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oh my bowie. jackson sanitarium. i don’t have a drooling smilie or i’d use that too. wow. it’s all i can say. that building…so beautiful. so much to see so little time. james and i were out there for about 3 hours today, and managed most of the main building (not the basement) and the power building (which i had gone in during my first trip). ran out of time without looking at the wooden houses and stuff further up the hill. but omg…it’s incredible. it’s a perfect location for a health spa type place, no wonder they built it there. the scenery is beautiful, it would be incredibly relaxing. just a wonderful wonderful place. must go back. brian is going to love it. 5 rolls of film to develop tomorrow (one has meyer malting and fog pics on it too). i can’t wait to see what turned out. could be some mighty good shots there if i didn’t mess stuff up.

wonderful wonderful time. we listened to rap on the way home hahah

i’m so exhausted i totally don’t want to go to work. and i feel scummy and gross but i don’t have time to take another shower. oh well.

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urbex trip day 1

where to start. once again i got to preboard on my southwest flight out of buffalo because i had the oldest penny. and it was a different penny than last time LOL

left immediately from BWI for philadelphia and eastern state. eastern state…*droool* as soon as we walked in i said i could spend hours in that one place. we headed in and we were early for the members only hospital tour, so we wandered around the public cell blocks for a bit. gah. unbelievable. the intent of the eastern state people is to maintain a stable ruin. they aren’t trying to restore it to what it was, just to keep it in it’s current ruinous state, which i think is wonderful. it’s beautiful. the 2 story cell blocks (newer additions) weren’t open to the public because they’re still too dangerous. cell block 3, the hospital, that we had the private tour of is not normally open to the public because it’s unsafe. it has the worst roofs in the complex, and they’re working on fixing them now. but we got to see it. and holy crap. possibly my favourite part of any urbex site i’ve been too was eastern state’s “hydrotherapy” room. it just had a sign on the door (along with signs for the laboratory, psychiatry, physiotherapy, and xrays). but it also had 2 other really great rooms, the gem’s of the hospital – the recovery room and the operating room. of course i disobeyed the rules and went full into the 2 rooms (we were only supposed to step in and see and leave). beautiful rooms. unbelievable. they are trying to fix the roofs over these 2 rooms so they can open them to the public as part of a normal self guided tour. after the hospital tour, we asked the tour guide if he’d show us the chapel (we could see in it, but it was locked) so he took us in there. it had religious paintings (all in decay of course) painted by a former inmate. in all, eastern state is wonderful. love it. definitely would go back. brian – you have to get there. you’d love it.

so after eastern state we headed up to easten to the crayola factory. WONDERFUL. so cute. mostly kids stuff, crafts you can do, and some bits of history….demonstration on how they make crayons, got “free” samples of stuff with our tokens….lots of modeling clay haha. fun fun stuff. then it turns out right next door is the pez museum. so of course we had to go do that too. real small place, really cool. they had the ziggy stardust pez dispenser. hahah

left easton for connecticut. we had originally planned to hit 2 other places in conn before the holy land but because it gets dark so quickly, and we didn’t quite know where the places were located in their respective towns we decided to ditch that. so it was dark, but we had plenty of day left to spend. we didn’t think conn would have much to offer so we took a slight detour to….manhattan.

it’s not often i’m near NYC so when the i realized it was my chance to see the my current architectural obsession, the chrystler building, we jumped on it. so we made our way through manhattan towards the chrystler building. holy crap. best.building.ever. absolutely beautiful. art deco and gargoyles. every building should have those 2 things. lol. the building was closed so we couldn’t go inside beyond the main foyer. next door was grand central terminal, so of course, we had to go in there too. beautifully renovated as well. i’m not sure i if like the constellations painted on the ceiling -kinda cheesy – but still. beautiful. from there we backtracked to the empire state building and went to the observation deck. i had never even seen the building in my prior nyc visits. that was neat. good view of the city. there was a minute of contemplating seeing ground zero, but that didn’t happen.

so we headed back on the road for connecticut. got into waterbury around 12, and found the glowing 50 foot cross. so we had to go find the holy land so we know where to go tomorrow (er today). drove around in a shady neighborhood at the foot of the holy land, and did find it. totally unsecured. probably could walk up no problem but i think we’re going to ask the nuns for permission in person (they said no over the phone). if not. then we’ll just do it. but the glowing cross….fabulous.

then we took about another hour to find a damn hotel in this shit hole city. apparently there are only 2. we found this out from stopping at the freaking EMERGENCY ROOM since they were the only people around who didn’t look like they could kill us. marriott was 129 dollars, and we are in the holiday inn express which was only slightly cheaper. suck. but we get internet LOL.

maybe some pictures tomorrow. holy land then asbury. prolly stay the night there or in wildwood, then wildwood and back to baltimore on tuesday most likely.

see you then.

 

the great urbex road trip day 2

coming to you live from wildwood nj.

i forgot to mention yesterday, between crayola and nyc, we took a little detour. i found on the map that there was an achtung mountain so we HAD to go take a detour and drive around this non-mountain to see if there was some kind of achtung sign we could photograph/steal. so we wasted a bunch of time driving around some neighborhood and almost hitting a dear, and never found a sign. that’s ok.

so we headed to the holy land this morning. got up and didn’t bother asking nuns for permission. leighanne stayed with the car cuz it was on the side of a mountain and with her gimp foot, it wasn’t good terrain. and cuz in case the nuns came out we didn’t want to get towed. so i went wandering around the holy land. my god is it ever fabulous. really. seriously. it’s so great. it’s entirely trashed and falling down, but it’s wonderful. words can’t describe it. so i wandered back to a the car and a nun had come out and told leighanne it was ok as long as she stayed with the car. when i had gotten back down there another nun came out to find out what we were doing, and said if we were planning to stay long just to move the car. so leighanne took the opportunity to move the car and go wandering herself, as much as she could, since we seemed to have permission to be there. we were there for an hour and a half or so before heading out en route to asbury park.

rolled into asbury around 3. total dejavu cuz i had definitely been there and seen the buildings in 1995. drove around a bit, had the pleasure of being raped buying film for 6 dollars a roll in the most scary ghetto corner store. yay that was fun. so headed for the palace first. cased the joint, easily able to get behind the fence, but there was no obvious way in the building. so did the picture thing then went down the street to the casino. big obvious entry way, stuck my head in to take some pics as there was a man just sitting in a car in the parking lot. cased the place a bit and a guy on a bike accosted me asking if i was with the news paper doing a story. i said no, he asked if i was writing an article. he said they should tear it down cuz it’s a piece of shit. then came being almost run over by the big bad blue truck. it sped past me onto the sidewalk and sand drive of the casino. stopped but the kept going and almost ran over leighanne leaving the power house next door. he told her about not going in or he’d have to arrest us. he turned around and came back to me, told me not to go in there or the palace or any other place or he’d have to arrest me. i assured him i had no attention of going in…unfortunately, because we think the guy just parked there was a narc, we didn’t go in. we could have in 2 places. and my god from peeking in the 2nd entrance (the first was in the carousel house, the 2nd in the back part), it was a mecca. roof almost completely collapsed, nature taking over again. wonderful. beautiful building. loitered around a bit doing the photo thing before driving down the street a bit to madam marie’s fortune teller booth, went by the metropolis hotel for some shots then left as it was getting dark by then and it was a gloomy day all day anyway.

asbury is a shit hole. a scary ghetto shithole. just so you know.

we were under the same predicament of last night where it’s dark at 5 and nothing to do all night. so we detoured again, to atlantic city. went to borgato casino, but they had too high of limits for our taste, so we went to harrahs. played 5$ roulette for a bit and taught leighanne paigow for a while. had dinner at a restaurant there, then headed out to wildwood. there is absolutely NO one here hahaha. it’s so deserted it rocks. a bit scary but….cool nonetheless. drove around a bit but nothing much to see in the dark. tomorrow will be doing some driving around, hit the board walk to see what is to be seen, then heading back to baltimore/dc.

no pictures cuz leighanne’s thingy wont read her camera data card. oh well. soon enough right?

til tomorrow.

 

great urbex trip day 3

where did we leave off. wildwood, correct? so we spent the night at the days inn in wildwood. in the morning we checked out and i went to settle the bill. i noticed that they had a note with local internet access numbers, and that it’s 50 cents to connect, and 5 cents each minute. which we did not know. and we were online for a long time (we almost left it on all night). so she girl finally shows up and gets my bill and says she has to adjust it. didn’t say why, i didn’t ask why. all i did was see her subtract 32$ off the bill. 32$ which were our internet charges LOL. so we ended up not paying for the internet usage and i didn’t even mention it.

we started by going to the doo wop museum. it’s closed in the off season, but there was a phone number so leighanne called the guy and he came and let us in LOL. we rock. it’s a cool little museum with all sorts of old neon signs from the hotels, and other 1950s furniture and decor. after that we headed for the board walk. it’s so eerie to be in a resort town in the off season. everything closed, no one around. the gates to one of the amusement parks happened to be open because people were doing work inside. so we asked if we could walk around and take pictures. 2 people said sure, so we were walking around. by the time we got to the end of the pier there was a lady there who was like, um, what are you doing here? she said we couldn’t be there, so we left. she was nice about it and stuff so it was ok. and we were basically finished anyway. back to the car to drive around and photograph the hotel signs and stuff.

headed out back to baltimore. drive seemed to take forever even tho it was only 3 hours. once we got to leighanne’s house we went out to dc to meet up with jeramee and go to dinner in georgetown. it was nice to finally meet him. went back to the dc apartment where there was discussion and agonization (is that a word) over their xmas party evite LOL. it was amusing. back to the maryland house for the night.

day 4 brought the enchanted forest. bizarre place. it’s an old childrens park with lots of little houses and things from fairy tales. a strip mall was built right next to it/on top of it, so behind the strip mall are all the artifacts from the amusement park. it was way rad. went to the other side of the park, opposite the strip mall, and found holes in the fence. so i went in briefly to take a few pics. then we headed out to baltimore to find the brewery that leighanne had found online. drove through probably the worst neighborhood i’ve ever been in. excuisite building however. no chance in hell i’d ever go in it, in that neighborhood. unfortunately by the time we found it, it was down pouring so we didn’t even get out of the car to take some pics of it. there was a severe thunderstorm and tornado warning issued. yay hahah.

so we drove out to leighanne’s office and caught the mj news conference before heading to the airport. cuz of the weather my plane was delayed about 40 minutes, so i didn’t get home til 6. went out to dinner with my mom and now i’m home again.

this is all i’m going to say about michael jackson for right now. tom sneddon (DA in Santa Barbara county) is a pompass smug asshole. he was having way too much fun during the press conference for matters so incredibly serious, and that is very offensive to me. joking and laughing. it’s just unneccessary and unprofessional. the fact that there is a warrant out and mj is going to be arrested makes this situation infinately more serious than what happened 10 years ago. it’s all very sad. very very sad. i’d really like to see jordan chandler now, considering he’s my age, and now an adult and can talk about the 1993 case he started all he wants. i’d like to see what he has to say about his case, and what’s going on now. but i don’t expect that to happen.

so the trip was amazingly wonderfully good. took in my 17 or 18 rolls of film to get developed. they’ll be done by 5 tomorrow, but with my schedule tomorrow i’m not sure i’ll make it there to pick them up in time. and after that…i have to scan all 18 rolls. so don’t expect a full set up pics up any time soon. i’ll do my best. maybe by monday. we’ll see.

a few gems of the trip
“flesh eating zombies, bothersome. our home loans, not so.”
“you should have it, you are a baskin robins.”

Roadtrip Photos

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today’s events were temporarily overshadowed by the fact YOU CAN SEE THE NORTHERN LIGHTS! go outside, right now. omg. soooo beautiful. i had read a cnn article about them from carrie’s blog and that there was a chance we’d be able to see them this far south. on my way home from my parents, i pulled onto the side street here and the sky was all red. there was a big red streak, then green starting next to it. they ended up getting “pulled” to the top of the sky and formed a sort of white “x”. ran to wilson farms for some color film, and drove out to the farm land in sanborn where it’s dark. attempted some long exposure pics, it would be nice if some turned out but i doubt they will. the lights seem to come and go every 20 min or so. they had disappeared when we left the house, but right after we stopped on a dark road they came back better than before. once again began to fade so we left.

i find it really hard to comprehend the phenomenon. i can’t imagine living way up north where this is a common occurence, and so much more beautiful and vivid – to the point where it creates shadows. amazing.

as adrienne put it “i love having an atmosphere” ROFL

so in other news.

indeed posted, but not patrolled.

made it out to dansville to check out the sanitarium. there are 3 very obvious gated access roads to the complex. posted no trespassing, and gates on the road…but not attached to fences. made it real easy to walk right up to the place. the challenge came in finding a place to leave my car, that wasn’t right in front of the gate. the building seems alot bigger in pictures than it actually is. all lower level doors and windows are boarded up. all higher windows are not surprisingly glass-less. there was one inside access point, but no way in hell was i prepared to go through a half window into the basement by myself.

to say the building is falling apart is a bit of an understatement. you’ll see when i get my film developed. but holy crap. the whole back left side has fallen off. not sure when it happened, because the bricks that were piled up in places have lots of moss on them. but there seems to have been a wooden structure added on to the back, and the whole area has fallen down. there were also 3 or 4 out buildings. one was a normal looking wooden house, boarded up but probably more than accessible (i didn’t try, cuz at that point i was still parked right infront of the no trespassing gate), one was a power building which was perfectly wide open. really cool in there, really muddy haha.

as long as you park somewhere other than infront of the 3 gates, i don’t think there’d be a real big issue with someone catching you. the gate i parked in front of briefly was on a road where people live, so that’d probably not be the best way to go. the gate i actually used is along a numbered highway, so walking up the slope i was visible to passing cars, but once up, no one can see you. maybe some day i’ll get back with some guests haha. i’m sure it’s a goldmine of wonderful stuff inside.

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kevin says tom is infatuated with me. yeah. i know. i’m trying to ignore that. tom’s been very cool to me lately, dealing with me crying at work and all that. he sent me an email today asking how the non-date went. when i said it didn’t, he said not to worry that i’ll find someone to treat me the way i deserve to be treated and all this. he continuously makes me offers. it’s just…not right…so i try to ignore it. kevin says you can tell just by looking at the way tom looks at me. super. he gives amazing massages tho hahah.

bedtime since i have to find my way to lockport in the morning.

and oh yeah. i got my 2nd vacation week assigned…the week ending on halloween, 2004.

 

today’s outing was good. today’s crew was me brian james and jasen WHO IS JUST SO COOL and i’m so glad he came with us today. went to flinkote, in lockport, an old asbestos factory. yeah that was super safe and healthy. beautiful place though. definitely near the top of my list – primarily because we found the asbestos machine, and gah *drool* machines….lots of things to see, places to go. good stuff. then went to a chemical factory that only james went in. right next to it was an old very ruinous building, that we’re assuming was some kind of railroad building (since it was next to railroad tracks). very cool. very much in the process of being reclaimed by nature. drove out to a radiation factory, so we could get cancer and permanent birth control all in one day, but there was no time left to try that since i had to get home to get ready for work. i think they were going back after they left me at walmart.

good times. i’ll have 4 rolls to process in class on tuesday. half a roll is from last weekend’s bct tour. and some of my experimental macro filter shots.

i’m so tired tho. i think i’m gonna lay down for a bit.

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so my day consisted of going to see bct with jerry. we went the back way, attempted the window drop, as opposed to 2nd floor entrance. once out the window, i realized it might not be as easy as i had thought to get back in. but we didn’t worry about that hurdle til we came to it. it was a good afternoon. shitty clouds and rain became bright sunshine, so got 2 rolls of film (i could have taken more. i’m stupid, i don’t know why i never go out prepared) of hopefully nice pictures. there was a slight problem with way too many people being around. a semi truck, a dump truck, and a mail man were parked on the street. then a red pick up went by where we were parked, the guy got out, then left. another semi pulled in and turned around, and afterwards a few more cars drove by where we were parked, a guy on foot showed up then left, and then a bunch of people on what seemed like some sort of exercise tour, kept coming by.

getting back in the window. yeah that was a bit of a problem. the drop was bigger than anticipated, and the space between the ground, and the small ledge, left too big of a space between the ledge and the window sil. somehow he managed to get a foot hold on some brick and got up. i made my 2nd attempt, and thank god for long legs. i was able to get up without much help. ended up sitting in bct’s parking lot for about an hour talking – about geneseo and stuff. it was cool. took my film to get processed.

in other news, my mom was all pissy that i hadn’t told her about ozzy fest, as she called it, and showing my photos at the terminal fund raiser. um hello you were gone all weekend in quebec, and all this just happened. how do you expect me to tell you when you aren’t even home. whatever.

and in other news, leighanne and i are seriously tackling the preperations and stuff for the art show at the terminal in the spring. trying to get things tacked down and official, so we can present a plan to russell by sept 1st. we have a list of things to decide on, and everything. and russell gave me the big green light for the terminal website, said my ideas were really great, and to contact the former web guy he had to get the info russell had given him a while back. so hopefully i can get that up soon. i’ve got the site already done, just need the info for it.

i guess i’m having nachos for dinner again, cuz i dont have time or ambition to prepare anything else. sooo healthy.

and the coconut juice bars i bought at aldis are beyond tasty. i’m going to have to stock up on them. yumyum.

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another weekend at central terminal. nothing all that new to report about things actually seen. but good news about other things. first off, i’m pissed as hell at my stupid piece of shit pentax camera. 2.5 wasted rolls because the fucker won’t advance. first roll, i took maybe 10 pics, and it wouldn’t advance anymore cuz it was jammed. had to open it up, expose all those frames, start over again. that roll did finish and rewound, but i still only have half a roll. 2nd roll…never advanced. i was on picture 35 and it wasn’t stopping. stupid piece of shit. tried again with my last color roll, i really thought it was working that time. nope…and they had all my puddle pictures on it (there were nice pools of water inside with awesome reflections – took some on adr’s digi cam since my film wasn’t going to turn out). pissed. throwing that camera out. i think i might try to go back tuesday afternoon, see if i can get some puddle pictures. but we’ll see.

the good stuff. i got to talk to russel about all the things he doesn’t answer me about in email lol. the film reels. i showed him the one i took, and he seemed interested in where i found them. i said i wanted to bring the sign out to him cuz he needs to keep it before someone takes it. so i brought that out and he loved that. and i convinced him to let me do the official website. score!! while talking about doing the website, this lady over heard that i did web design, so she wants to talk to me about doing a site for her at realbuffalo.com (i think). about the real buffalo, that isn’t all snow and crime. so that’ll be really cool, and really good for me – having 2 major sites in my portfolio.

perhaps the best news, other than the website, is that russell is totally cool with doing an art show inside in the spring. he said we (brian and i) could even show/sell some of our photos of the terminal at the fundraiser on sept 20th. so i gotta figure out what ones i want printed to show, and where i can take them to mount them, and find out how we’re gonna show them. yay.

and we met jerry in person. he’s a cool guy. maybe some of his pictures turned out since mine DIDN’T lol. arg. still pissed.

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well. blackjack in pit 3 last night, surprise. they pulled me off around 2am to do pai gow. surprise! i told them that it was my first time on a live game. i messed up my first hand LOL. but it was ok. i dealt the hands to the wrong spots. only ended up dealing 5 or 6 hands, cuz i got tapped off for break right after i got on the game, then it was dead until 5 min before i left. but it was good. i’m scared to do mini-bacc tho.

today. met brian and james at the terminal to go to the abandoned church near by. wow. beautiful church. and beautiful in it’s decay as well. surprisingly non grafittied, since it is on the east side and everything. lots of bird shit. lots of bird skeletons. lots of pretty ness. almost all of the stained glass windows are intact, which is phenomenal. very very nice place. when we were leaving, the construction workers asked if we took pictures inside. i was like um *not saying anything*. brian took over, said yes, they were cool about it and were talking about how it’s a shame it was abandoned like that. all good.

so from there we went back to the terminal. brian wanted to do some exterior shots and check out the mail building some more. i swear to god, the terminal+my camera=shit…the first time i was getting the stupid flashing Fstops (which i found out was a problem with not recognizing the lens)…2nd time, ran out of film…this time, ran out of batteries. fuck. thankfully brian had to go meet his mom and give her his digi cam, so we ended up by a walgreens, where i had to borrow 20 bucks from james to buy new batteries. but anyway. went into the parking garage. wandered in there a bit with james, brian was in the mail building i think at that time. left to do the cam drop off, came back. back into the parking garage now that i had batteries. then to the mail room. the staircase leighanne and i had found, but had no flashlights to explore, ended up going to a power room. a nice toxic power room. super. went out back to the tracks. i swear, this building is never ending. the things we find. it’s like no matter what we do, even if we think we’re at a place we’ve been before, and seen all we can see, there is something else. tons more stuff we found. we had limited time, so we have to go back. but yeah. unbelievable. the building never friggen ends. aside from the parking garage, and the mail building, and the baggage building, brian found another underground labrynth of tunnels. we didn’t check them out this time, cuz we found other stuff. but it’s a secret. and we find the most bizzare stuff in that place. this time we found big letters…made out of styrofome. if they had been metal or wood i wanted to take one, since they had an S.

so yeah. i told them if we happened to get caught by police i could get us out of it in 2 minutes, so to let me do the talking. i got it all planned out. it’s fool proof.  i like myself hehe

so yeah. great day, aside from having to get up at 8, thus having 3 hours of sleep. i so need to nap, but i need to eat first. and clean myself. i feel dirty.

gah gah gah the full version of a perfect circle’s new song “weak and powerless” was leaked to radio. gah this is so great!!!!!!! *still not regretting my tattoo* this sounds more reminiscent of tool than their previous album. it’s got a tool type bass line it seems. who’s their bassist now? oh yeah, twiggy. gaaaaaaaah.

 

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it can’t be. someone must have made a mistake in scheduling. i was on roulette tonight. my very own table. on a saturday. i wasn’t in pit 3. holy crap. tonight was great. my table was kicking all night. i had all colors out, and value on the inside (i know none of you know what that means). it was fabulous. was on my game til about 2:30, then sent to reassignment, and pit 3. of course. tomorrow i’m 7-3 which should be a roulette shift…2 nights in a row!?!?!?!? could it really happen?! we’ll find out in the next installment…

but yeah, work was pretty great tonight. i was on breaks with good people too. brendan invited me to the puerto rico fest…someplace in buffalo…tomorrow, but no can do. how the hell many fests are going on this week/weekend…cAnal fest, italian fest, and puerto rican fest?! i don’t think this area can handle all those fest at one time.

oh yeah did i mention the other fish died? yeah. it did.

i should get to bed. set the alarm for 11:30 incase i happen to sleep that late, i still have time to brush my hair and get to walmart to meet brian and jasen. lol.

 

i’m home. i called in sick. home from the urbex-ing with a ginormous headache that made me want to find a sawed off shot gun and blow my brains out. i knew that by 7 it would probably be gone – 3 excedrin and 2 prescription pain killers later – but that gave me no time to get ready for work etc. so i ruined my perfect attendance. no big deal. i’m not going to the party tonight, even tho it’ll be tons of fun, and i’ll be disappointing millions – ok, not millions, maybe 2. it provokes cognitive dissonance for me to go to the party but not go into work. plus i’d have to shower. ah well. it really was one of the worst headaches i’ve had in a while, if not ever.

the urbexing went well. i currently have a civil defense emergency drinking water steel drum in my trunk. we were really successful i think. hit the sanborn vacant air force site, the deveaux (which i heard people talk about that niagara falls neighborhood and always thought it was spelled devoe) park – where viewmobiles go to die, and the buff ave building across from our employee parking lot. way friggen cool. 4 and a half film rolls later…i need to find something to do with the last of the 5th roll tho, so i can take them in wednesday to get developed, along with my 2 nite shot rolls. maybe i’ll take pics of the apt, since the parents said the grandparents would probably like to see. and there is a farm down the street with a semi broken silo that i’ve been meaning to photograph, and the cows, so if there is a day before wednesday next week when it doesn’t rain, i’ll get that done too.

i need to do something with that drum. get it out of my trunk at least, before shit hatches and infests my car. i should probably just get it outside for a while, but dunno what the other tenants might think lol. it definitely needs to be hosed down and scrubbed before it comes inside to become an end table. we found some real nice intact good condition ones – that were filled with trash, in one building, but this one is worse for wear a bit. bri also found an little emergency drinking water can for me. yay for souvies. oh, and a tin that used to be full of emergency biscuits was found in the buff ave site…but only one package was left, and you couldn’t really read the writing on the tin. did i say only one package was left? yeah, you couldn’t pay me enough to eat one of the survival biscuits. well you could probably pay me enough, but it’d take alot. and more than anyone i know has to offer haha.

brian gave me a lens for my pentax camera, he said it was a zoom – but it doesn’t zoom in and out like you think a normal camera lens would (of course, i could be a moron and not know how to use it), but it definitely magnifies everything more than the other lens i use tho. i’m think the moron part might be accurate tho haha.

i need to cook something before my headache comes back. maybe soup would be good. and easy.

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it’s days like these that i love my life.

i almost wasn’t looking forward to this tour, because there were going to be so many people around, and i thought it was going to annoy me. brian had a crew coming, the tv kids were supposed to come, ninj from infiltration.org…there were alot more people there this time around. waited around while russell did his whole tour guide thing with the rest of the people, then once inside we sorta took off. we had a few set missions…try the 2nd far staircase into the tower, and the 2nd basement.

first was the 2nd staircase. we had heard it was blocked off at one point. it wasn’t. at least it wasn’t blocked off any farther up than the other staircases – 5th floor chain link gate to protect the clocks et al. so…i can’t remember the real sequential order of things, but i’ll do my best. up stairs on that end of the building, we found the glass walkway for that set of windows. less glass around the path, so…i said i’d try to cross it next time, if we go alone with russell’s permission instead of a tour. explored the floors around there, i lost everyone else, but that’s cool. ended up finding a set of metal stairs that went up to a sort of sub floor. and brian and adrienne were up there. so i went up there (and got asbestos dirt falling on my head, cuz they were taking the next set of stairs up)…”room” full of machinery and metal stuff. next flight up, same sort of thing – machinery and whatnot. there was a space to move into another part, so we did. i think there was a corridor there, because we split up again. adr and i ended up finding a big mostly empty, very dark room. we had flashlights this time, so we went in. shined the lights on the wall – lots of scary alien paintings like the one in the women’s lounge on the main concourse. that was sorta creepy. there were other machine things up there, and then a set of steps. went over there…and found the maintence catwalks between the real roof of the terminal, and the concourses false ceiling. went and got brian cuz i knew he’d love that, so i think 5 or 6 of us went through the catwalks, and down to a set of lower catwalks, before heading back. the cool thing was you could see through the ceiling where all the old light fixtures used to be, so we could see the concourse below, and other people on the tour. hope they couldn’t see/hear us hahah. adr and i left that room, and i think we went exploring on whatever floor we were on. i think it turned out that it was the 2nd floor, which i hadn’t explored last time cuz i couldn’t get the door open until right before we left. we found rooms that were fairly modern…at least they weren’t originally decorated when the terminal opened. had gaudy 70s wall paper. gross. there was a bathroom with toilet and shower, with awful shiny silver and gold wallpaper…we figured that it was where the crack addict lived when he owned the terminal. brian confirmed it when we showed him and his friend james the area. the toilet actually had been used…it was gross. there was another room that had a wall of mirrors.

not sure if we found anything else noteworthy on that part of the expedition. oh adr and i found another set of stairs, the “covered in paper” staircase, which took us to the 4th floor, and roof. showed adrienne some other parts in the tower, and finally went to the main concourse. went to the kitchen then into the first basement.

we had lost brian and his crew, so we decided to go down to the 2nd basement on our own. wasn’t all that much down there. there was a storage type cage that had rusted cans of paint…including one in the magnificent “institutional green”…lol. there was a bolted door that had a hole in the bottom of it for whatever reason. looking through the hole there was a whole nother part of the basement we hadn’t found access too. makes sense, but we had no idea where any stairs were that led to that basement. went back up as brian and crew were entering the kitchen. he’s like “you went down there already didn’t you” lol. we left there, since i had said there wasn’t much down there. wandered the main concourse a bit, trying to find another staircase that must exist to the basement, and by then the 2nd tour (which no one knew about) was coming in. i remembered that there was an open window, with a broken gate in the 2nd basement, so brian wanted to go see. went back down to the 2nd basement with everyone. he went through the window, so i went through the window. we ended up going into a window further down, and left everyone back in the first part of the 2nd basement. we were in some kind of power room, lots of levers and machines and stuff. there were 3 steps up to double irons doors, that of course, we had to go through. it went to a big long corridor with other rooms. another power room with big machine things in it. went the other way, and came upon the long lost main staircase from the train level to the main concourse. i think it was around there that we found some really bizzare stuff. there was a big mostly empty room, with a collapsed shelving unit that held lots and lots of magazines on ceramics…ceramic molds, jars of paints (for the ceramics i presume)…then even more bizzare there was a tipped over metal drum type thing full of reels of kodak film – like the kind you’d show through a projector… not frame by frame pictures, or 35mm roles of film. alot of them were torn apart with tape strewn everywhere. the boxes were labled but it didn’t give much clue to what was on the tapes. but…it was just weird. i think that’s the room where brian found the old scale. we saw james out the window, on the street underpass, so we told him how to get where we were, and he joined us after a while. the others who we left in the 2nd basement called brian, who told them there was no way we were leaving any time soon hahah. so they came and joined us as well. went further down the 2nd basement corridor, and there was another set of stairs that went to steam tunnel type structures. not so much a tunnel, but it housed big pipes and ducts and things. adr and i went down the stairs but didn’t stick around down there. then i recognized the writing that was on the wall… i had seen it through the hole in the door of the kitchen’s 2nd basement. so we actually ended up on the other side of the bolted door. haha

out the broken windows we went to the street underpass. that scared me more than most of the rest of the building, because so much of the ceiling had fallen down, and there was shit everywhere. went into the building, through a window of course, on the other side of the street, between the street and the tracks. looked around in there, and on that side of the street for a while. there was a ramp that went underground that we can’t really figure out what it is for – it didn’t seem like it was an entrance to the underground parking ramp, because it wasn’t in a place that cars would access. it was flooded. someone had built a raft out of old tires and wood. weird. james went on it, and was going to go further into the tunnel, but the submerged car and van made it look like not so good of an idea. we’ll have to go back with inflatable rafts hahah. jk..maybe.

hung out there for a while, and then we realized we might be locked in. no idea if russell and the 2nd tour had left yet, no idea how to get out other than jumping fences and i was having none of that. i figured if russell locked us in then he probably set the alarm, and we’d trip the alarm as soon as we got back in the concourse. we slowly headed back in from the street. found a staircase we had to detour up. it ended up going to a blocked off door, we should have sent one person up to scout it before all 6 or 7 of us went up. weird thing was, there was some kind of tank laying on the stairs. like a helium type tank, but it had no nozzle at the top, so it looked like a bomb. which reminds me, one of the rooms in the basement had old civil defense safety kit drums *joygasm*. hahah. sooo yeah…headed back in to the 2nd basement, through the windows back to the kitchen’s 2nd basement, and back up through the kitchen to the main entrance. where russell and a few stragglers from the 2nd tour were haha. it was funny, we suddenly appear out of no where, all filthy, acting like it’s no big thing.

things i can’t remember where they were…at some point we found rooms with big mechanical switch board type things. way friggen cool. adr said it was on one of the tower floors, not a basement level. somewhere in the basement brian and i found christmas stuff… tinsel and crap. and brian found another pin outside in the rubble. i forgot to give him back the pin he found last time that literally has my name on it.

i feel like there’s so much i forgot. brian – if anything seems wrong, location wise, let me know. if you map it out, i want a copy.

can’t wait to go back 🙂

oh yeah, i took along 6 rolls of film, thinking i’d use 2 maybe 3…totally not expecting to go and find where we went and found. gave one to james, and ended up using the other 5…way before we were finished. i guess next time i need to take 10 haha

*edit #87432598* it was so windy today. we were almost blowing away outside. it made all kinds of scary creepy noises inside. lots of good places to lock people in, in an episode of Fear hehe.

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wow…sometimes my life…is just…wow.

ok, i’ve felt incredibly rushed since saturday. getting home from the silos and rushing to work, then work sucking, then sleeping in sunday, going to work, work sucking again, and then the lunch meeting today. i need to do errands but i forget what time i work tonight so i’m gonna show up for a 7pm start just incase…so i have no time to do the errands either. i want to look at a lamp/chandelier at home depot to maybe buy for the future…and corn from wegmans.

but ok. went to lunch at the vietnamese place with the terminal president. he is wonderful. he’s totally hooking me up. basically any time i want access to the terminal all i have to do is call him. he brought me some things from the fund raiser they had last year, like the original menu from the opening ceremonies of the terminal in 1929. he’s going to mail me a bunch of other stuff. he’s going to let me know about the board meeting in the fall and stuff. going to get access to the tower soon, and like i said…access pretty much any time i want. i showed him my pictures from last weekend, and he’s like…wow you really got around..you weren’t supposed to go there LOL. i’m not sure he noticed that some pics were from the basement hehe. he’s comping the other 2 summer tours. he said to call and cancel my reservations, but i’m just gonna pay anyway…they need the money, and what’s 20 bucks to me? especially if he’s going to let me in on my own. he thinks i’m interesting… lol. i always laugh at that, cuz i find myself to be so boring. my good stories are only cuz i know lots of colorful people.

so yeah, that went really really well. i had mentioned expanding our book project to the terminal as well and he was all for it, said he’d help with whatever we needed. yay!!

since i was already near the psych center, i paid a visit. cased the building, our hole in the fence has been fixed…but it’s absurd how easily i could crawl underneath the fence in some areas. brIAn had said he went into the nurses quarters the other day, so…so did i LOL. the fence is cut and sorta peeled back, easy enough for me to get in. the building is wide open. i got a bit creeped out so i didn’t spend much time there, plus i was unprepared since i wasn’t expecting to do any exploring – no flashlight, semi decent clothes on. went into a few rooms, went up to the 2nd floor. left after that. i really didn’t want to be confronted by…1. security, or 2. any psychos hiding out inside, since i was by myself. left there, continued my walk along the perimeter and this guy comes up to me and is like “you know you’re not allowed to be walking around here with a camera.” i’m like..ooookaaay. he’s like, seriously, you’re breaking like 15 federal laws. i’m like…ooookaaaay…he’s like, security will tell you if they see you, if you have any pictures of anyone on your film you’ll be in huge trouble. i’m like…”i appologize?!?!?!” i dunno what that was about. i guess it would sorta make sense, that i should be photographing any of the patients at the complex…but i wasn’t. and i think it was pretty obvious that i wasn’t. so whatever. i finished up my roll of film and headed out. haha right around when the guy confronted me about the camera, i noticed an open door in one of the cages. looked inside…it’s institutional green LOL. i only had black and white film but i had to photo it anyway heheh.

so 4 rolls of film taken in to get developed again. *is going broke* *wishes everyone would pay her the money they owe her*…bought a roll of 3200 speed black and white, cuz the lights get turned on the terminal on thurs. want night pics of the hospital too. so guess what my friends…after thursday in the square, we going photographing  it’s MY birthday, I say so!! hehe but the film was 7 fucking dollars. there is no way i paid 7 dollars a roll when i was in photog class. definitely need to find another film source.

and i’ve decided the only reason i have a cell phone is to call leighanne lol.

 

why i need to win the lotto…aka why i’m not allowed to go to home depot —-

home depot has the best deco 4 bulb “chandelier”. i saw it in the paper, with no price listed, so i figured i’d go check it out. it was so awesome omg i want it. it’s 159$ tho, and since i don’t have a house of my own i dunno what i’d do with it til then lol. but it’s so great.

then they have THE BEST area rug..of course it’s the most expensive one they sell. 500$ i think, for the 8’x10′ BUT ITS SO FRIGGEN COOL omgomgomg haha. NEED THAT CARPET!

oh yeah, i only worked for 20 min today. went in at 630 incase i worked at 7…didn’t…worked at 8. then i was in pit 1 on relief, so i signed the early out list when i saw that. started at 8, relief gets the first break, came back down and was sent home. haha so i got paid to sit up stairs for 20 min. of course my check will only be 32 hours again…unless i pick up wednesday, a few ppl were interested in taking my day off, but we’ll see.

a perfect circle album, august!! yaaaaaaaaaay

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