Gold Coast, the legendary WeHo gay bar, Rises from the Dead – California News Times

West Hollywood Gold Coast Bar Shut down after 40 years in September last yearMany speculated that the once prosperous Santa Monica Boulevard gay scene was innumerably depressed. The legendary dive bar was the third gay landmark on the road closed during a pandemic after the Rage and framing saddles were closed a month ago. All three facilities were owned or shared by the controversial Baron Monte Overstreet, the so-called “King of Boystown”. Overstreet and his business partners also owned the landmark Country Western gay bar Oil Can Harry’s in Studio City. The bar closed 52 years later in December last year. (Founded in 1968, it was the oldest gay bar in Los Angeles and the starting point for performers from Kd Lang to RuPaul.)

However, while WeHo bar owners were hit particularly hard by the pandemic, the disastrous predictions of the end of Boystown turned out to be very premature.Rage will be back this fall under the ownership of the former N’Sync Star Lance BassSwear his revamped Robertson Boulevard. The disco will reopen as the largest gay nightclub in the world. (Bass is also a partner of Rocco’s, a hugely successful Gerber and restaurant across the street.) Currently, the Gold Coast has a new owner and a new name, The Or Bar, but is ready for a resurrection. it’s finished.

Whatever it is called, the new bar currently under construction will be overseen by a trio of new owners deeply rooted in the gay and nightlife scene in LA: West Hollywood entrepreneur Rob Nobinger has recently been dusty. Remake Poi Circus of Books Glossy Porn entrepreneurs began looking at dilapidated Gold Coast real estate shortly after the sign for sale came up. To get the project started in a hurry, he helped Stephanie “Stevie” Shestag, a lawyer and former television presenter who began her career as the owner of a trendy V-bar in New York. Celebrity stylist George Kotsiopoulos, a third member of the Triumvirate, is best known as the co-host of VH1’s now obsolete Joan Rivers tart tongue. He has recently been pursuing a lucrative side business in real estate, but the fashion police. Kotsiopolous has never actually owned a bar before, but he admits that he patronized many of them.

“Rob and I have always talked about working together,” says Kochipros. “And we’ve always complained about the WeHo bar scene, so when we heard that the Gold Coast was closed, everything was suddenly clicked. We both had bad drinks and We wanted to create a bar that would replace all the noisy gay Weho places with terrible lighting. We wanted our place to have a neighborhood atmosphere, good music. No TV! No nonsense of this mixology! Going back to basic drinks. As far as I know, there are two too many five ingredients in a cocktail! “

The old Gold Coast was a rebellious and wonderful paradise for grizzly bear patrons who prefer to have dinner at breakfast. The new incarnation is aimed at another customer. “I think the whole concept of’gay bar’seems a bit outdated,” says Schestag. “Twenty years ago things were more stratified, but since then the LGBTQ community has really changed. It’s no longer just homosexuals and heterosexuals. Everything is much more fluid. Named OrBar. I thought that the change would convey some of that ambiguity. “

Novinger and Kotsiopoulos oversee the decoration itself, but Novinger says he leaves it to his fashionable partners when it comes to taste issues. But he states that both are determined to avoid WeHo’s design clichés. “For one thing, we’re not minimalists!” Says Nobinger. “It’s very Michelle Pfeiffer inScar face-Sick-Cocaine Chic,’You can call it.Me please do not Literally Meaning — I mean the charm of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. We are intended for people at least 30 years of age and older. This will never be another nightclub. We want to make it a more sophisticated and relaxing place. “

They hope the new space will help boost the neighborhood, which was famous as an off-hours cruising ground in the 90’s. “We want to raise the busline ally!” Kotsiopoulos says brightly. “We’re doing it with a deck outside to captivate the neighborhood. I want to put a big Gucci ad on that open wall of Lahoya, but the city doesn’t allow us.”

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