LOS ANGELES — “Let me explain why we’re special,” our waitress said brightly as we sat down to dinner at the Springs,
a six-month-old “urban oasis” in this city’s quickly gentrifying
downtown. “You can eat dinner — everything is raw, vegan, organic, soy
free and gluten free — and then have your colon cleansed right through
that door!”
I had a bad feeling about this.
Maybe
she was joking? As an unhealthy, uncool carnivore, my knowledge of raw,
organic, gluten-free intestinal humor is admittedly slight. “Beavis and
Butt-head go to the vegan colonic facility,” my dinner companion,
David, dryly branded us with a shrug. “Speaking of which, where’s my
bong water?”
The Springs had come onto my radar with this headline on a local blog: “L.A.’s Latest Bizarre Health Drink Tastes a Lot Like Bong Water.” The writer was describing a Springs drink made with Pürblack,
a mineral resin scraped off Himalayan rocks. Before swallowing, you’re
supposed to swish it around in your mouth to let the extract’s healing
properties absorb through your gums.
“Sold out,” our waitress said. “Bummer, I know.”
Without
yet speaking to the owners of the Springs to ask what in the name of
hipsterism they were thinking (contempt before investigation is my only
real skill), it seemed like this 13,800-square-foot restaurant/juice
bar/yoga studio/spa was the perfect example of what happens to trends
when they become ubiquitous.
With
every mini-mall, gas station and gym in Los Angeles now boasting a
juice bar, or so it seems, the truly cutting-edge folks need to raise
the ante to the point of ridiculousness.
Kale-avocado-dandelion-cucumber-caraway-seed-jalapeño-heirloom-pear
smoothie? Snore. Over here we’re doing shots of really old compost.
The Springs does not offer just yoga
and two-hour soundbaths, where you lay on mats while a practitioner
uses frequencies to jiggle your organs. Classes here have also included Breakti, billed as a combination of yoga and break dancing. (“You will face your fears with compassion.”)
“A crisp, bright pause amidst the industrial exhaust” is how Design, Bitches, an architectural firm, describes the look it created
for the Springs: raw and blue-stained plywood, cement floors, roll-up
garage doors and globular paper lanterns (err, “moon-like orbs”). There
are also cinder-block planters filled with fig trees and palms.
Noting that the Springs is next to an organization called Farm Sanctuary,
which seeks to rescue cows and chickens from cruel agrarians, David
said, “This is the California cliché that New Yorkers love to ridicule.”
Not
all New Yorkers: The couple who opened the Springs, Jared Stein, 34,
and Kimberly Helms, 41, moved to Los Angeles two and a half years ago
after stints working on Broadway shows, in Manhattan and on the road.
And
poke fun at them all you want. At least among a certain set, their
concept is a smash hit. After only six months, the Springs is turning a
profit, according to Ms. Helms, who greeted me on a return visit with an
enthusiastic smile.
“We’re
getting three to four calls a day to do special events here, which is
beyond our wildest expectations,” she said, noting that the Springs now
offers live music four nights a week and that yoga classes have started
to hit capacity.
Ms. Helms and Mr. Stein employ roughly 80 people, although many are part time. “We’re going through a keg of kombucha every two days,” she said. “It’s nuts.”
No
lesser a wellness figure than Gwyneth Paltrow — the de facto fire
marshal of this kind of thing, either shutting an idea down or putting
it on the map — has been in for a colonic and a vegan snack. “The
practitioners were remarkable,” she wrote in a January newsletter
distributed by Goop, her lifestyle website. “I may move in there.”
The
Springs was Mr. Stein’s idea. The tattooed, bearded son of a Cleveland
deli owner (the kind who stocks tongue and chopped liver), Mr. Stein was
driving around downtown Los Angeles with Ms. Helms one day in 2012.
They were in town with a tour of the rock musical “American Idiot” (he
was music director and she was company manager) and decided to check out
the buzzy downtown Arts District.
“This is it,” Mr. Stein abruptly told Ms. Helms that day, jerking the car to a stop. Her bewildered response: “This is what?”
He
then laid out his vision for a place that would combine all of his
interests in one cavernous space: yoga, food, juice, music, colonics.
“There’s
a social element missing from the wellness world,” he explained to me.
“When you’re bounding all over the city going here for this and there
for that, you can start to feel a little lonely.”
Ms.
Helms was less convinced but she signed up. “I’m really not one of
those woo-woo people,” she said, despite having the word “presence”
tattooed in curlicue lettering on her wrist. “Blinded by love, I guess.”
I was liking her more all the time.
It
took Mr. Stein and Ms. Helms about two years to raise the money, about
$1.3 million, and work through the arduous local permitting system.
Their
insistence that the 92-seat restaurant serve food that isn’t just 100
percent organic and vegan but also raw (meaning nothing heated above 118
degrees) led to certain complications. The spa (sorry, “wellness
center”) alone turned into a full-fledged enterprise, with massage and
acupuncture rooms and an infrared sauna.
Their
timing was perfect. The Arts District, a gritty area tucked between
Little Tokyo and the giant storm drain known as the Los Angeles River, has started to gentrify with astonishing speed.
Now
home to high-end restaurants like Bestia and designer shops like
Poketo, the neighborhood will soon get its very own Soho House, the
chain of chicer-than-thou private clubs. Set to open next year a stone’s throw from the Springs, Soho Warehouse, as it will be called, will have a rooftop pool.
The loss of a few similarly minded Los Angeles restaurants lately, including Planet Raw, may be driving patrons to the Springs.
Mr.
Stein and Ms. Helms say they understand that “the uninitiated” may see
them as a punch line. (He even laughed at my repeated jokes about
wanting to use the infrared sauna to cook my dinner.) “This lifestyle so
often comes with an agenda: you can’t wear a leather belt, you have to
smell a certain way,” Mr. Stein said. “But that is not us. We wanted a
place where our friends who aren’t vegan would also feel comfortable
hanging out.”
As
Buffalo Springfield played on the sound system and the afternoon sun
enveloped the bar area, the Springs did seem rather comfy cozy. I
ordered a Pürblack, which Mr. Stein gladly whipped up in a rocks glass.
“It grows on ancient rocks,” he said excitedly, reminding me to swish.
I admittedly have not tasted bong water in some years, but the drink struck me more like a liquefied charcoal briquette.
