Google Geeks Muscle in on Venice Beach
The hedonistic paradise of California’s Venice Beach has long been the sun-soaked refuge of bodybuilders and surgically enhanced ‘beautiful’ people. But the ocean-front community is up in arms at the recent news that the nerds from Google are moving into town.
According to a report from the New York Times, the Mountain View company already has sales and tech staff working in 100,000 square feet of real estate in the area. However, the real furore has erupted over the announcement that the search giant is currently negotiating to double the size of its space, including a takeover of possibly the most famous muscle emporium in the world: Gold’s Gym.
Google has insisted that it has no intention of taking over the Gold’s Gym space but that has not stopped the local musclebound fraternity stepping out in force to show their disapproval, with many suggesting that the tech geeks are simply getting their own back for years of playground bullying.
Bodybuilder Nathaniel Moon went so far as to suggest that the move is “the ultimate revenge of the nerds” inferring that the tech company’s plans are “the greatest way of getting back at all the guys that stuffed people from Google into lockers in high school and stole all their prom dates.”
The governor of California has even been pulled into the debate, with Mr Schwarzenegger being an ex-member of Gold’s. The Terminator actor turned politician seems confident that Google and the other local residents can live comfortably side-by-side and that the gyms are here to stay thanks to Venice Beach being the ‘Mecca of bodybuilding’.
So, while some remain sceptical it seems safe to suggest that Muscle Beach is not set to become Silicon Beach just yet.