The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City Free

FREE THE MOLE PEOPLE: LIFE IN THE TUNNELS BENEATH NEW YORK CITY PDF

Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Thousands of people live in the subway, railroad, and sewage tunnels that form the bowels of New York City. This book is about them, the so-called "mole people" The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City alone and in communities, in the frescoed waiting rooms of long-forgotten subway tunnels and in pick-axed compartments below busway platforms. It is about how and why people move underground, who they are, a Thousands of people live in the subway, railroad, and sewage tunnels that form the bowels of New York City. It is about how and why people move underground, who they are, and what they have to say about their lives and the treacherous "topside" world they've left behind. There are even the voices of young children taken down to the tunnels by parents who are determined to keep their families together, although as one tunnel dweller explains, "once you go down there, you can't be a child anymore. They are a diverse group, and they choose to live underground for many reasonssome rejecting society and its values, others reaffirming those values in what they view as purer terms, and still others seeking shelter from the harsh conditions on the streets. Their enemies include government agencies and homeless organizations as well as wandering crack addicts and marauding gangs. In communities underground, however, many homeless people find not only a place but also an identity. On these pages Jennifer Toth visits underground New York with various straight-talking guides, from outreach workers and transit police to vetern tunnel dwellers, graffiti artists, and even the "mayor" The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City a large, highly structured community several levels down. In addition to chilling and poignant firsthand accounts of tunnel life, she describes the fascinating and labryrinthine physical world beneath the city and discusses the literary allusions and historical points of view that prejudice our culture against those who "go underground". Toth has gained unprecedented access to a strange and frightening world, but The Mole People is not a daredevil jo Get A Copy. Paperbackpages. More Details Original Title. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about The Mole Peopleplease sign up. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Dec 13, karen rated it it was ok Shelves: nonfictionsbooks-everyone-loves- but-me. View all 56 comments. Sep 07, Jon Nakapalau rated it it was amazing Shelves: politicsfavoritescultural-studiessociology. Their stories are both heart breaking and uplifting View all 4 comments. Dec 18, Erin rated it liked it. Not very well-written, but I always say that about journalistic style Hey journalism people: if even analytic philosophers can learn how to write well, why can't you? Oh, back to the book: the mole people The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City interesting, but don't expect Ms. Toth to reveal much about them that you don't already know, or can imagine. She was very naive when she was doing her research entering the tunnels alone, taking the Not very well-written, but I always say that about journalistic style Hey journalism people: if even analytic philosophers can learn how to write well, why can't you? She was very naive when she was doing her research entering the tunnels alone, taking the promises and proclamations of drug addicts at face value, placing her safety in the hands of people she knew were killers and for anyone who has worked with the homeless and with substance abusers, or who has lived in the city longer than a year, none of what she "finds" is a revelation, except for the large community under Grand Central with children, a mayor, and a nurse. Also, I found it downright amusing when she had to explain what "dissing" is, as well as ecstasy [a hallucinogenic drug]. But I can't really fault Toth for her naivete; no person can help where they are raised, and if the author found it difficult to understand urban slang, or lacked the basic survival skills your average urban 10 year old has, then at least her wide-eyed shock at what she sees in the tunnels provides a clear perspective on the living conditions of the homeless in NYC. While pretty much everything she encounters is to be expected, her childlike awe demands that the reader ask why it is that we are so jaded, specifically why it is that we simply assume that these people are too far removed from "surface society" to be rehabilitated. Why do we simply shrug at their hopelessness? It's a good question to ask, and had Ms. Toth been able to answer it, this book The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City have been far more interesting. As it is, her research came to an abrupt and decisive halt, for reasons you will have to read the The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City to find out, and she left NYC. I wonder if Ms. Toth were to return to the tunnels now, 15 years later, would she have something substantial to say? There is also a lot of debate about some of the communities Ms. Toth describes The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City the book, about whether or not they exist, about the locations of the tunnels, about the children living underground. I'll say only this: I used to work up at st street in Manhattan, The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City when you get off of the 1 train there, you have to take an elevator to street level, The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City the station platform is about 13 stories below ground I'd have to look up the exact number. The bedrock of most of Manhattan is granite, the hardest rock there is, meaning that you can dig many, many layers below street level. I also used to work in the parks, and if you think that the homeless aren't capable of seeking out any crevice or tunnel or natural cave to live in and create a home or small community, then you are mistaken. I can vouch for the existence of "secret" tunnels underneath Manhattan not that I ever got to go in any, I just know where a couple of the entrances are. I'm tempted to think that Ms. Toth inaccurately described the locations of tunnel entrances in order to keep her readers out. But whatever, the purported existence of underground communities is not what interests me. I'll leave that debate to you all. Update: I work in a university library, and I got the pleasure of checking a book out to Jennifer Toth the other day. Yeah for me! But it still wasn't as cool as when Arthur Danto came in. Jul 17, Antisocialite rated it liked it. I'm having a hard time rating this book, even weeks after finishing it. I don't even know what it is that has me so conflicted: it's well-researched and required great personal risks by the author Jennifer Toth was only 24 when she wrote it, and climbing around the tunnels under New York, talking to criminals, murderers, drug addicts and the insane. But some of the chapters, particularly one devoted to the literary tradition of the underground, felt absurdly academic in the middle of all the r I'm having a hard time rating this book, even weeks after finishing it. But some of the chapters, particularly one devoted to the literary tradition of the underground, felt absurdly academic in the middle of all the realism. In other places, despite Toth's constant efforts to not romanticize tunnel life, she did seem to want too much to mythologize it. Maybe this is commendable, as it seemed to come out of her intense identification with her subjects, but many times it The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City as though she was trying too hard. Overall, though, an interesting look at lives you would have never heard about otherwise. Dec 29, Jess Bensley rated it did not like it. Extremely interesting subject matter, terrible author. She definitely doesn't let you forget that most people don't get the access that she had. The real live people Toth describes are almost clownified by the way she describes them. Their interesting and sometimes tragic pasts are often only briefly mentioned. Toth seems to love pointin Extremely interesting subject matter, terrible author. Toth seems to love pointing out all the little weird things that the tunnel dwellers do. She does focus a lot on their interesting community dynamics, but even then she does a sloppy job. Was super excited to read this and dropped it less than halfway through extremely disappointed. View 1 comment. Oct 29, Jenny rated it it was amazing Shelves: read-with-dadmemorable- endingsfavorites. I asked him why. I said there was nothing I disliked about it, but there were some things missing. He said he wished Toth had included more of her own emotions, and I agreed. I also wish that Toth had spent a little more time developing everyone's stories and that she'd included more history. I found the history of the underground, in particular, to be very fascinating. When a reader wishes a book were longer, that says a lot about the quality of the book and its impact on the reader. Overall, I love this book. It was recommended to me by a student I had in English last spring. She listed it as the last book she'd read and really enjoyed. She had to read it for Sociology, but, even though it was required reading, she recommended it highly. Mole people - Wikipedia

Two decades after NYC sought to relocate its infamous tunnel-dwelling denizens, a years-long investigation reveals a few hardy souls still toiling and thriving beneath the city. The mouth of the tunnel is wide and dark, swallowing the light and all that breathes. Rubble is scattered along the train tracks, bordered by retaining walls covered in numerous layers of graffiti. This is where it all started. Here by the parkway with the blasting trucks and the roaring cars, near the filigree arches of the Riverside Drive viaduct, here with the gravel crunching under my feet as I run down the railroad into this hollow mouth. This is where they live, deep into the depths of the city, way underground, lying in the dirt. Sure, you know about them. Of course you know about them. Here in the tunnels. Their eyes have adapted to the constant night that cloaks them from the topside world. And one day they will spill outside and burn us all alive, and they will reign over our flatscreen joys and our organic delights. The lost ones, the hidden ones. The broken and the ill, the wandering, the gone. The Mole People. Jon has been homeless for more than fifteen years. Like many of The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City people interviewed for this article, he did not want to give his full name. He has been living here for a while now, in a small space between two support beams that can only be reached with a ladder. A plywood roof protects his hoarded belongings from seeping water. The place is crammed full. There is an old mattress on the floor, and cookware, blankets and electronics stacked on makeshift shelves. Jon says he did prison time. He is bipolar and suffers from major substance dependence. He used to be a gang member in the Bronx. He used to be a family man until he got disowned. He was a furniture salesman. The FBI is looking for him. He used to know Donald Trump. His real story has been buried long ago under thick layers of improvised memories that grew more detailed by the years, the man slowly becoming a collage of himself. Today is a good day for Jon, despite the rain and the cool weather. It makes them feel alive. Like alligators in the sewers. Jon offers me a sip of vodka. We drink together. He tells me to stay safe and to watch out for trains when I go back walking into the tunnel. I hear him talk to himself as I go away from the entrance and from the white sky. The smell down here is the one of brake dust and mold. I can see rats scouring for food and drinking from brown puddles in the tracks ballast. The city growls over my head — a distant growl muffled by the concrete, almost a snarl, like something cold and foul spreading over the long stretches of stained walls, like a dark and wild beast curling up around me and breathing on my neck. A dark and wild beast silently trailing me. Stories about underground dwellers were already flourishing when the first New York City subway line opened in The expansion of extensive sewers and steam pipes systems had brought a newfound fascination with what laid below the streets. But it was only in the s that the first widespread depictions of real-world tunnel residents appeared in New York. A New York Times article by John Tierney was the earliest to outline the phenomenon, looking at people living in an abandoned train tunnel beneath Riverside Park, along the banks of the Hudson River. Collective imagination took over quickly. An instant hit, it chronicled the organization of those underground societies, describing compounds of several thousands where babies were born and regular lives were lived, with elected officials, hot water and even electricity. However, the book was promptly criticized for its inconsistencies. A article by Cecil Adams further demonstrated that many accounts were perhaps more sensationalism than truth. Still, while the essay might have been inflated or romanticized, it was nonetheless true that the homeless begging in the streets of New York were merely the tip of the iceberg. This period is gone. That they spoke their own language. Creepy stuff, straight out of a horror movie… Most was made-up. I personally never witnessed unusual stuff. Written in an abandoned crew room of the F subway line, these words were the reason I ventured into the tunnels in the first place, looking for the invisible, guided by local dwellers along the years to seek foundations of humanity in the foundations of the city. All the stories I had read about the Mole People before descending myself had two things in common. They all showed simple human beings who were in no way comparable to the legends that had been told, The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City they all included a man named Bernard Isaac. I met Bernard Isaac for the first time in A place to find peace The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City take a break from the chaos. Isaac was at the very center of the Mole People legend. His BA in journalism and his studies in philosophy had somehow led him to work as a model, then as a TV crew member, then as a tour guide The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City the Caribbean where he began smuggling cocaine to the States. The father of two sons with two different women, he never cared much for family life, preferring to spend his smuggling profits on parties thrown at his Upper West Side penthouse. Soon he was broke, friendless and on his own. By the late s, he was sleeping in the Riverside Park tunnel. The tunnel was known by homeless people since its inception in the s, when it was used by trains to bring cattle to the city before the freight operations ended. Its population, limited at first to about three or four individuals, quickly grew at The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City time Isaac settled in, evolving into small tribes of vagrants who built thriving shantytowns in the newly abandoned space. Few risked getting down into the tunnel. But those who did go down called it home, and it became a haven for the destitute to unwind without fear of getting arrested or attacked like people on the streets often were. One day, three men asked Isaac for a toll as he came by the th Street entrance to the tunnel. Soon interest came from all around the world. In the encampment, the dwellers had a familiar place to be, watch TV, read or smoke. They had autonomy. Rules were simple but strictly enforced. Respect for privacy. No yelling. No stealing. Some, like Isaac, were at home in the darkness, and would not have lived anywhere else. Most who lived here did not consider themselves homeless. As word spread of the tunnel, a growing number of graffiti artists came to paint the seemingly endless walls that flanked the train tracks. We dared to be ourselves. Some residents were still eager to leave, only to come back later. Another who attempted The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City go to the surface was Bob Kalinski, a speed addict known as the fastest cook east of the Mississippi, who could fry twenty eggs at a time when on amphetamines. A heart attack forced him to try his luck with the public housing system in He too returned in the following months. The sense of belonging simply The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City too strong. The tunnel was a better place for him to be alone in freedom. I keep walking along the tracks. Jon must have passed out drunk, now, somewhere behind me. Every noise is threatening in the tunnel, and I find myself constantly looking over my shoulder, ready to face something too awful to name. Was that a train I heard? A cough? The metallic vibration of a dragged chain? It smells like death here. The pungent stench of rotting meat. The smell of death all over now. Are those eyes glowing nearby? I lean against the wall and try to breathe calmly, reminding myself this place is only populated by old memories and the occasional homeless person looking for a safe place to be. The rumbling feels closer. Something moves somewhere. I see rats scurrying by, racing into the obscurity. Then I see the charred remains of an animal in the corner of an alcove — a raccoon maybe, a big rodent with liquefied flesh, burnt fur and missing limbs. The Truth About New York’s Legendary 'Mole People'

New York City is the home of some impressive attractions, including Broadway, Wall Street, the Statue of Liberty, One World Trade Center, and many other places that attract thousands of visitors each year. However, these days it appears the great American city is not what it once was. There are nearly people leaving the area each day according to some reports. Some might call these the lucky ones because there are thousands of homeless in the city that can't find the resources to get out. There is a staggering number of homeless people in New York. Some believe more than 60, people are living in the city without a home. There are reports of 2, homeless living underground in New Yorkbut the number could be much higher. The mole people, as some people call them, are living under popular parts of town without the people who are walking above even knowing they are there. They travel under cover of darkness as not to be evicted from their underground homes by authorities. Numerous sections of New York's subways are abandoned. They once transported people throughout the city. However, some tracks like Track 61 are no longer in use. Instead of being cleaned out, though, they conceal old rail cars and other forgotten things deep beneath the city. During that difficult period, people started using the subway tunnels as a place to live. Since then, the homeless population has grown and so has the number of people living under the city. In New York, the weather is relentless. Those who do not have homes are at the mercy of the elements during freezing nights. The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City, they look for shelter anywhere they can find warmth. Abandoned places are a perfect refuge. The places where homeless people live are dangerous. Rodents and reptiles lurk through the tunnels. There are debris and other hazards in the dark. The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City, the darkness conceals criminals, and mole people are often the victims of attacks. Theives even steal what little they have. The entrances to the subway tunnels are easily accessible by anyone who has the desire to venture into them. There are numerous entrances throughout the city. However, it is illegal to enter and going into them can result in criminal charges. Just like any place that numerous people live, the mole people form communities. Most of them look after each other, but there is also a kind of hierarchy. Most of them are very territorial over the section of the tunnels where they live. After all, it is their home. There are couples and even families that live underground. The sad part is these people risk losing their kids if authorities find out they do not have a place to live. So, the families living in the subway do their best to stay concealed. People are not the only ones living in subway tunnels under New York City. Many animals live beneath the streets. Some of the mole people even domesticate these animals and live with them. These animals keep them company in the very isolated and lonely place they call home. The mole people do anything they can to eat and obtain the things they need. It is difficult for them, though. They have to wait until it is dark to emerge from their homes. If authorities see them, they risk getting in trouble. Homeless people are just like everyone else. They enjoy the same things you and I do. However, it is harder for them to do something like reading a book because they do not have electricity. So, instead, they use the light that comes in through ventilation grates. Some of the abandoned sections on the subway are beautiful. They feature ornate decorations and stained glass. The parts featuring windows offer natural light and appear to be cleaner than the darker sections. Honestly, these areas do not look like a horrible place to live if you are homeless. Despite the areas The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City the subway that are beautiful and The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City natural light, the mole people prefer the dark sections. The reason is simple. The shaded parts offer them protection from transit authority personnel and police who will kick them out if they find them. Throughout the years, the city has made efforts to clean sections of the subway tunnels. However, the task is so vast that many abandoned areas remain untouched, especially the parts of the system that are no longer in use. As the saying goes, "out of sight, out of mind. Some of the people living underground do not venture into unknown areas. They instead choose to sleep on operating platforms in plain sight of the people bustling around them. These people sleep on public benches or even on the floor steps away from the subway trains. Another popular place for people living underground to sleep or spend time is riding the subway. These people get on and ride for as long as possible. With so many people getting on and off, they can usually remain unnoticed for quite a while before someone kicks them off. Just like ordinary people, some of the people riding the trains for refuge are dirtier than others. Some of them throw trash around or clutter the cars with their belongings. However, you can't blame them for wanting to keep their few possessions with them. During the coldest nights, the number of people underground is much higher. Most of these people typically sleep above ground. However, during the freezing temperatures sleeping on a park bench is extremely dangerous. They wear whatever clothes they have and cover themselves with anything they can find to avoid hyperthermia. People living in abandoned spaces underground were forgotten for years. After being there for such a long time that it is difficult for them to figure out how to get out. So, the city now has the task of helping them find their way back into society. By Amy Gilmore Dec 20, The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City Share Share Tweet Email Comment. Here's What To Expect. Related Topics Destinations. And They're Worth Exploring Too. Hate The Cold? Looking For Comfort Food?