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Allen with a deadly traverse, downtown Vancouver

So Allen Roberts, the English Alain, where do hail from?

I grew up in the flatlands of Akron Ohio, home of the Goodyear and Firestone factories – essentially an industrial wasteland. I started climbing when I was around 12, but the only things to climb in Akron are boulders about 30 ft high, so I soon found myself looking for taller things to climb - things like the nearby industrial buildings.

Probably the highlight of my Akron buildering career was climbing the historic theatre. The building straddles the Ohio Erie Canal, which runs through Akron, and the corner that I climbed was about 70ft high. For legal reasons I wanted to climb it before I turned 18, so I ended up climbing it in the middle of winter since my birthday was coming up in a month. The corner was an arête, with little triangular gaps where the bricks met at about a 120° angle. The gaps all looked uniform from the ground, but I as discovered when I got about 20ft up, some of the mortar had filled the gaps completely over. So what I thought would be a straightforward climb ended up being about a 5.9, and it was quite cold on the fingers. My hands went numb after about 40ft, but by then I figured it was quicker to go up than to go down. Oh, and of course to make things worse, at the top of the climb are these big earthenware glazed cornice things, which were loosely set, so if you pull on them a certain way they’ll rip right off the building. So I spent another 5 or 10 minutes at the top of the climb banging on these things to see if they’d take my weight. The whole experience was horrifying actually.

When I did finally top out, I ran over to the other side of the building where there was about a 50ft wall, with a 10ft gap to a barbed-wire fence, and then another 10ft drop down into the canal. I quickly tied a single strand section of old climbing rope (that I planned to retire anyway) to a utility line, and went zipping down the wall. When I got close to the bottom, I took a good hard kick off the wall, bounced off of the fence once, and rappelled right off the end of the rope into the canal. I swam down the canal, under the building, and ran back to the car.

So back to your arch-nemesis Alain Robert. Do you think Alain still climbs for fun, or is it only for commercial and political reasons these days?

Oh I’m sure he’s out there having a blast, just like you or me. He just happens to make a bit of money at it. As far as his climbing as a form of political protest, the problem is that people seldom remember what it is a protest of. The message has form but no content. The form is that he’s putting himself at grave bodily risk for some noble cause. He is essentially threatening the onlooker with a situation where he might fall and traumatize them for life, and in that situation he tries to manipulate the onlooker in the way they feel about something. But that’s where the message fails to stick - people might remember his climb a year down the road, but they won’t remember what he was protesting.

And of course the message is even less meaningful to those of us who do climb. We know that Alain is just out there for a good time. We aren’t as affected by his apparent life-risking situations, because we all know that he is solid. Alain knows he’s solid. A soloist knows he’s solid, he knows he’s not going to end up like a strawberry splatter on the pavement.

But average citizens have that exact image running through their mind when they watch someone climb a building.

Definitely. Buildering can be quite disturbing for “the normals”. That’s why a lot of the buildering I do is at night, or orchestrated in such a way as to not be visible to people. I’ve gotten less concerned about this as time goes on, but for awhile I was really concerned about not scaring people. I think that is why buildering remains a solitary pursuit, since most practitioners are intent of minimizing its “spectacular” element.

And look at Parkour, which is even more spectacular. The interesting thing with Parkour is that it has an element of being watched. It’s almost necessary, since if you are going to add flair to something, say doing a flip instead of a straight jump, you want somebody to see that.

I think of Parkour as the lovechild of buildering and breakdancing. It’s playing in an urban environment, with the showmanship of breakdancing. That’s why Parkour is practiced in groups. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but it’s not for me.

What shoes do you wear for buildering?

Chuck Taylor All stars. The toe cap works well for jamming, the high ankles give you some support, they are sensitive, and the rubber works better on glass and steel than climbing rubber. The only downside it that they don’t have much cushioning, so don’t fall.

If you were a hotdog and you were starving, would you eat yourself?

That reminds me of a short story by Steven King. It’s about a surgeon who gets stranded on a desert island with nothing but a bundle of coke and his tools. He anesthetizes himself and slowly eats himself.

You didn’t answer the question, but whatever. Any advice for the masses of kids out there trying to make a name for themselves in the world of buildering?

Stick to Parkour.

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