Henry Giardina

When the first Los Angeles Pride parade hit the streets of Hollywood in 1970, the world was experiencing a crisis of contradictions. When it came to gay identity, things were changing. The Stonewall Riots of the year before gave way to protests all across the country, led by people who were sick of being treated like second-class citizens. The Black Cat demonstration in L.A. in 1967, along with the Cooper Donut riot of 1959, laid the groundwork for a new generation of activist gays who weren’t content to be shoved around, targeted and violently harassed by the police. – Advertisement – […]

In 2017, West Hollywood’s Plummer Park hosted an exhibit titled Lesbians to Watch Out For: ’90s Queer L.A. Activism. – Advertisement – On display were banners, pamphlets, radical texts and street flyers that told of a time gone by in Los Angeles: a time when the lesbian scene wasn’t just thriving but on the verge of creating major social change. Though it’s disheartening to think about how the city has changed in regard to holding and maintaining lesbian spaces, it’s something we shouldn’t allow ourselves to gloss over and forget. At least, not if we want the community to thrive. Before […]

A closer look at L.A.’s OG drag queen. Once upon a time, in a place that bears a faint resemblance to the Los Angeles we know today, there was a city full of crossdressers, queers and vaudevillians trying to make it in the entertainment industry. When the nascent film industry came to town in the early 20th century, it created a reason for performers of all kinds to come to the City of Angels to make their name, no matter how bizarre or localized their stage acts might have been.- Advertisement – One of these people was named Julian Eltinge. […]

Before the 1950s, America didn’t have any gay publications. While there may have been pulpy Gay and Lesbian fiction for folks to read and a few movies about gay life playing in cinemas (1936’s “These Three” and 1944’s “Laura” come to mind,) there weren’t any magazines or even pamphlets that queer folks could pick up to read about gay life. To put out an out-and-out gay magazine was just too risky, and while Lisa Ben, the RKO staffer who put out the country’s first lesbian magazine-cum-newspaper in the 1940s, was responsible for penning entire issues of “Vice Versa,” she had […]

“To the left of me,” wrote David Colker for the Los Angeles Times in a 1994 article, “four men were having sex. Only two of them were actually looking at each other.” So begins most bathhouse stories of the time. At the Compound, one of the Valley’s oldest establishments, porn would screen on the walls while patrons got it on in public (or private) rooms below. But not for long. Even in 1994, the gay bathhouse’s days were numbered. “A decade ago,” Colker writes, “Los Angeles boasted slick, high-tech bathhouses famous throughout the gay world. But as the specter of […]

Earlier this month, the New York Times ran a profile of Steve Ross, one of the city’s last great Cabaret artists. Ross has been playing at piano bars across the city since the 1980s, bringing the camp classics of the Great American Songbooks to newer, younger audiences at venues from the Algonquin to Birdland. While New York has always had a history of small, intimate bars built around a piano, L.A.’s relationship to the classic queer cabaret bar has been different. While the opening of Tramp Stamp Granny’s in Hollywood sparked a type of renaissance for that certain type of […]

With chart-topping pop stars like Kehlani and Tove Lo headlining this year’s L.A. Pride Festival, no one could have been surprised by an unusually high turnout. However, during this year’s Pride, the City of West Hollywood, along with the Pride organizers of Christopher Street West, saw an unexpected number of ticket sales and flooded streets on Saturday, June 9, causing parade-goers to be turned away by the thousands. No one saw it coming. Especially not the ticket holders who showed up from all around the country to participate in the legendary Pride festival. Alisha Broome came out from Florida to […]