Fuck It, We’ll Do It Live

Sunday was a day I honestly thought would never come, especially after the fuckery in Poughkeepsie -- my first time in a real abandoned mental asylum. Not just Rochester psych, half of which wasn't even built until the 60s, and the other building which I only saw by permission, but a real explore, a respectable location, and as an added bonus, even a working camera! Willard was actually the third asylum we tried that day, after abject failures at Rochester and Newark, and it seemed I would do anything possible to make it three in a row. I barely had…

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An Evening Of Culture

Bernar'r Macfadden, eccentric fitness guru of the last century, was arguably the inventor of the culture of diet, exercise and weight loss for health that is so prevalent today. Before the actual health benefits were known, or even suspected by the mainstream medical community, Bernar'r promoted alternately vegetarianism and a predecessor of the Paleo diet (raw food, including red meats) as the natural diet of the human animal. This, combined with strenuous outdoor exercise, became the foundation of Physical Culture, and the beginning of a lucrative career for Macfadden as America's first fad-diet shiller. Promoting his Physical Culture, Macfadden created…

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Mosquito Coast

After watching the tower come down, Anna and I continued on to our real adventure planned for the weekend -- bike camping along the lake shore. On our way out of town we stopped at the public market to pick up Katie, Jake and Tom, and went on from there to route 101, and about a 40 mile ride to Sodus Point. Our destination: Beachwood State Park, a newly acquired property that was once the boy scouts' Camp Pioneer (which would be replaced in 1951 with the current Adirondack site), then the girl scouts' Arrowhead Camp, before closing around 2000.…

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Less Studying, More Exploring

How better to enjoy finals week? Bernar'r Macfadden was a very eccentric man. His Castle on the Hill, the Dansville Physical Culture Hotel, served as a shining example of his health advice. The inventor of Grape-nuts and push-ups, Bernar'r (originally named Bernard; considering this name unmasculine he respelled it with the roar'r of a lion) considered fresh air, the outdoors and a raw diet essential to the promotion of health. Besides vigorous exercise, the hotel also offered the latest in music and theater, and lectures religious and secular, to contribute to its patients' mental health. This brochure from about 1938…

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315ing

I don't know much about this place, we just happened to find it while looking for anything at all to explore. It seems like it might have been a brewery, it looked an awful lot like the Buffalo malt. And I still had so much trouble with the concept of auto focus.

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Roundhouse

The Manchester Roundhouse was one of the largest warehouses of its time, built somewhere around 1900. Warehouses of that era tended to be arch-shaped, so that trains could come in, unload, and exit facing back out onto the track. This one stayed in business much longer than most roundhouses, but has been closed at least 30 years. This was my first time exploring with the new camera. Unfortunately I didn't discover auto focus for a few more days... so about 90% of what you don't see here was blurry trash that deserved to be deleted. One rusty truck Then this…

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