Gay bars silver lake

But gentrification has transformed the area. W e are driving up an almost vertical hill in a hip Los Angeles neighborhood, looking for one of the birthplaces of the gay civil rights movement. At the wheel is Roland Palencia, a gay activist who has lived and organized here for decades. The Silver Lake Reservoir shines behind us, the hills around it crowded with bungalows.

Silver Lake was once a Bohemian retreat, a neighborhood for artists and activists, and even, in the 40s and 50s, Communist party members. The road dead ends at the bottom of a steep flight of concrete stairs. Palencia rolls down the car window and asks a man in Spanish if he knows where the sign has gone.

He pokes into the bushes by the stairs. We have been spending the afternoon touring some of the landmarks of queer organizing in Los Angeles, and seeing how well they are surviving the intense gentrification of Silver Lake. We were standing on the hill where the Mattachine Society was founded inand began to advocate for homosexuals not as sinners or perverts, but as an oppressed minority who deserved rights.

Searching for Silver Lake: the radical neighborhood that changed gay America

By the 80s, Silver Lake was a center of queer life, especially queer Latino life, and, Palencia says, silver every other storefront was a gay or lesbian bar, a leather store, a bookstore, or a community Aids organization. Under new ownership, the historic bar is now a gastropub, currently operating in the shadow of a giant Shake Shack.

But Circus of Books, once a famous purveyor of gay porn, is now a cannabis store, Palencia noted. Off Sunset Boulevard, the neighborhood streets that were once destinations for gay cruising now have hardly any traffic, Palencia pointed out as we drove through. Silver Lake, then a largely Latino neighborhood, became a haven for Palencia and his friends, who co-founded Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos GLLUan advocacy group focused on issues and people they felt white gay organizations and white feminist organizations ignored.

At restaurants like Crest, now a bar called 33 Taps, they organized events, flirted and argued. The West Hollywood gay bar, in contrast, was sometimes explicitly racist and misogynistic: Studio One, a prominent club, sparked protests for its exclusion of men of color and of women, and its obvious preference for wealthier white male patrons.

But Silver Lake could also be dangerous, Palencia said: there were gay-bashing attacks carried out by local Latino gang members. One of his close friends was kidnapped and stuffed into a lake. The festival continued until But the mids brought a new crisis: Aids deaths were rising, and communities of color, including Latinos, were disproportionately affected.

The epidemic had a huge effect in Silver Lake. Gay organizations led by white activists in Los Angeles often neglected outreach to people of color, including Latino community members, failing even to offer crucial information in Gay. During the height of the Aids crisis, Flamingo, a Latina lesbian bar on Sunset Boulevard with a big outdoor patio, transformed into the headquarters of Being Alive, a community organization for people with HIV to support each other.

Today the building has become Bacari, a fancy tapas place. The backyard is crowded with cafe tables and is a coveted date night spot. Palencia came to Bacari recently to celebrate his retirement. Only the trees are the same, Palencia said, but the tapas are very good. A fter seeing so many queer establishments that had been whitewashed, mainstreamed, or completely erased, we needed a break.