When I first started exploring in 2015, I was pretty anal about following the rules. I never left trash, wrote my name on anything, and I never used overt tools like crowbars to gain entry into spots. I was very excited to be apart of a hobby where there were others who enjoyed exploring these kinds of places too. I was quick to join our local community forums and I was super into filming things for my YouTube channel. I looked up to people like the Proper People, ExploringWithJosh (I cringe thinking about that now), and other popular channels that posted exploring related content. I wanted to post content too but give a back story into the history of a building and how it got to this point in its life but soon I realized that wasn’t in the best interest for the community.

When I first started, I was so excited that I trusted too easily, shared to much, and fell short of protecting these places I professed to love and care for. I was so blinded by the idea of making a living from exploring that I didn’t realize that I was leaving so much damage in my wake. How many spots did I cause to get tagged? Get burned? I don’t think I’ll ever know for sure but I’m glad to have developed that self-awareness to see my past actions and ask myself, “am I being the dick?”. Looking back, I’m glad I established a stable boring life that gets me excited to tinker and poke around on my off time. I think this is what allowed me to take a step back and think about who I was interacting with online, reflect on my past actions, and allowed me to be more reserved about who I explored and shared things with.

When I got out of that YouTube phase around 2017, I surrounded myself with the local community. I pissed a lot of people off in the beginning just because of my ideas that everything should be open and shared. Looking back, I’m glad that they were willing to give me a chance to improve and learn and I wish more communities were like that; most underground communities are not as forgiving and as willing to teach as our community in KC was. Sticking around the community long enough I witnessed people using tools in creative ways; using socket sets and drills to make crafty entries, climbing on pipes and electrical boxes to bypass door alarms, and slipping latches to gain entry.

While witnessing the crafty side of the underground, I also witnessed the more overt entry methods by members of what I refer to as the “Entry-by-Force Explorers”. This one guy, a popular instagram explorer in our city, wielded a catspaw in such a way that I started to look at him as his methods as if they were okay, just because other people accepted him and loved him at the time. I think it was the encouragement of those actions that led me to buy my first pry bar and proceed to look at it as if it were a key to the city. I used my trusty catspaw for years; I wasn’t ashamed of breaking it out and breaking open whatever door we came across that night.

Fast forward to these past 2 years, I went exploring with a bunch of Instagram explorers that I knew through a friend. This one guy from Texas was trying to use all of these other methods to get the roof door open but I was getting impatient.

“I could get this door open in 5 seconds with my catspaw!” I thought to myself.

We eventually all decided to just go ahead and do it after like 30 minutes of messing with this door and ended up having a great time up there. Everyone got some great photos and I had a couple ice cold beers up there. But something felt off to me after that night. Interacting with this explorer that was anti-property-damage really started to get the gears turning in my head.

In years past I taught myself how to hack and bypass certain access control systems in these buildings to gain consistent access; why were these mechanical doors any different?

“Surely I can teach myself better entry methods than just being a caveman,” I pondered.

I never realized that exact thought would be stepping stone for me to encourage others to do better. That is when I decided to found ExploreUndercover and create the Beacon Ethos, basing the organization off of the core values the underground community had when I first started exploring. I wanted a lighthouse I could look to, a shining beacon for all explorers to encourage being stealthy and crafty again.

Since founding ExploreUndercover, I’ve crowbarred one thing open under the justification I made in my head of “there was no other way”. The truth was no one else that night got a chance to try another way. I’ve reflected on that night since and I look back at myself in disgust. I needed to improve immediately and leave the safety net of my pry bars at home to avoid the drunken temptations of laziness.

After my last big pry, this guy joined our forum out of nowhere and displayed some crazy skill unlike anyone I had ever met before. He was like me in a lot of ways, he loved to learn about different technologies and find exploits to use pertinent to exploring. We immediately clicked and before he had to leave town, we went all over downtown doing some buildings neither of us had ever done before. He was raking commercial locks open with a diamond pick, something I had no idea was even possible. He also had a lot of great crafty methods on how to modify things to allow for easier entry, while also keeping it covert to vigilant eyes.

I’ll never forget a conversation I had with him in which he professed to have crowbarred anything open and I was so star struck and inspired by that. Exploring whatever I want without being a big douchebag to the property owners and ruining it for later explorers? How did I allow myself to stray so far away from what was morally right? After spending a little money building out my entry kit, and doing more research, I’ve become a force to be reckoned with. Bypassing doors with simple tricks, all while not leaving the slightest bit of evidence I was ever there. All of these incredible revelations really pushed me to transition into a type of Urban Explorer that I’m proud to be.

Since then, I’ve really put a lot of thought into ExploreUndercover and figuring out where it should stand and how I can use the platform to help guide other explorers towards this better way I’ve found. I hoping future anecdotes shared by myself and others will only help further ExploreUndercover’s message and encourage others to pick up some of the methods we plan to share in the coming months and years.

To all of those who have influenced me through the years and lit that torch inside of me to better myself and lead the way, thank you. <3