Duck and Cover

baby arm wrote:Wait, what the fuck is urban exploration?

Building Hacking.

Instead of computers or networks, you sneak into physical places.

like into embassies, military compounds and bioscience facilities or what?

Just started Blade Runner aka Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheeps, by you-know-who.

So far, so good, even better than the movie.

I knew a self-proclaimed urban explorer. She'd climb under, around, and through buildings, occupied or not, and basically treated her neighborhood/city as if it was her own little jungle gym. Thoroughly retarded activity for a 19 year old woman, but she did like to screw around in some of those hard-to-reach areas, rooftops, etc. Kept her limber...

Freegans are much funnier as socio-cultural freakshows.

sounds pretty :outdoorsman: skill, alright

urban exploration is the shit, although most of the people i know who are 'into' it are pretentious artsty types who i avoid, so it's usually something i do alone. i've climbed billboards, gone into abandoned houses & warehouses & on rooftops, etc. if you look hard enough, you can find some pretty strange things, awesome graffiti, etc.

if you're looking for places, i'd advise you to read about your city's history & you will probably be able to find descriptions of some notorious uninhabited buildings, or old areas that are fairly rundown / uninhabited - industrial areas are probably the most interesting. either that, or just bike/drive around in places where you haven't before (preferably at night) and go wherever strikes your fancy. you can find some wild & wooly postapoc stuff. be sure to bring a camera, or vandalism tools, or whatever.

addendum: if your city is big enough it's likely there might be urban exploration communities on the internet or something, on mailing lists or blogs or something like that, though i don't regularly follow those so i don't know how useful they are.

ja, good hobby. good physical exercising. also good to know hideouts and makeshift bunker sites when the bombs fall. crowbar and waterbottle necessary items to take along.

I don't know, that just sounds like wandering around, the kind of stuff I did as a kid. We used to patrol the hills behind my neighborhood looking for cow skulls and coyotes. Eventually, someone moved a semi-major dope growing operation (complete with live-in guards and such) up in there. It was cleared out by the cops and they had to helicopter lift these giant, car-sized bundles of weed out into the cow pastures so they could be trucked out. Very surreal site to see right by my home.

Also, urban exploration sounds like something me and my friends would do in Berkeley while tripping, but we didn't have any name or concept behind it.

sounds like wandering around

That's exactly it. Two years or so back, when I knew this girl, it was hip and whatnot. But yeah, we've probably all done it, in one form or another, especially as 'kids.' Maybe not embraced it as a lifestyle, but there's plenty of places to explore, if you're curious. Buffalo was and probably still is loaded with them.

Even more fun are the various tunnel systems underneath your local College State University, no doubt closed in the 60s and 70s due to rampant rapine and brazen brigandry. 'Round here, entrances are commonly secured with naught but a padlock. Around five to six years ago, an ex of mine went to college out here and stayed in a dorm. There was a tunnel entrance in the basement laundry room of her dorm tower. Between that and her eighth floor dorm room, when the wind was blowing, it used to HOWL like a sonofabitch up there. All the duct tape, plastic, sheets, and eventually blankets in the world didn't help. Kinda creepy...

never said urban exploration wasn't juvenile; it is, but it's pretty good fun, especially if you're into graffiti (which is pretty juvenile in itself, but whatever). get some paint markers or cut some stencils or something and go decorate.

Thor Kaufman wrote:like into embassies, military compounds and bioscience facilities or what?

People routinely fuck with Area 51.

But it's chickenshit. The creepy Wackenhut guards will shoot if an actual breach occurs.

So people just kind of skulk around the perimeter stealing sensors and taking pictures.

thats funny i was just thinking about this stuff a few days ago, when my teacher was talking about transmissions, since i've nicked a few of em. My buddy an me used to go on drunken adventures sneakin into and out of scrapyards, construction sites, industrial zones and warehouses. we also lit some train tracks on fire that ran across a bridge over a semi-busy road, Back To The Future style. strangely enough we never got caught for all the dumb shit we did. no one got hurt from what we did, so i guess its not priority, and we were super sneaky, like a couple of goth ninjas.
CHEERS TO THE GOOD OL' DAYS!!!

S4ur0n27 wrote:Just started Blade Runner aka Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheeps, by you-know-who.

So far, so good, even better than the movie.

You haven't read it until now...
Tisk, tisk.

I just picked up Guy Sajer's The Forgotten Soldier and Tim O'Brien's If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home. Serious reading shall now commence.

And I just finished The Power of One, it was pretty appropriate for black history month, or something. :flower:

Speed_demon wrote:... and we were super sneaky, like a couple of goth ninjas.
CHEERS TO THE GOOD OL' DAYS!!!

The "Goth" part makes it even more difficult to explain why you didn't get caught.

Really, the best thing is to have a non-descript appearance.
Short hair, cheap suit, etc.

Swim with the fishes.


I wonder how hard it is to join the Birchers.

I would love to have that card in my wallet.

The "Goth" part makes it even more difficult to explain why you didn't get caught.

it WAS night time, and we are VERY sneaky, avoided dogs and cameras, while drunk LOL

BTW im almost done reading Neuromancer for the 4th time. Love that book. all of Gibson's books are great IMO

box wrote:I knew a self-proclaimed urban explorer. She'd climb under, around, and through buildings, occupied or not, and basically treated her neighborhood/city as if it was her own little jungle gym. Thoroughly retarded activity for a 19 year old woman, but she did like to screw around in some of those hard-to-reach areas, rooftops, etc. Kept her limber...

Freegans are much funnier as socio-cultural freakshows.

There should be a Mad Max version of Freegans. None of that peace and love crap.

Ridin' the rails like hobos, if they have vehicles- steal the gas. Bonus points for siphoning from police cars.

Gutter Punks don't count.
Need more "Fistful of Dollars" style.

Speed_demon wrote:

The "Goth" part makes it even more difficult to explain why you didn't get caught.

it WAS night time, and we are VERY sneaky, avoided dogs and cameras, while drunk LOL

BTW im almost done reading Neuromancer for the 4th time. Love that book. all of Gibson's books are great IMO

I've got so many better books to re-read than Neuromancer.
Hell, I've got about 300 books to read for the first time, let alone re-read.

Rereads? Ho, perforce to dream. Doubt I'll ever reach the summit of Mt. To-Read.