Rio's Point 202 Sauna Thrives Thanks to Owner Júnior Barbosa's Entrepreneurial Drive

It sounds like something from queer history – "a sexual playground" where (as Attitude Magazine describes it) "half-naked men walk around wearing only towels. On the first floor, sofas and tables and around 30 screens are arranged in front of a stage where drag queens and go-go boys perform for an audience of male locals and tourists."

No, it isn't a flashback to NYC's Continental Baths where Bette Midler made her name some 40 years ago. It is 700-square-metre Point 202 sauna, a Rio de Janeiro destination just blocks away from the famous Copacabana Beach. It has been thriving for some 23-years in the heart of Rio's gayborhood, but as owner Júnior Barbosa, 49, points out in a conversation with Attitude, it wasn't so easy at first. "At that time, the saunas in Copacabana didn't want me to open here. I received several threats over the phone. I had to walk around with six bodyguards and [had] an armoured car." They also were greeted with a West African sacrificial offering placed at the sauna's doorstep that meant to do harm to Barbosa.

To visit visit the Point 202 Instagram page, click here.

But the muscular, 49-year old didn't flinch and today is seen as a prime force in reinventing Copacabana's gay nightlife. "He is proud of his achievements: he lives in a spacious flat in the neighbourhood, travels regularly overseas, and has used his success to improve the lives of his mother and five siblings," Attitude writes. "Although he was briefly married to a woman years ago and had a son, he identifies as gay. Currently single, Barbosa says he's a happier man when he's free. He enjoys travelling and working out – in fact, his only vanity is his body, he says."

His is hard-scrabble success story. Born in a poverty-stricken town in Northern Brazil, he moved with his aunt to find a better life in Sao Paulo when he was 14. But he was humiliated by his relatives and tricked into sex trafficking and exploited by pimps. "They were dangerous. All the money went to them. The food was bad. I slept on the floor. I couldn't go out; I was a slave." With the help of a client, he escaped after three months; but alone in Rio, he lived on the streets and slept on the beach. "You have to face it when you have no choices. I was a warrior; that's why I'm here," he tells Attitude.

He tried the street sex market, but admits "not being good at it." Instead worked numerous jobs, saved his money and was able to open his first bar at the age of 19. Opening a sauna would come a few years later after he visited one and saw how poorly maintained it was. He established Pointe 202 as an alternative in Rio's city sauna scene, and it paid off, in part because Barbosa saw how the success of hookup apps was decimating queer nightlife. As nightclubs closed, he saw the opportunity to branch out, and became the first Rio sauna to put on drag queen shows, a move that was soon copied by rival businesses. This rescued the livelihoods of drag artists, who had seen their work drastically reduced as LGBTQ+ nightclubs closed. "The (drag) shows practically don't exist anymore. I helped their job market, and mine too by offering more leisure to my audience," says Barbosa.

There are now around nine saunas in Rio, with Point 202 being the most popular in the Copacabana district. It also one of three that offer rent boys. But they aren't hired by the sauna. "They just pay the entrance fee, and the money for their sexual services goes entirely to them, while the go-go boys are recruited just to strip," Attitude writes. "Everyone is instructed on the rules of the house. Drugs are banned, and mobile phones are forbidden."

Barbosa assures Attitude that the virtual dating world hasn't affected his business: "It's actually improved, because the safety is in the sauna, whether it's here or in another one. Sauna customers are more aware and don't go looking for these apps – they're more for younger guys, but there's a high risk of being mugged or harmed."

"Nowadays, the apps are dangerous," says Barbosa, telling me how thugs pretend to be gay in order to go to the victim's house. "When they get there, they coerce them, rob them, dope them and even kill them," he says.

And while Pointe 202 is a sex club, many go there to socialise with friends, drink and watch the drag shows.

As for the future, he tells Attitude he intends on slowing down after turning 50 and hopes to turn the business over to his 24-year old son, who is married with three children.

Check out these pics from Barbosa's Instagram: