Lifestyle
Tragedy feels all too familiar in these two international dramas
The Swedish series Quicksand and the Mexican drama The Accident offer a reminder that justice plays out differently around the world. Above, Hanna Ardéhn as Maja in Quicksand.
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When a show is called The Accident, you know something very bad is going to happen, and when it opens with a kids’ birthday party, you know it’s probably going to be extra bad.
While on vacation, I came across the 10-episode Spanish-language Netflix series The Accident, which is currently in the Netflix Top 10. I decided to give it a whirl, as much as anything because I wanted to know what the accident was. I had not watched the trailer, which gives it away, but because it does (and it’s revealed in the opening episode), I will tell you what the accident is: At the party, the bounce house where the kids are playing is picked up by a gust of wind, and tragedy ensues.
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Unfortunately, this can happen (there was a similar tragedy in Maryland not long ago), but this is only the inciting incident. As we follow the affected families, there is intrigue over a business deal, there is an affair, there is a very scary man, there is a teenage romance, and there is a tangled tale of who is responsible for this accident. The series is about the ways these people are changed by one day in their lives, but it also has a strong undercurrent of soapy drama.
I’m not sure the show is terrific, but it’s very watchable, in that I watched all 10 episodes in a single day. (Vacation!) This is a Mexican drama, and it made me think about how, wherever a story comes from, the deepest anxieties often echo pretty effectively. A nightmare that involves kids, families that start placing blame, parents who are trying to balance career and family responsibilities with devastating costs for failure – it’s all pretty horrifying.
It’s hard to transition with the words “speaking of horrifying,” but I also watched the 2019 Swedish drama series Quicksand, adapted from the book of the same name, which begins with a school shooting. A young woman named Maja (Hanna Ardéhn) is discovered covered in blood after a shooting that kills several people (including her boyfriend), and over six episodes, the series explores what her role was and what culpability she has. While some of it is about what could possibly drive anyone to commit an act like this, a lot of it is also about the toxicity that can develop in relationships between teenagers, particularly ones who feel alienated from friends or family. Ardéhn is excellent, as is the rest of the cast, and the story walks a fine line between sensitivity and mystery as it provides more and more information about the events on the day.
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While both of these series are what you might call a “tough sit” because of the subject matter, it’s always interesting to look through a different lens at storytelling that touches on familiar things. For an American viewer like me, both series drive home the point that the justice system works differently in different places – and that criminal offenses can have wildly different penalties in other countries.
And as always, I do recommend watching these shows with subtitles, for the simple reason that you have to give them your attention. You can’t second-screen if you need to read along, and there’s much to be said for training yourself to let something hold your focus for, say, eight hours or so.
Netflix is now serving me recommendations for many, many, many dramas that were produced internationally. I’ll see you in a few years, when I’ve made a dent.
This piece also appeared in NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter so you don’t miss the next one, plus get weekly recommendations about what’s making us happy.
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I stir in the dark. So do the others. There are around 30 of us, maybe more — all experiencing the soundscape of the quartz bowls; a tech-free hour designed for us to commune with memory, creativity and emotion. A chime brings the sound bath to its formal end, signaling us to reacquaint ourselves with the physical present, to officially “wake up.” Slipping out of blankets and off of tall, puffy mattresses, we give thanks, take a crystal, a mantra card … and leave the giant mattress warehouse for the bright lights of Glendale Boulevard.
While not affiliated with any specific modality, the sound bath inside the Atwater Village branch of Mattress Central has a cult-like following. The brainchild of practitioner Alice Moon, the event (which often sells out) is one of many nontraditional wellness offerings from her company Moon Soul Sound Baths. At the monthly event, her patrons gather at the store, select a mattress (alone or with a friend), get cozy and swap the static of the world for the soothing harmonics of Moon’s quartz bowls.
As you might imagine, Moon is fairly nontraditional herself. She grew up in New Orleans and after Hurricane Katrina she felt compelled to make a change. She came to L.A. for a long vacation and ended up staying.
“I just wanted to take a month-long trip,” Moon said. “But when I got here I was like, this is the missing puzzle piece that my life needed.”
In Los Angeles, Moon embraced cannabis culture. She became a self-taught cannabis industry PR professional and even created a tech start-up for locating edibles based on dietary needs (a kind of Yelp for cannabis, she explained). But after being diagnosed with cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, a condition in which long-term cannabis users can suffer from symptoms like severe nausea, she again felt a need for change.
Alice Moon plays an ocean drum while walking around participants; her sessions are 50 minutes long.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
“That kind of flipped my world upside down,” Moon said. “I went on this journey of trying to find things that brought me joy, the same way that cannabis did.”
Sound baths were the answer, helping Moon feel calm, positive and connected to herself. After years of practicing, Moon felt inspired to share her love of sound baths with others. “One day I woke up and I said, you know what? I feel like it is my time to bring that type of peace to other people.”
With her social media savvy and PR sensibilities at play, Moon wanted to create an experience that would be extra comfortable … and, of course, memorable. Inspired by other wellness practitioners, Moon reached out to Mattress Central to create her own version of the trend. A couple million views on Threads and hundreds of fans later, her baths book well in advance and to rave reviews. While Moon’s frequently sold-out mattress store offering has clearly made a splash on the L.A. wellness scene — it’s not the only one.
Heather Fink, left, and Nubia Jimenez, right, recline and wear sleep masks during a relaxing sound bath.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
In West Hollywood, Barry Raccio is also host to a highly coveted mattress store sound bath. With a background in Kundalini yoga, breath work, meditation and sound healing, Raccio is a 20-year veteran of the wellness space. In Hästens mattress showroom on Beverly Boulevard, he hosts a small but sought-after sound bath happening called the “Deep Reset Luxury Sound Bath Experience.”
At the event, Raccio — who’s facilitated baths for companies including Chanel, BMW and the Parker Hotel — pours tea, plays instruments (including the traditional quartz bowls) and holds court among ultra-premium Hästens beds, including the $720,000 Grand Vividus mattress, called “the most expensive mattress in the world.”
On these ultra-luxury mattresses, a small group of 10, maybe 12 people experience the crystal bowls and “heal their nervous systems” much deeper than a normal bath — one profound, restful hour away from the chaos of the modern world. It’s a more intimate, more opulent version of Moon’s baths, but with a similar healing effect (and yes — you can book the Grand Vividus for the occasion).
Alice Moon performs with crystal singing bowls.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
“Rest is a luxury,” Raccio says. “Because [the mattresses] are so comfortable, they conform to bodies without needing anything under your knees or even a pillow. You’re just so supported that the nervous system drops in much quicker and the relaxation process is even more profound. The effects of the sound healing even go deeper.”
In their own ways, Raccio and Moon’s mattress store sound baths are tapping into a collective need for rest, but beyond that — a gentle pause from technology for one’s own well-being. The chakra-balancing work of a sound bath coupled with the uniquely relaxing context of a mattress store gets guests there and beyond (deep sleep and snoring are commonplace at these events).
“At the mattress store, it’s like, you can really, really relax. And I just want people to feel comfortable and safe and, you know, just a moment for them,” Moon said. “That’s what it really is. It’s a moment for everyone to just, like, be there for themselves.”
In 1995, when Madonna held herself a lavish 37th birthday party, she chose a suitably trendy location: the Delano, the Art Deco Miami Beach hotel that the impresario Ian Schrager had transformed into a magnet for the glamorati and guests that aspired to be like them.
With its tastemaker clientele and discreet yet indulgent atmosphere, the hotel felt like a mix of a St. Tropez resort crossed with a fashion week after party.
“There were the cool rock star people, there were the Hollywood billionaire types, the downtown fashion New York people, people swimming naked in the pool at 1 a.m.,” said David Barton, the popular trainer whose gym had a branch in the hotel for several years. “You were just in this other world.”
A couple of decades before celebrities’ every move was documented on social media, the Delano was a safe space for revelry without consequences, perhaps with some selfie-free relaxation thrown in. The ambience stretched throughout the property, which included poolside bungalows and Blue Door restaurant, of which Madonna was an owner.
“It was really the Miami equivalent of Studio 54,” said Paul Wilmot, a former fashion publicist and Delano regular in its mid-90s heyday.
Next month, after closing in 2020, cycling through several ownership changes and undergoing a redesign that cost about $100 million, the hotel, in its latest incarnation, Delano Miami Beach, is scheduled to reopen. The reconstituted version is decidedly different than Schrager’s, focusing on pranayama breathing instead of partying and matcha lattes over martinis, with a bit of the atmosphere you might expect at a Soho House thrown in.
The aim, said Ben Pundole, the chief brand officer for Delano Hotels, is “to capture the current zeitgeist of wellness and experience and community.”
These days, getting the in crowd to South Beach may be a challenge. In the past decade or so, other neighborhoods — the Miami Design District, Downtown Miami, Little River, Coconut Grove and Wynwood — have stolen its alluring thunder.
“It’s been a nonfactor for so many years,” Ingrid Casares, a Miami native and an owner of Liquid, the defunct nightclub that opened in South Beach the same week as Schrager’s iteration of the Delano, said of the neighborhood.
“Back in the 1990s, it was like a small village, like Ibiza almost,” she said. “It was a very quaint town where we all knew each other.”
Pundole added that, with the new Delano, “we really have a responsibility to bring some of that back.”
Today’s Delano includes 171 guest rooms, with rates starting at $395. The décor is still imbued with some of the grandeur that guests of a certain age will remember, like extra-high ceilings and grand columns on the ground floor. The new design is sleeker and less imposing, without most of the quirky details — a giant outdoor chess set, diaphanous curtains wafting inside the lobby — dreamed up by the architect and interior designer Philippe Starck.
Where a giant Starck-designed white chair once sat, there’s now a cafe to grab a decaf oat cappuccino; at the renovated Rose Bar, the menu includes mocktails built on ginger ale or soda water alongside Negronis and old-fashioneds. In the basement spa, guests can order CBD shots or mushroom “coffee” and sit in a 22-seat communal sauna designed for what Pundole called “social wellness.”
Miami Beach itself is aiming to rebrand itself around wellness, too. In February, the city introduced its spring break campaign, this year called “Break a Sweat.” On its website, an image of a yoga class on the beach with participants in the downward dog position is captioned “Bottoms Up.” Under a photo of a muscle-clad man inverted over a workout bar, the caption reads, “This is our kind of hang over.”
“That’s an evolution also of what’s happening in our society,” said Steven Meiner, the mayor of Miami Beach. “Drinking is down, especially in the younger generation, and that is being felt and impacted in Miami Beach, as well.”
Miami Beach — a different city than Miami, strictly speaking — is seemingly trying to shift away from its image as a hotbed of partying, especially during spring break. Beyond late-night cacophony, the revelry on South Beach streets like Ocean Drive had a reputation for being potentially dangerous. Sometimes, it lived up to that image: In March 2023, shootings caused two deaths.
“We saw a level of chaos and, unfortunately, violence in the past that we’ve cleaned up the last couple years,” Meiner said. Through measures like increased police visibility, Miami Beach reduced its crime rate by about 20 percent last year compared with 2024.
“South Beach is maturing,” said Lara Koslow, a Miami-based managing director and senior partner at Boston Consulting Group, a global management firm. “It’s moving from a party-first identity toward a more curated, luxury-lifestyle positioning.”
As for its history of debauchery, she said, “that’s both an opportunity and a challenge.”
Perhaps with that in mind, some hotels close to the Delano that were once its chic competitors — the Raleigh, the Sagamore and the Shore Club — are also being reconceived. Nearby, the Fasano Group and Aman Resorts have properties in the works, too.
The opening of hotels like a Miami Beach Aman “could be just enough to have another resurgence down there,” Schrager said.
As for the new Delano, he said: “I don’t really know much about the reopening. I only really know about what we did and the pivotal impact it had on Miami Beach.”
The Delano’s footprint is poised to go well beyond South Beach. It is now a chain with Delano-branded hotels planned in a handful of cities, including New York, over the next few years. There are already Delanos in Paris and Dubai. A Delano-ifed apartment building intends to break ground in Downtown Miami next year.
With the reinvented Delano now set to open in South Beach next month, the question is: Can it survive as a wellness destination?
“Maybe that time has come and gone,” Barton said. “I don’t know that you can recreate what happened at the Delano.”
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