montreal
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By the time DJ Brinassa drops a pulsating house beat, Friday’s scantily clad crowd at Montreal’s newest outing is already glistening with sweat.
It wasn’t just the subtle glow from the night dance floor. At 10 p.m., inside the RECESS Thermal Station (a sauna and cold plunge that regularly hosts DJ events and other gatherings), attendees sweated freely in a circular sauna, illuminated by flashy club-like lighting, arching their gym-trained bodies.
Shirtless employees with artistic tattoos and multiple necklaces danced around the sauna while waving giant fans. In the outdoor lounge, couples cuddled up in cozy chairs by the DJ booth. Singles mingled over herbal tea and read ice-breaking messages from branded cue cards.
RECESS, which opened in September, is part of a new wave of what are often referred to as “social bathhouses” that are debuting across North America. The facility reimagines saunas and other bathing rituals not just as a wellness experience, but also as a means for nights out, first dates, and community-building.
RECESS co-founder Adam Sims said of the soiree, “You can potentially meet new people. There’s a high energy and atmosphere. You can dance.” “There’s a beautiful connection that comes out of that.”
They are emerging rapidly. Months after the first social bathing spot opened, another is set to open in Montreal this spring with the opening of the JOY Wellness Club. Bathhouse, whose New York City store is already known for its bustling scene, plans to open a Philadelphia location later this year. Expanding on an already strong New York City group, The Alter will arrive on Fifth Avenue in 2026 with a 50-person sauna and the tagline “Health as a Cultural Gathering Place.”
The wording reflects growing awareness that loneliness and social isolation are taking a toll on our health, and means many people are seeking new opportunities to connect.
“Due to the pandemic, we went through this monumental shift of being in front of screens all the time,” Sims said. “People understand that they need community, they need support, they need to be re-energized, and I think RECESS and projects like this can help us do that.”
It’s a big trend in wellness this year. But the idea that sweating together creates bonds is nothing new.
“As soon as we could create heat, we started building sweat structures together,” says Robert Hammond, president of Therme US, part of Therme Group, which operates spas throughout Europe and has large bath projects planned in Dallas, Washington, D.C., and Toronto.
Its precedents range from Ottoman-era hammams to Roman thermae, North American sweat lodges, and Finnish saunas. In many places, such customs declined over time. In some cases, indoor plumbing in private houses helped replace public baths.
“This is what I call ‘long oblivion,'” says Mikkel Aaland, a Norwegian-American photographer and author who has spent 50 years documenting sweat-bathing traditions around the world, including in his 1978 book “Sweat” and last year’s documentary series “Perfect Sweat.” (Erland’s upcoming book, Naked Sweat, will be published later this year.)
The past decade has brought about a global renaissance, including in Norway, where Arland spends part of each year. He also calls this resurrection “long memory.” In many parts of Scandinavia, this means leveraging existing practices, albeit with modern flourishes, such as the advanced design of floating saunas in the Oslofjord.
Many bathing facilities in North America are often aimed at audiences with little personal connection to the history of public baths, and are free to reinvent them while drawing on traditions from other regions.
“This is the beginning of something very exciting,” Erland said.
sound bath, games, etc.
Saunas and bathhouses of all kinds have been gaining popularity in North America for some time. But observers generally trace this more recent trend, with a clear focus on socializing and sometimes party mood, back to the 2022 opening of The Othership, a bathhouse in downtown Toronto.
At the company’s four locations across Toronto and New York City, visitors can now combine saunas and cold plunges with events such as stand-up comedy, sound baths and games.
Othership co-founder Miles Farmer said the vision is “a new form of socializing.” Like Sims, he pointed to the need to regroup offline after the pandemic.
“There are a lot of people in these big cities who don’t have real connections on a regular basis,” he says. “It’s hard to find friends. There are so many people out there, but it’s hard to find a partner.”
Entering a screen-free space facilitates the face-to-face encounters that many of us crave, Farmer added. “Your phone is away and you’re having a shared experience with a stranger,” he said. “It gives you a bond and connects you with people who are in the same space.”
On a recent Friday at Manhattan’s Othership Flatiron, a crowd of 20- and 30-somethings without phones gathered in the bathhouse, led by a “guide,” playing a soundtrack of electronic beats and piling snowballs infused with essential oils onto the sauna’s scorching rocks.
The space surrounded by trees is filled with fragrant steam. To help them stay in the sauna longer, some visitors wore wool dome hats designed to keep their heads relatively cool. As the heat increased, so did the conversation. Bathers wiped their faces with white towels.
Guides told trivia and played audio clips from movie soundtracks as sweaty participants chanted the names of movies they’d been in, including “Jaws,” “Avatar” and “Harry Potter.”
Winners were given cans of chilled coconut water, and the red-faced crowd poured out of the sauna and into the cold rapids. Other bathers lingered next to the self-service stations drinking water and herbal tea.
Just over a mile from the Othership Flatiron, visitors are likely to sip draft lager at the on-site restaurant followed by trivia or a DJ-free sauna session at the classic Schwitz communal Russian and Turkish Baths, founded in 1892.
Many sweat bath traditions around the world involve the use of alcohol or other intoxicants. In the 5th century BC, the Greek historian Herodotus wrote that the Scythians of the Eurasian steppes took steam baths by throwing cannabis seeds on hot rocks.
Ethan Pollock writes in his 2019 book, Without Banya, We’re Doomed, that Russian banya has long served up an alcoholic kvass made by fermenting beer, vodka, and brown bread. Some Finns drink beer or gin cocktails in the sauna. This is sauna juoma, or sauna drink.
The largely alcohol-free scene at Othership, Recess, and other new wave social bathhouses reflects a broader trend toward sober nightlife as some young people refrain from drinking.
“You don’t need a drink to go on a date. You don’t need a drink to meet your friends,” Farmer says. “People are starting to realize that they just don’t need substances.”
Plus, the endorphin-boosting effect of a plunge into cold weather is thrilling enough, he said.
“When you take an ice bath, you feel energized and excited,” Farmer says. “It’s like a natural drug.”
As North American bathhouses continued to innovate, they gained fans and many critics as well. Some consider the nightclub atmosphere to be an unwelcome departure from a more traditional experience.
“Europeans are taking notes on American sauna culture,” a recent New York Times headline appeared above an article calling on American sauna users to engage in transgressions such as doing yoga, wearing swimsuits, participating in group activities, and dancing. DJ in the sauna? Quere Horror.
“Sometimes I get criticized for not following sauna etiquette, but that’s fine with me,” says Robert Hammond of Terme US. “I think it would be interesting to make it our own.”
He pointed to a recent example of North American innovators experimenting with new forms of bathing-related art, with Social Bathhouse. In September, artist Rashid Johnson staged a sold-out performance of Amiri Baraka’s 1964 play “The Dutchman” in the sweltering heat of New York’s Russian and Turkish baths.
At the recent Culture of Bathing and Sauna Festival, hosted by Therme Group along the waterfront in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood, cultural center Pioneer Works staged performances and art installations.
“We hope we can help facilitate this experiment,” Hammond said. “That’s what makes it a little different and a little unexpected.”
Mikkel Erland, who has spent half a century researching bathing traditions around the world, has also come across many purists. “Not everyone will be a fan of disco saunas,” he admitted.
But Erland likes many of the innovations he sees. He recalled a 2021 book by American artist Travis Skinner detailing the construction of a quirky mobile sauna resembling a monkfish.
“It’s exciting to see artists throw something like that into the mix,” he said. He emphasized that combining human contact and bathing is not just a passing fad.
“The social part was an element of the bathing culture that lasted all this time,” he says. “It adds an important element to something that is already very strong.”
