Boystown. That billowing beacon of gay. When I first moved to Chicago, I was convinced the neighborhood would emanate a strange sort of gay magic - a combination of diversity, social justice and acceptance unlike anything I'd ever experienced in my rural Wisconsin upbringing.
Boystown represented a place where queers - a reclaimed umbrella term covering lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, gender-nonconforming and more - would walk the streets and live their lives without fear of harassment. Where we could be open and free, our whole selves.
Two years later, those expectations I once had for the city-designated hub of Chicago's LGBT community are surely naive, if not delusional. While Boystown offers the largest concentration of queer-centric spaces, the area's overflow of saccharine gayness has had an increasingly sour, if watered down, taste. As the story goes, the gays "made it nice" and the straights moved in with their baby strollers and purebred puppies, driving out the young or otherwise non-corporate-type lesbigays and transfolk who don't feel welcomed or can no longer afford to live there.
But that's not what this column is about. In a system where the majority continues to hold final say over issues of the "minority," the straight community remains one of the most valuable and least realized assets to the queer movement's political progress.
With Chicago's premier gay district, described as "a dynamic diversified neighborhood community" by the Lakeview East Chamber of Commerce, under the spotlight during the Obama-endorsed Pride Month, I think it's essential we ask the question of who truly needs Boystown? Is the gayborhood delivering what it promises where it counts? I'm increasingly not too sure that it is.
The majority of queer folk do not live their lives in a gay-centric bubble. We live in every neighborhood of this sprawling city. We come from a variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds. We work in many different careers. We care about a myriad of issues beyond the latest episode of Glee. Any public space that's "diverse" by definition should be held accountable for actively welcoming all the parts of our queer selves.
LGBT youth who travel from other parts of the city to partake in the health and community resources they sorely need are turned away and organized against by many of the area's wealthier residents and stakeholders. Their sheer presence is blamed for any number of petty crimes in the 'hood and valuable community resources like the Center on Halsted are sometimes criticized for attracting the so-described "urban youth."
Queer women who, with the close of Stargaze earlier this year, find themselves left without many nightlife options in the city, are all too often met with a begrudging smugness from the neighborhood's boy-centric bars. Area lesbians earlier this year organized a boycott of Spin Nightclub claiming harassment and discrimination. And while the boycott attracted some 700 members on Facebook and a fair amount of gay press, the accusations were completely disregarded by bar management.
If your interests in music and culture fall outside of the Gaga/Beyonce mainstream, you're frequently left with few options for a nightlife home in Boystown. The 'hood's few "alternative" spaces simply fall short in overcoming the 'hood's not-so-subtle air of superiority.
Many queer folk have responded to Boystown hostility with new opportunities for organizing and socializing. Chances Dances is always expanding, currently offering up three monthly queer dance parties that practice the inclusiveness it preaches. Queer Social Club, held on the first Wednesday of each month at Archie's in Humboldt Park, offers a laid-back, board game-intensive environment for queer kinship. Queerer Park, the new queen of the sweaty danceparty, takes over various gallery and warehouse spaces, usually off the Blue Line, on a monthly basis. And there's rumblings of more near West Side queer events on the way.
While these parties help toward filling the void of inclusive queer social space, many of the city's health and organizing resources for LGBT folk remain disproportionately invested in East Lakeview. This Pride Month, I welcome activists, organizers, promoters and friends of the city's queer communities to re-examine where we've focused our energies. When we say "LGBT" are we truly welcoming everyone? Are we meeting our community's needs?
Follow Joseph Erbentraut on Twitter: www.twitter.com/robojojo
"it is cardinal sin in the LGBTQ community to ever say either a bad word about a black person or anything good about a Republican"
Does this imply there is more condemnation of black youths than could ever be written or said?
Tolerant straight people like myself who could never otherwise afford lakefront property. I make nowhere near six figures, but I own a condo and get to wake up to the sun rising over the lake. I've been in Lakeview for eight years and may never leave. While my straight presence may dilute the community a bit, you all have my support.
It is for tourists, just like the Polish, Italian and Irish conclaves in the city. I loved living on the NW side of the city even when it was rough because I could be in the loop in 15 minutes.
My hope is that we will take Pride Month as an opportunity to have the sort of discussion we are having now: Is Boystown being as welcoming as it could be to those who otherwise lack a safe, supportive environment to be openly queer. While some pockets of the 'hood, are more diverse than others, I still feel we could be doing better and this topic needs to be addressed.
Anyway, your essay is quite interesting. I lived in Boystown and loved it, but as a straight woman, it provided a different environment for me than if I was, say, a lesbian.
I wonder, though, if they could survive in non-organized rural areas such as the Cumberfland Gap area of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, as many of the rest of us do. Most of the gay folks I deal with down here don't watch "Glee" or "True Blood" or "Dancing with the Whatzits" or "American Idleness" or whatever is the trendy queer-tinted TV show du jour. Neither are we all closeted Bubbas and Big Bessies who live out "Deliverance" fantasies with each other.
We mostly do like our straight counterparts do --- get by and don't spend a lot of time pondering our tattooed and pierced gay navels. Sometimes, we wonder what it would be like to live in a place like Boystown, where the gays made it so fab-u-lous that the straights took it over. But we don't and so we're mostly amused by all this bitching and moaning about how things are just as GAY as they used to be ...
The rainbow arches over a lot of country, folks. Sometimes the peak of the arch just ain't always over the big city.
"I'm glad my gay and lesbian brothers and SISTERS in the big city of Chicago have a big ol' friendly place to be open in."
I really need to drink caffeine before I start posting in the morning. Mea culpa, y'all.
In bringing this topic to light, I don't mean to "bitch and moan." Rather, I feel recent events in Chicago should not be brushed under the rug. If you're going to have a big gay-friendly space, it should be welcoming to all.
You've never lived in Boystown and you barely spend time here. You're as closed off to the culture here as you claim it is to others. Do you think alt-spaces like Chances welcome "saccarine" gays? (Thanks for belittling us with that and "watered down.") The mentioned alt-spaces are northside-centric and social, not political happenings. Do you think Andersonville (a hood with more dogs and families than LV) would react differently to a crime-spike caused by youth from other parts of the city? Also, Stargaze died in Andersonville, not Boystown where lesbian bar the Closet is alive and well.
How many times have you gone to the coffee shops here? The people I see regularly greet me on the street. No place is perfect, but it's not as awful as you paint it. As you mentioned, the Center on Halsted and Howard Brown are here, so I wish you would've researched the importance of social space for social change before belittling Chicago's GLBTQ epicenter. Why not offer suggestions on how resources should be reallocated? Or defend the idea of disseminating the population?
I encourage you to stop inciting in-fighting because Boystown isn't your scene. Stop judging the people different from you. Some of us happen to be your friends and you know we care about things other than Gaga and Glee.
I realize there are many issues at work here, Barrett, and while I'm sorry if you felt belittled by it, I don't feel I'm inciting in-fighting by bringing a few of these issues to light. I have spent a lot of time in the day in Boystown, writing in coffee shops, in addition to partaking in the nightlife. And I agree, social space is important for social change. Which is why I feel there's work to be done in improving an already, largely, good thing. Groups like GenderJUST, for example, are doing just that, working with the city to improve the North Side-focused allocation of LGBTQ-related health resources. They offer a fabulous model for a more equal distribution of already limited resources: http://sites.google.com/site/genderjust/issues/resource-equity