"Have you ever checked out the abandoned International Boiler Works building in the Poconos" my friend texted to me. "No I haven't, unfortunately I never made it there before demolition", I confidently responded. "What do you mean, the place is still standing, at least it was as of last week when I was there" my friend proclaimed back.

With that unexpected information, I immediately opened up Google Maps on my phone, putzed around the touch screen, manically dragging and pinching my fingers 500 feet above the podunk town of East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania until after a few minutes, I found it! Sure enough my friend was correct, the hulking ruins of the old boiler works, as I saw with my own eyes, at least according to the pixels displayed to me via Google Maps, was still standing proud, continuing to rot away at the end of Birch Street, just how I remembered it not existing.

But how could this be, I wondered to myself as my brain boiled in confusion. I was so confident that these ruins had been demolished years ago that I could even recall in my mind articles I had read online about the factory's demolition. Yet this wouldn't be the first time I've been duped by my own brain making up fictional stories and so unless the Google Aerial Imagery was horribly outdated or my friend was full of shit, I had no one to disbelieve except for myself. Because of the International Boiler Works advanced state of vandalism and ruination, it had never been a place that truly fascinated me despite it being abandoned longer than I have been alive. Sometimes my lack of interest of a place causes me to sort of erase it within my mind. However, when I'm proven wrong, it definitely poses a mind fuck which ignites a new heightened interest to investigate. And so one windy winter weekend I set off on a pilgrimage into the Poconos, which is naturally of course, the southern continuation of the beautiful New York Catskill mountains, yet in reality, a completely different world.

A muddy ATV path effortlessly meanders around a locked metal gate just past the last house on the right off of Birch Street. The gate, painted bright yellow and adored with "no trespassing" signs wants to act like a tough guy, yet far more ominous than the foreboding written warnings it beholds, are the random array of bullet holes which have easily pierced the thin metal private property signs. Just beyond this poser of a gate, a massive cock, sprayed painted and outlined with green paint and strewn across the grungy asphalt, points like an erect arrow down the overgrown road toward the boiler works ruins. At this point, my brain still wants to believe the factory is long demolished, yet forward I continue to walk, if only to prove myself wrong.

To the west, Birch Street is paralleled by an active railroad and to the east, a narrow swath of woods provides protection from any potential nosey neighbors or crazed caretakers. However, if signs could speak, it is entirely possible any angered property owners would just shoot on sight, after all this is the Poconos, a place where wearing your pajamas to Walmart at 2:00 PM is practically formal attire. As I continue to stroll down Birch Street, I am welcomed by more adolescent art and am beckoned by a note on the curb to call Lindsay for a good time. Unfortunately for Lindsay, the last four digits of her phone number strewn across the crumbling concrete curb have been painted over by a shoddy rendition of SpongeBob Squarepants puffing on a fat blunt. It is at this moment in which it becomes clear as to why I had been warned by numerous signs against trespassing here, for the artistic manifestations stemming from the trenches of the human mind can be a harrowing reality to experience.

A few hundred feet before Birch Street dead-ends into the woods, the ruins of the International Boiler Works physically appear before my very eyes and it is at this point that I become a believer, for even if my eyes are still lying, my ears can not deny the sound of loose sheetmetal slamming against the skeletal steel structure. Just ahead, a path within the weeds presents before me, blazed with trail markers consisting of broken beer bottles and Dutch Masters wrappers. This trail of trash leads to a steel roll up door which has been smashed in, presenting an open invitation.

Once inside, I am immediately overcome by a plume of white smoke and dirty soot as it rises up through the half collapsed roof inside the main warehouse structure. The smog is so thick it swallows the entire building within a veil of black and white, for any and all color is consumed by the grey soot, which much like a dense early morning fog, hangs low to the ground, disturbed only by the occasional winter breeze which whips through the shell of the former boiler works factory. Within a second story alcove nestled about the wreckage, a party of people adorned in pajamas are stoking a fire with whatever debris they can manage to rummage up from within the industrial ruins. A smoldering hunk of rubber billows blackness into the air. Alongside it an empty cardboard Pabst Blue Ribbon case shoots embers ceiling high, the ink laden paper consumed nearly instantly by the flickering flames of the fire.

The group of people soon notice my shadowy presence emerge from within the ghastly ruins. "Hey man, come up here and join us", a voice barks out from behind a curtain of smoke. With such an invitation, I place with my hands about the rungs of a cold, rusty ladder and begin to climb up toward the elevated smoke-filled party room. As my eyes crest above the top rung, I am met by a young gentleman who wreaks of smoke as much as he does marijuana and cheap beer. "We've been here since yesterday evening, camped out overnight. We just woke up actually, trying to get a fire started as you can see", the gentleman responds, as he gestures over toward his friend who is situated outside and feverishly hacking away at a still very much alive Ghetto Palm, attempting to split the lively limbs for fire wood.

Another gentleman was sitting around the campfire within the remnants of a stolen shopping cart which had been bent and distorted into a sort-of makeshift chair. Draped over his body was a "Poconos Blanket", which consisted of nothing more than a mangled blue tarp. Empty Dutch Blunt wrappers skated across the cold cement floor as a frigid winter breeze snuck in through a smashed out window. Aluminum beer cans littering the floor were easily crushed beneath the weight of the live tree limbs, chucked up from below and tossed on to the fire, which effectively smothered the flames more so than it stoked the fire. "Feel free to hang around awhile man, we'll be here all day", a new voice echoed as a third man appeared from under a cardboard box "sleeping bag". "Thanks for the invite, but I think I'm gonna poke around inside for a bit" I responded back. "No problem, we will be here all weekend," a new anonymous voice mustered back.

And such is indeed The Poconos, a strange, depressed, rural ghetto, where the peculiar trumps reality. A stretch of secluded mountains, touted as being merely a 90 minute drive from Manhattan, but in reality, may as well be a universe away. The Poconos is a place where vehicles remaining from years of day-to-day endless engine crushing commutes to NYC and back, go to die. Parked and abandoned for so long on small town side streets, mushrooms begin to sprout from their interior, as the flat tires deflate with as much sadness as their owners must posses themselves. The Poconos is a place that might make you believe the Pennsylvania state flower is indeed an abandoned tire. The Poconos is a place where skeevy honeymoon resorts rot and crazy caretakers shoot at curious trespassers with shotguns. But perhaps most important, the Poconos is home to The International Boiler Works, a lawless meeting place full of Poconos People and it is of no wonder that my mind remembered it as demolished.

"I just got back from The International Boiler Works" I texted back to my friend. "How was it" he replied. "Better off demolished", I responded.