STARTING HOLD - #22 > APRIL/MAY 2008

On the side of a river, factories and smokestacks reach up to a dead sky of soot and ash — a unique sight that can be witnessed from any plane coming in for a landing at Newark International Airport. The world gets strange around 20,000 feet. Crystalline blue skies suddenly turn as muddy as the marshes below. Down further, the air is thicker than water. Grass dare not grow where the highway thrives. Yellow and white dots flank the scrap-metaled landscape — a multi-billion dollar junkyard with an inventory the whole world wants. And somewhere in the midst of it all is this rock climber’s home.

New Joisey! Fuhgeddaboutit! Corrado’s Market must have more sausage and broccoli rabe leaving the shelves hourly than the rest of the world consumes annually. Used car dealers, diners, and malls are found as frequently as exits on the Parkway. Jobs are easy to come by... for hit men, strippers, and realtors. It costs more to live here than most of the over-populated population can afford — hence this is also the land of living above your means. In a place where “plastic paradise” takes on whole new meaning, Atlantic City is there to keep things warm and suicidal. And the once charming cobblestone town where Ol’ Blue Eyes Frank Sinatra resided is now home to the largest cover band scene that Jon Bon Jovi could ever be proud of. Big hair, fake tans, angry drivers... that’s Jersey. It’s almost as ugly as a Linkin Park record. Sounds like a pretty shitty place for a rock climber to live, right? Wrong.

Forget about the “Armpit of America” stuff and think about this for a second: Living in northern Jersey puts you within two hours of dozens of phenomenal crags. New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, even Rhode Island, together house enough stone to last 10 lifetimes. No joke. Multiple world class, bulletproof rock gardens... they’re everywhere. You really have no idea.

Now, this isn’t just an attempt to validate Tri-state folk as members of the core climbing community, it’s also a plug for an unmatched versatility. Aside from having beautiful, gi-normous chunks of stone amassed in the nearby hills, Jersey alone is, within reason, a perfectly diversified little bubble. Surfer? Grab your board and head an hour south. If you ride goofy foot, head an hour northeast, to Long Island. Skateboarders and cyclists enjoy endless possibilities in the same places amazing artists are nurtured – amongst cracked and “useless” concrete structures. There is a distinct buzz of life out east. Culture and mayhem co-exist, sounding off like the thumping heartbeat of this climber when he was an inner-city break dancer, almost 20 years ago. You see, the key to living in the Tri-state is to try everything. Cityscape. Mountainside. Water’s edge. It’s all there. All you gotta do is absorb it, hold onto the pieces you love and discard those you don’t. It’s very simple. Try it all... because you have that rare opportunity.

So, this climber gets up every day to make a hellish two-hour commute to work. Trains never run on schedule. He takes elbows to the throat, listens to the same horrific rendition of “Meet the Flintstones” every single day on the subway platform (courtesy of the Flute Man), and surrounds himself with influenza stricken straphangers – just to sit down at his desk in New York City and express how much he loves to climb rocks. Sounds improbable, huh? Well, it’s true. There are no snow-capped mountains out his window, nothing green... or blue (though the Empire State building wears its colored crown nicely after sunset). But what IS out there are this climber’s roots, his life, his home. That and a few thousand boulders sprinkled into the not-so-distant-woods. It’s his environment. Where he belongs. And somehow, landing at Newark Airport doesn’t seem all that bad when he thinks about it.