Amid the ongoing shutdowns and social distancing of the COVID-19 pandemic, the city of San Francisco just opened door to bathhouses culture making a major comeback.
For those unfamiliar with queer history, bathhouses once served as a social center for LGBTQ men in particular. Hanging out in the jacuzzi with friends–and maybe having a bit of sex on the side–was as customary as meeting up at a gay bar or club. That changed with the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, when cities across the country began shuttering bathhouse venues as a means of curbing the epidemic.
Related: You can tell a gay man with a love of bathhouses wrote this movie. We’re ok with that.
Now, almost 40 years after the city imposed a litany of restrictions designed to shut down bathhouses, San Francisco has reverted to pre-AIDS regulations. In essence, the city is inviting new bathhouses to open.
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“It is symbolically significant right now,” gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman told The Bay Area Reporter. “Whether it is significant on the ground depends on if entrepreneurs with the vision and financial capacities and the savvy to open can and operate one of these.”
The new regulations require that bathhouse venues must post warnings about the spread of STIs including HIV, as well as high-risk activities. In addition, venues must provide lube, condoms, soap and towels. Patrons under 18 years of age or who seem intoxicated are also not allowed.
It remains to be seen if a series of new bathhouse venues will open up in the city; COVID-19 restrictions currently prevent their opening in the short term. At the height of their popularity in the 1970s, San Francisco offered as many as 30 different bathhouse and spa destinations around the city. Today, only one venue remains. It also remains an unanswered question as to whether younger generations used to using dating apps to socialize and meet sexual partners will gravitate to a live venue.
ted72
What’s wrong with us? ?
Den
What do you mean?
Your personal distaste for recreational sex, your lack of understanding that safe sex or unsafe sex are independent of the venue in which they occur, or whatever other biases and prejudices inspired that comment do not in any way mean anything is wrong with US.
Judgement by individuals is just that and nothing more.
level75RDM
I suppose we’ve seen enough of how terrible this country is at managing the spread of disease. One more mistake could hardly ruin that image any further.
Creamsicle
Didn’t queerty already report this last year?
In the SF bay area, the real limitation on bathhouses will be real estate. It is no longer the cheap city for hippy burn outs that it was 40 years ago.
Den
I’ve lived here for over 45 years, and if you thought it was a city for “hippy burn outs” that is only because of where in the city you went and with whom you chose to hang out. If you are speaking from imagination or the opinions of others, without personal experience…Well, that tells us all we need to know about you.
But yes, it is certainly not as inexpensive to live here as it was in the 70’s and 80’s. And it is no longer the small town it was then.
WindChime
It’s a city filled with dirty drugs and druggies. Filthy streets and homeless people. Bathhouses should be banned not just in SF but throughout the country. Mandatory treatments for people who abuse drugs and lock them up in psyche wards. What a disgusting place for gay men to visit! Do they have no shame whatsoever?
Liquid Silver
@WindChime: No shame, baby. My street name is White Venom, and it’s not because of my skin tone but because of the venom my trouser snake spits.
I hear they even have a hole in the wall where you can see it all.
Cam
@WindChime
Right wingers HAVE to keep attacking blue areas because it’s the only way they can keep people living in red states from understanding just how badly Republicans have screwed their areas.
Lindoro Almaviva
Bathhouses never left SF completely. i understand there are still some, just not operating as bathhouses…
Mundo
Donde estan?
underboy
Sex clubs are allowed in SF. The difference is a bathhouse has things like hot tubs and closable doors (i.e. rooms you can be private in). Questionable distinction re HIV transmission but that was the approach they took 40 years ago or so.
ProfessorDave
In case any of you forgot, we gay people, notably the gay liberation pioneer Larry Littlejohn, campaigned for the closing of bathhouses at the outset of the AIDS epidemic. What opened instead were even less safe sex clubs. This is an excellent, excellent idea.
Liquid Silver
Given that I have a sneaking suspicion the mRNA vaccines are going to lead to some…major breakthroughs…this is probably going to be a grand idea. Go. Get your freak on.
barryaksarben
Windchime you seem to have enough shame for everybody but then I doubt you are gay
Tombear
@Windchime, you sound like a facist!
Kangol2
Windchime = HereIAm = CenterRight = whatever name Queerty’s resident Church Lady, who allegedly fled San Francisco and is in love with Aaron Schock, chooses on a given day. People might remember some of her other screen names too.
Zombiez8mybrain
“… bathhouses once served as a social center for LGBTQ men in particular. ”
Seriously? I don’t know about where the author of this article got that information, or maybe it was just different at the bathhouses I’ve been to, but they were no “social centers.” They were, and still are, a place to have casual, and mostly anonymous, sex.
I am glad to hear, though, that they are going back to the pre-AIDS regulations. People like to look down their noses at casual/anonymous sex, but I’d be willing to bet most of us have had (or still have!) the occasional random hook-up. That behavior isn’t going to change, so it’s nice to have a safe option for a location for it to take place.
Kangol2
They were social centers in the 1970s. You can even see videos online of this. Bette Midler, Barry Manilow, etc. performed in them. Again, you can see video clips if you search for them.
Mundo
Exactly!
underboy
Plenty of books describe the history of bathhouses as social meeting spaces.
inbama
In the middle of a pandemic?
Well, it is San Fransisco – a city that just took Abraham Lincoln’s name off a a school.
Cam
@inbama
It’s cute when Republicans pretend to give a crap about Lincoln when they frantically defended Southern states flying the Confederate flag…you know, the thing Lincoln fought against.
TheAbsoluteTRUTH
Well it IS California ffs the most un-american state in America so nothing is surprising what happens in that backward ass place
SaintRock
I am more disgusted with the hypocrical Str8 Consumer who love these slut shows like: Bachelor and Bachellorette and Married at 1st sight and Teen mom etc etc and slut meaning male, female and any concoction thereof. USA promotes Family Values but loves sex sex sex on Reality TV. Who needs Bathouses when you can be paid by Cable TV stations to get nasty.
DCFarmboy
I can’t believe the economics are there to bring them back. First of all, the costs of SF real estate. Second, maintaining a decent bathhouse is expensive — plumbing, sanitation, advertising, laundry, etc. Gays are not going to pay top rate when Grindr is free and even if you just price out the young guys, you’re dead. Also, we are past the days where gays can be made to pay anything for rundown, dirty, grimy bathhouses with backed up toilets and non-working steam rooms. So doing it on the cheap won’t work either.
A warehouse sex party would be more economical.
Joseph1971
I wonder what Governor Gavin thinks of this or Nancy Pelosi, Dr. Fauci? Now is the absolute worst time to open up the baths. COVID is not under control. At least with one on one hookups the transmission rate is reduced, but put a ton of horny, high gay men and San Fran can find itself a pandemic within a pandemic. I am all for sexual freedom and expression but this is one of the most terrible ideas to come down the road in a very long time.
Doug
I have to agree with you. I’m sure I’ll get flack for this, but I’ve been in San Francisco since the 70’s, and was a regular at bathhouses until they closed them. I saw a lot of people die that I would see in the bathhouses. I realize now I had a major addiction to sex and had some serious problems with intimacy. Those were very cold times… we all saw each other as meat. The number of STD’s in the city were astronomical. I don’t want to go back to those days, and I feel like opening bathhouses again will only reinforce those values within our community. And if people think safe sex will be practiced, you’re kidding yourselves.
WindChime
Doug, your honest comment proves my point. The STD rates in this country have skyrocketed since last year’s lockdown. It is mostly because of the reckless behaviors of gay men who hook up anonymously, do hard drugs, and live in a promiscuous lifestyle. I always believe that these disgusting bathhouses are breeding grounds for STDs, HIV, Hep C, and Herpes, not to mention that they cause gay men to become sex addicts. There is no way bathhouses should be allowed to open anywhere, esp during the pandemic.
Mundo
Agreed!
GayEGO
It has been awhile since I have been in a bathhouse in Boston and Seattle!
djguapo
I say bravo! Steamworks in in Berkeley is way too far, Eros is garbage, and sadly Atlas shut down due to the shutdown last year.
trell
Nope. This is wrong
This is not about queer solidarity and cultural significance in empowerment or whatever bullsh*t the article seemed to suggest.
This is not the comment of a prude or someone who feels that reopening bathouses is immoral (I used to love going out to saunas, and would welcome them reopning……but only once this pandemic is over.
This IS about safety and preventing the spread of COVID.
The article reads with the same stupid rationale as any anti masker trying to justify their insistence not to wear a mask. The consideration for the health and welfare of people in the LGBT community (as well as families, friends, co-dependents etc.) is about as selfish as holding parties or raves.
In the 80s, we took a difficult but responsible step in preventing the spread of HIV. It was painful, it didn’t completely stop the spread, but we did our best. A LOT of people died, society still saw AIDS as a gay disease, or God’s punishment on deviants, but we still soldiered on, used condoms, and learnt very hard lessons. Slowly, we came back to almost normality. We waited, and even now, the threat of HIV has not gone away, but at least it is now manageable.
In contrast, this global pandemic really has bought out the worst in us all. It has become a politically based excuse, a farcical reason to believe in far-fetched baseless conspiracy theories. The wantitnow generation seem to be so fed up about having to stay indoors that there is now ‘Lockdown Fatigue’ everywhere, and where the most pathetic examples of human drama are saying that they would rather die than give up a few pleasures (such as going out to bars, clubs, saunas etc).
If the pandemic had conscious thought, and wanted to capitalise on the best way to spread, it couldn’t have dreamed of a better exploit than stupid selfish humans. The old Twilight Zone episode ‘The Monsters are due on Maple Street’ is a perfect distillation of the disarray in the US right now.
….and while Queerty points fingers at all the irresponsible things that Republican politicians are doing, we seem to also celebrating doing an equally stupid thing and calling it ’empowerment’.
Keep the damn bathhouses closed, and only open them when it is finally safe!!!
whateverokok
HIV may be manageable, but AIDS is not. One slip up is all it takes. AIDS is incurable. Just because you manage HIV doesn’t mean the threat of AIDS is gone out of the window. No, AIDS is still deadly and HIV is no laughing matter. People these days think It’s cool and that we’ve essentially cured HIV/AIDS. Well, that’s folly on people’s parts.
chrisnyc1
WindChime, what a bucket of contradiction you are. You blame bath houses for rising rates of STD’s in one sentence and in another claim increases occurred during lockdown, when people did not have access to such facilities. Hmmmmm….. But one thing is clear, your misinformed prejudice against “disgusting bath houses”. Looks like no one ever wanted to play with you. Awe…… If you despise bath houses so much, stay home. You’re not wanted there. Enjoy your slimy radical right wing rock alone. Is there more sanctimony you want to spew?