Grunting in East Side Gym Class Leads to Hospital, and to Court Stuart Sugarman was exercising the way he had hundreds of times before.
He arrived at the Equinox gym on the Upper East Side 30 minutes before the start of spin class and signed up for the stationary bike on the left side of the room. He adjusted the bike for his hefty frame and clicked his specialty cycling shoes into the pedals.
And as the class got going, Mr. Sugarman, a senior partner at an investment firm, began the most conspicuous part of his ritual: his loud noises.
“You go, girl!” “Good burn!” “This is great!” Those are all phrases, Mr. Sugarman said on Wednesday, that he might well have screamed. When you’re getting pumped up, he said, “it’s all very normal responses.”
But on Aug. 15, 2007, Christopher Carter, a Manhattan stockbroker two bikes down, could not take another of Mr. Sugarman’s groans. After words were exchanged, Mr. Carter hopped off his bike and charged toward Mr. Sugarman “like a football player,” Mr. Sugarman said.
Mr. Carter grabbed the bike by the handlebars, raised the front end off the ground, driving the rear of the bike into a wall, and then let the bike go, Mr. Sugarman said. The impact of the drop, Mr. Sugarman said, has caused chronic neck and back pain.
Now, Mr. Carter, 45, is on trial in Manhattan Criminal Court, charged with assault. He faces up to a year in prison if convicted on the misdemeanor charge.
On Wednesday, the second day of the trial, the two men were face to face for the first time since the incident.
The case could be seen as a cautionary tale for New Yorkers with outsized personal habits — or bystanders who are easily irritated.
Mr. Sugarman, 49, sees himself as the victim of an unreasonable man having a bad day. Hospitalized for two weeks after the incident, with part of the time in intensive care, he contended that his actions during spin class were in line with what athletes do.
“Like any sporting pursuit,” he said, “you get pumped up.”
Because of his injuries, Mr. Sugarman said, he is no longer able to golf, hike, cycle or participate in other sports as he had done five or six days a week.
To the defense, Mr. Sugarman was as much the aggressor as Mr. Carter. He is exaggerating his injuries and Mr. Carter’s actions, the defense has argued.
“The complaining witness is not to be believed,” said Michael Farkas, the lawyer for Mr. Carter. “This is all an attempt to manipulate the criminal justice system to his own ends.”
Mr. Sugarman, who sometimes goes by the nickname Shug, testified that he had not filed a civil lawsuit. But he has retained Samuel L. Davis, a personal-injury lawyer from Teaneck, N.J. Mr. Davis declined to comment on whether his client would sue.
Mr. Sugarman, who is about 5 feet 11 and said he weighed 204 pounds, limped into the courtroom Wednesday morning. His neck appeared stiff.
He spoke softly before a jury of six. Some of his testimony was inconsistent with accounts given by two other witnesses who testified on Wednesday. He was often combative with Mr. Farkas on cross-examination, twisting his red face, sighing and offering up pointed rejoinders.
The judge admonished both Mr. Farkas, for comments he made between questions, and Mr. Sugarman, for not answering questions.
Mr. Sugarman described his grunts as “expelling air” and said that others in class sometimes appreciate the noises he makes because it motivates them.
From the start of the class, Mr. Sugarman testified, Mr. Carter was scowling. It became clear, Mr. Sugarman said, that Mr. Carter was agitated with him when he went over to one of the two spin instructors and said something. The instructor simply shrugged, Mr. Sugarman said.
Mr. Carter returned to his bike and, using an obscenity, yelled for him to shut up, Mr. Sugarman said. He said his initial reaction was a shrug.
But after Mr. Carter continued to swear at him, Mr. Sugarman said, he responded: “You don’t have to be such a baby. If you don’t like the class, there’s the door to the right; just leave.”
That was when Mr. Carter charged him, Mr. Sugarman testified. As Mr. Carter held up the bike, he looked Mr. Sugarman in the eyes and swore at him, Mr. Sugarman said.
After the incident, Mr. Sugarman said, he stayed and pedaled slowly for the final 15 minutes of the class, despite attempts by the club manager to make him leave, because he was in searing pain and wanted to figure out what he should do. He also was embarrassed in the class of mostly women, he said.
“I wanted to be a guy,” he said. “I wanted to muscle through it.”
One of the instructors in the spin class testified that he asked Mr. Sugarman to quiet down after Mr. Carter complained and that the two began arguing as he stood between them.
Earlier Wednesday, Dr. Sherri Sandel, a physician who was in the spin class, testified that after Mr. Carter told Mr. Sugarman to shut up, Mr. Sugarman responded, “Make me.”
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Lunk Alarm! part 2
This from the NYT today. I've highlighted particularly relevant passages for your reading convenience and pleasure.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Oh, it is Ber-Ought-En
Things have slacked off a bit lately in our small corner of the Bloggerverse. I blame this half-ass-idaisical weather, which has been bumming me out for the greater part of a month. Well, really ever since school got out. I submitted grades and then a few days later launched straight into my traditional summer program of working thirty hours a week at my other, non-academic job, squeezing as much academic work as possible into the remaining daylight hours when I'm not punching the clock, and having as close as I can get to a relaxing summer with what remains of the time. It sounds harried and hectic, right? Do those mean the same thing? But, it's really not so bad. Truth be told, yours truly gets more than a little weird when I have too much time on my hands. I still amuse (mostly myself) with my story about what happened the last time I was a little too idle. Bear with me.
I was living alone in an apartment in my hometown the summer after I graduated from college. I had a job working, I think, at one of those corporate electronics retail places. Like Best Buy, but not. If memory serves, I wasn't reading anything at all, though it's difficult to imagine that now with the pace I usually maintain. Instead, I was spending forty hours a week (a fat $1100/month) selling and stocking cds. The highlight of that job, incidentally, was listening to people sing. Of course, some of the singing was bad. Think people who don't know they're looking for Chumbawumba crooning a couple bars of "Oh, Danny Boy..." Not that singing. I liked it when people would be listening to cds, and they would kind of lose their grasp on what was going on in the world around them. Rather understated people would suddenly start singing the ubiquitous Goo Goo Dolls song (everyone remember "Iris"?) or Third Eye Blind or whatever. I loved that. Sometimes, what was even better, were the people who would pick their own cd to listen to. These folks were mostly No Limit Soldiers, though I doubt very much Master P would have given them the nod. There were also your metal heads and jazz folks. Some strippers, a handful of concerned moms. The coolest of these listeners was a ten year old girl belting out "Like a Virgin" on a busy Saturday afternoon. Really, it was almost as though the presence of headphones and music took everything else out of the picture. When they could no longer hear the bustle of the retail gambit going on all around them, they simply behaved as though the souls occupying that bustle couldn't hear them either. They always reminded me of the whitetail deer, which roam around the hills where one set of my parents live. They have such bad eyesight that they think that if they hold very still, you can't see them. You know, they can't see you, you can't see them. The metaphor works, right?
Anyway, so this post-graduation summer, as I dated around aimlessly a little bit before giving up in abject frustration, I was bored. Or maybe a better way to describe it would be to say that I had gone from taking eighteen credits and working forty hours to just working forty hours. I didn't know what the fuck to do with myself. And quite honestly, I can't remember what I did do. I wasn't running or cooking at the time, both things that take up a lot of my time now when I'm not reading or writing or fretting. What I do remember is coming home one day and determining to call the phone company to shut the thing off. I had decided, rashly as it turns out, to withdraw utterly from the world. With the spare exception of the forty hours a week I spent working retail. I was pretty set on it, and I couldn't tell you why I decided against it in the long run. Maybe my better self stepped in and reminded my everyday idiot to relax a little bit. Maybe I just got distracted. Most likely, it's the latter. It was a dark hour, my friends, and a good example of what can happen if you let your world shrink to the size of your head.
I guess what I'm trying to say, in a bright hour, and to quote our brave leader, is this: Bring it on.
I was living alone in an apartment in my hometown the summer after I graduated from college. I had a job working, I think, at one of those corporate electronics retail places. Like Best Buy, but not. If memory serves, I wasn't reading anything at all, though it's difficult to imagine that now with the pace I usually maintain. Instead, I was spending forty hours a week (a fat $1100/month) selling and stocking cds. The highlight of that job, incidentally, was listening to people sing. Of course, some of the singing was bad. Think people who don't know they're looking for Chumbawumba crooning a couple bars of "Oh, Danny Boy..." Not that singing. I liked it when people would be listening to cds, and they would kind of lose their grasp on what was going on in the world around them. Rather understated people would suddenly start singing the ubiquitous Goo Goo Dolls song (everyone remember "Iris"?) or Third Eye Blind or whatever. I loved that. Sometimes, what was even better, were the people who would pick their own cd to listen to. These folks were mostly No Limit Soldiers, though I doubt very much Master P would have given them the nod. There were also your metal heads and jazz folks. Some strippers, a handful of concerned moms. The coolest of these listeners was a ten year old girl belting out "Like a Virgin" on a busy Saturday afternoon. Really, it was almost as though the presence of headphones and music took everything else out of the picture. When they could no longer hear the bustle of the retail gambit going on all around them, they simply behaved as though the souls occupying that bustle couldn't hear them either. They always reminded me of the whitetail deer, which roam around the hills where one set of my parents live. They have such bad eyesight that they think that if they hold very still, you can't see them. You know, they can't see you, you can't see them. The metaphor works, right?
Anyway, so this post-graduation summer, as I dated around aimlessly a little bit before giving up in abject frustration, I was bored. Or maybe a better way to describe it would be to say that I had gone from taking eighteen credits and working forty hours to just working forty hours. I didn't know what the fuck to do with myself. And quite honestly, I can't remember what I did do. I wasn't running or cooking at the time, both things that take up a lot of my time now when I'm not reading or writing or fretting. What I do remember is coming home one day and determining to call the phone company to shut the thing off. I had decided, rashly as it turns out, to withdraw utterly from the world. With the spare exception of the forty hours a week I spent working retail. I was pretty set on it, and I couldn't tell you why I decided against it in the long run. Maybe my better self stepped in and reminded my everyday idiot to relax a little bit. Maybe I just got distracted. Most likely, it's the latter. It was a dark hour, my friends, and a good example of what can happen if you let your world shrink to the size of your head.
I guess what I'm trying to say, in a bright hour, and to quote our brave leader, is this: Bring it on.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Friday, May 2, 2008
Chapter What-ish
I was going to title this blog entry, "Facing the Muzak," but then figured that that bit is probably more than a little played out. So here we are with "Chapter What-ish." Why? Because I, like so many people I know right now, am up to my neck in dissertation chapters, revisions, etc. The "facing the muzak" temptation comes in because I just got back from the "required" department meeting for grad students planning on going on the job market in the fall. This, of course, is terrifying for more reasons than I'd care to enumerate, but suffice it to say, I left the meeting feeling oddly...hopeful. I was prepared to be lectured and chided for my insufficient preparation, but these are, I'm increasingly realizing, my own personal bogeys. In fact, the placement officer is so remarkable. She's so fucking intelligent and articulate and goofy and human all at the same time. I emphasize the human bit because when people in the academy truly freak me out, like, at the level of Ardelia Knightley (if we all remember her?), it's because they don't seem human. That's probably not accurate. It's more like they are so invested in defending with their very last breath the illusion that they are this bizarre, epistemologically privileged composite of academic wisdom, which makes them completely, apparently, devoid of irony, facetiousness, and the capacity for self-denigration and self-abasement of any sort. Fucking weird, you know? This is a long way of saying that this woman is amazing. And *cou-hot-gh*. Ahem.
Back to my newly discovered hopefulness. I've been focusing lately, inspired, I'll admit, in some degree by QC (and mrtreetop) in their admirable pursuit for self-improvement. While I have yet to take the plunge, what with the chanting and all that (though I've promised QC to try it sometime soon, and I will) the important idea is clearly developing one's capacity for introspection, for seeing the painful truths and delusions that govern our lives, and for taking proactive measures to adjust these painful truths as necessary. To disillusion oneself, say. Or something. With that in mind, I'm trying to focus on being just a little bit less my own worst, most crippling adversary.
Sorry for the earnestness. Have a lolcat.
see more
Back to my newly discovered hopefulness. I've been focusing lately, inspired, I'll admit, in some degree by QC (and mrtreetop) in their admirable pursuit for self-improvement. While I have yet to take the plunge, what with the chanting and all that (though I've promised QC to try it sometime soon, and I will) the important idea is clearly developing one's capacity for introspection, for seeing the painful truths and delusions that govern our lives, and for taking proactive measures to adjust these painful truths as necessary. To disillusion oneself, say. Or something. With that in mind, I'm trying to focus on being just a little bit less my own worst, most crippling adversary.
Sorry for the earnestness. Have a lolcat.
see more
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