On the Catwalk

Catwalks are not just for models.

There is a catwalk suspended beneath the pedestrian walkway of the Brooklyn Bridge. It is made of metal-mesh plates, square in shape. Welded together end-to-end, the plates are suspended by half-inch cables from the metal framework supporting the pedestrian walkway above. There are cable handrails, but they don’t lessen the vertigo that wells within you as you step from the solid roadway onto the catwalk. It creaks.

Through the metal squares beneath your boots, you see clear through to the river below -- 150 or so feet down. You can almost feel yourself falling. You grip the cable handrails so tight it slows you down. As you move along, salty ocean air flows swiftly and steadily across your face. The wind fills your ears, sounding like the small, hollow vastness of a seashell. You pause. You wonder if you should take a picture to document your passage, to prove you’ve been here, then, at once, recalling why you’re there in the first place, you release your grip on the cables and break into a full-tilt sprint.

There’s a jumper on the bridge, on the Manhattan-bound side, and you’ve come to take his picture. But you've got to hurry up, because these things tend to end quickly.

The police have shut down traffic in both directions over the bridge. This is how you’ve managed to access the catwalk at all: by sneaking up the Brooklyn-bound roadway, body plastered against the bulkhead of the bridge, not out in the middle of the roadway where you’d be easily seen. Your original plan was to shoot through the cable-and-steel latticework of the bridge to the other side, where the jumper is, but once you see this catwalk and realize you can reach the other side, you go for it.

New York, New York: May 21, 2007, On the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan-Bound Roadway, After Police Successfully Talk a 19 Year-Old Jumper Off the Rigging of the Brooklyn Bridge, Emergency Medical Technicians Wheel Him to a Waiting Ambulance.