Zachary Blair

Anthropologist, Researcher, and Writer

Gay Life's Featured Bars from the mid-1970s

Gay Life's Featured Bars from the mid-1970s

Below are some clippings from Chicago's Gay Life, chronicling some of the gay neighborhood's most prominent gay bars in and around New Town—the neighborhood that would become known as Boystown. These "featurettes" cover Little Jim's located at 3501 N. Halsted (which remains at this location today and has long been considered the first gay bar on the Halsted Strip), Virgo Out at 2546 N. Clark Street (then considered the center of gay life in Chicago), and Augie's at 3729 N. Ha

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Discourse, Constructing the Sacred, and Disciplining Bodies

Discourse, Constructing the Sacred, and Disciplining Bodies

When I went to the Pulse Nightclub on the night of June 10, 2017, the first thing I saw was a sign posted with rules of the nightclub parking lot turned memorial. "We ask that visitors maintain proper etiquette, personal behavior, and conduct at all times." This need to construct sacred space through disciplining bodies was a disturbing reminder of the oppressive forces that are always at play. Partnered with an ever present police force, memorial tourists striking somber pos

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East Lakeview Arts Festival

East Lakeview Arts Festival

For the next few months, I will be writing short pieces here about key moments documented through my fieldwork in Chicago's Boystown that will not be making it to the final manuscript of my dissertation. This moment was one of my favorites. I've also included some amazing (shaky) camera-work from the field. Walking down Broadway through the East Lakeview Arts Festival in the Fall of 2009, Dev turned to me and said, “This is so much different than Gay Pride or Market Days. Eve

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News Media, Violence, and Global Capital: Contradictions in Knowledge Production

News Media, Violence, and Global Capital: Contradictions in Knowledge Production

While writing a recent article on Pulse, I came across this dilemma when researching the reported protest of thousands of people against gay marriage in Puerto Rico in 2013. While I only briefly referenced the protest in an effort to contextualize experiences of homophobia and heteronormativity in Puerto Rico, I wanted to make sure I had correct facts about the religious protest–mainly that the large protest actually happened the way that informants had recollected. I vaguely

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"Safe Place" Programs: Neoliberalism and Violence Against LGBT People

"Safe Place" Programs: Neoliberalism and Violence Against LGBT People

Six months after the Pulse shooting, Orlando launched a "Safe Places" program in an effort to help victims of LGBT violence through "symbolic safety." "It is a voluntary program which allows businesses and other establishments to designate themselves as places that will report anti-LGBT incidents and allow victims to come inside and call police... Participating establishments are placing a rainbow-colored decal in their windows. In large letters, the stickers read ‘Report ant

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Starbucks and The Problem with Commercial "Safe Space"

Starbucks and The Problem with Commercial "Safe Space"

In the days after Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, acts of racism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and misogyny that invoke the president-elect have made headlines. These events, along with a generalized fear and anxiety about and the future of the country, have sparked numerous movements around the creation of safe space. The donning of the safety pin has become a widespread and contested movement, critiqued for its racial politics and slacktivism (alternat

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Orlando Pride 2016

Love is Blinding: Emphasizing Love and Ignoring War in Response to the Pulse Shooting

Love is Blinding: Emphasizing Love and Ignoring War in Response to the Pulse Shooting

Last week, the City of Orlando released the 911 calls made by Omar Mateen, the shooter who killed 49 people and injured 68 at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. You can read the full transcripts here. Omar's main message, which he repeated over and over, was to end the airstrikes in Syria and Iraq. Here are some excerpts of what Mateen said to police while still inside of the club: "... You have to tell America to stop bombing Syria and Iraq. They are killing a lot of i

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Spaces and Flows: Interactive Presentation

Spaces and Flows: Interactive Presentation

To accompany my conference presentation at Spaces and Flows this month, I created an interactive presentation. This digital component is meant to supplement the information provided at each conference, providing additional information, additional resources, and the larger framework for this research project. To access the interactive presentation, please click on the following link: https://spark.adobe.com/page/U16zVZkuxFB71/ If you have any issues accessing this presentation

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NDAA: A Pernicious Tool for LGBT Violence

NDAA: A Pernicious Tool for LGBT Violence

When Republicans are not slipping legislation into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that legalizes, expands, or protects discrimination against LGBT people, Democrats use the annual defense bill as a strategy to pass legislation intended to "protect" LGBT people by tying it to military spending and expansion. This “strange coupling of civil rights and national security,” first occurred with the marriage of the NDAA of 2010 and the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd,

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Pulse at the Orange County Regional History Center

Pulse at the Orange County Regional History Center

The Orange County Regional History Center is doing an amazing job collecting items and documenting all of the memorials of the mass shooting at Pulse. Even if you have visited the sites, there are things that you may not have seen available digitally. Check out the digital memorial here: http://www.thehistorycenter.org/digital-memorial/ #OrangeCounty #Pulse #massshooting #massacre #shooting #LGBT #gay #gaybar #nightclub #memorial #OrangeCountyRegionalHistoryCenter #history

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The LGBTQ+ People and Festivals of Boystown, Chicago

Pulse Nightclub Today

Pulse Nightclub Today

These photos were taken at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando on September 22, 2016. The signs, gifts, and offerings that were left at the club over the past few months had been moved. It seemed barren, but slowly people were bringing more things - candles, pictures, flowers, stuffed animals... A new fence was installed, and on it large canvas murals of local artwork were draped to hide the building. When I went, there were only a handful of people. Three women were filming a doc

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Local Art En Memoriam

Pulse Memorial Crosses

Pulse Memorials at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts

Memorial at the Pulse Nightclub