Daredevil photographers are scaling Downtown skyscrapers to snap dazzling images that they post to Instagram, such as this image of a “rooftopper” who goes by the moniker Usrnminvalid dangling from the top of 70 Pine St.
BY COLIN MIXSON |
High-rise landlords in Lower Manhattan are getting vertigo over a growing trend among adventurous photographers who sneak up to the lofty peaks of Downtown’s iconic towers in the pursuit of stunning vistas.
Both property managers and police are at a loss for how to prevent increasing numbers of surreptitious shutterbugs from breaching the rooftops for fabulous photoshoots — a trend that poses serious liability concerns for property owners.
But James McNally, one of the city’s pre-eminent “rooftoppers,” says that he and his ilk pursue their illegal avocation not simply for the sake of mischief, but out of love for the city — and a desire to share its charms.
“The reason we do this is we love New York City,” said McNally, who operates under the alias Jamakiss when posting his work on Instagram and other online outlets. “We know it’s illegal, but we want to show these amazing views.”
The rise of the so-called “rooftopping” phenomenon is linked to the advent of Instagram, according to McNally, and since the photo-sharing app’s debut in 2010, the trend has seen a steady increase in popularity.
“It’s closely tied with the rise of social photography — a.k.a. Instagram,” he said. “Before that, there were a few people posting stuff on Twitter and the Internet, but when Instagram took off is really when you started seeing more of this.”
McNally, who works at a startup in the city, launched his photography career in earnest about a year and a half ago, and says that since then he has secretly ascended — or to use his preferred term, “building-hacked” — just about every prominent Downtown high rise you can think of except One World Trade Center.
“Rooftopper” James McNally, a.k.a. @jamakiss, doesn’t limit his turf to Lower Manhattan — he snapped this selfie atop Midtown’s General Electric Building at 570 Lexington Ave.
“Off the top of my head, I don’t know. I’ve done a lot,” said McNally, when asked to name the buildings he has summited. “Aside from the Empire State Building and Freedom Tower, most of the tall, marquee buildings in Manhattan.”
Late last year, McNally “hacked” the tower at 70 Pine St., located between Pearl and William Sts., in an escapde that he documented with a Go-Pro camera that recorded his ascent from the lobby all the way up to the top of its airy spire, nearly 1,000 feet above the streets of the Financial District.
In response to that trespass, property managers at 70 Pine St., along with representatives from other towers similarly invaded by outlaw photographers, met with members of Community Board 1 and officers of the First Precinct on March 2 in an effort to better understand how to defend themselves from the rooftopper rampage.
The property owners are concerned that this fad among young photographers is exploding in popularity, and that the trend is only going to pick up steam once the weather warms, according to a representative for 70 Pine St.
“It’s cool and everybody’s going to want to do it,” said Joseph Alexander, development project manager for DTH Capital, which along with Rose Associates owns the former office tower now being converted to luxury residential. “There’s a clear intention that people want to continue to climb, and when the weather gets nicer, with these videos getting several thousands hits, each year there’s going to be an incident.”
In December last year, a man fell to his death from the top of the 52-story Four Seasons Hotel in Midtown, according to police, who said he was trying to take pictures from a rooftop catwalk.
However, the penalties for such trespassing aren’t particularly stiff, and especially when a private building has a public lobby, defense attorneys can easily argue for a motion to have charges pared down to a simple violation, according to officer Brian Nelson.
“Private buildings, even though they’re private, if the public has access to them their lawyer will claim they have a right to be in a building … which would knock it down to a violation from a misdemeanor,” Nelson said at the meeting.
And even if prosecutors were able to make a misdemeanor charge stick, judges usually avoid handing out the maximum 90-day sentence to first-time offenders in favor of an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal, or A.C.D., which essentially lets the culprit avoid jail while doing community service, according to Zachary Johnson, a criminal defense lawyer and former prosecutor with the District Attorney’s Office.
“For a first offense that would probably be an A.C.D., which is a six-month stay-out-of-trouble and a few days community service,” said Johnson.
Ultimately, community board members walked away with the impression that the police have bigger problems to deal with than Instagramming trespassers, and that it’s up to building owners and their security staff to ward off the illicit photographers.
“I think it becomes exceptionally difficult to expect the N.Y.P.D. to be able to arrest and actually incarcerate these people that are guilty of trespassing,” said CB1 member Paul Hovitz. “There was an announcement that, as a reaction to the subway slashing, they’re now assigning a police officer on every train. So when you consider how thinly spread they’re going to be, what’s the chances of getting a response, even though you want to curb this problem?”
For his part, McNally has every intention of continuing to seek the heights — even if it makes landlords queasy.
“It’s not something I’m going to stop doing,” he said.
You can look for him on Instagram, or maybe just look up.
