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Empty cities

  
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
16:49 / 14.04.02
I used to go into Nashville with some friends in the middle of the night. We'd take our skateboards and just run around town until dawn, looking for fun places to skate. Naturally, I had to stop this when I moved to Detroit. But I miss it. And I can't really do it here; Detroit is not really that kind of city. Inner-Nashville is a pretty safe place. It doesn't get dangerous until you reach the outskirts. Detroit is the complete opposite, it feels like the deeper you get, the cheaper your life gets.

But Detroit is not what I want to talk about right now. The point of this topic was that late at night, way down on sixth avenue, the streets would be completely empty except for five or six of us doing tricks off benches, stairs, statues, buildings, curbs and cars. Once, I looked over at my pal Steve-O, who was just sitting still, looking up and around. "hey steve-O watch this shove-it!" and still he was just looking around at the buildings and the sky. So I walked over to him and asked him what was up.

"Look around, man. We're the only people in the whole fucking city." And I looked, and by god, I couldn't see evidence of human life anywhere. The streetlights weren't on. The only light was from the full moon. All the cars looked like spooky skeletons that hadn't moved in years.

"It's a graveyard, man. It's a fucking graveyard." This was Brian who had now joined us in looking around at the dead city. Eventually, everyone was just standing and looking and straining to hear something that suggested that there was life somewhere in the city besides right there. It was so dark and so quiet, and it felt really cool. We walked around for a while, looking for better places to skate, and never saw another person. It was great.

Even a relatively small city like Nashville doesn't get cleared out on weeknights. There's always someone doing something. I've spent weekends just walking around, sleeping on benches, and there's always been either some street-cleaners, or cops patrolling, or latino gangs cruising around. I couldn't figure out what had happened. And it wasn't the last time it happened, either. Many times we would be out skating and whenever we reached the far end of sixth avenue, it was like we had just walked into a ghost town.

Has anyone else seen a city completely empty? I mean totally lifeless, with no evidence that anyone had been there in years? I don't imagine it happens in larger cities like London or New York, but I never guessed it would happen in Nashville either. It's like it's a completely different city.
 
 
Shortfatdyke
17:30 / 14.04.02
i've walked around my parent's village and down to the beach just before sunrise, and it's desolate, but never done it in a city, which must be much wierder.

lovely story!
 
 
Captain Zoom
18:20 / 14.04.02
Oakville's a small city, but a city nonetheless. My brother and I enjoy smoking a joint and walking all the odd little footpaths and sidestreets late at night. Being a rich city there's a fair police prescence, but if you know where to go, it's fun.

Evil Zoom.
 
 
fluid_state
20:43 / 14.04.02
detroit has scared the living hell out of me by being a ghost town... at three in the afternoon. right by the baseball stadium, no-one on the streets, driving by boarded, charred storefronts; ragged cardboard rolling down the street like tumbleweed. a pack or two of sullen adolescents glaring out from behind the ocasional (otherwise abandoned) gas station. Fun place, 10 years ago. Haven't really seen it since.

Happens in Toronto, too. Sunday morning in a January blizzard down Yonge street. No one but me and the homeless at 5 am. No cars, no people, dead streetlights on the city's "main" street.
 
 
wembley can change in 28 days
20:58 / 14.04.02
5:am is about the only time that happens in Toronto. I remember a glorious February morning when I was on my way to the airport to go to London. Snow had been falling for about two hours and was a blanket over everything. The whole city was fast asleep, and I walked from my house in the annex to the Delta Chelsea downtown to catch the airport express bus, walking almost the whole way in the middle of the streets, looking back every once in a while to see my own footprints as the only reminder of the place being inhabited at all, and even the footprints were slowly being obsolesced by the snow. Tres beautiful.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
23:32 / 14.04.02
About a year ago, I was in London on a Sunday with a friend who lives there. It was midday, and the place was absolutely lifeless. Couldn't hear any vehicles, couldn't see any other pedestrians... nothing. Brought back memories of that childhood fantasy about waking up one day and finding that everyone else has disappeared, leaving me free to take what I want, go what I want, do what I want.

Just like a zombie movie, only without the hordes of flesh-eating undead.

Living in a village just outside a smallish town, the streets are always empty after about 12AM. Walking back from a night out or a friend's house, it's brilliant. The dark, me on my own, it's like I own the roads and buildings. Not being a driver, the ability to walk down the middle of the main road is strangely (pathetically?) liberating.
 
 
Persephone
00:16 / 15.04.02
This is the opposite of empty, but has the same feeling-tone... this happened two times, once on a New Year's Day after a horrendous snowstorm and once in the middle of a heat wave when the power grid melted down.

For the first one, the city was utterly buried in snow. I used to take the commuter train downtown to work --only two stops and ten minutes normally, but the train couldn't run & you realized that there was no way that you could get to this place that you had grown accustomed to thinking was ten minutes away. No El, no buses, no cabs, and you couldn't get your car out of the garage with the alley two feet with snow. There was nothing that could be done until the snow was cleared away. So everyone was out shovelling.

For the second one-- no power, no airconditioning. Inside it was just like inside an oven. Dark, for one. And you could feel the heat radiating from things in the house, you could hold your hand six inches away from the table and feel the heat moving under your hand. So everyone was out sitting on their porches fanning themselves --in the pitch black, since the streetlights weren't working.

Both times, I couldn't stop looking at all the people. You just don't normally see that many people all out at once... yet they're there inside their houses all around you all the time. So the feeling I'm trying to describe that I had... I was thinking about the next time that I was going to see the street empty, how that empty was going to seem more full than I used to think.
 
 
Trijhaos
00:50 / 15.04.02
Back in February or March of 1994, there was this huge ice storm. It took a week for the entire town to get the power back. Everything was covered in ice. There were no lights shining out of windows, no people; nothing. Everybody stayed in the house and huddled in their blankets. I walked up the street to the corner and usually when school was out you'd hear children playing. Not this time, all I heard was the crunch of my feet on the ice as it cracked under my tennis shoes and the shattering of tree limbs in the distance. It was really spooky. I knew there were people in these empty looking houses. I knew in the distance somewhere, electric crews were trying to restore power. Of course, the spooky feeling was dispelled as on the way home, I slipped on some particularly icy patch of road and fell flat on my face.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
12:55 / 15.04.02
Not really a city, but an off-season British seaside resort ('specially on Sunday morning) has got to be the spoookayest place around.
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
17:05 / 15.04.02
Trijhaos: I remember that. The Tennessee ice storm of '94. I was still here in Detroit at the time, but I remember people telling me about it a year later when I moved and the look of awe on their faces when I told them "Bah! That happens three or four times a year in Detroit." Which it doesn't, really, but it does get pretty bad up here pretty often.

Good god, I can't imagine what downtown detroit would be like empty. This city scares me. Then again, so did Nashville before I got used to it and the people. Maybe I just need to spend a few weekends living in the streets and getting to know the hobo element.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
09:11 / 16.04.02
While it's going to be nowhere as well-constructed as the other tales here, I have to second E Randy's thoughts of London. It's amazing how empty the city is - the financial district, really - on the weekend. All the architecture, be it rebuilt shite or old-and-gargoyle-filled seems to take on some kind of a more menacing aspect; it's like there's a secret language going around that you can't understand. It's very, very odd. Also related; though it's in the middle of a busy area, Christ Church in Spitalfields always makes me feel like there's nobody around...
 
 
w1rebaby
09:33 / 16.04.02
If you want to experience utter London emptiness, try Docklands on a weekend night.

I was thrown off at Canary Wharf station after a fire alert; once the alert had finished, there were no more trains. I was living in the East End at the time and thought that I'd be able to get a cab.

The entire Isle Of Dogs was empty. If you don't know the area, it's office blocks and office blocks under construction. There were no construction workers there, but they'd left all the floodlights on, so the sites were very sharply and clearly lit, just empty.

I actually tried to get past the security barriers so that I could wander round them - I love empty construction sites, they're like playgrounds, particularly when they're nicely lit for my benefit - but unfortunately I couldn't, and I was also very tired. I didn't manage to get a cab, though... I walked back the whole way to Bethnal Green.
 
 
sleazenation
10:12 / 16.04.02
posted byMordant C@rnival At 15:55 15.04.2002:
Not really a city, but an off-season British seaside resort ('specially on Sunday morning) has got to be the spoookayest place around.

Oooooh yes. When I was living in Toronto one this was one of the 3 things about the UK I missed...
 
 
grant
15:49 / 16.04.02
I love sleeping cities, but down here, our major thoroughfare is I95, and there's *always* people driving on I95. A bit disgruntling.
 
 
rizla mission
08:14 / 17.04.02
I lot of those non-descript towns in mid-Wales seem like ghost-towns during the rush hour, let alone in the middle of the night.. a great area to set a horror movie..

Also, way out in the countryside where I am now, assuming all the neighbours are at work/school (looks out of the window to check their cars) I'm possibly the only human being within about half a mile.. imagine that..
 
 
grant
13:09 / 17.04.02
Yeah, I will say Florida in summer (moreso when I was littler) just empties out. It's creepy. A lot of restaurants and places close up. Driving is easier. Winter homes get boarded up as the snow birds fly north. Solitude at night is one thing, but solitude at high noon - that's a little "Day of the Dead"-ish.
 
 
Re-Set
14:54 / 17.04.02
I've always called this The Neverwhere Effect. It's happened to me once in LA, and more often than you'd expect in NYC. There is defintiely a quickening that occurs when you realize you're alone outside in the sleeping giant.
 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
19:26 / 17.04.02
this was how i used to feel after a Rave, when i would be walking a few blocks to where i was parked and wondering why no on appreciates the city at 4 am
 
 
Tamayyurt
19:39 / 17.04.02
My and my friends walk around Miami at all hours of the night. It doesn'y get too empty but the crackheads and hookers don't bother us much. Actually we like overpasses. And like grant says they're never empty but the feeling is totally alien... sorta like bladerunnr.
 
  
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