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Urban unconventional

BY ALEX HO

In print | October 5, 2006

You hate cities. You lament the lack of trees in Swarthmore. Your Nalgene gives you comfort at night. You have a collection of sneakers and hiking boots to rival your roommate’s collection of pumps. Your ideal death is while skydiving with the Outsiders Club. If this description fits you, and you’ve been grudgingly coerced by your “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”-poster-possessing friends into the urban hell of Philadelphia, the best way to compromise and reclaim your day may just be Go Vertical, the city’s only indoor rock climbing gym.

Go Vertical could not be located in a more obscure place than Penn Street, a tiny, ugly thoroughfare along the Delaware River. I myself had to do a double take to realize that a seemingly abandoned, graffiti-ed brick building had a large “Go Vertical” sign on it. The inside, however, is an enormous 13,500 square feet of climbing surface, walls 50 feet high for top roping and a 90-foot lead climb where climbers work through a completely horizontal archway — a hub for fun and fitness accessible to pretty much anyone.

Go Vertical accommodates the experienced and first-timers alike. If you’re experienced and you come with a partner with belaying experience, you can basically do anything possible in the realm of indoor rock climbing. There are around 400 different routes you can try - they’ve been given such interesting names as “Ma Petite”, “Saturday Night Pandemonium” and “Elbow’d” - and the staff changes them often, so that no route stays for longer than three months.

If you don’t have any prior experience, you can still get three climbs with a staff member belaying you for $18. Classes are also provided every day, but for a considerably pricier fee. You can also boulder along the 190-foot circumference of the gym. There are countless bouldering problems that are rated from V0 (easiest) to V8 (hardest). Being a rock climbing noob myself, I must admit that I spent most of my time trying to tackle a single V0+ bouldering problem, failing assiduously and glowering at a girl next to me who was practically swinging herself upside down like it was nothing.

Also, this is going to sound really tacky, but rock climbing is a very romantic activity. When I was there, the clientele consisted of two teeny-bopper birthday bashes, an old guy joking that the most dangerous thing about rock climbing was biking here from University City, and couples upon couples upon couples upon couples. I didn’t think much of this phenomenon at first, but in retrospect - with the whole trust thing going on and the obvious physicality of the sport - Go Vertical might just be the pitch-perfect place for a date.

So, whether you need to satiate your inner outsider, or want to try something fun and feel physically vindicated, or are desperate to improve your chances at love, Vertical is the way to go.

WHERE TO GO

Go Vertical
950 North Penn Street
(215) 928-1850

http://www.govertical.com
Open Mon.-Fri. 10 a.m.-10 p.m.
Sat. and Sun. 10 a.m.-8 p.m.

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