Inside Adelaide’s first Urban Climb
New year, new exercise grind? As bouldering takes off in Adelaide, CityMag stopped by the new Hindley Street gym to see how it’s settled on the strip.
As CityMag ascends the staircase of the bouldering gym at the repurposed Event Cinema GU Film House site, we’re greeted with a bark.
The bark belongs to Mabel, the chocolate-coloured Staffy-mixed pup of Urban Climb Adelaide club manager Phil McMeel.
Mabel is a Staffy crossed with some Bulldog and Rottweiler, overall a very good girl.
Urban Climb isn’t just dog-friendly, but dog-encouraging, even having an Instagram page dedicated to showing off the gym’s regular furry friends.
Mabel trots alongside us as Phil shows off the vast space, which includes a café, chill space and detailed climbing walls named in nods to the building’s history.
“She’s quite used to being here now,” Phil says of Mabel as we pass the Blockbuster.
Urban Climb’s “Blockbuster”.
“There’s lots of homages to what this building used to be,” he says.
“In what was cinema five, which is just behind us there,” he gestures, “we’ve still got the speakers”.
“The projector room is above our cafe here, and you can see it from all angles and we’ve got our weights equipment up there.
“There’s lots of little references to it as well, which is nice, it’s a very quirky building full of character, obviously, but that made it quite easily the most ambitious build the company’s done.”
Upstairs, the old projector holes can still be spotted in the weights room.
Phil explains there are different metrics to measure the size of a bouldering gym such as how many climbs there are, wall space and general building area, but by most of them, this is the biggest indoor bouldering gym in the country.
“Our rope gym in Blackburn in Melbourne is a lot bigger, but it’s just for rope climbing that’s why it’s bigger,” Phil says.
“The Roswell” is a nod to the 90s film about a UFO incident.
Bouldering, a type of rock climbing done on short walls or artificial rock walls, is done without ropes or harnesses, with thick, padded floors or mats beneath.
“The cool thing about this space is that there’s a lot of space here, obviously, but it’s not just chock full of climbing,” Phil says.
“There’s space to hang out, people come here and study, you’ve got the cafe, you’ve got plush sofas, there’s space to just be, you can go and grab food and then come back and eat.
“We want to create a space where people can just come and spend all day here.”
Urban Climb has plenty of chill spaces that are spectator-friendly.
Phil moved to Adelaide to run the venue after working for Urban Climb in Melbourne and says since they opened in August, there’s been an “overwhelmingly positive” response.
“I think everyone always knew there was a lot of potential in Adelaide,” Phil says.
“For years it was about finding the spot, finding the right opportunity to do it and then eventually this came up.”
The view of the Hindley Street forecourt from Urban Climb’s second-floor window.
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Before making the trip, Phil was given a heads-up about Hindley Street.
“I was sort of told a little bit that especially the end of Hindley street that we’re on was sort of in need of a bit of love,” he says.
“I think it was probably known that businesses like Urban Climb stepping into this space were going to hopefully be a catalyst in that happening.”
When they were fitting out the space, Brisbane graffiti artist Russell Fenn, better known as Sofles, provided the art. The brief? “Go nuts”.
Before Urban Climb opened, InDaily revealed nearly one in five Hindley Street properties were empty, with a mission to refresh the west end precinct front of mind because of the vacancy crisis.
“When I first came here and this was a build site, it was just, very clearly a dilapidated, forgotten about space and sort of treated as such, but not so much now,” Phil says.
“In quite a short space of time, us and Jets underneath us, the commercial gym, and Fox in a Box, the Escape Rooms underneath them, have all opened up in the space of two, three months together so that’s been really positive.
“Obviously, there’s the kitchen school here as well, and there’s a sort of pleasant foot traffic that we see come through the area.”
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With plenty of space to hang out between climbs, the Hindley Street spot isn’t just filling a real estate void, but providing a space for connection.
“The indoor bouldering explosion that’s taken place, it’s very, very apparent here,” Phil says of the sports increasing popularity.
“People come for the climbing and stay for the community.”
Phil says you don’t have to be physically strong to give bouldering a go, often you’re physically capable of climbing if you have good problem-solving skills.
On a first visit, when someone who hasn’t climbed before could feel overwhelmed by the unfamiliar environment or intimidated by the climbers looking athletic, Phil says his team’s job is to make people feel comfortable.
“The way it’s set up when it comes to the climbing, the difficulty grading, the way we help people, it’s designed to teach people and let people into it gently.
“The way Urban Climb venues are designed in general, whether you are climbing at the Olympics – and a couple of our staff members have climbed at the Olympics – or whether you have never tried it before, equally, you should be able to come here and have a really good session.
“It should be fun, engaging, challenging, just enjoyable in general.
“That’s kind of what keeps people coming back, and that culture of, like, cheering strangers up the wall.”
Urban Climb is located at 128 Hindley Street and offers two weeks free after your first visit so you can give it a go and see if it suits you.
Sorry Mabel, as the sign says “It’s ruff, but it’s safer that way”.