You may not have realized that Blink Fitness, the normal gym for normal people, was a New York institution, but it was—founded in 2011 by the Equinox Group as the cheap, adequate-at-best little brother of the city's striver gym for aspirational elites. Yet after a 2024 bankruptcy filing owing to $280 million in debt, Blink Fitness is now past tense, after the blissfully cheap chain of gyms was bought in a $121 million bid by a British firm (is that allowed?) at the end of last year.
Blink was always the awkward middle child of the Equinox empire. The conglomerate's namesake health clubs offer, for a premium: spas with threatening auras, licensed massage therapists that offer "Bodywork," Lightstim Red Light Therapy, and other highly-aestheticized health products advertised to give a post-human edge to the core offering of waiting your turn to use the StairMaster. They also offer cold plunges—and if that wasn't enough, Equinox Group owns SoulCycle. Dropping a bankrupt Blink Fitness, whose main thing is being cheap and normal, seems like a natural progression into the sleek, merciless future Equinox depicts in its ads. Godspeed, if there even is a god in a world like this.
Blink, on the other hand, was for the untermensch, and that's where I belonged. That's why it sent a chill up my spine this July when I read an emailed announcement to members that revealed Blink's new, European name: PureGym. No!
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