Film Diary

They say you can tell a person’s true character by how they react to an old Volkswagen van. And by “they say” I mean “I say.” Some people will come up to you and your van with a warm look in their eye, and “Oh gee I used to have one of those old vans.” Or, “I grew up in something like that…” Some people will even come up to you in a parking lot and offer you a beer, because they know you are Good People. All across America, people honked their horns in support, waved, gave us the universal fist in the air of support.  These people fill my heart with love.  In the climbing world, an old VW is almost a statement in itself. “I am a Dirtbag climber, hear me roar.” There’s some more to it, but you already get the gist.

Others people, the less worthwhile ones, will ride your bumper, shaking fists that they got stuck behind you. They’ll honk if you take too long to turn into a gas station. Others might sneer and make a point of coming by to tell you that you are parked wrong or you need to make sure you pay for your campsite before you leave, you dirty hippies. These people fill your heart with…oh, what’s the word.

“Approaching destination on the right. You have arrived.” Our GPS sounded off the alarm that we had indeed arrived at our destination – camping for the night. However, looking outside the window we found we were in the middle of downtown Oakland. Somehow, we had ended up in the seediest part of the urban jungle with the erroneous idea there was camping here. It was still early in the evening, and we laughed heartily at our circumstances. Tomorrow we would interview Allen Steck, and then Tom Frost.  We got back on the freeway and headed towards a camping sign we had seen some 15 minutes back, enjoying simple cheese sandwiches and tape recordings of our conversations played back in slow motion.

As we drove up a narrow, winding road, slowed to about 25mph in the dark, the laughter subsided as we grew sleepy and hoped to see this ‘campground’ where we could bunker down for the night. After an eternity, we finally arrived at the campground. “Shit!” Campground curfew was 11pm, and it was sometime after midnight. The gate was closed. We sat for a moment thinking, and suddenly, up the same winding road, comes a giant tow truck that drives up to the gate and opens it. We rush behind him, and I hop out.  To my surprise, the tow truck driver was a nervous, unpleasant fellow. He took one look at me coming out of the VW towards him and started shaking his head. “Yeah, park’s closed. I’m going in to meet a police officer, the campgrounds closed.” “But we’ve already set up our tent inside there, we just got back late,” I say. He says he doesn’t know what to tell me. “Who do I call? Should I call the ranger or something? All our stuff is inside there.” The tow truck guy looked pained, and after a few more words, was fed up. “It’s not my problem.” 

So he sped off down the road into the camp, and we slowly followed suit. For a brief moment, I wondered about this “police officer” and as we turned the corner, there in flashing red and blue lights was our doom.  What ensued was a scene straight out of Super Troopers, complete with power hungry cop from nowheresville going on and on about our damned “civil liberties.” The cop had evidently arrested a man in the park (unpaid parking tickets, probably) and was having the culprit’s car towed. The tow truck driver, that cowardly louse, had radio’d ahead to the cop telling him we were on our way in.

There’s nothing like a cop yelling in your face when you’re really tired and just drove a VW all the way up somewhere to get a good night’s sleep. A good nights sleep, is that so delinquent of a request?

“How many people are in this van?” he asked. After threatening to give everyone in the van fines, he told us we better reverse up the hill and get the hell out of his way. At that moment, Alex had the unfortunate task of telling him that this was impossible. On a one-way downhill incline, we could not back-up. “We actually can’t go in reverse.”  Well, Officer didn’t like that very much at all. We would have to drive to the bottom of the hill, and make an unsupervised u-turn (as he needed to stay with the alleged criminal in his backseat.)

And so we headed back down the hill into the night with a bitter taste, not knowing what to do next. At this point no one was laughing, and the joy of driving was gone. In fact, the simple joy of eating cheese sandwiches was long gone too. So gone, that Alex (still driving) was beginning to feel the after effects of the two days unrefrigerated cheese, mayo, pickle sandwiches in a very bad way. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

We drove around a small seedy town looking aimlessly for a place to sleep. No luck. Alex, meanwhile, searched earnestly for a place to go to the bathroom. No luck. (Every gas station that night seemed to have an out-of-order bathroom or a strictly no-people-inside-after-11pm schtick). Alex was starting to look…pekid. Finally some dude gave us a tip to go park the van “down by the marina”. As we drove off in the generally direction the guy pointed at, the van suddenly came to an abrupt halt. “A porta-potty,” said Alex. Everyone else looked warily out the window. “We’re probably pretty close to the Marina if you want to wai…” But Alex was off, headed towards a dark portapotty in a dark construction lot. It was a very funny situation, but we weren’t laughing.

We didn’t end up finding the Marina that night. We became so desperate that we just untied the plastic trees and popped the top on the side of a street. A police car rolled by, and we held very still (as if this would prevent us from being seen). Luckily, he kept going and we got some sleep. That cop could have hassled us, but he didn’t. Perhaps while he slowed and drove past us, he was not thinking of the laws we were breaking, but of the VW he and his family used to own. Good people. The van is a surefire way to gauge a human being.

Since we’ve been on an automobile-smashing trend, it seemed time to introduce these folks.

The Vulgarians, famous for their tough climbs, free-spirits, death defying races, parties, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, are the unofficial keepers of the Shawangunks.

Two copies of the “Vulgarian Digest” featuring Dick Williams, left climbing nude and Elaine Matthews, prominent female Vulgarian, topless on the right.

We interviewed Vulgarian Burt Angrist and Vulgarian and overall climbing legend Jim McCarthy about 2 hours after our car crash.  Jim, Burt, and Anka (Burt’s lovely wife) welcomed us into their home and immediately put us at ease with kindness, cheese and crackers, and Bourbon.

(Yup, proceeded to drink shots of Bourbon with Jim McCarthy as we interviewed him!)

Suffice to say, any lingering worries I had about the smashed up rental car dissipated as I listened to stories of the Vulgarian Grand Prix and stuff like this:

The Vulgarians are often given more publicity for their antics than their climbs, that are equally noteworthy.  The people who made up the Vulgarians throughout the early days of the ‘Gunks scene pushed the limits of climbing and partying, and remain heroes to many a bourbon-drinking, car-crashing, free-spirited climber like myself to this day.

It was an honor to be heckled, the next day, by Jim and Burt as they came across us climbing an ‘easy’ 5.5 Gunks climb called the Horseman.

Get your knees off the rock!

Beasty is more than just a 1976 Volkswagen van. She is what we call our Home Operations Traveling Resource of Destiny (H.O.T.R.O.D.)

In other words, this is our mobile crew unit that we’ll be traveling in over 5,000 miles from California to New York and back. We will be driving, cooking, sleeping, drinking, reading, filming, logging, and capturing all from the van.

Volkswagens like ours have plenty of history with the outdoors, free spirits and climbing communities alike, so we think its pretty fitting. Like John ‘the Verm’ Sherman puts it in his naughty book “Sherman Exposed“:

V: The van’s paid for. People see me traveling around climbing all the time, not punching a time clock and they think I must have married a Rockefeller. Not true. Living in a van is dirt cheap and simple. No rent. No bills. No phone. No boss. One-third food, one-third gas, one-third beer. Every once in a while splurge for a dollar movie or a box of chalk. Like Eric Beck said, “at either end of the social spectrum lies a leisure class.”

So there you go. That’s more or less our philosophy. (BTW If you have any good VW stories or pictures, send them to me and I’ll put em up here).

Our course depends on where we will need to go to meet our interviewees, but as you can imagine, it seems like many of the climbers we want to talk to are located near big climbing epicenters. Which works out great for us, since we couldn’t do without footage of all these places for the film.

I based a loose estimate of where we’ll be headed based on Don Mellor’s neat book “American Rock, Region, and Culture” of which I’ll try to get a pic of soon so you can get an idea of where we’ll be heading ( so that…you could maybe suggest a pitstop!).

Despite the skepticism about the lack of a radiator, I feel pretty confident about Beasty. The engine has been rebuilt, and I’m currently working on getting a solar panel operating off the top to run/charge our film equipment. (If you have some particular knowledge on solar panels and controllers in VW buses, throw some advice our way! I’ve got the panel, but not the know-how).

And if problems arise, in AIRS we trust (Aircooled Interstate Rescue Squad). What other automobile can claim this kind of support!

This is our basic basic basic production plan, but right about now you may actually want to know what kind of film we are making or what its specifically going to cover…so that’s coming in the next post. In the meantime, our website has some basic over-edited info for you to peruse…

Thanks for readin!