Franchises quickly spread across the country, each incorporating tropical-inspired thatched-roof huts, rattan furniture, and synthetic palm trees to match. Tantrific Sun was a ramshackle collection of fluorescent UV bulbs fashioned into standup 3-foot square booths fit with reflective surfaces to maximize their artificial rays. was popularized with the bikini in the 50s and 60s, but it wasn’t until 1978 that the first indoor tanning salon in America opened in the back of an old house in Searcy, Arkansas.
Army, Fitzsimons General Hospital, Denver, Colorado, ca. The sun’s rays - and the UV lights that mimicked them - felt good, and while the sun’s role as a healer fell off with the rise of antibiotics in the 1950s, the idea that a bronzed glow looks healthy stuck.Īlpine light treatment in the Physiotherapy Department, U.S. By the 1920s people were installing UV “ health lamps” in living rooms, children’s playrooms, and offices under the guise that sunbathing could prevent disease, improve moods, and even boost productivity in the workplace. The first artificial UV rays were created by physician Niels Ryberg Finsen in the 1890s to treat cutaneous tuberculosis. But I’m not one to shy away from tacky aesthetics, so I sign the contract that warns me about the cancer-causing properties of UV rays, grab a pair of strapless goggles, and make my way to the back of the salon. Today, bad perms and shiny pleather coats look cheap, as do pod-shaped tanning beds and the orange glow they leave on overcooked skin. Like most relics of the 1980s, tanning salons no longer represent the futuristic excess they once promised. The company claims to be “NYC’s premier tanning salon,” but the space, like the surrounding neighborhood, seems part of a crumbling empire. Faux Grecian columns, off-white stucco, and chipping paint mirror the business’s outdated posters featuring buff, bronzed men and Dirrty-era Christina Aguilera lookalikes. Inside, the salon smells of sour tanning lotion and burnt skin. It’s easy to miss and, with its faded signs in bold font, it reads more like a relic of the past than a journey to the future. The salon is positioned on the second floor of a commercial building far from the startup retail stores in Nolita. I walked past Future Tan Midtown on my first visit. The world is on fire and I’m going to the tanning salon.
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