I tied my first figure eight knot at the age of six at Planet Rock Climbing Gym in Pontiac, MI. The people there would eventually become my family but I had no way of knowing that as I threaded the rope through my full-body harness. Back then the employees were taught by real experts. They were real experts. They cared so much about climbing (almost every single one of them is still involved in the community) and they already knew a lot before starting work. There were two general categories of people who came into the gym: those who were there to say they had tried it and those who were or would become completely obsessed. I personally was a member of the obsessed camp. The sweat and tears, long hours on the road and on the rock, bloody fingers, bloody knees, victories, and defeats have without question been the defining force in making me who I am today.
Fast forward almost 20 years and I'm finding it harder and harder to relate to other climbers. Nowadays chain gyms are filled with a new category of climber: the lunch break workout climbers. From what I can tell, they're in there because Zumba didn't sound extreme enough to their tech office friends. They're following a trend, not an obsession. While I'm happy (or should be) that this means that beautiful training facilities are popping up everywhere and climbing is now very accessible, I'm upset that it's changing the environment of the crag and the gym into something in which I have no desire to take part.
These lunch break climbers are seen simply as a good source of income to make improvements to the gym. Time isn't invested in them to make them productive members of the community because they aren't really investing anything in return aside from their monthly dues. These are the people who overestimate their abilities and get themselves into trouble on the rock. These are the people who don't follow etiquette and alienate seasoned professionals. But it's not their fault. It's our little community that's to blame. The grungy few that populated the climbing gyms when I was young make up the climbing elite now. I don't just mean the people whose faces cover the magazines or those who win the competitions, but the ones building gyms and pushing our sport behind the scenes as well. We were just a bit too greedy, seeing the opportunity to step into the limelight and taking it without consideration of what might happen to us if we did. We built new facilities with outrageous entry fees and found out how to get the most members while spending the fewest resources to train them. We televised competitions and asked huge international companies to sponsor them and us. We stopped being a little community and started being the place people go on their lunch break because Zumba didn't sound extreme enough.
I miss the days when I could walk into almost any gym in the country and run into someone I knew. Now even in my home gym I feel alone and out of place. When I look at the person on the wall next to me I don't see a fellow obsessor, I just see a stranger. San Francisco may be at the extreme end of this gentrification of climbing, but I'm afraid the rest of the country is heading in the same direction.
I'm not sure we can turn back now. The people in charge are committed to making climbing an Olympic sport, to having a gym in every suburb with a Starbucks attached to the gear shop and a line out the door at noon every workday. I want to be angry at someone for taking my safe place and turning it into something so industrial and impersonal, but I can't blame anyone because in their position I would have made the exact same decisions. It's so hard not to be blinded by fame and money.
While all of this is happening I find myself in the position of the lunch breaker in another arena. I came to San Francisco willing to pay the absurd entry fee. I know I won't stay here, I'm not committed or obsessed. I'm just here for now because some other city didn't sound extreme enough. My friends are moving here, too. It's a bit of a fad for people my age to come to the Bay Area, get a job in tech, and go to climbing gyms on our lunch breaks. I feel guilty but at the same time I know it's not my fault. It's the old San Franciscans who allowed this to happen, right? They took an inconceivably large check in return for their home and found themselves surrounded by well-dressed strangers who don't care about them. I don't know what will happen to San Francisco or to the climbing community in the next 20 years. It's hard to believe that one person can make a difference in that path anyway.
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