It turns out you don’t have to buy thousand-dollar tickets, endure security and fly more than 12 hours to journey from San Francisco to Moscow—you can simply visit Archimedes Banya in the Bayview. 

The tastefully austere gray palace at 748 Innes Ave. could have been airlifted from Novgorod or Novosibirsk: the apathetic front desk attendants, the socialist-realist murals in shades of gray and yellow, the disorientingly dark-walled tavern full of pelmeni and borscht. 

But the most authentic component is the banya process, one that includes steam rooms so hot they glue contact lenses to eyeballs, a plunge pool so cold it feels like melted ice and bundles of birch branches (venik) with which you can beat your fellow bathers. 

It works like this: You check in at the front desk, where you receive a bathrobe and a bracelet that serves as your locker key, and descend to the only space separated by sex in the sprawling complex. There, you change out of your clothes and retrieve the black plastic sandals and two crisp white towels waiting for you in your locker. 

The majority of bathers don’t choose to wear a swimsuit, so as you move into the banya itself you are greeted by skin—lots and lots of it. 

A man dunks under the waterfall in the cold plunge pool at Archimedes Banya in San Francisco’s Bayview. | Source: Courtesy Archimedes Banya

After showering, you move into the Russian sauna, or parilka, which distinguishes itself by a combination of high temperature with humidity that can be continuously upped by splashing water onto a stove clad with handmade tiles from Russia. A frigid cold plunge beckons sweaty bathers as they emerge glassy-eyed from the saunas, the cycle of alternating hot and cold allegedly a miracle cure (and broken up with breaks for beer and snacks in the upstairs lounge). 

“If you can talk, it’s not hot enough,” said one bather, repeating a saying he learned from Archimedes owner Mikhail Brodsky, whose name is tossed around as if he’s a guru on the top bench thronged with bare bodies. It is a Russian tradition as old as the banya itself to wear a woolen cap to protect your ears from the extreme heat (Russian babushki have also advanced other rationales, such as protecting your hair and not allowing the steam to escape your body).  

The naked arrangement can lead to some awkward moments. Offering a courtesy grin to a man emerging from a pool whose hardware is at eye level leaves you wondering about unintended connotations. A friendly chat with someone new can abruptly have heightened meaning when you recognize you are naked, talking to a stranger who is also naked. 

In a world full of nearly always-clothed bodies, it’s overwhelming to see so many body parts, especially since the men typically outnumber the women 9 to 1—and 9 out of 10 bathers choose to forego clothing. 

Archimedes Banya in San Francisco’s Bayview has a number of soaking pools. | Source: Courtesy Archimedes Banya

But something happens as you move through the banya cycles and your eyes adjust to the steam. Bodies are simply bodies, and the chatter starts to seem like what it is: casual. Plus, you are beginning to feel amazing, more relaxed than you can remember. A condition some have nicknamed “banya brain” has set in.  

There’s a tile in the hallway of steam rooms at Archimedes depicting a kerchiefed woman with plump breasts beating the back of an old man with that bundle of branches. “Banya is the second life,” the image reads in Russian, attesting to the centrality of the bathhouse in Russian culture. 

The banya is where business deals are done, as Viggo Mortensen immortalized for Western audiences in Eastern Promises. There’s nowhere to hide a weapon, and no way to wear a wire. You reveal your tattoos, which in the Russian criminal underworld declare allegiances and even your biography. It’s where the world turns topsy turvy and begins anew, as in the Academy Award-winning film Irony of Fate, which is shown every New Year’s Eve in Russia. In the movie, lovers accidentally exchange partners after a bathhouse visit, thanks to identical-looking communist-bloc buildings.

“It’s the idea that you open up your pores and sweat out all the evilness, all the nastiness,” said Ethan Pollock, author of Without the Banya We Would Perish: A History of the Russian Bathhouse and a professor of history at Brown University.  

“The banya is a social space that speaks to a Russian sense of leveling, of egalitarianism, and people’s outside identity is stripped bare,” Pollock said. 

A bundle of branches (venik) sits on a plunge pool at Archimedes Banya in San Francisco’s Bayview. | Source: Julie Zigoris/The Standard

In a world where we are constantly distracted, there’s a modern-day magic that happens at the banya, a contemporary parallel to that historic past. Freed from devices and with nothing to do but talk, you shed your props in the same way it’s been done for centuries throughout Russia. You lose your hangups and your concerns, your worries draining out of your oh-so-open pores. 

You’ll find languorous bodies scattered throughout the Archimedes complex that spans four levels and includes a cafe, spa, TV room and roof deck: bathrobed men snoozing on extra-wide easy chairs, beer drinkers stretched out in the café, bodies lounging beside the lukewarm pool. 

But the banya can also be brutal. 

“Bend over and brace your legs,” the bathhouse assistant said while preparing for an aromatherapy treatment on a recent Friday. She clutched bundles of birch and oak branches meant to improve circulation and increase heat. The bodies on the top bench instantly complied, and the woman—in a black midriff top and short shorts—walked down the row, beating the bare back of each bather. 

A bundle of branches (venik) soak in water at Archimedes Banya. | Source: Courtesy Archimedes Banya

She alternated between three scents—peppermint, bergamot and beer citrus—flexing her abs as she stood on the top and hottest bench to whip a towel through the air (a move that ups the temperature and steam even further that another bather nicknamed the “Misha-copter” in honor of the bathhouse owner).

“Happy Friday!” she called out, and the sweaty bathers burst into applause. 

The sauna can be an endurance competition. 

“Good ideas come to you when you’re sitting naked in a bathtub,” said Brodsky, the owner and founder of Archimedes, referring to the bathhouse’s namesake, a Greek mathematician who discovered the law of buoyancy while in his soaking tub. 

Brodsky himself received the nickname Archimedes at the famed Sanduny Baths in Moscow as a banya-obsessed Ph.D. student. Brodsky had first tried the banya when he was 19 years old in Western Siberia and was immediately hooked. 

“I am the Archimedes of the 21st century,” Brodsky said, noting they are both applied mathematicians. To most people in the bathhouse, Brodsky is simply “Misha,” the ruler of his bathhouse kingdom. In case there is any doubt, he sports a gray bathing cap that says “Boss.”

Mikhail Brodsky, owner and founder of Archimedes Banya in the Bayview, smiles at his bathhouse. | Source: Julie Zigoris/The Standard

He came to California in 1989 to work as a research professor at the University of California Berkeley and spent 11 years there before opening his bathhouse on New Year’s Eve in 2011 after more than a decade of work to realize his dream. He moved on from Berkeley to become the president of Oakland’s Lincoln University, where he still works today—while also visiting the banya twice a week. 

“The steam gives you energy and invigorates you,” he said, pointing out that at 72, he had just played a soccer game. He has become a student of world bathhouse cultures, and Archimedes represents not only the Russian tradition but a blend with Turkish and Finnish styles (there is a dry sauna and a traditional steam room on-site). 

The terrace at Archimedes Banya in the Bayview has a view of San Francisco. | Source: Julie Zigoris/The Standard

Archimedes continues to expand its offerings, with comedy nights and brunches, clothing optional rooftop yoga and international bathhouse tours. Most importantly, the banya is a social place, Brodsky said. 

It’s also the only co-ed clothing optional bathhouse in the world, according to him. 

“Everyone said it was crazy, that there was no way we could do it,” Brodsky said. “But San Francisco allowed it.” It’s one of the few differences from the Russian banya, where women are always separated from men. 

“You need to shock with a marketing tool,” he said. “And it’s worked.” 

The post The Temperature Is Scorching at Archimedes Bathhouse in San Francisco appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

The hottest temperature on Earth ever recorded may have been reached on Sunday afternoon, as the mercury in California’s Death Valley hit 130 degrees.  

The temperature was reached at 3.41pm Pacific time on Sunday, according to the National Weather Service. 

If verified, the reading would break Death Valley’s previous August record by three degrees, the Weather Service tweeted. In a follow up tweet the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said it will verify the temperature.

‘Everything I’ve seen so far indicates that is a legitimate observation,’ said Randy Cerveny, who leads the World Meteorological Organization’s weather and climate extremes team. 

Scroll down for video  

Visitors posted the record online; the visitor center thermometer runs 3-4 degrees warmer

Tourists visiting the California park posted series of photos of the barren landscape

Death Valley is famed for being the hottest place on Earth, and on Sunday did not disappoint

Fires raging close to houses in Salinas, California, last night – around 260 miles west of Death Valley

Fires raging close to houses in Salinas, California, last night – around 260 miles west of Death Valley

Trees and bushes burning in Salinas, California, last night – around 260 miles west of Death Valley

In an email to The Washington Post, he wrote: ‘I am recommending that the World Meteorological Organization preliminarily accept the observation. 

‘In the upcoming weeks, we will, of course, be examining it in detail, along with the U.S. National Climate Extremes Committee, using one of our international evaluation teams.’ 

Death Valley currently holds the record for the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth – a record set on July 10, 1913, of 134 degrees.

Yet experts for years have believed that the reading was not accurate.

An extensive analysis of that record conducted in 2016 by Christopher Burt, an expert on extreme weather data, concluded it was ‘essentially not possible from a meteorological perspective.’ 

The remains of a home in Salinas that was destroyed by wild fires last night

A chimney block stands naked against the horizon after a home was destroyed by flames in Salinas, west of Death Valley, in California

Experts believe that Sunday’s temperature was the hottest ever accurately recorded

A 131F reading from Kebili, Tunisia, set on July 7, 1931, also has ‘serious credibility issues,’ according to Burt. 

Many believe that a 129F readings recorded in Death Valley on June 30, 2013, and in Kuwait and Pakistan in 2016 and 2017, were the highest ever reliably measured on the planet. 

If only those readings are considered, then Sunday’s 130-degree temperature would unseat them as the highest measured.  

Death Valley is the lowest, driest and hottest location in the United States. 

Furnace Creek, where its temperature is measured, sits at 190 feet below sea level in the Mojave Desert of southeastern California.  

In July 2018, its average temperature of 108.1F represented the hottest month ever measured on the planet. During that month, it hit at least 120 degrees on 21 days. 

Typically, such blazing heat records happen in July — the Northern Hemisphere’s hottest month — which makes Sunday’s 130F reading stand out.

Heavy smoke near Salinas, California, blotted out the sun on Sunday as wildfires raged

Wildfires swept across Contra Costa County in California on Sunday, sparked by lightning

Firefighters battled to put out the blazes on Sunday, inland from San Francisco

The roasting temperature came as a heat wave continues to grip much of the western United States.

More than 80 million people were under heat alerts Friday from the Central and Southern Plains as well as for nearly the entire West Coast.  

Oakland, California, on Friday hit 100F for the first time on record in August, while Phoenix tied its highest temperature for the month: 117F.

On Saturday, Needles, in California’s southeastern desert, soared to 123 degrees, its highest August temperature on record.

Sacramento hit 112F on Sunday, topping its previous August record of 110F. 

The hot weather overwhelmed the state’s electrical grid, prompting the California Independent System Operator (ISO), which runs the grid, to warn of an electricity supply shortage on Sunday evening.

California ISO sought to buy additional power to avert another rolling outage and issued a Flex Alert, urging utility customers to conserve energy during the late afternoon and evening hours.

The heat wave across the western United States is expected to last until Wednesday

Blackouts hit a large swathe of California on Friday evening from 6.30-10pm

Forecasters warned of ‘stifling heat’ across a large part of the western United States

‘It’s going to be tight,’ said Severin Borenstein, a board member of the ISO and energy economist at the University of California, Berkeley.

‘There is a real concern that they would have to do it again tomorrow and Tuesday,’ he said Sunday about the rolling outages.

California ISO ordered the first rolling outages in nearly 20 years on Friday when it directed utilities around the state to shed their power loads. 

The state’s three biggest utilities — Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric — turned off power to more than 410,000 homes and businesses for about an hour at a time until the emergency declaration ended 3 1/2 hours later.

The ISO instituted a second, but shorter, rolling outage Saturday evening that cut power to more than 200,000 customers.

The power grid is mostly stressed during the late afternoon and early evening because of higher demand and solar energy production falling after the sun sets.

California increasingly relies on energy from renewable sources instead of natural gas-fired plants. During the summer months, the state imports power when demand goes up, but a heat wave sweeping Western states meant there was less available, Borenstein said.

‘They are literally calling as well as emailing and saying, “Do you have any power to sell us to everyone in the West,”‘ he said. ‘But they can’t force the other areas to sell their electricity when those other areas need it for themselves.’

La Jolla beach near San Diego was packed on Saturday as people sought respire from heat

Baker Beach, beneath San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, was a popular destination Saturday

Kayakers in La Jolla hoped to cool off on Saturday amid searing, record-breaking heat

The last time the state ordered rolling outages was during an energy crisis in 2001. Blackouts occurred several times from January to May, including one that affected more than 1.5 million customers. 

The cause was a combination of energy shortages and market manipulation by energy wholesalers, infamously including Enron Corp, that drove up prices by withholding supplies.

The heat sent Californians to outdoor spaces and waterways, even as officials worried about the risk of increased coronavirus transmission. The state reported another 77 deaths Sunday, bringing total deaths in California from the virus above 11,200.

Unsettling weather also triggered an unusual warning by the weather service of a fire-induced tornado at an out-of-control forest fire that broke out north of Lake Tahoe on Saturday afternoon.

A massive fire cloud known as a pyrocumulonimbus formed over the fire, which started east of the town of Loyalton, about 40 miles west of Reno, Nevada. 

When high winds collided with the fire and whipped it into the air, a spectacular tornado-shaped spiral of flames was formed.

The fire has burned at least 45 square miles and triggered evacuation orders for sparsely populated communities along State Route 395 by the California-Nevada border, said Tahoe National Forest spokesman Joe Flannery.

Firefighters aided by water-dropping helicopters and air tankers faced ‘extreme fire behavior,’ he said, and worked through the night to extinguish spot fires and protect threatened structures.

At one point, the fast-moving fire jumped a highway and came dangerously close to a fire truck. A fire crew from Truckee tweeted a video of firefighters dragging hoses as they ran alongside a moving truck that was dodging the flames.

Ryan Peel said firefighters created some defensive space around his slot machine distribution warehouse in Chilcoot, but he was worried the erratic winds could still put his business in the line of fire.

‘Yesterday was extremely emotional, as we were at the mercy of the wind and the unpredictability of the fire,’ Peel said. ‘I was stressed and terrified at the idea of losing everything I’ve spent my life working for.’

With zero containment and strong winds in the forecast, he said, ‘we are not out of the woods yet’.

On Sunday, a rare summer thunderstorm brought lightning (pictured over Healdsburg, California, on Sunday) that sparked several small blazes in Northern California and stoked a huge wildfire that has forced hundreds of people from their homes north of Los Angeles

Lightning illuminates the sky over the eastern span of the Bay Bridge as a storm passed through San Francisco on Sunday morning

More than 4,500 buildings remained threatened by the fire burning toward thick, dry brush in the Angeles National Forest. Firefighters already battling the blaze in steep, rugged terrain with scorching heat faced more hurdles when hundreds of lightning strikes (pictured over San Francisco) and winds up to 15mph pushed the flames uphill

On Sunday, a rare summer thunderstorm brought lightning that sparked several small blazes in Northern California and stoked a huge wildfire that has forced hundreds of people from their homes north of Los Angeles.

More than 4,500 buildings remained threatened by the fire burning toward thick, dry brush in the Angeles National Forest. 

Firefighters already battling the blaze in steep, rugged terrain with scorching heat faced more hurdles when hundreds of lightning strikes and winds up to 15mph pushed the flames uphill.

‘We set up a containment line at the top of the hills so the fire doesn’t spill over to the other side and cause it to spread, but it was obviously difficult given the erratic wind and some other conditions,’ said fire spokesman Jake Miller.

The Lake Fire was just 12 per cent contained Sunday and has burned nearly 28 square miles of brush and trees. Fire officials said 33 buildings had been destroyed, including at least a dozen homes.

Temperatures reached more than 110 degrees and a pyrocumulus created erratic fire behavior, fire spokesman Tom Ewald said.

Thunderstorm and excessive heat were also a concern for firefighters battling a blaze that blackened almost 4 square miles in the foothills above the Los Angeles suburb of Azusa. 

The fire, believed to be started Thursday by a homeless man, is only 3 per cent contained.

Due to the triple-digit temperatures throughout the weekend and the combination of prolonged heat and smoke from wildfires, ozone pollution reached levels not seen in a decade in some areas. 

Air quality may reach unhealthy to very unhealthy levels in several regions of Southern California on Sunday and Monday afternoons, the South Coast Air Quality Management District said.

In Northern California, moisture from an offshore tropical storm fueled a thunderstorm that brought nonstop lightning strikes early Sunday, some of which ignited small fires and knocked out power across the San Francisco Bay Area.

Wind gusts reached 75mph according to the NWS, which said another round of lightning may develop early Monday.

‘This is probably the most widespread and violent summer thunderstorm event in memory for Bay Area, & it’s also one of the hottest nights in years,’ tweeted Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Scientists have found that the intensity, duration and frequency of heat waves worldwide are increasing due to human-caused climate change. 

A 2019 study found the planet has entered a ‘new climate regime’ with ‘extraordinary’ heat waves that global warming is worsening. 

Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle are among the cities under heat alerts.

For the West, an excessive heat warning is in effect until Wednesday for parts of Arizona, California and Nevada, with high temperatures expected to reach 110-125 degrees. 

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