Blogomat... Just looking in the Times magazine again today and noticed the article by the older guy who ruins himself playing Tennis every chance that he gets, and how Americans have become big "consumers" of exercise. Our President is characterized as a "gym rat", people pay big bucks to join gyms with special machines to exercise, and I am constantly being shoved off the sidewalk or roadway by rollerbladers or cyclers intent on getting their exercise. They all have special little suits to wear too. Pastel shorts, little warm-up items with white stripes down the sides, helmets, kneepads, exercise bras, wrist weights, sneakers. Thus, exercise has been transformed into a consumable item, a consumable that can be referenced as a class item. The other day on the train coming back from Ocean Hill I eavesdropped in on a conversation between a young black man, and a white classmate he met on the train going to Manhattan. After catching up on grades and class schedules, the white guy asked where the black guy was heading-" Oh I'm going to my gym in Manhattan... You mean you go all the way into Manhattan to use a gym? Well yes, you meet better people, and the whole experience is just better in Manhattan...." I ride a bike for basic transportation inside the City. I've been riding a bike for just about my whole life for transportation, first as a protest against automobile culture in Buffalo where I grew up, then as cheap transportation in Germany where it cost over a thousand marks to get a license in lessons fees, and finally in New York, where I rode a bike to my job in midtown everyday until they laid us off. During the nineties, I got a car as a gift, and became a car owner for the first time in my adult life. We use the Buick to go outside the City and on vacations, but still use the bike to get around town- no parking muss, quick routes through traffic, nice routes through parks, no subway or bus fare. The exercise has been a pretty secondary reason for owning a bike - a cheap one that doesn't get stolen more than every two or three years. Everyday on the elevator, my nesighbors confuse me with one who is part of the exercise culture- "Oh, are you going out for exercise? Do you ride in the park? " I nicely but pointedly say, "No, I am going to a meeting", or "I have errands to run. " I wonder how much longer the guy who ruins himself playing tennis, or the young black guy that rides into Manhattan just to use a better class of gym, will keep on exercising. I wonder if the tennis guy rides to the courts in a big black SUV, like many of my neighbors, even in the upper west side of Manhattan. When did exercise become something that was the province of the rich ( or middle class) and the young, or those aspiring to be young and/or rich? How come when I travel outside the City I rarely see anyone outside walking or riding a bike dressed in normal clothes as if they were heading to church, or a shopping center? I wonder how exercise, which used to be an inevitable part of everyday life performed by everyone as part of going about their normal daily business, became a class conscious consumable item.