[slackline]

i know it's off topic but i need to prove a point.
http://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php?action=ownkarma;u=3007

SHE DIED BEFORE I WAS BORN!!

Plaintive nonsense.



 

Don't worry Munkii, in (hyper-)space no one can hear you scream.

Sorry you never got to know your grandmother.  One of my grandfathers died when my mum was 11 (mothers side) and my (biological) grandmother on my fathers side died when he was < 10 so I never knew them.  What about your other grandmother?

[fatdoc]

having read the first 3 pages of this, and skimmed the rest it seems to me that:

the schoolies are lusting for their old place back, are desperate for a 50' board to use and there is a near unresolvable conflict on the ideas of endurance circuits, full on cluttered *never to be changed* boards and annual colour coded spartan type board desires.

I'd also agree with the general tirckery of not just the hard stuff in the whole wall, personally i like it.. i pay a fair amount of cash to go and be entertained whilst wandering about the place. There again i have my own board for basic stuff.

I'd suggest something the foundry did years ago.... the schoolies and the works directors open another venue.... the Works directors business skills with the knowledge of the schoolies = boards with real training promise for you strong boys

if history is anything to go by you will not inundated by punters paying more to trash the holds... that was never an issue in the various incarnations of the office boards at the foundry.

[schloosh]

Well something is happening.....

I was down the climbing works for my lunchtime boulder and they are stripping the wall of all holds.

We shall see....

[Bonjoy]

Which wall, the training wall?

[dave]

great - i hope banks got those projects nailed on sunday!

[schloosh]

Which wall, the training wall?

Yep

[Sloper]

Without having read the whole thread I would suggest that the proportion of 'serious' climbers who use the training board as opposed to us punters who use the circuits is insignificant, particularly in financial terms.

I'm not suggesting that the works (or indeed any other business) can afford to ignore their customer's views; however let's not forget the prime function of the works is to return a profit and not to provide a bespoke training facility.

[GraemeA]

they are stripping the wall of all holds.

Not all of the holds, just some of them.

Those of you who are calling for one of the vert sections to be turned into a steep board need to remember that steep boards have a massive drop off zone whereas vert boards have a significantly smaller drop off zone (4.2m at 45 degrees needs at least 6.2m for drop-off cf. 2m for a similar height vert board). So we are limited by this, we are also limited by general lack of space - if we turned one side of the campus board into a mega steep board we would lose significant amounts of seating and storage space for bags etc (anyone in yesterday will appreciate how important these are to the 400+ customers we had).

Our problem is that despite being the biggest bouldering wall in the world we are not actually big enough to accommodate everything we want to do.

Anyone know of a bigger building in a similar location 

[GraemeA]

And BTW we don't always react to people's suggestions, quite often we pre-empt them eg the new lights that went in today have been planned for a fair while.

[Paul B]

Those of you who are calling for one of the vert sections to be turned into a steep board need to remember that steep boards have a massive drop off zone whereas vert boards have a significantly smaller drop off zone (4.2m at 45 degrees needs at least 6.2m for drop-off cf. 2m for a similar height vert board). So we are limited by this, we are also limited by general lack of space - if we turned one side of the campus board into a mega steep board we would lose significant amounts of seating and storage space for bags etc (anyone in yesterday will appreciate how important these are to the 400+ customers we had).

I do fully appreciate that now you have limited space as everything is set out. Its a shame the limitations of the board weren't seen during the constructing phase. I'd like to point out that personally I see the scale of the campus board as absolutely insane both in height and variety.
People who truly want to train or climb hard etc. will always be in the minority and therefore don't offer much in the way of financial return. However, living in Sheffield and having a larger than usual percentage of waddage I'm surprised that the minority is still thought of as so small that its insignificant (Sloper et al.). Surely if the numbers are that small then the numbers of people wanting to do power endurance circuits is similar in scale and the training board might as well be sacked off completely in favour of
mantling corner?
volume humping arena?
big orange ball dynoing?

I look forward to sampling the new delights of the training corner. Now for my next campaign: Bring back the old style ginger flapjack!

[Fiend]

Next campaign: Get the back2back Clang Brothers to stay a bit more focused...

sorry 

[dave]

been on the training board tonight and all the problem set so far seem very good, lots of feet coming off in a schoolroom style just not as steep, so in my mind this is a major improvement over the previous stuff, the best of which are still there. can't wait till its finished. welcome to dog-with-6-cocks-ville.

[lagerstarfish]

And BTW we don't always react to people's suggestions, quite often we pre-empt them eg the new lights that went in today have been planned for a fair while.

I have this image of a group of pre-cog mutants being kept in a vat at The Works with the aim of pre-empting people's needs.

If there is a minority report from the pre-cogs regarding the proposed grade of a future problem, how do you decide what to do?

Further meditation on the idea suggests that they are kept in a vat of cheese, which is why there is a picture of cheese on the door to the vat room.

[GraemeA]

The only VAT in the cheese room is the one that pays your wages. And there are plenty of mutants down The Works that are not yet cognitive.

[grumpycrumpy]

volume humping arena?
 

Hmmmm ..... This isn't convincing me that it hasn't become the world's biggest and only bouldering wall / knocking shop ... 

[Jaspersharpe]

been on the training board tonight and all the problem set so far seem very good, lots of feet coming off in a schoolroom style just not as steep, so in my mind this is a major improvement over the previous stuff, the best of which are still there. can't wait till its finished. welcome to dog-with-6-cocks-ville.

 

[Percy B]

I do fully appreciate that now you have limited space as everything is set out. Its a shame the limitations of the board weren't seen during the constructing phase.

So you'll apreciate that when we built the Works, the School was open and provided you with all your board requirements. The Works is fantastically well designed to be a good commercial bouldering centre - not an alternative to the School. Now the School isn't there any more we aren't going to tear down existing structures and recreate the boards, because 1) It is not a sensible move from a commercial point of view, and 2) Because it wouldn't be as popular as the mantling corner, Volume humping area, or the big orange ball dynoing areas!
What we are trying to do is adapt the limited training facilities we do have to make sure we can accomodate as many peoples wishes as possible.

[fatdoc]

I still think it not beyond the wit of man that the works directors and the schoolies could get a separate venue...

wouldnt be the pitance that the school was mind... depends how much you beasts want it i reckon

[dave]

So you'll apreciate that when we built the Works, the School was open and provided you with all your board requirements.

theres plenty of us who weren't school members who also want to train you know!

[grumpycrumpy]

I want , I want , I want .... Stop whinging and read what Percy says ..... The Works is a COMMERCIAL VENTURE ie it exists to make a few quid , and as any fule know you can't make a few quid from only accomodating the few .... If you feel that strongly  then resurrect The Schoolroom , build your 50 degree campus or whatever you fancy .... Club together , what fucking ever , but please , please , please shut the fuck up .....

[dave]

luckily the peeps who run the works don't have quite the idiotic outlook on the situation as yourself.

[r-man]

2) Because it wouldn't be as popular as the mantling corner, Volume humping area, or the big orange ball dynoing areas!

Percy, are you completely sure about this? As Dave says, there are lots of people who would like good training facilities who have nothing to do with the school. Training facilities don't just appeal to those who are already strong, but those who want to get strong. That's a LOT of people. As an indication, the number of people operating at the ft7a - 7c level is pretty large, even if it is a minority, and most of these people go indoors to try and get stronger.

Just as you've seen the training wall become popular for power endurance (evidence of people wanting to train), I bet if you built a decent 50 deg. wall it would be equally popular. Yes, more than a mantling corner. (Come on, only wierdos like mantles!) Yes, more than a volume section. (You do realise that people react to volumes like marmite, whatever level they climb at...)

I just thought I'd write this because for some reason this thread seems to be promoting the idea that there are only two types of climbers - the hardcore strong boys and everyone else who don't want anything to do with training. This is all wrong. There are lots of people in the middle - it's obvious by the number of people attempting the harder circuits in the works, or anything on the comp wall. A minority, but a sizeable one I'm sure. Most people I know (myself included) are mid-grade climbers, and most are keen to train.

[grumpycrumpy]

Why do you feel my view is idiotic ? .... They opened a bouldering wall to make money ..... Simple as that ..... The fact that some very very good boulderers go down there does not alter the fact that they need to pay the bills ...... Ripping out part of it to make a section devoted to the few and thus losing some income don't make sense to me ....

[Paul B]

Fully.

What we are trying to do is adapt the limited training facilities we do have to make sure we can accommodate as many peoples wishes as possible.

Tonight I sampled the reset training board which is still a work in progress I'm sure and is definitely much better than it was a week ago.

  Less massive things to hit bodily parts off.
  More small-mid sized holds that don't eat skin.

  Almost every problem on there had one hold too many, some had up to three, ok so you can miss these out easily enough however it seemed like wherever it felt like you might have to pull there was a way around doing so. This detracted from the basic-ness of the problems.
  (Circuits and up problems will never co-exist happily, this was evident tonight where you'd wait an age between goes due to someone circling the board and shaking out).

I'm guessing some harder stuff is going to be added later on?

I want , I want , I want .... Stop whinging and read what Percy says ..... The Works is a COMMERCIAL VENTURE ie it exists to make a few quid , and as any fule know you can't make a few quid from only accomodating the few .... If you feel that strongly  then resurrect The Schoolroom , build your 50 degree campus or whatever you fancy .... Club together , what fucking ever , but please , please , please shut the fuck up .....

Now for grumpy:
feel free not to read on. It's not quite as simple as  you suggest or I would have, I've already invested a fair amount of time looking into this. Once after the demise of the woodie and once again the first time the school was threatened. I don't have a cellar and my balcony board was probably the first E12 in the world, therefore I'm fucked.
The notion that the amount of people that it would cater for is so small that its insignificant is something that I'd argue strongly against, OK so if you set Font 8C problems there would be issues but there's absolutely nothing around the Font 8a mark in the works and plenty of people are pulling down round about that level. True, there aren't enough to make the whole wall an elitist hotspot but enough to justify some change (which is what the commercial venture is now doing) eh grumpy?

(oh and what R-man just said farm more eloquently than I)

[grumpycrumpy]

Fair enough ( and I did read on ) , but the general feeling I've got from reading this thread is how an elitist few are trying to influence a fairly egaliterian venue ...... They shouldn't .... Why pressure the owners , they will do what they think is right for their business .... Are people going to boycott The Works because it doesn't fulfill all their training needs under one roof  ?....All I'm saying is accept the status quo , it's by far the best bouldering wall roundabouts and Percy , Sam and Graham seem to know what they're doing .....