Coach begins “urban camping” class in Belltown, sparks an exercise revolution.

The summer always gets people into the mood to get fit and go outside. Even now that Global Warming has done away with what our forefathers thought of as “summer” the innate desire lingers. Each year, Personal Trainer Jason Squatenhold sees enrollment in his outdoor “boot camp” classes soar early in May in anticipation of the legendary sun’s appearance and this year was no different. Except this year, Mr. Squatenhold had an idea that he says is catching on throughout the country now.

Urban Camp

Jason describes how the idea of “Urban Camp” came to him.
“The ideal of beauty in our society is to be tan and ripped, everyone is trying to get to that place where they look like they spend a lot of time outdoors. Staying thin is very important to the style conscious. I hold my boot camp classes in area parks. In Seattle the homeless are encouraged to occupy the parks as well as streets in front of Nordstrom. What I was seeing was that my clients were all chunky and pale, even more so in comparison to the homeless men leering at them. That’s when I came up with Urban Camping.
The Seattle motif is to be at one with the outdoors, recycling and roughing it, and no one does it quite like the homeless. They literally never go indoors. Harnessing this, Mr. Squatenhold’s clients go through the motions of typical homeless activities.
Client Marsha Mellow says she can feel her core burn when she does the “cigarette butt bends” a move where the class simulates picking up used cigarettes from the ground. Jason makes the class do hundreds of this exercise in a class.
Other exercises include “Spinning in a circle shouting at the sky” a move Coach Squatenhold says is a great way to prevent chin muscles from sagging and an excellent method for getting that sun kissed glow on your face.
"There are no lockers here, in the first class I send every one of my students back to their cars to collect the contents of their trunks, they have to carry everything, including the spare, the duration of the class.”
Naturally you can find a Groupon for “Urban Camp” classes so you can try it out yourself, but the savings don’t end there. “Thursday a German tourist gave me $5 out of nowhere,” stated die-hard Urban Camper Dave Flanders.

Day in reverse

Sitting in the coffee shop by our house, the one we printed out tickets in the morning we were all going for our (fated) Christmas trip. The air outside is redolent with Fall. In here someone has a cinnamon tea nearby and the music is soul and electro. I'm reading and Marissa is sketching. We got here a little before five and its now 7:30.
The after work meeting crowd left and the punk rock art school baristas kneel out front smoking and killing time. There's a guy twisting a rubik's cube while he looks on at his companion's laptop. She's telling him about the best after-hours gay bars and how her girlfriend often wakes up next to conquests she catalogs based on dominant tattoos.
The high tinkle of the bells punctuates everyone's comings and goings.
Rubik's cube guy goes outside to make a phone call. His right pant leg is rolled up, emblem of his membership in the tribe of the fixie. The barista has decided that we've had enough doo-wop music, and puts on
some Gogol Bordello. My foot moves reflexively and I look up from my
phone. To everyone here I am normal but what is it with us- forever on
our phones- outside a crackhead skitters past, his hair ghastly in the
back light of an expensive European car's halogen-its operator and
passenger slipping into down at the heels Belltown's many high end
eateries. There are so many restaurants because the rent is low.
Commercial space opens everyday, the start-ups and nonprofits, tech
firms and hair salons supplying a gust of lunch business at the apex
of the increasingly darkening days. in the morning the doorways
blocked by bundles of shipping boxes and blotchy blankets. Humans are
in there.
How does one get to a point where not even a family member can offer
shelter. Shuddering in the cold I tread quietly towards the silhouette
statues that emerge from the mist just past six am. We huddle and drop
our mats splat zippers and keys loud in the too soon morning, and
begin to sprint blood flows and I feel the movement of great slabs of
thigh muscle as I grasp to pass my fellow exercise classmates. We
exchange conversation as we lunge, birds fishing in shallow bogs, our
heron legs up, out and down, over and over.
Thus goes a day in reverse in forward in Belltown