Ask somebody what’s so great about the Valley, and you’re likely to hear a familiar list. Top contenders include the beauty of the environment, the educated and hippie-tilted populace, the accessibility of cultural events, and the laid-back, rural pace. Few folks recite a version of the Valley’s best points without including a particular ace in the hole: it’s only 100 miles from Boston (cue daydreams of road trips to Fenway), and it’s only 200 from the big one, from New York City.
We can, we proudly trumpet, head down the road for a few hours and stroll Soho galleries, procure real bagels and take in Broadway plays. We’re that close to culture with a capital C. I’ve known a few folks who really do barrel down I-91 with abandon, regularly heading for world-class theater, exhibitions at MoMA, and evenings at restaurants that even the owners have to make reservations for. Most of these folks give up when the Big Apple has battered their bank accounts into shrivelled ghosts of financial stability.
I once was among that giddy company myself; I saw the best minds of my generation in $1,500-per-month coat closets with “bedrooms” separated by cublicle dividers. But there was and is something about New York City that’s compelling, despite its issues. For me, that’s the immediacy of its arts scene. Look at the work of an artist in NYC, and it stands a good chance of being the cream of the crop, since most artists want, more than anything, to exhibit in New York. Not that New York’s collective judgment of art is infallible—it’s just the biggest of big ponds. That’s true in the arts in general, and it means that experiences there are, to some degree, more likely to be satisfying than arts performances in less rarefied locales.
It’s necessary, though, to overlook a lot to enjoy much of anything in New York. It’s hard to afford anything. Running gauntlets of drug sellers pushing their wares through fences is not entirely uncommon, and the crush of bustling humanity can be overwhelming. For me, since Sept. 11, 2001, the city exudes an air of gravity and grimy apocalypse that undercuts enjoyment. It’s hard to want to go to the metaphorical and now literal ground zero, that sinkhole helplessly commemorating the worst of human nature.
I haven’t been big on heading to NYC since, but the boundless energy of the metropolis doesn’t seem to have suffered from such misgivings as mine, having long ago incorporated the changed landscape. That became starkly clear to me recently when an art project of particularly New York leanings emerged to remind me of all that I love about that city, and about cities in general.
We’ve got our faux subways here, as imagined in maps created by Rob and Damia Stewart, but they’re just dreams of tunnels unbuilt, of urban grit that’s very un-Valley. They’ve got the real thing under New York. Not only that, they’ve got stuff right out of steampunk fiction: abandoned and unused stations, weird crypts beneath the streets, full of God knows what. Leave it to the artists of NYC to come up with a beautiful way to use one of them (in apparently illegal fashion, no less). It’s called the Underbelly Project.
From the project’s website: “For 100 years, a massive subway station sat unfinished, unused, and undiscovered. Over the course of the last year, artists have been secretly escorted into that station to leave their creative mark. Unobstructed by the pressures of commercial sales, email, or daily routines, each artist painted for one full night. The original entrance has since been removed and darkness has reclaimed the station. It has become an elusive pirate treasure of contemporary art.”
Few know the location or the current fate of the station (it may have been painted over, and may well remain open, if elusive). The reality of experiencing such a cavernous place armed with only a flashlight is much more daunting than reading about it, as blogger Luna Park discovered: “My every step kicked up swirls of the rail dust that blanketed every surface. If it hadn’t been for the reassuring presence of familiar art adorning the walls, I might have quickly succumb[ed] to the illusion that I’d arrived amidst the remnants of a forgotten city.”
Much of the art is stunning in its beauty and execution, in how it interacts with the bleak underground chambers it fills. That it is utterly unreachable outside of extraordinary luck or the right connections lends it a mystique like little else.
That sense of unbounded possibilities, the “forgotten city” Park talks about, is what lies at the core of my fascination with sprawling metropolises, and most especially New York. You just can’t find that on Northampton’s main drag, charming though it is. Maybe you won’t stumble on a buried trove of street art in New York, but somehow that uniquely big-city possibility is enough. Suddenly, the urge is back—I want to head out of the idyllic Valley, drive down to the looming skyscrapers and grime, and kiss a few hundred bucks goodbye in pursuit of the unreachable.
