Journalist Kevin Maimann has written two articles detailing the battle for control over Steamworks.
First part – Five-year-long legal dispute between owners of Steamworks comes at a time when gay bathhouses are reinventing themselves
A lengthy multimillion-dollar legal battle, punctuated by allegations of attempted poisoning and using employees to deliver drugs, has been unfolding behind the scenes at one of the world’s longest-standing bathhouse chains. And the outcome remains unclear.
Go to “Inside the nasty battle to control North America’s biggest bathhouse brand”
Second part – Do men in towels want to dance? See a show? Or just search for sex?
When the late gay activist Rick Stokes founded the Steamworks bathhouse chain in Berkeley, California, in 1976, the world was a different place. Though gay saunas were given licences in many North American jurisdictions in the 1960s and ’70s, they were still at risk of community outrage and raids by the police. Men frequented them anyway—there was no internet and many of the other ways to pursue sexual encounters, like blind dates and park cruising, were even riskier.
Go to “While Steamworks’ owners duke it out, the bathhouse industry is trying to reinvent itself”
To read more about Steamworks here
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