by Gates, Moses
But for all my melancholy, I also know this grey paint isn’t an ending; it’s a new beginning. In fact, I almost laugh out loud at the giant waste of money I know this process will end up being. All the painting is doing is giving a new generation of artists a brand-new canvas thousands of feet long. I know that if I come back for Brooklyn’s fifty-first birthday, I’ll see other, newer, but probably no less stunning works of art. This generation will build its own hidden legends. Maybe, like the gallery in the abandoned subway station, they’ll be part of a larger project, saying something about the state of the art world or the commercialization of creativity. But I imagine they’ll probably be created for their own sake and simply left for the curious, for whoever wants to go find them for themselves.
But as I keep walking down the tracks, I start to understand that those people won’t be me. I love the tunnel. I’m sad to see a part of it go. I think a lot about what will eventually replace the murals, which artists will be the ones to execute an idea. But something is missing. I’m curious, sure, but I don’t have that overwhelming thirst, that drive, to see for myself what’s going to be there. After I’d turned thirty, I found myself shivering in an abandoned firehouse across from a power plant. After I’d turned thirty-five, I found myself in a rusting emergency train exit under a park. I don’t want to turn forty and find myself hanging out in a steam tunnel, like Lazlo in that movie Real Genius. It’s time to get going on what’s next, time to find a new love, a new pursuit. There’s a time and a place for all different points in life—a time to explore and a time to nest. A time to get kicked in the head by a beatboxing homeless lady, and a time to, well, not get kicked in the head by a beatboxing homeless lady.
And besides, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t keep up anymore. It seems like every week a new website is popping up with tales and photos of some crazy adventure: climbing the Golden Gate Bridge, sneaking into Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch, infiltrating active U.S. military bases. But I don’t feel pushed by this like I felt pushed by Steve on the adventures we had. I feel like an old man watching the kids at play. And I don’t mind this feeling at all. I remember another feeling from five years ago, right after I got divorced and lost my job: the feeling of having tried to grow up and failed. I’ve allowed myself more than enough years of recovery—maybe it’s time to give growing up another shot.
• • •
Later I learn the piece I had seen in the subway tunnel wasn’t the whole story. It didn’t read “None Of This Matters.” It read “None Of This Matters . . .” I had missed those three dots at the end, the three dots that indicated it wasn’t complete but only the first half of a larger phrase. The second half was written in a separate stretch of tunnel, a stretch I had never visited. The message reads:
“None Of This Matters . . . But Its Very Necessary!”
© Eric Ruggiero 2012 – www.ericruggiero.com
© Eric Ruggiero 2012 – www.ericruggiero.com
EPILOGUE
2011
Two thousand eleven was a good year and a bad year for the international urban adventure crew. In the spring the Londoners cracked the last abandoned Tube station they had left to visit: Aldwych. Siologen and three others decided to try a return trip during the week of the royal wedding of Prince William and Princess Kate, getting caught and ending up with a thirty-six-hour stay in solitary, their apartments ransacked, laptops confiscated, and shenanigans firmly on the radar of the authorities all the way up to MI5. Silo decided to leave England, and we threw a raucous good-bye party for him in a storm drain under Hyde Park. Almost fifty people from half a dozen countries on three continents were there. The day before, he had learned that he’d be getting off with a “simple caution.”
I had been awake for thirty-six hours and had decided to spend the day walking nineteen miles from Heathrow Airport into the City of London before starting in on a hefty amount of what turned out to be 9 percent alcohol beer (the Wikipedia article referencing the specific brand ends with “This beer is associated with binge drinking amongst vagrants”). I cannot remember the speech I gave in Silo’s honor, but unfortunately it was videotaped by at least half the people in attendance. Later in the summer Silo ended up breaking his pelvis after a nine-foot fall through a subway vent shaft in Philadelphia before going back to Australia.
SILO’S GOING-AWAY PARTY. UNDER LONDON.
© Lutex
A couple weeks after Silo got busted, Eric and three of his friends ended up with their pictures in the New York Post under the headline “Tunnel-Punk Terror Scares” after they were caught hanging out in a stretch of unused tunnel under Second Avenue. What would normally have been a simple trespassing ticket ended up as an NYPD Emergency Service Unit raid with the four of them getting arrested at gunpoint. The city was already on high alert as a result of the Navy SEAL operation that had just killed Osama bin Laden. Then that night a crazy person jumped off the platform at the World Trade Center PATH train stop, walked under the Hudson River to New Jersey, and upon arriving told the police that he had left a bomb on the tracks. As a result, the cops weren’t taking any chances when a trucker called in a report of four young men opening a hatch in an East Harlem sidewalk. Earlier that night I had been hanging out with them at a bar, celebrating one of the group’s twenty-first birthday. They had invited me out with them. “Nah, I’m kind of too old for this stuff,” I’d said.
Ten days after that I climbed the Brooklyn Bridge with a college student from Hartlepool, England, named Lucy who was in town for the week. I knew it was my last time. For the first time I could see the under-construction new World Trade Center from the top of the bridge. We were seen coming down by a couple of bicyclists and a group of four middle-aged women, but none of them seemed to care. Lucy finished fourth in her local beauty pageant the next month while wearing a pair of hip waders with her bikini during the swimsuit section.
The same week that Lucy represented for the beauty of draining, two guys from New England got arrested on top of the Williamsburg Bridge after getting spotted by a routine helicopter patrol. Police commissioner Ray Kelly referred to them as “urban explorers,” and I didn’t know whether to laugh or be worried. A day after that QX and Marshall climbed the Bosphorus Bridge in Turkey on a whim. It’s more than 100 feet taller than the Williamsburg and patrolled 24/7 by Turkish police. QX and Marshall got away without a scratch. The bridge climbers back home got charged with felony reckless endangerment. Shortly after that, undeterred by the recent arrests, an aerialist climbed the Williamsburg Bridge in the middle of the day and did a death-defying performance involving hanging from the bridge and twirling around in what looked like a bedsheet. She also got arrested, taken to Rikers Island, and charged with a felony. It ended up getting pleaded down to five free aerial shows for kids.
Anastasia and Sasha celebrated their first anniversary. They had had their wedding in the Odessa catacombs. Ani wore a beautiful white dress. Sasha wore an orange caving suit. The Underbelly Project did a new gallery in an abandoned subway tunnel in Paris, with plans for more around the world. The Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower got converted into condos, with the penthouse unit housing the old observation decks selling for $1.325 million. The New York Times ran a story on the sale, mentioning the appeal of the old signs. They quoted the buyer: “‘I was very swayed by the terraces,’ she said, which . . . bear plaques retelling the history of the Battle of Brooklyn.”
In August, Shane and I managed to tag along on a tour for New York City transportation professionals to the top of the George Washington Bridge. It’s the tallest bridge I’ve ever been up, and the first I have ever been able to relax while on top of. I enjoyed the beautiful day and postcard-perfect view, but somehow it wasn’t quite the same.
A couple months later, Shane had sex on top of (as strictly defined by the Sex on Bridges charter) the Brooklyn Bridge.
“Man, that bridge is by far the best fuc
king experience out of all of them,” he texted me after doing the deed. “Solid stone surface instead of steel, unobstructed 360-degree view, and that giant American flag over your head. Makes for epic damn fucking.”
Steve and Andrew the videographer produced a half-hour Web video called Undercity featuring Steve climbing bridges, running in subways, and talking with the people living in the Riverside Park Tunnel. It went viral, got over a million views, and landed them on the Today show, where Steve was called, to my eternal jealousy, “a modern-day Indiana Jones.” Myself, I lasted less than a year before I went back for another visit to the Riverside Park Tunnel. I chatted with Brooklyn for a bit; she apologized for kicking me in the face and told me the tunnel had gone back to normal, that Amtrak had stopped coming by. They seemed to have run out of money about halfway through, the thin layer of dull grey paint stopping around 96th Street. There were already dozens of new graffiti pieces.
• • •
I want to retire, but I can’t. I slow down, but I never really stop. I’ve taught myself how to recognize the artificial boundaries and how to break them down in my head. But I never learn how to reconstruct them. It all simply becomes part of my new perception, my new reality, and I can’t go back even if I wanted to. Imagine that all of a sudden a traffic light’s been put at your front door. Would you really wait until it turned green before tying your shoes and heading out to start your day?
My taste for adventure continues to diminish, but it’s not even an adventure anymore, just a vacation. I take a few days to climb bridges with Lucy and a few other people in northern England, head to a party in an abandoned mine in Minneapolis, admire the views from the roofs of Chicago skyscrapers. I spend a weekend camping out in the Paris catacombs—I bring a travel hammock, a sleeping bag, a change of shoes, a strong flashlight, some camping provisions, a few liters of water, and a good book. While wandering through some of the quarries, a snaking blue pattern catches my eye—the same one I saw in the abandoned Paulo mansion years ago. I smile to myself. I think of how many other people can smile to themselves like that. I think of never smiling like that again.
ZEZÃO IN THE PARIS CATACOMBS.
• • •
Hey, mate,” I write QX after the trip. “So when are we giving this pyramids thing another go?”
© Eric Ruggiero 2012 – www.ericruggiero.com
SITTING ON THE SHOULDERS OF EAGLES–CHRYSLER BUILDING, NYC.
© Simon Yorkston
LONDON’S LOST RIVER FLEET.
© Silent UK
ABANDONED 18TH STREET SUBWAY STATION, EAST SIDE OF MANHATTAN.
© Shane Perez
UNDERGROUND ART—CATACOMBS OF PARIS.
All rights reserved. © Marc Expo 2011
UNDERGROUND ART—SUBWAYS OF NEW YORK.
Photo by Joseph Carnevale
CLIMBING NEW YORK CITY’S BRIDGES . . .
THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE
© Simon Yorkston
THE MANHATTAN BRIDGE
sleepycity.net | sewerfresh.com
THE WILLIAMSBURG BRIDGE
© Shane Perez
THE GEORGE WASHINGTON BRIDGE
RIVERSIDE PARK TUNNEL MURALS.
© Shane Perez
AFTER THE BUFF.
RIVERSIDE PARK TUNNEL.
© Allison Davis
CATACOMB BONES, PARIS.
© Eric Ruggiero 2012 –www.ericruggiero.com
NEGLINKA RIVER, MOSCOW.
© Paratozer
© Eric Ruggiero 2012 – www.ericruggiero.com
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, thank you to everyone with whom I have ever shared that wonderful moment of crossing from the everyday comfortable and officially sanctioned world into that strange space beyond it. This numbers, at this point, hundreds of people in dozens of countries, far too many to be named here—and many of whom wouldn’t even want to be. A few of these people you’ve read about in the previous pages, but most you haven’t. When one writes a book, some people and stories slot in seamlessly, while others, for whatever reason, do not. Many close friends and favorite memories are left out of this book—please know you’re remembered here. BMW, NPT, and all other assorted three-letter acronyms, for life.
Thanks to all who consented to my nagging requests for commentary, photographs, video, fact-checks, blurbs, reviews, translations, and everything else. Huge thanks to Larry Ray, Gilles Thomas, and Gabriel Rostey for review and fact-checking on (respectively) Naples, Paris, and São Paulo; Chris Pape for review and fact-checking on the Riverside Park Tunnel; Jim Alston for review and fact-checking on the Cave Clan and all things storm drain; and Danielle Plamondon for French translation. Thanks to the many who contributed commentary, photos, and video and who took the time to look over the stories of the adventures they were in—if there is ever any contribution to one of your endeavors I can repay you with, you have a written guarantee right here.
Thank you to all the professors and tour guides I learned about New York from during the time the events in this book took place—Joseph Salvo, Stanley Moses, Stan Thomashaw (RIP), Lee Gelber, and many others. You were the counterpoint and complement to the on-the-ground (or in-the-ground) experience I got of the city during this time. A well-rounded education is a very important thing.
Thank you to my wonderful family: parents Judy and David, sister Rivka, brother Micah, cousin Karen, late grandparents John, Mary, and Seymour, and all other members of my extended family up to and including third cousins twice removed.
Thank you to Carolyn, my first eyes on the page, whose support of, and advice on, these pages meant the world to me; Sara, with whom I took much of this journey, and with whom every step was full of joy; and Jennifer, who always encouraged me to be the person I wanted to be and do the things I dreamed of doing.
Thanks to my agent (and fairy godmother), Alyssa Reuben, and editor, Sara Carder, both of whom took a risk on an unknown writer without an online article or Twitter follower to his name. Thanks also to Jason Yarn at Paradigm, and to Brianna Yamashita, Joanna Ng, David Chesanow, Dave Walker, Amanda Dewey, and everyone else at Tarcher/Penguin who worked on this project.
Finally, thanks to the hole in the tunnel wall down the abandoned train tracks of the XIVe arrondissement. Everywhere comes and goes, especially in this hobby, but somehow I thought you’d always be there. You’ll be missed by me, and many others.
Notes
ONE
Dozens of average citizens: A tabulation of employee deaths since 1946 provided to The New York Times by the New York Transit Authority indicated approximately 150 deaths from being hit by a train and approximately two dozen deaths from electrocution resulting from contact with the third rail. According to a Columbia University study, there were an estimated 668 subway fatalities in total between 1990 and 2003. Robyn R. M. Gershon et al., “Epidemiology of Subway-Related Fatalities in New York City, 1990–2003.” Journal of Safety Research 39 (2008), pp. 583–588. In 2011, the last year for which information is available, New York City Transit reported forty-seven total fatalities from being struck by a train.
TWO
My favorite places became a beautiful derelict courthouse: These are, respectively, the abandoned Bronx Borough Courthouse on 161st Street and Third Avenue in the Bronx; the High Bridge, which was built to carry the Old Croton Aqueduct from the Bronx into Manhattan in 1848 and which crosses the Harlem River at about 174th Street; and the High Line, which runs from Gansevoort Street in the West Village up to 34th Street. The High Line has since been redeveloped into a public park, and the High Bridge and the Bronx Borough Courthouse are in the process of being renovated and reopened as well.
SIX
There are almost no skulls: Visiting the catacombs, while illegal, is punishable only by a civil fine. But if you get stopped at the airport trying to take home Jean-Pierre’s femur,
you’re going to be in a world of trouble. And regardless, you should really have a little more respect for the dead—although I suppose being taken and put on a tourist’s mantelpiece is just as dignified as being thrown down into an old limestone quarry.
But the variety of tunnels is even greater: These disused cables were removed sometime between 2006 and 2011.
SEVEN
There’s plenty written about the catacombs: There is actually one comprehensive English book on the catacombs, Caroline Archer’s wonderful Paris Underground, which I didn’t learn of until a few years after this trip.
NINE
We have four of the former longest suspension bridges: These are, respectively, the Brooklyn, the Williamsburg, the George Washington, and the Verrazano-Narrows bridges; the Bayonne and Hell Gate bridges; the Queensboro Bridge; the Marine Parkway Bridge; the Arthur Kill Bridge; the Hell Gate Bridge; the Carroll Street and Borden Street bridges; and, of course, the Brooklyn Bridge.
Before 2001, people bungee jumped: See Carla Spartos, “Jump: Under Cover of Night, Local Daredevils Bungee off City Bridges,” The Village Voice, May 26, 1998, http://www.villagevoice.com/1998-05-26/news/jump/.