This shot is another, in an occasional series of archival material where I'll delve into the beginning of my fascination with photographing my adopted home-town of Chicago. This picture was made at the intersection of Broadway and Belmont, and although the small cloth banner reads: "Lakeview East," everyone called the place "New Town." Then, as now, it was the heart of Chicago's GLBT community, albeit a very different animal than the sterile, Rainbow-Colored-Shopping Mall of today. When this photo was taken, on the cloudy and unseasonably cool afternoon of July 2, 1986, the area was a rough, edgy, and incredibly atmospheric old-style gay ghetto, the likes of which you don't see much these days. In a less tolerant era of rampant discrimination, police harassment, fag-bashing, and the unrelenting horror of AIDS, the ghetto was a necessary form of validation, activism, and support. In today's world of the internet and greater acceptance and visibility, the ghetto (in big cities, anyway) is becoming increasingly irrelevant. But not in 1986. As a young writer in search of a major subject, and on the cusp of accepting my own sexuality, this was heady stuff, filled with mystery, excitement, and some danger. And how could I possibly forget all of the wonderful characters who plied those grungy streets like something out of a Joseph Wambaugh novel: the pimps, the hustlers; the nervous young men with their furtive eyes; the outrageous drag queens; the bag ladies and street people; the call boys who would hang out in the all-night McDonald's, dishing about their strangest tricks until their beepers went off; the older gentleman with the long, gray ponytail who would parade around with a large, green parrot on his shoulder; the silent, old men who would sit on bus benches, blaring Cubs games on crackling transistor radios.... I occasionally find myself wondering whatever happened to these people? I'd imagine the vast majority of them are probably dead by now, or are slowly-graying denizens of middle age, like myself. It's hard for me to fathom how much things have changed in Chicago and the rest of the country since then. There's a great quote, and I can't remember who it's by, that goes: The past is a country that doesn't exist any more. This picture was made with a Nikormat 35mm, SLR using Kodak Plus-X black-and-white film.