While New York City is filled with enough Pub Crawls to last residents two lifetimes, one East Village resident decided to put a healthy spin to a crawl. Last year, 28-year-old Anna Garcia decided to launch Juice Crawl, a healthy living social event where one travel to juice bars, drink a lot of green juice and workout. Haute Living chatted with Garcia to find out what inspired the uber-cool, health conscious social event.
HL: What inspired the juice crawl?
Garcia: Juice Crawl was inspired by the social difficulties of healthy living and not drinking alcohol. A little over four years ago, at the age of 24, I faced a couple significant health issues. One, due to severe cystic acne, my face was so inflamed that I couldn’t touch it. I had tried every medication possible, including the horrific Accutane, and nothing seemed to work. Two, my doctor informed me that I was almost pre-diabetic. Based on chatting with medical professionals and my own research, I knew that diet and exercise could potentially improve both issues. So I decided to change to the vegan diet, which is known to be good for both diabetes and skin conditions. I also began running more frequently and practicing yoga.
To kick off my diet change, I decided to partake in a one-week juice cleanse. I chose the greenest most “advanced” cleanse option, which contained vegetable juice and was low in sugar. In one week I saw a significant improvement in my face, more so than from any other acne medication.
While this new lifestyle was exciting, it was also difficult socially. My life became even more difficult socially when I also gave up alcohol. It didn’t really interest me anymore and didn’t seem to have the same affects. I personally wanted another option. Sometimes when you are trying to be healthy it pulls you away from being social. If you need a place for both, this is what Juice Crawl is about. Juice Crawl is a healthy living event open to anyone. It’s also a pretty cool place to expose yourself to cool healthy brands and sample a bunch of juice bars with your friends.
HL: How does one participate?
Garcia: Purchase a ticket at www.juicecrawl.com. A ticket includes everything from the workout to the 20+ samples of juice during the event.
HL: How long have you been holding the juice crawl?
Garcia: On Oct. 18th, 2014 we held the first Juice Crawl event in Union Square. We are celebrating our one-year anniversary on Sunday, Oct. 18th with a crawl. We’ve held eight crawls this year in five different locations around New York City and Brooklyn.
HL: How do you see the crawl expanding?
Garcia: I’m looking to hold more events in New York City as well as bring this concept to other cities and countries. Juice Crawl’s mission is to join healthy living with a fun and social environment. We’re experimenting with more events and ideas that match this mission. We’re your one stop for healthy living events.
HL: Of course, when you’re speaking with someone who has become somewhat of a juicing connoisseur like yourself, we have to ask what are your favorite juices?
Garcia: Three juices I like to make at home are:
- Clery, Kale, Cucumber, Spinach, Parsley, Romaine, Lemon, Ginger
- Beet, Pear, Pineapple, Ginger
- Carrot, Orange, Ginger
Everyone on the friends page of Juice Crawl's website have yummy and nutrition cleanse. I wouldn't lead you to a bad juice place! That being said, here's three juices I like to buy:
- Juice Press's Gravity. contains celery, cucumber, kale and lemon and E3live.
- Juice Press's Mother F*#%in' Fireball. I'm a sucker for spicy and this is intense! It contains kale, ginger, celery, dandelion, swiss chard.
- Luitonix's blend Kick! It's so refreshing and tasty. contains kale, spinach, romaine, mango, figs, mint, chia, lemon.
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