Nearpara Rubber Company: From Tire Reclaiming to Toxic Brownfield

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The Last Days of Nearpara Rubber I smelled it before I saw anything worth photographing. That warm, faintly sweet bite of old rubber, the kind that hits you somewhere between a tire shop and a summer highway, drifted through the first building the moment I stepped inside. The structure was burned out, charred and broken, rubble underfoot. But the smell was alive. And then I saw the pile. In the corner of the room, faded brown and heaped maybe two feet high, was a mound of baby bottle nipples. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of the small rubber tips, just sitting on the floor of a collapsed industrial building in Trenton, New Jersey. I stood there for a moment, genuinely confused, and then kept moving. Nothing like the smell of warmed-over rubber. Twenty minutes later, I understood even less. Through another door passage, I found the main source of the smell: six open metal trailer containers, still loaded with bagged baby bottle nipples, sitting in open air. Bags of them, mountains of bagged n...
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Abandoned Oil Depot: Revisited (2017)







I returned to this once illustrious property with a new friend I am going to call JM. JM and I visited this property I explored last year alone. I found the place as I originally found it minus the squatter filth and homeless encampment inside the office building I had not explored. I ventured back to show my friend J the place. It surely doesn't disappoint. The property is subdivided by a rail line and continues in either direction a good mile and a half. The property was completely wide open as per usual and nothing of note seemed to have changed but a few plastered up wooden frames in front of the office buildings.










Giving the property a thorough exploration, I ventured inside the oil tank and immediately thought of The Proper People video where they ventured inside a much larger oil tank and busted out a solo guitar tune. A well known shot and audio in there opening trailer. Inside the sound of my voice reverberated around in the mostly silent enclosure minus the sound of the highway traffic 700 ft away. Some artwork was adorned inside but nothing of note or high complexity. An erie feeling and new experience. One for the fond memory portfolio.










Exploring away from the office buildings I headed straight for the most intact oil tank on the property. Climbing the spiraling stairs my heart raced. I was surely going to be in full view of passing vehicles and any passing local PD. I sauntered on with a clear goal to summit the tank. I was rewarded by my risky escapade as the nearby city opened up over the skyline. A truly rewarding experience. A view granted to the most daring of explorers. Trust your gut and put away the anxiety and life truly rewards the bold and courageous.





















Exiting and hightailing it out of there, we began to move to the next abandonment down the street for entry assessment. As soon as we exited, a local PD car stopped at the intersection. We continued walking like we owned the place. The vehicle turned towards the highway and we breathed a sigh a relief. A good start to the day!








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