We were able to get a free swim class from Kaia’s swim school since they were doing a limited time promotion: if families upload an Instagram reel or TikTok video praising the school and our experience with them, then we can get a free class redeemable by the end of December. So on Monday of this week, after I picked Kaia up from school, we took the subway down to Wall Street to the makeup swim class location at a pool I’d never been to. The pool was located at Wall Street Bath and Spa. The directions to get there seemed a bit weird: Look for the Spa 88 sign between a sandwich shop and a dry cleaners. I saw the school sign and walked down a dark staircase with Kaia. We poked our heads into the place and asked if this was where the swim class was. They confirmed we were correct. We then walked down another flight of stairs, through a steamy sea of half naked old men, sipping away at their cocktails and beer and reading newspapers and books. I had to walk through this strange area just to get to the women’s locker room. But once I got there, I discovered it was actually a very fancy spa-like locker room, complete with complex hair styling accessories and even a whole shelf of pool-side sandals that I could borrow while on the pool deck. I was pretty happy about this since I had forgotten my flip-flops.

I thought to myself, what the heck kind of sketchy place is this? It’s supposed to be a Russian bathhouse, but given that about 99 percent of the clientele were all 50s+ old white men who were barely clothed, I wasn’t totally sure this was a child-friendly place. I spoke with the instructors of the class, and they said that they didn’t even feel comfortable walking through the place, so they set up a tent on the pool deck to allow their students to change into their swimwear inside. This whole time, they didn’t even know the locker rooms existed and that you just had to walk through the sea of half naked men! I had to show them that day!

The journey and experience were worth it, though. Kaia basically had a 1:1 private swim lesson given how few kids there were versus the number of teachers. This whole visit to the bath house just made me realize exactly how hidden and discreet a lot of these secrets spots are all over New York City, and that “if you know, you know,” and if you don’t know… well, you may find out given these strange and unexpected opportunities.