Sneaking into abandoned places is as close as it gets to traveling back in time.
John Cirelly, a writer living in Cleveland, has spent the last decade exploring hundreds of places — from empty warehouses in Detroit to underground drains in Australia — for the chance to see crumbling architecture in a state of dilapidation.
The abandoned locations make for great Instagram material, sure, but Cirelly is part of the quiet community made up of hobbyists who dedicate much of their time to visiting forgotten sites and documenting what remains.
“You might walk through a place and see an old calendar on the wall and an old TV set,” Cirelly told me. “You cannot find that anywhere else. You can’t walk through something without guidelines and just experience a place as it is. There’s an inherent beauty to that.”
The urban exploration, or urbex, community congregates on a range of internet forums to share tips, recommendations and pictures of previous conquests (Cirelly runs his own site, UrbexUnderground, where he shares lessons from his experience). Discussion topics vary, from the best place to see the Eiffel Tower at night (an abandoned terrace called Le Palais de Chaillot) to the creepiest things uncovered during an exploration (a dismembered cat).
Sandi Hemmerlein, a former Atlas Obscura contributor who now runs the blog Avoiding Regret about her life in the Los Angeles area, said a favorite spot was the Lincoln Heights Jail, a century-old prison complex outside LA. Al Capone was among the inmates before the city decommissioned the jail in 1965, turning it into a movie location (Blink 182 shot part of the “Feeling This” video there) and then vandalism.
“I got in by posing as a location scout,” Hemmerlein told me, adding that she regrets the lie but celebrates the memory of entering the jail before it was covered in spray paint.
The most interesting part was the roof, which contained a little bit of a slice of life because there used to be a gym and a workout area for the prisoners up on the roof. You can look at the cells and cell block. If you’ve been to one jail you’ve been to them all. I’ve seen Alcatraz and Eastern State Penitentiary on tours, and those are great, but at Lincoln Heights it was like “Oh this is what life was really like for these guys.”
Preparation is key for a successful trip. Basic instructions come from internet forums or social media, but the best ideas seem to come from trusted networks of fellow explorers with experience. Loose lips and Instagram are helping a lot of people find secret spots, so hardcore community members tend to keep quiet about their favorite spots.
So the reconnaissance usually come down to doing the work yourself.
“It’s leveraging tools like Google Maps, finding a place on satellite view and then looking at county auditor sites to see who owns a place and how much they owe in back-taxes,” Cirelly told me. “If a property owner owes like $2 million in back-taxes, it’s probably safe.”
Cirelly said he was once arrested after mistakenly parking his car in front of a construction site, holding up work. Somehow, explaining to the cops that he actually was there to explore an abandoned building didn’t help his case.
“That was my fault,” he says now, adding later, “If we’re going to trespass, let’s at least do it right.”
John Bourscheid, who runs the @KillerUrbex and @JacksonvillePhoto Instagram pages, also said he looks at public records and online tax appraisers. A favorite technique: Find hazardous waste sites, and see if there are abandoned homes nearby. He plugs addresses into Google Maps and then zooms in on rooftops to inspect the quality and age.
“I found an old Coca-Cola plant from the 1920s and then it turned out the building next door had the roof cave in, with trees going through the rafters,” he told me.
“I realized this was a really bustling place and history and humidity and vandalism had turned into a really cool place,” Bourscheid said of a Jacksonville warehouse.
“Everything is on a clock. These buildings are not going to be up forever, and it’s important to see them before they’re burned down or demolished or turned into a hotel.”
The number of people taking shelter in abandoned locations has grown dramatically since COVID-19 hit, multiple people told me, resulting in urbex explorers bringing extra food or cash for the people they might encounter.
There’s also asbestos, lead paint, collapsed staircases and, sometimes, nuclear radiation. Sandi Hemmerlein took a break from exploring areas around Los Angeles to travel to Chernobyl, the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster in Ukraine. While watching the needle on a tour guide’s geiger counter max out, Hemmerlein also saw wildlife mingling with abandoned kids’ toys and hospital beds.
“There’s a contrast between standing in front of a literal nuclear power plant and then using a machate to go through overgrown trees,” she said. “Regular life is much more like black and white, in terms of either metropolitan or rural, whereas all this is like another planet.”
one more thing
Consider buying a print from Jason Linzer, who’s donating all the profits from his work to organizations dedicated to racial justice.
recommended reading
The Case of the Autographed Corpse: What happened when the author of the Perry Mason novels helped defend an Apache man wrongly convicted of murdering his wife. [@Jack_ElHai]
Worrisome New Coronavirus Strains Are Emerging. Why Now? The CDC estimates the COVID-19 variant from the U.K. will become dominant in the U.S. by March. This is the story of why that strain exist and why variants are a kind of referendum. [@MeganMolteni]
Lunik: Inside the CIA’s audacious plot to steal a Soviet satellite: How a team of spies in Mexico got their hands on Russia's space secrets — and tried to change the course of the Cold War. [@jeffmaysh]
A Vanishing Priest, a Wall of Secrecy and a 25-Year-Old Abuse Case: How some abusive priests continue to avoid accountability for molesting kids by operating in religious orders outside the Vatican’s jurisdiction. [@jennmorson]
$5 gigs, not $10M deals: the story of US punk label Dischord Records: When a bunch of teenage punks started a record label to release their friends’ music, they couldn’t have predicted they could become legends for their DIY aesthetic. The first line of this story sets the tone.“Do you know what I call an unplayed record?” asks Ian MacKaye. “A piece of fucking trash. It’s paper and plastic. So if I make something, I want to make sure it adds value.” [@DanielDylanWray]
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