The Narrows' Storm Drain

   I pushed open the doors and walked out of the building. Footprints in the beach led to me, clambering into an outfall. This drain pipe was ridiculously small; I couldn't even squat like I could in my first one. Flashlight getting soggy, I crawled through the sand and water. I crawled and crawled until my muscles were sore and I needed a break. Eventually I gave up trying to stay dry and plopped my pants and coat down into a soggy mess. I shone my light hoping that I would find something noteworthy, but there was nothing to be found here. There was no way I could keep plunging my arm into sandy water, keep having water pour into my shoes and chill my socks, keep leapfrogging through the 2' high drain. Screw this. I headed back. There are other drains. Like my first one.

 

I found this drain back in the summer of '11 and have explored it several times each time going further than the last. The best two adjectives I could use to describe the experience are boring and scary.

The sounds from the passing cars bumping through the tunnel, the dripping water, my boots sinking into the freezing wet mud, the stale air and the pitch blackness made it a scary experience.

However, the storm drains had a predictable pattern. Walk this many yards, then come across a rust-colored ladder and maybe some bacteria. Yipee. I saw almost no variety in my hour and a half explo of this place; in fact, the most exciting part was when the route curved. 

 

My perception from this tidally affected location is that going deep into storm drains is not worth your trouble. Few people go there, so there's nothing to see, and you always have to keep the tide in the back of your mind to make sure you don't drown from a drain flood. The mud is sticky, the water jumps into your boots and freezes your feet, and the darkness is intimidating. None of this is meant to detract you from drains, but be aware that some are more interesting than others, and get to know the risks and experiences involved before going.

Floyd Bennett Field Hangars

       Back in September 2011, I considered this spot to be the site of my first, "real" exploration, because I took a whole day off to check it out with a friend. During that day, we also went to Bottle Beach and climbed around the underside of the Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge. I always send my exploring pictures to my partners and tell them to do the same, but they usually never do the same. This worked against us when my friend lost his beautiful $300 camera phone and lost all of the pictures we took with it (this is why he can't have nice things). However, even though I knew that some of the hangars were having construction done on them, I went back. I knew there was more to see.
       I checked out the basements in one of the hangars going nowhere, totally dark and filled with either dirt or water, and stepped on a large rusted nail...again. Right at the same time that I was telling my exploring partner that the last time I was there, I stepped on a large rusted nail. The huge hole in the shoe miraculously patched up, and fortunately, the skin was not penetrated deeply. This is the importance of watching your step/having boots. If you go here, be careful. Those rusty nails are death traps. Another tense moment was laying low in a hangar as sanitation trainees walked by and helicopters whirled over us.
     Anyway, I must say I am quite pleased with the photographic results. Here are the fruits of our labors.

                                                                              Until next time!

The Bay Ridge Branch

  "I don't know why. I'm not an impulsive person".
  -Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

      This should be a tale of a young adult's heroism and overpowering sense of adventure. This should be about how he/she braved an oncoming slew of traffic from one side and a flanking from pedestrians and still managed to hop a tall spiked fence. This should be about that. But it isn't. Instead, let me tell you a tale of human incompetence and dumb luck.
      On the same day that I was exploring the Rockaway Branch I decided, on a total whim on the way home, to make my way to the Bay Ridge branch (just for a peek). This is location has gained infamy even among my non-exploring friends, and they cutely refer to it as, "The Avenue H Station". The seemingly abandoned Bay Ridge Branch, however, does run through that part of town. This was a location I had passed several times and peered into the fence, and have longed for an occasion (perhaps at night) where I could jump the fence and explore the place. However, it turned out I didn't need to.
     My eyes hopped from the prickly fence top to the frigid metallic padlock chain. Wait, what chain? The door ajar just ever so slightly, it invited me to enter. I couldn't believe it. The door was left open? How long was it like that? Perhaps it was only for a day. Even so, if I had decided to come just a day later, the place would be chained up and getting in would be so much more difficult. Wary of workers, I slipped through the thin crack in the door and vaulted over the rail to hide myself from the publicly viewable stairs. How many people have passed by this location without even making the conscious effort to peer beyond the gates? This is the importance of keeping plants of curiosity freshly cultivated in your mind, as well as saplings of impulsiveness - because acting on a hunch may provide you with the rich opportunity I had.
     Dark. The world was dark, and the only light shone in from a strange overhead angle. Contributing to the blackness, I had to walk in the shadows to ensure I wasn't seen from pedestrians from above, or any random homeless or workers.
     At one point, I climbed up a rusted set of stairs to peer through a grating. One of the stairs was missing and it looked like someone might've fell through the gap. Imagine stepping on a stair you believed to be sturdy only to have it collapse and crash to the ground eleven feet on impact. Time to turn back. As I went down gently, I heard bits of rust from the stairs rain down onto the dirt. Though the track is still active, it feels like nobody has been here for a long, long time.

      You see that elevated spot in the middleground? The R train passes through there between 59 Street to Bay Ridge Avenue and back. If you take the R and pass between these stations, make sure to steal a peek out the window. In the background to the left appears to be the line which the N train runs on. From this point, one can see three train lines at the same time!

     If you want to check out more on this long forgotten place, check out Nathan Kensinger's photo essay on the Bay Ridge Branch.  It's cool seeing his summetime shots because they contrast grealty with the barren winter I was shooting in. This site provides a virtual tour of this branch.                              

Many subsequent expeditions planned. And now, a little photo from the archives.

                                                  

These are tracks from an abandoned trolley station in Sunset Park. It's not worth a whole trip to check out the line, but if you're nearby, it's cool to see it. Peace, everyone!

  

Abandoned Rockaway Beach Branch

     I'm not sure how I heard of it, but once I was aware of its existence, my curiosity was piqued and I was intrigued, wanting to check it out. The Rockaway Beach Branch is reminiscent of the High Line - they both were/are both abandoned railways hoping to eventually fully become a park. My trip only covered a small portion of the whole track, but this microcosm is a fairly apt representation of the whole track. It appears that parts of the track run into active Long Island Railroad trains and perhaps it bumps into the A train. It also seems that Steve Duncan found the time to explore the historic site.

     As you can see, the tracks going back and forth are all in place, and the third rails are still present, though no longer electrified. My commentary won't add much, so I'll leave the following as a photo essay and let the pictures mostly speak for themselves.

 

     I must confess that when I saw this truss tower, which shot up about 40 feet into the air, it was an ample climbing opportunity. I only made it halfway up, because any further would arouse suspicion from the adjacent ballpark. I'm guessing that the tower I squirreled up used to provide electricity to the tracks, but now no wires exist there.

    At a certain point in the line, I saw two workers, each contrasting from each other because one wore a white hoodie, the other a black one. It appeared that they were painting the walls, perhaps to cover the graff. There was no point in hiding myself from them, but I managed to sneak past them anyway. Once I hit the end of the line and turned around, however, there was no way to conceal my identity as I loudly crunched and rustled the leaves along the path. This alerted them to my presence, but I had no idea what they thought. Moving on towards the wall, I noticed some amazing graffiti.

                                                     Goodbye, railway! Until next time!

   
     If you want to help save this historic Queens Branch from destruction and try to make it into a park, click here to sign a petition which will send a letter to the councilman of the district letting him know you care. So far, more than half of the required signatures have been reached, but it could still use your help. For more information and a comprehensive photographic tour of the full branch, click here.

    Here's to a New Year, and with it, new explorations. A toast! What do I have planned for my writeup for next month? It has something to do with this place...

Freedom Tunnel

    "1...2...Train!" Interrupted mid photo-shoot, my exploring partner ran across the tracks to hide by the wall. I couldn't assess whether I could make it in time to run with her without being splattered by the train, which was careening down the tracks at no slower than 60 miles an hour. I decided not to push my luck and ran to a dark corner very close to the train. I got in a prone position, buried my head in my shoulders and covered my ears as the train roared past. With lights so penetratingly bright, I wouldn't be surprised if I had been spotted.
                                                                            
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     I dipped my tea bag several times into the empty cup, like an angler tempting fish with his bait. As I had agreed to, I would meet with this anonymous stranger who would be shown the tunnel under my guidance. I'll admit that I knew the rudimentary steps to get in, but what happened from thereon in was all adventure.

    We slipped through a gap in the unforgiving steel of the barbed wire fence and came to an artificially lit part of the tunnel. Majestically, a bird swooped down as if to greet us. All of the doors providing access to the tunnel could only be opened from the inside, so we had to walk for a bit until we would reach the open space at 60th street. On the way, there were tags saying, "Big Brother is Watching" (most likely referencing the solitary camera that exists under the buildings) and a picture that I liked of a student getting a good mark.

     This was my fourth and most comprehensive view of the tunnel. From the first time I stumbled by it in the park to my contemplation of doing a thorough exploration, one thing was for sure - this was a place that definitely needed to be hit up someday...and today was that day. 

Our duo was a pair of minds, siblings in paranoia. I feared the trains which creep up silently while she feared running into the homeless. Every rumble I heard, I associated with a train, until I eventually became conditioned to pay the sounds very little mind. Every opening she found, she called out, "Hello?", just to ensure that we were not barging into someone's house. The tunnel has a few places where there is a ladder leading either to the park or is a one-way ticket to nowhere, like this opening that we stumbled upon.

      Most of the areas of the tunnel had accumulated hastily scratched out graffiti over the years, but every once in a while we would come across a well-done mural. One mutual interest was that we wished to find the (in)famous murals of Freedom - the tagger whose moniker had been adopted as the tunnel's unofficial name.

    After I did precision jumps from rail to rail and balanced on the tracks, we came across an open manhole. A stream of water vibrated through the hole. I asked for a headlamp and took a look inside. I climbed down the ladder's rungs and investigated the running water in the sewer/drain system. A good number of spots in this tunnel lead down into these waterways.

    We passed by golden graffiti with the "Illuminati" pyramid which said, "Everybody got a story" and made our way to 70th street - a place where the tunnel lights end and the only illumination comes from the sun shining into the overhead grates. As we walked along a wall, she perceived something to be amiss. A large beam of light. A sudden rumbling. We ducked our heads, straddled the wall, covered our ears and waited for the locomotive to pass. Our first train.

    I explained, "The last train went over that track, therefore, it's less likely that another will pass again over the same track." Somehow, we ended up in an adjacent construction site - one that provided safety from the flying bullets which we called trains. I grew cocky, searching everywhere, and discovered an area where a plethora of bottles laid.
"Wow, this a lot of litter!", I conveyed a bit loudly.
"Shh!", an unidentified voice replied, startling me.
"Sorry", I whispered in response.
Suspicion confirmed. There still were people living in parts of the tunnel.

   We jogged onward, and I didn't know the way out from Harlem, so I was under the impression that our trip would go full circle. Fortunately, this was not the case (as my legs would have probably fallen off afterwards from that much walking). Halfway through the tunnel, we found some more tags, and I noticed a couple made by Trap. I've seen Trap's work around a lot, particularly near places with trains. These other ones were a bit more colorful.
       

                     

Would you like to be a fly on the wall?

    This location had many poems scrawled out over the wall, and song lyrics as well, including bits from Pink Floyd's, "Welcome to the Machine" and "Brain Damage". As I was posing for a picture, I heard, "One...Two...Train!". Not having adequate time to run across the field to the safety of a protective wall, I ducked and covered confusedly like a bad actor in a 50s instructional video about atomic bombs. The dust parted and we met again. But as I walked past the picture, I noticed that something was missing...

"Uh-oh. Hang on."
"What?"
"I lost my phone. It must have fallen out of my jacket pocket when I ditched everything and ducked into the corner."
"Oh."
"Don't worry, this happens all the time. I just feel really bad that I lost your light."
"Let's go back and look for your phone."
"What's the point? Look, let's just forget about it and keep going."
"No, we have to go back and try to find it."
"Okay. Well... I was around here in the darker area to be well concealed."
"Found it!"
"Oh, wow. Thank you. Thanks."
"No problem."

    Freedom's murals were up ahead, but right as we were about to scrutinize them, train lights appeared from both sides and attempted to double team us. We both rushed back to our original hiding spots, where I took care not to lose my items again. One of the trains whooshed past. But the second train...where was it?

"Weren't there two train lights?"
"Yeah. Guess one of them was a ghost train."

    'Faded glory', is a phrase that comes to mind when viewing Freedom's work. A gray wall covers his pieces such as the Coca-Cola and American Way pictures. In their place, a bomber wrote, "Fuck Amtrak." Indeed, I was disappointed seeing his art being reduced from this:

                                                                          To this:

     As I contemplated why Amtrak would blow out their funds ruining the once beautiful walls, my partner discerned two figures walking in the distance (Fortunately, our pair had symbiosis in which I supplied physicality while she contributed acute sensory perception).

    "Fuck.", I swore. "Let's turn back." My mind was clouded with doubts, as I was nearly certain that this pair came to apprehend us. Non-reassuringly, a few signs threatened that those caught here would be detained. I also thought that a train had spotted me and the conductor radioed in the other (ghost) train to have men look for us. I suggested running while she wanted to talk her way out of it. However, if these were officials, they wouldn't be messing around. I suggested tensely, "If we go to the other tracks, we can avoid confrontation." She was as stagnant as the tunnel's air, and kept suggesting that we wait. I implored that we should leave because I didn't want to get arrested. But, defeated, I waited. We waited.

    The figures grew larger until they greeted us, terming us as, "fellow dwellers". Relieved, I told them that I thought they worked for Amtrak. They responded, "Yo, we was thinkin' the same thing about you!". We asked them if they knew a way out, and chatted about the details of the tunnel. The last words of advice they gave were, "Watch out for trains!"

    The light at the end of the tunnel. Sweet, honey colored light shone at the tunnel's end. Our final destination was so close, almost palpable. We saw a tagger run across the tracks and greeted him. In mid-chat, a fifth train came rolling by. He stayed by his wall while we skipped from the tracks back to a hiding place in the tunnel. This area had more visitors than I thought. We bade farewell to the kid and hopped the fence, eventually coming out.

    After being in dark quarters where many things may have hindered your life, the rest of the city seemed beautiful and was definitely a thing to be appreciated. It was like waking from a coma and seeing the world renewed (or rebooted as LTV Squad might say).

    I woke up safe and warm in my little bed the next morning. Was it all a dream? The last thing I could recollect was me being told to, "buy a bubble tea and take the J train." And I would. But for now, I let the sunshine embrace my body as I lay down...down...down.
                                                                         
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(As is now precedent, here is a teaser photo from my urbex files):

                                                                 Until next time, everybody!