Unauthorized Adventurers Abound Nationwide

By Katia Savchuk, The Lowell. Posted January 23, 2002.

Tristan Savatier peers into a labyrinth of machinery illuminated only by stars. He navigates through the darkness of the abandoned French Renault factory, following his friends into a deserted control room, dusty from years of neglect. Apprehensive that police will break up the expedition, they nevertheless continue, turning the corner to discover discarded gas masks and deteriorating blueprints of a steam-powered generator. After snapping pictures, Savatier and his entourage leave the factory, slipping into the cover of darkness.

Savatier is not your typical intruder; he is an urban explorer, a member of a growing subculture gaining adherents around the globe. From abandoned subway tunnels to deserted mental asylums, urban explorers venture into the most obscure recesses of metropolitan landscapes to discover forbidden settings and photograph their findings.

Savatier said he is interested in the element of mystery prohibited locations present. "If a door says, 'No Trespassing,' there might be something behind it that's interesting," he said.

Urban explorers undertake extreme exploits, fueled by the notion that "off-limits" is an arbitrary term. Urban explorer Julia Solis once hosted a formal dinner for 40 guests in an abandoned underground subway tunnel near the Brooklyn Bridge, according to an Oct. 15 article in the San Francisco Independent. In another adventure, Solis entered the deserted Northampton Hospital in Massachusetts, where she said "the morgue had a stained autopsy table, vials and test tubes. The refrigerator trays for the bodies still had blood on them."

	From abandoned subway tunnels to deserted mental asylums, urban explorers venture into the most obscure recesses of metropolitan landscapes to discover forbidden settings and photograph their findings.

While Savatier has climbed a Bay Bridge tower and has broken into an anti-atomic bunker in the Presidio, he especially enjoys investigating the catacombs in his native Paris. "Underground Paris is a gigantic Swiss cheese, a network of quarries and tunnels," he said. "It's a playground for adventurers. It's illegal (to enter them), of course."

Adventurers across the nation

New York City is not without its share of urban explorers, either. Web developers by day, daring urban investigators by night, two New Yorkers who go by the pseudonyms "Lefty" and "Laughing Boy" have scaled the no-access roof of Grand Central Station and infiltrated the maze of New York subway tunnels.

According to Laughing Boy, urban explorers distinguish themselves from common trespassers in their appreciation of the sites they investigate. "I would guess that common trespassers are often trespassing by accident, or as a shortcut to where they're going," Laughing Boy said. "An urban explorer is trespassing deliberately and purposefully, to explore an area that can't be accessed any other way. He or she is looking for something, some kind of knowledge or adventure."

Lefty and Laughing Boy differ from trespassers for another reason: Together, they head jinxmagazine.com, one of many Web sites dedicated to urban exploration. Aiding explorers in their quest to educate themselves and others about historical sites, the internet serves as both a comprehensive archive for documented conquests and a far-ranging meeting place for an international ring of explorers. Urban explorers exchange experiences and photographs, the only mementos they permit themselves to take from a site.

'Urban Exploration is Unsafe'

In their quest for the forbidden and unknown, urban explorers often encounter deteriorating buildings or angry authorities.

Officer Mark Gallegos of the San Francisco Police Department said he denounces urban exploration. "You face criminal penalties," he said. "There are reasons why places are closed."

Despite Gallegos's reprimands, Laughing Boy sees the police as partners, not enemies. "The police perform a vital service to us by keeping off-limits areas off limits," he said. "If just anybody could go just anywhere, we wouldn't have any place to explore."

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