2003-05-02 - 10:46 a.m.

my first membership in new york was at crunch on lafayette. my brother and i went to crunch for a trial membership and i was too lazy to cancel mine, so they locked me in for six months. actually, i didn't read the fine print and i ended up there for eight months. crunch, at $88 per month, is one of the most expensive memberships in the city, but i figured i was worth it. i mostly wanted access to the steam room in the ladies' locker room, but it turned out that it had been closed indefinitely by the health department. the membership people kept telling me they were going to reopen it any day, but friends who still go there say its still not open, a year and a half later. crunch has excellent equipment, and one almost can't turn around without facing cable television. the exerbikes are connected to the internet. the locker rooms are nicer than my bathroom at home. still, crunch is more like a nightclub than a gym. i was still in sloppy physical shape and the only other people i encountered there were thin, gorgeous, and superfit. i do, however, miss the ergometer upstairs, it brought back the joys of varsity womens' crew.

i weaseled out of my crunch membership to switch to dolphin sports on east 4th st. dolphin is a little more normal, mostly NYU students. i could still watch cable TV while pedalling the recumbent bikes, and there's a full complement of cybex machines. i bought an entire year at $350, which worked out to a little less than $30 per month. part of the problem, though is that dolphin is still in manhattan, and i live in brooklyn. i had to walk 12 blocks to the subway in brooklyn, ride one stop, and then walk another 12 blocks to the gym. it doesn't seem like a lot for new york, but i made up all kinds of excuses not to get on the subway in the morning. i went to dolphin regularly for about 6 months.

last summer, my friend miss c got me into swimming. we started swimming a couple of times per week at this massive outdoor swimming pool in bed stuy. we were often the only white people there, and usually the only people swimming laps. mostly its neighborhood kids splashing around instead of turning on the air conditioner. i was raised in southern california, and i love swimming pools. the kosciuscko pool ('k-pool') is one of the most beautiful public pools i've ever seen. its easily the size of a football field. the only downsides are the locker room, which smells like a sewer, and the chicken bones constantly being dropped in the pool by seagulls who fish them out of ghetto dumpsters.

as the weather turned cooler, miss c and i joined the indoor pool in my neighborhood. its only 5 blocks from my loft but it took me 3 years of living here to finally join. the facilities are remarkably nice, and there's a small weight room and a few cardio machines upstairs. k-pool is free, but the indoor metro pool costs a whopping $75 per year. i swam all winter, lifting weights in between to improve my performance in the pool. i grew to prefer the weight room to the swimming pool, because i started really losing weight lifting. the weight room reminds me of the gyms in the sleepy beach town i grew up in. there are more free weights than machines, its clean but not at all fancy. they put in a roman chair yesterday and everyone was excited today to try out something new. wednesday and friday there are 'women only' swims for a couple of hours frequented mainly by the hasidic women from the nearby satmar community. they tend to take over the locker room like a flock of wet hens.

bloomberg is threatening to close all the municipal pools this year due to budget shortfalls. if that happens, i will have to find another place to work out. there's a newer fancier gym here in brooklyn now at the next L stop, but i don't know if i can join a place called 'exodus'.