We’re sure the price of fancy cocktails at the Vue de monde restaurant in Melbourne’s Rialto Towers skyscraper are expensive, but BASE jumping off the balcony before paying for drinks? That seems just a tad extreme.

Like the start of a joke that ends up being crazy rather than funny, four men in business suits strolled into the swanky restaurant’s Lui Bar on the 55th floor in the 56-floor skyscraper and ordered up some Negronis, says Australia’s News.com.au, with travel suitcases. They told staff the luggage was for a presentation. Then they slipped away with excuses about going to the bathroom, and instead jumped off the balcony.

Of course, their bulky outfits and helmets with cameras on them helped the group both survive after free-falling and capture the whole thing on video.

The restaurant’s owner says the parachutes were hidden underneath that businessman exterior.

“They ordered some drinks at the bar. One went to the bathroom, followed by the rest, straight out to the balcony and pretty much jumped straight off,” said the restaurant’s owner, adding that he “ran from the kitchen into the room and I just saw a flash of them jumping over, and at that stage none of us knew what the hell was going on.”

There was a getaway vehicle waiting, he said. Protocol in such cases — it’s happened before in the building, apparently — is to first get down to the street and make sure no one is hurt. Oh yeah, and try to catch them, which he wasn’t able to do.

“It was just too late, they were just really quick at what they were doing, it was just very well planned and they’ve obviously done this sort of stuff before…. We all reacted with a fair bit of calmness because we’ve actually had training for this, it’s happened before at Rialto, happened several times before we’d taken over Vue de monde.”

Officials will use CCTV footage and YouTube to attempt to apprehend the daredevils. They still need to pay for those drinks, too.

Four daredevils do a BASE jump from Rialto Towers after cocktails at Vue de monde bar [News.com.au]

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