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Inside the Secret World of Urban Exploration

By day they work as computer programmers and stock boys and academics. But at night they are known as urban explorers. The Brooklyn Bridge, London’s Shard, Notre Dame—each structure is an expedition waiting to happen. Each sewer, each scaffold, each off-limits site is a puzzle to solve. No wonder the cops are after them. Matthew Power embeds with the space invaders and sees a world—above- and belowground—that the rest of us never knew existed.

The Murder Case of Anthony Smith

Some of his friends and teammates remember Anthony Wayne Smith as a strange and volatile guy, prone to paranoia and outrageous lies. Others recall a gentle giant who gave to charity and mentored kids. None would have predicted that he’d retire from football to a life of arson, torture, and murder—but that’s exactly what prosecutors allege. As the former defensive end (57 1/2 career sacks) waits trial for four killings over a nine-year span, Kathy Dobie unravels a life that made his violence on the field seem like child’s play:

On a cool, drizzly February night in 2003, at one thirty or so in the morning, a police officer cruising down Lincoln Boulevard in Santa Monica spotted flames shooting horizontally out a window of the Simply Sofas furniture showroom. From overhead he could hear popping sounds as the fire leapt up to eat at the power lines in the street outside. Inside, the blaze spread quickly, engulfing upholstery and wood, roaring up through the roof and melting the metal skin right off the loading dock door.

The fire was almost immediately deemed suspicious. Firefighters reported the strong smell of gasoline, and when investigators were able to get inside the building the next day, they found three “firebombs”—five-gallon plastic water jugs cut off at the neck, stuffed with paper and filled with gasoline. The evidence was gathered and sent to the lab.

Five months later, Sergeant Robert Almada, the police investigator for Santa Monica’s Arson Squad Task Force, walked into the interview room at the police station on Main Street with every reason to believe things were going his way. He had motive—revenge—and he had the kind of physical evidence almost never left behind in a fire: thirty pieces of gasoline-soaked mail, each addressed to the suspect or his wife. (In the heat of the blaze, the firebombs had caved in on themselves, preserving the magazines and catalogs and envelopes inside.) That suspect, one Anthony Smith, six feet four inches and over 320 pounds, a 36-year-old former defensive end for the L.A./Oakland Raiders, dwarfed the little table in the room.

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The Doctor, the CIA, and the Blood of Bin Laden

The doctor who helped track down Bin Laden is now in prison. Matthieu Aikins travels to Pakistan to investigate:

The Big House no longer looms above the neighborhood outside Abbottabad; the military razed the compound last spring, and in its place lies an empty field. But its presence lingers indelibly on the quiet streets, where residents stop and eye strange cars warily. In the center of the plot, where the living room might have been, a busted water line burbles freely out into the grass, and women from the poorer houses come in their colorful robes to collect clean water from what was once Bin Laden’s personal supply.

As Nader and I neared the site, we saw a black late-model Toyota Hilux with an extended cab idling by the road. I noticed Nader tense as we cruised past it. We drove around the corner, parked on a side street, and then walked down the same path Afridi had used to approach Bakhto and Amna as they waited, over a year before, at the door of Bin Laden’s house.

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So You Think You Can Paint? Welcome to ArtPrize

Every September, a quiet, churchy city in the American heartland undergoes a Technicolor transformation. Art pops up everywhere—paintings, giant insect statues, experimental happenings. Sidewalks and parks turn into open-air museums; taverns become galleries. A huge pot of money is dangled before the artists, $250,000(!) for the grand prize. And here’s the best part: You know who gets to pick the winner? You do. Matthew Power reports:

By September 29, 370,309 votes had been cast, and DeVos held a press conference to announce the ten finalists. The public would have six days to choose the $250,000 winner. Among the chosen: Rusty, the giant found-object puppy; the even more giant welded-steel praying mantis; the Tim McGraw–surfer Jesus mosaic; Gerald Ford; a crying octopus carved out of driftwood; a collection of chain-saw-carved bears; and a living statue of the sort you see in the piazzas of Europe, a dude dressed like a construction worker, covered in copper body paint and standing atop a scaffold.

The general critical consensus was that Rick DeVos’s grand experiment in letting public opinion determine the outcome had yielded up a torrent of kitsch—the “crazy crap” he’d asked for. Twitter was not kind. “Looks like the DeVos family is going to be seriously overpaying for some bad art. #artprize.” “Before announcing the #ArtPrize Top 10, Rick DeVos said it is not about the Top 10. I now understand why he said that.”

I found Paul Amenta in the dark and empty Site:Lab a few days later. Not a single Site:Lab piece had made the cut. “Don’t even get me started,” he said, shaking his head. “I had this moment where I had to switch gears, ‘cause if I didn’t I would go crazy.” He had dedicated months of his life to preparing the space and persuading artists to come exhibit. I asked him if he’d try again, and he laughed bitterly. “I couldn’t get the artists to commit to a thing like this, given what happened with the voting.”

This was exactly what he meant when he talked about the public fucking it up. He told me when DeVos had made the top ten announcement, the skies over Grand Rapids had blackened, and a windstorm with thunder and lightning had swept through the town. “It was freaky. Like God was registering disapproval or something.”

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