San Francisco just approved its first gay bathhouse in 40 years

San Francisco's Planning Commission voted 7-0 on 5 November to approve Sanctum Baths, a two-storey venue planned for 40 12th Street in SoMa, near Market Street and Van Ness Avenue. When it opens, it will be the city's first new gay bathhouse in more than four decades — a routine zoning decision that is also a small cultural milestone for queer San Francisco.

The city's bathhouses were shut down in the 1980s amid the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and no new one has opened since. In the intervening decades, San Francisco's queer nightlife has been squeezed by rents, licensing fights and closures, which is why a new permanent space reads as a political event as much as a commercial one. The approval also lands in a city that still argues loudly about what SoMa is for: housing, offices, nightlife or all three at once.

Who is behind Sanctum Baths

The project is led by local businessman Kevin Born, chief executive of Ashbury General Contracting & Engineering, who sought permits to convert the company's former headquarters into the venue. Born originally intended to call it The Maze, or Maze S.F., before settling on Sanctum Baths after consulting a marketing specialist. "At the end of day, I liked it," he told PinkNews.

Planning Commission president Amy Campbell backed the location, saying she could not think of a better and more appropriate place for it, and noted that she rides past the address on her bike every day.

The fight over windows and privacy

The sticking point was the building's street frontage. Planning rules require commercial premises to keep street-facing windows transparent and unobstructed, while Born pushed for more privacy for customers. Zoning administrator Corey Teague said he would grant a variance exempting the project from the clear-window requirement.

The approved plans keep the entrance at the front of the building and use obscured but translucent glazing designed to protect customers' privacy. Born had previously removed the street-facing windows without permission, prompting a planning enforcement issue that was resolved after the windows were reinstated.

"I can't think of a better and more appropriate location. I know this location very well, as I ride by it every day on my bike." — Amy Campbell, president of the San Francisco Planning Commission

Why a bathhouse is a planning story

Bathhouses occupy a strange place in San Francisco's civic memory. They were among the institutions swept up in the AIDS crisis, and their closure became shorthand for the loss of a particular kind of gay urban life — one built around physical space rather than apps. Approving a new one is, in practical terms, a decision about a two-storey commercial building and its windows. Symbolically it is something else: an official acknowledgment that the city's queer infrastructure is worth rebuilding, not just remembering.

The comparison with Europe is unavoidable for anyone who lives in Amsterdam. Dutch saunas and darkrooms operate in a very different legal and cultural framework, where licensing is handled at municipal level and sexuality is not usually the subject of a planning debate. San Francisco's argument over translucent glass would look almost quaint in the Netherlands — but the underlying question, whether a city lets queer venues exist in visible locations, is the same one that shapes Amsterdam's own nightlife map.

What happens next

Commission approval is not the final step. The project still needs building permits and construction work before anyone walks through the door, and no opening date has been announced.

• Permits: Born must complete the building permit process before work can begin on the former Ashbury headquarters.
• Design: the venue will keep a street-level entrance with translucent glazing, a compromise between planning rules and customer privacy.
• Precedent: the privacy variance could shape how other queer venues in San Francisco handle street-facing windows.
• Watch item: whether the approval encourages similar projects in other US cities that lost their bathhouses in the 1980s.

Closer to home, the lesson is that queer spaces survive when people use them. Vibra is built for exactly that: a free profile, a curated calendar of LGBTQ+ parties in Amsterdam, tickets without the faff, and Pulse points every time you turn up. Make a profile, find your people, and keep the scene alive.

Sources: PinkNews, "San Francisco approves plans for new gay bathhouse: 'Long overdue'" (13 November 2026); The Washington Post, "San Francisco approves first gay bathhouse since AIDS epidemic" (13 November 2026); San Francisco Chronicle, "SF approves first new gay bathhouse in decades" (11 November 2026).