It’s been a taxing month and a half for DC residents, many of whom are impacted by cuts to the federal workforce. To deal with the stress, more Washingtonians are turning to businesses around town that traffic in either relaxation or rage—anything to distract from the current reality.
Beth Wolfe is an Arlington yoga instructor who offers animal-themed sessions such as goat yoga and meditation sessions with bunnies. “We’ve definitely seen an uptick in ticket sales since Trump took over,” says Wolfe. “It used to be that we’d always have a few tickets available for our goat events in the days before. Now we’re selling out two weeks in advance.”
She’s also hosted monthly yoga sessions at the National Building Museum since 2017, and a recent Sunday attracted her largest crowd ever. “We had 300 people. I’ve had so many people say to me, ‘We need this right now,’ ” Wolfe says.
That same pattern is happening at other yoga studios in the area. Yoga Heights, in Columbia Heights and Takoma, also reports an increase in people coming in for classes. Founder Jess Pienda says it echoes a spike that occurred eight years ago.
“It happened when Trump was elected the first time,” she says. “Some people can feel conflicted, like, ‘Oh, we should be out there fighting and we should be out there protesting. So it feels a little off to be coming in and doing yoga, which feels very inward-looking.’ I try to remind them that we can do both.”
Yoga isn’t the only meditative activity experiencing a boost in interest. Daniella Romanetti, owner of Alexandria yarn store Fibre Space, says sales have almost tripled for knitting and crocheting classes and workshops. “[People are] looking for ways to really just be in safe spaces where they can check out and focus on something creative and something stress-relieving, so that they can go back out and deal with everything going on out there,” says Romanetti.
While some people are turning to soothing distractions such as yoga and knitting, others are looking for a more aggressive form of release. Anna Valero, owner of DC’s Kraken, has “definitely seen an increase in business” for rage rooms and ax-throwing sessions. “We’ve had a number of folks come in who were like, ‘We need some catharsis. We need to just blow off some steam,’ ” she says.
Among those looking to smash and scream are workers directly impacted by the DOGE cuts. She recalls one group of NGO employees who came to Kraken, stressed about the administration cutting funding for their programs. “There are a lot of folks from the federal side who are just in this limbo space,” Valero says. “We hear people say that what they’re stressed about is the uncertainty.”
That same sense of uncertainty has also caused people to tighten their purse strings. At Alexandria’s Mount Purrnon Cat Café, the flow of customers has remained unchanged since the start of the new administration, but adoptions are down, says co-owner Adam Patterson. He says that in the past month, at least five individuals have backed out of adopting a cat—a far higher number than average.
“Usually once people apply for a cat and they get approved, they’re almost always committed to do it,” Patterson says. “But we’ve had people who have applied for a cat, we approve them, and before they came to even pick the cat up, they were like, ‘I just lost my job. So I can’t do it anymore.’ “
