Soft floors: A summer at Glencoe

     Over the summer I've been meeting up with friends from all over, and have ended up in Indianapolis, Dayton, and alot of places around Cincinnati, and somehow keep finding myself at Glencoe.  Since June, between other adventures I've made a total of 7 trips here, and it's taught me quite a bit about what goes on here still, 10 years after it was boarded for good.  From a guy tossing ovens out the 3rd story window into a pickup truck, to kids using the hill for skateboarding, the place is quiet, but not quite empty.  In the past 5 months the entire block has been boarded up, and about 1/3 of them are already open again.  There's obvious signs of people living here, from recent beer to voices heard in the windows above, along with a solid amount of graffiti that has popped up, along with a random dead raccoon.

     These were taken a cloudy afternoon in June.  Came here with some internet friends and coincidentally a classmate of mine at school.  Our primary focus was exteriors, and a particular red house in the middle row.  This was one had the layout of single story apartments, and it was obvious someone had been living there recently.

 View South from upstairs

 Kitchen in downstairs apartment

 Looking North

     I Came back with Eschaton and some of his local friends about 2 months later.  I shot mostly video clips, but still got this panorama of the hotel and north row of houses.

     Between this time I was doing some exploring in Dayton with Trap, in addition to shooting some promo shots for Junior Crime Fighters here. 

Shameless plug

Reverbnation.com/juniorcrimefighters

This afternoon in late September, it was Trap's turn to travel, so he made a trip here to meet Harvestmanman and myself to hit up Glencoe, among other locations. 

 

      Fast forward another month, to the end of October.  On this freezing 35 degree morning, I met up with Urban-Explorer to hit up some local sites, and what's more tempting to urban decay enthusiasts than an abandoned neighborhood?

 

     Almost down to a routine at this point, this particular trip was turning out to be one of the more relaxing ones.   We had infiltrated into the basement of the Glencoe Hotel and were slowly working our way up.  Right before snapping this next picture we were walking through the kitchen at the end of the hall.  I spotted a hole in the floor and thought, "Better step a little further away from that."  As if on cue, I took a step, and my right foot punched through the floor and before I could shout a few obscenities, the area around it disintegrated and I instantly had fallen through to my stomach in kind of a sideways belly flop, messing up my right arm, and ripping my pants in half in the process.  In a panic I pulled myself out of the hole and proceeded back to the east side of the building to more solid floors, trying to step over studs to avoid doing that again.

Fallen ceilings tend to be a good warning sign for a soft floor.

 The basement directly below the hole i punched.

     The most recent trip I took was yesterday.  Eschaton came up again for some spontaneous explorations.  We had a late start but it still was successful, from finding a building in Glencoe in slightly better condition than the rest of them

 This structure used to be a corner store, but was partially demolished and restored during the 

70s renovation of the site.  the idea to be a commons area.

 Sadly these are all too common

 An apartment on the North block.  Although heavily vandalized, has suffered far less water

damage than many here.  This one was laid out as a multi level townhouse.

Despite sundown, the adventure was just beginning.  More will come on the rest of this story in time, but for now just leave you with this.