Yet Another Climber Scales New York Times Building

by Jordan Yerman | July 9, 2008 at 04:46 am

821 views | 7 Recommendations | 8 comments

When George Willig scaled the South Tower of the World Trade Center, he motivation was "because it's there". The motivation behind the man who climbed the side of the New York Times building seems to have been "because it's not".

The man was first spotted around 1:20 a.m., police said.

By 2:10 a.m., he had made it to the 11th floor, where he unfurled a banner that read "Bin Laden's Plan." It featured a picture of Osama bin Laden holding President George W. Bush from puppet strings.

"We are trying to ascertain how he got up the building," said New York Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis.

The climber remained on a ledge on the 11th floor for about two hours, police said.

This is the third attempt this year on the building; the second since Alain Robert's ascent to draw attention to global warming..

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.

... and local cops got upset when we used to practice our bouldering skills on the sides of a local pizza place...

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Barry ORegan

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 04:51 on July 9th, 2008

jordan, I like this story. It's good stuff. You know WHackjobs will do anything to get attention. I am surprised New Yorkers didnt call for him to jump instead of scale down

robtolar

at 12:35 on July 11th, 2008

check out more fo my photos here - http://flickr.com/photos/tolar/tags/favorites

robtolar has contributed a photo to this story.

robinstock

at 13:45 on July 11th, 2008

...the New York Times Buidling three weeks before the climbing. See more on my stream: www.flickr.com/photos/robinstock

robinstock has contributed a photo to this story.

Brechtbug

at 18:02 on July 11th, 2008

I was walking home from work June 5th around 6:25PM and hit 8th Avenue and 44th when I saw groups of people holding up their cell phone cameras in the direction of the "New" New York Times Building.
I overheard conversations about someone climbing so I took out my camera and used the zoom lens to get a better look. I took some shots as I walked to 42nd street and watched with the crowd as he made it to the top. I also shot a few seconds of blurry video that I had cut together (with the help of S. Botti) and posted on YouTube.

Here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya4jIMG7bpM

It was only after I got home and watched the news that I found out it was not Alain Robert the French Spider-man that I saw but actually the second climber computer expert from Brooklyn Renaldo "Ray" Clarke.

Brechtbug has contributed a photo to this story.

Kevin Prichard

at 18:13 on July 11th, 2008

This photo is of Renaldo Clarke, the second climber of the NYT building (June 5, 2008.)

I work for the New York Times, so these photos were pretty easy to obtain. When Clarke started climbing, around 6pm, the buzz in the office was pretty much instant. Grabbed my camera and headed down the stairs in the southwest corner of the building. More interesting in that moment than the man on the outside of the building, were the people in the street in front of Port Authority Bus Terminal, visible half a dozen stories below, staring up at Clarke.

I ran down to join the crowd following Clarke's progress, and snapped the photo shown here. Where Alain Robert made a slow, careful climb, resting on structural elements of the building, making cellphone calls (see Adam Trilling's photo), Renaldo Clarke pretty much walked straight up the west face of the NYT building like it was a ladder. All in all, an interesting day.

Kevin Prichard has contributed a photo to this story.