I’ve been reading and thinking about rooftopping; a highly specialized form of walking, and an essential
part of a certain kind of urban exploration.
Like all great ideas it’s essentially very simple, you get up to a high
place, usually by some quasi-illegal method, you find some thin girder or ledge
or parapet - and then walk along it.
Photography seems always to be involved whether skilled or not: somebody
generally takes somebody’s picture up there or maybe somebody takes a
selfie. At their best, the results are
equal parts awe-inspiring and terrifying.
It’s a worldwide trend and it can’t be all
that recherché given how many references
there are to it online. Still, I’m amazed that there are people who can do this stuff, and just looking at the photographs is enough
to give me an attack of vertigo. Below
is a picture Tom Ryaboi, the best rooftopping photographer I’ve seen:
I think the guy in the picture is Vitali
Raskalov, and I think the
picture is taken in Hong Kong, though I stand to be corrected on both counts. Tom Ryaboi’s flickr page is here:
Certainly some people die while rooftopping, but
when you consider how inherently lethal it seems, the numbers appear
surprisingly low. Perhaps it’s a self-limiting group. If you feel safe walking on rooftops you’re
probably going to be safe doing it, if you don’t feel safe walking on rooftops you’re
probably not going go up there. I certainly
know where I stand – firmly on the ground whenever possible. I’m definitely not a rooftopper.
And yet, and yet … Thinking about this has reminded me of an
incident from my generally all too well-spent youth. I was a student at Caius College, Cambridge, and
a group of us had been to the late-night bar.
Drink had definitely been taken but not so much as to lose all
reason. We went back to the room belonging
to a Scottish lad named Tony Kidd. His
room was on the top floor, actually in the eaves, of a building on Trinity Street;
the third floor if you’re in English, the fourth floor if you’re American. It's the building in the picture below with the street sign on it.
And as you can see, there were a couple of windows
that opened out onto the roof, and there was a parapet running along the front
of the building. It was summer, the
windows were open and I suddenly got the urge to climb out of one of them. Once on the roof I began walking back and forth
from one end of the parapet to the other.
I wasn’t showing off. I didn’t do any fancy antics like balancing on one
leg or dancing around. It was just
something I felt I had to do at the time.
I did a few lengths (nobody took a picture) and then I went back inside again. I think I may have had one more drink and then went home
quietly.
At the time it didn’t
seem I’d done anything very extreme or foolish, and by rooftopping standards I
very definitely hadn’t, but by my own standards I’d done something scarily out
of character. When I thought about it the next morning, the full surprise and
horror hit me. Even as I write about it now I can feel the cold sweat gathering
and the tide of vertigo washing in. It’s
not so much a case of “What was I thinking that night?” rather a case of “Who
the hell was I that night?”
I’ve
remained pretty much myself ever since, not completely avoiding high places, but
only going to them when I was absolutely able to feel safe there. And to be fair I felt perfectly safe on the
parapet in Cambridge while I was up there.
Here’s a picture I took from the roof, or rather where the roof once was, of the Old Hardwick Hall, in Derbyshire.
Here’s a picture I took from the roof, or rather where the roof once was, of the Old Hardwick Hall, in Derbyshire.
The view was great, both of the landscape
and of the ruined structure of the building.
I was there on the regular tourist visit, there was a firm platform
under my feet and there was a rail to hold onto, but the fact is, I still felt a
bit wobbly.
Of course some rooftops are far more
walkable than other. One of my
pedestrian quirks is that I like to walk in parking lots. They’re places not made for walkers, where
walkers are not wanted or considered, although of course sooner or later
everybody has to walk to their car.
And
the other day I parked up on the top of a parking lot here in Hollywood - one
of only three cars there – (wide open spaces – we got ‘em) and I walked around,
looked down, took a few pictures. A
female security guard appeared at the other end of the roof, and I thought she
was coming across to ask me what I was up to, but it was a hot day, and I was a long way
off, and she apparently couldn’t be bothered to walk all the way over to me. You can just about see her in the picture below.
This,
of course, is not true rooftopping, though I was certainly on a roof, and when
I looked down at the building next door there was another guy walking on a rooftop: a working man going about his business (below), whatever that business was. I guess rooftopping, true or otherwise, comes
in many forms.
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