San Francisco Bay, for most of us, is a piece of art: pretty to look at, but not to touch. Brrr. With bare skin? Over my surely dead body.
But then I took the plunge — and never felt more alive.
The native East Coaster in me used to find the Northern Californian beach scene odd. Annoying. Why bundle up just to sit on the sand and look at the water? Until I became the kind of local who did just that.
Sure, I knew some people — hardcore people, slightly insane people — who swam in our bone-cold sea every day: Those proudly scruffy South End Rowing Club members, and proudly not-scruffy Dolphin Club members, who love to debate who has the cleaner locker room (Dolphin) and who has the rowdier bar (South End). Both, however, have what anyone must have after emerging from our 50-something-degree water: a sauna.
But I can admit, I was always bay curious. Never enough, though, to bother trekking to Aquatic Park for what would inevitably end in hypothermia and a hundred-dollar parking ticket.
I was a runner, anyway. Not a swimmer. And certainly not an early cold-plunge adopter. Never did the Ice Bucket Challenge. Fully ignored Wim Hof and his ubiquitous icy beard.
Then one sparkling fall morning in 2023, my neighbor-friend Claire told me she’d recently started plunging at Crissy Field’s East Beach with her friend Gretchen. If I ran there and jumped in, she’d bring me a robe and drive me home, she said.
It must’ve been a mix of post-pandemic ennui, a summer trip to Scandinavia, and San Francisco’s climate-changing climes — or maybe I was just feeling puffy — but something in me jumped at the idea.
I was sold. And it was, like she said, so easy! So … I soon realized, after kicking off my Sauconys, stripping down to my sports bra, and wading ankle-deep into Crissy’s gently lapping water: fucking freezing.
Claire hooted, hollered, held her breath, and submerged, bursting out of the water like Poseidon, eyes as wide as her smile. Gretchen followed suit, in hers. Then, for the first time in the 20 years since I’d moved to our fair City by the Bay, I was in it! Gawking at the Golden Gate. Bobbing alongside a bunch of women I’d never met before. Bound by the beauty, the boldness, the sheer rush of it all.
The next Monday, I did it again. Soon, twice a week. Then we upped it to three. The group grew. Eventually we dubbed our text thread (and hence ourselves): Cold Plunge Ladies.
We weren’t alone. Looking around the slightly murky water, it is clear: Plunge culture is seeping into the city. Various pods of women, some in pompom hats, others strapped with don’t-hit-me orange floaties, one holding what seemed to be a Venti Starbucks cup. Every so often, a solitary man, looking a little lonely.
Each group has its own name, spot, and time slot. Church of the Bay meets soon after sunrise; Ocean Dippers, 8:30 a.m.; Ocean Beach Plunge Club, 6:30 a.m. every second and fourth Saturday at Noriega and the Great Highway; Ebb & Flow, Sundays at 7 a.m. in Sausalito. Sometimes my friend Rebecca double-dips, splitting her limited plunging time between us and a club whose members brave the waves across from Lawton Avenue, with a WhatsApp group more than 200 strong.
Soon, membership grew. Like Crissy itself, Cold Plunge Ladies are chill. We have a 15-minute minimum rule; 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. call time, haggled via text; and $0 dues. Anyone who enters is not-so-warmly welcomed if not always immediately recognized on land. I swear, several months after I’d been plunging with the same ladies every week, a fully clothed blond woman came up to me on the street, gave me a hearty “Hi,” and I gave her a blank stare. “It’s Vicky!” she said. A plunger out of water.
A bay plunge is like a mikvah of middle-age moms on meth. Except I’ve never done either. One Ocean Dipper put it this way: “I did a lot of drugs during college, and plunging is better.”
Plunging is a spiritual, religious experience with a serious dopamine release. And the weekday morning scene at Crissy is a bit of a cult — complete with long robes, loyalty. For the Cold Plunge Ladies, there’s even branding: cute patches designed by Claire, an artist, who cheerily passes them out to all who deign to dunk more than once.
Guest stars come and go. Some from Marin. One from Silicon Valley, even though she has a cold tub (and sauna) of her own. (Who down there doesn’t?) We toss our stuff by the rocks — and no, no one, swipes it. (Crime is down in SF, after all!)
We could do laps, I suppose, but instead we tread. And talk, through chattering teeth, about teenagers and Trump, board meetings and books, perimenopause and man flu, work and the chaos of our world — while retreating from it, if only for 15 minutes, to watch Karl unfurl over the bridge or uncloak it, and gulls soar and seals dive, whales spray, and tech dudes on $15,000 eFoils speed by.
Eventually someone checks their watch and calls it. We emerge, en masse, beaming. Better than we would’ve been if we hadn’t plunged, we all agree, aloud, every time, like it’s our first time.
The dogs are rounded up. Afterdrop — the continued cooling of your core body temp even once you’re out of the cold water — sets in. Goodbyes are hurried. Vicky’s lips always turn a little blue. Gretchen pulls a diet Ocean Spray cranberry juice jug from her trunk, refilled with warm water, and douses our sandy feet. Brooke beelines to the Presidio YMCA. Claire cranks our twin butt-warmers and blasts the heat, transforming her SUV into a pseudo-mobile sauna.
The other day, though, we were treated to a real sauna. Waterside. A gift from Fjord, a new sauna venture from two local guys bullish on bringing Norway to the Bay.
In July, they will open on the shore in Sausalito with two big, beautiful saunas built out of old barges, with room for six, picture windows, and ladders leading from the water up to its docks.
But when cofounder Gabe Turner caught wind of Cold Plunge Ladies, he thought he’d give the Fjord experience a dry run and brought a sauna to us. At Crissy Field. He was like a sauna Santa, spreading word and goodwill, with a warm foot bath, wood-burning coals, and a window pointed at the bridge. Did he have the proper permits? (Probably not.) Do we want Fjord to permanently set up shop in SF? (Yes, let’s flood Mayor Lurie’s inbox!) Shivering and still dripping, we piled in post-plunge, huddled on cedar benches in the heat, inhaled and exhaled, in awe of what we had, of what could be! A mobile sauna by our bay! With apologies to Claire’s sandy Volvo, Fjord may have forever ruined us.
San Francisco has been drowning lately in new bathhouses and onsens and plunge-centric day spas. A few months ago, the Cold Plunge Ladies took a field trip to one hip new hot spot in the Tenderloin. Its two tubs were so tiny! So cramped. So artificial. So … floating with stray hairs from the supple twentysomethings swarming the “sanctuary.”
Even with my irrational fear of sharks, I’d still rather the real thing — with its salt and seals and, yes, very occasionally elevated sewage levels. With its expanse and freedom and viscerality — and community of women who’ve lived here long enough to know: The bay is cooler.
This isn’t spa life. This is plunge life. Fjord, as well as Good Hot over the bay in Richmond, get it. Fjord has big dreams, with sights set on San Francisco next. “We’re aiming to be the anti-spa,” Turner explains. “To strip out the pampering. We want people to get out of their comfort zone and feel something real.”
Exactly. Cold plungers are addicts — a term I don’t throw around lightly. We can’t stop plunging. We’re in too deep! Although we stay close to shore. Year-round. Fog or shine. Almost two years in, we’ve come to rely on the jolt. The camaraderie. The collective wisdom. The buoyancy that comes from floating, together, in cold water. When we go too long without it, we get antsy, cranky, and land-life starts closing in. And so we plunge. All things being as unequal as they are in San Francisco, the life of a Cold Plunge Lady is plush. But — and perhaps why we do it — plunging is hard. At least at Crissy. Once Fjord opens, the ladies might have to start double-dipping with the Sausalito crew.
