I've been going to the gym for decades, and to my current one for about a decade. There's a cadre of fairly serious people who have been there for that long or longer who all know each other. Even if we don't necessarily know someone's name, we can usually give a short description, and everyone will know who we're talking about.

The downside is you get sucked into the operational drama. The guy who started the gym lives there and has developed obvious memory problems, while the business partner basically stole the business from underneath him. His now-ex-wife took all of his savings, including an insurance payout from when he was struck by a semi during a traffic accident and was forced to medically retire from being a policeman. I believe most of that money went to frequent Disney trips. The business partner is trying to drive him out by charging him rent to stay there and watch the place, changing the hours so he can't get quiet, and she also stopped paying him altogether.

We usually just commiserate on who and what we can't stand and the degradation of general gym etiquette: people screaming like they're having sex while working out, people sitting on equipment and playing with their phones, people so checked out they take the exact piece of equipment you were on, despite it being a large gym with duplicate machines for most things. These are evergreen discussion topics.