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UER Forum > Canada: Alberta / BC > Curriculum vitae (Viewed 41231 times)
billgeorge 


Location: Burnaby
Gender: Male
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Re: Curriculum vitae
< Reply # 40 on 7/12/2014 7:55 PM >
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I spent an afternoon infiltrating hotel pools in the Richmond airport-hotel district. My method was straight out of Infiltration zine: Carrying a classy oversize shopping bag (instead of a backpack), I rode the elevator up to the room levels and borrowed a towel from a housekeeping cart, which I threw over my shoulder. I removed my pants and sandals in a stairwell -- it's OK, I was wearing swim shorts underneath. Then I found the pool/fitness room, and waited outside the cardlocked door, sending fake flustered text messages like someone who has forgotten his key in his room, till someone went in or came out. No more than four minutes of patience required.



The Westin Wall Centre, pictured on the right, supplied towels (that's OK; I brought my own) and little else. Lockers in the change room needed real locks, though there were signs telling you how to operate the nonexistent electronic lock system. The pool was small and crowded. The hot tub was hot. Overpriced poolside dining available between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., at a $3.75 delivery charge plus 16% gratuity, charged to your room. It was 4:58, and I didn't have a room, so I passed. The fitness centre looked alright. 1.5 stars.

The pool at the Radisson, pictured left, near Aberdeen skytrain, was even less illustrious. They were out of towels (that's OK; I brought my own), or had never stocked any. Lockers were coin-operated but half of them were jammed. There were standing pools of water in the change area. The hot tub was tepid. The pool water was cloudy. The fitness centre looked neglected, and had twangy Chinese music being piped in. Shame, Radisson. 0.5 stars.





billgeorge 


Location: Burnaby
Gender: Male
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Re: Curriculum vitae
< Reply # 41 on 7/17/2014 12:05 AM >
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My new favorite building(s) downtown is the West Burnaby Meeting Hub. It definitely deserves its own thread or DB entry, but that will have to wait for now.

Though a big beautiful building in a very prominent location on the waterfront, I never really tried to look around inside it till yesterday. (Perhaps I'd been shooed out of the Pn Pcfc Hotel too many times.)

A couple months ago I found on some "Top free things to do around town" blog the idea to go for an official tour of the complex. I can recommend the hour-long tour, though mostly as an appetizer. We were told the usual forgettable details, like how many hundreds of thousands of square feet of convention space they house, how much a starting wedding package costs ($30,000, all in), and how they recycle their gray water and have grass growing on their roof. More memorable was the movies and TV shows that have filmed there (Mission Impossible, Robocop, Amazing Race Canada).

More memorable still was the tantalizing glimpse into the service areas, which extend the entire length of the Hub, like a concealed central nervous system. At one point, our tour guide electronically unlocked a hidden door, held it briefly open, and said, "We're not going to go in, but down that hall is where the huge, cutting edge, high-class kitchen is, which serves all of the ballrooms and meeting spaces in both of the buildings." (WTF! Did she think we didn't want to see that?) She also mentioned that, behind the public underground concourse connecting the two buildings, with its pleasant view of the harbor, was a long service corridor (you can call it a tunnel if you want), through which that fancy food was carted from the West to the East building.

That tunnel was my goal yesterday.

And here it is, in all its glory:



Though ostensibly inaccessible to yobbos like you and me, the service areas are all connected, so all you have to do is get in somewhere to get in everywhere. And this complex is just too huge and too active for every door to stay shut always. I finally managed to find an incompletely closed stairwell door in the north end of the West building, and wandered via clean, cavernous, chair- and table-lined hallways and stairwells all the way around the U, through the service concourse tunnel, and finally to the north tip of the East building. Here was my approximate path, drawn in pink on a googly satellite map.



I encountered many staff members (especially in the vicinity of the staff break room!), but none of them gave me dirty eyeballs or seemed inclined to question my right to be there. If the number of lockers are any indication, they must have more staff than any one person can keep track of. I wore no ID badge, but I did tuck my shirt in. And I carried nothing but a pocket flashlight. A backpack or camera on tripod might have made me a lot more dubious. I saw no security.


Under the iconic "sails" of the East building.


There is so much to explore. The place is just awe-inspiringly massive. They'll tell you that they have 430,000 square feet of meeting space, but me, I'd like to know how many dozens of thousands of square feet of service areas they have.

I will be going back again and again. I urge you to do the same.



[last edit 7/17/2014 12:23 AM by billgeorge - edited 1 times]

reduxzero 


Location: Edmonton, AB
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Re: Curriculum vitae
< Reply # 42 on 7/18/2014 1:25 AM >
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This is rad, both because you did it and then wrote about it. Infiltration lives!




reduxzero - DrainsofmyCity
Mowgli-dog 


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Re: Curriculum vitae
< Reply # 43 on 7/18/2014 6:15 PM >
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I agree, entertaining write-up and cool pics.




"We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." -George Orwell

Rest in peace, my pal Mowgli - the best dog there ever was.
JasonJacksonPhoto 


Location: VA
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Re: Curriculum vitae
< Reply # 44 on 7/20/2014 6:47 PM >
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Posted by billgeorge
I spent an afternoon infiltrating hotel pools in the Richmond airport-hotel district. My method was straight out of Infiltration zine: Carrying a classy oversize shopping bag (instead of a backpack), I rode the elevator up to the room levels and borrowed a towel from a housekeeping cart, which I threw over my shoulder. I removed my pants and sandals in a stairwell -- it's OK, I was wearing swim shorts underneath. Then I found the pool/fitness room, and waited outside the cardlocked door, sending fake flustered text messages like someone who has forgotten his key in his room, till someone went in or came out. No more than four minutes of patience required.

http://i43.photobu...in_zps3ad4c4ed.jpg

The Westin Wall Centre, pictured on the right, supplied towels (that's OK; I brought my own) and little else. Lockers in the change room needed real locks, though there were signs telling you how to operate the nonexistent electronic lock system. The pool was small and crowded. The hot tub was hot. Overpriced poolside dining available between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., at a $3.75 delivery charge plus 16% gratuity, charged to your room. It was 4:58, and I didn't have a room, so I passed. The fitness centre looked alright. 1.5 stars.

The pool at the Radisson, pictured left, near Aberdeen skytrain, was even less illustrious. They were out of towels (that's OK; I brought my own), or had never stocked any. Lockers were coin-operated but half of them were jammed. There were standing pools of water in the change area. The hot tub was tepid. The pool water was cloudy. The fitness centre looked neglected, and had twangy Chinese music being piped in. Shame, Radisson. 0.5 stars.




Yo that's awesome. I'm definitely trying to get into a hotel's pool when I move back to Richmond




http://www.flickr....jasonjacksonphoto/
Jecht 


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Re: Curriculum vitae
< Reply # 45 on 7/21/2014 1:48 PM >
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Wow, you really keep yourself busy. I like the abandoned ski jump in your first post.




billgeorge 


Location: Burnaby
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Re: Curriculum vitae
< Reply # 46 on 8/3/2014 12:15 AM >
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I drank a beer for courage and headed over to the construction site. It was approaching one a.m. on a weeknight.

The future condo was currently little more than a big two- to three-storey pit with three vertical sides -- impossible to climb down, even without the security fencing. The fourth side was a steep slope of dirt with one switchback road, above which sat various trailers, thrumming generators, vehicles, equipment, and the presentation / sales center. Several after-hours reconnaissances had revealed no sign of human activity, and, delightfully, a two-foot-gap between the perimeter fence and sales building.

My goal, the crane, was located in the corner opposite the trailers and machinery. Though it stood about five meters from a major thoroughfare, its small size, and its slanted, staggered ladders -- not to mention its wide-open accessibility -- made it an appealing choice for an acrophobic novice such as myself.

I was able to pass through the gap and into the site with this clever maneuver: I removed my backpack, and turned my body sideways.

The switchback road felt too exposed, so I partly clambered, partly slid down the dirt slope, which became wet sand halfway. (My imagination thought an avalanche was likely.) I had worn a nice black shirt and nice dark blue pants in case of a human encounter; but any credibility my neat appearance may have given me was now lost, because I was filthy.

I skirted huge concrete blocks, piles of rebar, mud puddles, and trenches, and reached the base of the crane. It surprised me a little that it was not easier to get inside -- as if they had forgotten to include a door in the design. I put on gloves and started climbing.

Each ladder section had about 24 rungs, extending the height of about two storeys. I had to pause after the first section and ask myself if I really wanted to do this. At this point, I was still in the shade of the pit, and pretty invisible to the street or anyone who might be in any of those trailers across the site. After another ladder or two, I would be bathed in streetlight and almost directly in the headlights of cars travelling down the near side of the road. Traffic was light, but there was still enough of it.

While maintaining three points of contact, I unzipped and took a nervous piss off the side. Then I continued up.

I paused again at the next platform, just below street level now, and reassured myself that it was almost impossible to fall to my death from this thing. Nevertheless my imagination kept throwing me off the ladders and through the gaps and down onto protruding rebar spine-first. I told my imagination to shut up and leave me alone.

It was not hard work, but my forearms were soon shaking from nerves. I moved slowly, even when climbing through the most visible section. Most of the time, I put both feet on the same rung. Getting on or off a ladder, I must have looked like a decrepit nonswimmer entering a cold pool.

I paused at nearly every level, telling myself that I was okay, that there was nothing to it, that I just had to take it one ladder at a time. While climbing, I tried to concentrate on the rungs, but my mind and my eyes kept darting around. Was that a police car down there? What was that sound? Can those people see me? (Having stared hard at the crane from the street myself, I knew that beyond a certain point I was practically invisible, especially when not moving, but it was hard to remember that.) When my brain wouldn't cooperate, I assured myself that I didn't need my brain anyway -- my body could climb a ladder perfectly well all by itself.

At one point, a door slammed across the street. It was a security guard, doing his perimeter check of the neighboring office tower. Had he seen me? I stood motionless behind a strut, and waited. When I looked again, he was not in sight.

Once I passed the fifth or sixth platform, I rose above the adjacent building, and suddenly felt very exposed and precarious -- as if a support had been taken away from me.

On one platform, the grated flooring was a little springy, which worried me and made me move even more slowly.

I paused again and looked around, and began to enjoy the view.

There were perhaps eight ladder sections altogether, bringing me about sixteen floors from the crane base. Anyway, I was about level with the thirteenth floor of the office tower across the street.

I was almost at the top, but now I encountered something new. The next short ladder was not slanted, but vertical. Also, it was flush with the "wall" of the crane mast, whereas all the other ladders had been in the middle, leaning over the hole to the level below, and thus providing a sort of safety barrier. Also, all the previous ladders had been caged. Not this one. I climbed it extra carefully, my imagination repeatedly tossing me down the hole behind me.

I poked my head up into a small, round chamber (the turntable?) and tried to figure out how to proceed. The platform I needed to get onto was covered in a nest of big thick electrical cables, which I did not like (my imagination was busy electrocuting and tripping me simultaneously). Also, the ladder I was on only extended one measly rung above the platform, which was going to make getting up there tricky. I was about to climb as high as I could, then perch my ass on the edge of the platform and carefully get to my feet, when it occurred to me how much more difficult this operation was going to be in reverse. I also didn't like how low and narrow the interior of the turntable section was.

So I said fuck it, and climbed back down.

I had a camera and tripod in my backpack, but I didn't take any pictures before descending. It would have been like lighting a cigarette while crossing a highway. I just wanted to get the hell out of there. I also had a victory beer that I didn't drink.

Even as I was climbing down, I kept shooting glances over at the site-office trailer. As if there was anything I could do at this point if I was spotted!

When I was about two storeys above street level, a couple of chatting guys began walking in my direction down my side of the street. I waited for them to pass by, not even looking at them -- just in case people actually can sense when they are being watched.

I was retracing my steps towards the dirt slope when I looked up and saw, on top of a pole at the back of the site, flashing red and blue lights. Oh, fuck.

"You are under video surveillance," a pre-recorded announcement informed me. "The police have been notified. Please evacuate the site immediately." This was repeated two more times, then an alarm began to shriek.

I waved and saluted respectfully in the direction of the flashing lights, and walked "calmly" up the switchback road and out the gap in the fence. The alarm stopped shrieking. I kept walking.

Three blocks away, I dusted myself off, sat down on the curb, shook out my sandy socks, and had a swig of my victory beer. Had I set off a motion detector, or had somebody finally spotted me on camera? I still didn't think anyone had been on site, or they would have come out to say hello. I didn't entirely believe that the police were on their way, either -- the alarm seemed like more bark than bite -- but I didn't linger. I circled back the long way, and headed home. My wife was still awake, and seemed pleased, on the whole, that I wasn't dead.




thegerm 


Location: Alberta
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Re: Curriculum vitae
< Reply # 47 on 8/3/2014 1:51 AM >
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Ive seen video software that can identify human shapes and motion which then trips the alarm or alerts an operator. There was a crane downtown of my city that used this.




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TunnelRunner33 


Location: Seattle
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Re: Curriculum vitae
< Reply # 48 on 8/4/2014 6:33 AM >
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I love it man! Keep it up. I haven't tried a crane yet, but I look at them and think about it every single day. I really enjoy the way you articulate what you were thinking in the moment, I'm sure anyone reading this recognizes having had those same thoughts at one time or another. I particularly liked your description of the anxiety you felt on your way back down the crane, repeatedly looking for security even though there would be nothing you could do about it anyway. And then avoiding looking at the two pedestrians as they passed, in a way that sounds like a good idea. If it were me and they looked up and saw me watching them, I would probably look so spooked that it might freak them out in turn, LOL.




If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find him, maybe you can hire... Tunnelrunner33!
billgeorge 


Location: Burnaby
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Re: Curriculum vitae
< Reply # 49 on 8/5/2014 8:28 PM >
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Posted by thegerm
Ive seen video software that can identify human shapes and motion which then trips the alarm or alerts an operator.


I wonder if you could defeat this software by wearing a cloak or doing a silly walk.







billgeorge 


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Re: Curriculum vitae
< Reply # 50 on 8/10/2014 9:13 PM >
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I like condo presentation centers and display suites for themselves, but they also provide superb credibility props for further exploration -- like this brochure for prospective buyers.


They call the spanning structure the Skybridge because, unlike ordinary bridges (?), this one passes through the sky(?).


"Oh, hello. I'm thinking of buying one of these units, and couldn't resist giving myself a little tour of the rooftop garden."

I didn't have to say this to anyone, because I didn't run into anyone. It was late in the day on a weekend. The security fencing had many gaps, doors were unlocked, and there was no sign of any construction workers or tradespeople. I heard a saw somewhere in the building, but that was all.



Armed with my brochure, I felt pretty invincible.


When completed, the building will glow with a soft, golden, holy light.





reduxzero 


Location: Edmonton, AB
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Re: Curriculum vitae
< Reply # 51 on 8/15/2014 4:59 AM >
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Best crane climb story I've read in a long time, despite the lack of a money shot. Well done. I don't personally have much experience with those Sonitroltype of alarms, but I hear they're effective.

WRT that Skybridge condo, are the units as cramped and terrible as my cynical self imagines?




reduxzero - DrainsofmyCity
billgeorge 


Location: Burnaby
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Re: Curriculum vitae
< Reply # 52 on 8/20/2014 11:47 PM >
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Yep. The ones I peeked into seemed pretty small, even empty. The one-bedroom display suite seemed fairly cluttered, and this two-bedroom floorplan ($500,000) looks pretty cramped:






billgeorge 


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Re: Curriculum vitae
< Reply # 53 on 8/24/2014 9:13 PM >
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I went back to this highrise the other night. I'd been meaning to for a while, because the penthouses look finished, and I figured the total absence of security measures could not last forever.

My old POE was blocked with new fencing. But, to my delight and amazement, one of the sections of perimeter fencing (on busy Kingsway) was sitting ajar. So I just strolled in like I worked there, feeling lucky and blessed.

I climbed 45 storeys without much dilly-dallying, admired the views from the skeletal penthouse apartments' balconies, and climbed back down, perhaps forty-five minutes to an hour after going in.

The fence had been closed again. I was trapped inside! I felt unlucky and cursed, and very bewildered.

That fencing is heavier than it looks. I finally managed to rip one up off its peg, but then couldn't get it back in place from the outside. I did my best and casually skedaddled.

Had an employee without keys entered the site briefly? Had a thief, or a fellow explorer, been there? But if they took the trouble to reconnect the fence after leaving, why hadn't they bothered to do so while inside? Had a security patrol come by and finally noticed a gap that had been in the fence all evening? Mysterious.





billgeorge 


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Re: Curriculum vitae
< Reply # 54 on 9/12/2014 3:28 AM >
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Finally found something abandoned, though I had to go all the way to Barnston Island for it. (Thanks to Canadian Viking for the tip.)


Barn swallows feigned dive-bombing me while I took this beautiful photo.


I enjoyed at the time trying to figure out what I was looking at -- what this building had been, what that structure had been used for -- but, in retrospect, I didn't learn much. Thirty minutes on Google didn't leave me much wiser.


These canned peaches seemed no more than a year or two abandoned.


It was a former cow farm; I did figure out that much.


A cow calendar.


There were about a dozen buildings, including a couple of farmhouses. Some barns were badly collapsing. Sturdy perimeter fencing had been installed sometime since 2013, as Google street view reveals. Blackberry bushes had also, in no time, taken over everything, making some of the buildings inaccessible.


A cow shed.



A cattle thingadoodadifier. Possibly.



Beside this door were signs that said "DEADLY GASES: Not enough oxygen to support life."


Aside from the joy of exploring (however superficially) a place without any fear of being caught or interfered with, I also enjoyed the tangible sensation of time's passage. You get a taste of decades in a single glance. One only gets this with decay, I think; and it's why well-preserved museum collections often leave me cold.




Canadian Viking 


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Nikon for life!

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Re: Curriculum vitae
< Reply # 55 on 9/12/2014 5:28 AM >
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You finally got out there! Nice.




Going......
Going...
Gone.
billgeorge 


Location: Burnaby
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Re: Curriculum vitae
< Reply # 56 on 10/3/2014 10:12 PM >
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A few downtown hotel pools:









One of these is totally accessible; only the change rooms are keycard locked, but you can change in the bathroom inside the pool area. One of these is accessible from the sundeck a floor up. One of these, currently under construction, is occasionally accessible: sometimes the door isn't locked. Another, not pictured here, is almost always accessible, since the door to the pool and fitness area is not well fitted, and usually sticks open. One of these is inaccessible without "social engineering," though all I had to do was knock and the attendant let me in. (He also had to let me into the change room.) I didn't give him any explanation, just smiled and thanked him -- though I did have a hotel towel over my shoulder.

As a bonus, here is a picture of a downtown hotel roof (quite accessible):





-Rio- 


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Re: Curriculum vitae
< Reply # 57 on 10/4/2014 6:40 AM >
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i see the Canada place hotel pool. Its a nice place to pretend to be a guess for the day and enjoy the sun and the beautiful view.




It doesnt matter how you die.
But only how you live.
billgeorge 


Location: Burnaby
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Re: Curriculum vitae
< Reply # 58 on 11/1/2014 1:58 AM >
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I went for an aimless bike ride on a recent weekend, and stopped along the way to wander into a condo under construction, a church basement, an arena and the old barns at PNE, and the presentation centre for Kensington Gardens condos, which is inside an old Canadian Tire building on Kingsway.

There were a lot of prospective home buyers milling around, so I was pleasantly neglected. After drinking in the display suites and the architectural models, I slipped past a small "Staff Only" sign, in search of a washroom. Then I stepped through this door, which was hanging open:



... and snooped around the cluttered, dusty, abandoned back and staff areas of the old store.











On my way out, I was sure to pick up their condo price list and one of their massive glossy advertising packages, each of which must cost $20 or more to print, and of which they had piles of boxes behind the scenes. I most enjoy the architect's CAD renderings, with their superreal buildings and their happy, unnatural, cut-and-pasted looking people.






Ganesha 

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Re: Curriculum vitae
< Reply # 59 on 11/10/2014 2:46 AM >
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You are such a nervy infiltrator; I have a suspicion that if I found you in my house you'd convince me that you were supposed to be there.

The architect's rendering is so photoshopped. The trees on the left are repeated, and the pattern artifact in the copy-pasted carpet is obvious. The girl on the lounge chair in the foreground is smaller than the couple by the fireplace. A real forehead-smacker.




"The beauty of mediocrity is that anything can make you better." -Jeff Mallett
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