heres a little write up about all of the many condemned and otherwise soon to be demolished homes.

Since moving to Vancouver I have had a lot of labor jobs. One of the more exciting and satisfying jobs was doing demolitions.. not with explosives (well, maybe sometimes, but not often here in Vancouver), and just as a member is coming , but with roofing shovels, a hammer/pry bar to remove all drywall and put it in a big pile out front of the house. While doing that job I would bounce from teardown house to tare down house and slept in them at night and woke up already on-site.

Anyways, ive seen all sorts of stuff in the walls of homes. Ive found a stack of some Asian countries currency (South east Asian, Pilipino or Indonesian if I remember right),,, in one guys walls he stored several hundred Canadian silver coins, .. another had actual gold and diamond jewels, and a lot of other stuff.

One of the most member able finds were the hidden rooms people would create in their homes. Usually they would be in the master bedroom, but also sometimes in the main living area or the spare bedroom.

Some were made better than others. A lot were used to grow weed it appeared. There was one that stood out tho, but not in a bad way.

It spanned almost the whole width of the room and when it shut, it shut tight to the wall so it looked just like the wall. There wasnt even a gap between the door wall and the floor nor the celling. It appeared that it was built by a skilled carpenter, and then the whole room was primed with a paint primer and then painted the same color and then finally the moldings must have been put on last, to make it not appear as an after-thought.

...The part that really made it look like slick work was that it all swung perfectly balanced on silent and hidden hinges. One could open the door, enter the room and close it behind them, and anyone who watched the person walk in would have a hard time figuring out where the went.

We only found it because I used a pick-axe to break apart the dry wall and as I pulled on the drywall (the pick was sort of stuck in the drywall, the whole wall seamed like it was falling onto me, when in reality it was just an optical illusion, and it was just swinging open.

The quality of the work was so good none of us were able to spot the hidden door/room when it was closed. we weren't sure what the room was used for, but it was likely for growing weed.

Along with the hidden finds was the stuff the people living there had left behind out in the open. When I first started the job I was appalled at how much of the perfectly good 'stuff' went to waste. When I first begun I told my boss that during my lunch break I would be hustling and selling things that the house had by putting them on craigslist.

For example, the first house had several really nice doors that had been removed from the inside rooms. They looked brand new. Also there were several full length - wide mirrors that also looked like they were brand new. I put the items up on craigslist and FB Market place listings for something like $5 for every item shown.. not saying if i meant $5 for each or $5 for all.. hoping i'd get $5 for each. "and those are just the start" I thought, getting the blessing from my boss to get rid of whatever I wanted in the house.

I had interested parties but they all wanted to ask questions about the item before volunteering to come look at them in person. When I spoke to them over the phone they became disinterested when they discovered that they were coming from a tare down, and that i was unsure of its age or origin... but not before trying to get them for free and/or get me to deliver them. 1This is when I discovered that I would be much better speeding my time doing actual work and not wasting my time getting screwed around by people too cheap to spend money on like-new items that were soon going to end up at the dump.

Some of these jobs were huge and lasted a week, some were short, and with a few guys, we could pound it out in a day.

Sometimes we were lucky and the house still had hot water, electricity and some beds to sleep on. At worst, the house would already be stripped of all copper wires and pipes so no electronics or water, in which case there was hydro power access on the pole outside that would usually feed the house and there would be a water pipe kinked or shut off somewhere in the basement (which might be flooded or part flooded depending on how quickly they were able to kink the water line).

This job greatly differs from traditional urban exploration in several fundamental ways, yet every time I would enter a new tare-down home it would always be an exploration the first time you go inside, and most homes were in densely populated areas located anywhere from Port Coquitlim to Surrey to Delta to Richmond to Kitselano to North Vancouver (any of which you could call an urban residential area).

Where the job differs is that its an actual full time job that you get paid to do. Also, the job requires smashing all of the walls and removing them to one big pile where they will get hauled away by a front end loader. And as a demo subcontractor, I also had salvage rights, which means that anything that I find while doing my job becomes mine, and that also include all recyclable materials like copper, aluminum, brass, or anything else I wanted to recycle..

Of course Urban Explorations culture says to never destroy or vandalize any place that you explore. This rule is sacred among tue urban exploration pioneers. It also states to never take anything (except for pictures and video with the camera you brought with you) from your location. As a demo worker, at the end of each day that we didnt finish the job, we would take a few hours before it got dark to strip the house of its largest electrical wiring as well as the copper in the walls and bring them to the recycler to make at least $100 per load of what we were able to haul on a bike, or several hundred or more if we had a vehicle.

Most of the homes that we worked on appeared to be gone through by the previous tenants enough where what they left behind was considered mostly garbage by most people, but once and a while you'd find something of value. A lot of times I'd find designer clothes of all types and sizes and sexs. I would often take these clothes and wash them, and what my friends didnt want, would end up selling them at the down town street market for cheap. A lot of times they would leave behind products you could use again, like dish soap, or draino, or cans of spray paint or mr clean cleaning liquid... A lot of this stuff was either unopened or hardly used.

The most full of stuff of any house I worked in was this one house where the neighbors would always get our attention while working, and ask us what was being done with the house; were we renovating or were we tearing down? When we told them we were removing the drywall and roof shingles so it could be torn down eco friendly like, each neighbor was happy. They told us that the house we were working on had been a 'drug house' for many years and they all said that they were thrilled to see it go.

To describe the inside of the house is not easy, as my description might sound made up.

Wherever you walked inside this house, in every single room you were at least 6" closer to the roof because of all of the high quality designer clothes, purses, packsacks and other items that we had been walking on to get around the house.

Whoever these drug dealers were, they were obtaining a massive amount of Gucci, supreme, bape, and many other really expensive types of clothes, apparel and other items. The floor was literally compressed clothing, everywhere, making it hard to walk, similar to walking through compressed snow, except sometimes harder.

This happened to be the same house that we found the stacks of Asian cash and the gold and diamond jewels.

Whatever happened to the people who were living there, we can only guess. I figure it was either they needed to skip town and do so right away or face jail or death or something else just as serious, or that they got raided and thrown in jail and were unable to have anyone take care of the place/pay the rent etc. Whatever it was, it caused them to leave in such a hurry that they neglected to take many of their electronics, their stacks of Asian money and their very expensive jewelry, and leave behind massive massive amounts of really nice and really expensive clothes.

After we finished our jobs, I spent a few hours gathering up the best of the best clothes I was finding and putting them in large black garbage bags to take with me to wash and then dry and then take to the market and sell.

Once I had around 10 full bags of clothes and a few bags of womens handbags and purses and several packsacks full of womans shoes, I called a cab to pick me up and transport me back home where I would begin my next hustle of selling clothing.

We requested a van taxi but they said it was busy and sent a regular cab. I started loading up the cab with bags of clothes and the cab driver started to dislike it for whatever reason. There was still room for more bags and it wasnt like I was asking him to help me move them into the cab, nor did he ask if he could help. After 7 or so bags the cab driver said no more. I tried reasoning with him a bit and we settled on letting me bring the packsacks with me too. With this, its really unfortunate that I was unable to bring a full load home. The plan was to actually drop them off at home outside on the back deck, and get the taxi to drive me back to the spot and start loading up even more. I also wanted to continue to search for more treasures. We had spent the whole day legit working, and it was only by fluke that I found the money and that my coworker found the diamond rings.

Alas, when I did get home I decided to throw one load of laundry on and after that I sat down and passed out almost right away . The next day the former drug house was already demolished by the time i woke up. We suspected it was going to be demolished in the afternoon, giving us a few more hours of discovery and salvage.

He didnt wait, and before noon the house was just a big pile of broken wood, glass, shoes, and tore up blankets and clothes and who knows what else.

Ultimately, it was a good one. We got paid our regular wages for the work, plus the found money and jewelry, plus designer clothes for myself and my friends, and extra clothes to sell.

This concludes my story of when I worked in demolition, and getting to explore and legally salvage.

A note of caution: I dont recommend living this lifestyle for most people. While the pay is as good as hard as you choose to work, and ever once and a wile youll score a bunch of money or other valuables 100% legally and you are entitled to them too. If you lived as I did, going from house to house and staying in them as to avoid paying rent or any bills whatsoever. Youll get to go through someone's stuff they left behind and sometimes score dope clothing and all sorts of other stuff you might want or need.

Thats the good. The bad is this: sometimes theres no hot water. Sometimes there's no electricity. sometimes theres no _DRINKING_ water. Sometimes the roof leaks and the place is full of mold or asbestos and sometimes both, and you are exhausted and need to sleep, and you are soaking wet from the downpour on the walk to work... sometimes you can catch a bacterial infection and it can cause many types of illnesses including pneumonia which can kill you. You are better off having a place to go home too.

I hope you enjoyed reading this