In a development that has sent tabloid editors into paroxysms of delight and conspiracy theorists into frothing convulsions, the New York Police Department has begun probing a series of startling videos depicting well-dressed gentlemen emerging manfully from the city’s sewers. Yes, you read that correctly: somewhere beneath the steaming grilles of Fifth Avenue, a cabal of dapper chaps appears to be using our great metropolis’s drainage system as an alternative entrance to polite society. One might call them the Underground Railroad for the chino-wearing classes.
Let us savour this exquisite absurdity for a moment. These clips, which have set the internet ablaze faster than a misplaced cigarette in a fireworks factory, show individuals in pressed trousers and jackets popping up from manholes like well-groomed gophers. They dust themselves off. They glance around with the nonchalance of men who have merely popped out for a paper, not clambered through a subterranean labyrinth of raw sewage and forgotten pizza crusts. It is a tableau so preposterous it demands the immediate involvement of both a satirist and a plumber.
According to sources, the NYPD has shifted from ‘mild curiosity’ to ‘genuine concern’ after analysts determined these sewer sojourners are not, in fact, lost tourists or urban explorers gone horribly wrong. They appear to be operating with purpose, a schedule even. One can only imagine the meeting minutes: “Agenda item one: discuss quarterly earnings in a disused drainage tunnel. Item two: ensure trouser cuffs remain unsullied by rat droppings.” The police have not ruled out a connection to organised crime, a shadowy cartel of sewage-access specialists, or perhaps a particularly dedicated troupe of Method actors rehearsing for a production of Les Misérables set entirely in a toilet.
Let us examine the footage with the forensic eye of a man who has seen too many David Lynch films. The subjects are uniformly male, impeccably shod, and exhibit a gait that suggests they are either former military, professional croupiers, or extraterrestrials trying to pass as human by observing bankers. They emerge, breathe deeply of the surprisingly fresh New York air, and then walk away with the brisk efficiency of men who have just completed a deposit of something neither legal nor mentionable in polite company. Could these be the fabled ‘Subterranean Stockbrokers’ my grandmother used to warn me about? She would mutter darkly about men who live in the pipes, trading futures in feral cat urine. I thought her mind had gone. Now, I suspect she was a prophet.
The implications for city security are, of course, both grim and hilarious. We have long known that the sewers are home to alligators, mutant turtles, and the ghost of a disgruntled mayoral candidate. But men in blazers? This is a crisis of fashion and infrastructure simultaneously. How are the police to respond? Will they station officers at every manhole with a bottle of bleach and a lint roller? Or perhaps issue a citywide edict: “All citizens are advised to knock before lifting a manhole cover, and to never accept a business card from a gentleman who smells faintly of effluent.”
My sources (a janitor at the 7th Precinct and a man claiming to be the sewer’s unofficial mayor) inform me that these individuals are likely part of an exclusive gentleman’s club that meets in a disused steam tunnel under Madison Avenue. Their membership dues are paid in gold bullion and silence. Their primary activity is presumably complaining about the upstairs neighbours (the rest of us) while enjoying a snifter of brandy and the gentle gurgle of unmentionable fluids. They call themselves ‘The Drainage Committee.’ I am not making this up. I am a journalist. I never make things up. I simply decorate reality with a more interesting hat.
As the NYPD bravely attempts to follow these sewer-dwelling dandies to their lair, I can only offer one piece of advice: check your shoes before you step into that corporate boardroom. The man next to you might have just come through the plumbing, and his handshake is going to be very, very slippery.
