I didn’t get around to blogging about it at the time, but we had quite a bit of excitement around here last November when a couple of BASE jumpers dove off the observation deck of the LDS Church Office Building in the middle of a sleepy workday and parachuted into a nearby parking lot. (Ed. note for out-of-town Loyal Readers: in addition to its famous temple, the Church owns a number of other buildings in and around Salt Lake’s downtown core, including a 28-story edifice that houses extensive administrative offices. It’s not the tallest building in SLC — that honor belongs to the Wells Fargo Center, which curiously has fewer floors than the Church Office Building but measures two feet higher — but nevertheless, the COB is a very prominent part of the local skyline.) As with just about anything in this city that involves the Church even tangentially, there was a whiff of controversy about the jump. Scanning through online comments about the incident, you’ll see that some speculated it was intended as a political demonstration, a thumb in the eye of a religious organization that was still doing damage control for its involvement in California’s Proposition 8. Some Mormons took it as a personal insult to their Church, not tied to any particular issue but obviously some kind of desecration because the building the jumpers chose was Church-owned. Still others thought it had nothing to do with the Church per se, but was disrespectful to authority and civility in general. And then there were those with the attitude that it was nothing more than an audacious stunt, utilizing the best property in the city for doing such a thing (the area around the Wells Fargo is much more congested, making it far more likely someone would’ve gotten hurt), which just happened to be a building belonging to the Mormons, and that the whole thing was a refreshing lark for a sedate city that needs an occasional jolt in the arm. (For the record, that was my take on it.)

In any event, the jumpers had a getaway car waiting and sped off within moments of reaching the ground, but they were soon identified and arrested. They’ve both recently pleaded guilty to trespassing and disturbing the peace, and received relatively light handling (as I understand it, the judge will drop the case if the men pay their court fees and keep their noses clean for six months, which is entirely appropriate in my view, considering no actual harm was done).

And now, just as a coda to a minor but memorable incident in Salt Lake history, one of the jumpers has posted a video documenting their stunt:

Church Office Building from Marshall Miller on Vimeo.

Personally, I still think these guys did something pretty cool…