Tales of the Urban Explorer: Just Gents Stylists

I looked but could not find a ‘before’ shot of ‘Just Gents Stylists'. A derelict barber sounds as exciting as a derelict butchers, without the stinking rotten meat fumes you are forced to inhale while walking through the doors.

In truth, we had come for the 'Central Hotel' which is next door, and next on the agenda. The barber shop happened to be in our faces, with the fencing knocked over. How could we ignore it?

There is a little history associated with this one and The Hotel Calafornia.

An ADHD youth accepted a bet to torch both locations within an hour, managed it, and avoided jail. That's the justice system for you in the UK.

The jails are full, there's no room.

'Don't do it again young James', will you? Here's a lollipop and a condom to go with it, don't go raping any young girls either, now off with you'.

Navigating around the fencing, it was straight in the front door and the stench hit us almost immediately.

“For fuck sake, has someone been murdered here and left?”, I motioned to @anidiotexplores who had already fitted his gag, a relic of the COVID days.

It was July, and as warm as it gets in the UK, the flies were having a field day and feasting on something or other.

We vowed to make this quick, especially on the ground floor where walking was proving troublesome due to the amount of shit underfoot and I was dreading having to experience that soft squelch of decaying corpse, animal or otherwise.

Besides many items of odd clothing, a few sleeping bags and fucks knows what else was under all this. I dared to stoop and snoop at the paperwork littering the floor.

£10,000 altered to £100,000, that’s a bit of a hike. It all seems related to someone trying to pay off debts.

Roland Nuttall is not having such a good time or should I say was not back in 1997. These papers are hardly new.

The High Court of Justice and Bankruptcy; this is one way to get out of paying lots of creditors, but it will screw your credit history over for years to come.

None of the papers appeared to be remotely about hair snipping and any scissors, shavers, or hair gel seemed to have seeped into the surging mess I was standing upon.

It's fine having a table but you can hardly use those rusty filing cabinets as seating. Opening these junkheaps is generally futile as the rust gels over time leaving them in a jammed state.

James Kikby looks to be getting off the smack but taking his legal heroin substitute while enjoying the many comforts of ‘*Just Gents Stylists’. I didn’t take a sniff, in case the remains of toxic fumes placed me in a standing stupor.

The radiator had been pulled off the wall leaving what I would call 'standard barber wallpaper'. The stripes remind me of what I see on the rotating barber's pole, typically placed outside the shop.

Having exhausted the comprehensive ground floor, we moved up these slightly worn stairs onto the middle floor. Navigation was a tad slippery but manageable.

Mr. Juvenile Arsonist, otherwise known as 'Luke Edwards-Meredith' must have done the dirty deed up here and legged it down those stairs after spreading the petrol and igniting it.

If you ever wanted to inspect a toilet's water system, this could be your chance. I was glad to see the red, which contrasts the otherwise burnt shitter quite nicely.

If it’s not black then it’s rusty. The kitchen living quarters looked to be quite modern, once.

The rear of ‘*Just Gents Stylists’ is reminiscent of an overgrown jungle situated in the suburbs of a city.

The radiator looks like it’s made of pure chocolate but don’t be fooled, the taste is more like stale rust. I didn't have a taste as the floor was extra sketchy in the room. Some things you just pick up from pure intuition.

Getting back down those 'stairs' could be tricky as there's little to stabilise you. Fortunately, we never needed to descend, as a consequence of a unanimous rash judgemental decision.

At this moment in time, we had no clue how to get into 'The Central Hotel' which was next door but what we saw on 'the other side' looked to be an access point. It resembled an unreachable portal to the hotel but we needed to cross a deadly threshold to get there.

The ‘threshold’ was fucking dangerous, and trusting the blue window frame with any kind of weight was not going to cut the mustard. It was jump or fail.

“Yeah, we can get in”, confirmed @andiotexplores who had made the leap of faith before me.

I turned around and peered up the stairs thinking.., ‘now then.. what’s up there’. Nobody will ever climb those steps again unless aided by mountaineering poles, pikes, and ropes.

Dare I cross that dangerous crevasse of decaying barbershop AGAIN, escape back to normality, and continue with my life while retaining my legs?

Discarding the pensive thoughts, I did a 180 and headed into the gloom of 'The Central Hotel'…

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