C H I C A G O ’ S F R E E W E E K LY | K I C K I N G A S S S I N C E 1 9 7 1 | F E B R U A R Y 1 8 , 2 0 1 6
Politics Mayor Rahm’s City Council allies bury a TIF investigation. 12
Music Vocal producer Kuk Harrell on bringing the best out of Rihanna 21
THE SCULPTURE and
THE STRUGGLE of
GARLAND MARTIN TAYLOR By Nissa Rhee — 12 —
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2 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 18, 2016
THIS WEEK
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EDITOR JAKE MALOOLEY CREATIVE DIRECTOR PAUL JOHN HIGGINS DEPUTY EDITOR, NEWS ROBIN AMER CULTURE EDITOR TAL ROSENBERG FILM EDITOR J.R. JONES MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO ASSOCIATE EDITORS KATE SCHMIDT, KEVIN WARWICK, BRIANNA WELLEN SENIOR WRITERS STEVE BOGIRA, MICHAEL MINER, MIKE SULA SENIOR THEATER CRITIC TONY ADLER STAFF WRITERS LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, AIMEE LEVITT, PETER MARGASAK, JULIA THIEL SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR RYAN SMITH GRAPHIC DESIGNER SUE KWONG MUSIC LISTINGS COORDINATOR LUCA CIMARUSTI EDITORIAL ASSISTANT CASSIDY RYAN CONTRIBUTING WRITERS NOAH BERLATSKY, DERRICK CLIFTON, MATT DE LA PEÑA, ANNE FORD, ISA GIALLORENZO, JOHN GREENFIELD, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, DANIEL KAY HERTZ, DAN JAKES, BILL MEYER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, DMITRY SAMAROV, ZAC THOMPSON, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERNS MANUEL RAMOS, CHRIS RIHA ----------------------------------------------------------------
IN THIS ISSUE
15
4 Agenda The play The Flick, the exhibit “Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936,” the Secret History of Chicago Music live, and more recommendations
18 Small Screen The Bachelor needs to give its final rose. 19 Lit In the graphic novel Beverly, a gesture’s worth 1,000 words. 20 Movies In Deadpool, superheroes are out and antiheroes are in.
CITY LIFE
8 Chicago hacks How to charge your cell phone on the CTA 8 Chicagoans An orgasmic meditation teacher on increasing the power and potency of climax
10 Transportation Will Rauner’s plan to widen I-55 ease congestion—or encourage more driving? 11 The Contrarian The mythical idea of the American heartland shouldn’t define the midwest.
ARTS & CULTURE
9 9 Joravsky | Politics Mayor Rahm’s council allies bury a TIF investigation.
15 Visual Art Tony Tasset’s Artists Monument brightens up Grant Park. 15 Comedy The sketch show I Think, Therefore I’m Sorry need not apologize. 17 Theater Goodman’s adaptation of Bolaño’s 2666 is epic, eerie, and ultimately unfathomable. 17 Dance “Walking With ’Trane,” the new suite by Urban Bush Women
MUSIC
21 Q&A Kuk Harrell on bringing the best out of Rihanna 26 Shows of note Frequency Festival, Future, Philip Glass, Slayer, Eleanor Friedberger, and more 28 The Secret History of Chicago Music Eddie Shaw blew some saxophone into the Chicago blues.
FOOD & DRINK
34 Review: Maple & Ash The whimsical steak house serves up Gold Coast excess at excessive prices. 36 Key Ingredient: Ponce Chef Won Kim stomachs the sausagestuffed pig stomach.
CLASSIFIEDS
37 Jobs 37 Apartments & Spaces 39 Marketplace 40 Straight Dope Where does the notion of suicidal lemmings come from? 41 Savage Love What to do when the new girlfriend has a “cuckolding past” 42 Early Warnings Alabama Shakes, the Church, Alejandro Escovedo, Sonics, and more shows you should know about in the weeks to come 42 Gossip Wolf Jen Dot of Swimsuit Addition launches a comicscentric zine, and more music news.
34
FEATURES
SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER EVANGELINE MILLER ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES BRIDGET KANE MARKETING AND EVENTS MANAGER BRYAN BURDA DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY BUSINESS MANAGER STEFANIE WRIGHT ADVERTISING COORDINATOR HERMINIA BATTAGLIA CLASSIFIEDS REPRESENTATIVE KRIS DODD ---------------------------------------------------------------DISTRIBUTION CONCERNS distributionissues@chicagoreader.com CHICAGO READER 350 N. ORLEANS, CHICAGO, IL 60654 312-222-6920, CHICAGOREADER.COM ---------------------------------------------------------------THE READER (ISSN 1096-6919) IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY SUN-TIMES MEDIA, LLC, 350 N. ORLEANS, CHICAGO, IL 60654. © 2016 SUN-TIMES MEDIA, LLC. PERIODICAL POSTAGE PAID AT CHICAGO, IL. POSTMASTER: SEND CHANGE OF ADDRESS TO CHICAGO READER, 350 N. ORLEANS, CHICAGO, IL 60654.
ON THE COVER: PHOTO OF GARLAND MARTIN TAYLOR BY JONATHAN GIBBY. FOR MORE OF GIBBY’S WORK GO TO JONATHANGIBBY.COM.
MUSIC VISUAL ART
The sculpture and the struggle of Garland Martin Taylor
With Conversation Piece, the south-side artist delivers a monumental creative response to Chicago’s gun violence. BY NISSA RHEE 12
Kuk Harrell brings the best out of Rihanna
The Grammy-winning vocal producer talks about the path that led him from church choir in Chicago to collaborations with the likes of Beyoncé, Sting, and Mary J. Blige—and to his work on the new Anti. BY ANNIE ZALESKI 21 FEBRUARY 18, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 3
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AGENDA R
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F $17 students and seniors. Cabaret “Outside it is windy,” R says the emcee at the Kit Kat Club, a racy nightspot in Weimar-era
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THEATER
More at chicagoreader.com/ theater Adoration of the Old Woman As with his mentor Gabriel R García Márquez, José Rivera’s best
work is at once realistic and magical, intensely political and deeply personal. Rivera doesn’t quite achieve this perfect balance in Adoration of the Old Woman; here the political issue at stake, Puerto Rican independence, is considerably more compelling than the various half-developed stories of love and loss that fill out the play. Still, the show has power and lots of heart, as do the performances in director Juan Castañeda’s sometimes ragged revival for UrbanTheater Company. The best of them—from Andrew Neftalí Perez and Melissa DuPrey, playing respectively a nationalist and a very opinionated ghost—transcend the limitations of this low-budget production and bring a transcendent life to Rivera’s rich material. —JACK HELBIG Through 3/13: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Batey Urbano, 2620 W. Division, 773-347-1203, urbantheaterchicago.org, $15 in advance, $20 at the door, $12 students and seniors.
The Awake Playwright Ken Urban’s The Awake is a cutthroat psychological thriller that crams an action-movie’s worth of torture cells, helicopter rescues, and tearful hospital scenes into a play less than two hours long. How does it manage to muster such excitement, and how does First Floor Theater pull it off in a tiny black-box theater on a shoestring budget? By having the actors narrate everything that happens to them rather than trying to show it happening. Granted, this solution put a third of the audience to sleep—theater, especially small theater, is a “show don’t tell” kind of art form. But while talk is cheap, pyrotechnics are expensive. By far the best scenes come in the show’s last half hour, when people—exciting, living people—start to emerge from their intricate webs of association and actually do something, even if it’s just talking to each other. —MAX MALLER Through 3/12: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 4 PM, Collabo-
4 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 18, 2016
raction, 1579 N. Milwaukee, 312-226-9633, firstfloortheater.com, $10-$20. Beautiful Autistic Like Interrogation, Scott Woldman’s other new play running in town (see separate listing), this unfortunately titled dramedy has pithy dialogue, intriguing characters, and no structure. Thus the well-spoken, intriguing characters mostly wander and dither. Woldman focuses on autistic 26-year-old Jimmy, who carries a backpack overstuffed with esoteric scientific articles and longs to have a “normal friend.” His only prospect is womanizing putz Eric, with whom he spends every evening in a Wrigleyville bar. For the bulk of two discursive acts, Jimmy does little but demonstrate typical manifestations of autism—in present and flashback scenes—while others struggle to understand and tolerate him. Most everything is dramatically inconsequential until late in the play, when the pileup of crises turns things melodramatic. Several stirring performances can’t provide the missing drama. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 3/13: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Chicago Dramatists, 1105 W. Chicago, 312-633-0630, chicagodramatists.org, $18, $13 students and seniors. Blueberry Toast Tympanic Theatre Company’s tagline is “the best kind of weird,” and Mary Laws’s absurdist domestic drama certainly delivers on part of that. A seemingly benign misunderstanding at the breakfast table—that was pancakes, not toast!—snowballs into Sarah Kane-level depravity and pandemonium. Seventy minutes of watching a man psychologically and physically abuse his wife (and sometimes vice versa) might sound provocative, but Laws’s contrived script amounts to such a laundry list of elements—gunshots, doublespeak, simulated sex, creepy singing twins, diatribes about oil—that despite looking and sounding like a statement it never has much of anything to say. In case there was any subtlety to the domestic theme, though, a curtain call to Arcade Fire’s “The Suburbs” drives the point home. —DAN JAKES Through 3/13: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, 773-935-6860, tympanictheatre.org, $22,
Berlin, “but inside it is so hot, every night we have a battle to keep the girls from taking off all their clothing. So don’t go away, who knows? Tonight we may lose the battle!” Nobody actually takes it all off in the 2014 Roundabout Theatre revival of Kander and Ebb’s famous musical, offered here in a touring production. But the teasing playfulness suggested by the emcee’s come-on is certainly stripped away. Sexual preferences are more nakedly presented than they were in the show’s previous iterations. Would-be chanteuse Sally Bowles is more starkly desperate. Decadence is more tawdry. And the consequences of being on the wrong side of Nazism are made far more explicit. Everything’s telegraphed. Everything’s heavy-handed. And the effect is powerful. —TONY ADLER Through 2/21: Wed-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 and 7:30 PM (2 PM only 2/21), Tue 7:30 PM, PrivateBank Theatre, 18 W. Monroe, 312-902-1400, broadwayinchicago.com, $32-$105.
Far From Heaven Todd Haynes’s 2002 movie Far From Heaven was a cunning exercise in style, cannibalizing Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows to tell a story Sirk couldn’t have told back in Eisenhower-era Hollywood, about a suburban housewife who falls for her black gardener even as she learns that her husband is gay. In adapting Haynes’s tale for the stage, Richard Greenberg, Michael Korie, and Scott Frankel take us a step away from Sirk—which means taking us a step away from what Haynes achieved. All that was subversive about the movie is merely imitative here, and the show flattens out into a conventionally liberal, less than believable tearjerker with a retro score. Summer Naomi Smart is quite literally too perfect as the housewife in this Porchlight Music Theatre staging. Worse, Evan Tyrone Martin’s gardener is utterly nonsensical: a grown man who seems clueless about race. —TONY ADLER Through 3/13: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont, 773-3275252, stage773.com, $32-$45.
Fugitive Songs ò AMY BOYLE
The Flick The best thing about R Annie Baker’s hyperrealistic 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama—how effec-
tively she conveys the sheer drudgery of working a low-rung job at a rundown movie theater—is also the worst thing about it: the play is more than three hours long, and much of that time is spent watching actors sweep up stale popcorn or mop up soda spills. Along the way we get to know the stunted souls who do this work. Baker’s dialogue is virtuosic, and she’s a strong storyteller even if her stories unfold at a glacial pace. Director Dexter Bullard’s production re-creates the look and feel of a movie house and highlights the drama coiled within it with the attention to detail of a Chuck Close painting. Likewise, his superb four-person ensemble succeeds in imbuing the most mundane task with meaning. And believe me, this play is packed with mundane tasks. —JACK HELBIG Through 4/8: Tue-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat-Sun 3 and 7:30 PM; also Tue 2/23, 7:30 PM, Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, steppenwolf.org, $49-$86. From These Fatal Loins There are two plays within this pitch-black Romeo and Juliet redo by the Ruckus that imagines what might happen if, instead of committing suicide, Shakespeare’s most famous couple faked their deaths. One is a sexy bedroom drama in which playwright Dan Caffrey translates the teenagers’ operatic flameout to the real-world, slower-burn challenges of staying in love after the early lust fades. The other is a madcap, mostly inexplicable metacomedy in which the two go on a Natural Born Killers-style murder spree in modern-day Las Vegas. Derek Van Barham capitalizes on vulnerable and quirky performances by Christopher Waldron as Romeo and Jillian Rea as Juliet, but the show’s two halves feel inefficiently stitched together, and whatever point is being made gets drowned in blood. —DAN JAKES Through 3/12: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Barry United Methodist Church, 4754 N. Leavitt, 773784-3273, ruckustheater.org, $15. Fugitive Songs BoHo Theatre R delivers an exquisite rendition of Chris Miller and Nathan Tysen’s 2008 concept revue—a cycle of songs about
KATIE HOLMES LUKE KIRBY
Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of February 18
CRITICS’ PICK
Chris Aiken and Angie Hauser in Spontaneous Combustion ò JONATHAN HSU
restless young people running (or wishing they could run) from bad relationships, dead-end jobs, dysfunctional families, and the like. Despite the downbeat-sounding premise, the show is constantly exhilarating and sometimes surprisingly funny, thanks to Tysen’s intelligent, candid lyrics and, especially, Miller’s beautifully textured, complex yet melodic music, which reflects influences ranging from singer-songwriters Laura Nyro and Joni Mitchell to musical-theater composers Adam Guettel and Jason Robert Brown. The material’s main shortcoming is its lack of specificity—this is a show about a theme, not a story. But director-choreographer Zachary L. Gray and his superb six-person cast—Justin Adair (who also plays guitar), Greg Foster, Charlotte Morris (who also plays violin), Elissa Newcomer, Julian Terrell Otis, and Demi Zaino—solve the problem with imaginative staging and nuanced, believable, emotionally intimate characterizations as well as beautiful singing. Keyboardist Jeffrey Poindexter’s musical direction of the intricate, driving acoustic-rock/ jazz score is crisp and sensitive. —ALBERT WILLIAMS Through 3/13: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Mon 2/22, 8 PM, Heartland Studio Theatre, 7016 N. Glenwood, 773-7912393, bohotheatre.com, $25. Interrogation Set in the small town of Rising Sun, Indiana, Scott Woldman’s new play follows unassuming Deputy Griggs (Eric Leonard) as he investigates the murder of local teenager Ellie. Or rather, it follows a roving, all-flashback recap of his investigation as he tries to convince his superior to reopen the cold case. Structurally, it’s a semipoetic police procedural, except it hardly proceeds. Rather it ricochets for two hours among telling moments from Griggs’s interviews with members of a vitriolic family clan, each of whom has a motive for killing Ellie, without escalating the stakes or tension. And in director Scott Westerman’s disjointed pro-
duction, the Harper clan are less a family than splenetic strangers. Woldman’s admirable dialogue far outshines his plotting. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 3/20: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, the Artistic Home, 1376 W. Grand, 312243-3963, theartistichome.org, $28$32, $20 students and seniors.
R
Looking Over the President’s Shoulder Alonzo Fields has been awfully busy for someone who died in 1994. A black would-be opera star who ended up spending 21 years as a White
AN IMPORTANT, INCREDIBLY
R
P O W E R F U L F I L M.”
www.BrewView.com
-Bill Zwecker,
“F
E R O C I O U S
F U L L
memory of playing music in his head as he stood at attention, waiting on Herbert Hoover. This Fields isn’t a political construct. He’s a man who made the choices he made under the circumstances he found. We have a fine visit with him. But then, he’d permit nothing less. —TONY ADLER Through 3/6: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2:30 PM, Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln, 773-404-7336, americanbluestheater.com, $29-$39.
R
Marc Salem’s Mind Over Chicago Renowned mentalist Marc Salem promises his audience members that no part of his show involves the supernatural, but it’s hard to be sure. Over the course of 90 minutes, he deftly employs the subtle science of kinesics, the study of nonverbal communication, to effectively read volunteers’ minds on a wide variety of topics. It’s not just guessing you’re thinking of the color blue. On the night I attended, he predicted all the key components of a farcical Chicago crime story dreamed up
O F
A N D
L I F E.”
-Fred Topel,
RSM
“
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Manny Buckley in Looking Over the President’s Shoulder ò JOHNNY KNIGHT
House butler, serving and studying four presidents, Fields was the inspiration for lead character Cecil Gaines in Lee Daniels’s The Butler. Before that, playwright James Still gave him this solo show, in which he’s depicted under his own name, telling stories as he waits for the bus that will take him home and into retirement. As embodied by Manny Buckley under Timothy Douglas’s impeccable direction for American Blues Theater, Fields seems the classic Dignified Negro of so many period works. You’d expect his pent-up rage to break through at some point. Instead, we get something subtler: a pensive longing, epitomized by Fields’s
by the audience and successfully shared details of a host of people’s past vacations. While it’s a show that involves reading, writing, and thinking, the key ingredient is a healthy and subsequently satiated sense of wonder. Salem even keeps it topical, comparing volunteers’ lying tells to those of Presidents Clinton and Bush. —MARISSA OBERLANDER Through 3/27: Sat 5 and 8 PM, Sun 3:30 and 7 PM; also Mon 2/29, 7:30 PM, Apollo Theater, 2540 N. Lincoln, 773-935-6100, apollochicago.com, $50. Marnie & Phil: A Circus R Love Letter Taking a cue from Beckett, this show written and
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AGENDA B directed by House Theatre of Chicago member Chris Mathews opens with a playful if grumpy pair bemoaning their present state: “I was handsome once,” “I was pretty,” “[Age] happens to the best of us.” Soon the story moves back in time, and we meet aspiring aerialist Marnie and clown-in-training Phil as 13-year-olds in circus school together. Jeremy Sonkin plays a hard-core trainer who reminds his troupe of the three enemies of the circus arts: “gravity, time, and inertia.” We next see the couple in their 30s, when we follow them as they travel across the world, maintaining their long-distance love affair with touching letters. The show features beautiful musical numbers written by Kevin O’Donnell, and asks big questions about what it means to be an aging performer forced to bear up despite dwindling opportunities and “the crushing, ubiquitous weight of it all.” —SUZANNE SCANLON Through 3/20: Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 4 and 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Actors Gymnasium, Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes, Evanston, 847-328-2795, actorsgymnasium. com, $15-$25. Pop Waits The “Pop” refers to Iggy, the “Waits” to Tom, and the two names together suggest the dynamic between Malic White’s Stooge energy and Molly Brennan’s Waitsian brooding. But this 90-minute performance piece is about more than musical preferences. White and Brennan use the title personas as a way of exploring their own, very complicated identities. It’s all fun, games, and a sharp three-piece backup band for a while. Brennan and White are both fine physical artists with great comic timing and an uncommon sweetness. (I was seduced by White’s obvious delight in watching herself be watched, Brennan’s smiles of loving indulgence as she did the watching.) The energy dissipates, though, when the pair turn confessional. As canny as they are about the nature of artifice, as brave as they are in attempting to dispense with it, they come up against a basic fact: suffering without art is just suffering. —TONY ADLER Through 3/12: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Neo-Futurarium, 5153 N. Ashland, 773-275-5255, neofuturists. org, $10-$20.
DANCE
Bold Moves The Joffrey BalR let’s winter series includes the return of two pieces from the
company’s recent repertoire: Yuri Possokhov’s Raku and Jiří Kylián’s Forgotten Land. Through 2/21: WedFri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM, Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress, 800-982-2787, joffrey.org, $32-$155.
Steve Krakow at Quimby’s on Thu 2/18 ò SUN-TIMES MEDIA Bronx Gothic This solo R performance by Okwui Okpokwasili brings together dance, theater, and visual arts to explore the relationship of two adolescent girls living in the Bronx in the 80s. Peter Born directs. Fri 2/19-Sat 2/20: 7 PM, Links Hall at Constellation, 3111 N. Western, 773-281-0824, linkshall.org. F
Spontaneous Combustion R Bessie Award winner Angie Hauser and Smith College assistant professor of dance Chris Aiken present an improvised dance performance. Thu 2/18-Fri 2/19: 7:30 PM, Hamlin Park Fieldhouse Theater, 3035 N. Hoyne, 312-742-7785, chicagoparkdistrict.org, $15.
Urban Bush Women: R Walkin’ With ’Trane Urban Bush Women, now celebrating their 30th year, return to Chicago with a suite inspired by John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme; pianist George Caldwell provides live accompaniment. For more, see page 17. Thu 2/18-Sat 2/20, 7:30 PM, Dance Center of Columbia College, 1306 S. Michigan, 312-369-6600, colum.edu/ dance_center, $30, $24 seniors.
COMEDY
Afro-Futurism Martin R Marrow hosts this variety show featuring African-American
performers from across the city, including Dave Helem, Shantira Jackson, and Felonious Munk. Through 2/24: Wed 8 PM, Second City, 1616 N. Wells, 312-337-3992, secondcity.com, $10. Harmontown Dan Harmon R (creator of Community and Rick and Morty) brings his podcast to Park West. Anything can happen, so come prepared. Sat 2/20, 8 PM, Park West, 322 W. Armitage, 773-929-5959, parkwestchicago. com, $15.
Laser Comedy Show A R sketch show in which one man uses lasers to create scenery
and characters. Through 3/7: Mon 10 PM, MCL Chicago, 3110 N. Shef-
field, mclchicago.com, $10. The Vagina Melodies A R musical sketch show exploring feminist issues. Through 3/12:
Thu-Sat 8 PM, Cornservatory, 4210 N. Lincoln, 773-650-1331, cornservatory.org, $10-$15.
VISUAL ARTS Camp/Us Gallery “A History of Vellum,” the local designers of Black Market Caviar display their past screen-printing work and debut their spring 2016 fashion collection. Through 2/20. 2883 N. Milwaukee, blackmarketcaviar.com. Hyde Park Art Center “Regenboog Broer,” a painting installation by Justin Witte exploring color, light, and geometric shapes. Through 4/3. “Who Cares for the Sky?,” Sabrina Ott’s installation inspired by Gertrude Stein and Clement Hurd’s 1939 children’s book The World Is Round. 2/21-5/1 Reception for all current HPAC exhibits Sun 2/21, 3-5 PM. Mon-Thu 9 AM-8 PM, Fri-Sat 9 AM-5 PM, Sun noon-5 PM, 5020 S. Cornell, 773324-5520, hydeparkart.org. Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center “Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936,” an exhibition featuring historical photographs, film, and the testimonies of athletes who participated in the Berlin Olympics. Opening reception Sun 2/21, 2-3:30 PM, features medalist Jesse Owens’s daughter, Marlene Owens Rankin; congressman and civil rights activist Ralph H. Metcalfe’s son, Ralph H. Metcalfe Jr.; and exhibition curator Susan Bachrach. 2/21-3/31. Mon-Fri 10 AM-5 PM (Thu till 8 PM), Sat-Sun 11 AM-4 PM. 9603 Woods, Skokie, 847-967-4800, ilholocaustmuseum.org, $12, $6 kids 5-11, $8 students and seniors. Mana Contemporary Chicago “The Pellizzi Family Collections,” the private collection features the work of Mexican painters Julio Galán and Daniel Lezama. Opening reception Sun 2/21, noon-4 PM. 2/21-8/15, 2233 S. Throop, 312-850-
Get showtimes at chicagoreader.com/movies.
AGENDA 8301, manacontemporarychicago. com.
archival footage of the band, ranging from their early days as a David Bowie cover act to their jamming onstage with Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead on British TV. —LUCA CIMARUSTI 136 min. Mon 2/22, 7 PM. Music Box
LIT
The (Possible) Future of R Water National environmental group the Natural Resources
Defense Council hosts a discussion between authors Claire Vaye Watkins (Gold Fame Citrus, Battleborn) and Chicago writer Abby Geni (The Lightkeepers, The Last Animal) about “cli-fi,” a developing new genre that addresses climate change through speculative fiction. Advance tickets required. Wed 2/24, 6-8 PM, Garfield Park Conservatory, 300 N. Central Park, 312746-5100, garfield-conservatory.org.
R
Geoffrey Cowan The author discusses his book Let the People Rule: Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of the Presidential Primary. Sun 2/21, 2:30 PM, Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State, 312-747-4300, chipublib.org. Steve Krakow Steve KraR kow—aka Plastic Crimewave, creator of ongoing illustrated feature the Secret History of Chicago Music—talks with Reader music editor Philip Montoro to celebrate the release of My Kind of Sound, an anthology of his work. Thu 2/18, 7 PM, Quimby’s Bookstore, 1854 W. North, 773-342-0910, quimbys.com.
You’re Being Ridiculous R This storytelling comedy show features performers sharing their “oops” moments. Sat 2/20, 7:30 PM, Mayne Stage, 1328 W. Morse, 773-381-4554, maynestage. com, $15.
MOVIES
More at chicagoreader.com/ movies NEW REVIEWS The Camera Obscura This muted 2008 melodrama tells the familiar story of an ugly duckling—complete with frizzy hair and glasses—whose self-confidence blooms only after she finds true love. In early 20th-century Argentina, a Jewish refugee from Russia (Mirta Bogdasarian) settles into a loveless marriage with a wealthy rural farmer; 20 years later an itinerant French photographer takes her picture, and his artistic gaze allows her to see herself anew. Cowriters Maria Victoria Menis and Alejandro Fernández Murriay borrow from Hollywood weepies Now, Voyager (1942) and The Bridges of Madison County (1995). As director, however, Menis refuses to foreground the emotions inherent in the melodramatic subject matter, and Bogdasarian lacks the charisma of
Eisenstein in Guanajuato
Bette Davis or Meryl Streep. This is competently made but inconsequential; the period sets and costumes are ultimately more convincing than the characters inhabiting them. Menis directed. In Spanish with subtitles. —MICHAEL GLOVER SMITH 85 min. Critic Alejandro Riera introduces the screening. Sun 2/21, 2 PM. Spertus Institute Eisenstein in Guanajuato Writer-director Peter Greenaway pays tribute to Sergei Eisenstein, the Soviet director of Potemkin (1925), with this quixotic jaunt, a feast for the eyes and ears that ultimately lacks substance. Imagining the director’s transformative 1930 sojourn in Mexico, the film is staged on elaborate sets and against less impressive CGI backgrounds, with triple-split screens occasionally popping up to enhance Greenaway’s droll expositions on the Russian Revolution or Red-scared Hollywood. The high points involve Elmer Bäck, as the closeted 33-year-old artist, and Luis Alberti, as the married professor who deflowers him, exchanging epigrammatic observations on sex and death. But melodic lines don’t add up to a satisfying whole, and Greenaway gets lost in his own panache, allowing the narrative to unravel. In English and subtitled Spanish. —LEAH PICKETT 102 min. Fri 2/19, 8 PM; Sat 2/20, 7:45 PM; Sun 2/21, 3 PM; Mon 2/22, 7:45 PM; Tue 2/23, 6 PM; Wed 2/24, 7:45 PM; and Thu, 2/25, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center Rolling Papers Shortly after recreational marijuana was legalized in Colorado, the Denver Post made some news of its own by launching the first pot section at a major daily. In this documentary by Mitch Dickman, veteran Post music critic Ricardo Baca enjoys his instant celebrity as the paper’s first pot editor (appearing on The View, he lines up Whoopi Goldberg as a columnist) but then turns to the more prosaic challenge of shaping the day-to-day coverage. Hard reporting on the social and economic effects of legalization, written by
clean-cut Post staffers John Ingold and Eric Gorski, runs alongside critical reviews of marijuana strains (illustrated in candy-colored shots that can only be called pot porn). Some interesting flash points emerge as readers try to get used to writers’ open acknowledgment of drug use in print (of particular sensitivity are Brittany Driver’s columns about pot and parenting). —J.R. JONES 80 min. Fri 2/19, 7 and 9 PM; Sat 2/20, 5, 7, and 9 PM; Sun 2/21, 5 and 7 PM; Mon 2/22, 7 and 9 PM; Tue 2/23, 7 and 9 PM; Wed 2/24, 7 and 9 PM; and Thu 2/25, 7 and 9 PM. Facets Cinematheque Time to Love Though clearly aiming for acute social commentary, Iran’s second-biggest box office hit of 2015 looks and feels more like a feature-length soap opera with tediously low stakes. The draws are Leila Hatami and Shahab Hosseini, who costarred in Asghar Farhadi’s vastly superior A Separation (2011), as an unhappily married couple with an awful secret dividing them—the wife, a divorce lawyer, unwittingly takes on her husband’s pregnant mistress and legal second wife (Mina Vahid) as a client. But neither the flimsy script nor Alireza Raisian’s unfocused direction gives one a compelling reason to care whether any of the relationships, least of all the central one, will survive. Hatami and Hosseini are transfixing individually but weak in scenes together that should be emotionally charged. In Persian with awkward subtitles. —LEAH PICKETT 100 min. Sat 2/20, 8 PM, and Sun 2/21, 4:45 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center Touched With Fire An odd duck but an appealing one, this debut feature by young writer-director Paul Dalio updates the sanitarium romances of the 1960s (Frank Perry’s David and Lisa, Robert Rossen’s Lilith) with its story of two poets who bond over their shared bipolar disorder and marry against the counsel of their worried parents. Dalio named the movie after Kay Redfield Jamison’s nonfiction
book exploring the link between manic depression and creativity, a subject of natural concern to the two artists (Katie Holmes, Luke Kirby). Jamison’s ideas often seem like a thesis draped over the story—she even appears in one scene, sitting down for coffee with the couple—but they add another vexing wrinkle to all the other problems facing the two lovers. As the young man, who’s gone off his meds, candidly admits to his wife and parents: “I want the mania.” With Bruce Altman, Christine Lahti, and Griffin Dunne. —J.R. JONES R, 110 min. For venues visit chicagoreader.com/movies. We Are Twisted Fucking Sister! Spanning two and a quarter hours, this documentary chronicles the humble beginnings of Long Island glam-metal outfit Twisted Sister, best known for their 1984 megahit “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” Director Andrew Horn covers every trial and tribulation in the dozen years leading up to Twisted Sister’s major-label debut on Atlantic Records. The running time may seem daunting to even the most dedicated Sick Mother Fucker (as the band’s fan club members are called), but front man Dee Snyder is charming and the movie is crammed with great
Rolling Papers
Zoolander 2 At one point this was being touted as Zoolander No. 2, which is a pretty good gag, but someone in marketing must have gotten a look at the movie and noted the actual fragrance. Ben Stiller revives Derek Zoolander, the brain-dead fashion model from his 2001 hit; back for another go-round are Owen Wilson as Hansel, Zoolander’s runway rival; Will Ferrell as Mugatu, the evil fashion mogul; and every joke that worked the first time. The original featured more than three dozen celebrity cameos, and the sequel is similarly overloaded with stars—fashion stars, film stars, music stars, sports stars, cable news stars. Unfortunately the script is so weak that chuckles of recognition become the lion’s share of the comedy; when this thing is 15 years old itself and many of those stars have dimmed, it will seem less a movie than a strange, sad artifact of a hollowed-out society. Stiller produced, directed, and kicked in on the script; with Penelope Cruz and Kristen Wiig. —J.R. JONES PG-13, 100 min. For venues visit chicagoreader.com/movies.
REVIVALS Greed Erich von Stroheim’s R 1924 silent classic is more famous for its original eight-hour
version than for this cut that MGM carved out of it (though apparently there were several prerelease versions, which Stroheim screened privately for separate groups). The studio junked the rest of the footage, and apart from a reconstruction cobbled together recently with production stills and the shooting script, the release version is all that remains today. But even in its butchered state this is one of Stroheim’s greatest films, a pas-
sionate adaptation of Frank Norris’s great naturalist novel McTeague in which a slow-witted dentist (Gibson Gowland) and the neurotic woman he marries (the great ZaSu Pitts) are ultimately destroyed by having won a lottery. Stroheim respected the story enough to extend it imaginatively as well as translate it into cinematic terms, and he filmed exclusively on location (mainly San Francisco, Oakland, and Death Valley). Greed remains one of the most modern of silent films, anticipating Citizen Kane in its deep-focus compositions and Jean Renoir in the emotional complexity of its tragic humanism. Jean Hersholt costars. Essential viewing. —JONATHAN ROSENBAUM 133 min. David Drazin provides live piano accompaniment. Sat 2/20, 1 PM. Northwestern University Block Museum of Art Lola + Bilidikid Director R Kutlug Ataman reportedly fled Istanbul to escape the death
threats that followed the release of this 1998 film. A powerful and superbly acted drama about the gay and transvestite subcultures among Berlin’s immigrant Turks, the film gracefully interweaves a number of compelling story lines: a boorish, foul-mouthed gigolo falls for a prim German architect who lives with his aristocratic mother; a cross-dressing entertainer ponders a sex-change operation, pressured by his ultramacho boyfriend; a homophobic man turns to violence when he suspects his brothers of being gay. Ataman’s only misstep comes late in the film, when a fight with some neo-Nazis becomes a stylized knife-and-gun battle recalling West Side Story. For the most part, though, this is fierce, eye-opening work. In Turkish with subtitles. —ADAM LANGER 93 min. Ataman attends the screening. Thu 2/25, 7 PM. Northwestern University Block Museum of Art Still/Here The midwest’s great cities can be alienating, and this black-and-white essay (2000) articulates disturbed relationships between people and landscapes through imagery and editing. Filmmaker Christopher Harris suffuses the blighted north side of Saint Louis with a powerful melancholy, lingering on rubble-strewn lots, decrepit buildings, and empty streets, while footsteps and a continually ringing phone on the soundtrack suggest lives interrupted by the devastation. Holes in a movie theater marquee are powerfully evocative, but even more impressive is the film’s sprawling, almost chaotic form: its calculated incompleteness truly matches the subject, and Harris’s long takes imply—not without a hint of anger— that the ruins of his hometown are eternal. —FRED CAMPER 60 min. Harris attends the screening. Thu 2/25, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center v
FEBRUARY 18, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 7
CITY LIFE Ù
ò CHRIS RIHA
OUR MOST READ ARTICLES LAST WEEK ON CHICAGOREADER.COM IN ASCENDING ORDER:
Chicago Hacks
Charge your phone on the CTA
THE POOR SLOBS ON THE EL are officially forbidden from accessing power outlets at stations or on trains. (“Charging stations is one idea among many customer amenities we’re exploring as we seek ways to improve service,” CTA spokesman Jeff Tolman says.) And even if you’re not going to let a little thing like the law stop you from topping off your iPhone, the new 5000-series rail cars (the ones with mostly aisle-facing seats) don’t have accessible outlets. The older 2600- and 3200-series models, which have a higher number of forward-facing seats, still feature one, though. It’s located in each car under the aisle-facing seats closest to the semiprivate corner opposite the enclosed booth intended for the train driver. The agency began installing locking covers a few years ago, but the outlets often remain exposed. Tolman says the electricity flows only when CTA crews are cleaning the trains. However, anecdotal evidence suggests the power does sometimes remain available to crafty customers. “I’ve occasionally, discreetly used the outlet on certain CTA cars under the sideways-facing seat,” says computer programmer Gareth Newfield, a Logan Square resident. “But they don’t always work.” “If an outlet may have accidentally been left on, the use of the outlet is not only against CTA policy, it could also potentially damage a device,” Tolman says. Safer and more dependable sources of power are the outlets along the platforms of el stations, the covers of which are often unfastened. While that method is still prohibited by the CTA, at least you don’t run the risk of a third-rail power surge barbecuing your expensive gadget. —JOHN GREENFIELD
“What Chicago can learn from Mexico City’s bus rapid transit” —JOHN GREENFIELD
“Logan Square ‘witches’ cast a protective—and political—spell” —ZOE GREENBERG
“Dance party Soft Leather gets the boot from East Room” —LEE V. GAINES
“Shark Out of Water” —TED KLEINE
“How Chicago’s ‘Fraternal Order of Propaganda’ shapes the story of fatal police shootings” — YANA KUNICHOFF ND SAM STECKLOW Diameters ers of circles are proportional to the number of page views received.
Chicagoans
Tazima Davis, orgasmic meditation teacher O RGAS M I C M E DITATI O N is a partnered sexual practice that is not quite sex. During OM, a stroker, who is usually a man, strokes the upper left-hand quadrant of a woman’s clitoris for 15 minutes. It’s an up-down stroke only. No circling, no inserting a finger in the vagina. The reason for this specific spot is it has the most nerve endings, and stroking it helps to thaw the sensation or emotion that can be trapped in a woman’s body. OM gives people the connection they’re hoping for in regular sex. Unfortunately, because regular sex is patterned on masculine orgasm, this doesn’t happen frequently. In feminine orgasm, which both people can access through OM, they can experience that deeper connection. OM is absolutely not foreplay. While people can get turned on during it, it’s actually about increasing and honoring your sexual energy. This practice is often referred to as yoga for your orgasm. You’re doing a practice that increases the power and potency of your orgasm. What do men get out of it? They become more sensitive to their own feelings and sensations. They are able to interact with women in a way that they couldn’t before, because they’re more confident about what’s going on for women.
SURE THINGS
As for women, the practice gives them a way to practice asking for what they want and experience actually getting it, which is revolutionary for most women. It also reduces their exp expectations of having the same experi experience that a m porn star is having, most of which is acting. actual get deCreepy guys actually prac creeped by this practice. I have personally de-creeped quite a few happ men. Creepiness happens when a guy doesn’t approve of his own deha a feeling, sire for women. So he has but he’s trying to sup suppress that pro feeling, which produces the dissonance bet between what presentin and the he’s presenting energy he’s projecting. That’s what creepiness is is, that d dissona nce. I coac OM, and teach and coach that’s how I help guys accept ar different their desires. They are people afterward. OM is for any human who wants does to practice. It doesn’t matter whether your partner is anyone t h at you’re rom a nt ica l ly i nm challenge volved with. Part of my n is helpin g people u ndersta nd that it’s OK to break the rules a little bit to have a dif different and more sat isf y i n g k i nd of l i fe. —AS TOLD TO ANNE FORD
“Creepy guys actually get de-creeped by this practice,” Davis says of orgasmic meditation. ò PARKER BRIGHT
Ñ Keep up to date on the go at chicagoreader.com/agenda.
THURSDAY 18
FRIDAY 19
SATURDAY 20
SUNDAY 21
MONDAY 22
TUESDAY 23
WEDNESDAY 24
M Ste lla r Speakea sy The latest installment in the “After Dark” series adopts a roaring 20s theme, featuring cocktails from Koval Distillery, music from Lakeside Pride Jazz Ensemble, and science demos exploring discoveries from the 20s and 30s. 6 PM, Adler Planetarium, 1300 S. Lake Shore, adlerplanetarium. org, $20.
* Winte r Fo rmal Slip into your fanciest getup (or don’t) for the Empty Bottle’s first ever Winter Formal Dance, featuring Red Francis, the Gnar Wave Rangers, Modern Vices, and Joe Bordenaro. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, emptybottle. com, $10.
ã Up pers and Downers Join Good Beer Hunting’s Michael Kiser and World Barista Championship winner Stephen Morrissey, along with Intelligentsia Coffee, for a day full of coffee, beer, and coffee beers. 11 AM, Thalia Hall, 1227 W. 18th, thaliahallchicago.com, $55.
Chicago Chili Take down Cooks from across the city go head-to-head to see who makes the best chili. Guests can sample them all and vote for the winner. 1 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, thetakedowns.com, $20.
F Arguments & Grievances Zach Peterson’s debate series enlists the city’s underground comedians to argue about heated issues such as “Hugs vs. Drugs” and “Dr. Dre vs. Dr. Seuss.” Tonight’s battle features Adam Burke, Marty Derosa, and Kristin Toomey. 8 PM, Up Comedy Club, 230 W. North, argumentsandgrievances.com, $12.
E The B ig Year The Field Museum hosts a screening of the bird-watching comedy. Joshua Engel, a research assistant in the museum’s bird division, discusses the film. 7 PM, Music Box, 3733 N. Southport, musicboxtheatre. com, $10.
Ch icago Pit Stop Rescue Paw- ty A fund-raiser for Chicago Pit Stop Rescue. Guests are encouraged to bring donations like dog beds, collars, and treats in exchange for a bag of tokens and free drinks. 6 PM, Emporium Arcade Bar, 1366 N. Milwaukee, emporiumchicago.com. F
8 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 18, 2016
CITY LIFE
BOBBY SIMS
Read Ben Joravsky’s columns throughout the week at chicagoreader.com.
POLITICS
More money, more problems The mayor’s council allies bury a TIF investigation. By BEN JORAVSKY
I
t was one step forward and, alas, another step forward on the road to financial ruin. In other words, we need to talk about what happened in the City Council last week. It seems the mayor and his council allies remain defiantly determined to waste money, raise taxes, and plunge Chicago Public Schools into bankruptcy. Good thing you didn’t elect Chuy Garcia— right, voters? Before I tell you what happened in the City Council, for context, let’s start with my latest obsession and the first of these two recent steps towards financial ruin—the $110 million dollars we, the taxpayers, recently paid Wall Street lenders. As I explained last week, Mayor Emanuel recently agreed to give Wall Street lenders $110 million in fees—which will come out of your property taxes—as part of a deal to lend CPS $725 million to pay off old debt. In effect, we get $615 million but have to pay back $725 million.
The mayor had to pay that $110 million—what lenders call an “original issue discount”—because the CPS’s credit rating is shot. And the reason the CPS’s credit rating is shot is that the mayor doesn’t have enough money on hand to adequately fund the schools. (Well, that and Governor Rauner seems determined to force CPS to go bankrupt.) That brings us to the second recent step to financial ruin: the City Council debate on the TIF surplus. Yes, my oldest obsession. Yes, I’m writing another column about TIFs. I really don’t want to. In fact, I’m ready to cut a deal with Mayor Rahm in which I agree to stop writing about TIFs if he agrees to stop abusing them. We’ll see who blinks first. The TIF surplus comes from the surcharge the mayor adds to your property tax bill to pay for his tax increment financing program. That’s the economic development program that’s intended to fight blight in poor neighborhoods but winds up mostly further developing rich ones.
The mayor can’t spend all the money the TIFs generate each year, so hundreds of millions of dollars get stashed in special TIF bank accounts. The mayor won’t tell us exactly how much we have in the TIF accounts—he doesn’t want any more pressure to spend that money to bail out the schools. But in an effort to shed some light on this matter, Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa recently introduced a nonbinding resolution calling on the city to use the TIF surplus to “mitigate any [CPS] program cuts, layoffs of staff, and reductions in services.” In other words, to use the TIF slush fund to pay for the schools. That makes sense. Only a lunatic would expose us to the mercy of carnivorous Wall Street lenders—and $110 million fees—if we could instead fund our schools with money in the slush fund. Ramirez-Rosa got 34 aldermen to sign on as cosponsors of his resolution. And he convinced Alderman Carrie Austin, chair of the Budget Committee, to hold a February 1 hearing on the matter. Then Ramirez-Rosa rounded up experts to testify that it might be a good idea to spend the TIF surplus—or at least to tally up exactly what we have there. So we don’t have to pay $110 million in “original issue discount” fees on any deal in the future. On the day of the hearing, the mayor sent his budget director, Alex Holt, to testify against the resolution. Holt’s the bureaucrat who’s been assigned the unenviable task of trying to convince people that the TIF program isn’t a scam. Which is sort of like trying to convince Chicagoans that the mayor didn’t bury the Laquan McDonald video for political reasons. Anyway, before the hearing, Holt distributed a fact sheet that said Emanuel had freed up about $113 million in TIF slush this year—of which about $60 million goes to CPS. Yes, that’s far shy of the $110 million that CPS just paid to Wall Street lenders. But you can’t expect the mayor to treat low-income schoolchildren like Wall Street lenders until those little kiddies start kicking in some campaign contributions. Anyway, the scene was set last Tuesday for a monumental debate on the TIF slush fund. But Austin announced she would be deferring the matter to the Finance Committee, chaired by Alderman Ed Burke, where it would likely die. I don’t know why Austin—an especially loyal
mayoral ally—deferred the resolution. She didn’t return a call. But I am happy to report the council independents didn’t just roll over. When Austin announced she was deferring the resolution, Alderman Rick Munoz said he objected. That set off a debate that I will paraphrase for one and all . . . Austin: Hearing no objections, the matter’s been transferred to the Finance Committee.
Only a lunatic would expose us to the mercy of carnivorous Wall Street lenders if we could instead fund our schools with money in the slush fund.
Munoz: You can’t say you hear no objections if I’m objecting. Austin: I’ll say whatever I want—because I have the gavel. Munoz: Well, when you put it that way . . . As a compromise, Austin agreed to have a roll call vote . . . on whether she should allow Munoz a roll call vote on sending the matter to finance. Hope you followed all that, because I’m moving on even if you didn’t. The vote was ten to nine against allowing Munoz to have a roll call vote. With that, the resolution was sent to die in the Finance Committee, thus guaranteeing that the mayor holds on to his TIF slush while we get to pay more of that “original issue discount” fees to lenders. Wall Street wins, Chicago taxpayers lose—again!! “It was like the wild west out there,” says Ramirez-Rosa, who’s trying really hard not to say anything too nasty about Austin. She sits next to him in the council chambers. Having completely depressed everyone with this account, I will now try to cheer you up. As far I as I can remember—and I’d be the guy who’d know—the Munoz roll call vote was as close as the City Council’s ever come to taking a stand against the ongoing roughly $400-million-a-year TIF scam. Hallelujah! It’s baby steps to reform. They don’t call it incremental for nothing. v
v @joravben FEBRUARY 18, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 9
RACHAL DUGGAN
CITY LIFE
TRANSPORTATION
I can’t drive I-55
Will Rauner’s plan to widen the Stevenson ease congestion? By JOHN GREENFIELD
F
or all his warts, Governor Bruce Rauner deserves credit for putting the brakes on the Illiana Tollway, a pet project of his predecessor Pat Quinn. That $1.3 billion highway boondoggle, proposed for a corridor roughly ten miles south of the metro region, would’ve been funded by a public-private partnership (P3) that would have put Illinois taxpayers on the hook for some $500 million in borrowing. In comparison, Rauner’s announcement earlier this month that he wants to use P3 funding to build new toll lanes on the Stevenson Expressway, aka I-55, sounded downright fiscally responsible. The state estimates it would cost $425 million to build the new lanes, less than a third of the price of the Illiana. Work on the lanes could start as early as 2017, with completion by 2019. The Metropolitan Planning Council, a local transportation and development think tank that opposed the Illiana, has applauded this project as sound urban planning. But MPC’s close ally the Active Transportation Alliance, which advocates for better conditions for walking, biking, and transit, has come out strongly against Rauner’s plan,
10 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 18, 2016
arguing that the solution to regional traffic woes is to give people alternatives to driving alone, not add road capacity. The Stevenson project would cover the 25mile stretch between the Veterans Memorial Tollway (I-355) and the Dan Ryan Expressway (I-90/94). The state says this segment of I-55 carries roughly 170,000 vehicles a day and is plagued by long, unreliable travel times. At least one “managed lane” would be added to the Stevenson in each direction. A likely scenario would allow solo drivers to pay a toll to bypass traffic jams on the regular lanes. Pace buses and carpoolers could use the new lanes at no additional charge. The project’s price tag would be relatively modest thanks to the Stevenson’s existing wide paved shoulders, which are used for Pace’s successful bus-on-shoulder program. Converting the shoulders to lanes that can handle more vehicles and higher speeds would require little or no land acquisition. The new lanes would employ “congestion pricing” to ensure that traffic flows smoothly—the fee would go up or down according to demand, based on the number of vehicles in the regular and express lanes. As the
expressway becomes more crowded, higher tolls would reduce the number of drivers entering the express lanes. In 2010 MPC conducted a study for the state tollway authority that looked at the possible effects of building managed lanes on I-55. The report predicted drivers who pay the toll would shave 22 minutes off a morning rush-hour commute on the 25-mile stretch. Assuming the toll prices are well calibrated to reflect demand, drivers who pay would be rewarded with faster, jam-free trips. That makes it more likely that an investor could be paid back via toll revenue than would have been the case with the half-baked Illiana. In a blog post last week, MPC vice president Peter Skosey cheered Rauner’s proposal. Skosey noted that adding capacity to I-55 is a top priority in the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning’s Go to 2040 regional plan. He also applauded the inclusion of congestion pricing, noting that expanding the roadway without it would cause new lanes to fill up with traffic. But Active Trans’s leadership thinks adding new automobile lanes to the Stevenson, even managed ones, would just make the region more car-dependent. In a post last week, director Ron Burke argued the state should instead convert existing roadway to carpool lanes and bus lanes, improve Metra service, and use transportation demand management strategies to give travelers options besides driving solo. “New highway capacity in urban areas like ours leads to more driving, more congestion, and development patterns over time that are often not conducive to walking, biking and transit,” Burke wrote. He also predicted that the additional car lanes would lead to more traffic jams on the surface roads leading to and from the Stevenson. Skosey says he doesn’t have a problem with the position taken by Active Trans. “Their mission is to promote alternative forms of transportation, so I think they’re being consistent with their mission,” he said. “But you can’t move everything by transit and bicycles,” he added. “Things have to move by cars and trucks as well.” Skosey conceded that, even if tolled lanes are built, the free lanes would likely remain as congested as they are today. He also acknowledged that MPC’s 2010 study didn’t consider the impact on the surrounding roads. “We have not done any analysis that
disproves Active Trans’s statement on this,” he said. Burke harbors no grudge against MPC for its stance in favor of the highway expansion.
“Adding highway capacity to fight congestion is like loosening one’s belt to fight obesity.” — Active Transportation Alliance director Ron Burke
“What it boils down to is whether one wants to concede that it’s inevitable the Stevenson would be expanded,” he said. “There’s an old saying: Adding highway capacity to fight congestion is like loosening one’s belt to fight obesity.” Burke argued that it would be much cheaper to eliminate 5 percent of the car trips on the Stevenson than build 5 percent more capacity. For example, Burke noted that many metropolitan areas around the country have multiple “transportation management associations,” nonprofits that help workers access large employment centers that aren’t directly accessible by transit. However, the Chicago region has just one: the TMA of Lake Cook. It manages the popular Shuttle Bug program, providing Pace bus service between Metra stations and job centers in northern Cook County and Lake County. Other TMA strategies include on-demand rides for employees working late, encouraging employers to let workers telecommute, discounted transit passes, and carpool and bike commuting encouragement. “We could certainly be eliminating some demand on the Stevenson through those strategies,” Burke said. “The bottom line is, one person and a briefcase in a car is an amazingly wasteful use of public space and a very effective way to create traffic jams.” v
John Greenfield edits the transportation news website Streetsblog Chicago. v @greenfieldjohn
CITY LIFE THE CONTRARIAN
The ‘American heartland’ shouldn’t define the midwest
Why should the Great Plains be synonymous with the midwest? Where are the skyscrapers and nonwhite people? ò WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
By DANIEL KAY HERTZ
Y
ou know what the midwest is?” Kanye West asked in 2004’s “Jesus Walks.” Last month, Vox answered: “South Dakota and Kansas.” Claiming his bona fides as a native of the warmer Dakota, Todd VanDerWerff argued that the entire Great Plains region—the Dakotas, Kansas, and Nebraska included—ought to be understood as prototypically midwestern. With the obvious caveat that there’s no objectively correct answer to the question, I’m going to say that VanDerWerff is completely wrong—and in ways that go to the very core not only of how we understand ourselves as midwesterners, but how Americans understand their country as a whole. The Great Plains, VanDerWerff acknowledges, might constitute a “subregion” of the midwest. But “while there are some interesting geographical differences,” it concludes, “the cultural differences are relatively minor. A small town in South Dakota and a small town in Iowa are virtually the same place.” This may in fact be true. I have no idea, since I’ve never been to a small town in Iowa and haven’t set foot in South Dakota since Michael Jordan was playing for the Bulls. I’ve spent over two decades living in the midwest, in two different states, and have family in two
more—and yet somehow managed to have zero experience with the cultural touchstones that supposedly define my region. Fortunately, Vox is here to explain: “The midwest is . . . the states where agriculture was, historically, the major industry. . . . They’re states where the dominant religion is some branch of Protestant—often Lutheran or Methodist. And they’re states where Scandinavians and other northern Europeans settled in droves.” Unless you’ve never left Andersonville, this is an odd description to try to apply to Chicago, which VanDerWerff acknowledges as the midwest’s capital. Agriculture is historically important here—in the form of industrial meatpacking and LaSalle Street futures trading—but so are steel, railroads, and corporate headquarters. Only about one in ten people in the Chicago metro area identify as some kind of mainline Protestant, according to the Pew Research Center; about a third are Catholic, and another third belong to evangelical Christian denominations, black Christian denominations, or non-Christian religions. And for the last hundred years at least, the cultural fabric of most of the city has been dominated by people of eastern European descent, African-Americans from the south, and, over the last few generations
in particular, Latin American immigrants and their children and grandchildren. And it’s not just Chicago. It’s hard to recognize Detroit, Milwaukee, Saint Louis, Cleveland, or any number of other midwestern cities in VanDerWerff’s portrait. His description of the midwest doesn’t reflect most of the midwest’s major population centers. Which means he isn’t really describing the midwest at all. It sounds more like “the heartland,” which is a sort of fictionalized version of the midwest without cities, and especially without black people or immigrants. (Or maybe I should say a certain kind of immigrant, since obviously Swedes are no more native to central North America than Poles or Mexicans.) The heartland is a quasi-mythical home of Protestant virtues. It’s an alternate origin story that takes away first claim on American-ness from the more urban coastal colonies (or, God forbid, Native Americans). It’s more an idea than a real regional identity, and one that exists at least as much for the benefit of other Americans as for midwesterners. Of course, the midwest is home to plenty of heartland-type communities as Vox describes them. But you might argue that what is really distinctively midwestern is the friction between them and our industrial cities. Unlike the east coast, our urban centers sit in a vast
ocean of land; unlike the western half of the country, that land is relatively well populated with farmers and small towns. The south, for its part, has the vast yet populated rural areas, but had no analogue to the midwest’s cities until well after World War II. As a result, it was in midwestern states that the tension was most acute between the people who imagined their home to be in the heartland and the people who were were seen as grubby, ethnically problematic residents of urban areas. That tension has played out both over long distances, in the political polarization between metropolis and hinterland, as well as over shorter distances, as urbanization and suburbanization brought the heartland from the countryside to the subdivision. It’s not a coincidence that Milwaukee could be a capital of American socialism while the rest of Wisconsin elected red-baiting Joseph McCarthy. It’s not a coincidence that midwestern cities experienced particularly severe white flight, or urban renewal that left city centers unrecognizable. It’s not a coincidence that this region’s cities are the most segregated in the country. But replacing the midwest with the heartland papers over all of this history. The appeal of that move for conservatives both in and out of the midwest is obvious, since the truth makes it harder to use nostalgia as a political rallying cry. (When Donald Trump says he’ll make America great again, how many of his supporters imagine the heartland?) But the heartland can appeal to coastal liberals, too, as a kind of foil to their self-identity as exceptionally cosmopolitan and urban. Whatever the reason, the heartland ends up positioning rural whiteness as not just the midwestern but the American default. Which, to get back to Vox, is the problem with making the Great Plains states the template for what “midwest” means. Of course, it’s not as if the Great Plains begin and end with white farmers either—that would require pretending that Native Americans, in particular, don’t exist—but it’s still much easier to apply the shorthand “agricultural, Protestant, northern European” to, say, Nebraska, than to Michigan. Because in a way, the midwest is a kind of genuine American heartland, with its history of colonial frontiers, boomtowns, immigration, racism, and cultural pluralism. If that’s not what the rest of the country sees when it looks at us, that says more about them than it does about the midwest. v
v @DanielKayHertz FEBRUARY 18, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 11
THE SCULPTURE AND THE STRUGGLE OF
GARLAND MARTIN TAYLOR With Conversation Piece, the south-side artist delivers a monumental response to Chicago’s gun violence. By NISSA RHEE
L
ast summer, Garland Martin Taylor Jr. drove 5,500 miles across the country with a 400-pound stainless-steel revolver in the back of his pickup truck. It’s not an actual, working revolver. Rather, it’s a sculpture, titled Conversation Piece—Taylor calls it a “war memorial”—made of scrap metal provided by a south-side manufacturing company. Welded onto the trigger are faces, which are meant to be anonymous. Stamped on the barrel, grip, and cylinder of the revolver are the names of people age 20 and younger who’ve been killed by gun violence in the neighborhoods surrounding Taylor’s home in Hyde Park. Each entry features the victim’s name, age, and date of death: brian weekly, 18 years old, 7 june 2014; anferneé durant, 19 years old,
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23 june 2015; arianna gibson, 6 years old, 7 aug 2011. There are 100 names in all. Taylor, who is 46, applies these names to the gun through a technique in which he uses a mallet to hammer “stamps” onto the metal; unlike everyday stamps, on which the letters face outward, the indented marks are pushed into the base. The font and styling of the names resemble military dog tags. Looking at the sculpture is like “being held at gunpoint to think about gun violence,” Taylor says. “It’s raw.” He decided to drive Conversation Piece across America in order to encourage people to think more about the epidemic of gun violence, especially in black communities in Chicago. The title, Conversation Piece, refers to the discussions people have around the gun, but it’s also a play on words—a conversation about peace.
Taylor works out of a studio in McKinley Park. In early January, he was there, imprinting more letters onto Conversation Piece—“Little Rock, AK,” to note where he last took the sculpture. Each hit of his mallet rang out like a dull bell. He was preparing Conversation Piece for display at the “Black Creativity Juried Art Exhibition” at the Museum of Science and Industry, which ends this Sunday, February 21. It was a Friday morning, and the parking lot outside Taylor’s studio was mostly empty. But as soon as the sculpture emerged, people began to appear. One man asked Taylor how long it took him to make the piece. Two thousand hours, Taylor said. Another admired the faces on the trigger. “The minute I put it on my truck, my private life is gone,” Taylor
says of the giant revolver. “Everywhere I go it becomes a public art installation. It’s nice to see what a public sculpture means in society. Otherwise you put it in some park or public space, and unless you’re sitting there at the park, you don’t get to witness how other people engage with it.” Taylor stopped at Nana in Bridgeport for breakfast and parked Conversation Piece outside. Traffic on South Halsted Street slowed down as people tried to get a look at the sculpture. The Ninth District Chicago Police Department is only a block away, and two squad cars circled around toward the truck. In Washington, D.C., last summer, Taylor was stopped for hours by the Secret Service when he parked outside the White House. After the agents were sure that the gun was
not a working weapon, one of them told Taylor he had attended the funeral of Hadiya Pendleton with Michelle Obama last year. On this day, the police left Taylor alone. But a beat-up Subaru pulled up behind the truck and a man in his 60s got out to examine the sculpture. He’d just come from taking his mother to the dentist, he said, and “just had to stop and see this.” When he learned that the names on the barrel are those of children killed by guns, he fell silent. “Oh no, that’s what it’s representing?” he said. “I just got chills now.” The man’s reaction is not unique. “Two things I’ve learned: people love guns, and people hate stories of babies being killed,” Taylor says. “What do we do with that?” That rumination sums up Taylor’s evolution as an artist, from creating abstract work that explores death to conceptual work that engages with the subject head-on.
T
aylor was born in 1969 at Mercy Hospital in Chicago. He grew up in the Lake Meadows apartment complex in Bronzeville with his father, Garland Martin Taylor Sr., mother Nedra Louise, and an older sister and younger brother. He enjoyed painting, and he traces his aptitude for sculpture to a love of model cars and rockets. “Even as a kid, I’d have this
itty-bitty studio on my grandmother’s dining room table,” he says. “I was making all of these pieces. My art has always been about lots and lots of tiny pieces that come together.” Taylor remembers the south side of his youth as being much different than the one he lives in today. “I never worried about gun violence,” he says. “We didn’t worry about getting shot.” Nevertheless, weapons helped feed his family. Garland Sr., a former cook in the army, was an independent businessman who made and lost a fortune selling military goods in the Middle East in the 1970s. Though he knew little about his father’s work while growing up, Taylor says he has been able to figure it out thanks to a trove of correspondence and receipts Garland Sr. left behind. According to these documents, the elder Taylor sold everything from guns to helicopters to cooking oil, and his clients included Major General Adnan Khairallah, Saddam Hussein’s cousin and brother-in-law, who was named minister of defense in Iraq after Saddam became president in 1979. “God knows how many guns my dad sold and how many of those guns took other lives,” Taylor says. “That haunts me.” After years of struggling with hypertension and kidney disease, Garland Sr. passed away in 1983 from a heart attack. Taylor was 13 years old. The family was left in debt and could no longer afford the apartment in Lake Meadows.
Taylor at work on an as-yet-untitled piece in his McKinley Park studio. “The seatless chair represents what used to be there,” he says. “It’s a piece about memory and compassion.” ò JONATHAN GIBBY
His mother moved the kids to a smaller place in Hyde Park and took a job teaching children with learning disabilities at Von Humboldt Elementary School on the west side. Taylor enrolled in Kenwood High School, but it would be more than a decade before he decided to become a professional artist. Despite encountering some sculptors as a child—he met Richard Hunt while growing up in Bronzeville and Virginio Ferrari as a teen in Hyde Park—art seemed more like a hobby to Taylor than a career path. When Taylor graduated from high school in 1987, he headed to Los Angeles with his best friend, Stephen Gazaway. The two had dreams of becoming stunt drivers for the movies, but didn’t have any contacts or experience. “I went and knocked on the gate at some studio and said I want to become a stunt driver, and the guy told me to go away,” Taylor says with a laugh. “Then I was stuck in LA.” In need of money, Gazaway joined the air force and Taylor enlisted in the navy. In January 1988, he went to boot camp in Orlando and then was sent to the Naval Air Station in Pen-
sacola, Florida. His time in the navy was shortlived, however: after just 11 months, Taylor broke his left leg while running, the result of a recurring stress fracture he sustained while working as a lifeguard in high school. He was honorably discharged and went to live with an aunt in El Cerrito, just north of Berkeley, California. Taylor decided to try his hand at construction; the Loma Prieta earthquake had hit northern California in 1989, and there was a big demand for plaster repair. After reading a book at the library on plastering, Taylor wrote a bad check and bought some knives, hammers, and other small tools he thought he would need. He got a job repairing the historic H.J. Heinz Co. Factory in Berkeley, which was then being used as a business center. It was there that he first thought about becoming a sculptor. “I was plastering the pillars and walls, and one day I said, ‘Oh cool, I’m a sculptor,’ ” he recalls. “It was a joke. But thinking back, Richard Hunt was my first example of an artist, and it was natural that I would think ‘sculptor’ before ‘painter.’ ” Feeling homesick, he moved back to Chicago in 1990. He continued working full-time in construction, but started thinking of himself as more of an artisan than tradesman. He did restoration work and custom mosaics on houses and businesses in Hyde Park. At home, he had a small studio where he painted “really bad” figurative paintings and pastels. J
FEBRUARY 18, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 13
From left: Taylor with an unidentified admirer in Carbondale, Illinois; Conversation Piece in Taylor’s workshop; detail of the victims’ names ò COURTESY THE ARTIST (CARBONDALE); NISSA RHEE
Garland Martin Taylor continued from 13
In 2001, Taylor decided to pursue art more seriously. He enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and earned his bachelor’s degree, in visual and critical studies with a concentration in sculpture, in 2005 and his master’s degree in the same fields in 2007. There, he studied under Ferrari and Preston Jackson, who introduced him to the scrap-metal material he still works with today. It was at SAIC that Taylor first began exploring death in his artwork. For both his undergraduate and master’s thesis projects he created mixed-media sculptures and sound installations about his father’s passing. He says that he had never properly mourned his father, and the pieces were his attempt to better understand the man with whom he shares his name. “I spend all of my time with dead people,” Taylor says. “I’m always chasing the dead.”
A
fter graduating, Taylor continued creating large-scale, abstract sculptures, but he experienced a turning point while working at the DuSable Museum of African American History in 2011, when he came across the art of Henry Jackson Lewis, the first
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African-American political cartoonist. Taylor was fascinated by Lewis’s work and started researching his life. A self-taught artist, Lewis had been born a slave in the 1830s. As a freedman, Lewis headed the art department at the Indianapolis-based Freeman, the nation’s first illustrated African-American newspaper. Taylor says that Lewis and other black artists who fought to “subvert the negative images in the media” continue to exert a big influence on his work. In 2014, the Arkansas History Commission awarded Taylor a Curtis H. Sykes Memorial Grant for African-American history in Arkansas to further his study of Lewis. “African-American art as a whole has always been functional,” he says. “It has tried to advance the cause of social justice.” Taylor also received a 2014-’15 Mellon fellowship at the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry at the University of Chicago. Along with political science professor Cathy Cohen and documentary filmmaker Orlando Bagwell, Taylor taught an interdisciplinary course, the Politics and Art of Black Death, in the spring quarter of 2015. The three also led workshops exploring death and violence in black communities with law enforcement officers like Sergeant Heather Taylor of Saint Louis’s Ethical Society of Police
and community leaders like Father Michael Pfleger of south-side church Saint Sabina. As part of his Mellon fellowship, Taylor decided to make a sculpture that addressed some of the topics they covered. Up until that point, most of Taylor’s work had been abstract—he decided to create “a piece that was engaged with reality, a piece that was socially engaged.” Cohen says Taylor more than succeeded in that objective with Conversation Piece. “It is a spectacular piece because it is recognizable,” she says. “When you’re hanging out with Garland and he has the piece in his truck, people come up to you to ask questions. In that process, you see all the ways in which violence and death affects people’s lives and the different stories they tell about loved ones lost either in death to violence or lost to incarceration because of violence. I think the stories that are being told on an individual level build out to a bigger picture.” One reason Taylor says he decided to take the sculpture on the road last summer was to build a bigger picture about gun violence and to make the work a truly public installation. To fund the trip, he sold some of his sculptures and enlisted help from his past patrons, his
wife, and his father-in-law. He stayed mostly with friends as he drove through 12 states, and paid for only two hotel rooms during his fourweek tour. On the road, people opened up and shared stories that still linger with him to this day. In Carbondale, Illinois, a teen showed him the 2010 funeral program and memorial T-shirt for his cousin—Brandon, aka “Juice Man”—who had been shot in Chicago. Later, in Brevard, North Carolina, an older man named Frank Hardy lifted his shirt to show Taylor the scars from five bullet wounds he sustained when he was shot by someone who mistook him for someone else. The experience was harder than Taylor could have ever imagined. “I never thought about the consequence, what I call ‘emotional recoil,’” he says. “Try it. Take an eight-hour day and read about these deaths and research every aspect of them, how they’re connected, how they’re quote-unquote ‘gang related.’ It’s tough. The more intricate the gun got, it was just me procrastinating the pain of thinking about these dead children.” After Taylor returned to Chicago last August, he was emotionally and physically drained. He had cried for three straight days on the trip, thinking about all of the kids on his piece and the people he had met on the road. Taylor dropped Conversation Piece off at his studio and decided to take a break from the project. Just two weeks later, 25-year-old Reginald Sanson was shot in front of Taylor’s home in Hyde Park. Taylor’s 11-year-old son heard the gunshots, and they soon saw the flash of a police car’s lights. Through the window, they could hear Sanson’s mother crying. “It was the crying of that mother, hearing her wailing and wailing as the ambulance was moving away with the body,” Taylor says, that renewed his resolve. Taylor spent more than a year working on Conversation Piece. While he says that he’s finished adding names to the gun, the project is far from done. He hopes to take the sculpture on the road again and to continue having conversations about gun violence. “The more I get around with the gun, the more people are asking the question: What’s going to be done to stop this?” he says. “Sooner or later someone will have an answer. That was the whole point of the piece, to get out and have people ask that question.” v “BLACK CREATIVITY JURIED ART EXHIBITION” Through Sun 2/21, Museum of Science and Industry, 5700 S. Lake Shore, 773-684-1414, msichicago.org.
v @nissarhee
READER RECOMMENDED
b ALL AGES
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ò COURTESY THE ARTIST
ARTS & CULTURE
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COMEDY VISUAL ART
The multicolored mirror By IONIT BEHAR
Tony Tasset, Artists Monument, 2014
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ò COURTESY THE ARTIST/KAVI GUPTA
hen people visit the Bean in Millennium Park, the first thing they see is themselves. The large, warped bodies and surroundings reflecting off the surface of the sculpture are a significant part of the artwork’s appeal. Tony Tasset’s Artists Monument—which will be unveiled this Saturday, February 20, in Grant Park, in a ceremony presented by the Chicago Park District, the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, and Kavi Gupta Gallery—is also informed by self-absorption. The artist has described the Artists Monument as a “narcissism magnet” because, as he explains, it is made by an artist, about artists, for artists. Artists Monument debuted at the 2014 Whitney Biennial; instead of being displayed inside the museum in lower Manhattan, Tasset chose to present his work outside, as a public art piece, in Hudson River Park. Red, orange, blue, yellow, green, and purple acrylic panels are assembled seemingly at random on two shipping containers stacked on top of each other, forming a horizontal monolith
that measures 80 feet long and eight feet high. The names of 392,485 artists, arranged alphabetically, are etched in white on the panels, and range from relatively unknown figures, such as Max Hein and Ann War, to predictable canonical ones, such as Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. (Most of the names were taken from an online database Tasset elects not to identify, a reminder of the data-driven modern world.) By celebrating the creative work of a diverse group of artists, Tasset attempts to flatten any hierarchy that exists among them. This act is in some ways an extension of his role as a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he has taught for 27 years, specifically with regards to his relationship with artist-students who are just beginning their careers. In its new location on the southwest side of Grant Park, on Michigan Avenue near Ninth Street, Artists Monument is surrounded by contrasting public sculptures and places them in sharp relief. On one side, a few feet away, is Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Alex-
ander Phimister Proctor’s somber monument to Civil War general John A. Logan. From the south corner, it looks like Logan is riding his horse on top of Tasset’s colorful containers. On the other side is Polish sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz’s dreary Agora, 106 ninefoot-tall headless torsos made of cast iron. This juxtaposition makes the placement of Artists Monument seem strategic, a rainbow bursting out of dun metal. Artists Monument honors not just artists, but their creativity—to make something new, to raise questions, to call attention to what is possible. The success of the Bean suggests that such lively, interactive public art is what pedestrians truly want to experience. Tasset’s polychromatic, engaging, and buoyant sculpture advances a cheerful celebration of imagination rather than a mournful memorial honoring a tragic loss. Artists Monument is hopeful, an attribute missing from too many public works. v R ARTISTS MONUMENT Unveiling Sat 2/20, 3 PM, Grant Park, Michigan near Ninth. F
No need for these ladies to apologize
IF TODAY’S WOMAN WERE LOST in space, would she care more about having enough food to survive or having enough laptop battery to finish Parks and Recreation on Netflix? How should you deal with a sexual attraction to Bigfoot? And why do guys dressed as Waldo from Where’s Waldo? think it’s OK to be a total creep to women at Halloween parties? The sketch show I Think, Therefore I’m Sorry searches for the answers to these pressing questions. Cat Ring, Connie Oshana, Katie Tyner, and Yasmine Baharloo make up the cast of the female-centric revue currently showing at the newly opened Crowd Theater. The venue’s sense of humor extends to its Yelp reviews, which claim the storefront theater has the best hot wings in town (it doesn’t actually serve any food). That playful attitude carries over to the stage in I Think, Therefore I’m Sorry, which opens with a rap about “fuckboys” throughout the ages. The quartet continues with a string of sketches that range from completely ridiculous to painfully realistic—a scene portraying a phone call between an overbearing mother and her daughter, in which the former wants the latter to be insanely successful while living at home, made me cringe and laugh at the same time. Plus, the title shrewdly alludes to an attitude that’s all too common among women these days. The show demonstrates the high level of talent appearing in small theaters across the city right now. Ring, Oshana, Tyner, and Baharloo exhibit range, great character work, and exceptional comedic timing, all without taking themselves—or the plight of the modern woman—too seriously. —BRIANNA WELLEN R I THINK, THEREFORE I’M SORRY Through
2/25: Thu 8 PM, Crowd Theater, 3935 N. Broadway, thecrowdtheater.com, $5.
FEBRUARY 18, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 15
BASED ON THE NOVEL BY ROBERTO BOLAﾃ前 ADAPTED AND DIRECTED BY ROBERT FALLS AND SETH BOCKLEY
2666
Sprawling and expansive, 2666 is an epic, once-in-a-lifetime theatrical experience. Traversing from Europe to Mexico and back, 2666 delivers a panoramic view of the nature of evil in the 20th century. RUNNING TIME IS FOUR-AND-A-HALF HOURS, PLUS THREE 15 TO 20 MINUTE INTERMISSIONS. FOR MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY
EXTENDED BY POPULAR PULAR DEMAND THROUGH THR MARCH 20 Tickets start at $25 DISCOVER A CELEBRATION OF LATINA|O ARTISTS GoodmanTheatre.org/LCelebration
312.443.3800 | GoodmanTheatre.org GROUPS OF 10+ ONLY: 312.443.3820
Principal Foundation Support of 2666
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WHAT GREAT THEATER SHOULD BE
ARTS & CULTURE Eric Lynch, Alejandra Escalante, Demetrios Troy, Juan Francisco Villa, and Yadira Correa ò LIZ LAUREN
THEATER
Epic, eerie, and ultimately unfathomable
By ZAC THOMPSON
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oberto Bolaño’s 2666 isn’t what you’d call an easy read. And I ought to know—as of this writing, I’ve gotten only about halfway through it. Published in Spanish following the Chilean novelist’s death in 2003 and translated into English by Natasha Wimmer in 2008, the book is epic and eerie, at times the sort of nightmare vision you’d expect from Franz Kafka if he were Latin American and read the newspaper. Its subject matter is disturbing, its mysteries often unsolvable, its digressions plentiful, and its page count just shy of 900. As when tackling many of the intimidating, cinderblock-thick masterpieces of literature (Moby-Dick, Ulysses, and Infinite Jest are others in that club), readers of 2666 can be assured of two things: (1) they will be asked to ponder the world’s imponderables and (2) they’ll get headaches from concentrating too hard. One of Bolaño’s own characters describes such books as forms of combat—“when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench.” That all sounds right up Robert Falls’s alley. The longtime artistic director of Goodman Theatre is not one to shy away from daunting texts or recoil from the aromas of rot and ruin.
In his dark, violent, and sexed-up takes on Shakespeare’s King Lear in 2006 and Measure for Measure in 2013, he dove right in. For the Goodman’s ambitious, almost inevitably uneven five-and-a-half-hour distillation of 2666, Falls shares adapting and directing credits with Seth Bockley, whose previous page-tostage work includes scripts inspired by the fiction of Nathanael West and George Saunders. Here, Falls and Bockley, their team of designers, and a cast of 15 have set themselves the difficult task of bringing onstage the teeming, sprawling metropolis of Santa Teresa, Bolaño’s fictional stand-in for Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Though located farther west along the U.S. border than the real-life city, Santa Teresa has all of Juárez’s problems—factories with unsafe working conditions, vicious drug cartels, and scores of unsolved murders involving young female victims, many of them factory employees. In five acts corresponding to the parts of Bolaño’s book, Santa Teresa is the desert sun around which dozens of interconnected lives orbit. Among the many locals and outof-towners we meet are four European academics, a literature professor and his teenage daughter, a New York reporter covering a boxing match, the police detectives investigating the murders, and an elderly German novelist—
not to mention a cavalcade of secondary artists, thugs, do-gooders, lost souls, obsessives, and creeps. It’s not the sort of story where all the parts fit neatly together. In fact, chaos and destruction are always lying in wait. The characters’ persistent efforts—whether through art, scholarship, journalism, or justice—to find or invent order and something like a code to live by are imperiled in a place like Santa Teresa, where you’re liable to get the sneaking suspicion that chance and suffering are the twin engines of history. “No one pays attention to these killings,” someone says, referring to the dead girls, “but the secret of the world is hidden in them.” Falls and Bockley have tried to leave in as much of the book’s multiplicity as possible, chasing tangents and ancillary characters at such breakneck speed that, despite the play’s overall length, it sometimes feels like we’re zooming through Santa Teresa via high-speed rail. Their dutifulness and efficiency notwithstanding, they only capture in fits and starts the sense you get when reading the book—that you’re tottering on the edge of an abyss. That’s partly because the script relies way too much on third-person narration. When long stretches go by in which the people onstage talk more to the audience than to each other, it not only starts to feel less like adaptation than recitation, but it also has a way of shrinking the unexplainable to the manageable contours of a lecture. Act three, which centers on the New York reporter and the seemingly doomed girl he gets mixed up with, has the least narration and comes closest to the atmosphere of danger and heartache in the novel. When they’re allowed to show rather than tell, the cast often turn in vivid and affecting work, including Henry Godinez as a haunted father, Janet Ulrich Brooks as a pragmatic baroness turned book publisher, and Alejandra Escalante and Eric Lynch as star-crossed lovers. Suggesting at various times dreamy desert nights, arid wastelands, storybook forests, and sleek conference rooms, Walt Spangler’s sets and Shawn Sagady’s projections supply a rich and consistently surprising visual equivalent to Bolaño’s shifts in narrative styles, from pulp to fable to reportage to lyrical realism. v 2666 Through 3/20: Tue-Sat 6:30 PM, Sun 1 PM, Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312-4433800, goodmantheatre.org, $25-$55.
DANCE
Walkin’ with ’Trane and walkin’ with the Lord
JOHN COLTRANE’S 1964 ALBUM A Love Supreme was the product of some major soul-searching. In 1957, when the jazz icon was still battling heroin addiction and alcohol, he famously got booted from Miles Davis’s band. Chastened, the great saxophonist kicked his drug habit, attributing his sobriety to a newfound faith in God—hence the title of the album, a popular success on which he developed his “sheets of sound.” It seems ripe for a dance, really, and from the start, “Walking With ’Trane”—the new suite of works by the Brooklyn-based company Urban Bush Women—tries to be the dance equivalent of Coltrane’s sweet spot: soulful, rich, and unmistakably original. “He had a different sound,” says dancer and associate artistic director Samantha Speis. “People often thought of it as antijazz, as opposed to being in his place of discovery as a musician.” In developing the piece Urban Bush Women put in lots of study: hours of listening to the suite, parsing the sounds of individual instruments and transcribing the work’s compositional themes. “It’s an incredible piece of art . . . that allows you to really have an experience,” Speis says. “It’s remarkable to be able to listen to his music and feel that—the spiritual, transformative journey.” The suite, co-commisioned by the Dance Center, celebrates Urban Bush Women’s 30th season. Pianist George Coleman supplies the live accompaniment, his own interpretation of A Love Supreme. —MATT DE LA PEÑA v R URBAN BUSH WOMEN: WALKIN’ WITH ’TRANE Thu 2/18Sat 2/20, 7:30 PM, Dance Center of Columbia College, 1306 S. Michigan, 312-369-6600, colum.edu/dance-center, $30, $24 students.
FEBRUARY 18, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 17
ARTS & CULTURE SMALL SCREEN
The Bachelor needs to give its final rose By BRIANNA WELLEN
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Directed and devised by Michael Rohd
Tickets just $20 | steppenwolf.org | 312-335-1650 Feb 27, March 4, 5, 11, 12 Performance Sold Out? Call the box office to find out about standby and waitlist tickets.
18 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 18, 2016
can only imagine how revolutionary the first season of The Bachelor must have been. Back then the premise was: regular guy with a normal job looks for love with a regular girl with a normal job, and the entire nation gets to watch the romance unfold. It was 2002, a simpler time, and not every date needed to start with a helicopter ride and end with a private concert. Even the finale was pretty calm: Alex Michel gave his final rose to Amanda Marsh and asked her to be his girlfriend. But now, 19 seasons and 14 years later, things have gotten way out of hand. Last Sunday night ABC aired a special, The Bachelor at 20: A Celebration of Love, to remind its audience just how extravagant its matchmaking reality-television show has become. There was a look back at the hundreds of bachelors and bachelorettes housed in the Bachelor mansion and in the domiciles featured in the spin-offs Bachelor Pad and Bachelor in Paradise. And the special ended with a wedding between two Bachelor alumni, a distraction from all the series’ failed relationships and crushed dreams. But if the current season reveals anything, it’s how dated and ridiculous the concept has become, despite a few matrimonial successes. Expectations have changed on The Bachelor. Whether because of my own age or that of the show’s contestants, it’s become obvious that it’s completely insane to fall in love and marry someone on TV after knowing him or her for eight weeks. Current bachelor Ben Higgins, a software salesperson with the personality of a wet mop, is a 27-year-old guy from Indiana who’s signed on to choose a wife from a pool of 25 strangers. The poor women, all in their early 20s, are trapped in a mansion with nothing to do and no one to talk to except the
Bland man seeks bland woman to enjoy D-list fame. ABC
other girls vying for this one man’s affection. No wonder they act crazy—the producers are essentially brainwashing them into thinking they have a lasting connection with a man with whom they’ve spent a total of less than 24 hours. When one of these attractive, successful twentysomethings gets eliminated, well, that must mean she’s unlovable and will be alone forever. It became clear just how much the series’ tone has changed during a group date last week in which everyone went swimming with wild pigs (the most romantic of all activities). In past seasons contestants turned a blind eye to these completely unnatural situations—they continued to flirt and pretended to get along with all the other girls. This time around, Higgins seemed shocked that no one was having a good time watching him hold hands in the ocean with another woman. He spent the rest of the day surrounded by crying women who just don’t think they can do this anymore. And who could blame them? In scenes from future episodes Higgins is shown in tears as he struggles to decide who will spend the rest of her life in trashy tabloids with him. It’s a far cry from the days of Michel asking Marsh to go steady. The Bachelor and all of its spin-offs continue to be popular, and they’ll likely be taken off the air only when they’re yanked out of host Chris Harrison’s cold dead hands. But maybe the show can go back to a time before professional soccer players and wedding-dress designers tried to find spouses amid wine-throwing fights and scandalous midnight hookups. A time when everyday people could go on some dates and have a good time. Hey, a girl can dream. v THE BACHELOR Mondays at 7 PM on ABC
v @briannawellen
ARTS & CULTURE
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NICK DRNASO/COURTESY DRAWN & QUARTERLY
Beverly chills By JANET POTTER
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everly, a graphic novel by local cartoonist and illustrator Nick Drnaso, consists of six overlapping stories of suburban life. The bleak tales are told mainly from teenagers’ perspectives. The characters, though shapeless and rarely expressive, are recognizable, and their situations are unenviable. The settings verge on the mundane: an after-school job, a house party, a pizza place, soccer practice, the playground where kids smoke. But in this world, the slightest aberration resounds like a shot. Drnaso’s drawing and writing style is deceptively simple—multiple readings of the same story reveal the purposefulness of each detail. The characters may appear blobby, but their body language is complex and profound. The dialogue precisely captures how teenagers are simultaneously bored with life and melodramatic in response to it. The most everyday encounter can turn sinister in an instant: a stranger on your walk home could be following you; a casual conversation at a party could reveal a dark secret.
The most interesting character in the stories is typically the one who talks the least. In “The Saddest Story Ever Told,” a woman receives a screening copy of a new sitcom along with a survey to fill out after viewing it, and invites her teenage daughter, Cara, to watch with her. The mother throws herself into the assignment, proud of the responsibility given to her, taking notes during the show, and trying to rehash it with Cara before they even open the survey. Throughout the story, Cara never speaks—her reactions to her mother and to the sitcom are communicated only by slight changes in her facial expression. Yet these gestures convey multitudes: boredom, skepticism about her mother’s enthusiasm, and a mixture of pity and embarrassment at how stoked her mother is about watching a terrible sitcom. The show they watch is called Somehow We Manage, which resembles much of what’s on network television nowadays. The premise involves a multigenerational family’s squabbles, which at the end of the episode are all resolved by luck and heartfelt speeches.
The characters in Somehow We Manage are the opposite of the disconnected, uncommunicative families in Beverly. “The Lil’ King,” for example, is about a disastrous family vacation that Cara, her younger brother, Tyler, and their parents take to Cape Cod. Tyler, a sixth-grader, never speaks in this story—he imagines decapitating his fellow tourists, or pictures the models showcased on billboards having sex with each other. Drnaso’s drawn panels depict these fantasies, while the dialogue concurrently follows Tyler’s parents’ ongoing vacation commentary—a text box reading “A lot of people out today” hovers above a pile of bloody corpses; “Brooke is already in high school?” floats over a pastor and a stripper naked and getting frisky against a cloudy backdrop. The disparity between pictures and text is pronounced in several places. In “Grassy Knoll,” a teenage boy, Tim, is paired with a chatty, weird coworker—but his focus, and that of the panels, is on a trio of girls nearby. Drnaso’s characters frequently ignore the
people trying to connect with them because they are too busy trying to attract the attention of someone else, who is most likely ignoring them. Tim dismisses his annoying coworker to get closer to the girls, who disregard him to pay attention to a different guy, who will go on to neglect his girlfriend’s cries for help. The book’s last story, “King Me,” shows a character who devotes many hours a week to going far out of his way for physical contact with a stranger who resembles his dead relative. He seeks out a semblance of intimacy that he’ll never have again. It’s an unspeakably sad undertaking, and yet somehow sweet. Drnaso’s stories and characters, and perhaps his view of the world, are like that—difficult to watch, achingly realistic, and all too familiar. v R BEVERLY By Nick Drnaso (Drawn & Quarterly) Reading and signing, with Brian Chippendale, Sat 2/20, 4 PM, Quimby’s, 1854 W. North, 773-342-0910, quimbys.com. F
v @sojanetpotter FEBRUARY 18, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 19
DEADPOOL sss Directed by Tim Miller. R, 108 min.
ARTS & CULTURE
For venues see chicagoreader.com/movies.
Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool
MOVIES
The good guy, the bad guy, and the other guy By LEAH PICKETT
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n Deadpool, heroism gets a bad rap. “You’re my hero!” a teenage girl tells the loutish mercenary Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) in an early flashback, to which Wilson ripostes, “That I ain’t.” After undergoing a mutation that turns him into the costumed Deadpool, Wilson weighs the pros of being a superhero—getting your own movie, for one—against the big con: “They’re all lame-ass teacher’s pets.” Over a shot of Wilson spearing one of his enemies, his cheeky voice-over belabors the point: “I may be super, but I’m no hero.” These repeated attempts to underscore the protagonist’s antiheroism are strategic. Just as antiheroic leading men became popular in cable TV dramas in the early aughts, comic book movies have also begun to skew their heroes darker and edgier, to similarly successful results. In contrast to Tim Burton’s cartoonish and phantasmagoric Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy (2005-’12) portrayed the Caped Crusader and his native Gotham City ssss EXCELLENT
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as realistic, gritty, and bleak. In 2008, Disney scored a megahit with Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, a conceited billionaire whose misanthropic wisecracks proved irresistible to moviegoers; his character became the catalyst for two sequels. Despite this recent rash of unsavory characters helming blockbuster films, the antihero—i.e., a protagonist who lacks such conventional heroic qualities as integrity and compassion—has long been a popular figure in movies. Citizen Kane (1941) and various crime films from the 1930s through the ’50s featured antiheroic leads, though not until the end of Hollywood’s moralistic Production Code in the late 1960s did more brazen antiheroes emerge in such landmark films as Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Dirty Harry (1971), and Taxi Driver (1976). Perhaps the best-known antihero of the New Hollywood was Michael Corleone, who morphs from hero to antihero in The Godfather (1972) and from antihero to villain in The Godfather: Part II (1974). This cultural shift in the 60s and 70s to a
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kind of antihero worship has trickled down to big-budget action films in more recent years, most notably with the dishonorable Captain Jack Sparrow steering Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and comic book movies—a fertile breeding ground for undesirables and degenerates—have naturally followed suit. What sets Deadpool apart from Pirates or Iron Man, however, is how aggressively it emphasizes the antihero archetype and how overtly it lays out and follows through on the three factors that define an antihero. First, the antihero may lack conventional morality, but he must have some personal code of conduct, as loose or eccentric as his scruples may be. (The cult cable series Dexter centered on a serial killer who snuffed only fellow serial killers.) In The Godfather, Michael’s moral code—which he shares with his beloved father, Vito—is to protect his family at all costs. Michael abandons this code in The Godfather: Part II when he orders a hit on his brother Fredo, and becomes the villain of his own story. Michael swings back to antihero status in The Godfather: Part III by showing remorse for that act, but the Godfather movies prove there’s a line that even the dodgiest antihero can’t cross without becoming a fullfledged villain. In Deadpool, the title character’s rage and subsequent violence are justified. He slaughters countless baddies, though mostly out of righteous vengeance against the Big Bad, Ajax (Ed Skrein), who fried Wilson’s flesh and then kidnapped his fiancee, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), just to rub it in. Wilson sticks to his moral code throughout: “I only give a guy a pavement facial if he deserves it.” At the end, when another mutant urges Deadpool to spare Ajax’s life and use his powers for good, Deadpool snaps: “If donning superhero tights means sparing psychopaths, then I don’t want to wear them.” Second, the antihero must be vulnerable. Viewers are more attracted to characters that are dimensional and penetrable. The antihero seldom considers himself to be either the hero of his story or the villain, just a flawed individual with valid reasons for behaving the way he does. Moreover, the antihero needs to have some kind of soft spot—a girlfriend, a family member, or some other meaningfully connected person that makes him more relatable. In the Godfather movies, Michael is made vulnerable by several factors: fear for the life of his father and, later, the lives of his wife and
children; hunger to prove that, as the youngest Corleone brother and a “nice college boy,” he too can be command respect and inspire dread; and a sincere longing to fulfill Vito’s wish for him by one day making the “family business” legitimate. When those weak spots are pressed, Michael becomes emotional, which allows the audience to identify with his struggles and root for him to prevail. Wilson, despite his mordant veneer, is a vulnerable character as well. He can be rude and even cruel, but also funny, especially when he gets knocked down a peg. He can be brutal and merciless toward his adversaries, but he also has a sweet and hilarious relationship with his best friend, Weasel (T.J. Miller), and a deep, weird love for Vanessa that is made even more appealing by their abundant sexual quirks. Wilson earns the audience’s sympathy when Ajax melts his face into a Freddy Krueger-like consistency and then sneers, “Guess you lost your shot at homecoming king.” Finally, an antihero must be ambiguous. Heroes are white and villains are black, but an antihero, like the vast majority of the audience, lives in a gray area. In the case of Michael Corleone, his ambiguity is what makes him compelling. He is both a gangster and a philanthropist; a cold-blooded killer and a loving family man. He is generous to other characters, particularly those in his inner circle, like his sister, Connie, and adopted brother, Tom; but if he feels he’s been betrayed, as with Fredo or his wife, Kay, in Part II, he is pitiless. Reynolds made his debut as Deadpool in the 2009 release X-Men Origins: Wolverine, though in that instance the character was appreciably more villainous, his mouth sewn shut and his demeanor consistently pissed. In Deadpool he’s a more ambiguous figure—a witty bundle of nuances and contradictions, spouting sardonic zingers and mile-a-minute pop-culture references. He also speaks the language of the Marvel fanboy and -girl, breaking the fourth wall to guide both diehards and newcomers through the Marvel Universe. As the latest in a long line of cinematic antiheroes, Deadpool toes the line of goodness more than the movie’s vulgar ads and red-band trailer might suggest. He may flirt with villainy, but he never fully embraces it. He’ll probably never be a hero in the traditional sense, but that doesn’t matter; his fans like him just the way he is. v
v @leahkpickett
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KUK HARRELL BRINGS THE BEST OUT OF RIHANNA The Grammy-winning vocal producer talks about the path that led him from church choir in Chicago to collaborations with the likes of Beyoncé, Sting, and Mary J. Blige—and to his work on the new Anti. By ANNIE ZALESKI
Thaddis “Kuk” Harrell ò ANGELA MORRIS
haddis “Kuk” Harrell is one of the music industry’s preeminent vocal producers, in charge of coaxing unforgettable studio performances out of top-tier stars. He compares his process to a therapy session—to capture distinctive, compelling performances, he has to connect with musicians and dig into their emotional cores. Harrell has a gift for doing this, to judge by his resumé—it reads like a who’s who of the Top 40. He’s worked with Beyoncé, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Mary J. Blige, Jessie J, and Celine Dion, and he has prominent credits on every Rihanna album since 2010’s Loud. Born in Chicago in 1954, Harrell grew up drumming and singing in a church choir, and he’s been a voracious music fan from an early age. Aside from his work with vocalists, he’s also an accomplished songwriter and engineer. He cowrote Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” cowrote and produced Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” and earned a Golden Globe nomination for cowriting the Avatar theme song, “I See You” (sung by Leona Lewis). Harrell has won five Grammys, including one for his work with Beyoncé (Song of the Year for “Single Ladies” in 2010) and three for his work with Rihanna: Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for “Umbrella” in 2008, Best Dance Recording for “Only Girl (In the World)” in 2011, and Best Urban Contemporary Album for Unapologetic in 2014. More recently, he’s worked on two number one records: the 2015 self-titled LP from a cappella darlings Pentatonix and Rihanna’s Anti—an album he calls “groundbreaking” for her. “She had complete freedom creatively, and it shows,” he says. “It’s a great body of work.” Harrell owes much of his success to his tight-knit musical family, who encouraged creative collaborations. His cousin is songwriter and producer Christopher “Tricky” Stewart, whose own impressive career includes work with Mya, Ciara, Mariah Carey, and Britney Spears; his mother and aunt sang in Chicago vocal group Kitty & the Haywoods, who backed Aretha Franklin and Curtis Mayfield (among others) and in 1977 released an LP called Love Shock produced by the Ohio Players. Harrell lived in Chicago proper till fourth grade, then moved to Calumet City; he later lived in Evanston for a few years before heading to Los Angeles at age 26. After many years in LA—where his activities included serving as a children’s worship leader for a church called Christian Assembly—Harrell relocated to Atlanta in the mid-2000s. For this Q&A (which has been edited for length and clarity), I spoke to Harrell as he was returning home after a rare week off, relaxing in Florida after Anti’s release. His 2016 is already shaping up J
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to be busy—he has a book deal, he’s working with Jessie J, and he’s mentoring a Netherlands-based songwriting team called DFRNS (aka Hidde Huijsman and Massimo Cacciapuoti). Harrell also says he’s looking to connect with new talent using the hashtag #kukharrellswhosnext on Instagram (@officialkukharrell) and Twitter (@ kukharrell).
Were there any specific differences working on Anti compared to Rihanna’s previous albums? Just her being more involved creatively was the biggest difference. She’s always involved from her side, as an artist. But musically, creatively, she really wanted to drive the direction of the album. I think that’s why she called the album Anti— she wanted to do something completely different than everybody else. Because we’re in a cookie-cutter time of music. Every record that everybody does is a record that somebody else could’ve done, if that makes sense. It’s so awesome that she just stepped out and was courageous enough to stick to that and be that and do that.
When you were giving vocal direction, how was Anti different? We’re always working on it together, but this time she was really meticulous about every line that we sang. Before—not saying that she wasn’t involved, but before, we would cut the record, and then I would comp it and put everything together. Then she would come in and listen and change a few things and go, “I want it to be like this.” But this particular album, she was really, really specific about every single line. If there was anything that she heard that she felt wasn’t perfection in her eyes, she
wanted to change. It was a lot, and I respect that. It’s hard, because I want to work quick and get stuff done and make it excellent, but now she’s like, “Listen, let’s up the quality level.” Let’s make sure we have the emotion, and make sure it’s a masterpiece. That was the mind-set for this one. You know, the other albums, they were, “Yeah, let’s make a great album.” But this time it was like, “Let’s make a masterpiece—a great body of work.” That was a big switch-up for me, and a point of growth. It must have been inspiring working with an artist who wants to push herself. When I work with people who are in that mind-set, it pushes me as well. Absolutely. A lot of people, if you’ve gotten to a point to where you’ve won awards, and you’ve got five Grammys, there’s a tendency—it’s easy, it’s just in human nature to get complacent or not push as hard. But with this particular album, it really taught me to keep pushing— that it’s OK to keep pushing and keep getting better, and not just rely on the fact that we’ve gotten awards before. It’s like we want to win the Super Bowl all the time. How did you originally get into vocal production? What drew you to that aspect of the studio and recording? My mom and her sister were background vocalists doing commercials, and they did records and sang backgrounds for Aretha Franklin and people like that. I was in the choir. My aunt was a choir director. We grew up in church, singing in choirs and stuff like that, so vocals have always been really dear to me, something that I love. I love harmonies. And then I also grew up watching my uncle produce jingles in Chicago. Me and my cousins
22 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 18, 2016
used to call him a vocal master. He just had this ability to put together harmonies and make the vocals sound like instruments. That was a thing that sparked for me. Then fast-forward to 2005, when I moved down to Atlanta with my cousin, Tricky Stewart. We decided to get back together and write. We all grew up together, but we had gotten to a point where we were really making it professional, making it our gig. I moved to Atlanta and we set our system up just like an assembly line, based on the example of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, how they used to work back in the day. Jimmy would do the tracks; Terry would do the vocals and the melodies and the lyrics. Then once they got the record done, they would give it to their engineer, Steve Hodge, and he would mix everything. It was an assembly line. We decided to set up our thing like that. Tricky was like, “Would you cut the vocals?” and I was like, “Absolutely. It’s no big deal.” I had been doing it for a long time, just practicing and all that kind of stuff. Because we wrote so many records in that first year of me moving to Atlanta, it just became a thing where I got really good at making sure I caught passion on the performance and the notes. Tricky was extremely instrumental in teaching me the difference between making a demo and turning a demo into a record. That’s when you start looking into the passion in the vocals, because the vocal is the most important part of the record. What exactly does being a vocal producer entail? What do you actually do in the studio? As the vocal producer, I’m responsible for the performance that lives on for a lifetime. Creating, crafting, recording the vocal perfor-
mance from the artist that lives forever. [Laughs.] That starts with listening to the record if it’s already demoed, listening to the record with the artist and going, “OK, we need to capture exactly what that demo is.” The artist goes into the booth, and we start from the beginning of the record, and then I’m coaching them as to whether or not they’re really getting it. “Sing a little more passionate here, or sing it louder here, or softer here, or make it sound like you’re mad when you’re singing this part.” It’s everything that it takes to make the vocals an emotional ride for the listener. What’s the most challenging part of your job? The most challenging part for my job as vocal producer is probably just always being in a mode where it’s not about me as an individual. If I’m cutting an entire album with an artist, even though we have a great relationship . . . we can take Rihanna, for instance. Just because we have a great day and a great moment right now doesn’t mean that we’re going to have the exact same kind of moment tomorrow. The superstars, they’re definitely in the moment, but they’re so busy. They have so many different things pulling at them, so depending on how close you are with them, it can kind of seem like, “Oh man, we’re buddies today,” and it’s like, “No, we’re not buddies. We have a job to do, first and foremost.” To be a successful vocal producer, number one you have to be selfless—see yourself, and go into every situation, as an open canvas. It’s not my job to make them sound like me. It’s not my job to make them act like me. The only thing is just me saying, “Man, let’s get that.” The only time I can really shape and craft who they are and
what they sound like is when they’re in the booths.
To be a successful vocal producer, number one you have to be selfless—see yourself, and go into every situation, as an open canvas. It’s not my job to make them sound like me.
The cover of Rihanna’s new Anti
And not every personality type is cut out to play that role in the studio. Absolutely not. I run into it all the time. I’ve had instances where I use engineers, and they sit in the room with me for a session or two, and then I find out a week later that they’re like, “Oh man, I can produce vocals.” They’re calling themselves vocal producers. I’m like, “No, you’re not.” First of all, it’s more than a notion. I’m not saying that to be a jerk, but the thing is, first of all, you have to have so much patience. Secondly, you have to be a people person. You have to know how to read people, because as the artist is in the booth, they go through so many different emotions. This is probably the second-most vulnerable time in their life, or in their day, when they’re in the booth. I’m the only one that gets to hear how they sound when they’re warming up, when they sing bad notes. So
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they have to get extremely comfortable with me, and just feel like I’m with them no matter what. Like, “This is my guy, he’s not judging me.” That’s why it’s such a big deal when people get isolated vocals from the studio leaked or something like that. People go, “Man, listen to how he really sounds,” you know what I mean? Out of all the studio projects you’ve done, which stand out to you as particularly memorable? Number one, obviously, this Rihanna album [Anti], because it is such a body of work. The whole mind-set. The records that stick out for me the most are when we went into it thinking, “Let’s just do great work. Let’s not chase radio. We’re not trying to get radio hits. We’re not trying to make sure that we can have a song that anybody could sing.” So that’s what Anti is. Let’s just do good work, because we love doing what we do, and we get to make music to it. Pentatonix’s album was completely creative—it wasn’t based on radio airplay, all that kind of stuff, although the label came to me. These records stick out for me, because even though that’s not the motive from the artist’s standpoint, we want the airplay and the notoriety and the pop culture to accept it. But there’s a thing inside where we have to turn that off and just be creative. That’s what happened with Pentatonix. The Justin Bieber album, Believe, is very memorable. When I was the music supervisor for his film [Justin Bieber: Never Say Never]— extremely memorable. Obviously, first and foremost, it would be “Umbrella,” being a cowriter and producer of that record. And then “Single Ladies”—winning the Grammys for those. I would say every record that I’ve won Grammys for. [Laughs.] “Umbrella” and “Single Ladies” are obviously two of the biggest pop singles of the past decade. When you were in the studio working on them and writing them, was there a sense that they were going to be massive? The only one was “Single Ladies.” That was after “Umbrella.” With “Umbrella,” we just had the sense of, “This is special. We love this. This is a special record.” It sounded different than anything that was on the radio at that time, and that’s what we were excited about. I don’t think Tricky or The-Dream—none of us [who wrote the song] knew exactly what it was going to turn into. That’s just not possible, because it’s not a formula. That’s the beautiful thing about it. We just knew that it was a special song, and we did our best on it. Then when it turned into what it turned into, we were like, “Whoa, this is mind-blowing.” J
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FEBRUARY 18, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 23
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It was a phenomenon. And that’s important to point out, because there’s this tendency for people to want to say, “Pop music is a formula, and here’s what you need to do to get hits.” And that’s not true. You never know. Not at all. You really don’t. There’s a part of that that is true—and it’s a bad thing, because that’s why music is in the state that it’s in right now. You can have a record that this person could cut, but these other two artists could cut it as well—the cookie-cutter mode. We’re in that mode right now where everybody . . . you know how when disco was out, everybody did disco? Everybody did those records. That was a formula. But then you had Prince break out and do something, and it was just like, “What?” You had Prince. Then you had Madonna coming out. Then you had Janet Jackson coming out. You had Michael [Jackson] doing what he did. These are people who were doing stuff completely different than what everybody else was doing—all the disco shit. [Laughs.] That’s the beautiful thing about where we are right now. It really spoke to me, watching Beyoncé at the Super Bowl. And her record coming out. We have people that are stepping out now, like Rihanna, taking that type of stance and going, “I don’t want to make what everybody else is making. I want to make what I want to make. I know my fans will love it because my fans are loyal to me, but if everybody else loves it, great. If they don’t, at least I know, as an artist, I’ve done what I want to do.” As opposed to what the label wants them to do, and the program directors, and the one guy that controls all the radio right now.
Absolutely. It’s hard almost to listen to the radio sometimes. You’re like, “Oh, it’s the same 20 songs, and they all sound the same.” Exactly. It is extremely hard. People trip out if they get into the car with me and they go, “Man, I wonder, what does he listen to?” And they hear the same records I listen to: Huey Lewis, Steely Dan, and Fleetwood Mac. Anything classic rock, that’s what I’m listening to. That goes into what I grew up listening to—Earth, Wind & Fire. I mean, I listened to everything. I spent my young years just listening to music. That’s all I did. And I listened to such a vast array of music: Kiss, rock, Van Halen, all that stuff. It gave me a great toolbox of colors. That’s how I see it when I’m producing vocals. It’s like I have an amazing toolbox of sonic colors that I sprinkle over all the records. It can be very simple things; it can be complex harmonies. But you definitely hear it, notice it, and get affected by it. That’s one of the shortages—I don’t know if that’s the right way of saying it—but one of the shortcomings that a lot of up-andcoming producers have right now [is that] a lot of people didn’t grow up loving and appreciating and learning music. They came into the game where, first of all, they didn’t learn music in school, because all the music programs are gone in schools. So now what they do is they’ve got a sampler, and their entrance into the game was sampling music and figuring out how to create melodies and stuff on top of that. After a while, that’s very limited. There’s a Steely Dan in-thestudio DVD, and you watch them go through how they constructed their music. And it’s fascinating, because the music sounds so effort-
24 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 18, 2016
It really spoke to me, watching Beyoncé at the Super Bowl. And her record coming out. We have people that are stepping out now, like Rihanna, taking that type of stance and going, “I don’t want to make what everybody else is making.”
less, but there’s a lot of thought and deliberate action that went into that. Absolutely, and you can definitely tell the difference. And that’s what I’m doing right now. I’ve signed some writers out of [the Netherlands], and [I’m] just really grooming these guys to tap into being musical again. Not two-bar phrases on a loop—it’s like, let’s do chord progressions. Because that’s what “Umbrella” was. And “Umbrella” really changed the game in music. It changed how people approached making a pop song. So, Kitty & the Haywoods— is that the group featuring your mother and aunt? Yeah, it sure is. My mom was Vivian. Kitty was her sister, who was my aunt, and Mary Ann is their sister. Later on, my sister sang with them. They were the number one background singers in Chicago that sang on all the radio [and] TV. They did generalmarket spots, as well as all of the black spots with Burrell. They were there in the beginning of the Burrell advertising company. And this is how we all came into the game. They knew a guy named Charles Stepney, who was from Chicago, who produced Earth, Wind & Fire. [Stepney] was cowriter on “Reasons” and “That’s the Way of the World” with Maurice [White], and he was the person that actually got all of my entire family in the music industry. Our family’s history in Chicago as music people is ridiculous. Ki t t y & th e Hay wo o d s backed up a lot of Chicago soul artists and worked on a Curtis Mayfield record, right? Yeah. There were tons of commercials. It’s interesting because my cousin, who partners with me on my management team, him and his
wife came and spent some time with us here on vacation. And we talked about that, like, “Listen, we have to capture and tell the story of what our family’s musical legacy is.” We just have to do it, first and foremost, for our kids and for their kids. But also for encouragement for people from Chicago who want to do the same thing that we’re doing, and see that it can actually happen, and see that it can happen in a family way. Not just Kanye or R. Kelly, solo artists, but it’s like we’re a team of people. When we left Chicago, it was a group of us. We’re all cousins. It was me; my cousin Laney [Stewart], who was the first one to really do records out of our generation; his brother Mark; his brother Tricky; and then our wives, which were our girlfriends at that time. We had like seven other people that were working with us and believed in what we were doing. We all packed up three trucks and six cars and hit the road from Chicago to LA. Was it sort of a foregone conclusion that you were going to go into music? Absolutely, because we grew up around it. Our whole family, that’s what they did. Music was our family, so I knew from the beginning that I would be doing music. I never knew for sure that the success that I have now was going to be what it is, but I knew that I was going to do music, and in the back of my heart hoped and prayed for success. And fortunately, it came. Most of the time, it just doesn’t happen. You have extremely talented people who never, ever see that type of . . . first of all, they can’t even get in the game, but then they never see real success. Did growing up in Chicago shape you as a musician
and the way you approach music? Absolutely. Growing up you could go downtown and see live musicians. My uncles, at the time, they were session musicians, so they played on so many general-market spots. But they also had a band, and they’re still in existence today—they’re called the Chicago Catz. They would go downtown and play at the Back Room and all these different places. You could go down and see live jazz and live bands doing stuff. So that influenced us. And having the ability to go in the studio and see commercials being written by my uncle, and then seeing him try to go and do records and stuff like that—that shaped us. That really let us know that there’s more than just records. When I was at home in my downtime, I listened to records. But having those other things let me know that music is a business. You don’t have to just try to write the next pop record—you can go into doing jingles. You can be a studio musician. What else are you working on now? Let’s see. The next project I’m probably working on is Jessie J, her next album—we’re starting with that. I don’t know exactly when, but that’s the next thing on the board. I have a book deal. I’m writing a book—a tutorial, a how to do what it is I do. The biggest skill set that you need is being a people person, so I’m tying it together with life skills. Eighty-five percent of what I do with the artist is all psychological. The music stuff is simple. But everything else . . . sometimes people go, “Man, you’re like a psychologist.” Like, yeah, that’s true, because the goal is to make sure that [artists] feel comfortable. That’s the main goal in the whole thing. And then
we’ll get the music stuff. The music’s easy because that’s just what we do. As you were describing what you do as a vocal producer, that’s exactly what came to my mind, that it’s almost like a psychologist. You have to make an instant connection and get to an emotional place. That’s not easy to do. Yeah, especially when you’ve never met the artist before. A lot of my sessions are like that. Some years ago, I had to produce Sting on a song. He was on tour when the Police had done their reunion tour, and they were in Boston. They were like, “Well, we want you to come cut this record on Sting. He only has three hours, so you’ve got to get him. What you get is what you get. If you don’t get it, you don’t get it.” And I’m like, “All right, whatever.” I’d never met him before. It’s easy to get caught up in, “Oh my God, this is Sting! Oh my God, I’m working with Sting. He’s Sting!” He got into the booth and started singing, and I was going, “Let’s get that one more time, you’re a little sharp. You’re a little flat—one more time for the pocket.” And the assistant that was in the room with me, he’s like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you’re telling Sting that he’s out of pocket.” And every now and then Sting would snicker on the mike. After we got done, he’s like, “Man, this is awesome. Nobody’s ever told me that I was out of pocket or I was sharp. Thank you so much.” That’s what it is, and that’s what I mean by being an empty canvas. It’s not about who they are as an artist or anything like that. It’s about getting a great performance and a great job done every single time. What is it about what you do and your personality
that makes people want to come back and continue working with you? I would say number one is my musical skill set. My knowledge of music. Not music artistry-wise, but my knowledge of notes and harmonies. And then the second thing—the confidence. Because I know that I know music and know harmonies and stuff like that. I don’t read music, but I just know what feels right, and I know what’s supposed to go together. It’s the confidence that I bring to that. And then it’s the comfort level that I help get them to. As well as we get it done in a timely fashion. That’s the most important part. We’re not in there messing around going, “All right, well, let’s just vibe on it” or “Let’s smoke a little bit” or “Let’s have a couple drinks and get at it.” It’s like, “No, this is a job, let’s go. You’ve got shit to do, I’ve got shit to do.” [Laughs.] You’ve signed these writers from [the Netherlands]. What’s the biggest difference for you, playing that mentor role with them? What is the approach you’re taking? It’s actually just passing on the exact same skill set that I have to create more of who I am and the people that I work with in the industry, as opposed to continually just watching beat guys be created in the industry and then call themselves record producers. I guess the way I can explain that is: You have anybody that has an Instagram page and can record a song in their bedroom, and they think that they’re an artist. Or all of a sudden they go, “Man, I’m in the record industry.” No, you’re not. It took years to learn what I’ve learned. The biggest goal in the mentoring thing is giving back. Giving back and sharing the wisdom that I have, so that
there’s more great producers in the world—as opposed to just a bunch of beat guys, and then all we’re doing is the whole cookie-cutter thing again. Like you said before, people are coming up in a very different way. They weren’t listening to all sorts of diverse records. Or they see someone on Instagram and they’re like, “I can do that.” They’re not actually taking the time. There’s homework. It’s hard work. Yeah. Absolutely. You’ll say something like, “Quincy did so-and-so,” and they go, “Who is that?” And I’m going, “Are you kidding me? How do you not know who Quincy Jones is? Or L.A. and Babyface? How do you not know that L.A. Reid used to be a songwriter—a part of one of the biggest songwriting teams in the game? How do you not know Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis history? How do you not know who David Bowie is?” You know what I’m saying? If someone told me, “I don’t know who Quincy Jones is,” I wouldn’t even know how to react to that. Yep. Get out of the studio and go learn. Exactly. That’s part of what my process is. I have an artist right now that I’m developing, and it’s the same thing. It’s just passing on that wisdom. When I say certain things to them, and they give me an answer, I go, “All right, we’re not cutting any records until I know that you understand what it is you’re shooting for. There’s no way you’re going to be an artist if you don’t understand what it means to get up at 5:30 in the morning and go do a radio interview and then have to go and get on a stage two hours later. For 60 days in a row.” v
JULY 19 CIVIC OPERA HOUSE
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v @anniezaleski FEBRUARY 18, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 25
MUSIC
Recommended and notable shows, and critics’ insights for the week of February 18 b
ALL AGES
F
FESTIVAL
The inaugural Frequency Festival seeks to prove that new music deserves a bigger stage
THURSDAY18 Cavanaugh Lizzo headlines. 8:30 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $15. 17+ Chicago rappers David Cohn (aka Serengeti) and Open Mike Eagle have carved out fascinating solo careers traversing the shadows of their labyrinthine minds. Hyde Park native Eagle, who now lives in LA, unravels our technologically impaired dystopian present with comedic aplomb, while Serengeti surrounds his vulnerable real life with the colorful, evolving universe of his fiftysomething blue-collar alter ego, Kenny Dennis. Last year the pair teamed up under the name Cavanaugh; their lone fulllength, November’s Time & Materials (Mello Music Group), is short on run time but long on ambition. It’s a concept album about a couple of maintenance veterans named Dave and Mike who work in Cavanaugh, a fictional mixed-income housing unit in the also-fictional town of Detroit, Florida. Over Eagle’s zonked-out instrumentals the MCs provide heartfelt depictions of the building’s residents. Five of the album’s nine songs don’t even cross the three-minute mark, but together these guys can make an impression quick. Cohn vividly spreads solemn embers with the first handful of lines on “Wonder Girl”: “I went to sleep sad / I never met my foster dad / He was always gone away from foster mom / But that gave us time to get close / We made love near a field of oaks.” —LEOR GALIL
Ensemble Dal Niente ò DREW REYNOLDS
LONGTIME READER MUSIC WRITER Peter Margasak began the weekly Sunday-night Frequency Series at Constellation to provide a regular stage for a burgeoning and adventurous new-music scene that before was plenty accustomed to occupying more unconventional spaces like storefronts and galleries. And as evidenced by a marathon performance last month in which pianist R. Andrew Lee played a storied, nearly five-hour-long minimalist piece by Dennis Johnson called November, new music has found a cozy place to call home. So celebrate with a festival. The Frequency Festival stretches from Tue 2/23 through Sun 2/28 and takes place at four different venues, with Constellation acting as home base for the final four days. Eighth Blackbird members LISA KAPLAN (piano) and MATTHEW DUVALL (percussion) kick off the festival on Tuesday at the Museum of Contemporary Art with a program that includes work by Steve Reich and John Luther Adams, while Wednesday’s free concert at Bond Chapel at the University of Chicago features a world premiere from Ecuadorian-German composer Mesías Maiguashca performed by the FONEMA CONSORT. The festival moves to Constellation on Thursday with a program by APERIODIC, a local collective Reader contributor Bill Meyer
26 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 18, 2016
describes as “specializing in renditions of indeterminate scores”; multidisciplinary ensemble MOCREP also perform. On Friday percussionists TODD MEEHAN and DOUG PERKINS perform a new work by Scott Lindroth that requires discarded materials to be reshaped into musical instruments, and on Saturday International Contemporary Ensemble flutist CLAIRE CHASE takes the stage, followed by an afterparty thrown by new-music cassette label PARLOUR TAPES. The Frequency Festival wraps on Sunday, first at the Art Institute of Chicago, where at 2 PM the SPEKTRAL QUARTET rolls out a world premiere by German composer Hans Thomalla, and later back to Constellation, where ENSEMBLE DAL NIENTE performs music by George Lewis and Beat Furrer, among others. Festival start times vary, as do admissions outside of the Constellation shows—though keep in mind that each all-ages museum show is free with admission (and the MCA is free on Tuesday for Illinois residents). —KEVIN WARWICK Tue 2/23-Sun 2/28, various venues (Constellation, 3111 N. Western; Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago; Bond Chapel, University of Chicago, 1025 E. 58th; Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan), $15 per Constellation show (18+), $40 pass for venue, frequencyseries.com.
Future Lil Donald and Ty Dolla Sign open. 8 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 1106 W. Lawrence, $35. 17+ In the mid-2000s Auto-Tune registered as little more than a fad. And almost on cue, Jay-Z arrived on the scene in 2009 with “D.O.A. (Death of AutoTune),” proclaiming the end of a short-lived era. Well, Jay-Z could have never predicted Future, the Atlanta rapper who transformed Auto-Tune from a mere gimmick into an innovation. He achieved this primarily by demonstrating Auto-Tune’s possibilities as an instrument. Future alternates his vocal delivery and the pitch-shifting tool’s settings in accordance with his lyrics, so that his word choice and its sonic presentation are equally significant parts of his overall artistic presentation; his producers, most notably Southside and Metro Boomin, are nearly as responsible for this breakthrough. Altogether, Future and his team have fashioned a style of rap that is, musically speaking, as evocative as any significant achievement in the genre’s history. On last year’s masterpiece DS2 (A1/Epic), Future and his crew make the sizzurp-soaked world of trap music sound like a hazy, multihued Dionysian playground— one that’s simultaneously supercharged and supersad—where sex is treated with ambivalence, misogyny is common, and everyday violence is conveyed with the numb indifference of someone suffering from PTSD. The music is almost always colossal and rousing, making the disconnect and tension all the more fascinating and addictive. Auto-Tune is no mere fad, but it is a footnote to Future’s immense artistry. —TAL ROSENBERG
Where are the rest of the music listings? Find them at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.
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skylar grey secret weapons
Eleanor Friedberger ò ROGER KISBY
FEBRUARY 19TH
SKIZZY MARS
02.19 V IS FOR VILLAINS
VENT TO ATMOSPHERE / LOW COUNTRY
02.26 MICKEY AVALON
DIRT NASTY / THE PALMER SQUARES
02.28 POUYA
SUICIDE BOYS / FAT NICK & THE BUFFET BOYS
03.01 TONIGHT ALIVE
SET IT OFF / THE READY SET / SAYWECANFLY
03.02 KALEO FIREKID
03.03 THE WORD ALIVE
FIT FOR A KING / OUT CAME THE WOLVES
ONES TO WATCH PRESENTS
03.04 FINISH TICKET / VINYL THEATRE 03.05 WINTER STASH WITH EGi CHACHUBA / THE ARS NOVA / JJ & DRE
Doug Tuttle Zeta One opens. 10 PM, the Owl, 2521 N. Milwaukee. F In a January interview with Noisey, main man Doug Tuttle (formerly of Mmoss) gave some character to his new solo full-length It Calls on Me by admitting to a slight fascination with private-press Christian rock: “I dig the sincerity and weirdo attempts at sounding pop.” And Tuttle’s second Trouble in Mind-sanctioned full-length, which features a wispy easygoingness accompanied by breezy, uplifting vocal melodies, has more than a few moments in which you can imagine a free-spirited longhair in an ill-fitting 1960s polyester getup awkwardly fading into the foreground with an acoustic guitar in tow and eyes focused on the heavens. Luckily tracks like “Falling to Believe,” with its forlorn vocal melody and psych-driven thick-fuzz guitar solos, and “It Calls on Me”—thanks in part to a chugging rhythm, looping guitar riff, and some deep-dive noodling— acknowledge that while Tuttle likes to give a wink or two to a bygone era of bizarre pop, he doesn’t want to hang too close to the jam circle. Regardless of what decade its influences lie in, It Calls on Me lands somewhere between the modern Kraut-tinted psych of Wooden Shjips and the too-often too-polished indie pop of Mikal Cronin. Which is a pretty cozy place to be. —KEVIN WARWICK
FRIDAY19 Bill Frisell 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln, $35, $33 members. b With its ethereal beauty, plangent elegance, and evocation of wide-open spaces, the music of guitarist Bill Frisell has frequently been described as cinematic, and in fact his work has turned up in various films over the years. He takes the tradition head-on with his gorgeous new album When You Wish Upon a Star (OKeh), which puts a spin on a variety of iconic themes from the silver screen (as well as a few from television, like “Happy Trails” and
“Bonanza”). An excellent cast of trusted cohorts joins him, and together they largely surrender the improvisational element that usually marks their work with Frisell in favor of lovely arrangements designed to highlight melody and atmosphere. Featuring plaintive singing by Petra Haden and moody viola embellishments from Eyvind Kang, the theme from the Bond film You Only Live Twice gets a terrific reading, while Haden also coos wordlessly on scores by Ennio Morricone (Once Upon a Time in the West), Nino Rota (The Godfather), and Bernard Herrmann (Psycho). The other real pleasure, aside from basking in the melodies and moods, is admiring the tight rapport of the band—which also includes drummer Rudy Royston and bassist Thomas Morgan—and how they manage to be both limber and disciplined. Most of the players on the recording appear here tonight, with Kenny Wollesen subbing for Royston. —PETER MARGASAK
Philip Glass 7:30 PM, Mandel Hall, University of Chicago, 1131 E. 57th, $35, $5 students. b Few living composers have achieved the fame and ubiquity of Philip Glass, a musician whose brand of churning, hypnotic minimalism has influenced countless others and possesses such a distinctive language that it’s usually instantly recognizable. He’s also one of the few modern composers that continues performing his own work, a practice which in the mid-90s led him to start writing etudes intended to increase his skill and sharpen his technique. I’ll be honest, I’m not a fan of much of Glass’s work. I once played hooky from high school so I could see the film Koyaanisqatsi, and his score lulled me to sleep, which his music has pretty much done ever since. But the 20 etudes he’s composed are a much different story, even though they share many of his usual motifs— particularly patterns that use the wagon-wheel effect and obsessively repetitive lines that change ever so subtly. But there’s a warmth and crispness to the etudes that makes them feel much more human and beautiful than his canonical work, their technical ambitions tucked neatly within their outgoing musicality. Last year the composer’s label Orange J
03.06 HAWTHORNE HEIGHTS / THE ATARIS HANDGUNS / LONDON FALLING
03.11 FREELANCE WRESTLING 1833 PRESENTS
03.16 XXYYXX
JIM-E STACK
03.25 CHON
POLYPHIA / STRAWBERRY GIRLS
SILVER WRAPPER PRESENTS
03.26 YOUNG FATHERS 03.31 WE THE KINGS
AJR / SHE IS WE / ELENA COATS & BROTHERS JAMES
04.01 SLAVES
CAPTURE THE CROWN / MYKA, RELOCATE / OUTLINE IN COLOR / CONQUER DIVIDE
04.02 DELTA RAE SILVER WRAPPER PRESENTS
04.07 TURBOSUIT / ZOOGMA 04.08 THE EXPENDABLES
JON WAYNE & THE PAYNE / TUNNEL VISION
04.09 PORCHES / ALEX G YOUR FRIEND
BOTTOM LOUNGE & SILVER WRAPPER PRESENT
04.09 RUFUS DU SOL 04.15 THE WILD FEATHERS THE SHELTERS
04.17 THE SPILL CANVAS 04.19 BASEMENT
DEFEATER / TURNSTILE / COLLEEN GREEN
04.23 KVELERTAK
W/ P LO
FEBRUARY 20TH
INFECTED MUSHROOM W/ RADIOHIRO & STRIZ
FEBRUARY 26TH
AUTOGRAF
W/TEEMID,CHETPORTER,GOODLIFE,AXILON
FEBRUARY 27TH
*SOLD OUT*
ANIMAL COLLECTIVE W/ RATKING
MARCH 4TH
HELLOWEEN W/ THEM
MARCH 5TH
EDX
NO EXCUSES TOUR
MARCH 10TH
RISK! PODCAST
MARCH 11TH HIPPIE SABOTAGE
W/ HAYWYRE, ALEX WILEY, KEMBE X
MARCH 12TH BRILLZ
W/ PARTY FAVOR, DR. FRESCH,
MARCH 18TH
MANICFOCUS W/ ARTIFAKTS
TORCHE / WILD THRONE
04.24 THE SUMMER SET 05.16 BEACH SLANG
POTTY MOUTH / DYKE DRAMA
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WWW.CONCORDMUSICHALL.COM 2047 N. MILWAUKEE | 773.570.4000 FEBRUARY 18, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 27
MUSIC
continued from 27
Mountain Music released a recording of the etudes by pianist Maki Namekawa, and it’s an energizing, lyric delight. Tonight’s special concert will feature all 20 works performed by a diverse cast of superb pianists, including Namekawa, Timo Andres, Lisa Kaplan of Eighth Blackbird, jazz artist Aaron Diehl, and the 79-year-old Glass himself. —PETER MARGASAK
Good Willsmith ADT and Potions open. 9 PM, Elastic, 3429 W. Diversey, donation requested. b
28 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 18, 2016
Where are the rest of the music listings? Find them at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.
Chicago’s Good Willsmith is having a good year. The improvisational electronic-doom band have received press from AdHoc and NPR in anticipation of their second full-length album, this month’s Things Our Bodies Used to Have (Umor Rex). Despite their modern approach to drone, there’s a lifelike pulse in their music. Sharp synthesizers rustle through the whir like leaves caught in wind, while robotic arpeggios stagger through muddy feedback. As improvisers, Good Willsmith are highly efficient at conjuring the unstable nature of human anguish with the coldness of their J
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FEBRUARY 18, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 29
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MUSIC
Future
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Where are the rest of the music listings? Find them at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.
ò COURTESY THE ARTIST
A Conversation with Thurston Moore hosted by Tony Sarabia of WBEZ Lisa Loeb: 11am (kids concert) & 7pm Robbie Fulks - Album Release Show Buika Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill Bela Fleck & the Flecktones at Thalia Hall
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19 8PM
Bill Frisell
"When You Wish Upon a Star"
with Petra Haden, Eyvind Kang, Thomas Morgan, and Kenny Wollesen
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20 5 & 8PM
Lúnasa / Tim O'Brien SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20 8PM
Alash In Szold Hall FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26 8PM
George Kahumoku Jr., Led Kaapana & Jeff Peterson Masters of Hawaiian Music SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27 8PM
Jane Siberry In Szold Hall SUNDAY, MARCH 13 7PM
Kathy Mattea The Acoustic Living Room: Songs & Stories featuring Bill Cooley
THURSDAY, APRIL 7 7 & 10PM
Deer Tick "Acoustic" ACROSS THE STREET IN SZOLD HALL
4545 N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL
2/19 Global Dance Party: The Flat Cats 2/26 Global Dance Party: Paa Kow Band 3/4 Sultans of String with sitar master Anwar Khurshid 3/5 Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre Inside/Out 2016 Kick-Off 3/5 Carrie Rodriguez 3/6 Alan Kelly Gang 3/11 Global Dance Party: NuBambu 3/12 Radney Foster 3/18 Global Dance Party: Angel D'Cuba 3/19 Fingerstyle Guitarists of the Old Town School: Nathanial Braddock, Ed Holstein & Chris Walz
WORLD MUSIC WEDNESDAY SERIES FREE WEEKLY CONCERTS, LINCOLN SQUARE
2/24 Noura Mint Seymali 3/2 Badi Assad
OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG 30 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 18, 2016
continued from 28
electronic instruments. Songs veer from dispassionate to violent in long, troubling minutes. And though their improvised music is already recorded live without overdubs, Good Willsmith shine even more live onstage. The trio operate as a three-headed dragon: Maxwell Allison and Doug Kaplan mix their multi-instrumental powers with the distorted vocal bursts of vocalist-synth player Natalie Chami to create a unified fiery breath. Their acute chemistry leaves you excitedly wondering which waveform they will conjure next. Tonight is the record-release show for Things Our Bodies, which is available in a limited 300-run edition on clear vinyl. —MEAGAN FREDETTE
Skizzy Mars P-Lo opens. 6 PM, Concord Music Hall, 2047 N. Milwaukee, $17. b Skizzy Mars doesn’t represent the brand of braggadocious rap that garnered respect for many of the Harlem rappers before him. Unlike the pink-furcoat-wearing Cam’ron or the rapping-in-high-endParisian-garments A$AP Rocky, this Harlemite deals with internal conflicts as he maneuvers through success as opposed to fame. Last year’s EP The Red Balloon Project debuted at number 35 on the Billboard 200 chart, and now Skizzy is set to drop his new full-length Alone Together in April by way of Atlantic Records. Leading up to the release of the upcoming album, Skizzy has teased fans with the pair of cuts “Alcoholics” and “Magic,” though the latter won’t appear on the album. On the self-damning tracks, Skizzy battles with drug use and sobriety via a sound reminiscent of vintage Kid Cudi and his melodic sing-rap style. His story-driven music also allows him to explore his complex relationships with women. Tracks like “Crash” and “Comb”—both featured on Alone Together—wrestle with a selfdoubt that leads to alcohol-infused nights and argument-driven days. —MANNY RAMOS
Slayer See also Saturday. Testament and Carcass open. 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, 4746 N. Racine, sold out. b Last year’s Repentless (Nuclear Blast) is the first Slayer album since 2009’s World Painted Blood, and its mixed reception is tempered by gratitude that it exists at all. Founding members Kerry King and Tom Araya held the band’s fate in limbo after the terrible year of 2013, when drummer Dave Lombardo left (again) and guitarist Jeff Hanneman died of liver failure due to cirrhosis. (Hanneman had already been sidelined by necrotizing fasciitis, which was possibly caused by a spider bite, and which, frankly, I’m surprised has not already become a Slayer song title). Repentless isn’t terrible by any stretch—it plays like a faithful grab bag of hallmark Slayer licks and tricks. Exodus guitarist Gary Holt fills in on second guitar, but King carries most of the weight here, and the album spends a lot of time in an effective but conservative (for them) zone. Though it rarely catches fire, it does still generate enough heat and light to fuel Slayer for now. —MONICA KENDRICK
SATURDAY20 The Kickback Low Cut Connie open; the Kickback and People’s Blues of Richmond open. 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, $15. 18+ In December Merge dropped a ten-year-anniversary reissue of Spoon’s Gimme Fiction, which is a reminder of the not-too-distant past when that album’s sophisticated, warm indie rock made the Texas band a cultural vanguard. Pop’s pendulum has since swung away from Spoon’s vision, and there’s less interest in bands endowed with the same grasp of untroubled harmonic bursts and refined, steady musical euphoria. Take the Kickback. J
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LIQUID SOUL
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CHRISTIAN SCOTT presents stretch music
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FEBRUARY 18, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 31
3855 N. LINCOLN
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JOE MARCINEK BAND FEAT. KRIS MEYERS OF UMPHREY’S MCGEE, MARTY SAMMON BAND, CANDYMAKERS
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continued from 30
Formed in South Dakota in 2006 but based in Chicago since 2009, the band recently dropped their long-gestating debut full-length, Sorry All Over the Place (Jullian Records), and though popularity isn’t a measure of artistic worth, we’re all poorer for these songs not being in more ears (though I’d probably say that regardless of how big the room is that they play). The Kickback are adroit in their precision—the nimble bass plugs away with minimal funk thump, the drums hum along with Krautrock poise, the guitars mosey with easygoing vitality— and front man Billy Yost provides hearthlike energy and heart. His smooth singing leaves enough gaps for bits of grit to surface, and his sudden changes in inflection on “Scorched Earth Brouhaha” and “White Lodge” unload extra kerosene. Tonight’s performances help cap off the three-night, six-venue Dunn Dunn Fest, a mini celebration of American music organized by local promotion company Harmonica Dunn. —LEOR GALIL
Slayer See Friday. Testament and Carcass open. 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, 4746 N. Racine, $50.50. b
WEDNESDAY24 Eleanor Friedberger Icewater and Coins open. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $15, $13 in advance. On her third and best solo album, New View (Frenchkiss), singer Eleanor Friedberger has pulled away even more from the breathless convolution of her old band Fiery Furnaces. Her new songs are direct hits, surrounded by lovely arrangements that draw upon a variety of 70s-rock antecedents like George Harrison or Bob Dylan, and they get their character from a plainspoken delivery. On “Open Season” she addresses an ex-lover who is now separated by some great distance, and her lyrics read
as though they come from a letter—she inquires about a new movie before unspooling a series of reveries about their shared past and what it means at present. The track’s ambling groove and lovely meandering lead guitar perfectly suit phrasing that begins with hushed introspection but grows more forceful as details become more personal. She lays her feelings out in the open on “Because I Asked You” with a litany of gestures that show a romance growing into love, while on “Roosevelt Island” she narrates a day of spontaneity hour by hour—featuring an epic series of verses that recalls vintage Dylan—as wonderfully scrappy guitar solos give her chances to catch her breath. Friedberger doesn’t possess an especially powerful voice, but she’s so comfortable with it that she’s one of my favorite singers—her conversational phrasing drops hooks in spite of itself. —PETER MARGASAK
Salonen conducts LutusŁawski 6:30 PM, Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan, $38$98, $15 students. b It’s no secret that the great Finnish conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen possesses a great love for the music of Polish composer Witold Lutosławski. A couple of years ago Sony Classical released a fantastic two-CD set of Salonen leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic through the four symphonies Lutosławski wrote during his lifetime; the vigor and depth of the performances is uncanny. This concert features him conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on a reading of the Third Symphony, not only the most exciting of the symphonies but a fitting choice since it was originally commissioned by the CSO in 1972. It took Lutosławski 11 years to complete the work, and it debuted in 1983 under the baton of Sir Georg Solti. Full of drama and intensity, it also contains luminous, unforgettable melodies. The composer requires performers to inject their own ideas into each reading using a procedure he called “limited aleatorism,” where phrases are played in rhythms devised by individu-
Where are the rest of the music listings? Find them at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.
Skizzy Mars
al players, independent of what the score calls for. This evening’s program also features Salonen’s own rousing Foreign Bodies and Beethoven’s Overture to King Stephen. —PETER MARGASAK
ò COURTESY ATLANTIC RECORDS
Ches Smith, Craig Taborn, and Mat Maneri 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $15, $12 in advance. 18+ A brooding, meditative intensity infuses every note of The Bell (ECM), a stunning debut album by the incisive trio fronted by percussionist Ches Smith. One of New York’s most mercurial players, the leader has an astonishing reserve of power, a natural proclivity for rock grooves, and an abiding love of controlled chaos. He wrote the album’s loose compositions for the trio with microtonal violist Mat Maneri and pianist Craig Taborn, but the tunes are mostly improvised, with loose guidelines that function as a road map. The title track feels like an invocation as it opens with the ding of a bell, then spends nearly eight minutes building tension. Taborn’s cycling lines suggest a crouching tiger waiting to assault its prey, while Smith counters with great forcefulness and Maneri offers running commentary. The piece just evaporates in the end, and that lack of resolution sets the tone for the exquisitely dark
grooves and moods that follow. Smith’s writing draws from classic minimalism in effective ways, especially when he moves to vibraphone: his interactions with Taborn on “Barely Intervallic” evoke the music of Steve Reich, but with a bittersweet melodic sensibility that belongs to him alone. There are a few pieces where his drumming provides propulsion, but more often than not he’s a colorist. I caught a performance by this trio in New York a couple of years ago that knocked me out, and the way the group now inhabits the material and has honed its interaction might make tonight even more impressive. —PETER MARGASAK
Vektor Voivod headline; Vektor, Eight Bells, and Predator open. 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2105 S. State, $25, $22 in advance. 17+ Vektor will release Terminal Redux (Earache) in March, nearly five years after their previous album, Outer Isolation. That sort of wait between records is often a symptom of a lineup overhaul, but these Philly-based sci-fi thrashers are still the same band that put out Black Future in 2009. Terminal Redux took so long to write because all four of these guys have full-time jobs—and because they’ve packed a staggering volume of data into the record’s ten songs, which total a frank-
ly exhausting 74 minutes. The mental discipline required simply to commit this material to memory for the stage suggests an inhuman order of intelligence—on their Facebook page, Vektor like to address their fans as “feeble Earth beings.” They spangle their frenzied, heart-attack-intense thrash riffing with impossibly rapid upper-register ornamentation, hurtling through knotty song structures whose melodies and countermelodies crisscross and leapfrog each other—it’s hardly catchy stuff, but it’s engrossing, and even if you can’t follow a song’s development, you’ll notice when it builds to a blinding, breathless climax that leaves the air swarming with afterimages. Front man David DiSanto mostly shrieks like a vacuum cleaner full of sand (his few attempts at proper singing aren’t worth discussing), and the warp-speed guitar solos spiral and swoop like incandescent hummingbirds—I don’t dare guess how many hundreds or thousands of times these maniacs had to rehearse each one to make it feel so liquid and effortless. The music often evokes the mind-destroying speed, vast emptiness, and lonely beauty of space travel, and on “LCD (Liquid Crystal Disease),” a breakdown takes the form of a sassy unison melody hocketing with a chugging low note that pocks it like the missing bits in a high-speed digital transmission. —PHILIP MONTORO v
FEBRUARY 18, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 33
FOOD & DRINK
MAPLE & ASH | $$$$$ 8 W. Maple 312-944-8888 mapleandash.com
NEW REVIEW
Maple & Ash offers Gold Coast excess at excessive prices The whimsical twist on the typically stuffy steak-house format would benefit from a little discipline.
Tender and meaty charred octopus; onion rings bring together the wedge salad; a martini serves as an “amuse booze”; the hanger steak (opposite) is full of flavor. ò LUCY HEWETT
By JULIA THIEL
I
’ve never had the luxury of not giving a fuck about what I do with $145. But Maple & Ash—which offers a $145 chef’s tasting menu friskily called “I Don’t Give a F*ck”—is aimed squarely at those who do. The Gold Coast steak house apparently was conceived as a playground for the fabulously wealthy and businesspeople with large expense accounts. A $95 seafood tower for two? Why not! Caviar ranging from $100 to $240? Bring it on! (When we asked our waiter for recommendations, those were the first items he praised to the sky. Coincidentally, I’m sure, they’re also the most expensive items on the menu aside from a 40-ounce porterhouse for $130.) It’s a fine environment in which to spend lavishly. Opulent yet modern, the enormous 600-seat restaurant is decorated with an ele-
34 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 18, 2016
gant chandelier and imposing floral displays. You enter downstairs through the main bar, a sleek space with its own menu of food (and its own chandeliers). The fare is more casual than what’s served upstairs; you can order a burger or chips and dip. There’s still plenty of opportunity for extravagance, though. While most of the menu items are under $20, there’s always the option of adding caviar to your deviled eggs for $24, or a bottle of champagne (up to $350) to your bowl of punch. Upstairs, after being seated you’re presented with an “amuse booze”: a small reverse martini (two-thirds vermouth, one-third gin) to sip while you peruse the menu, along with mini radishes and butter, a generous pile of chunks of Hook’s two-year cheddar, and a small bowl of excellent assorted green olives.
The spread’s a nice touch, especially since the wine list begins with a table of contents and continues for another 26 pages. It would be even nicer if the care taken with the martinis on my first visit—when they were delicate, perfectly balanced savory cocktails with just a hint of sweet and sour—hadn’t been abandoned on another occasion, when they were served warm (in chilled glasses) and so tart they were barely drinkable. It’s a shame since mixologist Cristiana DeLucca’s cocktail list takes martinis seriously, offering eight iterations from various historical periods—but I fared better with a seriously herbal martini with St. George Terroir gin and cucumber bitters. However the best cocktail I drank was the Pimiento Rojo, a smoky blend of reposado tequila, mescal, Amaro Lucano, framboise, and
“hearth-roasted red pepper-ginger syrup.” Speaking of “hearth-roasted”—Maple & Ash has a wood-burning grill that’s central to chef David Ochs’s approach to food. Not only meat finds its way onto the fire, but also vegetables, everything in the seafood tower, and a “baked-in-coals” French onion soup. All of the seafood tower’s components are available a la carte, which allowed us to discover that the Gulf shrimp and scallops, while superbly cooked, shared the same flaw: a fishy, not-sofresh flavor that also plagued a bland salmon tartare. Tender and meaty charred octopus, on the other hand, was some of the best I’ve eaten, and the “roasted seasonal fish”—in the case of one of my visits, walleye served over beurre blanc with lobster and endives—was nicely done if not particularly memorable.
Search the Reader’s online database of thousands of Chicago-area restaurants—and add your own review—at chicagoreader.com/food.
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Salad is never the point at a steak house— unless it’s a wedge salad, and Maple & Ash has a satisfying rendition with ranch dressing, blue cheese, chunks of bacon, and tomato, crowned by two enormous onion rings that, improbably, bring the whole thing together. The point of a steak house, of course, is the steak. Fortunately, this is one area Maple & Ash has unquestionably mastered. A 28-day dry-aged rib eye, well marbled with fat, had the most complex, earthy flavor I’ve tasted in a steak, while the perfectly rare interior of the strip steak contrasted beautifully with its smoky, lightly charred exterior. Even the cheapest cut on the menu, a $28 ten-ounce hanger steak served with fries, is handled with care, full of flavor and surprisingly tender. Aside from the crispy fries that accompany the steak frites, though, there aren’t many side dishes I’d order again. The server highly recommended the “baked and loaded” potatoes and the brussels sprouts with bacon. The rich potato dish, generously laced with braised short ribs and topped with raclette cheese, bacon, truffle, and fried onions, was delicious but made a terrible match for the fatty steak; the brussels sprouts, drowning in
bacon grease, had the same issue. On a later visit, though, we had the opposite problem: whipped potatoes with butter were undersalted and lacking in both butter and flavor; broccolini with pickled peppers was overly acidic even if a welcome contrast to the steak. Steak houses have a tendency to leave diners with not much room for dessert, but we didn’t have any trouble finishing the key lime pavlova: coconut sherbet and rich key lime custard topped with a brittle meringue wafer that shattered at the touch of a spoon and surrounded by grilled pineapple chunks and a graham cracker-coconut crumble. For that matter, the flaky-crusted caramel apple tart with sweettart cranberry caramel and cinnamon cream wasn’t work to get down either. Back to that wine list: Belinda Chang, a rock star in the world of sommeliers, is responsible for assembling the menu of 600plus wines—including a very useful page with the top 50 bottles under $50. On my first visit, our attentive sommelier recommended a Szigeti sparkling gruner veltliner from this section that I wish were on every restaurant’s menu. But another time, the wine service was lackluster: the first course
arrived before the sommelier inquired about a wine order, and when he finally did appear (a different one than before) he just pointed to a couple wines by the glass on the menu. After some prodding about the restaurant’s Coravin system, which allows diners to order any wine on the menu by the glass, he showed a bit more interest, recommending a nice gruner veltliner from Schloss Gobelsburg, the oldest winery in the Danube. Seeing the Coravin in action—it uses a needle to slowly extract wine from the bottle through the cork in dribs and drabs—made it clear why the program isn’t being advertised to people who aren’t obviously wine geeks, but it’s still a nice option to have. Maple & Ash presents itself as playful and irreverent, larding its menus with movie references and little jokes that imply this isn’t your grandpa’s steak house. And while the crowd does skew younger than the one you’d see at old-school places like Gene & Georgetti, the whimsy on display is the type that people with money to burn can afford. I’d happily exchange it for a more solid focus on the food. v
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v @juliathiel FEBRUARY 18, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 35
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○ Watch a video of Won Kim working with ponce in the kitchen—and get the recipe—at chicagoreader.com/food.
KEY INGREDIENT
Won Kim stomaches ponce, the sausagestuffed pig stomach By JULIA THIEL Tempura-battered and fried ponce, trumpet mushrooms, pickled onions, sesame leaves
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P
ONCE, also known as chaudin, is a sausage-stuffed pig stomach traditional in Cajun cuisine. In Chicago it’s all but nonexistent. So when CALEB TRAHAN of BREAD & WINE challenged WON KIM, chef of the yetto-open KIMSKI, to create a dish with ponce, Kim’s first task was locating some. He called around to local butcher shops with no luck before asking some chef friends for help. As it turned out, Dan Salls of the Salsa Truck and the Garage was about to go make ponce with Alfredo Nogueira, who serves Cajun and creole food at Analogue. The pair agreed to create an extra one for Kim; they even made him another in a ballotine—rolling sausage tightly in a splayed-open pig stomach and then tying up the log—as well as the more traditional whole stuffed stomach. The whole stomach was also a bit of a departure from the traditional ponce: pig stomach isn’t particularly easy to find in Chicago, and the only ones the chefs could get had already been cut open. “They sort of quilted the stomach together,” Kim says, to try to re-create what a whole stomach would look like. “It looks like some Lord of the Ringsesque grandmother made it,” Kim says. “I don’t even know if it’s all from the same pig,
honestly. It could be like five stomachs.” Because Kim is Korean—as is the food he usually cooks—he prepared a Korean take on the Cajun dish. Dangmyeon, or noodles made from sweet potato starch, served as a bed for the ponce; Kim tossed the noodles with a fermented chile sauce made with sesame seed oil, soju, and rice vinegar. For the ponce itself, he stuck with the neater ballotine style, poaching the whole thing before cutting off a thick slice, which he tempura-battered and fried. Kim served it with earthy panfried trumpet mushrooms, pickled onions for acidity, and sesame leaves, which he says add “a bright kind of bitterness.” The ponce, Kim says, is “everything I love about a sausage—spiced well, good texture. Good job, Dan! It doesn’t taste like shit at all.” Kim also liked the chewiness of the stomach surrounding the sausage. “I like to know that I’m eating stomach,” he said. “Fuck Caleb still, but I think it worked out.”
WHO’S NEXT:
Kim has challenged SALLS to create a dish with HORSERADISH. v
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SEEKING A COLLEGE educated
GRANT THORNTON LLP is
seeking a Solution Architect in Chicago, IL with the following requirements: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Information Systems, Management Information Systems or related field or foreign academic equivalent plus 5 years of related experience. Prior related experience must include: create infrastructure setup for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management and Business Analytics applications; implement consolidation and forecasting system using Hyperion Financial Management and Hyperion Planning; implement ODI interfaces with Hyperion and non Hyperion systems; implement reporting using Oracle Business Analytics tool set. 100% travel required; individuals must live near a major airport. Please apply at www.gt.com by clicking on the Careers link.
ALTERNATIVE REPRODUCTIVE RESOURCES
ARR
Chicago’s premier agency is looking for the following:
Egg Donors: $7,000 to all healthy, nonsmoking women ages 20-29.
General individual for a permanent part-time employment in Evanston working with children and adults in a Behavioral Vision Training program with Dr. Jeff Getzell, O.D. Experience preferred but not required for the right individual. Dr. Getzell is willing to work with an individual as an entry level person, should there be no previous medical experience. Requirements: -Exceptional problem solver -Bright -Curious -Open minded Work schedule: -Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays 2pm-6pm -Saturdays 8am-12pm Please note that the employment hours are not flexible. Resume submission options: Email: behavioraloptometry@gmail. com No phone calls please.
General
Gestational Surrogates:
$30,000- $35,000
to women between 21-38 who has delivered at least one child. To Learn More:
773.327.7315 ! info@arr1.com www.arr1.com
12.25/HR FOR 90 DAYS THEN
15.00/HR APPLY NOW 872.203.9303 BECOME A
HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONAL
STUDIO $900 AND OVER LINCOLN PARK 545 West Ar-
lington Place. 2450 North. Available now. Courtyard building set off by our lovely courtyard. Exposed brick hallways, oak floors, modern kitchens and baths. Resident engineer. 2-1/2 room studio $1125. Heat and appliances included. For appointment call 312-822-1037 weekdays until 5:30pm, Saturdays until 3pm.
MARINA
TOWERS
STUDIO
Apt Rental, Jan ’16 remodeled bath & kitchen, river view, 34th flr, $1,450/mo, 12 mo min lease, call leane @ 312.420.8851.
STUDIO OTHER CHICAGO, HYDE PARK Arms Hotel, 5316 S. Harper, maid, phone, cable ready, fridge, private facilities, laundry avail. $160/wk Call 773-4933500 CROSSROADS HOTEL SRO SINGLE RMS Private bath, PHONE,
CABLE & MAIDS. 1 Block to Orange Line 5300 S. Pulaski 773-581-1188
TRANSUNION, LLC SEEKS Sr.
Engineers for Chicago, IL location to develop IT analysis standards and methodology consistent with technical requirements. Bachelor’s in Comp. Science/Comp. Eng./Info. Tec h./Tech. Management/any Eng. field plus 2yrs exp. req’d. Exp. must include: ESXi, VMWare, vSphere, vCenter, vCloud Director, vOrchestrator, P2V & V2V migrations, Linux, TCP/IP, DNS, VPN, LDAP, AD. Send resume to: E. Munoz, REF: PVP, 555 W Adams, Chicago, IL 60661
OPENING FOR LEAD Quantitative Engineer in Chicago, IL at Geneva Trading USA, responsible for data analytics solutions for electronic trading. Requires master’s in quantitative finance or related field, plus at least 3 years of experience in Q(KDB), R, Python, or C++ in Linux environment. Knowledge of derivative products (futures and options) required. Send resume to Geneva Trading USA, 190 S. LaSalle, Suite 1800, Chicago, IL 60603 or apply online at www.geneva-trading.com.
REAL ESTATE RENTALS
STUDIO $600-$699 7500 SOUTH SHORE Dr. Brand New Rehabbed Studio & 1BR Apts from $650. Call 773-374-7777 for details.
BIG ROOM WITH stove, fridge, bath & new floor. N. Side, by transp/ shop. Clean w/elevator. $116/wk + up. 773-561-4970
312-236-9000 AAS Accredited Degree Programs:
• MRI Technologist • Health Information Technology (includes 3 certifications: Medical Billing, Coding, and Medical Office Administration) • Non-Invasive Cardiovascular Sonography (diploma & degree options) • Diagnostic Medical Sonography (diploma & degree options)
Now offers Associate of Applied Science Degrees
For OPEN HOUSE info, visit WWW.MCCOLLEGE.EDU
Diploma & Certificate Programs:
• Medical Assisting (also includes Phlebotomy & EKG) • Cardiology/Monitor Tech/EKG • Dialysis Technologist • Phlebotomy Technologist • Surgical Technologist (also includes Sterile Processing certification) • CNA • Pharmacy Tech • ESL
Office hours, programs, and class schedules vary by location. Please call us or visit our website for details.
We accept international students.
MIDWESTERN CAREER COLLEGE
Chicago 20 N. Wacker Dr. (@downtown) (312) 236-9000
Naperville Blue Island 200 E. 5th Ave. 12840 S. Western Ave. (@Metra Station) (@Metra Station) (630) 536-8679 (708) 926-9470
Midwestern Career College is approved by the Division of Private Business and Vocational Schools of the Illinois Board of Higher Education. Gainful Employment information for each program is available on our website at www.mccollege.edu under program descriptions.
CLEAN ROOM WITH fridge and
microwave. Close to Oak Park, Walmart, Buses & Metra. $115/wk & up. 773-637-5957
EDGEWATER - NICE Room with
stove, fridge & bath, by Shopping & Transp. Elevator, Lndry. $116/wk. & Up. Call 773-275-4442
1 BR UNDER $700 7022 S. SHORE DRIVE Impecca-
bly Clean Highrise STUDIOS, 1 & 2 BEDROOMS Facing Lake & Park. Laundry & Security on Premises. Parking & Apts. Are Subject to Availability. TOWNHOUSE APARTMENTS 773-288-1030
10801 S. PRAIRIE 2BR $775 newly decorated, heat/appls incl; 7337 S SHORE DR. XL 1BR, all utils, appls & heat incl. elev. bldg, lndry, workout rm, $900. Section 8 ok. 888-249-7971 CHICAGO SOUTH - YOU’VE tried the rest, we are the best. Apartments & Homes for rent, city & suburb. No credit checks. 773-221-7490, 773-221-7493 CO-OP APARTMENTS AFFORDABLE LIVING, Chat-
ham, 83rd & Langley. Dep. Req, Pymt Plns Avail. heat incl, no appliances. Credit chk fee $50. Call 773-723-1374
10508 S. MARYLAND, 1st flr, 1BR, carpet, A/C, stove/fridge, cfans, enclosed porch, heat not incl. $550 + sec. 773-704-4153, 10a-6p. CHATHAM, 708 E. 81st (Langley), 1BR, 3rd flr. 738 E. 81st (Evans), 1BR, 3rd floor. $650/mo + security. Call Mr. Joe at 708-870-4801 CHICAGO, BEVERLY / Cal Park / Blue Island Studio $530 & up, 1BR $650 & up, 2BR $875 & up. Heat, Appls, Balcony, Carpet, Laundry, Prkg. 708-388-0170 EXCHANGE EAST APTS 1 Brdm $575 w/Free Parking,Appl, AC,Free heat. Near trans. laundry rm. Elec.not incl. Kalabich Mgmt (708) 424-4216 6930 S. SOUTH SHORE DRIVE Studios & 1BR, INCL. Heat, Elec, Cking gas & PARKING, $560-$850, Country Club Apts 773-752-2200
NEAR 83RD AND Maryland.
Large 2BR. Recently remodeled, all hdwd flrs, new kitchen and bath, heat incl. $800/mo. 708-921-9506
CHICAGO - HYDE Park 5401 S. Ellis. 1BR. $535-$600/mo Call 773-955-5106
CHICAGO: Vicinity 76th & Paulina, 3BR, 2BA w/garage, newly rehabbed, Sec 8 welcome. $1400/mo. Call 773-510-9290
$395. FURNISHED GARDEN Bedroom in private home. Irving Park/Western. Laundry, bathroom, refrigerator. Wifi. Private entrance. NO KITCHEN. Yards. April 1. Nonsmoking! References, lease. 773485-3363, bjsilverbeam@msn.com.
CHICAGO 8633 S Maryland. 1BR, 1st flr, completely renovated, hdwd ceramic tile, new blinds, appls, heated. $ 650 + sec. 773-874-2103
MIDWAY AREA/63RD KEDZIE Deluxe Studio 1 & 2 BRs. All
Apt $600/mo + $600 sec dep & ref check. Quiet Bldg, Incl heat & fridge. Avail now. 773-297-8575.
modern oak floors, appliances, Security system, on site maint. clean & quiet, Nr. transp. From $445. 773582-1985 (espanol)
8927 S. DAUPHIN.
1BR 2nd flr apt. $600/mo. Heat Incl. Mr. Smith. 773-531-3531 80TH and Hermitage. 1BR & 2BR, 3rd flr, $625 -$675/mo. Dennis 773-4459470
DAYCARE FOR LEASE:
4930 W Diversey, 4200sqft, $4975/mo., furniture included. Call 312-617-5936 for more information
85TH/PAULINA - 1BR, 2nd flr
WEST PULLMAN (INDIANA
Ave) Nice, lrg 1 & 2BR w/balcony. 1BR $650, 2BR $750. Move-In Fee $300. Sec 8 Welcome. 773-995-6950
85TH & HERMITAGE , 2BR, $100 0/ month plus security deposit. Hardwood floors,heat included. Section 8 ok. 708-794-6485
79th & Woodlawn and 76th & Phillips 1BRs $650-$700, Remodeled, appls avail. Free Heat. Sect 8 welcome. Call 312-286-5678
N RIVERSIDE: 1BR new tile/ windows, lndry facilitities, a/c, incls heat & natural gas, $849/mo Luis 708-366-5602 lv msg
1 BR $700-$799 PLAZA ON THE PARK 608 East 51st Street. Very spacious renovated apartments. 1BR $722 - $801, 2BR $837 - $1,009, 3BR $1,082- $1,199, 4-5BR $1,273 - $1,405. Visit or call (773)548-9300, M-F 9am-5pm or apply online at www.plazaonthepark apts.com Managed by Metroplex, Inc
BLUE ISLAND - MOD 1BR Apt, newly decorated, carpet, A/C, stove, fridge, lndry room, private parking, $740/mo + sec. Vic. of 119th & Western, 773-238-7203 CALUMET CITY, HUGE 1BR, 1Ba, Newly rehabbed, appliances incl., $700/mo. + 1 month security. Section 8 ok. Call 510-735-7171 BERWYN - CICERO: STUDIOS & 1 Bedrooms, Heat included. No dogs. Call Ken 773-391-1460
1 BR $800-$899 ROGERS PARK/ EVANSTON!
7665-7703 N. Sheridan Rd. 1 bedrooms starting at $875 to $925, includes heat and cooking gas! Hardwood floors, free WiFi. Vintage courtyard building, by Evanston Northwestern University, long-term private ownership, cats ok, dogs upon approval. For a showing please contact Samir 773-627-4894. Hunter Properties 773-477-7070 www. hunterprop.com
EDGEWATER. 1055 W Catalpa 1
bedrooms starting at $875 to $925 heat and cooking gas included! Application fee $40. No security deposit. Parking available for an additional fee. Laundry room in the building, wood floors, close to grocery stores, restaurant, CTA Red Line train, etc. For a showing please contact Millie 773-561-7070 Hunter Properties,Inc. 773-477-7070 www.hunterprop.com
LAKESIDE TOWER, 910 W Lawrence. 1 bedrooms starting at $825-$895 include heat and gas, laundry in building. Great view! Close to CTA Red Line, bus, stores, restaurants, lake, etc. To schedule a showing please contact Celio 773-3961575, Hunter Properties 773-4777070, www.hunterprop.com ONE BEDROOM APARTMENT
near Warren Park and Metra. 1904 W Pratt. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. Heat included. Laundry in building. $ 830/ month. Available 3/1. 773-7614318, www.lakefrontmgt.com
SECTION 8 OK. 5BR, 2 full baths SFH, newly fin. hdwd flrs, quiet block, avail. immed., $1500/mo. Experienced landlord, 773-2252372
Addison. Available now. Magnificent apartments, super light and airy, set off by a beautiful courtyard. Laundry room, storage lockers. Steps from the lake, steps from transportation and steps from shopping and recreation. Resident engineer. 4/1 bedroom garden $1245. Heat and appliances included. To see call 312-822-1037 weekdays until 5:30pm, Saturdays until 3pm.
EVANSTON. 818-1/2 FOREST
Ave Apt C-3. Stately building on quiet street, near Sheridan Road. Sedate residential area. Near Main Street, shops, restaurants and transportation. Heat and appliances included. We will fax floorplans upon request. 1 bedroom. Available now-6/30 option to renew. $1250. For appointment call 312-822-1037 weekdays until 5:30pm, Saturdays until 3pm.
WE’LL PUT YOU in our place. DePaul District. 2901 North Seminary #103. Available 2/1. Cabinet kitchens and updated baths. Heat and appliances included. 2/1 bedroom $1225. For appointment call 312-822-1037 weekdays until 5:30pm, Saturdays until 3pm. 1748 W. WABANSIA 1 bdrm $1150. Water included. Call Daniel 773-875-8085 or Paul J. Quetschke & Co., 773-281-8400 (Mon-Fri. 9-5).
1 BR OTHER
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT LOS VECINOS Apartments, located at 4250 W. North Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, is opening its subsidized Section 8 Waiting List for individuals in need of (SRO) Apartments. Rent calculations are based upon your annual income and income limitations apply in order to qualify for residency. All requests for preapplications must be completed in person only and will be accepted at: Los Vecinos Apartments 4250 W. North Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60639 11:00 A.M. to 3:00P.M. Wednesday, February 17, 2016 PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT Karibuni Apartments, located at 8200 S. Ellis, Chicago, Illinois, is opening its subsidized Section 8 Waiting List for individuals in need of (SRO) Apartments. Rent calculations are based upon your annual income and income limitations apply in order to qualify for residency. All requests for preapplications must be completed in person only and will be accepted at: Karibuni Apartments 8200 S. Ellis Chicago, Illinois 60619 10:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M. Tuesday, February 16, 2016
EVANSTON, 1404 CENTRAL,
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT HOLLYWOOD HOUSE Apartments, a senior living community, located at 5700 N. Sheridan Rd., Chicago, Illinois, is opening its Waiting List for individuals in need of affordable Studio and 1Bedroom apartments. Income limitations apply. All requests for pre-applications must be completed in at: Hollywood House Apartments 5700 N. Sheridan Rd Chicago, Illinois 60660 9:00 A.M. to 2:30 P.M. Wednesday, February 17, 2016
Hyde Park West Apts., 5325 S. Cottage Grove Ave., Renovated spacious apartments in landscaped gated community. Off street parking available. 2BR $1045 - Free heat. Visit or call 773-324-0280, M-F: 9am-5pm or apply online- www.hydepark we st.com. Managed by Metroplex, Inc
APTS. FOR RENT PARK MANAGEMENT & INVESTMENT LTD. THE HAWK HAS... ARRIVED!!! MOST INCLUDE HEAT & HOT WTR STUDIOS FROM $510.00 1BDR FROM $575.00 2BDR FROM $745.00 3 BDR/2 FULL BATH FROM $1175 **1-(773)-476-6000** CALL FOR DETAILS
1 BR $900-$1099 Apt 107. Near Evanston Hospital and shuttle bus to Northwestern. Beautiful courtyard. Spacious vintage apartment, laundry and storage on premises. Near public transportation and el and super shopping on Central. Heat and appliances included. 31/2/1 bedroom. Available now-6/30. Renew optional. $1050. For appointment call 312-822-1037 weekdays until 5:30pm, Saturdays until 3pm.
WEST
RIDGE,
6200N/
2200W. Spacious updated one bedroom garden apartment. Near transportation, shopping, parks. Heat, appliances, electricity, blinds included. 773-274-8792. $900. CHICAGO, BEVERLY AREA 1316 W. 100th Pl. Total rehabbed, heat & A/C incl. 6 rms, 3BR, Sec 8 Welcome, $1000/mo. 773-339-0182
1648 W. CATALPA 1 bdrm Ave, 1BR, newly decorated. Tenant $950. Heat included. Call Rosie 773782-7627 or Paul J. Quetschke & Co., pays utilities. $500/mo + 773-281-8400 (Mon.-Fri. 9-5). security. Call 773-507-8475 HAMMOND, IN. 5604 Claude
1 BR $1100 AND OVER LINCOLN PARK. 512-1/2 West
ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar Villas is accepting applications for subsidized 1BR apts. for seniors 62 years or older and the disabled. Rent is based on 30% of annual income. For details, call us at 847-546-1899 ∫ 7637 S. PHILLIPS. Large 3BR, 2 Full Bath, hdwd flrs, renovated kitchen with appls, A/C. $1100/mo. Sec 8 Welc. 773-343-1808 before 6pm
FEBRUARY 18, 2016 | CHICAGO READER 37
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT LELAND APARTMENTS, located at 1207 W. Leland Ave., Chicago, Illinois, is opening its Waiting List for individuals in need of affordable Single Room Occupancy (SRO) and Studio apartments. Income limitations apply. All requests for pre-applications must be completed in person at: Leland Apartments 1207 W. Leland Chicago, Illinois 60640 9:00 A.M. to 2:30 P.M. Tuesday, February 16, 2016 PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT SAN MIGUEL Apartments, located at 907 W. Argyle, Chicago, Illinois, is opening its Waiting List for individuals in need of affordable Studio, 1 bedroom and 2 bedroom apartments. Income limitations apply. All requests for preapplications must be completed in person at: San Miguel Apartments 907 W. Argyle St. Chicago, Illinois 60640 9:00 A.M. to 2:30 P.M. Monday, February 15, 2016 APTS. FOR RENT PARK MANAGEMENT & INVESTMENT LTD. THE HAWK IS HERE! HEAT, HW & CG INCLUDED 1BDR FROM $725.00 2BDR FROM $895.00 3 BDR/2 FULL BATH FROM $1175 **1-(773)-476-6000** CALL FOR DETAILS WAITING LIST OPEN Drexel Square Senior Apts. 810 E. 51st. Chicago, IL. 60615 for Qualified Seniors 62+ Beautiful park like setting, Hyde park area, rent based on 30% of monthly income (sec. 8), A/C, heat, lndry., rec. rooms, storage space in apt, cable ready, intercom entrance system, 24 hours front desk customer service. Applications will be accepted immediately between the hours of 11:00am-3:00pm at the above address. 773-268-2120 CALUMET CITY 158TH & PAXTON SANDRIDGE APTS 1 & 2 BEDROOM UNITS MODELS OPEN M-F, 9AM-5:30PM *** 708-841-5450 *** CHICAGO, 7727 S. Colfax, ground flr Apt., ideal for senior citizens. Secure bldng. Modern 1BR $595. Lrg 2BR, $800. Free cooking & heating gas. Free parking. 312613-4427 ROYALTON HOTEL, Kitchenette $135 & up wk. 1810 W. Jackson 312-226-4678
SECTION 8 WELCOME SOUTHSIDE, RECENTLY RENOVATED, 1, 2 & 3BR APTS. $800-$1250/MO. CALL SEAN, 773-410-7084 CALUMET CITY 1 & 2BR condo style apartments, all appliances & utilities, laundry & off street parking included. Call Mike, 708-3726774 CHICAGO - BEVERLY, LARGE 2 room Studio & 1BR, Carpet, A/C, laundry, near transportation, $640-$750/mo. Call 773-233-4939 77TH/LOWE 1 & 2BR. 101st/May 2BR, 69th/Dante, 3BR. 71st/ Bennett 2 & 3BR. 71st/Hermitage 3BR. New renov. Sec 8 ok. 708-5031366 SUBURBS, RENT TO O W N ! Buy with No closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708-868-2422 or visit w ww.nhba.com CHICAGO, RENT TO OWN! Buy with no closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708-868-2422 or visit www. nhba.com WINTER SPECIAL $500 To-
ward Rent Beautiful Studios 1, 2, 3 & 4 BR Sect. 8 Welc. Westside Loc, Must qualify. 773-287-4500 www. wjmngmt.com
Large Sunny Room w/fridge & microwave. Nr. Oak Park, Green Line, bus. 24 hour desk, parking lot. $101/week & Up. 773-3788888 WEST HUMBOLDT PK 1 & 2BR Apts, spacious, oak wood flrs, huge closets. heat incl, rehab, $755 & $865. 847-866-7234 READY TO MOVE? REMODELED 1, 2 , 3 & 4 BR Apts.
Heat & Appls incl. South Side locations only. Call 773-593-4357
MOVE IN SPECIAL!!! B4 the N of this MO. & MOVE IN 4 $99.00 (773) 874-1122
Ashland Hotel nice clean rms. 24 hr desk/maid/TV/laundry/air. Low rates daily/weekly/monthly. South Side. Call 773-376-5200
2 BR UNDER $900 W. PULLMAN COMM: 115 E 119th Place 2BR, 2BA house, clean, Liv & din rm, 1/2 fin bsmt, Sec 8 welcome. $1150/mo 773-4158077 CHICAGO - 3349 W. 21ST., 2BR, heat incl, no appliances. $700/mo, 1 mo. sec + 1 mo rent. Call Mrs. Jackson from 9-8 at 773-521-8836 7701 S. South Shore Dr. 2 BDs with 1.5 Baths, Large Combo Living-Dining Rm, FREE Heat & cking gas. Prkng extra. $785-$800, Kalabich Mgmt (708)424-4216
CHICAGO SOUTHSIDE BRAND new 2, 3 & 4BR apts. Excel-
lent neighborhood, nr trans & schools, Sect 8 Welc., Call 708-7742473
S. SHORE 2 bedroom, newly decorated, heat incl, no security, appls not incl, $850 per month. 708-805-3202
7548 S. Blackstone,2 BR, $750/mo. Sec 8 OK. Call Office: 773-966-5275 or Steve: 773-936-4749
CHICAGO, 120TH & Halsted, 6 rooms, 2BR, heat & appliances included. $650/month + security deposit. Call 773-707-3132 NO SEC DEP 1431 W. 78th. St. 2BR. $595/mo. 6829 S. Perry. Studio $460. 1BR. $515. HEAT INCL 773-955-5106 CHICAGO 7600 S Essex 2BR $599, 3BR $699, 4BR $799 w/apprvd credit, no sec dep. Sect 8 Ok! 773287-9999 /312-446-3333
NO MOVE-IN FEE! No Dep! Sec 8
CHICAGO SOUTHSIDE, Newly remodeled 3BR w/ appliances,
ok. 1, 2 & 3 Bdrms. Elev bldg, laundry, pkg. 6531 S. Lowe. Ms. Payne. 773-874-0100
8514 S. Burley. New rehab 3BR apts, Hdwd flrs, Stove, fridge and heat incl. Free 50in TV. 312-678-9065
CHATHAM- 718 E. 81st St. Newly remodeled 1BR, 1 BA, Dining room, Living room, hdwd flrs, appliances. & heat included. Call 847-533-5463
ACACIA SRO HOTEL Men Preferred! Rooms for Rent. Weekly & Monthly Rates. 312-421-4597
2 BR $1100-$1299 4153 N. LINCOLN 2 bdrm $1125. Water included. Quetschke & Co. (Mon.-Fri 9-5)
Call Paul J. 773-281-8400
4014 N. HOYNE, 2 bdrm $1100.
Water included. Call Daniel, 773985-8085 or Paul J. Quetschke & Co. 773-281-8400 (Mon.-Fri 9-5)
3232 N LEAVITT, 2 bdrm $1100. Electricity included. Call Daniel, 773985-8085 or Paul J. Quetschke & Co. 773-281-8400 (Mon.-Fri 9-5)
CHATHAM
& 3BR w/ appliances. Call 773-908-8791
2 BR $900-$1099 6117 S. CAMPBELL, newly decorated 4BR Apt. Heat included. Stove & refrigerator. $1000/mo + $1000 sec dep. Sect 8 welc. 312719-0524
BURNHAM , 2BR, large liv/ din, new carpet appls, ceramic tile kitchen/bath, lndry, quiet area, Sec 8 ok, $950/mo. 708-534-6440
LINCOLN PARK 518 West Addison. Available 2/15. Magnificent apartments, super light and airy, set off by a beautiful courtyard. Laundry room, storage lockers. Steps from the lake, steps from transportation and steps from shopping and recreation. Resident engineer. 5/2 bedroom $1750. Heat and appliances included. To see call 312-822-1037 weekdays until 5:30pm, Saturdays until 3pm.
BEAUTIFUL
REMOD 2 & 3BR, hdwd flrs, custom cabinets, avail now. $1100-$1200/mo + sec. 773-905-8487 Sec 8 Ok
3752 N. SOUTHPORT 2 Bdrm $1100. Water included. Call Daniel, 773-985-8085 or Paul J. Quetschke & Co. 773-281-8400 (Mon.-Fri 9-5)
2 BR $1300-$1499 EAST L A K E V I E W / WRIGLEYVILLE Newly renovated, sunny, 2 bedroom apartment in elegant vintage greystone building w/hardwood floors, dishwasher, air-conditioning, backyard patio, washer/dryer on premises. $1400/ month. Call Nat 773-880-2414.
ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar Villas is accepting applications for Subsidized 2 and 3 bedroom apt waiting list. Rent is based on 30% of annual income for qualified applicants. Contact us at 847-546-1899 for details CHICAGO, PRINCETON PARK
HOMES. Spac 2 - 3 BR Townhomes, Inclu: Prvt entry, full bsmt, lndry hook-ups. Ample prkg. Close to trans & schls. Starts at $816/mo. www. ppkhomes.com;773-264-3005
7338 S. PAULINA, totally remodeled building, 2BR 1st flr, 2BR 2nd flr, $1000/mo + move in fees; 1 BR garden apt. $800/mo all util. incl. Launry room on site. 773803-7235 MATTESON 2 & 3 BR AVAIL. 2BR, $990-$1050; 3BR, $1250-$1400. Move In Special is 1 Month’s Rent & $99 Security Deposit. Section 8 Welcome. Call 708-748-4169 7359 S. DORCHESTER, 1 & 2BR Apartments, brand new, heat & appliances included. Section 8 OK. Call Miro, 708-4737129
OLD IRVING PARK 2BR apartment, 1300-SQFT. hardwood floors, granite countertops, breakfast area in kitchen, SS appliances, close to Blue Line, laundry in building, $1400/mo. 773919-0221
SECT 8 WELC, 2BR, 1BA, newly remod, hdwd flrs, carpet in BRs, all appls incl., clean bsmt, $1200/ mo. No Sec Dep. 847-533-2496, Steve
2 BR $1500 AND
Free Flat Screen!! ! 109th/ Princeton and 75th/Honore, 35BR, Remodeled w/ hdwd flrs. $700-$1500. Sect 8 OK. 773-4942247
OVER
EVANSTON 818 FOREST Ave Apt A-1. Stately building on quiet street, near Sheridan Road Sedate residential area. Near Main Street, shops, restaurants and transportation. Heat and appliances included. We will fax floor plans upon request. Large 5.5 rooms/ 2 bedrooms/ 2 baths. Available 3/1. $1650. For appointment call 312-822-1037 weekdays until 5:30pm, Saturdays until 3pm.
3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200
3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799
EAST GARFIELD PARK, West Side Newly Rehab 3BR Apts. $1195 - $1295 / month 773-230-6132 or 773-9316108
61st/Rhodes. Newly Decorated 3BR, 7 rooms, $875. 74th & East End, 2BR/DR, $825. 76th & Drexel, 2BR $725 Heat incl. 773-874-9637 or 773-493-5359
2 BR OTHER
SOUTH CHICAGO-CHATHAM-
CHICAGO SOUTH SIDE Beauti-
ful Studios, 1,2,3 & 4 BR’s, Sec 8 ok. $500 gift certificate for Sec 8 tenants. 773-287-9999/312-446-3333
2BR/1BA RENOVATED; hdwd floors; large closets, laundry available; free heat & water. $1000/mo + $1000 dep. 8350 S Drexel; 773952-8137.
PARK FOREST, 2BR Condo with full bsmt, near Forest Reserve & Playground, hdwd floors. Avail 3/ 1/16. Section 8 ok. 312-525-0567 SECTION 8 WELCOME 7334 S. Jeffery & 7620 S. Colfax New remodel, 2 Bedrooms, heat/appl incl. 312493-5544
6343 S. ROCKWELL - 3BR, incl heat. hdwd flrs, lndry facility, fenced in bldg, fireplace, appiances
$995/mo. Sec 8 ok. 773-791-1920
CHICAGO, AVAIL NOW! 71st &
Wolcott 4BR home, 2BA, hdwd flrs, fin bsmt, W/D hookup. $1100 /mo. Section 8 ok! 847-993-3010
SOUTH SIDE SPACIOUS 3BR, 1BA, 1 car gar. heat incl. $1,000/mo. 3BR, 1BA, newly renov. laundry in unit, $1,00/mo. + util. 858-699-5096 WOODLAWN, 2 Bedrooms, newly rehabbed, tenant heated. $1 000/mo. Hardwood floors. Section 8 Welcome. 773-520-7293 81ST & KINGSTON: 3 BDR, No Sec Dep, No App Fee $850, H/W Fl, Apl Included, Sec8 Welcome 773-412-0541
73rd & King Dr Completely Remodeled, tenant heated, 4 room, 2BR, $825/month, NO security deposit, agent owned 312-671-3795 Austin Area, 5016 West Adam, 3BR, 2nd floor, newly decorated, section 8 welcome. $900/ month plus 1 mo security 630-915-2755
3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499 6726 N. Bosworth Ave. Beaut. 3BR, 2BA, DR, LR, Hrdwd flrs. Nr trans/ shops. Heat, appls, laundry incl. $1375. Available now. 847-475-3472
SEC 8 3BR voucher! 3br/1ba Ranch 2 car det gar no bsmt; AC & super clean! avail 3/1 $1400/month 708267-0011 EAST GARFIELD PARK Newly
Rehabbed 3 Bed, 1 Bath Townhouse! Section 8 Welcome! Hardwood, Large. 312-401-6689.
4700 WEST WESTEND, Newly rehabbed, 3BR, 1.5BA, beautiful 2 flat bldg & hdwd flrs, appliances, Section 8 welcome. 224-456-6364 REHABBED,
3BR, laundry, close to downtown, train, buses, all utilities free except lights. $1500/mo. 773-384-2772
MARQUETTE PARK 7313 S Artesian, beaut rehab 3BR/2BA house, granite ctrs, SS appls, whirlpl tub, fin bsmt, 2-car gar. $1585. 708-288-4510 MARQUETTE PARK 7313 S Artesian, beaut rehab 3BR/2BA house, granite ctrs, SS appls, whirlpl tub, fin bsmt, 2-car gar. $1585. 708-288-4510 SEC 8 WELCOME, no security dep., 6717 S Rhodes, 3-level, 5BR, 2BA house, appls incl, $1300/mo. 708-288-4510 NEAR 83RD & Yates. 5BR, 2BA, hdwd flrs, fin basement, stove & fridge furn. Heat incl. $1600 + 1 mo sec. Sect 8 ok. 773-978-6134
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NEWLY REMODELED single family home, 3-4BR, 91st & Racine, 77th & Ashland. Section 8 welcome. $1300-1400 Call 773-8588028 113 61 S. THROOP, newly remodeled, 4BR, 1.5BA, newly tiled bath/kitchen, hdwd floors. Section 8 ok, $1350/ mo + sec, 773-616-5916 OAK LAWN, 5BR, 3BA, 2 kitchens, sun room, 2 jacuzzis, HUGE family room, fireplace, wet bar, all appls incl., $2500/mo + sec dep. Credit check req’d. 708-203-4800 3 & 4 BDRM, 2 Bath Houses & Apts in Woodlawn. Completely Rehabbed. Section 8 welcome. Contact 773.784.7900. MATTESON, SAUK VILLAGE &
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legal notices NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16145272 on January 27, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of LLG CONSULTING with the business located at: 918 N. WOOD ST. UNIT 1, CHICAGO, IL 60622. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner (s)/ partner(s) is: LAURIE GUTZWILLER 918 N. WOOD ST. UNIT 1, CHICAGO, IL 60622, USA
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NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16145440 on February 10, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of PARADIGM SHIFT PRODUCTIONS with the business located at: 1332 W HOOD AVE #202, CHICAGO, IL 60660. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner (s)/partner(s) is: AARON EISCHEID 1332 W HOOD AVE #202, CHICAGO, IL 60660, USA NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16145284 on January 27, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of CRIMSON CAT STUDIOS with the business located at: 3239 W. LELAND AVE #1, CHICAGO, IL 60625. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner (s)/partner(s) is: SUSAN INVERSO 3239 W. LELAND AVE #1, CHICAGO, IL 60625, USA NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to "An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State," as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16145335 on February 2, 2016, under the Assumed Business Name of Belly Rub Empire with the business located at 6151 N Winthrop Avenue Apt 306, Chicago, IL 60660. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/ partner(s) is: Elise Lyn Soeder, 6151 N Winthrop Avenue Apt 306, Chicago, IL 60660, USA. NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16145280 on January 27, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of DEFPOINTS DESIGN with the business located at: 200 MARTIN LANE SUITE A, ELK GROVE VILLAGE, IL 60007. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner (s)/partner(s) is: ALEXANDER SKOLNIK 3283 W. WRIGHTWOOD AVE., CHICAGO, IL 60647, USA NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16145186 ON JANUARY 21, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of MORGAN LEE PHOTOGRAPHY with the business located at: 1406 W. CORNELIA AVE., #2, CHICAGO, IL 60657. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner (s)/partner(s) is: MORGAN WILLIAMS 1406 W. CORNELIA AVE., #2, CHICAGO, IL 60657, USA
NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to "An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State," as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16145276 on January 27, 2016, under the Assumed Business Name of Ted Pryor Painting with the business located at 5715 S Menard, Chicago, IL 60638. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner( s)/ partner(s) is: Theodore John Pryor, 5715 S Menard, Chicago, IL 60638, USA.
NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to "An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State," as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16145282 on January 27, 2016, under the Assumed Business Name of BRM Ministries with the business located at PO Box 288063, Chicago, IL 60628. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner( s)/ partner(s) is: Barbara R Mayden, 10737 S Prairie Ave, Chicago, IL 60628 USA.
IN THE MATTER of the Petition of Jose Gustavo Rocha Case# 2016CONC000111 For Change of Name. Notice of Publication Public Notice is hereby given that on March 28, 2016 at 2:00 PM being one of the return days in the Circuit Court of the County of Cook, I will file my petition in said court praying for the change of my name from Jose Gustavo Rocha to that of Gustavo Breton-Wold, pursuant to the statute in such case made and provided. Dated at Chicago, Illinois, February 2, 2016. IN THE MATTER of the Petition of Caitlin Mireille Enos Case# 2016CONC000114 For Change of Name. Notice of Publication Public Notice is hereby given that on March 30, 2016 at 9:30 AM being one of the return days in the Circuit Court of the County of Cook, I will file my petition in said court praying for the change of my name from Caitlin Mireille Enos to that of Cameron Mireille Feidh Sidhe, pursuant to the statute in such case made and provided. Dated at Chicago, Illinois, February 3, 2016.
IN THE MATTER of the Petition
of Latoya D Kiner Case# 2016CON107 For Change of Name. Notice of Publication Public Notice is hereby given that on April 11, 2016 at 2:00 PM being one of the return days in the Circuit Court of the County of Cook, I will file my petition in said court praying for the change of my name from Latoya D Kiner to that of Kym L’rae, pursuant to the statute in such case made and provided. Dated at Chicago, Illinois, February 3, 2016. IN THE MATTER of the Petition of CHERYL M. MALDEN Case#
2016CONC000109 For Change of Name. Notice of Publication Public Notice is hereby given that on March 28, 2016 at 10:30AM being one of the return days in the Circuit Court of the County of Cook, I will file my petition in said court praying for the change of my name from CHERYL M. MALDEN to that of Cheryl M. Malden, pursuant to the statute in such case made and provided. Dated at Chicago, Illinois, February 2, 2016.
FEBRUARY 18, 2016 | CHICAGO READER 39
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40 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 18, 2016
off cliffs? I’m assuming this is an urban myth. But where does the idea of suicidal lemmings come from? —OWAIN EVANS
PHOTO: ALEXEY LYSENKO/ GETTY IMAGES
A : Let’s begin our investigation with a little
Google search, shall we? The popular line on the lemming-suicide myth, found easily on debunking sites like Snopes, plays as follows: (1) White Wilderness, a 1958 Disney documentary about arctic wildlife, contains a scene showing lemmings taking the plunge you describe, to florid narration: “Carried along by an unreasoning hysteria, each falls into step for a march that will take them to a strange destiny,” etc. (2) However, the whole thing turns out to have been faked. Filmmakers ran the little guys around on a lazy Susan and tossed them manually into a river shot to look like the ocean. (3) “Thus,” Snopes concludes, “did Disney perpetuate for generations to come the legend of periodic, inexplicable mass suicides by lemmings who die by hurling themselves off of cliffs.” Perpetuate, sure. But such accounts give Disney undue credit for a misconception that was already going strong. The lemming mass-suicide story had been in circulation for a while, as Edmund Ramsden and Duncan Wilson report in a 2010 paper in the British historical journal Past & Present. Scandinavians in the late 1800s recorded observations of the lemmings’ grim march to the sea, struck by the animals’ violent disinclination to be impeded, which inspired the common Norwegian phrase “angry as a lemming.” According to Ramsden and Wilson, “The lemming became the totemic animal in an age of cultural pessimism, a symbol of an unconscious and mindless urge towards mass self-destruction, and references to its suicide are legion.” Well, as a matter of fact lemmings do sometimes end up underwater, but far less melodramatically than all the hubbub suggests. Their populations operate on a regular boom-and-bust cycle. At the end of a boom, which puts pressure on nearby resources, they disperse in search of food. Some wind up at the ocean and attempt to cross it—lemmings can swim—but drown in the process. You’ll notice the Norwegians don’t say “smart as a lemming.” So, with respect to a weighty word like “suicide,” lemmings don’t really qualify. Do other nonhuman animals? The issue has captivated thinkers as far back as Aristotle, who
described a tormented stallion throwing himself into an abyss. Certainly animals take actions that lead to their deaths. Fifty dogs have jumped off Scotland’s Overtoun Bridge in as many years. Pods of whales heave themselves onto beaches; captive dolphins drown themselves. But does that merit the term “suicide”? The traditional argument against this is that animals are thought to possess senses neither of self nor imagination, both facets of higher-order cognitive functioning required for suicide: you must envision the end of life and understand its implications. So, such thinking goes, when an animal offs itself there’s always some biological or mechanistic reason: Navigation error, in the case of those beached whales. Underneath that Scottish bridge investigators found a colony of mink, whose anal scent glands apparently drive dogs wild— the pups were just lunging after a good smell. But this proposition has been called into question by cognitively complex creatures like dolphins, who can recognize themselves in a mirror, suggesting that crucial sense of self. All the same, until an animal manages to leave a note, the jury’s probably going to remain out. Ramsden and Wilson suggest that rather than trying to puzzle out whether animals conform to human notions of suicide, we invert the question: What if we conceived of human suicide—a behavior that’s long perplexed scientists—less as an a willful act of imagination and more as a mechanistic response to conditions? Take, for instance, Toxoplasma gondii, known to cause rodents (to their mortal detriment) to lose their fear of cats, in whose stomachs the protozoan prefers to breed. In humans it’s been linked, a bit more tenuously, to schizophrenia and, yes, suicide. A 2012 study of 45,000-some Danish mothers reported a “predictive association” between T. gondii infection and “self-directed violence.” Far from causation, yes, but as T. gondii continues to spread, it might be helpful to get a clearer picture. v Send questions to Cecil via straightdope.com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 350 N. Orleans, Chicago 60654.
SAVAGE LOVE
By Dan Savage
When the new girlfriend has a ‘cuckolding past’ . . .
What to think? What to do? Plus: a special appearance by Sherman Alexie
Q : My new girlfriend
blurted out that she had a cuckolding past with her ex-husband. She says her ex badgered her into arranging “dates” with strangers and that he picked the guys. Her ex would then watch her having sex with a guy in a hotel room. The ex only watched and didn’t take part. I am really bothered by her past. She says she did it only because her ex pressured her into it and she wanted to save her marriage, so she agreed. But I suspect she may have enjoyed it and may have been testing me to see if I wanted to be a cuck. What should I do? I am really torn by my feelings toward her. —CONFUSED IN NOVA
A : You suspect she may have
enjoyed fucking those other men? I hope she enjoyed fucking those other men—and you should too, CINOVA. Because even if cuckolding wasn’t her fantasy, even if she fucked those other men only to delight her shitty ex-husband, anyone who cares about this woman—and you do care about her, right?— should hope the experiences she had with those other men weren’t overwhelmingly negative, completely traumatizing, or utterly joyless. And, yes, people will sometimes broach the subject of their own sexual interests/ fantasies using the passive voice or a negative frame because they’re afraid of rejection or they want an easy out or both. (“My ex was into this kinda extreme thing, and I did it because I felt I had to.” “That’s gross.” “Yeah, I totally hated it.”) But cuckolding is almost always the husband’s fantasy, so odds are good that your girlfriend is telling you the truth about those other men being her
ex-husband’s idea/fantasy and not hers. As for whether she’s testing you: That’s a pretty easy test to fail, CINOVA. Open your mouth and say, “Cuckolding isn’t something I would ever want to do. The thought of you with another man isn’t a turn-on for me. Not at all.” It’s an easy F. So what should you do? If you can’t let this go, if you can’t get over the sex your girlfriend had with her ex-husband and those other men, if you can’t hope she had a good time regardless of whose idea it was—if you can’t do all of that—then do your girlfriend a favor and break up with her. She just got out from under a shitty husband who pressured her into “cheating.” The last thing she needs now is a shitty boyfriend who shames her for “cheating.”
Q : My husband is Native
American. I’m white. We’ve been together 16 years, raising a couple kids. We love each other very much, so this isn’t a deal breaker. I’ve got a thing for his long black hair. He’s a drop-dead gorgeous man, and while I gave up asking that he wear leggings or a breechcloth once in a while, I wish he would grow out his hair. I’m willing to wear (and do) anything he asks. He’s somewhere to the left of Sherman Alexie when it comes to this stuff, but could you tell me why I’m so wrong? He keeps his hair short, and the one time I made enough of a fuss, he grew it out and never washed it just to spite me. A long time ago, he participated in a sun dance, and he looked incredible. So I guess that makes me a blasphemous pervert, but really? Is asking for a couple of braids really so wrong? —WHITEY MCWHITE WIFE
A : I forwarded your e-mail
to Sherman Alexie, the award-winning poet, novelist, essayist, and filmmaker. Your question must have touched a nerve, WMW, because Alexie’s response arrived while my computer was still making that whooooshsending-e-mail sound. Now I’m going to step aside and let Alexie answer your question . . . “What does ‘to the left of Sherman Alexie’ mean in this context? I doubt there are very many Native dudes more leftist than me! And long hair on Indian men is more conservative and more tribal, anyway—more ceremonial. More of a peacock thing, really. And a lot of work! My Native wife certainly misses my long hair. But I don’t miss the upkeep and I don’t miss answering questions about my hair. I mean, I cut my hair 13 years ago, and some people still ask me about it! Thirteen years! Also, Native men tend to cut their hair as they age. Long hair is generally a young Indian man’s gig, culturally speaking. “I would venture that Native dude is tired of being romanticized, ethnocized, objectified. We Indians get enough of that shit in the outside world. Maybe this dude doesn’t want that in bed. Or maybe he just likes the way he looks with shorter hair. Because I am getting so gray, long hair would make me look like a warlock having a midlife crisis. Maybe this Indian dude is just sick of all the sociopolitical shit that comes with long hair. Maybe it kills his boner. Talking about it has certainly killed my boner.” v Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at thestranger.com. v @fakedansavage
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Nikki Lane ò GLYNIS CARPENTER
NEW
Casey Abrams 5/17, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Sat 2/20, 11 AM b Alabama Shakes 7/19, 7:30 PM, Civic Opera House and 7/20, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom, on sale Fri 2/19, 11 AM b Amsterdam Real Book 4/16, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Asleep at the Wheel 4/28, 6:30 and 9 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/18, noon b Available Jelly 4/15, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Band of Heathens 4/23, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen, on sale Fri 2/19, 10 AM Benny Benassi 3/3, 10 PM, the Mid Big Black Delta 5/5, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 2/19, 10 AM Johnny Britt 4/9, 8 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Buika 4/28, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 2/19, 8 AM b Chicago Open Air with Rammstein, Disturbed, Slipknot, Korn, Marilyn Manson, and others 7/15-17, Toyota Park, Bridgeview The Church 4/25-26, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Sat 2/20, 11 AM b Roger Clyne 3/10, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Norman Connors & the Starship Orchestra 4/3, 3 and 7 PM, the Promontory b DJ Clent 3/4, 10 PM, the Mid Emblem3 5/19, 6:30 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 2/19, 10 AM b Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate) 4/24, 7:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, on sale Fri 2/19, 10 AM, 17+
Alejandro Escovedo 5/6-7, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Sat 2/20, 11 AM b Fear Factory, Soilwork 4/19, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Bela Fleck & the Flecktones 6/12, 5 and 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 2/19, 8 AM b Fruit Bats 6/2, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen Malcolm Goldstein 4/3, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill 5/28, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 2/19, 8 AM b Hayseed Dixie 5/4, 8 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint I See Stars; Chunk! No, Captain Chunk 2/28, 6 PM, Portage Theater b Kinky 4/9, 7:30 PM, Portage Theater Natalia Lafourcade 3/26, 6:30 PM, Portage Theater Nikki Lane 6/4, 10:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, on sale Fri 2/19, 10 AM Lisa Loeb 4/17, 11 AM and 7 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 2/19, 8 AM b Pat McGee 4/22, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/18, noon b Shawn Mullins 4/20, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/18, noon b Peter Murphy 4/14, 9 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Norma Jean, He Is Legend 3/28, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Joe Pug, Langhorne Slim 3/2829, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/18, noon b Pup 6/2, 7 PM, Subterranean, on sale Fri 2/19, 10 AM b Riverside, Sixxis 5/9, 9 PM, Double Door, 18+ Scarface 3/5, 8 PM, Portage Theater
42 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 18, 2016
Skid Row, Great White 4/30, 7 PM, Portage Theater Sonics, Woggles, Barrence Whitfield & the Savages 5/28, 8 PM, the Promontory, 18+ JD Souther 5/25, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/18, noon b Spill Canvas 4/17, 6:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b Spunk 3/16, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Sunn O))), Big Brave 6/7, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 2/19, 10 AM, 17+ TFDI 5/28, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Sat 2/20, 11 AM b Paul Van Dyk 3/12, 10 PM, the Mid John Waite & the Axemen 5/5, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Sat 2/20, 11 AM b Widespread Panic 5/5, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre, on sale Fri 2/19, 10 AM Wombats 7/13, 7:30 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 2/19, noon b XXYYXX 3/16, 6:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b Yawpers 4/5, 9 PM, Empty Bottle
UPDATED Borns 7/21-22, 7:30 PM, Metro, 7/22 sold out, 7/21 added, on sale Fri 2/19, noon b Ra Ra Riot 4/8-9, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 4/9 added, on sale Fri 2/19, noon, 18+ Mavis Staples 3/19-20, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 3/20 added b
UPCOMING Abbath, High on Fire, Skeletonwitch 4/8, 6:45 PM, Metro, 18+ Aurora 4/14, 9 PM, Schubas, 18+
b Beyonce 5/27, 6 PM, Soldier Field b Black Sabbath 9/4, 7:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park b Leon Bridges 3/11, 7:30 PM, Chicago Theatre b Cloud Cult 4/3, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Cradle of Filth 3/1, 6 PM, House of Blues b Del the Funky Homosapien 5/12, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Dream Theater 4/30, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre b Fat White Family, Dilly Dally 4/27, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Freddie Gibbs 4/20, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Haelos, Twin Limb 4/7, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Hall & Oates, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings 7/22, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park b Iron Maiden 4/6, 7 PM, United Center b Lush 9/18, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Made of Oak 4/7, 9 PM, Schubas Magic Man, Griswolds 4/23, 7:30 PM, Metro b Magma, Helen Money 3/25-26, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Janiva Magness & Cindy Alexander 3/17, 8 PM, City Winery b Jesse Malin 3/31, 8 PM, City Winery b Mamiffer 4/2, 8 PM, Co-Prosperity Sphere, 17+ Marillion 10/27-28, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Boban Markovic Orkestar 3/9, 8 PM, City Winery b Matmos 3/15, 9 PM, Thalia Hall Nada Surf 5/12, 8 PM, Thalia Hall b Nap Eyes, Cian Nugent 4/3, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Napalm Death, Melvins, Melt Banana 4/22, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Iggy Pop 4/6, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre b Ron Pope & the Nighthawks 2/26, 6:30 PM, Metro b Prince Rama 4/8, 10 PM, Schubas Joe Purdy 3/22, 8 PM, City Winery b Chris Pureka 4/30, 7 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Pusha T 4/5, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Residents 4/18, 6:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Sheer Mag 3/31, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Sonata Arctica 3/28, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall b Thermals 4/20, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall Unearth, Ringworm 3/22, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Amy Vachal 3/22, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Hunter Valentine 3/18, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 18+ Chad Valley 3/24, 8:30 PM, Subterranean
ALL AGES
WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK
EARLY WARNINGS
CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME
F
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White Denim 4/30, 8 PM, Thalia Hall b Wild Nothing 5/3, 9:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Pete Yorn 3/24, 8 PM, Park West, 18+ Yung Lean 3/26, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall b
SOLD OUT Animal Collective, Ratking 2/27, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ At the Drive-In 5/19-20, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Courtney Barnett 4/28, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Beach House 3/1, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Chvrches 3/13-14, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Gary Clark Jr. 4/1, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Chris Conley, Matt Pryor 2/27, 8:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ The Cure, Twilight Sad 6/10-11, 7:30 PM, UIC Pavilion b Daughter 3/11, 8 PM, Metro b Andra Day 3/15, 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Greg Dulli 3/18, 8 and 11 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Father John Misty, Tess & Dave 4/14-15, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Julia Holter 3/2, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Glenn Hughes 3/24, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Carly Rae Jepsen 3/12, 8:30 PM, Metro b Less Than Jake 3/3-4, 7 PM, Double Door, 17+ Los Crudos, MK Ultra 3/26, 6:30 PM, Beat Kitchen b Melanie Martinez 3/17, 7:30 PM, the Vic b Rachel Platten 3/19, 7:30 PM, Park West b Charlie Puth 3/22, 7 PM, Park West b Shellac, Mono 3/30, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Snails 3/25, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ They Might Be Giants 3/20, 3 PM, the Vic b Thrice 6/23, 6:30 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Underoath 4/7, 7 PM, Riviera Theatre b The Used 5/17-18, 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Wolfmother 2/25, 8:30 PM, Metro, 18+ X Ambassadors 4/6, 6 PM, House of Blues b v
GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene GOSSIP WOLF IS a longtime fan of local weirdo bubblegum punks Swimsuit Addition because their jams are so damn tight, but lead singer and guitarist Jen Dot has also branched out into the visual arts. In January, Dot fired up a comics-centric virtual zine called Disappearing Media that includes work from Razorcake columnist Ben Snakepit as well as tarot expert and self-described “500 year old witch” Erica Walker Adams, plus three of Dot’s own comic strips, including The Political Class, Glass Rooms, and our total favorite, Emo Grrrls, whose protagonists she describes as “emotional teenagers who navigate their lives in a numb world by making friends, enemies, and genre-defying art.” Chicago-based dance label Clear launched in February 2015, and though it’s released just a handful of records since then, on Fri 2/19 it adds another 12-inch to the pile. The Cypher EP by local techno misfits Dar Embarks, aka Kenneth Zawacki and Dan Jugel (who also collaborates with Beau Wanzer in Juzer), is the duo’s first release since their 2014 debut, the double 12-inch Fleer. This Wolf digs all four songs on Cypher, especially the intergalactic circus thump of “Barrel Rider.” Chicago underground-pop maestro Richard Album drops an album on Thu 2/18 called Richard Goes Cold. Gossip Wolf is a fan of Album’s sweetly sick tunes and 80s-flavored synths, and his fondness for groan-inducing wordplay helps too—his backing band is called “the Singles,” for starters. On his previous release, Saturday Night Album (issued by Athletic Tapes in November), Album delivers his lovey-dovey songs with enough enthusiasm to make their chintzy sounds sparkle. Come for the sprightly bounce of opener “Who R U,” stay for the cover of Luther Vandross’s “I Wanted Your Love.” Richard Album & the Singles play the Burlington on Thursday; Richard Goes Cold is streaming on Bandcamp at bit.ly/ ra_rgc. —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.
FEBRUARY 18, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 43
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