Just watching random YouTube videos today and came up to one of the kids I follow who does 4K video walking tours of New York City. Actually, there are a few channels that do these in various locales around the world now...what a great way to virtually "travel" and feel like you're walking down some street in a far off, interesting location.
Today, ActionKid, as this NY young man is called, was up on the observation decks of the Empire State Building. It got me reminiscing the first time I went up to the same during this trip back in 1983, the subject of this FLASHBACK post. What I didn't mention is that, if memory serves me correctly, I actually made my way up to the now closed-to-the-public 103rd floor at the tip of the spire.
These days, the visitors experience is a bit richer in some ways since there is a cool museum on the second floor, then the visitor is ferried via special elevator with an LCD presentation in its roof to the new 80th floor observation area which looks like it had once been office space since it is bordered on all sides by the rather smallish 1930s style double sash windows common to all the office floors of the building, then after another quick elevator ride the visitor is deposited to the 86th floor where the familiar indoor/outdoor viewing areas are. This is where most visitors end their ascent since it is an extra charge to go up to the small 102nd floor glass enclosed deck which was just renovated last year. From here is where the above pic was taken.
But, like I said, I went to the 86th and 102nd back in '83 and I think the entry to the steep, tiny stairs to the 103rd was (perhaps unintentionally?) left opened and unattended and my friends and I quickly climbed up there enabling us to peer out of these small round porthole windows.
We did NOT access the door leading to the narrow ledge on the exterior. With my fear of heights, it was all I could muster dealing with the lofty vertigo I was having just being inside. (Though we did, of course, go out on the deck outside on the 86th using the binoculars and such...but that has a big fence so I felt okay.) I also could swear I felt some kinda energy pulsing through my body and could hear a very high-pitched ringing. This sign shown below, now on display up there, but not then, may explain what I felt and heard?
How cool were the eighties? Maybe it was the more lax times? Maybe it was the fact it was a recession and staff for the building was minimal perhaps? Perhaps the staff were there and let us go up there because the building management hadn't figured out how to sucker people for more money yet? (I don't think it was an extra charge for the 102nd floor visit like it is now)
But then again, maybe I did get exposed to dangerous frequencies and now that could explain, a bit delayed, the constant low-level tinnitus I've endured for the past few years now. Maybe a brain tumor will sprout up soon all 'cause I wanted to get just a little bit higher back in the day? Hmmm. If you ask me, it's probably OTHER ways of getting high since the eighties and well beyond that'll finally do me in, thank you very much.