I have blogs on other websites, namely Livejournal and Greatest Journal, and through those sites, I’ve found several communities within which to lurk. Some I post on, like my wonderful IUD community as well as the book club… but others I don’t, simply because I have nothing to contribute. Namely, I’m talking about urban exploration. The lure of entering an abandoned, broken down building is tempting…but my fear of being nabbed by the police wins out in the end. However, I have stumbled across several photographs and photo sites that I love to look at.
While in Savannah, my brother and I started discussing urban exploration. It began when he said “Pop is one of those, you know, urban explorers. Our father, right now, is a carpenter working on renovating historical buildings in Savannah. He’s spending his time these days helping to rebuild this 3 story monstrosity downtown, built in the late 1800s or 1900s, if I remember correctly. He took me through the building during my vacation. It’s completely gutted, but this is a house with a huge winding staircase, complete with casket corners, a fireplace in almost every room, INCLUDING THE BATHROOMS, and even an elevator and dumb waiter. But that’s not the urban exploration part my brother was talking about. He said a few weeks earlier, he’d been touring another one of my father’s renovations when my father spied a nearby rooftop and said, “I bet we can get up there.” So bearing no mind to “no trespassing” or “employees only” signs, my father found a route to the top, simply so he could check out the perspective. This simple act brought back memories of my childhood, when we’d take walks every Sunday. This was during the big Cape Cod construction boom of the 80s, when neighborhoods were going up everywhere. Every Sunday, we’d find a new development to traipse through. I can clearly remember the smell of freshly poured and cured concrete, the sawdusts on the framed-out stairs, imagining what the house would look like when it was no longer a skeleton.
In the course of my discussion with my brother, I touched upon the urban exploration communities that I frequent online. I recently sent him some choice photos from those communities, which he, happily, enjoyed.
It was nice for me to be able to share something I enjoy with someone like my brother.
I forget sometimes how alike we really are.
