When it comes to gay nightlife in Chicago, the Lucky Horseshoe occupies a category all its own. Known to regulars as “the ’Shoe,” the Boystown joint at the corner of Halsted and Belmont is the city’s only bar featuring a daily lineup of male dancers. My ritual is always the same: scoop up an empty stool and scan the room to figure out which comely lad in a jockstrap shall be the recipient of the wad of singles the bartender has handed me.
While I appreciate the eye candy, my affection for the ’Shoe stems largely from people’s shame-based resistance to the place: I claim it as “my bar” precisely because no one else seems willing to. Frequently I’ll run into friends there who clearly aren’t expecting to see someone they know, and upon locking eyes with me will radiate a deer-in-headlights look before giving a laundry list of excuses for being spotted at an exotic dance club. “This is so funny! . . . I’m just meeting a friend . . . I never actually come here.” I also regularly run into coupled friends for whom the bar seems to function as a compromise between one partner who wants monogamy and the other who has an insatiable libido. Even on Grindr, where filth is de rigueur, there’s reluctance to legitimize the Horseshoe: If I message a guy that I’m at the ’Shoe, the usual response is “LOL.”
