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‘How did he get up there?’ Florida man makes like Spider-Man atop South Beach light pole

Howard Cohen
·3 min read

South Beach seldom fails to deliver the wacky.

On Friday at about 5:25 p.m., Miami Beach police say Todd Fitzroy Boothe clambered atop a traffic light pole at the corner of 10th Street and Collins Avenue in the city’s bustling entertainment district.

There, Boothe, 29, inched along the pole on his butt, lanky limbs under his 5-foot, 11-inches frame, dangling astride the pole for balance.

That’s when crowds, armed with cellphones — naturally — started taking and posting video onto Twitter and Instagram, et al. You can hear the hoots and hollers below from the sidewalks and street

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But that’s only one reason Boothe, of Miramar, was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and breach of the peace, according to court records.

“Mr. Boothe’s actions caused vehicle traffic to slow at almost a complete stop, as pedestrians began to gather and spill onto the roadway endangering pedestrians as they began standing and filming,” the arrest report said.

A Miami Beach officer is seen on the sidewalk trying to talk to Boothe, who inches along the pole toward, and onto, the ledge of a building on the corner at 960 Collins Ave.

According to the police report, Boothe then bounded off the ledge and led police on a chase.

WPLG reported that Boothe ran westbound on 10th Street but police lost sight of the agile man when he ducked into an area of the Hotel Taft at 1040 Washington Ave. He then exited onto Taft’s patio and ran toward ... the police station at 1100 Washington Ave.

“Inadvertently?” local filmmaker Billy Corben cracked on his Instagram post.

Hey, it’s South Beach.

That chase led to Boothe’s second charge: resisting an officer without violence.

Booth walked into the Miami Beach Police Department building on Washington, the arrest report said, and he was still being held at Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on $1,500 bond as of Saturday morning.

Sherbrooke Hotel owner Mitch Novick provided WSNV 7 with several cellphone video clips of Boothe climbing and perched atop the traffic light signal over the intersection.

“A lot of people watching,” Novick told the station. I thought the police were gonna converge and get him, but he got up and [ran off.]”

The incident gave social media a bit of a workout on Friday evening and Saturday.

Like this one in response to an Only in Dade tweet: “How did he get up there? South Beach never ceases to amaze, always attracting the weirdos.”