Gadling

When I was a kid I used to explore my town as if it was some exotic land. The places to go were always the places I wasn’t supposed to go: people’s backyards, the basements under stores and restaurants, any kind of tunnel whatsoever, the darkened classrooms and offices of the school at night. We were what are now more formally called urban explorers. Well, OK, sub-urban explorers, because we lived outside of the downtown area of Los Angeles. But no matter, the point is that some people, and this included many if not most of my friends, were really into checking out the world around them, “discovering” places that we’d never seen and going places we knew we weren’t supposed to go.

I’d like to say those days are gone, that I’m a grownup now, but the fact is, I still spend a LOT of my free time just walking around NYC and exploring. No, I don’t break into buildings anymore, but if I see a dark alleyway that looks interesting, or a way to get under a bridge to see a new view of the river, I’ll do it. Urban exploration is still in my blood. But that said, there are some folks for whom the urban exploration idea gets taken to the extreme. They live and die for this stuff. Go over to this site called Infiltration.org, for example, and see some of the stuff they do and the places they go. They offer strategems and tips, all part of an actual book/zine they put out. This is hard core, but still very cool.