Nick Velkov, owner of Yoga Agora and St. Marks Yoga discusses his career in yoga and what it was like to work through the COVID-19 pandemic in Astoria Queens. This interview took place on June 18th, 2023 for the NYC Yoga Studio Archives project.

Nick Velkov - Yoga Agora & St Marks Yoga, NYCYSA Contributor Interview. NYC, NY. June 18, 2023.

NYC Yoga Studios Archive (NYCYSA) is a digital archive meant to preserve the histories of yoga workers participating in the NYC Yoga industry in the years before, during, and following the COVID-19 pandemic (January 2020–July 2023). In March 2020, the World Health Organization commissioned that gathering in groups in indoor settings was one of the highest risk activities anyone could participate in, which almost immediately cast fitness venues as a COVID-19 hotspot. The circumstance of New York City being the United States’ most populous city per square mile meant that most yoga establishments in the five boroughs remained closed for in-person business for well over a year. According to my independent estimate taken in July 2023, 88 out of 193 studios permanently closed or relocated within the five boroughs of New York City alone during this time period.

Through an outreach campaign, the archive gathered spatial and narrative stories of how it felt for yoga teachers to work through the pandemic remotely or in-person; how the return to in-person work experience had been, and the COVID-inspired use of alternative urban spaces for yoga classes. The Omeka Classic archive and Google My Maps reiterations of it showcased each studio on an interactive, geographical map with indication of the open or closed status, live stream or on demand offerings and news media, along with any publicly available data and/or crowd-sourced contributed content in the format of textual documentation, drawings, lesson plans, images, audio or written interviews and reflections. In addition to the digital map exhibitions of what the NYC yoga community once was and its spatial response to COVID restrictions, the archive reconnects displaced yoga workers with each other and spotlights yoga’s continued culture of commitment toward the improvement of the communities that surround the physical studio and worldwide.

DISCLAIMER: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Read our privacy policy. This project was built under the supervision of the CUNY Graduate Center on 365 5th Avenue in Manhattan, New York, NY 2022-2023.

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