For some time now, there has been both concern and consternation regarding the presence of drinky giggly women acting like fools in male-centric gay bars. This issue has emerged again recently, with the fight for equal marriage rights at the forefront of the gay civil rights struggle, since some gay bars are so often besieged by groups of these women, who go to gay bars to celebrate impending wedding vows. Bad enough as it is that they are loud and boisterous and obnoxious and tip badly, they also flaunt their legal right to marry by wearing little wedding veils and accompanying costumewear to their bachelorette shenanigans. Some bars have even banned such groups of girls (I can't really call them women because they don't really act like adults), for the above and other reasons.
Jessica and Elizabeth may not have been celebrating an upcoming wedding, but they are not unique. The two pretty much constituted a two-gal wrecking and mayhem party of their own Tuesday night on Halsted Street (I have problems with calling it 'Boystown' -- namely that a moniker such as that only reaffirms the assumption that it's a theme park, and the gays who hang out and live there are mascots and sidekicks and not real people).
Basically, the story says (full disclosure: the version linked to in this post was written and partially reported by me. The Sun-Times Wire Service overnight crew got the story originally, I got the charges and the gals' names and further details), Jessica and Elizabeth got stinkin' drunk at Roscoe's Tavern, and in the process, they dragged a guy into the girl's washroom, kicked bar manager, slapped a bouncer, and tried to interfere with the arrest of one of them, blocking the way of the police and screaming at them. Oh, and one of the gals MADE AN ALLEGATION THAT THE BOUNCER -- AT A GAY BAR -- RAPED HER. And they were only charged with misdemeanors.
Nothing I can say about these two would be fresh or new, because it would all be along the lines of 'Imagine if they had gone to one of the many straight bars just down the street from the gay strip -- do you think they'd be able to get as drunk as they did or act like they did without actually getting sexually assaulted at worst, or at best, gotten kicked out of the bar much sooner? These gals, both of whom live in the gayish area of Chicago, likely go to gay bars to get drunk and out of control because they feel safer doing so there than in straight bars, they like to live in the gayborhood because it's just so lively and fun and safe and I'll bet they don't even know where all their elected officials stand on issues that matter to gay and lesbian folk.
It's kind of odd that it took them so long to get kicked out of this particular bar, though, because Roscoe's has always had a full phalanx of headset-clad security throughout the place. And the former bouncer in me looks at this and thinks that even if the place was understaffed, there were probably signs that they should have been tossed out way before one of them kicked the manager.
I have, even very recently, opted not to chase certain news stories because I felt there would be nothing gained by doing so and it would cause undue harm and pain to those affected by the incident. Not so, here. I hope what these gals did gets out all over and while they were only charged with misdemeanors (Geez, can you imagine if a guy, or even worse, a Black person, had acted like that toward police? They'd be dead right now.), I hope they are embarrassed to death by having their names in the news. And they should be kicked out of the fucking neighborhood.
[NOTE: The above image is a stock photo, from the Daily Mail, of drunken young women at a tavern, presumably in England. Apparently such behavior is international.]
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