NEWS & POLITICS WHOSE TOWN?
All photos are from the Drag March for Change in June 2020, a Black, queer-led protest down Halsted Street, Boystown’s main drag. VERN HESTER
‘We’re not asking for any more than what we are already deserved’
Boystown, the enclave billed as a place where LGBTQ+ people of all stripes are safe to be themselves, faces a racial reckoning decades in the making. By ADAM M. RHODES
T VERN HESTER
16 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 26, 2020
he north-side LGBTQ+ enclave Boystown is known for many things: its promenade of popular gay bars, a rotating roster of talented drag performers, and for what many say is a decades-long underbelly of white supremacy that persists to this day. Last year, a Confederate f lag vest was found at local vintage costume and clothing store Beatnix; that same week, a leaked e-mail showed that the owner of Progress Bar had tried to ban rap music, a plan many
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