When it first opened, Bathhouse was jokingly called the Bitcoin bathhouse, as they use the heat generated from mining to warm the tubs. \u201cThe comments were like, \u2018Oh they\u2019re laundering money through Bitcoin,\u2019\u201d says Talmadge. \u201cBut it\u2019s just a fancy pool heater.\u201d Those jabs did not prepare them for what happened earlier this year, when someone posted on Reddit: \u201cI noticed the hot tub and body temp tub were looking kinda dirty and gross. I thought it would be fine, but then I ended up with a UTI.\u201d The poster added that a friend got a UTI at another location.<\/p>\n
\u201cA UTI doesn\u2019t walk across the river. If it was a problem it would be a pool at a single location at one given day,\u201d says Talmadge. \u201cThere is 24-hour computer monitoring, and they are manually logged five times per day, and we keep the logs. We are adjusting the PH and chlorine at all times. Every drop of water at every pool turns over every 30 minutes. All the vessels have their own independent systems so they don\u2019t mix. The water goes through a sand filter that takes out any particles up to two microns, like a receipt in their pocket or a tag that falls off, or a piece of lint. Then it goes through a UV filter, a big tank with three-foot-long light bulbs of pure UV light that will kill all bacteria and viruses. They\u2019re basically sterile.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople don\u2019t go to lower their blood pressure; they go because it feels good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Talmadge and Goodman\u2019s biggest mistake was they didn\u2019t think much of it. \u201cKnowing it wasn\u2019t true, our first reaction was, This isn\u2019t going to go anywhere. Boy, were we wrong,\u201d says Talmadge. What followed was a pile-on, with a former employee alleging on TikTok that Bathhouse had mold issues. (Goodman says it was a photo of a 100-year-old discolored brick wall.) The website Curbed picked up the story in late March, claiming that a former employee shared videos with the publication that seemed to show insects on the floors. The article included a dismissal from Bathhouse.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe next morning, NY mag put on their Instagram that they got a video of us cleaning our sewer lines,\u201d Talmage says, noting the post was viewed upwards of 3.5 million times. (\u201cWe power jet them out and sometimes nasty stuff comes out\u2014we clean out grease traps; we clean the sand filter.\u201d) Various Substacks and YouTubers picked up the story. \u201cIt did affect business,\u201d says Talmadge. \u201cThe timing was suspect because we were closing a capital raise the day the article hit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goodman says the former employee was someone \u201cwho had a big beef with an HR person who had left by then\u2026. It could have been handled better. She had a lot of anger. She ended up sending us a written apology.\u201d (A spokesperson for Bathhouse says the situation was resolved amicably.)<\/p>\n
By now things seem normal enough. Talmadge is back to occasionally and anonymously leading aufguss, a German sauna ritual Bathhouse offers hourly that involves a series of snowballs doused in essential oils (one crowded night in November was rosemary and clementine; another chamomile; and the last linseed, vetiver, and spearmint) that melt over hot stones that waft into the air via a towel he twirls around the room spinning it like, well, a helicopter. They\u2019re also expanding across the country, with new locations \u201cin various stages of construction\u201d (and largely funded as built to suit by landlords), including downtown Brooklyn; Philadelphia; suburban New Jersey; Chicago; Nashville; Stamford, CT; Minneapolis; and Hollywood.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe get the wellness crowd, but also people who work in finance and other high-stress jobs like doctors and lawyers who are burnt out and overwhelmed,\u201d says Bent, who is one of five cofounders of Othership, including her husband Robbie Bent, who was working for the blockchain Ethereum Foundation when they started to think of the concept.<\/p>\n
Bent says, \u201cRobbie was navigating some addiction issues with drugs and alcohol his whole life, and he went on an ayahuasca retreat and we met after. We would go to whatever local bath place when we traveled because they were open late, especially being sober. It gives you the sensation of an altered state and dopamine with the hot and the cold and brings you out of your shell.\u201d (Which must be working; they have started to host singles nights and can take credit for at least one engagement from people who met while sauna-ing.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When it first opened, Bathhouse was jokingly called the Bitcoin bathhouse, as they use the heat generated from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[7578,9,24,55,54,56,2407,10781,990],"class_list":["post-100337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-beauty","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-style","tag-textabovecentergridwidth","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}