Imagine corporate Ancient Greece. That’s what it looks like inside Sense of Self, a bathhouse where “ancient wisdom and modern science collide” in a warehouse in Collingwood. When you walk through the industrial door, you leave the bitumen, tram lines, and raving lunatics on the street behind you. You can relax now. The entrance room is light-filled, high-ceilinged, white-walled, and smells good. A welcoming staff member greets you from behind a pomegranate-red stone counter. Pick up a pair of pastel plastic bathing slides and a fluffy white robe and towel. Head to the change room. Familiarise yourself with the rules before entering the bathing area: wash yourself thoroughly before entering a body of water; stay hydrated; “no pee pee in the pools”; “no hanky panky.” Suppress any feelings of aggression or irritation this language may bring up.
Enter the bathhouse. To the left, there are showers with brushed brass tapware and sans[ceuticals] lotions. To the right, a door leads to a steam-room, or “hammam,” as the Turkish call it. It’s not Orientalist if there’s terrazzo everywhere; it’s bringing global bathing traditions into dialogue. Ahead, in the main bathing area, there is a mineral pool heated to 39°C, an icy plunge tub, and a sauna. There are pot plants and feature rocks alongside decorative curtains of steel chain link. So this is what “Mediterranean brutalism” looks like. A central couch area features a snack station with dried figs, smoked almonds, and tea. You can relax among the regulars. The crowd is not quite like the one in the photos from the website—multi-gendered people of colour, diverse in age and body type, wearing soft olive, taupe, and beige underwear. It’s more WFH couples and white ladies who bathe before they lunch on anchovy toast and Chablis. Take a seat and savour an almond. Light streams through a faded scrawl of graffiti sprayed on the exterior pane of a frosted glass window. This is it. This is leisure. You feel good.
Except that, at $59 a two-hour weekday session, if your visit wasn’t being supported by the dribbles of an email newsletter slush fund, you might feel a malignant pressure to really make the most of the whole experience. Maybe you should have invested in three self-care dirty martinis instead. Luckily, today you left financial anxiety at the door, along with your phone and body negativity (though how did that girl in the sauna with the tattooed arse get so hot and skinny? Does she come here often? What’s her skincare regime?) And rumours are swirling through the inner-north about spa working conditions, with some ex-staffers disgruntled after allegedly being fired without warning. Perhaps things might not all be “no bullshit wellness,” as the Sense of Self slogan goes. (Sense of Self declined to comment without further information, which TPE was not at liberty to provide.)
Over the last two months, I've visited every bath house in Collingwood on a mission: avoid bacterial infection and gain insight into modern bathing culture.
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