A Field Guide to Gay and Lesbian Chicago by Kathie Bergquist and Robert McDonald

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A Field Guide to Gay and Lesbian Chicago by Chicago Travel Books

A Field Guide to Gay and Lesbian Chicago by Kathie Bergquist and Robert McDonald
Price: $11.96

Features

Paperback: 283 pages

Publisher: Lake Claremont Press June 20, 2006

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1893121038

ISBN-13: 978-1893121034

Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches

Shipping Weight: 12 ounces

Book Description
Travel Deep into the Wilds of Chicago's Gay and Lesbian Communities with Anthropologists and Tour Guides Robert McDonald and Kathie Bergquist

"Straights beware! This is another salvo in the culture wars to turn us all gay."
--Ira Glass, This American Life

"An entertaining romp through the City of Big Shoulders, Pecs, and Abs!"
--Scott Free, Outmusic 2005 Musician of the Year

"Finally, a gay guidebook with a voice! Two delightful voices, actually. Kathie and Robert are so much fun to hang out with, this book will entertain the armchair traveller as well as the active explorer. And they are both SO gay; I defy anyone to read their defense of the Pride March and not pop a few buttons. For natives who need an update or first-time tourists, The Field Guide is fantastic! . . . Gay-positive, sex-positive, fun-positive."
--Linda Bubon, owner, Women & Children First bookstore, Chicago, IL

"If you want a dull list of places to go, look elsewhere. If you want the real dirt not only on Chicago lesbian and gay locales but also on what embarrassing, exciting, or simply funny things happened to Kathie Bergquist or Robert McDonald and their friends in these places, check out this lively, engaging guide."
--Karen Lee Osborne, co-editor, Reclaiming the Heartland: Lesbian and Gay Voices from the Midwest

"A travel guide with personality a plenty! Refreshing humor, sassy (data)tude, and solid research make this queer guide great for the visitor as well as the seasoned Chicago native. Don't leave your good time to chance. A Field Guide to Gay and Lesbian Chicago is as necessary for a winning vacation as comfortable walking shoes."
--Owen Keehnen, author of Starz

Excerpted from A Field Guide to Gay and Lesbian Chicago by Kathie Bergquist, Robert McDonald. Copyright © 2006. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Howdy, Homo! An Introduction

Howdy, homo! (Or, for the politically correct: Greetings, fellow homosexuals and those who explore nontraditional gender/sex mores and roles including but not limited to same-sex attraction!) Oh, "Howdy, homo!" will do for a start.

Thank you for picking up our field guide to gay and lesbian Chicago. Assembling this book has been a labor of love, and we hope that you will find our affections well spent. For years, both of us have worked within Chicago's GLBT community, and in the midst of our work and play, we have appreciated the diversity of its offerings. As book clerks in gay- and lesbian-identified shops, we both have also served many years on the information front lines for visitors to Chicago, answering, with witty frankness, their questions about where to stay, play, or pray, where to two-step, or where to 12-step. "What is a good bar to take a date?" "Is there a place where both my girlfriend and my mother can feel comfortable?" "Hey, I'm straight, but my out-of-the-closet-like-a-bullet queer-boy cousin is coming to town--what can I tell him?" "Where can I meet a girl just as charming as you, Kathie?" "Robert, where do gay gents who share your sterling qualities keep themselves in this wonderful town?"

Frankly, we got sick of it--sick and tired.

If only there were a single resource that had this information--and more--compiled in one slim, portable volume. Something we could put in the hands of the information seekers, to guide them as a best friend or chatty book clerk would guide them through the myriad of Chicago's gay community offerings. Something filled with the type of off-the-cuff insights and tongue-in-cheek observations that we had so long provided while leaning over a Chicago map spread across a bookshop counter.

And the startling fact is that up until now, this resource did not exist. Sure, a handful of advertising-driven "phone books" have been published over the years, and naturally, Chicago is mentioned in all the major national gay travel guides, but we have often found these resources inaccurate, misleading, or so slanted to advertisers as to be fairly useless for anything other than leveling a crooked table. "Who compiled that information, and do they live on Uranus?" we would ask ourselves when reading that the Closet, a tiny lesbian (but very boy-friendly) bar, has a pool table or, even more laughable, a dance floor. These listings were clearly not doing anyone any service.

And yet, Chicago's gay and lesbian cultural scene has so much to offer the visitor (or resident, for that matter). Chicago has two active neighborhoods that are so strongly gay and lesbian identified that even the straight denizens of these hoods admit that they live in a gay neighborhood. These areas are filled with gay-oriented shops, services, restaurants, gyms, bars . . . gay everything. But these two communities, vibrant though they are, are not the be-all and end-all of Chicago's culture and nightlife. Gay life in Chicago spreads from the city's farthest reaches on the North and Northwest Sides to the South Shore and Far Southwest Side. Our community includes numerous churches encompassing virtually every denomination, a comprehensive health center, several gay weekly papers, two competitive sports leagues, a chamber of commerce, and a marching band. Every year thousands of gays and lesbians visit Chicago for several annual events, including tIML, the Lesbian Community! Cancer Project's Coming Out Against Cancer Ball, the Northalsted Market Days, and, of course, Chicago Pride, which attracted more than 440,000 participants and spectators in 2005. And hundreds more come to the city for non-gay-specific reasons: to visit family and friends, to sightsee, to attend conventions at McCormick Place, the world's biggest (and perpetually expanding) convention center, or to take in a trade show at the Merchandise Mart.

All this culture, yet no way to disseminate it. All these visitors, but no one to tell them where to go. It became clear that we had a mission, and a calling. And, not to put too fine a point on it, a contract.

This is our field guide to the lesbian and gay Chicago that we know and love. It contains the field notes we have accrued in our many, many collective years in the homosexual midst and queer fringes of this city. Some of the knowledge we gained in the school of hard knocks and bitter experience (not to mention extension courses in naughty delights and delighted excess). Some of it we begged and borrowed from friends, exes, acquaintances, and the occasional beautiful stranger. We offer it to you, dear reader, the way we would if you were standing across the counter from us at a bookstore or sitting catty-corner from us at the Closet, where we both have been known to grab an after-work drink or five, and where we know from experience that there is no pool table--and certainly no dance floor. It's our guide, filled with our own predilections, biases, opinions, experience, and advice. We love Chicago, and frankly, while we don't know everything, we do know a lot.

This is our guide, and we hope you will make it your guide, too.

Reader Reviews
Reviewed by Rhiannon Kelly Fionn for Reader Views (08/06) "A Field Guide to Gay and Lesbian Chicago" is, by far, the very best travel guide I've ever read--and I did read it like a novel; it is that well written. I only wish it had been published years ago; guess I'll have to go back to Chicago now. There will be no arm twisting involved, well, unless it's February (shiver); after reading this I'm raring to go. Ms. Bergquist and Mr. McDonald use humor, common sense, honesty, and pure gusto to entertain throughout their divine reference book. Their candor is amusing and dead on; consider page 114 "We Wish! Brief descriptions of notable Chicago restaurants we can't afford". This is a perfect example of how well organized and thoughtful this guide is: they really did think of everything. Everything! Some of their readers may very well be able to afford that list of eateries but they know most of us can't and I appreciate the heads up. In other areas where the authors admitted they didn't have as great an interest as others might, like shopping, they enlisted the help of friends who ensured nothing was left out. The book begins with an insightful look into how and why Chicago became the San Francisco of the Midwest in "A Taste of Chicago History, Queer Flavored". Don't skip this chapter; it's as witty as it is educational. Though the title clearly indicates the focus of the book will be the delights of "Gayborhoods" and GLBT friendly businesses for the non-straight segments of society, there is so much excellent, practical, and thorough advice for travelers contained within, anyone will benefit. Besides, it isn't all gay--they include locations for strait burlesque troupes, too! The authors, and I'm guessing here judging only on the length of chapter 13, entitled "How About a Cocktail, Darling? GLBT Bars in Chicago", seem to have had a fantastic time researching their work - which, I am sure, was painstaking and thankless. Their good time spills onto the page making "A Field Guide to Gay and Lesbian Chicago" a pleasure to read. It will remain on my bookshelf until I begin planning my next trip to the windy city - and with their encouragement that will be sooner than later. Comment | Permalink | (Report this)

A Field Guide to Gay and Lesbian Chicago
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Updated on 8-25-2008.