To the untrained eye, the assortment of bars used for pull-ups, dips, and hanging leg raises in the corner of Tompkins Square Park looks a bit worse for wear.
But the motley crew of calisthenics enthusiasts who gather here swears they don’t make them as they used to — and they must be preserved.
“If you grab these bars, they actually feel different,” said personal trainer Danny Kavadlo during a recent morning session. “ As far as I understand, these bars were built with Canadian steel, and the new stuff that's getting built now is not.”
The New York City Parks Department is considering replacing these bars as part of a nearly $10 million plan to upgrade and expand the nearby mini-pool. Many New Yorkers might welcome a multi-million-dollar investment in their local park. But the devotees hope the city can sidestep the jungle gym during the renovation.
Kavadlo, the author of books such as “Street Workout” and “Diamond-Cut Abs,” said the bars have been seasoned by years of use.
“You literally have the blood, sweat, and tears of calisthenics athletes and non-athletes and the community putting their hands on these bars and getting strong together, and that you can't manufacture or quantify,” he said.
Nearly 2,000 people have signed a Change.org petition to “save” the fitness area.
Stephon Stallworth of Brooklyn does pull-ups at Tompkins Square Park.
The group devoted to Tompkins’ bars is diverse in age and ability. Weekdays tend to be quieter, with most working out in rubber-palmed gloves and headphones. Weekends can get wild, with the hardcore calisthenics athletes performing aerial tricks while music blares from a boombox.
“ A lot of the gang, we love these bars,” said 79-year-old Dennis Parlato. “Don’t touch them.”
He has been using the exercise bars for the past two decades, he said, adding that the city should use the money elsewhere.
“ Why are they so insistent on repairing things that are in great shape in a city where every penny could be used for so many other needy things?” Parlato said.
The current exercise bars date back to 1990. They sit in the northeast corner of the park, next to a pair of basketball courts and a dilapidated above-ground children’s pool.
The Parks Department wants to demolish the old pool and build a larger in-ground pool with a wider deck. But key piping and plumbing lines run underneath the courts and fitness area, according to city officials.
Councilmember Harvey Epstein, who represents the East Village, said he was initially surprised by the backlash to the project.
“You have to respect that people like the equipment and use it every day, and that we have to figure out a way to make this work for all New Yorkers,” he said. “This is our responsibility. It’s their park.”
Devotees of Tompkins Square Park's bars want the city to preserve them.
Epstein stressed that nobody opposes upgrading the pool. He said he’s asking the Parks Department whether there’s a way to replace the underground piping without disturbing the fitness area.
“That’s the million-dollar question Parks has to answer,” Epstein said.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the Parks Department said planners are still in the “early design stages,” and that community input would be incorporated along the way.
Tompkins Square Park, the heart of the East Village, has long fostered something of an iconoclastic streak.
It’s the site of multiple riots. In more recent years, a group of skateboarders and street hockey players organized to oppose a Parks Department plan to cover a patch of barren concrete with turf. The city eventually dropped the plans and instead repaired the asphalt and added new features for the skateboarders.
The exercise bar fanatics now hope they can score a win like the skateboarders.
“It looks simple, but this s--t means a lot to us,” said Avenue D resident Jahmal Kirwan, who also raps under the name Manhattan Mal. “It looks like a bulls--t jungle gym, but this is a real gym.”
Kirwan said working out at the exercise bars helped keep him out of trouble as a kid. He said he and his friends now teach other children in the neighborhood how to use them.
“Keep the bars,” he said. “Keep Tompkins.”
