San Francisco may allow gay bathhouses to re-open by July, ending rules introduced at the height of the AIDS epidemic. The city’s gay saunas closed their shutters when San Fran put in new rules in 1984.
They insisted owners tore down individual cubicles and video rooms so people couldn’t have unsafe sex in private. Amid a mounting AIDS crisis, the city and county even sued bathhouse owners calling them a ‘public health nuisance’.