Available in both black-and-white and color editions. Meet Jim Flint, known to many as Felicia—a truly remarkable man who has done some truly remarkable things. Raised in Peoria, Illinois, Flint was a precocious kid who “shined shoes” for older gentlemen at age 8 and joined the Navy at 17. He was a serviceman with a distinguished record who dreamed of becoming a missionary brother, yet only months later became one of the most popular gay bartenders in Chicago. Before long, he was stopping traffic on Clark Street as a roller-skating, baton-twirling drag queen, eager to garner attention for his now-legendary female impersonation bar, the Baton Show Lounge. Running a gay bar in Chicago in the 1960s and 1970s meant placating corrupt police and city inspectors eager for bribes, as well as shadowy, silk-suited Mafiosi. In addition to the Baton, in a few scant years Flint was also running a down-and-dirty leather bar and heading a gay motorcycle club. In the process he became a community leader, eventually even running for the Cook County Board as one of Chicago’s first openly gay candidates for public office. Flint also found the time to lay the foundations for a gay sports league. Flint’s story includes dozens of unforgettable characters such as Baton stars Chilli Pepper, Ginger Grant and Mimi Marks, transgender entertainment legends Alexandra Billings and Candis Cayne, and many others who inhabit the spotlights, the dressing rooms, and the evolving world of female impersonation. Flint is also the founder of the celebrated Continental Pageant System. As a witness to and a pioneer in the formation of the modern LGBT community, Flint has attracted memorable people from all walks of life. Meet Richie, the Baton doorman who hurled insults at the customers, Tillie the Dirty Old Lady, a parade of madcap patrons, battling bartender boyfriends, handsome S&M bikers and club kids, sports stars, celebrities, political bigwigs, and gay-rights activists of all descriptions. Unfortunately, domestic violence, serial killers, and drug addictions were some of the dangers in Flint’s circle, and of course the AIDS epidemic ushered in its own storm of drama and deep tragedy. In the midst of all this is Flint himself: energetic, warmhearted and generous, yet quick-tempered and opinionated, always respectful of his flamboyant, ultraglamorous, often emotionally fragile bevy of supertalented performers. Jim Flint: The Boy From Peoria is the colorful story of an amazing man and the LGBT community he helped to shape, as he championed an out-of-the-closet, be-who-you-are lifestyle. Authors Tracy Baim and Owen Keehnen unravel the many mysteries of Chicago gay community icon Jim Flint in this provocative new biography.
Tracy Baim is publisher and executive editor at Windy City Media Group, which produces Windy City Times, Nightspots, and other gay media. She co-founded Windy City Times in 1985 and Outlines newspaper in 1987. She has won numerous gay community and journalism honors, including the Community Media Workshop's Studs Terkel Award in 2005. She started in Chicago gay journalism in 1984 at GayLife newspaper, one month after graduating with a news-editorial degree from Drake University.
Baim's newest book is Gay Press, Gay Power: The Growth of LGBT Community Newspapers in America. The book is available on Amazon in B&W and color editions, as well as on Kindle. Baim is the author of Obama and the Gays: A Political Marriage, now available on Amazon and Amazon Kindle. In the book, she is also joined by two dozen other writers. It is also now on iPad.
Baim's other books include Jim Flint: The Boy From peoria and Leatherman: The Legend of Chuck Renslow (co-written with Owen Keehnen). She also has a novel, The Half Life of Sgt. Jen Hunter, released in early 2011 on CreateSpace through Amazon, and on Kindle. It is about lesbians in the military just prior to Don't Ask, Don't Tell, during the early 1990s Gulf War. The book was written in the late 1990s, was adapted for stage as Half Life in 2004, and is now being published for the first time.
Baim is the editor of Out and Proud in Chicago: An Overview of the City's Gay Movement (2008, Agate), the first comprehensive book on Chicago's gay history; Where the World Meets, a photo book about Gay Games VII in Chicago (2007, Lulu.com--Baim served as co-vice chair of the Gay Games board); and Half Life, a novel about lesbians in the military, which was adapted for the Chicago stage and performed at American Theater Company in 2004.
Baim was executive producer of the lesbian feature film Hannah Free (2008, Ripe Fruit Films), starring Sharon Gless, and of Scrooge & Marley (2012, Sam I Am Films, LLC). She was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 1994 and was named a Crain's Chicago Business 40 Under 40 leader in 1995.
Baim is a native Chicagoan and has been with her partner, 20-year Air Force veteran Jean Albright, since 1994.
