You’ll now find plenty of queer residents and establishments from Pacific Palisades to Elysian Park, north toward Malibu, and down into Laguna Beach. Much like the rest of the US, as gentrification continues changing the LA landscape, LGBTQ people are integrating into other neighborhoods. While West Hollywood is still the city’s central gayborhood, Downtown LA (DTLA) and Silver Lake also have diverse queer scenes. Since World War II, the queer community has spread through LA’s sprawling urban environment.
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Lincoln Park’s Las Memorias AIDS Monument project, founded in 1993, and a soon-to-open monument in West Hollywood, honor the lives of those affected by the epidemic. The city has played a significant role in HIV/AIDS research and prevention ever since. The first cases of what would later be known as AIDS were first reported in Los Angeles by a UCLA researcher, Dr. In 1968, the Metropolitan Community Church - the country’s oldest operating LGBTQ parish - opened its doors on Prospect Avenue. The Advocate, founded in response to The Black Cat raid in 1967, began as a queer newsletter in ABC Television Studios West, now the site of Prospect Studios. Two major precursors to New York’s Stonewall Riots - the Coopers Donuts riot of 1959, and a peaceful protest against police brutality at The Black Cat in 1967 - are two often-overlooked incidences of LA’s queer community standing up to injustice and discrimination. The Mattachine Society, one of the country’s earliest gay organizations, was founded in Silver Lake in 1950.
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The first lesbian magazine, Vice Versa, was published in 1947 by Lisa Ben, a secretary at the now-defunct RKO Studios. Regardless, the City of Angels was still a leader in the early fight for LGBTQ rights. Raids on queer bars were frequent in the 1950s and 1960s, and living as an “out” member of society was a dangerous and alienating form of resistance. While the silver screen attracted plenty of queer folk to the city in years to come, Hollywood’s celluloid closet spent a lot of energy censoring homosexuality and forcing queer individuals to lead clandestine lifestyles.
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Like many LGBTQ havens in the US, the Los Angeles queer community started to blossom in the wake of World War II.