G’day,
I’m ten thousand feet up with T-9 hours and 20 minutes to entertain myself. I've had one cup of miso soup, three coffees, a soba noodle seaweed salad, some lemon herb chicken and a bowl of vanilla ice cream (I love airplane food!).
I’ve watched The Dark Knight, read the new Elle Magazine with Linda Evangelista (A profile that looks foxy but is actually the harrowing story of healing from a double mastectomy, many collapsed lungs, and a slew of surgeries to fix a CoolSculpting malfunction: “I really, really, really don’t want to die”) and the new GQ with Ben Affleck (tonal whiplash: “I just think: fuck it man, I could give a shit. I just want to get the coffee.”)
My dad’s in the seat beside me, passed out, wearing a raccoon eyemask. The bathroom here has a bidet. We’re going to Japan.
On a Saturday night, a few weeks ago, I visited the new bathhouse, Othership and wrote about it for goop. The place combines group therapy and clubbing, all while schvitzing. It’s amber-lit and I could see it being sexy, though when I visited, I felt there was something deeply sexless about it all. It’s funded in part by Shawn Mendes (who’s apparently been over 100 times??), two tanned, zenned-out couples, and a Tim Horton’s franchisee.
Like the hed says, I did shed a tear in the class, and unlike Bathhouse, you won’t walk away with a UTI (I’ve heard that’s a rumor planted by a competitor, FYI. When I asked their CEO, he said Bathhouse, along with all the others, is not “competition.”)
Alas, none of this made it into the article, but thankfully Othership is rife with lore.
“It’s been dubbed “the SoulCycle of spas” by The New Yorker, the best place to find love by PopSugar, described as a blend of Cirque du Soleil and group therapy in Toronto Life, and, as New York Magazine puts it, I’ll leave with a “sober hangover.” All said, Othership’s most ubiquitous rumor? It’s a cult.”
So when I got their co-founder Amanda Laine, and then their CEO Robbie Bent, I wanted to know if there’s really worship on the ‘Ship.
“The word cult used to rattle me, I was like ‘oh my God, like what is happening,’” Laine says when I ask about their reputation. The word spread gradually at first. Then, when their Flatiron location opened, people began whizzing by their hundredth visit and raving about it online, the label stuck.
In response to the same question, without missing a beat, “I love it,” Bent says, naming companies with devoted communities, like SoulCycle, Apple, and Tesla. “That’s what we’re trying to create.”
To nobody’s surprise, Andrew Huberman came up a lot in the interviews, but then during the class, not once was “inflammation” or “norepinephrine” mentioned! They land in an extraterrestrial tech-meets-yogi land.
“There is a meticulous curation to what they don’t say. They avoid spiritual or religious concepts, basing their classes on psychotherapy techniques, “not chakras or energy,” says Bent. Nothing is “woo-woo,” Laine reiterates. This comes as a surprise, and reads as slightly incongruent to their marketing. (Someone on their team signed off an email with “happy to be in orbit with you.”)
You can read the article in full here.
I’m going to be in Tokyo, then Kyoto and a few other places for the next thirteen days. If anyone has any eccentric recommendations—like a blindfolded labyrinth, or something. Or if any editors have a story assignment.
Starting another movie now.
Sayonara, bai bai xoxo
did your Dad bring his fly rod?
🤗🤔