An urban spa needs to massage you differently than a resort. There aren’t tropical fish swimming on the other side of the glass beneath your table. The people around you aren’t likely to smell like suntan lotion, or have that windswept, layered look of a morning on the slopes. So what the best urban spas also have to do is massage your mind.
I’ve never seen a better example of this than at the Conrad Los Angeles, in the 28-story Frank Gehry building that opened summer 2022 in Downtown Los Angeles. The hotel itself is part of a larger $1 billion “The Grand LA” project, with dining, shopping, and luxury condominiums. I’ll get to my massage in a second, but the point is that the day of my treatment I awoke to a view of the madly beautiful, stainless-steel curves of the also Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall (home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic) glinting across the street from my room, and then I headed downstairs to visit The Broad and Museum of Contemporary Art, two stunning collections where admission is always enticingly free, and then past the Colburn School of Music and through the 12-acre Gloria Molina Grand Park (both of which offer even more cultural programming)—and if I hadn’t already made plans for that evening, I could have caught a performance at the Disney Hall or at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Los Angeles Music Center right next to it, home of the Los Angeles Opera. The point is that I was never more than a block from my room during any of this. There was a time when choosing a hotel in Downtown Los Angeles was something you regretted, unless your aim was to embrace seediness and desolation. But now it is Oz. Although, truth be told, there was also some suntan lotion later.
Which is to say that when my spa appointment arrived, I’d spent the morning looking at Jackson Pollocks, Yayoi Kusamas, Jeff Koonses, and Kara Walkers, and my feet were tired and my head was spinning. So I chose a “Deeper Rest” massage, which began with 30 minutes of Quantum Harmonic Therapy (using NuCalm-generated acoustic waves delivered through headphones and matched to my organs and chakras, while I simultaneously power-napped on an infrared, heated HigherDOSE PEMF, or Pulsed Electromagnetic Field, mat), followed by a 90-minute “intuitive massage” with CBD oil, to decrease inflammation and sculpt and burnish my developing state of rest. Combo treatments are big at Conrad Spa Los Angeles! So I might have opted for the spa’s “Recharge,” comprising a 30-minute sauna, 90-minute Thai massage, and 60-minute facial peel; or its “Recover,” combining a sauna, body plane, face couture, and intuitive massage.
Spread across 7,000 square feet, with seven treatment rooms, the Conrad Spa is as sleek and eye-popping as the rest of the hotel: wide-planked oak floors, polished concrete, marble, and recessed lighting, matching the layers and curves of the rest of the Gehry designs, with a carefully sourced spa boutique, an “Enlightenment Lounge” with weighted blankets and aroma therapy inhalers, and Recovery Cabins, where you can additionally relax with Hyperice Normatec compression boots, and HigherDOSE PEMF mats and LED masks as an arrival boost at the hotel (yes, this beats fruit punch and lemongrass-scented towels at an island resort!).
Naturally, there’s a 24-hour fitness center—with free weights, mats, regularly scheduled classes, and a flotilla of TechnoGym machines—although what called to me more was the sprawling rooftop pool, part of a 16,000-square-foot, 10th-floor wraparound terrace, with even more views of Downtown L.A. (yes, this was where the suntan lotion appeared).
The goal of wellness is always to leave you better than how you arrived. I’d already been enriched by my experience in the spa and my exploration of all that was just beyond the hotel’s doors. But I figured the last bit of enrichment really should be to my belly. So I spent my final evening at the Conrad back on that wraparound deck, at José Andrés’s San Laurel restaurant (a second Andrés restaurant/bar, Agua Viva, is lower key), where I started with kingfish crudo in a buttermilk leche de tigre (so soft I ate it with a spoon), grilled baby gem lettuce in a Manchego foam, duck breast with braised endives and hibiscus, and a Basque-style burned cheesecake. Was there wine and then dessert wine, too? Yes, I take my reporting seriously.
James Sturz is author of the novel Underjungle, set entirely underwater.