This is a little bit old, but back in the April 20 issue of the New Yorker, Lauren Collins wrote “The Vertical Tourist”, a piece on Alain Robert, the Frenchman who likes climbing skyscrapers. Robert is one of these people that are obsessed with climbing tall New York buildings. At some point Collins writes about Robert and Renaldo Clarke, a computer technician, climbing the Times building last year. This is an excerpt from the article
The daredevils, in tandem, irritated civic officials. Mayor Bloomberg pronounced them “stupid”. Peter Vallone, Jr., a city councilman who is the chairman of the city’s Public Safety Committee, suggested that Robert add “the walls of his jail cell at Rikers” to his list of conquests. (…) Five weeks later, a third man attempted to climb the building. He stalled at the eleventh floor. At his arraignment, a judge said, “If you want to kill yourself, find some nice quiet bridge in Connecticut in some hick town”
