Remember that scene from the "Sex and the City" movie where Samantha covers her naked body in homemade sushi and waits for Smith to come home on Valentine's Day to eat it off of her? Well, getting a seaweed wrap at Spa La La feels a little like that, except less fishy smelling and a whole lot less sexual.
Coined the Body Maki (hello, above sushi reference!), the seaweed wrap is a 90-minute, $175 treatment using seaweed straight from a British Columbian kelp farm.
Your seaweed-masseur wraps your body in the oceanic material and then seals it in with paraffin wax, but before said wrapping begins, your body is exfoliated from head to toe, ridding you of dry skin and the grime of the city.
But once the seaweed-wrapping/wax-dipping commences, do not expect to move from your coffin-like state. Caution: this treatment is not for the claustrophobic or weak of heart. It is, however, for the woman (girl, boy or man) who has the time and patience to rest their weary mind and body and physically feel the toxins sweating out of their pores.
A relaxing and steamy -- albeit necessary - shower (this treatment is messy) follows your seaweed mummification, but what follows the shower is by far the best part of your Body Maki. Your masseuse lotions you up and down with the best-smelling lotion this side of British Columbia has ever seen.
This unique treatment can only be found at the newly-opened, dimly-lit, very sexy, hip Spa La La. Yes, it's off the beaten path (on the corner of Western and Armitage), but it is well worth the drive, El ride, bus ride or hitchhiking that it takes to get there.
If Samantha had the patience of a sushi-wearing saint on Valentine's Day, you can put aside two hours of your day for a therapeutic, oceanic, purifying seaweed wrap -- sashimi style.
Erica Bethe Levin is the co-founder of CheekyChicago.com.
