Through the '90s, most of the gay bars in the neighborhood catered strongly either to the leather-bear community or the Latino scene, and although Silver Lake's scene remains decidedly less stand-and-model and more racially diverse than West Hollywood's, it's also more mixed gay-straight and hipster-artsy than it was a decade ago. In LA proper, there are smatterings of gay bars downtown and in Hollywood, and a few more spots north in the San Fernando Valley, but the city's best overall destination for gay bar-hopping, cafe culture, and resto-lounging is Silver Lake and - to a lesser extent - neighboring Los Feliz.Ī hilly, eclectic, and historic neighborhood north of downtown, east of Hollywood, and south of Griffith Park, Silver Lake has long been at the core of LA's gay rights movement. There's another nearby clutch of LGBT nightlife in Long Beach. The vast majority of gay nightspots in metro Los Angeles - there are more than 40 of them - are in the city's gay epicenter, West Hollywood.
