Miller's Blog: Entry: Exploring Unseen Charleston (Old Navy Ship Yard)

Ok....today's journey took me to the old navy base. There's so much of that area that I'd like to see but am afraid I never will. Today, on my way to a particular destination, I took a random side road and it lead to a very fortunate 2.5 hour detour through a part of town I never knew was there. It was another day for the bug spray. I have shown a lot of pictures here and, quite frankly, they are only a fraction of what I took.

Disclaimer: Again...I am NOT a photographer. I had some issues with my camera. Some pictures are over-exposed and some are fuzzy.

The only issue that I had with this area is that it has been heavily trafficked by (what I presume to be) teenagers with nothing better to do than paint graffiti and destroy things. For the remainder of this blog entry, I shall refer to these people as "the punks".

The area I scouted.

The rear of some kind of service garage.

From what I could tell, this used to be some kind of work shop. The benches that used to be up against the walls were on their sides, lined up on the floor. The jacks on the walls were still labeled.

Guess I'm outta luck.

This cracked me up.

A great poster shot for the zombie apocalypse.

Yep.

What remains of a hydraulic lift in the ground.

An ooooooold alarm system.

A decent shot of the garage.

Old-school UPS here.

A Sonic drive-through?

Cube farms.

A full-service garage, no less.

More garage.

Yeah...right. I didn't pull the handle. The label on the tank it was connected to was faded. I'm not messing with that.

Random shot.

A look behind at one of the houses I just crawled out of.

Huh? Activist graffiti?

More graffiti.

Now this, I thought, was interesting. Sharks and helicopters. Together. Flying....or swimming...or whatever. The artist is obviously talented.

This shot reminded me of Portal 2.

An outside view of the previous building.

Now this was a strange place, indeed.

Another front shot of strange place.

For a split second, I thought, "blood on the wall...how nice".

Good to know. I'll make sure not to work here for a decade.

Did I mention that the Punisher lives here?

Ok...I can't help but think that I've just walked into Auschwitz.

This was interesting. They boarded something up in the corner. Completely inaccessible.

I decided to climb the enclosure to see what was inside of it. Turns out that it was covered and grated at the top. Something worth protecting (or protecting from), perhaps?

Gives new meaning to "draining the lizard".

Used to be some kind of stock room, methinks.

Ugh. Things like this kill me. There was a balcony up there and that ladder was the only way up. Unfortunately, it wouldn't support my weight and I could find no alternate route up there (next to Michael Jordan-ing my way through the air).

Random piece of art found on the ground.

"No! Don't! You'll get in trouble!!!"

No idea what this was. Good shot, though.

Walked out the door and saw this random nest. Very cool.

So, behind the previous freaky building, we have what appears to be government-run temporary boarding. It looks like a motel.

A shot of the back side of the hotel.

Random sign on the ground.

This absolutely breaks my heart. Some individual had taken up residence in one of the rooms on the second floor. He had pulled in one of the old mattresses (which probably sat outside for years) and put it in the corner and covered it with several dirty, hole-y blankets. Across from his bed, he put up an unbroken bathroom mirror (probably the only one on the entire premises). There was a frying pan, walking sticks, hat, pair of shoes, and a few cans of the cheapest food. Whoever this was, they had made a little home for themselves where nobody had cause to bother them.

Well...the punks bothered them. They covered the walls in ridiculous graffiti and kicked in their mirror. I look at this scene and can't help but hope that whoever did this is rotting in a jail or prison somewhere.

The front desk.

What are the odds that I had posted about this movie just today on Facebook.

This takes me back!

Ok...what I'd like to know is whether ALL hotels/motels have these catwalks between the rooms. This was freak'in awesome (although kinda creepy as well).

A shot of the catwalk on the second floor. Notice the stairs on the right? They lead to the roof.

You have no idea how desperately I wanted to go onto the roof. The problem was that the stairs shook under the slightest pressure. There was no way. This was the second denied attempt at ascent in the same hour.

Another random catwalk shot.

Ok...so while exploring the first-floor catwalk, I notice that the building has four of these spaces that are quite sizable. I called them the "sexual torture dungeons" because they're large, dark, secluded, and nobody would probably ever hear your scream. Looking at the motel from the outside, if anyone had ever asked me: "Do you think there is any room for sexual torture dungeons in there?", I would have had to answer in the negative. How wrong I was.

Yep...I pulled it. What I hadn't realized is that when you pull it down, it STAYS down. I think the key is required to de-activate the alarm. So remember kids, when it's time to play that little prank of yours, you can't just turn off the alarm.