Say hi as you cruise by...cuz everybody is a star in Hollywood -Village People, 1977 In order to find our identity, we had to leave the Eastside.
A New Gay Dawning - Circus Disco button, courtesy of the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries.
The Chicano Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Stonewall uprising had empowered queer Chicano youth like myself to embrace our newfound sexual freedom. The Chicano student movement, especially, had instilled in us a sense of pride. In the wake of these heady events, we had the confidence to access another Los Angeles, a city our parents couldn't.
East Los Angeles during the mid-1970s offered few safe spaces for people like us. But Hollywood did.
From 1975 to 1982 were the explosive, underground disco years in L.A., and for the first time in the city's history predominantly gay and straight Chicano youth flooded Hollywood's dance floors.
Being out back than was to learn how to negotiate the physical and social landscape in order to find safety.
Being out back than was to learn how to negotiate the physical and social landscape in order to find safety - unlike today where people come out to their families, friends, coworkers, or even in cyberspace. To meet the demands of LA's queer youth, 18-and-over dance bars opened up in underutilized retail stores fronts, mini-malls, or warehouses in commercial zones. Many of these places were small - on the order of 3,000 square feet - which created an intimate, social atmosphere.
The dance floors of such Hollywood and North Hollywood clubs as the Outer Limits, Other Side, Paradise Ballroom, Sugar Shack, After Dark, Gino's II, and, ultimately, Circus were where we communicated with our bodies - an essential, enduring part of our queer development and identity. Many of these clubs and bars were intimate venues located in mini-malls, occupying retail store fronts less 3,000 square feet in size.
Whittier Boulevard, East Los Angeles, 1979. Photo by Anne Knudsen, courtesy of the Herald-Examiner Collection - Los Angeles Public Library.
The macho landscape of the Eastside was a hard place for queer youth to find a safe space to be ourselves. For our own safety, we had to learn how to read other people's body language and pick up subtle cues. I met my two best friends in the bus and at school. Both were shy social outcasts but our quirkiness brought us together. We became fast friends, came out to each other, and started planning to transform our lives by visiting a gay club we had heard about from a friend of a friend.
Though the journey from East Los Angeles to Hollywood was a few short miles, to me it seemed much further because my family never left the Eastside, and I didn't have a car.
After Dark matchbook, courtesy of the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries.
One Friday evening, feeling bold, I left my family, who were watching TV in the living room. I didn't know what I would find but I had to do it. Having the comfort of my entourage gave me the courage to make that trip to my future. I never would have been able to make it alone.
Our first trip to the club was by the Rapid Transit District bus. Nervously we met at the bus stop; it was still light out. We took the bus downtown to the corner of Fifth and Hill, from where all the buses to Hollywood departed.
We knew we were in the right spot when we met with a group of flamboyantly dressed African-American youth. As I looked around, I noted how, in the midst of all of downtown's activity, this corner gave off its own gay vibe. On one side of the intersection was the notorious gay cruising ground of Pershing Square, and on Fifth Street there was a bookstore where you could peek at magazines like Physique Pictorial and After Dark.
In the back of the RTD bus we found our temporary social zone. The bus engine groaned, and the black queens strained to talk smack over the noise. This was my community and we owned the city from in back of the bus.
Nightfall had taken over the light-manufacturing zone in Hollywood where we got off the bus. We headed to Arthur J's coffee shop to use the restroom and do some last minute priming. It was a typical looking LA diner with a big counter where people sat around - but all the customers were men. Here we invaded the quiet world of mainstream gay white culture.
Nestled between industrial buildings along the stretch of Highland between Santa Monica and Melrose was the Other Side dance club, located on the second floor. In the quiet of night under the darkness of ficus trees, as we gathered at the discrete entrance, other youth began to arrive with their entourages of sisters, brothers, friends, and neighbors. There were no rainbow flags or other obvious indicators of a gay space. We had our IDs out and ready to be checked.
I had butterflies in my stomach as I walked up the dark staircase and heard David Bowie's Fame. I hadn't known what to expect, but now I knew that I had found my Valhalla.
A disco ball spun above the dark room, and everything reflected in the mirrors on the surrounding walls. At one end a DJ stood at the disco altar.
Everyone was mesmerized by the club's diversity that converged on the dance floor in such a vivid spectacle. This is where Latino, African-American, Asian, and white youth - outcast from various parts of the city - found each other. They danced. They mingled. They laughed together. And, unlike the predominantly male clubs down the street in West Hollywood or Silver Lake, the patrons here were both male and female, which eased the sexual tension.
Each dance was a visual performance directed by the person behind the DJ booth: bodies bumping, partners swinging, hands waving in the air, skirts swirling, and scarves flying to the hustle, the cha-cha, the bump, the bus stop.
