Name: Holley High School Location: Holley, New York Status: Abandoned Accessibility: Easy Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Let’s go to Buffalo Holley! Taco, Scourge and I cross the border on a Thursday afternoon bound for Holley, a small village between Niagara and Rochester, New York. Our plan was to check out the closed down Holley High School and then head back to Buffalo for a dinner out with my mates Nightbird and Roadwolf, whom we hadn’t seen in ages. With some slight delays with traffic, the border, and generally awful directions from our GPS we were starting to run a tad bit late. We pulled into Holley around 5:30 and lucky for us the school isn’t that hard to find, the building is a massive centre piece of the village and stands three storeys tall; in the front of the building is a huge auditorium with tall columns and old Christmas decorations that I’m sure have been fixed to front façade since the buildings closure. Boldly going where many explorers have gone before Upon hearing about our impending visit one of my friends gave us a tip to check around the back of the school for an easy point of entry, we spot an open window on the first storey and scramble inside. This wasn’t actually the entry point my friend had in mind, not that it mattered, we weren’t complaining. We wander through the school’s hallways to find the auditorium and end up going around in circles a couple of times, we poke out a window and can see where we need to go, but not how to get there. The three of us head up a storey and back down again and find our selves completely discombobulated. “Is that where we first climbed into the building?” Okay, we’re lost. Without warning while heading down one hallway we suddenly find ourselves walking onto a large stage overlooking an audience of teddy bears and cabbage patch kids, we say hello and greet our fans before breaking out the cameras and document the building. The theatre while being a huge draw to the building soon bores us and we move out into the surrounding hallways, inspecting the lockers, offices and classrooms. Littered throughout the building are many children’s toys from the buildings brief re-use as a daycare facility, the toys have been scattered about by bored teenagers and photographers alike, there are many obvious photo set ups that will make you roll your eyes. To our surprise the school is not that badly vandalized, there is not a single board covering any of the many windows and with access so easy the occasional penis immortalized in spray paint is to be expected. The real surprise being that no one has bothered to do any serious damage, they’ve left that to Mother Nature. Time begins to pass and Nightbird and Roadwolf phone us wondering where we’ve ran off too. As it’s already past seven and we are hoping to have dinner sometime tonight, our group decides that we should fight our way back to the New York State Thruway and quickly head to Buffalo. Doing one last circle of the building for some exterior photos a group of local teenager’s stop to ask us if we want to go inside, they seem shocked to hear we already gave ourselves the tour. Not like it was very hard. July 24th, 2008 BACK