fanfair
September 2012 Issue

Riding High

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There’s very little that’s relaxing about the social swirl of the Hamptons, but dead last on the chill-o-meter has to be the scene at a 250-year-old potato barn in Bridgehampton, where 70 people in workout gear—and diamonds, and Rolexes—clamor to get into SoulCycle, the popular indoor-cycling class. “If you weren’t sexy, confident, and strong, you wouldn’t be here,” says cult trainer Stacey Griffith as the crowd pumps away on stationary bikes to a house remix of Annie Lennox’s song about having everything money can buy except love. “You’re all sexy,” she shouts. “This is a sexy-ass sport right here!”

That’s not entirely true—there is a lot of sweating, grunting, and flinging of sweat onto the person next to you, too—but there’s no denying that everyone in the room feels good about themselves right now. The SoulCycle formula—only in New York and Los Angeles at the moment, but, with Equinox’s purchase of the company last year, soon to be replicated in 60 locations, including Greenwich, Connecticut, D.C., and San Francisco—involves getting everyone hopped up on a cocktail of cardio fitness, motivational sayings, and the frisson of excitement that comes from overpaying for something worthwhile: the class, which lasts 45 minutes, begins at $32, making it perhaps the most expensive group fitness class in the country.

SoulCycle rooms are hot and sweaty. The music is deafening, and it’s almost pitch-black. Spinning may sound easy—it’s only riding a bike, after all—but you rarely get to sit in the seat, or “saddle,” as they call it; your body hovers over the bike like a jockey on a horse. After 45 minutes of this, things start to get weird. It’s like a Native American sweat lodge: everyone is in a stunned, near-hallucinatory state, and suddenly Griffith’s banter sounds utterly profound. “Be the same person on the outside as on the inside—those two people should match!” she says. “Work through the stuff in your own life. Let someone else’s behavior be someone else’s behavior—don’t let it affect you. Go!”

Finally, the crowd spills onto a sunny porch, enormous grins all around. “You’re a pound lighter and a quarter-millimeter taller,” says Griffith. Everyone sucks down raw coconuts, and dashes to the check-in desk, where a bevy of gorgeous, cheerful girls await them. “When can I get in again?” they want to know. “Can I get in tomorrow?”

Getting the entire upper class into really good shape seems to be the mission of SoulCycle, which has die-hard followers such as Chelsea Clinton, J. Crew’s Mickey Drexler, Katie ­Holmes, and Lady Gaga, who took two $2,200 custom-made bikes on her tour and just threw her 26th-birthday party at their studio in West Hollywood. “I love it,” says Kelly Ripa. “The teachers say things you walk away with for the rest of your day—the rest of your life, really!” “It’s the first exercise I’ve been able to do that I enjoy,” says Lena Dunham, on her way to a “double,” as sadistic back-to-back classes are called. “I love the music, I love the sweat, I love the handsome gay teachers shrieking in your face—I’m super cult-y about it.”

SoulCycle, which is a leader in the country’s luxury-­exercise trend—the new thing, it seems, is dropping gym memberships for classes that gyms offer but some would rather pay many multiples more for somewhere else—is a story of boot-strapping success. It was founded a half-dozen years ago after a pair of moms—Elizabeth Cutler (the business mind) and Julie Rice (the creative guru)—were introduced by a cycling instructor, who eventually left the partnership to begin Flywheel Sports, a rival company. “By the time I went to sleep, I was researching towels and Elizabeth was looking for spaces,” says Rice.

The studio’s beginnings were humble, in a onetime funeral home on the Upper West Side; when the building wouldn’t let them hang a sign, they tied a rickshaw outside with a logo, keeping a checkbook handy for $65 parking tickets. But when Cutler and Rice took a lease in the Bridgehampton barn, Soul­Cycle exploded. Suddenly, 27 Cadillac Escalades were waiting as the keratin-blowout-and-French-manicure crowd burned the fat off their thighs.

To meet demand in Manhattan, SoulCycle opened on the Upper East Side (attracting lots of “hard mommies”), in Tribeca (across from the new Goldman Sachs headquarters), and most recently in Union Square. Even those fundamentally against exercise were drawn in, like author Jill Kargman: “I hate working out, I hate people who work out, I hate people who talk about working out, and I’m full-on Waco, Texas, about SoulCycle. As good as it is for my ass, it’s better for my head. It’s mental floss.”

Everyone who works at SoulCycle also does SoulCycle, down to the I.T. guy. (“He just lost a ton of weight!” says Rice.) In the lobby, the scent of a Jonathan Adler grapefruit candle is in the air, and the gear they sell is fabulous, with neon logos like posse, cult, and obsessed. “My whole summer wardrobe is SoulCycle,” says Lizzie Tisch, whose husband, Jonathan, the chairman of Loews Hotels, is also a devotee. “They just get it.” There’s a fair amount of mingling of teachers and students outside of class, too. “They’re the Valentino of exercise,” says Marjorie Gubelmann. “They socialize with their clients.”

But in every paradise, there are a few clouds. It seems that there’s not enough of Griffith or Laurie Cole (another cult trainer, who says she puts on a “one-woman show every day”) or the other hot instructors to go around. On Mondays at noon—when the upcoming week’s schedule for SoulCycle is released—if you’re not on the computer hitting the keys right then like an eBay addict on the hunt for porcelain figurines, you’re often out of luck. Then you’re a desperate wait-list Soulie, standing outside class dejectedly in case someone doesn’t show up.

If this sounds unfun, that’s because it is, but it’s also a masterful psychological trick. The withholding creates that rare thing among the well-heeled—unfulfilled material desire. If this is a cult, it’s a cult of success—worshipping the ability to pay for classes, to buy the clothes, to live a life among the elite. In fact, SoulCycle has introduced a “SuperSoul” package: for $60 per session, you can get into the coveted classes, like you always wanted.

Of course, there is more to this than the money. Once you gain entrée, SoulCycle seems to deliver on the thing that Griffith described—as the “outside person” looks better, the “inside person” begins to heal. The peloton, moving in motion together, is powerful. “We genuinely care about everyone here: this isn’t just a shtick,” says Cole. “This is a marriage in your soul.”