I wrote this account for an anonymous magazine article. Unfortunately my co-defendant panicked and forced us to cancel the article, but after a decade in my drafts folder I think it's finally time to post it, as written in 2013:
Life becomes what you make of it. The government - spooked by a prank back in college - denied my security clearance. This set me off on a course of events that ended with me sitting down for a discussion with Homeland Security. The lack of a security clearance meant I was suddenly free of the threat that had restrained my adventurous tendencies for the prior year, and I dove back into my passion with a vengeance.
Losing my fear of career fallout opened a world of possibilities. I immediately set about crossing off my personal "big 3" - The three things I wanted to climb before I died... or worse: turned into a responsible adult. [2023 Me: Lol] I took care of #2 [cooling towers], and #3 will be easy enough to take care of [Bethlehem Steel, still unclimbed], as they are both sweet climbable things in the middle of different nowheres. Number one was less easy... my ultimate dream was a piece of infrastructure in the heart of post 9-11 New York City.A friend was selling a sweet wide-angle lens, and his personal grail was also in New York - which conveniently happens to be right between our homes! I'd buy the lens, we'd kill some time, and then cross off the top of our lists. Simple enough plan, but being realistic, we knew it might have some complications. So we prepared... I gathered some bail money: a few hundred cash, a blank check left with a friend. I prepped my camera, electrical tape pinning my flash down and hiding the front-facing led indicator. I psyched myself up. I picked out clothes in dark greys and blues.
The day started perfectly. We met, made the sale, and scouted his target quite thoroughly and without arousing suspicion. My partner-in-crime deferred on his climb, spooked by cameras and security guards. I offered to climb with him, but only after we did my climb... just in case. When we went to scout my goal we found police cars.... ... ...closing down half the road for construction! This meant traffic was only flowing one direction, which halved the likelihood of being spotted by a driver. It was just past midnight and hours before anticipated, but there was a gap in pedestrian traffic too opportune to pass up, and we sprinted for it. Up the cables of the most iconic bridge on the east coast, if not the country.
The Brooklyn Bridge became our playground. We swung around opposite sides of the cable-guards, barely a hiccup in our manic ascent. As we neared the top the cables steepened and we finally slowed our ascent. This is when the sheer stupidity, the sheer awesomeness, and the sheer drop off the side of the cable all became real, but we were committed to it, and to whatever consequences entailed.
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The summit felt like a dream. The highpoint of my exploring career and one of my main goals in life achieved! During certain climbs the summit feels like the summit of the world, with the entire earth spread out at your feet. I highly recommend it. In hindsight, I recommend it elsewhere. We shot a number of pictures, I hid my memory card in my sock, and took a few intentionally too-blurry pictures so that if we were searched they wouldn't look too hard for a memory card. My secondary goal for the night was to get these pictures home. Not being arrested was at least third on my list.
We descended the same way we came up, waiting for a lull in pedestrians on the wooden walkway 100 feet below us, before silently creeping down the cable behind the last group. Near the bottom we were back to sprinting, vaulting the final dozen feet to the deck before sauntering off of our neo-gothic jungle gym. We were down, safe, and relieved. It was one of the coolest things I've ever done.
But it was still early in the evening and we were hyped up on endorphins. So we went for another bridge. We justified it to ourselves "The Williamsburg is easy!" - not knowing that a story on bridge climbers had been published earlier that week, about that very bridge. We told ourselves it didn't matter if pedestrians saw us. We convinced ourselves that it was reasonable to take the built-in staircase, even if it was an obvious route crisscrossing over the roadway.
But we were young and immortal, making our lives interesting. We climbed with gusto, skipping across the plates crossing above the rail tracks and threading through girders thirty feet over traffic, then trudging up a dozen flights of stairs. Yet another Olympian summit with the city beneath our feet. Despite the endorphins the exposed climb up left me feeling a little naked, so I immediately started snapping pictures, calculating response times in my head. The bridge itself was a beautiful counterpoint to the Brooklyn, steel latticework replacing solid stonework, identical functions and opposite form. I stepped over the railing, across open space, and onto a steel plate on the edge of the tower, a smooth expanse just under two feet wide, just over two feet long, fifty yards over pavement, and a perfect platform for a tripod. As I lined up a shot of north Manhattan a helicopter crossed into frame. I smiled, picturing the artifact it would produce swooping in front of the open shutter.
Then the helicopter turned. And began to circle. I vaulted the railing and packed my bag in seconds, memory card joining it's brother in my sock. We frantically whispered (as if the helicopter could hear us) theories back and forth, and hid from the assumed thermal-imaging. I lowered myself beneath the plate I was previously shooting from, using the massive I-beams to keep out of sight, oblivious to the fatal fall beneath, solely focused on the "ghettobird" still circling above. My partner paced the catwalks, keeping the columns of the bridge between him and the chopper. We hoped that, seeing no-one, they'd assume it was a false alarm. They didn't. They assumed we had jumped, and began playing the searchlight over the surface of the water. Then it got worse.
Before I go any further, I want to assure you that I am not exaggerating. A police boat came up the river under us. It was joined by a dozen police cars, a police truck, another boat, and a few more police cars for good measure. Facing insurmountable odds, I give up. It's ridiculous to be risking my life to avoid the surely-inevitable arrest. Announcing my intention, I swing back up to the catwalks and motion to the helicopter that I would climb down. Said helicopter is too busy searching the river to notice me. My future co-defendant discovers an open maintenance hatch on one of the corner pillars and climbs inside, beckoning me after him. Having no better idea, I follow. I begin closing the grate behind me when visions of being trapped in the tower and dying of dehydration stall my hand. I leave it cracked.
We descended a quarter of the way to the road surface and then tucked in behind the ladder, blending in to the walls. Having exhausted all other options, I prayed while we listened to the officers climb the tower, their metal carabiners clanking off every railing as they make their way up. There was a moment where I thought we'd succeeded. We heard the officers joking, claiming that we disappeared... but then one asked the fateful words "Did you check the towers?" "Nah, they're all locked" "That one isn't." I should have let us starve to death. An officer poked his head in, shone his flashlight down, and pulled back. I was finally exhaling when a new sun ignited at the top of the tube, followed by a pause, then "GET OUT HERE NOW, ASSHOLES. BOTH OF YOU." Apparently someone had a better flashlight.
We emerge to a crowd of amused cops, with our spotter - still apoplectic- offering to escort us down nicely or throw us off the edge. We know he's not going to do that, he knows he's not going to do that, but we humor the officer and request the option involving stairs. They only have one harness so I'm forced to walk down the stairs backwards as a sort of manwich between two officers, both of whom are torn between admiring the view and bemoaning our stupidity.
Back at street-level we were unceremoniously lifted over the railing - because obviously, a railing would be too difficult to climb. We were then put on our knees and cuffed to wait for yet more cruisers to arrive, driven up the sidewalk. To our surprise, we were placed in the same car, unsupervised. I guess they figure they have us pretty dead-to-rights on this one. To be fair, they did. We briefly made sure our stories line up (this was the only thing we did tonight), and then cracked weak jokes to keep tensions low.
At the precinct we were searched, lost all our gear, money, belts, and shoe-laces, and were taken individually to be questioned by both the local police and Homeland Security. (Example questions: "Who asked you to take pictures of the bridge?" "Which organization are you affiliated with?"). After they decided that we were harmless idiots and not searching for structural weakpoints they sent us back to lockup where we waited for the police to argue about jurisdiction. Manhattan declared that since we were on the Brooklyn side of the bridge and over Brooklyn-bound lanes, we weren't their problem. Unfortunately, Brooklyn didn't decide we weren't their problem either, and instead set about seeing what charges they could come up with. Last we heard that night, they were considering Felony Assault on an Officer - because said officer suffered heat-stroke after 7 flights. Then they searched me again, found half a grand bail money in my shoes, and patted down both my legs. To this day [still] I am amazed they never felt the memory cards in my sock despite grabbing my ankles. Later, my new roommates advised me I should have "cheeked it."
In the morning we were driven to central processing, where we were fingerprinted (again), mugshot (again), and retinal-scanned for good measure. We spent the day bouncing between different holding cells, sleeping and talking to the various other arrestees, who referred to us as the "ganster-ass white n-----s." At the end of the day we went to bed on a cement floor, in a room where there were neither sufficient mats nor floorspace.
[I'm going to take this moment to retell my favorite story from processing. The novelty had worn off by now, boredom had set in, and it was just a matter of surviving until the next step. Lunch consisted of cheese sandwiches. Two slices of wonder bread, one slice of cheese, and mayo. I declined. One of our cellmates was a hard beefcake of a tatted-up gangster with scars across his face, clearly used to this situation, and he was using his cheese sandwich as a pillow. I saw it, nearly laughed, and turned away to regain my composure. After convincing myself it wasn't funny I glanced his way again, and almost lost it again. After a few minutes of promising myself it was definitely not funny I finally looked his way a third time, coughed severely to suppress laughter and presumably violence, and looked the opposite way for an entire hour until our next shuffle.]
The next morning we spoke to our public defenders. We were facing charges of criminal trespass, criminal mischief, misdemeanor reckless endangerment, and - the big one - felony reckless endangerment. After more waiting we had a bail hearing where our lawyers said great things about how responsible we usually are and how we would definitely come back for our trial, the prosecutor asked for several thousand in bail, and the judge declined to give it to him! Thirty-three hours after we stepped into the cop car we were finally free to go.
We went back to the precinct building to pick up our car keys and licenses. Which we were told required photo ID. Lacking said photo-ID (which they had confiscated), we could wait for the arresting officer, who wouldn't be in till midnight at the earliest. It was 11am. I was furious. Why did they fingerprint me, take multiple mug shots, and scan my retinas if they couldn't use those to figure out who I was? I felt inclined to do various things that, legally, I shouldn't mention here. Instead, I had my first meal in days. It was wonderful, and afterwards I felt much less arsony. I spent the afternoon napping in a church until a friend got off work- which meant I could finally shower, look myself up on news websites, and sleep somewhere soft. Eventually, I traded my property receipts for my car keys and headed home.
Over the next seven months I took 4 more trips into the city for court dates. The first was the grand jury hearing, where my peers would decide whether to pursue the felony charges. At the last minute I was reassigned a different court room, and after hours of hearing other cases the judge called me forward. The prosecutor said the felony charges were "completely baseless," dropped them, and it was all over in less than a minute. All of the court dates followed a similar pattern: hours of waiting followed by a brief "yes ma'am understood ma'am" as the judge and my assigned lawyer decided what to do with me. After additional trips to the city I eventually got my shoe-money and camera gear back, although (well over a year [decade] out now), there is still no record for the rest of the confiscated property.
Overall, I'd say it was worth it. I set out to make my life interesting, and even if it wasn't the intended method, it was a success. I had to do 70 hours of community service, in return for which they offered a suspended sentence on all the charges. My public defender negotiated a change to "Violation Disorderly Conduct" with a punishment of Time Served. So the only thing on my record is a non-criminal offense, and if I get arrested again the original charges won't come back to bite me.
We descended the same way we came up, waiting for a lull in pedestrians on the wooden walkway 100 feet below us, before silently creeping down the cable behind the last group. Near the bottom we were back to sprinting, vaulting the final dozen feet to the deck before sauntering off of our neo-gothic jungle gym. We were down, safe, and relieved. It was one of the coolest things I've ever done.
But it was still early in the evening and we were hyped up on endorphins. So we went for another bridge. We justified it to ourselves "The Williamsburg is easy!" - not knowing that a story on bridge climbers had been published earlier that week, about that very bridge. We told ourselves it didn't matter if pedestrians saw us. We convinced ourselves that it was reasonable to take the built-in staircase, even if it was an obvious route crisscrossing over the roadway.
But we were young and immortal, making our lives interesting. We climbed with gusto, skipping across the plates crossing above the rail tracks and threading through girders thirty feet over traffic, then trudging up a dozen flights of stairs. Yet another Olympian summit with the city beneath our feet. Despite the endorphins the exposed climb up left me feeling a little naked, so I immediately started snapping pictures, calculating response times in my head. The bridge itself was a beautiful counterpoint to the Brooklyn, steel latticework replacing solid stonework, identical functions and opposite form. I stepped over the railing, across open space, and onto a steel plate on the edge of the tower, a smooth expanse just under two feet wide, just over two feet long, fifty yards over pavement, and a perfect platform for a tripod. As I lined up a shot of north Manhattan a helicopter crossed into frame. I smiled, picturing the artifact it would produce swooping in front of the open shutter.
Then the helicopter turned. And began to circle. I vaulted the railing and packed my bag in seconds, memory card joining it's brother in my sock. We frantically whispered (as if the helicopter could hear us) theories back and forth, and hid from the assumed thermal-imaging. I lowered myself beneath the plate I was previously shooting from, using the massive I-beams to keep out of sight, oblivious to the fatal fall beneath, solely focused on the "ghettobird" still circling above. My partner paced the catwalks, keeping the columns of the bridge between him and the chopper. We hoped that, seeing no-one, they'd assume it was a false alarm. They didn't. They assumed we had jumped, and began playing the searchlight over the surface of the water. Then it got worse.
Before I go any further, I want to assure you that I am not exaggerating. A police boat came up the river under us. It was joined by a dozen police cars, a police truck, another boat, and a few more police cars for good measure. Facing insurmountable odds, I give up. It's ridiculous to be risking my life to avoid the surely-inevitable arrest. Announcing my intention, I swing back up to the catwalks and motion to the helicopter that I would climb down. Said helicopter is too busy searching the river to notice me. My future co-defendant discovers an open maintenance hatch on one of the corner pillars and climbs inside, beckoning me after him. Having no better idea, I follow. I begin closing the grate behind me when visions of being trapped in the tower and dying of dehydration stall my hand. I leave it cracked.
We descended a quarter of the way to the road surface and then tucked in behind the ladder, blending in to the walls. Having exhausted all other options, I prayed while we listened to the officers climb the tower, their metal carabiners clanking off every railing as they make their way up. There was a moment where I thought we'd succeeded. We heard the officers joking, claiming that we disappeared... but then one asked the fateful words "Did you check the towers?" "Nah, they're all locked" "That one isn't." I should have let us starve to death. An officer poked his head in, shone his flashlight down, and pulled back. I was finally exhaling when a new sun ignited at the top of the tube, followed by a pause, then "GET OUT HERE NOW, ASSHOLES. BOTH OF YOU." Apparently someone had a better flashlight.
We emerge to a crowd of amused cops, with our spotter - still apoplectic- offering to escort us down nicely or throw us off the edge. We know he's not going to do that, he knows he's not going to do that, but we humor the officer and request the option involving stairs. They only have one harness so I'm forced to walk down the stairs backwards as a sort of manwich between two officers, both of whom are torn between admiring the view and bemoaning our stupidity.
Back at street-level we were unceremoniously lifted over the railing - because obviously, a railing would be too difficult to climb. We were then put on our knees and cuffed to wait for yet more cruisers to arrive, driven up the sidewalk. To our surprise, we were placed in the same car, unsupervised. I guess they figure they have us pretty dead-to-rights on this one. To be fair, they did. We briefly made sure our stories line up (this was the only thing we did tonight), and then cracked weak jokes to keep tensions low.
At the precinct we were searched, lost all our gear, money, belts, and shoe-laces, and were taken individually to be questioned by both the local police and Homeland Security. (Example questions: "Who asked you to take pictures of the bridge?" "Which organization are you affiliated with?"). After they decided that we were harmless idiots and not searching for structural weakpoints they sent us back to lockup where we waited for the police to argue about jurisdiction. Manhattan declared that since we were on the Brooklyn side of the bridge and over Brooklyn-bound lanes, we weren't their problem. Unfortunately, Brooklyn didn't decide we weren't their problem either, and instead set about seeing what charges they could come up with. Last we heard that night, they were considering Felony Assault on an Officer - because said officer suffered heat-stroke after 7 flights. Then they searched me again, found half a grand bail money in my shoes, and patted down both my legs. To this day [still] I am amazed they never felt the memory cards in my sock despite grabbing my ankles. Later, my new roommates advised me I should have "cheeked it."
In the morning we were driven to central processing, where we were fingerprinted (again), mugshot (again), and retinal-scanned for good measure. We spent the day bouncing between different holding cells, sleeping and talking to the various other arrestees, who referred to us as the "ganster-ass white n-----s." At the end of the day we went to bed on a cement floor, in a room where there were neither sufficient mats nor floorspace.
[I'm going to take this moment to retell my favorite story from processing. The novelty had worn off by now, boredom had set in, and it was just a matter of surviving until the next step. Lunch consisted of cheese sandwiches. Two slices of wonder bread, one slice of cheese, and mayo. I declined. One of our cellmates was a hard beefcake of a tatted-up gangster with scars across his face, clearly used to this situation, and he was using his cheese sandwich as a pillow. I saw it, nearly laughed, and turned away to regain my composure. After convincing myself it wasn't funny I glanced his way again, and almost lost it again. After a few minutes of promising myself it was definitely not funny I finally looked his way a third time, coughed severely to suppress laughter and presumably violence, and looked the opposite way for an entire hour until our next shuffle.]
The next morning we spoke to our public defenders. We were facing charges of criminal trespass, criminal mischief, misdemeanor reckless endangerment, and - the big one - felony reckless endangerment. After more waiting we had a bail hearing where our lawyers said great things about how responsible we usually are and how we would definitely come back for our trial, the prosecutor asked for several thousand in bail, and the judge declined to give it to him! Thirty-three hours after we stepped into the cop car we were finally free to go.
We went back to the precinct building to pick up our car keys and licenses. Which we were told required photo ID. Lacking said photo-ID (which they had confiscated), we could wait for the arresting officer, who wouldn't be in till midnight at the earliest. It was 11am. I was furious. Why did they fingerprint me, take multiple mug shots, and scan my retinas if they couldn't use those to figure out who I was? I felt inclined to do various things that, legally, I shouldn't mention here. Instead, I had my first meal in days. It was wonderful, and afterwards I felt much less arsony. I spent the afternoon napping in a church until a friend got off work- which meant I could finally shower, look myself up on news websites, and sleep somewhere soft. Eventually, I traded my property receipts for my car keys and headed home.
Over the next seven months I took 4 more trips into the city for court dates. The first was the grand jury hearing, where my peers would decide whether to pursue the felony charges. At the last minute I was reassigned a different court room, and after hours of hearing other cases the judge called me forward. The prosecutor said the felony charges were "completely baseless," dropped them, and it was all over in less than a minute. All of the court dates followed a similar pattern: hours of waiting followed by a brief "yes ma'am understood ma'am" as the judge and my assigned lawyer decided what to do with me. After additional trips to the city I eventually got my shoe-money and camera gear back, although (well over a year [decade] out now), there is still no record for the rest of the confiscated property.
Overall, I'd say it was worth it. I set out to make my life interesting, and even if it wasn't the intended method, it was a success. I had to do 70 hours of community service, in return for which they offered a suspended sentence on all the charges. My public defender negotiated a change to "Violation Disorderly Conduct" with a punishment of Time Served. So the only thing on my record is a non-criminal offense, and if I get arrested again the original charges won't come back to bite me.
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