UPDATE: 2 Men Climb Towers of Iconic UWS Building: Captured in Stunning Photos

UPDATE: Monday, March 18 at 6:10 p.m: Following West Side Rag’s publication Tuesday morning of Jeff French Segall’s photos of two climbers on top of The El Dorado towers, management at the famous Upper West Side building reacted in an unexpected way.

Residents at the El Dorado, located at 300 Central Park West, received a message, which was shared with the Rag, claiming that the photos were fake.

“Upon receiving reports about the photos, the authorities initiated an investigation,” the message read. “After examination, the police believe that the photos in question are, in fact, manipulated and classified as deep fakes.”

However, on Monday afternoon, El Dorado building management began walking that back.

“Our statement that the photos were fake was based on the police telling our door staff Monday night that it was likely a hoax and we concluded, perhaps prematurely, that the photos were fake,” Mark Shonberger, president of the El Dorado board, told West Side Rag via text message. “Our main concern right now is to continue investigating and to work with the police to determine the facts.”

Shonberger emphasized that the claim the photos were fake was based on information given by police on Monday night.

The Rag confirmed with an NYPD spokesperson that officers were called to The El Dorado on Monday night for a “possible dangerous condition.” But a source familiar with the situation said that police visited the address only briefly and did not search the building.

Shonberger also asked the Rag for the contact information for Segall in the hopes of seeing more of the photos to both get a better understanding of what happened and to show police.

Segall, 82, who lives on West 90th Street less than 1,000 feet from the El Dorado and sent West Side Rag more than 100 photos of the two climbers on top of the Upper West Side building, reiterated to the Rag repeatedly that the photos were genuine. Segall said the only changes he made included a standard brightening of the images and touching up of the background of the photos to make them more clear.

Segall told the New York Post, which also wrote Tuesday about the stunning photos: “It’s insulting … The fact that my veracity, my honesty is being called into question is disturbing.”

The Post said that it independently verified Segall’s photos before publishing them.

The Rag consulted two experts on verification and misinformation, both of whom noted that current tools for detecting AI-generated images are not 100 percent reliable. But Cornell University professor Claire Wardle, who has done extensive research on verification techniques, noted (after examining some of the raw photos taken by Segall) that “there is a lot of metadata about time taken and other metadata that shows me this isn’t a deepfake.”

Nor are there obvious signs of photoshopping, like strange metadata or shadows that don’t match the time of the photo – though there’s no single definitive tool for determining when an image has been photoshopped.

West Side Rag will update this story when we learn more or if there is new information from the El Dorado.

Original Story

By Gus Saltonstall

A little before 7 p.m. on Monday night Upper West Sider Jeff French Segall looked up in astonishment.

Two young men were climbing the towers of The El Dorado building on Central Park West between 90th and 91st streets. The climbers had somehow reached the roof level of the nearly century-old building, which has twin 12-story towers on top of a 17-story base.

Upon reaching the roof, the pair then climbed to the tip top of both buildings and proceeded to take out what looked like a selfie stick, before photographing themselves for roughly 20 minutes.

The Upper West Side building is a New York City landmark, and the two towers are each nearly 400 feet tall, according to real estate listings.

Segall, a semi-professional photographer and contributor to West Side Rag, captured the moment in a series of stunning shots.

Here’s how Segall described the event unfolding before him.

“I had just taken an iPhone pano view of the El Dorado and the surrounding area from our 27th floor livingroom window, when my wife exclaimed, ‘Unbelievable, Jeff, look out the window. That’s a man!'” Segall told the Rag. “I looked up and saw, first, one man at the very summit of the south tower attempting to stand erect, and another man, reclining just below the top of the north tower, seeming to rest for a moment after his arduous climb. I ran for my cameras, fired off a series of shots with a low power zoom and then switched to my strongest zoom (150-600mm) for the remainder of the over 100 images.”

It seems unlikely that the El Dorado would have allowed something like this, and West Side Rag reached out to the Upper West Side building for more information about the situation. We will update this story if we hear back.

For those who are unfamiliar, this is what the El Dorado building looks like in it entirety.

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