Rice cakes of the night

Live tilapia at the Super H in Niles.

      Did you have a fun Valentine's Day? I sure hope so. We sure did. My wife bought us a day at King Spa, the sprawling Korean pleasure dome in Niles. The passes were good for the next three months, and I actually hesitated when it came time to go, thinking: "But that means ... I won't be home ... working. Maybe another day..." I contemplated that gambit, then dove in. Let's go!

     When I first visited, over a decade ago, I found that I had difficulty simply lolling. "Can you even loll through force of will?" I wondered, gazing at the clock, champing at the bit to get to the next pool of relaxation.
     Good news. Age hasn't brought wisdom, but it certainly has improved my ability to recline for protracted periods, doing and thinking nothing. Four hours flew by. Very restful. 

    The venue is pretty much the same — the price has doubled in 11 years, from $30 to $60, so it's less of a bargain. But the place was well attended, almost crowded, with the same smorgasbord of humanity — couples, friends, families, individuals, a spectrum of ages and races. The food was excellent. 
      Of course afterward we stopped next door at the Super H, an enormous Asian supermarket, where we wandered the stacked bags of rice, the unwieldy exotic fruit, the wildly enthusiastic boxes of mysterious products. My wife loaded up on mushrooms for a promised mushroom stew. I pondered a half gallon of matcha soy milk, took it, checked the carbs, put it back, then went for it — you only live once! — along with assorted goodies, like little round walnut cakes.   

      I enjoy studying the unusual packaging from other countries. Shorn of familiarity, some seem over-the-top, almost crazed, with their pop-eyed characters shouting nonsense syllables. For some reason the deadpan slogan of a Moon Pie-like Korean product, Choco-Pie, caught my fancy: "It's fluffy." I'll bet it is. Maybe I was just in a good mood. This not working thing — it grows on a person. I could get used to it.

     Then there were the yellow boxes below. Oh my. "Puto" is a male prostitute in Spanish. Though that's more of the sedate definition; it's actually a highly derogatory anti-gay slur. That couldn't be the intention. Back home, a moment's digging showed that, in Tagalog, it's a popular steamed rice cake served with — judging from the photo — a big pad of melty butter on top. Popular in the Philippines. I wonder how their sales to Spanish-speaking countries are? I imagine certain Hispanic men stock it for its camp value, the way I'd put a box of Kike toothpaste in my medicine cabinet if I ever came across such a thing.

Are you willing to take the heat?

 

     Be careful, readers. You never know where these newspaper columns might lead you. For instance, David Roeder’s Chicago Enterprise column last Monday led me directly into a hellishly hot room, where I found relief by pouring a bucket of cold water over my head.
     The column featured the plans of one Alex Najem, a developer who says he is going to build a 40,000-square-foot bathhouse on West Madison Street.
     “A reminder about how everything old can be new again,” Roeder wrote. “Professional massages and scrubs, pools and saunas.”
     “Hmm ...” I thought. “Interesting if true.” I’m sure Dave is correct: Najem plans a new bathhouse — construction is to start early next year. But plans go awry.
     At first blush, building a bathhouse struck me as woefully out-of-date, as if somebody announced the construction of a corner newsstand.
     But what if I’m the one who’s out-of-date? Pre-COVID, there was a vibrant Chicago bathhouse scene. The enormous King Spa & Sauna, a sprawling Xanadu in Niles, open 24 hours a day. The luxurious Aire Ancient Baths in River West, a magical space carved out of a 1902 paint factory, with waterfalls and glowing blue pools in a dim cave of old brick and wood timbers, where guests can bathe in Spanish wine for $650.
     Research seemed in order. There’s a perfectly serviceable bathhouse on Division Street. I began going there in 1990, when it was still the Division Street Russian Baths and promptly fell in love with the place, its boxing club decor, the Hav-a-Hanks and black Ace unbreakable pocket combs for sale at the entrance. Its sleeping room, with a high-pressed tin ceiling and iron single beds made with grey wool blankets, a room salvaged from the past, plucked out of the river of time.

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Saturday Fun Activity: Where IS this?

      As a fan of enigmatic signs, this of course caught my eye. Once I might have thought this was too minimal a hint to make for a fair contest, but after the Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinder was guessed by its "cash-only" sign, I feel this distinctive treat should get you in the right area.
      Or not. I took the liberty of Googling "Palabok," and, well, that isn't going to lead you straight to the doorstep of this place. Though I found it easily enough. 
      Anyway, enough hints—the hive has never been thwarted, and I assume you won't be thwarted now. Though to be honest, at this point, I can't tell if I'm trying to stump you, or pulling for you to extend your streak. A kind of Stockholm Syndrome.
        I've got a good prize: this attractive Iron Man figurine, which I plucked off the free table, thinking he could guard over my office. He's done a fine job—no security breaches on his watch. But he somehow isn't quite worthy of moving up to the my new office on 10 ... this Wednesday. I'm trying to make something of a fresh start. Well, as fresh as a start as you can while still dragging all 17 volumes of the New Catholic Encyclopedia along with you. 
      Where is this place? Make sure to post your guesses below. 

    Postscript 

    Well, since this was cracked so easily — 12:08 a.m. — I might as well put in a plug for (spoiler alert, if you want to try to figure it out, stop reading now, because I'm about to say where it is ... really, I mean it ... okay, you've been warned) ....
      The Village Creamery in Niles. A purveyor of Filipino ice creams in flavors like lychee, avocado, jackfruit and yam, I just can't drive past the place without stopping in and picking up a few pints, most recently some green tea and a flavor called "Halo Halo Fiesta." It's on Waukegan Road, right across the street from the King Spa, the deeply weird Korean recreation that is also worth a few visits.  Try the maize. And the green tea. And the birthday cake flavor. 

Hot fun in the Fire Sudatorium

     When it's cold outside, why not go where it's really, really warm? Thus many cold-climate cultures embrace the idea of saunas, steam rooms and bathhouses.  The Scandinavians—Swedes, Finns and such, are especially big on it, as are Russians. The Greeks and Italians helped invent it, and the Japanese developed the practice into ritual and art. Native-Americans had their sweat lodges. The current crop of Americans...well, not so much. Which I suppose in one way speaks well of us — we're busy, making money. The descendants of Calvinists and Puritans, we spurn comfort, pleasure and relaxation. But in another sense, it suggests something bad, that we fail to pause and just savor life. Inspired by this crazy cold, I paused to do some savoring Friday in one of the warmest places around. My report:

     Americans are bad at lolling. Or maybe it’s just me; I don’t want to be one of those guys who project their own faults upon the world, one of the many men who, to quote Thoreau, “mistake their private ail for an infected atmosphere.”

     We certainly are good at sprawling in front of the television. But lolling is different from sprawling. To loll is to idle away time “in a lazy, relaxed way.”

     I did that Friday, or tried to. It being so cold, with the promise of worse on the way, it made sense to head for King Spa.

     If you are not familiar, King Spa is a vast Korean establishment in Niles. At 34,000 square feet, it claims to be the largest Asian spa in the United States. The place is a strange mix of taste and kitsch, lovely Asian artifacts and huge cut amethysts with price tags slapped on them, granite counters and chairs upholstered in salmon Naugahyde and scrolled gilded woodwork that is half Louis XIV, half Lewis Carroll. If Kim Jong Un built a health club, it would look like this.

     You pay $30, men go one way, women the other. Stash your shoes in little lockers, your clothes in another. Off each gender’s locker room is a steam room and four pools, from quite hot to icy cold.
     I slid into the water at 10:55 a.m., thinking, "half an hour." That seemed the limit of sybaritic luxury. While the old Division Street Russian Baths, of which I was a member, could be deserted on a weekday, King Spa was hopping with a diverse mix, heavy on Asians and Russians, but with a cross section of Americans too—college kids, seniors. I closed my eyes, sank to my chin and listened to the murmur of languages.
     By 11:15 a.m. I was in the hottest pool, gazing at the clock, wondering why I am deficient in the idling-away-time, doing-nothing department. Can you even loll through force of will? That sort of wrecks it, doesn't it? As it was, I was on the clock, being paid and researching a column, so it didn't even count as true relaxation. Rest makes me antsy. Something to work on in the new year.
     I got out of the pool, dried off, put on a gray cotton uniform: shorts and a T-shirt (women wear pink, kids yellow).
     On the main floor, the spa has nine sauna rooms, heated to different temperatures (one is an Ice Room at just above freezing) and employing various supposedly healing and revitalizing materials: salt, charcoal, stone and such. Normally I'd sneer at the mystical pretensions of it all—"The pyramid-shaped sauna channels metaphysical energy coupled with the unique healing effects of 23 carat gold"—but that would lose the spirit of the place, like a visitor to Disney World observing that real elephants could never flap their ears and fly since the surface-area-to-weight ratio makes that impossible. Thanks professor.
     The hottest room is the "Fire Sudatorium," a beehive-shaped chamber where you sit, sweat and endure as long as you can—in my case about four minutes—before you bolt for the low entrance. It felt tribal.
     After 90 minutes my wife and I met at the restaurant and had a passable pitcher of some milky rice beverage, a spicy salad with walnuts and eight fried-vegetable pot stickers, all for just under $30.
     Walking to our table, I was slightly surprised to see, out the window, snow—Oh right!— and this is an indication of the relaxed mindset you fall into, between the uniforms, the burble of languages, the heat, the cold, the water, the chairs. By the time we left, 2 p.m., after three hours in the place, I felt rejuvenated; OK, maybe not rejuvenated, but not as crappy as I had felt going in.