A Brief Polil—and Personal—History of Gay Bathho ‹ Lerary Hub

Contents:

• A PEEK UNR THE TOWEL: INSI THE 500-YEAR HISTORY OF GAY BATHHO
• A BRIEF POLIL—AND PERSONAL—HISTORY OF GAY BATHHO
• GAY BATHHO WERE BARELY SURVIVG. AND THEN ME COVID-19.
• BEFORE IT BURNED DOWN, THIS BATHHOE SERVED AS A HAVEN FOR NEW YORK CY’S GAY COMMUNY
• THE HISTORY OF GAY BATHHO. 1984
• DID CLOSG NEW YORK CY BATHHO THE 1980S STRIP DIGNY OM GAY MEN?
• A S-OLD BAN ON GAY BATHHO WAS ABOUT TO BE LIFTED. THEN, A PANMIC.
• TWO PANMIC YEARS LATER, GAY BATHHOE ZONG BACK ON THE DOCKET IN SF
• GAY BATHHOE HIV PREVENTN: THE E OF STAFF MONORG OF PATRON SEXUAL BEHAVR

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

An extraordary, glimpse to the pre-AIDS gay sexual culture, "The Fairoaks Baths" is an exhib of Polaroids taken by Frank Melleno durg the sprg and summer of 1978 at the Fairoaks Hotel, a San Francis bathhoe. 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.

A BRIEF POLIL—AND PERSONAL—HISTORY OF GAY BATHHO

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.

I met a handsome Black man wh dreadlocks a gay bar lled The Fireplace on the edge of Dupont Circle, and after a few rounds of drks, we left to go have sex only to disver that neher of uld take the actn back to where we lived. So, by the late 1970s, you uld roll your ey at the opponents of gay sexual liberatn as you walked to the Roman Holiday Spa Los Angel; or the Nob Hill Theater San Francis; or Man’s Country Chigo; or the Olympic Baths Washgton, D. Here’s how the distorted story go: gay bathho, sex clubs, and porn theaters had no reemg social value and were purely an outgrowth of the immoral, dg-fueled, hedonistic liftyle of queer men, and closg the lewd dwellgs durg the AIDS crisis the 1980s was the pnt cisn.

GAY BATHHO WERE BARELY SURVIVG. AND THEN ME COVID-19.

Then when spurred to actn, a host of elected officials ed the public health crisis as a pretense to enact measur that had long been on their polil wish list—for stance, closg the gay bathho, sex clubs, and porn theaters, which was amed as a public health measure. I’ve raised this topic wh dozens of queer people across generatns, and a staggerg number nsir a matter of mon knowledge that shuttg down the gay bathho, sex clubs, and porn theaters was a necsary and effective policy unr the circumstanc.

As public health workers argued at the time 1980s, keepg the gay bathhoe, sex clubs, and porn theaters open would provi them wh plac to te people about HIV and AIDS, to tt people for HIV and AIDS, and to offer people greater accs to medil treatment for HIV and AIDS. My purpose unrsrg the value of gay bathho, sex clubs, and porn theaters and retracg the polil motivatns for closg so many of them down durg the AIDS crisis this say and my novel, My Government Means to Kill Me, isn’t simply an exercise explorg history.

To the untraed eye, gay bathho like Steamworks are mere ns of iquy, where taps on the bathroom floor, a lgerg glance, or a door ajar says much more than you’d expect; but to the iated and the experienced, they are ed that, but also so much more. Emjay Rawls, who worked at Steamworks om November 2015 to October 2018 and lls the bt job she’s ever had, says that the bathhoe often sponsors events the muny at popular gay bars Boystown, cludg Hydrate, Rose’s Tavern, and Sitrack. Lol gay historian Owen Keehnen, who -wrote wh Rear publisher Tracy Baim a bgraphy of Chuck Renslow, says Man’s Country at one pot boasted a leather shop and a shop sellg wtern wear, alongsi s gym, whirlpool, glory hol, and mic hall.

BEFORE IT BURNED DOWN, THIS BATHHOE SERVED AS A HAVEN FOR NEW YORK CY’S GAY COMMUNY

In an say on his webse, “Brotherhood of the Whe Towel, ” Keehnen also scribed how Man’s Country brought popular performers wh a gay cult followg, cludg Boy Gee, the Village People, and Dive. But spe the historic good the spac have done, for some gay people like Michael Gifford, who loaned a salvaged Man’s Country glory hole to the Leather Archiv & Mm June 2019, bathho are some ways a microsm of some of the most ser problems facg the muny, namely chemsex—or sex unr the fluence of dgs—and blurred l of nsent. On the other si stood the gay bathhoe proprietors, San Francis AIDS Foundatn, the San Francis Human Rights Commissn, a handful of polis, the gay prs, and most — but certaly not all — of the gay muny.

When the gay liberatn movement rose om the broken bottl of the Stonewall Uprisg, a new generatn of gay men—experiencg a measure of sexual eedom for the first time morn history—created a market for more bathho.

“It certaly was important at the time to have a place where gay men [uld] go and cise and have sex wh each other—but also meet each other, ” says Eric Newman, a Los Angel-based scholar and cric who has lectured LGBTQ studi at the Universy of California, Los Angel. For many the muny, the cy’s failure to force the Everard to rrect s safety vlatns—well known prr to the blaze—unrsred a feelg among gay men that their liv were simply not worth much the ey of officials.

THE HISTORY OF GAY BATHHO. 1984

Twelve days after the blaze, rears of the gay magaze Michael’s Thg me upon a full-page ad appealg for donatns to be sent to the Metropolan Communy Church (MCC), one of the first ngregatns Ameri to openly wele LGBTQ people. The succsful fundraisg effort “shows that, when faced wh a tragedy, the gay muny n actually e together quickly and effectively and lovgly—spe all of the homophobia, ” says Michael Bronski, an activist, thor and historian at Harvard Universy.

“Plac that were relatively private—and this clud gay bars wh back rooms, bathho and public cisg s—were important, and still are, bee as gay men we don’t have a lot of mols for what sex n be or what timacy looks like, ” Mattson says.

Timothy Lyle, assistant profsor of English at Iona College (at left), and Stephen Engel, associate profsor of polics at Bat, prent rearch argug that the 1980s closure of New York Cy’s gay bathho was an act of “digny takg” om the gay muny. Workg wh bath owners, anizatns such as the Coaln for Sexual Rponsibily and Gay Men’s Health Crisis unrtook substantial mpaigns to promote safer sex and to make remendatns, to be backed by spectns, for tnal, hygienic, and stctural improvements the bathho.

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

The gay muny’s effort to support the bathho, signed to balance health (and polil) imperativ wh sex-posivy and muny solidary, was aligned wh some official ristance to closg the baths, part on the grounds that closur would nstute excsive ernment terference. “The bathhoe closur perpetuated [a narrative of gay] culpabily, igned pretty ser divisns wh the gay and lbian muni, and produced wh gay men, I thk, a ep distst and even fear of ernment — and one another, to be hont. 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.

Footnote 2 However, the public perceptn of AIDS as a ‘gay disease’ and the medilizatn of the gay male body and s physil and discursive spac domated early bat, pecially around gay bathhoe closur 1983–84. 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.

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.

A S-OLD BAN ON GAY BATHHO WAS ABOUT TO BE LIFTED. THEN, A PANMIC.

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.

TWO PANMIC YEARS LATER, GAY BATHHOE ZONG BACK ON THE DOCKET IN SF

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. 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.

GAY BATHHOE HIV PREVENTN: THE E OF STAFF MONORG OF PATRON SEXUAL BEHAVR

Reprentatns of gay bathho advertisg the 1970s and early 1980s that clud ads on public billboards (Figure 1) were a far cry om earlier pictns of them as dgy, dirty and dangero spac the g of gay male urban culture.