Canadia Blog

Emily under the Go-Kart bridge

When I was a kid in Bradenton, by far the coolest thing to do in town was hanging out at Pirate’s Cove.  It was one of those arcade/go-kart/laser tag kinds of places, and it was a pretty good one at that.  At one point they even had a Shake Pit (a local ice-cream place), the only time Shake Pit ever had a second location.  Unfortunately, the mini adventure park type of establishment has really fallen out of favor, and a couple of years ago Pirate’s Cove closed its doors.  The owner had intended to sell the property, but that deal fell through, and after everything in the place was auctioned off they boarded up the building and left the property unmaintained.  It’s been several years now, everything is overgrown and destroyed, and I decided to go back for a photo shoot.

Emily in the alleyway behind the building

Last weekend, I met up with an old friend from middle school, Emily, who was interested in modelling.  The same day I drove by Pirate’s Cove again and noticed the amazing state of decay that it’s been languishing in, so we decided to meet up there this weekend to make some photographs.  This morning we showed up, and investigated cautiously, hoping no one would show up to ask us to leave.  Thankfully, the property is truly abandoned, and we didn’t see another sole for the entirety of the shoot.

We started out with the alleyway behind the building itself, where they used to hand out the balls and clubs for mini-golf.  The area has obviously been lived in, as there were newspapers scattered everywhere along the wall and a blanket hanging from one of the doors in the middle of the alley.

Emily in front of one of the pond on one of the mini-golf holes

After that, we moved into the outdoors part of the property, investigating the mini-golf course and the remains of the batting cages (which had been in disrepair even before the place closed down).  The mini-golf course has fallen into pretty heavy disrepair, with filthy fake grass covered in garbage, and disgusting algae-covered water filling the pond areas on some of the holes.  The batting cages have been reduced to rubble, and that entire portion of the property (which also happens to open out into some heavy vegetation at the back) has taken to looking like the remains of a post-apocolyptic wasteland.

Under the eaves of the building

After that, we headed back over to the building proper, and did some shots down the tunnel formed by the wall of the building and the plywood that they put up in front of the porch area.  After that we finished off with the Go-Kart course, doing a couple of shots underneath the bridge (like the one at the top of the article) and some on the outside of the track.  The goal throughout, of course, was to start in the least visible-from-the-street areas we could and minimize the risk of being seen and kicked out, which apparently worked out well enough.  On the Go-Kart track we were perfectly visible from the street, but that part of the shoot only took a couple of minutes, so we were okay.

After that we left, and I went to go have lunch with my girlfriend, and then to try and post-process with my cat incessantly laying down in front of the lowest-reaching of my monitors, so he just barely got in the way, because sitting in front of the higher monitor would have been too convenient.  Now it’s off to one of her relative’s potlucks, and then tomorrow we get to do 31/12 anniversary stuff, and I’ll finally leave to go to Orlando for school on Monday.  Should be a fun weekend…

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 3rd, 2009 at 5:24 pm and is filed under Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.