This entry is both depressing and very hot. I joined the very Guantanamo Bay Dolphin gym which lies in a u shaped basement below a Duane Reade drug store on Ave. B. Click for a closer peek!
It's like prison without the beatings and the sodomy @ $150- for half a year. They had a xerox taped to the door and a few of the peeling concrete pillars for 2 weeks that said "Attention members! Last day to renew for one year $120-!" until they crinkled up and fell off. Everything is painted black, there are wires hanging at head level from the ceiling, some cardio machines are from 1985 and nobody reracks their weights. 8 of the 25 lockers in the men's 'locker room' have doors whose latches work, the others have peeling stickers on them with private locker names scribbled on them in pen. No paper towels or soap every other day. The 2 showers are on an elevated platform in the back which I've never stepped up to - and wouldn't even if I didn't live a block away. I thought there was only a urinal for a month, but realized that a black dented metal door in the back that only opens 1/3 of the way because it hits the lockers was not a utility closet but housed a very death row toilet (with an electric air vent though!). Among the gym's denizens are local Puerto Rican, Dominican and African American muscle guys with huge arms, barrel chests, bellies and tapered legs... Huge hispanic madres with mustaches who walk slowly on the treadmill chatting next to each other and never bathe - there are some real ripe ones here... Lanky poopy straight guys that read folded up papers and hardly workout... Women in head to toe truly homely sweats avoiding rape... Mickey Rourke & Dog the bounty hunter look-a-likes with their bitches... Freakishly tattooed electric red dudes on steroids and/or crystal with facial wasting and lumberjack beards... and my favorite: Some 6'1" guy with a shaved head and one of his hulking arms tattooed, a block of man of a lower body and a sweaty weird big pointy nosed face with pointy eyebrows and an expression that says "I'm 'gonna do you pretty boy". He keeps sweating me and putting my weights back when I'm not done and crowding my sh*t. I'm in head to toe prison gang member gear as well and just look meek and horrified and continue to move away from him (that's the way it works in Oz, sex happens when the frustration reaches a psychotic head and you just can't be the bitch that fast.) and he storms around in a huff and sometimes runs out of the gym up the stairs (?) after I give a shytty look then runs back into the gym and plops down even closer to me all like "Nyeah." Whatever. We have vaguely smiled at each other twice just to reassure that we are both traceable taxpayers, I mean this is Manhattan there's nothing prison going on here, please. I make a point of never going into the locker room when he's there but have steadily fantasized about it lately. The one time I did he was about to use the shower (the ONLY person I ever saw use it!) and was digging through his big weird dirty sports bags when he looked up all psychotic at me. He also boxes in the isolated spooky 'stretching room' with a light bulb hanging from the ceiling.
There are many "The Accused" style looking places where personal violations come to mind. I've determined 4, but they could make a killing shooting a Gay porn anywhere here.
Ok, I'll explain these two grotesques below when I get back from my appointment...
Ahhhhhhhhh, just got back from a beautifully executed tattoo of dagers on either side of my chest crest tattoo. Not a botch job. If I ever take off my black hoodie in this place I will surely collect my gang. There is also an over the hill lower east side rocker/rockerchick population here. Whoever survived from the old neighborhood is trying to stay alive down here. Many have canes. There's an anorexic I always smile at that cycles for 2 hours or so at 6 am in a corner while reading mangled magazines. Next to her on the floor are 2-3 ripped studded leather bags with some safety pins holding them together and some plastic bags and a funked up fur or some other ill jacket. She later does crunches in the Jodie Foster suite for a few hours with her eyes closed. I know she stays there 4eva as I've had to leave and come back - she is a woman obsessed. She has eye makeup that looks like it was put on with a sharpie pen and goes straight up from the inside of her eyes to her temples. Vwoom! Dark purple lipstick, sometimes stringy silver necklaces with crescent moons and amethysts, Stevie Nicks hair. Occasionally someone nods out between sets on a machine (pictured above) making it sort of hard to ask someone if you could 'work in' with them.
I walk over at 6:30 or so in the dark with a coffee in my pilling cut off fingers black gloved hand. The 7 am crowd is dedicated and then at 8 am an army of the local under 45 or so yuppie infestation getting a workout in before work arrives with blinders and New Balance sneakers on and mobs the cardio area with their New York Times. They are out by 9:10am.
Part of the morning crowd is this Goombah dude in his late 40's with a few tattoos, a gold chain and a sopranos worthy gut. I was doing shrugs. His mouth was moving to my music and he was near me so I removed my headphones. "Look, buddy, I 'don normally give people workout advice I 'don know"
"Neither do I"
"But your gonna hurt yourself. You wanna do shrugs slowly, gently reaching yr shoulders to your ears. I'm sorry no disrespect I 'don normally tell people these things, but I known a lot about weight lifting for a real long time, trust me"
I could have looked anywhere on him and been a real snot pot, but I didn't look below the neck and fairly warmly & pleasantly thanked him for his concern and blah blah blah and dismissed him. He has since been hovering around me and glaring when I do my ab routine, so I'm getting a clue that maybe this was a bitch invite.
I got this rotted membership to get back in gear after not working out for 8 months due to, well you've heard it. I have a David Barton pre-join membership at the huge Astor Place location opening in April, but I love this place I'm going to now. DJ Will goes there and yesterday I was in locker room and who walks in with him? The now gym scenester Billy Beyond! What are the odds?! You know his BeyondSensors drew him, even just for a day, to observe a place with a buzz, even this freak show. The bony hungry ghost mid life crisis meth addict dude who is famous for his incomplete motion jerky exercise sets (people run in horror) was circling Billy. I think he wanted to put him in his tina pipe.
Dolphin Fitness, always a cultural eye opener.
I eat cage free scrambled egg whites with vegetables in them when I get home.
5 comments:
What are the showers like?
Covered it 4 u!
Yes I love to werq out there.
-DJ Will
"We have vaguely smiled at each other twice just to reassure that we are both traceable taxpayers."
lol
-
Caro (line) :)
hahaaaaa Yes well let's face it, that's why nobody gets held captive or lured into and apartment to be murdered very often in Manhattan: we are all highly traceable and all pay too much rent for tiny spaces and it would be too much an infringement of precious private space. Messy too.
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