Climbing Tall, Tall Buildings…: Spiderman may be an American cartoon, but–like Jerry Lewis–the French have adopted him. How else to explain the remarkable number of French climbers who spend their time climbing up the sides of every lofty edifice they can lay hands on? They even have a website, which carefully tracks each conquest (yes, it’s in French…). What sort of buildings do they go for? Well, urban climber Alain Robert just knocked off Tapei 101, which happens to be the world’s tallest building. Forget King Kong’s favorite climb, the Empire State building. Taipei 101 is the Everest of buildings, standing 1,676 feet tall. And it took Robert just four hours to scale the thing. By the time he got to the top there were hundreds of people below cheering and applauding. And check out this video of one of Robert’s climbing buddies, as he eludes police and scrambles up the side of 685-foot office building in just 35 minutes. That must be his lunchtime workout. Anyhow, Urban Climbing has lots of cool pics to look at, and a great video page. C’est magnifique…



Alain Robert, AKA “Spidey”: “Merde. These windows have just been washed and they’re really slippery. I can’t believe I left my web shooters at home…”