Gay Guide to Chicago
Chicago has a stronger claim on the beginning of American gay rights than any other city. In December 1924 a Bavarian immigrant named Henry Gerber chartered the Society for Human Rights here, the first known gay rights organization in the United States. It lasted months. Police arrested the members in 1925 on obscenity charges after a tip from one member's wife, and though the charges were dropped, the legal fees bankrupted Gerber and cost him his job at the Post Office. His house on North Crilly Court is now a National Historic Landmark.
The state moved early too. Illinois was the first in the country to repeal its sodomy law, effective 1962, more than forty years before the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion nationally.
The scene today centers on Northalsted, the stretch of North Halsted Street in Lakeview that most people still call Boystown. It was the first officially recognized gay village in the United States, and the city marked it with the rainbow pylons that line the strip. Dance clubs, drag, leather bars and neighborhood taverns sit within a few blocks of each other.
Andersonville, further north on Clark Street, is the quieter counterweight: lower-key bars, bookshops and cafes, and a long-standing lesbian presence that earned it the nickname Girlstown. Pilsen and the South Side have their own queer nightlife that rarely makes the guidebooks.
Northalsted Market Days in August is the largest street festival in the Midwest and the one worth planning around. The Chicago Pride Parade closes out June, and Pride South Side and Chicago Black Pride run their own programming rather than folding into it.