Here is a vid clip of "Amsterdam" New York. I grew up about 30 minutes north of this dump.

It used to be the home of:

Mohawk Carpets, Bigelow-Sanford Carpets, Mohesco Carpets, and Fownes Broom Company......

all closed up and left in the early 1960's.......

Coleco Toy company (remember them? they moved out by the mid 1980's)

The city now is virtually dead. Blocks abondoned. This is what the rest of the USA will look like sooner than later.

Warning. The clip is about 6 minutes long, and it is silent. It is sad. Now some of you will undertsand "what" I grew up around mostly. Closed up factories, gloom, hopelessness, and ruin. This is what California is slowly becomming.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39TTTicgVWY

Yep, looks familiar in that way.

Link fixed!

Yes its horrilbe. I grew up in Ballston Spa (still live there as a 28 year old man-child)... It is upstate New York's very own Detroit. You grew up in the Adirondacks? Like Wells, Speculator area?

I grew up in Benson. Went to Northville High School (class of 1989). Across the Batchelerville Bridge on Sacandaga Resevoir, just the other side of Northville and the town of Edinburgh. Lower Adirondacks.

MY COUSIN went to Ballston Spa High School, he grew up in "Rock City Falls" he graduated in 1988.
My other cousin grew up in Galway (my high schools arch rival in all sports), and she finished up in 1991.

My older brother has Downs Syndrome and he lives in "malta" in "Luther Forest" in a group home owned and operated by the Saratoga ARC.

I worked in Saratoga Springs during high school. My father was the head-foreman for the "Wilton Mall" at Saratoga when they were building it (1988-1990). My mother worked for Saratoga County Public Health as a nurse during the 1970's. She then got hired by the VA in Albany and drove to work everyday through Amsterdam to the NYS thruway....and on to Albany. I grew up on an old farm (120 acres) and my parents had a custom home built on it during the early 1970's. Most of the property was covered in forest. My parents wanted to live in the country. My closest neighbor was about two miles away. The property has a few small "hills" a few streams that feed into the resevoir. It was beautiful, but very, very rural, and very poor (you know the area, get outside of Saratoga in the northern part of the county in Day, Edinburgh, Providence....scary rural poor). My family was considered "rich" for the area, and we were. I have hiked, and camped all over Wells, and Speculator btw!

My mothers funeral was conducted by the Armer Funeral Home in Ballston Spa. She "loved" Saratoga Springs very much. She's buried in the Veterans Cemetery at the Saratoga Battlefield (my dad is a Veteran, so she was allowed to be buried there)

What's the lineup at SPAC this summer?????????

holy CRAP small world. I know EXACTLY where that group home is on Mayapple Way. I grew up in Luthers Forest the next street over. Graduated from Ballston Spa High School. I went to college at SUNY Potsdam where I earned my BS in Geology, I've been to every conceivable area of the Adirondack Park as a result. Rock City Falls, Wilton Mall, check, and check.

I'm not certain whats happening at SPAC since I never go there due to my revulsion of large crowds. I do know that there is a Guarentee for 3 nights of Phish this summer, and I know the Allman Bros. Usually show up once or twice too.

And as far as the northern part of the county being scary rural poor, I think they call the Town of Day Allantown because of the fact that the majority of the people there share the Allan surname, and are scary related to eachother, in the most hillbilly of ways. Nice people though regardless, long as youre just passing through!

I worked at Gap in Wilton Mall (1990-1993, summers home from college and during vactaions; I was at the one in Mohawk Mall before that from 1987-1989. I hear that the Mohawk Mall is now demolished!!!!). I went to Green Mountain College in Vermont, just over the New York / Washington County border in Poultney. I miss my college days in Vermont very, very much!!!!

I went to RPI for graduate school and lived in Troy during those years (1993-1995). I worked at the "Holmes and Watson" pub back then as a bartender and a waiter!!!

My brother is in the group home on "Meadow Rue" in Luther Forest! My cousin from Galway worked at the Malta McDonalds when it FIRST opened in 1989!!! She now lives in Glenville is married w/ kids and miserable.

My father had to drop out of high school to work the farm in "West Glenville" back in the 1950's, but he would've graduated from Scotia-Glenville High! the farm he actually grew up on was in Charlton!!!

WOW! It is a crazy small world!!!! I remember seeing "Edie Brickell / New Bohemians and Tom Petty" at SPAC in 1989......two weeks after the Tianamen Square massacre!!!!

Lots and lots of QUARTZITE in the Adirondacks!!!!!!!! I love Yosemite and Sequoia out here, and it is just majestic.....but the Adirondacks......will always hold a very deep and special place in my heart. I too have been all over "the park, inside the blue line"

What's your fav wilderness area in the park?

I have an affinity for the High Peaks and the LakeGeorge/Warrensburg/North Creek area, but I've also dont some camping and hiking in the West Canada Lake and along the Raquette River in the Northern part of the park.

My mother lives in Lake Placid so I'm always heading up there to hang out in the area too.

Yeah I dont know if you've been back to visit your brother at all, recently, but Malta has the largest, most advanced nano-tech fabrication plant in the world, somthing like 6 football fields side to side, plus the majority of the intersections have been replaced by roundabouts and new buildings being constructed up and down Route 9.

I camped, hiked, and spent many summers in the "Pharoah Mountain Wilderness Area" as boy and teen with my family. We used to camp at Putnam Pond, and Crane Pond mostly back in the 1970's and 1980's. Usually the 4th of July holiday / week. On the 4th, we would go to Ft. Ticonderoga and watch the fireworks!

I have hiked "Treadway Mt." a trillion times. I have been in the Pharoah Mt. "fire tower" before it was closed in 1981.

During the summer of 1986, my father and I went on a long-weekend backpacking trip in "high peaks" Mt. Marcy, Algonquin Peak, Mount Colden, looped through Alavalnche pass, Lake Colden.....probably the best memories I ever had with my dad are from that week. Swam in "Lake Tear of the Clouds" and camped in the lean-to that was there (all lean-tos above 4000 ft were removed after the summer of 1986). We bushwacked up "Sunrise Mt." as well.

Just a gorgeous place, and so mystical.....the Adirondacks........as a teen tons of day trips to "the Jessop river" and Sacandaga "east branch" for day use. This was really close to where I lived.

ALSO.....I photographed an "eastern" diamondback rattlesnake on the Tongue Mt range back in 1991 with my dad at "deer leap" and Adirondack magazine published the photo!!!!!!!

Heh, heh, a typical sight in ex-USSR in most of 90s and 00s.
And the major difference that in YOUR case, those bricks and scrap metal are still intact. (no materials thieves, really? ) In da mother Russia, they would have left the place in a single year. (each bolt that is not bolted down, goes straight into my bolt sack)