ABSTRACT This article investigates the ways in which power relations structure urban public space and privilege certain behaviors, while marginalizing others, and how these structures are resisted by young people through the creation of alternative spaces on the city’s rooftops. It examines the activity of “roofing” in St. Petersburg, a popular youth-culture practice of urban exploration, investigating the factors that have enabled the widespread flourishing of this activity, despite its illegality. The article explores how the rooftops offer a distinctive realm for the youth in modern-day St. Petersburg to defy authority; reestablish their rights to the city; and counteract the escalating social, economic, and political control that has come to define Russia’s public sphere during Putin’s reign.