Invisible Frontier: Exploring the Tunnels, Ruins, and Rooftops of Hidden New York [Paperback]

L.B. Deyo (Author), David Leibowitz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 22, 2003

In the shadows of the city waits an invisible frontier—a wilderness thriving in the deep places, woven through dead storm drains and live subway tunnels, coursing over third rails. This frontier waits in the walls of abandoned tenements, hides on the rooftops, infiltrates the bridges’ steel. It’s a no-man’s-land, fenced off with razor wire, marked by warning signs, persisting in shadow, hidden everywhere as a parallel dimension. Crowds hurry through the bright streets, insulated by pavement, never reflecting that beneath their feet or above their heads lurks a universe.

Led by its two founding agents, L. B. Deyo and David “Lefty” Leibowitz, Jinx is a stylish urban adventure out?t known for its daring—if sometimes ridiculous—forays into the hidden wonders that lurk above and beneath America’s greatest city, New York. In Invisible Frontier L. B. and Lefty chronicle Jinx’s dramatic—if sometimes absurd—exploration of a Dante-esque New York, from the depths of the city’s underground Hell (abandoned aqueducts and subway tunnels) to the pinnacles of its Paradise (rooftops and bridges) and everything in between, capturing the genius of the city’s engineering, the vibrancy of its found art, and the elegiac beauty of its ruins. Here is a true series of wittily narrated adventures into the hidden world beneath a great civilization.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This book's intriguing topic and delightful presentation by its knowledgeable and eccentric authors will enthrall New Yorkers and non-New Yorkers alike. Deyo and Leibowitz, editors at Jinx, a zine devoted to the urban exploration movement, illumine what drives them to explore cities' infrastructure, the places few consider going (including sewage systems, subway tunnels and bridge spans). A charming pastiche of Alice in Wonderland and The X Files, this is both a paean to New York and a chronology of a love affair with the unusual. The authors take readers on a hike to Manhattan from the Bronx via the Croton Aqueduct, which was one of the major engineering feats of the 19th century, providing water for most New Yorkers. They also traverse the tunnels under Riverside Park to find the so-called mole people who live in the Amtrak system and to seek out graffiti artists. A semi-break-in takes readers into the Roosevelt Island Smallpox Hospital. Other treks include exploring a condemned building in East Harlem, a nondiplomatic maneuver at the United Nations and climbing to the summit of the George Washington Bridge. Rife with literary quotations, historical and scientific tidbits, political and social commentary plus a plethora of details about the explorations the authors and their strange cadre have made (despite the muck and mire, the men always wear suits and ties and the women cocktail dresses), this smart, quirky book will delight spelunkers, couch potatoes and all in between. 25 line drawings, 25 b&w photos.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School--The authors are editors of Jinx,a magazine devoted to urban exploration--or, as one explorer puts it, "going places you're not supposed to go." The book is structured around 10 "missions" that the two took on in the summer of 2001, and lovingly describes their failures (attempting to slog from the Bronx to Manhattan entirely underground) as well as their successes (flying the Jinx flag at the U.N. building). The astonishing, delicious twist is that these operatives are far from the pranksters they might sound like. As if they were touring the Galápagos, they are careful to preserve the dignity of the spaces they explore; they may admire beautiful graffiti, but they'd neverleave any. On missions they wear Men in Black-style suits and sunglasses (the occasional female wears a cocktail dress). Most importantly, though, they know and cherish New York history. They speak so excitedly and reverently of the city--how it was formed and who formed it--that they come off more like endearingly geeky archaeologists than hip adventurers. And their awed enthusiasm is infectious, increasing readers' sensitivity to the urban environments around them. A thoughtful anomaly of a book, sure to intrigue and surprise YA readers.--Emily Lloyd, Rehoboth Beach Public Library, DE
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press; 1 edition (July 22, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609809318
• ISBN-13: 978-0609809310
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.5 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #747,831 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

70 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Well, there's four hours of my life I'll never get back., February 22, 2005

By 

E. Nabors - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Invisible Frontier: Exploring the Tunnels, Ruins, and Rooftops of Hidden New York (Paperback)

This book was a tremendous disappointment. Many of the "missions" are laughably boring and/or carried out in a stunningly inept fashion, much of the writing is markedly narcissistic in its tone and yet inconsistent in content, and perhaps most disappointing the descriptions of the places where the authors go are remarkably poor.

First, the missions. The mission to the UN mostly involves trying to get inside by asking for an interview. Wow, it's like working for my high school newspaper all over again. Once they're shot down, one member of the team briefly sprints past a barrier and `explores' a plaza outside the building for less than a minute (the main point of which is to hold up the Jinx flag while his friends take his picture). Another involves staying on the subway even after the conductor announces passengers should get off! - oh the bravery and cunning!. This is made all the more ridiculous when two non-English speaking tourists inadvertently do the same thing and when the authors do not even get off the train once it's stopped at the abandoned subway station they had planned to explore. Later, they go into an abandoned house, where they discover that a lot of other people have also done this over the years.

Second, the writing. Much of the text focuses on how cool they look in their "uniforms" (dark suits and sunglasses), how cool they look walking to their missions, how cool they look on their missions, how cool it is when they all get together and how everybody else in New York are mindless zombies who don't appreciate what is around them because they are trapped in their sad, meaningless lives. The whole uniform thing is particularly stupid. There's one throw-away sentence explaining that they wear these uniforms because otherwise "scientists" and "philosophers" will not take their "empirical data" seriously, but you simply can't shake the feeling that they just want to look like they're either in "Reservoir Dogs" or "The Matrix" (particularly when the ridiculous `uniforms' keep attracting attention when they're trying to sneak into some place.) Throughout the book the authors bounce between stressing that they explore places for the scientific, empirical value of doing so and that it is not at all for a sense of adventure, only then to talk later about how much fun the adventure of it all is (including one author's admission that he believes the other has a death wish and that is why he engages in so many dangerous activities while exploring). In addition, much space is taken up with various diatribes on the evils of modern life (including a particularly passionate rant against the United Nations that comes totally out of nowhere), and all the horrible twenty-somethings of the world who spend their lives drinking iced coffees (which is a particularly hollow complaint when - a few pages later - the Jinx crew sits down to iced coffees after having screwed up the UN mission). You almost get the sense that after trying in vain to improve the writing, the publishers finally decided to spin the writing as "witty" and hope that people fell for it.

Finally, the descriptions are no better than what you'd get if you wrote down what you think the locations look like without ever actually going. The Croton Aqueduct is dark and slippery. An abandoned subway station is eerie. When you're on top of the George Washington Bridge, the Hudson River looks a long way away. And that's about as good as the descriptions get.

Don't waste your time or your money.

42 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Urban Exploration Farce, August 14, 2004

By 

B. Dowling "Bratchny" (NYC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Invisible Frontier: Exploring the Tunnels, Ruins, and Rooftops of Hidden New York (Paperback)

I was so excited to receive this book, and can not believe how dissapointing it is!! The people aren't urban explorers (UErs for short) - they are children who dress up in costumes and give each other "gang" names and then proceed to perform daredevil-like stunts which are not very impressive.
The book starts out talking about two of the teams failures - City Hall Place and the Croton Acqueduct, which makes you want to put it down and watch grass grow instead. I've been past City Hall Station many times on the downtown 6 train, even with my Mother, it barely even qualifies as daredevil. Their train stops while looping through the station and they are standing right there, but decide not to jump off - don't write a book about it then!! Croton acqueduct is equally as sad - they walk through the tunnels for hours, then stop before the actual bridge (the goal) because they are tired - go back the next day and do it right, or don't write a book about it!!
Any yes, there are no pictures, although they refer to their pictures all the time.
The writing is pretentious and annoying and pointless for the most part - I want to read about "Exploring the Tunnels, Ruins, and Rooftops of Hidden New York" not about your evening spent in twin donuts looking like freaks and scaring people!!
Do yourself a favor and don't buy this book - there are better books about urban exploration, particularly ones about the NYC area.

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars disappointing, July 13, 2005

By 

J Flory (New York,NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Invisible Frontier: Exploring the Tunnels, Ruins, and Rooftops of Hidden New York (Paperback)

If the writing and adventures could match the inflated perceptions that the authors have of themselves, this would be a great read. Unfortunately, the writing is downright pedestrian and the urban adventures are either lackluster and/or poorly described. Also, the flow of each chapter is interrupted with uninteresting asides and juvenile commentaries on a scattershot laundry list of topics.

A typical example of this is the uninspiring breakin of an abandoned Harlem row house. The author starts off with a truncated textbook-like history of Harlem that lasts a few paragraphs. Once that boring bit of exposition is done with the writer and his friends drive around a little bit and then enter an abandoned building. They look around a little bit (not exactly thrilling) and then attempt to leave via the fire escape. Here, we are presented with a another aside about the author's 'love' of fire escapes.. "What, in fire escapes, do I admire?... their constancy... firm as Gibraltar... like Ulysses to his barque.. supporting, as Atlas, the gravid snows of winter". Ugh, at times like this you wish the author would have consulted with an editor.

Not everything is terrible. Things pick up here and there, there are a few interesting tid-bits of history, but overall the book does not live up to it's potential.