♨️ Sauna returns to King’s Cross

This Thursday, Bestival founders and wellness power couple, DJ Rob da Bank and his wife Josie, are setting up their travelling Slow Motion Sauna on Cubitt Square for a month-long winter warmer session.

As you’ll likely be aware, sauna is hot all over the UK right now, with facilities bubbling up everywhere from blowy beach fronts to town hall car parks, (not to mention the ongoing odd showdown shenanigans over bringing one to Hampstead Heath’s mixed pond).

That’s because getting sweaty over the hot coals offers loads of proven benefits, improving our physical, social and mental health - making it the ideal pursuit for the cold and resolute month of January.

The pop-up isn’t the first time sauna has been an attraction on the King’s Cross estate though - those readers who enjoyed the ambitious Pond Club freshwater swimming pool/art installation, based nearby back in 2015, may remember there was also a popular barrel sauna there.

This time around, for just £6 you’ll get an hour to thoroughly stew in a Lithuanian wood-fired sauna, and/or an electric one donated by The Finnish Institute, before sizzle ‘n sliding yourself gracefully into one of three cold plunge pools.

There’s a salt scrub for getting the skin tingling and showers to ease you back into reality, open Tues-Sun every week until Feb 11th - full info and tickets here.

❤️‍🔥 11 more places to enjoy sauna in the ‘hood

The borough has masses of places to embrace the heat, but often they’re hidden away inside members-only gyms and clubs, (or perhaps the occasional remaining, er, ‘parlour’). So here’s a line-up of hotspots – with options to suit all pockets, and persuasions – where you can access sauna easily whenever you like.

♨️ St Pancras Renaissance spa The former Victorian era ‘steam kitchens’, deep below the gothic redbrick St Pancras Station’s sumptuous hotel, have been converted to a very fancy spa including a decent sauna, a dinky, candle-lit swimming pool and some serious massages and skin treatments on hand, too.

♨️ Pancras Square Leisure Centre If the Renaissance experience is all a bit pricy, the newish Council facilities just across the road (run by Better) have poolside sauna and steam rooms, plus a drench shower, all of which can been booked by non-members at any time.

♨️ Spa Experience Swiss Cottage Better/the Council are also behind this accessible, affordable day spa ‘concept’, mercifully tucked away from the municipal hubbub of squash courts and soft play downstairs. It has a hammam and sauna plus a wide range of beauty treatments and group packages.

♨️ The Spa at The Landmark Marylebone’s lush Landmark hotel boasts a sanarium, the more gentle, introductory-level of hot room, making it ideal for those who find full-blown sauna a bit much. It also boasts a rare chlorine-free swimming pool, and then there’s the hotel’s iconic eight-storey glass atrium, complete with towering palm trees, in which to relax afterwards over tea.

♨️ Aire Ancient Baths The London branch of this international high-end chain is found below a Charing Cross townhouse, and though it doesn’t have a sauna specifically, is a worthy inclusion on our list for its tour through seven different temperatures, in truly stunning surrounds (pic above). You’ll venture through various baths including the Tepidarium (36°c), Caldarium (40°c) and Frigidarium (14°c and 10°c) before finding the Vaporium steam room, the Thousand Jet Baths, and finally the Flotarium, where you can thoroughly drift away.

♨️ Parliament Hill Lido During the current wintery months, taking a well-earned a sauna (based in a shipping container) has become a big attraction at the Heath’s all-year-round unheated Lido, and a session only costs £3.30 on top of your swim.

♨️ The Oasis Another longstanding, Better-run-Council joint, you’ll find sauna on offer alongside the main attraction here – the secluded outdoor swimming pool set, rather wonderfully, right in the heart of the West End’s theatreland.

♨️ Elite Spa West Hampstead’s established Moroccan hammam specialists will give you a mini peel and soap treatment plus access to the sauna alongside your hammam experience, or any massage. This is a place to find the uber-indulgent four-hands massage among their wide range or treatments, too.

♨️ Banya No.1 Hoxton Walk along the canal towards Islington to find this authentic Russian-style Banya, offering traditional thermal treatments, bucket showers and even a private log cabin to rent, where you can fully immerse yourself and friends in the rituals of self-flagellation with tree branches, and other restorative joys.

♨️ BodyWell Kilburn’s wellness hub offers free access to their sauna for anyone booking one of a range of specialist massages, or a signature body scrub.

♨️ Rios Naturist Spa Kentish Town’s legendary nude hangout attracts a ‘liberated’ crowd from day through until late at night, with a big sauna among its many, varied delights. A popular and proud swingers haunt, be prepared that some of the people looking hot and sweaty may have worked up their own heat, getting exceptionally well-acquainted in the corner.

ARTS & CULTURE

New theatre, and a wild film about a famous fleapit

🎭 We like the look of the dark comic cautionary jaded pop star tale, Rehab the Musical, which takes place in the round on the dancefloor of Piccadilly’s swish all-day bar and club, Neon194. It opens tonight for a five-week run, starring TV talent Keith Allen, gospel songstress turned Eastenders regular Mica Paris and plenty more.

👗 The Astonishing Adventures of Kitty & Peg is a new comedy play written and performed by talented local duo Sophie Trott and Cara Jennings. It’s on at the Hen & Chickens Theatre from Tues 16th - Sat 20th, and should be well worth seeing as it’s loaded with sensational twists and turns including sex, death…and industrial action.

🎞️ Longer-standing Camdenists may have their own fond-but-hazy memories of spending horizontal all-nighters in amongst the fiercely bohemian crowd and weed fug at King’s Cross countercultural cinema The Scala. Scala!!! is a documentary film celebrating this wild, important era, which has just gone on general release and The Arts Desk have run an interview and some great photos too. 

FOOD & DRINK

Booze-free Camden plus New Year, new openings

This week we’ve updated our rundown of the most innovative places to find low and no alcohol drinks in the area, in case that kind of thing is on your agenda this month, and indeed anytime.

From the established ‘sober curious’ hub and events centre, Club Soda in Covent Garden, to the world’s first 0% proof heavy metal bar in Camden Town, it’s a real eye-opener if you are currently muddling through Dry January, or indeed for those who are most certainly not.

🍺 The UK's latest branch of Wetherspoons opened this week, next to Euston Station. The Captain Flinders is named after the Royal Navy explorer who led the first circumnavigation of Australia, (and who’s remains were recently uncovered nearby during digging for HS2). Most locals will be more familiar with the history nugget that the building the pub occupies was previously the rather seedy lapdancing joint, Secrets.

👯 Talking of such things - or rather the highly sanitised, tourist-friendly modern equivalent - North Yard’s theme bar, Coyote Ugly, is redressing the gender balance for one night only with their annual ‘Man Auction’. If you’re a bloke and want to get up on the bar and show ‘um what you got, then it’s all to raise finds for mental health charity Mind - sign up and/or buy tickets here.

🍔 Gastro-amusement arcade Seven Dials Market has announced a New Year's shake-up, which sees Columbian taco joint Los Gordos, burger faves Mother Flipper, Kati rolls specialists Kolkati and Nashville hot chicken supremos Lucky's all incoming, adding to an already stellar streetfood line-up.

🐔 There are a few tickets left for a special Veganuary Dinner at Primrose Hill’s plant-based institution Manna tomorrow night (Sat 13th). It’s in aid of Fresh Start For Hens, an organisation dedicated to finding loving homes for hens leaving the commercial egg production lines.

🍝 Running through until next weekend, you can currently enjoy 50% off your total bill at the soft launch of the new Baker’s Street branch of in-demand fresh pasta restaurant Emilia’s.

📊 This week’s poll question

MUSIC

January sounds around this part of town

🪩 It's the return of the infamous annual KOKO Electronic Launch Party 2024 tonight at KOKO, (it’s so good there’s a Part 2 party next Friday 19th, too), where unannounced global house and disco headline DJs jet it to wow the early January crowds, and resolutions go out the window.

🎸 The January Blues Festival currently sees masses of top quality rhythm ‘n blues bands and artists appearing all this month at Camden Town venue The Forge, with Wednesday night (17th) bringing Chicago legend John Primer (pictured above) as headliner.

🎤 Camden born and raised singer-songwriter-rapper-poet Jazzi Sirius headlines The Lower Third for an immersive evening with fashion party-starters Lev3ls and kinky performance couple Romantic Therapy.

🌑 Psychedelic ambient electronica trailblazers The Orb play a special set at Dingwalls on Thursday (18th), and with 18 LPs under their belt, there’s a wealth of mind-expanding music to bring to the party.

CAMDEN DIARY

Privilege, diversity and discomfort

The weekly Camdenist column: a week of living, working and playing in the borough…

SUNDAY: I’ve been going to Camden Town’s Triyoga for over 20 years 😲, and January is always a roadblock, as the well-intentioned flock to their mats. Classes are bursting with all kinds of people, and after the glaring lack of diversity in such studios was rightly flagged a decade or more ago, it’s also a far more mixed bunch today, which is great progress. Much of this has been achieved with the active inclusion of more teachers of different ethnicities, ages and body shapes. People clearly like the person guiding them into odd contortions to look something like them, and you can see this gravitation reflected in the make-up of students. Black and Asian teachers’ classes are popular with more… Black and Asian yogis.

As I worked up a handstand-drill sweat, notably the only white male - indeed the only male full stop - in the packed room, I wondered why I felt so comfortable in this setting, with no even fleeting wish to gravitate to a paler, staler, male’er variety of instructor or class. Obviously I’m going to feel fairly home in this space after so many years, but perhaps my inherent ‘middle aged white guy in London’ privilege means I’ve never truly understood the need to seek out one’s tribe? The solace of being among others with a shared experience of society silently, (sometime noisily), ranking you based on looks and tired old assumptions.

Then I though of the many alpha-privileged white guys who’d be guaranteed to feel incredibly ill at ease in any yoga studio at all - instantly downgraded as their usual powerplays become irrelevant with the need to balance and twist, and the great levelling unfamiliarity of it all. While we may dream of a day when differences in culture, gender, shape or colour simply melt away, our differences - and similarities - can also be what drive us to focus, group, specialise and succeed where we do feel comfortable and confident. Still, putting yourself in challenging positions - of both the mental and physical kind - is also a vital part of the overall progressive mission. There’s plenty of room for yet more diversity in the studios - we definitely need more privileged pale-stale white guys embracing their rare discomfort in yoga. 🧘🏼

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