En Vogue

We are overdue for an email-to-the-members and we are even more overdue for a rant. Thankfully, this industry is an endless fountain of crap to critique. There is a necessary preface to this, maybe two…

Emails haven’t gone out because the energy and attitude would not be fun. Those communications have always been about community-reinforcement, getting ahead of small issues before they escalate, and having a little bit of fun. The last few years have left us struggling to find that requisite fun, which has been replaced by frustration. The nature of this gym, a small and delicate (but very specific) ecosystem, relies on active participation from everyone, owner-member-guest-etc. We’ve lost a bit too much of this. We are making efforts on our end to improve our contributions and will then work to bring the membership back into a state of caring. This is not to say folks don’t care, only that we’ve slipped a bit and should regain our footing. And as it happens, communication has a habit of doing just that.

Secondly, this gym isn’t a typical business. There is no profit to speak of. In fact, it actively consumes resources and arguably makes some things worse while also being an extension of our passion. That might sound contradictory but is an important reality, in general, regarding this little blog-rant-thingie.

So….to the point…

What spurred this entry was a bit of very basic website maintenance; updating the temporary pass info and making some notes to revamp the site more completely, soon. In doing these things, we noticed more than one mention of “old school” or “classic” or similar descriptors. Obviously, we typed these at some point but hadn’t given it much thought. But reading these things now, amidst a wild shift in the gym industry, was much like pouring salt into a wound….Oooo, the sting!  You see, there is this wacky but grossly massive push in the gym world to seize upon “old is cool!” The Instagram algorithm is spewing gyms, from coast to coast, trying to spin up memberships because they have this old piece, or that one, or whatever other pretending is hot. Similarly, manufacturers have bought up old patents or are replicating old designs and touting them as novel. The vogue of multi-hinged and non-linear equipment seems to have not just faded but been blown to smithereens.

Why does this matter and why aren’t we just minding our own business? Excellent questions!  This goes back to the seemingly unrelated prologue above. This gym world has always been something special and important to us (P and K, and our close, “old” gym pals), and we’ve injected as much passion and knowledge as we can into creating a timeless space.  A space free of the bullshit attitudes, bullshit fads, and bullshit moneymaking that consume everything. Aside from the realities of resource limitations, this space has been curated to let good people get strong, train hard, and grow the sort community that loves lifting & training, big meals with the crew, head down-volume up beatings, and kindness across the board. A damn difficult recipe to get right. The old shit within these walls isn’t there for photo ops, or ad content, or to make soft folks feel hard. No, it is there because it is effective, timeless, high-grade steel with great welds, storied, and was probably a smokin’ deal on Marketplace or Craigslist. Every member has a story, and a lot of great gym pieces also have stories. In this house, that matters.

You can’t fake it. You can’t replicate it. Hell, you can’t even plan it… The walls, the stuff, the people, and the attitude – they grow on their own and become what they will. We’re protective of our little gym, and what it stands for, and can’t help being aggressively protective while shaking our heads at the rest.