Lady Ivory outside Progress Bar in Boystown
Halsted and Buckingham Streets in Boystown Where’s queer nightlife going?
Art Johnston has been tracking Chicago’s LGBTQ nightlife for 35 years. “It used to be Boystown and a little bit of Andersonville. And then Wicker Park came into the picture, and Bucktown. And now, it’s unusual to go anywhere and not see gay people in every part of the city, going to every kind of restaurant, every kind of bar,” says Johnston, who opened the stalwart bar Sidetrack on Halsted Street in 1982. He’s right, of course. And as another bar owner notes, straight people have become more comfortable with visiting “gay” spaces. “What we’ve noticed on Halsted is the increasing comfort with the straight community being in our venues,” says Mark Liberson of LKH Management, which operates the dance club Hydrate and bars Elixir, Replay and Lark. “And we find ourselves becoming a destination for straight couples as well.” This dynamic would have been unimaginable back in the day. “When we opened Sidetrack, the average life of a gay bar was two to three years. And because of that, nobody put any money into them,” says Johnston. “There was a lot of plywood painted black, because you were not going to
Pride Parade 2016
Clark Street and Balmoral Avenue in Boystown
be around long. With the pressure from police, which was constant, there was no reason to put anything more into it than that.” But as Sidetrack and its neighbors—
Roscoe’s, Progress Bar, Scarlet, Hydrate, Kit Kat Lounge & Supper Club, etc.—have become fixtures, it’s possible they’ve also
Roscoe’s
Roscoe’s
gotten more staid, even as straight patrons have loosened up.
Who is Boystown for?
“The crew of queer women, trans and gender- nonconforming folks I’m usually rolling with will frequently be fetishized or side-eyed for being there,” Kristen Kaza says of her experience in Boystown. “There’s simply nowhere that seems to intentionally reach out to or make safe space for us.” That’s precisely why Kaza launched Slo
’Mo, now one of the most popular LGBTQ dance parties in Chicago, at the Whistler in Logan Square five years ago. It’s become a Chicago queer institution fully independent from Boystown. Similarly, Boystown’s narrow demographic prompted Lauren Black to launch a series of parties with the Lesbifriends Cartel nine years ago. “We wanted to create a space where we were unapologetic about how gay we are or how black we are,” says Black. But unlike Kaza, Black launched a party in the thick of it all: at Progress Bar, right at Roscoe and Halsted Streets. Her party, Illuminaughty, ran monthly from 2014 to 2016 and was specifically geared toward
Time Out Chicago June 7–September 5, 2017 32
PHOTOGRAPHS: TOP LEFT, CENTER: NEAL O'BRYAN; TOP CENTER, TOP RIGHT, CENTER RIGHT, BOTTOM LEFT: ERIN KOMMER
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