Photograph by John Taggart / Bloomberg / Getty “Between the two of us, we agreed that I would explore if there was a grace period where I can still cancel my membership,” he said. “If we avoided everything he owns, our quality of life would go down considerably.” It was weighing on him, though. “Are we going to avoid that, too?” he asked. On one hand, “I feel like I should follow my convictions and leave the gym.” On the other, “I just paid, I think it was, like, five hundred dollars for the month, with the initiation fee.” He added, “And there is no comparable option this close to my apartment!” He’d talked it over with his boyfriend, who pointed out that Ross was also behind Hudson Yards, the luxury development in Manhattan. and I was, like, ‘Fuuuck.’ ” Now he was stuck in an “ethical quandary,” he said. “I joined this gym three days ago,” he said. Just inside the door to the gym, an interior-design graduate student was moping. “I know he sees people outside of Equinox, so maybe that’s what we’ll do,” she said. The writer was going to discuss the possibility of boycotting Equinox with her trainer, who, she added, is gay and a person of color. at the time, Travis Kalanick, to step down from Trump’s economic advisory council. The movement later targeted Uber, forcing its C.E.O. “I e-mailed Zappos, because they carried Ivanka’s shoes, and I said, ‘I won’t shop here anymore.’ And I haven’t.” The following year, Nordstrom stopped carrying Ivanka’s clothing line. When the #GrabYourWallet campaign launched in response to Trump’s “Access Hollywood” tape, in 2016, urging people to boycott companies that had connections to Trump, she joined in. On the other hand, she thinks of herself as a conscious consumer. “Is there a symbolic value in me forfeiting all the money to this shithead?” And the membership fee is on top of that.” She could cancel, and lose the fees to Ross’s company. She loathed Trump, she said, but she loved her trainer, and she had already paid for multiple sessions. “I guess I don’t feel the need to defend myself.” She’d just finished a workout and was having a drink called Supa Dupa Greens and a bowl of Superfood Mousse in the gym’s mezzanine lounge-café. “I come here for a trainer,” a brunette writer explained, at the gym’s SoHo location, which has a juice bar on the first floor and a grand staircase. Those who worked out at the gym this week seemed to be engrossed in a complicated moral arithmetic. “What’s your policy for canceling memberships once a member finds out your owner is enabling racism and mass murder?” Some members quit the gym with dramatic social-media sign-offs. Its current ads feature oiled models receiving pedicures in the nude and watering marijuana gardens. The company regularly participates in L.G.B.T.Q. Equinox is conspicuously not targeted at the MAGA demographic. A hundred-thousand-dollar ticket bought a donor lunch and a photo op with the President two hundred and fifty thousand dollars bought a seat at a roundtable discussion. The fund-raiser was set to take place at Ross’s home on Friday afternoon, and guests included Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law, and Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary. Ross, who is one of the richest people in America, also owns the Miami Dolphins and SoulCycle, and has partial ownership of several restaurants, including Momofuku and Milk Bar. Members of the luxury gym Equinox learned this the hard way this week, when news broke that the gym’s owner, the billionaire real-estate mogul Stephen Ross, would be hosting a big-ticket fund-raiser for Donald Trump in the Hamptons. In the Trump era, political dilemmas can arise at any moment.
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