UBC Buildering Contest 4

Posted Sat, 04/08/2006 - 23:41 by ardarvin

Category:

(p) Oker.

I originally thought this was the third buildering contest, but then realized that we already had a third, it just wasn't very well attended and there were no photos to document the event. So lest these landmark events be lost to time, here's a brief history of the contests to be forever immortalized within the Googles and Wayback Machines of the internet.

The first buildering contest to take place in the history of mankind, EVER, took place at UBC on April 7th, 2004. OK, I highly doubt it was the first buildering contest ever, but since the Euros are in to their overly exaggerated claims, i.e. a “Buildering World Championship” with only local participants, I figure I’d lay claim to it.

The first contest was a large success. Lots of eager faces excited to try out something new. We had around 25 participants before we got shut down by campus security. Although nothing came of it at the time, eventually news of the event would propagate through campus aristocracy.

The second contest was in the fall of 2004. We switched the format, breaking into two smaller groups, which worked great for not attracting attention to ourselves, but lacked the excitement of having one large chaotic group. We did not get busted.

Then I received a cease and desist letter from the UBC legal department. Having already graduated from UBC, I could care less about their threats of expulsion -- however the same could not be said for the majority of other builderers. Student union executives also got wind of our contests, and were quite interested to meet with our "Buildering Club" members.

Six months later, spring 2005, we had a poorly advertised, and very informal contest. I can't remember much about it, nor can I find any pictures of it, but I do know SteveZ won.

That brings us to the present. Still somewhat paranoid, this year's event was only advertised through word of mouth. The UBC lawyers may still check into the site from time to time, no thanks to a douche-bag reporter who recently called the legal department looking for quotes for his buildering/parkour article.

Kenny Frazz is too strong. Admin Dyno. (p) Oker.

Unknown. (p) Oker.

(p) Oker.

A nice balancy problem which tests your wingspan. (p) Oker.

Despite the lack of promotion, this, the 4th UBC Buildering Contest, was a huge, smashing, euro-blowout of an event. There was a total of 35 people. Of course having such a large group of men, women, and children (we had a 4 year old contestant this year) climbing buildings means a high risk of being noticed and reported to the police. And that’s exactly what happened. By the time security finally did catch up with us, they had already received three separate calls.

I was hoping that having a large group would work to our advantage, since 35 people climbing is less suspicious than two or three people doing the same. You’d think people would assume this was some sort of officially sanctioned event, or at the very least something harmless – just look at the cute ickle 4 year old! But no, the capacity for human stupidity abounds.

A few of us had brought crash pads for safety. Well I guess some tattletale rocket-scientists thought that we were breaking into buildings and stealing CHESTERFIELDS. “Well I can’t really tell officer, but it looks like they are climbing into buildings…oh wait they're leaving with some large cushions on their backs….I think they are stealing chesterfields!”

These people are the embodiment of Heather Anderson, the elementary school do-gooder who ratted out Derek Buzdell for hitting the teacher in the back of the head with a spool of thread. She single-handedly shattered two hours of classmate solidarity in detention, and my faith in the human race.

Yeah, so we got shutdown by some big fat dummy with no friends. You can see her in the background of one of the photos, she's pounding on a window trying to get our attention.

When on UBC campus, 911 calls of this nature are dispatched to campus security before the police. This extra “true authority buffer” is great, it means I’ll be long gone before the guys with the red and blue lights on their cars show up.

However this time campus security a dog. I have an innate fear of mean looking dogs sinking their teeth into my toned calf muscles. Also, being a large group, our mobility was hindered somewhat. I’d hate to be the lone runner and spoil everything for the rest who stayed behind to face the music. "Why did he run? Do you know him? Either you tell us who he is or you are all going down to the station."

We pretty much refused to talk, give ID, or in any way acknowledge the authority of these rent a cops. Respect is earned, not demanded, and these yahoos weren't doing much in the earning department. They threatened to press charges, expel the students, and demanded we hand over our camera gear. Extra points to Oker for sneakily ejecting his memory card, then going through the motions of formatting his camera.

So our options were: run and see what the dog does, or wait for the real cops to show up. We waited. When the boys in blue did arrive, we were nothing short of saints. We explained how we were just training for rock-climbing, being very safe (look at the "chesterfields"), and not harming anything. The police checked our names to “see if any of you are axe-murderers”, gave us a brief lecture on how campus security are the real authority on campus (ahem...*bullshit*), and let us go.

Contest Results:

1st place: Kenny Frazz
2nd place: ?
3rd place: ? (we were too distracted by lesbian night at the bar to add up scores)

PS: This was a photoshopping contest. Nobody actually climbed anything.