Posted by Ryan Gierach, WEST HOLLYWOOD, California

 

 

Performance artists in colorful costumes take over the streets of WeHo to deliver a unique spin on the quirky, sordid history of “The Creative City.”

 

 

The Stuart Timmons’ WeHo LGBTQ History Tour is back by popular demand for its second run on Saturday, June 4, 2016 as part of The City of West Hollywood’s One City One Pride LGBTQ Arts Festival.

The tour involves a diverse cast of twenty performance artists, musicians, and dancers including, singer/songwriter Jane Cantillon, renowned Broadway playwright Robert Patrick, drag artist extraordinaire Miss Barbie Q, and performance artist Kristina Wong, who is currently on tour with her hit one-woman show Wong Street Journal.

Starting at 11 a.m. and lasting until 2 p.m., wheelchair accessible shuttle buses will depart every 15 minutes from the West Hollywood Library.

 

 

After a short ride around the city, participants will then be dropped off for an easy urban hike, encountering performers stationed along the route enacting the information about each location.

The tour lasts approximately 90 minutes.

You can find more details at www.stuarttimmons.com/tourpress/

The tour was written by acclaimed author and historian, Stuart Timmons based on his research and his Lambda Literary Award-winning book “Gay L.A.” (Co­authored by Lillian Faderman and considered by many the quintessential tome on Los Angeles LGBTQ history).

Stuart planned the West Hollywood tour as the third in a trio of walking tours along with Downtown LA and Silver Lake in 2007, but was unable to finish it when he suffered a severe stroke in January 2008.

Stuart was in a coma for several months and it took several years of rehabilitation to recover; he maintains mental function but has impaired speech and motor control – to this day he uses a wheelchair and lives in a nursing facility.

 

 

Jason Jenn met Stuart in 2013 and when Jason heard that West Hollywood was planning a series of special events to honor its 30th Anniversary in 2015, he approached Stuart with the idea to complete his unfinished tour for the celebration.

As a collaboration and under Jason’s direction, the tour has transformed from a self-guided walking tour, into a special event performance art production that takes place at various locations throughout the City of West Hollywood’s central core.

It was a hit with audiences in 2015 and is back by request befitting the One City One Pride’s festival’s 2016 theme of “Into The Streets. “

“I’ve truly enjoyed working with Stuart on the project,“ says Jason.

“I thought I knew WeHo before, but I discovered just how much more there was to it.”

He credits Mr. Timmons with the enlightenment, saying, “Through Stuart’s engaging writing, not only did I learn more about the fascinating LGBTQ history of West Hollywood, but I’ve gained so much respect for the city and the collective struggles and creativity of the people that lived in it.

 

 

“It’s thrilling to witness audiences respond enthusiastically to the experience—what I’ve heard referred to as ‘epically entertaining’, and I look forward to more this year.”

 

 

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Date: Saturday, June 4, 2016

Length: 90 minutes.

Wheelchair Accessible Time: Every 15 minutes from 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.

Cost: Free!

Location: West Hollywood Library @ 625 N. San Vicente Blvd

Parking: Free! West Hollywood Municipal Parking Structure II just south of the West Hollywood Library.

 

 

 

Editor: A few personal thoughts

Years before I became a journalist, and then a historian, while schlepping by bus from Arcadia to UCLA thrice weekly studying history, I learned of Stuart Timmons’ book about Harry Hays the gay movement’s best original thinker and mover behind Mattachine, entitled, The Trouble with Harry Hay.

That book – Stuart’s book – changed my interest in the 11th and early 12th Century Norman/English Kings of England, Henry II, his Quean Eleanor of Aquitaine and their sons, Henry, Geoffrey, Richard Cours de Lion (Lionheart) and John “Lackland,” so named for squandering what was until then the largest continental empire since Charlemagne, and then handing the Crown’s powers to the noble families.

It led me to focus on the incredible, incredibly important and fundamentally different West Coast approach to the gay movement’s most successful activists – and because of the new focus I scored a job writing for Frontiers and then national gay advocacy publications.

By 2005, 10 years after leaving college, I’d met Stuart Timmons and published a couple of histories, not to mention founding WeHo News that year.

So, you see, it’s all his fault.