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T2
climber
Cardiff by the sea
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Along with my peer Jason Brown and crew we built the Diablo location in Concord under SolidRock wall systems. My roll specfically was to build and install all the structural steel for the massive overhanging lead wall. It was a fun project.
I have always appreciated the fact that Mr. Melvin is a legitimate climber.
Chris Mac. I am surprised we did not cross paths back then.
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Brock Wagstaff
Trad climber
Larkspur
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Chris - I think you were about 16 when we first met. I believe Bennett built Class 5 around 1994 or 95, and spent more money on the bathrooms than he ever did on the climbing walls. Maybe you remember when Mark bought it, but the climbing walls got a lot better after that!
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Phil_B
Social climber
CHC, en zed
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Ha, as long it's old farts telling stories, here's mine:
I joined City Rock about a week after they opened and met my ex there. Almost didn't go out with her because it was a lifting night, not a climbing night (d'oh!). Anyway, I remembered almost too late that it was never a bad idea to go climbing with a pretty girl.
But this thread is about Touchstone. . .
I had to quit climbing due to arthritis in 1992, but my son got me to take him again some time around 2002 or so. We went to Iron Works and I had a great time. I'd somehow gotten my arthritis under control and hadn't realized that I could climb again. I became one of the regulars in the Monday Wednesday evening crew of old dudes. No problem finding partners as it shifted depending on how many folks showed up.
Through Supertopo and the gym, we heard about this thing called SushiFest and I was super bummed I couldn't make it to the inaugural trip, so we had a pity party instead. They became a regular thing for people who couldn't make it out of town. In the intervening years, I'd gotten divorced and Fat Trad set me up with a friend at one of these pity parties. The blind date didn't work out, but a very interesting woman was sitting on the other side of me who climbed, kayaked AND was a geoscience geek. Love ensued and now we live in New Zealand, having forsaken careers to go travel.
Circumstances change and Cleo has been unemployed for over a year now so she bit the bullet and started applying for jobs in the US. Lo and behold, we will soon be returning to Cali and be living in Sac. I guess we'll be members of Pipe Works by the end of 2015.
We're even planning on heading out to Indian Creek for a SushiFest in 2016.
Cheers
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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great to hear you and Cleo will be climbing at Pipe Works!
(being totally selfish about it...)
I've missed you two!!
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snowhazed
Trad climber
Oaksterdam, CA
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When I started climbing in '04 I was too broke for a membership I just walked right in past the desk like I belonged. It worked for 2 years!
I am grateful for the gym. 2006-2011 were my peak years for days outside. Now even though that number of days gets less and less, I climb longer and harder every year, thanks to having a place to train.
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mmelvin
Trad climber
san francisco
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Hi. Please let my contribution not subdue any negatives about Touchstone. I look for them wherever I can, to know how we perform. To that end, let me respond to simple history. CityRock opened in 1990. Peter Mayfield, Wayne Campbell, and Christian Griffith came together to create an exciting indoor professional climbing venue. They weren't literally the first, and even Class 5, a notion more a gimmick in climbing than they, opened within months. But they were definitively the best. In those days everyone thought that one gym per 4 million people was saturation. But let's be frank, indoor climbing isn't amazing as a concept. By 1995 Mayfield was trying to open a second gym in San Jose, which had difficulties, ultimately resolved by Planet Granite opening in Santa Clara, closing later, now with gyms in Sunnyvale, Belmont, The Presidio, and Portland. Debra and I didn't know what we were doing, but pretended we'd figure it out, and with the help of 40 shareholders all expecting failure, opened Mission Cliffs in August 1995. In 1996 Class 5 Fitness asked if we would buy their assets, which we did, thereafter investing to replace their climbing walls. In 1997 CityRock for whatever reason, was about to not make payroll. We made an offer to shareholders to buy the company, which was accepted. After managing CityRock for a couple years it was apparent that we were about to be usurped by other startups in the East Bay. We then spent what almost bankrupted us to open Berkeley Ironworks in 2000—does anyone remember myself and Markham turning members away when the Building Department closed us for opening early? In any case, the rest of our history has been sorted. Class 5 lost its lease later to a "credit tenant." Sacramento opened in 2001, a superior historical building at an honest 40', but in the worst part of the city. Diablo was built in 2002 when no landlord in the world would pay attention to us, although we did the most amazing cantilevered build of any gym. By the time of Oakland in 2007, we were wanting to relive the crowds at Berkeley, and I still want to put a route up the full chimney outside which would be almost an honest pitch. Our next build, in Fresno in 2011 has arguably our best walls, a collaborative work with Mark Benkert, an amazing artist, but in the hardest economically-hit county in the U.S. San Jose in 2012, a creative build in a theatre, has been poorly accepted by climbers. When we finally realized that the world wanted superior bouldering, we designed with Lyn Barraza and Jeffery Bowling what we still hope is world quality bouldering at Dogpatch Boulders, opening 2013. We are trying to build a community of gyms in Los Angeles now, an exceptionally underserved area. This forum is tough, so this might not be accepted, but we're committed to gyms in close proximity in support of an entire community more than we think are others. I'm really sorry for anyone who knows how to belay outside to be bothered by our staff. It's a constant battle for me, to make sure that if someone knows how to belay safely that we don't change their system. I'll get the word out again. I'd rather climb outside any day, but if inside, I want outside practices to be revered.
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climbingcook
Trad climber
sf
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I started climbing at Mission Cliffs almost a decade ago, it got me into the sport, I've met tons of amazing people, spent hundreds of days climbing outside, and have had a great time doing so.
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Tarheel
Trad climber
San Rafael, CA
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Oct 12, 2015 - 09:43am PT
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I was the second investor and was certain of success because: Mark has a master's in operations research from Berkeley and worked at BofA and later Fair Isaac. Even more sure of success due to several horrendous experiences survived together. For example, we once climbed the north face of the Matterhorn together. We did this straight off the flight without any acclimatization or warm up, thinking we would take 7 hours. We strayed off the classic route to a more direct line and got caught in a storm. We spent the night hanging from a bad anchor without food, water or warm clothes. We spent a second night on the summit. But in the photos I am always smiling.
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ArmandoWyo
climber
Wyoming
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Nov 26, 2015 - 10:50am PT
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Mark hit the highlights. And of course there was a lot more to it than that. But Mark, did I note a little apologizing for climbing gyms. No need, none at all.
My minor involvement started with CityRock. I still consider it seminal, even if it ultimately failed.
By the late 1980s, I had been climbing for 20 years. But I was a weekend warrior. I started training almost from the beginning. In 1972, I started running; weight training a couple of years later. I remember being embarrassed as I pumped iron on my flimsy weight bench in the basement as Fred Beckey shook his head in distain.
I moved onto to gyms, but there were few choices back then. I found a power-lifting gym and then one of the first Gold’s gyms. Serious training those places. If you think the air in climbing gyms is thick with chalk, try deep breathing in a power-lifters gym.
I had know Peter Mayfield since he started climbing at 14. Peter must have faced resistance at home, because he had his mother calling me, the grown-up, to assure her that rock climbing was safe. (Now that my grandson is at that age, I know that little is safe for a 14 year old.)
This long build up is to explain why I jumped onboard immediately when Peter Mayfield proposed CityRock. Peter was a innovator and special salesman, and he needed those skills to put together the initial group of about 30 investors to start CityRock. Peter had me, however, with the words, “climbing gym.”
The CityRock construction workers and investors would meet late at night, bolt on holds as the walls were going up, and play like kids with a new toy. I like to think those were some good days for Tony Yaniro, perhaps the first and ultimate training guru, pounding nails all day and then climbing in the middle of a construction zone into the wee hours.
Belittle gym climbing all you want, but for those of us who could only climb weekends and vacations, gyms were the movement of climbing, the training we couldn’t match with weights, and the climbing culture and socializing of Camp 4.
Still CityRock wasn’t a success. Mark talks about the difficulty of finding 40 folks to put up the money to build Mission Cliffs, “all expecting failure.” In part that expectation was because of CityRock’s track record: popular but still losing money.
Only three of us from CityRock joined Mark for his Mission Cliffs venture. Later, when CityRock was finally going under, the same three, Sandy Mailliard, Wayne Campbell, and I, traded our “pennies-on-the-dollar” CityRock shares for Mission Cliffs shares. Good financial decisions about passions like climbing don’t usually go together. I’m grateful that fate granted that as mine.
It’s been great to be involved, even if my stake has been only money and conviction. Mark, Debra, and the Touchstone team have shaped today’s climbing scene in California.
From my opinionated historical perspective, the impactful eras in San Francisco climbing have been the original Bay Area Rock Climbing Section of Dick Leonard and Dave Brower and the climbing gyms revolution led by Mark Melvin and Peter Mayfield. I’d include somewhere the influence on climbing and our culture of Indian Rock bouldering.
Congrats to Mark, Debra and the Touchstone team.
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