Sorry this latest installment is a little overdue. As always, I'm eager for readers to submit articles on urban exploration-related events they've heard about.
Infiltrating in the News
Infiltration.org received a fair bit of publicity in late July when the _Toronto Star_ devoted the third page of its Sunday edition to an article about the site. The article quotes Toronto's manager of security and life safety Dave Nichol as saying, "From the city's point of view, we want the contents of the magazine removed from the Web" and author Mitch Potter concludes that "Because everything they do ends up on the Internet, it poses a danger to others who might attempt similar acts." To learn more about how the use of the web medium increases the inherent evilness of certain information, read the full article.
New York photographer of abandoned buildings and tunnels Stanley Greenberg has continued to receive many favourable reviews of his book and his photography in a wide variety of publications. A recent article in The Stranger reads "Just as Greenberg shoots the forgotten city, he's also documenting the one that the responsible engineers, not the glamorous architects, have built. While architects scurry above ground, designing a stage for their work, engineers run the pipes, cables, pistons, and valves below. They are the stage managers, assuring that everything is safe and functional. They give the skyline a chance to happen." The full text of this article is available at http://www.thestranger.com/AE/booklead.html; a web search for "Stanley Greenberg" will turn up many more.
Rotterdam explorer Petr Kazil has been doing his part to spread the gospel of urban exploration to the masses of Europe. Petr took the crew of the series "Explosief" up a building, inside the Metro tunnels, into an abandoned Nestle factory and over some bridges (the hard way). Petr also offered a talk about urban adventure in the congress of the "Rotterdam Art Days", showing his TV appearance, samples from various sites in the Urban Exploration Ring, introducing Infiltration and Il Draino to his audience, and talking about some of his personal conquests, and later assisted a reporter from a local newspaper for homeless people with an article on the subject.
Drunken Trespasser Falls Off Hotel
Police suspect drugs and alcohol were involved in the death of Clinton Craigie, who fell from the roof of an 18-storey-hotel in downtown Winnipeg on 10 July 1999, according to a news clipping sent in by Paul Renault. Neither Craigie nor his associate were guests of the hotel. While the men are more drunken idiots than urban explorers, their story is interesting because of the attention the incident brought to the hotel's security. Hotel manager Roger Davis went on record as saying, "We have a constant security patrol, and he has just checked the door at the top of the hotel at 1 a.m. and it was locked. The door looks like it has undergone some trauma. If someone is determined to do something like this, it's pretty tough to stop it. There just isn't a logical explanation for this. Why would someone be on a roof of a hotel at three in the morning when it is pitch black and pouring rain?"
Actually, _that_ I understand. It's the falling off part that baffles me.
Urban Exploration Ring Update
The Urban Exploring Ring continues to grow, now with 50 member sites. New members include:
Danvers State Hospital [Massachusetts]
Dudley Limestone Mines [England]
Entropic Americana [California]
Exploring the Abandoned Michigan Central Station [Michigan]
Industrial Art [Belgium]
h2o [France]
Sub Scooters [Australia]
UEA College tunnels [Australia]
Val's Tundra [Ireland]
Hope you enjoyed this edition of Infilnews! If you have any comments,
corrections, questions, suggestions or submissions, please get in touch.
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