u/SquiddySen

TLDR: I joined Crunch mainly because it has an indoor basketball court, but it's booked almost every weekday during prime hours by outside leagues, camps, and private reservations. It feels frustrating to pay a higher membership for an amenity that's rarely available, and I'm also wondering if people coming in for these events end up using the rest of the gym for free afterward. Is this normal at other Crunch locations?

So I just joined my local Crunch, and one of the main reasons I picked this location was because it has an indoor basketball court. The problem is that every time I go, the court is occupied by an outside league, a kids' camp, or some other reserved event.

It honestly feels a little misleading because having a basketball court bumps this location into a higher membership tier, so I'm paying more specifically for an amenity that I can rarely use. That seems like a pretty bad deal for members.

I asked one of the employees if the court was always this busy, and he was nice enough to show me the schedule. It's booked every weekday from 6–9 PM, which is basically prime time for anyone with a normal work schedule.

I also talked to another member during one of the rare times the court was actually open, and he told me he and 15 friends pooled their money to reserve it every Friday for the next three months. When I started talking to him, he politely mentioned that if I wanted to run a game of pickup I should do it "soon" because him and his friends had booked the court for private play.

I understand why Crunch does this—it's obviously another source of revenue—but it's frustrating that anyone can pay to reserve the court and effectively block paying gym members from using an amenity that's one of the reasons they joined in the first place.

It also made me wonder what happens after these leagues or reservations end. Do those people just stick around and use the rest of the gym? I mean, why wouldn't they? They already walked in for the event, and I can't imagine anyone is checking whether they leave afterward. If that's the case, it feels even worse knowing members are paying for access while non-members might be getting to use the rest of the facility for free.

Is this normal at other Crunch locations, or is my gym an outlier?

TLDR: Just say no and save an hour of your time.

The kickoff session was honestly a complete waste of time. It was sold to me as a body scan assessment with some feedback on the results. I figured there would be a little bit of a personal training sales pitch mixed in, but in reality, the majority of the session was exactly that, just a sales pitch.

I recently joined Crunch with the Peak Results membership, and I'm already pretty active and knowledgeable when it comes to working out and training. The main reason I agreed to do the kickoff session was because the person who sold me the membership mentioned it included a body scan that measures things like BMI, body fat percentage, and other metrics. For an extra $10, I thought why not? I've always wanted to get it done but I was told I'd have to go to like a clinic of something. They told me they had a means to do it onsite so I figured f-it, 2 birds with 1 stone.

The session basically broke down like this:

• About 25 minutes of sales pitches and being told how this training program could completely change my life.
• Around 10 minutes for the body scan, which immediately lost credibility with me when I saw the height measurement. I know how tall I am, and the scan had me listed 4.5 inches shorter. At that point, I was pretty much checked out and assumed the rest of the data was probably questionable too. We only spent a couple of minutes reviewing the results anyway.
• Then came the workout, which was fine, but nothing particularly interesting or eye-opening. I already knew personal training wasn't what I was looking for, so it didn't do much for me.

Overall, if you're doing it specifically for the body scan, I wouldn't get your hopes up. If you're genuinely interested in personal training, you might get more value out of it, but for me it felt like a long sales presentation with a quick body scan and workout tacked on at the end.

Not sure if this is the best place to ask, but does anyone know of a shop in the San Fernando Valley or even greater LA that does custom costume or prop fabrication?

Long story short, I'm getting married soon, and as part of my culture's wedding ceremony, the groom wears a headpiece called a Topor. I ordered one from a seller on Etsy that shipped all the way from India, but it arrived completely crushed. I managed to salvage it enough to make it usable, but I'm not happy with how it looks.

The seller sent a replacement, but unfortunately international shipping got the better of that one too, and it arrived in pretty much the same condition.

Since we're so close to Hollywood and the film industry, I was wondering if there are any shops that could use my damaged Topor as a reference and recreate something similar from scratch.

The frustrating part is that these are nearly impossible to find in Southern California. There aren't many local Indian shops that carry traditional Bengali wedding items like this, so finding a replacement locally hasn't been an option.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated or if I just suck at sniffing out niche shops and anyone knows of a place that sells these that would be amazing.

I added some photos of how it arrived and how I was able to salvage it to its current state.