San Francisco officials and community members are trying to determine whether gay bathhouses should be allowed after an absence of nearly three decades. Most such businesses shut down almost 30 years ago, as the AIDS epidemic raged. In 1984, a San Francisco Superior Court judge issued an injunction forcing several bathhouse owners to remove doors from private rooms and have staff monitor patrons to ensure they were practicing safe sex. The order was to remain in place until the city's public health director declared the AIDS epidemic over. Despite all of this, bathhouses have continued to operate in San Francisco throughout the 1980s until today. In addition, one only had to cross the Bay Bridge into Berkeley, or drive to San Jose, in order to visit bathhouses. Ken Rowe, owner of The Castro landmark bathhouse Eros said, “It all depends on how you define bathhouse. According to the police code for bathhouse, yes, if you provide a steam room or sauna, that's a bathhouse. By normal vocabulary, a gay bathhouse is private rooms and yeah...since the court injunction against private rooms in San Francisco sex clubs, that adds to the confusion.” But the gay men are not confused; they just have mass orgies in the club’s public areas. The absence of doors hampers nothing. As for monitoring, they are always too dark to see much of anything.
A new study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concludes that “one in five gay men in the United States has HIV, and almost half of those who carry the virus are unaware that they are infected.” In New York City, Dr.Demetre Daskalakis, a Professor at NYU School of Medicine, often spends his nights haunting the various gay-bathhouses around Manhattan vaccinating men against a new outbreak of meningitis among sexually-active homosexual males and warning patrons of the risks inherent with gay sex. Yet, back in San Francisco, Rowe, of Eros, said, “We always ask ... what is it you're missing about those private rooms from the 1970s? Generally, what guys talk about is a sense of camaraderie” and “a sense of freedom,” among other benefits. “Those are all aspects we try to do at Eros in our whole building,” he said, including through the club's lounge, classes, “and having an open space for guys to play in altogether.” In essence, many young and lonely boys are lured into these places with a promise of friendship and acceptance; a false illusion that they are merely spots were gay men congregate in non-sexual and completely healthy ways. Not so, for these pits are dark and cramped; men often have sexual relations with those whom they never even see. When I walked through them, all I could make-out were the shadowy figures passing by me.
Again, I want to warn all gay men, especially the young who may be reading this: Do not go into these places. Only disease and death awaits you there. The people inside do not want to be your friend…they only want to use you. If you are a young piece of fresh meat, you will be quickly preyed upon. Men will lie to you, make promises, and then force you into doing things you don’t want to do. After it’s all over, you may just walk away – beaten and bruised, but otherwise intact. However, you may also leave with an incurable disease. I knew one young guy, who moved from the Mid-West to find love and sexual liberty in San Francisco; after only a couple of months in The Castro he came to me and said he was HIV+. He died in 1997.