Remember those 24-hour seven-elevens I mentioned? They proved to be a blessing and a bit of a curse. We stood at the end of an alley on the opposite side of a street from one of these all night convenience stores, waiting for the flow of people to cease or at least slow. The problem was that near the end of said alley was a fire escape that lead all the way up to the top of another rooftop. The good mood we had been riding on for the last couple hours following our ascent of Aqua had started to turn sour with annoyance. We focused our hate on one particular individual who was standing on the sidewalk across from us yacking on his cellphone. After several long minutes the street finally cleared enough and we very quickly hopped up onto some dumpsters and pulled ourselves onto the steel steps.
“Alright, so, the trunk doesn’t have a latch, so if we get separated, just come back to the car and you can crawl in that way.”
“…Why would we get separated?”
“I don’t know, cops, security guards, Godzilla. Who knows, its just a contingency plan.”
And with that Gino and I set out to conquer rooftops. We walked a couple blocks, rounded a corner and ducked into a dimly lit alley. I went first, balancing on a trashcan, gripping a drain pipe and pulling myself up to the fire escape, noticing along the way a rather large chunk of crumbling brickwork teetering on the corner of the building.
Dickin around, wandering the streets and back alleys of naptown, I came upon an old 17 story building with a decrepit looking fire escape running up one side. Access to the first platform was gained via mad climbing skills and some very strong fingertips and the subsequent stair climb was full of self posed questions as to the structural integrity of the flimsy metalwork. Built as a last desperate escape plan likely a hundred years ago and anchored to the building with nothing more than mortar, my fears were well founded.
