[patton]

Flying In NY

"C'mon, Mark, what the hell are we doing?" I looked over the edge, feeling a little
sick. Thirteen stories of Riverside drive apartments, topped by a twenty foot wall
around the water tank.

All of those old New York buildings have water tanks on top – the city water pipes
are so unreliable, each building has to have it's own supply, in case of fire.

"We are going for a run," Mark said, "and then we will climb down." I thought, is he
nuts? This damn wall is all of ten inches wide.

"I can see Grant's Tomb from up here," I said. We had my birthday party in the park
next to it. I was eight at the time. Some people created about an acre of paper mache
sculptures around the benches. But Mark knew that – he was there, of course.

The sun was shining – it had rained earlier, so the smog was washed out of the air. I
always loved the rain, because I could breathe when the air got washed. This day was
glorious, and the sun framed Mark as he stood on that wall, 15 floors over Riverside
Drive.

"Are you ready?," he asked.

[nopardons]

I don't know if it was you or someone else, but that spurious story has been posted to FR several times before. It is not only badly written, but the author has NO idea what he's talking about. Water tanks are NOT because water pipes are "bad" in N.Y.C. at all. Neither do they contain water for emergencies. And NOBODY uses then to put fires out.

And N.Y.C. doesn't have smog.

[conservative in nyc]

I don't know where your story is from, but we have water tanks on tall buildings here because of this little thing called gravity, not because the pipes are unreliable or because of fire danger. The water pressure in the mains aren't strong enough to reliably pump water up more than about 6 floors. Water pressure in the mains is created by gravity - we get our water from reservoirs in the Catskills and the foothills of Upper Westchester and Putnam County. Water will always only seek its own level unless force is applied.