big new climbing gym New York City

Morgan Patterson wrote: sarcasm Kev... i get the point but its just a fact of having roofs. To me, its like complaining because water is wet.

Your sarcasm aint crisp/obvious enough. Some people really are that dumb to think that. Unfortunately.

sarcasm police?
new one...

rogerbenton wrote:sarcasm police? new one...

Want to be a deputy?

no thanks kev i have a li....

waaaaaait a minute- i see what you did there!

Sneaky!

you made a sarcastic reply to my comment about your comment about that other sarcastic reply...

you're really "showing us how it's done"!

write it down people, good stuff here and FREE!

oh how well timed and facetiously apropos-

and to think i just let that zoom over my head at first! gods, what a turkey i must seem. tricky bastard!

and the wit!

oh i'll be keeping my eye on you, mr. zinger...

I hear the roof there leaks when it rains and it was a poor design to build the wall right under the leak. But that's OK because sometimes real rock gets wet too.

(How's that??)

climbed there a bunch and no real complaints compared to any other climbing gym. It's taller, less crowded, and SO MUCH CLEANER than bkb so it has my vote. Honestly, just going in there and not being completely disgusted by how gross everything is was a nice change from bkb.

At last I got there with Sharon. The Cliffs at Long Island City is an excellent gym.

• Useful location just half a block from the first subway stop east from Manhattan.
• Very big top-rope and lead area (bigger + taller than I need)
• Very big bouldering area.
• Sharon liked that it has nice showers.
• System board with adjustable incline angle.
• more non-climbing strength + aerobic machines than other climbing gyms.
• high price

Other than those, not much that distinguishes it from other good gyms in the metro NY - NJ area. I guess I was somehow expecting it to be advancing the "state of the art" for the metro NY area, but mostly it's just big and nice and it's nearer to some people.

• route-setting on the Top-Rope routes mostly very good on the ones I tried.
• wall surface infrastructure for TR+Lead areas are mostly panels with linear edges -- to me seemed inferior to the more varied curves and soft edges at the Gravity Vault gyms in NJ, and to the new highly-featured wall surfaces at some leading Euro gyms, e.g. München-Thalkirchen DAV and Espace Vertical - St Martin d'Heres .

I know one less-than-average height Euro climber who says these surfaces make a big difference for reaching key hand-holds, by allowing clever foot-placements like out on real rock.

• leading -- high percentage of routes have bolts + draws set for Leading. And with the high number of routes which are sustained overhanging, leading seems like something you'd want to do lots of. I asked about how to get permission to lead, and it sounded pretty straightforward.

Getting picky about the "extras":

• campus board just standard "macho" design. No horizontal foot-boards like recommended (in the Gimme Kraft book) by the modern trainers at the original Nürnberg Germany campus room. No friendly features to help less-than-5.11 climbers get started, like the board at Gravity Vault in Upper Saddle River. It does have one ladder of nice diagonal features (but nothing like as sophisticated as the training room at Mur de Lyon
• fingerboard -- great idea to install two, one above the other (so you make dynamic reaches from one to the other). But no structure to permit rigging a pulley to reduce two-arm-hang down-pull resistance. No rope or elastic to reduce one-arm-hand down-pull resistance. Didn't notice a cord with weight-plate-spike and carabiner to add down-pull resistance.
• non-climbing strength training machines and free-weights. Pretty good range of pulleys easily used for arm + shoulder strength (or creatively used for other pruposes), and free-weight barbells and dumbbells - (but does not come close the range and specificity machines at a serious non-climbing fitness center).

Just my impressions from a single visit. Be glad to get corrections and other perspectives.

Ken