Burgess was carrying out the country's first extensive research project into homosexuality. A sociology professor at the University of Chicago, Ernest W. Lurking in the shadows that evening, a nondescript, bespectacled man in a plain suit and tie scrawled notes. Over the years, the old building, at Wabash Avenue and 15th Street, had played host to political conventions and hockey games, but these men were there to dance the night away. As midnight approached on Halloween Eve in 1932, men in vampy satin ball gowns, French-heeled slippers, teased coiffures, and rouged lips crowded into the Chicago Coliseum.
