There are two ways to drink with friends on a spring weeknight – grab some beers and sit on a couch, or grab some beers and climb 33 flights to the roof of the Book Cadillac and enjoy a few sips while enjoying a breathtaking view of downtown.

This was the first time we mixed our two favorite hobbies – skyscraper exploration and boozing. And we inaugurated this new mix with a two-fer, hitting the Lafayette Building first, then over to the grand prize after a little warm-up on Lafayette’s lovely roof, with frequent rest stops at Bar Bar.

We didn’t get loaded, we just took a couple of token beers up there for the sake of sipping, not to get hammered. I know a lot of our fellow urban explorers fiind beers as much a necessity as flashlights, but generally we do our explorations alcohol-free. Not this time.

There’s a new smell in there since the last time we were there, and it’s not from the fire a few weeks back. I could smell it throughout the hotel. It was a strong chemical odor, sort of like aromatic cancer, which went well with the dozens of “Danger: Asbestos” signs posted all over the place now that the contractors had kicked up a bunch of asbesos fibers throughout the hotel.

They also very helpfully lit the entire stairway from bottom to top, sparing us the climb in darkness, though that didn’t help with the sheer enormity of climbing 33 flights of stairs all at once after a couple of beers. It took a few rests on the way up before we made it, though having to breathe deeply while standing next to an asbestos warning sign doesn’t produce a sense of well-being.

Yes, alcohol + immense heights don’t always go together well, especially because you’ve got bottles of liquid courage influencing your thinking. But we’re rather smart boys, and all went well.

Even with the tripod, the wind made most of the photos blurry, because the cheap construction of my tripod is slowly failing, and the legs keep collapsing inadvertantly. Damn! Still got a lot of pretty shots, though we were slightly disoriented in the dark and couldn’t get to the part of the roof we really wanted to be on. Got down, and after a quick look-out ran out of the hotel as several potential witnesses in a future courtroom scene drove by.