Take a communal bath at Kabuki

Anxious for something to do with your weekdays besides compulsively reading Internet news, watching TiVo-ed Sally Jesse Raphael reruns and waiting for the mailperson to arrive with your unemployment check?

How about relaxing at a traditional communal Japanese-style bath with 30 other naked (and possibly also under- or unemployed) men or women?

Sound great? If so, check out Kabuki Springs & Spa.



The communal baths have a sauna, a steam room, a hot pool and a nut-/ovary-shrivelingly cold pool. They also have stand-up showers like we Westerners are used to, as well as sit-down showers equipped with stools (wooden, not poo),


like those commonly used across the Pacific.

For the more financially secure (and therefore stressed out) among us, the place also has lots of different massages, facials, accupuncture sessions and other foofy goodies--"Abhyanga Massage with Shirodhara Treatment" or "Javanese Lulur Body Treatment," anyone?--available for extra cash-money.

Because, as you well know, you're worth it.


Kabuki Springs & Spa is located at 1750 Geary Blvd., at Fillmore, right next to Sundance Kabuki Cinemas in Japantown. The baths are men-only Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays; women-only Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays; and coed (bathing suit required, perverts) on Tuesdays. Entrance to the baths are $22 Monday to Friday and $25 on Saturday and Sunday. The whole thing is open 10AM to 10PM daily. Abhyanga massage is evidently just another name for Ayurvedic massage. No idea what the deal with Javanese Lulur is.

Play gay soccer (or at least buy a gay-soccer calendar)

San Francisco is both an athletic city and a rather gay one. Those qualities--plus a bridge and some hills--combine to make it unique in the minds of many. But how is one to combine the "athletic" and the "gay" outside of a musty gym locker room and attached group showers?

One answer: the San Francisco Spikes.



One of the oldest gay soccer teams in the United States, the Spikes were one of five teams to compete in the first Gay Games, held in San Francisco in 1984. These days, the club is composed of two teams: the "Marin Team," which is the more competitive of the two and plays on Saturdays in the Marin Soccer League, and the "San Francisco Team," which is more recreational and competes on Sundays in the San Francisco Soccer Football League.

Both teams' seasons run approximately from March to September of each year, and combined practices happen once a week--outdoors during the season and indoors in the off-season (on the fields at Mission High School and in the gym at the Eureka Valley Recreation Center, respectively).



For info on how to join the team and how much it costs, game and tournament (including international tourneys) schedules, and other pertinent info, go to the About Us section on their website.

But for all you armchair enthusiasts out there with a space on your wall and a hand in your pants, you could always just spend 20 bucks and buy the 2009 Men of the San Francisco Spikes Calendar.





(10% of all calendar sales go to the soccer-related charity Little Feet, with the rest going to help with team expenses.)


Mission High School is at 18th and Dolores. The Eureka Valley Recreation Center is at 19th and Collingwood. Photos of the team courtesy of the Spikes' website. Hot calendar photos courtesy of photographer Blake Tucker at BLAKETUCKER.COM.