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To some gay people here, the closing of the city’s last bathhouse marked the end of an era.
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A half-dozen remaining gay sex clubs, bookstores and theaters have restricted their patrons to “safe-sex” activities, Delventhal said. Others closed when patronage dropped, leaving only 21st Street Baths. Several bathhouses chose to close rather than monitor their patrons.
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Ultimately a local judge blocked the shutdown, instead allowing the clubs and bathhouses to stay open if they monitored their patrons and ejected anyone engaging in activities that could spread the AIDS virus. In the 1970s, before AIDS began to appear in the gay community, San Francisco was home to 20 to 30 gay bathhouses and sex establishments, said Paul Boneberg, executive director of Mobilization Against AIDS. We have benefited the community for over 25 years and feel now the time has come to close. A recorded message on the bath’s phone told callers, “We are closed and will not reopen. Neither the bathhouse owners nor their attorney were available for comment. “If they opened up (again) for a bathhouse, they’d be in big trouble.” “They cannot reopen for any sex-oriented business without permission from the courts,” Delventhal said. But this week, the bathhouse’s owners reached a settlement with the city that called for closure of the bathhouse in exchange for dismissal of the charges, said Deputy City Atty. In April, the San Francisco city attorney’s office had charged 21st Street Baths with violating a 1984 court order requiring clubs to bar sexual activities that could spread acquired immune deficiency syndrome. They can build affordable housing projects.The last remaining gay bathhouse in San Francisco closed with hardly a ripple this week, a victim of stricter laws and changing life styles brought about by the AIDS epidemic. It’s located in a ‘Service/Arts/Light Industrial (SALI) District), which is meant ‘to protect the expansion of existing general commercial, manufacturing, home and business service, and light industrial activities, with an emphasis on preserving and expanding arts activities’.Ĭondos, office blocks, or hotels can’t be built on this site. The building is zoned for development up to 30 feet in height. However, it might not be the end-of-the-line for these iconic purveyors of promiscuity. Especially as marketing materials for the Central SoMa site gloats of its easy freeway access in an area of ‘expanding Tech and Entertainment’. While the operators of the club would like to stay at the premise, a new owner who doesn’t want a sex club running on the property could easily shut it down.
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There’s themed nights ranging from watersports to naked nights, and the dress code is fetish, jockstraps and underwear. It’s open till 6am most days.īlow Buddies boasts glory holes, play rooms, mirrors, dark rooms and a heated backyard area. The gay sex club is a private members’ club for men over the age of 21, charging patrons membership subsidies alongside an entree fee of $17 (14.97EUR). However, the building is now on the market for $3.25 million (2,861,495EUR), according to Socketsite.
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The 6000-square-foot club has operated for three decades at 933 Harrison Street, South of Market. Blow Buddies, the largest gay sex club in San Francisco, is in danger of shutting down as the owners of the building look to sell.