Gay bathhouses could come again. For once, no one is moaning

“We’re gonna try to make these happen,” Mandelman said in an interview. “Or at least ensure that the city is not the barrier to this happening.”

His first try was unwinding restrictions on the operation of gay bathhouses in the city’s health code, a legacy of the AIDS crisis. He followed that by changing the planning code to allow bathhouses and sex clubs to operate in a larger swath of the city. Most recently, he’s attempting to remove the ultimate authority to regulate and permit these businesses from the San Francisco Police Department.

Mandelman introduced legislation Tuesday that would repeal Article 26 of the police code, which outlines standards around sanitation but also requires businesses to keep a registry of all patrons and prohibits services from being offered behind locked doors. The hope is to get the law passed by the end of the year. 

In a rare bit of San Francisco comity, pretty much everyone is on board. The Department of Public Health was already responsible for much of the Article 26 oversight, and a stretched police department was happy to get it off its plate. Police found themselves ill-equipped to answer questions about waterproofing and what exactly counts as a prohibited “service.”

What goes on inside a sex club may be the stuff of feverish imaginings, but the business of running one is more prosaic, particularly in San Francisco, where red tape is less a bondage prop and more a fact of life.

Although the Tenderloin queer sex club Eros features a glory-hole alley, video play areas, and a handful of sex slings, what’s top of mind for co-owner Ken Rowe in running the 30-year-old business are his real estate footprint, throughput, and the rising cost of insurance. 

Over the years, he’s seen several efforts try and fail to spin up a bathhouse in the city. One of Rowe’s biggest outstanding questions is about utilities. With prices through the roof and the state in perpetual drought conditions, who can afford to fill, clean, and refill pools?

“There’s a reason why we describe ourselves as a sex club. We’re not trying to confuse people,” Rowe said. “But we’ve always said we do better when there’s more choices.”

The allure of reviving bathhouse culture in a gay mecca — paired with a city government trying to make the process easier — has inspired locals to try their hand.