I grew up in Los Angeles. I discovered my lesbian identity in 1956, at the age of 16, when Eddie, a gay male friend who was only 19 himself, got us fake IDs and took me to gay bars he’d heard about. One of them, the Open Door, was mostly a gay girls bar. I looked around, and I knew I’d found home. Twenty years later, having gotten my Ph.D. and become a college professor, I began doing archival research and conducting interviews on the subject so dear to my heart. Eventually I published a dozen books on lesbian, gay, and LGBTQ+ history, including (with Stuart Timmons) Gay LA: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians (link to publisher).

Six historical lesbian spaces in LA that I love:

Tess's Café International: I never had the pleasure of setting foot in this glamorous night spot on the Sunset Strip. But I would gladly trade a signed copy of The Well of Loneliness for the chance to have been at Tess’s the night that the dashing “male impersonator,” Tommy Williams, stood next to Marlene Dietrich’s table and crooned love songs to her. Tess’s was shuttered in 1942 by law enforcement, for “endangering public health and morals” (which meant that lesbians met there and had fun). 

Open Door: My first lesbian bar. Whenever I walked into the Open Door during that summer of 1956, the juke box seemed always to be playing Elvis Presley’s I Want You, I Need You, I Love You. The femmes were dressed in capri pants and off-the-shoulder blouses; the butches wore button-down shirts over white Ts, their hair in Jimmy Dean-style ducktail coifs. The owners, who sometimes tended the bar, were a refugee couple, white haired and with Yiddish accents. Open Door regulars called them “mom” and “pop.”

If Club: The If Club was across the street from the Open Door. A sign at the entrance said, “This establishment is off limits to military personnel.” One evening, Jan, my butch girlfriend, and I jaywalked, holding hands, from the Open Door to the If Club. A passing police car stopped, and the officer demanded we get in. He drove us around the corner, parked, told Jan to get out, and lectured me for half-an-hour—about how I would end up in big trouble if I kept hanging out with homosexuals.

Star Room: The Star Room was in a rough and rundown neighborhood on South Vermont, but I adored the place because it had a dance floor, and women could hold one another and dance. However, you couldn’t hold too tight. In 1956, the authorities were still shuttering lesbian bars for endangering public health and morals. Though I never witnessed this, rumor had it that the owner would come around with a flashlight and shine it between dancing couples, telling them, “I gotta see the beam on the opposite wall. If I can’t see the beam, you’re dancing too close. You’ll get me busted!” 

Club Laurel: I discovered the Club Laurel shortly after it opened in 1957, and I fell in love with it—or rather, with Beverly Shaw, the singer who was the main draw at the Club Laurel. Gorgeous in her man-tailored jackets, short skirts, and high heels, Shaw sat atop the piano bar, held the microphone caressingly, and crooned a la Marlene Dietrich. For each set, she chose one woman among those in her mesmerized and adoring audience and seemed to sing directly to her. “Choose me!” we all shouted silently.  

The Palms: In the 1990s, my partner and I, both of us middle-aged then, wandered into The Palms after dinner on Santa Monica Blvd. This must be what Tess’s Café International was like in the 1930s, I thought. Everyone at The Palms looked like a twenty-two-year-old Hollywood starlet. I’d never seen such a display of pulchritude and chic outside of fashion magazines or photos of the Academy Awards ceremony. It was such a different universe from the one in which the Open Door, the If Club, and the Star Room had existed.