Let’s say you’ve met Sam Stranger online. So, in the age or Grindr, how are you going to convince young guys bathhouses are better? But if they thought they weren’t attractive enough they wouldn’t let you in. I got rejected there once, but I got let in three or four times, and I remember the process quite well. In its day, there would be a line down the stairs to the street and you’d wait and you’d climb all the way up and if the attendant didn’t like your looks, he wouldn’t let you in.
Now our age is about mid 30s rather than late 40s.īack in the day were the clubs just full of super hot young guys? We’ve seen these promotions skew our age much younger. As long as they don’t cluster and giggle they enjoy themselves. Pretty soon someone would come by and he would try the bathhouse and he would tell his friends and we’d get three or four guys.
We’ve done various promotions where 18 to 24 get free entry. So, how are you going to get young guys to show up? We did a forum with a couple of guys who were very active in gay marketing and promotion in Las Vegas and they came in and both of them said, “No, we’ve never been to a bathhouse.” There are two bathhouses in Las Vegas and neither are shining examples of what they could be, but they were judging and hadn’t been. Why do you think young guys aren't into bathhouses? There are plenty of people I know just by there being there so much. We have people who have been going to one of our clubs for 20 years, 30 years. Yeah, there was sex, of course, but the clubs we were building had swimming pools, gyms, they had a lot to offer. That’s what I believe our function is even today. What was the atmosphere like in the clubs? A lot of people, even to this day, say, “Oh, the Club Baths. Two of our principal partners met in the club in Cleveland in the late 60s. One of the by products was the number of couples that first met in a bathhouse. They were busy, and it depended on the person-some were fairly promiscuous and some were picky. Were the clubs busy? Were the guys having tons of sex? Every city I would look at bars and bathhouses and see what was going on. I traveled constantly for business for several years before I settled down in one city. Were you visiting the bathhouses a lot back then? We tore the original building down, and we built a $1.8 million (£1.1 million) new structure about 12 years ago. I went down and we found a building and property and we bought it and we’ve been on that property for 40 years.
It was the 70s, so things were going great guns.Īn opportunity came in Houston because I met some guys who they said they needed a bathhouse. At that time, six or eight guys would throw in some money and one guy agreed to go build it and that’s how they were built. A couple weeks later, I met the principals of the Club Baths chain. I looked at the demographics and realized there wasn’t one for 100 miles in any direction. We went to a brunch the next day with his friends and they got talking about how Indy needed a gay bathhouse. I was in Indianapolis for the qualifying for the 500 and it was raining, so I went out and met somebody. VICE: How did you end up in the bathhouse business?ĭennis Holding: I worked in the automotive industry at the time on the racing side, selling parts. I recently chatted with Holding, who has invested in bathhouses all over the country since he opened his first club in 1972, about the past, present, and future of the industry. It might be an uphill battle, but it’s one that Dennis Holding, NABA's 75-year-old president, says that they’re winning. Now the North American Bathhouse Association (NABA) is using a combination of awareness-building, steep discounts, and social media outreach to entice a new generation of young dudes to put down Grindr and Scruff (the apps that are basically a bathhouse in every gay’s pocket), pick up a towel, and channel the 70s spirit of cavorting with the hottest bods in town.