Amidst all the false commemorations, the one tradition that's grown up I really like is the morning of the drunken firemen. What happens is that every September 11th the entire department comes up to the Fireman's Memorial at 9 am, the time of the attacks. (The memorial is a huge bas relief granite at 99th and Riverside Drive, erected circa 1904, which most people never notice because it's up on the access road where few people walk.) And then (and this started spontaneously the first year after) they fan out to a couple of bars in the neighborhood with Irish names which serve them free. Normally bars can't open that early, and normally you aren't allowed to drink your beer on the sidewalks. But it's become tradition to waive those rules for these guys on this day.
The result is that when you're buying your breakfast bagel at Absolute at 10 or 11 am you wade through this huge throng of happy drunk fireman in their dress blues, some of them in kilts.
It's not quite New Orleans, but for a blue state, it's not bad.
Michael