Today it is New York City’s largest spa, with 300,000 annual visitors and sales of “more than $20 million in recent years,” Chon told Inc.com.
The community board promptly shot Chon down, “deriding the proposal as a thinly disguised ‘hot sheet’ establishment,” the Queens Gazette reported.īut Chon gained the support of then-Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, who helped shepherd the project through a series of city approvals. The spa’s Facebook page has even described its mission to create a “light-hearted, family-oriented” ambience. He envisioned it as a family-friendly hotel-spa. But in 2005, the developer with champagne tastes purchased a ramshackle warehouse on 11th Avenue in College Point for $3.6 million. A self-described “gambler” with “big guts,” Chon passed on working at the family laundry and studied engineering at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, according to a profile on Inc.com.įor two decades, Chon’s forte was building and renovating Korean-run laundries and nail salons. The mega-spa is the brainchild of developer Steve Chon, 56, who came to New York from South Korea in 1980 when he was 21. When you see somebody on someone’s lap bouncing up and down and the jets aren’t turned on, you know what’s happening.” A not-so-uncommon sight at Spa Castle They think they are being sly about it, but they’re not.
“Practically every day, couples are caught having sex in the indoor and outdoor pools.
“There is a big problem with customers having sex in the pools, and the management doesn’t know how to handle it,” said the staffer, speaking anonymously. A couple made out a few feet away.Ī male member of the group wondered out loud if they should make a liquor-store run. A few minutes later, the nude woman stood in front of the seated man while her hand jerked in and out of the water. House music pulsing, one of the women stripped naked and cheerfully played with her breasts while a woman in a yellow-fringe string bikini and a man looked on. But that did not stop a group of five heavily tattooed twenty-somethings from engaging in splashy sexcapades in the 2-foot-deep, heated wading pool on the second floor. Last Sunday, the clientele ranged in age from toddlers to octogenarians. It looks like the set of a porn movie.” Spa Castle in Queensĭuring two recent visits, The Post found patrons in their birthday suits, groping each other, making out and having what appeared to be underwater sex. “There’s lots of skinny-dipping and the girls are making out with each other and partying. “We open at 6 a.m., and lots of strippers come here after work to unwind,” an employee told The Post. On Sunday mornings, an army of exotic dancers getting off their Saturday night shifts descends on the complex - and it’s not to do laps in the pool. 56th Street)Īnd of course there’s always your home.The Spa Castle in Queens is billed as a sprawling, 22-pool Disneyland of soaks and steams.īut some patrons are anything but G-rated. Lay down, spread your legs–and play safe! (227 E. It’s been there for decades, so there must be some hot, available junk there. Same owners, same vibe, pretty much the same rates. The same attitude prevails, and everyone seems afraid to make a move, but maybe you’ll get lucky and meet Mr. They say it’s “an alternative to the bar scene,” but it’s really just the bar scene with fewer clothes on, and with a sauna. Some cuties, some mental patients, and some cute mental patients. A low-rent Times Square video store, the upstairs is lined with booths which are supposed to be only for one, though that’s hardly enforced, as long as you put a dollar in the slot for porn films.
(The last time around, they moved the location to Brooklyn, sending a bus from Chelsea. A bathhouse-y party that starts slowly, but after the toweled (and usually hot) patrons have had a few thousand drinks, it becomes a nouveau version of the twin cities–Sodom and Gomorrah. Just walking to the bar there, you might find yourself suddenly entrenched in a nine-way involving every fetish you never even dreamed of. Here they are, in all their grubby desperation and/or fascinating appeal: Yes, there are still some places, even in the wake of crackdowns and internet hookups.