It is even better than I remember it, and definitely worth a trip to Tribeca.
Today I am assigned Tina —a tiny Korean woman with, as it turns out, a lot of strength.
Tribeca Spa of Tranquility is clean and efficient. I check in, and am directed to a small room. There I undress, put my things in a locker, and walk out in a pair of disposable panties (quite unattractive) under a wrap-around towel.
The first stop is a steam room. After a few very hot minutes, I am freed by Tina. We enter another room, similar to a massage room — long table, low lights, soft music — except the cover on the table is plastic, and there is a shower, hose, and big bucket of water nearby.
I lie down on the table and Tina covers my eyes with a warm facecloth. It adds some mystery to the experience as I can no longer see anything.
Next I feel big buckets of warm water being dumped all over my body. It feels great. Tina then rubs some kind of liquid soap everywhere, and begins her hard work.
Tina is basically a scrubwoman, though instead of scrubbing floors, she's scrubbing skin. She uses some kind of mitt that feels like a loofah, and scrubs every inch of my body many times over. In between, she dumps the warm pails of water over me.
It is not exactly a relaxing experience, but it is a satisfying one. Dead skin falls away. Places I can't get to are scrubbed smooth. The tops of my feet are erased of all patchy skin. My back is scrubbed and scrubbed. I even smell cucumber slices all over my face, "to make it smoother and whiter," Tina says.
In the end, I'm standing naked as Tina showers me off, and sends me to the sauna to dry.
I am squeaky clean. Literally. I rub my skin and hear it squeak.
I walk out into the gritty streets of lower Manhattan, knowing my impossibly clean body won't last. I need to take the subway home.
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