title: Bright Nights: Photographs of Another New York
author:  Tod Seelie 
description: Bright Nights: Photographs of Another New York compiles a decade and a half of pictures from a roiling underground of music and art and noise and mess. Organized aesthetically, the collection features friends and comrades tromping through basement rock shows and dirty parties, climbing up bridges, and descending into live subway tunnels.
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  ![](image006.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **Chapter 1**
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  At dawn, the sun was a brilliant orange ball of fire rising in
  
  
  the pale blue sky above New York City. It hovered for a few brief
  
  
  moments at the point where the horizon merged with the East River,
  
  
  casting a ghostly silverish tint across the water that separated
  
  
  Manhattan from its sister boroughs, Queens and Brooklyn. The
  
  
  temperature had stayed close to the eighty-degree mark
  
  
  throughout the night, with only a faint breeze that smelled of fish
  
  
  and the ocean to cool the air. A trio of sea gulls dove beneath the
  
  
  gently ruffled waves, men quickly resurfaced, screeching as they
  
  
  wheeled toward the sun, now visible between the two arching
  
  
  steel spans of the Brooklyn Bridge.
  
  
  
  
  
  The city was slowly coming awake. From In-wood and Washington
  
  
  Heights at the island's nor