Wednesday, January 22, 2003

" [...] in the world of people who obsess over abandoned subway stations, the fierce debate over whether 76th Street exists has transformed it into transit Atlantis. For decades, the station has been rumored to sit just to the east of the Euclid Avenue station, part of a grand, never-realized plan to continue the A line out to 229th Street in Cambria Heights, where the subway is now only a distant rumor. The station cannot be found on any map, however, nor can it be reached by any train. On the street where it is supposed to be, along Pitkin Avenue, just over the Brooklyn border into Queens, there are no traces of evidence, like subway grates, that anything lies below. Some swear they have been inside the station — or, more accurately, they swear they have talked to others who swear they have been inside it. But apparently these explorers have never returned with pictures. And so that leaves true believers, chief among them a retired transit worker and police officer from Queens named Steve Krokowski, in a decidedly lonely minority. So lonely, in fact, that during a recent exchange on a Web site for subway buffs — www.nycsubway.org — many doubted the existence of not only the subway station but also of Mr. Krokowski himself. Perhaps, they suggested, his whole account of the station's existence was part of an elaborate ruse, worthy of Thomas Pynchon or Chuck Barris. Perhaps even the name itself was a subtle hint: Krokowski . . . crock? [...] "

Next Stop, 'Twilight Zone' (a k a 76th St. Station)
New York Times, January 21, 2003