I always took photos of the missing ceiling tiles until a security guard stopped me

Every trip to a dead mall I was obsessed with documenting the water damage and collapsed drop ceilings. Thought that was the coolest part of urban decay. This guard at the old Granite Run Mall in Pennsylvania told me the real story is the floor tiles that still have the 80s pattern intact since nobody walks there anymore. Now I focus on the forgotten details that are still standing instead of the wreckage. Anyone else shift what they look for after a conversation like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

lucas_price8321d ago

I always took photos of the missing ceiling tiles" - yeah, see, that part got me thinking. Actually, you might be wrong about the guard saying the real story is the floor tiles. I bet he was just trying to get you to look at something different because he was tired of seeing people photograph the same damage over and over. Those guards at Granite Run probably saw hundreds of urbex folks doing the same thing. Floor tiles with 80s patterns are cool but honestly, the real story is usually in the little things that nobody notices at first. Like the fact that the mall still has its original directory signs but nobody uses them because nobody is looking for a store. That kind of detail tells you more about how dead the place is than any collapsed ceiling does.

rowan_hayes21d ago

Actually you've got a point about the guards being tired of the same photos. But I gotta gently disagree about the directory signs thing. Those directories actually do get used. I saw a couple of older ladies using one to find the bathroom last time I was there. The thing is, Granite Run still had a few anchor stores open way longer than most people remember, like that furniture place that hung on until 2018. So people definitely used those signs for that. But yeah, the real story is in the weird things like the food court having a single working Taco Bell while everything else sat empty. That always told me more than any damage did.