Get Used to It: Ep. 111, "The City of West Hollywood"

(silence) (typewriter clicking sound) (funky upbeat music) - Hi, welcome to "Get Used To It." I'm Sheila Kuehl, your guide, your hostess, whatever. And today, we're gonna talk about West Hollywood and sort of West Hollywood in the world. The city of West Hollywood is celebrating its 20th anniversary, I can't believe it either. If you were there, you're saying, so soon, wasn't it just eight? But no, 20 years and it's a very special city. But for those of you who are watching this show and are not in California or might be in Northern California and you'd say, what do I care about a local Southern California city? We hope that you'll stay with us because this is a very special city and I think set an example in this country for, well, you'll see, you'll judge when you see the show. Very pleased to have three great guests on the show today, Steve Schulte, who was a Mayor of West Hollywood, who was the director of the Gay and Lesbian Center here in Los Angeles. Who's been an activist in our community for years. Welcome Steve. - Thank you, Sheila. - And Ivy Bottini is our second guest. Also a long standing, I never say old because I'm getting there. A long standing activist, lesbian feminist in the Gay and Lesbian Community in the Senior Community. Really one of our guiding lights in terms of activism here in Southern California, welcome Ivy. - Thank you. - And our third guest is John Duran, who's currently the Mayor of West Hollywood, but in his own time young as he is, has been a long time activist on Gay and Lesbian and also a number of progressive issues, an attorney and welcome John. - Thank you, nice to see you. - So Steve, let's start with you sort of historically you might have been out on the ground floor of this city and I guess I wanna know in terms of your own life at the time the city was founded or a little before, how did your life come to intersect with this city life? Where'd you come from? - This is a time warp Sheila. I have to say can't be 20 years. - Yeah. - But having said that, I had moved here with my first lover in 1977, came from the Midwest from Iowa and early on by a job through City Hall, got involved with the Gay Community, actually. - [Sheila] So City Hall in LA? - City Hall in Los Angeles, thank you. And Bill Carey, who some people won't remember, but have read about was Mayor Bradley's liaison to the Gay Community, the Gay and Lesbian Community as we say now, we didn't then. And met him and he really introduced me to the Gay and Lesbian Center and I was hired as Director there in 1979 and served for three years. So that had a very early sort of political involvement and I had wanted for several years to be a gay elected official, which is sort of in my blood, but you'll understand this and as important as that was to me, I tried first to put a campaign together in Los Angeles and it was pretty clear it wasn't going to work West Hollywood was coming about and I jumped on board. Some thought that in fact, that was sort of like going to another State because I didn't live in West Hollywood at that time. But it was a very exciting thing to be part of, I must say and I quickly caught up in that and that's how I got here. - Well, what is it that makes a person wanna run for office as a gay person? I mean, I did it in 1994, okay. - Yeah. - That's not when you're talking about, and even that 10 year interim, there were a lot of changes. It was a very unusual thing, why would you want to be on the Council of a City? - I think that, and this really dates me certainly. I think you had to have heard Harvey Milk speak. I think you had to know Harry Brit after Harvey was murdered. I think you had to meet Elaine Noble and hear her in a house here in Los Angeles with a bunch of gay men and lesbians who were professionals and just get the excitement of that, it was a very new thing. I mean, I've always been progressive politically. My friends were progressives, we were liberals, whatever, but gay people weren't elected, that was an unusual thing. So to think, I suppose somewhat presumptuous that you could be in that crowd and could be part of things and really be kind of a pioneer in a way was just a very infectious idea, I think that's the best way I can describe it. - And what was your sense about the idea of forming the city at the time that it was happening? - I think that in some ways we were all a little naive, the city, let me explain this part of this geographic area that was part of the County of Los Angeles was unincorporated, was sort of patrolled by the Sheriff's department, seen as kind of a liberal sort of, you know, unregulated area to some extent, although it was quite developed. The city proposal was to bring rent control and stabilization, there were a lot of senior citizens, there were a lot of gay people. There were also a small contingent of homeowners who were very opposed to this and very worried about what regulation and rent control and all those things would mean. There was also within that context of issues, that flurry of issues, there was the sense of a gay identity stamped onto this city or put together with the city so I think that's what motivated us. Very few people thought Ron Stone, who was an early founder here and a friend of mine I think was one of the first people really understood. Look, this is about nitty gritty zoning issues. This is about contracts with the county. This is about learning how to deal with the Sheriff's department or are you gonna have your own police department, et cetera? I think we were little naive, but we learned so much so that we began quickly to move into that phase from the idealism to the practical, quite a move. - So from the very beginning, I mean, one of the things I don't know whether people know much about West Hollywood really even outside of LA County, maybe in Northern California and all the rest of the States, they think, well, you know, it's a gay city. - [Steve] Right. - But one of the very interesting things to me is like, from its inception there seemed to be an idea that was larger than just let's have a city for gay people because it certainly hasn't turned out to be just a city for gay people. It really was much more progressive in its ideas. You talk about rent control, there was a coalition of renters rights type people, seniors were very active and there was also, was there a Russian community here at that time? - [Steve] There was, there was at that point it seems to me it was three to 4% of the population, Sheila and most of them weren't voters and so on, but yes, that was a part of the population then. - So even though a lot of, a number of gay people were running and were elected I assume for the first council. - [Steve] Yes, three of us. - There was an understanding or a sense I guess, that now we've got a real city we've have to serve all the people in the city? - I think that's probably one of the most important lessons that we learn and probably one of the most important we'll hear from John in here in a minute, but standing legacies of West Hollywood is really that progressive nature. The notion of being openly gay and being part of it and having, being able to deal with those issues was critical always. But from day one, you had to go to homeowner meetings and neighborhood watch groups and speak to homeowners who were concerned, they said about garbage and police issues and traffic issues and liquor licenses and you very quickly on also spoke to Russians who were concerned very much about legitimacy and social services and really never talked about gay issues very much so that I think surprisingly, to some extent you were never on the defensive certainly about a gay person, but I think on the other side of that, you quickly had to become a person who understood real city issues and issues of interest to other groups and learn to handle those issues on the fly. You couldn't just rely on being an outspoken gay person, that wasn't enough. - Well, you mentioned Elaine Noble. - [Steve] Yes. - When I was in law school in Cambridge, Elaine came and spoke to us a couple of times. - [Steve] Very impressive. - She was an elected in the state legislature in Massachusetts, from a section of Boston. - [Steve] That's right. - And that section of Boston had a lot of Irish people in it of course, and Elaine used to tell the story that after she was elected, cause she was an out lesbian and everybody knew it. She used to say that, little old ladies would stop her on the street and say, now you know darling, you have to be there for all of us and I guess it's the same kind of thing. - [Steve] Absolutely right and I think this may have been surprising at the very beginning, but you soon learned that people were fine with you being gay. I mean, they may not have wanna heard you about your Saturday night, I don't know if that's changed that much, but they were fine with your being gay as long as you were fair to them and were open minded. One of the most controversial issues that happened in our day, Sheila was the notion that I was never in favor of frankly, of starting a gay police department. And it was one of the most controversial issues because it looked like all of a sudden this was one group pulling away from the other groups to their own self-interest, very important experience it seems to me. - The decision was made not to do that. - [Steve] The decision made not to do it yes, absolutely. - What were the other early issues for the city? - Rent control was the key issue as I said. I think that independence from the County of Los Angeles and being able to excuse me, Zeev, but distinguish ourselves in those five supervisors, those five feudal Lords and be able to handle our own issues and if you were a homeowner, as I said, they were sort of more pragmatic city issues like zoning. But if you were a gay person it was domestic partnership. It was really the right to be able to talk straight to Sheriff Block, who was the sheriff in those days. For business people it was very much about, will this remain a commercial thriving or will it become in fact, a thriving commercial center and obviously it has done that in a very good way. Social services was very important early on, there were lots of seniors as I pointed out, there was HIV, there were Russians who needed social service support so there were all those kinds of issues. And I think really one of the key issues early on was image, was marketing. This may shock some people, but one of the first things the city did was hire a marketing contract group and tried to figure out how do we present ourselves? So those were some of the issues. - Well, Ivy I know you were not deeply involved in the founding of the city, but I know that you were deeply involved in gay or gay and lesbian issues and feminist issues at the time of the founding of the city 20 years ago and you were here in LA. What was your impression from sort of the LA perspective and your perspective of the idea that came together about carving the city out and the idea of having what was then I think thought of as a gay city or a gay friendly city? - Well, when I moved here, I settled over in the Silver Lake Echo Park area. - [Sheila] Further east from West Hollywood. - Further east, right, yeah. That's right, people won't know where that is. - [Sheila] Not everybody. - Yeah and a lot of my early days when I first arrived here in 75 permanently, I was traveling with my comedy show. So I was kind of on the peripheral of the activism, even though I was doing activism in my comedy show. And then what happened was that I heard there was a job opening at the Gay Center, Gay Center not Gay Lesbian Center. - [Sheila] Not yet. - And I applied for that and I was Women's Director for a period of time and while I was Women's Director in 76, Anita Bryant was doing what she was doing in Florida around all that stuff she was trying to do against gay men and I knew Morris Kite at that time and the two of us formed this coalition for human rights. And that started to draw me over west further because there was more of us over here. And then we did the the "Noon Six Campaign", the "Briggs Initiative" and then when I was going to go back to the center and Gail Wilson, who was over here as a realtor she said, no, don't do that. She said, get your real estate license and come with me. So I did early 1979 I became a realtor I think it was in April. And then that really brought me, even though I lived over on the east side, I spent every day and weekends over here. And then I started to hear about a movement to create the city and I thought, never gonna happen. I thought the county is never gonna let go of this. You know, it's just never gonna happen. And so I kind of went on about my business and I was aware of it out here, but then in 1981, 82, the AIDS started to surface, wasn't called that then. And in 1982, a friend of mine Ken Schorl was one of the first three men to be diagnosed in LA and he died and it really got my attention. So then I started to focus on it, which then brought me over here a lot more because there was more people that you could talk to and more people you could find. And then I started the first AIDS organization, but it wasn't called that, but it was a network group before anything else had happened because none of us knew what was going on so once every couple of weeks we'd all get together and what did you hear? What did you hear? What have you read? You know, did you get a phone call? And that's how we started to. And then I started to get more involved in watching the city try to become a city and I honestly didn't think much about whether it was a good idea or bad idea. And when I would come over here in those early years, I remember once I got passed, once I got west of Losanita I thought it was kind of desolate. there was a lot of dirt I mean, there wasn't all the buildings that are there now, and now that's kind of the center west of Losanita. But as time went on and then all of a sudden, boom, we're a city. And now I'm saying we are, so you see now. - Right, nothing succeeds like success. - [Ivy] Right, and then I did a lot of work over here and then in 1997, I actually physically moved over here. I was living in Silver Lake in a big old house. My relationship of many years had broken up, I was rattling around in a five bedroom, two story craftsman and I got up one day and I thought, why are you doing this? And I got in my car and by evening I was in Escrow. I bought myself a condo and it was on Creston Heights and Fountain. And then I started to go to City Council meetings and I was getting more and more involved and for a while, when I first got over here, I thought, ooh, I'm gonna run for City Council. And then I looked at all the drudge work you do and I thought, no way, am I gonna do that. And besides I liked needling from the outside to the inside, but it's interesting to hear you speak about it because I think of this city as a gay city. And when you were talking, I thought, oh, it's not, but I honestly have an emotional, psychological thing about West Hollywood, to me, it's a gay city, it's Camelot. It's like everybody's gay, lesbian dream, if they could live somewhere, they would live here. I mean, I absolutely love this city, I love living here. It's very, very well, the Creative City, that's the slogan, that's the name, you know, West Hollywood, the Creative City and I have many t-shirts with that on the back, but it's artistic and it's political and it's involved and it argues with itself and nobody always agrees, but eventually we come to some way that we can all work together. Yeah, my history with the city is one of, truly, one of joy really is even when I'm pissed at the city. - Well, you must have been, I mean, it's an interesting kind of involvement I found in a number of cities. There are a dozen cities in my Senate district and in every one of them, it's very special when people go to council meetings because a lot of people in the city, they wouldn't even think of it. And I think partly that's an act of faith I mean, you say you get pissed at them and whatever, but you love it anyway. What brought you originally to be going to council meetings? Did it have to do with GRIDS I think is what the AIDS was called early on. - Yeah, I pretty much started. - Gay Related Immune Deficiency Syndrome. - Yeah, I pretty much started going around the AIDs issue. And then as that was moving, the other thing I caught my attention was the domestic violence within our lesbian and gay community. - [Sheila] Right. - And one of the people at City Hall had been killed and that really brought it to a head. And then, I got very involved in Domestic Violence Task Force, that the Lesbian and Gay Advisory Board pretty much shepherded through. - [Sheila] And you're the co-chair of the advisory board in the city, right? - Lesbian, Gay Advisory Board, right. I think I'm going on six years, it's been a great experience, but the domestic violence issue was a shock and at that point we were calling it Partner Abuse because domestic didn't fit our community, that was like for married people. And so we were calling it Partner Abuse and our community understood that in a whole other way. And then as that issue moved more and more people started to get interested in it to the point where the County actually set up under their domestic violence and they have a huge task force, they actually set up we are they now gay and lesbian people are in that and there's money that goes over, probably you give some, I don't know, maybe not that's the county, who knows. So there are the other issues and then there's the housing issues around seniors and around there's always the rent control issue, that's always skirting around, but the senior issue has sort of surfaced and it's coming into, the logger heads with people who wanna preserve the neighborhood the way it is. I'm getting a little nervous myself because I grew up on Long Island and I traveled through Queens and I watched Queens be destroyed. - [Sheila] Kind of gentrification is what you mean by destroyed, right? - Destroyed with condos. - [Sheila] Yeah. - You know, all the neighborhoods disappeared. - [Sheila] So the question of sort of how you preserve a city and allow it to grow at the same time I mean it's. and its that's a balance affluent too. I mean, there are a number of cities on the west end of LA that LA County that sort of are going through the same thing. And John, you're the Mayor now, although you've been on the council. - [John] It's my fourth year, - Right, four years so just sort of rolling back a little bit to kind of catch up history. How did you get involved with West Hollywood originally? I mean, where were you in your life when it first came to your attention? - I was a Beach Bomb in Laguna Beach back in 1984. - [Sheila] That sounds good. - I lived in Laguna, yeah. I was one of the dancing boys on the bass speaker at the boom boom room and completely apolitical apathetic and we heard talk up in Los Angeles about them forming a gay city. At the time Laguna Beach had an openly gay council member, Bob Gentry. - [Sheila] Right. - So we did have Bob present, but you know, sort of heard about it, I knew John Heilman from about that period of time. I met Steve a few years later and I guess in Orange County, we sort of looked with envy to what was happening in West Hollywood, we were surrounded, Reverend Lou Sheldon from the Traditional Values Coalition was based in Orange County. Congress member Bob Don and Congress member Will Danamire, Senator John Briggs, I mean the entire right wing and we had this little pocket called, Laguna Beach that we all sort of felt very safe in. And so we looked up at what was happening in Los Angeles and not only was MECLA sort of the model for what we would replicate down in Orange County, but now there was talk about creating a municipality that the gay and lesbian community could really focus on it as home. So I guess if anything, I felt really envious about this sort of the conversations that were were going on. - [Sheila] Now MECLA was formed to help people get elected. It was an organization of gay and lesbian people who just wanted to pull together I don't mean just, but wanted to pull together some money to support gay and lesbian candidates or gay friendly candidates. Cause as Steve said there weren't a lot of us in those days just to explain to people that didn't know quite what that was. - [John] What MECLA was. - So there you are looking with envy on West Hollywood. - And at the time during the late eighties, I moved here in 1990 and it's partially because of Steve Schulte that I moved here in the first place because in the late eighties I was co-chair of the Life Lobby, which was doing Sacramental Legislation, but Bob Craig, who was the publisher of "Frontiers" and also one of the founders of West Hollywood, he and I had done a reapportionment study under an organization called "Westpac" in 1988, 89, looking at legislative districts in California and we discovered that many gay and lesbian neighborhoods had been bisected or trisected into different parts to shore up safe democratic seats, but at the same time preventing any sort of consolidation of gay or lesbian power. So I'd call Steve and say, we gotta get behind this, we gotta raise money for this, we gotta keep West Hollywood in one district. We can elect gay and lesbian people and I think you got tired I mean, he just said, John, you know, you care so much, why don't you move up here? And I think he said it flippantly and I said, you know what? I will, I will. I think the right wing was sort of had its fill of me too so I sort of left towards. - [Sheila] So they paid your moving cost? - Yeah, exactly, shut me outta town and I moved to West Hollywood in 1990 and the city had been around five or six years. I wasn't really a city activist, I was a gay and lesbian activist and I hear it was interesting hearing Steve talk about the sheriffs because one of the first issues I was confronted with when I got here was Deputy Bruce Boland, coming out of the closet as an openly gay sheriff and being terminated from his employment and being an attorney, my law firm took on that case and my entree to Sherman Block, the sheriff was I'm suing him for wrongful termination. So when the notion of forming our own police department came up, I was one of the signatories on the ballot initiative to form our own West Hollywood police, this was in 1990, 91, after they had rejected the idea at City Hood. Now it was on the ballot and I think fortunately we lost, if I can say that, fortunately we lost, but we lost 49 to 51, we just lost. And I think by just losing it sort of pushed the sheriff and the department towards reform, which is really what we wanted. And today we enjoy a very good and healthy relationship with the Sheriff's department. - Well, it was interesting when I was first running in 94, I went to Sherman Block who was then sheriff as my mother would say, may his soul rest in peace and asked for his endorsement and he said, you'd be surprised to hear this, but I actually do understand the issue of discrimination. He said, I'm a Jewish sheriff, do I need to say more than that? So it was very interesting, but I know that there was an enormous conflict and not only conflict, but real lack of sensitivity, which is very different under Sheriff Bacca, now as I understand it. So you got involved in these issues sort of. - Tangentially, I mean. - Not really city issues so much. - So not really city, then there was medical marijuana, that was another big issue that came up. And when Preposition 215 California's Medical Marijuana Initiative passed, there was talk of opening a Cannabis Center in West Hollywood. So I became General Counsel for the center and we were actually open and thriving until George Bush was elected and John Ashcroft shut it down in 2001, but that was another issue. So I was always sort of involved with, I think the gay and lesbian and AIDS communities issues in and around the city, but never directly on city issues. I rarely came to a council meeting. Once a year I'd come because either John or Abby called and John Heilman, Abby Land Council members to say, we need you to come lobby on this, other than that, I really wouldn't come. And then when an opening occurred on the council, John Heilman, took me out to dinner and said, you're smart, you're right. - [Sheila] Time to step up with a play, John. - We can use you, we know you wanna be elected, time to run so. - [Sheila] Are you glad? - Yes, although I was telling Steve, it's a little interesting being the Mayor of the city of West Hollywood. When I tell people that, it's like saying I'm the wizard of Oz, you know, when people here you say, I'm the Mayor of West Hollywood. Cause they think not only of the gay and lesbian Santa Monica Boulevard, they think of the Sunset Strip, they think of the Melrose Design Center. They think of the entire design industry around the Pacific Design Center, it's really this really beautiful part of Southern California in terms of its architecture and creativity and excitement and every weekend, hundreds of thousands of people pour into this town and then they go back to their homes. I mean, it's one of those landmarks of Southern California, many of the sort of buildings and locations in the city of West Hollywood. So it's sort of, if you had to be mayor of a small town, this is the one to be mayor of it's pretty exciting. - Well, and the Sunset Strip has a somewhat interesting history before West Hollywood was incorporated I mean, when I was in college, we first went there and it was sort of glittery and glamorous when I first started in college and the Crescendo was there and the nightclub where I'd go to hear, I don't know, Ella Fitzgerald and I heard Nancy Wilson sing there before anyone had heard of her, she was singing with a band, right. And then all of a sudden it was all coffee houses and beatniks and you know, I wanted you to go sit one night at the Unicorn and talk to Jack Calwark and it was a very interesting time. I mean, of course that makes, you know how old I am, but it was extraordinary even before that. - Well, let me go back 30 or 40 years before that, the reason it was called the Sunset Strip, it was that strip of land of unincorporated county where the LAPD, the Los Angeles Police Department could not reach. So during prohibition, it was where all the speakeasy set up and bathtub gin and then eventually brothels and it was a red light district and it was anything goes, which attracted the mob so then it was Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen and all these very flamboyant characters that formed the "Gardens of Allah" and then Frank Sinatra and all the rat packs sort of poured in and so, you know, West Hollywood's always sort of had this very permissive, tolerant, flamboyant, colorful presence for the last hundred years. You know the gay and lesbian reincorporation of that, that's just the newest version of I think what's always happened in this part of Los Angeles. - But people have their eyes on West Hollywood now around the country I know even the "LA Times" did a story about couples in other states applying for domestic partnerships in West Hollywood because they have to show some official document that shows that they're domestic partners if they're corporations give these benefits. So how does West Hollywood go from being sort of our local little wonderful place to this national, probably international reputation? - It's interesting because you know what Steve and Ivy had mentioned earlier is that it's not a gay city, I mean, two thirds of the people who live here are heterosexual, we're only about a third of the population, but in the minds and the heart of the national gay and lesbian community, much like Provincetown, much like the Castro, it is an identifiable location on the planet that gay and lesbian community sort of identifies as home in a very hearty way as Ivy was describing. You know, when we are, it's not unusual on Santa Monica Boulevard to see gay and lesbian tourists taking pictures of the Lambda flags, we fly on Santa Monica Boulevard all year round. The thought of a city that proudly displays the Lambda flag as part of its identity, I think is unusual. So people come here and this whole issue of us issuing domestic partnership certificates, they're toothless don't really mean anything other than saying, you declare yourselves domestic partners, but to a health insurance company back in Kansas, it's some evidence of a relationship that they can then rely upon. - Well, I wanna ask you to kind of pick up this theme about what the city looks like from the outside and why it may or may not have been important. I mean, you talked about the gay and lesbian community and how they think about it. Are a lot of people moving here? I mean, it would seem to me that soon, it wouldn't be a third, it would be a totally gay city, why isn't that happening? - We're a victim of our own success in some ways. We just surpassed the city of Beverly Hills in terms of our commercial real estate rates for the first time. The cost of housing in West Hollywood, a single family resident is now comparable to homes in the Hollywood Hills so we have seen this incredible exchange occur where we now have become a city that's perceived and is becoming more affluent and more wealthy. That displaces a lot of the pioneers that Steve was talking about, it sort of displaces people who relied upon rent control, sort of the actors and actresses and production people who found a home in our apartments in West Hollywood. Our bar backs and our servers and our waiters and waitresses working in our restaurants, not to mention our school teachers, our firefighters, our police officers, none of them can afford to be here anymore. So instead we're seeing very wealthy, affluent, both gay and non-gay people moving into West Hollywood and that has the potential of reshaping our progressive politics and that's, I think one of the biggest challenges for the current council is how we remain progressive and liberal which I think is at the heart of the soul of West Hollywood and at the same time bringing newcomers who may not share sort of the passion we do for very liberal, progressive politics. They're not all liberal, limousine liberals. Is that the term limousine liberals? - [Sheila] I think so. - Who are moving in, we're getting people who care about their pocketbook and care about their money and really don't care much about the homeless people or our aging population or people living with AIDS. So that to me is somewhat of a threat to sort of our core values so that's a continuing education process. - What do you guys think? - [Ivy] I haven't thought thought about it in those terms, but you're absolutely right. I was in a conversation the other day and somebody was saying that once you get east of Fairfax, the neighborhoods kind of change, the houses change. There there's a lot more duplexes and four plexes as you go east and it's predominantly the Russian community east of Fairfax and somebody was saying to me, that's going to be changing because the children of the Russian community, the Russian community is getting older and the children of the Russian community a lot of them are leaving which then will bring, who knows, whether what happens west of Fairfax will then start to spread east and up to LaBrea. Will the whole area become more affluent and that can have a big impact, you're absolutely right. - [Steve] I wanna take slightly different attack, cause I think this is an interesting, but in the sense that the bridge it seems to me from the past about what West Hollywood was in the beginning to what it's dealing with today is it focuses on the word progressive. I mean, you know, to me I think we all did a lot of sort of theorizing and conceptualizing about what it meant to be liberal or what it meant to be gay or lesbian politically correct, et cetera. At the end of the day, it was about reaching out to people to make sure that everybody got included and addressing their issues. That looked different in 1984 than it looks in 2004. I mean, I know that's sort of trite, but it seems to me it makes the point. So the challenge really at one particular time is to determine, what is important here? Who gets included? Is this really about, you know, sort of focusing on a narrow group and making sure they have more and more and more and gobble it up and I just made a political statement, but forgive me. Or is it really about everybody being able to share in that? So that, I think when you said Sheila, why isn't everybody moving here? I think one of the most important things that happened during the eighties was that people in other communities said, let's do that here. You know, and they were running for City Council in Chicago and they were running for City Council in Missouri and they were in for City Council, et cetera. And it turned out the gay and lesbian elected officials group and appointed, I believe officials group in those years very quickly by the end of the eighties was probably about a hundred folks around the country. Now that's from when I said, I knew of three, you know, when I first started being politically conscious, but the point is that's what happened, it sparked enthusiasm, it sparked the notion of how do we make that happen in our community and that's what progressive really means, it seems to me. - Well, the inclusionary aspect is a difficult one sometimes too, because rental property is generally owned by private citizens and when the state kind of undercut the ability of cities several years ago to maintain rent control over a vacant unit, it's like, as soon as it was vacant, you couldn't keep rent control on it and the owner could just pump it up to whatever they want an issue I voted very strongly against, but I lost and that went through. Seems to me that that's been a problem for a lot of cities that have tried, cause one of the progressive ideas of a city is also to try to keep that mix, but it's not just for the poor people. - [John] That's right. - Or for the ethnic people, it's really a notion of what a city feels like when you were talking about Queens. It's not just what the buildings look like only, but who mixes on the streets and who's here or not here and not wanting to lose the senior community, it's happening all over the state in terms of city's little cities, especially that are well run doing well and the property values go up. What's the city able to do, let's say it wants to retain its soul as a progressive city and a blended city. What does the city do to kind of keep that happening? - [John] We're looking at a couple of things that I think a lot of cities around the country are looking at, one is the whole notion of mixed use development on our major thoroughfares. You know, we have been adverse to putting housing on the Sunset Strip, on Santa Monica Boulevard on Beverly, on Melrose in the city of West Hollywood cause traditionally it's been a commercial zone. Now we're looking at redeveloping these areas, first floor retail restaurant, grocery stores, pharmacies, and two or three stories of housing on top. Now that notion that sort of change is very threatening to some people who've been here a while, they call it the Manhattanisation of Los Angeles. But the reality is west Hollywood is a city that's built out, there's really nowhere to go but up. We have this incredible crunch for housing. The laws of economic supply and demand are in full play, limited supply, high demand means high price, it's right up here and so the only thing we can do is increase our housing stock. But at the same time, we have to be sensitive to the issue that Ivy brought up, which is a lot of our historic buildings and our historic neighborhoods are zone multi-family and what we've seen are developers coming in or private property owners, tearing down these beautiful hundred year old apartment buildings and putting up 16 condominiums and we don't wanna encourage that, we want to discourage that. So we're looking at providing incentives and bonuses if developers will build on the thorough fairs and stay out of the residential neighborhoods. We're getting ready to do another historic survey to bring more of those partner buildings into some sort of protected status. - [Sheila] You don't sound like a gay man running a city to me. - [John] No. - Regular guy running a city. - [John] Yeah, that's. - [Sheila] Strange enough. - [Ivy] Speaking of mixed use, I've been kind of talking mixed use for the last three or four years because I come from the east coast and one of the wonderful things about mixed use is that it creates its own little neighborhood. You get to know the people who live above the stores and that block becomes the neighborhood. And I mean, I used to walk in Manhattan or in Queens and you'd see people who would bring a chair down at night when it was a hot night and they wanted to get outside and they'd put it by their door and they'd sit there and they'd read a paper or smoke and people would come by and they'd have conversations now, I'm not sure it could work on the Sunset Strip. - [Sheila] Or it might. - Or they might be down. - It's a neighborhood. - But I loved that as I was growing up as a kid, because it brought people together, you had to relate because it wasn't like a separate house where you go in and close the door and you may never know your neighbors I mean, that happens in condos here all the time. I live in a condo that has 62 units. I know maybe 10 people by name and the rest, I don't think I've ever seen. So I come from a place where getting together is very important, I'm Irish and my ex-husband Italian and you get them all together and it was wonderful growing up like that so I love mixed use. - [Steve] I think one of the questions John, it's so interesting listening in terms of this conversation, but I'm sure you guys deal with this, I wouldn't have an answer and haven't thought about it for a long time, but what does that building out that development do to the quality for people who live? I mean, one of the things that happens obviously is Ivy talking about kind of urban density where neighborhoods take oppressions over identification as a city, as part of the city or something, is that what happens is there are, what are the trade offs and sort of, how do you measure keeping people feeling they're part of a small community? Or is that an important question anymore? - [John] I think what we're trying to encourage is making West Hollywood very walkable, very pedestrian friendly that's one of our chief priorities to do exactly what Ivy's describing. That people sort of get to know one another, you walk to your pharmacy, you walk to the AIDS testing center down the street sort of your pharmacist, you know your grocer, you know the sheriff, deputies, I mean, we do want to encourage that and more mixing of our peoples. The biggest political opposition to that is our current residents who don't want any more density, who don't want any more traffic, who don't want any other people, they've got their piece of the pie and they don't want anybody else to come in. Unfortunately, under state mandate as the Senator will tell you that we've got to build housing to make sure that we're also keeping up with the demand in California to develop more housing and West Hollywood is one of those cities that does that. So part of it's educating our current residents that look, even if we put a moratorium over West Hollywood dome and we built nothing else, it wouldn't matter because the development's gonna continue to happen all around us. And most of our traffic problems are actually people passing through West Hollywood, not our residents necessarily so that's one of the challenges as well. - I'm sure you're sort of articulating that and I think that again, going back to the point so then perhaps of why everybody doesn't come here in a sense, I mean, I have to say this and don't mean doesn't make sense to be political, but it isn't attractive to everybody then after a point. I mean, this becomes a certain kind of urban environment. I will speak about myself chronologically. This was such a dream, you and I shared this before the show here, before the taping going to Studio One for the first time having come from the Midwest and Orange County and they're just about the same, obviously, but you know, today at this point in my life, working for Kaiser Permanente and being part of the Global Immunity Project of AIDS Healthcare Foundation and so on different kinds of issues, I don't identify with this in the same way, that's not bad or good. The history here was really, really important, what this is today is really, really important, but it doesn't address my needs in the same way. And I think a lot of people feel that way and that's okay too, what I think it says is, the extent to which we become more diverse and sophisticated as a population and again, are dealing with similar kinds of issues 20 years later. - [Sheila] Still though I do think, I mean, without making any comment on your age or whether you go to go to Studio One again, in a way though, I think West Hollywood is still the kind of place that we used to also think that the gay and lesbian center was and is. You know about it and it just feels safer to be there if you're gay or lesbian I mean, it is a very safe city. A lot of people come in to clubs or parties or not just gay people I mean. - [John] I was just gonna say. - So lot's a very happening city at night and not just on the weekends and I think that it's still for younger people, a place to go that's very social, very exciting in many aspects and very safe. And I don't think it's just gay and lesbian young people either cause a lot of times it's kind of dangerous out there in terms of going for a good time and still, I do think more than any other city here, people know that if you're two guys and you wanna walk hand in hand with your lover you can do it and maybe not everybody's totally madly in love with that, but it's accepted here, that's who we are. And I think that's a very, very good thing, it's more than tolerance it really has to do with being who you are and being able to live here. - [Ivy] Well, one of the things that I worry about with this whole marriage issue is being diffused. You know, I'm not real hot on this marriage issue and that could be a whole show, but. - [John] Idea. - [Sheila] Okay. - But I'm a lone voice, me and a handful of other people, but for me as the marriage issue develops and if and when that ever happens, I think we will need West Hollywood more than ever because we will start to become invisible. You know, we will diffuse into that never, never land out there and become the Joneses who live next door. And we will not have to fight for our identity and fight to let you know that this is who I am and I mean, that's our strength and marriage to me is going to kill it and I think this city has to get more gay, you know, San Francisco has to dig in and become the Castro, has to be more out there and the identity of where we can see ourselves in this country has to really be brought up, the profile has to get higher because we will be invisible after a while and you can tell I'm very passionate about this. - [John] Can I speak to the other side of that coin? - No. - And that's the notion of the metrosexuals, which is happening in West Hollywood and that is heterosexual people who are adopting some of the culture of the gay and lesbian community within their own culture, which is a fascinating thing to watch, to watch heterosexual couples choosing not to get married, but instead to live as domestic partners and register as domestic partners. - [Ivy] That's why we have to remain. - Watching sort of our nightclubs where now a lot of the clientele they're gay and straight mixed, they're not just gay men and lesbians or even just gay men, it's very mixed and many of the employees in the gay clubs are straight and heterosexual who don't blink an eye watching two men make out or hold hands or watching two lesbian moms come in with their kids, it's not even an issue and they can tell you about, who was on the show eye for the straight guy last Thursday night I mean, so you're sort of seeing the culture's mish mash and I don't know if that's a bad thing ultimately, and that's the question, I think that's the debate that we're engaged in. - But they're adopting our culture. - Yes, they are. - I'm afraid we're going to start adopting that culture and our culture is just gonna. - Of course, you know, people who've been in the closet all their lives adopted that culture in a way or at least put it on like a suit of clothes and we were invisible. Now that we're not invisible because of coming out and people saying who they are, culture kind of followed in a way we didn't necessarily know that it would. I really understand what you're saying, but you think about interracial couples and how they're still not totally comfortable and totally welcome in every single county in the United States. There are communities that are mixed where the kids are comfortable, the families are comfortable and that's a lot of communities in LA these days, a lot more like than I think people know. So I maybe in a way, West Hollywood or WeHo as we call it so fondly can set a precedent that could be very important about retaining culture, but not being a ghetto about it. - [Steve] I think that's such a good point I mean, I've had discussions like this for a long time. I don't fear so much that that sort of dissolution, I think in fact, what is an anchor there is again, the idea of West Hollywood, I think people don't have to live here, West Hollywood, isn't just a geographic place. I mean, John alluded to that earlier, it's really an idea for people about the comfort of if your image is two guys walking down the street, holding hands together or two women sitting in a lesbian coffee shop, whatever it is you know, that notion is planted. I'm not saying political circumstances always stay the same, but that idea is there, it's in the culture now. And people are able to do that in lots and lots of ways. So even if West Hollywood looks different 20 years from now and it will and feels different and the majority on the city council isn't gay at that point, the idea of West Hollywood, it seems to me still is a really, really powerful one for people and they'll take that on in their own way so I'm not quite as afraid of it being lost I guess, Ivy, even though there are dangers there. - You trust people memory. - Yes, if they work at it, right. - Right, I don't. - It is sort of a core question about and it, you know, West Hollywood as you said it's not a gay city, but in people's consciousness it is like a gay Mecca, where you can go where there's lots of us here, et cetera. And the question of how one maintains an identity, it's a conversation in Italian families between the grandmother, the mother and the daughter. - [John] Absolutely. - Because each of the three of them is going to be very different kind of Italian or Italian American. And I think in a way it's the same with us. I grew up in a very mixed neighborhood in the Great Chaw district when it was kind of in transition in Los Angeles and it seemed to me that the most creative way was to have lots of mixture because then everything seemed familiar, now this case it was racial, but it was things were more familiar and therefore you could retain your identity and participate in the, you know, larger world or whatever and to some extent, I think that's what we've tried to find in the gay and lesbian community, not to be ghettoized and yet to be gay, to be lesbian out in the world, whatever that means. Not that we're always sure what that means. - [John] It's interesting we have two heterosexuals in our city council and when they identify as members of the council from West Hollywood, they are presumed to be gay and lesbian, even though Abby Land is not, neither is Sal Gariello at age 87, but that is the presumption in place. So it's always interesting to watch them have to sort of explain that they're not gay, but that it's not that it's an issue at all whatsoever and to sort of do that little dance that they do. - The one elephant in the room and I have to say, that's so interesting that we're not talking about it, cause in some ways it doesn't even affect the form here, but it's generational stuff too, this has been so fascinating to me. I am as different in my political views from guys, I will say guys here for the sake of this discussion who are 20, 25 years younger than me than I can even imagine and hearing Ivy comment on marriage is so humorous and refreshing to me because I think we have to be open about that. People given their point in life and their station are gonna look at things very differently and that's okay. I mean, that is a much more open discussion, I think again than it was earlier, we're much more open about that and I think that's okay and we're not gonna control that we just sort of have to cope with it, it seems to me. - [John] Well, we will be at the forefront of the discussion on marriage, you can guarantee that. And not just because on the issue of marriage, but because again, we're on the defense and you know, they're not just going after marriage, they're going after civil unions, they're going after domestic partnership, they're going after our people, period. So I mean, that's the issue. - [Ivy] Most people don't get that. - We are on defense as we always are, it's always no on this, we're on the defense again, we're playing defense. Good news is it's a game we know, we've played it many times and we've succeeded, - I was just thinking that. - It'll be a very interesting five to 10 years. - Yeah, well, and you can't build something and then say, I don't want it ever to change or I mean, you don't have the choice. And we really don't know, it's sort of like parents and kids, when they kids grow up, it's like, you've done your job, if you've done it and whatever happens, they're going out there and they're gonna have to kind of do it. The city may change a lot or it may always identify itself as a progressive city. It may attract people who like the notion that rich people can live in a city and still have great social services for people who are not doing as well as they are or not doing well at all. That there needs to be art in people's lives and that how that gets to be a progressive issue these days I don't know, but it is. It's like only we believe that there ought to be art in people's lives, I don't get it, but that notion can continue because sometimes you attract sort of like people to live in a place I mean, why do I win in my Senate district? Because it's a lot of Democrats in the Senate district and despite what everybody says, if you draw a circle around it, it's still a circle, it isn't like we had to really draw out to find a few Democrats here and there, people are attracted to the West End of Los Angeles for its progressive politics and the cities that are incorporated in that part of LA have always been I think, very progressive. - [Steve] And you're a good spoke person Sheila as we all know, I mean really. - [Sheila] Well, I mean, I was lucky that I just meshed with people and they voted for me, do you know what I mean? It's not like I had to say, I wonder who I'll be today and then ask my constituents. - [Steve] But somebody has to speak to that and I think speak to the times that you know, are represented and that's always important I mean, in each piece of this conversation here, it happens in different ways. - [Sheila] So is the city taking the lead or participating in the gay and lesbian movement by being here, by doing something active? I mean, people look at it, but is it really a part of the movement? - [John] Well, I think lemme use marriage as an example, although there's many I could use. I think they were talking about marriage 20 years ago when the city was just formed. The fallback was domestic partnerships so that notion of marriage while it was considered radical 20 years ago, it was part of the mainstream political discussion here back then. Today, not only are we supporting the legislation, but my colleagues also encouraged me to become new co-chair of equality, California, which is the organization sponsoring. - [Sheila] The sponsoring organization, right? - Sponsoring the Marriage Bill along, you know, working through the caucus, of course. And so I think the city considered as a one of our top priorities to sort of be on the forefront of the issue of marriage because it impacts a third of our people, but in terms of shaping gay and lesbian policy, Ivy was just part of an interesting debate we had on the continuing boycott of Coors Beer where some of our organizations and people in the community forgot about sort of the history we've had with Coors over the last 25 years and those recommendations came out of our Lesbian and Gay Advisory Board to the council who asked us to support a continuing boycott. It was on consent wasn't even discussed or debated it just passed as a routine matter. - [Sheila] We unfortunately only have two minutes left. I just got sort of that signal, you don't have to apologize, that was exactly the right, but I wanted to make sure that you got to say in closing, if there was anything that you had thought of and said, gee, I wish I'd gotten to say that, Ivy. - The one thing I would like to say is that this is a very artistic city and we have a lot of art galleries, but the one thing I think that is missing and I'm talking to you, John. (all laughing) - [John] I see that, I see that. - One thing that I think is missing are outdoor art shows on the weekend, cause a lot of people will not walk into an art gallery, it's just very intimidating and it's the outside art shows that then get people to then walk into the art galleries. - [Sheila] And so now you don't have to go to the City Council meeting. - How about you? - [Ivy] So I'm encouraging on weekends we have artists on the Boulevard. - No, I wanna say thanks, this has been a great discussion. I think that it stirred up a lot of thoughts in me and I hope other people get to have this discussion, I think it's wonderful so thank you Sheila and thank you guys. - [Ivy] Well, look how we're sitting, we're all like this. - Yeah, I know that's what it is. - We started here. - Well, I wanna thank you very much for being here. It's an interesting continuum of history in this city, but also I think it's funny how the city has become a kind of image, as you said in people's minds. You use the word Camelot, you use the word Oz. I mean it is very interesting and I hope if you live here that you're enjoying it, if you don't live here, I hope you'll come and visit West Hollywood, but wherever you are in the country, you can be like West Hollywood so "Get Used To It". (upbeat music)