Les secrets de la Ville de Lumiere

One of the current cause celebes of the Downtown Brie and Chablis set is the High Line. Abandoned since 1980, this former rail line runs about a mile and a half down the West Side of Manhattan, and currently enjoys a quiet life about 20 feet above the streets a bit west of 10th Avenue. It’s an interesting enough walk - not that much more interesting than the other abandoned rail lines scattered throughout New York, but it has a certain appeal. And for some reason, the highbrow crowd has absolutely fallen in love with thing - just check out some of the “prominent individuals” on this list. Martha Stewart’s 8th from the bottom.

Pretty soon though, it’s not going to be the “remote natural habitat” described in this article. The City of New York is starting construction to turn it into a landscaped walkway, patterned after the Promenade Plantee in Paris. I decided to take a walk up there to see what the High Line’s going to end up looking like in a few years.

It starts off as a viaduct near the Plaza Bastille. I climb up the stairs and head under these gates up onto the walkway. It continues east above the streets for a while, has a short section at street level, and then goes through a couple tunnels into and open cut. It ends at this staircase, where I climb back up onto the streets near the edge of Paris.

Here I find another abandoned - and unrenovated - rail line built in the late 19th century, the Petite Ceinture. This is actually part of the same line that we walk along to get into the catas. The southern part, where we get in and out of the catas, is an open cut occasionally going through some tunnels (one of which contains an entrance to the catacombs). The eastern part, near the end of the Promenade Plantee, is slightly elevated. I find a way on, and it’s remarkably like the High Line as it exists now. I’m tempted to start walking, but I know I’ll just end up where I started - after circumnavigating Paris. The Petite Ceinture (little belt) is a ring railroad running just inside the city borders. So instead I take a few shots of the graffiti and hop back down. By the way, if someone could translate this piece, I’d appreciate it.

If you want to visit the High Line that resembles the Petite Ceinture, and not the Promenade Plantee, do it now. And I’ll tell you exactly how: go to 33rd street between 11th avenue and the West Side Highway (closer to the West Side Highway). Walk through the gate on the north side (it’s always open) into a truck parking lot. On the other side of the lot, the tracks slope downward. Head on over and hop on. It’s that easy. I’ve gone in broad daylight with a cop parked across the street. You have to slide under one metal barrier (as seen in this goofball picture), but that’s about the only tricky part. I actually tried to organize a snowball fight on it not too long ago, but only one other person showed up.

The High Line is one of those “technically off-limits” places that really shouldn’t be - especially now that it’s owned by the City of New York and not a private railroad company. Yet the highbrow folks (who somehow all manage to go visit themselves) still parrot the official line of “please do not trespass” (to which I wrote this response to the Village Voice article - third letter down), without giving anything close to a reason why not. Because, of course, there is none.

Don’t get me wrong: I understand if the authorities don’t want random people climbing bridges or running around subway tunnels - although I think controlled tours, similar to the Sidney Harbor Bridge Climb, or the tours of the old City Hall Subway Station the Transit Museum used to conduct are great ideas. But the High Line? It’s not dangerous, and it’s certainly not any kind of terrorist target. I’m guessing the only reason for any sort of disclaimer at all is because of lawyers being concerned about liability.

In fact, during Open House New York (a great idea that I’m in no way discouraging), the good folks at the Committee for a Free New York decided to pull a little Highline Hijinks by heading up there and attaching a few banners where they’d be seen at the “viewing spot.”   Hey - just because you and I don’t know Martha Stewart doesn’t mean we shouldn’t get to see what we want to see - in Paris, New York, or anywhere else.

Unless otherwise noted, all pictures are copyright of my friend, travel partner, and fellow guerilla urbanist Steve Duncan. Steve is a wonderful photographer, and specializes in underground and urban photography. Prints are available - visit his website at http://www.undercity.org

One of the most interesting and rewarding experiences of visiting publicly inaccessible places is coming across amazing artwork that you never would have expected. In New York, the most famous of these “Underground Art Galleries” is probably the Amtrak Tunnel on the West Side of Manhattan. Throughout the 2 1/2 mile long tunnel, huge murals and elaborate graffiti pieces are painted on the walls. The most famous of these is probably an interpretation of Goya’s 3rd of May by Freedom and Smith that’s about 10×15 feet. In fact, this tunnel is sometimes called the “Freedom Tunnel” after the artist Freedom, who painted about a dozen or so murals down there. It’s actually not very difficult to get to, but only about a few dozen people visit it every year. And although the murals would definitely be worth seeing even if they happened to be painted along a busy street, I’d be lying if I said this exclusivity isn’t one of its appeals.

There’s a few other interesting things you come across while perusing the underground of New York (the most famous of which are probably pages of REVS‘ journal), but in comparison to the stuff we found in the Paris underground, it’s an entirely different ballgame. Just for starters, subway graffiti is way more elaborate - somewhat due to a different mentality over in Europe (by both the painters and the authorities), but I think mostly because the trains stop running for a few hours late at night, while in New York you’ve got to dodge trains 24-7. And when you get to the catas, things get just ridiculous.

After hitting the bones on our first trip, Steve and I headed off to some of the most visited rooms - rooms where artists had spent countless hours painting and sculpting for an audience of pretty much themselves, friends, and whatever other random people happened along. A lot of the murals (especially the ones we saw later in the German Bunker), were by a group called “The Rats.” Other than the castle, the room it was in contained sculptures of four different gargoyle heads (well, not technically gargoyles), and we came across various other carvings during our trips in. As far as the painting went, most of it was in larger rooms rather than tunnels - two of which were La Plage (which translates to “The Beach - check out the floor), and the Egyptian Chamber.

The tunnels themselves were interesting. They were either generally spotless, or completely covered in tags. I thought it was cool that people got to enjoy the freedom to paint and write graffiti to their hearts content, yet some of the tunnels were left to be enjoyed in their natural state. We left our mark also - Miru painted her rat she does a few times (which was kind of neat when we ran into it later), and on another short trip with Rosie and friends, Krisprolls threw up a few tags and a piece, and another guy did some work on a sculpture that had been started by somebody else.

It’s not just the catas that the cataphiles graffiti though - for instance, there’s also this seven-story high writing on the scaffolding of the Tour St. Jacques. F.C. stands for “Frotte, Connard!” Rosie told us this translates out to something like “erase, assholes!” It’s a challenge to the anti-graffiti crowd to try and erase their stuff. In addition, I’m pretty sure there’s one of those double-entendres that a non-local just isn’t going to understand in there also: “Frotte” is also a slang term for having sex. Translate the rest of the writing on the tower, and you’ll see this theory probably has some merit.

Still, as rude as that might be, it should be noted that the Tower itself was untouched - again, a nice balance of expression and respect. We also saw “FC” a lot in the catas - like in this entirely blue room. That piece of paper you see below the “FC” is a tract: usually just a piece of paper (might have a story, cartoon, party invitation, who knows) that people leave in the catas. You’re supposed to take it and leave another. A similar idea is actually trying to catch on in New York.

It was a great trip. Steve and I crawled out the same hole we went in about 12 hours earlier. There was only one place to go next: La Louvre!