Rubber Bowl: Abandoned

When I knew I was going to have a few days in Ohio after our recent road trip, I started making a list of abandoned places that I wanted to try to creep on. Ohio has its fair share of abandoned places and I'm constantly mad at myself for not taking advantage of all the Midwest has to offer back when I lived there. I've been determined to make up for lost time, and top of my list was the Rubber Bowl. Built in 1940 as a football stadium for the University of Akron, the Rubber Bowl closed in 2008, and despite plans to renovate it, it currently sits vacant.

In addition to hosting football games, the Rubber Bowl was also a performance venue, hosting the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus as well as concerts by The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead, Simon & Garfunkel and Black Sabbath.

The stadium has a seating capacity of 35,202, and is right next to Derby Downs, home of the annual Soap Box Derby. In fact, the Soapbox Derby was happening at the exact same time we planned on creeping on the stadium, and we were almost deterred by the crowds. I'm so glad we had the courage to go ahead as planned anyway, because the stadium was an absolute post-apocalyptic dream.

We initially went into the interior of the stadium, which doesn't have much left in it except piles of bleachers and other debris. The stadium, striped of its bleachers down to the concrete feels more like the Roman Colosseum than a modern-day arena. It's crazy how big the stadium felt, probably even more so because we were the only ones there. The toilet rooms confused me (so close together!) until JMP pointed out that there were once stalls to separate them from one another (duh).

I'm definitely still a novice when it comes to exploring abandoned places, but I can't imagine finding a place much better than the Rubber Bowl. Abandoned spaces are fascinating to me because of contrasts—seeing a place that was once filled to the brim with people, now completely empty; man-made concrete and steel structures being reclaimed by nature, green crawling and sprouting from every crack. The Rubber Bowl is a perfect example of this, with its evergreen artificial turf looking game-day ready, while the rest of the stadium crumbles around it.