I had a friend who lived across the alley from the Seattle Steamworks, a notorious bath house. His wife, who was not allowed to smoke in the house, became really well acquainted with the janitors, who would wheel out enormous carts of used towels every morning to be disinfected.

whoops meant as a reply to CD :)

Yeah there's a few bars here that have been converted into bars or music venues; one even has a Mass with a real Catholic Priest. Same as any other Mass, you just get to drink things other than a thimble of wine (or grapejuice depending on the Church you went to).. :)

You usually have to pay to get in, or buy some tokens. But once you're there, yup.

One of my best friends, who is gay and in a wheelchair, stays at bath houses whenever he can if he's traveling in Canada, not for the sex (he's actually pretty critical of the entire gay hookup culture, although I know he's not above Grindr) but because for about you can usually get a pretty decent, if small, room and according to him the staff are, almost without fail, vastly more helpful and respectful of someone in his situation, up to and including carrying him up stairs and things like that. He says that the staff at regular hotels are pretty much always condescending to someone in his situation but at bath houses and sex hotels they treat him like an equal.

Holy shit, at /night that's cheaper than a lot of studios in Portland now. Assuming one doesn't have much stuff, like maybe just a laptop and a backpack full of clothes, could one just stay at a bathhouse indefinitely? Just curious because I've got a friend who wants to move back here (or at least visit again for an indeterminate amount of time and see if he can find a job) but the place I'm in is already too full so I can't post him up like I did last time.

Man, don't start gentrifying gay bathhouses.