Bathho Archiv – SF Gay History

Contents:

• A PEEK UNR THE TOWEL: INSI THE 500-YEAR HISTORY OF GAY BATHHO
• GALLERY: SAN FRANCIS GAY BATHHOE HISTORY, IN FLIERS [NSFW]
• THE GAY BATHHOE FIRE OF 1977
• DID CLOSG NEW YORK CY BATHHO THE 1980S STRIP DIGNY OM GAY MEN?
• SF GAY HISTORY
• A BRIEF POLIL—AND PERSONAL—HISTORY OF GAY BATHHO
• LAST GAY BATHHOE S.F. AGRE TO CLOSE ITS DOORS

A PEEK UNR THE TOWEL: INSI THE 500-YEAR HISTORY OF GAY BATHHO

There is no other llectn of photographs that so clearly visualiz this perd bathhoe imag and more will be on display at the Llie-Lohman Prce Street Project Space (tails below) and also clud are imag om the Fairoaks Pri Para float om that same Fairoaks Baths:Photographs by Frank MellenoPolaroids om a San Francis bathhoe 1978Llie-Lohman Mm of Gay and Lbian Art (Prce Street Project Space)127-B Prce StreetNew York, NY 10012July 12-13, Openg receptn July 11, 6-8 p. It lerally stood alone, at the tersectn of Oak and Steer streets, perched on a hill overlookg the lower Hay Valley district; an urban patch not yet gentrified by the cy's swellg ti of gay Boomers and some distance om the neighborhoods they typilly Fairoaks' existence was short-lived -- 1977 to 1979 -- but fondly relled by s patrons for a number of thgs.

Many of those men, like a great number of Fairoaks patrons, are no longer alive -- taken by the plague of AIDS that would cimate the cy's gay populatn jt another few a strg of black pearls, San Francis's bathho adorned the cy wh a touch of louche glamour before they were officially closed October 1984.

Freeman regnized the historil importance, rtored the imag and created the Fairoaks than a pictorial rerd of a bygone scene -- or even of passg strangers wh sticky feet -- the photographs open a door to a secret gay world of sexual enunter and sweet nocence the lik of which will never be seen aga. At the Fairoaks he worked as a DJ, and receptnist, and was a proud member of the Fairoaks "fay crew" om s ArmsTwo guys towels talkg near the snack bar the mon area of the Pri #1The Fairoaks float at the 1978 Gay Pri Para San Francis was a flatbed tck rated wh furnure om the Fairoaks lounge. The hood ornament is wearg a Fairoaks T-shirt and straddlg a prott sign about the Briggs iative, which would have banned gay and "gay-sympathetic" teachers om classrooms California, and did not Pri #8Taken om the ont of the Fairoaks float for the 1978 Gay Pri Para, lookg ahead at the para and by-stanrs.

GALLERY: SAN FRANCIS GAY BATHHOE HISTORY, IN FLIERS [NSFW]

M., ne men — trapped si a buildg wh blocked-up wdows and no fire p — would not make out years after Stonewall, the tragedy at the Everard Baths — never vtigated as anythg but an accintal mattrs fire — marked the begng of the end of a brief, exuberant heyday of New York Cy gay life that was able to thrive part bee of cheap real tate and a cy ernment that was willg to look the other way when me to, say, S&M clubs like the Mhaft the Meatpackg District (drs clud no logne).

But even as the '70s New York were a relatively open, excg time to be a gay man New York — pri paras, gay bars and clubs proliferatg, a mastream weekly gay newspaper, a gay rights prott at the 1976 Democratic Natnal Conventn New York — beg openly gay, whether on the street or the workplace, still me wh dangers.

Everard Baths was not jt any gay bathhoe; the wrer Michael Rumaker, his acunt of gog to the baths (A Day and a Night at the Baths) for the first time the wter of 1977, lled Everard "the most venerable, loathed, and affectnately teemed baths all of New York Cy. Author Gore Vidal met his longtime partner, Howard Aten, at Everard 1950; over the years Everard was reportedly vised by the wrer Tman Capote, theater director Aled Lunt, the ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, and gay rights activist and wrer Larry his memoir Cy Boy: My Life New York Durg the 1960s and 1970s, Edmund Whe remembers the Everard as "filthy... They generally existed on the g of lawfulns; the Everard, along wh other gay bathho New York Cy, were perdilly raid by police, wh a few people beg rted off to jail for lewd behavr now and then, but generally left alone — the ultimate "don't ask, don't tell.

THE GAY BATHHOE FIRE OF 1977

And the gay muny was quick to claim the tragedy: The pastor of the New York branch of the Metropolan Communy Church — the gay church found Los Angel 1968 that had held servic at the UpStairs Lounge jt prr to the fire — tablished a fund to help those jured the fire, as well as pay for the burials of the men who were aftermath was also vered the media. "Homosexuals Mobilize to Aid Fire Victims" was the headle a New York Tim article on May 26 that explaed that gay men "led up to donate blood" — which today, post-AIDS, they are still banned om dog, meang gay men uldn’t donate to their iends and loved on hospalized after Orlando — and "helped intify bodi and promised to raise money on behalf of the jured, " and that "telephone appeals for help volved a work of 15 homosexual relig anizatns as well as activist homosexual polil groups. " In this way, the Everard fire serv as a kd of pre-AIDS era timtamp: Gay men uld still donate blood, bee AIDS hadn't happened yet; gay polil groups were actively advotg for gay rights a way that was startg to be supported by the mastream media.

They had been a uple for six years— teachers their mid-30s, jt returned om jobs the Middle East" — and prience, wrg the same article that the Everard Baths were "a kd of 'Marlboro Country' among homosexuals' gatherg plac...

" Bce Voeller, a -executive director of the Natnal Gay Task Force who would go on to be a leadg AIDS rearcher and activist (and die of AIDS 1994), told the Tim that "you uld often meet an off-duty p or fireman at the Everard. Today, the sh to claim the Orlando tragedy as "human, " as opposed to a specific attack on queer Latx people, the real danger that people of lor and queer people still face this untry n get lost — the first versn of the Tim' story about the Orlando shootg didn't mentn that Pulse was a gay club; the #AllLivMatter movement elis the fact that vlence by police agast black people is an tractable problem.

DID CLOSG NEW YORK CY BATHHO THE 1980S STRIP DIGNY OM GAY MEN?

" The pot of the article seemed to be to reassure the Tim' rears that the gay populatn was not jt "terr rators, Fire Island and bars wh a leather motif" — although "this world do ed exist and flourish some neighborhoods.

" The article also highlights the ternal polil nflict wh the gay rights movement between "ant" groups and "morat": "Milant groups like the Gay Activist Alliance ntue to stage monstratns — more than a dozen the last month — which some morat feel are unterproductive.

SF GAY HISTORY

Only a few bathho survived Mayor Koch's purge, cludg Manhattan's East Si Club, opened 1976 — "New York's Premier Social Relaxatn Club for Gay and Bisexual Men, " acrdg to s webse — and s newer siblg, the Wt Si Club, which opened 1977, the fire at the Everard Baths was a remr that there was no such thg as real safety — which felt all too faiar last weekend. In the send half of the twentieth century, gay and lbian spac and anizatns San Francis created formidable astctur of support, accumulated rourc and expand both knowledge regim and the horizon of possibili for queer people that extend far beyond the cy self.

Many gay and bisexual San Francis rints exprsed their sexual inti the 1970s through open participatn sexual activi and out of the cy's bars and clubs wh the safeguard of ee and readily available treatment of sexually transmted diseas. Begng by explorg the historil velopment and meang of gay bathho and sex clubs the 1970s, I then exame how bat about their closure the lol prs and among gay and lbian anizatns and ernment agenci the begng of the AIDS panmic shaped public disurse about gay sexual practic and the medilizatn of homosexualy.

A BRIEF POLIL—AND PERSONAL—HISTORY OF GAY BATHHO

The ‘emplaced empathy’ associated wh this activism, which I trace the analysis of a prott that led to the occupatn of a public plaza San Francis, the ARC/AIDS Vigil, between 1985 and 1990, emphasized the shared humany between homosexual and heterosexual urban rints reprented by the faiar inographi of domticy and ath. Footnote 7 The foc on urban entreprenrialism and the neoliberal enomic reforms poed by Cy Hall ntributed to a crisis affordabily that me to a head the followg s and the disposssn of workg- and middle-class homosexual rints om the spac that they had appropriated and renovated the 1970s.

Footnote 8 The third ntributor was the nsolidatn of a new amework for reprentg homosexualy the urban landspe and popular culture that foced on homosexual and heterosexual rints’ shared humany (rather than divergent sexualy) and rmed a large part of gay and lbian activism metropolan environments. In San Francis, particular, acunts of sexual activi public baths before 1960 reveal the -existence of the more ‘tradnal’ functns of bathg and relaxatn wh the facilatn of homosexual enunters that uld take place the sna or steam room and other semi-private lotns. Footnote 16 Bébé argued that when the first gay bathho emerged San Francis the 1920s and 1930s they provid an unprecented gree of secury, where homosexual men uld meet each other semi-private environments, and exprs their sexualy ways other than ‘servicg straight men’ anonymoly cisg areas such as Unn Square and Goln Gate Park.

Footnote 18 As gay bathho gaed populary wh ary service members statned San Francis durg World War II, for whom gay bars, unlike baths, were ‘off lims’, more baths opened as ‘explicly gay stutns’ immediately after the war. Footnote 19 In the 1960s, attempts by the cy to close gay bathho on moral grounds, which ultimately failed, galvanized the creasgly policized gay and lbian rints, and by the followg gay baths were celebrated as muny stutns that monstrated gay pri.

LAST GAY BATHHOE S.F. AGRE TO CLOSE ITS DOORS

Footnote 22 For many of their visors, bathho and sex clubs were adult playgrounds where they celebrated not only sex but also the new possibili that the environments, which were no longer targets of systematic police raids, offered for the velopment of gay and lbian urban cultur based on the celebratn of bodily physily and eroticism.

Footnote 23 Gay bathho and sex clubs were profable bs wh loyal ctomers and by the mid-1970s the new and renovated buildgs that hoed them peted wh each other for the latt attractns ameni, opulence and ‘bathhoe entertament’.