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 Mr.Rat
Location: united states
Gender: Male
 |  | Book out on UE
< on 9/12/2003 5:11 PM >
|  | | | There's a book out on UE that I just got at my library. It's from New York. It's called Invisible Frontier.
It's really awesome that a book about urban exploration out in the mainstream "book scene".
So check it out. It's relativively new.
So it would probably be in like the new releases section or something like that. Or you may be able to find it on amazon.com 
Tunnel rats eat raw sewage. |
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Mochi
 
Location: West Jordan, Utah
Gender: Male
Stare deep into a kitty's nose.
| |  | Re: Book out on UE
<Reply # 1 on 9/12/2003 5:16 PM >
|  | | | No no no no no. It is NOT awesome.
Awesomeness attracts ignorance and trendiness.
"UE is the hip, dawg! Yo! I drain!"
A mainstream UE book in the front of fuggin' Barnes and Noble or Borders is NOT a good thing.
Period.
>_< Mochi, not on his period.
JESUS SAVES!!!
(And then he redeems his tickets for free prizes!) |
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Detroit
   
Moderator
Location: Ottawa /Gatineau /Montreal
Gender: Male
4-aminophenol and 2-5% potassium hydroxide
| |  |  | Re: Book out on UE
<Reply # 2 on 9/12/2003 5:21 PM >
| | | | Posted by Riceballicus Maximus
No no no no no. It is NOT awesome.
Awesomeness attracts ignorance and trendiness.
"UE is the hip, dawg! Yo! I drain!"
A mainstream UE book in the front of fuggin' Barnes and Noble or Borders is NOT a good thing.
Period.
>_< Mochi, not on his period.
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I could not have written a better response than you already have Sir Mochi, and I agree wholeheartedly with you.
Stop reading my mind … it hurts!!!
Mainstream=BAD
The end of the beginning is the beginning of the end. |
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Ben
Noble Donor
Location: Mojave Desert
Gender: Male
| | | Re: Book out on UE
<Reply # 3 on 9/12/2003 5:23 PM >
| | | | That's Jinx's book. That's probably the one that was in Maxim.
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uem-Tux
Iron Wok Jan
Location: Montreal
Gender: Male
UE Geek
| |  | | Re: Book out on UE
<Reply # 4 on 9/12/2003 5:29 PM >
|  | | | You joyless bastards. 
Okay, let's get one thing straight. We can make every effort we like, but the fact that UE is getting more popular is just that, a fact. We can't stop it. The most we could probably do is slow it down. Sure there are downsides, but good stuff too! Like books!
Since it's going to happen ANYways, we may as well enjoy the benefits.
I mean yes, all the standard arguments apply, increased public awareness of recreational trespassing could mean our hobby is misunderstood, adopted by trend-hoppers, security increased... all that.
But there will always be abandonned buildings, there will always be drains, lord knows there will ALWAYS be poor security in places like universities, train stations, and small office buildings... the popularization of UE is not going to ruin our fun. It might bruise our egos a little bit to be part of a "popular" movement, but I've found that the people who call themselves Urban Explorers and mean it are versatile, clever, sneaky, mischevious people who are smarter than to let that drive them away from what they love.
Anyways, if UE ever reaches the popular saturation point of say "All Your Base" then you all know what'll happen right? It'll fade away, like fads always do, and we'll be left alone to enjoy our hobby once more.
We just have to keep a positive attitude!
[last edit 9/12/2003 12:31 PM by uem-Tux - edited 1 times]
Urban Exploration Montreal
Why are you the way that you are? |
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darkism
Gender: Male
hop on the bandwagon
| | Re: Book out on UE
<Reply # 5 on 9/12/2003 5:41 PM >
| | | | I own Invisible Frontier, and consider it an excellent purchase.
Yes, I bought it at a Barnes and Noble - it was filed under "Travel."
Like tux said, let's just enjoy the benefits of UE gaining some attention, because there's nothing we can do to prevent it. Invisible Frontier is an excellent read, it's just like reading highly-professional writeups on any other UE site.
Go buy it!
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Detroit
Moderator
Location: Ottawa /Gatineau /Montreal
Gender: Male
4-aminophenol and 2-5% potassium hydroxide
| | | | Re: Book out on UE
<Reply # 6 on 9/12/2003 5:43 PM >
| | | | Posted by uem-Tux
You joyless bastards.
....We just have to keep a positive attitude!
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Awww ... I'll try to be positive ...but damn it, it's so much more fun to be a joyless bastard!
The end of the beginning is the beginning of the end. |
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Jester
Location: Vancouver,B.C. Canada
Gender: Male
Always just out of sight...
| | | Re: Book out on UE
<Reply # 8 on 9/12/2003 5:56 PM >
|  | | | I have that book sitting on top of my dishwasher right now... Reduxzero bought it to read on his bus ride out from Edmonton, and was kind enough to leave it for me to read. I really do need to read it...
I don't think the attention is going to turn UE into a huge fad. Lots of people will say "oh, cool" but a far, far smaller number will say "hey, I should do this"... And if a small number of people do decide to do it, then maybe we won't always hear "I wish there was somebody else around here to explore with me"...
It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf. |
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asdafaf
Location: oe'r yonder
I have always been here before.
| | | Re: Book out on UE
<Reply # 9 on 9/12/2003 6:22 PM >
| | | | Hear hear, UEM-Tux! Well said. The only people that should worry too much about UE getting popular are those who are in it not primarily for the love of exploring, but primarily for the "cool points" that come with doing something "underground." And I know that this description doesn't apply to anyone on this board ... right? <suspicious eyes turning to a wink>
heh heh
If anything, I am kind of eager to go ahead and get it over with already. Get UE as watered-down mainstream and commerical as possible as soon as possible, so we more quickly can go back to exploring and sharing info and what not in relative peace ...
I'm looking for software engineers to hire at Amazon. |
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Mochi
Location: West Jordan, Utah
Gender: Male
Stare deep into a kitty's nose.
| | | Re: Book out on UE
<Reply # 10 on 9/12/2003 6:41 PM >
| | | | Oh, fine. Being the joyless bastard that I am, I'll go check it out on the bus ride home from school today. Pish posh. We should add "joyless bastard" as lingo to the UE dictionary.
>_< Mochi, pip pip and all that.
[last edit 9/12/2003 1:41 PM by Mochi - edited 1 times]
JESUS SAVES!!!
(And then he redeems his tickets for free prizes!) |
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Chainsaw
This member has been banned. See the banlist for more information.
Location: Underground, Colorado
Gender: Male
| | | Re: Book out on UE
<Reply # 11 on 9/12/2003 6:50 PM >
| | | | Eh...popularity...It could be as bad as it could be good.
I think it's important as people in an existing community that we welcome the newcomers and lead by example. Otherwise we end up in a quagmire of determining who's cool and who's not - don't let the star on your belly make you think you're better than the guy who hasn't got one.
Really, UE is dangerous enough that natural selection should take care of the real idiots for us. Maybe we should start setting booby-traps. Look! A UE buttonaaaaiaiiiiigggh!
Quid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
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Jester
Location: Vancouver,B.C. Canada
Gender: Male
Always just out of sight...
| | | Re: Book out on UE
<Reply # 12 on 9/12/2003 6:57 PM >
| | | | Posted by Commander Chainsaw
Otherwise we end up in a quagmire of determining who's cool and who's not - don't let the star on your belly make you think you're better than the guy who hasn't got one.
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I don't have this star on my belly... where can I get one ? Shouldn't this have been included in my UE monthly fees ? I think i'm getting ripped off.
It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf. |
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kowalski
| | Re: Book out on UE
<Reply # 14 on 9/12/2003 8:34 PM >
| | | | Invisible Frontier is an alright book.
And Jinx are interesting, sometimes very gutsy explorers.
Unfortunately, I found the book's treatment of a lot of the places it deals with to be a little superficial. Too much time is spent on presenting themselves as extensions of the classical explorer (Shackletons or Hillarys for the 20th century city), and on their get-the-flag-to-the-top mode of operation. I'm not going to deal with the problematic subtexts and histories of such images, you either can think about that or not, depending on your personal socio-political-cultural headspace. But it leaves out so much of the rest of the exploration experience that the book seems to present a sort of cardboard cutout of the pursuit.
That's not to say that there aren't some very interesting and involving chapters. The first (as i remember it), dealing with their partial foray into the Croton Aqueduct, is probably the closest they get to really doing justice to the depth (pardon the pun) of the exploration experience. The trip to a crumbling hospital on one of New York's outlying islands also makes an excellent chapter.
But a lot of the rest of the book left me disappointed. Too much time was spent stroking their spy-team-leader complex; and their relationship with their city, while extended by the historical information they were able to illustrate it with, felt fairly overwrought for its mostly simple, mainstream and uncritical content. Finally, the muddled and semi-fictionalized politics they dumped on the pages in a couple places (and elsewhere on their website), misguided and factually-misrepresentative at best and pseudo-fascist at worst, was completely unnecessary and clashes badly with the exploratory vision of their city and life within it that they were trying to present.
I had really high hopes for this book, given the breadth and depth of what they've done in New York over the years, but unfortunately I was disappointed. I'm not saying don't purchase this book, I'm just saying that it is not as significant as it could have been. Personally, I think the best writing on their site comes from their other contributors, rather than from Deyo and Leibowitz.
But that's just me. I have no problem with their dressing up - that's pretty cool - or their secret-agent fantasy. I just think they could have done a better job with the opportunity to write a book about urban exploration.
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Krenta
Location: Saint Paul, MN
Nope, wasn't me.
| | Re: Book out on UE
<Reply # 15 on 9/12/2003 8:38 PM >
| | | | People who are going to explore are going to explore. Popularity isn't going to change that.
My wife won't go into a sewer, period. She thinks they're "icky", even though I've shown her pictures, and told her that the East Kittsondale drain is probably one of the cleanest tunnels in the cities... just won't do it.
A lot of people won't even go into abandoned buildings in the middle of nowhere, or the back hallways or "off limits" areas of public buildings, or publicly-accessable caves. A lot more people won't go into subway/utility tunnels. Even more people won't do storm sewers, and a lot of people avoid sanitary sewers.
I just don't think the publicity of UE is going to affect it. They're not perfect examples, but look at base jumping, or any of the strange alternative lifystyles/hobbies that periodically become publicised.
Ten years ago, almost nobody knew about base jumping. It's gotten huge media coverage in the past few years, but, oddly, not that many people are throwing themselves off the IDS Tower, or the Saint Louis Arch, or Mount Rushmore these days ---who weren't doing that kind of stuff before---.
When you give a label to something, it helps people to accept and understand it, even if they don't approve. It could actually be good for UE. Consider:
A decade ago, if I heard about a bunch of couples who got together every weekend and slept with each other's spouses, I'd have called them a bunch of wierd, unfaithful perverts. Today they're called "swingers", and are viewed as wierd but harmless.
If you'd heard, five years ago, about a group of people who dress up in animal costumes and go to parties where they mill about acting like animals, making animal noises, grooming each other, yadda yadda, you'd have called them a bunch of sick bastards who need therapy badly. Today, we call them "furries"...and understand that they're, again, wierd but harmless.
Five years ago, if you were building a robot in your garage that had a flamethrower on it, or a chainsaw attached, the police would stop by and have a loooooooong talk with you. Today they just smile and go "Cool! Battlebots!".
A few years ago, if people heard about people who like to explore abandoned buildings, sewers and tunnels, they'd have been shocked and appalled, and expected them to be a bunch of teenagers hiding out, getting drunk, and having orgies, or vandals getting high on paint fumes. Nowadays they worry about terrorism and vandalism and liabilities. Perhaps in a few years they'll go "Oh, urban explorers? Whatever floats their boat, I guess. Did you see that last update Max Action did on his site? Weren't those pictures awesome?"
Publicity isn't always a bad thing...
Have Speed Graphic, Will Travel. |
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asdafaf
Location: oe'r yonder
I have always been here before.
| | | Re: Book out on UE
<Reply # 16 on 9/12/2003 9:03 PM >
| | | | I should confess that I've never really cared for Jinx Magazine or their site. The UE element is coming from a totally different perspective and foundation, which I don't share. The exploring part we have in common, when motivated and interpreted in such different manners, seems just a superficial similarity in the end. Too artsy, postmodern, contrived, detached and ironic for my midwestern punk rock tastes ... too much flash and fiction, too little adventure content.
That said, I don't begrudge them their book and would read it if I found one laying around. Different strokes for different folks, and all that.
I'm looking for software engineers to hire at Amazon. |
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Jester
Location: Vancouver,B.C. Canada
Gender: Male
Always just out of sight...
| | | Re: Book out on UE
<Reply # 17 on 9/12/2003 9:21 PM >
| | | | I personally can't get into the idea of exploring in a tuxedo or something like that. But exploration is exploration, regardless of whether you wear camo, tuxedo's, or reflective backpacks ;)... or nude as in the case of many of Max's *friends*...
Posted by Max Action
That said, I don't begrudge them their book and would read it if I found one laying around.
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Well, if you ever pop up in my kitchen... help yourself, it's on the dishwasher...
It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf. |
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uem-Tux
Iron Wok Jan
Location: Montreal
Gender: Male
UE Geek
| | | | Re: Book out on UE
<Reply # 18 on 9/13/2003 12:11 AM >
| | | | Max, you and I are similar thinkers I think  I've always sort of grudgingly liked Jinx because of all the cool places they've been, but I frankly much prefer the treatment you or Ninj give sites. Way more down to earth. More my style.
Urban Exploration Montreal
Why are you the way that you are? |
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Mr.Rat
Location: united states
Gender: Male
| | Re: Book out on UE
<Reply # 19 on 9/13/2003 3:21 AM >
| | | | I don't agree with how jinx is all centralized and that they have rules against graffiti
(bullshit!). And they like the cops :>(
Tunnel rats eat raw sewage. |
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