Gay Bathhouse - Layout and Typical Amenities

Layout and Typical Amenities

On being buzzed in, the customer receives a towel and the key for his room or locker. The customer undresses; storing his clothing in the locker provided, and is then free to wander throughout the public areas of the bathhouse, which typically include the amenities of a traditional bathhouse or steambath (Picture from the movie Hamam).

Many bathhouses also provide free condoms and lubricant. Some establishments require a piece of identification or an item of value to be left with the front desk on entry. Homosexualities emphasized the importance of the towel:

Visiting a downtown gay bath was in many ways like revisiting a high-school gym – everyone wearing the same towel, in the same color, on the same part of the body. There was no status consciousness in the social-stratification sense; the towel or loincloth created a sort of equal-status social group.

— an ethnographer, Homosexualities, p239, 1979

Bathhouses are usually dimly lit and play music. They are often laid out in fashion to allow or encourage customers to wander throughout the establishment; such a space is often referred to as a "maze". Rooms are usually grouped together, as are lockers. Bathhouses are frequently decorated with posters of nude or semi-nude men, and sometimes explicit depictions of sex. It is not uncommon to see pornographic movies playing on wall-mounted televisions throughout the bathhouse.

Most men typically just wear the towel provided. Some bathhouses are clothing optional and some encourage total nudity. In some bathhouses nudity is forbidden in the common areas of the establishments. While some men may wear underwear or fetish-wear, in most bathhouses it is unusual for customers to remain fully or even partially dressed in street clothes. Bare feet are customary, though some men prefer to wear flip flops or sandals, mostly for foot protection. The room or locker key is usually suspended from an elastic band which can be worn around the wrist or ankle.

Some bathhouses require customers to purchase yearly memberships and many offer special entry rates to members or to students or other groups. In some countries, bathhouses can restrict entrance to men of certain age ranges (apart from the general requirement of being an adult) or physical types, although in other places this would be considered illegal discrimination. Some bathhouses hold occasional "leather", "underwear", or other theme nights.

In the 1970s bathhouses began to install "fantasy environments" which recreated erotic situations that were illegal or dangerous:

Orgy rooms . . . encouraged group sex, while glory holes recreated (public) toilets, and mazes took the place of bushes and undergrowth (in public parks). Steam rooms and gyms were reminiscent of the cruisy YMCAs, while video rooms recreated the balconies and back rows of movie theaters. A popular Chicago bathhouse called Man‘s Country provided a full-size model of an Everlast truck where visitors could have sex in the cab or in the rear, which served as an orgy room . . . Man's Country also offered a . . . fake prison cell made of rubber bars.

— Eddie Coronado, The history of gay bathhouses

Many bathhouses sell food and drinks, cigarettes, pornography, sex toys, and toiletries. Some bathhouses also provide non-sexual services such as massage and reflexology.