Othership, the SoulCycle of Spas

Perhaps the buzziest offering is Othership, a “social sauna” startup from Canada which opened in Flatiron, last July. The company began when the cryptocurrency entrepreneur Robbie Bent converted his Toronto back yard into an unlicensed communal spa. In 2022, Bent and four co-founders opened the first formal Othership club, in downtown Toronto, eventually raising eight million dollars in funding. Bent has described Othership as “a Cirque du Soleil performance that you are a part of, meets group therapy.” Intrigued, I took them up on an offer to try a drop-in class ($64).

Othership is, I found, not intended to be a leisurely experience. Think of it more as a fitness studio, but for hydrotherapy—the SoulCycle of spas, where relaxation is regimented down to the minute. To begin each seventy-five-minute session, participants (the studio calls them “journeyers”) gather in swimsuits in the tea lounge. The lounge has a decidedly cultish feel: the day I visited, it was packed with dewy twentysomethings air-kissing in clusters—a vibe that was not entirely dispelled when our “guide,” a cheery woman named Sharisse Francisco, told us to enter a 185-degree “performance sauna” for a twenty-minute “guide down” ritual, where we would chant and rub our faces with wooden gua-sha tools.

In the sauna, under neon lights, Francisco put on a thumping playlist and led the group through deep-breathing exercises. Every few minutes, she would hurl essential-oil-infused snowballs onto the sauna rocks with a theatrical flourish. After a rinse in a communal shower, we were led to the cold room, containing shallow plunge tubs of varying icy temperatures. I was directed to the coldest—thirty-two degrees—and Francisco commanded us to dunk in unison. We were encouraged to endure the brutal, teeth-chattering sensation for up to three minutes; I lasted forty-five seconds. Francisco banged a gong. I looked around at a sea of blissed-out faces and wondered, Are we all so fried these days that we yearn for tranquillity on demand? It feels contradictory, and yet it has never been more popular: Othership’s second location opens in Williamsburg this fall.

Pick Three

Jackson Arn on some of his favorite reds.

1. I’m aware that I have nobody but myself to blame for this, but writing a longish article about uses of the color red in visual art felt like one prolonged pang of “But what about . . . ?” I wish that I’d found a way to work in, for example, “No Fear, No Die,” Claire Denis’s film, from 1990, about underground cockfighting, a sort of encyclopedia of red’s different emotional meanings: bloody, gaudy, ecstatic, childish, sexual. The underground club where much of the film takes place, all whirring Vegas-y electronica, could be the single coolest set in cinema.

2. In Chapter 3 of “Ulysses,” Stephen sees a dog running along the beach, “a rag of wolf’s tongue redpanting from his jaws.” That might be my favorite snippet from the entire novel—so precise and surprising that it can change the way you see, just a little. Someone has surely written a dissertation about the postcolonial symbolism of an animal with another animal’s tongue. But the next time you pass a dog, pay close attention and then tell me it doesn’t look like it’s panting redly.

Photograph from BFA / 20th Century Fox / Alamy

3. A few months after I’d moved to New York, a friend brought me to a midnight screening of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” which turns fifty this year. The movie began with the disembodied mouth of the actress Patricia Quinn (she plays Magenta) floating like a U.F.O. in the night sky. It might have been the first time that I felt completely welcome in my new city, and I wonder if the shameless, gooey redness of her lips was what did the trick. The color doesn’t belong, but nothing really does, so everything—and everyone—is welcome.

P.S. Good stuff on the Internet: