History of Gay Bars in New York City

The FBI Files: David Petillo: "in his early teens was reputed to be a 'fairy,' but . . . when he was 18 or 19 years old he went to Chicago where he was ‘straightened out’ by Al Capone"

David Petillo was a long-time soldier in the Genovese crime family and, born in NYC in 1908, perhaps began his criminal career as a finocchio in Little Italy because “in his early teens was reputed to be a ‘fairy,’ but . . . when he was 18 or 19 years old he went to Chicago where he was ‘straightened out’ by AL CAPONE and was soon a member of the CAPONE mob there.”  Although Petillo may have “straightened out,” he nevertheless had a fetish for dressing in drag when he killed his numerous victims over the decades.  When Petillo returned to New York he hooked up with Charlie Lucky Luciano, and on February 1, 1936 was arrested on white slavery charges “with 100 prostitutes and madams and was described as an individual who had organized 200 houses of prosititution under LUCIANO with 3,000 girls grossing $12 million a year.”  The girls were happy to testify against Petillo, and he served 20 years at Sing Sing until he was paroled in 1956.  At this point Petillo trafficked heroin for Vito Genovese through the Lower East Side gay and straight bars on East 4^th Street and Second Avenue, including Club 82, and in the mid- and late-1960s had hidden interests in an afterhours club at 11 East 16^th Street.  Petillo became involved in the pornography rackets in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and he had an interest in the notorious Arrow Laboratories at 75 Spring Street which produced some of the most hardcore obscene material avialable at the time until selling out to the Gambino crime family. However, throughout the 1970s, Petillo was “active in operation of sex-related businesses in New York City” and cocaine trafficking.  On February 4, 1980, he murdered Edward Vassallo a/k/a Charles Talbot, and fled the country.  Petillo died in Spain on December 28, 1983.

 

Download David Petillo FBI Files Part I

 

Download David Petillo FBI Files Part II

 

Download David Petillo FBI Files Part III

 

Download David Petillo FBI Files Part IV

 

Download David Petillo FBI Files Part V

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: "In 1930, Variety estimated that there were 35 such venues on the city's Near North Side"

An entry (“Gays and Lesbians”) by Chad Heap for the Encyclopedia of Chicago states:

As one of the busiest industrial centers and transportation hubs in the United States, Chicago at the beginning of the twentieth century attracted thousands of single women and men with new employment opportunities and nonfamilial living arrangements in the lodging-house districts of the Near North and Near South Sides. The anonymous and transient character of these neighborhoods permitted the development of Chicago's lesbian and gay subculture. During the early years of the century, much of this subculture was centered in the Levee, a working-class entertainment and vice district. Here, several saloons and dance halls catered to gay men and featured female impersonation acts. By 1911, the Vice Commission of Chicago noted the presence of “whole groups and colonies of these men who are sex perverts,” many of them working as department-store clerks in the Loop. * * *  By the 1920s, a visible lesbian and gay enclave was well established in the Near North Side bohemian neighborhood known as Towertown. * * * The Dill Pickle Club on Tooker Alley hosted group discussions and debates on homosexuality and lesbianism, while the Bally Hoo Cafe on North Halsted featured male and female impersonation acts, as well as a contest for cross-dressed patrons. In 1930, Variety estimated that there were 35 such venues on the city's Near North Side. * * * With the arrival of southern black migrants during the Great Migrarion, a lesbian and gay enclave also developed on the city's South Side. African American lesbians and gay men became regular fixtures, as both patrons and entertainers, in Prohibition-era cabarets, including the Plantation Cafe on East 35th Street and the Pleasure Inn on East 31st. In 1935 a black gay street hustler and nightclub doorman, Alfred Finnie, launched a series of drag (transvestite) balls on the South Side. Building on the success of the interracial drag balls that had been held at the Coliseum Annex on the Near South Side since the 1920s, the Finnie's Ball became a celebrated Halloween event on the South Side, drawing thousands of gay and lesbian participants and heterosexual onlookers well into the 1960s. * * * After the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, the first bars catering exclusively to lesbians and gay men opened in Chicago. Among the best known were Waldman's, a gay male bar run by a married Jewish couple on Michigan Avenue near Randolph Street, and the Rose-El-Inn, a lesbian bar on Clark Street near Division. During the 1930s and 1940s, the Loop became an increasingly important meeting place for gay men; the theaters, restaurants, and bars of this district supplemented the Near North Side venues as gathering spots for both gay men and the soldiers and sailors who swarmed the city during World War II. Lesbian bars on both the Near North and Near South Sides, especially those run by the lesbian entrepreneur Billie Le Roy, drew sizable crowds, as did the South Side's Cabin Inn, which featured a chorus line of cross-dressed black men. * * * During the 1950s and 1960s, the Near North Side and Near South Side remained important lesbian and gay neighborhoods, and new enclaves formed in Old Town, Hyde Park, and in the Lake View neighborhood near the intersection of Clark Street and Diversey Parkway. The gay leather community also coalesced during this period—first, around Omar's Grill in the Loop, and in the early 1960s at the Gold Coast, Chicago's first gay leather bar. * * * Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s lesbian and gay bars, dance clubs, and bathhouses multiplied.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: The 1930s Pansy Craze

A November 2005 article (“The Gay ‘30s”) by Lucinda Fleeson from Chicago Magazine states:

As midnight approached on Halloween Eve in 1932, men in vampy satin ball gowns, French-heeled slippers, teased coiffures, and rouged lips crowded into the Chicago Coliseum. Over the years, the old building, at Wabash Avenue and 15th Street, had played host to political conventions and hockey games, but these men were there to dance the night away. Lurking in the shadows that evening, a nondescript, bespectacled man in a plain suit and tie scrawled notes. A sociology professor at the University of Chicago, Ernest W. Burgess was carrying out the country's first extensive research project into homosexuality. "When the drags entered," he wrote at one point, "there was much laughing, particularly about one elderly man dressed in women's clothing, glasses, boyish bob and out-of-date costume, shaved but chin showing growth of a beard." For a brief time in the late 1920s and early 1930s, similar scenes unfolded up and down the city, as a relatively open gay culture thrived in Chicago, with gay cabarets and nightclubs proliferating throughout the Near North and South sides. By 1930, Variety reported, there were 35 "pansy parlors" in Towertown, the neighborhood named for its proximity to the Old Chicago Water Tower. A place called Diamond Lil's, at 909 North Rush Street, was packed so tight with partying gays that people were turned away. * * *  With its wildly relaxed attitudes, Chicago's Pansy Craze, as the brief phenomenon has come to be known, emerged from Prohibition just as homosexuality first came to be recognized in this country as a distinct sexual orientation. The outburst lasted only until the mid-thirties, when the impact of the Depression and a series of sensationalized sex crimes led to a crackdown. * * * The remarkable era might have dropped largely from history were it not for the pioneering efforts of Burgess, a founder of the "Chicago school" of urban sociology. He assigned dozens of his students to take notes at nightclubs, interview gay men and a few women, and write term papers on the subject. The results are now contained in 107 linear feet of typewritten reports on fading foolscap, notebooks in longhand, photographs, and other records, all meticulously cataloged and preserved as part of the Burgess papers in the Special Collections vaults at the U. of C.'s Regenstein Library. * * * His students' reports are vivid. The party was just coming into full swing when one researcher arrived at the Ballyhoo Café, at 1942 North Halsted Street, at 11:30 p.m. on September 24, 1933: "Seventy-five were queer fellows and 25 queer girls. The hostess dressed in masculine style was queer as well as the M.C." The girls-"mentes," as they were called-got drunk on gin. Probing all the while, the researcher asked one to dance. He reported that she talked about the "jam" people-code for "straight"-and confided that queer people despised them.   * * *  By the Roaring Twenties, Chicago had evolved into Sin City, offering an array of vices and entertainments, many dominated by gangsters. Those tumultuous years were marked by enormous social upheaval-women obtained the vote in 1920, bobbed their hair, and embraced emancipation, while post–World War I modernist European ideas poured into the cauldron of Chicago's explosive growth. Throughout the Midwest, tales of Chicago's freedoms reached secreted gays. Burgess collected a May 1934 letter written by a Saginaw, Michigan, man named Bill to a Chicago friend: "Yes, I did hear of your gay parks and beaches," Bill wrote. Back in Saginaw he had to lie low because "as for gay places there just aren't any in town. We generally go to Detroit." Chicago's Democratic mayor William Dever began his term in 1923 with crackdowns on the city's illegal saloons, vowing to "drive hard against every vicious cabaret in every part of the city." But his actions were unpopular-even the Chicago Tribune opposed Prohibition. Gangsters were said to be grossing almost $13 million in beer sales, gambling, and prostitution during the first two terms of Dever's predecessor, William Hale "Big Bill" Thompson. When Big Bill emerged from retirement to run again, in 1927, he promised, "We will not only reopen places these people have closed, but we'll open 10,000 new ones." * * * The Pansy Craze reached its height in 1933 as Chicago prepared for the Century of Progress world's fair exposition. Organizers, criminals, and social reformers geared for an explosion of entertainment offerings, both licit and illicit. "Happy days will be here again when the World's Fair opens next June," one brothel owner was quoted as telling a Juvenile Protection Agency investigator. Dozens of cabarets opened on the South Side, a boon to Chicago's Depression economy. The drag shows featured at the K-9 Club (advertised as "Chicago's oddest Nite Club"), at 105 East Walton Street, drew capacity crowds. The fair closed down in the autumn of 1934, about ten months after the repeal of Prohibition. But legalizing liquor didn't create a boom in nightclubs, bars, and permissiveness. Rather, the opposite occurred. The crush of the Depression descended. The tourist trade evaporated. Even the prostitutes complained. A young New York hustler named Rodey who traveled to Chicago for the fair told one of Burgess's students that business turned bad after the fair closed: "The Depression has hurt hustling. I used to get $5.00 but now sometimes go down the alley to get $.50 or $1.00." Still, reformers demanded that Mayor Edward J. Kelly clean up nightlife, and they campaigned against strippers and female impersonators. Early in 1935, police padlocked the K-9 Club and the Ballyhoo. Two lesbian cafés, the Twelve-Thirty club, at 1230 Clybourn Avenue, and the Roselle Inn, at 1251 North Clark Street, were shut. In October 1935, police raided two State Street nightspots, the Cabin Inn and the De Luxe Cafe. "Put on pants or go to jail," police ordered the drag queens. For a while the black-and-tan cafés were allowed to continue their drag shows, but then they, too, were shut down. Police raided the Halloween Balls at the Coliseum. By 1935 Mayor Kelly had eliminated gay nightlife.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: "[o]f course, everything you bought in the bar you had to buy through the syndicate"

Chicago was the gay capital of the country even before San Francisco and New York became coastal meccas for the gay community, and by 1970 had ninety gay bars most of which were controlled by the Mafia, and this control existed at least well into the 1980s.  Windy City Times reports that Jimmy Allegretti, a member of “the outfit” or “syndicate” as the Chicago mob is known, operated many gay bars in the 1970s and 1980s on the Near North Side including the Alameda Club, the Stockade Lounge, the Stage 618 Club, and the Ranch.  One gay man known by the nickname “Wrench” worked for Mr. Allegretti’s establishments, and he writes:

I worked for the outfit for years.  The first bar I worked for was the Alameda Club, and these were all owned by the same outfit guy.  They had a jukebox company [redacted] Amusements, they had the syndicate bars, they owned the machines, the games, and all that stuff.  Oh yeah, I knew Jimmy Alegretti, and he was a rat, a rat, a rat.

On April 28, 1980, Curt “Rocky” Blau, a bouncer at Stage 618, the Ten-oh-Two, the New Flight and O’Bannion’s was stabbed to death in the Ranch.

Another prominent owner of gay bars which allegedly were under the control of the Chicago “outfit” was Nate Zuckerman.  Among the bars Mr. Zuckerman operated was The Front Page which was “a syndicate bar.”  Dee (Dennis) LoBue, who first went to The Front Page as a junior in high school in 1958 and later became a drag performer, said:

[The owner was] Nate Zuckerman, interesting guy.  Brilliant when it came to liquor and managing bars, he knew what to do.  * * *  Beer was $2.22 a case.  It was syndicate beer from Cicero, we called it The Green Piss, it was the world’s worst.  Of course, everything you bought in the bar you had to buy through the syndicate.

Mr. Zuckerman “had connections,” and one employee of The Front Page, Jaye Sutherland, stated that “if you didn’t ask too many questions or know too much, you didn’t get in trouble.”

Chicago beefcake photographer, businessman and activist Chuck Renslow opened a non-mob bar called the Gold Coast Leather Bar in 1958, and he states that even as an establishment outside of the outfit’s control he still had to bribe the police and deal with mobsters:

Right after we opened the [police] bag man came around and said we would have to pay X amount of dollars (I’m not sure what it was at the beginning – but it got up to $200 a month) and said we had to pay each month.  We couldn’t argue.  I knew some bars that argued and when that happened the police would just park out in front with the blue light going and nobody would dare to go inside.  * * *  The outfit also came and got their money, well not money, but we had to have their jukeboxes and all that sort of thing.

On organized crime hearings before the United States House of Representatives in 1986, the Congressional Record details the control that the “outfit” had over at least some gay bars in Chicago:  “Vince Solano, president of Local 1 in Chicago, is a territorial boss of the Mafia on that city’s north side,” and “[a]s a territorial boss . . . Solano controls gambling, sport bookmaking, extortion of topless clubs, strip joints, massage parlors, adult bookstores, gay bars.”  Mr. Solano’s control over at least some gay bars on Chicago’s North Side came up again in an order by the Laborers’ International Union of North America in 1999 which booted out John Matassa Jr. as the President and Business Manager of LIUNA Local Union 2 for his ties to Mr. Solano.  Among the specific criminal Mafia activity in which the 1999 Order finds Mr. Solano’s North Side crew engaged was the extorition of gay bars from 1980 to the present.

In the 1970s and 1980s several Chicago gay bars were destroyed by arson.  Sukie de la Croix, the “Chicago Whispers” columnist for Windy City Times, writes the arsons had become such a cliché that “[m]ention fires in a gay bar to a Chicagoan and you’re sure to get a smile that says ‘suspicious.’”  Arsonists set fire to the Ritz, a popular black male club, on both June 1 and September 2, 1981, and its owner, Fred Morris, wrly stated:  “I guess my competition doesn’t like me or the bar."

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: Wacker Bath House at 674 1/2 N. Clark St.: "immoral practices were permitted there"

A March 13, 1936 article ("Revoke License of bath house on morals charge") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Mayor Kelly yesterday revoked the license of the Wacker Bath House, 674 ½ North Clark Street, following the conviction earlier in the day . . . of three men arrested in a police raid there.  Sergt. Frank O’Sullivan . . . and his partner, Thomas P. Lyons, had visited the place after receiving complaints that immoral practices were permitted there.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: The Bench at 115 N. Clark St.: "[p]olice officers . . . arrested 69 men"

A June 5, 1941 article ("Liquor license of tavern revoked after police raid") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Mayor Kelly yesterday revoked the license of the Bench, a tavern at 115 North Clark Street, on the recommendation of Police Commissioner J. P. Allman, who charged a disorderly house was operated there.  Police officers raided the place Sunday and arrested 69 men.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: "After the war, things got real bad for gay people in Chicago"

A June 1, 2001 article ("A tour of bar history") by Nara Schoenberg from the Chicago Tribune states:

With its dart board, dark woodwork and worn leatherette chairs, Legacy 21 could be any neighborhood bar. Only the rainbow banner and the word "pride" spelled out in glowing letters on the far wall suggest the rich history of one of the oldest gay-owned bars in Chicago.  In the fourth decade of the modern gay rights movement, it's hard to imagine a day when police raided gay bars on flimsy charges, inspected lesbians with flashlights to see if they were wearing men's pants and gave names of patrons to newspapers -- a practice that resulted in family turmoil, job loss, sometimes even suicide. But that's what happened, my tour guide Sukie de la Croix tells me. That's the world Legacy 21 was born into in 1961. The owners, Woody Moser, now deceased, and his lover, Jose Rodriguez -- the soft- spoken, impeccably coifed 64-year-old sitting at the end of the bar - - were among the first Chicago bar owners to advertise in the gay press, de la Croix says. They played host to big crowds and, at one point, a mayor. They survived a raid in which the charges were eventually dropped. "It's really an important bar," de la Croix says.  Legacy 21 . . . de la Croix says is the oldest gay-owned bar still operating in Chicago . . . .  De la Croix has tracked down gay bars going back to 1928, when Diamond Lil's -- named for the man who ran it, who in turn had taken the name of a Mae West play -- operated in the free and easy prewar atmosphere.  "After the war, things got real bad for gay people in Chicago," de la Croix says.  Among the notable postwar bars was Louis Gager's -- named, de la Croix says, for "a huge, great fat gay man" who ran it. Located near O'Hare International Airport, the bar was rumored to sit between two townships, allegedly making it immune to law enforcement crackdowns. But in 1964 that theory was proved false.  Police raided the bar and arrested 109 people, eight of them teachers, de la Croix says. Names, occupations and addresses of some of the bar-goers were published in local newspapers, including the Tribune, and some people lost their jobs.  In the '70s and '80s, Legacy 21, at 3042 W. Irving Park Rd., was part of a triangle of gay bars. Across the street was the now defunct Blue Pub, which de la Croix has traced back to at least 1971. A few blocks away is a lesbian bar that opened in 1965.  In the 1960s, lesbian bars were subjected to a particular form of police scrutiny. Police enforced an old cross-dressing law that required women to wear three items of "female apparel." In the frantic early minutes of a raid, some women would run to the bathroom and trade clothes in an attempt to achieve the legally mandated minimum of women's attire.  "There would be cops outside with a flashlight checking to see if they had their flies in front," which was considered a masculine style, de la Croix says."

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: "they proudly display the earmarks of their trade, the waved hair, the mincing walk and feminine makeup"

A November 14, 1948 article ("Dive keepers on N. Clark St. get warnings") from the Chicago Tribune states:

[Police Captain John J.] Walsh also ordered the cleanup of other saloons in the area which cater to degenerates.  It was pointed out that many men who infest the saloons which thrive on the business they bring are morally depraved.  They make no effort to conceal their depravity.  In fact, they proudly display the earmarks of their trade, the waved hair, the mincing walk and feminine makeup.  And since their activities are illegal, the dives in which they congregate wink at the law although police beatmen patrol the streets where the saloons’ gaudy neon signs make red patches in the night.  The situation – which has existed under police noses for many months – came forcibly to public attention early yesterday when two men caught by park police in Lincoln Park fled from the squad in an automobile travelling 80 miles per hour.  When the fleeing car – under police fire – hit a street car, it knocked the public vehicle off the track and shook up 40 passengers.  The two men said they met at the Windup Lounge, 669 N. State St., a known hangout for the degenerates.  It is licensed by the city and the licensee's name is Paul Medor.  In both 1947 and this year, police have received many complaints of indecent singing, indecent exhibitionism, and solicitation in the Windup, but no action has been taken.  In the late evening hours, when the N. Clark St. dives are soliciting the city's visitors, the immoral crews congregate in many other saloons in addition to the Windup.  And the dim lit, smoky barrooms are jammed with shrill voiced men, customers who go to be approached, and the merely curious.  The license of the club at 7 W. Division St. is issued to Carlo Lamark.  In addition to the unsavory morals of many of its patrons, police also list gambling complaints against it.  Perhaps the prize exhibit of the area is the Shanty Inn, 716 N. Clark St., a shoddy saloon licensed to Sid Rosenthal and Jerry Abraham.  It was closed briefly in 1947 by police, but it soon reopened.  It has a long record as a center for degenerates and even murderers.  A Negro, Tyree Soree, was slain there on March 25, 1947.  Next door, at 714 N. Clark St., the Green Lantern Club, licensed to Helen Benedict, is a dive.  Other dives are The Sewer, 620 N. State St., a saloon with a record for immoral entertainment and serving liquor to minors, and a saloon at 5 W. Erie St. known variously as the Glass Pub and the Jungle Club.  The Sewer’s license is issued to Joseph Cohen, and the Jungle Club’s is issued to Abby Davis.  There are many more.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: The Windup Lounge at 669 N. Clark St.: "They should be taken out of society as the first step"

A January 17, 1949 article ("Capt. Harrison jails 24 in war on degenerates") from the Chicago Tribune states:

In a drive against degenerates infesting vice and clip joints, Capt. Thomas Harrison of the E. Chicago Av. station early yesterday arrested 15 men and nine women in taverns on the west side of N. Clark St., between Chicago Av., and the river.  Accompanied by six detectives and a patrol wagon, Harrison questioned hundreds of patrons in taverns, sent degenerates to the police station for investigation, and broke up couples who had newly met.  * * *  Harrison, who last week arrested 93 men in a raid on the Windup lounge, 669 N. Clark St., a hangout for perverts, condemned degenerates for the recruiting of adolescents.  Dr. Harry R. Hoffman, Illinois state alienist, agreed, and added that homosexuals should be incarcerated in institutions "for the protection of society."  Capt. Harrison said that Chicago probably has at least 18,000 sexually maladjusted men, all potentially dangerous.  Boys as young as 12 have been approached, Capt. Harrison said, and unless they have been warned by parents, friends, or church leaders, might easily fall victim.  Many homosexuals, Capt. Harrison said, maintain luxurious apartments where they entertain young, unsuspecting “recruits” with food, music, liquor, and obscene literature.  "That’s the beginning of the downfall of many boys and young men," Capt. Harrison said.  "All families with boys should warn them early to beware of strange men at all times."  Unofficial information received by Harrison indicated, he said, that most of Chicago’s degenerates are members of a national organization run by a man named Brown living in or near Miami.  Dr. Hoffman said that for years he has campaigned against the problem.  In his opinion, he said, the degenerates "are born and not made.  Cure is secondary," Dr. Hoffman said.  "They should be taken out of society as the first step."

A January 22, 1949 article ("6 arrested in vice raid on N. State St. demand jury trial") from the Chicago Tribune states:

In a four hour court session 72 defendants arrested by police on Jan. 9 in a raid on the Windup Lounge, 669 N. State St., paraded before Municipal Judge John J. Griffen in the Chicago Av. police court.  Of that number 23 were discharged, two were fined, six demanded jury trials and 41 were ordered examined at the court’s psychiatric unit . . . .  Capt. Thomas Harrison charged that the lounge was frequented by homosexuals.  * * *  Those demanding jury trials were Anthony Allegretti, 39, of 2200 W. Campbell Pk., John Grachetti, 24, of 701 S. Hoyne Av., Clyde Miller, 23, of 48 W. Goethe St., Bill T. Ramsey, 24, of 1454 E. Marquette Rd., Frank Woods, 21, of 1246 N. Dearborn St., all bartenders; and Jack S. Kaplan, 47, of 927 Wilson Av., floor manager.  Allegretti and Kaplan also were charged with operating a disorderly house.

A February 3, 1949 article ("Bartender seized by police in morals raid is fined $100") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Clyde Miller, 23, of 48 W. Goethe St., a bartender, who was arrested in a morals cleanup raid at the Windup Tavern, 669 N. State St., was fined $100 yesterday . . . on charges of selling liquor to minors.  * * *  The Windup was raided Jan. 9 by Capt. Thomas Harrison of the E. Chicago Av. station, who described the place as a hangout for perverts.

A February 5, 1949 article ("3 bartenders fined as result of raid on Windup lounge") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Three bartenders in the Windup lounge, 669 N. State St., arrested in a raid on the tavern Jan. 9, were fined yesterday . . . as inmates of a disorderly house.  They were among 93 persons arrested in the raid.  * * *  The bartenders, addresses they gave, and their fines were:  William R. Ramsey, 24, of 1454 E. Marquette Rd., $45 and costs; John A. Giacakette, 34, of 701 S. Hoyne Av., $25 and costs; and Oscar L. Ferner, 23, of 162 W. Oak St., $25 and costs.

A January 10, 1949 article ("File charges against 87 in vice net") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Police completed late last night the fingerprinting, investigating, and booking on vice charges of most of the 91 men who were seized early in the morning in a surprise raid at the Windup lounge, 669 N. State St., a notorious hangout for degenerates. The raid was the latest action in a drive directed by Capt. Thomas Harrison of the E. Chicago Av. station to suppress vice and clip joints in the near north side.  * * *  Harrison said that he would recommend revocation of the Windup lounge's license, and follow a similar pattern against half a dozen other known dives in the district.  Although the Windup lounge is in the name of a Paul Medor, police said the real owner is James Allegretti, reputedly one of the Big Four controlling many saloons, night clubs and dives in the E. Chicago Av. district.  * * *  The bar was lined two deep, and all tables were crowded.  When the police burst in many of the panicky inmates threw powder puffs and cosmetic cases in the bar in an effort to dispose of incriminating evidence.  * * *  Principal prisoners were the manager, who gave his name as Anthony Policheri, 45, of 2200 Campbell Park West, but who police said is a brother of James Allegretti; the floor manager, Jack S. Kaplan, 29, of 927 Wilson Av., and three bartenders, Frank Woods, 21, of 1246 N. Dearborn St., William Ramsay, 29, of 1454 E. Marquette Rd., and Charles W. Taylor, 35, of Winfield, Du Page County.  Policheri and Kaplan were booked on charges of running a disorderly house and selling liquor to minors, and the bartenders on charges of selling liquor to minors.  The others—except the minors—were booked as inmates of a disorderly house.  * * *  Police said that James Allegretti was the real power behind the Windup lounge, with his wife, Mrs. Florence Ramsey Allegretti, and that Allegretti has an interest in questionable places in E. Huron St., and W. Division St., and also in a Rush St. night club.  * * *  Allegretti was said by police to be associated with the Three Doms dominating so-called night life on the near north side.  The Three Doms were identified as Dominic Nuccio, Dominic Brancato and Dominic De Bello, all reputed members of the Guzik-Capone gang.

A January 11, 1949 article ("Continue hearings of 86 men arrested in police vice raid") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Hearings for 86 men arrested early Sunday in a police raid on the Windup lounge, 669 N. State St., a hangout for sexual degenerates, were continued yesterday to Jan. 21 . . . .  Seven minors also were seized.  * * *  Police said the Windup is operated by a segment of the Guzik-Capone mob.  Its license is in the name of Paul Medor, 33.  Principal defendants are the manager, Anthony Policheri, 45, alias Allegretti; the floor manager, Jack S. Kaplan, 29, and the bartenders, Frank Woods, 21, and William Ramsay, 29.  * * *  Police files show that Kaplan, alias Sol Kaplin, was sentenced Nov. 4, 1939, to Riker’s Island, New York, for impairing the morals of a minor and in June, 1943, in Cook County, to jail for a year for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

A January 13, 1949 article ("2 North Side taverns lose licenses after police cleanup drive") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Mayor Kennelly, acting on the recommendation of Police Commissioner Prendergast, yesterday ordered revocation of licenses of two near north side taverns which were investigated by police, one as a "clip joint" and the other as a hangout for degenerates.  * * *  The latter tavern was raided . . . Sunday morning when 86 men and seven minors were arrested.  Their cases are pending.  At the time of the raid police said the Windup bar was lined with panicky customers who threw compacts, cosmetics, and powder puffs on the floor to dispose of incriminating evidence.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: Old Huron Bath at 679 N. Clark St.: "an indecent proposal"

A March 1, 1949 article ("Bathhouse inmate gets 90 days and $100 fine; 2 others freed") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Hakon Simonson, 53, of 14 W. Erie St., was sentenced to 90 days in the Bridewell and fined $100 and costs . . . on a charge of being an inmate of a disorderly house.  * * *Simonson and nine other men were arrested Saturday night in the Old Huron Bath, a Turkish bathhouse at 679 N. Clark St., in a police raid ordered by Capt. Thomas Harrison in his drive on vice and degeneracy on the near north side.  Detective Francis O’Connor testified that Simonson made an indecent proposal to him.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: "a hangout for perverts, homosexuals and degenerates"

A July 29, 1949 article ("2 taverns stripped of permits; report sex, dope violations") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Police Commissioner Prendergast revoked the liquor licenses of a north and a south side tavern yesterday, on recommendation of Mayor Kennelly.  The Hollywood Bowl, 1300 N. Clark St., lost its license as the result of a report from Capt. Michael Ahern of the Hudson Av. Station, who described it as "a hangout for perverts, homosexuals and degenerates."  Ahern said several perverts were found in the place July 20.  The license was issued to Anna Lauda.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: "a meeting place for homosexuals"

A December 17, 1949 article ("Lie test clears business man in Rinearson case") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Raebern H. Post, 36, of 209 S. 9^th Av., La Grange, a suburban businessman, who was seized yesterday on an alleged sex charge, was questioned for more than two hours under the lie detector in police headquarters last night concerning the rape slaying of Roberta Rinearson, 10, whose body was found Dec. 18, 1948, on a roadside near Elmhurst.  Post, the 319^th person subjected to a lie test about the slaying, cleared himself of suspicion, in the opinion of Capt. Daniel Gilbert, chief investigator for State's Atty. Boyle.  * * *  Post was questioned about the murder after he had been named in a perverted sex act by Eugene Krott, 19, of 4455 Kinzie St., a railroad oiler.  Post earlier had accused Krott of assaulting and robbing him.  Lt. John Selle of the highway police said Post admitted a "vague recollection" of having met Krott in Louis Gager's tavern at Medill and Mannheim Roads, Leyden township, and of having spent some time with him.  * * *  Krott told policemen of his meeting with Post in Gager's tavern, which has been reported by police as a meeting place for homosexuals, and of the alleged act of perversion.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: Bughouse Square: "Haunt of homos"

In their 1950 book Chicago Confidential, Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer write of the Tenderloin District on Chicago’s North Side:

Chicago lives through one unbroken round of conventions.  It is overrun with stop-overs, tourists, buyers and sellers, and smalltowners in for a fling.  North Clark Street is two minutes’ walk from some of the busiest hotels, and the guests mill along Clark gawking at the framed photos outside the stripperies, and then rush in with their eyeballs bulging.  Prices here are higher than on the West Side, but furtive gentlemen will approach you and offer you anything you can name.  Everything they sell is illegal in a black market for any kind of drug or weapon or unspeakable circus, bi-sexual or homo-sexual, human or beastly.  * * *  If Chicago has anything resembling a bohemian section, it is the Near North Side.  Bughouse (Washington) Square attracts the nuts and the exhibitionists.  The made-over flats and the remodeled mansions harbor all that is left of Chicago’s artistic and literary colony.  What was once on the way to being the center of a new school of civilized culture has dwindled to a pocket edition of the remains of atmosphere in New York’s Greenwich Village, with candle-lighted tea-shops, a few sawdust-strewn saloons where the avante garde reads effusions of its confusions to other would-bes, and the pet drinks are grape and vino rouge.  Such habitual always draw the distorted and the perverted and that mélange of middle-sexed jobs which nature started but never finished.  As a blind for allowing more serious toleration, the police swoop down now and then on the pathological misfits, but they soon return.  * * *  Bughouse Square [932 N]  Proper name Washington Square, at North Clark and Walton Streets.  Haunt of homos, pinkos, nature lovers and nuts.  Chicago’s version of London’s Hyde Park with soap boxers and prosties.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: Cyrano's at 8 E. Division St.: "Vice charges filed against 58 in bar raid"

An April 15, 1951 article ("Trace actions of choir singer before slaying") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Police yesterday found a witness who traced the movements of Richard Miller, 29, of 8517 Sangamon St., a choir singer, to within half an hour of his fatal wounding early Friday in Jackson Park, near 62d St.  The witness was Rosario Eccesso, a hairdresser, who owns the Artistic Beauty shop at 1613 E. 67^th St., in the rear of which he lives.  * * *  Police said Eccesso told them he and Miller were close friends.  Figuring in Eccesso's story was Cyrano's tavern at 8 E. Division St.  Eccesso told police that he and Miller dined together early Thursday evening in a restaurant near the beauty shop, then went to Cyrano's, where they had drinks.  * * *  Eccesso said he and Miller then drove in Eccesso's automobile to the beauty shop, where they parted.  The police were told that Miller left on foot.  The time of the parting was fixed as half an hour before Miller, clutching an unlighted cigarette, was wounded fatally by a bullet that struck him in the abdomen.  Police said the Jackson Park area where Miller’s body was found has been known as a meeting place for homosexuals

A December 31, 1951 article ("Vice charges filed against 58 in bar raid") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Vice charges were placed yesterday against all but two of 60 men arrested in a police raid earlier on Cyrano’s tavern, 8 E. Division St., a reputed hangout for homosexuals.  Capt. Redmond Gibbons of the Hudson Av. station ordered the raid.  The owner, Howard Blencoe, 31, of 3425½ Elaine Pl., was charged with being the keeper of a disorderly house.  He and Gerald Aucoin, 22, of 1520 N. La Salle St., and Edward Deladkowski, 23, of 1217 N. State St., bartenders also were charged with selling liquor to intoxicated persons.  Fifty-seven patrons were charged with being inmates of a disorderly house.  Hearings were set for Wednesday in Boys court because some of the patrons are younger than 21.  Capt. Gibbons said that the tavern operated in an orderly manner until recently, but that complaints have become numerous.  The tavern figured incidentally in the fatal shooting April 13 of Richard Miller, 29, of 8517 Sangamon St., in Jackson Park.  He had visited Cyrano’s prior to the shooting, which still is unsolved.

A January 4, 1952 article ("Sex charges against 60 seized in tavern dropped") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Judge Joseph J. Drucker in Boys Court yesterday dismissed sex charges against 60 men seized in a raid by police Dec. 30 in Cyrano's lounge, 8 E. Division St.  The charges were dropped for lack of evidence

A September 9, 1952 article ("Two arrested in vice raid fined; 28 freed") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Two men seized in a vice raid on Cyrano's Lounge, 8 E. Division St., a reputed hangout for homosexuals, were fined $25 and costs on disorderly conduct charges yesterday . . . .  Twenty-eight other men were dismissed, including the owner, Andrew Blencoe, 32, of 3425 Elaine Pl.  Blencoe was charged with being the keeper of a disorderly house.  He was arrested last December also when police raided the place and arrested 58 persons.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: The Greyhound Bus Terminal on W. Randolph Street: "working the terminal"

The Greyhound Bus Station – located at either 64 and 74 W. Randolph Street – was a well known gay cruising and hustling zone populated with drug addicted and/or teenage hustlers nearly since its opening in 1953, and was a favorite hunting ground for serial killer John Wayne Gacy in the 1970s.  Among those who worked the station in the 1950s was a gang of young hustlers under the command of Harry Figel who – much like Ed “the Skull” Murphy in New York City – used the boys as tools for extorting gay men.  Harry Figel was murdered by Chicago cops Richard Cain and Gerald Shallow on March 22, 1959 under the pretense of self-defense pursuant to an effort to arrest him after an undercover investigation into the extortion racket.  However, Figel’s murder appears to have been the result of a failure to pay street tax to the Outfit.  Richard Cain in fact was a made member of the Outfit and was a bagman and enforcer for its vice operations.  Indeed, Richard Cain, whom the FBI identified as “possibly the most corrupt police official in the history of Chicago,” subsequently was forced to resign from the Chicago police force once several of his crimes came to light.  After a brief prison term Richard Cain divided his time between Chicago and Mexico conducting business for mob boss Sam Giancana.  Mob hitmen killed Richard Cain in 1973 by blowing away his face with a couple of close-range shotgun blasts.

A June 9, 1949 article (“2 Ex-Convicts Get Year; Used Youngster in Shakedown Scheme”) from the Chicago Tribune states:

Earl Cunningham, 21, of 6126 S. Tripp Av., and Harry Figel, 28, of 2448 47^th St., ex-convicts, were sentenced yesterday to a year in the Bridewell . . . after they pleaded guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor.  The two were arrested Tuesday at Adams and State Sts. By Lt. John Murphy of the confidence game detail, who accompanied Wesley E. Olsen, 35, of 3511 S. Washtenaw Av., there after Cunningham and Figel had taken $30 from him and demanded $500 to be delivered at that corner.  Olsen told police he picked up Frank Whitefield, 15, of 5019 S. Racine Av., as a hitchhiker and was asked to drive him to Loomis and 53d Sts., where Cunningham and Figel stepped up, accused him of an act of perversion, extorted $30 and ordered him to deliver the $500 later.  Whitefield, a former inmate of the state training school for boys near St. Charles, has been returned there.

A March 23, 1959 article (“Kill Ex-Convict in Loop Gun Fight”) from the Chicago Tribune states:

A Loop gun battle with police brought death Sunday morning to Harry Figel, 37, of 2531 46^th St., an ex-convict with a long record as an extortionist and robber.  Detectives Gerald Shallow and Richard Cain fired five shots into Figel after he had fired at Cain in an alley south of Lake Street between Clark and Dearborn Streets.  Figel, police said, had been suspected of being the leader of a gang of young men who posed as perverts to make dates with actual perverts.  Figel’s role was to appear suddenly and pretend to be the uncle of his young accomplice, then extort money from the victim.  Sgt. Thomas Mulvey, head of the sex bureau, to which Cain and Shallow are assigned, said he learned of the Figel gang’s activities about a month ago and assigned Cain and Shallow to work on the case.  The detectives found one member of the gang who promised to cooperate in capturing Figel, known to the gang as “Uncle Harry.”  With Cain masquerading as a pervert, the young informer told Figel he had set up a meeting for 5:15 a. m. in the rear of the Greyhound bus depot.  The detectives went to the scene.  Shallow hid in a doorway across Lake street while Cain and the young man waited for Figel to show up.  When he did, Figel told Cain he was the informer’s uncle and pulled him into the alley, where Cain pretended to plead for mercy.  Figel offered to let Cain go for $100.  Cain agreed, and handed over the money in marked bills.  While Figel was counting the bills, Cain pulled out his badge and arrested Figel.  By this time Shallow was running down the alley to help.  Figel drew a .25 caliber automatic pistol and fired one shot at Cain and one at Shallow, but missed.  Bullets fired by both detectives killed the ex-convict.  Police did not reveal the identity of the informer.

A March 31, 1959 article (“Inquest Hears Cops Accused of Shakedown”) from the Chicago Tribune states:

A charge that Harry Figel, 37, ex-convict and suspected extortion ring leader slain by sex bureau detectives March 22, was a victim of a police shakedown was made Monday by Atty. Edward L. Kelly, representing the Figel family, at a coroner’s inquest.  Kelly said he had a witness who saw two detectives beat Figel at 63d Street and Ashland Avenue a week before Figel was shot to death in a gun battle in an alley south of Lake Street, between Clark and Dearborn Streets.

A March 22, 1963 article (“Nab 5 in Bus Depot Shakedown”) from the Chicago Tribune states:

Four men and a 16-year-old youth were arrested yesterday as police broke up a ring which allegedly extorted money from homosexuals who frequented the Greyhound Bus terminal at 74 W. Randolph St.  Charged with bribery were Virgil Lamb, 38, of 1606 E. 50^th Pl., terminal manager; Herman Westerhoff, 36, of 10155 Lafayette Av., a captain for the Inter-state Detective Agency. 407 S. Dearborn St.; Henry Meyer, 46, of 2518 Haddon Av., an Inter-state patrolman; and Ronald Monaco, 30, of 9 W. Harrison St., whom police described as a pander.  * * *  Breakup of the ring came after two Central district detectives picked up the juvenile, Warren Todd, 16, of Lake Geneva, Wis., in the bus terminal early yesterday.  Police said Todd admitted he took money from homosexuals and said Lamb, Westerhoff, Meyer, and Monaco made him “steer” homosexuals to them for a “shakedown.”  * * *  Todd was turned over to juvenile authorities, police said.  He admitted “working” the terminal for three months, sleeping in various places on the near north side, they said.

A December 21, 1973 article (“Ex-cop Cain Shot to Death”) by Michael Sneed and Thomas Powers from the Chicago Tribune states:

Richard Cain, the hoodlum who once was chief investigator for the Cook County sheriff’s office, was shot to death yesterday in gangland style.  Cain, 49, was killed by two gunmen wearing ski masks as he stood against a wall in a sandwich shop at 1117 W. Grand Av.  Witnesses said that only 15 minutes earlier Cain had been seen conferring with four other men in the restaurant.  Investigators speculated that Cain may have been lured to his death in the sandwich shop.  When the masked gunmen arrived, the four men with whom Cain had been talking had left.  Tho the gunmen ordered Cain and others in the sandwich shop against the wall, only Cain was hit by two shotgun blasts fired from close range.  The blasts tore away his face.  Frightened witnesses said no words were exchanged between the killers and Cain.  * * *  The shotgun blast struck Cain in the lower jaw and so disfigured his face that it was several hours before he was identified.  * * *  In recent years, Cain had been a driver and lackey for Sam Giancana, a former Chicago crime syndicate leader.  * * *  Cain was taken to the county morgue from the sandwich shop, Rose’s Poor Boy Sandwiches, as an unidentified murder victim.  * * *  Cain was a former Chicago policeman in 1962 when Richard Ogilvie was elected sheriff as a reform candidate.  Ogilvie named him chief investigator.  During two years as chief investigator, Cain forced suspected mob informers to take lie tests at the public’s expense to determine if they were giving away underworld secrets.  Cain’s efforts to work both sides of the street, serving as both a policeman and a mobster, came to an end in 1964 when Ogilvie forced his resignation.  Cain had been implicated in a $240,000 burglary of the Louis Zahn Drug Co., warehouse in Melrose Park and later was convicted with other mobsters for his part in a 1963 Franklin Park bank robbery.  Cain served three years in prison for the bank job and for lying to a grand jury about the warehouse burglary.  After his parole in 1971, Cain fled to Mexico and joined Giancana. 

Four days after the Figel shooting detectives Cain and Shallow were recommended for the Mayor’s Youth Award – which they subsequently received – by the following letter from their supervisor:

During the course of numerous investigations over a long period of time in which homosexuals were involved from conversation with these people it became apparent that they themselves were being victimized.  The name of the individual involved was Harry Figel who was the ringleader of a group of young men who plied on the weakness and immoral characteristics of homosexuals by extorting money from them.

Detectives Richard Cain and Gerald Shallow were assigned to direct their activities towards Figel and his gang.  After a week of background investigations, the investigating officers had determined that Harry Figel had an extensive criminal record for robbery, con-game, extortion and contributing to the delinquency.  He had served two sentences to Joliet penitentiary, House of corrections and the New York penitentiary.  He was known among his associates as a ruthless sadist, who enjoyed inflicting pain upon both his victims and his young hustlers.  He was alleged to have from 15 to 20 fruit hustlers working for him in the Loop area, Wilson-Broadway area and South Side areas.  His method of operation was for one of his gang to make contact with a homosexual and Figel was notified as to where the gang-member and the homosexual would be at a given time.  Figel would then appear and claim to be either a police officer or the uncle of the young gang-member.  He would then extort money or jewlry from the homosexual or assault and rob him and then later split the proceeds with the gang member or “hustler.”

An immediate canvass of establishments suspected to be frequented by Figel and his associates was begun by the investigators.  At the Greyhound Bus Station, 64 W. Randolph Street, one of the young “hustlers” was located and kept under surveillance for a period of four days and then the officers identified themselves to him and after assuring him that his identity would be kept confidential because of the expressed fear the young man had of Figel, his cooperation was obtained to establish a contact with Figel.

Detective Cain was to pose as a homosexual and by pre-arrangement with the young gang-member at 2:00 A.M. on March 22, ’59 Detective Cain was waiting at a public phone booth in the Greyhound Bus depot.  The informant was to contact Figel and then call Detective Cain who was supposed to be a homosexual “roped” in by the informant.  If at the time of the phone call, Figel was with the informant he would cue Detective Cain by calling him “Baby.”  At about 2:05 A.M. the phone rang and when Cain answered the informant on the other end of the line said, “Is that you, BABY?”  Detective Cain answered in the affirmative and an appointment was made to meet at the Lake Street entrance to the Bus station at 5:15 A.M. supposedly for Detective Cain and the “hustler” to meet to go to a hotel together.  By the use of the word “baby,” Cain of course knew that Harry Figel would be there, supposedly unexpected by Cain.

At 5:15 A.M. Detective Cain was standing in the pre-arranged spot while his partner, Detective Shallow, maintained surveillance from an advantageous position across the street.  At about 5:20 A.M. Harry Figel came up to Detective Cain, poked a finger into Cain’s chest and said,, “you’re the son of a bitch that’s been fooling around with my nephew John, I want to talk to you!”  With that he took Detective Cain by the arm and walked him around the corner, through a parking lot and into the alley in the rear of 64 W. Randolph St.  Detective Shallow moved from his vantage point and followed.  In the alley, Figel then said, “Now I’m going to take care of you” and drew back his arm in a striking position.  Detective Cain protested and asked if this whole thing couldn’t be “straightened out.”  Figel then answered, “well, we can straighten it out right now for one hundred dollars.”  Detective Cain then counted out $100 in marked money and held it out towards Figel.  As Figel reached for the money, Cain also displayed his star, announcing his office and proclaiming Figel under arrest.  Figel then looked and saw Detective Shallow hurrying towards them and with that he quickly stepped back, drew a pistol from his pocket and fired twice at both Cain and Shallow.  After this overt display of viciousness, the Detectives then withdrew their pistols from their holsters and returned the fire.  Figel bolted and ran down the alley while the officers continued firing, Figel then turned around raised his pistol again, pointed at the officers and fell to the ground fatally wounded.  The gun used by Figel was .25 cal Colt automatic.  He was pronounced dead on arrival at St. Luke’s hospital.

The actions of the two investigators truly displays exemplary action and bravery.  Through their actions and complete thoroughness they brought to a conclusion the sadistic career of a malicious felon who victimized people whose morals were not normal and used this condition to threaten and force them to pay him money.  A “racket” that he had been successfully conducting for quite some time.  In view of these facts, it is therefore respectfully requested, if the Commissioner of Police so approves, that the actions of Detective Richard Cain and Gerald Shallow, be brought to the attention of the Committee for consideration of an award from the Mayor’s Youth Foundation and as a department gesture in recognition of praiseworthy duty they be given a creditable mention.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: "a gathering place for homosexuals"

A January 9, 1954 article ("Mayor takes licenses from two taverns") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Mayor Kennelly yesterday revoked the licenses of two taverns on the recommendation of Police Commission O'Connor.  One was Annabelle's at 1801 North Av., licensed to Ruth Gemende, which police reported was a gathering place for homosexuals.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: Congress Bathhouse at 505 S. Wabash Av.

A February 10, 1954 article ("Bathhouse clerk freed") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Frank T. Maufas, 32, of 22 W. 91^st St., clerk in the Congress Bathhouse, 505 S. Wabash Av. arrested in a raid on Jan. 17 on charges of keeping a disorderly house, was dismissed . . . because the raid was made without a warrant.  Eight patrons seized also were freed.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: "a special federal grand jury investigating gambling, vice, and gangster control of Rush Street saloons and North Clark Street strip joints"

An October 23, 1959 article ("Writ to get night clubs’ books asked") from the Chicago Tribune states:

The government asked Thursday for a federal District court order directing operators of 13 near north side clubs to turn over books and records of their businesses for scrutiny by the January, 1959, special grand jury.  All of the men have refused to surrender records in response to subpoenas on the ground that their books might tend to incriminate them, Richard B. Oglivie, special assistant United States attorney general told Judge William J. Campbell.  * * *  The grand jury is investigating organized crime in the Chicago area.  On Oct. 5 it began a probe of night clubs and taverns on the near north side, Ogilvie said.  * * *  Operators and clubs are:  John Butterfield, Lemon Twist, 1007 Rush St.; Sol Regilio, Mark Twain cocktail lounge, 1168 N. Clark St.; Edward Caldwell, Club 19, E. Chestnut St.; Ben Byer, Mardi Gras, 939 Rush St.; Joseph Marcangelo, Front Page Lounge, 530 Rush St.; Charles Wagner, Toy Tap, 1213 N. Clark St.; William Vasile, Devonshire cocktail lounge, 19 E. Ohio St.; Sol Warshawsky, Playhouse Café, 550 N. Clark St.; Frank Bruscalo, Talk of the Town, 1159 N. Clark St.; Victor Mirallegro, Shore club, 528 N. Clark St.; David Fields, Silver Follies, 400 N. Wabash Av.; Joseph De Franco, La Rue 32, 932 Rush St.; and Tony Tornatore, Harry’s New Yorker, 876 N. Wabash Av.

An October 27, 1959 article ("12 night clubs told by judge to open books") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Judge William J. Campbell in federal District court Monday ordered 12 near north side club owners to turn over their books and records to a special federal grand jury investigating gambling, vice, and gangster control of Rush Street saloons and North Clark Street strip joints.  * * *  The jury also is looking into possible income tax evasion involving the “take” from some of the night spots.  Some profits are believed to find their way, unreported, into underworld treasuries.  Among the principal targets of the jury’s inquiry are Ross Prio, overlord of north side gambling, his lietenants, Joseph DiVarco and James Allegretti, and Marshall Caifano, reputed syndicate collector.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: "Hint gang link in barkeep’s slaying in car"

A November 9, 1961 article ("Hint gang link in barkeep’s slaying in car") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Police searched yesterday for clues in the murder of Joseph Gentile, 35, of 1631 W 19^th St., a bartender and female impersonator, who was shot while seated in his automobile near his home.  Virgil Peterson, operating director of the Chicago Crime Commission, termed the slaying the 10^th gangland murder since the first of the year . . . . Gentile was sitting in his car with two other men, Richard Langford, 21, who recently came here from Asheville, N.C., and lived with Gentile, and Jack Hodges, 50, who said his address was the Salvation Army office, 509 N. Union Av.  The two men told police a large sedan drew up and that six shots were fired into Gentile’s car.  He was killed by a bullet which struck him in the head.  * * *  The two men with him said Gentile was backing into a parking lot and said "O, my God!" as the other car drew up, indicating he recognized its passengers.  * * *  Gentile was a bartender in the King’s Paradise tavern at 555 Madison St., and worked as a female impersonator in night clubs on weekends.  Police said that Langford is wanted for questioning by federal authorities on charges that he deserted from the marine corps in 1960

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: Diversey Bathhouse at 2827 Broadway: "goings on from the steam room"

A December 30, 1961 article ("Arrest 18 in bathhouse for disorderly conduct") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Four detectives clad in bath towels arrested 18 men yesterday as inmates of a disorderly house—the Diversey Bathhouse, 2827 Broadway.  The detectives, posing as patrons, paid a $3.50 entry fee each and walked in at 15 minute intervals, observing goings on from the steam room.  They also arrested the attendant, Frank Maufas, 40, of 220 W. 91^st St., and charged him as a keeper.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: Front Page at 530 Rush St.: "found two men kissing each other at the bar and saw several other men dancing with each other"

A March 27, 1962 article ("Police seize 40 in raid at Rush St. inn:  witness men kissing and move in") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Thirty-nine men and a woman were arrested last night in a police raid at the Front Page lounge, 530 Rush St.  Detectives Arthur Tyrrell and Edward Kalaich said they found two men kissing each other at the bar and saw several other men dancing with each other.  * * *  John Coleman, 35, of 536 Rush St., manager of the Front Page, was charged with being the keeper of a disorderly house.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: The Patio Theater at 6008 Irving Park Rd: "lewd acts"

A March 27, 1962 article ("Police seize 40 in raid at Rush St. inn:  witness men kissing and move in") from the Chicago Tribune states:

[C]harges against 12 men seized in a raid on the Patio theater, 6008 Irving Park Rd., were continued to April 11 . . . .  The men were arrested inside the theater Sunday night by detectives who allegedly witnessed lewd acts.  Two of the men were accused of taking indecent liberties with a 15 year old boy.  * * *  Also seized were John Mitchell, 55, of 5301 Patterson Av., co-owner and licensee of the theater, which police described as a gathering place for homosexuals.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: The Fun Lounge at 2340 Mannheim Rd.: "many of the men carried powder puffs and lipstick"

An October 8, 1962 article ("Ogilvie says he’d padlock Fun Lounge") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Crime syndicate vice spots are running full blast in the "Glitter Gulch" of Mannheim Road, Richard B. Ogilvie, Republican candidate for sheriff, charged yesterday.  * * *  The worst resort, Ogilvie asserted, was Louie's Fun Lounge, at 2328 Mannheim Road . . . .  The operator of the lounge was identified by Ogilvie as Lewis Gauger, 58, a pal of Tony Accardo, the millionaire gangster.  * * *  "The Fun Lounge is open 24 hours a day," Ogilvie said.  "Under-age drinkers, including high school students, mingle with degenerates to watch indecent shows..  Gauger advertises special parties which start at 5 a.m.  At that hour, a week ago, our investigators heard the bartender boast:  'We’ve got the okay to go – we never close.'"  * * *  Gauger has a record of arrests for gambling and liquor law violations.  As a defense witness at Accardo’s 1960 trial for income tax fraud, Gauger testified that his lounge was a hangout for Accardo and other gangsters.

An October 9, 1962 article ("Fun Lounge finds things get unhappy") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Aids of Sheriff Frank Sain opened an investigation of the Fun Lounge . . . yesterday after Richard B. Ogilvie, Republican candidate for sheriff, charged that the saloon was a vice resort operated by a pal of Tony Accardo, the millionaire crime king.  * * *  Ogilvie charged in a speech Sunday that under-age drinkers mingled with degenerates in the tavern, which is operated by Lewis Gauger, 58, a buddy of Accardo.

An April 26, 1964 article ("Teacher, 1 of 8 seized in vice raid, quits") from the Chicago Tribune states:

One of eight suburban teachers arrested in a vice raid early yesterday morning at the Fun Lounge, a tavern at 2340 N. Mannheim Road . . . resigned yesterday afternoon.  * * *  Cook and Du Page county school superintendents' offices said that the cases of seven other suburban teachers arrested along with 95 other men and six women in the raid by sheriff’s police would be investigated.  * * *  Many of the men arrested carried powder puffs and lipsticks and some of them wore wigs, according to Richard Cain, the sheriff's investigator.  * * *  The squad seized a supply of marijuana freshly shipped from Mexico and valued at $500 to $1,000 along with several hundred barbiturates.  Arrested in living quarters in the rear of the place was the lounge proprietor, Louis Gauger, 53, a 270-pound avowed friend of Tony Accardo, the "elder stateman" of the crime syndicate.  * * *  Included in the 109 persons arrested in the early morning raid were six minors.  * * *  Gauger, the Fun Lounge proprietor, posted $1,500 after being charged with sale of liquor to minors, possession of narcotics, and being the keeper of a disorderly house.  Similar charges were placed against Herbert Schieler, 24, . . . who holds the Fun Lounge liquor license, and Robert Levy, 34, . . . the manager.  Two bartenders, Kevin Jenner, 24, . . . and W. G. Westby, 34, . . . were charged with selling liquor to minors.  Another bartender, David Lakella, 32, . . . and the bouncer, Ray Sclorf, 27, . . . were charged with being keepers of a disorderly house.  The Fun Lounge has an inconspicuous tile front, no front windows, no sign or neon lights, and a steel front door.  It has no address on the door, and occupies the south half of a long building for which the mailing address is 2340 N. Mannheim Rd.  "You would have to know the Fun Lounge was there for you couldn’t tell it from the front,” said a person in the neighborhood.

An April 27, 1964 article ("Boards to get vice raid data on 8 teachers") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Sheriff Richard B. Ogilvie said yesterday that his investigators will confer today with officials of suburban school districts about the arrests of a school principal and seven teachers in a vice raid early Saturday.  The eight were among 109 men seized in the Fun lounge, 2340 N. Mannheim Rd., Leyden township, along with six women.  * * *  The proprietor of the lounge, Louis Gauger, was charged with sale of liquor to minors, possession of narcotics, and being the keeper of a disorderly house.  Lt. James Donnelly said that many of the men carried powder puffs and lipstick, and that some wore wigs.  The lounge has catered to sex deviates from all over the nation . . . and has been raided many times in the last 15 years . . . .

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: Shoreline 7 Lounge at 7 W. Division St.: "[t]wo men, described as female inpersonators and dressed in women's clothing, were charged with being inmates"

A July 6, 1962 article (“Cop arrests 5 in raid at 7 W. Division”) from the Chicago Tribune states:

Five persons were arrested in a raid on the Shoreline 7 lounge, 7 W. Division St . . . .  * * *  [T]he licensee, John J. Campbell, 74, was charged with being the keeper of a house of prostitution.  Two men, described as female impersonators and dressed in women’s clothing, were charged with being inmates.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: Magic Lounge at 820 E. Pershing Rd.: "permitted a female impersonator to serve as a bar maid"

A February 5, 1963 article ("Voids licenses of Club 51 and Magic Lounge") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Mayor Daley, acting yesterday as Chicago's liquor control commissioner, revoked the licenses of the Magic Lounge, 820 E. Pershing Rd., and the Club 51, 51 E. Oak St.  * * *  Police said the Magic Lounge had allowed prostitutes to solicit customers and permitted a female impersonator to serve as a bar maid.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: Kitty Shean's at 745 Rush St.: "[t]wo men . . . were beaten without provocation"

A March 5, 1963 article (“2 ask damages for beating in Rush St. club”) from the Chicago Tribune states:

Two men filed suit in Circuit court yesterday asking $25,000 damages each, alleging they were beaten without provocation Jan. 27 in the Kitty Sheon Key Club, Inc., 745 Rush St.  * * *  Defendants are the key club and three persons identified as employees – William Sullivan, Edward Luther, and Samuel Schneider.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: "a congregating place for homosexuals"

A March 27, 1964 article ("Four taverns lose licenses to sell liquor") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Mayor Daley revoked the liquor licenses of four taverns yesterday.  * * *  The Green Onion tavern, 1300 Madison St., was closed on the ground that it was a congregating place for homosexuals.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: Lincoln Baths at 1812 N. Clark St.: "lewd acts in the steam room"

A June 14, 1964 article ("33 men seized thru vice raid on bathhouse") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Thirty-three men, including a County hospital physician, two teachers, and two attorneys, were arrested early yesterday in a vice raid on the Lincoln baths, 1812 N. Clark St.  Lt. Thomas Kernan, commander of the vice control division, said a detective obtained entrance to the baths and saw four of the men performing indecent acts in a steam room.  Kernan said the bathhouse has been a national meeting place for perverts.  William J. Anderson, 55, of 748 E. 84^th Pl., was charged with being keeper of a house of ill fame.  The rest were charged with being inmates.  * * *  He said files of the bathhouse listed various meeting places for perverts throughout the United States.  He said police had kept the bathhouse under surveillance for the last month but had been unsuccessful until early yesterday in getting into it.  Patrons are viewed through a peephole in a locked door and checked against the files before they are admitted, Kernan said.  Kernan said a boy and an army lieutenant who entered the place during the last week and were solicited for indecent acts gave police information on various inmates.  The lieutenant has agreed to become a prosecution witness, Kernan said.  Among those arrested were an operations department employee at O’Hare International airport, salesmen, a druggist, an accountant, an advertising copy writer, two hospital laboratory technicians, a draftsman, a crane operator, a public school teacher in Gary, a junior college instructor in Idaho, a designer, two laborers, a clerk, a plumber, and a hotel manager.

A July 1, 1964 article ("Seven men sentenced for morals offenses") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Seven men arrested in a raid on the Lincoln Baths, 1812 N. Clark St., on June 13, were fined or placed under court supervision . . . after their conviction  in moral charges.

A July 24, 1964 article ("Fined $50 as keeper of disorderly house") from the Chicago Tribune states:

William Anderson, 55, of 748 E. 84^th Pl., was found guilty yesterday of keeping a disorderly house and ordered to pay a $50 fine . . . .  Anderson and 31 patrons were arrested at the Lincoln Baths, 1812 N. Clark St., on June 13.  Police testified that the patrons were participating in homosexual activities.  On June 30, seven of the patrons were convicted on vice charges and placed on probation.

A March 5, 1966 article ("Seize 32 men in raid on bathhouse") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Vice detective late last night raided the bathhouse of the Lincoln Hotel at 1812 N. Clark St., and arrested 32 men for being patrons of a disorderly house.  Those arrested, police said, included members of prominent families, doctors, school teachers, lawyers, entertainers, and a sculptor.”  Police withheld the names.  Police took the men into custody after one detective . . . entered the bathhouse, and said it was a meeting place for perverts.  Vice policemen began investigating the bathhouse after receiving complaints that homosexuals were congregating there.

An April 20, 1966 article ("Keeper fined in vice raid on Lincoln Baths") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Fred Braxton, 51, of 8925 Harper Av., was fined $50 yesterday . . . on a charge of being the keeper of a disorderly house.  Braxton and 31 other men were arrested in a raid March 5 on the Lincoln Baths, 1812 N. Clark St., after an undercover detective said he witnessed lewd acts in the steam room.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: "Most were run-down and Mafia-owned"

In Conduct Unbecoming:  Gays & Lesbians in the U.S. Military (St. Martin’s Press: 2005), Randy Shilts writes:

Danny [Flaherty] began to learn that there were many more homosexuals than he had ever imagined.  He heard about gay bars in Chicago and began visiting them.  Like other establishments catering to homosexuals in this era [mid-1960s], these were not wholesome places.  Most were run-down and Mafia-owned, since decent people wouldn’t operate such businesses.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: Talk of the Town at 1159 N. Clark St.: "[n]ine male dancers were arrested"

A January 8, 1965 article ("Police arrest 17 persons in 4 vice raid") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Seventeen persons were arrested in vice raids by the police department prostitution unit yesterday morning.  Nine male dancers and a waitress were arrested at the Talk of the Town, a lounge at 1159 N. Clark St., which has female impersonators as entertainers.  The raid was made after one of the dancers solicited a detective for a drink . . . .  The dancer was charged with public indecency, impersonating a female, soliciting for prostitution, deviate sexual conduct, and being an inmate of a disorderly house.  The other dancers were charged with impersonation.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: "There's no law against these 'unusual people' being people"

A May 8, 1966 article (“New Rush Street cop pledges to reduce vice, gaming in area”) by Thomas Powers from the Chicago Tribune contains an interview with newly appointed police department captain James Holzman who makes remarks on the following subjects:

Homosexuals – "The law does not permit us to close down bars frequented by homosexuals unless there is a violation of the law that we can detect.  There's no law against these 'unusual people' being people."  * * *  The crime syndicate – "We're going to use every legal means to drive the bomb throwers and musclemen out of business.  We’re paying particular attention to the bars and restaurants owned by the mob."

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: "mob is preying on sex deviates: muscles into bars on near north side"

A May 15, 1966 article ("Tells how mob is preying on sex deviates:  muscles into bars on near north side") by Robert Wiedrich from the Chicago Tribune states:

A million dollar "muscle" on the near north side is recouping crime syndicate losses suffered from police crackdowns on B-girl joints and call girl rings, the Tribune learned last night.  In the last year, mobsters have been using force or the lure of high profits to convert at least 14 financially foundering taverns into lucrative hangouts for homosexuals.  Investigators estimate that these places are putting at least one million dollars a year into crime syndicate coffers.  Much of the information obtained by the Tribune was disclosed by one of the tavern owners.  Investigators identified a 30-year-old former operator of strip tease joints on the near north side as one of the key architects of the mob scheme. He is related by marriage to James [The Monk] Allegretti, a crime syndicate vice boss now in federal prison.  * * *  The tavern owner who talked to the Tribune expressed fear the mobsters might dump him and take over his joint but he told the following story:  A year ago he and two partners opened a cocktail lounge near Division and Clark streets.  Within a few months, they were faced with little business and the prospects of an $18,000 long-term rental lease.  * * *  Not long afterward, the owner said, he was visited by Allegretti’s relative, who demanded a 50 per cent share of the lounge profits in exchange for furnishing business.  The relative of Allegretti was operating a homosexual hangout a few blocks away, and he offered to divert 20 percent of his trade to the new lounge and to obtain customers from similar joints as far north as Diversey parkway.  Under the agreement he would receive 50 percent of the profits, but later 50 percent of the corporation’s stock would be placed in the name of a mob front man, the owner was told.  The owner’s name would remain on the city and state liquor licenses.  Payments were to be made in cash.  The owner was to remain as the operator.  His partners sold their interests to him.  Within four days of the agreement, the lounge's business picked up to $1,000 net profit a week and continued to grow.  Also within four days, the clientele consisted only of homosexuals.  Investigators were told that the hoodlums have developed business for each new establishment they have taken over by having underlings distribute thousands of business cards in other known hangouts of sex deviates.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: The Mafia's "Chickens and Bulls" Exortion Scam

The Mafia’s chicken and bulls extortion scam by which hundreds of homosexual men were lured into sex traps and then extorted to pay millions of dollars to phony cops threatening arrest and exposure was a nationwide organized crime scheme among which included associates tied to, among others, the Outfit and the Gambino crime family.  The defendants in the case were principally based in New York and Chicago, and among the defendants from Chicago were former detective John J. Pyne and doorman Daniel C. Blake from the Water Tower Inn at 800 N. Michigan Av. which then had been a longtime watering hole for homosexuals.

A June 25, 1966 article ("Ex-policeman held in N.Y. extort case") from the Chicago Tribune states:

John J. Pyne, 52, of 10458 Claremont Av., a former Chicago policeman was arrested yesterday by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents outside his home on a warrant issued in New York.  The warrant charged him with interstate transportation in aid of racketeering for the purpose of extortion and was signed by Judge William B. Herlands.  He reportedly was part of an extortion ring whose members pretended to be law enforcement officers.  They obtained money from business executives who in turn escaped arrest on phony charges.

A July 1, 1966 article ("Orders ex-cop seized in sex extortion ring") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Federal Judge William B. Herlands today issued a bench warrant for a former Chicago detective, John J. Pyne, 51, who failed to answer an indictment in which he was named as one of the masterminds of a nation-wide ring that extorted millions of dollars from homosexuals.  Pyne was arrested in Chicago last Friday, and was released in $50,000 bail.  Herlands ordered the bail forfeited after Thomas H. Baer, assistant United States attorney, described a "national scheme in which hundreds of victims are involved."  Three members of the wing pleaded guilty earlier this month to shaking down homosexuals, and await sentencing Aug. 15.  They are John Fellebaum, 27, a former weightlifter of Monroeville, Pa.; Sherman Chadwick Kaminsky, 38, of Baltimore; and Elwood Lee Hammock, 48, of Durham, N.C.  * * *  Atty. Baer told the court today that Pyne supplied police badges and other identification "from virtually every jurisidiction in the country," adding that victims were identified by a wire service reporter in Chicago who frightened victims by threatening to print stories exposing homosexual activities.  * * *  The prosecutor charged that Pyne provided arrest forms and extradition warrants to convince victims they would be exposed.

A July 14, 1966 article ("Judge orders cop to face charge in N.Y.") from the Chicago Tribune states:

John J. Pyne, 52, of 10458 Claremont Av., was ordered by federal District court Judge Richard B. Austin yesterday to appear today in New York City to be arraigned on federal charges of extortion.  * * *  Pyne and four others are accused of posing as police to shakedown persons on sex charges.  Federal officials said the men would lure wealthy businessmen, entertainers, homosexuals, and others into sex traps and then demand money for secrecy.

A July 19, 1966 article ("Cop files bond of $50,000 in U.S. extort case") from the Chicago Tribune states:

John J. Pyne . . . was released yesterday on $50,000 bond in federal District court in New York City on federal charges of extortion.  * * *  His release was protested by an assistant United States attorney who said that Pyne had been attempting to intimidate witnesses and "fix" policemen and prosecutors while out on bail.

A September 13, 1966 article ("Nab doorman as member of extortion ring") from the Chicago Tribune states:

A doorman at the Water Tower Inn, 800 N. Michigan Av., was arrested yesterday as a member of a sex extortion ring whose victims included business men and entertainers.  Seized by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents was Daniel C. Blake, 25, of 5016 Sheridan Rd., formerly of New York.  * * *  He is charged with extorting $2,000 from a Virginia business man last year.

A May 18, 1967 article ("Victim tells of extortion plot") from the Chicago Tribune states:

A 37-year-old Utah contractor described in federal District court yesterday how an extortion gang shook him down for $10,000 with phony charges of homosexual activity.  The contractor was the key witness at the extortion trial of two men, including John J. Pyne, 53, of 10458 Claremont Av., a former Chicago policeman believed to be the leader of a nation-wide gang.  Also on trial is Robert Schwartz, 27, of Balmawr, N.J., accused of being Pyne’s chief assistant in the ring.  Another gang member, Edmund Pazewicz, 45, now in the county jail, pleaded guilty to extortion charges last Friday.  The contractor said that while he was in Chicago for a convention in 1964, Schwartz approached him on a Loop street, called him by name, tho they had never met, and urged him to return to his hotel to talk business.  The contractor testified that in the hotel room, Schwartz made an indecent proposal, but flashed a badge and identified himself as a policeman when the contractor became angry.  He said Schwartz questioned him at length about his background, then left.  The contractor said that when he returned to Utah, Pyne showed up, said he had a Chicago warrant to arrest the contractor for homosexual activities, and demanded $10,000 not to serve the warrant.  The contractor testified that he paid Pyne the money but made recordings of their conversations which he later turned over to the FBI.  Federal authorities said the extortion technique described by the Utah man is the same as that described by hundreds of other victims, including movie actors, television performers, and government officials.

A May 19, 1967 article ("Federal jury finds 2 guilty of extortion") from the Chicago Tribune states:

John J. Pyne, 53, former Chicago policeman believed to be the leader of a nation-wide shakedown racket involving charges of homosexual activities, was found guilty of extortion yesterday.  The federal District court jury which found Pyne guilty in one hour and 40 minutes also brought in a guilty verdict against Robert Schwartz, 27, of Bellmawr, N.J., who was accused of being Pyne’s chief assistant.

A June 21, 1967 article ("Sentence trio in shakedown, one an ex-cop") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Three shakedown artists who preyed on conventioneers were sentenced to five years in the federal penitentiary yesterday.  * * *  John J. Pyne, 53, of 10458 Claremont Av., the ex-policeman, Robert Schwartz, 27, of Bellmawr, N.J., and Edmund Pacewicz, 45, currently serving a term on similar charges in the Oregon state penitentiary, were sentenced by Judge Hubert L. Will in federal District court.  * * *  Judge Will called the men "parasitic scavengers" at the sentencing yesterday.  Pacewicz’s five-year term will be served concurrently with a four-year term he received in another case.

A July 16, 1968 article ("Court upholds conviction of 2 for extortion") from the Chicago Tribune states:

The United States Court of Appeals yesterday unanimously upheld the conviction of John J. Pyne . . . and Robert F. Schwartz . . . on charges of extortion.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: Steve's Health Club at 215 W. Division St.: "indecent acts among the patrons"

A January 8, 1967 article ("Police seize 36 men on indecency charges") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Detectives early today seized 36 men for public indecency in Steve’s Health Club, 215 W. Division St.  The raid was made after policemen observed indecent acts among the patrons, many of whom work as musicians and artists.  Club attendant, Howard Tanner, 50, was charged as a keeper of a disorderly house.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: Trip Lounge at 27 E. Ohio St.: "catered on Sunday nights to sexual deviates"

A January 29, 1968 article (“Nab 14 in raid on near North Side Lounge”) from the Chicago Tribune states:

More than 140 men, including prominent professors, business men and several clergy men, were questioned by police last night after a raid on a reputed private club for homosexuals on the near north side.  Lt. William McKeon of the police prostitution unit ordered his men to raid a cocktail lounge at 27 E. Ohio St., which reportedly functioned six days a week as a public restaurant and lounge and catered on Sunday nights to sexual deviates.  * * *  A check of identification disclosed many of those present came from as far away as Colorado and Nebraska.  * * *  Police arrested 14 persons in the lounge.  Eight were charged with public indecency after Detectives [Carlo] Cangelosi and [John] Spellman entered the place with identification cards which were sold to club members for $10 each.  Sgt. [William] Maloney said that six others were charged with being owners or employees of the club.  Dean T. Kolberg, 45, of Kewanee, Ill., and Ralph L. Johnston, 39, who listed the club as his address, the owners, were arrested as keepers of a disorderly house.  Dale W. Shirt, 30, of 643 Belmont Av., the floor manager, was charged as an inmate.   He was found hiding in a dumbwaiter between the first and second floors of the four-story building.  * * *  Sgt. Maloney said club members were charged $1.50 admission.  * * *  In Johnston's fourth floor apartment, police found a mailing list of club members containing several thousand names of persons throughout the United States.

A June 7, 1968 article ("City revokes 8 licenses; 6 are taverns") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Licenses revocations for six taverns . . . were announced by the city of Chicago yesterday.  Liquor licenses revoked were . . . Dean T. Kolberg, owner of the Trip lounge, 27 E. Ohio St.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: Bob Damron's Address Book: 1968

The “Editor’s Note” to Bob Damron's Address Book 1968 states:

This fourth edition of THE ADDRESS BOOK for 1968 has been expanded to include some states with no listings previously, and in addition a section has been added for Puerto Rico.  The result is almost 1050 places to go in some 275 cities in North America.  For the third year, Bob Damron has traveled the U.S. and Canada to obtain accurate, on-the-spot additions and revisions.  Thus with its completeness and its thin pocket size, this little volume has become the most popular guide of its type.  While its accuracy is almost 100% as we go to press, the scene does change everywhere for various reasons.  Therefore readers are urged to make local inquiry where indicated.

With respect to Chicago, the Address Book states the following:

A new “fun” area of Chicago is “Old Town,” around 1600 N. Wells.  This is the Left Bank, Soho, Greenwich Village and Haight-Ashbury of the Midwest.  Interesting bars, restaurants, art galleries, men’s stores, etc.  Especially Sunday afternoons.

Annex*  2865 N Clark

Baron (M-RT) 626 N Clark

Blue Dahlia (M-S) (touristy) 5640 W North

Blue Pub* 3100 W Irving Prk Rd

Checkmate 2546 N Clark St

Dome Room (PE) Sherman Hotel Clark & Randolph Sts

El Cabana (M-S) 4600 S Kedzie

Freddy’s Lawrence & Winthrop

Gold Coast (SM)* 1110 N Clark St

Haig 800 N Dearborn

If Ands or Burts* 5 W Superior

Inner Circle* 1842 N Wells

Kitty Shean’s (PE) 745 Rush St

KW 1114 W Argyle

Lost & Found (G) 2959 Irving Prk Rd

Nite Life (M-S) 931 N State St

Oasis 1745 W Howard

Office 4636 Broadway

One-Sixty-Nine Club 169 W Division

Ruthie’s* 2836 N Clark St

Sam’s (moving late ’67) Clark & Division

Steve’s Baths 215 W Division

Town & Country (PE) Palmer House Hotel State & Monroe Sts

Twenty-One Club 3042 W Irving Prk Rd

Water Town Inn (M-PE) (cocktail hour) 800 N Michigan Av

Zack’s (RT) 24 W Van Buren

The following “Explanation of Listings” is further provided by the Address Book:

*             Very popular

C            Coffee, sometimes food too, usually open late when bars are closed

D            Dancing

G            Girls, but rarely exclusively

H            Hotel, motel, lodgings or other overnight accommodations

M            Mixed crowd and/or tourists

P            Private club policy, make local inquiry as to admission

PE          Pretty Elegant, usually jacket and tie advised if not required

R            Restaurant, although not all places serving food are so indicated.  A *   after this symbol doesn’t indicate quality of the food served, but the popularity of the bar

RT         “Raunchy Types”, often commercial

S            Shows, often impersonators and record pantomime acts

SM         Some Motorcycle.  Don't confuse with "M-S" which means mixed crowd/show

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: "reduced to skimming illegal profits from the operations of . . . the network of so-called 'gay' bars"

An October 24, 1972 article ("Chicago Crime Syndicate Slipping Under U.S. Grip") by Bob Wiedrich from the Chicago Tribune states:

Even [Ross] Prio, the gangster who often prattles in his native tongue to frustrate investigators, had his particular brand of pathos.  Members of his gang were reduced to skimming illegal profits from the operations of another sign of changing times, the network of so-called "gay" bars that dot Old Town, New Town, the Near North Side, and areas of Rogers Park.  But even this racket had to come to the attention of the FBI and the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.  A bunch of the joints had been raided and copious quantities of booze confiscated because of violations of federal and state liquor tax laws.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: "its pages filled with advertisements for . . . homosexual films"

A March 27, 1973 article ("Maury Kahn’s police lament") by Bob Wiedrich from the Chicago Tribune states:

For more than two decades, Maury Kahn has stumbled about the sewers of Chicago’s nightlife distributing copies of a throw away sheet glorifying the seamy side of the city.  Each week, Night Life in Chicago is to be found on the cigarette scarred table tops of third rate hotels, its pages filled with advertisements for filthy movie houses, homosexual films, over-the-hill hay bags masquerading as topless and bottomless dancers, and a host of scum bag joints as far away as Kenosha.  * * *  Thru the years, as the paunchy Kahn has made his way thru the nether regions of the Near North Side, he's forged some strange alliances for a small-time publisher.  In the late 1950s, Kahn admitted helping solicit business along Rush Street for labor racketeer Joey Glimco’s sanitation company, which purportedly tidies up tavern toilets.  And from time to time, Kahn has been observed breaking bread with a number of shadowy gangland figures who only emerge after dusk like Godzilla risen from the depths of Tokyo Bay.  These include Ken Eto, the only Oriental muscleman in the Mafia; Joseph [Joey Caesar] DiVarco and Big Joe Arnold, resident North Side loan sharks and gambling overseers, and Eugene [Yudie] Lufman, a top lieutenant of rackets boss Lenny Patrick.  A few years ago, Kahn was among mourners at the wake of crime syndicate chieftain Anthony [Big Tuna] Accardo's mother, Mary.  And last December, Kahn himself was sentenced to six months in federal prison for income tax evasion.  He enters prison next Monday.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: The Chicago PD Vice Club: "picked up more than $6,000 a month in exchange for police protection of mob bars"

An August 17, 1973 article (“In police bribery trial, vice club list climbs to 8”) by Robert Davis from the Chicago Tribune states:

The number of Near North Side taverns identified as members of a $100-a-month police vice club rose to eight yesterday as more tavern owners or employees testified in the trial of Capt. Clarence Braasch and 22 other Chicago policemen.  * * *  One witness, Nerbert Springer, said he worked as a bartender at both If, And's or Butts and the Wagon Wheel, and on both jobs gave police monthly payoffs.  The Wagon Wheel payments were $100 a month, but the other tavern, identified as a "gay bar," made payments of from $150 to $300, he said.

An August 31, 1973 article ("Ex-city aide tells role in cop bribes") by Robert Davis from the Chicago Tribune states:

Nick Argiris, the former assistant manager of Bentky's, 640 N. State St., which he described as a "small gay bar," said he made monthly $100 payments to [Salvatore] Mascolino from June, 1970, thru January, 1972.  When asked why he made the payments, Argiris said, "The way the laws are in Illinois, they can close you up any time they want to.  They call it a setup."  He said he didn’t want police to harass his primarily homosexual clientele, because "if any police officer would walk in, everybody would walk out."  * * *  In a related action yesterday, perjury charges against Ira Gruenberg, 51, of 6200 N. Hoyne Av., former owner of the Nite Life Lounge, 935 N. State St., were dropped at the request of the government.  * * *  The Nite Life Lounge was identified earlier this week by Lowell Napier, another admitted collector, as one of 10 crime syndicate taverns in a private shakedown club . . . with the proceeds going to "deputy superintendents."

An October 7, 1973 article ("U.S. plans more indictments of Chicago cops") by Robert Davis from the Chicago Tribune states:

Even with the stunning convictions of Capt. Clarence Braasch and 18 other Chicago policemen on extortion and perjury charges making shock waves in the community, federal investigators are preparing more indictments of policemen in other districts.  And Braasch’s troubles may be increased as federal prosecutors continue their probe of police corruption in the East Chicago Avenue police district, which patrols the city's nightclub district, including several reputed crime syndicate taverns.  During the Braasch trial, the most sensational evidence came from Lt. Robert Fischer, the admitted collector from crime syndicate representatives, who said he picked up more than $6,000 a month in exchange for police protection of mob bars and gambling interests.  * * *  The investigations of police corruption in the city have reportedly branched out from tavern shakedowns and now are including payoffs from gamblers, narcotics dealers, and crime syndicate figures.

A December 15, 1973 article ("Sentence 18 cops in payoffs") by Robert Davis from the Chicago Tribune states:

Capt. Clarence Braasch, the highest ranking Chicago policeman ever convicted of a federal crime, was sentenced to six years in prison yesterday for tavern extortions and perjury.  Seventeen of 18 other men who worked under him in the East Chicago Avenue Police District were sentenced to terms ranging from 18 months to four years by federal Judge William J. Bauer.  All were convicted on Oct. 5.  * * *  Before sentencing, Judge Bauer rebuffed sharply defense arguments that the policemen were no more guilty than the more than 50 tavern owners who testified during the two-month-long trial that they made monthly payments averaging $100 to vice policemen as "protection" money.  Bauer said tavern owners had not been given the trust of the citizens of Chicago.  He said he regarded the tavern shakedowns as "virtually treasonable activities."

An August 24, 1973 article ("Ex-captain, 14 indicted in cop payoffs") by Robert Enstad from the Chicago Tribune states:

Former police capt. Mark Thanasouras, 33 other former policemen of the Austin district, and an attorney were indicted by the federal grand jury yesterday on charges of conspiring to shake down tavern owners and night clubs in that district.  * * *  Thanasouras . . . [was] named in a separate indictment charging [he and others] conspired to extort $300 a month from the Blue Dahlia, a liquor store at 5640 W. North Av.

An August 23, 1973 article ("Ex-prosecutor cited in payoffs") by Robert Davis from the Chicago Tribune states:

An assistant state's attorney, who resigned two weeks ago was identified yesterday as one of the tavern owners who paid $100 a month to a police department vice ring.  Sal Strazzanie, who was assigned to the Felony Review Section working with police to determine which cases should be brought to trial, was named by Edward Rifkin, one of the admitted collectors in the Federal District Court extortion trial of Capt. Clarence Braasch and 22 other Chicago policemen.  * * *  Rifkin testified earlier that he also took payoffs from Myron Minuskin between mid-1967 until mid-1968.  Minuskin is a former assistant corporation counsel who handled liquor license revocations for the city until he resigned under fire in 1966 when it was revealed that he also held a liquor license.  * * *  Minuskin is the lawyer for the Inner Circle, 1842 N. Wells St.

A December 31, 1972 article ("Traffic chief Braasch among 24 in graft indictment") by John O’Brien from the Chicago Tribune states:

Twenty-four present or former Chicago policemen, including Traffic Chief Clarence E. Braasch, were named yesterday as members of a police extortion racket that allegedly solicited payoffs of "hundreds of thousands of dollars" from at least 53 taverns in the Near North Side Chicago Avenue District in recent years.  * * *  In making public the names of the 24 under indictment on federal extortion charges, United States Atty. James R. Thompson said the government's investigation of police corruption in Chicago "is now proceeding in other districts, and I assume in the months ahead we will find districts where the same extortion conditions exist."  * * *  Thompson said members of the district's vice squad solicited payoffs from the 53 taverns named in the indictment "on a monthly basis, and would distribute the money to other policemen and Comdr. Braasch."  The taverns named in the 16-count indictment are mostly in North Clark Street, North Rush Street, North State Street, North Wells Street, North Dearborn Street, and West Division Street.  Many of them are singles bars featuring entertainment and go-go girls.

A June 2, 1973 article ("Indict 6 more in cop bribes") from the Chicago Tribune states:

The indictment of six former Chicago policemen for conspiracy to extort payoffs from Near North Side tavern owners was announced yesterday by United States Atty. James R. Thompson.  * * *  Sources in Thompson’s office said the six are charged with being members of one of three separate police extortion rings that operated simultaneously in the East Chicago Avenue District.  * * *  They are charged with conspiring in June of 1966 to shake down the owners of nine taverns in the Near North nightlife area.  * * *  The nine taverns they are charged with shaking down are . . . New Jamie's, 1110 N. Clark St; . . . .  The indictment charges that the six operated on a “package” system in which various members of the ring would pick up extortion payments and split the money with the others.  The latest indictment brings to 47 the number of policemen and former policemen indicted in various extortion scandals, mostly in the East Chicago and Austin Districts.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: "crime syndicate operators of a network of homosexual bars"

A September 30, 1973 article (“Finally, somebody’s after the real rot”) by Bob Wiedrich from the Chicago Tribune states:

In a certain North Side police district, crime syndicate operators of a network of homosexual bars have been cavorting with vice detectives and some of their bosses for almost a decade.  * * *  If anyone doubts such illicit liaisons, listen to what has occurred in the lives of two former vice dicks bounced for shakedowns:  Both are now employed as managers of crime-syndicate-owned gay bars.  One is suspected of sharing a hidden interest in a joint with the mob’s New Town vice merchant.

History of Gay Bars in Chiago: "I still believe most male prostitutes we arrest are female impersonators"

A July 25, 1976 article ("'Vice versa" squad fights male hookers") by Michael Hirsley from the Chicago Tribune states:

Chicago police do not categorize prostitution arrests by sex, and their best guesses are that 5 to 10 percent of arrested prostitutes are male.  But police officials admit male prostitution is a problem, if not growing, at least more visible than ever before in Chicago.  * * *  For [Tony] LoBue, tactical officer with the Central District, the job has changed drastically.  His uniform had changed . . . to a T-shirt and pants, both tight fitting.  His beat had changed . . . to the basement men's washroom of a Loop theater.  That was two weeks ago Friday, the night he and his partner led a raid in which 15 men and one woman were arrested as “inmates of a disorderly house.”  The "house" was the Monroe Theater, 57 W. Monroe St., where LoBue said he observed homosexual sex acts throughout the theater, and all he had to do was loiter in the washroom to be mistaken for a prostitute.  A man tried to solicit him to perform a sexual act for $15, LoBue said.  "While my partner detained several men in the washroom, I went to the ticket taker and complained, as a citizen, about what was going on.  He shrugged and said, 'So?'"  Based on that conversation, LoBue said, he was able to arrest ticket taker Booker Brown, 39, of 6512 S. King Dr., and charge him with keeping a disorderly house.  * * *  Aware that law officers in Los Angeles recently said males constitute 40 percent of prostitution arrests, [commander of the vice control division prostitution section Lt. George] Bicek said, "We’ve never broken down arrests by sex, and male pimps are not differentiated from prostitutes.  Homosexuals have come out of the closet these days, and male prostitutes are more visible," Bicek said, "but I still believe most male prostitutes we arrest are female impersonators."  * * *  Police have vowed a crackdown in the obvious female prostitution but remain more or less oblivious to subtler male prostitution.  * * *  The quieter counterpart for homosexuals is near Newberry Library on Clark Street, where two movie houses feature X-rated all-male films and "Bughouse Square" park has become a well known congregating area for homosexuals.  * * *  The only major arrest of male prostitutes in his district was last winter at a tavern near the police station, [Commander Robert] Sheehan said.  "Police officers had encountered male hustlers there, so we raided it."  The raid, in which 62 males were booked on charges of being inmates of a disorderly house, resulted in the closing of "New Jamie's" tavern at 1110 N. Clark, Sheehan said.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: "investigators have identified Joseph (Joey Caesar) DiVarco as the crime syndicate's overlord of the growing maze of gay bars on the North Side"

An October 4, 1973 article ("Cops, pols, mob in gay bar payoffs") by Bob Wiedrich from the Chicago Tribune states:

Scholars seeking a textbook example of the unholy alliance between crooked police, politicians, and mobsters need look no further than Chicago’s North Side.  For there, in a network of 20 nightclubs and bars catering to the specialized recreational needs of homosexuals, the mutually avaricious interests of these groups are interwoven in a tragic tapestry of corruption.  In short, thieving lawmen and politicians have joined forces with crime syndicate gangsters to prey upon some of society’s most vulnerable—the gay people.  * * *  From the Chicago River to the northern city limits, the Justice Department men have spent two years probing a cesspool of extortions and blackmail, not only of tavern owners, but successful and prosperous homosexuals fearful their secret will be exposed to business associates.  Also involved in the inquiry is an estimated multi-million dollar rip off of state, local, and federal taxes thru the illicit "skimming" of profits from certain gay bar operations in which gangsters are known to have a hidden interest, plus a flourishing traffic in narcotics.  * * *  Probably the most tragic victims of the widespread shakedowns, investigators report, are the well to do homosexual businessmen who have submitted to continuing blackmail under threat of arrest on real or trumped up charges.  * * * The "skimming" of a fortune in profits from mob-backed gay bars has been of special interest to the government.  A tavern or nightclub grossing, for example, $1,000 a night in the heavily patronized gay market, may report for tax purposes only half that amount or less.  * * *  Thru two years of surveillances, investigators have identified Joseph (Joey Caesar) DiVarco as the crime syndicate's overlord of the growing maze of gay bars on the North Side.  Repeatedly, he has staged meetings with hoodlum backed tavern operators at the same locations at which he has also rendezvoused with corrupt police.  In addition, agents have identified the presence of other hoodlum groups in the gay bar business including members of the Boulahanis clan of mobsters who lost their lucrative rackets territory on the West Side in recent years.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: Dugan's Bistro: "the glitter scene"

An April 7, 1974 article (“Secure sexuality . . . and the scene sells”) by Lynn Van Matre from the Chicago Tribune states:

Once upon a time, the Bistro was a restaurant . . . .  * * *  The French fare, and the restaurant itself, vanished from the scene more than a year ago, replaced by a scene.  Lighted neon lips glow on the walls, the music starts at 10, and the dancing doesn’t stop 'til 4 – either on the discotheque floor or above, where a couple of male dancers, including a Bearded Lady decked out in dowdy drag for comic relief, ply their trade by turns.  The Bistro, or Dugan's Bistro as the bar and disco answers to these days, is unabashedly gay.  It is also the essence of hipness.  And in case you haven't noticed, the two have become synonymous to a certain degree.  * * *  Not that gay, of course, has always been synonymous with good.  Up until a few years ago, gay meant hassles, as the owners and patrons of earlier gay bars well know.  "I opened at a great time,” says Edward [Dugan] Davison, a very together 28, who lent his name to Dugan’s Bistro and spends 18 hours a day running the place.  “For the last two years, there’s been a very cool atmosphere as far as the law goes."  * * *  Now the gay scene pays off another way, in terms of American capitalism.  The Bistro does good business – just try to get in on a Saturday night around midnight , when the lines have been known to stretch a block back to Clark Street.  The same holds true for Tenement Square a few blocks north and east at 247 E. Ontario St., where a discotheque called the Bogart Room serves up much the same scene to a different clientele.  Together, the two comprise the downtown "glitter scene," tho there the similarities stop.  "Basically, it all started with the Bistro," says Tenement Square’s Mike Carlucci, who opened the Bogart Room last Halloween night to a glittering crowd.  "The Bistro was the first Chicago gay bar modeled after the New York discotheque thing.  * * *  At first, Bogart's was baciscally gay.  The gays came to check it out; they wanted to stay on top of what was happening and see if they were welcome.  They are.  But the room's 95 percent straight now, and the gays that come here come like everybody else – to be seen."  Like the Bearded Lady of the Bistro, who had a brief flirtation with the Bogart Room before moving back to dance at Dugan's.

 

An April 12, 1987 obituary ("Edward L. Davison, 40; Founded Dugan’s Bistro") from the Chicago Tribune states:

Nightclub owner Edward L. Davison, 40, who used the name Eddie Dugan, founder of the former Dugan's Bistro which was credited as being Chicago's first New York-style discotheque, died Friday in Illinois Masonic Medical Center.  Mr. Davison opened Dugan's Bistro in 1973 at Dearborn and Hubbard Streets when he was in his mid-20s.  Catering predominantly to a gay clientele with a minority of hip, straight clients, Dugan's Bistro became part of what was known in the 1970s as the downtown "glitter scene."  The Bistro had three bars and a dance floor lit from below with tiny rivers of lights and from above with spotlights and police-car flashers bouncing off revolving mirrored balls. On some nights the club drew more than 2,000 people. As the Bistro's reputation and the lines outside grew, it was visited by dancer Rudolph Nureyev and U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.)  Before opening the Bistro, Mr. Davison had been a bartender at the now defunct Broadway Sam's lounge on the North Side.  In 1974, after Dugan's Bistro had become a big success, Mr. Davison said he was surprised "the way gay has caught on." He added, "It sort of puzzles me because gay people usually like to be left alone, and suddenly the whole scene's become fashionable."  Dugan's Bistro closed May 31, 1982, after the building was sold and was awaiting the wreckers.  Mr. Davison and a group of investors next opened the Paradise, a flashy nightclub with a mixed clientele that was a success for several years, but it closed in 1985.  At the time of his death, Mr. Davison and businessman Chuck Renslow were building Bistro Too, a new dance and video club on Clark Street in the Andersonville area which Renslow said will open in June.  Dan DiLeo, publisher of Gay Chicago magazine and a friend of Mr. Davison's, said Mr. Davison died of complications due to AIDS.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: "the guys are making a fat, fast buck off the gay bars"

An April 21, 1974 article ("The old, gray mob") by Bob Wiedrich from the Chicago Tribune states:

Sure, the guys are making a fat, fast buck off the gay bars and pornographic book shops they own behind the façade of front men.  There is no doubt they are active in everything from used cars to scrap metal to insurance fraud.  But the bloom has vanished from the bloody rose that was once the Chicago contingent of the Mafia.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: "men emerging from the back seat of limos, coming into the bar, and collecting large sums of cash taken directly from the cash drawer by the bartender"

In Children of Horizons: How Gay and Lesbian Teens Are Leading a New Way Out of the Clost (Beacon Press:  1996), Gilbert H. Herdt and Andrew Boxer write:

Our informants in the late 1980s remembered this period [the 1960s to 1970s] in strong and . . . sometimes nostalgic narratives:

Before Newtown was at Clark and Division [on the Near North Side].  Just a handful of bars.  Mafia-owned.  Very dark.  Very little light.  Bars like Ruthie’s.  You couldn’t touch, dance, eat, no tables.  Only lean against the bar or wall and get drunk.  Find someone attractive.  Go home and fuck ‘em.  Then go back to the bar the next night.  It only provided for alienation.  That’s it.  If you did touch anybody you were bounced out the door.  But the bouncer could walk up to you and put his hand down your pants.  There wasn’t anything you could do about it.  You had to stand there and take it.  Or be thrown out of the bar.  There were no other social outlets.  Nothing.

Another man described the extent of the early gay territory in these words:

The [gay] ghetto extended from Diversey north to Belmont along Broadway.  The concentration of gay people was enormous.  It was like a barrio.  I got here in ‘sixty-nine and it was like that, residentially speaking.  I don’t know when it was established.  Some gay people lived in Old Town.  There was a bunch of gay folk around Orleans, down in that area, along the side streets, such as the Eugenie.  It was very oppressive.  The social scene was oppressive.  There were bars on Broadway.  The original Annex.  Three other bars on Clark Street.  There was a bar on Rush Street, called the Normandy, near the Carnegie Theater.  The Haig.  And Kitty Shean’s.  The lesbian bars were west on Irving Park.

* * *  And what kind of place was the early bars?  Another man comments:

The bars were shadowy places, but the street life in the early 1970s was out in the open, in the daylight or at night.  We countered the bar scene the way we could.  I remember when the gay liberation movement began in Chicago, the first places to get hit were the bars.  I went one night after the bars had closed and I broke windows.  It was terrifying.  I was sure I would get busted.  The bouncer at Ruthie’s told me I had to buy a drink.  You had to buy a drink or you would be thrown out.  I had my arm around my friend Jerry.  He took my arm down and he said, “You can’t touch anybody in here, faggot.”  I put my arm back.  He got abusive.  He came back later and started to open my pants to grope me.  He had just called me a faggot.  But he wouldn’t let me put my arm around Jerry.  I came back with a bunch of bricks and broke the windows.

The quality of social life in the bars was bad enough that the patrons demanded changes on their own. The same informant tells the story:

It was difficult for gay-owned bars to get started because they were torched.  I figured it was the syndicate.  One of the first to make it was the Bistro, and another place was Eddie Dugan’s place.  It was great.  It was fun.  One night we were picketing the Normandy.  We were demanding that it be better lit, that there be tables, food, and that we be allowed to dance.  They refused all these demands.  We tried to stop people from going in.  We wanted to destroy their business.  We pretty much did.

Chicago’s cultural geography reconstructed the moral geography of the marginal.  The city’s history, as we have seen, reveals an oscillation between radical crusades for sexual social control and libertine openness that extended to the liquor and vice interests of the criminal underworld.  The geography represented the city, with rather hostile social oppression, and the relatively benign social environments outside the city limits.  Calumet City, a suburb of Chicago, continues to offer an island of gay bars just outside the city.  Over many years the crusading mayors in Chicago have often shut down establishments of vice, but through it all corrupt little Cal City, just over the border, always remained available . . . .  The wild city threatened the clean city, and life at the moral margins was always subject to vice investigations and shakedowns by organized crime.  An informant who frequented the gay bars in Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s remembers men emerging from the back seat of limos, coming into the bar, and collecting large sums of cash taken directly from the cash drawer by the bartender.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: "Man's Country, hottest spa in town"

A February 14, 1975 article ("Man’s Country, hottest spa in town") by Bruce Vilanch from the Chicago Tribune states:

It may sound perverse, or at the least bizarre, but that is one of the unique features of Chicago’s latest watering hole, a steambath-cum-nightclub called Man's Country [5015 N. Clark St].  The most exotic nightspot for blocks and blocks—if not years and years—Man’s Country boasts hot and cold running showers and patrons, bedrooms, lockers, a sauna, a glass-walled steamroom, a mirrored shower that looks like something that got loose from a Stanley Kubrick set, a Jacuzzi, a multicolored parrot that views the proceedings with serene disinterest, and a gigantic disco-music hall with much of the ambience of the Oriental Theater lobby, which it distinctly resembles on a muggy night.  * * *  This week, Man's Country, which now sprawls over half a city block, three full floors from top to bottom, celebrates its first anniversary.  The big party is being held in the brand-new Man's Country Music Hall, the former Swedish Society recreation hall that has now been refurbished as an enormous discotheque, replete with deep-pile carpeting, overstuffed pillows, and a stage, lighting, and sound system that set the original owners back $100,000—capital they raised handily in their first year of operation.  * * *  Clearly, Man's Country is not the sort of place you’d want to take anyone’s mother, certainly not your own.  And that is just as well with the management.  In fact, that is their firm policy.  "We have toyed with the idea of opening the place to women," manager Gary Chichester says, "but it just wouldn’t be feasible.  We are a private club, and a private men’s club.  We started it that way and that is primarily what our business is."

      

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: The FBI Files: Club Bath Chain: "Investigation . . . has indicated LCN associates as having been involved with some Club Bath Chain Bath-houses in the Chicago area"

In 1976 and 1977 there were a series of confirmed and suspected cases of arson involving gay bathhouses along the west coast including:  the Folsom Street Barracks at 8 Hallam Street, San Francisco; Club Bath at 328-330 Ritch Street, San Francisco; Steve’s Bath House in Sacramento, California; and Club Bath in Portland, Oregon.  The FBI investigated an individual who had interests in west coast gay bathhouses as the suspected arsonist to determine whether he had ties to organized crime, and more broadly to determine – as alleged by the San Francisco Police Department – whether "organized crime groups, using extortion, threats, and arson" were attempting "'take overs' of homosexual bath houses in the San Francisco, California area."  The FBI was concerned whether the Mafia had infiltrated the west coast gay bathhouses because "[o]ther homosexual bath house chains have been determined as being financed by organized crime."  More specifically, the FBI's Chicago Field Office had concluded pursuant to an earlier investigation, that some Club Bath franchises were tied to the Mafia:

Chicago investigation entitled [redacted] ANTI-RACKETEERING (Chicago File 92-3518) indicates organized crime influence in Club Bath Chain.  * * *  Investigation at Chicago has indicated LCN [La Cosa Nostra] associates as having been involved with some Club Bath Chain Bath-houses in the Chicago area approximately five years ago.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: "2 policemen are subpoenaed in extortion of gay bars"

A March 13, 1975 article ("2 policemen are subpoenaed in extortion of gay bars") from the Chicago Tribune states:

A police lieutenant who once worked in the prostitution unit has been subpoenaed by the federal grand jury probing shakedowns of gay bars, a high police source admitted Wednesday.  The lieutenant, now assigned to other duties in the police Vice Control Division, received the subpoena in January for his testimony regarding his activities from 1967 to 1971, the source said.  * * *  Considered of special importance in the investigation is testimony by Gene J. Benjamin, 43, a former Chicago policeman, who was ordered jailed Friday for contempt of court after refusing to testify before the grand jury under a grant of immunity.  Benjamin, who pleaded guilty to extortion of taverns, was sentenced to one year in prison last November.  He was recalled before the grand jury for testimony regarding gay bar shakedowns as well as shakedowns of massage parlors and pornography studios . . . .  Federal sources said Benjamin was believed to have been the bag man or collector in the gay bar shakedowns, and as such, could have provided testimony regarding other policemen involved.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: The Block: "the teenage boy prostitutes"

A May 16, 1977 article ("Child sex:  square block in New Town tells it all") by George Bliss from the Chicago Tribune states:

At the corner of Clark Street and Diversey Parkway, the teenage boy prostitutes were making their usual rounds, on the lookout for lone male drivers circling the block.  Police call it Clark and Perversity because of the homosexual activity that goes on in the area.  * * *  “Some of the kids are runaways, but some of them are Chicago boys who come down here just once a month to turn a trick when they need some money.  The prices start at $20 and vary, depending on what the boys are asked to do.”  The boys hang out at junk food stands on Clark Street and occasionally walk around the block bounded by Clark, Diversey, Lehmann Court and Drummond Place.  The male drivers foillow the same circuit, wheeling around the corners one after the other like riders on a carousel.  * * *  [M]ost of the youngsters are in the 14 to 19 age group.  “When you hit that 19 to 20 mark, you’re too old,” [Officer Joe Bongiorno] said.

History of Gay Bars in Chicago: Carol's Speakeasy at 1355 N. Wells St.: "Gays fear resumption of 'the raiding game'"

A May 20, 1979 article ("3 hurt, 11 arrested after cops close bar") by Monroe Anderson from the Chicago Tribune states:

Three men were injured and 11 arrested early Saturday during a brawl in the middle of North Wells Street in Old Town after a tactical police unit closed down a nearby homosexual disco.  The raid drew charges of "police harassment" and "undue physical violence" from members of Chicago's gay community.  Tactical police . . . went to Carol's Speakeasy, 1355 N. Wells St. at 1:15 a.m. Saturday to check for "underaged drinkers," and because there had been complaints from Old Town businessmen that the lounge was allowing "unlicensed and illegal acts" to occur on its premises, according to police.  Shortly before 2 a.m. police ordered the bar closed "for building and fire code violations."  The fighting began minutes later when an estimated 700 patrons were told by authorities to leave Carol's . . . .  * * *  [S]everal eyewitnesses charged police with instigating the fight by attacking patrons when they left the bar.  * * *  "They hit more people than they arrested," said Dave Veltkamp, a freelance photographer.  "I had two friends who got hit but weren't taken in.  One guy was covered with blood."  One of the injured men was hospitalized with a possible concussion.  * * *  The manager of the bar, Fred Farnham, said, "It looks like it was just police harassment completely."  He said that Carol's is a private club and that the one 20-year-old patron police discovered was a plant because the minor had no membership card.

A February 28, 1980 article ("Gays fear resumption of 'the raiding game'") by Bonita Brodt from the Chicago Tribune states:

Carol's Speakeasy is a private disco.  A homosexual disco.  It was raided twice last year, on May 12 and 19, during a campaign against gay bars by officers of the Chicago Avenue and Town Hall police districts.  At 1:15 a.m. on May 19, tactical officers from the 18^th Police District said they went to the Old Town bar with six squadrols and billy clubs to check for "under-age drinkers" and to respond to citizen complaints about activity in the bar, which included male prostitution and illicit sexual conduct.  But the gay patrons and other witnesses to the fighting that eventually broke out say the police came to the bar for other reasons—namely, harassment of the gays.  * * *  Carol's owner, Frank Kramer, admits there were some violations.  * * *  Eleven persons were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.  * * *  After the Carol's raid, and similar raids at the New Flight on Clark Street, there was an outpouring of protest against alleged "selective" police enforcement of building code violations at known homosexual bars.  * * *  After a few months without such a raid, officers last month raided Rialto's, a bar in the South Loop which has a heavy concentration of gay patrons.

A December 16, 1986 article ("Suit assails 1985 raid on gay bar") by William B. Crawford Jr. from the Chicago Tribune states:

Members of the Northeastern Metropolitan Enforcement Group and four Chicago police officers were accused Monday in a $1 million damage suit of engaging in wide-ranging misconduct against patrons of a gay bar during a raid last year.  The suit says that the police raiding party subjected about 50 men who were in Carol's Speakeasy, 1355 N. Wells St., on the night of Sept. 12, 1985, to threats of violence, illegal searches and confiscation of personal property.  Filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, the class-action suit charges that Frank Gomilla, director of the Northeastern Metropolitan Enforcement Group, and about 15 other MEG officers entered the bar without the necessary search warrants, ordered the patrons to lie on the floor, forced them to fill out forms disclosing detailed information about their personal lives, photographed them and then left after making only one arrest.  The Metropolitan Enforcement Group is an umbrella law enforcement agency that draws police officers from various municipalites and state agencies to investigate major narcotics rings.  The police officers allegedly referred to the patrons as "queers and faggots" and donned rubber gloves "as if they needed special protection before coming into contact with plaintiffs or others in the room," the suit charges.  At the time of the raid, the suit charged, the raiding party was armed with a single arrest warrant against an unidentified man who was tending bar. The man was arrested on the warrant, which charged him with possession of a controlled substance.

An August 18, 1989 article ("Accord reached in gay bar raid suit") by William Grady from the Chicago Tribune states:

The state and the city have agreed to pay about $227,000 to patrons of a gay bar on the Near North Side who contended that their constitutional rights were violated during a raid by state drug agents and Chicago police in 1985.  The payments-about $5,000 to each of the 45 or so patrons in Carol's Speakeasy, 1355 N. Wells St., at the time of the raid-are part of a proposed agreement intended to settle a class-action lawsuit and two other civil-rights suits pending in federal court.  * * *  The lawsuits charged that about 15 agents of the Northeastern Illinois Metropolitan Enforcement Group and a handful of Chicago police officers went to the bar on Sept. 12, 1985, with arrest warrants for two of its employees, only one of whom was there at the time.  The customers were ordered to lie on the floor for up to two hours, questioned, subjected to verbal abuse and photographed, according to the suits.  One of the customers was charged with resisting arrest but never prosecuted. None of the other customers was arrested, and no drugs or weapons were found, lawyers have said.  The Northeastern Illinois Metropolitan Enforcement Group is an umbrella law enforcement agency that draws police officers from area municipalities and state agencies to investigate major narcotics trafficking.  The role of the Chicago police officers in the raid was minimal, according to documents filed in connection with the lawsuits. The officers were detailed to guard the doors of the bar.

An October 27, 1989 article ("Agreement settles suit from bar raid") from the Chicago Tribune states:

A federal judge has formally approved an agreement that will settle lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other lawyers on behalf of patrons of a gay bar on the Near North Side who contended their constitutional rights were violated during a raid by state drug agents and Chicago police in 1985.  The state and the city have agreed to pay about $5,000 to each of the 45 or so patrons in Carol's Speakeasy, 1355 N. Wells St., at the time. The customers were ordered to lie on the floor for up to two hours, questioned and subjected to verbal abuse, according to the suits. No drugs were found and no one was ever prosecuted as a result of the raid.  Judge Suzanne Conlon of U.S. District Court ruled that the settlement was fair and adequate, according to Harvey Grossman, legal director of the ACLU here. He said about 30 people have filed claims since the proposed settlement was announced.