Fitness SF — Fillmore

The Room

A medium-sized electric dry sauna that tries its best under sheer human throughput. The heat is legit—175–180°F with a fast "hit" once you're on the upper bench in the back. The space is chopped into a two-tier zone and a one-tier zone, which makes the geometry weird but usable. Drafts are frequent because people are constantly entering/exiting; regulars wedge a towel under the door to stop the under-door breeze.

Ventilation is basically "collective sweat atmosphere." Not crisp. Not dangerous. Just gym-sweaty.

Lighting is dim enough to be tolerable, and honestly one of the more pleasant aspects of the room.

Cleanliness

Floor: perpetually wet.
Benches: usable but not "Spa Nordics of the world" clean.
Smell: fine, because heat kills everything, but you're aware of the day's traffic.

They seem to clean it once per day. Problem: it's used all day. Entropy wins.

No mold jump-scare moments. No weird broken hacks.

Heat Character

This is a classic gym electric sauna done reasonably well:

• Heat "arrives" quickly once you sit up high.
• You'll sweat in 5–10 minutes.
• By 15–20 min you're cooked enough that you start thinking in short declarative sentences.
• Heater seems correctly sized for volume.
• Back upper bench is the throne; everything else is transitional space.

Nothing mystical, nothing Finnish-ancestral. Just competent heat.

Crowd + Vibe

Extremely time-dependent.

Peak chaos:
7–9:30 am and 5–10 pm — constant churn, people standing, door opening like CVS on Black Friday.

Midday:
3–5 people, quiet, actually usable.

The clientele is mostly gym-going tech workers with normal 9–5s. No sauna culture, no community, no talkers, no ritual. Just bodies doing recovery. A few old guys go nude. Most are in towels or swimsuits. Some phones appear.

It's not hostile. It's just… functional. No one forms a bond here.

Adjacent Facilities

This is where Fillmore wins:

• Cold plunge
• Cold showers
• Towels
• Decent showers
• Pool
• Full gym

You can do a respectable hot–cold cycle without leaving the men's locker room. Post-sauna cool-down is basically "stand in the locker room like a lizard until your temperature drops."

Locker room is shockingly clean for how many humans pass through it but definitely crowded at peak times.

Access + Reliability

• Membership: ~$120/mo
• Guests allowed
• Sauna occasionally offline because someone fiddles with the thermostat and it dies for a few days
• Gendered locker rooms
• No weird closure rules

Intangibles

Best thing:
The upper-back-corner bench in off-peak hours—quiet, steady heat, no one bothers you.

Worst thing:
Crowd churn + dirtiness + drafts. At peak times it's like trying to meditate inside a revolving door.

Unexpected charm:
None. This is a gym sauna with no mythopoetic layer.

Would I recommend it for the sauna alone?
Only if you live nearby and convenience is the whole point.

Culture delta vs. South End Rowing Club:
SERC is an old-world communal micro-civilization. Fitness SF is a throughput machine for people checking one more box on their wellness stack. Heat is similar; humanity is not.