25 years after 9/11, small businesses in Lower Manhattan are thankful to still be serving the community

When the towers fell on 9/11, many small businesses in Lower Manhattan thought they might never reopen.

Twenty-five years later, some are still serving the community. Thirty-four mom-and-pop shops were recently honored with a legacy business award, including City Blossoms and Bubby's Pies.

"Stay on your feet no matter what"

Inna Lipovsky has been running City Blossoms for more than three decades, and now, she runs it alongside her daughter Karina Granin.

The morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Lipovsky was supposed to meet a driver at the twin towers to take her to a flower show in New Jersey, but something made her change plans.

"I said, 'Why don't you drive through Staten Island?'" said Lipovsky, who lived in Staten Island at the time. 

She said that last-minute change may have saved her life, but she lost contact with her husband, who worked on Wall Street. Meanwhile, her daughter was worried sick.

"I couldn't reach him," Granin said of her father. "And then he just showed up covered in all the dust because he walked across the bridge."

But many of their clients and friends, they didn't see again.

Located just blocks from Ground Zero, all the vases in Lipovsky's shop shattered, but her only concern was her family, staff and community.

In the weeks that followed, her flowers became something much more than a business.

"People sending flowers to someone who lost someone," she said. "Everyone knew someone who died. Everyone was affected."

Over those next months, she kept making bright bouquets, bringing color back to a neighborhood that was gray with ash. Her shop became a gathering place to connect.

"There was no way she would leave," Granin said of her mother.

"You know what, if you fall in, you're not going to pick up," Lipovsky said. "You have to stay on your feet no matter what."  

"I never considered quitting or closing down"

A few blocks north of City Blossoms, Ron Silver was working as a chef at the beloved Tribeca restaurant he founded, Bubby's. He remembers standing outside when the first tower came down.

"I zipped up to get my son from school," Silver said. "Pure chaos."

In the days that followed, he sneaked past police barricades to get into his business so he could make pancakes for first responders and anyone who needed a meal and a place to sit.

"The purpose of the business at that point was just to provide a community space," Silver said.

People heard on the radio that first responders needed items like eye wash, socks and bottled water, and they started dropping it all off in front of Bubby's.

Silver says he pushed through for his community.

"I never considered quitting or closing down or that New York wasn't coming back or any kind of thing like that," Silver said.