Kevin/Stuntmovie-
These pictures are
GOLD baby-
GOLD!
Here are some updates to a few questions raised.
1. The 2nd Golds Gym location at
1452 2nd Street Santa Monica was a 15,000 sq/ft building divided in half. Gold's Gym had 7500 and Lisa Lyon rented the other half as a home.
2. The 2nd Street location was home to Gold's Gym from 1977-1982. In 1982 they moved into the
360 Hampton Drive location. That was the first time I was ever in Gold's Gym Venice-1983. Same for World Gym-22 years ago.
3. The original Gold's Gym muscle man,
"Guido" was designed by Ric Drasin, who has been on some TV series lately-like "The Sheild" on the FX network. He had a few original Gold's Gym shirts with Guido, or what most people call "Baldy" on them, that he were selling on EBAY for about-as I recall-500 bucks each. Baldy has since had a make over though, and he looks more like Oscar from the Academy Awards to me now
.
4. The
1006 Pacific Avenue location, Gold's Gym #1, is now a home. Ken turned it into his home, and that was the reason why the gym moved to 2nd Street in Santa Monica. Lee Priest posted a while back that the place was listed for sale and it had a price tag of about 500,000 as I recall Lee posting. Lee went in and looked it over. That would be the ULTIMATE-buying the original Gold's Gym as your home. It is
amazing that today, after the gym being gone for 28 years, it still has the Gold's Gym sign that can easily be seen. The windows were taken out and plastered over though.
5. The old World Gym location at
2210 Main Street in downtown Santa Monica. I have been by it recently and the bottom used to be parking-about 5-6 spaces (showers were also downstairs next to the parking spaces), but it has been sealed off and turned into office space. It was listed as being for lease when I was there about a year ago. At one time Tony Nowak, who makes all the World Gym, Arnold Classic and Terminator leather jackets had his office located there. Tony was also in "Pumping Iron". Arnold comes into Gold's to train and he goes "Big Tony". And Tony is a huge guy.
6. Is
Zucky's still open? It looked pretty beat up!
7. The "Dungeon" gym that Dave Draper trained at, before Gold's Gym opened in 1965, was in the basement of an old hotel that was torn down. It was replaced with a parking lot-and I am sure the the parking lot has been developed by now.
8. Muscle Beach Santa Monica was almost all gymnastics and tumbling up until the late 40's. That is when the bench press platforms and squat platforms were built. They were made out of wood back in those days-not steel. Even in the 1950's there was some serious bench pressing going on at Muscle Beach.
Those pictures are BBing history. You should have hung with the Muscle Beach old timers and waited for Tanny to show up, that would have been the bomb.
Thanks for sharing! Loved it baby!