This Guy Loves Exploring Chicago Sewers More Than You Love Your Mother

Chicago Magazine  – When Neal Conroy walks down the street, he is always on the lookout for a hole to crawl into, a gateway to someplace that lets him disappear. On this chilly night in mid-November, that gateway is a sleepy intersection in Irving Park. It doesn’t look like much: a raised traffic circle surrounded by a few manholes. But when he reaches the spot, guided by an old Metropolitan Water Reclamation District map, Conroy says in a hushed voice, “This is the one.” 

He slaps on a pair of blue latex gloves and kneels in front of a steaming manhole. Conroy has a slender build, close-cropped hair, and, at age 30, the patchy mustache of a try-hard teenager. Coast clear, he pries off the 120-pound cast-iron cover with a grunt and shines a flashlight downward. Vapor pours from the opening like it’s a witch’s cauldron, obscuring the view. Then, without further ado, he slips like a spooked rabbit down the rusty iron ladder and vanishes from sight.

I strongly recommend going to Chicago Magazine and reading the entire article on Neal Conroy because it is un-fucking-believable. He’s basically got some rare form of autism that causes him to obsess over Chicago’s sewer system and maybe obsess is an understatement. Naturally he chalks it up to TMNT

Conroy’s life began heading down the drain, so to speak, one Saturday morning in the mid-1990s, when, as a grade schooler, he first watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He envied the wisecracking heroes in a half shell for their spacious sewer lair.

Turtles were awesome. I was always Raphael because he was the meanest. My brothers usually argued over who got to be Michaelangelo or Leonardo. No one ever wanted to be Donatello. In hindsight I miss being a kid and getting to say stuff like I’m Michael Jordan during the middle of a pickup game. We need to bring that back.

“I grew up thinking about having a big treehouse,” he says. But treehouses were hard to come by in Chicago, and before long, its sewer system, with 4,400 miles of tunnels and pipes, beckoned. “It’s like a treehouse, but underground.”

I checked with Big Cat and turns out Reverse Treehouse is an Old Hockey Trick. What else…

He has also created webpages dedicated to his favorite sewers. Some get pet names: My Secret Dungeon, My Secret Chamber, My Secret Fortress. 

This guy needs a partner because those names fucking suck. You need Wow Factor. You need Sex Appeal. My Secret Garden isn’t doing shit for me. What were Winterfell and Gryffindor taken? Figure it out Neal.

Before returning to the street, Conroy sometimes leaves a calling card: a small photograph, a self-portrait, taped to the tunnel’s interior. Some of his selfies show him in a suit and tie and holding flowers – a PR effort aimed at winning over any police officer who would seek to apprehend him.

Alright seriously this guy keeps a website and it’s fantastic. Turns out he really posts selfies of himself:

I need this guy on Dog Walk pronto.

He delights at encountering “waterfalls,” the Niagara-like cascades created when runoff from one sewer plunges into a deeper one.

“Waterfalls”

That’s rich.

One night in 2010, a police officer witnessed Conroy’s descent, and he looked into the sewer and asked what the young man was doing. According to the police report, Conroy answered simply, “I’m visiting.” He’d been stopped by cops twice before and let off with a warning, but this time he was charged with reckless conduct, a Class A misdemeanor.

I just put I’m visiting. in my bag and I can’t wait to use it. What a phenomenal excuse. I’m routinely told I don’t belong places. Let’s dance now motherfuckers. I’m just visiting.

….he was in possession of a road flare (“for visibility” ), as well as a can of pepper spray and a bulletproof jacket (“for safety”).

This guy should be getting a merit badge not a misdemeanor.

A judge ordered Conroy to complete 50 hours of community service. After he’d logged his time, he sent his arresting officer a homemade greeting card. The cryptic note’s only text read, “Happy Valentine’s Day!” It was typed above a photo of an open manhole. The message was clear: Once a drainer, always a drainer.

Like I said earlier maybe obsessive is an understatement.