Run a Self-Guided Route: Gaybash by David Jay Collins
Suggested way to use this page: After reading the book, lace up your shoes and head to the Addison Red Line Statio~3.2-mile route inspired by David Jay Collins’s Gaybash.
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About Gaybash and David Jay Collins
David Jay Collins works for Northwestern University and lives in Lakeview. Besides Gaybash, he is the author of Summerdale and Summerdale II and is currently writing the third novel in the Summerdale horror trilogy.
Gaybash is set during Memorial Day weekend in Boystown. In the novel, main character Matt Thompkins is faced headfirst with the fact he’s always lived a comfortable life within easily-discernible lanes. When he’s confronted with a terrible and violent situation near his house, his awakening leads him to make a decision that will impact his life forever. As David Jay Collins said in one interview, “Gaybash is about trusting yourself and believing in yourself, no matter who you are.”
Get Interactive: Suggested Stops & What to Look For Along the Route
Addison Red Line Station
The Addison Red Line Station is the stop closest to the main character Matt’s home just a few blocks east. This is a well-frequented location in Chicago for Matt, but when he received a homophobic slur by an angry stranger, it takes on a whole new light. Bring the book to life by reading this quote when you’re here: “Matt walked up a few blocks to Addison Street and stopped at the light. Just west, past the train, enormous lights brightened Wrigley Field beneath the evening sky. Groups of baseball fans walked by, young and old, wearing Cubs jerseys and caps, some listening to pocket radios. A small group gathered around Matt, waiting to cross Addison: "There is no parking here!" "Why are tickets more expensive every yeat?" "Man! should not have done that last shot." (10)
Courtyard Apartments: 740-750 W. Addison
This is the apartment building Matt lived in. In the story, the author writes that for Mat, this was “his first condo, and one that he couldn't entirely afford, but with a co-sign from his parents and everything in his checking account, he convinced a bank that he was creditworthy.He looked over the building: dark bricks set off in patterns of lattice, marble belts dividing each floor and joining the window sills, a simple cornice topping off the third floor. Middle-class by the standards of the early 1900s. Gay bars down Halsted, the Red Line and Wrigley Field three blocks west, the lakefront two blocks east, Whole Foods across the alley. Beats the little studio I left behind. He stepped back and smiled a wide smile, causing a passerby to look in the courtyard, too.” (13-14). Sadly, this apartment also becomes the site of a vicious hate crime against the LGBTQ community and later the setting of a tragedy that will change Matt’s life forever.
AIDS Garden/Belmont Rocks
In the novel, David Jay Collins intentionally refers to this location by its former name, the Belmont Rocks. Historian Owen Keehan details the history of this place on his website and through his project “A Place of Us: LGBTQ Life at the Belmont Rocks.” From roughly the 1960s-1990s, this stretch of rugged, rocky shoreline was a safe haven for Chicago’s (mostly male) LGBTQ community to play, flirt, relax, and be out in the open. The rocks were removed in 2003 for shoreline renovations to protect against erosion.
After Matt is painfully faced with both bullying from the A-list gays at Sidetrack his own self-doubt, he heads to the fictious bar Stench, where he meets Mike, a man he will follow back to his hotel room for an almost-hookup. During the encounter, he suddenly has a moment of panic and scurries out of the hotel room. We read that “he took off running, passing the crowds, passing cars, running east for blocks and blocks until there were no more blocks. He caught the walk signal for the Lake Shore Drive underpass and ran by the locked gates of the harbor and stumbled toward the Belmont Rocks. The shoreline. The lake. The end. He caught his breath and sat on quarried rock, one of dozens on the shore. There was not another person as far as he could see. Matt looked away from the gilded high-rises behind him and toward the blurry, faraway line between sky and water. He settled down into himself, resting his head on his knees. The splash-splish-plunk of the lake water leaping ashore comforted him, and he wanted nothing more than to roll over and disappear beneath its calm surface.” (131)
Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center
Though not mentioned by name, this is the hospital that David Jay Collins writes about in Gaybash. Matt is admitted to this hospital after being the victim of a hate crime in the alley outside his courtyard apartment building at 740 W. Addison. In the safety of the hospital room, Matt recovers with the help of his parents, his best friend Greg, and the care of the nurses and doctors.
Halsted and Roscoe
The weight of much of the story’s drama is held here at the corner of Halsted and Roscoe. At many points in the novel, the author details the sights, sounds, and feelings of daily life on this corner. From this vantage point, runners can glimpse Sidetrack, a historic LGBTQ bar, the iconic phone booth and turret at Roscoe’s, the rainbow rockets and sidewalks denoting the gayborhood, and Elevate, the coffee shop that serves as David Jay Collins’s writing space. This corner, with all of its life, love, flirtation, pride, and friendship, also becomes the site of another homophic slur from a couple in a truck as Greg and Matt are walking nearby on Halsted and Newport on Saturday morning. After Greg and Matt hear the slur at Newport, Greg runs down Roscoe Street to stop the truck at Roscoe. The standoff is filmed and goes viral, converting Greg into an instant celebrity and activist, while simultanteously forcing Matt to face his own insecurities, jealousy, and low self-esteem.
This route was created by Allison Yates, owner and founder of Read & Run Chicago. Read & Run Chicago originally ran this route at a book club run with author David Jay Collins in May 2023.