 Our English professor and Lucia's fellow boxing aficionado, Adam Berlin, is going to be giving the official introduction here, but I did wanna let everybody know that Lucia is joined by a couple of guests today. All the way to my right, your left, is Genev Brassard, who is an artist and educator completing her PhD in art practice at Goldsmiths University of London. She's a former competitive amateur boxer and one of Lucia's key informants for the book. And on Lucia's left is Reggie Lecrette, who is a former professional prize fighter, another of Lucia's key informants for the book in which he was portrayed as Anthony. So welcome Genev and Reggie and welcome Adam. There is no sport like boxing and boxing goes beyond sport. Joyce Carol Oates in her fine book simply titled On Boxing describes boxing as our modern tragic theater and goes one step further. She states that life is a metaphor for boxing, not the other way around. Strip down every sport to its essence, take away the balls and bats and baskets and you have pure competition and noise. I'll say it again, strip down every sport to its essence, take away the balls and bats and baskets and you have pure competition, man on man. And that's the essence of life. Civilization began with Darwin's survival of the fittest and that credo continues today no matter what we wanna believe. We may not rely purely on physicality to survive but the strongest do prosper whether they are strong because of their minds or hearts or might. In the ring during a great fight, boxing is life. I often have a hard time justifying my admiration for a sport perceived as brutal and uncivilized by non-boxing fans but maybe I shouldn't be forced to justify my close connection to boxing. I know I crave the adrenaline rush of seeing a great fight. I can't fully explain why I look forward to a punch thrown with bad intentions or why I'm suddenly standing while a man in the ring starts to fall. I also can't explain why I fall in love or stop in the middle of the street during a Manhattan hedge sunset. Perhaps it's just part of our human core. And while there is much wrong with boxing, I still marvel at its purity and its beauty when it's done right. It annoys me when people dismiss boxing too quickly. Yes, men are damaged and even die in the ring but many more boys and girls and men and women have been saved by stepping into the ring learning discipline, channeling aggression, recognizing their worth. It also annoys me when people who write about boxing rehash the same old, same old cliches about the sweet science. Lucia Trimber does the opposite. In her thorough, thought-provoking book Come Out Swinging, The Changing World of Boxing in Gleason's Gym, she moves past easy analysis and uses the small world of Gleason's Gym as a jumping-off point for insightful, large, macro-cosmic discussion. Gleason's Gym, probably the most famous boxing gym in the world, is a place where boxing legends have trained and current boxing champions master their skills. The gym has moved around the city. It's now in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn, tucked under the shadows of the Brooklyn Bridge. But Gleason's movement hasn't just been physical. The movement inside the gym, the changing faces of the men and women who come to Gleason's to learn how to deliver a punch and how to take a punch, and all that means that's what interests Professor Trimber. I'm a fiction writer, and fiction writers try to convey felt experience and make sense of it. Lucia Trimber is not a fiction writer. She is an ethnographer, and yet she brings much of what a good fiction writer brings to the work. She brings us into the gym. We feel the pain, we smell the sweat, we see the fighters, professionals and amateurs and white-collar boxers putting in the rounds, and we hear the voices of those who train in Gleason's. Men and women speaking candidly, often insightfully, about their hard work in the gym, and their motivations for coming to the gym. Professor Trimber creates the necessary visceral foundation on which to build her ideas about the unique community of Gleason's and its sociological implications. In the same way a boxing ring exposes truths about character, this book exposes truths about class and race and gender. Before you enter Gleason's, there's a sign with Virgil's words posted. It reads, now whoever has courage and a strong and collected spirit in his breast, let him come forth, lace up his gloves, and put up his hands. Professor Trimber's writing spirit is strong and collected, and as the title of her book suggests, she comes out swinging, not as a flailing amateur who put her toe into the ring and quickly stepped out, but as a well-schooled, well-disciplined, knowledgeable professional who has sweated literally and metaphorically with pugilists. Lucia Trimber is an Associate Professor of Sociology at John Jay College and the CUNY Graduate Center. Prior to joining the Sociology Department, she was an Andrew Mellon postdoctoral fellow on race, crime, and justice at the Vera Institute of Justice. Her work has been published in academic journals, as well as popular journals, and her book, Come Out Swinging, the Changing World of Boxing in Gleason's Gym, which you will be talking about today, is published by Princeton University Press. Please welcome Lucia Trimber. It's Adam so much. That was incredible, and I have to say, as an ethnographer, it's absolutely terrifying to follow a fiction writer in anything, so thank you very, very much for that. That means a lot. I also wanted to thank the Office for the Advancement of Research, particularly Dan Stegeman for putting on this event, Dan for shepherding every step of the way, and for brainstorming with me ways to make this most interesting to you guys, and especially for inviting people who mean so much to me, Genev and Reggie. Thank you guys so much for coming out at a really busy time in the semester. I know this is crunch time, so thank you. Whether you chose to come or your professor told you you have to, I still appreciate it. Thanks to my friends, my colleagues, and some of my students in the audience. It means a lot that you're here. I just have to acknowledge one of my advisors is here from my graduate school days, Dr. Alondra Nelson. In 2003, I promised her that I would do this, and it's amazing to be able to stand up here and to show her, look, I did it. It was real. Also to my editor, Eric Schwartz, this would not be possible without you. And then finally to Reggie and to Genev. I don't know what to say and to thank you so much for both being here, but also for yours, teaching me about the sport, everything that Adam said was possible because of you too, because of the hours and hours and hours that you spent with me, being participants, but also friends. And I owe a great deal to you, and it means the world that you're here. Okay, so, oh, also my dad's here. So maybe this wouldn't be possible without him in some way. Okay, so I'm gonna try these reading glasses. I just turned 40 and prescribed reading glasses, and apparently they're gonna help. So what I wanna do this afternoon is to read four passages from the book, Come Out Swimming, Swinging. Okay, we'll let that go. And I wanna get us into the gym because often what happens in the gym is far more interesting than anything I have to say about it. Each passage or what we call ethnographic vignette gives a very different view of Gleason's Gym where this book takes place. So my goal is to show the different types of people in the gym so that I can talk about how their contrasting experiences led me to write the book. The vignettes are meant to capture the various groups who spend time at Gleason's in their lived experience. So the first vignette shows how boxing trainers work with amateur fighters. Passage one. The only people out at that time of night are cops and robbers. Harry is at it again. Reclining in a plastic chair with his arms folded behind his head, ankles crossed and heels propped up on a table. Harry, a gym trainer, is beginning to lecture Cedric, a tall and quiet 14 year old. Cedric has no idea that he has perched on the precipice of a sermon, but others do. Sensing Harry's fervor, several gym members exchange warning glances and slink away. Cedric also has no idea that after just months of working with Harry, he has already become one of his coach's favorite boxers. This status will position him as a charmed beneficiary of a number of lectures in the time to come. Several months before, Cedric was brought to Gleason's gym by one of his middle school teachers, who saw in him great promise, but little guidance. Cedric's mother has abandoned her formal parental responsibilities while his father, who is incarcerated, is unable to intervene in his son's day to day activities from behind bars. Cedric has taken, Harry has taken Cedric under his wing and assumed the role of a mentor. It is a job that Harry takes quite seriously and to fulfill it, he will rely heavily on lectures. Today's start when Cedric innocently mentions that he hurt his hand playing basketball until 1.30 AM the night before. With an injured wrist, he cannot hit the heavy bag, but it is not the injury that concerns Harry. It is Cedric's lack of a curfew. Harry's first move is fact-finding and so he grills Cedric. Why was he out so late? Who was he out with? And when did his mom want him home? Harry responds with a dramatic eye roll and sigh to each of Cedric's answers until he has heard enough and he begins his speech. Life in the projects is very dangerous, Harry argues. Far more than Cedric probably realizes. The only people out at 1.00 AM are cops and robbers and as a black youth in Brooklyn, Cedric is likely to get shot as much by the cops as by the robbers. Hanging out late will get Cedric into serious trouble and Harry predicts that if Cedric continues such dubious escapades this summer, he will land in jail before it is over. If Cedric doesn't believe Harry, he should talk with Kenny, one of Harry's other amateur boxers who has recently endured this very trauma. Harry then prescribes a remedy. Cedric needs a summer activity. Harry has been trying to find Cedric employment but has not been able to secure anything yet. As a substitute, Harry promises to show Cedric the world and so the ultimate consequence of the curfew infraction is that if Harry can pull together some money, he will take Cedric with him on his next boxing trip. The lecture's conclusion is Harry's specialty and even he acknowledges that he often saves the best for last. Does Cedric know why Harry is so intimately acquainted with the dangers of social housing life? It is because Harry was one of those late lurking robbers. Harry rehearses a history of wine drinking and pot use and cocaine and crack addiction. A parallel history of crime is detailed. Pickpocketing, mugging, robbery and attempted murder in Marcy, Tompkins, Sumner and Gowanus housing projects. Crime led to prison, prison to homelessness and social exclusion to racial exclusion. Harry ends with a pronouncement. Cedric does not know the dangers of project life because he cannot see beyond it. Harry implores them to try. Passage two is a conversation between another boxing trainer and another amateur boxer which illuminates some of the ways that people spend non-training time in the gym. Passage two. I'll probably give golf since like Reggie said that he's Anthony. I know, I'm gonna be talking a lot about Anthony. Okay, Anthony enters the gym one morning and immediately reports to Mike that he saw. Your boy, Ronald Reagan on television that morning. Just before Anthony has arrived, Mike already voiced to others his annoyance at the press's representation of Reagan as a good president. One politician's anti-black racism then leads to other commentaries about the bad decisions of city politics and other expressions of white supremacy. Anthony, you know, they're taking a lot of junior high school students to see the casket. A bunch of teenagers were there. It was literally like the whole state of California went to see Ronald Reagan's casket. Mike, are you upset? Anthony, I'm not upset. It's just so many times. Mike, I'm upset. I'm upset about Ronald Reagan. Anthony. They said it's gonna be 90 degrees today and here's the people watching Ronald Reagan. You know, OJ had an interview with Katie Couric and there goes the people seeing Ronald Reagan. Mike, I'm gonna get on a bus again and shoot. Lucia, again. Anthony, again. Lucia, to impress Jody Foster, Mike, Angelina Jolie. Anthony, Mike, no lie, this one Mexican lady. You can get an answer to her and say, oh, she's Mexican. You know what I mean? There was no doubt that she was Mexican. She was crying. She couldn't even walk over the casket. I mean, come on. Mike, same Reagan who cut out all the summer programs in the hood, same Ronald Reagan who had minimum wage at $3 an hour, same Ronald Reagan who cut the fucking welfare bill, same Ronald fucking Reagan who cut the school lunches. My mom couldn't find a job in an apartment but he was spending millions and millions of dollars on the Star Wars program. What happened to that? I mean, billions. Anthony, Mike, tell me why a guy Bloomberg is gonna stop Mr. Softy. Mike, what's up with that? Anthony, that's culture, that's history. That's the culture of this damn city. All you see is the kids running to him. Mike, I think he's sad Ronald Reagan died. Anthony, damn, conservative Republican. What does that mean? How do you do that? A Republican and conservative? Mike, what about the millions of dollars in cocaine that was funded so you could have your war? I don't recall. Anthony, I don't recall. Everything was I don't recall, right? Like 10 questions in a row and he didn't know one. Early signs, let me sleep on that. Mike, he set the framework for Bush. Anthony, oh yeah, yeah. Mike, I wanna know where the billions for Star Wars went. Anthony, Mike, it was so funny. Then they have Katie and OJ and she's basically telling him, we know you did it, you know, so what do your kids think about it? Mike, and what did he say? What if I cut your throat right now, bitch? Anthony, and you know OJ, he could run for president. He's a good talker. He was swift, he was swift, Mike. She would ask him a question and he was right there, boom. Lucia, do you think he did it? Anthony, I don't think he did it physically but I think he knew something because psychologically you don't run. Mike, I'm not talking to you anymore if you think he did it. Anthony, oh no, that's my boy, OJ. Mike, it's impossible. How are you gonna decapitate someone and you don't have one speck of blood on a Bronco? If you can't explain that one, no DNA, no blood, no physical evidence, do you know what I mean? Anthony, no, he didn't do it physically. Mike, they said he did it physically. Anthony, yep, they did say that. But he knew something. Even if he didn't pay for somebody to do it, he knew something. The woman was a coke addict and it could have been somebody who she owed money to. Mike, that's right. Anthony, she was using OJ's money to get high so he probably knew something was gonna happen to her and that's why he ran because you don't run for no reason. You just don't do it. Okay, so now we're gonna shift to something that is somewhat new. It was new when I was writing this book. It's not as new now but it's exciting about the gym and that's female boxing. Passage three, don't back up. Don't back up, please don't back up. I repeat this phrase silently to myself prying my eyes open when I realize I've shut them tightly in anxiety. One of the most important rules of boxing is not to back straight up and Maya has done this twice in the current round. Getting hit brutally in the face is a punishment. Luckily it is Maya's only apparent weakness and not a second later a fan in the audience verbalizes my unspoken plea and Maya rectifies her mistake. She moves forward with renewed energy as if empowered by her corrective. I exhale loudly and pledge to keep my eyes open. It's 7.30 on a frigid Thursday night in January and I'm at Maya's professional debut at the Paradise Theater in the South Bronx. I have come to support her to cheer and wave her birth country's Trinidadian flag as she transitions from amateur boxer to professional fighter but I'm having difficulty focusing on the tasks at hand because I hardly recognize the athlete in the ring. Since I last saw her Maya's five foot three frame has lost 30 pounds and whatever small amount of fat that remained has been eaten up by muscle. Two years ago she had little interest in competition instead training sporadically and concerned about losing too much weight. With no offense to me she told me she did not want to get skinny like a white bitch. Her goal was to get healthy and maybe learn to eat better but since then Maya has won almost every single national tournament and international tournament she has entered frequently by knockout. At the way in the day before I cannot help but mention to Maya my surprise by her change to which she quickly retorts what that I look like a crack whore. She's trying to make weight and she's hungry and I'm holding the chicken and avocado dish that she will devour seconds after stepping off the scale. Yet still the flippancy with which she dismisses my comment and by extension her talent, her work, her experience baffles me. Mike, her trainer laughs at my incredulity but eventually grants me she looked different, right? But it is not Maya's corporeal transformation that amazes me most. I've spent enough time in gyms to see bodies change rapidly and dramatically. What takes me aback is that Maya appears a different person. The calm and grace with which she enters the ring foreshadows her almost total domination of the fight. In about she performs a calculated precision evidence of her talent and battles with confidence moving around the ring with agility. Though her coach is trained her to quote fight like a man which means taking more body than headshots and maybe Jennifer talk more about that Peter. Maya does not act like a man and she forgoes the stare downs, showboating and trash talking typical of men's matches in favor of an amicable and respectful gamesmanship. Goose bumps cover my arms as I see expressions of her self assurance especially when she cuts off her opponent at almost every turn and when she allows a humble smile to stretch across her face after the fight. She's declared winner by unanimous decision. Okay, last one yet. This is about white collar boxing. Again, a new boxing practice. On a Wednesday evening Gleason's gym closes four hours early in preparation for a special event. Scott Steadman and Jeff Coyne, the editors of Elle magazine and the New York press respectively, two small alternative magazines are taking a feud between their publications from the page to the ring. For the past four months Coyne has attacked the Elle magazine insulting everything from the fashion choices of the editorial staff to the supposed sexual activities of the editor's mother. To defend magazine and mom, Steadman will settle the score in a pugilistic encounter at Gleason's gym tonight is fight night. A handful of boxing trainers remain past 6 p.m. to help run the event. As 300 young white professionals exceptionally dedicated to the latest fashion trends descends on the gym, it is unclear which group of people is more surprised by the other. Self-professed hipsters train at Gleason's gym and trainers and competitor fighters alike coexist with a variety of gym users. But this mass of fashionable 20 somethings gives even the most unflappable gym trainer pause. I watch with Harry, Mike, and Ricardo as a army of women clad in slept like dresses, heavy woolen tights, metallic sandals, and crocheted hats. That was like the fashion of the time. And men wearing Wyobara shirts and fedoras march into the gym. With eyes on the audience and arms across his chest, Ricardo leans to me and whispers where do you even get this stuff? I shake my head, we decide this clothing must come from deep in the recesses of Williamsburg. During the fight, female spectators sit dower faced, arms folded, their arms, their legs wagging in affection and affectation and detachment. Behind me, one of them needs a restroom and mutters to her friend. Do they even have bathrooms in places like this? Over excited men scream profanities and air punch combinations during the round. At the seconds out, one of the audience's loudest asks me earnestly, how is he doing? With little understanding of his friend's performance in the ring. The gym's owner announces each bow and takes his opportunity with the microphone to promote the gym. Half of the membership, he says, is made up of people like you who live, work and play in Dumbo. He plugs the excitement of never knowing who may be training in the gym on a particular day. Hollywood actresses, championship fighters, businessmen and television network executives. Okay, so what do we make of these passages? In the first passage, we meet boxing trainers who work with young men to mediate and navigate the situations of racial capitalism. We meet amateur boxers, the young men with whom trainers work for free, who have been all but shut out of a restrictive labor market and who have often spent considerable amounts of time in prison. In the second passage, we encounter the ways the men of the gym create a space to process their social worlds and to give their critiques of it, asserting both their right to interpretation and to authority. In the third passage, we catch a glimpse of the world of women fighters. Over the past 30 years, women have joined the urban gym, such as Gleason's, to claim their right to engage in pugilistic exercise. And in the last passage, we're introduced to white collar boxers who paid gym trainers significant amounts of money to be trained, which is a side note that allows boxing trainers to work in the gym full time, effectively subsidizing their work with amateurs as a form of entertainment. These are four very different groups with different motivations and uses of boxing as an exercise. And they make the gym that is very different from gyms of the past. So 40 years ago, the urban gym was frequented almost exclusively by competitive male boxers of color, trainers and other types of professional men, such as managers, promoters, matchmakers and sports writers. Boxing trained for competition. Professionals work to advance their paid careers and amateurs practice so that they could go pro at some point in the foreseeable future. Trainers work with their fighters early in the morning before work or late in the evening after punching out. And what I found during my four years of formal research and now 13 years of study was very different. Today the gym has over 1,000 members, roughly 80 trainers, 450 amateur and professional fighters, 300 female pugilists and 300 male white collar clients. For me, the goal was to make sense of the different uses and experiences and to figure out how and if they work together. What I had considered intriguing as an ethnographer and as an urban ethnographer and why I wanted to write this book is the contrast, is the ways different people use the gym in different ways. So what are these different groups of people get out of the gym? What unites these groups is that they are all responding to changing post-industrial circumstance. They all go to the gym to create work, to develop a sense of self-worth, to consume and to process their social worlds, albeit in different ways. Poor and working class men of color joined Gleason's gym as amateur boxers, professional fighters and trainers, but their participation is different in a post-industrial era. With little access to the wage, the gym is a site of masculine identity formation. Men use the gym not merely as athletes training in their spare time, but rather as workers use their place of employment. The labor to convert joblessness into self-respect. In a time of mass incarceration, men with experiences with forced confinement joined Gleason's to reenter society and to receive guidance and support from men with similar histories. They engage in masculine socializations and build individual and collective forms of identity. At the same time, men and women with material resources, primarily white in a post-industrial landscape, have turned their attention to capital and consumption and gaze to their body. Women with determination to become strong and confident in their bodies sign up in large numbers. Through their training, they find out who they are, how to defend themselves and discover how to trust themselves. They also carve out a protected space for themselves in the urban gym, creating camaraderie, support and community in the process. Preoccupied with their masculinity and anxious about how their office jobs may have emasculated them and attracted to the bodily strength of black men, white collar clients seek out a powerful manhood by proximity to blackness. So, gym members use training to answer back to forms of inequality, such as anti-black racism, class stratification, gender subordination, while others use capital from new markets to forge identities and to entertain themselves. Each group invests its own meanings in the gym's culture and undertakes boxing training in various ways to produce new, lived experiences. However, as I write in the book, this meaning-making in Gleason's gym helps people mediate the injuries of racial, class and gender hierarchies, but it doesn't change those hierarchies. Instead, it operates within them. This is the landscape of post-industrial New York City, offering poor men of color, middle-class women and wealthy white and white collar men the ephemeral possibilities of new identities at the same time it packages and commodifies their lived experience. Thank you so much. You can hear me now. So first, I'm delighted to be here. I feel truly honored to have been invited to be a part of this talk. I admire Lucia as an ethnographer and a writer. I think the book is a valuable contribution to discourse and understanding around boxing. Lucia's accomplishment is definitely helping me with my motivation as I try to complete my own dissertation. Thank you. And I'm really happy to see Reggie, who I've trained alongside of for years. You've seen each other in many different gyms. It's been a long time. You're a lovely person. I'm glad to see you. Thank you. Thank you. So, reading Lucia's book crystallized a question that I asked myself, more generally, as an artist and as a person in the world, as well as specifically in relation to boxing, which is, how do I want my humanity to be represented? And I think that for the most part, boxing is represented in a very dramatic and simplistic set of terms that can, that can lead, you can't hear me? Okay. Just let me know if you still can't hear. Can you hear me now? Closer, okay. Even closer. Okay. Better? Yes, okay. So I was saying that I think that boxing, for the most part, is represented in very dramatic, simplistic terms that can lead to a kind of dehumanization or othering of people who box. So by offering an alternative version or a more complex inquiry into the boxing world, Lucia is in some way doing my humanity a service. I appreciate Lucia's intervention, so to speak, and what I think can be a problematic mainstream or standard understanding of boxing. By focusing on the space of the gym as a valid community, she allows for what I consider to be my primary experience of boxing. I was part of a truly supportive network of people who consistently showed up for me. In addition to that, boxing, that is competing in a match, is definitely the most intense, unexpectedly intimate and deeply personal experience that I've ever had, aside from childbirth. The combination of training, all its hardships, like running and dieting and et cetera, plus the never-not-surreal experience of actually competing, surreal even after 38 amateur fights, and last but not at all least, the community of support that I experienced, that's all a part of my life that cannot be encapsulated or even genuinely addressed by most sociological or media discourse that I've encountered so far. Even my current work, which focuses on more creative realms, such as art-making and literature, I still find that even in these more open-ended practices, I find that boxing is often simplified and utilized as a metaphor for other things. However, Lucía's book is indeed adding something to our understanding of what boxing is, because she is presenting the boxing gym as an alternative space that while contextualized in the capitalist world and general gentrified craziness of Dumbo, nonetheless operates with a different economy, one that is not about money, but rather human connection and specific experience. I'm not saying that money doesn't play a part in boxing, it does, of course, but the core experience of being at the gym is not really about money. It doesn't depend on that much on economic value. Although come out swinging is very precisely written and makes specific claims, it nonetheless allows for multiple understandings of boxing, an approach that I find to be a truly welcome addition to the array of cultural, historical, artistic, and literary representation of boxing that currently exist. Let's see, in terms of being a female boxer, can you hear me? Okay. At one time, my daily experience was not actually one of transgression, although Lucía does identify much of the difficulty that female boxers encounter in the context of entering into what's largely a male realm or is framed that way. My daily experience of boxing was almost all about the gym and being part of a community, Gleason's and other gyms, and for me, at the core of this community was being able to participate in something that in the moment, truly equalizes the participants. Sometimes that something is as immersive and simple as being really exhausted, a shared exhaustion, yet, because boxing is really about continual training, the shared common experience that I think is most meaningful is more sustained and contextualized. So, that kind of sums up my response for now. I want to first say thank you to Lucía for remaking the book, because it's awesome. It is, nobody thinks about boxing in that way. And, Genevieve Rock, so, the book in itself gives everybody a look at boxing that nobody really looks at, right? But on the surface, boxing is as simple as as what people make it out to be. That's what draws people to boxing, right? Two people in the ring, punch each other in the face. People like it, it's violence, right? It's what draws everybody to boxing. But the deeper part of boxing is not what people like. People don't like the ugly, right? They want to hear people with a great story. That's what you get nowadays, guys with great stories. Somebody who beat cancer, somebody who had a tough life, but the guy who probably can really fight is not the guy who you're gonna see, because he's gonna fight all the tough guys and then the managers are gonna sit him down, right? So, the story that you see it tells actually showed me how much I grew up in the gym, because I didn't realize, I took it all for granted how much I grew up in the gym. I am the typical of what she has in her book, right? The tough background and utilizing what I found in the gym to better myself, right? But just to take issue with something that you said, I don't think everybody comes to the gym with that intent, with the intent to better themselves or to change things. I think that's just a byproduct of what the gym gives you, right? It gives you that discipline, because you come in and you say, I can fight, I know how to fight. I'm gonna get in the ring and fight. And that first minute, you realize you're not ready to fight, because it's a lot of conditioning to do those three minutes, you know? Hands up, defense, and the punch. Then you learn the discipline. The discipline is what changes you, right? Become a different person. And in that book, you realize all the conversations that go on, it's beyond just getting in the ring and punching someone in the face, you know? It's actually growing you up. Everybody in the gym benefits from each other without even knowing it, you know? And the environment of Gleason's was great. It was great because it was different people or the different genres that people came from. And everybody does get their own take from the gym. A lot of guys, especially women and women who learn self-defense. It's the equivalent to the artificial self-confidence that people get from a gun, right? When you learn how to use these, you never lose these. You always walk around with these. When you know how to use these for defense to defend yourself, that confidence that you have is always with you. The artificial confidence that you get from a gun, when you don't have that gun, that confidence is not there. Who you really are is who you really are, right? So Gleason's was a great place. It still is, but boxing has changed. And while you were writing that book was a really good time in Gleason's. It was, it was great people, really good people. And I love that you made the book. I really do. Because mostly anything about boxing turns me off. It does because it's all this rocky theme stuff, right? It's like this one great guy with this, you know, whatever. But it's the truth, it's the truth. Some people come with a different agenda, but they all come away with the same thing, you know? And that's my take on the book. I love it. I love you, see ya. Miss Ginev, and thank you. So we do have a good half hour for audience questions. Let me take the organizers privilege and ask the first one. And this is for anybody, anybody and everybody at the front. I know Lucia that one of the themes obviously of the book is gentrification and the way that the experience of the gym is commodified, but in this sort of more traditional sense of gentrification and pushing out sort of original residents. Do you see that happening as well in terms of, particularly in terms of trainer's time, are they more inclined to sell their time to paying customers at this point than they are to take on mentoring opportunities that might lead somebody to an amateur career or a prize fighter career, that sort of thing? It depends. When you see, when a trainer sees real talent, they will invest their own time in that real talent. Some guys, they're all about the fast buck like mostly anybody is. But when they see real talent, they invest in that real talent. So it totally depends. Boxing is like, it's not like any other sport, but in certain aspects it is because when you see, even on a football team, you see that one very talented guy, the coaches push him harder than they push other people. So trainers do the same. I just want to add to that quickly which is, I boxed and competed for a few years in London and England and it's completely different there. It's a very different setup. The amateur and the professional boxing is separate and the trainers there don't, they don't, amateur boxers come to an amateur gym and train as a team and the trainers just train them and take them. They get, you pay your dues so you pay what would be the equivalent of like $2 a day or sometimes less and then those amateur trainers take the fighters all the way through the competitions and everything like that. And also Gleason's, if I may, is very specific in its approach to trainers and boxers. I don't know if it's still like that. I imagine it is, but it's almost like trainers are waiting often for new clients to come in and then kind of pounce on them, get to them first. So there's a lot of hustle in Gleason's that is not necessarily present in other gyms where the owners might divvy up clients a little bit differently or trainers have different specialties or it's more of a team thing. Gleason's is very much an independent contractor type model. Toward the end of my time at Gleason's, there was increasing discussion among trainers about how many trainers were going to be able to be in the gym, like how many trainers the gym could accommodate because the owner was just sort of allowing anybody to come in and train people. And there was a real frustration among people who had been there for a long time that they had a special, that they were there first and they had a special expertise and that they cared about the sport more than other people but that what they were reduced to was this hustle. And I think different trainers have different purposes as well but like Reggie said, what is amazing is that there are some trainers who would figure out in this sort of cost-benefit analysis of how many white collar clients they had to have to make ends meet to be able to work with the amateurs who they really wanted to work with. So even as there was this sort of independent contractor system, people were still finding ways to do the work they love and whether that meant working at different times, times that weren't convenient for white collar clients or working on off hours, they still were finding ways to work with amateurs. I mean one of the things did you work with, one of the common practices was to have amateurs spar with white collars so that they would be training both amateurs and white collar clients at the same time. Did you spar with white collar clients? They wouldn't let you. That's right, I think you did that once and ended up punching someone. Yeah, okay, so maybe you were off the list after that. Other questions from the audience? Thanks, I may have this wrong but when I read the chapter on women boxers, I recall it being difficult for some other women boxers to take the first strike and so there was a certain ritual around getting the other person to go make that first strike. Is that true? Yeah, I know what you're referring to. Could you just speak to that and about that transformation because I found that particularly interesting in the way in which the violence was, or the strike, that it was harder to begin it and there was a gender dimension to that. Yeah, I'll open, I'll start by saying I think that it's probably different now because there's so many, women boxers have been doing it for a while. I mean this was many years ago and that now the cultures change so it's less of a women doing a male thing. I mean within the gym culture, of course in this specific context it's like that and so I don't think it's so much like that. It's not as much of a hurdle to get over, I don't think because there's more of a precedent set. So that's one thing. Another thing is that often waiting for someone else to punch first is in fact a strategy that is utilized across the genders just to be able to counter. But then I think what you're actually talking to about is my experience, yes, it was hard. It's hard, not with men though. If I was sparring men, I did not encounter that resistance within myself. It was easy to hit them. You can add to that what you will but whatever it was it was complex but it was much easier. Sparring another woman, especially one that I knew because it's a community of women boxers within the gym too so most likely she was my friend unless she came in from somewhere else. Yeah, there's resistance not wanting to hurt somebody as paradoxical as that is. Did you find that? Were you afraid of hurting people? No. No. For defensive purposes they don't have a woman that punches at you. Reggie also fought a heavyweight. Light heavyweight. That changes things and he also was a professional boxer. I think he transitioned from amateur to professional while I was there. It's very specific. It would only ever be defensive with a man who is light heavyweight because there aren't very many women who are light heavyweight. There are some. Other questions? We could talk about how you personally navigated your own position as an ethnographer coming into such a contested and complicated space and then also if your informants could also speak to your impressions of working with an ethnographer and what that was like for you both as well. That's a good question. Thanks, Samantha. I love the sport boxing and followed boxing before going to the gym. So I wasn't approaching it as an exotic space but as any sort of sporting space that I was a fan of. When I was getting... When I was choosing a gym to go to I had read that Bruce, the owner, had recently given a talk at Oxford and so I thought, if he went and gave a talk at Oxford I would open to academics coming into the gym and I get this question a lot and I did not find it difficult to quote-unquote get access. I started talking to Harry within the first couple minutes. I initially went there in 2001 and I guess my strategy was just pretty much up front, right? I just said that I was doing a dissertation on boxing that I was going to write a book one day, hopefully. And... Yeah, I think it was just to sort of be open about what I was doing. I had notes that I took. The only time that I really ran into problems was that for a while I had a recorder and I would get worried that people had forgotten that I was recording them and so I would say, do you remember that I have this recorder on? But the recorder in the sort of part of the gym where I was... anybody could turn it off at any time and the same was true with interviews. Everybody forgot you were writing a book. Yeah, so... You'll see it was like a friend. She was just somebody hanging around the gym working out. No job. No job. That was it. Katelyn and your sister would come by. Everybody forgot you were writing a book. Do you think that was bad? No, it was great. Everybody was... They were able to beat themselves. You know? Other questions? Come on folks, dig deep. Adam, I'm looking at you. Fair enough. I really had a question. So, is your name Reggie? Yes. So I was so interested by the idea of discipline and how there's the discipline of the sport and then the discipline of the gym. And I thought you were really... That was a really fascinating connection and I think the ethnography speaks to that for sure. It's a great panel. I want to say that to it and say that at first. But I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the idea of discipline. Maybe all of you. And boxing. Well, a lot of the guys who come to the gym they don't come from a discipline background. They're actually looking for something. And not knowing that they're running to one of the most disciplined things they can do outside of going to the military. So when they get to the gym and they learn this stuff. They learn that there are no cutting corners. A serious trainer won't let you cut corners. When he says put your hands up he's going to yell at you every time your hand slightly goes down. So, not everybody can take that. But it helps them in so many different levels in life when they learn if you just stick to something and do it the way it's supposed to get done that their success at the end. A lot of people don't have that in their life. Once they learn that, it's the same thing people learn from going to the military. You structure your life, you do it a certain way then there's an end result. And boxing gives a lot of people that who don't have that. I'd say for me the discipline is notable because it had to take first priority in my life over absolutely everything else. So it re-prioritized my life. And over everything. Everything I ate, how I slept, what I did revolved around the fact that I was most of the time preparing for a competition of some kind. And I mean, part of that, and this is one of those quotes that seem to pop up all the time in boxing, but it was very true, and it's something that actually has stayed with me always since then, is a trainer said, and I really internalize it, is you should never... It's a paraphrase. You should never lose a fight because you're not prepared, because you're not on weight, because your conditioning isn't good, because you didn't get enough sleep, because you didn't spar enough. That should never be why you lose. You should lose because the person's better than you. And that's the only reason. And so that kind of discipline is pervasive in a way. Like how prepared can you really be and what does it mean? So, yeah, and never because you somehow didn't do your part. So it's kind of this very easy way to describe what it means to show up for something, to really be there for yourself, and then for the people who are supporting you. So it sounds kind of like corny, but that is how discipline has... the boxing discipline, how it stayed with me in that very specific way. To sort of add to that, not for me personally, but watching you guys, is that that's mourning up to the time you go to bed. Whether you have a job elsewhere and you have to put in those eight hours, it's still structuring your life. From the moment you wake up to... From every bite of food you take deciding when you're going to run. Or to take a sip of water. Yes, it all matters. Yeah, how you use your energy suddenly takes on much more meaning when you know that it's going to affect the outcome of, you know, of a fight, of an actual fight with another person, right? That's true. Suddenly everything becomes much more important and you can decide what you don't spend your energy on. It's much easier to make choices, I think. It also factors into your confidence level, right? Like when you go into a test, parallel to going into a fight, when you know you've studied, you're more confident. You can sit down, you're ready for that paper to be placed in front of you. When you've done everything you need to do before a fight, you're not worried. You know you're ready, you know? But when you've cut all the corners you can cut, you're not the same when you step in the ring. You know? You're worried about the other guy. You're not confident in yourself. So you have to be disciplined. I was always worried, though. Let me just really quickly. Can you talk about the times in which you have had a fight and decided not to fight because of that? So I remember one season when you were really agonizing over whether to compete or not. And I think that's happened with you in times two is, do you compete? Are you ready? So what goes into that equation? Well, a lot of things. A lot of things. Your weight, you know, whether you've been in the gym or not. I got my first loss because of it. I did a year out of the gym. Nobody would fight me at 175. But then I get the phone call to come down to 170. And I say to myself, I'm capable of doing it, but I want to fight so bad, right? So I take the fight, and I get myself down to 170 pounds. And I get on a scale that everybody says, oh, you look great. You look amazing. But I don't feel right because I'm at 170 pounds, right? I didn't eat for like a day and a half. And I don't feel right. And as much as you train, when you don't feel right, it shows. And when I got in the ring, I didn't feel right. And after the first round, I sat down and I knew it. I just knew it that I was going to have to change my game plan because I can't do what I would normally do because I don't feel right. There was a year that I didn't compete. Yeah, because I fought the Golden Globes in 2003. And then I won them. And then I didn't fight at all really in 2004. And it was because of other life obligations. I went back into school. I was trying to kind of like what was going on. Yeah, I went back to school and I was working full-time. So it seemed not... I couldn't commit in the way that I needed to. And then there have been times when, as Radji said, the eating thing is a big one. And that's more like in the moment. It's not kind of an overall decision not to fight for a year. But yeah. And I mean, there have been plenty of times where I've had to make weight and knew that it was just not good. And I fought anyway. I mean, that's kind of this common thing, I think, is seeing people show up at the weigh-ins, really grumpy and dehydrated. And then, yeah, but fight anyway. So not exactly prepared, but still. So it builds on what you were just talking about, about the emotions of loss or the emotions that are part of it all. And I was thinking about the white collar boxers who aren't really represented. But the big difference, it seems to me, is how you identify, and you both identified as boxers. And so there's a huge inequality in the sense that, you know, the emotional investment is totally different because of the identities. And so the white collar boxers are, when they lose a fight, they're still identifying as a, you know, whatever that guy was, like an editor, right? So the emotions are really on a different level in terms of the investment in which... Because I think they would probably, I'm guessing, a lot of the things that you've said, they would think, oh yeah, I'm right there with him on that discipline. I'm right there with him on that weight, and I know what it's like to get hit in the face. But they can also kind of bow out in a way. So maybe you could speak to that loss as, or not loss, but end victory, but the emotions when you identify something versus those people on the other side of the room who are sharing something, but then they're really not. Does that make sense? I think once you invest the time to learn how to fight, that anytime you get a person in front of you that's better than you, it hurts, right? Not just physically, but like the emotional, right? Like you want to be better. You want to win, you know? And I think it doesn't equate to like real fighters just on a level of we prepare for an event, right? Everything we do is for the one fight, for that one big fight, right? I think that's the only way it separates. But once you learn how to fight, you know how to fight, even if it's sparring. You feel bad when you know you got beat up. You know, it doesn't just hurt physically, it hurts emotionally, because you want to be better. I've seen amateur fighters who could fight. I mean like, not amateur fighters, but white-collar fighters who could fight. You have a couple, you have a, I can't remember his name. He won the Golden Globes recently. He works on Wall Street. You know, like some of these guys, they can really fight, you know, because they invest in it. They want it, you know? So I think the feeling is the same. It just changes based on preparation for an event, you know? Yeah, in terms of like identity, yeah, I don't know if I could really make that distinction either, although there are plenty of differences between white-collar boxers and pros or amateurs. But I can just say that what I experience is that, yeah, that it's losing is so heartbreaking. There's, and I don't, I imagine it's probably similar if you're a white-collar boxer, although there's, as Reggie says, it's like there's different pressures so like losing and, you know, a white-collar boxer might box and it's like the expectation isn't there in the same way, you know? Like they're not necessarily part of a team of people who are hopefully trying to get to some other tournament and it's like a different context. But yeah, losing is horrible and it's a lot because of this, the context, like the expectation and just that like everything was for that win and then to lose it, it's a real, it's a loss in a real sense of the word, not just a, you know, a letter, I think, because your identity is so much about it. I've also heard boxers say that they are, that they feel bad even if they win but they didn't like try their hardest. Like people have said, like if I didn't go out there and like really give it my all and I won, it still is not enough because their identity was wrapped. It was so tied up with doing the best that they could of preparing for the event and really going after it with everything and then to not bring everything when they could have, even if they had won. They were happy with their performance. Great, yeah. Even if they win. That's coming, yeah. I feel like I'd almost always, it's like, oh I could have done better. But there's also, I think what you're saying is I just thought, usually like if you, if somebody, if a regular person, it's so general but sees a boxing match and then someone wins and that's it. They saw the match, someone won and they experience it as they experience it but the fighter wins and then also knows that their trainer, all their sparring partners, the people from the other gym, the judges whom they've seen in many competitions, like future opponents, it's like very contextualized. It's part of this like much larger discussion that's like gonna continue and that has been leading up to this. So it's kind of not your own, just your own thing or even just someone saying, oh my team won. However ecstatic that may feel, there's this kind of knowing that it's affecting others and that others have something, are thinking about it and have something to have their experience of it too, have feelings about it, might be disappointed or whatever. Yeah, yeah, future opponents, it's a big one. So it looks like we have time for one more question and Susan, sounds like you had one. I love the way you've discussed all three of you and we'll see your book is beautiful. The nuanced nature of individual lives but also contextual lives in close relationships and larger relationships in teams and gyms. I wonder if you, and there's something about what you've described it's very elemental in relations in any sport I think and some things that are particular to boxing and some things about it go way back in history in terms of boxing but I wonder if you could look at the future for a second and just briefly describe where you think the sport is now in society and where it's going because you've all alluded to that was a good time or that was a good gym and if you could just talk a little bit about the context of boxing in society I think it would be really helpful. Thank you. What came to mind, what just came to mind was that there's a big difference right now between professional boxing and amateur boxing especially that women were just allowed to compete in 2012 so the future of amateur boxing specifically in the context of the Olympics I see as there being a real future like there being things changed things will be generated some amazing athletes are going to be able to compete and perform and you know ideas about gender can be you know brought into play with all of that so amateur feels separate to me and is definitely changing in a real way in a meaningful way and then professional boxing you know I read you said most things about boxing turn them off I feel that most boxing turns me off most pro boxing turns me off I get like a not all of it and of course there's some great fighters and even within women's boxing which I think is changing and developing more than men's because it's newer but yeah I feel it's more complex in that it's there's a lot about it to me feels quite distasteful that it's turned into something that's almost completely about capitalism and that then there's a lot of people that kind of get eaten up by that you know like again what Reggie said like the guy in the gym all the guys all the people in the gym that like never make it to the televised fight yet have put their literal bodies into it some of the best fighters some of the best fighters boxing of the past is not better just cut your wool boxing of the past is not is not the same as boxing of now and of the future is not the same because of what people like now boxing of the past was if you're a good fighter you're a good fighter you fought everybody the best fighters had records like 23 and 6 and they were like the best guys they were like the guys who would beat anybody you know the fighters you see nowadays are 30 and 0, 40 and 0 and they're made champions because they have a great story and that's what we like we like the Kardashians we like the we like the you know we like we like that stuff we eat it up so that's what we want to see you know so the gritty fighter you see four losses on his record you say he lost four times you know so whatever right but he's probably the best guy you would learn so much from watching them you know and the fighters of the past again are not the same as the fighters of the future you see Muhammad Ali has been beat up and knocked out how many times and we still call him the greatest right but you see the fighters now who like they pick and choose their fighters right they pick and choose who they fight you got these guys who are 30 and 0 and you couldn't find the 30 guys he knocked out they're probably at a bar somewhere you know yeah and they just picked him up and got them you know got them knocked out and when you see that record he's 30 and 0 with 30 knockouts this guy's a beast right but they groom him they groom him for that reason and they make a lot of money and like she said it's all capitalism now the game has changed it's different so you have to fit a mold now to reap success in boxing this is different it's different it's very different unless you're an amateur female or the very cute amateur female that's a that's a point well I think also the amateur scene has moved out west so that there actually is a vibrant community the grassroots boxing in New York City just has not been invested in over the past 30 years and the scenes moved out west if we were to be having this conversation in California in Nevada it would be a really really different scene there are fights every week and there are people now they're never going to make it to the cards that Reggie's talking about but there is there is a community of grassroots boxing out there so let's have a round of applause for the Cia Vinan and Reggie