Dear Banya Family and Friends,

It has been way too long since I had a proper steam.

I have to confess: my last steam session was not at Archimedes. It was at a modern hamam in Istanbul. I’ll always remember my last steam session, not because of the beautiful lap pool and ice mountain to accompany the heat, but because that was the day Turkey announced its first case of Covid-19.

Thus began my steam starvation.

My short vacation to Turkey to visit my family became an extended lockdown when all the flights in and out of the country were grounded. Despite the disruption to my plans, it was wonderful to be next to the sea during the springtime. I watched flowers bloom and I started a vegetable garden. But Turkey prohibited public gatherings, which meant I obviously could not go to hamam or termal. Instead, I would wake up each morning, start a fire in the fireplace, and practice kundalini yoga, just to sweat a little. Moving the body in a hot room felt great, but my soul missed the connected energy from other students and my teacher’s hands-on adjustments. Even though yoga is very personal, removing critical social vibes makes the quality of my practice go down. It’s just not the same.

My feelings on the world’s condition have been rolling like the sea for the past few months. I witnessed Turks reacting to new social restrictions, such as quarantines on the weekend and limited travel between cities, while I learned about life in the US from friends and the news. When the consulate arranged an evacuation flight back to California, I endured the most intense international travel experiences of my life — we were the only flight out of the country that day, every passenger had their own row, and I wore a mask for the whole 14 hour flight. I returned home to a city in retreat. Not a solemn retreat, but one full of existential angst. You can feel the tension in the lines at the grocery store and in the overcrowded parks. We might be safe from physical harm when we shelter-in-place, but the mental harm needs to be addressed.

If we all could gather together for a steam, we would relieve that collective anxiety and mental suffering of the community. I will be there — with a face mask, if necessary — to throw more water on the rocks and to heal the body, mind, and soul in the best way I know: in the company of my fellow steamers.

As we eagerly await our reunion in the new and improved saunas at Archimedes, I am on a quest to build connections within our amazing community of steam bathers. I have been talking to other bathing obsessed people around the world to see how they are faring. Some have saunas in their backyards or have access to private banya in their neighborhood. A friend who builds saunas thinks local sweat clubs will pop up and another friend has a sauna on a trailer that is easy to clean and move around. They all believe that the healing power of socially steaming with other people present will be even more necessary now because of the pandemic.

I would like to invite you to pause and think about who you were with during your last perfect steam. How was the heat? Do you remember any good conversations you had? How about laughing together after the cold plunge? If you are anything like me, you have been dreaming that someone would walk into the sauna and ask the room full of steamers if the rocks needed another scoop of water. The best remedy for months of social distancing is steaming with your friends.

I #WishWeWereBathing together and over the next few days will be posting beautiful bathing photographs and designs from some of my favorite artists in our community of soakers and sweaters on our Instagram. We’d love to see photos of your best times at Archimedes, so please always feel free to tag @banyasf along with your Banya friends :)

With Metta and Sweat,

Ekin Balcıoğlu

PS — I would love to hear from the community! How have you been dealing without the Banya? What have you been doing to stay physically and mentally fit? Feel free to drop me a message here.

The Remedy for Social Distancing is Steaming With Your Friends was originally published in The Banya Journal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s a typical Thursday night at Archimedes: the saunas are packed with sweating bodies and the steam oven’s stones give off the perfect sizzle indicating the complex heating system is operating properly. The regulars are catching each other up on the week’s events and offering compliments on the quality of the heat to no one in particular, when a man walks up the stairs wearing a gray hat with “BOSS” unironically stitched into the felt. He raises his hands above his head to survey the conditions as he has done in almost every sauna from here to Kamchatka. “I’ll add a few scoops”, he says. Even without the custom embroidery, his presence is ominous causing one of the guests to lean over and whisper to his friend “that’s the owner.”

Dr. Mikhail Brodsky is indeed the Boss of the Banya. When he isn’t cooking steam, he wears a boss hat of a different kind at Lincoln University in Oakland where he is the President. To friends he is known as Misha, but to sweat enthusiasts all over the world, he has come to be known as Archimedes. Like the ancient mathematician and inventor, Misha is a problem solver with an eye for detail, which means he is almost always in teaching mode. “I designed this room so the steam would rise and collect before falling here,” he instructs as he points to the corners of the room. “See how the ceiling slopes?”

As the dense steam falls, Misha waves his towel in the air to mix the heat and spread his love of sweat bathing across the room. Some guests head for the cold plunge as Misha takes his place on the top shelf — his favorite spot in the sauna — while others stay with anticipation that class is about to be in session.

I recall the first platza I gave when Misha was in the sauna. I could feel him observing my technique and sensing my nerves wielding veniks instead of a paintbrush, the standard tool of my trade. Anticipating a lecture, I was shocked and relieved when he approached, grabbed a venik and joined in on the action. “All details are important, there is nothing secondary,” Misha recently told me, describing the perfect platza as a philosopher would. “The success is in the details.”

However, building a successful Russian bathhouse on the shores of the San Francisco Bay was easier said than done. As the story goes, it was 1998 and Misha was a statistics research professor climbing the ladder of academia. When his application to be a department chair was rejected, he instead decided to pitch the idea of a public banya to his Russian friends and his steam buddies at Frogs. “The Bay Area is so international and I feel an obligation to educate our community in the different ways of communal bathing,” Misha told me. There was no lack of enthusiasm for his vision, but financing was not as easy to come by. Thus began the twelve year journey to opening Archimedes. “I was not confident in the result, chances to complete the project were slim and several partners withdrew. However I am also quite stubborn and that helps against calculations.”

Drawing from years of experience soaking and sweating in bathhouses all over the world, Misha had plenty of inspiration for how Archimedes should look. “My wife and I were always attracted to the simplicity of ancient Roman architecture from the baths of Caracalla and Pompeii. When we went to Stockholm, we fell in love with the Art Nouveau swimming pool at Centralbadet. By the way, they also have their banya on the ground floor, then residences, then the roof deck.” Misha is a wellspring of knowledge when it comes to building a modern urban bathhouse, but his dream project became complex after working with several different artists and architects. “I tried to include as many features from different bathing cultures as possible in a relatively small space. I have all the designs, but finally the simplicity proposed by Vadim Puyandaev and structural requirements, such as the columns, made the banya as it appears today.”

Archimedes opened its doors for the Bay Area banya community on New Year’s Eve in 2011. It was never a guarantee, and no one knows the obstacles that were overcome better than the Boss. “It required some bravery for Americans to believe that a co-ed, clothing optional bathhouse could exist,” he said. “Of course San Francisco is among the best places to get it done.”

Twenty years into his quest to spread the practice of communal bathing and Misha is still dedicated to the cause. When I asked about his most outrageous schvitz, he described a private banya next to a lake outside Riga, Latvia whose owner overcame hurdles to open a banya for people. “It was the right time, late October or early November, so it was cold outside. The platza man was heavily tattooed and had spent years in prison. Now he realized, respected, and valued the simple pleasures of life, specifically banya rituals. It was his love of the banya and his pride in demonstrating the quality of his place, his veniks, and his work. The combination resulted in my great experience.” Perhaps Misha’s commitment to his vision and his attention to details are the greatest legacy he has created with Archimedes Banya.

Create your bathing ritual at Archimedes Banya. Learn more at banyasf.com

Spreading the Love of Communal Bathing was originally published in The Banya Journal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dear Banya Family and Friends,

Hello, and I hope that you are well. My name is Ekin Balcıoğlu and I am very excited to write to you about our new publication The Banya Journal — a literary celebration of our community of bathers, soakers, sweaters, and dreamers.

You might know me as one of the Platza Masters at Archimedes Banya or, perhaps, simply “The Turk”. Additionally, I am an artist and a healer originally from Izmir, Turkey and I received my BA (Honors) from Central Saint Martins in London and my MA in Visual and Critical Studies and MFA in Fine Arts at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. I grew up around the practice of hammam and am a lifelong ofuroholic with a strong belief in bathing’s capacity for rejuvenation. I have spent years quite literally immersing myself in the great water cultures of the world.

I came to Archimedes a little over a year ago after moving from NYC and I desperately needed to soak and sweat. The saunas were hot and I felt my soul begin to thaw as I observed a larger-than-life employee giving a strong platza to another man. They spoke Russian to each other and even though I don’t speak the language, I felt the diversity of cultures and people melting together. I immediately embraced the remarkable blend of past and present traditions and knew that Archimedes held a special place in the collective hearts of its community. I will dive deeper into the history of Archimedes in my next issue which will include an interview with our founder, Dr Mikhail Brodsky.

The Banya Journal is a space for us to collectively explore the physical, mental, spiritual, and social aspects of banya culture and build connections between each other and water. Through a series of essays, interviews, and musings, I will plunge into both the traditional and contemporary practices of bathing culture so we may reconnect with water even when we are not at the Banya. But first it’s important to understand the importance of the banya throughout history.

The architectural and cultural significance of the bathhouse is immensely fascinating and I love studying the great authors on the topic. One of the most monumental architectural theorists, Sigfried Giedion, had this to say in Architecture and the Phenomena of Transition: “The way in which a civilization integrates bathing into its daily life, as well as the type of bathing it prefers, yields an insight into that period.” Giedion adds in Mechanization Takes Command, “The role bathing plays within a culture reveals the culture’s attitude toward human relaxation. It is a measure of how far individual well-being is regarded as an indispensable part of community life.” This is certainly true for our community at Archimedes, particularly when it comes to creating a habit of self-care. In Baths and Bathing in Classical Antiquity, Fikret Yegül, an architect and Professor of the History of Architecture at the University of California Santa Barbara, writes “Bathing in the ancient world, especially the world of the Romans, went far beyond the functional and hygienic necessities of washing. It was a personal regeneration and a deeply rooted social and cultural habit — in the full sense of the word, an institution.”

In Taking the Waters, Alev Lytle Croutier captures the essence of my personal relationship with bathing as a “ritualistic communion with water”. Croutier writes that “While most societies developed different ways of creating physical contact with water, incorporating the philosophy and temperament of their people and their environment, they always seemed to have the same elements in common — spiritual, hygienic, therapeutic, and social.”

To me, the banya is a place I can create a ritual around relaxation and well being. It is also a place of many extremes, and not just temperatures. The banya invites a wide spectrum of people of all shapes, sizes, colors, and orientations that have decidedly lived many lives. The Japanese have a term — brothers in the skin — that refers to the affiliation created amongst a community of bathers. I think Jane Withers, the curator of Soak, Steam, Dream: Reinventing Bathing Culture an immersive exhibition at the 2016 London Design Festival, put it best when she said, “unlike the contemporary spa — almost invariably a place of privilege and luxury — the bathhouse has more inclusive roots.” I completely agree and I am proud to work at Archimedes where the cultures of the world meet to bathe.

If you’re reading this, you already know that Archimedes is a special place. My hope with The Banya Journal is to chronicle the impact Archimedes Banya has on its community and its significance amongst the world’s greatest bathhouses. To that end, I would love to hear your thoughts, ideas, prayers, and input on where this publication can go. Like our cherished Banya, The Banya Journal is open to all beings and I am looking forward to seeing what we create together.

With metta and sweat,

Ekin

Ekin Balcıoğlu, Creative Director @ Archimedes Banya

Visit us at banyasf.com

Introducing The Banya Journal was originally published in The Banya Journal on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.