As one of the club’s first female personal trainers, Ms. Walsh’s work uniform became two pairs of black tights, a belted thong leotard, leg warmers and sneakers. She joined a phalanx of bright young things recruited for their aspirational bodies and fitness expertise, educated within an inch of their lives to train some of the most demanding people on the planet: New York’s upper crust.
During the mid-1980s, the Vertical maintained its razzle-dazzle reputation by staying ahead of fitness trends; some of its innovations helped lay the groundwork for spaces like Equinox, SoulCycle and Barry’s Bootcamp that redrew the city’s landscape (and now, with the pandemic’s strictures against sweaty congregation, stand hanging in the balance).
Along with Sports Connection in Los Angeles and the East Bank Club in Chicago, the Vertical Club was one of the first health clubs in the United States where, as early as 1984, you could do aerobics, use a Nautilus machine, play tennis or squash, run around an indoor track, do yoga or tai chi, go swimming, get a massage, and work with a personal trainer under the same roof (the rock wall came later, in 1990). Mr. Raiola created an early one-on-one personal training program in New York; it became a dominant fitness trend of the ’90s, notably at the David Barton Gym.
The Vertical Club attracted celebrities (like Cher, Diana Ross, Liza Minnelli and Arnold Schwarzenegger); executives (S.I. Newhouse, Edgar Bronfman Sr.); pro athletes (Keith Hernandez, Andre Agassi); musicians (David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, who was trying to become “solid … as a rock,” presumably); and models (Fabio, Brooke Shields, a whole flotilla from the Ford agency). Tom DiNatale, the club’s dapper general manager, was there to greet them, wearing a designer suit and smelling divine. ‘’People come to see and be seen,’‘ he told The Times in 1984.
There was no V.I.P. area, so these familiar faces worked out with everybody else. “I don’t know why it became such a magnet for celebrities,” said Annie Niland, the club’s aerobics coordinator from 1985 to 1988, though, “for the most part, everyone was very cool about it.”