My trip to the gym

Some of you know that I belong to LPAC (Lincoln Park Athletic Club) which is maybe a mile from my house...maybe two. Just about two weeks ago, they finally opened up their new property LVAC (Lakeview Athletic Club) which is at Broadway and Belmont, a distance from my house that would be measured in blocks not miles. As such I was very excited about the opening with visions of a slimmer, trimmer, more muscular Joe resulting from this very shrewd move to open a facility closer to me. Though this club would be closer, it's price tag was significantly higher; $120 a month instead of $90! I do think that I would get some break though since I already belonged to a related gym.

Tuesday I was finally able to head over to see how the new facility laid out. Below I've laid out my thoughts:

-Huge open area at the entrance with many pleather chairs and sofas. Looks like a great start!
-Men's locker room is downstairs. Nice. Put the guys in the basement. Whatever.
-Lockers already have combination locks installed and you reset the four digit combo. Unfortunately, this makes it tough to find YOUR locker when your done. They all look exactly alike. My blue Master Lock stood out for me a little.
-Dry heat sauna is wayyyy too small for a newly constructed facility. Shoot. I can't even lay down to get the heat evenly distributed on my aging back prior to working out. Big issue here.
-Steam room is too small as well. Ugh.
-Up two flights to get to cardio room. Hmmm, pretty big, lots of equipment.
-When I run on one of the treadmills, the video screen is moving around like a building in a San Francisco earth quake. I have to look away from the screen periodically otherwise I start to get motion sickness. Ugh.
-Up another flight to the weight room. No televisions anywhere.
-No clocks anywhere.
-All of the hand weights, and there are ample, are at about knee level. Why wouldn't they make the racks waist level at least? The last thing you want is to have people bending over to pick up heavy weights because most of them don't do it properly. Poor design.
-Not all of my favorite machines are there. Crap.
-Three flights back down to the locker room. This trip will get old in a hurry.
-Where's my locker?
-What four digit number did I use?
-There's literally 5 people in the entire facility and two of them have lockers right next to me. Isn't that the way??
-The showers are awesome! Individual stalls with floor to ceiling opaque glass and a shower head mounted both on the wall and directly over head. You can choose either shower head or both! Sweet.

So, unless I want to go there specifically for a shower, I'm probably going to have to take a pass on the facility. It really was disappointing.