So Near, So Far

From today's New York Times, "Densely Populated, but No Shortage of Grisly Dumping Sites," a story of an uncanny New York City overlaid and entangled with mundane New York City:

Bodies have been discarded less than 100 feet from well-traveled highways and parkways. The dead are close, but not that close. “You just don’t think there’s any place that people can dispose of a body anymore,” said Robert Sullivan, the author of “The Meadowlands: Wilderness Adventures on the Edge of a City.” “You think every place is noticed. But it’s not. There’s so many places that are mysterious. There’s two maps of New York overlapping here. The map of places that are somehow forgotten and beautifully mysterious, and the map of people that are forgotten.”

The are, in fact, many such Strange Cities within the City. The homeless know some of them. Graffiti writers know others. Urban explores too. And kids. One stretch of land, many networks of paths, multiple cities.