Last week I moved from Detroit to Chicago and was wondering if there's any Chicago area explorers who would be interested in exploring together. I'm not very familiar with this city or area yet. Most of what I've seen has been high rise construction sites.

There's a pretty tight-knit crew in Chicago and a lot of goods to see! Not as much as Detroit, but more than my entire state. Good luck on the adventures!

A lot of what you want to see will depend on your ability to get to mobile transportation, aka a car. There's a lot to see relative to other cities but what there is is dispersed widely between Chicago, southwest to Joliet, and then southeast to Gary. Unlike Detroit, where I could trip and stumble and find my way into somewhere easy no matter what.


As far as a "scene" goes, well, I'd say it isn't as large or deep as, say, the Twin Cities or Detroit, where there's a large subcultural history of exploring (underground stuff mostly in the former, abandoned stuff in the latter), and are the other two Midwestern cities whose scenes I know.

There's a newer generation of younger twenty-somethings around now. At 30, when I got started exploring with others at 18 or so, I was a baby and every other explorer here was around 8 or more years older than me. Now I'm old. They seem more inclined to larger social gatherings than say, the old CUE gang I hung with were. I'd look around on here for some of them.

Where are you based at up here? Neighborhood-wise.

I'm up in Waukegan. Don't usually do much directly in the city but lots of stuff all around it. I'm sure you can get to plenty of cool places through public transportation in the city, but there's definitely quite a few impressive things beyond the reach of that worth seeing.

I just moved to Chicago as well and am looking for a group just like you. I have a car but don't know the area. Did you ever end up finding a group?

Chicago has a really active community, but the vast majority you wont find on here.

fuck chicago

Chicago can burn for all i care.

Posted by relik Chicago can burn for all i care.

You mean, again.

Nah...Chicago's pretty great.

Will be in the Chicago area start of December. Would love to see if I can meet up with other explorers and check out some locations. Never really explored over there.

Posted by Dalmaticus You mean, again.

Precisely.

Everyone keeps saying that Chicago has a fantastic urbex community but no one suggests how to find it. If MonoxideChild is correct and most of the Chicago peeps aren't on this site, does anyone know where they are??

Posted by raven_lunatic Everyone keeps saying that Chicago has a fantastic urbex community but no one suggests how to find it. If MonoxideChild is correct and most of the Chicago peeps aren't on this site, does anyone know where they are??

They're in Chicago. ;]

There really is a pretty active group, but they're pretty exclusive. I'm not sure what to recommend, other than try to run into them in an abandoned building or on a rooftop. A couple of them do very occasionally pay a visit to the great UERZ, but typically they try to avoid the drama that is the great UERZ.

Posted by relik They're in Chicago. ;] There really is a pretty active group, but they're pretty exclusive. I'm not sure what to recommend, other than try to run into them in an abandoned building or on a rooftop. A couple of them do very occasionally pay a visit to the great UERZ, but typically they try to avoid the drama that is the great UERZ.

Man I don't even want to calculate the odds of just randomly running into someone. How do you know all this anyway? Seems like you could only know this stuff if you've met people on the inside

There's other ways of meeting explorers than using UER. It's not like this site is a database of every explorer in the world.

There used to be a secret forum, tucked away under an innocuous name that was where Chicago used to talk about UE. Dunno if it's still around.

MSP get out chicago's bidness! You want me to come back up there? Keep talking shit about chicago, and I'll be paying y'all another visit!

Posted by Lord Awesome MSP get out chicago's bidness! You want me to come back up there? Keep talking shit about chicago, and I'll be paying y'all another visit!

Why don't you go eat some bees!?!

Posted by raven_lunatic Everyone keeps saying that Chicago has a fantastic urbex community but no one suggests how to find it.

It's pretty much like Harry Potter in the train station.