A feature that came out on the Inquirer of November

This story I wrote it few weeks ago - it is about urban exploration. What it means to me. My adventures are in here, my feeling, my thoughts. Enjoy. [published on the Inquirer, City University Independent Newspaper]

Rarely happens that people stop and notice how the features of a town reflect the features of its citizenship. And even less we notice how fast our facial features change, exactly as the town ones.
If you spend a Sunday going around East London you will be able to notice it. You will see how Bishopgate new skyscrapers is in reality and extension of Londoner’s mind, a rectangular dream which sticks out from our more intimate and hidden wishes of scratching the sky. As if, I laugh while writing it, we want to ticklish god. It does not really matter if a Londoner is religious or not – the push towards defying divinity is intrinsic to every human being. Today, though, it seems like we even give up our own history, our own roots, in order to defy god. We demolish our old houses, our old buildings that once cuddled us, just to run in vertical. It is a vertiginous climb on glass and iron – I wonder if at one point we will suddenly slip down.
There are different kinds of urban exploration, mainly suburban one. I, though, like to explore the visible features of the east part of this metropolis because I have got the feeling that there is a quick painter who is changing them. There is a big architect, who, friend of the big brother, is designing a new map, both in horizontal and vertical. Go to the heart of the cyclone, Hackney, and daub powder will stuck into your breathing system. Wherever you turn while walking along the streets of Shoreditch, Moorgate, Brick Lane, Whitechapel you can see the unmistakable shape of urban cranes biting the sky. Turn right and you will see cranes, red as raspberries throwing new grey materials up the sky, turn left and bananas-yellow caterpillar will be shaking their proboscis while chewing off old walls. And there, in the middle, the urban explorer stands. There is me, a friend, reflex camera and the will of trespassing the old building seized by workers’ blue barriers. Then, the climb, then just us inside the construction site. Apparently there are no dogs and no cctv cameras. We seem to be lucky. The building, on Holywell Lane, is a skeleton of an ex-squat, previously someone else’s house. Graffiti are pending together with the thread of the reinforced concrete, as dry brunches of a dying tree. The challenge, after the tenth picture of the outside, is to break through and climb the whole building. There is scaffolding on the left side of the house. We decide to try from there. After having tested the stability of the scaffolding we ascend as monkeys, perhaps going back to our old nature. The first floor is impossible to get in, so we climb more and get up to the second floor. We hear some police sirens on the back but ignore them and troll into the second floor through a broken window. The scene is awesome: beautifully made graffiti are decorating the walls so we start playing with a black one which is made of floral decorations using our own shadows to create new branches and figures. I thought pops in me: “In few weeks it will be off”. My heart crumples.
“Let’s reach the top floor”, I tell my friend. We get out and I notice that is possible to pass on another building by walking on a close roof. We end up on the top of a wine shop on Shoreditch High Street which is directly looking towards Shoreditch Tube Station construction site. On our left-hand side stands the T-bar, on our right hand side stands a newer brother, Bishopgate skyscraper. From the prospective of two laying human beings it is a quite intimidating silver figure which challenges the peace of the nightlight. After taking some more pictures of the traffic below us we decide to focus back onto our mission: get up on the top floor. But it is not an easy mission and we have to find some ladder in order to accomplish it. We start walking along the scaffolding and find two ladders, a wooden and a metallic one. The metallic one seems more stable, but it is also way to heavy to hold. We decide to try anyway. Freaky but exiting. My friend goes first and I have to hold the metallic ladder. Suddenly the ladder slips and I find ‘donno which force’ to hold it. The other explorer, fast as a tiger, had grabbed the new floor of the scaffolding and saved his ass. Now it is my turn. My legs are shacking a bit, but I find the craziness to go on. Step after step I reach the other explorer. We breathe deeply, take some hero-style pictures and break through the second floor windows with the wooden stair. The second floor is actually a kind of delusion – there are no graffiti and we kind of get bored of it after having watched all London view from it. “Let’s reach the roof”, says Oliver. “Yes, we must”, I reply. Armed with the wooden stair we go back to the scaffolding and fast like two baboon we jump on the roof. The view is breathtaking. I hold Oliver hand while saying: “Mission accomplished, well done explorers.” I am proud of our mission, I am happy that one day, when that building will not exist anymore, I will have the memory of the sensation of stepping on its roof. I will remember for ever the feeling of standing there and seeing lots of smashed old bricks of Shoreditch Station piled few meters away from me as lonely tombs of an ancient forgotten time. Around them, pieces of wall still standing waiting to be demolished today, tomorrow or maybe yesterday. They look like a piece of dark cheddar bitten by a huge rat. I feel sorry for them. They remind me of those people standing in cues waiting to be shot dead by soldiers of a sick regime. I would love to pass my fingers on them and listen to their stories, to all the stories they have been listening to along their existence. Urban exploration is, to me, a way of telling stories of others before they die for ever. It is a way of making immortal something that is condemned to death, no matter if it is a building or a bunch of old dirty bricks.