This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

The Grit and Glamour of Queer LA Subculture

Silver Lake Map Image

This page is referenced by:

Swish Alps Archive

1. Oral Histories
Short excerpts of the interviews open the previous sections in "The Swish Alps." Longer and edited audio files are forthcoming. We include here the biographies of our four oral history narrators. We hope that future developers of Grit and Glamour are able to contribute more oral histories to this section on Silver Lake and that these documents eventually find a home at a major institution. See the biographies and excerpts of oral histories.
2. Matchbook Collection
The Swish Alps has uploaded the ONE Archive’s “Matchbook Collection” of LGBT* bars and bathhouses in LA. In addition to providing a poignant visual testimony to past queer spaces, this collection of ephemera has enabled Occidental College and the ONE Archive to produce a mapping project of queer LA and its subcultures. See the Matchbook Collection gallery.
3. Sunset Junction Street Fair
Also from the ONE Archive is the ephemera and photographs of the Sunset Junction Street Fair (1980-2010). The materials embedded in the Swish Alps chapter are gathered from the small digitized sample available in Online Archive of California (OAC). See the Sunset Junction Street Fair gallery.
4. Shotgun Club Collection
MW Wilson has afforded us access to his private collection of ephemera and photos from the Shotgun Club (2005-2009). We feature this uncatalogued collection here and likewise hope that future archivists take an interest in processing this rare collection. See the Shotgun Club Collection gallery.
5. Map of Swish Alps
Our mapping project is still under development, but we feature a "beta" version here. Daniel Calzadillas used the information gathered during and after Oxy’s CTSJ 337 course to aid the ONE Archive in their broader mapping of queer LA. Future developers might layer this map with the “cruising” courses of oral history narrators’ lifeworlds. Go to the Map of Swish Alps.