PigLick on 26/7/2011 at 15:15
Came across this (
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2011/07/exploring-ruins-of-gary-indiana.html) link, its a little thing about the city of Gary(heh) in the US, urban decay and all that. I dont know exactly what it is about this stuff, but I find it highly evocative, and exceedingly melancholy. Makes me wish I had a good camera and some sort of skill with it.
demagogue on 26/7/2011 at 16:27
The island I was living on in Japan had rampant population loss, something crazy like 300K to 30K in a decade was the statistic I read (not sure exactly), but there were entire small towns abandoned ... rows of apartments, gas stations, convenience stores, bowling alleys, all being reclaimed by nature; very foresty around there. Really evocative driving through them. It's like an image of what this place used to be in the '80s pearl boom years, all these hopes and ambitions, now just a distant fading memory. Only the cement is left, and even that is giving way to the trees.
PigLick on 26/7/2011 at 16:59
Photographing decay helps me express my inner desolation.
242 on 26/7/2011 at 17:14
Quote Posted by demagogue
The island I was living on in Japan had rampant population loss, something crazy like 300K to 30K in a decade was the statistic I read (not sure exactly), but there were entire small towns abandoned ...
I'm afraid of small Japan islands since I played Siren ;) Watched some photos and youtube streetview just out of interest, and they gave me really creepy feeling. Very few people, abandoned old buildings, and environments too similar to those in the game.
demagogue on 26/7/2011 at 20:52
Quote Posted by 242
I'm afraid of small Japan islands since I played Siren ;)
Particularly interesting about my island, because it was on the Sea of Japan side and sort of the entryway to the mainland, it was a rear training camp during WWII, so there were abandoned WWII-era underground bunkers and some facilities... Now those were cool and creepy to explore, as an American. Also the innate coolness that there's a massive Russian dreadnought that sank off the coast about 50m straight out from where my apartment was located, from the famous 1905 Battle of Tsushima; so close I could practically swim out to it.
The other cool thing was just hiking out in the hills, I'd run into stone foundations or pottery that looked like they're 1000 years old or more, and looked like they'd just been left undisturbed the whole time, getting covered by the grass and trees. This is aside from the "recognized" sites, 1500+ year old temples and other sites around.
All very different from growing up in blah American suburbia.
edit: pictures!
Inline Image:
http://i55.tinypic.com/ddorde.jpgInline Image:
http://i56.tinypic.com/makvtz.jpgInline Image:
http://i52.tinypic.com/oqhvev.jpgInline Image:
http://i51.tinypic.com/35kr7rq.jpgInline Image:
http://i56.tinypic.com/332nsxk.jpgJason Moyer on 26/7/2011 at 20:58
Gary, Indiana isn't much of a ghost town. The population is still over 80,000. Granted, the vast majority of those are poor black people, but the town isn't really going anywhere.
june gloom on 26/7/2011 at 21:06
Gary's less of a ghost town and more of a level from (the original) Manhunt.
And boy, those photos from Bodie are like something out of a future-gen Fallout game.
Starrfall on 26/7/2011 at 21:35
You don't have to go to the midwest. Welcome to Victorville, CA:
Quote:
Hunter S. Thompson barreled through here with a head full of acid and a rag drenched in ether pressed against his face on his search for the American Dream. And that's exactly what Victorville, a desert commuter suburb 100 miles east of LA, has become. It is subprime central, a wasteland that boomed at the height of real estate bubble, overflowing with cheap McMansions built to scam low-income suckers into homeownership. But these days, the dream is dead. The row upon row of empty houses makes this depressingly obvious. You know the poor people that get displaced by gentrification? Well, suburbs like Victorville are where many have been forced to go. Places like this are going to be America's 21st century ghettos, safely out of view, like Gulags.
(
http://exiledonline.com/desert-dispatch-meth-morons-and-murder-in-victorville/)
Another "ghost town" with 100K people, but it's pretty bleak. Find it on google maps and scroll around and see how many unbuilt lots you can find. Then use street view, and pity the poor souls who live there. (At the spot I found, the road was half covered in blown sand. The google street view car driver must have hated himself that day.)
There's a ton of interestingly horrifying stories about Victorville on that site, index (
http://exiledonline.com/tag/victorville/page/2/) here.
