Adrenaline junkies dangle from NYC luxury condo for insane selfies — but building has bizarre reaction to heart-stopping pics
Two daredevils crawled onto the pinnacle of a 30-floor Manhattan building on Monday to take insane selfies – but managers of the luxury condo bizarrely claimed the heartstopping pics were phony.
El Dorado on the Upper West Side cried “fake news” over the wild pictures, telling its rich and famous residents in a letter that the photographer was pulling a massive “deep fake” prank.
But The Post independently verified that the images are real — and the 82-year-old retired school teacher who snapped the photos swore he only used enhancement technology on the stills.
“It’s insulting … The fact that my veracity, my honesty is being called into question is disturbing,” Jeff French Segall, a “semi-professional” photographer, told The Post Tuesday.
The finger-pointing erupted Tuesday after the West Side Rag published Segall’s pictures of the pair dangling from El Dorado’s twin 12-story towers, which sit atop a 17-story base.
The top is so narrow that the adrenaline junkies barely had enough room to stand — but the pair each had a selfie stick in hand as they dangled and even laid across the towers’ points.
Segall said he had been taking iPhone pictures of the sun setting behind the condominium from his 27th-floor living room — a routine exercise for the budding photographer — around 7 p.m. Monday when his wife noticed the thrill-seekers.
“I get chills just thinking about how dizzy I would be if I were up there. I don’t see how he can even turn around like that. I would be out of my mind with fright. But I was really impressed. I immediately put my iPhone down and I reached for my Nikon,” Segall said.
Segall said he took about 100 snaps which he plugged through Photoshop, Lightroom and a “denoiser” AI tool to make the images clearer before he sold them to the Rag.
When the pictures were published on Monday, El Dorado’s management team sent out a message to shareholders claiming no one had snuck through the building’s front doors.
The luxury building, which the likes of Alec Baldwin and Bruce Willis have called home, advertises a “24-hour doorman and concierge, ensuring exceptional security.” A two-bed and two-bath unit fetches $2.75 million.
El Dorado claimed “the police” investigated the photographs and determined they were “manipulated and classified as deep fakes.”
“The investigation determined that the images were digitally altered to create the illusion of individual being on top of the towers, an act that would be highly dangerous and were created with the intent to mislead the residents and community and cause unnecessary panic,” the letter stated.
When reached by The Post, a representative emphasized that the incident was “fake news,” saying it was “correct” that it didn’t really happen.
The NYPD, however, had no record of such an investigation.
The Post also verified that Segall’s original photographs — before he used the AI tool — were real.
Segall figured that his pictures would ruffle a few feathers upon publication, but was surprised that the backlash was aimed at him.
“What I thought was just that the management would be upset with the doormen for having allowed people to come into the building to trespass and go up there,” Segall told The Post. “I thought that perhaps the consequences might be internal. I didn’t think that the consequences were going to be denial.”
Segall and his wife, Ricki, assume the two thrill-seekers managed to sneak atop the building through the chaos of ongoing construction on the top portion of the building.
Segall meanwhile hoped the condo’s managers would change their tune.
“They were absolutely not doctored photographs,” Segall said. “In the end, they’re going to have to understand that the pictures were authentic … Now they’re going to have to retract it.”
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