Hidden NY : "The Book"
  Many years ago, sometime around the mid 1970's, I was privy to a strange and unique social/artistic artifact in the subterranean recesses of Manhattan on the upper westside. A boy who I was casual friends with, on a particularly hot and humid summer day, invited to witness "The Book", the book, he stated mysteriously, was located under Riverside Drive Park, needless to say I was intrigued. The prospect of dark and cool spaces to wander, hidden from view, when compared with the blinding sun and wilting heat and steam of a New York summer day, was an irresistabley attractive alternative.
  I was led down to the entrance to the river walk around 93rd street or so, where there was a massive metal grate in the wall, a couple of bars had been broken off creating an entrance into the subterranean recesses of the freight rail sytem that glides almost unseen underneath the length of the park. As a little boyI would delight in standing over the grating located at intervals in the park that looked down onto that same train line, and watch for the long freight trains to rumble by, watching the interestingly shaped and colored train cars roll by from above them, now here I was actually on those tracks!
  My friend guided me past an underground cave village of sorts, inhabited by the nominally homeless and outcast who shambled on the streets above but apparently called this cavern their home. I was assurred that the trains came infrequently and the danger from the locals was minimal as they were accustomed to people coming down to see "The Book".
  He showed me through several passages, lit dimly by daylight filtering in through the grates in the surface, until we came to a long narrow tunnel with only one set of train tracks running the length of it, on the wall, painted in panels on the concrete wall, I saw "The Book".
  It was a floor to ceiling graffitti mural, stretching for more than fifty feet, depicting the struggle of good against evil , the apocalyptic end of the world and its ultimate rebirth, hidden here in the cool, musty, dank twilight of the train tunnels. I was stunned.
  My companion explained to me that the artist had come down for many months assembling the book on the walls of the tunnel, and showed me earlier and later work by other artists who had used these walls as their canvas, but nothing compared to "The Book", it was, to my 11 year old eyes, utterly transcendant. The style was reminiscent of the underground comics of the day, and the magazines of fantastic and exotic horror and science fiction, but in that tunnel, it was beyond description. The story it told, in that style of art work, and the general air of decay and revolution in the air at that time made an indelible impact on my mind that is still fresh a little over thirty years later.
  I never visited that place again, because my guide moved away shortly after that ( his father had lost his job and decided to try the family's luck out of state), and without him to show me through the passages I would never have found it again anyway. But I remember at odd times, that strange journey underground and that strange mural and its story of destruction and rebirth just below the surface of the world I thought I knew so well.
