bustersd10 on Yellow Pages 12 years ago
12/28/2010, 15:38 PM
Hillcrest is a neighborhood that celebrates diversity. As new business open, they bring different cultures, ideas, and worldviews to the residents, enriching the community and making the area a successful melting pot of people and perspectives from around the world.
With the grand opening of Karma Relaxation Spa at 3969 1st Avenue, Jing Sun and her family bring a new cultural perspective to the spa business. Instead of the guilty luxury that most people imagine, they wanted to introduce a more traditional Chinese model that offers the same high quality treatments as other facilities but at a much more accessible price for the average person.
The 3969 location on 1st Avenue has everything they want, 4,000 square feet of space, a nice and modern glass exterior, it was near University and the heart of the community and had a parking lot outside and in back.
Jing explains that in China, everyone gets massages; they are so common that many people get them every day after work. On weekends, it is common for an entire family to spend a day at a spa.
The facilities are usually several stories tall, and clients will remove their shoes and walk into the men’s or women’s shower to rinse off. After showering, you enter another room and get full body sea salt scrub. Walking to the second floor, there are many different steam rooms, wet and dry, some with wood, others with stone. Once you are done, on the third floor there is a common area where everyone relaxes, talks, exercises, and plays games together while waiting for a foot and body massage. After the massage, you go to the top floor where there is another common area with a buffet table, so everyone finishes the day eating and socializing well into the night.
Americans, while very sexually open, are much more shy and cautious about their bodies than people are in China, so they could not duplicate the model, but had to adapt it to American comfort levels. The result is a large facility offering body and foot massages, Vichy showers, detox treatments, milk or honey baths, and a sauna at a fraction of the price.
The President package, one of their most expensive, last about three hours and includes a 60 minute body massage, a 60 minute foot massage, a 15 minute body detox, a Vichy shower, a milk or honey bath, and a sauna treatment followed by a hot towel wrap, all for $79.99!
While they could charge two to three times the price and still be less expensive than most, they would rather make up the difference in volume so that everyone can afford the physical and emotional benefits of regular and frequent treatments instead of keeping it as an expensive infrequent indulgence.
Featuring seven top-of-the line fully adjustable foot massage lounge chairs, and ten massage tables in spread between eight themed rooms, high quality gold paint gives the different sections a warm radiance that is tempered by sheer curtains diffusing of the light. Smells of lavender and vanilla relax your mind while arousing the senses.
Open from 10:00am to 11:00pm seven days a week, there is little doubt that this is a cultural experience that the community will whole-heartedly embrace. As the buffet of different regions, countries, and traditions expands, residents increasingly get to pick and choose from the best that the diversity of the world has to offer. When you can enjoy an authentic Italian lunch at Buonissimo, a Chinese styled spa afternoon at Karma, and finish it off with a Turkish coffee and hookah at Istanbul, all without setting foot on a plane, or even leaving your own neighborhood, then you know you truly live in America’s Finest City.