By Harrison Burke
2.5.10

Many a student sitting at an assembly or concert bored out of their minds has tilted their head back and peered into the inky blackness of the theater ceiling. Some may have even noticed faint outlines of something emerging from the far off rooftop. Those strange shapes appearing out of the gloom are the catwalks – a simple network of suspended walkways that enable the Opstad Tech Crew to reach the highest lights in the theater and to rig special effects.

The catwalks ranks up there in the grand list of “dangerous things at City High.” A four or five story fall out of the ceiling is not good for one’s health. There are only two ways into the cats. One, a very tall ladder, was actually sealed inside the wall during the 1999 renovations to the theater. The other is a ladder recessed into the wall of the balcony, with a padlocked and screwed shut trapdoor at the top.

There is one more piece to the cats however. Above the stage there is a separate system know as the “Grid.” Explicitly forbidden to students, the Gridd is a web of I-beams that suspend the lowerable bars that hold curtains and lights. Riddled with large holes and crisscrossed by a network of high tension cables that suspend the bars, the Grid definitely ranks high on the “Dangerous parts of City High” list.

Falling would mean a long drop to the stage floor, stopped only by the large metal bars that one would hit on the way down. Also, after you got out of the hospital, you’d likely be suspended for a week or two.

Everyone knows about the bell tower – it as after all, fairly easy to spot. The fairly visible door is an unassuming wood slab on the third floor in between the language office, and the door to the Little Theatre balcony. It’s usually (but not always!) locked.

As many tower is now home to a Verizon cell tower, but there are a few things that most people don’t know about the tower. For instance, have you ever noticed the small closet on the ground floor of the Little Theatre? It’s just a small, triangular room with a door in the front. But it doesn’t have a ceiling…just bricks ascending into blackness. Yup, it goes to the tower, two and a half stories straight up. Rumor has it there are old two by fours nailed to the walls that an enterprising student could use to scale the sheer walls…

Rumor also has it that there are pictures floating around Facebook of enterprising students scaling the outside walls of the tower…