The WeHo Stories book launch is coming up Wednesday, Jan. 21, with a free public event and panel discussion at 7 p.m. in West Hollywood’s City Council Chambers at 625 N. San Vicente Blvd.
The project includes a limited-run coffee-table book, and a companion website that organizers say will be announced at the launch. At its core, WeHo Stories collects first-person accounts from people who helped lead the West Hollywood cityhood movement and shaped the City’s early years after incorporation.
What WeHo Stories Is Trying To Capture
If you have lived here long enough, you’ve probably heard different versions of the same story over the years: how West Hollywood becoming a city was not inevitable, and how different communities joined forces to make it happen.
WeHo Stories sets out to document those stories and memories in a way that will last. The project uses portraits and personal stories from the very people who were in the room helping to write that first chapter of the amazing story that is West Hollywood.
The idea for the project originated with former West Hollywood Councilmember and Mayor Lindsey Horvath, now a Los Angeles County Supervisor for the Third District, and was developed in partnership with LA County Library, West Hollywood Library, and the City.
The City credits Barbara Grover as the project lead, noting her firsthand connection to West Hollywood’s early years.
The Panel Lineup
Wednesday night’s panel discussion will include Grover and Horvath, along with Professor Richard Tahvildaran-Jesswein, co-director of the Santa Monica College Public Policy Institute. LA County Library CEO Skye Patrick is tapped to moderate.
The discussion will focus on storytelling as a way to describe WeHo’s unique community identity and advocacy, and on the importance of preserving lived experience, especially in communities that have often had to fight to be seen and recorded, including LGBTQ+ communities.
There’s a great scene from election night in 1984, when an “extraordinary coalition” came together in what was then an unincorporated pocket of Los Angeles County. This is the kind of moment the book is built around, the turning points that changed everything, told by the people who were there.
How To Attend And How To Get The Book
The event is free and open to the public. There will be limited validated parking available in the adjacent five-story West Hollywood Park parking structure.
Copies will be available to order at the event for a suggested minimum donation of $25 to Friends of the West Hollywood Library, with proceeds supporting library programs, collections, services, and technology. The City describes the print run as limited.
Inspired by Ron Stone, who brought together a disparate group of residents, the incorporation effort, once launched, was spearheaded by the Coalition for Economic Survival, the local renters’ rights group headed by Larry Gross. 40 candidates vied to be elected to the initial City Council; I knocked on doors with Steve Schulte, a Colt model and former CEO of the Gay and Lesbian Center (as it was then called), who won a seat in that election. The County estimated that our initial budget would be about $26 million. Barbara Grover was in the thick of things and will have some… Read more »
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