Atlantan Barry Clement
Location: Stone Summit
Date taken: November 5, 2012
Barry Clement’s family tells him they would like to see a few nice pictures from his trips, but the less they know the better. Barry, a Decatur native and resident, has been rock climbing for more than a decade, and the sport has taken him to some breathtaking and precarious places.
“I remember one trip to climb a route named Remember Appomattox when I became dehydrated and had low blood sugar … and then a storm came in,” said Barry. “With the steepness of the cliff, the only way out was up. We slept on the side of the cliff wall, rationed out our food and waited out the storm and eventually moved out. For a while there, it seemed like the world was bearing down on me.”
Barry got his first taste of rock climbing at age 14 at a summer camp. Later, he received training from the National Outdoor Leadership School to become a adventure ropes course instructor and started leading climbing activities. By the time he got to Georgia Tech for college, Barry was hooked on the sport. During every school break and most weekends, he and a group of friends would head off on climbing trips.
“There’s a sense of accomplishment with climbing and an adrenaline rush,” said Barry, who majored in industrial design. “It’s a certain amount of scariness and excitement at the same time. And, it’s addictive because when you start, you can see yourself progressing in the sport really quickly.”
For the past two years, Barry has served as general manager of Unique Outfitters, a specialty sporting goods store located in the country’s largest indoor climbing gym – Stone Summit. With several new climbing gyms in Atlanta and some of the country’s best natural climbing located just two hours away in the Lower Appalachians, Barry says the climbing community in Atlanta has exploded in the past five years.
Unique Outfitters seeks to outfit Atlanta climbers with the needed gear and apparel. The store’s employees are all expert climbers like Barry, who has traveled all over the world climbing – from Hidalgo, Mexico to Fontainebleau, France.
“The longer I have been climbing, the more I’m drawn toward the aesthetics of the sport,” said Barry. “Now, I’m looking to climb something aesthetically pleasing to me. Imagine looking an Ansel Adams photo and thinking ‘I want to be a part of that.’ That’s what I think when I go climb. I want to be a part of it.”
Unique Outfitters is an online and retail location, located in Stone Summit. The store features more than 60 pairs of climbing shoes, extreme hammocks, hangboards and other items for climbers. Side note: Barry is also a co-inventor and co-founder of Superhooper, lighted hulu hoops.
Atlantan Leslie Caceda
Location: Wall Crawler Rock Club
Date taken: September 17, 2012
If you are interested in discovering new parts of Atlanta, Leslie Caceda highly recommends biking to work. As she tries out quicker routes, navigates around road construction and works to avoid automobile traffic congestion, Leslie often stumbles upon new places in city.
“I’m a different person when I bike,” said Leslie. “When I drive to work, I feel myself becoming impatient and angry. But, on the bike, I take more time. I see things I didn’t see before. I actually enjoy getting to work.”
A native of Peru, Leslie spent her teenage years in Newnan, Ga., and then graduated from Wesleyan College in Macon, Ga. Although she fondly recalls the yellow bike of her childhood, Leslie didn’t start seriously cycling until she attended Georgia Tech for graduate school. With the high price of a parking permit and shortage of spaces, Leslie decided it would be more cost efficient and effective to bike to class. She’s been biking around town ever since.
Now, Leslie works as program manager for the Atlanta Bike Coalition. You might find her managing bike valets at Atlanta events, helping teach bicycle safety, demonstrating how to install a bike rack or working with the city’s transportation officials to improve and increase the number of bike lanes. According to a report by the Alliance for Biking and Walking, the number of cyclists in Atlanta increased by 386 percent between 2000 and 2009. Leslie is not only one of those new cyclists, she’s an advocate for all of them.
Interested in biking around Atlanta? Check out the upcoming Atlanta Streets Alive on Oct. 7. There’s also Mobile Social, Heels on Wheels, Java Lords rides, Atlanta BeltLine Bike Tour and lots of events and workshops offered through the Atlanta Bike Coalition.
Atlantan Lindsey Kerr
Location: Lindsey Kerr’s home office
Date taken: July 10, 2012
Her two older brothers collected and traded baseball cards. But as a child, Lindsey Kerr collected things that were a little more unique – Band-Aids, pencils and stationery. She loved things with patterns and prints, especially pretty pieces of paper. The stationery store at the mall in her hometown of Lake Jackson, Texas, was a frequent shopping destination for Lindsey and her friends. They would spend their allowances on individual sheets of paper and envelopes − then trade them. Lindsey kept her collection in three-ring binders, where she could flip through the sheets and admire them often (sometimes for hours at a time).
A few decades later, as she was ordering invitations for a friend’s wedding shower, the inefficiency of the process led Lindsey to an epiphany. She thought, “I could do this better.” So, Lindsey started handling invitations for a few friends, and slowly she began to build her own business of pretty pieces of paper − Linvites. She researched stationery lines, bought printers, started an e-commerce site, taught herself Adobe Creative Suite and created her own designs. Although being a small business owner presents some tough challenges, Lindsey says, “I can’t imagine giving this up.”
Linvites is a stationery design studio and boutique based in Atlanta that features invitations, personalized stationary and unique gifts. Recently, Linvites has started offering items for businesses and corporations, including employee recognition gifts. Contact Lindsey at www.linvites.com.
Atlantan Marcus Rosentrater
The year was 1997. The name of the film was “A Hamster’s Tale.” The shooting location was Marcus Rosentrater’s cousin’s house in nearby Littleton, Colorado, where 12 hamsters resided. The film starred Marcus and his cousins, who, at the time, all dreamed of growing up to become movie stuntmen. The film’s action-oriented plot allowed the actors to show off their skills – fighting, wrestling, jumping off the roof, jumping off the trampoline and jumping over furniture. Marcus was the film’s editor, using his family’s video camera, VCR and a CD Walkman to create the final product. When the 10-minute film was complete, the young actors and producer showed it to anyone who would watch and then started planning their next action flick.
From his first movies featuring Legos and Micro Machines to ones like “A Hamster’s Tale” to the videos he turned in for school assignments in high school, Marcus’ passion for film has been constant. When he moved to Atlanta in 2004, his first stop off the plane was to fill out a job application at Movies Worth Seeing, where he would eventually work for five years. “Pretty much everything good in my life in Atlanta has stemmed from that place,” he said.
This includes co-producing with co-worker Gideon Kennedy. So far, they’ve collaborated on three short films, including Clandestine, which has been shown at more than 30 film festivals, and are working on their first feature-length film. When Marcus realized there weren’t many venues in Atlanta for a film like Clandestine, which was made from archival footage, he decided to create a micro cinema and provide similiar films with a platform to be seen and shared. And that’s how Contraband Cinema, which hosted nine events in its first two seasons this past year, was born.
Contraband Cinema is a micro cinema safe house that brings the best local and international experimental films to Atlanta audiences.
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