I’m writing this log sadly today because it is the end of an era for strength in Boston.
The Covid 19 lockdown had an extreme effect on all of us but had a particular effect on specific types of businesses.
It rewarded BIG business and punished small business to a massive degree. Particularly independently owned gyms and restaurants.
I can’t tell you how many gyms have closed but according to Fortune.com over 100,000 businesses closed permanently due to the lockdown, many of them gyms.
According to the NSCA and a Life Fitness survey:
- 42% laid off or furloughed employees
- Only 86% of facilities are open or partially opened
- Average of 42% loss of client base
- Average of 34% loss of revenue
- 69% had to lower operational budgets
Today I am specifically talking about one gym, and it was an AWESOME one, Greater Boston Fitness, formerly known as Nautilus +.
Photo courtesy greaterbostonfitness.com
This gym has been around for about 40 years and in its heyday, it was the place to train.
It’s one of the first gyms I ever went to and I trained there for years.
It was massive.
They had at least two full basketball courts, a shit ton of racquetball courts, an Olympic swimming pool, an indoor pool, a huge cardio room, and indoor track, but most importantly one of the biggest weight rooms I have ever seen. It had to be at least 20,000 square feet of iron and Nautilus, and I mean the old ones, the good ones.
Back in the day Nautilus + catered to just about everyone but bodybuilders and powerlifters ruled the gym. They even had a Powerlifting Pit, which was a section of the gym sunken into the floor with deadlift platforms, a Monolift, benches and squat racks.
It was like heaven walking in there the first time.
Nautilus + was home to some Old School legends like Domenic Sardo and Andrew Hickey and many others.
This was a gym where you could go in, know nothing and people would take you under their wing and teach you how to train. I started training there in the late 1980’s and let me tell you, I learned a lot. The older lifters there truly Lived, Learned and Passed on.
It was also back in a time where there were not too many gyms around, unlike today where there is one on every corner. It was situated not too far from Logan Airport and when the WWF was in town at the Boston Garden, ALL the wrestlers trained there.
For a youngster like me this was amazing. I got the chance to train with some very famous wrestlers. It was pretty wild, one day me and my training partner were warming up on the bench and Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka came over and asked if he could work in. Duh, of course you can.
He asked us if we wanted to do his chest workout with him, as if we’d say no. Superfly nearly killed us that day. I remember I couldn’t move my arms for almost a week.
Another time Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart asked to jump in on back with us, and the same thing happened; we trained back with him and almost died.
Photo courtesy IMDB.com
We got the chance to train with a bunch of them over the years and they were all really cool guys to train with, and many of them showed up at Zeke’s (a bar I hung out at on Revere Beach), so I may or may not have had a few with them.
One night after training and his match, the Iron Sheik came in to Zeke’s and he was wearing his famous Iranian boots that he wore in the ring. That dude could put away some booze kids. And he bought rounds for everyone.
Photo courtesy twitter.com
Over the years it changed ownership and downsized, but it still kept its roots in strength. When it changed to Greater Boston Fitness they stayed true and it was the HOME to some of the best bodybuilders in the area.
As a matter of fact, a very good friend of mine was an owner for a few years, Rich Angelo (I’ve written about him many times).
I got a DM the other day that they were permanently closing this week. It made me sad.
I got in touch with the owner and talked to him about it. The lockdown destroyed their business, it almost destroyed mine.
We are still here, and they are not. That makes me sad because as I said to Frank (the owner of GBF) I never viewed them as competitors even though they are only about a mile and a half away. We live in such a densely populated area that there is enough people for all of us to thrive-in good economic times.
I wished Frank well and expressed my sympathy for the loss of his business and I meant it. Although I never trained at Greater Boston Fitness much, maybe 3 or 4 times (because I own my own place obviously) it still meant something to me. It was my first hardcore gym and I loved it (when it was Nautilus +) and I will always have great memories of training there.
I also hate the fact that they had to close.
You see, most if not all of the people who own small gyms don’t do this for the paycheck; it’s not that big, we do it out of passion. To see someone who has put their life into something lose it out of no fault of their own is a tragedy.
They didn’t close because of mismanagement or irresponsibility, they closed because they were forced to close during the lockdown and they still had to pay all of the bills.
Property tax, insurance, rent and much more. And let me tell you that rent for a gym that size around here is at least $20,000 a month excluding operational expenses like electric which can easily be another $4000 a month. It doesn’t seem right that the government closes you down and still makes you pay thousands of dollars a month in property taxes while you have no revenue coming in, but that’s a topic for a different article.
Let’s take a moment and pour one on the sidewalk for Greater Boston Fitness and all of the other businesses run by passionate owners that were forced to close because of the lockdown.
It’s the end of an era for strength in Boston.
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Vincere vel mori
C.J. Murphy
May 20, 2021