( One of those men I would meet a few years later, in the Chicago Men's Gathering, and we would remain friends until he finally left Chicago ).īy 1970, I finally found out about the gay bars on the North Side. I remember that it was a small group that had both men and women there. These were modeled after similar groups that women held during the Women's Liberation Movement. I also remember that after I had come out in 1969, while still living in Hyde Park, I went to a meeting of a gay consciousness-raising group. By 1970 there were a fair number of gay bars in Chicago, but Adrons was one that had been around awhile and had this "straight by day but gay at night" thing going. This bar later became Nutbush City Limits. I went there several times in the evening and there was nothing "straight" about it. Supposedly it was a straight bar during the day but gay at night. One bar that I went to in 1970 was in Forest Park called Adrons. The Eagle was a restaurant in Hyde Park that gay men went to I went there once or twice with a gay friend of mine in 1969, after I had come out. In Hyde Park, Smedlies was supposedly a bar that gay men frequented. Supposedly there was a bar called Town and Country in one of the hotels downtownI think maybe the Palmer Housethat gays frequented during the cocktail hour, after work. Kitty Sheons was a bar in the Rush Street area that supposedly required guys to wear coats and ties. The ad would not talk about being gay, but any ad about a male looking for a male roommate was suspect.Īfter I came out in 1969 I heard about bars in Chicago that were either gay bars or were gay bars only at night. "Īnother way that guys met in 1968, that I found out about later, was through roommate ads in the Chicago daily newspapers. He told me that he was the one who wroteon his own ad, in different handwritingthe message "This guy's a fag. We met at a coffee shop and talked for awhile before I went to his apartment. I did not visit him then, but I wrote down his phone number and eventually called him back.
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Down below the hand-written ad someone had scrawled, "Watch outthis guy's a fag." I called the guy and we talked he lived in a building down the block, and he mentioned that there was only one bed in the apartment. So my first gay experience, in August of 1969, happened because of a roommate ad I saw on the bulletin board in my graduate dormitory.
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There were no gay organizations of any kind that I was aware of. NOTE: In this special issue devoted to 1968 see personal stories of the year at the links below. But I was very ready to come out in fact, I think I spent more time thinking about that in 1968 than I did studying for my classes. I had known, in some way, that I was gay since I was 8 years old, but had not come out yet and had not had any gay experiences other than "fooling around" with a couple of fellow students when I was 13 years old. I was new to the city and was living in Hyde Park. Aside from getting a taste of history, visitors will also have a chance to check out the surrounding friendly neighborhood of Boystown.In 1968, I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, in a masters degree program in international relations. Visitors to the outdoor museum enjoy a historical tour of the various LGBTQ monuments memorializing queer heroes and events that have helped shape the past, present, and future of LGBTQ life in Chicago. If you only have time to visit a few queer staples in Chicago, be sure to make at least one of them the Legacy Walk. Even if this sounds beyond your wheelhouse, every visitor can benefit from a visit to this museum that has worked diligently to preserve the history of the queer community.
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The museum has preserved the history of the leather, fetishism, sadomasochism, and alternative sexual communities of Chicago and beyond through archives, exhibits, and reading materials. Photo: Leather Archives & Museum/Facebook Leather Archives & Museumįor those tourists who crave a more nuanced view of Chicago, the Leather Archives & Museum delves into a hidden society of the city - the leather and kink communities.