But at night it seemed to be inhabited solely by leathermen strolling from the Brig, the Ambush, the Boot Camp, the Arena, or the Eagle to the Slot, the Caldron, the Folsom Street Hotel, the Club Baths, the Hothouse, or the Handball Express. Despite the number of these establishments, a particularly popular bar sometimes had such a hold on its clientele that they just overflowed into the street, beer bottles held against their hips at the angle of a hard cock, to converse over one another’s motorcycles or slip into side alleys for quick, rough, semi-public sex. On one block, the typical flow of traffic—the masculine bodies in their silver-studded black skins—was disrupted by a different kind of crowd: women. A mysterious lesbian heiress had used a chunk of her inheritance to purchase one of the big, red-brick warehouses on Folsom Street. After she earthquake-proofed it and brought it into compliance with the rest of the building code, she turned it into a unique establishment, the Calyx of Isis, a women’s bathhouse.
