#cooper donuts

[electronicsquid]

Nighthawks at Cooper Donuts

(Ralph Crane. 1957?)

[itgetsbetter]

🍩 ☕️ Iced coffee gays rejoice: our new Pride merch benefits LGBTQ+ youth AND honors our history!

Our donut design by queer artist Mo McMasters is inspired by the 1959 Cooper Do-nuts Riot in Los Angeles, where patrons of the popular LGBTQ+ hangout rose up (and threw donuts and coffee) in response to police harassment targeting LGBTQ+ customers. It's recognized as one of the earliest queer uprisings in U.S. history!

Wear a little piece of history with a sticker, enamel pin, t-shirt (in black or white), and hoodie (in black or white)! Shop now on our site!

[jorgeclardiary]

LGBTQIA_🎉 (A Spotify Playlist) [To listen, click HERE]

It is with great pleasure that I issue for this festive weekend (during which I define myself as blank-space), a playlist of some of my favorite anthems.

On the cover photo, I am holding a historic 1950s Tepco restaurant mug from Cooper Do-nuts in Los Angeles, the very locale of what is now viewed to be by some historians as the first modern LGBTQIA_🎉 uprising in the United States.

According to the “Cooper Do-nuts Riot” Wikipedia entry:

Cooper Do-nuts was a cafe on Main Street in downtown Los Angeles between two gay bars, Harold's and the Waldorf, and was a popular hangout for gay people. At the time, Los Angeles law made it illegal for a person's gender presentation not to match the gender shown on their ID, and this was often used to target and arrest transgender patrons. For this reason, many gay bars were hostile to transgender patrons and banned or discouraged them from entering.

Cooper Do-nuts was welcoming to the gay community and this made it a target for police harassment. Many LGBT customers had been taken into custody before. Novelist John Rechy, who was present at the riots, described the routine arrests in his 1963 novel, City of Night: ‘They interrogate you, fingerprint you without booking you: an illegal L.A. cop-tactic to scare you from hanging around.’

The playlist features Bronski Beat, Dead or Alive, Freddy Mercury, Azul y Negro, Kraftwerk, Samantha Hudson x La Prohibida, Javiera Mena x Hidrogenesse, Blur, New Order, Fangoria, Klaus Nomi, Phil Oakey x Giorgio Moroder, and Pet Shop Boys.

I would like to dedicate this playlist to Macha Colón, as it has a spirit of Neons Videotheque and the good times we spent there.

Photo: Goor Studio

Hat: @chariandco

Glasses: Sabine B

Location: Lazy Suzy Café

[kestimac]

Los Angeles' Cooper Donuts gay riots sparked a revolution 10 years before Stonewall - The Pride LA

BY CHRISTIANA LILLY | It was a torrent of doughnuts and coffee that kicked off the LGBT-rights movement. Sure, the Stonewall Riots of 1969 in New York City get all the glory, but ten years earlier there was a small, nearly forgotten uprising to which the movement’s roots can also be traced: Cooper Donuts in …

[commiepinkofag]

Cooper Do-nuts Riot

Pansies, Piggies and Pastries

Cooper's Donuts was a popular [especially with the LA Police Department] all-night eatery on Main Street in downtown Los Angeles in the 1950s and 1960s. It was situated between two (also popular) gay bars, Harold's and the Waldorf, and therefore became a common late-night hangout place for LGBTQ+ individuals. It was the hub for transgender people, queers, hustlers, drag queens-every social “deviant” under the sun. Because it was one of the few venues where transgender women could safely reside, it was easily a target for cops.        On this particular spring night in May 1959, two cops decided to spontaneously check IDs. The outcome of their check was the arrest of about five customers. Much like the Compton Cafeteria riots, and happening only a few years prior, the rage and frustration demonstrated by the many night customer of Cooper’s illustrated their impatience and intolerance for police brutality consciously directed towards LGBTQ+ individuals simply looking for the company of people just like them. In the patrons’ clash with the police, they utilized items from the coffee/donut shop itself. This included coffee, donuts, spoons, cups and so on. The officers had no choice, but to retreat and with their return were more officers. The riots ensued and lead to the temporary closure of Main Street. Although smaller in scale to that of the Compton Cafeteria riots and Stonewall, the Cooper’s Donuts riot was the first tip off to general police insensitivity and violence towards LGBTQ+ people. More >

[ Image Source: Stephen Seemayer and Pamela Wilson's film, Young Turks, 1982 ]