To me the Staten Island Farm Colony is like Kings Park scaled down to about 1/5 its size. The psychiatric wards and the asbestos filled basement are still present, only much smaller. My first brush with the SIFC was not a pleasant one. I had hopped on the bus with a contact on a dull rainy day, and after a slow ride, circumvented the entire fence searching for an opening. When we got in, I found the one building that we visited to be majorly underwhelming.
However, I knew that the campus was much larger. In other photos, some pretty amazing stuff crops up which I evidently overlooked. I decided to go back there and my perception was changed...what I originally thought was one of NYC's most boring explores actually turned out to be very cool. And seeing as it's about 70 acres, there's still much more to see...I will definitely be back.
Here you can see an entire floor has collapsed. Being the thrill-seeking loons that we are, we climbed around there.
The whole building is overgrown, almost to the point where the plants disguise it. It took a bit of monkeying to get up to the apex. Here, nature reclaims its rightful property.
During summer 2012, I would constantly wear this compass around my neck. It was a great companion and accompanied me in many of my travels. This photo is representative of the death of the compass, the death of the season, and the death of an era: I lost the artifact at Fort Totten towards the end of the summer, after which my adventures became much more high risk than typical abandoned buildings, a time where I pushed my limits far further than I could have ever imagined.
We watched the sunset from one of the rooftops, upon which we also found an unsealed bottle of Vitamin Water. Though slightly warm, it was, curiously enough, still good to drink. Then, as we left for the bus we bought a roll and a quarter pound of cheese from a nearby deli, sitting on the street curb and ripping chunks off our homemade "ghetto sandwiches." Needles to say, it was a very good day.
No comments:
Post a Comment