Street: Are you from an area with actual rock climbing?
Kyle Sirianno: Yeah. I'm from upstate New York. I live in the Bermuda Triangle of America's best rock climbing. I got the Gunks to my south, the Shawangunk Mountains. You say "the Gunks" to any climber, they know exactly what you're talking about. And then to the north I've got the Adirondacks.
Street: Like the chairs?
KS: Yeah! That's right where I live!
Street: So you climb real mountains, not just indoor ones?
KS: Rock. Mountain climbers and rock climbers are different people. Rock climbers actually climb up the rock with their hands and feet until they get to the top of it.
Street: Do you ever climb other things, like.
KS: Buildings? Yeah! It's Philadelphia, and there's no rock, so you have to climb what you can. You see these buildings made out of sculpted marble and sculpted granite, and your hands just start tingling, like, "Oh I gotta do it!" One time last year, on the corner of 34th and Sansom, I climbed the Penn Book Center. It's really beautiful, it's slotted brick. [And when] I got up top to the window, I peeked in.
Street: How do you do it?
KS: Just like you climb anything else. Or there's bouldering. Climbing is about getting to a destination. It's not about the moves you make or your technique. But bouldering is literally what it means - on a boulder. You climb, usually in a whole bunch of different angles, completely inverted, crazy stuff. Bouldering is just about doing a hard problem and making hard moves. And it's called "buildering" when you're bouldering a building.
Street: So if I have no strength and have never climbed before, you could turn me into a climber?
KS: Pretty much. And the thing is, it's such a community. It's not like you get on the elliptical, you put on your headphones and you run backwards. Here you come and you're climbers. So if you're pulling on something and you can't get it, there's guaranteed to be someone to say, "Hey man, check this out," or "Try this." And a lot of people think climbing is a really male-specific sport, but some of our strongest climbers here are women, and we have a pretty huge base of women climbers.
Street: Do you ever get sick of looking at butts all day? Just people going up and down?
KS: I get sick of looking at some butts all day. There's some butts that come in here that I don't mind looking at.
Street: Do you do things besides rock climbing?
KS: Uhhh, think about rock climbing.
