E L E C T R I C R E L A X A T I O N The story of the notorious NYC bathhouse Continental Baths is the story of disco. Housed in the basement of a grandiose turn-of-the-century hotel on New York’s Upper West Side, the Baths were at the epicenter of gay culture and the burgeoning equal rights movement.The club’s early success in breaking new talent like Bette Midler and Patti LaBelle soon gave way to DJs moving front and center as the main attraction for its towel-clad patrons. After the sound system was overhauled on a shoestring budget, the club recruited well-known Fire Island selector Bobby DJ, who brought over his own following. In the stimulating nights that followed, the Baths would birth the careers of dance icons Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles, two young DJs who were soaking in the nascent disco scene of the early ’70s—and who soon got their own shot behind the decks. Despite the technical limitations of the club’s equipment, both DJs honed their skills and moved on to influence the dance scene in immeasurable ways.
by Dan Gentile
In the spring of 1968, disco didn’t exist, homosexuality was illegal in New York City, and the basement of the Ansonia Hotel was covered in forty thousand square feet of dust. 1 Over the course of the next eight years, that dusty space transformed into the world-famous Continental Baths. It served as the preeminent hub of gay culture and a disco incubator that helped to birth two of the most famous DJs in history: Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles. In order to succeed at business, “you can either fulfill a need or create a desire,” wrote Continental founder Steve Ostrow in his book Live at the Continental .“If a business can create a desire that fulfills a need, how can you lose?” 2 Ostrow aimed to serve New York City’s burgeoning gay community with a safe place to meet, socialize, and have sex. He stumbled onto the space that would become the Continental Baths while attending a vocal lesson at a suite in the towering Ansonia.Although the basement was in severe disrepair, it had formerly functioned as a spa and had the necessary infrastructure to fulfill Ostrow’s vision. The building itself was an architectural marvel. Located between West Seventy-Third and Seventy-Fourth on Broadway, the Upper West Side hotel was constructed in 1899 with the intent of breaking the world record for tallest building. It fell only slightly short of its intended grandeur, clocking in at seventeen stories and fifteen hundred rooms. The hotel also boasted the world’s largest indoor swimming pool, as well as a rooftop that housed five hundred chickens, 3 and would later be covered in hundreds of pounds of sand, beach lounge chairs, and the sound of proto-disco wired up from the basement DJ booth. Nicknamed “the Tubs,” the Continental was a unique mix of hedonistic playground and community center that served up to twenty thousand gay men a week. Unlike other bathhouses that were mostly seedy and rat infested, the Continental would have a safe and welcoming atmosphere. The main draw for most visitors were the four hundred private rooms rented out to be used for casual sex, but these were supplemented with an incredible range of amenities that included a steam room, swimming pool, dry sauna, cabaret stage, disco dance floor, licensed bar, café, and STD clinic.There was even a space for religious services. 4 The first time that house-music pioneer Frankie Knuckles visited the club with Larry Levan in 1973, they didn’t leave until two weeks later. I spoke with Knuckles shortly before his passing, and when I asked him if there was a contemporary comparison to the Baths, he claimed there’s nothing even close. Unfortunately, not everyone was so ecstatic about the club’s presence. Homosexuality was still technically illegal in NewYork City, and the club was raided on opening day. Despite buying tickets to the policemen’s ball to try to stave off the vice squad, the Continental Baths was raided over two hundred times.The invasive tactics led the club to organize a petition to change NewYork City’s antiquated laws.Over 250,000 signatures were delivered to the mayor’s office, resulting in the repeal of the laws and a major victory for the gay liberation movement. 5
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