Twenty-five bucks. The Best Deal in West Hollywood Right Now

I picked up a copy of WeHo Stories when it first came out. Still reading it. It was definitely one of the best bangs for my buck in awhile

If you’re reading WEHOonline, then I know you care about this city. Actually care. You follow the votes. You know the council drama. You track the development fights and the planning disputes and the arguments about bike lanes. You show up. That’s why I think you’ll love this book. And what’s that old saying. Before you know where you’re going, best to know where you’ve been.

It’s thick. It’s hardcover. It’s full of portraits and first-person accounts from the people who were actually there when West Hollywood voted itself into existence in November 1984. Reagan won 49 states that night. West Hollywood went the other way.

Renters and seniors and LGBTQ activists and Russian-Jewish immigrants who’d fled Soviet persecution all ended up on the same side. They wanted rent control. They wanted a say. They wanted a city of their own. They got one.

County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath had the vision for this project back in 2015, when she was still on the City Council. She could see what was happening. The people who’d built this city were getting older. Their stories weren’t written down anywhere. She reached out to Barbara Grover — who’d actually worked as a consultant on the 1984 cityhood campaign — and together they spent nearly a decade making this book happen. COVID slowed them. Illness slowed them. They kept going.

Some of the people they wanted to include didn’t make it. Ron Stone, known as the Father of Cityhood. Helen Albert, the retired teacher and human rights activist who served on the first City Council. Joyce Hundal and Bud Siegel, homeowner activists who were instrumental in making incorporation a reality. They’re remembered in these pages by the people who stood alongside them.

That’s what this book is. Not just history. Evidence that people who cared enough to show up changed everything.

Twenty-five dollars. That’s the suggested minimum donation to Friends of the West Hollywood Library and they send you this book. I’ve spent more than that on a round of drinks I didn’t finish. This one I’ll keep.

Supplies are limited.

wehostories.org