No Place Like It in the World

The building used to be an old furniture showroom with large picture windows facing the street.

It was situated on Market Street in Boardman a few blocks from where the city of Youngstown began. “R’s” Pharmancy was just down the street on the opposite side. The pharmacy was in a white stucco and timber building that you would find in Europe. 

Today I think that building is some kind of store that sells vacuum cleaners.    

Passers-by would sometimes stop and gaze inside the large gym windows to catch a momentary glimpse of the curious characters working out. That was back in the days when people still walked up and down the street to conduct their daily business, when there was daily business to conduct. 

You would enter the gym from a side door, glance briefly at the warped poster stapled to the door advertising an old boxing match that had taken place years ago, then enter.
 

I ventured into the place for the first time in the Spring of 1980 as a sophomore in high school. Those were good times in a strange, quirky way. We were in the middle of an economic recession, Reagan just took office, the Soviets were bogged down in Afghanistan, Pink Floyd's “Another Brick in the Wall“ was the #1 hit song on the radio, and Arnold Schwarzenegger would win his seventh Mr. Olympia title in Sydney Australia.
 

It was a spacious gym with low ceilings and exposed pipes and ductwork. A series of ratty gray carpets covered the floor. None of the equipment matched and the barbells and dumbbells were browned with the patina of history like an old penny. There were posters of Arnold, Franco, Tom Platz, and Frank Zane taped up to the walls to provide the essential motivation.

I’ll never forget the magazine clipping that someone taped to the wall in front of the squat rack. It was an advertisement for the movie “Paradise Alley” with a badass-looking Sylvester Stallone dressed in a black leather jacket, gray flat cap, and cigarette hanging from his mouth. Whenever you came up from a squat, that picture would come into view and you’d become instantly motivated to take another descent.  

Every weekday between 4 and 5pm, the crew would start to file in, guys of all ages from all walks of life, mostly blue-collar guys from the city – health care workers, electricians, mechanics, cops, and firemen. A few steel workers lifted there, but not many, as most of the mills had closed three years previously. 

“How you doin?” was the common greeting exchanged between the lifters when they first entered. The usual reply was a weary shake of the head followed by, “Just trying to make a living” answered with a slight nod of the head signaling silent acknowledgement and empathy.

The cast of characters ranged from loud, hardcore bodybuilders in torn sweatshirts, to stoic hospital orderlies in scrubs who read the newspaper in between sets of bench presses. There was always a group of us high school guys who were “lifting for football.”

The equipment was old, the ceiling was low, and the stereo loud. There were usually some well-thumbed issues of Muscle & Fitness magazine stashed in the corner which you would sometimes read between sets.

There were no cell phones back then, and it was wonderful.

I feel sorry for today’s generation who are hopelessly trapped by these machines, scrolling endlessly between sets or fucking around with their playlists. I hope someday they will realize how ridiculous they look.  

I record my workouts in a hardbound Bullet Journal with a black felt tipped pen that cost a pretty penny.

That’s my superpower.   

We had a nickname for everybody in the gym. As sixteen year-old high school students, we were easily enamored by the colorful characters who assembled there. 

Some nicknames were more or less just embellishments of their real names that highlighted their personas such as “Big Ralph” or “Crazy Eddie”, while other names we made up because they fit, such as “The Bug”, a big and stocky guy with a round face and frizzy hair who carefully recorded every set into a well-worn stenographers pad with a ballpoint pen;  “The Prison Lifters”, two serious guys who I doubted ever set foot in a prison, but worked out in gray sweats and black skull caps;” The Old Pro”, a guy in his 50’s with great arms and military style crew cut; “The Scientists”, a team of two intense guys whose workout routine followed the latest routines published in Joe Weider’s Muscle & Fitness: rest-Pause training, drop sets, reverse ladders...they experimented with it all. 

These guys probably would have kicked our asses if they knew we were making up all these stupid names. But being in the gym felt like the best place in the world to be.

Despite the initial intimidating atmosphere, some of the guys would take us under their wings. Gave us tips about lifting, girls, and life in general. Much of their advice we eagerly embraced, some of it was total shit. 

Like Crazy Eddie telling me that the key to good deadlifting was to get a good bounce off the floor between each rep. Since we didn’t have access to Franco or Arnold, it would have to do. Besides, pretty much everything worked when you were training for the first time.

We watched these guys saunter around the gym, sometimes hanging outside the doorway to get some fresh air in the summer watching the Market Street traffic go by, their leather lifting belts hanging down low on the waist like western gun-slingers. 

Today’s belts are mostly made from synthetic materials and secured with Velcro. I think it’s hilarious how Crossfitters rip off their Velcro-fastened belts after completing a 100 rep set of a bastardized version of an Olympic lift, while the bumper plated barbell bounces a few times off the floor for dramatic effect. All the while their mobile phone is perched on a tripod capturing the action for posting later on social media. 

They need to ban phones in gyms. 

The only phone appropriate for a gym is a black bakelite rotary dial instrument sitting on the counter by the walk-in desk. You were always allowed to use the phone to make a quick call to your bookie or check the price of a stock, or let someone know you were on the way home. 

I swear, cell phones are going to be the death of us all.  

I’ll never forget the night when “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones blasted out of two waist-high speakers set up by the cable machines connected to the JVC stereo system.  Pretty much everyone joined in on the chorus of “Woo -woo, woo-woo…” even if in the middle of a set. It was great.
 

From the serious bodybuilders, to the football players, powerlifters, and just regular Joes-- we were all together in the moment. With Stallone watching over us from his view from the squat rack, we were invincible.

The Walkman hadn’t been invented yet. It was the age without headphones.  

There were no contracts in those days, you paid your membership fees in cash; one month, three months, a year, whatever - and when you were coming up on the end of your term, “W” the owner, would chase you around the gym until you paid up. Gym fees were hand-written in magic marker on a piece of art board taped to the wall. Payments were recorded in a green hardcover notebook with a felt tip pen.

Sometimes you’d see a guy haggling with “W” over his payment schedule. But that was Youngstown I guess, every transaction was eligible for some kind of negotiation.

Common gym attire consisted of gray sweats, and a flannel shirt worn over a white thermal underwear top. Many guys wore work boots. This workout fashion became a bit of a fad within bodybuilding circles when David and Peter Paul, aka “The Barbarian Brothers”, were featured in Muscle & Fitness with their hardcore training regimens and animalistic image.

But guys in Youngstown didn’t follow fads, they dressed that way because they came to the gym straight from work.

The crew in the gym consisted of various cliques. You had a small group of competitive bodybuilders led by a guy named “J”, whose dense, compact physique had us in a constant state of awe. He drove a red Camaro Z28 and made you take your shoes before getting inside.

There was a group of powerlifters who performed their workouts in a cloud of white chalk dust on the wooden platform in the corner. I was fascinated by their large gear bags containing all the tools of the trade like knee wraps, plastic Cool-Whip containers holding bricks of calcium carbonate chalk, thick power belts, lifting singlets, and smelling salts.

They seemed to be always be fussing with their gear. What they didn’t do was throw their belts down on the ground like a Crossfitter, though.  

But I would say the majority of the lifters were guys who just lifted. Many trained with the same energy and intensity as the guys who competed, and there was always a drama being performed in the squat rack.

I remember one guy, “B”, would pace back and forth in front of the squat rack yelling out his patented, “Strong! Strong! Strong!” before addressing the bar while his entourage looked on. He would then grab the bar, pull himself under it, then crank out his set with the plates rattling. No one used collars back then. When he was done, he’d rack the bar with an eye-bugging scream.

There was no cellphone recording the event. And that made it ever more valuable to those who were there in real life.

There was nothing like the day when Frank Zane came to the gym to give a seminar. He was passing through town for some event or another and “W” managed to book him into the gym one Saturday for a question and answer session. He probably offered him a big wad of cash to stop by.

I had never seen anything like him before. He was surreal. Deeply tanned and possessing a vascularity that was other-worldly. Don’t let anyone ever say Frank Zane was small, he was larger than life.

At the end of the seminar, he offered to sign autographs and he signed my leather lifting belt in black magic marker.

The seasons came and went, and life moved on. During the summer between my junior and senior years of college, the gym closed. A few guys from the original crew got together and opened up a new gym in a freshly renovated storefront in Boardman Plaza. It was fully equipped and a great place to work out. But it just wasn’t the same.

As the late 80’s turned into the 90’s, things became glitzier, cleaner. Grit was out of style.

Frank Zane’s autograph on my leather lifting belt eventually faded, but my memory didn’t.

I get back to Youngstown every now and then, and today there is a pizza joint in the building where the gym used to be. I would venture to guess that not too many people remember when it used to be a gym.  

I never tried the pizza yet, but I’ll bet it’s pretty damn good though.