The New York Times building was scaled by another climber late yesterday afternoon. Following the lead of French stuntman Alain Robert, who climbed the Old Gray Lady’s digs yesterday morning, Renaldo (Rey) Clarke of Brooklyn, USA started his 40-minute ascent up the skyscraper starting at about 6:00PM yesterday afternoon. Clarke had reportedly been planning the climb for more than a year and had left work yesterday angry that Robert had stolen his thunder, heading straight to the site of the building to begin his own stunt.

The green design of The New York Times building, by world famous architect Renzo Piano, utilizes ceramic tubes running horizontally (seen in photo) up the entire building to regulate the amount of light and heat absorbed into the workspace. These tubes were used as a makeshift ladder by both Robert and Clarke in their barehanded climbs up the side of the structure both without a rope or net.

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The New York Times has got itself a shiny new, super sustainable, “technologically advanced and environmentally sensitive” office tower in midtown Manhattan. It’s got all the latest in alternative amenities”well, almost. They forgot the bike racks.

Company executives had promised that the new building would include parking for bikes, but those plans apparently fell by the wayside, leaving employees with no safe place to stow their wheels.

So Times bikers have been doing battle with the building’s security guards, who won’t let them bring their bikes into the building, or even chain them to the building’s steel girders. As the cyclists seethed, the building management tried to placate them by creating a small indoor bike parking area near the trash compactors. But it only provides 20 spaces, of which the Times can only claim 12; 8 are for employees of other companies in the 52-floor building.

The old building had room for dozens of bikes, but the new facilities are discouraging many Times employees who used to bike to work, including Jim Dwyer, the paper’s Pulitzer prize-winning reporter.

Dwyer used to commute by bike along the Hudson River Greenway from his home uptown, but gave it up when the Times moved to the new building “because of the hassle with the parking.” Looks like the devil is in the derailleurs.