Walking briskly, Ivan Kuznetsov leads Kirill Vselensky and Vasilisa Denisova out into the courtyard of a 30-story architectonics in Moscow's business district. He turns and perches alertly on his heels, anxiously analytic for a aegis bouncer like a bird watches for a garden cat. There are none, as far as Ivan can tell, and he continues to the admission of the underground parking barn and down a angled driveway. He's analytic for a way to the building's roof - then a way to get off it.
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Past a few anchored cars, the leash arch for a account door. It's locked, but with one solid accept bang it flies open. Everyone is now central the building. So far, so good. They've done this before.
Behind the account aperture are account escalators and stairways and weary workers who pay no absorption to the three adolescent people, who acquisition an elevator and ride it as far as it goes, to the 16th floor. They avenue and bound ascend 14 flights of stairs. They are now breadth they capital to be, breadth they aren't declared to be - on the roof, demography in the actionable appearance of Moscow's old and new city-limits accession out afore them. Skyscrapers admission imperiously, and the Moskva river apprehension its advance through the affection of the city.
Ivan, a abbreviate 19-year-old apprentice with aphotic hair and an air of acquiescently apprenticed confidence, accomplish to the bend and aeon down to the artery below. "One hundred meters," he says, eyeballing the ambit to the ground.
He spies a needle-like atom of metal bulging out from a parapet. With no assurance accouter nor net, no braiding nor hesitation, he accomplish assimilate it. There's just Ivan, a attenuate section of metal and the sky.
Ivan Kuznetsov on a crane by the Shanghai Tower. (Photo: Ivan Kuznetsov)
Ivan, Kirill and Vasilisa are "roofers," a loose-knit accumulation of crazily non-acrophobic daredevils who betray and bastard their way to the acme of Russia's accomplished buildings. Already they get up there, they accomplish atrocious tricks - blind by their fingertips, continuing on one leg - that they abduction in photos and videos that frequently go viral, accumulation assorted millions of YouTube angle and boundless awe and atheism at their addled Instagram photos, a abundance of which could lay affirmation to getting a allotment of the a lot of alarming selfies anytime taken.
Like any acceptable Internet celebrities, the roofers are now acquisitive to monetize the absorption they've received. So far, Ivan and Kirill's attempts to do so accept accepted trickier than trespassing. Ivan hawks photos of sunsets to British photo agencies. The a lot of he's awash one for was 8,500 rubles, or, almost $240. From time-to-time Kirill arranges couples' dinners on roofs, cheating lovers into sites breadth they can adore some apathetic soup and a advantaged view. These interludes don't consistently plan out, "If the wind is blowing," says Kirill, "you can see on the girl's face that they are thinking, 'This is romantic?'"
There accept been, Kirill claims, bigger paydays. He says a Russian commercial bureau paid him to blur himself sucking on a Chupa Chups lollipop on top of a arch in Vladivostok. Unfortunately, he couldn't acquisition the bonbon already he got to to the city. He scaled the bridge's girders anyway, and fabricated do with a knock-off Chinese sucker.
And there was the time, in 2012, if Kirill climbed a arresting belfry in Moscow dressed as Spiderman to advice advance the web-slinger's accurate reboot, The Amazing Spider-Man. (See him in apparel at 1:33 in the video below.)
Kirill aswell says that he was asked to accord a address on beam to Russian Nike executives, and that the accouterment behemothic now gives him chargeless accouterment to wear.
But Kirill, Ivan and Vasilisa were roofers afore they knew anyone was watching them, afore they even wanted to be seen. So while money is a acceptable motivation, it's not the alone one. "Why do we go on roofs?" wonders Ivan hypothetically. "We wish adrenaline. We're like junkies; we can't reside afterwards it. You wish to analysis your possibilities and yield aggregate from life. You try it already and it is actual harder to stop."
Ivan muses for a moment. "I will stop one day if I accept wife and kids. I can't do it all my life."
Kirill, 21 years old and with more than 40,000 Instagram followers, nods in acceding to his colleague's thrill-seeking explanation, but aswell offers a added adventurous perspective.
"Every new roof is like a new analysis into your city," he says. "I apperceive Moscow actual able-bodied as I see it from above. As a kid I acclimated to adulation to appointment humans as every time there was a new appearance from the window. It is an simple way to acquisition chance in your own city."
Vasilisa, a abbreviate albino with an communicable laugh, has her own take: "I prefer," she says, "the beneath college buildings."
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In Russia anyway, accomplishing actionable things on rooftops is annihilation new, but the roofers accept taken it to a new acute - not that the authorities care.
"Nobody stops us," explains Ivan, the wind whipping his hair on the roof. "Even if they bolt us they usually let us go. They don't wish to accord with the paperwork."
In roofer jargon, the belfry we're continuing aloft is a bayan - an simple roof to get up on. Kirill and Ivan specialize in the tallest and the riskiest buildings, admitting they had to advance their mettle. Ivan, who began beam afterwards seeing some photos of added climbers online, started with a architectonics that was a simple 12 belief tall. From there, he formed his way up to a 50-story architectonics that appropriate him to ascend up the ancillary via a account elevator in adjustment to accomplish the final ascent.
"My knees shook," says Ivan about that climb, speaking a few canicule beforehand at a café in a Moscow mall. "But I knew I could do it."
When he's not ascent buildings, Ivan is enrolled in accommodation school. But he doesn't abundant wish to allocution about that. Instead, he keeps affairs out his iPhone to appearance photos and videos of the attractive sunsets he's captured from high-rises, as able-bodied as added shots that appearance him animated and advance from boundless heights.
Roofing isn't all addled fun and games. Kirill tells of a chill autumn attack to ascend the cooling belfry of a Moscow adeptness station. He tripped an all-overs and was chased by bouncer dogs, aegis sirens blaring, the black air stinging. The smoke advancing out of the adeptness station's chimneys, says Kirill, was "hot but [the night] was algid again so we broiled our easily on it." Still, he managed to get breadth he capital to go.
Vladimir Sidorov, on one of the seven Stalin Sisters, skyscrapers that mimicked New York and that were congenital in 1940s and 1950s. (Photo: Ivan Kuznetsov)
Kirill and Ivan have, on occasion, fatigued apprehension from on high. In 2012, about the time of Putin's presidential inauguration, a brace heavies from the FSB, the almsman to the KGB, came animadversion on Kirill's door. Not to arrest him, he says, but to ask, firmly, that for aegis affidavit he breach off roofs for a while.
As continued as the roofers breach politically neutral, authorities will acceptable appearance them benignly. Kirill says that during the 2013 Moscow mayoral campaign, associates of the anti-authoritarian action movement asked him to advice adhere banners. Kirill refused. "I didn't accede with their politics," he says flatly. To do so would've been to allure added FSB scrutiny.
Mostly, though, Kirill sees roofers' adeptness to ascend unmolested as affirmation of a decidedly Russian live-and-let-live (or die) mindset. "If you are in the West," he says, "and you go over a fence, passersby acknowledge nervously. It is not normal. If you do something actionable in Russia, you can do annihilation unless you alpha to exhausted somebody up and cipher will pay attention. That it is the mentality of Russia. We accept a association that doesn't care."
Russian adolescence assume to be abnormally accomplished at seeing their environments as an befalling for acute adventure. The roofers are allotment of an burghal analysis ability that aswell includes kids who analyze the abounding tunnels beneath Moscow, as able-bodied as those who breach in to alone houses and factories. Vasiliya acclimated to analyze Moscow's alms system. It's easy, she explains. One can lift up a manholes and go down that way or just jump off the alternation platform. "That is the a lot of bruised and alarming method," she says, abacus that exploring the busline curve makes "you get absolutely bedraggled and smell."
An anonymous roofer in Hong Kong. (Photo: Ivan Kuznetsov)
A added prevalent, and dangerous, anatomy of burghal chance is alternation surfing, breadth humans try to angle on top, or "ride," accelerated trains. In 2011, the endure time official abstracts were released, 100 humans were said to accept died from attempting the stunt. Alternation surfing, like roofing, has become a accepted YouTube phenomenon. Just this past, April, a Moscow jailbait died in the Moscow busline afterwards he approved to cream a train. (Russian adolescence accept aswell died while aggravating to ape roofers' exploits.)
Ivan estimates that there are about 50 austere Russian roofers, and allotment of the acumen why this country ability be acquiescent to such alarming behavior is artlessly because it's logistically easier to do in Russia than just about anywhere else. There's been a architectonics bang in the endure few years, and, as his acquaintance Kirill said, aloofness - or maybe it's fatalism - is widespread. Aegis at the ample amount of architectonics sites in Moscow is generally lax and consisting of underpaid and undertrained guards. Even if they were to get caught, a roofer faces fines of 500 rubles (approximately $14). The alone absolute bridle is the roofers' own fear.
To Ivan's ability two roofers accept died as a aftereffect of climbing. One fell through a bottle roof in Moscow and accession slipped off a roof in St. Petersburg. He doesn't like to anticipate about them. He can't allow to. "Certainty is the a lot of important thing," Ivan says about climbing. "If I am not assertive again I will not go."
He's had some abutting calls. During a cruise to Shanghai, Ivan's eyes lit aloft the massive Shanghai Belfry skyscraper. He and Kirill climbed to a crane at the top of the aloft structure. Ivan got added than 600 meters off the ground, assimilate the crane, if something happened.
"I was 5 meters from the end," Ivan says, "and the crane angry on, the engine. There was snow and I anticipation what should I do? I, at the moment, to be frank, bits myself."
He was able to eventually accelerate himself down the affective crane and get to the cabin, breadth he fabricated eye acquaintance with the abettor inside. "We looked at ceremony for a few seconds," Kirill says. "He nods. I say accost and asked if I could blur him and again I went aback down."
A cruise to Egypt was analogously hairy. Kirill illegally climbed the Great Pyramid of Giza afterwards ambuscade in a adjacent cemetary for 5 hours. A tourism official accepted an apology, adage "What would accept happened if they were terrorists or are planning a agitator bombing?"
Trespassing laws aside, roofers, like a lot of subcultures, chase a set of rules. They go to adore the view, get a adventure and certificate their adventures. They are accurate not to breach anything. (Or, says Kirill, "that's what we acquaint journalists.") They aswell accept their own slang, in accession to bayan there is viselnik, which almost translates to "hanged man" and is a appellation for a roofer who hangs by just his or her fingertips.
The a lot of acclaimed viselnik is a Ukrainian who calls himself Mustang Wanted. His accumulation video, apparent below, has becoming added than 5 actor YouTube views. If you google "Mustang Wanted" one of the autocomplete suggestions is "Mustang Capital Dead," which is a altogether reasonable concern if you've apparent said video. Ivan dismisses his Ukrainian battling as "an acrobat" not a roofer. "He is extreme," says Ivan. "He goes on roofs not for the adorableness or the photos but to adhere there. The alone humans who alarm him a roofer are kids who don't apperceive anything."
Despite their airy admission to, you know, their own lives, it's bright that Ivan and Kirill yield their amusement seriously. Listening to them allocution about prepping for a ascend is like eavesdropping on planning for a aggressive operation. "You charge to go annular the territory," explains Kirill, "see breadth aegis are, breadth the cameras are, if there is a way in. To go in via underground like a car park, which is usually abominably guarded, or you can go above? Are there heating pipes to clamber in on?" He addendum that the a lot of accepted adjustment for accepting admission to a architectonics website is aswell conceivably the simplest. "Over the fence at night," he says. "Security guards plan irresponsibly. They are usually comatose at that time.
And it is aegis guards, rather than coast to one's death, that are the roofers' greatest antecedent of anxiety.
"We're generally asked what are we a lot of afraid of?" says Kirill. "To fall? The better abhorrence is to be detained," said Kirill.
Ivan thinks aback to a night if they were nabbed by aegis guards. "They exhausted us a little bit," he says. He's getting bashful. "By exhausted a little," he continues, "I beggarly I was covered in blood."
For safety, roofers ascend in pairs and generally with a babe in tow. "The best aggregation to go up is two lads and a girl," says Vasilisa. "Two can advice ceremony added and the babe can abate the situation. We say, 'we accept an anniversary.' We anticipate something up. It absolutely helps."
Ivan Kuznetsov, on top of one of the seven Stalin Sisters. (Photo: Ivan Kuznetsov)
Prior to Moscow's accepted architectonics mania, the a lot of acclaimed top acceleration barrio in the city-limits were the alleged Stalin Sisters - all-inclusive barrio erected amid 1947 and 1953 and whose gothic modernist architectonics was aggressive by Manhattan skyscrapers that Soviet engineers had apparent decades earlier. The Sisters housed the affair aristocratic as able-bodied as the country's top university and the adopted ministry. Continuing aloft the 30-story architectonics they've just climbed, Kirill, Vasilisa and Ivan can see six of the seven sisters - the aforementioned six that the two boys accept already climbed.
Getting the sixth is a accomplishment of which the Kirill and Ivan are proud. They went as far up as they could accurately go from the autogenous of the tower, cogent guards that they were acceptance advancing to analysis the breadth for accomplishments radiation, again as one blah bouncer slipped off to drink, says Ivan, "we bankrupt the aperture went up to the spire." If they came aback down, he continues, "[the guard] was still there drinking."
The belfry apartment the Russian adopted admiral is the one missing Stalin sister from the roofers' collection. It's aswell the a lot of heavily guarded. They approved to get in once, via adjacent cesspool tunnels, but hit a asleep end.
They vow to accomplish it to the top someday. They vow to beat the seventh sister. "We have," says Ivan, grinning, "a plan."
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