My pal Amy is getting hitched in a week. Though I’ve attended a handful of weddings in recent years, I’ve only been to one other bachelorette party. That experience involved body shots off a burly biker named Rob in Hibbing, Minnesota, and building a bonfire in a cornfield. So when the planner for Amy’s carouse emailed for ideas for the outing, I naturally suggested the most likely venue to have hirsute denizens. I suggested the Russian & Turkish Baths.

Something about the idea of getting platza-ed at before getting plastered appealed to me. Evidently, it did not to the bride-to-be. Though Amy knows my peculiar predilections well, she knows that I wouldn’t mind if she nixed the plan to have muscled Eastern Europeans beat me with oak branches soaked in olive oil soap. It’s MY idea of a good time, but maybe not that of the several pregnant gals in the group.

I’m obsessed with the idea of trying a treatment at this joint, though. I’ve talked it up all summer, trying to persuade friends to accompany me. I get some snorts of derision, plenty of gaping faces, and not a few strange looks. Oh, I explain, it sounds great! Hot steam rooms, buckets of cold water with which to douse your steaming bod…like Bikram Yoga, but without the weird positions and with more unibrows.

My, that’s unfair. Not all Slavs eschew the eyebrow threading. And Bikram, which I tried yesterday for the first time, was actually kinda cool. But I went with a friend who’s tried it before. I guess I feel that the platza experience is one best enjoyed with others; I don’t want to get beaten without some buddies there to get theirs, too.

Perhaps later this winter I can finally round up a group to go, or another betrothed will take her friends to the Lower East Side for a treatment (they have coed and women- or men-only sessions). We, meanwhile, had a rousing time eating and drinking at a cute little place in Brooklyn called Fanny’s instead. Best moment of the evening: The party planner busted out personal-size boxed wine for us to chug as we roamed through the Williamsburg night. Good food, good friends, and Three Thieves Bandit vino…can’t wait for the wedding.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 13th, 2006 at 6:40 am and is filed under Wine, Spa, Yoga. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.