Zachary Blair

As Treasure Island closes its stores and union workers sue the grocery store chain, I began to reflect of all of the changes that have occurred in Boystown since my fieldwork from 2006-2011; the stores that have gone out of business, buildings that have been bulldozed, and other transformations in material space. Here is a photo I took of the Treasure Island grocery store located on N. Broadway between Cornelia Avenue and Stratford Avenue: I used to love walking through Elain

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

As the writing continues, I thought I should post this article published in 1983 in the Chicago Tribune titled, "Dollars, votes promote gay power." The article opens up with a description of gay life at Broadway and Clark Street and includes a timely reference to "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" (I hope you are watching Feud). This intersection was, for a relatively brief timespan, known as the center of Chicago's gay ghetto. Just a few blocks south of present-day Boystown,

I was organizing the newspaper articles I clipped during my fieldwork and came across one of my study of Boystown. It was published in the now defunct Chicago Free Press on March 4, 2010. The cover page read, "Weathering the Storm: How GLBT non-profits are coping with new economic realities," a story on the economic recession's effect on local non-profits. It was also ironically next to a story about a hate crime attack on the Red Line, when Daniel Hauff defended "gay youth"

I spent this week doing a lot of revisions and going back to the archives, page by page, flipping through resources like Chicago Gay News, Gay Chicago Magazine, Blazing Star, Gay Crusader, Lavender Woman, and Windy City Times. Here are some of my favorites, which you will not see as part of my dissertation. My favorite pieces of gay art work published in the 1970s: Berlin was always, and will always be, my favorite nightclub in Chicago. This is a sampling of their advertiseme

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

For years, I have wanted to write an article about the relationship between Gayness, Art Deco, and Disney. While there are a few connections I have discovered, they never fully solidified and my research has always led me to various dead ends. However, apparently I'm not the only one who has thought somewhere along these lines (read this). Think about Miami's South Beach, The Tower of Terror, Grauman's Chinese Theatre, apparently Tulsa, Oklahoma, and of course, Boystown. Geog

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

Here are some photos of Pride and Market Days from 2007-2010, which I took during my ethnographic fieldwork in Boystown, Chicago. #gay #LGBT #LGBTQ #LGBTQ #gaypride #pride #chicago #boystown #photographs #ethnography #pictures #parade #festival #street #public #gayneighborhood #gentrification #party #neighborhood #queer

On October 28th, No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies will be published. This is a volume of scholarly works edited by E. Patrick Johnson that serves as a follow-up to his original edited volume, Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology. This volume features an essay I wrote based on my fieldwork in Boystown, Chicago entitled, "Boystown: Gay Neighborhoods, Social Media, and the (Re)production of Racism." In it, I explore the role of Facebook in the productio

Writing has never been a problem for me. I have always loved writing. But writing an ethnography has been such a huge challenge. There are no rules to writing an ethnography, so you are never taught "how to write an ethnography" - at least I never was. Journalistic writing - pretty clear. There is a structure, a style, guidelines, and an established norm. Creative writing - fun. Essay writing - beginning, middle, and end. Writing ethnography, unlike anything else I have ever

As gentrification continues in the neighborhood of Boystown, so too does the writing of my dissertation. I have written and re-wrtiten quite a number of drafts over the years (yes, years) and I am finally down to my last round of draft writing. It's going to be a giant push, but it's going to be pushed. This website is an effort for me to wrap my head around all of my research and writing during this time, and to help me organize my new thoughts and reconnect with some old on