Gilliland said he wanted people to feel temporarily transported: “Take a walk down memory lane and realize all of these things existed in our city.The Abbey is annually voted one of the world’s best gay bars, which explains the long lines on the weekends to get into this once-humble coffee house-which now boasts four full bars and five times the amount of real estate it originally occupied. “We’re almost spoiled with our ability to connect with people on the internet.” “It’s really easy to forget what it was like to be a gay person, even ten years ago,” said Gilliland. The artist Adrian Gilliland installed an homage to cruising at Griffith Park, a park with a deep queer history, setting up trees and foliage and putting up infamous “No Cruising” signs. “To think of these little safe spaces for queer people to let their hair down and have a cocktail and then be shut down by police, it’s just so dehumanizing.” It felt like we knew we were coming with the purpose of respecting and remembering our culture, because we are the only ones who can keep it alive,” said Freckle, an actor and LA native who sang at the launch, standing under a sign that said Jane Jones’ Little Club, the name of a 1930s lesbian nightclub that was raided by police.
“I felt lifted by the spirits of everyone. Inside the dark and steamy room, partygoers wrapped towels around themselves and sat on benches.
Artists re-created Circus Disco, considered the oldest and longest-running LGBTQ Latinx nightclub in LA.Īnother room was set up to resemble Basic Plumbing, a bathhouse shut down in 2001 after angry neighbors complained about cruising. “But I didn’t realize how nearly every other corner was once actually a queer space.”įreckle: ‘We were coming with the purpose of respecting and remembering our culture.’ Photograph: Courtesy FreckleĬruse sought to revive some vanished spots during Queer Maps’ launch party on Friday night at Navel, a renovated loft space in downtown LA.
“I knew Silver Lake was a queer zip code,” said Kim Anh, a local DJ who worked with Cruse on the alternative Pride event and has long lived in the neighborhood. The neighborhood was home to a gay cabaret restaurant that was bombed in a 1980 hate crime, a short-lived “fuck club” in an industrial space in 1982, and a number of beloved bars, bathhouses and other now shuttered spots. Silver Lake was also where the Mattachine Society, considered one of the first national gay rights groups in the US, was born in 1950. A group called Personal Rights in Defense and Education (Pride) later arranged a major protest of the police raid – two years before the Stonewall riot in New York. On New Year’s Day in 1967, undercover officers assaulted patrons at the neighborhood’s Black Cat gay tavern, arresting 14 people, and charging them with lewd conduct for kissing. The neighborhood has a vibrant gay history. The idea for Queer Maps came in 2014, when Cruse and other nightlife organizers wanted to host an alternative Pride celebration, outside of the mainstream parade in West Hollywood, and began researching events in Silver Lake, the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood to the east.Ī screen shot from Queer Maps showing the Black Cat. “It’s powerful to me to know that we’ve been here for a long time, and it makes me feel like we have to continue patronizing places that are currently open and stay active and vigilant.” “It’s important to be able to tell the people who come after us where we came from,” said Cruse. The map is a project of Chris Cruse, a local DJ and nightlife producer who has for years hosted underground queer dance parties in LA. It honors world-famous institutions alongside little-known haunts that quietly thrived during eras when being gay was criminalized and dangerous. The tool launches at a time of growing concern about the disappearance of queer bars in cities across the country – LA’s last remaining lesbian bar closed in 2017. Drawing on materials from a wide range of archives, the mapping tool documents the region’s queer bars, nightclubs, organizations, religious institutions, cruising spots and other landmarks from 1871 to the present with locations, historical facts, quotes and images.