Billy Jam says:
New Jersey explorer, writer, photographer, filmmaker, welder, artist, skateboarder, avid Passaic River canoe traveler, graffiti lover, urban anthropologist, prankster, high school dropout, WFMU listener, Weird NJ contributor, and as he calls himself "run of the mill trespasser" are all titles befitting Wheeler Antabanez who will be a guest on WFMU today (Nov 20th 3-6pm) on Put The Needle On The Record when he will talk about his passion - New Jersey, especially the rundown abandoned funky parts - and take phone calls from listeners on exploring the abandoned buildings of the Garden State. But in the meantime, as a primer for his WFMU appearance, here are a sampling of video clips of some of Wheeler's adventures plus his interview with Beware Of The Blog (BOTB).
BOTB: Are you NJ born and bred, and when & where did you first start your explorations?
WHEELER: I grew up in Caldwell, which put me in easy bicycle range of the abandoned Essex Mountain Sanatorium. My friends and I happened upon the hospital while we were exploring the woods in North Caldwell behind Matarazzo’s Farm. The first thing we saw was the entrance column with a huge swastika spray painted across the front. It was in the peak of summer, the buildings were completely overgrown, and Overbrook, which is what we used to call it back then, was the scariest thing I had ever seen. It didn’t take us long to grow the balls to enter the building. By the time I was 15 or 16 I knew the layout so well it was almost like I owned the place. In those days I had an M17 BB gun hidden in the rafters above the auditorium. When I walked the halls with that weapon in my hand, I felt like nothing could hurt me, even on the darkest midnights. Looking back, I was lucky to have never been shot by the sheriffs’ officers on patrol, because the gun looked real. The best part was the innocence of our destruction. We found the place long after it had already been trashed by generations of teenagers, so it didn’t seem like a crime to break the windows, or smash the toilets. Over the years I’ve worked many construction jobs and smashed up plenty of plumbing. Somehow demolition has never seemed like much fun compared to when I used to run wild through the sanatorium.
BOTB: Is NJ truly a haven for all things weird and funky and abandoned?
New Jersey explorer, writer, photographer, filmmaker, welder, artist, skateboarder, avid Passaic River canoe traveler, graffiti lover, urban anthropologist, prankster, high school dropout, WFMU listener, Weird NJ contributor, and as he calls himself "run of the mill trespasser" are all titles befitting Wheeler Antabanez who will be a guest on WFMU today (Nov 20th 3-6pm) on Put The Needle On The Record when he will talk about his passion - New Jersey, especially the rundown abandoned funky parts - and take phone calls from listeners on exploring the abandoned buildings of the Garden State. But in the meantime, as a primer for his WFMU appearance, here are a sampling of video clips of some of Wheeler's adventures plus his interview with Beware Of The Blog (BOTB).
BOTB: Are you NJ born and bred, and when & where did you first start your explorations?
WHEELER: I grew up in Caldwell, which put me in easy bicycle range of the abandoned Essex Mountain Sanatorium. My friends and I happened upon the hospital while we were exploring the woods in North Caldwell behind Matarazzo’s Farm. The first thing we saw was the entrance column with a huge swastika spray painted across the front. It was in the peak of summer, the buildings were completely overgrown, and Overbrook, which is what we used to call it back then, was the scariest thing I had ever seen. It didn’t take us long to grow the balls to enter the building. By the time I was 15 or 16 I knew the layout so well it was almost like I owned the place. In those days I had an M17 BB gun hidden in the rafters above the auditorium. When I walked the halls with that weapon in my hand, I felt like nothing could hurt me, even on the darkest midnights. Looking back, I was lucky to have never been shot by the sheriffs’ officers on patrol, because the gun looked real. The best part was the innocence of our destruction. We found the place long after it had already been trashed by generations of teenagers, so it didn’t seem like a crime to break the windows, or smash the toilets. Over the years I’ve worked many construction jobs and smashed up plenty of plumbing. Somehow demolition has never seemed like much fun compared to when I used to run wild through the sanatorium.
BOTB: Is NJ truly a haven for all things weird and funky and abandoned?
