‘Behind the glossy veneer, LA is a city steeped in gay history’
By Will Stroude
That infamous quote came from late American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who, many insist, meant it as something of a slight towards the great city of Los Angeles: a restless, urban metropolis, collecting rudderless dreamers from around the world. But talk to a native Los Angelian today – or more likely, someone who’s come from elsewhere to make L.A. their adopted home – and they’ll wear Wright’s quote as a badge of honour.
On arriving in Los Angeles for the very first time – perhaps as one of those ‘loose’ people Wright referred to, being an Aussie visiting from my new home of London – I visited the Huntington: a tranquil private art gallery, library and botanical gardens out west of the city in Pasadena that houses a collection of materials from iconic gay novelist Christopher Isherwood (A Single Man). Poring carefully over some of his rare personal documents, I arrived at a letter he sent home to his mother in 1939, shortly after he arrived in Los Angeles: “The people are most friendly; we all live openly in the sunshine. If you appear dressed in red velvet or walking a baby puma, nobody bats an eyelid.”As I soon discover, while in 1939 Los Angeles seemed an American sister city to Isherwood’s beloved Weimar-era Berlin, the city’s LGBT history is more chequered than the sunny picture of unquestioning acceptance Isherwood painted.
Discovering Tinseltown’s queer history, sandwiched as it is, on the gaudy Hollywood Boulevard strip next to cheap tourist shops and tackier fare like Madame Tussauds, it’d be easy to dismiss The Hollywood Museum as just another tourist trap. Don’t. This four-storey museum is located in the stunning former Max Factor building, long time headquarters of Hollywood’s make-up king. You’ll get a kick out of Hollywood ephemera – like Hannibal Lecter’s actual jail cell from Silence of the Lambs, but the real treasures are those that hark back to the building’s original purpose: Factor’s world-famous make-up rooms, now transformed into shrines for the women whose looks he helped create. See where Marilyn Monroe became a blonde, Lucille Ball became a redhead and many other Hollywood sirens perfected their signature looks.
That’s all very camp, but if you want to go deep underground in hidden gay Hollywood, Out and About Tours (outandabout-tours.com) is an unmissable treat. Taking small groups, one-on-one tours and even wedding parties, host Jim Davidson is an enthusiastic fountain of knowledge about the city’s queer history.
See that abandoned building down an alleyway, the one that looked like it couldn’t have ever housed anything much more exciting than a laundromat? It was a secret drag bar – one that stars like Joan Crawford were chauffeured to after they’d finished filming for the day, to watch drag queens portraying them on stage. That overpass in the now-genteel suburb of Silver Lake? It was the unofficial afterparty venue – dubbed ‘Planet Myra’ for local guys to do whatever they pleased once the bars had shut up for the night.
But life was fraught for gay men and women in Los Angeles. Police raids of gay bars were common, with a handbook handed to police officers titled The Sexual Criminal. Its ethos: if you’ve found a homosexual, you’ve found a criminal. Shocking stories of police harassment abounded. Take Nancy Valverde, a Costa Rican immigrant and butch lesbian who was first arrested in 1948 at the age of 17 for ‘masquerading’ – a statute that prohibited men and women from wearing non-gender conforming clothes. Unbowed, Valverde kept her masculine clothes, and over the course of many years, was arrested countless times for the simple act of not dressing like a ‘lady’.
Many people will not realise, too, that Los Angeles had its own version of the Stonewall riots some two years before Stonewall. On New Year’s Eve 1966, The Black Cat Tavern on Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake was the subject of a brutal police raid. At five minutes after midnight, as the men squeezed into the bar – many of them in full drag – celebrating the start of a new year, plainclothes policemen began swinging pool cues and other makeshift weapons, violently dragging patrons out onto the street. Of the sixteen arrests that night, six were for ‘lewd conduct’ – kissing.
The raid galvanised the local queer community, with an air of defiance growing in L.A.’s gay scene and leading to public demonstrations against the police. It’s incredible to think all this was happening while, on the other side of the country, the Stonewall riots – considered by many to be the birth of the modern gay rights movement – were still a couple of years away. Today, The Black Cat is a relatively sedate hipster cafe/bar, but it hasn’t forgotten its proud roots. The walls are adorned with framed newspaper reports and photographs from that one fateful night and the ensuing protests.
Out of these early acts of rebellion, groups like the Gay Liberation Front formed, and one of their first vows was to make Los Angeles the most gay-friendly city in the world. Today, it’d be hard to argue that they didn’t achieve their mission.
1. Eat like a local
Vegan, raw, clean-eating – the city of Los Angeles is all about it. Two recommendations: head to Plant Food + Wine in Venice for incredible food in even better surroundings – their cheese platters are a must (despite none of them containing, y’know, actual cheese). And vegan whole food restaurant Cafe Gratitude – several sites around the city – is the ultimate in (slightly pretentious) LA dining. The food – all amazing – is listed on the menu in the form of affirmations. Want the kale chips? You’ll have to announce to the waiter, ‘I am vivacious’. Good news: if all this is a bit precious, you can also get the best tacos for a couple of bucks from a food truck when you spill out of a club at 4am.
2. Hike Runyon Canyon
The Hollywood sign and the Griffith Observatory might be more iconic visages, but if you want to work up a sweat, get up early, head up past Hollywood Boulevard to Runyon, and get moving. The views across the city are spectacular. Bonus: thanks to its proximity to the Hollywood Hills, it’s a magnet for health-conscious celebs. Spend the morning there and you’re bound to at least bump into a Real Housewife walking her lap dog.
3. Get arty
From the electric atmosphere at LACMA – a hangout even for those who’d never usually set foot inside a gallery – to the imposing grounds of The Getty, high in the hills above the city, the museums and galleries of Los Angeles are far from stuffy and static. Our pick? The newest girl on the block, The Broad, which opened in September 2015. It’s free to the public and home to some of the most impressive modern art you’ll ever see, offering a chronological look at modern art from Warhol to Koons, Haring to Basquiat. Also be sure to check out the Hammer Museum, where the 2016 Made In L.A. Biennale brings together hundreds of works across mediums for a vibrant showcase of emerging and underrepresented artists. The full programme’s announced February 10 at hammer.ucla.edu.
Lovers of LGBT history should note that, in 2016 (and a first for the two institutions), L.A.’s Getty and LACMA will be working together to present a huge exhibition of the works of Robert Mapplethorpe. With a selection of roughly 450 objects on display, this is a two-parter in the truest sense of the word: visitors can wander LACMA and then head for the hills and the Getty to take in more of his works.
4. Hit the beach
Los Angeles is known for its year-round warmth and sunny days; on average, just 14 rainy days per year. By comparison, London sometimes feels like it has more rainy days than that in an average week. So why not make the most of it and head for the beach? 15 to 20 years ago, Venice Beach was a virtual no-go zone. Now, it’s a thriving creative hub, home to Abbot Kinny Boulevard and a very cool little gay bar by the name of Roosterfish.
5. Go downtown
In the past decade, downtown’s residential population has skyrocketed, with more L.A. residents attracted to the allure of city living compared to the relative suburbia of much of this sprawling metropolis.
Before you hit the gay bars and clubs popping up seemingly by the week, you must eat at Clifton’s Cafeteria on Broadway. Both one of L.A.’s oldest restaurants and one of its newest hotspots thanks to a recent multi-million dollar refurb, it’s a sight to behold: three floors of woodland kitsch, with imposing stuffed animals in almost every corner. The food’s not flashy, but it’s hearty, honest fare, served help-yourself style in a giant cafeteria on the ground floor. Best of all: despite the rumoured $10 million-plus price tag for the recent refit, prices are still dirt cheap. We opted for a bowl of jello for dessert: 35 cents.
Of the area’s gay bars, we can recommend the super-new and super-stylish Bar Mattachine – named after the Los Angeles secret society of gay men of days gone by – and, after you’ve polished off your cocktails, the cavernous beer barn Redline for more drinks, dancing and… whatever happens.
Where to stay
Given we were on the trail of Hollywood history, we opted for the Hotel Roosevelt: a grand old dame on Hollywood Boulevard since 1927, and the site of the first Oscars ceremony in 1929. Marilyn Monroe was a resident at the Hollywood Roosevelt for two years when her modelling career took off. The hotel pool is one of the city’s coolest hangouts (complete with gorgeous underwater mural painted by David Hockney).
Getting there
Virgin Atlantic flies daily direct from Heathrow to LAX – at 11 hours and 30 minutes, enough time to enjoy a film or two and catch some Z’s.
Getting around
You’ve heard the cliché, L.A. is a car town, but it doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily need to hire a car. Uber is competitively-priced in this town, and while the modest public transport system can’t compare to London, recent advances have made catching the metro a much more appealing option.
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