deneb

On Saturday, Peter picked Alex and me up to go on an urban exploring adventure. The Detroit Book Depository Building apparently started off as a post office, then was turned in to the book depository for Detroit Public Schools, then for some reason it was left completely abandoned. It has not been in use for many years, but it was not left empty. Exploring it was one of the craziest photo hunts I have ever been on:

The whole building is surrounded by barbed wire fences, which aren’t really too effective since there is a gaping hole outside of these loading docks, where we got in.

A taste of the random things that are scattered on the ground outside.

Boilers.

I’m a wheel.

The first floor. Very dark. Very wet. Very gross. We did not explore it much.

The second floor is much more interesting. This is one of many huge piles of books.

This is what the floor looked like. It seemed to be made out of thousands wood blocks sitting on end. Very strange.

Yarn.

Looking down the north-facing side of the second floor.

These things were everywhere. I’m guessing they were stacked at some point as shelves for all the crap that is now on the floor.

I’m sure kids at some school in Detroit need some chalk right now. Here it is.

On the left you can see the Michigan Central Train Station. It is also huge and abandoned. I might go in there someday.

Piles of more random things.

A bathroom.

In here we saw a steaming pile of fresh feces. A sign that we were not alone… A few minutes later Peter was admiring what looked like a dwelling made from all kinds of stuff piled together. He then saw it move. A few minutes later a homeless dude came out. Kinda creepy, but he didn’t bother us at all, and we were glad to leave him alone.

We couldn’t figure out what this was.

A room.

No, it will not.

Elevator Shaft.

The third floor. I guess there had been a fire on this floor, because the ground was mostly a “soil” of burned books. Here, part of the roof had collapsed under the weight of the trees growing on it. Very reassuring.

The third floor also has the most graffiti. There is some really interesting stuff.

A crank to open some windows.

Hello.

A hallway on the third floor.

Some cool thing at the top of the elevator shaft.

On the roof. How does this happen??

The top of the abandoned train station.

Seriously, are people setting off bombs or something up here?

Trees growing with the Detroit skyline in the background.

To the right, you can see the tops of the trees that are growing on the third floor. They had previously been on top of another thing like this, which fell into the third floor. This one looks like it’s going to go soon as well.

Top of the freight elevator shaft.

We couldn’t go in the basement as it was completely flooded with about three feet of water.

So my first real urban exploring adventure was a complete success. If you ever plan on doing it, remember to bring a flashlight, and don’t wear new shoes.
To read more about the building, check this out. That guy also has some great photos of the place, some cool HDR’s and stuff. He is a much better blogger than I am.

Hello…I haven’t had many interesting pictures to post lately. This will change soon

Saw this today.

For whatever reason we decided to have a fire and drink at least one bottle of wine every night last week in Greg’s backyard. By the fourth day we were sick of buying wood, so we made our fire out of a starter log, a log from the previous day, and a bunch of particle board that my dad was throwing away. It turns out that we weren’t supposed to burn the particle board because it had a bunch of weird glue and chemicals in it that smelled awful when burning. But that was ok because the fire had become an experimental abstract expressive art project:

….which then exploded flame!!!!

Eventually I went a little crazy and put a few too many pieces of the particle board on the fire, causing it to sort of smother out, sending assloads of toxic smoke into the air…we used a hose to put it out. The next day though we had a real fire with lots of real wood and a barbecue with hot dogs and veggie burgers and we made s’mores with marshmallows to make up for it. Mmmmm….

In other news, today I went to see the Detroit Symphony play some Philip Glass music while some wildlife photography by Frans Lanting was projected onto three huge screens behind them. It was sweet. Afterwards they had an exhibit of real live bats in the lobby. Then I ate a hamburger at the Detroit Beer Co. A good day. But now I have a headache, so I am going to go relax and go to bed. Goodnight.

Take that, flower girl.

All of a sudden it is like 90 degrees with a million percent humidity outside. But whatever, I was out in it on my bike. There is nothing better than coming inside from a tiring bike ride in that weather, all sweaty and hot, and downing a few glasses of ice water in the cool, dark basement. Ahhhh…  I don’t know why more people don’t ride bikes. Bikes are awesome. I was thinking that when I was riding home from Chris’s house earlier tonight as the cool night air was sweeping over me and a crescent moon was rising through some clouds in the sky that was just barely still noticeably lit from the sun that set maybe 40 minutes earlier. So nice. I also had the song “It Beats 4 U” by My Morning Jacket stuck in my head. That song has been stuck in my head a lot lately. Good song. I had it blaring out my car windows last night when we were driving around and honking and acting like idiots (because the Wings won the Stanley Cup or something).

I am going to go ride dirt bikes again this weekend up north. As much as I love regular biking, it is also sometimes pretty fun when your bike has a motor on it and big tires and you ride it through a bunch of mud and dirt and stuff. I will probably post some pictures, Sunday-ish.

Saturday was spent wandering around the city, looking for some interesting photos. I didn’t find very many though, so I’ll just have to keep going back until I get back in my groove. Later I watched the first Tim Burton Batman movie with Greg and Ben. Awesome. Yesterday was uneventful, as is today so far. I am still looking for a job, and since I have been unable to ride my bike I have been spending a massive amount of time on the internet. I just finished reading Peter Jurich’s book online, entitled “Typing With One Hand.” It is basically a memoir about his life experiences growing up around Dearborn and Detroit, and I found it to be pretty entertaining and thoughtful. He has posted the entire thing on the internet for free, and you can read it by going to www.typingwithonehand.com. I recommend checking it out…

Well today was pretty cool. I was excited because they were practicing for the Red Bull Air Race downtown, and you could go watch for free. Unfortunately, even though we got down there like two hours before it was supposed to be over, we only got to see one plane fly through the course for like two minutes before they deflated the huge pylon thingies. Laame. So after that we headed over to the MGM Grand where I lost three dollars. woooo… Then we ate at Greektown which was interesting. After that we watched the Pistons lose. Now I am sitting on Alex’s couch and I’m tired. weeee. Whatever I was just happy to be out of my house finally after being sick for so long. Hooray! I think I am going on a Detroit photo hunt tomorrow, so hopefully I will post some pictures from that.