UPDATE: DNAinfo reports that family and a friend have been assured that Tidwell is safe.
Farinas told DNAinfo that Tidwell in recent days had “faced an intensifying sense of hopelessness.” Farinas said friends “believe that Dane is a threat to himself and needs help. We are fearful for his life.” Police were notified.
My introduction to Tidwell came four years ago, when I reported the bleak end of the once thriving bar rag Gay Chicago. Craig Gernhardt, son of the late Ralph Paul Gernhardt, the founder, had run into financial trouble when he tried to take Gay Chicago upscale and brought in Tidwell as an equal partner to right the ship. Tidwell, I wrote, “came to Chicago from Texas in December 2008 and was dabbling in local politics—trying to organize the Stonewall Democrats of Illinois, styling the website of gay attorney Jacob Meister during Meister’s brief 2010 run for the U.S. Senate, thinking out loud about running himself for alderman this year. None of these initiatives went anywhere.”
