Get your towels ready, Cruisers—adult bathhouses could be coming back to New York City thanks to new legislation proposed last week. The Public Health Modernization Act would strike language restricting businesses from hosting sexual activity from the books—that means we may be on the verge of a bathhouse cruising renaissance.
The legislation was proposed by State Senator Erik Bottcher and Assemblymember Tony Simone, and would update the state’s health code to repeal restrictions passed in 1985. “There's no reason why New York City should be one of the only major cities in the Western world that has this outdated prohibition,” said State Senator Erik Bottcher in an interview.
From the turn of the century to the mid-1980s, casual cruising encounters and elaborate orgies at legendary bathhouses like the Everard, St. Marks Baths, and Continental were a staple of gay life. In an era much less friendly to the LGBTQ cause, the baths served as a lifeline for queers to socialize, relax, and fuck.
That all changed when panic over the AIDS epidemic prompted New York to join other cities in prohibiting businesses from facilitating any sexual activity. In New York, the health code provision deemed any business “where anal intercourse, vaginal intercourse or fellatio take place” a “threat to public health.”
But now, after the introduction of life-changing HIV prevention medications like PrEP and PEP, as well as effective treatments for HIV, the consensus among public health experts and community leaders has changed. These outdated AIDS-era restrictions, they agree, cause more harm than good to the queer community. Bottcher and Simone’s legislation marks New York as the latest state to finally remove these restrictive laws from their books—following Minnesota and California.
“Science has changed. Medicine has changed, prevention has changed. It's time for our laws to change, too,” said Senator Bottcher. But repealing the ban on bathhouses is about more than just sexual health. “These are third spaces that were very important to gay life for many years. And there's no reason why we shouldn't have them again,” he said.
The repeal is particularly important to Michael Falco, executive director at the Queer Nightlife Community Center—an arts and community space dedicated to supporting queer nightlife and nightlife workers. They’ve been in conversation for months with city leadership as well as Senator Bottcher to make the case for why changing the state’s laws is so important for nightlife and the queer community at large.
For Falco, the ability to create a safe space for liberation, self-expression, and freedom is an essential component of queer nightlife. “Sex is absolutely part of that freedom and liberation we can discover on a dance floor and a nightclub with each other,” says Falco.
And have them we will—at least if entrepreneurs like Alex Gabriel have their way. Even though the proposed legislation is less than two weeks old, Gabriel says he is already scouting locations in Brooklyn and Manhattan to open a bathhouse that would rival the legendary Continental baths. “Think of a refined version of Steamworks but with the energy of Berghain,” he says. “It will be unlike literally anything New York has seen before.” Will there be swings and gloryholes? Gabriel demures, but he did assure me there would be several pools.
As hot as Gabriel’s vision may be, he acknowledges a few boner-killing complications standing in the way of projects like his. First: the remaining AIDS-era state liquor law withholds liquor licenses from venues that facilitate “sexual acts, lewd conduct, and public exposure.” Drinks sales will be a financial necessity for most bathhouses, so a lack of a liquor license presents a real issue.
The second hurdle is the archaic regulation and zoning codes of New York City itself. Since the city doesn't currently recognize commercial bathhouse models, an interagency task force will have to rewrite numerous city-level codes. Both problems will have to be solved before we enter our bathhouse cruising golden era.
Given the glacial pace of New York bureaucracy, it’s unclear how soon New Yorkers will be able to hit the sauna for a midday orgy. But at least there’s light at the end of the tunnel, and the chance to relive the glory days of New York’s bathhouse-era won’t just be a wet dream for long.