The air inside New Mission Yoga is hot and humid. It’s like walking into a freshly clean dishwasher, if that machine had Persian rugs and a full-sized portrait of Our Lady Guadalupe. Owner Steve23 Sanchez, standing shirtless at the counter, doesn’t seem to mind.
He was born Steve, but at 23, he had what he describes as an “epiphany.” (The nature of that epiphany, he keeps to himself.) He’s been Steve23 since.
And, for almost 20 years, he’s been taking and teaching yoga in the Mission, now offering classes in both hot yoga and pilates.
“The yoga isn’t hot. You’re hot,” Steve23 explained. That’s why he’s rigged air filters to the furnace, to keep the temperature high and the air unpolluted. He says sweating from the heat boosts the metabolism.
His dog Pepper, 13, naps on the sofas in the lobby while classes take place in the back. Sanchez has some of his old art hanging on the walls.
Steve23 has lived in San Francisco since 1991, when he was 19. His first job in the city was as a parking valet. After majoring in electrical engineering, he worked in tech for seven years before being laid off in 2001. He’d read about the Burning Man in Wired, and decided then to attend. He’s gone every year its happened since.
That initial experience in Black Rock Desert convinced him to give up his career in tech and become an artist, creating sculptures out of metal. He lived and worked with anarchist art collective Headless Point, named for the headless horse that stood outside, until it burnt down in 2004.
It was around that time that he started taking classes at Mission Yoga, a studio on the corner of Mission and 20th streets. It wasn’t long before he was teaching classes, and then in charge of the whole studio.
During the pandemic, Mission Yoga closed and Steve23 started New Mission Yoga on the opposite corner of the same intersection. He’s expanded the studio into a shamanic wellness center, offering classes in sound healing and breathwork.
Still, the city isn’t the same.
“All my art friends are gone,” he says, priced out and migrated across the West. Live-work artist collectives like Headless Point have fallen out of fashion.
But he still has Burning Man.
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