Posts Tagged ‘Boystown Chicago
2009 Christmas in Boystown
So, our friend Joe is visiting from Philadelphia next week. He hasn’t been to Chicago in ten years. We stayed with him a few times when we were campaigning first for Hillary Clinton in the primaries last year, and then for McCain/Palin in the last days before the general election. So, he’s coming to Buzzquarters for Christmas and we’re going to have many adventures, we’re sure.
We asked him if he had his Christmas costume and he texted, “What’s that?”.
We’ve lived in Chicago for so long we almost forgot other cities exist where people don’t wear holiday costumes like here in Boystown.
There are few different routes you can go with this stuff, too:
(1) The Ugly Sweater — find the absolute most hideous Christmas sweater you can find, something that when you were a child you would have been mortified to receive as a gift and would have thrown tantrums to keep from wearing in public. Now, as someone in your 20s or 30s, put that sucker on and hit the bars, guaranteeing yourself a free drink or two as people are so delighted by your sweater’s holiday infused ugliness that drinks will be on them. We swear this happens. Ragstock, just off Halsted at Belmont (in the alley to the side of Hollywood Mirror), has an enormous supply of Christmas sweaters in a wide range of ugly. There are actually some we remember our moms wearing in the 80s. It’s fun when a group of people get their ugly sweater mojo on, go out together, and spread that holiday spirit.
(2) Christmas tee shirts — Another fun option if you don’t want to do an ugly sweater is to find some fun holiday themed tee shirts. Threadless, on Broadway near Barry here in Chicago has GREAT, funny, snarky tees…with some fun Christmas ones. Also, on Clark north of Belmont, there are several great tee shirt shops with lots of holiday options. Wear them over a red or green henley and you’ll be warm, but rocking a Christmas tee, by yourself or in a group. Festive!
(3) Santa hats — De rigeur on holiday pub crawls this time of year, and can be bought just about anywhere, including CVS. For cooler hats, checkout Beatnik, Batteries Not Included, and Cupid’s Treasures on Halsted, for all sorts of sexy and crazy holiday themed hats. They have some that look like menorahs for Hannakhah, too…some that look like reindeer antlers…some that look like the Whos from The Grinch. In the bars this time of year, you’ll find lots of people rocking these holiday hats. Merry, mary.
(4) Full-on costumes — A lot of people dress up all in green with elf hats and ears, or all in red as various members of the Claus family. The sexier the better in Boystown…and the same costumes can be worn on July 25th for the summer’s Christmas in July party (a highlight leading up to Pride). We spotted a group of guys out last night wearing elf hats and white tee shirts — they personalized the shirts as different elf characters, like “Lumberjack Elf” or “Tipsy Elf”, and had the personalities to match. They just tied christmas bows to themselves in various places, and brought the looks in really cheaply. You can do sexy versions of Frosty, Rudolph, the Krampus, and all sorts of other holiday characters too. The go-go boys are rocking red and green speedos and jocks. The drag queens are be-tinsled, some dressed up like big green trees with lights and ornaments. Since there are actual strings of battery-operated holiday lights, you can even complete your look with strings of these lights lit up when you go out. We saw two guys do this the other night and it was a lot of fun.
Two of the holiday pub crawls have already happened, like “Santa Con” (Santa convention) and “Naughty Elves”, where people dressed up as santa or elves in the hundreds and assembled in different places to hop bar to bar. There’s no Santa Speedo Run in Chicago like there is in Boston, but that would be fun to start in the future…to raise money for charity like they do in Beantown.
On Halsted last night, a band was caroling, playing live Christmas music up and down the street. Rumor has it in the next few days there will be Victorian-costumed Christmas carolers walking Boystown too…with Miss Foozie herself (the unofficial mayor of Boystown), leading the singing.
It seems all the bars are decked out with great Christmas decorations, and each one’s doing something cool and inventive for holiday parties. Scarlet’s got a Christmas burlesque show tomorrow, starring Hot Toddy and his male revue. Lucky Horseshoe has Christmas strippers. Sidetracks has holiday music worked into its Showtunes playlist for tonight. Pie Hole has a Christmas Pizza (BBQ sauce, ham, sweet potatoes) that we’ll probably get for dinner tonight.
We like to share what fun things are going on here so that you, wherever you are, might incorporate some of it into your own towns. There are so many grinches in this world. Boystown is not grinch-friendly, and is a place where we celebrate every holiday imaginable with bright lights, big smiles, tons of fun, and sparkle, sparkle, sparkle.
You kind of should too.
Sarah Palin related Halloween treat today
This afternoon, we took our friend Marie’s daughters Trick or Treating here in Boystown (they went as Hermione Granger (older girl), with the kindergartener dressed up as Crookshanks), where all the local merchants dressed up and passed out candy and there was a lovely Alice in Wonderland themed children’s party at Space Park on Roscoe, just off Halsted. The weather was brisk, but lovely, with lots of colored leaves bustling about and actors dressed like Wonderland characters running through the neighborhood bringing everyone to the park for fun.
Very well done.
Lots of great kids’ costumes, heavy on the Disney princesses for girls and the Star Wars clone troopers for the boys. Lots of adults following the Wonderland theme with many a Mad Hatter or Playing Card walking around.
We stopped for lunch afterwards at Nookie’s on Halsted and Buckingham, probably our favorite restaurant on Halsted — and it was packed today. The tables were close together and of course we couldn’t help overhearing what the people next to us were talking about.
That’s because we listen to other tables’ conversations in restaurants and always have our little notebooks ready to catch the interesting bits we like to share with you (“It’s called eavesdropping, bitches, and just admit you do it already,” says our friend Panda, who is not always wrong).
Well, the booth next to ours was a group of Boystown boys, who will all most likely be various shades of undressed tonight, being a relatively mild night for Halloween, which falls on a Saturday, which also coincides with the “clocks falling back an hour”, meaning it’s going to be all-out-nuts in Boystown this evening.
The guys were munching on carrots and cucumbers and no dressing, no sauce this and that, so undoubtedly they’ll be stuffed into Speedos with little room for a pulled pork sandwich or stack of pancakes in their bellies.
Because the girls were with us, and were talking about all the different kinds of candy they got today, we didn’t catch all of the conversation but our little ears shot up when we heard the guys talking about Sarah Palin…and Levi Johnston posing nude in Playgirl (or is that online for Playgirl, as the magazine doesn’t really exist anymore).
We braced for another round of Palin hate from low information fops, as is standard operating procedure in Boystown. Instead, we were treated to something unexpected that went something like this:
“Did you hear Levi’s posing nude in Playgirl and they say it’s going to be full frontal. He’s taking dick pics, totally.”
“You know what, I don’t like Sarah Palin, I don’t like any Republicans, but that kid is a jackass.”
“Do you see him on TV the other day. He’s a mouth breather. He sits there and just says, “Yah, that’s right” to whatever the reporter is asking him. Like Katie Couric or Don King or whomever. He just agrees with what they say, like, “Levi, did Sarah Palin call her son Trig, “That retarded baby?”, and Levi says, “Yah she said that”. It’s like he just puppets what they tell him to say.”
“Yah, and Sarah let him live with them and supported him because he has no job and his family are losers, and look how he thanks her. That kid is trash.”
“I totally want to see his dick, though.”
“Yah, me too.”
“Wonder if he’ll do Sean Cody next.”
“What else has he got to lose?”.
The guys clearly meant “Larry King”, not Don King, but you get the idea. And for those of you who don’t know, Sean Cody is a website featuring young amateur guys, who claim to be straight, doing all sorts of interesting things you can imagine. Several guys on that site ended up working at MiniBar and other places around Boystown, including a few of the gyms as personal trainers. “Sean Cody” is like saying “Xerox” for generically making copies, but in this case it’s “being naked for pay on a website”.
We have no doubt Levi Johnston will go gay for pay in a year or so. He has burned all his other bridges.
We can only hope he does this, too, because it will further remove him as a weapon to use against the Palins in 2012.
Hopefully, you can see what a big deal all of this is already…95% of Boystown hates Sarah Palin because few of these guys think for themselves, and most of them just parrot whatever Anderson Cooper, Rachel Maddow, Daily Kos, or Moveon.org tell them to say. The ones who read anything other than profiles on Manhunt might pick up The Advocate for their daily two-minute hate on Palin. Almost all of them regurgitate “things my friend who is smart told me”, all claiming Palin is the new Anita Bryant.
And, yet, something magical happened today…these guys actually, without knowing it, established a new boundary in their irrational hate.
Unlike Reagan, unlike Bush, unlike Gingrich, with Palin there’s consideration for her as a person, as a mom, as a grandmom, even if it’s totally subconscious and unacknowledged. Read what those guys said…they don’t like Palin, but they think Levi Johnston is a jackass for allowing himself to be used as a weapon against the woman who did so much for him. There’s a quiet, almost silent, empathy for Palin entwined in that.
These guys won’t vote for her. They’ll keep making fun of her, keep repeating things Tina Fey says about her, and will try to browbeat everyone they know not to vote for her in 2012…but there is a line there that the Left can’t cross with Palin.
There was no boundary with Bush. There remains none with Reagan. In Boystown, you could dress up as Bush or Reagan and have someone pretend to rape you in the street and people would cheer. As sick as that is, it’s true, and the twisted minds in Boystown could probably come up with a lot worse.
We don’t know what the boundary lines are with Palin, but the reaction to Johnston proves they exist – while also showing even low information fops know the MSM is behind the attacks on her, looking for patsies to use in their scripts, telling them what they need to say to damage Palin.
It’s impressive the Boystown crowd picked up on this.
Of course, abruptly, they moved on to talking about all the cute guys they saw out last night at Scarlet and MiniBar and how they were going to be 110% cuter than them tonight when they went out in THEIR costumes. We went back to eating our lunch and telling little Chloe and Kat about what Trick or Treating was like back in the 80s in Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Rochester, where three of us grew up.
We finished lunch and walked outside to a gorgeous day remembering that last Halloween was the final day we spent in Chicago together before hitting the road and going to different states as DeMcCrats for McCain. There were a lot of Sarah Palins in costume last year…a lot of liberals who thought it was funny to dress up like her and be jackasses, to make fun of her.
We’re sure they’ll be some out this year too.
And the year after that, as well.
But, it’s nice seeing that there IS a line people won’t cross with her. A line that means there’s something special about Palin that no one else is talking about, that Reagan and Bush and others don’t have…something that could be a powerful weapon in her campaign in 2012.
Palin’s a regular, decent person and even her biggest haters in Boystown can’t deny that. We’ll write and think more about this in the future, but we just wanted to share the anecdote above with you — as we wonder if you, too, have had any experiences like the conversation we just accidentally on purpose overheard.
