(All pictures are screen grabs from a video made on ZR900)
Over on the East Side of Buffalo, close to the Science Museum and the former site of the Orphanage, was a fully stocked and completely abandoned store and warehouse. At different points there had been among other things there a TV repair shop, which looks like it also dealt in 70’s era computer terminals, and an office supply store.
We had been clued in to this site by a certain city planner who told us to get there fast because they were going to tear it down. Of course it had been sitting there with an order to be torn down for over a year so who knew exactly when it would happen.
It was a cold December morning, and there was almost no one around which was perfect for us. We parked not too far away from the building and went looking for a way in. Thankfully someone had torn out a large double door frame and we had no problem finding that.
Inside this place was a disaster. It looked like whoever owned it just closed up business as usual one day and then didn’t return for ten years. The floor was covered in retail junk in various states of decay. We found stacks upon stacks of assorted TV repair parts and the stairs to the basement were so filled with junk you couldn’t even see down there.
When I say full of junk I mean this is a special episode of Hoarders sort of affair. Wherever you walked you were on garbage and the piles of it were often taller than we were. It made the place unique, usually when we get somewhere it’s already been cleared out and gutted.
Each floor had interesting surprises on it, and the higher we went the less junk was strewn about. Occasionally we could see the ground. On one floor we found a bunch of office supplies printed with a company name that my mother had worked at back in the 80’s. It was odd mostly because that company was a defense contractor. So what was this stuff doing here?
On another floor, we found these old Wang terminals. Kind of like the ones you’d see in Fallout or corny old movies about cold war computers taking over.
Large parts of the top most floor were damaged from exposure to the weather, so we had to be careful where we stepped. I also opened the door on a pigeon hiding out in a bathroom and scared both of us.
When we decided to leave we thought that it would be better to leave via an exit we saw that led to a side street, away from any traffic that might be passing by. We were also concerned because we heard a car pull up next to the building and thought we heard talking. We slipped down the back staircase, out the window, and landed next to some poor older lady unloading her groceries. Whoops, sorry for the scare.
We waved once while we walked back to the car.
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