San Francisco Gym Owners Discover Gyms in Government Buildings Have Been Open for Months and They're Livid
If you open up a browser and run a Google search for “gyms in San Francisco,” you’ll quickly learn that all locations are “temporarily closed.”
It’s not that the city’s more active citizens have decided that exercise is no longer important amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Gym owners and exercise enthusiasts would be thrilled to get back to their routines.
But due to city ordinances in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s district, gyms are to remain closed, apparently until all danger passes.
Not all gyms are created equal, though.
While gym owners are being crushed under a mandate that they’re being told is about public health, they’ve discovered gyms inside government buildings are being used by the same people who are keeping their doors closed.
While Pelosi was getting a hair blowout last week in a salon that was supposed to be closed, other government officials had access to gyms.
KNTV-TV reported government employees have been using city-owned gyms for months.
One gym owner who spoke to KNTV was rightfully upset to find that rules keeping her gym closed don’t apply to everyone.
“It’s shocking, it’s infuriating,” Daniele Rabkin of Crossfit Golden Gate told the outlet.
Rabkin made the discovery that gyms are still an option for some government officials when she reached out to police officers in her area to offer them a place to work out during the closures.
The cops reportedly told Rabkin they were being accommodated by a department gym.
“Even though they’re getting exposed, there are no repercussions, no ramifications? It’s shocking,” she told KNTV.
Another gym owner apparently went down a rabbit hole which uncovered the full scope of California government hypocrisy.
Cops are joined by judges, lawyers and bailiffs in being allowed access to gyms.
Even the city’s paralegals are being given special treatment.
Now to be clear, city employees, especially police officers, should not be blamed for using gyms in government buildings. It’s particularly important for police officers to stay in shape so that they can best serve their communities.
The issue is that residents who don’t work for the government are being robbed of the opportunity to use gyms. The answer isn’t to keep gyms in government buildings closed, it’s to open up private gyms as well.
Dave Karraker, the owner of MX3 Fitness, told KNTV there is a clear double standard.
“It just demonstrates that there seems to be some kind of a double standard between what city employees are allowed to do and what the residents of San Francisco are allowed to do,” Karraker said.
“If these SFPD fitness centers have been open the entire time, then they are the perfect case studies to prove that indoor fitness is safe,” he said to Mission Local. “If none of them closed because of a covid outbreak, that suggests that other gyms could operate indoors with the exact same protocols and be safe.”
KNTV reported that government officials have been using their gyms since at least July 1.
Barbells, treadmills and those big wall-mounted mirrors elsewhere in the city are collecting dust, unless the city’s crushing mandate has already created a black market for exercise.
The city confirmed to KNTV that all indoor gyms are ordered closed until the end of this month, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.
It looks like in San Francisco’s government, officials are under the impression that the coronavirus is more dangerous in for-profit gyms than in those being subsidized by taxpayers.
That, or they’re being disingenuous.
The entire saga, though, could explain how Pelosi has stayed so slender throughout the coronavirus pandemic, despite her passion for luxury ice cream.
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