Zeros

Two Guests Check Out of Level 0: What the Empire State Building Climb Looked Like From the Backrooms A Russian rooftopping couple scaled New York's most famous spire, got engaged, and got arrested — and somewhere behind the wallpaper, a very different broadcast was airing. Somewhere between the yellowed carpet and the buzzing fluorescent hum of Level 0, two figures noclipped straight into the biggest engagement stunt of the summer, and they had no idea the rest of us were watching through the seams in the wallpaper. Around noon Wednesday, Ivan Vanya Beerkus and Angela Nikolau, the Russian rooftopping duo behind Netflix's Skywalkers: A Love Story , free-climbed the antenna atop the Empire State Building — 1,454 feet up, no ropes, no harness, just vibes and, apparently, a ring. They unfurled a black-and-white banner referencing Jimi Hendrix , held the moment for the cameras, and Beerkus got down on one knee. Nikolau said, yes . The NYPD said, several felonies ....

There’s something unsettling happening in the corridors of Kim Gordon’s latest solo work, Play Me . Not unsettling in the way a horror movie lunges at you— but in the way a fluorescent light hums just a little too loud , just a little too long, until you start wondering if it’s thinking about you. This is where we are now : a concept album that feels less like a collection of songs and more like wandering into the wrong office building after hours. The music is built on trap beats, industrial textures, and ghostly repetition— familiar enough to follow, strange enough to distrust.  And then there are the videos. They don’t just accompany the music— they are the music’s architecture . Gordon drifts through spaces that look like they were generated by memory rather than design: empty hallways, beige rooms, nowhere places . It’s the aesthetic people now call The Backrooms , but Gordon wears it like her name's on the lease. ●  BYE BYE She marches, but not like she’s go...