New York Interiors and Urban Exploring

“Urban Exploring” is often thought of as some kind of elite super ninja activity; tinged with adventure, a sense of danger, and definitely some flying nunchucks. For city folk with a sense of wanderlust and a need for exercise, the act of checking out an abandoned old building can be just as satisfying and dangerous as going for a bracing hike or rock climbing in the mountains, but it’s much closer to a deli.

New York Interiors (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Like most large cities in the US, New York has always had its share of run-down decrepit buildings that virtually welcome your exploration. It’s a surprise to find that even with improved city parks on the rise in NYC, when you duck through a hole in the fence to explore an old house or factory you may find other people doing the same thing. In fact sometimes you’ll find people living in them, riding skateboards in them, having sex in them, doing drugs in them, and of course spraying aerosol in them.

Javs. New York Interiors (photo © Jaime Rojo)

You can’t see all this action from the street but sometimes there are awesome interiors in cavernous spaces that continually evolve and metamorphose – an urban art gallery that has a regularly updated exhibition. The perspective will depends on your personal tastes of course.

This particular spot made us think of high-end magazines with shots of socialites posing and air-kissing and banging their hats into each other at charity fundraisers. Something about its grandness feels like a ballroom, even though it looks like it was a power station for the MTA in the early 1900s and the neighborhood itself is probably a SuperFund site, thanks to decades of industrial dumping.

After this rotting and colorful corpse is cleaned up in a few decades, it will probably be razed for some deeeeeeluxe cookie-cutter condos selling for a million each. But for now, you can just squat and take pictures of the golden light streaming through the dirty cracked windows and gaping crevices. Here is your non-ticketed opportunity to enjoy the gorgeous mosaic of graffiti art that waits: rich with color, pattern and coded messages. It can be a brain tease to try to guess what this stuff says. Also, you can practice with your nunchucks.

New York Interiors (photo © Jaime Rojo)

You Go Girl. New York Interiors (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Booker/ReadMore . Reskew. New York Interiors (photo © Jaime Rojo)

KUMA. New York Interiors (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vein. New York Interiors (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Never. New York Interiors (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Booker. New York Interiors (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bat Fiends. New York Interiors (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swampy. New York Interiors (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Stae 2. New York Interiors (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A mobile made primarily of bike tires. Call it Calder for the graffiti set. New York Interiors (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Enoc. New York Interiors (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Heart. New York Interiors (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JESP. New York Interiors (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Steve. New York Interiors (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Moose. New York Interiors (photo © Jaime Rojo)

IAL Crew. New York Interiors (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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