"if you have to sleep on a subway, the E train is the best place to do it."

I'm in the midst of working on a research paper on homeless people living in the subway tunnels of New York City. Known as 'mole people,' they have entire communities underground. Several books have been written on the topic, and there's a good documentary out on it as well, Marc Singer's 'Dark Days.'

While doing my research this afternoon, I came across some interesting things. One is a quote I read in an article from the February 12, 2002 edition of the New York Times about the homeless sleeping on subway cars. According to the report, "if you have to sleep on a subway, the E train is far and away the best place to do it. Or perhaps a more accurate way to phrase it would be that the E is indisputably the least undesirable place to spend the night on a moving subway train."

Hmm. So, if you want to spend the entire night riding around in a subway car, apparently the E train is the best place to do it. Interesting, interesting. I always knew something was up with that train!

I never ride the E (preferring the A or C trains), but I can vouch for the fact that homeless people do sleep in subway cars. Just the other day I stepped onto an F train and was assaulted by the worst smell of urine I have ever encountered in my life. I looked over and a homeless man was sprawled along three seats, passed out to the world. A long stream of pee had soaked through the bottom of his pants. This being New York, everyone else in the car took it in stride. However, at the next stop, a young man got on the train, sat down near the homeless guy, and then started sniffing at the air. He turned to me and asked, "Does it smell like piss in here?" I started laughing -- I couldn't help it -- and gave an affirmitive answer. Yup, it smells like urine in here!!

Anyway, enough about homeless men peeing on themselves. Getting back on to the topic of interesting things I've discovered during my research, I have a website for anyone interested in abandoned subway tunnels. http://www.columbia.edu/~brennan/abandoned/ <-- right there, folks.
It has a large list (with photos) of old subway stations, tunnels and platforms in the city. Being the geek that I am, I find this very interesting. Equally dorky is this website about NYC's first subways: http://wt.mit.edu/Subway/Archives/Project.html <--right there.

Last, but not least, two websites that have photographs of mole people and/or aboveground homeless:
http://www.fragiledwelling.org/
and
http://www.artcoup.com/movie.html