Exploring News: That building? AUGH!

Published on: December 26th, 2019 | Written by: Bad Guy Joe

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All Things Exploring now Exploring News
Or, XN for short. You know, eXploring news? The working title of ‘All Things Exploring‘ felt too long and indirect, whereas Exploring News just cuts right to the damn point.

Don’t Sell Your Looted Mercury in Parking Lots at 3PM OMG ALMOST DIED!
A Houston man was arrested after selling Mercury to various strangers, after having stolen it from an abandoned building. Pro tip: don’t try to sell looted chemicals.

The abandoned building itself became a news item later in the week when investigators entered and found ‘tubs of mercury‘ along with various other hazardous chemicals.

Mercury, BTW, is my favorite metal. It’s liquid, it wants to kill you. It’s so fucking metal.

Whole Train Insanity
Last week noted that infamous NYC graffiti artist Zexor passed away. It was a bad week for the graffiti world, as subway graffiti pioneer Phase II also passed. As a tribute to these and other artists, a team of graffiti writers painted an entire 8 car long J/M train with their names.

Noted toy and anti-union media owner Jake Dobkin naively stated “It’s very unusual to see a train leave the yards with a top-to-bottom, end-to-end burner”, apparently extremely unaware of how often these trains have been seen by the public in the last five years.

Speaking of garbage news outlets, CBS news says the MTA claimed that it will cost “tens of thousands of dollars to clean up“. That’s a huge number, maybe they should do some fact checking on that? And if the MTA is really spending deep into the tens of thousands to power wash a train, maybe we should be questioning why? Four or five people with power washers could get the job done in a morning. Most MTA maintenance yards are equipped with automated subway car washers.

If you ask me, the MTA should just sell permits to paint subways instead. the tourists would love it. Platforms like those at City Hall Lower Level could be used by permit holders to safely paint these trains.

More Drug Tunnels
Drug traffickers in the border town of Nogales, AZ used a sewer (called the ‘International Outfall Interceptor (IOI)’) to build a branch tunnel that was 82 feet long and 8 feet deep. This side tunnel lead into a trap house. No word on if those who found and/or built this tunnel consider themselves DrAin0rz!

YEET YOUR LOOT TRASH ON AMAZON
Did you know that you too can sell your trash on Amazon? Or better still, sell other people’s trash and loot you’ve found in ‘bandos. This should surprise no one of course, since the dawn of ‘Urban Exploring’ as a buzzword, looters have sold their stuff on eBay. Amazon is just one more corporate outlet to piggyback off and make that sweet booze money. Until the day comes when we can destroy these corporate overlords, let’s take advantage of them every step of the way.

BUSTED!
Two derps in Alabama were arrested after they were caught breaking into a ‘bando with a pickaxe. Judging from google street views, there are no substantial abandoned buildings near the crime scene, except maybe a tiny schoolhouse or a closed gas station. That’s a lot of legal trouble for a garbage ‘bando. Lootie says: always yeet your B&E tool before entering a ‘bando. One less criminal charge!

Chicago ‘Bando Firehouse reuse.
Some Chicago residents have found a creative way to reuse an abandoned firehouse without knocking the place down. Good work.

Carraway Hospital Redev?
Down in Birmingham, Alabama, the old Carraway Hospital might finally be seeing redevelopment. The mayor and neighbors are pretty much done with its ten year run as a ‘bando.

Redlands CA church bando
If you’re making that California trip, maybe this abandoned church in Redlands is worth a stop? It’s apparently used for storage at the moment but since when has that stopped some of you goons?

Sleeping Bag Looters
Copper thieves were almost caught looting the old coleman sleeping bag factory in South Cakalacky last week. The factory has been abandoned since the late 1990s and apparently has only now come on the radar of scrappers.

Florida Man takes Runway Child Bowling
A Jacksonville Perp was arrested for harboring a runaway child in an abandoned bowling alley. Apparently he had more than one run away, in more than one building… and as horrific as that is, I’ve got a one track mind for Bandos. Think of the parties you could throw in a ‘bando bowling alley?

Las Vegas Drain Homeless
If you’re still not familiar with the homeless who live under Las Vegas, this new Huffington post article rehashes all the details.

Texas Hyperloop
AECOM has proposed building a hyperloop connecting Texas cities, so you can travel to any one of them within twenty minutes. They could build high speed rail, right now, but hey these corporate clowns seem to love living in Elon Musk’s deranged vaporware fantasy land, where everyone drives a Tesla that speeds through a tiny tunnel and traffic doesn’t exist because hey let’s all be like Adam Neumann and make a bunch of bullshit while flying around the world getting high?

FATBERG BREXIT
Some hearty maintenance workers removed two more fatbergs from under London last week—at a total combined weight of 100 tons, these fatbergs were going to cause no end of trouble.

A few less ‘Bandos
If you were thinking of hitting up that Bishop McDevitt school in Harrisburg, you better run a strong side route and get in that end zone quick, cuz a former NFL start is planning to do some shit with it.

Similarly, if you’re looking to do the old Pfizer lab and office in Terre Haute, IN, get in now before renovation work begins.

Up in Detroit, the city paid a contractor to demolish a house, and the contractor ended up demolishing the wrong house. If this sounds familiar, it’s because the same contractor made the same mistake just a few months ago. To be fair, most of the abandoned homes on that street don’t have visible addresses, but that’s no excuse given today’s easily accessible geo-location tech.

Bando BBQ!
Up in Canada, a large factory building that was popular with AUGHS (Arsonists, Urbexors, Graffiti artists, Homeless and Scrappers) is finally being taken down.

If you’ve never heard the term AUGHS! before, it’s because I just came up with it. Right Now. Right here. It’s the sound you make when you hear about an abandoned building, only to go check it out and find that it has been picked over and pillaged already.

A large abandoned building in Brussels went out in a blaze of glory, necessitating its complete demolition afterwards.

A-Derpy McDerpington was arrested for setting a building on fire in North Carolina. Dude looks like the airhead BF of a woman I once… oh you don’t need to hear this.

Speaking of maybe homeless people bando fires, a building in Pacoima (CA) caught fire, with investigators eyeing the homeless camp outside as potential suspects. A similar situation played out in Petaluma.

Here’s a good one from Cleveland: “A man is in custody after being suspected of setting fire to an abandoned home four times over the course of seven months and trying to set it on fire a fifth time Thursday evening, according to the Cleveland Division of Fire”. I really want to know what this person’s motive is. Five times?! Holy obsession batman!

The old abandoned Northland Mall suffered a rather harsh fire last week. At one time, it was the largest mall in America.

A portion of an abandoned stadium got the homeless fire treatment near Salt Lake City.

PIGLOOS!
This story has almost nothing to do with exploring but did you know that the US has a huge feral pig problem, and these pigs have adapted to the cold by “…burrow into the snow in winter, creating so-called pigloos — a tunnel or cave with a foot or two of snow on top for insulation. ” The US’s other feral pig problem is proving to be just as vexing to resolve, as those pigs evolve their torture style and legal tactics… but what can you do? Hopefully this silly spiteful sidebar was insightful and didn’t boar you.

International Update
The UK is just all up in the bando news this week. According to one report, the UK has 617,527 empty buildings! Of this number, 445,310 were residential dwellings and 172,217 were commercial buildings, according to the data released by Glide. So many places for those instagram vacant building porn shoots!

Speaking of the UK, here’s a retrospective on how the Battersea powerplant has lasted as long as it did.

If hospitals are more you’re thing, check out these photos of a long abandoned hot mess over in Leeds. Apparently there’s a ‘bando nursing home in Bracknell awaiting your exploration.

Have you heard of the ridiculous rich couple who are building a mansion with a secret tunnel big enough to drive an electric car through (it will include one!) leading to a well stocked bunker? Maybe next we’ll have mega-wealthy fools building hyperloop tunnels across the globe to their South Dakota bunkers?

If none of this is nuclear enough for yo, or read up on how the gobshites once planned to blow up the channel tunnel with a nuke, if for some bizarre reason they needed to…

Big Correction
Two weeks back this newsletter was titled ‘The fatberg that sank southeast Queens”—and as it turns out, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection flat out lied to the press. It was a broken 42 inch sewer piped that caused the flooding of 160 homes, not a fatberg. It seemed a little dubious that a fatberg would randomly appear and cause that much flooding. I’m glad they at least fessed up, though I worry they won’t do right by all these families who have been displaced.

AND THAT’S A WRAP.
So who needs a cigarette? That was one long update!

Behind the scenes, I’ve probably spent far too much time this last month addressing a host of ridiculous issues on this website, mostly geared towards not encountering bullshit problems down the road. If you buy me a whiskey I’ll happily tell you alllllll about it. Some stuff is best never written anywhere.

So with the groundwork laid, early next year I’ll be buttoning up a branding overhaul, and potentially reopening the web store for a very limited time. Newsletter subscribers of course will get a deeeeep discount, should you actually want any of this magic loot.

-Bad Guy Joe.

Comments

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