San Francisco Voice

Should I go alone?

In indoor rock climbing, there are two basic options for you if you do not have a partner that you want to take with you to the rock climbing gym.  The first is to go ahead and go to the gym alone and then to really put yourself out there in trying to find a partner who is already at the gym.  This really hasn’t been too hard to do at the rock climbing gym in San Francisco because both San Franciscans in general and, I think, rock climbers as a group, tend to be pretty laidback people happy to help each other out when they can.  So you can generally feel okay with approaching a group of climbers and asking to join in, since you simply can’t belay yourself and climb at the same time.

If, however, you fail to find a partner or group at the rock climbing gym, you can take the other option and go bouldering instead of climbing.  One of my San Francisco climbing buddies has gotten pretty good at this (probably due in no small part to the fact that I haven’t been hitting the gym with him as much as I ought to) and considers it a viable option for enjoying some indoor rock climbing without having to find a second person to help you out.  Bouldering requires different skills from climbing and tests different parts of your ability, but it is still a form of indoor climbing that can be greatly enjoyed by climbers of all skill levels.

Switch gears and lets head over to the dating world.  At the end of last week, I went to go check out the singer-songwriter Susan Werner perform at Brava Theater.  I knew in advance that I was going and I had an extra ticket so I figured that I would drum up a date.  Again, it’s really not that difficult to find a date in San Francisco, because both San Franciscans in general and, I think, singles in any urban scene, are pretty comfortable with meeting up for first dates at random events like women-in-the-arts concerts.  However, I didn’t put forth much effort and ended up on concert night deciding to fly solo.

And you know, it was fine.  It had been a long time since I went out to a nighttime activity like that without someone at my side.  In the same way that bouldering offers a similar-but-different experience than climbing, hitting the town solo offers a different perspective on the world around you than attending events as part of a twosome or moresome.  But it’s still a fun way to spend an evening.  I enjoyed the concert, probably paying more attention to it than I would have if I’d had a date, and I was actually completely comfortable in my seat by my lonesome.

There’s a time and a place for everything in our lives.  We may normally be climbers but sometimes we might just want to boulder on our own for a bit.  And we may usually find a date to events, but it’s hardly the end of the world if you want to see something and you can’t get anyone else to tag along.