800 S. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles 90005 (at W. 8th St.)
From the late 1940s through the mid-1960s, this block on Vermont Avenue was home to two working-class, racially mixed lesbian bars: the If Café (also known as the If Club) and the Open Door.
“Crowd of butch girls, men in 40s others from area,” read the Barfly gay bar guide’s description for If Café in 1966; for the Open Door, the same guide noted simply, “Same type crowd as at If Café.” The clientele of both bars was Black, white, and Latina, demonstrating that queer life in Los Angeles did not exist only in white and affluent areas but was also embedded in working-class communities of color. Women at these clubs developed a strong, oppositional community, with their own styles and slang; for example, butch Black women termed themselves “hard dressers.” Women’s experiences at the If Café and Open Door also remind us that homophobic and racist police practices overlapped in postwar Los Angeles. Police frequently raided the bars and arrested patrons, charging women either with “masquerading”—that is, wearing men’s clothing—or prostitution. While some lesbians did work as prostitutes, many such charges were false and were used simply to harass and criminalize women who did not meet dominant gender and sexual norms. Black women, who were already more likely to be perceived as “loose” or “deviant” by the dominant culture, faced increased risk of arrest for lesbian behavior. The If Café and the Open Door stayed open for years and produced a vibrant culture that carried over into activism and community life among lesbians of color in subsequent decades.
Image: This block of Vermont Avenue was home to two working-class lesbian bars. Photo by Wendy Cheng.