Hydra

noooo… sad. i’ll miss this place… at least they are still online!!! woo hoo!

I am now officially permanently stinky since this store just closed.
Sorry.
Wanna be my +1 at the next Unilocal event?
Seriously, on a more useful note, you can still buy their product online at
.
Or you can visit their sister store in Berkeley:
If you go there, please take me for the ride.
I can wear a dress made out of little trees air fresheners to cover my smelliness.
Or you can just bring me back a whole bunch of cool little soaps.
Thanks.

Hydra has super cool stuff. It is a great store for random gifts when you don’t know what else to get someone.
I could spend hours looking at their cute, tongue-​in-​cheek, soaps that smell so much like their title — I find the alcohol ones hysterical (Guiness, Margarita, Martini).
Also, you can make your own for $ 12 at any time. They also have a neat selection of skincare items and a MASSIVE amount of rubber ducks — awesome!!!

The soaps here are so creative, bright, and delicious! They have drink flavors like Guiness, Champagne, and Merlot, they have Banana Split and Mint Chocolate Chip — they smell and look good enough to eat. My favorite soaps are the ones representing different parts of San Francisco — Chinatown soap, Marina soap (with a little sailboat in it), Sunset District soap, and The Haight soap (complete with psychidelic tie-​die colors). The scents always go with the theme of the soaps, and it’s fun to just walk around and smell them all — although you may come out of the store feeling dizzy from too much of a good thing!
The soap is expensive, so go for the thin, light pieces. They also have bath salts, bath «teas», rubber duckies of all kinds, and a bubbly, giant bathtub in the back of the store! So fun!

Lots of people mention the cost of the products here as a slight deterrent. It can definitely get costly if you don’t pay attention to what you’re doing but it’s well worth it, really; the prices on bath bombs seem competitive with LUSH and the products are nice.
Keep in mind, those pretty soaps with interesting shapes embedded inside aren’t easy to make! What they do have out is pretty well-​made too.
If you’re on a budget and don’t want to shell out a lot for the fancier soaps but still want to treat yourself, try the Puck soaps that they have. The scents are nice and are not overpowering but when I last checked I believe they were about $ 2.50 or so a bar with some sort of a deal if you buy a couple pucks at once. The bath beads are also pretty cheap too and if you’re looking to put together a little gift box for someone you can do so without spending too much if you just avoid the fancier soaps and stick with the bombs, beads, or bath salts.
I do wish they’d have some soap making supplies on hand or offer classes (they may have offered classes and I’ve missed it). I like making soap on my own but need some help and/​or better supplies. If they put together little kits for DIY work at home I’d snap them up in a heartbeat; I’d rather not make the soap in-​store since I’m not in that area often and don’t have the time to stick around out there.

I originally bought my first 2 bars of soap here because my roommate had given me a gift certificate for my bday.
I used both and was moderately satisfied with both my ‘Ladybug’ and my «Fig & Citron» bars. Only moderately satisfied because both smelled great when I pressed my nose against them, but when I washed with them, the smell didn’t seem strong enough to last for more then a second.
This was 2 years ago.
Fast forward to today.
I dropped by just because I was early to meet a friend at Bittersweet. I didn’t pay attention to the prices (priced by ounce) or to the fact that I knew I had been here before.
I bought a bar of soap.
$ 12, cha-​ching!
I left the place feeling anally raped, albeit it was a friendly raping, the girl working was very nice, but I had been done in by my own stupidity.
So for those thinking of dropping by for some cute soap, do so, but remember THEY CHARGE BY THE WEIGHT.
Ask the staff to chop you off a $ 5 if that’s all you can afford. Don’t just pick up a pre-​wrapped piece like I did.

Every time I’ve been in here (which is all of, um… twice), I’ve wandered through the whole store and not been acknowledged by the sales staff, who were busy snapping their gum and nail filing behind the counter.
Booo snobby soap salespeople. Hooray Ivory, or Dove, or Cetaphil!
Two stars for the bathtub though.

Fun stuff, but yes, a little pricey for the soaps.
I love the yo mama lotion, it’s great for dry skin and it’s not perfumey at all.

Soap should not stink this bad!

My god, every time I walk out of Hydra I feel like going through a detox from the abundance of smells and textures in there and make myself as dirty as possible. I’m not a soap or bath person myself; Walgreens shower gel does it for me. But I thought maybe I could do some holiday shopping here for friends who like pretty scented products. After walking through the whole store, my head’s swirling with so many choices: Green Tea, Chinatown, Pina Colada, Rocky Road, Guinness, soap with pumice stuck in it, bath salts, scrubs, dissolving balls, a million kind of rubber ducky in various sizes, animal-​shaped sponges… finally I gave up. It’d take me years to try to match up the right product to the right person I’m shopping for. So, Hydra is fun to stop by once in a while to check out how many more smells and flavors there can possibly be-​just be ready for a sensory overload.

Cute scented soaps and bathwash! They make for great gifts. I did find it a bit dark since they didn’t have their lights on…
Times visited: 1

Places like this always make me happy, but then again, I’m a total product whore. Adorable little soaps in scents named after the SF neighborhoods and in every other scent imaginable. Also lotions, bath bombs, etc. The also have a soap bar in which you can design or own! Very cool. Minus one star for the prices and the overwhelming smells — had a headache after 5 min. But still, yay.

They do have some really fun things in here. I love the rubber duckies… all the soaps, etc. The salespeople can be either a bit too pushy or too distant, but overall, this is a great store for bath/​body products.

I love going in Hydra just because of the yummy smell that wafts out into the street. Some of the soaps smell soooo good! I’ve never bought one for myself, but I used to work in the neighborhood and have bought them for gifts plenty of times. Just dropped by again today and picked up a few bars as gifts. I mean, really, who can’t use soap? And at least they’re pretty. :)

Great smelling hand cut soaps. The designs are so cute! I couldn’t resist but to get a couple slabs. Be warned, they can get pricey… as my friend put his away when he saw my total. Best for gifts I think.

Why are all these stores with with the blocks of soap that you cut off a piece and pay by the weight so expensive? And why when asking for «just a medium-​sized piece» do I always seem to get stuck with a $ 15 bar of soap?
Well, if you like your soap by-​the-​pound, this is a cool place. Tons of soaps, fizzing bath bombs, and other products. Rubber duckies too. I think this is a much better, local-​based alternative to Lush, where the overwhelming smells make me feel like I need a gas mask to enter the store.

Their products are a little too fruity & childlike for my taste, but hey, they have glow-​in-​the-​dark devil duckies. And I like that.

Sure, the soap is pretty — unfortunately, that’s about all it has going for it. Which is a shame, because I like my soap to do more than be aesthetically attractive. But, I could be in the minority on that one.

I love this place! It is the reason I have more soap than any one person can ever use but I still love it. And continue to buy more. And one night I even got picked up with the line of «do you shop for soap often?» (And no, I am not kidding). Check it out — afterall you can never be too clean.

It’s a good thing soap tastes like crap or else you’d be tempted to eat everything here, it looks so tasty and cute. It’s just the funnest bath and beauty place; you’ll invariably be able to find a girl gift here. Such an array of pretty soaps and gift boxes! And their lotions are a good buy for stuff that works as well as many mid-​high end products. I think they’re also cruelty-​free.