New national bathhouse survey.

[Marlin]

Buffalo's only bath house closed about 25 years ago. Nearby Rochester still has one. 
Toronto is only 90 miles away and has 2 very nice 24/7 facilities, Spa XS and Steamworks. 25 years ago there were at least 5. 
I have not visited the Toronto bath houses in about 10 years, but they were always crowded on weekend nights with lots of action. 

[BBBottom98]

Southampton UK here and used to head to Pink Broadway but that closed around New Year's 2023. It's a shame as it was a fun place to go and had been around a while.

[Guest]

Crew Club in D.C. is pretty good.  I lived in D.C. for 2 years, 2012 to 2014, and I go just about every Saturday night.

[lower_bucks_bottom]

Philadelphia uses to have 2 but the Sansome Street Gym had a fire and the owner decided to sell the building rather than rebuild. Club Philly is still open and the only one left.

[Movietheaterslut2]

I live halfway between Seattle, WA and Vancouver, BC. Seattle has two (Steamworks and Club Z). I like them both, have had fun at both. Vancouver BC has three (Steamworks, Steam1, and  F212 Steam) I prefer Steamworks in Vancouver.

I've been to both the places in Portland, and really enjoy Steam Portland. All of these kinds of places are hit and miss, but I usually get enough dick to put a smile on my face lol

I prefer adult theater spaces, like Airport Video (north of Seattle). Cheaper, a bit dirtier, and I usually get more dick down my throat. 

[austin_submale]

There used to be a Midtowne Spa in Austin, but it closed down a few years ago.  I never went there, as I wasn't really that active during the time it was open but I heard it had a lot of business.  Unfortunately it was in a part of town that has gotten very expensive and that's what I heard did it in.  Rent got to where it couldn't stay open anymore.  That has closed a lot of other long time storied businesses (restaurants, bars, etc) in the Austin area.  Nowdays too with the political climate we have (and not just from the right, the left politicians here are also largely against sex based businesses because of health/covid/monkeypox/etc reasons instead of religious ones) I am not sure it would be possible to open a new business like that.  The local city level politicians use manipulation of zoning, code, building/occupation permits, business licensure and other chicanery to keep out businesses they don't like.  And they like to lean on landlords to shut down businesses by threats of things like "nuisance" violations that they can't really do legally -- lots of threats and whatnot.  We're down to only two bookstores where anyone can play anymore, and they're both outside the city limits of Austin I believe where the Austin Health Dept doesn't have jurisdiction.  There used to be at least 3 more.  2 got shut down probably 12-15 years ago because the owner got in trouble on some kind of tax beef.  The last one that closed basically didn't make it past Covid.  They re-opened limited hours after but didn't last long.  The same person who owned that one owns one of the two still left.  It is still not open 24 hours like it used to be.

San Antonio still has a spa where the Cumunion has been held recently, but I haven't had an opportunity to go down there to check it out.  San Antonio is an hour and a half to two hours away but I rarely get that direction and when I do I usually don't have time or I'm not alone.  There is a lot more up in the DFW area and I've heard Houston as well but I don't get to either of those very often either.  I did check out one of the bookstores with booths in the Ft. Worth area when I was up there last year.  It was kind of a disappointment though, but I may have been there on a slow night because I've heard good things about that place from other people and it looked like it should have been better.

I really wish I had $$$ because I'd really love to open up a bookstore or spa.  I think one that was run by someone who really understands what guys are looking for could make a lot of $$$ -- the places that have made it seem to follow certain models.  It would be a matter of finding the right location.  You'd either have to own the land or have a very sympathetic landlord.  Ideally you'd hide the ownership as much as possible by proxy controlled shell corporations I'd think.  Then possibly you could control both the land and business ownership.  It would definitely need to be far enough out of town to be out of reach of the city politics but off a major enough road to get traffic flow.  The two that are left are like that, they're along major freeways out of town.

 

[topblkmale]

Sadly I never got to visit Watergarden in San Jose before it closed. 

 

 

[BlkBear77]

4 minutes ago, topblkmale said:

Sadly I never got to visit Watergarden in San Jose before it closed. 

 

 

I’m miss the place. I spent many evenings there.

[1Exhibitionist]

Club Saint Louis is my local bathhouse and worth the price of admission.

[barecubtop]

I live in Indianapolis and (somehow) we have two bathhouses that are still open.  Club Indy is downtown and The Works is out by the fairgrounds. 

I went to Club Indy this week after several months without going (no particular reason other than scheduling and convenience).  Over the last couple years they've replace the hot tub with a larger dry sauna, and they rearranged the dark room to be a little more maze-like with a sling and some gloryhole booths.  When I was there this week, it was pretty dead in terms of a crowd, but I fucked one of the employees. 

I agree with others who have said Steamworks in Chicago is pretty amazing.  I was up there in December and it was just as great as before the pandemic.  I need to get up there more often.

[BootmanLA]

On 2/20/2024 at 10:13 PM, jz48811 said:

Denver no longer has a bathhouse which is kind of hard to believe. 

As noted, I don't find it hard to believe at all that any large city in 2024 might lack bathhouses. Again, nothing against them at all - I'd be happy if they were flourishing - but they met a need at one time that has largely diminished. The factors working against them - especially rising real estate values in downtowns, which is traditionally where they were located (because downtowns used to be cheap real estate, compared with thriving suburbs) - affect them everywhere they once existed.

[NWUSHorny]

24 minutes ago, BootmanLA said:

rising real estate values

I suspect this is the main driver in the loss of bathhouses in many cities. Not all of them are in the downtown core, but real estate values have risen substantially above the rate of general inflation across the board in most major cities over the last 25 years. It will be interesting to see how the fallout from the current glut of vacant office and retail space shakes out and hopefully corrects the problem. Vacant retail properties seem to be getting slowly converted to residential, but so far vacant office spaces seem to be just sitting.

[BootmanLA]

5 minutes ago, NWUSHorny said:

Vacant retail properties seem to be getting slowly converted to residential, but so far vacant office spaces seem to be just sitting.

That's true in some place, but not all. I know of at least a few major cities where major office towers are being converted to residential, and even here in podunk Baton Rouge, one of our only three privately-owned "skyscrapers" (each in the 25-floor range) is being converted to high-end apartments, for which there is apparently lots of pent-up demand. (The fourth "skyscraper" here is the State Capitol, also the tallest at 34 floors, but as a government building it's not part of the real estate market per se.)

[Ab100c]

When I regularly visited Houston a few years back there was the high-end sauna downtown (Club Houston) which was always busy with mainly young guys. At the other end of the spectrum there was a warehouse just off I10 and 610 which was like a big adult bookstore (just without the books…or the store!) with lots of booths and plenty of hot Latino guys looking for asses and mouths to fuck as they were away from their wives. I enjoyed both places but always had a better time at the warehouse ! Anyone else remember that place ?

[Guest]

On 2/18/2024 at 7:21 PM, BathhouseCumdumpDC said:

I live in the Washington, DC area and frequent Crew Club one or twice a month on a weekend night. I would not want to live in an area that did not have a gay bathhouse. 

Never been to Crew Club and I'm only 2 hours away from DC. Need to spend a weekend night in DC.