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(water trickling) (toothbrush buzzing)

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- Good morning.

- Good morning.

(water trickling)

Oh my God, my hair.

(both chuckling)

(eggs sizzling)

- I'm never able to make omelets the way you do.

They're always impressive to me.

- You just throw 'em in there and walk away.

- I know, I know, I know, I know, I know.

I watch you do it.

They're simple and delicious,

and mine never come out like that.

Today, lemme look and see what we're doing,

or what I'm doing.

I know I always have to write everything down,

and I'm jealous that you remember what you're doing,

and I don't.

- It's all here.

(smooth rhythmic music)

(cars rumbling)

- When you look across at this enormous place,

it's remarkable to think that in 1982, we were...

- One storefront.

- ...we were one storefront of all of this.

Every one of these businesses we're looking at

came to the street after we did,

so we're suddenly very, very old.

(both chuckling)

- Thanks.

(smooth rhythmic music)

(upbeat dance music)

(guests chattering) (patrons shouting)

- Welcome to Sidetrack's

38th Annual Holiday Party!

(guests cheering)

On my left, a man who has shared in my life

and made my life a wonder

for forty...

...forty-six years.

(guests laughing)

You know, when you get old and can't count anymore,

that's when you need a boyfriend to tell you.

As we approach a new decade,

take a moment to remember the progress we've made,

take a moment to remember

that the only people that we gay people

can really rely on are each other.

(guests cheering)

(upbeat rhythmic music)

In the '70s, the vast majority of gay people came to Chicago

from small towns, from other parts of the Midwest largely,

and for the first time in our lives were free.

- [Pepe] Everybody was discovering the freedom of being gay,

and sex was, like, everywhere basically.

- [Victor Salvo] We were living in that crucible of time -

kind of the post-Stonewall, post-Harvey Milk -

and everything just seemed to feel more electric.

I've always described it as, "My generation of gay men

was the last generation to actually have fun."

- [Art] In the typically accepted sense of coming out,

that really happened when I came to Chicago

for a sabbatical.

I had somebody whom I loved and who loved me in college,

and I thought that I was done for my life.

Didn't expect to ever fall in love

in that way or more so again,

but we both knew that I would always be gay

and he would not.

- [Tico Valle] Lakeview in the early days

was very Hispanic/Latino, and for many people,

Halsted Street was a community, a street

that you didn't want to venture down

because there were gangs, there were people of color.

The neighborhood on Broadway beginning at Diversey,

that's where a lot of bars opened up.

In fact, that's where Art and Pepe met at a local bar.

- [Pepe] I always had my eye on this one particular bar

that was on Clark and Surf called Shari's.

I got hired, and before I knew it, I was a bartender.

This is gonna sound so corny,

but all I remember the first night,

the first time I met him was his smile.

He was a customer at the bar

and I was kinda protective of him.

I always made sure that

if he was gonna go home with somebody,

I wanted to make sure that the person was okay.

You know, I always felt like he was like the new kid in town

and he needed some guidance.

- I didn't know much but I knew that whenever I saw him,

I was happy.

All the people at the bar were all just crazy about him,

like you could just see it.

He was performing just by being himself,

so I went back many nights to his bar, ordered a beer,

and chatted with him.

He had a boyfriend named Arthur.

What are the odds?

And one night he said to me,

"Oh, by the way, I broke up with Arthur today,"

and I let an appropriate amount of time go by,

'bout a minute and a half,

and said, "So what're you doing after work tonight?"

- [Pepe] I was about to enjoy the '70s.

I was breaking up with my situation

just because I wanted to be in the middle of all this

celebration,

but

he was more important.

I thought, "If I don't do this,

what if this is the one?"

And it turned out he was.

He was the one.

- He came home with me that night

to my student apartment in Evanston and never left.

(upbeat music)

- I slowly started moving in, you know.

Bring a few records. (Pep chuckles)

- I couldn't wait to get home from my classes

to our apartment and run up those stairs.

- [Pepe] I could hear him.

He always started normally, like, coming up the stairs.

We were on the third floor.

By the time he got to the second floor,

he was moving a little faster.

By the time he got to the third floor,

he was almost running.

That was always wonderful.

He always did that.

Sidetrack was one storefront.

That beam in the middle of the room, that was a wall,

and from that wall to that brick wall, that was it.

That was the space.

- [Art] We got around 15,000 square feet now,

having started around 800,

so we have grown a bunch over the years.

How many expansions do you think we've had over the years?

- At least five.

- At least.

You know, we have to go back and count.

We should learn this offhand.

I'm thinking we're at seven, but I'm not sure.

- And this is almost,

almost done.

- [Art] We're a couple of weeks from opening.

We're in final inspections.

- [Pepe] Maybe three weeks.

I think every decision we make involves more

than just the two of us.

- Indeed, and although away from here in community stuff,

I'm the guy with the big mouth

who never says no to going up on stage.

But actually in the business, I'm the quieter one.

I'm less well-known by far than Pepe which is rightly so,

and we're excited about the space

but our customers don't know much about it

so we're trying to be careful not to sorta overpraise it

and overpromise and let it just kinda be what it's gonna be,

and our customers will let us know.

- I've been coming to Sidetrack since 1982.

- I've been comin' to Sidetrack now

going on maybe, like, 30 years.

- [Customer] Three times a week sometimes.

- At least three, four times a week.

- [Woman] Sidetrack is a home away from home.

- [Customer] It's not so much of a business.

It's more like family.

- People have often traveled from the South Side

to come to Sidetrack,

and that only happens because Art and Pep

understand the importance of building an inclusive space.

- [Wyatt] If you have never been to Sidetrack,

you should definitely come to a theme night.

- [Both] There's so many. (both laugh)

- [Wyatt] Beyonce night, Lady Gaga night.

- Our personal favorite is Dog Days...

- [Maggie] ...which was brave I thought for Sidetrack

to have so many dogs wandering around

their beautiful, beautiful bar and hardwood floors.

- Dogs were all over the place, which I like.

- [David] Musical Mondays. - [Wyatt] Showtune Sundays.

- [Maggie] To hear the interaction

of the yelling back at the screen

in certain, you know, songs or clips.

- Your favorite probably is the napkins.

- [Guests] Bon voyage. (people cheering)

- Napkins flying all over the place.

- [Aimee] A lot of these things are learned

from the guys and gals that have been coming here

for so long, right? That's how I learned it.

- [Tedd] We've had a lot of celebrities here.

Cindy Lauper standing in line with her money in her hand.

She's like, "I'm just here to get my drink."

Bea Arthur, she was promoting her one-woman show.

This one poor customer fumbling

trying to get a picture of Bea...

It was just cute to see Bea lose it

and just say, "Take the fucking picture."

(Norbert chuckling)

- [Aimee] We talked it over and we're like,

"Why not have our wedding here?"

- That was pretty incredible.

We had 150 family and friends.

- Our families were experiencing a gay bar,

some of them for the first time.

- [Aimee] And then once people saw

and we showed, you know, people our photos,

they're like, "That's Sidetrack?

Oh my God, it looks amazing, I would never think."

- Sidetrack is a long-standing positive element

of the community,

and it's the only place I've drank booze for 29 years.

(men chuckling)

- You're so graceful.

- Am I?

- [Cleve] Art and Pepe?

They're generous, and they're kind, and they're funny,

and they're two of the hardest working people

I've ever known.

- My favorite brother. (people chuckling)

- Hi, Pepe.

- [Pepe] I grew up in a small town in Cuba

in the eastern part of Cuba,

and I was very spoiled as a child.

I always got my way somehow.

- Tio! Look at the napkin, please.

Seriously?

- Oh, don't you want variety?

- No.

(woman vocalizing)

- [Pepe] They're using the wrong oil for the wrong thing.

(woman speaking Spanish)

I'm gonna stay away from there.

My dad was a schoolteacher.

My mother was a housewife.

It was a very

easy, pleasant childhood, you know.

I mean, we didn't have a lot of money, but I never knew that.

Oh, God.

Ew, I'm naked.

- [Art] I love this one.

- [Pepe] I look like Ricky Ricardo.

- I always knew that he was different.

I always knew that he needed me more than my other brother.

He was very intelligent. He was very serious.

- Oh, my first communion.

- [Celia] First communion.

- [Art] Which-- they had to sneak around because--

- [Pepe] My dad wouldn't allow it.

- [Art] Your dad would not allow it.

- [Celia] He was a Communist.

- [Art] So it made Catholicism interesting

'cause it was forbidden and secret.

- [Pepe] That's the only time I liked it 'cause it was like,

I'm not supposed to.

- And it was four o'clock in the morning

and my father was sleeping, and my mother says,

"You have to go now."

- Oh geez.

Because I wanted to have my first communion.

- [Pepe] We were hiding from him.

- Because he didn't know.

- [Pepe] That was fun to hide from him.

(Celia chuckling)

The revolution happened in 1959,

and by then my parents were divorced.

They never had the same political view.

My dad was extreme left, he was a Communist,

and my mother was extreme right,

and my mother's obsession was to get us out.

She didn't want us, her children,

growing up in the communist system.

We left the country.

- [Interviewer] Were you able to say goodbye to your dad?

- No, I wrote him a letter.

I wrote him a letter, and his wife-- he was remarried by then.

She told me--

not recently, but a few years after the fact--

she told me that he went into the bedroom

and didn't come out for three days.

So that was tough.

I didn't see him again for 17 years.

Look how stupid I look.

(everyone laughing)

- Oh, well, well, well.

- Pictures don't lie.

(everyone laughing)

- You're gonna pay for that.

- [Man] Can I take your conehead with me?

'Cause I think that's what I'm gonna be.

(people chattering)

Here's Tommy.

- [Art] It was a long complicated process

how we ended up being bar owners 'cause

we were the least likely bar owners.

- [Pepe] The original idea for Sidetrack

came from a friend of ours, Rocco Dinverno.

Rocco live in San Francisco,

and he was familiar with a bar called the Midnight Sun.

He was convinced that something like that would work

in Chicago, and when I saw this place, I was blown away.

Their programming was all videos.

- [Art] In days before video was--

- [Pepe] ...before MTV, before anything.

He looked at me and said, "You think you can do this?"

And I said, "Yeah."

What got into me? But I always loved music.

I always loved movies.

- [Art] Rocco knew who were the great bartenders

in our community,

none of whom would work for him,

but they would all work for Pep.

(upbeat music)

- This one here is the first one we ever played at the bar,

the night we opened.

The song is "War of the Worlds" by

Jeff Wayne.

(upbeat music)

You get the sound effect, and you see the thing going by, yeah.

It's fun, I'm telling you, it's just fun.

The movie was available, and it had some wonderful visuals

and the song was about "War of the Worlds"

so it was a natural pairing.

- [Art] I went to a bank two days before we opened

and borrowed enough money to put up a big projector.

It was all shoe-stringed.

Smile.

- Hi.

(upbeat music)

* Nobody else here *

* Nobody like me *

- Let's rewind, let's catch up here.

What? Talk to me.

Let's rewind this and catch up.

- [Pepe] We were told by some people that

that will never fly.

This is not California. This will never fly in Chicago,

So I thought it would be a slow process,

and you know, we're gonna open

and then we're gonna have to build this up.

It was busy from day one.

- [Victor Salvo] I had been a regular at Sidetrack

from the night it opened,

literally from the night it opened.

I know a lot of people say that like they were at Woodstock.

I actually was there the night it opened.

- [Owen Keehnen] Music videos were one thing,

but these videos that I saw here were like--

okay, this is the first time I've seen videos

that are collected with a queer sensibility.

And again, it was another form of welcoming.

- [Pepe] Opening night you couldn't get in,

so we'd run out of beer by 10 o'clock.

I remember getting in my car and going to

a bar on Lincoln Avenue, Touché's,

and asking them for, you know--

I called them and said, "Could I borrow some beer?"

They said, "Sure." So I filled my car with cold beer

from Touché and took it back to Sidetrack

and finished the night.

So even from day one,

we were depending on other bars and other people.

It's always been a community effort in many ways.

- [Tico] Sidetrack was a postage stamp.

It was this one storefront, but it was the go-to bar.

We all sat on cases of beer.

- I sat

on stacks

of these guys.

- [Art] We had no storage so we stored all the beer

in the beer cases along one wall

and people sat on the beer cases

'cause we didn't have benches in the very beginning.

- As you see, they're durable 35 years later.

- [Pepe] We couldn't finish the front of the bar.

We run out of money to begin with.

- There was no sign, not because we didn't want a sign,

because there were too many other things. We had to buy beer.

Beer was more important than a sign.

As we were about to open--

it might even been the first night--

somebody spray painted "Fag Bar" on the door.

I'm not sure why we had the good sense - but we did -

to leave it.

And so one way people knew

how to find the bar besides counting a number of doors

from the corner of Roscoe was to look for the door

that said "Fag Bar."

- Gay bars were the only place we could socialize,

but it was also extremely dangerous,

and then when we began to see

bars that were owned and operated by gay people themselves

with roots in the community

and a genuine concern for the community,

that changed things profoundly.

(people cheering)

- Hey, get one of me!

- [Art] I remember being called by a nightlife reporter

who wanted to write an article about this

unheard-of secret bar.

I said, "I don't want you to write an article."

- No, I never drink on the job.

I never do.

You're beautiful.

- [Art] "We're a gay bar,

and if you write an article about us,

we will become a sideshow for hip straight people,

and when they move on, we'll be done.

If they come, they're welcome,

but I'm not interested in attracting any straight people

to our business."

- [Announcer] You heard of Women's Wear Daily,

this is what men wear nightly!

- [Art] The reporter was very unhappy,

told me I was passing up the opportunity of a lifetime.

I said, "I'm sorry, that's just the way we see it.

We don't have much that belongs to us,

but this bar belongs to us.

We're not letting it go."

- [Kim] All right.

- Welcome to Outspoken: LGBTQ

Storytelling.

- So we create community here,

so we have storytellers who take the stage,

who share a little bit of who they are.

We wanna honor their words.

- Part of the reason we started Outspoken was to help us all

learn more about our own history.

- [Kim] And I am really honored and proud

to introduce Channyn Lynne Parker.

(people cheering) (Kim laughing)

- I knew that was coming. That's why I paused.

- [Art] One of the thrills

for older folks like me has been to watch the rise

of new, young members of our community.

- I am a healer.

It's amazing how a head massage can magically take away

the stress of a long work week.

For a young trans woman,

the beauty shop provided a safe haven for my transition.

It's the continuation of this monolithic narrative

that all trans people come from

this inherently traumatic background and experience,

and when we continuously project that narrative,

it really checkers the views of other individuals

and has them see us through a very narrow lens.

A year later,

I became the manager of the Trans Life Project,

and today I am a program director at Howard Brown Health

and a member of the executive leadership team.

(people cheering) Thank you.

It's not the end of the story, y'all.

(people laughing)

One of the reasons why I'm so happy to be

in the position that I am in is because

it models possibility.

You know, it shifts that narrative

or that lens of service provision,

which again is good, to,

"Wow. I can be administrative, right?

I can be an executive. I can be in leadership."

So the next time you are at a salon,

think of me and give the shampoo assistant a big tip

because you just never know what they may become.

Thank you all so much for listening.

(people cheering)

I feel like a little kid when I'm around him again,

and Art will go into one of his many war stories.

He's just such a wealth of information.

I can listen to him talk forever.

Those are the things that we all walk away from Art

being better for.

(birds chirping)

- [Sylvia Becker] I wanted to tie knots

and learn how to go canoeing and

I got to do all that stuff.

Well, this guy drowned three times.

- I was pulled out from the bottom of the canal,

which is a pretty filthy place anyway.

They brought me back, resuscitated me.

I was out, I was gone, and I woke up,

but now the lesson that I had learned was,

you get back on the horse.

Well, you shouldn't, f--

You should learn how to ride the horse

before you get on the horse again so

I just I jumped back in and drowned again,

and they had to pull me out again.

- You finally earned the badge, didn't you?

- No, I never did, I never did.

It kept me from being an Eagle Scout.

I was never-- not a good enough swimmer.

- Oh.

I remember fun things like when he'd come home from college,

he came home and wanted to cook for us,

but he did fried apples, which I had never heard of.

I asked him, you know, "Where did you learn about this?"

He said, "Well, they serve it in the cafeteria

where I work."

And I said, "Well, did they give you the recipe?

Did they show you how to make it?"

And he said to me, "Sister,

if you wait for somebody to teach you how to do things,

you will never learn anything,"

and I think that's how he's lived his life.

(men laughing)

(soft music) (birds chirping)

- [Art] Now, in the 1980s,

Chicago was not a hundred percent welcoming.

Police didn't like gay people.

- [Owen Keehnen] The bar raids in Chicago were going on.

- [Tracy Baim] And who would get arrested

would be the gay bartenders.

- [Art] We had a situation. We had a fellow in the bar

trying to cause a fight with a pool cue.

I come from a blue-collar town.

I know about pool cues and fights in pool halls.

This was not pretty.

Cop car comes by, and the cop jumps out of his car,

sees me holding this guy, and says, "What's going on here?"

And I said, "Well, this fellow started a fight.

We're holding him, and we called the police."

He cut through it all and said, "So,

are you the fucking fag who owns this fucking fag bar?"

I said, "I guess that would be me."

He said, "We got too many fags in this part of town

as it is. I'm gonna shut you down and put you in jail."

They took me four blocks up the street

to Addison and Halsted and put me in jail.

- [Cleve] I think people should be paying more attention

to the history of bars in our community

because the bars are the anchors of the gayborhoods,

and the gayborhoods are vanishing.

- [Cameraman] How about a little show, girls?

- What do you want to see?

- Whatever you wanna show.

- [Cleve] Now, many people will tell you,

"Oh, it's going away because we're so accepted,

we can live anywhere we want,"

and I think, "I would like to have whatever you're smoking

because that is just not true."

- [Lori Lightfoot] Going up to Northalsted in my 20s

and seeing people living unabashedly, unapologetically,

a gay life was eye-opening for me

because it gave me a sense of what the possibilities

for my own life could be.

- [Cleve] It's when we live in geographic proximity

to each other that we have political power.

We can elect our own, and we can defeat our enemies.

(people chanting)

- [Reporter] This is Chicago

in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is a public health crisis that's unprecedented

in modern history.

- I've never lived through anything like this.

- [Reporter] The corner bars and restaurants,

the city's cornerstones, they all closed to the public today.

(metal door clanking)

- [Brad] Owning a bar, managing a bar,

working in a bar is a very social experience.

It's really tough.

So we've been trying to create things that are

a substitute for what we're able to do in person,

but not trying to recreate what that exact experience

would be like because all of these virtual experiences

that try to be a replica of what you get in real life

don't do it for me.

Please follow us on our social media pages.

We will throw up little tidbits, little treats,

little memories to get us through this time.

I know that nothing's gonna compare to shouting back

at Evita on the big screen or tossing a handful of napkins

in the air, but until we can all get Sidetracked again,

take care of yourselves, take care of each other.

For about five years, I worked at getting my teaching degree

and worked here, and I was sitting in the back office one day

and Art came in, and then he asked

where I saw myself going with my teaching career,

and that is when the light triggered in my head:

"Oh, what he's really asking is something bigger,"

and he asked if I would be interested in applying

for the job as general manager.

Very early when I worked here as a bartender,

somebody said to me-- and it really changed my life--

I was like bartending with my shirt off

and like taking tips and like

everybody's having a great time,

and I said something about becoming a teacher,

and he looked at me and he goes, "Do not do that."

And he goes, "Why do you wanna be a teacher?"

And I said... (Brad murmuring)

He goes, "You think what you do here is not important?

What you do here is important.

People need this.

People need an escape, they need to have fun,

they need to have a good time.

What you do is important."

That statement was even in my mind

while I was making the decision to

jump from one career to the next.

I think we're starting to see some push back.

I think businesses are getting tired of playing nice.

- [Art] Our citizens are not immune to quarantine fatigue.

- [Brad] That's a good phrase. "Quarantine fatigue."

- [Art] We know how difficult it is to see one of,

if not the most, vibrant strips in the city completely dead.

- I feel like this whole year is lost,

business-wise and--

I'm hoping that next year will be

a whole different experience,

but we're concentrating on surviving right now.

- [Art] Our community, when we went through AIDS,

we ended up

teaching the world

how to live

and love

in the time of plague,

and if we have to teach the world those lessons again,

we'll do it.

- [Reporter] It appeared a year ago

in New York's gay community,

then in the gay communities in San Francisco

and Los Angeles. No one knows why.

- Just like this pandemic now is changing

a lot of people's perspectives

on what's important and what's not,

I think AIDS did that to us, you know,

in a major, major way.

- [Victor] Chicagoans,

I think there were probably more cases

than we were consciously aware of

because they weren't getting the kind of newspaper coverage

that they were in New York,

and that was sort of a double-edged sword

because we did feel insulated against it.

- [Tracy Baim] At that point, there were no drugs,

very little known about transmission and all sorts of things

that we were trying to just grab onto as reporters,

as a community.

- [Tim] What was safe? What was unsafe?

Should I trust this person?

Should I go home with this person?

- [Dr. Blatt] There was always that tension between

how to encourage people to promote safer sex

and still figuring out what that meant in those days,

without being anti-sex after this whole excitement

for all of us about finally being able to be ourselves

and sex was pretty fundamental to that.

- [Person] Run hard, honey.

- ...serious or not.

- I don't know if it was because we got ahead

or because the tension wore off or-- Try whatever.

Let's just try to keep whatever it was--

Each of us, think of whatever it was we were doing

in those first few innings. It was working.

We had at Sidetrack national championship

and other softball teams that traveled around

the country to tournaments.

We saw in bars, in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston,

safe-sex materials, which we had never seen.

None of that at all was visible in Chicago.

I went to meet with the executive director

of the sexually transmitted disease clinic

and urged them to take on this work.

They couldn't take it on.

I was deeply pissed off and said to them,

"If not you, then who?"

I contacted the health departments in Los Angeles,

San Francisco, and Houston.

They all gave us permission to reprint all of the materials

which Sidetrack did,

and Sidetrack staff distributed those materials

to bars in Chicago.

- [Victor Salvo] The numbers began to pick up.

(soft music)

When I was 29,

I didn't know anybody that was even HIV positive.

By the time I turned 30, 6 of my friends were dead.

- I was diagnosed with HIV at Howard Brown

at age 24,

and so that was terrifying.

- [Greg Harris] My doctor said, "Well, you

should probably wrap up your affairs.

You've only got six months left,"

so I went out and spent all of my money

and a lot of a couple bank's monies on my credit cards

figuring, "Oh, well, what the hell?"

- [Pepe] We were convinced we had it.

We went to the test,

and it came back that we were both negative,

and the first reaction you get is like, this elation.

It's like, this weight's been lifted, and you feel like--

you feel so, so incredibly lucky,

and then few minutes later you realize

that you're the exception,

that most of your friends are not going through that,

and then the guilt comes in.

- To go to a bar became a very fraught experience.

- [Pepe] The few people who were completely out

who told everyone that they had it

would come into the bar and could see the people

sort of moving away from them.

- Sometimes people come in and meet a stranger

and 10 minutes later, you see 'em leaving.

That, you're not seeing anymore.

- [Pepe] Well, there was a lot of fear

at the beginning of the pandemic and ignorance.

It was a hell of a combination

and within our own community,

it hit us both at the business and in our personal lives.

Some of our closest, closest, closest friends,

considering the number of employees we had at the time,

I would say about 50%, gone.

- [Art] We were living through a pandemic.

Nobody would help us. No government support.

- I think many of you may be surprised I'm here tonight.

There are some who said I wouldn't come

for political reasons.

There are some who say I'm out of touch

with the gay and lesbian community.

- He set us up to expect that he would follow through

on AIDS funding and on appointing real,

openly gay and lesbian people to boards.

He's not following through on his commitments.

- Is he trying to say that I'm not human

about people's illness in this city?

Please, never do that to anybody in this city.

You're really doing a disservice to the entire city.

- [Speaker] Mr. Mayor, it's not gonna help.

(people yelling)

[crowd] Shame, shame, shame!

- [Tico Valle] During the AIDS epidemic,

people were being convicted, losing their jobs,

starving because they didn't have funding for food.

- We had a friend who was quite ill.

He was a bartender at Sidetrack,

and I really wanted this person to live in my apartment.

He was very sick at the time and needed to move,

and the landlord at the time was not understanding

because he wasn't working

and there was this problem and that,

so I went down and got Art.

It took a lot of fighting for Art and I to say,

"Look, Mr. Landlord, don't worry about--

the bills will get paid, the rent will get paid,

there's not a problem."

I mean, it was terrible.

- Here in Chicago,

we especially took care of each other

because nobody else gave a good goddamn about us.

The folks you saw today are not people who normally

beat their fists on desks and make a lot of noise,

but there's great anger and frustration

that the real state of things in our community

is simply not being communicated to City Hall.

- [Art] When I got pulled into this gay rights work,

the group of us who came to be known as--

it was a moniker thrown at us: the Gang of Four.

At this time, we were working on passing an ordinance.

- [Tracy] The Gang of Four, which was Laurie Dittman,

Jon-Henri Damski, Rick Garcia, and Art Johnston,

they all four were pit bulls for gay rights, right?

They all did it in their own different way,

and somehow during that window of time

where it was important to work together,

they figured out the magical mix to do that.

You had Laurie Dittman, who was the quiet female of the group.

- [Art] You could not deter Laurie from her chosen path

no matter what.

- And when they keep saying, be good little queers,

be quiet, be patient, and wait outside the door,

don't let them.

- Then you had Jon-Henri Damski,

a character unto himself who was a writer,

just a really kooky individual, I have to say.

He wrote for me on and off,

and I still couldn't get a handle on him.

Really just "eccentric" is the best word to describe him.

- [Art] He brought his own lengthy background

and understanding of the role of various aldermen.

- [Laura] Every reporter loves a person

who gives you a good quote,

and Rick Garcia was a quote factory.

He was just made for television, made for journalism.

You wanted somebody to be outrageous and be outraged,

you called up Rick.

So he was one of my go-to sources for many years.

- [Art] Undoubtedly, Rick was the most politically savvy

of any of us.

- This administration is inconsiderate, it is outrageous,

and we no longer have the appropriate channels

to go through.

This is what it's come to.

You name the day, you name the time,

because all you do is spew forth lies and filth.

- [Tracy] And then you have a bar owner who was an educator.

- [Laura] Art was the motivator and to some extent the money

and the power behind the organization.

- [Art] My role in Gang of Four,

I got there because I proved that I could organize.

There was a wonderful idea to start a big rally

in Daley Plaza on the Sunday before the first vote

in Chicago city council.

There had been some disagreements

or sort of lack of ideas on how to move forward,

and one of the ideas was to ask all the bars to close.

That's when I became involved with the work,

because I didn't think that was a good idea.

In our history, whatever progress we've made

has been funded, if funded at all, by bar owners.

Why would we want to piss off the only people

who've ever carried water for our community

for all these years?

But what ended up happening was my ideas about

how to get people to the rally by having them go first

to the bars and having bar owners pay for buses,

turned out to be a very good idea,

although it was one of those ideas

I swear I must have pulled outta my ass

'cause I have no idea where it came from.

I did feel that part of my role was to continue

to remind folks that bars are an important part of a community,

that Stonewall began with a bar.

I viewed my work as part of the continuing line

of activist bar owners.

- [Anna DeShawn] What's good, good people?

You know this is your girl, Anna DeShawn,

right here on E3 Radio,

your number one stop for queer radio done right,

and I am blessed to have the two founders of Sidetrack

with me today, Art and Pep.

What's going on?

- It's great to be here. It's great to be here.

- I'm glad that you all are here with me.

I mean, you all started this-- let me get it right-- 1982?

- 1982. - April 1982.

- I'm not gonna say that I wasn't born yet,

but I think I was thought about.

I think that my parents met. Okay.

- Go ahead.

(people laughing)

I'm an '80s baby.

And if there's anywhere in Boystown, now known as

Northalsted, where I can feel comfortable, it's at Sidetrack.

I think about Affinity...

- Yes.

- ...starting in 1995, and Irma,

who's our program coordinator right now,

cleared out our storage area, right,

and they were like, "I need to organize this stuff."

So 25 years of stuff, and they were going through

and they were finding programs from 20 years ago

that was sponsored by Sidetrack.

- Wow.

- Right? - Wow.

- And it was just like, wow.

1995, Sidetrack was supporting Affinity

when other folks didn't even want Affinity to exist.

- [Art] But thank you for what you've done with Affinity.

- And we're sitting in Affinity Community Services, right,

which has been around now for 26 years

serving Black lesbians, Black LGBTQ folks here.

The work that I do here at Affinity,

it is totally social justice driven,

totally community driven, and so it speaks to that passion.

But my first love is media.

And let's talk about that.

Like Boystown, it's had many racist incidents

over the years. - Yes it has.

- Right? - Yes, it has.

- Bars "stopping playing hip hop"

means stop Black folks from coming in.

Even within an LGBTQ community,

racism can still exist.

Xenophobia can still exist.

- One of the things that's always strange in the world

is when you see a group of people

who have been discriminated against,

and then the first thing you know,

they've turned around and are discriminating back.

Come on folks, whoa, whoa.

- Yeah, how does that work?

- It clearly doesn't work.

* You are now turned in * to higher frequencies *

* We do this frequently *

* Turn your radio station * to E3 for that decency *

* Listen to... *

- [Anna] The radio station actually started off

as a college radio network,

and eventually it became E3 Radio.

This is everybody's problem, right?

- I think it just goes to show what a lot of us

Black LGBTQ folks experience.

I mean, we have to deal with enough

in the broader society from white people

across sexual orientation, gender identity, but also...

- [Anna] We were talking like,

"What can we be doing right now in this moment?"

In the midst of COVID,

in the midst of everything that's happening,

social justice is really important to all of us.

We're like, "We can start a show."

We can do a show every day 'cause

we just wanted to talk.

We just wanted to feel like we were being a community,

and how can we activate our own activism with the tools

and the gifts that we have?

Because if we don't tell our stories,

who's gonna tell 'em

and then who's gonna tell 'em correctly, right?

What I wanna do is build a media platform

that can employ people where they feel safe,

can give people visibility, and we can get some ownership

and some stake in this thing and show value.

Y'all, more to come, okay? So stay tuned.

This is Anna DeShawn on E3 radio.

Everyone has a gift.

Everyone has a place in the movement,

and in the work. And you just do what you're good at.

Everything that you do every day is part of your activism.

[people chanting] No justice, no peace.

- [Art] The movement for Black trans rights

is very close to our community.

There was a time when all gay people were treated

the way Black trans people are treated today,

and we as a people of privilege need to remember

how we got here, and we got here by protesting,

by working, by fighting.

The gay community understands what over-policing is like.

Now if you look today

at the way white gay people are treated by police,

you would not know that it was ever any different.

There's no question that the trans lives,

they're under such attack from the president on down.

- [Pepe] They were there from the beginning,

so there wouldn't be a Stonewall without them.

They started the whole movement.

- [Art] So this march is what gay pride in 2020

should look like.

I have never been prouder

of my community than I am today.

This is fuckin' remarkable.

We gotta have more of this.

(upbeat music)

[people chanting] Act up. Fight back. Fight AIDS.

- [Tico Valle] The movement of the AIDS epidemic in Chicago

really brought out the best of our community.

- [Greg Harris] Back then, it was just a group of

average people just struggling every day

to do our best to save our friends.

[people chanting] Act up. Fight back. Fight AIDS.

- [Art] ACT UP was an entirely new force.

Nobody kind of knew what to do with them,

which is what they wanted,

and they did get many of us

more mainstream, traditional lobbyists

to take off our suits and ties and join them in the streets.

- The Chicago Department of Health

says they don't have to get information

to the gay and lesbian community

because we've done a good job educating ourselves.

Well, don't you believe it!

- [Art] The most well-known person in Chicago area

in ACT UP was Danny Sotomayor.

[people chanting] City Hall says, "Get back." We say, "Fight back!"

- [Danny] Gather there, block off that street, do speeches.

Once that's over, we can go back to this section,

do the circle again...

- [Art] Like so many folks,

I would've done anything Danny asked me to do,

and when he asked us to come to marches

and lie down on the street in front of the police horses,

we gladly did it.

You either adored Danny, loved him, nearly worshipped him,

or you hated his guts,

and there were plenty of people who hated his guts

'cause he didn't take any prisoners.

(people cheering)

- [Lori Cannon] Boy, oh boy, oh boy.

Yikes. Your head.

- They got me a little bit here, too, when they dropped me.

- Right now I would say you're still

in shock over the arrest.

I'm concerned about your head.

- Yeah, I'm fine.

- I'm concerned about your injuries.

- I'm fine. - Okay, all right.

- [Art] Mayor Daley might be speaking at some event,

he might be at some dinner.

Not far behind was Danny and his banner.

Danny sensed that the mayor was the perfect object

for personalizing their fight.

- [Reporter] Gay activists have complained

Daley hasn't done enough to fight the AIDS crisis

and hasn't appointed gay and lesbians

to key City Hall positions.

- [Art] Some members of ACT UP

took it upon themselves to protest at budget hearings.

- We would target Mayor Daley.

We'd find out his schedule, we would follow him.

We'd-- like-- "You have to increase the budget for AIDS.

This is unacceptable. Our people are dying."

Finally, he just said, "Listen, if you can find the money,

we're going to increase the budget."

We did get a copy of the budget.

"Oh, here's $80,000 for rat control in Lincoln Park.

Give us $25,000 of that."

You know, we thought at least they could spend

as much on the queers as they did on rats in Lincoln Park.

- In the midst of all the horror,

there was life

in the affirming strength

of fighting back.

- [Greg Harris] You know, Art and Pepe's skill at

mixing fun and serious business was always really an art.

They would get people packed into their club on the weekend,

but then they would follow up and make sure

that they also took political action.

- [Art] You will have an opportunity through this week

to meet many other lesbian and gay candidates

from around our country,

the kind of folks who are gonna make sure

that lesbian and gay rights become a reality across our country.

(people clapping)

- [Tracy Baim] There started to be a movement

for gay rights protections through the law

in the early 1970s.

One of the Alderman in Chicago, his name was Cliff Kelley,

was the first person to introduce.

He was an African-American South Side alderman.

He was one of the first really to understand gay rights.

- Alderman Majerczyk, do I understand you correctly

in effect to say that laws exist already

in which if, a homosexual person felt

that he or she were discriminated against,

that they can go in and get something done?

Is that your position? - I believe so, yes.

- [Moderator] You think that comes out of

the 1964 U.S. Civil Rights case?

And that's federal law.

- I'd like to know what provisions those are.

- [Alderman Majerczyk] Well, I'm not prepared

at this time to...

- That's because they don't exist Alderman,

that's the whole problem.

- The ordinance was introduced in 1974.

It languished there until the '80s.

The first vote was in '86.

The chambers were packed.

The vote came up short.

- [Art] All of us in City Hall were pretty depressed,

and somebody started singing.

And they were singing,

"We Are a Gentle, Angry People."

It's an old universal hymn, and I tell you,

I hate that song.

We are not a gentle, angry people.

We are an angry people, and we're not gonna do kumbaya

and sit around and hug each other.

We're going to get the work done, the political work done,

and at that moment, everything changed.

We put together a strategy.

We are going to talk to regular Democrats,

independent Democrats, Republicans.

Everybody is a potential "yes" vote.

- What you are trying to do is deprive

the broad mass of Americans of the freedom

to make decisions regarding their own private behavior

and their own associations on the basis of their morality.

- In the state of Illinois, it is perfectly legal right now,

right today, for a person to be fired from a job

simply because that person's perceived to be gay or lesbian.

It's our country, too.

- Chicago way of politics is about muscle,

and it's about power, and it's bringing people to your side.

Sometimes you have to do some horse trading

and sometimes you have to make some promises.

- [Rick] In talking to a legislator, they try to put us off.

Jon-Henri Damski would say,

"I have friends in Bonaventure House.

They don't have the time to put it off."

That really struck the heart of legislators, like,

"Oh yeah, you'll get around to it,

but I really can't do it now before my election."

There are people who may not live.

At least let them die with dignity.

- [Reporter] Aldermen supporting the ordinance said

it was a necessary extension of the Civil Rights Law.

- It is the next logical step for the protection

of our individual freedoms.

- [Reporter] The opponents cited their religious beliefs.

- Homosexual activity is known to be characterized by

the most dangerous of sanitary practices,

the right to spread, infect--

Go ahead, animals.

- [Rick] We got criticism from the progressive element

in the LGBTQ community.

They said, "Well, that's-- he would be a dirty vote."

Mother of God, any vote that gets us to 26 is a good vote.

I don't care who they are.

- [Laura Washington] When you bring in what would seem like

the least likely allies, people pay attention

and it can be a force for change.

- [Rick] I am a Roman Catholic, and I have connections with

religious sisters and brothers all over the country

and in the city.

- [Art] Rick understood brilliantly that nuns

do not take their directives

from the local Archbishop Cardinal.

They take theirs from the leaders of their order,

usually in Rome.

- [Rick] I called sisters that I knew here in Chicago

and we put together the Catholic Strategy

because in Chicago - at that point, very, very Catholic...

- [Art] When an alderman would say,

"Oh, I can't vote for this. I'm Catholic, you know,"

the nun would say, "I'm Catholic, too."

And the nuns convinced many an alderman to vote "yes"

on the Gay Rights Ordinance, who otherwise

would've been opposed.

- [Reporter] This was the third time the measure

was called up for a vote.

Two previous times it was voted down.

- [Pepe] We were expecting the whole thing to fail again.

- Then I heard that ACT UP had plans for this meeting.

- [Pepe] I was sitting next to Danny Sotomayor.

He had this plan that the moment they said

that they didn't pass, we were gonna jump over the railings

and we were going get on top of the desk and the tables

and we were gonna create mayhem.

- [Rick] ACT UP would say, you know,

"We want to throw slime on the City Council."

That doesn't help.

We don't think that helps us.

And they'd say, "Yeah, because you're mainstream,"

and I'm thinking, "God, I'd be the first one

to lob slime at them."

- [Art] I made a deal with ACT UP in which I said,

"Okay, folks, if it doesn't pass,

we will join you in sliming City Council and get arrested.

Pep was very happy about this possibility.

He was always impatient with traditional lobbying.

- I was really excited 'cause-- I was like, "Oh, yes!"

- [Art] The green sliming of City Council chambers

did not occur because we won.

We won, we won, we won.

- The roll call is 28 "yea"s, 17 "nay"s.

The ordinance is adopted.

(people cheering)

- The mayoral candidates have realized that

the lesbian and gay community is a strong community,

is an important community, and they had to deliver.

- [Art] We had done what we had been told over and over

we could not do.

A week didn't go by that some political reporter

wouldn't seek me out or Rick and say,

"What are you guys doing?

This will never pass here in Chicago.

You're not in Seattle or San Francisco

or Los Angeles or New York."

So it was, needless to say, even sweeter

when we had been told over and over, it could not--

it would never pass.

Interesting side note to show our own naïveté

is after we passed the city ordinance,

we had a meeting where we declared gay rights

a reality in Chicago, and we publicly burned

the bylaws of our organization.

It wasn't long after that when, of course,

the reality struck all of us that gay rights work

was not complete.

We needed to do more.

- And we really hope to

work on different issues and see just how much legislation

we get through the city council

that benefit gays and lesbians.

- Oh, that's great.

- We've only just begun.

- Rick really pushed all of us to

become more formalized as an organization.

The group and its name morphed into Equality Illinois.

- So this, for a statewide organization,

is where it all happens.

At Equality Illinois, when we think about the policies

we have to pursue, like we focus disproportionately

on schools, healthcare, and criminal justice reform.

The other things we're really focused on

is making sure that LGBTQ people are at every table

where decisions about our community are made.

There can't be places where major decisions are made

about our society or our community

where queer people are not there.

I wanna start tonight off on a personal note.

So this happened this year.

This is my daughter Josephine, born in May.

Parenting

has made me

care more about the work and less about work.

Now I'm doing work,

not just for me,

but to make sure that my daughter gets to live in a world

where her family is respected and affirmed.

Now I'm fighting for someone that I love.

You wanna have a strawberry?

- Oh yeah, you can have one.

- Joey do.

So let me tell you about our home.

The home I rock Joey in,

sheltered against the cold Chicago winter nights.

The foundation, which grounds us laid by Sylvia Rivera

and Marsha P. Johnson.

The floors upon which we stand proudly

set by Danny Sotomayor, Rick Garcia, and Vernita Gray.

The walls that hold up our home against the January winds

erected by Tracy Baim, Greg Harris, Mona Noriega,

and Mary Morton.

Every nail and plank holding our home together

put in place by the work of thousands of people,

too many to name. And finally the door,

the door through which we enter this home,

carved out by my dear friend and mentor, Art Johnston.

There is nobody I know in the world

who is as good at channeling righteous anger

and soft compassion as Art.

- So please repeat after me.

To equality...

- [crowd] To equality...

- [Art] ...and full justice... - [crowd] ...and full justice...

- [Art] ...for all. - [crowd] ...for all.

- [Art] Cheers!

(metal door clanking)

(people chattering)

- When you were out there-- no, I said, when

you were out there, you should have called me.

(people chattering)

- [Woman] He's looking at nudes.

Nudes, you wanna see some nudes?

I don't have nudes. This is a clean phone!

Whose nudes are those?

Everybody in Boystown. This is the Rolodex.

- We've been closed for almost exactly three months,

but it feels like a lot longer,

and we'll make it work.

And we don't know how long this particular way

of doing things will last, but it is a start.

- [Brad] Just a reminder that we're gonna wear gloves.

We're gonna change our gloves every 30 minutes.

Also, per city regulations,

we're supposed to sanitize everything

at least once every two hours.

I would like us all to use the phrase,

"Thank you for being patient with us today."

(people chattering)

- [Brad] Welcome back.

So things are gonna be a little bit different today.

You're gonna have a cocktail server.

- Sure, thank you guys for joining us.

- We missed it.

- [Calvin Drent] I don't know that Sidetrack

is making money right now, but it's really nice

to be open the little bit that we can.

- You keep it.

- [Calvin] We open the doors back up thinking

people will be clamoring to come back to Sidetrack,

and there were some that were,

but a lot of people are scared and broke.

It's cheaper to have a drink at home

than it is to go out to the bar and have a drink

so it's been tough even still.

- [Brad] It's not fun to walk by

and see your favorite bartender stuck

behind a shield of Plexiglas,

and it's not fun to go to a table of people

and tell them they need to put their masks on

if they want to sing along to the song,

and it's not fun to walk up to somebody and be like,

"I'm sorry, you can't approach a table of people

you don't know.

I keep a very happy face when it's time to interact

with the staff and the public, but it is pretty joyless.

- [Pepe] Sometimes I wonder if we should stay open or not

until we can fully open.

Well, first of all, we don't have a crowd on the floor

singing and reacting to the videos.

I'm playing to an empty room so that's a big difference.

You get a lot of energy from the crowd,

you feed off the crowd, and you cannot do that anymore.

Showtunes, showtunes, showtunes. It's one of the things

that define Sidetrack.

* You can't stop the beat *

(upbeat music)

(crowd cheering)

Of all the things that have to do with Sidetrack,

that's the one that I feel the closest to.

- Do you need anything?

- No. - Okay.

- I think I'll be fine.

- Okay, great.

- [Pepe] It's been imitated all over the country.

I don't care where you go.

There's always been a bar that does showtunes on Mondays.

And this is a log book

so I keep track of everything that I play.

It's something that-- I cannot play without doing this.

* Don't cry for me, Argentina *

* Let's do the time warp again *

We've been doing showtunes since 1983.

Our slowest night was Monday night.

I thought the idea of doing a night, Monday night,

that would be nothing but musicals.

It became this huge thing.

I had to learn really fast

'cause I didn't know much about showtunes.

I mean, I've seen a few musicals in my life,

but you know, I wasn't really into it.

With time, the crowds started reacting.

They like to sing along because they all knew the lyrics.

It became like a sing along kind of thing,

and then they started changing the words of the songs,

and some were really funny.

* The ship's over there! *

* Fosse, Fosse, Fosse... *

I feel like I'm also keeping some traditions alive.

I have people ask me, "Who is that woman singing?"

I'm like, "That's Judy Garland."

Not everybody knows who she is, especially youngsters.

* No day but today *

When you go to a movie in a theater,

which is something else we're not doing anymore,

when you leave the theater,

you have a connection with the people around you

who also had the same experience,

and that's what I think happens every time

we do a showtune.

(water sloshing)

(metal clanging)

(people chattering)

- I appreciate your help.

- Okay. No problem.

(liquid sloshing)

- You're going to want to put a lot of ice in it.

I don't have any celery so--

- Happy Sunday. (glasses clink)

- Happy Sunday.

(people chattering) (produce crunching)

Love your T-shirt.

- [Art] Tonight, we're having dinner with some friends,

Jackie and Anne and their son, David.

- I appreciate the sommelier as well,

but the chef really outdid himself.

- We were with Art and Pep for dinner.

Two days later, I was on a conference call

and I saw Pepe had called, and I couldn't get the call,

but then I heard Anne's phone ring

since we're all working from home,

and I heard her say, "Oh boy, I hope he's doing okay."

- [Pepe] He got up in the middle of the night,

was beginning to get very weak and having problems

with his balance,

and he fell and hit his shoulder and part of his chest,

so we decided to go to the emergency room.

They did test him for COVID-19, and he came back positive

so they took him right upstairs to a room,

and that's where he is right now.

(machines beeping)

He's been through a lot.

I mean, he had a triple bypass.

He had throat cancer.

He beat all of those things.

He came out fine.

I miss him every morning, I miss him every night,

and

I miss him constantly.

I don't know, I think sometimes I think I'm in denial

or I'm stronger than I think, or I don't know.

One of those.

Emotionally, it's a rollercoaster.

I get sad, I get depressed, I get angry, I'm scared.

It's a million different feelings.

If anybody would beat this disease, it's Art.

(leaves rustling)

I've never seen a yellow ambulance before.

I'll get the door for you.

- Hello.

Hello, folks.

Hello, hey.

(people chattering)

(door clicking shut)

- I need some kind of a shirt or a pullover or something.

- This should be fun.

(soft music)

(doors clattering)

- Margarita?

- I wish.

- You're supposed to drink a lot of water.

The doctor told me that you're not drinking enough water.

(soft music)

- I'm gonna try to go up the stairs.

- [Pepe] You wanna do that now?

- Yes, I wanna try to get this out of the way.

- All right.

- You want to sit down for a minute

or do you wanna keep on going?

- I'm gonna sit down.

- Okay.

- [Art] We're starting to be realists about--

we've actually begun to think about those things

you must think about.

We've been together 47 years, and this is nothing morbid.

It's just that, you know,

there are average lifespans and all of this.

- You did it.

- [Art] I made him swear to me that he would do some things

about funerals.

Not that I expect to die now.

Nothing like that, but--

the realization that, you know--

we need to be ready for whatever comes in life.

- Serious now.

- Come on.

Get serious.

Get in bed.

Come here.

- I'm not going anywhere.

Not in your condition.

(men chuckling)

- I'm leaning on you, which I've done forever,

and I'm still doing.

(crickets chirping)

- Down at the desk, I couldn't even get your whole last name out.

This is my brother.

- Art Johnston.

Nice to meet you.

- So in case you didn't have enough reading,

I brought you some reading.

- Great.

- This week's...

- Okay, super. - All the stuff.

So have you been eating? What's going on?

- No, I started--

end of Wednesday, Tuesday, I started to eat.

I couldn't eat Monday or late Tuesday, and...

I can swallow now and stuff.

Get this, someone from the health department showed up.

- [Art] Wow.

- [Danny] Yeah. To our meeting. Because I mean,

I'm sure before they didn't really understand

the significance of ACT UP.

Now they will, or they do,

and now the press knows who we are

and it's no longer, "ACT UP, who?

What's that?"

- [Art] I'd love to talk to you sometime

about all those trade-offs.

I mean, obviously it looks to me like

it's been a good trade-off.

Danny became very much a part of our life.

Danny asked us if we could take George, his first macaw.

- [Pepe] He was told that he had to get rid of the bird

because of his immune system being depressed.

He became part of our family.

He became my partner in crime.

I loved the bird.

- [Lori] After Danny died,

my good friend, Richie Daley, approached me.

I go, "Yeah, what do you want?"

He said, "I always admired this deep and special friendship

you had with Danny.

No matter what, you were right there."

- Mayor Daley often said he became a better mayor

because of Danny.

- [Lori] He did? - And you.

He became an incredibly strong and supportive person

for our community.

- [David Munar] In the '90s,

there definitely had been some gains made,

but I think it really wasn't until the mid 2000s

that I kind of realized, "Oh, I am going to survive."

- [Greg Harris] Like almost everyone else I know died, and I didn't.

I do think about, "Why us and not them?"

I have no idea why some people lived

and most everyone else died.

- [Pepe] He's gotta get used to...

- [Lori] And here we are, right next to his partner, Ralph.

- [Art] My community saved ourselves,

and all the things we learned about how government operates

are the very reasons why 20, 25 years later,

we have something called gay marriage.

- [Brad] Marriage now the law of the land.

- [Reporter] That was at Sidetrack's in Boystown.

Its trailblazing owner, Art Johnston:

- [Art] Being married, for a gay person, was about as likely

as going for a walk on Mars.

Amongst all the articles that were written about,

"Oh my God, gay marriage! How fast this happened!"

So rarely did they mention that

we paid a very heavy price.

The tuition that we paid to learn those lessons

about the way government works was a price too much to pay.

Pepe,

I love you

not only for what you are,

but for what I am when I am with you.

- Arthur, I love you not only for what you are

making of yourself but what you're making of me.

- I love you because you have done more

than any creed could have done to make me a good person.

- And I love you because you have done more than any faith

could have done to make me happy.

- You have done it by being yourself.

- You have done it by being yourself.

- And by the power vested in me by the constitution

and the laws of the state of Illinois,

it is my great honor and delight to declare you

civil union partners and partners in life for life.

(people cheering)

- Mazel tov! - Mazel tov!

(people cheering)

(wind rustling)

- Stop pushing.

- No, it's fun. I like pushing you.

(wind rustling)

(door clicking shut)

- [Doctor] So how was the first shot?

- Fine, I didn't have any--

Minor, minor, minor something around the injection area,

but it was really nothin'.

(supplies rustling)

- [Doctor] That was it.

- Thank you, felt nothing. You have good hands.

- [Doctor] Beautiful.

Thank you.

- Excellent, thank you very much.

We are on our way to a meeting

with two of our representatives in Springfield,

one state rep and one state senator.

Now we're going to talk about the building

of a gay business area around

where this new Black gay center will be.

The state rep is named Lamont Robinson.

- How do we get some synergy around

the Black LGBTQ center in Bronzeville?

- The opportunity for Black entrepreneurship,

I think there's the opportunity here is gonna be something

like we've never seen before.

- Absolutely.

- [Art] The other person is somebody I've known

for many years, Mike Simmons.

Mike was just appointed to an open seat as a state Senator.

- Yep, we got 200 vaccines to

immigrants, Ethiopians,

indigenous people from the Middle East

and then low-income residents in the district I represent, so Black...

Art Johnson is a mentor of mine.

Art and I met in 2009, so it was an immediate friendship.

I just think Art is a fountain of wisdom.

- In some ways it must be easier not to have lobbyists

on you every moment of the day, 'cause that's what it always was.

I had the joy of talking to various other community members

and many of whom are people I've known for the years,

making points as to why Mike would be great

and he's already proving himself to be an amazing senator.

- One of the things I worked on is I've worked on

an ordinance with a lot of community stakeholders around

redoing the way that the city interacts

with people in the transgender community

when law enforcement is doing their thing.

In my first four months in the state senate,

I got six bills passed.

One of the bills requires that the states

start collecting data for LGBTQ people so that we can know,

for example, how the coronavirus has affected

queer people that don't have health insurance.

We had a colleague of mine try to talk dog-whistle.

He referred to sex education as perversion,

and I knew what he was talking about

so I got up and I called him out against the counsel of

some of my colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle

who wanted me to just sit quiet because we had the votes.

I said, "I don't give a damn if we have the votes."

This is the Senate for the state of Illinois,

and I expect a certain degree of decorum and respect.

I find the word "perversion" to be deeply offensive

and would ask that it be stricken from the record.

I'm not gonna sit here and let him sell out my community

and talk about the people I represent

who've never had a voice in this chamber like we're animals.

I do feel like I am a torchbearer

because I'm literally next generation

standing on the shoulders of these local giants,

people like Art Johnston and the ACT UP coalition.

It's not enough to have hashtags.

It's not enough to say, "Black trans lives matter."

It's not enough to say, "Black lives matter."

It's not enough to say, "Queer magic."

We have to do something about the things that we're seeing

in our community that rob us of our humanity.

I also think it's important for me to say

some of our queer folks are creating something altogether

new, and I think it's exciting,

it is laced with liberation, and it's intersectional,

and that is literally the thing

that is gonna save our society.

So you asked if I am-- in this new role,

I seem like I'm brave and unafraid and everything else.

I may be very good at hiding it.

(laughing)

- You've had a hell of a past year.

COVID almost...

COVID almost killed you.

- Yeah.

That's true.

COVID did almost kill me.

It tried hard.

- [Brad] Eight months later?

- [Art] Eight months later, still doing some follow up

with doctors a couple days a week.

Messed up a lot of my insides.

A lot of my internal organs got infected

and that's been hard to deal with,

but I've got great doctors

so I was very fortunate, and I made it through.

- In a word, pride is...

- Celebration. - Celebration.

(Art and Pepe laughing)

Celebration. - Celebration.

- [Interviewer] What has this month been like for you guys?

Reopening of the city and during pride month has to be huge.

- Yeah, you know, we thought that it would take off slowly.

Oh, my Lord, no.

Within a couple of days, we were so packed.

Better business than we've ever had.

People in our community and our friends

are so anxious to get outta the house.

- Okay, so I need to see proof of your vaccinations.

Great. Wonderful.

And I need to see both of your IDs.

- [Brad] Chicago announced

that if a business could guarantee that a space

was only filled with people who were completely vaccinated,

that social distancing guidelines

didn't need to be followed anymore,

and so last night was our first night of doing that.

A lot of people were very emotional about it.

It just was the first real, like,

"If Sidetrack can be normal again,

the world can be normal again."

- You see the way people are coming back in

and the way they're reacting. That's a reminder

of what the bar means to people.

Like somebody said, "This is where we come

to celebrate our victories..."

- [Todd] ...he wanted Barry Manilow's "Welcome Home."

- [Pepe] "...or where we come when something horrible happens."

- Lionel loved deeply,

and lucky for me

was slow to anger and willing to forgive.

He accepted people as they were

and he made them his friends.

We're here this evening to celebrate

my husband, Lionel Smith.

Because we didn't have a test,

we can't say the Lionel died of COVID,

but his body was fighting something

and having a really hard time

and just couldn't go on anymore.

* Who can say if I've been * changed for the better? *

* Because I knew you *

* I have been changed for good *

- To Lionel.

- [crowd] To Lionel.

- [Art] We all suffered, we all lost,

and this will not be over until we can really figure out

how to turn it all into something of value,

and I don't know what that is yet.

(soft music)

- [Pepe] I'm trying to see if I recognize anyone.

I recognize her.

Olivia Newton-John. "Physical."

That was a big hit.

- [Art] Oh right, of course it was.

- So you think that there are more people alive today

than we think? Or...

- You know, it's a great question.

I immediately recognize the people have passed.

- Well, Johnny C.

- Johnny C., one of our best.

- He passed and...

Eddie Lechin, Steve White.

I mean, sitting here watching the opening night,

1982, I just came to the decision that

I'm thinking about retiring, and...

- What?

- I mean, I'm-- from the business, and...

I still want to be connected,

but I'm thinking once we get over this pandemic

and once everything goes back to normal,

that's what I like to wait for.

I don't know long that's gonna take,

if it's gonna take a year, maybe two.

But I would like to.

- So at this moment, when you're thinking of retiring,

what does that mean?

- It means that I have complete trust in the people

that we have running the place, the business,

and I don't see any need for me to be there,

which I think is a great thing.

- Wow, so are you saying that you would

give up your VJ shifts?

- Um... (chuckles)

I may still do one once in a while,

but I don't want it to be a regular thing.

- But, um...

But, uh...

Wow, I've never thought that there would come a time

when you actually thought about...

- It's time.

(soft music)

- [Art] For us, being in love and having a relationship

with each other over all these years has been

the easiest thing that's ever happened.

- Can I get some help with buttons?

- Yeah.

- [Pepe] I always feel like the two of us together,

we can do anything.

We can go against something and win,

sickness or political activism, whatever.

We always found a way.

We always found a way.

(soft music)

- [Art] Would there be a Sidetrack without our love story?

The answer is no.

(people cheering)

I don't think there's any community

better at coping than the gay community.

What we've been through and what we've arisen from...

We struggle, we fight back, we work hard,

we care for each other, we are a community.

- [Mike Simmons] We need to celebrate

the progress of the queer community.

We need to celebrate that there will be a second

and third and fourth queer member of the state Senate

at some point in the very near future.

I have no interest in being the first and last.

- [Pepe] So the future that we all envisioned

is here for a lot of people.

It's not perfect.

We still have a lot of work to do.

We still have to protect what we have,

which can be taken away.

So you can't completely relax.

- [Brian Johnson] We will always have to do this work.

Like, we have to wake up every single day

and demand our equality.

- [Anna DeShawn] I'm excited about bringing along my friends

and all these people I've met over the years

who are doing such amazing work in the community

that folks need to know about,

who are living out their own calls and passions

every single day.

- [Art] If there was one thing

that I would love people to know,

I know that you can make a difference.

You can make life better for the people you love,

for the world, 'cause we all deserve to have a better world

than the one we came into.

It can be done. It can be done.

If we can do it, I guarantee you, anybody can do it.

- I agree.

(Pepe laughing)

(soft music)

* It feels like * something's passed you by *

* You're too worried, you're * too worried to prioritize... *

- I'll tell you one thing: that Pepe,

he's a very patient man.

(laughing)

Can you imagine being married to Arthur Johnston?

I mean, my God, that man is all over the place.

He's just, "Let's do this, let's do this."

* You ain't gotta be lonely... *

- And I think I became a much better legislator

from Art's bitchiness.

and it's nothing I wouldn't say--

there's nothing here I wouldn't say to his face.

Thank you for your bitchiness, Art.

- Everybody's got a story of when Art Johnston

was furious, and there's also a joke

that, like, Art's the easiest person to get to cry.

- He's been teased for years about crying

at the drop of a hat.

The old joke used to be he'll cry at an AT&T commercial.

- He is the biggest Wendy Weeper

of almost anybody that I know.

- I've probably witnessed him cry as much as I've

cried in my lifetime.

* You built a house... *

- I'm a huge fan of Pepe.

- I adore Pepe.

- Pepe is just a lovely human being.

- If you know him, you love him.

- He's just a wonderful soul.

- I feel Pep in a way that, you know,

makes me feel like he's like a real brother.

- Meeting Pepe Peña is like, you know, meeting love.

- I've been accused of liking everybody, which is not true.

- More than once somebody has said,

"And then Pep yelled at me," da, da, da, da.

And I go, "No, Pep has never yelled in his life."

Like if Pep really yells, then you are really in trouble.

- Talking badly about somebody, I just don't do that

or try not to.

I'm sure I've done it,

but not to the people you interviewed.

(laughing)

* But you gotta be strong *

* I know you think there's something *

* but you waited too long... *

- I had applied for my citizenship before,

and I got denied twice.

So the third time, Pepe came up to me and said,

"Listen, if this doesn't go the way we want it to go,

then we'll adopt you." And that was when I was like, "Okay,

this is definitely the place for me."

And I'll admit there was a part of me,

I was like, "Well, I don't wanna get my citizenship anymore.

I'd rather be adopted by these two."

(upbeat music)