A Daily Thing

Here is a funny thing about me: I am a clean neat-freak.  I love bleach, pine disinfectant, eucalyptus spray (kills 99.9% of germs!).  But show me an abandoned building, a derelict house, architectural neglect and ‘It-a makes-a my heart-a go boom-a ticky boom’ (the Italian captain from ‘Allo allo‘, yes?).

I start to jump up and down, my mind busy with the pictures I could take and thoughts of what could possibly be in there.  Except:

• These types of places can be dangerous (asbestos, structural weaknesses and collapsing floors).
• These types of places are patrolled, or very clearly marked as private property.  Did someone say ‘breaking and entering’?  I like my blank criminal record too much.

On occasion I have asked for access – and gotten it (the legal way, yay!), but mostly I have a mental inventory of places around Melbourne and around the world I would kill to have a look at, and probably never will.

Being the chicken that I am, pictures of others’ daring forbidden urban explorations are as close as I will get to certain places, and are often enough to give me a thrilling fix.  I don’t know the name of this person, but I am really grateful he risked his life by walking on (in use!) Parisian métro tracks to the abandoned St Martin stop, closed for the last 40 or 50 years.  Just knowing it exists (not exactly sure where it is though) and that these gorgeous painted ads are still intact makes my day.

Boom-a ticky boom.

(St Martin article originally via Frogsmoke).