Ruckus Brought

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."
JFK, Delivered at Rice University in Houston, Texas on 12 September 1962.

For those coming in through the front door, there are others here.


Julian


Jonathan


Lucian

It's An Oldie Where I Come From

The Sleepies

It's a shame they don't allow smoking in bars. It's a shame that smoke machines are probably worse than cigarette smoke.


The Knockdowns

Also, happy birthday Corin Tucker! Please come back to us!

Whittier Pt. 2b: The Bucker Building

Of course, once you return from a successful trip to an exotic place everyone wants to go. The rest of the crew loaded up to go on a tour of their own and this time I took the flashlights.



The Buckner was an arcology of sorts with a theater and a bowling alley and a general store and a tunnel system connecting the buildings to each other for winter safety. While the building we saw was mostly in ruins, the movie theater was in surprisingly good shape -- except for the collapsing ceiling -- and because the seats were intact, it had the most visible evidence that humans actually used the place and lived and played and worked there. We didn't find the bowling alley (we suspect it's in the basement) but we did manage to find the kitchens and galleys as well as the lounge on the second floor.




The damage to the building appears to be mostly man made. For example, most of the latrines have had their porcelain smashed to bits (bears do not carry sledgehammers). The copper and metals have been stripped, the fixtures redistributed and any infrastructure remaining falls from lack of support. Hardhats, while not able to protect you from, say an exhaust fan dangling from a single wire, they will protect you from smaller plasters and are recommended when visiting (again, know that you are breaking and entering when you visit so... leave your felons at home).



Buildings and cars tend to be anthropomorphized more than anything and it's easy enough to project a veil of sadness over the site: The building was built by the military but sold in to private hands so there is no money for cleanup or teardown and so it sits on otherwise usable land. Any sort of amusement or pleasure to be taken from it involves the destruction of the building bit by bit by half-bored teenagers, exotic forms of vandalism and clandestine activities (read: drugs, alcohol, sex). It's not even stable enough to be used as a tourist trap and eventually someone will be hurt or killed by falling debris or falling into debris and god knows what will happen then.