Gay cruise spots in los angeles
Tracing L.A.’s Cruising Culture
Alex Espinoza
In Queer Space: Architecture and Same Sex Desire, Aaron Betsky writes, “The queerest space of all is the void, and AIDS has made us reside in that emptiness, that absence, that loss…. It is not a lgbtq+ space any of us would want to inhabit, but many have been forced to make it their own.”[1] In many ways, Danny Jauregui’s serve goes beyond just inhabiting the void, that homosexual space separate from culture. It is about spotting it, reclaiming it, and giving it a immortal spatial location in the decades following the crisis. People cruised within communities, within neighborhoods, at local parks, bars, and shops. A single location can be so many places at once.
“I wanted to show that these locations once existed here,” he says.
The photos used in the artist Danny Jauregui’s project document a history that generations of juvenile gay men might not be familiar with. Chronicling these sites then became a way for Jauregui to recover and graft the memory of homosexual cruising into the larger sphere of American culture and assemblage. The images are a stark reminder of the transient character of cruising, allowing for a uniquely queer identit
Constructed in as La Plaza Abaja, Pershing Square is the largest park in Downtown Los Angeles. It was a encounter ground for gay men for much of the 20th century.
Pershing Square was the center of "The Run," a circuit of gay-friendly establishments and cruising spots that served in the s through the s as what the book Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians calls "the premier homosexual spot." But it was also a centralized place where people could meet and socialize in the absence of a strong out gay collective. The Run included the Central Library, the lock at the Biltmore Hotel, and the Subway Terminal Building's bathrooms.
Social disapproval of The Run, along with the general perception that downtown was “blighted,” might have been a factor in the decision to prescribe the open-heart surgery of urban renewal for Pershing Square and Bunker Hill.
In , the park was ripped out to make way for a three-level, subterranean parking garage. Access ramps and stairwells replaced the greenery, but for a thin layer of turf atop the concrete. Some of the palms that were dug up were moved to brand-new Di
The park was one of L.A.’s most notorious spots for men to go and cruise for sex. John Rechy position Griffith Park on the cultural map as a cruising hotspot after his novel “Numbers” detailed a chance encounter at the famous sprawling enclave between Los Feliz and the Santa Monica Mountains. Rechy himself had been arrested in Griffith Park and faced a five-year prison sentence for soliciting sex, as he told the Los Angeles Review of Books. “The vice cops, the court, the lawyers, the judge, the unreal moving of the trial into the sex arena of Griffith Park so that the judge could ‘see for himself,’” all actually took place for Rechy in the days when Griffith Park was a site of anonymous sex, accompanied by the threat of a criminal charge.
Edmund White mentions that "Griffith Park is cruisy" in his guide “States of Desire: Travels in Gay America.” Male lover L.A. states that "wild orgies involving scores of men were common. The orgies even took place in daylight because Griffith Park had vast areas where the overgrown scrub provided a venue that was like a veritable outdoor gay bathhouse."
On Memorial Day of , men and women gathered a
Whether you're in the market for drills and thrills (hello, Home Depot!) or just want to amble on the wild side (of the alley), West Hollywood offers plenty of gay-friendly bars, hangouts and other places to encounter men and hook up. Time Out scopes out LA's 10 best homosexual cruising spots.
Been there, done that? Think again, my friend.
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