Yesterday I made mention of one of my favorite subjects, Urban Exploration. For those of you who were intrigued, this is the post that will answer some of your questions and (hopefully) give you some new ones.
I cant really recall where I first heard about urban exploration (to be abbreviated as UE from now on). I was probably playing around on google on one of my more restless days, searching for things like “adventure” and “explore”. Either way, I stumbled my way onto a page that mentioned UE and gave a brief description of it. I thought to myself, “Hey, I like to explore! And I live in an Urban environment!”, so I began a more thorough web search in an attempt to acquaint myself with the phenomenon. What ensued was a little bit like a dream…
The first step for me was a specific google search. I typed in “Urban Exploration” and, lo and behold, a whole list of hits that were actually relevant to what I was searching for. The first hit was the ever-reliable Wikipedia, which gave this short description: “Urban exploration (often shortened as urbex or UE) is the examination of the normally unseen or off-limits parts of urban areas or industrial facilities.[1] Urban exploration is also commonly referred to as “creeping” or infiltration, although some people consider infiltration to be more closely associated with the exploration of active or inhabited sites. In the USA, it may also be referred to as “draining” (when exploring drains) “urban spelunking”, and “urban caving”, “vadding”, “trolling”, “building hacking”, “reality hacking” or “roof and tunnel hacking“.”
Does that not sound freaking AWESOME? I mean, come on, REALITY HACKING? That sounds like something out of a science fiction novel! How industrial!
At this point my interest level went from “Hey, this is neat” to “OHMYGOD, how do I do this?”
Urban Exploration, as I understand it, is quite a simple concept. It is the belief that there are things we don’t see every day that we SHOULD get the chance to see, and that a door or a no trespassing sign is not a really good reason not to see it.
There is a strong code of ethics behind UE that follows some other organization’s motto quite closely. “Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints”, is how it goes, and I think it was coined by the Audubon society. Urban Explorers take this to heart, and they make it a point to inform those who are interested in the hobby of the philosophy behind it.
I could go on for days about UE, but I wont, because that would be cruel. I will merely leave you with the tools to research it yourself, and hopefully get into it as much as I do. But first, some pictures taken during UE expeditions (not by me, thank google for them):
Neat, huh?
Now to pepper you with links and resources.
UE on Wikipedia-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_exploration
UE resource-http://www.uer.ca/
Infiltration, one of the best sites out there-http://www.infiltration.org/
Urban Explorers Network-http://www.urbanexplorers.net/
Okay, enough links for now. I highly recommend the Infiltration site- they have a book about the subject called “Access All Areas” (see picture at top of post) , which I own and they sell in their shop. It is a great resource for anyone interested in UE. There is also an out of print book called “The Urban Adventure Handbook” by Alan S. North, which I found on Amazon for cheap. It has lots of neat stuff in it as well, though not all UE related. It was published by Ten Speed Press, and my copy has the copyright date of 1990.
Go explore now!
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