Page 30 - 200303 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - February 2003

30 Next Stop, 'Twilight Zone' Next Stop, 'Twilight Zone' 30 Next Stop, 'Twilight Zone' Krokowski . . . crock? up ALWAYS commit suicide?" one Next Stop, 'Twilight Zone' (a k a 76th St. Station) By telephone yesterday, Mr. skeptic, David Pirmann, commented (a k a 76th St. Station) By RANDY KENNEDY Krokowsi, 58, protested vehemently. sarcastically on the Web site. "Seriously, "You tell those guys that when they meet that part reeked of urban legend to me; it me," he said, "they're all going to have to casts a bad light on the rest of the story." For U.F.O. devotees, there is buy me dinner." But Mr. Krokowski is sticking to it, Roswell. For Kennedy assassination More than wanting to substantiate and to the rest of his stories, and Mr. theorists, there is the grassy knoll. his own existence, however, he was eager Raskin, the transit official, said he would And for a circle of very devoted to marshal his considerable evidence that not rule any of them out just yet. subway buffs in New York, there is yet the 76th Street station exists and to add it "I never argue with people like another place of mystery, a province of finally to the list of others once thought to that," he said. "They may be right." [End] gathering shadows where the tracks end be ghosts and now rediscovered, such as and cosmic questions begin. parts of the storied old Polo Grounds It is known as — strike up the shuttle. SCIENCE TRIVIA SCIENCE TRIVIA "Twilight Zone" theme — the 76th Street Among what Mr. Krokowski calls subway station. his incontrovertible proofs: O.K., the questions may not be - On the electric light board in the - If all major forms of cardiovascular cosmic, and the place may not have as control room at Euclid Avenue showing disease were eliminated, human life exciting a ring as Loch Ness or the the locations of trains, there is a part — expectance would increase by 9.78 years. Bermuda Triangle. If it exists, in fact, it is now black-taped over — that says "76th SOURCE: National Center for Health nothing more than a dark four-track IND Street." (Joe Raskin, a transit official and Statistics subway station with blue tiles, on the A part-time subway historian, says that this line near Ozone Park, Queens. description of the board is correct, but - Treatment-resistant tuberculosis has But in the world of people who adds that he can find no documentation been reported in 42 states and obsess over abandoned subway stations, that the station was ever actually built.) Washington, D.C., up from 13 states the fierce debate over whether 76th Street - At a subway yard near 76th Street, during the tuberculosis epidemic of the exists has transformed it into transit there are remnants of old tracks that head late 1980s and early 1990s. SOURCE: Atlantis. northeast and then stop near a cinder- Centers for Disease Control and For decades, the station has been block wall. Mr. Krokowsi admitted that Prevention (CDC) rumored to sit just to the east of the recently, during a fit of obsessiveness, he Euclid Avenue station, part of a grand, put on a safety vest, went into the yard - The world record for passing gas was never-realized plan to continue the A line with a shovel and tried to dig under the set on Japanese television, 3,000 times in out to 229th Street in Cambria Heights, wall. He found a piece of a subway track a row. SOURCE: Grossology: The where the subway is now only a distant tie, suggesting that tracks continued past science of Really Gross Things rumor. the wall and into a sealed-up tunnel. But The station cannot be found on any he had to abandon his illicit spelunking - The typical American child watches map, however, nor can it be reached by when part of his hole caved in. 1,680 minutes of television per week any train. On the street where it is - A fellow retired police officer told (about two months a year). The same supposed to be, along Pitkin Avenue, just Mr. Krokowski that sometime in the youth spends 38 minutes a week in over the Brooklyn border into Queens, 1960's, the cinder-block wall had a door meaningful conversation with his or her there are no traces of evidence, like and that he walked through it to the parents. SOURCE: A.C. Nielson Co. subway grates, that anything lies below. station, which was completed except for Some swear they have been inside turnstiles and token booths. (The man did - Mexico City is sinking at a rate of 18 the station — or, more accurately, they not respond to a message left yesterday at inches per year as a result of draining the swear they have talked to others who his home.) water table for human consumption. swear they have been inside it. But - Several other transit employees SOURCE: National Water Commission apparently these explorers have never also told Mr. Krokowski through the returned with pictures. years that they had seen the station. All of - The aqualung, a device for breathing And so that leaves true believers, them are unfortunately — conveniently? under water was invented by Jacques chief among them a retired transit worker — deceased now. Cousteau and Emile Gagnan of the and police officer from Queens named Mr. Krokowski's fellow subway French Navy in 1943 so that "frogmen" Steve Krokowski, in a decidedly lonely buffs are a skeptical lot, however, the could put mines under enemy ships. minority. So lonely, in fact, that during a kind of aficionados who can argue recent exchange on a Web site for subway passionately for days about things with - In 1994, scientists in Australia invented buffs — www.nycsubway.org — many esoteric names like homeballs and trailing a way of removing fleece from sheep doubted the existence of not only the points. They say he damages his without shearing. They injected the sheep subway station but also of Mr. credibility by insisting that there is yet with a special hormone, then wrapped Krokowski himself. Perhaps, they another abandoned station on the R line in them in lightweight hairnets. Three suggested, his whole account of the downtown Brooklyn and that the engineer weeks later, the fleece could be peeled off station's existence was part of an who designed it shot himself when he the sheep by hand. elaborate ruse, worthy of Thomas discovered a horrible error in his plans Pynchon or Chuck Barris. Perhaps even that caused the station to be shuttered. Trivia - Believe It or Not - Food for the the name itself was a subtle hint: "Dontcha know that engineers who screw Brain!