Alain Robert is not the first human spider to climb tall buildings: George Willig, “Spider Dan” Goodwin and the more obscure Tony Deutchler did climbs in the 80’s and 90’s.
Even further back there are stories about Bill Strother doing a climb in 1921 in Augusta and Jack Williams doing climbs in 1917 and 1918.
The sculpturist [...]
The parkour are following in the footsteps of the greatest urban athlete of them all: climber Alain Robert - The Man Spider. His website is full of charming English like:
Is he out the law?
It is very difficult to obtain authorizations to climb a tower with naked hands, then to each one of its rises, Alain [...]
We did swing around lampposts and climb roofs in the town when I was a kid - but that’s where we stopped. The kids from Lisses south of Paris did not stop - they continued to hone their skills and so invented the sport of free-running:
moving around the urban landscape as it was a combination [...]