“These places were our safe havens.” Photograph: Jeremy Lucido “I can’t imagine a world without Precinct,” said Meatball, a drag queen who performed at the club.
Behind on a year’s worth of rent, the bar has also started raising funds. New Jalisco, also in downtown, is one of the longest-running Latino gay bars in the region, run by an immigrant couple who transformed it into an LGBTQ+ venue in the 1990s. Precinct has long had an unpretentious vibe that made it more comfortable than many gay bars, Meatball said: “It’s dingy, it smells like old alcohol when you walk in, and there’s something so comforting about this dark, seedy place – gay people love that stuff.” There are people who you only see there, but they are your close friends.” “I can’t imagine a world without Precinct. “These places were our safe havens, so to watch them be the first to go is really fucked up,” said Meatball, an LA drag queen who performed at Precinct, a downtown club that is raising funds to stay open. Many of the LA bars that are struggling are located outside of the West Hollywood scene, which is known for catering to white gay male crowds and is more touristy, with owners turning to GoFundMe to make it through the crisis. The venues most at risk of closing are often independently owned and cater to more underrepresented groups, including Black and Latino communities, trans and gender-nonconforming crowds and working-class neighborhoods, research has shown. Oil Can still had a siren on site that staff used in the 60s to warn customers that police were coming and allowed them to quickly switch to partners of the opposite gender, said Dominguez: “New generations aren’t going to get to know this space.”īefore Covid, gay bars were already disappearing in LA and other US cities due to rising rents and gentrification, and as online queer dating and hookup apps grew in popularity. Rick Dominguez, back row, second from left, was part of the dance group LA Wranglers that performed at Oil Can Harry’s in 2012. So many people met and fell in love at Oil Can.” “We are losing a lot more than just our place to dance. “It feels like a death,” said Rick Dominguez, a DJ who hosted disco and country nights at Oil Can Harry’s for 27 years. Then in January, as LA become one of the worst Covid hotspots in the nation, Oil Can Harry’s, a beloved gay country bar in Studio City, said it was closing for good after half a century of hosting queer line dancing. 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. 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.