Sunset Junction, Los Angeles

Sunset Junction is an informal name for a portion of the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles, California.

For most of their distance, the streets run parallel, but join here where they intersect Sanborn Avenue and where Santa Monica Blvd ends.

The event is named for the Black Cat Tavern, formerly at 3909 Sunset Blvd between Sanborn and Hyperion Avenues, a location that had been a gay bar periodically since the 1940s.

[2] Organized in response to a police raid on the Black Cat on New Year's Eve 1966, in which several people were hurt, the protest was planned to coincide with similar actions at African-American, Latino and “hippie” establishments around the city, which were also regularly patrolled.

The store functioned as a focal point for the community and was the site of readings by noted authors, including Christopher Isherwood, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Larry Kramer.