Project: The Locker Room: Minneapolis Queer Community Care within Bathhouses 1960s -1980s

This project was created by students in the GWSS/GLBT 3404 spring 2023 class. To explore other projects created by students in this class, please visit the complete collection available at this MNT project library page.

The Locker Room, an important site of gay life in Minneapolis throughout the 1960s and 70s, represented the policing of care within the LGBTQ+ community, lacking dedicated and safe spaces to gather before and during the HIV/AIDS crisis. A place to find joy, eroticism, pleasure, and resources, bathhouses became essential areas for (self and community) care in the public sphere until their eventual shutdown due to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Here, you will find an exploration of the importance of these spaces and an illuminating story of discrimination, state intervention, and debate within Minneapolis at the time surrounding the crisis.

Further reading

OutFront has an article that offers a more in-depth look at the political aspect of the bathhouses and their eventual banning. Bathhouses have also been in the news recently, and there was an interest in overturning the ordinance before the COVID-19 pandemic, as seen in these articles.

City Ordinance

Remembering Pleasure in a Pandemic - Twin Cities Pride Magazine Does Minneapolis have the will to bring gay bathhouses back to the city? | OutFront Minnesota