Can you sleep at a gay sauna

Denholm Spurr, a year-old gay former homeless man who last month revealed to BuzzFeed News the sexual violence he suffered from landlords while exchanging sex for rent, says at times Sweatbox was a lifeline. Neil used to work at Waterloo but recently moved to the only remaining location.

The man using the sauna as his postal address was the final straw, pushing Ford to introduce the new eight-hour rule. At 54, he has been running Sweatbox for over a decade and in the last few years has been balancing two competing stresses: trying to help gay men falling victim to the housing crisis, but also ensuring he sets boundaries that adhere to the restrictions on his business.

Our manager was completely aware, the owner was completely aware, so we just ensured that everyone was safe and the facilities were habitable. As with Sweatbox, Chariots also has straight customers. There are, he says, no easy solutions. Regardless of sexuality, saunas across London are having to contend with how the housing problem affects the community.

It is the only solution for many trying to survive in London today, he says. Against a backdrop of having to have sex with a succession of landlords, Sweatbox, for Spurr, was a break from exploitation. Every gay sauna in London that opens overnight conveyed the same reality to BuzzFeed News: The housing crisis has become so extreme that men are resorting to sleeping there to avoid being on the street.

It was previously a chain, but over the past few years has seen London branches in Farringdon, Streatham, and Shoreditch close, the last of which — in an area of prime real estate — was sold to developers. As Ford and others explain, those who stay in gay saunas overnight come from a range of personal circumstances: from the straight migrant worker who cannot afford London rents, to the young gay sofa-surfer who does not consider himself homeless, to gay men who hail from other parts of Britain and have jobs in London but do not earn enough to pay for the commute as well as for rent.

And the scale of the problem is so great that some saunas are having to change their admission policies, fearful of contravening licensing laws. Overseeing this comparative safety is the owner, Mark Ford. You don’t go to a sauna to play Scrabble. They help protect your privacy, keep things hygienic, and ensure that all interactions are consensual and respectful.

What exactly are you supposed to do when you’re inside? Having been homeless as a teenager, having lived at a shelter and now working with LGBT young people, Adil knows what hazards await gay people with nowhere to go. Are you living in London? When he had no money and nowhere to sleep, Spurr would go there on Mondays because on that day it allows unders in for free.

Neil — who wanted his only first name mentioned — works at Chariots, perhaps the most well known of gay saunas. With the amount of business at the weekend, says Neil, it would be impossible to monitor all visitors to ensure no one was outstaying the 24 hours. Sometimes Neil gets to know these customers.

As well as providing shelter to men with nowhere else to go — men who often form part of the invisible homeless population — such saunas are also trying to manage and contain a problem that for some has become unmanageable. Mark Ford at Sweatbox, meanwhile, wants to do more than simply try to manage the overspill from the housing crisis.

The Vauxhall branch closes every morning at 8am, so rather than staff having to monitor who is outstaying the allowed hour limit, all customers have to leave. Alternatively, you may be so familiar with a particular gay sauna that you’re written into the fire instructions.

The first time you step into a gay sauna can be an unnerving experience. And what aren’t you supposed to do? The sauna is called Sweatbox. Employees at Pleasuredrome, one of the other major gay saunas in central London, and the Locker Room, a smaller sauna in south London, also confirmed to BuzzFeed News that men sleep there.

But even this only contains the issue within certain parameters. Keeping within the terms of their license while also being compassionate becomes very difficult. They often return, however, a few hours later. Can You Go to a Gay Sauna and Not Have Sex? Absolutely, yes—you can visit gay saunas without any sexual activity, and many men do exactly that regularly.

Hi, I am going to Bangkok and my flight arrives very late on Thursday (around ). The rules in a gay sauna aren’t there to kill the vibe – they’re in place to make sure everyone feels safe, respected, and comfortable. Whilst these venues do facilitate intimate encounters for those seeking them, there’s no obligation, expectation, or pressure for every visitor to participate in sexual activities.

They just come in here and watch TV and go after five or six hours. Advice or suggestion please. Any of us can only do so much. As soon as you’re in the. Gay saunas are sex-positive places. Through interviews with sauna employees and owners, we reveal for the first time a further dimension to this: Homeless heterosexual men are sleeping in gay saunas, too.

I don't want to spend a meaningless night at hotel, so I am thinking of going to a sauna to sleep there after midnight Does Men factory or Mania seem safe to sleep there? Nestled in a quiet side street in the midst of Soho, central London — the heart of the LGBT scene — Sweatbox, which also contains a gym, has like many gay saunas both communal areas in which to relax and private booths with mattresses on which to rest.