PART FLASH MOB, ALL FITNESS
North Face-November Project partnership brings free workouts to S.F. — and they aren’t the only freebies
A recent Thursday evening at AT&T Park brought two opposing events together: the Giants preseason opener and the first North Face San Francisco Mountain Athletics training workout at the company’s new retail space at the Yard at Mission Rock. Like a flyball being derailed by AT&T’s northwest winds, some workout devotees struggled with the gravitational pull of the Yard’s nearby Anchor Steam beer garden, where 200 or so baseball fans were gathered.
While Giants fans swilled their beer, the 60 or so spandex-clad attendees squatted, sprinted and lunged in unison, led by trainers who mixed hollers with motivational messages centered around community and personal training goals.
These free 60-minute workouts are part of a new collaboration between North Face’s Mountain Athletics line of training apparel and the November Project, a Bostonbased community fitness movement that is taking over large urban spaces across the country and offering free goaloriented workouts for anyone willing to commit to training.
Though it’s hard to say whether communal suffering (hey, no pain, no gain) builds friendships, or even courtships, there’s a certain level of “we’re in this together” camaraderie that appeals to the twentysomethings flocking to these events.
Part of the reason North Face was so excited to work with November Project to promote its new fitness line was to capture the flash mob-type enthusiasm that November Project founders Bojan Mandaric and Brogan Graham established with their 2011 free workout events. With thousands of social media followers and a hundred or so devotees gathering at the crack of dawn to swap hugs (a manda- tory salutation) and sweat, Mandaric and Graham must be doing something right to keep people showing up.
Partnering with the popular November Project was a social media coup for North Face, and the company is hoping that the new Mountain Athletics sessions carry the same energy that the November Project provides during its early-morning workouts at Alta Plaza Park, Twin Peaks, Fort Mason and Ocean Beach.
But these aren’t the only free workouts happening around town, taking advantage of the city’s hippest hubs to socialize.
Jenn Pattee, the queen of urban fitness and founder of San Francisco’s Basic Training, has been holding her basic training workout sessions at another urban playground: Hayes Valley’s Proxy. After a successful Indiegogo campaign, private donations, and public support from Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, Pattee raised enough money to set up her permanent fitness hub at Proxy in June 2014, completing the space’s vision for commerce, culture and play.
Before Pattee had her space at Proxy, she based her sessions in the Marina, close to where she lived, but felt it was important to expand her mission of “play every day” to other parts of the city. During the summer of 2010, Pattee was one of the first fitness organizations to host wellness-type events during off-season at the ballpark.
Though Pattee’s sessions aren’t typically free, sponsorships from companies like Clif, Fitbit and Aether Apparel allow her to provide free workouts at Proxy, and all over San Francisco.
Pattee says that, “actually, Lululemon was supporting community fitness years ago with no strings attached.” Part of Lululemon’s business model is based around community, and it still hosts free weekly yoga classes at its retail locations. But unlike indoor yoga sessions, Pattee’s and Mountain Athletics’ sessions are about using the city as your playground.
Earlier this month, Pattee participated in San Francisco’s Market Street Prototyping Festival where she built a proto-spot at Fox Plaza with bars for swinging and grips for climbing. “We created a design to get people active on their lunch break,” she says. “Even some BMX bikers stopped by and asked if they could use the installment. Skateboarders only look at the city as a place to play. I love that.”