Posted on 07/03/2009 3:11:01 PM PDT by raybbr
If you're scared of heights, it may be time to look away now.
Not content with having the tallest building in America, the owners of Sears Tower in Chicago have installed four glass box viewing platforms which stick out of the building 103 floors up.
The balconies are suspended 1,353 feet in the air and jut out four feet from the building's Skydeck.
Designers say the platforms - collectively dubbed The Ledge - have been purposely designed to make visitors feel as they are floating above the city.
The reward is unobstructed views of Chicago from the building's west side and a heart-stopping vista of the street and Chicago River below - for those brave enough to look straight down.
'It's like walking on ice,' visitor Margaret Kemp, from Bishop, California said. 'The first step you take you think "Am I going down?"'
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Okay, that was too much height and openness for me...
F%#% that.
Just looking at those picks gave me the heebie jeebies.
Screw dat.
Do you think it would upset you to do that?
Don’t like it, and that’s just from seeing the pictures.... LOL...
I can barely make it out to the end of the 'Infinity Room' at House on the Rock, though hanging out of helicopters used to be no problem for me, LOL!
Have to keep my eyes closed.
If I was in there with some other folks I’d be like “OK, now, on the count of 3, let’s all jump up and down as hard as we can.” Just to test out how sturdy it really is, you know...
I don’t even want to look at that without ropes, carabiners, and a bombproof belay!
Amazingly, Children have always taken to this kind of thing more than adults. Adults know what can go wrong.
If only the Obama administration was that open and transparent.
..now ya know why some cats will spend hours clinging to a branch in a tree
Okay...couldn’t do that either. My stomach gets queasy just looking at it.
I have a bridge phobia, probably related to the glass-over-large-canyons-and-cities phobia.
If that cute little girl can do it then why not? Actually, you eventually get used to the height. Many summers ago, I had to inspect welds on coulmns, beams and metal deck, which forms the mold for concrete floor pours. I wore a safety harness connected to a steel cable along the perimeter of the structure but that was it. My hard hat and steel-toe boots weren’t going to do a lot for me from the 54th floor. When you’re looking at a weld on the outside corner of a steel column at that height, it can be a bit much.
One of my favorite restaurants ever was Windows on the World, atop the WTC. The food was pretty good, the views spectacular. I remember watching the planes heading into LaGuadia for landing, they would actually be flying BELOW you on final approach. There was one large area by the bar, where the wall was all glass..floor to ceiling..about 20 feet. It was not uncommon to see a group of people all clustered together, about 5 feet from the glass..afraid to get closer. When the nervous crowd got too large, the managers had a very successful technique to solve the problem..they would have one of the busboys line up like a fullback, about 15 feet from the wall...all the staff would loudly countdown from 10..and at 3-2-1..the busboy would run full tilt at the glass..hurl himself at it, and bounce off...then people would wander up to the edge and press their noses against it...it gave the illusion that the building was leaning over slightly..that you could look straight down.
Not for me - the kids seem to like it, though.
That is worse than looking out the airplane window when I’m fortified on valium.
It WAS leaning---to allow for wind velocity.
How about going up in the elevator that rocked back and forth? And having to get into a second elevator to accomodate the dizzyng height (like having to get into another gondola to climb the mountain to ski).
Most memorable was eating dinner while looking DOWN at the cloud cover.
LOL, but if their insurance rep had ever been there, I will bet that that person would have been in a cold sweat at best! Windows was one of the glories that we lost. I understand that there was a largish crew there that morning - what a horror and how our media has led us to forget!
Damn. Just looking at those pics makes my palms sweat !
Ok. You always read about freak accidents- someone falling out of a roller coaster or a plane crash or an elevator plummeting to the ground, yet most people still ride roller coasters, planes, elevators etc. But if I ever read the floor dropped out of one of these glass boxes just one time, I’d never get near one again. You?
15 or so years ago, there was a lawyer in Toronto who liked to do that to prove to interns that the glass in their building was unbreakable . . . until that one time when the frame gave out and he fell 24 stories to the street. No thanks.
Ever hear the one about the guy who did something like that to show off in his office, and one day he went through?
I was 8 years old when we visited the Space Needle in Seattle. The ride up was uneventful but when we got to the top and looked out I freaked out. I had to ride back down hugging the wall of the elevator (and spoiling my dad’s time). I’ve been adverse to heights ever since, although it didn’t bother me to jump out of airplanes.
Would love to watch a thunderstorm from there.. would be so cool above the street.
On a much smaller scale, I took our kids to Multnomah Falls (620 foot drop) in Oregon this past month. There’s a nice observation area at the base of the falls, and you can take a winding walk to an observation bridge (non-see-through) that’s 70 feet up the falls.
My oldest, nearly 13, has decided that she has no problem at all with heights. It’s *depths* she doesn’t care for.
She was glad to come back down to the base of the falls.
Methinks that this Ledge would not be up our family’s collective alley.
*LOL*...that gave me a good chuckle...reminded me of a time a bunch of us guys talked another guy into getting on amusement ride....when we started up the initial climb and it was going very high, this guy turn and looked at me and said "I ****ed up didn't I?"...and I smiled and said..."yeah ya did"...his eyes rolled back in his head and he started screaming like a banshee..I laughed so hard I didn't remember the ride
I’d love to walk out there with a boombox, with a recording of slow, slow, loud creaking, girders bending, some crunching noises like rocks shattering, etc.
Might have been interesting before that, but now that would be all I could think of.
But being a guy who's no longer skinny (if ya catch my drift) I think I'll take a rain check for this new Sears Tower thing.
Same here. I’ve always had a phobia of heights.
I wouldn’t let a kid of mine out on that thing. It just looks untrustworthy to me.
I went to the Eiffel and got on the elevator up to the first level and couldn’t get off,,
Heights bother me alot.
It took me a couple of stiff adult beverages before I'd get anywhere near the windows.
When I spent that summer inspecting welds on a high-rise in downtown Chicago for an engineering firm, an ironworker had fallen to his death from a nearby structure. As my boss told me, the chances of that happening are pretty slim but are guaranteed if one does something stupid. Since we didn’t have nets back then we made sure our harnesses were secure and I made sure I did everything by the book. Since weld inspection was part of my job description, I really couldn’t avoid going high up. When I was walking along the beams or smaller girders, the safety harness gave me a measure of confidence so I seldom slipped off even though the walking surface was only one foot wide or less(with nothing underneath).
The glass and the connections on these balconies are excellent and based upon the large atriums one sees throughout many downtowns. I probably would be scared if I got on one of those balconies with a really fat person because the visual would have a psychological effect but logically I know those structures are tested to withstand high lateral and compression loads.
I was once on the roof of the John Hancock Center. I hooked my arm around the window washing machine track and hung over the side to get a photo straight down to the street.
My crazy friend stood on the corner of the roof, facing inward with the Chicago evening lake breeze to his chest. He stretched out his arms like he was struggling to keep his balance. Now, THAT freaked me out.
“If I was in there with some other folks I’d be like “OK, now, on the count of 3, let’s all jump up and down as hard as we can.” Just to test out how sturdy it really is, you know...”
Me, too! That is one cool looking place, and I’ve put it on my cheap thrills “to do” list. If I’m ever in Chicago, I’m THERE!
I love the Space Needle. I still go up whenever family is in town and want to see the sights. Took my future wife on our first date to dinner up there.
Funny prank time:
Start reading one of the joints....
“made in China, lol”
Ummm. I don’t think so!
When..........hell......freezes........over! No way, not a chance. If it’s over 2 stories, I’m not going to like it.
Looks like fun to me.
If you define “fun” as having your testicles retreat up to your ears.
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