When Covid Upends Your Small Business
The owner of a New York City fitness studio on how the pandemic closed her gym — and breathed life into online fitness.
The end of an era, and the start of a new one.
Photographer: Lisa Eskenazi BoyerOn March 16, Lisa Eskenazi Boyer was working up a sweat with her students one last time at her bustling Queens, New York, fitness studio. Covid-19 lockdown orders were about to take effect, and Simply Fit Astoria — along with all other local gyms — would have to close its doors later that night. She never expected it to be for good.
When Eskenazi, 37, first started Simply Fit, “boutique gyms” weren’t yet part of New York City lingo. It was 2009, the height of a different crisis. It took a costly renovation, which Eskenazi describes as “the price of a house,” to convert a Byzantine woodworking factory into a sleek studio outfitted with spin bikes, lockers and other equipment for its heart-pumping classes.