Sunday Cool

It is a day for meteorological Schadenfreude. Elsewhere in this country, snow lingers, but here in L.A. the spring-green hills present themselves to the sky like a cat offering its belly to the sun. A perfect day to call my East Coast snob friends and say nyah, nyah, and head off for the beach.

Instead, I head off to the gym for an aerobics class. On a Sunday. Not my usual Sabbath ritual, but this is not just any aerobics class. This is gospel aerobics with, I have been promised, live music and singing. In the beginning there was gospel brunch--could gospel aerobics be far behind? Apparently not.

My destination is Crunch, an unforgivingly hip gym that just opened on Sunset and Crescent Heights boulevards. Crunch reminds me of Area, a New York nightclub that was very hot for a considerable length of time--that is, 15 1/2 minutes--during the mid-’80s. This is not surprising, since Crunch is direct from Noo Yawrk, where it is still believed that one can wrest cool from the universe if one uses enough angled spaces and wrought iron. Crunch has two stories’ worth and huge round mirrors that, propped up on steel legs, look like oversized vanity stands. Vanity also stands in small ripped-ab clusters by the boxing ring, the spinning cycles, the sprawling regiment of weight machines and the workout room--with mirrors on one side and glass on the other three, there is no place to hide.

My friend shows up and we shuffle in. I am the only one not wearing black Lycra, a Mary Ann in a room full of Gingers. Ange Buckingham, our leader, backed by a drummer and a male vocalist, starts humming, then singing, urging us through a relatively sane low-impact routine. I had expected a row of women swaying in electric blue robes, but Ange & Co. work just fine. Her voice first gathers into a seamless, wordless melody, the song of blood rushing and muscles working. My friend and I, red-faced and sweating, exchange glances in the mirror; it is like listening to the creation of music and seeing how inseparable it is from movement.

There is an exuberance here that those of us raised in more, um, sedate faiths tend not to associate with Sunday. Being Catholic and too young to remember the giddy folk Mass days, I find the idea of roaring “Amen” while gyrating in shorts and my boyfriend’s T-shirt a tad discombobulating. I half expect Father Walter to appear, in his cassock and perpetual state of disapproval, to pluck me from the room by my ear.

We’re still humming, literally and figuratively, when we leave. Crunch is on the top floor of the mall containing the Laemmle Theatres and the Virgin Megastore. We check out the hip-hugged and Puma-ed crowd draped about Buzz coffeehouse and the Wolfgang Puck Cafe. Another, more specific, spiritual experience dawns--no wonder Noo Yawrkers fled to this spot. Here, at the mouth of the Sunset Strip, are sunshine, designer pizza, art movies, purty young thangs . . . well, swimmin’ pools, movie stars. Welcome to L.A.