Lowline NYC

This awesome project on Kickstarter is already fully funded but still accepting donations to expand the prototype phase. While I disagree that there is 'limited green space' in NYC (there is a pocket park like every 10 blocks, especially in the Village/LES), there is definitely limited SPACE in NYC, period, and this is so much more appealing to me than throwing a few trees on the roof of a building no one is allowed to explore anyway and calling it 'green.'

This idea, to not only renovate and utilize an old trolley station for public recreation but also to magically (ok, it is actually new technology but it sounds like magic to me) use fiber optic cables to inundate the space with real, underground rays of sunshine, has really sparked my interest. And also, it will be super-helpful, if not life-saving, after the Electrical/Zombie/Mayan/Republican Apocalypse. (One of those things will end us, to be sure.)

 Someday, remote skylights will be used for so many awesome things that the fact that they were invented because an architect wanted to play in an abandoned arm of Fraggle Rock will be like if the guy that invented shoes only invented shoes so he could reach the spear he kept on his top shelf without pulling out a step stool every time.



One thing that I had to know was WHY, OH WHY would they go to all of the trouble of excavating, building, decorating and later upgrading this large underground space and then close it off and abandon it exactly 40 years later? Apparently, when the trolley service across the Williamsburg Bridge was discontinued, they simply converted the trolley lanes on the bridge to car lanes and, presumably to prevent tourists, or worse, hipsters, from driving down the ramp to the supposedly awesome underground area (you know those hipsters would have turned it into an ironic barbershop-slash-mustache atelier or a bar that served nothing but tap water shots and expired cans of Tab),they blocked off the whole thing.

Dear 1948: You are wasteful, and apparently learned nothing from the motto of the Great Depression (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, duh). Also, you have greatly increased the length of time until it won't matter that I always forget to buy light bulbs by delaying the technology that will replace light bulbs by however many years it takes to finish this project. OR, has your sloth and lack of creativity actually fostered the development of this technology 64 years later? My mind is blown! In closing, 1948, say hi to my grandparents and have a nice sloe gin fizz for me!