There was no contract. Frenchie calls the gym members his disciples. As in, “My place is here with my disciples.” Some guys have been coming to Frenchie’s for decades, like Mo, who joined 27 years ago when he was trying to quit drinking, and now drives 45 minutes from Queens every day just to use the place. The walls are dotted with framed pictures of the disciples who’ve thrived here: they’re fle
xing in bodybuilding competitions, puffing up proudly next to a pool or at the beach. In the 70s and 80s, when Williamsburg, like much of New York City, was overrun by drugs and left for dead, Frenchie’s was a rare bastion of positivity in the neighborhood, a place for self-improvement. Now, with rents soaring and gentrification squeezing in on all sides, it’s a proud symbol of the past. Something worth preserving. The gym occupies the top two floors of a commercial building on the corner of Rodney and Broadway. On the first floor is a discount clothes store called Telco that used to be a Woolworth’s. The second floor was once a dentist’s office; now it’s where Frenchie keeps the ab equipment and the heavy bag. The old exam rooms were converted to locker rooms. Upstairs is the main floor, with the wood paneling, the pressed tin, etc. This is more like a loft, and it is here, from behind his desk, that Frenchie holds court and occasionally catnaps. If you use the gym for a few months, as I have, you realize there is a certain perfection to it. Every inch of usable floor space is occupied by a piece of equipment, leaving just enough room for everything to move freely—it’s an elaborate, room-size jigsaw puzzle. And everything works. If the upholstery on a bench comes apart, it’s patched with material from a conveyor belt. When a treadmill breaks down, Frenchie tinkers with the motor on his desk while the guys gather around him, talking in Spanish, pointing at this thing or that thing. A few days later, the treadmill is working again. On Friday nights Frenchie and a few guys play poker at his desk. In December there’s a Christmas party. The equipment on the third floor is pushed to the walls, and a table is set up in the middle of the room, filled with two big trays of pulled meat cooked by Frenchie’s wife, one tray of chicken, another of pork, the two helpfully differentiated by the roasted pig’s head in the pork tray.
