Brooklyn Boulders

Saturday March 31,  I attended the Miss Representation screening hosted by BKB. It was amazing! For those who missed it, here is a summary of the film:

Miss Representation: Statistics

(Source: http://www.missrepresentation.org/)

The documentary explores how the media represents women in movies, tv shows, ads, politics, and the news. Specifically, in the context of the United States, the message given to women and girls is that their value comes from their body and physical appearance. Regardless of academic, political, and professional achievements, what matters the most in how they look. The media plays a role in shaping this discourse and reinforcing this in a variety of ways. From developing simple, one dimensional, female character’s who’s action’s revolve around getting a boyfriend, getting married, and having a baby, to reality TV female characters that mainly cat-fight, back stab, and call into question the other women’s sexual past, the media presents a limited representation of how to be a women. In terms of representation, women comprise 7% of directors and 13% of film writers in the top 250 grossing films. Women make up 51 percent of the US population but only 17 percent of Congress.

These limiting roles leave young girls with no alternative messages and many try to live up to unrealistic definitions of beauty. Ads play on these messages and use harmful gender stereotypes with images that reinforce unhealthy, unrealistic expectations of beauty, perfection, and limited messages on sexuality. According to the film, “the number of cosmetic surgical procedures performed on youth 18 or younger more than tripled from 1997 to 2007. Among youth 18 and younger, liposuction nearly quadrupled between 1997 and 2007 and breast augmentations increased nearly six-fold in the same 10-year period.65% of American women and girls report disordered eating behaviors.”

Not only does this hurt women, but it also hurt’s men as well. According to Kilbourne, “the negative and distorted image of women deeply affects not only how men feel about women, but also how men feel about everything that gets labeled feminine by the culture – qualities like compassion, cooperation, empathy, intuition, and sensitivity. Human beings should share the whole range of human qualities – strong and gentle, logical and intuitive, powerful and nurturing – and not be told one sex can have only one set of human qualities and one sex only the other.” There are many ways in which people do gender, and the media only offers one limited, heteronormative image. If you have the chance, watch the documentary. I highly recommend it.

To learn more check out:

I: Jean Kilbourne Killing US Softly videos easily found online.

II. Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity.  View intro on You Tube.

III. Beyond Rhythm and Rhymes: Documentary that examines representations of gender roles in hip-hop and rap music

Massive thank you to Minna Kim for putting this whole event together and organizing the fundraiser to host the viewing!

For those who didn’t come, Minna organized BKB’s first ever women’s climb-a-thon as a fundraiser to host the film. It was awesome! Everyone who participated took shifts and rotated between climbing, belaying, and counting. Pretty much, each individual had to climb the wall as many times as they could in 30 min. Doing it on the auto-belay felt like doing wind sprints. Strongly recommend trying that for a cardio work out.

For all those people who wonder what climbers are talking about at the gym, this post is for you.

Climbing Terminology

1) Flash: completing a climb on the first try with no falls.

2) Match: When you place either both your hands or feet on the same hold. (A good skill to master)

3) Stem: A move that requires using opposing outward pressure, which can be done with both your feet and your hands. Best way to explain it: when you tried to climb the door frame as a kid.

4) Smearing: Another technical term, which refers to applying the sole of your shoe onto the wall when you don’t have a hold. I think this is easier to do outdoors, but that’s just me.

5) Beta: Advice on how to successfully complete or do a move on a route. WARNING!! Some people really hate getting beta,  but if you are someone like me who occasionally needs it, there are many climbers who will give you beta.

6) Beta-flash: think about it….. flashing with  beta…

7) Dyno: A really dynamic move that typically requires that both feet are off the wall for a hot second and involves some body momentum.

8 ) Mantle: A technical term that refers pushing down on a ledge or hold, typically one pushes down with their hands to allow one to possibly match with one’s foot.

9) Crimp: Technical term that refers to a using just the tips of your finger on a hold. This can take a little while to get used to.

10) Pinch: just another way to use a hold.

11) Undercling: using a hold with your fingers faced upwards instead of down. Typically used on the beast or in the cave.

12) Arete: typically this refers to a narrow ridge outdoor, but indoor this refers to the corner of the wall. If you climb the left back walls, some of the routes will say arete off on the tape.

13) Hook: A technique that involves hooking your heel or your toe.

This post is only about terminology used in an indoor climbing gym, and if anyone is interested in a post about outdoor terminology, just let me know!

Have fun climbing!

Esty

Do’s

6. Fuel up and Bring a Snack

Climbing really burns a lot of calories and climbing on an empty stomach isn’t going to do wonders for your performance, especially if you are planning to be there for a while. There are a few food places around the corner and some places near by even deliver. If you’re coming straight from work, throw some trail mix in your bag along with your gym clothes. Water is also awesome as are snack breaks.

5. Do Try a Yoga Class

Climbers tend to have tight shoulders and wrists. One of the best things about the amazing yoga classes offered at BKB is that the instructors get it, since many of them climb. You will spend class stretching out and strengthening the muscles you use while climbing. Especially for people who climb a few days a week and who are trying to get better, yoga will help. Trust me, your body will thank you for it.

4. Do Come Alone

The climbing gym can be a bit intimidating. For people who just started climbing,  want to start climbing more often, and even for those who have been climbing for a while, don’t be nervous about coming alone. The majority if people at BKB are really friendly and very willing to give you tips if you ask them. If you need someone to top rope with, most people are pretty willing to let you jump into their climbing rotation. Just ask.

3. High Five People

Recognize someone’s hard work. Okay, so not everyone will be into actually high fiving each other. I just started V4′s and the other day I was working on a 4 in the back while a few guys worked on some 5′s and 7′s. When I finally finished the V4 I was so excited! It was the 5th V4′s I’ve done so far, not that they knew that, but they saw me struggling with it. Getting high fives from random people was super rad! There is something nice about recognizing someone’s hard work and supporting each other. I give people high fives and props all time. BKB is a community so when you see someone working on a route regardless of the level and she/he is super excited about accomplishing her/his goal, high five them or something. I see it happen at the gym all the time and it’s part of why I love BKB. The best is when you are working on a route with a total group of strangers, everyone really wants the group to get it, and you all work it out together. Group High Five!

2. Invest in a Pair of Shoes

For those of you who climb more then once a week, I highly recommend you get your own pair of shoes. BKB sells a bunch as does REI and EMS. They range from the $60-$200 and are worth it. It’s the same thing for anyone that runs. You don’t run in just any random pair of sneakers. You get the sneakers that fit your feet, are the best for the terrain you cover, and your running style. The same thing goes for climbing shoes. There are different kinds based on what and how you climb and investing in a pair will make a massive difference in your climbing.

1. It’s All About Community

I think one of the best things about BKB is the community they’re trying to build and it’s members. BKB is really open to new and old climbers. I think it’s safe to say that most people who are at the gym love climbing, are super excited to be there, and are really friendly. If you come during the day Monday-Friday you don’t really have to wait as long to get on the wall and there are less people, but since most of you are not in grad school and have traditional jobs, you will have to brave the masses from about 5pm-9:30pm. I do both, and while there are different waves of people that come during different times of the day, the one thing they all have in common is that they are very supportive, share the wall, and are willing to help you out. BKB members are very diverse. There is no common background, pretty evenly split gender wise, and a wide range of physical capability. There is room for everyone.

Don’ts

6. Don’t Come if You are Sick

I saw  a lot of people with cold and flu like symptoms climbing in the past few months. Unlike traditional gyms where you are supposed to wipe down the machine when you are done, no one really wipes down the holds after they climb. Take a few days off. If not for you, then for the rest of us. Thanks.

5. BKB is not a Day Care Center.

Don’t leave your kids unsupervised. I’m  not referring to the kids who are part of the BKB Beasts team or to the parents who bring their kids hoping to get them excited about climbing, –that’s awesome and I wish I started at an early age. No, those kids are well behaved and supervised. Key words here: Supervised and well behaved. I’m referring to the parents who drop their kids off and just sit around chatting with each other while their kids run around in circles and beat each other up in the cave area. Your kids make me nervous. Why? Because I’m afraid that when I fall off the wall, I as a big person, will squish your little child. Also their screaming gives people a headache, but you know that.

4. Guys and Girls: Don’t Rock Short Shorts.

It’s a gym. Wear appropriate clothing. We don’t need to be flashed and climbing requires some stretching of the legs. Keep it contained people.

3. Appropriate Times to Take Your Next Facebook Photo.

I get it. Climbing is awesome and you want everyone in your online community to know you tried it. But climbing to the top, spreading yourself out so now you are taking up even more space, busting out your iPhone and taking multiple shots of yourself hanging from the wall while there are a line of people waiting to boulder at 7pm (also known as rush hour on a week night) is really not cool. Just ask a friend to take a picture of you while you are climbing or at least do it on the practice walls.

2. BKB: Not Always the Best Place to Get it On.

It’s great a lot of couples climb together and I can totally understand wanting a partner who has similar interests, but making out on the climbing mats while people are trying to climb around you, not so much. This is not directed towards people who hug and kiss their friends and significant others. I’m talking to the people who mount each other on the climbing mats that I have to walk around to get to the wall.

1. Don’t be That Guy

You know the guy who doesn’t share the wall and thinks he is entitled to it because he does V7′s and V8′s while you are still struggling with V2′s and V3′s and then expects you to get off for him even though you have been working on it all day and are one move away from finally finishing, don’t be that guy. I sadly see this happen too often. Everyone starts from the beginning and we all progress at different rates. I played a sport in college and there was this weird rule about how athletes had priority to use the machines over non-athlete students. BKB is not my college and in this space there is no hierarchy over who gets to climb first or who has priority on the wall. Wait your turn guy and be just as mindful as the rest of us who are sharing the wall. You don’t need to ascend that V8 five times in a row and if you don’t flash it the first time, it doesn’t mean you get to keep hogging the wall. Share the wall and drop the attitude toward beginners.

Surowiti, Java, Indonesia

On the coast of eastern Java, one hour north of Surabaya ( Indonesia’s second largest city ), limestone cliffs peek over endless seas of kaleidoscopic jungle. A remote mountain village carries on with its daily routine as me and my unlikely companions set forth to clean the growth from walls some bolted only one year ago. The walking track disappears into thigh-deep vegetation as we stop to take the machetes off my pack. I thought briefly of a distant life in Australia . Of the months of suffering and saving that allowed me to be here, right here, in this very moment. But past was exactly that…..the past, and there I left it to remain.

By the time I look up, Florian is slashing like a madman through the wild growth. The tip of his rusty blade coming dangerously close to my sweaty face. We push our way forward through the tangled mess.  A million dying leaves lying in the wake of a forward march. Ten meters from the rock face mother nature would launch a surprise attack aimed at out reckless ambition and blind over-confidence. From beneath the earth a torrent of giant red soldiers, ants larger than any I had ever seen, came pouring up my legs and beneath my jeans. The night before we set out I had foolishly and arrogantly been applauding the decision to wear a pair of jeans in the sweltering tropical heat. “Everyone will be wishing they had my foresight once we get out there,” I thought. Then I imagined myself brazenly pummeling through the wilderness as the others stop with nervous anticipation of its contents. But now that I was dancing around the jungle, swinging a giant machete at one inch ants, whooping and hollering with a vicious wave of hot pain crawling up inside of my jeans, the decision seems to have been slightly less sound. I almost just took my pants off right there in the jungle. We had been defeated and come completely undone. The wall would have to be cleaned another day. By harder men. With tougher skin. And more practical trousers.

There were constant reminders that this was not our place. Atop one of the easier climbs I stopped to watch an evil squadron of red ants carry a snake skin across the speckled face. My mind awash with worry. “What kind of snake lived in that skin?,” I thought. Later in the day a local village man came strolling down the path as casual as can be, loose pants, flip-flops, cigarette dangling between fingers, and a long  rifle dutifully slung over his left shoulder. Note to self: Mind your P’s and Q’s.

There are only a handful of established bolted sports routes at the crag, but potential for heaps more if you’ve got the gumption, a good drill, and maybe a can of raid.  The rock is sharp and brilliantly featured, but with so few established climbs it was hardly the climbing paradise I had been hoping for. My quest to find an off the beaten path climbing gem was slowly becoming an irrelevant idea though. Indonesia seemed to be offering greater adventure than anywhere I had ever been. I didn’t know it yet but this was just a start. In a few weeks I’d embark on a spur of the moment journey across Java that would be as challenging as it was rewarding.

{ 2/4 } – Jean-Pierre Chery

* Check back in a few days for the third part of this four part story.

Fifty five days ago I boarded a plane, tired, scared, and anxious for what I was doing, Traveling three thousand miles from one coast to another. I took only a one way ticket and thought that i would take three weeks to get sick of it, but instead; it absorbed me as well as I had absorbed it. California is an amazingly vast state, huge, and the changes in weather in the different regions is to reflect on that. I began in Oakland, the only thing I could think of when I thought of when I think of Oakland is that it was the home town of MR. Cooper, an old television show that I had watched as a child in the 90′s. when I reached the state the weather seemed moderate. I recall that it was supposed to rain, as an ever occurring joke would rise that I had brought rain(and eventually a touch of snow) to the Bay area.

The first night we went to the California academy of Science for their ” night life” I had never thought that they would be vending mixed drinks beer and wine in a place with a planetarium, an extensive aquarium as well as it’s own environment controlled- 4 story rain forest in the middle of it. from butterflies to fish to lizards to an albino alligator, I was astounded through and through. They had many living specimens and boastful amounts of dead ones, I was in awe with the seahorses, the queer way they would float along boasting their unique texture and shape. Coral would sway in the man made currents, it’s pastel and florescent array of  colors only comparable to a kaleidoscopic of an alien planet. Only Yards away there would be a room with spiders well known for their hourglass markings and others that were beautiful as well as large and perhaps nerve wrecking making you swat at the faintest fibers of denim nipping at the hairs of your leg. Still further along, dart frogs, tiny and potent, vivid green reflecting the light off it’s moist skin as if they were lone candles in a dark room. We eventually headed home, tired from the excitement of the eyes, and myself from jet lag, quite a memorable first night in a land that I would come to know.

July, 25th, 2011. There I sat, half-cocked on a five dollar bottle of Cab Sav. The cold creeping in through my rotting window like an ex-con with the illest intentions. Upright on the bed. Back to the wall. Sleeping bag hiked up to musty arm pits. First layer, second layer, hoodie on top. Nothing will help me escape the cold.

Roaches roam freely about the darkness. Tiny terrorists. Running sorties across the damp mildewed carpet and special ops missions up the exposed vertical face of Dresser Drawer ( 5.12c / 0.8 meters ). Rolling the bottle around in my hand, I guess at the weight of its contents and ultimately how much longer I have to stay awake. But the reality was, that none of this really mattered anymore. Not the cold, or the roaches, or the poverty stricken room. My future was right in front of me, burning loudly on a seven by five inch screen.  Darwin, Australia to Bali, Indonesia. December 1st, 2011. $66.87. Visa. Click to submit.

My mind swelled with exponentially infinite possibility. Of beautiful limestone faces seeping hues of burnt coffee and vanilla. Of first ascents on holds sharp enough to bite. Of billowing smokestacks on rumbling trains burning fast through the countryside. Of adventures that my mind could not yet perceive.  All of this was only one click away. A single twitch of the finger to unleash my dreams into the reality of waking life.

With the ass end of the bottle thrust high in the frigid air, I drew long on Australian grapes. It was all swirling around inside of me now. The tiny screen beckoned. Click to submit payment. Click to commit to the unknown. My finger floated lightly over the weightless plastic square.

Dec, 19th, 2011

Was this real? Was I really walking through the jungle in a pair of tight jeans with two machetes strapped to the back of my climbing pack? Funny, my current reality seemed outlandishly more audacious than my imagination had ever been.

{ 1/4 } – Jean-Pierre Chery

* Check back in a few days for the second part of this four part story.

By: Jamie J. Hagen

If you’ve ever heard of the Bechdel test you have some idea of what sort of media representation women have when it comes to film. This video explains the test which basically requires  two female characters talk to each other directly about something other than a man to pass. Almost all of the 2012 Oscar winners fail. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when we look at media representation of women. MISS Representation explores how the media’s misrepresentations of women have led to the underrepresentation of women in positions of power and influence. Check out the trailer for the film and read more about the film on Jezebel. The documentary Miss Representation, by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, and aired on OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network.

Following the screening there will be a panel including speakers form the Lower Eastside Girls Club, a group founded in 1996 to address the historic lack of services available to girls and young women on the Lower East Side,  and Women in Children’s Media, an organization of women and men who are committed to creating and distributing thoughtful, entertaining media to children and young adults producing educational events, promoting professional development, and inspiring members to lead, innovate, and shape the future of children’s media.

Don’t miss the pre-event fundraising bake sale on March 10th! More info below.

About the event:

Seating begins @ 6:30 PM
Film begins @ 7:00 PM
Panel discussion follows the end of the screening, with:
* Reshma Saujani the Deputy Advocate for Special Initiatives at the Office of the New York City Public Advocate.
* Special Projects Coordinator from the Lower Eastside Girls Club
* Youth member of the LES Girls Club
* Vice President of Women in Children’s Media

On March 10th, there will be a bake sale starting at 11AM until whenever the goodies are done, and then a Climb-a-Thon starting at 7PM. Come by and support the women participating, as we are doing this fundraising day so that the community can watch the movie for free! All excess funds raised will go to the LES Girls Club!

RSVP on the Facebook event page!

A freakishly mild, dry Bay Area winter means only a couple things:

• No Christmas tree burning (for fear of starting a wildfire); &
• Yosemite in February! (what?)

Even the bears are confused, some of them still awake, ambling around like drunk toddlers, just angling to steal our Clif bars. And they’ll be so tired in the spring!

You know, or huge, having spent the winter eating moar food! instead of burning off that winter fat.

…or both tired and fat: narcoleptic roly poly bears bumbling about confusedly. A spectacle for the Korean tourists, for sure.

Anyway, climbing outside in February is great, but climate change is real, you guys. So do your part.

• Unplug your electronics when not in use (they still sap electricity from the socket, even if the appliance is off or disconnected from the charger)
•  Turn your thermostat down (yeah we all like to pretend we’re in tropical paradise in the dead of winter, but suck it up. Bust out your fuzzy socks.)
•  Wash your clothes in cold water (they’ll be just as clean, I promise).