The Brooklyn Rail

What will become of the COVID-era couple, face-masked and train-delayed, whose first date is forever commemorated in the opening and closing moments of Claire Read’s offbeat new short, Penn F—ing Station? It’s hard to be too hopeful: the deck is stacked against them. Theirs is a Love in the Time of Intractable Municipal Policy Failure. But perhaps they’ll hit it off. And perhaps their love will last—long enough, even, to witness a new, futile plan to fix woebegone Penn Station.

Ever since the ignominious demolition of Penn Station’s Beaux-Arts forefather in 1963, New York has faced an interminable question: what can be done to improve its most important—and most reviled—train station? There were a few brief years when Penn felt modern and clean (though critics lamented its “delight-proof … penitentiary style” as early as 1968), and the Madison Square Garden sports arena on its roof was once heralded for its unobstructed views. But those days quickly passed, and for the past three decades, an array of senators, governors, mayors, developers, legislators, and advocates have championed a variety of different plans to remodel, remedy, or entirely replace the increasingly decrepit train station.

The 2021 opening of Moynihan Train Hall solved part of the problem, allowing Amtrak to move its boarding process to the elegant confines of the former Farley Post Office. Yet just this modest upgrade (no tracks were added, service was not increased, and New Jersey Transit customers were ignored entirely) was a herculean undertaking which required nearly thirty years of negotiations, 1.6 billion dollars in funding, the blessing of the Dalai Lama, and even—much like the Holland Tunnel two miles south—claimed the life of its project manager.

Penn F—ing Station starts the clock a few months later, focusing on the political battle over real estate conglomerate Vornado’s 2020 plan to redevelop the blocks surrounding Penn Station. Under this proposal, Vornado would construct ten predominantly commercial towers, which the state would exempt from property taxes; the developer, in turn, would commit a portion of its roughly 1.2 billion dollars in tax savings towards renovations of the Penn Station complex. Even in the checkered pantheon of public-private partnerships, the Vornado scheme—which was mothballed in late 2022—was notably light on benefits for commuters, and notably heavy on windfalls for Vornado. Still, the plan was championed by governors Cuomo and Hochul, and, had it not been for a downturn in the commercial real estate market after COVID, construction would probably have broken ground around now.

Any time a politician so much as sneezes near Penn Station, an impossibly complex latticework of public, private, local, state, and federal stakeholders emerge to voice their support or misgivings. Filmmaker Read, keenly aware of her subject’s near-infinitely broad scope, narrows her film to the hyper-local opposition to the Vornado plan. Her core protagonist is Community Board 5 veteran Layla Law-Gisiko, a spirited French émigrée who mounted an unsuccessful campaign for New York State Assembly in 2022. Read’s limited framing is advantageous, both because it allows her to circumvent the duller minutiae of state bureaucracy, and because local politics tend to make up for in color what they lack in impact.

Read’s film shines as its subject matter grows more and more specific. With a fine sense of timing, and a Wiseman-esque instinct for idiosyncrasy, Read assembles indelible portraits of the people who live around, above, and inside the beleaguered station. It’s with quiet, assured direction that she follows Law-Gisiko to her campaign kick-off, from which we meet fervent supporter Steve Marshall, and from whom we meet Marshall’s local troupe of blind musicians. Soon, in perfect rehearsal room dissonance, we watch as the blind band practices the familiar theme from Midnight Cowboy. This is the sort of surreal, poignant scene that documentarians dream about at night, and Read luxuriates in the beguiling moment, cutting wide to the dark passageways of Penn as the music plays. Ratso Rizzo may be long gone, but his spirit is walking here.

Much like its namesake, and much like its city, Penn F—ing Station is often moving, often funny, and often tinged by tragedy. Read’s film is strongest in such moments of provocative elegy, as well as in its cheeky interviews with passersby, and striking interludes in the caverns of Penn. Dispatches from the Law-Gisiko campaign are lively, though they sometimes risk flattening a complex debate. While Law-Gisiko’s motives are noble, it’s worth remembering that others joined the fight against redevelopment for less altruistic reasons. Law-Gisiko’s primary donor, in fact, was real estate mogul Arnold Gumowitz, who owns an office tower marked for redevelopment in the Vornado plan. Gumowitz fought the plan not out of his commitment to affordable housing, or his fondness for a quirky, offbeat city, but rather to protect what he calls a “generational piece of property.” The protestors in Read’s film lament the loss of “historic” Midtown, but Gumowitz’s tower (and the Sbarro in its lobby) hardly seem treasures worth preserving. One wonders whether some critics would support any redevelopment at all. (Law-Gisiko, it’s worth noting, opposes even the modest City of Yes housing reform fighting its way through the City Council right now.)

Today, however, much of this debate is moot, since, like the commuter trains in its tunnels, the plan to rebuild Penn is delayed again. Vornado’s proposal is on indefinite hold, and while Governor Hochul has pledged to renovate the station without private financing, the intricacies of the state’s commitment remain to be seen. Today, rival redevelopment proposals abound, but all of these plans will require years of debate before any shovels hit soil.

New Yorkers are skilled at waiting; now they’ll wait some more. But if there’s any silver lining to this policy quagmire, it’s that the fascinating world Read records in Penn F—ing Station will live on just a little longer. Read’s viewers may even be moved, on their next trip out of town, to turn east on that long underground platform, to skip the splendor of Moynihan, and to come comfortably home to the flickering fluorescents of Penn. It’s still—to borrow from the mayor when it opened—a fun station.