From 1995 to 1997, British filmmaker Marc Singer lived in an Amtrak tunnel under Manhattan's Riverside Park and documented the community of homeless people who built semi-permanent residences there. Dark Days, the film he made with a crew composed entirely of tunnel residents, won the Audience, Freedom of Expression, and Cinematography awards at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Jonathan Ringen spoke to Singer about the ways in which these dwellings are not so different from our above-ground homes.

Metropolis: Why did these people choose to live in a tunnel?
Marc Singer: Well, on the street you're kind of out in the open. You never know who's going to be walking by who could do you harm. You get moved around a lot at night, so you don't get a good night's sleep. In the tunnel you can build yourself some type of structure and make it like a home.

Can you describe a typical house?
It depended on the person, and it depends on how sorry that person was feeling for himself or herself, whether or not they wanted to make something of their situation. Tommy's and Ralph's were, to me, the best houses in the tunnel. They were built more or less the same way. First you build box-frames, nail them all together, and nail the outside walls on, which are plywood. You have to line any seams with strips of sheet metal--that's for the rats. Then you insulate it with spongy foam or Styrofoam and put the inside walls in. You do the same thing with the floorboards and line them with as many carpets as you can find. Then you just start decorating the inside with stuff you find on the street--nobody buys anything. Everyone had a front door. You'd padlock it from the outside, and if you were inside you'd bolt yourself in. All of the houses also had trap doors. If there was a fire burning on the inside, Ralph had a trap door on the roof that opened out and one panel of a wall that was a single piece of plywood that he could kick right through.

Could you describe the interior layout of one of the houses
Tommy's house had a kitchen, a little dining area, a TV, a couch, and a bed, all downstairs. Then you'd go up a ladder and go left into one bedroom or right into the other bedroom. They were really comfortable bedrooms. I used to sleep there a lot. Outside he had a run for the dogs. He actually built his house on top of someone else's. There was this huge, old, brick storage room, and there were people living in that. Tommy's house was built on the roof. He had all of these dogs that would run around the roof, but one of them fell off one night and hurt his leg, so he built a pen for them outside. Ralph also built a dog pen around his house. As far as appliances, everybody had a hotplate, a heater, a fridge, and a TV.

How did they get access to electricity?
It started with them tapping into the streetlights and running the wires down through the grates. The problem with the streetlights is that they turn on and off. If you get your lights from there, they come on at 5:00 at night and go off at 5:00 in the morning. And in the summer it's even less. The rest of the time you're very cold and you don't have any light. So they had to find a 24-hour power source. If you really go exploring in the tunnels, you can find huge electricity boxes that basically power that part of the city. In this case the box was probably about 30 blocks away from the encampment, so you'd have to find 60 blocks worth of wire, 30 for positive and 30 for negative. They'd just take a butcher knife and cut the big cable and tap in. Sparks would be flying everywhere! Five or ten people could tap into that one line. So if you ran a couple of more lines, you had power for 20 houses. Since most people shared a line, I could tell exactly what you were doing in your house by what happened in mine. Certain appliances take more juice, so you turn on your cooker, I know you're eating. We would play tricks on people. Like some of the girls in the tunnel loved soap operas. Loved them. You know how soap operas are very dramatic before the commercial break? We'd wait until we'd hear them all screaming at the TV, and at that moment we'd turn the heat on and their TV would go [mimes TV image shrinking into a dot].

Are there still people living in tunnels under New York?
There might be some people going down there to get high or find a place for the night, but nobody's setting up shop.

What happened?
Well the police came in and, in this tunnel, Amtrak security. In the other tunnels, Metro North and the MTA came in. At the time [1997], this subject was getting a lot of press, and there were fires, and a few people got hit by trains. So the police came in and cleared everybody out.

As the last of Detroit's three voter-approved casinos debuts this fall, small signs of economic life are visible almost everywhere downtown. A drive down the main drag of Woodward Avenue, from the sprawling northern suburbs to the city center, reveals buildings going up and coming down left and right. But if the casino industry has contributed anything to the overall picture of development in Detroit, few people are mentioning it.

"They haven't done anything for the city except suck $2 million off the streets every day," says Jerry Herron, author of Afterculture: Detroit and the Humiliation of History. "That's $2 million a day that's not going to see the light of day there, especially in the downtown area. In Las Vegas, casinos are public spectacles that move people around in the external world, whereas in Detroit they are this sort of roach motel for gambling where people check in but don't check out."

Even the mayor's office tends to play down the importance of gambling to the economy. "The temporary casinos represent just a fraction of the investment that has been coming into the city," says Greg Bowens, press secretary for mayor Dennis Archer. (Due to complications in buying the riverfront property originally sited for gaming, it was decided that three casinos would open in temporary locations. The permanent locations are expected to open within four years.)

Yet with nearly 10 percent of casino profits going directly to the city government, the first temporary casinos pumped more than $51 million into the budget last year. If things go as expected with the permanent riverfront casinos, annual tax receipts will eventually amount to more than five times the amount of money provided by federal redevelopment grants. That's about 10 percent of the city's entire $2-billion budget for the year 2000.

It's not just unsavory associations with gambling that the mayor's office wants to downplay. "In ad-dition to compensating for cuts in state revenue sharing, the money brought in by the casinos is allowing us to eliminate the corporate tax and cut the resident and non-resident personal income tax," says Bowens.

Corporate welfare? It seems to be working. The city's municipal bond rating has been slowly moving out of the C range (junk bond) and into the As (investment grade) in some indexes, and nearly $6 billion in investments is on the table in the coming year, including hotels, lofts, apartment buildings, offices, university expansions, a software company headquarters, the redevelopment of the Renais-sance Center, and several sports and entertainment facilities. It seems that these investors know something the casinos' patrons don't: Unless the odds are tipped in your favor, you might as well be throwing your money away. --Stephen Zacks

Like any other museum worth visiting, Seattle's new Experience Music Project (EMP) has a collection that's far too vast to squeeze into a mere building. Rather than shove all the extra guitars, concert posters, and grunge memorabilia into the basement of this shimmering monument to rock and roll, EMP has scanned images of tens of thousands of artifacts into a digital archive. With a computer device developed for the museum, visitors can see items that lie beyond the glass cases--in a warehouse across town.

In a cubicle on the third floor of that warehouse, EMP director of online development Diane An-dolsek taps at her keyboard, turning this virtual ar-chive into fodder for a Web site (www.emplive.com) that will change the way visitors experience museums. "It's like creating a whole other site from the one we're launching," Andolsek says. She and about 40 colleagues in EMP's technology department have indeed set up two versions of the museum's online universe: One for those who have never visited the museum, and one for those who have. The second site works with a device that visitors carry around the museum. The blue and silver handheld computer resembles a Palm Pilot and attaches to a hard drive worn on a shoulder strap. Dubbed the Museum Exhibit Guide, MEG for short, it allows users to listen to audio through headphones, but also to bookmark items that pique their interest, such as the guitar that Jimi Hendrix used to warp "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Woodstock. With a touch of MEG's bookmark icon, visitors tell the computer they'd like to further explore the sig-nificance of this renowned item later, preferably from the comfort of their own homes.

When visitors return the MEG at the end of their visit, the device is docked in a bank that sucks out the data and sends it to emplive.com. At the Web site, a recent EMP visitor can type in the nine-digit number found on his or her ticket and use the bookmarks to extend the museum experience by referencing archival material, sound clips, and video.

This development certainly ups the ante in the museum world, where there's a growing fascination with infrared scanners, interactive kiosks, and digital audio tours. But Andolsek keeps her cards close. "I don't think EMP set out to obliterate what came before it," she says.

What came before it was Antenna Audio's Explorer, a lightweight handheld device that resembles the portable MP3 players now in vogue. Three months before EMP opened in June, San Francisco-based Antenna rolled out this museum-enhancing product at the Whitney Museum's biennial; it's currently available to visitors at San Francisco's Explora- torium. Perhaps feeling the pressure from EMP and its MEG, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston will employ the Explorer for its upcoming exhibition "Dangerous Curves: Art of the Guitar."

The days of browsing museum exhibits at the mercy of monotone tour guides may be over. Robert Fitzsimmons of Vulcan Northwest, which developed MEG for EMP, says that the museum's 2,500 MEGs are put to good use; early exit polls reveal that about 90 percent of visitors use the device, either for its bookmark feature or to access the 12 hours of audio content in its six-megabyte hard drive. Antenna marketing director Laura Mann says the Explorer, which lacks bookmarking capabilities, is also a hit; the company planned to manufacture 6,000 units this year, but curators have sent in so many orders that Antenna will build 18,000. Advanced technology is no longer a luxury, says Mann: "Museums and their visitors have come to expect it." --Richard A. Martin

It's an unwritten rule of urban renewal that when even the porno theaters start going out of business, it might be time to do something. This was the case a decade ago when the 42nd Street Development Project was created to restore that district to its historical position as the entertainment mecca of America. Ten years later, it's difficult to argue with the project's success. On 42nd Street and in neighboring Times Square, the sidewalks are packed, and the full range of our national icons--Broadway musicals and 25-screen movie complexes, MTV VJs and Condé Nast editors, the ESPN Zone and the Olive Garden--fight for your attention. The blazing commercialism of Times Square is so complete, so enthralling, that it has supplanted any other reality.

Which makes the completion of the New 42nd Street Studios, a 10-story building that provides affordable rehearsal facilities and office space for performing-arts companies, all the more spectacular--both for its mission and for the surprising excitement of its architecture. While celebrities made of wax are on display at Madame Tussaud's across the street, at the New 42nd the message is "Real! Live! Artists!" rehearsing in full view behind a glass curtain wall. "Everything else on the block is geared to consumption," says Cora Cahan, president of the New 42nd Street Inc., the non-profit organization that built the new studios and has overseen the restoration of seven historic theaters on 42nd Street. "This building is about production: making theater, dance, and other performing arts. When you see it, you can say, eThis is where artists do their work. This is where they take care of business.'"

Designed by the New York firm of Platt Byard Dovell, the building contains office space for the New 42nd Street Inc. and several performing-arts organizations; a 199-seat, black-box theater called the Duke on 42nd Street; and 14 studios, all with sprung floors and 13-foot ceilings. Glass curtain walls on the south and east facades offer the dancers and actors New York views worthy of their show-biz dreams while providing pedestrians on 42nd Street a glimpse into the studios. Here dancers, rather than stock symbols or advertisements, leap across the facade.

But it's not until the sun goes down and the lights come up that the building really comes to life. With the help of lighting designer Anne Militello, Platt Byard Dovell created a "building made of light"--a facade illuminated by a constantly changing pattern of colored theatrical lights that reflect off louvered stainless-steel blades. The effect is a sort of "water lilies on 42nd Street": Impressionism forced into a grid. By rejecting the commercialism of Times Square while appropriating its tools, the designers have created an innovative building that still adheres to the neighborhood's mandated guidelines for light and signage.

"The building struggles against what we see as artificiality and contrivance elsewhere in the redevelopment of 42nd Street," Platt says. His is a tough line to walk--turning up your nose at the vulgarity while embracing its energy--but regarding this building, it may be the right stance. Like the Nasdaq sign seen through bleary eyes, the New 42nd St. Studios building is more abstraction than advertising, illuminated proof that the attraction of 42nd Street is based not so much in its commercialism but in its energy. --Andrew Blum

This spring anti-advertising crusader Carrie McLaren led a group of activists to the belly of the beast, Times Square, where they handed out free guide maps to one of Manhattan's most dominant cultural and architectural elements: outdoor ads. Want to see a $110 million building that has no tenants above the ground floor? It's in Times Square, of course, where its only value is as a backdrop for giant neon signs. How about the vinyl Calvin Klein "wallscape" that covers five floors of windows, turning offices that face south into dark, airless caves? It's down in Soho, near the towering Yahoo! sign that city-council members field complaints about every day.

Why do billboards feel like more of a blight than other forms of advertising? "With radio or TV or magazines, you always have the choice of turning it off or changing the channel or turning the page," says McLaren, who edits Stay Free!, a 'zine about commercialism. "You don't have that choice here, and what's more, you're not getting anything back. When you watch TV, the cost of getting to watch the program is that you have to watch the commercials. There's no equivalent in outdoor advertising. It doesn't benefit us in any way."

McLaren's objective isn't to eradicate ads entirely but to empower citizens to reclaim public space; her map and Web site (www.stayfreemagazine.org) give "fight back" suggestions, including how to register a complaint with the city. "We just want to set some boundaries," she says, "and to get the city to enforce the laws that do exist." --Karen E. Steen

Vinton Pacetti began skateboarding in the early Eighties near his north Florida home, at what was then one of the few concrete skate parks in the country. The surface quickly tore up his elbow- and kneepads, but luckily he grew up in a family of designing women: Pacetti used his mother's and sister's boat-sail shop to repair the damaged pads. "After a while I became fed up with fixing other people's faulty products," says the 31-year-old. Five years ago he made his first prototype, but it wasn't until last year that he released the 187 Pro Series, followed by the lighter-weight Fly Series. In addition to superior construction (darts that provide a natural curve, inside binding for smooth edges, and two straps for a secure fit), the 187 products feature high-endurance protective caps made of a "self-healing" plastic that is extremely resistant to abrasion. Though he won't specify what the material is, Pacetti will allow that a lesser grade has been used to line landfills. A regular set of caps can wear out in a weekend, but Pacetti's last for years. (For ordering information, see page 197.) --Kristi Cameron

This summer Ben Katchor, whose comic strip has graced the back page of Metropolis since April 1998, became the first cartoonist ever to receive a fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Likewise, he is almost certainly the first member of the British Matchbox Label and Booklet Society (the only organization he belongs to) to have been so honored. "It was a lucky break," says Katchor, as if getting the so-called "genius" grant were like winning the lottery. Though the fellowship comes with an almost lottery-size stipend, Katchor has no plans to carbonate Lake Erie or carry out any of the other schemes described in his strips. He is simply grateful that it will be easier for him to continue to do the work he loves. Katchor has just released a new book, The Beauty Supply District (Pantheon), and those curious to know more about the decidedly analog world he has created can explore it in its digital version at www.katchor.com.

Another MacArthur winner, architect Samuel Mockbee, has also appeared in Metropolis ("What Architecture Can Do," April 1997). Mockbee's work with the Rural Studio, which he co-founded at Auburn University in 1993, has brought inexpensive, functional, and beautiful architecture to poor people in rural Alabama and Mississippi, teaching future architects that experimental design and public service, far from being mutually exclusive, are necessary components of a truly democratic architecture. Mockbee's fellowship is only the second MacArthur granted to an architect; the first went to Diller + Scofidio last year. --Julien Devereux

On a hot summer afternoon, Kal Spelletich sat on the cement floor of the Eyebeam Atelier on West 21st Street in Manhattan, assembling the Bullfight Machine: a pneumatically-powered bicycle connected to the top of an eight-foot steel pole by a long mechanical arm. The frame of the bike was covered with the ragged remnants of a fur coat, and fixed to the handlebars was a cow's skull, its horns removed and replaced with flame-spewing torches. Spelletich explained that later in the evening, during the performance he was preparing for, three volunteers would operate the machine. A "loving couple" would stand next to the pole and use a throttle to control the bike as it sped around them, while the third volunteer, holding a frayed maroon and gold blanket, would attempt to dodge the hurt-ling contraption. "It was inspired by the Spanish and by Hemingway," said Spelle-tich, 39, as he sipped from a bottle of beer, "but it's also a metaphor for how two people in a relationship deal with a third person who tries to come between them." With the dozens of machines he's built over the last decade, Spelletich seeks to rep-licate experiences of danger, passion, and dysfunction. They include Cerberus, a robotic dog with three heads that fight among themselves, and Kissyboys, two steel robots that crash together in a destructive courtship ritual. "Some people come to my shows thinking they're about death and destruction," Spelletich says. "But they're really about exploring common experiences in human life."

Spelletich became fascinated with machinery and danger as a youth in Iowa, where he modified cars for demolition derbies. He also spent three years working with Survival Research Laboratories, a group of San Francisco artists who create giant battling robots. In 1988, he founded his own collective, called Seemen, because he wanted to design performances that were more participatory. "Most art shows are totally passive," Spelletich explains. "In my shows you feel the heat, you hear sounds, and you're right in it. If you want the chance, you can get directly involved by running a machine that can kill you. You get to look at your mortality."

Spelletich began the evening's performance by feeding branches into the jaws of a dinosaur-like machine on a wheeled dolly, then allowing a man from the audience to maneuver it over a steel contraption resembling a Venus flytrap. The man dropped the boughs into the snapping petals, where flames shot upwards and ignited the leaves as six black-and-red-clad cheerleaders waved pom-poms and shouted, "Burn, baby, burn!" A moment later, the contraption un-expectedly tipped over, scattering sparks across the floor. The crowd surged backwards. Over the next hour and a half, Spelletich solicited audience members to operate other machines, including a belt with a nozzle that shot streams of fire high into the air. "I've always had a fantasy about having a penis," the woman who strapped it on remarked later. "It made me feel very virile." The evening wound down with several demonstrations of the Fire Shower; volunteers stood one at a time inside a whirling metal framework engulfed in flames. After the show, participant DJ Chrome stood outside, sweating and exhilarated. "It was like being in the second level of Dante's Inferno," he said of the Fire Shower. "I really thought I was going to burn." A few days later, Spelletich spoke about his effect on audiences. He compared running one of his machines to taking part in a religious or cultural ritual of reawakening. "People want to be moved," he said, "and that's the original function of art. I'm trying to give people a transcendent moment, a moment of clarity." -Colin Moynihan

You'd think Chicago Alderman Burton Natarus would have expected to field a little bitching when he proposed naming a prominent street corner in his ward after Playboy founder Hugh Hefner. Then again, why would he? Honorary street signs are usually doled out so smoothly. Chicago aldermen have put up more than 800 of them in the last 20 years, and none has been more generous than Natarus, whose ward includes the Gold Coast, the Magnificent Mile, and 115 honorary street markers. Neighbors sometimes argue over who gets honored, and critics complain that the signs are confusing, but proposals to limit their proliferation have been squelched or deferred, and aldermen continue to enjoy the perk of distributing them as they see fit. In fact, the process is so routine that at an April 10th meeting, the city transportation committee had already approved Hefner's sign before anyone realized two witnesses had come to testify against it. Their arguments inspired the committee to reverse its decision, but Natarus's cronies wouldn't see him usurped. Alderman Edward Burke agreed to fish the proposal out of the trash and reintroduce it the next day through the finance committee, which he chairs. The process was a little irregular, but as the fantastic testimony from the hearings proves, there were all sorts of good reasons for pursuing it. Every page of the transcripts yields new insights into honor, free speech, and the American way.

Seven Good Reasons Why Hugh Hefner Should Have His Own Street Sign in Chicago

1. Because money rules:
"Whether we like Hugh Hefner or not, his daughter has kept the corporation in the city of Chicago, he has contributed to the economic welfare of the city of Chicago and employs people," Natarus scolded the transportation committee as things first slid out of control. "Now, there are peo-ple in society who think money is bad. Well, I regret to inform you: It is money that forms the gasoline for the economic en-gine that is the city of Chicago, whether we like it or not."

2. Because Black Muslims get their own street signs:
Alderman Carrie Austin, an opponent of the Hefner sign, argued, "I'd have a hard time going back to my ward having voted to honor a man who made his millions and billions of dollars on the backs of women." ("Actually, on the fronts of women," a voice from the gallery chimed in.) Natarus, who is Jewish, countered that "people on the South Side name streets after Black Muslims. The Black Muslims call my religion dirty and unclean." Austin, who is black and represents a South Side ward, protested that she had nothing to do with signs honoring Black Muslims, but that didn't stop Natarus from repeating that Black Muslims were anti-Semitic until she yelled, "What else is new?! You said that three times now, and I still feel that I have a right not to vote for something I do not feel...is honorable!"

3. Because he's not just a pornographer:
When Hefner's daughter, Christie, showed up at the finance committee meeting to argue that Playboy had been a champion of civil rights for blacks, gays, and women, witness James Madigan begged to differ. "Mr. Hefner's success is due to one basic business service," he argued, producing a copy of the magazine to prove his point. "He gets women to expose their genitalia for money." Alderman William Beavers asked Madigan to show the centerfold to the committee. Madigan did so, claiming that what they were looking at was "a tool from which men gratify themselves sexually." Chairman Burke: "You are not qualified as an expert witness on that?" Madigan: "No, I am actually gay, so this was my first purchase." Alderman Beavers: "A number of people read that. I don't see them playing with themselves. What makes you think somebody is going to play with themselves because they look at a picture? I think I read it a number of times, but I don't think I ever did any masturbation. There's nothing like a real woman." Madigan: "I will take your word for it." Earlier, Christie Hefner had allowed, "I think we agree to disagree about what has propelled Playboy's success over the years," but she still seemed inclined to believe it was the articles.

4. Because he's not a pornographer:
Arguing that pornography harms women, witness Michelle Dempsey pleaded with the finance committee not to rubberstamp the sign. "Think about the message such a thing would be sending to women who have been abused in pornography, as a result of pornography." Alderman Beavers countered with this revelation: "According to the Supreme Court, this is not pornography." Dempsey repeatedly tried to explain that court arguments had hinged on the definition of obscenity rather than pornography, a distinction none of the aldermen seemed to be interested in (or even to understand). Alderman Beavers' response to Dempsey: "Have you ever been to a nude beach?"

5. Because Chicago is not provincial:
"My father is one of the most famous Chicago citizens of this century," Christie Hefner reminded the committee. "His name and his company's name are associated with Chicago on street corners the world over, and while we could be anywhere in this digital age, we choose to remain headquartered in and committed to the city of Chicago... We know that this is a city that recognizes and celebrates diversity in our communities and is not a city that is provincial and parochial in its outlook" (a powerful prod to what is still often referred to as the nation's "second city").

6. Because you can't threaten a Chicago alderman:
Witness Madigan promised that he and a group of his fellow law-school students would make the committee member's votes on the sign known. "We are going to get your attention the old-fashioned way," he said. "We are going to encourage people to vote you out." An angered Alderman Bernard Stone responded, "Individual witnesses can threaten us after they speak, or even before they speak, but not during their testimony!"

7. Because Chicago defends the right of all aldermen to express themselves:
Alderman Stone meditated on this theme at length, referring to the aldermen's ability to name streets as their right to free speech. "Was this a due-course matter?" he asked. "You bet your life it was, and until you testified, it was going in that manner. You used some very inflammatory statements and apparently threats. That was wrong. It is an absolute abridgment of the First Amend-ment what you did, and yet you come in here saying, 'I have my First Amendment rights.' There are many of us who have our rights under the First Amendment to read what we want to read, see what we want to see. You want to have your opinion, I'd say have your opinion. But don't tell me what my opinion should be."

In the end it was the opinion of the committee that the public has an absolute right to see an honorary sign for Hugh Hefner. If anyone had doubted the outcome, they soon found out what the odds were that the sign would be voted down. Just hours after the decision, at a pre-arranged ceremony with Hefner himself in attendance, a sign reading "Hugh M. Hefner Way" went up at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Walton Street, the site of the first Playboy nightclub. -Kristin Ostberg