San Francis tells gay bathho, "Wele back!" :: Bay Area Reporter

Contents:

• GAY BATHHOE EROS TO OPEN S NEW TENRLO LOTN FOR PRI WEEKEND
• GALLERY: SAN FRANCIS GAY BATHHOE HISTORY, IN FLIERS [NSFW]
• SAN FRANCIS TELLS GAY BATHHO, "WELE BACK!"
• GAY SEX VENU RETURN
• HISTORIC GAY BATHHOE NOW TRANSFORMED TO PUPPY PARADISE
• BEHOLD: A MAP OF SAN FRANCIS'S LOST GAY BARS
• LAST GAY BATHHOE S.F. AGRE TO CLOSE ITS DOORS
• A S-OLD BAN ON GAY BATHHO WAS ABOUT TO BE LIFTED. THEN, A PANMIC.

GAY BATHHOE EROS TO OPEN S NEW TENRLO LOTN FOR PRI WEEKEND

When the 30-year-old bathhoe and sna Eros left ’s old home on Market Street near the Castro December 2021, the cy's only remag gay sex club said they had a new home led up.

The gay muny had achieved a lot of liberatn and a lot of promence San Francis over the seventi and on to the early eighti, and I thought that closg the bathho would really be a polil setback. The Rch Street Baths, we thought we'd take a look back on some of the fliers om the plac, which were a primary sexual outlet for the cy's gay muny long before Grdr was even a possibily. 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.

Whether is signifint on the ground pends on if entreprenrs wh the visn and fancial paci and the savvy to open n and operate one of the, " said gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael Manlman of the liftg of the old bathhoe l. Allowg for the reopeng of tradnal gay bathho uld be a boost for lears of the area's Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District as they try to prerve the neighborhood as an LGBTQ enclave. 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.

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

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. He'd been a member of the '70s gay mune that went on to purchase and nvert a fad but wonrfully tact Victorian apartment buildg on the edge of a black ghetto to a gay bathhoe. 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.

Members of the groups were enuraged by the offer of a ee locker to spend the eveng and this helped foster a more faiar and timate atmosphere than was mon other gay bathho of the era. 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. Certa officials San Francis's ernment, and members of s gay/lbian/bisexual muny, strongly disagreed over whether the bs should be closed, should make their own AIDS-preventn efforts, or should ntue operatg unr new regulatns.

SAN FRANCIS TELLS GAY BATHHO, "WELE BACK!"

Steamworks and San Francis's Eros are the last gay sex venu that were left to reopen when California Governor Gav Newsom gave the all-clear last week; San Francis's Blow Buddi and San Jose's the Watergarn were forced to shutter permanently due to the COVID-19 panmic. But somethg that gay bathho and sex clubs offer that apps like Grdr lack is the -person experience, Jensen said, a difference that mirrors how much of society has lived for the past year and their reentry to physil teractn now. 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. Footnote 3 Throughout the followg , facg tense scty and wispread hysteria about gay sexual practic and the diseased gay body, they had to addrs the role of sex homosexual urban cultur.

GAY SEX VENU RETURN

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.

HISTORIC GAY BATHHOE NOW TRANSFORMED TO PUPPY PARADISE

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. Footnote 9 Over the followg two s, sex beme ls central to homosexual cultural inti, beme more heavily ntrolled and mediated, and no longer a primary anizg logic of gay life. Public baths have always been homosocial environments by virtue of the separatn of men and women and the cultur of male and female bondg, rpectively, that they facilated.

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.

BEHOLD: A MAP OF SAN FRANCIS'S LOST GAY BARS

Footnote 15 Communy historian and gay activist Allan Bébé wrote a history of San Francis gay bathho up to 1984, prompted by bat about their closure due to the spread of AIDS that year. 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.

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.

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

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.

As more and more gay men moved to the Castro, for example, a lol bathhoe nverted massage rooms to private cubicl where men uld have sex, much to the dismay of old heterosexual rints who spend their patronage. 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’.

In San Francis, the visibily and tegratn of gay baths the cy's urban landspe – and to a lser extent sex clubs – along wh the polil fluence of their owners and patrons, who reprented gay and bisexual men across social class, ensured that they beme a re part of the everyday liv of a signifint part of the gay populatn and were promoted as gay tourist attractns.

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

Although unrground gay guis had existed sce the 1950s, extensive new maps and guis were profsnally produced and updated regularly wh ‘special’ sectns on bathho sce the mid-1970s.

From the first reports of a rare form of ‘gay ncer’ Sprg 1981, until 1984 when over a thoand people had lost their liv to AIDS, the viral nature of the disease was ltle unrstood and the exact ways spread were unknown. Footnote 29 By his own acunt, Mervyn Silverman, the director of public health for the cy of San Francis, sought the nsultatn of gay and lbian polil lears about regulatg sex bathho early on.