Market Days, Chicago

We spent much of last Saturday and Sunday two weekends ago at the big end-of-summer neighborhood festival in Boys Town, Chicago's gay district along Halstead Street.

Market Days apparently is the biggest annual gay and lesbian event in the Midwest, though the mix of straight people in the crowd was far higher than at your typical gay pride event.
We took the train from Andersonville to Boys Town. Why can't other cities figure out mass transit the way Chicago has? From left to right: Tim, Pete, Steve (our host), Al, Martin and the Cajun.
There were a few people in costume, like this very prideful flight crew. But it was nothing like Mardi Gras or Southern Decadence.
One of the most surprising parts of the festival was the great music line-up. This is Candye Kane, who left behind a brief career as a porn star and magazine model (i.e. Juggs) in the mid-1980s to become a punk rocker-then-rockabilly-blues singer.

The San Diegan has an amazing voice, is a professed bi-sexual and was treated successfully for pancreatic cancer last year.
Next up was Catfight, a Chicago all-chick punk-rock-pop cover band. Click on any pic to view it larger.
The girls loved the girls.
The Village People closed the festival's final night.
The soldier and American Indian are original band members, and the cowboy and lead-singing cop have been with the band off and on since 1980. The construction worker and leather guy are newer additions. Here they are doing a stirring patriotic rendition of "The Navy."
A good time was had by all.