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 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. Also take a look at the Chicago Gay Bathhouse and Sex Club Guide, which has plenty of advice on where to meet guys looking to hookup around Chicago.One thing I love about queer life in Chicago is how so many faces and voices are being recognized.
Here's a more in-depth look at these Downtown and South Side Chicago gay social establishments. It's also a bit of a distance to reach these bars, but they're both legendary nightspots that are well-worth checking out, especially given that many of the nation's gay African-American hangouts have steadily disappeared over the years. Additionally, on the city's South Side, you'll find a pair of gay bars that cater predominantly to African-American patrons, Club Escape and Jeffery Pub. You can find extensive lists of establishments in the Chicago Lakeview Gay Nightlife Guide and the Chicago Andersonville Gay Nightlife Guide. These neighborhoods are a lot of fun, but they're also a bit of a haul - by cab or public transit - from downtown Chicago, which is where most of the city's hotels are.įortunately, there are a couple of very fun gay nightspots right in the heart of downtown, not to mention an almost endless supply of terrific restaurants, many of them with mixed gay/straight followings. Although Chicago has among the greatest selection of gay nightspots in the country, the majority of these hangouts - from bars and discos to LGBT-popular restaurants - are in popular mixed residential-commercial neighborhoods on the north side of the city.