Time Travel, Promises of Enlightenment, and The Delicate Art of Southern Perspiration

Finding Hot Springs in Hot Springs, Arkansas is harder than you would think. The last time I visited there, it was impossible. The time before that there was one option: the “health club” on the outer periphery of the town center. The health club had a state of the art 19th century mental hospital feel. Like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest, but much more barren and lifeless. A barf emerald hue infused the place, the ceilings were unnecessarily high, and the natural baseline Arkansas creepy - which is already pushing into the red zone - was magnified exponentially by the ghosts and goblins of health club past.

And then there were the Russians. Seldom a calming presence in any environment, but the pride of fat Russian tourists splashing merrily around in the tubs - oblivious to the spookiness of the place - was somehow reassuring. As if there were real flesh and blood people here and not just the un-dead and their voodoo brethren roaming the halls. If there was an apocalyptic war, I would have some well lubricated allies.

Years later, a Russian friend of mine in New York would explain to me the phenomenon: “Russian always look for Deal. Arkansas is “chip chip” (cheap cheap) so Russian find it to get good deal.” I couldn’t argue with the logic, and I filed the memory away as something I largely wish had never happened.

Today I was reminded of the incident as I soaked in the “ambiance” at a place I had longed to visit for over a decade. I have been “schwitzing” (as the Yankee Semites call it) at the Russian Turkish Baths in NYC since the second Bush administration. The southern chapter in Miami had always twinkled as some sort of special neverland for seasoned soakers who made it down south for business or cheeseball vacations or the Jewish Haj that seems to take everyone who speaks accentless Yiddish to these parts when the snow come. But I never had any reason to go to Miami, and so the idea of visiting here lingered in my mind like a thought cloud of “maybe,” with Boris’s ever deepening winter tan quietly goading me on to give it a shot.

Well today the day finally arrived.

I walked in and was not greeted. It was as if I had never left new York. I remembered the key and wallet ritual and gave up both to the iron lockbox that would keep me from fleeing the premises in the case of, well, anything, and I was enthusiastically handed a towel, a very used bathing suit, and some even more used “flip flops” by one of the attendants (who would later, it turns out, try to cajole me into giving him a job).

“My first time here,” I told him. “Been going to NY for years.”

“Well this one is ten times better.”

“Wow. And half the price,” I calculated. (Update: I was wrong about that.)

He coughed up a tip that might have cost him his job, “Stock up on the 20 pass here, cause you can use it in New York too."

That Boris and David and their pathological cheapness had not closed this loophole was beyond me. It must have been some sort of trap for their vendetta list. . . But I took it under advisement and spent the next few minutes cooking up an arbitrage scheme to fly patsies down here to stock up on passes to resell back in Brooklyn to the trapped Russians who frequent 10th Street.

But that would have to wait for another day. . .

For now, I was a tourist again. Shehekianu. Experiencing something new and for the first time.

Well. . . The 3.5 stars on the Yelp review seemed about right. In potentia it was great. Grand, almost. From an amenities point of view, it blew New York away.

But in reality. . . a bit more meh.

There was the infrared sauna room. A workable hat tip to the true health aficionado.

There was the Amethyst Room, a nod to the half man, prissy Korean spa denizens who condescended to visit the temples of their hairier and more violent western adversaries. Here in this reflective purple temple the only thing keeping you from visions of Nirvana was the deep stank of frozen body odor. That and the spy cam pointed directly at you in the tiny room, making escape from the watchful eye of Boris and his security goons nearly impossible - should you even consider running off with a giant chunk of Amethyst hiding in your very used bathing suit.

Also new was The Chinese Water Torture room, euphemistically dubbed “the rain room.” You had to hand it to them for the mock sprinklers, jerry rigged out of PVC pipe. Also hard turn valves - a constant theme of the place - made the wet and dry extremely accessible, even as the closing of the valves at all access points (“Close the Water!” read all the signs) shook the entire structure and pipe network such that you thought it all might explode and flood the place before you could collect your key and wallet on the way out.

But this trip (knock on wood) no such flooding occurred, and after a few showers, you get used to the loud jolt every time you Close the Water on your way out of the shower.

There is also the Firehose Room. A true southern experience. . .cleverly redubbed “The Swedish Aquatherapy Room” for those not in the know. Overcome that.

The Russian room itself was a step down from the New York version. The 3/4” thick wooden planks seemed incapable of holding the full Russian girth of the crowds for more than a few minutes. Although the cold water pool outside was ICE cold and provided an exceptional contrast to the deep, penetrating heat within, there was something much more communal about the northern version with its concrete bench and great throbbing furnace. For the grand poobah of saunas, this was a let down.

There are a thousand small details I am missing. . .like the byzantinely labyrinthine layout of the place - odd curved and dead-ends, counterintuitive ingresses and egresses, and an overall casino-like layout that had you confused at all times. The weird shower “situations,” the ultra-low squat toilets, and the fresh ocean water that fills the jacuzzi all conspired to create an ambiance unlike anything you would experience on the outside. But you really have to come here to take it all in.

The aromatherapy room was maybe my favorite room. In truth. . .they were all aroma therapy rooms, with the Turkish room bearing a deep funk and the Swedish Sauna smelling . . .awkwardly. . .of Bar-B-Q. Whatever the Aromatherapy room smelled of was aptly covered over by the cut rate Eucalyptus oil drenched over the steam valve.

But it was the lighting scheme that brought me back to Arkansas, oh so many years ago. An amber glow permeates everything, and where that fails, a lapsed aquamarine hue picks up the slack. I can’t imagine it was any better ten years ago, but those nasty, glaring, ugly-making corkscrew lightbulbs (Russian Baths Goes Green!) made the whole thing extra eerie.

And maybe in the end, that’s what brought those Russians down to West Central Arkansas. The atmospherics that reminded them of the Communist Motherland with its shitty everything and not quite enough of everything else (including incandescent lighting). The kinship between this place and that is almost uncanny, though, as I said, the amenities here are technically much, much better than the other coastal Schwitzes.

But I don’t know. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by the fastidious cleanliness of Wi Spa, Kabuki Hot Springs, or the incredible Springs at Pagosa in Southern Colorado. But I’m no longer charmed by the mauve tiling and flaking lead paint peels that give this place its old world “charm.”

As with a Korean spa, it is definitely like taking a trip to another country. Even another time. But I’m not sure 1960s Sputnik Era Russia or 1890s Post Bellum Dixie are quite the places I would want to be transported to if I had the choice.

Will I be back? I’m not sure. I can see it being an interesting date spot - for someone who is already really, really, like irreversibly in love with you. I get enough Schwitzing from Hot Yoga these days, and as far as cultural tourism, as a newly minted southerner, I’m not sure I have much need for it. Will I miss the microwaved borscht, Georgian mineral water, and 1980s vintage Hunt’s ketchup bottle (“chip! chip!”)? A little. . . But maybe it’s time to leave nostalgia and its amber colored glasses behind for a while and embrace the New World on its own terms a little bit more. Maybe it's time to create somebody else's nostalgia. . . D