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L.A. Scene January 2010: Gays R Us, Uh Huh Her, p.LA.y and Jetsetter

L.A. Scene is a monthly column that chronicles lesbian nightlife and events of interest in Los Angeles. Sarah Witness, an East Coast transplant and obvious femme, has been navigating the snark infested waters of Hollywood since 2001. Although she’s an NYU trained actress, she prefers sipping vodka and making idle chit-chat at really gay nightclubs.

Happy New Year!

Holy crap, it’s January!

You didn’t hear from me in December because I was too busy eating. Also, nothing particularly gay happened. The holiday season was over-saturated with straights gone wild, so I put on my holiday sweaters and joined them. Did you know that you can go fake ice skating on a giant piece of plastic at the W Hotel?

Anyway, I got back in the gay groove just in time for the New Year and attended the grand finale (or so we thought) of lesbian night at East/West. Thursday night’s “PLATINUM” at East/West started three years ago and I’ve shown up with alarming frequency. Club promoter and lady about town Shannon K put the place on the map and made it the staple of lesbian nightlife in Los Angeles for those of us who can’t dance.

The bar is situated smack in the middle of Boystown. It’s an upscale establishment with cushy seating and an unfortunate patchouli/sewage odor that can be detected blocks away. More importantly, the flattering lighting and gigantic cocktails make the already attractive clientele look even hotter.

The general consensus on New Year’s Eve was that 2009 was atrocious for everyone. East/West was packed to the gills with lesbians in woolly Smurf hats looking to kick off 2010 with a bang and a hangover.

It was Shannon K’s last night hosting and a slideshow over the bar presented pictures of drunken revelers from the past three years. I was seized with anxiety when the pictures started rolling, but somehow I had eluded photo capture. I’ll drink to that!

You Have to Laugh

Trying to recap stand-up comedy is an exercise in futility since you kind of had to have been there. Still, I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about two excellent shows I saw this month.

Gays R Us is a monthly show at the prestigious Hollywood Improv, hosted by the always hilarious Erin Foley. The night features mostly gay and lesbian comics, with a friendly straight or two often thrown in for good measure. This is the best place to see lesbian comedians that have moved past the hackneyed dildo jokes. Not that those aren’t enchanting but…

The recent show included sets by Amber Tozer, Bruce Daniels, and a particularly en fuego, Page Hurwitz. I won’t attempt to rehash their material for you, just go next month and see for yourself. If you live in Berlin or something, as many of you do oddly enough, you can find all of those people doing great sets online.

Also hysterical comic Tig Notaro, hosts a monthly-ish show at Largo at the Coronet Theater. Tig is a very funny, very droll comedian, who performs all over creation. She’s also a regular on The Sarah Silverman Program.

Tig does a stand-up set, then brings in special guests. She did some very funny material about Suzanne Vega and Taylor Dayne. The predominantly lesbian audience didn’t seem to know who those guys were. Which is weird. Then Tig did some impressions of household items, such as the sound of curtains opening. She taught us how to do this ourselves, lest we run out of conversation points at a cocktail party.

This month’s guests were Leisha Hailey and Camila Grey of Uh Huh Her. I saw them perform at Dinah Shore in April 2009 and their set was really… depressing. They were clearly super-talented, but the music kind of made me want to off myself.

At Largo they talked about how much 2009 sucked and then delivered a super dynamic, fun show. A question and answer session followed, led by Tig. I hate Q and As. Total buzzkills.

I decided to stay anyway, mostly so I could stare at Leisha Hailey and wonder what it’s like to be so freaking adorable all the time.

I assumed the largely lesbian audience would ask Leisha a zillion questions about The L Word. Shockingly, no one did. The first question asked was “Would you rather have a laser shoot out of your nose every time you said the word ‘the,’ or needles for leg hair?” That old conundrum. Cam chose lasers, Leisha chose leg hair.

The Q and A was lengthy but fun. Tig taught us a song, a pseudo-spiritual if you will, and Leisha, Cam, and several audience members sang it with great gusto.

Tig will be back at Largo on February 24 with Megan Mullally. She’ll also appear in the upcoming film The Runaways. You can find out more about her on her website www.tignotaro.com. Uh Huh Her is kicking off a tour soon. So far, the stops are Texas and Germany. You Berlin people will have to fill me in on that.

Scene Changes

The rest of January was a meandering, overcast mess. Not unlike this month’s column. It’s been cold and rainy for what seems like an eternity. Bad weather causes Los Angelenos to go insane. This is probably because we all traded in our souls in exchange for the promise of sunshine (and, ideally, a co-starring role on a hit medical drama.)

In November, I reported that I went to Girlbar and that it was actually really fun. Well, I went back last weekend and it had gone back to resembling 1989 in there. Girlbar clearly needs to do something to reinvent itself.

THIS JUST IN: East/West Lounge has announced that “PLATINUM 2010 is now partnered with Girlbar.” Which is a quote. From East/West’s Facebook page. Because I’m not a real journalist.

Shannon K, previously of East/West fame, promotes all sorts of events. She can be a bit trigger happy with the e-blasts, so a few months ago, every lesbian in the Southland got word of a new Saturday event. p.LA.y is held at The Den, which is a club on the super-straight Sunset Strip. Nothing in the promotion declared it a lesbian night, but since Shannon was sending the info, we took notice. I drove by one week, saw a bunch of frat boys, and hightailed it back to Santa Monica Blvd.

The next week some optimistic lesbians persuaded me to try again. A group of five of us sat on the large outdoor patio feeling awkward. The inside of the club was getting packed with very straight people. Cast of The Hills types. I’ve never seen so many leggings.

We kept trying to leave, but then a few more friends would trickle in. Two hours later the patio was completely overrun with hundreds of lesbians. The straights indoors stayed put as well, so the whole thing was reminiscent of a middle school dance. Everyone had fun and we forgot where we were until it was time to go to the bathroom inside. So disconcerting! But not necessarily a bad thing.

Last summer I wrote about the premiere of lesbian night, Jetsetter. It was a wild party held at a huge club in the heart of West Hollywood. The August event featured VIP booths, throbbing music, and writhing dancers. It was the sort of thing I might attend every few months when feeling particularly energetic.

Well, Jetsetter relaunched in January and it was a completely different experience. The new venue is Crown Bar. Although technically in WeHo, Crown Bar is off the gay stretch of Santa Monica Blvd. that we all know and love. It’s a vintage “Old Hollywood” style place, with lots of leather and chandeliers. On a typical night you are more likely to see TMZ outside the velvet rope than hoards of lesbians.

The Hollywood hipsters must have gotten the memo that it was a different kind of Ladies Night on Thursday, because the place was packed with lesbians only. The venue’s smaller size, comfy vibe, and outdoor patio make it the perfect spot to mix and mingle. The crowd was similar to that at East West, with a huge age-range and lack of pretention. I spent most of the night catching up with friends before realizing that I might want to write about Jetsetter again.

Deciding to turn all journalistic several hours and cocktails in may not produce the most lucid of columns. Still, it’s a good excuse to talk to strangers. I sidled up to an older woman at the bar and started asking her questions for this article. She said she would talk on the condition of anonymity because she isn’t out at work. I assured her many times that I wouldn’t even ask her name. She proceeded to tell me her entire life story.

She had just gotten out of a seventeen-year relationship and this was her first foray back to the scene. I can’t imagine what the lesbian scene was like seventeen years ago, but I suspect it wasn’t pretty. She downed a drink and immediately had an epiphany. She begged me to use her name in the article because she was “tired of being closeted and wasn’t going to do it anymore!” Right on.

I won’t use her name as I suspect she was inebriated. Still, I think her proclamation was emblematic of a shift in the Los Angeles scene. More and more people are out of the closet and now out of West Hollywood. We seem to be moving away from our designated play areas and infiltrating the straight world. Whether this is good, bad, or just different remains to be seen. What do you think?

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