Echos of the past

looks like the railyard permission was a false rumor. ;-(

may try again in the evening, but the film crew turned us away.

Here is a bit, of kinda cool virtual exploring,

See the opulent splendor,

http://wordcab.blogspot.com/2009/06/inside-gertrude-zacharys-fortress.html

Well turnout was pretty sad(but not pointless), at least as far as I could tell, we had only one person whom was not already known to the 3 of us, and the bar would not let one of us in due to his recently expired ID.

But I will not let it totally discourage me, there will be another one.

Reminder Saturday (4:30pm)we are having the first meeting of NM Urbexers, over at the Monte Vista Firestation, I know of about 6 people i know may be going, beyond that Im not sure, Id like to get a rough count so i can tell them to reserve some space for us.

Also, looks like the railyard might be open (legally) for photographers, on July 11th,
http://www.flickr.com/groups/abq_sf_meetup/discuss/72157620375080861/

other than that looks like there may be another run to the Old state pen up by santa-fe
http://www.flickr.com/groups/abq_sf_meetup/discuss/72157620417953516/

With the Saturday night meet-up looming, I was wondering if anyone attending would be able to give me a lift? I live about 4 blocks south of the Press Club. Thanks.

Map to next Saturday's Urbex Face to face thingum. 4:30pm-7ish June 27th
Monte Vista Fire station (above Gruet Steak House)

Map for those not familiar with the place.

So, off the top of my head trying to think of cool places to have the Abq_Urbex meeting, I kinda wanted to put it some place public, but with a bit of history,

The first thing that came to mind was the Rooftop bar of the Monte Vista Fire Station, 3201 Central NE Built in 1936 by Architect Ernest Blumenthal, by WPA (depression era funds)

Of those likely to attend, is everyone over 21? Not to be age'ist but to explore with me you have to be atleast 18, and preferably 21, just to limit the "corrupting a minor" legal issues. and since this is a bar, that would further limit your access to this event.

Sound good to you all? When is best for folks, mid afternoon? *edit* just discovered im on call for work that weekend, so if my preferences factor in, id like it to be in the 4:30-7ish range.

Warning, don't rent, the urbex documentary, Echoes of Forgotten Places [2005] from netflix, they have shipped me 3 shattered disks of it before i gave up and hunted for it online. I can only guess the dvds are made out of something like movie stunt glass.

It is beautiful, I can recommend seeing it(and I hope netflix keeps buying replacement disks so they get a fairly good number of sales of the content), if you are into these sorts of things, it was kinda like watching really good quality porn. Another good documentary is Into the Darkness.

Been on a spree of reading up on other peoples takes on the sport. Finished Invisible Frontiers, a bit ago, and just got "Infiltration: Access all areas".

What do people think of doing the Urban explorer gathering afternoon/evening of June 27th, or 28th? Can I get a show of hands of how many people are thinking they might be able to show?

feel free to email me killbox at livejournal dot com if you prefer.

One of many locally filmed movies, coming out this fall, is "Gamer" (it was "Game" when they were shooting it, if you look at the plot it looks like a worn out rehashed done a dozen times flick, but because it features our beloved railyard and lots of other Albuquerque scenes, i frigged i would want to see it.

But caught the preview, and it looks better than i thought, i might actually enjoy watching it. (even if it is insanely stupidly named and really hard to google for!)

http://www.gamerthemovie.com/

Ive only skimmed it but it looks pretty good. Probably as good as one can hope for in a 2 page article. (which is pretty nice)



I will link the electronic version whenever that gets updated.
http://alibi.com/index.php?scn=feature&di=&story=27994
electronic version has atleast one of the photos attributed to me, and some of Ty's photos.

In the article he goes a little ovarboard with the getting permission part, The biggest edit I would have to that section is, that sometimes its nearly impossible to find the right people to ask for permission!

Built in 1926, covering 2.3 acres at 803 Central SE This hospital has stood as a TB sanatorium, The regional hospital(mostly for the railroad and railyard shops), and eventually as a psychiatric and out patient oriented medical practice up until the early 2000s

Its been closed down, on and off the market, and guarded most of the time. this has kept the likes of me wandering the perimeter and wondering.

I tried calling the number on the real-estate signs, but never got a call back.

One fellow photographer had talked to the security guards, and they claimed it had a bad resistant staff infection and people were kept out for their safety. I called BS on this, but the rumor was persistent.

About 2 weeks ago i caught an article about how they were going to have a big ground breaking for the Unveiling the plans for the new "Hotel Parq Central", Their drawings look like they are going to try and keep the look, and some of the feel. Which as i say beats a wrecking ball or it being gutted by fire for insurance money.

It will house 72 rooms or so. Well i got to wander around with the rest of the crowds and photograph the place, on the ground floor, the boiler shops and the 2nd/3rd story, and basements were off limits.

Here is a link to my photographs, and a few selected ones for those that are too lazy to go look ;-D
http://www.flickr.com/photos/killbox/sets/72157618943918576/

At the bottom I will have some links to some videos of the news coverage of the event.





http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/business/business_krqe_albuquerque_new_hotel_boasts_historic_roots_200905271741
http://www.koat.com/news/19584478/detail.html

Ok, well I posted before about this stuff, but here is a little recap.

First off we have a spiffy new domain name, www.urbexnm.com I'm going to start making email aliases. unfortunately lj does domain aliasing the stupid way, I was going to have albuquerque.urbexnm.com be this blog, but their server does not do that properly. so for now its http://www.urbexnm.com people who are not lj users can see the non protected entries there. but all in all for daily use http://abq_urbex.livejournal.com is probably the best for posting, and reading all the articles.

If anybody would like an email address there (basically an alias that will forward to whatever email address you currently have/use/want) let me know, you can email me at killbox@ lj dot com or killbox@ the above domain name (minus the albuquerque or www), give me the destination and the @urbexnm.com name you want, and I will setup the forward for you.

In the longrun I may setup a simple joomla site there and allow it to cross link to any other urban centers that develop a taste for urbex in NM.

2nd off, URBEX metup and pizza/beer whatnot. got 2 yays for it, So I think sometime around late june we will pick an evening and do it. get your preferences in now, both for place to meet and day!

3rd, I have no clue how good/bad/odd the urbex article in a soon to be coming out alibi will be, but Knowing Ty I think it will be pretty fair. So check it out, if you hate it I can point you at his blog ;-D

there was a 4th, but i forgot it. going to be doing a little writeup and photo post of the Memorial Hospital exploring we were allowed to do, love to do more! and while i'm working on it you can probably find all the photos over in my flickr account.

oh yah, 4th one, so who has gone and seen terminator? Yah I cant say i was bowled over by it, huge plot holes, annoying acting. but the sites were neat, how many did you recognize? (put a spoiler alert before any spoilers please)

Looks like the article on Albuquerque Urbex, is coming out next week in the Alibi, I have no clue how it turned out, and or how they may edit it up, but it is a loosed arrow flying from the bow.

Barring any local natural disasters or whatnot, It's looking like its scheduled to be the feature article.

To those of you from the future reading this because of the article, Welcome!

Made a little post in abandonedplaces, concerning just a mini outing i went on this weekend, my ankles have been too grumpy for much more.

see it here.
http://community.livejournal.com/abandonedplaces/1780061.html

What say you all to sometime meeting up over some beer and/or a few pizzas sometime? This community is still pretty small so most of us know one or another, But my hope is that you all will invite those you know who are interested.

And when it comes down to exploring, Im not extremely picky, I just want to make sure you are not in on it to loot and are self aware enough to keep safe! But i know meeting new people can be daunting, and when it may also involve trespassing or going somewhere off the beaten path, it can be a bit daunting to do with strangers.

Anyone interested? If so when is best (I'm well aware no time will be perfect for everyone!), Picking an interesting and possible historical place would be good too. If we like this we can try to do it semi regularly.

I'm also almost considering breaking my total dislike of twitter, if people think it would be beneficial for there to be a urbex outing (exploring buddy finding) tweet space. From time to time i find possibly interesting places to explore, but waiting a week or two to find a buddy on here can be annoying especially when the possible target is only briefly available or in the process of being knocked down or whatnot.

Debate!

Looks like the fake rumors of it being full of deadly resistant viruses were indeed just smokescreen like i thought.

Want to get inside Memorial hospital?

Looks like May 27. Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez and City Councilor Isaac Benton will address around 400 invited guests. Tours of the ground floor in the 1926 former hospital will be conducted from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.


http://albuquerque.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/stories/2009/05/18/daily7.html

you can try and get yourself invited. (im going to try despite it being in the middle of my work week)

ibenton@cabq.gov
mayor@cabq.gov

While I am seldom one to blatantly advocate law breaking, this is so amusing I had to at least share! http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/15/fake-dhs-photography.html

Sorry for the delay posting my notes on my talk, ive been having eye problems so didnt feel much like firing up my laptop and editing the links from local to online links. (was worried that i may have problems with internet so i locally cached a bunch of the links.

Anyway, here it is in pdf format. http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1121647/urbex1.pdf

The talk was pretty basic, and unfortunately my slides were more of an outline with me randomly babbling about it, but here they are anyway. if you have any questions fire away.

In other Urbex news, they are tearing down the school at Menaul and 1st street, Stronghurst. you can see some of the insides as they have been gutting it a bit at a time.

And speaking of URBEX assuming my eye feels better anyone up for a little outing Saturday to Sunday morning? Got a writer/blogger whom is working on an article for the alibi, and hes looking to go out on another run before the article gets finished. (He went on the Baker commodities run).

As for locations, im kind of out of new vetted places to take him, but thought we may revisit one of the previous sites. anyone got any specific desires?

Those few who made it to my talk Urbex talk at DorkbotAbq Thanks! The rest of you I totally understand if you had other stuff to do! In a day or 2 I will post a link to a pdf version of my slides. and if anyone has any questions or comments i will field them.

I think the talk went pretty well, Room was a little warm so i may have forgotten a few bits, but meh.

Met a bunch of very cool people, The Hand Of Man talk was fun, lots of talk of its failure/success.
http://current.com/items/89251171_the-hand-of-man.htm

As was the Doing wacky camera/photo tricks talk!

All in all for Albuquerque's 2nd Dorkbot I must say the quality of the talks was really good!

http://www.dukecityfix.com/profiles/blogs/beautiful-building-good-bye

its an article about the Stronghurst School on Menaul, now rubble.