Berlin Tee

ORDERS OPEN: 6/18/26
ORDERS CLOSE: 6/22/26
TO PRINT: 6/23/26

PRINTED ON LAA GD1801 BLACK TEES. BY LOCAL BUSINESS. 

ALL ITEMS TAKE BETWEEN 3-4 WEEKS TO PRODUCE AFTER THE ORDER PERIOD ENDS. You will always receive your item unless otherwise contacted. All items are final sale. We are not responsible for lost, stolen, or misplaced packages. 

Tim Sullivan and Shirley Mooney — a gay man and a straight woman — opened Berlin in 1983 because they wanted a place where gay and straight Chicagoans could simply be in the same room together. On Chicago's north side at the time, the geography of nightlife was clearly delineated: bars for gay men, bars for gay women, drag bars, leather bars, and then everything else. The idea behind Berlin was that everyone could drink a beer together in this arty, bohemian place on Belmont Avenue and get to know each other a little better. They called it "the Neighborhood Bar of the Future." Forty years later, it turned out they were right about that, even if the future eventually ran out.

The room itself did a lot of the work. A mural above the main bar was painted by local artist Zuleyka Benitez, inspired by Polish Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka — a deliberate evocation of Weimar-era Berlin in the 1930s, which was exactly the right reference point for a club interested in what happens when sexual identity stops being a fixed category and starts being a costume everyone gets to try on. The drag performances happened on elevated stages, the music ran from heavy synth and new wave to house and disco, and on any given night the crowd might include leather queens, baby dykes, alt-goths, curious suburbanites, and the occasional celebrity. Elton John, John Waters, Donna Karan, and Oliver Stone all reportedly danced there at one point or another.

What sustained Berlin through four decades wasn't mystique or exclusivity, it was almost the opposite. Its owners called it the best "non-gay gay bar" in Chicago, and the description stuck because it was accurate: everyone was welcome, and the room somehow never lost its queer center of gravity in the process. When the AIDS crisis gutted Lakeview in the '80s, Berlin became a refuge. When the alternative music scene needed a home, it was there. Chicago's nightclub scene accumulated decades of burnout and closures, but Berlin kept mixing tattoos and trans people, pinafores and platforms, dada and go-go and everything in between without ever feeling like it was curating a vibe. The vibe was just what happened when you unlocked the door.

Berlin closed in November 2023 after a labor dispute with workers seeking to unionize, which added a particular bitterness to an ending that already felt like a loss. "Berlin was on the cutting edge of queer Chicago for 40 years," LGBTQ historian Owen Keehnen said. "It fostered friendships, romances, and brought people together to dance and have a good time." The space is being revived under new ownership, which is either hopeful or beside the point, depending on how you feel about the difference between a room and the people who filled it. "The magic that happened at 954 W. Belmont will never be recreated," the owners wrote on their way out. "It couldn't be."