Adams Morgan Rooftop Bar Jumper Rescued By Fire Squad

WASHINGTON -- A man tried to get from one District of Columbia rooftop bar to another roof the Spider-Man way on Thursday night and was brought to safety by fire personnel on a high-angle rescue.

Not-so Spidey was trying to get from The Reef's rooftop patio to an adjacent rooftop in Adams Morgan.

Prince of Petworth posted a note from a reader who witnessed the event and thought he knew why the daring feat had been tried:

Last night while i was drinking at The Reef, some guy got pissed his girlfriend told him off and thought that he would impress her by showing that he could jump from The Reef to The Mellow Mushroom and didn’t quite make it.

"That's close," writes Martin Austermuhle on DCist. Austermuhle tracked down a slightly different explanation for the episode. (Austermuhle also suggests the jump itself was small-scale):

[A] person with direct knowledge of the incident tells us that the woman in question threw her boyfriend's sunglasses off The Reef's roof and onto the roof of a neighboring bar, Millie and Al's. The man -- who "was very drunk" according to one person, but not very drunk according to another -- thought he could retrieve them himself, hence the ill-advised stunt.

Brian Harrison, who was bartending on The Reef's rooftop bar last night, said that it wasn't much of a jump, but rather that the man -- who was apparently an extreme sports enthusiast -- thought he could lower himself down to Millie and Al's roof next door. He tried, but he misjudged the distance, which Harrison said approaches 18 feet.

Austermuhle writes that the man "only suffered a broken ankle." We do not yet know the fate of his sunglasses, or his relationship.

Prince of Petworth and DCist both ran a Flickr photo showing the scene on 18th Street NW as the rescue was underway.