Officials removed the last traffic signs from a Los Angeles neighborhood this week, wiping out its homophobic past.
According to a Los Angeles Times report, signs reading “No Cruising. No U-Turns. Midnight to 6 a.m.” were erected around the Silver Lake neighborhood in 1997 in an attempt to discourage gay men from roaming the streets looking for dates.
The signs were removed this week, just in time for Pride Month.
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A bright sky provides a colorful backdrop to the downtown Los Angeles skyline as seen from Boyle Heights on Tuesday, March 15, 2022. (Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
“Los Angeles has a rich history of welcoming the LGBTQIA+ community, but homophobia is also very real and at times imprinted on our physical spaces, like no turn signs,” City Council Member Nitya Raman said in a statement.
In the late 90s, gay men were printed Guidebook It listed public areas where people could find love, sex, and community without coming out, including Griffith Park Boulevard in Silver Lake and West Hollywood.
“30 years after the Black Cat protests, this type of homophobia continues in Silver Lake and physical remnants of that bigotry remained in our city until yesterday when I finally joined @nithyavraman to remove the signs,” City Councilman Higo Soto Martinez wrote on X on Tuesday, referring to one of the first demonstrations in the United States to protest police violence against LGBT people, which preceded the Stonewall riots in New York City.
He said the signs were used to target and persecute the LGBTQ+ community.
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A U-turn sign on Griffith Boulevard in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. (Google Maps)
“I didn’t notice those signs and would never have found them. [them]” said Pickle, West Hollywood’s first drag queen award winner.
The first “No Cruising” signs were removed. In 2011 The Silver Lake Neighborhood Council voted to leave the remaining “no U-turns” and other clauses detailing time restrictions in place and largely forgotten.
Donovan Daughtry, a Silver Lake resident, Podcast Episodes He spoke about the neighborhood’s gay history, city council members said.
Long exposure aerial view of Los Angeles, California illuminated cityscape at dusk. (iStock)
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“People driving around at night with Madonna on the radio was not a good fit for a quiet neighborhood like Silver Lake, and the noise inside the bar could spill outside,” Albert LeBaron, co-owner of gay bar Akbar, told The Times. “But let’s be honest, a lot of us are just people who have nowhere else to go, so we walk or drive or hang out.”
