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Urban Exploration. Yes? Yes.

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10:51 / 16.11.01

Used to do storm drain exploration here in Leicester, a lot, often when tripping.

Three great things about it

You never know where you're going to end up, yet remain attached to the mundane world.
The huge joy of knowing something the rest of the city doesn't.
The slight tinge of fear as you cross boundaries.

So we have something homely yet alien and tinged with transgresion.

Old canal networks are good too.

Is this something for a barbelith outing?

[ 16-11-2001: Message edited by: Ian Jones is not Luke Wing ]

14:40 / 16.11.01

I jolly well hope so.

I always wanted to explore sewers when I was kid. I teamed up with a pal and made a pact to live in the sewers and trek through the trans-Atlantic tunnel to America in search of the Ninja Turtles.

But obviously we didn't, because sewers tend to be full of shit and are generally not very nice.

14:41 / 16.11.01

quote:Originally posted by The Redcap's back.:
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.

Wow, I hope you didn't make that up. That sounds cool.

19:18 / 17.11.01

quote:Originally posted by Rizla Year Zero:
I always wanted to explore sewers when I was kid. I teamed up with a pal and made a pact to live in the sewers and trek through the trans-Atlantic tunnel to America in search of the Ninja Turtles.

But obviously we didn't, because sewers tend to be full of shit and are generally not very nice.

Lies! Sanitary sewers are generally full of shite -- storm sewers are for rain water and diverted streams, although animals sometimes forget that. "Storms", as they are known, are generally pleasant places to be (in my humble opinion).

15:28 / 19.11.01

I don't know if there were any 'storm sewers' where I come from. I never found any that weren't full of shit anyway..

16:22 / 19.11.01

quote:Originally posted by Rizla Year Zero:
I don't know if there were any 'storm sewers' where I come from. I never found any that weren't full of shit anyway..

Oh my.
In some places it is standard practice to use combination pipes. Basically, everything goes to the same place, usually a treatment plant. It's inefficient but it saves laying another set of pipes devoted to sewage. If you live in an old part of your city this may well be the case.

However, I found the Leicester City Council website and searched the documents and found that they do seem to draw a distinction between "foul" and ground water.

" No development approved by this permission shall commence until a scheme for the disposal of foul and surface water, including the protection and/or diversion of existing SEWERs, has been submitted to and approved by the City Council as local planning authority. The scheme shall be implemented in accordance with the approved scheme"

They do not, however, make it clear if there is a separate system for each.

[ 19-11-2001: Message edited by: Abydoss ]

17:21 / 19.11.01

I have spent many happy hours in the storm drains of Leicester and can wholly recommend them as a shite free urban walkway.

00:55 / 11.04.04

Maybe it's time this thread was revived, with some fresh blood.

The Vanishing Point (Draining in Ontario, Canada -- my site, just launched)

Sydney Cave Clan

Urban Glow (photos from Australia, and way better than mine)

Action Squad (underground St. Paul, Minnesota)

Exploring is incredible. It's like putting the defibrillator paddles to a heart and mind and soul deadened by modernity. It's tearing back the shrouds of the relentless abstraction and spectacle of post-industrial consumer capitalism and discovering a boundless world of mystery right around us, in our own cities. Incredible!

04:22 / 11.04.04

I've heard about tours given by Harvard University and MIT student organizations of lesser-known university catacombs, tunnels, and corridors leading all over Cambridge, MA. Not sure if that fits under Urban Exploration, but an interesting story:

During an anti-Vietnam war riot in Harvard Square, as teargas began to waft and cops chased protesters down streets, a friend of mine was led to escape by some secret Harvard society or another- into an alley by well-dressed Harvard students, led through a winding series of tunnels and passageways, and eventually into a perfectly circular room with leather armchairs and a white noise machine in the center. He was then led out when the coast was clear.

Maybe it was just the Harvard Lampoon people?

19:02 / 11.04.04

Underground sofas. Class.

I've been getting interested in this sort of thing since I've been in the US, actually - around here there are a lot of construction sites, and there's something about them that attracts me. They're in a state between "empty patch" and "building", two things that are familiar (though I'm sure that if you worked in construction you'd find "half-empty half-building" just as familiar and uninteresting).

There are also a lot of industrial sites that seem to the untrained eye to have been completely abandoned. It's really quite a good area for that sort of thing.

Not being a citizen, though, I'm a bit concerned about the legal issues in a foreign country. I feel a lot less comfortable than I would have in the UK.

Whale... Whale... Fish!

19:11 / 11.04.04

The story about the underground sofas is indeed very cool!
I used to live in Edinburgh and there's loads of underground streets and tunnels and stuff. As when there was a plague outbreak or anything they just built over the old street (residents included :S) and shifted the ground up a storey. Apparantly some go down 6 or 7 storeys! But a lot of them have been filled in with concrete to stop the old town collapsing and you run the risk of catching the plague but other than that...

19:21 / 12.04.04

I'm positive there was a Laboratory thread on this stuff....

It pops up in the Underground Tokyo thread, but I'm sure there's an older one.

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