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 | A P R I L 7, 2 0 1 6
Politics The mildmannered muscle behind Michael Madigan 10
Food & Drink The first Chicago brewpub to perfect pairing beer with food 35
DAUGHTERS OF THE REVOLUTION How queer women are shaping the Black Lives Matter movement in Chicago By DERRICK CLIFTON 12
50 TH BIRTHDAY BASH SA TU RDAY , AP R IL 16, 10AM–4 P M Celebrate CAF’s 50th anniversary with a FREE day of fun and surprises for all ages, including hands-on activities, lectures, film screenings and $1 walking tours! architecture.org
CAF IS A N ONP RO FI T ORGANI ZATI ON DEDIC ATED TO IN SP IRI NG PE OP LE TO DI SCOVE R W HY DESIG N M ATT E RS 2 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 7, 2016
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THIS WEEK
C H I C A G O R E A D E R | A P R I L 7, 2 0 1 6 | V O L U M E 4 5 , N U M B E R 2 6
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EDITOR JAKE MALOOLEY CREATIVE DIRECTOR PAUL JOHN HIGGINS DEPUTY EDITOR, NEWS ROBIN AMER CULTURE EDITOR TAL ROSENBERG DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY DANIELLE SCRUGGS 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, DAN JAKES, BILL MEYER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, DMITRY SAMAROV, KATE SIERZPUTOWSKI, ZAC THOMPSON, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERNS CHRIS RIHA, SOPHIA TU, SUNSHINE TUCKER
IN THIS ISSUE
MUSIC 20
8 4 Agenda The Hypocrites’ Adding Machine, Wanda Sykes, CAKE Art Auction, Chantal Akerman’s final film, and more recommendations
CITY LIFE
8 Street View Nightclub fixture Lexi Kingery is a butterfly by day. 8 The Contrarian Ian Belknap isn’t hankering for Hot Doug’s. 10 Joravsky | Politics Michael Madigan’s behind-the-scenes muscle? Alderman Marty Quinn.
ARTS & CULTURE
18 Theater Silk Road Rising’s Kushneresque Mosque Alert 18 Comedy Therapy Sessions at the Hungry Brain asks performers uncommon questions. 20 Visual Art Fake stamps make for provocative art at Carl Hammer Gallery. 20 Lit In Listen Liberal, Thomas Frank takes a break from bashing the GOP to bash the rest of us suckers. 22 Movies For SAIC student Joe Houlberg, a thriller is a riddle wrapped inside an enigma.
28 Shows of note Savages, Chicago International Movies & Music Festival, Autolux, and more
FOOD & DRINK
35
35 Review: Forbidden Root Restaurant & Brewery The West Town brewery pairs botanical beers with spot-on pub food.
22
CLASSIFIEDS
37 Jobs 38 Apartments & Spaces 39 Marketplace 40 Straight Dope Why is jury pay so damn low? 41 Savage Love Secular Jew seeks Nazi role-play, and more 42 Early Warnings Andrew Bird, Guns N’ Roses, King Sunny Ade, Femi Kuti, Sigur Ros, and more shows in the weeks to come 42 Gossip Wolf Riot Fest lineup predictions, and more music news
FEATURES
---------------------------------------------------------------VICE PRESIDENT OF NEW MEDIA GUADALUPE CARRANZA SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER EVANGELINE MILLER ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE FABIO CAVALIERI, BRIDGET KANE MARKETING AND EVENTS MANAGER BRYAN BURDA DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY 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 BY READER DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY DANIELLE SCRUGGS.
ACTIVISM
Daughters of the revolution
MUSIC
How will ESS replace Lou Mallozzi?
How queer women are shaping the Black Lives Matter movement in Chicago
The cofounder and executive director of Experimental Sound Studio is stepping down— and the rest of the staff is stepping up.
BY DERRICK CLIFTON 12
BY PETER MARGASAK 24
APRIL 7, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 3
Karski & The Lords of Humanity is a partially animated documentary film about Jan Karski, who risked his life to try to prevent the Holocaust.
“Karski & The Lords of Humanity” Movie (Karski i władcy ludzkosci)
AGENDA R
READER RECOMMENDED
! Send your events to agenda@chicagoreader.com
b ALL AGES
F victims—just a bunch of people in pain trying to feel better. The whole cast is excellent, but Sol Patches is exceptional as B, the teenage son. —TONY ADLER Through 5/1: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, American Theater Company, 1909 W. Byron, 773-409-4125, atcweb.org, $38-$48.
By Emmy-winning filmmaker Slawomir Grünberg.
April 8th (04/08/2016) at: 7:30 – 9:30 PM Copernicus Center
5216 W. Lawrence Ave, Chicago Doors Open: 6:30 PM • All Ages Welcome
The Last Big Mistake Factory R Theater christens its scrappy/ The Misanthrope British playlovely new Rogers Park home with Ernie R wright Martin Crimp penned Deak’s scrappy/lovely new play about this 1996 adaptation of Molière’s 1666
http://copernicuscenter.org/karski/ www.jankarski.com “a moving look at a Polish resistance fighter”, The Los Angeles Times “...fascinating...”, The New York Times
Adding Machine ! MATTHEW GREGORY HOLLIS
THEATER
More at chicagoreader.com/ theater Adding Machine Elmer Rice’s 1923 play is a marvelous anomaly: an expressionist satire that makes Marxist points by seeming to scorn the masses. Its central shlub, Mr. Zero, is a clerk with a horrific wife who’s spent his entire adult life adding columns of figures for a big company. Fired after 25 years, he goes berserk, kills the boss, gets executed, and moves on somehow to heaven, where he’s even more lost. The tale has undergone all kinds of mutations over the years; in 2007 Jason Loewith and Joshua Schmidt premiered their musical version of it at Evanston’s now-defunct Next Theatre. Directed by David Cromer, it was great. But this Hypocrites revival may be even better: lighter and deeper, less sentimental and more cruel. Well cast, and featuring near-perfect musical direction by Matt Deitchman, Geoff Button’s staging uses comic repetition to get at the abject horror of Zero’s life. What’s more—and I mean this in the nicest possible way—Patrick Du Laney is a perfect Zero. —TONY ADLER Through 5/15: Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Den Theatre, 1329-1333 N. Milwaukee, 773-609-2336, the-hypocrites.com, $36.
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script, though we don’t see much of the anguish and fear they claim to be feeling. —ZAC THOMPSON Through 5/1: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2:30 PM (except 4/10, 1:30 PM); also Wed 4/6, 7:30 PM; Sat 4/16, 2:30 PM; and Thu 4/21, 2:30 PM, Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln, 773-404-7336, remybumppo.org, $32.50-$57.50.
Dreams of the Penny Gods This R is the kind of off-Loop theater that put Chicago on the map: low-bud-
get, superbly acted, performed on a tiny but well-designed set (here by Michael Chancellor) in an awkward, cramped space (in this case the third floor of an Albany Park church). The play, by Callie Kimball, about a 13-year old girl trying to break free from an abusive grandmother, her legal guardian, is full of wit and fire, and this Halcyon Theatre ensemble, directed by Jennifer Adams, finds the heart in Kimball’s words. In particular, there’s a creepy chemistry between the protagonist (played to the hilt by Caity-Shea Violette) and her sleazy ex-con father (Ted James). The result is an evening of intense, satisfying live drama. —JACK HELBIG Through 5/1: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 6 PM, Christ
Evangelical Lutheran Church, 3253 W. Wilson, 773-478-7941, halcyontheatre.org, $20; limited number of free tickets each performance. The Great Love Debate This R “unique, interactive, Town Hallstyle event” is better suited to groups
of single guys or gals than to couples, as the assembled panel of local dating experts (authors, therapists, matchmakers, etc) and heavy audience participation provide a satisfying, and often hilarious, form of group therapy—and possibly even some coping skills for dating in the modern age. Technology isn’t the cause of our discontents with digital romance, says creator and host Brian Howie (“America’s #1 Dating Enthusiast”), but rather certain persistent gender dynamics: women want to be approached (but not by creeps), men don’t want to seem creepy, and in that chasm lie such perils of online dating as “ghosting” when feelings fizzle. (Or, in one woman’s case on the night I attended, being “holy spirited” after a seemingly successful date at a church fish fry.) While the advice dished out to both ladies and gentlemen can feel old-fashioned, reactions and input from the audience reveal that many of the hoariest cliches remain all too true (“Who wants to buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”). —MARISSA OBERLANDER Through 4/17: Wed-Sat 8 PM, Sun-Mon 7 PM, Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln, 773-404-7336, greenhousetheater.org, $25. Kill Floor Andy, the troubled mom of Abe Koogler’s 90-minute play, works on the killing floor of a slaughterhouse in her “shithole” of a hometown. She sees some awful things there. She also suffers, and provokes some awfulness in her spare time. But if Koogler is trying to build a thematic connection between the abattoir and Andy’s struggles, I don’t see it. There’s just no comparison between cows getting skinned alive and Andy and her traumatized teen son trying to put their lives back together after Andy’s five-year stint in prison. Which is why I’m glad that director Jonathan Berry works past the metaphors, delivering a modest but strong drama in which there are neither villains nor
a pair of brassy former lady wrestlers sinking eyeballs deep into an overblown two-bit mobster misadventure. In typical Factory fashion, Deak’s story is steeped in trashiness and cliche, expertly complemented by fight choreographer Anthony Tournis’s cheeseball wrestling moves and costume designer Rachel Sypniewski’s jaw-droppingly awful (and all too accurate) late-70s duds. But Deak’s trashiness is never cheap; his intricate, compelling story is populated by ingeniously idiosyncratic stereotypes and has a subtle, powerful feminist streak. Director Manny Tamayo maintains a brisk pace throughout the 75 minutes of sparkling mayhem, but the show still has a few empty patches, and Deak’s ending is singularly disappointing. It’s the cast’s ferocious precision that ultimately carries the evening. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 4/30: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, the Factory Theater, 1623 W. Howard, thefactorytheater. com, $25, $18 students and seniors.
The Life of Galileo It’s been nearly 400 years since the Inquisition forced Galileo to recant his heretical belief that the earth revolves around the sun. But the issues raised by that event—dogma vs. truth, control vs. freedom—have never stopped being timely. In the 1940s, when Bertolt Brecht wrote and revised his play about the Italian astronomer, the contemporary parallels were totalitarianism and Cold War paranoia. Nick Sandys’s production for Remy Bumppo Theatre Company also calls to mind the 20th century, particularly in Rachel Lambert’s postwar-era costumes. Playing Galileo and his fellow scientists as well as their religious adversaries, an enthusiastic cast capture the intelligence and righteous outrage in Brecht’s
comedy about a self-righteous moralist—a man who rails at the shallowness and hypocrisy of the world in which he lives—hopelessly in love with a fickle woman who embodies everything her lover despises. In Crimp’s version, set in present-day London, the title misanthrope, Alceste, is a playwright, and his beloved, Jennifer, is a Hollywood actress surrounded by a campy, coke-snorting, selfie-shooting entourage of two-faced sycophants. Crimp’s dialogue—written in Molière-style rhymed couplets but also laced with very contemporary profanity—is quite clever, with its updated allusions to Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, the BBC, “unprotected sex,” and Molière himself. The cast of this diverting, intimate production handle the witty text with impressive verbal dexterity, and there are plenty of laughs here. But new artistic director Michael D. Graham’s staging never probes the dark subtext of Alceste’s extreme contempt for the failings not only of society but of human nature itself. —ALBERT WILLIAMS Through 4/23: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Piccolo Theatre, Evanston Arts Depot, 600 Main St., Evanston, 847-424-0089, piccolotheatre.com, $27. Olive and the Mouse Spider King On her 16th birthday, a girl’s morbid curiosity gets the better of her when she devises her own punishment on behalf of her wicked parents: marrying the cruel, eyeball-snatching ruler of the dark tunnels below the crawl space of their home. Dream Theatre founders Anna and Jeremy Menekseoglu bid farewell (for now, at least) with this macabre fairy tale written and produced in the distinctive episodic style the company has embraced over 13 years in Chicago. There’s rich mythology to be mined
Dreams of the Penny Gods ! TOM MCGRATH
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Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of April 7
in each of the fantastical characters, puppets and human alike. And though the production lags by the end, the poignant visuals and stirring speeches create enchanting moments throughout— especially in the case of Anna’s resilient Blue-Haired Girl, for whom empathy is an unpredictable, divine, and dangerous tool. —Dan Jakes Through 4/17: Thu-Sun 8 PM, Dream Theatre, 556 W. 18th, 773552-8616, dreamtheatrecompany.com, $20, $18 students and seniors. Sight Unseen In some urban dystopia where resources are scarce, the rich and powerful inhabit something called the Tower, while everybody else tries to scratch out an existence in the Shambles, a sprawling shantytown built from garbage. It’s the same world created by Tom Arvetis for Spark, his 2014 play for middle-schoolers. In this prequel, a spunky teen named Janice flees the Tower and teams up with Shambles-dwelling brothers Kegan and Zeph to search for Janice’s mother, who’s joined a rebel group. As you’d expect from a prologue, many things are left unresolved, but Arvetis’s script is inventive and full of good lessons on bravery and compassion. Rives Collins and the cast of his Adventure Stage Chicago production put it over with pluck and scurrying energy. —ZAC THOMPSON Fri 7 PM, Sat 4 PM, Vittum Theater, 1012 N. Noble, 773-342-4141, adventurestage.org/ pages/vittum_theater/45.php, $17, $12 kids 14 and under. Ulysses The great virtue of this Plagiarists production is its recognition that James Joyce’s immense novel boils down to a single, simple, affecting intention: to chronicle a day in the life of Dublin advertising salesman Leopold Bloom, who’s only pretended to live since the death of his infant son, Rudy. All the literary provocations that have made the book so celebrated and daunting hang on nothing more than that. The great weakness of the production is its lack of a real strategy for confronting those provocations and folding them into the narrative. As directed by Aileen McGroddy, who wrote the adaptation with Jessica Wright Buha, the show has some resonant moments—thanks especially to David Fink’s hangdog
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performance as Bloom. But it too often comes across as confused, approximate, and unappealingly casual. —TONY ADLER Through 4/30: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Berger Park, 6205 N. Sheridan, 773-761-0376, chicagoparkdistrict.com, $15-$20.
by artist Dana Major, tarot card readings by John Schwenk, an exhibition with site-specific installations, a silent auction, raffle, food, drinks, and music. CAD will also be honoring the president of African art collectors’ group Diasporal Rhythms, Patric McCoy. Sat 4/9, 7 PM, 1932 S. Halsted, #100, 312-226-8601, chicagoartdepartment.org, $25-$80.
DANCE ABC Project: Peep Show Peep Show gives audiences an inside look at the creative process behind choreographing. Each performance features two choreographers who are given 45 minutes to create pieces that include audience suggestions and custom music. Mon 4/11, 7 PM, Links Hall at Constellation, 3111 N. Western, 773-281-0824, linkshall.org, $5. Circling the Square Hedwig Dances presents an evening of two works by artistic director Jan Bartoszek, Trio M and AscenDance. Fri 4/8, 7:30 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, 773-935-6860, athenaeumtheatre.com, $15-$35. Scratch The Dancer’s CooperaR tive presents an evening-length performance exploring the current
system for underwriting contemporary dance (specifically calling attention to Governor Bruce Rauner’s budget cuts) and calling for action when it comes to funding the arts. Sat 4/9, 7 PM, Beauty & Brawn Art Gallery and Think Space, 3501 W. Fullerton, 773-772-9808, beautyandbrawngallery.com, $15. SpringThree Visceral Dance R Chicago returns to the Harris Theater for its third season, debuting
two new pieces, Vital and The Last Round. Sat 4/9, 7:30 PM, Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph, 312-334-7777, harristheaterchicago.org, $25-$70.
COMEDY Laser Comedy Show Chicago R comedian Chris Fair’s one-of-akind comedy show combines art and comedy as Fair illustrates his stories
Wanda Sykes ! JAMIE MCCARTHY/GETTY on a laser board. 4/8-4/29: Fri 10 PM, Second City, 1616 N. Wells, 312-337-3992, secondcity.com, $13. The Revival Hour The comedy R club’s signature hour of improv, sketch, and stand-up. Open run: Sat 8
PM, the Revival, 1160 E. 55th, 866-811-4111, the-revival.com, $10. Shebeast Don’t miss your chance to see this outrageously funny Annoyance show from the ladies of Shebeast. Self-described as “the loudest, nastiest, sexiest group of he-women you’ve ever seen,” the Shebeasts know the words to every song and have bingewatched every show, and if they can’t be famous, they can at least be fabulous mermaids washed up on the dirty shores of pop culture. Tapping in and out of scenarios with ease, the ladies let things happen at random and continually enjoy themselves, and while I suppose comic actors who aren’t having fun can make a great show, it greatly increases the likelihood that they will if they are. The Shebeasts may laugh at their own jokes a little too much, but this would change if they had the kind of turnout this crazy act deserves. —MAX MALLER Through 4/22: Fri 7 PM, Annoyance Theatre, 851 W. Belmont, 773-697-9693, theannoyance. com, $5.
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Wanda Sykes The veteran comic R brings her punchy stand-up to town. Sat 4/9, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre, 175 N. State, 312-462-6300, thechicagotheatre.com, $39.50-$75.
Chicago Art Source Gallery “Ebb and Flow,” new work from Bassmi Ibrahim and Allison Svoboda. Opening reception Thu 4/7, 5-8 PM. 4/7-6/18, 1871 N. Clybourn, second floor, 773-248-3100, chicagoartsource.com.
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Cobalt Studio “Symbol,” Pilsen Outpost hosts a two-day group exhibition featuring 11 different artists at Cobalt Studio. Opening reception Fri 4/8, 6 PM. Fri 4/8-Sat 4/9, 1950 W. 21st storefront space, cobaltartstudio.blogspot. com. Hideout CAKE Art Auction, this fund-raiser will offer live and silent auctions of more than 20 pieces of art by contributors to the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo (CAKE). Local artists Isabella Rotman and Samuel Nigrosh will also present live comic readings. Fri 4/8, 7 PM, 1354 W. Wabansia, 773-2274433, hideoutchicago.com, $5 suggested donation. Pilsen Outpost Skullie Painting, artist Teresa Magaña walks you through painting your very own sugar skullies. The final session on Sun 4/17 at 6 PM is BYOB. Sun 4/10, 2 PM, and Sun 4/17, 11 AM and 6 PM. $15. 1958 W. 21st, pilsenoutpost.com.
LIT Fictlicious Enjoy a night of storyR telling and live music by Jen Coffeen, Nadine Kenney Johnstone, Matt Martin, Bob Stockfish, Steve Trumpeter and Micki LeSueur, Adam Michaels, Anndi Obannayurns, and Jogford. Sun 4/10, 7 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, 773-227-4433, hideoutchicago.com, $10.
Wiggle Room City Winery’s comTan Lin The latest installment of R edy and burlesque show features R the Poetry Off the Shelf series Michelle L’amour and Peekaboo Pointe, features poet and artist Tan Lin, who along with comedians Adam Burke, Danny Kallas, and Kristen Toomey. Sat 4/8, 11:30 PM, City Winery, 1200 W. Randolph, 312-733-9463, citywinery.com, $15-$20.
VISUAL ARTS SpringThree ! CHERYL MANN
Chicago Art Department CAD Crystal Ball, Chicago Art Department’s annual fund-raiser features crystal ball readings
will be joined by acoustic musical group NbN. Thu 4/7, 7 PM, Poetry Foundation, 61 W. Superior, 312-787-7070, poetryfoundation.org. Poetry Talk This monthly show R begins with a short monologue and reading from a book of dirty lim-
ericks, followed by a reading and short interview with a special guest. Tue 4/12, 8 PM, Public House Theatre, 3914 N. Clark, 800-650-6449, pubhousetheatre. ! com, $10.
APRIL 7, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 5
“DON CHEADLE ISS ELECTRIFYING!”
don cheadlle ewan mcgregorr
-David Edelstein, NEW YORK MAGAZINE E
AGENDA
!
IF YOU GONNA TELL A STORY, COME WITH SOME ATTITUDe.
parent and globe-trotting daughter. Long takes of the Israeli desert, paralleled with long takes of empty rooms in Natalia’s apartment, suggest her sense of dislocation as a Holocaust survivor, a condition she struggles to verbalize in her kitchen with a daughter who probes for more. The combination of memoir and abstraction is both cerebral and heartrending. In French with subtitles. —ANDREA GRONVALL 115 min. Fri 4/8, 6 PM; Sat 4/9, 3 PM; Sun 4/10, 5:15 PM; Tue 4/12, 6 PM; Wed 4/13, 8 PM; and Thu 4/14, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center
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6 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 7, 2016
MOVIES
More at chicagoreader.com/ movies NEW REVIEWS Demolition The grief-and-loss drama has become a mainstay of indie cinema, with a rigid character arc of shock, denial, inappropriate behavior, offbeat obsession, interpersonal crisis, and breakthrough. Screenwriter Bryan Sipe covers all the bases in this tale of a bored investment banker (Jake Gyllenhaal) who loses his wife in a car crash and, guilt-ridden over his lack of emotional trauma, takes to dismantling things and destroying stuff—including, ultimately, their expensive home. The lead players (including Naomi Watts as a single mother who befriends the hero, Judah Lewis as her alienated teenage son, and Chris Cooper as the banker’s baffled, increasingly angry father-in-law) triumph over the story’s familiarity, running with Sipe’s ironic dialogue and eccentric situations. Jean-Marc Vallée (Wild, Dallas Buyers Club) directed. —J.R. JONES R, 101 min. Landmark’s Century Centre I Don’t Belong Anywhere: The Cinema of Chantal Akerman Just before Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman (Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles) committed suicide in 2015, documentary maker Marianne Lambert followed her from New York to Israel, capturing her final days. The result is an intimate, sometimes fascinating look at Akerman’s nearly 50-year career as a major figure in feminist and avant-garde cinema. Clips of Akerman’s signature long takes and architectural compositions, and commentary from actors and directors she influenced (such as Gus Van Sant), contribute to this insightful retrospective, which may challenge your notion of what movies are supposed to do. A natural storyteller with a musical voice, Akerman delivers anecdotes
that fans and scholars may consider essential, though viewers unfamiliar with the language of experimental film may find them impenetrable. In French with subtitles. —ADAM MORGAN 67 min. Fri 4/8, 8:15 PM; Sat 4/9, 5:15 PM; Mon 4/11, 8:15 PM; and Wed 4/13, 6:30 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center Miles Ahead Don Cheadle wrote, directed, and stars in this Miles Davis biopic, focusing on a twoday period in 1980 just before the protean jazz trumpeter began to emerge from a self-imposed retirement of five years; Ewan McGregor is a Rolling Stone reporter dispatched to find out what, if anything, the reclusive genius has been recording. To concentrate on the least productive phase of Davis’s career may seem perverse, but Cheadle and cowriter Steven Baigelman are fascinated with the idea of creative entropy in such a dynamic figure—their odd framing of the story is the sort of gutsy move Davis himself might have respected. Unfortunately there’s also a flashback sequence that connects the musician’s creative problems to his failed marriage to dancer Frances Taylor Davis; this pat psychologizing of a notoriously complex personality undercuts the swirling chaos of the 80s narrative. With Emayatzy Corinealdi and Michael Stuhlbarg. —J.R. JONES R, 100 min. Landmark’s Century Centre No Home Movie Chantal R Akerman’s final film shares some formal concerns with her
earlier works; what sets it apart is a stream of love and yearning, regret and loss, from which painful memories resurface. Akerman (who died in 2015) said that she prepared for her 1975 masterpiece Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles by closely observing her homemaker mother, Natalia, for decades, and indeed this 2015 documentary about her mother’s last years reveals an extraordinarily warm, intimate bond between
Remember In this gimmicky thriller, an elderly man suffering from dementia (Christopher Plummer) is so traumatized by his wife’s recent death that he resolves to track down and kill the former Nazi officer, now living incognito in the U.S., who murdered the man’s parents and siblings at Auschwitz. Can he carry out his mission without forgetting who he is, or where he is, or why he’s gone there? Can this movie get any stupider? The premise seems richly ironic given our need to “always remember, never forget” what happened under the Third Reich, but first-time screenwriter Benjamin August has a hard time spinning it into a credible story as the old geezer makes his way across the continent in search of the fugitive Nazi. Atom Egoyan directed; the strong cast includes Dean Norris, Martin Landau, Jürgen Prochnow, and Bruno Ganz. —J.R. JONES R, 95 min. Sabina K. The title character of this hokey Bosnian drama is not the dauntless heroine that feminism and social progress have made a cinematic standard-bearer but a passive, pathetic victim who implodes without a man to fulfill her. Sabina (Alena Dzebo), a Muslim divorcee and mother of two small children, plans to marry a Catholic (Alban Ukaj) with whom she served during the Balkan conflict, despite their parents’ disapproval. But when her seemingly adoring fiancé fails to show up for the nuptials, she goes into a tailspin so histrionic it borders on the comical. A title reports that this was “inspired by a true story,” but nothing interesting or empowering comes of it. Instead writer-director Cristóbal Krusen delivers an overlong, overwrought morality play with a tacked-on religious coda in which his weak-willed protagonist replaces a man’s love with that of Jesus Christ. In Bosnian with subtitles. —LEAH PICKETT 126 min. Krusen attends the screening, part of the Chicago Festival of Bosnian and Herzegovinian Film; for a full schedule visit chicagobhfilm. org. Sat 4/9, 7 PM. Loyola University Sullivan Center Sweet Bean Japanese writer-director Naomi Kawase R has crafted a poignant tale about
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YOUR CHICAGO BIKE AND CAR ACCIDENT LAWYERS
a middle-aged man (Masatoshi Nagase) whose small dorayaki bakery is reinvigorated after he reluctantly hires an elderly woman (Kirin Kiki) for her culinary skills. This 2015 drama follows their increasingly tender friendship, not to mention the making of her delicious sweet red-bean paste, but some of the narrative elegance is lost when neighborhood gossip reveals that she has leprosy, which threatens the future of the bakery. There’s also a subplot involving a schoolgirl (Kyara Uchida) who frequents the shop, but it sometimes feels out of place given how peripheral she is to the main relationship. Ultimately Kawase is more interested in charting emotional and sensory landscapes than in thinking through any narrative thread, yet there’s something to be said for the movie’s sincerity and simple beauty. In Japanese with subtitles. —ANGELICA JADE BASTIÉN 113 min. Fri 4/8, 2 and 8 PM; Sat 4/9, 7:45 PM; Sun 4/10, 3 PM; Mon 4/11, 6 PM; Tue 4/12, 8:15 PM; Wed 4/13, 6 PM; and Thu 4/14, 8:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center
REVIVALS The Kid The most Dickensian of Chaplin’s features (1921), with a Victorian street atmosphere and a sentimentality to match. Still, the scene in which Charlie searches the poorhouses for his lost boy (Jackie Coogan) is powerfully moving; I have never known a silent film to speak quite so clearly as in Chaplin’s mimed call of “Kid! Kid!” It was Chaplin’s first full-length film, and the action is perhaps too episodic; he hadn’t yet mastered the structural demands of the long form. But several of the episodes—Charlie and Coogan in the plate-glass business, the poor boy’s dream of heaven, which comes out nicely tattered and tacky—are sublime. With Edna Purviance and Lita Grey. —DAVE KEHR 68 min. Presented by the Silent Film Society of Chicago; Jay Warren provides live organ accompaniment. Sun 4/10, 3 PM. Saint John Cantius Church
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SPECIAL EVENTS Chicago Latino Film Festival The 32nd edition of the long-running fest runs Friday, April 8, through Thursday, April 21. For J.R. Jones’s profile of filmmaker Joe Houlberg see page 22; for reviews of eight features screening this year visit chicagoreader.com/movies. River East 21
700+ 2-Wolff’s Vendors! Flea Markets
Anniversary 1 25th Outdoors at the
Rosemont Allstate Arena 6920 N. Mannheim
By O’Hare - Free Parking
Open *Sundays
6am to 3pm *Closed Early for the Day: 5/1, 7/10 & 9/4. Closed for the Day: 6/12
2 Karadima’s Forest, screening as part of the Chicago Latino Film Festival
Indoors year round
Palatine 1775 N. Rand Rd.
Open Sats. & Suns. 8am to 4pm 4/17 Vinyl Spectacular 847-524-9590 or wolffs.com
HUMP! Film Festival Savage Love columnist Dan Savage presents his annual festival of amateur porn. Fri-Sat 4/8-4/9, 7 and 9:30 PM Music Box Juggernaut Film Festival Sci-fi and fantasy shorts, collected by Chicago Filmmakers and Otherworld Theatre Company. Sat 4/9, noon. Music Box Sci-Fi Spectacular Fourteen hours of sci-fi/horror shorts and features, including A Trip to Jupiter (1909), The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953), Blade Runner (1979), and Big Trouble in Little China (1986). Sat 4/9, noon. Patio Theater v
please recycle this paper APRIL 7, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 7
CITY LIFE
Doug Sohn at the now-shuttered Hot Doug’s. His “retirement” has been Jay Z-like. ! PETER HOLDERNESS/SUN-TIMES
The Contrarian
! ISA GIALLORENZO
I don’t miss Hot Doug’s
Street view
A butterfly by day “FASHION IS AT ONCE a caterpillar and a butterfly,” Coco Chanel famously said. “Be a caterpillar by day and butterfly by night.” Stylist, clothier, and model Lexi Kingery (aka @clear_bones) subverts Chanel’s rule by being a butterfly in the light. “I’m so sick of black and white,” she says. “Right now I’m giving you a mixture of 70s flow with some colorful 60s mod realness.” In preparation for the spring sartorial season, Kingery says, “I’ve been really exploring the Gunne Sax and Victorian region of the vintage realm, and I’m excited to present that more.” By night, this fixture in the local club scene favors sexy and “very small” pieces that are “just shiny enough to be tacky or trashy.” Some of those very items are available for purchase on Kingery’s Instagram vintage clothing shop, @shopbluedream. —ISA GIALLORENZO
I HAVE A WAY of digging in my heels. My enthusiasm for anything is usually inversely proportional to the vehemence with which somebody gets bug-eyed and lays his hand on my arm to squeal, “Oh my god—you’ve got to [see/eat/ read/try] it! You just have to!” So it was with Hot Doug’s. Accompanied by an avalanche of fanfare, encased-meat conjurer Doug Sohn shuttered his Avondale restaurant and retired in 2014. In the waning days, extremists called off work, camped out overnight in front of the door, and ordered one of every sausage on the menu, believing it would be their final taste of Hot Doug’s. Except Doug didn’t go away. He’s been doing a seemingly unceasing stream of ersatz comeback gigs that have included a popup at Publican Quality Meats, a pizza collaboration with Piece, and a partnership with the Cubs that allowed Sohn to sell sausages at the team’s spring training games in Arizona. Each time Doug peeks his head out, what follows is a wave of fawning food-media puffery and breathless social media
exclamations. Sohn’s prolific retirement continues on April 11 with the Cubs home opener at Wrigley Field, where for the second year fans will spend many an inning queued in front of a concession stand near the center field bleachers to once again partake in the purportedly transformative hot dogs. I’ve gotta say: I don’t understand all the hype. And I don’t miss Hot Doug’s. Back when Sohn was still doing brisk business at his storied restaurant, the decade-long pummeling of Oh my god, you’ve never been? was so unrelenting and clamorous that I finally succumbed. (I’m human, and therefore susceptible to the urgings of the herd.) So there I was, standing in the famous line stretching down the block, waiting for the dubious privilege of paying too much for a hot dog. It was an early spring day, which meant it was about eight fucking degrees outside. But I was driving up California Avenue, had eaten no breakfast, and had been told—repeatedly, insistently, feverishly—that Hot Doug’s would forever alter my experience of space-time,
that the flavor profile of even its most modest offering would open my chakras, that I’d drop to the floor in rapturous tremors after a single bite. The line was populated by the expected irritating groupies. I stood in the alley atop the flattened carcass of a rat, endured stultifying conversations that were, in essence, the sausage geek’s version of Phish heads swapping bootleg cassettes in the parking lot outside a show. A fistfight nearly broke out over the question of whether it’s permissible to add condiments or otherwise season the offerings of the master who held forth behind the counter inside. Finally, at the front of the line, I recall a frisson of accomplishment comparable, I imagine, to what marathoners must feel upon crossing the 22-mile marker. I don’t recall my exact order. I do remember opting for maximum exoticness. So I asked for the—I don’t know—the Caiman Dog Garnished for Some Reason With the Left Foot of a Pheasant and Drizzled in Self-Congratulation. Or maybe it was
the Kodiak Bear Dog Swaddled in a Net of Saffron and Topped With Shavings From the One True Cross. Since word had traveled down the line that this was my first hajj to Meat Mecca, there was a ring of wide-eyed acolytes surrounding me when I bit into the first sausage, each person bending at the knee slightly as if anticipating a new convert. As a prospective proselyte, I would ultimately disappoint. It was a good hot dog, a fresh hot dog, a hot dog prepared with evident skill and obvious care. But it was just . . . a fucking hot dog. My fellow pilgrims could see I remained unrapturous, that I was the lone man in the compound who wasn’t guzzling the Kool-Aid. They began scanning their temple for fuel to feed the bonfire to which they wished to consign me. During their baffled paralysis, I managed to make my escape. Now I’m bracing myself for the death threats that are certain to follow this essay. But I’ll reiterate with my final breath: Come on, guys—it’s just a fucking hot dog. —IAN BELKNAP
# Keep up to date on the go at chicagoreader.com/agenda.
CITY AGENDA Things to do about town. THURSDAY 7
FRIDAY 8
SATURDAY 9
SUNDAY 10
MONDAY 11
TUESDAY 12
WEDNESDAY 13
! Teat rocinema The Chilean theater company presents Régis Jauffret’s graphic novel Historia de Amor (Love Story) onstage. In Spanish with English subtitles. Through 4/10: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM and Sun 3 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago, mcachicago. org, $30.
○␣ White Sox Opening Day Bash Kick off the baseball season Reggies style. Admission includes an upperdeck ticket to the Sox home opener versus the Indians, an all-you-can-eat tailgate buffet before and after the game, and a round-trip bus ride. 10 AM, Reggie’s Music Joint, 2105 S. State, reggieslive. com, $40.
# Frontwoman Fest Benefit profiting Girls Rock! Chicago. Featuring Impossible Colors, Young Camelot, and Radio One with food and drink from Roots Pizza and Half Acre. 1 PM, Burlington, 3425 W. Fullerton, girlsrockchicago.org, $10.
♀ The Black Women’s Ex po The weekend expo features brands, products, and merchandise made specifically for black women in addition to seminars by guests like Kelly Price, Jessica Love, and Angela Martin. 4/8-4/10: McCormick Place, 2301 S. Lake Shore, theblackwomensexpo.com, $20, $45 for weekend pass.
% Chicago Lati no Film Festival Celebrate the 32nd annual Chicago Latino Film Festival, with more than 100 films celebrating the diversity of Latino culture. Visit the festival website for a full schedule. 4/8-4/21, various locations, times, and prices, chicagolatinofilmfestival.org.
" New Belgium Beer D i nner Schubas Tavern partners with New Belgium Brewing to offer a five-course dinner with beer pairings. 6 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, lh-st.com, $50.
& Chicago Reader Book Swap We invite you to bring your old books to swap for a batch of new ones while enjoying music by Old Town School performers. The first 100 guests get a free tote bag. 6-9 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4545 N. Lincoln, oldtownschool.org. F
8 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 7, 2016
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Author Encounters Francine Segan Saturday, April 30, 9 a.m. Francine Segan, culinary historian, chef and James Beard nominated author is coming to the Driehaus Museum to discuss “The Art and Artifice of Dining”. Ms. Segan will elucidate the finer points of dinner etiquette, elaborate dishes, and elegant parties during the Edwardian time period. She will discuss proper social etiquette such as popular toasts of the era to the appropriate time to remove ones gloves. You and your friends will be experts in hosting your own Edwardian-age dinner party before you know it! To purchase tickets or for more information please visit DriehausMuseum.org 40 East Erie Street Chicago, IL 60611
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APRIL 7, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 9
CITY LIFE
Read Ben Joravsky’s columns throughout the week at chicagoreader.com.
POLITICS
Madigan’s muscle Marty Quinn is a behind-the-scenes powerhouse. By BEN JORAVSKY
A
s hard as it is for me to believe—and I still can’t get over it—one of the most powerful operatives in Illinois house speaker Michael Madigan’s mighty Democratic Machine is a mild-mannered alderman who rarely says a word during City Council debates. That’s alderman Marty Quinn—of Madigan’s home 13th Ward, on the southwest side. In the March primary, Quinn oversaw three legislative campaigns on Madigan’s behalf, including Juliana Stratton’s successful run against state rep Ken Dunkin—one of the most expensive and high-profile legislative campaigns in state history. Quinn may not keep his role as a Madigan operative a secret, but he certainly doesn’t publicize it. I only found out about his role in the Stratton race from a conversation with a political operative that went a little like this: Me: Who’s r unning Stratton’s campaign? Operative: Marty. Me: Marty who? Operative: Marty Quinn. Me: The alderman? Are you freaking kidding me? Only maybe I didn’t say “freaking.” Anyway, I did a little digging and discovered that since 2000, Quinn’s made more than $400,000 as a strategist for Madigan’s political operations, running various campaigns for secretary of state Jesse White, Illinois attorney general Lisa Madigan, Cook County sheriff Tom Dart, and former Senate candidate Dan Hynes—just to name a few. In the March primary, Quinn worked on campaigns for Stratton, state rep Sonya Harper, and Madigan himself. When Quinn started his political work
10 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 7, 2016
back in the early 2000s, he was more or less a full-time campaign aide for Madigan. In 2013, he got elected to the council. He was reelected last year—not too difficult, as he ran unopposed. His political work amounts to a second job—which he reports on his council ethics statement under the category of “advisor” to “Friends of Madigan.” From what party insiders tell me, Quinn is Madigan’s go-to-guy for really important races—like the recent Stratton-Dunkin showdown. In that campaign, Madigan wanted to punish Dunkin for breaking ranks with house Democrats to support Governor Rauner on a couple of bills. Before it was over, President Obama aired commercials for Stratton, who won with more than 67 percent of the vote. In many ways, the Statton campaign was a classic Quinn/Madigan affair. Put it this way. Running against a Marty Quinn candidate is like sitting in the front row of a live performance by insult comedian Lisa Lampanelli: You’re gonna get slammed. First, Quinn has research operatives dig through your background, looking for evidence of indiscretions—especially any that led to jail time. Then, he hammers you with mailings and commercials that turn you into a shadowy, almost frightening figure. The point here is not only to win the election, but to scare future candidates from even thinking about challenging the speaker or his caucus members. Among legislative insiders that I talked to, Quinn is known as Madigan’s muscle. In contrast, in the City Council Alderman Quinn is a minor player. He’s only introduced two bills in his tenure, and almost never votes against the mayor. Apparently, the speaker wants the
Alderman Marty Quinn ! BRIAN JACKSON/SUN-TIMES
mayor to know his alderman from the 13th Ward won’t challenge the mayor’s authority in Chicago. In return, the mayor rarely—if ever—challenges Madigan in Springfield. Quinn is so under the radar that he has no social media presence. Dang, Marty— even I’m on Facebook. Anyway, last week I reached out to Alderman Quinn for comment. And, well, I must make a confession. Marty, I prejudged you. Assuming you would not take my call, I went straight to Steve Brown, Madigan’s press spokesman. I’d no sooner finished telling Brown why I was calling, when the phone mysteriously went dead. Apparently, Marty really does have clout, I thought. When I called back, Brown uttered one of the decade’s great understatements: “Marty doesn’t look for big media.” He went on to explain Quinn’s value to Madigan: “Marty’s a great nutsand-bolts political operative who understands how to run a good ground operation.” But amazingly enough, Quinn did take my call. When I reached him, he was modest, and said I was “overstating” his role in Madigan’s political operation. “I
Quinn is so under the radar that he has no social media presence. Dang, Marty— even I’m on Facebook.
don’t view myself as a political strategist,” he said. “I view myself as a public servant.” Then he gave me a brief biography: He grew up in the 13th Ward. His father, Bob Quinn, was 15th Ward superintendent— the powerful city worker in charge of garbage collection. “My father was a very talented precinct worker, and he taught me you have to put in the time going door to door,” Quinn said. “I still spend a lot of time going door to door. Last year, I met 1,611 people.” You counted? “Yes.” The younger Quinn graduated from Saint Rita in 1993, and then from Saint Xavier University. His wife is a speech pathologist for the Chicago Public Schools and a proud member of the Chicago Teachers Union—which means that last Friday, she was walking the picket line. Right on, Mrs. Quinn! True to form, Alderman Quinn said he didn’t want to discuss his involvement in any election, including the Stratton campaign. “I think you’re overreaching when you play up my role,” he reiterated. “The reality is, Juliana Stratton was a very good candidate. She took her case door to door throughout the Fifth District. That election was about Juliana Stratton—it’s not about Marty Quinn.” Well, it was probably about Barack Obama. But, whatever. Quinn also said he planned to speak up in council debates more frequently, noting he offered comments about the mayor’s budget last year—which he supported. “It was really nice chatting to you,” he then said. And with that our conversation was pretty much over. It was nice talking to you too, Alderman. Let’s not be strangers. Now that I know what a badass you are, I’m officially enlisting you to the cause. Start treating Mayor Emanuel like he was Ken Dunkin. Hit him hard for his dumb ideas—like that Lathrop Homes TIF, for starters. Bring in the president, if you have to. We need all the help we can get. v
! @joravben
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For more information, contact bburda@chicagoreader.com@chicagoreader.com APRIL 7, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 11
Rachel Williams, 25 Organizer, Black Youth Project 100 and Black Lives Matter Chicago
Daughters of the revolution
How queer women are shaping the Black Lives Matter movement in Chicago By DERRICK CLIFTON | PHOTOS by DANIELLE SCRUGGS BLACK WOMEN, and queer and trans people, have always been part of efforts to combat racism. Yet the struggle’s most celebrated narratives and most recognized faces have belonged to black, cisgender, heterosexual men—the Martin Luther Kings, the Malcolm Xs—who occupied high-visibility leadership positions in the broader civil rights movement. But as another generation of young black people march in Chicago’s streets, its emerging leaders represent a change from previous archetypes. Perhaps most significantly, black women, many of whom are queer and/or transgender, are leading and shaping the movement, whether at a Laquan McDonald protest or a #ByeAnita action. Their very presence underscores that black people experience connected but distinct forms of prejudice— misogyny, homophobia, transphobia. This generation of leaders believes
12 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 7, 2016
that building a movement means keeping the experiences and issues of the most marginalized people front and center, whether or not they themselves personally identify as part of those groups. “No one is free until we all are free, and that includes those who are employed, unemployed, those who are incarcerated or in gangs, or who are sex workers,” says Aislinn Pulley, chapter coordinator for Black Lives Matter Chicago. “What we are fighting for is a world where our full humanity is honored and protected and valued, and that includes all of who we are.” These women cite role models such as civil rights movement pioneer Ella Baker, who played key roles in the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and who pushed back against charismatic male leadership. Other influential figures include Marsha
P. Johnson, a trans activist who resisted police during the Stonewall Riots, and the Combahee River Collective, a group of black feminists and lesbians who between 1974 and 1980 gathered in retreats that resulted in a collective political statement that has since become an important text for contemporary black feminists. The Reader spoke with a few of the many young black women organizing in Chicago. It’s a movement that has no central figurehead or spokesperson but is built on the understanding that many leaders make up the whole, and that their collective responsibility is to ensure that power is shared. Their personal stories and experiences offer a window into the various perspectives of black women and queer leaders working in the movement.
! @DerrickClifton
RACHEL WILLIAMS’S PASSION for activism developed during her time at John Hope College Prep, a public high school in Englewood. In addition to serving on the student council and competing with the policy debate team, she helped organize demonstrations tied to current events. During her junior year, in 2007, she put together an action connected to national rallies for the Jena Six, a group of black teenagers in central Louisiana who were charged with attempted murder after severely beating a white classmate. (The incident followed a period of racial tension and violence at the school that included white students hanging nooses from a courtyard tree and attacking a black student at a party.) Across the country these charges were seen as excessive and racially motivated; students at Williams’s school wore small black ribbons to show solidarity with their southern peers. The moment, she recalls, showed that black students lived through similar struggles even if they were hundreds of miles apart. “I was at a CPS high school during a time when we lost more than 50 to 60 students each year to violence. And I thought, ‘How can I do the work to make change for my community while being a student?’” she says. “As I got older, I realized there were many avenues to go about doing that.” Her dream was to graduate from college and do community work in Chicago, because she originally believed she couldn’t be an effective organizer without a more formal education. She attended Kentucky State University, but felt she wasn’t getting the enrichment she desired despite her earnest efforts, so she left in the fall of 2013. (The school, which is among the nation’s historically black colleges and universities, is now on the verge of closing.) Williams connected with Chicago activists after returning home, and today serves as an organizer with Black Lives Matter Chicago and Black Youth Project 100. Her community work is like a full-time job, on top of the six-plus-hour shifts she spends with students daily—Williams coaches debate at a west-side CPS high school, where she encourages students to connect their personal experiences with racial disparities to the policy discussions that happen during debate rounds. “I do movement work when I leave work, or do
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it en route to work, or even when I’m supposed to be actually sleeping for work,” Williams says. “I’m consistently working, if not talking with other young people about it.” Williams has concentrated much of her activist work on the #SayHerName campaign, which seeks justice for women like Rekia Boyd, Sandra Bland, and Mya Hall, a trans woman killed by police in Baltimore in April 2015. And for all the other black women and girls—queer or straight, cis or trans—who are subject to police and state violence but whose stories aren’t often told. “Let’s be real: Most of the work is being led by black queer women,” says Williams, who identifies as queer herself. “We’re not going to be put in a box or left out. We’re putting our bodies on the line day in and day out.”
Williams also emphasizes the importance of inclusion for people with disabilities, drawing from her own experience with cerebral palsy—a chronic condition that affects muscle coordination. Not everyone who attends a rally is able-bodied, Williams says, but they can still be included and instrumental. As an example, she cites a group of Bolivian activists who recently suspended themselves from a bridge in their wheelchairs to raise awareness about how people with disabilities are treated in their country. Her compassion has served her well with grieving families who have lost loved ones to police shootings. After spending Christmas Day with a few close friends, Williams learned that 19-year-old engineering student Quintonio LeGrier and 55-year-old Bettie Jones, a mother and
community activist, had been shot and killed by police. She rushed from her family’s home on the far south side to the Austin neighborhood home where the shooting had taken place; in that raw moment she saw the fresh bullet holes etched into the wall near the front entrance. Just a few hours later, Williams and Chicago Black Lives Matter coordinator Aislinn Pulley went to Jewel to pick up a cake. The occasion was a birthday celebration for Dorothy Holmes, the mother of Ronald “Ronnieman” Johnson, the 25-year-old whose death at the hands of police had been made public just a few weeks earlier. Waiting at the grocery store, the reality of the day finally hit her. Williams sought the privacy of a bathroom, where she broke down in tears. “Other days, I’m able to put up this hard-ass
exterior, because I have to be strong for the families,” she recalls. “But that day I had a hard time. Part of me on the inside was screaming, because another two sets of families joined [Holmes] in mourning. Meeting these families affects you, even if you don’t allow it to show in the moment.” Although the work takes a personal and emotional toll, Williams says she sustains herself through her friendships with other activists, and by working to inspire the next generation. “I don’t want to be some 40- or 60-year-old organizer doing work for youth, and there not be any youth doing it,” she says. “I see kids who think through ways we can change our community, in conversations, and in debate classes. They want to make an impact, and I want them to be able to see themselves in the work.”
APRIL 7, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 13
Janaé Bonsu, 25 National Public Policy Chair, Black Youth Project 100 JANAÉ BONSU DIDN’T SEE a bustling activist community in her hometown of Columbia, South Carolina, despite the area’s sometimes overt racism. She remembers passing restaurants proudly flying the Confederate flag, a sight she says can still be seen today—even after Republican governor Nikki Haley signed a bill last year to remove the flag from the grounds of the state capitol following the tragic shooting in Charleston. “Living in that type of environment without seeing people in a really visible way resisting against it” put a fire in her belly, she says. Bonsu, who was born to a black American mother and a Ghanaian father, also developed an understanding of colonialism, global capitalism, and the struggles of people across the African diaspora through occasional visits to her father’s home country. She wasn’t sure how to solve many of the problems she routinely witnessed, including “the real-time effects of criminalization and mass incarceration” that plagued members of her own family. A number of her relatives endure constant unemployment because of past convictions—one uncle lives in a day hotel because he can’t get an apartment, Bonsu says; other loved ones work two or three jobs, barely able to scrape by, and manage a range of substance abuse and mental health issues. But during college at the University of South Carolina, Bonsu began figuring out how she could help. “I was a psychology major and a criminal justice minor,” she says. “I thought I could go to the direct practice and clinical route, and help people cope at an individual level—because my kinfolk and people who look like me are dealing with so much shit.” Bonsu planned to pursue a PhD in clinical psychology and applied to several programs, but was devastated after Fordham University, the one school where she was granted an interview, didn’t offer her admission. Instead, Bonsu took a research job with MDRC, a poverty-focused New York nonprofit sponsored by the Ford Foundation, where she learned how public policy affects the access disenfranchised groups have to jobs, early childhood education, and other resources. “I learned that I don’t have to take a clinical route to get to the heart of the matter,” Bonsu says. “There are social workers who are commu-
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nity organizers, who are policy makers, and who are trying to get at the root of our problems. So I wanted to go to the best school of social work that I could.” Bonsu moved to Chicago in September 2013 to pursue a master’s degree at the U. of C. After arriving and starting classes, she realized that even in her social work program, there wasn’t as much attention paid to race, class, and privilege as she thought there would be. The elitism and lack of diversity on campus, she says, were also
palpable. But shortly after she arrived in Hyde Park, Bonsu attended an millennial-oriented event for the Roosevelt Institute think tank. There she had a chance encounter with a few activists from BYP 100. Encouraged by conversations with them about black liberation and visions of a world without prisons or police, she knew she had to join—and did, in January 2014. “This is was what I was looking for when I was in South Carolina. I can effect change through
advocacy and political education,” she says, describing this community as her chosen family. “I hit the ground running.” Bonsu, who’s now studying for a PhD in social work from UIC, says her identity as a queer black woman is central to her activism. “It is the intersection of these [identities] that I feel has been historically overshadowed,” she says. By finding strength in blackness, womanhood, and queerness—identities all targeted by prejudice—“I embody resistance.”
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Charlene Carruthers, 30 National Director, Black Youth Project 100 A COLLEGE TRIP TO SOUTH AFRICA in 2004 proved to be one of Charlene Carruthers’s most formative experiences. She’d grown up in Chicago’s Back of the Yards and Gage Park neighborhoods, attended Senn High School, and had faced financial barriers to affording college. But after her first year at Illinois Wesleyan University, Carruthers spent the summer studying contemporary politics in South Africa. To finance the trip, she took out a student loan—one she just finished paying. Ultimately, she says, it was worth every penny. “I was coming to a political consciousness around that time,” Carruthers recalls. “Going out of the country for the first time was very transformative for me.” She and her peers visited Cape Town’s District Six Museum, a memorial to the forced relocation
of more than 60,000 people under apartheid, when black homes were bulldozed to make space for whites. They also traveled to the original District Six community, now a national heritage site. The trip made Carruthers consider the situation back at home. “It was pivotal in my thinking about what segregation looked like in Chicago growing up, and the impact of institutional segregation in South Africa,” Carruthers says, noting that she connected Chicago’s racial stratifications with what she learned about South African apartheid. “That stood out to me.” It was then that Carruthers made a commitment to movement work. In the years that followed, she became a student activist, focusing primarily on racial justice at her school. Carruthers went on to earn a master’s degree in
social work at Washington University in Saint Louis, and worked with a variety of national organizations, including the black political action group Color of Change and the Women’s Media Center. At 23, she had something of an aha moment while staffing a Generation Change program for emerging leaders, during which she attended a training focused on organizing. “The trainer talked about building power and relational organizing, which means organizing has to be based in strong relationships,” Carruthers says. “That’s when I decided to go after a grassroots apprenticeship” based in northern Virginia, “and become a community organizer.” In 2013, she helped plan a national summit at the University of Chicago, attended by 100 young black people and organized by the research-focused Black Youth Project and its
founder, U. of C. political science professor Cathy Cohen. The gathering would eventually give birth to the activist group Black Youth Project 100. It was during the conference that a Florida jury found George Zimmerman not guilty of the murder of Trayvon Martin; the verdict affected the remainder of the group’s time together. “This was a very painful experience to, yet again, hear a reinforcement of the lack of compassion that the state has for black people,” she said. “On the other hand, it was a moment of clarity around the necessity to do something . . . around building power for black people and in the service of liberation.” Carruthers says fellow organizers “agitated” her into applying for the job as BYP 100’s national director, even though “I had a job at the time and did not plan on leaving,” she says. She took the position because “it was really the opportunity to build the type of organization I wish I had growing up.” Locally, BY P 100 has one of the largest member bases of young black activists and organizers, who share and often collaborate with members of a variety of similar groups. Carruthers says this is intentional. “None of us are powerful enough on our own,” she says. “Black liberation isn’t going to be won by one or two people, it’s going to take many of us. . . . We work with each other because we care for each other, we love each other, and share many of the same values.” Carruthers, who also self-identifies as queer, admits that it’s taken her several years to feel confident in her leadership abilities. She credits other black women organizers who have supported her in her journey, and says she feels fortunate to live at a time when more activists favor operating from a black queer feminist perspective. “We’re in a moment of evolving past the cis male charismatic leader, and forms of that leadership still exist,” Carruthers says. Still, she notes, she and her peers are building upon the work of their predecessors: “The best way to fight against the things that didn’t work are to build things on sound values that are radically inclusive.” Some of those values, as articulated in the BYP 100’s Agenda to Build Black Futures, include advocating for an end to health and wealth disparities in black trans communities, and a divestment from prisons. Although some may consider this approach too radical, Carruthers says it’s necessary. “If what we put out there runs counter to people living in their full dignity, then I’ll entertain that opposition,” she says. “If it’s a matter of whether it’s too risky . . . living in America is risky for young black people—so we have to live boldly and articulate a vision [about] the world we want to live in.”
APRIL 7, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 15
Veronica Morris-Moore, 23 Organizer, Fearless Leading by the Youth (FLY) and the Trauma Center Coalition
AS A HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT raised in the Fuller Park and South Shore neighborhoods, Veronica Morris-Moore spent much of her time playing alto saxophone, recording songs, and writing poetry about growing up on the south side. Around the time she graduated from Hyde Park Academy in 2010, her energy began shifting towards activism. Morris-Moore became acquainted with Fearless Leading by the Youth (FLY) through a friend who was already working with the group. She accompanied FLY on a trip to Detroit that summer to attend the U.S. Social Forum—an
16 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 7, 2016
annual gathering of social justice activists—and joined the organization soon after. It was during the event that Morris-Moore met Damian Turner, one of FLY’s leaders and cofounders. She would only know him for a short time. Two months later, Morris-Moore texted one of her peers to ask about upcoming meetings; she was instead invited to a gathering of grieving friends and family. “I asked her why, and she said it was because Damian was killed,” Morris-Moore recalls. “I remember thinking, ‘Damn.’ That year, he was the
third person that I knew of who was shot. And it hurt because even though I didn’t have a close relationship with him, he cared so much about the community . . . and he lost his life like that.” Turner died after being caught in the cross fire of a drive-by shooting. The University of Chicago Medical Center was only a few blocks away, but because the facility lacks a trauma center, he was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, more than eight miles away. Had there been a trauma center nearby, his life might have been saved—traveling more than
five miles by ambulance greatly increases the risk of fatality after a shooting, according to a 2012 study published in the American Journal of Public Health. At that meeting, Turner’s family members and close friends expressed their wishes for a trauma center on the south side. “We knew we needed to fight, because he would’ve,” Morris-Moore says now. “That inspired me, because growing up around gangs, when something like this happens, you’re used to hearing conversations about retaliation, not about what actual justice looks like.” Seeing the family’s resolve encouraged her to join the fight for a trauma center. And in doing so, “I became dedicated to this movement.” Since then, Morris-Moore has worked as a part-time paid organizer for FLY. During direct actions and demonstrations, some of which took place at U. of C., she says police officers have dragged her through a gravelly construction site and kicked her outside on her back when she attempted to stage a sit-in. “I accept that someone’s going to want to hurt me because I want to see black people get free,” she says. Morris-Moore accepts those risks as she fights for the movement’s rewards; in December, she and her peers got the news they’d been waiting for more than five years to hear—the University of Chicago would add a Level I adult trauma center to its Hyde Park hospital. “I cried,” Morris-Moore says. “I felt so relieved—and powerful.” “And I felt like a human being,” she adds with a cathartic chuckle, saying that the news caught her off guard. “We often have to defend ourselves and our existence, and for once I felt like we won the debate of whether or not the hospital should be saving black lives. That made me feel human.” Morris-Moore has now spent nearly six years fully dedicated to organizing and activism. (She attended Harold Washington College for a short time, but withdrew because she didn’t see herself or her goals reflected in the education system.) That includes the #ByeAnita campaign, which contributed to the defeat of Cook County state’s attorney Anita Alvarez in the March 15 primary. “This is my life. This is all day, everyday,” Morris-Moore says. “I try to take time to take care of myself, but I also just love supporting other young black people.” She adds that her participation in the movement is especially meaningful because of the visibility and presence of other queer black women like herself. “We’re told to be seen and not heard, submissive and not aggressive, to follow and not lead. It’s very unique how committed to intersectionality this movement is becoming, and it’s important for me to be a part of that.”
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Kristiana Colón, 30 Codirector, #LetUsBreathe Collective ENGAGING IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE through creative expression has become second nature to Kristiana Colón, who’s been performing and writing since she was old enough to hold a pencil. At the tender age of six—a time when her favorite film was Malcolm X—she penned the first of her many poems, titled “I Am Stronger Than Hate.” Colón, who grew up in Beverly, Englewood, and Logan Square, says literary pursuits during high school at Whitney Young helped nurture her politicization and her craft. “Activism is an act of creativity and imagination, and curating a more liberated future is an artistic act,” Colón says, noting that creativity is necessary to envision social change. “So it is natural that artists will be the forward guard of revolution.”
Like her activism, much of her poetry and performance work—honed through her studies at the U. of C. and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago—are influenced by her Afro-Latina identity. “It’s important for me to embrace the African diaspora in Latinidad, both because of the rampant antiblackness and colorism in Latinx communities [a gender-neutral variant of Latino/Latina], and to deconstruct the privileges afforded to me because of my presentation as an exotic, fetishized version of blackness,” she says, alluding to her light skin and long wavy hair. “I also think it’s important to build power with all indigenous, displaced, and colonized people of the earth.” Like millions of others, Colón sat at home, terrified and angry, as she watched Ferguson,
Missouri, protesters being met with riot gear and pepper spray from a militarized police force. But one Friday night in August 2014, after consuming countless hours of the footage, she decided that she’d had enough. “I felt the same way after Trayvon—that I’m going to have to drive to Florida and turn up because this just can’t keep happening,” she says. “But Florida is 30 hours away.” When she google-mapped the drive to Missouri, however, she realized that Ferguson was only five hours from Chicago. She decided to go. “I wanted to turn that feeling of rage into something productive,” she says. Colón reached out to people on the ground in Ferguson, who expressed the need for gas masks. After launching a crowdfunding campaign,
Colón called her younger brother, fellow artist and activist Damon Williams, to organize a trip. (Williams is now a chapter cochair for BYP 100.) It was the unwitting start of many such weekend trips, and ultimately became the moment the siblings formed the #LetUsBreathe Collective. The online funding campaign raised thousands of dollars, more than the siblings needed for the gas masks. So Colón and Williams sought the best way to use the extra money, and through that process met Lost Voices, a community group that sat outside in the protest area for 47 days until Ferguson police officers forcibly removed them. “We dedicated our resources to making their camp livable and sustainable,” Colón says, “and to amplifying their story in a way that the media wasn’t nuanced enough to convey.” They eventually worked together on a documentary film and speaking tour that took the Lost Voices story to various communities and college campuses. The combination of community care and arts-focused activism continues through their present work in Chicago. Colón recently launched the Black Sex Matters campaign, which explores how pleasure shapes ideas of liberation, and how artists and activists navigate sensuality in social justice spaces. The idea, she says, is built on the belief that reproductive justice, sexual autonomy, and healing in intimate spaces are paramount in achieving a complete vision of liberation. Colón has what she describes as a complicated relationship with her queerness, and usually chooses not to publicly identify as something other than hetero. “But I do feel that I am a part of the LGBTQ community, and that it’s important to organize through a queer feminist lens,” she says, “because folks fighting for liberation cannot do so while reproducing oppressive power structures.” The #LetUsBreathe Collective also organizes Breathing Room, a monthly event that serves as a dynamic mix of an open-mike performance space, political education forum, community service hub, and a space that shares services such as guided meditation, writing workshops, painting, and massage without charge, plus food and a “free store” filled with everything from books to clothing and cooking utensils. “Day-to-day movement work can be very reactionary and is constantly responding to the injustices of the state, which is never-ending and draining work,” Colón says. Having a community space focused on creativity and service, she says, helps build capacity for organizers and opportunities for marginalized people to heal. “One of our core values is the universal law of abundance—that communities have everything they need from within to liberate themselves,” she says. “The exchange is the value you bring to the space. Whichever gifts and talents you bring, that’s your price of admission.” v
APRIL 7, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 17
ARTS & CULTURE
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READER RECOMMENDED
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Mark Ulrich, Nina Ganet, and Riley McIlveen
Will the center hold? By JUSTIN HAYFORD
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ear the first-act finale of Jamil Khoury’s sprawling, ambitious Mosque Alert, conservative assimilationist imam Mostafa Khalil prepares for a Naperville town meeting. The only item on the agenda is his proposed Al Andalus Library and Community Center, to be built smack downtown. While the bribe-friendly director of the Naperville Chamber of Commerce, Ted Baker, publicly backs the project—not coincidentally, Khalil’s developer, Tawfiq Qabbani, knows how to grease a palm—his rich attorney brother, Daniel, gets wind of the project and hastily assembles a hyperbole-laden website, mosquealert. com, which spews the sort of Islamophobic misinformation routinely parroted by rightwing bloggers, Republican politicians, and even certain local mainstream media outlets. Getting to this point hasn’t been easy for Khalil. His ardently anti-assimilationist wife, Aisha, takes every opportunity to remind him of how eagerly he’s erased overt signs of his faith from the project, striking the word “Islamic” from the center’s name and even shaving his beard. His progressive daughter, Samar, insists the center, which will include
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a mosque, allow men and women to pray together and be “LGBT friendly.” Meanwhile his stoner son, Farid, thinks all Muslims must “own up” to the actions of terrorists. In fact he’s not sure he wants to be a Muslim at all. So to say Khoury tosses a lot of balls in the air is an understatement. (I haven’t even mentioned the uncertain love affair between Farid and Ted Baker’s daughter, Jennifer; the half-formed activism of Jennifer’s gay brother, Carl; or the vigorous scheme that Baker’s wife, Emily, cooks up to market the fashionable hijabs designed by Qabbani’s wife, Amina. Got that?) Khoury developed the play through five years of staged readings, video blogs, college productions, video essays, and “civic engagement programs,” all designed to elicit feedback from widespread audiences, and it seems he tried to get everyone’s feedback into the play. So when Kahlil preps for the town hall meeting, and Amina, playing a “concerned citizen,” lobs him one anticipated criticism for the project—“The real problem is overdevelopment and overcrowding”—she may as well be describing the play. Which isn’t to say Mosque Alert isn’t effective, even important. But it’s not consis-
tently so, either. The story that matters—the manufacturing of strategies, allegiances, lies, and betrayals that may get an Islamic center built or nixed—often gets put on hold while ancillary personal issues play themselves out. It makes for a long two-plus hours, made longer on opening night by the underrehearsed tentativeness of director Edward Torres’s Silk Road Rising production. But when Khoury foregrounds the politics of his play, the results are often stunning. In these scenes Khoury shows a Kushneresque knack for complicating already complicated realities, muddying motivations, and making it agonizingly clear that no one can be right— or even fully comprehensible—in a hopelessly fraught situation. And often he cracks open political dilemmas far removed from the mainstream, as when Carl attempts to support the imam by linking the fight against Islamophobia to the gay liberation movement. It’s one of those deliciously frustrating scenes in which an impossible gulf between lived experiences and historical legacies leaves two natural allies utterly at odds. The other thing Khoury’s got going for him is a stunning cast. Even if a lot of them dropped multiple lines opening night, there’s no mistaking their precision, thoughtfulness, and nuance, even when momentarily stilted dialogue turns certain exchanges into staged college debates. No one better demonstrates command of Khoury’s script than Steve Silver as gracious hatemonger Daniel Baker. His unwavering poise, unfailing eloquence, and unshakeable conviction make his facile equation of Islam and terrorism frighteningly convincing. Khoury turns Daniel—the play’s irredeemable villain—into its most levelheaded character. It’s a courageous move, and the play’s greatest success. It’s also the most depressing aspect of Mosque Alert. While most everyone else muddles through moral complexities, identifying his or her own lapses, striving to understand or at least accommodate other points of view, Daniel is his own echo chamber. He recasts intricate messes into clear, satisfying dichotomies of good and bad. He makes everything easy. After an evening with him, it’s hard to believe the Islamophobes won’t always win. v R MOSQUE ALERT Through 5/1: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat-Sun 4 PM, 77 W. Washington, 312-8571234, silkroadrising.org.org, $35, $15 students.
! NATE BEATY
! AIRAN WRIGHT
THEATER
COMEDY
Performance therapy THE FUNDAMENTALS of Therapy Sessions, a show at the newly reopened Hungry Brain are simple: a live musical act, a stand-up or spoken-word block, and a DJ set, all focused on a monthly theme (in March it was “guilty pleasures”). Previous performers include the Lawrence Arms’ Brendan Kelly, music critic and journalist (and Reader contributor) Sasha Geffen, and musician Antony Ablan. It goes beyond a simple variety-show structure—after their performances, guests are interviewed about a given theme. Event coordinator Alyssa Martinez stresses that the folks at Hungry Brain are all about starting conversations, and that Therapy Sessions is the perfect starting point for this endeavor. “I think our purpose is not necessarily to interview a guest on who they are and what they do, but to ask them questions that they might not normally get asked as a musician, writer, etc,” Martinez says. “‘What’s your guilty pleasure?’ ‘How was your childhood?’ ‘What scares you?’ ‘How do you feel about technology?’ To let [the guest] explore some more personal topics that all of us can relate to.” The program is still played fast and loose—the show has been going on for only about two months and is still trying to find the structure that best works. What it lacks in formality, it makes up for in sincerity. Give it a few months, and Therapy Sessions may become a restorative experience for performers and audience members alike. —CASSIDY RYAN THERAPY SESSIONS Open run: Wed 9 PM, Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont, hungrybrainchicago.com. F
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EARLY WARNINGS
chicagoreader.com/early
APRIL 7, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 19
○ " Blvck Vrchives founder/curator Renata Cherlise remembers Martin Luther King’s impact on Chicago at chicagoreader.com.
ARTS & CULTURE
Psycho! ! COURTESY THE ARTIST/CARL HAMMER GALLERY
VISUAL ART
The postcard always stings twice By DMITRY SAMAROV
M
ichael Hernandez de Luna has been designing phony stamps and sticking them on envelopes for more than 20 years. He’s a satirist and provocateur who intentionally courts conflict. Because stamps are legal currency, using one’s own designs could be construed as fraud—but Hernandez de Luna’s creations aren’t counterfeit, so he has
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never been arrested or prosecuted. And after all, who’s really being deceived? Hernandez de Luna’s unwitting collaborators, the United States Postal Service employees who are in charge of canceling stamps, could be viewed as the butt of the joke. Yet they are agents, however inept, of the public, so everyone is in some way implicated—we’re all getting
fooled. By involving a colossal bureaucracy like the USPS, Hernandez de Luna deepens his critique of the institutions that govern society. After he has designed a new sheet, Hernandez de Luna affixes a stamp to a vintage envelope and attempts to mail it to himself or one of his friends. In “Michael Hernandez de Luna: Philatelic Adventures,” the artist’s new show at Carl Hammer Gallery, each sheet is displayed with the envelope that Hernandez de Luna mailed. On some letters he used just one stamp, others two or three. It’s evident that some mailings were confiscated, because some sheets are missing more stamps than others. But judging from the fact that none of the sheets on display is missing more than two or three stamps, his success rate must be pretty good. The targets of Hernandez de Luna’s ire are manifold. Like the rest of the nation, he cannot resist commenting on the Trump phenomenon. Hernandez de Luna devotes several stamps to him—one series has Trump’s face next to a naked woman blowing a trumpet with her ass. Yet Trump’s campaign is already so absurd that it defies wit, sarcasm, or any other type of humor. Other works are more subtle, for the better. One of my favorites is Bill’s Little Black Book, which presents Hillary Clinton surrounded by the women to whom her husband has been linked; the envelope used to mail four of these stamps is from Clinton’s current presidential campaign. Some images are more wistful than pointedly critical. In the middle of the sheet called The Diner Is Closed and Becoming a Massage Parlor (Homage to Edward Hopper) is one of the title artist’s lonely burlesque dancers, surrounded by stamps of Nighthawks with FOR Sale signs on the window of the diner. The USPS has already announced that it will change the way letters are processed, and perhaps stamps will disappear. But Hernandez de Luna’s works will always have inherent value, even when stamps cease to be U.S. legal tender. And there’s little doubt that he’ll find some new way to stick it to the powers that be. v R “MICHAEL HERNANDEZ DE LUNA: PHILATELIC ADVENTURES” Through 5/14, TueFri 11 AM-6 PM, Sat 11 AM-5 PM, other times by appointment, Carl Hammer Gallery, 740 N. Wells, 312-266-8512, carlhammergallery.com. Free
LIT
Party of the professionals By RYAN SMITH
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o, Thomas Frank hasn’t gone conservative, though from the title of of his latest book, Listen Liberal: Or, Whatever Happened to the Party of the People?, it might appear that way. Frank (who has contributed to the Reader) is a onetime Chicagoan and the cofounder of the Baffler, a left-leaning journal of fiction, poetry, and cultural, political, and economic criticism (he’s currently listed as “founding editor” on the masthead). He has spent more than a decade writing books devoted to exposing the destructive reign of the Republican Party. Considering his CV and bibliography, it’d be fair to assume that Listen Liberal—a reexamination of U.S. politics during the 1990s—might cast Newt Gingrich as the central villain. But the toad-faced former speaker of the house who tried to
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strangle the federal government into submission during the “Republican Revolution” of 1994 is barely mentioned. Frank instead saves surprisingly sharp words for Gingrich’s charismatic, saxophone-playing public adversary, Bill Clinton. “Bill Clinton was not the lesser of two evils, he was the greater of them,” Frank said in a phone interview. “The magic of him being a Democrat was that he did things that Republicans could have never accomplished. Welfare reform, the crime bill, NAFTA—things that injured members of his coalition. Clinton got done what Reagan couldn’t do and what Bush couldn’t do.” In other words, Clinton’s crimes aren’t the ones that Gingrich once belabored (thankfully, Monica Lewinsky and Whitewater aren’t even mentioned in Listen Liberal). Rather, they’re the legacy of legislation that ultimately favored Wall Street above America’s working class and poor. Frank isn’t fooled by Clinton’s folksy rhetoric—he concludes that the president famous for feeling our pain delivered a heaping dose of it to his own coalition. Frank began writing Listen Liberal in 2014 partly out of sheer boredom. From 2004 to 2012 he published an unofficial trilogy— What’s the Matter With Kansas?, The Wrecking Crew, and Pity the Billionaire—three politicals screeds with the same overarching theme: the GOP was filled with false populists who served the 1 percent and manipulated social conservatives into voting against their own economic interests. “This time, I wanted to look at the other participant in the two-party monopoly,” Frank said. “The real pitfall of the partisan mind-set is that you begin to think that what your side does is a natural and normal response to everything, but of course it isn’t. You have to be willing to look in the mirror.” The timing of this change in approach is impeccable. During the past several months Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign has held that same mirror up to the warts of the Clinton and Obama administrations. There are moments when Listen Liberal reads like a 300page endorsement of the Vermont senator, even if Frank says it’s a happy coincidence. “I’m a journalist, I don’t endorse candidates,” he told me. “That said, Bernie and I share worldviews to an alarming degree. It wasn’t written with Bernie in mind, but I hope
it captures a lot of what his supporters are thinking.” Listen Liberal doesn’t go as far as to call for a Sanders-style political revolution—it’s an angry plea to the Democratic Party to return to its liberal roots. Frank claims that since Clinton’s presidency, the Democrats have been swooning over the “professional class”—an ascendant group of highly educated Americans with careers in tech, law, finance, banking, academia, entrepreneurship, and other “creative” or “knowledge” fields. Never mind the old scions of the world—say, the Koch brothers or Donald Trump. Think Jeff Bezos and Sergey Brin, socially liberal folks who approve of gay marriage and abortion yet share the views of conservatives on economic issues like free trade and deregulation—at the expense of the party’s old labor-loving New Deal coalition. “Clinton treated different groups of Americans in radically different ways,” Frank writes, “crushing some in the iron fist of the state just as others were getting bailouts, deregulation, and a frolicking celebration of Think Different business innovation. . . . The ascendance of the first group requires that the second be lowered gradually into hell. . . .What the poor get is discipline; what the professionals get is endless indulgence.” Frank lays much of the blame at Clinton’s feet, but also points fingers at the neoliberalism of Hillary, Obama, and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, members and protectors of this same vaunted professional class. Rahm’s Chicago—that of rampant and ever-rising inequality between the low-crime, highly manicured Green Zone and the high-crime, destitute neighborhoods of “Chi-raq”—is par for the course, says Frank. “Rahm loves one class of citizens and strongly disapproves of another,” Frank says. “He’s interested in the entrepreneurs and innovators but goes to war with teachers’ unions. But it’s not just him. He’s following the exact same road map as the rest. The Democrats just aren’t interested in the fate of working people.” v R LISTEN LIBERAL: OR, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE PARTY OF THE PEOPLE? By Thomas Frank (Metropolitan Books). Book release party, Wed 4/13, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, 773-227-4433, hideoutchicago.com. F
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164 North State Street
Between Lake & Randolph MOVIE HOTLINE: 312.846.2800
NO HOME MOVIE a film by CHANTAL AKERMAN Apr. 8 - 14
Fri, 4/8 at 6 pm; Sat, 4/9 at 3 pm; Sun, 4/10 at 5:15 pm; Tue, 4/12 at 6 pm; Wed, 4/13 at 8 pm; Thu, 4/14 at 6 pm
SWEET BEAN NEW FROM NAOMI KAWASE!
Apr. 8 - 14
“Especially moving.” – NY Times
Fri, 4/8 at 2 pm & 8 pm; Sat, 4/9 at 7:45 pm; Sun, 4/10 at 3 pm; Mon, 4/11 at 6 pm; Tue, 4/12 at 8:15 pm; Wed, 4/13 at 6 pm; Thu, 4/14 at 8:15 pm
“Cerebral and heartrending.”
– Chicago Reader
APRIL 8 - 13 • Jean Cocteau’s BEAUTY & THE BEAST in 35mm! BUY TICKETS NOW
at
SAIC student Joe Houlberg’s Thirst screens as part of the Chicago Latino Film Festival. ! DANIELLE SCRUGGS
www.siskelfilmcenter.org
MOVIES
APRIL 8-21, 2016 AMC RIVER EAST 21 THEATRES 322 E. ILLINOIS STREET
ChicagoLatinoFilmFestival.org
CLOSING NIGHT GALLA / nightt Of argenttinaa: THURSSday, april 21ST NO KIDS
Argentina (2015) 100 min. Directed by Ariel Winograd Genre: Romantic Comedy Spanish w/ English Subtitles
SCREENING: 6PM
Chicago History Museum 1601 N. Clark St.
RECEPTION:
FOLLOWING THE SCREENING
Chicago History Museum 1601 N. Clark St.
TICKETS:
$85 - General $70 - ILCC Members
THE WHITEHALL HOTEL
22 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 7, 2016
For Joe Houlberg, a thriller is a riddle wrapped inside an enigma By J.R. JONES
U
sually when you finish watching a movie, the first thing you ask the person next to you is, ‘Did you like it?’” notes Joe Houlberg, whose Ecuadoran thriller Thirst screens this week as part of the Chicago Latino Film Festival. “But that’s not the right question to ask in this movie,” he says. “It’s more about, ‘What did you feel?’ It’s a movie that you have to digest. It takes you a while to really understand what you felt and if you liked it or not. It’s not a movie that finishes right when it finishes.” That sort of mystery is more common to Latin American thrillers than to their Hollywood counterparts, which tilt toward action, suspense, and tidy conclusions. With no music score and precious little dialogue, Thirst is a languidly paced psychological study of four young friends who arrive at an old country house for some rest and relaxation but soon begin preying on each other’s nerves. Sara, the
main character, is blind, which complicates her romantic relationship with the narcissistic Jose. Her cousin, Carolina, has brought along her own boyfriend, Pedro, but sexually they’re less interested in each other than in respective flings with Jose and Sara. This volatile situation gathers tension for an hour and a quarter, and true to Houlberg’s promise, you may be taking some of it home with you. Houlberg, 30, is currently enrolled at the School of the Art Institute, completing his first year of study toward a master’s degree in film, but he already has a professional track record back in Ecuador. Growing up in Quito, he started making short videos at age 11, after his father bought a Hi-8 digital camcorder. Both his parents had flirted with creative careers—his father had studied as a fine artist before going into the petroleum industry, and his mother had worked briefly as an actress on a TV soap opera—but the movie business in
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Reader critics weigh in on more Chicago Latino Film Festival offerings at chicagoreader.com/movies.
Armed with the Arri Alexa, Houlberg installed his cast and crew at the Hacienda San Isidro, a 300-year-old estate about 30 miles from Quito, in the Valle de los Chillos, for an 18-day shoot. The property included a giant garden with a lagoon; the camera crew were lodged in a room once used to prepare the dead for burial services in an adjoining chapel. As in The Shining, the lodging almost becomes a character in the story; particularly striking is the giant half-moon window, brutally symmetrical in the Kubrick tradition, where Sara confronts a long-buried childhood memory. Thirst may have been shot in less than three weeks, but Houlberg spent three years in postproduction. Originally the script had included a second, more horror-oriented story line about an indigenous woman of local legend, but after completing three different cuts of the movie, Houlberg decided the two stories were working against each other and excised the second one almost entirely. Coming up with funds for editing and color correction was another challenge, though Houlberg managed to finish the movie with a prize from the Consejo Nacional de Cinematografia del Ecuador; a second prize from the organization provided him with funds for publicity and promotion. When Houlberg, eager for a change of scenery and a broader education in film, decided to get an MFA, he looked at programs across the U.S. and Europe and finally settled on SAIC because it allowed him to chart an eclectic course of study instead of repeating basic production classes he didn’t need. Once Thirst has screened at the Chicago Latino fest—Houlberg will attend the Sunday show—he’ll turn his attention to the movie’s general release in Ecuador, scheduled for this summer, and to two other features he’s been writing, an “ironic comedy” and another low-budget drama for a small cast. The Ecuadoran release is much on his mind: “I have no idea how people are gonna react to the movie, but I’m really interested in that, because I feel like Thirst pushes the limits in the conservative mind that most people have in Ecuador.” Like his movie, Houlberg isn’t finished. v CHICAGO LATINO FILM FESTIVAL Fri 4/8–Thu 4/21, River East 21, 322 E. Illinois, 312-431-1330, chicagolatinofilmfestival.org, $13, $110 for a 12film pass. Thirst screens Sunday, April 10, 6 PM, and Wednesday, April 13, 6:45 PM. For our critical roundup of the festival visit chicagoreader. com/movies.
! @JR_Jones
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Ecuador is so small that Houlberg had never considered filmmaking as a profession until his father suggested it to him. Shortly after he earned a bachelor’s degree in filmmaking from the University of San Francisco Quito in 2010, he was hired as a director by Vertigo Films, a local production company. An opportunity like that would be hard to find in the U.S., and Houlberg took advantage of it, directing commercials and also serving as a producer and assistant director on dramatic and documentary features. “That was a great experience,” he recalls. “After working on those movies—which were really lowbudget, they were almost like a guerrilla working process—I was like, ‘OK, I feel I can make my own movie.’” Once he set out to produce and direct Thirst, his association with Vertigo proved even more helpful: the company allowed him to borrow its new, state-of-the-art Arri Alexa digital camera, which contributes to the movie’s subtle soft-focus effects. Houlberg had spent about a year on the script. The story of the four friends was inspired to some extent by Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), another tale of people trapped together in a remote location. Houlberg was fascinated by Kubrick’s idea that “when you’re not in your usual space for a long period of time, your real instincts start to come out. When you’re in your home, you know the space, you’re in your comfort zone, and you pretend to be this calm person that has no problems. But when you’re out of that zone, these things start to come out, these psychological things, these emotional things.” Another model was Frenzy (1972), Alfred Hitchcock’s ice-cold thriller about a “necktie strangler” on the loose in London. Houlberg’s favorite part was the spider-and-fly scene in which the killer traps a woman in her office after hours and toys with her for close to ten minutes before strangling her. “She already knows that this is the guy, but she’s trying to act normal to escape from the situation,” Houlberg says. “He knows that she knows, but they both play the role as if they’re having a normal conversation. I really love that idea of characters in a space pretending to act as if they don’t know, but they both know that they both know!” In Thirst, Pedro sits on a couch across from the blind Sara, quietly masturbating; she seems oblivious to his presence, but is she? Earlier, Carolina comes on to Jose, standing over him and knocking his knee back and forth between her legs; Sara is sitting right there but doesn’t know what’s going on. Or does she?
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Friday, April 8 @ 8:00pm Saturday, April 9 @ 6:00 & 10:00pm Sunday, April 10 @ 6:00pm Mon-Wed, April 11-13 @ 9:00pm
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Thursday, April 14 at 7:00pm
Frank Zappa & The Mothers in Roxy the Movie
Tickets at http://roxythemovie.bpt.me
APRIL 7, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 23
MUSIC
Lou Mallozzi in front of a sound-diffusion panel in Studio A, the live room where ESS hosts many of its concerts ! CARLY RIES
How will ESS replace Lou Mallozzi?
The cofounder and executive director of Experimental Sound Studio is stepping down—and the rest of the staff is stepping up. By PETER MARGASAK
F
or its three decades and counting as a vital outlet for the sonic arts in Chicago, Experimental Sound Studio has been synonymous with artist Lou Mallozzi, who founded it in 1986 with his first wife, Dawn Mallozzi, who died of cancer in August 1999. They ran it together from its inception till her death, with Lou as associate director and Dawn as executive director, and since then he’s served as executive director himself. This summer, though, he’s stepping down, letting go of the reins at a crucial institution he’s spent 30 years nurturing—though after a six-month sabbatical, he’ll return at the start of 2017 as a board member with title of director emeritus. Formed before Chicago had a coherent sound-art community, ESS began by serving a variety of artists from different milieus united
24 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 7, 2016
by their interest in experimenting with sound, either as a primary or secondary focus. Performance artists such as Lynn Book, Lawrence Steger, and Brigid Murphy used its recording studio, as did poets such as David Hernandez and Carlos Cumpian. Naturally, many of the city’s important experimental musicians got involved with ESS very early on, including Michael Zerang, Gene Coleman, Douglas Ewart, Laurie Lee Moses, and Jeff Kowalkowski. ESS also partnered with important cultural presenters, among them Lower Links and Randolph Street Gallery. Internationally renowned artists who performed under the aegis of ESS in those years included the likes of Nicolas Collins, George Lewis, and Elliott Sharp. ESS is a nonprofit, and it not only offers affordable rates to artists interested in using the studio as a tool but also accommodates
unusual techniques and ideas. A 1999 Reader story about Dawn mentioned a few, including “arranging microphones in buckets of water or rolling dice to decide how to set up the mixing board.” During its 30-year history, ESS has grown into a multitiered institution, and while its recording facilities remain central to its mission, it also organizes classes in studio practices, provides artist residencies, and houses the steadily expanding Creative Audio Archive—whose historically important collections include the myriad show recordings of activist Malachi Ritscher, a trove of material from Sun Ra and El Saturn Records, and recordings from the Links Hall concert series curated by Zerang. ESS has also grown into one of the most reliable and consistent presenters of sound art and experimental music in the city, hosting concerts in its cozy studio and partnering with Chicago arts organizations to hold events in more conventional spaces—and in some not-so-conventional spaces. The Fern Room of the Lincoln Park Conservatory has hosted a long-running sound-installation series called Florasonic since 2001, and Pritzker Pavilion has been home to large-scale environmental sound-art works curated by ESS, including Olivia Block’s Sonambient Pavilion, which paid homage to the sound sculpture of Harry Bertoia last fall. I recently spoke with Mallozzi about his impending departure and the future of ESS. When I asked him why he’s decided to step down, he quipped “age” and laughed heartily—he just turned 59. But he went on to offer a characteristically thoughtful and detailed explanation. Over the past few years, he says, ESS’s capable and reliable staff has coalesced into a vital organization—one that’s fostered the expansion of live performance series such as Oscillations, which invites young artists to perform at the space via open call. He also feels it’s time for him to move on because technology has changed so much, and because the role of a nonprofit arts organization is so different now than it was 30 years ago. MALLOZZI: I’ve been thinking about it for a time, simply because I was getting to a point where personally I just didn’t want to have the kind of situation where I felt like you do in an ED position in a small organization—where you’re basically responsible for everything one way or another. It’s a normal thing that I’m sure everybody in this position goes through—nothing dramatic.
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MUSIC But as we started hiring staff, the staff had developed these amazingly synergistic ways of working together. And whenever I would delegate some kind of responsibility, it was never a situation where people just did what they were asked to do—they also always took it and sort of converted it into something more their own. It started to become clear that the team that we had were capable of taking on a lot of stuff, and were really dedicated to what they were doing and interested in really making the organization their own in the best possible way. It was concurrent with the fact that they were extending the organization’s programs and services into a wider and wider range of artists, so that we were starting to work with people from a wider variety of backgrounds and aesthetic sensibilities. I realized that it was possible for the organization to not only do what it was doing but to expand or change. That made it viable that I could start to step away without there being any danger of it stopping. Because with a small organization, which for a long time is centered on the activity or let’s say the presence of one or one or two people only, the danger is that when one of those persons leaves, all a sudden the whole thing collapses. It depended on that one individual, and it’s associated with their personality. So that’s a very fragile situation if the person leaves, because there’s no glue there.
Mallozzi believes that ESS has its glue, though, provided by the current staff: managing director Adam Vida, marketing and communications director Dan Mohr, technical director and chief engineer Alex Inglizian, development and outreach director Olivia Junell, and archivist Allison Schein. Over the past few years, this crew have learned to work symbiotically, taking on roles much bigger than their titles indicate. In some ways I feel like a little bit of a dinosaur. So I’m kind of recognizing my own limitations, and I think other kinds of viewpoints coming in and other models for running things might be better in the long run for the organization. The other thing is that for many years the organization was pretty much centered on me or centered on me and Dawn. We basically ran the thing together—maybe not since its inception, but from shortly after its inception forward, it became clear that it was going to be the two
of us running this thing. And so we did that until she died in ’99. Then after that I had to make a decision about what to do, and I decided just to continue on. Because of the dynamics of the situation and who was around when and all of that, a lot of the operation fell to me directly or personally. I had some great people working with me, that’s definitely true, but a lot of it was still centered on the individual. This is not an unusual thing—it’s pretty typical for smaller arts organizations. The whole idea for me over the last seven years or so has been to try to move away from that towards something that wasn’t sustained by an individual or by a personality, but that was going to develop an organizational identity of its own that could transcend the person and operate in a more diverse or diffuse sort of manner and at the same time not lose the sense that there’s still a sort of personal touch to the whole thing. The way we operate with audiences and with artists is very direct and very personal, with—dare I say it—a kind of elegance and something that’s very real at an individual level. That approach could still be maintained even if the organization stopped being attached to a specific individual.
In December, Mallozzi sent an e-mail to friends of ESS announcing that he would depart on June 30, 2016. He wrote that ESS would begin searching for a new executive director in January, but that search never began. By the time ESS made Mallozzi’s impending resignation public on March 8, the organization had decided that the five remaining part-time staffers would spread the former executive dirctor’s responsibilities among themselves. ESS also has a five-member board, where Mallozzi is joined by veteran arts administrators and artists Kate Dumbleton, Ed Herrmann, Drew Roulo, and Darin Walsh. We talked about the staff already, but the other thing that has happened is that in the past three years the board has really stepped up. We developed the board in some extremely positive ways, and we brought a couple of new people on—that has brought some new energy to it. The board has been really hands-on in trying to stabilize the finances of the organization, look at what its real capacity is, and to also engage in various kinds of J
APRIL 7, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 25
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please recycle this paper 26 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 7, 2016
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analysis—both with staff and separate from the staff—in terms of thinking about what the strengths of the organization are and what its weaknesses are and what it can try to accomplish in the future. They also really took a good hard look at the finances, and working with the staff, totally revised how we manage [them]. You can look at programming, and it’s sort of the face of the organization—that’s what the public engage with, and that’s what the artists see and engage with—but none of that works unless you have all of this other attention and activity underneath the surface, and that’s what the board has really helped to bring. The board and the staff work so well together that it really means that we get a lot done in a short amount of time. We get to dig in on a given issue and work through what all the possibilities are that make sense for the organization, and we look at models that exist—but we always look at that as refracted through the sensibility of the organization itself, in terms of what ESS is really about. When I decided to announce to the board that I wanted to leave, I said I wanted to do this with a very long transition. It was the fall of 2015, and at that time I told them it would be the summer of 2016 when I would leave—so that was a good eight months, and that was very intentional and extremely important because it gave us a chance to really strategize and think about what that was going to mean and to try to put some processes in place to make the transition
work. It was kind of assumed that, “OK, well, I’m leaving my position. That’s a position that exists—it does something in the organization—therefore we will need to fill that position.” What is the cost of doing that? It’s going to cost more than what I’m being paid, because I’ve kind of held my own salary, one might say, unnaturally low—but also just thinking about structurally what it meant.
Among the responsibilities Mallozzi will be leaving behind are designing the budget, writing grants, meeting with funders and donors, overseeing administrative responsibilities, developing new programs and evaluating old ones, and determining spending priorities. We were thinking that we were going to try to hire someone, which is the logical assumption. When the staff and the board started talking about it more, there was a joint meeting of both parties about a month or so ago. It was brought up, you know, maybe what we’re looking for is not an executive director, but maybe we’re looking for another kind of position that really doesn’t fit that mold in the traditional sense. Instead of hiring a new position to simply take those responsibilities, we could reassign them among the existing staff—who have all of this incredible expertise already, and who already have this kind of chemistry of working collaboratively—and see if that model might make sense. And it was like this strange eureka moment where I think we all, in a kind of pop, we were like, “Oh yeah, maybe we just need to assign this a different
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MUSIC ESS staff: managing director Adam Vida, marketing and communications director Dan Mohr, archivist Allison Schein, technical director and chief engineer Alex Inglizian, and development and outreaach director Olivia Junell ! CARLY RIES; CHRIS RIHA (INGLIZAN,
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Marshall Crenshaw & The Bottle Rockets kind of structure, a structure that seems to organically grow out of what we are, what our identity is, what we’ve become, what we’re doing, and also that grows out of the direction that we seem to be moving in— looking ahead in a different way.” That’s when we came up with what some would consider a rather atypical solution— not having an executive director at all, and instead running the organization in this kind of lateral collaborative administrative model. The staff said, OK, we’ll come up with an outline for what we think that will look like. They go away, and then a few days later they present the outline. I have no idea how they did this, because it was so amazingly worked out and it really covered all the bases exceedingly well. Then the question comes up: “What’s that going to look like to funders?” There’s this assumption that funders are inherently oriented towards very traditional corporate models. Which is completely untrue, as it turns out—it’s not uniformly the case at all. I tested it out at a meeting with a funder last week and mentioned this idea, and he just looked at me and said, “That sounds great.” I think it has to be said that that this thing came through a deeply thought-out and well-discussed process. It wasn’t like we all look at it on an e-mail and check a box off or something. It really comes out of a lot of face-to-face discussion. People who know the organization really well and are really committed to it aren’t going to lie. Their agenda is not going to be about of self-preservation; their agenda is going to be about how to
make this thing a creative laboratory. The organization is supposed to be a creative laboratory for artists and for musicians and for audiences, but it also is a creative laboratory at the level of the organization itself—for administration to create a laboratory for programming, to create a laboratory for preservation. That notion that it is a creative laboratory at as many levels as possible is a really important thing, and that’s sort of the root of this organic development.
As if to quiet any fears that this transition will disrupt its programming, ESS already has a full schedule for much of the rest of the year. The Outer Ear concert series at the studio, which runs from April through June, includes performances by British new-music group Distractfold and Chicago’s own Spektral Quartet, and percussionist Tim Daisy’s Florasonic installation at the Lincoln Park Conservatory will be in place till July 10. Hong Kong artist Mark Chung is in residence at ESS from April 14 through May 14 as part of the international exchange program Waveform. The Monday series Option—curated by Daisy, Ken Vandermark, and Andrew Clinkman—will continue as well, and most of the concerts are now streamed live online. ESS will also present a 30th-anniversary gala at Constellation on July 2 with performances by Vandermark, Olivia Block, vocal improviser and sound poet Jaap Blonk, and instrument inventor Hal Rammell as well as an exhibit of selections from the Creative Audio Archive. v
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SATURDAY, APRIL 9 8PM
SERDAR ILHAN PRESENTS
Erkan Ogur & Ismail Hakki Demircioglu with special guest Michael J. Miles with David Jennings • In Szold Hall
SUNDAY, APRIL 10 7PM
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Taj Mahal Trio
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Lisa Loeb Kids concert at 11am! All ages at 7pm THURSDAY, APRIL 21 7 & 9:30PM
The Bad Plus Joshua Redman ACROSS THE STREET IN SZOLD HALL 4545 N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL
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4/13 Paula Monsalve 4/20 Ali Aftab Saeed and Saad Sultan BUY TICKETS AT
OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG APRIL 7, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 27
Recommended and notable shows, and critics’ insights for the week of April 7
MUSIC
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ALL AGES
F
PICK OF THE WEEK
With Adore Life, Savages deliver on the outsize promise of their debut
Denzel Curry ! JMP
THURSDAY7 Savages See Pick of the Week. Angus Tarnawsky opens. 9 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, sold out. 18+
FRIDAY8 Abbath High on Fire, Skeletonwitch, Tribulation, and Green Death open. 6:45 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $31. 18+ ! COURTESY MATADOR RECORDS
SAVAGES, ANGUS TARNAWSKY
Fri 4/7, 9 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, sold out. 18+
WITH THEIR SPECTACULAR SECOND ALBUM, Adore Life (Matador), London-based quartet Savages deliver on the outsize expectations aroused by their searing 2013 debut, Silence Yourself, upping the ferocity while revealing a dramatic evolution as songwriters. You can still hear Siouxsie Sioux and PJ Harvey in Jehnny Beth’s caterwauling delivery, as well as the sharpness and tonal expansiveness of former Clash and PIL guitarist Keith Levene in Gemma Thompson’s imaginative playing, but those Brit-punk antecedents have never felt more superfluous. Most of the songs orbit around iterations of love, from carnal desire to romantic desperation, but in a larger context they address the way people deal with the world at
28 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 7, 2016
large: “Evil” excoriates social pressures, while “The Answer” deals with debilitating jealousy; “T.I.W.Y.G.” articulates the emotional turbulence and painful lack of clarity that love can bring, and “I Need Something New” is a rant appealing for freshness in the midst of stasis. In other words, the songs embrace the ambiguity a fully lived life brings; they’re also more ambitious structurally than those on the earlier effort, with heightened dynamics and drama. Thanks in part to the massive, churning bass of Ayse Hassan and drummer Fay Milton’s manic, driving, jackhammer rhythms, Savages have never sounded more, well, savage, despite the sophisticated lyrics. And they only raise the stakes onstage. —PETER MARGASAK
When front man and guitarist Abbath Doom Occulta departed Norway’s classic Immortal last year, it was a fairly acrimonious split, and it’s now up to the fans themselves to decide whether the lineup that continues on under that name counts as the “real” Immortal. Personally, I think the self-titled debut by the band Abbath sounds like the best Immortal album in years. The leader took Gorgoroth bassist King ov Hell with him, and Creature (aka Kevin Foley of Benighted and Disavowed) covers the drums with an innovative type of death-inspired ferocity (he has since been replaced by Gabe Seeber, currently of the Kennedy Veil and formerly of Alterbeast). There’s nothing particularly radical about Abbath, but the sound is classic WYSIWYG northern-chill black metal, featuring a dense wall of howling wind that ushers in devouring wolves and ice zombies. The always-winter-neverChristmas sounds were released in January via Season of Mist, and the cover of Judas Priest’s “Riding on the Wind” might be worth the purchase alone. —MONICA KENDRICK J
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MUSIC ON SALE THIS FRIDAY 10AM
SATURDAY JUNE 18
FESTIVAL
A closer look at the second ‘M’ in CIMMfest Peter Murphy performs at Thalia Hall on Thursday, April 14. ! SUN-TIMES MEDIA
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THE CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL MOVIES & MUSIC FESTIVAL returns for its eighth installment this week, kicking off Wed 4/13 and wrapping up Sun 4/17. The largest CIMMfest yet features tons of films (that coverage appears in next week’s paper) plus question-and-answer panels, live scores performed along to movies, and of course concerts. The musical performances kick into gear on Thu 4/14, with Hungarian-born singer and violinist ESZTER BALINT at the Hideout, blues combo the TAJ MAHAL TRIO performing two shows at the Old Town School of Folk Music, and hip-hop producer DAVID BANNER doing his thing at the Promontory. That same night, local dark-pop trio MY GOLD MASK plays at 1st Ward, Bauhaus front man PETER MURPHY brings the spookiness to Thalia Hall, and TAYLOR MCFERRIN (son of Bobby) performs at East Room in Logan Square. Things don’t slow down on Fri 4/15, with experimental electronic artist TIM HECKER at the Empty Bottle, Ken Vandermark’s MADE TO BREAK at the Burlington, hip-hop royalty SLUM VILLAGE at the Promontory, and suburban-bred hard-rock duo LOCAL H playing their first of two shows at Metro—they’ll perform their 1996 album As Good as Dead front-to-back each night. Local H’s second show is Sat 4/16, and other gigs around town that evening include garage-rock maniacs OBN IIIS at the Empty Bottle, legendary DJ AFRIKA BAMBAATAA at the Promontory, Chicago-based producer MANO at 1st Ward, and synth-pop band POLICA at Thalia Hall. On Sun 4/17, the festival’s final night, performances include singer-songwriter LISA LOEB at the Old Town School of Folk Music and Indian-American multi-instrumentalist GINGGER SHANKAR (daughter of venerable violinist L. Subramaniam) playing twice at City Winery. These notables merely scratch the surface of the festival’s music bookings—for full lineups and showtimes, see our listings. Tickets can be bought per show, and festival passes range from $79 to $149. —LUCA CIMARUSTI
CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL MOVIES & MUSIC FESTIVAL Wed 4/13-Sun 4/17, various venues and times, $79 film and music pass; $99 film, music, and conference pass; $149 VIP pass
30 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 7, 2016
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Autolux
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! ELLIOT LEE HAZEL
Ryoko Akama, Dan Friel Part of Pictures & Sounds 2016, presented by WHPK. Ryoko Akama headlines (see also Sunday); Gabriel Saloman with Paul Clipson, Dan Friel (see also Wednesday) with Todd Bailey, and Dialect open. 7 PM, Film Studies Center, University of Chicago, 5811 S. Ellis, $7 suggested donation. b Japanese sound artist and composer Ryoko Akama, who lives and works primarily in England, deals with the simplest of materials. In an interview published by the Wire a couple of years ago, she points out similarities between the traditional Japanese tea ceremony and composers she collaborates with, explaining that “teaism” is “all about living in the simplest form and trying to find a particular light within imperfection.” She works with stripped-down electronic sounds and in recent years has largely supplanted the laptop she used in the group the Lappetites with homemade devices: housed in the shell of the traditional Japanese string instrument called the shamisen, her Box of Austere, for example, was built as part of an adaptation of Alvin Lucier’s Music on a Long Thin Wire. She also often works closely with figures involved in the minimalist Wandelweiser collective. For her performance of open-ended text scores on last year’s Senu Hima (Melange Edition) she asked composers like Jürg Frey and Sarah Hughes to create works that adapt-
ed the Noh concept where nothingness or silence in a composition represent its most important parts. She’s also a key part of Next to Nothing (Another Timbre), a dazzling trio effort with Bruno Duplant and Dominic Lash that finds exquisite beauty in the most sparse of materials—bowed bass, tone generator, bells, and electronics. For her Chicago debut Akama will participate in WHPK’s annual Pictures & Sounds event, where experimental musicians provide music for video. She’ll perform solo at Elastic on Sunday. —PETER MARGASAK As coleader of Parts & Labor, the Brooklyn noiserock unit that broke up in 2012, Dan Friel lassoed the abrasive, mutated sounds that froth in dingy, poorly lit basements and yanked them up toward the cosmos. He continues to push noise into an
interesting new terrain, and his solo instrumental work has a gnarly, experimental facade, even as its heart beats a pop-ready euphoric pulse. On last year’s Life (Thrill Jockey) he builds dense, looming, animated tracks using a toy keyboard and loads of other gear, imparting a vitality through plastic parts and knobs that shouldn’t be able to manufacture such colorful compositions. Gleaming, fuzzy melodies stretch upward like skyscrapers of stainedglass windows. Songs seamlessly transition from an industrial clomp to a dance thump, and Friel steers his music towards gentle, tender moments even as the decibel rate feels like it could blow off the roof. He collaborates with Brooklyn electronic visual artist Todd Bailey for tonight’s Pictures & Sounds slot and performs solo at the Hideout on Wednesday. —LEOR GALIL
Bombino Galactic headline. 8:30 PM, House of Blues, 329 N. Dearborn, $33.50. 17+
Of all the Saharan artists to break out as a result of the ascent of Tuareg guitar group Tinariwen, none has demonstrated a willingness to explore rock hybrids like Nigerien guitarist Omara “Bombino” Moctar. His music has come a long way from his 2009 debut on the Sublime Frequencies label, on which he balances parched acoustic balladry with oversaturated, in-the-red guitar workouts. The new Azel (Partisan) is the third straight studio album he’s cut in the U.S., and after working with Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys on 2013’s Nomad, he’s now partnered with David Longstreth of Dirty Projectors. While there’s no missing the syncopation of Jamaican music on certain tracks and a firm shuffling backbeat on others, Bombino hasn’t watered down or betrayed his desert soul—he pulls back a bit from the organ-stoked sound applied by Auerbach. Rhythms still cycle in and out with infectious clopping beats, and hotly bubbling, overdubbed guitar riffs—capped by his own fiery leads—form dense webs of counterpoint. His clenched, nasally voice remains the other key factor, with his lyrics raising concerns about politics and love in his homeland in his native Tamasheq. The novelty of Tuareg guitar music has worn off, but nobody has as skillfully found the sweet spot between its traditions. —PETER MARGASAK J
APRIL 7, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 31
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continued from 31 David Gilmour 8 PM, United Center, 1901 W. Madison, sold out. b
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Unless you’re talking about the great recent work of Neil Young or the late David Bowie, pretty much every classic-rock superstar is currently cranking out disappointments. On 2015’s Rattle That Lock (Columbia), legendary Pink Floyd coleader—and one of the planet’s finest guitar players—David Gilmour proves that he has what it takes to age more than gracefully. Across Rattle’s ten tracks, Gilmour revisits the sounds that made Floyd so great in the 70s: the droning organ and mournful guitar of “Beauty” is straight from “Shine on You Crazy Diamond,” and “A Boat Lies Waiting” lifts the creepy spoken samples and somber piano from Dark Side’s “The Great Gig in the Sky.” The album leans heavily on Gilmour’s guitar work, as his playing is dominated by the same crystal-clear, sweeping Stratocaster sustain of the classic solos in “Time” and “Echoes,” which feature some of the most beautiful guitar sounds ever put to tape. If there has to be a bummer about Rattle That Lock, it’s the lame, sorta-funky blues-rock title track—but as bad as it is, maybe the blow is somehow softened by remembering that “Money,” with its ham-fisted boogie, is one of Pink Floyd’s most popular tracks ever. Tonight’s show is the last of a three-gig stint in Chicago that includes a stop on Wed 4/6 at the Auditorium Theatre, a stage Gilmour hasn’t graced since Floyd played there in 1972. —LUCA CIMARUSTI
Sophie Spice Boy, CJ Milli, and Thirsty open. 10 PM, Primary Nightclub, 5 W. Division, sold out. London-based Samuel Long (aka Sophie) is more compelling than your average producer dude hanging behind a chorus of samplers, because while he works within the margins of big-single pop, he also exploits its structure by mashing together shards of instrumentals he’s built to form overgrown tracks
with beats that are products of whatever scraps trail out behind. Last year’s debut album Product (Numbers) is composed of four new singles and a handful of those Sophie released previously in 2013 and 2014—with two of the best and most popular, “Bipp” and “Elle,” leading off the album. The latter is about three sidesteps away from a track by experimental-rock trio Battles as it layers on euphoric, sometimes ambient symphonic sounds poked at by sci-fi zaps and squiggles, while its following super (but brief) track “Lemonade”—which features J-Pop singer Kyary Pamyu Pamyu—shuffles between a swaggering hard beat and microwaved pop. The hyperfied qualities of so much of Product certainly makes it occasionally feel like it’s going to skitter itself right into self-combustion, but the impending organ doom doled out by a dark cut like “Msmsmsm” helps keep Sophie’s sound at least kind of grounded. —KEVIN WARWICK
SATURDAY9 Alex G Porches headline; Alex G and Your Friend open. 5:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 1375 W. Lake, $15. b Philadelphia bedroom experimentalist Alexander Giannascoli (aka Alex G) expands glum, intimate ditties till they feel as big as the world—or at least make the world feel a little less imposing. On last year’s Beach Music (Domino) Giannascoli weaves sun-setting emo guitars, half-whispered vocals, and slumbering slacker hooks into songs that, individually, might not resemble the ones that precede or follow it, though they still fit snug within his low-key, whimsical tapestry. Giannascoli hits upon the hard-to-define gray feelings I so often associate with being in your 20s and figuring out what it means to be a functioning person in society. The songs are alive and electric even when they’re somber. The chintzy lounge percussion, frigid postpunk guitars, and pitch-warped vocals on “Salt” move in
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Where are the rest of the music listings? Find them at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.
DON’T KNOW HOW TO PLAY? JUST COME STRUM ALONG.
Bombino ! MARIJE KUIPER like orange-colored clouds ahead of a sandstorm— together they’re unexpected, foreign, and enchanting. —LEOR GALIL
Autolux Eureka the Butcher open. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $18. It’s powerful to witness a beloved band release just three records over the course of 12 years but still maintain a devoted fan base. Autolux have never been concerned with prolificacy: six years separate their new album Pussy’s Dead (30th Century) from 2010’s Transit Transit, and their acclaimed debut, Future Perfect, came out back in 2004. But spacedout records and little press have only shaped their mythic quality, especially given the consistency of their music. Future Perfect has aged like a velvety merlot, the only indication of its age being simple distorted guitars reminiscent of an early-aughts sound when indie bands all wanted to be Joy Division. But Autolux resisted the urge to wander down a flamboyant path. Their fuzzy pop songs are played in minor keys, so they sound just a bit off, and disaffected, and citified vocals temper the rookiness of lyrics like “Our lord is so neurotic / He’s a hypochondriac.” Their placid composure and enchanting coolness allow them to get away with naming an album Pussy’s Dead in 2016. Autolux have figured out how to write music that is both aloof and comfortingly intimate at the same time, which should prove to be a magical combination for tonight’s anticipated show. —MEAGAN FREDETTE
Denzel Curry, Allan Kingdom Denzel Curry headlines; Allan Kingdom and JK the Reaper open. 6 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2105 S. State, sold out. b The Web hasn’t entirely eroded hip-hop regionalism so much as created an avenue for MCs and producers to submerge themselves in distinctly
local sounds from zip codes other than their own. Suburban Miami rapper Denzel Curry has an irrepressible affection for Memphis’s sun-stained funk thwack—and repurposes that sound by injecting it with adrenaline and then tossing it in a cold, dark padded cell to brood. His new Imperial mixtape bristles with angst and anxiety even as he softens his bark and removes some of the muck from his music—the chilling swing of “Knotty Head” would sound massive playing on the radio, and not just because it features Rick Ross. Opener Allan Kingdom has followed his own sound, and much of his music feels as though it’s been built around his vacillating, flamboyant vocals. On January’s Northern Lights mixtape Kingdom’s vocals swirl together with plucked synthetic strings, serene washes of synths, and percussion that leaps and dribbles like plastic bouncy balls to form hard-hitting anthems and tranquil, levitating tunes. With its R&B glide, “Fables” manages to ring out with force even when everything but the song’s minimal, echoing keys dissolves. —LEOR GALIL
Rhodri Davies 8 PM, Graham Foundation, Madlener House, 4 W. Burton, free with RSVP at lamporhodridavies.eventbrite.com. b Welsh harpist Rhodri Davies is one of the more versatile improvisers in the UK, a bold experimenter whose sound rarely suggests the sweet cascade of sparkling tones we usually expect from his instrument. Davies prefers radical abstraction, often working in collective settings where the ensemble sound trumps individual contributions or isolated interplay (a good example is his group Common Objects with saxophonist John Butcher, electronicist Lee Patterson, and his violinist sister, Angharad). Naturally, he applies various extended techniques, whether that means bowing the instrument or choking its strings with a small hand-held powered fan, thus turning it into a pure sound generator. But even on solo J
When you’re here, you’re part of it. Set your own tone. Get in your own groove. Join up with people from all walks of life, from all over Chicago and the world. Strike a chord with us this spring. Find your folk at the Old Town School of Folk Music. New classes start April 25. Sign up at oldtownschool.org
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APRIL 7, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 33
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Ryoko Akama ! ANDREJ CHUDY
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recordings, where he plays the harp in a slightly more conventional fashion, he creates unexpected sounds. His 2012 album Wound Response (alt.vinyl) deploys lacerating distortion to rapidly plucked patterns, evincing a strong engagement with African music. The Western harp is a relative of the kora—a 21-string instrument built from a large gourd—but Davies’s aggression here suggests the amplified likembe used by Congolese group Konono No. 1. However on the 2014 album An Air Swept Clean of All Distance, he opts for the pure acoustic sound that suggests a kora, while his halting phrasing hews closer to Welsh folk music or the spasmodic playing of guitarist Bill Orcutt. In his Chicago solo debut, Davies will present recent music for both lap harp and standard concert pedal harp. —PETER MARGASAK
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Glenn Jones The Few open. 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $12, $10 in advance. 18+ American Primitive guitar playing has been around for nearly six decades, and it will forever be associated with John Fahey, who coined the phrase to describe an expansive fingerstyle attack forged from various strains of U.S. and Indian traditions. There have been loads of deeply skilled adherents in Fahey’s wake, but of the generation that’s emerged the last two decades few have been as devoted to the sound as Glenn Jones, who in the 90s took guitar playing in avant-garde directions as the leader of Boston’s Cul de Sac. He doesn’t play around with hybrids on the beautiful new Fleeting (Thrill Jockey), except maybe during a handful of pieces played on banjo. Recorded outdoors on a porch overlooking Rancocas Creek in New Jersey—you can hear birds chirping here and there—the performances feel like a part of nature. Certain pieces were inspired by the outdoors—“Spokane River Falls” references the waterfall in downtown Spokane, and “Close to the Ground” describes the foggy canals of Utrecht—and the fluid, cascading piles of notes ultimately feel like something that’s existed for hundreds of years. Jones’s technique is superb, but the mixture of lyric tenderness and structural drama subsumes any pyrotechnics. He continues to trust in the simplest of ingredients, which allows the emotional grandeur of his indelible pieces to say something quietly profound. —PETER MARGASAK
SUNDAY10 Ryoko Akama See Friday. Joe Mills & Adam Sonderberg and Graham Stephenson open. 8 PM, Elastic, 3429 W. Diversey, $10 suggested donation. b Kneedelus Makaya McCraven opens. 7 PM, Schubas, 3459 N. Southport, $20. Since forming 15 years ago, New York quintet Kneebody have been honing a supertight, postfusion sound and perfecting an electric blend of moody lyricism and deeply propulsive grooves. All five members are composers that bring in a wide range of ideas and influences. Rhythms from funk and IDM collide with atmospheric melodic schemes of film scores and the stately elegance of contemporary classical music (this group, after all, worked with singer Theo Bleckmann on a collection of Charles Ives music). Yet as tightly as each piece is arranged and as explosive as the beats get—melding the intensity of early-70s Miles Davis with the melancholy of Radiohead—improvisation is what gives Kneebody its sense of purpose. The elastic, high-energy grooves of drummer Nate Wood and bassist Kaveh Rastegar offer trumpeter Shane Endsley, reedist Ben Wendel, and keyboardist Adam Benjamin all the propulsion one could ever ask for, and each soloist chews up the scenery with muscular yet impressionistic lines. Wendel went to high school in LA with electronic-music producer Alfred Darlington (aka Deadelus) and had occasionally dropped solos into his pal’s music, while Deadelus eventually contributed some Kneebody remixes. In 2009 they collaborated for a performance in Vienna and last year memorialized that partnership with Kneedelus (Brainfeeder), a collaboration on which the quintet is the most recognizable party. Daedelus adds electronic grooves and some ambient washes, but the music remains Kneebody’s through and through—and that’s a good thing. I’d be interested to hear the producer exert a heavier touch, but for now I’m cool hearing him give the quintet space. —PETER MARGASAK
WEDNESDAY13 Dan Friel See Friday. Trevor De Brauw and Mukqs open. 9 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $10. v
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FOOD & DRINK R FORBIDDEN ROOT 1746 W. Chicago 312-929-2202 forbiddenroot.com
NEW REVIEW
Forbidden Root is a brewpub to root for
The West Town brewery pairs botanical beers with spot-on pub food. By MIKE SULA
Mushroom potpie ! GILLIAN FRY
W
hat is it about this moment in urban history that each stretch of formerly barren, formerly working-class commercial corridor sprouts a brewpub? What’s unpredictable about the phenomenon is whether the places are any good. It’s been a mixed bag in the last couple of years. From Breakroom Brewery to Band of Bohemia, few have risen to the level of John Manion’s moment of glory as the chef at pre-AB-InBev Goose Island or Piece’s relentlessly successful pizza pub. Occasionally, a glimmer of hope shines through the murky demijohns, and such a glimmer of hope is Forbidden Root Restaurant & Brewery, housed in the vaulted skeleton of West Town’s erstwhile Hub Theatre. Comparisons to “culinary brewhouse” Band of Bohemia are inevitable. Forbidden Root is brewing “botanical” beers, suds with both subtle and unsubtle food flavors. Ginger, lime, black walnut, licorice, wintergreen, nutmeg, cinnamon, elderflower, cocoa, and pecans permeate these lagers, porters, and pale ales. They’re mostly pretty good, and unlike the complicated, confusing pairing scheme at Band of Bohemia, drinking them doesn’t seem essential to enjoying the food from chef Dan Weiland, who’s put in time at Trenchermen, Blackbird, and Avec. There may be a method to matching these beers with his simple, intuitive, occasionally twisted pub food (so unlike the overcomplicated plates at BoB)—but unless you ask, staff play it cool. Some have very clear affinities for each other. The mahogany Forbidden Root lager with its cinnamon, nutmeg, and root beer notes goes great with the thin, leathery sheets of lamb jerky. Honey Vee, a floral Vienna lager with notes of jelly bean and toasted coconut, is a refreshing natural with snacky things such as sweet Korean pepper-spiced popcorn or crisp multicolored root vegetable chips. But for the most part the beers stand on their own. The smolder of the Number Six, a smoked porter, is enhanced by chipotle. A Belgian-style witbier, Money on My Rind spiked with grapefruit and juniper plays on gin and juice. The thick Cherry Amaro Ale is every bit the tonic its Italian herbal liqueur referent is. Weiland’s menu is less predictably inspired, though there are some superlative moments, such as a seemingly mundane J
APRIL 7, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 35
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plate of soft f lattened baby sweet potato drizzled in butter infused with the aromatic French-Indian spice blend vadouvan. All over the menu he harnesses an ability to transform the apparently boring into something special. A kale and spinach salad goes to the Levant with fried chickpeas and a creamy tahini dressing. Cranberry bean hummus tastes just like chickpea hummus, it turns out, but smeared on grilled sourdough and garnished with bits of dried fig, tart sumac, and preserved lemon, it redeems the concept of $9 toast. Even the aforementioned root chips, light, crispy, and well seasoned, are the ideal form of their commonly stale, bland, supermarket cousins. What’s more dull than a bowl of cauliflower soup? Here it’s slurpable, the crucifer roasted to bring out its sweetness, a smear of thick and vivid curried yogurt along the bowl’s surface. An aged cheddar cheese spread spiked with the brewery’s own IPA disappears far too quickly with a whole sleeve of Ritz crackers on the side. I’m always leery of entrees in these situations, but a simple hanger steak (now a ri-
beye, I’m told) with crispy potato pancakes, mushroom-horseradish cream, turnips, and black garlic jus was executed perfectly. As was a dry-aged duck breast fanned over polenta, with a fragrant dollop of harissa that only needed some chile heat. (Bafflingly, the item has been 86’d.) Others dishes don’t perform quite so well. An underseasoned schnitzel sandwich is slathered with a fuchsia-colored pickled-beet mayo and served with McDonald’s-style shoestring fries that demonstrate an uncommon lack of effort coming from this kitchen. Meanwhile a bland gluey mushroom potpie is upstaged by its side of tangy, sauteed chicory, while a plate of chunky deep-fried giardiniera is covered in a pasty undercooked batter. But overall, this big, bustling, beautiful space with gleaming brew vats on display in the rear is the scene of some refreshingly nongimmicky beer and beer-friendly food. Forbidden Root’s the first brewpub in town to figure out how to put the two together. v
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$2 off all Whiskeys and Bourbons
$6 Firestone Walker Opal pints $6 Finch Vanilla Stout 16 oz. cans $7 house wines $8 Few Spirits
Moosehead pints $3.75, Hamms cans $2.50, Special Export Bush Longneck bottles $3, Foster Big cans $5
Jim Beam Cocktails $4, Jameson Cocktails $5, Cabo Wabo $5, Malibu Cocktails $4, Corona Bottles $3.50, PBR Tall Boy Cans $2.75
WED
$6 Jameson shots, $3 PBR bottles, 1/2 price aliveOne signature cocktails, $4 Goose Island brews, “Hoppy Hour” 5pm-8pm = 1/2 price IPAs + pale ales
$6 Firestone Walker Opal pints $6 Finch Vanilla Stout 16 oz. cans $7 house wines $8 Few Spirits $10 classic cocktails
Moosehead pints $3.75, Hamms cans $2.50, Special Export Bush Longneck bottles $3, Foster Big cans $5
Stoli/Absolut & Soco Cocktails $4, Long Island Iced Teas $5, Herradura Margaritas $5, Stella/Hoegaarden/ Deschutes Drafts $4, Goose Island 312 Bottles $3.50
$5 Martinis, Lemon Drop, Cinnamon Apple, Mai Tai, French, Cosmo, On the Rocks, Bourbon Swizzle, Pomegranate Margarita
OUR READERS LOVE GREAT DEALS! CONTACT YOUR READER REPRESENTATIVE AT 312.222.6920 OR displayads@chicagoreader.com FOR DETAILS ON HOW TO LIST DRINK SPECIALS HERE.
PHOTO: ALEXEY LYSENKO/ GETTY IMAGES
APRIL 7, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 37
EDUCATION: ASSISTANT PRO-
FESSOR – Loyola University, Chicago, IL. Duties: Instruct undergraduate and graduate courses in the area of inorganic chemistry; direct research of undergraduate and graduate students; perform departmental committee work. Requires: Ph.D. in Chemistry and 1 year post doctoral research experience. Apply by mail to Loyola University, Attn: Duarte Mota De Freitas, 1032 W. Sheridan Road, Chicago, IL 60660 SENIOR DEVELOPER ( C h i cago, IL): Reqs Master’s in Applied Computer Science and exp. or edu. w/ dev. iOS based apps; HTML; CSS; ASP.NET; JavaScript technologies; & publishing apps in the App store or Google Play. Send resume to Solstice Consulting LLC at jobs@ solstice-mobile.com UNITED METHODIST HOMES & Srvcs. seeks Accounting Manger., Chicago, IL: Manage A/R & A/P, audit bank rpts., gen. acctg., payroll, prep financial stmts. Reqs. BS in Business Admin, Acctg, or rltd + 5 yrs. exp. in Mgr. Acctg. Send CV to B. Lowe, 1415 W. Foster Ave, Chicago, IL 60640 CAR WASH MANAGER Needed. Valid drivers license & ability to drive a stick shift a must. Apply in person: 478 N. Milwaukee, Chicago or call 312-942-3927 ask for Bruce
REAL ESTATE
RENTALS
STUDIO $600-$699 EDGEWATER!
1061 W. Rose-
mont. Studios starting at $625 to $675, All Utilities included! Elevator building! Close to CTA red line train, restaurants, shopping, blocks to the lakefront, beaches and bike trails, laundry onsite, remodeled, etc. For a showing please contact Jay 773835-1864 Hunter Properties, Inc. 773-477-7070 www.hunterprop.com
STUDIO APARTMENT NEAR
Loyola Park. 1335 W Estes. Hardwood floors,. Cats OK. Heat included. Laundry in building. $695-$725/ month. Available 5/1. 773-761-4318, w ww.lakefrontmgt.com
STUDIO APARTMENT NEAR
Red Line. 6824 N Wayne. Hardwood floors. Pets OK. Heat included. Laundry in building. $695/ month. Available 5/1. 773-761-4318, www. lakefrontmgt.com
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
EDGEWATER - NICE Room with
stove, fridge & bath, by Shopping & Transp. Elevator, Lndry. $116/wk. & Up. Call 773-275-4442
CLEAN ROOM WITH fridge and microwave. Close to Oak Park, Walmart, Buses & Metra. $115/wk & up. 773-637-5957 BIG ROOM WITH stove, fridge, bath & new floor. N. Side, by transp/ shop. Clean w/elevator. $116/wk + up. 773-561-4970 8324 S INGLESIDE 2BR, newly remodled, lndry, hrdwd flrs, cable, Sec 8 welc. $780mo 708-3081509, 773-493-3500
1 BR UNDER $700 1 BR, $695 FREE Credit Check, No Application Fee. Newly decorated, carpeted, stove, fridge. FREE heat & cooking gas. Elevator & laundry room 773-919-7102 or 312-8027301 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
MIDWAY AREA/63RD KEDZIE Deluxe Studio 1 & 2 BRs. All
modern oak floors, appliances, Security system, on site maint. clean & quiet, Nr. transp. From $445. 773582-1985 (espanol)
CHICAGO, 1115 W. 76th St. 1BR Apartment. Newly decorated, heated, appliances incl. $645/mo + security. Call 1-773-881-4182
7500 SOUTH SHORE Dr. Brand New Rehabbed Studio & 1BR Apts from $650. Call 773-374-7777 for details.
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
General
General
CHICAGO, BEVERLY/CAL Par k/Blue Island Studio $550 & up, 1BR $650 & up, 2BR $905 & up. Heat, Appls, Balcony, Carpet, Laundry, Prkg. 708-388-0170 AUBURN GRESHAM. 8105 S. PAULINA ST. 1 & 2BR APTS, CREDIT CHECK, SECTION 8 WELCOME. $650-$750/MO. TOM 708205-1448 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
79TH & WOODLAWN 1BR $650-$700, 2BR $775-$800; 76th & Phillips: 2BR $775-$800. Remodeled, appls avail. FREE HEAT. Sec 8 welc. 312-286-5678 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
MUST SEE! 7000 S Talman,
2BR w/balcony, formal DR, walk-on pantry, Lndry facility in bsmt, hdwd flrs & moldings, ceiling fans, $950. Owner pays heat, Call. 773-568-0130
2-3 BEDROOM APARTMENTS
avail. No utilities included. $825$875/mo. Near 55th & Ashland - 71st & Halsted. Call 872-203-5734
CHICAGO 8633 S Maryland. 1BR, 1st flr, completely renovated, hdwd ceramic tile, new blinds, appls, heated. $ 650 + sec. 773-874-2103 8001 S. DREXEL – 1BR $650; Stove and fridge, Heat Incl. Section 8 welcome 312.208.1771 or 708 .890.1694 WEST PULLMAN (INDIANA
Ave) Nice, lrg 1 & 2BR w/balcony. 1BR $650, 2BR $750. Move-In Fee $300. Sec 8 Welcome. 773-995-6950
CHICAGO SOUTHSIDE, 1 Bedroom, 819-21 West 75th St, nice & clean, Backyard. No pets. $550/ month. 773-445-4949. 6930 S. SOUTH SHORE DRIVE Studios & 1BR, INCL. Heat, Elec, Cking gas & PARKING, $560-$850, Country Club Apts 773-752-2200
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
CHATHAM - 7105 S. Champlain, 1BR, $640/mo. Sec 8 OK. Call Office: 773-966-5275 or Steve: 773-936-4749
CHICAGO - HYDE PARK 5401 S. Ellis. 1BR. $600/mo Call 773-955-5106 NO SEC DEP 6829 S. Perry. Studio $460. 1BR. $515. HEAT INCL 773-955-5106
1 BR $700-$799 FOUR ROOM, ONE bedroom. West Rogers Park (Devon/ Kedzie). Newly decorated. Formal DR. 800 sf. Clean, quiet, owner occupied building. Second floor. Cultured area. Near shopping, transportation. Cats OK. $795. 773-4415183
CAMPAIGN JOBS
12.25/HR FOR 90 DAYS THEN 15.00/HR
A P P LY N O W 8 7 2 . 2 0 3 . 9 3 0 3 38 CHICAGO READER | APRIL 7, 2016
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
CALUMET PARK- 1BD/1BA,
spacious. Looking for sublease. Move in ASAP. No sec dep. $705/mo. Assigned prkg. 773-513-9139
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
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
GARDEN
apartment near Warren Park and Metra. 6802 N Wolcott. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. Heat included. Laundry in building. $800/ month. Available 5/1. 773-761-4318, www. lakefrontmgt.com
ONE BEDROOM APARTMENT
near Red Line. 6824 N Wayne. Hardwood floors. Pets OK. Heat included. Laundry in building. $850/ month. Available 5/1. 773-761-4318, www. lakefrontmgt.com
WEST CHATHAM 1 bdrm, heat incl, laundry on premises, well maintained, quiet building. $800 510-5016318
1 BR $900-$1099 Hyde Park West Apts., 5325 S. Cottage Grove Ave., Renovated spacious apartments in landscaped gated community. Off street parking available. 1BR $1195 - Free Heat, 2BR $1400 - Free heat, 4BR Townhome $2200. Visit or call 773-324-0280, M-F: 9am-5pm or apply online- ww w.hydepark west.com. Managed by Metroplex, Inc
RAVENSWOOD 4883 N PAULINA, 1BR, remodeled kitchen /bath, separate DR, hardwood floors, heat included. Ample closets, additional storage locker. Cable, laundry, smoke-free. Available immediately. $900. 773-4779251, 773-230-3116 LOYOLA 7000N GND 2BR: new constr. 1400sf, SS appl, oak flrs, CAC, on-site lndy. $1250/ heated 773-743-4141 urbanequiti es.com RAVENSWOOD 1BR: 850SF, great kit, DW, oak flrs, near Brown line, on-site lndy/storage, $975/ heated 773-743-4141 www. urbanequities.com EDGEWATER STUDIO: 2 1/2 rms; full kit, oak flrs, on-site lndry, $795/incls ht, water & cooking gas. 773-743-4141 www.urbanequities. com
1 BR OTHER APTS. FOR RENT PARK MANAGEMENT & INVESTMENT LTD. UNSATISFIED WITH YOUR LIVING CONDITIONS?? Spring is early LET’S GET MOVING!! OUR COMMUNITY OFFERS... HEAT, HW & CG Patio & Mini Blinds Plenty of parking on a 37 acre site 1Bdr From $745.00 2Bdr From $925.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000** CALL FOR DETAILS!
APTS. FOR RENT PARK MANAGEMENT & Investment Ltd. SPRING IS HERE... IT’S MOVING TIME!! Most Include HEAT & HOT WTR Studios From $525.00 1Bdr From $645.00 2Bdr From $795.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000** CALL FOR DETAILS
SECT 8 WELC. 6 rooms, tenant pays heat & utils. Credit & bkgrnd check $35, non refundable. Appointments between 1pm-6pm. 773-287-3839
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
NEAR 96TH & TROY AVE. Newly decorated 2BR apt, carpeted, unheated, near transportation. $900/mo. Call 708-752-5320
WEST HUMBOLDT PK 1 & 2BR Apts, spacious, oak wood flrs, huge closets. heat incl, rehab, $765 & $875. 847866-7234
AUBURN GRESHAM 1814 W 79th, 2b-drm, stove, refrig, ac, laundry, ele-vator, $850 plus Sec Dep 773-358-7757
75th/S. E. Yates - 2 BR, Fam Rm, 1.5BA, LR, DR, Eat in Kit, 2nd flr apt in 3 flat. Ten. pays heat. $925 No Increase. 773375-8068
RHEABBED STUDIOS, A v a ilable Today. Hdwd floors, heat & appliances included. 1957 E. 73rd Place, 7450 S. Luella. Call 773-888-3413
BLUE ISLAND,
2BR Apt, $795/month. Heat & hot water incl. Appls + security 708-205-1454
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
DIXMOOR 2BR, QUIET area, carpet, parking, near transportation. $695mo + sec.
CHICAGO, RENT TO OWN! Buy with no closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708-868-2422 or visit www. nhba.com
JUST IN TIME FOR SPRING! Calumet City, XL 2 BR 2ba, laundry, appls, pkng, owner pays heat. $925/mo. 312-339-3517.
Large Sunny Room w/fridge & microwave. Nr. Oak Park, Green Line, bus. 24 hour desk, parking lot. $101/week & Up. 773-3788888
CALUMET CITY LARGE 2BR, appls, parking, w/d on premises, near shops and expressway. $850/mo + sec. 708-862-5448
CHATHAM- 718 E. 81st St. Newly
CHICAGO, 205 N. LARAMIE, Newly Decorated 2BR Apt., $760/ mo + 1 mo security deposit. Tenant pays all utilities. Call 773-213-0441
remodeled 1 BR, 1 BA, Dining room, Living room, hdwd flrs, appliances. & heat included. Call 847-533-5463
773-568-7750
ok. 1, 2 & 3 Bdrms. Elev bldg, laundry, pkg. 6531 S. Lowe. Call Moni 773-874-0100
77TH/LOWE 2BR. 101ST/MAY
1 & 2BR, 69th/Dante, 3BR. 71st/ Bennett 2 & 3BR. 77th/Essex. 3BR. New renov. Sec 8 ok. 708-503-1366
MOVE IN SPECIAL!!! B4 the N of this MO. & MOVE IN 4 $99.00 (773) 874-1122 CHICAGO SOUTH SIDE Beauti-
SECTION 8 AFFORDABLE Housing Waiting List is now open!! 1, 2, & 3 Bdrms 2443 W. Dugdale Rd Waukegan, IL 60085
APPLY NOW!!! You must apply in person & all adults must be present. ID, Social Security Card & Birth Certificate REQUIRED Contact: Management Office 847-336-4400
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
CALUMET CITY 158TH & PAXTON SANDRIDGE APTS 1 & 2 BEDROOM UNITS MODELS OPEN M-F, 9AM-5:30PM *** 708-841-5450 ***
ful Studios, 1,2,3 & 4 BR’s, Sec 8 ok. $500 gift certificate for Sec 8 tenants. 773-287-9999/312-446-3333
CHICAGO, 8041 S. Rhodes Ave. 2BR, 3rd floor, $900/mo + 1 mo sec dep. FREE HEAT! West Hyde Park neighborhood. 773-562-2953
2 BR $1100-$1299 1447 W. MORSE 2 Bdrm $1100.
NO MOVE-IN FEE! No Dep! Sec 8 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
68TH & 69TH So. Rockwell, 2 & 3BR, heat incl, newly updated incls appls, hrwd flrs., lndry on site, $950$1100 Sec 8 ok, Call 312-622-7702
Heat included. Call Daniel, 773-8758085 or Paul J. Quetschke & Co. 773281-8400 (Mon.-Fri 9-5)
SOUTH SHORE 2BR, spac sunny front & back, updated BA & kitchen, heat incl, no pets, Sec 8 Ready. $ 1300/mo. 773-636-4566
CHATHAM
CHICAGO
7600 S Essex 2BR
$599, 3BR $699, 4BR $799 w/apprvd credit, no sec dep. Sect 8 Ok! 773287-9999 /312-446-3333
2 BR $900-$1099 CHICAGO SOUTH SHORE, 69t h/Chappel, 2 bedroom 1 bath 3rd floor unit, $950 month. quiet building, 1 month security deposit, carpeted, heat/appliances included, laundry on site, near bus/train. no pets, no smoking. 773-547-0307
BEAUTIFUL
REMOD 2 & 3BR, hdwd flrs, custom cabinets, avail now. $1100-$1200/mo + sec. 773-905-8487 Sec 8 Ok
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. $1350/month. Call Nat 773-8802414.
4237 W Grenshaw: 3BR, 2nd Flr apt, heat incl, lrg rooms, $900/ mo + 1 month security. Call 773-978-1130 Ashland Hotel nice clean rms. 24 hr desk/maid/TV/laundry/air. Low rates daily/weekly/monthly. South Side. Call 773-376-5200 ACACIA SRO HOTEL Men Preferred! Rooms for Rent. Weekly & Monthly Rates. 312-421-4597
ROYALTON HOTEL, Kitchenette $135 & up wk. 1810 W. Jackson 312-226-4678
2 BR UNDER $900 CHICAGO, SPACIOUS 2BR, 8605 S. May. Heat included.
Tenant pays cooking gas & electric. Garage available. $850/mo. 720-331-2601
COLLEGE GIRL BODY RUBS $40 w/AD 24/7
224-223-7787
W. Edgewater 1BR: Stunning 900sf vintage, great kit, new appl, oak flrs, on-site lndy $935$1050/incl ht. 773-743-4141 www. urbanequities.com HOMEWOOD- SUNNY 900SF
1BR Great Kitc, New Appls, Oak Flrs, A/C, Lndry & Storage, $950/mo Incls heat & prkg. 773.743.4141
SMOKE FREE BUILDING!!!
SOUTH SIDE 5 rooms, 1BR deluxe. 101st/King Dr. well maint. appls/heat incl. $785/mo. plus sec. Mr. Ben. 312-802-9492. CHICAGO, 134TH & Brandon,
1BR Apt for Rent, $750/mo + security deposit. All utils and appls incl. No pets. Call 708-986-4400
ROSELAND 12241 S Emerald
Nice 1bdrm, Liv rm, Den, Huge Kitchen, Ht not inclu, $700 + Sec Dep MartinRoc Mgmt 773-358-7757
1 BR $1100 AND OVER LOGAN SQUARE Boulevard Guest House, 2-story LR with fireplace, loft, 1 bedroom & sitting room, modern kitchen & bath, utilities included. $1500/mo. Non-smoking. 773235-1066 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).
l
l
CHICAGO 5246 S. HERMITAGE: 2BR bsmt $400. 2BR 1st floor, $525. 3BR, 2nd floor, $625. 1.5 mo sec req’d. 708-574-4085.
ROGERS PK: STUNNING 2BR: 1400sf, new kit, SS appl, FDR, oak flrs, on-site lndy. $1295$1350/heated 773-743-4141 www. urbanequities.com
2 BR $1500 AND
OVER
LARGE BRIGHT LINCOLN PK
2Bd, 1Bth, In Unit W/D, Roof Deck, Back Porch, HVAC, Fireplace, DW, Hardwood Flrs, Available Immediately. $2000-$2500 Call: 773 472 5944
2 BR OTHER 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
CHICAGO, NR 79TH & Western, 2BR, Heat, appls & A/C incl. Laundry room. $975/mo+1 mo sec. Sect 8 ok. No pets/smoke. 773-415-5102 CHICAGO 5 ROOM APARTMENT. 2BR, 2nd flr. 7545 S. Union. QUIET, 4 FLAT BUILDING. NO SEC DEP. CALL FOR INFO. 773-6552388 LOVELY UPDATED 2-1/2BR
sep. lr & dr, crpt , blinds, ceramic tile, appls, garage space avail. nice blk Sec 8 approved. Michelle 773-8689394
7359 S. DORCHESTER, 7804 S. Maryland. 2BR Apts, brand new, heat & appliances incl. Section 8 OK. Call Miro, 708-4737129 MATTESON, 2BR, $990$1050; 3BR, $1250-$1400. Move In Special is 1 Month’s Rent & $99 Sec Dep. Sect 8 Welc. 708-748-4169 CHICAGO: 7000 S Paxton, 2BR, 2BA, hdwd flr, appls incl., heat incl., lndry in bldg, sun porch, $1150 /mo. Call (773) 429-0988 74TH & ARTESIAN, Section 8 Welcome. Newly remodeled, huge 2BD, 1BA, hdwd flrs, separate utils. Sec dep req’d. 773-908-1080
3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200 SECTION 8 WELCOME Newly Decor 73rd and Ridgeland. 2BR. $775. 76th and Drexel. 2BR. $700. Heat Incl 773-874-9637 / 773-493-5359
3BR APARTMENT FOR RENT. Newly Renovated. Located at 5600 S. May. For more information please call 773-294-5885 or 773870-2014 4141 PRAIRIE, 3RD flr, A/C, lndry rm, new crpt, stove/fridge, 3BR, $895. Tenants pay heat. Sec, rent req’d. 773-704-4153, bwtn 11a-6p. HSE FOR RENT-MARKHAM Il.
3BDR 1BA mod. kitc& bath hdwd flrs stove fridge washer&dryer. $1100+1mon sec.no pets Sec8 ok 7085670351
ALERT! ALERT! Apt avail. No Sec Dep. 3BR, 1BA, $875/mo. $500 move in fee. 41 W. 14th Pl. Chicago Heights, Lincoln Hwy / Chicago Rd. Call 331-777-0223 KANKAKEE, 3BR APARTMENT, stove & fridge, ceiling fans, 1st floor, $750/mo + security deposit. Call 815-944-8375 or 219427-8543 PARK FOREST 3BD/1BA, New rehab incl kit, BA, cer.tile, shed, fcd yrd, Wtr/ Trash/ Alarm, cent air. $1125. Sec. Dep/Cre. Ck. 708-582-7420 NORTH LAWNDALE, 3BR, 1.5BA Remod Garden Unit, hardwood floors, $1100/mo, no security, leave message, 773-203-0288 3BR APT - 5723 S. Michigan
EAST GARFIELD PARK, West Side -Newly Rehab 3BR Apts. $1095 - $1195 / month 773-230-6132 or 773-931-6108
3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499 CHICAGO, UPDATED 3BR House, 1BA, 11734 Prairie. Appliances incl. $950/mo + 1 mo sec. Ten pays own utils. Nr public trans 708-4087075
CHICAGO: E. ROGERS PARK
6726 N. Bosworth Ave. Beautiful, large 3BR, 2BA, DR, LR, Hrdwd flrs. Nr trans/shops. Heat, appls, laundry included. $1450. Available now. 847-475-3472
CHICAGO: BEAUTIFUL 4BR for rent 6137 S. Rhodes $1100 & 7706 S. Paulina $1200 Central Heat. . No Sec. Dep. Sect 8 Welc. 312-505-8737
CHICAGO, NEWLY REMOD, 4BR, 1BA, on 110th and Emerald. 3BR, 1BA, on 119th, east of Michigan. Sec 8 OK. $1250-$1400. 773410-8706
HAZEL CREST 3 to 4 BR Split
Level, 1.5 bath, FamRm w/frplc, cntrl air, oven+refrig, Tenant pay utils. $1400-1 mo. sec 708-821-8198
212-214 E. 71ST St; 3BR, 1BA; $900-$950. Newly rehabbed, no utilities included. Call 312-7895311 to schedule a showing. 6343 S. ROCKWELL - 3BR, incl heat. hdwd flrs, lndry facility, fenced in bldg, fireplace, appiances
CHATHAM! NEWLY REMODELED large 3BR in a quiet neighbor-
hood. Heat included. Section 8 welcome. AVAIL. NOW! 773-814-4301
3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799 3 BR 1 bath on 2nd floor of own-er-
occupied 3 flat. Woodfloors, free laundry, central air, pet-friendly. Quiet neighborhood near Irving stop on Brown line. Easy parking. 312.310.0835
$995/mo. Sec 8 ok. 773-791-1920
75TH & KING Dr - 6 Room apt, exc trans, req: 1 mo rent($850/775), Move in fee, Credit Check, Appls. Tenants pays heat, 773-655-6048
City. $1200 per month. NO smoking. NO pets. Heat included. Electric stove included. 708-774-8010
MAPLE PARK NR 116th/S. Laflin.
4BR, 2BA House, 2 car gar w/patio, encl yard. $1500 + sec. Call C. Johnson 773-865-4741.
SEC 8 WELCOME, no security dep., 6717 S Rhodes, 3-level, 5BR, 2BA house, appls incl, $1300/mo. 708-288-4510 SECTION 8 WELCOME. NO SECURITY DEPOSIT. 1701 W 59th, 4BR, 2BA house, appliances included, $1200/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
FOR SALE BANK OWNED ON-SITE REAL ESTATE AUCTION FLOSSMOOR 227 Shea Drive 2BR, 2.5BA, 2492 Sq. Ft. Single Family Home. Sale Date, Sat 5/7, 12noon Free Color Brochure 1-800-260-5846 auctionservicesintl.com 5% Buyers Premium Josh Orland, Auctioneer WI. 471.006701 ASI-FM. 444000425
OTHER
PILL HILL AREA, 93rd & Paxton, 4BR House, hdwd flrs, finished bsmt, close to schools & transportation. $13 00/mo. 312-852-1260
LAWNDALE AREA, NEWLY remodeled, Spacious 4BR Apartment, 1.5BA, hdwd flrs, stove & fridge incl., Sect 8 Welc. 708593-4740
non-residential WATER-
MUST GO! 2.38+/- acre lakefront estate with 458+/- feet of incredible shoreline. Dock in place, ready for you to enjoy! ONLY $59,900 Call 217321-4574
SELF-STORAGE CENTERS. T W O locations to serve you. All
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NOTICES CALLING ALL DANCERS and
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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: D16146027 on March 23, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of EJ WATSON’S SWEET TREATS with the business located at: 2638 W FARGO AVE, CHICAGO, IL 60645. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner (s)/ partner(s) is: QUINCY MATHIS
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: D09117492 on March 23, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of SERENE GLAM with the business located at: 8615 W GRAND AVE APT GS, RIVER GROVE, IL 60171. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner (s)/partner(s) is: CHRISTINA TORRES 8615 W GRAND AVE APT GS, RIVER GROVE, IL 60171, 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: D16145863 on March 10, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of SUMMIT INSIGHTS with the business located at: 1628 N PAULINA ST, CHICAGO, IL 60622. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/partner(s) is: BELINDA BRENNAN, 1628 N
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: D16145946 on March 18, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of JELLIGUN with the business located at: 5207 NORTH ASHLAND AVE #1, CHICAGO, IL 60640. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner (s)/partner(s) is: JESSICA GUNDERSON, 5207 NORTH ASHLAND AVE #1, CHICAGO, IL 60640, USA
2638 W FARGO AVE, CHICAGO, IL 60645, USA
PAULINA ST., CHICAGO, IL 60622, USA
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: D16146060 on March 23, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of RUCASDAD WEB DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT with the business located at: 3434 WESLEY AVENUE, BERWYN, IL 60402. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner (s) /partner(s) is: JUSTIN DEREK CARDENAS 3434 WESLEY AVENUE,
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: D16146042 on March 23, 2016, under the Assumed Business Name of Jadevine Graphic Design with the business located at 819 W Sunnyside Ave Unit 1, Chicago, IL 60640. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/ partner(s) is: Jasmine R Jackson, 819 W Sunnyside Ave Unit 1, Chicago, IL 60640, 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: D16146085 on March 25, 2016, under the Assumed Business Name of Mila Rose Boutique with the business located at 5461 N East River Rd #510, Chicago, IL 60656. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/ partner(s) is: Maria Silva Young, 5461 N East River Rd #510, Chicago, IL 60656, 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: D16146147 on March 30, 2016, under the Assumed Business Name of Katamarija Creations with the business located at 3722 W Wrightwood Ave Apt 2E, Chicago, IL 60647. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/ partner(s) is: Marija Jo Ferber, 3722 W Wrightwood Ave Apt 2E, 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: D16145956 on March 18, 2016, under the Assumed Business Name of Ever Fluent with the business located at 2535 W Cortland St Apt 2W, Chicago, IL 60647. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/ partner(s) is: Elisa Plaza, 2535 W Cortland St Apt 2W, Chicago, IL 60647, USA.
BERWYN, IL 60402, 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: D16146015 on March 23, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of LOVE AND CARE NANNIES with the business located at: 4452 N DOVER ST UNIT 3S, CHICAGO, IL 60640. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner (s)/partner(s) is: KELLY M COLEMAN, 4452 N DOVER ST UNIT 3S, CHICAGO, IL 60640, USA
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APRIL 7, 2016 | CHICAGO READER 39
Legal Notice
If You Are an Illinois Resident Who Bought a TV, Monitor, Notebook Computer, Cell Phone or MP3 Player or Other Product Containing a Flat Panel Screen between January 1, 1998, and December 31, 2006,
STRAIGHT DOPE
What is the lawsuit about? There is a lawsuit involving the price of thin film transistor liquid crystal display (“TFT-LCD”) Flat Panels. The lawsuit was brought by the Illinois Attorney General (“Plaintiff”). The lawsuit claims that Defendants conspired to fix, raise, maintain or stabilize prices of TFT-LCD Flat Panels resulting in overcharges to consumers who bought products containing the TFT-LCD Flat Panels. The Plaintiff is asking for money damages and an order to stop the Defendants’ alleged behavior that is the subject of this lawsuit. The Defendants deny Plaintiff’s allegations or that consumers suffered any overcharge. The Court has not decided who is right.
What do the settlements provide? There are six settlements, totaling $104,646,436. More details are in Settlement Agreements and other documents available at www.illinoislcdsettlement.com. The cost to administer the Settlements, as well as the Illinois Attorney General’s fees and costs will come out of the Settlement Fund. Plaintiff will request attorney’s fees and costs amounting to 10% of the Settlement Fund. Plaintiff will request that fixed portions of the remainder of the Settlement Fund will be distributed pro rata to the State of Illinois and state governmental entities (roughly 1.2%) and political subdivisions (roughly 10.2%), and that the remainder Settlement Fund (roughly 88.6%) be Settlements have been reached with five used to pay individual and business consumers Defendants (Epson Imaging Devices Corp., LG in Illinois. Display Co., Ltd., Hitachi Displays, Ltd., Chi The maximum amount you could potentially Mei Innolux Corp., Sharp Corp., and certain recover will vary by device, ranging from $270 affiliates) and one alleged co-conspirator for a TV to $20 for a small-screen device. If (Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd.). Three there is not enough money recovered to pay Defendants (AU Optronics Corp., Toshiba the maximum amount, your recovery will Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.) have depend on the number of claims per device not agreed to settle so the lawsuit continues submitted and the total recovery. We expect against them. that such a pro rata distribution will allow for at least $20 per claimed device and will Who is included in the lawsuit? increase if there are additional settlements or The lawsuit involves TFT-LCD Flat Panels the State prevails at trial against the remaining purchased indirectly from the Defendants. Defendants. “Indirectly” means that you purchased products containing the TFT-LCD Flat Panel from How can I get a payment? someone other than the company that You must submit a Claim Form to get a manufactured the component TFT-LCD Flat payment. You can submit a Claim Form online Panel. The case is proceeding to recover money or by mail. The deadline to submit a Claim for these groups of indirect purchasers: Form is October 4, 2016. Claim forms are available at the website or by calling Illinois consumers: As parens patriae, Plaintiff 1-800-949-0146. No money will be distributed has brought claims for monetary damages yet. Plaintiff will pursue the lawsuits against incurred by any person or business that the Non-Settling Defendants. All funds purchased TFT-LCD panel products between received in this case will be distributed together January 1, 1998, and December 31, 2006, while at the conclusion of the lawsuit or as ordered by residing in Illinois and for their own use and the Court. not for resale. TFT-LCD panel products include most notebook computers with color What are my rights? displays, flat screen monitors, TVs referred to If you do nothing, your rights will be affected. If as LCD or LED TVs, cell phones, MP3 players you do not want to be legally bound by the and other handheld devices with high lawsuit, you must exclude yourself from the resolution color displays. lawsuit. If you exclude yourself, you will not get any benefit as a result of the settlements, trial, or judgment in this case. If you do not exclude yourself you will not be able to sue the Defendants for any claim relating to the lawsuits. The deadline to exclude yourself is June 4, 2016. Any request for exclusion or objection must Illinois state governmental entities: Plaintiff be mailed to: Illinois LCD Indirect has also settled potential claims on behalf of the Exclusions, PO Box 170500, Milwaukee, WI State of Illinois and its state governmental 53217. Illinois state governmental entities may entities. not exclude themselves from the Settlements.
Illinois political subdivisions: Plaintiff has also settled potential claims involving the same products and time frame on behalf of counties, municipalities, townships and other political subdivisions in Illinois.
For More Information: 1-800-949-0146 www.illinoislcdsettlement.com
40 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 7, 2016
SLUG SIGNORINO
A Lawsuit And Settlements May Affect You.
By Cecil Adams Q : I was impaneled as a juror in a civil case.
For this privilege, I got paid a whopping $5 per day—which, if that wasn’t insulting enough, is considered taxable income. OK, New Jersey is on the low end of juror pay. In Maryland, jurors get a whole $10.50 per day. Why is jury pay so low? —DAVID WEINTRAUB
A : Heck, at least you showed up. One study
found that 80 percent of prospective jurors in Dallas County, Texas, simply ignored their summons altogether. And who can blame them? I don’t know your specific economic situation, David, but I can think of a lot of people for whom jury duty’s not merely a petty hassle but an unaffordable luxury. I think there’s a clear case to be made that any jury system that requires folks to work for five bucks a day isn’t just annoying, it’s plainly undemocratic. But let’s back up. Just how bad is this problem? Well, take federal jurors. In 1968, they could expect to haul in $20 a day, or $136 in 2016 dollars. The actual dollars we pay federal jurors in 2016, however? Only $40 a day, $50 if their term of service stretches past ten days— in other words, just short of the federal minimum wage for a day’s work. Outside the federal system, things are pretty patchwork—some states set the rate, and if they don’t, the counties do. Nationwide, pay generally doesn’t exceed $50 per day and, as your experience illustrates, is often much lower—in South Carolina it’s $2 a day. In some states, rates improve the longer you sit on the jury: Pennsylvania, for instance, pays $9 for each of the first three days and $25 daily thereafter. You might get lucky and receive compensation for travel, but on the other hand you might have to pay for parking: I give you Mobile, Alabama, where jurors hearing cases at the county courthouse take home a whopping $10 per diem, plus five cents a mile driven there and back, less the $2 (the special jurors’ rate!) they’re pretty much forced to put down to leave their car in the parking lot. (OK, Alabama employers are required to pay fulltime workers for the days they serve on juries, but that’s little help to those Alabamans who lack the security of a full-time job.) And of course there are more invisible costs too, like child care, canceled vacation plans, etc. As I suggested up top, the implications of this pay regime are pretty brutal. Let’s say a person who makes minimum wage (in one of the 40 or so states without laws like Alabama’s) is forced to skip work at her full-time job to serve ten days on a jury, for which she
might take home, say, $100—we’re looking at a financial disaster. That’s why most states allow for hardship exceptions, if potential jurors can prove their service would be an undue burden. In one sense the exception seems merciful. Viewed another way, though, it’s downright unconstitutional: someone’s getting excluded from meaningful participation in the American democratic system simply because she can’t afford it—which may well, according to a 2015 article in the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy, violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Another paper, from the Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems in 2012, argues that because most states link voter registration with jury service, jury duty basically constitutes a poll tax: it’s effectively a fee for casting a ballot. Citizens know they’ll be put on a jury list if they register to vote; some know they can’t afford to miss work to sit on a jury; therefore they don’t register, and subsequently can’t vote. The paper estimates that up to 7 percent of American citizens are thus disenfranchised, and proposes official sources other than voter rolls—tax or DMV records, for instance—from which potential jurors’ names could be culled. Of course, that wouldn’t address the problem that juror pay is too low to begin with. I don’t think the reason for this execrable set of affairs is particularly mysterious. You might as well ask: Why are the country’s highways and bridges falling apart? What’s the reason for rising maternal mortality rates, or growing hunger and homelessness in major cities? What you’re seeing is the result of austerity and misplaced political priorities. In Minnesota, juror pay has actually been cut twice since 2003 due to tight state finances; last year the governor proposed an increase, but his plan didn’t make it into the final budget approved by the legislature. Thus did the state’s pay rate for jurors remain at a paltry $10 a day. But hey, it’s a crumbling empire, man. What did you expect? v Send questions to Cecil via straightdope.com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 350 N. Orleans, Chicago 60654.
l
l
SAVAGE LOVE
By Dan Savage
Secular Jew seeks Nazi role-play
Plus: a lesson from Mame, and a lesson on how not to judge others Q : I’m a twentysomething,
straight, cis-female expat. How long do I have to wait to ask my German lover, who is übersensitive about the Holocaust, to indulge me in my greatest—and, until now, unrealized—fantasy: Nazi role-play? He is very delicate around me because I am a secular Jew and the descendant of Holocaust survivors. (Even though I’ve instructed him to watch The Believer, starring Ryan Gosling as a Jewish neo-Nazi, to get a better grasp on my relationship with Judaism. To be clear, I am not actually a neo-Nazi—just your gardenvariety self-hating Jew.) This persists even though we’ve spoken about my anti-Zionist politics. Evidently he was indoctrinated from a young age with a hyperapologetic history curriculum. I appreciate that he thinks it was wrong for the SS to slaughter my family, but it’s not like he did it himself. I know it sounds really fuckedup, but I promise this isn’t coming from a place of deepseated self-loathing. Even if it were, it’s not like we’d be hurting anybody. We’re both in good psychological working condition, and neither of us is an actual bigot. I would try to get to know him better, but we are so different (there’s a big age difference) I don’t really see our relationship being much more than ze sex. —NATIONAL SOCIALIST PRETEND PARTY
A : “Sex writers get all
the really good religion questions,” said Mark Oppenheimer. “Can we trade mailboxes sometime soon?” I’m tired of dealing with all the questions about why evangelicals support a thricemarried misogynist realityTV star who never goes to church.”
Oppenheimer writes the Beliefs column for the New York Times and is cohost of Unorthodox, an “irreverent podcast about Jews and other people” (tabletmag. com/unorthodox). I invited Oppenheimer to weigh in because I am, sadly, not Jewish myself. “First off, I think that Die Fraulein should make her kinky proposal ASAP,” said Oppenheimer. “Given the ‘hyperapologetic’ curriculum that her Teutonic stud has absorbed, he is probably going to freak out no matter when she asks him to incinerate—er, tie her up and fuck her. But it’s all or nothing in a case like this. She can’t win him over by persuading him that she’s not one of those uptight, unforgiving Jews who is still hung up on the destruction of European Jewry.” While your kink didn’t really faze Oppenheimer (it’s not exactly unheard of), NSPP, your discomfort with your own Judaism did. “In her letter, she assures us that she is ‘secular,’ ‘anti-Zionist,’ and ‘garden-variety self-hating’—then jokingly compares herself to the Jewish white supremacist (played by Ryan Gosling in that movie) who in real life killed himself after the New York Times outed him as a Jew,” said Oppenheimer. “Now, all of us (especially homos and Yids) know something about self-loathing, and I think Jews are entitled to any and all views on Israel, and—again—I am not troubled by her kink. That said, I do think she needs to get to a happier place about her own heritage. Just as it’s not good for black people to be uncomfortable with being black, or for queer people to wish they weren’t queer, it’s not healthy, or attractive, for
Jews or Jewesses (we are taking back the term) to have such obvious discomfort with their Jewish heritage.” And finally, NSPP, I shared your letter with a German friend of mine, just to see how it might play with someone who benefited from a hyperapologetic history curriculum. Would he do something like this? “Not in six million years.”
Q : I am fresh out of a
gay relationship, which started monogamous, opened up, dabbled with polyamory, but ran out of steam. I’m heartbroken and I need you to weigh in on a disagreement we had about polyamory, which is one of the things that led to our expiration. I believe polyamory to be a small group of people all in love with each other, all sleeping together. He believes polyamory to be different pairings, where a relationship between two people would be lived and enjoyed separately from that couple’s pairings with other people. He thinks my definition would be impossible to find and sustain. I think his definition sounds like child custody in a divorce dispute. Who is right? —REEXAMINING
partners. There is no ‘one true way’ to do poly, no matter what anyone says.”
Q : I’ve been in a fantastic
monogamous relationship for almost eight years, but I used to have what I would consider an adventurous sex life, with lots of partners who were GGG, and I enjoyed continually pushing my sexual boundaries as long as everything was consensual and honest. Fast-forward to my current life: I’m now married to a wonderful vanilla woman. The transition to monogamous and vanilla was difficult at first, and I had fears about not being sexually content. As it turns out, it was a great move and I’m a better man for it. My desire to have every kind of sex under the sun has settled down considerably. I just want your readers to know
that the answer to their happiness may not be the pursuit of more outlandish sex—for some, it just might be less. —MONOGAMOUS IN MONTANA
A : Your letter reminded me
of Saint Augustine’s prayer as a young man: “Lord, make me pure—but not yet!” You’re pure now, MIM, but first, like Augustine of Hippo (354–430), you had yourself some impure fun. Perhaps you would be just as satisfied, happy, and smug if you’d been in a monogamous/vanilla relationship all along. But it’s possible you wouldn’t be satisfied and happy now if it weren’t for the adventures and experiences you had then. To paraphrase Saint Agnes Gooch of Mame (1966): You lived! You lived! You lived! The perspective and self-awareness
you gained during the fuckanything-that-moves stage of your life may be a big part of what made you the man you are today, i.e., a guy who was ready to make a monogamous commitment and capable (so far) of honoring it. Finally, monogamous/vanilla types routinely cross over into the ranks of the sexually adventurous/nonmonogamous and vice versa. Instead of disparaging the choices others make, we’re better off encouraging people to make the choices that are right for them. And choices that are right for someone now may not be right for them always— and that goes for you too, MIM, even now. v Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at thestranger.com. @fakedansavage
RELATIONSHIP REMNANTS
A : “They’re both right,”
said Allena Gabosch, a poly activist, educator, and podcaster (The Relationship Anarchy Show). “What the letter writer describes—a small group of people who love each other and all sleep together—is sometimes called ‘polyfidelity.’ It’s less common, and yet I’ve seen it work. His ex’s definition is more common: a primary couple with secondary and sometimes even tertiary
APRIL 7, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 41
Sigur Ros ! PARADIGM AGENCY
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42 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 7, 2016
Macy Gray 7/10-11, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 4/7, noon b Guns N’ Roses 7/1, 8 PM, Soldier Field, on sale Fri 4/8, 10 AM Helmet 7/15, 9 PM, Double Door, 17+ Heritage Blues Orchestra, Toshi Reagon 7/21, 6:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park F b Hey Mercedes 7/8, 8:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Hillsong United 7/30, 7 PM, United Center, on sale Fri 4/8, 10 AM Inter Arma, Withered 7/13, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 4/8, 10 AM Sarah Jarosz 7/10, 5 and 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 4/8, 8 AM b Jesu, Sun Kil Moon 11/13, 8 PM, Park West, 18+ Jones Family Singers 7/25, 6:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park F b King Sunny Ade, Ugochi & A.S.E. 7/18, 6:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park F b King Woman, Wax Idols 6/1, 9 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Femi Kuti & Positive Force 7/11, 6:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park F b L7 8/6, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Mark Lanegan 6/17, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Lower Dens 6/30, 6:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park F b Lucky Chops 7/5, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Sat 4/9, 11 AM b Mbongwana Star, Dos Santos: Anti-Beat Orquesta 8/11, 6:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park F b
b John McCutcheon 6/15, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 4/7, noon b Miner 5/31, 9 PM, Subterranean, on sale Fri 4/8, 10 AM Minor Victories 6/26, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 4/8, noon, 18+ Nneka, Gina Chavez 6/16, 6:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park F b Nothing but Thieves, Holy White Hounds 5/4, 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall b Over the Rhine 7/15-16, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Sat 4/9, 11 AM b Eddie Palmieri Salsa Orchestra, Ecos del Pacifico 6/27, 6:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park F b Maceo Parker, Marrow 6/23, 6:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park F b Piano Guys 9/17, 7 PM, Chicago Theatre, on sale Fri 4/8, 10 AM Sarah Potenza 5/12, 8 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, on sale Fri 4/8, 11 AM Rascal Flatts 8/7, 7:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park, on sale Fri 4/8, 10 AM Royal Southern Brotherhood 7/10, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Sat 4/9, 11 AM b Darrell Scott 7/21, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 4/7, noon b Richard Shindell 6/12, 7 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Sigur Ros 9/30, 8:30 PM, Chicago Theatre, on sale Fri 4/8, 11 AM Sinkane, Mark de Clive-Lowe 8/4, 6:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park F b Snoop Dogg, Wiz Khalifa 8/16, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park, on sale Fri 4/8, 11 AM So So Glos 5/21, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Sonny & the Sunsets 7/7, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Spray Paint 5/25, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Otis Taylor Band 7/2, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Sat 4/9, 11 AM b Tengger Cavalry 5/18, 9 PM, Subterranean, on sale Fri 4/8, 10 AM Travelin’ McCourys 7/29, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Sat 4/9, 11 AM b Dick Valentine 4/25, 8 PM, Cobra Lounge Julieta Venegas 5/27, 11:30 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Walking on Cars 5/22, 7:30 PM, Subterranean, on sale Fri 4/8, 10 AM b Water Liars 7/12, 9 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 4/8, noon, 18+ Aaron West & the Roaring Twenties 6/7, 6:30 PM, Subterranean b
ALL AGES
WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK
EARLY WARNINGS
CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME
F
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Whilk & Misky 6/25, 10 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 4/8, noon
UPDATED Boyce Avenue 10/7, 7:30 PM, the Vic, rescheduled from 5/20 b Savoy Brown 9/30-10/1, 7 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint, rescheduled from 4/23
UPCOMING Amon Amarth, Entombed A.D. 5/5, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Balkan Beat Box 6/22, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Coasts 4/28, 7 PM, Lincoln Hall b Dead Meadow 5/17, 8 PM, Double Door Eagles of Death Metal 5/25, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Ben Frost 5/19, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Graves at Sea 4/24, 7:30 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Peter Hook & the Light 10/28, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Il Divo 10/22, 7 PM, Rosemont Theater, Rosemont b Damien Jurado, Ben Abraham 5/28, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall King Khan & the Shrines 6/19, 10 PM, Subterranean, 17+ La Sera 5/6, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Aimee Mann 5/9, 7:30 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Napalm Death, Melvins, Melt-Banana 4/22, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Ought 7/25, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Pity Sex 7/9, 7:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b Quinn XCII 5/11, 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ R. Kelly 5/7, 8 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Say Anything 5/6, 6:30 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Tame Impala 6/9, 7:30 PM, UIC Pavilion Useless Eaters 5/11, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Waxahatchee 6/19, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Young Thug 5/25, 8 PM, the Vic b Yuna 5/6, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Zhu 5/8, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ v
GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene NOW THAT THE LOLLAPASNOOZA lineup has dropped, more summer festivals are due to make their big announcements—including Riot Fest, which returns to a still-battered Douglas Park from September 16 through 18. Gossip Wolf has a few ideas about who might be on that bill, and at the top of the list are nu-metal survivors Deftones, whose upcoming tour is conspicuously missing an Illinois date. Other possibilities include reunited screamo poster boys Thursday, 311 acolytes Turnstile, friendly MC Biz Markie, and the Velvet Underground of second-wave emo, American Football. Plus of course pizza enthusiast Andrew W.K. and interplanetary scumdogs Gwar, because how could it be Riot Fest without them? When Gossip Wolf was a pup in the mid-90s, local label Skin Graft Records regularly put together amazing packages of international avant-rock and comicbook weirdness, helping introduce the world to mangled mayhem such as U.S. Maple, Dazzling Killmen, Melt-Banana, and Colossamite. The label’s output has slowed—this wolf last heard about 2008 releases from London no-wave spazzes Pre and Canadian wastoids AIDS Wolf (no relation). But founder Mark Fischer says the label has signed a distro deal with Redeye Worldwide and is preparing new slabs to celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2016—including a full-length from scuzzy rockers Cellular Chaos (featuring former Flying Luttenbacher Weasel Walter), an aluminum-sleeved seven-inch of unreleased 2001 jams from Arab on Radar, and a reissue of the 1994 Dazzling Killmen LP Face of Collapse. Last summer local punks Flesh Panthers dropped NGC 2632, and bandleader Ryan Zombotron says they’re already hard at work on Willows Weep, a follow-up due early this summer on Maximum Pelt. Mr. Ma’am drummer Frankie Mars Gunner recently joined Flesh Panthers, and they play a free show Mon 4/11 at the Empty Bottle. —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.
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WANDA SYKES SATURDAY, APRIL 9
JOE SATRIANI
FRIDAY, APRIL 15
WGCI PRESENTS THE TAKEOVER JAM
FEATURING YO GOTTI, K. MICHELLE, KEVIN GATES, 2 MILLY, TK & CASH, AND ZOEY DOLLAZ SATURDAY, APRIL 16
MICHAEL CARBONARO LIVE! SUNDAY, MAY 1
CAROL BURNETT
AN EVENING OF LAUGHTER AND REFLECTION WHERE THE AUDIENCE ASKS THE QUESTIONS MAY 17, 19 & 20
HATSUNE MIKU WEDNESDAY, MAY 25
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APRIL 7, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 43
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