Way back in 1970’s New York there was once a place we called
“The Time Tunnel”. A dark scary block long underground corridor
that connected the 34th street F-train with Madison Square Garden.
I remember many a week night taking the F from Church Avenue
with my cousin Pete to see a Rangers game at the Garden,
and walking through this homeless filled tunnel that smelled so
bad and looked like something from that movie “Escape from
New York”.
It was filled with dozens and dozens of New York’s finest
“Street People” who lived there during the coldest of winter
months. Just lining the walls of the "Time Tunnel" and whatever
little nooks and crannies the place had as well.
And let me tell you this tunnel was real damn long too,
it stretched from Sixth Avenue to Seventh Avenue.
So this wasn’t just some little underpass, no, this was
a freaking city.
Yeah, this was "Kojack’s" New York, and it just isn’t the
same anymore. No, just too polished and too clean nowadays,
and no more “Time Tunnels” before a Rangers game to walk
through, and scare the living "shit" out of you.
Ron Lopez
2 comments:
I remember this very well - and in fact, I was mentioning this stench-filled menagerie of the world's discarded to a colleague just yesterday - only I referred to it as Death Valley. It is walled off now - for years, trudging from the PATH train turnstiles on 32nd Street I walked past where the entrance had been as I headed toward the 34the Street exit...no one would know that tunnel still exists - it is one of those "hidden New York" phenomena that will be "rediscovered" when somebody breaks dow a wall for redevelopment...I just don't think the rank stench and filth would ever dissipate. Ah...what memories. What was worse, the stank on a hot summer day, or the puke and sh*t and piss of several hundred homeless and those expelled from mental hospitals who parked in that tunnel on a cold winter's night?
Funny, my Frineds and I use to call it the Gauntlet, as in Running the Gauntlet, from an old Superman episode.
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