‘Doo Doo Water and a Few Needles’: Inside the Mystery of the New York City Manhole Prowlers

In caller days, a fantastical question has captured the attraction of New Yorkers and section tabloids: Who is popping successful and retired of manholes crossed the city, and what are they doing successful the sewer system?

On May 5, information footage showed 3 radical wearing hep waders entering a manhole successful Queens. Then, successful the aboriginal greeting hours of May 29, different camera captured a radical of radical exiting a manhole successful Brooklyn. The aforesaid day, a antithetic radical was seen emerging from different Brooklyn manhole, miles distant from the archetypal location. Some wore headlamps, and immoderate were carrying what appeared to beryllium shovels and flashlights.

The New York Police Department has speculated that the men are scavengers looking for jewelery, guns, oregon different valuables. But nary 1 knows for sure, truthful WIRED consulted with respective municipality exploration contented creators progressive successful New York City. On platforms similar TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, “urbex” creators—typically teenage boys oregon young men who movie unneurotic successful tiny groups—explore abandoned oregon difficult-to-access spaces similar defunct factories, dilapidated mansions, and underground tunnels.

The creators who spoke to WIRED accidental they didn’t admit anyone from the video footage. By and large, they did not assertion the alleged sewer bandits arsenic their own.

There’s thing of worth down determination too “doo doo h2o and a fewer needles,” 1 creator says. “And sewers are beauteous risky, due to the fact that determination is fundamentally zero compartment work down there.” (Because this benignant of exploration is illegal, the creators spoke connected the information of anonymity.)

“Nobody does sewers,” says different creator erstwhile WIRED asked if the manhole men could beryllium portion of the urbex community. “It’s conscionable specified an aged strategy and radical don't cognize a batch astir it.” The men successful the videos “were mode excessively blase astir it,” the creator says, pointing to the information that immoderate switched apparel aft they emerged.

Another creator claimed that the city’s subway tunnels and abandoned stations are amended filming locations, noting that radical could seizure close-up views of trains and “prestigious graffiti.”

In 2010, the New York Times went connected a guided circuit of subterranean New York City, including parts of the sewer strategy that person entranceway points successful the Bronx’s Van Cortlandt Park and Queens’s Kissena Park. The nonfiction included descriptions of “a condom and gooey scraps of toilet paper” floating successful “coffee-colored murk,” but nary marvelous graffiti.

Another creator says that a gully of entering a manhole whitethorn beryllium the imaginable of uncovering abandoned trolley tracks. They assertion they cognize “a mates radical who went successful sewer manholes conscionable for the thrill of the exploration,” but added that it was a “long clip ago,” and that “nobody successful the urbex country contiguous really knows which manholes to unfastened to entree trolley lines.”

“Multiple radical going into antithetic sewers crossed NYC seems fishy to me,” the creator says. “This mightiness beryllium much than conscionable exploration.”

The NYPD and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees the sewage system, some archer WIRED they investigated the sewage strategy locations shown successful the surveillance footage, and said the concern doesn’t contiguous a menace to nationalist safety. (The DEP besides stressed that specified enactment is “both amerciable and highly dangerous.”)

WIRED wasn’t capable to find immoderate caller urbex contented that showcased New York City’s sewer systems. The astir communal benignant of contented shows subway tunnels, abandoned subway stations, and non-public rooftops connected Manhattan skyscrapers.