http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City

Kowloon Walled City. This city was utterly lawless. It was situated in Hong Kong and neither the Chinese nor the Britons claimed jurisdiction, making it the perfect sanctuary for criminals, thieves and generally wicked bastards of all kinds. A handful of buildings grew upwards and outwards and into each other until the original streets became tunnels and newer streets were pretty much elevated hallways. It sort of grew, organically, into a single fourteen story monolith.

Its beyond anything I’ve ever read about. And it was REAL. Thats the amazing thing. The entire city was controlled by the goddamn Triads for chrissakes. People did whatever they did and without being forced to and built a goddamn city! And apparently they got along good enough to make it GROW. There was industry and churches and stores and livelihood of all kinds. It boggles the mind.

Even when there wasn’t an actual concrete ceiling above you, there was bound to be a canopy of cables, pipes, trash, drying laundry, and corpses missing vital organs; making natural light scarce, except for the top levels. Streets were eternally flooded in shadow and had to be illuminated with fluorescent lights.

The population density was about twice that of NYC and everybody stole their utilities! Delightful!

I know it’s a naive thing to say, but its a damn shame that this place doesn’t exist anymore. I don’t know what life was like for the people here, I’ve read a few contradictory accounts of how bad/not-bad it was, but I think the world is a hell of a lot more amazing when, somewhere in it, you have an honest to god city of thieves.

I mean, from a logistic point of view it’s incredible. OK, say you lived here. Now imagine you just got a new apartment across town and you have to move your stuff. I don’t care how much Dunkin Donuts iced coffee you got, I’m not reluctantly helping you move. Imagine schlepping a mattress through that mess.

Well its all gone now. Its become mythology. They leveled it and put a park there. How disappointing. Even though I’m not a kick boxer, and probably would’t last long in those shadowed corridors, I’d have loved to see it.