One of the few things that break up the monotony of driving across the rural midwest is coming across a windfarm. For untold miles nothing but soybeans, and suddenly, an army of quietly spinning sentinels appears. From a distance, there is a languid grace to their movement, at dusk the synchronized blinking of their aircraft … Continue reading Windfarm in White
In four parts, namely: The old boarding house, a Jimmy Carter era motel, this humble abode, and, lastly, the manor in the woods. Continue reading Empire State Gothic
A bleak December sun rises over Lake Michigan and the crumbling ore walls at the site of the former U.S. Steel plant. Continue reading US Steel Sunrise
Some recent vacation time at work gave me the opportunity to escape the bitter cold and massive snowfalls of Chicago. I gladly traded those in for… the bitter cold and even deeper snows of upstate New York. At least I wasn’t unprepared; my trusty shitkicker boots proved their worth yet again. Having to trudge through knee-deep … Continue reading The Great Outdoors
We’ve all heard things about Philadelphia and Philadelphians. They’re mean. They throw snowballs at Santa Claus. They’re assholes who got dressed down by Bill Burr when they wouldn’t stop booing comedians at a show. They’re just the embodiment of the nasty, brutish, always-in-a-rush sterotype of the big city, particularly East Coast, denizen. And you know … Continue reading Phila-fucking-delphia
Last summer, I went to jail. Voluntarily. Did I mention the jail had been abandoned? That’s probably obvious, if you have any familiarity with this blog. Nevertheless, on a hot, steamy day during last July’s trip out to the East Coast, we headed to a well known former county lockup. I had never been to … Continue reading Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200
I found out only recently that there a few nuclear power plants around the country which were abandoned mid-construction. And you can go to some of them! Strictly speaking, you’re not allowed to go to them, but we are really splitting hairs. So it was that a clear winter’s morning found us traipsing through some … Continue reading Atomic Tourism
On a disused stretch of railroad tracks in the woods of Tennessee stands an abandoned train. Just a locomotive and two passenger cars make up the train which sits between a creek and a wooded hillside. The French language signs inside the cabins suggest an origin in Quebec, or at least Canada, which seems a … Continue reading Tennessee Ghost Train
It’s not exactly common for a major urban cemetery to become abandoned and fall into disrepair, but that’s exactly what happened to Mount Moriah, which straddles the southwest city limits of Philadelphia. Its story is similar to that of countless other abandoned places and buildings: changing socioeconomic factors slowly eroded the graveyard’s relevance until it … Continue reading Mount Moriah Cemetery
Theater opulence reached its zenith in the early part of the last century. The boom in motion pictures, which quickly became the prime form of entertainment for the masses, coupled with the trend of studios owning their own theaters which they strove to make as lavish as possible in order to attract patrons, created this … Continue reading American Palaces
T A B U L A R A S A photography 