Is Bill Finan an 'evil genius'?
This article and the podcast episode with Bill Finan comes out on his birthday and I wanted to start by saying Happy Birthday 🥳 🎂 Bill! I hope you are having a blast! Keep on exploring and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise! This year will be the year you will get your driving license 💪 ! (I reckon…) I wish you that! Anyway, let’s plow through this. Have you done the quiz above? How did you do on the quiz? You can let Bill know here: @concrete_urbex Also, before I move into the main part, if you fancy listening to the podcast where 7 explorers compete in ‘Bill Finan Quiz’ with BILL FINAN himself present and revealing the answers (!) and commenting on the them (!) don’t look further, get it from here:
I was joined by Bill & those amazing explorers! Thank you Chris, Devin, Rachel, Gabby, Sonny, Ghost and Katharina!
Part 1: Worst explorer ever?
First time I heard about Bill was from Bill himself in February 2021. I got an email from him. “Would you like to interview the worst urban explorer of all time? – he asked me. I didn’t understand him. What in the world is he talking about? I kept reading the email he sent me and I noticed a link attached (what seemed like April-fools Day article about who invented urban exploring). I was super confused. Wait a second. Is this guy for real? Is this some-kind-of joke? Is Bill busting my balls? I ignored the whole thing and moved on.
As it turned up. Internet was filled with memes about Bill
Couple months later I noticed a comment somewhere about paying few bucks for entry to some abandoned building. It was from Bill! I messaged him about it and we started talking. The timing was excellent as I was looking for someone to interview for the pod and this guy sparked my interest. He had some wild ideas – I though to myself. Rather different to your established ‘urbex rules’. I was willing to give him 5 minutes. Little did I know… 😂 Oh boy, how wrong was I? We needed hours!
Bill came on the podcast exactly one year ago and his episode was one of the most popular on Chasing Bandos! In case you haven’t heard it, I will insert it below. I was told ‘well done for not loosing your shit Greg’ on many occasions after the interview. “You were way too nice to him” – was another strange one I got few times. As much as I disagreed with Bill on the locations-sharing I liked his persistence and his conviction. More importantly, I respected him coming on the pod arguing what he believed in. But let’s rewind a bit.
On this episode (above) is where I first had a chance to speak to Bill and have a proper discussion with him. In our first chat Bill explained his frustration of not being able to go out there and explore (due COVID restrictions) and how he finally wanted to confront the bullies who have been making fun of him. “It’s been almost 10 years of exploring community having fun with me. I was looking for opportunity to take that and own it. I don’t want to call myself ‘the worst explorer of all time’ but I do feel like I deserve a chance to answer for all the memes in a way. Nowadays, I don’t mind the meme status. At some point instead of fighting against it and being angry at it every time you see it, you gotta start laughing. Also, (and this might be a shocker so better be sitting down right now) Bill admitted that in fact he did not invent UrbEx. “As you know, I did not invent urbex – just to put that on the record. The first time I went exploring was in the summer of 2006 and few months later I found out that there was a whole community around it. I was wondering when all this negativity and mocking of Bill was coming from. He wasn’t exactly sure but suggested it might have started in the Fall of 2008. Apparently few explorers from Rochester, including Bill, were desperately trying to find an entrance to certain drain tunnel that others were looking for 3 years. I have mistakenly ruled out what turned out to be correct entrance for it and I posted on UER that this wasn’t it. It turned out that was it and there was a meet-up in Rochester (that was a monthly thing […]). This meet-up was not like the others. We went to an abandoned high school 3 miles from Rochester (later Bill says 30 miles). The school had a difficult entrance […]. I couldn’t get in. I sat it out while others explored it. It turned out that this one entrance was in clear view of one cop in town. I assume those explorers had a different plan in mind. They never confirmed it to me specifically but I suspected that they wanted me to be bait. While I was struggling to get out of that place they would make their escape and I would be the only one left to get the ticket. Because I didn’t go in, they all got caught. They were not happy and they decided to leave me out there. They just drove off and left me there. Since that moment things were never the same for Bill. I must admit this is a very sad story if, indeed, this is what happened to Bill. I’m sorry to hear it.
Also, now writing this and reflecting upon it and also having more experience of talking to “drainers”, I find them more and more odd. This is an increasing feeling I get. Don’t get me started on Cave Clan [insert-shaking-head-emoji]. Since hosting an urbex-podcast and talking to many different type of explorers, I feel like it gives you a bit of a perspective and you start noticing certain trends. How easy is to talk to this group? How difficult is to talk about this and that. How willing is that explorer to share this story? And this feeling of strangeness I get about those explorers who focus mainly on drains… – I want to call them rats now – that’s where my mind is going, can I do that? Is that rude? Drain-rats! There you go. That’s better. Almost exclusively the drain-rats are the only explorers I had difficulty with. I wonder why that is? Maybe, Bill got to experience the true colours of drains-rats? The dark gray colour. 😝 Wait a second, what colour are rats? Yeah, they are kinda dark grey. Grey, grim and gloomy. GGG-drain-rats.
Anyway, let get back to our birthda-boy. 🎂
Happy Birthday BILL! 👏 🎉 🥳
Part 2: Boxing match
At some stage Bill and I arrived at something we fundamentally differ – the location-sharing. I feel that was what made this first meeting with Bill very special – never before I argued with someone for over 45 minutes in a podcast episode. 😆 I’m going to cut this part short since you can listen to two episodes about it (yes we did 2 on this topic! 😂 – second with Keeper… of The Second). Basically, Bill doesn’t see a correlation between making location public and the future demise of the same location. We went back-and-forth on this and we also tried to get to the bottom of what makes urbex…UrbEx. I was trying my hardest to explain that the effort is key but quite frankly Bill’s arguments are not completely pointless. There is some merit to what he is saying. There are different types of explorers. Not everyone is involved in active infiltration. Someone might just enjoy the ascetic of abandoned, overgrown building and doesn’t have time to spent months scouting through forums, satellite maps and traversing through Dark Web in order to find exact locations. Sure, I get that. I suggest you dive into those episodes if you haven’t already and make your own mind. From my perspective – it’s hard to argue – specially when it comes to openly sharing locations. I have seen the negative results of that with my own eyes while living in England and even now, in China where UrbEx is still making baby steps. Heck, I have a whole page on this website dedicated to what UrbEx is. Not long after my initial convo with Bill Keeper – explorer from Texas – was the most passionate in his reactions to Bill Finan interview. The idea for UrbEx Boxing Match was born (below).
The second installment was a one explosive episode you can NOT miss out on. Trust me. Something weird happened to my audio and I don’t sound normal (note to fix that!) but in this one Keeper takes a centre stage and throws some heavy punches. Bill however, holds his own and parries them left and right. Is that how you say it? I don’t have too much experience with boxing apart of this one time when I got myself involved in the charity boxing match. I remember loosing 7.5kg in first 3 weeks of training. Anywaysss, Keeper and Bill were fighting with words on the podcast and it was brilliant. I took a step back and let them go at each other. It’s hard to pick a winner but I don’t think it was about that, right? No, no… honestly. What do you think? One thing we know for sure is the appearance on the pod changed few things for Bill. All of a sudden he noticed his inbox was getting more and more invites to go exploring. And that leads us nicely to the last part, one interesting exchange I had with American explorer Nick on a completely different episode many, many months later.
2017: I did real boxing match once in my life and somehow won my fight on points 25-24 – HAHA – Never again 😂
Part 3: Evil genius?
April 15, this year. I had a pleasure of talking to Nick (The Urban Ninja) about a crazy drive-by shooting story 😮 where a bunch of explorers (including Ninja and his wife) were photographing dilapidated chapel while some insane probably-drug-infested individuals drove by and shoot up the church with automatic weapons! UrbEx in America everyone! 👏👏👏😵💫 Fortunately, no one was injured and all of the explorers involved managed to successfully leave the place unscathed. So that was the reason Nick came on the pod – to tell this story, however, in the same episode he also mention exploring with Bill. “That was… emm, it was interesting. I’m trying to word this the right way… Bill is an evil genius.” 😆
I was intrigued. What could possibly Nick mean by this? Is Bill really like a “flu virus” where his ideas keep spreading? Nick was conflicted. On one hand he wanted to meet Bill (who wouldn’t duh 🙄), at the same time he wasn’t sure where to explore with him as he was well aware of Bill’s ideology (a.k.a all those spots will be shared). After discussing it with Bill, apparently the ‘God-of-UrbEx’ himself didn’t seem to care that much were they go. “I wanna do blow-up spots anyway. That’s my thing. It’s easier for me”. They met in Detroit at the train station, went to Airbnb, had some pizza and head out exploring – the classic godly-like service that Bill deserves (obviously). “The thing that bothered me is that as much as he claimed to like blown-up locations, or just being appreciative of exploring, there were times where it didn’t feel that way. I heard his comments about other explorers in the same city going to better locations. But then, the second spot we went to is where I noticed it. He had business cards with QR code to his discord server where he shares all locations. Basically, it was like this: I am exploring, Bill is tossing his cards all over the bando.” That rubbed Nick the wrong way. It’s understandable. If you come from the point of view of protecting those abandoned sites and a person who you invited decides to let everyone know about it… well, it could make you question if it was a good idea to bring him along after all. Nick felt uncomfortable with that.
Fast-forward few hours. Boys are now at a different location: abandoned church, still in Detroit. When Bill and another explorer Aidan (I called him “Adrian” on the podcasts, sorry Aidan!) were at the back of the church Nick was taking pictures at the front. He noticed other explorers entering the church. There was also a pillar in the church where someone wrote with a black marker “BILL FINAN IS GOD” and the recent arrivals noticed it right away. “Hey, you won’t believe it but he’s at the back if you want to meet him” – Nick told the new visitors. Not long after, Bill comes out from around the corner and the new explorers lose their shit and get wet in their panties from all the excitement. OH MY GOD! IT’S BILL FINAN! 😂 And who can blame them? I needed to change my underwear after just imagining meeting Bill like that. 😁🤦♂️
Pic courtesy of Ryan (abandoned_newengland)
“This is were I very quickly realized the danger of his celebrity. That other explorer who was there immediately texted someone he knew in the area. They also texted other explorers and within 10 minutes around 15 new people turn up. Just to meet Bill! All-in-all, I don’t want to say bad things about Bill, we had cool connection and we had some interesting topics but that situation was too much for me. Also, I need to highlight something here: Bill is not stupid. He knows exactly what he is doing. He gets all of us to give him locations, we are his ride, his guide, we pick him up and we are all doing it willingly. We take him to new spots, he takes it all and shares them with his people on his public map. We are all being taken advantage of and we are all letting it happen.”
Well, is it true, isn’t it?
1 Comment
whoiscall
May 21, 2023 /
Good luck!