|
Suburban Underground Vadders
|
Merchants Ice & Cold Storage Co.
Allva, LMG, Marbrough and I (RevSM) all gathered at our normal meeting spot on a Friday night to do some scouting and exploring. Allva had been wanting to check out this place. Apparently it was built in 1900 and used to make Ice and store things that needed to be kept refrigerated. They have recently turned one of the buildings into a warehouse club called “Fuel” and have plans to turn the rest of it into a communications hub to house the backbone of major telecommunications.
The Merchant’s buildings are located in the warehouse district and sits right next to lots of train tracks. In fact this picture was taken from the Spaghetti Warehouse Restaurant parking lot.
Fortunately Fuel was not open this night so we were able to walk over to the area without being to noticeable. One of the first things that we saw was a big hole in the wall of the main building so we decided to check it out. Suddenly we were surrounded by pipes, tanks and wonderful tubes. We figured that since our entrance was not facing the street and there was no windows in the building, we would be ok with using flashlights and flash photos.
The place was really dirty with plenty of trash and debris all over the floor.
More of the trash here. This picture is looking just to the right of the picture before it. We were only about 15 feet inside the building when LMG said someone was coming. Everyone turned out the lights and stood in the dark facing the door when 2 bicycle cops rode by. We were almost positive they saw us but we didn’t move. I don’t know how long but probably less than a minute went by when we saw a light coming from the right of the doorway shining in but not inside enough to illuminate us. The light source was out of our view but we knew we were caught. A few more seconds went by when the light went out. We started whispering trying to figure out if we should leave, how to leave or if we should not move. After several minutes we got the balls to peek outside and we didn’t see anyone. We decided that if we could get to the street without being seen they wouldn’t have any reason to stop us. We quickly made our way and only a few seconds after making it to the street, 2 more bike cops came around the corner. There was at least 3 of them circling the block but even when they passed right next to us they didn’t say anything.
Later we were a few blocks away nearer to central downtown outside of a Denny’s trying to decide what to do now when an obviously drunk guy came by and told us that someone had been walking around stabbing and carjacking people. Maybe it had something to do with the cops but we decided later that… uh, oh yeah, it’s Labor Day weekend. Probably not the best time to be exploring downtown SA. At least we had made it out without being stabbed, or worse… arrested!
We tried 2 more times to explore other places but when we made it out to Standard Industries we found that it was in use and they had guard dogs. Upon leaving there we rounded a corner not far away to see two cops parked on the side of the road talking. We decided to not push our luck and call it a night.
Fortunately I was able to make it back the following day to get a few good pics of the outside
|
