Hellllooo, we’re super excited about this Q&A guest today. Meet Gabe: the creator of CUL DE SAC, an NYC-based nonprofit building the city’s first outdoor community sauna. For the past 9 months, CUL DE SAC has been running proof-of-concept pop ups turning the city’s parks, plazas, and squares into open-air bathhouses.
Prior to starting CUL DE SAC, Gabe spent 12 years as a product lead at Google and Stripe building early-stage consumer products. You can read more about his experience building CUL DE SAC and other notes on health, wellness, and culture in More Atoms Less Bits (I’ve read it, and that’s why I desperately wanted him for this series.)
Occupation: Founder, CUL DE SAC
Neighborhood: Greenpoint, Brooklyn
Astrological Sign: Pisces sun, Virgo rising, Capricorn moon
Tell us about your personal approach to taking care of your body?
One of the richest lessons I’ve learned is that my physical health doesn’t live in a silo. Tending to it means tending to my mental, emotional, spiritual and social health as well.
On that note, my approach has evolved over the years from one that largely consists of sporadic bouts of extreme physical endeavors (e.g. running the NYC marathon on 2 weeks of training) to one that prioritizes consistency, diversity of movement, and living in rhythm with the sun.
With zero exception, my morning starts with sunlight. I picked up this habit after a particularly bad bout of insomnia a few years ago. After trying almost every sleep hack/supplement in the feed, I read The Circadian Code by Dr. Satchin Panda and was forever changed. The basic premise is that almost every cell in your body runs on a 24-hour clock, and that clock takes its cues from light. Aligning your day to it is one of the most powerful ways to improve your health and vitality.
After my morning walk, the rest of my day is largely governed by this principle. I’ll eat something easy to digest – usually a bowl of oats, maybe some eggs –, and then a pretty varied training week. Two heavy lifts (Monday and Thursday), two cardio days (Tuesday and Friday), one yoga day (Wednesday), and a wild card on Saturday – maybe a long bike ride, maybe a swim, ideally something in the great outdoors. I always have at least one rest day, which I typically spend near a sauna.
I also put a lot of focus on recovery. There’s a common misconception that recovery = doing nothing. Rest is certainly part of it. But recovery is really about doing what’s necessary to help your body heal. Keeping your blood moving, easing sore muscles, doing some breathwork, things like that. Recovery looks different for everyone.
We’re long overdue for a correction on the obsessive focus on metrics and optimization. I get it… I went through a biohacking and Whoop journaling phase. Frankly, when I had the most gadgets, I was the least regulated. These days, recovery for me looks like easy runs, sauna, time in nature, and deep, uninterrupted sleep.
Where do you actually workout, recover, and relax in NYC right now?
In the elements, whenever possible.
Movement: Cardio outside unless dangerous. I try to get at least one of my weekly heavy lifts or yoga sessions in a park. Sure, Equinox is nice, but doing some outdoor calisthenics at the adult fitness center in Tompkins Square Park is free and way better people watching (I’m long overdue for a SNAKE SUPER HEALTH session s/o Sami Reiss). On weekends, you’ll occasionally find me at Nowadays or LSD on Huron Street. In general, I think the world would be a healthier place if more people looked at deep listening and raving with your friends into the wee hours as wellness.
Recovery: Greenpoint/Williamsburg waterfront on a recovery run, in a sauna (ideally one that’s wood-fired and outdoors :P), on a cushion at Three Jewels, or on a hike with friends and family (typically Rockefeller State Park where I grew up).
Relax: writing, reading, dozing in and out of consciousness somewhere in a mountain range far far away from New York City. I’m an avid snowboarder and grew up riding in Vermont, so being in the mountains has always been my happy place. I try to escape for a reset at least 2x/year.
You started CUL DE SAC—a pop-up sauna that was most recently in a community garden in the East Village. What was the idea behind it? What do you think it’s adding to (or challenging about) NYC’s existing wellness scene?
CUL DE SAC started as an experiment.
I spent some time in the Nordics last summer and was struck by how sauna and bathing culture are woven into the public infrastructure there. In cities like Copenhagen, Oslo, and Helsinki, saunas are low cost or free utilities – communal gathering hubs built into the city in the way a basketball court or bodega is in New York.
The other thing that struck me is that no one there calls it “wellness.” These are thousand-year-old social and cultural traditions. It’s what people have been using to take care of themselves and others long before a $10T industry existed.
I came back to New York not only craving that, but also questioning what “wellness” even means here. So often it gets peddled at us in the form of $60 cold plunges, a $100 supplement stack, a $300 studio membership. I like to call this big-W wellness: the industry’s manufactured idea of what we need to be well. Sure, some of those things make us feel good, but so does dancing at a rave with your friends, getting lost at a museum for an afternoon, or camping upstate with no service.
CUL DE SAC is a marriage of those threads. It’s our attempt at creating the city’s first outdoor community sauna with a cultural footprint. A place that’s affordable, accessible, and open-ended about what it means to live well. A place where everyone undresses and becomes just a New Yorker sitting next to another New Yorker. For the past 9 months, we’ve been running pop ups transforming the city’s parks and plazas into open-air bathhouses as a way to prove the concept, grow our community, and talk to people about what they actually want from a space like this.
There is a dizzying number of bathhouse and contrast therapy spaces in New York. But heat, cold, water, sound, and movement have always existed – and always will – without any industry. We’re challenging the idea that a place like this is a luxury good, that it has to be indoors, or that it should exist within the silo of what’s commercially considered “wellness.”
What’s in your (metaphoric) gym bag? (ie. the products, gear, etc you use all the time)
I’ve drastically reduced my footprint over the past few years, mostly because I loathe the idea of needing to buy something in order to feel well. I spent way too much time in my twenties building a rigid protocol of supplements, products, gear, wellness hacks, and other esoteric routines to achieve *peak* human performance, whatever that is. These days, the bag is small…
A good pair of running shoes – Hoka Cliftons (I’m in a very cushy era of my life)
Light, breathable training gear (I run hot) – a bunch of old Satisfy pieces
A good mineral-based SPF – Freaks of Nature
Natural, plastic-free sauna shorts – I basically live in Norse Sauna’s Bambu shorts
Electrolytes – Trace ZeroLyte (great flavors and not too salty) or LMNT when I’m at CUL DE SAC
An old pair of wired headphones
What do you do to take time for yourself when life gets overwhelming in the city?
I’m a bit of a broken record at this point, but nature is very grounding for me. If it’s winter time, I’ll try to escape for a weekend in the mountains with my splitboard. If it’s warmer months, I’ll throw something ambient and experimental on the headphones and get on my bike for a long ride to Coney Island. Generally speaking, I’ve found that moving my body and being in nature trends toward panacea territory.
What's the most overrated thing in wellness right now?
Supplements in general are way overhyped. IANAD, and of course there are sound reasons to supplement with different vitamins, minerals, tinctures etc. depending on personal circumstances. But the industry has gone way out of pocket shilling unregulated sugar pills and convincing people they need a fancy “stack” to feel good. Reddit (and increasingly Substack :/) is a minefield for this.
Maybe 8 months ago I stopped taking most of my daily supplements - multivitamin, B-complex, vitamin D+K2, CoQ10, vitamin C, Lactoferrin - and, after a week or two of my body recalibrating, I felt the same. If not better. Now I spend less money and have a way chiller morning without a fistful of rando pills to start my day.
My 2c: ignore the supplement-du-jour and put that energy into natural interventions – sunlight, nutrition, sleep, movement, stress management. Optimization culture is consumerism masquerading as self-improvement.
What song have you had on repeat lately?
I’ve been on more of a Soundcloud kick lately, focusing on deeper, more intentional listening vs. the usual Spotify shuffle. I find the transitions between songs in longer sets to be magical moments where you can not only appreciate the DJ’s technical skills but also discover entirely novel sound experiences through the mashup of different tracks.
Current set on repeat: Eli Escobar’s Romance Mixtape. NY 4EVER <3
Honorable mention: Carpet (F.L.H.P) at CUL DE SAC
What have you found lately—books, newsletters, podcasts, accounts—that have stuck with you and why?
Books: Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Gregory Bateson (free link). Pretty foundational and shaped how I think about physical health within the broader context of well-being.
Podcasts: Dharmapunx NYC
Substack: Cuckfucius, Sasha Chapin
I spent a few years going really deep with meditation, partly facilitated by a yoga + meditation studio called Three Jewels in the East Village. Someone asked me the other day about my relationship to meditation and my answer was… “estranged.” I want to get better at meditating regularly – I could write endlessly about why – and the algorithms know that. Every now and then I’ll find myself on Substack/Twitter in the depths of esoteric discussion on consciousness and smile at the nuggets of wisdom that somehow find their way to me.
What’s a gym, spot, or trainer in the city that's underrated and deserves more love?
It shocks me that this could be in the realm of gatekeeping but…
The Y. Best value for a gym in the city. Cardio, weight room, swimming pool, and a sauna for $70/month. And there’s one in almost every neighborhood.
New York is notoriously expensive for pretty much everything, but especially fitness and wellness. What would you do to take care of yourself in a day if you only had $40 to spend.
Start the day with a long run in Prospect Park or along the WSH. Around mid-day, a donation-based yoga class at a community garden (Chelsey at Elizabeth Street Gardens or Renata at La Plaza Cultural Community Garden are both wonderful) or some calisthenics at Columbus Park in Chinatown. Late afternoon, a wood-fired sauna + cold plunge session at CUL DE SAC to wind it down. And honorable mention to what Joe Holder has been doing at Seaport – weekly guided outdoor workouts, all waterfront, all FREE.99.
Health and wellness /= spending money. Despite what the algorithm tells you, you do not need to join a fancy membership club or get NAD+ injections to live well.
And at the end of the day, you’ll still have some left over to pay cover at Nowadays.
<3
We love Gabe!