Friday, April 28, 2017

Crane-climber a welcome break from politics as usual

In a welcome diversion from the dominant news items of the day (Trump tilting at the windmills of NAFTA and NATO, the Ontario provincial budget, blah blah blah), a Toronto woman was rescued from the top of crane yesterday, in an early morning drama which has captured the imaginations of the population and the local media.
23 year old Marisa Lazo, described by a friend as "an adventurous girl" (which is perhaps an understatement), was discovered around 4am on Wednesday morning placidly sitting on the pulley of a crane about 10 stories above street level in a construction site at Yonge and Wellesley in downtown Toronto.
Crane rescue
Dressed on this cold night in jeans, button-down short, a light denim jacket and two inch heels, Ms. Lazo had somehow scaled the huge crane, and then shinned down the cable to the pulley, where she was spotted swaying gently in the breeze by neighbours as it was coming light in the morning. Firefighter Rob Wonfor, who carried out the rescue, is quoted as saying: "I have no idea how she did it ... It was hard enough for me to go up with ropes and harnesses and she free-climbed that".
The next day, Ms. Lazo faced six mischief charges, and was ultimately released on $500 bail on the condition that does not enter an more construction sites or do on any rooftops. Which might sound kind of ridiculous, but apparently she has a penchant for standing on, or dangling off, tall building sin Toronto, as her Instagram account (since taken down) attests. In fact, "rooftopping" for photos is apparently a thing among some young people, and some have even died from it. Who knew?
Anyway, I just wanted to thank Ms. Lazo for brightening my day a little, and for giving the press something other than dry politics to feast on, for a while at least.

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