1. "Made in LA"
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What is the origin story of SoulCycle?
Hi, I'm Ariana Grande. Hi, I'm Cynthia Erivo. And you're listening to the Broadway Podcast Network. Visit bpm.fm to discover more.
It was so incestuous and culty and wild and fabulous. It was every fucking color of the rainbow.
From its inception, SoulCycle was the hottest, fastest-growing fitness studio in New York City, catering to the rich, obsessive, famous, and fame-adjacent.
A lot of the instructors partied hard. I mean, partied hard. So the young ones would stay out all night doing God knows what, a lot of drugs, and then coming in, popping an Adderall, and then, like, getting on the bike, spinning a million miles an hour. Ah!
We made it this monster, this beautiful fucking monster of a whole bunch of bikes in a dark room. We were all hot and wild and some of us homewreckers, some of us on page six.
We'll explore how this cultural phenomenon captured the zeitgeist in a way nothing has before or since.
We're on a bike in the dark. You're going nowhere, but we went everywhere. We went everywhere.
Oh, well, I am so adored by this community. I can say whatever the fuck I want. I can do whatever the fuck I want. What a rush. Noon on Monday. It was like bracing for war.
Noon on Monday is not a thing anywhere else. It never was before and it never will be again.
Make no mistake, it was a magical time. But they're like anything. There's always when you peek behind that curtain. This is the cult of body and soul. At the risk of sounding dramatic, it's euphoric. It was club culture meets fitness meets guru meets self-help. There was nothing like it. Never was, never will be.
My name is Jessie Rothschild. I'm a writer and producer living in Manhattan. In 2023, I created a docuseries centered on the history, mystique, and lore of Fire Island, home of the oldest queer communities in the United States. Over the last 20 years, I have found connection and meaning in two places, on Fire Island and in the New York City fitness community, specifically at SoulCycle. And while I've spent much of my adult life dedicated to fitness, my time at SoulCycle transcended far beyond that of boxing, yoga, or boot camp. I've spent years obsessed with soul, analyzing every single aspect of the phenomenon with friends. My first class was in 2011 and I went about four times a week until 2019. People I met at SoulCycle spoke at my wedding.
They were also there for me when that relationship suddenly ended. We took destination spin rides in the Hamptons, Miami, and LA. Destination spin is basically an excuse to travel and then revolve your day around an instructor's schedule. I've had instructors to my home for Thanksgiving, and I was so intrigued by the secretive nature of the training program that I almost applied to be an instructor myself. Today, I find myself looking back, yearning for this time in my life. Like, what were the ingredients that made it so unique and special? Throughout this series, you'll hear from instructors, studio managers, and other riders like me. We'll even talk to folks who worked on the corporate level. While all instructors are named, other employees have chosen to remain anonymous.
Well, you have to understand something. The story of SoulCycle is, you know, you get these two incredibly media-trained, very, like, savvy businesswomen who have come up with an idea of a story that they want to tell, but it's not the whole story. There's a third person that was integral to creating this thing who was literally iced out, who was pushed out through legal means. For whatever reason, they just figured out one day, she doesn't fit into this.
To fully understand the story of SoulCycle, we need to go to Los Angeles in the 90s.
Okay. I've been a dancer my whole life, and I had a very colorful upbringing. And by colorful, I mean disaster. I eventually was such a mess. I was at Call Arts doing dance, majored in dance, with a minor in drugs, or maybe it was the other way around.
This is Janet Fitzgerald. Many fitness contemporaries cite Janet Fitzgerald as one of the original spiritual fitness instructors. Janet took the intention setting typically associated with yoga and applied it to high-intensity spin classes. Through her voice and specific music curation, she is able to take riders to a place of reflection and meditation.
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