“When you’re in a 210-degree room, you can’t wear a weapon or a wire”
In this edition of the Weekender: saunas, spring flowers, and bringing sexy back
This week, we’re having a schvitz, currying favor with a medieval horse, and watching Japanese plum trees.
NATURE
Patience
Yasumi Toyoda’s reflection on watching her plum trees blossom is also a paean to the joy of waiting.
I’ve been waiting
—
inI’ve been watching the buds on our plum trees—watched them pout at the sun, watched them sulk, plump and pink, waiting for the ripe moment to burst into laughter. I thought to myself, when that happens, tiny green Japanese nightingales might visit. And when that happens, it means the air might just begin to warm a little. I cannot wait for that!
There’s a kind of waiting that pricks and pulls, heavy with its own heartbeat, restless and undone, but that’s not the kind I’m thinking about today. Today, I’m thinking of the kind of everyday waiting that smiles in promises, whispering, “almost, almost.”
This is the kind of waiting Japanese people know well—the kind known while standing in line outside a particular restaurant for a particular dish (it can be a perfectly ordinary dish), and the wait becomes part of the ordinariness. It’s the kind of waiting done in leisure, with quiet anticipation, because its end is within reach—just there.
Patience in waiting is woven into the pace of Japanese life, and it’s something life here has taught me to flow into. Waiting is not necessarily an inconvenience. It can be a moment to catch up with a friend, or, if I am alone, a moment to breathe, think, daydream, rest, or simply give in to boredom. There’s a shared stillness in waiting the Japanese way—a shared calm, a restrained anticipation, and a quiet understanding and respectfulness in the waiting itself.
I’ve been watching the buds on our plum trees. They burst into laughter—blooming in frilly pale pink clusters that rise in delicate puffs along the leafless, dark branches. I am still waiting for tiny green nightingales to visit. When that happens, it means the air might just begin to warm a little more, and I cannot wait for that!
MIXED MEDIA
INTERVIEW
Sweat it out
Culture of Bathing interviews Paddy Lynch, who gave new life (and a thorough cleaning) to a storied Detroit bathhouse.
Resurrecting the Schvitz
—
inCulture of Bathing: How did you set about the resurrection?
Paddy Lynch: In the early days, it was restoration by subtraction. The carpet had to go. We ripped it up and exposed these gorgeous black-and-white tiled floors. Then we ripped out the drop ceiling—it was bad, a century of smoke and other DNA—and exposed this gorgeous tin ceiling.
We moved on to what they called the movie room, but it was a porno/orgy room. We ripped down the curtains, threw away all the weird furniture, and then we noticed that the floorboards were different. We do a little digging, and we discovered a mikvah underneath [a bath traditionally used for Jewish purification rituals].
The Schvitz was originally the Jewish community center. Then in 1930 the Meltzer family, who were affiliated with the Purple Gang, the Russian Jewish mafia of Detroit, took control of the building and converted it to a bathhouse. The Russian Jews wanted the baths for religious and cultural reasons, but also because it’s private: when you’re in a 210-degree room, you can’t wear a weapon or a wire.
The same family held it until 1975. It was under FBI surveillance through the ’60s because after Prohibition, they moved into racketeering and high-stakes gambling. You name it, they did it all.
CoB: As well as the building, the clientele has changed. How did this happen?
Paddy: Once we got rid of swingers’ night, we had all these free nights to work with. The trick was balancing the history and the future. One of the reasons why I didn’t end up in the Detroit River is I didn’t mess with the men’s nights. I left them totally alone.
One of the most important things we did was establish women-only hours. Some people think it was this really progressive move. But in fact, if you go back to the early gangster days, Grandma Meltzer, who ran the kitchen, would kick out all the men one day a week and let the women have the place to themselves.
The key was getting in as many different communities as we could. We opened up the doors to all kinds of people that we felt like would not only enjoy the heat but would enjoy it as a community center. We let artists use the ballroom for exhibitions. We let musicians come in and do sound baths. We let AA groups use the space. We gave deals to vets. We just tried to bring in as many people as we could. At the start we were lucky to get 30 to 40 people a day. Last month we averaged 175.
I always tell people I’m like a steward. The Schvitz existed long before me, and God willing, it will exist long after me.
VIDEO
ETYMOLOGY
Fauvel the horse
Weird Medieval Guys tells a weird medieval story while exploring the etymology of the phrase “to curry favor.”
My favourite etymologies: “to curry favour”
—
inOur story begins in 14th-century France, with a poem. About a horse. This poem, the ultimate origin of currying favour, is called Le Roman de Fauvel, or “The Romance of Fauvel.” Romance being the original sense of the word—not a love story necessarily but a grand and fantastical tale—and Fauvel being the name of its main character, who is a horse. Fauvel isn’t just any old horse, though. He’s a naughty horse. Maybe the naughtiest horse there ever was.
The 3,820 rhyming lines that make up the poem are dedicated to telling the reader in great detail of Fauvel’s misdeeds and character deficiencies, which are many and severe. For starters, his coat is fallow, the colour of mud, barren fields, and vanity. Our next clue to Fauvel’s unsavoury nature is his name. Spoken aloud, it sounds like faux veil, or “veil of falsehood.” It’s also an acronym, wherein each letter stands for one of the vices that Fauvel embodies.
F: Flattery
A: Avarice
V*: Villainy
V: Variability
E: Envy
L: Laxity
That’s pretty damning stuff, especially for a horse. What could Fauvel have possibly done to make himself the object of such ire, you ask? To which I reply, oh boy.
*Although the consonant sound V and the vowel sound U were distinct in medieval French and English, the two letters were considered to be variations of the same letter and were used interchangeably until the 16th century. So the acronym sort of works better if you imagine you’re a 14th-century French speaker.
PAINTING
FASHION
Hot new trend
Leandra Medine Cohen celebrates the arrival of a certain subversive eroticism in women’s fashion.
The new fashion woman has good sex
—
inWe are in a new era.
And in this era, the most meaningful trends don’t signal exterior status. They tell of rich inner lives. This shift is why I suspect we’ve become so neurotic about articulating and breaking down and teaching and learning personal style.
Through personal style you get to convey the richness of your inner life.
Until now, these lives have been informed by an innate curiosity about the arts (be they fine arts, be they books; never has it been so fashionable to read) met by understated sophistication and a subtle, restrained but extremely poignant interest in clothes.
These lives have been heralded by brands like The Row, often cited as the succeeding Philo-torch holder.
On the surface, this interiority has looked like minimalism, which was exciting and dynamic to witness and partake in for so many years because even though the clothes were simple, they appealed to the moment and reflected how a mature woman wanted her interiority to be perceived.
More often these days, the same kinds of clothes read as flat or dull because we’ve reached our culmination with them. Because the woman is ready to unfold otherwise areas of her nuclear richness.
And what I feel coming through most acutely surrounds the fantasies and mysteries and desires—the erotic material that laces her sexual inner life.
I don’t mean this as literally she has good sex. She might—but the conceit behind the transmission is driven by her curiosity and unapologeticism. By the peace she has made with what turns her on.
She nurtures and studies this part of herself. She respects it and wants to celebrate it, to convey it through her dress.
And much the same way she did not dress like the caricature of an intellectual in her minimalist era, she will not assemble herself into a crop top and miniskirt to stop at the post office or pick up groceries or even to seduce her significant other. It’s far more subtle and subversive, implicit, than that.
There’s a feeling of revolutionary about embracing this part of yourself. Of bringing it forward with the same esteem that you would the desires of otherwise pursuits.
And I think this piece is what intrigues me most—the freedom of something formerly shackled in taboo.
MUSIC
FOOD
Lamb cake
is singlehandedly trying to “spark a resurgence of Easter lamb cakes.” Here, she provides an illustrated guide. 
Substackers featured in this edition
Art & Photography:
, , ,Video & Audio:
,Writing:
, , ,
Recently launched
Inspired by the writers featured in the Weekender? Creating your own Substack is just a few clicks away:
The Weekender is a weekly roundup of writing, ideas, art, audio, and video from the world of Substack. Posts are recommended by staff and readers, and curated and edited by Alex Posey out of Substack’s headquarters in San Francisco.
Got a Substack post to recommend? Tell us about it in the comments.
thank you guys for the mention!! it’s an honour 🤗
I love Yasumi Toyoda's wonderful piece about the plums.