Thursday, August 17, 2006

Sketchy Scaffolding outside my window


OK, I know this is a crappy photo, but I took it with my cell phone from out my boss' window. It's a photo of the building, parts of which came crashing to the ground last week

The reason it kills me is that I was sitting in his office on a conference call this morning, looking out the window at the building, and realized that the scaffolding (you can see 2 strong vertical lines on the facade- that's the supports-and then the platform is at the top, 1 story below the roofline) is all the way to the top of the building now. The thing is- it looks like they affixed the scaffolding to the very same architectural element that was falling off in the first place!

When my boss noticed that I was glued to the scene outside the window, all I could say was that you couldn't pay me enough to stand on scaffolding that is essentially being held up by 100 year-old gargoyles and ornamental what-nots. I also found out that, because the sidewalks are so old and there are underground vaults below them, they also had to drill down into the street and make sure the footing of the scaffolding was stable before starting at the bottom and jacking the platform up to the top of the thing. It has taken over a week to get up there. The best part was that we could see that the owner of the building was standing up there, 150 feet up. I guess he was trying to prove that it's not dangerous or something.

Fuhget it!

p.s. the streaky windows are thanks to the peregrine falcons, whose nest is 2 stories directly above this window!

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