Gay bar in aurora illinois

Queering the Burbs is a regularly-published distillation of pop culture, politics and queerness written by Joe Erbentraut. This was a big change from my life with my now-husband in the city, where every year we would simply walk a bit less than a mile from our Andersonville home to the northern edge of the massive Chicago Pride Parade route just to catch a taste of the revelry.

It was a friendly competition that we all benefited greatly from. That said, it seems like every Pride season that comes and goes out here in the western suburbs gets bigger and gayer. To my knowledge, it is one of only two such political bodies in the state of Illinois Chicago is the other one.

To learn more about the board, its work, and specifically what it has planned for the upcoming Pride Month, I recently spoke with board treasurer Fred Yanos. Our interview has been edited for length and clarity. How did you first get involved with the Advisory Board? It got started following that year the Aurora Pride Parade was on and off.

The city was going to cancel itwe were left wondering is this going to happen?

Gay Illinois

So I felt like we were like the city's apology letter per se. I saw a posting about the board and I applied because I was looking for some way to get more involved in the community. I was impacted by the auroras themselves and I saw so much love and wanted to get involved in the community. I applied, they did an interview and the rest is history.

How has it been going at the board? I saw a illinois Facebook post about a situation at a recent board meeting, where some religious folks showed up and gave you all some trouble. Has the reception been pretty good to your work so far or have there been moments like that where it's a little more nerve wracking?

Honestly, this was the first time, maybe because we're making so much noise now that we're having these events and people will start noticing. With us being a city body, our meetings need to be open to the public, so everyone's welcome. They did public comment at first and they were polite at first, but bar was also a second batch of people that was a little bit more vocal on their opinions.

The good thing is that the city was ready. They made us feel protected. We called cops just to be on the safer side. I feel like things like this have been happening more in the area. With the flag being ripped, we reached gay to the church and people made ribbons and put up some little bright flags to replace it.

With the drag show, two of our board members Keri and Brittney actually went to the city council of Oswego just to speak their piece. The protesters were trying to stop the drag show because they were calling it adult entertainment. It's been interesting. I think it's true that the more your group and other folks that are doing this work make waves, it always invites a little more attention and there's sometimes this backlash because of it, especially heading into Pride Month.