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“It’s a little hard, financially, to make these things work when the only way you’re able to make money is on the entry fee,” he said. With its inclusive atmosphere and diverse clientele, Steamworks Baths provides a welcoming space for relaxation and socializing.

Article 26 was repealed in December.

“So I hope that, as a legislative matter, the job is done, and now it’s on the entrepreneurs,” Mandelman said.

The supervisor shared that at least four are on that list.

Here are some do’s and don’ts for first-timers, and an insight into what you’ll find. An image in San Francisco’s GLBT museum records gay men demonstrating at City Hall wearing only those short white towels; one protester holds up a sign reading, “Out of the Baths and into the Ovens!”

Onerous new regulations adopted in response to the epidemic led to the last of the baths closing in 1987.

Forty years later, after retroviral drugs and PrEP lifted the death sentence once associated with HIV, lawmakers and activists decided the time was right to bring the baths back to San Francisco.

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And there's definitely an untapped market on this side of the Bay among gay men who wouldn't venture to deepest Berkeley for that sort of thing.
Currently there's no timeline for when Maze SF might open, and city approvals for the project are still to come.

The gay bathhouse is back in San Francisco.

So zoning changes were adopted to allow adult sex venues, including bathhouses, in parts of the city that have a historical connection to San Francisco’s queer community, including Upper Market and the Castro, the Tenderloin, and present-day SOMA.

But the bathhouse boosters’ work still wasn’t done.

“Some of these folks, again — as they continued to work their way through the approval processes — found that there was some pre-1980s regulation of bathhouses in the police code that was going to make it hard to get their permits.”

Mandelman referred to Article 26 in the SFPD code, an ordinance adopted in 1973 that mandated bathhouse owners maintain a daily register of patrons, including their names and addresses, the time they arrived, how long they stayed, and their room number.

One advocate for the baths’ return, Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District board member David Hyman, called the police overreach “insulting.”

“Actually enforcing it would be wasteful of police resources, possibly unconstitutional, and of little or no value to the cause of public health and safety,” he said last fall.

The Board of Supervisors — and the SFPD — agreed.

At the Ritch Street Health Club, guests cruised an interior evoking a Minoan palace.

As Born tells the SF Business Times, Maze SF would be "elevated," open 24 hours a day, and would be "unapologetically queer." As he explains it to the publication, "This isn’t your daddy’s old bathhouse with plywood walls painted black. Has not been good for civic life.

Our program is designed for universal scalability, making it the perfect application for any committed individual regardless of experience.

What payment methods do you accept?

We take all major credit cards and debit cards. I think we get a kind of stimulation from some of this online activity, including online-based sex apps, but it’s actually better to have more sustained community in person.

But getting there shouldn't be hard. Prior to that 1984 ordinance, enacted under Mayor Dianne Feinstein, gay bathhouses had proliferated across San Francisco, with many of them concentrated in and around SoMa.

The new ordinance finally passed in November 2024, and there's been some movement on the bathhouse front, with two nascent projects appearing to be on the hunt for space and backers, Castro Baths and New Bathhouse.

"By 2020, with treatments for HIV and PrEP and a whole lot of knowledge that it no longer made sense, and from a public health perspective, we could do better by allowing bathhouses and regulating them," Mandelman said last year.

Currently, there still are no proper queer bathhouses in SF — which are defined by rentable rooms with lockable doors, in addition to showers and spa elements — only the pseudo bathhouse/sex club Eros in the Tenderloin, and the more traditional, non-sexual bathhouse Archimedes Banya.

“You could travel in cities around the country and around the world and find bathhouses, but not in the gayest city in the world, San Francisco, and that seemed weird. Another prospective bathhouse operator also demurred.

It’s an indication that the competition is heating up among the small coterie of would-be bathhouse toppers, who have draped a white towel over their plans.

Mandelman advised prospective owners as they contemplated what form their projects would take.

“If you think about the great bathhouses around the world, they’re not just sex venues,” he said.

You’ll feel like you stepped into the Four Seasons Spa."

The move to open a bathhouse comes five years after openly gay supervisor Rafael Mandelman first proposed rolling back the local ordinance that, at the height of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco, outlawed gay bathhouses for both political and public health reasons.

Steamworks in Berkeley is the closest actual queer bathhouse that's still in business.

But Born hopes to change that — and, interestingly, he identifies as straight, but has had plenty of gay friends over the years and knows a business opportunity when he sees one. We like to organize our fitness classes into small groups, as this allows you to meet others.

What sets you apart from other gyms?

We are a community of people that share the same fitness journey as you.

A healthy lifestyle has to be manageable and realistic for the long term. No matter what your current fitness level is, we have the fitness program that is right for you. You get hooked on feeling good, and junk food just isn’t worth it. It may take a while for your body to get used to training at that intensity, so listen to your body and know you will need recovery time between training days.

Do you provide free refreshments there?

We have filtered water available to our members.

Max's Gym is located and easily accessible from all of Oakland.

Trusted and Loved By Hundreds of Oakland, CA Residents

Questions? It offers a variety of Russian-style saunas, steam rooms, plunge pools, and spa treatments.
We do not accept personal checks.

What kind of exercises can I expect during a workout?

Our class programming will include a strength portion in which you’ll work on something like Olympic weightlifting, deadlifting, squatting, or bodyweight strength or you may work on a skill like handstand push-ups.