❓What’s your name and how old are you? Michael Fontanarosa and I’m 54. Soon to be 55, so look out for that workout. That’ll suck.
❓Ever had a cool nickname? No, unfortunately. Rosa, maybe. Which is just people being lazy.
❓Married? Kids? Married with two teenage boys. One’s in college, his second year, and the other’s a senior at Cleveland High School.
❓Where’s he going to college? He doesn’t know yet. Hopefully someplace cheap and local.
❓This is normally where I ask people where they grew up, but you grew up all over the place, right? Yeah, all over. I think I moved 11 times by the time I graduated high school.
❓Can you name all 11 places? Let’s see… I was born in Dayton, Ohio. When I was real young, we lived in Maryland. We were also in Connecticut. Abilene, Texas. Irving, Texas. Odessa, Texas. We lived in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. Aberdeen, Scotland twice. London, England once. How many is that? Oh, and my dad would go to school occasionally, so we’d do like six weeks in Norway or something like that. I feel like I’m forgetting some places. Oh, when I was a little older, Denver, Colorado and Bakersfield, California. I think that’s it.
❓Of all the places you grew up in, what was the best? London, England. I was in high school and, at that age, you can just run wild in London.
❓What’s your all-time favorite movie? I’d say the Godfather. The first two, at least.
❓What do you do for a living? Industrial design is my degree, but I mostly do shoes.
❓Do you ever wear shoes that you’ve designed? Rarely. Usually by the time I finish the process, I never want to see them again. And anyway, I get a lot of free shoes. When you’re in the industry, they give you lots of samples.
❓And you design motorcycle jackets, too? Dawn used to wear one of your jackets, right? Yeah, me and a friend started a motorcycle apparel company. Apparel, protective equipment. We did that for awhile.
❓Any cool jobs in your past? Yeah, I guess. My uncle’s a fishing boat captain, and I worked with him for awhile. We fished for scallops off New England, what they call Georges Banks. I did it for a couple months. They go out for 2-3 weeks at a time. Basically, until they have just enough fuel to get home.
❓Were you good on the water, or did you puke a lot? I was pretty good. It was in the fall, though. I never went out in the winter. That’s when it’s really rough.
❓How long have you been a member at the gym? A long time. Shortly after they opened. I didn’t think I was going to be here that long. Joined on a whim, really, but here I am, 12, 13 years later.
❓Was it a lot different back then? Oh, yeah. They did CrossFit in the back room, where the boxing ring is. Were you here for that? It was crazy back then. Winslow was the coach, did you know him? He’d do crazy shit like bringing pieces of wood and ladders and we’d be jumping around on them. It was fun, but dangerous. It’s better now.
❓And you’ve done jiu-jistu, too, right? Yep, did that for 4 or 5 years. I’m a three-stripe blue belt. I don’t do it anymore, though. Age got in the way. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life recovering from injuries.
❓Tell us about your all-time favorite pet. Could you even have pets as a kid, what with all the moving? We had kind of tragic history with dogs when I was a kid. Something always seemed to happen with them. Hit by a car, poisoned, stolen. So that was bad. I guess our cat Wheezy would be my favorite. She was a good cat, good personality, still fresh in my memory. We’ve got these two new cats, but I’m still holding a torch for Wheezy.
❓Pancakes, waffles, or french toast? Oh, man, I’m not really a breakfast dude. It’s right around lunchtime before I’m hungry at all. And the smell of warmed-up sugar in the morning kinda makes me want to puke.
❓Were you an athlete growing up, and if so, what sports did you play and were you any good? I was a mediocre skateboarder and a prolific smoker of cigarettes.
❓Where in Portland has the best burger? There used to be a place called Stanich’s. It’s closed now, but it was a Portland institution. They were famous for burgers. They’d put an egg on your burger.
❓What’s your favorite workout/movement? I don’t mind rowing. I like anything where it’s just work. Rowing, burpees, box jumps. None of the strength stuff, unfortunately. I wish I was strong. Wish I was like Joel.
❓What’s your least favorite workout/movement? Anything where that shit’s overhead. Fuck that. Thrusters. Overhead squats.
❓What are some things you do in your free time? I like to tinker on motorcycles. I think I’ve got six down in the basement. Only two of them run. Well, maybe I’ve got three that run. I used to race them. I raced smaller motorcycles, so it was nothing insane, but even a small motorcycle can do 100 mph, no problem. Raced at the Portland International Raceway, and did other races all up and down the west coast.
❓Did you ever win? I was mostly a mid-packer, but I did get lucky a few times.
❓If you could have any superpower, what would it be? Probably time travel. Is that a superpower? Dr. Strange did that, didn’t he? And Dr. Who.
❓What’s the weirdest food you’ve ever eaten? I’ve eaten some weird shit, I’ve been to Asia a lot. The one that sticks in my mind, because I’m still kind of scarred by it, was duck tongue. But it wasn’t just the tongue itself, which was pretty small, it was this big long muscle and stuff attached to it.
❓Oh my god. So you ate, like, duck esophagus? I tried. I persevered as much as I could, but most of it ended up in my napkin. The part that I did eat was just chewy and tasted like dirty water.
❓What’s your current gym goal? Well, it used to be muscle-ups, but we don’t really do those anymore, so I guess I’d just say upper body strength.
❓What’s your advice for new members of the gym? Don’t look at the workout ahead of time. Just show up. I can look at them now, since I’ve been doing this so long, but if someone’s brand new, I think seeing that Instagram workout would just dissuade them from coming.
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