absent magazine

I wear shoes with padded soles to these places of the past; this keeps me from being heard while walking. Touring an abandoned place is a lot like walking through a post-apocalyptic no-man’s land; but with it comes both the guilt and exhiliration of potentially being caught for a crime.

When we see these places from the outside, they often don’t leave us with any lasting impression. Passing by them may incite idle curiosity for a few fleeting seconds, but it’s generally in passing. When one is inside, though, the experience changes. There are moments in which I’ve heard my own heart beating; seen flapping gulls in a framed-glass six story foyer that once housed radioactive ship components; an escalator that was once the world’s tallest and sits covered in mold, rust, and bird droppings. In a digital age, where everyone has a camera and every person with a cell phone is a photographer, these places serve as ideal snapshot fodder — and as a result an entire sub-culture of explorers have built a veritable institution online.

Beyond their raw photographic, draw though — beyond the interplay of light and rust, peeling paint, and the odor of asbestos and death is something that tells more about our culture than any critic or pundit could. Top secret manuals strewn about in military bases closed by the Base Realignment Committee; a multi-million dollar mansion built by a copper baron; the pervasive smell of benzyne, diesel fuel, and who-knows-what-else hundreds of feet underground in a Titan 1 missile silo. These experiences are incredibly formative; in an odd way they are the modern, post-industrial equivalent of Muir’s cathedrals.

My first conversion experience was not in a pew; it happened while I was alone. I was about to enter one of Oakland’s grandest historic structures — the Key System building. Pulling up a retractable ladder to a second story window, I nonchalantly climbed into the dark hole as bus passengers across the street looked at me in shock. The ladder disappeared from the bus passengers’ view along with me as I cautiously strolled across the precarious platform, which had a commanding view of the lobby below. Hand-carved Beaux Arts plaster had toppled from the ceiling; water dripped; a lone desk from the 40s sat in the middle of it all, rusting in its wake. But the conversion came higher — six stories up. I climbed the wrought iron staircase, encountering artifacts from various raves dating to the 80s. Though the building was an empty shell, one still had a sense of its magnificance. It was first built as a bank building and the architect spared no expense.

As I went higher, the rooms became emptier. Characteristic orange sodium vapor light flooded in through the broken windows. A building’s beauty is often best brought out when it’s empty. All too often we walk through active buildings and take little note of the care that is taken into its construction. At night, and while empty, is a building’s moment of glory. If a building’s best moment is when it is empty, its worst moment is reaching the final set of stairs. It is a moment of loss; a moment when one realizes there is nothing left to discover and this brief escape — like all escapes — will have its end.

I emerged to the roof and saw high-rises all around me. To the north was the Tribune building. I stood there to take it all in, understanding history through experience; knowing what a place once was, in the middle of a growing city that’s so alive, yet still carries the dead weight of the past on its shoulders. I stood there for what seemed like minutes (likely hours) in meditative silence. There on the top story of a 1911 building, a new belief was formed, and since then have discovered things about the past that few have been privileged to see.

Yes, I am a trespasser, and I have likely encroached on one of America’s dearest of ideas — that of private property. But through that minor transgression, I have been in the captain’s room of a 1950s cruise ship and have seen the silo of a 4-megaton nuclear warhead; photographed the abandoned mansion of a billionaire, and walked the halls of a World War II secret interrogation facility. It’s good to know there is still much to discover in this world, and taking pictures of these places is my conceit of ensuring that they’re never forgotten.