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The Great Escape
Hot tub and tan salons offer rest and relaxation in a hectic life
Post Photo / Jenn Madjarev
SUN FUN: Pam Foley of Shelby Township perfects her
tan in a bed at Cabana’s Tanning Salon in Clinton Township.
Post Photo / Jenn Madjarev
DIPPING IN: Jenn Rec of Warren tests the waters
of a hot tub in the “Jungle” room at Bubbly Tub and Tan in Madison Heights.
By Andrea Nobile
Life Editor
Winding down is done best in a hot tub.
For those of you ready to collapse from the onslaught
of work, school and whatever, places like Bubbly Tub and Tan in Madison
Heights are here to rescue you.
“(Customers) like the look. They like the feeling in here,”
said Edward Hakim, owner of Bubbly Tub and Tan.
That look and feeling can be attributed to the tropical,
island paradise theme Hakim has given his tanning and tubbing salon. When
walking into his store, located on John R Road between Eleven and Twelve
Mile, visitors are greeted with immense foliage and color-schemed fun.
Tropical plants decorate the lobby. The carpet is green,
designed to look like grass. The walls are a bright, sunny shade of yellow.
Regular lobby chairs are substituted by flowery patio furniture, complete
with a table umbrella. Caged pet birds chirp in the background.
“I gave it a real tropical theme. I mainly wanted the
type of thing I like - very tropical and pretty,” Hakim said.
Hakim’s store, unlike many tanning salons in the area,
is open until midnight on weekdays and 2 a.m. on weekends, making the spot
a relaxing and even romantic change from a regular weekend out. When Hakim
opened the business in 1993, he decided to offer private hot tubs along
with state-of-the-art tanning beds.
“I enjoyed hot-tubbing. And I thought everyone would enjoy
it,” he said.
And enjoy it they do. Although Hakim said you can usually
walk-in on a weekday and find an empty tub to use, it’s best to call ahead
for weekend visits, especially late at night.
Bubbly Tub and Tan features four private 2-person hot
tub rooms, complete with a shower and a skylight. Each room has a different
theme, such as a jungle room and a Roman room. Tubs are $30 per hour to
rent for customers (18 and older) and $10 each additional half-hour.
The tubs, approved by the Oakland County Health Department,
feature individual filters (like those in swimming pools), that keep the
water sanitized and safe. The actual water is also replaced on a regular
basis making it, according to Hakim, pure enough to drink out of.
In the past few years, tub and tan places, as well as
regular tanning salons, have become much more than a way to get a quick
bronze. Although tub salons are more scarce, regular tanning salons can
be found in nearly every strip mall.
Many people go to tanning salons, like Cabana’s in Clinton
Township, to get away from everyday stress. The months of March and April
are their busiest, pulling in their highest numbers of the year thanks
to seasonal social occasions, Spring breaks and the approach of summer.
Coleen Foley, an employee at Cabana’s, said tanning salons
are great businesses because their customers are always happy to be there.
“There’s no one coming in my door that’s crabby,” she
said. “They come in happy and they leave happy.”
One customer, a 52-year-old high school principal, visits Cabana’s
everyday, even though he just got back from Cancun, Mexico with a tan that
can’t get any darker than it is.
“This is his stress relief. He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t
smoke. He just comes in here to relax,” Coleen said.
She believes tanning salons have seen major growth within the past
five years because people just don’t have time to spend hours laying out
in the sun anymore.
“Our society is busier than it was years ago,” she said.
Dave Foley, Cabana’s owner, is a business sophomore at OU. Foley, who
purchased the business in January from his mother, Coleen, agreed that
people are always happy to be at the salon.
“They come in happy because most people are going on vacation.
Or they’re just coming back from vacation and they’re holding onto their
tan. And you get to hear about their vacation,” he said.
Coleen admitted that tanning is something that needs to
be done carefully. Like lying out in the real sun for hours, tanning under
the bright bulbs can be dangerous to your skin if not done right.
According to Foley, customers must always check with their
salon to see if they change their bulbs regularly. A good salon should
also know the wattage output levels on its bulbs - the higher the better.
Newer bulbs take less time to tan the body, so time spent in the beds is
shorter. The better and newer the bulbs are, the safer your skin is from
burns and irritation.
Bubbly Tub and Tan, along with standard beds, offers standup
tanners, as well as 30-minute bronzers, which have bulbs that are free
from the UV rays that burn your skin.
A good lotion that fits your tanning level, whether beginner
or advanced, is also needed for safe tanning, Coleen agreed.
“You want to take care of (skin), especially when you’re
young,” Coleen said.
“You have to start out real slow... and build up the time.
The slower you do it, the deeper, darker the tan is. If you tan quickly,
it’ll just wash away.”
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Comprehending the signs on the road to love
Mike
Murphy
With four weeks of the semester left, I see the fear in
you.
You don’t have time to eat, sleep or talk on the phone,
so you try to pack all of your former recreational activities into your
commute to campus, creating dangerous “World’s Most Entertaining
Car Crash Dismemberments Three” situations.
You have three papers due tomorrow. One you haven’t even
read the books for, the next you haven’t read the assignment sheet for
and the third you haven’t yet realized was ever assigned.
Your professors? Demons. Computer labs? Full when you
need them. Blue books? Still have to pay for them. That’s a little like
executing you and charging you for the bullet, isn’t it? Geese? Back and
ready to start hard-core poop saturation of our grass, sidewalks and shoe
bottoms.
You’re sleeping, you’re working, you’re studying, you’re
wondering why this is even necessary.
Just as you’re about to quit it all and start a new life outside of
college, love rears its ugly head.
It comes out of nowhere, returning unannounced, like Dennis
Rodman from a leave of absence. One day, it’s who-knows-where, gone forever,
and suddenly it’s back making rebounds and leading your team to victory.
And when it locks on, you’re done. Love is the Borg Cube
chasing the U.S.S. Enterprise of your heart.
That is, if you see it in time. Love may show up like Rodman, but it’s
not that conspicuous. You have to look for it.
Signs, they call them. The interested send them out, the
pursued pick them up and respond. Flirting. If you’re into someone, you
don’t tell them outright. You test the waters and hope they bite.
Sounds like an animal mating ritual, and it is. Even with
all of our computer labs and “must-see” TV, we really are just apes with
ideas.
Look at me. As I write this, my every move is being broadcast
worldwide (plugging, that’s www.webdorm.com, look for “Morris”) and yet,
I’m really only one evolutionary tiptoe out of a cage in a zoo.
Proof? Let’s look back to those signs. I don’t get them.
I tried. Last night, I asked some women to explain to me the things
they do when they’re “after” a guy. They listed many, from casual touches
to quickly returned phone calls, and while they talked I thought my overachieving
primate hamster-wheel of a mind was actually learning something. I nodded,
I asked questions — and they sure thought I got it. Yeah, right.
I came out of that conversation as clueless as a freshman
looking for West Foundation Hall.
I can recite the knowledge I learned on a piece of paper
(I just did), but I can’t apply it to real life. It’s my lousy simian mind
that can’t make the connection between practice and reality.
The kicker? The people out there who can pick up on these
signs have already done so, and they’re attached. What we have left are
the men and women who’ve missed every signal so far.
So we’re up against evolution here. Not easy. But love
will come. Dennis Rodman always returns, the geese always return, finals
always return and so does love.
So as you’re hunched over your books dreaming of sharply
curved grades, take the time to pay a little more attention to the world
around you. Someone might be trying to send you a message.
Also, look out for the poop.
Junior Mike Murphy is a journalism major
and staff writer for The Oakland Post.
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FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT
Television
• The world was first introduced to ‘Mary’ girl Cameron Diaz in “The
Mask,” a 1994 comedy-fantasy starring Jim Carrey, at 8 p.m. Wednesday on
FOX.
• And speaking of Jim Carrey, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch,” knows just
what Truman Burbank feels like when her life is broadcast on the Witch
Channel, at 9 p.m. Friday on ABC.
• Laugh or cry at “rap-has-been-but-stillhoping-for-a-comeback” Rob
Van Winkle, when VH1’s airs his “true story,” “Vanilla Ice: Behind the
Music,” at 9 p.m. Sunday on VH1.
Film
• This Friday’s “The Mod Squad,” gives the ultra-hip 1970s show a 1990s
hot-stuff makeover, with help from hot-stuff stars Claire Danes, Giovanni
Ribisi and Omar Epps.
• Director Ron Howard’s first comedy in almost ten years, “EdTV,” stars
Matthew McConaughey as an everyday dimwit thrust into fame when his life
becomes a 24-hour television show.
• Take your little brothers and sisters, or maybe just yourself, to
see “Doug’s 1st Movie,” the feature film version of Nickelodeon’s hit animated
cartoon about a precocious boy named Doug.
Music
• Blur, a quartet of British rock boppers, follow up their 1997 release
“Blur” with “13,” an love-and-angst album written directly after
singer Damon Albarn split up with his girlfriend of 8 years, Justine Frischmann
of Elastica.
• Pop pixie Beth Orton gives Sarah McLachan, Jewel and other post-modern
folkies a strum for their money with “Central Reservation,” a sweet
follow-up to 1997’s “Trailer Park.”
• Four-man funksters BLACKstreet groove with sweat and soul on “Finally,”
their new album of R&B riffs and rambunctious rhythms.
Video
• Hot young things Reese Witherspoon and Tobey Maguire join Joan
Allen and William H. Macy in “Pleasantville,” a colorful fantasy about
two teens sucked into a 1950s television sitcom.
• “Bride of Chucky,” the fourth installment in the devil doll series,
stars Jennifer Tilly as a vampish babe who eventually morphs into Chucky’s
plastic soulmate.
• “Mighty Joe Young,” stars Charlize Theron as the lifelong friend of
a 2,000 pound gorilla who is forced to relocate to L.A. after their African
habitat is threatened by poachers. Bill Paxton (“Twister,” “Titanic”) also
stars.
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