Review: Grand Spa, Koreatown

Amenities: 3/5

Cruisiness: 2.5/5

Price: $15

Pros: Price is ok. Good supply of small towels. Three pools.

Cons: No privacy in the sauna. Tends to be crowded with mostly straight Asian guys. 

Yay, another review! Did you miss me?

I'd been to Grand Spa before, over a year ago, but I wanted to go and get a fresh look at it before I wrote up a review. (I had forgotten a lot about it anyway) I didn't have anything going on after work today so I swung by on my way home.

I'd forgotten from my earlier visit that the entrance is up this side staircase... for some reason, the outer hall is all done up in this ancient Egyptian motif; it's kind of odd.

Upon entering, the locker room is very small; doesn't seem like it's much bigger than a 10x10 room. And inevitably, there's someone with a locker really close to me, so we're doing the whole awkward changing-too-close-to-each-other dance. When you open your locker, there's a robe, a small towel, and a large towel. Note that this large towel is the only one you'll get. They keep a supply of small towels by the shower, however.

From the locker room, I entered a glass door into the spa area. There are showers in there (upright on the right, seated showers on the left)... the body wash is in loose bottles; they look like they were from the 99-cent store or something, and smelled way too floral for my tastes.

Once past the showers, there is a steam room on the left. I really liked the steam room; the temperature was just right for me. Hotter on the upper bench, but less so (such that you could sit in there for a while) on the lower bench. It also pleasantly smelled like cinnamon. The steam room is fairly large, and although the wall is glass, the steam is enough that you can't really see too far into the steam room.

The dry sauna is right next to the steam room. It's fine, temperature-wise, but again it has a huge glass wall that means it's not at all private. There's also a big-screen TV in there (and also facing the other direction, outside of the sauna) showing the latest in Korean television. 

Across from the sauna and steam room are the pools: a cold pool, a warm pool, and a hot salt-water pool. I've said before that I like when they give us a choice for temperatures; when there's only two pools, the hot pool tends to be TOO hot. But here, the warm pool felt great.

Back outside of the spa area, there's a TV room with a bunch of recliners, and a dark, quiet sleeping room. The sleeping room is quite private (if there's nobody else in there), but when I was in there there was a guy snoring loudly... something about Korean spa sleeping rooms, I guess; I always seem to find ones with loud snorers.

The place was fairly cruisy though. The clientele was roughly 2/3 Asian, but I could tell that a few of them were looking to play. I was in the steam room and this older Korean man was being fairly obvious about checking me out. Not my type, but I didn't really mind... I didn't let it go any further than looks though.

There was another attractive (white) guy, we fooled around a little bit in the steam room and the sleeping room, but with the amount of people there on a Thursday evening, it was difficult to get much privacy. As I was leaving, there was another Korean guy that I'm pretty sure was checking me out, too.

Anyway, Grand Spa is fine; nothing to get too excited over though.

Grand Spa
2999 West 6th Street (at Virgil)
Los Angeles, CA 90020
http://www.grandspala.com/