Gadgetory

most of time we hear about crazy tunnels I'm in cities most the time it's 90% just legend and rumor it was completely completely forgotten about no one no one knew was there people speculated but there was no actual like grounds for knowing about that all the experts were saying it was destroyed and all kinds of bizarre stories about eight-foot manning rats inside of it poison gas even though something sounds outlandish that may be real I was born in Brooklyn lived in this very apartment for most of my life I was always interested in engineering I always had an interest in trains because trains and trains were kind of like a combination of my two interest which was history and engineering so as a combination of both areas so was a natural fit when I was in high school I won a science award for alternative energy sources I built a working model of a satellite don't orbit the earth and change sunlight into electricity using photovoltaic cells and you could power up the city off of one big satellite I was going to Pratt studying Electrical Engineering but the radio on and there was a Gil grow show and he was talking about a book that just came out that we called the cosgrove report and the thrust of the book was that John Wilkes Booth was never killed that he escaped to England by way of Manhattan and then on his way out of New York he hid the missing pages of his diary inside of a tunnel that was just closed up on Atlantic Avenue oh by the way next to it is a steam locomotive laying on its side so I was like what steam locomotives and charm folks poof I'm on it so I figured the best way to start was to get a good map of the area from that time period so I just kept on digging until I found that newspaper article from 1911 which told about the set of engineer's drawings at the borough president's office from 1861 and I draw a board home I looked at for about two seconds and I saw it was an opening in the roof of the tunnel right here come on silver be a good boy hello lines up right over here with a dot in the middle of Atlantic Avenue in Court Street I figured that must be a manhole cover so what I ended up doing was I went said the borough president Howard golden told him the story and he had the water department come out the next day and pick up the lid so I jumped in and squeezed into a space about this high and you can see the brick roof and the dirt going off to the distance so I knew there was tunnel under there and I noticed there was a space with a dirt then dropped down again and you can see a concrete wall right ahead plugged up with bricks and cobblestones like a doorway and when we got through the wall pulled out all those stones a blast of cold air came out from the other side I was just like laying there on my stomach laughing into the walkie-talkie because I couldn't talk because I was so shocked that it was really there and all the experts were completely wrong that I couldn't even I was speechless for a few minutes but the gas company executives knew I found something because I was laughing so hard the young man's name is Robert diamond and looking read about him in all the papers the first subway tunnel ever built in America that's right I found it a tunnel shut and forgotten about nearly a century and a half tomorrow it could take us all for a journey back in time I took a close look at one man's obsession tonight in a dark hole under Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn the toys actually happened by popular demand and so we had like 7 800 people show up but we got them all in and out of there but we weren't interested in the money were just interested in the experience of getting people down there because it was fun and they liked it that the funny thing to me is that I asked some people why do you like to come in here cuz I had people coming back seven and eight times so what he keep coming back here and then surprisingly they said because they like the story of how I found the tunnel so I'd hear all these people walking past me saying they wanted to meet me and then I'd get up and say I'm Bob diamonds and they would all applaud I first met Bob when I went on one of his tours I'd heard about him for a while and I'd heard about this mysterious tunnel underneath one of the busiest intersections in Brooklyn I said sure probably somebody's basement but I won on the tour and that's exactly what it was suddenly you're in this enormous expansive tunnel which just stretches away seemingly infinitely away from the people looking around and awe and then we all congregated at the bottom of it yeah after a while I had kind of like a routine set up a probably there was exploding gas and poison gas down here and five foot netting rats but more about that later and I'm kind of like an artist in a way because I like having people come down and show him how I work I get pleasure by them enjoying my work so we just kept using the entrance that we'd built and everything was fine up until three years ago I got a letter one day out of nowhere there was no warning there was no due process I just got a certified letter saying if franchises revoked and don't ever go back there again you're gonna be arrested well we're there for 32 years never had an accident so I guess I was doing something right so yeah like in retrospect like if something happened down there like if there was a fire or something then it probably would be rather difficult to get people out in a extremely timely manner considering that it was it was it was a bottleneck trying to get through that everyone through that niche yeah I suppose that was probably a pretty serious safety hazard in retrospect of course something I didn't notice at the time the most exciting places for me are the ones that are more raw a lot of times it's a trade-off the more people you want to be able to see place the more you have to polish a way that that roughness that can be so excited we're never given notice that the thing was being revoked we were never given a chance to remedy their complaints and and and and that basically there was no due process is that we've been there for 32 years we made it into a federal landmark it's in the National Register of Historic Places people come from all over the world to see it and basically the city just comes along one day and just says get out I like people like Bob who are motivated by something totally outside the realm of money and even outside the realm of kind of what makes sense the keys he has a vision and he has things he's in love with fascinated by and that is what drives him it's such a bizarre surreal sort of a story like in the middle of an urban environment where nothing is unexplored he found a two-mile long tunnel what could I find like it was like it's like well that could never happen but it did the reason I did those tours because people had come in there and say oh wow this is amazing that tunnel was basically my whole life that's what I did every week and now it's like I'm sitting around not doing much for three years what else am I gonna do I'm 54 years old you know who old to go fight into the tunnel somewhere else you