A young man clings to the edge of a roof by his fingertips with no safety equipment dozens of meters above the ground, and then removes his left hand in a death-defying stunt that leaves him with only his right hand to hold him. A moment later, he throws back his head and smiles directly into the camera. This is when viewers gasp in shock and lean away from the screen. Naturally, questions quickly follow. “Why is he doing it?” “Isn’t he afraid?” And finally, “Is he insane?”
Sitting inside a fast-food cafe near Lukianivska metro station, Grygoriy – who, with criminal liability at stake, wouldn’t give his surname – dressed in athletic shorts, sneakers and a t-shirt, his boyish face sporting a thin mustache, doesn’t look like a crazy, danger-seeking human spider-man. Rather, the 25-year-old fidgets in his chair, twirls his mobile phone in his hands and shyly answers Kyiv Post’s questions.
On the web he is known by his pseudonym, Mustang Wanted, the man famous for his high-wire stunts atop some of Eastern Europe’s tallest skyscrapers and towers. His exploits are shared with the public through videos and photographs online, posted by him and a small group of friends. They show Grygoriy dangling from rooftop ledges by a single hand, doing pull-ups on the steel bars of construction cranes and scaling his way up a suspension bridge cable high above the ground and without a safety rope or special equipment.
His daredevil acrobatics have earned him thousands of fans on social networks Facebook and Vkontakte, and his videos posted on YouTube have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. In the most viewed video (more than 454,000 views on the afternoon of June 20, 2013), Grygoriy teeters atop the steel beam of a 150-meter-high crane, confidently strolling back and forth on the boom with his arms spread for balance. It is enough for most to lose their lunch over.
But not for Grygoriy, who confesses he does not experience fear.
“It’s fun. That’s it,” he says with a shrug. “I feel neither fear nor an adrenaline rush.”
Perhaps some of those feelings are quelled by the soothing music emanating from the headphones he wears during many of his routines, which is in strict contrast to the heavy rock or rap paired with many of the videos. “(I listen to) the classics mostly – Chopin, Mozart, Vivaldi,” he says.
Grygoriy’s high-wire performances have inspired copycats, which is something that worries him. “They upload videos of themselves roof walking, but one can see that they are unprofessional and scared. I don’t want anyone to fall and hurt themselves,” he explains. “At these heights, there can be only one fall,” he says.
However, he does not seem to care so much about his own safety. Thus far he has gotten by with only minor scrapes and bruises. Oddly enough, his most serious injury resulted from an accident on a stairway. Dipping his head, he points to a four-inch scar where it was split open.
Grygoriy, who admits to being a bit of a bookworm and loving Fyodor Dostoyevsky, used to study philosophy, but left college and is not working now.
He did tell the Kyiv Post that he is interested in a career as a stuntman. This would be a way to monetize his parkour-styled hobby. Recently he has solicited companies for sponsorship – as does Alain Robert, the “French Spider-Man” – via his personal website, only to receive a few disappointing replies.
“I got a generous offer from one porn website in the U.S.,” Grygoriy says. The website, the name of which he did not disclose, wanted its motto to appear in his videos. The idea did not pan out. Other offers came in from a Bulgarian alcohol company and a U.S. medical company. No Ukrainian businesses have shown interest thus far.
“I’ve only made like a couple hundred (dollars) on this whole thing,” Grygoriy confesses.
He dodges questions about what his family thinks of his hobby. He does agree, however, to speak about his meetings with police and building security.
Typically, officers simply question him and then remove him from the premises, Grygoriy says. On a few occasions officers have asked him to pose for a photograph with them.
A recent escapade in Moscow where he scaled the famous Triumph Palace – the tallest apartment building in Europe at 264 meters high – earned him a trip to the police station.
He narrowly escaped an officer in St. Petersburg after climbing a lamppost on a city drawbridge in order to wave a burning torch while hanging from it. To avoid arrest he leapt into the freezing waters of the Neva River and swam to the bank, where a friend was waiting for him. The two escaped on the friend’s motorbike.
But there have been more serious brushes with authorities.
“Once, police officers threatened to break my legs,” Grygoriy recalls. But they let him slide with a stern warning.
Sometimes, he says, after leaving the police station, he heads directly to the next rooftop.
Grygoriy rarely makes press appearances. The one time he visited a TV show proved to be much less enjoyable for him than he had imagined. According to him, representatives of the show lied about their interest in him and mostly ignored him on air.
A vindictive Grygoriy, following the show, thought an appropriate response would be to leave a message atop the TV station building.
“My friend and I climbed to the TV center’s roof and urinated on their windows,” he says with a coy grin.
Kyiv Post editor Olga Rudenko can be reached at [email protected] Kyiv Post editor Christopher Miller can be reached at [email protected]
