It is beautiful out in New York City today... currently 58 and expected to get up to 67. It will probably be 22 by Monday, but what can you do.
Anyway, I biked in this morning and made my usual stop at the gym first, to workout and and cleanup. The NYSC on 35th and Madison, unlike the other ones I've been to, has no poles in front of it... no parking meter, streetlamp... anything. The only place to lock my bike is on the corner of 36th against the walk/don't walk sign... which is a little ways down. I'm not totally comfortable with that, and so I asked at the gym about a place to put it inside.
So, the woman at the desk said that I couldn't bring it in because they couldn't be responsible. I wasn't asking for that... I just felt safer if it was inside. And, actually, if they had a bike rack inside, and someone came in with some clippers, I'd imagine she'd at least call the cops or something, just to be nice. She suggested I talk to the manager.
The manager said there were some places around the corner, which of course, defeats the purpose. He also said they tried to get the city to put in some bike racks across the street, but they didn't get anywhere. "What about a rack in the club here?" The club has a double entrence and in between the inner and outer doors, there's a perfect space for a small bike rack.
This is where it gets ridiculous.
"Oh, we can't have that because this is a high visability club."
I knew what he meant, but I just wanted to get him to say it.
"High visability?"
"Well, it's a nice location that a lot of people come to so we can't go messing it up with a bunch of bikes that people can see."
"Umm... doesn't biking sort of fit with the whole gym concept? You know... exercise. Just seems to me a gym, of all places, should be bike friendly?"
"I see how that might make sense, but I don't think that's something we're going to do here."
The ironic thing is that, every year, New York Sports Club sponsors a team in the Five Borough Bike Tour.
They're all about biking, so long as it's not near one of their clubs, because bikes are aestheticly displeasing. Let me tell you, bikes are pretty far down the list of aestheticly displeasing things I've seen at the gym... I wish they would ban the hairy naked guy that towels off next to me with one foot up on the bench.