Comments

1
and NPR was reporting that lesbian bars are going extinct as well.

resistance is futile. you will be assimilated.
2
@1 GOOD!
3
memories.....
4
Although I reflexively mourn the decline and disappearance of any culture, ours is one largely born of exclusion and fear. The mainstreaming and dilution of gay culture represents our lives getting better in incredible ways. Though the linguist in me cries for Polari, I do not cry for the larger culture that necessitated it.
5
and yet the STD rate among homosexuals continues to rise.
6
Typically Dan -- bathhouse negative, slutty-sex shaming.

Highly selective quote, too. The full story mentions a booming 50000 sq ft mega bathhouse complex in Ohio with luxury spa services.

And quotes an out 22 year old in LA who feels bathhouses are safer than online or bars when he just wants a quickie.
7
Now if only the pedo priests can get shut down. One small step: the Vatican just revoked the diplomatic immunity of defrocked archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, which could lead to him being extradited and tried in the Dominican Republic, where he stands accused.

The background is in this NYT article from the weekend: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/24/world/…
8
I used to love a good romp at the Bathhouse. La, the memories.....
9
The internet and apps have replaced the physical reality with a virtual one.

Witness Grindr and the like.

Closet cases still abound, Dan, just as the fear and oppressive cultures that fuel them. Not every gay man lives in a city like Seattle.

The modern bathhouse is a clean - sometimes even stylish - spa and gym where mostly out gay men enjoy a sense of nostalgia without the full reality of it.
10
Well, it’s not like you can talk about them at a PTA meeting or other polite company.
11
...also...y'know, the internet is here now.
12
You better trademark "Dick Zombies" before somebody uses it for a band or an adult video.
13
I think there's a large element of fashionableness involved, as well. When I was a baby faggot, the preferred bathing suit was the square-cut shortshort, bikinis were just beginning to be worn by females, and bathhouses were shameful. Ten years later, men were wearing the tiniest bikinis, women were getting close to strings, and bathhouses were (relatively) much more brightly lighted, with many more amenities -- almost like social clubs. That, however, was the culture of the late 50s through the late 60s. Forty-five years is at least a generation and a half if not two full generations. Think of the changes in fashion from when your grandparents were young and contrast them to today's sense of style. Straight or gay, there's a huge difference.
14
I think you underestimate the horror of AIDS , Dan. From the outside, it looked like bathhouses evolved with the explosion of gay pride and sexual freedom of the 70s. Then AIDS hit hard. And an association was made .. As I said, it looked like this, from the outside.
16
@5

...and yet childbirth still kills women the world over, inherently a risky lifestyle.
18
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, you could legitimately blame AIDS for the closure of a lot of bathhouses. Bathhouses—fairly or not—became synonymous with the spread of disease.

Today? Not so much. If bathhouses are continuing to decline, it no longer has anything to do with their association with HIV. It has everything to do with the ease of hooking up online, or through things like Grindr. Bathhouses used to be one of the easiest ways for gay men to find a quick NSA sex. Now technology has given us other options that are easier yet.

Technology is killing bathhouses, not HIV.
19
As a straight, I cannot even imagine the awesomeness of bathhouses. Or grindr. I feel like it's only fair that gays be denied something to level the playing field.
20
Hah!

For once I agree with Ken Mehlman.

*shudder*
21
@14

Yes, from the outside...of the city limits deep in the heart of those lily white suburbs...it looked like the poverty and broken families in the [insert decade here] black community were self-inflicted also.

The view from far, far away whether by time, distance or experience tends to get distorted in the service of ignorance and fear.
23
While I hate Dan's bathhouse-negativity I have to agree the numbers are down in part for the reasons Dan says, no closet, no shame, less demand. There's also the internet making hookups easier but it's a huge time suck.

A lot of bathhouses in USA are crummy and dirty and full of trolls. But not all are. Here and there is someplace clean, fresh towels, some granite & marble and out guys who are in shape attend, more in Europe & Asia than in US.
24
@17

Borders killed Borders.

They were so fixated on Barnes & Noble and giddy with access to cheap money for commercial construction that they went deep into debt building mall locations around the country and handed off their online store, which they viewed as a novelty, to their true competitor, Amazon.

Borders is an "etextbook" example of why you don't mindlessly promote the older, senior management to the helm of a business or organization; often, they have their head jammed so far up the rearend of yesterday that they can't see tomorrow even as it dawns.
25
Maybe this can help spark a movement. :-)

http://www.showerjerk.com
26
Please stop telling the safe sex generation fantastical stories about the good, old days of wild, crazy sex at the bathhouse, in the bushes, down at the docks, in public restrooms, in the alleyway, in the parks, behind the dive bar...

In our world, the STDs are drug-resistant, moving in with your boyfriend carries the risk of "palimony," the bathhouse is more of a museum experience, the gay ghettos are now gentrified for wealthy straight people, the porn is abundant and boring, and sex is completely enveloped in latex.

Kind of killed it for everyone, didn't you, gay grandpa?
27
@26, I remember reading some wild stories of how AIDS started. But yeah, it sure was a fun time, and not just for the gays..
But. But. My brain is still imprinted with news headlines re AIDS. We were all at risk.. Fucking very scary, for many yrs.
29
@27, meh, I think the risk serial monogamist straights were in in the 80's was vastly overstated. dental dams? please.

getting tested for AIDS seemed absurd at the time, and in retrospect it was. more of a political action than a practical method for preventing the spread of the disease.
30
It can be done, even in north america. I'm always hearing about Steamworks in Chicago and similar places in Toronto being full of hot, in shape, not all gross and closeted guys.

The one time I went to the one in Philly it was like a house of horrors, trolls around every blind corner, and even when I did find a guy who I was into, everyone clustered and creeped around, touching. no thank you.
31
I always thought it was behavior that spread STD's and not location.
32
@29, a lot of the boys were fucking each other and then fucking the girls. And who said anything about serial monogamy?
33
And I'm talking bout the 70s; a good ten- fifteen yrs of very loose behaviour, who knew how long the virus had been lurking?
As always, you men know how us women experience life. Might as well just shut up, and let you define us, like, forever.
34
What @3 said. But don't quote me
35
[?]

Assimilation in this case leads clearly to erasure - which will eventually mean having to start over. Of course, for those of us who want to be Mr Sullivan, that would appear to be a feature rather than a bug.

[HA]

And, Mr Horton, just because you couldn't pass the stiff entrance examination, there's no need for sour grapes.
36
But where are conservatives gonna go to suck cocks?
37
@36, airport restrooms?
38
Airport bathrooms are for those who are as closeted as they are desperate. Everyone else without a reputation to protect - closeted *and* a slut - there's Craigslist!
39
I still go to a bathhouse a couple times a year. Though there's no shortage of hot online men willing to hook up, there's something about deciding who to play with based on physical presence vs. online profile for me. Last time I went there was a line out the door. Also for me a bathhouse is a symbol of sexual freedom rather than shame. As gays assimilate there is increasing pressure to act respectable, but I worked too hard in my teens and 20's to be proudly sexually liberated to become a sexless gay conforming to hetro norms of sexuality not that gays are mainstream.
40
Back in my youth, that place on Summit (Steamworks? née Club Seattle) was the cheapest hotel room to sleep off 4 beers too many before heading home sober. And sometimes there was someone worth doing. A room at $20 beats a DUI.
41
Basic Plumbing/Tribe died because it became infested with tweekers doing and or selling drugs. The smartphone apps were a part of the decrease in patrons, but the death knell were the damn meth/heroin zombies living in the basement.
42
@41, agreed. When they were still off Boren BP was fun, lots of hot guys and it didn't have the drug problems. After they moved they must have had a change in management because it really did become a homeless shelter for meth-heads.

But there will always be one or two bathhouses in Seattle simply because there are lots of guys (many of which are hot and lots of younger guys) who get off on the bathhouse experience. And not because they are closeted (I go a couple of times a year and only see a few guys who are closet cases, most you see out and about all the time) but because it can be fun.
43
Yup, as any straight man knows, there's nothing quite like having a place you can go to filled with naked people of the sex you're most attracted to who are eager to have sex with you for free... hm? What's that?

Oh, right.
44
There really isn't anything quite like it when it comes to group sex. I can't think of any other way to get a group of guys together that doesn't require being a professional party planner and syncing schedules only to wind up with no shows.
45
As usual, a big loud "FUCK YOU AND SPEAK FOR YOURSELF" goes to Dan Savage. I am NOT in the closet but still, I would NEVER "meet through friends" or "the supermarket" or something else and have a relationship. Why? Relationships are stupid and overrated.
This whole idea of meeting a guy, knowing him, and going through all the motions and essentially playing house makes me want to vomit. I like sex, and that is all men are there for for me. We meet, we fuck, and maybe I'll get a booty call every now and then if I enjoyed it.
Relationships are for losers and I actually like being on open terms with men and saying "yes, this is just about sex and as long as we consent, who gives a fuck about feelings?"
46
@36
Church?
47
@45: "Relationships are for losers"
tfw no bf
48
@45: As I said to you on the Sarkeesian thread where you were whining about the sexual objectification of men:
Pot. Meet Abercrombie.
Go c_s. You're stupid.
49
@48
As I said before: I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH OBJECTIFICATION OF ANYONE, JUST THE HYPOCRISY OF PEOPLE WHO ARE MAD ABOUT THE OBJECTIFICATION OF ONE GROUP (women) BUT ARE OKAY WITH OBJECTIFYING ANOTHER GROUP (men)
And notice no women have called me "pig" or any other insult. If I had posted something similar about women, they would be all over me like that DILF I met in Everett the other week was (what was his name again? Who the fuck cares. He had a big cock and that's all that matters)
51
I went to bathhouses two different times and couldn't possibly have enjoyed those experiences any less. Maybe it was the huge wad in the drinking fountain. Just grossed me out and gave me the creeps and I am no puritan.
52
@49; you seem like a pig to me. A pig to other men but especially a pig to yourself. Pig attitudes and I'm guessing, a pigs life.

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