Amherst Town Center: a tad later

3:15 PM
Kind of the "low rent" time period, with a little less traffic flow. The favored candidates are off sucking down cappuccinos at Starbucks bolstering themselves for the busier after-5:00 PM time (although visibility becomes a factor)

High Noon Amherst Town Center

Actually a tad after 1:00 PM so they are packing it in until the 5:00 PM rush
I wonder how the dog would vote?

Even in Amherst

10:30 AM
Of course if McCain wins somebody will need to call out the National Guard for this Amherst abode.

And the winner is...

(8:50 AM) Unidentified Pilot: “Anybody know what that smoke is in lower Manhattan?”

Yeah, I know many weeks back I predicted a McCain victory on Mary Carey’s About Amherst blog but a week later kind of wanted to take it back. Not that I changed my mind about voting for him, only that a majority of Americans would not follow suit.

But now with the bewitching hour fast approaching I will go on record on my own blog about who will tomorrow’s epic contest. McCain.

Not that Obama made any major screw-ups over the last month (that I was anticipating) although a few smaller gaffs BUT one big one from his running mate. By saying that President Obama “would be tested” in his first few months in office by folks who want us all dead Biden returned the focus to the one issue that makes all the difference in the world to me: the safety of my family.

And yeah I do think race, unfortunately, will play a role. In the privacy of the voting booth you can do things you don’t confess to for any reason at all, even a bad one. But I think safety is the crucial deciding factor --and that’s a good one.

Springfield Republican‘s stunning Sunday editorial

A horse is a horse...

So Kira placed in every event she entered yesterday at Muddy Brook Farm horse show including a Blue Ribbon for costume division. Not bad for her first time out.

Criminal indeed

So our illustrious Select Board, none of whom have any business background, asked ever so nicely for Municipal Department Heads who oversee our $65 million operation to come up with coping mechanisms for next years budget (besides drugs of course):

Cherry Hill—you know, that vital luxiourious game of golf—came up with a dozy:


8. List at least one area where efficiency might be improved for FY 10.

Utilize Department of Corrections inmates to a greater extent to provide no Cost maintenance work at Cherry Hill.

Wow. The NIMBY’s are just going to love that! (Especially battle ax Hilda Greenbaum). Sure, bus in the muggers, rapist and murders--as long as they work for free.

Since it was the immediate neighbors (especially the Greenbaum’s) that brought us Cherry Hill to begin with over 20 years ago, sounds like poetic justice to me.

In 2001 the cost of incarceration in Massachusetts was$37,718 annually while the national average was only $24,052. And I have got to believe it’s a lot higher now. Yeah leave it to a town bureaucrat to shift costs to some other (state) budget as long as it makes her look good.

All that glitters...

Like that old song lyric: "Don't push me cause I'm close to the edge."
UPDATE: Saturday, February 21, 2009 (Yikes) 'Comments' are the best!
And so it continues to go (but not for long)

UPDATE: Thursday November 13, 2009
I have been running a fitness center for 27 years and only been blogging since 3/17/07; and never have I gone back to a two-week old post to add an update (a day or two maybe, but never this long)

My sitemeter tells me I’m getting almost a dozen visitors a day to this particular post because you did an internet search for “leading edge fitness Amherst” or “Golds becomes the leading edge” or something similar.

And that only further proves my point! The local boys who originally founded Golds five years ago were supposed to be so hip, so cool, so cutting edge (maybe that’s where the new name comes from) using the Net, Facebook, email interaction with customers, etc.

But this name changed occurred so suddenly nobody thought ahead to take out a domain name under “the leading edge Amherst” and fill it with content so that when you did your search they would come up number one rather than my humble critique?

Original post: 10/30/08
Changing your name from the gold standard of health club franchises (not that there are all that many in the industry, as about 85% of fitness facilities are Mom-and-Pops) “Golds Gym” to “The Leading Edge” is kind of like that McDonalds in Hadley changing its name to “Billy Bob’s Burgers”.

And, of course, it has nothing whatsoever to do with paying the annual 5% of gross revenues franchise fee. Even at “only” 1,500 members paying $40/month that still amounts to a yearly overhead of $36,000.

When Golds first opened five years ago they revealed an astonishing target of 3,000 members. I say astonishing because if you added up the entire membership of established Health Clubs this side of the river (Hampshire Fitness, Kidsports, Ultimate Fitness and
Amherst Athletic Club) it would not total much more than 3,000.

But considering “Video To Go” located adjacent to Golds and about four or five times smaller in square footage was paying $5,000 per month rent (so you can imagine what Golds is now paying), they really do need that many members to break even.

And yeah, after Golds opened Kidsports and Ultimate Fitness closed--but the owners of Hampshire Fitness sold out to Perry Messer, owner of the oldest club in the Valley ‘Northampton Athletic Club’, and about as experienced a pro as you can get.

A recent Gazette article revealed that membership of both Perry’s clubs now number “about 3,500”. So the largest, oldest two clubs in the Valley combined barely exceed what Golds—I mean ‘The Leading Edge’-- all by itself needs to survive.

In an email to employees they herald “opening a second club in Greenfield soon!” Interestingly ‘Video To Go' moved to Greenfield (to escape the high Amherst rent and cutthroat competition from Blockbuster Video) and lasted less than a year.

And since the conditions placed on Newmarket Center in 1985 calls for sign review/approval by the Planning Board, you gotta wonder if the sign changes were recently approved.

One woman's experience

Previous post on the death of Ultimate Fitness