NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) -- The chatter escalates each time someone is caught on video popping up from New York City’s sewers.
Some think they’re urban explorers looking for underground adventure. Others suspect they’re influencers gathering content or scavenger hunters going after valuables that slip through street grates. Online forums tracking sightings of “mole people” generate wild theories. Think Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
This week, though, the fascination took on a more serious edge when people were spotted emerging from a manhole on Park Avenue, near the hotel where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was staying during the United Nations General Assembly.
On Friday, police said they arrested two 25-year-old men from Queens in connection with the incident and charged them with trespassing and conspiracy.
The New York Police Department ruled out anything related to terrorism, saying the men were looking for valuables in the sewer system and that officers had seen “a bunch of these” over the past few months.
The incident quickly became fodder for the internet, where videos and speculation about people navigating New York’s subterranean world have circulated for years.
New York’s vast network of subway tunnels, sewers and utility passages has long attracted urban explorers, who document their excursions online. Other people have ventured underground looking for discarded or lost objects, while social media has helped turn obscure sightings into miniature mysteries.
This year, three men wearing waders were caught on surveillance footage dropping into a manhole in Queens. Another incident caught more than a dozen men doing the same in Brooklyn. Last month, three guys with black waders and headlamps popped out of the street before dawn not far from Penn Station.
The Park Avenue incident landed at a particularly sensitive moment, with New York hosting world leaders for the UN General Assembly and security forces on heightened alert around the city.
The men were spotted exiting the sewers near East 61st Street, jumping into vehicles waiting nearby and driving away. Police responded by stepping up security sweeps.
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