I’ve called West Hollywood home for the past two years. It reminds me somewhat of my original home in New York, minus the eternal overwhelming crowds. WeHo is a community built around historic landmarks, preserving the pedestrian’s right to walk to their favorite coffee shops, thrift stores, and bars. The area is a melting pot of time periods, ideals, and the revolutionary movement of gay and lesbian rights. It is home to many Jewish and Russian refugees, and remains a major advocate in maintaining rent‐controlled apartments. West Hollywood shelters relics like the Chateau Marmont, Formosa Cafe, the Whiskey a Go Go, and the Troubadour. During the 1960 Ciro’s, a popular movie star hangout during the 1940 and 50s, became a rock and roll club and held the city’s first gay night. Sunday nights became known as “Tea Dances” and perhaps it would be noteworthy to mention that at this point in history, two men dancing was still illegal. By 1975 the design and decorating industry had entrenched itself into the vital center of WeHo. The glowing and changing lights of the Pacific Design Center remain a beacon in the night.
Although 3000 miles separates New York’s Greenwich Village from WeHo, both cities saw the birth of and nourishment of artistic cultures incorporating civil rights, and gay movements into their core, but also remaining a vigilant force in preserving them. On June 28th 1969 a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, in Greenwich Village, was the first time that gays and lesbians began to riot and protest against continued harassment by the NYC police.
The Stonewall Inn was reportedly owned by the mafia, and catered to a majority of citizens the police department enjoyed harassing. It took the police over two years to get a warrant issued to shut down the bar on the grounds that it was being run as an illegal membership club without a license, and had no license to serve liquor. The raid on Stonewall Inn lasted between the hours of 12 am and 2 am, 13 arrests were made, and four police officers were reported injured. The patrons of Stonewall Inn fought back against the police raid; throwing anything they could get their hands on including compacts, projectile lipsticks, and stilettos aimed as missiles against the police. According to neighborhood accounts, the raid left the Stonewall Inn as if it had been devoured by a tornado.
Shutting down bars catering to homosexuals was a routine exercise in police brutality in New York, but this time, the residents of Greenwich Village quickly united to form activist groups concentrating their efforts on establishing venues where gays were allowed to express their sexual orientation without fear of being arrested. Only a year after the Stonewall ignited riots, both New York City and Los Angeles commemorated the anniversary of the events by creating The Gay Pride March. The yearly march has grown tremendously, and is a major event on the calendars of anyone living in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, where people from all over the world flock to celebrate their sexual freedom.
The Stonewall riots also played a major role in having a vast majority of gays move to Weho. The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Dept patrolled WeHo, and they held a reputation for being less offensively brutal than the homophobic LAPD. The neighborhood continues to develop as a community where outcast and creative activists reside. It was in 1984 that WeHo was able to carve itself out of the greater Los Angeles area, and became the City of West Hollywood. A pinnacle point in the formation of the City of West Hollywood was created by the fact that by 1984 Los Angeles began escalating plans to dismantle rent control. In creating the City of West Hollywood, the locals, mostly renters who would face eviction without the rent control laws, with the help of the Community for Economic Survival (CES), established West Hollywood as a city with one of the nation’s strongest rent control laws.
Present day WeHo is Los Angles’ answer to the Village in New York, and the Castro in San Francisco. It is a city where men can walk hand in hand, and display affection openly without the neighbors casting malicious glances, and possibly calling the police. Women don’t fear walking the dimly lit streets, and your neighbors greet you. The City of West Hollywood was home the short‐lived marriage ceremonies for gay couples last June, and the many rallies before and after the passing of Prop 8.
One has to wonder how WeHo fares during our current economic state. While brightly populated local bars and restaurant like The Abbey, Eleven, Rage, Here and others along the Santa Monica and Robertson strip continue to remain packed to capacity, there are also places disappearing off the map. The Court Yard was an amazing Spanish/Mediterranean tapas restaurant, a staple on Santa Monica Blvd. It served mouthwatering food, great sangria, and welcomed both locals and tourists alike into its open courtyard. Walk by its locked gates now, and the night air scented with rich aromas, burning candles, and countless conversations taking place, are only memories. The lease would have been up in April, but revenue no longer leveraged the cost of staying open. Half a block east of the now closed Court Yard is Famima .A modern, Japanese take on your local grocery store. Famima in WeHo was the first of its kind to be opened in
Los Angeles on June 20th, 2005. Bright colors and imported goods smiled backed at you from the racks, not particularly overpriced. It was last weekend, while coming in through its back door, that I was greeted by a large 50% off sticker. I’ve bought a variety of Kambucha drinks, Pocky, sushi, salads, and even neat Japanese notebooks here. Famima would remain vigilantly open until 2 am, nourishing and feeding hunger, thirst, and nicotine addictions. I use their ATM, and buy a pack of gum, because you can never have too much tropical gum to offer. The gum only costs me $.64, a bargain, but also a reminder of the fact that by the end of January, Famima in WeHo will be no more. I have to ask the clerk why they are closing, and he points out that they plan to open another location in downtown LA, but states that in the last year business has slowed down to a point where a profits are no longer afforded. Kim’s nail salon is also located on Santa Monica Blvd. I’ve been a religious devout since my fist manicure. Kim, a Vietnamese refugee has owned the salon for the past twenty years. When I first started going to Kim’s, I would spend a good half an hour waiting my turn. Lately, I can spend a full hour getting a manicure and pedicure without ever seeing another customer come in. I asked Kim if she has witnessed a decline in business, and she smiles as she looks outside through the glass front. Kim has seen much of the neighborhood change. Many of the regulars, despite the city’s efforts to maintain low rents through rent control, have migrated to Silver Lake, because the cost of living continues to mount. Rents soar making it difficult, if not impossible, for the locals to remain. Smaller houses have been torn down and have been replaced by condominiums, and overpriced supermarkets. Kim’s regulars do not come in as often, she admits. Where once her clients may have come in twice a week, now they come once. It is the homey atmosphere and kind nature of everyone who works in Kim’s salon that brings everyone back. We sit and talk over a cup of Vietnamese tea, as I wait for my manicure to dry, and we catalogue the outline of the houses and trees on the street. I wonder what it will look like in twenty years.
Like all inhabitants on this earth, I am caught in a place in time, a history ever changing. I am elated to witness what the present and future hold, while trying to withhold casting my judgment. It makes me proud to know that WeHo has emerged as a diverse metropolitan area in Los Angeles, one that continues to house and nourish humanistic ideals. There is much that is born during trying times, and the world economic crisis is no different. As neighbors, activists, artists, humanists and consumers our choices speak for us with every dollar spent. We are active agents in shaping the political and economic landscape of our futures.

 

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