Gentle reader,
It’s not the initial crime, prosecutors know, but the subsequent cover-up that can demonstrate knowledge of wrongdoing and intent to defraud. It’s much the same when a mistake is made by local government and discovered after the fact by concerned citizens. What follows is revealing.
We cannot know what was in the minds of civil servants working off-site for the City Planning Department during those strange days in late 2020 when they first processed an error-laden application to redevelop 2700 West 7th Street, the historic home of the historic Silver Platter legacy gay bar, and failed to flag issues that should have triggered a public hearing to discuss a threat to a heritage site.
The project was for a generic mixed-use complex with 55 apartments, ground-floor retail and underground parking. Filed under the Transit Oriented Communities (TOC) program, it received density bonuses for including six affordable housing units.
As the application advanced, the property was listed for $5 million as a development opportunity with ready-to-issue plans as a possible joint venture, raising questions about how the project would be financed. It didn’t sell.
Perhaps the invalid project was intentionally rubber-stamped—or it could have been an honest mistake made by a stressed out staffer in a very difficult time.
But the application’s Environmental Assessment Form, which checked the box stating the 1922 commercial building was less than 45 years old and wrote “N/A” when asked whether the project would impact any historic resources, was not truthful. There’s no question about that.
And nobody inside City Hall has been willing to make this right.
Since news of the threat to the Silver Platter broke in our newsletter in May 2024 after a concerned neighbor saw a demolition notice posted, the outpouring of alarm from preservationists and the widespread media coverage shows that had the matter been brought before the public correctly, before a new project was quietly approved behind the veil of Covid, there would have been many voices at the table seeking a solution that protected an important legacy business serving marginalized communities.
One option could have been salvaging historic interior and exterior features and integrating them into the ground floor of the proposed new building with the Silver Platter as an anchor tenant.
Saving the Silver Platter never meant blocking any development on site.
But that conversation never happened—not in 2020 and not in 2024, when the eviction and demolition threat became public knowledge and members of the public begged CD 1 Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez to intervene to protect the historic bar. She has refused to do that.
Instead, the Silver Platter is navigating rocky waters, trying to move to a new location in Crown Hill, a mile and a half away. Emails obtained via a public records request show that the CD 1 council office has been doing a great deal behind the scenes to help make this happen.
To take up occupancy in the former Taxy Bar at 1403-1407 West 3rd Street, the Silver Platter needs to be approved for a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) required for a liquor-serving establishment.
The Zoning Administrator’s CUP hearing on 7/14/2026 was important to the bar, the Westlake and LGBTQ+ communities, and to the often-unwritten history of gay gathering places. And yet the City produces no documentation: no video recording, no audio file, no transcript, no minutes.
If an internationally famous legacy gay bar is fighting for its life in a Zoom hearing the City won’t even preserve, does it make a sound?
The bar’s representatives came prepared with a long list of promises intended to make the decision an easy yes: restricted hours, private security, identification checks, cameras, no outdoor drinking or seating, no off-site alcohol sales, coordination with schools during evening events and return to the ZA for a review after a year of operation.
A few near neighbors called in, objecting not to the Silver Platter explicitly, but to any bar moving into that spot, because the prior operator was a noisy nuisance.
And LAUSD formally opposed the application, citing six nearby schools, public-safety concerns and a previous ABC disciplinary action involving the Silver Platter. Neighbors raised more immediate concerns about parking and noise.
Martha Vasquez, the daughter of the bar's owner Margarita Xatruch, told the ZA she had spent months talking with LAPD and neighbors. But the first person speaking against the bar was a newcomer, a resident of the newly constructed senior apartments down the block and a longtime community organizer describing Spanish-speaking neighbors who didn’t want a bar there.
When one speaker struggled to participate, the ZA acknowledged that there was no Spanish-language interpreter available, despite the hearing concerning a historic Latino LGBTQ business in a majority Spanish-speaking neighborhood.
Anne Stockwell, former editor-in-chief of The Advocate, the gay magazine founded in Los Angeles in 1967, four years after the Silver Platter, spoke eloquently of how precious a place like this is, her surprise never to have heard of it before it was threatened, her hope it could remain in its historic home and her eagerness to support it in the future.
Technical problems were apparent. At least one prospective speaker, Peter Flores, was unable to get through. Rather than hearing from him directly, the ZA heard a statement attributed to him read by the Silver Platter’s Martha Vasquez.
And preservationist and retired engineer Mike Callahan reminded the Zoning Administrator that the real story getting lost in the minutiae of the CUP hearing was the City's own failure: the bar was only being forced to relocate because Planning had accepted a flawed project application in the first place.
We screen captured the hearing—or most of it, until we ran out of local memory—and provide it here as a public service, for the benefit of current citizens and for the historic record, and as an act of protest against a city government that claims to be progressive, while rejecting transparency, refusing to correct its mistakes and treating constituents who press it to do so like annoyances.
At the end of the ZA hearing, the public comment period was set for one month, until 8/14/2026, so if you have an opinion about the Silver Platter and its request for a CUP, you can send an email to Christine.Saponara@lacity.org and marie.pichay@lacity.org, subject line Silver Platter ZA-2026-256-CUB-SPPC.
CD 1 Planning Director Helen Campbell was on the call, but she didn’t express an opinion beyond a wish to read all comments after they were submitted.
Campbell is in an awkward position. While the 2020 project approval was ministerial, with no public hearing, it was processed by the Los Angeles City Planning Department, where Campbell was then serving as an appointed member of the City Planning Commission.
Although she had no formal role in approving DIR-2020-5151-TOC-HCA, her name is on the letterhead attached to the project that doomed one of the oldest gay bars in America to displacement and an uncertain future. There’s a reasonable expectation that she should be able to answer questions about the process by which this flawed application was deemed complete and approved by Planning Director Vince Bertoni, what safeguards exist for flagging invalid projects and how the City handles such mistakes if and when it becomes aware of them.
The July 2024 email we obtained through a public records request offers an interesting glimpse of the City Family’s attitude toward those questions. Campbell wrote to colleagues that a particularly persistent journalist “seems like they are trying to play gotcha with us,” and their inquiries should be shunted off to the Planning Department.
Last week, Isaac Vargas wrote a feature for L.A. Local, syndicated by LAist and by the Los Angeles Times, about the growing opposition movement among locals who were unable to participate in the ZA hearing.
The Silver Platter’s path to the contentious hearing wasn’t quick nor was it easy.
Through public records, we’ve learned the council office has been very active trying to “help” the Silver Platter. What it has not done is equally revealing.
• CD 1 helped the Silver Platter register in the LA Legacy Business Registry and secure a $10,000 Legacy Business Recovery Grant through the City’s Economic and Workforce Development Department, confirming its status as a culturally significant business serving Westlake for over 60 years;
• Made a direct connection to Bet Tzedick legal services to assist with eviction proceedings from the current location;
• Made a direct connection to the City’s Business Source Centers resulting in additional financial support;
• Made the direct connection to the LA Conservancy in August 2024 to assist in preserving signage and the bar; Worked with LA Conservancy and Museum of Neon Art to connect with owner of the TOC project and get permission to conserve the elements of the bar and the sign;
• Facilitated a meeting with the [Beverage and Entertainment Streamlined] BESt unit in the Department of City Planning to streamline and enable CUP transfer and with the Central City West planner to ensure historic elements can be relocated to the new location;
• Provided a letter of support for the historic acknowledgement by Latinos in Heritage Conservation;
• And provided contacts at LAUSD to conduct outreach for the CUB application.
This is a remarkable litany of hands-on constituent services for the benefit of a private business, and anyone who has tried and failed to get the attention of a council office for a pressing problem is probably bug-eyed at this list.
The office has expended significant staff time and helped marshal public resources, building bridges with City departments and nonprofits, all in the service of helping the Silver Platter move away, as if that 2020 project application was being honest when it said there was nothing old worth preserving at 2700 W. 7th Street.
And yet never once did the council office try to find a way to keep the bar in its historic home. And when preservation organizations were brought on board by the council office, it was not to find a true preservation solution like salvaging character-defining features to be used on the ground floor of the new building, but to facilitate a move to a new location that appears to be a non-starter.
Trying to keep the Silver Platter at 2700 W. 7th Street is the only thing CD 1 can do that would truly help the bar survive, but doing that requires admitting mistakes were made.
So what’s next for the Silver Platter? We wish we knew.
The pandemic-tolled extended deadline to use the affordable housing entitlements appears to be close to expiring, possibly as soon as 8/28/2026, with no sign that a large development is about to break ground.
Once the public comment period closes on 8/14/2026, the ZA will have an unspecified period in which to consider the request before issuing a determination. The combined impact of neighbor and school district opposition and a council office expressing no opinion isn’t encouraging.
The stress and cost of this protracted battle must weigh heavily on the bar’s owners and its regulars, and now the proposed new neighbors are also upset.
It doesn’t seem fair.
None of this needed to happen and it would not have happened if the City Planning Department hadn’t screwed up over a series of procedural approvals between 2020 and 2022 and if councilmember Eunisses Hernandez had not refused to do the right thing, even if that meant holding her own Planning Director and others in the City Family accountable for past mistakes.
Angelenos have gotten used to hearing our City Council staffers saying, “Sorry, we sympathize, but the alphabet soup of new Sacramento housing laws have tied our hands and that cool old business or your longtime RSO apartment home is going to be torn down—but hey, there will be more housing to replace it.”
Getting citizens to swallow this line of baloney depends on good faith projects, honestly submitted and properly permitted, which are then actually constructed and not just flipped back onto the market as a vacant lot with entitlements.
Despite what CD 1’s inaction suggests, Los Angeles City Councilmembers do have a mechanism for pushing back when it appears that a development project has been wrongly approved, allowing a fresh hearing based on the facts, the law and public sentiment.
Councilmember Tim McOsker recently asserted control over the approval of a massive new house at the back of the parcel that would have made it impossible for the landmarked Walker’s Cafe in San Pedro to ever operate again.
And just last week, Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez asserted control after the Central Los Angeles Area Planning Commission allowed a rent controlled bungalow court compound to be converted to tiny houses that could be individually sold out from under the tenants.
For 63 years, the Silver Platter has been a place where patrons could be their true and authentic selves, without fear or shame. There’s something fitting in the desperately sad fact that, in what might be its last gasp of life, the bar is exposing hypocrisy and cowardice among civil servants who serve themselves before any of us.
It’s easy to say you’re a progressive who stands for the people. But if you don’t put it into actual policy on the public record, it means nothing.
Come into the pale blue neon light, ye servants of the savage City, and do the right thing for once. Maybe you’ll fail. But we’ll think so much better of you for even trying.
It’s not too late for Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez to do the right thing and bring all the stakeholders together to find a real preservation solution, without pushing her policy failures into a nearby neighborhood.
Let her know you want her to assert control and actually do the work to try to save the Silver Platter by emailing councilmember.hernandez@lacity.org.
Long live the Silver Platter, a Westlake treasure worth preserving!
We have no public tours for the next couple of weeks, though we’re available for private bookings for small or larger groups.
The next tour is Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue on August 29, a ramble up and around the hilly Victorian suburb that’s not quite what it seems, to talk about how its preservation was part of the run up to the 1984 Olympic Games, strange tales of crime and mystery, failed and successful house moves, an uncanny experience we had on a past tour, Chinatown filming locations, oddball Angelenos, cold war anxiety and the outrageous assault on this lovely, dense, mixed-income community by Sacramento’s land use shock troops that you can help to fight. Join us, do!
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
Are you on social media? We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, Substack Notes, TikTok, Nextdoor and Reddit sharing preservation news as it happens.
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
• Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (8/29) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (9/12) • Know Your Downtown Los Angeles (9/19) • 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)
