NYC Subways

art from the underbelly project

Paraphrased from the NY Times:

103 street artists from around the world, painted mostly big murals directly onto the walls of an abandoned, uncompleted subway station.

I love it!! When I lived in NY I was always fascinated by the abandoned stations that flashed by the window far downtown.

I would make a fantasy for myself that secret people lived in them. I always wanted to explore the stations but they just flew by the train windows. That speed protected the secret people who lived there. The train would make the awful screech they make on a turn and the people would have time to hide if they were out on the station. They lived in the hidden parts above that were clean and fixed up but still recognizable as subway stations. They used the platforms to get from one place to another.

When I was a kid our line was the Flushing El (82nd St stop). At that time they still had largeish waiting rooms, with wooden benches, that adjoined the bathrooms. At our station they had pot bellied stoves so on cold days we would wait in the ladies waiting room until we could hear the train and then scurry up to the station. On the El the station master, the bathrooms and waiting rooms were under the station and the tracks. The windows of the waiting rooms looked out over the avenue and so it seemed like, if our station were abandoned you could be there and nobody would know but you would have heat and water and electricity.

I figured it was the same for the abandoned stations but, of course, the waiting rooms and all that were above the tracks. Now, once the art is finished, the secret people who live in the stations will have beautiful walls. Maybe they will make friends with some of the artists and the artists will make the walls of the secret parts beautiful as well.

I’ll have to go to NY and take a subway ride.