Twenty years ago this August, I moved to West Hollywood.
I came for a lot of reasons, mostly because I’d lost the life I’d spent years making for myself. What I found here was life as I’d never imagined living it. Life here is still hard sometimes. They still charge rent – too much, if you ask me. There are lines at the grocery store. The traffic gets snarled and parking is a pain here, same as everywhere else. But West Hollywood offers me something I didn’t come looking for because I didn’t know it was on offer.
In West Hollywood, I’m nothing special.
Oh, I’m still my special unique self. As you might expect from our storied geography, special is the norm here. There’s tons of movie and TV stars, singers, musicians, directors, writers, poets, rappers. You name it, we’re all right here. I love living in the midst of dreams and creativity. Hollywood’s on one side, Beverly Hills is to the west. My next door neighbor is Johnny Depp. The Vanity Fair Oscar party takes place across the street. When the helicopters were over Paris Hilton’s house, they were over mine.
But more than any of that, you can’t sling a dead cat in this town without hitting gay. I don’t know if gay people are even the majority in West Hollywood, but there are so many of us here, it’s impossible to stand out just for being gay. I didn’t get to grow up in a gay home. I didn’t go to a gay school. God knows, there’s no gay church. There was no place where I ever felt like I really belonged. And, as you may have noticed, there’s been considerable effort over the years to make gay people feel even less welcome pretty much everywhere.
Here, not so.
Here I get to shine for being who I am. Being gay isn’t really an important or interesting fact about me in West Hollywood. It’s like being a southerner in Atlanta – still charming but just not that remarkable. I love it.
West Hollywood has changed my life. Here, I get to forget about this one relatively minor aspect of who I am that gets made such a big deal of in so many other places. In West Hollywood, I get to be me. If people take note or ignore me here, it’s for who I am or am not, for what I do or don’t do, for the choices I make. Not because of something I had no control over.
With the changes that are happening in the world today, I hope that West Hollywood will spread and that gay people will get to be not special where ever we go and live.
In tribute to this place that has come to feel like home for me in a way that I didn’t even know was possible, I’m starting a series of interrelated short stories based the city, its residents and my time here. As with the rest of this blog thing, we’ll see how it goes.
I’d thought of calling it 90069, our unintentionally obvious zip code. But I’ve settled on a different name. It’s based on my first address here. Let me know what you think of the name and the stories. It’s fiction. But, I hope, it will be an accurate portrait of this city that beckoned me home to a place I’d never been a minute before I arrived.
Welcome to: Sweetzer Court
Eric Shaw Quinn 
Can’t wait to read it mon petit. Make sure us gay film geeks get in there somewhere too.
Let your hair fly today baby.
xo P
Great introduction to this line of stories. I look forward to reading all of them. I had the good fortune to live in West Hollywood a few years ago, and I can say without doubt that Los Angeles is my favorite town in the southern part of California. Their neighbors, south a county or two, not so much. I was always told West Hollywood and L.A. were too superficial, but I never saw it like I did in Orange County and San Diego County. The horror stories I could tell about these places, but I never found it so for L.A. and West Hollywood. Even a night out at the Abby was always exciting and adventurous, even when I was trying to pull a piece of gum off of Mary, Mother of God’s head. What I miss more than anything is Friday nights on Melrose Avenue at the Bodhi Tree Book Store at 8585 Melrose. That and the coffee shop on the same block at the end of that corner. And who cannot stand in awe of Hollywood Forever, where you can walk among the dry bones of the dead and famous or where you can catch a showing of Night of the Living Dead right on the side of a mausoleum during summer night movie festivals. If I keep this up I am going to make myself homesick for that magical city. Thank you, Eric, for the reminder of this wonderful place. Even though I am gone from there now, living north in San Francisco, I will always see West Hollywood and Los Angels as my home, too.
Eric, after reading this, I feel like giving you a really big hug. You are truly a romantic.
I feel the same way about my hometown, West LA. Sadly, I don’t live there right now, though I can’t wait to move back. Yep, you’re totally right: overpriced rent, it’s crowded, the traffic can be terrible but…. it’s just fabulous! Obviously, it’s not quite the same as West Hollywood, but despite the smog, the crummy buildings, whatever, it’s just… what can I say? Glamorous.
And I am starting Sweetzer Court asap. It sounds great.