Twelve Years Later, Still a Vision of Bananas
How a rooftop Pilates class became a community.
By Kimmy Smith, Founder, East River Pilates
Rooftop Days
Where it all began. The rooftop of dreams.
This month, East River Pilates turns twelve years old. Twelve years!
It's not particularly glamorous, nor is it one of the big milestone anniversaries. It's not thirty. It's not twenty-five. It's not even a nice round ten. It's basically the equivalent of a full carton of eggs.
And yet, for reasons I can't quite explain, this anniversary has made me more nostalgic than any of the others.
Somewhere between teaching rooftop classes in Williamsburg, opening our first studio, surviving a pandemic, launching a teacher training program, signing more leases than I'd ever dreamed of, and watching this community grow into something far bigger than I ever imagined, an entire decade somehow slipped by.
Maybe it's because we've just signed a new ten-year lease at our original S 1st studio. Maybe it's because twelve years feels long enough to look around and realize that many of the people who were there in the early days are still part of this story in one way or another. Or maybe it's because anniversaries have a funny way of making you reflect on all the twists, turns, lucky breaks, challenges, and wonderful people that brought you here.
The views from the rooftop.
Twelve years ago, I was teaching Pilates classes to friends on the rooftop of my apartment building on the corner of Kent Avenue and S 11th Street. The building was filled with photographers, artists, designers, architects, filmmakers—the kind of people who had moved to New York because they were chasing something. It was a building full of big dreams and even bigger ambitions, and the rooftop had phenomenal views of Manhattan that made you understand exactly why people fall in love with this city in the first place. Standing up there and hearing the faint sounds of the hustle and bustle that NYC is so famous for felt like standing inside possibility.
It was hope in a can.
What We Were Really Building
Some of our original Dream Team mates circa 2017
What surprises me most is how little I think about the studios when I look back on the last twelve years. My mind goes straight to the people.
My family and friends who cheered me on from those rooftop classes and became some of our very first members. Looking back, so many of them ended up leaving their mark on East River Pilates in ways that unfolded naturally over time. One helped us find our first basement studio and later shaped our interiors, branding, and graphic design. Another helped navigate lease signings. Another stepped in to help with accounting. Little by little, this community helped build the company alongside me.
I think about the friendships that started in our studios and somehow became family, the teachers who took a chance on an entirely new career and ended up changing the trajectory of their lives, and our Dream Team members who have grown alongside East River Pilates, helping shape not just the company itself, but the culture, community, generosity, and sense of belonging that people feel the moment they walk through our doors.
Opening Norman Ave Studio in 2019.
Sometimes it feels like I've spent the last decade learning on the job with no real guidebook, surrounded by a group of people who are all up for a challenge, willing to figure things out together, and just adventurous enough to say, ‘Let's give it a try.’ Which, now that I think about it, might actually be the unofficial mission statement of East River Pilates.
I think about the fact that there are now nearly fifty people who get to spend their days doing work they genuinely love alongside people they genuinely care about. Because if you'd met me twelve years ago, I was in a season of saying ‘yes’ to just about everything.
I had recently moved from Hong Kong to New York after undergoing hip surgery and was slowly accepting that my dance career wasn't going to unfold exactly the way I'd imagined. Looking back, it was a wonderfully random chapter of life. I'd worked as a magician's assistant, a Disney mermaid, and an aerialist. I was trying to establish myself in New York's dance scene, producing dance showcases, teaching Pilates, researching graduate programs, applying for jobs and internships. I wasn't exactly lacking options. If anything, I had too many interests and was still trying to decide where to focus my energy.
I was also taking a wild number of personality tests. At one point I became convinced the answer to my future was hiding somewhere between my Myers-Briggs type and a color-based career quiz I found online. Spoiler alert: it wasn't.
A Vision of Bananas
One afternoon, after an interview for an internship at BAM that had gone as well as many of my interviews seemed to go back then, I was heading home wearing a bright lemon-yellow dress.
The infamous stairs of 475 Kent.
It was a ridiculously windy day and Kent Ave had become a wind tunnel strong enough to make you do a little run every now and then to keep up with the rest of your body. You know the kind of happy skip you’re forced into doing, even if you have nothing in particular to be happy about.
As I approached our apartment, I recognized one of the men loading boxes into a car at the base of the stairs. It was Bill Murray.
He looked up. Even through his wrinkled face and that cheeky, familiar smile, I knew immediately it was him. He'd been staying in our building while filming a movie, so naturally I'd been keeping a casual eye out for him.
I was also incredibly relieved that, of all days, I wasn't wearing activewear.
As you do when you unexpectedly run into one of your favorite celebrities, I did my best to appear completely unfazed. ‘Well, look who we have here,’ I said as coolly as I could manage, before continuing up the stairs and deliberately choosing not to linger for too long.
He seemed to like that.
I was standing at the top of the stairs trying to find my keys with one hand and keep my dress down with the other. The whole thing felt like a low-budget recreation of the Marilyn Monroe photo. He looked at my dress, raised his hands in the air with Bob Fosse jazz hands and said slowly:
‘You're…a vision of bananas.’
To this day, it remains one of the best compliments I've ever received. I've remembered that phrase for more than a decade. Partly because it came from Bill Murray. But mostly because I love the idea of being a vision of bananas.
ERP’s Vision Meeting and Dream Team of 2015
There was something so joyful about it. It was unexpected and playful and exactly the kind of interaction that makes living in New York feel magical. The kind of thing that makes you smile long after the moment is over. Looking back now, I think many of the things I hoped East River Pilates would become were already hiding somewhere inside that moment. Not the Bill Murray part. The vision of bananas part.
Not just a place where people come to exercise, but somewhere people feel at home. Somewhere people know your name in a city where it's surprisingly easy to feel invisible. Somewhere you can show up exactly as you are and leave feeling a little happier and a little more connected than when you arrived.
Over time, the rooftop classes became studios, and many of the people who first walked through our doors became friends, teachers, mentors, leaders, business owners, and some of the most important people in my life.
That's the part nobody tells you when you start a business. The relationships become the best part, which brings me to the reason I've been feeling particularly emotional about this anniversary.
How I actually felt signing the 70 page N 11th lease in 2018. Terrified and excited.
Leases and Landlords
After eleven months of negotiations, we recently signed a new ten-year lease for our original S 1st location. I can confidently say that eleven months of lease negotiations was not how I envisioned celebrating our twelfth anniversary.
You'd think that after already making it through a ten-year lease in one space, the renewal would be as easy as peeling a banana. Less like a battle and more like a victory lap. But no.
My first lease was a standard six-page lease, which you rarely see nowadays, with a one-page rider covered in handwritten notes and initials. Some of the more recent leases I've signed have been seventy pages.
At one point, we were presented with a clause stating that if East River Pilates was ever sold, the landlord would receive fifty percent of the sale value of the business. Fifty percent. Not ten. Not twenty-five. Fifty!
ERP friends hanging out in Norman’s backyard
I remember sitting there thinking, ‘Have these people completely lost their minds?’
I was angry. Not because I expected running a small business to be easy, but because it felt like yet another example of people trying to profit from communities they had no hand in building.
If you've never negotiated a commercial lease before, you're probably reading this and thinking I've made the whole thing up. I wish I had.
Unfortunately, clauses like these have become increasingly common. What would have seemed outrageous a decade ago is now often presented as standard practice, as though small business owners should simply accept it without question.
The last time I checked, landlords provide the spaces where businesses put down roots, welcome people in, and bring their vision to life. That's important, and we need those spaces. But…
They don't build the community. They don't hire and mentor incredible people. They don't invest in professional development. They don't spend years creating a culture that people genuinely want to be part of. And they certainly don't teach Pilates.
Our accounting superstar and forever dream team mate, Mabel, in 2016
Yet somehow, more and more of them seem to believe they're entitled to the value created by the communities they had no hand in building. It’s absurd, and I’m deliberately choosing to share this because I think it’s important for people to understand what often happens behind the scenes of their favorite local businesses.
And unfortunately, it wasn't the first time we'd seen a clause like that.
It's incredibly frustrating. Not just for us, but for every small business owner trying to build something meaningful. Because here's the thing: small businesses are hard. They're beautiful and rewarding and deeply meaningful, but they also have a way of stretching you in every possible direction. They ask you to be optimistic, resilient, creative, resourceful, patient, and brave—often all on the same day. And every now and then, they'll take you from celebrating a huge win to solving a major problem in the span of fifteen minutes.
Malory, Head of Community & Marketing, and Reggie, Head of Studio & Operations.
Behind every cute neighborhood café, bookstore, restaurant, salon, flower shop, or local business is usually a person losing sleep over payroll, rent, staffing, insurance, legal documents, taxes, repairs, and a thousand other things nobody sees.
And yet we keep doing it. Because these places matter. They're where people celebrate birthdays, catch up with friends, find jobs, discover new passions, meet future partners, and become part of something bigger than themselves.
Throughout the lease negotiations, we spent thousands and thousands of dollars on legal fees. Money that came directly from emergency funds.
And honestly, I couldn't help but think about the countless smaller and newer businesses that don't have emergency funds to fall back on. The entrepreneurs who are already stretching every dollar, working every hour, and trying to get something meaningful off the ground.
What happens to them?
If they don't have the time, money, or resources to push back on unreasonable demands, do they simply walk away? Do some of those ideas never become businesses at all?
The Answer Was Never the Lease
There were definitely moments where I felt frustrated. But there were also moments where I found myself feeling incredibly grateful. Because every difficult conversation forced me to stop and think about what I was actually fighting to protect. And the answer was never the lease.
After our first Self Love workshop, led by the one and only, Natalie Pierson.
It was all of you.
Our Dream Team, our clients, our mentors, our leaders, and the thousands of people who have helped shape this community over the years.
It was the teacher who remembers your shoulder injury from six months ago, your favorite reformer, your dog's name, and the race you're training for even though you only mentioned it once in passing.
It was the managers, mentors, trainers, and leaders who have poured years of their lives into helping this community grow.
It was the clients who have trusted us with important chapters of their lives, celebrating milestones, navigating challenges, and showing up again and again.
It was the members who kept showing up through moves, pregnancies, injuries, career changes, heartbreaks, celebrations, and all the other moments that make up a life.
It was the person walking into their very first class feeling nervous and the person celebrating their thousandth.
ERP End of Year Celebration in 2016.
It was every friendship formed in the studio, every teacher who took a chance on themselves, and every member of this community who helped make East River Pilates what it is today.
One of the things I love most about East River Pilates is that, despite how much we've grown, it still feels like a place where everyone knows someone.
People celebrate each other's wins here. People show up for one another here. People bring their friends, their partners, their parents, even their children (thanks to the cutest Baby & Me classes), and eventually the people they brought become part of the community too.
In a city that can sometimes feel overwhelming, that feels incredibly special.
That's not something I take for granted. And it's certainly not something I built alone.
More Than You Know
Post workout dream team selfie in 2022.
Hold me back, because I'm about to go on a small-business love rant.
Every class you've booked, every membership you've maintained, every friend you've brought along, every workshop you've attended, every retreat you've joined, every teacher training you've completed, every recommendation you've made, and every time you've chosen to support a local business instead of a giant corporation has helped make all of this possible.
More than you will ever know.
Because of you, careers have been built. Families have been supported. Friendships have been formed. Communities have been strengthened. Because of you, East River Pilates is still here.
And after spending nearly a year fighting to protect one of our sacred spaces—and my personal favorite because of all the history we’ve built there together—I can tell you with absolute certainty that it is worth every bit of the effort.
There are nearly fifty people whose livelihoods are connected to East River Pilates today. That fact is never lost on me.
Some are raising young families. Some are buying their first homes. Some are teaching their very first Pilates classes. Some have grown from new instructors into mentors, leaders, and teacher trainers.
Twelve years ago, I was teaching rooftop Pilates classes a couple mornings a week and working a day job in Manhattan. The idea that this little side project would one day support nearly fifty people would have seemed completely unimaginable.
Yet it's become one of the things I'm most proud of.
The truth is, I was just trying to figure out my life. I had no grand plan. No roadmap. No vision of where any of this would lead. I was teaching Pilates on a rooftop, saying yes to opportunities, taking far too many personality tests, and hoping that eventually things would make sense.
Today, because of all of you, nearly fifty people get to build careers around something they genuinely love alongside people they genuinely care about.
That is extraordinary. And it is something I never take for granted.
More of That
If there's one thing these past twelve years have taught me, it's that people need connection. They need places where they feel welcome. They need movement, community, laughter, encouragement, challenge, friendship, and sometimes just a familiar face who knows their name.
So what comes next? Honestly, more of that.
More opportunities to share the life-changing benefits of Pilates with every body. More teachers discovering careers they love. More community initiatives. More ways to help people feel stronger, more connected, and more at home in their bodies. More Gift of Movement scholarships. More DOING GOOD projects. More retreats, more laughter, more friendships, and more people discovering just how capable they really are.
More moments that remind us why we started all of this in the first place.
So whether you've been with us since the rooftop days, joined during COVID, completed a teacher training, attended a retreat, volunteered through DOING GOOD, received a Gift of Movement, come to a Flow for a Cause class, referred a friend, or took your very first class last week, thank you.
Thank you for choosing us. Thank you for supporting local businesses. Thank you for supporting our Dream Team. Thank you for helping create a community that is warm, welcoming, resilient, and imperfect, and thank you for helping turn a rooftop dream into something far more meaningful than I ever could have imagined.
Here's to twelve years. And here's to the next ten!
With so much love and joyful yellow energy,
Kimmy
