There’s something sad about these photographs. Maybe it’s the composition? Or maybe — and not to be morbid — it has something to do with the New York Times article from three years earlier: “Rare Cancer Seen in  41 Homosexuals.”

The photographer had just moved to Chicago when he discovered the loungey gay scene at the Belmont Rocks in Chicago’s Lakeview gayghborhood, and it is striking that homosexual fondness for square-cut spandex has not changed.

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On the Rocks (Boy Culture)
Eight Forty-Eight: Capturing the Scene at Belmont Rocks (Chicago Public Radio)