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Urban Exploration. Yes? Yes.

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13:53 / 21.09.01

To be honest, I couldn't for the life of me figure out which forum this belonged on.

Here's the thing. I'm curious as to how many people here are aware of, have an opinion regarding, or actively participate in Urban Exploration (or "Infiltration", as it were).

A defining quote, so as not to be entirely vague:
"Urban Exploration is just that: the extensive exploration of old, dangerous, off-limits or simply nifty places -- specifically those created by human civilization, as opposed to natural formations such as caves and canyons.
Why?
Why not?
Everyone has a different answer as to "why". Some say they're interested in the history of old and abandoned places. Some say it's for the rush of going where they're not supposed to, socially engineering, or putting their life or freedom in danger. There are those who hold that putting one's life in mortal peril makes one feel more alive.
Then there are those of us who just get a kick out of it."

Some good links for those of you who've never heard of the damn thing would be the page of the Infiltration zine, the PlanetJinx site, based more on experiences than exploration and, of course, my personal site, which I submit as not so much a plug as a clear indication of my experience with UE.

Aw, hell, it's a plug.

Really, though: any thoughts on it? Anyone have odd experiences or stories? Any thoughts on how UE relates to the revolutionary/non-conformist mindset in general?

And now, having used all of
- links,
- acronyms, and
- buzzwords,
I'm going to slink away feeling very very bad about myself.

[ 21-09-2001: Message edited by: Mister Snee ]

14:26 / 21.09.01

Is that akin to psychogeography, Mr Snee?

Or rather, to what psychogeography has become (I'm not too clear on this; wasn't it started by the Situationists? Has it subsequently been appropriated for other purposes?)

14:36 / 21.09.01

I wouldn't be surprised.

There's probably a whole dimension of psychogeography to be found (if not already established and based in) urban exploration.

I mean, sure, the streets are all well and good, but what about the subway tunnels and storm drains?

15:34 / 21.09.01

By the way, a word to you Australians out there:

Your storm drains are fricking fantastic.

http://www.caveclan.org

Spoiled!

17:03 / 21.09.01

I used to hike up storm sewers with my buddies. One of them, actually, we had to canoe up in low tide. It's quite a test, once you lose sight of the entrance, to keep going further.
One time, one of us wanted to get out so badly, he strongarmed a manhole cover off in the middle of a busy road. Luckily, there was a construction zone around that manhole and it was fairly late at night, so his arm wasn't taken off by a speeding pickup truck.
I think that might be the last time we went spelunking.
I dunno - I'd like to do it again.

17:10 / 21.09.01

This looks amazing. It's like that sense of exploring something when you were a kid. Trespassing. It's like urban rambling.
I sometimes think of the cities as these islands and there are villages with native communities who work and hunt and do their thing but there are also alot of alienated people. The are surrounded by people, but they are ultimately on their own. I think of them as Urban Robinson Crusoes. They do what it takes to survive.
This idea of exploring, the alienated, unused landscapes of the city fits in quite well with idea. Like Robinson exploring his island, building his summer house.
Erm, well yeah, anyway, that is the kind of stuff I think about.

17:22 / 21.09.01

I quite like that idea...

as for opening manholes in the middle of the street... what fun that is!

We've made exits from drains before in the middle of local fairs, next to crowded parks, and in all sorts of similarly scary places. It's more often than I'd care to admit that I end up with a crowd of bemused (but mostly silent) onlookers, watching up to seven or eight people climb out of a manhole, one after another. We usually just take stock of our crew and our bags, slide the lid back over, wave nonchalantly and trot off in our squishy shoes.

I think that'd be a hell of a détournement. I'm sure the odd individual who's been minding his own business on the street when a manhole in front of him cracks open and a voice from under the road says quietly, "hey, are there any police around?" is bound to look at the urban infrastructure he took for granted differently. For a while, anyway.

I've held conversations through gutterbox grates, and I've talked to people on the street from inside ventilation shafts in subway tunnels, having to shout over the noise when trains went by. I think the odd time that a perfectly normal, decent person gets unwittingly pulled into our strange little world is perhaps one of the most fun aspects of all this.

[ 21-09-2001: Message edited by: Mister Snee ]

18:48 / 21.09.01

We started calling it "Urban Exploration" this summer, to sound legit when someone asks us why we are nosing around ("We're an Urban Exploration club, you see..."

) but have been doing it for quite a while - me and my brother, plus a pair of friends.
We're not that much into trespassing into forbidden areas - we prefer to just take a few random turns and discover places where apparently nobody ever went, even if they're perfectly open to the public: secluded courtyards, back alleys and so on.
By night's the best - no people around, no noise.

So far the two best discoveries we made are four blocks of honest-to-goodness pre-WW2 country village surrounded by anonymous towers in the city's periphery (turn a corner, and it's dirt roads, houses with flower pots at the windows, people sitting out in the shade) and a fair-sized chunk of parkland at the back of an industrial complex.
Absolutely incredible.

18:49 / 21.09.01

We started calling it "Urban Exploration" this summer, to sound legit when someone asks us why we are nosing around ("We're an Urban Exploration club, you see..."

) but have been doing it for quite a while - me and my brother, plus a pair of friends.
We're not that much into trespassing into forbidden areas - we prefer to just take a few random turns and discover places where apparently nobody ever went, even if they're perfectly open to the public: secluded courtyards, back alleys and so on.
By night's the best - no people around, no noise.

So far the two best discoveries we made are four blocks of honest-to-goodness pre-WW2 country village surrounded by anonymous towers in the city's periphery (turn a corner, and it's dirt roads, houses with flower pots at the windows, people sitting out in the shade) and a fair-sized chunk of parkland at the back of an industrial complex.
Absolutely incredible.

Frances Farmer

19:28 / 21.09.01

This topic could easily become more critical than it's originators have imagined in the next five years.

19:48 / 21.09.01

What, exactly, are you thinking of?

I do know, since the WTC disaster, that it's going to be a while before we start creeping around any big-name sites again (CN Tower, Skydome, Toronto city hall, that sort of thing)... the current paranoia running high would probably come down on us quite hard if we got caught in a machine room or on a roof with a bag full of assorted toys.

22:14 / 21.09.01

one of the most fascinating experiences I have had was getting into a construction site (while drunk, obviously) in the middle of the night and wandering around the guts of what later became a sizeable Edinburgh hotel.

the experience of walking through Docklands at 2am is more alien than that provided by any drug. You are the only human being, literally, for miles, surrounded by abandoned cranes and half-finished towers.

I find the urban landscape more beautiful than anything nature creates on its own. As well as aesthetic beauty you have human meaning.

I am actually in the process of putting together a site of my own urban landscape pictures. I'll post something when I have done so.

22:47 / 21.09.01

...Ice Honkey can attest to the beauty of the building I called home outside Philadelphia...the Benson. Twelve floors of unmatched mediocrity and beauty. While I lived there, they begun reconstruction of the building..knocking down walls, pulling out wiring from the ceiling, opening up passage closed for 70 years...

In the 2nd sub-basement...there was a locked stairwell and a cage elevator that didn't work and only went down...doors hidden in old bathroom stalls...leading to shower stalls strewn with newspapers rotting since the sixties and a single fading flourescent light overhead.

The banging complained about by the downstairs unit when no one was in ours...honestly...the best home I ever had.

Loved the old tressle down the end of my street too...

We're The Great Old Ones Now

01:03 / 22.09.01

Tom fixed this link for his drunken friend so that it wouldn't deform the page...

[ 22-09-2001: Message edited by: Tom Coates ]

13:06 / 22.09.01

Neat. Compared to the rest of the world (or even the continent, or country, or province), I seem to be living in an infiltration wasteland. I live in one of the fastest-growing cities on the continent (so nothing's ever left abandoned), right on a lake (so the drains don't have to be very large, and they aren't), and still too small to be important in the past or present (read: no bunkers, no transit tunnels, no bridge rooms, no buildings large enough to be interesting). The only real kicks to be found here are the odd nifty construction site and the few decent drains we've found (of which we regularly arrange tours for curious friends and acquaintances

).

Thus, when possible, we migrate to Toronto (where there is much subway tunnelish, abandoned buildingesque, large draineriffic fun to be had), and more rarely out of the country (downtown Detroit is an urban explorer's dream).

Nonetheless, I'd really like to go overseas, but I can't damn well afford it. The catacombs in Paris, bunkers in Germany, the storm drains in Australia -- good god, the storm drains in Australia...

But I can't damn well afford it.

Sigh.

Those of you who aren't living in the same city as me don't realize how lucky you are.

Unless you're in PEI. It's worse.

15:07 / 22.09.01

quote:Originally posted by w1rebaby:

the experience of walking through Docklands at 2am is more alien than that provided by any drug. You are the only human being, literally, for miles, surrounded by abandoned cranes and half-finished towers.

I actually started this urban exploration thing when I was in London - sharing an apartment with a few other students gave me lots of good reasons to be out of there late at night/early in the morning.
Nothing compares to Covent Garden at 6 a.m. on an winter sunday morning.

As for security problems in the future - yeah, I had overlooked the fact that it will be a while before crawling around deserted office buildings is an harmless hobby again.
Brings the current situation closer home than all those TV specials.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

15:52 / 22.09.01

This is a fantastic idea. Reminds me of a night in Willesden, when the whole area became a new site for exploration (including bunkers, a shed, and a building on the verge of collapse. Mind you, acid was involved.) As far as psychogeography goes, I only know Iain Sinclair & the LPA, and try as I might, I haven't been able to find any decent info on its Situationist origins (any pointers would be handy). Urban Exploration, though- I like it. I have to stop being so boring and do more of this shit. Consider yourself inspirational.

16:49 / 22.09.01

Wow, I've never been inspirational. What a rush!

17:07 / 22.09.01

Checked out yer site..looks great.
A few years back some friends and I were exploring some of the service tunnels that run under one of the local unniversities. We were very carefull to avoid the cameras (oddly enough, the were NONE.) On our return we we supprised to turn a corner and find ourselves surrounded by about 5 cops. It seems that they had motion detectors instead of cameras..those sneaky bastiches! After a good 5 minutes speech about how we were just lost trying to find our class we were let go. I think the cops were laughing at our story. Humour is a great weapon.

BTW anyother exploreres(sp?) in montreal?

17:15 / 22.09.01

Hehe, thanks. I'm hearing about more and more universities installing motion detectors in their steam tunnels, which is a real shame.

Our policy if we encounter police is to tell the honest-to-god truth: "We were just exploring this storm drain, officer. We thought it was public property?"

That or "it's okay, we're with the UEC", just 'cuz it's fun to say.

07:39 / 24.09.01

the cave clan occasionally organise parties in the storm drains - cue bad jokes about 'underground raves'. i'm a wee bit claustrophobic for dancing underground, but i've heard they're pretty amazing, surreal, slightly nerdish...

18:27 / 24.09.01

Well, how about abandoned hotels?

Sarasota, when I was in school there, was a goldmine of abandoned mansions and Gilded Age opulence gone all condemned....

The Ringling Hotel got razed, unfortunately, and one of the prime mansions got bought up by the school.

The weird thing to me wasn't the big empty building, gone all weeds, collapsed floors and pigeon nests... it was the signs that people were still going there, still living in empty rooms, hanging their clothes in woodrot closets.

Eeerie.

14:15 / 25.09.01

quote:Originally posted by Nick:
Tom fixed this link for his drunken friend so that it wouldn't deform the page...

[ 22-09-2001: Message edited by: Tom Coates ]

Babelfish provides this rough translation of Darken worlds. Shelter, tunnel, gewoelbe under Berlin.

"Brief description:
The mysterious dark worlds under Berlin are for the public not accessible and even the responsible person of the city give up them every now and then mysteries. Many documents were lost in the war, so that for surprise new underground systems emerge again and again.
The authors of the book made it with her working group citizen of Berlin Unterwelten it's duty to bring light into this darkness. They fully researched in and foreign files, asked time witnesses and explored locally stations without track link, connecting courses without door and Betonkolosse without each function. They tell the history of the various use citizens of Berlin of the background and report thereby of Gruften and brewery cellars exactly the same as of drains slots, pneumatic delivery lines, shelters and blind tunnels."

(I'm guessing gewoelbe means "golfing", Betonkolosse means "bedclass", and Gruften means "kangaroo".)

Oh, and here's a review I love:

5 stars: " A city inspection of the special type... , 16 September 1999
Rezensent: wrd@itbnet.de from Porta Westfalica, NRW
City tours by pulsating Berlin are offered to this city as well known at almost each corner - this book however loads underworld, by underground slots, crosswise to a unique, fascinating round travel by the mysterious citizens of Berlin tunnel and bunkers in, which can be more interesting and more excitingly hardly... The detailed sections of figures, plans are completed and particularly by a multiplicity of completely protruding color photos. This book is MUST for everyone, which is particularly interested in the history of this city.

I love it.

Clavis

15:26 / 26.10.01

Urban Exploration as a business?
Recently I have heard many fellow infiltrators discussing UE as a business. The idea being that is it a ‘physical security’ thing, you essentially try and break into a building. Of course you are only try to break in because you have been hired to.

I know one man who actually does this for a living, but is it really the same type of ‘infiltrating’ that most urban explores do?

From my personal experience we don’t try and break into things, we visit them and occasionally the entrance needs a little help, but never just to break-in. Or am I wrong?

And, only vaguely on the same note: what about train-hopping?

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

16:02 / 26.10.01

coupla years back a few friends and myself infiltrated a middle school that had a courtyard in the middle, we had to climb the roof and jump down into the middle, then pile up plastic furnoiture to climb out
was more fun than i have had in a while

20:13 / 26.10.01

I don't really have any personal experiences; I did manage to get myself deliriously lost in the various buildings on the Berkeley campus, but I never ended up anywhere I wasn't supposed to go, that I know of.

I do seem to remember that there was an article in, I believe, The Happy Mutant Handbook called "Building Hacking". Same philosophies of poking around and not breaking or stealing anything.

(I did get to wondering when reading your site: What happens if only some of you are killed?)

23:38 / 26.10.01

quote:Originally posted by doubting thomas:
(I did get to wondering when reading your site: What happens if only some of you are killed?)

Well, we hide the bodies of those who were killed in a drain. I mean...

Actually we have always wondered that, you know, "what if one of us falls through a floor?" I suppose that it would be our obligation or duty, if you will, to tell the respective infiltrators family. Which of course would be worse than dealing with the Police, in my meager opinion. "Hello Mrs. Krall, we were out with your son last night and, well, there was an accident."

So, that is why we have our cyanide with us at all times

By the way, I am not an alter ego of Mister Snee's, I am 'Asher' of UEC... just in case anyone was wondering.

04:38 / 27.10.01

Chicago has this wonderful Pedway system that nobody ever uses except to go their trains. It's kind of like the skyways in Minneapolis, and the underground tunnels in Canada that connect buildings to other buildings there, but those things serve a purpose that the Pedway is supposed to serve but never properly does.

I've lived here for 4 years and I'm still trying to figure out where the Pedway goes.

This week, I finally figured out how to get from the AON Center, where I work, to the El. I've actually been trying to figure this one out since I worked for a different company in the same building two years ago.

The neat thing is there WERE all these stores down there but now most of them are gone and it's just little shells of stores and murals and people sleeping down there for warmth. One establishment still exists, though: "HinkY Dink's" - an underground bar! I don't know when it opens but it closes at 7. I'm perpetually fascinated by who knows about it, who's there, how they found it, and who works there.

13:38 / 27.10.01

Cool read jinxmag and infiltration a while back, pity theres nothing similar for the UK. There's a few personal sites and for some serious people interested in bunkers and the like.

Only time I've actually done anything like it is to walk into an old mostly abandoned train yard in newcastle, they've recently ripped up all the old equipment and taken the cool rusting trains away but it was very cool bit of urban decay there for a while. Got some cool photos out of it.

hmm what a cool idea for an article for the Barbelith zine, tom would love you for it :-)

[ 27-10-2001: Message edited by: invisible_al ]

15:15 / 27.10.01

THis is something that's fascinated me for a while. NOt that I've done a lot of UE, but bits and peices here and there when I'm off wandering on my own. When I lived out in the country, I used to find aold fences and follow them to wherever they led. There's a huge storm drain near where I live, and when I was a kid we'd go off adventuring in it. It led to one of those big sluiceways. And the construction sites are always interseting.

Y'all should read a story by Robert Charles Wilson in his "Perseids" collection, the name of which escapes me, about exploring Toronto. It's very much in the spirit of what you've all been talking about.

I expect I'll be back after a few adventures. Once again, consider yourselves inspirational.

Zoom.

01:24 / 02.11.01

We at UEC have been contacted by the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), they wish to do a story about urban exploration and want to come with us on an expedition. So, can the media portray UE as anything other than an eccentric obsession? Or could the media's selective filtering, if you will, make it come across as either criminal or ridiculous?

Basically, if you were in our shoes (or have been) would you get involved with the media or tell them to bugger off?

02:02 / 02.11.01

oh, i like this.

a friend took me climbing on the Williamsburgh bridge one night - we saw an amazing moonrise and all of madhattan. [there are stairs]

here is a site for an UE group that a friend organizes.
http://www.darkpassages.com

enjoy

02:08 / 02.11.01

Abydoss:
As much as I prefer the CBC (compared to CNN) my opinion is say no. The minute everyone knows about it then everyone will do it and it just wont be the same..goverment involvement ect..Just look what happened to murder once the goverment go wind of it...now only they can do it, all the rules and regulations...arrrgh!

19:51 / 14.11.01

Can anyone point me toward information on UE in Amsterdam? I'm writing a book set there, and want to set a group of characters wandering about...

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

08:30 / 15.11.01

Fascinating subject. Not something I'd do myself but really interesting.

I was wondering do any of you ever come into contact with underground communities. I understand that New York has a sizeable "Mole Man" community, Paris has a big underground community, including one interesting sounding chap called the "King of the Skinheads", I think London has one and there are cities in Eastren Europe (either Poland or Romania) who are infested with subterainean goth satanists, though I may have made that up.

As for the media, it would depend on what you wish to accomplish with your exporations. If you have either a political or even just informational agenda, I would say yes but be prepared for a negative result (though I don't believe that would definitly be the case).

Good thread though.

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