Let's start our tour of LGBTQ+ history at the Las Memorias AIDS Monument in Lincoln Heights, just east of downtown LA. It's the country's first publicly funded AIDS monument that opened in 2004 to honor victims of HIV/AIDS. It consists of six murals that depict life with AIDS in the Latino community and two granite panels that honor the names of local residents who died from AIDS. (Note that the site is currently being renovated, but you can view the murals.)

A very brief drive from the Las Memorias AIDS Monument, you will find Lincoln Heights Jail. The building was abandoned in 1965, and the somewhat eerie site looks more like the set of an Alfred Hitchcock production now. Opened in 1931, the jail housed many queer inmates in a seperate wing during the 1950s and 1960 when city police often raided places where LGBTQ people gathered (including Cooper Do-Nuts). The separate lock-up was derogatorily referred to as “The Fruit Tank.”

This former Standard Oil Building used to be known as The Woman's Building. In the 1970s, three pioneering, trailblazing women founded the Feminist Studio Workshop, which became one of the first independent art schools for women in the country. The workshop became a thriving epicenter of the Los Angeles feminist and queer movement, pushing women's equality to the forefront through art, debate, and community. The Woman's Building also housed Sisterhood Bookstore and the Associated Women's Press.

Walk a few blocks south to find Los Angeles City Hall. The stairs and front lawn of this historic building have been the site for many LGBT rallies. One of the first major protests where people gathered at Los Angeles City Hall was in response to the 1978 Briggs Initiative, which aimed to bar LGBT people in California from teaching in public schools. Demonstrations were also common in the lead-up to the defeat of Prop 8 in 2008, clearing the way for marriage equality.

Head toward Pershing Square to find the Millennium Biltmore Hotel, a popular hangout for queer patrons in the early 20th century. The hotel hosted a psychiatrist conference in the 1970s which argued in favor of electroshock therapy as a "cure" for homosexuality. The Gay Liberation Front disrupted the gathering, forcing a dialogue between mental health professionals and the gay community. Their debate led to removing the classification of "homosexuality" as a mental health disorder 2 years later.

Silver Lake and East Hollywood were the center of activism and resistance during the 1950s. The lesbian civil rights group Daughters of Bilitis was founded during this era, along with the Mattachine Society, which laid the foundation for the modern-day LGBTQ equality movement in the United States. The Mattachine Steps, located at the hillside where trailblazer Harry Hay founded the organization, pay tribute to this history. Visit the stairs to take in an essential part of LGBT history.

On the eve of February 11, 1967, hundreds of people gathered outside The Black Cat to protest against police brutality that targeted the bar’s LGBT patrons and queer spaces located elsewhere in the city. It was one of the first documented LGBT civil rights demonstrations in the country and served as a catalyst for New York City’s Stonewall Riots two years later. Although the original Black Cat eventually closed, a new restaurant reopened later under the same name.

LGBTQ media played a critical part early in the gay liberation movement by rallying voices and highlighting LGBTQ topics through news and storytelling. America's preeminent LGBTQ publication, The Advocate (formerly known as the newsletter Los Angeles Advocate), didn't operate from this location, but its founders, Bill Rand and Dick Michaels, used the printing facilities at the ABC television studios to print copies of The Advocate during its early years.

While on the ground in Los Feliz, take a hike up to Griffith Park. The park has been a popular hangout for LGBT people throughout the decades, but the park's merry-go-round also became the home for so-called "ay-Ins" in the early 1970s. Organized by the Gay Liberation Front, the Gay-ins encouraged thousands of LGBT people to join, come out of the closet, and socialize during weekend afternoons with music and speeches.