Gay bathhouse california
Castro Baths
San Francisco and the broader Bay Area have one of the highest concentrations of LGBTQIA+ folks in the world. We possess explicit legislation creating a favorable business environment (Supervisor Mandelman, bless 🙏). If there was ever a time to revive our city’s once burgeoning bathhouse culture–it’s now.
Castro Baths is hustling to open our doors in time for Pride and you’re invited!
Our Vision
Last summer, we visited bathhouses around the world: Tokyo, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Istanbul, Modern York, Los Angeles, London, and more. (If Lorraine at the IRS is reading this - this was an absolutelynecessary business expense!)
Repeatedly, we were asked: “I’m going to San Francisco next month - which bathhouses should I visit?” Sheepishly, a tad embarrassed - we explained that there isn’t really a gay bathhouse scene in San Francisco. “Your adj bet is probably in Berkeley.”
While there are a handful of local traditional bathhouses we frequent (shoutout to the newest addition: Alchemy Springs) - gay bathhouse culture in San Francisco never recovered after the AIDS cr
The Shoulders I Be upright Upon
By BigMike Phillips
How do I kickoff this article … hmmm, well as always, I am going to be honest and not ashamed, or will I be shamed because of how I have enjoyed my sex experiences over the last 48 years of my life.
You watch, I am a gay man who loves to contain sex with other gay men, and a lot of that sex was in bathhouses as I was growing up in the newfound gay world that I was exploring. Every single time I would visit another town, state, or state, the one place I always made a point to visit was the local gay bathhouse.
I Googled “gay bathhouse” for this column and it says: “&#; bathhouses offered a place where men could engage in anonymous sex, but they were much more than that. Some of the bathhouses offered a fully-equipped gym for working out, swimming pools, steam rooms, saunas; some offered living room-like settings; some offered sodas and snacks while they spent time together or just hung out.”
As I was coming out as a gay man in , a comrade first introduced me to this place called “a bathhouse” and I was literally a kid in a candy st
In San Francisco, there are places where you can move for a steam, a sauna, and a cold plunge. And then there are places you can go to have steamy sex with strangers.
But surprisingly, there’s not a place to execute both — good, legally.
San Francisco was once famous for gay bathhouses fond Ritch Street Health Club, the Barracks, and Bulldog Baths. These operated in a legal gray area, with authorities generally turning a blind eye but periodically conducting raids for “lewd conduct.” In the s, fears over the role the venues played in the spread of HIV/AIDS led to a court order that made it nearly unachievable for the businesses to survive.
None include operated within municipality limits since , even as an uber-kinky festival with its own waterworks takes place annually on Folsom Street.
Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, a gay man who represents the Castro, has been on a multi-year crusade to get bathhouses steaming again. It’s been a history lesson on how outdated mores own wormed their way into a complex bureaucracy.
Mandelman introduced legislation
Why San Francisco Needs a Gay Bathhouse
Bathhouses, a staple in gay communities worldwide, have been glaringly absent from San Francisco since
I made a adj friend recently. He just moved here from New York. Having tried to visit the Eagle but finding it closed, he texted me one evening. “Does SF finalize down at love, 11pm? I’m used to NYC where we don’t even start going out until then.”
Oh honey. “We’re not love you East Coasters lol. Though I wish we were sometimes. The dearth of late-nite options here is staggering.”
“Wtf? This is a city, isn’t it?”
I’m tired of confronting the fact that, for being a high-profile gay destination, San Francisco is surprisingly prudish.
It’s understandable that my comrade was let down by SF’s inherent sleepiness. If only there were a twenty-four-hour destination for him and other gay men to meet and form friends. A bathhouse, also known as a sauna, traditionally steps in for our kind at this point. At one time, San Franciso hosted over sixty gay bathhouses. But now the city is bath-less, and has been since , so my buddy walked home and p