On a particularly dreary weekend in New York in the fall of 2023, a friend and I were brainstorming activities. We were new friends at this point: we’d been to parties and group dinners together but hadn’t yet made it to one-on-one hang-outs or going to each other’s apartments. I stumbled upon a TikTok video of a group of girls wearing pink sets for a “spa day” at The Spa Club in Koreatown and sent it to her. “I definitely need this; I feel very drained,” she replied. “So much to catch you up on.” We booked a 4pm slot, and once we arrived, I quickly realised I’d unintentionally invited her to a fully nude spa. We laughed at my mistake, our clothes came off and she opened up to me about some dating drama. Somewhere between the spa, the steam room and the downstairs cafeteria – our friendship progressed to a new level.
Social spa days have always existed. There are countless cultures with ancient bathing traditions across the world: onsens, hammams, banyas and Roman baths. It’s an activity that takes time, planning and putting your phone away, meaning it can easily become overlooked in the midst of our forever-busy modern-day schedule. However, New York has experienced somewhat of a social bathing revival in recent years. The city’s first “wellness speakeasy”, Elahni, opened in 2023, combining a Finnish sauna and ice baths with an “adaptogenic tonic bar”. Now, more “social wellness clubs” are popping up across Manhattan.
In January, Culture of Bathing hosted a variety show to celebrate spas and saunas as an “evolving social scene”. After the show, there was a “bathhouse bathe-around” where people could meet fellow social bathers at some of the city’s most iconic bathhouses. This included Russian and Turkish Baths, a staple of the east village since 1892. Russian and Turkish Baths is reaching new, younger audiences on TikTok through bizarre low-res videos of people being slapped with leaves. In its prime, vodka was served in the lobby, and it was a hangout for gangsters who talked business in the saunas. Now, it’s attracting groups of singles who want to ditch dating apps and young men who want to socialise in a way that fits into their “wellness lifestyle” (although the iconic bathhouse markets itself more as a steamy good time than a health-focused oasis).
There’s a strong undercurrent of wellness culture embedded into New York’s new bathing scene that made me initially sceptical of joining the party (the more exclusive wellness social clubs are charging up to $10,000 a month). Young people are drinking less, and weight loss drug use is increasing rapidly for those aged 12 to 25 – alongside the social pressure to stay (or, at least, appear) “healthy” at all times. For some people, this means avoiding “empty” alcohol calories and eating out like the plague to focus on working out. This makes swapping a night out for the spa or sauna an obvious replacement.
Last spring, a few months after I visited The Spa Club, my close friends started asking me to join them at one of the Bathhouse locations after work. It’s an underground spa that first opened in Williamsburg in 2019 as a “home for people to look, feel and perform their best”. While I can’t say I noticed any life-changing physical improvements from regular visits, it is a good place to catch up without worrying that you’ve reached a restaurant’s 90-minute reservation window. We’d chat for hours each time (probably more than some of our fellow sauna-goers like), and soon, it became something I’d look forward to. Hadn’t seen each other in weeks? Let’s head to the sauna. Someone’s going through a breakup? Let’s head to the sauna.
Once you get past the flying sauna sweat and jam-packed pools, the best part about social bathing is that it’s an activity that transcends generations. While visiting my family in New Zealand over the new year, I convinced my mum to spend our spare days in the new open-air hot pools in my hometown, He Puna Taimoana. In the sauna, we started a conversation with a travelling New Yorker. She told us that she misses upstate New York and that it’s taken her five years to fully potty train her son. My mum told her that she was planning to visit me for the first time. Then, she shared recommendations for activities to do during her stay. Undoubtedly, this will include an afternoon at one of New York’s many bathhouses.
Rampant wellness messaging aside, in the midst of the current loneliness epidemic, the age-old act of communal bathing is well worth a revisit – even just as an excuse to get that one friend who keeps dodging dinner plans out of the house. It doesn’t have to be a substitute, just a new location for long conversations. And my friends and I are not the only ones. At every New York spa we’ve tried, among the serious cold plungers are groups of three or four friends who are having not-so-serious talks, spotting someone they know sitting in the spa across the room. Once, my friend swears she saw a couple getting a little too social under the red light in the dry sauna. (We’ve steered clear of that side of the bench since then.)