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- Falldog, on 09/10/2009, -2/+271"Today, we’re going to do some urban exploring as we’re searching for the tallest abandoned structures around the world. We’re going to visit Russia, North Korea, the US and Poland on our quest for the rustiest. Once found, we’re going to climb the towers and buildings so make sure you leave your vertigo behind…"
AKA we're going to post pictures we found on Google and Wikipedia - topcat5, on 09/10/2009, -2/+173Really bad reporting in this article. The Ryugyong Hotel is not being finished. It can't be finished. This was supposed to be a hotel, over 100 stories tall, with 7 rotating restaurants on the top, 5000+ rooms and 34 (or was it 43) elevators. What happened to it, is there were severe structural problems created due to the concrete used in the project being out of spec. It kinda crumbles and it is too expensive to fix. In fact impossible to fix. Most of the floors have sagged and are not inhabitable and most of the elevator shafts have shifted out of alignment.
So it sat their for 16+ years like a big elephant in the room that nobody was allowed to talk about or even acknowledge.
What has changed is that Kim Jung Il has convinced some investors to come in from the Middle East and "dress it up". They are slapping windows on the outside and opening the ground floor. The remainder of the building is off limits. There is some talk about providing access to the top floor as an observation point. Like everything else in that regime, it is vast illusion to hide the real story underneath. - inactive, on 09/10/2009, -0/+95Copying and pasting JPGs is my kind of urban exploration.
- IphtashuFitz, on 09/10/2009, -0/+75I wasn't aware that the North Koreans had restarted work on the Ryugyong Hotel. After the initial work stopped in 1992 it apparently became such an embarrassment to the government that the entire population essentially pretended the abandoned building didn't even exist. I believe they even went so far as to photoshop the hotel out of panoramic images of Pyongyang. I wonder how the powers-that-be justify the fact that for 16 years it was almost considered taboo to even talk about the building, and yet suddenly it's being worked on again.
- stephhicks68, on 09/09/2009, -1/+51I'm staying on the ground - you go up and take the photos....
- IphtashuFitz, on 09/10/2009, -0/+42It's all about bragging rights and stoking the egos of the DPRK leadership.
Kim Jong Il claims to have shot 11 holes in one (and 38 under par) the first and only time he ever played golf.
Kim also created the World Festival of Youth and Students to try to outdo the Olympics after Seoul's success in hosting the games in 1988.
A village in North Korea near the DMZ is nicknamed Propaganda Village because it sports the worlds highest flag tower. It's 525 feet tall and flies a flag weighing 600 lbs.
In 2002 North Korea started the Arirang festival, which is the worlds largest gymnastics festival, involving 100,000 participants, mostly North Korean school children.
There are plenty more examples if you spend a little time with Google. It's all about propaganda for them. They like to brag to their people that they're the best country in the world, etc. by being able to pull these sorts of things off. - MacBookForMe, on 09/09/2009, -2/+40What about having an office in that Ostankino tower...a fikus & and a hot Russian secretary?
- psion01, on 09/10/2009, -0/+35Hey, c'mon! That's the most environmentally friendly way to do it!
- IphtashuFitz, on 09/10/2009, -1/+29See my post below. the hotel was abandoned for approx. 16 years and was such an embarrassment to North Korea that the entire population effectively ignored it. Use Google to find reports from people who visited Pyongyang and they'll describe asking their "guides" (government minders) about the building only to have them quickly change the subject, ignore the question, etc. The hotel was even photoshopped out of official pictures of the Pyongyang skyline for much of that 16 year period.
- AmazingSteve, on 09/10/2009, -0/+28Spelling aside, why digg him down? That very story was on digg not that long ago.
- Smokeydabear, on 09/10/2009, -0/+26Maybe there is a giant ICBM hidden under all the glass and cement?
- Neverclear, on 09/10/2009, -0/+25The Ryugyong is not finished and ready to open its doors for dear leader's birthday, and construction has never - and will never - resume without first tearing down substantial portions of the existing structure.
An Egyptian cellular company wanted to put some antennas on the top 5 floors and in exchange they agreed to cover the ugly, withering façade with cheap glass, black particle board, and advertising. Underneath it's still just a concrete skeleton with no finished components and about as safe to enter as a bombed out Nazi bunker from WW2. I think they expect it to fall down within the next 50 years thanks to the terrible quality of the concrete used. - CaptHuggyFace, on 09/10/2009, -0/+24It was Kim Jong Il. Didn't you know he was on Digg?
- lolwatermelon, on 09/10/2009, -2/+22They abandoned building it for a while because the concrete was about as solid as wet particleboard.
- IphtashuFitz, on 09/10/2009, -1/+20Well two are just radio/tv towers. One is a tower that had it's entire interior burned out. One is smack in the middle of the capital of a repressive dictatorial government who would likely ship you off to a forced labor camp if you tried to squat there.
The ones in the US, however, may very well have squatters living in them. There's no mention one way or the other in the article. - dinkydarko, on 09/10/2009, -1/+18only 18 stories but i still like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Central_Stat ... looks very batman to me
- directedition, on 09/10/2009, -0/+17I really don't get the point of it. They have trouble even filling the Yanggakdo Hotel as it is. Most tourists that go are the only ones there. They make use of one floor of rooms at a time at most.
They may finish construction and they may even open the doors for a day. But that's pretty much where it will end. - lashtal, on 09/10/2009, -0/+17Inaccurate: Ostankino tower has never been abandoned. Interior reconstruction is nearing completion and it's open for tourists since March.
- RealmDown, on 09/10/2009, -1/+18Keep a video camera on him though. It's a youtube moment just waiting to happen.
- lovemorgul, on 09/09/2009, -0/+15It certainly gives you a different view and perspective from Ostankino Tower, Moscow.
- doctechnical, on 09/10/2009, -0/+15Aww, no mention of Rex's Erection in Cuyahoga Falls, OH?
http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=13 ... - andytronic, on 09/10/2009, -0/+15The Ostankino tower also has another cool feature: it turns into a completely different tower when on fire (check the silhouette photo of it burning). Or was the first pic of it taken before it's completion?
- subliminali, on 09/10/2009, -0/+15simple. If you're homeless, would you really want to live in a very tall building with no heat, electricity or elevators? the first couple of floors maybe, but even then its really no different than a awning of a building.
- PolarZoe, on 09/10/2009, -0/+14How come the buildings are not overrun by squatters?
- rushiku, on 09/10/2009, -0/+13A giant hotel in N. Korea? To build tourism, I suppose?
What, then, is their advertising slogan?
"Come for the oppression, stay for the Supreme Leader (or else)"
"North Korea, you may never forget" - lovek, on 09/10/2009, -0/+12Listing the tallest structures first makes the following structures increasingly disappointing. I like my Top 10 countdowns, people!
- inactive, on 09/10/2009, -0/+11Huh? That show talks about how buildings will eventually decay within hundreds of years without the continual maintenance humans would be able to provide. The only thing that dies within hours are things like electricity plants and other ***** that requires constant human supervision.
- mehan, on 09/10/2009, -0/+11Ostankino is not, and has never been, abandoned. To even suggest that shows a complete lack of understanding of how important that structure is to the whole region.
- irishjays, on 09/10/2009, -0/+10Actually down the street from the Detroit building on this list, is an other abandoned structure, in which people trespassed to play hockey, next door to a dead squatting frozen homeless man...
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/ ... - mediaphile, on 09/10/2009, -0/+9It's dangerous to enter bombed out Nazi bunkers?
- Super6, on 09/10/2009, -0/+9There's a high risk of being killed by an inglorious basterd
- strictnein, on 09/10/2009, -0/+8Why did they let them paint that ugly mural on that building? Ughh... it looks horrible.
- crunchyeyeball, on 09/10/2009, -1/+9That monstrosity has to be the ugliest building I've ever seen. It looks like some tacky 1960s sci-fi vision for the prison of the future. It hurts my eyes to look at. I think I'd rather live in one of the radio towers.
I'm really liking the PacBell building though. Seems like a waste to see it go unused. - DirtPile, on 09/10/2009, -0/+8Everyone pees standing up inside them.
- Bkkgnar, on 09/10/2009, -0/+8The thing looks like some comic book supervillan's lair. It's so obnoxiously evil.
- AmazingSteve, on 09/10/2009, -0/+8Have a look at buildings that have been abandoned for 50 or 60 years solid. The Packard plant in Detroit, Battleship Island of the coast of Japan. Christ, Priyapat near Chernobyl has been abandoned for less than 25 years and it's buidings are starting to come apart.
- Railz, on 09/10/2009, -0/+8How is it BS. The abandoned buildings were all around the 80s which is only 20 years. The insides were already rotting. One of the older towers - the one in Russia looks like it could collapse in a minutes notice anyway. Their point stands.
- philliesphan026, on 09/10/2009, -0/+7Good read from a link I found off of this submission:
http://www.terrastories.com/bearings/pac-bell-san- ... - benderillo, on 09/10/2009, -0/+7(recent pics)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kernbeisser/386194180 ...
It looks like the top floors are already done. - irishjays, on 09/10/2009, -1/+8When I used to work in D-Town, we called this "spook central" after the building from Ghostbusters 1, and when ever we'd drive by we'd hum the Ghostbusters cut music, you know, the , dooo doooo dooooooo
It's also the site of this grizzly story:
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/ ... - dwright99, on 09/10/2009, -0/+7Being from the Detroit area I had to look and I wasn't disappointed. Surprised by the Broderick building being abandoned though.
- irishjays, on 09/10/2009, -0/+7We have one in Cleveland by the Burke Lakefront Airport. Some people like it, some people prefer the false idol of Lebron downtown I like both, but why the hell are there all there whales painted near a FRESH WATER lake. It would be like painting a bunch of maple trees in Senegal.
- catpuke, on 09/10/2009, -0/+6Abandoned structures are cool
- AmazingSteve, on 09/10/2009, -1/+7In '97 somebody paid that ***** to do a bunch of them all over North America. There's one on the Redpath Sugar refinery in Toronto and it's ugly as sin too.
- asshopo, on 09/10/2009, -0/+6Here's some pics of urban exploring of the Broderick Tower. Being from the Detroit area, working downtown for a stint and being interested in urban exploring, I found this stuff.
http://forgottenmichigan.com/gallery2/v/abandonmen ...
and
http://www.flickr.com/photos/radiospike/sets/72157 ...
Interesting stuff left in the building. - Spandia, on 09/10/2009, -0/+6I thought he was going to physically scale the buildings himself and was very disappointed :(
- Elset, on 09/10/2009, -0/+5The one in Detroit is pretty sweet because you can see it from Comerica Park. They used to have a giant Barry Sanders picture on it. The whales are cool too. But now, I think it's just a huge Verizon ad with the "Can you hear me now?" guy
- jaxparrow, on 09/10/2009, -0/+5Thanks for contributing
- dinkydarko, on 09/11/2009, -0/+4thanks for the link. grim story.
- AmazingSteve, on 09/10/2009, -0/+4Nice find.
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