David Barton Gym

In 1992 when I opened my first gym the exercise world was anything but inspiring. It was epitomized by a movie which showcased John Travolta in leg warmers. I saw that nightclubs were becoming less popular but the glitterati were not ready to trade in their place in line at a hot spot for a membership to a gym. I, being a refugee from the nightclub world understood why people I knew would not be caught dead in a gym. They called working out uncool, dull, naf, dorky, and they were right. It was for these people that I would reinvent the gym; the fashionistas, downtown celebutants uptown debutants, scenesters, miscreants of the night, and pretty much anyone who had elevated taste regardless of their economic position. In fact I noticed a growing number of people with more taste than money.

So I did. I made it okay for cool people to go to the gym I made it so okay that my first gym became a shrine to the in-ness of working out. It became “in” for anyone who shunned the traditional health club whether because of its bland surrender to middle class milk-toast stylessness or because the traditional health club lacked a motivating staff who had the expertise and desire to help deliver a new body in return for their membership dues – just didn’t deliver. Read full article.

The first gym I ever walked into was in a basement and had 50 members.  That gym changed my life forever.  When I opened my first gym I wanted to do 3 things; 1. bottle the emotion I felt in that first gym 2. help people get the body of their dreams 3. Learn what every other health club was doing and do just the opposite. At DavidBartonGym.  The first thing you will notice is that your gym looks nothing like your living room. In fact it looks nothing like anything else in the outside world.  This is because I want you to forget the outside world while you are here.  It is a landscape for the senses, carved out of my imagination and built with one objective; to get your heart racing before you ever step onto the treadmill. 

When magazines like Interior Design single out DavidBartonGym as one of the world’s most innovative ideas, concepts, and designs of the year it is no wonder so many details of ours are so often copied.  Yet what has never been duplicated is the experience, the rare alchemy that occurs when we fuse the pulse of a neighborhood gym with the soul of the local culture.    When we take cues from a neighborhoods history like the punk and glam of the east village or outdoorsiness of Seattle and modernize it in a way no one has ever seen before.  When all these details from the lighting to the person who greets you to the music are orchestrated just right, we recapture the excitement I felt in that first time I stepped foot in a gym.  It is that feeling I have devoted my career to sharing with my members.  When you step out of the ... Read full article.