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Local contractor Kevin Born is looking to take advantage of the recent change in San Francisco law allowing adult bathhouses to exist again, and he has plans to create a luxury version of a bathhouse in a two-story building he owns on 12th Street in SoMa.
Born, who owns and operates Ashbury General Contracting & Engineering and is a part owner of the Midway nightclub, has submitted plans to the city for Maze SF, a new, upscale gay bathhouse that he hopes to create inside a two-story building at 40 12th Street — a few blocks from the SF Eagle, and a half block south of Market Street.
That addition would be “beyond our local capacity,” he said, and require a regulatory change at the state level.
Mandelman’s predecessor as District 8 supervisor, gay state Sen. Scott Weiner, could pick up the bathhouse baton and run it to Sacramento.
More important than extras like booze (or legal weed, for that matter) is simply getting people together, Mandelman said.
“I think our retreat into our personal spaces, our own homes, our own technology, has not been good for people.
And that’s both a good thing financially for the people who are trying to operate them, and then I think actually makes for a better experience for patrons in those establishments.”
Adding alcohol to the mix could be useful, he said.
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Some publicly lobbied for the baths’ return but aren’t talking after permitting roadblocks were cleared.
After agreeing to share more about their plans with GayCities, Joel Aguero, owner of the nascent Castro Baths, didn’t respond to follow-ups. We're here to ensure you build healthy habits and systems that keep you on the right track.
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With its central location and inclusive environment, Eros offers a comfortable space for LGBTQ+ individuals and visitors to unwind and connect.
Steamworks Baths
Steamworks Baths is a well-known LGBTQ+ sauna located in the SoMa (South of Market) neighborhood of San Francisco. Article 26 was repealed in December.
“So I hope that, as a legislative matter, the job is done, and now it’s on the entrepreneurs,” Mandelman said.
The supervisor shared that at least four are on that list.
And I agree.”
Mandelman started working with community supporters and at the Department of Public Health to determine what they needed to do to usher in the baths’ return.
“There are bathhouses that are not sexual bathhouses, that are not sex venues,” in the city, Mandelman said, like the popular Kabuki Hot Springs in Japantown and the just-opened Alchemy Springs downtown, featuring what they claim is the world’s largest dry sauna.
“But the gay bathhouses that people think of were basically eliminated in the 1980s with court rulings and regulations that prohibited locked doors and required an intrusive level of monitoring of patrons’ activities.”
After a pandemic delay, Mandelman and two co-sponsors, gay Supervisors Matt Dorsey and Joel Engardio, got legislation passed repealing the 80’s-era prohibitions.
“We weren’t actually done” though, Mandelman said, “because when people who would be bathhouse operators started trying to figure out how to get one open, they realized that from a public health perspective, they could do it, but from a zoning perspective, they couldn’t, because there wasn’t the zoning to allow for these kind of facilities.”
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He plans to hire a full-time operator to manage the business, once construction is complete.
Per the Business Times, the permit applications details call for a maze-like design, with lounge spaces upstairs, and "multiple rooms for patrons to engage in sexual activities or watch other patrons engaging in sexual activities."
He's also reportedly been doing market research by surveilling how many people go in and out of Steamworks on a daily basis — he says it's between 250 and 350 per day.
Our program is designed for universal scalability, making it the perfect application for any committed individual regardless of experience.
What payment methods do you accept?
We take all major credit cards and debit cards. Another prospective bathhouse operator also demurred.
It’s an indication that the competition is heating up among the small coterie of would-be bathhouse toppers, who have draped a white towel over their plans.
Mandelman advised prospective owners as they contemplated what form their projects would take.
“If you think about the great bathhouses around the world, they’re not just sex venues,” he said.
Steamworks in Berkeley is the closest actual queer bathhouse that's still in business.
But Born hopes to change that — and, interestingly, he identifies as straight, but has had plenty of gay friends over the years and knows a business opportunity when he sees one. I think we get a kind of stimulation from some of this online activity, including online-based sex apps, but it’s actually better to have more sustained community in person.
A healthy lifestyle has to be manageable and realistic for the long term. The smell of sweat, poppers, chlorine and street weed filled the air.
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“The legislative process has been a little more involved than I had hoped or expected,” gay Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who spearheaded the effort beginning in 2019, told Gay Cities.
“I’ve been involved in San Francisco politics and queer community politics for a couple of decades, and all through that period, there were folks in the queer community, older folks who remembered the bathhouses and either felt that it had been a mistake to close them in the first place or felt that it was time to get them reopened.”
“Younger people who’d heard about the bathhouses couldn’t understand why San Francisco — uniquely apparently — how this very queer city doesn’t have these kinds of facilities,” Mandelman said.
Here are some do’s and don’ts for first-timers, and an insight into what you’ll find. “They’re a kind of community center. With its diverse offerings and relaxing atmosphere, Archimedes Banya provides a rejuvenating experience for LGBTQ+ individuals and visitors.
Eros
Eros is an LGBTQ+-friendly bathhouse and spa situated in the Castro district of San Francisco.
Well, almost.
After running a five-year gauntlet through the city’s byzantine laws governing traditional gay bathhouses, officials promoting their return repealed the last of a set of archaic regulations blocking them late last year.
Now, it’s up to prospective bathhouse owners to get them off their mood boards.
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San Francisco had been home to scores of baths catering to gay men since one of the first, Jack’s Turkish Baths, opened in the 1930s near Polk Street, once the epicenter of gay life in the city.
The baths’ heyday was in the 1970s when gay men swapped 501 Levi’s and lumberjack shirts for a short white towel hanging low on the waist.
And I hope that our muscles for that are not so atrophied that these things wouldn’t be successful if they opened.”
“I think a lot of good can come out of people getting together — not just getting off, although getting off is great — but I think community spaces are important to the community.”
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