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	Photo: Jennifer Downey

Bid a nostalgic farewell to Great-Aunt Gertie’s beauty parlor, with its pale pink hair rinses, Popsicle-orange nail lacquers, industrial-sized cone dryers and faded posters of models showing off seventies-era shag cuts. In Alameda, the pamper palaces have arrived.
    Whether or not you’ve noticed them—their outward appearances do tend toward the discreet—new day spas are purveying a wealth of indulgent treatments, from champagne facials and grape seed pedicures to enzymatic sea mud body wraps, Dead Sea salt glows and Thai/yoga massages.
    Sure, you can still go in to color your tresses or get a manicure (guys, too). But enough with the ho-hum hair-and-nails routine. Day spas reach for a fantasy stratosphere—or at least a sense of the special. Just check out Sumbody on Park Street, which offers the “Mother-To-Be” massage for pregnant clients: “This treatment connects mother to child and mother to bliss!”
    Not quite you? Then how about the “Teen Queen” facial? Or the “Bachelorette Bonanza,” where the bride and her attendants can mix their own aromatic oils for foot, hand and neck massages?
    A few blocks away on Santa Clara Avenue, things get even glitzier. The sleek new O Spa Salon and Boutique will create a “Romantic Island Retreat” for couples, complete with double facials, aroma steams, massages, manicures, shampoos and blow-dries—not to mention “2 Candlelit Lunches, 2 Biscotti and Teas, 2 O Spa Robes, a Gift Basket, and VIP Parking.” Price tag: $1,000.
    Obviously, half the fun lies in browsing the considerable spa menus. I weigh these matters carefully. Do I truly believe that the body-firming scrub fights cellulite? Or that scented oils massaged into my temples will zap my headache or clogged sinuses? Nah.
    But what about lifting my spirits on a dreary winter day, easing muscle tensions and making me look a tad more polished? Now that I can live with.

Sumbody

    At first glance, the Sumbody home spa shop on Park Street resembles a spotless candy store, with all-natural, handmade bath products that look good enough to devour. Salt scrubs, wrapped like bonbons in bright foils, give off enticing scents: “tingle mint,” “chocolate orange” and “raspberries and crème.” Bath bars fill up big glass cookie jars. And soaps come in colorful slabs that look like toothsome chunks of fudge.
    But this façade is amazingly deceptive. Hidden behind the store is an actual day spa, where I’ve scheduled a 45-minute, $45 facial. As I step through an unassuming door that reads, “Sumbody. Retreat Yourself,” I have no idea what awaits me on the other side: an atmospheric fantasy world for the harried Everywoman. For all I know, I’ve been whisked to a serene yurt encampment straight out of Mongolia. By the dim glow of orange hanging lanterns, I can make out white canvas tents obscured behind dusky gauze curtains. I hear a music track accented with gongs, flutes, birdsong and faintly Asiatic chanting.
    A slender young woman named Ann brings me a cup of tea and asks me to change into a robe and slippers. Then she ushers me into a “relaxation tent,” where a small fountain burbles and three books beckon: “A Thousand Paths to Happiness.” Or “Tranquility.” Or “Enlightenment.” I’m left alone to ponder their musings: “Do not panic about anything. Keep calm.” Or “A happy person knows that it’s hard to argue about color in the dark.”
    Ann returns from preparing my facial ingredients, which include a bee pollen mask “activated with cranberry juice,” she says. Then she guides me to a softly lit “treatment tent,” where I shed the robe and slip under the covers of a heated bed that makes the facial even more relaxing. “A lot of people fall asleep,” Ann tells me. “It’s very cozy. You don’t have to do anything.”
    So I don’t. I simply lie there like a cat on a patch of sun while Ann begins enchanting my senses. High into the air, she spritzes an orange blossom mist that settles lightly onto my face. “This is uplifting and refreshing at the same time,” she murmurs.
    Then I close my eyes as Ann glides a citrus-scented cleanser over my skin, followed by a “manna” salt scrub to clean my pores. Next, she slathers on the “Be Euphoria” bee pollen mask, covering my face with a warm towel to help the treatment soak in. Last, she applies a cucumber toner and light moisturizer. Although I came in expecting only a facial, I get an unexpected bonus as she massages my arms and hands with oil.
    At the end of the facial, which has unfolded with the rhythms of a ritual, Ann ceremoniously strikes a bell. Then she offers me a glass of cucumber-
scented water.
    Feeling refreshed, I change and stroll back out to bustling Park Street. Pretty cool, I think to myself: exotic mini-vacation, no boarding pass required.
    Sumbody, 1350 Park St., (510) 523-2639. Offers facials, massages and spa parties. Spa hours: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day.

O Spa Salon & Boutique

    In the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit that I’m a pedicure novice. When I call the O Spa to make an appointment for a “peppermint pedicure”—a 60-minute session—I can’t imagine why the spa would need a full hour to treat feet, the lowliest of body parts.
    I’ll soon find out. On a brisk winter morning, I arrive at the spa, an attractive, tan, Mediterranean-style house on Santa Clara Avenue with a large, shimmering “O” on the wall. Inside, a stylish receptionist oversees a waiting room filled with pristine white armchairs, a gray marble fireplace, blue glass lamps and shelves of baubles and perfumes for sale. In one corner, clients help themselves to herbal tea, water with lemon slices, butter cake and lemon cake. In the background, a silken jazz tune plays.
    At my request, the receptionist shows me the main building, which houses a contemporary hair and makeup salon. Then we walk a few steps to a newly constructed building in the back, where clients can avail themselves of massages, baths (“hydrotherapy” in spa parlance) or body wraps in four varieties: algae, moor mud, Sedona mud or green coffee.
    Be forewarned. Before any treatment, clients must fill out a two-page questionnaire. I am asked, among other things, my birth date, wedding anniversary, the temperature of water that I wash my face with, whether I’ve ever had Botox injections, whether I’ve had a pacemaker or recent dental x-rays or even trouble with claustrophobia.
    “Do I have to fill this out even if I’m just having a pedicure?”
    Yup.
    With preliminaries out of the way, I meet my pedicurist, Marta, who has beautiful doe eyes and dangling, pearl-encrusted earrings. She waves me into a pedicure room decorated with seashells and bottles of bath salts and lotions. As I ease my way into a big comfortable chair with a footbath, Marta shows me the buttons to control the chair’s back massage features. In case I’m not the chatty type, she hands me two magazines, People and Shape. I give them a perfunctory glance, but soon, Marta and I are gabbing away like old girlfriends.
    For the next hour, Marta administers a lavish peppermint pedicure to the tune of $65. She has tossed blue “mint gymnasia” bath crystals into the footbath and started the whirlpool jets. After I’ve had a good soak, she starts the requisite nail shaping and buffing, followed by cuticle trimming. Next, she exfoliates my winter-dry skin with peppermint-scented salts, then coats my legs and feet with a peppermint mask. Last, she gives me a leisurely leg and foot massage with peppermint-scented lotion. I am impressed.
    Then comes the big moment of decision. Along a rack of more than 50 nail colors, I eye the staid beiges and plums so proper for a middle-aged mom. Then I make a beeline for “Strike a Pose Rose,” much too bland a name for what can only be described as a totally toxic, teeny-bopper, screaming-Mimi, in-your-face fuschia. Marta looks startled. Then we both burst out laughing.
    Girls just wanna have fun, right?
    O Spa Salon & Boutique, 2525 Santa Clara Ave., (510) 522-0772. Offers massages, body wraps, hydrotherapy bath and steam, facials, skin care, manicures, pedicures, waxing, lash and brow tinting, hairstyling and makeup. Also offers special packages that combine several services. Hours: Tuesday 10 a.m.-8 p.m.; Thursday 10 a.m.-8 p.m.; Friday 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; Saturday 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Closed Sunday, Monday and Wednesday. www.OspaSalon.com.

The Spa at Harbor Bay

    I’ve made a career out of sampling hot stone massages. It’s something I do well. A few years ago, I drove up to Calistoga for a decadent date with a seaweed bath, followed by a massage with hot volcanic basalt rocks and cooling chunks of marble. Back then, the “LaStone Therapy” massage was new—and thoroughly loopy-sounding. But now, hot stone massages have become all the rage, even in Alameda.
    Call me a sucker for any place that employs massage therapists named Katja, Dolly, and Trinka, but that’s the main reason I plunk down money for a massage at the Spa at Harbor Bay. The spa’s Swedish, shiatsu, acupressure and traditional Thai massages all sound inviting, but in the end, I can’t break with tradition.
    I book an hour-long hot stone massage ($75 for club members, $85 for non-members) at the spa, which is tucked into a wing of the Harbor Bay Club. Lisa, a sporty-looking massage therapist in jeans and sneakers, waits for me in a dimly lighted room hung with prints of Indian women bathing in the Ganges River. New Age music plays softly, but unfortunately, the atmosphere falls short of spellbinding. Because I happen to be in a massage room right next to the women’s locker room, I hear an undertone of voices, keys jangling and hair dryers blowing just outside the door.
    But the massage itself is very complete and relaxing, from head to toe. As I rest on the massage table, Lisa fishes smooth, warm oval rocks—“river rocks,” she calls them—from a heated tank of water. At different times during the treatment, she lays them in a row along my spine or tucks them into my palms and the soles of my feet to keep me warm. She holds them in her hands, too, to massage my muscles with long, kneading strokes. It’s quite soothing to feel the heat and smoothness of the rocks along my back and limbs.
    When the massage ends, I’m ready for some wicked fun—telling the tennis ladies that I lounged around the club all morning, getting stoned.
    The Spa at Harbor Bay, Harbor Bay Club, 200 Packet Landing Road, (510) 521-5416, Ext. 125. Offers skin care, hand treatments, makeup, lash and brow tinting, hair removal, body treatments and massages. Open 7 days a week (phone for hours). www.harborbayclub.com.