toronto & chicago
ISSUE 3 ~ $10
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palace of porn
bridges over the river don
osker & smug
Jul ie bal dassi
n o a H Va n d e r l a a n
barry cHonG
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monument
fear of fighting
collect ‘em all
sam WHi te
k at r i n a c e r V o n i
“ r ob for d �
T A B L E
O F
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the metro theatre Will not Be rUBBed oUt
f o e c a l a p f o e c a l a p f o e c a l a p J u l i e p H o t o G r a p H y
n r po n r po n r o p
b a l d a s s i b y
For the last 30 years on repeat, old men have pushed open the Metro Theatre’s double doors to Bloor Street, lit a cigarette beneath the glowing illustration of blue bikini-clad babes, and, with discrete junk-adjustments, walked on. It’s a delicate scene, given the vigour of what goes on behind those closed doors. For more than three decades, the Metro has been a straight-up porno theatre. In the late 70s and early 80s—an era when porn actors became porn stars—Toronto saw an explosion, if you will, of such locales. Most of them have cleaned up and moved on, but the Metro has not parted with the skin flicks altogether. In the last year, artists and filmmakers have used the space to put on performances, and screen the kinds of small, independent films that seem destined to appear on either a rare collectors edition box set labeled “the early works,” or some long-forgotten hard drive (one never can tell).
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The arthouse evolution has been coordinated by self-titled “film and entertainment deal builder” Jonathan Hlibka and his former partner, Nadia Sandhu, and thanks to the work of Toronto filmmakers like The Outside World and the nerd-themed burlesque troupe, The underground peep Show. When Hlibka began organizing screenings at the Metro, he promised everyone that he would steam clean the seats each time the audience changed from fappers to hipsters. But he didn’t want to change anything about the decor, besides adding a fresh coat of paint. He wanted a place with an interesting feel. “I didn’t want it to feel like some pre-fab corporate box. I wanted a place where you walk in and you can feel the history on the walls,” he told me. The theatre’s interior looks like Miami had sex with an art deco mansion, and raised the
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illegitimate offspring at a 80s coke-fuelled after party. Once-opulent gold and crystal chandeliers hang against the electric pink and turquoise walls. It’s like visual crack: the sight of it compels one even to endure the lingering smell of 30 years worth of handmade jizz (and on one noteworthy occasion, human feces). In reality, though, what Hlibka calls “good vide” is likely part of what keeps the Metro alive and kicking: the building requires a horrendous amount of renovations, and thus far, neither the owner, kar Hirji, nor prospective buyers of the property—listed for about $4-million—have been prepared to make them. The Metro’s allure is more than a feeling of history in its walls—its allure is also its decay. In a city that’s being torn down and built up faster than any other in North America, we cherish our little decrepitudes. I can count on two hands the Torontonians I know who have made sojourns to Detroit, finding inspiration in the pornography of its ruin. Increasingly, Toronto’s skyline is made of clean lines and transparent surfaces. It can feel sterile, so it’s refreshing to find a few dark and dirty walls to close yourself behind. A few years before the theatre became a part-time hipster haunt, BlogTO writer Chandra Menard documented her first visit in an article optimistically titled, “Crashing the Metro Theatre for some Adult Entertainment,” as if willing a hilarity that didn’t quite pan out. It’s an understandable curiosity: who watches porn in public anymore? Sitting at the back with a kit kat bar and accompanied by a guy friend-cumsecurity guard, she of course caught the attention of regulars. They flocked to her. “Men seemed to be roaming the aisles, and some were sitting closer and closer, across and behind us,” she wrote in 2009. “I guess when I thought about writing this story I was hoping to have some funny material, but the Metro really is just a hard core porn theatre.” Later, in the comment section, regular patrons like “Mike” explained, inadvertently, what the strange behavior was all about: the Metro is a
place for cruising. “It’s a great way for any guy to go in and get a BJ for only $9 cost of admission. I go at least once a week. I’m not gay, just fat, and can’t pick up any chicks,” he wrote. Hlibka describes it more delicately as a “social club.” “The customers spend their days there,” he said. “They pay the admission price, they hang out.” And that’s not far off from how the space is being used by its new patrons (minus the BJs, probably). “When I started this, there wasn’t a space where you could just go and hang out and meet other filmmakers. And that’s always been one of the driving goals,” Hlibka says. “At the end of that day, I think that’s what’s going to make or break the industry, having that kind of infrastructure.” Ever since I came across my big brother’s stash of porn on the family computer in our unfinished suburban basement, I knew what the Internet offered. The rise of the Internet has meant animated gifs and house plants that tweet us when they’re “thirsty,” but it hasn’t been good news for porno theatres. The Internet unleashed a kind of self-sufficiency to not only what porn we watch, but how we watch it. To Hlibka, the Metro is a token of that change. “Yeah, it’s a porn theatre. But it’s also one of the city’s last standing independent theatres,” he said. Early last century, the Metro was a neighbourhood theatre that screened B-movies and re-runs for 90 cents. Later, competition from new multiplex theatres and television forced the theatre to close and re-open as a porno theatre. Today, the Metro is still for sale and its uncertain whether the prime Annex real estate will remain as a theatre at all. “The history of the Metro is very much the history of cinema in Toronto,” said Hlibka. Some may look back on the popularity of skin cinemas as a stain on Toronto cinema history, smudged somewhere between the 90 cent talkies and the new, subtitled TIFF fare. But for better or worse, the Metro Theatre will not be rubbed out.
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12 toronto’s Bridges are the city’s Past, Present, and FUtUre
bridges over the river don n o a H
V a n
i l l u s t r a t i o n
When Europeans settled in what is now Toronto some 200 years ago, the Don River was a shimmering stream teeming with fish and wildlife, emptying into a vast marshland at the foot of Lake Ontario. Today, the 38-kilometre stretch of the Don Valley is an urbanized watershed, sandwiched by the Bayview Extension and the Don Valley parkway auto routes. Many bridges crossing over the southern end of the Don—at Bloor, Gerrard, Dundas, Queen, Eastern, and the Gardiner Expressway—are on their second or third incarnation. From wood to stone to steel, Toronto’s aesthetic needed to evolve as timeworn infrastructure clashed with contemporary utility. Through adaptation, these bridges tell the story of Toronto- past, present, and future. Artist Eldon Garnet’s work “Time: and a Clock” on the Queen Street bridge presents the phrase: “This river I step in is not the river I stand in,” borrowed from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus,
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who noted that a moving body of water is defined by its ever-shifting of contents. The quotation pays homage to the bridge’s architectural predecessors, the ghosts of Toronto’s past. The prince Edward Viaduct, built in 1912, is the grandest of the Don bridges and has come to embody the spirit of Toronto’s present. The project was overseen by Toronto public Works master, R.C. Harris, a man who said he “would gladly count every brick in Toronto, and not only count them but kiss them.” With incredible foresight, Harris built the bridge with a lower deck for rail transport—even though a crosstown subway line wouldn’t exist until the 1960s. And the Viaduct continues to adapt to the city’s changing needs, itself an essential piece of Toronto’s everyday infrastructure. The Cherry Street lift bridge over the keating Channel is the southernmost crossing point of the Don River. The site was recently renovated with wider sidewalks and bike paths,
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and with plans underway to redevelop the area and restore the mouth of the Don River, the bridge will soon become a symbol of the Toronto of tomorrow. The Lower Don Lands project will be a community with mixed land uses, replete with green roofs, pedestrian-friendly streets, extensive parks and public spaces, affordable housing, and public transit. Though no design yet exists, we can hope that the new Cherry Street Bridge will be a flowing continuation of the natural waterway, a slender curved steel and glass structure. It will serve all forms of transportation equitably, allowing pedestrians, cyclists, and streetcars a deserved right of way. Capturing the friction of vehicular traffic and harnessing the power of the sun, the new bridge will be completely energy self-sufficient. The future development of the Don Lands will transform Toronto’s waterfront and the city at large—a project worthy of the bridge that made it possible.
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interVieW
osker & smug
b a r r y
c H o n G
RIGHT NOW, SMuG AND OSkER OF TORONTO’S LSD GRAFFITI CREW COuLD BE VANDALIZING YOuR STuFF. FOR OVER TEN YEARS, THEY HAVE MADE TORONTO’S uRBAN LANDSCApE—ROOFTOp WATER TOWERS, DIVE BAR WASHROOM STALLS, CROSS-COuNTRY RAILROAD CRATES, WHATEVER—THEIR uNOFFICIAL pROpERTY. IT TAkES A SpECIAL kIND OF CRAZY TO LIVE FOR AN ART FORM THAT MANY pEOpLE CONSIDER TRASH, BuT THAT’S ALSO pART OF THE ALLuRE. DOUBLE DOT RECENTLY SpOkE WITH SMuG AND OSkER ABOuT EGO, GETTING ARRESTED, AND pISSING WHERE YOu EAT.
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smuG, you’re classically trained as an artist; osker, you’re not. does tHat matter?
smuG: It’s not necessary. If you’ve been writing for ten years, you know how to do a proper throwup. Being a successful writer has nothing to do with being a successful “Artist.” osker: Training has no relevance. They’re two totally different beasts. Ninety percent of writers will laugh at the idea of fine art. You can be a shitty “Artist” and be well respected within the graffiti community. HoW mucH of Graffiti is about eGo?
osker: For most people, 99 percent. But I always ask, “If you woke up tomorrow morning and you were the only human being alive, would you still paint graffiti?” If the answer is “no,” then you’re doing it for very flawed, shallow reasons. smuG: A lot of people get lost in up-keeping their name. But, let’s be real. The only reason you get good at graffiti is because you think you’re better than everyone else. can you be innoVatiVe in Graffiti?
osker: Innovation is getting away with something that’s bigger, bolder, and more timeconsuming. It’s risking losing your freedom. Anybody can go to a legal spot for 50 hours and paint a crazy burner with a thousand cans. smuG: But I got to say, progressive bombing is not happening in Toronto right now. so, WHy aren’t you Guys bombinG more?
smuG: We’re getting old. We’re spreading it out more for longevity’s sake. osker: Cities that are active in innovative graffiti have a very large number of people pushing the scene forward. In Toronto, it’s a ton of kids. They’re doing graffiti for the first time. If you’ve been arrested six or seven times, and you’re still out painting, you have to be cautious.
if you just throw a stencil on some wall, who cares? but if i find a cool spot, get on all fours, and free-hand some ill letter form, you can’t front to that
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WHat’s tHe best tHinG about toronto’s GeoGrapHy?
WHat do you tHink of street art?
smuG: Toronto is fucking amazing. There are walls everywhere. We’re spoiled. We still have stuff running from when we started. That’s proof enough. osker: It’s a major metropolis; we have a vibrant downtown that gets traffic. If you do a throw-up, even if it gets buffed in three days, a hundred thousand people will have seen it. We have the TTC; GO Trains; VIA Rail. The buff is very harsh, but people will see your shit.
smuG: It depends. If you just throw a stencil on some wall, who cares? But if I find a cool spot, get on all fours, and free-hand some ill letter form, you can’t front to that. osker: It doesn’t excite me. It works when it’s a commentary on the environment. But graffiti is special because it’s about getting up and doing your thing. At the end of the day, everyone else can fuck off.
but toronto’s condo-fication Has destroyed many leGendary Graffiti spots.
do tHe people WHo commission your murals knoW tHat you also paint illeGally?
smuG: people are going to start utilizing more of the Greater Toronto Area. It’s all walls. osker: It’s terrible, but that’s the way a city grows. If you are driven to paint, you will find somewhere to do it. Go to places that are overlooked—like abandoned properties— they’re incredible.
osker: The average person has no clue. They look at our pieces and say, “I love your work. It’s that tagging shit that I hate.” And they’ll point to a wall, and it will be one of our tags. In our head, it’s the same shit—they’re connected. people don’t even know that while they were paying us, we got drunk and tagged their property. The “Artists” and the “piece of shit kids” are the same people. In the graffiti writer’s eyes, the easiest thing to do is a piece. The hardest thing to do is a tag. smuG: Not every case is the same. A certain tag on a certain part of someone’s property can be very disrespectful. But do you really care about that shitty part of the back of your store?
but less people Will see it.
osker: Yes, but I love graffiti because it lets me know my city in a more intimate way. There are corners that nobody knows exist and I can utilize them in a unique way. smuG: We’re vandals but we can also appreciate something that looks good.
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Fiction
s a m p H o t o G r a p H y
W H i t e b y
f o n G
Q i
W e i
Ravine, highrise, subway, another day. You first found it walking across the broad city, daring your newly postpubescent limbs to take you as far as they could’ til there it was, a green square field, the cranes creeping up the condos in the distance. You stopped and sat on the perfumed ground and laid and looked at the sky, and this place wasn't anything to you but an inbetween and would never be anything else. parents walked by with strollers, and skinny sweatshirted men with jerking walks scratching their arms, and women in sundresses unfolding picnic blankets, and the red streetcar trundling past. The day was so nice that you weren't ridiculous laying here by yourself, though you felt like you were, and felt you had better continue on, and you did, home and out again like the tide to the broad sea that is the city, to tuck bills under ashtrays on patio picnic tables, to cough into silent lecture halls, to climb down fire escapes and up poolside fences, in short, to press your hand to the cool
stone of every crooked corner of the labyrinth, or so you thought. And three years later you stumbled back to this place with your friends after leaving a house party shortly before dawn. You were all walking to eat burgers cooked by a man at a blackened flat-top grill who, in a previous life, piloted a boat in Greece, and one of your friends pointed out this square of land. The grass is silver over there, he said, do you see it? You all sat down, and though you knew you had been here before, it still wasn't anything to you. The place was silent, and in the distant darkness dogs led their yawning masters across the lawn. You stayed in the place and talked’ til dawn woke the streets around it, and you went home, avoiding eye contact with the bleary-eyed streetcar riders on their way to work, guilty for something you would only later recognize as your youth. You would remember every beat of that night, every lull in conversation, and the sour smell that fell in dots from the trees, everything but the plain fact of the grassy square itself, and you never ate that hamburger. It always seems to find you at the ends or beginnings of things, like a forgotten prophecy. It was the third time you came here that made you feel this aspect, although it was a feeling in your limbic system, like a shiver, and not a thought you could put into words. It was autumn two years later and you had to make a call, in fact you had been given a chance to make a call that you had wanted to make for so long. So you left home and got on your bike and peddled standing up in no particular direction, and the air was no less delicious for its pollution. You cycled through the teetering skyscrapers that pumped the city full of
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wealth and enabled your lifestyle. On the other side you dismounted and started walking your bike. You started thinking about your lack of courage, and soon you were here, surprised to have found this place again, this broad square field of yellow-tipped grass and dandelions. You leaned your bike against a gnarled and warted oak, and made the call, bending over to feel the grass, and as the phone clicked over to voicemail, you felt what I'm talking about. You left a message, and your breathing slowed. You mounted your bike again, and as you rumbled over the lawn you thought about this place for the first time. About how it was still here. About how it was still the same, and how that meant you were going somewhere. It wasn't and you weren't. You went home. She returned the call and it pushed the park out of your head like a cook wiping down a cutting board. You were inseparable. You took her to the island that was slashed from the city by a rogue midcentury hurricane. You realized that you would never run out of things to say. You ate tacos in korean neighbourhoods. You ate sushi in polish neighbourhoods. You ate a three course locally-grown farm-to-table meal in a neighbourhood still blighted by crack cocaine. One night you sat at a white pavilion on a beach together and counted down from ten, and at zero the sun slipped out of view and splashed green across the sky, something you'd never seen before. Fifteen months later, when a phone call woke you with a start, you realized with dawning urgency that you'd never see her again. The phone call was an invitation to a job interview. You pulled on your pants and when you looked up the address you couldn't quite believe it. It was winter, and the subway was all mud and water, the riders bouncing off eachother in their coats. A streetcar ride later you were back here, improbably, at this broad grassy square now gasping under the snow. Across from you was
you would every beat of every lull in and the sour in dots from a red brick building, built as a fortress, now full of graphic designers and hair dressers. How is it, you thought, that I've never noticed it before, though I've been here several times? You crossed the field through snowtracks pressed the previous day and went inside. Theseus wanted to know: if you changed all of a ship's boards one at a time, was it still the same ship? The interviewer asked you
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remember that night, conversation, smell that fell the trees questions like this then, and others, questions about everything but the job itself. And after boarding the streetcar going home, you received an email to your phone stating that they'd decided to go in a different direction. Over the following weeks your job search lost momentum, and you spent too much money on beer and too much time on the Internet. But you were still young and full of energy and
by midsummer you were wiping down tables at a cafe and looking at the colourful women who walked past. By that autumn you were exhausted, working at an office that had only asked from you the barest tip of the nub of your life's energy. Your job afforded you a trip abroad. There, over steaming coffee you met two potential business partners, one exhausted and one brimming with energy. That night, you were walking alone when a drunk man sitting on the street called you a foreigner. In broken French, you said he was right. He asked where you're from, and when you told him, he asked you what it was like. You cleared your throat, and said “great.� All of a sudden uncomfortable, you continued walking, and in a few days you soared over tectonic clouds and returned home to resume your life. You ate, worked, slept, drank, talked, read, did laundry. After work one day you were in the shower and the answer to the vagrant's question came to you like the finger of death tapping on your shoulder. What is the city like? It's like that park, that place that kept finding you, that place you hadn't thought about in years. You dried off, dressed, and drove here. Now you're here, looking at the same warted trees, the same brick building. You think about the job interview, and the phone call, and the late-night conversation, and how you used to take walks across the city just because. You're long past awareness that time is only speeding up, and you've given up on asking where it's gone. What I'm here to tell you is that it's gone here. Where you're standing. The only way to know it is to know the smallest piece of it. And only now, tonight, do you see it. Everything else is a distraction and this, the place itself, is the fact of it. And tonight is already tomorrow, and tomorrow is already yesterday, and you are in Toronto: incubator, playground, den, grave, monument.
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insPired By the noVel By stacey may FoWles
fear of fighting p h o t o g r a p h y m a k e - u p h a i r m o d e l
k a t r i n a e l y s e
d i a n a J e s s i
c l o t h i n g s h o e s
m a m a
c e r V o n i
m o l a n d
G a W e d a f r o m
e l i t e
l o V e s
G r a V i t y
y o u
p o p e
shoes left trippen, shoes right adieu
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shoes marni, watch meister
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bracelet betsey JoHnson
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collect ‘em all
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masthead
contibutors
gemma warren noah van der laan jeannie phan osker & smug sam white fong qi wei katrina cervoni elyse moland diana gaweda glenna sandy jessi dasilda sarah blais tenemy shaughnessyde rothschild raven sierra mel contant bram gonshor josh alletto sebastien thibault jesse skinner louis manna kate knibbs randy vreeland
editors
special tHanks!
barry chong julie baldassi
gravity pope spectacle mama loves you spirit graphics magazines canada metro theatre elite models
art director
shannon jager
double dot magazine explores the cultural and creative relationship between sister cities—where they part and where they collide. info @ double dotmagaz ine. c o m double dotmagaz ine. c o m
Printed through spirit graphics
coVer imaGe
model raven sierra photography & art sarah blais styling tenemy hair diana gaweda make-up elyse moland clothing mama loves you
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editor’s letter
My first experience with Chicago was short and sweet. I had been accepted to Ryerson university in Toronto and my dad and I had decided to skip the four-hour flight from my hometown of Calgary and embark on a 33hour father-daughter road trip across North America. We decided to travel through the States, exploring new cities like kalamazoo, Minneapolis, and Chicago. We turned off I-90, accompanied by the song du jour, “Sex On Fire,” winding through Chicago, following signs directly to the waterfront. We filled up on slices of deep-dish pizza and hot dogs, and spent the afternoon walking through Grant park, listening to jazz musicians rehearse. Sadly, we left Chicago that evening and drove into the night, trying to make it in good time to my new home of Toronto.
shannon
Chicago and Toronto have been sister cities since 1991 and have close cultural, geographic, and economic ties. Both have beautiful waterfronts, delicious food, bustling arts scenes, and diverse populations. Toronto—now home to almost 3 million people—recently surpassed Chicago in population. As Toronto grows, so does our little publication. We recently renamed the magazine DOuBLE DOT in order to create a stronger connection with our content—focusing on two cities or dots on a map every issue. Our goals are simple: We want to be more involved in our own creative community, and connect with other creative people in cities around the world. The team has put a lot of heart and time into this benchmark issue. I hope you enjoy it.
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collect ‘em all
rock & soul
dennis the menace
micHael Jordan
br am GonsHor
saraH bl ais
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tall order
the dillinger mistake plan
the annoying music show
JosH allet to
Jesse skinner
k at e k n i b b s
C O N T E N T S
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interVieW
the o’my’s b r a m
G o n s H o r
IN 2007, CHICAGO’S BIGGEST MuSICAL EXpORTS kANYE WEST AND pOp-puNk kINGS FALL OuT BOY WERE BLARING THROuGH THE EAR BuDS OF THE “DOWNLOAD GENERATION.” MEANWHILE, ON OppOSITE pARTS OF TOWN, “HIGH SCHOOL RIVALS” MACEO HAYMES (VOCALS) AND NICk HENNESSEY (kEYS) DECIDED TO MERGE THEIR TALENTS AND START THE O’MY’S, A BAND HEAVILY INFLuENCED BY THEIR pARENTS’ VINYL COLLECTIONS. WITH THE CATCHY AppEAL OF THEIR RADIO-FRIENDLY COMpATRIOTS, AND A CITY-LIFE SOuL REMINISCENT OF THE MOTOWN ERA, THE O’MY’S ARE ON THEIR WAY TO BECOMING THE NEW INNOVATORS OF WHAT THEY CALL THE “CHICAGO STYLE,” uSHERING IN A NEW ERA OF YOuNG LOCAL TALENT CuRRENTLY GAINING MAINSTREAM AppEAL. HAVING WORkED WITH pOp STARLET ZZ WARD AND RISING MC CHANCE THE RAppER, THE O’MY’S HAVE STAYED TRuE TO THEIR INFLuENCES WITH THEIR HONEST AND OpEN LOVE LETTERS TO THE CITY THAT GAVE THEM EVERYTHING. HAYMES AND HENNESSEY SpOkE WITH DOuBLE DOT FROM LOS ANGELES DuRING THE RECORDING OF THEIR NEW pROJECT, a huMBle MasterpIece.
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Maceo Haymes: Vocals, Guitar Nick Hennessey: Vocals, Keyboard Ried: Drums Tom Schuba: Illustrious Mic Ripper Xavier: Trombone Will Miller: Trumpet Boyang: Bass Zack Wicks: Not Your Average Rapper
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Our music draws on the roots laid down in this city— The blues, rock and roll, soul— Chicago has always been at the heart of american music
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We were really impressed with how proudly you rep Chicago. How has the city influenced in the O’My’s sound?
Haymes: Our music draws on the roots laid down in this city—the blues, rock and roll, soul! Chicago has always been at the heart of American music. Hennessey: Cold winters and hot summers. Haymes: [Laughs] Yeah, that too. Has recording your new record, in L.A. influenced your sound at all?
Haymes: A Humble Masterpiece is one of a number of projects we have been cooking up. Most of our recordings have started at our home in Chicago. Some are more heavily influenced by [producers] Blended Babies, others are completely The O’My’s productions. Regardless of where the music is being mixed, listen to or preformed, you’re going to hear Chicago. What were some of the first Chicago venues the O’My’s played in their early days? Are there any important venues a new band must play to establish themselves in the Chicago scene?
Hennessey: There’s so much music and so many venues in the city, that it’s really your music that establishes you. Haymes: We started off playing a lot of smaller taverns. Gradually, we got to play legendary spots like Reggie’s Rock, Metro, and Double Door.
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As we can see in your videos like the “Wonder Years” or “Smoke Killa,” family and community seem very important to the band. Does your family come out to the shows often?
Hennessey: Maceo and I are both lucky to have super supportive families. Everyone comes out to the shows and has a damn good time. Haymes: A real fucking damn good time. On the topic of family, Chance the Rapper and his dad were featured in the “Wonder Years”’ video. He is on the verge of exploding in the rap game. We’ve been working with folks in the
SaveMoney crew for years and had seen Chance around for awhile. It wasn’t until we started working with Blended Babies that we got in the studio with Chance. Hennessey: Our trumpet player, William ‘Big Sexy’ Miller, laid down some great horns on [Chance’s latest album] Acid Rap. That shit is dope! What should someone expect if they were to attend a party at the O’My’s house?
Haymes: Loud music, loud people, cold beer, juking, and dice games. Road Manager: Gambling, extortion, and what some might call prostitution.
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Mama Loves You Vintage 541 Queen Street West, Toronto mamalovesyouvintage.c om
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into the mind oF dennis rodman
dennis the menace
p h o t o g r a p h y m a k e - u p h a i r h a i r
&
d i a n a
a s s i s t a n t m o d e l
a r t
G a W e d a
r a V e n
s t y l i n g
s h o e s
s a n d y
s i e r r a
t e n e m y
m a m a
r o t H s c H i l d l o V e s
G r a V i t y
s u n g l a s s e s
b l a i s
m o l a n d
G l e n n a
s H a u G H n e s s y - d e c l o t h i n g
s a r a H
e l y s e
y o u
p o p e
s p e c t a c l e
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shoes Doc martens
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sunglasses linda farrow~prabal gurung
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necklace Lost soul
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a (Very) BrieF history oF chicago’s sKyscraPers
tall order J o s H i l l u s t r a t i o n
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In 1884 William LeBaron Jenney, designed what is widely considered to be the father of the modern day skyscraper. The Home Insurance Building was located on the southern edge of the Chicago Loop and was the first to make use of metal skeletal frame construction methods that would later become standard on most skyscrapers. Before 1884, much of a building’s weight was held by its walls, which meant the structure was only as strong as its base. By constructing the frame out of steel, Jenney was able to omit the wide centre columns often used as additional support in similar structures, thus achieving height without sacrificing floor space. The system was so successful that it wasn’t long before other architects began using it to build much more massive buildings in Chicago and across the country. Though the Home Insurance Building never held the title of tallest building in the world, (it was ten storeys tall), Chicago would claim that title nearly one hundred years later. The Willis Tower (formerly the Sears) is perhaps the most recognizable icon in the Chicago skyline. But if it weren’t for a daytime trip to the bar and a pack of cigarettes, the building may have never been. The Sears Roebuck Company, at the time the largest retailer in the world, commissioned the building in 1970. The hope was to create a massive central office to house its growing number of employees. As soon as the architects started to draw up plans for the massive
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building, it became apparent that in order to create a space large enough to accommodate Sears’s needs, they would literally have to build the largest skyscraper in the world. The only problem? Traditional methods were not strong enough to support a structure that tall. Again, Chicago would find itself home to an engineering innovation. The answer came one afternoon when architects Bruce Graham and Fazlur kahn were out after work, having a drink and discussing the challenges of the Sears project. They were making little progress when Graham went to reach for a cigarette from the pack he had sitting on the bar. He pulled one out and several others came up with it, surrounding the one between his fingers at different heights. Graham had a brainstorm. He pulled a handful of cigarettes out and held them in the same way for kahn to see. His partner instantly understood. By constructing the building out of nine large tubes that would rise to varying heights, the building would have a strong enough base to allow portions of it to rise higher than any building before it. This method of tube construction had been used before on another famous Chicago building, the John Hancock Center, but the Sears Tower would be the most ambitious use to the technique. Today the Willis Tower stands 1,454 feet and for a period held the distinction of being the world’s tallest building. Though that title has since been lifted, the Willis Tower remains a marvel of architectural ingenuity.
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shortchanging chicago’s most legendary gangster
the dillinger mistake plan J e s s e i l l u s t r a t i o n
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In On July 22, 1934, John Dillinger left Chicago’s Biograph Theater and was gunned down by federal agents led by Melvin Purvis and Samuel P. Cowley. He had just finished watching the Clark Gable and William Powell crime picture, Manhattan Melodrama. At that time of the year he could have seen Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in one of their finest co-starring vehicles The Black Cat, or watched Gable try to take Claudette Colbert to bed in It Happened One Night. Instead he chose what would have been an otherwise unremarkable picture. Films have done him no great service in return, least of which Michael Mann’s big-budget biography, Public Enemies (2009).
Since the turn of the 20th century, Chicago has been something of a magnet for notorious criminals. America’s de facto first serial killer H.H. Holmes came to the city with the pretense of operating a hotel, in reality drawn to its bounty of World’s Fair travelers and lost souls. Like Holmes, Al Capone, and Richard Speck, Dillinger came to Chicago and made his mark well into adulthood. He escaped from an Arizona prison and arrived in October, 1933, after he and his gang had stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from banks across Ohio,
Indiana, Wisconsin, South Dakota, and Iowa. Four years earlier, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, in which seven gangsters were gunned down in a warehouse on Chicago’s North Side, had cemented the public’s outrage over violent crime and began the descent of South Side kingpin Al Capone. But Dillinger’s purported charisma, ironic professionalism, and tendency to inspire urban legends helped cement his legacy as an antihero, a quasi-Robin Hood figure, for the times. Citizens passed around the story of how Dillinger once escaped
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from prison using a fake gun carved out of wood, and after his death, the one about his enormous member being preserved and displayed at the Smithsonian. Dillinger was so well-liked relative to his criminal contemporaries that fans offer remembrances annually. One, called Dillinger Days, finds the citizens of Tucson commemorating his final capture and arrest in their city months before his death. For years Chicago resident Mike Dietz and his group, the John Dillinger Died for You Society, have led crowds to the Biograph every July 22 for “death reenactment.” Talking to Dillinger aficionados would likely reveal more about his curious cult of infamy than Mann’s dry Public Enemies. Mann makes the severe error of favouring realism over entertainment value. He conceives of Dillinger as a man no larger than life. In its staid recreations of events both historical and apocryphal (the “wooden gun” bit is included), it imagines how he may have actually carried himself in and out of banks and prisons, deemphasizing both his near-mythological stature and his adopted city’s history of organized crime. It’s the kind of movie that would have certainly puzzled and alienated audiences of Dillinger’s own time. In his casting, Mann goes big with small results. using Johnny Depp, arguably the most sure-fire “Movie Star” of his age, he aligns one charismatic icon with another, but dials down everything that made both actor and character famous. Mann has Depp play Dillinger with an aloof manner that drains him of wit and bravado. Dillinger might have been better served with a flashy Hollywood take on his life. Until that point, it was primarily the domain of lowbudget gangster pictures—Lawrence Tierney played Dillinger with great enthusiasm in Dillinger (1945), while Warren Oates gave him the actor’s signature sleaze in another
eponymous bio in 1973—but neither performer could escape their films’ B-level production values. Public Enemies has the curious distinction of being both very expensive (with a $100 million budget) and very cheap-looking. Shot on HD video, which has the effect of highlighting the actors’ pores and creating distracting light contrasts, and full of drab, minimalist sets, Mann’s vision is somewhere between the ground-level shoot ‘em up of Heat (1995) and a re-enactment on America’s Most Wanted. His style certainly does no favours to Chicago. Here, the city and its surrounding areas are colourless, uninteresting locales in which largely anonymous henchman exchange bullets. unless you believe in what Werner Herzog has called “the Voodoo of Location”— in which real environments inspire the filmmaking process—Mann’s choice to shoot key scenes, including the Biograph shooting, on their actual sites is an affectation without a purpose. Within these largely undressed settings, scenes feel claustrophobic and cut off from the world at large, as if one could sense the modern buildings and cars just outside the edges of the frame. Mann’s Chicago has no personality. Compare it to, say, Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential (1997), which wonderfully illustrated the way certain cities breed certain crimes. Hell, give credit to Chicago (2003) for saying more about the city’s crime culture within the framework of a frivolous musical. John Dillinger was a criminal, not a hero, but, then again, he didn’t become famous just by stealing a bunch of money. There was something in his life story that lifted the spirit of an economically depressed America. No film has captured his appeal with the proper budget and scope, but Public Enemies is particularly egregious. With its high budget and great cast, it is one of modern movies’ biggest lost opportunities.
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EDMONTON • CALGARY VANCOUVER • TORONTO WWW.GRAVITYPOPE.COM
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annoying mUsic shoW listeners can’t tUne oUt
Radio-masochism
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The Annoying Music Show! Began the way many great things do—penicillin, Will Smith’s acting career—as a total accident. The harried disc jockeys at WBEZ Chicago found themselves with a few-minutes-gap in their scheduled programming and, scrambling to find something that would fit, a boisterous young DJ named Jim Nayder threw together an impromptu program. “I blurted out, ‘Time for The Annoying Music Show!’ The phones lit up, and I am a simpleton, but I knew something was there,” recalls Nayder. He threw on the most grating music he could find, and somehow, audiences loved it. “I continued it as a joke every week, thinking it would be short-term. But the program director came to me and said, ‘we’re getting amazing responses.”’ WBEZ Chicago is a staple for Chicago
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commuters, and it’s been around since 1942. You’ll hear the likes of Ira Glass and Terry Gross—hosts who consistently produce some of the best work in radio. Nayder’s experiment certainly didn’t fit in with the standard fare of NpR programs—smooth jazz and other talk shows—not when it started in 1992, and still, despite its success, not today. The show’s enduring success is nothing if not surprising. It’s a minute of total chaos, the most aggravating compilation of sounds cobbled together in an unholy symphony of noise. And it’s really, really funny; a refreshing antidote to the sometimes overly mellifluous global harmonies and tepid voice overs that populate public radio. It’s like the Joker in Batman— intent on mayhem, disruption—but instead of being a homicidal maniac it’s an innocent, lighthearted music program.
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It’s been a long time since that first hectic day, but Nayder is still churning out playlists of some of the worst music imaginable. It’s hard to imagine that would be a formula for winning repeat listeners, but the show is one of Chicago public radio’s most enduring and beloved little gems. “Almost 20 years later, Annoying Music is an art form,” says Nayder. “Bad music, you turn off the radio. But with annoying music, like a train wreck, you can’t look away.” We enjoy unprecedented access to any song we want to hear, whenever we want to hear it. Whether you live in Chicago or Toronto, Chattanooga or Chile, you can download or stream almost any tune, from Gregorian chants to Rihanna’s feistiest new track. You can access past favorites with one click or avoid entire genres of music if you want, creating a world for yourself where mainstream country or death metal only exist in brief snippets of sound drifting out of certain stores. Radio used to be the main vehicle for music discovery, but the kinds of services people use now, like pandora, Songza, Spotify, curate stations precisely attuned to your tastes. You will be delighted, but rarely surprised. Since more personalized music experiences are becoming de rigueur, the value of hearing something totally unexpected is diminished. But it’s not as if Annoying Music is completely untouched by technology—thanks to the Internet, Nayder’s collection of abrasive beats has grown exponentially. “When I started Annoying Music, I would go to garage sales, et cetera, but technology caught up with me,” says Nayder. “Now I open my email every day and am blasted with annoying music contributions. I am so lucky and so ill.” The clips sent to Nayder are usually collected from around the web or off the radio, but sometimes they’re more personal. One of the stranger musicians Nayder was informed
about is a boy who goes by the name Young Rick. “He is my favorite, and in our Annoying Music Show Witness protection program.” “His mom actually sent me his recordings in a serious attempt to get him airtime,” recalls Nayder. “I told her, ‘This is The Annoying Music Show!’ and she said, ‘I don’t care, as long as he gets airtime.’” When Nayder isn’t cultivating odious musical concoctions, he’s listening to far more mellow tunes—he favours Carly Simon, Cat Stevens, Elton John, and other melodious 70s artists. And Annoying Music isn’t his only gig on WBEZ. Nayder also hosts a program called Magnificent Obsession, where people dealing with addictions tell their stories in their own words. Magnificent Obsession deals with extremely heavy subject matter, and no matter how often addicts temper their stories with levity, the underlying theme of struggle is the program’s anchor. It’s intensely different than Annoying Music’s lighthearted pandemonium, but the shows complement each other—Annoying Music’s gleeful, almost masochistic absurdity provokes you to laugh, counterbalancing Magnificent Obsession’s thoughtful take on a weighty subject with lightheartedness. Most people listen to WBEZ and its affiliate station NPR because they offer intelligent programming from some of the best in radio. Upon first listen, it seems like The Annoying Music Show! is an anomaly, an island of meaninglessness amid more weighty radio. But it’s a necessary ingredient in the station’s mix; a raucous presentation of songs that sound like they were chosen by our deviant collective id to counterbalance all of the demographic-pandering and highly customized music programming of today. Jim Nayder is the pied piper of Annoying Music, and he and his 1-minute love note to goofiness are Chicago treasures.
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What Men Need to Know About Sex, Style, What Music, Men Drinks, Need to Sports Know and Video. About Sex, Style, Music, What Sports Men Drinks, Need Know andto Video. About Sex, Style, Music, Drinks, Sports and Video. toromagazine.com
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