Industrial

Fluid Dynamics 103

Third time at the Fluid Dynamics factory; not that I especially wanted to go back, but it's a place the new Concrete Collective hasn't seen, and we have a ride out there, so why not go for it... Watch out where the huskies go, never eat ammonia snow! Whittiker's First Law: Every abandonment has a shopping cart Whittiker's Second Law? The front door always opens! This little gadget is an explosimeter. Properly calibrated, it will let you know if the air where you are standing is imminently explosive. Luckily it is reading a 0% chance of blowing ourselves up. Unfortunately,…

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Fluid Dynamics 102

Back to the Kleen Brite factory... not all that much to say about the place, but you can't go wrong with industrial rust. The company went under, and left everything, right down to half done experiments in the labs This place must have been a nightmare for the plumbers Need any caps for anything? Photo album here

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Black Cats and Step Ladders

(Part 5 of my Detroit/Cleveland adventure) Right out of the cold storage, this came along meowing at me. I wanted to bring him home with me. But instead he just seemed to bring typical black-cat luck through most of the day! Four locations, and four U-turns, into the day, Mike still needed to wrap his head around the fact that not all of us can climb like lemurs... this was a perfectly doable entrance for him, and a perfect way to fall and break something for me! And nothing but more of the same at St Luke... no way in…

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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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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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