Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
I found that there were people down there who wanted to escape from society.
What got me interested in the story was I was a graduate student a Columbia NY. And I was tutoring
a girl, she would tell me stories about her life cause she was such an interesting kid
and she would tell these great stories about what she did in school and finally she said,
you know, there are these mole people under ground and they have ashen colored skin and
glowing red eyes and webbed feet. I said Kristen, Tell the truth. And she said No! There really
are people that live underground there are really people living in the tunnels and that's
how I got started. She was right.
I got started in this project because primarily,
ever since I was a kid, I was always fascinated by things like The Loch Ness monster and UFO's
and crop circles, and when the opportunity came for me to actually work on this project,
I grabbed it. The mole people, is a myth that I could try to prove or disprove.
My first impression was not so much the fear of the tunnels but actually the fear of police
in the tunnels because it obviously something that's illegal. So there was a lot of trepidation
and just getting on the tracks and going into the tunnels and I went with Erik and he told
me to let him know by making a sound or a signal in case someone was coming on the platform
or was interested in what we were doing.
You know, what really worries me is that there is no catwalk.
No catwalk There no catwalk and even though we are going
at a time that there are almost no trains going around, there still no where to go if
a train does come around. So, it does worry me a little bit
So what are our options? Our options are just to be careful.
It's kind of like archeological traversing. You know? I now know how the guys that discovered the
pyramids felt. The dark tunnels, the arches, the torchlight. I think there's a train right
there. Yes it is, so let's cross over and wait for it to go by. I was scared, I was exhilarated,
but we went down a few times. Uh, two or three times not really venturing too far off the
path. It's a different experience down there. You feel fears you never knew existed.
All these passages and tunnels, its like you couldn't make one from another. That's when
I started wondering whether getting back to the surface would be a problem.
Kenny, be careful please.
Hey, this was Freedom Smith. Bernard and Chris Pape used to come
down here and do art and they were all taggers and artists. And this is one of the pieces,
that he left down here in the tunnels. This is beautiful!
As we got further in to the tunnel, you could hear what sounds like a drum, sounds like
a double beat and you wouldn't hear it behind us from where the platform was, and you would
hear it further into the tunnel. And we felt like we were being seen, we felt
like we were being watched those other times and we heard a lot of tapping, and drumming.
Stuff that we've learned is kind of how people communicate to let people know that there
is someone in the tunnel that shouldn't be in the tunnel.
And then I noticed, from behind, there was somebody else getting on the track.
Okay, we're going to step over the third rail here so be careful.
The entire time that we were following him I was somewhat in the distance in the back.
What's going through his mind, what he may have been thinking about before we met him.
My whole thought was about being ambushed in some sort of tunnel and even if some of
us or all of us would be able to escape, not finding our way back out. I was afraid the
entire time. Okay, kill that light, kill that light.
He ended up taking us to a place, we finally stopped, and he said he didn't want to be
on camera, but that we could talk to him. I've been out here for a few years now. And
I found this place through other people and... I did 16 years in jail, straight up, 16 years
you know and I wanna be free. And this place is concealed, you'll get killed down here,
and you will be here for a long time before they find you. You'll be dead and stinking,
before they'll find you, man. You'll probably be a skeleton. I do what I need to survive
out here. We talked to James for a little while until
he ended the interview. He said he had to go and he'd get us at least to where we could
make it back to the platform, and we made a time for him to meet and to be honest, I
didn't think he'd be here the second time. You know, we got a lot of intelligent people
out here man. You got people
that got massive degrees out here man, and you'd be amazed how *** intelligent some
of these people are out here man. And you ask yourself why they out here man. Why they
out here? A woman drive a *** crazy man.
Downhere? Yeah, you got people that was in love man,
and they probably left them. And they just *** flipped man. They start their smoking
and they just gave up on life man. Life don't mean *** to them no more. Life don't mean
a *** thing to them no more. James has become our best guide. He's taken
us to tunnels and tracks that are not active anymore. He's taken us to various places,
down in the tunnels that haven't seen even an M.T.A. worker in 10-15-20 years. He took
us to the arteries and through the stairs that connect the tunnels down underneath.
I see light., okay,...Uphere, this is the door that you go outside.
Where does this come out? That's what I'm trying to figure out. I know
two spots. We either go out through a screen or we go out to a park. Or we go out on Stanton
street. Is this kinda your emergency exit, or is this
the one you use all the time. You know I told you it's just a spare man.
I've never been this high up.
In the 70's, in the 1970's, there were a lot
of people in the tunnels shooting up drugs and mostly just looking for a place to escape.
People hiding out from the law. Then the 80's was the decade of crack and homelessness and
that's when people started really going down into the tunnels and living there, making
homes. Homes with microwaves set up and shower systems that they used from the sprinkler
system and finding bathrooms that were no longer in use but had actual running water.
There are 99 bathrooms in the subways of NY and only 10 are open to the public so the
rest of them have running water and they're buried in the tunnels.
Bertrum, Bertrum was like a shell of a person. He expressed no interest in living above ground.
I don't know if he was on anything at the time that we interviewed him, but he didn't
seem to operate too well, mentally and emotionally
I've been down here for about 15 years. More
than 15 years. I used to live all the way down there on 116th st. next to a watchtower
overthere. I used to have nice place there, I used to go to the men's shelter. And then
after I suddenly associated myself with some of the guys who live in this tunnel. Who live
in this place. I sort of got out of there, moved down there. Moving to Bernard's place.
To talk to him and, first time I got high on
crack, I was, like, with him. And the guy, you know, sort of, gave me a drink, and he
gave me a hit, a sedative . And I sort of understood where I was living for a while
and it worked on my mind for a while and, well I'm what you call a crack head.
Bertrum, somebody's here. Somebody's here? Yo! Tony, is that you? Alright,
that's Tony. You've known him for a long time? Yea, we became
very close when, when they closed that hole up over there. And we used to get in here
to get in there. And he came up here to live. And he came climbing up here with some kind
of bag of cans and I said oh ***. I couldn't get in, and I couldn't get out. So I decided,
you know, to find some kind of way to release the pressure, the burden, you know what I
mean? And I started digging that hole until really early in the morning, until about 2
o' clock. I finished that hole. A lot of work. I did.
You know, we had somebody living down here one time. Somebody lived down here once before,
down in here, but then they cleared it out. They caught a couple more spots down here.
It's just a sleeping place. A sleeping place, yea. A safe place here,
it feels safe. Where aint no one gonna be bothered. They will bring their water down
here. There are some pillows
Like I said man, I could write a *** book on me being down here man. When I first decided
to come down here, this place would never be this dirty. But other people come down
here and open... you never open your doors to these *** down here man, cause
they come with their filth, you know, and they start to leave their *** all dirty and
he will bring somebody else, and then you gotta go find another *** place cause
it aint yours no more. We're all out here together man, you don't tell a ***
to get the *** out of here, they're tired man, maybe they've been running around smoking
all night, you know, you be tired. It's just that when you do that, I won't *** with them
blankets. I'm the cleanest motherfucken person there is. I'm telling you man, I am man, I'm
like kinda dirty right now man, but before I ran into you, I was gonna go back to my
storage and change my clothes. I take good care of myself. My health means a hell of
a lot to me. I got mad *** cosmetics. I got every *** thing I need. I've got enough
*** to last me for years. Hell, I got about 15-20 *** coats. That's just the track
man. That's just the track. You understand what I'm saying. That's Angie. That you baby?
Okay you don't want to be on the camera right? It's very dangerous for women down there,
but it can also be very vicious particularly for a woman down there alone, she's thought
to be fair game, and often times can be pimped out for money or used in exchange for drugs
or something like that. So almost all of the women had a man. Either a protector, or a
***, or a husband, or a boyfriend. Gina was interesting in that her and her husband
ran the community. Her husband didn't want to be on camera. He was someone to be feared.
But she at least would take a little time to talk to us.
We don't like intruders. In fact, from this emergency exit, down to the train station
is territorial, and I watched you guys coming down. It's territorial and we keep peace down
here if you noticed, the train would be much much dirtier right now. It's scary right?
Look at that train go over! There's only one other female down here and she lives down
the track and down around. She's a ***. I would respect her more if she'd go around
the corner and sold her body. But to come down here for five dollars. Huh, this is a
no-no. I keep this track clean. As clean as I possibly can. We want no telltale signs.
Let me put this here. Thank you.
I'm not supposed to have paper
towels. There was a robbery earlier this morning. This stuff was not here when I came in. Somebody's
pocketbook has been grabbed. So now I have to look for identification in one of them.
I don't want police down here sniffing around. I have 'nuff problems without the police coming
through here, looking for information like that. Cause if they really want to get nasty,
they could pin it on me. So when did you and your husband get married?
Approximately 7 years ago. So you guys lived down here together?
Yea. My mom died and my brother, he took everything, he took her credit cards, he took all her
money, all her jewelry. He gave it to his wife. He took over the condo, she had a condo.
My mom's house is beautiful. It's absolutely gorgeous, it's like out of a picture magazine.
And I gave up on life. I was mad at god which I believe in. The father, the son, and the
holy spirit, I believe in that. I was brought down here by my husband. He would have flipped
if he knew you guys were here. I've lived up there. Oh, over there, guys used to live
up there, and they sealed it off. They lost their home.
The mayor's office sealed that off? Yea, You see those iron bars up there? Yea,
they sealed it off, The guy had to walk across the, we call it a platform. Those iron bars
up there. Yea 4 people lived in there once upon a time, and now there's none. It gets
lonely down here I think that the tunnels do have a lot of
connotations and when you experience the tunnels, a lot of those connotations are true. A lot
of people who find themselves in the tunnels, were at the end, absolutely at the end of
their road. Most of them that I met, when they went down there, they didn't care if
they lived or died, they just wanted out, and they wanted to escape, and then from there,
they may have adopted a life down there, they may have adopted a family or found that they
did survive, they feel liberated by that. So the tunnel became their home. More of a
home than the topside world could be to them because they weren't judged down there.
People used to come in here and burn this place down. The last dude that burnt this
place down, his name was Manny...A FIRE!!! Wow.... It was like a four alarm fire, everyhting
was like ashes and I was like, thinking, it wasn't really that hot, oh there is the saltshaker.
I've been looking for that bad ***. What's wrong with this fire? I'll be right
back. I'm gone go down, anything that will burn.
Let me see; let me get pieces of plastic...six.
I gave Tony one of my belts. He never found his belt and he still didn't give mine back..I
gotta get over to his house.
I'm uh, fifty-four, fifty-five. I had to check it again. Sometimes
Tony is trying to reconsider, sometimes you hear him say that I'm not going to just die
in here, I won't just die in here. I am not going to live in this rat hole all my life,
you know what I mean? I'm not going to just die in here, Oh, the only thing, I ain't got
no bread.
Yea, we like to feed the rats, cause they got children too. Some of these
little rats catch up on your hand and kiss you. You know, when I clean up my house, I
try to remember what I can do to cheer'em up -- give'em like a regular diet. It's sometimes
I threw out here some mile, open it, and leave it there. I put milk in dish or something.
I let them eat out of my pot, don't want to get their food dirty. I won't get their food
dirty. So the mice are friendly to me like I'm trying to be friendly to all the other
animals.
I think that there is a terrifying aspect
of the tunnels and I think most people who find themselves in the tunnels go through
that fear at first. That lack of control, not knowing, having any control over your
environment at all, and then becoming a part of the environment, and then adopting it and
then feeling more comfortable in it's darkness than you do above ground in the light, and
feeling safer there and it's a constant, above ground in the topside world, things change,
they're moved from place to place. People are taken away from them or by crimes, or
drugs or whatever, and the tunnels is some place steady, and they get to know it and
they become part of where they feel comfortable and who they are.
I haven't done laundry so you have to excuse my appearance; I'm not normally this sloppy.
It took us three hours to pop this lock, which by the way, this is a master lock. That should
be the best lock. This is all dirty clothes and laundry. Welcome to my home! I tried looking
for carpeting. I tried to use newspaper because newspaper doesn't attract a lot of dust. When
I go in my house, I must take off my shoes first, because there's dirt out here and cleanliness
is, although it's very hypocritical of me, is next to godliness. And we don't want the
dirt. Now if my boyfriend were here he would scream at me because my shoelaces are touching
this right here, which has a lot of dirt on it. I am to take my shoestrings and make sure
they don't touch the floor, because that's the floor, my hand touches, the strings, the
strings touch the floor, my hands touch my face, and now, there's and infection, cause
it's all dirt. Just because I live down here, and it's filthy down here, doesn't mean I
have to be filthy. My pants are clean, my shirt is clean, but yet, it's dirty down here.
I like to be clean. There's no reason for people to smell. Soap and water does the trick,
I shower with hot water. I shower with these hair care products, my soap dish, his deodorant,
and one for her. I prefer to use the reach toothbrush, it does miracles.
Would you believe it,
the rodents love to eat deodorant. They love anything and everything that's edible
so therefore, since their sense of smell's so keen, this is plastic, they can't smell,
they can't get to it.. Stuff like this are the things you eat. We love insects, and anything that god gives
you in life. I read things like this from cover to cover, from back to back. The only
reason why this book isn't thrown away is because it has so much interesting information.
Every now and then, I pick it up and read it. I've read this whole book from cover to
cover. I read a lot of national geographic. Anything about wildlife I simply love. I'm
a veteran I did four years of college. My major was computer science. I do fortran.
That's computer language, for programming computers.
Locked!
I think one of the reasons that they have been in that area for so long is that they're
very careful about how they do things in their day-to-day life.
You be very observant of your surroundings you must! Because it could be life or death
situation. People hide between those columns. As a matter of fact, if you noticed, well
not today, but normally, I wear dark color clothing, all black and I resume with the
darkness. I hit a light bulb, because every five light bulbs, all run on the same wire.
I'll take one light bulb out- so it'll get pitch black. I could see you but you can't
see me. I climb, then I have to walk across that bar there. It means you have to have
a big balance. Then the cable wires, you usually have to climb down.
And you just hop right on that ledge right there.
Hop right on the catwalk and I could just poof disappear. Who's that? Who's that?Oh,
that's James. Who's that with you? My man....See you later baby...See you, man. Oh, what's up?
What's up bro? James, we gotta talk.When I was in the military, I was an expert in everything
I did. I'm an expert shooter, out of fifty targets, I hit bulls eye, I hit 49 and they
were moving. I threw hand grenades. Out of ten targets, I'm an expert, I missed none.
I could pick up one of these stones right here, and I could throw it. If I decide where
it's going to hit it, that's where it's going to hit, that's exactly what its going to hit.
And if I ask someone to identify themselves, and they don't, threw a rock at them. I'm
more dangerous to them than they are to me. I'll knock the lights out and you could kill
a man down here and stuff him somewhere and never be found, except from the smell, which
will not be too much because the trains with the air and speed of the trains take them,
dissect them, put a couple boxes of baking soda on them and you have a body.
Wow! Have you ever heard of that happening? Yes.
I found that there are a lot of people in the tunnels who adopted one another into their
family like structures. They would refer to another person in that tunnel as their father
or their uncle or their brother or their cousin and even though they only knew the person
pretty much by a first name, they had, they cared a great deal about other people that
they would look out for one another. They really left their lives above ground on the
topside world, created families of their own underground.
That's not his baby I know, that's not Tony's baby either
He was in jail when she conceived I know, she's a dumb *** man you
know, she's down her cause she's a ***. She was down here last night, wanna suck Dread's
*** man. You know what I'm saying? The other Dread, that other kid.
You know what I'm talking bout. She brought him downhere?
Yeah... You know? She be bugging, you know?
Cuz she's gotta stop bringin people down here. We gotta female here... She's pregnant. She's
smoking, and she be buggin. She's pregnant?
Yeah she's pregnant you know? What the *** is it? Ok these are bags.
What is that? These are bags. These are crack bags. I don't
see why she wants to have a *** baby, she's smoking mad *** crack like she's ***
stupid.
Oh, sorry Angie. Sorry baby
How about just on. You gotta love an ***
conductor. The conductor saw us getting on and tried to slam a door on us. New York City.
I wanna check, see whether or not there's a catwalk.
Most of the people in the tunnels have issues with substance abuse and mental illness. They
are cast offs from society and some of them have never felt a part of society, particularly
the young people, the children running away for orphanages, foster care, sometimes kids
who have been abused, or people who have been released from prison and can't find a job.
But their issues I think are greater and more complex than a lot of people recognize. And
I think in a great sense, the tunnels are just a physical extension of where they are
mentally , it's not an accident that they wind up in the tunnels, It's that they're
comfortable there.
Actually, I had a good job, good family and
everything and due to unfortunate circumstances everything went to hell.
Mario was the only guy that we found, that worked as an intermediary. He was kind of
like half mole-half topside person. He slept topside sometimes, and in the tunnels sometimes.
He knew everybody in the community and spent a lot of time there but he didn't consider
it his home. Down here, all you got is, you're at the mercy
of everything. I was a commercial cartoonist and I was good but I wasn't great so I gave
that up and took trade school up and became a superintendent. And then I moved to Alabama.
My brother in law was stationed over there and I started a contracting business, and
got divorced. I met a young girl when she was in the army, she got out. I left my wife
and my kids for her, and her family was involved in importing drugs, *** from Peru, and
talked me into bringing some from Florida to New York and that just screwed my life
up. When I came out, how could I tell somebody on the reference that the last two years you
spent in prison and that's what led me down here, and once you're down here, its hard
to get out. I was robbed. I don't have any idea at all, beaten because I had no money.
That's when I was sleeping up top on a bench. Three young kids about 16-17 came by with
sticks, asked me for my money, I had no money so they started beaing me up and took my empty
wallet, all my ID and that's when I came down to this level. It's hard to understand. It
really is hard to understand how somebody could fall to this level. Down here, it's
all over; it's a horrible reality, and an unfortunate fact that we come to. It's something
we brought upon ourselves because I had a good life. I made the mistakes; I can't blame
it on anybody else. I can't say society or because I am Spanish. That's ***, I had
a good job, I had good opportunities, and I screwed up. Drugs have changed society and
I'm an unfortunate addict use the substance, crack ***.
The people who took me down there were very personable and nice charismatic gentle people
and they often took me to places where there were people who were more scared, more desperate,
more dangerous so there's great diversity in the tunnels in terms of personalities and
reasons why they're there. There's a real code of conduct in the tunnel and in some
tunnels, it's more crime to steal, than it is to *** someone.
Yeah, we was in Vietnam, It was a nice place but it was really chilling. Vietnam is a nice place? Yeah,
sneak away, killing people. Like they do it right now. See when I was in the service,
I got in trouble because the sergeant tried to play a joke on my as if I'm too slow to
understand something like that. He wanted to get that through my thick skull. I shot
him man, like a *** cool enough. I shot him in his head once. Although I took
my bag off, I was firing before I took my bag off and I shot him in the head.
Did he die? Yes he died. He most certainly did die, with
a bullet went through his membrane and went out. It was an accident... So... It was like
accidentally, on purpose. I couldn't believe it. I fired directly. So, I said "I didn't
kill nobody, I didn't kill nobody" to myself. If you committed a crime, there's got to be
some way to teach you some kinda way -- you can't stop. In here, right in here, I killed
a little girl. She was Puerto-Rican and never got a family. Some people in her family were
policemen and I had to take the straight taste as, so they convinced me, you can't just stop.
I didn't commit *** this semester so I didn't commit *** ever since that happened.
One time, I tried to kill Tony. Sort of put all the pieces of puzzle together and fired.
I can never trust nobody in this motherfucken neighborhood, like I wanna. See , this is funny
thing about me that I ain't supposed to have that M16 in here, you know what I mean?
A lot of people in the tunnels have told me that there is a very thin line between where
you are and where I am, and I never understood what that meant and I didn't believe it. But
they were talking about psychologically, there's a very thin line you cross when you know that
you have to survive and take care of yourself and there are things that you wouldn't consider
doing in normal circumstances that you might when you feel threatened, and that was the
first time that I realized that I would do what I had to do to protect myself and if
that meant hurting or even killing someone that I once thought very highly of, I could
do that. That's a difficult thing to really realize, to really recognize. To think you
could say that easily, but to really feel it, there's a frightening thing inside that
knows that you could actually pull a trigger and you could let yourself be in a situation
where you'd have to do that. So I left and I feel like I escaped because I think that
there is somewhat of a tunnel mentality and I think that after spending 6, 7, 5 hours
a day in the tunnels, it became more of my life than my above ground life. I saw more
tunnel people than I did, my friends above ground. And while it seemed like such a distinctly
different world at first, it became more merged as I went on.
New York is a great city, if you can stay on top of it.