September 14, 2025

"Next came Solórzano, who performed in a leather jacket, throwing his first snowball from a cocktail shaker—a blend of cedar, benzoin, and cardamom which conjured the smell of whiskey."

"To a soundtrack of ragtime and death-metal bluegrass, he waved his towel with muscular grace, using it to represent (variously) lightning in a prairie thunderstorm, his dead lover’s body, and a bar tray that he used to deflect bullets. Between vigorous towel-waving sequences, he narrated his moral dilemma, of whether or not to take vengeance on his former best friend, an outlaw who’d killed his girl.... As the temperature surged to two hundred degrees, Solórzano slammed a snowball scented with black pepper and juniper tar onto the rocks, filling the room with a gunpowdery musk, and waved furiously, darting up and down the sauna stairs, tossing his towel in an elegant plume of white. The crowd went wild."

From "Sweating and Storytelling in a Williamsburg Sauna/Aufguss: a world championship for twirling a really hot towel" (The New Yorker).

Had you heard about Aufguss?

11 comments:

rehajm said...

I’ll one and one it: Unless there’s a naked Heidi Klum involved…nein.

Aggie said...

I don't know anything about 'Aufguss', but I have an old T-shirt from the brewery, about 15 years old. All in all, I prefer the beer cold.

Wince said...

Well spank me with a vihta!

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

To a soundtrack of ragtime and death-metal bluegrass...

Oh, that just wrong!

Smilin' Jack said...

“ Had you heard about Aufguss?”

Not till I saw this post. Thanks a bunch. Every time you think humanity has hit rock bottom, someone shows you that rock bottom has a basement.

Narr said...

Sounds like harmless fun, which is not always the case with German fun.

buwaya said...

For this, among other reasons, it is clear the Thirty Years War did not go on long enough.

mezzrow said...

"Hey there, ChatGPT. Read this to me in David Attenborough's voice."
Recommended.

mezzrow said...

I just translated aufguss and it came out to be what I expected it to be. Not digging any deeper into this one, thanks.

Caroline said...

Death-metal bluegrass: like Kurt cobain shrieking Will The Circle Be Unbroken?

Lazarus said...

Victory of style over substance.
The writing is certainly colorful.
But I don't have a clue what's going on.

Post a Comment

Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 2 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.