In one of the biggest, gayest cities in the world, there’s one big, gay thing missing: big, gay bathhouses. New York City bathing establishments like the Everard (fondly nicknamed “Ever Hard”) and the New St. Marks Baths were flourishing centers of gay social life until 1985, when the city shut them down amid the AIDS crisis. Whether you believe their closure was a necessary measure to save lives or a draconian overreach, almost forty years on, bathhouses like these have yet to return—and they won’t so long as New York State Codes Rules and Regulations, Volume A Title 10 Part 24.2, which deems such facilities “a threat to the public health,” remains on the books.
Still, we work with what we have. There’s the steam room at high-end gyms like Equinox, Crunch, or TMPL, where members can release tension after a hard set of reps. Or the Korean baths in suburban New Jersey, which are rumored to be cruisey (spoiler: they are!). And what about certain hours at a not-to-be-outed bathhouse, which, according to a 1991 New York Times article, had a sign identifying it as “the s…