The San Francisco Board of Supervisors will soon vote on a measure that would allow gay bathhouses to reopen around the city.
Bathhouses once served as the gathering place for queer men before the AIDS epidemic forced them to close in the 1980s. Now, more than 30 years after the city ordered their closure, it looks like the once-popular venues could make a comeback…at least after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“To be clear, this ordinance does not and will not require or allow the reopening of adult sex venues in San Francisco before it is safe to do so as part of our COVID-19 reopening,” said gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman. He further clarified that the measure–which he sponsored–will “allow for adult sex venues to be part of our economic and cultural recovery when it is safe to do so.”
Related: With Dallas gay bars closed, this bathhouse reopens?
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Mandelman’s measure passed through the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee in a unanimous 3-0 vote. The full Board of Supervisors will vote on the measure on July 21. Should it pass, the Department of Health will have to comply with the ordinance by January 1 of next year.
In the 1970s, bathhouses thrived in San Francisco as well as in many other major American cities. The onset of AIDS created an enormous stigma around the bathhouses, however, and in 1984 a court forced their closure as a means of curbing the spread of HIV. Now, in an age of PrEP and renewed LGBTQ rights, Rafael Mandelman says the time has come to make a change.
“During the 1970s and early 1980s, bathhouses were a focal point of gay social life in San Francisco and were important community meeting places where friends would gather to share stories, dance to the latest disco hits or watch a live show,” Mandelman notes. “COVID-19 has resulted in the closure of many small businesses, a deadening of our neighborhood commercial corridors and record unemployment in San Francisco and around the country. I hope this ordinance will make the operation of adult sex venues more feasible and will encourage the opening of new businesses that will aid in our economic recovery.”
Kangol2
Whew! I was going to say, don’t do this before there’s an effective vaccine or treatment regimen (plasma, etc.) for Covid-19, because it’ll otherwise be an unnecessary, avoidable man-made catastrophe. If they haven’t already done so, they should also mandate that every bathhouse provide free PrEP, condoms, lube, STD screenings, and anything else that will ensure safe(r) sex!
Center_Right
Glad I left that filthy city filled with homeless tents and used needles on the streets. Having a bathhouse in Berkeley is bad enough and now the city wants to encourage reckless anonymous and promiscuous sexual behaviors among gays by allowing the operation of new bathhouses? What’s wrong with those ultra lib politicians? They all deserve to get infected with Covid-19 like that deranged Brazilian president.
sirwoody65
Only a doctor can provide PrEP because you need to be tested first and every 3 months. A bathhouse cannot do that.
Kangol2
@SirWoody, great point. What about PEP? If they had a health professional on staff, couldn’t they provide that?
Cam
@Center_Right
It’s cute how Republicans CONSTANTLY have to try to attack California, because, while Red states with Republican governors like Kansas and Oklahoma were going bankrupt, Ca was running multi-billion dollar surpluses.
ryeguypdx
I’m impressed that we’re at a place, culturally, where we can reopen bath houses. Just a shrug, and a hope that they still matter. It seems like a tough business, with the apps being what they are. But if anyplace can make it work, it’s SF. I remember visiting about 10 years ago, and how casual everyone was about Steamworks, the bath house in Berkeley. If someone got their heart broke, or just couldn’t get laid on a particular night, they’d just head over the bridge. I went once, but Steamworks was so industrial and sinister, black lights and pounding techno. The ride over the bridge was the best part.
1898
the average rent price for a small apartment in San Francisco is $3,629 a month. that’s over $43,000 a year just for rent and nothing else
San Francisco has over 9,000 homeless inhabitants, and 75% of those homeless folks previously had homes in San Francisco
and the board is spending time, money, and political capital on… public sex?
i don’t even know what to say to that
Chrisk
Speaking of that. Since no one can afford to live there anymore but the well-to-do set I image you get allot of people from other parts of the bay area or country. Having a bathhouse could fill that need.
Harley
Agreed. It’s like when I was young cruising the city parks at night was a way of hooking up. Not so much now.
Chrisk
The boomers and Gen X’s will love this but will the millennial’s and now Gen Z’s even use them? I’m in Gen X so I have no idea.
Although I am kind of sentimental about the past and traditions so I’m liking it. 😉
C_Alan
@Chrisk says:
1. Gen X’s will love this
2. I’m in Gen X so I have no idea
Kangol2
C_Alan, not sure if you ever studied grammar in school, but Chrisk’s comment was clear enough.
Here you go: “The boomers and Gen Xs will love this but will the millennials and now Gen Zs even use them? I’m in Gen X so I have no idea [IF THEY, MILLENNIALS AND GEN Zs, WILL USE THEM].”
Got it?
Heywood Jablowme
Timing aside (Covid), I really doubt anyone can succeed financially with a bathhouse in SF. Business rents are sky high, and a bathhouse needs quite a lot of room.
The eastern cities that still have gay bathhouses (pre-Covid) are the cities that haven’t been totally gentrified yet and still have some “grit” to them: Philly, Montreal, Providence. The last bathhouse in D.C. just closed. SF is so gentrified, the supervisors can approve this all they want but it wouldn’t be surprising if no one even tries to do it.
ShiningSex
If you think bathhouses are good then you must like visiting disease ridden places.
NO self respecting gay person would visit such vile places.
Vince
You’re looking at this as a mature adult. Think back when you were young and horny. There’s a lot of things we did that we probably look back on now as irresponsible and nasty but it was what it was.
Heywood Jablowme
Sure, you’re much better off hooking up with someone online who declares he’s “clean.” No one ever gets infected with HIV or STIs at home!
/s
Doug
I’ve lived in SF most of my life, and I frequented the baths here during most of the early 80’s. It was a time when we viewed each other as pieces of meat rather than human beings, and I never want to live that over again. I I’ll probably get dissed for this, but there’s a big difference between taking a guy home for sex rather than having sex with 8 or 10 anonymous guys a night.
Heywood Jablowme
@Doug: You do realize it wasn’t an actual RULE that you had to have sex with 8 or 10 anonymous guys? You were even allowed to ask someone’s name if you wanted to. Maybe you were unaware of this. 🙂
frapachino
The once great city of SF is now a chit hole because of the socialist politicians running this city! And no not because of this measure but because of all the other absurd anti business regulations and the chit and p I s s and zombies and criminals overrunning the streets!
1898
it’s hilarious that you call the leaders of SF socialists
if they were socialists, the average rent wouldn’t be $3600/mo
if they were socialists, there wouldn’t be 9000 people living and dying in the streets
the terrible things you described — and i agree they’re terrible! — were all aided and abetted by unrestricted capitalism
Cam
@frapachino
Translation: It’s wealthy and has far lower crime rates than red states cities so Republicans desperately have to deflect from those facts.
SPEEDOSWIMMER
Hey sexy studly Tops, where are y’all at???
Yummmmmmmmmmm
Center_Right
I have read stories on some gay web sites where some gay guys report having sex with up to 8 other men at a bathhouse in one afternoon! How could this be and what’s wrong with these people? Most of us have less than 10 partners in our life time and then you have these sex crazed men going to the disgusting sex places to engage in anonymous sex with multiple men — in one afternoon! No wonder the syphilis rate among gays is way up.
marcbruer777
Ten partners in an entire lifetime? Gay men??? I haven’t read anything so hilarious in eons. It’s more like several thousand in a lifetime for the typical gay man. I know a guy in Tampa who is 60 and claims about 7000 lifetime partners. I know many guys around the world whose numbers are in the thousands. Hell, I’m only 27 and I estimate my number of partners at about 700.
Ten???? Get real, Mary.
Heywood Jablowme
“sex crazed men going to the disgusting sex places to engage in anonymous sex with multiple men — in one afternoon!”
Don’t be silly. A bathhouse is never that crowded in the afternoon.
Erna
You sound like a stinkfish and probably a fugly one at that!
Cam
Sweetie, if you’re going to come on here and try to stealthily troll, you may want to be careful about making it obvious you’re a hetero troll pretending you belong on an LGBTQ site.
winemaker
Who in their right mind elected this idiot and for that matter all the other idiots on the board of ‘stupidvisors allowing these places to reopen? Evidently mandelman didn’t live through the AIDS epidemic, watching many of their friends die in the prime of their lives, changing bedpans, diapers and a doing a lot of other unpleasant and nasty things to help friends going through this hell!. Time to get real thinkers now and get rid of progressive clowns like mandelman hell bent on destroying things with their foolish nonsense. With apps like tinder and grinder why are these places reopening even with safe sex materials in place? Again time to get rid of all these useless idiots that keep making San Francisco more of a national joke and disgrace. For what it costs us to live here in Americas most expensive city, we deserve so much better than the nonsensical BS we’ve been getting for years.
jennifer.white530
What do you expect from a city and a state controlled by DEMOCRATS? San Francisco was a beautiful city to visit. Today you have to look down as you walk to not step in feces or on dirty needles. Now with defunding police demands, crime will skyrocket as it has in NYC. Democrats want to eliminate the middles class, so there are only rich and poor people.
Kangol2
“Republicans want to eliminate the middles class, so there are only rich and poor people.” This is what they do every time they’re in office. Hoover, Nixon, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush–go down the list. Eisenhower was a rare respite since the late 1920s. They also blow up the US economy, leave recessions, allow crime to spin out of control, etc., and Democrats always have to clean up after them. It’s happening once again too!
Chrisk
So were a bunch of socialists who want everything to be free but for whatever reason we want to eliminate the middle class. I’m scratching my head on that but I also don’t live in the Fox News echo chamber like you. Lol
Btw. The middle class is helped by providing for an affordable education, a living wage, health care, fair taxation, regulations, clean environment, etc etc. Something the Republicans and their lobbyists are very much oppressed to.
Every single time in my memory when they get in power the debt goes through the roof and we end up with a trashed economy like Kangol2 just said. The middle class always suffers while their 1% masters only richer.
This time the Democrats won’t be able to clean it up for a very long time.
Cam
And the same right wing troll account is here with it’s THIRD screename all to freak out because the city San Francisco was mentioned.
Once again, while red states under GOP government like Kansas and Oklahoma were going banakrupt, Ca was running multi-billion dollar surpluses and paying off the HUGE debt Republican governors ran up.
You aren’t fooling anybody troll.
DCFarmboy
The city can permit them, but that doesn’t mean the private market will. I would not invest my savings in opening a SF bath house. It is an industry in steep decline.
trsxyz
Doesn’t seem like a particularly good idea (business or otherwise). With all the other options available for hooking-up in 2020, a bathhouse sounds like an unnecessary “blast from the past”.
Erna
We recall the wonderful times at Basic Plumbing in WeHo, where we enjoyed the most magnificent sizemeats on the planet!
And NO rubbers!
Center_Right
I have to admit that I find your behavior so utterly repugnant that I am not able to keep up the pretense that maybe deep down you are an OK person.
Cato
I’ve been to bathhouses and sex clubs around the world and with rare exceptions they are well-maintained and safe places to get reliable information on safer sex as well as STI testing by healthcare professionals. In 25 years I have gotten two STI – one in a bathhouse and one from a steady partner.
If you want to hook up with 10 guys in an evening, if you’re pleasant and/or attractive it can happen. It’s also a great place to learn to handle rejection and how to say “No” graciously — skills that are quite useful in the rest of your life. I’m still friends with guys I met 20 years ago in a bathouse — a few were decades older than me and a few decades younger. Black, white, Asian, Latinx, rich and poor — all men I would probably never have crossed paths with outside of the baths, but we did cross paths, discovered we share common interests (outside of getting our rocks off) and have become important parts of each others lives.
Not to romanticize the places — I’ve met plenty of assholes in them too. But they can be a positive and healthy part of the gay community for many men. Don’t be a self-centered asshat and decide if it’s not for you then it’s bad and shouldn’t be allowed for anyone else. If they’re not for you — fine, don’t go. The rest of us will have more fun without you judging us.
Aires the Ram
Bingo!!
charmin88
Out of all the things we could bring to the table for the gay community they want to bring bathhouses back as if the community isn’t already portrayed as over sexualize. Why not use that money to get homeless LGBTQ off the streets, Use it towards progressive laws to give LGBTQ more rights and freedom and more protection under the laws. Help out lgbt owned small businesses that are struggling right now during and pre-pandemic. Put money towards Charities, more visibility etc. The list can go on with me because I am an activist who tries to do what I can so people in my community doesn’t have to hide who they are or feel ostracized within and out of their communities by Donating, protesting and spreading/Signing petitions and what is more important to these clowns is a bathhouse that can be the epicenter of a new pandemic. Hearing news like this is discouraging when so much other things should take priority.
Cam
I’m not a cheerleader for bathouses, but I have to point out something about your comment.
“”Out of all the things we could bring to the table for the gay community they want to bring bathhouses back as if the community isn’t already portrayed as over sexualize. Why not use that money to get homeless LGBTQ off the streets,””
1. Who am I to tell people not to do something because of how the community is “Portrayed”? Should we also pull DragRace off the air because it doesn’t portray LGBTQ people as “Masculine” or not allow trans people to be protected in the workplace because it upsets right wingers?
2. And your comment saying “Why not use that money to get homeless LGBTQ off the streets”….what money? The council isn’t funding bathhouses. They’re are just pulling down a ban on them, so that if private people want to start a business they can. This isn’t taking any money out of the city budget.
With all the dating aps up, not sure this is a great business idea, but then again, maybe people don’t want to have strangers over, not sure.