Worth a Look is an occasional feature in which WEHOville calls out stories in other publications about people, places, and issues that have or have had an impact on West Hollywood.
Buzzfeed News has published a three-part series about the surge in use of methamphetamine and its impact on black and Latin gay men that casts an unfavorable light on West Hollywood.
The stories, written by Patrick Strudwick, the LGBT editor for BuzzFeed News, interviews a number of black and Latin men, some self-identified sex workers, in Los Angeles and other parts of Southern California who say they have been exploited by white gay men. It makes frequent referrals to Ed Buck, the gay white political donor and animal rights activist in whose apartment Gemmel Moore and Timothy Dean, both African-American, were found dead of meth overdoses.
“An escort for six years, Andrew Sims has come to fear bookings from West Hollywood because of how many involve white men wanting PnP sex,” Strudwick writes in the first installment of the series. “ ‘I’m like, oh my god, what am I getting into? They get off on pushing your boundaries, all the time,’ he says. ‘And the more meth, he adds, the more aggression and racism surfaces — sometimes before they have even met’.”
In the third installment, Jeffrey King, a black gay community organizer and addiction worker, says that young black men from Compton, Inglewood, and Crenshaw go to West Hollywood because it is “the center of [all] LGBT life for Los Angeles now — which wasn’t the case [before].”
“The white men who for years have been introducing meth to black men, therefore, are now finding more black youngsters nearby.”
The second installment can be read here.
ew.. just ew.
Have not watched but heard its more to clickbait. Not so good reviews.
Talk about heads in the sand! The old white boy network that runs West Hollywood couldn’t have cared less what happen to Ed Buck’s victims. It wasn’t just the DA but political hacks like John Duran and Eric Bauman who did everything to playdown Ed Buck’s drug den on Laurel Ave. Go Buzzfeed news for exploiting this. With the exception of a very tailored and politically correct statement made by the local chapter of the Stonewall Democratic Club most of Los Angeles’ Democratic and LGBT community–which are often one in the same–did nothing to say publicly about Moore’s death. Politicians… Read more »
the old white boy network runs city hall too bro.
Not worth a look. Tacky clickbait. The series is absurd. Yes West Hollywood and other gay enclaves have been havens for people who engage in promiscuous sex and drug use for decades. Those characteristics are mildly embarrassing and unfortunate but a reality held over from our assimilation into the mainstream through the sexual revolution; race isn’t a factor in a broad sense. Black people do drugs and white people do drugs. Some people are nice and some people are selfish assholes. Those traits are universal and arbitrary, not specific to any race. It’s obvious that series is attempting to manufacture a boogyman… Read more »
Not only is the information in this story incorrect it’s full of bigotry. I know first hand affluent gay black men who serve meth up to young, often underage white boys to take advantage of them just the same. What Buck did is disgusting And he should spend his life in prison, but fetish goes both ways and transcends racial identity. Meth removes boundaries for everyone involved and is a travesty to the LGBT community.
Perhaps I’m too sensitive about our West Hollywood but repeating and characterizing the Buzzfeed story isn’t really news and isn’t necessarily correct.
I think that if a major national outlet produces a story about very real problems in our community we can’t and shouldn’t sugarcoat it or pretend it doesn’t exist. Truth is truth, regardless of its inconvenience to our image. Our image needs rehabilitation, that rehabilitation starts with unelecting much of the current West Hollywood Student Council. Give us back our urban village!