Digital Ink'd

For weeks, I had been orbiting the perimeter of the impending demolition of the Church of St. Michael and St. Edward, a once revered church in the heart of Fort Greene, like a moth drawn to a flame. The neighborhood, a patchwork of tight project housing, seemed indifferent to the fate of this historic edifice. The intel I had received suggested that entry was as simple as scaling a wooden fence, yet the timing had never felt right. Until one day, it did. With a mission in New Jersey looming, I knew it was now or never. The demolition was advancing at a startling pace, the church's twin steeples already reduced to rubble. The skeletal remains of timber beams and rusted steel frames peeked out from the ruins, a testament to the relentless march of progress. Summoning a surge of courage, I seized a moment of quiet in the bustling housing project and vaulted over the fence. My heart pounded in my chest as I slipped unnoticed into the church grounds. The once grand entrance now stood as...

This place holds a special meaning for me. I’ve visited several times, determined to explore every corner and uncover its secrets. But no matter how hard I tried, I never quite managed to see it all. The main front building, the one closest to the road? Never got inside. The massive cooling building in the back with its giant fans and smaller outbuildings? Missed that, too. And then there was the tank farm—a cluster of 22 rusty tanks tucked away in the upper right corner of the property. For some reason, no one ever took pictures of those tanks, even though they sat quietly in the shadows. I only noticed them recently, flipping through my old research notes. That’s when it hit me: I’d never taken the path that led there, too hesitant to get close to the Trenton-Mercer Airport’s fence line. I wasn’t here to get in trouble. I was here for the peaceful, empty buildings, not to risk getting caught wandering near airport grounds. Still, being there felt like stepping back in time. Walking t...

Within the imposing walls of the Bayside Fuel Depot , also known as the Bushwick Inlet Refinery, eclectic art pieces and vibrant graffiti adorned every available surface, creating a sensory overload that was both chaotic and mesmerizing. The cavernous oil tanks and sprawling rooms of the main building played host to a lethal dose of creativity, transforming the depot into an unlikely graffiti wonderland. I arrived intending to document the refinery’s industrial history but found myself captivated by the dizzying array of colorful art pieces that had claimed the depot as their canvas. Every inch of the immense white walls inside and out was covered in a smorgasbord of rainbow colors, shapes, lettering, and characters. Playful figures from Disney classics stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the abstract, the surreal, and the subversive, forming a visual tapestry that mirrored the diversity of the city itself. In my opinion, the Bayside Fuel Depot was on par with the legendary 5 Pointz graff...

If you ever went inside this boiler room, this was where the school of fish lived. I am probably sure there was more on the right-hand side of the cutout. Fish in the Boiler Room: An Unexpected Discovery 🎥 Watch: Fish swimming in the flooded boiler room of the abandoned Cayadutta Tannery. The news came on a Monday. An article by the Daily Gazette , a bureaucratic death sentence for a place I thought had more time. On March 30, 2026, the Gloversville City Council gave the green light. The long-abandoned Cayadutta Tanning site was coming down. A state grant of $1.5 million had been secured to clean up the city’s industrial scars. Bronze Contracting would handle the demolition for a price of $255,032. The tannery was just one name on a list of historic and blighted properties, including the old Fownes building and the Gloversville Knitting Company. It was progress, the city said. A renewal. Bu...

  I have a thing for industrial ruins. Smokestacks, turbine halls, boiler rooms with ceilings high enough to swallow a cathedral. Something about these places pulls at me. So when I first stumbled across English Station, a coal-fired power plant squatting on Ball Island in the Mill River between Fair Haven and Wooster Square, I felt that familiar tug in my chest. It started with a set of old photos from 2012, posted by someone who had slipped inside years before the place became a pilgrimage site for urban explorers. The images stopped me cold. Barrels lined the floors in long, quiet rows. The exterior loomed like a fortress slowly losing a war with time. And then there was the shot that really got me: two men standing on the roof of the structure, grinning wide, the whole New Haven skyline stretching out behind them like a reward for the climb. I wanted in. Within seconds, I had Google Street View open in another tab, scanning for an approach. What I found cooled my enthusiasm fas...