The plan had been to get on the fire escape and take it up the building prodding for an open window or door. As I woke to small shards of sunlight poking through the hotel curtains I knew that was no longer an option. Rumor was the building had a guard. Though we knew nobody was watching the feed from the cameras which covered the alley, climbing up a fire escape in the daylight in downtown Detroit would really have been asking for it. There was only one way. A last resort that was reserved only for the most desired of targets. We would try to bribe the guard.
Injekt looked through the glass door, spotted the man, and knocked loudly to get his attention. What followed was a good ten minutes of the best persuasive speak the six of us could muster. At first the man, who clarified that he was no guard but rather an engineer, was having none of it. “the upper floors are too dangerous, I just can’t let you guys up there.” We poured it on heavier. We were out of town photographers and architecture enthusiasts. We had our hopes riding on seeing it. And wasn’t it such a beautiful building and we wouldn’t hurt anything or take very long. I think I mentioned something about it being the only abandoned italian renaissance skyscaper in existence. We bargained. We would settle for just the 15th floor, we said, for it had row of Caryatids which was a major architectural artifact. He relented, partly. We were only to go the fifteenth floor and not beyond. To ensure our compliance he limited us to only one hour. “Whatever you do get back down here within an hour.” We promised and swore and assuaged his doubts.
We immediately commenced hauling ass to the roof. We were grateful for the caretaker’s willingness to let us in but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. The roof was the prize and we would have it, time limit or not. We ran. Two, three steps at a time we ran up those steps. Thirty-Eight flights of stairs plus a couple ladders and we were at the tip top of the slanted copper roof. A standard hatch and a 4 foot wide strip of tarpapered platform made this the smallest I had been on. We soaked it in briefly, we were on the clock, under the gun. “How much time?” “45 minutes, we made it up really quick.” Sweet. Some got to taking pictures, others explored the large electrical panels and winches and other machinery that sat beneath the pointed roof. I went down a level and began to scramble over the ledge of stone which surrounded it.
The bright early morning sun made photography a but more difficult than usual. I had to bracket everything. Sometimes having to block the sun with my hand I would then have to take another shot so I could remove my intruding fingers from the blue sky. I passed a couple of my friends on my way down to the fire escape. “Time?” “Another 20 minutes but I might say fuck the limit.” I had no qualms about disobeying the caretakers instructions about the upper levels but I did want to make the time limit. He might have a boss showing up then and I didn’t want to reward his kindness with trouble. I soon found myself alone at the higher levels and later regrouped at the 15th floor where we did indeed take a moment to appreciate the naked ladies holding up the roof of the low rise building to which the high rise was attached. With heavy steps we sprinted back to the lobby level with a couple minutes to spare. Some shot the lobby up with flashes and shutter clicks. We thanked the caretaker, offered him a pooled bit of cash which he refused, and exited. From there we split up and said our goodbyes. For the other four it was on to more Detroit and later Gary and Chicago. For the girl and I it was an uncertain crossing into Canada.
Treading gingerly across a rotted out fire escape I was trying to find an unlocked or broken window. Standing lookout fifteen feet below was Injektilo, Vadder, Bounce, Lord Awesome, and DJ Craig. Despite the rather intimidating nature of this group of five white kids in a Detroit alleyway one elderly paraplegic managed to break their perimeter. He rolled down the narrow corrior, parked his chair next to a dumpster and sparked up his pipe. As he held the flame beneath and inhaled furiously I could see the substance boiling through the cloudy glass. Crack? Meth? Fuck it, this fire escape sucks and all these windows are rusted shut. We wrote off that building and moved on. By this point it was getting dark and we were without accommodation, but we had a good camping spot in mind.
Feeling a tad out of place a couple forty ounce bottles of malt liquor were purchased before retrieving sleeping bags from the car, which was left devoid of any valuable items. Our entry lay at the end of an unlit, dirty, and rather pungent alley. We held the busted door open for each other as we each shoved our gear through and squeezed inside. Half the group was forced to wait outside as a raggedy looking fellow stumbled down the dead end alleyway towards us and began rummaging through the dumpsters. He looked up, hesitated a moment, and promptly turned a one-eighty and left. Clearly the fact that we were up to no good was apparent. The rest of the group crammed inside and we began a long climb up 35 flights of stairs. Inside it was hot and stuffy, I was glad to have my large condensating bottle of Colt 45 to quench my thirst.
Going from the top floor to the roof was a bit of a tight squeeze and I got momentarily stuck carrying my big olive green C-bag full of blankets and camera gear. With a swig from the 40 and a little bit of aggression I freed myself and climbed the last couple treads to the roof. We took pictures as always, laid out our bedrolls and put ourselves to sleep with the remainder of our beverages. The night was interrupted by a few loud bangs, the source of which became a point of discussion the next morning. They echoed through the artificial canyons of downtown Detroit and woke all of us briefly. I drank the last quarter inch of Colt 45 and went back to sleep.
I woke before dawn and took a few more photos before packing up. By the time the sun breached the edge of the earth and lit up our campsite everyone had all their gear ready to go. We took in the view for a few minutes before heading down. I looked through a hole in the door before pushing it open. We all squeezed back out the opening and into the alleyway. We made it back to the cars and then to a gas station. Parched throats quenched and empty stomachs filled by cheap junk food we piled back into the cars, we had a lot left to see.
The sun had just set on a long day of running down new drains and the girl and I parked the car around the corner from a refurb job that promised to have a decent view. When built over a hundred years ago it had been a church of some kind and had served several other uses in the century since. But this night it stood empty and clad in scaffold that just asked to be climbed. So we did. We rounded the block, looked around, and promptly stepped over the orange mesh and onto the metal stairs of the scaffolding. Quick and quiet was the name of the game since the structure was in the middle of a residential area and it was still very early in the evening.
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We had given up on the Gold Coast. Hours of walking and nothing to be had for fear of cameras and doormen. We got back in the car and cruised southward, back to the loop where the pedestrians were scarce and the fire escapes plentiful. Creeping down alleyways we saw camera after camera. But one building was in the process of renovation. This made the likelihood of the camera feed being watched by a real life person pretty much nil.
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For three days we returned to that wonderful city by the lake which we had dominated a year earlier. Sitting firmly in our sites the first night was a juicy pile of Gothic Revival architecture stacked 45 stories high known as Randolph Tower. The terra cotta façade of the building was smothered in fine details and came complete with flying buttresses arching through the sky, way up on the forty-third(?) floor.
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As you can see, No Promise Of Safety has a new look. We’ve moved from WordPress.com over to our own, more independent host. As a consequence some of your old links will no longer work. The old domain, uliveandyouburn.wordpress.com, will no longer host this site. We’ve put up ads through Google’s adsense program. Call us corporate whores if you like We really don’t care. We’re still experimenting with the look and layout so bear with us. If you visit sometime in the next couple weeks and the site is down or looks all a fuck, come back later.
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While not climbin’ cranes, infiltrating supertalls, or busting up historic landmarks, the remainder of the Chicago invasion was spent on the more easily accessed rooftops of a hand full of hotels. These were nice places to chill and enjoy the view without having to expend much effort or stress to get there.
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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.
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