Hidden Cities: Travels to the Secret Corners of the World's Great Metropolises; A Memoir of Urban Exploration

by Gates, Moses

  Still, it’s a little hard to swallow. I have always been attracted to the idea of spaces like this one as uncontrolled, outside the everyday rules of the city. I like that people can do what they want with them: put art in them, write graffiti, hang out, set up a home, even. I love the general concept of the art gallery, the idea that people are creating something from scratch in this place not for a show, not to try to sell the works, but just because it’s a cool thing to do. But the end vision is a different case. For the organizers, the gallery—constructed off the grid for an audience of next to nobody—is at least partially meant to be a statement about fighting the commercialization of street art, with the space just a vehicle for a larger point to be made.

  Jasper Rees, writing for the website The Arts Desk after the project was completed, quotes one of the organizers:

  For the last few years urban art was getting ridiculous. You could go out with some cute little character that you drew, or some quirky saying, and put it up everywhere for a few months, then do a gallery show and cash in on the sudden interest in urban art. It really was that easy for a while. Banksy pieces that were selling for $600 one year were suddenly selling for $100,000 a few years later. It was nuts. People were going out and literally sawing walls in half to steal Banksy pieces. Electrical panels were being ripped off leaving live wires exposed that had Shepard Fairey stencils on them. It was commercialism at its worst. This atmosphere starts to fuck things up. Early in the street-art years, I relished the ability to feel like I was my own island. [This] was our way of feeling like we were an island again. We finally had a space in the world that collectors couldn’t contaminate. A space that couldn’t be bought.

  But I have a different point of view. I love the place for itself; the art is just decoration to me. No matter how good it is, how skillfully done, it still isn’t the ultimate point, doesn’t overtake the place itself. And it’s always bothered me when people try to control or claim ownership of these spaces, whether that’s the city closing them off, or hipsters throwing a supersecret party with a cool-kids-only guest list, or artists doing their best to enforce a need-to-know-basis-only policy on a place that never had one before. I like the idea of these places being accessible to anyone with the interest to get to them, which is always why I appreciate the people who put art in them, creating an unexpected treat for anyone who happens to find it.

  This line between use and control is a fine one, one that I’ll freely admit really lies in my own head; after all, I never resent it when people stake the ultimate claim of ownership and control to these spaces, which is to live in them. But the artists have benefited enormously from both the space’s obscurity and its ease of access. After the gallery hits the papers, both these benefits will be gone.

  • • •

  But still, losing this station is far from losing everything. There are other great off-the-grid places in the city where it’s pretty easy to relax and hang out. One of these is the Red Hook Grain Terminal, a beautiful old industrial building, cathedral-like on the ground floor, with a roof that provides an up-close, unobstructed view of New York Harbor: you almost feel like you can take a running leap off the building and land on the Statue of Liberty’s torch. I’ve loved hanging out there since the first time I went, accompanied by a Montreal explorer named Nel who was in town for the day. Nel’s a soft-spoken flamenco dancer in her fifties who, on the side, travels the world to explore abandonments, drains, subways, and anything else that strikes her fancy.

  RED HOOK GRAIN TERMINAL.

  © Nathan Kensinger

  The organizers of the art gallery are making a documentary about the project and ask me to do an interview for it. So when the filmmaker wants an “explorey” place to film my interview, the grain terminal is my first suggestion. She’s already been there with me, Shane, and another friend of ours, Eric, to do some action shots of us rappelling into the abandoned concrete silos that used to store the grain, and it went off without a hitch.

  I had met Eric last year at Steve’s going-away party. I was boozed and up for something, so I put out a blanket suggestion of a bridge climb. Eric, Sara, and I, and a fourth friend, headed over to the Manhattan Bridge, Sara staying on the pedestrian path as the rest of us quickly made our way up. We got to the top just in time to take pictures of the flash thunderstorm that had surrounded us. The other two really, really wanted a picture from the top of the bridge with a bolt of lightning in the background. Since we were currently on top of the tallest metal structure for hundreds of feet around, this did not really seem like the smartest plan. I guessed we weren’t in any real danger—after all, plenty of people cross the bridge during thunderstorms—but I certainly wasn’t enthused about testing this theory. Luckily, they quickly got their shot and we made our way back down, absolutely drenched, somehow managing not to slip and fall on the descent. When we dropped off the structure and back onto the path, Sara was huddled with a random old man, who was somehow not surprised when her three companions basically fell out of the sky.

  “He asked me what I was doing here in the rain and I said I was waiting for some friends,” Sara told us. “Then he asked me if I wanted him to wait with me until they got there. I said sure. After a few minutes I felt bad—the guy was so nice. So I came clean about where my friends were.”

  I meet the filmmaker in a park by the grain terminal. This time she’s got two girls with her, her interns, who look barely old enough to vote. They turn out to be college students, one from New Jersey, the other from California. They’re excited about this excursion. While they’ve been interning on the film for weeks, they haven’t actually gotten to see the space where the gallery is being created. This is the next-best thing.

  The interview goes great. We head in, navigate the tricky walk to get to the rusty staircase, and set up on the roof, complete with boom mic and sun shield. After a couple hours it’s starting to get dark, and we wrap it up, heading down the stairs, out the building, and back through the courtyard. As we’re about to hop the fence to exit, we see a van circle around. A police van. By myself I’d make a run for it, bailing over a wall on the other side of the courtyard, but I’ve got three ladies and about fifty pounds of film equipment in tow. Shit—well, maybe they didn’t see us.

  “OK, we might have to deal with the cops,” I tell the other three. “Don’t say anything. Just act like we’re hanging out by the water.”

  Even if they saw us, this shouldn’t be a big deal. We’ll probably get a warning, a summons at worst, which will be annoying but far from anything that’ll ruin our night. And I can’t imagine it’ll even go that far: I’m with three nondescript grown-ups, not shady-looking teenagers or graffiti writers with backpacks full of aerosol spray cans.

  “Could you step over here, please?” The cops have indeed spotted us. Damn. OK, time to deal. We step over the fence.

  “You know that’s private property?”

  We start the cop game: be exceedingly polite, say as little as possible, and deny everything. Unfortunately, when you’re caught red-handed, there’s not a whole lot to deny, so we just stick with the first two. Apparently being three feet on the wrong side of a waist-high fence warrants five different officers, three men and two women. They’re nice enough, but why shouldn’t they be? We’re an easy collar.

  The guy who’s doing most of the talking is young, maybe twenty-five or so, a big guy with a build that falls just short of chubby. He seems inclined to cut us a break.

  “OK, hang on a minute,” he tells us. “This will probably just be a warning. I just got to check one thing.” He talks on his radio for a few minutes and then starts conversing with the fellow officers.

  “OK, so it turns out we can’t just give you a warning,” he says.

  “So we’re getting a summons?” I ask.

  “Well, uh, unfortunately it’s going to be a little bit bigger deal than that,” he says to us. “We’re
going to have to take you in.”

  I can’t believe it. I’ve been up a dozen bridges, done countless trips into the subway, trespassed on national landmarks and World Heritage sites. One time Steve and I had to deal with cops after we’d been messing around on the underside of the highway bridge that leads to the approach to the George Washington Bridge. The cops hadn’t caught us in the act, couldn’t prove anything, but knew we were the ones they were looking for. We, of course, kept our mouths shut, and their exact words before letting us go were, “Word to the wise: You’re out here fucking around on the approach to one of the biggest terrorist targets on the East Coast. You don’t think maybe that’s not such a great idea?” All of this, and the first time I end up in handcuffs is with two college film interns and a woman who has just gotten done telling me about how much she loves double Dutch jump rope.

  After they tell us the bad news, they cuff us and drive us down to the precinct. I’m in a van with the big guy and another nebbishy officer—short, balding, and with an accent like Joe Pesci. We get to the precinct and they take us inside.

  “What’re they here for?” the desk sergeant asks.

  “Trespassing,” the big guy replies.

  The desk sergeant is not happy with this answer. “So give them a summons,” he says.

  “It’s criminal trespass,” the officer replies, with a “Hey, I don’t want to do this either, but what can we do?” kind of look. For a moment I think we might get out of this.

  “OK, put ’em through,” the desk sergeant says with a shrug. Later I learn that the owner of the building has gotten tired of the neighborhood kids messing around in there and asked the precinct to arrest everyone they caught.

  They take everything out of my pockets for vouchering, the short guy going through my wallet and removing and examining every card stuffed in its nooks and crannies. I know what he’s looking for: a Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association card or something else that will let him have an excuse to let us go. He’s not going to find one. I try to look on the bright side. I want to see everything in New York—I’ve never seen the inside of a jail cell.

  We’re the first ones of the night. There are two cells next to each other, each with bars facing a common processing room; you can hear the people in the next cell over, but not see them. I go in the one on the left, the ladies go in the one on the right.

  “OK, so you’re gonna to wait here. We’ll try to get you out on a DAT,” the cops tell us. That’s a desk appearance ticket. If you’ve got no warrants and otherwise seem like a good citizen, it means you get let go that night instead of having to go through Central Booking.

  The next two arrestees of the night join me a few minutes later. They seem nice enough: a father-and-son team. They’ve come in with a daughter who got picked up also, and who gets put in with the filmmaker and interns next door. They don’t say a whole lot, their vocalizing limited to answering questions from the police and occasionally muttering to each other in Spanish, and I certainly don’t ask any questions. The father doesn’t speak much English, but he seems to know what he’s doing. I’d be pretty surprised if they haven’t been in here before. My processing officer is a young, soft-spoken woman who says they’ll get us out of there in a few hours. I marvel that in the days of instant credit check it still takes this long to figure out I don’t have a warrant out for my arrest.

  The next arrival, about a half-hour after the father and son, is a skinny, nervous black guy. He’s one of those people for whom silence is like a vacuum that can be resisted for only so long before it has to be filled. I don’t talk. The father and son don’t talk. So he talks. A lot. I quickly learn he got picked up in the Red Hook houses, a public housing project a few blocks away from where we got arrested. He was leaving his girl’s apartment, was drinking from an open container, got stopped, got frisked, had a joint on him, and voilà.

  “What you in for?” he asks the father-son team.

  Wisely, they don’t answer directly. Instead the son tells the story of how they got arrested.

  “I hear a knock on the door so I open the door, right? And there’s, like, a million cops. So I say, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ and they’re just like, ‘Come with us.’ So here we are.”

  He makes a few other generic statements when Skinny’s never-ending verbal assault takes the form of direct questions. My guess is that they’ve been dealing drugs out of the house. The fact that they know not to say anything solidifies my suspicion that this is not their first time here.

  Next to enter the cell is an extremely stoned fellow with dreadlocks that reach down to his lower back. He sits down, eyes bloodshot.

  “What you in for?” Skinny asks.

  He ends up having much the same story as Skinny, except this time the weed came first and the open container second. He’s also from the Red Hook houses; it turns out he actually knows Skinny. He’s too stoned to say much, so Skinny continues to fill the aural void solo.

  Unlike the father and son, Skinny does not know what he’s doing. He has the worst curse of the lawbreaker: the need to confess. At one point he even confides in me, completely unprompted and not even in a whisper, “I’m dirty as fuck right now,” meaning he has drugs on him. This is in a police station, with cameras pointed right at the cell, and officers directly on the other side of the bars. I determine Skinny is the absolute last guy I would ever hire to deal my drugs.

  About two hours after we get there, the last arrival is brought in. This guy is huge. He looks like Fat Joe the rapper: bald, beady eyes, caramel complexion, and, well, fat. While he’s wearing glasses that make him look kind of bookish, it quickly becomes clear that he’s the closest thing to a real criminal we’ve had so far. He starts trouble right away. He doesn’t like the cops and the cops don’t like him. Fingerprinting becomes a drama. Removing his shoelaces becomes a drama. Asking to make a call becomes a drama. Skinny finally has a partner in his battle against the silence. A loud partner.

  Everyone in the cell wants a desk appearance ticket, although the father-and-son team seem resigned to spending the night in jail and put their energy into trying to get the daughter in the women’s cell out. If you don’t get a DAT and you end up getting put through the system, you’re usually looking at at least twenty-four hours before you can see a judge and get out. Now, while I’ve been told Central Booking sucks and the food is pretty bad, the most important thing getting a DAT will do for you is avoid screwing up your next day: there’s no need to give your boss an excuse for why you missed work, no angry girlfriends to deal with, no skipped appointments.

  The problem is you have to be a hundred percent squeaky clean to get out on a DAT. First comes the bad news for the guy in dreads. He has an outstanding summons. The summons is for riding his bike on the sidewalk, but it’s enough to ruin his next day.

  “Shit,” Dreads goes. He doesn’t look that surprised. It doesn’t seem like he remembered the bike summons specifically. It’s more like he was just counting on the fact that something or other would end up screwing him over.

  Next comes the bad news for Skinny. Skinny comes back a Blood. As in, a gang member. I barely manage to keep in my guffaw when the officer breaks the news. Skinny is no more a Blood than I am. He would make the worst gangster ever known. Even the cop seems to accept this diagnosis as faulty.

  “Look, I’m not saying you’re a Blood. That’s what the computer says. Maybe you are, maybe you were just hanging out with the wrong guys, I don’t know. But I can’t get you out on a desk appearance. Sorry.”

  It seems Skinny, at some point, must have been standing too close to someone wearing red. This is somehow constitutionally sound grounds for a night in jail.

  Then comes the bad news for Fat Joe. Fat Joe has an outstanding warrant. It’s from 2001, for an open container. Fat Joe is livid at this news.

  “I was in prison in 2001!” he screams. “I got put in for eight yea
rs for assault! How can I have a warrant? Look it up, look it up! I am a violent felony offender! You should know me! Eight years, it’s in there!”

  I am in a ten-by-seven cell with a three-hundred-pound self-described violent felony offender. I’m actually not too stressed about it, never feel like I’m in any danger. My biggest worry is that the cops will decide to impound the film footage, find out about the art gallery, bust it before it finishes, and I’ll be the idiot who fucked it all up.

  And it would have been my fault, not fairly chalked up to bad luck. A couple weeks previously, Shane and Eric were hanging out on the roof of the Red Hook Grain Terminal when security spotted them. They played a cat-and-mouse game until dark, at which time they managed to sneak out the back. Shortly afterward I read an article in the local paper about how the owner was complaining about all the trespassing that was taking place ever since the city made him replace a ten-foot solid metal fence with a shorter see-through one on the grounds that the old fence obstructed the view of the water. I should have known the consequences of being caught would be more than a stern lecture, and definitely should have paid more attention and not been so cavalier about our exit. I didn’t even wait the few minutes it would have taken for it to get dark enough that the cops might not have seen us. Once again, I’m reminded that injury and arrest are almost always the result of complacency, laziness, and otherwise getting too happy with yourself.