Untergunther & Les UX

IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Anyone read any of the stuff about these guys (Untergunther) recently? In the news today 'cause they broke into the Pantheon in Paris, built a secret workshop where they lived for months and repaired the 150 year old clock that the city officials had never got round to fixing.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2554240.ece

They are apparently part of the movement UX which was responsible for the abandoned underground cinema that Paris detectives found last year in the city's catacombs (think there might have been a dissensus thread about that at the time).
Kinda cool I think.
 
C

Canada J Soup

Monkey Man
When I was 16 a friend whose family had just moved to France spent the summer studying at the Alliance francaise Paris. He stayed at the apartment of some college age kids of friends of his parents and I ended up making my way there and crashing on the floor for a while. We pretty much ran wild the entire time (greatly encouraged by the older French kids who may have looked on us as badly behaved non-French speaking mascots of some sort) and a key activity was exploring the Metro tunnels and other underground parts of the city. I got the impression that this was something that all native Parisians did in their teenage years. Thinking back on it, it was probably one of the most irresponsible and stupidly dangerous activities we could have gotten up to...so maybe it was just our friends :)
 
G

Gabba Flamenco Crossover

High Sierra Skullfuck
I've got some mates who are into urban exploration, they all went to the catacombs last year and had a whale of a time.

I always meant to go with them when they used to hit London targets, but it involved a lot of early morning starts and my bed was always a bit too comfy...
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I heard about this guy who got lost in an abandoned tube (i.e. London Underground) station not long ago...what happened was the train was going through the disused station (not uncommon, as many disused stations - and there are a fair few of them - are situated on bits of line that are still in use) and for some reason the driver stopped at the platform and opened the doors. I guess it must have been late and driver and passenger were both tired and not really with it, as this guy got out thinking it was his stop before realising that the place was deserted and the walls covered in information posters about Nazi air raids. :rolleyes: By this time the doors had closed and the train moved off! He must have got out somehow otherwise no-one would have heard of it (if the driver had kept quiet about it!), but I don't know how he escaped. Perhaps the driver realised what he'd done and went back for him, or alerted the driver of the train behind him. Must have been pretty freaky to have been that guy though, watching the other train pull away...
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
"I always meant to go with them when they used to hit London targets, but it involved a lot of early morning starts and my bed was always a bit too comfy..."
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Have you ever seen the forum that is dedicated to urban exploration? There are some amazing pictures obtained by breaking into abandoned warehouses and shipyards and stuff and a massive kind of trains' graveyard. My favourite was this one, although it's not exactly urban (think these pictures are quite well known now)

http://home.f01.itscom.net/spiral/t_rando/t_rando1.html

I've never done any proper urban exploration involving breaking in and all that stuff but there is a children's hospital on Hackney Road that is no longer in use and my girlfriend managed to blag our way in when she saw a film crew doing a shoot there. It was pretty amazing, the thing is on about five or six floors and you can wander down all these old corridors that are occasionally decorated with pictures of Mickey Mouse or whatever. Lots of the rooms are - seemingly at random - roped off with yellow and black hazard tape and some of the joining walls have holes in. There isn't really any old medical equipment - unless you count a knackered old trolley - but a lot of the signs (saying operating theatre or similar) are still there and there are loads of weird sockets in the walls and plugs with cables hanging out. On the higher floors there are bits where birds have obviously been living and have crapped everywhere. It's also a pretty cool place to get good views over the east end of London.
 
bruno

bruno

est malade
the berliner unterwelten started out as a 'clandestine' group, didn't it? now they have official offices and clearance to do tours in bunkers and so on, very fascinating and worth visiting in spite of the tourist angle.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Canada J Soup said:
Really? That's nuts...must be incredibly difficult to get to (other than by train) if it's been untouched since the 40s.
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There are probably all kinds of disused service tunnels and whatnot, though. They even have lights on in the abandoned stations (at least, the one at York Road, between King's X St. P and Caledonian Road, does).

Edit: bloody hell, look how many there are!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Disused_railway_stations_in_London
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Disused_London_Underground_stations
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
"There are probably all kinds of disused service tunnels and whatnot, though. They even have lights on in the abandoned stations (at least, the one at York Road, between King's X St. P and Caledonian Road, does)."
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There are websites about all this stuff, telling you where to look to see the abandoned stations and the like. Here is one that looks pretty good

http://www.abandonedstations.org.uk/

It's interesting when you read about the history of the tube. At the start various companies were competing I believe and so you got stations surprisingly near to each other. British Museum was one that was deemed unnecessary when the companies were merged or nationalised or whatever happened.
Think Aldwych is the one that is normally used by film companies when they want to film in a generic underground station.
 
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