More photos. I took lots ...

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And more ....

There are some movie props on site, such as this one of Andy’s tunnel he dug through his cell wall ...

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They also had several fake pipes, which were used for the shots where Andy crawled out of the prison.

Here’s the real “hole” .. there was a whole section of these. These were used in the movie too.

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And more of the blocks. They were 6 stories high. The largest self supporting cell blocks ever made.

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One of the best places I’ve visited.

We were there for nearly 4 hours. The place is huge.

I really appreciated the freedom they gave you.

$12 for the entry, and $5 extra for a audio tour handset which is well worthwhile getting.

After that, we headed into Mansfield.. here’s the building that was used as Brooks’ halfway house .. an old grocery warehouse.

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And a recreation of Brooks’ seat in the park, when he was waiting for Jake to show up.

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Mansfield is also home to a large Carousel manufacturing plant, and they’ve set up a nice new timber carousel in the centre of town.

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Wasn’t much else happening in Mansfield.. lots of empty stores.

However, the Olympic Lounge did look pretty bitchin ...

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and it had a sweet alleyway next to it ... I bet that could tell some stories.

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Yep! It was built for young offenders ... the idea was, they didn’t want to put young guys in with the old hardened crims. Good idea ...

There were up to 2200 prisoners in there. In the 1980s, a petition was started as the prison was now seen as “inhumane”. They built a new prison right behind it, and the Reformatory was closed in 1990.

Here you can see the old prison, with the new one behind it.

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Sounds dangerous ...

Could be a plan. Is there food/beer handy?

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Big day in Detroit today!

Some good stuff going on in this city.

But firstly — some old broken stuff!

Aka “ruin porn”!

Often we just drive around aimlessly and see what we see. We’ve found some awesome things this way.

This morning we hit the freeway and headed to the city centre ... along the way the sign said “bridge to Canada” so we are like, let’s go to Canada! Whoooopa.

So off we go ... then just before the bridge I say “have you got the ESTA papers?” “Nope” “no Canada then” so I pulled off the freeway at some random offramp. And what do we see ... abandoned buildings ahoy!

Firstly ... the Detroit Harbor Terminal building.
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When we pulled up, we were sorta behind another car which pulled into the old warehouse next door. They were really shady dudes .. they kept looking over at us like we were casing their joint out. So I just got out and walked over to the Harbor building and they got the gist.

Their building had razor wire and TWO locked gates .. there was something going on in there ...

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Further down the road was Fort Wayne. At first I thought it was all locked up and abandoned - but the other end was opened up.

Fort Wayne was established in the 1840s, close enough to Canada so they could blast them with some cannons!

Today, the Army Engineers still have a portion, and the rest is owned by the city of Detroit. Guess which bit is in good condition.

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Haha ... this previous post was ringing in my head all day ...

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In the same neighbourhood, lots of abandoned houses.

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And someone sure likes soda water, cause there were a heap of these around ...

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Cool abandoned church in the same area ...

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But, the thing for me was, it’s not really looking at what was there ...

It was more, look at what isn’t there.

There were acres and acres of empty land where someone’s house or business had once stood. Just amazing.

Coming from a country where land is worth gold, seeing this is pretty sobering.

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After that, we headed to a place I’ve always wanted to visit. The old Packard factory. Probably the most famous of the abandoned buildings in the USA.

It’s friggin huge.

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..

The good news, someone has bought it and there were dudes working in there today. They have their work cut out for them ...

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There are security guards on site and KEEP OUT signs up everywhere.

Of course, being a naughty boy, I had to have a look inside.

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I admit, I was a bit scared. Who knows who lurks in the dank shadows of the Packard Factory!

Into the Maw of Despair!

(3/4 naked Greg reference...)

I was just getting comfortable in there, when “WHOOOP WHHHHOOOP” it’s Mr Security Guard outside in his car, on his bullhorn “YOU ARE ON PRIVATE PROPERTY” at full volume - I almost shat myself lol

Busted!

Sheepishly, I emerged from the building - “just popped my head inside ...”

“Didn’t you read the signs? You be going to jail!”

“Ahhh ok! Won’t do that again! Have a good day!”

Haha

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Then, on to the Michigan Central train Station.

Central is sorta a misnomer ... as it’s nowhere near the city centre. In fact, it’s 30 minutes walk. I know, because we walked back down there later (we had dinner over the road)

This has been abandoned for years ... and has long been a symbol of Detroit’s downturn. It was built in 1914 and the last train ran here in 1988.

But good news, Detroit lovers! Ford MoCo has bought the place a few months back, and is going to restore it to its former glory, and use it as the centre for their autonomous car department. It’s gonna house 1500 staff!

So that’s great for Detroit.

Sweet building!

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(Some of today’s buildings are so large, the camera can’t fit all of them in frame ...)

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Onto the Detroit city centre.

And it was buzzing!

Heaps of people out and about.

Buildings had a high occupancy rate ... several old buildings were undergoing conversion to apartments. Good to see!!

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Time for lunch! And a drink! It was friggin hot out pounding the streets!

There’s a famous battle in Detroit ... who has the best Coney hot dog?

American?

Or Lafayette?

So let’s find out!

The stores are side by side for maximum rivalry.

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First off - American. $2.69, As it comes off the menu.

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Then, Lafayette... $2.60, again, as it comes off the menu.

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The Lafayette one had way stronger chilli. The American one had a nicer frank. 50/50 but I’d prefer the American one, the chilli overpowered everything in the Lafayette dog. Plus, the Lafayette store was a bit of a dump. Haha. So American takes the win for me.

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Some more Detroit sights ....

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Chilli guys would probably prefer the Lafayette... the chilli on the American was unobtrusive, you could still taste the rest of it.

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Also checked out two local pin bars ... both in the central city.

First up, POP + Offworld. 5 pins plus many 80s vids. Pizza and beer.

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Later on, Ready Player One. 4 pins plus lots of vids. Food menu plus bar.

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We walked 30 mins out to Corktown to go to the famous Slows BBQ for dinner. This is just around the corner from the old train station.

Good BBQ plus a crazy range of wanky craft beers.

Worth going to! Good eats. We shared a plate and added some fries and slaw.

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Oh, missed out a bit.

Walked along the River Walk next to the GM building.

Look over there! It’s Canada!

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The River Walk was cool ... lots of people out and about.

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And here’s our stead for this trip .. Hyundai Something. Goes great. Good stereo, good interface with the iPhone. Got up to 45 MPG on yesterdays trip down to the prison.

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Yep, I went there at Xmas time. It’s slap in the middle of Fremont Street. At the time, it didn’t dawn on me that it was the Detroit place.

It was really busy every time I went past.

Cool. That was at the Ford Open days? I read about that.

Did they let you go through the rest of it? Or just the ground floor?

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They were $2.60 each.. you don’t get gourmet food for that price.

I believe they are grilled ... hard to tell with all that chilli on there.

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Another big day today.

Headed out to Ann Arbor for a look around.

Ann Arbor is the home of the University of Michigan - and it is HUGGEEE. It has 45,000 students, and covers 20,000 acres. 18,000 people work there.

It was funny to see the fraternity houses with the Greek names on them. We have no fraternities in NZ. We looked for Lambda Lambda Lambda with no success.

Nice town! Lots of people around. Leafy streets, nice houses.

Looked like a nice place to live.

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Then we headed off to meet up with j_m_ and Bax1 and hawk370 at Buffalo Wild Wings for pre pinball beersies ... great thanks to JM for picking up the tab. Very generous of you to do that.

They kindly offered to take us on a guided tour of the local pinball highlights.

First up - Marvellous Marvin’s Mechanical Museum.

http://www.marvin3m.com

Marvin has collected a huge collection of “stuff” which is quite the thing to see. Well worth a visit if you are around the area. There were around 12 pins ... all getting some good play at Friday night league.

Good to meet judremy and GravitaR there as well.

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After that, we headed off to Brighton to visit The Arcade. It’s a little bit “middle of nowhere” but well worth the drive.

This was a cool place. Cooler for me personally than Marvin’s, as it just had a HEAP of cool arcades and pins, all arranged in their collections. I prefer this to a huge collection of novelty stuff, but that’s me ...

He operates on a $20 play all day model. Which seems like a bargain to me. We were lucky enough to be able to look around for a little while for nothing as JM is the owners buddy.

He had a few old Arcade signs around which were cool. There was also a mezzanine floor with even more 80s arcades.

It’s always cool for us to see the original USA cabinets. In NZ, the cabinets were all locally made in brown wood grain with NZ made monitors, only the PCBs were imported to avoid paying the import tax that was sky high, back in the day. The USA made ones look so cool in comparison to our old ones.

All the arcades looked in ship shape condition. We only played a couple of pins, and they looked good and played well. The customised Flintstones was cool.

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Then, we got to visit Clay and his VFW collection.

Clay has over 400 pins, all set up and playing at his VFW compound, again, a little out of town.

When we arrived, he and a few guys were riding little motorbikes around, which he is into now. Cool!

We got to meet Aaron who used to work at Pinball Pete’s in Lansing, and had sent us some Pete’s t-shirts a couple of years back. Aaron has joined the RD Cool Kids Club and also drives a hearse! A 1985 Caddy, converted by Sayers and Scovill, same as my 93 Towncar.

Clays collection is impressive. He has a heap of Zaccarias (maybe all of them?) and lots of everything else, arranged in 3 large sheds on site.

It was cool to go there .. thanks to Clay for letting us visit, and to JM and Bax for taking us out there!

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