Homophobia Shut Down 12th Street Gym

If I were to tell you there was a fitness center in the heart of the city that had a swimming pool, racquetball court, basketball court, sauna, sun deck, about ten thousand square feet of gym equipment, and sprawling classrooms for endless free classes, you'd think I was crazy. If I told you it cost about $29 a month, came with two free training sessions, seven individual guest passes, all without the nefarious upsell and membership cancellation practices of corporate gyms, you'd have me committed. 

But it did exist, for nearly three decades, and it finally closed its doors because New Philadelphians and Millennials have turned Philadelphia into a hot-bed of pro-corporate snobbery. 

From the outside, 12th Street Gym is unassuming. The only thing indicating it's more than a warehouse along the Gayborhood's 12th Street Strip is the stunning mural of LGBT rights activist, Gloria Casarez. Once a gay bathhouse - community code for a den of anonymous sex - the gym had a hard time shaking its former reputation. Many straight men and women no doubt avoided the notion of joining a "gay gym," while gay men scoffed at the connotation it carried, all despite its bevy of services and modest membership price. Nonetheless, it catered to over 4000 active members, many dedicated for a long time. I'd been a member myself since I moved to Philadelphia in 2004. When 12th Street Gym closed, I declined the extended membership offered for Philadelphia Sports Club, and like so many others, opted for Optimal Sports Health Club nearby at Walnut and Juniper. 

Optimal is a fine facility, casually referred to as "the other gay gym." The day after 12th Street closed, Optimal was taxed with a barrage of new members. Underestimating just how many would reject PSC's offer, Optimal quickly annexed an additional 800 square feet of space. Still, the gym is small, roughly the size of one of 12th Street's many floors. It's practical. There is no common space, no juice bar, and it's tucked down a small street. Once again, like so many LGBT venues in Philadelphia, the community has been hidden from plain site. 

What made 12th Street Gym so popular with those of us who embraced it, and the very reason we sought out Optimal in lieu of PSC, is that it was more than a fitness center, it was the Gayborhood's community center. With more and more mainstream development expanding throughout the neighborhood, with developers adopting the phrase "Midtown Village" beyond the confines of 13th and Chestnut, it's not hard to feel the pangs of gentrification. We need places like 12th Street Gym, places to gather beyond booze and hookups. I like Optimal, but it isn't one of those places. 

"Midtown Village" itself, though it started merely as a business collective along the once-beleaguered 13th Street, is a concept met with understandable reservation within the LGBT community. Real estate agents use the term to sell and rent apartments to those who might be skittish about living in a "gay ghetto." You wouldn't be hard-pressed to overhear a few sipping mimosas at Green Eggs Cafe, even cocktails at Woody's, espouse how the neighborhood is changing without a hint of dismay. 

Indeed it is changing.

Woody's, once Philadelphia's go-to gay bar, is now avoided by local LGBT individuals: it caters to bridal parties on some sort of safari. 

While this change may be good for developers, it's not for a still-marginalized community. Exposed by the apparent connotation in the word "Gayborhood," a brand only whispered by heterosexual newcomers, is a latent underlying homophobia more dangerous than arbitrary protesters at a Pride parade. Why? Well it's hard to know your enemy when they're self-professed liberals from Park Slope who don't want to admit they don't want you around their kids. 

This discrimination would be far more apparent were developers renaming the Italian Market. What would it say about race if real estate agents began referring to Chinatown as "East Market Village" because, for some reason, they had a hard time moving condos in an ethnic enclave? But that's exactly what's happening in the Gayborhood, and it's going unchecked. 

12th Street Gym had financial problems, that's very true. Several years ago, the Department of Licenses and Inspections slapped them with a fine for inadequate fire doors necessitating $500,000 in renovations. However, as I was getting my hair cut at Rossi's next to the gym shortly after it closed, I was talking about those exact problems with several former members and my barber, and it became clear that the gym easily could have crowd-funded the money needed to remain open. $500,000 is by no means a small sum, but the LGBT community is by no means loose. Thanks to dealing with a whole lot of shit, we're a tight group that comes to the aid of one another. In a few years, even a few months, we could have raised the funds. I would have gladly pitched in one of those thousands. 

The truth is, 12th Street Gym didn't fit in with what the city is becoming. The gym didn't close when it failed to meet L&I's standards, it closed when a development company from New York purchased the property. No doubt two lawsuits regarding a handsy massage therapist didn't help matters, but the second lawsuit was incredibly sketchy. In a facility as large as 12th Street Gym, and one that had been open for so long, these unfortunate cases happen. That's why gyms, therapists, and trainers pay massive insurance premiums. 

None of this would have closed 12th Street Gym a decade ago. L&I's fire safety standards haven't changed that substantially, if at all in the last ten years. But L&I and other city agencies have been working at the behest of gentrification, targeting locally owned businesses and granting passes to the corporate conglomerates that fall in line with developers' largest profits. It wouldn't be hard to imagine Midwood Corporation flipping the bill for $500,000 in renovations if they could land a corporate tenant like Planet Fitness, or something more marketable to the "Midtown Village" set. 12th Street Gym just didn't fit the mold of newcomers, and the L&I violations and lawsuits proved worthy scapegoats to shut the place down. In 2018, gay owned and operated businesses still carry a stigma amid the happy couples pushing baby carriages through "Midtown Village." And that's profoundly sad for those of us not born with the privilege of being "normal."  

Migrants, Ibrahim, Mingora-Philadelphia

Apparently I'm a bit behind on my Philadelphia murals and the works of famous street artists. Walking down Chestnut Street something caught my eye: one gigantic mural of Enrique Iglesias!

What? Why? I mean I love Enrique Iglesias, but why here?

Well, obviously I was wrong. 

It's actually a gigantic mural by a French street artist known only as "JR." The fifteen story mural of Ibrahim Saha, a Pakistani immigrant and Philadelphia resident, on the Graham Building is tucked in a small side street. Titled Migrants, Ibrahim, Mingora-Philadelphia, it is part of a global series focusing on immigration issues.

The mural is pretty astounding, even in just its size and photographic realism. Although not as abstract or unusual as JR's other works around the world, the large black and white portrait along Philadelphia's emerging shopping strip might get mistaken for a Calvin Klein billboard by some less informed passing by, myself obliviously included. 

Keeping Public Art Public

Philadelphians may live amongst more public art than any city in the world. Before you stop me, consider the more than 3,600 murals commissioned by the Mural Arts Program. Not to mention the seemingly endless supply of carved and cast historical figures, some tucked inconspicuously deep into the woods of Fairmount Park, as well as the modern works incorporated into nearly every commercial and residential development project.

Our city is our greatest museum. And it shows. Because of our vast portfolio of public art, Philadelphia is home to hundreds of amateur and professional photographers, bloggers, and independent periodicals that drape Philadelphia's corner of the internet with the works that have made urban art synonymous with our city.

Elsewhere, the Statue of Liberty is one of the most photographed works of art in the world. It's been recreated in plastic, screen printed onto t-shirts, and brought to life in Ghostbusters II. Closer to modernity, Robert Indiana's LOVE statue which has been placed around the word in multiple languages, is photographed, printed, and sold without any hassle. 

IMAGE: wweek.com

But some places aren't so lucky. Few may know that the country's second largest copper statue sits above the entrance to a municipal building in the Pacific Northwest. In fact, facing a tree filled park, it's kind of hard to see. More people may know about Portland's beautiful Portlandia if artist Raymond Kaskey hadn't spent the last three decades threatening to sue anyone who attempts to use an image of his work.

When Portlandia arrived in Portland, the city's Metropolitan Arts Commission decided to allow artists to intellectually retain ownership of their public works of art.

Kaskey has been quoted as saying, "Not many cities respected artists' rights in those days." They weren't? Was $328,000 disrespectful...in 1985? It's not as if he commissioned the work himself. I don't want to delve too deeply into the notion of what constitutes art, but if Norman Foster is commissioned for a skyscraper, can he sue everyone who profits from a photograph of the city skyline for copyright infringement?

There's obviously some sort of empirical delineation between buildings and art in Portland,  or at least I hope there is. But if cities like New York, Chicago, or Philadelphia were burdened with such rigid regulations, it would be impossible for a photographer to make a living photographing the people and places within our cities. 

Portland is no stranger to its nanny's overreaching arm, but this particular regulation is capitalistically counter to the city's largely liberal ideals. They aren't protecting the rights of their artists, they're allowing Kaskey to essentially collect residuals from lawsuits long after he skipped town. Meanwhile their urban photographers have to tiptoe around the city for fear of inadvertently photographing intellectual property. 

Luckily most public artists understand their public position, they even embrace it. Photography and replication isn't just flattery, it's free publicity. Unfortunately Kaskey's talent is trumped by his greed, and an otherwise beautiful statue is tainted by what it represents. 

Barely Human: psychylustro's Katharina Grosse

In case you don't know what that new graffiti is across from Boathouse Row, it's part of Katherina Grosse's joint venture between Amtrak and the Mural Arts Program. psychylustro, according to the German artist, is part of a need for day glo neon paint in order to "get close to people."

I know I won't make any friends in the Outsider Art community by saying this, but that's art speak for "I'm not talented enough to paint a good horse."

The installations involve spraying thousands of gallons of paint along Philadelphia's Amtrak and SEPTA lines in an effort to offer passengers a view of what amounts to the aftermath of a paintball battle or an Electric Run. It essentially covers our blighted corridors in bright colors to mask the squalor, much like the Favela Paintings in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. 

It looks kinda cool, like something from The Cell. But just think what this will look like in twelve months.

psychylustro is everything true talent hates: it's entitled, arrogant, and worst of all, its explanation is more creative than what anyone is actually looking at. But being an overrated artist is nothing new. Look at Zoe Strauss or Andy Warhol. 

What's truly disgusting about Grosse's work is that, in six months, it will no longer be maintained. Leaving our rail corridors lined with endless chemicals melting into the already polluted ground and views of fading pinks and oranges covering the trees and grass. All at a cost of nearly $300,000.

Way to think it through, Mural Arts and Amtrak. And thank you, Katherina Grosse, for using Philadelphia as your Third World canvas before retreating back to Europe. 

Mural Arts Program Paints Amtrak

Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program has teamed up with German artist Katharina Grosse to make Amtrak's journey through Philadelphia a little less bleak. Grosse has been legally tagging the line's corridor with a project called "psychylustro" thanks to $291,978 in contributions from various organizations including Amtrak itself.

It's an interesting enough idea. Amtrak's northeast corridor winds through some of the nation's most unsightly slums and industrial arteries. And it's high time that the Mural Arts Program ventures into new territories while revisiting their original vision: transforming blight through art.

But still, much like the Favela paintings of Brazil or similar efforts along Germantown Avenue's abandoned storefronts, "psycholustro" is art speak for hiding blight by jingling a set of shiny keys. People don't avoid Amtrak because of the view, they avoid it because of the cost.

Were Grosse's paintings to be maintained with the same level of effort that maintains the murals throughout the city, it might be worth the nearly $300,000 investment. But the paintings will not be applied with the same standard as other murals throughout the city, and after six months they'll be left to the elements. Perhaps if the Mural Arts Program pairs the exhibit with information about the city's huge collection of public murals, it may attract a bit of attention from passengers incidentally paying attention to the view.

Mural Arts: Too Much of a Good Thing?

This year, the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts will be helping the city celebrate the 30th anniversary of its Mural Arts Program. The success of the MAP isn't just noted for its lavish, colorful murals adorning Philadelphia's less desirable neighborhoods or vacant walls, but it's been echoed in cities around the world, a solution to profane graffiti and blight.

But in recent years the MAP's relevance has been called into question. As Philadelphia gets cleaner, as vacant lots are filled in with new construction, the MAP has found itself a divisive organization, even contentious. Once was a time when residents of our struggling neighborhoods longed for the MAP to come to their vacant corner, the MAP could propose anything, professional or amateur, and the city would oblige.

Now that the city's poorer neighborhoods are covered in murals, the MAP's mission has changed, with grand murals gracing the sides of buildings in our city's most successful neighborhoods. But while the MAP's mission has evolved, its self assigned image as necessary and welcome hasn't. There are places that don't need murals, even places where the murals themselves serve as the visual blight the program once attempted to eradicate.

The MAP has become too much of a good thing.

That fact has made itself evident in the program's most recent proposal, a pair of 100 foot wide paintings along the Schuylkill River at the base of the Girard Avenue Bridge.

The base of the bridge is nothing significant and the paintings, a tribute to the Schuylkill's rowing history, would be tasteful. But the Department of Parks and Recreation didn't simply offer MAP blind approval. Although the Art Commission was consulted in the murals' approval, Parks and Rec's deputy Mark Focht took the murals under thoughtful consideration, recognizing that Fairmount Park, even along the heavily trafficked Kelly Drive, may not need the MAP.

Although Focht noted that Fairmount Park is not devoid of art, sculptures cast in bronze or carved from native stone surrounded by boxwoods and ivy don't interfere with the natural experience our parks offer. Brightly colored paintings on the other hand, can be more distraction than complement.

The MAP had no intention to segue into Fairmount Park until veteran rower Tony Schneider offered the program $85,000 towards the paintings, so it's not clear if the precedent will encourage the MAP to creep further into the woods or if this is a one time deal.

Time will tell.

For this location, a mural may be an improvement. While the success of the Schuylkill River Trail speaks for itself, murals on the underside of this unimpressive bridge will probably do nothing to improve or hinder the trail's experience. They will simply exist.

As for the program itself, finding itself in front of the desk of resistance should signal to those in charge that their goal was never to cover Philadelphia in a coat of Duron. Philadelphia is exciting and dynamic on its own, especially in the vast panoramic views from Fairmount Park and Kelly Drive. 

Graffiti Parks and the Mural Arts Program

A couple friends and I recently found our way to an abandoned coal pier near Port Richmond. We likely weren't supposed to be there, along with a few others fishing and swimming in the Delaware (which is probably less advised than actually walking on the relic). But what we also found were about a dozen graffiti artists adorning the towering concrete and twisted rebar with layers upon layers of ever changing artwork.

Call graffiti what you will: art or vandalism. With graffiti's unique style finding its way into major galleries, the line is fine and only technical. Someone could tag City Hall with a Renaissance masterpiece, and the only thing that distinguishes it between art and vandalism is a permit to paint.

The bottom line is that some of the stuff thrown up on vacant buildings in the middle of the night is not only better than most of the modern wing at the PMA, but also talented in the feat of accomplishing such works so quickly and unseen.

Likely much of what was taking place on this rusted pier was practice. Graffiti artists want to be recognized and they want their work to be seen in mind bending locations that make their audience scratch their heads from the Schuylkill Express way and think, "well how the heck did they get up there?"

Still, in and of itself, graffiti is gradually becoming a legitimate and respected genre in the art community, particularly when displayed privately and without the legal implications of trespassing.

Whether a graffiti artist is particularly talented doesn't always make the work appropriate. Again, tagging City Hall with a masterpiece might display talent, but even if it were to be authorized it would be unsightly and unnecessary.

While many street artists respect their surroundings and have taken to gracing otherwise useless and abandoned eyesores - a rogue Mural Arts Program - just as many callously scar historic landmarks, private homes, and even the natural spaces that abound Philadelphia like Fairmount Park.

It's hard to find your inner peace along Forbidden Drive or Wissahickon Valley when a crudely drawn tag reminds you exactly where you are.

Graffiti isn't new, it isn't an epidemic, and cities have been trying to address it as a problem since spray paint was invented. In fact ancient graffiti has been found around the world, even on cave paintings predating any semblance of modern civilization.

Since Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program began in the 1980s, they managed to transform hundreds of graffiti tagged walls and buildings into legitimate and authorized works of art.

For the most part it's been successful, and has been widely repeated in cities across the country. Graffiti artists typically avoid sites that have been transformed into murals and opt to create their own murals on vacant properties with absentee landlords, or other sites not necessarily conducive to traditional wall art.

But the Mural Arts Program's model has shifted it's goal. Instead of solely addressing blight, the MAP employs artists with a presence. Intended to temporarily camouflage vacant lots, some of their own murals have actually inhibited future development that threatens their murals. With more MAP murals visible in prominent neighborhoods not tagged with graffiti than the blighted ones that could use a splash of color, graffiti artists have become the city's unofficial, interim mural program painting communities that struggle.

When you consider this, the MAP's success becomes debatable. Local architecture and art critics have gone as far as criticizing the program, not just its forgotten purpose, but even the quality of some of its works. Obviously criticizing any organization rooted in charity and good intentions draws its own criticism.

Whatever the case, MAP's goal of eradicating graffiti and blight hasn't been met. Perhaps it shouldn't.

New programs throughout the country have been set up to address graffiti in a more dynamic way. San Diego's Writerz Blok encourages curious wall artists to fine tune their talent by designating public space in their own urban studio.

Instead of covering up graffiti with paintings of Frank Sinatra and Ed Bacon, the Writerz Blok works with the city's street art community, offers them space to work, teaches them technique, and perhaps most importantly, what's appropriate and where.

It's not always good.

The unfortunate reality proven by aerosol and history is that graffiti will always find a presence as vandalism. But we've also learned that the MAP, for all its good intentions, has run its course as the sole solution to a problem. Perhaps that's aided by a lack of competition.

By putting one and only one program in charge of attacking blight through art, some of it has become trite and some unnecessary. Someone recently even suggested painting a mural on the south side of the historic PSFS Building, a blank tile wall that architects William Lescaze and George Howe described as their favorite.

It isn't always bad.
(Flickr user LoisInWonderland)



Obviously, a graffiti park is simply a place to teach and does little outside the workspace itself. One could even argue that it encourages vandalism. But with the right structure and guidance it doesn't have to.

In fact, programs like the Writerz Blok could be taken beyond the scope of their own designated walls and into the city through authorized programs, perhaps even working with the Mural Arts Program to add a new perspective to MAP's signature style.