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Comment by tricky | Hacker News Reader

There is an extensive network of caves under my city that were used by beer breweries in the 1800's to store beer. They are all but inaccessible, and, at the time, kind of a myth. Most people didn't believe they still existed. I was fascinated by this and I compiled as much information as I could find on my personal website in the early 2000's. One day I received an email, "do you want to go into the caves? I know someone who can get us in. Meet us at 1am at XXXXXX - bring flashlights, old boots, and $50 to pay the tour guide."

Me, being young and always up for an adventure, showed up and it was awesome. These were legit spelunker urban explorers who knew how to pick locks. We got into the caves and it was crazy. Best part is I didn't get murdered.

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As soon as I read this, I knew it was St. Louis.

A former co-worker used to have a shop on Cherokee Street about 15 years ago. He told me that a neighboring building had access to the caves through the basement, though its owner was too afraid to explore it.

Could that have been across from what is now Earthbound Beer? If so, they hand-dug all the debris out of the cave and you can pretty easily get a tour. The owner said the cave under the cave is off limits b/c they almost ran out of air while exploring it.

It probably was. It was definitely on the north side of the street and west of Jefferson, so that would be about right.

Check out the book "Lost Caves of St. Louis" - it even contains a map of the caves.

> Best part is I didn't get murdered.

I was almost going to say this sounds crazy dangerous and more like a trap, but 15 years ago I would have done the same and probably came out safe.

I don't know what changed, it feels like things are getting more dangerous, but unsure if it's perception, or the truth.

"Things" are objectively not more dangerous, in fact quite the opposite.

Overall things are much safer, but contact by scammers online (online scams in general) is much more a thing now than it was then. There was a turning point in the mid-late aughts for me where the level of trustworthiness of random anonymous online contacts took a dive.

Sounds like a sad story. I’m sorry to hear that

This is my feeling as well. For some reason online community feels more "trustable" in the early 2000s. That is definitely NOT true today.

What's funny about this is at the time I most trusted my online friends people who weren't terminally online felt much more vocal about online predators and scammers. Now that everyone is terminally online they don't seem to be as worried.

Perception (maybe you just have more information!), and having more to lose, personally, as you get older.

> having more to lose, personally, as you get older

Or, as an extension of that, having others tightly depending on your continued existence and well-being.

I think it's perception mostly.

In 2000 when some random guy asked a 13yo "hey wanna cyber" the answer was "lol ur a creep", today they'd call the police and there would be newspaper articles how Whatsapp is failing to protect our youth from online predators.

People just seemed to worry a lot less about the internet 20 years ago.

It's amazing how I'd never heard the word "spelunk" before today, and now in the span of the last few hours, I've heard it multiple times in three different contexts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion#Working_Mem...

It's the word I use for exploring unfamiliar (and potentially scary) parts of a codebase

I take it you don’t play video games either. Spelunky was a pretty popular Indy game back in the day. Named after, you guessed it, spelunking. I first learned the word from “Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego” back in the 90s. I had to ask my parents what it meant.

There's also an old NES game called Spelunker.

This comic is my first memory of the word https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1986/08/07

Yes but my experience with WITWICS predates the NES for me.

First time I heard it in English! Your comment made me want to dig deeper... It looks like it comes from the Latin "spelunca", meaning "cave"

Curiously, in Portuguese we have "espelunca" which is more commonly used as a synonym for a seedy, shady place -- and now I know why!

in german "Spelunke" is used for a seedy, shady bar

And another fun bit of trivia: in the animated series “The Seven Deadly Sins”, one of the characters owns and operates a somewhat suspicious bar in a remote mountain cave.

Seems there may be a cross-culture notion of caves and sketchy bars having similar level of… ah, “shadiness”. Makes some sense, as I’m typing this out. The dark is where (both literally and figuratively) shady things go down, and it’s hard to get much darker than a cave, so “Spelunke” seems a fitting name.

Same case for "spelunka" in polish

Have you heard of the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion

No, but now I'm seeing it everywhere!

Ha! Only thing missing from this is: “Bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed.”

I have only done this once before.

Alas, I have done this many times. I'm still alive, so I suppose fortune has smiled on me.

Did you document any part of it on your blog? Or was it just a personal memory for you alone? Either way, fucking dope.

i did. It is really old so the writing is very cringe... search cherokee cave tour and my username to find it.

I found it!

It's not cringy - I thoroughly enjoyed it! Out of curiosity, were you able to verify the firefighter story?

Edit: I've removed the link.

Glad you enjoyed it!

And, no, i never did verify the firefighter story.

So, I looked into the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's archive (1874 to present) in the hope of solving this mystery, but could not find anything. However, I did find a rather fascinating article titled "A Morning in the Cave" that was published on 28 July 1996. If anyone is affiliated with an academic institution, they can read it on ProQuest.

There is a free OCR version available here:

Page 7: https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/142619929/?terms=%22cher...

Unfortunately, I could not find the page 8 clipping on newspapers.com.

Edit: I found the page 8 clipping - https://www.newspapers.com/clip/25694845/the-world-beneath-1...

It looks like this was part of a larger Sunday piece titled "The World Beneath". You can find all six clippings on r22tycoon's newspapers.com account at https://www.newspapers.com/clippings/?user=4850847%3Ar22tyco...

what? this is amazing, I haven't seen that article. I was just able to pull the article's text up for free via the St. Louis County Library. Thank you! if I figure out how to find individual pages, i will let you know.

>Me, being young and always up for an adventure, showed up and it was awesome. These were legit spelunker urban explorers who knew how to pick locks. We got into the caves and it was crazy. Best part is I didn't get murdered.

Sure Cave Murder Tour Guide, sure

There is a system of subterranean galleries under my city also. It's closed to the public and I planned some time ago with some guys to explore a part of it. We were too lazy to do it and now I regret it a bit.

From my local cave clan:

When it rains, no drains.

This reminds me the movie Barbarian.

Cincinnati?

are there caves there? seems like a road trip is in order

Over-the-Rhine?

Is this also a thing in Cinci?

Yep. Lots of underground brewery-related stuff. And an abandoned never-finished subway (now hosting a massive water main and a ton of fiber cables).

> Best part is I didn't get murdered.

Pretty important if you ask me

Great opportunity of a viral video and digital glory and fame missed by not becoming murdered just a little, you, lazy alive being. Fake it at least with some homemade ketchup. The algorithm says: booring, you need to commit more with the channel.

;-)

My old blog was all for laughs, vanity and stupid terminal tricks. Not much lost.

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