When people climb up the sides of buildings using only their
bare hands, it’s known as urban climbing or buildering—and they’re often
arrested for their trouble.
Alain
Robert
is one of the more notorious practitioners, having climbed the Empire State
Building, the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, and the Sydney Opera House.
There are also those who do what might be considered the exact
opposite—they go underground. In Dallas
and some other cities, it’s become fashionable to venture into the storm sewers.
The practice even has its own name: urban spelunking. (“Spelunker,”
incidentally, has become a pejorative term, used by experienced cave explorers,
who call themselves “cavers,” to describe amateurs who don’t know what they’re
doing.) Going down into the sewers is less visible than climbing buildings,
arguably less risky, and often done in groups. Some people are curious to see
the hidden underground systems that we usually take for granted; others are
interested in the historic tunnels, some of them a century or more old. Still
others, probably, are just bored.
A recent article in the Dallas
Morning News quotes the city’s stormwater manager, Susan Alvarez, saying the
activity is “perfectly legal, and it’s also perfectly not a good idea”; she
cites the risks of falls, contaminated discharge, methane gas, and rats. Still,
because the sewers are public infrastructure, members of the public who enter
them aren’t actually trespassing, she notes.
Are
you aware of anyone doing this in your city’s storm sewer? Have you ever
ventured in there yourself—either as part of the job, or just for the adventure?