Matthew OBrien is a Las Vegas-based writer and editor. Hes the author of Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas and news editor of Las Vegas CityLife, an alternative weekly with a circulation of 85,000. OBrien was born in Washington, D.C. and raised in the Atlanta area. He has lived in Las Vegas since 1997. Matthew descended into the storm drains beneath the city of Las Vegas chasing after a criminal and made some shocking discoveries about life under the casinos.
Gerry Duggan: What led you to the tunnels beneath Las Vegas?
Matthew O'Brien: In the summer of 2002 there was a murder in downtown Las Vegas, a guy named Timmy T.J. Weber, he killed his girlfriend and one of her sons and raped her 14-year-old daughter. He was on the run from the police for about a week and was actually featured on America's Most Wanted. Then he returned to the crime scene and attacked a surviving family member. The police descended on the home and Weber just vanished. When he was actually captured a few weeks later in a trailer park he actually told them that he used a storm drain to go underneath their dragnet. So that got me curious about what he experienced down there in the storm drains, what he heard, what he saw, what he smelled, so I decided to go down there with a freelancer pal, Joshua Ellis and explore the drains.
GD: What shocked you the most down there?
MO: Initially the fact that people were down in there. Josh and I didnt really consider that. You know, we thought that there may be some stray cats and dogs down there, some weird miscellaneous items that had washed into the storm drains and maybe some graffiti art. We did not expect to find people actually living in these storm drains, which can fill a foot per minute with flood waters. So when we stumbled on the first camp we were both in shock.
GD: If you had to make a generalization, how would you say that most people end up living down there?
MO: Well, they end up homeless in a variety of ways, you know, through drug addiction, alcohol addiction or gambling addiction. Then a lot of them just sort of stumble on these storm drains, a lot of them told me, You know, I was walking by and I saw the tunnels and decided to get out of the sun and check it out. Then they would eventually move deeper and deeper into the drains and get more and more comfortable and a lot of them would just go ahead and set up camp at that point.
GD: Their quality of life seemed surprisingly good from the book, you know, these are guys that, you dont want to say they were comfortable, but I think they were living a better life than they could up in the sun.
MO: Yeah, I mean, initially, as I said, Josh and I were surprised that people were down there but when we started interviewing them it started to make more sense. They explained that, above ground in Las Vegas, which is in the heart of the Mojave Desert you know, temperatures are 115-116, where below ground its 30-35 degrees cooler. Also Las Vegas is a city thats very mean to the homeless and being down in these drains, no one really knows about you, no one comes and bothers you, the cops dont patrol it and business owners dont come down there and its rare that teenagers would come down there and destroy someones camp. So theres a sense of permanency down in there as well.
GD: In addition to that sense of permanency, is there a community? I understand that everyones going to be different. There probably are some basket cases down there. You certainly met a few. But, is there cooperation?
MO: Well, its not like in the subway, and train tunnels, in New York City, in the 80s and 90s, when thousands were down there. These are flood control channels and they can fill a foot per minute with flood waters so youre not talking about thousands of people, but there are hundreds of people who are willing to risk their lives down there to live in the drains. But a lot of them are very private, very reclusive people and they tend to respect each others space. So youll find, if you go into a six pronged tunnel storm drain you may find a camp in each one of the tunnels as opposed to five, six, seven camps in a row. But there were some small communities that I did find down there, you know, 10 to 15 people living together in one area sharing food, money, drugs, stuff like that.
GD: What was the most beautiful thing you found down there?
MO: That was one of the surprises. I did not expect to find so many, kind of, interesting, quirky and beautiful things down in the drain. But, you know, a beam of light coming through a manhole shaft into a tunnel. Some of the artwork and coloring on the walls, you know, when lit by sunlight by a ceiling grate. Some of the people were just surprisingly cool and beautiful. I was really surprised by how many people were willing to talk to me and how many poignant and interesting things they had to say.
GD: What were some of the worst things you found or saw down there?
MO: It was pretty grim...the beauty was kind of few and far between. But, you know, people washing their clothes in urban runoff thats going through the tunnel. People sleeping in three foot in diameter lateral pipes. People just addicted to drugs and dying of cancer or AIDS, war veterans who have served their country, down in there. Theres a lot of misery down beneath the neon and beneath the glitz and glamour of the Las Vegas strip.
GD: It is somehow awfully fitting for that city, I think.
MO: [Chuckles] And yet you know, its a side of Las Vegas that not many people know about, locals included. Its the kind of information the casinos and the politicians dont really want out there. Theyre all about promoting the success stories of Las Vegas and the glitz and the glamour. Theyre not so keen about letting the side effects of gambling get out to the public.
GD: Yeah, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas and sometimes it sinks.
MO: Yeah.
GD: You had sort of touched on one of my questions, which was going to be how what is under Vegas differs from New York but you sort of hit on that already.
MO: Right.
GD: Im curious and maybe you dont have an answer, but has your writing about the tunnels changed them in any way now?
MO: No, not a whole lot. One of the reasons I went down there and explored these drains for five years was to bring attention to the plight of the people who were living down in there and to get the people who wanted help some help. That really hasnt happened. It seems like the politicians and the casino executives have largely ignored the book and the media coverage of the book, which is somewhat depressing to me. You know, I had hoped that, the police would go down in there with social workers from the city and the county and offer these people some assistance. But, I guess that was kind of unrealistic in Las Vegas where everyones kind of under-funded and understaffed and overburdened and I guess they feel they have more important things to worry about.
GD: Do you feel like these people have sort of gone underground to get away? Like, I know it can be difficult sometimes to talk someone that needs help into help. Is this them trying to get away from that? Obviously, it would be great if these people were getting help.
MO: Yeah, I didnt meet too many people down there who were like, Yes, I love the storm drains. I hope I live in here forever. Almost to a person it was, you know, I want to get out of here. Im trying to get out of here but theres no better options for me in this town. You know, I think if they were approached properly and they were offered affordable housing or a treatment center bed, something like that, that they would be very much open to it.
GD: I was impressed that metro police try to give them a heads up about a rainstorm or a flash flood. I guess at the big level its not working, the politicians dont really and I guess the brass of the police, are sort of turning a blind eye but do you find that the guys actually on the street, in the cruisers are trying to look out for these people?
MO: Well, actually one person that Josh and I interviewed said that the cops give them a heads up. Im not sure thats true. In fact, I think he was just telling us that so we wouldnt alert the police ourselves or something like that.
GD: Thats interesting.
MO: Yeah, Ive walked these tunnels and Ive never seen a police officer down there or even seen one even near the inlet or the outlet of a storm drain. The only time they go down there from my experience and what the people in the drains tell me is if there is a rape or a murder in the neighborhood and they have some reason to believe that the suspect may be hiding out in the storm drains. Otherwise they steer clear of them.
GD: What sort of advice would you have for anyone? I mean, I think probably most people are going to read the book and absorb it. But do you have any advice for any other urban, I dont know what the correct word would be, urban explorers?
MO: My advice would be to read the book. You know, I put a lot of details in the book. We have more than thirty black and white photographs of the people, artwork and architecture and other kind of weird things we found down in there. You know a lot of these people like their privacy. I went down there because I thought there was a story there. I wasnt trying to be an urban explorer, you know, I was a journalist, a writer, and, you know, their stories are in the book. That would be my advice, you know, to kind of stay out of there if you can or if you go down in there kind of avoid the camps.
GD: Right.
MO: There are some beautiful things you can find down there without disturbing the people.
GD: At one point in your exploration you ended up following a tunnel into an underground casino parking lot.
MO: [Laughs] Like I said, you know, from my research it looks like another Las Vegas juice job you know, where a casino owner was opening a casino and he convinced the county through whatever means he used, to let him build a hotel/casino right over one of the primary washes in Las Vegas, the Flamingo Wash, so the Imperial Palace Hotel/Casino, which was built in the 1970s, its driveway actually doubles as a flood control channel. So you have this massive storm drain that goes under Caesars Palace, under the strip, under part of the Imperial Palace and actually opens up in the middle of the Imperial Palace property, which is another one of those only in Las Vegas things.
GD: Have you checked out any of those other sort of places? I know Seattle has an extensive underground.
MO: Yeah, I didnt go personally to any of them, you know, I really wasnt working.
GD: I mean, I know this was your story but did it open up any or do you have any plans to sort of check out any other subterranean locations?
MO: Not so much. I mean the Vegas thing seemed like a good fit for me. Im in decent shape where I can walk a six-mile tunnel where the ceiling drops down to four feet when youre three miles in. You know, Ive done a lot. Ive been a reporter in the city for almost ten years now so I feel like I know it pretty well. I did have a little background in the storm drains from Josh and I going down there and exploring them. So I felt like that was a good fit for me.
GD: Yeah.
MO: And again I felt like there was a story down there. So thats why I went after it but I dont really have any desire to explore the Shanghai tunnels of Portland, Oregon or to go check out the subway and train tunnels of New York City. Those stories are probably better told by someone else.
GD: I think I know the answer to this, but just checking, youre not at all claustrophobic or anything are you?
MO: [Laughs] Not especially so but when youre in a four foot-by-four foot tunnel, and youre trying to go deeper into it in hopes that the ceiling may rise, you know, the storm drain system in Vegas is very random like that. It gets a little bit tough to breathe, I mean, theres very little humidity in Las Vegas except for in the storm drains because even on a dry day youll get millions of gallons of water going through the system.
GD: Did you take any precautions? I know you took the golf club down there as a matter of practicality and then also defense, but did you ever ask a friend or coworker, If you dont hear from me in 10 hours or so, you know.
MO: Yeah, the rules of caving also apply to storm draining. You want to bring at least three light sources down in there. You want to bring plenty of water and some snack food and you also want to let someone know where youre going and where you hope to come out. So, I learned some of that stuff the hard way but for the most part Ive gone by those rules and everythings turned out all right. For instance I would call my friend Chip and say, Hey, you know, Im going into a storm drain that starts downtown behind Main Street Station and Im going to come out at the Las Vegas Wash near Sand Hill Avenue. Ill give you a call in three, four hours. That type of thing.
GD: Cool. Anything else that I maybe didnt touch on that you might want to say about the experience?
MO: I hope that people will read the book and kind of understand that theres a different side to Las Vegas. I hope it brings a little more balance to the Las Vegas story. Its like we hear a lot about the success stories of the casinos and the performers on the strip but not as much about the American dream gone awry. You know, what can go wrong here, in fabulous Las Vegas. So I hope people will check out the book and see a different side of the city.
GD: Right on. Thanks for talking to me, I really appreciate it.
MO: Gerry, thanks so much man.
Photos by Danny Mollohan
Gerry Duggan: What led you to the tunnels beneath Las Vegas?
Matthew O'Brien: In the summer of 2002 there was a murder in downtown Las Vegas, a guy named Timmy T.J. Weber, he killed his girlfriend and one of her sons and raped her 14-year-old daughter. He was on the run from the police for about a week and was actually featured on America's Most Wanted. Then he returned to the crime scene and attacked a surviving family member. The police descended on the home and Weber just vanished. When he was actually captured a few weeks later in a trailer park he actually told them that he used a storm drain to go underneath their dragnet. So that got me curious about what he experienced down there in the storm drains, what he heard, what he saw, what he smelled, so I decided to go down there with a freelancer pal, Joshua Ellis and explore the drains.
GD: What shocked you the most down there?
MO: Initially the fact that people were down in there. Josh and I didnt really consider that. You know, we thought that there may be some stray cats and dogs down there, some weird miscellaneous items that had washed into the storm drains and maybe some graffiti art. We did not expect to find people actually living in these storm drains, which can fill a foot per minute with flood waters. So when we stumbled on the first camp we were both in shock.
GD: If you had to make a generalization, how would you say that most people end up living down there?
MO: Well, they end up homeless in a variety of ways, you know, through drug addiction, alcohol addiction or gambling addiction. Then a lot of them just sort of stumble on these storm drains, a lot of them told me, You know, I was walking by and I saw the tunnels and decided to get out of the sun and check it out. Then they would eventually move deeper and deeper into the drains and get more and more comfortable and a lot of them would just go ahead and set up camp at that point.
GD: Their quality of life seemed surprisingly good from the book, you know, these are guys that, you dont want to say they were comfortable, but I think they were living a better life than they could up in the sun.
MO: Yeah, I mean, initially, as I said, Josh and I were surprised that people were down there but when we started interviewing them it started to make more sense. They explained that, above ground in Las Vegas, which is in the heart of the Mojave Desert you know, temperatures are 115-116, where below ground its 30-35 degrees cooler. Also Las Vegas is a city thats very mean to the homeless and being down in these drains, no one really knows about you, no one comes and bothers you, the cops dont patrol it and business owners dont come down there and its rare that teenagers would come down there and destroy someones camp. So theres a sense of permanency down in there as well.
GD: In addition to that sense of permanency, is there a community? I understand that everyones going to be different. There probably are some basket cases down there. You certainly met a few. But, is there cooperation?
MO: Well, its not like in the subway, and train tunnels, in New York City, in the 80s and 90s, when thousands were down there. These are flood control channels and they can fill a foot per minute with flood waters so youre not talking about thousands of people, but there are hundreds of people who are willing to risk their lives down there to live in the drains. But a lot of them are very private, very reclusive people and they tend to respect each others space. So youll find, if you go into a six pronged tunnel storm drain you may find a camp in each one of the tunnels as opposed to five, six, seven camps in a row. But there were some small communities that I did find down there, you know, 10 to 15 people living together in one area sharing food, money, drugs, stuff like that.
GD: What was the most beautiful thing you found down there?
MO: That was one of the surprises. I did not expect to find so many, kind of, interesting, quirky and beautiful things down in the drain. But, you know, a beam of light coming through a manhole shaft into a tunnel. Some of the artwork and coloring on the walls, you know, when lit by sunlight by a ceiling grate. Some of the people were just surprisingly cool and beautiful. I was really surprised by how many people were willing to talk to me and how many poignant and interesting things they had to say.
GD: What were some of the worst things you found or saw down there?
MO: It was pretty grim...the beauty was kind of few and far between. But, you know, people washing their clothes in urban runoff thats going through the tunnel. People sleeping in three foot in diameter lateral pipes. People just addicted to drugs and dying of cancer or AIDS, war veterans who have served their country, down in there. Theres a lot of misery down beneath the neon and beneath the glitz and glamour of the Las Vegas strip.
GD: It is somehow awfully fitting for that city, I think.
MO: [Chuckles] And yet you know, its a side of Las Vegas that not many people know about, locals included. Its the kind of information the casinos and the politicians dont really want out there. Theyre all about promoting the success stories of Las Vegas and the glitz and the glamour. Theyre not so keen about letting the side effects of gambling get out to the public.
GD: Yeah, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas and sometimes it sinks.
MO: Yeah.
GD: You had sort of touched on one of my questions, which was going to be how what is under Vegas differs from New York but you sort of hit on that already.
MO: Right.
GD: Im curious and maybe you dont have an answer, but has your writing about the tunnels changed them in any way now?
MO: No, not a whole lot. One of the reasons I went down there and explored these drains for five years was to bring attention to the plight of the people who were living down in there and to get the people who wanted help some help. That really hasnt happened. It seems like the politicians and the casino executives have largely ignored the book and the media coverage of the book, which is somewhat depressing to me. You know, I had hoped that, the police would go down in there with social workers from the city and the county and offer these people some assistance. But, I guess that was kind of unrealistic in Las Vegas where everyones kind of under-funded and understaffed and overburdened and I guess they feel they have more important things to worry about.
GD: Do you feel like these people have sort of gone underground to get away? Like, I know it can be difficult sometimes to talk someone that needs help into help. Is this them trying to get away from that? Obviously, it would be great if these people were getting help.
MO: Yeah, I didnt meet too many people down there who were like, Yes, I love the storm drains. I hope I live in here forever. Almost to a person it was, you know, I want to get out of here. Im trying to get out of here but theres no better options for me in this town. You know, I think if they were approached properly and they were offered affordable housing or a treatment center bed, something like that, that they would be very much open to it.
GD: I was impressed that metro police try to give them a heads up about a rainstorm or a flash flood. I guess at the big level its not working, the politicians dont really and I guess the brass of the police, are sort of turning a blind eye but do you find that the guys actually on the street, in the cruisers are trying to look out for these people?
MO: Well, actually one person that Josh and I interviewed said that the cops give them a heads up. Im not sure thats true. In fact, I think he was just telling us that so we wouldnt alert the police ourselves or something like that.
GD: Thats interesting.
MO: Yeah, Ive walked these tunnels and Ive never seen a police officer down there or even seen one even near the inlet or the outlet of a storm drain. The only time they go down there from my experience and what the people in the drains tell me is if there is a rape or a murder in the neighborhood and they have some reason to believe that the suspect may be hiding out in the storm drains. Otherwise they steer clear of them.
GD: What sort of advice would you have for anyone? I mean, I think probably most people are going to read the book and absorb it. But do you have any advice for any other urban, I dont know what the correct word would be, urban explorers?
MO: My advice would be to read the book. You know, I put a lot of details in the book. We have more than thirty black and white photographs of the people, artwork and architecture and other kind of weird things we found down in there. You know a lot of these people like their privacy. I went down there because I thought there was a story there. I wasnt trying to be an urban explorer, you know, I was a journalist, a writer, and, you know, their stories are in the book. That would be my advice, you know, to kind of stay out of there if you can or if you go down in there kind of avoid the camps.
GD: Right.
MO: There are some beautiful things you can find down there without disturbing the people.
GD: At one point in your exploration you ended up following a tunnel into an underground casino parking lot.
MO: [Laughs] Like I said, you know, from my research it looks like another Las Vegas juice job you know, where a casino owner was opening a casino and he convinced the county through whatever means he used, to let him build a hotel/casino right over one of the primary washes in Las Vegas, the Flamingo Wash, so the Imperial Palace Hotel/Casino, which was built in the 1970s, its driveway actually doubles as a flood control channel. So you have this massive storm drain that goes under Caesars Palace, under the strip, under part of the Imperial Palace and actually opens up in the middle of the Imperial Palace property, which is another one of those only in Las Vegas things.
GD: Have you checked out any of those other sort of places? I know Seattle has an extensive underground.
MO: Yeah, I didnt go personally to any of them, you know, I really wasnt working.
GD: I mean, I know this was your story but did it open up any or do you have any plans to sort of check out any other subterranean locations?
MO: Not so much. I mean the Vegas thing seemed like a good fit for me. Im in decent shape where I can walk a six-mile tunnel where the ceiling drops down to four feet when youre three miles in. You know, Ive done a lot. Ive been a reporter in the city for almost ten years now so I feel like I know it pretty well. I did have a little background in the storm drains from Josh and I going down there and exploring them. So I felt like that was a good fit for me.
GD: Yeah.
MO: And again I felt like there was a story down there. So thats why I went after it but I dont really have any desire to explore the Shanghai tunnels of Portland, Oregon or to go check out the subway and train tunnels of New York City. Those stories are probably better told by someone else.
GD: I think I know the answer to this, but just checking, youre not at all claustrophobic or anything are you?
MO: [Laughs] Not especially so but when youre in a four foot-by-four foot tunnel, and youre trying to go deeper into it in hopes that the ceiling may rise, you know, the storm drain system in Vegas is very random like that. It gets a little bit tough to breathe, I mean, theres very little humidity in Las Vegas except for in the storm drains because even on a dry day youll get millions of gallons of water going through the system.
GD: Did you take any precautions? I know you took the golf club down there as a matter of practicality and then also defense, but did you ever ask a friend or coworker, If you dont hear from me in 10 hours or so, you know.
MO: Yeah, the rules of caving also apply to storm draining. You want to bring at least three light sources down in there. You want to bring plenty of water and some snack food and you also want to let someone know where youre going and where you hope to come out. So, I learned some of that stuff the hard way but for the most part Ive gone by those rules and everythings turned out all right. For instance I would call my friend Chip and say, Hey, you know, Im going into a storm drain that starts downtown behind Main Street Station and Im going to come out at the Las Vegas Wash near Sand Hill Avenue. Ill give you a call in three, four hours. That type of thing.
GD: Cool. Anything else that I maybe didnt touch on that you might want to say about the experience?
MO: I hope that people will read the book and kind of understand that theres a different side to Las Vegas. I hope it brings a little more balance to the Las Vegas story. Its like we hear a lot about the success stories of the casinos and the performers on the strip but not as much about the American dream gone awry. You know, what can go wrong here, in fabulous Las Vegas. So I hope people will check out the book and see a different side of the city.
GD: Right on. Thanks for talking to me, I really appreciate it.
MO: Gerry, thanks so much man.
Photos by Danny Mollohan
Great job, Duggan.