As one of Charlestown’s leading health gurus, D’Arcy Goldman is introducing two innovative and relatively unheard-of fitness techniques to the town.
Last fall, Goldman and Mount Vernon Street resident Elizabeth Farley founded Charlestown Movement and began offering personal training for Pilates and Gyrontonics. Pilates — a physical fitness regiment that was developed in the early 20th century by German national Joseph Pilates — encourages participants to use their bodies as weights to help develop their abs and to align their spines through linear and rigid movements. Gyrotonics, on the other hand, is a more fluid and flexible discipline that employs an exercise machine to help build core body strength.
A ballerina since the age of 4 and later an instructor, Goldman first discovered Pilates around 20 years ago, as a fitness regiment that would complement her dancing. Around seven year ago, she began training at the Hill House on Beacon Hill under the direction of Kathie Van Patten, who started the first private Pilates studio in Boston in 1993.
Goldman was training in Pilates when she was first learned of Gyrotonics, which Van Patten had introduced to New England several years earlier. Goldman began intensive training in both simultaneously, and after logging in 600 hours for Pilates and 750 hours for Gyrotonics, she became a certified instructor in the two fitness techniques.
In 2001, Goldman began working as an apprentice teacher in Pilates and Gyrotronics at Body Work Studio on Beacon Hill. Two years later, she became a senior instructor in both at Body Work’s Newbury Street location, where she met her future business partner, Farley.
When Goldman and Farley broke out on their own and launched Charlestown Movement, Goldman said many people contacted them out of curiosity after seeing their ad. “People call for Pilates because they don’t know what it is,” Goldman said.
Goldman said Pilates is also beneficial for people who take part in a variety of other physical activity besides ballet, including running, weight lifting and even golf. She also encourages newcomers to attend three sessions so they have a better understanding of what this regiment entails.
Gyrotonics is less mainstream than Pilates, and its availability at Charlestown Movement has spread primarily through word of mouth. “Most people still don’t know what it is,” Goldman said. Yet, the fitness technique is beginning to catch on locally, as made evident by the recent addition of a Gyrotonics studio at Sport Club LA in Boston.
Goldman said both Pilates and Gyrontonics help to build cardiovascular as well as core strength. “It’s just a question of where you gravitate to,” she said, adding that an individual’s body type often determines which regiment is most suitable.
Today, Charlestown Movement has about 10 customers and operates out of a small studio, but Goldman hopes to expand to a bigger space as the clientele grows — a move that could potentially accommodate four to six people for each regiment at once and subsequently result in lower rates for customers.
Goldman is also launching a Pilates program for teens and young adults at the Charlestown Working Theater on Jan. 29. This new venture came about because the Working Theater’s co-director, Kristin Johnson, is one of Goldman’s students. “Depending on how many people are interested, I’ll teach teens and young adults separately,” Goldman said.
Although Goldman emphasizes that children younger than 12 or 13 shouldn’t partake in Pilates and Gyrotonics because their bodies are still developing, she can’t help but speculate that her dancing could have benefited from both regiments.
“If I’d had this training as a ballet dancer as a child, my dancing would’ve been much different,” Goldman said.
For more information on Charlestown Movement, call D’Arcy Goldman at 617-212-0024.

After four years, the Constitution Inn in the Navy Yard will soon revert back to its original designation as a YMCA.
”We’re happy to have Charlestown as a part of the family,” said Kelley Rice, a representative for the YMCA of Greater Boston.
In 1992, the hotel at 150 Third Ave. opened under the management of the Armed Services YMCA. According to Rice, the Navy Yard operation stopped serving military personnel over time and subsequently no longer fulfilled the conditions of its agreement with the Y’s national office, which resulted in the revocation of its charter in 2003. Later that year, the hotel reincorporated as a 501(c)3 non-profit entity under the name Constitution Inn.
While the Constitution Inn maintained ownership of the building, the national Y charter mandated that it be transferred over to the YMCA of Greater Boston, as the closets branch of the organization to Charlestown. A yearlong lawsuit between the two organizations ensued, and the Constitution Inn ultimately agreed to relinquish control of the building to the Greater Boston Y. This decision was finalized last Thursday when the Boston Redevelopment Authority voted to honor this agreement.
Rice said the new management would keep on all Constitution Inn employees for at least the next six months. “We have no immediate plans to make any personnel changes,” she said, adding that the building would continue to function as military barracks for the USS Constitution’s servicemen.
Joseph Navago, newly-appointed executive director of the Charlestown branch of the YMCA, looks forward to working with the community and has already met with representatives from the Charlestown Boys & Girls Club in an effort to not duplicate its efforts.
“I think that my mission is to assess the situation and try to make sure the current operation goes as smoothly as possible,” Navago said.

A routine traffic stop in Monument Square by National Park Service law enforcement rangers early Saturday morning has led to the arrest of a Charlestown man and subsequent allegations of police brutality from a Charlestown woman.
Park Service law enforcement rangers stopped a 1991 Toyota Camry four-door wagon at 12:03 a.m. because its taillights were not functioning, according to police reports filed by Park Service officers and released to the Patriot-Bridge. Inside the vehicle were two unidentified individuals. The passenger allegedly fled after the car was pulled over.
The driver failed a field sobriety test, and it was determined that he was operating under the influence of alcohol. The Park Service maintains that the driver was cooperative with rangers and complied with their instructions up until this point.
According to the arrest report, Park Service rangers told the driver he was being placed under arrest and ordered him to place his hands behind his back. He fled the scene at this point, with the three rangers in pursuit. After park rangers caught up with him, the driver resisted violently and went to the ground several times as the rangers grappled with him. The rangers were eventually able to subdue him and handcuffed his hands behind his back.
After three Boston Police officers responded to the scene, a Boston Emergency Services ambulance transported the driver to Massachusetts General Hospital at 12:38 a.m. He was discharged from the hospital approximately nine hours later, and is presently in custody awaiting a hearing before a United States Magistrate Judge.
Park Service spokesman Sean Hennessey the organization’s northeast regional director had received the local woman’s complaint and it was forwarded to the National Park Service Office of Professional Responsibility in Washington, D.C., for a thorough investigation.
“The National Park Service takes complaints of this nature very seriously,” Hennessey said.
The driver’s attorney, Charles Clifford, refused to comment on the case but said his client would answer to all charges.

The mayor’s message to us,
and our advice to him

Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s State of the City address was vintage Menino. Every ward in the city, including Charlestown, will benefit from his continued leadership in the year to come. We believe this to be a real expectation because, frankly, the mayor takes his position seriously after all these years. He knows how to run the city. Also, his word is good, and he tends to follow through with promises made.
That being said, Mayor Menino needs to pay much closer attention to the difficulties in Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan, where gangs and shootings are destroying the quality of life in those important neighborhoods.
The ongoing scourge of violence in those neighborhoods is the type of situation, which, if overlooked, could ultimately lead to the mayor’s leadership being seriously challenged.
Mayor Menino needs to lead a full court press against the ongoing gang violence and indiscriminate violence wracking Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan. He needs to dispel the growing belief that the city has virtually pulled out of those neighborhoods – and there is that belief, and certainly among those who pay close control to how the police react to violence in those wards.
All the new development and amenities brought to us by the city will mean nothing if large geographical areas of the city are out of control and unsafe for children and parents and for those just passing through.
The mayor’s real test in the coming year is not about continuing all that is good coming toward us, rather, it is about ending the nightmarish violence in three of the city’s wards.
Without doing that, the mayor’s message is hollow and empty.


Councilor Jim Kelly

The death last week of South Boston City Councilor Jim Kelly was noted by many people in Charlestown. During the chaotic and contested era of court-enforced busing, Kelly was an ally of those locally who believed then, and who believe today, that it was the wrong policy.
He was loyal, true and faithful to his Charlestown supporters, Peter Looney chief among them.
Kelly came up the hard way in Southie. Over time, he overcame the vicissitudes of his youth to become a bold and colorful leader.
He was not a racist, as many would assert who did not understand him or who were not affected by court-ordered busing. He was a realist, and he was for the neighborhood — that is, for the Irish neighborhood, as well as the black neighborhood. He believed that court-ordered busing would ruin the neighborhoods of Boston and that it would achieve the opposite effects it was intended to foster.
He was right.
No one has gotten a better education in this city for almost 40 years because of busing. A once imperfectly integrated school system where neighborhood schools were open for neighborhood children is now almost entirely an anomaly – a matter that no doubt has caused a further segregation of whites and blacks and Hispanics and whites; it is endless really how badly busing divided the city.
Kelly wasn’t a saint. His anti-busing protests gave rise to thugs and bums coming out of the Charlestown projects who came to be viewed locally as Robin Hoods. The Charlestown of that era wasn’t racist. Neighborhood people simply wanted to save neighborhood schools.
Kelly’s death makes us recall that time, when the world was a far different place than it is today.


Health and fitness

Our health — no matter what our age is — depends on our physical and mental well-being. Exercise and diet, physical strength and mental coherence are achieved only with hard work these days. Because most of us work nearly all the time, there is the tendency to overlook our bodies’ crying need for exercise and the mental need for fitness.
In this edition, you will kindly note that there are more ways than one locally to achieve health, fitness and wellness, as many people tend to refer to it today.
Benjamin Franklin knew of what he spoke when he said: “Sound body. Sound mind.”


The Patriots

The San Diego Chargers learned an important lesson last weekend: You don’t plan a victory parade before playing the game.
At the ancient Battle of Pharsalis, the great Roman generals always vying for power met in battle. Caesar, with a much smaller force, faced Pompey, with a much larger force. Pompey was certain he would defeat Caesar. Pompey spent the week before the battle preparing a huge tent in order to serve a sumptuous victory dinner to as many as 5,000 people.
Caesar paid attention to the upcoming battle and to strategy.
Then, the battle was fought, and as the great historian Plutarch tells us, at the end of the day: “Caesar ate Pompey’s dinner in Pompey’s tent.”
Now, it’s on to Indianapolis where the Pat’s continue their rendezvous with destiny.