Karaoke on Thursdays, Beer Busts on Wednesdays along with no cover, cute bartenders, and stiff drinks makes The Motherlode (aka "The 'Lode") West Hollywood's diamond-in-the-roughiest guilty pleasure. The music is a little different, but the DJ manages to play the more popular stuff on busier nights (typically, Thurs-Saturday).
#History west hollywood gay bars upgrade#
The bartenders are all extremely nice and fun people and the outdoor (but tiny) dual smoking patios are a very nice upgrade to the Motherlode's exterior giving every smoker his or her lovely view of a very busy Santa Monica Blvd.'s party nights. Nothing beats nice locals that check their attitude at the door and congregate for one universal goal - to get good and toasted for the rest of the night's debaucheries. Everyone, whether they're going to hang out at the more pricey but delicious Abbey, shake their booty at either Micky's, Rage, Ultra Suede, The Factory, or even Here makes The Motherlode their first stop of the night. This place is definitely West Hollywood's guilty pleasure. Some people think that The Motherlode's namesake comes from the high-octane drinks it serves. Now, Gonzaba is hoping the project will help others not feel like they are alone.This place is a dive without the divey feel. The game’s caller a redhead drag queen named Endora fussed. The Santa Monica Blvd strip with all its gay bars and gay friendly businesses is literally your back yard (the closest bar is 50 feet away). Techno music chugged strobe lights blinked. In building the online interactive map, the team found LGBTQ sports leagues and hang-out spots. It was bingo night at Main Street Bar & Cabaret, Laguna Beach’s last gay club. “The second phase of our project, thanks to generous funding from the National Endowment For The Humanities, we’re hoping to see what happens to gay spaces during one of the most momentous times in the history of the United States which is during the AIDS crisis,” Gonzaba said. In those two decades, Gonzaba found that those spaces went from about 700 locations to over 4,000 - a now easily accessible discovery that Gonzaba believes will help others learn more about the past.
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The team used the data to create a visual representation of LGBTQ spaces from when the gay rights movement began to take hold in the '60s and into the late '70s. But the history it contains, is now being turned into an online interactive map, Mapping the Gay Guides with the help of a Cal State Fullerton grant, assistant professor Eric Gonzaba, Amanda Regan and other researchers. These are sometimes patrolled by police and you are at risk of being arrested for being a homosexual,” Frederick said.Īccording to the publishing company, Bob Damron, the author, sold his company and passed away in the late '80s. “What it showed gay travelers was also areas to avoid because Bob would add at the end of the listing in the cruise-y areas ‘AYOR’ - at your own risk. That’s why the book incorporated some descriptors. Club Laurel was an upscale lesbian venue owned by singer Beverly Shaw, who was a nightclub pioneer and identified as a lesbian in the 1950s. Frederick felt the books were a double-edged sword at the time because they connected the community by putting locations out in the open. The Studio City club was the last venue in a once thriving string of LGBTQ bars that dotted Ventura Boulevard. Over the years, the address books transformed from pocketbooks to thicker copies as more locations were listed. “People would be like ‘OK, I’m in Omaha, Nebraska. West Hollywood is home to the famous Sunset Strip, with its nightlife and its rock-music history, and to the largest gay nightlife district in the Los. In Los Angeles after World War II, he ran a sex operation for Hollywood’s gay and bisexual elite.
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Scotty Bowers (top, second from left) with some of his friends and escorts.
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It didn’t say gay, gay, gay all over it,” he said. The population of West Hollywood is roughly 40 LGBT+, making it one of the gayest neighbourhoods on earth arguably the gayest in any big city. A new documentary tells the story of Old Hollywoods inescapable closet through the eyes of a man once known as the Pimp to the Stars. It was just something that was this size, they could put it in their pocket. It was an opportunity he was happy to be a part of. By the '70s, Frederick’s Media Arts company was asked to create advertisements and graphics inside the books. The books were created by a businessman to help LGBTQ travelers find safe spaces nationwide to be themselves. Locations like The Abbey were listed in guides called Bob Damron's Address Books that date back to the mid-'60s. The project found spaces skyrocketed from 700 locations to 4,000 in the late '70s.The project is an undertaking that CSUF Assistant Professor Eric Gonzaba, Amanda Reagan and other researchers are taking part in to map history from the mid-'60s to late '70s and now from '80s to early 2000.The guides known as "Bob Damron's Address Books" are now being preserved in the Mapping the Gay Guides online interactive map to help visualize community spaces in the past.Bob Damron, a businessman began publishing LGBTQ travel guides in the mid '60s.