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The front bar area and hallway to the back remained the same, but the back space was divided by a brick wall into a middle bar and then the back dance floor - "that tucked away, dark and dirty dance floor," Harvat reminisces. While it went through several incarnations during its run, the layout was similar to today's Hydrate Nightclub, but less open. The original Manhole was dark, with a blacked out exterior and a "down and dirty atmosphere with a gritty feel and interior," according to Harvat and just about anyone else willing to reminisce about the old club. Pictures from the club's opening night list Kasaris and the Tessler couple as owners alongside the bar's manager, Ben Pohl. It was soon thereafter that Brahill's lover and his sister and brother-in-law converted Christopher Street into Manhole, which opened in October of 1990. According to his obituary, Brahill died of complications related to AIDS in September of 1988.
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At that time the space on the southwest corner of Cornelia and Halsted was occupied by Christopher Street, a video bar and dance club that lovers Steven Brahill and Patrick Kasaris opened along with Kasaris' sister Susan and her husband Jeff Tessler back in 1982. (Luckily here at we have LGBT historian Sukie de la Croix and his incomparable personal archives of Chicago's gay history). "Yes, it was a bar that had very specific rules and catered to a certain crowd, but when you looked around, there was a little bit of everything and everyone there - all together in that late night chaos of smoke, lights, music and more." Like many greats of the past, especially those from before the Age of the Internet, the details about the beginning and ending of Manhole's story can be quite fuzzy, even for Boystown veterans like Harvat, who arrived in Boystown in the late '80s just prior to Manhole's inception.
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You cruised in person! You went to hear the DJs because that was the only way you heard new music." "The great thing about Manhole was that, even though there was an enforced dress code of leather or shirtless, rubber, uniforms and/or a harness to be allowed into the back rooms and dance floor, it was never something that made anyone feel out of place," he continued. "You went out to the gay bars because that's where you met people - no Facebook, no Instagram, no 'social' apps. " definitely a very different time in Boystown," Matthew Harvat, aka Circuit MOM, told.
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This was before the Internet and iTunes, when the proposals we now make on Grindr and Scruff were made walking down Halsted, at the bar and on the dance floor. They envision the new Manhole, located in the Chloe's space carved from the upstairs and basement bars of the old Spin Nightclub, as both a gathering place for the fetish and leather communities and a space where all of gay Chicago can experience the kind of deep house, industrial and trace music that made Manhole famous as well as the sense of community and the atmosphere that made it infamous.
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Manhole, the famous - or infamous - late night club known for their steamy, dress code enforced back dancefloor and pulsating music is back, thanks to LKH Management, who seeks to bring something new to Boystown by bringing back something old. While oftentimes these changes mean bidding adieu to long-established haunts, this weekend Halsted Street saw the return of an old favorite. It's no secret that Boystown has been going through major changes over the last couple years, with bars and restaurants closing down and springing up in storefronts throughout the gayborhood.