We Tried Casper's New Nap Pods

[View on the web]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( Op-Ed [I Took a $25 Nap]( [A Casper nap pod.]( At 4:22 pm, I pushed up my sleep mask to find the quietly perky nap concierge waiting for me. I don’t know if she’d let me sleep past my 4:15 wake-up time or spent seven long minutes trying and failing to rouse me. I was too embarrassed to ask. “OhIfellsleep,” I mumbled. “That’s great!” she whisper enthused, leading me back to the bedtime-themed changing area. I had successfully napped at [The Dreamery](. --------------------------------------------------------------- Casper’s announcement that the mattress brand had [created a space]( where New York’s tired could take 45 minute naps for $25 was met with a range of reactions. Some thought it was a [genius move](. Others said that it could be read as a [nightmare extension]( of [late-stage capitalism](, where the last of our basic human needs are being commodified. Still more pointed out the possibility that said pods would be used as a location for sex, both [alone]( and with [others](. Personally, I felt exhausted, for reasons both related to this — the deep ennui that sets in when I am forced to recognize that a marketing scheme is “a good one,” the enervating implicit question of what to do about the late-stage capitalism monster — and not. (Who sleeps well in summer? Not I.) In my sleepiness I saw an opportunity: to zonk out during work hours and charge it to Vox Media. No one asked, but I volunteered to take an expensive, expensed nap. I was so excited, I could hardly sleep the night before. Would I be able to actually doze? Or would I spend each waking minute inside the pod trying to have funny thoughts to write here — or worse, trying to do the math on how much company money was slipping away? (No, because I already did the math the day before: it’s 55 cents per minute.) So I arrived for a 3:30 pm nap on the first full day of The Dreamery (that’s what it’s called) — early enough in its life cycle that I was able to somewhat feasibly hope that not all the pods had yet been boned in. And I took some poorly composed photos to prove it all. It’s a spa for sleeping, and spas work, at least on me. As you enter, cheerful but sedate pajama-top-wearing counter people check in nappers, softly offering unisex Sleepy Jones pajamas (on loan) and a little cloth baggie of Sunday Riley facial products. (They can’t take them back.) The welcome area doubles as refresh lounge, where the newly awake can drink free cold brew or La Croix and reacclimate to being up. The front-desk person brings you back to the changing area, where each curtained stall holds a sink stocked with Q-tips and cotton pads and a mirror with a cute saying (“What a time to be asleep” or “You miss 100% of the naps you don’t take”) and lockers containing towels and Casper-branded socks. Under a sign imploring visitors, “Grab your sleep supplies here” are tie-dyed earplugs, blinky-eyed sleep masks, “bed head taming devices” (combs), and [Hello]( brand toothpaste and brushes. When you’re ready for bed, you enter a little waiting area (with “You are getting very sleepy” written on the wall and a [monstera leaf](), where the nap concierge (a title that could be codified but I might have made up) lays out the ground rules (TLDR: “be quiet now please”). Finally she escorts you into the actual sleeping chamber. The room itself feels as close as I’ve ever felt to being in heaven, not exactly in a “this is the most wonderful place I’ve ever been” way but in a “seeing Defending Your Life at a young age influenced my impression of the afterlife” way. It’s what I hope being dead will be like, and that’s a compliment. Large circular wooden frames dot the floor, giving the pleasantly random impression of a high-class merry-go-round. The vibe will fit well at cavernous, future-forward, sterile, [heaven-smelling]( airports, the likely next locations for the experiment, according to the brand. Each pod holds a Casper mattress with Casper sheets and a Casper pillow, with — if you’ve made a reservation to be tired in advance, as I did — a little card with your name on it, wishing you sweet dreams and giving you the wifi password, in case you can’t sleep. The gray curtains are heavy and are shut for you, and the light is nearby so you can turn it off yourself. It will come on again slowly, to gently wake you when your three-quarters of an hour are up. The dark area was the perfect place to think anxiously about the commodification of the unconsciousness. Charging 55 cents per minute so people can engage in a natural bodily function sounds Orwellian, but it might already be true that there’s no such thing as a free nap. I rent my apartment and bought my bed. Pay toilets still exist (at least in Europe), food remains resolutely unfree, and, hey, have you heard about health care? And in a country where we already have a litany of laws (from [loitering statutes to park curfews and bans on sleeping in cars]() that effectively make homelessness illegal, we can’t easily argue that our basic requirements to live aren’t already coming at a price. Does this mean we should pay $25 for a 45-minute nap? No, Jesus, it means we need to fix our broken systems and live different lives. But snug in my pod, that thought queues up the siren song that goes, “Well, but until then ... ” Because lying down is nice, and the bed and pajamas and sheets and vibe are by no means uncomfortable. [Read the rest of the story here>>]( Ad from our sponsor Entertainment [Eighth Grade’s Portrayal of Hollister Is Quietly Devastating]( [Eighth Grade, the movie]( Because [Eighth Grade is a rigorously researched]( and incredibly faithful depiction of what life in an American middle school is like, there is a lot of Hollister in it. The students wear Hollister as they lug backpacks half their size through the halls, and an older boy’s Hollister shirt plays a big role in one of the film’s most difficult-to-watch scenes (I won’t dig into it here, but oof). But the most authentic depiction of Hollister comes when the film’s socially awkward main character, Kayla, attempts to befriend the pretty, perennially texting popular girls by complimenting their shirts. It’s during a moment when Kayla, who makes advice-giving YouTube videos despite not having much experience with the subject matter, has decided to “put herself out there,” whatever that means. Like many eighth graders, Kayla is lonely — her world consists of watching other people live their lives through her phone while struggling to craft an online persona of her own. Faking it is a major theme in the film — we hear the audio of Kayla evangelizing about “being yourself” and “having confidence” at the same time as we watch her hiding in the background of group pool party photos and getting voted Most Quiet at school. Nowhere is this tension more visible than in Kayla’s clothing. She has all the markers of a well-adjusted (and well-off) suburban eighth grader: She knows how to use a Beauty Blender; she wears chokers just like the cool girls; she ties a flannel around her skinny jeans; she keeps her long blonde hair straight; her iPhone case is the fun glittery kind that floats around in plastic; and yes, she wears Hollister. But the thing about Hollister is that it’s like the teenage version of the “no-makeup makeup” aesthetic of brands like Glossier: It only makes you look good if you already looked the right way to begin with. Hollister T-shirts are among the cruelest garments known to civilization, which, of course, is why they’re wildly popular during the cruelest years of our existence. They run very small, certainly, and it’s nearly impossible to find a large or extra large among the stacks of extra (or double-extra) smalls in the stores. What’s even worse about Hollister shirts, though, is that they are incredibly, absurdly long. When pulled to their maximum, they can double as dresses on particularly short people, but that’s not what makes them awful. The awfulness is that when you’re a teenager, you assume that because something is long enough to cover you, that it means it fits. So when I saw Kayla stumble to make conversation while wearing an ill-fitting gray T-shirt with the giant Hollister logo, I felt a familiar pang of empathy. I remembered shopping inside dark and deafening stores with my thinner friends for whom these brands designed their long skinny tube shirts, convincing myself that not only could I fit into them too, but that I looked good in them. And when Kayla pulls the very same shirt as far as it can go, I remembered doing the same, comforted by the assumption that I was totally hidden. When you’re 13, wearing Hollister shirts can feel like a disguise. They let us hide our awkward fledgling personalities behind a cool but friendly logo, sure, but they also physically hide so much of us. When we get uncomfortable, we can pull on them — after all, they’re very stretchy — and when we feel too exposed, we can layer them — they’re so thin! [Read the rest of the story here >>]( Did a friend forward you this email? 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