Someone took it upon himself to free-climb the Salesforce Tower this morning. Passers-by in the vicinity of 415 Mission St. swiftly took note of this daring and exceptionally inadvisable stunt—as did one person who captured video of the young climber from inside the tower itself, smiling as he scaled its gently curving exterior wearing gloves and little else by way of mountaineering equipment.
Shortly before 11 a.m.—and roughly 90 minutes after the initial reports—the San Francisco Police Department’s scanner traffic revealed the climber made it safely to the top of the Salesforce Tower, where he was promptly detained by police officers. Broadcast news footage reviewed by The Standard shows the climber handcuffed by police, and SFPD later confirmed that he was arrested for trespassing and resisting arrest.
The climber was a 22-year-old anti-abortion activist from Santa Clarita, Calif., who on Instagram identifies himself as Maison De Champ and calls himself the “Pro-Life Spiderman.” He says he is raising funds to jail a specific Washington, D.C.-based abortion doctor whose clinic was connected to a bizarre April incident in which anti-abortion activists were found to be in possession of several fetuses.
On Monday, a leaked document indicating that the U.S. Supreme Court is set to overturn Roe v. Wade caused widespread outrage in San Francisco political circles.
Reportedly, Maison De Champ is also the same person who climbed the 600-foot Aria Tower in Las Vegas in August 2021 in protest of mask mandates.
“This person is placing firefighters lives and the publics safety at risk,” a Fire Department tweet read, further urging people to condemn the action and not celebrate the unsanctioned climber’s highly dangerous (mis)deed.
People have previously illegally scaled some of San Francisco’s other tall monuments, namely Sutro Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge. The 1,070-foot, 60-story Salesforce Tower, headquarters for the city’s largest employer, is the tallest structure in SF and the second-tallest west of the Mississippi.
A man scales Salesforce Tower on May 3, 2022. | Courtesy of SFFD
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