New York is the city that never sleeps, but arduous commutes, hellish hours and ultracompetitive jobs mean even the most wired of party animals or dedicated employees have to recharge their batteries.
However, instead of knocking back a coffee or quaffing an energy drink, a growing number of New Yorkers are opting for a quick nap during office hours.
With affluent Americans increasingly health conscious — indulging in fads such as green juice, hot-house yoga and matcha — a few pay-for-sleep businesses are now offering customers a little shut-eye on the quiet.
Photo: AFP
Nap York is one. It opened three months ago in a three-story building near Penn Station, where US$12 buys patrons 30 minutes in a wooden sleep cabin, day or night.
“We wanted to accommodate all the exhausted New Yorkers,” Nap York marketing director Stacy Veloric said. “It’s really hard to find peace and quiet within New York City.”
The business opened with seven cabins, but demand quickly exceeded supply and it added 22 more. Soon there are also to be hammocks on the roof, where half an hour’s kick-back is to cost US$15.
The US sleep deficit is real.
One-third of Americans sleep less than they should, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data showed.
Only 24 percent of New Yorkers get eight or more hours of sleep per day — nearly half get six or less, a state-wide survey for Siena College found.
Lack of sleep causes moodiness, low productivity and poor concentration. It also costs the US economy up to US$411 billion and the equivalent of 1.23 million working days each year, a 2016 RAND Corp study found.
Laura Li, a 28-year-old copy editor for a travel company, is someone who prefers a 35-minute nap to a coffee. Each week she pops along to YeloSpa, a luxurious, spa-style Fifth Avenue fixture opposite Trump Tower.
Li stepped into a hexagonal cockpit that looked like it was straight out of a science fiction movie and onto a bed suspended in a position of zero gravity, knees bent and feet elevated to lower the heart rate and induce sleep.
Thirty-five minutes later, she is to be woken by “a simulated sunrise,” YeloSpa manager Maya Daskalova said.
The price? US$1 per minute, with a minimum of 20 and a maximum of 40.
“I come here specially on days where I have a lot of work — just to get more energy for the rest of the afternoon,” Li said. “I don’t drink coffee, so if I feel tired there’s nothing I can really do, other than sleeping.”
She might not have told colleagues that she naps during lunch, but has confessed to friends, who are baffled by the concept of paying to sleep.
“They might think this is a waste of time or a waste of money,” Li said. “As long as I can afford it, then it’s worth it. I just feel better afterward, that’s enough.”
Daskalova has seen her clientele grow gradually and believes that cultural attitudes in the US are changing.
“Resetting you for the rest of the day is much better than crashing in your desk in the middle of work,” she said.
Who escapes to take a nap? Those who work long hours or live kilometers away and want time out before a night out. Pregnant women who are exhausted. Parents of babies suffering sleepless nights and party-goers who need a breather.
In 2004, Christopher Lindholst created MetroNaps, a company that designs the supermodern EnergyPod for quick naps.
He installed several in the Empire State Building until security requirements kicked them out, then focused sales on companies, universities, hospitals and airports.
Google and NASA are among those who have bought his pods.
“People’s attitudes changed dramatically in the last 15 years, there’s much more awareness of the importance of sleep and the benefit,” Lindholst said.
However, in a city with the longest working day in the US, travel time included, he thinks it would take a full generation to erase old stigmas about laziness.
“We use the argument all the time that we are talking about a very short period of time, 10 to 20 minutes, essentially the same [as] a coffee break, or in New York, a smoke break,” Lindholst said.
One EnergyPod lives in the Soho offices of Thrive Global Holdings Inc, a wellness start-up founded by Arianna Huffington, author of the 2016 best-seller The Sleep Revolution and a founder of the then-Huffington Post.
Her book calls for an end to “the delusion that we need to burn out to succeed.”
“We’re in the middle of a cultural shift, one in which more and more of us are taking steps to reclaim sleep,” she wrote.
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