Astoria's underground is something that totally intrigues me. I would love to get in there and have a look around, but every obvious and visible entry has been blocked with gates and padlocks. The stores that had trap-doors to the underground have covered them to protect themselves from burglary. Seems like the new owners of the buildings don't know where the entries are or are totally and blithely unaware there even is an Astoria underground.On the way to the public bathrooms on Exchange Street, I keep peeking down while at the corner of Exchange and 12th Street just before the Clark Gable plaque. At ground level, there are locked gates at the southwest corner of the hospice. They cover what was clearly an entryway to the underground. I went around and down to ground level by the hospice, and there are gates at the northwest end of the building, too. I only wish I had a flashlight with me so I could have peeked in and seen more.
From there, I walked across the lot over to the ramp off 13th Street that goes down into that lot. If you go way up under the ramp, it looks like it might still be an entryway there. There are boards over it, and it would be a crawlway, but I did not get close enough to check the boards out to see how loose they are. I'm inclined to think it's an entrance, though, because I saw a backpack tucked out of plain sight under the ramp, and several beer bottles.
I heard a rumor in a local tavern that runaway kids are hiding out under Astoria. When I questioned the lady who was talking, she said her son knows the way in, and goes in there regularly just for the hell of it. I went where she told me, and yup, a person could definitely get in there, but not easily.
At that point, my common sense got the better of me, and I didn't go in. And I don't think I would, by myself, anyway. It's probably pretty dangerous under there, but that only adds to the allure. Maybe I just have an unhealthy fascination for worlds lost, underground, or out of use.
There's a fascinating web site about people who take this obsession to the extreme, i.e. breaking in to abandoned places/tunnels and photographing them as a record that they've been there. They call themselves "urban explorers," or "urban spelunkers," and one of their more skin-crawly sites is Dark Passage, which has a plethora of sub-sites and links.
Wonder if they'd be interested in checking out Astoria ...
