In general, get acquainted - the roof of the Plant (Combine/Boiler Room), which is no longer there

I started making this drawing back in October, when it became known that it was being demolished
To pay tribute, so to speak, and for myself as a keepsake

Well, I'll tell you a little about the Combine and art (you have to read a lot, I want to be nostalgic, sorry):

It's a summer evening in 2017, when we climbed onto the roof for the first time
Due to the fact that there were no such buildings that at least somewhat reached the height of the Combine, the sky seemed so low that it was scary to get up
Therefore, the first minutes on the roof I did not walk, but crawled
(The emotions of that moment are associated with the chorus of the song Through the cellar door - Lanterns on the lake, so I will not)

Speaking of the landscape: from there you could see the whole of our small town and much further, all the forests and fields and even neighboring villages, it was interesting to watch how trains run
A huge flock of jackdaws also settled on the roof

That day we just sat on the roof, I found my favorite place: a piece of moss, in the place where the roof covering is stripped to stone

Then we went up there more than once before the end of the summer and we were not alone
At that time, for some reason, the Plant began to be in demand (or so it seemed to me)
On the roof, you could often see several groups of people, sometimes we even crossed paths while climbing up

In general, there was a peaceful atmosphere upstairs, people were sitting, admiring the landscape, talking and joking about something of their own, but it was further up the roof, and we came to our place not far from the entrance

Our leisure was not much different, except that we probably carried food with us more often than others
And Katya (my friend) also had a favorite activity: walking along the edge of the fucking roof, along a ledge of bricks
The funny thing is that on the other side, at a distance of less than 100 meters, there is a police station

In short, there was a lot of everything: we somehow met some guy who crawled from the first floor, to our roof, to the smell of food
And then we threw a salad in a bag from the roof to a Egor (another friend of mine) who was waiting for us downstairs outside (spoiler: the salad did not survive)

Fun took place not only on the roof, but also in the building itself

It was a box, roughly speaking
The first floor was the darkest and there were only pillars supporting the second floor, but there was one place where the whole fun took place - a hefty concrete block on which newspapers and cardboard boxes were spread out
There were mostly younger people hanging out there
Their favorite activity was to light bonfires there
On the other side of the ground floor, behind the stairs, there was a one-story room with a corridor and some offices

There were two ways to the second floor: by stairs and by a concrete slab that fell to the first floor, along with several similar slabs, but unlike them, this slab did not fall completely, but remained tilted
A large sinkhole was formed at this place and this is one of the few places from where light got to the first floor, the rest of the places are large entrances to the building

The second floor was the lightest and most spacious, there were large piles of bricks in the middle, there was black sand in one place, and one slab fell off on the far wall and a large window was formed
Holes in the floor started from this floor, so it was a bad idea to mindlessly run around
I was told how one guy involuntarily took a shortcut to the first floor, through one of these holes and hit his head hard (everything is fine with him, he got off with fright)

The other 2 floors were located on the sides, they were just long strips of floor, along the large windows
And the higher you climb on them, the more holes in the floor and moss become on the floor

There were 2 stairs, only one of them led to the roof, the other ended on the fourth floor
The second staircase was not completely intact. The rest are beams leading to the roof
It was necessary to climb them
With our feet we walked along the lower beam, and with our hands we held on to the upper one so as not to fall

There was another roof, it was on the 3rd or 4th floor and naturally was lower and smaller, it was a continuation of the floor, only on the street
It was possible to get there only through a hole in the corner, into which you had to literally crawl

We were one of the last to visit the roof
The summer of 2017 was the last period when there were so many people there

The winter from 17 to 18 was very wet and because of the moisture, the building began to collapse

A slab fell down, on which it was possible to climb to the second floor, and several more slabs from the second floor fell on the healthy concrete block and leveled it to the ground
In the spring we discovered that the beams on the roof had fallen down (or they were cut down), about a year later someone came up with the idea of climbing onto the roof with a ladder that was thrown between floors, but we did not dare to take such a desperate step

From that moment on, we almost did not go to the Plant, and if we did, then a couple of times

This spring, an abandoned swimming pool has already been demolished, and in the fall they decided to demolish the Combine

It has been standing there since 1979 (In any case, this date was laid out with a brick on the wall), before there was a boiler room that heated the whole city, and inside there were large boilers with fuel oil (by the way, there were small pits/tanks with fuel oil next to the Plant)
It seems to me that during this time the Plant has already managed to become a kind of symbol of the city and it has somehow become empty without it


Now only ruins remain on the site of the plant
We can only hope that the same fate will not befall another building that we walked through in 2018


We won't forget🖤