Beto Sanchez, 27, started his lunch break, opened his phone and saw, to his shock, that he and his co-workers at Starbucks had lost a United States Supreme Court case.
As his phone vibrated with texts from lawyers and friends, the irony of the situation sank in.
“I’m generating revenue for this company with my labor while the court is deciding that I should have just been fired,” he said, laughing.
It’s been over two years since Sanchez and six colleagues — dubbed “the Memphis Seven” — were fired after they tried to unionize their Poplar-Highland store. At the request of the National Labor Relations Board, the District Court of the Western District District of Tennessee issued a preliminary injunction against their firing and they were reinstated.
Starbucks appealed that injunction all the way to the Supreme Court. On June 13, the court ruled that the District Court should have employed a different standard of evidence before issuing an injunction. The court’s decision means it is now easier to fire workers for organizing.
The company has spent, perhaps, millions of dollars in legal fees to prove they shouldn’t have been reinstated. But if Starbucks’s goal was to break the union members or force them out, their efforts have backfired. Sanchez, a shift supervisor, and three other members of the Memphis Seven still work at Starbucks. The workers who remain at Starbucks sense their employer wishes they would get another job — and that’s why they won’t.
“If Starbucks really thinks they’re going to get rid of us, they’re not,” said Florentino Escobar, 21, a barista, trainer and another member of the Seven.
Neither Sanchez nor Escobar were activists before they worked at Starbucks. By contrast, Sanchez said that their firing turned them into “martyrs of Starbucks’ union busting.”
Now, Sanchez and Escobar have become well-known figures in a resurgent American labor movement. Working for Starbucks is no longer just about paying their bills.
“I know that if management and the corporation are so hostile to us, it’s because they know that there’s something in us that can make a change,” said Escobar.
Escobar used to love going to Starbucks.
He grew up in Collierville, a suburb he described as “very conservative.” Escobar is Latino-American and queer, and in Collierville, “being different is seen as quite literally being an alien,” he said.
Still, he felt comfortable in Collierville’s Starbucks. “It was so diverse,” he said. “There were a lot of LGBT employees, a lot of people of color and even people with disabilities. It was nice to be able to go there and talk to some of them.” When he started looking for a first job in high school, Starbucks was a natural choice. He became a barista in early 2020.
His story almost sounds like it could have been written by Howard Schultz.
Schultz, Starbucks’s former CEO, made Starbucks a national brand by emphasizing the social function of its stores. In 2008, a Starbucks manager told Fast Company magazine, “We want to provide all the comforts of your home and office. You can sit in a nice chair, talk on your phone, look out the window, surf the web… oh, and drink coffee too.”
Famously, Schultz also treated partners well; he distinguished himself from other CEOs by offering workers health care, stock options and payment above minimum wage. To Schultz, these benefits make a Starbucks union unnecessary. In 2023, Schultz insisted, “Starbucks is probably one of the best, if not the best, first job in America.”
It didn’t feel that way to Escobar. Shortly after he started his job, the COVID-19 pandemic began. “At first, the company was really supportive,” said Escobar. “But then it started going downhill.”
Sanchez and Escobar, along with their coworkers and supporters, on the strike line in February 2022. Video by Andrea Morales for MLK50
In 2021, Escobar moved from Collierville to the Poplar-Highland store, where he met Sanchez. During that period, workers were under enormous pressure. Shifts had fewer workers, making it difficult for baristas to keep up with customer demand. Workers felt inadequately protected from the virus. The ice machine was moldy, but management refused to replace it. Their paychecks were often inexplicably short.
Even before the pandemic, some Starbucks employees had become disillusioned with the company. Workers get benefits if they work at least 20 hours a week. Some, however, were scheduled inconsistently and unpredictably, which meant, in practice, that some employees never received any benefits. Meanwhile, Starbucks’s ever-growing list of drinks and modifications — currently, there are at least 170,000 possible drink combinations at Starbucks — has made the job of a barista harder.
On Jan. 17, 2022, Poplar-Highland workers announced they’d seek a union vote. A few weeks later, on February 8, seven of the workers were fired. Their firing led to the NLRB’s intervention — and, eventually, to the Supreme Court.
On May Day of 2022, Sanchez and another organizer were invited to give a speech in New York City at an event hosted by several labor unions in New York City. That afternoon, they marched to Howard Schultz’s Manhattan home and protested outside.
The Memphis Seven also thinks Starbucks is weaker than it used to be, despite the company’s court victory.
On July 30, Starbucks reported that its sales had declined for the third quarter in a row. According to Sanchez, worker turnover has increased. Meanwhile, younger consumers are boycotting the company.
On Aug. 13, Starbucks swapped its CEO, Laxman Narasimhan, for Brian Niccol, a former Chipotle CEO with a fraught history with unions. Unlike Schultz, Narasimhan seemed open to working with unions, but he failed to increase revenues at the company.
To boost sales, Starbucks has started offering more promotions. These deals “reek of desperation,” said Sanchez.
Sanchez holds the microphone during a February 2022 strike line. Photo by Andrea Morales for MLK50
Starbucks Workers United is now in a stronger position than expected. Currently, the union is negotiating with Starbucks to create a “foundational framework,” a contract that functions as a set of guidelines. These guidelines will allow each unionized store to create its own collective bargaining agreement with Starbucks. The framework is expected to include health and safety protections, protected scheduling, standards for discipline and protections for workers who want to organize their stores.
Sanchez, the Poplar-Highland store’s delegate in negotiations, seems confident in their prospects.
“We’re hoping that what we build will make it easier for others to follow in our path,” he said. “Others will be able to see what they can win from organizing, to be able to see that it doesn’t have to be this way.”
Rebecca Cadenhead is the youth and juvenile justice reporter for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. She is also a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. Email her rebecca.cadenhead@mlk50.com.
This story is brought to you by MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, a nonprofit newsroom focused on poverty, power and policy in Memphis. Support independent journalism by making a tax-deductible donation today. MLK50 is also supported by these generous donors.
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In our continual efforts to provide you with the confusing level of treatment you’ve come to expect, we’d like to introduce you to HellthChase, our new cumbersome and contactless check-in solution.
HellthChase invites and obligates you to engage in the unpaid data entry of your health information. Once you’re set up, you can complete a variety of other activities online without having to interact with a human regarding important medical care.
What kinds of activities can I complete on HellthChase? You can attempt such tedious tasks as:
Ask questions or request prescription refills from doctors and staff who might read and respond within one day or never
Regularly scan and upload your insurance card and driver’s license because we’re not sure we believe you that you are who you say you are
Sign forms with a pre-selected online signature in the font of an eight-year-old child’s writing
Be gaslit into thinking you can schedule appointments online easily
Examine some HIPAA forms you signed but never read and don’t give a shit about
Opt in by default to receive texts about balances due, with no billing or insurance detail
Are my records secure? Yes. All personal data entered online is completely hacker-proof. Did you know that prior to web-based recordkeeping, paper records were constantly being snagged from doctors’ offices by cat burglars?
Is that true? No, but it’s a narrative that HellthChase says inspires instant cooperation from technophobic patients.
Given that I can complete forms at home before my appointment, will HellthChase save me time? Oh, god, no. HellthChase convinced us to purchase off-brand digital tablets that our receptionists will hand you at check-in. The tablets love to freeze and time out, which allows you to mindfully watch a digital hourglass (HellthChase likes to say they put the “patient” in “Patient Portal”). Once our Wi-Fi has caught up and the screen refreshes or starts over at the beginning, you will get a chance to confirm or re-enter any information you previously completed before your appointment.
Wait, if I have to hold a tablet… didn’t you say it was contactless? Well, you don’t have to touch the receptionist’s hand; you just have to take the tablet. Technically, you aren’t making contact with a human, which is our ultimate goal. However, holding a tablet that was held moments earlier by another ill person allows you exposure to healthy germs that will keep your immune system robust.
Will this system connect with patient portal systems my other doctors use so I can have one login? No. As an American with healthcare, you must have unique passwords for at least twenty bespoke portals, none of which connect with one another.
Did my previous online health records migrate over? Ha ha ha, what? No. Those were lost in a cloud fire. You can declare yourself at the beginning of a fresh start of your health, or if you were a really anxious nerd and you printed your previous records, you can try entering them on your own (but remember the character limit). Or you may give them to your provider, who will just throw them in the trash.
Two days ago, I requested a prescription refill, but I have not heard back. Should I request a refill via my pharmacy? No. This double-dipping will create confusion and delay. Just be patient. Doctors may take twenty-four to forty-eight hours to respond, but sometimes take 1,204 hours due to regular software updates to the portal.
I received a scary test result via the portal. Can I please speak with a doctor to confirm I’m not dying? What are you doing trying to interpret your own test results? Those are not meant for your eyes. Wait for your doctor to message you that everything is fine.
Isn’t the point of the portal to access my information? The point of the portal is that it’s cool and proves we aren’t afraid to stay on the cutting edge of technology, even when it’s not helpful yet. There are definitely notes our doctors make and see, and you will never know about anything you don’t have access to. You really shouldn’t be looking at anything. Except the HIPAA forms.
I’d prefer not to be texted balances due. Can you mail me a bill instead? No. One hundred percent of ill Americans, you included, are criminals who plan to never pay their medical balances, so for efficiency, we omit sending detailed paper bills. Instead, the portal bombards you with a series of texts with balance reminders, which is not unlike the harassment of debt collectors. Just trust that the amount we say you owe is correct. Pay immediately, or you will be texted repeated threats and insults, you lazy sack of disease-riddled bones.
Can I opt out of this bullshit? No, you are obligated to take charge of your well-being with HellthChase. Sign in today to take an active role in getting actively frustrated by your healthcare. Your username is your social security number, and your default password is SucKeR.
WASHINGTON, DC—After running a thousand errands, working hours of overtime, and being stuck in seemingly endless gridlock traffic commuting to and from their jobs, millions of Americans were disheartened to learn that it was, in fact, only Tuesday.
“Tuesday?” San Diego resident Doris Wagner said. “How in the hell is it still Tuesday?”
Tuesday’s arrival stunned a nation still recovering from the nightmarish slog that was Monday, leaving some to wonder if the week was ever going to end, and others to ask what was taking Saturday so goddamn long.
“Ugh,” said Wagner, echoing a national sense of frustration over it not even being Wednesday at the very least.
According to suddenly depressed sources, the feeling that this week may in fact last forever was further compounded by the thought of all the work left to be done tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and, if Americans make it that far, possibly even Friday, for Christ’s sake.
Fears that the week could actually be going backwards were also expressed.
“Not only do Americans have most of Tuesday morning to contend with, but all of Tuesday afternoon and then Tuesday night,” National Labor Relations Board spokesman David Prynn said. “If our calculations are correct, there is a chance we are in effect closer to last weekend than the one coming up.”
Added Prynn: “Fuck.”
Reports that this all has to be some kind of sick joke could not be confirmed as of press time.
Isolated attempts to make the day go faster, such as glancing at watches or clocks every other minute, compulsively checking e-mail, hiding in the office bathroom, fidgeting, or reading a boring magazine while sitting in the waiting room, have also proven unsuccessful, sources report.
The National Institutes of Standards and Technology, which oversees the official time of the United States, is flatly denying that it has slowed or otherwise tampered with Tuesday’s progression.
“The current Tuesday is keeping apace with past Tuesdays with no more than one ten-thousandth of a second’s variation at the most,” NIST spokeswoman Dr. Geraldine Schach said. “However, I sympathize with the common consensus that this week has already been a colossal pain in the neck.”
Labor Secretary Elaine Chao released a statement addressing widespread speculation that it might as well be Monday for all anyone cares.
“We understand this day has been tough on many of you, what with meetings mercilessly dragging on and an entire stack of files still left to organize,” Chao’s statement read in part. “Yet we urge Americans to show patience. The midweek hump is just around the corner, and we have strong reason to believe that Saturday will be here before you know it.”
“Go about your lives as best you can,” the statement continued. “Do not, we repeat, do not take a sick day, as it’ll make the rest of the week that much harder to endure.”
In the meantime, citizens are doing their best to cope with the interminable week, though Tuesday is still hours away from ending.
“The more I try to speed it along, the longer it almost seems to take,” said Dale Bouchard, a Chicago-based broker who has been waiting for today to be over since it first began earlier this morning. “Honestly, today could not have come at a worse time this week.”
In the meantime, the latest wristwatch consultations indicate that it is somehow still Tuesday, if that makes any sense at all.
This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.
A reader writes:
This is a weird low-stakes thing. I work in a small government office and we have a guy working here who’s been here for over 40 years and is within a year or two of retiring.
I like him well enough, but I’ve noticed he almost never calls women by their names. Any woman he speaks to, he addresses as just “you,” and if he’s talking about a woman who’s not in the room, he just says “her.” There are more women working here than men, and he always uses the men’s names or at least their surnames.
It makes it very confusing when I have no idea which “her” he means. I’m “her,” my closest colleague is “her,” our big boss is “her.”
I have no idea if he’s doing it deliberately/maliciously or if he just genuinely can’t remember any of our names, and thus no idea if I should be outraged or trying to do anything about it. If I prompt him, he usually will clarify who he’s talking about, after a bit of hesitation, and he’s not particularly sexist or anything beyond this. Is this just a weird quirk I should continue to be mildly amused and perplexed by, or should I be taking a more active stance in getting him to use women’s names?
Why not just ask him about it? “I’ve noticed you never refer to women by their names although you use men’s names. How come?”
And then maybe: “It’s really hard to know who you’re talking about when you don’t use names. Can you please use our names just like you do with men?”
Who knows why he’s doing this. Maybe he’s uncomfortable with women, maybe he sees us all as a generic block with no individuality, maybe he’s taking a stand against women being at work. I don’t know, but it’s weird and troubling and it doesn’t belong at work. You should feel free to call him out on it every time, which will make him look even weirder if he insists on continuing.
You might also point it out to your boss. I’m guessing she’s noticed, but saying it out loud might nudge her to address it herself.
BABYNAMES Matilda Archibald Benjamin Katherine Theodore
CHILDHOODNICKNAMES Tilly Archie Benji Kat Teddy
NAMESFOR A JOBINTERVIEW Maddie Arch Ben Kate Ted
NAMESFOR A REBELLIOUSTEENAGER Madison Ash Benny K Spyder
PENNAMES M. K. A. W. B. R. R. K-C T
WRONGNAMESCALLEDOUT BY A BARISTA Melinda Arnold Ken Cameron Todd
NAMES TO USEWHENORDERING AT A COFFEESHOP TO AVOIDTHEBARISTACALLINGOUTTHEWRONGNAME Emily Ben Ben Emily Ben
NAMESACCORDING TO THENATIONALBIRDINGASSOCIATION OF AMERICAREGISTRY Matilda Archibald Benjamin S. Keymore, Associate Member, Expert Trail Guide, Golden Feather Recipient 2021 Katherine Theodore
NAMESFORPARENTHOOD Mrs. M Mr. A Mr. Ben Caroline’s Mom Sir
I smell them before I see them. Even as I’m surrounded by the bustling city life of Vienna, the smell of horses is unmistakable. It’s the smell of my childhood — a smell I’ve known my whole life. One whiff and I am back on the farm in Arkansas, a little girl in a big western saddle. Another deep breath, and I am soaring over jumps at a Los Angeles ranch. But I am not on the farm or the ranch now; I am in the heart of one of Europe’s great capitals. I look down to see straw strewn among the cobblestones as though I have slipped through time. I’m close, I think, as the smell gets stronger. Suddenly, I hear a neigh.
Prized by emperors, the Lipizzaner breed has been the glittering, shimmering diamond of the equine world — and, more specifically, Vienna — for centuries. Many consider them to be the perfect horses, with their docile temperaments, ability to concentrate and small builds that enhance their agility. But they are also beautiful. Bearing coats so white they seem to glow, Lipizzaners have long Roman noses, strong, arched necks and muscular shoulders. They are like beholding Pegasus, if he had shed his wings and come to live among mere mortals.
And just as the mortal Bellerophon needed the goddess Athena’s secret golden bridle to tame Pegasus, so have the secrets of training the ethereal Lipizzaners been passed down through generations of riders at Vienna’s Spanish Riding School. For nearly half a millennium, since the Habsburg monarchy established the school in the 16th century, people have come from all over the world to enter the temple of the art of classical riding and behold the legendary Lipizzaner stallions in their gleaming golden bridles.
I am here because some say the temple has fallen, that the school is dying.
As one stands alone in a shadowy corridor of the Hofburg Palace in the center of Vienna, it is not hard to imagine the Stallburg stables as a graveyard. I say “alone” because I am the only one standing — pressed against the stable’s thick glass windows watching the tamed pegasi — but behind me a steady stream of people passes, casting fleetingly interested glances at the sleek, white heads of the Lipizzaner horses who make their home there.
Some passersby stop to stare at the screen installed on the palace wall, where footage plays of the horses prancing and leaping in the regular shows put on by the school. A few even pause long enough to snap a photo of the horses on their phones before continuing to dinner. Few seem to know or care that they are in the presence of equine royalty. All of the horses that populate the stables before me are descendants of six stallions from the 18th century — their lineage as protected as that of kings. And yet the people carry on, their mobile conversations growing blessedly quieter as they depart, only to be instantly replaced by the rumble of an engine as a car passes, then the softer, yet still unwelcome, whizz of electric scooters.
Horses’ time at the center of modern culture is long past, as is the need to know how to ride one, classically or otherwise. Moreover, our views on how we interact with animals and their roles in our lives have changed. Modernization brings new criteria and values to the question of what elements of our heritage we preserve, though our past remains vital to the connectedness we experience within cities, communities and cultures.
On March 12, 2023, Alfons Dietz, a rider who formerly trained at the school, created a petition on Change.org. The petition came five days after chief rider Andreas Hausberger was dismissed from his position at the Spanish Riding School and banned from the premises. Management claims “misconduct,” but it didn’t take long for a letter to surface, allegedly penned by Hausberger before his dismissal and addressed to the school’s new CEO, Alfred Hudler. The letter claimed that the school’s stallions were overworked and that the school’s esteemed caliber of horsemanship had declined. The writer demanded Hudler change his business tactics or resign.
The mysterious letter is only the most recent form of complaint, however. In my bag, I have a heavily highlighted and scrawled-upon copy of an audit conducted on the school by the Austrian Court of Audit in 2021. It covers the years from 2014 to 2019, when the school had its first female director, Elisabeth Guertler. Known for managing Vienna’s iconic and highly lucrative Hotel Sacher, Guertler was appointed to transform the school into a business following its privatization in 2001. No longer would riders and veterinarians run the school; the Spanish Riding School now needed someone who could make the school money. And Guertler did — at great cost.
A year after her appointment in 2007, Guertler increased the school’s schedule of performances — each a 70-minute spectacle of jumps, leaps and perfectly controlled movements executed by an octet of stallions and riders — from just 35 a year to 69. By 2010, the performances were up to 72 per year; by 2012, the number was 75. All of this was in addition to traveling for international tours. Soon, according to the audit, the horses were exhausted and injured and being made to perform anyway. Many were retired early, sent to the school’s training facility in Heldenberg or back to the Spanish Riding School’s stud farm in Piber to live out their days away from the public eye. (When visiting Piber, I asked to see the school’s retired stallions and was refused.) Allegations surfaced claiming the use of abusive training methods like rollkur — hyperflexion of the horse’s neck caused by riders’ aggressive use of the reins — and unnecessary neurectomies. Typically done as a last resort in cases of heel pain and lameness, neurectomies involve severing or removing a section of the nerves in the horse’s foot. They are controversial, particularly in horses that perform or compete, as they do not cure the issues — neurectomies only eliminate the pain.
By the time Sonja Klima, the well-connected ex-wife of a former Austrian chancellor, took over in 2019, Guertler had unceremoniously axed two chief riders, and performances had increased to 90 a year.
Klima’s appointment was met with the immediate resignation of the entire school’s advisory board in protest. They had wanted the longtime rider and administrative manager Herwig Radnetter to take the reins. Not long after, Radnetter was gone too (there are conflicting reports as to whether he was suspended or left willingly).
Now, there is Hudler, whose background is in the beverage industry. To say his appointment was met with hesitation within the riding community would be an understatement. But if he were distrusted before, he is downright reviled after firing Hausberger, who, after 40 years at the school, was largely regarded as its last great keeper of the old knowledge. The institution seems on shakier ground than ever.
Dietz, who trained for eight years at the school beginning in 1984, wants the well-funded Austrian Ministry of Culture to adopt the school from the Ministry of Agriculture, thus eliminating the need for a money-driven business plan. His petition, which currently has over 16,000 signatures, calls for Hudler to be removed and for the return of the ousted chief riders. Yet these seem like solutions aimed at only half the problem.
Just because something has been practiced for centuries doesn’t necessarily make it important, points out Fumiko Ohinata, UNESCO’s secretary of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. What matters, she explains via Zoom call, is the element’s current meaning and that it is “evolving” and alive within its community now. This is why intangible cultural heritage is also called “living” culture.
A few days after arriving in Vienna, I sit in Cafe Schwarzenberg — my favorite of Vienna’s famous cafes. Like the Spanish Riding School, Vienna’s cafe culture is inscribed on UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity — a crowning achievement in the world of cultural heritage. But the vibe in the cafe is far from the lonely corridor at the Stallburg. Here, living culture thrums around me.
Under the cafe’s low-hanging chandeliers and within its dark wood-paneled walls, secrets aren’t dying — they are being traded over coffees, cakes, drinks and Hungarian goulash. Large, arched windows reveal time passing, of no great concern to those inside, lounging in their leather-backed chairs, while those in the ever-present line outside patiently wait their turn. There are no laptops here, no headphones. No one is even on their phone. People are deeply and actively drawn into their conversations, laughing, sipping and eating while servers twirl with trays, zipping and dipping to serve table after table.
I sit with Anna Puhr, the deputy secretary general of Blue Shield Austria, a nongovernmental organization involved in cultural heritage protection during conflict and disaster. Before us are two lemon sodas and two cups of Viennese-style cappuccino, or “melange.” Puhr is easy to like and easy to talk to. She has an infectious, invested interest in the world around her, and soon we are camouflaged among all the other cafe patrons, deep in conversation.
As I broach the subject of the school’s diversity, Puhr smiles knowingly. “You feel like you are in another century, no?” she asks.
“They’re all white,” I say incredulously, and I am, for once, not talking about the famous Lipizzaner stallions. Though the school accepts applications from all over the world, my tour guide at the school admitted hesitantly that the institution has never had a Black or Asian rider.
This launches Puhr into an extensive detailing of the diversification efforts of half a dozen other performative cultural institutions, from the Vienna Boys Choir to the opera, ballet and theater. Puhr’s previous work in digital communications at the Burgtheater makes her particularly resourceful in this area, and building digital bridges has remained a central focus of her work at Blue Shield and Austria’s National Defense Academy. It has also made her acutely aware of the difficulties of modernizing cultural heritage.
“There are also, in the cultural heritage community, those who still hold on to the past. They are part of another generation who kind of celebrate these older centuries,” she says. “They forget about today.”
Puhr is the future of cultural protection, talking one minute about digitizing museum inventories across the globe in case of disaster and in the next spouting a list of modern, green renovations currently underway in Vienna.
Digitization still seems a slippery concept to me, however. While it offers increased accessibility for people to experience culture via the intangible “cloud,” I worry that it simultaneously decreases our connection with the tangible world around us. But I am older than Puhr — not by a lot, but perhaps by enough that I might be considered part of the cusp between her generation and older ones.
“You need to find a way to modernize the old figures or the old symbols or the old buildings and make it something that is for everyone,” she says passionately. “Because if you cannot relate to it, why do you want to save it?”
Two days later, I am back at the Hofburg Palace, but this time I pass the stables and make my way to the palace’s Winter Riding School to attend a performance. Often regarded as the most beautiful riding hall in the world, the Baroque edifice is a palace all its own, with large pillars, two balconies and three large, glittering chandeliers stationed over the ring. Appropriately, it is all white.
Seated on the ground floor, I stare up at the majestic second- and third-level balconies with Puhr’s question still fresh in my mind. The balconies are full, but as I scan the crowd, I see today’s generation — Puhr’s generation — is notably absent.
The lights dim, leaving only the flickering of the tall candles in the elegant wall sconces. Silence fills the space — there is no whooping or cheering here — and I am drawn back through time. Classical music plays softly, and spotlights kick on, illuminating eight riders entering the arena atop their ivory stallions. They walk slowly, straight down the center of the ring under the sparkling chandeliers, the riders removing their bicorne hats in salute to an oil painting of the school’s founder, Charles VI, out of sight above my head. Then, returning their hats to their heads with practiced synchronicity, they begin the centuries-old choreography.
But it is not the riders who captivate. Gleaming like polished pearls, the horses are majestic in their golden bridles. Moving soundlessly on the mixture of sand and wood shavings covering the rubber mats below them, the horses begin to trot, their legs curling and unfurling like the limbs of ballet dancers as they prance. For the pas de deux, a term borrowed from ballet, only two horses and their riders remain in the ring to perform a dance that sees the pairs move in mirrored, elegant arcs. It is the most intimate part of the show’s choreography, and there is no better exhibit of the gracefulness of the Lipizzaners. But several minutes in, a restlessness seems to grow in the crowd.
Polite applause fills the hall as the two riders exit, and the program moves into the airs above the ground, a series of jumps and leaps known as the haute ecole. Spotlights illuminate either end of the arena now, and I watch my end, where a single stallion appears, his rider hustling into the pool of light beside him on foot, long reins in one hand, dressage whip in the other. The rider holds the whip gently against the horse’s back legs, and I watch the horse raise his front legs off the ground and balance in the air for the levade, the lines of his muscles running like streaming water down his sides and haunches. Another is soon performed with a rider on the horse’s back, perfectly balanced and seemingly at ease despite the absence of stirrups. A hesitant applause follows, and I watch as the horse and rider move quickly to the side of the ring, into the shadows, where riders rub and pat the horses profusely. With lightning speed, they produce sugar cubes from secret pockets sewn into the tails of their coats, offering them to the horses before their next turn in the spotlight.
Now comes the courbette. I watch as a stallion lifts his lithe body into a levade, but this time, the rider taps the back of the stallion’s legs lightly with his dressage whip, and the horse hops on cue: tap, hop; tap, hop; tap, hop. The applause grows.
No sooner is one horse gone than another takes its place in the lights, this one accompanied by two riders on the ground, one holding reins at the shoulders of the horse, the other trailing behind at the end of the long rein, dressage whip in hand. The stallion moves into the levade, but this time, a loud crack of the whip snaps through the air in the hall. At this cue, the horse leaps into the air and kicks out his back feet for the capriole.
A gasp ripples through the hall, followed by applause, but I can’t help the sick feeling in my stomach. Immediately, I think back to my 8-year-old son’s tormented, horrified face watching the horses charge at one another during a performance at Medieval Times, the riders’ whips working fast. I remember the shame I felt for taking him, thinking it would be a fun experience, and I am stunned by the parallels before me. These, too, are war horses with no war, made to perform not for the defense or expansion of nations but for the cost of admission — warriors made into circus animals. It is a feeling I can’t shake as the school quadrille — often called the “Ballet of the Eight White Stallions” — finishes the performance, the horses once again prancing on all four hooves, crisscrossing and weaving in a hypnotic dance before they and their riders are gone.
“I hate that word!” cries Myriam Hlatky, the communications manager at the Spanish Riding School, when I mention the circus. I can tell it’s a subject that has been raised before, and I agree that, at their core, the school and the circus are not the same. Classical training is, in its purest form, an art of harmony and sympathy between horse and rider, based upon a deep love and respect for horses, born out of people’s need to defend themselves, hunt and traverse the land more efficiently. Ask any classically trained rider, and he or she will tell you that even the practice’s most challenging moves — the lifts and jumps of the airs above the ground — supposedly mimic the movements the horses would naturally make in the wild.
These are nearly the exact words used by Hudler when I receive his responses to my emailed questions, forwarded back and forth through the school’s marketing department: “There are no tricks shown,” Hudler writes when I ask him what makes the Spanish Riding School different from a circus. “The foundation of our work is always the horse and its natural movements, hence why we work with stallions who love to show these powerful movements as part of their dominance behavior in nature.”
Horses in nature aren’t made to perform on command, however, and industrialization and technology have largely eliminated the need for this type of training. Without that need, sympathetically training a horse to jump and dance for sugar cubes looks different. And yet simplifying things to this extent fails to acknowledge that these are some of the most cared-for horses in the world, a subject Hlatky and I spend much time on.
She is easygoing, chatting with me remotely in a pale blue sweatshirt from her sparsely furnished home — a sign, I suspect, of a workaholic. And she’s funny, too, which quickly soothes any awkwardness after my weeks spent requesting in-person meetings with her, Hudler, the riders, the grooms and various other staff members, only to be denied across the board. (My follow-up request for a virtual interview, sent directly to Hudler, went unanswered.)
I ask about the neurectomies, and she does not deny them. They were done under previous management and before her time. They are not done now and will not be done in the future, she tells me, before talking at length about the school’s dedicated round-the-clock vet; a secondary, twice-a-week vet; and the school’s association with the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna.
If there is a horse that can’t perform “or has to have an operation or something serious, then it’s not only one vet that can make that decision,” she explains. “We take that very seriously because our horses are our treasures.”
The only subject she avoids is that of the dismissal of Hausberger. Instead, she discusses the concept behind the ancient knowledge for which the school is renowned, pointing out that if someone — anyone — has been at the Spanish Riding School for numerous decades and has achieved the status of chief rider, that person, by the very nature of the training involved at the school, has received the old knowledge and passed it on successfully.
This brings us to the topic of the cyclical nature of culture, and she tells me about a collection of letters the school was recently offered by an antiquities dealer in which the school’s famed director during World War II, Alois Podhajsky, was similarly accused of allowing the school’s integrity and sacred knowledge to wane. As Podhajsky literally risked his life for the cause, challenging the Nazi regime in the name of the horses and guiding them to safety through air strikes and war, it seems absurd to question his dedication. Yet the letters bring into focus how long people have been concerned with saving the school’s heritage.
It certainly makes sense to see an uptick in preservation efforts following a war; the tangible and intangible losses that resulted from WWII are some of the worst the world has ever known. To find renewed importance in the culture that survived is humanity’s resilience at its best — a testament to the soul of society in the wake of devastating loss. Seen thus, the questioning of Podhajsky’s commitment speaks to the importance of the intangible heritage at issue (and other intangible elements like it), because the destruction of such heritage is not just the loss of words, methods and traditions, but also the loss of our memory.
In his research on how war targets the collective memory, the author and architect Hadis Abdula references the near-total destruction of Gjakova’s Old Bazaar during the war in Kosovo in the late 1990s, noting that it “not only affected the urban fabric but also seriously injured the memory of society.” In many of the interviews he conducted regarding the bazaar’s destruction, however, it was not only the physical destruction of the buildings that the community mourned but also the loss of the intangible elements within the bazaar’s walls — the ancient methods of the craftspeople and their wares, along with the philosophies passed between community members.
“One of the most important features that makes a city a city is the people living in it,” Abdula writes. “Therefore, when ‘intangible cultural elements’ such as rituals that these people or ‘urbanites’ have embraced for centuries and passed on from the past to the future are subjected to destruction, the urban memory is exposed to trauma.”
Yet Vienna’s young urbanites seem largely untraumatized by the crumbling prestige of the Spanish Riding School. Puhr was born in Salzburg and has lived in Vienna most of her life. She has never been to the Spanish Riding School. Likewise, Hlatky, the riding school’s communications manager, admits that before getting a job in the school’s souvenir shop five years ago, she had not been to the school either. It is, in fact, hard to find any evidence of the school outside of its dedicated spaces in Vienna.
An element’s community is a term UNESCO leaves undefined, however, with Ohinata saying slyly, “If you are in it, you know.” Living culture is not necessarily defined by its physical location but by the people who practice it. Still, one must weigh the element’s relevance in modern society and the anticipated impact of the loss of its memory against the pleas of the community trying to save it. For instance, in 2012 UNESCO denied the inscription for the tanning and dying of the southern Zimbabwean multicolored poncho — a gift made traditionally by a husband for his wife as a symbol of “beauty, status and love.” The practice was taught orally and handed down through generations of the Nyubi community — the last of the Ndebele-speaking communities still actively crafting the poncho — but was not inscribed after UNESCO found that “the viability of the practice is threatened by the transformations of Ndebele life, in which the poncho has lost much of its function and meaning.”
If the world has outgrown the need for riding horses, the question becomes: What purpose does the practice serve? Is preservation for preservation’s sake viable, or is society better served by the reshaping of what was into something that is for everyone?
Back home in Southern California, I stand in the ranch stables of my old riding school, Jump for Joy. Here, the horses are white, brown, black and freckled, but it is not lost on me that the stables’ paint color is none other than Hofburg yellow.
I am with my 6-year-old daughter, who is about to take her first riding lesson. “You know they shut down the pony rides at Griffith Park?” my old coach, Linda Luger, asks as I lead the lesson horse, Dreamy, back to the ring. “After 75 years!” I nod. “People are going to stop riding altogether,” she says, and I wrestle with the words I have been thinking being said aloud.
Horses are in every era of my memory. I have pictures of my father holding me in diapers on my great-grandfather’s horse, Lady, and I can still see my son in diapers, playing in the sand while I trained in the very ring I stand in now, watching my daughter climb onto a horse for her first time.
We are the living and evolving inheritors of culture, and how we modernize should reflect both the traditions that made us and the statements we want to make to the world. Destruction, when necessary, is part of our job, and the time has come for us to ask ourselves if we are still living in a world in which the subjugation of another living being is acceptable for sport, entertainment or art, despite the centuries it has been practiced.
As modernization continues, our job is not just to live in the world bestowed upon us but to respect it, preserve it and, in some cases, change it — thoughtfully and in good conscience. Our goal, as Abdula suggests, should be to approach modernization not with the idea of creating “better or more perfect things” but to respond “to the needs and possibilities of the new world” in an effort to build memories we are proud of, that honor those who came before us and that the next generation will be proud to inherit.
This article was published in the Summer 2024 issue of New Lines' print edition.
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