Bubble Baths and Weed: A Work Sesh with “High Maintenance”

This month, on the 10th anniversary of The Standard Spa, we’ve been talking about the wonderful world of “Cures”—from soba to sensory deprivation, reiki to rolfing. We almost forgot about last year, when our buddies Katja and Ben from High Maintenance dropped by The Standard, East Village for an impromptu stay. Katja Blichfeld and Ben Sinclair, of course, are the creators, writers, executive producers, and geniuses behind the weed-themed web series, which was picked up by Vimeo, and now HBO). As successful showrunners, they tout their favorite creativity cures—weed and bubble baths. We’ll let Katja and Ben explain. And don’t miss our “Night Out with High Maintenance" from last year. 

At the end of a very busy year, we did ourselves the service of getting the fuck out of New York and escaping the winter. We handed over our apartment keys to an artist couple from Copenhagen and headed to LA—where we felt like geniuses as we watched our Instagram feeds become filled with sub-zero tableaus captioned with dour emoji. “Let’s never leave this place!” we’d say to each other over daily green juice and breakfast tacos. We made plans to stay until April and beyond.

And then, per the Laws of the Universe, we booked a commercial job back in New York and had to drag our asses back to the urban tundra.

The Danes were still in our place, so we had to come up with other accommodations. Luckily, our friends at The Standard, East Village helped us find a way to ease our transition back to life (back to re-al-ity) and we were able to do New York as we never had before—as business tourists.

We specify "business tourists" because we were working the whole damn time y’all: holding breakfast meetings in the café downstairs, printing scripts and contracts in the second floor Perch, and getting a shitload of writing done in our light-flooded corner room, complete with a window out of which one could exhale his or her inspiration-inducing smoke. (In of “inspiration” coming from our room.)

Some nights we rewarded our hard work with dinner at Narcissa (good lord, the fried cauliflower!) and nearby eateries like Estela (tell them to feed you whatever they want) and we'd be like, “Life’s pretty cool, right?” Then we'd go back upstairs, take bubbles baths, get into bathrobes, and watch Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt on our laptop in bed. Oh, and we smoked some grass, but that goes without saying. (Our Broad City Pax vaporizer turned out to be the best way to get stoned in the bathtub, in case you were wondering.)

While everyone who works at The Standard, East Village looks like a model, they all happen to be supes friendly, too. The aesthetics of the place are pure class, and somehow they know how to anticipate your every craving. Our week was a real treat, and made our work feel like play—the way we like it.

 Out of five stars, we'd say that The Standard is too fucking cool for stars. Stars are for insecure assholes.

 xo,

Katja + Ben