Hit Piece: Bathhouse
When there's a clear agenda against a person, business or establishment, it elicits an investigation.
This morning I woke up with a killer cold, which led me to scroll a bit too long on the socials. I am a total Instagram fiend and I often get my news from there as opposed to X (I know, a very bad habit, which has gotten me by for nearly ten years in the industry).
Through a couple of sniffles and sputtering coughs, I was surprised to come across this headline…
If I had coffee in my mouth, I would have spit it out. Ew. Ew. Ew. I was just there with my boyfriend a week and a half ago and was *this close* to booking a massage for my mom at the trendy schvitz spot. Could it be true?
There was only way to find out. I read the article… and what I found was a total hit piece against my new favorite place to relax. CANCEL CULTURE IS ALIVE AND WELL, Y’ALL!
To start… that vile video of the worms in the Instagram post. Was it real? The video gives off little-to-no identifying features. I checked the article to see if the journalist linked the video to the article, but what did I find?
“Another former employee shared videos with me that seem to show several wormlike insects crawling on tile floors and brick walls with patches of what they say was mold in the hammam rooms.”
Is this New York Magazine or the New York Post? The source to these videos was not identified and there is no proof or identifying features that the videos were from Bathhouse.
Now, diving into the article. If this was a review of Bathhouse, I think this would have been perfectly OK to publish; However, this is a news piece that is a clear hit targeting the Brooklyn and Manhattan-based establishment.
In the first line, the journalist writes, “At a minimum, Bathhouse has a Reddit problem. In the last week and a half, several people have claimed that they developed urinary-tract infections after taking a dip at the wellness chainlet’s locations in Williamsburg and Flatiron.”
When pitching a story, I have two questions that I ask myself:
Does this story have high reach and relevance?
Is this story important?
Answer to question 1: Low.
Answer to question 2: Low.
To start, a reddit thread with 172 comments and 542 upvotes is not cause for alarm. We’re all guilty of surfing to Reddit to find some hot piping allegations against some up-and-coming wellness brands, but is it really worth writing a cobble about? (For those who don’t know what a cobble is, it’s basically a story that’s written based on previously published materials without pursuing your own reporting).
How do I know this was a cobble? This story was written for Curbed, which is NYM’s New York-focused vertical, so it’s meant to target local news. The journalist should be New York-based, so they should have the resources to do on-the-ground reporting given that this is a local news article. I do think the journalist aspired to investigate, but, giving them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they ran out of time. To my knowledge, the journalist didn’t visit Bathhouse and didn’t do any on-the-ground reporting. Instead, they linked a video from this person’s account.
This person in the above video claims to be a former employee of the shvitz. She posted a nearly 10-minute long video with >4,000 views about how the facility was festering with mold, pests and was not cleaned properly. I looked at the subsequent videos she posted to her account and it’s clear that she has animosity towards the company. In a video entitled “PART 2 - personal testimony”, she claims that she was denied a request to work at the Flatiron location because of consistent tardiness and the way “she spoke to coworkers” after calling a manager “unprofessional”.
In the next video, she claims racist and sexist allegations against the company. Then, two videos later, she admits that she was offered a hybrid position in which she’d work at the Williamsburg location some days and the Flatiron locations other days. After working at the Flatiron location, she claims she was less busy than the other new aestheticians and then posted in her company’s slack channel “I’m feeling overlooked, I’m feeling overworked, I’m feeling underpaid, I’m feeling unappreciated and I really want someone to explain to me why this schedules looks as such”. Confusing, right?
After watching nearly 36 minutes of testimony I found out a major reveal… *drum roll please*… SHE WAS FIRED!
I do feel bad for this woman, named Jessi. She had a miscarriage and obviously struggles with some challenges. However, for the journalist of this article to include her testimony without any context to her employment status raises some eyebrows. Had he watched the other videos at all? And if he did, did he just use her original video to fit his narrative.
Now for the UTI allegations. According to the Cleveland Clinic, “about half of females will have a UTI at some point during their lives. Males can also get UTIs, as well as children, though they only affect 1% to 2% of children. Healthcare providers treat 8 million to 10 million people each year for UTIs.”
That’s a lot of UTIs! Now, according to the NHS, UTIs have many different causes including:
having sex
pregnancy
conditions that block the urinary tract – such as kidney stones
conditions that make it difficult to fully empty the bladder – such as an enlarged prostate in men and constipation in children
urinary catheters (a tube in your bladder used to drain urine)
having a weakened immune system
not drinking enough fluids
not keeping the genital area clean and dry
Yes, people can get UTIs from hot tubs. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a bacteria that is found commonly in hot tubs that can give you that Cranberry juice-eliciting infection down there. There are little scholarly articles on how many people contract UTIs from hot tubs, but to the above points:
not drinking enough fluids
not keeping the genital area clean and dry
It’s very possible that the people who did contract UTIs “from Bathhouse” may have been dehydrated and/or were sitting in a wet bathing suit for a little too long. Candidly, my boyfriend and I have spent an easy four hours at Bathhouse each time we’ve been and once you enter Bathhouse, they generously allow you to stay all day.
The journalist does admit “While these are just Reddit rumors, the claims don’t seem to be too far-fetched”. I think he is stretching the narrative a bit here. He should have also disclosed that you can get UTIs from “not drinking enough fluids” and “not keeping the genital area clean and dry” as well.
Lastly, this line absolutely made me roll my eyes, “Maybe worse than mold allegations? Shvitzers claim the vibes are just off these days.”
LOL. Playing G-d much? So you decide to write a hit piece about one of the few places you can relax for an affordable price in this city and then you make a bold claim that “the vibes are off”? Maybe the writer was paid by the spa’s across-the-street rival, Othership because something certainly seems fishy.
TLDR: From my perspective, it seems like this journalist must have paid a visit to the Bathhouse, hated it for some reason and then decided to write a takedown about it.
How I would have approached the story
If I was assigned to write this article, I think I would have done a little bit more than just call the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and cited a few TikTok and Reddit posts. I do think it’s fair for him to be critical of the establishment, but it seems that there should have been a little more legwork on his end to make it a more well-rounded story.
First, I would have traveled to both locations and would have done some on-the-ground reporting. What are the clients saying while on the scene? What are the employees like? What are these alleged “off vibes” like?
I would have reached out to the Bathhouse founders for comment. Maybe, they would have given a blanket statement or maybe they could have given a personal tour of the rooms, proving that there isn’t any mold. Maybe it’s just discoloration?
I would have made sure to have an overall more fair approach to the article. This is labeled as a “mystery” article… maybe it should have been a review if the writer wanted to maintain his stance.