The Sutro Baths (ruins)
File:Richmond$sutro-baths-interior.jpg
Interior of the Sutro Baths.
Photo: Greg Gaar Collection, San Francisco, CA
Next to the Cliff House at Great Highway and Point Lobos. The baths, built by legendary local weirdo Adolph Sutro must have been a sight to behold: six huge indoor pools filled with ocean-water, surrounded by seats for 7,000 spectators. The baths were replete with statuary and plant conservatories featuring palms and real Egyptian relics, like something out of Norma Desmond's wettest dream. The baths also housed several restaurants, a museum, trapezes, and water-slides. But like so many of San Francisco's magnificently weird landmarks --- Fleishacker Pool, Playland at the Beach, the Fox Theater--the Sutro Baths were too good to last. By the 1950's, the baths were no longer profitable; they were finally turned into an ice-skating rink. But even that lost money, and by 1966 the owners were about to go bankrupt.
On June 26th, 1966, just as a wrecking ball was poised to begin smashing in the walls of the legendary Baths (and two weeks before the bankruptcy that would have ruined the owners) a mysterious fire broke out and burned the whole place to the ground. It turned out that the building was heavily insured; the owners collected their massive settlement and quickly left town, leaving many suspicions but no tangible evidence of fraud and arson. The ruins of the baths still linger as one of the most mysterious sites of San Francisco.
Beneath the ruins of the Sutro Baths winds an elaborate labyrinth of caverns and tunnels. Over the years, a few intrepid explorers have ventured into these mysterious passages; whether all have ventured back out into the light of day is another question. Many wild rumors have circulated in San Francisco's occult underworld concerning the nature of the creature(s) beneath the Sutro Baths. LaVey has expressed the opinion that the creatures are like unto the entities which populate the tales of H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft, a member of America's unholy trinity of great horror writers (the other two are Poe and San Francisco's own Ambrose Bierce), wrote about mysterious, malignant entities that enter our world by way of mysterious "doorways" to other dimensions. According to Lovecraft, spells of black magic, like those in the legendary Necronomicon of the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, may be used to summon these creatures.
-- Dr. Weirde
Sutro Baths exterior, before 1906. Cliff House is in the background.
Photo: Greg Gaar Collection, San Francisco, CA