Congress has cut federal funding for public media — a $3.4 million loss for LAist. We count on readers like you to protect our nonprofit newsroom. Become a monthly member and sustain local journalism.
This is an archival story that predates current editorial management.
This archival content was written, edited, and published prior to LAist's acquisition by its current owner, Southern California Public Radio ("SCPR"). Content, such as language choice and subject matter, in archival articles therefore may not align with SCPR's current editorial standards. To learn more about those standards and why we make this distinction, please click here.
The Other Side: Silver Lake Piano Bar Closes After 40 Years
Hands playing piano via Shutterstock
()
By Amanda Schwartz
After over 40 years in business, Silver Lake piano bar and mainstay of the Los Angeles gay community The Other Side closed its doors for a final time Sunday.
Located on Hyperion Avenue, the bar is the subject of filmmaker Jane Cantillon’s 2006 documentary The Other Side: A Queer History, which chronicles experience of the bar’s long time patrons as they faced raids by Los Angeles Police Department officers in the 1960s. Along with the Flying Leap Café, the bar’s sister establishment, the space will now be making way for Hyperion Public, a gastropub.
Many patrons lament the disappearance of another mainstay of Silver Lake’s gay community. For his blog Greg in Hollywood, Greg Hernandez interviewed some of the bar’s longtime patrons, including real estate agent Eric Toro of Eagle Rock. “I hate to see it close. It’s been a fun place to party, a fun place to be with friends. There’s almost no place to go in Silver Lake, period. There’s a great deal more acceptance in straight bars but I still don’t feel comfortable reaching around and hugging my husband and kissing him in another bar. It causes too many eyebrows to be raised. So it’s the end of an era for me and it’s certainly a cultural place that’s going away,” he told Hernandez.
Support for LAist comes from
Owner Paul Hargis, posted a note outside the bar:
It is with warm reflection that I pass along the bittersweet news of the closing of The Other Side and Flying Leap Cafe on June 24, 2012. Both have achieved landmark status in their own right, and each has had a real impact on the exciting Silver Lake food and entertainment scene over the past fifteen years. It also marks the end of an era for one of the longest continuously open piano bars in Los Angeles, with its original roots back to the late 1960s.
Hargis said the main factor in his decision to close the business was retirement, rather than a decline in business. Although he said he spent the past four years looking for a buyer who would maintain the concept, he found no takers. "As the solo owner with another full-time job out of state, I was not able to keep up with the challenges of ... owning a bar and restaurant in this city from a distance," he told the LA Weekly.
Although the atmosphere cannot be recreated, the Showroom at The French Market Place in West Hollywood will be hosting a number of The Other Side’s piano players on the nights they used to play at the bar, says KPCC.
Just this past November, Le Barcito, another fixture of Silver Lake’s gay community and a historic-cultural landmark, also shuttered its doors.
As Editor-in-Chief of our newsroom, I’m extremely proud of the work our top-notch journalists are doing here at LAist. We’re doing more hard-hitting watchdog journalism than ever before — powerful reporting on the economy, elections, climate and the homelessness crisis that is making a difference in your lives. At the same time, it’s never been more difficult to maintain a paywall-free, independent news source that informs, inspires, and engages everyone.
Simply put, we cannot do this essential work without your help. Federal funding for public media has been clawed back by Congress and that means LAist has lost $3.4 million in federal funding over the next two years. So we’re asking for your help. LAist has been there for you and we’re asking you to be here for us.
We rely on donations from readers like you to stay independent, which keeps our nonprofit newsroom strong and accountable to you.
No matter where you stand on the political spectrum, press freedom is at the core of keeping our nation free and fair. And as the landscape of free press changes, LAist will remain a voice you know and trust, but the amount of reader support we receive will help determine how strong of a newsroom we are going forward to cover the important news from our community.
Please take action today to support your trusted source for local news with a donation that makes sense for your budget.
Thank you for your generous support and believing in independent news.
Chip in now to fund your local journalism
(
LAist
)
Trending on LAist
-
With less to prove than LA, the city is becoming a center of impressive culinary creativity. -
Nearly 470 sections of guardrailing were stolen in the last fiscal year in L.A. and Ventura counties.
-
Monarch butterflies are on a path to extinction, but there is a way to support them — and maybe see them in your own yard — by planting milkweed.
-
With California voters facing a decision on redistricting this November, Surf City is poised to join the brewing battle over Congressional voting districts.
-
The drug dealer, the last of five defendants to plead guilty to federal charges linked to the 'Friends' actor’s death, will face a maximum sentence of 65 years in prison.
-
The weather’s been a little different lately, with humidity, isolated rain and wind gusts throughout much of Southern California. What’s causing the late-summer bout of gray?
Best of LAist