I feel like, in the black community,
there's like this misconception, oh,
black people don't do that.
Only white people do this.
And they have every right to believe that,
because, you know, their outlet to the world
is what you see on the TV and on the Internet,
and if you don't see any black people
or any people of color climbing,
you're not gonna think you can do it.
Yeah, nice.
I was curious.
I was like, are there any black climbers?
So I literally typed are there black climbers in Google
and I came across this forums and someone said
black people don't climb.
I grew up in Queens.
I went to elementary school five minutes from here.
Out here there's no rock climbing gym,
there's no mountains, there's nothing out here like that.
Like, my idea of the outdoors is the backyard, you know?
(siren wails)
grew up in Harlem.
You can't just go to, like, Riverbank
and find a climbing wall there.
Know what I mean, like, my dad wasn't into climbing,
my mom wasn't into climbing, my family wasn't into climbing.
No one knew that that was like a sport.
This was like one of the sports that I got into by myself
and I kind of found by myself.
I think I was like the only Dominican there.
I think I'm still like the only Dominican doing this.
(subway clacking)
I've had kids, black kids say, oh we don't do this,
yeah, we don't do this.
And then that made me like, damn, this kid is saying that
what else could he think he can't do just because he's black
or he has not seen another black person do that.
I love climbing so everybody that knows me they're like
you climb now, I'm like why don't you come and find out?
- When I first came to the gym back in 2009
there was maybe one other black guy.
Any time you saw someone else was black, like,
we made it a thing to say hey, what's going on?
I remember when Pete first came.
You know, we kinda like just saw each other
and then slowly moved towards each other, like
hey, he looks like me and not that I was like feeling
out of place, I'm sort of used to being the only black guy
in everywhere, but.
I really wanted to see
more black people in the gym right?
I just thought, like climbing, could benefit from it.
I went by myself, I climbed for a couple hours.
I didn't know anybody there.
I was in an area of Brooklyn that I've never to before
and I think I just watched this group of guys just killin it
and I just gravitated toward that.
Saul, he looked like
he wanted a crew to just climb with.
I was like, yeah, like I can learn something here.
Then we said, okay we have to come together.
This is gonna be the crew that takes over climbing.
The crew was actually a mix of both, I guess,
us and a lot of other Asian people.
At first, it was like blacks are climbing
and then it was Asians are climbing.
I don't know who made it up.
I think someone said brothers of climbing
which kinda made more sense at the time
and then people would just shout it out.
Like, they'd see us and be like B-O-C B-O-C.
I think it's just the energy the group brings,
just helps me climb better
because they're the ones that first brought me outside.
You know, they're the ones that taught me a lot of things,
they push me a lot.
Come on, stick with it.
Yeah, one over.
Look at this guy crimpin'. (laughs)
Crimps are my favorite.
Who taught you how to do that?
Like it came to a point where we were actually
hanging out outside of the gym.
You know, we would go, you know, go get some food
and then, I don't know when it hit us, we were like,
let's all go to Chattanooga and let's just do a trip.
That would be so much fun.
I definitely have, like, gone places where
you feel like, maybe we should not be here.
If you're traveling in a car with other people
and they all happen to be black or whatever,
like you do put yourself in a certain, you know,
and outside of that, like, just experiencing, like,
standing around and like cops driving past two times
and then they'll stop and be like what are you doing here.
You know, we tried to buy a guide book, talked to the lady
for like 10 minutes, and she was like
so what do you need it for.
I was just like, we're going climbing!
Like why do you think we were talking to you
for the last 10 minutes?
Like, and her face was like what you're going rock climbing?
Swing it up, bump it up.
Got it.
Alright, pull the feet up, got the undercling.
Got it.
Got it?
Got it.
Alright, keep it going.
Okay.
Like, just goes back to, you know,
not being exposed to the outdoors, right, and that the
problem is we're telling ourselves that we can't do it
and on the other end, there's no one telling us we can do it
so it's a problem on both sides of that coin
and we have to attack it from both sides.
It is up to us for us to, you know,
make that representation, show people there are
black people in climbing.
That's what we're trying to do now, is kinda show people
that, hey, you can, you can do this.
As you climb up try and work your feet up a little bit
until you feel comfortable.
Yeah Katie.
Come on, come on.
Just bring it, bring it to the top, man,
we got you, we got you down here.
There was a woman in California who was looking for
a group forever and she found our Instagram.
She was like, there's a black climbing group somewhere
like, she was looking, you know, so,
someone out there is looking and they might be the only one.
So BOC's mission is to increase involvement
of minorities in the outdoors.
Right now we're starting with climbing
but I want to see more of us participating
in outdoor activities because if more of us are out there
then it would just be more of a common thing.
I don't think I would be
where I am without them.