For over 20 years, I never left New York for more than two weeks. I’m a creature of habit, you might say. Then in 2021, I started to make a film about Paul Reubens and his alter ego Pee-wee Herman. That summer, I needed to move to Los Angeles for three months to begin production.
Having been raised in Northern California, I was conditioned to hate Los Angeles. But when I came to live in the city, I fortuitously found a sublet at a friend’s streamline moderne house in Silver Lake. I fell in love with the neighborhood, and each morning, I would take an hour-long walk around the Silver Lake reservoir. The 114 acre man-made lake is nestled between hills that are dotted with eclectic midcentury houses.
There are a series of daunting staircases that traverse those steep hills. One that I like to climb is landmarked as the “Mattachine Steps,” named after the seminal gay rights organization The Mattachine Society. In the 1950s, the actor, communist, and pioneering activist Harry Hay lived on that hill, and he convened the first meeting of The Mattachine Society at his home on Oakcrest Drive. (In a previous post, I wrote about meeting Hay as a teenage intern, so those steps are of particular significance to me).
The storied queer history of Silver Lake, however, begins much earlier. The first Hollywood studio was built in the nearby Edendale neighborhood in 1909, and Hollywood tradesmen and bohemian artisans (aka homosexuals) populated the surrounding areas. During that era, the silent film star Julian Eltinge—famously celebrated for his female impersonations—lived in a Spanish Colonial mansion in the Silver Lake hills, just two blocks from Hay’s future home. In the decades that followed, insiders referred to the neighborhood as the “Swish Alps.”
Silver Lake’s thriving underground gay culture poured into the streets on February 11, 1967. After police raided the neighborhood’s popular gay bar Black Cat Tavern on Sunset Boulevard, protests erupted with some 200 demonstrators (pre-dating the Stonewall riots by two years). They organized through a secret phone tree.
The neighborhood had long been predominately Latino, and after Black Cat Tavern closed, the bar became a queer Latino nightclub called Le Barcito, until going out of business in 2011. By then, much of the Latino community had already been displaced by gentrification.
Today the average house price in Silver Lake is 1.4 million dollars. Black Cat Tavern is occupied by Shake Shack, and trustafarians shop at the Erewhon supermarket (‘nowhere’ spelled backwards incorrectly), where a smoothie costs 17 dollars. Yet, the neighborhood’s queer bohemian ethos is not all lost.
The first time I came to Silver Lake was with my friend Every in 2004 when she was a graduate art student at UCLA. She promised me a “gay old time” at two Silver Lake institutions— the Mexican restaurant Casita del Campo, and a piano bar down the street called The Other Side (now shuttered, but thankfully immortalized in a documentary).
Inside Casita del Campo lives an enormous rubber tree, which has been pruned and trained to traverse the skylights that stretch across the sprawling restaurant. The main dining room is appointed with dozens of Tiffany stained glass pendant lamps, eclectic artworks featuring Frida Kahlo, and stained glass windows. Restaurant regular Larry Colburn’s painting of the original owners Rudy and Nina del Campo is prominently displayed.
Adjacent to the main dining room is a cozy bar straight out of a 1960s John Rechy novel. Inside there are dimly lit private booths, where couples can discreetly look over the restaurant.
The waiters wear red bandanas around their necks and black aprons embroidered with the vintage Casita del Campo cursive logo. The restaurant is known for their strong fruit margaritas and a variety of enchiladas, but the menu is extensive. Most importantly, the clientele is median age 65-years-old—predominantly gay regulars, who have been patronizing the restaurant for decades. Needless to say, it’s enchanting.
Several weeks ago, Paul Reubens died. I was scheduled to conduct my final interview with him the week after he passed away.
In a state of shock, I came to Los Angeles, and I went straight to my friends Terence and Garrick’s house in Silver Lake from the airport. We got stoned, and watched the sunset overlooking the reservoir in the distance. I wanted to go somewhere nostalgic, so I suggested we get dinner at Casita del Campo. I don’t know if Paul ever went there, but I do know that he would have appreciated its idiosyncratic vintage interiors and the rubber tree’s meandering branches, which have grown inside since the 1960s.
Prior to opening Casita del Campo in 1962, Rudy del Campo was a dancer in New York and Las Vegas. When he was 25-years-old, Rudy was cast as a chorus boy in Singin’ in the Rain, but his big break was performing as a Shark in the original 1961 West Side Story film. A year later, he opened his restaurant, hoping that his friends from the industry— many of them closeted at the time— could be their authentic selves at his pink bungalow on Hyperion Avenue.
After the Black Cat Tavern was raided, word spread that Casita del Campo was a safe haven from police harassment. Rudy installed privacy curtains in the bar booths to allow patrons like Rock Hudson to have furtive encounters. Over the years, Rudy painted regulars’ names on the back of the restaurant’s hand-carved chairs.
Three years after opening Casita del Campo, Rudy married one of the beloved waitresses, Nina. Their son Robert remembers growing up at the restaurant, singing along to the gay cabaret mainstay Rudy de la Mor, while his mother lead a conga line through the banquet and main dining rooms. He explained, “This idea of acceptance—gay or straight—melding together and supporting each other has always been a part of Casita del Campo.”
After Rudy de la Mor moved his cabaret act to another supper club, the basement performance space at Casita went unused for some time. Then Rudy met the nightlife impresario Mr. Dan, who was well-known for hosting the legendary Dragstrip 66 party. Mr. Dan was looking for a new venue to host his alternative queer events, so Rudy invited him to use the restaurant. He remodeled the basement, and they named it The Cavern Club. Mr. Dan’s Thursday night drag show there—featuring stalwarts like Jackie Beat and Sherry Vine— continues today.
In 1993, the year that The Cavern Club opened, Peter Friedman released his documentary Silverlake Life: The View From Here. The film is directed by Friedman alongside one of the subjects, Tom Joslin. Joslin filmed extensive video diaries in Silver Lake of himself and his lover Mark Massi facing their deaths from AIDS. At the film’s climax, Joslin dies on screen. It’s one of the most harrowing things I’ve ever seen, but Friedman handles the death with tremendous care.
While the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco and New York are well-documented, the experience and impact of the epidemic in Los Angeles— a city where there is a dearth of public space— is lesser known. Silverlake Life is an essential account.
White gay men and artists are often considered “pioneers” in the process of gentrification. For decades, queer people had been buying languishing midcentury modern houses in Silver Lake and fixing them up. Today those types of architectural homes— notably the ones designed by Rudolph Schindler, Richard Neutra, and John Lautner— are coveted.
When many gay men in the neighborhood died from AIDS, there was an abundance of available real estate. New wealthy homebuyers discovered the cultural and economic value of these lovingly restored houses, and the neighborhood transformed swiftly. AIDS left a vacuum in Silver Lake, and the bohemian gay culture that flourished there for nearly a century faded.
Casita del Campo is an artifact of gay Silver Lake that I never experienced firsthand. There has been much discussion about gay bars as institutions for chosen family (my friend Jeremy Lin’s book Gay Bar is a fantastic exploration of those ideas). However, there has been less discussion about gay restaurants— the places where queer people have come to share meals and community— as extensions of home.
During the height of the AIDS epidemic—when families rejected their queer relatives, and some were scared to even touch people with AIDS—these welcoming and nourishing spaces were essential. Today, they are forms of living history, where the comforts of previous generations can be experienced and shared.
After Rudy died in 2003, Nina continued to run the family restaurant until she passed away in 2018. Today, their son Robert and his wife Gina preside over the little pink house built by the del Campos. “It’s always been with a glad heart to support the legacy of my father and all this dedication from the customers,” Robert says. “I want this place to continue when I take my last breath, and I want to take care of this community.”
There are other old school gay restaurants like Casita del Campo— Napi’s in Provincetown, Elephant & Castle in New York, Orphan Andy’s and at one time Cafe Flore in San Francisco—all institutions in their own right. If you know of others, please name them in the comments.
I loved this story and your ability to tell it. I lived in Silver Lake for several years. What a magical place. The Neutra home on Silver Lake Blvd. was occasionally open to the public. The interior woodwork was as stunning as the entire architectural design.
Love reading your deep research into things most people take for granted!