Posts Tagged ‘Chicago
Have you ever experienced “Thunder Snow”?
As a male child of the 80s, when someone starts talking about “Thunder Snow”, I immediately think it’s some kind of polar-based vehicle for half-man/half-jungle cat superheroes to tool around on in a cartoon.
But, last night my boyfriend Justin and I had dinner with friends at Ping Pong in Boystown, which has floor to ceiling windows the entire length of the Chinese restaurant. It was the perfect place to watch the snow swirl around in the blizzard…where we caught a glimpse of the two bursts of “Thunder Snow” Chicago experienced.
I had never heard of this phenomenon, but I witnessed it while sharing some orange chicken, kung pao beef, and other goodies, where I learned that it’s lightning and thunder that happens during a massive snow storm. The lightning actually gets projected across the white canvas of snow, causing everything around to glow purple and pink for a few seconds.
It was eerie and amazing, like special effects in a movie or cartoon.
Magical.
EW.com has a video up of a local Chicago news reporter experiencing “Thunder Snow” for the first time as well. He has the same reaction I imagine someone from the distant past would have upon spotting an airplane for the first time. He didn’t quite shout, “Beware! It’s a DRAGON!”, but he came pretty damn close.
Snowpocalypse 2011 — the blizzard that really came
Chicago is literally buried under tons of Global Warming today.
Last night, Boystown looked like a ghost town, with most of the bars and restaurants closed, including places that don’t even close on Christmas or Thanksgiving. Here and there, a few people could be spotted trying to make their way down the streets — they were bent and nearly broken by the cold and weight of the snow, pushed left and right by the wind as they struggled to make their way forward. They looked like zombies in a horror movie shambling about.
What’s most interesting to me today is how no one I knew believed all of this snow was really coming.
That’s because no one I know trusts the Media, especially the sensationalist local news, and the weatherologists thereof, that repeatedly cry BLIZZARD OF THE CENTURY! in advance of approaching storms that normally leave about as deep a dusting as Ally Sheedy’s dandruff in The Breakfast Club.
Because the local news is so terrible, and needs to ring as much panic and doomsday scenario over every story it produces (SQUIRREL INVASION IN GRANT PARK! CRIME SPREE CRIPPLES LAKEVIEW! LOCAL STUDENTS TRAPPED IN FAILING SCHOOL!), people seem to apply an 80/20 rule to whatever the local newscasters say, especially regarding the weather, which is reported on as a sort of masochistic meteorological porn.
I often think of Kathleen Turner reading the phone book and somehow making it sound dirty whenever I catch the local Chicago stations reporting on tomorrow’s weather, because something that should be dry and factual gets punctuated with nonstop exclamation marks in the Media’s effort to captivate viewers…but 80% of the time those dire warnings and doomsday predictions don’t come true.
So, when the SNOWPOCALYPSE really does hit a city like Chicago, we’re actually taken by surprise, because the Media’s cried BLIZZARD! so often in the past that people disregard whatever they say completely. I can’t even count the number of emails and texts I got from friends saying “I didn’t think it would snow this bad” or “I know they said it would be a blizzard, but I didn’t believe them”.
I 100% didn’t believe them either. When I woke up this morning my boyfriend Justin was standing by the window with his mouth agape, stunned by the snow that had fallen all night. Huge dunes of white have buried whole cars. The wind’s swirling and pushing the accumulation across the street like the whole neighborhood was plucked up in the middle of the night and deposited in Antarctica. If you aren’t a penguin or some sort of Yeti-esqque Himalayan abominable something or another, you just shouldn’t leave your home for a few days.
Seriously.
Do you feel this way about your own local news wherever you live?
Are they as sensational, and do they try to make every broadcast as exciting and MUST-SEE! as possible by crying BLIZZARD! when there is none, so that when a blizzard actually comes the net effect is that people ignored the warnings as if there hadn’t been a news broadcast at all…since trust in what the local media says is just so low?
Have you, too, ever been caught off guard by something that really ended up happening because you just thought the media was exaggerating again?
Chicago political experts believe Obama will not seek a second term
What could Obama do in 2012 to convince people who didn't buy into his hopeychange in 2008 to vote for him in the next election?
My friends and I here in Chicago are all doing whatever we can to stop Rahm Emanuel from becoming the next Mayor of the city, despite a massive push by the Media to make this happen.
For those of you who don’t know Mayor Daley, and have never met him, don’t believe the caricature you have of him, as presented by the Media. Yes, he’s head of the Chicago Machine, and yes he’s done a lot of odd things over the years — with the sale of the Chicago parking meters to a private company being the last straw with a lot of voters.
The one thing you really need to know about Daley, though, was just how nice of a man he honest too goodness is. One day last week, one of my friends had lunch downtown with his wife and little baby, in an Irish pub somewhere in the Loop’s warren of tiny buildings jammed between skyscrapers. In the back, at a table all by himself, sat Da Mayor, reading the paper and munching his lunch. Daley saw the little baby staring at him, and he smiled, waived, and came right over to see the little boy…who instantly lit up when the Mayor gave the baby loving attention. He stopped and chatted with my friends for a good ten minutes while their food came, as if he was an uncle or old family friend they ran into…instead of a politician they had never met. This has been my experience with Mayor Daley the whole time I’ve lived in Chicago.
And if you like that, then you need to know his wife Maggie Daley is even more kind, more gracious, and more caring. She’s honest to goodness the nicest woman I have ever met. She’s the First Lady of the nation’s third largest city, married to a man who’s practically an emperor considering his power and clout, and yet she’s as kind and friendly as one of your mom’s best friends or your favorite teacher from grade school, always happy to see you and proud of what you’ve made of yourself.
The thought of people as terrible as Rahm Emanuel and Amy Rule replacing Mayor Daley and his wonderful wife Maggie as the new Chicago power couple offends people on a visceral level here.
The situation we’re up against, however, is one where Democrats ran Carol Mosley Braun as a stalking horse for Emanuel to keep the black community from running a candidate who could actually win the race. Braun’s campaign is imploding right now, after she forced other black contenders out of the race, or scared them away from running. Braun never wanted to be Mayor. She’s going to get a major payout from Democrats for doing Emanuel this favor, and blocking a black candidate from having a real chance at becoming Mayor. Expect one of her “consulting firms” to get a big city contract from Emanuel as a thank you if he wins, or for Braun to be given some other prize by the White House for doing them this favor.
You can’t talk about the Chicago Mayor’s race without talking about the White House, and that’s just what happened yesterday after a strategy session I went to, for people trying to help Miguel del Valle capitalize on his EXCELLENT debate performance last week and make inroads for him to come in second place behind Emanuel in February 22nd’s election (which is Phase One of the Mayor’s race, after which the top two vote-getters will head to an April run-off contest…it’s guaranteed Emanuel will win the February 22nd vote, but he won’t get a majority, and the run-off will be needed).
Del Valle is the best hope for Chicago, while both Gerry Chico and Braun are only in the race to split votes so that Emanuel can squeak ahead.
The Chicago Mayorship is Emanuel’s thank-you from Obama and his White House for Emanuel abandoning his long-held dream of “making history” as the first Jewish Speaker of the House (since Emanuel was next in line to become Speaker after Nancy Pelosi). By leaving Congress to become White House Chief of Staff, Emanuel surrendered that dream, with the proviso that once the Mayor’s office was open in Chicago, it would be his. That’s why Obama gave Emanuel that large send-off from the White House with loud fanfare, despite the fact that many in the Obama orbit think Emanuel did a terrible job as Chief of Staff and he’s largely blamed for all of the administration’s many daily failures.
He has a bad attitude, is evil to people, is beyond childish, carries grudges, and berates even those who try to help him. Say what you want about Daley being corrupt and in charge of the Machine, but that’s the polar opposite of the man who has been this city’s Mayor for generations. Chicago is in for a very rude wakeup call with Rahm Emanuel at the helm, but this is his quid pro quo with Democrats for serving Obama in Washington.
In talking with various political types here in Chicago yesterday about all this, it kept coming up that many of them don’t think Obama is running for a second term, despite what the Media keeps insisting. They think he will use “family reasons” for not seeking re-election, either making up something about wanting his daughters to grow up outside the limelight of the White House, or even using grandmother Robinson as an excuse, saying she’s sick and Michelle Antoinette wants the family to relocate to Hawaii for their health.
I still think he’s going to use his Parkinson’s as his excuse, like LBJ and his heart condition, so that he can leave the White House with immense sympathy and start his book tours and lecturing. This is why he wanted to be president by the way, so that he would never have to work a real job for the rest of his life. He just wants to write books, the way Jimmy Carter does, that impugn and attack America, while making millions of dollars traveling the world as a former US president who can always be counted on to trash our country. He is quite looking forward to this, and Michelle Antoinette is thrilled to be looking at mansions in Hawaii to move to. No one here on the ground in Chicago expects these people to live here ever again. Why should they? They took everything they could get from Chicagoans, never giving anything back or helping the black community in the slightest, and now that they have achieved everything they ever wanted, they are looking forward to the post-presidential perks that will be afforded to them in Hawaii.
Where, clearly, his presidential library and museum will indeed be located, right on the water, with as spectacular a view as possible for this new center to his cult of personality.
It might seem incredible that Obama would just walk away from the presidency, leaving Democrats in the lurch for 2012, but I was told, repeatedly, to watch what David Axelrod and Michelle Antoinette have both been doing in recent weeks…they give no signs whatsoever that they are engaged in a re-election campaign.
Axelrod was recently on a Chicago Sunday political show and kept dodging all talk of the re-election campaign, which is like Oprah Winfrey turning down a large supreme pizza or a sandwich bigger than her head. It’s unheard of.
Axelrod’s favorite topic in the world is how he got Obama elected president, which means Axelrod’s second favorite topic in the world should be how he is going to re-elect Obama in 2012. He left the White House claiming that’s why he was moving back to Chicago, to focus on the re-election bid, and when given the perfect opportunity to wax on about that, and praise himself and his efforts, he completely dodged the topic, wanting nothing to do with it. Why?
Pressed by the reporter, Axelrod apparently said “the president’s re-election is just one of the interesting projects I am working on”. What could be peer, in terms of being interesting, to re-electing a president if you are a political consultant? Chicago political veterans picked up on this and saw it as a sign that those in the Obama ranks either do not believe he will win in 2012, or that he won’t even run, largely because of the former.
Then there was Michelle Antoinette on Good Morning America last Thursday or Friday, wearing something hideous as usual, also downplaying the re-election campaign and dodging questions about her involvement in it. This, too, is strange because Michelle Antoinette has always loved talking about how influential, powerful, and generally wonderful she (thinks she) is.
Like Axelrod, Michelle Antoinette poo-poohed the re-election talk, not taking the opportunity to go on about how much her husband deserved a second term to keep doing whatever it is all day, the end results of which the American people clearly hate.
She had a very “one and done” attitude about living in the White House for Obama’s term, and people here in Chicago who know her said that she was in particularly bad spirits after returning to DC from Hawaii, because she just didn’t want to ever leave and resents having to spend any time at all in DC.
The Obama cultists in the Media keep insisting “there’s no way Obama doesn’t win re-election”, and the Cocktail Party GOP defeatists pick up their usual Eeyore cues from that and essentially seem geared to give up before the 2012 election even begins, but I keep coming back to something a good friend of mine asked me the other day that I honestly didn’t have an answer for.
She posed this question — which I invite you to answer in comments below: “Have you ever heard anyone who didn’t vote for Obama in 2008 wish they could go back and vote for him now, after seeing him as president?”.
This is a new take on what we hear a lot, that people who voted for Obama, now unhappy with his job performance, wish they could go back in time and not vote for him. This feeling seems to be widespread now that a good deal of the hopeychange Kool-Aid has expired.
But, have you honestly ever heard ANYONE say that “I didn’t vote for him in 2008, but he’s done such a good job I wish I had known better and can’t wait to vote for him in 2012″?
The last Democrat to win re-election (the ONLY Democrat to win re-election since FDR) was Bill Clinton. I worked as a volunteer for Clinton’s re-election campaign in 1996, going door to door for him in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. I honestly DO remember hearing over and over again that “I didn’t vote for him in 92, but I’m voting for him now because he’s done a good job”. Many people regretted throwing their votes away on Ross Perot and decidedly backed Clinton in his re-election, admitting they would have voted for him the time before if they had known what a good president he would be.
That’s largely because Clinton not only connected with them on a personal level and seemed to care about regular people in a warm way, much like Mayor Daley here in Chicago, but also because the economy was powering along and riding the Dot-Com initial wave like gangbusters.
For Obama to win re-election, he will need people who did not vote for him in 2008 to wish they had done so, and to turn out and vote for him in 2012.
I just can’t imagine anything that could make them feel that way.
I strain myself to think of even one thing this administration has done that’s of any good.
Using Daley as an example again, even people who hate the Chicago Machine, the parking meters, and the patronage and corruption in this town have to admit Millennium Park, the Cultural Center’s programs, the beauty on our streets and parks, and all Chicago’s many festivals are marvelous and that in these regards Mayor Daley has had a direct positive impact on their lives as Chicagoans.
Can anyone out there (who isn’t the recipient of $50,000 in “Obama money” from the Pigford scheme) really say they are better off now than they were before Obama became president?
Better question: can anyone really say with a straight face that Obama delivered any real hope and or change?
THAT, right there, is why I think Obama will not seek a second term and why David Axelrod and Michelle Antoinette avoided talking about a re-election campaign. The ads against this man just right themselves, since he over-promised and under-delivered more than any politician in American history.
Foolish people and confirmed idiots bought into the hopeychange nonsense in 2008, giving Obama the benefit of the doubt, but I just don’t see how they are duped again. I don’t see how Obama repeats the 2008 phenomenon, even with the Media 100% on his side like usual.
I don’t see how he gets practical people to say “I didn’t vote for him last time, but he’s done such a good job I want to vote for him now”.
Do you have any thoughts that could shed more light on any of this?
Is there an election strategy for Obama you think would work in 2012?
Can YOU, using as much creativity as you can muster, come up with even one reason why someone who did not vote Obama in 2008 would vote for him in 2012 because he or she thinks Obama did a good job (and be specific about what job he did that was good)?
Have a safe and fun night out – see you on the other side of 2011
Before I head to New Year’s Eve adventures here in Boystown I wanted to thank everyone for being a part of things here on HB in 2010. You were collectively the best part of a brutal year.
Tonight, if you are headed out on adventures of your own, please drink responsibly and plan ahead. If you know you can’t say no when the free shots and champagne start flowing, give a bar manager your car keys so there is no chance in Hell you can drive home.
There is no shame in cabbing it and admitting you lost control and are now too buzzed to drive.
I don’t want to turn this into an after school special, but I have lost friends to drunk drivers, so on a night like tonight, just please remember how your actions can impact yourselves and others.
Have fun. Be excellent to all you meet tonight. Live to see tomorrow. You are loved and needed in the fight come 2011.
Use the best trick in my book if you know you will be pressured to drink a lot tonight: order a Guinness in a bottle. It’s opaque. No one can see how much is in it. If you want to have just one, you can totally pretend it is still full all night and no one can tell. It is a great way to stay sober without seeming like a wet blanket.
Look out for those around you tonight. If you see someone driving erratically, call 911 and report it. Better safe than sorry…you might save a life.
Let’s all do our part to start the New Year right, and alive, with all our limbs, and nothing we regret tomorrow.
I get to spend the New Year with an awesome guy I love, some really great friends, and all the many characters in Boystown that make me smile…or cringe, as the case may be. The decorations are all gold and gaudy. There’s glitter everywhere. I’ve seen Chers representing almost every Cher look and decade, save “serious actress” and “infomercial sellout”.
Wouldn’t have it any other way.
See you in 2011!
A Tale of Two Christmas Parties — One Conservative, One Leftist — and Just Guess Which Won Welcomed A Gay Guy Where
"No conservatives at my Christmas party, evvvvvvvvvvvverrrrrr!"
Five years ago ,VJ Otho was on top of his game, one of the sharpest, most sought-after, and reliably cool VJs in Boystown.
His real name is Corey, or Corky, or Leonard. Susan? I can’t remember.
That’s because from the instant I first met him I called him “Otho” in my head, long before someone straightened out his actual name for me. Which I instantly forgot. People are usually “nice lady with weird glasses”, “guy who talks too much”, “friend of David’s I don’t like”, or “cute guy in motorcross jacket” before they become “Kat”, “Vincent”, “Minnetta”, or “Justin”, with their names permanently fixed to their faces.
Because this particular Boystown VJ is the spitting image of Glenn Shadix, by way of Beetlejuice, and the sort of in-your-face, over-the-top, ridiculously bitter and conniving gay man found mostly in cartoonish fiction, his real name never overcame the “Otho” that he forever will be to me.
Otho was one of the very first people I ever met in Boystown, because he lorded over one of the clubs I liked from a VJ booth on the second floor, watching the crowd below like Laurence Olivier chewing the scenery in Clash of the Egos. Rotund, and sweating even through the dead of February, he’d play some long, drawn-out vaudevillian showtune whenever he’d want to scurry down from his perch, like a spider, to talk to some guy who caught his eye…waiting for just the right moment for him to be alone and thus vulnerable, with his friends getting more drinks, off to the bathroom, or otherwise engaged in a corner (this being one of the most popular bars in Boystown, I’ll just leave it up to your imagination what those guys were doing with other nice looking young guys).
Otho, the spider queen, for some reason took a liking to me years ago, back when I was still with my ex Harvey, and he took delight in one day scurrying down from on high, when Harvey was in the bathroom, to tell me that Harvey had been cheating on me.
Conspiratorially drawing in close, Otho whispered in my ear something about Harvey being in the bar a few nights before, with some other guy, having a good time, then leaving with him at 1:36am. Otho was well-rehearsed to the point of knowing the exact time Harvey left, though he wouldn’t say with whom, because “that would be trouble-making, and I’m not here to make trouble, only to let you know what I saw. I’m like the news this way. Just call me Katie Couric!”
It’s a shame the role of Ursula the Sea Witch was already cast, because Otho could have played that part well, too. As for the Katie Couric comparison, well, Otho’s spot-on with that, I must admit…though I don’t think Couric reports the news as much as she tries to make it, which brings her closer to Otho’s level than Otho’s attempt to raise himself up to hers.
VJ Otho has an excuse for everything he does, including remembering the exact minute Harvey left the bar (“because I always play the “Last Call for Alcohol” song at 1:37 and I saw him leave, hand-in-hand, with that guy one minute before. This is when you were in New York visiting your friend, which I know because Perry told me, and Brenden told him. But, I’m not saying Harvey did anything, only that it totally looked like he was going to do something with that guy, because I bet they went back to your apartment and did it in your own bed. Isn’t that terrible what he did to you?”), because, well, that’s just Otho.
I accept him as part of the gay community the way I accept Miss Pattie the rainbow-haired punk rock lesbian who sits at the corner of Roscoe and Halsted and sells gum and Tic Tacs to raise money for Vital Bridges…or “Looks Like Cher”, our neighborhood Cher impersonator, who tells the best stories…or all the many, many, more every day, Brendens — those flighty, fad-obsessed boys always looking for the new “it” craze and jockeying to be the next Mean Girls leader once whatever guy in charge of the clique now gains too much weight or loses too much hair to be Queen of the Night anymore.
Boystown wouldn’t be the same without the lying, conniving, always-trying-to-break-people-up, obsessive spider that is VJ Otho (though I freely admit it might be better, and would love to see the day when we could all determine that once and for all).
Christmas, also, would not be the same without VJ Otho’s Holiday Jingle Balls Ball, which he hosts annually in his admittedly fabulous top floor apartment. It’s an industry-heavy event and Otho calls in many of the favors he accumulates all year to get tons of the best booze, all the cutest boys, Broadway-quality themed decorations throughout, and even waiters dolled up like elves, reindeer, you name it…with Otho making a grand entrance down his massive spiral staircase, dressed up in an elaborate Christmas costume just like Elton John used to do at his birthdays every year back when anyone still cared about him, too.
Otho may not be the big VJ in town anymore, and his parties might not be QUITE as packed and “must-attend” as they once were, but he sure as heck knows how to throw a festively fabulous fete, with nonstop alliteration and libation till dawn. The ghosts of Oscar Wilde and Quentin Crisp hang heavy in the air, encouraging the spiking of the eggnog, while mistletoe disappears from the door frames and fantastically resprouts itself on the front waistband of the go-go-boys green and red jocks.
I’ve been invited to the party every year, and though Otho the spider queen does give me the creeps, I’ve always gone and had an interesting and enjoyable time, marveling at just how much gay could be crammed into one apartment without Liza Minnelli actually being there, in person. Though “In spirit”, for her, was a given.
Not this year, though!
I think this is so hilarious, it’s actually BETTER than going to the party.
My boyfriend Justin is another guy that Otho’s followed from his perch in the VJ booth, so he’s been a guest for Christmas for the whole time he’s lived in Chicago, too. I actually met Justin in a bar where Otho was VJ-ing, and Otho tried his level best to keep the two of us from talking. He told Justin that I’m crazy and evil, and that I’m working for Sarah Palin to infiltrate the gay community as some sort of plot. Then, when Otho saw I was alone one night, with Justin nowhere in sight, he scurried down to tell me all sorts of lies about Justin being promiscuous and being a naked waiter for parties old guys throw. Otho’s a master of the specifically ridiculous, where the lies he tells are detailed enough for them to seem plausible, because who would go to the trouble of making something so specific up, well ahead of time, so he could sound so sure of what he was saying when he made it seem he just accidentally bumped into you on the way to get himself a fresh CC and diet for the video booth.
I told Otho I didn’t care what Justin did, and if he wanted to waiter naked for old people, more power to him as I bet that’s a lucrative market in Chicago, considering how many old queens there are in Rogers Park, especially. Justin, on his own, before we started dating, told Otho he didn’t think I was crazy or evil, but hoped I really was secretly working for Governor Palin because he thought that was cool and intriguing. At that, Otho gasped, took a long swig of his drink through his tiny little straw, threw the end of his scarf back over his shoulder and huffed his way back up to the VJ booth before Celine Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back to Me” finished on the big screen.
So, Otho’s figured out Justin and I are together, and he doesn’t much like that, but he’s still fine with Justin…and still invited him to his Christmas party…but told Justin, specifically, that I can’t come.
“Why not?”, Justin asked, and Otho told him it’s because he saw me on TV telling people to vote for Bristol Palin on Dancing with the Stars and that I “ruined the show by getting the Tea Party people to kick off Brandy instead of Bristol”.
So, Otho’s mad at me for urging people to vote for Bristol and keep her on the show…and also because by doing this Otho found his way to HillBuzz.org and doesn’t much like that I’m encouraging people to stand up to the Left every day and work hard to take Obama down for 2012.
“He can’t come because he’s a Republican, and I don’t want a Republican in my house,” Otho told Justin, not realizing that Justin is a Republican too, though totally under the radar and still in the closet about it. No one suspects Justin, which is hilarious, because he’s actually to the right of me, and I’m to the right of probably 80% of people who call themselves “conservative”.
Justin and I have only been dating for about a month, so he still doesn’t know what things I’ll find funny or soul-killing. “I know you think your hatemail is funny, but since these are people who actually know you, I don’t know if I should tell you what Otho said or not,” Justin started, with me interrupting him to note how little I cared whatever new lie Otho had spun that night up on his web while sadly proving how long ago his VJ heyday was.
I think it’s funny Otho doesn’t want me at his Christmas party because he saw me on TV talking about a silly dancing show, and that’s how he figured out I’m a gay conservative. It’s just so typical of “the tolerant Left” to be so childish and mean-spirited, even at Christmas.
MEANWHILE, at about the same time Otho was telling Justin I couldn’t come to his Christmas party, a conservative family I know invited me…and Justin…to their Christmas get-together this coming weekend. This is a family straight out of a family values recruitment calendar, where every month the mom, dad, 2.5 kids, and golden retriever would wear matching outfits and do something wholesome and outdoorsy to show how much they loved each other and how well they represented conservatism.
And they are the nicest people to me. I know them from the 2008 campaign, and the mom and dad read HB every day, occasionally giving me insight into what the Cocktail Party is up to here in Chicago because these people want a real conservative to win the nomination in 2012, and that woman will be from Alaska, you betcha.
They, clearly, know I’m gay…because they told me, specifically, how much they want to meet Justin…and they clearly and warmly refer to him as my boyfriend whenever talking about him. It is exactly the same way they would treat Justin if I was straight and it was a Justine we were talking about instead. Since they live way out in Hoffman Estates and they weren’t sure if Justin drives, they also told me if we took the train out that we could just sleep over Friday night in a guest room after the party and leave after breakfast for a train back to the city in the morning.
This “Tale of Two Christmas Parties” is anecdotal, of course, and it’s just two events that happened at relatively the same time, coincidentally, in my life here in Boystown…but I can’t help put draw your attention to a few simple facts I see repeatedly again and again in not just Boystown, but nationally.
‘The tolerant Left” is an oxymoron.
Leftists are the most intolerant people I have ever encountered. They hate anyone who sets a foot outside the gay reservation the Democrat Party placed gays on, as part of the identity-bloc coalition Democrats depend on to maintain power. The prime directive of the unthinking Left is to shun, stone, polarize, and pulverize any gay who dares think for himself and buck the party line. Should a gay man vote Republican, he’s turned into a pariah if the community finds out. Worse, should that guy openly come out as a conservative, and work in the community as a conservative activist, gays like Otho feel it’s their duty to make his life as much as a Hell as possible…starting with uninviting him from parties, ostracizing him, and making him as much of an outcast as possible.
That’s how Democrats roll…that’s “the tolerant Left” in action.
MEANWHILE, conservatives, the people Democrats and the media (redundancy alert!) claim are so evil, so hateful towards gays, so simple-minded and terrible, have never been unkind to me.
I remind you what I’ve said many times on this site: since becoming actively involved in politics and spending every day in the thick of all this, the “worst” a vocal conservative has ever said to me was that he was praying for me to not be gay anymore…and when I thought about his heart, and where he was coming from, even that was not said from a place of malice — instead, it was his way of saying, in an admittedly awkward and strange way to me, that he wished I didn’t have to go through all the social and cultural grief for liking guys because this man thought my life would be easier if I was straight. AND, if I was straight he imagined I could have a wife and kids like he did, which he thinks is the ideal for anyone, so he sees that I don’t have that and was wishing that happiness for me.
I remind all of you, also, that Fred Phelps is a Democrat and that the Westboro Baptist Church is a Democrat organization (and giant supporters of Al Gore), despite the fact Democrats and the media (redundant redundancy alert!) want you to believe otherwise. The only people shouting that they hope gays die from AIDS are Democrats…just as the only people on tape lobbing real, actual anti-gay pejoratives here in Illinois are Democrats like Palatine Committeewoman Sue Walton (who shouted that garbage at Andrew Breitbart, who isn’t even gay, a few months ago).
What the media WANTS you to believe about conservatives isn’t true…and is in fact a projection of what the LEFT really thinks of gays, and how even the Leftist gay community treats a gay conservative.
I got uninvited from a Leftist Christmas party because I am an out and proud (and vocal) conservative and my boyfriend was told he could not come to the party, either, if he brought me.
MEANWHILE, my boyfriend and I were invited, as a gay couple, to a conservative family’s Christmas party with said family so eager and anxious to meet Justin that they’ve gone out of their way to make sure there was no practical way for us to turn down the extremely kind and generous invite.
It’s a tale of two Christmas parties here in Chicago…where conservatives are accepting and loving towards me as a gay man, while the Left is bitter and hateful towards me for being a gay conservative.
You won’t ever hear stories like this reported in the lamestream media because it directly challenges the “Democrats are good and Republicans are evil” narrative those JournoList clowns are so desperate to sell, but I think it’s important I share anecdotes like this to you from Boystown so that you see how hypocritical both the gay community and the Left itself are just about every day of the week.
But most glaringly so at Christmas.
Hilarious: you can't win whether you use a notepad or your phone in Boystown
I think this is fascinating, because never in a million years would I ever go up to a stranger and ask him what he was doing.
I have told you before that if I am out in Boystown and get an idea for a column, I whip out my little Bruce Chatwin moleskin and a pen and sketch the basics out before I forget it.
Within moments of doing this, without fail, some drunk I don’t know will always ask me “Why are you writing?”.
Not WHAT, but WHY…as in, they can’t remember the last time they saw someone doing that.
I like telling these noseyparkers that “I am thinking up baby names because my wife is pregnant again. Man, I can’t believe it. This is our fifth. Here, let me tell you the intimate details of each of those messy, messy births. Vagina!”.
That, or if it is Saturday night, I like saying I am writing prayers to say in church tomorrow or listing my favorite religious songs so I can request them at mass in the morning.
Either of these results in the shape of a nosey gay man being left in the wall, Tex Avery style, as he flees the bar to get away from me.
Well, a few weeks ago, I figured out how to write HB posts from my phone, like I am doing right now.
So, I can skip the notebook and just write HB while on the go. I have even created a little Marauders’ Map of Boystown identifying all of the electrical sockets I can use in each bar, restaurant, cupcakery, coffee shop, store, and theater in a five mile radius.
If I am recharging, like I am now, staring out the bay window of Roscoe’s near the pool table, someone – without fail – will come up to me after five minutes and say “You text a lot”.
Not a question…just this inaccurate comment.
I very rarely text and only really use the phone for HB. I only talk on it when I call into radio shows.
I think it’s fascinating that writing with pen and paper instantly freaks guys in Boystown out…and makes them to demand to know WHY I am writing…and spending more than five minutes thumb typing on this little T-Mobile Vibrant makes them comment on how much I am typing.
I honestly would never keep track of how long someone I didn’t know was on the phone, and I sure wouldn’t ask him why he was using a pen and paper.
But, I also would never ask anyone what nationality he is but we all know how often that Nationality Expert garbage happens here.
Only in Chicago!
Another Guy in Boystown Wearing A Che Guevara Shirt Who Has No Real Idea Who That Was
This is a new hobby of mine.
Whenever I see someone wearing a Che Guevara shirt, I ask him who that was.
I have yet to meet anyone who can successfully answer this.
The man in this photo, at Roscoe’s tonight, said Che was “that dude that unionized the farmers and had that sign he held up in California, for the union”.
No, that was, kind of, Cesar Chavez.
Mixed in with about 80% Sally Field in Norma Rae.
Thank our teachers’ unions for another excellent public school graduate by going to see “Waiting for Superman” in theaters if Harry Potter is sold out this weekend.
The abandoned malls of Chicago
This is Century Mall near Boystown.
When I moved here in 2004 or so, it was thriving. Every shop was full.
They had a kooky little place that only sold retro board games.
There was a men’s underwear shop that had live models and latenight pajama-jammy-jam fashion shows.
In the basement, there was Eatzi’s, which was an upscale market and deli with overpriced, gourmet foods.
The mall itself was a movie palace in the 20s, before being carved into a mall (keeping a gorgeous rococco exterior) with, funnily enough, an arthouse movie theater on the top floors.
This is where the Reeling LGBTQ film festival was held last week.
In the last two years, Century has largely collapsed. The hipster, kooky stores are gone. In their place, a few junky, oddball, discount places appeared for a while. Those are gone now too.
There’s a woman who threads eyebrows and does henna tattoos. She is very nice, but never seems busy.
On the lowest level, there’s still a Body Shop, and the Aveda salon, and they probably stay in business because of the cruisy Bally’s upstairs (which has the only gang showers in a 20 mile radius that’s not Steamworks). So, with that gay magnet, it’s still weird the underwear store went under, but the rest all makes sense.
How are the malls near you doing?
Are they creepy ghost malls now too?
Fun new tech in Boystown: windows with computers in them
This is a real estate office I pass on Clark a lot…it’s an apartment rental place.
They installed a touchscreen computer in the window, behind the glass, so you can search their rentals or send them a message from outside after hours.
I don’t know how many people would use this…or how the window will work in winter when that glass gets so cold…but a fun gimmick that made me think of the tech in Minority Report.
See any high tech ads like this by you?
Do you have a place near you that has been 18 different things in the last three years?
This restaurant, Diva, is new here in Boystown. It’s a late night night sushi restaurant. In a neighborhood that has seen something like five late night sushi restaurants fail in recent years.
Before this, Diva had been a late night grilled cheese restaurant called the 44th Ward Dinner Party where I used to go when I dated Jacobi the dancer/bartender. That place lasted about seven months. Which was five months more than Jacobi and me.
Before that, it was owned by fallout boy Pete Wentz and was called The Lakeshore Broadcasting Company, which people thought was a TV production facility, or maybe a radio station.
Do you have spots like this, in good locations, that keep being reincarnated as various perpetually failing businesses?
They are the Shirley Maclaines of commercial real estate.
