A Place for Us: Gay Life at Chicago's Belmont Rocks

by Owen Keehnen

329 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 7, 2026

About the author

Writer and historian Owen Keehnen has had his fiction, essays, erotica, reviews, columns and interviews appear in dozens of magazines and anthologies worldwide. Keehnen is the author of the humorous gay novel Young Digby Swank (Wilde City Press, 2013), the gay novel The Sand Bar (Lethe Press, 2012) and the horror novel Doorway Unto Darkness (Dancing Moon Press, 2010). He also recently released the reference book The LGBT Book of Days (Wilde City Press, 2013). Along with Tracy Baim, he co-authored Leatherman: The Legend of Chuck Renslow (Prairie Avenue Productions, 2011) as well as Jim Flint: The Boy From Peoria (Prairie Avenue Productions, 2011). Over 100 of his interviews with various LGBT authors and activists from the 1990s have been collected in the book We’re Here, We’re Queer (Prairie Avenue Productions, 2011). He recently finished editing For My Brothers, the Mark Abramson memoir about life and love in San Francisco during the height of the AIDS epidemic. He co-edited Nothing Personal: Chronicles of Chicago’s LGBTQ Community 1977–1997 (Firetrap Press, 2009), was a contributor to Gay Press, Gay Power (Prairie Avenue Publications, 2012) and wrote ten biographical essays for the coffee table history book Out and Proud in Chicago (Surrey/Agate, 2008). Keehnen was on the founding committee and executive board of The Legacy Project and is currently a contributing biographer for the LGBT history-education-arts program focused on pride, acceptance, and bringing proper recognition to the courageous lives and contributions in LGBT history. He was the author of the Starz books, a four-volume series of interviews with gay porn stars. He has had two queer monologues adapted for the stage and served as co-editor of the Windy City Times Pride Literary Supplement for several years, was a co-founder of the horror film website RacksAndRazors.com, and a featured poet in Wilde City’s 2013 collection Falling Awake. He lives in Chicago with his partner, Carl, and his two ridiculously spoiled dogs, Flannery and Fitzgerald. He was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 2012.

Reviews

[Anya Kaplan Hartnett - AKH! · Rating 5 out of 5]

QUEER JOY IN THE MONTH OF JUNE ALHAMDULILAH !!

This book collects interviews from dozens of people who lived and created community around the Belmont Rocks, which is significant to me because I live like 500 feet from that place :0

Keehnen layers stories of love, adventure, and resilience in overlapping patterns. The book is not organized by chapter per se, but the interviews are placed in an order that highlights different aspects of the Rocks and points of transition and change. Such a richness of stories! Gay people swimming under the full moon, exploring caves left in the ruins of the missiles, hosting picnics and parties, laughing as cops fall off their bikes, finding lovers and soulmates, grieving friends lost to AIDS and violence, creating impermanent art, bringing queerness into the light on the shores of the Lake.

This moment in time is no longer but I still bring my lover to the place this book describes and I see glimpses of its freeing energy in many other places in my city and in the world ... if anyone in generally the midwest wants to borrow my copy pls let me know

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

"It was the age of the boom box, and that added greatly to the atmosphere of the place. Gays were clever in that they figured out that instead of competing boom box music, if everyone tuned into the same radio station, the entire area was filled with the same music. The greater the number of people, the greater the number of 'extended speakers' there were. The result was a stereophonic 'room.’” (p. 17)

“I took a photo of him on the day we met —to this day, he claims it is the best one taken of him. I'll give credit to that old camera, a bit to the beautiful light, a tiny amount to the photographer, and the rest to the power of the Rocks." (p. 178)

Priceless collection of interviews and historical documents relating to Chicago’s Belmont Rocks, a gathering place for the queer community (predominantly gay men) from the 1960’s until it was revetted in the early 2000’s. Less of a chronological recounting than a semblance of sitting around with your gay elders, hearing them laugh and swap stories and candidly reminisce about a time wherein it was more difficult to exist, and when AIDS meant a death sentence, but when the community had each other’s backs in a way we no longer do – the boom box quote above elegantly summarizing that lost communal feel. The intimate portraits of individuals lost to the plague, retold here after so many years, are deeply moving in a way statistics never could be.

On a lighter note, can we please incorporate the terms “squankable” and “nipple ponies” (back) into the vernacular? Genius!

[August Deatherage · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a kaleidoscopic view of Chicago’s premier LGBT gathering place from the 1960-1990’s. The large majority of the book is quoted interviews of people who went to the Belmont Rocks throughout the decades. Hearing about their experiences through so many different identities, and the progress of queer life through time was really special. Also living near the Belmont Rocks makes me very invested!

[Brian Kirst · Rating 5 out of 5]

Caveat - I am one of the people that Keehnen profiled in this heartfelt and informative remembrance...That being said, the memories and photos shared by all the interviewees here are stunningly personal - full of happiness and regret, sadness and joy - & they paint a full and necessary picture of what it was like to be LGBTQIA in Chicago throughout the '70s, '80s and '90s. This is a vital document for all who are interested in the history and pertinence of the queer community as a whole.

[Veronica Jacobson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved learning more about the area where I spend a lot of my summer!!! I had no idea how much the area meant to people and its rich history. Giving it four stars just because I thought it was going to be more of a narrative book and it was actually just a collection of interviews.

[Erin McMahon · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite part of this month's bookclub book was the author coming to bookclub, he's amazing!