Racism - Always and Forever

Or maybe "Things Wypipo Love"? I would like to hear about gap years, goat yoga and complicated coffee ordering.

 

More like an extreme way to cull the one percent.

 

I know you mean this in jest, but the diversity is growing in the rock climbing community. For example Lonnie Kauk (Ron Kauk's son) is Native American. I remember seeing Kai Lightner at my gym when he was a teen (some DC connection). Ashima Shiraishi is another elite climber. Miho Nonaka is another one I can think of off the top of my head. The owner of the the gym I go to is an Asian female.

There are groups at my gym: Stonewall climbing DC. Escala DC, Brothers of Climbing (BOC), Girl Beta night. My former climbing partner is Argentino. My current main partner is half Syrian and my other climbing partner is Chilean/Portuguese. I do see a lot of POC at my gym. Having said that, it is anecdotal and may be just my gym.

Here is a picture of the comp kids who have a regionals competition this past weekend:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CtH4ilVuU70/
https://www.facebook.com/srclimbing/photos

EDIT - I know there is a distinction to the climbing I am referring to and the climbing/mountaineering discussed here

 

I long for the days when I could climb stairs two at a time!

 

Funny that you mentioned that. I climbed in the UK when I lived there and visited Stannage (highball bouldering and short climbing routes) near Leeds at lot. A lot of the locals felt like blue collar workers. Not dressed in Patagonia/La Sportiva/Black Diamond clothing, but heavy carhartt type pants, or worn out khakis.

The climbing culture was quite different there.

 

I read it and was amazed at what the experts' ability (think Boukreev could summit with no oxygen) do but aghast at how some of the cocktail party tourists did not have the same level of respect and/or fear for what they were doing.

 

Rock climbing culture when I started a decade ago was definitely blue collar and definitely white. There'd be the occasional doctor, maybe an engineer but it was mostly folks who were pipefitters, contractors, electricians, and such. I started climbing when I was moving furniture to survive.

The culture's changed, especially with one of the gyms I visit in Detroit proper. A lot of the people would feel out of the place in the gym I started in.

 

Tons of kids in the sport here. Usually they aren't super wealthy.

With the climbing gyms becoming a thing, it has gotten more bourgie.

 

I more or less think social media is responsible for that than climbing gyms. I have this view towards the outdoors in general. Lots of people I wouldn’t see in my usual hiking spots, especially in the last few years became a thing.

Coincidentally, when I was hiking in my favorite spot a while back I only saw the usual old person doing laps on the trails. Wasn’t anywhere what it was three years ago.

 

I repped the humor, but really, most people are what they're allowed to be. I've been told, at different points in my life by different (usually inconsequential) people, that skateboarding, cycling, jazz, chess, and RC cars were for White people. I won't even get into literature or education.

A lot of what you read or hear some Black people shrug off as White Folks' Shit is just stuff they weren't allowed to do a generation or so earlier, and so they have no experience in it. Sour grapes. I'd love to have been allotted a gap year, but I'm Black. I had a responsibility to get out and use my degree to help some other Black people survive.

 

I was surprised to find out when I grew up that there was a Black fear of water and aversion to swimming. My whole family knew how to swim (though my mother didn't learn until well until adulthood) and people I knew in my neighborhood generally swam. Maybe MD Blacks were an exception with the Chesapeake Bay and all.

 

I agree with this and will add another reason. I first climbed in 2000 and off/on in the 2000s. There has been a growing interest in climbing (and outdoor activities) where it grew from a mostly white male community to a more diverse one. In 2011, when I first went to a DC gym the demographics changed a lot. At the same time I feel that accessibility of climbing gyms have improved, in location and frequency.

Anecdotally speaking, there was 1 gym in the greater Cincy area, 0 in Louisville and 1 in Lexington, in the early 2000s. Two gyms in the entire state, plus Cincy. Now there are 4 or 5 in the greater Cincy area, 3 in Louisville, and (still) 1 in Lexington, but much larger and not in an industrial park. These gyms in the past 20 years have moved away from the outskirts of cities to more populated areas. The 1 in Cincy was in Blue Ash, a suburb. Now I see one next to the Cincy Zoo and 2 in the downtown area. In DC, there was 1 in the late 1990s in Alexandria. Now there are 6, (Manassas, Rockville, Crystal City, Sterling, Tyson's and the Alexandria one tripled in size) with another being rumored to open.

I am not sure if social media exposure is spurring to accessibility/inclusion in nature or the other way around, but it is an interesting thought experiment.

And I think the term @The Jitty Slitter is looking for is "dirtbag climber" -- a lighthearted affectionate term.

 

All of my friends can swim, but I have taught students from rural areas who cannot. And some of that is females concerned about having to redo their hair. $$$. My male students in Selma could swim. The females, almost to a one, could not.

 

Yeah, I'm not slagging them all. It's nice to be out in nature & doing stuff you love. But the mess that's been made of Everest is practically criminal & a slap in the face to the local folk who revere it.

 

Ruh-roh. Controversy over a Ginese woman not fully paying sherpas for saving her ass.

A Chinese climber saved from Mount Everest has been caught in a social-media firestorm after being accused of refusing to pay a promised $10,000 fee to the Sherpas who rescued her
Matthew Loh
Jun 13, 2023, 12:17 AM ET


Mountaineers trekking in the Mount Everest region of Solukhumbu district on April 30, 2021.
PRAKASH MATHEMA/AFP via Getty Images

• A Chinese woman saved from Everest was accused of refusing to pay the Sherpas who rescued her.
• Social-media users cited her fellow climbers who said she paid only $4,000 of the $10,000 fee.
• Amid the fallout, her partner company said it would take responsibility and pay her rescue expenses.

The rescue of a Chinese woman from Mount Everest kicked off a social-media firestorm last week after she was accused of refusing to pay the Sherpa who helped to save her.

While her climbing organization and the firm employing the Sherpas said that they'd settled all claims, the allegations against the climber have roiled into a social-media frenzy that's seen her attacked in thousands of comments and doxxed.

The dispute hinges on a single event — a promise made without the climber's knowledge that ultimately saved her life.

As parties on all sides stepped forward to say their piece, the only person who hasn't made a public statement is the woman at the center of it all: the 50-year-old climber Liu Qunying.

https://www.insider.com/climber-saved-from-mt-everest-accused-of-refusing-rescue-2023-6?amp

 

She should be blacklisted from ever getting a permit to summit anywhere ever again.

 

Marine subway choker indicted by Manhattan grand jury

JUST IN: A Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict Daniel Penny, the retired US Marine who held Jordan Neely in a fatal chokehold on the New York City subway, a source says https://t.co/2mviYNmWNm

— CNN (@CNN) June 14, 2023

 

But what about black on black crime?

NEW: Daniel Penny indicted by grand jury in Jordan Neely subway death https://t.co/TCpHQ5xA5x

— Ana Cabrera (@AnaCabrera) June 14, 2023

 

The Dutch FA, the KNVB, has sentenced our second tier club Top Oss to a suspended fine of 3750€€ if they allow in the next two years the confederate flag to be shown.