It’s the last Friday night in January at Cell Block, a leather bar on North Halsted. The club is packed with leathermen, skinheads, and enough beer bellies to fill an Oktoberfest tent. A few women dressed like tarty cheerleaders bob through the crowd, and a gaggle of straight-looking people, apparently someone’s work friends, huddle at the far end of the bar sipping drinks.
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His name is Jinx Titanic, and the band’s is too. They crash into their first song, “C’mon,” and beer and Silly String spray into the air. A beefy giant wearing a fur jockstrap weaves between the musicians and starts asking the crowd for donations for the Rainbow World Fund; eager contributors do their part by stuffing dollar bills into his pouch. Porn star Brad McGuire–eight and a half inches and uncut, according to his Web site–struts around the stage in snakeskin briefs fondling himself. Midway through the set the Likity Split Radical Cheerleaders, a group of young, mostly female queer activists in green and purple costumes, are invited up to extol masturbation and admonish the audience to riot, not diet.
Jinx Titanic plays at Cell Block the last Friday of every month, and despite the under-the-radar promotion, its outrageous shows are popular, attracting gay men and lesbians, the transgendered and straight. The band has brought punk to a gay strip that doesn’t offer much in the way of music other than dance tracks and show tunes. “For a community that pushes diversity,” says Jinx, “there’s not much of it on Halsted Street.”
The band played the usual circuit of venues for newly formed acts, but they quickly grew tired of what Jinx calls the “shitty rock-club atmosphere.” After shows they and some friends usually headed to Cell Block, where Jinx had worked as a bartender and DJ. “My friends kept asking, ‘Why do we always have to go to straight clubs to see the group?’” he says. After some prodding from customers, Cell Block’s manager offered the band a gig.
Info: 773-665-8064, www.cellblockchicago.com
