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It just might be the gayest event in the whole midwest.

On today’s show Jason Heidemann, the Gay & Lesbian editor for Time Out Chicago talks about Northalsted Market Days, the largest and gayest street festival in the Midwest.

Jason describes the month of June and all the Pride events surrounding it as Thanksgiving with your family which is fun but a time of reflection and thanks for all we’ve achieved.

But Northalsted Market Days is simply one giant gay party with no agenda except to have a good time. In many ways, Market Days is the party we all want to have after the Pride Parade is over but have nowhere to go and often have to work the next day.

Listen as we give you the inside scoop on what to see, what to do and who to do this weekend as over 200,000 people gather to hang out in the gorgeous Lakeview area and feast on street food, drink in public and enjoy the tinny sound of 80s has-been bands like Expose!

One perennial favorite of the street fair is the Steamworks booth which is more like a mini-mall featuring an eclectic mix of staff, porn stars and local residents playing twister for kitchsy prizes. I’m definitively not as limber as some of these famous adult actors, but it sure is fun to “lose” in this game, if you consider losing as lying under a pile of handsome men.

Some men like a challenge, I don’t.

Be sure to keep an eye out on our flickr photo gallery for pics of guys (and gals) kissing each other with joyful bliss. It’s always a hit with the online photo bloggers.

One thing thing that everyone loves to talk about to this day is the phallic, awkward pylons that anchor the Halsted Street area between Addison and Belmont as the official “gay” area of Chicago. When they were first erected, many people thought they were odd, ugly and way too gay, but over the years I’ve grown to like them a lot and embrace their quirky, rocket like presence looming over us like trees in Lord of the Rings.

If these pylons could talk!

By the way, kudos for Time Out Chicago for making their whole issue go gay. It looks fabulous, especially the cover of the handsome young blond man spraying us with his hose and cooling us from the summer heat.

We’re hoping to do interviews from the Mark Twain Hotel in San Francisco and plan on getting as many of the folks from Trannyshack on the show in person, talking about the queer legacy of San Francisco, Harvey Milk, the Coquettes and what it means to the rest of the world. But, we need your support to help make it happen. It’s just around the corner so please give a helping hand.

We’re trying to raise approximately $2820.00 in the next two weeks to cover the costs of the trip and repair our recording equipment to make it happen. Will you help?

Click here below to donate:

The podcast that makes it’s own gravy- Feast of Fools.

Featured Music:
Gaye Adegbalola – Gaye Without Shame: iTunes | Amazon

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 1:32 am and is filed under Podcast. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.