Sending It

A few years ago, as a corrective to the sedentary habits I developed in architecture school, I renewed my interest in indoor rock climbing. In New York City, bouldering—climbing that tops out at an overhead-saving fifteen feet—is king. One afternoon, sitting on the cushion around the lower apron of a bouldering wall, I realized that the building I was in was weird as hell. An employee was fastening a mix of plastic holds to the fractal plywood cladding the gym’s interior, rearranged at regular intervals to bring people back in. Bouldering gyms, in addition to being reputed pickup spots for gorpcore-wearing urban professionals and imaginative approximations of far-flung nature, are sites of experimental and dangerous design. And they’re taking over the city. As storied gyms like GP81 have closed to make way for luxury apartments, spectacular Covid-era gyms have appeared in neighborhoods like Gowanus and Williamsburg in Brooklyn and West Harlem and the Lower East Side in Manhattan. Just this summer, Williamsburg’s 1 Nassau Avenue sold for 1,321 percent of its 2018 pric…