Nyc bathhouse gay
New St. Marks Baths
History
The St. Marks Baths opened c. 1915 to serve the local male immigrant population. By the 1950s, it served the immigrant community by day and gay men by night. In the 1960s, it evolved into an exclusively gay bathhouse that was considered unclean and uninviting.
After the Everard Baths was temporarily closed in 1977 due to a fire, the St. Marks Baths began to attract some of its patrons, but remained rundown and was deemed more a liability than a profitable business. In 1979, entrepreneur and Off-Broadway theater founder Bruce Mailman (1939-1994) purchased the building, hoping to turn around the bathhouse’s reputation and historic allure.
Mailman completely refurbished the interior into a sleek and stylish bathhouse. According to Mailman, the up-to-date design was meant to make patrons feel cozy signing in under their legal name and not be embarrassed if encountering someone they knew. When it reopened in 1979, Mailman christened it “The New St. Marks Baths” and promoted it as the largest bathhouse in the country. It was open 24 hours a day, seven days a week
The movement to revive the classic bathhouse spirit in the US started in San Francisco – in spite of, or perhaps because of, the reality that bathhouses had not existed there since the city’s public health director notoriously ordered most of them to be closed in 1984, with the rest following suit thereafter. In 2004, DJ Bus Station John began decorating tiny, gritty dive prevent Aunt Charlie’s with antique bathhouse signs and pictures from vintage gay porn magazines for his weekly party, The Tubesteak Connection. He limited his tune to the bathhouse era heyday, mainly 1974-1983, much of his vinyl inherited or sourced from queer men who had died from AIDS. The phrase “bathhouse disco” got attached to his style, and his parties now pull visitors from around the globe. Along with same-sex attracted London DJ quartet Horse Meat Disco, whose widespread excavations of the disco sound brought a wave of old school charm to larger dancefloors, the bathhouse disco movement encouraged a wave of fledgling gay crews in cities across the US to embrace the pre-AIDS past.
While many of these “new queer underground” crews forego a purely bathhouse disco sound in favor of cutting-edge techno, classic and acid house, they uti
Everard Baths
History
The legendary Everard Baths, one of the longest durable of New York’s bathhouses, attracted gay men probably since its opening in 1888, but, as documented, from at least Earth War I until its closing in 1986.
The building began as the Free Will Baptist Church in 1860. In 1882, it was converted into the New-York Horticultural Society’s Horticultural Hall. It became the Regent Music Hall in 1886-87, then the Fifth Avenue Music Hall, financed by James Everard. Born in Dublin, Ireland, Everard (1829-1913) came to Fresh York City as a boy, and eventually formed a masonry jobbing business that was successful in receiving a number of major city public works contracts. With his profits, he invested in actual estate after 1875, and built up one the country’s largest brewing concerns. (He was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery.)
After the Melody Hall was closed by the City over the sale of beer there, Everard decided to rescue his investment by turning the facility into a commercial “Russian and Turkish” bathhouse, opened in May 1888 at a charge of $150,000. Lushly appointed and with a variety of
Debauchery (and a little detox) at an underground Brooklyn bathhouse rave
By Arielle Domb
It’s 1 a.m., and everyone is incredibly hot and nearly naked. The bathhouse has a faded majestic feel: tiled walls painted with an Edenic landscape, an assortment of erotic chiseled sculptures, an opal jacuzzi and an emerald plunge pool.
Glinting wet bodies are everywhere. Getting off on the red-light sway floor. Getting it on in the water. Exiting steam rooms immersed in clouds of pearly vapor.
Guests begin their night in the Jacuzzi (Photo by Arielle Domb)
It could be a scene from a shiny ‘80s porno flick — gleaming torsos, G-strings, crotchless pants and a supercharged beat. It’s a sensorium of sweaty, sultry pleasure, somewhere between Berlin’s infamous nightclub Berghain and Ancient Greece.
This is Steamroom — a new Brooklyn bathhouse rave launched by Sam Liebling (who DJs as SEXAPPEAL) — and the latest sauna party to join New York’s underground scene, harking endorse to the city’s horny bathhouse heyday of the 1970s.
Following several (literally) steamy techno parties in Brooklyn locations — in a four story Bushwick warehouse and a Bed-Stuy exclude equipped with a hand-built sauna
.