https://flic.kr/s/aHsmMp63xKI had talking to this dude for awhile. My other friend gave me his snap. Told me to have him show me some spots. Finally a night came along where we could both get out to explore.
Originally we had been planning on checking out a cave, but then he told me about a drain that allegedly had lights on in them currently. I had just recently found the maps of this drain, so I was eager to go.
I drove in and parked. Even though I had just gotten a parking ticket a week earlier, I didn't pay the parking meter because I'm a cheap bastard. It was very eerie walking through the city that night. no one was around at all, save a few janitors and crack heads.
We find the right manhole lid and make our decent into the unknown. We entered in a large, impressive brick arch room. There was ropes along the wall to help us keep balance on the sloped floors. The tunnel split into two in this arch room, with one round brick tunnel, and one arched concrete and limestone tunnel. We looked down the round tunnel, and to our surprise found a beaver! He was just as surprised to see us as we were him. We left him be, and went down the arched tunnel.
There were lots of odd tunnels, including one that was filled almost to the ceiling with mud. Another tunnel looked like it lead to a dropshaft, but actually led to a large metal door. We were on the inside of it, but we couldn't open it. I believe it led to a sewer interceptor. As we continued down the tunnel, we saw some more unique architecture, and found the spot where the lights should be. They were gone sadly. We weren't too disappointed though, this was one of the most unique drains I had been in. We went further in, but the tunnels got much less exciting. Concrete tunnel leading to concrete side tunnels leading to dropshafts. One thing that was cool was the iron street signs at the start of many side tunnels. We went for a ways and made our way back to the arch room.
At this point, several more beavers had appeared and were swimming around the arch room watching us. We could now get into the brick tunnel without getting too close. The brick work was incredible. I dubbed one section "the Cheese Tunnel" because the lime deposits had built up on the drain walls, and it looked like it was dripping with mozzarella. This tunnel went straight back for a block, then ended at a dropshaft.
We returned to the surface, and were walking back towards our car when we began looking at a building. We realizing we could get up to the roof quite easily. We began trying to get onto a roof closer to the ground so we could get onto the ladder. As I lifted my leg up, I felt my pants completely rip. Spongebob style and everything. Sadly, this wasn't even the way we should have gone. I decided due to my equipment failure, I shouldn't continue this climb (I'll be back tho). My buddy made it all the way to the top.
After we decided to call it a night and head back to the car,we came across a very interesting person. This guy was playing electric guitar out of a little amp on the street corner. Very sad, bluesey music echoing through the empty streets. We tried to tell him he sounded good, but he would turn away from us as we walked towards him. I never saw his face once.
If you read all of this, I hope you enjoyed it! I'll hopefully be back with more write-ups soon.
