1974 wasn’t that long ago but this amazing photograph of Philipe Petit tight rope walking across the World Trade Center towers looks like it was taken back in the 1800’s.

I only bring this up because several nights ago I was working late at my home office and I was looking for a little diversion. I channel surfed the OnDemand section and stumbled upon a movie/documentary called Man on Wire. I read the intro and it looked interesting and when I turned it on my work ended and I was glued to the TV. All I have to say is “big cahones” because after watching this show there isn’t a chance in hell I would have ever done what this crazy guy did. Wow! But as it turned out he’s really not that crazy. He’s just wicked good at tight rope walking.

His name is Philipe Petit and I won’t soon forget it. Petit was born in France in 1949 and was obsessed with tight rope walking even as a child. He perfected the art early on and when he heard that the World Trade Center Towers were going to be built in New York he started to plan the walk between them before they even broke ground. Petit had walked the towers of Notre Dame and some towers in Sydney, Australia while the Trade Center towers were being built. Now that’s determination and it was later called “the artistic crime of the century.”

It took him six years to secretly plan this “coup” as he likes to call it and after watching the show you will discover why it took him that long. This was not an easy thing to do and not get caught. Some of the actual footage that was shot made you dizzy and all of the people he had to have help him each had a job to do in this event. All of them knew they were going to be arrested at the end but this was Petit’s vision and he didn’t care.

They had to use a bow and arrow to shoot fishing line from one tower to the other and gradually increased the thickness of the rope to eventually pull across 450 pounds of steal cable and securely fasten it from one brace on the tower to the other. they had to create a fake business with fake invoices to get past security and on August 7, 1974 he walked his way to fame. The cross balancing bar weighed in at 50 pounds and on the walk Petit did some tricks on the wire to the amazement of hundreds of spectators in the street. One woman’s job was to get spectators to look up from the street. (Why do the act if nobody sees it, right?)

As it turned out Petit was arrested but all charges were dropped if he performed a circus type show for kids in New York, which he graciously did. He later became famous for his walk and actually made the towers famous and is credited for getting office space rented as before the walk they were having problems filling the space. He was then given a life time pass to the towers observatory platform and actually signed a beam near the location where he crossed.

Great story and I highly recommend it.

Jim

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