UFO Cafe

Upon learning that an alien spacecraft had landed at the side of a lake, I just couldn't stay away! Did I finally have the means to escape this pisspot of a planet? 

Well, no. The spaceship is actually an old café from an amusement park. The search for intelligent life wasn't unsuccessful though. I may not have left Earth, but I did leave the UK.  

The UFO is technically a shipwreck too, and we know how much I love those! It was built in 1957 and christened "Arizona," and throughout the 1960s it was a popular lakeside attraction, not only as a floating café but as a dance hall. And perhaps coolest of all, it could escape its moorings and speed off across the lake at a whopping 5km per hour.

Naturally, as a popular venue, there are a multitude of old photos of it from its heyday. 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

Arizona actually presents us with an excellent example of why you can't trust Google AI. I say this as someone who regularly upsets the urbex applecart by bringing primary sources like census data to debunk the fake stories put forward by those who rely on Google AI. If you ask it, Google will actually admit to that its AI does get things wrong. It pulls info from all over the internet, tries to compile it, and then sometimes gets muddled. 

In this case, googling UFO attractions in this particular area didn't bring me information on this floating restaurant. At least, not entirely. It gave me the location and the year that Arizona was built, but then randomly linked them to a well-known UFO sighting by a chap called Jan Wolski that actually happened somewhere else entirely in 1978. You can't trust Google AI!

(Photo not mine, obviously)

Arizona does look pretty cool, and it apparently had a twin! A second UFO café was created, but it was apparently destroyed in a crash on its way to its intended destination. Arizona survived its journey, and ended up floating merrily in a lake at the amusement park, totally unique.

It's fifteen meters in diameter and apparently has capacity for 75 people. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s it sold drinks, ice cream and hosted dances. According to one source, it also had its own swimming pool, but I'm fairly certain that's a mis-translation. For starters, no it doesn't. Secondly, why would it? It's floating on a lake! It was probably popular with swimmers. People would take a dip and then come for refreshments. 

Slipping inside was pretty easy. Efforts have been made to secure the conventional entrances, but they haven't realised that abandoned alien spacecraft don't attract conventional people. 

And check it out! It's big and empty, and I absolutely love it. It offers a 180 degree view of the lake, meaning people could just sit, chill, and enjoy the view while enjoying a coffee. 

It's easy to look at this and imagine how it used to be, with window seats, perimeter tables, and a central dance floor. 

This would have once been such a fun place to be, full of friends and families enjoying their day out. Perhaps friendships were made here. Perhaps couples went on dates here and went on to get married, and tell their children that they fell in love on a UFO. 

When it comes to urbex, some people like residential locations and some people like industrial. My personal favourite types of places are leisure sites that benefited their community. Even though it's dilapidated and slowly crumbling into a lake, there are multiple generations of people who will have fond memories of this place. They may have come here as children, and then their own children may have come here too. Its legacy is multi-generational. 

Arizona was retired in the 1980s due to being in poor condition. This was apparently caused by vandals setting fire to it, although there doesn't seem to be much fire damage visible now. Nevertheless, it closed, and then in the 1990s it was sold to a chap named Mr Jurek. He was something of a diving enthusiast who had decided that a floating UFO would come in useful. He arranged for it to be taken to this lake via helicopter.

And can we just stop to appreciate how awesome that would have looked? Thousands of people would have looked up that day and seen a UFO being flown through the air, hanging from a helicopter. It would have been awesome!

If Mr Jurek didn't at least ask if he could ride inside, I'll be very disappointed. 

In 2001, seemingly restored from the damage that had led to its retirement, Arizona was renamed "Róża Wiatrów" which translates to "Rose of the Wind." Mr Jurek handed it over to an organisation called "The Academy of Good Ideas" whose main objectives seem to be finding creative ways to help cultural and intellectual development in communities, as well as helping children with difficult backgrounds. The founder of the organisation, a fire fighter named Grzegorz Siemko, seems to think that the UFO could be a community asset. He says it could be used as a floating nature observatory, or used for sports activities. He even considered making it a small floating museum of the local history.

It all sounds pretty cool.

I absolutely love it. If I had the money I would buy it, fix it up, and fly it home in a heartbeat. I would absolutely love to live in a floating UFO. It wouldn't be too out of place somewhere like Ellesmere. There's a good few lakes around there, and they're all close enough to Wem that the presence of extra-terrestrials wouldn't be too shocking.

Over here we have the cockpit.

And here we have the controls. Back in the day, the Captain would be sat here, zooming Arizona across the water. 

The newly christened Róża Wiatrów set sail on the lake in 2001, after a small struggle to get permission to do so. And it enjoyed a bright new era of entertaining locals... right up until 2005 when it failed a safety inspection and was considered unfit for purpose. Some reports say that this happened in 2008, but I don't think that's important. The result is the same. 

Having been shut down, there were requests to return the UFO to its original lake, but upon examination they realised it was too deteriorated for transport. It was stuck here for the foreseeable future.

There are loads of little rooms around the UFO, which I guess would have once been little booths for groups of people to have ice cream or drink coffee. 

Things got a little convoluted in recent years, and it's a little challenging to make sense of it because I'm not fluent in Polish. But it seems that the UFO was abandoned by Mr Jurek on Grzegorz Siemko's property. Even though Grzegorz Siemko had been using the UFO with permission, it didn't really belong to him. A chap called Tomasz Gryc showed up, claiming to be the new owner, having purchased it from Mr Jurek, but he was unable to provide any documentation to support this, so Grzegorz refused to let him have it.

But it was worth a try, I guess? Showing up on someone's doorstep and claiming to have purchased the dilapidated spaceship moored up on the lake outside. I honestly don't blame him for giving it a go.

Unfortunately this landed Grzegorz Siemko in hot water, because Mr Jurek had disappeared and Mr Siemko was quite possibly holding onto property that wasn't his.

He told the media "The situation is difficult for me because I am accused of misappropriating a UFO." There's a line that no journalist ever thought they'd ever print. Their career has peaked. 

By all accounts, Grzegorz Siemko did the right thing and reported the abandoned UFO to the local authority. In November 2022, they arranged for the UFO to be removed from his property, and towed it from one side of the lake to the other, where it remains today. The media published photos of it being towed, and I love them so I'm going to share them here.

(Photo credit to the Polish media)

Grzegorz Siemko actually got to ride on it while this happened, the lucky man. 

According to law, the local authority is responsible for securing the UFO and finding the owner. They've so far failed to do both of those things. After two years, if the owner fails to claim it, the property gets given to whoever found it.

So since it was abandoned on Grzegorz Siemko's property, it's now technically his. 

I'm not jealous at all... 

He seems very passionate about the prospect of fixing it up and making something of it. There's a video on Youtube that shows him beginning the early stages of renovation. In the video he also shows us the home-made functioning elevator in his workshop, that only he can use because if Health and Safety saw it they'd have a meltdown.

Grzegorz Siemko says he came from a poor background and learned how to make the most out of what he had. In addition to restoring abandoned spacecraft, he also restores furniture, and uses scrap to make practical things like lamps. He's very passionate about his projects. 

Unfortunately, Arizona is an expensive project, and so it sits in limbo. He's started a fundraiser, but so far the UFO remains as it is, decaying at the side of a lake.

But he seems pretty determined, so never say never. 

(Another towing photo, credit to the Polish media)

I quite like Grzegorz Siemko. He said in his video that passionate people remain eternally young because they have these passions to occupy them. He's seen many of his colleagues retire and then be miserable because they have nothing to do. 

And I totally agree with him. We saw this dynamic at play during the Covid pandemic too. All the people with hobbies were absolutely fine during lockdown, while everyone else became curtain-twitching maniacs. And yet they always tell us that at some point we need to grow up, as if enjoying life is childish.  

Let's be honest, they're jealous. You only have to look at the tenacity and continuousness of their mockery to see that they're just miserable and trying to make their horrendous life feel okay by making out that your happy one is somehow wrong. 

Above all, remember that if a big part of someone's happiness relies on you being "normal" then the issue is theirs, not yours. Embrace your passions. We were born for more than to just work until we're too old to be productive. The world doesn't need any more managers. These aren't the heroes of today. The heroes of today are the people who are following their passions and being happy.

The view from Arizona is pretty nice. The lake was very active, and I got a few cheerful waves and puzzled looks from people sailing by. I wanted to climb out and get on top of the spaceship, but I didn't trust the roof to support my weight. 

Arizona's legacy lives on in a rather curious place. There's an IT company that set up a headquarters at the lake that once held Arizona. They decided to model their office decor on the original amusement park, and one of their break rooms pays homage to the spacecraft. 

(Photo credit: Sii Polska)

How cool is this? I love that Arizona is being referenced and remembered, despite its dilapidated state. And I seriously hope that one day Grzegorz Siemko can sail it on the lake again. 

But I'm also a qualified diver and I love underwater wrecks. In fact I have my first underwater blog coming up in... 92 blogs time. I'm seriously behind. 

But even if Arizona was sank at the bottom of this lake, and turned into some kind of habitat for marine life, that's not necessarily an urbex dealbreaker for me. I think a UFO at the bottom of a lake would be amazing to photograph. 

That's all I've got. I absolutely love this floating tin can, and wish Grzegorz Siemko the best of luck in restoring this. I would love to come back to Poland someday to see this thing set sail.

I have a quick splatter of short, quick blogs to do on my other blog before I focus on something big and glorious on this one. The small ones are really feeding my addiction to diving down archive rabbit holes with pure autistic glee to bring you the story of a family that once lived on a spot that is now just a pile of bricks. I love that sort of thing. The big blog on the horizon is definitely more traditional urbex, and I love that too. It's industrial, and we don't do those very often, so it's a bit like a big greasy metal Christmas. 

If you want to stay updated with my blogs, then the best way, unfortunately, is by following my social media. I am on Boomer 4chan. Sorry, I mean Facebook. The algorithm there only shows people the things that will make them angry, because that's how posts get engagement. So the best thing you can do is follow my Facebook, tell me how much you hate me in the comments, and how much my very existence ruins your life, and you should start seeing my posts in your newsfeed. 

I'm on Twitter and Instagram. Nobody knows how those algorithms work, and personally I don't care. If you follow me on Bluesky, Cara or Vero, you won't need to worry about algorithms because those apps are sensible and just show you the people that you choose to follow.

Thanks for reading!

Jumanji House

This adorable abandoned house was given the curious name "Jumanji House" in urbex circles. I saw a couple of posts online that say that this is because it has a chessboard set up in the front room. As far as nicknames go, it does beat "Grandads House" and "Fireplace House." You gotta give them credit.

Actually fuck that, no you don't. I'll give you three guesses what game they were playing in Jumanji. Here's a clue: It wasn't chess.

Now, when it comes to having someone to roast, urban explorers are the gift that keeps on giving, but even I was a bit stunned by this. So I decided to figure out which urbexer actually came up with the name, and ask him what the truth was. He's a chap who saw the rise of AI image generation and promptly removed all photos of his children from social media, so I know he's not an idiot. This actually makes him more intelligent than 90% of the people on Facebook.

Not that the bar is particularly high there. 

Anyway, he said that he came up with the name "Jumanji House" because of the way it's covered in ivy, with some of it creeping into the house itself in the upper floors. That makes a lot more sense. I guess once it became popular with the urbex herd, someone came in later, saw the chessboard, and said "Ah, that must be why it's called the Jumanji House," and the whole world collectively face palmed. 

Let's slip inside! 

I don't use this term lightly, but "Jumanji House" is a true time capsule. At least, for the time being. No doubt it will be looted and plundered eventually, and a big dick will be drawn on a wall. It may have already happened. But at the time of my visit, it just had natural decay like cracked paint, peeling wallpaper, and invasive vegetation, and it had enough of it to make its abandonment unquestionable while simultaneously being fully furnished and giving full Mary Celeste vibes. It's as if the owners just went to the movies and didn't come back. 

But the thing is, there's not really any history to be had here. Usually I go traipsing through old records with pure autistic glee, and bring forth the story of former occupants dating back to the 1800s. This place was a field back then. It doesn't show up on maps until well into the 20th Century, whereupon it was owned and occupied by a chap called Dick, which was short for Richard. That might be stating the obvious but I get the feeling it may be a tad archaic today. 

According to some urbex posts, Dick and his family decided one day to just leave the country and never come back, leaving behind all of their belongings for some mysterious reason.

If you think that sounds like a load of wank made up for youtube clicks, then you'd be right. My own research revealed that Dick went to Australia in 1980, but came back in 1988. 

Some other sources say that he passed away, and that his sons down in London want nothing to do with this property. That is pretty intriguing but a lot more believable. 

I think this adds a level of sadness to any abandoned place. What we have here is a museum to someone's former life. Houses, more so than anything else in urbex, are the most deserving of respect. Alas, they seldom get it. But for me, seeing an abandoned house is sort of like being slapped in the face by the concept of mortality. This could very easily be what happens to our own homes someday, and there's nothing we can do about it. I mean, we can write a will, but once we're in the ground it's really out of our hands. 

Here we have the lounge, clearly unloved but also a little too pristine. It definitely feels a teeny bit staged. It looks like how everyone wants an abandoned house to look, and after years of doing this, it only comes off as inauthentic. I think we've all been chasing the dragon since Red Dress Manor. 

Even that little telephone on the armchair feels a little staged. It certainly invokes the  image of a little old lady sat comfortably while nattering to her mates, but realistically speaking, who keeps a phone there? 

Nevertheless, I still love this place. Some parts of it may be staged, but the overall layout still feels authentic, and there's enough natural decay here to make it interesting.

Onto the kitchen!

Kitchens are never my favourite part of an abandoned house, because they tend to be disgusting, with the stench of leftover food and milk. This is no exception, but thankfully there are no burst pipes making everything soggy. 

But what I do love is all the old photos of Dick and his wife still on the fridge. But that's as exciting as the fridge is. As a word of advice, in an abandoned house we never, ever open the fridge. 

There's a sewing machine on the table. 

There's some cool little tidbits of information on the noticeboard too. 

There's a little note here that seems to indicate that someone went on holiday and is getting into baking. 

There's loads of newspaper clippings talking about some farmer who was jailed for cruelty to his animals.

 What confuses me is why these newspaper clippings have been collected here. It's not about Dick or anyone in his family, but he presumably must have known the person.

But even then, people generally collect newspaper clippings of their loved ones successes. This details a man's downward spiral, his wife leaving him for another man in 1994, an accident crushing his leg, and his consequential inability to run his farm leading to his cows dying and him being charged.

This isn't the sort of thing people usually keep on their corkboards. It would be like Queen Elizabeth keeping a scrapbook of all of Prince Andrews headlines over the past five years. It doesn't make any sense. 

I assume at least one of these kids is related to Dick, but their names aren't specified. They'd be adults now. 

Here we have a cute article about foraging for mushrooms. 

Onto the dining room!

The dining room is actually pretty cool, retaining more authenticity than the lounge. There's enough here to give it character, but it's messy enough to look abandoned. And along the back room are boxes of belongings, which indicate that someone did care about this place once, and was taking steps to sort out Dick's things. For some reason, they just stopped. 

There's some paintings dotted around, which are pretty cool. It seems someone in the family was a bit of an artist. 

It's time to head upstairs! 

As with the Dining Room, all of the boxes in the bedrooms seem to indicate that an effort was made to clear the place out, but for whatever reason, they gave up. 

This magazine is dated 1992 and the cover promises to tell us how celebrities lost their virginity. 

Do people actually read these things with genuine interest? How can we judge the younger generation for spending all their time on Tiktok when adults in the 1990s were reading this? I guess brain rot content has always been a thing. 

Here we have some issues of Private Eye from the 1980s. 

The bedrooms have a wonderful balance of decay and abandonment. There are still ornaments above the doors, but the wallpaper is peeling and there's mould all over the walls. 

There's still bedding on the bed. 

The fact that there are two beds in one room is pretty interesting. I did wonder if two children shared one room, but the one bed is definitely giving me more "man of the house" vibes. 

There's a family photo on a card here. The card says that this is a rare photo of the family together, making a point that Dick is also included! I'm guessing he's the older chap on the left next to the woman in white. Presumably everyone in the image is related to him, but the text would indicate that the family very rarely get together, and that Dick himself is the more reclusive of the bunch. Do they all live far away? Was there a feud that made things awkward? Was he just really busy? We may never know. 

What I do know is that old Dick is famous! I recognise him from the TV!

(screenshot courtesy of the BBC, 2013)

The Dick on TV has the exact same first name and surname, and a similar enough head for me to assume he's the same guy. And he's pretty easy to research. He was born in 1942, and began a career in the railway industry in 1959, working his way up the ladder and becoming a project manager in Liverpool. He pops up in newspapers throughout the 1970s for overseeing the creation of Liverpool's railway network. That's quite impressive. 

Following his trip to Australia in 1988, he became a project manager at Kings Cross, and his career took him down to London. The screenshot above is from 2013, where he's criticising the proposed "HS2" train from London to Birmingham, saying that Stratford Station, with its two unused platforms, would be a more viable one to use than Euston, because Euston is already congested to the point of absurdity.

But this muddles the narrative somewhat because I don't think he's dead. So why is this house abandoned? 

The card gives his wife the name "Carol," which is interesting because all of the urbex kids say that her name was Christine. The only evidence they provide seems to be paperwork signed with the initial "C." Perhaps Christine is the only female name beginning with C that they could think of. 

I don't know what she did for a living, but documents from 1995 reveal that she had an overdraft limit of £15,000. That's absolutely bonkers.  

The newspaper is dated 1998. 

Next to the bedroom is a dressing room. 

If Dick is still alive, this makes very little sense. Why is this house like this? I know he's rich and can afford a whole new house, but surely that doesn't cause all of this to become meaningless?

Some additional searching online revealed a document from 2006 where Dick actually requested planning permission to demolish this house and build a new one. Evidently this didn't happen, so maybe he just thought "fuck it" and abandoned the house to pursue his developmental ambitions elsewhere. 

Check out all the shoes still in their little shoe bags. 

And over here we have a little make-up area next to a shower. 

It's pretty cool. It's very rare that I find a bedroom that has its own ensuite dressing area. But check out that ceiling!

It's only a matter of time before that comes crashing down. 

There's another little side room that seems to have been a study. It's got loads of books crammed onto the shelves.

And check it out! Dick has a certificate for completing a safety management program for British Rail in 1991. It's definitely the same guy from the TV!

And in this room, quite intriguingly, we also have some porn, which I had to censor appropriately. I'm personally not bothered, but I know other people might be. I'm more intrigued by the type of porn. This guy is full-on pissing in the woman's mouth. 

I know some people in the urbex world get all "teehee we found porn" like it's something edgy, but I really don't see the big deal. If I'm honest, I don't even think this is his. I know some urbexers actually plant porn in abandoned houses for clickbait. It happens all the time. But if it is his, who cares?

The women in the magazine are adults, and in a world ran by nonces, where we're coming to learn that everyone we've ever voted for has either been involved in child trafficking or known about it and done nothing, this is totally fine. If anything it's a breath of fresh air... in between big gulps of piss. 

I love the orange and green decor and tiled fireplace in this bedroom.

And this room is situated directly above the lounge downstairs, also having a pretty cool fireplace and amazing corner window. I would love it if this was my bedroom. And check out the ivy reaching in! This is where the Jumanji vibe makes sense. 

There's a couple of model planes placed on the bed. But check this out!

Retro games! My camera didn't focus because it is slowly dying, and probably will conk out completely at the worst possible moment. But right now, who cares? We have vintage video games! This is such an amazing find.

There's some George Orwell and Agatha Christie on the bookshelf. 

And look! Vintage Lord of the Rings! These editions are from the 1970s. 

There's also some paperwork here relating to railway infrastructure. 

Now onto the best part of any abandoned building, the bathroom!

Still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs. 

It's time to head up another level.

Things get increasingly cluttered upstairs. It seems that a lot of stuff was just dumped up here.

There's a lot of vintage toys, likely left by Dick and Carol's children, who would now be in their fifties.  

There's a few old Beanos from the 1970s that look like someone has propped them up for a photo. It wasn't me. I don't change anything. This was whoever was here before me.

There seems to be a bedroom up here in the attic, which is pretty cool. It looks like someone has been squatting up here. 

Lastly, there's a bathroom in the attic too. 

And that's all I've got for the Jumanji House. 

What a weird place! I'm genuinely intrigued by why it's abandoned. If the owner is still alive and seemingly rich, then why is this house just derelict and rotting away? He must know about it, because recent council meetings talk about urban explorers, and how they're trying to contact the owner in London to secure the premises. Evidently nothing has come of that. 

Maybe he is dead.

Abandoned houses are intriguing but they aren't my favourite type of urbex. Mainly because they're literally everywhere and it gets repetitive. The things that do lure me out are the things that are different and quirky, and I'll be covering something that fits that description soon enough. Although my next blog will be military stuff. 

In the meantime, if you like my blogs and want to stay updated, then I don't know how to help you. Social media is an algorithmic hellscape that doesn't show people the output from the people that they choose to follow, unless those people sacrifice their integrity with engagement bait, or pay whichever rich nonce owns the website in question. Neverthefuckingless, I am on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Being on these platforms is practically self harm at this point, so help me out. Come over to Bluesky, Vero and Cara! Bluesky is exactly what Twitter should be, and the latter two are what Instagram should be. They just need people to go over and populate it. Let's make the internet fun again. Leave the grumpy old people to their obvious data mining operation disguised as social media. 

Anyway, that's all I've got today. Thanks for reading!