A Vietnamese student named Binh Po buys and talks his way onto the grounds of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, joining ten thousand other desperate people, only to wind up among the four hundred and twenty left behind when an order from President Ford ends the evacuation prematurely and the last Marine chopper takes off.
Then another chopper took off.
The chopper takes off and pushes to the south.
The chopper took off, and for a while, Smith seemed to be handling it pretty well he grinned at the camera, chatted with the guys onboard, and threw a peace sign up to the crowd gathered below him: his wife Jada, and his kids Jaden, Willow, and Trey were all there, looking generally terrified, as was Alfonso Ribeiro ( a.k.a. Carlton from Fresh Prince).
It has a bit of sentimental 'Nam-style paraphernalia: Hendrix's Voodoo Chile as the choppers take off, famine-hit civilians called "skinnies" (nice touch, guys) and newcomers told to call the capital "Mog" or "The Mog".
The tourist choppers take off from the city-owned heliport in the Financial District, and typically swoop over toward Brooklyn Bridge Park, circle around Governors Island and the Statue of Liberty, and fly north up the West Side, buzzing over miles of new waterfront parks.
Both Clapton's and Vaughan's choppers took off into heavy fog after a show in Wisconsin.
Though Manhattan's waterfront is an unlikely place to find a thriving outrigger canoe scene -- set as it is on a river whose obstacles include bobbing baseballs and soda cans, swells from the Circle Line ferries and gusts from choppers taking off and landing at the West 30th Street heliport -- the club is a sign of the sport's growing popularity outside Hawaii.
After hoisting them to safety, Fay was about to climb in the chopper and take off when he saw a movement out of the corner of his eye.
When I later arrived at the embassy, I was told that the last chopper had taken off 30 minutes before.
