10.11.2007
From booze to barbells
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The gym is the new bar.
Apparently, the “let’s get healthy” kick has ousted saloons as the cool place to meet people and wear clothes that push the envelope of basic decency.
Instead of resting an elbow on the bar and panning the room for eligible singles, men lean on a weight machine and check out women in some sort of spandex-bikini concoction.
Instead of strolling through a bar with a cosmopolitan in hand, women speed-walk on the treadmill reading Cosmo.
The juice bar has replaced the liquor bar.
The message board has replaced the dart board.
Rotated, “safe” CDs have replaced DJs and bump-n-grind rap music.
And worst of all, Lycra has replaced Louis Vuitton.
Smart people go to the gym at 5 a.m. There are fewer people and much less distraction.
A gym at “happy hour” (5 p.m. and on) is much like the same time at any local watering hole - crowded, loud, sweaty.
At 5 a.m., most people wear gym shorts and T-shirts.
At 5 p.m., it’s an all-out fashion show of spandex and skin. On men and women.
It’s completely natural for people with 7 percent body fat to want to show it off, but a bone-gripping shirt isn’t breath-taking; it’s vomit-inducing.
Really, most of society doesn’t need to see the outline of your rib cage to know you have muscles.
Those guys are a trip. They’re the ones who in the bar wear the pastel-colored, pop-collared shirts that are two sizes too small. Put that look into gym-mode and voila - grown men sporting Under Armour for boys.
In a bar, these are the guys who brag about how many “chicks” they’ve been with and how much they can drink.
In the gym, these are the guys who talk about how many personal trainers they’ve gone through and how much they can bench press.
It’s funny how little exercise these guys do. Often, they just hang onto a weight machine while their “lifting buddy” does presses.
This way, they are able to flex every muscle in their spandex-wrapped body without becoming overexerted so the spandex-wrapped women climbing the Stair Masters nearby will “ooh and ahh” in between sips of their low-fat strawberry-banana energy drinks.
These women.
These women are constantly coming up with ways to wear even less clothing to the gym - much like clothing is disappearing from the bar scene.
After all, no one is in the gym to actually work out; they’re there to pick up an equally image-obsessed counterpart with which to “make whoopie,” so why not cut out the barrier (clothes)?
It must be with that thought in mind that these women get dressed - or undressed - to go to the gym.
When did a sports bra and shorts that can only be described as underwear become acceptable workout wear in a place that is not your home?
Ah, yes, it became acceptable when people quit patrolling bars for their next partner and turned to the gym instead.
Now, wearing regular-length shorts and a T-shirt that gives your body room to breathe is like wearing pointy-toed heels to a bar (Note: Pointy-toed heels are out again).
Even town drunks have translated.
Instead of the creepy, inebriated scruffy guy in the corner who drools as he watches co-eds dance, there’s the creepy too-much-Red-Bull guy in the stretching area who sweats as he watches co-eds run.
It’s only a matter of time until even the gym gets replaced as the new singles go-to.
Odds are it’ll be the grocery store, single moms cruising the cereal aisle decked out in skanky aprons and Keds with heels, single dads wrapped in tool belts and too-tight jeans.
It’s only a matter of time.