Mermaid Spa is Beautiful Banya, But Not Hot Enough

Given the dearth of reliable English-language information about the various banyas in town, and emboldened by my inexplicable first-page listings on Google search results for “new jersey banya“, “lazy gringo“, “wall street banya“, “beat up black guy“, and belovezhskaya pushcha, I’ll tell you all about Mermaid Spa in Sea Gate, Brooklyn, making sure to further optimize my keywords.

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.”