Jeff Chapman (1973 - 2005) #RIPNinjalicious
Jeff Chapman was a Canadian urban explorer, known as Ninjalicious. Jeff published Access All Areas and the founder of Infiltration, zines and website.
"It's the thrill of discovery that fascinates me. Yes, I know I'm not the first person there, but I can honestly say I found it and I earned the experience for myself. After exploring for a while, you get a wonderful feeling that you're "in on" the secret workings of cities. You know what's under your feet and what's behind the closed doors and what the city looks like from the highest office towers, while almost everyone around you only ever looks at the public areas and never truly pays attention to urban structures unless they've paid admission to take a look." - Jeff Chapman/ Ninjalicious
Source: Interview at Philadelphia City Paper with Neil Gladstone (1998?)
This month, August 2015, marks ten years since Jeff Chapman passed away. I thought someone should post in his honour. I never met him personally. I did email with him, twice. I met his wife, Liz, at a Broken Pencil Zine Festival in Toronto.
I attended the Festival to buy Access All Areas: A User's Guide to the Art of Urban Exploration, see some of Jeff's (and other publishers) zines and take a look at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto. I was just beginning to explore with a digital camera then. Before that I just didn't know what I was doing had a name (and film was expensive!).
A tribute can still be found at the Toronto Architectural Conservancy
Jeff Chapman (September 19, 1973 -- August 23, 2005), better known by the pseudonym Ninjalicious, was a Toronto-based urban explorer, fountaineer, writer and founder of the urban exploration zine Infiltration: the zine about going places you're not supposed to go. He was also a prominent author and editor for YIP magazine, as well as its website, Yip.org.
Chapman attended York University in the early 1990s and later studied book and magazine publishing at Centennial College.
He went on to serve as Editor at History Magazine and as Director of the Toronto Architectural Conservancy board.
Chapman died of cholangiocarcinoma on Tuesday, August 23, 2005 --- three years after a successful liver transplant at Toronto General Hospital (a location he loved to explore). He was 31 years old.
Source: Wikipedia: Ninjalicious
Toronto's own late Jeff Chapman (a.k.a. "Ninjalicious") published his first printed issue of Infiltration, "The zine about going places you're not supposed to go," in 1996. Though Toronto may not live in the imagination of people around the world, Chapman made this city's sewers famous for his global readers. His work lives on in Access all Areas, his book published just before his death to cancer in 2005, and at infiltration.org.
Source: Shawn Micallef: Getting to know Toronto's sewers
Under the alias Ninjalicious is where Jeff made his biggest mark. In his early twenties he spent long periods of time in the hospital battling various diseases. Often bored, he and his IV pole would go exploring the hospital, investigating the basement, peaking behind doors, looking for interesting rooms and equipment. It was here his love for the under explored side of buildings developed, and upon returning to health he created Infiltration -- the zine about going places you're not supposed to go.
Infiltration has had a profound influence on urban exploration in Toronto and around the world, as evidenced by the hundreds of tributes left for him in the Urban Exploration Resource forum. Ninjalicious had a strong code of ethics which he promoted, including no stealing or vandalizing while exploring. Issue 1, all about Ninj's beloved Royal York Hotel, was published in 1996, and the zine was continually published throughout the years ending most recently with Issue 25: Military Leftovers.
Source: Sean Lerner: Torontoist: Death of a Ninja
About ten years ago I was in a Toronto bookshop and found a copy of Infiltration. Subtitled "the zine about going places you're not supposed to go", it was devoted to the escapades of the author, Jeff Chapman --- or "Ninjalicious", to use his nom de plume --- as he explored the many off-limits areas in famous Toronto buildings such as the Royal York hotel, CN Tower, or St. Mike's Hospital. In each issue, Chapman would pick a new target and infiltrate it --- roaming curiously around, finding hilarious secrets, then describing it with effervescently witty delight. Chapman had the best prose of any zine author I've read anywhere. Many zinesters are clever, of course, but Chapman wrote with a 19th-century literary journalist's attention to detail; nothing escaped his notice, from the relative fluffiness of the towels in executive lounges to the color of the rust pools in a mysterious, hangar-sized room buried below Toronto's subway system.
Source: Clive Thompson: Collision Detection: R.I.P. "Ninjalicious" --- the founder of urban exploration
infiltration The zine about going places you're not supposed to go, like tunnels, abandoned buildings, rooftops, hotel pools and more.
Source: Infiltration
See also:
cancon
what is it that attracts you to going where you're not supposed to go?
Ninjalicious
Healthy human curiosity about the workings of the world I live in, of course. I mean, it's free, it's fun and it hurts no one. A harder-to-answer question would be: why doesn't everyone?
cancon
what are the tools of your trade?
Ninjalicious
Usually I travel very lightly, with a pen, paper, a Swiss army knife, a camera and a flashlight. That's about all the equipment I need to have a good time in 90% of the places I visit. I take along more specialized equipment, such as rubber boots or various props, for specific targets.
Source: Cancon Interview with James Hörner