Capitol Hill men’s bathhouse Steamworks has again been targeted in an armed hold-up, CHS has learned. According to an SPD report on the incident, a man made off with an undisclosed amount of cash after entering the Summit Ave business late Tuesday afternoon and threatening the person working at the entrance to the bathhouse with a handgun.
The worker told police a black male in his 40s wearing a black hoodie pulled tight and a black bandana with a white design covering a portion of his face entered the building in the 1500 block of Summit Ave just after 3:30 PM Tuesday.
The robber is said to presented a grey duffel bag and pointed a black, semi-automatic pistol at the man working behind the glass window of the Steamworks front counter. The suspect then demanded cash and said “I’ll shoot you if you leave,” the victim told police.
As the worker was getting cash to hand over, the suspect became angry and demanded the worker hurry up. The suspect began banging on the glass until it broke, according to the SPD report.
The victim said he then handed over the cash and watched the suspect leave on foot before calling 911. The SPD officer arrived within one minute of the call but the suspect was not found in the are and no fingerprints were recovered from the scene. SPD also looked for any signs of blood from the broken glass but none was found. Video footage from the entrance security system was not immediately available but could yield more information about the suspect who is believed to possibly have been involved with another robbery at the bathhouse in late 2010, SPD tells CHS.
In early December, a man also wearing a dark hoodie entered Steamworks and made off with cash. In that robbery, the suspect sprayed the employee with pepper spray.
Weird. Something doesn’t seem right. Why only that location is being robbed? Can pepper spray go through glass? How much glass breakage was there? No cuts or blood? Why easily breakable glass?
i’d love to see steamworks put pics of the robber on the big screens facing summit!
It does seem strange they don’t have bulletproof glass, like a bank would. I’ll bet they do now.
I sorry its kinda like karma.
huh? what is ‘like karma’?
Steamworks sounds like a factory. What is a mens bathouse?
geoff,
It’s a plumbing supply place. haha
“I sorry its kinda like karma.”
So we’re supposed to laugh if your family gets robbed at gunpoint, simply because you’re a worthless prick?
A place where men have sex with men.
They obviously have to collect money somehow… so, there’s an opening in the glass.
This is by far the nicest bathhouse in seattle and it’s gotten SO much nicer in the past few months… cleaner and less sketchy looking guys too. Makes sense to rob though… nobody is ever at BP when I go! So they probably have no money to take! lol.
This “business” is nothing but a front for drug dealing and using and the spread of disease. As a member of the gay community I think we should be putting all of our energies towards shutting this and the other two establishments like it down. It’s a total public health nuisance.
Well said, Mein Kommandant. Sieg Heil.
Banks, “payday loans” places, and other such establishments have bulletproof glass with trays under the glass to slide money under. It’s not necessary to have a circle in the glass (or plexiglass) that someone can stick their hand through. You have to wonder why, if they thought enough to have glass like this, they still made it flimsy enough for the thief to break it by slamming against it? The clerk should’ve been able to hit the floor and activate an alarm, silent or otherwise, without getting shot.
You know what is a health and public nuisance? The needles, jars and baggies that litter out parks all over Capitol Hill. The dog feces that is everywhere and the cigarette butts that act as mulch around almost every tree. You really want to go after Steamworks? A place that is legal and caters to adults? Well then you better include all the straight sex clubs and dens that are in this city too, legal and illegal. And there are a ton of them.
“This “business” is nothing but a front for drug dealing and using and the spread of disease”
So’s your mom, but she seems to make out ok.
For the people leaving posts here criticizing bathhouses: grow up and get a clue. Gay bathhouses are a fact of life of big-city living. If you feel that they are a public health nuisance, move your self-righteous ass off the hill and to some stinkhole like Tacoma or some pretentious, boreville like Bellevue where they don’t have bathhouses. Furthermore, if you did have a clue, you’d know that Steamworks is BY FAR the cleanest, most community-oriented club of the three of its kind in Seattle.
Its a place where we go to get our asses plowed by a stranger (if your into that). This is by far the cleanest place, normal guys actually can be found there…well…normal in a bathhouse type of way.
“For the people leaving posts here criticizing bathhouses: grow up and get a clue. Gay bathhouses are a fact of life of big-city living.”
I support and encourage safe, clean bathhouses, but “grow up and get a clue” isn’t really the most convincing response for those people who’re just trying to get a rise out of you.
the posts here are mostly intelligent and i appreciate that. my favorites are the humorous ones. thank you to everyone for making me smile today, even the posters with whom I disagree because you provoke responses that are laugh out loud.
judging doesn’t make you better; it makes you ignorant.
I believe the robbery was an inside job. No random black thug is going to rob a bathhouse. I’m not member of the ACLU, but this story has a racist and inside-job slant to it. Not buying it for a minute.