Longtime Silver Lake business owners recall being outbid, rising rents and community buyouts

A group of longtime Silver Lake residents recounted the neighborhood’s small-business history and the pressures of rising commercial rents during an oral-history interview.

One speaker who identified themselves as a longtime owner of a neighborhood shop said they were the third owner of a business called Saint James and had run it for 26 years. The speaker described being encouraged by their predecessor and recalled doing charcuterie work for a television green room early in the business’s history.

The speaker said they tried to buy the building where the shop operated but were outbid by new landlords and that the landlord’s asking rent was "9,000 plus triple net," which the speaker estimated would raise monthly costs to about $12,000 — a level they said would be unaffordable for their operation. "They did give me the first the first rights of refusal," the owner said, and added that the proposed monthly figure would be "totally and completely impossible."

Other interviewees described how neighborhood venues were threatened during the 1980s and how the community later organized to preserve gathering places. One account details how around 1996 a small group borrowed modest sums from roughly two dozen neighbors — "we borrowed money from maybe 20... people" — to buy a bar known at various times as Silver Dollar, Bulldog, Red's and Jolie's, and to keep it as a communal meeting place.

The oral history also touched on earlier economic conditions: one speaker recalled paying $65 a month for a live-work studio decades ago and later $85, underscoring the contrast with current commercial rents.

Speakers connected these economic pressures to broader cultural changes, noting that some gay bars were purchased and converted into mainstream venues over time. They described both frustration at displacement and pride in neighborhood efforts to sustain local institutions through community investment.

The interview contains first-person recollections about business ownership, rent negotiations and community fundraising; it does not include lease documents, formal sale contracts or independent verification of the rent or sale figures cited.