I was awoken this morning around 8 by my dipshit upstairs neighbor, doing her usual banging and clomping and thumping. As I tried to get back to sleep, I realized I could not because there was a helicopter hovering outside, very near.

The sound was not the usual police-helicopter-circling noise. It was a loud, big chopper, something military-sounding.

I decided there must be something interesting to see, so I got out of bed, threw on clothes, grabbed my camera, and ventured into the gray spittle morning. When I rounded the corner down the block, this was going on:

I took all kinds of pictures and movies. The pics are up in my gallery.

The helicopter—a Sikorsky S-58T—was installing a new air conditioning unit at the top of a skyscraper. (It was, of course, also bringing down parts of the old unit.) The helicopter made trips back and forth, picking up and dropping off large parts connected to the chopper from a long cable. The pic above is during one of the helicopter’s refueling landings.

There were not many people around since it was early. We had to stay back, but I was amazed we were allowed to get as close as we did. I stayed around for almost an hour. At one point, as I was taking a movie, I wondered what would happen if the thing crashed there, in the middle of a major artery, between two skyscrapers and a high-rise apartment building. I don’t think the landing would have been this uneventful.

Nothing crashed, nothing came loose and plummeted to the ground. It was just your average, run-of-the-mill big-ass helicopter maintenance call.