This past weekend college friends Bruce and Kristin came to visit and do some exploring. The abandoned subway was on their to-do list along with Sykes Datatronics, beyond that they hope to be able to see some other locations as well. I came up with a few other ideas with Andrew’s help for Saturday since we planned to hit those first two on Friday. Their visit would also mean that we had to go to Dinosaur BBQ and Phillips European for cake which I didn’t complain about 
On Friday Bruce, Kristin and I hit up the subway as planned. They both had never been shooting down there despite living around here for a number of years, so we shot in the areas under the library and the Broad St. bridge. My camera batteries finally packed it in and both were dying on me within half an hour in the cold. I suppose that’s not unreasonable considering they’re over five years old, just like the camera! By alternating between the two and keeping one in my jacket and one in the camera until it shut down I was able to keep shooting.
After the subway we planned to check out Sykes but that turned out to be a bit of a problem. There was a construction crew there dressed up in what looked like abatement garb and the lower shipping warehouse area had been demolished! They had even put up white plastic covering all the openings along the bottom floor of the main building. Unfortunately all that meant that Sykes was off the table for the day, so we retreated, licking our wounds and tried to think of an alternative.
We eventually decided that we would go check out Agway. Fortunately I didn’t drive, so I was free to place an order for new batteries for my camera using my phone. Agway was the same as usual, just colder. The buildings and the ground surrounding them had a nice covering of snow and I had hoped to see snow inside but there was very little. So far this winter has been disappointingly mild! Back to Sykes: Andrew and I don’t expect the rest of the building to go anywhere anytime soon since nothing short of demolition will take that hulking concrete structure down.
On Saturday the four of us (Andrew joined in) went out to Flintkote and spent a good portion of the day wandering through all the still-standing parts of that facility. I saw more of it this time than I did the last time, but there still wasn’t much snow in it in spite of its swiss cheese state. I’m hoping to get to some of these places later in the winter (if we have a winter, and more snow) because I’d love to see what they look like with some snow drifts inside. Seeing the remaining areas of Flintkote was nice though, there was a whole shipping and loading dock area that I never saw as well as a two story section of the building that I missed last time. It was much brighter in parts of Flintkote than the last time I was there, it took me a bit to realize that was because the trees were all bare.
Hopefully next time they come up Sykes will be a possibility, we’ll probably also check out ALMC and there are some other locations around town that I still haven’t seen but might be good places to bring them as well.
It seems that for some reason I shot a lot of verticals at Agway and Flintkote. I really can’t say why that is.
