S3 E8“Chicago ain’t No Sissy Town”
“Through the blue cigarette smoke you can make out the outlines of crowded tables.”
We return to the time & place where Queer Serial began: 1920s Chicago. We'll cruise Towertown and visit the Dil Pickle Club, meet the performing queers at the 1892 World's Fair, read lesbian pulp, and dance at the First Ward balls. Queers of the Pansy Craze, the Levee brothels, the drag & jazz clubs of Bronzeville, & the mafia-owned lesbian bars lead us to a massive gay crackdown in Chicago, and the formation of the Mattachine Midwest in 1965.
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Original release: June 7, 2021
More Gay Coloring Books from 1964! 🖍
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SEASON 2 BONUS EPISODES
Wilma & Rita
Subscribe on Patreon or Apple Podcasts to listen to this bonus episode from spin-off podcast Forgotten Fairy Tales—and many more from Mattachine Meeting, Randy Wicker Radio, Infamous Crimes: White Night Riot Interviews, and more!
Check out these free bonus pieces from season 3 & beyond:
Instagram @queerserial
lesbian pulp
June 6, 2021
Tomorrow! The last 6 episodes of the series, starting in my favorite cityyy. Any guesses? 🔍💖
June 10, 2021
“The searching novel of a lonely young wife faced with the temptations of unnatural love.” 🔥
🎧 Mattachine Midwest co-founder and lesbian pulp author Valerie Taylor takes on the Chicago police in the final episodes!
June 11, 2021
“As children, we were told that the policeman was there to protect and help us…such thoughts are pure nonsense.”
🎧 Lesbian pulp author takes on the Chicago police in this week’s new episode.
💥 Chicagoans, please follow @caarprnow 💥
📚 One of Taylor’s many books (see recent post)
🗂 A letter I stumbled upon at @glbt_history. “My new book, Journey to Fulfillment, brought me $900 only because I have a good agent & something of a name in the field. It works out to about $1.00 an hour.” Wow.
🗂 Display at @gerberhart, I believe down in the @howardbrownhealth waiting room, which is so fab. She’s on the cover of the Mattachine Review!
📸 Valerie Taylor, 1977. Photos by Tee Corinne.
June 8, 2021
It’s Tillie Tuesday! I’m joining @gerberhart in celebrating this weekly holiday because the Dirty Old Lady of Chicago appears in this week’s new episode! Hear why old Tillie went into a 5-year retirement during a police crackdown in Chicago. 👠
🗂 So glad Gerber/Hart has preserved her collection. Check out their insta for tons more photos of her, and learn more about the largest LGBTQ archive in the Midwest at gerberhart.org.
June 8, 2021
“Thru Hole in Wall at 858 N. State Street, Down Tooker Alley to the Green Lite” 🚪
🎧 S3 E8: Visit the legendary Dill Pickle Club!
📸 Entrance to the Pickle, 1916. Newberry Library.
🗞 Various undated ads, Newberry Library.
📸 Dill Pickle Club founder Jack Jones (second from left) with partygoers at the Dill Pickle Club Barbary Coast costume ball, December 31, 1919. Newberry Library.
June 7, 2021
“The annual ‘Finnie’s Ball’ to be staged at Coliseum tonight figures to be the gayest in the long series.” 💋✨👠
🎧 Visit Finnie’s annual ball (and the First Ward balls) in the new episode!
🗞 Jet Magazine coverage of the balls
🗂 displayed at @gerberhart 2018 exhibit “The City that Werqs: A History of Chicago’s Drag Revolutionaries”
June 11, 2021
“Debauch, which remind one of pagan Rome in her most degenerate days.” 😈
🎧 Visit Chicago’s red light district in the South Side Levee! Business is booming.
🗞 “Dangers of the Dance Hall” from ‘Vice Bondage of a Great City,’ 1912 .
📸 Member of an anti-vice group called Midnight Mission on left, Levee district sex workers walking the street, c. 1911. Photographer unknown.
📸 Vic Shaw, keeper of a resort for sex perverts. Date and photographer unknown.
📸 The Everleigh Club, a notorious high-priced brothel, on far right. South Dearborn Street in the Levee, c. 1911. Photographer unknown.
🗂 Map from W. T. Stead’s “If Christ Came to Chicago,” 1894.
📸 “Chicago’s Levee District at Night,” H.G. Maratta. Harper’s Weekly, January 22, 1898.
📸 Again, the Everleigh Club at 2131–2133 South Dearborn Street. Photographer unknown.
🗞 “If Christ Came to Chicago,” by W. T. Stead, 1894. lol
JANUARY 26, 2022
Missing Chicago today, so here's a blast from a past episode, some images from research for season 3's Chicago episode. Saloons, flop houses, & brothels on the Levee!
💖 Thanks to @conner.good for sharing the first map of the "Wickedess Place in USA."
💸 Brothel map of the same area from W. T. Stead’s “If Christ Came to Chicago,” (lol) 1894.
📸 Member of the anti-vice Midnight Mission (left), & Levee sex workers walking the street, c. 1911. Photographer unknown.
#lgbthistory #chicagohistory #historypodcast
Also check out @sexworkhistory!!
June 10, 2021
“Where the daddies are daddies and the fems are fems!” 🎺
🎧 Visit Tiny & Ruby’s Gay Spot in Bronzeville in this week’s new episode!
🗞 Jet Magazine coverage of trumpeter and bar own Tiny Davis, 1950s.
📸 Regal Theatre in Bronzeville, photographer unknown.
📸 Jazz and blues guitar virtuoso Lonnie Johnson playing at a tavern on the South Side, 1941. Photo by Russell Lee. @librarycongress
📸 Last 2 are both at a tavern on the South Side, 1941. Russell Lee. @librarycongress
June 12, 2021
🏋️ “He is fond of the music and Sieveking likes to see Sandow’s muscles work.” 🎶
🎧 Meet this adorable duo, Eugen Sandow & Martinus Sieveking, in this week’s new episode!
JULY 28, 2021
🎉 “debauch, which remind one of pagan Rome in her most degenerate days.”
💰The infamous First Ward Balls of Chicago, a queer party and a scheme for these aldermen to rake in graft.
Don’t change that dial! 📻 We finally made it “from the beginning to Stonewall.” Coming soon, a series finale special detailing gay liberation’s wild year following the uprising. Catch up now! 😘
📸 Chicago Examiner, December 15, 1908.
📸 Another cartoon! This one from the Chicago Tribune by John T. McCutcheon, 1908.
📸 Chicago Tribune, date unknown.
📸 Republican Convention, 1916.
AUGUST 23, 2021
🎶 I went out last night with a crowd of my friends / It must've been women, 'cause I don't like no men / Wear my clothes just like a fan / Talk to the gals just like any old man
🎧 Explore Ma Rainey’s lesbian lyrics in this season’s big Chicago queer history episode!
📸 JP Jazz Archive, c. 1924-25.
📸 photo from @lgbt_legacy
📸 Gilles Petard/Redferns
mattachine midwest
June 13, 2021
American homophiles meet at The Trip! 🎈
🎧 Tomorrow’s new episode, “Mattachine Millennia”
📸 Del Martin speaking at the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO) conference held in Chicago, 1970. Episodes 8 & 9 detail their gathering at the Chicago ‘68 conference. @gerberhart
🗞 The Trip logo, ad that @owenkeehnen recently shared! ☺️
📸 Members of Mattachine Midwest: Tom Erwin (top left), Bill Kelly (bottom left) and Roland Keith (bottom right). Top right is possibly Jim Bradford/Osgood? 1970. @gerberhart
🗂 Display at @gerberhart exhibit “Out of the Closets & Into the Streets: Power, Pride & Resistance in Chicago’s Gay Liberation Movement” 🔍 “The Trip Raid: Chicago’s Stonewall,” detailed in last week’s episode!
June 9, 2021
Mattachine Midwest!💥
“From a few dedicated men and women gathered in a living room, we’ve grown into an organization that attracts hundreds to our public meetings.”
🎧 Hear all about the 1964 Chicago bar raid at the Fun Lounge that set the Mattachine Midwest into motion!
🔍 spot the warning about Officer John Manley, known for entrapping gays, harassing women co-workers, and shooting and killing 15-year-old Jerome Johnson, a Native American boy, the night before the 1968 DNC.
🗂 All from @gerberhart exhibit “Out of the Closets & Into the Streets: Power, Pride & Resistance in Chicago’s Gay Liberation Movement”
AUGUST 12, 2021
ONE Magazine reported “conviction by publicity.” Wrapped up in mafia drama, the massive raid at Louie’s Fun Lounge caused Mattachine Midwest to spring into action. 💥
🗞 Chicago Daily News, April 1964.
🗞 Fun Lounge raid articles on display at the fabulous @gerberhart