Barney’s Backs Down : Message No Match for Changing Times

To its devoted patrons, Barney’s Beanery has always been a place of refuge, a barroom where the troubles of the outside world can be forgotten among fellow regulars, sympathetic bartenders and fast-drained mugs of beer.

But troubles intruded in recent weeks as Barney’s, a restaurant and bar that has been a Santa Monica Boulevard fixture since the 1920s, confronted the West Hollywood City Council over the restaurant’s continuing distribution of matchbooks printed with the warning “Fagots Stay Out.”

West Hollywood’s newly elected City Council--three of whom are homosexuals--found the matchbooks to be offensive and in violation of a new city ordinance banning discrimination against homosexuals. Two weeks ago, City Atty. Michael Jenkins warned restaurant owner Irwin Held he would be subject to a $500-a-day fine for failing to adhere to the new law.

After threatening to take the new city to court over the anti-discrimination law, Held backed down Tuesday, agreeing to withdraw the matchbooks and a sign bearing the same message that has hung over the bar for two decades.

Neither he nor his regulars were happy about it. “For the first time in my life, I know how MacArthur must’ve felt at Corregidor,” Held moaned, referring to Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s retreat from Japanese invaders on the fortified Philippine island in 1942.

Held, who bought the bar in 1969 from the original owner, Barney Anthony, insisted that the message printed on the matchbooks and bar sign was a long-standing humorous tradition at Barney’s and never was used to ban homosexual customers.

To Held and his patrons, the sign and matchbooks are part of Barney’s cluttered ambiance, where yellowed newspapers on the ceiling, vending machines in the bathroom and menus with 150 beer selections all have their place.

Work of Art

Indeed, Barney’s--and its anti-gay sign--has been immortalized in a Life magazine photograph and in a sculpture by artist Ed Kienholz of the barroom and patrons, which now hangs in the Royal Dutch Museum.

“The sign’s always been part of Barney’s,” he said. “Homosexuals never had any trouble as long as I’ve been here.”

West Hollywood Mayor Valerie Terrigno agreed that the restaurant “has had a history of acceptance and friendliness to all kinds of people,” but added that the matchbooks showed a continuing “strain of intolerance” toward the city’s homosexual population--estimated to be about 30% of West Hollywood’s 35,000 residents.

“For the people of West Hollywood there has been nothing nostalgic about it,” she said. “The words have been discriminatory, and have reduced a large part of our population to the status of second-class citizens.”

After announcing that he would agree to withdraw the matchbooks and remove the sign, Held retreated to the restaurant. There, he was consoled by regulars and employees while, in the barroom, Terrigno and another council member, Alan Viterbi, used screwdrivers to remove the sign over the bar.