The Black Cat (Black Cat Tavern)

At midnight on New Year's Eve 1967, as couples kissed to welcome the new year, undercover LAPD officers inside the Black Cat Tavern in Silver Lake began beating and arresting patrons. Fourteen people were arrested; six men were charged with 'lewd conduct' for kissing another man. What followed made history. On February 11, 1967, around 200 people demonstrated outside the bar against police brutality — organized by PRIDE (Personal Rights in Defense and Education), it stands among the first documented LGBTQ civil-rights demonstrations in the United States, more than two years before Stonewall. The movement it energized had a long afterlife: PRIDE's newsletter grew into The Advocate, the nation's leading LGBTQ magazine. The recognition is now official twice over: Los Angeles designated the building Historic-Cultural Monument #939 in 2008 — the bronze plaque on the facade calls it the "site of the first documented LGBT civil rights demonstration in the nation" — and in 2022 it became California Historical Landmark #1063, the first state landmark recognizing LGBTQ history. What you see today: since 2012 the space has operated as The Black Cat, a handsome, mainstream 21+ gastropub (open daily from afternoon until 2am) that consciously honors its past — the name survives, the plaque is outside, and photographs of the 1967 demonstration hang inside. It is not a gay bar today, but it wears its history on its walls. Combine it with the Mattachine Steps ten minutes away for a compact Silver Lake heritage walk through the neighborhood that organized before Stonewall.