They’ve Come Off the Streets to Make Things Work Out

The exercise studio sits in a little section of Santa Monica where trendiness meets desperation. The upscale studio is some kind of converted garage, and the big corrugated tin door is usually lifted open, allowing in the breezes from off the Pacific Ocean a block away. On the sidewalk, marchers in the passing parade look in. Some stop to watch the action, nodding in time to the pounding rock music that you just can’t work out without. Eardrums need exercise, too.

Many of the spectators are street-type people, dazed and down and out, not in Beverly Hills, but close. Most of the exercisers appear to be nearer the opposite end of the socioeconomic scale.

“We see the people walking by,” says Kim Haves, director of Main Street Dance and Exercise Studio. “The diversity (between the exercisers and the spectators) is huge.”

An awkward situation. What to do? Main Street decided to offer workouts for the homeless, which I thought was pretty hilarious when I heard about it.

Shades of Marie Antoinette! The people are hungry? Let them do abdominal crunches.

This is a perfect example, it seemed, of why the rest of the world makes fun of Southern California. This is a perfect example of why Southern Californians make fun of Southern California.

As it turns out, I was slightly wrong, a unique development.

The Main Street staff doesn’t herd bag ladies and winos in off the street and have them dance around to “Sledgehammer.”

What they do is offer free workouts to “transitional” homeless, which means people who have entered recovery-type houses in order to begin putting their lives back together. If exercise is good for the body and soul, a theory that is the foundation of all sports except Clipper basketball, why should only the well-to-do have access?

The program was inspired by a thief. About a year ago, Main Street hired a recovering street-type person to work at the studio. He was a sterling employee, except for his sticky fingers. He ripped off several thousand bucks from the studio safe, almost bringing the mom-and-pop type operation to its knees.

This incident, instead of turning Main Street management’s hearts against society’s rubble, turned attention to the problem right outside the open garage door.

Main Street owner Lisa De Mondesir contacted local social-aid programs, and she and her small staff instituted the fitness classes for the homeless. They also started a dance class for battered women from a local shelter, and a physical theater workshop for runaway teens and recovering addicts, taught by Kim Haves’ husband, Stefan. There are about 35 regulars in the three programs.

It’s all financed by contributions from corporations, local businesses, and even from some of the Main Street workout regulars. The classes are taught by the studio’s instructors, working free.

Only in Los Angeles, world capital of two breeds: the homeless and the fitness snob. The twain have met to sweat.

One recent evening, four men and two women from the nearby halfway house were huffing through an hour-long workout. They were all wearing new shoes and workout outfits, donated by Reebok and earned by faithful attendance at two months’ worth of classes.

At hour’s end, the exercisers staggered off the floor with the kind of tired exhilaration you see in a team that has just won a big game.

“I stopped coming here for a while,” said Martin, a hipster-surfer type. “I was going out with the same girl I used (drugs) with. When I started working out, she thought it was a joke. She laughed at me, and it was embarrassing. I figured she must be right, that it was a joke, so I stopped coming.

“I’m glad I came back. Now, when I talk to people, I don’t look at the ground.”

Martin was into heroin and pills. He did time in a youth detention center for attempted murder. He said he merely fired a warning shot over the head of someone who was threatening him. Like others in the class, Martin seemed like a person with a lot of energy in need of an outlet.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m gonna explode,” said Caryn. “I come down here and let it out. What did I do to let it out before ? Use.

“If I don’t work out, I go crazy. It’s my new addiction.”

It took some recruiting to pry most of these people from the relative safety of their transitional home and into a dance and exercise class.

“For me, personally, I could never picture myself in a crowd like this, dancing! “ Gilbert said. “Before, I’d rather make a fool of myself in a bar, flat-face on the floor.”

Stanley, a man who spent most of the last couple of years living in streets and alleys after the breakup of his family, said, “This makes me feel like part of the community, getting back in tune with people.”

Funny, but it turns out that Stanley works out for the very same reason Jane Fonda works out.

“It helps you get comfortable in your skin,” he says.