The Ting and I:
Building Community at the Hottest New Yoga Studio
In New York City, there are countless yoga studios to choose from and when they garner media attention it is usually investigations into criminal behavior and not because they are great places to go. Sky Ting, whose name comes from its first location above Sky Ting Trading, always seems to be at the top of the list when it comes to recommendations from either the media or word of mouth. With a loyal membership and teachers and workers that know your name, they have created the perfect practice for someone who has only skimmed the yoga Wikipedia page. I never felt as if the classes were designed to exclude those who did not know what paschimottanasana refers to, that I could not keep up, or that I did not fit in even though I do not own Alo or Lululemon clothes. During my frequent visits to Sky Ting’s Allen Street location, the space could barely contain all of the students. Krissy Jones, one of the founders and current owner of Sky Ting, knew they needed a new space and with the help of a team of all-female investors, she closed Allen Street and moved Sky Ting to its newest location on Lafayette in NoHo. When I heard about the move, my first thought was that Sky Ting was turning into a mixture of Equinox and the Wing. But after speaking with students and taking a couple of classes with Krissy, I realized my assumption was unfair.
Krissy assured me that the goal is one studio, and that she closed the Chinatown location to make sure that things (tings) did not get out of her control. Krissy’s and by extension Sky Ting’s attention to detail is part of the reason it stands out; it is a kinetic, attentive, and fun studio, and the new space accommodates the number of people who want to take classes there. However, something has continued to nag me about the move and it is not Sky Ting’s fault. Their new space still feels emblematic of how businesses in New York City must keep up with the Joneses. You can’t just open a space with bigger studios; you have to create what Galerie Magazine calls a “special wellness experience.” That’s the problem: nothing can be simple because the city has become a playground for the rich.1 It is unfair to single out Sky Ting,2 but I picked it because it has and will be an important third place in my life, and it’s a good example of what a community space now looks like in New York City.
After Krissy walked me through the new space during our first interview, she explained that they have given everyone a little bit more room to move around. the new space has a much bigger yoga studio, another smaller one, a hot-yoga studio, a combo suite,3 and a treatment room currently rented out to Osea. I asked her why they added these deluxe features beyond more spaces to take yoga classes. “The rent is extremely high and New York prices for commercial spaces are expensive,” she explained. “Wellness to me is multimodal. I wanted a center where everyone could come and feel better, whether that’s an infrared sauna, getting a juice, or getting a facial.” You could now spend an entire day here. The space is partly designed for lounging, and our second interview took place in a cozy back room made for “the combo suite experience.” These upgraded things (tings) should not be read as a signal of anything but simple add-ons to build community and create a center for wellness. But I cannot stop noticing the upscale atmosphere; the bathrooms have Chanel products, the class I took after an interview was sponsored by a retinol pill (Krissy explains the sponsorship is to help pay the rent), and the lobby has a shag carpet; even the HVAC repairmen took their shoes off while servicing the AC.
You don’t get the impression when talking to Krissy and others that these changes are out of the ordinary in Sky Ting’s evolution (they once had studios in Williamsburg and Tribeca). Krissy treats this move as a lateral one. The new location is centrally located; longtime member Austin Tedesco said, “NoHo feels like a good mix of convenience in terms of location––the people uptown and in Brooklyn can get to it––and neighborhood/vibe fit.” Krissy called it a “simplification,” and however you may interpret these features, as teacher Chelsey Forbes argued, “People might have an opinion about Sky Ting, but they have a different one after they have been inside.” What about the cost? A drop-in class at Sky Ting is $33 and a monthly membership is $250. Don’t these prices create a sense of exclusivity? Krissy explained to me that paying teachers well has been fundamental to Sky Ting’s success, and that “these are prices that I have to charge to pay my rent.” Yoga teachers are gig employees and in a place like New York City, to retain great staff you have to pay them a living wage. And the cost of a class and membership are in line with other studios in New York City. It is hard to argue with them when they already exist in a world of high rents; if they moved to Gravesend, then it would no longer be Sky Ting. In fact, you are probably getting a deal at Sky Ting because those other places don’t have shag carpets, Chanel products in the bathroom, or classes that include free sponsored merchandise.
Sky Ting is doing everything right: teachers are being paid well, and the studio has found creative ways to pay the rent so it can welcome in people interested in more than just yoga. Considering our loneliness, as new student Wonik Jang told me, who wouldn’t want to go to a place where “everyone here seems to be here for something other than yoga”? Why pay anything less when you can be somewhere that Chelsey described as “an environment that continues to empower and challenge you”? Until we do something about rising rents, the availability of public space, and the demarcation of neighborhoods into things (tings) called NoHo, being active in spaces like Sky Ting is what being in community costs. Unfortunately we seem to be going in the opposite direction, so we will continue to find ourselves at restaurants, bars, stores, and yoga studios that we cannot quite afford, but we’ll go to them anyway because we yearn for that connection across the mat.
The obvious caveat is that this is in reference to specific slice the city.
For example the upgraded Sahadi’s, which now pales in comparison to its neighbor Damascus Bakery. Another example are the Jewish inspired delis / restaurants. Looking at you Jack’s Wife Freida.
An infra-red sauna and cold plunge, not a Carvel / Baskin-Robbins.