Where Are All the Gay Clubs?
If you were looking for a gay bar in Los Angeles during the early 2000s, many would have immediately pointed you to The Spotlight. One of LA’s oldest gay bars, with a nearly 50 year run before its closing in 2011, The Spotlight was a heavy loss for many members of the LGBTQ community. The bar had a good, long run but was forced to shut its doors for good due to rent tripling, until recently when the space was bought by Framework, an LA-based production company owned by Kobi Danan. The Spotlight reopened last month under the same iconic name.
Danan, however, had a new vision for The Spotlight. Because Framework is a part of LA’s growing dance club scene, Danan thought that The Spotlight’s small, 300 maximum capacity venue would be perfect as a dance club space. This has left many people wondering — and worried — about the lack of queerness in such a historically queer space.
When asked about the history of The Spotlight, Danan said, “Everyone’s welcome,” and mentioned that there are ideas in the works for “a few concepts for beautiful gay nights,” given the club’s history. Along with this, there has also been concern around some of the theming and design of the refurbished club itself. The lobby bar of the venue is currently lined with portraits of dance music legends that have passed such as Larry Levan, Frankie Knuckles, and Avicii. Along with this, there is also a portrait of Erick Morillo, a house music pioneer that was charged with sexual assault in 2020 before he died of a drug overdose only a month later. When asked about Morillo’s inclusion on the wall, Danan did not comment. Including someone charged with sexual assault has raised a lot of concern amongst old patrons of The Spotlight.
The new direction of The Spotlight has people wondering what the queer club and bar scene in LA looks like today. LA saw a drastic decrease in gay bars right before the COVID-19 pandemic hit — as well as during it — but is it still that way in 2024? Iconic Latino gay bar La Plaza was another incredibly long running gay bar in the LA area prior to COVID. Like The Spotlight, La Plaza was also forced to shut its doors due to high rent. Many of these bars — especially the ones creating spaces for queer people of color — closed due to gentrification. Photographer Reynaldo Rivera spoke up in an interview with The Nation about how so many neighborhoods in LA were, not long ago, home to so many Latino communities that have been wiped out by increased cost of living and rent. These queer spaces are far from immune to this.
But it isn’t all bad. Many new queer spaces are opening in place of ones that have been lost, and many people think the new bars and clubs are even better than The Spotlight. “Many spaces within the early 2000s gay bars were not as inclusive as they seemed.” Priya Arora, host of the podcast “Queering Desi,” discussed how lesbian and gay bars are not always inclusive of people who don’t identify as cisgender and have been anti-trans in the past. Many of these bars catered to cisgender gays and lesbians, but excluded transgender and non-binary people.
Many of the recently opened clubs have been much more inclusive spaces for all queer people. Honey’s At Star Love is a newer queer bar in LA with an emphasis on the lesbian and transgender community. This bar also includes several non-alcoholic drinks and snacks to increase the venue’s inclusivity as the community grows. There is also The Ruby Fruit, a small wine bar in a strip mall on Sunset Blvd owned by Emily Bielagus and Mara Herbkersman that opened in February 2023. Honey’s At Star Love and The Ruby Fruit have become favorites in the queer community — especially the sapphic community — in the past year. Club Tempo is another club still going strong. Located in East Hollywood, Club Tempo is a safe space for all queer Latinos that is a little closer to home for most. The gay cowboy themed club caters to the working class, creating a space for everyone to come and enjoy themselves.
Queer nightlife has evolved and changed over the last decade, but it is far from disappearing in LA. With many losses such as The Spotlight, we can only hope that the new queer clubs and bars opening up will last. But these new spaces such as The Ruby Fruit show that the queer bar and club scene has room to grow and change, creating more inclusive spaces for everyone.
Photo Courtesy of LA Times
