Ellen Stolar and I are walking down Halsted Avenue on a balmy Sunday afternoon, people watching and checking out neighborhood stores. The farther north we head, it seems, the campier the stores get. Shop windows feature signs with bon mots like “Sorry, I don’t do girls,” and polyester is definitely the fabric du jour.
We pause for a minute before one store window displaying male mannequins dripping with feather boas and sporting, yes, lavender polyester pants. “Yay, gay!” Stolar quips, striking a pose. “That’s my motto.”
Although not gay herself, Stolar, a Weinberg sophomore, says she likes to come to Boystown occasionally for the atmosphere. She and friends come, try on clothes — let’s be honest, the more feathers the better — and play up the kitsch.
Although it is typically thought of as a primarily gay neighborhood, Boystown (or Lakeview), just east of the Belmont El stop, offers more than the expected campy clothing stores and nightclubs. In fact, on our one-mile walk Stolar and I pass bookshops, restaurants and gyms while breaking for photo opportunities in front of several landmarks — especially the tall obelisk street markers adorned with rainbow-colored bars.
We continue strolling by wine stores and chicken shacks, but pass them all by. Our mission? Find color! And accessorize.
But before our shopping extravaganza gets fully underway, we stop to lunch at Joy’s Noodles and Rice, 3257 N. Broadway. This inexpensive Thai restaurant features an open veranda that lets in the sun and breeze and allows us to bop to Madonna music while we continue our people watching.
“They did such a good job bringing the outside inside,” Stolar tells me as we laugh over diet Cokes. Once we finish our lunch and decide it’s time to hit the stores we are lured back to Halsted by its crazy colors and dreams of vintage.
Our favorite store, Beatnix, 3400 N. Halsted, is an accessory-lover’s paradise. Across from racks of dreary cowboy boots a wall is stocked with splashy shoes — heeled, of course — in colors from canary yellow to red polka-dots. And these shoes are plus-sized, perfect for a male foot.
“Since when do women have size 14 feet?” Stolar asks. “Well, now my guy friends have no excuse to keep borrowing my heels.”
Another wall of cheap sunglasses (some priced under $10 and other lovely pumpkin-themed orange frames on sale) faces a floor-to-ceiling row of hats. A gigantic-sombrero-style one adorned in, of course, more feathers catches Stolar’s eye.
She convinces me to try it on while she searches for a hat for herself. I’m simultaneously drowning in the feathers and trying to figure out if they match my linen trousers. Is this appropriate for class? What about a party?
Stolar opts for a more tasteful pink knit cap, but she pooh-poohs it saying, “this is really one of the ugliest hats I’ve ever seen.” Perhaps there just weren’t enough feathers.
Our favorite item, though, we find on the way in at the front counter. Stolar fingers the pink item, and then we realize — yikes — it’s a penis. A vibrating penis. And it doubles as a lighter!
“It’s nice to see they’re trying to make Boystown more accessible to non-rainbow enthusiasts,” Stolar says. “But people who buy this are going to have to watch out for its dual features.”
