#also been thinking about how Olli made two sets of stage clothes for the band and the visuals for the Nokia Arena andandand- 😭😭

[sparfloxacin]

I’ve been feeling so emotional the whole day 😔 last night was so good and I miss them so much already

[naraism]

Two concerts. First rows. An afterparty and a meet and greet.

Aka the two best days of my entire life. My hands are still shaking, so pls ignore typos.

Okay, so, Bára/ @followthecreeper , Lucy/ @beauty-at-matrix, our friend Terka and Anna/ @062467 (who joined us to the first rows) and I attended the two concerts in Prague. I’m gonna write down everything I can and the girls are encouraged to add just as much they can. ♡♡♡

The First Concert

The first day we got to the arena at 8am and our waiting began. We managed to be right behind a couple so we were among the first people there – the waiting was annoying but so much worth it. When the gates finally opened we sprinted down into the venue and managed to get a spot in the first row right in front of Paul. (We risked by going to a different entrance than we had on the tickets, thankfully, all went well.) Then came a couple of more hours of waiting and the duo Jatekok started to play. Not your usual choice of a support but I rather liked it. Also during the waiting one of the security guys came to us, asked us how are we doing and then he opened his hand and had a number of Richard’s pick in it. They were gone in a matter of seconds lol – Lucy managed to get one, I had one gripped but a dude was stronger than me. The last ten minutes were the longest minutes in my entire life – though what came after them was the most beautiful thing ever.

Rammstein started playing at 19:40 – Schneider’s intro really knocked the air out of you and as each member started to walk out onto the stage, the madness began. I wanted to cry when I finally saw them all right in front of me and when Paul walked to our side and IMMEDIATELY started looking into the audience, we lost our shit. @babypaulchen was right, the man keeps staring at you, keeps smiling at you and plays with you the entire time! We could see he really loved when we started to headbang and our hair went flying everywhere – I can remember how he was looking at me, smiling, and then he started to headbang too, encouraging us to be crazy.

I think that somewhere in the beginning of the concert Till came to our side and sung right in front of us. Then the motherfucker looked at me and mimicked at me that I should take my shirt off and show him my tits. I just raised the crop top so my bra was visible but that was not enough for him and he kept raising his hands up, so I would take the bra off too. With so many people around I was too shy to do that so I just laughed and shook my head, screaming NO! at him. He pretended to be offended, waved his hand in dismiss and returned to the center. Later in the song he came back and did the leg thingy where he threw his leg onto the railing and kept singing.

Paul kept running from one place to another, being the sweetheart that he is, he even climbed behind Schneider to play with him and then kissed his forehead. My heart melted. And every time he was on his side he kept looking down, seeing us party down there and laughing so much. I never really could hold his gaze longer than for a couple of seconds, It just felt like you’re suddenly the only person it there. He also went down to the fence and signed a couple of things, then he touched our hands as he walked by. The same thing went with Till when he was kicked down during Mein Teil and he walked by us in all his butcher glory.

During Links one of the main security guys was walking down the row, stopped right in front of me and just offered me the Afterparty bracelet. I couldn’t believe my eyes as he strapped the band around my hand and told me where to go after the concert. Fucking speechless. He then continued into the middle, picking up some other random people as well. I also saw Joe so I waved at him, hen noticed me and winked back lol.

During the concert you could really see how much fun the guys were having, laughing all the time, goofing around, running around and enjoying the energy coming from the audience. The entire stadium flawlessly sung Du hast and Sonne, it really chilled us to the bones, hearing so many people sing in unison. And the same thing can be said about Engel – while the guys were moving to the B stage, the camera was pointed at the audience and guess who had her face shown to the entire arena – I diiiiiiid. They took shots of all different people and before you knew it, the sign to use your phone’s light appeared and everyone was singing their heart out. Really magical. The guys then returned on their boats and our partying with Paul continued. We were doing the fucking Macarena in front of Paul, making him laugh.

Also holy shit I think it was during Du hast Paul stood in front of us, hand nothing to do so he started FLOSSING. You know, that weird-ass dance. Or rather attempted it and then frowned, waved his hand in dismiss and then continued to dance his own little dances.

Rammstein and Ich Will took our breaths away, especially when Till spoke in Czech – ruce nahoru! – and the arena went nuts. A beautiful ending, Till once again used his Czech, charmed us with his thank yous and the guys disappeared into the tower. Also, I almost caught Schneider’s stick, he noticed my screaming and jumping and threw it my way, but a dude next to me had longer hands. Oh well. That was not the end of the day for me. I once again asked one of the security guys where to go, said goodbyes to the girls and went my own way to the Afterparty.

The Afterparty

There was quite a number of us people and even before the stadium emptied, we were ushered into a room with red lights, a bar, a DJ set and couches and chairs by the walls. I was feeling kinda weird as I didn’t know anybody in there so I just shuffled to the first group that was speaking Czech. Luckily, I befriended a girl, Camie, who was also in the Afterparty for the first time and as I found out, loves Paul just as much I do. We got some mojitos, the barman was happy to hear Czech lol, and we kinda stood there together talking about the concert – in like half an hour Paul was the first one to come out of doors that were curtained and lead to their dressing rooms. It was discouraged to follow them around, you were supposed to enjoy the free booze, the music and if you were lucky enough, one of the guys would start to chat with you. So Paul moved from one place to another, greeting people and talking to them. Then came Schneider and spend some time talking by the dressing room doors, talking to one of the girls I chatted with too.

LOL

While that happened we saw Flake emerge together with Ollie and holy shit, even when they’re both really tall, it’s so easy to overlook them. I think that Ollie immediately went back to the hotel while Flake hanged around for a bit and then also kinda disappeared. We were both freaking out, because holy shit, they’re suddenly so freaking close asjdhhkjasbdkjsad. Till then walked out as well and together with his body guard made a beeline to the exit. He looked like a fucking mob boss, in a dress shirt, suit and a cap. I think he had kinda different plans, as I saw somewhere a pic with him and couple of girls, that were supposedly pole dancers. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

And then the diva walked out. Richard was basically wearing the same clothes he was wearing during the Berlin aftershow, where he was dancing with Khira. He got immediately swarmed by girls, either asking for a signature or for a hug (pics weren’t allowed). We used the situation as well and joined the group, waiting for our turn. Richard was so kind, he was smiling the entire time, laughing, and generally being really friendly. When I asked him for a hug he was like “Sure! :D” and laughed and his hug was so warm and my heart melted. He was also so much smaller than I expected. It might have been also because I was still wearing my steel boots while he had his worn out pair of converse shoes lol. Nonetheless, he was really charming and welcoming.

We then moved in front of the DJ set, with new drinks and danced for a bit – Joe was mixing the songs and it was all really good, he played anything from Depeche Mode and Joan Jett to Billie Eilish and Britney Spears. (I wanted to make a short vid of us dancing later but Joe immediately told me not to do that and wanted me to delete the vid lmao, which I did. I just found it hilarious that we were dancing to Dschinghis Khan’s Moskau jsahajsfka).

We then took a break for a while and discovered that Paul was just next to us, talking to some people. We joined the circle and me and Camie took a vid of us hugging Paul. I talked to him for a bit, thanked him for the show, telling him how much I enjoyed it and that it couldn’t have been better. He smiled that adorable smile of his and offered me his hand so I took it and before I knew what’s going on he raised it and kissed it. Then he hugged me and thanked me as well. He is also so so tiny ksjaflshfkskfa. And because Paul’s attention span is non-existent, he was already turning to other people to talk to them. We were both freaking out, Camie shook me by my shoulders in joy, not realizing she was pushing me accidentally into Schneider’s back. We then went for more drinks, the poor barman was almost out of alcohol, so he tried to mix up anything drinkable lol.

(we weren’t allowed to take any pics but Camie managed to make a sneaky video, bless her - PLS DO NOT STEAL THE GIF, DO NOT REPOST IT)

We talked for a bit, saw Richard hanging by the doors into the arena – if someone wanted to smoke they had to go out, it made sense he’s going to be there. I told Camie that I’d like to talk to him but before I could come with anything sensible she was already pushing me towards him. We stopped by him and I just started to babble about how I like his work, that especially the last Emigrate album was great. He put his hand onto his heart and kept thanking me, doing these tiny bows and looking absolutely adorable/hot. I also mentioned that Brig was at the 1,2,3,4 video shoot and that it was really great and he just kept smiling, thanking and being happy in general. Then other people came to talk to him so we left them alone, going to relax a bit.

We could see that only Paul and Richard remained, although more and more people were dancing. We joined them and danced our hearts out, loving every song that Joe played. Not soon after Paul got up from the couches and joined the dancing group, dancing there with us. It was so surreal – he was dancing right next to me, being his little energetic self and also trying not to spill his wine. We kept dancing there for some time and Paul then slowly moved through the groups, dancing around till we lost sight of him.

I had to check if there were any trams going back to my flat as it was already after midnight. We danced for a bit longer but some drunk guy was trying to get our numbers and kept inviting us to him so we tried to distance ourselves. We also discovered that Paul had already left as there were not so many people – there could have been like 70(?) of us, now probably not even half. Richard was still there, though he was again talking to some girls. I was already getting tired and didn’t want to wait for another hour for the trams so in a hurry I said goodbye to Camie, looked around for the last time and left the afterparty. And because I was an idiot (and drunk) I fucked up my night trams and in the middle of nowhere, with dead phone I had to go to the nearest opened pub and asked for a taxi. I returned home around 2am and barely had any strength left.

The Second Concert and the Meet and Greet

Since I had the meet and greet event I did not have to wake up early – Bára left in the morning to wait with the rest of the girls again for the first row and I had a chance to sleep in till 4pm and get rid of the hangover. I asked the girls to write down everything that happened in the first row again, because apparently, it was wilder than the first time – just seeing Bára “pick her nose” in the gigantic screen while Lucy was facepalming made me laugh so hard. They returned with with drumsticks and a pink hat signed by Paul. And supposedly simulated sex with glow sticks during Pussy, making Paul lose his shit.

The Meet And Greet

(I will upload my pics on a separate post :) )

For a month or so I was in a group chat with the other people that were also attending the M&G and we agreed to meet a bit earlier to finally meet each other. I wanted to stop at the merch-truck but the queue was so fucking long I left it be (I just hope they’ll put the shirts into the rammshop like they did last time). We all met, chatted for a bit – there were people from all over Europe – from Germany, Poland, Sweden, Holland, Italy, Russia – I was actually the only Czech there lol.

We were picked up around 18:50 by the guy who was responsible for us, he checked our IDs and then took us through the VIP zone down the stairs to the same room where the afterparty was the day before. We had to wait for a bit as there were some other guest meeting the guys who were then escorted up the stairs. Thee guys apparently received Gold for the 7th album. Also one of the guys that was taking care of us told us that one of the grannies living nearby the arena called the fire department, thinking it was on fire lmao.

Anyway, after like ten minutes, we were let in and stood in a row against the wall where a couple of hours before I was dancing my head off. There was a woman that was telling us how it’s all going to happen, that the members will have pens, will sign one item and can take a pic. She couldn’t even finish her sentence and Richard already walked in, in his full stage outfit, took some pens from her and moved to one side of the line. She said something like “Ah, here is the first one.” And Richard, nonchalantly replied “I’m always the first one.” while beginning to sign stuff. What an experience. It got a bit chaotic then because the rest of the guys suddenly appeared too and stared signing stuff from the other side.

Before Richard could get to me, Oliver singed all of our stuff and apologized that he’s not taking any pics today as he is in hurry. I did not understand at first but then I realized he was the only one who was not in a stage outfit and they were supposed to play in like a half an hour. Then came Richard, now much taller with his boots and signed my album. Joe was again with him and because I did not really want to have selfies with the guys I asked him to take the pic. He did, just as he did it to other people as well.

Then came Flake in his glorious golden outfit, smiling and being friendly. A girl on my left complimented his outfit, pointing to her silver top, telling he inspired her. It was so cute seeing him thanking her and complimenting her outfit just as well. I greeted him, thanked him for the show, took a picture with and wanted to also thank him for all the books he wrote, though there was already a queue forming – Schneider was right behind him, so he had to move forward.

Let me tell you, Schneider is such a sweetheart. While he was getting ready to sing my stuff I told him how I started drumming because of him and how it helped me to deal with stuff and he immediately started grinning and going “Aawww, thank you so much, that is wonderful!” and was smiling like an idiot, just as me. There was nobody free to take a picture so with him I took a selfie – even when I tried to stay cool my hands were shaking a bit and he was patient enough to take a proper pic. Than he thanked me once again and moved forward.

PAUL. Paul, baby, I love you so much. Again a very cheery Hi! And that wonderful smile of his. When he was about to sign the album I asked him if he could draw that smiley face he does and he laughed and said “Sure!” and drew the prettiest self-portrait ever. It was so surreal to watch him draw it, focusing hard on it to make it perfect. He did a couple of re-touches until he was satisfied with it and then proudly smiled as he observed his creation. I asked the girl next to me for a pic. Her hands were shaking quite a bit so when she took the pictures, Paul was concerned with the results. “Are the pictures okay?” He asked as he looked down into my phone. “Are they blurry?” So we checked them together and they were fine; again, he was so happy with the result. Meanwhile Till was going from the other side of the line so Paul was stuck next to me so he turned to me and smiled – he pointed to my red crop top and told me: “Oh, we match!” he had the red beanie and red boots on and in that second I died inside. “We both have red!” he said happily and then slowly moved to the girl next to me. The last thing he did was that he looked at me and asked “Alles okay?” I just managed to laugh and told him that “Ja, just perfect.”

He then spent some time with the girl next to me, looking at the pictures she had brought for signing – he was amazed by the quality and took his time looking over them, looking at each individually. He even called Till over to look at them. That’s where I internally cried as my almost non-existent German did not help me. What I could understand was that Till looked at it, telling him that those were pictures from Instagram. Paul asked him where from and they both started discussing the pics and Instagram. It was adorable – Paul was in awe while Till just shrugged and continued signing, taking pictures. Paul signed the main picture she had and then she quickly showed Paul a picture of him, where he was striking a pose with his guitar leaning back. He was overjoyed and immediately copied the pose, leaning back, doing the same pose. He then laughed and signed some pictures and moved on.

Till was the last one to come, he quickly signed my stuff and I let the guy next to me take the picture. I can’t describe the feeling when he put his gigantic paw around me – he really is a bear turned into a human. I also loved how nonchalant he was about the whole M&G. He then moved to the guy next to me and signed his stuff and I was supposed to take the pic. Except I put my phone down onto the ground next to my things and expected him to hand me his phone. “No, take it with yours, it’s better!” so I bent down for it and heard Till laugh and say “Too late!” and moved to the next person. He was of course just joking and when I was ready with the phone he returned and I took the picture.

In another minute or two it was all over, Schneider and Paul told us to enjoy the show, smiled and then again disappeared into the dressing rooms. Us people with the standing tickets were escorted out into the arena and I had a pleasant surprise – on the other side of the doors stood Ulrike, in her beautiful black dress. Holy shit she’s really tall. I wanted to compliment her dress though she was busy herding their sons, it was hilarious. We passed, let her inside and went to find a good spot.

The Second Concert

I stayed with the guy who was next to me during the M&G, nicknamed Probo, who was from Italy. He told me he managed to not spoil himself the concert so it was really precious watching his reactions. We stayed near the B stage, meaning we had a beautiful view of the entire stage and the fire show. It was also nice to see the guys singing Engel and encouraging the crowd to sing as well. Especially Paul did jsahjsfkuftjhchd. Then we had a wonderful view of the guys on the boats – Schneider and Paul tried to stand up but fell down to their knees in a moment while laughing like maniacs. We enjoyed the rest of the show, danced and sung with the crowd. Last nice surprise was that People sang Sonne while the piano version was in the background as the guys kneeled.

Oh and when there was the camera from the backstage, filming the guys as they’re getting into the elevator, there was nobody to give Richard a cigarette, so he just stood in front of the camera, opened his mouth and kept pointing his finger into it till somebody finally came to him and put the cigarette right into his mouth. That was really… something.

Anyways, this is all from me and I hope @followthecreeper, @beauty-at-matrix, and @062467 will add their stories from the first row.

Best two days of my entire life. ♡♡♡

[weekegg2-blog]

A ‘freaking fag revolutionary’ remembers the early years of gay liberation in Chicago

When the annual Pride Parade steps off from the intersection of Broadway and Montrose at noon on Sunday, June 30—with Lori Lightfoot, Chicago's first openly gay mayor, serving as honorary grand marshal—it will represent a very different mind-set from the event that launched the pride parade tradition. This year's parade is expected to draw more than a million participants and onlookers to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion of June 28 and 29, 1969. Thus the theme Stonewall 50: Millions of Moments of Pride.

I was a teenaged member of Chicago Gay Liberation, the loose-knit, short-lived group that organized the first pride parade on Saturday, June 27, 1970. Most of our group thought of ourselves, proudly if irreverently, as members of the "freaking fag revolution"—to borrow the phrase used by Thomas Aquinas Foran, the U.S. attorney who had prosecuted the so-called "Chicago Seven" anti-war activists charged with conspiracy and incitement to riot as a result of their protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

The first parade wasn't even a parade. It was a march, which meant we were allowed to walk on the sidewalks but not in the streets. There were no floats, no cars, no politicians, no crowds, no corporate sponsors pitching their brands to onlookers. The last thing on our minds was the possibility of any mayor, let alone an openly gay one, leading the way; we were happy the city's then-mayor, "Boss" Richard J. Daley, didn't set his cops on us.

The day began at noon with a rally in Washington Square Park across the street from the Newberry Library—known as "Bughouse Square" because of its storied history as a free-speech forum. From there we walked to the historic Water Tower at the intersection of Michigan and Chicago Avenues. Then, instead of dispersing as we had originally planned, we impulsively headed south on Michigan into the Loop, chanting "Out of the closets and into the streets!" as we wended our way through throngs of Mag Mile shoppers. The march ended with another rally in Civic Center Plaza (now Daley Plaza), where the event culminated in a joyous circle dance around the Picasso statue.

Between 150 and 300 people (depending on which account you read) showed up to celebrate what our flyer promoting the event declared (in all capital letters) was: "THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF GAY PEOPLE TELLING THE WARPED, SICK, MALADJUSTED, PURITAN AMERIKAN SOCIETY THAT THEY HAVE HAD ENOUGH SHIT."

That flyer is on display as part of "Out of the Closets & Into the Streets: Power, Pride & Resistance in Chicago's Gay Liberation Movement," a new exhibit at Gerber/Hart Library and Archives, the midwest's largest LGBTQ library and research center. Conceived by the library's director, Wil Brant, and curated by a team of young volunteers including professional librarians Chase Ollis and James Conley and designer Kurt Conley, the display is drawn from Gerber/Hart's extensive archival collection.

The march marked the first anniversary of a riot in New York City on June 28, 1969, when patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a gay nightclub in Greenwich Village owned by the Genovese crime family, reacted violently to what had begun as a routine police raid. That event, and the events leading up to and following it, are well covered in a new book, The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History by Marc Stein (NYU Press).

But that first Stonewall anniversary march wasn't the first activity of Chicago Gay Liberation, which started up in fall 1970 after University of Chicago grad student Henry Wiemhoff placed an ad in the Chicago Maroon student newspaper seeking a gay roommate. Not only did he get a roommate—a female taxicab driver named Michal Brody—he got a discussion group. We met in Wiemhoff and Brody's Hyde Park apartment and then, as our numbers grew, began to gather at the Blue Gargoyle, a community center and coffeehouse in the multicultural, nondenominational University Church on the University of Chicago campus.

Talking soon led to action. The first public Gay Lib event I participated in was a protest four months before the Stonewall march, on the snowy afternoon of Wednesday, February 25, 1970, outside the Loop headquarters of the Women's Bar Association of Illinois. The group was hosting a program on "Youthful Offenders" with a Chicago police officer, Sergeant John Manley, as guest speaker. But for us, the offender was Manley himself. The blond, muscular cop was notorious for entrapping gay men in Lincoln Park restrooms; wearing street clothes, he would pretend to solicit guys for sex and then arrest them if they responded to his invitation. Mattachine Midwest, an established "homophile" organization in town, published Manley's picture in its mimeographed monthly newsletter and mockingly suggested Manley himself was a closet case: "If I were gay and I didn't want anybody to know, and I felt very, very guilty, I think I might get a job where I could cruise in the public interest," wrote David Stienecker, the newsletter's editor. On February 7, 1970, Manley made an early morning appearance at Stienecker's third-floor apartment to arrest him for criminal defamation.

"After I unsuccessfully attempted to make a phone call, Manley called for a police van and I was escorted from my apartment in handcuffs," Stienecker now recalls. "Upon arriving at the precinct house, Manley suggested that if I just pleaded guilty the judge would only give me a slap on the wrist." But Stienecker, represented by the diligent and fierce lesbian attorney Renee Hanover, fought the charges. After several court appearances, most of which Manley missed, the case was thrown out of court, but Stienecker lost his job as an editor at World Book Encyclopedia due to the ensuing publicity—there then being no legal protection against employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Manley later rose to the rank of captain in the police force, but his career crashed and burned in the mid-1990s when he was fired for sexually harassing female officers under his supervision. Some 20 years later, his name popped up in the news again when he was ticketed for, of all things, impersonating a government official after he posed as a U.S. Maritime Service "special agent" to avoid a parking ticket. Stienecker, who went on to a successful career writing educational books for children, is credited as a program supporter of Gerber/Hart's "Out of the Closets" exhibit.

In March 1970, we responded to the release of The Boys in the Band, the film version of the 1968 off-Broadway stage hit. Our aim was not to boycott the movie—which used waspish humor to illustrate the pathological, self-hating behavior of a group of gay New York men—but to use it as a teaching opportunity. We handed out flyers on the street outside the Carnegie Theatre on Rush Street (where Gibsons Bar & Steakhouse is now), which read in part: "The pain and cruelty typified by The Boys in the Band should be understood as the expression of human lives damaged by an environment of condemnation, suspicion, job discrimination, and legal harrassment [sic]."

Gay Liberation also organized dances, which drew large crowds from around the city. Though same-sex dancing wasn't illegal, it was forbidden in the mob-owned gay bars in Boss Daley's Chicago, where periodic police raids were a given. The first two Gay Lib dances were held in the protected environs of the University of Chicago campus. (It inspired other LGBTQ student groups to hold their own dances at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle—now UIC—and Northwestern University. At the latter, music was provided by the Siegel-Schwall Band, then one of Chicago's hottest blues-rock bands. )

When the U. of C. demanded that CGL move its dances off campus because the crowds were getting too big, we booked the Coliseum, located on South Wabash between 14th and 16th Streets, a huge venue that had hosted several Republican presidential conventions, sports events, rock concerts, and, a few weeks previously, a congress of Black Muslims. As historian Timothy Stewart-Winter, author of Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press), recounts in a Slate article titled "Beyond Stonewall: How Gay History Looks Different From Chicago":

"[T]here was a problem: The venue required an insurance policy, and every insurance agent the organizers approached said the risk was too great that the police would raid the dance, cart the attendees off to jail, and levy fines. Only on the day before the dance did the activists find a broker who'd sell them a policy—a black man whose company had insured the Nation of Islam's annual convention at the same venue."

About 2,000 people showed up at the Coliseum to dance for liberation on April 18, 1970. So did the police. But when the cops entered the hall and came face to face with a phalanx of attorneys—including the formidable Renee Hanover—primed to document any civil liberties violations, they shrugged and went away.

The Gerber/Hart exhibit includes copies of the mimeographed newsletters that Gay Lib used to spread its message in those long-ago pre-Internet days. Also on display is a copy of the Chicago Seed, the city's hippie/radical underground paper, which published an eight-page Gay Liberation supplement in one issue. There's also a well-deserved tribute to the late Frank Robinson, who gave Chicago's LGBTQ community the first professional- quality publications we could call our own. Robinson was a closeted middle-aged editor for Playboy magazine; unable to come out for our demonstrations, he devoted himself to behind-the-scenes messaging. After publishing a one time "Gay Pride" paper to promote the 1971 Pride Parade (which by then had been relocated to the Lincoln Park/Lakeview area on the north side), Robinson put out two editions of The Paper, a 1972 tabloid that covered local LGBTQ arts and politics. The Paper ran interviews with local counterculture celebrities such as painter Ed Paschke, lesbian singer-songwriter Linda Shear, female impersonators Roby Landers and Wanda Lust, and stage director Gary Tucker, aka "Eleven," whose gender-bending Godzilla Rainbow Troupe was then running its hit production of Charles Ludlam and Bill Vehr's outrageous Turds in Hell. A copy of The Paper on display at Gerber/Hart shows a photo from another landmark of Chicago's fledgling off-Loop theater movement, the Organic Theater's sci-fi epic Warp!, featuring André De Shields (who just won a Tony for his performance in the Broadway hit Hadestown) as Xander the Unconquerable. In 1973, Robinson had relocated to San Francisco, where he became the speechwriter for a camera store owner and activist with aspirations to a political career—Harvey Milk. But by then the city had its first (more or less) regularly published newspaper, the Chicago Gay Crusader, edited by activist Michael Bergeron with copy editing supervision by his lover Bill Kelley.

The success of the June 1970 Stonewall anniversary march (no one got arrested!) encouraged members of Gay Liberation to start developing a larger agenda. Inevitably, there were conflicts. Some wanted to merge Gay Lib into a broader leftist coalition; others preferred to keep the focus on LGBTQ issues. GL's women's and Black caucuses went off in their own directions; the Black caucus turned into Third World Gay Revolutionaries, led by Ortez Alderson, who went to prison for destroying draft records in downstate Pontiac. And in September 1970, as reported in a CGL newsletter displayed in the Gerber/Hart exhibit, "Tensions that had been brewing for some weeks finally came to a head . . . with the result that the group suffered a schism and a large number of members announced they were forming a new group—not a new caucus—to be called 'The Chicago Gay Alliance.' . . . Though there . . . were moments of acrimony, the parting was amicable. . . . All present expressed a desire to avoid the infighting of competitive groups in other cities"—a reference to the internecine turf wars that tore at the fabric of New York's gay community around the same time.

The debut issue of the CGA newsletter in November 1970 explained: "The Chicago Gay Alliance is actively interested in alleviating the ghetto (whether spiritual or physical) conditions of homosexuals, in dispelling the psychological and sociological mythology that has grown up about the subject of homosexuality, in providing referral services to homosexuals, in helping homosexuals 'coming out' develop a sense of pride in who they are and courage in facing the generally hostile outside world, to provide additional social outlets so that homosexuals can meet each other as human beings, to change repressive laws and end police and political harassment, and to improve communications between the homosexual and the heterosexual communities."

In 1971 CGA gave Chicago its first LGBTQ community center, a ramshackle red-brick two-story rented house on an Old Town side street at 171 W. Elm. By 1973 the center had closed for lack of financial support, and CGA ceased operations. But the activism continued. A July 1973 issue of the Chicago Gay Crusader reported that 20th Ward alderman Cliff Kelley, working with a group called Illinois Gays for Legislative Action, had introduced legislation in the Chicago City Council to prohibit discrimination in jobs, housing, and public accommodations based on sexual orientation. It took 15 years for the City Council to finally vote an LGBTQ-inclusive Chicago Human Rights Ordinance into law on December 21, 1988.

The Old Town community center paved the way for today's gleaming Center on Halsted. The Gay Crusader was succeeded by the weekly newspaper GayLife, founded in 1975 by the late Grant Ford, and then by Windy City Times, cofounded in 1985 by Tracy Baim, now publisher of the Reader, and still publishing in print and online 34 years later. (I served as editor of both GayLife and WCT in the '80s.)

The Gerber/Hart exhibit's narrative arc climaxes with a major event from 1977, chronicled in an issue of GayLife on display. On June 14 of that year, singer, orange-juice industry spokeswoman, and former Miss America Anita Bryant arrived in Chicago for a concert at the historic Medinah Temple at Wabash and Ohio (it's now a Bloomingdale's home furniture store). The concert had been booked before Bryant achieved national notoriety as leader of an anti-LGBTQ initiative in Dade County, Florida. LGBTQ activists, including me, picketed the Bryant concert in Chicago, despite being cautioned by gay establishment leaders that our action would be an embarrassing failure. By then, it was thought, the activist energy of the early 1970s had waned, and the only time queers turned out en masse was for the Pride Parade. But a spontaneous, unexpected turnout of 3,000 to 5,000 (depending on whom you ask) proved the naysayers wrong.

Chicago Gay Liberation, the Chicago Gay Alliance, and the other groups that sprang up in the wake of Stonewall ran out of steam by the end of the decade, but the sense of empowerment they gave the community—and the lessons we learned from their successes and setbacks—guided us into the 1980s, when the AIDS epidemic and the struggle for civil rights at the city, county, and state level drove a new activist spirit. "The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long," notes Gerber/Hart's James Conley. "As transformative as those groups were, they were temporary. But the impact they had in their short span of existence was monumental and lasting."   v

Special thanks to Amber Lewis at Columbia College Chicago

Correction: This article has been revised to reflect that the Siegel-Schwall Band played at a dance held on the campus of Northwestern University, not that of the University of Chicago.

Source: https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/gerber-hart-gay-pride-history/Content?oid=70924510