Ken Bowden, a technology consultant, and Jim Nemeth, a technical writer, are a gay couple who share a two-story house on West Balmoral in Forest Glen, a tidy neighborhood near Foster and Cicero. In mid-July they painted two panels of six-foot fencing Pepto-Bismol pink and propped them up against their existing fence facing the side door of their neighbors, John Vasilopulos and his elderly mother, Kanella, or Kay. Bowden says that the Vasilopuloses had displayed “a deep hatred of gays” and had “harassed and taunted us every single day this summer.” He and Nemeth figured the pink fence was fair retaliation.
Vasilopulos insists that he and his mother started out being friendly to Bowden and Nemeth. She took them tomatoes she’d grown. “When they objected to the floodlight over our porch I put in a weaker bulb,” he says. “When their basement flooded I helped haul out the carpet, and I called the cops when someone took a crowbar to their garage.” Bowden acknowledges that Kay brought over tomatoes but says John never helped with the carpet.
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Bowden and Nemeth called the police. They investigated, but no charges were filed. The following day, says Bowden, he could hear John lisping loudly inside his house, “Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?” John says, “That sounds like something I’d say to my goddaughter.”
On July 18, say Nemeth and Bowden, John responded by howling like a wolf and cranking up the volume on the TV. The couple called the police, who talked to John. “After they left I went out back to have a cigarette,” says Bowden, “and John started taunting me through the fence, singing, ‘Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you.’ The next day Jim said to me, ‘Freedom of speech works both ways. Let’s paint the fence pink.’” They bought two new fence panels, painted them pink, and leaned them against the existing fence on their side of the property line.
“My mother survived two world wars, the Greek civil war, coming to this country, and stepping in dog shit,” says John. “Her corner of the world has become her kitchen, the TV room, the back porch, and the backyard. Now these guys are trying to kill her with a pink fence and getting the 16th District cops after her for listening to the divine liturgy in Athens. To paint a portrait of me as Adolf Hitler or Idi Amin, that’s unfair. You can’t use gayness or lifestyle as an excuse for being bad neighbors. If there’s any bigotry here, it’s coming from them.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Lloyd DeGrane.
