It would seem that there are a pretty fair number of active types who may be just like the average Joes outside local bars. Rather than filling their calendars with coffee shop and cocktail outings and stretching their budget for a non-generic cigarette, these people consider outings to gyms and trail circuits more their speed, with budgetary consideration weighing on the side of new gear and health food.



This is a new column for them.



I’ll try to pick a point of healthy lifestyle in Tacoma that comes across my path, and enlighten dear readers who may be hung over as they peruse this fine rag prior to that SOS breakfast, along with those fine readers drinking herbal tea at the Antique Sandwich Company after running Point Defiance Park’s Five Mile Drive.



I’ll start with a tiny slice of observed gym culture that overlaps bar culture.

In bar culture urinal etiquette is key, as I have been told by my male friends. Women don’t have the same restroom issues, but then, we don’t exactly whip it out and race for first stream while avoiding standing close to the next guy, because we have private little stalls where we can be discrete and womanly.



But wait! There’s a vestige of this phenomenon at play at the gym. Perhaps the idea started with men who may have viewed banks of treadmills with their practiced urinal-viewing eyes.



Now note that in the gym men rarely make a move to a treadmill right next to another runner. And women seem to be the same way. Maybe it’s seen as a challenge, a subtle “wanna race?” nod that can come across threateningly, and so it’s avoided.



Similarly, in the open showers at several gyms I’ve been to, the phenomenon continues in the privacy of the women’s rooms. One marked difference is that once women begin chatting — even while soaping up private parts, the “wall” is down.



Men, I have been told, don’t ever chat at the urinal.



Do they chat at the shower? I’ve been told, no.



A connected phenomenon that I’ve been told also exists in the world of men’s locker rooms is the one I call Murphy’s Law of Lockers: Even if you choose a locker on the end adjacent to lockers that don’t appear to be occupied, as you get dressed, you will have at least two wet and naked booties next to you.



Here, the no-chat law of urinal etiquette seems to apply.



To which I wonder: what’s up with that?