Urban Spelunking

I've always had a passion for places that are out-of-the-way and forgotten, or are abandoned entirely. I got to experience both in the course of the evening.

I spent most of the night with Jesse at the State Fair. Now, the fair is pushing 150 years old, and most of the buildings feel as if they've been around nearly as long. They've got nondescript architecture, plain interiors, the sort of cracked and peeling look that comes with the benign neglect of only being used once per year. Or not neglect even, just a total lack of the renovations that one usually sees in other buildings of similar vintage. And the whole park's like that, so large that nobody can really be familiar with all of it, with lots of areas that are rarely seen or whose purpose has been largely forgotten.

At one point, we found ourselves sitting in a remote corner of the beer garden. I noticed a row of folding chairs neatly stacked along the wall - and covered with cobwebs. Later, I noticed that all of the ugly, ugly tables (barely more than planks) were resting atop the frames of antique sewing machines. Marvelous.

Later, I was walking back to my car from Kauffman at around 2:00 AM. I managed to walk all the way to the Haymarket without seeing or hearing another living soul. Now, bear in mind that the home football season begins tomorrow, and I walked right past the stadium, so signs of preparation were everywhere. Traffic cones were up, food vendors were in place and ready to sell, the stadium lights were on. But no people at all. The banquet was set but no one had yet arrived to eat it.

It's strangely exhilarating to walk through a huge section of an urban area and find it utterly abandoned. I've only done it once before, and that was in Venice. If you are the only person in a place, then you own that place, as surely as if you held the deed.