Pride reads: Those who have pushed for the return of bathhouses are now imagining what they could look like in today’s San Francisco, and are eager to know what demand there is for the special blend of sex and culture bathhouses offered for so long here.
The myriad and longstanding legal hurdles to reopening gay bathhouses in San Francisco should soon be eliminated.It’s been nearly 40 years since bathhouses, a cultural staple and welcoming space for gay men for much of the 20th century, operated freely in San Francisco.
“It was a place for a lot of different events … and there was still that focus that it was for safe sex,” said Ken Rowe, co-owner of Eros. Mandelman successfully spearheaded legislation in 2020 that required the Department of Public Health to update regulations on adult sex venues and rescind the previous requirement that they employ monitors to ensure sex between patrons is safe. But the work was not over, as the zoning administrator ruled later that year that such venues were “adult businesses,” which are generally not allowed in The City.
Eros has operated in San Francisco since 1992, meeting city standards by not allowing private rooms, but its move prompted renewed scrutiny of its compliance with zoning regulations. Nale’s building at 132 Turk St. operated as a bathhouse from the 1930s until the 1980s, he said. On the same block was Compton’s Cafeteria, where transgender women and allies rioted against police harassment in 1966, before New York City’s famous Stonewall riots.
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