HomeOpen House: Chris’ Humboldt Park House
30. Jul, 2009 
10 Comments
When Chris was a kid growing up in Michigan’s upper peninsula, his parents warned him it was too dangerous to cross the busy street in front of his house, but they allowed him to play in the woods behind the house, a place where bears roamed and daylight was eclipsed by a dense canopy of trees. Why, Chris wondered, did his parents judge one boundary to be safer than the other?
Borders and boundaries intrigue the Michigan native, former club kid and current nuclear medicine technician who finds himself testing limits in all areas of life – and sometimes death. Within minutes of meeting Chris tells me about an informal memorial at the home of a friend who’d died of Lou Gehrig’s Disease. During a lull in the group’s conversation, they were startled by the sound of a thump coming from upstairs. Upon investigating, they discovered that a mounted fish they’d hated had fallen off the wall. Was it coincidence? Or was their friend trying to send them a message from somewhere between the here and the hereafter?
In his quest to understand life, Chris has studied Christianity, Buddhism, Baha’i and read books like the reincarnation tome Many Masters, Many Lives. And in his quest to understand his current life, Chris has explored Detroit’s punk and gay scenes and he’s traveled extensively, favoring locations considered to be off the beaten path by the average tourist.
In Niger, for example, a broke Chris paid $2 to stay in a brothel. When the women realized Chris didn’t want what they were selling, they began to treat him like a son and even taught him how to cook. In Gabon, he and a friend stopped a group of citizens from beating up Senegalese people who landed on the shore hoping to emigrate to the wealthiest country in Africa. “I started screaming for them to stop,” says Chris. Brandishing a sword, Chris and his friend let a group of Senegalese pile into his jeep, driving them to a safe house where the entire group was promptly arrested. Chris was soon released thanks to his luck in disposing of the sword (being caught with a weapon is a serious crime), his American status and his friend’s $75 bribe.
But Chris doesn’t just travel for the adventure and has a genuine interest in learning about and helping local cultures. The medical technician spent four to six weeks every year for eight years providing medical relief in the Peruvian jungle, which is where he met his lover of five years, Dante. Dante moved to Chicago, but the couple doesn’t live together.
“He lives at Belmont and Lake Shore,” explains Chris. “He wasn’t going to live in Humboldt Park.”
His Humbold Park single family home of nine years is in a rough part of the neighborhood, and when I arrive at his house, he advises me to bring my laptop with me. Chris says he’s seen mothers rolling around on the ground fighting, that an Avon representative was stabbed nearby, that sometimes when people disappear nobody looks for them.
Chris’ house reflects his interests and history. Rows of vintage male nude photography hangs in his building’s wood paneled front stairway, and the former Hook Torture Gallery owner still displays homoerotic and “degenerate” art pieces like those he showed in the gallery he founded in response to President Reagan’s NEA budget cuts. When I arrive Chris shows me around the first floor, which, with its concrete floors and open footprint, looks more like a warehouse than a traditional home. And that’s pretty much how he uses it; a church pew, a giant stain glass window and a giant paper maiche Our Lady of Guadalupe Chris made for a pre-Burning Man party shares space with statues of animals staring from forests of houseplants and a small rear kitchen and bathroom.
Chris leads me out the side door and we survey his large yard, which is decorated with faux skulls. The yard is enormous by Chicago standards, and it’s one of the reasons Chris stays in Humboldt Park. A rear staircase leads to the home’s second floor living areas, including two bedrooms and a sitting room in what looks to have once been a kitchen and what will soon be something a bit . . . stranger. Chris’s painting a black geometric pattern on the yellow walls in an effort to create not a vintage David Hicks pattern but the inside of a hive; he plans on making paper maiche wasps he’ll hang from the ceiling. If the hive room is a form of theatre, the dining room makes it a two stage house. A Valkyrie’s head sits on a platter under the visage of a clown more scary than most. Despite the range of influences, the space feels remarkably cohesive, authentically representative of Chris’ life and interests and thus utterly unique. Chris shows me more photos, and I realize that he’s sharing just a tiny fraction of the stories he’s collected from his lives and travels.
Chris once accompanied his friend Martin Sorrondeguy to Mexico City to help him film a Limp Wrist concert for a documentary he was making about the gay hardcore punk band. The concert was held in an old warehouse that was filled to capacity, and there were more fans than tickets. Tthe organizers closed the doors to maintain crowd control, but the passers-by heard the muffled beat, the cheering audience and the lead singer’s voice, faraway like a dream, so they stopped what they were doing and joined a motley crew of ticket-less fans.
Chris remembers when the pounding started, a steady pounding, which he quickly realized must be coming from the unruly crowd. Soon, the pounding was joined by the clink of rocks banging on the skylight; they began to break the glass and rain down on the crowd below. Chris was getting scared; what if they were skinheads, hell-bent on roughing up the crowd, many of whom were gay. Desperate to get the crowd under control, the concert organizers threw open the doors, but suprisingly, the crowd stopped throwing rocks and immediately calmed down.
As it turned out, they weren’t skinheads, and they weren’t dangerous; they just wanted to hear the music. With the artificial border removed, the poor mingled with the rich and the straight people danced with the gay people. Chris surveyed the scene, and smiled. All was good.
Click here to read past Open House tours.
A Polaroid of the performance art stage at the Hook Torture Gallery.
Leopard is a neutral. You heard it here first (unless you read it where I read it).
This was Roy (of Sigfried and Roy) to Chris' white tiger at a past Halloween party.
Chris & his place are really fantastic! I love seeing something so original.
Home sweet home.
Thanks for sharing this space!
What, no pictures of the front entry? Male nudes seem so rarely done that I don’t think I’ve seen any vintage ones . . .
You’re right about the place being remarkably cohesive even with everything its got going on. I really like the round shelf units.
Something about the flavor of the house, or maybe the way you shot it, reminds me very much of The Selby–in a good way. And the stories are fascinating.
I’ve never seen Cafe Bustelo cans used so artfully. The rest of the place is cool, also.
So, so cool! I think I’ve mentioned a variation of this lament before, but I need some new less-vanilla friends!
wow, thanks for doing such a great job. my place never looked so clean. glad you didnt open the oven to photo all those dirty dishes shoved in there.
Just would like say that Chris’s place has been an oasis to me for several years. I am glad this article captured the magnificence of it. Chris is also just as amazing as his place is. Thanks for the article that will share it with so many!
Wild!
Chris, you cleaned!!! I love and miss you and all your stuff!! Awesome article.
Hello Chris , I am so impressed with your blog