1 month ago
21
New York|The Deadly Lure of Subway Surfing
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/16/nyregion/subway-surfing-problem-nyc.html
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
On a late spring afternoon, two boys celebrating the last day of sixth grade set out through their New York City neighborhood in search of an adventure.
It arrived in the form of a subway train screeching into the Church Avenue station in Brooklyn. The boys, Donald Munoz and William Layden, hoisted themselves onto the roof of one of the cars and were soon careening north, the warm air whipping across their faces.
But their escapade was brief. Near the next station, they clipped an overpass and were flung onto the tracks. The impact fractured both boys’ skulls, and Donald died that day. He was 11 years old. William, 12, was taken to Kings County Hospital, unconscious.
The year was 1938. But it could have been any year.
Recent news reports typically trace the reckless act of riding atop a train car in New York City — known as subway surfing — back to the 1980s and blame sensational videos on social media, taken by bystanders and the surfers themselves, for a recent rise in popularity.
But accounts of subway surfing incidents can be found from the earliest days of the city’s transit system, more than a century ago, and have an eerie familiarity.
These urban daredevils, then and now, share a common impulse, experts said: to seek out a jolt of adrenaline, a buzz, with whatever limited options might be available to them.
