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A Place for Us: Gay Life at Chicago’s Belmont Rocks
Owen Keehnen
“A vivid, texture-rich recreation of a lost sanctuary.”
—Chicago Literary Hall of Fame
$24.95
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Description
Belmont Rocks: Where Chicago Went Queer in Broad Daylight
A Place for Us: Gay Life at Chicago’s Belmont Rocks by Owen Keehnen brings a lost world of Chicago LGBTQ history vividly back to life. Before rainbow flags, before open-door bars, and before Pride was a season on the calendar, Chicago’s queer community carved out freedom on a jagged stretch of Lake Michigan shoreline at the end of Belmont Avenue. It wasn’t a beach. It was rock, concrete, sun, and possibility. Everyone knew it as the Belmont Rocks.
Often remembered as “a big gay carnival,” “a gay paradise,” and a place where everyone could just relax, the Rocks became an outdoor home base for gay men, lesbians, and the wider queer community. People came to meet friends, flirt, cruise, people-watch, welcome newcomers, and feel, for a few bright hours, unafraid. In an era when many gay bars still had blackened windows, the lakefront offered something radical: visibility, community, and belonging in broad daylight.
Drawn from interviews with more than 100 firsthand witnesses and illustrated with more than 115 photographs, A Place for Us captures the humor, heat, music, codes, courage, and everyday humanity of a beloved “gay beach” that helped shape queer Chicago long before the wider world caught up. Rich in memory and grounded in oral history, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in LGBTQ+ history, gay history, Chicago history, and the places where queer life was lived openly, joyfully, and together.
Owen Keehnen is also the author of Man’s Country: More Than a Bathhouse and Gay Chicago Memories: 1300 N. Wells.
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About the Author
Queer historian and writer Owen Keehnen is the author of several fiction and nonfiction titles. His books of LGBT Chicago history include Dugan’s Bistro and the Legend of the Bearded Lady, Man’s Country More Than a Bathhouse, and Gay Chicago Memories 1300 N. Wells. He coauthored, with Tracy Baim, the biographies of three Chicago LGBTQ community legends — Leatherman: The Legend of Chuck Renslow, Jim Flint: The Boy From Peoria, and Vernita Gray: From Woodstock to the White House. He worked with St. Sukie de la Croix on the Tell Me About It series, a gay-studies trilogy chronicling milestones in LGBTQ lives. Keehnen is the co-founder of the LGBTQ history/education organization, the Legacy Project and was on the founding committee for AIDS Garden Chicago. He was inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame in 2011. He lives in Chicago with his husband, Carl, and their dogs, Vince and Daisy.
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“The Belmont Rocks were a part of our everyday history, which is in some ways so much more vital than the big headlines. Owen Keehnen’s work ensures that this vibrant queer history—built on barbecues, sunbathing, and solidarity—is finally given its due.”
“Drawn from interviews with more than 100 firsthand witnesses and over 115 rare photographs, A Place for Us is a vivid, texture-rich recreation of a lost world. Owen Keehnen has captured the energy, warmth, and profound sense of belonging that made the Belmont Rocks a legendary sanctuary.”