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Eerie Passages
Q: Where is the tunnel that is featured so prominently in the movie The Girl on the Train? I know it is supposed to be in Westchester, but I can’t figure out exactly where.—Nancy Markell, Somers
A: The immensely popular bestselling novel is set in London, but for the 2016 film starring Emily Blunt, Westchester County was chosen as the location, largely because of Metro-North’s Hudson Line. Turns out the screenwriter, Erin Cressida-Wilson, once dated a Vassar student, and she fell in love with the ride up the Hudson to Poughkeepsie.
According to Natasha Caputo of the Westchester County Tourism & Film office, the tunnel you are referring to is actually located in Irvington. The Station Road tunnel in the Spiro Park neighborhood serves as an underpass for the Old Croton Aqueduct pathway. It is a popular running and biking path that stretches over 26 miles.
If you’re expecting to witness the tunnel in full Hollywood-special-effect creepiness, I have a caution for you. The film crew used a glycerin-and-water misting machine to get that eerie effect on the underpass. There’s no guarantee Mother Nature will cooperate, should you want to run perilously through the tunnel in your own self-produced movie thriller.
The Last Laugh
Q: I recently noticed that the comedian Paul Virzi had the no. 1 comedy album on iTunes. Is that the same local comedian the magazine profiled a few years ago? —Shelley Adelman, Armonk
A: It certainly is, and a lot has happened since we wrote about Paul four and a half years ago.
You’re right about the album. Paul Virzi: Night at The Stand hit the top spot in the iTunes comedy album charts. It also reached no. 4 on Billboard’s top-100 comedy rankings.
Virzi has toured with comedy superstar Bill Burr; together they’ve played some rooms you might have heard of, like the Beacon Theatre, Carnegie Hall, and Madison Square Garden — in the main room. Yeah, that’s right, where the Knicks, Rangers, and Billy Joel play.
All of this has propelled Virzi to the next level. He’s now a headliner and in the process of setting up his own national tour. He’s a regular on the NFL Network; an hour-long comedy film is in the works that plans to shoot right here in Westchester, at the Tarrytown Music Hall, this spring.
It’s nice when a local boy makes good. Paul grew up in Westchester and currently lives in North Salem.
Glory Days
Q: My teenage son is a big Bruce Springsteen fan, and he insists The Boss never played The Capitol Theatre in Port Chester. I’ve told him that before Springsteen became super-big, he played places like The Cap — and not only that, one of his most famous shows from the late ’70s was there. Let the kid know that he has to clean out the garage, okay? —Josh Mandelbaum, Yorktown
A: Sorry, Pops. Junior is off the hook for garage detail this time.
Bruce never played The Capitol Theatre. Back in ’78, he did play venues of that size, but The Capitol’s floorboards were never graced with his motorcycle boots. In fact, the theater was closed during much of the ’70s because of an ordinance against music in the neighborhood.
Now, there was a legendary Bruce show at the Capitol — but that was in Passaic, NJ, in 1978. The tape of the concert, originally broadcast on local radio, was coveted by E Street aficionados for decades, and it holds a place in the pantheon of bootleg videos. Music Vault, a concert-video website, released a digitally remastered version of the concert in 2014, and although it is considered the pinnacle of the Darkness on the Edge of Town tour, most Springsteen fans worth their salt have had this tape for 30 years.
But don’t go racing through the swamps of Jersey to make a pilgrimage to the place. The wrecking ball ended The Capitol’s “glory days” back in 1991.
See what I did there?
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