David Witter

I was born on June 29, which means that my birthday often coincides with Pride Week. In 1970, however, the first ever Gay Pride Parade went right past my house--on my birthday.

Today, the gay community is centered on Halsted Street between Belmont and Addison. In the sixties and seventies, the intersection of Clark, Diversey and Broadway became the original "Boystown." At first there was some resistance to the community. A restaurant on the corner of Diversey and Clark, called The Astro, tried to ban gays from entering. Lawsuits, news coverage and picketers with signs that read "Up Your Astro" put a quick end to that, but it gives you some idea of the climate for the first Gay Pride Parade. At the time I was so young that all I remember are hazy visions of honking cars, but my father, Robert Witter, remembers the day well.

"I remember you had all your friends over, and you were playing pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey when we heard drums and bugles," Dad says. " We ran outside and saw people marching and playing horns, and a bunch of men dressed up like women marched passed us. It took me awhile to figure out what was going on, but I learned later that it was the first Gay Parade."

I was 6 years old and transfixed by the bright colors, music and marching. I asked my father what was going on. Realizing that this was not the age, time or place to explain the situation, he replied, "It's a special parade, and I ordered it just for your birthday."

The first parade was only a dozen or so floats and a few blocks worth of marchers and people waving from convertibles. Yet I went back into my yard to eat cake and ice cream beaming. I was the luckiest kid on the world because I had my own parade, on my birthday!

(2005-06-24)

Also by David Witter

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It's Memorial Day at the Home Depot on Elston and half of Lincoln Park is wandering the aisles and filling their carts with flats of hostas, inpatients and tomato plants named Health Kick and Golden Boy
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The Life Aquatic
No chlorine. No walls. No ladders. There is nothing like treading water over the rolling waves of Lake Michigan and looking up at Navy Pier, Lake Shore Drive, or the Chicago skyline while you do it
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Last of the Slaughterhouses
Over the last 75 years, Chiappetti Lamb and Veal has survived competition from the giants like Armour and Swift, the closing of the Chicago stockyards, and major changes in the American diet
(2005-05-03)

Paint by numbers
"Want to purchase beautiful oil paintings at a fraction of their retail value?"
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The Death of Neon
(2004-11-30)

Take me to the river
(2004-05-12)

A moll meal
(2004-02-18)

Steel stomachs
(2003-11-05)

Young Turks
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BAR NONE
(2001-04-26)

BRAIN MATTERS
(2001-01-11)

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