Stripping on Sundays
At the beginning of my sophomore year, I was on the phone with my grandmother when she asked me if I’d gotten a term-time job. I was, I admit, scrolling through my inbox at the same time and distracted, bored from listening to pickleball drama. “Yes,” I answered her. “I’m stripping at CRG.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line, and it took a few moments for me to hear my own words. “Climbing hold stripping,” I quickly clarified. “At Central Rock Cambridge.” Though my grandmother was unfamiliar with hold stripping, once she grasped that it in no part involves undressing, her concern was assuaged.
It’s an easy joke often parried between my colleagues and me: “We’re stripping buddies,” “Joe and I strip together,” “Could you please move as I am going to start stripping on this ladder.” And somehow that joke, paired with the dirty manual-labor nature of the job, fit in well with the “Flashdance” imitation I was trying to achieve. (“Flashdance” being an underrated ’80s movie starring Jennifer Beals at her most iconic, playing an aspiring dancer in Pittsburgh who makes a living as both a welder and a cabaret performer.) I was an athlete who proved her devotion to her sport not only through training, but also by toiling away in exchange for a gym membership, an otherwise formidable expense.
Why CRG hired me as a setting assistant (the job’s official title) rather than for the other available role as desk staffer is a mystery. Measuring in at 4’10” with shoes on, I come bearing obvious limitations when it comes to reaching the holds at the top of the wall, carrying around volumes and ladders, and lifting bins weighing more than half as much as I do. But for a free membership, I was willing to be the official urinal-scrubber and gutter-cleaner if that’s where the gym wanted me.
I chose to attend Harvard as opposed to a number of other colleges because of the abundance of climbing gym options in the Cambridge area. As a high school senior in Colorado, my first action in researching a college would be Google-mapping the distance from campus to the nearest climbing-related establishments.
CRG has become just as central a part of my Harvard experience as any Harvard-affiliated group or location. I spent my freshman year taking the 78 bus to Western Cambridge four days a week to visit the CRG located there, or waking up at 5:30 a.m. to walk through snow to the Bouldering Project in Somerville so I could get in a session before Linear Algebra. It was a wonderful surprise when CRG opened a location right in the middle of Harvard territory ahead of my sophomore year. Not a block away from the T, you can see it most clearly at night. The modernity of the gym contrasts harshly with the colonial style of the architecture it resides within, and its presence is an indication of how mainstream bouldering has become.
It’s one of my favorite things — walking out of CVS after the sun has gone down and being able to see that illuminated piece of home through the large windows of a red-brick building. On Sunday nights I am in there, part of the view through the window myself, covered in chalk and grime and wearing very fashionable protective eyewear.
It surprises me that many at Harvard don’t even know the gym is there, even those that have picked up El Jefe’s orders beneath it several times. I won’t lie — it’s a bit hard to figure out how to get in. You might need to keep the web page perpetually up on your phone to open the door yourself, or you can press the button at the entryway and hope desk staff is paying attention and will buzz you up. Then you’ll walk past a security guard sitting in the nondescript lobby and up the spiraling stairs, losing your sense of direction.
Even though Harvard and CRG now reside in the same space, it’s still disorienting when my two worlds collide. It doesn’t happen too often though, as the climbing community at Harvard is small. There is inexplicably a greater number of Harvard graduate students, so I’ve run into more of my TFs at the Harvard Square CRG than classmates.
For instance, during my first hold stripping shift almost two years ago, my Math 21b TF was present. I said hi to him, embarrassed, one eye swollen and teary from debris that had infiltrated my safety glasses. He was still climbing an hour later and got to witness me become soaked head to toe, wearing an oversized rain suit and my shower flip flops as part of the hold washing process.
Especially for my first couple shifts, hold washing was the most onerous part. My colleague Joe and I traded turns doing it, and a colleague eventually brought me a small sailing jacket so I could stop shredding the rain suit’s sleeves with the power washer. We washed holds in one of the gym’s bathrooms, concentrated in the shower, but despite everyone’s best efforts, water got everywhere and flooded the room. The power washer itself was deafening, forcing you to be alone with your thoughts and misery for the two hours it took to get the job done.
By this point, I’ve become fully accustomed to the physical demands of hold stripping and washing, though I’ve grown no taller and my size still limits me in some ways. Reflecting on the many years I’ve been a climbing gym patron, taking the setting assistant job has helped me appreciate the gym staff who worked on my behalf for all that time, keeping the routes fresh and the facility clean.
Every Sunday evening, this week and every week until the end of the semester, I’ll slip on my CRG staff sweatshirt as playground becomes workplace. When my coursework and extracurricular responsibilities get overwhelming or the world of academia becomes exasperating, I’ll consider again trying to build a career in the climbing industry. Not making use of the Harvard degree I hope to obtain this year would surely disappoint my grandmother, but hey, I can always remind her that there are worse jobs I could be doing.
— Magazine writer Sierra A. Lloyd can be reached at sierra.lloyd@thecrimson.com.