Manchester, England //
Ad astra per aspera
Breaking out of a Manchester skyrise
Date September 2007
Posted September 2010
Posted September 2010
On a narrow back street in the Deansgate area of Manchester I reached into the boot of the car and withdrew the laptop case and then unzipped it to check the contents which, not surprisingly given our plans, didn't include a laptop. Frank stepped out of the passenger side at ease in his well-fitted suit and looked quietly upward at the mighty Beetham tower, no doubt trying to imagine the view from the top - a view which we were hoping to experience very shortly. The third member of this group of smart looking 'young professionals' would be Ellie, who dropped into the role of serial trespasser completely unphased by the possible consequences. Complete, we did what people like us are 'supposed to do' on a Friday night in the city: we hit a bar.
It was close to 9pm when we approached the large revolving door at the front of the hotel, the wide opening flanked by two equally wide bouncers. Frank (as always) looked confident, I tried to do the same and Ellie smiled sweetly. The big men didn't care anyway - here, apparently, were three more chumps willingly heading for the Skybar to waste the monetary rewards of their corporate-whoredom on overpriced drinks. Obviously it didn't cross their minds to consider that we may have completely different motivations. And why would it? In a world where so many and so much is the same, it's not difficult to camouflage yourself.
We passed the hotel reception and walked to the lifts. As thrilling as any night-time live steelworks infiltration, the socially engineered passage into private areas of high profile premises presents a whole different series of possible scenarios. Chief amongst them is what to do when caught in the act of something so obviously pre-meditated? The answer to this would come shortly, after we'd quietly walked across one of the floors of the hotel and opened a nondescript door into a service room. Here a few room service trolleys (empty) were waiting to be taken away, but crucially there were no staff here. A second door gave access to the back stairs of the building - a service route between floors that could be used in the event of an evacuation. Once more the excitement of 'going back stage' was fuelling our progress.
Now in the service stairwell we could do what the hotel visitors couldn't: bypass the remaining floors (all apartments, and not publicly accessible) up to the roof. This methodology was all more or less down to the research, hard work and compulsive curiosity of rave-throwing car-racing miscellaneous-trouble-making most-hated son of Manchester, Scott. Rather than adopting the suit/tie method though, it appeared they just rolled up wearing whatever they happened to have on, and then cruised back through a wedding reception swiping champagne as they went. Later I was to learn that this was pretty typical behaviour for the boy, abeit on the more acceptable end of his repetoir of mayhem...
But for the three of us in the stairs, no amount of dressing up was much help when a door swung open and a contractor of some kind presented himself, thus terminating any ideas we still had of seeing Manchester from 600ft up. We had the made up excuse of course that we were looking for the Skybar, and it's possible that our attire gave enough credibility to the claim that the guy didn't feel inclined to phone down to the security guards. Either way we were out, sent back to the main lifts and ultimately back onto the streets. After that we did what people like us are 'supposed to do' on a Friday night in the city after some drinks and misbehaving: we hit another bar.
Later I returned, this time with Scott himself, to find the roof hatch held fast on a magnetic lock. We knew in advance that the trapdoor would probably be locked, so this time from the laptop bag I withdrew a digital multimeter, using which Scott set about unwiring the lock from the fire alarm system (you can imagine the stakes here...). The pair of us then utilised a broom handle to lever the door open. Evening sunlight poured in, and we were up.
Shouts to Scott, NFBUA, ENDS and Prourbex.
It was close to 9pm when we approached the large revolving door at the front of the hotel, the wide opening flanked by two equally wide bouncers. Frank (as always) looked confident, I tried to do the same and Ellie smiled sweetly. The big men didn't care anyway - here, apparently, were three more chumps willingly heading for the Skybar to waste the monetary rewards of their corporate-whoredom on overpriced drinks. Obviously it didn't cross their minds to consider that we may have completely different motivations. And why would it? In a world where so many and so much is the same, it's not difficult to camouflage yourself.
We passed the hotel reception and walked to the lifts. As thrilling as any night-time live steelworks infiltration, the socially engineered passage into private areas of high profile premises presents a whole different series of possible scenarios. Chief amongst them is what to do when caught in the act of something so obviously pre-meditated? The answer to this would come shortly, after we'd quietly walked across one of the floors of the hotel and opened a nondescript door into a service room. Here a few room service trolleys (empty) were waiting to be taken away, but crucially there were no staff here. A second door gave access to the back stairs of the building - a service route between floors that could be used in the event of an evacuation. Once more the excitement of 'going back stage' was fuelling our progress.
Now in the service stairwell we could do what the hotel visitors couldn't: bypass the remaining floors (all apartments, and not publicly accessible) up to the roof. This methodology was all more or less down to the research, hard work and compulsive curiosity of rave-throwing car-racing miscellaneous-trouble-making most-hated son of Manchester, Scott. Rather than adopting the suit/tie method though, it appeared they just rolled up wearing whatever they happened to have on, and then cruised back through a wedding reception swiping champagne as they went. Later I was to learn that this was pretty typical behaviour for the boy, abeit on the more acceptable end of his repetoir of mayhem...
But for the three of us in the stairs, no amount of dressing up was much help when a door swung open and a contractor of some kind presented himself, thus terminating any ideas we still had of seeing Manchester from 600ft up. We had the made up excuse of course that we were looking for the Skybar, and it's possible that our attire gave enough credibility to the claim that the guy didn't feel inclined to phone down to the security guards. Either way we were out, sent back to the main lifts and ultimately back onto the streets. After that we did what people like us are 'supposed to do' on a Friday night in the city after some drinks and misbehaving: we hit another bar.
Later I returned, this time with Scott himself, to find the roof hatch held fast on a magnetic lock. We knew in advance that the trapdoor would probably be locked, so this time from the laptop bag I withdrew a digital multimeter, using which Scott set about unwiring the lock from the fire alarm system (you can imagine the stakes here...). The pair of us then utilised a broom handle to lever the door open. Evening sunlight poured in, and we were up.
Shouts to Scott, NFBUA, ENDS and Prourbex.
