In the “good old days” (i.e., a few decades ago) before the AIDS crisis, no visit to another city was complete without checking out its best-known “tubs”—Denver’s Ball Park, Beverly Hills’ Club 8709, and San Francisco’s Ritch Street Baths were the equivalents of the Rockies, the Hollywood sign, and the Golden Gate Bridge as must-see spots. Baths or bathhouses (known in Europe as saunas) were one of the most popular meeting places for gay hunks, and one of the few places where gay sex contacts were, if not guaranteed, at least expected. Which was pretty much their undoing. During the mideighties, political forces both within and outside the gay community decided that bathhouses were loci of unsafe gay sex contacts. Compromises were attempted in some cities: Literature about AIDS was strewn all over the bathhouses’ public areas, and machines selling condoms and spermicidal lotions were placed next to those selling Dr Pepper and Sprite.