London Crawling

[jd]

Of course there are no hairballs - they sent men down with shotguns
and flashlights after them years ago!

On 7/12/06, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> my girlfriend just saw him speak at Cuny--he writes about the people who
> work the night shift in London
>
>
> rich
>
>
>
> On 7/12/06, Erik T. Burns <erik.burns at dowjones.com> wrote:
> > foax:
> > excellent story from the Telegraph about London's sewers by Sukhdev
> Sandhu.
> > no alligators, nor even rumors thereof (it's hairballs these "flushers"
> are
> > worried about) but nevertheless a pynchonesque trip into the bowels.
> > etb
> >
> > snippets:
> >
> > The sewers are often imagined as an unpatrolled wilderness. They are
> > imagined - and correspondingly desired - as the mephitic opposite of tamed
> > civil society. They are meant to cancel it out. In truth, they mirror
> rather
> > than reverse what goes on above ground.
> >
> > ...
> >
> > I never did find the giant hairballs I was looking for. Apparently they
> > don't exist. I shouldn't have been surprised: the sewers of London
> > accumulate myths as much as they do fat. They are built out of a sediment
> of
> > gossip, whisper, untruth, longing. Subterranea is alluring because it is
> > thought, by autodidact dreamers and unstable visionaries, to contain the
> > solution to the city, to store its hidden wiring.
> >
> > ...
> >
> > The sewers are more than negation or black absence. They are rich in
> fragile
> > beauty. The brickwork, some of it more than 200 years old, amazes all who
> > work below ground.
> >
> > full article:
> >
> >
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2006/07/08/ftsewers08.x
> > ml&page=1
> >
>
>