I visited Vince's Gym only one time, in the late 80's and it was an experience.

Vince was nice enough but when I asked where the bathroom was he asked "do you just need to piss?"

"Uh, yes."

"Then piss on the damn wall like everybody else does!"

Sure enough, I noticed others indeed made trips out the back door into the parking lot and come back in. That was the toilet.

As I recall, "Larry Scott's Locker Room" was a few hooks on the wall.

We stopped off at Joe Gold's gym so Arnold could see Zabo Koszewski. When we arrived Zabo showed him around and introduced him to Peanuts West, who was pushing some iron at the time.

Later, we went to a restaurant in Santa Monica. Arnold was so hungry he nearly ate the design off the plate. Zeller, no slouch in the eating department, decided he would have a salad because he had already had a full dinner earlier. He then proceeded to eat whatever he could find from other people's plates.

Zabo had to get back to the gym, so he took off in that direction, while Arnold, Art and I went to Art's apartment to see Art's wife, Josie. Josie comes from Germany and we thought Arnold might enjoy speaking his native tongue.

Time rushed by and before we knew it, it was time to meet Don Peters at his home. Don had been kind enough to offer his fabulous house to Arnold for a few days until he could find an apartment. This house is the one with the fantastic home gym, swimming pool, professional pool table, color TV, palm trees and genuine California sunshine.

After a few days in this perfect place, Arnold moved into an apartment that happens to be a block or so away from Vince's Gym, so you can guess where he's training now. Every morning at Vince's and every evening at Don Peters, this massive Austrian Oak bombs his muscles.

I recently asked Vince how Arnold was doing and I thought he was going to mount a bandstand to tell me.

"He's a vast untapped reservoir of unused tissue."

"What do you mean by that?" I asked.

"For one thing he's never used a preacher bench before; he's never trained his legs or shoulders correctly and only recently has he started working his waist hard and started taking supplements of any kind. The other day I put him on a new deltoid exercise and you could see the insertion in the humerous literally burst out of the skin while he was doing it, only to disappear when the pump was gone."

Now Vince looked at me seriously.

"Dick, I guarantee in six months he'll put two inches on his arms and three inches on his shoulders. That's six months from now."

"But how will he cram on all that size?"

Vince walked away with a knowing smile. Don't worry though, I'll find out and let you in on any secrets. The Austrian Oak is in town and you'll get all the information from Vince's Italian Riviera.

Rare photos of Vince's Gym in its heyday.

Take a look at Vince's Gym on 31 December 2003.

John Balik remembers Vince Gironda.