Los Angeles police Monday were investigating a stunt carried out by a social media daredevil who walked a slack-line tightrope between the notorious downtown “graffiti towers.”
Benjamin Schneider, 28, who is known on social media as “Reckless Ben,” managed to slip past police patrols and access the fenced-off Oceanwide Plaza complex in mid-May. He and his team then stretched a slack line between the towers, and he delicately walked between the buildings, with a drone-mounted camera catching all the action.
The video has been widely viewed, leaving little doubt about who carried out the stunt, which the Los Angeles Police Department confirmed Monday it is investigating, noting that the graffiti-covered buildings are private property.
Schneider told reporters the stunt amounted to performance art.
“The line represents the line of life,” he told Fox11. “On one side you have birth, on the other side you have death, and there’s a line that connects it through, kind of like your timeline. I had to walk from one side to the other, balancing on life. In life, a lot of things will come in your way and you have to balance through it all to make sure you don’t fall and die.”
He told KTLA5 that police began searching the building when they realized he was on the property, and he hid in a bathtub covered with plywood for several hours before leaving.
The Oceanwide Plaza buildings have been a sore spot for the city, with the Chinese developer behind it abandoning the property after going bankrupt. The buildings then became a magnet for graffiti vandals, who have tagged virtually every floor of the complex overlooking Crypto.com Arena.
Last year, some people filmed themselves base-jumping from the roof and floating to the street below.
The property has been fenced off and is patrolled by police, but vandals have continued to gain access.