On the eve of February 20, 2023, Instagram user @jhu_liminal_spaces posted their most liminal space yet. The photo in question depicts a striking view of North Charles Street from the vantage point of the crane on the Mattin Center gravesite. Campus has been abuzz, wondering who this mystery climber might be. What are his motives? Will he strike again? Is he single? Our BNBJ Undercover Tracking Team (BUTT) was filled with a fiery passion to investigate the case.
In order to track down the Culturally Relevant Anonymous Climbing Kid (CRACK), we devised a foolproof scheme to catch that smooth, smooth criminal. We first planted signs with arrows that read “LARGE CRANE AHEAD! DO NOT CLIMB.” leading to a large box. When The CRACK went to look inside the box, he triggered the Super Tactile Immobilization Climber Kapturer (STICK) to fall, causing the box to drop and trap The CRACK inside its walls. We left him some cheese to keep him calm while our team brought him back to our headquarters for an interview. Here is the transcript:
BUTT: Are you ready to talk?
CRACK: Do you guys have any more cheese?
BUTT: We’ll ask the questions here. Who do you work for?
Before we could get another word out of him, he bit down on a capsule hidden in his tooth. We originally thought it was cyanide, but it turned out to just be a piece of chalk that made him too thirsty to speak. However, in his fit of coughing a blueprint for a second, larger crane fell from his pocket. We believe this is how he mounted the beast.
After we rehydrated him with Cheez Whiz Original Cheese Snack 8 oz. Spout-Top Can, he revealed that he was simply a pawn in a much larger game. The CRACK claims to be a pledge of the JHU Climbers of Unauthorized Monuments (CUM), an underground rock climbing organization with the mission of getting cooler climbables on campus. After another line of Cheez Whiz, he leaked their list of demands.
- Get bigger cranes
- More rocks
- Replace glass wall of UTL with rocks
- D1 rock climbing
- Replace orgo with rocks
- Replace stairs with rocks
- Revamp all elevator shafts to be rock climbing walls
- More cheese
- More rocks
- Cheese rocks?
- Chocks
- Chalks
It may not be obvious to the naked eye, but CUM is everywhere and plans to leave a big stain on campus. Unless these demands are fulfilled within the week, CUM will strike again, and the situation will be even stickier.
The Black and Blue Jay 