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The pandemic has permanently closed more than 100,000 bars and restaurants across the United States but in LA, which has been under some form of lockdown restrictions since last March, the impact on nightclubs has been particularly brutal.įour LGBTQ+ bars shuttered in West Hollywood last year, including Rage, a legendary nightclub that closed after 37 years, and Gold Coast, a 39-year-old dive bar down the street on Santa Monica boulevard.
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In a letter of support for the house receiving this designation, the West Coast editor of Architectural Digest wrote that Laaksonen's artwork "one of the most important forces in the evolution of gay culture in the 20th century.Even as nightlife gradually returns, some of the remaining queer bars across southern California have resorted to crowdfunding in a last-ditch effort to stay afloat, warning that Covid-19 may bring about the end of historic institutions that have weathered the Aids crisis and multiple economic downturns. Just last year, for its connection to Tom of Finland and its merits as a turn-of-the-century Craftsman house, the Tom of Finland house received city Historic-Cultural Monument status.
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The house is now the home of the Tom of Finland Foundation, an archive for homoerotic art. In a letter of support for the house receiving this designation, the West Coast editor of Architectural Digest wrote that Laaksonen's artwork "one of the most important forces in the evolution of gay culture in the 20th century."
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His work, showing strong, virile men, was considered especially important in the 1980s, when the AIDS epidemic meant that the prevailing image of gay men was the opposite of muscular and healthy. Tom of Finland went on to have appreciation for his art grow, and exhibited his work in museums like LACMA. This house in Echo Park eventually became his home, and his presence drew notable gay artists such as John Waters and Robert Maplethorpe to the home as well, which became a gathering place. Tom of Finland was name that Finnish artist Touko Laaksonen used when he first started submitting his homoerotic art to magazines popular among gay, male readers. Everything south of the Rosslyn is now a parking garage or lot. says the Cooper Do-Nuts was located between two older gay bars, Harold's and the Waldorf on Main Street, south of the Rosslyn.
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When they came back, the event escalated such that it ultimately shut down Main Street for a full day. Resentment at being targeted by the police came to a head in the Cooper Do-Nuts, and when police came into the especially popular gay hangout attempting to arrest three people (Rechy among them), some of the trans women and gay patrons bombarded the officers with donuts, coffee, and paper plates until the police ran out seeking backup. (It was this kind of police attention that also inspired the Black Cat riot in Silver Lake seven years later.) Rechy, who was present in the doughnut shop on the night in May 1959 when the riot took place, notes that at this time, it was not uncommon for police to arrest members of the gay populace simply for congregating or being in a bar that was being raided. The event has also been detailed in the 2009 book Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians, says Out magazine. John Rechy, a noted chronicler of gay LA, wrote in his book City of Night that this location of the Cooper doughnut chain on Main Street was the site of a 1959 uprising of transgender women and street hustlers. This incident, though relatively small in size, is often considered by historians to be the first modern uprising against police treatment of gay people.