MEDFORD, Mass. — Many people look for convenience when shopping around for gym memberships. But now there may be one more item on the checklist: what is the city or town’s mask rule?
Blink Fitness owner Steve Sabile said he has a different set of rules at his two locations.
“In Medford, we have a mask mandate; in Beverly, we don’t because it is community by community,” Stabile said.
Stabile added different rules in different communities can make it challenging.
“To monitor it and have […] enough [staff] to be able to police it all day long,” Stabile said.
Stanley Francios works out just up the street in Malden where there currently is no mask mandate.
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“I prefer not to wear the mask because it is easier to work out without the mask, easier to breath,” Fancios said.
He added that he would drive up to 10 miles to do a mask-free workout.
Some of Boston’s gyms put out an official request to the mayor for a mask mandate exemption in their industry citing the customers switching to gyms in communities without mask mandates. In a written statement a spokesperson for Mayor Kim Janey told us the following:
Boston’s indoor mask mandate helps slow the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant among vaccinated people, as well as unvaccinated people. Mayor Janey will continue to follow public health data, support local businesses, and ask everyone to do their part in Boston’s recovery, reopening, and renewal from the ongoing pandemic.
Blink Fitness is not sure if the mask mandate is sending any of their customers away, but many of their customers have no problem sticking to the rules.
“I’m fine with the mask,” one customer said.
“I don’t do too much cardio. I usually do a lot of strength training, so it hasn’t really bothered me,” another customer said.
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