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

Contents:

• LA’S GAY PAST: THIS IS LGBT HISTORY, TOLD SIX LANDMARKS
• UNRSTANDG LOS ANGEL (AND WT HOLLYWOOD) GAY HISTORY: CONTUY AND DISNTUY
• GAY HISTORY OF L.A.
• SEARCHG FOR SILVER LAKE: THE RADIL NEIGHBORHOOD THAT CHANGED GAY AMERI

LA’S GAY PAST: THIS IS LGBT HISTORY, TOLD SIX LANDMARKS

The two-story mm serv as a time psule for historic years of queer culture, and also functns as LA's Downtown gay muny center—hostg exhibns, art shows and cematic screengs for both the USC stunt populatn and Los Angel at large. Playfully known as "Gger Rogers Beach, " Will Rogers wel hard bodi to play volleyball and mature men to relax and get a tan - gays of all shap and siz have been wele here sce the 1950s. John Rechy, a noted chronicler of gay LA, wrote his book Cy of Night that this lotn of the Cooper doughnut cha on Ma Street was the se of a 1959 uprisg of transgenr women and street htlers.

Rechy, who was prent the doughnut shop on the night May 1959 when the rt took place, not that at this time, was not unmon for police to arrt members of the gay populace simply for ngregatg or beg a bar that was beg raid.

Rentment at beg targeted by the police me to a head the Cooper Do-Nuts, and when police me to the pecially popular gay hangout attemptg to arrt three people (Rechy among them), some of the trans women and gay patrons bombard the officers wh donuts, ffee, and paper plat until the police ran out seekg backup. Especially toward the end of his reer, police created problems for him: At a show a Hollywood gay club, he was ma to do his act a tux stead of his gowns due to an anti-cross-drsg law. In a letter of support for the hoe receivg this signatn, the Wt Coast edor of Archectural Digt wrote that Laaksonen's artwork "one of the most important forc the evolutn of gay culture the 20th century.

UNRSTANDG LOS ANGEL (AND WT HOLLYWOOD) GAY HISTORY: CONTUY AND DISNTUY

No list of “gone but not fotten” gay landmarks would be plete whout acknowledgg this leral mom and pop-owned bookstore/porn purveyor immortalized the 2019 Outft Openg Night documentary Circ of Books. The film, produced and directed by Rachel Mason, the dghter of the owners, offers an timate look at how this adorably average middle-aged uple wound up beg one of the biggt distributors of gay porn the Uned Stat. After operatg as a gay bar unr several nam, the current owners ter to a general clientele but rurrected the name as an homage to s unique history and display numero photographs si om their storied past.

WeHo Pri 2019, on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebelln, the very reason for Pri’s existence, pletely ignored that earth-shakg event, pretendg like had never LA LGBT Center’s attempted 2019 to falsely rewre s early history and rrectly ced 1969 as the date for s 50th anniversary celebratn even though 1971 was the date ed to memorate s 25th Archiv refed to operate an attempt to provi a venue to asss the impact of Stonewall on the velopment of the Los Angel gay vic 1967 LAPD raid on the Black Cat, a Silver Lake gay bar, and s aftermath is skewed today to the pot of misreprentatn, and there are other exampl.

To honor the seven men—Harry Hay, Bob Hull, Chuck Rowland, Rudi Gernreich, Dale Jenngs, Jam Gber, Konrad Stevens—who rpond to Hay’s origal ll for a homosexual anizatn that 1951 beme the Mattache Society, named after the masked mattachi urt jters of medieval Europe thought by Hay to be largely homosexual men. Until the 1969 Stonewall Rebelln, protective super-paranoia based on dividual safety and survival om hetero supremacists’ vlence and physil and psychologil genoci characterized homosexual realy. History, homosexuals intified themselv as an opprsed mory group, affirmed that there was such a thg as a homosexual culture, implied, but never actualized, llective polil actn, and anized succsful, but secret, discsn groups entirely by word of mouth.

GAY HISTORY OF L.A.

(a name rived om Thomas Carlyle’s “A mystic bond of brotherhood mak all men one”) replaced Mattache and started g the scriptive term “homophile” (lover of man or same), importantly broang inty om a solely sexual fn to also clu relatnship.

As Mattache had started homosexuals talkg to each other about their opprsn, albe secretly, the Homophile era was important that, through s pneerg publitns, the wrten word also me out of the closet for the first time. Addnal fg characteristics of the Homophile era clud nyg that a homosexual culture existed, law reform was a panacea, advot for social acceptance for homophil should not be homophil themselv but hetero profsnals (misters, attorneys, psychologists and psychiatrists), and, for safety purpos, psdonyms were wily ed to shield real inti. D’E, lookg back over the attempted erasure of Mattache and the ascenncy of the Homophile effort, wr, “In sum, acmodatn to social norms replaced the affirmatn of a distctive gay inty, llective effort gave way to dividual actn, and nfince the abily of gay men and lbians to terpret their own experience yield to the wisdom of the experts.

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

It is important to unrstand historilly that New York Cy, Los Angel, San Francis and elsewhere the seeds and spiratn for the early Gay Liberatn revolutn did not e om eher the Mattache or the Homophile efforts, whose history most people were unaware of, even many members of the Gay Liberatn Front of Los Angel (GLF), whose cy that history rid. Gay Liberatn was seed largely by the spiratn of and molg by the bravery of lunch unter s-s by black llege stunts, water hos and the ant black civil rights movement, the -your-face anti-Vietnam War protters, early femist thought and actn, and the righteons and zeal of numero other social jtice/social change movements. Before Stonewall, many gay and lbian people were actively engaged a myriad of progrsive social change efforts, sometim learship posns, but the closet due to the vilent and stutnalized hetero supremacy progrsive circl and society general.

After Stonewall, a handful of those activists--other-, like 28-year old me, began to see our own personal fight for eedom as a gay person as well as the Gay Liberatn movement self as an sential part of the social revolutn occurrg around . A Homophile emancipatn md-set (heteros will give our eedom and accept if we behave and act jt like them) was supersed by a liberatn iology and a grassroots, radil prott movement (gay and lbian people will une llectively and antly ee ourselv).

A., GLF, the central anizg enty facilatg the Gay Liberatn movement here, fought back agast hetero supremacy wh direct nontatnal polil actn and a fierce unwillgns to promise on anythg impactg the eedom and well-beg of gay and lbian people. After a year and a half of dac monstratns and nontatns, 1971 GLF’s Gay Survival Commtee morphed to the Gay Communy Servic Center (now lled the LA LGBT Center) around which an anized, visible and polilly proactive gay muny alced where none had ever existed before.