When Ethan Blauner signed the lease to take over a small private gym last fall on a nondescript stretch of 27th Street in Chelsea, he didn’t set out to make it a destination for Jewish athletes and fitness aficionados.
But like so many things in the Jewish community, that all changed following Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
After months of preparation, Blauner, 29, opened Sid’s Gym in January. Initially, Blauner had envisioned opening a boutique gym that fused his love of running with strength training. But it quickly became clear to him that many local Jews needed a place to channel their post-Oct. 7 fear and anger into something positive.
And so, while welcoming New Yorkers of all stripes to his business, Blauner has also leaned into Jewish programming, including hosting regular workouts with groups like Nice Jewish Runners, and events like Schvitz & Shabbat, in which a Friday night workout is followed by a Shabbat dinner in the gym.
“I’ve seen people wanting true community in the Jewish space and I’m happy to be able to host that,” Blauner said. “I want a place for people to be empowered and connected to other Jews around them.”
Even the name of his business took on a new meaning after the terrorist attack and Israel’s war with Hamas began. Blauner, who was born in the Upper East Side and raised in Riverdale, had long planned to name his gym after his first investor and greatest supporter: his father, Sidney Blauner. But in a terrible twist of fate, Sid flew to Israel with the intent to be of service in some way in mid-October 2023 and never returned.
Blauner explains that his father, an American who had served in the Israel Defense Forces as a young man, was struggling psychologically while in Israel, sounding manic and belligerent when they spoke by telephone. From what Blauner has been able to piece together, his father passed out in his hotel room after consuming a combination of pills and alcohol. After a hotel employee found his father, he was taken to an Israeli hospital and was getting a psychiatric evaluation when he fled. A few days after he went missing from the hospital, his body was pulled from a river.
Blauner said his father loved sports — particularly basketball, which he played regularly — and served as a coach in all of the sports Blauner played as a kid. His father always encouraged him to hold himself to a higher standard, and to do better when he was down.
Blauner believes that fitness has the power to transform someone’s life for the better. Though his family was health-conscious and his parents ingrained in him the importance of exercise and nutrition, it was not until he began training at a local boxing gym while a student at the University of Florida that he began to see changes in himself through working out.
“I had bad anxiety and was depressed, [something that had] manifested in high school,” Blauner said. “Training at the boxing gym made me more focused, calm, and relaxed. My depression and anxiety melted away, and I gained a sense of confidence and love for myself that I could do hard things.”
After graduating with a degree in sociology, Blauner returned to New York in 2017, where he began working as an assistant coach at a now-defunct Manhattan fitness studio called Switch Playground. When the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered businesses, he started his own online class and soon had more than 100 people on Zoom doing weekly core workouts together. From there, the Blauner’s dream of opening his own gym took shape.
Blauner reached out to his mentor, Roger Harvey, the former CEO of Switch Playground, who put him in touch with a Chelsea gym owner who was looking for someone to take over his business. Last June, Blauner walked into the space at 149 West 27th St. and saw “these crazy-looking treadmills,” which were built into individual platforms and had large flat-screens and terrain-tracking software that simulates running through fields, beaches and mountains. As it happens, the creator of the treadmill technology was also named Sid — which is why the Sid’s Gym refers to the treadmills as “Sid-mills,” Blauner explained with a laugh.
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“The space was looking for an operator and a new name, and I was looking to do something fun, cool and innovative,” Blauner said. “This was waiting to be brought into the world.”
With family and friends investing $150,000, he had enough funds to cover opening and initial operating expenses. Shortly after Sidney Blauner’s funeral, Sid’s Gym had a friends and family soft launch. “I want to give back the way he did, but he had his own demons to deal with and he didn’t,” Blauner said of his father. “He was an incredibly passionate guy who cared about everyone around him, often more than about himself.”
At Sid’s Gym, Blauner offers 50-minute classes that alternate blocks of walking, jogging or running with strength training, seven days a week. But it’s more than just a place to work out. Inspired by his father, Blauner urges his clients to focus on self-care, and he endeavors to create an atmosphere where people can feel positive and connect with their fellow workout partners.
For many regulars, it’s Blauner’s personality and natural charisma that keep them coming.
“I used to go to the gym as a checkmark in the day, but I go to Sid’s not just to work out,” said Sid’s regular Alyssa Hartstein, 29, who is Jewish and lives in Kips Bay. “Ethan wants to know everyone’s story, wants to make people feel welcome, and is just such a special person.”
According to Ezra Feig, the founder of Nice Jewish Runners, who was one of the New York Jewish Week’s 36 to Watch this year, members of his informal group regularly take classes at Sid’s. “What Sid’s Gym offers is a beautiful way to connect to Judaism while working on your mind, body and soul,” he said. “I don’t know if there is anywhere else where you can go to the gym, work out, and ‘Hava Nagila’ is playing in the background.”
In addition to fostering fitness and Jewish communities, the death of Blauner’s father also spurred him to create another community: the Dead Dad Running Club (DDRC). Blauner and his friend, Sebastian Forrest Tinker, both of whom had lost their fathers, started the club earlier this year as a way to bond, heal and share their stories with others through running.
The group meets every Sunday evening at Sid’s. There, they do a short gratitude practice, and then run a 5K on the Hudson River Greenway. Blauner said the DDRC has about 50 “consistent” members.
“It was an instant, ‘Yes, I have to go meet these people,’” said new DDRC member Scott Iseman, who lost his father to leukemia in 2019. Iseman, who is a chiropractor and is not Jewish, learned about the club when he randomly popped into the gym one evening.
“The casualness of the DDRC makes it a place to openly talk about loss and grief in an organic way,” Iseman said. “You can open up as much or as little as possible, and there’s a beauty in sharing with a complete stranger.”
“I’m so grateful for all the people who have shown up and shared their stories,” Blauner said of the DDRC. “The more you hear how common it is to lose a parent, the more you realize you’re not alone.”
And while Blauner welcomes New Yorkers of all cultures and faiths into Sid’s Gym, he said he’s proud of being a Jewish business owner and using that platform within the fitness space to bring his community together.
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“I want to be a positive influence and ambassador of health in the Jewish culture,” he said. “I want you to leave Sid’s Gym feeling empowered, inspired, happy and joyful.”
