Review: Riviera Spa, Torrance

Amenities: 3/5

Cruisiness: 1/5

Price: $25 (includes Jim Jil Bang)... but there's a $5-off coupon on their website

Pros: Nice clean facility, plenty of towels, not crowded

Cons: Saunas hotter than I prefer, a little pricier than comparable spas

I had only just heard about this spa last week; I guess it's fairly new. Anyway, I happened to be in the area for work, and decided to get some late afternoon spa time in, rather than face a Friday rush hour commute.

I arrived in the lobby and the staff was very friendly, and when I answered "yes" to the question "Is it your first time here", a gentleman showed me to the locker room and gave a very brief rundown of the locker room area. Separate (non-lockable) cubbies for shoes... I'd normally put my shoes in the locker (even if I removed my shoes by the cubbies), but with the guy showing me around, I felt compelled to use the non-lockable shoe cubbies. Still, I'm always paranoid that someone's going to walk off with my shoes.

The locker room is nice, with dark stained wood cabinetry. I stripped off my clothes and headed to the shower area. There are plenty of showers in there, both upright and seated showers. In fact, probably more showers than I've seen at any other Korean spa I've been to (except maybe Wi Spa)... there's a resting area with a handful of leather recliners and a muted TV set to Korean programming.

The men's spa area had three pools (hot, warm and cold)... the warm pool was plenty hot for me, actually maybe slightly hotter than I'd prefer, but not horribly so. The warm pool is also HUGE, probably the biggest I've seen at any Korean spa so far. (according to the nearby sign, the capacity was 32 people!)... one annoyance was that the spa jets were on one of those dial timers, so after 20 minutes or so the jets would turn off, and one would have to get out and turn the dial again to turn the jets back on. The spa area was tiled in mostly granite; it felt pretty upscale to me.

There was a sauna and steam room in the men's spa also; the steam room was also a little hotter than I'd like (but again, not horrible) and the dry sauna was much hotter than I like; I could only stand it for a few minutes at a time. Even though there was a rug on the floor, the floor was hot on my feet. And the benches were hot to sit upon, even with a folded towel between my ass and the bench. 

The place was practically deserted when I arrived; there was only one other guy in the entire men's spa, and he left not long after I arrived. So I had the men's spa to myself for half an hour or so. Then, probably a little before 6:00pm, a few more guys arrived, including a father with his young twin sons (maybe 7 or 8 years old)... If you're a regular reader, you know my feeling about the kids, but these guys were actually pretty well behaved. They didn't stay long either; I assume they went up to the Jim Jil Bang. Few more guys came and went, but I don't think there were more than maybe 5 or 6 guys at most in the men's spa at any one time.

That said, zero cruising action was happening here. I was the only non-Asian there, with the exception of one other guy who arrived toward the end of my visit, and most of the guys there were older and, presumably, straight. This isn't really the place to go to to find guys willing to play around. There's not really any privacy there either, except maybe in the back of the steam room. It probably gets busier on the weekends, but with the distinct lack of privacy, there's no opportunity, really. For voyeurs, though, while there's unlimited towels, they're too small for people to wrap around their waists, so everyone is stark naked.

While I was there, I visited the Jim Jil Bang. It was fine; there were three heated saunas and one cold sauna. There's a restaurant there also which smelled really good. I hate having to wear clothes in the Jim Jil Bang area though... they just feel annoying to sweat in the saunas. So I didn't really stick around for very long. The elevator between the men's locker room and the Jim Jil Bang was making odd noises too, which didn't really inspire me with confidence.

All in all, a nice place for a sweat and a scrub. And nobody walked off with my shoes.

Riviera Health Spa
3601 Lomita Blvd (just east of Hawthorne)
Torrance, CA 90505

http://rivierahealthspa.com/