Division Street Russian and Turkish Baths

Does anyone on this board have any experience with or impressions of the Division Street Russian and Turkish Baths?

The sauna culture is strong where I currently live (Sweden) and I've learned to appreciate sweating out the remanents of a hard night's drinking by sitting around a pile of steaming rocks, surrounded by semi-naked or naked strangers. I'll soon be heading to an afternoon Cubs game on the day following a bachelor's party and I figured a great start to an otherwise painful morning would be a trip to a reputable bathhouse or sauna. Do a search for "Chicago" and "bathhouse" on Google, however and you'll get some links that may open an eye or two. I eventually stumbled across the Division Street Russian and Turkish Baths, though and it seems interesting. I've read a little on the net about the place but I suppose I'm looking for first-hand accounts...

So, has anyone been to this establishment? What's it like? While I don't have a problem with gay bathhouses, they are not what I'm looking for and I'd really prefer not to stumble into one, hungover (and with my hungover brother) first thing on a Sunday morning...

Sincere thanks for any information you may have!

Division Street Russian and Turkish Baths
1914 W. Division St.
773-384-9671

The Division Street Bathouse is both cool and flawed. It is the only such place left in Chicago, and as such, pretty much has the competition to itsef. On the other hand, it could use a good competetor. I'm actually surprised that a few new Bathhouses or banyas have not opened with the influx of Russians into Chicago.

The core of the experience remains two-fold. First, there is the whole idea of parading around in a big towel, dilipidated sheet or other half-cover, with no embarrasement, drinking shots of vodka chased by strawberry nehi, eating big salads from stainless steel bowls, while a cigar never leaves your teeth. Second, there is the turkish bath itself. There are two forms of shvitz at the Division Street Bathhouse. One is what you might find at the YMCA or any health club, a standard steam room, but hardly anyone uses it. The other is the more classic hot room, but it is not purely dry like a sauna. In this room you will find buckets of constantly re-filled cold water for the classic hot-cold shock as well as men partaking in various forms of Eastern body scrubbing and beating. This second room gets really hot, like over 150 degrees (so I am told), and it can waste you (in a good way). Amazingly, there are people who work in this room all day, providing massages and platkas, the once-over with soap and oak broom.

Here's the downsides: It aint cheap. Its like $20 just to get in the door--that will get you a towel, a big wrapping sheet and a bar of soap. There are no grand toiletries like at a fancy spa, so if you want moisterizer other Queer Eye type products, bring your own. You may also want to bring your own bathrobe to avoid the toga look. If you want a massage or platka, that is extra (if you and your friends are secure, you can platka each other, but you still need to buy a oak branch or two if you do not have one). Plus, you need to tip the guys who show you around and such. And it aint exactly sparkling. To call this place threadbare would be an injustice to all the threadbare joints out there. The locker room is dingy and the heat rooms are mostly concrete. This is not a fantasy of Turkish tile in the least.

In the end, it is still a very real and very interesting experience and one I continue to try to push on other hounds with NO luck. You will still find an amazing cast of characters there from mobsters to Jessie Jackson (no jokes please!). You can purge the system and then put it all back in and then some with drinks, pretty good food and a nice cigar. Maybe I'll join you...

Rob

This remains the best web site for all things shvitz:
http://members.aol.com/OABH1930/index.html

Magnificent reply, Rob! Thank you.

It actually sounds very much like the kind of place I'm looking for. I'm aiming to visit the place around the beginning of August and if things work out I'll be sure to post a follow-up post.

I can't help feel that your description fits nearly perfectly with the LTH forum crowd, in a non-restaurant kind of way. No frills - just pure, unique, genuine article... What's scaring everyone away?

Thanks again for taking the time to reply.

Bridgestone wrote:I can't help feel that your description fits nearly perfectly with the LTH forum crowd, in a non-restaurant kind of way. No frills - just pure, unique, genuine article... What's scaring everyone away?

The thought of Rob in a toga.

From 'Literary Chicago' on the Lake Claremont Press website:
http://www.lakeclaremont.com/literary/excerpt3.htm

3.
Division Street Russian Baths
1916 W. Division St. 773/384-9671
Although the Luxor Baths that Nelson Algren used to visit at 2039 W. North Ave. have gone out of business, this old-time bathhouse still remains. (The beautiful facade of the North Avenue Baths building, 2039 W. North, is worth admiring, however.) Take a hot bath here, enjoy a sauna, or get a massage just like the old-timers have done for years (for thousands of years, actually, if you go back to the ancient Roman bathhouses).

The Russian Baths play an important role in Saul Bellow's 1975 novel Humboldt's Gift. Humboldt's old friend Charlie Citrine, who narrates the story and comes into a legacy that Humboldt has left him, remembers going to the Russian Baths with his father when he was a boy. He describes the facility as seemingly having been at the same location forever, "hotter than the tropics and rotting sweetly." A quarter of a century later, the description still rings true. Citrine goes there to meet a Mafia acquaintance, Rinaldo Cantabile. They are surrounded by old guys "engaged in a collective attempt to buck history."

On the corner, just to the west, is Damen Avenue. Here Frankie and Sophie go to see Old Doc Dominowski after the accident that has left Sophie in a wheelchair in The Man With the Golden Arm. At Damen and Division, Frankie leaves his friend Sparrow after a long card game and goes to see his drug dealer at 4 A.M.

The Luxor baths were the best. A friend and I used to treat each other on our birthdays (winter).

You didn't have to pay anything extra except for the massages. The oak branches were free for the taking, everything was.

Except also the kosher dairy bar at the end. We would always have a bowl of good beet borsht with a snifter of courvoisier.

I cannot bring myself to eat in the restaurant that is there now. I've seen beautiful pictures of the food, so sparse, so well arranged, and I can't get it out of my head how much more I enjoyed the fat grandmas who weren't the least bit embarrassed to lay naked on a table and get a strong massage.

The kosher dairy bar, they only had the best brands. No beer, no wine. Just a strong licquor to fortify you after you had progressed from dry heat to wet heat, to the whirlpool, and then a bit of swimming in their very small swimming pool.

The people that give you the massage if you choose - they are women, right?

Are the baths only for men? Or is there a women's side?