Hitchcock's Temple of Fitness

(the why)
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Located in downtown Calgary, you could walk right by this modest, brick-clad building and not even notice it. Even after walking around it, the building does not appear very interesting. Run of the mill architecture, with boarded up windows and no lights being the only clues to its emptiness (and now, demolition notices posted on the outside). But entering the former YMCA is like entering into an alternate, abandoned dimension. Even after having quickly explored most of the building, it's still somewhat difficult for me to believe that a structure that seems so small on the outside could hold so, so much on the inside.
A large group of us entered the abandoned YMCA this night- Naos and myself, plus a sizeable group from UEA- Anymouse, Skaught, Stong, xfallenembrace, and Kaos. After eveyone made it inside, we headed through to the back of the building, with UEA acting as tour guides. We went through some locker rooms into a massive natatorium that contained a huge, empty swimming pool. After wandering around the vast, tiled room for a while, Anymouse led us down to the basement mech rooms. To me, the mech rooms showed the age of the building more than anything- with countless rusty parts and antiquated machinery, piping with insulation peeling off, and a solid layer of dirt crusted over everything. It was fantastic, there was even an area underneath the swimming pool.
I wandered off from the group at this point, following a path between some mech to a small hatch in the wall. This led to a little maintenance room, which had a door the lead to a large shower room. From here, I went through a warren of interconnected rooms: shower rooms, saunas, steam rooms, a room with a hot tub, numerous closest and tiny pipe chases. I even circled back through the mech rooms once again.
In fact, the entire basement is a veritable maze of small, interconnected rooms. I went in circles more than a few times, passing through rooms and halls that led in every direction. I remember seeing a big locker room, at the back of which I found a door that led to a tiny hallway. From this tiny hallway, two more doors led into big, empty racquetball courts! The wooden floors were water damaged, and there were some viewing booths looking into the courts accessible from a higher level.
I had a basic layout forming in my head as I went through it, but I was constantly amazed to turn a corner and find another new hallway, or set of rooms. There were several large, empty rooms, rooms with small wire-mesh baskets instead of lockers, and a couple stairwells thrown in at random. The basement was the floor I examined the most throroughly in the building, possibly because I wandered off on my own and took my time.
Eventually, I joined back up with the group, and we headed upstairs. We spent some time around the main floor of the building, which seems to have been mostly for administration/office area; judging from the carpeted floors and bland, empty office-sized rooms. The front reception desk had an interesting notebook left sitting on it; pages and pages filled with writing and notes. The exterior walls seemed quite thin- I could hear traffic passing by on the street outside, and even heard some people talking as they walked by.
We went through a small kitchen area, with a cafeteria style counter and the usual short-order kitchen apparati. The menu for the day was Evil Cheese Toast.
UEA started rushing along at this point, since they had already seen everything. Naos and I did our best to linger and examine things, but I could have spent at least another hour inside. The stairwells in the building, from about the main floor upward, are covered in pigeon shit and feathers. The random dead pigeon carcass can also be found in the stairwell, the birds simply dropping dead after being unable to find a way out. The staircases were quite big and nice; strangely made even cooler by the coating of pigeon shit.
We took one such stairwell up to the second floor, and wandered into the main gymnasium. It was hard to believe they had a gym this size inside a building the looked so small from the outside. The gym was huge, and as with the raquetball courts, the floor had sustained some water damage. Incredibly, behind this large gym was another, smaller gym. The floor in this one was heavily warped, in several places the wooden floor boards had erupted upward. Also, while walking through it, some rotten floor boards cracked and collapsed under my feet a couple times.
If I'm not mistaken, it was also possible to acces a small inner courtyard from this floor. The courtyard contained a fenced, wooden deck, complete with sunbathing beds. I had a feeling of security thanks to the surrounding walls, while still able to see the downtown skyscrapers.
I think there were also a couple former work-out rooms on this floor, as well as the access into the viewing area for the raquet ball courts. But we rushed on, back into a shit covered stairwell up to the top floor. I believe this entire floor used to be hotel rooms, several dozen of which are spread out around the main U-shaped hallway. All the rooms are empty, I think, although some still have curtains.
Explorers beware- the Pigeons have taken over the entire floor, and made it their lair. Pigeon shit coats every inch of the ground, piled several inches deep in places. Feathers and fluff are everywhere, along with dead bird carcasses in various stages of decay. In places, small nests have been made in the shit on the ground, and tiny pigeon eggs sit within. The pigeons themselves lurk in the darkness- cooing and rustling noises abound from every room.
Pigeons are very dumb animals, that are easily frightened. So, whenever one of us walked near one, it would beat its wings, take flight, and head towards the nearest source of light coming through a window. In an enclosed hallway, with dozens of pigeons and several explorers, this rapidly became the most interesting part of the expedition.
Anymouse started it, I think- purposely scaring pigeons into the air towards the rest of us. This resulted in everyone else ducking and yelling as frantic, winged rats flew directly into us in a dark hallway. Then I realized how much fun it was to do this too, and then all that could be heard was the thumping sound of pigeon wings flapping, people swearing as the birds ran blindly into them, and the occaisional whacking sound of a bird running into a wall or window.
Every so often, a pigeon would fly past and whack you in the head, or someone else would scare some out of a room and you'd have to duck to avoid them as they'd frantically race out, running into walls and people. I also learned that it was possible to actually pick up the pigeons and hold them for a while- they were quite docile while being held. Then, by thrusting your arms out and opening your hands, you could launch a pigeon at somebody, and laugh at the resulting fit of ducking, flapping wings, and swearing.
We did this for quite a while, throughout the entire hotel floor, and it was hilarious. I was glad I was wearing my respirator, though, because with all the pigeons careening about, the air was soon filled with tiny specs of white dust and feathers- not something that looked healthy to breathe in.
After we were done with the pigeons, we headed up onto the roof. We entered a small closet that contained a steep, narrow metal staircase- each step of which was coated with a thick layer of pigeon shit. The roof penthouse was even worse than the hotel floor- coated with more pigeon guano than I've ever seen. Both roof doors were wide open, and it was clear the pigeons took advantage of this.
Coming out onto the rooftop was amazing. The Y is right downtown, surrounded on all side by skyscrapers. At night, the buildings windows are randomly lit up, and the city seems to glow on all sides with light. It was very beautiful, but also very cold, so we didn't stay out too long before heading back inside. After visiting the roof, we exited the building.
The Y sits at the top of my list for being one of the most interesting abandoned buildings I've ever seen. There's lots of stuff I didn't mention, and it would take at least two trips to discover ever single detail inside, and then even more return trips just for the fun of it.
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