NYP – The staid New York Athletic Club is a real animal house behind the scenes, employees say. Transcripts of depositions of one current and one former employee paint the tony 144-year-old club — the site of a notorious large-scale brawl between members earlier this year — as a hotbed of sexual harassment, racist remarks and wild behavior in recent years. In the transcripts, which were obtained by The Post, the men say members and managers would often make racial cracks, including using the N-word, and no action would be taken by the club. Female employees’ complaints about being sexually harassed would routinely be declared “unfounded” after daylong “investigations,” while club brass turned a blind eye to managers’ drinking and partying during and after events, the employees said.  Many workers didn’t report incidents because they feared they’d be fired or face retaliation, the men said. 

There’s “a lot of discrimination with management toward the employees — and club members also, toward employees,” alleged Elvis Lopez, who has worked security at the Central Park South club since 2005. The depositions were taken as part of former waitress Keisi Ballenilla’s sexual-harassment lawsuit against the club. In his sworn testimony, Lopez described an incident with one club member who allegedly called a barback in the club’s lounge the N-word. The same member also allegedly used the word when another member brought a black female friend into the club, Lopez said. Another member would allegedly harass a female coat-check worker, showing her pictures of guys in bikini briefs, the employee said.

I’ve never stepped foot inside the New York Athletic Club but I always just assumed it was full of racists and sexual harrasers. You go behind the scenes at any of these old school establishments and I guarantee you’ll open a Pandora’s Box of N-words, sexual misconduct and wild parties. I mean isn’t that what you pay for? If I was to get a gym membership it’d definitely be at a spot like this. Sure I could go to Crunch or Gold’s but at those places you can’t be blatantly prejudice and harass the coat-check bitch like you can at the NYAC. What’s the point? Working out already fucking sucks as it is. If I can’t throw around racial epithets, pinch a few trainer’s asses and get in a drunken fight afterwards than I’d rather stay home and be out-of-shape. No way I’m paying that kind of money just to exercise and sit in the steam room. I gotta be supersetting my bench press with some white hate and sexually degrading the help or the membership cost just doesn’t make financial sense for me.