Living in New Zealand, buildering gets zero attention, which is a good thing from a not getting busted point of view. There are bugger all people doing here in Auckland and there's a heap of good climbs all around the inner city.
Just wondering if those of you in Canada feel like buildering is as popular there as it's gonna get or do you reckon it will take off as an “urban extreme sport”?
Personally it seems similar to the Dogtown and Z-boys story, as buildering is seperated from mainstream climbing much like the dogtown guys were seperated from the lame competition skating. I think buildering has its own style, and even the people who  builder seem to be quite far removed from traditional climbers. For example, those into buildering seem to have a skate background, I myself have bmx street background and I can definitly see some crossovers.

So anyway, are we in the hay days or is it going to take off like the dogtown skating style did? And as pioneers will you Canadians get get your own “Etinies Ard” signiture shoes? :p

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4 Responses

  1. ardarvin Reply

    Some nicely put questions.

    Somehow I think that this is about as good as it gets for buildering. It's far from being a new sport, and has always avoided mainstream popularity due to it's inherent danger and illegal nature. Even though it receives it's fair share of publicity through the “human flies” of the world (Alain Robert et al), it's just not accessible enough for the general public to want to take part in it.

    It's not like other extreme sports. Like Parkour for example is so massive right now, and will become even more massive because anyone can do it. Anyone can put on their running shoes and jump off the garden shed. Plus it looks cool on video. Climbing/buildering videos are pretty boring unless it's some wacko soloing some gnarly climb, then it's crazy…not accessibly exciting.

    What the buildering community needs to do (if they actually want to promote buildering – which many don't), is to educate the public on the safe practices of buildering. Footage of Alain Robert soloing some massive tower is sure exciting and gets my heart pumping, but it won't convince the masses that they too can participate in this sport.

  2. Kiwi Reply

    Maybe you are right and we won't ever come close to being as popular as skating or even PK once that reaches its peak. But maybe that's not the type of popular that most builderers would want or enjoy as it would obviously bring about tighter security on many buildering sites. In saying that, I'm sure that buildering will continue to grow in popularity and maybe evolve as more people experiment with urban climbing.

    Wouldn't it be cool if there could be a system similar to BASE jumping where climbers would solo certain climbs to receive a BASS number.
    It could be:
    B – Building (of a certain grade or height)
    A – Aerial (as in those freaken massive ones)
    S – Structure (such as a bridge, with mandatory bridge swing)
    S – Sculpture (this would be a large piece of public art, we got some big ones here in NZ now!)

    So there we go, something to think about anyways.

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