The urbex lifestyle
By John Quinlan, Journal staff writer | Posted: Sunday, January 14, 2007
The boarded-up KD Station has lured urban explorers to Sioux City since it closed in 2004. A fire there last month makes future visits less likely. (Staff photo by Jim Jenkins)
Alexander the Great. Christopher Columbus. Leif Erickson. Marco Polo. Daniel Boone. Meriwether Lewis. Richard E. Byrd. Neil Armstrong. Philibert Aspairt.
Great explorers all ... almost.
Philibert Aspairt?
While most of the names above are familiar, that last one may cause some head scratching. Unlike the great explorers before him, Aspairt is not famous, perhaps known only in the world of the urban explorer. He is considered by some the first cataphile -- an urban explorer who illegally tours the Paris catacombs. In November 1793, he became lost while exploring the catacombs by candlelight. His body was found 11 years later.
Today, the urban explorers, who are his spiritual successors, exist in thriving but semi-secretive urbex communities throughout the world, venturing out at night to meet at preordained sites, like abandoned buildings, tunnels, factories, hospitals, ghost towns, even closed shopping malls like Sioux City's KD Station.
Their presence is especially strong online, thereby dispelling attempts at complete secrecy, where explorers hook up and exchange advice and information. It is where we made contact with two young Iowa urban explorers, Ben Brockert of Ames and Matt "Clockwork" Jegerlehner of Dubuque, who told us what they could about the urbex lifestyle.
Googling "KD Station" also led to a Webzine with a fascinating report about an urbex visit to the KD Station back in 2005, less than a year after the historic building was closed following a fire in an electrical transformer. A two-day fire in December brought more attention to the KD Station, which was a popular destination for urban explorers, who mourn the destruction caused by the recent fire which, they say, effectively closes the building to future exploration.
An Australian with the urbex name of Nivelo wrote in the Webzine about the group's 12-hour stay at KD Station and their amazement at what they found: the bowling alley, miniature golf course and meatpacking plant decor. The other urbex members mentioned in the story hail mostly from the Twin Cities, though one listed his hometown as Watermoo, Iowa.
'A gem of a location'
Brockert said the men and women, ages 18 to 45, who visited Sioux City may have also included an Italian. Europe, they say, is another hotbed for urban exploration.
"They all thought it was a gem of a location. The way a meatpacking plant was reused as a shopping and entertainment center was unique and led to very unusual architecture and design," Brockert said of KD Station. "The detritus left over made it even more interesting, from records to meathooks, beauty supplies and miniature golf. It's always fun to find bowling alleys."
College students Brockert and Jegerlehner declined phone interviews. Both said urban explorers have been burned in the past by the media and they feared being misquoted. But both agreed to exchange e-mails and answer what questions they could.
Jegerlehner said most urban explorers are in the 18-to-30 age group, though a couple of the members in the Minneapolis community are in their 40s. When he lived in Chicago, he saw more members in their 40s and 50s. And a member of his group exploring the catacombs of Paris met a cataphile who was 63.
"There is no age limit for urban exploration. It is simply a very physical hobby," he said.
Part of the UE lifestyle is scouting out new places to explore, which is how KD Station was discovered shortly after its closing in 2004. Jegerlehner said his Twin Cities community enjoyed its first weekend camp at KD Station in September 2005. He was not present on that visit, but he said he did get to go on return weekend camp outings in May and July.
"Camping in an abandonment like KD Station is an amazing and unique experience," he said. "Here we have an early 20th century packing house which was converted in the 1970s to be a 'Wild West'-themed shopping mall. All the shopfronts are constructed out of meathooks and other packing plant paraphernalia to resemble an old west town. How bizarre is that?"
Jegerlehner said his people learned about the fire the day after it happened.
"It may seem hard to understand," he said, "but the burning of KD Station is a great loss to our community. Camping trips there strengthened the bonds of friendship with many people in our group, and the fun times will be remembered forever. We were planning another outing to KD Station next spring, but now it appears we won't be able to do that."
Jegerlehner said his community has an "agent" in Sioux CIty who alerted them to the recent KD Station developments, but is a bit too nervous to talk to the media. The agent told him: "I'm leery. I had a run-in with a cop the night of the fire, walked around the building once. Went back to my car -- he shows up. Looks like they are grasping at straws as to who set the fire, but I sure as hell don't want to be a scapegoat."
There is a bit of nervousness in the urbex community, Jegerlehner said, with members fearing urban explorers may be blamed for the fire. "We are the good guys who love the places we visit, and are not the criminals many police believe us to be," he said.
Young vandals blamed
Last year, he said, his group noticed a lot of vandalism at KD Station. "On more than one occasion, we discovered local kids rummaging around inside the place, and noticed the destruction they caused," he said. "These kids are not urban explorers. I suspect they are responsible for the fire that ate KD Station. The entire interior of the building was full of water, mildew and mold. Arson is the only cause for a fire in that wet of a place."
Jegerlehner said there are many recorded instances of people who have died in abandoned sites and then urban exploration is blamed. "There are times when people are arrested causing wanton vandalism to places and then they try to tell the cops they were just urban explorers," he said.
There is a lot of misunderstanding about what urban exploration is and the intentions of explorers, he said. Some try to get into the hobby because they believe it to be some sort of anarchy-based extreme sport full of danger and excitment, an image propagated by some famous urbex Web sites and TV shows.
"Urban exploration is, by and large, a hobby based on curiosity and the appreciation of forgotten man-made realms," he said. "Typically it involves going places most people never go or aren't interested in visiting."
This includes abandoned buildings, but there are other interesting realms, such as abandoned mines, active buildings, utility and steam tunnels, sewers and drains, bridgerooms, bridge-scaling and others, he said.
"Urban explorers are drawn to these sites out of a fascination for seeing something different, something out of the ordinary."
Brockert said he knows of six Iowa urban explorers who post info on the Internet forum he uses. Jegerlehner said there are several Iowa explorers, and they have agents in all the major Iowa cities. But the Hawkeye UE presence is smaller than in other parts of the country. And most Iowans are hooked up with the large UE community in Minneapolis, one of the world's more popular UE meccas.
Brockert said Paris, New York and Moscow are the only other cities that can claim more extensive underground features than Minneapolis, "and people who have done New York and Paris say the Twin Cities are more interesting." The area's famous abandoned breweries are also UE magnets.
Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota also have their attractions.
Brockert noted an abandoned brickworks halfway between Ames and Sioux City. Iowa State University and University of Northern Iowa both have steam tunnel systems that have been explored. He also recalls a long weekend with three people driving through South Dakota looking for ghost towns and abandoned Titan silos. The one Nebraska highlight he recalled is the Sioux Army Depot in Cheyenne County.
Who is the typical urban explorer?
People in this hobby come from all walks of life, Jegerlehner said. There are people with doctorate degrees and high school dropouts, business professionals and punk rockers.
"There are a few typical trends common with explorers though," he said. "An interest in historic preservation is common amongst our people. There is also a great deal of interest in engineering, architecture, social sciences and maps. Photography is another large part of urbex, and a lot of professional-grade photographers explore."
If you need to know more, the largest worldwide gathering of urban explorers can be found at www.uer.ca.
One
Great explorers all ... almost.
Philibert Aspairt?
While most of the names above are familiar, that last one may cause some head scratching. Unlike the great explorers before him, Aspairt is not famous, perhaps known only in the world of the urban explorer. He is considered by some the first cataphile -- an urban explorer who illegally tours the Paris catacombs. In November 1793, he became lost while exploring the catacombs by candlelight. His body was found 11 years later.
Today, the urban explorers, who are his spiritual successors, exist in thriving but semi-secretive urbex communities throughout the world, venturing out at night to meet at preordained sites, like abandoned buildings, tunnels, factories, hospitals, ghost towns, even closed shopping malls like Sioux City's KD Station.
Their presence is especially strong online, thereby dispelling attempts at complete secrecy, where explorers hook up and exchange advice and information. It is where we made contact with two young Iowa urban explorers, Ben Brockert of Ames and Matt "Clockwork" Jegerlehner of Dubuque, who told us what they could about the urbex lifestyle.
Googling "KD Station" also led to a Webzine with a fascinating report about an urbex visit to the KD Station back in 2005, less than a year after the historic building was closed following a fire in an electrical transformer. A two-day fire in December brought more attention to the KD Station, which was a popular destination for urban explorers, who mourn the destruction caused by the recent fire which, they say, effectively closes the building to future exploration.
An Australian with the urbex name of Nivelo wrote in the Webzine about the group's 12-hour stay at KD Station and their amazement at what they found: the bowling alley, miniature golf course and meatpacking plant decor. The other urbex members mentioned in the story hail mostly from the Twin Cities, though one listed his hometown as Watermoo, Iowa.
'A gem of a location'
Brockert said the men and women, ages 18 to 45, who visited Sioux City may have also included an Italian. Europe, they say, is another hotbed for urban exploration.
"They all thought it was a gem of a location. The way a meatpacking plant was reused as a shopping and entertainment center was unique and led to very unusual architecture and design," Brockert said of KD Station. "The detritus left over made it even more interesting, from records to meathooks, beauty supplies and miniature golf. It's always fun to find bowling alleys."
College students Brockert and Jegerlehner declined phone interviews. Both said urban explorers have been burned in the past by the media and they feared being misquoted. But both agreed to exchange e-mails and answer what questions they could.
Jegerlehner said most urban explorers are in the 18-to-30 age group, though a couple of the members in the Minneapolis community are in their 40s. When he lived in Chicago, he saw more members in their 40s and 50s. And a member of his group exploring the catacombs of Paris met a cataphile who was 63.
"There is no age limit for urban exploration. It is simply a very physical hobby," he said.
Part of the UE lifestyle is scouting out new places to explore, which is how KD Station was discovered shortly after its closing in 2004. Jegerlehner said his Twin Cities community enjoyed its first weekend camp at KD Station in September 2005. He was not present on that visit, but he said he did get to go on return weekend camp outings in May and July.
"Camping in an abandonment like KD Station is an amazing and unique experience," he said. "Here we have an early 20th century packing house which was converted in the 1970s to be a 'Wild West'-themed shopping mall. All the shopfronts are constructed out of meathooks and other packing plant paraphernalia to resemble an old west town. How bizarre is that?"
Jegerlehner said his people learned about the fire the day after it happened.
"It may seem hard to understand," he said, "but the burning of KD Station is a great loss to our community. Camping trips there strengthened the bonds of friendship with many people in our group, and the fun times will be remembered forever. We were planning another outing to KD Station next spring, but now it appears we won't be able to do that."
Jegerlehner said his community has an "agent" in Sioux CIty who alerted them to the recent KD Station developments, but is a bit too nervous to talk to the media. The agent told him: "I'm leery. I had a run-in with a cop the night of the fire, walked around the building once. Went back to my car -- he shows up. Looks like they are grasping at straws as to who set the fire, but I sure as hell don't want to be a scapegoat."
There is a bit of nervousness in the urbex community, Jegerlehner said, with members fearing urban explorers may be blamed for the fire. "We are the good guys who love the places we visit, and are not the criminals many police believe us to be," he said.
Young vandals blamed
Last year, he said, his group noticed a lot of vandalism at KD Station. "On more than one occasion, we discovered local kids rummaging around inside the place, and noticed the destruction they caused," he said. "These kids are not urban explorers. I suspect they are responsible for the fire that ate KD Station. The entire interior of the building was full of water, mildew and mold. Arson is the only cause for a fire in that wet of a place."
Jegerlehner said there are many recorded instances of people who have died in abandoned sites and then urban exploration is blamed. "There are times when people are arrested causing wanton vandalism to places and then they try to tell the cops they were just urban explorers," he said.
There is a lot of misunderstanding about what urban exploration is and the intentions of explorers, he said. Some try to get into the hobby because they believe it to be some sort of anarchy-based extreme sport full of danger and excitment, an image propagated by some famous urbex Web sites and TV shows.
"Urban exploration is, by and large, a hobby based on curiosity and the appreciation of forgotten man-made realms," he said. "Typically it involves going places most people never go or aren't interested in visiting."
This includes abandoned buildings, but there are other interesting realms, such as abandoned mines, active buildings, utility and steam tunnels, sewers and drains, bridgerooms, bridge-scaling and others, he said.
"Urban explorers are drawn to these sites out of a fascination for seeing something different, something out of the ordinary."
Brockert said he knows of six Iowa urban explorers who post info on the Internet forum he uses. Jegerlehner said there are several Iowa explorers, and they have agents in all the major Iowa cities. But the Hawkeye UE presence is smaller than in other parts of the country. And most Iowans are hooked up with the large UE community in Minneapolis, one of the world's more popular UE meccas.
Brockert said Paris, New York and Moscow are the only other cities that can claim more extensive underground features than Minneapolis, "and people who have done New York and Paris say the Twin Cities are more interesting." The area's famous abandoned breweries are also UE magnets.
Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota also have their attractions.
Brockert noted an abandoned brickworks halfway between Ames and Sioux City. Iowa State University and University of Northern Iowa both have steam tunnel systems that have been explored. He also recalls a long weekend with three people driving through South Dakota looking for ghost towns and abandoned Titan silos. The one Nebraska highlight he recalled is the Sioux Army Depot in Cheyenne County.
Who is the typical urban explorer?
People in this hobby come from all walks of life, Jegerlehner said. There are people with doctorate degrees and high school dropouts, business professionals and punk rockers.
"There are a few typical trends common with explorers though," he said. "An interest in historic preservation is common amongst our people. There is also a great deal of interest in engineering, architecture, social sciences and maps. Photography is another large part of urbex, and a lot of professional-grade photographers explore."
If you need to know more, the largest worldwide gathering of urban explorers can be found at www.uer.ca.
One
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rv_fr wrote on Dec 21, 2007 3:59 PM:
kpp001 wrote on Jan 23, 2007 9:49 AM: