Urban Exploring

The Daily News has a big feature on underground tours of the city's underbelly of tunnels and sewers, as led by Steve Duncan of Undercity.org. What's great is the quote from the Department of Environmental Protection's spokesman: "They are not allowed in our sites. As you can probably imagine, we do not approve of unauthorized visitors. These are dangerous places. I only hope whatever they're doing, they're being very, very careful." And not carrying suspicious backpacks! Authorities freak out about the groups, and we can imagine some people had a case of the vapors when reading the story, but people have been exploring supposedly inaccessible parts of the city forever, whether it's a trip to the Highline or an organized tour through an old tunnel.

What are your favorite urban explorations thus far? Another urban exploration group is the LTV Squad, and there are urban exploration groups all over the world on MeetUp. And Forgotten-NY's Kevin Walsh organizes periodic tours for parts of NYC that aren't necessarily hidden but places we take for granted.

Photograph by Mike Epstein at Satan's Laundromat

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By Jen Chung in News on August 2, 2005 7:54 AM

Comments [rss]

sp

the Freedom Tunnel on Riverside was my stomping grounds in high school. The was also an abandoned park on Edgecombe Ave and like 180th St.

Kevin Walsh

I have that map,or rather the 5-boro version. Didn't know Steve had anything to do with it. (That's because opuspublishing.com has been 'under construction' for months.)

It's a good map though, and it's comprehensive, showing streets the other maps miss. It does resemble somewhat the Van Dam NYC maps that have been out for a few years (bought by American).

Gives me an idea to perhaps do Street Necrology maps for...

www.forgotten-ny.com

Christian

Steve Duncan was featured on a Discovery Channel show called Urban Explorers. I've been tunneling with him a few times - he's part adventurist part explorer.

Steve also has a map publishing company, Opus Publishing, that makes a killer Brooklyn flip map - with subway stops!

brooklyn flip map

Kevin Walsh

Thanks for the plug. AAMOF, we have a short tour in Flushing this Sunday and we have some slots left:

http://www.forgotten-ny.com/tour21.html

We won't be heading for the sewers but should be fun, anyway.

dirt

My urban exploration consists of certain bars in the 'hood...

- Employees Only

- Other Room

- Little Branch

gayle

I work PR for Ars Subterranea (www.creativepreservation.org), and I think we do some good projects (although admittedly infrequent). Right now, members of Ars Subterranea are working on a film project called 'American Ruins' that will higlight a lot of these "UE" sites (mostly the ones above ground). Ars Subterranea's founder Julia Solis also wrote a great, recently published book called 'New York Underground: Anatomy of a City'.