A piece of history...Original Gold's Gym Bench from 1006 Pacific.

[CropDusterMan]

Hello everyone, just joined the site, have meant to for a long time. I wanted to share with some fellow bodybuilding enthusiasts, a little gem I found not to long ago that I added to my
home gym...

I have been a long time bodybuilding history buff, and have been fortunate to have some great conversations with some of the guys who trained at the original Gold's back in the 60's and 70's,
such as Zabo, Eddie Giuliani and Ken Waller to name a few, and I really enjoyed their tales. When I was looking on Craigslist for a bench for my gym, I stumbled across an ad by a guy in
San Clemente, Calif., just a few towns up from me along the coast...he said he had a bench for sale from the original Gold's-I called him and he was really cool, and he too had tales of his time
as a member of the gym in the 70's. He asked.."Have you seen Pumping Iron"? Who hasn't. "I'm actually in the film in some of the early gym scenes", he added. I Q'd up the film and took note
of his background scene description and when I met up with him later that day, sure enough, he wasn't B.S-ing me...it was him I'd seen in the film. If you watch the movie, pay attention in the
opening gym sequence with Arnold and the gang in the gym...

The bench, which you see here is one from the gym, and when Ken Sprague bought the gym and was moving the gym location to Main St. in Santa Monica, he sold a few articles, and this guy bought
the bench from Ken, and 30+ years later, here I was loading it into my '65 Ford truck along with some weights.

Just thought I'd share my little story...did Joe Gold or his friend build it?...not sure...but it's built like a tank.

[NaturalproMJG]

Awesome, would be honoured to train on if legit.

[RoroCwalker]

That's actually pretty cool, thanks for sharing!

[Deano87]

Cool Story!

[BartPimpson]

Just imagine training with two degrees of separation between you and Arnold's balls.

[ROMMYromboid]

Just imagine training with two degrees of separation between you and Arnold's balls.

Also notice there are numerous chips on the bench, i would never repaint it, there is a good chance Arnold could have made them. The only person qualified to repaint the bench would be Arnold himself now he has retired from American politics.

TEAM ROMGLE

[transformerchad]

Also keen to know who made that equipment , was it actually Joe Gold and/or employees that designed and built the benches etc... ?

[Dan101]

In on awesome thread. Thanks for sharing OP, very impressive.

Last time I was out in Venice I met Ric Drasin for lunch and just soaked up his stories from the Golden Era like a sponge. He told me that Joe Gold actually made all of the equipment himself.

Quick snap I took whilst walking past the original 1006 Pacific location. It's a house now, but they kept the original paint work on the outside. This bench was inside this very building:

[CropDusterMan]

Glad you guys liked the thread...ya, it was quite a find, and there's no way it can't be legit...as I mentioned, the guy I bought it from was in Pumping Iron, it was unmistakable.
As far as the original equipment, I know that Joe did make some of the gear, but I know he also had another guy work with him on it...Ric Drasin mentioned it in one of his videos
on his site. As far as painting it-NEVER! By the way, I bought the bench and about 390lbs of nice Ivanko Olympic weights for about 300 bucks...and the guy had some fun stories
he shared of the times he trained there....would love to have a time machine.

[CropDusterMan]

Also notice there are numerous chips on the bench, i would never repaint it, there is a good chance Arnold could have made them. The only person qualified to repaint the bench would be Arnold himself now he has retired from American politics.

TEAM ROMGLE

No offense to Arnold, but I'd like to have considerable distance between me and his "stuff". ;o)

[Beej1989]

Looks damn near identical to the bench Arnie is using in this pic

[dustinwiser]

I have several pieces from that gym Including the handmade dumbbell set from Joe gold's you wanna see them