Stranger and Neighbor at the Schvitz in London

Every year the elite of the business, media and cultural worlds meet at scenic Davos in Switzerland to attend the World Economic Forum. The upcoming conference in January of 2022 has the theme of “Shaping an Equitable, Inclusive, and Sustainable Recovery,” so in between enjoying the pristine views, fresh air, and skiing, the attendees will be busying themselves attending no doubt very valuable workshops and talks on how to encourage ethnically and culturally diverse groups of people to get on with each other a bit better. I presume that my invitation got lost in the mail, but, in the meantime, I have learned my most valuable lessons about diversity and inclusion, not on the alpine slopes, but in a dilapidated industrial estate in a forgotten part of London.

When I drive, as I try to do every Friday, into this dusty estate littered with scrap metal and rusting machinery, I pass a boarded-up old pub, the Durham Arms, once a favorite redoubt for the East End’s gangsters and rogues, and am greeted by the growls and barks of chained Rottweilers and Alsatians guarding the disheveled lots. It’s a short walk from there to my destination: the New Docklands Steam Baths, or as we call it: the schvitz.

The decor of the schvitz is not much to write home about. In the lobby, apart from a few couches and tables, the most notable thing is a big gold plaque, dedicated to Bobby Lazarus, a veteran of the East End Jewish boxing scene. It was Lazarus, who, along with other veterans of the schvitz, founded the New Docklands Steam Baths in the 1980s, when their former stomping ground, the Porchester Baths, was targeted by the local council for gentrification. In a bid to attract a more respectable and well-heeled clientele, the council made drastic changes that made traditional schvitz culture impossible: introducing mixed-gender sessions, cracking down on swearing, and insisting everyone wear swimming trunks at all times. Lazarus and his mates found in the Docklands a place sufficiently ramshackle that no city slickers looking for a spa treatment would ever disturb them again.