Far enough from the suburbs to be considered wild, and sufficiently bedeviled by flood, fire and rattlesnakes to deter the half-hearted, Topanga Canyon has traditionally cast itself as LA’s preferred utopian outpost: the city’s own rustic, occasionally treacherous Shangri-la.
In the middle of the canyon stood a building that seemed to acquire a new identity every few years. Originally the Sylvia Park clubhouse, dating to 1930, it later became a gambling den during the reign of Mickey Cohen, among other incarnations. By the 1950s, it had become the Canyon Club — a remote drinking and dancing spot that would develop a particular following among gay men and women.
Getting there was part of the appeal. A dusty road led into the canyon and away from the watchful eyes of Los Angeles, to a place where gay men and women could meet, drink and dance with considerably more freedom than they could in the city. The club was owned by a former Los Angeles policeman, an unlikely proprietor of a gay bar whose attitude toward its clientele was reportedly less than sympathetic. But business was business, and the money to be made outweighed his prejudices.
That did not mean the club was beyond the reach of the law. Police harassment was an occasional reality, and when the red lights appeared, everyone knew what to do. Men and women would quickly pair off, swapping partners to make themselves look respectable before the authorities came through. The performance could be absurd, but the need for it was real: same-sex dancing remained illegal in Los Angeles County until the 1970s.
Topanga offered something that was harder to find in the city: a little distance from conventional life. During the McCarthy era, the canyon attracted blacklisted actors, artists and political outsiders, and its growing reputation as a place for eccentrics and renegades created an atmosphere in which people could, at least temporarily, invent lives outside the rules of mainstream Los Angeles.
But that freedom was not distributed equally. For heterosexual artists and bohemians, living outside conventional society could be an expression of independence. For gay men and lesbians, being discovered could cost them their jobs, their families and their reputations. The underground nature of places such as the Canyon Club was therefore not simply romantic. It was a necessity.
The Canyon Club remained part of Topanga's queer life into the early 1970s, when the legal and social landscape was beginning to change. The building itself continued its restless succession of identities, eventually becoming a music venue and, after a later restoration, the Mountain Mermaid.
What survives is less a perfectly preserved piece of gay history than the physical trace of a particular kind of Los Angeles freedom: a place hidden in the canyon where people who could not always be themselves in the city could, for a few hours, come together.