"2006_04_empireidiot.jpg" from gothamist.com.

In any case, the verdict is in and Jeb Corliss is not welcome at the Empire State Building. Ever. Again.

AP: Judge bans daredevil Jeb Corliss from ever stepping foot into Empire State Building

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Director Marah Strauch of Scissor Kick Films is working on putting together a non-fiction feature film, aiming to capture what it feels like to jump off a building, cliff or a bridge, and walk away alive.  She wants to capture the essence of life, of freedom, of what it feels like to defy gravity for a moment and fly.
This is a huge project and Marah and her team are currently working to raise funds to be able to complete the work – specifically they are launching a fundraiser focused on the restoration and transfer to HD of the Carl Boenish film archive.

Please visit their Kickstarter fundraising page, where you can also get more information about the project.  In Marah’s words, this film is meant to be more than a simple history of BASE, it is to be a film that will inspire BASE jumpers and non-BASE jumpers alike to follow their dreams.  And here is her brand new blog.

Best of luck to the Gravity film team, we look forward to see the final product!

Baffin Island, Canada

The month-long Baffin Island BASE Expedition is on right now! Check out that link for a lot of cool information, including an up-to-date blog, mission info, team member profiles and photos and videos from the last trip to the island in 2008.

The team includes some pretty big names in the BASE world, including the PD Factory Team’s own Jay Moledzki. We were also really psyched to see so many chicks on the team. Yay, chicks!

Good luck to the whole expedition!

Jump 4 Heroes

See the TV interview below and a short edit of the jumps below that.

Enjoy the video—and particularly MSNBC’s spectacular journalistic reporting of the building’s height as 27,017′ (the smarties at MSNBC changed out the video on us and they’re correct now! – it’s 2,717′):

Some more links to fill up what remains of your Friday workday:
BBC
CBC
Daily Mail

Jump4Heroes Jump from Bloukrans Bridge. Photo by Dawie du Plessis.

It would be a shame to go all the way out to South Africa and not experience the place. So, with the World Cup nonsense out of the way, Jump4Heroes teamed up with some of the PD Factory Team to venture around the country and jump from anything survivable that was in sight.

Starting out at Cape Town, the weather was against us, so we put our foot down and headed for a jump in the rain at the 200′ Gouritz Bridge. Touring the Garden Route we spent the next few days having a boogie at Bloukrans Bridge, home of the highest commercial bungie jump operation. For anyone planning to go BASE jumping in South Africa, be warned—the landing areas can be pretty tight; landing at Bloukrans was either in the water or on a small patch of rocks, the trek out either involved swimming or rock climbing with no equipment- definitely scarier than the actual BASE jump!

Moving on, and having taken a 14-hour drive, we all jumped from the pool deck of a prominent hotel in Durban. The crack of the slider-down canopy openings may have slightly disturbed the guest out for an early morning swim and those breakfasting in their rooms admiring the view of the the sun rising over the sea.

The PD Team members called it a day at this point. They kept citing work as the reason they had to leave the trip but the rest of us firmly believed that they were just too scared; maybe they’d just had too much fun for 2009 though. It was then time to head north to the Drakensburg mountains, the largest mountains in South Africa, for a few jumps. The weather then turned and the remaining jumps didn’t happen.

In all it was a great trip. The Jump4Heroes crew got to raise some great awareness for The Royal British Legion, a charity that supports our troops- members of the Armed Forces, past and present. There’s a short clip of video, including BASE jumping from the roof of a moving car at Bloukrans Bridge, here:

Thanks to all those that made it possible, particularly our guide and photographer Dawie du Plessis.

Read about him here. And take note – the December/January issue is the last for National Geographic Adventure, so snag your copy now.

View What to Do for Bridge Day in a larger map, including Google Street View of the bridge

Based on the great help we got from all the local businesses Marcus recommended in his piece, we have to believe Fayetteville is one of the coolest towns ever. We’d have liked to print more of the great pictures they sent, but there were just too many cool establishments to have room for them all!

P.S. The Mystery Hole is not the quietly-whispered-about strip club. They’re here.