Industrial

[continued from part 5] Just like everywhere else in Gary, all it took was a quick look around the block to find yet more places to explore. Above and next to the theater there were more storefront-type places that weren't all that interesting on their own, but did still have a few products left, and this idyllic mural -- could this have been Gary in its early days? There isn't much of a village left here, but who knows, maybe Gary will rise again someday... I didn't have to go far to find still more abandonment, this time an entire…

The environment for exploring here is truly unlike anything I've ever seen... we saw this building from the roof of the Methodist Church and thought it looked interesting, so we walked down 6th street toward it. A local saw us and our cameras and, instead of being suspicious or avaricious, asked us if we were going to see "the Aristocrats". I said, maybe -- we didn't know where they were -- and he told us that it was the abandoned hotel we saw, and that it was once the residence of U.S. Steel executives when they spent time in Gary,…