By Norm Singer The Shvitz was built under the Sunset bowling Alley in the 1950s on Western Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. Western Avenue was the street that separated the Gentile half of Rogers Park and the Jewish half. The high school kids east of Western would go to St. George High School and the grade school kids would go to St. Margaret Mary Grammar School. The kids west of Western would go to Sullivan High or Mather High School; which were two very progressive schools in the Chicago public school system. Algebra was taught in the 5th grade while the other CPS schools were on long division, quite a big difference. East of Western Avenue had an Irish Alderman and the West had a Jewish Alderman to keep things relatively even, although the council was under the control of Mayor Daley and his Administration. But let’s get back to the Shvitz. In the basement of the Sunset Bowling Alley was a Russian bath house. After walking down a flight of stairs you would come upon a man sitting behind a counter, his name was Bathhouse Jerry. Jerry was a 200 pound 5 ft. 10 inch overly hairy Eastern European manager and cook. When you greeted Jerry, you would ether give him your membership number or pay the daily rate of $7.50. After passing Jerry you would come upon a square room brightly lit with a yellow tiled floor. There were 8 card tables with 4 kitchen chairs at each table. The table tops were made out of Formica and trimmed in aluminum. From the constant use of the tables and the drawing down of the cards from the center of the table, a stain in the Formica flowed down to the edges. The card games that were the most popular were Kiyoudel, a Yiddish card game, Clobyosh, and gin rummy. This room was constantly filled. The regulars would come at 1 oclock after a round of early morning golf. Jerry would then become the cook. The menu consisted of hot dogs, hamburgers, French fries, or borsht with sour cream. But the hardcore men would order the Russian style of raw herring and sour cream and a raw onion peeled and eaten like an apple. The men would chase this wonderful lunch down with ice cold shots of vodka, yummy. If you turned to your left, you would enter the locker room. There were ten rows of lockers, ten deep to store your clothes and valuables. After locking up your things, you would be given a pair of plastic bathing shoes and a towel. You would then take a shower after which you would be given a large white sheet to wrap around your lower half that you wore in public places like the card room. The Shvitz consisted of a swimming pool. the card room, the locker room, the shower room, and the massage room with 4 tables for massages or hot water playtza, a bunch of oak leaves bound together to form a brush which you lowered into a bucket of hot soapy water and scrubbed down with it. There was a sauna and a wet heat room. This steam room was quite unique. It was about 25 feet square with a built in oven where large rocks sat over gas flames. The rocks were heated up and cold water was thrown over the rocks causing a vast amount of steam to shoot out into the room. The room had three rows of wooden shelves surrounding it where the naked men would lay down. The top row was the hottest; the heat would rise to the top and would create an extremely hot experience. Only the very experienced men could tolerate the heat. When it became intolerable, the men would jump off of the shelf and take a bucket of ice cold water and pour it over their heads, ah the pause that refreshes.. This would go on for 20 minutes or so. Observing this procedure of top shelf playtzas was quite an experience because most people could not tolerate the heat. By watching, the Russian experts, I learned how to remain in the steam room with the extreme heat and keep my body cool. It was like watching an exotic ballet where the Russian men would raise their arms as high as possible in order to get the oak leaves as hot as they could before dropping the oak leaves on their backs. The men would then leave the shvitz bath and take a very cold shower in order to close their pores so that they would not catch pneumonia. After this you could take a swim, take a nap in a room with bunk beds, play cards or eat lunch. One summer as a teenager I worked at the Shvitz. I had obtained Lifeguard status from the Red Cross. As I sat by the side of the pool, I realized that if a 300 pound man was in the pool and needed help, I wasnt going to jump in after him. So I took several sheets from the massage room and tied knots in them and if someone needed help I would toss them the sheets and pull them to the side. Luckily, this never happened. One afternoon, a grandfather brought his grandson to the pool for a swim. The young boy vomited in the shallow water. The grandfather took the boy out of the water and the vomit was floating on top of the water. OH NO!!! What to do now? I retrieved an oak bucket that was used for Playtzas and with my hand guided the vomit into the bucket. As I was doing this, I was gagging and dry heaving. I took the bucket to the bathroom, went into a stall, missed the toilet and the vomit went all over the floor. There I was again on my knees, with my hand pushing the vomit back into the bucket dry heaving. After this incident, I quit working at the Shvitz and decided to hang out at Morse Beach, play cards and play Buck Buck How Many Fingers Up.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 20:38:04 +0000
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