Around October of last year, while having Zoom drinks with a friend I hadn’t seen since the spring, I mentioned that I was really missing my monthly schvitz at the Russian and Turkish Baths in the East Village. It had become a routine: for a couple of hours every month, I’d sit in an old, dark building around a bunch of strangers, each of us with our individual reasons for paying for the privilege to sweat. It was one of the things I looked forward to the most. I missed the experience of bathing with other people.
“You should try hot tubbing,” my friend mentioned. I laughed and let out a little “Yeah...,” and then changed the subject. Little did I realize that conversation would lead to a new obsession.
Humans have been bathing together for centuries. The Egyptians did it, the Greeks did it, and the Romans seemed to especially love it. The first known Jewish mikvahs (ritual baths) started appearing around the first century. The earliest mention of a banya in Eastern Europe goes back to the 13th century, and Japan’s first sentō was built in 1591. Native Americans built sweat lodges, the Finnish are known for their saunas, and in the 1800s, spending time bathing in the hot springs of France, Italy, or even out west in California became a status symbol among wealthy health nuts.
It was only a matter of time before some enterprising soul tried to bring that feeling home. “There has been some mild controversy over the origin,” Leon Elder wrote in 1975, in his book Hot Tubs Year ‘Round, which says the first modern hot tub was “observed” in 1958 in the foothills of Santa Barbara. A “disparate group of young settlers” called the Mountain Drivers had a homemade tub with a “makeshift water-heating system” that used “diesel oil dripping into a stove pipe with a vacuum cleaner turned backwards for a blower,” for a tub made of timbers originally used to hold cargo onto railroad cars.
By the time Elder wrote his book, the hot tub occupied an interesting place in the culture: earthy boomers loved to soak outside in nature, while horny boomers loved to have sex in hot tubs. The hot tub was the place where former flower children and swinging disco cats could find harmony. Hot tubs became inextricable from the sexual revolution and were often portrayed as a relic of its seedy aftermath; think John C. Reilly as Reed Rothchild reciting a poem to Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights, or Will Ferrell and Rachel Dratch on SNL as “The Love-ahs.” Eventually, in-house whirlpool baths—almost always referred to as “the Jacuzzi,” even though that’s not always the case since Jacuzzi is a brand—became a staple of the American McMansion bathroom. As a result, the hot tub as a place for communal gathering took a backseat. America, it seemed, had forgotten how to tub together.
Hot tubbing occupies an interesting place between wellness and sleazy kitsch. Studies have shown that soaking in a hot tub can relax muscles, lessen stress and help people sleep better. But as Margaret Bienert of the Instagram account A Pretty Cool Hotel Tour points out, the sleaze element has predominated in recent years. “We get so many comments about how “disgusting” or “unsanitary” old tubs are — even though we share cleaning tips — and it makes me sad that people spread so much misinformation about using them,” Bienert says. “I’ve talked to a few doctors to make sure they’re not actually unsanitary.”
And then the pandemic happened and I noticed something: everybody was hot tubbing again, and it looked incredible. Nobody wanted to travel to cities where they’d be around too many people, so a lot of my friends started escaping to the woods, or to lake houses, or to the suburbs and to anywhere they could be removed from humanity when they needed a getaway. Instagram posts of local landmarks and regional delicacies gave way to very chill and serene images of my city friends surrounded by nature—andalmost every one of these getaways involved some sort of outdoor hot tub action. I thought it was just a coincidence—that I had a miniscule sampling. There was no way that this could reflect America’s turn back to the hot tub. But the numbers were there to back up my theory: with the closing of public pools and saunas, as well as the recommendation that the safest hang was an outdoor one, the hot tub industry saw a spike the likes of which one seller likened to the go-go days before the 2008 recession.
John Meyers was one of the people who got into tubbing. The co-owner of the Maine-based soap company Wary Meyers purchased a Softub—a particular kind of tub that he’d be able to put by the pool in the summer, and on the deck in the winter. But he and his wife paid extra for the wooden surround, which acts like a deck for the tub “to lean into that ‘70s vibe.” The plan was to eventually add geraniums, ferns, a telephone, and, most importantly, room for more friends to hang. But Meyers points out that’s all decoration. “The hot tub is definitely like a time machine — you get in and your stress just melts away and you’re transported back to the carefree ‘70s. No matter what the tub looks like on the outside.”
Like Meyers says, getting into a hot tub is great on its own, but he was not alone in learning that you need to put in a little work to make getting into bubbling water an experience. Another person I talked to said that getting a hot tub for their backyard was the impetus for finally buying a Sonos system for their house, so they could listen to music while they tubbed. (On the soundtrack: Steely Dan, Weyes Blood, and Yola.) “It’s all about curating my hot tub experience,” he says. My friend also casually mentioned that he bought a robe specifically for getting into and out of the hot tub, noting that cool archival photos of hot-tubbers seem to always feature robes.
I don’t know if hot tubbing will become more than a pandemic fad. But I do know that it feels broadly good, and not just for reasons of 2021 convenience. When I was in my 20s, all I wanted was to find good rooftops to hang out on. When I hit my 30s, I would put up with even my most annoying not-quite friends to snag a spot at their weekend houses. Now I’m in my 40s, and my priorities have changed. I have my own roof to hang out on, and I actually like the people that invite me to their weekend homes these days. But what I really want is some hot tub action—and all the warm, bubbly, slightly sleazy vibes that come with it.
