Half Moon Bay, CA Spa and Massage

As one of the first certified-green day spas on the peninsula, The Spa Studio keeps both its clients and the earth beautiful by reducing waste and conserving resources while carrying out a range of skincare, massage, and wellness services. During airbrush-tanning sessions, a solution infused with botanicals and antioxidants coats the skin and bronzes it over a 12-hour period, resulting in a glow that doesn’t require exposure to the sun’s harmful UV comets. The Organic Bliss facial rejuvenates skin with minerals and omega-9 nutrients, and permanent, nonlaser hair removal uses an enzyme called trypsin to prevent hair from growing back.

Certified Shiatsu Practitioner Kim Pon banishes pain buried within muscles by administering soothing strokes in a number of massage methodologies. Kim Pon attended the Acupressure Institute in Berkeley, graduating from a comprehensive program that taught powerful stroke techniques, and also completed the 720-hour Certified Massage Therapist and Health Educator training at the National Holistic Institute in Emeryville. Kim Pon's extensive massage-therapy knowledge allows her to combine techniques from various disciplines to give patients custom treatments, including gentle, yet soothing, Swedish strokes and pain-relieving deep-tissue kneads that would make a French boulanger proud.

Scattered throughout the peninsula, Natalie Salon Inc.'s five locations each house a team of specialists who pamper and beautify guests during nail, waxing, hair, and facial services. Staffers make over bodies from head to toe, rejuvenating faces with facials and treating dull talons to manicures and pedicures. They hone in on hair all over the body, waxing away unwanted fur, arranging lackluster strands into stylish coiffures, and tinting eyebrows to match recently dyed locks or recently dry-cleaned banana suits.

Beauty specialist Vimaa Patel opened I Bar to concentrate on threading, body art, and permanent makeup. Vimaa ensures her staff is practiced in the ancient technique of eyebrow threading—gently pruning and shaping brows with cotton strings—by requiring potential team members to have at least two years of experience. The technicians also enhance eyes and brows with permanent-makeup treatments and personalize shoulders, ankles, and calves with temporary body art, such as birds, blossoms, or safe combinations.

I Bar's intensive focus on a handful of treatments let the staff master their craft, and customers took notice. Within four years, the beauty haven expanded to four locations, each of which maintains the rigorous quality and boutique ambiance of the original.

Despite the sincerest efforts of herbologists everywhere, mani-pedis still do not grow on trees, only vines. For $45, today's side deal gets you a vine-ripened and moisturizing mani-pedi ($30 value)—plus a bed tanning session ($20) and $45 toward waxing—at San Francisco Sun in Cole Valley, for a total value of $95.

Since 1984, Sunrise Sun Spa's aestheticians have performed a variety of salon services, including tanning, facials, Light Concept Nails, waxing, Shellac manicures, and pedicures. More in-depth treatments include the Beauty Angel red-light-therapy beauty regimen, which firms and tones skin through a three-step process involving muscle stimulation, red-light energy, and Beauty Angel skincare products.