Results tagged “gym”

Five female employees at Battery Park Swim and Fitness say they were fired after complaining to human resources about a manager who ran the place like his own personal frat house. A lawsuit filed by two of the former employees, membership consultant Courtney McCallion and trainer/receptionist Maggie Alexander, contends that manager David Anglin was usually about as mature as Rodney Dangerfield on his fifth martini during their employ at the gym, and his harassment included such timeless flirtation gambits as bra-strap snapping and jokes about their cleavage.

Maybe this is just a sign that we need to hit the gym more often, but whaaa? This was the scene earlier today at fashion designer Charlotte Ronson's gym, where bitches were hitting the treadmills hard to fit into their slutty whatever costumes. (Hope they toweled down those machines afterward.) By the way—overheard on Bedford Ave in Williamsburg last night: "Well, I need to find loud panties because I'm going as a slutty bee!" Be careful out there Saturday night, people. [Twitpic via Guest of a Guest]

Almost two weeks after the story was broken by Miss Heather, the NY Post says they have learned that there's a scam artist running an illegal gym in Williamsburg. They spoke with the muscleman proprietor, John Suarez, who told them, "I can't own another gym, but I've got to make a living. I had a mistake six years ago. I'm trying to start a new life. It's not like I was scamming anybody." The problem is that he did scam 1,000 people out of membership fees for a gym that never opened in 2004, and then made a deal with state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that he'd never operate a health club in the state again! To make matters worse for himself, when a Post photographer snooped around his new gym on South 3rd Street in Williamsburg, Suarez tackled him and damaged his camera—which of course brought on charges of assault, menacing and harassment. Following the incident he told the paper, "Things happen. I did what I had to do. And he did what he had to do."

With most of Williamsburg's condos in purgatory at the moment, some are taking advantage of the empty spaces (particularly those gutter punks). Miss Heather informs us of a new gym that's opened up in the ground floor of the vacant 117 South 3rd Street condo, and the membership is only 29 bucks a month. Everyone wins! But wait, a tattle-tale tipster goes and ruins the deal, saying that while the building's retail space is rented to John Suarez, who is running a gym out of it called Cutting Edge, "there are many problems here."

Police arrested a suspected serial gym robber who hit New York Sports Club and Crunch locations in Manhattan. The NY Post reports that John Perez of Queens "would usually get past security by using a gym member's ID that he had previously stolen...Then he would sneak inside the locker room, use a bolt cutter to break into lockers and grab wallets, cash, credit cards, ID's, Blackberrys and cell phones, sources said." The 23-year-old allegedly stole from the West 82nd Street Crunch three times and the Christopher Street location once, while also hitting the Chelsea, Upper East Side and Upper West Side branches of New York Sports Club. Perez was charged with 10 counts of burglary. Some robbers do like gym lockers: One man arrested earlier this year for a rash of NYSC robberies was arrested in 1979 for stealing from a Jack LaLanne gym in the Bronx.

The latest dose of scandal served up to Alex Rodriguez in what has already been a long year comes from Kirstin Davis, who claims that she knew the slugger "personally and professionally" over the years. Friends and associates of the madam, who has claimed that Eliot Spitzer was once a client, say that the slugger pursued her with zeal while also taking advantage of the services of women who worked for her as a client.

Everyone's been bit with the Bollywood bug in the wake of Slumdog Millionaire's Oscar wins. The Daily News reports on Sarina Jain's Masala Bhangra workout classes (which are held at various gyms throughout the city)—it isn't new, but it unsurprisingly has a lot of new students (attendance doubling since the movie started getting buzz). While it won't leave you looking like Freida Pinto, it will burn at least 500 calories, even if you don't do it gracefully. Practice at home (video) before doing this in public. And if Slumdog wasn't your thing, skip to 6:13 in this video for the more obscure The Reader dance.

Actress Gwyneth Paltrow, who recently started dipping her toes into the world wide web, is now opening a gym in Tribeca (she's a part-time resident of downtown New York). The Daily News reports that she's partnering with her trainer/friend Tracy Anderson (who is also responsible for scary Madonna arms), but that "no other details on the gym are available yet." It's doubtful you'll be sweating with the star anytime soon however, she told Oprah recently that her favorite gym is the one in her own home. Paltrow has been taking a big screen break and won't be seen in theaters again until 2010, and the paper warns that if she's looking to "push acting aside in favor of becoming an Oprah or Martha, she needs to tie things together."

Bally Total Fitness, the notoriously deceptive gym, has found a new way to screw over its loyal members. A reader informs us that "the Bally's Sports Club in Worldwide Plaza announced this week that, effective Dec. 15, it will no longer provide clean towels for members to use."

A Manhattan gym is now charging $110 for personal training sessions that incorporate video games into the workout. According to the Post, trainers like Dorothy Evans at Gravity Fitness have started using Nintendo Wii Sport games like boxing, tennis, golf and dodge ball. Evans swears it can provide a full body workout: "You'd be surprised. It may have little to do with the real sports, but we get people's heart rates up to 140 to 150 beats per minute – although some of that may just be the excitement of the game."

Yesterday around noon, an alert came through the newswire mentioning an "unusual rescue" at 145th Street involving a woman "pinned between two exercise machines at the gym."

The case of the spin class smackdown has been sparking a lot of debate about proper workout etiquette. According to the Times, the noisy behavior of Stuart Sugarman – who was thrown against the wall during a spin class by a guy who was fed up with his vocalizations – is not at all abnormal. There are too many people grunting, cursing, and hollering “Let’s do it!” in gyms all over town, and also plenty of people who’d like to shut them up with brute force.

Never mind the kids who are being murdered by violent parents or drugged to death by foster mothers, the Administration for Children's Services is busy checking up on the home environments of kids who skip gym class too many times, even though that's not technically a violation worthy of an ACS home visit.

Not only are New York gyms poorly run, but the establishments that are supposed to make you healthier are doing the opposite. The Daily News reports on the germ-ridden gyms of the city in a fairly unsurprising article.