“Bar service stopped at 2 but they kept it open until 3 and the lights went out for that final hour. Jonesy, a mononymous L.A.-based queer artist who was a regular at a number of these spots worked briefly as a barback at Cuffs, a major gay hangout of the recent past.Ĭuffs “was incredibly dark and super cruisey,” Jonesy recalls. These are souvenirs from experiences which could have been life-changing moments.” “ have a very strong emotional connection. “People go through and look for places they remember,” says Lerew. The matchbooks have made the library a draw for former patrons of the bars. Many of them are gone now and are the only record they ever existed.” “It’s like an archive of safe spaces,” Lerew says of the collection. Todd Lerew, program manager at the Library Foundation, the private nonprofit that oversaw “21 Collections,” curated the exhibition. Elegantly arranged in concentric circles, the matchbooks hail from such evocatively named establishments as the Sewers of Paris, Basic Plumbing, the Meat Rack, the Big Banana, the Fallen Angel and Dude City. gay bars and sex clubs, most of them now closed. In the midst of the exhibition “21 Collections,” which fills the Getty Gallery with doll hats, bird eggs and Tom Hanks’ stockpile of vintage typewriters, sits a round, glass-topped case containing 200 alphabetized matchbooks from L.A. A time capsule of L.A.’s bar history is now on display at downtown’s Central Library.
