Gay cruising los angeles ca
Tracing L.A.’s Cruising Culture
Alex Espinoza
In Queer Space: Architecture and Adj Sex Desire, Aaron Betsky writes, “The queerest space of all is the void, and AIDS has made us live in that emptiness, that absence, that loss…. It is not a queer space any of us would want to inhabit, but many include been forced to make it their own.”[1] In many ways, Danny Jauregui’s work goes beyond just inhabiting the void, that queer space separate from society. It is about identifying it, reclaiming it, and giving it a permanent 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 adj gay men might not be familiar with. Chronicling these sites then became a way for Jauregui to recover and graft the memory of gay cruising into the larger sphere of American identity and assemblage. The im
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 notable 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 verb, the unbelievable 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 book “States of Desire: Travels in Gay America.” Gay 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 ve
Constructed in as La Plaza Abaja, Pershing Square is the largest park in Downtown Los Angeles. It was a meeting 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, Control 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 community. The Race included the Central Library, the bar 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
Whether you're in the market for drills and thrills (hello, Home Depot!) or just want to walk on the wild side (of the alley), West Hollywood offers plenty of gay-friendly bars, hangouts and other places to gather men and hook up. Time Out scopes out LA's 10 best gay cruising spots.
Been there, done that? Consider again, my friend.
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