Imagine that the name of your neighborhood, which has been established for over a century, doesn’t sit well with a local business association. To drum up more interest in the area–to clean things up and make it spiffy–they change the name.
That’s what has happened in San Francisco, where an area was recently rebranded “The East Cut” by a marketing agency. They even whipped up a cute little logo that looks vaguely reminiscent of the Black Flag band logo. They even managed to tell Google Maps that this area should be called The East Cut, not because any real person actually calls it The East Cut, but because the business association and their PR agency thought it would be a fun idea. Thus: The East Cut.
But when it comes to the naming of other streets and areas, it’s instructive to remember that this type of thing happens all the time. The name “Hollywood” was largely (but not completely) invented in the early 20th century to drum up interest in the Hollywoodland real estate development in Los Angeles.
Streets have long been named by property developers, with input from public services such as fire and police. That’s why many older communities have streets with names like Carol, Laurel, Charles, and so on–the names of developers’ children.
Dan Bell, or This Is Dan Bell, as his YouTube channel is called, has now been added to the annals of greatness that I am always stockpiling in my mind.
Start with the basic information. Maryland resident Dan Bell films himself walking through and, post-production, narrating his strolls through commercial buildings such as resorts, hotels, and malls that are dead or on their last legs in the Mid-Atlantic U.S. region.
Is that all he does? A site called Dead Malls has been doing this for years. Or has it?
Going Way Beyond Dead Malls
Not really. Dead Malls, ground-breaking at the time for encyclopedically covering the demise of super-sized retail shopping, failed to take advantage of its own popularity. With only 40 updates in the last 4 years, the site is nearly as dead as the malls they cover. My local “dead mall,” the Totem Lake Mall, in Kirkland, WA, has long been torn down and is almost rebuilt as one of those hipster food-retail cathedrals featuring a Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods.
Dan Bell doesn’t pretend to be encyclopedic; he’s selective. He ventures on day trips, just himself and maybe a friend, and a camera. Unlike urban archaeologists who get off on being dick swinging badasses who sneak into Packard plants in Detroit, Dan Bell lets the subject speak for itself. He literally stays out of the picture. As a Baltimore Sun article notes
Bell doesn’t consider himself an urban explorer, but a filmmaker who takes risks in order to create thrilling short films.
Most importantly, he elevates these dark places to the level of high art. He gets their feeling. He understands visual composition. He carefully frames images. He knows that detail is important: a pair of roller skates, brochures on the ground, hotel keys on a rack, a cocktail napkin. He gently adds music that lingers in the background, providing just enough atmosphere to the scene but rarely overpowering it.
His camera hangs on parts of the mall (he really loves shooting through metal security gates), in long pans and slow zooms. Big budget Hollywood director Michael Bay, whose shots range from 3.00 to 3.40 seconds per shot, would have a brain aneurysm while watching a Dan Bell film.
My only complaint about the Dead Mall Series and Dead Motel Series is that there is not more of them. And there is one culprit for this: Another Dirty Room.
Another Dirty Room
On November 11, 2016, Dan published his first episode in the Another Dirty Room YouTube series entitled “Cesspit From Hell : The Midtown Inn Baltimore.” Dan and friends pay for decidedly low-rent motel rooms and, armed with UV lights and gloves, proceed to deconstruct the room. Results are disgusting: rat turds, semen, and lots of hair.
I understand the impulse: you start to see success in a certain direction, you read the signals (and often, the web traffic analytics), and then you capitalize on those signals. In other words, you go where you think people are telling you to go.
Another Dirty Room is a YouTube series that is clearly looking for a major TV network to pick it up. I could be wrong; I’ve been wrong before (I clearly remember the day in 1998 when I read that Amazon would begin offering products other than books and I said, “It’ll never fly.”).
But this impulse toward reality TV is misguided, it sorely misuses Bell’s ample talents as a maker of art, and it takes him away from more important projects.
If you’re looking for a secret wall hiding place, YouTube and other recesses of the Web usually point you to a method that involves an electrical box, outlet, and face place. You install an electrical box in the wall or use an existing (non-wired) one, add a dummy outlet, add a dummy face plate. Behind that dummy outlet and plate is your trillion dollar bill.
Now, it’s a cute little hiding spot, and I like it, except for one problem: it is so easy to discover and everyone knows about it. All a thief or nosy spouse or parent needs to do is to remove the face plate. The valuables are immediately visible right behind the outlet.
My secret wall hiding place method is so much better and it is practically impossible to find. When the interloper takes off the face plate, he or she sees an apparently wired up outlet. Wires come up through the wall and are attached to the outlet. Nothing to the side or behind the outlet. What’s the secret?
The outlet is dead and the wires are only about 18″ long. At one end, the wires attach to the outlet in a normal fashion. At the other end, the wires attach to a container small enough to fit in the rectangle that you cut for the electrical box.
[process_steps]
[process_step link=”#” new_tab=”no” title=”Create Hole” icon=”1″]Cut space in wall big enough for new electrical box.[/process_step]
[process_step title=”Attach Outlet” icon=”2″]Attach one end of 12 or 14 gauge wire to outlet.[/process_step]
[process_step title=”Attach Container” icon=”3″]Attach other end of wire to a valuables container”[/process_step]
[process_step title=”Insert” icon=”3″]Insert in wall and close up.[/process_step]
[/process_steps]
How to Do It
Tools and Materials
Remodel or old-work electrical box
About 18″ of 14 or 12 gauge NM or Romex wire
Outlet
Container for the valuables
Jab saw
Cordless drill
Cut Hole in Wall
Cut Hole in Drywall Before Inserting Box
In the electrical section of Home Depot or any other home improvement store, purchase an item called a remodel or old-work electrical box. This is cheap–no more than a dollar or two–and installs very easily. See directions below.
Choose an interior wall as exterior walls contain insulation, which impede installation. Choose a section of the wall equidistant between two other outlets, if possible, or on a wall that is not served by an outlet. This further makes your fake outlet appear to be real.
Attach the wire to the outlet: white wire to silver terminal, black wire to gold terminal, bare copper wire to green screw. Make it look like an authentically installed, not faux, outlet.
Attach Other End of Wire to Container
Attach Other End of Wire to Container
You can use anything that closes up and which fits through the hole in the wall. In this case, I used a thoroughly cleaned mustard container.
A nice, recent cutaway drawing of the Matterhorn at the Anaheim, CA Disneyland. This graphic, from the February 8, 2012, Orange County Register, shows remodels to the Bavarian-influenced concrete “rock.”
One of the most notable and largest changes was filling in many of the large openings, including the large one that allowed passage of the now-discontinued Skyway.
In 1976, RiverCountry opened up at Walt Disney World in Florida. By 2001, it had closed. Now, it stands–rotting and decrepit in a manner that J.G. Ballard would have approved of. These photos come from an excellent thread about River Country on Dis Boards.
It was just a waterpark, although one of the first generation of waterparks. Here are the rotting water slides:
