In what has got to be a first (publicly at least) a gay bathhouse in Shinnonhyeon, Seoul is denying entry to those men who are not up to snuff.
If you are old fat ugly your entry into the Black Sauna will be denied. And they are not the only ones. Many bathhouses in Seoul are following in this pattern of barring old fat ugly men.
A spokesperson for Black Sauna says they need to have a discriminatory policy because it needs to attract “hot” males to make the place “hot.”
“You cannot enter here if you are fat, or 45 years or older. We allow young and slim white customers but try to prohibit all South East Asians because we get complaints from other customers,”
While another spokesperson for Prince, a popular gay sauna in Shinchon, says that gay saunas in Seoul have a stricter policy than Black to fill their bathhouse with customers who have a strong sex appeal.
“We need to make the majority of our customers happy to stay in business,”
This is a topic that surely a lighting rod for you and your friends to debate. To read more go to Gay saunas in Seoul ban old, unattractive foreigners.
The young and hot have very few reasons to go to a baths in the first place. The best way to attract a young sexy clientele is by making it a value to go there. You don’t offer just sex, you make it a nice place to just hangout. “Trolls” are going to be there. They have every right, the most need, and are the most reliable customers for a bath house.
I use Steamworks in Toronto as the gold standard. When I first started going there back in 2005, I noticed a stark contrast to the baths in my then-hometown of Philly.
The place is clean. It is inexpensive, and it’s placed dead set in the middle of the gayborhood in big bold letters. I realized the stigma of being a bath house was much different than in other parts of the world. As I began to frequent the place every time I visited Toronto (about one extended weekend every other month) I figured out why this was the case.
Steamworks is more than a baths, it is a community center. It is a place where a concentrated population of sexually active men could go and do their thing, or sit and chill with others, or go in for a lunchtime workout in their fully functional gym, but most of all there is a concentrated audience for education on community events and health awareness.
To be a busy baths, you should follow this business model. Anyone who goes to Steamworks knows there is something for everyone. There are model hot guys, all the way down the spectrum to your fair share of “trolls”.
You want to get bodies in the door so they will pay your workers’ salaries? You don’t discriminate against your own population who are already used to being discriminated against. You create a reason to get them to LOVE your business.
There is a baths in Philly that is enormous, generally pretty clean, and has tons of potential. But I’ve never seen any more than a few dozen people in there at max. They could do well in spite of their location being a few blocks outside of the gay area if they just had some decent business sense.
There is no reason to go there. Once you are there, there is nothing to do, and it’s entirely a crap shoot as to whether you’ll even see another person there.
You want to attract your hot young guys? Give them a reason to go. Give them $5 entry with college ID and under 25. All the time. Do the opposite to attract your “trolls” away on other nights.
I see so many places with potential that just don’t follow the right business model to get the right bodies in. CSD in San Diego. CCBC in Palm Springs (my god…SO much potential, but nothing but geriatrics there), any baths in Philly, NYC, DC. They are all lost potential.
The HIV crisis may have shuttered a lot of places in the 80s and 90s, and the Internet may have stolen casual sex from the baths, but there are still people looking for places to GO.
They couldn’t do that around here because that’s their only clientele!
Not surprising. Some bars in Japan won’t let in foreigners.
Don’t discriminate against trolls. Young gays, most of whom are self centred, easily forget who fought for gay rights during the 1960s and 70s. The younger take for granted what was a dark period during those times.
If anyone should be more understanding about discrimination it’s should be gays if all ages. The twins will be trolls sooner than they think!
They did not want to let me in a bath house in Osaka, a few years ago. But my husband who was with me, is Japanese and of a high social status in Japan, so he knew how to make them comply and they did. I got in.