This article was scraped from Rochester Subway. This is a blog about Rochester history and urbanism has not been published since 2017. The current owners are now publishing link spam which made me want to preserve this history.. The original article was published March 16, 2010 and can be found here.
A few months ago two of my readers (I'll call them Tim and Jeff) contacted me to find out if RochesterSubway.com gave tours of the abandoned subway tunnel. I explained that while I wasn't in the business of giving tours, I would be happy to go down there with them when the weather warmed up. Tim and Jeff were both on board and I soon posted an "event" on the RochesterSubway.com Facebook page to invite others to join us--cause "safety in numbers" is my credo. Anyway, I figured I'd get 3-6 people to come along and it'd be a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
Soon enough that little Facebook event had attracted 43 Yes's and 55 "Maybe's". Oh shit!
At that point I thought it'd be a good idea to ask the City's permission before I bring 90 people into their precious urine-soaked hole-in-the-ground. So sent a few emails to various people I knew in the planning department. Nothing specific, just a quick something like, "Hey man, how would one go about getting permission to tour the subway tunnel? How about those Amerks? Alrighty, see ya."
Fast-forward to this morning when to my surprise I get an email from an RPD "Crime Prevention Officer"... you heard me... CRIME PREVENTION! His email read...
It has come to our attention that your group and some others may be doing "tours" of the old subway system. If this is in fact true, we are requesting that you discontinue doing so. There is safety issues being down there and also legal issues as it is trespassing. If your group is not one that participates in organizing these tours, then I apologize. Thank you and feel free to give me a call if you have further questions.
Officer [ name omitted ]
Rochester Police Department
Crime Prevention Officer
Southwest N.S.C.
[ phone # omitted ]
Wow, I had been schooled. So naturally I picked up the phone and gave the officer a call to see if I could figure out who the whistle-blower was. He sounded like a nice enough guy. Simply doing his police man work and whatnot. But of course he didn't give up any information either. Just that with construction work starting down there now, it wasn't safe to be in the tunnel bla bla bla, and all the same stuff he outlined in his email.
So that's pretty much that. Another Rochester "crime" averted I guess. I bet it was Christine who blew me in. Sorry Tim and Jeff.
