SAN DIEGO:
HARRY HAY’S HOUSE 2328 Cove Avenue One of the three homes in Los Angeles with LGBT
historic designation potential, the Harry Hay House at, is for many, the birthplace of the LGBT movement. Beginning in 1950, the house and Mr. Hay played host to the first meetings of “Bachelor’s Anonymous,” later known as the Mattachine Society, the earliest known homophile organization.
REVEREND TROY PERRY’S HOME 6205 Miles Avenue According to the L.A. Pride website, Christopher
Street West (the organization that produced the first pride parade) was founded in May of 1970 at Perry’s home in Huntington Park and is rumored to be the site of his first official same-sex marriage. Perry was arrested in a 1968 LAPD police raid and subsequent protests at The Patch, a gay bar in Wilmington, which is gone now, but predates Stonewall. A Pentecostal minister at the time, the event inspired him to create “a church for all of us who are outcasts.” That organiza- tion is the Metropolitan Community Church and today ministers to upwards of 43,000 members.
BLACK CAT TAVERN 3909 Sunset Boulevard One of Los Angeles’ historic-cultural monuments,
the Black Cat Tavern in Silverlake, opened in 1966 and was the site of a brutal police raid New Year’s Eve 1967 (again significantly predating Stonewall). The full-blown riot flowed out of the bars and spread to adjacent saloons, resulting in brutal police beatings and more than a dozen arrests. The property is now home to its bar/restaurant namesake, The Black Cat.
GRIFFITH PARK 4730 Crystal Springs Drive The picnic grounds at Griffith Park was the site
of the first Gay-Ins starting in 1968. A flyer for what claims to be the first says it would be “both fun and educational,” beginning with a primer on police harassment and ending with a bar crawl.
THE GAY CENTER 2250 B Street Back in 1971, the LGBT movement was just begin- ning to make ground in San Diego. Jess Jessop, Bernie Michaels and Fred Scholl (among others) were co-founders of the first Gay Center, opening in 1973 and located in downtown. Considered to be second oldest and third largest LGBT Commu- nity Center in the U.S., it is now housed proudly in the heart of Hillcrest. The original building still stands proudly as one of San Diego’s LGBT firsts.
THE BRASS RAIL Though the property that housed the original
ONE ARCHIVES GALLERY & MUSEUM 909 West Adams Jim Kepner, Harry Hay and several members of the
1950s Mattachine Society, the early “homophile” organization, founded ONE, Inc. in 1952, which began publishing ONE Magazine in 1953, the first wide-distribution magazine for gay people. Kepner amassed what would become the beginnings of the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives now housed permanently, courtesy of University of Southern California. The archives would become part of the world’s largest research library whose sole purpose is to honor and preserve LGBT history. Though techni- cally not a historic site, the museum is a “time capsule” for years of queer achievements.
Many organizations such as the Lambda Archives in San Diego, One Archives in Los
Angeles, GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco and many others across the nation are actively archiving our achievements—there is even a push to build a LGBT National His- tory Museum in Washington, D.C. A history worth saving, don’t you think?
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” - George Santayana
MAY 2014 | RAGE monthly 51
Brass Rail is long gone, its place in San Diego’s LGBT history is a storied one. Originally opened in the Orpheum Theatre Building at 6th and B in the ‘30s, it was known early on as the city’s most gay-friendly bar. Owner Lou Arkos, an avowed heterosexual, later purchased the property and continued to openly serve homosexuals. The bar remained downtown until 1963, when Arkos moved it to Hillcrest’s first location and then crossing the street into its current home in 1973.
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