I wasn’t staying around with the other clientele. I started leaving rooms when all the Orthodox Jews left the room. The Bath personnel spend the day upstairs asking people to buy “treatments” on the way inside and no one was patrolling downstairs. The Cedar Sauna room and the Turkish steam were particularly bad. I went there today and had to complain to management. (This is also increasingly common in Ukraine and Russia.) So unfortunately for heterosexual couples or mixed-gender groups, they will have to walk around in shorts soaked in sweat… If you want to hang out naked, Russian & Turkish Baths offer one women-only and two men-only time slots.īTW, they regularly offer special deals and discounts through Groupon, and, so keep your eyes open.
On a side note, coming to the US after Germany, I have to mention that saunas here are clothing-optional only in single-sex setting. But if you don’t have such a broom and don’t know how to do platza, you can ask local masseurs – they are really good! I first massaged two Brazilian friends of mine, and then one of them massaged me. Yesterday, I used the birch broom which I brought from the Ivanovskie Bani in Kiev. Platza is finished with a dip in the cold water pool, which is supposed to train your vascular system. As they claim, “the oak leaves contain a natural astringent, which will open your pours, remove toxins, and actually take off layers of dead skin”. It may look a little rough, but in fact it feels very relaxing. It is a whole body massage that includes soap wash and whipping with oak branches. It’s a traditional Russian banya massage (aka platza, a yiddish term). But my favorite treatment there is actually performed right in the Russian sauna room. There are also massage rooms with treatments (e.g. Some friends of mine don’t like its dated look, but I actually find that low key style appealing the room of Russian sauna (banya) looks as if it has not been renovated since the opening of the bathhouse in 1892.Īlthough the bathhouse is called Russian & Turkish Baths, it has also two Finnish saunas (dry and hot), in addition to two hammams (Turkish steam room, relatively mild temperature), and a bigger banya (Russian sauna, very hot but with humid air, sort of a mix between Turkish and Finnish ones). The biggest one is probably the Spa Castle with Korean saunas in Queens, but if you prefer a more central location, Russian & Turkish Baths in the East Village is a good choice. When it is cold and gloomy, one of the best things you can do is to go to a bathhouse – as I did yesterday, while the cold spell is back to the US Northeast.
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