Around 2012 I was working near 5th Ave and 14th st, and there was a giant water main break. They had to dig about three stories down in a large intersection, and you could walk near the edge and look in.
It was extraordinary, like something out of a sci-fi where an alien ship has been torn open and the mess of pipes and wires looks organic. It was also a funny case of lost tech / organizational memory -- I heard they had to ask the union to help find retired folks who had worked on the lower levels and could explain why pipes were laid out the way they were.
Meanwhile in place of power, cable, and phone lines there is a related 18 mile translucent line hung in order to turn the entire city into one big happy home called a *eruv* -- following the law of the highest of high courts to the letter. [0]
AFAIK the eruvim are not dictated by “high courts” (there is no “high court” at all), but are instead constructed and maintained by various Orthodox groups. Not all Orthodox groups agree about their propriety either, so the presence of an eruv doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s recognized.
(Also pedantic, but it’s not the entire city: there’s a Manhattan eruv that covers a large part of Manhattan, while Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx have separate smaller eruvim.)
I live in nyc, when I first heard of the eruv couldn’t believe they would come up with such elaborate hacks just to ‘technically’ still be following their religious laws! Now if I remember I try and spot it when out.
Religious infighting with 2 fundamentalist sects that somehow boiled down to some people digging a tunnel connecting 2 buildings because of... reasons? Like it seems like they thought that if they built the tunnel that'd magically lead to everyone deciding "You know what, this expansion project is a good thing!"
Very bizarre.
Regardless, I'm glad it got shut down before a collapse killed someone.
> Religious infighting with 2 fundamentalist sects that somehow boiled down to some people digging a tunnel connecting 2 buildings because of... reasons?
The very short version is that both groups claim ownership of that building, and one of them wants to expand it significantly. Neither group is allowed to modify the building because of a court order, so the one that wants to modify it did it surreptitiously in an attempt to create facts on the ground that would modify the status quo.
(Obviously none of this is sensible, but the actual reasons are pretty quotidian.)
You can find the defendant names in this article (from the wikipedia link) [1] and then look up some basic case info by name: google "new york WebCriminal Defendant Search" and then search by defendant name + Kings Supreme Criminal Court. You'll see information like case number and next court date. You can also find similar info with "nyscef case search".
When I was clicking around, the website sometimes had language about not linking to it directly without permission so that's why no link... even though it seems a bit silly.
An illegal tunnel in a densely populated city like that is a bold move.
This was unexpected though:
> stills taken from videos of the synagogue's interior as well as the room leading to the tunnel, which showed a stained mattress and high chair, respectively, fueled antisemitic conspiracy theories
> A USA Today fact-check stated that the stained mattress seen in viral videos had been removed from behind wood paneling of the synagogue rather than from the tunnel itself, undermining online speculation that the mattresses were in the tunnel
> An illegal tunnel in a densely populated city like that is a bold move.
I'd say it was an utterly braindead move and pretty much everyone involved is lucky to be alive.
There's just so, so much dangerous stuff you can hit below ground - high voltage cables that really, really do not like it if you even nick them, high current cables giving off nasty electromagnetic fields, ordinary low voltage cables whose isolation is already degraded, old water, gas, steam and sewer mains that may or may not burst simply because the only thing holding together the rust is the pressure from the soil, other, maybe long forgotten tunnels...
And that's before even getting into the issue of potentially getting caved in, creating a sinkhole or an ingress avenue for stormwater.
> Huebner downplayed the seriousness of the charges and said the defendants are all Israelis studying to be rabbis ... Two of the men have dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship and none are married.
> The 13 people, all young men, pleaded not guilty in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn ... Another four defendants were absent because they were in Israel, according to their lawyer, Levi Huebner.
> Justice Adam Perlmutter ordered the defendants ... to turn over their passports.
One of the most informative videos from Practical Engineering channel. I thought I knew NYC infra fairly well, but I learned so much from that video still (like how NYC's electric grid is actually a grid and more fault tolerant).
This is quite informative and useful as I live in NYC. I think in the video he mentioned that the city is collecting all that data on what’s underground to collect all in a database and make repairs easier - anyone know if such data is or will be public, like on data.ny.gov ?
And what I’m getting at, is it would be really cool to have this kind of 3d visualization like in the video, but based on actual real data so I could view what’s actually underneath the streets I walk every day.
Don’t know about this specifically but if you ever watch Rainbolt you know that NYC is pretty legendary for providing crazy data to the public (for example a database of all trees, or insane detail street information)
This is fantastic, but I so hoped it would come with an infographic of NY's underworld, slice of cake style. I recall seeing one somewhere, but my attempts at finding it again all failed.
If you're referring to the Belgian blocks[1], I don't think they're actually from Belgium specifically, just Europe in general. Although some might be from Belgium!
Nothing in that article suggests that the actual stones come from Europe. It seems like it would be rather impractical to import that much heavy material.
This report [0] from the Historic Districts Council in NYC says:
> Despite the name Belgian block, it remains unclear to what
extent, and during what era, paving stones imported from Belgium
may have provided the raw materials for New York City’s streets.¹ It
is known that the city’s early paving stones included a type of six-
inch-square traprock commonly called “Belgian” block, and said to
have first been used in Belgium.
>1. While it has often been reported that Belgian blocks were
imported to New York as ship ballast, we have not found primary
evidence to confirm this practice.
Around 2012 I was working near 5th Ave and 14th st, and there was a giant water main break. They had to dig about three stories down in a large intersection, and you could walk near the edge and look in.
It was extraordinary, like something out of a sci-fi where an alien ship has been torn open and the mess of pipes and wires looks organic. It was also a funny case of lost tech / organizational memory -- I heard they had to ask the union to help find retired folks who had worked on the lower levels and could explain why pipes were laid out the way they were.
That's where the mutants live. Also, there's a thousand year old, old New York City buried underneath that had bathroom booths with phones in them.
Don't touch the weird pink goo you find down there either.
And if your name is Winston, it's just best if you stay above ground, or stick to the subway system.
And those weird booths that look like suicide booths, are no suicide booths. I love you, meatbags! Hello, it’s me, Bender Rodriguez!
I guess a robot would have to be crazy to be a folk singer...
Argelio
I can’t read something like this without thinking of the late great Richard Scarry
Luckily ChatGPt does a pretty good impression https://chatgpt.com/s/m_6a6662e9af6c81918523fb06d1384e74
This is actually rather impressive. Care to share the prompt you used?
https://chatgpt.com/share/6a673180-0a78-83ed-abd0-d797c4d95a...
tldr the initial effort didn't seem to read the linked article so I copied and pasted the full text in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_synagogue_tunnel...
Meanwhile in place of power, cable, and phone lines there is a related 18 mile translucent line hung in order to turn the entire city into one big happy home called a *eruv* -- following the law of the highest of high courts to the letter. [0]
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSldb9IMDVU
AFAIK the eruvim are not dictated by “high courts” (there is no “high court” at all), but are instead constructed and maintained by various Orthodox groups. Not all Orthodox groups agree about their propriety either, so the presence of an eruv doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s recognized.
(Also pedantic, but it’s not the entire city: there’s a Manhattan eruv that covers a large part of Manhattan, while Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx have separate smaller eruvim.)
8 replies →
I live in nyc, when I first heard of the eruv couldn’t believe they would come up with such elaborate hacks just to ‘technically’ still be following their religious laws! Now if I remember I try and spot it when out.
It also has a status page! https://eruv.nyc/
7 replies →
This is a very weird story.
Religious infighting with 2 fundamentalist sects that somehow boiled down to some people digging a tunnel connecting 2 buildings because of... reasons? Like it seems like they thought that if they built the tunnel that'd magically lead to everyone deciding "You know what, this expansion project is a good thing!"
Very bizarre.
Regardless, I'm glad it got shut down before a collapse killed someone.
> Religious infighting with 2 fundamentalist sects that somehow boiled down to some people digging a tunnel connecting 2 buildings because of... reasons?
The very short version is that both groups claim ownership of that building, and one of them wants to expand it significantly. Neither group is allowed to modify the building because of a court order, so the one that wants to modify it did it surreptitiously in an attempt to create facts on the ground that would modify the status quo.
(Obviously none of this is sensible, but the actual reasons are pretty quotidian.)
It's quite frustrating. The story ends with:
> four defendants refused to accept a plea deal and were set to be tried in April 2025
I can find loads of stories reporting those facts, but I can't find an account of what happened next. Did they change their pleas? Were they tried?
Looks like the cases are still ongoing.
You can find the defendant names in this article (from the wikipedia link) [1] and then look up some basic case info by name: google "new york WebCriminal Defendant Search" and then search by defendant name + Kings Supreme Criminal Court. You'll see information like case number and next court date. You can also find similar info with "nyscef case search".
When I was clicking around, the website sometimes had language about not linking to it directly without permission so that's why no link... even though it seems a bit silly.
[1] https://www.nbcnewyork.com/brooklyn/men-charged-brooklyn-syn...
Any mention of NYC underground is an opportunity for the antisemites to come crawling out of the woodwork.
An illegal tunnel in a densely populated city like that is a bold move.
This was unexpected though:
> stills taken from videos of the synagogue's interior as well as the room leading to the tunnel, which showed a stained mattress and high chair, respectively, fueled antisemitic conspiracy theories
> A USA Today fact-check stated that the stained mattress seen in viral videos had been removed from behind wood paneling of the synagogue rather than from the tunnel itself, undermining online speculation that the mattresses were in the tunnel
Here's a video in which a Rabbi who is a member of the sect clarifies the story:
https://xcancel.com/Truthtellerftm/status/197901264211193488...
1 reply →
> An illegal tunnel in a densely populated city like that is a bold move.
I'd say it was an utterly braindead move and pretty much everyone involved is lucky to be alive.
There's just so, so much dangerous stuff you can hit below ground - high voltage cables that really, really do not like it if you even nick them, high current cables giving off nasty electromagnetic fields, ordinary low voltage cables whose isolation is already degraded, old water, gas, steam and sewer mains that may or may not burst simply because the only thing holding together the rust is the pressure from the soil, other, maybe long forgotten tunnels...
And that's before even getting into the issue of potentially getting caved in, creating a sinkhole or an ingress avenue for stormwater.
> Huebner downplayed the seriousness of the charges and said the defendants are all Israelis studying to be rabbis ... Two of the men have dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship and none are married.
> The 13 people, all young men, pleaded not guilty in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn ... Another four defendants were absent because they were in Israel, according to their lawyer, Levi Huebner.
> Justice Adam Perlmutter ordered the defendants ... to turn over their passports.
One of the most informative videos from Practical Engineering channel. I thought I knew NYC infra fairly well, but I learned so much from that video still (like how NYC's electric grid is actually a grid and more fault tolerant).
This is quite informative and useful as I live in NYC. I think in the video he mentioned that the city is collecting all that data on what’s underground to collect all in a database and make repairs easier - anyone know if such data is or will be public, like on data.ny.gov ? And what I’m getting at, is it would be really cool to have this kind of 3d visualization like in the video, but based on actual real data so I could view what’s actually underneath the streets I walk every day.
Don’t know about this specifically but if you ever watch Rainbolt you know that NYC is pretty legendary for providing crazy data to the public (for example a database of all trees, or insane detail street information)
You might run into "security thru obscurity".
There was viral video in January 2024 showing what is under your feet in NY
So many Ghostbusters II flashbacks watching this.
Still waiting for someone to resurrect that old pneumatic tube system...
The Boring Company is on it lol
This is fantastic, but I so hoped it would come with an infographic of NY's underworld, slice of cake style. I recall seeing one somewhere, but my attempts at finding it again all failed.
The video does have something like that, it's not labeled though, rather he goes through each part and highlights the part he's talking about
Fascinating. Anything that grows up above ground has a proportionate growth below ground as well.
Pieces of Belgian cities?
If you're referring to the Belgian blocks[1], I don't think they're actually from Belgium specifically, just Europe in general. Although some might be from Belgium!
[1]: https://sohobroadway.org/soho-broadway-block-by-belgian-bloc...
Nothing in that article suggests that the actual stones come from Europe. It seems like it would be rather impractical to import that much heavy material.
This report [0] from the Historic Districts Council in NYC says:
> Despite the name Belgian block, it remains unclear to what extent, and during what era, paving stones imported from Belgium may have provided the raw materials for New York City’s streets.¹ It is known that the city’s early paving stones included a type of six- inch-square traprock commonly called “Belgian” block, and said to have first been used in Belgium.
>1. While it has often been reported that Belgian blocks were imported to New York as ship ballast, we have not found primary evidence to confirm this practice.
https://hdc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/HDC_Historic-Stre...
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