Todd Klinck’s bathhouse guide

Stone massages, slave caves & glory holes - Todd Klinck’s bathhouse guide

Public baths have been a part of everyday urban life since the sixth century B.C. Starting in Greece and Rome before sprawling across the Medieval West, bathing became ritualized, an art, as well as an essential civic service – people without running water needed to clean. Bathhouses flourished in New York City in the Roaring Twenties as clandestine meeting places for “pansies.” The traditional Russian baths (a few still exist in New York, Detroit and overseas) cater to men only and promote an environment of camaraderie, mutual massage, and the plaitza – a rub down taking place inside a steam room, utilizing an oak leaf broom soaked in hot water.

Modern gay bathhouses are decadent emporiums of pleasure. They are lucrative enterprises that have commercialized and centralized a wide-spread desire amongst men: the desire to fuck strangers. There are very few people using bathhouses who don’t have access to running water.

Being of the safer-sex generation, I was raised with an awareness that sex can kill. Being the big-time pervert that I am, as soon as I moved to the big city, I gravitated towards the baths. I was in awe. Make eye contact, scratch balls, head gesture, sex. The potential for rampant disease-spreading, the experience of stepping in cum, the
witnessing of border-line rape and unsafe sex, none of these things have changed my fascination with the environment.

Toronto has eight bathhouses (nine if you count the Bijou, famous for its slurp ramp and a new huge backroom). Seven of them are open 24/7. Three of them are in the west-end. The other five are in the gay ghetto. Trying to grasp the unique culture of each of them within only a few visits is hard. I’ve been to St. Marc, Spa Excess, and Club Toronto dozens of times, so my comments on those have a bit more insight.

A note on cleanliness: Because of the volume of clients and the nature of bathhouse subculture (i.e. men seem to find it acceptable to shoot their loads anywhere, at any time), no bathhouse will be 100% clean. I’ve seen most of the bathhouses looking disgusting at some point over the years. Be warned: it is easy for a steam room to begin to smell like a sewer and fermenting jizz. That said, I visited all the bathhouses in town within the last four weeks, and they were all very clean.

CENTRAL SPA
“West-End Scrub’n’Wash”
1610 Dundas St. West 2nd Floor
416.588.6191
15 rooms, 60 lockers (noon-3am, 7 days/wk),
regular room: $15, locker: $10
BUSIEST: Sundays noon-8pm
C-Spa is the cleanest bathhouse in the city. It opened in 1997 and offers several services. Try one of Milan Procka’s amazing massages with hot stones. Kill the time while cruising with a “Scrub’n’Wash” from one of the staff. Other services include pedicures, Vibrasage and body shaving. Services are $25/30 minutes, $40/hour + $5/half hour for stone treatment. Add 10 minutes for $10. Milan is a registered massage therapist so his treatments are covered by some medical plans.
Milan was the massage attendant at the Oak Leaf from 1975 to 1990, and at The Spa on Maitland when it first opened in 1991. Inspired by the mellow European bathhouse vibe, he has created a comfortable gay get-away in the macho Little Italy/Little Portugal area. Milan is straight, but he does not pretend to run a hetero establishment. He knows his patrons are gay and are having sex. Notable: His is the only bathhouse of those surveyed that offers free lube as well as free condoms. This bathhouse isn’t always busy but it has a high turn-over, which means if you are patient, you’ll see a whole parade of men. And it’s a nice break from downtown.

OAK LEAF STEAM BATHS LTD.
“The Original Steam (The Real Deal)”
216 Bathurst St.,
416.603.3434
42 rooms, 99 lockers,
regular room: $17 for 4 hours, overnight $22; locker: $12, seniors locker: $10 for 10 hour rental
BUSIEST: Sundays
Milan Procka (owner of Central Spa) says “Oak Leaf was the old-fashioned original bathhouse of Toronto past. In the wintertime, they would let in those who were down on their luck for free, it had that kind of spirit.” There was also an infamous orgy room underneath the stairs, but Milan says that was boarded up pre-1975.
The Oak Leaf is Toronto’s most under-rated bathhouse. If you aren’t offended by the mixing of the classes (a lot of homeless people use it as a place to bathe and sleep), the Oak Leaf (which opened 1941) offers exceptionally good steam. While coming down from E, take a buddy to the top bleacher of the steam room and scrub each other down with traditional oak leaf brooms (available for $10 from the snack bar). Respect that it is not primarily a gay cruising ground and that people are trying to sleep. Mincing through the public bunk area all chatty-nelly with your friends should be saved for the other clubs.
Massage service is available here. Cruising definitely occurs, but it is more repressed and cautious which can make it hot. The entrance hallway reminded me of a bingo hall. There were about 20 older men sleeping. I stripped and went to the wet area. The dry sauna and dry steam room were padlocked. I met “Bob” in the wet steam: “I got hammered yesterday and came here to dry out,” he says. “My room has a draft, so I’m warming up.” Bob gave me the low-down: the padlocked rooms are functional, they only keep one or two of the three facilities open at a time. Bob also showed me how the old-fashioned steam room works – there is a chain along the ceiling of the top bench, which when pulled turns on the powerful steam. Another man with a nice penis joined us, the three of us pulled the chain simultaneously until the room filled up with steam.

ST. MARC SPA
“The Busiest Bathhouse:
(Best Chance of Getting Laid)”
543 Yonge St., top floor,
416.927.0210,
135 rooms, 95 lockers,
regular room: $18.50, locker: $10
Fast-talking manager Leslie Lemieux says “We’re #1 in Toronto. We always have people all the time. You want me to take out my business records?” St. Marc is the place to go for quantity. I’ve been to St. Marc many times when every single room was booked and the waiting list was four hours. Decent facilities: whirlpool, clean-smelling and well-lit steam room, adequate sauna. Wider age-range than Excess means there is someone for everyone. St. Marc has been open for 10 years, and just renewed its lease for another 10.
St. Marc is full of voyeuristic pleasures – the public shower is in plain view of the hallway, the steam room lighting is bright enough that public orgies can be watched. The porn room is awesome – bleacher-style levels covered in padded vinyl with a cubby-hole in the middle providing access to the action for those on the ground. And the showers at St. Marc are sexy. A few shower heads on each side of a narrow corridor. Enough room that you aren’t rubbing butts with the person opposite you, but close enough to be a good place for a pre-steam room courtship ritual. People wishing to access the steam room often walk through this corridor too. All those cocks dangling so close is such a turn on.

BARRACKS
“Leather, Fetish, Bears, Real Guys”
56 Widmer St.
416.593.0499, www.barracks.com,
24 rooms, 66 lockers,
regular room: $18, locker: $10,
from 10am-2pm room: $8, locker $4
BUSIEST: Black-out Night (second Tuesday and last Thursday each month). Visitors are given a wee flashlight and the bathhouse lights are turned off.
This drafty old house is laid-back. Public showers on a weird slant (which can cause stubbed toes when one is drunk) lead to a big well-lit sauna and then to a dark steam room. Not being in the gay ghetto makes it more attractive to closeted types. The Barracks markets itself to the leather and fetish community, although it does attract a mixed crowd. The club has all sorts of theme days – Bear Day, Jock Night, Naked Wednesday. Manager Lawrence Laffan also mentions a new “Leather Night” every second Friday. “We run a ‘slave cave.’ When they come to the door, they identify themselves as either the slave or the master. If they are slaves, they are put in a room and made to wait. The master comes in, and prepares his room however he likes it. He goes down and chooses a slave. The slave may not refuse. If he does we bring him to the lounge and we spank him. Then when he decides to submit to the master, the master takes him away.”

THE CELLAR
“It’s Dark”
78 Wellesley St. E. (the Black Door), 416.975.1799
20 Rooms, 55 lockers,
regular room: $21, locker: $11
BUSIEST: Wednesdays
The Cellar, which once advertised with the slogan “It’s dark,” has always turned me off (I like seeing my sex partners). But a recent Troll award from fab’s own Paul Bellini for “Best Daily Orgy” prompted me to call him for details. “Love blooms at the cellar – it’s a special place for me,” says Bellini. “It’s where I want to have my wedding. I met my first boyfriend there. He cruised me, we were making out in the hallway and he asked me to go home. We were together for two and a half years.” Bellini says that 90% of the action happens in the stall/glory-hole area, and in the back hallway. As far as bathhouse amenities, there is a shower area and two saunas “that everyone avoids.” Bellini leaves me with this: “‘Weird’ Wednesdays (it’s actually called Wild Wednesdays) is fucking hopping, that’s when everybody goes. After 6pm you can’t get a room – huge line-up.”

SPA EXCESS
“Todd’s Favourite Overall Bathhouse”
105 Carlton St.
416.260.2363, www.spaexcess.com
86 rooms, 150 lockers,
regular room: $21, lockers: $11, rooms $22 on weekend 8am-6pm, room: $15, lockers: $8, Toonie Wednesday: students under 30 with ID, 8pm-midnight, $2 locker
BUSIEST: Weekends
Excess is my favourite overall bathhouse. Nice TV lounge, licensed bar, coolest wet area, and a very interesting and extensive public sex area/backroom on the top floor. Youngest crowd of all bathhouses in Toronto. Packed on weekends, but not as consistently jam-packed as St. Marc’s. The glass-walled steam bath facing the public showers is hot, and the public area upstairs is like a Disneyland for cruising, with a public sling, a public horse (unfortunately they took out the motorcycle), booths, glory holes, and a very dark and scary backroom. My favourite thing about Excess is the wooden door leading to it from Carlton St. In large block letters it says one very appropriate word: EXCESS. How many downtown office-workers have walked by that doorway wondering what was behind it? Especially when whacked-out circuit fags stagger out wearing sunglasses at 8am on a weekday.

• Todd Klinck is fab’s Trade columnist.

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