LGBTQ event planners want to help some of Chicago's cultural attractions roll out the welcome mat for the city's queer community.
The Welcoming Committee, a Boston-based events organization launched in 2012 and expanding to Chicago on Oct. 3, is planning a series of "takeovers" of local cultural events, sports games and other attractions.
"Doing something with a community you know and love is typically more fun than doing it alone,"founder Daniel Heller said. "The idea is to transport the comfort that is unique to gay bars everywhere else. We're opening up the entire city to people in ways they hadn't really experienced before."
The takeovers are reminiscent of the "guerrilla" queer and gay bars that have been organized in Chicago and other cities (including a Guerrilla Queer Bar in Boston that Heller has been hosting since 2007). In those cases, event organizers call LGBTQ-identified partiers to a popular nightclub or bar for a night that normally doesn't attract queer people. But Heller said he wanted to create similar spaces for LGBTQ people to socialize outside of nightclubs and bars.
"People started asking, 'why it is just straight bars?' They were saying, 'It's cool, but I'm a classical music buff or a sports fan'-not traditionally super gay-friendly spots," he said. "They were saying, 'There is a place in my life that is iconic to me and I want to experience it in this sort of outrageously comfortable way.' So we moved into culture and sports and travel, and it's amazing how much energy there is around taking over these sorts of things."
The Chicago events haven't been planned yet, Heller said, but a recent visit to the city drew him and other planners to the city's comedy and music scenes.
"Chicago is like, the home of comedy, so I am super excited to bring our members to things like Second City. I'm hoping we end up doing concerts in Millennium Park," he said. "And stuff outside of Chicago like the Kentucky Derby. I probably wouldn't do it with one friend, but would I do it with 500 other LGBT people? Yeah."
The Oct. 3 launch will include a guerrilla queer bar-style takeover, but the locationstill is up in the air. The Welcoming Committee, which already is in Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., will launch in San Francisco and Atlanta on the same day.
The events are part of a growing trend. Chicago Take Over, a floating LGBTQ party, also is planning a similar set of "takeovers." Starting Oct. 16 at a bar in the South Loop, the group will be organizing pop up LGBTQ parties at bars around the city about once a month.
Though some unfamiliar with the concept might wonder why the LGBT "takeovers" are necessary in a time of legalized gay marriage and an increasing mainstream acceptance of same-sex relationships, Heller said the goal is to make attendees feel "100 percent comfortable" being themselves in a way they might not when surrounded by heterosexual couples.
"Thing that I talk about is the difference between 98 percent and 100 percent comfort. You may feel comfortable being at a baseball game in Boston, but maybe not with holding hands with a same-sex partner. You may feel 90 percent comfortable at a bar in the Loop, but if someone asks you what you're doing later that night, you might be shy about saying you're going to a gay bar," he said. "It is remarkable how few people it takes around you to make you feel like that space is OK for you, even if it wasn't designed for you."
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