My journey after The Warriors through Van Cortlandt Park

I previously wrote of how I found inspiration in the film The Warriors (1979) for a variation on Apocalypse World's implied setting that I felt more comfortable running with. I have since read the book that the film is loosely based on, also called The Warriors, published in 1965. I will probably not take too much out of the book - it is powerful, and more raw, but also full of content that I would be uncomfortable playing with, and I am glad did not make it into the movie other than through implication.

I was, however, impressed with the further details about the journey itself, from the confab in Van Cortlandt Park, in the Bronx, back to the gang's home turf in Coney Island. So when, towards the end of my visit to New York City (where I visited MoMA, and did other things besides), I ended up with most of a day to myself, I decided to have my own pilgrimage after The Warriors.

Originally, I planned to simply take the subway up to Van Cortlandt, look around a little, see some landmarks from the film, then take the subway all the way back to Coney Island, then head back to take my bus. However, I realized that this would mean spending most of the day on the subway, with little else to show for it. So instead I decided to spend a little bit more time in the Bronx, and possibly take a detour to Queens to make use of my complimentary MoMA PS1 ticket, and then return to Midtown Manhattan to catch my bus. That is not what happened.

Instead, once I got to Van Cortlandt Park, a short search online showed me that the scene at the start of the movie was actually filmed in Riverside Park in Manhattan. Having already arrived at my destination, I decided I would walk around a bit to get a better idea of the feel of large forested wilderness sliced through by motorways that comes out in the beginning of the book.

So I walked, and walked, and saw some wildlife, and took some pictures, and continued to walk, and had to double back because you could not cross through the public golf course (first in the nation!), and then went down a path that I hoped would eventually let me cross over to a different path down, to continue with my plans.

A long while later, I found the first meaningful map I had seen in the entire park, referring to South County Trail. "South County", I asked myself? Using the GPS-powered map on my phone, I confirmed my suspicions - I had managed to exit NYC and enter Yonkers, a city familiar to anyone who had ever had to fill out a New York state tax return, or used the train through Westchester County, the County of which I was in the Southern Trail. The first way out that wasn't back was into Yonkers.

I started seeking a local restaurant that looked inviting online, when I realized that time was pressing, especially considering how far I was from my starting point now. So I took a loop through Yonkers, climbed one of its famous seven hills, and found another entrance into Van Cortlandt. This led into a bit of a maze of paths, again unmapped, which, with the help of my trusty phone, I followed back towards the subway station, and then down to Midtown, where I had to rush around to eat a late lunch and then to make it to my bus, out of breath, but otherwise on time.

While this wasn't physically too similar to the journey in either version of The Warriors, I unexpectedly found myself emotionally close to this feeling of being suddenly removed and disconnected from my "home", in this case, the area of the bus station from which I had to go back to my actual home Upstate, and rushing back there through parts unknown.

These types of accidental experiences are the ones I treasure most. You can't entirely plan them. You can put yourself in a starting situation, and open yourself catching them as they come. In life, in travel, in role-playing games.

Current and recent reading (June 2022)

I've been suffering from blogger's block for the past few months. To try and break it, I figured I'd go over some books I've read recently, or am in the process of reading:

• The World of Fanzines - A Special Form of Communication, by Fredric Wertham, most famous for his Seduction of the Innocent, which lead to the Comics Code, and made him in many ways an enemy of comics, weird fiction, and the like. And yet, he became a big fan of fanzines as a medium, and writes about them insightfully and appreciatively, even when they satirize him. Cites from a variety of sources, and dedicates the first half of the book to reproductions of fanzine art.
• Sailing - an Informal Primer, by Richard Ulian, is an acquisition from back when I gathered up quite a few books about maritime subjects, preparing for it being a bigger focus of my Dungeons & Dragons campaign. I'm glad I got this one - it helps me make sense of description of sailing in fiction, and gives some ideas of the kinds of problems you might run into. Possible seeds for challenges and hazards in games that are focused there.
• The Study of Folklore, edited by Alan Dundes - this collection is a treasure trove of classics in the field. It's grouped by subject, and is wide-ranging - which is good, because folklore is very wide-ranging itself.
• Contested Culture - The Image, the Voice, and the Law, by Jane M. Gaines - a difficult read, encompassing two fields I'm not very acquainted with: legal and culture studies. But I'm enjoying my slog through it. This critical look at copyright law and how it relates to the creation of culture, and who gets to be termed a creator thereof, is a nice complement to all my reading about folklore.
• Subterranea - Journey into the Depths of the Earth’s Most Extraordinary Underground Spaces, by Chris Fitch - each one of the vivid studies in this book could inspire a dungeon delve or other underground adventure, from terrifying natural phenomena that either themselves or taken to a slightly larger extreme could become a significant adventuring challenge, to depictions of human habitation below the surface.
• The Complete Wargames Handbook, by James F. Dunnigan - I am starting to feel that I could at least get something out of a hex-and-chit wargame. Also interesting to get some perspective on how an out-and-out board wargamer saw role-playing games in a book published in 1980. A third edition is available online (pdf), although I'm reading a copy of the first edition.
• Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition Keeper's Rulebook - the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Dungeon Master's Guide was a huge disappointment when it came to helping me do my work as a dungeon master. This, so far, seems to be much better at providing guidance as to how to actually run a game of CoC, although I haven't done this myself yet.
• Apocalypse World 2nd Edition - this edition is supposedly less edgy than the first one. It still has a bit of that left left, but having persevered in reading through a few chapters, I'm already seeing why it's become a classic, as well as a template for a whole genre of RPGs.
• Welcome to Mars - Politics, Pop Culture, and Weird Science in 1950s America, by Ken Hollings - a book based on a limited radio series (found here; out of order, unfortunately). Made me revisit the start of the Atomic Age, and realize how fascinating it is, in itself, in its effects on our culture and society, and in its fictional and gaming potential. Also full of horror stories resulting from Operation Paperclip, MK-ULTRA, and many human experiments.
• The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, by Erving Goffman - I went all in on Goffman after encountering his frame analysis in Gary Alan Fine's Shared Fantasy, and reading this is already rewarding.
• Night's Black Agents, by Fritz Leiber - More well-known for his Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories, this shows Leiber as a very good modern weird/horror fiction writer, as well. An easily available, Lovecraftian sample is The Dreams of Albert Moreland, originally published in a now scanned fanzine (The Acolyte 10, pdf).
• Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Sep/Oct 2020 - I used to manage to keep up with Analog so that I would finish one before the other came around. Towards the middle of 2020, as I started accumulating RPG and other books, this fell by the wayside. I was also not very happy with the early 2020 issues, which made it easier to decide to cancel. I still have a backlog, and I finally finished this one. Mixed bag. Two stories that should express the gamut of the magazine pretty well are available from the publisher online: The Chrysalis Pool by Sean McMullen (pdf) is a weird tale with Arthur Machen vibes, while The Writhing Tentacles of History by Jay Werkheiser (pdf) is a more typical hard science fiction story, with animalistic aliens that would make fine inspiration for your next science fiction or fantasy game.