While it hasn't happened recently, I used to often have dreams of walking in or actually boarding trains in the MUNI subway tunnels between the actual stations beneath Market Street in San Francisco. My dream tunnels were nothing like reality; while they often started out as the standard size you'd expect, they would often open into huge caverns, as if stations were constructed but abandoned at some point for lack of funding. Unlike the dark, damp tunnels of reality, these cavernous spaces—while no means bright—were decently lit from above. My tunnel dreams often centered around the Civic Center Station, one stop on the line whose energy I always found a bit odd.
Come to think of it, I have a lot of dreams about trains. Freight trans are often ominous, dark, frightening entities; passenger trains are the opposite, although they often take me places I hadn't intended. To this day I remember a dream I had shortly after arriving in The City in 1986; I hopped on a train that took me to the beach, but it wasn't like the real N- or L- lines, nor was it like any beach I'd ever seen in San Francisco. (Think sub-tropical with lots of lush vegetation.)
But I digress…
This morning, when I saw these photos of the big dig going on under New York City, it was as if they were pulled right out of my MUNI tunnel dreams. Even the lighting effects were spot-on.
