With all due respect to Mr Yarick and his family, I don't believe that he would have been as famous as he is today within the BB community if Steve had never trained at his gym. Back then you had to be an extremely exceptional bodybuilding individual to get acknowledge in any way whatsoever.
In fact most people involved in the game back then were merely considered as oddballs and eccentrics. But Steve was the exception due to the fact that he always looked and dressed like every kid wanted to look like and dress like and get the girls' attention.
When he came to the Russian River during the summer months which was not too very often, everyone talked about this new kid down at the beach that was damn impressive and such a polite kid to one and all.
Any other gym owner in the Bay Area was mostly unknown unless he sought publicity by doing publicity seeking stuff. Jack LaLanne was a great example of that and eventually made him famous worldwide, but I can name a few others who passed through life relative obscurity.
I'll also go so far to state that the photographers who shot physique photos of the young Steve Reeve can attribute their success to Steve himself. Steve made many people famous just by his association with them.
There were a number of top BBers who lived in the Oakland area in those days.
Norman Marks, who is the least well known out of Reeves, Clancy Ross, Jack Dillenger and Jack LaLanne, but Marks had a health club that did very well, and he opend a state of the art 10 sq/ft club in Oakland about 6 blockes west of Lake Merritt in 1982 or so, and as far as I know the club is still there. The old Holmes Book store is where his club is located. Great gym.
That 10K sq/ft gym was the ONLY gym in America, outside of Gold's Venice, that was that big at that time. Gold's Venice in 1981 was just the main room and was 10K sq/ft also.
Marks had won Mr. California, took 2nd behind Clancy Ross in the Mr America. I doubt he is still alive. But who knows, Clancy was alive until May.
