NEW YORK - Wearing just a small white towel and a smile, Bob prowls the dark halls of the East Side Club, looking into dozens of its closet-sized rooms and hoping eye contact with another man will lead to sex.

"It's better than going to a bar and taking your chances," said Bob, a 46-year-old garden supplies salesman from New Jersey who declined to give his last name. "You always know something is going to happen here."

For some gay men, the city's two 24-hour bathhouses - the East Side Club in midtown and the West Side Club in Chelsea?- live on as a spot for sex without strings despite a recent trend toward more men hooking up online.

They rent small rooms to have sex in at a cost of $21 for four hours, after paying a nominal annual membership fee.

Bathhouses, pushed to the fringes of the gay scene in the mid-1980s when the city shuttered most of them to stem the spread of AIDS, still offer patrons something a bar or the Internet cannot - near-guaranteed sex in a safe environment.

"In a bathhouse you meet a person in the flesh in a relatively safe and clean environment where everyone has the same agenda," said Bill Stackhouse, director of the Institute for Gay Men's Health at the Gay Men's Health Crisis, a group that fights AIDS in New York City.

"It's safer than the Internet, where all you have is a photo and maybe some video footage before you go to someone's home," he said.

Operating a business for the purpose of sex violates state law. City officials say they do inspect the bathhouses, but they are not legally allowed to look inside the rented rooms.

"We do not access private areas within establishments, 'private' meaning closed-door, to make observation," said Isaac Weisfuse, deputy commissioner for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Several officials, asked why the city effectively turns a blind eye to the bathhouses, declined comment. The office of Mayor Michael Bloomberg also declined comment.

An itch to scratch
The two clubs are owned by businessman Ancil Brown, who declined an interview request, but managers at the clubs allowed a reporter to tour the facilities and interview patrons.

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Peter, 57, a construction manager with silver hair, goes to the East Side Club once every two weeks and has for years.

"You have that itch, and it feels good to scratch it," said Peter, who also did not want to give his last name. "There is still a place to go for it. You should see this place at 6 (p.m.) before all of the guys go home to their wives."

Both clubs smell of chlorine and loud techno music bounces off the ceiling and walls of the thin, dark hallways, which are lined with about 100 rooms and separate steam rooms and showers. They are both housed anonymously in Manhattan office blocks, identified only by discreet entries on the tenant directory inside the lobby of each building.

Customers can rent lockers or rooms, which are about 6 by 8 feet, of which a bed with a 2-inch-thick mattress takes up more than half. A small lamp dimly lights the rooms.

CONTINUED: Last resort?

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