It's my busy season at work with hundreds of projects coming in all at one time and I just finished designing my first museum exhibit, which was cool because you get a party after. I didn't go to it, but I hear there were lovely foodstuffs and bubbly.
Even though I'm pretty busy, I've managed to find the time to get to the gym quite a bit and reclaim my status as an avid "runner." I feel like anything over 20 miles a week will put you in that category and I'm pushing 26-30. Suck it.
I haven't always been a "runner" (that's the last time I'm putting runner in quotes because it's annoying, but I have done so because I think people who refer to themselves as one are doing so to impress you. I don't want to impress you. I just don't want a fat ass.)
...I often get away from myself with these parenthesis. Anyway, I haven't always been a runner, but back in my college days I moved to London for a little while and being the underage co-ed that I was, the 18yr old legal drinking age opened up a whole new world of possibilities for me. However I realized if I was going to pub it up every night after work I needed to get my butt in a gym to save myself from having to buy an extra seat on the flight home. My luggage wasn't going to be the only thing with a weight limit.
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| May I introduce, waiting for bad joke reaction eel. |
So I joined a proper British gym and started running daily. I found my relationship with the treadmill is obviously love/hate. I loved not becoming a circus freak, but hated the actual running process. I tried running outside once, once however all the fuckers with bikes threatened to run me over and I nearly took out an entire neighborhood's population of kids on scooters, so that experiment was a failure. Logging countless miles on the mill it was and so my Forest Gump habit began.
When I moved to Chicago for school I was dirt poor, but decided a gym membership was pretty important to keep me sane and I didn't know anyone save for the advertising weirdos in my classes (yep, you're weird. you know it.) so I joined a gym in my neighborhood called the Sweat Shop to feed mah running need and possibly meet new friends.
This would have been a brilliant plan if this Sweat Shop establishment was located in any neighborhood other than boystown. As it was, the Sweat Shop was a place where gay men exercised in their boxer briefs and looked at me as if my boobs offended them, but whatever, it was cheap and a block or so from my apartment. It was, however, a complete shit hole. I think they had like 6 treadmills and these weren't the fancy pants treadmills with TVs and 100 different settings. These were the Salvation Army reject treadmills and the sole TV was one of those giant cube jobs that was haphazardly strung up in a corner above one of the treadmills.
That machine didn't see much action.
The other ghetto-fab quality that the Sweat Shop offered was the big open windows in front that all the machines faced and since we were at street level, you were literally running in front of and next to people who were cruising the sidewalk. There was a fried chicken place across the street and every now and then you'd get some wise guy who thought it would be hilarious to buy a bucket and proceed to stand in front of you and make love to a chicken thigh while he ate it. I squirted one of these jackasses with water once, but was promptly told by a SS employee that it was frowned upon, so I remained defenseless against the slobbering chicken lovers.
Being at street level also allowed me to once witness a guy on the treadmill in front of me flip off a policeman who was giving some car a ticket. Apparently he thought the Sweat Shop windows served as some sort of legal barrier, the likes of which this policeman could not penetrate. He was wrong. Policeman walked right in and handed him a ticket for harassing an officer. That was pretty neat.
Anyway, I was a proud member of the Sweat Shop for 3 glorious years...Then came the fateful day. Myself and other members of SS were doing our hamster runs and starring out the window per usual when they arrived.
Bulldozers, dump trucks, tractors and other various construction equipment gathered across the street at the site that would soon be known as Lakeview Athletic Club - a towering 4 story powerhouse with two pools and enough equipment to train the NFL. Poor little Sweat Shop cowered in the LVAC shadow as we ran and watched it built from the ground up, day after day.
I had high hopes for the Sweat Shop, believing that its members would never jump ship and abandon the trusty vessel that had been there for them countess years. Never judging. Always waiting with open arms to offer its subpar equipment and basic cable. But no. I soon started recognizing former members walking up the giant steps of LVAC, ready and energized for a traitor's workout. It was only a matter of time. One day I walked into the Sweat Shop and was greeted with a huge sign that read, "Lakeview Athletic Club welcomes former Sweat Shop members!"
fuck you
Well, not really. They offered us the same rates we were paying at SS for the duration of a year (which was much cheaper than their normal rate) and I didn't have a lot of other options save for braving the mean running streets again, which wasn't very appealing.
So I became a LVAC member and a bunch of the former SS employees got jobs there. I never relinquished my Sweat Shop water bottle though. It sat proudly on the high-tech treadmill as I watched HBO and tiny midgets fanned me with palm tree leaves.
Today I am a proud member of Lincoln Square Athletic Club because it's closest to Dave's condo. LSAC isn't as showy as the Lakeview one and I generally like it better there. However every gym tends to have the gym douches and this one is no exception. There are four types of gym douches who threaten to ruin my runs. Lets examine them.
1. The Grunter: He's beefy. He's sweaty. He's working hard. And he wants you to know it. I've lifted many things in my 30 years and never, not once, have I found it was easier if I emitted lyrics from the "Sounds from the commode" soundtrack. Why then? Why do they do it? My only conclusion is that Rex over there wants me to know that he could javelin throw me over the el tracks if he so pleased. Noted, buddy. Noted.
2. The Dropper: A close friend of The Grunter, this guy is determined to put a hole in the floor as he lifts 200lbs above his head and promptly releases it. I imagine he does this because after you lift 200lbs up, you don't feel like putting 200lbs down. My solution to this would be just not to lift the 200lbs in the first place, but that's just silly logic.
3. The Talker: She could be there with a friend or she could be on her cell phone. It doesn't make any difference to me. This person came to the gym to make conversation through her entire workout and she don't care who's listening. It's cool if you want to have an easy breezy walk and chat with your friends, but take it outside sister. If you want to exercise like an old fart, please go join the 70 yr-olds in the park. You'll learn some lovely new knitting tips.
4. The Look At Me Guy/Girl: I don't think this person actually ever steps foot on a machine or lifts a single weight. He/She wears the equivalent of a body condom to the gym and struts around so you can see just how big his muscles are or tight her abs look. Perhaps gyms hire them as inspiration to keep coming back and they're actually just planted there. I sincerely hope this is the case because if it's not, fuck those guys.
Alright time to sign off. I don't have time to proofread this right now, so if you find grammar/spelling errors, feel free to chastise me. And if you've learned only one thing from this post, let it be that the Sweat Shop is dearly missed by myself and others in a I had grown fond of that ugly mole before the doctor burned it off kind of way. If you happen to live on Broadway and pass the old spot often, do me a favor and toast a chicken leg to it's memory.
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| Rest in peace you old dirty hag. |
In honor of Obama coming out in favor of gay marriage this week, here's my favorite thing on the internet today.
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| You tell em, Tom! |
