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.
