Comments (0) Best Place to Get Skinned - 2011
Olympic Spa
Once you've come to accept — even embrace! — the very graphic reality of Olympic Spa, that you're flopping around butt-naked with the women of Koreatown all day, you'll realize the pampered lifestyle of a much fancier lady isn't so far out of reach. That's right, princess: For the price of one and a half Patron shots, you can fade into a sweet three-tub rotation of jacuzzi, tea bath, cold rinse, repeat. Olympic Spa's $15 cover includes three sauna types: steam, clay and the red-light third room offering purported "oxygen stones" and charcoal formed from 1,800-degree ubame-gashi trees. Freebies, an intrinsic part of bathhouse privilege, abound — a sea-foam bathrobe, awesome-smelling shampoos, towels and flip-flops. It's quiet, light and pretty, almost utilitarian at times — as if a lovely cleanse were a necessity, and a right. Extra rubdowns and treatments are available, but the only thing you really need won't cost more than $2: a pair of yellow exfoliating mittens that, after a rubdown by the trough, will leave you simultaneously delighted at your new lightness of being and horrified that you could leave behind such a gnarly battlefield of dead skin cells. So worth it. 3915 W. Olympic Blvd., Koreatown. (323) 857-0666, olympicspala.com.
—Simone Wilson
