Climbing the Walls in Brooklyn

You are hanging in plastic knobs a dozen feet on the floor of an old garage in Brooklyn Daily News. Music pumps, and crowds of people joy. But if you close your eyes for a moment, one can imagine that is hundreds of meters high, hanging from a cliff in Yosemite National Park.

Since opening last fall, Brooklyn Boulders, a 18,000 square foot gym in the old garage in Gowanus, has become a destination for rock climbers of New York at all levels. The colorful space - urban art of graffiti covered walls of style - is usually full of people of all ages. You can rent a complete set of equipment for $ 10 a day - a crotch harness, hugging, tight shoes and a bag of chalk to the hands - and up to $ 20 a day. (Beyond the basics, there are lessons for $ 60 and children's summer camps, among other offers.)

Climbing is a physical challenge that the arms of tone like few other activities, but also an art form in which graceful, fluid movements can make even beginners look like spiders dancing on intricate networks. Indoor climbing provides a quick dose of the sport, which often requires hours of time outdoors. For city folk, rock gyms offer training and practice needed to hit the cliffs on the weekends. And some people never go outside, preferring the relative safety of indoors.

Some of the best climbers in New York can be seen on the walls of boulder gym, where climbing without ropes. This type of climbing is more down to earth, the land covered by climbers, soft, flexible pads. Expect to be humbled by his achievements.

For those who prefer ropes, more than 40 of them have created. You go into a harness and tie you down with a rope that runs the height of the wall, about 29 feet in some places. As you reach for a failure after another, one partner or gym staff member on the floor pulls the rope along, providing support only when it is dropped or wants to rest. Climbers follow trails of the tape on the wall to find out where to go; routes are labeled to indicate difficulty. At the top, you sit back with the weight of the rope, and her partner is reduced. (The gym requires members to pass a driving test of the rope.)

Other gyms with walls of rock, like the Chelsea Piers in Manhattan, are more expensive. Boulders Brooklyn was founded by three New York climbers - Jeremy Balboni, Lance Pinn and Stephen Spaeth - who were friends at Babson College in Massachusetts, and wanted a more affordable option for climbing in the city. Part of their goal is to become a research center on the climbing gym mats and built the floor, walls and structures from scratch.

Two new walls, Zig-Zag Wall and the Beast, add more routes to cope. There is also a fine line for those who want to practice their balancing acts. Good balance, of course, it is useful to scale boulders and climbing walls of the gymnasium here.

The founders of the gym is like to say they are fighting for the "global domination." That could be a great ambition, but for now are helping ordinary people to defy gravity with a little more of reach.