CoffeeGuru: Bethlehem Pennsylvania, Embodying the Poetry Of Decay

Introduction- What does this week's post have to do with Coffee? Nothing at all! I'll return to coffee related posts next week. I was inspired by my visit to Bethlehem PA and want to share my thoughts and photographs. I hope you enjoy them.

A few days ago I traveled to Bethlehem, PA to pour wine at a food and wine festival at the Sand's Casino. Driving to the casino I passed through the town that had seen better days. Small, dilapidated houses line the streets, leading me to the top of a hill where suddenly below there's a huge factory taking up most of the horizon. It's an impressive sight, filled with multiple buildings and smoke stacks... a vast behemoth. I could immediately tell this monstrous mill has seen better days. Altough the blast furnaces stopped working back in 1992 and the plant folded in bankruptcy nine years later, a large portionof the facility still stands, a rusty shell of it's formar self. It's a vast complex covering over 4.5 acres.

The $700 million dollar Sands Casino hotel and convention complex stands on the site of the former ore pit of the old Bethlehem Steel Plant. That was my destination for the day. A wine and food festival was being held inside their event center and I was tasked to pour for a few hours. After setting up I slipped away to check out the casino floor. The Sands opened in 2009 and the hallway smelled like it hasn't been cleaned since then. I went up the escalators and into the main casino.

Altough it was Saturday afternoon, very few people were in the casino itself. The place seemed to reek of flop-sweat and desperation. A few people, mostly senior citizens and asians, listlessly fed the slots, chained smoked and stared blankly at the slot machines. I left after a few minutes.

Walking back to the event center, I passed by an indoor outlet mall, about a hundred yards from the casino floor. There were multiple shops filled with clothing, jewlery, electronics and the like. Not a living soul was shopping. It felt something apocalyptic happened and reminded me of the decay just outside the building. After four hours pouring wine, the day's responsibilities were finished and I left the building to explore the remains of the mill.

The mill itself takes up several city blocks and there's two complexes with a bisecting street. On the one side the mill looks like a vast ship with rust towers, pipes and walkways. The middle of the mill has been torn down, making way for a street, the casino, local PBS station, bandshell, and museum.

What was once the rolling mill resides on the other side of the street. Both sides are protected by fencing which I suppose protects the public from any sudden collapses or falling debris.

It's a bizarre sight. The whole thing reminded me of what I imagine Chernobyl or a factory abandoned after a disaster would look like after decaying for a few decades. Although on the one hand it's depressing.... like an ancient momento mori it reminds me of death, on the other there's a certain beauty to this slow distruction that aestically captivates. This fascination of the "Poetry of Decay" or "Ruin Porn" has been an inspiration for artists and writers for many decades. But what I found particularly interesting is the irony of the slow decay inside the casino contrasting with nature's decay just outside the windowless rooms.