Author: Concrete

This author has written 232 articles

Everybody’s Doing The Fish

(Part 3 of my Detroit/Cleveland adventure) Following the suggestion of the hobo in the old hotel, we found our way after a few (well, more than a few) wrong turns to the Fisher Body plant. It's no Packard, but still a good taste of the Motor City's abandoned legacy. Fisher was/is the supplier of steel auto bodies to GM, and to a lesser extent some of the European models, and still has a major facility next to GM in Dearborn, even though this one in Highland Park closed in the late 90s. Architecturally, it is a nearly perfect Detroit boxy…

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And You Shall Say, God Did It

(Part 2 of my Detroit/Cleveland adventure) Our next destination, Detroit urbex tourists as we were, had to be the Packard Plant! There is nothing like it around... over a million square feet of giant, dead factory space with nothing in it but some vagrant homes, a precariously perched RV or two, and the best graffiti in the Midwest. Only one thing could stop us: Optimus Prime! Only one thing did stop us: Optimus Prime, surrounded by a film crew and attendent security. Oh well, looks like we got a sneak peek at Transformers 4... soon to be in theaters for…

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Apocalypse: Here

After 32 hours and 1200 miles of trains (yeah about that... Chicago was nice and all but really? You can fall asleep on a train and wake up 3 states too far?) I finally arrived in Detroit. I'm not sure what I was expecting to see, maybe some third world abandonscape right outside of the train station, but it really seemed like any other American city I'd ever been to. There were cars on the road, people in the streets, a crowd gathering at the station to catch the next train to Lansing, 9am and well into their tailgate already…

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Once More To The Lake

I never thought I'd be able to say it about this spot, but it came painfully clear from the first night: the glory days were over. Far from living up to its name, the 3rd½ Annual UR UrbEx Semi-Cold Sesqui-Awesome ExploroCamping Extravaganza felt like hollowly going through the motions of something that once was special. Gone are the hipsters and artists, here are the new order, the engineers. Even when it comes time for the traditions from old Concrete, the sausage roast, the pomegranates, tetherboating -- the rules are what they are, and rule us in our time of freedom…

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Home of the Wage Slave

Back to the familiar Sykes Datatronics building, with about 50 people from the UR group in tow this time! The biggest change from last year is the fresh graffiti, looks like the anarchists had something going here over the summer... I'm actually kind of sad I missed this Ancient keyboards are a pretty common thing here. They seem to have held up a lot better than any other computer parts. I think I found an internet! One imposing building from this side May '68 + January '07 = this Bad Business More HDR weirdness. Still not sure I like this...…

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