Searchg for Silver Lake: the radil neighborhood that changed gay Ameri | Los Angel | The Guardian

Contents:

• SEARCHG FOR SILVER LAKE: THE RADIL NEIGHBORHOOD THAT CHANGED GAY AMERI
• BEYOND OFF SUNSET: A GUI TO GAY SILVER LAKE
• GAY SILVER LAKE (JOHNSON COUNTY, TENNSEE)
• MOVE OVER, WT HOLLYWOOD — SILVER LAKE IS THE TE GAY MEC

SEARCHG FOR SILVER LAKE: THE RADIL NEIGHBORHOOD THAT CHANGED GAY AMERI

We are drivg up an almost vertil hill a hip Los Angel neighborhood, lookg for one of the birthplac of the gay civil rights movement.

At the wheel is Roland Palencia, a gay activist who has lived and anized here for Silver Lake Rervoir sh behd , the hills around crowd wh bungalows. ”The plaque qutn memorat the Mattache Society, one of the first US “homophile” groups to openly advote for acceptance. We were standg on the hill where the Mattache Society was found 1950, and began to advote for homosexuals not as sners or perverts, but as an opprsed mory who served rights.

BEYOND OFF SUNSET: A GUI TO GAY SILVER LAKE

Ls than two away is the Black Cat Tavern, the se of one of the first public gay rights monstratns, 1967, prottg the Los Angel police partment’s btal New Year’s Eve raid.

By the 80s, Silver Lake was a center of queer life, pecially queer Lato life, and, Palencia says, nearly every other storeont was a gay or lbian bar, a leather store, a bookstore, or a muny Aids anizatn. Today, spe the rabow flags flyg along Sunset Boulevard, Silver Lake is beg “-gayed and -Latized” queer history tour began at Silver Lake’s most famo gay landmark: the Black Cat Tavern.

The prott outsi the Black Cat took place 1967, two years before New York’s Stonewall rt, which is often scribed as the foundatnal event of the US gay rights movement. There’s no reference to the s when the Black Cat buildg transformed to a seri of different gay bars, cludg Le Barco, which offered drag performanc Spanish, and Club Fuck! At Basgo’s Dis, which was famo for s art-punk athetic and BDSM performance Sunset Boulevard, there are other holdouts om Silver Lake’s gayer past: Rough Tra, a leather and fetish shop, is a few doors down om the Black Cat.

GAY SILVER LAKE (JOHNSON COUNTY, TENNSEE)

But Circ of Books, once a famo purveyor of gay porn, is now a nnabis store, Palencia noted. Photograph: ONE Archiv at the USC LibrariOff Sunset Boulevard, the neighborhood streets that were once statns for gay cisg now have hardly any traffic, Palencia poted out as we drove through.

“It’s right between East Los Angel, which has tradnally been Lato, and Wt Hollywood, which beme more gay, ” he said.

”Silver Lake, then a largely Lato neighborhood, beme a haven for Palencia and his iends, who -found Gay and Lbian Latos Unidos (GLLU), an advocy group foced on issu and people they felt whe gay anizatns and whe femist anizatns ignored. 33 Taps, at the former se of Crt, a meetg place for Gay and Lbian Latos Unidos. While there were tensns at the time between gay and lbian anizers LA, the gay men who started GLLU reached out to lbian Latas to get them volved as lears the group, as documented Unidad, a new film about the group’s history.

MOVE OVER, WT HOLLYWOOD — SILVER LAKE IS THE TE GAY MEC

Palencia said this was ccial: “Polilly, the lbians were much more evolved terms of their thkg of systems – like patriarchy, enomic systems, sexism, even racism, ” wh an agenda “that went beyond sexual polics” members supported Lato labor anizers and the Uned Farm Workers, and proment labor activists, cludg Dolor Huerta, marched alongsi them a 1983 Pri Wt Hollywood gay scene, ntrast, was sometim explicly racist and misogynistic: Stud One, a proment club, sparked protts for s excln of men of lor and of women, and s obv preference for wealthier whe male Silver Lake uld also be dangero, Palencia said: there were gay-bashg attacks rried out by lol Lato gang members.