High-End Gyms Explore Exercise Options For the Rest of Us

Working out (via Daniella Zalcman's flickr).

How's that New Year's resolution coming? Still haven't joined a gym? No worries, the year is still young and cheaper workout options are available. The high-end gym Equinox, for instance, has gone and spun off a whole new low-cost gym, Blink, which opens Friday in the old Tower Records space on Broadway. And it is more than fair to call it bare bones.

For $20 a month, plus initiation fees, you get a gym and that's it. No classes, no trainers, no perks and definitely no greeting at the door (there is a kiosk instead). It is just a gym with some six security cameras (which should be great for those crooks tired of hitting up the gyms around the corner).

On the one hand we think its nice that affordable gyms are starting to pop up in such normally expensive 'hoods (an Equinox membership over on Crosby, for example, will cost you well over $100 a month). On the other hand, you know what is cheaper than $20 a month? $50 a year. Which just happens to be the membership cost for the city's many recreation facilities. Also? Walking.

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By Garth Johnston in News on January 5, 2011 2:11 PM

Comments [rss]

Yahtzee

How's this for a quote at the end of the DN article....

"But hard-core gymgoers at pricey David Barton Gym, just up the street on Astor Place, turned their noses up at Blink's lower-paying clientele.

"I don't want to work out next to riffraff," said bartender Rob Henry, 32. "I don't know what a $20-a-month gym will attract.""

Peanut_Butter

When it comes to an actual gym, the city's deal can't be beat.

Stevennnn

How about Planet Fitness? It's about $15/20 a month.

edisdead

I bought my Schwinn 10-speed for $40. Cheapest workout this side of walking to the subway!

Kreo

that is nothing comparing to the deal my neighbor scored. he does daily 4 hour speed-walking sessions and gets paid about $70K/year for them as a postman.