Editor’s Note: This story originally ran in the Q4_2021 issue of quattro Magazine. We do not have access to some of the photos of the A6 allroad seen in the ruins of the World Trade Center for digital use, so not all imagery that ran in print will run here. The story has only been updated to account for the difference in years since the original writing of this story. Thank you to David Graifman’s family for helping us share more of his story.
To most adults, twenty some years doesn’t seem like a long time. To anyone who lived through September 11, 2001, much less lost someone that day, a sunny morning over two decades ago seems like just yesterday. In the fast-paced world of the internet, recalling back more than two decades seems like a lifetime. The pre-2001 world wide web may be even less recognizable than airport security practices of that era. However, it’s important we recall the context as we remember those we lost.
In the Audi enthusiast community, September 11 anniversaries inevitably recount @davidnyc. The username makes it pretty obvious David was a New Yorker, and a briefly active participant on the then fledgling Audiworld.com website. Forums were then the most social of electronic mediums, shifting the landscape from list servers and chat rooms, creating a communications platform that was incredibly friendly to search engines still unfettered with paid ads. Forum users were on the forefront, utilizing the fast-paced growth of these new networks to interact and learn from each other. It was an optimistic and heady time so full of opportunity. At 40 years old, @davidnyc had quickly adopted the medium, using it to discuss his passions of watches on Timezone.com and also cars on Audiworld. He’d been considering a purchase of the then-new Audi allroad. He’d signed on to Audiworld in July, becoming a familiar user in the quickly growing allroad forum.
Then, on September 10, his posts abruptly ceased. The events that took place on September 11, 2001, would have been undoubtedly disturbing and life changing to anyone watching whenever they may have taken place, but happening as they did with the world wide web hitting its stride was a new and different experience. This network allowed for a worldwide population to feel it more personally. If you lived near New York or Washington then you likely knew people affected by the attacks, but now in the virtual world, so many more people had come to know of people like @davidnyc. Over on the popular VW/Audi forum VWvortex.com, a discussion thread on what was happening churned rapidly in real time and continued throughout the following weeks, months, and even years. This heightened the tragedy, making it that much more vivid for those involved online, even though most didn’t know anyone there firsthand. Most of the users mourning David’s passing on Audiworld didn’t even know who he was beyond that username and his affinity for the allroad.
That following February 7, David’s loss was further emphasized when an allroad was pulled from the rubble at Ground Zero, lifted by crane from the B2 level underground parking garage of World Trade Center 6. It reappeared remarkably intact and covered with dust, and many over at Audiworld recalling @davidnyc’s interest in the car wondered if it was his. His posts suggested it was not, as his writings imply that he hadn’t finalized his decision.
As the 20th anniversary of the tragedy approached, identifying @davidnyc took on a new meaning. Coming to terms with what happened that day also meant identifying and honoring those we lost. @davidnyc most directly represents that loss for the Audi enthusiast community, and yet we didn’t know precisely who he was.
The search began then on Audiworld.com. Kris Hansen, a longtime administrator for the site, was quick to help by sharing links to David’s posts or threads about his loss. One user suggested his identity was David Graham, and though there were a staggering 65 victims named David on September 11, none of them were named “David Graham”. Another post by a user @rkny who joined and posted just once on September 17 of that year stated that David worked on the 81st floor at “Keefe Bruyette” and confirmed his active participation on TimeZone.com. The TimeZone forums links no longer work, but the associations offered more clues that inevitably helped us identify @davidNYC.
Keefe, Bruyette, & Woods (KBW) is an investment banking firm headquartered in New York City. In 2001, the company’s headquarters were on the 88th and 89th floors of the World Trade Center’s South tower. When the first plane hit the north tower, several dozen KBW employees managed to escape. Tragically, 67 of them remained at their desks and those employees were lost when the south tower collapsed. Even among this group, there were still four victims named “David”.
Among this group was David Graifman. It was his shared interest in watches that was the final clue. In 2001, David Graifman was more known online as an expert in his financial field, or perhaps as a member of the New York Mensa society for high IQ individuals who very memorably took part in a comedy bit on the Late Show with David Letterman in 1992 where the group formed a human chain to deliver Letterman a can of root beer. David is the clean-cut good-looking kid in the dark jacket and white t-shirt at about 3:14 into the bit now available on YouTube.
By 2001, David Graifman was just hitting his stride. He’d grown up the youngest of three Graifman brothers. As a kid, he did everything he could to keep up with his brothers Gary and Brian off on adventures at the handlebars of their BMX bikes. In adulthood he’d found his own road when the two elder Graifmans became lawyers. David went into finance instead and had earned an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business. He’d married his wife Christine less than a year earlier, and they quickly set about establishing a life together by traveling to parts far flung. They were about to close on a house in the idyllic town of Irvington just up the Hudson River. It’d mean a commute, just 30 minutes by train on the Metro-North’s Hudson Line. Work would keep them regularly in Manhattan, and so too would season tickets at Shea Stadium to watch the Mets.
Over on Audiworld, Graifman hadn’t yet made his choice to buy the allroad. Like many of his diverse interests, David tackled his car purchase with his analytic talent that even superseded his passion for cars. He’d owned cars like a Fiat X/19 as a youth, and their commuter capable but perhaps boring Honda Civic wasn’t cutting it. Life on the wooded shores of the Hudson beckoned, and a long-roofed station wagon was in order. He’d narrowed the choice down to the affordable Subaru Outback, the safe yet conservative Volvo V70 XC, and the more luxurious and high performance allroad with its intriguing adjustable air suspension.
David conferred on Audiworld, and many of his fellow forum members were as pragmatic as he was, warning him of the challenges of reliability for those early biturbo cars but sharing in the appreciation for the new tech the Audi was bringing to market. There’s no doubt that wagons were the focus in the market at the time. The allroad had just arrived in the U.S. months before. On the morning of September 11, 6 hours ahead on German time, Audi had revealed its super luxurious A8-based Avantissimo concept at the Frankfurt Motor Show’s opening day. This concept seemed to suggest, like so many other things in those days before the attacks, how much further such unbridled potential would take us.
In the weeks leading up to the attacks, David’s keen sense for analysis and his ability to keep discussion level and on subject without starting flame wars were making him a welcome participant on Audiworld. He’d volunteered calculations of mean, median, mode, minimum and maximum age of allroad owners in the group. With pragmatism and subtle disarming humor, he even recognized that, while not often a priority for Germans, cupholders were key to his experience with an automobile. He shared, “my main passenger (my wife) contributes significantly to my financial and mental well-being. Letting her dehydrate is not an option.”
David’s posts continued until Monday, September 10. Early that morning, another user considering an allroad was asking about New York area lease deals. Helpfully as was his nature, David popped on at 10:41 to share that the Sunday New York Times referenced the deal as ending on September 30. This was his last post, and the owner community on Audiworld was almost immediately aware that he’d been lost.
On February 7, 2002, that dust-covered allroad made news when it was removed from Ground Zero in front of photographers covering work on “the pile”. It wasn’t David’s car, but the location and specificity weren’t lost on David’s online friends on the forums. As it turns out, further research reveals that the allroad in question belonged to 54-year-old Angel Pabon of Brooklyn, a management director of international equity at Cantor Fitzgerald who’d been working on the 104th floor of the north tower. Pabon had also been killed that day, and his wife Yvette shared in the New York Post that she was “stunned” to see photos of their car being lifted out of the rubble in the pages of the newspaper.
As Graifman likely intended, the allroad represented to the Pabons a more relaxed life. She shared that the grey 2001 allroad stirred memories of happier days driving to their weekend house in Pennsylvania. The fate and location of the car removed from Ground Zero remains unknown as of this writing.
As anniversaries of 9/11 pass, remembrances of @davidnyc and that dust-covered grey allroad continue to surface in the Audi community. Forum posts continue over on Audiworld, and @campallroad shared photos of Angel Pabon’s allroad on September 11th, 2019, mentioning @davidnyc with the hashtag #neverforget.
For our part, we felt it was important not just to never forget, but also to bring to light who they were… to tell their story. Angel Pabon was that allroad owner and David Graifman was a member of our community.
When we finally established online contact with David’s two older brothers Gary and Brian, it was a powerful moment for all. David’s family knew of TimeZone, but not of Audiworld. @DavidNYC’s postings were a fresh snapshot of someone they miss very much. What they shared with us was a fresh and critical snapshot of a memorable and tragically enigmatic member of this community.
David’s brother Brian first responded to our inquiry, confirming for certain that David Graifman was indeed @davidnyc. His brother Gary also shared that, during a Mets night game at Shea Stadium, David had revealed he’d made his decision to purchase the allroad. Unfortunately, that experience and so many more never came to pass for David Graifman. We now mourn his loss with the specificity we’ve been lacking.
We’d like to thank David’s family for making themselves available to us, to Brian and Gary for catching up via phone to confirm facts and for sharing photos that exemplified David’s automotive interests, and to his wife Christine who also confirmed key facts via his brothers. While we hope the experience was also cathartic for them in some way, we know that one can never revisit such a life changing experience without a heavy heart, and so we sincerely appreciate their cooperation in bringing this story forward.
It probably goes unsaid but twenty years on from the September 11th attacks (at the time of this writing) invites reflection on what we had and what we lost in 2001. It is certainly a reminder to seize the day lest an unexpected tragedy steal it away from you, and also to remember the sense of optimism and unity we shared, particularly online where 2001’s world wide web represented exploration of life with helpful and informative strangers like @davidnyc rather than today’s salacious and often snarky contacts on social platforms that is now the norm. Remembering those like David Graifman for what they were and emulating that optimism, helpfulness and sense of intelligence are behavior we sorely need more of in today. Never forget.
Update: Coincidentally after publishing this story digitally for the 23rd anniversary, we ran across another mention of David Graifman by @stripmallguy on Threads. We loved it, because it too was further evidence of the helpful optimism that seems to define @DavidNYC.
