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People stand on bollards at the World Trade Center to try to secure a view of President Obama during his visit Thursday evening.?
President Obama and the First Lady arrived at Ground Zero Thursday to review the reconstruction effort and sign their names on one of the final steel beams to be added to the One World Trade Center tower.
After Air Force One landed in Queens, the First Couple took a helicopter into Manhattan and then a motorcade ride through police-barricaded streets over to Ground Zero, pulling in a few minutes before 6 p.m.
A White House official said they would be venturing up to the 22nd floor of the tower, due to be the Western Hemisphere's tallest skyscraper, at a symbolic 1,776 feet, when it is completed.
Their tour guides: Gov. Cuomo, Mayor Bloomberg, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Port Authority bigwigs.
Following the tour, they were to greet workers from the more than sixty trade unions that are currently working on the massive job.
Once they?re through with glad-handing with scores of hardhats, the President was set to mingle with the rich and famous for a routine he now knows quite well - call it "Cash-grabbing and the City."
Obama's campaign, facing a Republican fund-raising operation that is continuing to gain momentum, has booked two star-studded war-chest-padders in Manhattan. The tag-team of fund-raisers, expected to gross a total of $4.5 million, will represent the President's 27th and 28th New York cash grabs.
His use of New York as a campaign "ATM" is surpassed only by Washington DC and California, where he has held 36 and 29 fund-raisers, respectively.
From Ground Zero, the President's motorcade will zip up to the West Village pad of "Sex and the City" star Sarah Jessica Parker for a $40,000-a-head event.
The fund-raiser at the actress' Charles St. brownstone is dubbed "A New York Night" and is co-hosted by Vogue editor Anna Wintour, who - naturally - supervised the decoration of the townhouse earlier this week.
The icy fashionista would surely have approved of the outfit that the always-well-dressed First Lady wore upon arrival in New York: She stepped off of Air Force One clad in a floral print sundress, lilac colored sweater and bright yellow flats.
The Parker-and-Wintour bash was expected to draw plenty of big names. A Daily News scribe spotted Oscar-winner Meryl Streep and ledendary singer Aretha Franklin arriving early.
From there, Obama was due to head to Midtown, for a 10 p.m. event at the Plaza Hotel, where some 250 supporters were expected to contribute $10,000 each for a chance to hobnob with the 44th President. Alicia Keys was supposed to be in attendance.
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