Monday, June 9, 2008

New York moment...

So, I was walking to meet some friends on Thursday, going from my building on 45th and 9th through Times Square to get to Bryant Park when I noticed a huge crowd of people standing at the corner looking up. I thought it was kind of weird, maybe just a group of tourists, so I kept walking. The next corner I got to there was another group of people standing on the corner looking up. I stopped. Looked at 2 other corners in that intersection, all were crowded with people looking up. I attempted to look in their same direction, didn't see anything and asked a woman "What's everyone looking at?" But she didn't speak English and ignored me, so I just kept walking. On the next street there were even more people, about 200 crowded along the street looking up in the air, and at this point some were even pointing! I looked up again and saw 5 helicopters hovering in a circle. I kept walking until I heard someone speaking English and then I asked them, "What's everyone looking at?" To which they replied, "There's a man climbing the side of The New York Times building!" Sure enough, there was a guy in red pants scaling the side of a skyscraper! I watched for about 5 minutes, and he finally reached the top of the 52 story building (that's what, around 600 feet?). It was intense, he was so high and you couldn't see any equipment, he was free climbing all the way. Then he was finally yanked off the wall by the police right when he reached the top. And everyone cheered.

The craziest part? That was the SECOND time someone had scaled the building that day. Crazy, right? The first guy was an actual famous climber speaking out against Global warming. The second was some guy from Brooklyn speaking out against Malaria (?). Go figure. Both were apprehended and taken immediately to a psych hospital for evaluations.

3 comments:

Britt said...

wow, you were there? CRAZY!

Unknown said...

psyc hospitals -- lol

Elizabeth said...

just because of that i'm going to stop warming the planet and not get malaria. thank you climbers!