Quick stop in Philly/Asylum in the snow

←Days 1-2

After staying up editing photos from Friday and listening to Sergio snore until almost 3am, waking up at 5am on Saturday didn’t happen easily for me. Nonetheless, we got up, stopped to pick up Ron as the sun was coming up, and we were on our way to Philly for the day. We got there around 9am and our first stop was an old boxing gym. I had seen pics of this place before and instantly knew I had to go here ASAP. Although it was basically just one room, it didn’t disappoint. I’ve been to a church with a boxing ring in it, but it was nothing like this. There’s a guy that lives there and provides security to the place, so it’s remained really well preserved. I assume they have done or will do some filming here before they rebuild or tear the place down.

Next, we went to an old school that I’d been to about 3 years ago. Not much there has changed, but the place is pretty awesome, so I guess that’s a good thing. We started from the rooftop basketball court and made our way down through the building, taking probably way more time than we should’ve, knowing we had several other places we wanted to go. Regardless, we had a good time and worked up an appetite, so we headed over to Pat’s to grab a quick bite and figure out where we’re going next. Here are some shots from the school.

We decided to go check out an old bank after lunch, but I got a text from Ramy, saying we should check out a church that’s wide open, so we change direction and head there instead. Ron had been there before, so he immediately knew something was different when we pulled up. The place had been very recently boarded up. Luckily, we saw a few places on the way. We tried to find this big fortress looking building, but when we found it, it was obviously in use. Instead, we went for the sure thing and stopped by an old factory we knew we could get into, which also happened to be the size of a small city. We ended up just staying there for the rest of the day.

We took Sunday off from exploring and drove to Brooklyn for some BBQ (not that great), then we rode the train to Chinatown to shoot people on the streets. Eventually, it started snowing, so we went back to the hotel to meet up with Pun from Dealers NY and get some product to shoot back in Atlanta. We set alarms for 6am and planned to hit one more place Monday morning before we turn the rental car back in and fly home. Apparently we needed sleep because none of woke up until about 8. We packed up our stuff, checked out of the hotel, and headed to one last abandoned hospital to hang out until we had to go to the airport. The approach to the building was awesome. The sun was shining but there was still snow everywhere. After some a brief search, we found our way in and explored every floor and wing in the building. At one point, all three of us were each just roaming around and taking pictures all alone. We ended up finding each other and the exit pretty easily, and got the rental car back just in time. We didn’t go everywhere or see everything that we wanted in the amount of time we had, but it all worked out pretty well.

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