I've been jogging at the gym for many years now, and for slightly less time than that have grown to detest the television monitors that are inevitably installed in front of every treadmill. At my present gym, which is on the second floor of a midtown building offering views of the sidewalk below, I much prefer to watch the ebb and flow of traffic (both vehicular and pedestrian) than anything I might find on daytime television.
You can imagine my pleasure when earlier this week I discovered that the gym had installed several new treadmills in front of a window and miraculously decided (at least for the time being) not to place television monitors in front of them (i.e., the treadmills), so that my view of the sidewalk is completely unobscured, perfect even. I didn't go running for the past three days because I've been trying to shake a cold, but today I went and ran three very easy miles, with Bedhead's first album What Fun Life Was (which btw I consider one of the most criminally neglected masterpieces of the 1990s) blaring pleasantly in my headphones. (I'm not a complete luddite, after all.) Oddly or not, I was the only person of the handful using the treadmills to choose a monitor-free model, which just goes to show that either a) I'm a freak, or b) most ppl like television present no matter where they are or what they're doing, even if they have views of the mutating city available only a few feet in front of them. (I was hypnotized by the brick pattern on the facing building, among other things.)
Running along at an easy pace I felt like I could have lasted forever, even though I wasn't going anywhere. The music, which only seconds earlier had been magisterial, grew quiet and contemplative, and the hushed lyric "just float and relax" had never sounded better or more appropriate.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/technology/25brain.html
Possibly my favorite NY Times article of the past year for this part alone:
At least one exerciser has a different take. Two stories up from the main floor, Peter Colley, 23, churns away on one of the several dozen elliptical machines without a TV. Instead, they are bathed in sunlight, looking out onto the pool and palm trees.
“I look at the wind on the trees. I watch the swimmers go back and forth,” Mr. Colley said. “I usually come here to clear my head.”
Posted by: Brian | 10/31/2010 at 02:15 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/technology/25brain.html
Possibly my favorite NY Times article of the past year for this part alone:
At least one exerciser has a different take. Two stories up from the main floor, Peter Colley, 23, churns away on one of the several dozen elliptical machines without a TV. Instead, they are bathed in sunlight, looking out onto the pool and palm trees.
“I look at the wind on the trees. I watch the swimmers go back and forth,” Mr. Colley said. “I usually come here to clear my head.”
Posted by: Brian | 10/31/2010 at 02:15 PM
Whoa, nice--thats what Im talking about!
Posted by: Matthew Gallaway | 10/31/2010 at 05:45 PM
have you thought of running outside? lot of stuff to see there.
Posted by: alex k | 11/04/2010 at 12:34 PM
Thanks for the comment, smartass, but its not exactly feasible when youre on 34th Street and Park Avenue at lunchtime. I run outside all the time on the weekends though.
Posted by: Matthew Gallaway | 11/04/2010 at 12:39 PM