![]() ![]() ![]() Urban free climber James Kingston’s website sells posters of him balancing precariously in a variety of places as well as a range of T-shirts.īut selling merchandise is only one element. Not that he is unique in turning his exploits into cash. Gallagher’s Nightscape website sells original T-shirts for £24.99 and hoodies for £39.99. Photograph: why not? Building a rooftopping brand can be lucrative. It’s about building their personal brand, all about the image, all about the spectacle.” “For the people doing it, it’s all about the image, getting the cool, exclusive YouTubable footage. In an article for Domus magazine in 2011, Dr Bradley Garrett, an urban explorer and a geographer at Southampton University, suggested that urbex practitioners were reviving the practice of “usufruct” – “which basically means that someone has the right to use and enjoy the property of another, provided it is not changed or damaged in any way”.īut Kindynis suggests the selfie generation are not in it for the philosophy. The high-profile stunts of Gallagher and his cohorts seem a world away from urbex’s original ethos and its political overtones. Cranes and construction sites and rooftops are getting locked down because these guys are prostituting it to social media.” “Within certain elements of the community, these guys are not liked. Within the urbex community, these things tend to be kept hush-hush, but now it’s on YouTube and they will have changed their security measures so nobody else will be able to enjoy that rooftop. They were probably told how to do it by someone else. I highly doubt they were the first people to get on to the roof of One Canada Square. “These guys are notorious within the scene for poaching other people’s spots. Gallagher and a friend can be seen climbing on to the roof of One Canada Square and scaling its pyramid.Īt the start of the video, already viewed 450,000 times and liked by 45,000 people on YouTube, the pair describe the challenge as “almost impossible” and express astonishment that they were able to pull it off. His latest “hack”, released online last week, will have helped send his reputation soaring. His exploits are posted on his YouTube channel and promoted through Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. ![]() Gallagher has previously targeted Robin Hood airport in Doncaster, the roof of West Ham’s new stadium, and the London Olympic park’s Orbit structure. The old ‘take-nothing-but-photos-leave-nothing-but-footprints’ adage is increasingly irrelevant.” As a result, you’ve got new attitudes and etiquettes evolving. You’ve now got subway explorers and you’ve got rooftoppers like Nightscape doing the foot-dangling thing. “What was traditionally thought of as urban exploration, fetishists exploring abandoned mental asylums, that sort of thing, is mutating. “Urban exploring is beginning to splinter into different practices,” said Theo Kindynis, a criminologist at Roehampton University. ![]()
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