Russian & Turkish Baths

The experience

A cellar bathhouse at 268 East 10th Street that has been steaming New Yorkers since 1892, with several dry and wet saunas, a Russian room walled in rock, a 39F cold plunge and Swedish showers. Two families have run it on alternate weeks for decades — Boris Tuberman's side (now his grandson Julius) and David Shapiro's side (now his sons Dmitry and Jack) — so the house style changes week to week. The signature Platza Oak Leaf treatment has a specialist thrash you with a broom of oak leaves soaked in olive-oil soap. Weekdays it does not open until noon; Sunday it opens at 9am and it is 18 and over throughout.

The last unreconstructed New York schvitz, a basement of rock heat and cold water that has outlived every spa trend since Ellis Island.

What a membership adds.

Everything above is free: the name, the photo, the rating, the exact spot. What members get is the part you can't Google: the sourced insider tip for this place (what to order, when to go, what to skip), every day of your trips unlocked in full with the insider tip on every researched stop, and the concierge at full strength, answering with your own insider tips, no daily meter.