Sublunar Photography

Imagine being a physical newspaper company in the early 2000's. Print journalism had already been on a steady, predictable, decline over the decade prior and now this newfangled thing called "the internet" was capable of spreading the written word instantaneously across the globe. For free, even. Average print circulation was dropping 1% every year and household subscriptions had declined nearly 15%. The writing was on the wall.

Faced with numbers like the above, one brave newspaper made a bold move. At a time when declining subscriptions and ad revenue forced many of their peers into collapse, this newspaper decided to spend roughly one gazillion dollars (nearly $300 Million USD adjusted for inflation) to build this giant 6-story printing press and its supporting infrastructure.

To the surprise of at least a small handful of people, it wasn't long before their financial outlook was, and I quote, "bleak". The time soon came when they could no longer justify keeping this monstrosity running. So now it sits empty... along with their historic 100+ year old former headquarters, which they abandoned when they decided to build this mega-facility. The company does still exist, surprisingly, but now they operate out of smaller offices and must resort to paying to have their papers printed hundreds of miles away and then shipped into town.

If you're equally bad at spotting trends, reading the room, etc, then you'll be delighted to know that this massive newspaper printing facility is currently on the market for about 1/10th the cost to originally build it. But wait. Hold the presses. Contact me right now and I'll give you a much better deal. I accept cash offers. As you can see, it's in mint condition and probably runs great.

"I'll tell you what, though.. Blogs. They aren't going anywhere. People love this shit!" the author insisted as he firmly but affectionately slapped his antique photography blog which caused the thick layer of dust to waft through the air. "This social media craze is just a shiny new thing. It's a trend that will fade out. I couldn't even tell you how many visitors I had to my blog this month". The statcounter plugin stopped working about 10 years ago. "But it was probably several. Several unique visitors." And then he hobbled off back to his peaceful retirement community while bitching to himself about some "dumb kids" on instagram.

I was pretty excited to see this complete Linotype machine here. One of my favorite locations from a decade or two ago (the Wright Arcade) had a newspaper office in it that was full of these, but in much worse condition.

NOTE 1: It's been over a year since this visit occurred and in the meantime they've auctioned off a lot of the more significant items in here. So a lot has changed here and this location has been deemed safe to post here.

NOTE 2: This blog post does not correlate to the "4 part series of loosely related posts" mentioned in the previous two updates. Consider this one a bonus. We will return to the 4-part series on the next post.

2024 is now upon us which means this blog will commence its ~17th year the exact same as it ever was (more or less) in terms of both its form and its purpose. Its form remains limited to this remarkably obsolete thing called a "blog" and it still has no meaningful purpose. Short for "Web Log", blogs were an antiquated online diary of sorts which fell out of fashion a long time ago; Nobody uses them anymore. In the last 17 years we've seen the rise of Instagram, Youtube, podcasts, and other outlets which have all replaced blogs by having better features, more user-friendly interfaces, etc. Today, blogs have all but completely died off. The fact that this one is still going is just as much of a mystery to me as it is to you. I don't get it either.

The only real purpose of this blog, if one exists, continues to be found in the description in the header above each post. In summary: this site exists to document my(/our) adventures into hidden/sealed up/off-limits locations. I am proud to remain as committed as ever to this pointless, stupid, time-consuming, risky, dangerous and completely unrewarding line of work. It is also frequently exhausting and has the potential to be very costly to myself personally-all the while earning me zero monies. This is a service I provide to you free of charge and I can assure you it's a hell of a good deal. On that note, please note that this blog remains ad-free and devoid of "suggestions", click-bait and other manipulative nonsense that your feeds elsewhere are all bloated with. You'll find none of that here, my friends. For almost two decades now we've been serving up only the freshest cuts of the finest beef available to its nearly half-dozen or so visitors - and nothing more! Ok sure, there's also usually way too much text you have to scroll past to get to the pictures.. One side-effect of being in business for so long is that many locations which have long since been demolished into oblivion still live on in the photos and stories presented here and I think that's pretty cool.

Let's get down to business: I now present the world's smallest gas station*!

The Gas Station

I don't know anything useful, especially when it comes to this gas station. I would guess it was built in the late 60s/early 70s and probably closed in the mid 80s.

What's that you say? This is the most boring location ever? Well, hold onto your pantaloons because this is just the first in a series of 4 upcoming blog entries which started right here with the most boring location ever and will culminate with the juiciest location ever*. There's sort of a loose theme that ties them together... sort of. Bonus points if you figure out the theme before we reach the end.

Stay tuned!

*These claims have not been verified.

Hospital #6 began in this location 150 years ago although most of the original buildings were demolished and replaced in the 1950's-70's. Over the last decade or so, they began to slowly decommission various portions of the now sprawling complex. At some point within the past couple of years, it finally closed for good.

Click here for the video.

When this hospital was still semi-operational it was a pretty surreal environment in which to find yourself; On one floor you'd encounter a typical medical office with clean hallways and receptionists who occasionally called out the names of bored magazine readers. Just around the corner from the waiting room, a normal looking staircase transported you to an alternate-reality version of the same space you just passed through. The muffled sounds of a still active hospital wing faintly reverberated through the long unswept hallways and heavy shadows of the floor above. There's a definite tension in the air when you know that you're not alone inside and you've become unsure of the quickest route to the nearest exit. Some stairwells were locked on one floor but open on another which effectively made the whole place a sprawling 3D puzzle you needed to solve in order to get to the next level. Occasionally a nurse would require something stored in a deactivated wing and they were always escorted by security. The elevators would randomly come to life with sudden buzzing/rattling noise which usually gave you just enough time to duck before the familiar "ding" as the doors opened. Sometimes it dinged on the floor above and other times it happened right around the corner from you. Most of the time you were too far away to hear anything so you never could be sure where exactly the riders disembarked-or if anyone was there at all.