"West Side Improvements" ~Reading Response

Before reading this piece, I had never hear anything about the mole people that lived under the tracks in Riverside Park. Their story is fairly sad seeing that they were icked out of their home, having done nothing wrong. It is also confusing as to why these people were punished, while the guys who did graffiti all of those years were not. It definitely was an eye opener for me to say the least.

As for the purpose of this piece, it is definitely a toss up between an attempt at telling a history or if it is an attempt as justifying graffiti as a form of art. In some senses it is both, through telling the story of Riverside Park improvements an underlying story emerges of the relationships in the tunnel. This story almost redefined the feelings that people have about "homeless" people. In this reading they seem to make amazing companions and the life in the tunnel doe not seem so bad.