Greg Brick

The book was a dull read from the start and never got better. I was expecting tales of adventure and was let down. I was expecting expert scholarly writing and got endless propaganda aimed to destroy everyone the author had an axe to grind with. It was rambling and incoherent. It focused too much on personal issues the trespassing author had with fellow trespassers, and not nearly enough with the subject matter. The writing style was sophmoric at best. I would recomend it solely for the moderate amount of factual content only.… (meer)

I had looked forward to reading this book, as an ardent armchair urban explorer and follower of the oddities of local Twin Cities history. I have followed the vibrant Twin Cities urban exploration scene for years online (while having not had, so far, the opportunity to visit any of these underground cites personally) and I was eager to explore vicariously and in more detail the tunnels, caves, and passages that honeycomb the region through Greg Brick's work. I had read about the controversy surrounding Brick's ill conduct regarding other explorers, which gave me some pause, but decided to read it first and come to my own conclusion, gaining at least some new insight into the history of the subterranean world of the region. While insight was provided, Brick's bitterness and sense of superiority towards others makes it less enjoyable than its premise suggests. Sadly, in the end the book was a bit of a disappointment, no matter how interesting I found the subject matter.

Greg Brick definitely shows his strengths as a researcher and “Subterranean Twin Cities” remains an important reference work detailing the natural and social histories of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, and how these cities came to have extensive and mysterious networks of caverns, tunnels, and sewers buried beneath them. I especially found the history of mushroom farming and blue cheese manufacture in city caves to be fascinating, as well as the various legends and folklore surrounding specific subterranean places in the metropolitan area.

Unfortunately, while Brick certainly painted his explorations of the Twin Cities sewers in all their disgusting glory, and I applaud him for it, much of his anecdotes and writing style in general fell flat for me, particularly in comparison to the rollicking online accounts by the “Action Squad” and others. The writing style just was not as gripping as the interesting facts behind them, and while Brick might be a great researcher and explorer of hidden places, he is not an engaging writer. This is not helped by the aura of smugness that clings to many of his interactions with others throughout the book, particularly the younger urban explorers; in spite of engaging in questionable activities himself over the years (including attempting to drain a pond inside a St. Paul cave in order to explore deeper through a surreptitious excavation) he definitely looks down upon others as not “scholars” and not fit to explore while he was a certified researcher. No matter that, more often than not, no one was truly authorized to plum the sewers for the simple passion of exploration, Brick included. In spite of these shortcomings, “Subterranean Twin Cities” is still a useful reference work for Twin Cities history, and well worth reading for anyone who is interested in the topic, though it is a shame it is a not a little less bitter.… (meer)