Be careful, readers. You never know where these newspaper columns might lead you. For instance, David Roeder’s Chicago Enterprise column last Monday led me directly into a hellishly hot room, where I found relief by pouring a bucket of cold water over my head.
The column featured the plans of one Alex Najem, a developer who says he is going to build a 40,000-square-foot bathhouse on West Madison Street.
“A reminder about how everything old can be new again,” Roeder wrote. “Professional massages and scrubs, pools and saunas.”
“Hmm ...” I thought. “Interesting if true.” I’m sure Dave is correct: Najem plans a new bathhouse — construction is to start early next year. But plans go awry.
At first blush, building a bathhouse struck me as woefully out-of-date, as if somebody announced the construction of a corner newsstand.
But what if I’m the one who’s out-of-date? Pre-COVID, there was a vibrant Chicago bathhouse scene. The enormous King Spa & Sauna, a sprawling Xanadu in Niles, open 24 hours a day. The luxurious Aire Ancient Baths in River West, a magical space carved out of a 1902 paint factory, with waterfalls and glowing blue pools in a dim cave of old brick and wood timbers, where guests can bathe in Spanish wine for $650.
Research seemed in order. There’s a perfectly serviceable bathhouse on Division Street. I began going there in 1990, when it was still the Division Street Russian Baths and promptly fell in love with the place, its boxing club decor, the Hav-a-Hanks and black Ace unbreakable pocket combs for sale at the entrance. Its sleeping room, with a high-pressed tin ceiling and iron single beds made with grey wool blankets, a room salvaged from the past, plucked out of the river of time.
But I also remember the place being deserted. It was closed for years then reopened as Red Square in 2013, the last time I went. Thanks to the war in Ukraine, the place has rebranded itself, unimaginatively, as the “Chicago Bath House.”
I paid $40 and went downstairs. It was neither empty nor crowded — maybe a dozen patrons scattered throughout, the same global spectrum of bathhouse aficionados as in past days. Older Russian-speakers with bald heads and beach ball bellies. A pair of Asian men, a group of Hispanic guys. Some young athletic bros gobbling homemade protein snacks, their bodies tattooed like Yakuza. One fellow, apparently visiting for the first time, wondered aloud where he found himself.
“The old Division Street Russian Baths,” I said. “Saul Bellow went here. A few scenes in ‘Humboldt’s Gift’ are set here.”
He looked at me as if I’d welcomed him to Mars.
“Who’s Saul Bellow?” he replied. “What’s ‘Humboldt’s Gift?’”
I muttered something about the Nobel Prize in Literature.
I’m happy to report the main sauna is still intact — wood instead of tile, yes. But it has black buckets (the same black bucket as a decade ago, starting to go around the edges). The peak sauna experience is to fill one from a tap, wait until you feel like you’re being baked alive, then grab the bucket with both hands, tilt your head back and dump its contents over your face.
Ahhh. Not quite as revivifying as I remember, but then I’m 63; maybe you can only be shocked back to life so much at this point.
Location seems key in bathhouses — I’d go to King Spa because it’s just down the road but never visited the Chicago Sweatlodge because it’s way the heck over on Cicero in Portage Park — I guess that’s next.
Going by yourself to a bathhouse is not much fun. But convincing people to accompany you is a harder sell than getting them to go to the opera. I convinced three associates over the decades to go — my brother, a doctor who lived across the hall on Logan Boulevard and Michael Cooke, the former editor-in-chief of the paper, an adventurous Brit who celebrated his 70th birthday by jumping out of a plane.
Now that people won’t get dressed and go to the office, does that mean they’re primed to start meeting at bathhouses? Or will they be reluctant to leave the house? I wouldn’t want to be the guy betting big money on the answer. But if one does get built on Madison Street, I’ll definitely show up. At least once.
