Gay bathhouses in philly

Gay bathhouses that once remained in the shadows to stay in business are now seeking attention to keep their doors open. Some are doing aggressive online advertising and community outreach. Others tout their upscale amenities like plush towels and marble baths. A bathhouse in Ohio has even added hotel rooms and a nightclub.

Gone are the days when bathhouses drew crowds just by offering a discreet gay for gays to meet, share saunas and, often, have sex. It's taken away the need to sneak into back-alley places," said Dennis Holding, 75, who owns a Miami-based bathhouse. In the heyday of bathhouses in the late s, there were nearly gay bathhouses in cities across the U.

In the last decade, bathhouses, including ones in San Diego, Syracuse, Seattle and San Antonio, have shut down and the total nationwide is less than Most patrons are older. Hollywood Spa — one of the largest bathhouses in Los Angeles, a city regarded as the country's bathhouse capital — closed in April.

Owner Peter D. Sykes said fewer customers and rising rent put an end to four decades in business. Bathhouses date to the Roman Empire. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, American bathhouses were built in many cities to maintain public hygiene among poor and immigrant communities. Chicago and Manhattan each had about 20 public bathhouses.

But the need for bathhouse places to wash up declined and by the s and '60s, bathhouses largely had become rendezvous spots for gays, prompting occasional raids because sodomy was still criminalized. Privately run, gay-owned bathhouses proliferated in the s, offering a haven for gay and bisexual men to meet.

Each venue was operated like a speakeasy: a nondescript building often located in the urban fringe. In-house entertainment was common, from DJs to live performers. Bette Midler even launched her career from the stage of the Continental. Amid the AIDS epidemic in the early s, bathhouses were vilified for enabling promiscuity and philly spread the disease, and many either closed voluntarily or by legal pressure.

Those that remained were stigmatized, and now many younger gays see them as anachronisms. Nibbio, the executive director of the North American Bathhouse Association.

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NABA formed two years ago for bathhouse owners to pool best practices for marketing and operations. To attract younger patrons, some bathhouses offer steep discounts, cutting admission by as much as 60 percent. On Tuesdays, Los Angeles' Melrose Spa lets those 18 to 25 in for free, a deal that brought year-old Brett Sparks on a recent midweek visit.

Saporito uses the chain's Cleveland-based flagship spa, whose 50, square feet include luxury hotel rooms and a nightclub, to run the city's annual pride parade. Flex Spas also has sponsored the White Party, an annual electronic music festival in Palm Springs, and partnered with the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, part of an effort to frame the bathhouse as an opportunity for preventing risky behavior.