Paul Allen Rice, 1964-2005


From the Infiltration timeline:

"July 1997 - In response to increasing spam on the newsgroup alt.college.tunnels, Paul Allen Rice establishes a mailing list where vadders can discuss college tunnels and any manmade underground structures, the Underground list.

March 1999 - Paul Allen Rice creates the domain Urbanexplorers.net, and a website containing many useful links for college tunnelers goes online there shortly afterwards."


I first heard about "Urban Exploration" in the winter of 1998 - my freshman year of college. Back then there were only about a dozen UE websites total, and certainly no UER or any other message board. IIRC the Infiltration mailing list was invitation-only, but the Underground mailing list was open to all. It's so weird to think about now... but that's how UE'ers communicated, that was our one real resource. I remember most of the frequent posters on the Underground, a lot of them are still around and active today. Paul Rice ran the mailing list, and he ran it well. Really, he put up with no spam and no shit from anyone, but he was fair about it. I never heard a single negative comment about him. Sure Paul wasn't some super-elite-underground-tunnel-exploring-ninja, but he always seemed like a genuinely nice guy, and probably had more of a positive impact during the early years of this hobby than most anyone else, and for that I will always respect him.

The Underground mailing list probably peaked around 2000-2001, then faded away as UE message boards started to appear. In 2005 I noticed that the Underground list had stopped completely - I assumed that Paul had shut it down, so I went to his personal website to shoot him an e-mail thanking his for his years of helping out the UE community. Much to my dismay and horror, I saw that he had passed away of a heart attack on February 8, 2005. I was surprised that I hadn't heard about it on UER, but I guess few other people knew about it either.


And as a side note, the Underground mailing list is up and running again, although with far less use than before.

Ninjalicious, 1973-2005


Wow, Ninjalicious has had more of an effect on the hobby of Urban Exploration than other other person or group, ever. His website is the first UE site that most everyone runs across, and is without a doubt one of the best and most informative. Every single one of us can learn from his insatiable curiosity and sense of adventure.

I've only talked to Ninj once, via e-mail, and that was just to exchange links to each other's websites. I wish we could have talked more, I feel like I missed out on something big, if that makes sense.

I first saw the news of Ninj's passing on the Infiltration website. I was terribly saddened, although I'd known that he was very sick, so it wasn't as much of a shock as it otherwise might have been. My thoughts and prayers were, and still are, with Liz and the rest of his family.