![the closet chicago gay bar the closet chicago gay bar](https://assets0.dostuffmedia.com/uploads/aws_asset/aws_asset/8537962/c0298c62-30a1-4b78-a7bd-622ec2d34708.jpg)
This wonderful flower shop that also sells artisan jewelry has been a Wicker Park mainstay since 1999. Now you can pick up fashion-forward wares, candles, grooming products, hats, wallets and pretty much everything a guy might need - maybe even a future date browsing the table next to you. But if you want to stay close to the action, check out the Hawthorne Terrace or Villa Toscana guesthouse right in Boystown, or the Guesthouse Hotel, just south of the heart of Andersonville on Clark Street.Ĭhef/owner Paul Fehribach beautifully prepares Southern-heritage fare like shrimp and grits, Ponchartrain blue crab cakes, fried chicken, and sweet potato barley jambalaya while offering one of the deepest bourbon selections in Chicago.Īndersonville lacked a quality men’s shop until this opened. In this day and age, you’d be hard pressed to find a hotel in Chicago that isn’t gay friendly (not to mention gay welcoming), whether the high-end spots around Michigan Avenue, hip hotels in Fulton Market like the Ace, Hoxton, and Soho House, uber-cool Robey in Wicker Park, or the design-forward Hotel Zachary across the street from Wrigley Field and just blocks from Boystown. This area is a hub of creativity, excellent nightlife, live music bars, galleries, theaters, and so much more. While not really considered an official LGBTQ+ neighborhood, Wicker Park (and Bucktown and Logan Square for that matter) is very gay friendly, as evidenced by the large number of queer folk who live in that part of the city. the gay beach, just a few blocks to the east. There are beautiful homes and easy access to Hollywood Beach, a.k.a. Today, Andersonville is a lively, colorfully-mixed neighborhood with fantastic restaurants and bars like Anteprima, Little Bad Wolf, Replay and Marty’s Martini Bar. Set on the Far North Side centered along Clark Street between Winnemac and Irving Park, this former Swedish enclave started attracting more gays and lesbians in the late 1980s, especially with the opening of Women & Children First Bookstore. Gays started moving here in the 1960s and ‘70s and it officially became a gay village in 1997, the first in country.
![the closet chicago gay bar the closet chicago gay bar](https://www.tripsavvy.com/thmb/pW4baPuECWw1YpnaIdrbSKQhvqE=/1100x777/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/club_escape_2-cf105fb364304f0694a3f798d30438fe.jpg)
The annual Pride parade and festival take place here each June as does Market Days, one of the country’s largest street fairs. Even though many of us still live in gay-heavy ‘hoods, we’re not ghettoized anymore and live everywhere - and the city, for the most part, is open and accepting.ĭespite the name, Boystown is Chicago’s largest inclusive LGBTQ+ neighborhood with bars, shops, restaurants, gyms, theaters, a historical legacy walk with rainbow-clad demarcations along Halsted Street and the Center on Halsted, the city’s large LGBTQ+ center. And what’s beautiful to me is everywhere you go in Chicago, queers are there. Today so many more people seem to have a larger presence in queer life in Chicago-people of color, femmes, trans men and women, genderqueer and more. In the past, you’d go to Boystown and it seemed like it was mostly just a place for gay white guys. One thing I love about queer life in Chicago is how so many faces and voices are being recognized.