The 1964 World's Fair was held in Flushing Meadow Park, and the relics of the fair have always seemed particularly fascinating to me.

The symbol of the fair was the Unisphere, created by U.S. Steel; the theme of the fair was "Peace Through Understanding." Robert Moses was deeply involved with the event as president of the World's Fair Corporation, which helps explain why the fair's organizers were able to "borrow" $24 million from the city, none of which was ever repaid. Moses' centrality might also explain why the fair was the site of civil rights protests; many of Moses' public works projects in previous years had already demonstrated his deep and ingrained racism. Peace and understanding indeed...

Without a doubt, this was the most difficult climb I've ever done in an urban setting. It was nearly impossible to get up the first 25 feet of the structure. Eventually, I asked the welder who lives on the bottom floor of our Brooklyn warehouse to help me out, and he used a torch to bend a piece of heavy rebar into a hook. After many tries of throwing it we got it hooked into a narrow gap in the structure, and I climbed up the knotted nylon rope shown in the first picture above. (The picture is my view down the rope to my partner.) It was quite difficult to climb the rope; ascenders wouldn't have helped either, because the crux of the climb was the top, where I had to leave the rope and squeeze into a gap in the concrete not much bigger than a large-size offwidth crack. When I finally got in, 30 feet off the ground, I found that the hook had only been caught on a rusted metal electrical box-- nothing I would ever knowingly trust my weight to.