High-End Gyms Explore Exercise Options For the Rest of Us

Working out

How's that New Year's resolution coming? Still haven't joined a gym? No worries, the year is still young and cheaper workout options are available. The high-end gym Equinox, for instance, has gone and spun off a whole new low-cost gym, Blink, which opens Friday in the old Tower Records space on Broadway. And it is more than fair to call it bare bones.

For $20 a month, plus initiation fees, you get a gym and that's it. No classes, no trainers, no perks and definitely no greeting at the door (there is a kiosk instead). It is just a gym with some six security cameras (which should be great for those crooks tired of hitting up the gyms around the corner).

On the one hand we think its nice that affordable gyms are starting to pop up in such normally expensive 'hoods (an Equinox membership over on Crosby, for example, will cost you well over $100 a month). On the other hand, you know what is cheaper than $20 a month? $50 a year. Which just happens to be the membership cost for the city's many recreation facilities. Also? Walking.