I Think I Might Just Be Underdressed For The *gym*
I’ve gone to the same gym for about three years and work out so regularly people I don’t recognize have recognized me from the gym. (Which is always kind of awkward, I might add) Anyhow, I belong to an independent gym known as Cheetah which I feel really comfotable at. The one I go to is in Andersonville so I can work out and buy lingonberries. There’s some great things about it, namely that the people who work there are so incredibly nice (I literally think it’s a requirement that you are just extremely nice when you get hired.) They also have book holders so I can read at the same time and ice water that they often put cucumber or lime slices in. Best of all is a lovely little pool by the stairwell where coi swim and where these two turtles often climb up on a big rock and stare longingly at the ceiling as if they were gazing at a nighttime sky full of stars.
But, recently, I went to the Cheetah gym in Wicker Park on North Avenue because I was working in the area and my parents were flying in at O’Hare so it would have been impossible to drive all the way back home and then back that way in time. It was a whole new experience. Instead of the metal lockers in the locker room, there were these beautiful wooden ones. The locker room sinks were a cross between woks and silver lily pads and there was a little dish by the sinks dotted with peppermint candies. The shower door looked like a door to a sauna and on the stairwell there hung a brown furry thing which I wasn’t sure was a rug or a modern art piece.
And then it hit me: I’m underdressed for this gym. It sounds silly even…wearing designer clothes to work out? I mean, I’ve never been the designer label type of person (too much money spent on clothes; not enough on records) so I just wear pretty simple non label shorts and tanks. I’d say my nicest tank top that I’m most proud of is my Stars one. It’s so old it’s from their Nightsongs tour and it was the one they had pinned to the wall so there’s a running blue all down the shirt from where someone wrote: Stars on it and it blurred in the wash.
I really liked going to the other gym in a way. I felt almost sophisticated like a character in a William Gibson novel but actually, I think honestly I’d rather feel comfortable just like home. Plus, the Wicker Park cheetah doesn’t have turtles.
(now playing: The High Dials: War of the Wakening Phantoms-I cannot even begin to express how absolutely fantastic this album is. I’ve been playing it on repeat for days.)