Now, developers are razing most of the structure to make way for a large mixed-use project.Īnother lost establishment mentioned by Rojas is Arthur J’s coffee shop, once located at the intersection of Highland and Santa Monica. Eventually, it grew into a destination for LGBT people of color, lasting into the new millennium as an EDM venue. The popular disco formed in response to prejudice within the gay community, as one of its founders told LA Weekly in 2015. The latter club, established in 1974, was formerly located at Santa Monica Boulevard and Las Palmas Avenue. 'The dance floors of such Hollywood and North Hollywood clubs as the Outer Limits, Other Side, Paradise Ballroom, Sugar Shack, After Dark, Gino’s II, and, ultimately, Circus were where we communicated with our bodies – an essential, enduring part of our queer development and identity,' he writes.

During this time, underused storefronts and warehouses with low rents became intimate dance clubs by night-often, as Rojas points out, in spaces smaller than 3,000 square feet.įor Rojas and his friends, who grew up in East LA, the small nightclubs became refuges from the expectations of family and community: West Hollywood has long been the rainbow-draped capital of the gay community in Los Angeles, but in an article for KCET, city planner James Rojas describes the diverse and somewhat under-the-radar gay disco circuit of 1970s Hollywood.