Wednesday, July 3, 2024

Bath House Day Triple Feature, Part 1 - Turkish Hammam

Today I'm posting a triple feature on bath houses. The Romans are said to have invented the

concept of public bathing facilities, but there is some archaeological evidence they might have

been around even longer than that. In part one, we look at the Turkish hammam, a type of facility

that closely approximates the Roman. These photos came to me undated, but some

of the details make me think they are several decades old.

As for sexual activity in hammams, the official line is that it is not allowed, but according to a 2019 travel blogger, "I received assurances from my hotel concierge, the taxi driver, and the guy at the front desk that this place was absolutely not a gay bath house. After twenty minutes, the groans emanating from the dark corners convinced me that their definition of gay differed from mine. I can only imagine what the hammams advertised as gay might be like."

That look

I've stared at this for half an hour, and I still can't figure out the look on this guy's face.

Of course, first I had to stop and look at those lovely rumps.

Shower

I think this guy is switching on an ancient looking shower in the hammam.

Lighting

I really like the lighting in this one, plus the way the odd guy is reading a newspaper.

Hmmmm . . .

If I didn't know better, I'd think there was more going on here than a soap suds massage.

Bath House Day, Part 2 - Gay Baths

Part two of out triple feature goes gay. From the earliest days of public baths, men have

engaged in sexual activity with each other on site. One example would be the Everard Baths

of New York City, which was notorious for such as early as the late 19th Century. By the 1960s,

bath houses operated by and for gays sprang up in nearly every large American city.

Not long after, bath house porn began to appear.

VHS

In the late 1970s when VHS and Beta video recording became available, lots of small time operators got into the porn film business. This is an early example in black and white of a bath house video,

and this screen grab is about as good quality wise as the original

Convenience

Some interior designer conveniently place a bench right under the showers in this bath house.

Another still

This is another grainy screen capture from a different VHS porn video made in a bath house.

And finally . . . Going or coming

This undated gay bath house scene features a shower right in the locker area.

I cant tell if the guy at left is coming in or going out.

Bath House Day, Part 3 - The English

Part three of Bath House Day takes us to England. As London and other English cities became more crowded during the Industrial Revolution, hygenic concerns led to the construction of public bath houses as early as 1842. They ranged from the very simple and utilitarian in working class neighborhoods to posh facilities at gentlemen's clubs. The scene above from 1900 is the shampooing room at the Jermyn Street Turkish Bath in London which was built to resemble a hammam. Apparently, this was a middle class establishment, and a contemporary description went:

"Then one is conducted to the shampooing room, and whilst reposing on a marble slab, one is massaged by light-handed attendants. That process is followed by a series of brushes and different soaps; and after a variety of shower douches and a plunge into cold water, the bath is complete. A sojourn in a lofty cooling room, a quiet smoke, or a light meal, and one sallies forth to a new being. A visit to the gallery of the attendant hairdressers makes perfection more perfect."

Royal Pioneer Corps, 1940

After a particulary heavy air raid on London during the Blitz in 1940, soldiers of the Royal Pioneer Corps were called in to help clear rubble from key transport corridors and facilities. For respite from their backbreaking labor, they were treated to a day at a bath house in an undamaged part of the city. What a fine looking group of men with a variety of ages!

Tuesday, July 2, 2024

Arno Breker Day

When I posted an Arno Breker (1900-1991) series on my old tumblr, I caught some flak

from more than one viewer for featuring a darling of the Nazis and favorite of Adolf Hitler.

While Breker's work does fit the Aryan superman myth, there is an undeniable sense of raw

masculinity in it that draws our attention. This will probably be the only time I do this,

and I'm including some biographical and historical notes that show some of the darker

elements of his story. We start with Battle Against the Serpents from 1940.

Decathlete

Arno Breker won the silver medal for Decathlete in the 1936 Olympics sculpture competition.

Although not yet officially a Nazi, his style was clearly in keeping with theirs.

Who knows? He might have won gold had he joined the party sooner.

Prometheus

Although it had a clear Classical reference, Prometheus from 1937

was quite in keeping with Breker's Nazi inspired work.

Berufung

This appears to be a plaster mockup for this Breker piece called Berufung, or Predestination,

which was in the Nazi art catalog for 1942. It was the last piece cast in bronze due

to wartime metal shortages, and I believe the original was destroyed.

Der Wäger

Der Wäger (above and below from a different angle) was supposed to represent the spirit of the Reich, but got more attention for the fact that it appeared that Dr. Karl Brandt has posed for it, at least from the neck up. Brandt, the man behind the euthanasia and medical experimentation programs of the Third Reich had the distinction of being the only war criminal condemned to death by both the Nazis and the Allies. The Nazis convicted him of moving his family away from Berlin so that they would be in the zone of the Americans at the end of the war. His friend Heinrich Himmler managed to delay the intended execution long enough for the war to end, but the Americans hanged him in 1948 for a variety of war crimes.

The Party

Arno Breker joined the Nazi Party in 1937, and created this piece called The Party

shortly thereafter to decorate one of the ceremonial entrances to Albert Speer's

rebuild of the Reich's Chancellery for Hitler. It was destroyed in 1945.

the postwar Denazification Courts were not fully convinced.

Alexander

This is the last scupture ever done by Arno Breker, Alexander the Great and the Eagle of Zeus from 1982. If you think it looks remarkably like his work for the Nazis, you wouldn't be alone.