coming to los angeles? here are the 28 gay bars still standing, and one of them is in eviction court

Los Angeles has 28 gay bars we can stand behind, and a much longer list of ones it used to have. Seventeen of these are in West Hollywood, most of them on four blocks of Santa Monica Boulevard, and the rest are spread across sixty miles of county, which is why nobody ever does the whole scene in a weekend. What follows is all of them by neighborhood, with a map, addresses and what each room is actually like. Then the ones we lost, which in this city is not a short section.

Last updated: September 2026

west hollywood

The Abbey

692 N Robertson BoulevardWest Hollywood

The one everybody means when they say they are going to WeHo. Four bars, multiple levels, a patio built for being seen on, drag brunch, and a food menu that is better than it needs to be. Open from 11am on weekdays and 10am on weekends, to 2am. The Chapel next door at 694 takes the overflow when the main room gives up.

Micky's

8857 Santa Monica BoulevardWest Hollywood

Two floors, drag most nights, dance parties, karaoke, and drag brunch on the weekend. It calls itself the number one gay nightclub in West Hollywood, which is the kind of thing a bar on this block has to say about itself, and it is not far off.

Revolver

8851 Santa Monica BoulevardWest Hollywood

A video bar since 1984, still gay owned, with an open front onto the boulevard so the bar and the sidewalk are basically the same event. Five in the evening on weekdays, 4pm on weekends. Forty-two years on the same corner is not nothing in this city.

Mother Lode

8944 Santa Monica BoulevardWest Hollywood

Opened October 16, 1979, which makes it the oldest gay bar left in West Hollywood. A pool table in the middle, two small patios onto the boulevard, strong wells, beer bust on Sundays and karaoke on Thursdays. Everything around it has been renamed and reconcepted twice. This one just kept opening.

Trunks

8809 Santa Monica BoulevardWest Hollywood

Tiny, sports on the screens, pool tables, well drinks all day, and a door policy the bar states as gay, straight, curious, who gives a hell. Open from 1pm. The one you meet at before anybody has decided anything.

Hi Tops

8933 Santa Monica BoulevardWest Hollywood

A gay sports bar imported from San Francisco, done as high school locker room, with trivia Tuesdays and a Thursday called Gym Class. Noon to midnight most days, 2am Thursday and Friday. There is a second one in Los Feliz now, which is below.

Gym Bar

8919 Santa Monica BoulevardWest Hollywood

Fifteen screens, American bar food, and a room that fills for anything with a scoreboard. Opens at 10am on weekends, which tells you it takes the early games seriously. The less themed of the two gay sports bars on this block.

Beaches WeHo

8928 Santa Monica BoulevardWest Hollywood

Beach bar conceit, frozen drinks, long happy hours and drag brunch. Open from noon every day but Monday, when it starts at 5. Sister room to Beaches Tropicana half a block east, so the two of them are an evening if you want one.

Beaches Tropicana

8911 Santa Monica BoulevardWest Hollywood

The bigger, louder one: a multi-level club with real lighting and sound, ticketed nights, and drag names you have heard of. It runs on an events calendar rather than fixed hours, so check who is on before you walk over.

The Bayou

8939 Santa Monica BoulevardWest Hollywood

Cajun theme, Mardi Gras beads, strong wells and a long happy hour. Last call lands around 1:45. Committing this hard to New Orleans on Santa Monica Boulevard should not work and it does.

Mattie's

8900 Santa Monica BoulevardWest Hollywood

Gay owned and operated, a big patio, dogs welcome, drag on a stage and an actual kitchen rather than an afterthought. Open from 2pm most days and noon on weekends, midnight on Mondays. The one to pick when somebody in the group wants dinner.

The Wild

8945 Santa Monica BoulevardWest Hollywood

Tulum by way of the Rainbow District: tropical room, proper cocktails, go-go boys and house. Thursday to Sunday only, and it closes at 8pm on Sundays, so it is an early evening rather than a last stop.

Fiesta Cantina

8865 Santa Monica BoulevardWest Hollywood

Two-for-one from 4 to 8 every day and again late Sunday through Thursday, which explains the entire crowd and most of the noise. Tacos, music videos, plastic decor, no pretension whatsoever. Open from noon daily.

Schmitty's

8737 Santa Monica BoulevardWest Hollywood

The neighborhood one. A heated patio on the boulevard, karaoke and open mic, cheap enough to stay at, and built for conversation rather than a dance floor. Three in the afternoon on weekdays, 1pm on weekends.

Or Bar

8228 Santa Monica BoulevardWest Hollywood

A French disco cocktail lounge in black, white and gold, with a chandelier of some 3,700 crystals, opened December 2022 by Rob Novinger, George Kotsiopoulos and Stephanie Schestag-Muriano. It is a coffee bar by day. The name is the joke: or means gold in French, and this was the Gold Coast, the dive that stood here for forty years before the pandemic took it.

Hamburger Mary's

8288 Santa Monica BoulevardWest Hollywood

Burgers, and drag queen bingo every Tuesday and Wednesday at 7, which has been running long enough to count as municipal infrastructure. Legendary Bingo raises money for charity, so the worst case is you lose at bingo for a good cause.

Roosterfish

8948 Santa Monica BoulevardWest Hollywood

Call ahead on this one. The bar revived the name of the Venice institution and took the old Pump space here less than three years ago, and in September 2026 its landlord sued for possession and about $111,000 in back rent while the property was listed for lease. It had not been evicted when we checked and it was still trading. We are listing it because it is open and we are telling you the rest because you deserve to know before you plan a night around it.

silver lake and the east side

Akbar

4356 W Sunset BoulevardSilver Lake

A dark room with a jukebox, a back dance floor and thirty years of everybody's twenties in it. Open daily 4pm to 2am. It changed hands after 27 years under its original owners and did not turn into anything else, which is the only review that matters.

Eagle LA

4219 Santa Monica BoulevardSilver Lake

A leather bar since 2006, with a patio, beer busts, sports teams and a different theme most nights of the week. From 4pm on weekdays and 2pm on weekends. Since Faultline closed this is the leather bar on this side of town, which is a heavier load than one room should carry.

Honey's at Star Love

1532 N Western AvenueEast Hollywood

A queer bar for women and trans people that opened in 2023 in the room that was Girl at the White Horse, with DJs, karaoke, burlesque and comedy. Thursday from 8, Friday and Saturday from 9. With the Ruby Fruit gone this is most of what Los Angeles has left in this category, and the math on that is worse than anybody wants to say out loud.

Hi Tops Los Feliz

1714 N Vermont AvenueLos Feliznew

The newest room on this list and a real argument that the east side can hold a gay sports bar: trivia, DJs, the games, a patio and brunch. Noon to midnight, 2am Thursday through Saturday.

downtown

Precinct

357 S BroadwayDowntown

Industrial, two levels, a rooftop, and the only proper gay club downtown has. Drag brunch, a Sunday party called Over Easy, happy hour from 6 to 9. Closed Mondays, and it shuts at midnight on Sundays.

The New Jalisco Bar

245 S Main StreetDowntown

Drag every single night at 10:30, cheap drinks, a dance floor and a Latinx crowd that has kept this room going since Rosa Maria Garcia took it over in 2005. Nine until 2 most nights, from 5 on Sundays. No frills and no interest in acquiring any.

westlake

The Silver Platter

2700 W 7th StreetWestlake

On the corner of 7th and Rampart, and the single most important bar on this list. It became a gay bar for Latino men under Rogelio Ramirez, passed to his brother Gonzalo after Ramirez died of AIDS, and since the 1990s has been one of the only places in the city where trans Latinas, many of them immigrants, can simply be in a room together. The building faces demolition. In September 2025 it was named an Endangered Latinx Landmark and the LA Conservancy is fighting the finding that the site is not historic. Go now, and tip like the lease depends on it.

long beach

The Falcon

1435 E BroadwayLong Beach

A cornerstone of the Broadway corridor since 1996, and genuinely two bars in one: somewhere to have a beer after work on a Tuesday, and a club from Thursday onward. Open from 10 or 11 in the morning, every day, until 2.

The Mineshaft

1720 E BroadwayLong Beach

Leather and jeans since 1972, pool tables, a jukebox that has been properly maintained, and no attitude at the door. Noon to 2am, seven days. Fifty-four years is longer than most of this list has existed.

The Men's Room

1744 E BroadwayLong Beach

Two doors down from the Mineshaft, a dance floor and a neighborhood crowd. Four in the afternoon on weekdays, noon Friday through Sunday. Broadway was designated an LGBTQ+ cultural district in 2024, and this stretch of it is why.

Silver Fox

411 Redondo AvenueLong Beach

Off the Broadway strip and worth the ten minutes: a video music lounge and nightclub that has been running for decades. Four in the afternoon on weekdays, noon on weekends, 2am close.

what this city keeps losing

Write these guides back to back and the difference is impossible to miss. Chicago opened three gay bars in 2026, including the room where Berlin used to be. Los Angeles, in roughly the same window, has closed its only lesbian bar, lost its leather bar of 26 years to a straight bar with the same liquor license, lost its downtown drag bar, and is watching a 60-year-old Latino and trans institution in Westlake wait on a demolition decision while one of the newest bars on the strip sits in eviction court. A December 2025 industry survey found 84.8% of Los Angeles restaurant and bar owners reporting revenue down on the year, with many saying conditions were worse than the pandemic. None of this is a gay problem specifically. It just lands hardest on rooms that were already running thin.

gone too soon

Here because people still search these by name, and because a guide that only tells you where to go is half a guide.

The Ruby Fruit, 3510 Sunset Boulevard, Silver Lake. A strip mall wine bar named after the Rita Mae Brown novel, opened February 2023 by Mara Herbkersman and Emily Bielagus as the first permanent lesbian bar Los Angeles had been given since 2017. It closed in January 2025 when the wildfires finished off a business that had opened with no cash reserves. They said they hoped it was a pause. It has not reopened.

Faultline, 4216 Melrose Avenue, East Hollywood. The city's leather and Levi's bar for 26 years, closed in 2021. Its liquor license was canceled that December and transferred to a straight bar in the same room. Before Faultline the address had been The Stud and then Griff's, so that corner had been cruising for about half a century before it stopped.

Redline, 131 E 6th Street, Downtown. Downtown's drag and dance bar, opened 2015, closed in 2025. It threw a closing party and called itself DTLA's favorite little drag bar on the way out, which it was.

Gold Coast, 8228 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood. Forty years, then September 2020, the third gay landmark on this boulevard to go in the pandemic after Rage and Flaming Saddles. The space is Or Bar now and the new name is a tribute, which is a nicer outcome than the other two got.

Jewel's Catch One, 4067 W Pico Boulevard, Arlington Heights. Jewel Thais-Williams opened it in 1973 after being carded and refused in West Hollywood for being Black and a woman, and ran it for 42 years. It is believed to be the first large Black-owned gay disco in the country. She had to buy the building because state law would not let a woman tend bar unless she owned the place. It closed in July 2015 and was made a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in November 2024, which is recognition arriving exactly nine years too late to drink in.

So: go on a Tuesday. Go to the Silver Platter specifically, while there is still a Silver Platter. Tip in cash. The bars that are still here are here because somebody bought the building in 1973, or reopened after a fire, or refused to stop paying a lease on a boulevard that got expensive around them. If you are drinking at home instead, we keep a list of queer-owned brands worth pouring, and we have done New York and Chicago too.

Hours and addresses change and bars close faster than anybody can publish. Every bar here was checked against its own website or two independent sources the week this went up. Call ahead if you are traveling for it, and if we have something wrong or a bar we missed, tell us and we will fix it with a date on it.