But It's Also ...
There's a series of underground rooms under the Brooklyn Bridge. How the hell do you put a room under a bridge? Well, technically they're under the anchorages of the bridge -- one catacomb under the Manhattan side and one under the Brooklyn side. And the most important part is that, for a long time, they were completely stuffed with alcohol.
Stanley Greenberg
Every square inch of this room has been barfed on at some point.
From before the bridge was even completed in 1883 to the beginning of Prohibition in 1918, these massive vaults, some of them 50 feet high, contained the best champagne and wine in New York -- renting them for alcohol storage made it possible to offset the massive debt caused by the bridge (or at the very least forget about it more easily). Prohibition spoiled things for a few years, but in 1934, the wine cellars reopened in grand style, with a big underground vault party taking place underneath the bridge, featuring champagne and Viennese waltzes, the '30s version of Red Bull and Skrillex.
So think about it: While respectable New Yorkers were getting into traffic jams and sounding their claxons, below the ground the spinsters were having wild parties. The Brooklyn Bridge was literally business in the front, party in the back. By the way, the vaults are so large and labyrinthine that they're still finding shit there -- just a few years ago, city workers stumbled across a hidden chamber stockpiled with Cold War supplies.
John Marshall Mantel/NY Times
Drums presumably filled with vodka, in case the Russians won and we had to adjust.
Inexplicably, the artificial bridge caves are now used for maintenance equipment rather than champagne, making us seriously wonder where our priorities lie these days.
N. Christie is currently traveling the world to determine once and for all what the Seven Wonders of the World really are.
Related Reading: There's even MORE you don't know about famous landmarks! For example: The flag on the moon is completely white by now. And if you thought Mount Everest was a pristine example of nature's unspoiled finery, think again. It's mostly garbage and old corpses at this point. There are more myths about the landmarks you know and love: Click here to shatter what illusions you have left.
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