Gay cruising in Los Angeles

The park, undeniably, was amongst L.A.'s most infamous locales, frequented by men seeking sexual encounters. John Rechy, in his own words, placed Griffith Park firmly on the cultural radar as a cruising destination, following his 1967 novel 'Numbers,' which described a fortuitous meeting within the famed, extensive area nestled between Los Feliz and the Santa Monica Mountains. Rechy himself, furthermore, had been apprehended in Griffith Park and faced a five-year custodial sentence for soliciting sex, as he communicated to the Los Angeles Review of Books. 'The vice cops, the court, the lawyers, the judge, the truly astonishing moving of the trial into the sexual sphere of Griffith Park, so the judge could ‘witness it firsthand,'' all, in fact, unfolded for Rechy in those times, when Griffith Park was a place of anonymous sex, compounded by the specter of a criminal charge.

Edmund White notes, pointedly, that "Griffith Park is cruisy" within his 1980 book, 'States of Desire: Travels in Gay America.' Gay L.A. asserts that "unrestrained orgies involving a multitude of men were commonplace. These orgies even transpired during daylight, as Griffith Park offered expansive areas where the untamed vegetation offered a setting akin to a genuine open-air gay bathhouse."

On Memorial Day of nineteen sixty-eight, both men and women converged at the Griffith Park Merry-Go-Round to listen to Mike Hannon, a former police officer who became a lawyer and Civil Rights advocate, discuss the difficulties of being gay within a prejudiced society.

In the years 1970 and 1971, the GLF arranged a sequence of gay-ins; three of these transpired at the merry-go-round in Griffith Park. Akin to a parade, the intention underpinning these gay-ins was to urge LGBT individuals to emerge from the shadows and to encourage the public to acknowledge differing expressions of sexuality and gender. These occasions, which pulled in thousands of individuals, occurred throughout the day and encompassed speeches, music, and dance, in addition to booths providing complimentary legal and social services. Contesting the LAPD policy which effectively forbade gays and lesbians from assembling in public also constituted one of the objectives of the GLF, which was generally accomplished by these occasions. The LAPD officers who oversaw the events only served to upset the gatherings. Consequently, the GLF secured a restraining order, citing it as a violation of their civil liberties.

https://thepridela.com/2017/05/getting-griffith-park-history/