When is an exit not an exit?
May 17th, 2012 by Control Comments to this post20 years ago, I was walking through this tunnel with a lady friend at 2AM. Tagging up on walls and looking for trouble. All was quiet though, outside the sounds of spray and flirtation. We came upon a nook in the tunnel wall and suddenly heard rythmic banging on a large metal trashcan from just feet away, in the pitch darkness. It was wild – surreal and downright startling. We backed out onto the tracks and noted more rustling sounds – as if the native homeless people were CHUDs alerted to a potential dinner by a watchman who could see in the dark.
We didn’t run, but we did get the hell out of that area quickly. Weapons out and ready for a battling retreat.
That was a long time ago.
Today these tunnels are now one long continuous one. There’s limited access from the streets, so the homeless population down here have dwindled to next to no one. Those that may sleep here are nowhere near the hostile natives of old, who routinely attacked anyone passing through with bottles tossed in their direction.
The darkness of this tunnel is also now punctuated with light: newly covered tunnel sections where lighting has been installed and seemingly maintained.
In one of these newly covered, lit areas – immediately next to our encounter with the drumming nutcase in the dark, is this spot: the Non Exit.
Curious about this tightly fenced in area, we arrived late one night to gain access to the marked ‘exit’ and see what was built here in terms of access.
Once inside the fence, we found quite the surprise: There is no exit here. All signs leading to the street actually go… nowhere. An empty clean room where a drummer once drummed… a darkness that is no longer menacing, yet somehow just plain strange.
Why the hell did they put exit signs all over this fenced in area and… you know… not build a god damned exit?
