It’s from the streamed clams they’re having.
Ah yes, the classic New York fog machine. Turns out it’s not for dramatic effect—just the city’s 19th-century steam system still doing its thing. Who needs modern infrastructure when you’ve got built-in Gotham vibes?
yo mama’s farts
There’s a lot of things under the streets of New York, many of them cause heat. In order to cool them off the heat is vented outside and the warm moist air meets with the cool dry air and condensates into droplets that we see as steam. Same affect as breathing out on a cold day, you’re not creating steam but it looks that way because the warm moist air from your breath is condensing in the cool dry air.
Could you name one thing that would cause heat under streets? It’s kinda hard to believe tbh
Subway brakes.
Ehhhhhhhh
When you take a hot shower where do you think that water is going?
Wouldn’t it cool off in the sewer, though?
Yes but hot water continues to flow in.
And it doesn’t need to stay very hot. It just needs to be warmer than the outside air temperature in order for vapor to form.
The ground and continuous hot water input keeps everything insulated.
But cold water is also continuously flowing in. And as someone said, it perhaps cools down quickly. Is that all and all enough for such a dense vapor cloud to appear as in pic?
More hot water than cold water is flowing in. It’s a simple thermodynamics problem
How so, or do you just wanna sound smart
If it is colder above ground, than the ambient temperature of the ground, IIRC that’s somewhere in the 50° F range, and less humid than the sewers, sure.
Pipes transferring steam.
The New York City steam system includes Con Edison’s Steam Operations, a piped steam system which provides steam to large parts of Manhattan. Other smaller systems provide steam to New York University and Columbia University, and many individual buildings in New York City also have their own steam systems. The steam is used to heat and cool buildings and for cleaning and disinfecting. It is the largest such system in the world and has been in operation since 1882.
Wow, that was quite a read, thanks. Amazing technology
Whole parts of Eastern Europe still transport Steam for heating.
What you think of is district heating, it (usually) just uses warm/hot water instead of steam.
Amazing for the 1800s
We have these in Lansing MI too! Part of the Satanic Panic back in the 80s involved kids playing D&D down in parts of the steam tunnels under MSU, which, I’m told, is much harder to do now unfortunately
We have these in Lansing MI too! Part of the Satanic Panic back in the 80s involved kids playing D&D down in parts of the steam tunnels under MSU, which, I’m told, is much harder to do now
unfortunatelyvery fortunately since children don’t know how to look out for a superheated steam leak and it was only a matter of time before a child got fucking bisectedFtfy
Wow this makes me realise why so many movies set in New York I watched in the 80’s and 90’s often had steam coming up from the ground.
The tubes are there to raise minor steam leaks above street level so they don’t hinder visibility.
Another interesting underground quirk we have is our pneumatic tube mail system.
Haha Roosevelt Island trash system go pshew
Wait those pneumatic tube things are real?? I always thought it was like 1960s sci-fi. Like what they thought the future would be like
It was the fastest way to get original physical documents from one side/floor of the building to another.
When I was a kid that was the standard way that banking drive throughs worked, too. You’d drive up to the multi-lane drive through, each station would have a pneumatic tube for handing off cash or checks or receipts between the car and the teller in the window. It pretty much ended when ATMs could start handling cash and checks.
Are these not the norm for bank drive thrus now?
I haven’t seen a new bank branch open with a drive through in a long, long time. Most banks just have multiple ATMs in the drive through, as there’s very little you’d need a teller to do compared to what the ATMs can do now.
Ah I’ve never seen that. Big city? ATM vendors sucks… Can’t imagine banks here surviving without tellers. I’ve only seen multiple teller drive throughs and an ATM eating one of the drive through spots.
Oh shit you’re right. I think I vaguely remember banks having those when I was really young. I mostly remember the suckers they’d give us tho. Fuck those things are cool tho. We should bring them back
They’re still a thing. You can still find them at banks with drive thru tellers. My local department of motor vehicles has a drive thru for vehicle registration so you can do your inspection and registration without leaving your car. You send the registration documents back/forth via pneumatic tubes.
They left? All the banks still use them in the middle of the US. So do drive through pharmacies that have an extra lane.
Those things used to be on every single bank drive-up teller booth in the 80’s and 90’s.
As a European, the idea of a bank having a drive-through is just absolutely wild.
They use a lot of steam for heating still
What the other comments aren’t mentioning is that, as you’ve probably learned, poops steam. Put a lot of poops under the ground (i.e. sewers) and that steam has to go somewhere, due to various complex thermodynamic principles that are probably beyond the scope of this question.
With respect, I believe you may have confused New York with Cleveland.
Despite the fact that poo steams if it is really cold outside, I have a strong suspicion they did not build a smoke stack to release a cloud of shit-smelling steam in the city.
Based on media set in New York, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.
It’s not poop. It’s people running hot water. That hot water needs to go somewhere and that somewhere are the sewers.
Hot water flowing through the sewers is warmer than the air temps. The air being vented from the sewers is also hot because of the water.
As the hot air comes into contact with cold air outside of the sewers you see vapor form as the cold air squeezes condensation from the hot air.
That isn’t steam, it’s smoke. Smoke from the smoked hams we’re having. Mmmm, smoked hams.
I thought that was from the streets of Albany?
no, there it was the other way round, pay attention
Ah, so it was the streets of Utica.
Surely you mean smoked clams?
Ooh. I know this one. Parts of NYC still use a steam heating system that was first designed in the late 1800’s:
You should tell this guy.
Thank you. There’s so many people responding with unhelpful answers.
Wow that’s neat
No, that’s heat.
Yeet the heat or beat the meat
Yeet the meat not the heat.
Denzel movie used the steam pipes
I immediately thought of this tune for some reason.
That’s not smoke. It’s a space station.
That’s no moon, it’s… oh, wait… shit.
The CHUDs are having a BBQ. Guess the markets closed for the day.
I think it’s important, at this point, to differentiate between NYC CHUDs, and your common racist shitbag chud. NYC CHUDs are many things, but not racist dickbags.
I’m just referencing the movie, but if you think that there are not racists in NYC, you haven’t talk to enough New Yorkers.
Believe it or not. Very old infrastructure in the city. Still runs on steam power.
I swear I thought this answer was about as accurate as the one that said “dragons”.
How steampunk for probably the largest city in the world to use steam in this day and age? I love it…
I’m going to have to interject, NYC is the 11th [or 35th] largest city.
11th, OR 35th? Could you explain?
Or 3rd or 76th.
It depends on how you define the city, here’s my source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities
That list is from 2018
NYC didn’t grow any more populous since.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/14/nyregion/nyc-population-decline.html
I don’t know why they include the surrounding areas as part of the city population. The 5 boroughs is roughly 8 million people. If you live in jersey city, you shouldn’t be counted as part of nyc population
I don’t know why they care about population https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_by_area clearly land is more important because land votes not people.
