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Market Street's Eros is now the only longstanding gay-oriented sex club remaining in San Francisco. One thing is certain: it likely won't become an apartment building or tech office, which has been the fate of many SoMa warehouses.ĭue to zoning restrictions, the building cannot be used to construct market-rate housing, hotels or offices it can only be used for light-industrial manufacturing or affordable housing. The club is a cornerstone of SoMa's queer and leather bar scene for both locals and out-of-towners, and its closure marks the end of a major chapter for San Francisco's LGBTQ+ nightlife. Records show that it sold last August for a little less than that: $2.85 million.Īccording to a 2019 real estate listing for the property, Blow Buddies' monthly rent was $13,200, which the previous property owner believed was "below market rate." Prior to the pandemic, its lease was set to end in April 2021. It had already shown signs of potential trouble last March, when its building went on the market for $3.5 million. "The club was created in response to one virus and done in by another," Blow Buddies writes in a message on its website, alluding to the fact it was able to weather the ravages of the AIDS crisis, but not COVID-19.īlow Buddies operated as a membership- and cover-based venue, with all the furnishings of a well-appointed bathhouse. Retrieved September 27, 2017.Landmark gay sex club Blow Buddies (933 Harrison St.), which has operated out of a nondescript SoMa storefront since 1988, will not reopen in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Archived (PDF) from the original on Octo. ^ "San Francisco Jacks Newsletter" (PDF).Archived from the original on 29 September 2017. "The Bay Area Reporter Online - Tour digs up SOMA's gay past". Archived from the original on 4 February 2015. ^ "The Caldron's First Anniversary Orgy".^ Joe Mayo, interviewed 3/28/97, in Rofes, p.: CS1 maint: archived copy as title ( link), p. ^ Bob Thomas, interviewed 3/12/77, in Eric Rofes, A Walking Tour of South of Market in the 1970s, n.p., 2005, "Archived copy" (PDF).
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^ Mick Sinclair, San Francisco: A Cultural and Literary History, Interlink, 2003, ISBN 1566564891, p.^ Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, New York, Viking Press, 1987, ISBN 0312009941, pp.San Francisco Bizarro: A Guide to Notorious Sites, Lusty Pursuits, and Downright Freakiness in the City by the Bay'. Political Responses to the AIDS Crisis, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2009, ISBN 0807833142, p. ^ Jennifer Brier, Infectious Ideas: U.S.Rubin, "Elegy for the Valley of the Kings: AIDS and the Leather Community in San Francisco, 1981-1996", in In Changing Times: Gay Men and Lesbians Encounter HIV/AIDS, University of Chicago Press, 1997, ISBN 0226278573, pp. The San Francisco Jacks, a masturbation club, met at the Caldron. Slate and Gilman were members of the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, which after Monday chorus rehearsals sometimes repaired to the Caldron for a private party. The name Caldron, according to owner Gilman, was the I Ching's commentary on itself. A poster announcing its First Anniversary Orgy has been preserved. The Caldron featured thematic nights: Tuesdays were for water sports, Thursday for fisting it also set aside nights for masturbation. There were tables and benches for having sex on, and slings. The club had two bathtubs for those who wanted to be urinated on. The owners were Hal Slate and Stephen Gilman. It was described as "exemplary" as one of the first venues to promote safe sex as the AIDS crisis hit.
#Sf gay sex club license#
Like other similar venues, it had no alcohol license patrons brought their own alcohol, usually beer, and this was stored in a cooler and patrons given chits that they could turn in for a can of the brand of beer they had brought. Patrons were required to be naked except for footwear a clothes check was provided. Located in a converted warehouse, the site was unabashedly a place where men went to have sex. It was called "the epitome of the uninhibited, abandoned, 'sleazy' sex club." Description area, was a gay sex club which opened in 1980 and closed in 1984. The Caldron (often misspelled Cauldron), at 853 Natoma Street in San Francisco, in the South of Market St.