Not everyone knows that the barre bro never really wanted to be a barre bro – he had never taken a barre class before his wife opened tuck, and even the barre classes he took at tuck were so unpleasant that he started this whole blog just to vent about how awful they were. If I wanted to be brainwashed into enjoying abuse, I would have just joined the Church of Scientology. Seriously, take a look at this picture of Callie teaching – she looks like a Southern evangelical preacher fueled by the fury of the Old Testament, and the students behind her have that North Korean “We Love Dear Leader And We Love What We’re Doing!” fake smile down cold.
No, the barre bro’s first choice for a small business would have been a bowling alley, because bowling is everything that barre is not. Instead of long stretches of pain and effort, bowling involves a split second of exertion followed by a leisurely gaze of admiration as inertia does all the work (barre teachers HATE inertia and call it cheating). Barre accessories are torture devices, like weights and bands. Bowling accessories are nachos and beer. Barre has silly socks, bowling has cool shoes. Seriously, look how cool Callie looks in her bowling shoes.
Here’s Callie looking shell-shocked after class, like she just got hit by a car (we call this the post-barre wtface).
And here’s happy Callie after throwing them rocks.
This is why our next business will 100% be a bowling alley. Also, I still like yoga, so we can call it tuck bowl & yoga.
In all seriousness, it’s a bit weird to think that we’re quickly approaching tuck’s third birthday – in some ways it feel like it’s been a lot more than three years, and in other ways it feels like we just opened yesterday. Owning and operating small businesses while working full-time isn’t always the most pleasant way to live, but there are two feelings that I absolutely love about owning tuck with my wife.
- When someone buys something in cash, and then we immediately go buy a coffee with that cash. The first time it happened, it felt so cool, like we were part of the economy or something! We sold a service, got paid, then put the money back into the worldwide stream of commerce as we enjoyed a hot cup of La Colombe coffee from OCF.
- The fact that people actually wear our clothes. This one was unexpected – we originally started making clothes just because we had the wall space in our first studio, and it seemed like what small businesses do. To this day, I still can’t believe people like us enough to buy our clothes and wear them around, especially the ones with silly puns on them. But when I actually see people wear our clothes, I feel such a deep sense of gratitude that people like our studio enough to wear our gear. Really cool feeling.
Full disclosure – tuck is a lot of work! Callie taught almost 400 classes in 2019 while working full-time. I, uh, blog from time to time and deliver water? Still, it feels like a lot! Our close friends know that the strain of it all almost sent us to couples therapy! (Would definitely have sent us to couples therapy if it was cheaper!) Like this night – this was a lonnnng night.
On the other hand, the friends we spend the most time with these days came from tuck. Like these guys!
And these guys!
We ran into a bunch of, well, ourselves, at this Phillymag event…
And we regularly hold UFC nights at Kate’s house (Fun fact – Meg LOVES UFC, when she isn’t teaching awesome yoga/barre classes, she’s fantasizing about throwing knees into people’s faces and choking people out)
I can’t believe how lucky we were to find and meet all of our teachers. Also, we do really random things like hold drunk plank contests (Kate crushed everyone – 5 minutes 10 seconds is her record).
Our first sound system was this tv sound bar.
Now we have bangin speakers that let us do rave barre!
We did barre at Drexel Square Park –
And at the Pier –
And did yoga at the top of Liberty Place –
We also met Julia. Have you met Julia? Julia is like, the nicest person in the world, ever!
And our dogs have been with us the whole way!
So on behalf of everyone at tuck, Callie and I humbly thank all of you for being a part of this with us, for coming to our classes, buying our silly clothes, and petting our awesome dogs. 
the barre bro 