I have finally become member of a sports club which is conveniently located on top of my favorite Korean greengrocer on Flatbush Ave.

Unlike the many sports clubs that I tested or have been a member of in Switzerland and in the Netherlands the atmosphere here is friendly and relaxed. The staff and trainers take their job serious but they don't harass the sweet bejeezus out of you. It is quite obvious that these guys actually work out themselves, which one might think of as quite an important prerequisite to earning money by working in a gym. In my experience though the most obnoxious gym instructors are often of the physically lazy and —I hate to say it— also of the female persuasion. In other words, women who see their job as a position of power rather than one of service and who often amazingly enough don't seem to feel any affinity with sports in general or fitness training in particular. I should not get started on the PMS-style hostility I have had to endure by some of the pills at Caesar's in Den Haag or at the Forum in Basel... At my new sports club I have been spared by those and must say that the staff is helpful, friendly and serious about the process. After my prior experiences I have to pay those guys and gals here in Brooklyn a big friggin compliment. I have the cheapest of the three available memberships which allows me to come in on off-peak hours only. This works fine for me though because that way it's never too crowded. As for constructive criticism there are two points worth mentioning. The old carpet is just slick and icky in some places and the sound systems on the cardio machines don't seem to be set up to either play anything but white noise or the ones playing actual programs are not corresponding to the programming on theTV's. Talking to the staff about the sound issue has not actually yielded any results so far. But let's be fair, that's basically small fries to me so I'm pretty happy and look forward to turning Hannes, the beached whale into Hannes, the sexy, butch deity.