A few years ago, around the time that rock climbing made its Olympic début, in Tokyo, many New York City graffiti artists developed a keen interest in the sport. Some joined climbing gyms. Others learned on YouTube. Rope was acquired, not always legally, from R.E.I. The fruits of that education are now visible across the high peaks of lower Manhattan. Deploying the tools of “rappel graffiti,” the vandals have been racing to claim fresh canvases of vertical space once thought untaggable.

Shortly after midnight on a recent frigid evening, two of the form’s most accomplished practitioners, XSM and QZAR, met up on a shadowy street near SoHo, both dressed entirely in black. Their target for this evening: the prominent façade of a residential building facing West Houston. XSM, who is thirtysomething and slender (his tag denotes his stature: extra small), slipped a balaclava over his head. “The mental thing is probably the biggest barrier,” he said. “It’s actually very safe when you’re on a rope.” They waited until the last of the building’s lights went out. Then XSM shimmied through a crack in a playground gate, leaped onto a fire escape, and tiptoed six stories to the roof. From there, he signalled to QZAR to carry up the supplies: a hundred and twenty metres of static rope, plus harnesses, carabiners, belay devices, and a dozen cans of spray paint. “I always get nervous before I go up,” QZAR said. He had a stud in his left ear and wore paint-splotched pants and a hoodie embroidered with the word “HELLBOY.”

On the roof, QZAR discovered a problem: “My rope is frozen,” he said. It had been soaked the previous week while he tagged a decrepit “Welcome to the Bronx” sign in a downpour. “Fuck, dude,” XSM said. “I don’t know if that’s good.” He paused to think. “Let me ask ChatGPT real quick.” The language model pointed out that alpine climbers often rappel in Arctic conditions. Satisfied, the men secured their ropes to the top of the roof and went off the edge.

They descended side by side, their feet on the wall, adding friction to the frosty ropes using a clamp-like braking device. Each unleashed his tags in quick bursts of royal-blue bubble letters on the building’s red brick. “I feel like my stress has disappeared,” XSM said. “There’s nothing else I can do up here. I can’t go on Instagram. You’re really just stuck.” QZAR said, “I feel like my rope right now. I’m frozen.”

Nearly halfway down, XSM used a tool called an ascender to hoist himself back up, so that he could outline his looping characters in white. “This requires some body strength,” he explained.

His partner was lagging behind. “I’m a little bit perfectionist,” QZAR said. A police cruiser sped by but didn’t stop.

An hour after they started, they returned to the roof, wound their ropes, hurried back down the fire escape, and gazed up at their work. “It’s pretty fire,” QZAR said.

“It’s, like, a sense of accomplishment,” XSM said. “Like you won a game.”

At a nearby café, the pair considered the growing popularity of rope-assisted graffiti. “Before this, everyone did ladders,” QZAR said, sipping a jasmine tea. “It’s the theory of broken windows. It just spreads.” He estimated that, across the city, about a dozen graffiti writers were regularly rappelling, along with international visitors from Paris, Berlin, and elsewhere.

“Brazilians actually like to climb without rope, which is crazy,” XSM said. He has been doing graffiti for more than fifteen years. In 2023, he and two other prominent rappellers, RAMS and NOTICE, sneaked to the top of an unfinished luxury condo near the South Street Seaport, leaving behind a set of multistory tags more than six hundred feet in the air. The graffiti, considered the highest in the city, remains up. Lately, XSM has been trying to pursue a more traditional art career, but has been finding it difficult to stop tagging. “I’ve been saying it’s the last one for, like, years,” he said. “Graffiti is kind of addicting.” In September, RAMS tagged the crown of an unfinished skyscraper at 45 Park Place, near City Hall. “I didn’t even know that building was there,” XSM said, a hint of envy in his voice.

For work, both QZAR and XSM paint murals legally, among other side jobs. Each has been arrested previously. A few months earlier, during a marathon painting session that unexpectedly stretched into the morning rush hour, QZAR locked eyes with a police officer while hanging from a rope above Canal Street. “He looks at me, I look at him, and I wave to him,” he said. “I try to have a little bit of respect and appreciation, even if graffiti is kind of a disrespectful thing.” ♦