Olympic Spa
Koreatown, Los Angeles
By Lori C. Aronsohn
I've been to many lovely spas and enjoyed the saunas, steam rooms, jacuzzis, massages, body scrubs, etc. in lovely, sweet-smelling, hushed, elegant settings.
That wasn't the way at the Olympic Spa in Koreatown. The place has been around ever since Koreans set foot in the new land, I think,....same walls, same floors, same ceilings, same plumbing.
First, you check in at the front desk which is deceptively lovely, and stocked with pretty skincare products from fine European suppliers. You're given two towels, one bath size, one hand towel size, a tiny robe and a key with a locker number on it.
You stop at the first locker and put your shoes in there. You don't, in return receive any spa slippers....no...you're to go barefoot. Next you go into the main rooms and find your main locker where you strip down, don the paper thin cotton robe and wonder at the odd scents....is that? egg drop soup? ramen noodles? diseased old lady?
You take off everything and leave all your belongings in the locker...then stroll through the place...check out the different 'rooms', tubs, etc. and take note of the many babbling Korean women who work there of all shapes, ages and sizes, wearing black nylon panties and bras. No, not erotic...kind of...oh...shall we say ....ick.
I glanced into the pen where half a dozen of the Korean women were providing body treatments and was horrified to see a middle-aged, overweight woman splayed out on the table like a walrus for all the world to see, being rubbed down with some kind of potion by an 'aesthetician' intent on getting the job done thoroughly. You know how they say that the human body is a beautiful thing? Well, sometimes darlin, huh uh...not so much....
Before partaking of any of the services, one is required to shower in stalls that are reminiscent of the high school gym locker room....leave your modesty at home.
Once I was sufficiently clean, I strolled out and considered the three pools. One looked like broth or tea, and smelled like maybe a combination of the two. The sign above it claimed it contained mudwort and extolled the virtues of bathing in it. I stuck a toe in and immediately pulled it back. I swear it was tea -- boiling hot tea. Now, I like really hot water, but this was just at the boiling point. There was another regular spa pool, supposedly clear water, not as hot, but not very welcoming either. Then, there was a cool dunking pool. uh huh….pass…
I went over to one of the saunas. One claimed to be an oxygenated dry heat sauna. The signs are all in English as well as what must have been Korean. I wondered if the words in Korean make jokes at the expense of those of us who aren't fluent in the language. I went into the oxygenated sauna and immediately burned my feet. Most of the platform is covered in what appeared to be mah jong tiles strung together into mats without the lettering. Beneath that is slick stone that is hot enough to roast a chicken....or me. From the ceiling are suspended some kind of black rock stuff, lava rock maybe? I guessed that was the source of the oxygen. I like dry heat saunas and this would do fine, so, wrapped in my little towel, I leaned back to relax...on the roasting hot stone wall which left a burn on my back. I stayed in there a while, careful to touch only parts covered by the ‘mah jong’ mats.
Then I went to the steam room. I love the steam room, usually, but what was that smell? I stuck it out until I'd had enough and went to join Heather at the cool dunk pool. We just dangled our toes in for a while to inhibit swelling from our burns, and chatted, which was nice. Then Stacy joined us and actually jumped right in, her breasts floated her back to the surface.
Next was my favorite part. We went to the heated floor. Yep, it's like a big stage tiled with marble and heated. Thin cotton quilts were available to wrap yourself in, or lay on, or whatever. I just lay flat on my back and enjoyed the warmth seeping through my body and the snoring of the woman near the wall....until Miss Angry Korea came and called out my number: Seventeeeeeeeen ? Seventeeen?
I followed her and we arrived at the treatment pen, and I call it a pen because that's what it is...a pen with six or eight tables close enough to one another for a person to reach out and touch the person on the table next to them. Miss Korea, grabbed my key from me, and my robe and my towel and directed me to lay face down on her vinyl covered table. Then she threw a plastic basin full of some soapy concoction over my body and began to scrub me like I was a dinner plate in the kitchen sink. Swear To God that's what I envisioned I was...a dirty dinner plate.
Having roughly scrubbed my backside….every square inch of my backside, she directed me to turn over, which I did, but that wet, vinyl table was mighty slippery and I started to slide off the table, at which point she nonchalantly grabbed me by my breast and my hip, plopped me into place and, without so much as a pause to adjust her black grandma panties and bra, started to scrub down my front. "Okay," i was thinking "interesting...where's the nice sugar polish I registered for?" Then, whack, she slammed me up to a sitting position, held my hand up and squirted some lotion in my palm and directed me to: "Go wash face in shower and come back".....
"Yeah?" i thought, "hmmmm....should I make a run for it now?"
I did as I was told, because, as we all know, I'm a pushover anyway. Then, the good stuff arrived, I even got a towel to rest my face on while I was scrubbed down with a lemony sugar polish. Rough but good. I was flipped over again, and, you know, scars, bruises, abrasions...open wounds...were all treated to the same rough 'polishing'. When my forty-minute treatment was complete I'd been polished, had received a facial and had my hair shampooed and conditioned, all in the most matter of fact, rough way one can imagine. The ending was unceremonious. Miss Korea jerked me to a sitting position, handed me a towel, a fresh robe, and a little manilla envelope with her name on it that stated: "Gratuitites: 15 -20% is customary" and announced "go take shower, you done”.
And yet, I felt really, really relaxed. As I waited for Stacy and Heather to complete their treatments and join me on the heated floor, I looked down and noticed that Miss Korea had completely scrubbed away all the scabs from my shin caused by my run in with a pack of bicycles the previous week.
