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BRADLEY: It doesn't get any better.
00:04 COMM: If heights or enclosed spaces make you
feel queasy, it might be best to look away now.
BRADLEY: I do enjoy the danger elements, I'm
one of those explorers who tend to push it a bit further in terms of taking risks.
COMM: This heart-stopping footage was taken
by Dr. Bradley Garrett, an ethnographer, who spent four years as an urban explorer to understand
their world.
COMM: The American, now a researcher at the
University Of Oxford, studied the sub-culture when he was a PHD student at the University
Of London.
BRADLEY: What the ***?
COMM: The thirty-three year old was one of
a team of explorers, who made headlines in 2012, when they posted a series of snaps from
the top of The Shard skyscraper while it was under construction.
COMM: Garrett, who grew up in California,
spent his younger years exploring the archeology of the desert, and believes that urban exploration
should be as natural as a walk in the countryside.
BRADLEY: How's it look? Oh my God.
BRADLEY: For all urban explorers, everyone
who gets involved with urban exploration, gets involved, not because it's necessarily
something external, it's not something that they look at and think "Oh this is cool, I
wanna get involved". I think there's something within people that actually drives them to
do these types of things. Once you sort go out and you realise what you're capable of
- that you can actually make these things happen, yeah there's certainly, there's an
addiction there. Um y'know you feel like you need to go out more and more to sort of satisfy
the craving, to feel those types of experiences.
COMM: In the course of his research, Garrett
has explored everywhere from skyscrapers, to half finished hotels, and abandoned amusement
parks, the catacombs of Paris, and even London's sewer system.
COMM: He has now released a book, Explore
Everything: Place-Hacking the City, a collection of his writings and photographs from the urban
exploration scene.
BRADLEY: Being an urban explorer completely
changed my outlook on the world, and I think that that came specifically from the realisation
that things that I thought were impossible were suddenly possible right? And this switch
gets flipped in your brain. Now when I walk around the city, all I can see are opportunities
everywhere. I see manholes I can open, I see doors that are unlocked, I see a skyscraper
lobby where the security guard is half-sleeep and I can walk in. It's almost difficult for
me to get on with everyday life anymore because the city is so pockmarked with opportunities
all the time.