Trains may not be Americans’ preferred mode of transportation, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their devoted fans.
Arlo Guthrie, Johnny Cash, and Willie Nelson have all sung about them.
Jack Kerouac, John Steinbeck, and William Vollmann have written about them.
And a man named Shawn Lukitsch , rail rider, documentarian, and organizer of the Hobo Film Festival, has made films about them. And he wants you to see them.
The Hobo Film Festival recently made a stop in New York City and will be in Brattleboro, Vermont tonight. Be sure to catch Lukitsch’s own 22 minute documentary, which splices together video clips and narratives of Lukitsch’s travel around the U.S. by box car.
This form of train travel, Lukitsch says, “is pure, unadulerated, unhomogenized America.”
Photo: Marky Bon (creative commons)
Julie Schwietert
Julie Schwietert Collazo is a writer, editor, researcher, and translator currently in New York, formerly of Mexico City and San Juan. She is Matador's managing editor and is the lead faculty member of MatadorU's travel writing program.
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