SOUND: Music in a Queens sewer tunnel

 

The sign read “Attention Shoppers! Our shopping carts will lock if taken beyond the parking lot perimeter. While distinctive yellow lines mark normal exits, the entire lot perimeter is protected.” It was a good thing none of the twenty or so people gathered at the back of this Costco parking lot in Queens had brought a cart, because they would soon be journeying far from the parking lot perimeter, and avoiding all “normal exits.” Indeed, this group would be heading into the watery underbelly of New York City.

The group—which had been instructed by a text message earlier that day to expect “slippery clambering” and “tight spaces,” and warned to “be timely or the tide may depart without you”—followed a waterfront path, past lolling fishermen and the waftings of marijuana smoke, and slipped through a hole in a shrub, then a hole in a chain-link fence.

A tunnel through the bushes let to an inlet off the East River, where a wobbly two-by-eight served as a gangplank from the shore to a small flotilla of wooden rafts, canoes, and a dinghy. At the center of one raft, resting on an oriental carpet, was an assortment of musical instruments and a piano with amputated legs—which made sense, given the anticipated lack of headroom during the evening’s program.

A few calm men in jumpsuits kept hold of lines that tethered the boats to the shore. The fleet bobbed in the water at the yawning mouth of “Combined Sewer Outfall #BB029,” inside of which, improbably, tonight’s concert would be taking place. The tunnel was painted with the name of the performance, Drain Bramage, the brainchild of N.D. Austin—known for his experiential installations in forbidden places—and the Tideland Institute, which “connects New Yorkers to our harbor by building on-water opportunities for physical access, celebration, and creative engagement.” Conditions tonight were ideal for sailing into the tunnel: a waning gibbous moon and lack of recent rainfall meant a low water level at low tide, so participants would not hit their heads on the ceiling.

As we waited for the rest of the audience to arrive, a ferry surged past the inlet. Its wake gained force as it approached the shore, creating a tsunami that almost flipped the boats and drenched a few people at the end of the flotilla, who laughed it off; people about to enter a sewer tunnel have to be open to anything. One man, scrambling down the shore to grab a line to steady the fleet, slipped on the rocks, and his phone plunged into the inlet. He gamely tore off his shirt and dunked his torso in the water (Did it contain raw sewage? we wondered) and emerged with his phone held aloft, to cheers.

The combined sewer outfall is located where the now-buried Sunswick Creek joins the East River. According to the blog Watercourses, through the late 1800s the stream ran aboveground between Astoria and the former neighborhood of Ravenswood; it was gradually paved over. The outfall now lets out now near Hallett’s Cove, just below Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City.

https://watercourses.typepad.com/watercourses/sunswick_creek/

Mr. Austin—with a waxed mustache, and dressed in canvas overalls, galoshes, and a felt hat—informed us evenly that the water was only rib-deep, so in case of emergency, we could always wade out of the tunnel. The gangplank was lifted, the ropes untehered. Mr. Austin’s compatriot Stefan Zeniuk played a series of low notes on a tenor sax, and we began slowly, slowly to drift toward the mouth of the sewer, as Austin intoned sea chanties about Buttermilk Channel, Mill Basin, and other New York City waterfront spots of yore. A visitor at Socrates Sculpture Park, standing just a few feet above the inlet, gazed down, open-mouthed, as our motley crew disappeared into a hole in the riverbank, singing.

There was some degree of trepidation. The weather was auspicious, but painted signs on the tunnel entrance indicated that 75 million gallons of “sewer outfall”—a combination of excess storm water and untreated wastewater—pour through this outfall each year. But everyone ducked as Austin pulled us into the darkness via a series of cords strung along the ceiling.

We were quickly enveloped in darkness as his song faded into the tunnel, which echoed with distant gurgles and glugs and ripples. If we looked over our shoulders, we could see the last dinghy in the platoon silhouetted by the Manhattan skyline, which was just starting to twinkle into evening. But ahead of us, the evening—and the city—were unknown.

Zeniuk’s formal title for the music that evening was “Composition #1 for unspecified low drum, legless piano, small accordion, and clarinet (to be performed in a sewage drain tunnel).” Erica Mancini was on accordion and percussion; Yula Beeri played the legless piano and flute. Both wore ethereal gowns and had heavily shadowed eyes and dark lips. The four musicians uttered haunting notes that ricocheted down the tunnel: bird calls, squawks, hoots, yodels, howls, whistles, and meandering songs in invented languages.

As the music unfurled in the tunnel, some audience members took swigs from mini liquor bottles; others illuminated the tunnel walls with red pen lights and added percussion by thumping on the rafts. After singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” backward by syllable, to confounding effect, Mr. Austin led everyone in a round, with the passengers on each watercraft taking up a different part. Within the echoes of the tunnel, the parts wove and dipped and overlapped with one another, creating an almost holy sewer incantation. At one point, tiny beeswax candles were passed around, each candle lit another, and the tunnel was illuminated by infinitesimal flames. Though the sewer, remarkably, did not smell—faintly moldering, but not unpleasant—the honey scent of melting beeswax created an almost homey atmosphere in this urban Acheron.

Almost imperceptibly, the flotilla began to move in the other direction, back toward civilization. As the last raft emerged from the sewer, fireworks exploded within the tunnel, an eruption of green and pink sparks lighting up the concrete walls and steel ceiling. Blinking as our eyes adjusted to the night sky, we looked up and thought we detected a double moon through the trees—could this be another orchestration of the evening?—only to realize it was a pair of floodlights in the Costco parking lot.

The gangplank was lowered, the candles were extinguished, and one by one we crossed back to earth from the netherworld.

Back in the permitted perimeter of the Costco lot, a woman in a sari unloaded the last pack of paper towels from her cart, then leaned against her trunk and lit a cigarette, oblivious to the outfall of sewer denizens emerging from the shrubbery. As the ashes of her cigarette flickered into the night air, down below the musicians removed traces of their forbidden concert, leaving only ripples in the water, wisps of firecracker smoke in the tunnel, perhaps some lingering strains of music in the dark.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sense & the City is a monthly blog exploring the hidden corners of New York City. Each month’s post is devoted to one of the five senses. Receive daily sensory impressions via Instagram @senseandthecity.

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