Joe Gold R.I.P.

[Tim Wescott]

Gold`s Gym founder, and iron game legend Joe Gold, has passed away after years of deteriorating health.

Exact cause of death has not been determined, but they think it`s due to a stroke.

Joe also started the World gym chain and was a true legend in bodybuilding circles.
Never have I read one bad word concerning Joe,and he helped a lot of people and loved bodybuilding.

The sport will definately miss Joe.

RIP
LtoR: Dave Draper,Joe Gold,Zabo Kasewski,Eddie Guliani,and Lou Ferrigno.

[Tim Wescott]

A young Joe Gold!!

He practiced what he preached.

[Tim Wescott]

Joe with Franco Columbo,Frank Zane,and Arnold!

Thanks once again to my buddies at ironage for the great pics!!

[Tim Wescott]

Here`s a great article on Joe Gold by Flex magazine`s Greg Merrit!!

www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0KFY/is_1_20/ai_98432739

[Tim Wescott]

Governor Schwarzenegger Issues Statement on Death of Joe Gold of World's Gym

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today issued the following statement regarding the death of Joe Gold, founder of Gold's Gym and World's Gym:

"I am deeply saddened to learn of Joe Gold's death. Joe was a trusted friend and father figure and was instrumental in my training during my days as a bodybuilder. Gold's Gym was not only a training facility but it became a home to me. Joe was an inspiration to many and his death is felt deeply in the entire health and fitness community.

"In 1968 when I came to America, Gold's Gym was the gym where I first went to work out. Joe looked after me and encouraged me, and his dry sense of humor was a daily feature of the gym.

"Joe Gold was a bodybuilding legend, a pioneer, but above all, deep in his heart, he was a bodybuilding fan. The world will be the poorer for his loss. I will miss him as a dear friend of 36 years."

Born in Los Angeles in 1922, Joe Gold was a true bodybuilder whose love of the sport led him to create the modern gym chain operation, which included Gold's Gym and World's Gym. Gold joined the Navy during World War II and was injured during the Battle of Leyte, which took place in the Philippines in 1944. After the war, he joined the merchant marines and sailed around the world for the next 30 years. With every voyage he took a set of weights with him and built a great physique. In 1965, he opened the first Gold's Gym in Venice Beach, welding most of the equipment himself and designing unique machines that were beneficial to the serious competitive bodybuilder. He called it "the first gym made specifically for bodybuilders." Joe sold Gold's Gym in 1970 and resumed his career as a merchant marine. In 1977 Joe decided to open a new gym and so World's Gym was established. Today it is a global franchise, famous throughout the world, and even toward the end of his life, Joe could still be found at the front desk of the Marina Del Rey headquarters.

[GerryT]

Sad to hear, but he is also free of his suffering and in a better place.

He was indeed a legend in the sport and deserved the respect he had. Glad that he had a long and productive life. Sympathies to his family.

[ChrisC]

RIP Joe Gold

Reuters is running a respectful and interesting story on his passing...

I love the part about the $45 a year membership and six eggs and toast for a dollar. clearly someone who stayed involved in the sport for the love of lifting, not just another dollar.

God Bless Joe Gold.

Legendary Gym Founder Joe Gold Dies in Los Angeles
Mon Jul 12, 2004 10:06 PM ET

By Kevin Krolicki

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Joe Gold, who founded the legendary California gym that brought body building to the mainstream and became the launch pad for the career of Arnold Schwarzenegger, died on Sunday in a Los Angeles suburb, associates said on Monday. He was 82.

Gold, a Los Angeles native and lifelong bodybuilding enthusiast, opened the first Gold's Gym in Venice Beach, California, in 1965, calling it "the first gym made specifically for bodybuilders."

The unassuming storefront in a low-rent district attracted an international following and shot to fame as the setting for the 1977 documentary "Pumping Iron," featuring Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno.

Gold sold his namesake gym in the 1970s and went on to found Marina Del Rey, California-based World Gym, where he continued to work until near the end of his life. Both operations have grown into sprawling international chains.

Gold's Gym International was sold to privately held TRT Holdings, Inc., which owns Omni Hotels, last month in a deal the Los Angeles Times said was valued at $160 million.

Gold, who had carried dumbbells with him on merchant marine voyages for decades, hand-welded and designed much of the equipment in his original gym, including cable-based gear that bodybuilders came to rely on to push their muscles to exhaustion.

He also set the tone for the gym -- a tough-minded place where "the only music was sweating and grunting," said Michael Uretz, Gold's longtime friend and business partner at World Gym.

"He put his gym in a place where he wanted to be," Uretz said. "In the sun, on the beach and with cheap rent. Because in those days bodybuilders had no money."

In the years since, weight lifting went from the fringe to the mainstream, Venice became one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the United States, and Schwarzenegger, once an unknown Austrian immigrant, went on to become first a major Hollywood action star and then governor of California.

But in the early 197Os, Gold was still charging just $45 for a year membership and bodybuilders would crowd a nearby restaurant featuring six eggs and toast for $1, Uretz said.

Schwarzenegger issued a statement on Monday saying he was "deeply saddened" by Gold's death.

"Joe was a trusted friend and a father figure and was instrumental in my training during my days as a bodybuilder," Schwarzenegger said. "Gold's Gym was not only a training facility, but it became a home to me.

"In 1968, when I came to America, Gold's Gym was the gym where I first went to work out. Joe looked after me and encouraged me and his dry sense of humor was a daily feature of the gym," he said.

"He and Arnold really put fitness on the map," Uretz said. "And Joe did it by making gym equipment and by catering to the people he liked -- bodybuilders."

Gold, who had suffered from heart and kidney problems, had been hospitalized in Marina Del Rey on Friday.

A U.S. Navy veteran during World War II, Gold had also been troubled through his life by pain from a back injury he suffered during the 1944 Battle of Leyte when a torpedo blew up near his ship, Uretz said.

Gold was never married and leaves no survivors.

"All of us at Gold's Gym are saddened about the passing of Joe Gold," Gold's Gym International Chief Executive Gene LaMott said in a statement. "He was an icon in the bodybuilding and fitness industry and we will never forget his contributions."

[SCYankeeJay]

Rest In Peace Joe! Wow, I can't believe this! I hope he's in a better place now.

[ChrisC]

Anyone else catch this yesterday?

Robery Siegel did a great piece on Joe Gold on NPR. He interviews Harold Zinkin who shares his thoughts and stories of his friendship with Joe Gold.

www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3375027

Go to the page and click on the "All Things Considered, audio" link. The audio clip is about 5 minutes long.

[EricDonnelly]

From Dave Drapers weekly newsletter:

Joe Gold, a good friend, died this past Sunday night; he was 82 years old and heart complications earlier this year initiated a general downslide in his well being. He was active with projects till the end and recognized death as a place where he’d be "reunited with old friends."

He was a tough guy, an authority figure, straight as an arrow piercing the bull’s eye. He built his first Gold’s gym in Venice, California gym with his own hands and the hands of his buddies in 1964. You know the place; it’s where the Golden Era of bodybuilding was conceived and its rambunctious brats grew big and strong. The cinderblock workshop on Pacific Avenue was decked with muscle-building equipment of thick iron engineered and constructed by Joe Gold himself and amused and comforted a rare family of brothers. Artie Zeller, bodybuilding’s Van Gough with a Roloflex, composed inspirational portraits of the brawny gang as they restlessly played amid steel muscle-building contraptions, indestructible benches and superior pulley systems.

There’s a series of black and white photos taken in the summer of ’70 with Frank Zane, Franco, Katz, Arnold, Waller, Zabo and me barging about the upgraded, second-generation, ground-level dungeon. Bare stone walls and smooth-running, heavy metal torture racks stimulate and induce hard training and muscle growth. You can hear the weights rattle and clang as they’re loaded on bars, you can feel the strain of sinew and might under hot resistance and you understand muscular satisfaction with every strenuous exhale. The pictures speak, they tell the story.

From that knarly gym, the original among imitations, grew a large population of World Gyms (350 global), a non-pushy, responsible and respectful gym licensing company where fewer jerks and more cool people gather. Until April, Laree and I owned two WGs in central California.
After 15 years of duty to goodness, we passed the metal on to our dear friends and confidants. Everybody’s happy.

Running a gym is not a laughing matter, I discovered early on, and when confronted with an unknown I’d say, "What would Joe do?" An unknown was, in fact, anything and everything, including the layout of the gym equipment, the collection of past dues, breaking up a fight, implementing rules and regulations, asking troublemakers to leave and maintaining respect and responsibility. What am I, a cop?

"To keep it simple," Joe said, "you run your gym like you run your house.
Keep it clean and in good running order. No jerks allowed, members pay on time and if they give you any crap, throw them out. There’s peace where there’s order."

The gym became a sound refuge for many; it paid its bills and made no money, it sparkled, displayed no graffiti or broken windows and there was not a jerk in sight. All the troublemakers made their way to the gyms down the street or the next town over, where they were typical, packed jungles.
Thanks, Joe; if I had to do it over again, I’d follow your advice again.
Integrity before the dollar is worth a fortune.

Because of his authentic Muscle Beach-ness and Mae West days in Las Vegas, his innovative gym equipment design and gym-empire building, his generosity to the underdog, honesty, commonsense and worldly courage and stoicism, The Gold has become good and important things to many people.
He’s an icon in the subculture that is bodybuilding and physical culture.

An anonymous giver, Joe sort of took Arnold under his wing when the young lad from Austria first arrived in California. Only the folks who train in his gym knew he didn’t let Big Bill from Pennsylvania go hungry, unclothed and unsheltered for 25 years, though anyone else would have chased him away with a stick. If you were visiting from out of town and wanted a workout, the place was yours. He gave me woodworking projects when I was down and out, and paid me in advance so I could eat. Zabo, Eddie Giuliani, Steve Strong, Mike Uretz and Arnold will gladly take the microphone from my hand and tell stories of Joe’s armor-plated character and fighting spirit. Those who sailed with him during the years he toured as a merchant marine said the ships' captains came to rely on his steadfastness. Joe could poke fun at life without meanness or disrespect and had name for everybody shaped by their nature and mannerisms: The Chief, Nature Boy, 911, Bug Eyes, Slick Dick, X R, The Fish, Doctor Strangelove, The Good Wife, Cyclops.

He took risks when everyone else took shelter. He took aim when others took flight. He walked, hiked and trudged when others stumbled or pulled up lame. They simply don’t make them like that anymore. His broad smile lit up a room.

Sometime in 1967 -- spring, I think -- the Muscle Beach Dungeon was losing ground at its subterranean digs. It was then that I pulled up stakes and moved to Joe’s facility to carry on my training. Mr. America and Mr.
Universe were behind me and the continuation of bodybuilding as a competitive sport and the primary motivator in my life was questionable.
Like I say today, I said then, "Why? Time for a real job."

There I sat in Joe’s gym on the first day. It was early morning and the sun was blazing through the huge translucent windows facing Pacific Avenue in Venice. I hadn’t seen the sunlight this time of day for years, my customary position being at least 20 feet below ground level. I felt self conscious, almost naked, and the rags I noticed on my back were exactly
that: rags on my back. I could see this for the first time because there were mirrors on the walls the size of billboards. Who’s the creature? What kind of place is this? I felt as if I’d been extracted from my private and primal world against my will. I don’t need no stinking mirror to look at myself. What’s that, I hear voices! It sounds like people. There’s no shadows, no dark corners, no place out of plain view. They’ll see me if I don’t do something and quick.

I buried myself under a bench press. Works every time.

Once I got past the sunlight, mirrors and half-dozen morning people, fresh air and sense of the living and breathing, things really kicked in. Like, there were these incredible cable systems with real pulleys six inches in diameter for smooth-rolling action, not the kind of rope pulleys used for drying underwear in the backyard. There were rugged steel benches instead of colossal splintery wood structures, Olympic bars that weren’t bent like trailer truck springs and dumbbells that were balanced and machine bolted, not welded one drowsy afternoon in some beefy tan guy’s driveway. I felt modern, slightly spoiled and feared I‘d get soft, but soon realized gravity is gravity and might is might. Besides, all these contemporary conveniences bore the Joe Gold signature and they were guaranteed to build big muscles practically overnight. No one made the claim, but you could tell by the way they felt. Just right.

Old Bombers never die, they just fly away. If you see an airborne craft on the horizon tipping its wings, it’s probably The Gold saying, "Press on."

Go with God... Dave