Shane’s bar might be fictionally set in Silver Lake, but the Semi-Tropic is in the adjacent neighborhood of Echo Park, where the park itself is a popular spot for sunny-day sitting with friends and dates, offering A-plus people-watching. queer women and friends go on the east side. The vibes, like the rest of the neighborhood, are very queer, which makes Shane’s bar, Dana’s, a great jumping-off point for a guide to the “reality” part of where L.A. In reality, that bar is the Semi-Tropic, a 21-and-over spot for food, coffee, cocktails, and kombucha, with laptops out during the day and DJs at night. In the first few episodes of Generation Q, Shane returns on the brink of another breakup, looking to take over a former gay bar, Atlas, and make it gay again. The Black Cat, for instance, was home to the city’s famous pre-Stonewall, pro-LGBTQ demonstration and subsequent police raid in 1966. Since the original went off the air in 2009, Silver Lake’s long history of queerness has become more celebrated and less of a secret.
anywhere near L.A.).Ī new generation of L Word fans, though, will finally be able to visit the actual spots featured in the reboot, some retooled for TV but brick-and-mortars, nonetheless, as The L Word: Generation Q was shot and set on the east side of L.A. But any of the queer women who moved to L.A.’s resident gayborhood were sad to discover that the Planet, SheBar, or any other facet of The L Word world was simply a set on a Vancouver soundstage, as most scenes were not shot on location (a.k.a. The show was set in West Hollywood, where it purported several women with full-time jobs and purpose-driven lives met up at the same café every morning for a leisurely coffee or breakfast before work.
Ten years ago, The L Word became the first television series to prominently feature not just one, but several lesbian and bisexual characters who were hot, wealthy, and, for the most part, played by heterosexual, high-femme women.