Like many major cities, Chicago is made up of distinctive communities and neighborhoods. Just
north of downtown’s skyscrapers, a few blocks from Wrigley Field, is an LGBTQ+ community
with rainbow-colored rods that line the path from Melrose Street to Bradley Place, a
neighborhood that has long been affectionately known as “Boystown.”
But as the LGBTQ+ community in Chicago and around the country strives to become more
inclusive, some say the change of the name is a step towards removing the inherently gay identity of the community.
The undercurrent of frustration with the name surfaced in June 2020, when a group of activists
petitioned the neighborhood’s chamber of commerce to change it from “Boystown” to the more
neutral “Northalsted.”
Historians dispute whether the nickname was coined in the 70s, 80s, or 90s, but the official end
of the name came in September 2020 when the petition was accepted and the chamber of
commerce announced it would no longer call one of the most prominent LGBTQ+ communities
in the country “Boystown.”
Despite the official change, many people still feel attached to the old name.
The Chicago Tribune conducted a survey of residents’ feelings of the proposed name change in
2020 and reported that 58% of respondents favored keeping the “Boystown” moniker and 20%
said they felt unwelcomed by the name.
The change prompted varied responses from residents.
”You have to understand the gayborhood – which I call it – the gay ghetto today is not what it
was,” said Thomas MacEntee, who is white and has lived in “Northalsted” for nearly 20 years.
He said that he is empathetic to the goals and aspirations of non cis-gendered white men within
the LGBTQ+ community and that the more recent push for change correlates to the rise in
broader social diversity movements.
“I think it’s an appropriate reaction during the Black Lives Matter and everything like that,”
MacEntee said.
While he said he understands the broader move toward inclusivity in the LGBTQ+ community,
MacEntee is critical of pushing into what he would categorize as “cancel culture.”
A self-described boomer, MacEntee would not completely reveal whether or not he agreed with
the change, but said he felt that social movements like the push for renaming “Boystown” to
“Northalsted” can often lead to more division.
“I think in retrospect, it doesn’t connect us, it divides us,” he said.
Attempts in understanding shifts in communities have led to a long body of academic work.
Professor Greggor Mattson is a sociologist from Oberlin University who studies LGBTQ+
communities in small cities. He points out that one of the main tensions to overcome for queer
spaces is gender segregation.
For years, Mattson said, “many gay bars tended to serve only cisgender men, often cisgender
white men.”
Over the last 20 years there has been a decline in gender segregation in gay bars, according to
Mattson. “This decline of gender segregation and opening up to people of multiple sexualities,
including straight people, has really been a challenge” for many gay bars.
When it comes to “Northalsted” and the apathy over the name change, Mattson said it is no
surprise coming from a population that often prefers bars that are tailored to gay men
specifically.
“I call them cruising men’s bars,” Mattson said., “They often were indifferent, if not hostile to
women.”
The neighborhood name change started a ripple effect that the community is still dealing with.
“A very small portion of the community pushed very hard to have a change, but the change that
resulted [was] very commercial,” said Verne, a white resident of “Northalsted” who only wanted to
be identified by his first name.
The aim of the petition was to move toward gender-neutrality in pursuit of inclusivity. However,
Verne said he believes the change dilutes the queer identity of the neighborhood and leaves it
more vulnerable to gentrification.
He says he has watched the community slowly evolve with new developments and businesses. “I’ve watched all these establishments: daycare and doggy daycare and I’ve watched the number of baby carriages from straight couples [rise],” he added. ”We ended up with … ‘Northalsted’ which has zero gay identity.”
Despite the official change, many locals still call the community “Boystown.” because the change
of moniker only occurred on a committee level.
Beyond the removal of signage in some places, “Northalsted” is the same as it was in 2020.
Larger problems around diversity and access in the neighborhood persist.