One of the few local hotspots I’d actually heard of before visiting Iceland, The Blue Lagoon offered many of the comforts of a yuppie day spa, though the experience reminded me of nothing so much as visiting the water park during summertime as a kid: forking over hefty fees and trudging through locker rooms and whatnot so you can get your ass in the water wit’ a quickness. I liked how it was almost literally in the middle of nowhere: the tiny access road and rock-strewn surroundings suggest that some hikers stumbled upon the lagoon long ago, and kept the place a secret before commerce did its thing. I also liked that a place that hypes itself as a source of replenishment is also most likely a giant repository for urine and sex-spew. But since I’d had enough of the winter cold – and, moreover, since any analogous place in New York would likely prove hyper-fetid – I was happy to strip to my jockey shorts and splash some locals.
Christian Hoard writes about rock and roll music for an independent, counterculture magazine in New York. He last wrote about an up-and-coming underground act from Detroit called The White Stripes. Look out for them. They should be huge someday.