Explorations and Adventures?

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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P0L 1C3!

Draining around Buffalo on a hideously rainy January afternoon... the first two were gushing torrents of storm-swelled rivers at Lockport and Scajaquada, so we just happened to find a small manageable one in West Amherst. After a stop at Home Depot for drain boots and a run through the Mighty Taco drivethru, we returned to the entrance, followed by a moderately suspicious black Lexus. The license plate being P0L 1C3 should have been much more of a clue than it was. But after we explained what we were up to, the chief offered us a few suggestions of bigger and…

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Wings of Progress

Are they claws? Antennae? Batman? Rochester's Times Square building is best known for its Wings of Progress The building, commissioned in 1928 and built as the country plunged into depression, was meant to symbolize, along with the statue of Mercury across the street, Rochester's position as a technological and economic leader. The bank that built the tower fell in the bank runs of 1930, and it's held a variety of banks and offices ever since. Obviously, this is a building best left to tours, but if you get the opportunity, I would recommend seeing it. The basement, which was a…

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Slime

I'd just like to take this opportunity to let some people know how I feel about that UER meet this weekend. I don't know whether to call it discrimination, bad blood, or just bad luck, but it needs to be known that these people left me in Holley, 23 miles from Rochester, and it only gets worse from there. It started out like every other monthly meeting, with coffee and bagels and deciding where to go which is mostly bragging about what everyone else found. For once I had something to bring to the table, I've got some new drains…

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Physical Culture

While its earliest origins were as a home for injured Civil War veterans and an asylum for children, the Castle on the Hill gained its greatest notoriety as a Physical Culture spa, or 'healthatorium'. Led by the highly eccentric Bernar'r Macfadden, Physical Culture combined bodybuilding, ascetic fasting and a strict raw food diet. An incredibly prolific writer, Bernar'r wrote about 115 books, copies of which used to be stacked by the thousands in his publishing house (which burned down in 2006) behind the sanatorium. Guests here included most of Wall Street and Broadway in the '20s and '30s, at the…

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Introducing IOLA

Third meet of the UER season, and a chance to meet some new explorers. NeonTempest wanted to introduce us to this place, the Iola Sanatorium, to show us what "real exploring" was like. Which, to him, meant something like park a mile away with 12 people, and march right onto the grounds in the plainest sight possible. Just to take us straight downstairs into this. The whole point of going was these tunnels, blocked off with fresh new cinder blocks. So we get to try another entrance, going through this just to find more cinder blocks. By the time he's…

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