Going Underground: New Yorkers headed into tunnel raves for New Year’s Eve
New Year celebrations are so tame these days; in London, you now need to pay for a ticket to watch the boring show from the riverbank, and it feels like the thrill has been sucked out of New Year’s across the globe, with New York’s nightlife looking like a cliché.
We’ve seen drone shows overtake traditional fireworks, and a new generation of alcohol-free Gen Z-ers wake up without a hangover on New Year’s Day. Even the Hootenanny has turned into a snorefest, and it makes you wonder if just having an early night might be the best way to tackle it after all.
That was until the start of 2026, when mysterious footage, uploaded to both X and Instagram by a user called Danny Cole from New York, showed an underground rave, a raw, unfiltered party, that instantly got people talking. So, now the video has racked up millions of views, it’s fair to ask, are New Year’s parties back?
As cringeworthy as the phrase ‘last night was a movie’ has become, this party might just qualify for genuine enthusiasm. In deep underground tunnels underneath New York, you could see hundreds of revellers, fireworks being shot indoors, flares being held in people’s mouths, dancing while revellers watch on from steel beams, and even guys on bicycles jousting, such that, if this were a trailer for a new coming-of-age film, you wouldn’t bat an eyelid.
However, the biggest question became where this rave was being held, and according to eagle-eyed commentators, it was found that it’s likely one of New York’s most storied underground landmarks, the Freedom Tunnel.
Just under three miles in length, the Freedom Tunnel is a stretch of railroad on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, beneath Riverside Park, that was built 90-something years ago, initially constructed to conceal the railroad from the wealthy residents nearby.
Shifts in industry in the 1970s saw shipping replaced by freight trucking, so by 1980, the tunnel was defunct, and with a growing homelessness epidemic and miles of underground room now vacated, it soon became a shanty town, with residents hijacking the electricity grid and building multi-level dwellings. These residents, known as ‘mole people’, shared the tunnels with graffiti artists when street art became the rising subculture of the city.
In 1991, when Amtrak reopened the tunnel, they bulldozed the dwellings to make way for the train service, with some residents moving further into unused bits of the tunnels, while a documentary about the mole people, known as Dark Days, led to pressure, which ultimately saw the tunnel dwellers finding housing. Another clean-up operation from Amtrak in 2012 booted out the final few people using the tunnel to live, and with mass evictions and the destruction of shacks, as well as increased police presence, the tunnel was done being a home.
It’s not clear how the revellers at New Year managed to get into the Freedom Tunnel, with fencing and security both protecting the space; regardless of how they found their way into the tunnel, it’s refreshing to see these spaces used for parties, even if the active high-speed train lines make it dangerous. Maybe those reports of Gen Z becoming boring are overplayed, and the kids are alright after all.
