so i’m back!! here goes nothing…
headed out pretty early for asbury and made decent time despite some traffic en route to the thruway. yahoo weather was predicting severe thunderstorms for asbury during the afternoon and night, but we got there around 3 and everything was perfectly sunny and warm. score. but before that…when we got into new jersey there was a sign for “the land of make belief”…the possibility that it was abandoned made us have to find it. but to our dismay it was fully functioning and full of people. they had fun signs that we went back at night to try to steal with no success. haha.
drove past the back end of the palace, where they started demolition. everything is still fenced as it was when we were there in november. the back wall and half of the building has been torn down, but the front half (where tillie is) and the attractions under that part of the roof were intact still (er well…urbex intact i should say). we parked at the stone pony, and walked along the beach side of the casino instead of parking in front of it like last time. the casino was very freshly and newly boarded up since november. the 2 entrances that were on the sides last time were enclosed, and the missing panel out front was fixed. seemed as if there would be no entering the casino. the one promising thing was…there were 2 vans there from a company that i now want to start (more later) doing work inside the casino. we stood around waiting to see if they’d come out but they didn’t. so we walked over to the palace…
the most amusing thing to me is how many people were around. while we were walking to the palace a woman parked and got out with a camera. an older man on a bike stopped with a camera. while we were talking to the woman and casing the property there was another man on the other side taking pictures. 1 in every 3 cars stopped or slowed to look. the whole time we were there at least 15 people came to see the palace. anyway…walking around with pink shirt lady, we found weak fence areas. suddenly the fence just fell right open. for such a dead town there were alot of cars passing by. we would run in behind the fence, take a picture, run out. take a brick, run out. and by then i just said fuck it and ran into the debris. o.m.g. i hate those bastards. such a pretty place, gah. most of the castle was still standing, and other various parts of rides that had once been inside. so colorful and just wonderful. as i was intending to walk out, i see leighanne walk by the outside of the fence and she yelled stay. i’m like oh shit. so i ran and hid behind the orient express structure thing. stood there hiding for a while. i didn’t know what to do, i kept peeking out but didn’t see her or any cops. i was seriously shaking and anxiety filled. i didn’t REALLY want to get arrested haha. i figured she would have to come back for me and let me know it was safe to come out, so i just hung out there til she did finally come back for me. it probably felt like i was waiting longer than i was, but i feel as if it was at least 15 minutes.
turned out the local foot patrol police or whoever had come by and asked her and pink shirt lady what they were doing. they had tickets in hand. pink shirt lady sacrificed herself for me and engaged them in conversation while stealthily leading them towards the casino and away from me. when they turned the corner onto the board walk leighanne gave me the all clear sign and i was able to get out. by that time, 2 more youngish people with cameras showed up. they all saw me run out, so everyone else figured game on. the 2 of them went in, pink lady and her husband (who had just shown up) went in, followed by 3 more people who happened to arrive while i had been inside. and they weren’t stealth about it at all. hahaha.
leighanne and i left them to go back and see if the workers were around the casino. walked around there and waited, no sign of them. pink lady and husband came over and we tried to find an entrance in, but still no dice. watched more people show up at the palace, then we decided to go back in again. before leaving we checked out the metropolis hotel and called to see how much they were selling it for (2 million for the lot, the building isn’t worth saving or restoring). by then it started torrential downpouring, so we headed out.
pretty successful trip i think. have some souveniers in the trunk. after asbury we went to freehold (where bruce springsteen lives) for dinner at a pizza place he frequents (but no sign of him). then headed back to asbury because of the nice lighting conditions (sunset, clouds, but the rain had stopped).
asbury becomes a much scarier place once the sun sets. with nothing else to do we started the drive home. stopped for the night in watkins glen, at a hotel my parents and i would stay at a few times a year. talk about trip down memory lane. it was exactly as i remembered it. stopped at wixons before we left for home this morning…also found a closed semi-abandoned winery (used to be the home of the barrel people) but couldn’t/didn’t try to do any exploring because people were living next to it.
now…i found a new career. the people doing work at the casino were photographers. they’re van said the company did “current condition documentation”…which is just an uppity legal way to say “we do urbex and get paid”….we took a picture of the van with the company name and website so i’m going to look them up. i figure it can’t be too hard to start a service like that. get some asbestos gear, hire lawyers to figure out liability waivers and insurance and stuff. and then cameras. from what we could see inside the casino, they had things set up on tripods, with these marker things that i can’t quite figure out the purpose of. so it’s probably more complicated than i’m thinking, but that’s ok. must definitely look into it. there are lots of places in buffalo that could use current condition documentation. it’s all sort of funny, because the times i was at the terminal last year without permission, that was going to sort of be my story to the cops if we got busted. that i/we were doing work for the CTRC documenting the building’s current condition.
so anyway. good good trip.
and i decided that blue, is absolutely not my color. maybe it’s just this blue shirt doesn’t really go with THE urbex pants, but…i dunno. it makes me feel like a boy. it’s such a fun shirt tho.
