When it first opened, Bathhouse was jokingly called the Bitcoin bathhouse, as they use the heat generated from mining to warm the tubs. “The comments were like, ‘Oh they’re laundering money through Bitcoin,’” says Talmadge. “But it’s just a fancy pool heater.” Those jabs did not prepare them for what happened earlier this year, when someone posted on Reddit: “I noticed the hot tub and body temp tub were looking kinda dirty and gross. I thought it would be fine, but then I ended up with a UTI.” The poster added that a friend got a UTI at another location.
“A UTI doesn’t walk across the river. If it was a problem it would be a pool at a single location at one given day,” says Talmadge. “There is 24-hour computer monitoring, and they are manually logged five times per day, and we keep the logs. We are adjusting the PH and chlorine at all times. Every drop of water at every pool turns over every 30 minutes. All the vessels have their own independent systems so they don’t mix. The water goes through a sand filter that takes out any particles up to two microns, like a receipt in their pocket or a tag that falls off, or a piece of lint. Then it goes through a UV filter, a big tank with three-foot-long light bulbs of pure UV light that will kill all bacteria and viruses. They’re basically sterile.”
Talmadge and Goodman’s biggest mistake was they didn’t think much of it. “Knowing it wasn’t true, our first reaction was, This isn’t going to go anywhere. Boy, were we wrong,” says Talmadge. What followed was a pile-on, with a former employee alleging on TikTok that Bathhouse had mold issues. (Goodman says it was a photo of a 100-year-old discolored brick wall.) The website Curbed picked up the story in late March, claiming that a former employee shared videos with the publication that seemed to show insects on the floors. The article included a dismissal from Bathhouse.
“The next morning, NY mag put on their Instagram that they got a video of us cleaning our sewer lines,” Talmage says, noting the post was viewed upwards of 3.5 million times. (“We power jet them out and sometimes nasty stuff comes out—we clean out grease traps; we clean the sand filter.”) Various Substacks and YouTubers picked up the story. “It did affect business,” says Talmadge. “The timing was suspect because we were closing a capital raise the day the article hit.”
Goodman says the former employee was someone “who had a big beef with an HR person who had left by then…. It could have been handled better. She had a lot of anger. She ended up sending us a written apology.” (A spokesperson for Bathhouse says the situation was resolved amicably.)
By now things seem normal enough. Talmadge is back to occasionally and anonymously leading aufguss, a German sauna ritual Bathhouse offers hourly that involves a series of snowballs doused in essential oils (one crowded night in November was rosemary and clementine; another chamomile; and the last linseed, vetiver, and spearmint) that melt over hot stones that waft into the air via a towel he twirls around the room spinning it like, well, a helicopter. They’re also expanding across the country, with new locations “in various stages of construction” (and largely funded as built to suit by landlords), including downtown Brooklyn; Philadelphia; suburban New Jersey; Chicago; Nashville; Stamford, CT; Minneapolis; and Hollywood.
“We get the wellness crowd, but also people who work in finance and other high-stress jobs like doctors and lawyers who are burnt out and overwhelmed,” says Bent, who is one of five cofounders of Othership, including her husband Robbie Bent, who was working for the blockchain Ethereum Foundation when they started to think of the concept.
Bent says, “Robbie was navigating some addiction issues with drugs and alcohol his whole life, and he went on an ayahuasca retreat and we met after. We would go to whatever local bath place when we traveled because they were open late, especially being sober. It gives you the sensation of an altered state and dopamine with the hot and the cold and brings you out of your shell.” (Which must be working; they have started to host singles nights and can take credit for at least one engagement from people who met while sauna-ing.)
Marisa Meltzer
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