The A-Gays - Some take a different view of the Center on Halsted
The A-Gays - Some take a different view of the Center on Halsted
By Sukie de la Croix
Copyright by The Chicago Free Press
June 20, 2007
The state of Chicago’s GLBT community is encapsulated in the building at 3656 N. Halsted, a structure called the Center on Halsted whose purpose is as baffling to me as the monolith surrounded by excited apes in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” I’ve been trying to figure out what the Center on Halsted is for?
I’ve asked friends and nobody else seems to know either—the general consensus being “it’s a place for ‘other people’ to use, but not me.
Now that we’ve assimilated into the community at large—be careful what you wish for—the mere idea of a gay community center seems archaic and quaint. It smacks of 1970’s Gay Liberation: one imagines a smoky office with a battered typewriter and an open frayed copy of Troy Perry’s “The Lord is my Shepherd and He Knows I’m Gay,” a womyn-only space where feminists pass “the talking stick” and where hippie gay guys wander aimlessly around between touchy feely rap sessions.
One long time Chicago Gay activist told mew, “Of course, The Center was paid by the A-gays, though they won’t be using the place themselves.”
He’s right, of course those darned A-gays who attend annual AIDS benefits that most of us can’t afford to go to have orchestrated and built the Center on Halsted for reasons known only to themselves. Perhaps if the A-Gays had come down from their cave-dwellings along Lake Shore Drive and asked us street-level B to Z-Gays what we thought, we would have informed them that there is no gay community anymore—it disappeared with tubs of hair gel and Depeche Mode. Ironically, it was the A-Gays charging $300 to attend an AIDS benefit, cutting the rest of us off from the joy of donating money to charity, that put the last nail into the coffin of any sense of “community.”
I suspect that if there’s a controlled epicenter the great unwashed masses of B to Z-Gays will be easier to control and influence—they’ve thrown us a bone and we should be grateful. I can’t wait to see how that works for them.
The problem is that the A-Gays who built the Center on Halsted still have financial and political interest on Lakeview and the rest of us have been priced out and are living openly gay lives in other areas. We’ve moved on.
Even though I don’t know who or what the Center on Halsted is for, I do hope it works out for the people who created it. It must have taken a lot of work and hours—months even—of political ass licking to get it open. And if it flops, it doesn’t matter as we can all carve our names into the façade like the Vietnam War Memorial, lay flowers outsode every Proide Parade and collectively sing “Y. M. C. A.” just for old times sake.
By Sukie de la Croix
Copyright by The Chicago Free Press
June 20, 2007
The state of Chicago’s GLBT community is encapsulated in the building at 3656 N. Halsted, a structure called the Center on Halsted whose purpose is as baffling to me as the monolith surrounded by excited apes in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” I’ve been trying to figure out what the Center on Halsted is for?
I’ve asked friends and nobody else seems to know either—the general consensus being “it’s a place for ‘other people’ to use, but not me.
Now that we’ve assimilated into the community at large—be careful what you wish for—the mere idea of a gay community center seems archaic and quaint. It smacks of 1970’s Gay Liberation: one imagines a smoky office with a battered typewriter and an open frayed copy of Troy Perry’s “The Lord is my Shepherd and He Knows I’m Gay,” a womyn-only space where feminists pass “the talking stick” and where hippie gay guys wander aimlessly around between touchy feely rap sessions.
One long time Chicago Gay activist told mew, “Of course, The Center was paid by the A-gays, though they won’t be using the place themselves.”
He’s right, of course those darned A-gays who attend annual AIDS benefits that most of us can’t afford to go to have orchestrated and built the Center on Halsted for reasons known only to themselves. Perhaps if the A-Gays had come down from their cave-dwellings along Lake Shore Drive and asked us street-level B to Z-Gays what we thought, we would have informed them that there is no gay community anymore—it disappeared with tubs of hair gel and Depeche Mode. Ironically, it was the A-Gays charging $300 to attend an AIDS benefit, cutting the rest of us off from the joy of donating money to charity, that put the last nail into the coffin of any sense of “community.”
I suspect that if there’s a controlled epicenter the great unwashed masses of B to Z-Gays will be easier to control and influence—they’ve thrown us a bone and we should be grateful. I can’t wait to see how that works for them.
The problem is that the A-Gays who built the Center on Halsted still have financial and political interest on Lakeview and the rest of us have been priced out and are living openly gay lives in other areas. We’ve moved on.
Even though I don’t know who or what the Center on Halsted is for, I do hope it works out for the people who created it. It must have taken a lot of work and hours—months even—of political ass licking to get it open. And if it flops, it doesn’t matter as we can all carve our names into the façade like the Vietnam War Memorial, lay flowers outsode every Proide Parade and collectively sing “Y. M. C. A.” just for old times sake.
posted by Carlos T Mock @ 10:37 AM
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