I Survived Brooklyn’s ‘L Train Shutdown Nightmare’

As the suspension of New York City’s L train tunnel looms nearer, fear of the L-pocalypse is mounting. The city’s transit administration has warned that it will begin limiting subway service to the borough for 15 months starting in April, displacing 275,000 passengers daily, in order to make track and tunnel repairs associated with Superstorm Sandy flooding. In advance of the long-dreaded shutdown, savvy entrepreneurs on the Brooklyn side have sought to mitigate its effects with such offerings as discounted amenities for those who sign onto luxury apartments and private buses to Manhattan that provide an upscale alternative to city buses along the same route. Other businesses, however, have decided to embrace the terror.

That’s the thinking behind the L Train Shutdown Nightmare, an “immersive haunted house and club” in Bushwick, a rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood that is served in part by the L train. The Halloween-themed attraction, paired with a subway-centric pop-up nightclub called Club Transit, promised to send guests on a post-apocalyptic expedition through a neighborhood “warped by the chaos and destruction wrecked by the disturbing aftermath of the L train shutdown.”