Gay cruising spots in los angeles

Alex Espinoza

In Queer Space: Architecture and Equal Sex Desire, Aaron Betsky writes, “The queerest space of all is the void, and AIDS has made us live in that emptiness, that absence, that loss…. It is not a queer space any of us would want to inhabit, but many hold been forced to make it their own.”^[1] In many ways, Danny Jauregui’s work goes beyond just inhabiting the void, that lgbtq+ space separate from society. It is about identifying it, reclaiming it, and giving it a permanent spatial location in the decades following the crisis.  People cruised within communities, within neighborhoods, at local parks, bars, and shops. A single location can be so many places at once.

“I wanted to show that these locations once existed here,” he says.

The photos used in the artist Danny Jauregui’s project document a history that generations of adolescent gay men might not be familiar with. Chronicling these sites then became a way for Jauregui to recover and graft the memory of male lover cruising into the larger sphere of American identity and assemblage. The images are a stark reminder of the transient nature of cruising, allowing for a uniquely gender non-conforming identit