Dark Days

If, like me, you occasionally walk past homeless beggars sitting in the street and think, "get off your arse, you lazy bastard!" then you might like Dark Days, the DVD I watched last night.

It's a documentary about a group of homeless people who used to live in an underground railway tunnel in New York City.

They weren't just dossers who felt sorry for themselves, they would drag boards, pieces and furniture and equipment down there and had all managed to build themselves little houses, utilizing the electricity from the train tracks to fuel their cookers etc. They were fiercely house proud, one of the guys would even make people take their shoes off before they came into his hut.

There was a great camaraderie in the tunnel. People felt safer living down there instead of being on the streets where they didn't know who was going to walk by and what was going to happen next. Here they were all united against the same enemy - the many rats who also called the place home!

There was a strict code of conduct, nobody stole from each other or entered anybody else's space without being invited. The penalty for violation was harsh - one woman got into a fight with one of her neighbours and came home to find her hut being burned to the ground.

Eventually the group were evicted by Amtrak, the US rail company. They were all given proper homes and jobs by the local government. Most of the stories had happy endings and people made the most of the opportunity they were given. Though there was one guy who couldn't cope with the return to normality - he returned to the tunnel where he sat on the tracks and waited for a train ...