Gentle reader,
Since May 2024, when a concerned neighbor alerted us to a demolition notice posted on the oldest gay bar in Los Angeles, we’ve been speaking out for the Silver Platter and the lousy way the City has treated a Westlake treasure.
If threats to the bar’s survival are new to you, we suggest reading our original newsletter here, then coming back for this timely update.
Two weeks ago, a blog post titled The Fight To Preserve America’s Endangered Latinx Landmarks appeared on the Forbes.com website, published by contributor R. Daniel Foster.
Foster writes that “The Silver Platter has since found a new location nearby, with the original bar and neon sign installed there” and that “a preservation battle to save the original building has been ongoing.”
Nieman Lab has reported on the lax standards for contributor-branded posts and the use of the platform by publicists who pay contributors to generate pre-arranged press clips. We have no knowledge of how Foster came to publish this post, nor whether he was compensated for it.
What we do know is that neither statement accurately reflects the current situation.
The historic neon sign remains installed on its longtime home at 2700 W. 7th Street, no permit has been issued for its removal, and as recently as 7/11/2026, the Silver Platter was open for business.
We were curious about Foster’s claim that elements of the Silver Platter might be moving to a new address, so we decided to visit 1403 W. 3rd Street, the former Taxy Bar location a couple of miles away. The name wasn’t just snappy moniker—the bar doubled as the Yellow Cab Company hiring hall in the 1960s! Public records we obtained from Council District 1 had previously identified the property as a possible new Silver Platter location.
What we found posted on the shuttered storefront was a newsworthy surprise.
Silver Platter Conditional Use Permit Hearing
Tuesday, July 14, 2026 • 10:30 a.m.
A Zoning Administrator hearing has been scheduled concerning this address as a proposed new Silver Platter location.
Silver Platter owner Margarita Xatruch, represented by Jesi Harris of Brian Silveria & Associates, seeks a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) authorizing the sale and dispensing of a full line of alcoholic beverages together with approval for one 15-foot illuminated sign.
How to Participate in the Hearing
The hearing will be conducted virtually on Tuesday, July 14, 2026, at 10:30 a.m.
Join by Zoom
Meeting ID: 835 4496 6582
Passcode: 071822
Join by Telephone
Dial: (669) 900-9128 or (213) 338-8477
When prompted, enter Meeting ID: 835 4496 6582#
Speak During the Hearing
On Zoom, click the Raise Hand button.
By telephone, press *9 to raise your hand when staff calls the item.
To Submit Written Comments
Email the assigned planner (Marie Pichay, marie.pichay@lacity.org) before the hearing. If you submit written comments, ask that they be distributed to the Associate Zoning Administrator and included in the case file for ZA-2026-256-CUB-SPPC.
If you support the requested CUP, have questions about the relocation, or want City officials to pursue every possible option to preserve the Silver Platter at its historic location or to hire a professional photographer like Stephen Schafer to record this landmark for the Historic American Building Survey (HABS) as a binding public record deposited with the National Parks Service, this hearing is an opportunity to make your views part of the public record.
This is the first opportunity since the redevelopment project was submitted in 2020 for City officials to hear directly from the people who care about the Silver Platter in a public hearing devoted to its future.
Our Position
We love and support the Silver Platter, its extraordinary history as a gathering place for artists and marginalized communities, and its elegant neon sign, which we first spotted in the opening credits of Barfly, written by longtime neighborhood resident Charles Bukowski.
We do not oppose Margarita Xatruch’s request for a new Conditional Use Permit. If the Silver Platter has to relocate, we want the business to succeed.
But we also believe the Silver Platter never should have been placed in this position, and that there still could be a way out of it.
How Did We Get Here?
The Silver Platter should not be facing relocation because of a Transit Oriented Communities (TOC) redevelopment project that received ministerial approval, despite factual errors in the application submitted by the property owner under penalty of perjury—errors that City Planning staff failed to identify before granting project entitlements.
Because the project was approved ministerially, no public hearing occurred before the entitlements were issued. The public had no meaningful opportunity to review the proposal, question the factual errors, or explore alternatives that might have preserved both new housing and this important legacy business.
Had those errors been identified when the application was submitted, the public could have been alerted in 2020 that the Silver Platter was threatened. Preservationists, neighborhood stakeholders, the property owner and City officials might then have worked together on a solution that allowed the Silver Platter to remain an anchor tenant in a new development or otherwise protected the building’s historic character.
Instead, years later—after demolition notices were posted, when it was effectively too late to challenge approvals that the public never had an opportunity to contest—Silver Platter owner Margarita Xatruch has been forced to lease a second location and hire a land-use consultant, all while preservation organizations scramble to save pieces of a landmark that should never have been placed at risk.
The City Can Still Fix This Mess
Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez’s Planning Director is Helen Campbell, who served on the Los Angeles City Planning Commission when the ministerial approval for the redevelopment project was issued. Although the Planning Commission never voted on the project—because ministerial approvals require no public hearing—Campbell’s name appears on the March 17, 2022 Letter of Determination granting the redevelopment entitlements.
Campbell has extensive experience in complex planning matters and is well positioned to work with the Los Angeles City Planning Department and the City Attorney’s Office to determine whether the administrative record should be corrected and what additional steps may still be available to protect and foster the Silver Platter.
Meanwhile, there is a very real question about if the Silver Platter needs to leave its home due to an imminent demolition threat.
The redevelopment entitlements for this project would ordinarily have expired on April 2, 2025, but Mayor Eric Garcetti’s pandemic-era tolling orders appear to have extended them until August 28, 2026—although as Mike Callahan notes the precise expiration date is difficult to determine because City Planning has never fully integrated tolling information into its online planning portal.
As of 7/13/2026, however, we found no active redevelopment permit activity on the LADBS permit portal, and nothing new since 2024.
Many redevelopment projects never advance to construction. Vacant lots all over Westlake used to be older housing stock demolished for new housing that never happened, as at these parcels that “Cranky Preservationist” Nathan Marsak visited the same year the 2700 W. 7th Street project was submitted .
If no active project is moving forward at 7th & Rampart Streets, the obvious question is whether the Silver Platter should simply be allowed to remain where it has served the community for generations?
And if redevelopment ultimately does proceed, why shouldn’t the Silver Platter return as an anchor tenant, with significant elements of its historic space and iconic neon sign incorporated into the new building?
Those are questions City officials should be actively working to answer.
Long live the Silver Platter: it matters.
Now scroll down for upcoming walking tour listings, including Saturday’s Hollywood Noir, a ramble along the upscale residential Los Feliz Boulevard shoulder and down into the former adults only fun zone to talk about black magicians and unsolved murders, crooked cops and crusading cafeteria operators, miniature golf, teenage runaways, neon lights, mystery, history, lore and more. Join us, do!
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
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Our work—leading tours and historic preservation and cultural landmark advocacy—is about building a bridge between Los Angeles’ past and its future, and not allowing the corrupt, greedy, inept and misguided players who hold present power to destroy the city’s soul and body. If you’d like to support our efforts to be the voice of places worth preserving, we have a tip jar, vintage Los Angeles webinars available to stream, in-person tours and a souvenir shop you can browse in. We’ve also got recommended reading bookshelves on Amazon and the Bookshop indie bookstore site. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.
UPCOMING WALKING TOURS
• Hollywood Noir (7/18) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (7/25) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown L.A. (8/1) • Film Noir / Real Noir (8/8) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (8/29) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (9/12) • Westlake Park Time Travel Trip (9/26) • Bunker Noir! True Crime on Los Angeles’ Bunker Hill with Nathan Marsak (10/3) • Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (10/10) • Film Noir / Real Noir (10/24) • Hallowe’en at Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (10/31) • The Real Black Dahlia (11/7) • Richard’s Birthday Weird West Adams Tour & Elmer McCurdy Museum Visit (11/14) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (11/21) • Hollywood Noir (11/28)
