Spa Trends 2008

As soon as the calendar flipped to 2008, spa publications and other experts began rolling out their predictions of what spa goers would be asking for in the upcoming year. (But as these things go, what they are really doing is telling spa goers what the industry is telling them they should be asking for.)

Within the various lists there was some overlap, but also striking opposites.

One prediction said we’d see more luxury spas with designer “labels.” There is now an Armani-branded spa in Tokyo and the Versace empire has a spa in Australia. Bulgari, Prada, they’ve all entered spa land. Is cross marketing the term for this? (Yes, yes, there are other names for it, too.)

On the other end of the spectrum, and perhaps a proletariat pushback of sorts, young people, they say, are beginning to seek out places of relaxation before spa was spa as we now know it—ethnic bathhouses, saunas and mineral springs that were once all the rage. They fell into disrepair when painkillers, being a much more expedient way to deal with arthritis, etc., were developed.

But I believe young people have been long onto these “best-kept secret” spots because of their retro feel. In Chicago there’s a Korean bathhouse called Paradise. My friends and I discovered it about 15 years ago. It’s on a sleepy (though used to be sleepier) stretch of Montrose Avenue and it’s the real deal. You have sauna, steam, hot and cold baths. But there are also massage therapists on hand, a restaurant and even a quiet zone with reclining chairs and television. The cost is well under twenty bucks and for westerners it used to be a spectacular portal into the traditional Korean spa experience. I don’t think they liked having us around, though I can’t be sure because there was not much English spoken on the premises.

Last year I had another old-time spa experience that I still think of fondly. Hot Springs, Arkansas used to be the water cure destination of choice for 19th and early 20th century seekers. People flocked. Bathhouse Row, as it’s called, is now making a comeback. Grand, free-standing buildings tricked out in beautiful mosaics and porcelain everything. I had my traditional spa day at the Arlington Hotel, though the Buckstaff is also a good choice. The Arlington was once the poshest of hotels but not much has been done to update its look. Original signs still announcing crazy-cheap prices hang and everything is musty and saggy and a bit dingey because of the high humidity levels and the absence of a fresh coat of paint.

But prices are still cheap by modern-day standards and there are lots of elderly regulars who have been going weekly for years. In fact I was told the Buckstaff frequently has a line of locals waiting. (If they are put off by the onslaught of newcomer tourist types pushing their way in they won’t be able to hide it behind a foreign language.)

Don’t expect much TLC. This was the era when clinically speaking bodies were slabs of meat—which I suspect had as much to do with the era being more rough-and-tumble as it did with ye olde Protestant ethic. That’s right, no co-ed experiences here. There is a lady's side and the men’s side and never the two shall meet. I was scrubbed and slapped and kneaded and talked to in assembly-line tones by gritty gals who’ve been doing this work for years. . . having taken over from their moms before them! I kept pretending it was 1800 something and I'd crossed the country by rail to heal my lumbago. It was just great.

Everyone should check out one of these throwback spas if only for a basis for comparison. And, after all, the spa experts say, you know you want to!

Here’s a fine photo of me wrapped in steamy hot-springs-water-soaked towels.

Last train to Hot Springs

When I was 19 my sister and I took a side trip around the island of Sicily during a two-month family stay in my mom’s home town of Sant’ Ambrogio on Sicily’s northern coast, just an hour or so from Palermo. Sant’ Ambrogio has a population of about 200 but a mere seven kilometer drive will land you in Cefalù, which has become wildly popular since those visits of my youth. It was already well on its way to being a vacation hotspot—I recall it swarming with mostly German tourists—but now I wouldn’t consider going there in July and August, which were our usual vacation months.

That summer we took a train around the periphery of the island, stopping to stay where the spirit moved us. I don’t remember how it happened—I think we just followed the crowds—but one day we found ourselves hopping a ferry headed for Lipari, one of what is usually referred to as the Aeolian Islands, a volcanic archipelago in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Some of us went for the scenery and to have a new experience, but the older people were looking to bask in the healing mud baths, the source of which was the volcanic pumice quarry.

As soon as we debarked, people began peeling off their clothes and wading into the chalky waters. It didn’t take much before my sister and I started slathering ourselves with mud. Oh, if I could only upload those photos! But it was long before the digital age. Each time we’d look at each other we’d guffaw and slather some more. The whole place smelled of matchsticks and for a solid week, no matter how many times we washed ourselves, as soon as our skin dried it turned the same pale white of the mud.

That was my first experience with man’s rush to yield to nature’s healing properties, even though I was thankfully free of desperation because at 19 nothing much ever hurts.

So last week I decided to spend a few days at the (relatively) nearby hot springs in Arkansas, to check out the old bathhouses on the strip located right across the street from Hot Springs National Park called Bathhouse Row. Most of those old bathhouses are closed down now, though not for long since they've been cleaned up. One is still operational; the Buckstaff, has been running steadily since 1912. I tried to get in for an old-time bathing experience but the lines were long and their hours are short.


So I went to one of the many others instead, the old Arlington Hotel bathhouse. Let’s just say it’s seen better days. Not much of an effort has been made to spiff up the place (unlike the Buckstaff, which has all the charm of an old bathhouse but none of the creeping inevitabilities that a facility regularly hitting steamy temps in excess of 100 degrees would have. I got dunked, scrubbed, wrapped and patted down just like the ladies before me did as long as 140 years ago. The rooms were clinical and stark and no creature-comfort efforts were made.

There are over 100 hot springs in the US alone, mostly on the coasts, and if you’ve never been I encourage you to visit one, just to see what counted as medicine to our forebears. It’s sobering, for sure. But guess what? The bathhouses are experiencing a resurgence of interest as we march willingly back to the days of natural remedies for preventive and disease care.