The Leatherneck, Chicago

I miss the Leatherneck (the one in Chicago…how many other bars were called The Leatherneck over the years?) It was at 209 W. Lake Street, smack dab under the L, in one of the few remaining 1890s storefront buildings in the Loop. Probably had been a bar since the day it opened, and from outside it looked as if it were vacant. Maybe there was a sign. My late friend Jeff introduced me to it, and I loved it from the moment I walked in. I remember it as dark, shabby around the edges, with mysterious nooks and corners and doorways. I believe it had the last 5 AM liquor license in the Loop, so I’m sure quite a lot was going on there early on Saturday or Sunday morning. But around 1999, at 6 PM on a weekday it was the only place for good downtown after-work gay drinking. There was one bartender - an amiable, shirtless, leather-suspendered young man with a nipple ring, a very heavy Southern accent, and a missing front tooth. And not stingy with the whiskey, baby. What kept it “ours," I thought was obvious - the TV sets around the room playing hardcore S&M VHS porn even at that hour. (Sound off, they had a decent jukebox.) It was only vaguely observed by the suited or business-casual 6 PM homo crowd. But only homo. Back then, you could always take relaxed straights from the office to the Second Story Bar on Ohio Street, or that one on State whose name I can never remember. But risk exposing that nice Michelle or Jennifer from the office to the sight of a guy being fisted on a bunch of 19” CRTs? Nope. So, it felt secret in a pre-Stonewall way and sleazy in a 1970s way. And Homo-Social. The building was torn down a few years ago for, in a depressing cliche, a parking garage. Their matchbooks used to say, “The Cure for the Common Halsted,” a nice dig at the the fancy-nancy street up in what was then called “Boy’s Town.” I wish I’d gotten one. —Jeff M