Climbing content creators Ivan “Vanya” Beerkus and Angela Nikolau are known for scaling tall buildings and looking Instagram-sexy at the top of them. A 2024 Netflix documentary called Skywalkers: A Love Story chronicled their stunts. Now the two have topped themselves by briefly hanging from the top of the Empire State Building while local news choppers circled overhead and the internet gawked at their risky romance.
Initially, the whole thing looked like a political protest of some kind. The two climbers were dressed all in black, wearing bandanas and masks. The first thing they did atop New York’s second-tallest skyscraper was unfurl a big banner from the top of the needle. It read, “When the power of love beats the love of power, the world knows peace.” Antifa this was not.
BREAKING: Two people have climbed to the top of the Empire State Building in New York City, holding a banner from the skyscraper’s antenna reading, “When the power of love beats the love of power, the world knows peace.”
As of now it’s unclear how the pair reached the top of the… pic.twitter.com/rUPZ6nc1eK
— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 1, 2026
Later on during the stunt, the two climbed down from the top of the needle to the platform just below and one of them got down on one knee to propose to the other. The woman put the ring on and even held our her hand at arm’s length and started snapping pics of it. It’s a good thing I wasn’t up there because in addition to being terrified of heights starting at anything above 10 feet, I also would have butter-fingered that bling right through the metal grates.
But it was probably nothing for the viral internet couple who have previously scaled much taller structures. The Netflix documentary that catapulted them to a new level of notoriety followed Beerkus and Nikolau as they climbed Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur, the second-tallest building in the world at 2,227 feet (the Empire State Building is just under 1,500 feet to get to the tippy-top of the needle).
JUST IN: After two people climbed to the top of the Empire State Building and unfurled a banner on top of its spire Wednesday afternoon, one of the climbers appeared to propose to the other. https://t.co/ngG3jOeTBU pic.twitter.com/PhubQpnRH6
— ABC News (@ABC) July 1, 2026
All of this, including the masks, is of course quite illegal. The Russian couple was eventually taken into custody by the NYPD. It’s unclear if they’ll be formally charged or let go with a stern talking-to for fear of invoking the wrath of their internet following. Given the state of things, you could be forgiven for assuming this is all part of some astroturfed marketing campaign to promote AI or betting markets or some other crap. That doesn’t appear to be the case, however, and Deadline reports that the Empire State Building stunt was not connected to any Netflix project, past or future.
Some people just want to climb tall stuff and look hot while doing it. And given that the heat index in NYC today puts the “feels-like” temperature at 106 degrees, I’m sure they were very hot indeed.