Urban Exploring - Hobby of yours?

[Chachi]

marys tower, from weirdnj near flemington nj. consiquently it has burned down since ive been there. these are old shots from 2005 with a point and shoot.




paulinskill viaduct off rt 80 in north jersey







farm colony, staten island ny.







abandoned church by my house in nj, some couple got married at it last halloween.


i've got more from mental hospitals, but they're on my externalhd. we will see if laziness will prevail.

[kts]

Kts all of those pics look great, I especially like the chemical plant.

Thanks!

kts' European Vacation, part 3

After a short night of sleep due to a lot of warm beer and a 5am wake up time we make the short drive to our first location only to find the entry has been recently welded. Bummer. On to the next location.

After much driving where I thought for sure we had crossed into Germany or France driving down roads labeled by my GPS as "Road" or "Unknown Road" we eventually ended up at this nice castle like structure that used to be part of a large hospital complex. Inside it looked like a home fit for royalty. The usual entry was sealed so Bartje pretended he was Spiderman, climbed up a wall onto a small balcony and in a window where he then opened up a far easier window for the rest of us to go into.

The basement, Like a bad 70s porno


Fancy


Royalty






Fireplace turned TV cabinet


Every thread needs a lonely chair


We continued our journey and went into France. Along the way we saw a massively impressive church and decided to have lunch out in front of it. It was underdoing renovations and the front door was left unlocked so we snuck in to take a few photos of it.



Hand held, 6400ISO. I <3 my D700


Hand held, 6400ISO. I <3 my D700


Then we made our way to a small church high up in the hills. It too was under going restoration but I thought it was pretty cool so we took a few photos of it.







We then made our way to a famous vehicle graveyard. I think it has been cleaned out since our visit. Bartje just told us to park in the middle of a farmer's field next to the graveyard. The pissed off farmer kicked us out a few minutes later. It was amusing to see Bartje and Martino tell the farmer to F' off and kept on shooting.

Post-apocalyptic traffic jam




On our way in I met this cow. It make sounds like a squealing pig.


Next stop - Terre Rouge!








On our way out of town we stopped at a grocery store and picked up some stuff to grill and in the middle of freaking nowhere we set up the grill Bartje brought and had a nice little BBQ complete with more warm beer.


We then went to a former railroad station built for a king. We had planned to just take some quick shots of it but we got there it was like a party was breaking out there. When we arrived we disturbed 2 young lovers who were hoping for a nice romantic weekend. Sorry about that! Minutes later a group of 20 people arrived with kids and dogs in tow and set up a BBQ. We decided that this would be an excellent spot to camp out at for the night.

The unamused lovers


I was too busy trying to sleep, mANVIL took this awesome night shot of
the action.


At one point it got really cold so I bailed to the car to try to get some sleep. A few hours later msb woke me up screaming "DUDE!" I was still half asleep and yelled "WTF? Hey what's what noise? And what's up with the flashing lights?"

Around 3am a bunch of folks showed up with a mobile DJ rig, lighting, and a generator and had an after hours rave party.

Photo by msb


Only in Belgium...

[10Toes]

Kts all of those pics look great, I especially like the chemical plant.

[Lof8]

a girl whos butt i was peeing in for a period was into it, pretty cool to do sometimes.

pics of said butt?

[dkbmxer002]

a girl whos butt i was peeing in for a period was into it, pretty cool to do sometimes.

[kts]

kts' European Vacation part 2

After the long trip over to Belgium and hitting the ground running off to abandonments mANVIL, msb, and myself were pretty damn tired. We slept in at Chateau Formule 1 for most of the morning and then headed off to a wonderful lunch at Chez Delhaize (Known as Food Lion here in the states) and then off to an old saw mill. Lots of traffic and a wrong turn or two we finally found the mill. It was a lot smaller than we thought it would be and to get to it we had to quickly hop through someone's yard, over a low fence and then around another. It was at this mill we discovered the first of many "Belgian Fences." It seems in Belgium it is quite popular to build a fence around only part of a structure and that is "good enough" to keep people out. Since I hate fences I am very OK with the idea of a Belgian Fence.

I really don't know much about this mill over than it was pretty old, a lot of it had collapsed, and it was in the middle of a residential neighborhood. You could hear children playing in the yard next to this place, people riding their bikes on the streets around the mill, and see people hanging up laundry in their backyards right next to this place.

While this place was small I thought it had a lot of interesting things to shoot.











I use this stuff in my car, it was pretty cool to see a 30+ year old bottle of it


This room was very dark and hard to get some shots of this thing since it was a small and narrow room yet the whole thing was pretty bad ass.
http://uesuperfunhappytime.com/gallery/europe2/saw8.jpg[/img]

After this we headed out to see a monastery that someone had recommended to us but it was unfortunately very recently welded shut so we moved on to a nice brewery that we very much wanted to see only to find a ton of people hanging out right around the big gaping hole in the fence. We looked for another way in but found none and with the people by the big gaping hole eyeing us suspiciously we decided to come back later.

We then decided to drive back towards our hotel to see a popular abandonment, the Fort de la Chartreuse. Built in 1817 by the Dutch the fort has had a number of occupiers over the year from Belgians, Germans (twice), Americans, and then back to Belgian control. It is secured and taken care of by a caretaker who we were hoping we could talk into letting us in.



When we got there we parked and looked down the street to where the street dead ends into a gate for the fort complex. A tarp had been thrown over the gate and some barriers had been set up in front of the gate. We could hear a lot of people talking from inside the gate. We began to walk towards it only to have a car pass us filled with what looked like Russian soldiers. They honked their horn and the gate opened. Inside were more Russian soldiers wielding AK-47s and cheering for their comrades who entered the gate. Inside you could hear very Soviet era patriotic music. What the hell was going on here? Have the Russians invaded Belgium? I mean we have been a little out of the loop with the news since arriving here but you would have thought we would have heard something.



We walk up to the gate and discover the soliders are speaking French. mANVIL knowing a little bit of French started talking with them and we find out that no the Soviets haven't regrouped and invaded Belgium, they are just some airsoft people camping out at the Fort for the weekend before they and the Yankee scum they are fighting have an all out airlift war. They invite us in and tell us to take all the photos we want of the place.



Inside the fort is very cool, a lot of old well built brick that has held up to years and years of neglect and has lots of very cool graffiti from the various occupiers of the fort from over the years. Most of it is from around WW2 timeframe and it's just damn too to look at.





The 3 of us spend a few hours looking over every inch of this place and also noticing how the place has changed from the photos we have seen of the place taken a few years ago. The old caretaker only let select people into the site where as his son who took over when the old caretaker passed does let in people from time to time to go paint balling or do airsoft. The trees and some buildings in shots taken by Motts, NickSan, and others who were here only a few years before are now gone, replaced by rubble and a large demolition crane. The caretaker was not there so we could not find out what the future holds for this place but from the rubble and clear cut woods it doesn't look good.



The doors appear to have been setup to use as cover points for the coming airsoft war










With the sun fading and more airsoft soldiers running around it was time to head out. We grabbed dinner at an awesome Doner Kabob place we found near the hotel and then headed back to the hotel to get ready for the next day which would be a busy and long day of exploring with Bartje and Martino. Later that night we had a loud banging at our door and they had arrived. They quickly forced us outside of Chateau Formule 1 so we could drink some beer with them. I like beer, beer is good. Bartje opens up his cooler and tosses us some Palm beer. Things are going well until I notice that this beer is room temperature. Mmmmm room temperature beer! The 5 of us stay up late swapping stories, drinking, and generally pissing off everyone else at the Chateau Formule 1 with our loud noises and cheeky antics. We run out of beer and decided to head to bed around 12:30-1am which is a good thing since we are waking up in a few short hours to begin our awesome weekend exploring of awesome.

Europe, watch out.

[kts]

since I've used up all my vacation leave for quite a while I'm finally going over the last 2 years of photos I have to process.

These are all from a little trip to Europe I took in May/June 2010.

Any names listed are the online names of fellow urban explorers.

kts' European Vacation, part 1

The alarm goes off and before I even realize it I'm up, alarm is off, and I'm in the shower. It's 4am. I didn't even finish packing until 11pm and didn't really get to sleep since the excitement was building up inside me. Why?

Because it's time for my European vacation!

Around 5am mANVIL showed up and a short while later the Super Shuttle arrived to take us to the airport. All I wanted to do was sleep. Although I live few short miles away from an airport we ended up flying out of a much smaller regional airport which is a pain to get to, especially in rush hour traffic. Adding to that we have to fly 600 miles in the wrong direction only to fly back over my house and then on to the right direction. Why? I still have no idea other than when you are using frequent flier miles to pay for a flight the airlines make it as hard as possible to get you to your destination as a 'reward' for being a loyal customer. Oh well, the flight was free right?

We left DC and headed south to Raleigh to sit around for 3 hours before flying back over DC on our way to New York. From New York it was a 4 beer layover until it was time to head to Brussels. The Raleigh to New York and New York to Brussels flights featured screaming children everywhere and really smelly people. The things I will endure to explore awesome abandonments.

We land in Brussels and have to wait to msb to show up since he wisely, paid for his trip so he didn't have to enjoy the multiple flights and long layovers. We have now been up for 24 hours and I am ready for bed. However now it's time to hop in the car and drive.

Belgians have some very strange rules for rights of way, something I was unaware of for the first half of this trip and now explains why we nearly got into countless accidents, and at every intersection I was honked at and yelled at by everyone. Doh!

Our first stop were the horror labs but unfortunately that day there was a bit too much activity going on around the building so we jetted off to Hasard Cheratte, everyone's favorite castle-like coal mine.

Walking past some guys working on 4 wheelers and dirt bikes down a dead end street with cameras is not suspicious, no not at all. We found a pallet someone had tied to the corner of a brick retaining wall which made a nice ladder to get up the hill and on we went into the place. Inside it's what you would expect from a large place such as this that has been abandoned for so long it's pretty scrapped, tagged, and otherwise rundown. At the same time there is still a lot of coolness about the place.













After we had taken it all in we headed out only to find our nice pallet ladder was not in fact a ladder, it was barrier to prevent people from entering the site that way which was reinforced with a large stump and some other things to keep people out. Well that wasn't very nice of those 4 wheeling hooligans to block us in like that. We decided to take the ~9 foot drop down the retaining wall for our exit. mANVIL and msb got down quite gracefully, I on the other hand decided to add some showmanship to my drop and ended up face up after having done a nice fall and roll down covering myself in dust and dirt. Awesome.

We went to the front of the place and between taking exteriors of the town being dwarfed by this imposing castle of a mine we chased a ton of free range chickens that wander the city.

It had been a long 36 hours and we were ready for food and sleep. We drove past a random place that was open called Buffalo Grill (big mistake, I really do not recommend that place, it was terrible) and then headed to our hotel, Hotel Formula 1, which is a whole different adventure.

[kts]

My favorite little spot in my state. It's the admin building of a long closed (and mostly demolished) TB hospital.

[Civilian]

This stuff is extremely cool. The first video to grab my interest was UNDERCITY

Here's a trailer for those who don't want to watch the full 27 minutes.

And the full video here

Enjoy! :D

[Pac1373]

Nice shot M, why are your nipples blurred?

This IS r3v, clearly he did not want any one jerking off to pic's of his manly nipple parts.


Cool pic's, there is little in the way of ruins around here to explore, I would be all over this as a hobby lol. (when I was a kid, they called it trespassing, I like urban exploring better....)

[LJ851]

dinanm3atl- Nice shots btw! Prison chicks.

Nice shot M, why are your nipples blurred?

[5Toes]

Fucking awesome stuff above. Im jellyyy

Love the editing, very dark feel

[kts]

Chemical Plant - Italy

This place was awesome and tricky. Somehow I managed to squeeze my fat ass through a tiny hole in a thick cement wall and dodge the active security that patrols the place. Inside were all kinds of awesome ruins and a full chemical laboratory.

Looking down


The top


Across


Just go around


Cage the machines


Near the base


The tower of death


Guess where the birds usually sit?


Dirty


Yet another hallway


Walkway


Kettles


Kettles


Have we seen enough kettles yet?


OK, last kettle shot


Viva La Revolution! (in calendar form!)


Chem lab


Chemicals


I should have centered this better. Oh well.

[MAXELHOFF]

joint ladies

dinanm3atl- Nice shots btw! Prison chicks.

[MAXELHOFF]

The joint

Dinanm3atl- I went to the prison a while back. OPPRESSIVE! Solitary door.