Decades after the AIDS crisis led to the emergency closures of gay bathhouses across the country, gay sex has never been more profitable. Grindr generates $3 million yearly revenue per employee, exceeding giant tech companies like Meta, Apple and Google’s parent company Alphabet. Corporate dating giant Match Group made a $100 million bet on cruising app Sniffies in April of this year. 

As Steamworks Baths celebrates 50 years, the chain which once expanded from Sacramento, Fresno, Honolulu, San Juan Puerto Rico, Chicago, Toronto, Seattle and Vancouver— even inspiring a “Steamworks: The Musical”— faces little to no competition from brick-and-mortar substitutes. 

It has also proved it can compete alongside Grindr’s AI-assisted hookups and Sniffies’ 50-person orgies. It could also be that traditional gay bathhouses are in large demand but in low supply.

Sam, whose name has been changed for privacy purposes, first visited the Berkeley bathhouse 3 years ago, when he was 25. He keeps driving 71 miles from Sonoma County because it’s the only gay bathhouse anywhere near his area. 

The sauna and hot tub are some of his favorite amenities, but the perk of being surrounded by other gay men is what keeps him coming back.

“At least at Steamworks, if I find a really cute guy that I desperately want to make out with, at least that’s something I can do there,” he said, as opposed to doing so in a locker room where he might risk being arrested for cruising a man. 

Steamworks founder Rick Stokes brought his idea to life in 1976 with his partner David Clayton. A year later, the civil-rights lawyer would lose to Harvey Milk when running for a seat on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors— running a comparatively “conservative” campaign against the future gay icon. 

Zose Newell, 53, who manages Steamworks’ Berkeley location, never visited a bathhouse until his late 30s. He learned the ins and outs of them by working at one for 15 years. 

Newell says Stokes’ idea for opening the 24/7 bathhouses was to have a place for gay men to go, no matter what. “He wanted to have a place where you could go at any hour and have community,” he said.

Despite being grateful, Sam also acknowledges a need for competition. 

“There should be something that’s nicer than Steamworks, so then they compete against each other, and then maybe Steamworks ups its quality a little bit more.”

Nonbinary college student Berlin Telfar, 19, who goes by their house name, says Steamworks isn’t their favorite. It’s the only option, and they have a problem with that. 

“I used to know a guy who would go to Steamworks and he lived in fucking Atwater, that is a four-and-a-half, five-hour drive one way,” they said. “He would do that once a month or twice a month because it was that important to him to come out.”

Another issue arose after they befriended a frequent attendee and, after several interactions, found out he was “a crazy person.” Since then, they’ve feared running into him at Steamworks, so they haven’t returned. 

Being the only brick-and-mortar spot for gay hookups, though, hasn’t been all letdowns. Telfar remembers meeting a really good friend for the first time in the Castro but forgetting to ask for their contact. They would later reconnect at Steamworks.

“It’s something we both really value about our friendship. The fact it was 100% human interaction-based,” they said. “Like the internet helped us stay in contact, but it is not what initiated our first contact between us. We were just two people who ran into each other and liked each other.”

A smell of chlorine is the first thing that meets club members as they pack the rest of their belongings into a locker, except for a key on a band and a white towel wrapped around their waists. Past the ground-level hot tub, across from the sauna baths, rows of red doors line hallways of rooms for men to rent for a couple of hours. 

Further in, a fully stocked gym with 120lb free weights and vending machines selling lube, poppers, douche hoses, and other products that might’ve forgotten to be packed on the latest trip to the bathhouse. The warehouse-shaped bathhouse also includes a DJ booth that hosts weekly themed parties and a cruising playground with gloryholes and sex swings. A mosaic of an uncut penis christens the space from the wall at the end, as if it were in a Catholic chapel. 

Despite medical advancements like PreP and PEP becoming mainstream around 2017 — the cities that banned these bathhouses to control the spread of HIV have only now started to roll back these bans while bathhouses in places like Europe have already bounced back. 

“The U.S. is very puritanical. ‘Oh my god, sex! Oh my god, nudity!’ Everything is like a big deal here. That’s this country,” Newell says. 

For the past 6 years, Rafael Mandelman, the president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, has worked to pass three pieces of legislation aimed at facilitating the return of gay bathhouses to the area, and a fourth bill is pending. 

Mandelman said there was a “low-level agitation” for the past 40 years to reopen the city’s bathhouses—and a lot of enthusiasm for working to repeal the ban.

Across the bay in Berkeley, the enthusiasm for Steamworks is most apparent on Sunday nights, when a line extends outside the door and down the block. More often, though, it manifests through the regulars who visit on their lunch breaks.

Newell notes that while he understands people are trying to open competing bathhouses, he’s not sure how easy it is to open a “large quality establishment, especially like this one.” 

Kevin Born, a local contractor, is interested in testing the water in San Francisco’s bathhouse sector. In order to gauge demand he reportedly tracked the number of people entering the Steamworks in Berkeley, which he describes as 250 to 350 per day. 

After all the work that’s been done to repeal the AIDS-era bathhouse bans, Mandelman thinks the high costs associated with managing water, plumbing and other infrastructure might still be an economic hurdle—with few, if any, options to recoup those costs other than with membership fees.

“Some of the ways in which entertainment venues make money are not open to bathhouses,” he said, noting how state law bans bathhouses from serving alcohol. 

Newell, the Steamworks manager, doesn’t think the apps pose much of a threat. After all, more people have been coming in the last five years or so. He attributes the business’ success to its championing of diversity. 

“We have Latin night. There’s hip-hop night. Gender Fuck is a transgender celebration where all gender expressions can come—women, men, whatever—and it’s just it’s a good place to escape.”

Save for any bureaucratic setbacks, Born plans to open his gay bathhouse in the South of Market neighborhood in June 2027. A new gay bathhouse, he described as not “your daddy’s old bathhouse with plywood walls painted black” but instead like a “Four Seasons Spa”, could force Steamworks into leveling up if they want to see another 50 years. 

In the future, Newell says he’d like to see technological upgrades like allowing members to check in on their phones, but it’s hard to upgrade without shutting down temporarily and facing complaints from members. 

He’s the wrong person to ask about the apps, he said. After all, he’s been married for three years to his husband—whom he met at Steamworks. 

With routine clinical services for visitors to get tested for HIV and philanthropic initiatives to fundraise for different causes every year, the Steamworks brand has comfortably situated itself as a community leader. 

“We’re professional, and it’s not shady or seedy. We’re constant. It’s constantly being cleaned and updated. I think the public comes in, loves it. 50 years is a long time.” he said. “Everyone knows about this place.”