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“We thought about other symbols, like the inverted pink triangle, but we liked that the rainbow has other associations beyond the gay community,” said lead architect Edward Windhorst. The designers say they were trying to be subtle. It’s not going to change,” said Ben Allen, a director of the merchants group.Ĭritics agree, but add that the city project “looks too official,” in the words of Richard Majko, a 47-year-old registered nurse. Gays have bought residential property on surrounding streets. North Halsted runs down the center of an 8-by-4-block area with 20 gay and lesbian bars, one of the largest concentrations in the nation. “You have to be blind, deaf or dumb not to know that this is a gay neighborhood.” And it was gay businesses, he noted, that transformed the street from a seedy, gang-ridden stretch 20 years ago into the vital commercial strip it is today. Banners-a procession of red, yellow, green and purple-hung by the private Northalsted Area Merchants Assn. The colors show up in flags and banners flying over bars, a home store and a video shop. The rainbow motif already runs rampant along the eight blocks of North Halsted designated for sprucing up. And suburban Oak Park, to the west, has such a large gay population that it recently enacted a same-sex partnership registry.įriends, Rouse said, have voiced the flip side to his concern: “They’re asking, ‘Are straight people going to come here anymore?’ ” He shrugged. Rouse’s home turf, for example, is Andersonville to the north, once predominantly Swedish and now experiencing an influx of homosexuals. “Gays and lesbians live in a lot of different neighborhoods.” “It’s recognition, yet at the same time, it’s ghettoizing,” said David Rouse, a 51-year-old librarian emerging from Ram. “We meant it as a thank you, an acknowledgment to the businesses that helped turn this area around.”
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“We just wanted to make sure we preserve the character of the neighborhood,” said Mary Morten, Daley’s liaison to the gay and lesbian communities. Planners insist that they never expected the least hint of controversy to attend the tribute, part of a $3.2-million refurbishment. Daley’s administration is setting a precedent, casting Chicago as the first city in the nation to place a gay neighborhood on the same plane as an ethnic neighborhood-and proposing to spend nearly half a million taxpayer dollars to do so. The project designers thought they would reflect the community by adding two 25-foot gateways and some 200 street pylons, all adorned with lighted rings in the same colors as the stripes of the rainbow Gay Pride flag. Recently, the time came for the city to widen sidewalks and plant trees along North Halsted Street, home to businesses like the Manhole, the pink-awninged Gay Mart and Ram: A Gay Treasure. A huge sculptural rendition of the Puerto Rican flag spans Division Street as it runs through Humboldt Park. Greek Town sports classical columns at the entrance. The municipal government has long backed up that slogan with public works celebrating the special nature of various slices of the metropolis. A cliche that ranks right up there with “Windy City,” “City of the Big Shoulders” and “That Toddling Town” is the oft-intoned sentiment that Chicago is the “City of Neighborhoods.”