Archive for August 22nd, 2010
A Bachelor Party in Boystown?
We’ve written before about the issues some people in Boystown have with bachelorette parties hitting the bars on the strip. There are a few camps on this issue, with most people generally falling into a category that doesn’t particularly like these girls coming to gay bars to have their parties, but understanding that they do spend SOME money in the bars, and that’s a great thing in the Obama Economy (where we are all STILL waiting for that hope and spare change we were promised).
Some guys actively hate the bachelorettes and want them banned, because in many cases these girls seem to be more trouble than they are worth. They come into a bar, scream and shout, are loud the entire time they are in there, and leave after having one round of shots and taking as many pictures as they can of the guys in the bar. This makes a lot of gay guys feel like they are animals in a zoo being gawked at – so much so that bars like Cocktail, Charlie’s, and others have a no-bachelorettes policy because of this.
Personally, we like seeing 90% of these girls out and about. It’s very rare for us to encounter the obnoxious, stomach-turning, point-and-gawk suburbanites who prompted the negative reaction against these parties. Usually, the girls who come to Boystown for their bachelorette party are either mousy, had-no-better-idea girls with friends or cousins who hang around with a lot of gay dudes (what we call a fairy’s princess, but some of you might still refer to in the pejorative as a “fag hag”) or they’re cool girls, elegant, with a sense of humor who are out for a Sex and the City sort of night and they’ve made Boystown one of their stops — a highlight — but not the be-all, end-all of the adventure.
That last batch of girls can be amazing, actually, especially when they dress up. Either dress to the nines and look better styled than girls off a magazine shoot, or dress up ridiculously, like as variations of Lady Gaga or where they each dress like a different 80s singer and go out for a theme night. Love. Those. Girls. They are a lot of fun, and never make anyone in the bar feel awkward, and never scream and shout and annoy other patrons.
Now, none of these women tip well. Ever. So it is a pain for the bartenders…or, worse, the strippers, in Boystown. As we’ve talked about before, the standard tip in bar is a dollar a drink. Anything less than that and you shouldn’t be going out. Save your money until you can afford to show courtesy, because the bartenders work really hard. It’s not an easy job. Trust us on that. Bachelorette parties tend to be incredibly high maintenance, time-consuming, and attention-demanding…but with no compensatory tip at the end to make it a bartender’s worthwhile. Worse, the girls at a bar will drive other paying customers a way, so not only are they not taking care of their bartender, but they are costing him business just by being there, since older gay men in particular don’t want to be around the bachelorette parties. And, of course, the older guys are the ones who actually tip…a lot…so it’s a multiple-whammy for the staff when these girls hold court in a bar on a Friday or Saturday night (AKA, the nights service industry employees make all their money for the week).
Strippers get hosed by bachelorette parties because they expect all these guys to be Chippendales’ dancers, and to do acrobatic tricks on the stage, and to dote on them, when that’s not what happens in a gay bar. Guys, especially older ones, will tip a male go-go dancer well for just standing there in his underwear. He doesn’t have to move at all and he’ll make $25 in fifteen minutes up there on the stage. If he knows a few moves and can keep time to the music and work the crowd, he’ll do much better. But, he doesn’t have to break a sweat to get tipped well by guys. Women expect him to be what they’ve seen on TV, but they won’t reward him for the effort. While guys will slip him fives (or even tens, for some of the grandpas who are making up for all the years they lost playing it straight), women will begrudgingly give him a single or two, screaming and yelling the whole time, and once again chasing away the actual, paying customers. Guys also buy the strippers drinks, which they like, because contrary to popular belief the bars don’t supply drinks for free. Women in gay bars just don’t take care of the staff, but expect the staff to cater to them, to the detriment of actual, paying, gay, male customers. Which the bars were opened to cater to.
So, that’s part of the backstory with why bachelorette parties aren’t especially loved here in Boystown. Some people will tell you that there’s a big political unspoken issue regarding gay marriage in this too, but that’s nonsense. It’s all about money, folks. The women in gay bars don’t tip well, they don’t treat the staffs of other patrons well (in general), and they drive business away. No one is jealous these women are getting married. None of us want to be in their weddings. None of us wish we could have a “bachelorette party” too. Because, frankly, we can have any sort of party we want, any day of the week, and it’s guaranteed to be fabulous. There’s a better chance than not that Cyndi Lauper or Liza Minnelli would stop by, or even perform, and the whole thing would be like an elaborate photo shoot for Vogue. No one is stopping any gay from having a party and calling it whatever he wants. And no one is stopping any of us from getting “married” either — because we know of about five “married” gay male couples who had a commitment ceremony, and a big party, and did gay “bachelor” parties too. A good lawyer, the right paperwork, and legally binding contractual agreements can give two guys (or two women) the same legal rights that Britney Spears had with that guy she was married to for about fifteen hours. It might take more work, and more creativity on the part of a good lawyer, but if a gay can dream it in this world, he can use some of his magic to make it happen.
There just needs to be another word invented for it than “marriage”, because we think that word should be reserved for people who had a religious ceremony. Everyone should have to go to city hall and file paperwork for a civil union…and then people who belong to churches or temples or whatever can get “married” in a sacramental ceremony of their choosing. Just as we all get birth certificates, but the religious then get baptized afterwards. The state does not baptize, and the state should not marry. It should only join in legal unions…of which any two consenting adults of legal age should be able to enter into together.
“Partnership” is not a good word, because it’s already taken by lawyers and others in business relationships. “Spousehood” is something we’ve tried to use, but it’s so awkward. One day, it will hit us like lightning what a word for two guys together, legally joined would be…and what a corresponding word for two lesbians would be. Then, there would be correct verbiage for all possible variations on the them: marriage, for straight people who had a religious ceremony…domestic partnership for straight people who are joined by the state but who did not have a religious ceremony…”X” for two men joined by the state…and “Y” for two lesbians joined by the state. Maybe two more options would be created for two men and two women who go on to have some sort of religious ceremony of their own in the future, after the state joining. You could spend all day obsessing over verbiage and semantics like this, and it’s honestly too gorgeous of an end of summer day to do that.
But, we did want to note that something happened last night at Roscoe’s here in Boystown that actually made us feel that angst, frustration, and insult that we’ve always heard some people felt towards those bachelorette girls, but which we’ve never personally felt on our own.
And it took a bachelor party hitting Boystown to make us feel this way.
“Bachelor Party” in the traditional sense, with an obnoxious frat boy, man-child, straight guy and his buddies who decided to come to Boystown to “see the fags” and raise a little Hell in an environment in which they thought they’d get the better of everyone.
They appeared right around the same time as a large trolley full of drunken bachelorette girls rolled down Halsted, making a brief stop in front of Cocktail so the girls could flash their breasts at the windows and generally establish how drunk they were. When no one paid them a bit of attention, or indulged whatever exhibitionistic fetishes they were trying to work out, the disappointed bride-to-be and her entourage pulled away, no doubt heading for Wrigleyville where they could flash away and get all sorts of freebies all night as a result. This is, quite frankly, where these sorts of antics belong…on Chicago’s version of Bourbon Street, just a block west of Boystown.
We never saw the bachelor party enter, so they must have done so during the trolley’s commotion, but we couldn’t miss them once they were inside. The bachelor was late-20s, and the sort of guy we imagine works as a day trader or something else professional and testosterone-fueled downtown. He wore a neon-colored shirt somewhere north of chartreuse, emblazoned with RIP 10/01/10 on his back…the date we presume he’s either to be married, or executed (or, a little of both, depending on your position on marriage). He’s the sort of guy who has to announce his presence in every room he enters so even the blind and deaf person in the back corner knows he’s there. We can’t imagine he’s much different starting work every morning, because guys like this only allow alcohol to amplify who they typically are…but no amount of booze can really turn a naturally nice, decent guy into a jackass. He has to be a jackass to start with, but one who keeps it under control most days.
The bachelor’s buddies were all tools — late-20s as well, and probably a mix of some guys he went to college with (frat buddies, most likely) and guys from the office. Absolutely all of them were as straight as straight could be, and were dressed hideously in mismatched checks and stripes, like they’d been shopping with Michelle Obama at the Men’s Wearhouse or J.C. Penny’s. They had a white sheet of paper with them that was some sort of scavenger hunt checklist, and they drafted a girl who looked like Jersey Shore’s Snookie to help them fill in a few of the spaces. It was a photo scavenger hunt, so they had to take pictures of the bachelor doing various things…like walking a stranger’s dog, talking to a cop, kissing a fat girl, etc.
And, yes, they actually did go up to a large woman in Roscoe’s and asked to take their picture with her. About the only thing we’ll give these guys points for was the fact they were dead honest about everything they were doing: they were upfront with the girl and told her they needed a pic with a “fat chick” and they accurately surmised this particular girl would have no problem with the label. She thought it was a blast, in fact, and took the pic with no problem. Everyone in the bachelor party laughed, and the “fat chick” laughed with them, but the rest of the people in the bar got more and more uncomfortable the longer these clowns were in there.
For the first time, we understood what those people were talking about when they said they felt the bachelorette parties made them uncomfortable, as if the girls were visiting the zoo.
We saw the bachelor and his friends looking down their lists, then scoping the bar to see if there were any other potential scavenger items to snap off. They must have had a cigar store Indian on the list, because they took a picture of themselves with one that’s positioned prominently in Roscoe’s front window (with Roscoe’s essentially being a cross between a TGI Friday’s and your grandmother’s attic in terms of decor). Maybe that’s what drew them into the bar in the first place (though Blue Havana, an actual smoke shop, is just a few streets away, and it has SEVERAL of these Indians they could have photographed themselves with).
The bachelor kept going in and out of the bar to puff on a big, fat cigar, while his friends nervously followed him in and out. The bachelor was being overly gregarious, talking to everyone who was walking by, though few of them wanted to talk to him. He made a big show about how much he didn’t have a problem with being in Boystown, showing how straight he was by how loud and boisterous he was being, but how open-minded he was that he was there on his bachelor party night.
The whole thing was weird, really.
Security kept watching the group like hawks, to see if they said or did anything that would warrant booting them. They didn’t buy any drinks, and were just milling around, looking at items for their list, when finally Sebastian said he’d had enough of this and was going over to end it.
So, he took off his shirt, and strode over to the bachelor on his last trip back inside. Bast, shirtless, then proceeded to flirt with the guy and test how much he could take. Remember, the guy was making a big show of how cool he was with being a bachelor in Boystown, and how gregarious and cool of a guy he was in general, and Bast maneuvered this against him.
It lasted about a minute, where Bast asked him if he was marrying a guy or a girl, and when the bachelor said, “Uh, duh, a girl” Bast asked him “Well, what are you doing here, stud?”. “Because if you’re spending your bachelor party here, chief, maybe your fiancee needs to know a thing or two about you before the wedding night”.
The bachelor had to laugh, that strained, nervous sort of laugh straight guys use when they are embarrassed…and he waited until the next song started playing before he decided he wanted to leave, so it didn’t look like he was being run out of there, but that pretty much did it.
He and his buddies poured out of the bar, and high-tailed it to the cars they had parked in the 711 lot across the street. They headed north, to points unknown, but for all we know they could have been going to Crew, Wild Pug, Jackhammer’s, Touche, or even Man’s Country (a favorite of at least two married men who currently work in the White House).
If a bachelor party starts off in Boystown at Roscoe’s, there’s no limit to the amount of gay bars it could end up.
The whole thing was just bizarre. And a very effective deployment of a shirtless Sebastian to solve a problem, yet again. We were going to use Panda, but that would have been overkill. And it could have resulted in a bachelor-shaped hole in the wall near the door as he tried to make his escape.
It was a damper to the night feeling like these straight guys had come out to make fun of the guys who were out at Roscoe’s. But, on the same note, it was such a puzzle these guys would WANT to come down to Boystown to do something like this in the first place. Every once in a while, there’ll be a carload of little suburban punks (who must have just gotten their license) that will roll through Boystown, with all but the driver shouting “FAGS!” as loud as they can. They’re all intensely stupid, of course, because 70% of the population of Boystown spends 3 hours a day in the gym, doing cardio and heavy lifting, so shouting something like that results in a couple dozen bodybuilders chasing your car down the street. We’ve never seen what happens when guys catch up with a car like that and let those inside have it, but we bet it wouldn’t be pretty.
This isn’t 1980 anymore. It’s 2010, and this is not a zoo for straight people’s amusement or a place for little punks to come and shout pejoratives. Boystown should be a safe place to come and have fun, with the goal of an evening never being to see how many people you can make fun of.
It’s sad if any bachelor or bachelorette would want to start their marriage off by being cruel to anyone, even strangers, and gays in particular. We can’t imagine what sort of union would follow a beginning like this…but maybe that explains the high rate of divorce amongst punks like these.
The first, of course, to cry about the “sanctity of marriage” whenever gay couples want to commit…and do it in a way that does not involve a scavenger hunt through Wrigleyville making fun of anyone.
