Locker Room Baths

315 1st Avenue North, Minneapolis

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Locker Room Ad, 1980. courtesy of the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection.

The Locker Room was a a place of anonymous sex and cross-cultural encounters, where men could enter, pay a small price for a locker to store street clothes, and wander in a state of undress searching for available sex partners. It was considered a place for young men, while the Hennepin Avenue Baths [in the lumber Exchange] and Big Daddy’s [in the Patages Theater’s basement] catered to an older crowd.(1) Bathhouses were once a mainstay of urban life in America, as private bathrooms were a luxury only the wealthiest could enjoy in the early 20th century. Citizens used bathhouses for hygienic purposes, though sexual activity assumedly took place even during these “reputable” times.(2)

As time progressed, ageing bathhouses came under new ownership and discarded all pretense of non-sexual services. Instead, and amid a 1970s culture of unabashed sexuality, the bathhouses advertised their services in queer publications.

The Locker Room began as an offshoot of Sutton’s Place, a gay bar located at 1st Ave N. and 7th St. (where the Target Center now stands). The bathhouse and bar eventually separated ways, and the bathhouse moved to a run-down warehouse. Reportedly, a giant leather phallus and scrotum hung from the ceiling in one of the Locker Room’s many rooms;(3) it underscored a humorous and lighthearted approach to same-sex male sexuality that has since vanished.

Locker Room Ad, 1977. Courtesy of the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection.

The City of Minneapolis did not get the joke. Minneapolis Police, under the auspice of a “Vice Squad,” frequently raided the Locker Room Baths and arrested the employees, the owners, or the clientele.

Locker Room matchbook, Courtesy of the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection.

These raids were so common that the Locker Room’s helpful staff printed escape pamphlets in the event of the arrests and, for a short time, the police and gay bathhouses achieved an unsteady truce. The advent of HIV/AIDS in 1980 led to “Anti-AIDS” ordinances that, in turn, led to further and frequent raids that became progressively more aggressive.(4) Eventually, with a dwindling customer base and inhospitable business conditions, the Locker Room Baths closed in 1988.(5) Its location, within the now-trendy Warehouse District, is presently home to Club Karma.

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Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN: 100 Queer Places in Minnesota History, (1860-2010)

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(1)Tretter, Jean-Nickolaus. Interview with the author and Jacob Gentz. 1/16/2009.

(2)Williams, Marilyn T. Washing the Great Unwashed: Public Baths in Urban America: 1840-1920. Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1991.

(3)http://gaytubs.blogspot.com/2006/12/history-of-gay-bath-houses-blog.html. "THE LOCKER ROOM - MINNEAPOLIS 1976 - 1982 [sic]" comment submitted by "Greg" 1/24/2007

(4) Ritter, John. "New Ordinance may Close Bathhouse." Equal Time issue 152, 2/3/1988. Page 7.

(5)Ritter, John. "315 Health Club closes prior to ordinance." Equal Time news, Issue 157. 4/13/1988.