The Tunnel — New York ’93

Before the night, there was the dream. The records we listened to in the Paris suburbs. The money we saved. And an idea that finally became a plane ticket: crossing the Atlantic to spend a night at the Tunnel.

I set off with my friend Boris and our friends from the suburbs. For the first time, we leave France for New York. We come for the music, to enter the world we know through records. The Tunnel would become one of the great institutions of hip-hop. For us, it is already a destination.

Then the door opens.

I step into the Tunnel. The night swallows me.

Hip-hop beats like a concrete heart. Beneath the red neon, sweat forms halos. The syllables of the Fu-Schnickens rush, collide, bounce. I feel the bass in my chest before I understand the words.

A kid from the Paris suburbs, I discover that this music has warmth, a scent, bodies. Boris is here. We crossed an ocean for this moment. Everything that once seemed so far away now surrounds us.

In my memory, it all mingles: cold metal, black incense, warm vinyl, a burst of lime, wet asphalt. And skin warmed by the night.

I left the Tunnel. Something stayed on me.

Years later, I try to give that trace a material form. A cold, electric opening. A dark, pulsing heart. A base that recaptures the warmth of bodies.

The Tunnel holds the memory of that first crossing. Of a friendship. Of a dream paid for with our savings that became, for one night, our reality.