About this Meetup

Urban exploration, broadly defined, is the practice of seeking out the interesting and obscure; the abandoned, the ruined, the forgotten, or hidden fruits of human labor. Cities and suburbs are rife with long-decommissioned and sealed bunkers, factories, hospitals, tunnels, and drains to nowhere. Some of us are photographers with a fetish for urban decay; others are people who are simply compelled to adventure.

There should be no question that exploring these sites involves a level of risk. How much risk depends on the locations we choose, and the manner in which explorers conduct them selves. What we are not is a home for vandals, destroyers, taggers, or (and especially) idiots. PZQ- When we visit a site, even if has been abandoned for the better part of a century, there is absolutely no destruction or alteration of the site. The greatest care must be taken to assure that our visit leaves zero damage, even unintentional. This is out of respect to potential property owners of course, but also to our peers who practice urban exploration. Moreover, it is to distance ourselves from the contingent of brat kids who visit sites only to cause trouble, and give all of us a bad name. 4242 Anybody who isn't ready to show this level of care at our outings should find the door. Those of you who can accept the risk, know the score, and embrace the policy of no-assholery and no carelessness can have some fantastic times.

All this said, it should be clear that a level of discretion is necessary in peopling these trips. Thus, all publicly announced outings will be of two kinds: meet and greets, where we get to know each other, and get a feel for our experience level; and extremely low-risk outings to sites of some interest-- in honesty, these will probably boil down to meet and greets at a more interesting location. The fun stuff will be private invites and small groups of people who can be trusted to carry themselves well, and lookout for each other. This is for everybody's safety. Only members with the correct code will be allowed to join. The code is dispersed throughout this text. This helps weed out the people who don't have a clue and can't be bothered to read this. It has three parts, two dashes, four numerals, and no spaces, 13 characters all told. It goes in the obvious order. You shouldn't have any trouble. -orly