Mermaid Spa in Sea Gate, Brooklyn has by far the nicest interior design of any banya visited to date, and the Turkish steam room is spectacularly hot and steamy.  The wood-paneled sitting area is beautifully designed.  An outdoor area includes a dozen or so reclining deck chairs, a covered sitting area, and a comfortably-arranged and popular smoking section.  Even the kharcho is good.  But besides the Turkish room, the other saunas are small, and not hot enough.  This simply remedied situation is truly a pity, because Mermaid Spa is beautiful banya.

Mermaid Spa itself is immaculate.  But the entire journey there is an experiment in unfulfilled potential.  Getting to Sea Gate requires a trip through Coney Island, which is akin to wading through knee-high sewage in what was once the most beautiful part of New York and is now a museum of human detritus.  Fortunately, the only way to reach Mermaid Spa in Sea Gate is by car, which means that at least you will be insulated and protected from the environs as you continue on your way.  Just like Mermaid Spa, the banya itself, the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Coney Island and Sea Gate could be such nice places with only a little thought – they have everything going for them, but they don’t deliver.

The Turkish steam room, which I traditionally shun in deference to the drier, more penetratingly hot types of sauna, is in this case the best of rooms at a consistent 210 degrees Fahrenheit.  Far hotter than any sauna in any other banya, with the exception of the most popular room in BRC Sauna, the New Jersey banya, which is of an equivalent heat.  A little metal box that looks like a filing cabinet sits in the corner of the room, churning out heat and steam.  This thick steam makes the temperature feel even hotter and more aggressively delicious.

A used deli coffee cup perched precariously on the sill of the window in the Turkish room can be filled with water to pour into a small humidity sensor on the wall.  This triggers the steam to start spewing out of the filing cabinet, a precautionary measure in case the automatic system does not moderate the steam to your liking.

The dry sauna is truly dry because there is no oven, just a giant and ineffective rock covered heater of some sort which keeps the room at the unacceptably lukewarm temperature of about 160 degrees Fahrenheit.  There is no reason to go in there.

The shvitz is probably the most likeable and busiest room besides the Turkish.  It is moderately hot at between 160-180 degrees Fahrenheit.  It seems possible to heat it up adequately with water on the rocks to the point where you actually feel like pouring water over yourself.  However the culture of this banya is such that the other patrons don’t seem to want the rooms heated up sufficiently.

In fact, a fight almost broke out over this very issue.  Sitting in the Turkish room, a group of buff young guys were chatting loudly in their foreign tongue.  The most talkative uppity of them turned to me and started speaking in Russian.  I began, “ya nya gavaryoo…” and being uppity, he finished my sentence, “pa Ruskie..”  He converted to English, “It’s king of the hill in here.”  I asked, with  jocular good humor, slightly fascinated by the concept of a wrestling match in the banya, “Is someone coming to challenge us?” “No,” he said “the last one who can take the heat wins”.  Bemused and about ready for a dip in the cold plunge, I said, “I’ve been here a long time.  You can have the hill.”  They chuckled.

Later, while I was in the shvitz bemoaning the inadequate heat, and lack of space, a fight almost broke out between this same guy and another, middle-aged man.  The older guy was giving a venik treatment to a scrawny girl, while the young guy, who I had briefly chatted with in the Turkish room, wanted to heat up the poorly heated room.  He and I at least had the same taste in heat.

Zubr in Belovezhskaya Pushcha

Cultural things seemed to be very backwards in Mermaid Spa.  Usually venik treatment givers are the first to heat up the room.  But this guy giving venik treatment insisted that the other guy not heat up the room in what I presumed to be very strong Russian language.  Eventually there was a zubr mating ritual in which the two men puffed out their chests in each others’ faces.  The young guy was fiesty, but did not look like a fighter.  The older guy looked scrappier.  The situation eventually dissipated as the younger guy’s four friends did the ritualistic breaking up of the argument.

After they had all left the room to cool off (as if it were hot in there), a wise old man, who had been lying on his chest in the corner during the whole argument raised his head and began speaking of the venik treatment guy, “This guy is fighter”.  I presumed the mellow old man meant this in a derogatory, war-weary kind of way.  But he continued with his pronouncements in a totally unexpected direction.  “Good guy.  He very good fighter.  He know himself and talking very calm.  Other guy say lots of thing. Don’t know himself.  This guy good guy.”  To which I responded, “But there were 5 of them and 1 of him”, counting on fingers to help make the translation apparent.  The old man smiled gently, “Not problem for him.  He know himself.  I see him.  Very good fighter.”

Although they were originally a very quiet group, they have become more animated as well.  Often, when I am not lecturing, they strike up conversation amongst themselves.  Another good sign.  And I hope the course evaluations they filled out this past Saturday reflected what I perceive to be their positive impression of the course.

Nevertheless, after 9 hours of teaching, one needs a shvitz to wash away the heavy layer of sticky grime that comes along with several hours of personal responsibility.  And so it came to pass that Elliot and I arranged to once again meet up after class, to ford the Hudson River, overcome the flats of Teaneck, to brave the inclement climes of BRC Sauna and Spa, the New Jersey banya.

Elliot is rumoured to have driven there many times before.  Yet both occasions on which we have gone together, he has forgotten the route.  Our first stop was NYU’s Coles gym, where I rushed to pick out a pair of shorts and old plastic flip-flops from my locker in the unspecified-gendered men’s locker room.  Once back in the climate-conditioned microcosm of the VW wagon, we reminisced unironically about the masculine tuna salad fiasco, worked ourselves into a particulate froth of bitterness.  And a few miles past the George Washington bridge we found ourselves unsure of whether our last turn off of the highway had been correct.  Luckily my iPhone GPS was able to direct us down NJ Route 4 to Fair Lawn, NJ, where the banya is located in the basement beneath a nondescript mini-mall, in typical suburban New Jersey fashion.

Elliot stayed in the car, as is etched in tradition, and I proceeded alone, down the cavernous steps, past the monumental statuettes of lions prancing on their hind legs, and into the windowless brown basement lobby of the BRC Sauna and Spa, the NJ banya.  To my despair, instead of the humorlessly bear-chested Russian man of two weeks yore, a short scrawny Israeli-looking girl checked me in, took my wallet and iPhone for storage in a secure locker, had the chutzpah to begin explaining the banya system to me, and eventually shut up when I cut her off with a sharp wave of the hand.  Finally she gave me a key to locker #7 in the men’s changing room.

Opening locker #7, it was empty.  I filled it with my undergarments, overgarments, footwear, and then I slipped on my gym shorts, flipped my feet into their flops, and made my way along a rectangular path that surrounds the enclosed, windowed, immaculate swimming pool room:  first along the main sitting area near the bar, then past the narrow sitting area that takes you around the long side of the swimming pool room,  finally past the tertiary sitting area at the top of the swimming room, and around the corner into the Turkish steam room.

Here is an attempt at a map of the floor plan:

New Jersey Banya Floor Plan

The banya was almost empty.  The Turkish room was entirely empty, and it was hot.  I immediately jumped on the bed of stones and began stomping back and forth.  The rocks are tightly packed, and don’t move easily.  So one really has to stomp into them to get a thorough workout of the soles of one’s feet.  Although I had been skeptical and self-conscious of this rock bed the last time, this time it was is extremely therapeutic, and I continued to stomp for five minutes, until my body had rediscovered its connection with the earth (assuming it had once known such a thing).

Then I sat down on a bench and admired the sparkle of cleanliness on what little bit of the tiling I could see through the almost impenetrable fog.  Not a drop of water fell from the ceiling in this well designed cavernous space.  I recalled the filth of the Turkish room in the Wall Street banya, and this just reinforced my feeling of current well being.

After 10 more minutes of sitting in ecstasy, I left to rediscover Elliot in the sitting room area the bar.  We then ventured together into the dry sauna, which was scorchingly hot, even hotter than the hot last time.  A look at the thermostat revealed a temperature of nearly 210 degrees Farenheit, where it stayed the entire night.

Time and again we entered the dry sauna, sat for a while, jumped in the cold plunge, pulled the lever for the gravity dump, sat down near the bar for a few minutes, and repeated, until hours later, I had reached the spot that I had been seeking.  In the dry sauna, I learned to sit with my flip-flops underneath my butt, because they had begun to melt.  Without sitting on them, putting the flip-flops on my feet after being in the sauna for just 5 minutes was like walking on burning coals with molten glass wrapped around the tops of my feet.  One time experiencing that is enough, and I saw that my choices were to either sit on them each time, or walk barefoot out of the sauna, which itself would have been a harrowing ordeal.

I won’t bore you with every last detail of the excellent, superb heat of the dry sauna, the lukewarm temperature in the unaromatic “aromatherapy” sauna, the unenthusiastic feelings I felt towards the perfectly adequate but lackluster shvitz, the inexplicably lightweight mug of beer I ordered which only cost $3,  the pleasure of sipping a bottle of Baltika #5 in the banya whereas I would never have #5 in normal daily life, or my surprising lack of desire to sample the food after watching Elliot maneuver a masculine tuna and biodiesel garlic potatos down his hatch.

But I have confirmed for myself, if there was any doubt, that New Jersey banya is good banya for enthusiastic intelligent-type.

My audience today

I'm suddenly big in Minsk

An hour after arriving, the earnest young Moroccan and his haughty Chinese friend were discussing acting classes in the bigger sauna.  The Uzbeki children had disappeared, and the mildly Caucasian-looking men were sitting exactly as they had been an hour beforehand.

I went upstairs to the pool area for a swim.  By this point, the Moroccan and his cohorts were in the sauna, and a bearded tattooed wiry man and his partially-Asian girlfriend were in the center of the pool.  So I jumped in the deep end.  After a few breast strokes, I stood at the end then floated.  The water felt greasy, and there was a clearly visible pile of dirt in the bottom corner of the deep end.  I recalled how beautifully pristine and secluded the New Jersey banya pool had been.  I showered and returned downstairs.

Shortly thereafter, I felt a pat on my back, and looking up from an Economist editorial about the need for better dialogue between the Israelis and Palestinians, I saw Luis, Jamie, Jo, and Ian.  Luis, Jamie, Ian and I know each other from grad school.  Jo, the Japanese, works with Jamie in Newcastle, England.  Did you know that Menkui Te means “I want to eat” in Japanese?

I had met up with Luis for a night on the town last night.  He and Paula, a friend of his from Mexico visiting from Boston had been enjoying a sip of Prosecco at the time I finished teaching.  Instinct had led me to text message him to see if he wanted to meet up, and fortuitously enough, they happened to be only a few blocks away enjoying outdoor seats in the warmth of the sun.  As if by homing instinct, Elliot arrived shortly thereafter like a pigeon carrying an important message that as far as I remember was never delivered.

And we four, and a dynamic cast of itinerant characters, spent the next several hours socializing with our drinks at The Magician until near midnight, at which point I gazed across the room to see Elliot with a milky smile giving a silent wave to me as the three of them slid out magically and disappeared into the night.  I wandered through the packed streets of the lower east side for a little while before realizing that I was tired and hungry, and had eaten nothing at all since the plump dumplings for lunch.

Vegetable Dumplings

As I made my way to the subway on Houston St & Broadway, I stopped off at Yonah Schimmel’s Knishery, next door to the Landmark Sunshine theater.  Oddly enough, I had run into John Schimmel, of no relation that I know of to the Romanian knish magnate, at Astor Place between the time when I finished teaching, and the time only a few minutes later when I met up with Luis.  He’s another grad of the same NYU program.  John Schimmel and I had briefly discussed his plans to hook his toilet to the internet and give it its own Twitter feed.  His McLuhanesque girlfriend was adamant that literally broadcasting crap was the best use of the Twitter medium.  I had suggested the toilet should use Twitter to advertise its availability when John was not around.  It was thus preordained that I would eat a spinach knish with mustard at Yonah Schimmel’s.

The proprietor at Yonah Schimmels asked if I wanted the knish heated up. I said yes.  Whether I asked, I can’t remember.  But he nevertheless informed me that they were not always open at this time of night.  I remarked that it was probably good for business regardless, motioning out the window to the crowds of revelers streaming past.  Yet, as if in a dream, the knish shop was empty except for he, me, and a girl sitting at the nearest table, listening to our conversation, who I assumed was his personal plump dumpling.  He responded that yes, there were flocks of drunk people all around.  I felt compelled to disclose that I was myself quite drunk, but he was not deterred.  “Yes, but nothing  like them”, he said, gesturing out the window.

About a half hour earlier, very soon after I had embarked upon my dérive through the Lower East Side, I had seen two people carrying a passed-out girl, presumably a friend of theirs, across Houston.  And again, a few minutes before entering the knish shop, I had seen the same limp girl being lifted by emergency medical technicians into an ambulance.  The friends were not in sight.  What had she been doing in the intervening 25 minutes?  Yonah Schimmel’s knish man said, “There are more people drunk now than before, right?”  He was talking about the effects of the economic downturn.

Since the knish man and I were basically family at this point, there was no need for a goodbye.  I continued along Houston towards the subway, nibbling my knish, dipping it in the small cup of delicious mustard, and enjoying the spectactle of people who are not so different from me streaming past in all our unimaginative glory.

The train ride home was mostly uneventful.  A relatively large black girl sat across from me, and although we were in Manhattan, I was confident she was on her way to Church Avenue.  She barely moved, yet I sensed a certain tension and discomfort emanating from her… possibly from her very thick thighs. So I stared at them trying to ascertain the source.  Somewhere near Atlantic Avenue, the train stopped inexplicably between stations.  The girl let out an impotent bleat of outrage, but her thighs didn’t move.

Soon after this event, I discovered a worn middle-aged Caucasian-looking man in worn denim, the type you would see playing blackgammon in Tblisi, playing a highly graphical car racing game on his phone while his plump young blonde dumpling watched on chuckling and resting her head on his shoulder.  They were an unlikely but jolly couple, and it lifted my spirits to be next to happy people.

Town Square in Sighnaghi, Georgia

The cold plunge in the Spa 88 banya was not extremely cold, although what it lacked in chill, it made up for in depth.  One can jump into it and make a comfortable splash.  Despite showering after every cold plunge, I occasionally found other people’s hairs on my hands.  And each time I’ve been in this banya, the area around the cold plunge has been covered in a few inches of water that is either runoff from the showers, or overflow from the cold plunge itself.  Either way, it is simply unhygienic and a sign of poor maintenance.  Although I couldn’t resist the cold plunge, towards the end, I used an unimpressive cold water shower instead.

The main sauna room is quite filthy, with dark stains and dislodged pieces of wood in the benches.  The is a gentle patina of other people’s sweat that insinuates itself into the odor of the room, which perhaps surprisingly is something that is usually absent in better-kept banyas.  The room is painted an awful indiscernible color that enhances the uneven, bumpy, cancerous texture of the ceiling.  Occasionally a fit shirtless Russian lad came in and incompetently swept the venik off of the floor with a broom that was as sturdy as the spinach in my dumpling broth a day earlier.  There were still scraps of  venik left on the floor throughout the night despite my having seen only one person using it.

The shvitz room was well heated, and less popular, and hence a bit cleaner.  My main complaint in Sandoony is the mild temperature in the shvitz.  If the Spa 88 banya has anything to say for itself, it is the temperature in the shvitz.

The Turkish room had a constant flow of steam loudly pumped.  Despite the thick fog permeating the room, the tiled walls and benches were visibly dirty, and I felt uncomfortable enough about staying in a dirty room with warm disease-carrying vectors of steam that I summarily left after a minute, never to return.

At Luis’s recommendation, he ad I decided not to eat at Spa 88 for fear of disappointment.  Jamie and Jo left for Williamsburg, where they are staying.  And Ian set off for parts unknown.  Luis and I settled upon a borsch, pierogies, and latkes at Vesulka, further uptown.  The borsch was small, but good for something in that part of town.  The pierogies were done adequately, and the latkes were of the mashed variety.  Quite nice, but not my mama’s grated latkes.  It’s only now that I remember my favorite dish at Vesulka, from years past, is the lentil salad.

As I sit here in the dark now, half a day later, pulling lamb bone out of my mouth betwixt slurps of store-bought kharcho from Domino, the local Russian gourmet supermarket, I can’t help but think it required some gall for me to have accepted Elliot’s insouciant proposition.  He text messaged on Thursday, “NJ banya on sat?  Me you and luis…”, followed up by a call on Friday, “I’ll bring the afikomen… we’ll hide it in the banya.”

It just so happens that Dad, my father, had arrived from Paris on Friday evening soon after Elliot’s confirmation call.  Mom, my mother, had picked Dad up, and brought him home to Mystic Pointe, where I was sitting on the couch contemplating the virtues of toxic asset relief, making myself at home.  The taxpayer is clearly getting screwed.  Dad pottered around a bit, then ate some of the two pounds of leftover chopped liver I had brought for Passover from Adelman’s the local kosher deli in Brooklyn.  I, me, had already eaten enough chopped liver, roast beef, potatoes, broccoli, and pareve cake in the past few days to sustain me through the remaining cold days of spring, although I had managed to sneak in a bit more liver, imbibe much of the remaining belgian-brewed Duvel I had semi-accidentally left in the fridge while clearing it of chametz, as well as masticate two slices of the local Cappricio’s pizza and sip an americano while chatting with childhood pal Mike Lyons at the Black Cow, found after idly cruising the ole’ home town that afternoon looking for something to do or somewhere to go.

Rather than continue along the path of overconsumptive idleness in suburbia, I had decided, by the time Dad arrived Friday evening, and two days after I, myself, me, had arrived there, that I was going to get active and take a drive all the way around the condo’s circle loop to the Mystic Pointe clubhouse, and swipe the magnetic key to lift a few weights and sweat in the sauna for an hour or so.  An ambitious plan, but one I thought I could manage.  I had even gone so far as to take an exploratory mission to the clubhouse, pre-heated the sauna, and returned home to be present to greet Dad upon his arrival.  Dad, forever spry, even after an 8 hour flight, decided to come along to the sauna soon after arrival.  And off we went, lifting weights, running on treadmills, elliptical machines, etc.

Once in the sauna, we were able to get the temperature to about 140 degrees Farenheit – a mild heat.  Dad and I began to sweat as we poured ladel upon ladel of water over the rocks.  And after the steam began to fog the sauna door window looking out to the exercise area, Dad divulged that he had begun preparatory work on a novel is planning to write about his experiences in Africa. And that’s when I began to feel light-headed.

Having brought myself intentionally to heat exhaustion many times in the banyas of Brooklyn, and being no stranger to head rushes, dizzy spells, or extreme hot or cold for extended periods of time, I went into the men’s room and jumped into a cold shower quickly.  If I was going to have a dizzy spell, I might as well make the most of it.  I then returned to the sauna feeling refreshed.  But as Dad continued to expound the third-world plot, something was still wrong.  I returned to the shower once again, but the water was not adequately cold to cause a change in my body, and being wet and room temperature in the clubhouse basement only made me feel like a moldy carpet in a grandmother’s damp room.

My dizziness persisted, and I seated myself near the soda machine and water fountain outside of the sauna.  The kitchen-like table has had upon it large-format photo books of the hudson valley, probably since the condo’s conception.  I doubt anyone has read them.  Dad, also having taken a quick cold shower, returned to the sauna, with an imperceptibly slight look of concern.  I sat a bit longer, tried to put my head in various positions to unsuccessfully mitigate the growing nausea.  Then I vomited small clumps of tomato and miscellaneous small-format pieces of semi-digested leavened bread into the trash can next to the water fountain.  God had smitten me with kareth. I could feel Dad watching calmly through the foggy sauna door.

All this to say that it was not without apprehension that I met Elliot outside of my NYU classroom building at exactly 6:10pm this evening, today Saturday April 12 2009, with the agreement to ford the Hudson River into New Jersey land, seeking out the elusive New Jersey Banya for a night of sweating, cold plunges, and eating.  Afikoman or not, even if it caused further purging of chametz, I was intent to find out whether this New Jersey banya I’d heard so much about was worthy of the all the talk.

According to Elliot, Luis had decided not to partake of the banya party at the last minute today, which meant that to maintain the unity of the tribe, we required ourselves to rationalize that he is not truly part of the clan in the first place, so his absence only makes us stronger.  This worked well.

Arriving at the banya, officially named BRC Sauna, I changed into my perceptibly baggier swimtrunks than the Speedos I am now accustomed to wearing in my diving board classes.  I always bring my own flip flops, which are the perfect banya flip flops: foam soles and artificial fabric straps, both of which keep them cool, even in the steamiest schvitz with venik pushing scorchingly dry hot air over my toes, and today was no exception in this regard.

Elliot had stayed behind in the car for a minute, so I proceeded to explore the banya. I found myself walking in what felt like a loop, past many tables with people sitting around civily discussing the day’s topics in both Russian and English while munching snacks. It seemed very calm and composed, and most importantly the sitting area was relatively clean.  At the end of the path, I came upon the Turkish steam room.

The Turkish room in the New Jersey banya is by far the best I have ever experienced.  Walking in, the steam was so consistently thick that visibility dropped off entirely two feet in front of me. After a few hesitant steps, I discovered the step leading up to the tiled sitting ledge, where I perched myself as my senses adjusted to the quiet murmers emanating from the distance out in the fog.  Steam continually spewed from discretely hidden valves, and although I never did see the far end of the room, I was able to surmise that it was not so big, perhaps 12 square feet.

Occasionally a rustling noise could be heard, like footsteps on a rocky beach, which, as I learned later, was exactly what it was.  The Turkish room has a small pebble-strewn walkway for exercising and massaging the bottom of one’s feet.

By this time, Elliot had been found in the sitting area, and we proceeded to the Russian dry sauna.  The wood-paneled room was relatively cozy, but not small, and it was clear within a few seconds of entering that the air here was significantly hotter and drier than in its brethren in the city.  The wood seemed relatively new, the floors were relatively clean, and the air had a distinct smell of fresh resin.  Most noticeably, the ceiling was well plastered in a tactful natural tone, and the amber hues of the walls, ceiling and wood benches gave the entire room a honey-lathered sheen of coziness that kept the heart warm, but not too warm.  A look at the thermometer showed 190 degrees Farenheit – about 10 degrees more than the typical sauna temperature in Sandoony.

It didn’t take long before I was in the cold shower, this time not to suppress my instinct to vomit, but because I was working my way up to the that point, after several cycles of intense heating and cooling, at which you feel in ecstasy.  The shower outside the Russian dry sauna is the gravity type which gravity dumps a heavy load of freezing water on you once you pull a lever.  This type of frozen shower gravity dump is extremely gratifying and should be experienced by all.  The gravity dump in the Neck Road banya in Sheapshead Bay is more shocking and intense, in my memory, but this Jersey dump was quite good.

After another cycle of Turkish and Russian steam rooms, and a dip in the immaculately clean but slightly chilly swimming pool, and more sauna, I noticed that the cold plunge was too heavily chlorinated, and was not as cold as I would have liked.  Very disappointing.  The gravity shower dump was far more satisfying, so I stuck with that from then on.  But by then anyway, we had reached banya satisfactoin, and were ready to order food at the bar, manned by two suburbanly healthy-looking girls who would not at all feel at home in the free-for-all that is Sandoony – they were of the “practical” variety, and not the “kept” type seen more frequently in Brooklyn.

Elliot ordered a mesclun salad (spelled “masculine” on the menu) with tuna, and fried potatoes with garlic.  I, having avoided food all day besides a croissant and green tea latte from Starbucks in the early hours of the morning, ordered a Greek salad and fried potatoes with garlic.  Rather than wait for our order, we paused to approvingly note the elegantly colorful paintings of rubenesque middle-aged fully-clothed Russian women on the walls, and then we returned to the saunas.  Banya atmosphere is an important ingredient of body sweat, and this banya was, relative to others, decorated like a boutique basement hotel.

Sweat running freely, and again returning to our table, Elliot discovered that the waitress had mistakenly given him a Greek salad, not the masculine tuna he had been hoping for.  This “ruined” his dinner, and cast a pall of sobriety over the otherwise festive atmosphere of banyadom.  The waitress, in a surpringly service-oriented tilt, tried to placate Elliot by replacing the Greek with the masculine salad he so desired at reduced cost.  But it the meal had already been ruined.  Such things would never happen at Sandoony, and it was difficult to ignore the unfavorable comparison of the food service at the two banyas.  Sandoony thrives on its attentive waiters who gladly turn a blind eye to the transgressions of the clientele.

The Greek salad, which came topped with thinly sliced well-cured basturma and jarred pitted green olives, was acceptable.  If it weren’t for the excellent salads available at Sandoony, I may have said it was good compared to the average restaurant.  The plate of potatoes were peeled, sliced and fried to such a saturation point of grease that somebody should be able to run a biodiesel automobile up and down the New Jersey Turnpike on New Jersey banya garlic potatoes for weeks before needing replacement oil.  The flavor was good, like a banya home fry, however, the portions and overall gastronomic impact seemed significantly smaller than the equivalent at Sandoony.

Overall, my impression is that New Jersey banya has a far superior Turkish steam room to any other banya I’ve visited to date.  The Russian dry sauna lives up well to its dry moniker, and is as a result more penetratingly hot than any other I’ve experienced.  New Jersey banya doesn’t seem like the place where you’ll see a lot of agonizingly vigorous venik treatments – things are more even-tempered and cool-headed for that.  Equally unlikely is the possibility of setting up court at a poolside table and drinking vodka or cognac while nibbling fresh fruit with ten of your most trusted friends.  New Jersey banya is tactfully decorated, efficiently operated, and the clientele are unlikely to confide in a stranger with jokes such as, “Little boy wakes up in middle of night and sees strange man at kitchen table.  Boy asks man, ‘Are you my new babysitter?’  Man says ‘No, I’m your new motherfucker!’”  New Jersey banya retains a thick veneer of suburban assimilationist conformity.

The food that I ordered was not as good as can be found elsewhere – perhaps there are other dishes that would elicit a more favorable review next time.  But food aside, this is a very strong challenger to the Sandoony throne, and assuming traffic over the George Washington Bridge can be kept at bay, I believe New Jersey banya to be good banya for enthusiastic intelligent-type.