After a 30-year ban, the city of San Francisco is flirting with the idea of allowing bathhouses again.
In 1984, during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, a San Francisco Superior Court judge effectively banned bathhouses by ordering them to remove all doors from private rooms ostensibly to cut down on opportunities for unprotected intercourse. Since then, enterprising queers have had to find a way to Berkeley’s popular Steamworks or even to San Jose for the Watergarden.
Or make due with the lively SF sex clubs.
Related: Are Gay Bathhouses Going Extinct?
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Mayor Ed Lee tells the Bay Area Reporter he is “open” to the idea of doing away with that rule and allowing bathhouses to once again operate within city limits. There’s a catch. Lee says public health officials must be on board, as well.
“The issue about bathhouses and so forth that is an item that blends entertainment along with safe sex,” said Lee. “I have got to have experts telling me that is something they wouldn’t have a problem with. I would be open to it but I have got to have that kind of process.”
Related: After 30 Years, Should San Francisco Allow Gay Bathhouses?
The city recently announced its Getting to Zero initiative, which aims to cut new HIV infections 90 percent over the next five years. The increase in HIV testing and widespread adoption of PrEP has made that goal obtainable. There is concern in some quarters that reopening bathhouses could hurt that initiative.
The City’s Department of Public Health has not changed its position regarding the ban.
Buzz Bense, a former co-owner of Eros, one of the city’s last remaining gay sex clubs, predicts the City’s Department of Public Health will never get on board.
Related: Five Reasons Why San Francisco’s Gay Sex Clubs May Soon Be Extinct
“This isn’t about health science,” he claims. “It is about politics.”
There’s another more practical reason it might not happen anytime soon. Given the skyrocketing price of SF real estate, potential operators would be hard-pressed to find a convenient location for such a modern facility, although, presumably, demand would be high after years without a true bathhouse in the world’s gay sex mecca–even in the age of hookup apps.
Eros, a sprawling two floor space on the edge of the Castro, could presumably be reconfigured with private rooms rather than bunk beds and communal spaces open to all.
“Where the fuck can you buy a big building for less than a gillion dollars to open a bathhouse?” Bense asked.
Related: PHOTOS: A Rare Glimpse Into San Francisco’s Infamous Fairoaks Bathhouse
Rupert Garcia
Yay!! Bathhouses!!
Raúl Hernández
Those who forget the past…
Brian JC Kneeland
It is up to the individual to use them or not!
Josh Olson
I believe it’s about time to remove the ordinance that was emplaced back in 1984, we’ve come so far since then let’s move forward.
Josh Spaulding
Like a bathhouse owner could afford the rents in San Francisco!
Michael Clark
I thought they had sex clubs already
Dennis M Daniel
http://www.queerty.com/rare-footage-captures-bette-midlers-1971-farewell-performance-at-nyc-gay-bathhouse-20150131 the golden age of bathhouses.
Victor Barry
None of government’s business what adults want to do.
Joe Eugene
But…but…it was such a smart move in the first place to close establishments that offered condoms, STI testing and counseling, washing facilities, clean towels, discretion, and even over-chlorinated hot tubs to soak in; it put sex back in the parks and in the public eye where it belongs!
Luis H. Lopez
Everything within reason life guards and plenty of protection . Fight AIDS not gays !
Andrew Von Pelt III
is this all because the castro fitness sf steam room closed?
SeeingAll
Wouldn’t it just be a bunch of boring (politically-correct) rich guys ?
Glücklich
@Josh Spaulding:
My thoughts exactly. Where could one go where there’s enough relatively affordable space to make a place worth visiting? Kink.com could lease out part of their space, I guess, but otherwise….what? Bayshore? Get high, get laid, get shot.
Then the permitting…the protests…exactly why nothing else ever gets built around here.
@Michael Clark:
There are a handful of sex clubs but the only place that resembles a gay *bath house* in the traditional sense of the word. Next closest one is Steamworks over in Berkeley. And there’s one in San Jose believe it or not.
Glücklich
@Glücklich:
Apologies. Should have said ‘the only place that resembles a gay *bath house* in the traditional sense of the word _is Eros_.
Tony Chaplinski
just remember that aids has not gone away
Bob Weber
About time
Danny Bellamore
Eric Tang ð???
Dennis Patrick Ellis
Shut them down PERMANTELY- PEOPLE DO NOT PLAY SAFE IN THOSE DARK DUNGEONS
Mark Angstman
Catering to the gay crowd are we Mayor Lee?
William Thomas Bramlett II
Bad idea
patricklee5150
I used to have the best time at the bath houses….never got any virus, infection or a bad time.
Paul Arthur C
I’m all for it.
David Junior
Rehd here you go
Brian K Combs
Just by stock in Grindr
Kirk Montrealer
‘LOADS’ 😉 😉 OF THEM HERE IN MONTREAL…RIGHT DOWN MY STREET
William Howell
Good, maybe going out will be fun again.
sportsguy1983
Making it easy for people to act like sluts is good for the economy I guess.
Jim McHardy
It is about time there is a reality check. They never should have been closed.
Chuck Cardillo
The mayor of SF is a fucking idiot.
L Streeter
@Chuck Cardillo: Do you think that he’s an “idiot” because he wants to allow ‘gay’ bathhouses? Perhaps you are not aware that ‘gay’ sex clubs in San Francisco were never closed, have always flourished, and are a much more likely venue for unsafe sex.
L Streeter
It never made any sense to me that when they closed the bathhouses in San Francisco – where I lived from 1982 to 2006 (yes, after 36 years in New England I moved to the epicentre of the AIDS pandemic at its geneses) – they left the sex clubs open; because the bathhouses had private rooms where a couple (or?) at least had some privacy to (hopefully) discuss and negotiate safer sex options, whilst in the sex clubs there was really no opportunity at all.
L Streeter
@sportsguy1983: @sportsguy1983: People don’t need bathhouses “to act like sluts” … have you never heard of parks, back room bars, sex clubs (which were never closed in San Francisco), ‘gay’ movie houses, restrooms at bus stations, etc. A venue does not a “slut” make, a “slut” is the creation of an individual and their own self-image … AND the creation of narrow-minded people who feel the need to judge the behaviour of others.
L Streeter
@Joe Eugene: Spot on Joe, thanks for your absolutely accurate assessment.
Glücklich
@Andrew Von Pelt III:
You get a better class of person at Equinox anyway.
Kangol
About time! Between condoms and PrEP there shoulndn’t be an issue any more. And just have lots of HIV prevention materials and posters at the front door and throughout the maze of rooms and spaces!
mwalsh
The most convincing aspect about the bathhouses is that they allowed gay men and even some straight people to find their sexuality and to build community in a way that will never reoccur in the way that it occurred during the time when bathhouses made sexual expression unbound by the shame which ties us to attempting to copy status quo heterosexual sex, a format built out of shame and not a format of our own and true to our natures.
Giancarlo85
@L Streeter: The internet.
That’s enough anyone would ever need if they want to be a slut lol. The internet basically renders everything else obsolete.
?ohn Equality Panganiban
Lip service. His opponents for the mayor title next week are more than likely to establish bathhouses again. Not the current mayor who is responsible for evicting most queer and liberal people in favor of the rich assholes. #anybodybutlee, #123replaceedlee, #edleeisapuppetmayor, #gentrification, #savesf
Blackceo
To each their own but ewwwwwwww. I don’t even swim in public pools. I damn sure aint trying to frequent a bath house with people’s DNA all over the place.
seaguy
For one to make a profit they would have to charge rates like a high end hotel with the sky high rents in SF. So don’t see any bath houses returning to the city by the bay anytime soon.
John Goldsmith
I’m over his opinion on anything at this point. Lee has got to go!
Glücklich
@?ohn Equality Panganiban:
He has opponents?
L Streeter
@mwalsh: Very well said, thanks you for sharing.
notevenwrong
How is a sex club different from a bathhouse?
Glücklich
@notevenwrong:
I must sound like such a hosebag but who cares?
I think the distinction is bath houses have private rooms guests can reserve at check-in, then prowl the common areas (which may include wet features like steam, whirlpool, shower rooms, etc.) for a partner/s to invite back to their private room.
James Sigmon
Really.
notevenwrong
@Glücklich, it seems to be a pretty irrelevant distinction. So you can’t close a door but you can still have sex AND people can watch. Even better!
So basically SF has public sex venues now, and has had them all the time…
…which is why I don’t get why this is news anybody should care about.
Glücklich
@notevenwrong:
Exactly. This, and the city’s new-as-of-this-week law regulating gun shops, in a city where the *only* gun shop is going out of business as of this (or next) week.
Meanwhile we’re issuing bonds to fix the potholes and trim the street trees.
Still, I can’t feature enjoying living anyplace else. What would I complain about?
alphacentauri
@Michael Clark: They are there in SF and in cities near SF like Berkeley, and they’ve been there for decades. This is not news.
spemat
HIV/AIDS rates aren’t going down but if they all just go there, it could get contained…