He has done it on Saturday. Previously in 2000 when he tried to climb a 63 storey OUB building, he was arrested at the 23^rd storey. But this time he was cheered. And even lucky draws were held. Times change, Singapore is no exception!

Speaking of NYC, here's an interesting article about 2 people who both, in the same day, July 5th, climbed the New York Times building to protest.  One is the french Spider-Man, Alain Robert and the other, just some bored Brooklyn guy, Renaldo Clarke, protesting Malaria.  Then today, AGAIN, another NY Times climber, protesting (what else?) the war.  And Bush.  And he has his own crazy conspiracy theory, which you can read about here on his fashionably designed website (which I only post b/c of the sheer laughability of it).  You can also check out his new (see: old?) book, with equally fashionable design. 

Note: sarcasm - a sharply ironical taunt; sneering or cutting remark.

updated: Thank you for this, Mr. Martin.  I'm glad we feel the same way.

____________________________________________________________________________

"If he wants to climb something, he can climb the walls inside his jail cell at Rikers.''

- Councilman Peter Vallone

A man scaled the front of the New York Times building in Midtown Manhattan in the predawn darkness early Wednesday — the third time in five weeks that a climber had scaled the one-year-old skyscraper, which is sheathed in thin ceramic rods. After staying on the building for about four hours, the man surrendered to police officers and was arrested around 5:20 a.m.

Unlike the two previous climbers, this one — identified as David Malone, an activist who studies Al Qaeda — did not attempt to make his way to the roof. Instead, he unfurled a banner around the fifth floor of the 52-story building, before climbing a few more stories. Several hours elapsed during which the police appeared to alternate between trying to go after the man and waiting for him to surrender.

Mr. Malone was taken out of the building’s West 40th Street entrance in handcuffs at 5:39 a.m. and placed in an ambulance. He was taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan. The police said charges were pending.

The police received a call at 1:23 a.m. Wednesday alerting them that there was a person scaling the skyscraper, at 620 Eighth Avenue, between 40th and 41st Streets. The authorities closed off Eighth Avenue between 40th and 42nd Streets to traffic, as well as West 41st Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, diverting vehicles onto other streets. Sidewalks below the Times building were closed to pedestrians.

Police officers tried to catch the climber by cutting through a window on the fifth floor of the building, but after having briefly rested at that level, he had already climbed past them.

The climbing episodes have at this point become something of an embarrassment for The Times. On June 5, two men scaled the building, hours apart, reaching the roof before being arrested. The first was Alain Robert, a 45-year-old French stuntman known for climbing tall buildings; the second was Renaldo Clarke, 32, of Brooklyn, who said he wanted to draw attention to the problem of malaria.

At the time, Times officials said they would tighten security and take other precautions to prevent anyone from climbing up the building again.

Now, just over a month later, someone has, yet again.

The Daily News reported on its Web site early Wednesday morning that it had received a call from the latest climber and that he had identified himself as David Malone, 29, of Connecticut, who had dropped out of the University of Michigan to study Al Qaeda.

A police officer subsequently confirmed that Mr. Malone was the climber. What appears to be Mr. Malone’s Web site, called Bin Laden’s Plan, states that Mr. Malone “independently researching bin Laden and publicly advocating the aggressive isolation and destruction of Al Qaeda.” The site goes on to claim that Mr. Malone “has successfully predicted some of the major events of bin Laden’s war” and is now trying to warn of efforts by the terrorist network to goad the United States to invade Pakistan and Iran. (Mr. Malone did not immediately respond to an e-mail message from The Times, sent while he was still on the building, requesting an interview.)

Witnesses said the climber began his ascent near the northern entrance to the building, on West 41st Street, and made his way toward the western entrance, which is on Eighth Avenue, opposite from the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

“I thought he was a worker,” said Michael Pabon, 32, who was outside the bus terminal when he saw the man begin to scale the building. “He turned up to the letter ‘H’ and climbed above it,” Mr. Pabon said, referring to the letter H in the “The” of the New York Times logo, which is painted in giant black letters on the ceramic rods on the Eighth Avenue side of the building.

It was above the “T” in “The” that the climber hung a white banner with red fliers stuck to it. The banner referenced Mr. Malone’s Web site about Mr. bin Laden. Some of the red fliers were also stuck to the windows of various floors in the building as the climber went up.

Witnesses said the climber was using his cellphone repeatedly during his ascent. “He’s some kind of professional,” Mr. Pabon said. “You could see he knows what he’s doing.”

After reaching the 11th floor, Mr. Malone faced out toward the street and talked on his cellphone for several minutes. He then descended to a spot between the ninth and 10th floors. Police officers on the fifth floor had breached a floor-to-ceiling window and some were outfitted with climbing cables and hard hats. A large inflatable cushion had been placed on the sidewalk in front of the main entrance, presumably to save the man if he jumped.

The Times building was designed by the architect Renzo Piano and opened last year. Both Mr. Robert and the second climber also scaled the building using the horizontal ceramic rods that sheath the exterior — and are one of the building’s most distinctive features. The rods are intended to allow sunlight while keeping out heat, helping the building use energy more efficiently.

There is a long history of attention-grabbing stunts at New York skyscrapers. The French stunt artist Philippe Petit walked along a high wire strung between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974, a feat that is the subject of a new documentary, “Man on a Wire.” In 1977, the mountain climber George H. Willig scaled the south tower of the trade center.

In 2006, another stuntman, Jeb Corliss, was arrested after trying to jump off the observation deck of the Empire State Building.

Prosecuting the stuntmen has sometimes proved difficult.

In the most recent cases, Mr. Robert, who climbed the Times building on June 5, faced misdemeanor counts of reckless endangerment, trespassing and graffiti. But on June 12 a grand jury decided to dismiss those charges, though it did allow Manhattan prosecutors to proceed with two counts of disorderly conduct against Mr. Robert. Lawyers for Mr. Clarke, who faced the same charges as Mr. Robert, said they hoped that he, too, would only face disorderly conduct charges.

On June 26, City Council members introduced a bill that would explicitly make it illegal to scale or jump from a building 25 feet or taller.

No environmental activism or political intervention behind today's stunt, though. It's all legal, secure (Robert wore a safety harness) -- and paid for. His 40-minute climb was filmed for a German program called "Unglaublich!" (which NYT translates into "Unbelievable!"). This time, his call-to-action was replaced by a T-shirt with the name of the show.

Why do so many independent acts get turned into promotional vehicles or media opportunities? As our visual landscape gets more and more jampacked with promotional messages, corporations are always on the lookout for the next out-of-the-blue spectacle. And they've got the budgets to monetize these unusual acts.

Does everything and everyone ultimately have a price?

Photo: Arne Dedert/European Press in NYT

Alain Robert made news when he got arrested in New York, NY climbing the 52-story Manhattan building. According to him the night before that he made a trial practicing climbing a building and made out a few meters. He wasn't arrested on his first attempt doing the trial at 2;30 in the morning. Fun huh?! How would you react if you see a person climbing on your window of your apartment building @ 2:30 in the morning. Call 911? He was lucky, it didn't happened to him the first trial.

Alain Robert climbing the building

“What I am hoping is that the government is going to realize that [the fight] on global warming, it’s something very urgent and we [have] until 2009 to [make] the right decision,” he said.

Is it worth it? End up getting arrested?

By the way his next plan is to climb one of the landmark building in Europe.

Friday, authorities in NY charged Robert with four misdemeanor counts for his climb: criminal trespassing in the third degree, reckless endangerment in the second degree, making graffiti and disorderly conduct.

He must have been trying to climb the bars while at the jail, LOL.

[News]

This one really deserves no explanation.  They said "bare hands". 

Source

I might be reading a little too deeply into this, but why does James Barron's New York Times article almost paint the Frenchman in an almost Indiana Jones fashion, while the brotha' from Brooklyn gets written about like he's some kind of lunatic? I obviously don't know the particulars about the police bringing him to Bellevue, but the tone of the article is getting under my skin.

Few hours later, a man from Brooklyn felt envious of the Spiderman, and he too climbed up:

According to news reports and eyewitnesses, Robert had hitched himself up over a glass awning on West 41st Street and began climbing with nothing more than his bare hands and feet. (Designed by Renzo Piano, the horizontally-piped facade which allows maximum use of natural light also seems to function quite well as a ladder. Who'd have thought.) At one point, Robert stopped to unfurl a green fluorescent banner announcing: "Global Warming Kills More People Than a 9/11 Every Week." He then continued climbing.

The NYPD received a 911 call at 11:30am, proceeded to the scene, and arrested Robert when he reached the roof at about 12:22pm. He had scaled the entire building in about 40 minutes.

The 45-year-old environmentalist claims to have climbed over 70 skyscrapers and monuments around the world as a call to action. Robert writes on his website:

I have climbed in New York, as a peaceful way to create support for far greater and urgent action from world leaders on global warming. Emissions are still climbing. So am I...

World leaders meet again next month at the G8 conference in Japan. YOU can help make sure they get the message...

Some are calling Robert insane. And his Spiderman strategy may already be inspiring copycats. This evening, NYT reports that a second person climbed the very same building on the southwestern corner facing Port Authority Bus Terminal on West 40th Street. He was arrested at 6:38pm when he reached the roof.

I suppose the city just got itself another tourist attraction.

(Seriously: In 2007 Robert was deported from China for illegally climbing its tallest building. Officials later invited him back to legitimately climb a mountain as a tourist attraction.)

Tonight (June 5th) I photographed the 2nd annual WGirls NYC "LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT Bachelor/ette Auction previously discussed here.

I worked from home yesterday so I could get more work time in and then I picked Jo Ann at her job. We quickly ate a healthy dinner at Wendy's *giggle* and made our trek into New York City at rush hour. I don't recommend this to anyone but it was a necessary evil last night.

The NJ Turnpike wasn't bad but once we got on Route 287 over by where Jo Ann works is a total nightmare (as usual) but the Route 495 that was a total jam-packed nightmare but we "rode it out" with good conversation and some good "tunes" until we got ourselves into the Lincoln Tunnel.

Once we got out of the tunnel and into NYC we noticed crowds of people standing on the sidewalk pointing up at a skyscraper behind us...we looked around but we had no idea what they were looking. I counted 6 news helicopters circling above us so we decided we needed to find out what was going on. Jo Ann rolled down her window to ask what everyone was looking & pointing at and a woman told us a guy was climbing a skyscraper. Our light turned green and we had to go, go, go. *sad face*

It turns out there was (as my friend Lee told me) a Spiderman was scaling the side of a skyscraper. Spiderman? What was he thinking??? The funny part about this tale is that Lee told me there were actually 2 people to do this in one day on the same building! 2 people??? Again, what are people thinking??

I'll tell you what I was thinking!!! I was thinking how late we were after we had so carefully timed our trip into the city and this crazy Spiderman better not make any more traffic jams pop up for me!! But photographer in me had the devil on her shoulder thinking.... "hmmm, wouldn't it be cool for you to pull over and photograph this crazy guy scaling the building??" but then angel on the other shoulder told me "Okay, photo journalist...you best be moving along, sister, and get to the nightclub to do what I promised!" So I did. I drove away from an interesting photo op...yup, I did (not easy for me).

The traffic made us late enough, Nancy (my GPS, mentioned here) had us going a little out of our way down the one way city streets to get to the club, and we still had to find parking in New York City! We let "Nancy" guide us to the door of the club (although she was a bit off in where she told us "we had reached our destination" ... darn you Nancy). We figured we'd pass by the club and then find parking.

We were lucky....we found it one block over although it required me to do the tightest parallel park job I ever had to do on the left side of th street. I actually ended up getting a tiny knick on the back bumper of my new "ride" when I backed up just a smidgen too much (I had to take deep breaths and let it go...I had no time to panic about a small knick).

I squeezed my Rogue into the spot between a Mini Cooper and a big truck, got my gear together, locked the car, and just as we were on our way when I noticed that a giant wide-open parking spot opened right ahead of us.... hmmmm...isn't that always my luck!

We walked one block over and our assignment for the evening started. It took me a few minutes to get my bearings straight. I hadn't done anything like this before and I needed that 5-10 minutes to get my thoughts together, survey the land (so to speak) and make my plan of action of how I would handle the photography. Of course I hurt my finger on my own speedlight during this 5-10 minutes (don't ask me how) but since it wasn't cut or bleeding I was able to avoid a fainting tragedy (uuugh, don't ask!!) in a dark nightclub filled with tons of people that that I didn't know. We went to the restrooms and I composed myself (thank god!) and then got to work!

Outside the club some of the W Girls NYC posed for photos:

This is Tara who I know from college (Rider University ). Tara is part of the WGirls and is the person that asked me if I was interested in photographing the event so I took her up on the offer because I thought it sounded like a good experience for me:

I think it went really well considering I never shot in a dark nightclub before. Focusing was the biggest issue since it was so hard to see but I only had to throw out a handful of photos (apologies to those that don't see their photos but know that I took one of you).

Jo Ann was kind enough to come with me into NYC to lend me a hand (thanks Jo!!).

Jo Ann and I -- Yes, I actually handed my camera off to someone else...shocker!

All event photos can be viewed on my website by going to: http://www.jenrinaldiphotography.com/ and clicking on GALLERIES----->Events or you can CLICK HERE.

Alain Robert, a.k.a. the real-life Spiderman who's famous for climbing skyscrapers is coming to Hong Kong for a talk. But we all know what's his real agenda is, to climb the skyscrapers of Hong Kong (DUH!). For those who don't know, I've posted a shot of some of the skyscrapers of Hong Kong below.

Anyway, here's the info:

Monday 14th April - special dinner with Alain Robert, the real-life Spiderman - $400 including 3 course dinner, glass of wine and coffee/tea with talk and presentation by Alain at Soho Soho Restaurant & Bar.

Inquiries: 2850-5065 or visit www.asia-city.com/events

Alain Robert in action, scaling the Italia Building: São Paulo, Brazil

Agora, eu lhes digo, esse maluco é doido!

O cara já escalou os prédios mais altos e conhecidos do mundo. Quem não se lembra da escalada na Torre Eiffel? E o mais fantástico é que ele foi preso em grande parte dos países onde ele aprontou suas loucuras. e isso me leva a duas considerações:

 1º - Ele é um doido de pedra, mas ele está arriscando apenas a própria vida! O que tem de tão terrível deixar ele escalar um prédio?

2º - E essa tem duas partes:

- O cara se diverte pacas! Já pensou fazer o que te der na telha, sem nem considerar muito o risco pessoal e ainda se divertir a beça?

- E, gente, esse cara tem na verdade duas manias: Uma é escalar prédios altos prá caralho e a outra é colecionar fotos de prisão.

“O que me move é a coragem; é a liberdade”, conta Robert. Em seguida completa: “é um meio também de eu mandar uma mensagem contra essa sociedade atual que me deixa irritado”. Para ele, estamos todos “poluídos pelo capitalismo”. Questionado se o comunismo era uma boa saída, respondeu: “é interessante dividir os mesmos valores, mas não funciona”. Nossa, além de Homem-aranha, o cara é comentarista político...

GRANDES PODERES TRAZEM GRANDES RESPONSABILIDADES... ¬¬

Veja alguns prédios e monumentos o que o 'Homem-Aranha' já escalou:

- Muralha da China (China) 

- Prédio de 243 metros em Moscou (Rússia) 

- Torre de 106 metros em Berlim (Alemanha)

- Segundo prédio mais alto do mundo em Kuala Lumpur (Malásia)

- Torre Agbar, em Barcelona (Espanha)

Como eu adoro colocar vídeo idiota aqui...

E já que o assunto é o homem-aranha:

Alain Robert fez fama escalando edifícios no mundo inteiro. Ele disse ter ficado frustrado, mas não desistiu: prometeu tentar escalar o prédio novamente, mas com a permissão das autoridades brasileiras.

Um porteiro reconheceu o "homem-aranha" em um hotel próximo ao Edifício Itália e alertou a segurança. Minutos depois, o francês saiu acompanhado de policiais militares e explicou o que aconteceu no alto do prédio. Ele contou que já havia começado a descida mas, no último segundo, os seguranças o agarraram pelo tornozelo. O francês disse que tentou se desvencilhar e que, no meio dos puxões, acabou ficando sem as calças.

Entre outros famosos cartões-postais escalados pelo francês estão a Ponte Golden Gate, em São Francisco (EUA), e o Edifício Taipei, em Taiwan, na época o mais alto do mundo. 

HOMEM ARANHA BOM É ESSE AQUI:

Click to enlarge

Haven't touched watercolours for a long time and it shows: time for some practice I think.

I get vertigo just looking at photos of Alain Robert. Even sketching this was a bit nauseating (I'm not joking!). I used to climb a bit, but with ropes and nothing too delicate as they euphemistically call non-existent holds in climbing circles. I've only ever led climbs indoors, where it's just a case of climbing a few feet above the last wall clip, so if you fall it's a bit stomach lurching, but only a couple of seconds before your partner takes the weight (so long as they're looking ;) ). But climbing buildings? The golden gate?