West Hollywood, California (November 27, 2009) - It really doesn’t seem like it all happened twenty five years ago. I suppose that’s because West Hollywood cityhood wasn’t supposed to happen in the first place. 
Steve Martin is a West Hollywood attorney and former-city council member. WeHo News - West Hollywood’s ONLY Newspaper, ONLY ONLINE. |
The idea that the unincorporated area of Los Angeles County could actually become its own municipality had been kicking around for decades but it never seemed to catch the popular imagination.
A State law decreeing that no city could be completely be surrounded by another kept us from being annexed by the City of Los Angeles years ago, of course that did not stop LA from annexing strategic locations over the years, leaving West Hollywood with incoherent borders (and ironically looking like a handgun).
In the 1890s WeHo became a terminus for the railroad running between Santa Monica and Los Angeles. Railroad owner and real estate mogul Moses Sherman modestly laid out a company town named Sherman.
Sherman would have remained a quite backwater except for the advent of the movie industry and Prohibition. Being unincorporated, Sherman was outside the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles Police Department, yet there was barely any presence by the County Sheriff.
Sunset exploded with bars and restaurants blatantly flouting liquor laws giving rise to what became the Sunset Strip. One of the oldest alcohol establishments in California was Sloan’s located at Melrose at Huntley Drive.
While there was a wholesale closing of bars throughout California, it somehow survived the temperance holocaust and it even pre-dated the system of liquor licenses. The owner used to brag that they were the only bar in California that, theoretically, could have nude bar tenders.
Close on the heels of the bars came the movie industry. Countless apartments and bungalows sprang up the house movie stars and Hollywood wannabes. The art deco Argyle hotel, the beautiful apartments on Harper and Havenhurst and other great architectural gems date from this golden period.
By WW II, the Strip was known for its mob-run world class night clubs such as Ciro’s. Hollywood and international royalty both converged upon the elegant Sunset Strip to bask in the entertainment capitol of the West Coast (Nat King Cole had his own room at the pre-war Trocadero).
Even though gay nightlife thrived undercover along the under-policed Strip, by the end of WWII exclusively gay bars were opening in West Hollywood in response to LAPD’s vicious attacks on such establishment.
Still, Hollywood’s glitterati, attracted as moths to flame, moved on to the new Strip, the one freshly built in Las Vegas by same mob money that once kept WeHo chugging. Studios stopped providing housing for their aspiring contract stars in West Hollywood.
The Sunset Strip in the 1960s saw interracial couples, hippies and bohemians attracted to its storied grounds. Photo courtesy ”Images of America: West Hollywood,” Published by Arcadia Publishing. WeHo News. |
That set the stage for the 1960’s return of the Strip as the vibrant heart of rock and roll, much to the chagrin of the old timers and the Sheriff’s Department who despised the “hippies.”
By this time West Hollywood had lost any world-wide cachet; once more Hollywood than Hollywood, its countless mansions and art deco buildings gave way to ugly 1970’s apartments. Low rents attracted retirees and young gay men.
All this time West Hollywood had no local government to speak of; the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors, most of whom had little interest in our community other than what could be gained by catering to developers, ruled our urban hamlet’s fate.
The County has such a bad reputation for code enforcement that the developer of the Bel Age hotel actually built and extra story on the building beyond his permit, because he apparently believed the County would never notice.
While irresponsible development and increasing tensions between gays and the Sheriff’s Department fostered some local dissent, it was the issue of rent control that finally galvanized the community toward Cityhood.
Ron Stone was a shy, modest and self effacing man who started evangelizing his gospel of incorporation. Photo courtesy ”Images of America: West Hollywood,” Published by Arcadia Publishing. WeHo News. |
An unlikely hero started the movement to incorporate West Hollywood as an independent city. Ron Stone was a lanky, bespectacled, soft spoken gay man with an intellectual bent.
In the early eighties Ron, who was shy, modest and self effacing, started evangelizing his gospel of incorporation. Ron said that the residents needed to take control of their destiny and stop leaving important decisions regarding development and law enforcement to an unresponsive Board of Supervisors.
He talked about the opportunity for gay empowerment and demonstrated that West Hollywood was generating far more revenue for the County than it was receiving in services.
Then, in 1983, the County let its rent control ordinance lapse. WeHo rents skyrocketed.
Hundreds of West Hollywood seniors faced eviction. The Coalition for Economic Survival, (CES), led the fight to restore rent control and pumped new life into the budding incorporation movement.
Ron Stone’s idealistic and quixotic dream suddenly became an economic necessity for countless residents.
Suddenly Jewish seniors, gays and lesbians found themselves bound in a popular coalition to incorporate. The Board of Supervisors and most of the business community were adamantly against Cityhood, claiming that West Hollywood would not be economically viable as an independent municipality.
The popular crusade for Cityhood seemed unstoppable, however, as forty-one candidates vided for office, including a Colt model (the only non-CES-endorsed winner), a charismatic lesbian, a pudgy twenty one year old Jewish Democratic activist who had the chutzpah to call himself the “Young Zev” and a fey, soft spoken recent law school graduate.
West Hollywood was ready for its Sunset Strip close up. In 1984 we made history as being the first municipality to elect an openly gay City Council majority.
After twenty five years it may be impossible to recapture the spirit of ’84, but it was a heady era that will never be forgotten by anyone living here at the time.
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