Hot Bods, Summer in the City

These quaintly comic lyrics of "Welcome to WeHo," a satirical poke at L.A.'s gay mecca of West Hollywood, can be heard at the Hudson Theatre in Hollywood in a new revue, cleverly if somewhat inevitably titled "Bed, Boys & Beyond." Five handsome, buff young guys move deftly upon a minute corner stage and celebrate, bemoan, protest and berate the experiences, trials and tribulations of being a gay man in modern urban America.

American audiences often seem to applaud the intention of a cultural enterprise rather than its execution, and the night I went, this show appeared to have the overwhelmingly gay male crowd in the palm of its hand from the get-go. Its intentions were so honorably politically and emotionally correct, and so seemingly tuned in to the audience's own preoccupations, that the reception was predictably loud and enthusiastic.

"Mr. Right," "Dance at the Gym," "Cruising & Schmoozing"--the titles summoned up a supposedly universal gay search for love, sex, affection or all three. Along with this, the obsession with appearance and the gym is ridiculed, as you might expect (albeit by five immaculate and very fit-looking young actors) and there is the obligatory plaintive cry for tolerance.

But some of the songs also had a real and particular resonance with this L.A. audience. The gist of "Welcome to WeHo" was that, for its happy clappy residents, those guys with faces unclouded by excessive thought, there was no earthly reason any sensible gay man would want to venture beyond WeHo's borders when he has everything gay that he could possibly want or need at his fingertips: great friends, great boyfriends, great gyms and great coffee.

The general laughter of recognition in the audience tallied with my and my friends' experience. But were the boys on the stage at the Hudson really accurate portrayals of the guys I see every day on the streets and in the bars?

For many gay men all over the world, West Hollywood has come to symbolize some kind of ultimate gay glamour, and was certainly famous enough in my hometown of London for us to get the jokes of Joan Rivers ("What separates the men from the boys? In West Hollywood, that's a crowbar").

It's no great surprise that gay men visit the city in the thousands; for them the California surfer-jock look is the ultimate desire-object and makes the place a natural destination. Much of what informs gay lifestyle in European cities draws its inspiration from WeHo: The current fashion for hairless, glistening, muscled bodies ("ripped" in the current parlance) is essentially an L.A., a WeHo, thing.

However, when I first visited in 1993 the alternative Strip--that stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard between La Cienega and Doheny--I was disappointed. It seemed provincial, the clubs and bars looked surprisingly sleazy and bereft of the hunks of the promised land.

So, instead, I found myself spending most of my time at a sweet little outdoor coffeehouse called the Abbey near Santa Monica and Robertson. It was relaxed, quiet and relatively uncruisy. It served the best desserts I'd seen in this dessert-less city and played a civilized mixture of piped music. It felt like having tea on somebody's front patio and was anything but hardcore.

Now, in the summer of 2001, the Abbey is enjoying its recently acquired status as one of the hottest gay venues in the city; indeed, it's famous enough to be mentioned in "Welcome to WeHo."

On the weekend nights, when more than 400 of the city's finest pack in there, there are impressively long lines and the obligatory morose-looking guy checking IDs at the entrance. Instead of being just a meeting point from which the guys sort out their evening's entertainment, it has become a destination in itself.

They're not just coming for coffee and cake anymore. Essentially, the Abbey has transformed itself by adding cocktail bars and hugely extending its outdoor patio area. The garden statues and little fountains remain, but the area has been virtually doubled. It has installed a row of desperately fashionable cabanas at the back for \o7 louche\f7 Romanesque sprawling. It has changed its fixtures and fittings, establishing a decorative style which could be termed Disposable Quality; if Pottery Barn had been asked to come up with a gay bar, it would look like the Abbey.

Add to this a reputation for its range of somewhat expensive but superb martinis mixed by bartenders who seem to have been genetically modified for looks, and the place has managed in the process to create something in line with the desires and aspirations of the more social, visible part of gay L.A.

And visibility is an important part of it. The Abbey is still quite unusual in that it is completely open to the street.

"We are proud to be visible," says Saul Santos Aldana, manager for the last five years. "Gay men no longer want to be hidden behind doors."