Ken's at Kensington

About this place Ken's at Kensington

Ken's at Kensington is the longest-established gay sauna in Sydney and one of the longest-running in Australia — a facility on Anzac Parade that has been operating for decades and has built a reputation for comprehensive facilities and a genuine sense of community among its regulars. The sauna's facilities include a heated pool, steam room, dry sauna, gym, and private cabins available for rental, covering the range of equipment expected from a premium gay bathhouse. The location in Kensington — close to the University of New South Wales and some distance from Oxford Street — gives the venue a slightly different character from an inner-city sauna: more local, more regular-oriented, less dependent on the tourist and weekend visitor trade that sustains venues closer to the gay strip. Ken's has navigated four decades of change in Sydney's gay male sexual culture — the AIDS crisis, the normalisation of online hookup apps, the gentrification of the inner city — and emerged as an institution with a loyal regular clientele and a reputation for the kind of consistent quality that comes from decades of operation. For gay male visitors to Sydney looking for a sauna experience, Ken's at Kensington is the established reference point.