statler
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I know a few people here have fessed up to urban exploring. I'd love to try it but I'm way too chicken-shit. Anyone have some goods stories, links or photos of their (or other people's) adventures?
There are also some links and a slide show on the story page.
LinkBostonNOW said:Boston off-limits exposed
Boston urban explorers delve into secret city places
Christopher Loh, cloh@bostonnow.com
Saul really didn't know where the stairwell would lead, but it looked sturdy enough.
Saul (last name withheld by request) was a veteran at this, an urban explorer with a pedigree of conquered buildings, tunnels and underground byways. The Dorchester resident was now a few minutes into his newest find, an abandoned Dorchester factory.
Standing on the dusty, dirt-caked floor, Saul looked at the staircase intently weighing risk versus gain. He decided to take the chance.
Halfway up the teetering wooden staircase, however, Saul's legs registered the change. The planks cracked, bolts sprang free from the crumbling brick wall and the antiquated structure gave way.
It was a short fall. This time, he climbed from the wreckage without injury.
"I've overcome my fear of it," Saul said of the unexpected danger urban exploration often brings.
There is a wide array of old abandoned factories and subway tunnels in Boston. There are hollowed-out office buildings and military compounds, emptied mental asylums and health facilities, all dotting the city's landscape, calling out to people like Saul, silently waiting to be explored.
Urban explorers exist in small and sometimes secret cells. Recently, photos have started to appear online and logs of explorations have been posted to blogs. The Internet has become a window into a world about which most Bostonians would never otherwise know about.
According to Liz (last name withheld by request) from infiltration.org, the art of urban exploration is about opening a world that is otherwise closed. She described the urban explorer as a kind of athlete-cum-daredevil. She warned it is not for the lighthearted or the foolish.
"You're making judgment calls constantly," Liz said. "This is one of the reasons that it is difficult and that urban exploration has a little bit of a reputation of being a thrill-seeking activity. [That reputation] tends to make it seem like it is something good to do drunk with your buddies. You really do need to have your wits about you and you really do need to think about a lot of different factors when you do this."
But the reward in exploring an abandoned subway tunnel or factory floor is well worth the risk, according Saul, if done safely.
"It's a little rush to pop outside somewhere and go, 'I didn't know I could get to this point from this point,'" he said.
Liz echoed that sense of excitement. Urban exploration generates, she said, a range of emotions, from curiosity to fright.
"Some people actually do explore because they want to be scared," said Liz. "They want to be thrilled -- that's not necessarily my motivation -- but it would be impossible to go into this with a totally lackadaisical approach because there's all kinds of things to be scared of. You should be!
"I mean there's something really amazing about being someplace that is overlooked and there is something amazing about being in a place that's trapped in time," she continued. "But for me, it's not about having it being mine alone and it's not about having it being scary or risky. It's simply about contextualizing my urban environment."
The ancient buildings and factories of blue collar South Boston, Saul said, are some of the best shows in town -- including a land bridge to islands in Boston Harbor (where one can slip into old military buildings, a mental asylum and old missile silos).
"The satisfying part of it is when you go back and you say, 'Where the hell was I?' and you say, 'I didn't know this even existed,'" he said.
Urban explorers don't always dive into pre-picked destinations. Saul said. His targets are, to a degree, random. To stay open to opportunity, Saul said he carries a pack with him -- a sort of urban exploration tool belt featuring a digital camera and an all-purpose workman's tools.
"I tend to go left when there's a right and see what happens," he said. "There are definitely people I know that are organized about it. There is a meet-up group that goes around."
"I get fairly regular e-mails from people who say, 'Oh my God, I didn't know you guys were out there doing this, I thought I was the only one,'" Liz said. "And that's a really great thing because through the Internet people are able to form these communities. I try to help influence people to do these things in a healthy way."
And then there are the authorities. Urban explorers are seldom in places they are supposed to be, and the consequences can be a run-in with the law.
Urban explorer Dave Nault spoke of his adventures with local enforcement. Nault's discovery of the day was a room full of rusted wire cots, cast in striking relief in the morning sunlight of the abandoned tuberculosis hospital's second floor.
A "profitable" day of urban exploration took a turn for the worse, however, when Nault, 25, of Plymouth, saw the cop was standing outside. The officer was patient, waiting by his cruiser -- waiting for Nault to emerge.
It wasn't that the room of cots, where Nault imagined dying patients once lay, wasn't creepy. It was that the prospect of arrest for trespassing seemed the greater of two evils. Nault decided to wait this one out.
"I saw him and stayed in the top floor of the hospital for three hours waiting for him to leave," said Nault, who has been exploring broken-down buildings in suburban Massachusetts since his days in junior high school.
"I've kind of learned when to make my presence known in places and when not to," said Nault, adding that running away from police officers is the worst thing you can do. "If you fly off the handle, they fly off the handle."
Most of the time, Nault said, a slap on the wrist is all an urban explorer will receive -- usually in the form of discarding any photographs taken of the building or just a plain "get out of here."
At one point Nault said he bargained his way out of trouble with donuts and coffee.
"He said he was coming off a 24-hour shift so I said we should get some coffee at a Dunkin' Donuts across the street," said Nault of one encounter with a police officer. "I talked to him for 15 minutes and then took off."
Urban Exploration (by any other name)
* Infiltration (although this is associated more with the exploring active or inhabited sites)
* Urban spelunking
* Urban caving
* Vadding
* Building hacking
* Reality hacking
* Tunnel hacking
History: Who was Ninjalicious?
Jeff Chapman was, and perhaps still is, the most well-known urban explorer.
Chapman, more commonly known by his handle "Ninjalicious," founded Infiltration magazine in 1996.
Infiltration started out publishing 25 hardcopy issues, covering different elements of urban exploration -- ranging from how to avoid security to exploring abandoned military shelters.
Infiltration went on to become an online publication: "Infiltration.org: the 'zine (online magazine) about going places you're not supposed to go."
The website hosts a number of different articles written by Chapman, including his explanations and instructions for the art of exploring operating churches and how to ignore different warning signs.
He was also a prominent author and editor for YIP Magazine and published his own book on urban exploration titled Access All Areas: A user's guide to the art of urban exploration.
Chapman died of cancer at age 31 in 2005.
Published on Wed, May 9, 2007
There are also some links and a slide show on the story page.
My site was one of those links 
