Six months have passed since we witnessed the amazing derring-do of a tightrope walker who strung his high-wire along a rocky outcropping near Land's End.
But now someone has come to supplant him.
Alex Honnold, a 28 year-old rock climber who recently switched from wild escarpments to urban fixtures -- beginning with the Taipei 101 skyscraper in Taiwan -- just enthralled audiences in San Francisco by climbing the century-old Palace of Fine Arts and the brittle, seven-story 720 Building.
In a video that aired on KQED, Honnold insists he had a solid footing on both structures, and that the concrete on Palace of Fine Arts was "well-maintained." (In fact, it appears to be newly renovated, as SFCitizen pointed out this morning.)
The high-rise at 720 California Street made for a slightly scarier ascent, given that one of its bricks could have popped out at any moment.
"Even in the back of my mind, on the way up, I was thinking, 'Oh, these bricks are ornamental, not structural," Honnold told a caller on KQED Forum. "...I was trying to tread lightly and not put too much faith into any one point."
And, brick by quarter-inch-brick, he made it to the top. Here's a video of his exploits:
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