Stuart Timmons at Metropolis Books 4.7.07

For those unfamiliar with Downtown L.A., every native Angeleno sort of has a conflicted view of the place, a troubling situation not helped much by the sheer fact that the vast majority of Southern Californians never venture into the place and, when they do, the combination of traffic-congested one-way streets, rampant poverty amid pockets of blossoming affluence, and the lurking question of "Why did we bother coming here in the first place?" seem to make the visit a downer on even the best of days.

Currently, however, Downtown is undergoing an urban transformation. New building projects, more lofts than you can shake a subway map at, and, finally, some sense of urban life beyond the cultural outlet of Music Center have certainly helped. A great example would be the opening of Metropolis Books at Fourth and Main late last year, a move which finally brings that staple of cities everywhere to our lovely town: the cosmopolitan bookstore that serves as a meeting point for the "interested" of all persuasions.

Eager to see the results, I trekked Downtown yesterday to see Stuart Timmons reading from his new work Gay L.A., a book cowritten with the fantastic Lillian Faderman, and one which is particularly timely given that much of the history it chronicles takes place in buildings currently under redevelopment. Who would have known that the fading, yet still grand, Alexandria Hotel was the site of a 1914 scandal involving "masquerading"(L.A.P.D. code for drag)? Or that there was an anti-police brutality uprising in 1959 outside of Cooper's Donuts, ten years before Stonewall? With this work, Timmons has done for L.A. what George Chauncey did for New York City; he has put us on the map. My recommendation: buy this work, and place it on your bookshelf next to your worn-out copy of City of Quartz from undergrad days.

So what are you waiting for?