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

These days, An interesting question has attracted the attention of New Yorkers and local tabloids: Who is going in and out of the wells all over the city, and what are they doing in the toilets?

Get started May 5thSecurity footage shows three people wearing hip waders entering a ditch in Queens. Then, in the morning hours May 29a camera captured a group of people emerging from a ditch in Brooklyn. That same day, a different a group was seen coming out of a ditch in Brooklyn, miles away from the original location. Others wore them headlampsand some carried what looked like shovels and flashlight.

New York Police Department he is comparison that the men are scavengers looking for jewelry, guns, or other valuables. But no one knows for sure, so WIRED spoke with many urban designers working in New York City. On the platform like TikTokYouTube, and Instagram, “urbex” creators – mostly young men or boys who draw together in small groups – explore abandoned or hard-to-reach places such as old factories, ruined buildings, and underground tunnels.

Producers who spoke to WIRED said they did not recognize anyone in the video. For the most part, they did not claim the alleged robbers as their own.

There’s nothing of value down there except for “doo doo water and a few needles,” one creator says. “And toilets are dangerous, because there are zero cells at the bottom.” (Because such research is prohibited, the creators spoke anonymously.)

“No one does shit,” says one creator when WIRED asked if mermaids could be part of the urbex scene. “It’s a very old system and people don’t know much about it.” The men in the videos “were very strict about it,” the author says, pointing to the fact that some flexible clothing after coming out.

One producer also suggested that subways and abandoned stations are better locations for filming, saying that people can film trains with “familiar images.”

In 2010, the New York Times went one step further guided tour of New York City, including parts of the sewers that have access points to the Bronx’s Van Cortlandt Park and Queens’s Kissena Park. The article included descriptions of “condom and toilet paper waste” floating in “coffee-colored sludge,” but no interesting notes.

Another producer says that a hole-in-one model may be available to be abandoned trolley lines. They say they know “several people who have gone into canals just for the fun of exploring,” but add that “that was a long time ago,” and that “nobody these days knows exactly which rivers to open for trolley tracks.”

“Many people going to different toilets across NYC seems disgusting to me,” the designer says. “This could be more than just a search.”

The NYPD and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees the sewage system, both tell WIRED that they have investigated the sewage storage facilities shown in the footage, and said the problem does not pose a threat to public safety. (The DEP also stressed that such activities are “prohibited and extremely dangerous.”)

WIRED was unable to find any recent urbex footage showing the sewers of New York City. Notable features include subway trains, abandoned subway stations, and non-public rooftops of Manhattan.