Earlier this year, I wrote about the mysterious emergence of dozens of people from New York City manholes. Various security cameras caught the act, making it seem like we were capturing rare glimpses of the Ninja Turtles emerging from their sewer lair. Some months have passed, and NYC officials have made breakthroughs in the case, and I’m thankful for it because it has led to some of the funniest writing I’ve ever come across, as The Guardian tried to explain to its readers who the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are.
In a genuine attempt to clarify what is meant when people refer to the whole phenomenon as being an awful lot like witnessing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles emerge from the sewers (a comparison even I made in the opening sentence of my write-up some months ago), The Guardian meticulously defined the iconic sewer-dwelling turtle clan using the stuffy language of modern-day news journalism, much to my delight.
NYC’s ‘Sewer People’ Mystery Now Has a Hilariously Serious Ninja Turtles Explainer
“Jakupovic isn’t the first to make the comparison to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a fictional group of human-turtle hybrids who, across a comic book, cartoon TV show and feature film, are depicted as living in the sewers. Per canon, the turtles mutated into humanoids after being exposed to a toxic green goo. They are subsequently trained in martial arts by a large rat.
The turtles, who are brothers, fight crime, frequently crossing paths with a man called Shredder and his accomplices Bebop, who is a mutant warthog, and Rocksteady, who is a sort of rhino. They also encounter Krang, an alien blob-thing who lives in a robot.”
That’s 108 words describing a passing reference to an iconic pop culture IP that, by now, I’m sure most people on Earth are at least vaguely familiar with. Incredible. “They are subsequently trained in martial arts by a large rat” is just beautiful. Bravo. Bravo to everyone involved in that article.
The story has actual updates, though they’re far more mundane than the rigid, textbook definition of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Law enforcement recently arrested two men in their mid-20s, Samuel Reveron and Kevin Rodriguez, charging them with trespassing after tracking the Toyotas they fled the scene in after emerging from the sewer. They are unfortunately not part of some secret clan of mole people, as the pair confessed they were hunting for lost jewelry, gold, and valuables that washed down the storm drain.
Apparently, there’s a market for that, though the chances of finding anything of true value are exceedingly low, as the New York Times learned from sewer Explorers who said they usually find nothing but expired credit cards. Doesn’t seem worth trudging through miles of New Yorker pee and rat turds, but to each his own.
The post Two Men Arrested in NYC’s Sewer Mystery Say They Were Looking for Gold. Seriously. appeared first on VICE.
