Fun story in today’s NY Times (Metro section) about “train hoppers” that illegally ride freight trains across the country. Of course, the practice has been going on for decades, with Jack London, Jack Dempsey, and Jack Kerouac, not to mention other luminaries not named Jack, among the participants.

Bed-Stuy was home to the Hobo Film Festival this past week, with a variety of rail-riding films screened for a ragtag audience munching on free popcorn from metal cooking pots.

“It is pure, unadulterated, unhomogenized America,” rail-riding filmmaker Shawn Lukitsch said. “You see everything from the seediest underbelly of industrial areas to rural places to people’s backyards with laundry hanging on a line.”

Lukitsch, with train tracks tattoos on his wrist, was screening his 22-minute film “Spruce Pine to Bostic.”