Veronica Velasquez was born in Colombia, and grew up in New York City and Bogota. In addition to directing, producing, and editing her own projects, she's the creative director of all the graphics you see at Madison Square Garden.
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Interview
What do you do when you’re not hunting for missile silos?
I’ve been working at Madison Square Garden, where I do all the graphics for the Knicks and Rangers. I’m also working on my own side project, a website called The Show and Tell Show where people upload video content about themselves. The idea is that people all over the world will upload what they’re into and share it like a show-and-tell project. I’m still working out the technical side of it. Hopefully by the end of the year, the site will be live.
How did you get involved with the project?
I used to be a video editor at VICE and traveled with them to Colombia, where I’m from, to work on stories there. Santi, an old friend and colleague, heard about this missile silo story Palladium was doing and called me about it.
What did you think when they first said you’d be exploring these huge underground bases built to withstand a nuclear attack?
I’d read about different aspects of the Cold War, but I’d never really gotten into missile silos. It almost felt as though I’d sort of made it up in my head – I got this idea that there were people who live underground. Then I got there and it was really the case. There are people living underground. And these are their homes. It’s a little bit of a sci-fi movie.
Did they remind you of anything you had seen before?
They were not like anything I’d ever seen. It was a little bit of Mad Max’s Thunderdome mixed with Blade Runner.
What’s it like down there?
It was a really surreal experience. They were made in the 50 and 60s, and they look very Cold War but also apocalyptic. It’s like every spy movie, and at the same time it looks like the end of the world. If the Cold War had actually ignited a missile exchange, it would look like this. It’s very evocative of things that you would fear about the future.
How far underground are these things?
Maybe 300 feet, the exact amount I’m not sure. Sometimes we’d go underground to one chamber and then up to a second, and then down to a third and all around. It was even hard to tell how far from the car we were sometimes. It’s such a strange sense of space. All the stairwells are spiraling down and around. There are no windows. It’s very crazy and creepy--very much like a scary movie. In the first one, there’s like a giant hole in the center, and then the stairs go around this huge pit that drops four or five stories. You just sort of have this wire mesh that keeps you from falling into the center.
What was it like working with Ed, the missile silo real estate agent?
Ed was super cool. He was a teacher before he was a silo real estate agent, and he kind of reminded me of my dad, who’s a university professor. Ed was very didactic–he’d explain things and tell you stories, trying to get you to think about stuff. He’s done a lot of research, and he’s even met the soldiers who would have potentially pushed the buttons [to launch the missiles]. He’s very sweet and very nice—not the type of person you imagine living in a missile silo. He’s a total hippy. He’s such a trippy guy. His whole thing is trying to change the energy of the place; because it had the potential for so much destruction. He wanted to change it to a place of love where friends are welcome, and he does a good job of it.
What was the landscape around the silos like?
In both places [Washington and Kansas] it was kind of barren. It wasn’t even like…a cow pasture. Just barren land, lots of little hills, a farm here and there. Very spread out. It’s very easy to get lost.
Was it hard to find the silos?
Yeah! It took us so long to find the silos. Even with maps, we couldn’t find them. The only one that was a little less inconspicuous was the first one in Washington because the guy had built a ring of trees around the whole property. In Kansas, even when we were driving with Ed to the second silo, he didn’t even know the direct way to get there. There are so many turns and twists in the area. He learned to spot the silo by spotting these big military roads. There are usually just dirt roads, and then every once in a while you see this wide busted up concrete road that might lead to a silo.
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