Eiichi’s self-confessed shock is now hopefully more understandable – he was not simply being asked to rework an old typeface, he was being asked to touch up an acknowledged “Old Master.” Johnstone Sans - A Typeface for the Underground. [more inside]
posted by badrolemodel on Sep 18, 2009 - 25 comments

The World's Best Alternative Subway Maps, including Eddie Jabbour's NYC Kick Map.
posted by nickyskye on Aug 7, 2009 - 48 comments

Julia Solis, who brought us Dark Passage (previously), is still exploring derelict sites, both subterranean and in urban decay. Her most recent project is Abandoned Theaters, a look at grand old movie palaces, school auditoriums, and theaters that have become, shall we say, retired. Julia still keeps a photoblog that she calls Dark Passage Travelogue, and partnering with Suzy Poling, she chronicles the decrepitude of hospitals long abandoned in Fantastic Degradation.
posted by netbros on Jul 2, 2009 - 10 comments

On Sunday, Karmanoia, one of Berlin's most interesting underground clubs, closed its doors for the last time. Although not as storied or well-known as Tacheles - also facing tough times - and easy to pass without noticing, Karmanoia had a loyal crowd of oddballs frequenting it, and was notable not just for its pirate-ship-like interior, but also for the full Labyrinth built into its upper portions. The club's funeral took place directly after locking the doors at midnight on Sunday, with an orchestra dressed like skeletons leading a parade to a nearby canal to bury the key in a watery grave. [more inside]
posted by mannequito on Apr 1, 2009 - 23 comments

Ed Piskor became interested in alternative comics at the tender age of nine [according to Wikipedia] after watching Harvey Pekar reading one of his stories in a documentary [most likely this one]. Fast-forward a decade or so, and Ed's getting the call from Pekar himself, asking Ed to draw some comics for him. [more inside]
posted by not_on_display on Mar 20, 2009 - 4 comments

It's scary out there. It can make you just want to hide.
posted by Joe Beese on Mar 19, 2009 - 75 comments

On March 3rd 1943, the worst civilian disaster of the Second World War killed 173 people, including 62 children. During an air-raid alert, the noise of a new anti-aircraft battery panicked the crowd trying to get into the shelter at Bethnal Green tube station. In the dark, wet conditions, someone tripped and fell at the foot of the stairs, blocking the pathway and knocking others over in a domino effect. More and more people continued to pile in at the top leading to a massive and deadly crush. [more inside]
posted by Electric Dragon on Mar 3, 2009 - 27 comments

You Say You Want a Revolution -- "Despite some bravado, I myself was a cautious person looking to break the shackles of bourgeois detachment. I felt real relief in seemingly giving my all. But at the same time, I was terrified. Such existential 'acting out' does not ordinarily lead to political good sense. The importance of demonstrating revolutionary credentials or moral purity gets in the way of clear thinking about how to strengthen the movement or take advantage of political opportunities." Howard Machtinger, a founding member of the Weather Underground, provides a contemporary critique of his group's actions. [via]
posted by billysumday on Feb 19, 2009 - 19 comments

TCM Underground (warning: flash, sound) has been screening an excellent selection of Cult movies on late Friday nights that are worth staying up for. Upcoming films include: Terror of Tiny Town, The Swinger, Ladies and Gentlemen the Fabulous Stains, Willie Dynamite, Shack Out On 101, Two-Lane Blacktop, and The Legend of Hell House.
posted by Otis on Jan 12, 2009 - 34 comments

London's iconic transportation symbol, the roundel, is 100 years old this year and a new online exhibit at the London Transport Museum features some amazing galleries of architecture, promotional material, livery and a great illustrated history of the mark.
posted by salishsea on Dec 4, 2008 - 10 comments

What does the artist do to a machine? There's a hammer lying here. Suppose we consider the computer a tool very much like the hammer, only we don't know what to make with it or what to do with it. [more inside]
posted by louche mustachio on Sep 12, 2008 - 2 comments

With the potential 'crisis' with Russia, Georgia, Europe et al, the BBC tries to imagine what a new Cold War would be like starting with a tour of the budding Moscow tourist attraction called the Confrontation Cold War Museum. Sold off in an auction last year, the underground bunker now belongs to a private company that plans to turn it into an entertainment complex with a museum about the Cold War, a restaurant and even a spa. But it is already possible to hold fashion shows around the 600-meter-long network of bare, cavernous tunnels.
posted by infini on Aug 31, 2008 - 6 comments

Tunnel boring machines, underground nuclear tests, and all manner of things below the surface.
posted by Wolfdog on Jul 21, 2008 - 25 comments

"Q: What the hell is this site about? This is a site about urban exploration in the Ozarks." Abandoned water slides, underground tunnels, abandoned buildings and half-demolished malls throughout Missouri were all once fair game for this blog, and remain fair game for those who post in Underground Ozarks' forums.
posted by limeonaire on Jun 16, 2008 - 25 comments

The Underground Railroad refers to the effort -- sometimes spontaneous, sometimes highly organized -- to assist persons held in bondage in North America to escape from slavery. Historic places along the Underground Railroad are testament of African American resolve. One of those places is Lycoming County, PA. Freedom means a hard, dangerous trek. Do you try it?
posted by netbros on Jun 15, 2008 - 26 comments

Trying to get unemployed youth interested in farming, Pasana O₂ boasts a slick website (Japanese only unfortunately), a vision statement, a newsletter and oh yeah, an underground farm covering one square kilometer inside a former bank vault. [Via our very own]
posted by your mildly obsessive average geek on Feb 16, 2008 - 6 comments

No Tourists, No Artists. Tourists at Atlanta's Underground didn't realize they were working with an real live artist, but they were. Tom Richmond, Caricaturist Of The Year for 1998 and 1999, recipient of a Reuben Award in 2003 , one-time comic book creator, and frequent artistic contributor to Mad Magazine (movie parodies, mostly), supported his freelance work for almost 18 years by doing cartoons-for-hire in historic Underground Atlanta. Despite many efforts to "save" it, Underground continues to fade in popularity and the tourist traffic just dwindles on down, leaving folks like Tom no choice but to pack up their paints and leave. Tom's story makes for interesting insight into a job that most of us might take for tourist-trapping huckstery. (via Radical Georgia Moderate)
posted by grabbingsand on Jan 7, 2008 - 14 comments

Russos takes photos of Moscow Metro construction. Also of a half-abandoned river port, a cool bridge being put together, and an old underground nuclear submarine base. But mostly of the Metro, behind the scenes. (Don't ask me how he gets access.) [more inside]
posted by parudox on Dec 6, 2007 - 4 comments

Some amazing photos of the storm sewer system in Tokyo. (Further reading)
posted by dersins on Sep 4, 2007 - 26 comments

Derinkuyu wasn't discovered until 1965, when a resident cleaning the back wall of his cave house broke through a wall and discovered behind it a room that he'd never seen, which led to still another, and another. Eventually, spelunking archeologists found a maze of connecting chambers that descended at least 18 stories and 280 feet beneath the surface, ample enough to hold 30,000 people. [flickr]. [wiki].
posted by dersins on Aug 31, 2007 - 48 comments

Wieliczka Salt Mine in Poland has been in operation for 800-odd years. Needless to say, this has given the miners plenty of time to carve some pretty amazing things. More photos here and here. Videos here and here. Virtual tour here. Wikipedia.
posted by dersins on Aug 16, 2007 - 36 comments

Live in an underground dome home.
posted by Burhanistan on Aug 15, 2007 - 30 comments

The maps of the London Underground and the Washington Metro are iconic in their cities and a favorite of experts on information graphics. They share a similar philosophy: sacrifice geographical accuracy in order to clearly illustrate the system. What if the New York Subway map were drawn the same way? What about the Interstate system?
posted by silby on Jul 24, 2007 - 85 comments

Sally Cruikshank intends to put all of her animations on YouTube, including her opening credits for Ruthless People, the Seseame Street Feets too Big short, and don't miss the Oingo Boingo assist on Face Like A Frog. She's very active in the comments section of some of her videos, too, answering questions and participating in the discussion of her work.
posted by Slap*Happy on Jul 23, 2007 - 23 comments

Some commuters are nervous about London Underground drivers filming journeys on their camera phones and posting them on YouTube. YouTube links all. BBC Story.
posted by nthdegx on Jul 13, 2007 - 22 comments

Paul Krassner's The Realist. Four issues of the seminal humor magazine to be uploaded per month, starting...now.
posted by Sticherbeast on Jun 8, 2007 - 11 comments

Velvet Welk
posted by JeffL on Apr 1, 2007 - 20 comments

The 50 most underplayed and under-appreciated rap tracks according to ohword.com, all in one download. Some of my favorite hip-hop music blogs. For those who aren't hip-hop fans, an exhaustive list of MP3 blogs.
posted by rollbiz on Feb 18, 2007 - 27 comments

Ghosts of the London Underground - a documentary. More here.
posted by greycap on Jan 31, 2007 - 7 comments

Metro-land: Railways Around Amersham & The Metropolitan Line. 'The name "Metro-land" was created in 1915 by the publicity department of the Metropolitan Railway. "Metro-Land" became the name of the annual publication of the railway's booklet which described the area the railways served through north west London, into Middlesex, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. The Railway set up a separate company to develop housing and shops along the Metropolitan's line. Much of the area was extensively developed between the World Wars and created a distinctive atmosphere...'

A guide to the Metropolitan Line (prefaced by John Betjeman's poem 'Metro-Land') is here. The London Transport Museum website has an article on London Underground and 'Metro-Land'.
posted by plep on Jan 13, 2007 - 4 comments

TIBET is an artist who works entirely underground (literally) in Stockholm, Sweden. All of his work is done only in the most hidden of places, and very few people will ever get to see it. Each statue is made of concrete and are 11" tall and weigh about 5 pounds each. They are glued, welded or drilled into the solid rock and will stay there for a very, very long time. via
posted by jonson on Oct 29, 2006 - 14 comments

Sewers of Canada Many pictures of Great Canadian Drains.
posted by GuyZero on Aug 28, 2006 - 13 comments

In 1899, the core of downtown Seattle burned to the ground. While the shops quickly rebuilt & re-opened, the city itself took the opportunity to rebuild the streets some 36 feet higher than they previously had been (ostensibly to combat water pressure/sea level issues), meaning that pedestrians climbed ladders to go between street level and building entrances. Eventually, the city laid down sidewalks up on the new street level, and the underground city was all but forgotten. Today, via a building in Pioneer Square, you can still tour what remains of the abandoned underground, looking up at the people above through the opaque glass sidewalk.
posted by jonson on Aug 9, 2006 - 45 comments

In 1999, to mark the centennial of Alfred Hitchock's birth in the Leytonstone district of London, 17 mosaics were installed in the entrance corridors of Leytonstone tube station. Each mosaic celebrates a different Hitchock masterpiece. True to form, Hitch makes several cameos among the mosaics.
posted by lilbrudder on Aug 7, 2006 - 18 comments

New York City Water Tunnel No. 3 has been under construction since 1970 and completion is expected in 2020. (Be sure to click the sidebars.) City Water Tunnels Nos. 1 and 2 have been operating continuously since 1917 and 1936, and currently cannot be shut down for repair without disrupting the city's water supply. Popular Mechanics and BLDBLOG have articles, Newsday has photos, and 60 Minutes has an article with video. Local paper The Villager covers the construction of one of the many shafts that connect to the tunnel. It has inspired a one-woman show. The Sandhog Project covers the workers, called "Sandhogs," with photos, sound, and video. Over twenty sandhogs died building the tunnel.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim on Jul 29, 2006 - 11 comments

Abandoned iron mines - imagine exploring this one.
posted by Wolfdog on Jul 26, 2006 - 14 comments

Joe Nishizawa's new photojournalism book, Deep Inside, is a visual exploration of the amazing, highly mechanized world under Japan's urban areas. This brief interview with the author is accompanied by several interesting photos.
posted by jonson on Jul 24, 2006 - 18 comments

London Underground Fashion Victims - as featured on the Going Underground blog.
posted by Mwongozi on May 6, 2006 - 33 comments

Subterranea Britannica is a website devoted to underground sites in the UK, be they storage facilities, old kilns, chalk mines, military facilities from the cold war, astronomical observatories or even a precursor to the Channel Tunnel. It's full of photographs and informative articles and is a great resource for those interested in spaces beneath the earth. Dig deep and fill those gaps in your knowledge of British holes!
posted by longbaugh on Mar 11, 2006 - 16 comments

The real Jewish Underground — During the Nazi occupation of World War II, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian Jews were killed or transported to Nazi concentration camps. In 1942 and 1943, thirty-eight men, women, and children aged 4 to 74 years survived by living underground in two caves for nearly two years (their 344 day stay in Priest's Grotto beat Michel Siffre's 1972 NASA research study.) Emerging at night to cut firewood and steal food, these unwilling troglodytes returned to the cave before dawn to avoid capture. Spelunker Chris Nicola first discovered their survival story (PDF, pp. 6-12) in 1993.
posted by cenoxo on Feb 22, 2006 - 23 comments

The Subway Challenge! Can one man get off the Glasgow underground at one stop, race the train to the next and get back on the same train? Mebbes aye, mebbes naw. (What? Want more underground? Here are some great photographs from before and after its 1970s restoration)
posted by bonaldi on Jan 22, 2006 - 61 comments

Welcome to Cold War City It covers 240 acres and has 60 miles of roads and its own railway station. It even includes a pub called the Rose and Crown. Oh, and it's underground. And for sale. Much more interesting than the article, though, are these photo galleries.
posted by dersins on Oct 31, 2005 - 18 comments

Everything you thought you knew about Jean Charles de Menendez is wrong. There was no bulky fleece jacket. He didn't leap the barrier at the Tube station. He was shot seven times, not five. Is there anything in the original police reports which the Metropolitan police still considers to be "substantiated"?
posted by clevershark on Jul 28, 2005 - 110 comments

FT changes headline on Blair's statement. This morning, I picked up the paper copy of the Financial Times, scanned the headline, and harrumphed, remarking that "I had seen something like this before". Yesterday, the FT website had the same title - "Blair rejects calls for probe into bombings." Today, however, the headline has been changed to "Blair promises to hunt down bombers". (BTW, it's UK conservatives calling for a probe). Not only that, but the text in question is purged:

Tony Blair will on Monday reject Conservative demands for a government inquiry into last week's London bomb attacks, insisting such a move would distract from the task of catching the perpetrators.

Gentlemen, prepare your tinfoil hats!!
posted by rzklkng on Jul 11, 2005 - 19 comments

London Underground Bombing 'Exercises' Took Place at Same Time as Real Attack
According to a BBC Radio 5 interview (aired on the evening of July 7th) with Peter Power, Managing Director of a consultancy agency with government and police connections, Mr. Power said his firm was actively running an exercise for an unnamed company that revolved around the London Underground being bombed at the same times and locations as happened in real life on the morning of July 7th.
Power told the host that at the exact same time that the London bombings were taking place, his company was running a 1,000 person strong exercise which drilled the London Underground being bombed at the exact same locations, at the exact same times, as it unfolded on that morning.
Power is a former Scotland Yard official and at one time was attached to the Anti Terrorist Branch.
More inside....
posted by Dunvegan on Jul 10, 2005 - 78 comments

Major Incident on London Underground reported. Anyone have any further information?
posted by Cobbler on Jul 7, 2005 - 712 comments

The Anti-Hit List , by John Sakamoto, continues to unearth music from the depths of the net and through rare releases. It can be found in the pages of the Toronto Star and is now available in convenient podcast form. Note: previous death and rebirth of the site.
posted by boost ventilator on Jul 3, 2005 - 8 comments

The London Underground is home to some of the most interesting, weird and fun adverts, which have been tailored to the fact that they have huge posters that passengers are often looking at for minutes at a time while waiting. In Copywriting goes Underground, they challenged ad agencies to write an ad which had at least 50 words in it. Some are crap, but some are pretty innovative - check them out.
posted by adrianhon on Jun 21, 2005 - 15 comments

"When George saw 21-87, a lightbulb went off".
"21-87" is an experimental film made in 1964 by Canadian avant-garde director Arthur Lipsett ,who committed suicide in 1986. "George" is George Lucas, who was obsessed by underground movies until "a little movie called Star Wars lured him to the dark side". (more inside)
posted by matteo on May 2, 2005 - 25 comments

Ever wonder what the London Underground Map [105 KiB PDF] would look like if it were geographically accurate [255 KiB GIF]? If you could morph [13.7 KiB Flash] between those two versions and Harry Beck's 1933 map [112 KiB JPG]? What it will look like in 2016 [218 KiB PDF]? What if you replaced all the stations, even ones that are no longer used, with well-known personalities [46 KiB JPG inset]? If you knew exactly which carriage to get on so you'd already be at the Way Out (never "exit" [23 MiB PDF]) when your train stops (or doesn't stop)? If you had a similar schematic for buses [245 KiB PDF] or river boats [50 KiB PDF]?

Pass your Oyster card over the reader and go on a tour of interesting, imaginative, and subversive maps and diagrams of London public transport. And as you leave, remember to Mind the Gap, Stand on the Right [671 KiB JPG], and Always Touch Out.
posted by grouse on Mar 7, 2005 - 65 comments