Why America Gave Up on This Town | Abandoned (Full Episode)

foreign Martin I was accused of sexual harassment by my cousin this really pissed me off because I would never touch any something a poem by Martin Ricky Ricky Ricky you you're on my death list Martin doesn't like me [Music] [Laughter] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] this building has no roof all these buildings are bordered up in a city this big that was once one of the largest cities in America it's really crazy all around here is just bombed out buildings just bombed out by poverty for one of the richest countries in the world to have in cities look like this is really shocking [Music] [Applause] [Music] the city of St Louis is home to just over 300 000 people this number would come as a shock to city planners from 1950. at that time the city had a population of 850 000 and it was expected to balloon to a million homes and buildings couldn't go up fast enough but from the 50s through the 90s mass suburbanization and the collapse of Industry completely transformed the city the population shrunk by over 60 percent and the vacancy rate skyrocketed this evacuation of St Louis is most evident in the public school system middle class and wealthy families took their kids and tax dollars out to the county and anyone with money in city limits put their kids in private charter schools over the last six decades student population has dropped from over a hundred thousand to under thirty thousand that's why today there's over 20 abandoned schools in St Louis after struggling with upkeep and declining attendance in the 80s and 90s Central High School shut down in 2004. I have to wait outside of the school right now because the police are doing a sweep on the inside to make sure nobody's in there I'm liking my shoes dirty I think I would be more spooked than anybody I ran into in there because you know zombies and all those things that people are afraid of since Central shut down it's been a magnet for vandals and photographers hello I'd also heard about a secret skate spot in the gym I wanted to check out so how far is it to the gym I'll decide to be okay watch your head watch your head you ever found anybody in the school yes you ever found any skateboarders in here no yeah but can you skid on this yeah you can skate on it wow it's a lot of lumps and wool went through the floor like the floor is breaking right here right before I jump so I'm probably gonna eat right about here [Applause] I'm having problems with the structure here I don't know if it was built to Coast it's better all right let's get it [Music] oh [Music] [Music] yeah I think the spots deteriorated we're done I reached out to a former student for a tour of the old school Brian Beard graduated from Central back in 99. this is not the high school reunion that you expect no no it's a little more grim want to go inside yes let's do it holy wow what are you feeling here what are you seeing it's jacked up yeah this is jacked up wow this place would be packed with kids around there when the bell rang and there was always a security officer here and there right that's where the heat was at exactly this was the biology room so there's probably some cool things growing in here probably what these are growing out of the floor these mushrooms unreal this is my desk right here this is where I sat right there we dissected fetal pigs and like it was uh it was good it's really surprising that in just 11 years a space can look like this like be this destroyed I mean I didn't even like high school and if I went back to my school and saw it like this I'd uh I probably be pretty shocked now we're going up to the fourth floor yeah is this a room that you used to go to this is the visual arts department also this is your Zone this is it yeah how does it feel now shitty man I mean like it's it's horrible we had easels in here and we had desks that you know for all of what high school is and for your difficulties you're you're at that age where you're pissed off at your parents and whatever yeah this was like a sanctuary you know like you could come in here and you could work and the other kids you know that who knows where they're coming from at home so so it was it was neat because it was different than than just School damn it I have to go to school yeah it was a public school system that sucks sure there was a lot of shitty yeah but uh kids were getting something you know kids were going somewhere yeah it's just this is a shame it is it's frustrating yeah and it really hits home because all of St Louis needs to get off of this private school that that everybody sends their kid to a private school yeah fund the public schools man fund the public schools they need it they need it bad yeah they need it bad like yeah we're a developed Nation like this this is embarrassing as a developed Nation it's not like St Louis isn't trying they've put most of the schools up for sale to help inject funds back into the education system Brian's old school is going for less than a tiny condo in New York [Music] so this is the auditorium yeah whoa that's insane just look at this place that wall is totally exposed yeah yeah they took all the windows out some kind of sandbag is going to fall on our heads or something right I expect it but I expected it even when we were here yeah this real estate is just going to waste this is a badass place do you know how much they're selling it for I don't two hundred thousand is that what it is that's what I heard this is two hundred thousand that's what I heard I I swear St Louis you're going to see here in St Louis you're going to see like the Gold Rush where the rest of the country is just going to say what am I doing paying the money that I'm paying yeah when there's there's architecture like this available yeah for free almost Rome Has Fallen I hope St Louis does go through another boom foreign buildings like Central High School can live again [Music] St Louis the vacancy rate is high but it's not like the entire city is empty and run down driving around South St Louis it seems like you're in a thriving American city these properties are insane massive they look like castles but everything changes when you cross Del Mar Boulevard this is Del Mar and enter North St Louis two blocks from here is Mansions this block is abandoned buildings that's a strong divide I'm going to meet up with a photographer from the north city his name is Adrian Walker he grew up here and I wanted to show me around his neighborhood the JBL Adrian started taking photographs of his neighbors in the JVL then published a book of the protest in nearby Ferguson he lives and works on the west coast now but comes back every chance he gets I feel like this is the mecca of North you know this is why I really grew up you know what I'm saying a lot of places that all around here aren't there anymore so it's just like we have to like visualize the things yeah we're seeing a lot of that and you know it's a lot of emptiness around here so I'm basically just show you all that stuff it's just depressing to see boarded up houses where you were born and raised that when you were a kid you know used to play over here it was in your mind it was safe because you were a kid you know yeah but now it's just looking at it you know it's just sad it's gone it's gone it's it's just gone you know and you know I still have love for where I come from you know this is what you taught me how to be who I am now right I came from this and I wouldn't trade it for the world the old neighborhood it looks quite nice yeah it looks kind of safe there's nothing going on you know yeah it's not even a street sign right here anymore uh it used to be this is your street sign yeah if you can see like this is brighter yeah as you can see you know this used to be where the pole was at for the actual streets oh no it's not there anymore you know what I'm saying how come they blocked off the other end of the street and made it sort of heavy traffic man you know a lot of uh stolen cars a lot of high-speed chases and stuff over here they just wanted to tone everything down so they want to make it one way in one way out right you know solos were one of the main things to do around here growing up stolos it's a stolen car oh really in the car you had a Jeep Liberty Dodge Intrepid or neon yeah out of luck really you're getting it stolen they're the easiest ones the easiest ones to break down no way you just get a screwdriver take it yeah going to Joyride you park it you come back home really nothing happened and how come you didn't uh get into the gang life stuff I was a geek yeah I was I was catching Buzz with one of my friends I asked for a telescope and a microscope I'm the only kid in the hood with these things you know right yeah yeah crazy you know who the hell is this kid with a I didn't get they didn't talk about me though right my mom stayed with me and my dad stayed with me I had my brothers and sisters so I had like a good support system growing up and that's rare around here and it's really rare you know what I'm saying it's just somebody houses the households is just just your mom right your daddy the locked upper in jail the street sign is gone but its name is brantner place from the late 80s to the early 2000s this was one of the most dangerous crime-fueled blocks in the U.S Adrian was a geek surrounded by gangsters but he loved his neighborhood and this is my place right here at 3128 this is my spot man it's crazy is still here [Music] you know we just used to hang out all the way it was right yeah sitting on the stoop yep just hanging out neighbors talking you know whatever just seeing what was going on but yeah it's my homeboy yo right here what's the word born and raised man next door neighbor it's crazy Rick I swear bang bang nice to meet you what's the word what's going on we're just chatting about uh the JBL all right all right yeah I mean this dude used to carry me this is where my mama took care of meat in town like they was friends he was all friends or whatever like this you grew up right next door here yeah so I was in 3128b and this is hey I didn't really know anything like about banging and nothing like that I was like he knew that I was different everybody knew I was different you know what I'm saying and I knew he was something else I knew it yeah so it was basically like it wasn't like I had a pass it wasn't like like oh he got a pass it's like right they just knew not me on that level especially if he say no then there's no there's no right like what was like for you to go to school here I really didn't go no yeah I really didn't quit it yeah because it was like I could come out here I tried I don't get me wrong I tried no I tried yeah I just be like damn but when I'm walking to school I really made about 300 while I'm walking to school and I'm like damn man somebody's going to school for right yobanga ran this street when it was a crime hotbed but since him and the other ringleaders were locked up in 2003 brand new place has been quiet you see all these bullet holes in the doors and the walls oh wow that's probably not happening here anymore though right no this oh this is from when we was out here what's this all about this is the path this is where everything went down man if you was right here I knew you was doing something right the only time I came I was like hoping hanging with them for a little bit watching a nice game I go in the house yeah all right time to go yeah because you know what I'm saying and they ever tell me to go in the house he didn't tell me to go in the house time to go to this where everything went down and like yeah what's up scoring I'm chilling man just speaking about the block man I remember back in the day on my birthday we used to shut it down and shut down the alley and it'll be a basketball tournament maybe you know what I'm saying it'd be a Turner from like a thousand dollars yeah five barbecue pits going DJ playing every year on my birthday we used to have this one so alive that you should be like I love this I remember back in the day they posted an article in the world and it's it this one-way Street holds more crime than 125th Street in New York and I went to New York a few years ago and I spent on 125th street I said God damn 125th Street bigger than St Louis bigger than St Louis and this is just one one one block one block yo banga moved back here after he got out of prison but times have changed oh man this is crazy when you come back and look at this man like dang this Drake gone like you you know I'll be looking at this like man this is took a you know how you feel like I just took something from you that's how I feel when I look at this like man that hurt it's like one of my kids is then turn this back on right this part of the JBL might not look like much but to Adrian and yobanga this neighborhood was home [Music] I'm at Grover Cleveland High School it's a former Naval Academy for kids they closed it in 2006 it's by far one of the largest most grandest abandoned schools in St Louis it's kind of like a mix between a castle and an insane asylum I don't think I would have wanted to go to school here really creepy these faces are like gargoyle teachers morning there's a lot of mold in here 's an auditorium whoa this is really big there's a basketball net on the stage of the auditorium that's kind of weird especially since they have a basketball court in here got some more floor buckling we'll have to come back in about a year and skate this once it buckles more feels like I'm in some sort of Submarine or something smells like it there's a lot of water dripping everywhere there's like a whole stream going under here from some big leaky pipes whoa should I see if it turns on it's just just noisy wandering through the ruins of Cleveland High I realized this place is the perfect symbol for my own high school days my experience at high school and school in general was not very good uh I definitely felt like I didn't belong there in a lot of ways I felt like I was invisible I was a skateboarder in high school when there wasn't a lot of skateboarders around and I was kind of on my own I was a good kid I didn't cause any trouble I didn't do anything bad I just didn't do anything at all it was very easy for me to disappear and be invisible in class not hand in any work and uh somehow get moved ahead the next year finally by the 10th grade after dropping out of school and still getting moved ahead every year I just left for good School wasn't my thing but I had a decent high school to go to in St Louis not everyone has that option School everything is totally different depending on what neighborhood you live in from the county to the inner city the rich poor divide is huge we met some kids in an abandoned schoolyard who know all about this divide my high school is said Roosevelt High School Theodore Roosevelt High School in St Louis and the environment there is ridiculous outer city kids they have the best education they have laptops tablets they have all these sports teams you can do so much you can actually do you know how they draw the pictures of Heaven and Hell or whatever and they have the line you can perfectly see that line exactly where it splits like okay you look at our little cross signs order ours are all dented up or Twisted theirs is written in cursive with nice pretty silver lettering and everything's perfect and it's like our voices don't matter because we're inner city we don't have all the education you guys have we don't have all the resources that you have so like when we're over there trying to talk or get our points across too no one wants to listen there's a lot of empty schools there's a lot of empty houses but mainly there's a lot of empty schools that can be used for useful reason rather than just being left out like this one it doesn't have to be like this exploring parts of St Louis struggling with poverty it's hard to imagine what it would be like growing up here day in and day out I met up with Shiraz Gorman to get her take grew up in inner St Louis her career took her to the West Coast for over a decade but she came back out of love for her City it is painful to see this imagine what this neighborhood could be if this school was back up functioning having football games having plays yeah bringing pride in yeah you know and I think the thing that we want to be mindful of and that people of the city I believe are mindful of is that we just don't get relegated into being almost like this poverty porn Center you know people want to come and explore our Decay like they've done Detroit there are people here their families here and there are people with dreams with ambitions here do we have our issues of course like everywhere does yeah you know however if we want to take a look at the crime rate we know what that's rooted in right that's rooted in poverty yeah that's rooted in having education deserts for Shiraz it's important to stand up for the abandoned buildings of St Louis how we treat the buildings in struggling areas says a lot about how we treat people in those areas this gorgeous lecture hall I've never been in a room like this before [Music] see these are the types of rooms where children knew that there was a life much bigger you know just look at it even in this state I can see just how Grand this building this particular room is right and it's just like you know you would come here to learn is this sort of like St Louis in a hole this is what happens when you don't realize what you have like I see the school and like I see St Louis it's like someone who's in a relationship where you don't know your worth okay you are the most beautiful most brilliant person but you can't see that because the person you're in a relationship with is telling you you ain't no one wants you but me and you start deteriorating that's how I feel about this space in this moment in time and how the city is like an abusive boyfriend but unlike human beings buildings do not have the ability to speak buildings do not have the ability to get up and walk the way and say you can't tell me who I am but the people of the city can do that it's just that simple and just that hard [Music] the amount of vacant schools in St Louis is shocking and exploring former Central and Cleveland High was Haunting and surreal but the Silver Lining is even more surreal both schools were reborn in the body of another vacant High School in South St Louis it's about 6 30 in the morning and I'm at the new Cleveland Junior Naval Academy today I'm going back to school military school [Music] after the old Cleveland school closed they came to this school which was another closed school and they sort of rebirth themselves here kind of repurposing this carcass of a school the school seems to be functioning well enough pretty clean the lights are on that's a plus good morning how's it going good what's good about to go on right now uh we've been uh go through master I know we are just following listen to the announcements okay the thing is I don't like these unicorns right yeah we try to work with you try to work I'm just wearing this stuff whatever I want to wear get a pencil let me get a picture [Music] [Applause] so now they're about to fall in line and they're going to do this muster thing where they uh I think salute the flag and then they did the morning announcements [Music] [Applause] we just did the muster let's go see what's for breakfast it's kind of like a food court in a mall or something looks like they have like businesses set up a kid playing the piano over here you guys gonna Jam [Music] what you got for breakfast apple juice some cereals what's it like going to Cleveland yeah yeah it is yeah [Music] yeah it was too early for me what do you guys want to do after high school army army college nice well good luck with you guys thank you [Music] good morning gentlemen can you give me a little lesson all right so this is the basics well this is heavy so one of the first things we teach uh the freshmen yeah it's uh called 14 count so the first one yeah you'll bring it down yeah and you'll just hop in them okay down boom Spin and then bazooka no no okay all right thumbs down let's go perfect and stand straight yep stand up straight I gotta slouch what's it like for you guys to go to Cleveland I absolutely loved it uh definitely when I came it was a little bit harder yeah you have to have our uniforms straightened out every single day right we're the only Military Academy that comes the school every day right uh most come one day a week what time do you guys wake up I I usually get up about 5 30. about the same yeah what do you guys see a lot of uh abandoned schools around where you live yeah there's a it's this area just like yeah it's just bad we went to the old Cleveland School actually had a look at that yeah so that was actually nice school yeah when it was when they yeah but back then that's when they had a lot of kids now we only got 300 and some kids really okay so it's a small school I kind of like it being a small school it's less job you got to worry about this fight You Gotta Wear who are we [Applause] [Music] that was cool right now they're doing their weekly uniform grading to make sure that the clothes are all right and their haircuts and shades are good and they get upgrade every week for that can you inspect me now you're out of uniform what's zeros zero yeah yeah I do zero yeah it's zero man I fail all right thank you [Music] it was nice to be inside of a warm living school with people in it instead of uh paint peeling and the roof falling on you there were two really surprising things for me today that I learned one was 100 of the kids here are below the poverty line every single one of them and they have a 100 graduation rate I don't know how they do that because I know how hard it is out here I've seen it you know it's hard to get by and even get to school I'm sure but I can see how that system it's sort of like another support to help them stay on the line that might be a little more Progressive for them as far as moving forward in their lives as adults [Music] one of St Louis's empty schools was used to save Cleveland and Central High when they lost their old buildings that still leaves over 20 vacant properties on the books but there's a plan for those two I heard about this guy whose job it is is to sell abandoned schools for the public school system and I have no idea how you're going to sell a dead school [Music] good morning good morning how are you Rick yeah Walker Gaffney director of real estate for the public schools so in this area right here in like as far as we can see there's four schools right here and three of them are closed that's correct and uh it's important to note that we built schools at one point just barely keeping up with a number of new students coming in right we had a peak enrollment of 110 000 and today we're down to about 26 27 000 students in the district well shall we go inside yes absolutely let's do it so the public school system has a lot of empty schools on their hands and they had to hire you to help them get some revenue from that my goal is not to knock them down number one because it's very expensive to knock down a building and it'd be better for the community and the neighborhood to have the school repurposed and knocked down for sure they're usually a fairly big structure in the community so to have that be dark it's not a positive yeah it's a big footprint we can sell these old buildings it's good for the neighborhood because it puts the building back in life and it's good for the districts because we raise funds how much are you selling the school for it's steal at a half a million dollars yeah for this whole building half a million dollars that's incredible Walker is selling abandoned schools like Turner to put money back into the education system but it's not just schools sitting empty when a city loses more than half its population lots of buildings are left stranded how can they be revived I learned about one amazing building that's found in afterlife a really cool thing happening in St Louis right now is that there's this old abandoned Cathedral that these guys took over and they build a bunch of skate ramps inside of it that's pretty much my kind of repurposing holy praise be to the skate gods [Music] it's insane all kinds of graffiti we got a 40-foot long mini ramp in here this is my kind of church right here I would have come to church every day of the week if this is what they were like [Music] guys this is insane yeah there's nothing like this anywhere else I don't think yeah that's what people keep telling us yeah yeah yeah so how did this place come about like how did you get the building we never technically bought the building like you know like right we the company that owned it yeah for the last 25 years we just owned that now and so then we can just kind of like operate and just do stuff you know there's no there's a certain freedom in this area and the north side too is like you know they got bigger they got bigger fish to fry right yeah we're trying to figure out what the purpose is but we're staying pretty uh loose with our definition of what we're trying to do yeah pretty much we kind of want like this idea being kind of organic it'll be whatever it is like yeah we'll just sort of see what it becomes and and then the the skateboarding aspect of It kind of happened organically like skateboarders and graffiti Riders basically they just like give them this but like you can do your thing here they're like cool yeah like I'm out here with wood and cans and yeah 30 guys to build it tomorrow we get chased out of every other place we're still exactly yeah exactly so yeah in some ways it's really become kind of like a sanctuary for uh The Fringe artists and The Fringe you know skaters and things like that and the place was pretty it was destroyed when we first got it I pulled like five Rolex downstairs full of garbage out of here there was really a feet of pigeon and dead pigeons yeah garbage can I skate your ramp sometime I dare you too [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you feel better [Applause] [Music] right now yeah St Louis if you're into repurposing abandoned buildings this is a land of opportunity [Music] hello yeah let's try this big one between the pigeon and the lead on this we're totally shortening our lives here [Music] you tell you don't smoke [Laughter] wow this is creepy this is horror movie creepy oh yeah oh yeah yeah we're gonna kill you guys when we get up here this is the structure that makes that ceiling inside of the chair you can't be afraid of heights yeah working on this building no first graffiti writer in the church Benny the bomb 19 does that say 39 yeah 39 1939 Benny the bum amazing if any of the bomb got up dude yeah this is way up there today he's way up there baby got Fame I love this man I love this building I love working on it man taking old and building new out of it is literally like some of my favorite to do I mean look at this awesome in a lot of cities like if you're in Los Angeles or you know a lot of other places you could never get away with doing something like this and you know a lot of the that we do you know they'd be up your ass real quick I think the fact that St Louis has got the problems it has also lends it to be able that when people want to kind of work outside of the box that kind of government Society dictates that you must work in it's a lot easier to do that here because the box has got so many holes in it and it's real easy to find a way out of it I mean all in all man St Louis is awesome I've lived all over the place all over the world and I always wind up coming back here and like eventually when I got older I just kind of quit fighting it like just started sewing Roots down and you know I'm here now and I ain't going nowhere I love St Louis I love it I'll live here until I die [Music] St Louis is a city of 300 000 that was built for a million so there's a lot of emptiness here forgotten what do these buildings want to be renovated and turned into something new or torn down so they can rest in peace as long as these abandoned buildings stand they still have a chance like the kids who once filled these empty schools there's a lot of potential [Music] and as my teachers told me try not to waste it why St Louis [Music] every day you're not near I'm crying at the door now I'd be the first [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] my God [Music] apart every weekday after Dark [Music] I can't forget [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: VICE

Views: 2,022,788

Keywords: documentary, documentaries, docs, interview, culture, lifestyle, world, exclusive, independent, underground, videos, journalism, vice guide, vice.com, vice, vice magazine, vice mag, vice videos, film, short films, movies, abandoned, St. Louis, Missouri

Id: SPyjYQALnrE

Length: 43min 55sec (2635 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 16 2023