Frank Gehry.
You’ve heard of him. Builds things. Beautiful things. Things like opera houses, brushed steel parks and transcendent office buildings, for instance.
And gyms. He’s doing gyms now.
Welcome to La Palestra, a Gehry-designed fitness center with a fanatical mission to get you ready for... whatever, tucked beneath the Plaza and accepting members now.
So, gyms: weights. Treadmills. Tank tops. Evaluations with a nutritionist, orthopedist, physical therapist, internist and psychologist before you ever lift a weight. Oh yeah, that’s just this place. They’re kind of big on getting to know you here (or they’re secretly planning on turning you into the Six Million Dollar Man).
The reason: they’ve got to know what you’re after. If your goal is to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, you’re in luck. They just happen to run a program that teaches you to climb using heavy gear. Then they go. To Kilimanjaro. And you climb it. If you’re gunning for fencing gold in Rio in ’16, they can work with that, too.
To get there, head downstairs through the food hall, past the lobsters (think of them as part of your training). Those glass doors: part them. Have a shower in your private changing room. Head down more stairs—exposed subway tiles and old coal shoots surrounded by daylight bulbs, climbing ropes and state-of-the-art equipment.
That presidential fitness seal is so close you can taste it.
You’ve heard of him. Builds things. Beautiful things. Things like opera houses, brushed steel parks and transcendent office buildings, for instance.
And gyms. He’s doing gyms now.
Welcome to La Palestra, a Gehry-designed fitness center with a fanatical mission to get you ready for... whatever, tucked beneath the Plaza and accepting members now.
So, gyms: weights. Treadmills. Tank tops. Evaluations with a nutritionist, orthopedist, physical therapist, internist and psychologist before you ever lift a weight. Oh yeah, that’s just this place. They’re kind of big on getting to know you here (or they’re secretly planning on turning you into the Six Million Dollar Man).
The reason: they’ve got to know what you’re after. If your goal is to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, you’re in luck. They just happen to run a program that teaches you to climb using heavy gear. Then they go. To Kilimanjaro. And you climb it. If you’re gunning for fencing gold in Rio in ’16, they can work with that, too.
To get there, head downstairs through the food hall, past the lobsters (think of them as part of your training). Those glass doors: part them. Have a shower in your private changing room. Head down more stairs—exposed subway tiles and old coal shoots surrounded by daylight bulbs, climbing ropes and state-of-the-art equipment.
That presidential fitness seal is so close you can taste it.
