In recent days fantastic question caught the attention of Novel Yorkers and local tabloids: Who goes in and out of the drains throughout the city and what are they doing in the sewer system?
ON May 5Surveillance footage shows three people wearing waders entering a manhole in Queens. Then in the early morning hours at May 29another camera captured a group of people emerging from a sewer manhole in Brooklyn. On the same day a miscellaneous the group was seen emerging from another manhole in Brooklyn, miles away from the first site. Some wore it headlightsand some carried what seemed to be shovels AND flashlights.
The Novel York Police Department has already done this was speculated that men are scavengers looking for jewelry, weapons or other valuables. But no one knows for sure, so WIRED consulted several urban exploration content creators based in Novel York. On platforms such as TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, ‘urbex’ creators – typically teenage boys or juvenile men who film together in tiny groups – explore abandoned or hard-to-reach spaces such as disused factories, dilapidated mansions and underground tunnels.
The creators who spoke to WIRED say they did not recognize anyone in the video. In fact, they did not consider the alleged sewage bandits as their own.
There’s nothing of value there except “doo doo water and a few needles,” says one of the creators. “And sewers are quite risky because there is basically no cell phone reception there.” (Because this type of mining is illegal, the creators spoke on condition of anonymity.)
“No one does sewerage,” says another creator when WIRED asked if manhole workers could be part of the urbex community. “It’s just a very old system and people don’t know much about it.” The men in the films “were too sophisticated about it,” says the creator, pointing out that some change clothes after they appear.
Another creator said subway tunnels and abandoned stations in the city were better places to film, noting that it could capture close-up shots of trains and “prestige graffiti.”
In 2010, the Novel York Times published an article entitled guided tour underground Novel York City, including portions of the sewer system that have entrances to Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx and Kissena Park in Queens. The article included descriptions of “condoms and sticky bits of toilet paper” floating in the “coffee-colored gloom,” but no miraculous graffiti.
Another creator claims that the potential discovery could be the entrance to a sewer manhole abandoned trolleybus tracks. They claim to know “a few people who have entered manholes just for the thrill of exploration,” but add that this was “a long time ago” and that “no one in today’s urbex scene really knows which manholes need to be opened to access trolley lines.”
“A lot of people going to different channels throughout New York seem suspicious to me,” the creator says. “It could be more than just exploration.”
The NYPD and the Novel York City Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees the sewer system, tell WIRED that they have investigated the sewer locations shown in the surveillance video and determined that the situation does not pose a threat to public safety. (The DEP also emphasized that such activity is “both illegal and extremely dangerous.”)
WIRED was unable to locate any recent urbex content featuring Novel York City’s sewer systems. The most popular content types are subway tunnels, abandoned subway stations, and non-public rooftops of Manhattan skyscrapers.