By Brian Sonia-Wallace
Last night, the final hours of the 24-hour fitness facility in West Hollywood saw a packed gym as longtime members overcrowded the machines for one final workout. The energy was different – off-shift staff sat at the front desk to spend a few moments with their co-workers, and in the last ten minutes they turned up the volume to Backstreet Boys Bye Bye Bye, The Final Countdown, and Time of . to play your life like this was a high school graduation.
Outside, the members gathered with candles for a final farewell in a small mock ritual in which everyone “distributes ashes” – actually chocolate-whey-protein powder, in memory of the death of the institution.
In my role as City Poet Prize winner, I shared Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I Couldn’t Stop for Death.” For the occasion, the poet Corey Saucier wrote an original piece in which he reflects on his 20-year history with the gym as a place of self-discovery after his HIV diagnosis, a powerful reflection on blackness and self-love in a space between dissemination and Subversion of white supremacist beauty standards and heteronormative fitness culture wavered. The local poet and co-founder of the Melrose Poetry Bureau, Nayeli Adorador-Knudsen, ended the evening with a reading of Pablo Neruda’s love sonnet LXXXIX:
“I want what I love to live on,
and you, whom I love and sing
continue to bloom, full bloom “
The funeral flash mob drew more than 30 gym goers, including enthusiastic and slightly disbelieving employees. 24 Hour Fitness on Santa Monica Boulevard was purchased by John Reed Fitness and is heading for a $ 7 million remodel and membership dues of $ 130 per month, up from the current price of $ 50 per month (and this does not apply to long-term members for whom the new monthly rate was more than their total annual membership). Members spoke of “the end of an era,” noting the various eras the gym had gone through to make cruising difficult for men. “[the new owners] are not familiar with the culture here, ”said one employee. “You are planning a bedroom. Much luck!”
The original invitation to the mock memorial was as follows:
The existential complaints office invites you to …
A lament for 24-hour fitness
24 hour fitness closes its doors for the last time on Tuesday, November 30th at 9 p.m. The West Hollywood Poet Laureate invites you to take a final tour of the room with electronic candles at 8:30 p.m. Wear a shroud if you can. Or just take off your shirt and come and see us. The procession ends with a sad reading by Emily Dickinson outside and a group howling / chest knocking / clothes tearing (attention: please bring clothes to tear apart, you beast). Let us celebrate and mourn the death of space and use and tradition in the context of late capitalism, which paves the way for more expensive capitalist capitalism. Refreshments will be provided.
