Sewers are perhaps the most enigmatic of urban infrastructures. Most citizens of modern cities are aware of their existence, yet few could accurately describe their layout or appearance.
–Matthew Gandy

Clearly not accurate

Above me, the heavy round metal doors into this underworld shake with a pinging metallic scream that reverbs down these watery tunnels, slowly fading into a seemingly endless succession of dull thuds that migrate down the street above us, some racing black cab speeding a jilted lover home from the pub after the last trains have stopped running. This overworld scenario interests me far more interpreted from below the undercarraige of the cab, little bits of shit-sticky mud dislodging themselves  from the freshly-pried manhole cover edges, plopping onto my bald head. Cue a shuddering shake, aural spell broken.

Water races around my feet faster than the cab, pinning my waders in a strange plastic comfort to my legs, little bits of used toilet paper and raw sewage which we lovingly call “the fresh” blocked by my PVC barrier, pushing around me angrily in an effort to make it down this old river and into the Thames like salmon swimming not toward their spawning ground but the river Styx where the boat will sink halfway across and they will float lazily to the bottom, never to move again. As drainers, we learn to love the waste just as we learn to love the trash left behind in the streets of London at 4am on a Friday night. It is the detritus of passion passion for life that staves off our impending deaths, as Michael Dibdin writes in Cosi Fan Tutti:

This place reeks of mortality.
I thought it reeked of rancid oil and bad drains.
It comes to the same thing in the end.

At some point in London’s Victorian Age, the separation between “river” and “sewer” became blurred. Technically, I am standing in the River Westbourne which no one but sewer workers and daring drainers have seen for a hundred and fifty years. Despite the fact that no one has drank the water from this river since the 1400s, it remains a vital waterway of this city, a throbbing vein of live humanness, rushing underneath our unknowing feet as we run to work on the pavement above. Seeing it is a reminder that, as Gay Hawkins writes, “our rituals of cleansing and disposal are enfolded with this landscape, our personal secrets are implicated in the public secret of sanitation.” This misadventure into the bureau of public secrets is the newest in our chain of London infiltrations, our most recent attempts to make sure that this city is documented from every possible angle through experience, fear and love. Just as I wouldn’t wipe the ass of somebody else’s baby, only London’s sewers interest me.

We view the stigma of what is flushes on these journeys both literally and socially. Our preferred mode of access to these hidden waterways is hiding in plain sight and the classism of London society works in our favour, with both police and the public ignoring everyone dressed in high-vis and a hard hat, benign foreign workers who make their living in places where no “respectable” Londoner would ever step foot. Our team of 4 digs into their toolbelts of large screwdriver, t-shaped keys and crowbars to break the seals into underdiscovered territory, finding what the city forgot existed, our brazen crew seemingly as hidden as this river when we actually look like we work for a living.

Cracked

Pull this bird

The addiction to infiltration does not lay in the adrenaline rush of the experience. Infiltration creates unwieldy complications, difficult mental junctions and moments of crises that confuse, inspire and complicate our existence. My second identity as the underclass, the role that I play to gain access to urban secrets, is slowly becoming my primary identity. My clothing, my language, my social class, all now defined by my behaviour “on the job.” Leaving this tunnel late on this night (early the next morning?), we were greeted by “real” workers at a tube station who tossed slight nods our direction, eyeing us with confused interest, suspicion, respect and likely some revulsion given we were covered in underground wetness that smelled even worse than the rank pub toilet across the street.

We have been systematically exploring London’s subterranean features for the last few months, cracking every stormdrain, abandoned railway, cable tunnel and sewer we can find in the city – elements of this urban environment that Steven Smith, in his book Underground London, calls “London’s best kept secrets.” We know why. Not only are they some of the most beautiful and surreal places in the city, they are also the most foul.

Pour your heart out

The sewer is a place for alterier cartography, a place where no one may reside but where one can pass through, cameras capturing endless angles of the oldly new, remapping our mental conceptions of where the verticality of the city begins and ends. Our embodied experiences move like the stinking water, shifting from one chamber to the next, chalk marks on walls marking our way home, level after level of underground run-off continually sinking into what we imagine to be an endless succession of metal grates covered in dried up cakes of unknown substances, unidentifiable pieces of fabric and scraps of food. Matthew Gandy, in his article The Paris sewers and the rationalization of urban space contends that “by tracing the history of water in urban space, we can begin to develop a fuller understanding of changing relations between the body and urban form under the impetus of capitalist urbanization.” Pretty sure he wrote that line from the Paris sewers.

Alterier chamber

We trace these cultural lines and flows, finding here that nature and culture drift at the same rate in an interdependent foulness. London’s legendary sewer rats are in full effect tonight, running from us in a terrified scamper, climbing the round slippery walls of the tunnel in inexplicable ways and disappearing into holes we can’t even see into. I want to explore what they can see. At one point, some sort of nest is disturbed and they came at our lights, their little claws feet screeching all around us. Staying in the middle of the slimy sticky mud, shit and runoff where the rats won’t swim was clearly our best option.

We spent 4 hours sliding around these chambers, building up our immune system with aching stomachs upon exit and mouth sores to come. As we emerged I felt, as I often have, that tonight was another attempt to document my own disappearance in the course of making the city reappear in alternative iterations. As I sink deeper into my PhD, I sink deeper in this city, still so in love that there isn’t even room for another human being. I can only hope that either I or the thesis emerges at the end of this torrid love affair, unsure I will survive the potential breakup. Until then.

Own the night.
Cherish these secrets.
Wield this power.
Love this life.

Explored

Beneath your pub crawl

More playful than righteous

________________________________________

This author’s endeavour should be to make the Past, the sense of all the dead Londons that have gone to the producing this child of all the ages, like a constant ground-bass beneath the higher notes of the Present.

-Ford Madox Ford, The Soul of London

“You should create your own icons and way of life, because nostalgia isn’t glamorous…live your life now.”

-Marilyn Monroe

Alien dump

I grew up in Riverside, California, on the Western edge of the Mojave Desert. My interest in urban exploration came from my childhood here, full of frequent trips into the Mojave exploring old mining towns to break up my rather mundane suburban childhood. Coming back to visit this year, I knew that what I needed from this trip was to rediscover what it was that brought me down the UrbEx path. So I hit the desert for some old school federal trespass.

Because of that green UFO?

My friend Joel tipped me off to the existence of Boron Federal Prison Camp, a US Air Force site that was abandoned  in 2000. I rolled into Boron on an incredibly windy day, with light rain splashing in off and on (rare here I assure you!). I found all the gates open and amazingly drove right past a dozen derelict buildings, straight up to the old water tower.

Dusty Industry

It was only when I stood at the edge of the cliff at the water tower that I realized how extensive the site really was. There were at least 30 buildings here, some multi-storied, spread out over maybe 5 or 10 acres.

Rural Sprawl

As I looked out across the flat expanse of desert toward Barstow, the wind was whipping my hair in my face and I was constantly wiping water drops off of my lens. I decided to take shelter in the only thing higher than the water tower – the stucco church.

Monument to the gods of television.

Stencil worship

I stepped into the church and found myself in a silent room that had one wall painted and others covered in banal graffiti. As I stood there, I came to realize how much different this exploration felt than those I had been undertaking in Europe. It was so much lonelier. Part of this, of course, can be chalked up to the fact that I was indeed alone, but there was also a spatial dimension. It seems to me that perhaps because of the availability of space here in the desert, it is much easier to simply walk away from a place. And when that happens, an essence of loneliness particular to this dusty landscape seeps in. It is a loneliness, a sadness, so deep that even destruction of the place does nothing to erase it.

When I explore in more urban landscapes, the predominate emotion is fear-fuelled adrenaline. There is a sense of urgency that drives explores and has been one of the difficulties I have encountered in trying to get video footage of our explorations – we never really stop to take it in. We move fast, we pack multiple explores into a day. It’s like derelict architecture speed dating.

In contrast, this federal prison invited me to stop, to spend the day, to really take the time to let it scar me. It felt less like a conquest and more like an invitation to meditate on the possible pasts that led to it’s untimely death. The site encouraged more of an archaeological eye, little artefact mysteries to be uncovered around every corner. The fear of being caught here (which was very high, with possibly sever consequences) was so overwhelmingly overshadowed by the lonely introspection the place invoked that I simply sat down for some time to listen to the wind whipping power cables and slamming doors open and closed and forgot that a patrol might roll in at any moment.

I went on to explore the kitchens, mess hall, work corridors, carpentry shop, the fire station, basketball court and finally the “vehicular component factory”, whatever the fuck that means. It had been almost completely stripped out, every window broken, and despite the emptiness of the place, it continued to have a particular thickness to it. It was a place full of sad memories, left to rot our here 50 miles from the nearest city where the incarcerated inhabitants could do no harm.

Deserted

The Mess Hall

Barricaded

The camp seemed to be connected with a company called Unicor – a name which I think has an oddly Orwellian feel to it. There was also an active air traffic control station on site covered with live cameras which was beginning to make me a little nervous 3 hours in.

1984

Road to government vaugeness

I jumped into the truck to follow my gut instinct that it was time to leave, feeling rather satisfied with my day, when I noticed a side street I had not seen before. I drove down it, finding nowhere to park (a vehicle is a serious limitation to exploration I have realized – hiding a car in the desert is usually almost impossible) and walked into what turned out to be derelict inmate housing.

Reasonable traffic conditions

As I walked down row after row of empty cul-de-sacs lined with derelict tract homes, I was pulled right back into the sadness of the place. I walked through people’s homes and looked at their landscaped yards, taking notice of which domestic plants had escaped and were thriving without human intervention. In one, I found a constructed mini-bar and waited a while for a drink to be served. In another, a brick oven filled half the backyard. I imagined summer BBQs in 120 degree heat, families of inmates coming together for a few drinks and a chat about who-was-whose bitch that week.

Patio Party

I was struck anew by the imposing affectual qualities of the place and when I reached an abandoned playground. I stopped to play alone on the teeter-totter.

Does anyone remember playing here?

By the time I left the housing area, all numbed by the weirdness of my experience, my truck was blocked in by a stereotypically overambitious security guard wearing a fake federal badge. He told me I had been filmed and that he was supposed to call the FBI (I call bullshit on that one buddy) but I think he could sense that I had come here for different reasons than he might normally encounter. We ended up chatting about the history of the place and he sent me off with a stern warning, locking the gate behind me.  After a day of modern ruins, ghosts and self reflection, I drove off into the Mojave Desert in a familiar cloud of pink dust looking for the next adventure.

Not that I'm nostalgic or anything

Now that I had been underground in New York, I thought I might as well go aboveground as well. Luckily, I happen to be staying in a lovingly decrepit 15 story building on 5th Avenue and 31st this week with a nice view of the Empire State Building.

Not nearly high enough!

Taking the lift to the 14th floor, I walked out into what was clearly some sort of space for workers living in the hotel. Luckily they were asleep. I took a quick tour around and found a big black door marked “Emergency Exit, alarm will sound.” That’ll be the one I want. I hit the lift button just in case the alarm actually went off so I could jump in and make my escape. The lift doors opened with a ding and I hit the the metal bar on the door. With a sucking sound, the cold air rushed in, alarm free.

I stepped outside onto a lovely roof. Not the highest I have ever done by any means but it had two sketchy water towers on it to get up on more floor (though you had to lay on their sloped roofs rather awkwardly to get shots!). There were also multiple levels connected by rusty ladders which I enjoyed walking up with no hands. I spent the rest of the night laying around staring at a beautiful skyline shrouded in moonlight and soft city glow.

Water Tower Tipsy

Peep show

Nights like these

“They rolled down the Champs de Lise in these armored vehicles. They were dressed in black, carrying tripods and camera gear, saying the would explore every inch of the city. It was terrifying.” – Constant Conscious, Baker

“One of them said he had been under the Musee du Louvre bowling with skulls and I was like ‘what the fuck is happening here?'” – Achille Chevalier, Town Watchman

Leave no one alive

Marc called us from Paris where he remains in exile after murdering that poor Gurkha security guard at Pyestock. The Parisian populace was getting downright menacing he said, throwing instead of blowing kisses at President Sarkozy. The wet smooches were slapping him in the face with soppy smacks, knocking him down on every street corner, leaving him sapped of mojo. And a flaccid emperor can’t run this city, as Napoleon III learned 300 years ago, despite his glorious mustache.

Tashe

Turns out, Marc had been rummaging around (as he does) the other week and had located a fleet of abandoned military vehicles, perfect for quelling French proletariat rebellions. He imagined us piloting them down the wide toward the city centre, just as Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann built it to be used, setting all right once again.

Under the cover of darkness, we crept in, leaving behind two operatives to secure the vegetable supplies in a adjacent quarry. I hopped into a small Humvee and ordered the doors battered down. Can’t believe they left the keys in this puppy.

Charge!

We rolled into central Paris in our new acquisitions bumping Del The Funkee Homosapien and drinking blue Chimay, throwing baguettes at hopeless romantics, police and cataphiles alike in a transparent attempt to capture hearts and minds. Implementing an age old audacious tactical maneuver passed down through the Statler family for 40 generations, we climbed every tall building in the city to survey the scene.

Seizure

Just then, Silent Motion cried out, pointing to the horizon, an almost inarticulable gasp pouring out of the side of his mouth. In the distance there was what appeared to be a rift opening in the sky.

Holy smokes!

We took decisive action, speeding over the the rift only to find that it was a reincarnation of Zuul, back from Ghostbusters I to invade Paris the same night as us. Damnation!

This party's over!

With a stroke of luck, LutEx arrived, fresh off the Eurostar, answering our Craigslist ad for reinforcements. Right then and there, he pulled out this horrendous map of some underground city where he claimed previous failed revolutionaries had gone into hiding. Clearly drunk at this point, we decided he was the man to follow.

And then the revolution died

The dejected revolutionaries crawled into the underground maze through a manhole at rush hour, dragging the bodies of their dead comrades, pussing fang marks and all, hopes and dreams tied up in little canvas sacks, squirming and wiggling, screaming for acknowledgment.

Shouldn't have crossed the Rubicon

Lest our hopes get the best of us, we left them in the bags and trampled them while we danced to our failures, praying that Zuul had been lenient with the people after her extraterrestrial takeover. And that’s how Marc’s dream of a new Parisian republic died, in a bout of inebriated dirty dancing, headtorches waving in little battery powered gestures, light painting the the walls of the cave we all knew we would never be able to leave.

Here's to failure!

_____________________________________________________

This post is dedicated to that little Swedish boy that died exploring in Stockholm last week. I celebrate you for not sitting inside playing video games like your friends kid.

Let us go then, you and I.
When the evening is spread out against the sky
like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets…
-T.S. Eliot

Passion

Hanging above bank station from a red crane that pulsates with foggy light warning off incoming aircraft, the metal making slow groaning sounds as the bitterly chill wind nudges the structure into a gentle sway, I look down at the bank of England and hear a cacophony of voices in the city.

But the voices I hear are not of the screaming hordes of city bankers, roping in whithered lovers for an evening of lust soon to be forgotten or morphed into office scandal, they are the voices of the past, explorers who walked these city streets in ours and other ages, who crawled into the dark folds of urban architectures looking for crack, photographs, walls to graph or poetry. I connect with myriad individuals who share my love for plenitude, the inanimate animated.

Dickens was a fellow nighttime crawler, a man wrapped up in a perpetual dream, an explorer of the uncanny who felt “a solemn consideration when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses it’s own secret; that in every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there is, in some of its imaginings, a secret the the heart nearest it!”

Beauty unmatched

Delving

Our secret is here, looking down on the city we work in, play in; the place where we encounter life in all it monstrous forms. And Dickens stands here with me, laughing at the audacity of this adventure, an approving smirk cracking his extravagant goatee.

I used to think of infiltration as an masochistic incarnation of urban exploration, a pale shadow of experience, disconnected from roots to history or respect for those that walked before us. But up here, staring down at this city that I am courting, the only city that has replaced my perpetual desire to be intimately attached to another human being, the city of blissful isolation where everyone minds their own fucking business, I am in love with the history of this moment and with the workers who are building our future, one brick at a time.

Building our future

In our limited time here on the planet, we can choose to stumble through life, working our job, drinking our beer in front of the blaring television in the darkness of “off-time”, blissfully uncaring. We can remain wrapped in an Indian Ashram, walking circles in the garden, in perpetual meditation for meaning, eschewing the trajectory of the age. Or we can hit back, head on, at the age in which we live, mining it for meaning and finding answers to questions both small and large, wherever those journeys may take us. None of these ways of life are better than another. They are just different, little epitaphs to tombs not yet constructed.

What luck!

The last time I watched The Big Lebowsky, I was stuck anew by the opening narration from the Old Timer:

“…Sometimes there’s a man…who, well, he’s the man for his time and place. He fits right in there.”

One day I may ask for your love London, but for now, thank you for returning my lust. For the first time in my life, I fit right in there.

Always yours,

The Goblinmerchant