Flash vs. cash

In New York, Adam Berke and his gym would be big hits. This isn't New York.

Business by Yvonne Abraham

He has soaked up buckets of free ink and adulation from glossy magazines. Vogue crowned him one of the hottest trainers in the country. GQ called his gym the best in Boston. Women's Sport and Fitness said it was one of the 10 best in America. And Boston magazine's recent "Best of Boston" issue gave him awards for Best Personal Trainer and Best Public Sculpture, putting Adam Berke's physique on a par with Mark Wahlberg's prosthesis in Boogie Nights. The magazine also devoted a full page to a color photograph of him, naked save for a towel held coyly over his number-one member, pumped and verily rippling in his own locker room. ("A few sessions with personal trainer Adam Berke will turn you into a prime cut," Boston gushed.)

Berke has become quite the fixture among the city's Versace set -- his ample frame crammed into all manner of flashy suits at Oskar's and M-80, his longish flattop perfectly frosted, his square jaw set permanently to brood.

Yes, these should be the best of times. But for Adam Berke and his eponymous gym, these look more like . . . well, the times look pretty bad.

Take just a few steps into the Adam Berke Gym, and it is clear that serious money was dropped on the place even before its first members signed up last fall. It's chic-looking, with a charcoal-gray décor and the moody lighting found in stylish restaurants. No oiled-up Weider-body posters taped to these walls -- at the Adam Berke Gym, there is art: a witty play on Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam, tasteful nudes, and the like.

There is also space. The whole gym takes up several storefronts on Boylston Street, in the Fenway, and there's plenty of room to mill about around the treadmills, the stationary bikes, and the Treadwall between sets. Behind the main reception area is the weight room, where a score of small, tastefully framed mirrors line a wall. That's so each patron has personal territory in which to check his or her form on squats and curls: Adam, as your tour guide will tell you, knows how frustrating it can be to fight for mirror space. Close by is a bar (offering cereal, juice, and, until recently, wine), which Berke seems to have intended as the kind of flatteringly lit social setting the rest of the facility evokes.

A narrow spiral staircase leads to the second floor -- the offices and the locker rooms, which are labeled ESTROGEN and TESTOSTERONE and are lavishly appointed in a minimalistic, Philippe Starck-ish way. There is much mirror.

But not many people to reflect. Even during peak hours -- say, at 6 p.m. on a Monday -- only a handful of exercisers use the treadmills and the weights. The gym, say some, is close to extinction. Some critics argue that its struggles are a testament to the fact that selling Berke and selling his gym have not turned out to be the same thing. Industry sources say Bostonians are practical about their workouts: appeals to their sense of elitism simply won't work here the way they might in New York or LA. But that's only part of the problem. Berke's father -- and a slew of unhappy creditors -- maintain that the gym's biggest handicap is Adam Berke himself. (Although Adam Berke spoke briefly with the Phoenix for an article in September, he declined verbal and written requests to be interviewed for this story.)

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At first, Berke tried to position the gym as the classiest in the city: memberships went for as much as $1500 a year. It was the kind of place where modish society ladies could be among their own. Euros could drive their convertibles a couple of blocks south of the Lansdowne Street clubs and feel right at home, firming their bits in an environment that looked more like what they were used to than the fluoro-lit sweatshops where baseball-capped college students work out.

But what sounded good in theory has proved much more difficult to pull off in practice. Because even style mavens need convenience, and for all its visual splendor, the Adam Berke Gym has been short on that.

Where, for example, could members park their convertibles once they got to Boylston Street? In the midst of a strip that hosts a White Hen Pantry, the Ramrod nightclub, an Osco Pharmacy, and a McDonald's, the gym is right at the heart of Red Sox game-day traffic hell. Even during the winter there is precious little parking. Nor does the facility's Fenway neighborhood boast the kind of residents who can afford $1500 a year and walk to the gym: it is too far from the affluent Back Bay and too close to the relatively poor, densely packed student colonies of Peterborough and Queensberry Streets.

"That club would do very well in Chestnut Hill," says Jonas Thompson, owner of Club Fitness, in Somerville. "It's very obvious why he's not doing well. That place looks like a beautiful restaurant from France. Average people won't come because they're afraid to touch the wall and sit down. You're afraid to sweat in there."

Other industry sources question whether a gym like the Adam Berke, with its reliance on image -- especially that of its namesake -- could work even in Chestnut Hill.

"He promotes himself too much," says Thompson. "He should promote the club." Thing is, local fitness enthusiasts are not overwhelmingly concerned with image, period, say other gym owners. "The typical profile of a health-club member in Boston is one who is really serious about

fitness," says Mark Harrington, president of Healthworks Fitness Centers, a successful chain of four local gyms. "New York and the West Coast are driven by glitz and star aerobic instructors and personal trainers who have big names. In this city, people are much more concerned with fitting their exercise into their lifestyle. They want convenience and great facilities, and they don't necessarily need the fluff."

All of which has precipitated something of an identity crisis at 1260 Boylston Street. Having begun by positioning itself as the city's most exclusive gym, the Adam Berke a few months ago offered full-year memberships for as little as $99, a price even the rabble could afford.

"In general, if I saw an ad for a gym showing memberships for $99 a year, I would think it was going out of business," says Paul Cristostamo of Mike's Gym, in the South End.

The number of members a gym has is obviously central to its financial well-being, as is the price of those memberships. Some creditors are clearly worried and have sued to secure payments they say the gym owes them. A search of Boston Municipal Court records reveals four civil suits and two small-claims suits against Berke and his gym, which has just celebrated its first anniversary (to mark the occasion, it is offering yearly memberships for just $199 -- more than the special deal of a few months ago, but still an enormous reduction over the original rates.)

Splash, a Newton kitchen and bath company that supplied fixtures for the gym, brought a suit against Berke for $5285 worth of bathroom hardware, for which it received a default judgment (Berke did not show up in court). That debt is now paid. WBCN, which broadcasts from a building across the street from the gym, sued Berke for $3975 in unpaid advertising. LAZ Parking, which leased 30 spaces to the gym when it opened, has sued Berke's company for $3600. "Let's put it this way," says LAZ president Jeffrey N. Karp. "We haven't had a professional response from Berke. Or a professional relationship." The Improper Bostonian has just filed a lawsuit against Berke's company for $12,886.75 worth of advertising. (Berke also owes money for advertising to Stuff@Night, which is owned by the same company as the Phoenix.)

Meanwhile, there is a small-claims suits against Berke from a woman who had used him as a personal trainer and felt she'd been overcharged (the court agreed and ordered Berke to repay her). There is another claim brought by a woman who says Berke promised a refund of her $999 membership fee when she became pregnant and moved to New York at the end of last year. She still hasn't received a dime. That case, too, was won by default when Berke did not show up for hearings.

At first, says the woman's husband, David Thompson, who is dealing with the gym on her behalf, Berke gave verbal assurances that he would repay the money. Then, he says, Berke stopped taking his calls altogether. Then, Thompson says, the gym changed accountants; the new person promised payment. A couple of months ago, he says, the new accountant told him the gym would be filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and wouldn't be paying him after all. Although rumors that he will declare bankruptcy persist, Berke has not filed for Chapter 11 and denies that he is in any financial trouble.

Berke is no stranger to bankruptcy proceedings, however. He declared Chapter 7 -- personal bankruptcy -- in June of 1995. The then-31-year-old had amassed $46,112 in debts he could not pay, including almost $17,000 in federal taxes and $17,000 to GMAC for a car.

Nor is he unfamiliar with court intervention in his financial affairs. Late last year, he was arrested for bouncing a check to a company called Salleses and Sons, which had supplied metal lockers, to the tune of $2199.35. He forfeited his $2200 bail to settle the debt.

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It was his current financial situation that Adam Berke and his father, Carl Berke III, were arguing about in the gym on the afternoon of Friday, September 4, 1998.

Although the two Berkes see the events of that day differently, each agrees that a physical confrontation took place. Carl Berke says he'd contributed $100,000 to the gym and was part-owner, and that he tried to talk to his son about what he says are the gym's chaotic finances. "He has a high profile, and that's all he wants," says Carl. "The gym could succeed if he didn't spend money on the high life." He says Adam lost it, and began beating on him.

"I told him, `I can't give you any more money,' " Berke the elder says. "That angered him." Carl Berke says Adam picked him up and threw him into a chrome and glass desk, then into a wall, and stomped on him.

In a brief interview with the Phoenix in the café at his gym back in early September, Adam Berke shook his head when told of his father's allegations. He spoke quietly as his wife, Catherine Mattaliano, squeezed his shoulder. He said his father came to the gym drunk that afternoon and tried to strike his wife. "I'll never allow anyone to touch my wife," Adam said. Carl Berke, he insisted, does not own any interest in the gym: "Catherine and I are the only ones with ownership. My father has no right to be here." Carl Berke denies all of this.

Records at the Secretary of State's office list only Adam Berke as the officeholder of the gym's holding company, Size and Symmetry. Carl says he owns 30 percent. Carl also says that local businessman Doug Noble owns an interest in the gym, too: it was Noble who signed a promissory note to the Improper Bostonian, before it brought its lawsuit against Berke's company. Noble maintains that he has never owned a share of the business, and that he was just helping out his friend Berke when the gym first opened.

Much of the fighting took place in the entrance area of the club, in full view of club workers and patrons. Police broke it up; the incident report lists the father as the perpetrator and Adam Berke as the victim. Still, it was Carl Berke who was taken by ambulance to Beth Israel Hospital, and Carl Berke who required several staples for a deep cut in his head.

The father has pressed criminal charges against his son, and on Friday, September 25, they met before a magistrate at Roxbury District Court, who allowed Carl's criminal complaint to go forward. Adam Berke will be arraigned on October 16 for assaulting his father. "I've got to admit," says Carl, "part of this is vengeful. But I have mixed emotions. He's my son. He's got to get treated. Not [sent] to prison, where he won't get help."

Carl Berke, a slight, soft-spoken 57-year-old with curly gray-black hair, maintains that Adam has been violent before, and that he is pressing charges this time because he's afraid his son "is going to get killed or kill someone" unless he gets help. He took out a restraining order against his son and daughter-in-law to keep them away from Carl's Milford home. Meanwhile, Adam and his wife have filed their own restraining orders, not only against Carl but against Adam's brother, Joshua.

It's all a long way from the elegant, understated image Adam Berke has been trying to project for his gym. But, as the past year has demonstrated, it's not easy being beautiful.

Yvonne Abraham can be reached at yabraham[a]phx.com.