I don’t often feel the compulsion to blog, or twitter, or even update my status on Facebook. In a world where everyone is constantly sharing why would a “writer” want to “write” in such easy-to-distribute formats? There’s so much “content” in the world why would I want to add to the pile? But tonight I do feel the urge to post a random blog post, to say goodbye to a wonderful place in San Francisco that has served as a refuge for me over the last ten years.

Osento was a uniquely San Francisco women’s spa in the Mission District that has existed for over 25 years. Affordable: it only cost $12 to get in. Diverse: full of naked women in every size, shape, color, and nipple style. Unpretentious: the lounging cots offered both stacks of literary magazines and US Weekly. And divinely, sometimes dizzyingly relaxing: there was nothing like emerging from Osento, cleansed from an almost scaldingly-hot water soak and a pore-draining 20 minutes in the wet sauna, to Valencia Street, light-headed and renewed.
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