Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
It’s after Memorial Day, so you know what that means – it’s summer! The fact that summer doesn’t officially begin until June 21st is a technicality that only a calendar watcher should be concerned with, and nobody likes a calendar watcher. Now that we’re in the most leisurely of the four seasons, many are planning their vacations to get away from their laptops for a week or two and laze about on a beach, in a friend’s swimming pool, or at an outside bar. Others are just taking staycations. But in New York, two separate incidents have found groups of individuals getting away from it all by getting under it all. And by that, we mean jumping into sewers for a few hours.
Backrooms, more like Bathrooms! This grainy video shows a man emerging from a manhole. (Youtube.com/CBSNewYork)
In the new A24 blockbuster Backrooms, a disaffected furniture store owner discovers liminal spaces in his store’s basement. In the current Brooklyn situation, groups of people have been found going into and emerging from sewer manholes in the NYC borough. Are they finding liminal spaces, an alternate universe, or just tons of s**t? We may never find out, because they’re still on the loose and should be considered armed and extremely smelly. In the first incident, seven or more people were seen entering the sewers via a manhole in the Gravesend section around 11 pm on Thursday (5/29) and emerging around 2 am Friday, changing their clothes and making a getaway. Eight miles away in South Williamsburg, a separate group hit the (below) streets at around 1 am Friday, staying for another three hours and escaping in a vehicle.
There are more questions than answers, though. They may well have been teenagers, but were any of them proficient in martial arts or named after Renaissance artists? Were they two separate groups inspired by the aforementioned film, or that one level in Resident Evil 4, or It, or were they all part of a sewer crew acting in unison? And if they were going to visit sewers in a borough in NYC, why not Flushing, Queens? The NYPD, as well as a K-9 unit, the FDNY, and the Department of Environmental Protection, showed up and inspected the sewers at both locations. They were found safe, so maybe the two groups’ MO was just to make cops roam around sewers.
It should be noted that it’s highly illegal to enter a sewer. That’s perhaps why manhole covers are so heavy. On an unrelated note, it’s 2026, shouldn’t they be called personholes? At any rate, a spokesperson stated that sewers are also extremely dangerous, since they can contain “noxious and potentially deadly gases, unstable surfaces, flooding risks, and confined spaces,” although that also describes a typical $3,000 studio apartment in Brooklyn.
While the current crew hasn’t been caught yet, the same thing happened just last year. However, those dumbasses did it during broad daylight and got caught. These crews realized nighttime was the right time. Or maybe the wrong time, because maybe don’t hang out in sewers. Regardless, if you have any Brooklyn friends who you’ve noticed smell even worse than usual, ask them what they were up to last Thursday night/Friday morning.
To read Drew Curtis’ Odd Take on this story, click here.
This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
