drains

There are 6 posts tagged drains (this is page 1 of 1).

Manhole Covers as Urbex Fashion

Looking for something really urbex to wear? Consider a print of a manhole cover. This site has a project creating prints from manhole (sewer) covers. There are events and workshops. You could make your own.

Raubdruckerin uses drain covers as a printing module for textiles and paper. By pressing a garment on a drain cover coated with paint, the surface is being transferred as a graphical pattern onto the desired object. After first experiments in 2006 Raubdruckerin is meanwhile printing in streets all over the world. Currently the collection shows objects from more than 20 cities.


Source: raubdruckerin

Rooftopping Versus Skywalking

Rooftopping is not about hanging yourself from the edge of a building.

Skywalking has been promoted in the media as rooftopping, incorrectly. Urban exploration is not about taking silly risks with your life. Urban explorers take photographs, are careful as they explore, don’t litter or vandalize and they make it home again to upload their photographs. Taking photographs is not to prove you were there, or show how much of a thrill seeker you are. The photos document the place you visited, not the fact that you, in particular, were there.

Rooftopping is not performance art. Some explorers like to be underground in tunnels, drains and other types of big holes in the ground. Some (maybe the same people) like to be far above ground, to see everything from a new angle and look at all the city lights. The first rooftopping photo was taken in Toronto, Ontario. The photograph showed the city far below with the photographer’s shoes hanging over the edge of the tall building they were sitting on. (Note, sitting on, not hanging or dangling from). If you enjoy dangling yourself from a crane join a circus or take up construction and learn how to do it safely. Have some care and respect for yourself and be here (relatively undamaged) for your own further adventures, tomorrow.

Culvert Installations from Saskatchewan

Source: Culvert Installations

About Culvert Installations

Welcome to this collection of culverts. It’s a work in progress. Saskatchewan’s total road surface is 160,000 km, enough road, according to The Government of Saskatchewan Highways and Infrastructure, to circle the equator four times. Under all these roads you’ll find culverts. All of these culverts have stories. These are my photos of Saskatchewan culverts, the basis of a book in progress. The writing is underway.

Brenda Schmidt is a writer and visual artist based in Creighton, a mining town on the Canadian Shield in northern Saskatchewan.

A History of Toronto’s Underground Explorers

I don’t think of the drains and tunnels of the sewers often. Usually just when I notice a manhole cover on the street. I look for names and dates on those but I’m not jumping in to see what lies under them.

Following is a clipping from The Toronto Star newspaper. I’m happy I do know about most of the people mentioned in the article. I’ve reposted it here to preserve the information as an archive of Toronto’s underground explorers.

 

Toronto has nothing to compare to Paris’s Sewer Museum (yes, there really is one), but the past decade has seen a growing appreciation of our sewers by the “urban exploration” community. While you may have stood on a manhole cover, these folks opened it and jumped in.
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.
Similarly, Michael Cook, then a student in human geography at York University, started vanishingpoint.ca in 2003, a lush and wistful website that continues to explore drains and more in Toronto and beyond, exchanging bureaucratic sewer designations for romantically named journeys (the Wilson Heights Storm Trunk Sewer becomes “The Depths of Salvation”). These writers make Toronto’s sewers seem as magical as Paris’s, whether it’s a late-Victorian brick tunnel in Trinty Bellwoods, or a mid-century concrete tunnel in North York.
Less clandestine is the recently released anthology by Coach House Books called HTO: Toronto’s Water from Lake Iroquois to Lost Rivers to Low-flow Toilets. The essays within parse through the layers of water under Toronto looking at wastewater sewers, storm sewers and, of course, the buried creeks – some notorious, others forgotten.

 

Shawn Micallef is senior editor at Spacing magazine and contributed “Subterranean Toronto: Where the masquerading lakes lay” to the HTO anthology.

Source: Getting to know Toronto’s sewers | Toronto Star

The old rivers, creeks and such do interest me. Those forgotten and lost waterways. Not so long ago in our history we just took all our fresh water for granted. As if it would always be there, mysteriously replenished without any effort on our part. Now water is an issue. Getting water, cleaning water and keeping water are all important. Those long lost streams of water are being looked at again. But, some are too polluted, too misdirected to be useful now. The greening of our water supply is something I like to read about. Not greening with algae but greening as in making it work again.

Then there are all the old drains. Some are antique, over 100 years old. People may wonder about what is down there: lost treasure, old pipes, stagnant water, etc. I admit I would like to see the old pipes, the old drains and mechanics. Did some long ago worker leave a name in a little corner niche? Did they add some extra trimmings, fancy workmanship and decorations to anything they did? What little unknown secrets are there under every city?

CanZine: I Was There

Originally written: Nov 6, 2006. I haven’t gone back due to moving farther from Toronto. I’d like to make the trip for the next one this October. Is anyone else planning to go?

Last Sunday, my first weekend new to the city of Toronto, I caught the Queen Street streetcar and attended CanZine. I was far too early. Many of the tables were not set up. But, I made the mistake of thinking it would take longer to get there than it really did. Still, I paid my admission with a bit extra for the subscription to Broken Pencil. BP are the creators of the event (as far as I know) and they have done a lot to promote it.

I was really happy to meet Liz from Infiltration while I was there. She was interested in seeing my own urban (rural farmhouses) exploration photos. I have yet to email her as the moving chaos continues and I don’t even have my ISP connected yet. Anyway, I bought the Access All Areas book and a few zines. I hoped there would be more geared to the old buildings and architecture as that is what I really like. I’m not very eager to trek into drains and tunnels. I’m not even hugely enthusiastic to pry my way into the old farmhouses, not a great plan when exploring alone wearing open toed shoes. I’m sure it mentions that as a rule in Access All Areas.

I looked at other zines, writers, cartoonists, illustrators and artsy types. I wish I had seen some of the people there instead of just the notes for their places at the tables. Too bad more weren’t early. Torontoist was there but not there yet. Next time I will not go so foolishly early. Maybe I won’t feel so out of place either if I have met a few others in between now and then. I do feel like a fish out of water in the city. Mostly everyone at CanZine was younger and thinner than I am. I still went and I will go again.

Next time I won’t be too shy to take a few names, interviews and digital photos either. Good luck to me!