New York's Hottest Club Is a Bathhouse

Then came UTI-gate. Last month, New York Magazine’s Curbed reported on a wave of Redditors freaking out about Bathhouse—part of a new-wave of baths the Curbed article dubs “party spas,” which opened in Williamsburg in 2019 and runs partially on mining Bitcoin—after one user complained that they and a friend left the premises with a UTI. Comments ranged from disgust at Bathhouse’s cleanliness standards to speculation about whether the users who developed UTIs already had them during their visit. Most commenters also noted how packed Bathhouse is on a typical day—“There were like 60 people down in that tiny area,” writes user grrnyay. Even before the scandal, Bathhouse co-owner Jason Goodman acknowledged the place was busy. “We realized the first weekend we were open; we were like, ‘Oh, man, we made it too small,” he told me back in February, when I first began reporting on the rising bathhouse trend.

Scandal aside, the popularity of this and other, similar baths like Flatiron’s Othership exemplify a new wave of bathhouse enthusiasm among Gen-Z as an alternative to stuffy, expensive spas, particularly in New York City. These new venues feature sleek, modern aesthetics, and friendly intro classes to guide bathers through sauna sessions. But older baths, too, are reporting a sudden influx of a younger, more female, more Gen-Z crowd. “It's gotten very popular, shoulder to shoulder,” says Juanita Gilmore, a middle-aged teacher who visits the Russian & Turkish Baths weekly. “They're getting younger and younger.”

So, what’s behind the bathhouse renaissance, and what should you know if you want to partake?

“What a sweat bath is, it's very simple,” says Mikkel Aaland, writer of Sweat and star of the new streaming series Perfect Sweat. “It's a heated chamber where people go to sweat. That could be as simple as a prehistoric cave with a fire, where people sat and got warm and felt good and sweated, and it seems to be as common among our species as baking bread or fermenting the grape.”

Modern bathhouses revolve around the sauna: a dry-heated room between 150 and 220 degrees. Also popular is the sauna’s slicker cousin, the steam room, usually heated to around 120 degrees and cloudy with thick steam. Both types of sweat baths are equipped with bleachers, where bathers can sit or lie down while they schvitz; the closer you are to the ceiling, the more you’ll feel the heat. To cool off after the sweat, most bathhouse facilities have showers and cold plunges, where the goal is to sit in the icy water as long as possible.
While we’re currently seeing a rise in bathhouse attendance across the US, America is actually way behind. The Russian banya and the Turkish hammam each have a history dating back thousands of years; in Finland, there are 3 million baths to the country’s 5.5 million inhabitants. (In New York, by contrast, there are less than 30 to share between 8.8 million people.)

New York’s public bathhouses were built starting in 1895 as a solution to concerns about public health in tenement apartments, which were not required to have a bath or shower, and which were densely populated with immigrants from cultures familiar with public bathing. Pretty much as soon as these baths opened, they also became safe havens for gay men to meet, mingle, and engage in sexual activity. The first documented anti-gay police raid took place at Ariston Baths in 1903, and involved the arrest of 26 men for “immoral acts.” In the 1980s, the government officially shuttered New York’s classic bathhouses as a response to the HIV/AIDs crisis, effectively delaying bathing’s hold on the mainstream for several decades.

Later, the venues welcomed another crowd, too: businessmen. In 1984, New York Times reporter William E. Geist wrote that the Russian & Turkish Baths were a place for “big, fat men … who sweat profusely in the steam bath before going upstairs to puff stogies, argue a game of gin rummy, converse in full chorus, tell dirty jokes, toss back shots of vodka, consume steaks the size of sides of beef—both sides—and proclaim that they would not want to be anywhere else in the world.”

While most establishments still happily cater to all the usual bathhouse customers, many have found a new niche among young men—and, importantly, women—who are interested more in wellness than excess. Dmitry Shapiro, a second-generation co-owner of the Russian & Turkish Baths, says that women started flocking to their bath once their facility went co-ed in 1986. Now, the youth have arrived, too. “The younger people, they’re not into going out and drinking and going out to restaurants,” Shapiro says. “Their idea of a good daytime activity is to steam with their friends.”

Of course, bathhouses are more than just a health fad. “This is not like a normal trend, because we've been doing this for thousands of years,” says Robert Hammond, co-founder of NYC’s High Line, curator of the newsletter Culture of Bathing, and president and chief strategy officer for Therme Group. “Every society comes back to this. It's just taken ours a long time.”

The newer, modern baths that have recently emerged reflect this shift—according to many of the bath owners I spoke with, the clientele is at least 50 percent women—though their reputation as a popular queer space largely remains intact.

While bathhouses often get shelved under the “spa” category, that term—which generally applies to pampering venues for relaxation, massage, and cucumber water—can set unrealistic expectations. Anjali, a 19-year-old Bathhouse Flatiron patron, fell victim to what can feel like a misnomer. “Normally, I'm a big fan of spas,” she says. “This one, I've heard so much about it, so I decided to try it out, and I was a bit underwhelmed, to the extent that it's co-ed and a little bit crowded. There's no exclusivity to it.”

But exclusivity would be missing the point. By design, neither the traditional bathhouse nor the nouveau party spa experience are about exclusivity—or tranquility. At Bathhouse, patrons change into swimsuits and then descend stairs into a cavernous, dark room studded with pools and hot tubs. Several saunas and steam rooms hide behind closed doors. Couples embrace in the large, temperate pool at the center of the space; friends chatter in the hot tubs; strangers cheer one another on as they submerge in the cold plunge. Several times a day, a gong is struck, summoning everyone present to join in on a guided sauna session. The room is moist, warm, and bubbling with energy. In short, it’s a party.

“Is it relaxing to be in a cold pool? No, it's not relaxing. It's freaking cold,” says Bathhouse co-owner Goodman. “I think the relaxation thing actually is missing the whole point.”

If that’s the case, what is the point for these younger bathgoers? Many tout the supposed health benefits, which range from increasing blood flow and improving overall cardiovascular health, to the reported anti-aging and detoxifying benefits of saunas and cold plunges.

Twenty-eight-year-old serial bather Alan is a distance runner and engineer who visits the Russian & Turkish Baths three times a week. “Recently, there are a lot of tech bros that have been going to the baths and saunaing more in general because of people like Andrew Huberman and Joe Rogan,” he says. “I don't really ascribe to that pseudoscience stuff that they push—like, ‘Oh, if you go to the bath, you'll reduce the risk of heart disease by 80 percent.’ How do we know that? That seems like cap. But, you know, it's definitely not bad for you.”

Hannah Christian, 27, has a chronic illness that makes exercise difficult, and enjoys the sauna as a sweat-inducing alternative. “I'm always seeking out health and wellness spaces that aren't necessarily workouts, because a lot of the time, workouts are just too hard on my body right now,” she says. “That's been a big part in seeking out [the baths]. And there's also this community piece that I did not expect, and that's been super attractive to me.”

Hannah’s experience aligns with what the Godfather of Sweat, Aaland, describes as the three pillars of bathhouse culture: the social, spiritual, and physical. “Those three components are contained in one single structure,” he says. “And I challenge you to find any other human activity that under one roof holds those three together as strongly as a sweat bath.”

For the young people I spoke to, the baths’ capacity to bring an eclectic group of people together into a temporary community—without the social lubricant of alcohol or the crutch of smartphones—is the most enticing reason to go. “It's like a fly trap for weird, eccentric people,” runner Alan says. “I honestly just like going for the social aspect, especially when it's cold out. It's like going to Miami for an hour and a half.”

“It’s been said the more we go into the high-tech world, the more we're going to need actual physical experience in our lives,” says Leonard Koren, creator of WET, a popular art and culture magazine from the late ’70s and early ’80s dedicated to what he called “gourmet bathing.” “And bathing is, you know, quintessential physical immersion, whether it's hot air, water, or whatever, and the baths can also be a social venue, without electronic devices or alcohol. These things make it very appealing.”

While the baths may be trending right now because of UTI allegations, when clean, they offer more than just a horror story for Reddit. No matter whether you’re drawn by immersive wellness, the promise of disconnecting from your phone, or the weirdos you’ll find schvitzing alongside you, the baths in New York City are a unique experience you can’t get anywhere else. UTIs, on the other hand, are a dime a dozen — your call.

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