This year's re-route of the Annual Pride Parade may have quelled safety concerns raised after last year's event, but some Lakeview residents are reporting a new set problems in connection with the day's festivities: chaos in the neighborhood hours after.
According to several residents, many partygoers spent the evening smashing bottles, jumping on cars and passing out on residential lawns.
Dr. Robert Garofalo said it was so bad that he woke up the morning after the parade and sent an email to his realtor. A Lakeview resident of 10 years, Garofalo said he has never seen the neighborhood so out of control.
"Last night was just really a topper for me," he said the day after the parade. "People were just out of their heads."
Garofalo said he passed five people who were unconscious in the few blocks it took him to walk home on Roscoe Street that evening. They had passed out on front lawns and sidewalks, he said.
The following morning at 6 a.m., the streets around his house were covered in garbage and vomit, he said. In addition, there were still people unconscious on the streets.
Brenden Chrisman, the general manager at Roscoe's Tavern, said that outside his home, people were jumping on cars, smashing bottles, serving cocktails and shouting hours after the parade.
Chrisman returned home from his shift at Roscoes after 1:30 a.m. The doorman at his building told him that people had been partying in the streets all night, he said.
"It's like it got dark and all of the sudden it was midnight and everything changed," he said.
Gary Shovers, whose partner lives in the neighborhood, said that the problems went on until 3 a.m. However, he thinks that much of the chaos is a weekly issue in Lakeview.
"Things are out of control," he said.
At least one man has been charged in incidents that occurred that evening. Steven Harris, 21, is facing one felony count of criminal damage to property, one felony count of resisting arrest and a misdemeanor charge of battery. He allegedly stabbed a 31 year-old man before crashing through the window at Forever Yogurt, 931 W. Belmont, to avoid arrest.
The incident sent one police officer to the hospital for a lacerated hand as well as the victim who was transported in stable condition to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center. Harris was also taken to the hospital for evaluation, said police.
Max Bever, 44th Ward Ald. Tom Tunney's director of community outreach, said his office has received reports of problems that night.
"I've gotten a handful of complaints and calls," Bever said.
Tunney's office has been pressing the Chicago Police Department to classify the neighborhood as an entertainment district since last summer, when a string of highly publicized crimes rocked the neighborhood and set off controversy over alleged racial profiling of queer youth.
The classification would mean increased police presence in the neighborhood. Bever said he believes Tunney's office is close to securing that classification.
"We know that the issue is that we're lacking in resources," Bever said.
Several residents complained of youth gathering in the neighborhood the night after Pride. Shovers described the crowds as youth ranging from high school age to their early 20s.
But Garofalo, who works with many of Chicago's queer youth, said he did not believe the night's revelers were the city's young people or queer youth.
"It wasn't really a youth issue," he said, adding that his best guess was that many people had come from outside of the city to party.
What all seemed to agree on is that the partying was not a direct continuation of pride festivities.
Chrisman said he is tired of seeing LGBT people blamed for incidents that follow the parade. He contends that those breaking bottles and jumping on cars had not come to celebrate pride.
"This was not a 'let's be proud' celebration," he said.
