For the first time in nearly four decades operators of traditional gay bathhouses can once again seek permits to open in San Francisco.
The city's public health department has rescinded the restrictions that have kept such businesses from operating in the city since the mid-1980s.
A legacy from the height of the AIDS epidemic, bathhouses in San Francisco until now could not have private rooms with locked doors and were required to monitor the sex of their patrons.
Those regulations, when put into effect, resulted in a de facto ban on gay bathhouses in San Francisco, leaving residents to have to travel to such businesses in Berkeley and in San Jose.