Youthful fervor and optimism helped West Hollywood...

Youthful fervor and optimism helped West Hollywood grab the nation’s spotlight when the “Creative City” burst into life with its incorporation in 1984.

Activists heralded a “Gay Camelot,” where the large homosexual community would show the world that gays could govern as well as protest. The international media converged to capture the tearful and euphoric inauguration of the nation’s first gay-dominated City Council.

The new council, responding to a rallying cry, passed one of the nation’s strictest rent-control laws. Council members astonished the bourgeoisie by outlawing discrimination against homosexuals, making Halloween an official city celebration and giving domestic partners rights formerly reserved for married couples, such as health benefits and hospital visitation privileges.

Attempting to be fair to the city’s large Jewish population, the city in 1985 eliminated Christmas as a city holiday. The “Grinch law,” as it was called by some residents, was repealed a year later.

Eyebrows were raised when Mayor Valerie Terrigno resigned after she was found guilty on 12 counts of embezzling $9,000 in federal funds while heading a counseling center. In the city’s latest controversy, the proposed opening of a drop-in center for gay and lesbian youths has pitted outreach workers seeking to help runaways and other homeless young people against neighborhood groups who say the center would attract street hustlers.

Once a trolley town better known for being on the wrong side of the tracks from Beverly Hills, this island of eccentricity is now a hub of the entertainment, recording, publishing and interior-design industries. It is home to Warner Hollywood Studios, Geffen Records, the Writers Guild of America West and the Pacific Design Center, the largest concentration of designer showrooms in the country outside New York.

West Hollywood Inside Out

LAND OF THE LITERARY: Author F. Scott Fitzgerald spent his last months in an apartment on North Laurel Avenue, trying to finish his novel “The Last Tycoon.” “To economize we shared the same maid,” wrote Sheilah Graham, his lover and neighbor. Edgar Rice Burroughs, who wrote the Tarzan stories, lived on Sunset Boulevard. Author Nathanael West described Hollywood in “The Day of the Locust” as a “dream dump,” and Raymond Chandler set a scene in his novel “Murder My Sweet” at a landmark hotel--now called The Argyle--overlooking the Sunset Strip.

BEANED AT THE BEANERY: At the rock ‘n’ roll landmark Barney’s Beanery, Janis Joplin purportedly hit Jim Morrison of the Doors over the head with a bottle of Southern Comfort.

CELEBRITY PLAYGROUND: The legendary Normandie Village on Sunset Boulevard, described alternately as a “cornball salute to France” and “a rambunctious rendezvous of Hollywood’s partying past,” was torn down and replaced by an office building in 1973. In its heyday, it competed with the now-demolished Garden of Allah. The apartments, clustered among vine-covered pathways, were home to stars Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, Myrna Loy and silent-screen beauty Billie Dove.

BANDIDO: In 1874, the colorful robber and horse thief Tiburcio Vasquez was wounded and captured by Polish Jewish immigrant Deputy Emil Harris near what is now the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Kings Road. Harris would be rewarded for his role and become Los Angeles’ first chief of police. Vasquez also was rewarded after a fashion: While he was awaiting execution, a play based on his life opened in Los Angeles.

WORLD’S FIRST: A store called Name That Toon on Melrose Avenue has what is believed to be the world’s first Gumby museum. The clay animation star has a room--Gumby World--devoted to him and, of course, his parents, Gumbo and Gumba.

HIGH TECH: In addition to its flashy restaurants and a “Car Wash of the Stars,” West Hollywood is the Dry Cleaning Capital of Southern California. Twenty-six dry cleaners are squeezed into the city’s 1.9-square-mile area.

RESPECT? THIS CITY GETS ZIP: Four different Los Angeles ZIP codes--90038, 90046, 90048 and 90069--that predate West Hollywood’s incorporation in 1984 dice the city into little pieces.

By the Numbers

CITY BUSINESS

Date Founded: Nov. 29, 1984

Area in square miles: 1.9

Number of parks: 3

Number of city employees: 170

1995-96 budget: $39.6 million.

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PEOPLE

Population: 36,118

Households: 22,502

Average household size: 1.59

Median age: 38.2

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MONEY AND WORK

Median household income: $29,314

Median household income / L.A. County: $34,965

Median home value: $347,600

Employed workers (16 and older): 22,050

Women in labor force: 59.9%

Men in labor force: 79.3%

Self-employed: 2,901

Car-poolers: 1,880

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RETAIL STORES

Total number of stores: 717

Number of employees:6,032

Annual sales: $498 million

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ETHNIC BREAKDOWN

White: 85%

Latino: 9%

Black: 3%

Asian: 3%

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NUMBER OF CARS PER HOUSEHOLD

One: 58%

Two: 22%

Three or more: 3%

None: 17%

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AGES

65 and older: 18%

50-64: 13%

34-49: 26%

18-34: 36%

17 and younger: 7%

Source: Claritas Inc. Household expenses are averages for1994. All other figures are for 1990. Percentages have been rounded to the nearest whole number.