Drowning Osento

Osento means "honorable bath". It is a women-only bathhouse on Valencia Street that has shaped my life in San Francisco since the first week I moved here. But—

This is from Osento's website: "On April 15, 2008, Osento will be 28 years old. Sometime within the next six months Osento will be closing. The building will then be returned to its original use as two residential units and sold."

Osento

I am bereft and heartbroken. Osento is, to me, the essence of the Mission. Original, funky, secret, brilliant, humanitarian, spiritual...they let any woman over 70 years old in free.

Where else is there truly women-only space?

Where else can we get soak for $12? Not some fancy, intimidating spa, but an everyday place, like the bathhouses of old. Public, friendly, non-judgmental.

Where else can women go to transcend (and don't say the Lex, which is great, but merely fun).

Osento is like some kind of relic or promise of a better society—a place for friendship, meditation, taking the healing waters.

I don't want to say that this means something about gentrification or change—I don't think all change is bad. I happen to like density and city life. This is just a tragedy, like someone you love dying.

So we need a poem:

Landing Under Water, I See Roots

All the things we hide in water
hoping we won't see them go—
(forests growing under water
press against the ones we know)—

and they might have gone on growing
and they might now breathe above
everything I speak of sowing
(everything I try to love).

-Annie Finch (Calendars)

Comments

[Annie Finch]

I'm so glad to see my poem used here, in service of such an important and moving cause.

Annie

[Jane Brooks]

Do you know about this project? http://betterthanosento.blogspot.com/

It's an experiment in microlending and other network-y things with the aim of opening a place to replace Osento's.

I don't know the people who started this but am interested to see how it turns out.

Jane