These nouveau bathhouses are also, invariably, expensive to visit. You may or may not be surprised to learn that a meaningful slice of the current bathhouse trend is driven by the tech industry and those adjacent to it. Crypto mining is what heats the pools at Bathhouse facilities, along with a small but growing number of other pools. Othership was founded by someone who moved first through hedge funds, start-ups, and crypto, before getting sober and starting to host sauna parties in Toronto during the early years of the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to the idea for a physical business. And the Lore Bathing Club is the brainchild of one of the founders of NeueHouse, the bicoastal members-only club and coworking space that raised millions in venture capital funds in 2015, only to abruptly shutter this September (the same month the Bathing Club opened), subsequently filing for bankruptcy. At a time of staggering economic inequality\u2014driven in no small part by the tech industry and its funders\u2014along with a crushing affordability crisis, one might wonder if Roman baths and the fall of that particular empire are a better cultural trope to make use of in this proliferating market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Given all the above, I was interested to spend time with a couple books focused on bathing traditions to see what insights or counterpoints they might have to offer. The first one I picked up was Towards a Nude Architecture: A Visual Compendium of Japanese Hot Springs<\/em>, which includes writing, photographs, and architectural renderings by Yuval Zohar. And the second was the decades-old Undesigning the Bath<\/em> by artist and designer Leonard Koren, who was also the founder and publisher of WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing<\/em>, an important but very tongue-in-cheek compendium of design and culture.<\/em> Both authors share an interest in celebrating and appreciating unique practices tied to one of our most basic needs\u2014cleaning and caring for our bodies\u2014yet they approach the topic from very different angles. At the end of the day it\u2019s clear that Zohar is yet another person selling an aestheticized \u201cexperience\u201d that few can access, even as his book gestures toward accessible alternatives. Koren, meanwhile, continues his decades-long endeavor to poke fun at the haughty connoisseurship he was pressing against with WET<\/em>, an early mirror for the high-end experiential consumption proliferating today. All of that said, a central point underlies both books, and the recent surge in interest in these spaces: that communal bathing facilities could potentially provide a unique means of bringing people together at a time of heightened isolation, political polarization, and extraordinary disparities in wealth. But if that\u2019s the pitch, then the product has to live up to it, and so does the price point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s no accident that lack of access to public restrooms and shower facilities in the US is among the key barriers homeless Americans face when trying to get jobs and connect with services. Public parks and the amenities they provide are one of the few shared places we have, but these spaces are increasingly being privatized and are often heavily policed in ways that dramatically limit some populations\u2019 ability to use them or relax there. One of the only other models we have in the US for anything approximating a shared sanctum are public libraries, and not only do they carry too much of a load because of that singularity, they are also coming under attack precisely because they are intended to serve everyone. So while the topics of these books could seem esoteric or epicurean, the truth is that providing affordable, egalitarian spaces of rest, renewal, care, and human contact\u2014things that are central in many of the cultures from which these new facilities are taking ideas\u2014could offer a model of shared public space and cross-cultural exchange that doesn\u2019t require carbon-spewing plane rides to far-flung places or other types of privatized, individual consumption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Towards a Nude Architecture: A Visual Compendium of Japanese Hot Springs<\/em> is too small to be a coffee table book, not comprehensive enough to be an authoritative English-language guidebook, nor is it the architectural manifesto the title might lead you to think it is (playing as it does with the title of Le Corbusier\u2019s seminal volume, Towards a New Architecture<\/em>). Instead Zohar\u2019s book lays out a lot of useful and enticing information, along with copious imagery focused on communal bathing traditions in Japan. An architect who has lived and worked in a number of countries around the globe, Zohar transited Japan to gather the photos and information that make up this book and now calls Yugawara, a small coastal Japanese town with a number of onsen<\/em>, his home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are two primary types of public bathing facilities in Japan. First are onsen<\/em>, which are baths and pools fed by naturally heated sources, typically with inns attached, that dot the Japanese landscape. And then there are sento<\/em>: a more utilitarian public bathhouse, which grew out of a time when most of the population did not have baths in their homes, later becoming an embedded norm. Sento <\/em>are most often tap water fed and, in their heyday, were far more widely available than onsen<\/em>, numbering roughly 18,000 at their peak, with tightly regulated pricing to keep costs low for attendees (currently set at about $5 per visit). Ultimately, Zohar presents himself as a connoisseur of onsen<\/em>, driven by an interest in the specifics of how the Japanese make use of and have built culture, aesthetic language, and meaning around the copious hot springs gushing out of their extremely volcanic geography. He largely eschews the pragmatic sento<\/em>, seeming to claim the less common and typically far more expensive onsen <\/em>(prices per night for the inns you must stay in to access most of the spring-fed pools typically range from $100 to $500 per night) as the more authentic way to appreciate Japanese bathing culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Zohar\u2019s proposition comes across as yet another luxury experience, wrapped in an aestheticized interpretation of a cultural tradition rooted a few thousand miles from Midtown.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Yet, there\u2019s a central paradox at the center of his book that echoes in the language around the new wave of US bathhouses. Even as Zohar leans heavily on the Japanese concept of hadaka no tsukiai<\/em>\u2014roughly translated to \u201cnaked friendship,\u201d which he describes as \u201cthe unspoken bond formed at the dissolution of social hierarchies as both clothing and status are removed when immersing in the waters of a public bath\u201d\u2014the reality is that an idealized cross-class and cross-caste experience is not possible on a regular basis when the price of admission runs to a few hundred dollars per dip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps given his trade and the particular time we\u2019re living in, it\u2019s not surprising that the book ends with Zohar\u2019s own proposal for a New York City bathhouse, a city he lived in for part of his life. Apparently there are a growing number of people with the means and connections to do so who just can\u2019t resist the temptation to build a bathhouse all their own. In Zohar\u2019s case, inspired by the onsen <\/em>he has studied for years,<\/em> he wryly posits making use of the municipal steam pipes that throb beneath the city\u2019s surface as an endemic heat source that mimics the hot magma heating Japan\u2019s pools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There seems to be a somewhat joking tone in aspects of his proposal for a new bathhouse, as there is a sly sense of humor in much of his book, and yet, Zohar informed those of us in the audience at his US book launch at the Japan Society that he was in talks with investors to make the idea a reality. And so, Zohar\u2019s proposition comes across as yet another luxury experience, wrapped in an aestheticized interpretation of a cultural tradition rooted a few thousand miles from Midtown. When someone more interested in creating a space for the kind of meaningful connection described by \u201cnaked friendship\u201d might, instead, suggest dozens of well-designed municipal steam sento<\/em> instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Notably, Zohar\u2019s book doesn\u2019t once reference the work of Leonard Koren, even though it was he who helped to popularize certain aspects of Japanese culture in the US. Koren was especially important in popularizing Japanese bathing and the concept of wabi-sabi<\/em>, a Japanese philosophy embracing imperfection and incompleteness, which he wrote about in his 1994 book Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers.<\/em> As noted earlier, Koren was also the founder and publisher of WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing<\/em>, a wide-ranging and cheeky endeavor that ran from 1976 to 1981, becoming highly influential in its time and after because of its ethos as well as the designers, artists, and writers who contributed or were featured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like Zohar, Koren was trained as an architect and produced his own volume on bathing spaces, Undesigning the Bath<\/em>, which references Japan\u2019s hygiene cultures but also extends far beyond that country\u2019s borders. The book is relatively light on text, emphasizing the author\u2019s interests and preferences through black-and-white photographs (a fair amount of which were originally featured in the pages of WET<\/em>). Koren is just as interested in the shoveled-out mud pit or loosely arranged rocks and crumbling dirt walls surrounding a natural spring as he is in more formal bathing architecture. He summarizes part of his ethos this way: \u201cGreat baths require that the creator leave his or her imprint as discretely and unobtrusively as possible.\u201d And he goes so far as to title one of his chapters \u201cWhy Designers Don\u2019t Make Great Baths,\u201d and in that chapter offer a direct critique of architecture\u2019s tendencies toward \u201cfraternity and convention\u201d and the \u201cnonstop selling of ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s not at all surprising, then, that Koren does not include a pitch for a luxury bathing establishment in his book. That said, he does catalogue his personal beliefs about the elements required to create a \u201csuperior bath,\u201d such as pleasure, safety, timelessness, and animism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Given how influential Koren has been on the topic of bathing, particularly from a design and architectural standpoint, and the even-in-jest kinship Zohar is claiming with Le Corbusier, it felt like either gross oversight or intentional omission not to acknowledge Undesigning the Bath<\/em> or WET <\/em>anywhere in Towards a Nude Architecture<\/em>. Particularly because there are many shared interests between them. Both writers employ their own brand of humor and extensive knowledge of their subject. Both are interested in understanding the long and varied histories of bathing practices, along with some of the spiritual traditions that underpin them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s also notable that both books spend a portion of their time talking about traditions that were ultimately adaptations. Take Japan\u2019s bathing cultures as an example: Zohar acknowledges that it was the introduction of Buddhism into Japanese culture that led to regular, ritualized bathing practices in the country. Yet he doesn\u2019t mention that Buddhism came to Japan by way of Korea and China, nor does he offer any consideration of how practices in those countries might have informed Japan\u2019s traditions. For his part, when writing about hammam architecture, particularly examples from Turkey, Koren notes the specific ways in which hammams reuse and adapt Roman bath architecture, shifting the primary mechanism from the Roman preference for pools of water to the Ottoman preference for wafting steam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This last point seems particularly relevant to New York City\u2019s bathing cultures, and perhaps American culture more broadly, given the direct or vague cultural references that are often a key component of the marketing associated with bathhouses here. You may already be familiar with the fact that a very popular vacation rental website now spends almost as much of its digital real estate encouraging you to book \u201cexperiences\u201d as it does places to stay. These add-ons most often emphasize the authenticity of the person, place, or activity you will encounter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At this point, there\u2019s a common, if largely unspoken, understanding that this yearning for both novelty and the hoped-for meaning embedded in these experiences is born of a world in which cultures are homogenizing, enshittifying, and polarizing in ways that strip away the human, the regional, and the specific. The ouroboros-like offering of these experiences simultaneously invites people to engage in conspicuous consumption while acknowledging a deep desire to step outside of endless cycles of unfulfilling consumption. Walmart, Google, and Amazon are the daily cross-class feeding trough for the vast majority of us living in the US. Strip malls filled with the same stores now line the roadways of just about every city and town in this country, including New York City. And that same reality is extending out globally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Early in the first decade of the 21st century, as Amazon marked its first profitable year, UNESCO was crafting its Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. This treaty, adopted in the fall of 2003 and ratified in early 2006, focuses on cultural practices as \u201ca mainspring of cultural diversity and a guarantee of sustainable development\u201d and notes \u201cthe invaluable role of the intangible cultural heritage as a factor in bringing human beings closer together and ensuring exchange and understanding among them.\u201d Among the traditions UNESCO has added since starting the list are a handful of hygiene practices that are deeply rooted among specific peoples and places: from the centuries-old tradition of crafting olive oil soap in Nablus, Palestine, to the smoke saunas of Southern Estonia, to the Chinese practice of Taijiquan, or Tai Chi, as it\u2019s more commonly known to English speakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cultural specificity matters, particularly in New York City. We are among the most diverse cities in the country, most especially in the outer boroughs, and one of the most glorious things about this city is the ways in which its extraordinarily varied immigrant communities have brought their traditions with them, adapting them for their new home. This allows residents and visitors to share meals and be invited into spaces and practices that would otherwise only be available by crossing oceans and continents. The oldest operating bathhouse in the city, the Russian & Turkish Baths, was built in the late 1800s in a former tenement to serve an immigrant population that was used to communal bathing, sometimes lacked in-home facilities, and wanted to be able to keep long-held and familiar traditions. Similarly, it was Korean communities\u2019 more recent embrace of non-Korean customers at jjimjilbang<\/em> such as Queens-based Spa Castle and Jersey-based King Spa that helped popularize communal bathing in the city in the decade before this new wave of bathhouses. These establishments have adapted and continue to adapt to US culture, giving the communities that founded them a taste of the familiar while also developing a taste among those from outside that culture for the pleasure, relief, and shared experiences they provide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Cleveland_Model-Cities-building-1000x600.jpg\")
<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n \n Nonprofit Neighborhoods: How Not to Fight Poverty<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
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<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n \n \u201cRecover, Replant, Return\u201d: Talking Nuclear History, Writing, and Food with Kate Brown<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
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<\/a>\n \n B. R. Cohen <\/a>\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/div>\n\n\n\n\n