Equinox West 76th Street — Local services in New York

This is the best Equinox location I've been to in NYC. Very large and spacious, great locker room and keypad lockers, nice showers. Best of all this location has a spacious lounge with various couches and chairs to chill in on the Wifi or eat lunch at from the cafe. Most of the Equinox locations are missing nice lounges like that. The other locations if they have any chairs at have them in terrible locations like right in front of the front desk or in front of the offices and they feel awkward. The only other one with a nice lounge I've been to is the one on Wall Street.

Though a complaint I have about ALL of the Equinox locations in NYC are their cafe prices. The juice bar and stuff they make at the cafes are fine. Though the drinks and the protein bars and other dry snacks they sell at them that you can get at Whole Foods or tons of other little markets etc. all over New York for 1/3 the price they sell them for. They charge literally up to 3X the price for everything you can get down the street. Airport prices! Though it's not a freaking airport! Since it's not far at all to find the same stuff for 3X less at a store on almost any block, why are they charging 3X more? Who do they think they are? A coconut water that is $1.69 at Whole Foods they charge $3.69 for. Protein bars that are $1 at Whole Foods are $3 at their cafes. Why? Just cause the members can afford it? Instead of getting extra benefits and treatment for being a member you get ripped off cause they know you can afford an expensive gym. Stay away from their snacks and bottled drinks!

The other complaint I have about ALL of the Equinox locations in NYC is their OCD about cleaning. Don't get me wrong, I love having a very clean gym. It's great for the locker room how they constantly keep it clean and wiping down equipment and the laundry and towel service. Though they excessively clean the floors everywhere and break out the vacuum like every hour on the hour to vacuum the entire gym! I highly doubt the floor got that unclean in the last hour, and no one is obsessively looking at the floor anyways. They're just walking on it with their shoes on. They could save the vacuuming for the evening after the gym closes to give a full vacuuming and moping and detailed cleaning of the equipment etc. Instead almost every time I walk into any location, start using the equipment or take a seat in the lounge, it's not more than a few minutes until I hear the loud and annoying vacuum come out again and can't hear the music over it much. A really obnoxious noise and intrusive to it's members trying to workout or read or hear the music. And then they come up right next to you and you have to move to get out of their way as they try to vacuum...

I’ve been a EQ member for going on 6 years but this club made me cancel my membership. Long story short - there are various other studios opening up in the UWS which are significantly better options for what UWS residents would expect quality wise. I rarely write reviews but this place really stinks and is a comical waste of money.

1. Facility itself: very small and so overcrowded, you can’t sit anywhere or use machines without having your head in someone’s crotch during peak hours. Every couch / seat available always had people working in it, it looked bizarre like a really busy airport. Half the machines were broken for weeks on end. No nice amenities like the other clubs and classes are limited in times/types. My husband got herpes gladiatorium from their mats!! It always smells like sweat. I don’t think I ever saw their smoothie bar open. Cockroaches in the basement locker rooms! The towels were so rough and over washed, they seemed to be relics from the Bush administration.

2. Administration just looks to suck money and provides no help. I expect that from like NYSC but not EQ. I had a 48 session personal trainer package automatically renew without my permission 2 years ago. I went to the front desk the next day and asked them to cancel it but they said nothing they or their manager could do. I sucked it up and figured that eventually I’d use it. Because I didn’t renew the personal trainer package myself, I never saw that they expire after 6 months. They didn’t notice until recently when I had asked again if there was a partial refund I could get because I’m struggling to get through them (I’m a nurse with an erratic schedule - hard to get standing appointments that trainers need), my trainer was AMAZING though. They then told me “nope and by the way now that we’re aware you have 3 weeks to do 14 sessions good luck”. I emailed at least 5 people (both at SC where the package was renewed and at 76) and only one got back to me was 76’s club PT manager who did try to help me out but at that point I was fed up with the club in general and cancelled my membership. Rene from SC straight up just ignored my various emails after initial “no”. I lost well over $1500. EQ touts itself for being top of its class, and you would expect for the price you’re paying they wouldn’t be like this.

I used to belong to Sports Club, which was worth the expense and they even had cute events from time to time as well as a rooftop in the summer and outdoor running track. This location ended up being more per month since they only accept the all access package (which doesn’t include locations like...

I don't recommend this location. All the staff have such an attitude and if you are a woman, this is an unsafe place for you to work out.

Recently, I went there around 9pm and finished my regular workout and took a shower and put a towel over my body. There was no one else in the women's locker room except a cleaning lady. Then I saw a suspicious person, who didn't look like a female, walking back and forth very slowly fully dressed with a towel on their head. I reached out to the person and snatched the towel from their head. It was a teenager or boy in his early 20s. He just slowly walked out and I screamed so hard several times, "security!" Not a single person showed up.

I quickly put my clothes on and ran upstairs to the front desk people. When I asked them if they heard me, their response was "oh, music is too loud here". No one asked what happened to me and they didn't seem to care at all. I explained to them what happened, but no one asked if I'm okay or said they were sorry. My body was shaking from fear. They seemed more interested in making excuses, since they were saying things like "maybe he got lost",or "he might be the son of a member."

The next day, a manager called me and asked if there was any chance the person in the locker room might have been transgender. The day after that, he called again to say he had reviewed the surveillance tape from the entrance area. So basically this suspicious person walked into the gym without scanning a member ID and none of the front desk people seemed to notice or care. The manager said they don't know who he was, and since nothing physically happened to me, they wouldn't report it to the police. He also said the guy was not a member of the gym--but, if you don't know who he was, how can you be so sure he is not a member of the gym only because he didn't scan his card? Also nothing happened? Seriously? The manager offered me two months free but come on!!, I don't feel safe at a gym that has such poor security and I don't feel comfortable with the staff's attitude. In response to my questions, the manager told me there is nothing to prevent people off the street from entering the locker rooms (other than the inattentive front desk people), and he also said they did not intend to make any changes to improve security.

I canceled my membership immediately. I wasn't paying over 200 dollars every month for such poor service and lack of security. I feel that all women who go to this gym should know what happened and how badly equinox handled...