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Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol and Alfred Hitchcock all frequented the decadent New York bathhouse — as did the police who constantly raided it. Its year-old founder, Steve Ostrow, explains how Continental Baths made club culture what it is today.

Sex, disco and fish on acid: how Continental Baths became the world's most influential gay club

Hundreds of people are queueing to get in. Ostrow watches on, his eyes widening. Homosexuality is illegal in the state of New York. Shortly after his stakeout of the Everard, Ostrow, an opera singer by profession, opened the Continental Bathhouse. Over the next eight years, it became a cultural hub for music, clubbing and queer culture, providing gay men with a safe space unlike anything that had been seen before.

This story will soon be told on the big screen. Now 87 and living in Sydney, Ostrow looks back fondly on the Continental era. The cleanliness of the Baths was — and still is — a source of great pride. They were dirty … filthy. They treated you like shit. To begin with, the Baths were a social space where gay men could meet, swim, relax and have sex, but, as their popularity grew, Ostrow began booking entertainment.

People would dance in their towels, bathing suits, nude or anything! For the first time in dance music history, the stage — designed specifically for a DJ — was set. Levan became renowned for his flamboyant charisma and Knuckles for his focus and dedication. Both mixed using three turntables, a skill learned from their mentor, Nicky Siano.

After leaving the baths, Levan and Knuckles would go on to etch their names into dance music history : Levan spent a decade playing as a resident at the Paradise Garage, another seminal venue, which opened in Manhattan in Knuckles moved to Chicago and its Warehouse venue, where he helped develop the house music sound.

Continental regular David Wallace moved to New York in the 70s and believes he may have come into sexual contact with as many as 10, people in that period. Though many clients only came to the Baths for one thing, Ostrow continued to book big names as entertainment. Six months after it opened, the Continental was raided by police.

Very good-looking policemen would come in, rent a room, get into a towel, go into the steam room and then wait for someone to touch them. And then, from underneath the towel, out would come handcuffs. Ostrow estimates that the Baths were raided at least times. Were the patrons put off? They knew I always would, so they kept coming in.

For a long time, the only way for the Continental and other gay clubs in New York to operate was to pay bribes to the police or the mafia. And everything changed in the city.