Shvitzing and kibitzing with some of New York’s most stylish men at the East Village’s Russian & Turkish Baths.
– MATTHEW SCHNEIER MARLON JAMES WRITER CHRISTOPHER ABBOTT EDDIE HUANG WRITER AND RESTAURATEUR INTERVIEWS BY SAMUEL HINE
On Christopher: COMMISSION Shorts, similar styles at commission.nyc. HERMÈS Towel, at hermes.com. PROUNIS Tourmaline Necklace, at prounisjewelry.com. Additional Necklaces, subject’s own. On Mike: DIOR Shorts, at dior.com.
The hottest party in the East Village is kept at a temperate 194 degrees Fahrenheit. The Russian & Turkish Baths, at 268 East 10th Street, is open seven days a week serving sweat, shrimp, and borscht. It has been going, at least according to lore, since 1892.
A hundred-plus years is plenty of time to see your fortunes rise and fall and rise again, and the Baths’ has. There were the émigré years, the second-generation years, the gay years, the Mafia years, the flophouse years. When the current ownership, the result of a détente between the Shapiro and Tuberman families, took over in 1985, the 10th Street Baths, as it was known, was down on its luck. “To be honest, we were probably the worst bathhouse in 1985,” says Dmitry Shapiro, who runs it on alternating weeks. Today, it’s the only bathhouse in the East Village that has survived.
But shvitzing (a Yiddishism for “sweating”) is a hardy tradition, wet-sculpting its own acolytes. Besides the remaining Russian baths in Brooklyn, there’s a flourishing scene of Korean baths in midtown and Queens, not to mention a sudden influx of trendy latter-day inheritors such as Bathhouse, Othership, and Lore. At the Russian & Turkish Baths, you pay a daily entrance fee—currently $60, each price hike attended by kvetching—and from there, the day is yours. You can alternate hot and cold, wetter (Turkish) and drier (Russian), get therapeutically beaten with oak leaves (a platza, which the previous owner, Al Modlin, is said to have dropped dead immediately after administering). You can have a Russian snack and a beer in the restaurant—John Belushi liked it so much he used to order takeout—or lie out on the roof with a smoke.