Renaldo Clarke, the second man to climb the New York Times Building Thursday, may be doomed to the fate suffered by Buzz Aldrin and Tenzing Norgay.
But the Brooklyn computer technician and amateur skyscraper climber insisted to prosecutors it was his idea, and that it was purely “a coincidence” that French daredevil Alain Robert beat him to Mt. Sulzberger.
“I heard that some other guy had done it, and I was disappointed,” Clarke said, according to Manhattan Assistant DA Heather Pearson.
Clarke did his stunt at the height of the evening rush hour and, unlike Robert, did not have a support crew on the street.
He showed “utter disregard for police authority,” Pearson said.
But just like his French counterpart who made the ascent hours before, Clarke was charged with reckless endangerment and criminal trespass before being released yesterday evening on $2,000 bail.
Clarke, 32, who had been planning the stunt for two years, said he wanted to raise awareness about malaria, the disease that killed his uncle.
Friends of Clarke insisted there is a prize for second place.
“Wow, he upstaged a professional and said, ‘Here ya go, Frenchie!’ ” said his neighbor, Eric Hernandez, 29.
But Robert, who had also already beaten Clarke to an endless series of media interviews while the amateur was still awaiting arraignment, said that after this experience, he will never again climb a New York City building.
Calling the Times climb easy, as a result of the building’s ladder-like ceramic rods in which architect Renzo Piano had wrapped the building, he rated it a “a 0.5 on a scale of 10.”
“But no, never again, because the law is kind of difficult,” he said. “In Europe, I can climb and, nine times out of 10, it is no big deal.”
Robert said all that mattered to him was “getting his message across” about global warming, but those who work at the Times building were skeptical.
“What does climbing have to do with saving the planet,” said Phil Weimeo, 50, who works on the 35th floor.
Mayor Bloomberg called the daredevil duo “stupid,” and said that as a result of their antics, architects would have to make their buildings Spidey-proof.
“If you want to run the risk of killing yourself, I guess that’s your business,” Bloomberg said. “But if you fall and kill somebody else, that is the city’s business.”
More than a dozen cops patrolled outside the Times building yesterday morning until private security arrived and wooden planks could be installed as a temporary deterrent to would-be mountaineers.
Architects dismissed the notion that designs should take into account the risky whims of Robert, Clarke and their ilk.
“If we take as a paramount concern that someone might climb their building, I think we would be doing a disservice to the visual complexity,” said Rick Bell, New York director of the American Institute of Architecture.
Ever since city buildings began to reach for the heavens, there have been daredevils willing to risk their lives for the glory of scaling their heights.
In 1923, after a group of these “human flies” formed the “Safety Last Society,” and one of their members plummeted to his death, the city passed a law banning such “performance in which human life is needlessly imperiled to satisfy either an insane desire for vainglory or money.”
Additional reporting by Lara Moscrip, Betwa Sharma, Tatiana Deligiannakis and Melissa Jane Kronfeld