By the 80s, Silver Lake was a center of queer life, especially queer Latino life, and, Palencia says, nearly every other storefront was a gay or lesbian bar, a leather store, a bookstore, or a community Aids organization. Less than two miles away is the Black Cat Tavern, the site of one of the first public gay rights demonstrations, in 1967, protesting the Los Angeles police department’s brutal New Year’s Eve raid. We were standing on the hill where the Mattachine Society was founded in 1950, and began to advocate for homosexuals not as sinners or perverts, but as an oppressed minority who deserved rights. Today, the neighborhood is better known as a place to sip artisan coffee at farm-to-table cafes or buy an $18 smoothie at the influencer-approved Erewhon grocery store.īut over the past 70 years, these few miles around a palm-lined stretch of Sunset Boulevard have seen repeated key events in LGBTQ+ history. 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. “This is where it all began, at least in modern times.” A view of Silver Lake and the neighboring hills from Maltman Avenue.
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