The Caldron (often misspelled Cauldron) was a sex club for gay men located at 953 Natoma Street in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood. It opened in 1980 and closed in 1984.Gayle S. Rubin, "Elegy for the Valley of the Kings: AIDS and the Leather Community in San Francisco, 1981-1996", in In Changing Times: Gay Men and Lesbians Encounter HIV/AIDS, University of Chicago Press, 1997, , pp. 101-144, at page 116. It was called "the epitome of the uninhibited, abandoned, 'sleazy' sex club."Jennifer Brier, Infectious Ideas: U.S. Political Responses to the AIDS Crisis, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2009, , p. 40.
Description Located in a converted warehouse, the site was unabashedly a place where men went to have sex. Patrons were required to be naked except for footwear; a clothes check was provided. Like other similar venues, it had no alcohol license; patrons brought their own alcohol, usually beer, and this was stored in a cooler and patrons given chits that they could turn in for a can of the brand of beer they had brought. It was described as "exemplary" as one of the first venues to promote safe sex as the AIDS crisis hit.Rubin, p. 197.Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, New York, Viking Press, 1987, , pp. 304-305.
The owners were Hal SlateMick Sinclair, San Francisco: A Cultural and Literary History, Interlink, 2003, , p. 329 and Stephen Gilman.Bob Thomas, interviewed 3/12/77, in Eric Rofes, A Walking Tour of South of Market in the 1970s, n.p., 2005, , p. 12, retrieved 11/20/2014. The club had two bathtubs for those who wanted to be urinated on. The lights were not dimmed.Joe Mayo, interviewed 3/28/97, in Rofes, p. 12, retrieved 11/20/2014. There were tables and benches for having sex on, and slings.Rofes, pp. 11-13. A poster announcing its First Anniversary Orgy has been preserved. The name Caldron, according to owner Gilman, was the I Ching's commentary on itself.
Slate and Gilman were members of the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, which after Monday chorus rehearsals sometimes traveled to the Caldron for private parties. According to Eric Rofes, "they played opera music while the sex was going on."Rofes, pp. 12-13.
Cartoonist Al Shapiro created artwork for the Caldron and was known to visit. The San Francisco Jacks, a masturbation club, also met there.
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