Print Issue of April 19, 2018 (Volume 47, Number 28) by Chicago Reader

C H I C A G O â&#x20AC;&#x2122; S F R E E W E E K LY S I N C E 1 9 7 1 | A P R I L 1 9, 2 0 1 8

2 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 19, 2018

THIS WEEK

C H I C A G O R E A D E R | A P R I L 1 9, 2 0 1 8 | V O L U M E 4 7, N U M B E R 2 8

TO CONTACT ANY READER EMPLOYEE, E-MAIL: (FIRST INITIAL)(LAST NAME) @CHICAGOREADER.COM

INTERIM EXECUTIVE EDITOR DAVE NEWBART CREATIVE DIRECTOR VINCE CERASANI DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY JAMIE RAMSAY CULTURE EDITOR AIMEE LEVITT FILM EDITOR J.R. JONES MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO ASSOCIATE EDITORS STEVE HEISLER, JAMIE LUDWIG, KATE SCHMIDT SENIOR WRITER MIKE SULA SENIOR THEATER CRITIC TONY ADLER STAFF WRITERS MAYA DUKMASOVA, LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, PETER MARGASAK, JULIA THIEL SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR RYAN SMITH GRAPHIC DESIGNER SUE KWONG MUSIC LISTINGS COORDINATOR LUCA CIMARUSTI FILM LISTINGS COORDINATOR PATRICK FRIEL CONTRIBUTORS NOAH BERLATSKY, ALLISON DUNCAN, JORDANNAH ELIZABETH, ANNE FORD, ISA GIALLORENZO, JOHN GREENFIELD, ANDREA GRONVALL, KT HAWBAKER, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, TANNER HOWARD, IRENE HSIAO, DAN JAKES, MONICA KENDRICK, H. MELT, BILL MEYER, ANGELA MYERS, MICHAEL MINER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, MARK PETERS, LEAH PICKETT, JANET POTTER, BEN SACHS, DMITRY SAMAROV, KATE SIERZPUTOWSKI, OLIVER SAVA, TIFFANY WALDEN, KEVIN WARWICK, BRIANNA WELLEN, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERN ASHLEY MIZUO ---------------------------------------------------------------ADVERTISING DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER BEST SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER EVANGELINE MILLER DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY ADVERTISING COORDINATOR HERMINIA BATTAGLIA ---------------------------------------------------------------DISTRIBUTION CONCERNS distributionissues@chicagoreader.com CHICAGO READER 30 N. RACINE, SUITE 300 CHICAGO, IL 60607 312-222-6920 CHICAGOREADER.COM

FEATURES WEED

Herbal Notes brings pop-up pot dinners toChicago

Chef Manny Mendoza’s events combine good food, good feels, and responsible cannabis consumption. BY MIKE SULA 11

Governor Buzzkill Voters gave the thumbs-up to legalizing recreational marijuana, but the governor’s vowed to veto any bill that reaches his desk. BY BEN JORAVSKY 13

The rise and fall of the ‘cannabis candidate’

Bongwater bath

Is soaking in marijuana-infused bath salts worth the weed it takes to make them? BY MELANIE LAFORCE 16

Go green

I fell in love with Benjamin Wolf— then I got burned. BY HUNTER STUART 14

Dispensary block parties, THC dinners, and more 4/20-friendly events BY ASHLEY MIZUO 17

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

Jessica Risker sharpens her sweet songs on a hazy new album

I See You Among the Stars is the Deadbeat front woman’s first solo record under her own name—and her most confident and consistent effort yet. BY PETER MARGASAK 23

IN THIS ISSUE

---------------------------------------------------------------READER (ISSN 1096-6919) IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY STM READER, LLC 30 N. RACINE, SUITE 300 CHICAGO, IL 60607. COPYRIGHT © 2018 CHICAGO READER. PERIODICAL POSTAGE PAID AT CHICAGO, IL. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. CHICAGO READER, READER, AND REVERSED R: REGISTERED TRADEMARKS ®.

CITY LIFE

4 Chicagoans Donald Trump impersonator: Just don’t punch me, please. 6 Politics Aldermen’s absolute veto power over ward projects gets an unlikely court challenge. 8 Transportation Dockless bike share is a step closer to coming to Chicago.

ARTS & CULTURE

ON THE COVER: PHOTO BY MARZENA ABRAHAMIK. FOR MORE OF MARZENA’S WORK, GO TO MARZENA-ABRAHAMIK.COM.

18 Theater The Hypocrites’ four-hour Aristophanesathon never cracks the whimsy barrier. 18 Opera Donizetti’s Il Pigmalione and Rita demonstrate two versions of love.

19 Theater Reviews of Steppenwolf’s The Doppelgänger and seven more new shows 20 Comics A comics legend teams up with Three Floyds to brew some beerfueled superhero mayhem. 21 Movies Chicago Palestine Film Festival: Past versus present, neighbor versus neighbor 22 Movies Our critics review the latest releases, including Super Troopers 2 and the Spike Leedirected Pass Over.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE 26 In Rotation Jared Brown of Central Air Radio on life-changing

punk black women, and more current obsessions 27 Shows of note Khruangbin, Rlyr, JPEGMaﬁa, and more of the week’s best

FOOD & DRINK

32 Restaurant Review: Old Habits The kitchen at Avondale’s Ludlow Liquors is so good it gets its own name. 33 Key Ingredient C.J. Jacobson of Ema gives dried scallops some Mediterranean ﬂair.

CLASSIFIEDS 34 Jobs

34 Apartments & Spaces 35 Marketplace 36 Straight Dope Do cows ever attack humans? 37 Savage Love Can anal sex cause constipation? and other burning questions 38 Early Warnings Jeremy Enigk, Pelican, Eric B & Rakim, and more shows to look for in the weeks to come 38 Gossip Wolf Inclusive punk collective Pure Joy relaunches with a fund-raising show (but still no permanent home), and other music news.

APRIL 19, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 3

CITY LIFE Chicagoans

Please don’t punch him—he just looks like POTUS

Dennis Alan, 67, Donald Trump impersonator

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“I’m as fat as Trump is, so I don’t need any assistance there either,” says Alan. é GARY TYSON/ F8 PHOTOGRAPHY

é COURTESY OF DENNIS ALAN

ELKHATIB LAW, LLC

BY NATURE’S CURSE or benefit or whatever, I just happen to look like Donald Trump. It takes me five, ten minutes to make myself up. Most of the other impersonators who do Trump need some kind of facial prosthetic, but I can just throw on some foundation. And I’m as fat as Trump is, so I don’t need any assistance there either. If I have to apply the hairpiece, that can take maybe 20 minutes. I’ve done advertisements in South Korea and Hong Kong, and I did an advertisement for Twinkies in Cairo. It was a video with an Egyptian film star for some new flavors of Twinkies that were coming out. Trump has a signature orange tone to his skin, and evidently one of the new flavors was orange. It’s going to sound crazy, and I felt crazy, but in the ad I was in a tiki bar next to this movie star, a big hulky guy, and he was juggling oranges and I was pouring orange juice into a stein and sipping on it and watching him juggle. Mine is not to reason why, right? People approach me to do parties and things, but in smaller venues, particularly where alcohol is going to be served, I don’t know if I’m walking into a crowd of people that want to throw things at me or what. I have had offers to be in a dunk tank or have a pie thrown at my face, and I’m just not going to do that. And I get offers to take part in rallies and things like that, and I don’t do those either. One of the reasons is security. There have been a couple of incidents where I was wearing the baseball cap that says MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN and people actually attacked the hat.

Impersonating Trump has changed my life in that among people who knew me before this, I have become kind of a celebrity. It’s kind of the thing where if you are overweight and

then you become thin, your relationships with all the people in your life will change. Up to that time, you were the fat person in their life. Whereas before this happened with Trump, I was just a schmo. As a matter of fact, when I go out and socialize now, I avoid making it known that I do this. Maybe somebody who has craved this sort of thing their whole life would bask in the attention, but I don’t feel that way about it. Worse than that is that people assume that because I look like Donald Trump, I behave like he does. People treat me as if I’m going to treat them like their image of Donald Trump would treat them. But I forgive them for it, as long as they don’t come up and hit me. I say in humor, “I’m gonna do this till he gets shot or impeached.” Sooner or later, it’s gonna end. I’m reminded of the movie Patton, where he was saying that in ancient times a victorious general would be returning from battle, and he’d have a victory parade in a chariot, and somebody in back of him would be whispering in his ear, “All glory is ﬂeeting.” So I’m hearing that in my ear even now. —AS TOLD TO ANNE FORD

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APRIL 19, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 5

CITY LIFE POLITICS

Veto override?

“Aldermanic prerogative” on ward projects gets an unlikely court challenge—from a luxury developer.

By MAYA DUKMASOVA

lenStar, the luxury developer at odds with 41st Ward alderman Anthony Napolitano over a proposed 299-unit apartment building near the Cumberland Blue Line, has sued the city in an attempt to secure the necessary zoning changes to proceed with construction. But buried in its demands that a judge ﬁnd city officials’ actions regarding its proposed building unlawful is a major legal challenge to the age-old practice of “aldermanic prerogative.” This tradition, while not articulated anywhere in city code, has historically given aldermen veto power over all developments in their wards. As the case of GlenStar’s proposal has shown, when Napolitano decided he didn’t want its apartment building in his ward, the City Council’s zoning committee complied and didn’t grant the developer a hearing or vote on its proposal. In a complaint ﬁled in Cook County circuit court on March 20, GlenStar lays out a series of events that matches those previously reported by the Reader: Napolitano initially supported GlenStar’s proposal, and it received approval from both the 41st Ward Zoning Advisory Council and the city’s Department of Planning and Development. In June 2017, however, Napolitano “inexplicably” reversed course and withdrew his support, according to GlenStar. This happened shortly after controversy erupted over an affordable housing proposal in nearby Jefferson Park; Napolitano had publicly sided with those opposed to that building. GlenStar contends that Napolitano flip-flopped because its development would include affordable housing units too. (Napolitano has maintained that his opposition to GlenStar’s proposal is on the basis of density, though in an e-mail to 45th Ward alderman John Arena previously obtained by the Reader, he actually defended the apartment build-

6 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 19, 2018

GlenStar’s proposal for a 299-unit apartment building on the northwest side includes 30 aﬀordable housing units. é COURTESY GLENSTAR

ing in question, saying the proposed location “is exactly where you’d expect to see density.” Napolitano also claimed he wasn’t aware of the affordable housing planned for GlenStar’s building.) After this change of heart, Napolitano tried to prevent a vote on GlenStar’s proposal by the city’s Plan Commission but was unsuccessful. The Plan Commission approved it, and Napolitano set about trying to prevent a vote in the subsequent zoning committee hearing headed by 25th Ward alderman Danny Solis. This time, his lobbying efforts worked, and GlenStar’s zoning request hasn’t been put to a hearing or a vote since last fall. This has amounted to a denial of its proposal, GlenStar argues, in violation of its rights to due process. GlenStar’s attorney, Peter Friedman, says the developer played by both the formal and informal rules from the beginning. Though city code doesn’t require the approval or involvement of local aldermen or ward “zoning advisory committees” in development proposals, aldermanic prerogative is a well-established practice, and GlenStar is a well-established player in local real estate. The developer thus sought approval from Napolitano, who had already formally told the city he wanted an apartment building on the site. When GlenStar then bought the land, it said Napolitano promised his support if the 41st Ward Zoning Advisory Council went along with plans. GlenStar made presentations to the advisory council and got unanimous approval in January 2017. In its complaint, GlenStar contends that Na-

politano subsequently again verbally “pledged his support directly to GlenStar.” The developer went on to spend more than $350,000 to complete development plans and ﬁle applications with the city, with the understanding that the plans had the alderman’s blessing. Friedman says at that point, if aldermanic prerogative was indeed in effect, the project should have moved forward. He argues that approval shouldn’t be reneged on when an alderman changes his or her mind. “If [aldermanic prerogative] exists, then we have the right to rely on it,” he says. “If it doesn’t exist, then the City Council has a right to ignore it.” In other words, there’s no reason why Napolitano’s objections should have been honored and the proposal blocked from a vote in the zoning committee and by the full City Council. (GlenStar also argues that the zoning committee’s decision to indefinitely defer a hearing on its proposal was made in violation of Illinois’s Open Meetings Act.) Aldermanic prerogative has been acknowledged by judges in federal courts on at least two prior occasions, in cases centering on Chicago zoning decisions from 1997 and 2009. But the practice—widely accepted and proudly honored by aldermen despite its total informality—has never been successfully challenged in court. “Perhaps the reason the prerogative has not been challenged is because aldermen generally use it responsibly,” Friedman says. “When they say they support something, they support it, and they can’t then four months

later change their mind. . . . If the City Council wants to continue to honor the aldermanic prerogative, then this denial [of GlenStar’s zoning request] cannot be allowed to stand.” Ironically, last September, a resident of the 45th Ward sued the city over a proposed development near the Jefferson Park Blue Line station. That development had the support of alderman John Arena. That suit contends Arena wielded aldermanic prerogative inappropriately because he didn’t give in to community pressure against the building. Individual aldermen’s sway over development decisions has long troubled urban planning experts in Chicago. For decades, aldermanic prerogative has reinforced segregation as white aldermen refused to allow public housing projects or even scattered-site public housing units to be built in their wards. Aldermen have also been known to wield their prerogative to kill proposed buildings that have gotten bad press, or when developers haven’t shown sufficient gratitude in the form of campaign contributions. (Council members are also sometimes willing to vote for plans they don’t necessarily support in deference to the practice, especially when it comes to projects pushed by the mayor.) Napolitano, and many who came before him, defended their decisions with the justification that they’re representing the will of their constituents. Napolitano didn’t respond to the Reader’s request for comment, but his chief of staff, Chris Vittorio, previously told Crain’s that GlenStar’s lawsuit is “frivolous,” and said the

CITY LIFE Alderman Anthony Napolitano é ERIN BROWN FOR THE SUN-TIMES

Aalderman “is ultimately focused on what his ward wants and what the residents want and don’t want.” Napolitano has also previously denied that he expressed a commitment to the building before changing his mind. In a recent blog post reﬂecting on this issue, Metropolitan Planning Council vice president Marisa Novara argued that too much local control over zoning and planning decisions can have a detrimental effect on the city as a whole. “I am seeing ‘listening to the community’ held up as the decision-making North Star when it’s actually being used to justify exclusionary and even racist decisions,” Novara wrote. She added that research has shown “a troubling correlation between the number of public sector entities making land use decisions and levels of segregation.” Chicago, she points out, has much greater local representation than other major cities. While our 50 aldermen represent about 54,000 residents each, New York has one city council member for roughly every 166,600 residents, and Los Angeles has one for every 264,600 residents. This makes it much more difficult to set citywide planning priorities in Chicago, she argues. And when it comes to affordable housing, aldermen are much more likely to cave to the NIMBYism that reinforces segregation. “It is a pretty basic notion that all communities need to contribute to the city’s affordable housing needs,” Novara said in an interview. “And if that is our basic principle, then individual communities should not be able to opt out of that contribution.” An audit released by the city’s inspector general last year found that between 2007 and 2015, 57 of Chicago’s 77 community areas had created no new units of affordable housing. Some would argue that it’s beneficial to have Chicago aldermen represent relatively small constituencies because that makes it easier for grassroots groups to inﬂuence their elected officials. For the last year, residents who support affordable housing on the northwest side have rallied behind GlenStar’s proposal and the affordable housing planned in Jefferson Park. But while they’ve succeeded in

building an alliance with Arena, Napolitano— the only Republican on the City Council—has favored the voices of NIMBYists. In exercising their prerogative aldermen aren’t required to explain how they know what their communities want or prove they’re truly representing residents’ wishes and not advancing their own agendas. Despite Napolitano’s insistence that he heard from a number of 41st Ward residents opposing GlenStar’s apartment building last spring, he’s yet to produce any hard evidence. The lawsuit could now force him to do so, as the developer would be in a position to subpoena records and depose Napolitano and his staff. In GlenStar, the challenge to aldermanic prerogative has found the unlikeliest of crusaders—a luxury developer whose primary mission isn’t to provide affordable housing or desegregate the city. While the company wants to fully comply with the letter and spirit of the Affordable Requirements Ordinance, it never set out to make a principled stand about affordable housing on the northwest side. Friedman says that the developer’s objective with this suit is just to get the necessary city approval to put up the building. Because GlenStar already has city permission to build an office building on the same site, its decision to construct an apartment building instead requires only an amendment to the approved planned development. The company wants to do everything it can to make sure the time, effort, and funds it sunk into procuring the zoning amendment didn’t go to waste. “GlenStar’s primary hope here is that the city will quickly allow this matter to be resolved so that GlenStar can proceed with its proposed development,” Friedman says. “[The company] only filed this complaint as an absolute last resort.” Nevertheless, if the city doesn’t move to settle and a judge finds that the custom of aldermanic prerogative is unlawful, the case could have wide-ranging ramifications for planning and development in Chicago. A spokesman for the city’s Law Department declined to comment on the case. The city has until mid-July to respond to GlenStar’s complaint or file a motion to dismiss the case. v

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CITY LIFE LimeBike staﬀers Gwen Jones and Will Piper show oﬀ dockless bikes now available in Rockford. é JOHN GREENFIELD

TRANSPORTATION

Move over, Divvy

Dockless bike-sharing could roll out in the city soon. BY JOHN GREENFIELD

new form of bike share could be coming to town. And riders who use this service won’t have to hunt for a station to return the bikes to: the so-called “dockless” bikes can be parked pretty much anywhere. After months of radio silence about whether Chicago will let dockless bike share come to town, last week city officials confirmed that they met with vendors in March and could launch a pilot in the near future. Dockless bike share, which some call “DoBi,” lets members use a smartphone app to locate and use the rental bikes—which can be left anywhere in a designated service area. The dockless companies, propped up by venture capitalists, offer cheap rental rates, generally $1 for a half-hour trip, compared to $3 for a single Divvy journey (which until recently required you to either buy an annual membership or rent the bikes for at least 24 hours). The new bikes are rolling out in cities across the country, including Rockford, which earlier this month got 500 bright green bikes maintained by the San Mateo company LimeBike. That company is one of several vying to operate in Chicago—causing concerns among other operators because Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s former top adviser, David Spielfogel, is on LimeBike’s board of directors. Still, many groups are eager to see the dockless bikes come to Chicago. The Chi-

8 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 19, 2018

cago-based transportation justice group Equiticity has argued that dockless technology should be deployed immediately to bring shared bikes to outlying neighborhoods that don’t yet have Divvy stations. Chicago Department of Transportation spokesman Mike Claffey conﬁrmed that officials recently met with DoBi companies. “We will be assessing their operational impacts and their business models to ensure that we can advance the city’s transportation goals of providing safe and affordable transportation options for all Chicagoans,” Claffey said in an e-mail. Officials want to prevent dockless cycles from becoming hazards parked in the middle of sidewalks, eyesores— or worse. (Pictures of LimeBikes and other dockless bikes dismantled or in other strange places have made the rounds on Twitter.) Officials also want to keep vendors from undercutting Divvy—which received $30 million in city and federal funding to help it launch—and driving it out of business. To that end, former Active Transportation Alliance director Randy Neufeld, now with the SRAM Cycling Fund (which bankrolls bike projects worldwide), has asserted that dockless bikes should be conﬁned to parts of Chicago that don’t currently have bike share. That’s an approach New York City might take. The current leadership of Active Trans doesn’t share Neufeld’s opinion that dockless should be limited to neighborhoods currently

without Divvy. But the group wants the city to charge the DoBi companies for access to the public way and use the revenue to fund new bike infrastructure, especially in neighborhoods with relatively few bike lanes or racks, said governmental affairs director Kyle Whitehead. The companies at the March meeting with CDOT, according to a source familiar with the gathering, included Santa Monica-based CycleHop, New York’s Jump Bikes (which was recently purchased by Uber), LimeBike, Beijing-based Ofo, San-Francisco-based Spin, and Zagster, of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Gabriel Scheer, director of strategic development for LimeBike, said city staffers asked vendors how they planned to serve all parts of Chicago equitably, and how they would provide access for people without smartphones or credit cards. The officials also asked how the companies would ensure the bikes didn’t create conﬂict with other uses of public space. “Basically they wanted to know, do you play well with others,” Scheer said. Ofo spokesman Taylor Bennett said his company is “eager to extend our affordable and accessible bike-sharing platform to even more Chicagoans.” Ofo and Jump are providing cycles for low-tech “bike libraries” offering bikes to borrow on the far south side and in North Lawndale this spring. While some cities, including Seattle, Dallas, and Washington, D.C., have multiple

companies offering the bikes, others, like Rockford, have granted exclusive access to one company. A dockless bike industry professional, who asked not to be named, told me there’s concern among operators that if Chicago grants an exclusive contract, LimeBike might have an unfair advantage. In addition to Spielfogel, who as the mayor’s right-hand man was nicknamed “mini-Rahm,” ex-CDOT deputy commissioner Scott Kubly now runs LimeBike’s government operations. (Meanwhile, former CDOT commissioner Gabe Klein is on Spin’s advisory board.) “Companies are hoping that there will be a transparent [request for proposals] to shine a light on the process,” the source said. LimeBike spokeswoman Emma Green called the concern a “nonissue,” claiming that neither Spielfogel nor Kubly is lobbying in Chicago, and added that Kubly left CDOT more than four years ago. CDOT’s Claffey declined to comment on the subject. LimeBike launched its Rockford fleet on April 7. I visited the city of 150,000 last week and met up with local LimeBike staffers Will Piper and Gwen Jones for a bike tour of the city. As we rode, walkers and drivers called out questions about the bright green bikes and asked how to rent them. After chatting with a few LimeBike users, who seemed stoked about the service, we took a spin north on the lovely path along the Rock River. At one point, a jogger yelled “Go LimeBike! Making Rockford better.” It hasn’t been completely smooth sailing, however. A couple times during our journey Piper stopped to relocate bikes that were partially obstructing the sidewalk. And there have been news reports about dockless bikes stuffed into a planter and hanging from a tree. Still, there’s one guy who’s conﬁdent that LimeBike will be a shot in the arm for the city: Cheap Trick lead guitarist Rick Nielsen. He still lives in Rockford and is a bike enthusiast. Nielsen told me he plans to start using bike share soon. “LimeBike should be great for Rockford once people know what it is,” he said. “Anything that brings positive attention to the town is a good thing in my book.” Dockless bike share could have a similarly beneficial effect for Chicago, especially for neighborhoods that don’t have Divvy docks. Let’s give it a try. v

m @greenfieldjohn

New Arthritis Painkiller Works on Contact and Numbs the Pain in Minutes ADVERTISEMENT

New cream works faster and is more targeted than oral medications. Key ingredients penetrate the skin within minutes to relieve joint arthritis pain. Users report signiﬁcant immediate relief.

By Robert Ward Associated Health Press BOSTON Innovus Pharmaceuticals has introduced a new arthritis pain relief treatment that works in minutes. Sold under the brand name Apeaz™, the new pain relief cream numbs the nerves right below the skin. When applied to an arthritic joint, or a painful area on the body, it delivers immediate relief that lasts for hours and hours. The powerful painkilling effect is created by the creams active ingredient, a special medical compound. Anesthetics are used in hospitals during surgery. They block nerve signals from the brain so that patients don t feel pain and they work fast. The anesthetic found in Apeaz™ is the strongest available without a prescription. The cream form allows users to directly target their area of pain. It works where it is applied. The company says this is why the product is so effective and fast acting. “Users can expect to feel relief immediately after applying,” explains Dr. Bassam Damaj, President of Innovus Pharmaceuticals. There will a pleasant warming sensation that is followed by a cool, soothing one. This is how you know that the active ingredients have reached the infected joint and tissue.

Works In Minutes

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Additional ingredients in the cream help suppress in&ammation around tissues and joints. Published pre-clinical studies have shown that the ingredients in Apeaz™ can also prevent further bone and cartilage destruction. There are also no negative side effects from the oral medication. Apeaz™ delivers its ingredients through the skin. Oral medications are absorbed in the digestive tract. Overtime, the chemicals in pills can tear the delicate lining of the stomach, causing ulcers and bleeding. When compared to other arthritis medications, Apeaz™ is a fraction of the cost. At less than $2 a day, the cream quickly is becoming a household name. Those with terrible arthritis in their hands and 'ngers, love how easy Apeaz is to open. The jar 'ts in the palm of the hand, which makes it much easier to use.

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Apeaz is an FDA drug with approved claims for the pain relief of the following conditions: Arthritis pain Simple back pain Strains Sprains Athletic injuries Muscle stiffness and pain Wrist, elbow, shoulder, hip, knee, ankle, foot, muscle or joint pain

Apeaz™: Quick Acting Pain and Arthritis Cream is Now Available Without a Prescription penetrating right to the source of your pain, numbing the nerve endings. This is why Apeaz™ is so effective for people with arthritis. It reduces pain while adding an additional layer of joint protection, explains Damaj.

A New Way to Treat Pain

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With daily use, Apeaz™ plus ArthriVarx helps users live a more vital, pain free life

without any of the negative side effects or interactions associated with oral drugs. By delivering fast, long-lasting, and targeted relief from joint pain and reducing in&ammation and swelling that causes joint damage, Apeaz and ArthriVarx is the newest, most effective way to tackle your arthritis pain. You can now enjoy an entirely new level of comfort that s both safe and affordable. It is also extremely effective, especially if nothing else has worked well for you.

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APRIL 19, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 9

The Pot Issue PHOTOS BY MARZENA ABRAHAMIK

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Herbal Notes is planting the seeds of culinary cannabis in Chicago Chef Manny Mendoza’s pop-up dinner series combines good food, good feels, and responsible cannabis consumption. By MIKE SULA

ne evening early last December, some 20 dinner guests sat at a candlelit table in a converted Logan Square factory loft eating carnitas with red mole infused with NYC Sour Diesel, a strain of cannabis known for its relaxing, euphoric effects. Next came chilaquiles with kale salsa, soubise crema, roasted mushrooms, and smoked habanero cheddar with a smoked guajillo oil infused with a cross strain of AC/ DC and Haze. Due to its low THC levels, the last has little psychoactive effect, but thanks to a high concentration of cannabidiol, aka CBD, it’s good for relief from anxiety and chronic pain. As effective as those strains might be, the evening wasn’t as chill as you’d expect. The diners—all card-carrying beneﬁciaries of the Illinois Cannabis Patient Registry Program—were surrounded by other guests who weren’t partaking in the six-course meal but who milled about chatting and sipping CBD-infused micheladas. Now and then, in twos and threes, partygoers slipped in and out of a side door leading to a carport that emitted drifting whiffs of smoke. In the corner a DJ was playing a mix of pop and international-oriented dance music while two photographers and a videographer prowled the space capturing the party vibe for posterity—with a particular focus on the large open kitchen where chef Manny Mendoza and his crew briskly plated the food before it was marched over to the guests by a team of runners. As there often is at notable food events, a group of food media hangers-on sat at a separate table eating uninfused courses.

I don’t have a medical marijuana card either, but I lurked around in the background trying to look inconspicuous with my pen and notebook. One guy approached and genially asked if I was a narc. This was the Chicago debut of Herbal Notes, a culinary cannabis pop-up supper club Mendoza started from his home base in San Diego last year. Weed dinners by pedigreed chefs are no big deal in California—or any other place where legal recreational cannabis and a progressive food scene coexist. Given the anemic caliber of Illinois’s current medical marijuana law, events like this are much less regular here. Mendoza, who’s 25, aims to change all that. Born and raised in Pilsen, he came into cooking with cannabis about ﬁve years ago, after graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. He returned home, took music and business classes at Harold Washington College, and worked at a handful of notable restaurants: Owen & Engine, and the late Senza and Green Zebra. Meanwhile, he’d started experimenting with cannabis as an ingredient in food. A pot smoker since he was 15, he’d had one or two unfortunately prototypical edible-eating misadventures: nasty sugar-loaded brownies and baked goods of unknown strength that led to unpleasantly unnerving highs. Mendoza began infusing oils and alcohol based-tinctures with cannabis flower and incorporating them into hard fruit candies, but he often used trim and sometimes stems and seeds, not realizing that these parts of the flower are less than ideal and can J

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contribute undesirable volatile compounds to the end product. He had a breakthrough one day in a glass of chocolate milk. He gently simmered some Grand Daddy Purple in whole milk, then mixed in chocolate and chilled it down. It was “cold, refreshing, rich, and decadent,” he recalls. “With onset within 15 minutes, [it had] soothing strong sedative effects. I remember a mild head high but very potent relaxation.” Mendoza began to toy with the idea of combining cannabis and its therapeutic effects with his own food, and presenting it at multimedia events with music, in comfortable surroundings. But he was worried about pursuing the plan in Chicago. Plenty of friends over the years had been arrested and jailed for simple possession. He himself was caught with an empty herb grinder and ﬁned almost $1,500 in 2013. “I’m just fresh out of college, and I’m working like crazy just to maintain. To get slapped with something like that really threw my life off,” he says. The bust played a part in his decision to go west. In California he found restaurant work and continued to experiment, spending time on both conventional and pot farms, where he learned to grow his own. Mendoza prefers to make his own infusions from ﬂower, but particularly in Chicago, where supply and higher prices make that inconvenient, he uses precisely

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dosed and commercially available tinctures and oils. Typically his method is to finish off uninfused food with low-dosage sauces and seasonings. He’s made a name. Last November he reached the ﬁnal round of the High Times Cooking Competition at the annual SoCal Harvest Cup. He started throwing dinners in San Diego in February 2017, but last year, with an eye on the political appetite for recreational legalization that’s been steadily growing in Illinois, he decided it was time to bring Herbal Notes home. December’s dinner, titled Windy City High, was his way of testing the waters. How dark was the gray area surrounding the practice of serving infused food to medical marijuana patients—essentially tastes of their own medicine? Unexpected publicity for the event, including a TV news segment for which he says he was never contacted, had him a bit worried. “I knew that they were pretty much signaling the police department, or somebody, that ‘Hey, this is happening here.’” Still, the $125 six-course dinner sold out almost instantly. Guests, who’d revealed their medical condition and cannabis tolerance beforehand, were directed to the previously undisclosed location on the day of the dinner. Also in attendance was a large group of guys from a local start-up called CannaRaw, who cosponsored the event and were attempting to launch a number of nonpsychoactive CBD-infused products, like the tequila that was being mixed into cocktails by Javier Garcia, the bartender behind Big Mich, a Chicago-born michelada mix. Mendoza’s Chicago-recruited crew included Daniel Espinoza, then chef at the South Loop’s Lobo Rey, who

conceived three of the dishes. Together they banged out six courses, including a swordfish ceviche seasoned with a Watermelon Haze keef-Tajín seasoning blend; a crispy pig-head croquette with black-bean puree and Watermelon Haze thyme salt; and a tamal with cranberry-ginger reduction, roasted sweet potato, and Cherry Kandahar pepper. With each course Mendoza or Espinoza addressed the guests and broke down the dishes, each of which contained about a 3.5 mg dose of THC—what, in the current parlance of responsible cannabis consumption, is known as a microdose. By the time the dinner was over, the guests, who varied greatly by age and whose conditions ranged from PTSD and anxiety to chronic pain and cancer, drifted out the door with a small kit of olive oil, vinegar, and salt and pepper together with instructions for infusing them at home. There was no staggering, no delirious giggling, no white-knuckled, wide-eyed paranoia—just a mellow postprandial denouement. Since then Mendoza’s returned to town twice, first for a three-day stand in January, then for a dinner and three brunches in March. He’s expanded the number of guests he feeds, and his crew, which now numbers about 20, includes David Hollinger, a friend from culinary school he’s brought on as pastry chef. Hollinger, who’s worked at Topolobampo and the Bakery at Fat Rice, has contributed decidedly unbrownielike sweets like a cafe de olla mochi with a CBD-infused canela and a Guatemalan-style concha stuffed with fried plantains spiked with CBD oil. For the four sold-out events Herbal Notes has scheduled this week, Hollinger is making a Skywalker OG-infused tres leches cake. Mendoza is planning, among other things, courses like a savory quiche with green chorizo, queso cotija, and a fire cider vinaigrette infused with his own proprietary cannabis oil; vichyssoise with curried salmon, double-smoked bacon, and an infused creme fraiche; and chicken mousseline tortellini with wood-grilled mushrooms, apple-lemon beurre blanc, and infused brown butter. Garcia from Big Mich will be debuting a Tangie-infused Malort cocktail with smoked piloncillo, Chinotto, vanilla, and a Green Dragon-infused cherry. Mendoza’s opened these dinners up to anyone—no medical card required—in an effort to widen and drum up support for recreational legalization. If any of the above gives you the munchies, you’ll have more chances to try Mendoza’s food this summer, provided you have a medical marijuana card; he plans to hold at least one series in Chicago every month. If not, he’s banking that one day soon you won’t need one. Next week he’s giving a free informational talk and Q&A on cannabis at a time and location TBD; e-mail info@herbalnotes.co for details. “I’m trying to be an educator and advocate on all aspects of the plant,” he says. “From the horticulture to the medical benefits to differences between strains. And social responsibility is the key to all of it—especially in Chicago.” v

@MikeSula

Bruce Rauner, buzzkill Voters gave the thumbs-up to legalizing recreational marijuana, but the governor’s vowed to veto any bill that reaches his desk. By BEN JORAVSKY

s if anyone needed another reason to oust Bruce Rauner, consider this: there will never be legalized marijuana in Illinois as long as he’s governor. Just in case his attempts to bankrupt public education weren’t enough of a deterrent to casting a vote for his reelection. All right, on the week of 4/20, the time has come for me to answer a few questions about the state’s effort to catch up with the rest of the modern world and legalize reefer. Or, as the pols like to put it—legalize the recreational use of marijuana (since its use for medical purposes is already allowed in Illinois). As though smoking reefer were like playing flag football. So the first question is—isn’t it already legal? You’d be surprised how many people have asked me this in the aftermath of last month’s referendum on legalization, which passed by 68 percent of the vote in Cook County and 73 percent in Chicago. Unfortunately, that was a nonbinding advisory referendum. I’d say it was worthless except that the results should shoot down any attempt by anyone not named Rauner to argue that the public is against legalization. I’ll get to the Rauner situation, but first, another question—isn’t there already a bill to legalize it in the works? Yes. State rep Kelly Cassidy and state senator Heather Steans—two north-side Democrats—have been dutifully crafting a bill for several months. “We’re in a holding pattern,” says Cassidy. “We’re continuing to work out a draft. But there are a lot of factors at play.” With all due respect to Cassidy and Steans, if it were up to me, I’d have legalized marijuana years ago for the simple fact that it’s grossly unfair and unjust to have a situation where black people are routinely arrested for something that white people get away with doing all the time. The only sensible solution is legalization, unless you want to start arresting white kids in Winnetka

as though they were black kids in Englewood. And I doubt even Rauner wants to do that. After all, he lives in Winnetka. Also, it’s time once and for all to end the so-called war on drugs that has been savagely destroying too many lives, families, and neighborhoods for too many years. Now that I think about it—had cops treated kids in Winnetka like kids in Englewood, the war on drugs would have been ended years ago. Alas, the legislature is ﬁlled with nervous Nellies— they’re afraid to vote for legalization because someone, somewhere, might accuse them of being soft on crime. Cassidy and Steans are trying to calm the nerves of these legislative worrywarts by ironing out a few wrinkles in their bill, such as making sure that whatever revenue the state raises from taxing reefer helps pay for adequate drug-prevention education in our schools. “We can’t just have a just-say-no-to-drugs approach, which is how they did it when you and I were in school,” says Cassidy. God bless you, Kelly Cassidy. You’re just being nice to me. You know I’m at least a generation older than you are. The anti-pot-smoking teaching device of my youth wasn’t Nancy Reagan’s just-say-no admonition but a don’t-do-it-or-you’ll-be-sorry movie called Reefer Madness. As I recall, the antidrug part of health class came soon after the unit on basic human reproduction, which featured a riveting slide show on the fertilization of the egg by the sperm. Leading 11-year-old me to proclaim— why am I always the last to know these things?

In retrospect I realize that Reefer Madness probably d i d m o re h a r m than good to the antidrug cause, as the general conclusion of the older kids was that it was way more hilarious to watch when you were stoned. By the way, one revealing tidbit that Cassidy and Steans have unearthed in their research on the subject is that studies show teenage consumption of marijuana goes down in states where it’s legalized. “There are two basic reasons,” Cassidy explains. “One, it loses its cachet if it’s legal. And, two, it’s harder to obtain. I mean, the drug dealer on the street is not asking for your ID.” So now that we’ve pretty much eliminated any reason to oppose legalization, why won’t it pass? That brings us back to Governor Rauner, who vows to veto a legalization bill. And since there aren’t enough Democrats to override his veto, house speaker Michael Madigan probably won’t let it be called for a vote. Why is Rauner so opposed to legalization? There’s his stated reason—it would lead to more teenage use. We’ve already dealt with that. And there’s his probable unstated reason—he wants to look tough for his Republican base, which is still mad at him for signing the reproductive rights bill HB 40 last fall. Guess the base is still ﬁghting the culture wars of the 60s. If it were up to me I’d introduce a bill, if only because Rauner vetoes are so entertainingly hypocritical to watch. We learned that last year, when he vetoed the income tax hike only to hold a press conference with Mayor Rahm to celebrate the distribution of revenue to schools after Madigan did the hard work of rounding up the votes to override him. But Madigan doesn’t see the world the way I do—at least not when it comes to legalization. And he’d just as soon not put his Democratic caucus members in a tough situation where they’d have to vote the way their constituents want only to be hit with a barrage of Rauner-funded campaign mailings calling them soft on crime. So the war on drugs continues—reefer madness, indeed. For what it’s worth, J.B. Pritzker—Rauner’s Democratic opponent—says he supports legalization. Like I said, one more reason for change at the top. v

@joravben

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‘Cannabis candidate’ flames out I fell in love with Benjamin Wolf—then I got burned. By HUNTER STUART

was almost immediately hooked last month when I first saw a campaign ad for Chicago congressional candidate Benjamin Thomas Wolf showing him smoking a joint in front of an American flag. “Legalize Cannabis. Vote March 20,” the ad said. Wolf looked smart and sophisticated. In media interviews and on his social media pages, he said he was a former FBI agent and Iraq veteran who had also worked overseas as a “presidential envoy” with the U.S. State Department. He also claimed to be a “professor of human rights” at Roosevelt University. He had photos of himself with three smiling children. In early March, I tweeted Wolf’s weed ad, which had earned him the nickname the “Cannabis Candidate” in the press; it got retweeted more than 2,400 times. Wolf soon messaged me: “Thanks for your support. You should stop by the office!” I was excited and flattered to meet him. So that night I went to his Ukrainian Village office at 2048 W. Chicago, where Wolf greeted me warmly. He was tall and handsome. The walls were adorned with framed letters

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attesting to his service in foreign countries. He had an acoustic guitar on the couch and a cute dog named Muddy romping around. We talked. He started boasting about his overseas experiences, noting that he’d saved Peace Corps volunteers during a coup in Guinea. He said he’d been one of the ﬁrst FBI agents saving lives at the Pentagon on 9/11. He told me he’d moved to Chicago ﬁve years ago from

Washington, D.C., to finish his PhD in international psychology. Wolf was sure he was going to win on March 20. The current Fifth District congressman, Democrat Mike Quigley, he said, “is old and doesn’t show up to events.” Sameena Mustafa, another opponent, “is just a real estate agent,” he added. I was sold. I’m a cannabis supporter, and it was great seeing a former law enforcement guy embrace it so

openly. I especially liked that Wolf spoke of the need not just to legalize weed but to destigmatize it. I read quotes from an interview he did with CNN where he said marijuana “allowed him to be gentler, a better father, a better partner . . . and much more empathic.” I could relate to that. I felt like he was someone who could represent my interests in the nation’s capital as soon as next year. But then I started getting Twitter messages telling me to look into Wolf’s background. Roosevelt University deleted his faculty page. “He’s never been a professor here,” a spokeswoman told me when I called to ask why. “He tutored one student for a little while in 2016, that’s it.” I started digging into Wolf’s role at the State Department. He has indeed served in dozens of countries, and he has framed certiﬁcates in his office commending him for his service in Guinea and in the gulf coast after Hurricane Katrina. He also toured with former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. Other claims were harder to verify. Officials with the State Department declined to comment on whether he had been “appointed a Presidential Envoy” or served as “a United Nations liaison” or “personal staff member to multiple Secretaries of State,” as a Wolf campaign press release says. But a State Department agent who’d served with Wolf in West Africa (and asked not to be named) cast doubt on some of claims made by Wolf on his LinkedIn page. Wolf says he was a “security and human rights attache [who] acted as the lead area expert within . . . West Africa providing both information to the ambassador of the United States and the National Security Council.” “There is no such thing as a human rights attache,” the agent said. “That role doesn’t exist.” As to whether Wolf served as a presidential envoy in West Africa, the agent said, “That’s crazy.” When I asked Wolf about the claims, he pointed to his commendations from the U.S. government and clariﬁed that he had been a special agent in the Diplomatic Security Service, the law enforcement arm of the State Department. As to whether he’d ever served in the U.S. military, he blamed a campaign staffer for language in a press release saying he was an “Iraq veteran” and had been “deployed” there. However, he later told the Tribune that those terms don’t only apply to military service. I was fast falling out of love. I also researched a tip that Wolf had doxxed a woman to thousands of his social media followers. I went to his office the following Monday to discuss it with him. “Get out,” he told a cluster of campaign staff when I walked in. Wolf admitted he’d posted the home address of a woman who interned for his campaign, but said he had done so “by accident.” The woman had threatened his family, Wolf said, and he “had her arrested”—which was “really hard for

him.” He said some of his supporters had wanted to testify on his behalf, and that’s why he posted the police case numbers to social media, but he had mistakenly posted her address too. The woman, Katerina Coates, said Wolf’s claims against her are false. In a later interview with Politico, she said that Wolf physically and emotionally abused her, once even throwing her to the ground and standing on her chest. Wolf denied abusing Coates. Still, she pointed to other women with similar claims about Wolf’s behavior. Many of them declined to speak publicly out of fear of retaliation. I found out other things he claimed weren’t true. He has called himself “a former FBI agent.” But FBI Chicago special agent Janine Wheeler told me that there had only been “a non-special agent professional support employee at the FBI by that name”—much different than an actual agent. Wolf was adamant that he was at the Pentagon on 9/11. He offered to put me in touch with his supervisor but never did, and said because there were no cell phone cameras at the time—and he was busy saving lives—he didn’t have a picture. As stories of Wolf ’s lies exploded in the media a couple weeks before the primary, my disillusionment was complete. Mustafa issued a statement calling Wolf a “liar with a history of violence” who shouldn’t be trusted. But Wolf had told me that even negative media attention was a good thing. I sent him the Politico article, and he seemed OK with all the coverage. “Oh man, you ARE really getting a lot of attention!” I texted. “Amazing,” he responded. I sent the Politico and Tribune articles to a campaign staffer I’d met in Wolf’s office. “After learning of this, I am no longer with the campaign,” he said, and asked me not to print his name. The next day, on March 8, Wolf posted a few updates to his social media pages. He posted a photo of a wolf to his Twitter page. “I care about people and families, not politics, corporations or the chicago establishment. The people need healthcare, they want cannabis, they hope for free education. I’m ﬁghting for them. Rahm and the establishment are afraid we might win. They are ﬁghting back. #VoteWolf” Then his social media pages went dark. On March 10, Wolf appeared at a forum hosted by the Northcenter Chamber of Commerce. According to video of that event, the moderator asked Wolf to respond to news articles that had accused him of padding his resumé and of “escalating and abusive behavior” toward a former campaign intern. “There was a woman on our campaign staff who had to be removed because she was interested in having a relationship with me,” Wolf says in the video. “We explained to her that that was not appropriate.”

When the forum ends, a man in the audience can be seen yelling at Wolf, “The first time I met you, you called me pathetic in front of my four-year-old. The second time I met you, you asked someone to physically assault me. Why should people vote for you?” Wolf doesn’t answer, and he heads toward the exit. “You’re a stain on this district, sir,” the man shouts. Wolf doesn’t seem to have made any public appearances after that. He skipped a March 12 forum for Fifth District candidates hosted by the Wrightwood Neighbors Association, according to Robin Dusek, a local lawyer who had used Twitter to try to discredit Wolf. On March 19, after ten days of silence on social media, Wolf did put in some last requests for votes. “Chicago. Cook County. DuPage County. Vote tomorrow for #cannabis!” one tweet read. He didn’t post anything on Election Day. He later told me he spent election night at his Wicker Park loft with friends and family, watching the news, listening to music, and “enjoying a variety of cannabis products.” For some reason, I wasn’t invited. Quigley won, with 63,000 votes, about 63 percent of the vote. Mustafa came in second, with 25 percent of the vote, and Wolf came in third, with more than 9 percent of vote—or about 9,500 votes. According to property records, Wolf has since sold his Chicago apartment. On April 5, I talked to him for the first time since the election. He told me he was in Ohio with his family and that he had no hard plans to return to Chicago anytime soon. He said he was disappointed he didn’t win and blamed his loss partly on young people in the district who didn’t go to the polls on March 20. Less than 15 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds in the city voted in the primary, a spokesman for the Chicago Board of Elections said. However, Wolf was rejected the same night voters in Cook County overwhelmingly voted in favor of an advisory referendum encouraging Illinois make recreational marijuana legal. Wolf’s campaign office in Ukrainian Village has been shuttered since March 20; he said he’d like to see it used as a cannabis dispensary. He may run for office again in the future, he said, but in the near term he might start “a hemp or cannabis farm” in southern Illinois so he can “commune with nature,” or travel. “I need to reconnect with relatives and friends I’ve neglected,” he said. “I have dreams of going back overseas to work in human rights or of finding a project in Africa that’s a good fit.” He also mentioned returning to D.C. to “be a professor.” Wolf said he wasn’t in debt, and that he’d submitted his final FEC filing and closed his campaign account. As for me, I’ll think twice before cozying up to a candidate just because he or she smokes weed on camera. But honestly, I can’t say I wouldn’t volunteer for the next politician who demonstrates the strength of his or her convictions by publicly lighting up. v

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Bathed in bud Is soaking in marijuana-infused bath salts worth the weed it takes to make them? By MELANIE LAFORCE

discovered marijuana-infused bath products on a hazy trip to Portland in 2016. Taking advantage of my ﬁrst visit to a state where recreational marijuana is legal, I greedily snapped up every THC-endowed product my arms could carry: Marijuana gummies! Pot tea! Cannabis cupcakes! Weed honey! At the (now closed) Pur Roots Dispensary in Northeast Portland, my eyes settled on the bath and beauty products enclosed in a glass case. “This has weed in it?” I asked the shopkeeper incredulously, pointing at a package of Empower Black Label Epsom bath salts. I love both leisurely bath time and marijuana’s antianxiety effects—would it really be possible to combine the two? “It does,” she replied warmly. I dropped my voice to a whisper. “Does it go in through the vagina?” She stared back at me blankly. “It enters through your dermis,” she said. Turning to my husband, I added furtively, “It totally goes in through the vagina.” I wasn’t very scientific when I tried my first dose of marijuana-infused bath salts. I gleefully dumped the entire package into a tubful of hot water, then settled in with a glass of cheap Malbec and my one-hitter. Within ten minutes I was drunk, high, and sweating profusely into the lavender-scented water. But I couldn’t tell for sure whether it was the salts that had put me in such a great mood. Maybe it was the wine, the toking, or even the Cheetos I kept dropping into the tub. Chicago’s cold and seemingly endless winter made another warm weed bath appealing, and this time, I opted to make my own marijuana bath salts. Using a recipe adapted from the blog Cannabis Cheri (cannabischeri.com), run by medical marijuana patient and food professional Cheri Sicard, I whipped up a quick batch in the kitchen. The bath salts are relatively simple to concoct: you just mix good old-fashioned Epsom salts with any weed-infused oil. To make the weed oil itself requires a few steps, but it’s easy to master. First, I baked an eighth of an ounce of marijuana ﬂower (bud) to activate its THC, the active ingredient in pot that gets you high. Cannabis Cheri recommends baking bud at 240 degrees for two hours. Next, I mixed the baked bud with a half cup of grapeseed oil in the top half of a double boiler (or substitute a bowl placed over a pot of boiling water). You can also

16 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 19, 2018

use coconut, olive, or any other food-grade oils (and then use the leftover oil to make brownies). Using a double boiler prevents the weed and oil from getting too hot and cooking all the THC out. The combination of baking and double boiling fully activates all the happy cannabinoids and infuses them into the oil. After 45 minutes, I judged the bud was sufficiently infused, and strained the weed oil through a mesh sieve (cheesecloth also works) to remove the solids. Finally, I mixed the weed oil directly into the Epsom salts. You can get creative here—I added lavender and geranium essential oils for a fancy spalike fragrance, and even grated fresh ginger directly into the Epsom salts. To top it off, I added some dried Russian sage from my yard. To better gauge the impact of the bath salts, I scheduled two more baths: one on Saturday with plain Epsom salts, and one on Sunday with the marijuana version. I vowed not to drink any booze or smoke any pot before or during either bath. Saturday’s bath was pleasant and cozy. I forced myself to remain in the tub for at least a half hour, until my ﬁngers developed an extrapruny look. On Sunday, I set the exact same atmosphere: one candle burning on the edge of the bathtub, the lights off to give the room a nice, dim lagoon vibe. I dumped two cups of homemade marijuana bath salts into the tub and stepped in. I’d forgotten that Epsom salts mixed with oil make the bathtub very slippery, and nearly cracked my head open in the process. But I recovered myself and nestled into the warm water, trying to relax. Lying back, I watched pieces of Russian sage and grated ginger swirl among the oil clouds. The water appeared herby and pleasantly witchy. (My husband, who came in after my pit bull barged in and started slurping up the water, frankly deemed it “disgusting.”) I inhaled deeply. The essential oils mixed with dank indica, a family of strains known for inducing a “body high”—aka “couch lock”—gave my bathroom an earthy scent.

As the minutes ticked by, I found myself more relaxed than I’d been during the previous day’s bath. I felt a bit like a luxurious Exxon mermaid, given the oil slick permeating my skin. After about 20 minutes, I caught myself thinking about Girl Scout cookies. “Am I high?,” I asked myself. I couldn’t decide. After about 35 minutes, to ensure the continutity of my scientific experiment, I dragged myself begrudgingly out of the bathtub. I toweled off, and immediately headed down to the fridge to consume three string cheese sticks. “It’s the bath’s fault,” I explained to my husband through a mouthful of cheese. But although I wanted to blame the bath for my surge of the munchies, I had to acknowledge that I wasn’t really stoned. I did feel almost like I was floating, however. Light, yet grounded. Buoyant. So the bath seemed to have some additional relaxation benefits. There’s no solid science regarding most marijuana skin-care products (thanks, Big Pharma), so research on marijuana topicals like bath salts, oils, and body lotions remains scant. Most of the information available on the effects of marijuana skin-care products is anecdotal, although proponents of marijuana skin care claim that it has hydrating, anti-inflammatory, and possibly antibacterial effects. Experts have suggested that cannabis-infused products may help treat skin conditions like psoriasis, eczema, and dandruff but are quick to acknowledge that they don’t have psychoactive effects. Despite this, some weed bath products carry warnings that females could experience a slight high owing to vaginal exposure. Cannabis-derived bath products are available in Chicago, although they’re usually made with CBD (i.e., cannibidiol, the nonpsychoactive cannabinoid in marijuana) rather than THC. CBD is legal in most states, and may provide many of the same benefits of THC without the high. Cloud Vapor Lounge in Logan Square offers a CBD bath soak for $21 and a CBD body wash for $30. You can also purchase fizzy CBD bath bombs at the Bucktown, Andersonville, and Boystown locations of CBD Kratom (cbdkratomshops.com), where they come in a variety of CBD doses and range from $16 to $30. CBD bath products are readily found online as well, at sites like the CBD Boutique (thecbdboutique.com). If you have a medical marijuana card, some dispensaries in Chicago do offer THC-infused topicals. Columbia Care Illinois sells a THC body oil for $24. A staff member told me customers can also buy RSO, or “Rick Simpson oil,” an extremely potent marijuana oil (named for the Canadian weed activist who devised a simple extraction method), which some patients use to make bath bombs. If you’re looking to experience marijuana’s most wellknown effects, however, you’re much better off smoking or ingesting the stuff. Judging from my experiment, a marijuana bath won’t really get you stoned, and many would consider it an unfortunate waste of perfectly good weed. Might it be the best bath of your life regardless? I certainly relaxed, though it’s difficult to tell whether that was due to the weed or simply a placebo effect. I saved enough bath salts for one more try. This time I’ll bring back the cheap wine and the one-hitter, and definitely the Cheetos. That should make it even better than my last soak. v

m @rileycoyote

P A R E N T A L

HERE ARE THE

A D V I S O R Y REAL FACTS E X P L I C I T WA R N I N G F R O M M E D I CA L P R O F E S S I O N A L S

ABOUT CANNABIS :

FROM 1990s. THE THE HIGHLY HIGHLYPOTENT POTENTMARIJUANA MARIJUANAOF OFTODAY TODAYISISDIFFERENT DIFFERENT FROM THE 1990s. Marijuana THC in states states that have have commercialized commercialized Marijuanaﬂower ﬂoweraverages averages more more than 20% THC it, it, dab/wax/shatter, to 90%THC. and THC. andprocessed processedcannabis, cannabis, dab/wax/shatter, upup to 99.9% Usage by by kids and with retail retailmarijuana marijuanasales. sales. Usage kids andyoung youngadults adultshas hasincreased increased with Marijuana suicides, Marijuanaisisthe thenumber numberone onesubstance substance found found in in Colorado Colorado suicides, ages old. ages10-19 10-19 years years old.

BIOHAZARD

Marijuana products have been found to be contaminated with fungus, heavy metals, pesticides and chemicals.

4/20 events

WARNING

Marijuana harms the unborn child, and concentrates in breast milk.

Things to do for weed week By READER STAFF Don’t Kid Yourself: Drugs Are Bad This sketch comedy show ﬁnds inspiration in stories from the performers’ childhoods. “Drugs are bad” is the timely theme this month. Fri 4/20, 7:30-10:30 PM, Volumes Bookcafe, 1474 N. Milwaukee, 773-6978066, volumesbooks.com. F

Four Twenty Extrava-Ganja The Herbal Care Center opens its doors to existing and potential medicinal cannabis patients. Product sales and referral bonuses apply all weekend long, and on 4/20 itself, anyone who shows up with a completed application receives free ﬁngerprinting and photo services. Complimentary massages keep spirits high. Fri 4/20, noon-6 PM, the Herbal Care Center, 1301 S. Western, 773-7244200, theherbalcarecenter.com. F Lucy Lux Canna Kitchen Chef Lucy Lux serves multiple courses and cocktails, all infused with THC. Miscellaneous edibles available for purchase. For tickets, visit tickettailor.com/events/ lucyluxcannakitchen. Fri 4/20, 4:30-10:30 PM, location TBA, $75. MOCA Special 420 Performance Modern Cannabis Dispensary (MOCA) rewards its patients

WARNING with two days of concerts. On Thursday, the Psychedelic Summit features Grateful Dead tribute band Terrapin Flyer and punk band Zebu! On Friday, hip-hop artist Mick Jenkins takes the stage alongside DJ Green Sllime. Thu 4/19-Fri 4/20, 8 PM, Emporium Arcade Bar, 1366 N. Milwaukee, 773-697-7922, emporiumchicago.com, $5. Sam Tallent This Colorado comic jokes about crazy Uber drivers and unfortunate tattoos. He’s been featured in the Cannabist and Vice. Fri 4/20, 8-11:30 PM, and Sat 4/21, 7:30-11 PM, the Comedy Bar, 500 N. LaSalle, 312-836-0499, comedybarchicago.com, $20. Tweakfest Avery Brewing Company is celebrating 4/20 by pairing its Imperial coﬀee stout, Tweak, with free brownies. Fri 4/20, 4:20 PM, Bangers & Lace, 1670 W. Division, 773-252-6499, bangersandlacechicago.com. F Waldos Forever Fest! Spend the day dancing to live music, munching from food trucks, and learning cannabis-friendly facts—like why 4/20 is signiﬁcant to weed culture. Presented by Do312 and 1833. Fri 4/20, 10 AM-9 PM, W. Ainslie at N. Clark. F

Marijuana can trigger violence in those with PTSD or make PTSD worse.

WARNING

Marijuana smoke is associated with lung disease and some cancers.

WARNING

Marijuana has been shown to decrease IQ in younger users.

WARNING

Marijuana can cause mental illness and is associated with onset of schizophrenia. Marijuana is implicated in psychosis, suicide and homicide. WARNING

Marijuana can cause cyclic vomiting.

WARNING

Marijuana is linked to increased driving fatalities.

CAUTION

Legal marijuana brought increased use by 8th, 10th graders in Washington, according to JAMA Pediatrics, Feb 2017.

WARNING

Marijuana harms the developing adolescent and young adult brain.

MARIJUANA DOES NOT CURE CANCER. MARIJUANA DOES NOT HELP COMMON PAIN CONDITIONS. MARIJUANA IS NOT CURBING THE OPIOID CRISIS; COLORADO HAD RECORD NUMBERS OF OVERDOSE DEATHS IN 2016 AND 2017. Dedicated to those who have lost loved ones due to marijuana. To join the pushback against cannabis, visit PopPot.org & MomsStrong.org. Learnmore: more: SAM-Lessons-Learned-From-Marijuana-Legalization-Digital SAM-Lessons-Learned-From-Marijuana-Legalization-Digital.pdf Learn

APRIL 19, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 17

ARTS & CULTURE

Sasha Smith and Breon Arzell in Aristophanesathon é JOHN TAFLAN

THEATER

Everything but nasty

By TONY ADLER

18 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 19, 2018

b ALL AGES

OPERA

Lovers, liars, and clowns

Donizetti’s Il Pigmalione and Rita demonstrate two versions of love.

In four hours, the Aristophanesathon never cracks the whimsy barrier.

y comparison to their 2014 All Our Tragic, the Hypocrites’ Aristophanesathon is a wee little thing: running just over four hours where its predecessor lasted 12, featuring six performers as opposed to 14, and, most significantly, pulling together a mere 11 extant plays by a single ancient Greek—way down from AOT’s 32 by three. Still, I found the Aristophanesathon harder to sit through than All Our Tragic, even though Sean Graney (who adapted and directed both) has built two food breaks into the new show, as well as regular audience stretches and the assurance that we’re allowed to visit the in-theater bar or grab a snack anytime we want. Each of the Aristophanesathon’s three episodes is timed to last just 70 minutes; a seasoned audient should be able to do that standing on his or her head. I’m seasoned. I even like a good marathon. (One of my all-time-favorite theater experiences was the English Shakespeare Company’s 21-hour Wars of the Roses, presented at the late, lamented International Theatre Festival of Chicago.) Yet this one felt like a slog. Why? Lots of reasons. But one enormous one has to do with the material. All Our Tragic was a distillation of the surviving works by three great classical tragedians—Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides—whose story lines people know even when they don’t know they know them, since they revolve around iconic events like the Trojan War and mythic ﬁgures like Oedipus, Electra, and Herakles. Graney had both name recognition and familiar

READER RECOMMENDED

tales to draw on there—really, the bedrock of Western culture. The Aristophanesathon is a different matter. As the title suggests, it’s culled from what remain of Aristophanes’s satires, which also happen to be all that remains of the Attic genre called Old Comedy. Anybody who’s been to school is likely to know his biggest hit, Lysistrata, in which Athenian women organize a sex strike to get their men to stop making war. Most of us go woozy or completely blank, however, when it comes to the other ten. What’s more, Aristophanes’s plays don’t yield a ready-made narrative arc, the way, say, the tragedies about the house of Atreus do. They’re one-offs, unified more by their author’s savage, ribald, absurd sensibility than any ongoing plot. So maintaining momentum over 250 minutes becomes a challenge. How do you get people to stay excited about returning to their seats after the dinner and snack breaks? Graney’s got two strategies. One is to tie the three episodes together by taking a handful of characters from various sources, turning them into a family, and having them recur throughout. Chief among these is Praxagora, originally the heroine of Aristophanes’s Ecclesiazusæ (women disguise themselves as men, infiltrate the Athenian city council, and rearrange things). Graney’s version of her appears first as a precocious 11-year-old, redistributing treasury money from the military to the poor and ending a plague of flies with the help of her mother’s pet jumbo dung beetle. Next, in the strongest section of the evening, we see her as a prominent mid-

dle-aged politician, pitted against a Trumplike xenophobe who wouldn’t mind seeing her dead. In the ﬁnal passage, she’s president of all Greece, going on expeditions to Hades and the cloud nation of the birds. For all that, Praxagora turns out to be a poor peg to hang an epic on, in large part because Kate Carson-Groner never manages to establish her as a force to be reckoned with. Even as her life’s trajectory is taking her from political prodigy to cosmos-hopping stateswoman, Carson-Groner’s Praxagora feels hapless, passive, even a little tired—someone dragging herself through amazing adventures. Which (a) puts her in odd opposition to the dynamism of Sasha Smith and Aja Wiltshire as her mom and sister respectively, and (b) makes all too plain Praxagora’s structural status as little more than a device for taping the show together. Graney’s other interest-building strategy will be familiar to anyone who’s seen his work of the last few years, particularly his very successful forays into Gilbert and Sullivan: a heightened—even hopped-up—playfulness. A goofy cartoon aesthetic that privileges bad puns, ukuleles, audience response, and heavy ingratiation. In a way, it’s only appropriate that he use it here too, since Aristophanes’s plays were performed at Lenaia: festivals dedicated to Dionysus and celebrated with revels. But the sweetness of it all begins to seem disingenuous as the Aristophanesathon’s modern-day political intentions kick in, until, during the final episode, you feel as if you’ve been interned at a bizarrely jolly reeducation camp. Aristophanes had political intentions too, and often whimsical ways of expressing them. But he was also unafraid to be a nasty motherfucker. This show never ﬁnds its nasty motherfuckerness. v ARISTOPHANESATHON Through 5/27: Fri-Sat 6:30 PM, Sun 4 PM, Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division, the-hypocrites.com, $60 “includes a light meal and snacks.”

CHICAGO OPERA THEATER’S double bill of two rarely performed one-act operas by Gaetano Donizetti presents the composer’s first work, Il Pigmalione (written in 1816 when he was 19 years old), and one of his last, the farce Rita (written in 1841). They’re both about love—one idealized, the other gone wrong— and COT has attempted to link them with a tough-to-pull-off intermission performance by members of the 500 Clown troupe, who also function as a silent, comic chorus in Rita. Il Pigmalione, based on the myth about an artist obsessed with his own creation, is a halfhour solo by the lovesick sculptor capped by ten more interesting minutes of interaction with the object of his affection after she comes to life. Tenor Javier Abreu (the artist) and soprano Angela Mortellaro (the statue) are superb, but the piece is mostly a slog. Rita, on the other hand, is mostly a hoot. It features Mortellaro as the take-charge title character, Abreu as her subservient goof of a husband, and adds a third excellent singer-actor, baritone Keith Phares, as Rita’s deliciously hateful previous husband. It’s all greatly aided by William Boles’s charming cafe set, evoking Italy’s Amalfi coast circa 1950, and Shanna Foster’s smart costumes. Both operas are sung in Italian; Rita has spoken dialogue updated by COT. Amy Hutchison is the director; Francesco Milioto conducts a 29-piece orchestra —DEANNA ISAACS R IL PIGMALIONE & RITA Fri 4/20, 7:30 PM, and Sun 4/22, 3 PM, Studebaker Theater, 410 S. Michigan, 312-704-8414, chicagooperatheater.org, $45-$145. Il Pigmalione é LIZ LAUREN

m @taadler

ARTS & CULTURE 9 to 5 the Musical

THEATER

é EMILY SCHWARTZ

For better or for worse—but R mostly better

An engaging revival of Company explores the theme of marriage as partnership. The Mercury Theater gives its new Venus Cabaret space a stellar launch with this engaging, imaginatively staged rendition of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s landmark 1970 concept musical. The cozy, nightclublike venue (carved out of the former Cullen’s Bar & Grill) brings out the best aspects of this revuelike collection of sketches and songs exploring the theme of marriage as partnership, for better and for worse. The show’s focus is on Robert, a 35-year-old bachelor, and his friendships with five heterosexual couples, whose complicated, competitive, sometimes combative relationships seem to provide Robert with prima facie evidence as to why he should avoid taking the plunge, even as his emotional isolation grows increasingly unbearable. Furth’s script (originally penned as a suite of plays, and transformed into a musical theater libretto under the guidance of the original director, Harold Prince) feels remarkably contemporary, by turns hilariously satiric and emotionally pungent, in the capable hands of director L. Walter Stearns and his excellent 14-member ensemble. With his broad, toothsome smile, David Sajewich is a wonderful Robert—always eager to please the people he’s keeping company with, yet always feeling like an outsider trying to crack the codes they use to communicate with each other. Sondheim’s intricate, pop-flavored score is well sung under the musical direction of Eugene Dizon, who also leads a piano-bass-woodwind trio; though I missed the driving energy that a drummer would have added, I greatly appreciated hearing Sondheim’s brilliant songs delivered without amplification, which enhances the intimate connection between actors and audience that is this production’s greatest strength. —ALBERT WILLIAMS COMPANY Through 6/3: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2:30 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2:30 PM, Mercury Theater Chicago, 3745 N. Southport, 773-325-1700, mercurytheaterchicago.com, $50-$65.

Southern. Like Southern, Erlbach is a heavy-duty iconoclast. Before The Doppelgänger is over, no sacred cow is left unslaughtered. Also like Southern, Erlbach puts his comedy in the service of a theme usually deemed too serious for farce. In Dr. Strangelove (for which Southern wrote the screenplay) it was nuclear war. In this play, it’s the postcolonial exploitation of African nations for their natural resources. Sadly, Erlbach—or Erlbach as interpreted by director Tina Landau and her ensemble—lacks Southern’s lighthearted spirit. Where Southern loves puckishly mocking foolish mortals, Erlbach lapses into annoying, earnest moralizing. Parts of the play are very funny. Erlbach delights in packing in references to other, earlier comic writers and actors—Danny Kaye, Abbott and Costello, Peter Sellers, even Dr. Seuss. (James Vincent Meredith’s killingly funny send-up of a wheelchair-bound African dictator owes much to Sellers’s Strangelove.) But whenever things get too funny, Erlbach, Landau, and company slam on the brakes. It is as if they, like our Puritan ancestors, get nervous whenever they see people having too much fun. They don’t seem to understand what Southern, Ludlam, and the rest knew in their souls: that comedy is all about revealing the repressed, expressing all the awful things we all try to keep hidden away. Instead they remind us that we’re here to condemn “blood diamonds,” “blood lithium” and other horrors of postcolonial Africa. —JACK HELBIG THE DOPPELGÄNGER (AN INTERNATIONAL FARCE) Through 5/27: Wed-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 and 7:30 PM, Tue 7:30 PM, Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, steppenwolf.org, $54-$112.

Double trouble

R A blood-curdling masterpiece

In his dark comedy about an avaricious, ill-tempered British plutocrat who switches places with a sweet, mild-mannered American kindergarten teacher (both played with considerable comic verve by Rainn Wilson), Matthew-Lee Erlbach pays homage to a brace of farceurs, among them Eugène Marin Labiche, Georges Feydeau, Joe Orton, Charles Ludlam, and Michael Frayn. But the writer he most closely resembles is Terry

By a despicable margin, America has the highest rate of female incarceration in the world. Only in the past few years have the nation’s criminal justice institutions begun to acknowledge how decades of draconian sentencing practices have positioned the United States as a despotic outlier among nations of the developed world when it comes to “correcting” its criminal oﬀenders—and the unfriendly environment it introduces them to upon release. Boo Killebrew’s airtight, blood-curdling new mas-

Steppenwolf’s The Doppelgänger doesn’t take its farce seriously enough.

Lettie is one of the great distinctly Chicago plays of our generation.

terpiece uses the broken criminal justice system as a backdrop, then zooms in on what is indisputably one of the most exacting and holistic character studies onstage this year. Desperate to reclaim a role in her teenage children’s lives after seven years in lockup, Lettie (Caroline Neﬀ) navigates sobriety, a skeptical workplace, and the demons of her past under Job-like pressure while living in a transitional-housing complex with a partner in fate (Charin Alvarez). Her kids (Krystal Ortiz and Matt Farabee) have all but forgotten her, and their devoutly Christian guardians (Kirsten Fitzgerald and Ryan Kitley) are loathe to reintroduce such a volatile force into their young lives, custodial rights be damned. Chay Yew’s Victory Gardens production is one of those rare and spectacular alignments of narrative, performance, and direction that makes audiences empathize with each and every one of its characters while exonerating none of them. Killebrew set out to write the untold story of working-class women in America; in doing so, I believe she has also penned one of the great distinctly Chicago plays of our generation. —DAN JAKES LETTIE Through 5/6: Wed-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Tue 7:30 PM, Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln, 773-871-3000, victorygardens. org, $27-$56.

R #ThemToo

Three women fight back against sexual harassment—1970s style—in 9 to 5 the Musical. Firebrand Theatre, which calls itself “the world’s first Equity musical theatre company committed to employing and empowering women on and off the stage,” closes its inaugural season with an incredibly uplifting and of-the-moment musical comedy based on the 1980 film. Penned by Patricia Resnick, with music and lyrics by Dolly Parton, the show had a short run on Broadway in 2009. Firebrand’s production, under artistic director Harmony France’s direction, makes a stunning first impression with its cast’s gender and racial diversity. Playing narrator Doralee (Parton’s role in the movie), a charismatic, straight-shooting Sharriese Hamilton paints a picture of life at Consolidated Companies, a typical 1979 workplace where women are confined to secretarial roles and subject to a disturbing level of harassment that’s more overt than what we’re used to in 2018 but still unnervingly familiar and uncomfortable

to watch. The chief perpetrator is boss Mr. Hart, played by a slimy and bumbling Scott Danielson. For Doralee, the harassment takes the form of demeaning ogling and groping. For veteran Violet, played by a commanding Anne Sheridan Smith, it’s being passed over for a promotion. For newbie Judy, played by a wide-eyed and anguished Sara Reinecke, it’s verbal abuse that adds insult to injury after her husband leaves her for his secretary. The three women eventually band together with a wacky plan to take control of their destinies, and the journey is an alchemic mix of cockeyed optimism, admirable grit, and empowering song-and-dance numbers. As Mr. Hart’s devotee Roz, Veronica Garza steals the show from an already inspired cast, eliciting uncontrollable laughing ﬁts with her rendition of “Heart to Hart.” —MARISSA OBERLANDER 9 TO 5 THE MUSICAL Through 5/20: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee, 872-903-3473, ﬁrebrandtheatre.org, $45.

R Earplugs included

33 to Nothing’s speakers go up to 11.

Grant James Varjas’s 33 to Nothing begins with a warning: This is a show about a rock band’s real-time rehearsal, and it gets very loud in A Red Orchid’s tight space. The production kicks off with an explosion of sound as the musicians immediately get to work before putting each other through intense emotional labor. Complimentary earplugs are provided on each of the seats. Affectionately described by lead singer Gray (a belligerent, despondent Aaron Holland) as “the gay Fleetwood Mac,” this group is falling apart as personal conflicts and dwindling audience numbers put its future in question. Tyrone Phillips’s direction captures how years of decaying friendships and bubbling resentments weigh down these bandmates. This comes through most heavily in the relationship between Gray and Bri (Steve Haggard, projecting gentle pity), exes whose flame hasn’t been fully extinguished. Amanda Raquel Martinez and Annie Prichard are convincing voices of reason trying to make their escape with minimal heartbreak, and Jeff Kurysz is a refreshing source of positivity as the band’s kindhearted, genderfluid drummer. This play with music features eight original songs written by Varjas with exuberant music direction by John Cicora, and they give the show a concert feel that elevates an otherwise traditional drama about artists in their 30s struggling to hold on to their dreams. It isn’t a groundbreaking plot, but this team explores it with a blend of subtlety and verve that highlights the complexity of the characters’ relationships with each other and their music. —OLIVER SAVA 33 TO NOTHING Through 5/27: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 N. Wells, 312-943-8722, aredorchidtheatre.org, $35. v

APRIL 19, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 19

ARTS & CULTURE

COMICS

All hail the Alpha King

Brian Azzarello and Three Floyds team up to brew some beer-fueled superhero mayhem.

By MARK PETERS

he location of my conversation with comics writer Brian Azzarello couldn’t have been more appropriate for our subject matter: We met at Andersonville’s Hopleaf—one of the best beer bars in the world—to discuss the forthcoming release of one of his current projects, the collected edition of Alpha King, an ongoing Image Comic series featuring characters based on Three Floyds beers. Azzarello writes the series with Three Floyds head brewer and cofounder Nick Floyd; it’s illustrated by Simon Bisley. Hopleaf also happens to be where, back in 2002, a bartender ﬁrst poured Azzarello a glass of Three Floyds’ Alpha King pale ale and told him, “You need to try this.” By the time we ﬁnished chatting about the story behind this weird comic and the rest of Azzarello’s long career, I’d found myself in an impromptu tasting session with Azzarello, Hopleaf owner Michael Roper, and some dude from Toppling Goliath Brewery in Decorah, Iowa. The rest was a drunken blur, but it was crystal clear why Azzarello, who every Hopleaf employee seemed to know by name, ended up writing a comic book about beer. With names like Lazersnake, Arctic Panzer

20 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 19, 2018

Alpha King and Moonshine é IMAGE COMICS

Wolf, Robert the Bruce, Gumballhead, Dark Lord, and of course Alpha King, Three Floyds’ beers suggest wild characters straight out of an issue of Conan the Barbarian. When the Three Floyds brewers decided they would actually do a comic, they turned to Azzarello, who had become friends with Floyd and Barnaby Struve, another Three Floyds brewer, thanks to their shared interests in beer, comics, and role-playing games. Azzarello seemed a natural choice: at 55, he’s made plenty of comics over his long career, including the now-classic noir series 100 Bullets, the Hulk story “Banner,” and a run of Wonder Woman that had a strong inﬂuence on last summer’s movie version with Gal Gadot. The conversation with Struve, however, didn’t go the way you’d think. “It wasn’t even me who was gonna do it originally,” Azzarello says. “Barnaby didn’t come to me saying, ‘Let’s do it.’ It was, ‘Do you know anybody who would want to do it?’ Yeah, me. I know your beers. I can write about your beers.” The result is a rollicking adventure, full of gore and humor, in which a mild-mannered Indiana brewer is transported to another reality where he discovers his true identity as the Alpha King—a muscular warrior in a barbaric world of sword-and-sorcery mayhem. Heads are lopped off, blood is spilled, and war is waged against the Rice King—a symbol of tasteless macro beers such as Budweiser. The humor is both smart and silly, and the visuals are visceral and bold and occasionally disgusting, thanks to Bisley, a British illustrator whose work is so metal it should be on the periodic table. There are already plans under way for a second arc of the comic, which will feature a different artist. The title suggests it will continue down the path of beer-soaked anarchy: Space Station Middle Finger, named for another of Three Floyds’ pale ales. Alpha King isn’t the only project Azzarello’s currently working on. He’s been busy with Moonshine, an ongoing series, also published by Image Comics. “It’s crazy, right?” he says. “I’m writing two books that are alcohol fueled.” The series returned from a yearlong hiatus in February, and a collected edition of its ﬁrst six issues will appear next month. “It takes place in Prohibition,” Azzarello explains. “A New York gangster is sent to the Appalachians to convince this moonshining family to make product for them. There’s some resistance, and there happens to be

werewolves in it too. And the lead character, this gangster, even during Prohibition, is an alcoholic and he’s prone to blackouts. So is he the werewolf?” The series explores this question and others in Azzarello’s naturalistic, no-BS, noir style that shines through in his other works such as Joker and Spaceman. It’s drawn by one of his long-term creative partners, Argentine artist Eduardo Risso. “I think he’s the best storyteller living right now,” says Azzarello. “His graphic storytelling is incredible, and I’m not just saying that because I work with him.” Risso relishes the chance to tell the story visually, Azzarello explains: “He doesn’t want me to write splash pages [panels that take up an entire page or two] and that kind of stuff, because he likes to tell the story on a page. He wants to lead the eye.” Their partnership is so comfortable that Azzarello doesn’t need to spell out every little visual in his scripts. Azzarello is working with another longtime creative partner, artist Lee Bermejo, on Batman: Damned, a series for DC’s new Black Label line. Azzarello describes the adult-focused line as “HBO for superheroes.” Its creators will get a chance to write self-contained stories that don’t tie into the oppressive, byzantine continuity of weekly comics, and they won’t have to play to 12-year-olds. That’s been a proven recipe for the best DC comics since the 80s with The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen. Azzarello loves the collaborative nature of comics, whether with Bermejo, Risso, or his buddies at Three Floyds. “I’ve been at this for such a long time,” he says. “Now what I work on is less important to me than who I’m working with. It’s the collaboration: that’s what gets me off. Not like, hey, I’m the Batman writer. I could give a shit.” As I excused myself from Hopleaf, buzzed to the gills, Azzarello seemed poised to continue drinking with Roper and his other buddies for the foreseeable future. Visitors to this year’s Dark Lord Day on May 19—the one day a year Dark Lord Imperial Stout is sold at Three Floyds Brewing Company in Munster, Indiana—will be able to buy a hardcover special edition of the Alpha King comic. That could make those long lines waiting to buy Dark Lord go a lot faster. v ALPHA KING Story by Brian Azzarello and Nick Floyd, art by Simon Bisley (Image)

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CHICAGO PALESTINE FILM FESTIVAL

Sat 4/21-Thu 5/3, Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800, siskelfilmcenter.org, $11.

ARTS & CULTURE MOVIES Kholoud Al-Faqih in The Judge

MOVIES

Past versus present, neighbor versus neighbor Cultural tensions abound at the Chicago Palestine Film Festival. By ANDREA GRONVALL

n this year’s eclectic Chicago Palestine Film Festival, two themes dominate: the tension between tradition and modernity, and the uneasy, often tragic relations between Palestinians and Israelis. The opening-night film, Annemarie Jacir’s crowd-pleasing Wajib (Sat 4/21, 8 PM), stars real-life father Mohammad Bakri (Since You’ve Been Gone, HBO’s The Night Of) and son Saleh Bakri (The Band’s Visit) as a Palestinian patriarch and his expatriate son, a hipster architect who reluctantly leaves his home and girlfriend in Italy to return to Nazareth for his sister’s marriage. The father, a born schmoozer, embraces the time-honored duty of hand-delivering wedding invitations, while the son, sporting a samurai topknot, rankles at his father’s friendships with Israelis and the diplomacy required to circumnavigate a warm but fractious community. In Writing on Snow (Thu 4/26, 8:15 PM), a bleak allegorical drama from Rashid Masharawi (Laila’s Birthday, Ticket to Jerusalem), ﬁve Palestinians with different politics take refuge in a Gaza home as bombs rain down on them. Tempers fray in this pressure-cooker situation, and one intolerant, gun-toting stranger (Amr Waked of Syriana and Lucy) soon poses a more immediate threat to the group’s survival.

Stephen Apkon and Andrew Young’s documentary Disturbing the Peace (Wed 4/25, 8:15 PM) generates some optimism with its focus on Combatants for Peace, a group of disenchanted ex-soldiers from the Israel Defense Forces; in 2006 it formed a coalition with Palestinian resistance ﬁghters who had studied nonviolent protest while imprisoned. The members are committed to stopping the cycle of violence and ending Israel’s presence in the occupied territories, but unsurprisingly this causes them grief at home and in the streets. The filmmakers privilege colorful visuals—demonstrators carry large puppets and use theater games to build trust among themselves—though their documentary could use a few substantive scenes about the group’s strategic planning. Erika Cohn’s revealing documentary The Judge (Thu 5/3, 7:45 PM) profiles Kholoud Al-Faqih, the first female Palestinian judge of sharia law. Her purview is domestic cases, and she often rules on women’s rights. Some of the more sensitive matters involve multiple marriages (under sharia law a husband may have up to four wives simultaneously, so he’d better have money). Her most harrowing experience was a divorce case that ended when the mentally unstable husband murdered his wife, an incident that Kholoud and her colleagues recall at the scene of the crime. The documentary follows Kholoud’s professional ups and downs, throughout which she remains shrewd, committed, and down-to-earth. v

A Bag of Marbles

This routine Holocaust drama is the second screen adaptation of Joseph Joffo’s 1973 novel, which recounted his experiences as a Jewish schoolboy enduring, and then fleeing, the Nazi occupation of Paris. Sons of the local barber, Joseph and his brother get into a schoolyard brawl over the yellow stars they’ve been forced to wear, but they begin to grasp the danger they’re in when their parents (Patrick Bruel, Elsa Zylberstein) give them a wad of cash and instruct them to head south and join their older brothers in Vichy France. During the movie’s production, the crew caused havoc in Nice by hanging a Nazi flag from the Palais des Rois Sardes; thankfully it was taken down before the French government could surrender again. Christian Duguay directed a screenplay by many hands. In French with subtitles. —J.R. JONES 110 min. Fri 4/20, 1:45 and 6 PM; Sat 4/21, 5:15 PM; Sun 4/22, 3 PM; Mon 4/23, 6 PM; Tue 4/24, 8 PM; and Wed 4/25-Thu 4/26, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

The Endless

Two brothers in San Diego who escaped from a UFO suicide cult ten years earlier decide that the time has come to return to the cult’s rural compound and see how everyone is making out; after they arrive, their old friends welcome them back, and one of the brothers decides things weren’t so bad there after all. The brothers—played by directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead—don’t seem much like trauma survivors (“I saved you from a

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cult—you’re welcome!” exclaims one), but the premise is good for a fair amount of suspense as the cult members’ gentle, understanding behavior begins to undercut the sinister picture painted of them earlier. Unfortunately the filmmakers introduce a sci-fi element in the second half that deflates much of the interpersonal tension and shifts the focus from the subtleties of mind control to the vagaries of time and space. —J.R. JONES 111 min. Fri 4/20-Sat 4/21, 2, 7, and 9:30 PM; and Sun 4/22-Thu 4/26, 2, 4:20, 7, and 9:30 PM. Music Box.

A Million Bid

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Friday, April 20 @ 8:00pm

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Half Baked Opening Sunday, April 29!

Game Night

22 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 19, 2018

A young woman (Dolores Costello) wants to marry an ambitious young brain surgeon, but instead her conniving mother forces her to marry a boorish millionaire (Warner Oland). The newlyweds set oﬀ for their honeymoon, and when their ship sinks, the bride, presuming her husband dead, returns to England and picks up with the surgeon. All goes well until the millionaire returns, having lost his memory. This silent melodrama (1927) was the second U.S. feature by Hungarian emigre Michael Curtiz, who would go on to direct many of the great Warner Bros. dramas (The Adventures of Robin Hood, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Casablanca, Mildred Pierce). He elicits nuanced performances from the cast and keeps the pace brisk—the story may be hokey, but it isn’t belabored. Curtiz also employs some clever photographic eﬀects to convey the millionaire’s amnesia. —BEN SACHS 70 min. 35mm restored print. Dennis Scott provides live organ accompaniment. Sat 4/21, 11:30 AM. Music Box.

R Pass Over

Spike Lee rolls into town to ﬁlm Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s production of the Antoinette Nwandu play, an update of Waiting for Godot that transforms Vladimir and Estragon into two young black men (Julian Parker, Jon Michael Hill) killing time one night at the corner of 64th Street and King Drive. While they’re killing time, white America is trying to kill them, and in a sick variation on Beckett’s slapstick, they drop to the ground with every burst of police gunﬁre in the distance. The play reminded me of Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman in its uncompromising rage toward whites, which must have been the big attraction for Lee. He simply trains his cameras on a stage performance (directed by Danya Taymor), though there’s also a potent documentary frame in which parishioners from Saint Sabina’s Church

in Auburn Gresham are bussed in for the show and react with knowing sadness to the violence exploding onstage. —J.R. JONES 74 min. Available Friday, April 20, from Amazon.com.

Souvenir

In this offbeat romantic comedy, an aging assembly-line worker at a paté factory (Isabelle Huppert) nurses a crush on the newest employee, a handsome young boxer (Kévin Azaïs); he reciprocates after recognizing her as the same woman who, years earlier, competed as a pop diva in the equivalent of the Eurovision Song Contest. Before long the smitten boxer has abandoned his career and declared himself her new manager, mounting a show business comeback for her that includes some of the ﬁnest fairs and nursing homes in Belgium. Huppert may be the only French actress currently working whose name above the title can land a movie in U.S. art-house theaters, which may explain why director Bavo Defurne allowed her to perform her own songs even though her voice is so bad her shower would beg her to be quiet. On the other hand, Huppert proves the old adage that acting is reacting, and she can do wonderful things with a line like “My father thinks you’re great—and that bugs my mother.” In French with subtitles. —J.R. JONES 90 min. Fri 4/20-Thu 4/26. Facets Cinematheque.

Super Troopers 2

This sequel to the 2001 cult comedy abounds with dick jokes, drug humor, and mean pranks, yet as in the original, the amiable, laid-back tone generates enormous good cheer. The hard-partying Vermont state troopers of the original film are called upon to establish a highway patrol station in a small town that’s about to be annexed by the U.S. from Canada, and this gives rise to lots of good-natured Canada bashing reminiscent of South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut (1999). Rob Lowe gives a spirited performance as the town’s mayor, a former minor-league hockey star who now runs a brothel, and Brian Cox, returning as the troopers’ captain, gets a rare chance to show off his considerable comic chops. Jay Chandrasekhar directed a script he wrote with his costars: Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, and Erik Stolhanske. —BEN SACHS R, 99 min. ArcLight, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON, 600 N. Michigan, Webster Place.

Beautiful teens on spring break in Mexico are lured into a cursed game of truth or dare that follows them home, with dire results. The mechanics of all this are a little flimsy—the game challenges come from other characters, momentarily possessed, whose features twist into a waspish grin—but the folks at Blumhouse Productions (Insidious, Paranormal Activity) know that their patrons will buy into any dumb idea for the sake of a good scare. Sadly, there aren’t any here, though there’s a lot of soap opera among the horny teens as they choose “truth” and their secrets come tumbling out; choosing “dare,” they die in fairly routine accidents that make you long for the slapstick ingenuity of the Final Destination franchise, still a high-water mark in teen-elimination films. Jeff Wadlow directed; with Lucy Hale and Violett Beane. —J.R. JONES PG-13, 100 min. For listings visit chicagoreader.com/movies.

REVIVALS

R Laurence Anyways

Lushly romantic and daringly original, this third feature (2013) by writer-director Xavier Dolan (I Killed My Mother, Heartbeats) follows the ups and downs in the ten-year relationship between a Montreal ﬁlm production manager (Suzanne Clement) and her lover, a heterosexual author and professor who one day announces he wants to become a woman (Melvil Poupaud). Identity construction as performance art is a recurring motif, as the title character develops a style that works on her chiseled frame, ﬁnds a simpatico band of cross-dressing antique dealers, and desperately tries not to lose the love of her life. Nathalie Baye plays Laurence’s withholding mother, who may have rejected her son but welcomes her newly minted daughter. In French with subtitles. —ANDREA GRONVALL 168 min. Mon 4/23, 7 PM. Univ. of Chicago Doc Films.

SPECIAL EVENTS

CineYouth Festival

Presented by Cinema/Chicago, this three-day festival “celebrates and fosters the creativity of ﬁlmmakers 22 years old and younger.” This year’s edition opens Friday with a free screening of the documentary Minding the Gap (7 PM) and continues Saturday and Sunday with 11 programs collecting shorts by young artists. Fri 4/20Sun 4/22. Music Box. v

Jessica Risker at home in Logan Square, where she also maintains a private practice as a therapist. é RACHEL WINSLOW

Jessica Risker

sharpens her sweet songs on a hazy new album

I See You Among the Stars is the Deadbeat front woman’s first solo record under her own name—and her most confident and consistent effort yet. By PETER MARGASAK

essica Risker has learned to enjoy playing music onstage, but it’s mostly a means to an end for her. “Being in a band is a necessity for what I actually enjoy most, which is writing songs and recording,” she says. She’s loved listening to and making music for her whole life—she took piano lessons as a child, learned flute and saxophone in school band programs, and taught herself guitar in high school in the late 90s—but it wasn’t till February 2007, when she was 28, that she finally finished a recording of her songs. At that point she’d never played any of that material with a band or at a show—she made an album called My Imag-

inary Life at home alone as part of that year’s RPM Challenge, a sort of musical equivalent to National Novel Writing Month. Now 39, Risker maintains a private practice as a therapist in Logan Square, but the well of creativity she tapped with that home-recording project is still ﬂowing. For the past decade she’s moved restlessly from one sound to another, working on her own and with bands—her subsequent recordings include sparse acoustic tunes, full-band pop rock drenched in electronic textures, and music-box lullabies. On May 4 her ﬁrst formal release under her own name comes out via Texas label Western Vinyl: I See You Among the Stars is her most im-

pressive and assured accomplishment yet. She celebrates the album with a show at the Empty Bottle on May 8. I See You Among the Stars is tender and delicate, creating a warm, watery, almost womblike space for Risker’s gentle folk pop. Hushed melodies and cooing vocals cascade over clean, arpeggiated acoustic guitar, and Risker’s longtime collaborator Joshua Wentz adds keyboards and electronic enhancements that help push the material into a spacey, reverberant psychedelic zone. The introspective songwriting conjures the spirits of Sibylle Baier, Vashti Bunyan, and Joanna Newsom, and the subtly warped production gives a contemporary J

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continued from 23 feel to Risker’s tunes even as they hark back to the 60s. Her usual melodic generosity is on display, but with more concision and consistency than ever before. Risker grew up in tiny Archie, Missouri (population 1,028 in the 2010 census), about 50 minutes south of Kansas City, and earned a bachelor’s in psychology from the University of Missouri in Columbia. In 2002 she moved to Chicago, and two years later she graduated from Northwestern’s masters program in counseling psychology. She landed a job as a case manager at the now-defunct REST (Residents for Effective Shelter Transitions), helping connect women to housing and social services. Her love of music didn’t leave her as she began her professional career, but it would take a few more years for her to find an outlet. A dorm neighbor at Mizzou had given Risker an old MIDI sequencing program called Digital Orchestrator, which fired up her imagination and facilitated her early dabbling in home recording. But it wasn’t till she’d been in Chicago for five years that her experiments produced something concrete. Her brother told her about the RPM Challenge, then in its second year—participants endeavor to write and record an album (defined as at least ten songs or 35 minutes of original material) in the month of February. “Even though I’d always played instruments, that really kicked off the songwriting and recording,” Risker says. At a meeting of Chicago-area RPM Challenge participants, she met Wentz, who’s been a friend and musical partner ever since. Risker stands behind the material on My Imaginary Life, but she blanches at its chintzy MIDI arrangements (it’s no longer on her Bandcamp page). She recorded her voice and guitar live, but all the other instruments were generated by the software: strings, clarinet, trumpet, drums, bass. “When I compose in a digital sequencer, I tend to have a basic idea for the song, often a melody I’ve found with guitar and singing,” she says. “Then I begin building the song in the program. I just click in the notes in the piano roll, and I can work pretty quickly like that. From there it kind of takes on a life of its own.” In 2008 Risker began working at the Heartland Alliance, a much larger social-service agency. But she still wanted to learn more about music, so in July of that year she began an internship at Earhole Studios downtown. “They took me in and let me come as often as I wanted to,” she says. “I just sat and helped and learned.” While there she met engineer Matt Harting and producer Adam Wiebe, who joined Risker and Wentz in her first band, Absinthe & the Dirty Floors. (She played guitar, sang, and wrote the songs; Harting played second guitar and bass, Wiebe drums, and Wentz keyboards and electronics.) They gigged steadily from 2009 till 2012, when Harting moved away, and recorded a self-titled album of punchy, tuneful, and rather ordinary pop rock that they released on Bandcamp in 2010. At the same time, Risker was working on solo material under the name Deadbeat, which she’s since started applying to full-band releases too. She’d moved into a Logan Square basement apartment after a divorce, and she holed up at home to make an acoustic breakup album called One Foot out the Door (self-released in 2009 and later issued on cassette by Athletic Tapes). It presaged the approach she uses on I See You Among the Stars, but the performances are shakier, with wobbly intonation and flubbed guitar notes. The songs have a pop feel similar to that of Absinthe & the Dirty Floors, but they

proved that Risker’s melodies could stand on their own. Risker continued to develop her craft on her own, spending her free hours tinkering with home recordings and hitting open mikes several nights a week at places such as the Gallery Cabaret and Quenchers. (In 2011 she won one of Uncommon Ground’s regular open-mike competitions.) Not long after Harting moved away, Wiebe’s friend Jarrett Hothan replaced him on bass, and they dropped the Absinthe & the Dirty Floors name—that’s when Risker started using Deadbeat for all her work, even stuff with the band.

JESSICA RISKER, EMILY RITZ, TY MAXON

Tue 5/8, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $8, $5 in advance, 21+

The earliest Deadbeat group material in 2012 took an experimental, noisy turn, blending samples, synthesizer riffs, electronic beats, and chantlike vocals. Risker had begun immersing herself in the local DIY scene, and she felt energized. “I really loved noise shows—how they felt and sounded. And some of the electronic stuff was really inspiring,” she says. “I was positively inspired by those things, but I was also negatively inspired by what seemed to be a lack of focus sometimes. I wanted to do something with those sounds that felt more thoughtful.” After a couple of rambling digital releases, the Deadbeat group sound began to cohere on the 2016 tape Big Forever (Already Dead). Risker’s pop sensibilities came into alignment with her interest in electronic soundscapes to create a futuristic sound inﬂuenced by British band Broadcast. Not long after Big Forever came out, though, Risker switched gears, and she hasn’t worked much with the band since. She went into private practice as a therapist, and later in 2016 she self-released Soft Moons: Twenty Lullabies, whose brief, delicate melodies she composed using the music software Logic and played using a hand-cranked “music box” kit that uses a long strip of paper punched with a pattern of holes rather than the usual revolving cylinder. “For the lullabies, I usually have just sung a little tune to myself earlier in the day that serves as my starting point,” she says. Risker funded Soft Moons in part with a 2016 Individual Artists Program grant from the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. She’d already received one in 2015, which helped pay for Big Forever, and she won another in 2017 to defray the cost of producing I See You Among the Stars. The lullaby album also attracted the attention of the Lillstreet Art Center, and it invited Risker to teach a children’s class incorporating those songs for its Lil’ Kidstreet program. Risker began writing the songs on I See You Among the Stars in 2016, and she spent much of 2017 recording them with Wentz and engineer Dave Vettraino (who’s done a lot of work

for International Anthem) in Vettraino’s home studio. She started shopping demos last spring, and at the suggestion of Rob Sevier, co-owner of the Numero Group, she approached Western Vinyl in Austin, Texas. Their deal for her new album is her first with a nationally distributed label. Sevier had seen Risker evolve at DIY shows over the years. “When I saw her style transition into something more stripped-down, it started to connect with me,” he says. “I felt like the songwriting was breaking through some of the trappings of the busier Deadbeat sound (not that I didn’t like the Deadbeat stuff—I did and do). It was really compelling for me, and I wanted to help get it to a bigger audience than the local scene could sustain. Music like this is, and I think should be, mostly local. These songs have been hammered out in front of crowds big and small, and it seems like a document that’s not just about its creator but the physical spaces and people it was created in and for.” Risker also considers I See You Among the Stars a strippeddown singer-songwriter record, albeit one with what she describes as a “psych-space-folk” sound. “The tradition of a singer and a guitar is something I want to carry on in my own way, and I worked really hard on the balance of the album,” she says. “I want listeners to take away that this a singersongwriter guitar album, but there’s also spacey, kind of modern ambient noises. Josh and I worked very hard in placing them in just the right amount.” Risker’s lyrics on the new album also move away from the confessional style of her previous work. “It was written from a space of being a woman at home by myself, going about my day-to-day things and capturing a slice of life, in a domestic sense,” she says. “Just dealing with tasks like cleaning up, doing the dishes, while I’m in a growing relationship and reflecting on that.” She remarried last fall to David Yontz, who’s served as music director for the likes of Second City, iO Chicago, ComedySportz, and the Annoyance; they’d met on the open-mike circuit nearly eight years ago. Risker doesn’t express her happiness with dull, goopy romantic cliches, thankfully. The observations in her lyrics are the sort of thing that just don’t tend to occur to people wrapped up in emotional trauma or tumult. On “Zero Summer Mind” she lets herself relax into the mundane while pedaling around Logan Square on her bike (“And the car in front of me / Your lights are blinking violently . . . Mind the potholes / Mind the traffic lights / And the rear-view signs”), and on “Shallow Seas” she indulges in a meditation on contentment (“You and I / Are lost in a dream / But there are times / I know you exactly / I love you exactly”). Risker is planning a summer tour, but after a couple years in acoustic mode she’s itching for a change. “Now that I’ve written a folk album, I’m ready to get back with the band and get noisy,” she says. She’s already written a bunch of songs for a new Deadbeat group album. “I think she’s ambitious and driven without being a hustler or self-promoter, which is good and bad, of course,” says Sevier. “Everything she does is very unassuming but built on work-intensive approaches. I like that she does kids’ music, electronic music, and whatever she sees fit, whenever she is compelled to make it. She doesn’t need to be wrapped up in an easily marketable package, so isn’t.” v

m @pmarg APRIL 19, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 25

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APRIL 25............... PETER CASANOVA QUARTET 8PM MAXLIELLIAM ANNA APRIL 26............... PRINE TRIBUTE NIGHT BY JAMIE WAGNER 9PM FEBRUARY 26 JOHN .....RC BIG BAND 7PM APRIL 27............... UNIBROW FIRST WARD PROBLEMS JANUARY 20.................. APRIL 28............... BUNGALOWS JANUARY 21.................. TONY DO10PM ROSARIO GROUP8PM FEBRUARY 28 DEADLY .....PETER CASANOVA QUARTET VAN GO JANUARY 22.................. RC BIG BAND 7PM TRITA MARCH 1............SMILIN’ BOBBY AND THE CLEMTONES JANUARY 24.................. PETER CASONOVA KOSI & THOMAS MATECKI TRIO 8PMQUARTET APRIL 29............... ANDREW D.BOX HUBER JANUARY 25.................. THE WICK BIG HOUSE MARCH 2............ICE AND FIONA MCMAHON JANUARY 26.................. THE HEPKATS MAY 2 ................... SMILIN’ BOBBY AND THEROCK CLEMTONES 9PM SKIPPIN’ MARCH 3............CHIDITAROD AND TARRINGTON 10PM JIMIJON AMERICA JANUARY 27.................. STRAY BOLTS PLUS DJ MR.THE WIGGLES MARCH 7............JAMIE WAGNER & FRIENDS JANUARY 28.................. WHOLESOMERADIO DJ NIGHT MAY 3 .................. THE POLKAHOLICS 8PM

EVERY TUESDAY (EXCEPT 2ND) AT 8PM OPEN MIC HOSTED BY JIMIJON AMERICA

IN ROTATION

A Reader staﬀer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn.

LEOR GALIL Reader music writer

Los Angeles punks Fuck U Pay Us perform at last year’s Black and Brown Punk Show Festival.

Vince Ash, “Thoughts” Hammond is home to one of the best underground punk scenes in the country (if not the world), so I keep my ears open for any music that comes out of that northwest Indiana city. And it’s not always punk: when Los Angeles label POW Recordings (founded by inimitable hip-hop journalist Jeff Weiss) released Do or Die, the debut of Hammond rapper Vince Ash, I gave it a listen at my first opportunity. The blunt, sullen “Thoughts” demonstrates why rap storytelling is an art form. Jet’s May 1973 interview with Curtis Mayfield Every time I stop by Hyde Park Records, I spend a little time thumbing through the shop’s back issues of Jet. I recently bought a copy of the magazine from May 31, 1973, that features Chicago soul legend Curtis Mayfield on the cover. Super Fly had come out the previous year, and the Oscars snubbed Mayfield’s soundtrack for the film—not that he seemed to care much. “I’m glad I was in a position to let everybody see what the Academy Awards are—a personalized social club with exclusive members,” he said. And every Oscar season, we have a chance to see that again.

é MARTIN SORRONDEGUY

DJ, producer, vocalist, and visual artist, and all those roles come together in her live sets (which I’ve only caught on YouTube). The way she sings and raps the vocal parts on her own tracks in the midst of a DJ set reminds me of Drake calling More Life a “playlist.” She’s a creator and a curator. “Feel It Out” includes a lyric that I’ve taken as a personal reminder recently: “See that there is more than one thing / Open up in a new way.”

Earcave I love this online music retailer so much that I have to ration my visits—I can’t afford even half the things it’s selling that I desperately want. Run by Andrew Morgan, founder of the Peoples Potential Unlimited label, and likewise based in D.C., Earcave is where I go for the finest import boogie reissues, private-press dance 12-inches, and of course PPU’s own ace releases. A still from Bjork’s video for “Arisen My Senses” é COURTESY THE ARTIST

Hammond rapper Vince Ash é DANNYPHOTO / DANIEL STEWART

SASHA TYCKO DJ, writer and editor for The Sick Muse Yaeji, “Feel It Out” Yaeji’s Soundcloud bio says “I’m into it all.” She’s a New York-based

26 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 19, 2018

Bjork’s video for “Arisen My Senses” I love the visuals for Bjork’s 2017 album Utopia: the utopia they imagine is sensual, messy, feminine, androgynous, synthetic, and animal. I’m equally touched by the collaborations that helped make this utopia: drag makeup by Hungry, silicone headpieces and masks by James Merry, music videos by Jesse Kanda, and coproduction by Arca. I sense kinship in the way they talk about each other in interviews, and it’s made literal in the video for “Arisen My Senses”—Bjork and Arca are attached by a sort of umbilical cord. Their real-life friendship and onscreen experiments with the body are part of a queer utopia I want in on. Lafawndah My friend just turned me on to Lafawndah. Her globe-trotting beats ask my body to move in all kinds of ways, and I’m mesmerized by her voice, which floats over

them all. When my friend saw Lafawndah open for Kelela in the fall, she just played her instrumental tracks off a laptop—which is so conﬁdent and DIY.

JARED BROWN Artist, writer, and

founder of Central Air Radio on WHPK Black and Brown Punk Show Festival 2017 A typical summer afternoon in Pilsen becomes life-changing. Why? Because I’m attending a kid-friendly queer punk fest dedicated to black and brown musicians. A group of four black women from Los Angeles take the stage and begin tuning their instruments. They introduce themselves as Fuck U Pay Us, or FUPU for short—a clever homage to American fashion house FUBU (“For Us, by Us”). Their set begins with what feels like a prelude to an immersive, accessible manifesto about liberation, better access to resources, reparations, and oral sex. Almost before I realize it, I’m moshing in a crowd of mostly black and brown queer femmes as the band yells SUCK MY NAPPY BLACK PUSSY. I’ll never forget how much love I felt among everyone that afternoon. I’m transported back there every time I hear FUPU’s live album. Chae Buttuh, HoFi: A Collection of Glam Trap & Hoe Hymns These songs by North Carolina rapper Chae Buttuh prove how important it is for us to widen our understanding of who gets to be a riot grrrl. Not all riot-grrrl stories are about an existential suburban isolation crisis. Some riot-grrrl stories are about sex work, sugar daddies, and trade. Roy Kinsey, Blackie It’s inspiring me to trace my family’s lineage back to Mississippi. This album by queer-identiﬁed Chicago poet, rapper, and librarian Roy Kinsey beautifully commemorates black matriarchs and the blues while inviting us to conceptualize a sustainable future.

Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week of April 19

MUSIC

b ALL AGES F

PICK OF THE WEEK

Texas instrumental trio Khruangbin blends globe-spanning influences harvested from the Internet

Jeremy Pelt é RA-RE VALVERDE

THURSDAY19 Khruangbin See Pick of the Week. The Mattson 2 opens. 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, sold out. 18+ Jeremy Pelt Quintet See also Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase, 806 S. Plymouth, $20-$25. 21+

é MARY KANG

KHRUANGBIN, MATTSON 2

Thu 4/19 and Fri 4/20, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, both shows sold out. 18+

IN A REVIEW of Con Todo el Mundo (Dead Oceans), the second album by Khruangbin, Pitchfork writer Erin MacLeod observed that the instrumental Texas trio makes “music for the Spotify era.” Streaming services give listeners an entire globe of sounds to pick through, and the members of the band haven’t been cagey about where their numerous influences comes from—the same review notes the presence of vintage Thai pop music the group injested from MP3 blog Monrakplengthai. Khruangbin has never directly mimicked any single style; its atmospheric grooves seem to be a composite, assembled piecemeal with elements from whatever particular flavor the group’s members are hooked on at the moment. A recent review by Lars Gotrich for All Things Considered mapped out their inspirations for each tune, such as 70s zouk from the French Antilles on “Evan Finds the Third Room,” borrowed lines from obscure Iranian guitarist Kourosh Yaghmaei on “Rule,” and vocal chants purloined from an Ennio Morricone film score on “Ruins.” The deep, rolling grooves sculpted by bassist Laura Lee and drummer Donald “DJ” Johnson are steeped in late 60s and early 70s R&B, suggesting a medley of tracks dug up by the Numero Group as played by the rhythm section of the funk-soul group Menahan Street Band. Mark Speer’s sweet-toned guitar lines fit that same vibe, while his melodies embrace a global array of traditions. But as lovely as Khruangbin’s music sounds, it all feels a bit remote, as if created in a lab from a set of prescribed elements, a distillation and hybrid of the member’s favorite records rather than an expression of their own. —PETER MARGASAK

Few mainstream trumpeters over the past decade have matched the muscle, dexterity, and soul of Jeremy Pelt, who has morphed from a rising star into a trusted presence. Though he’s a dyed-in-thewool postbop technician heavily influenced by protean but thoughtful blowers like Freddie Hubbard and Woody Shaw, he’s been known to make subtle but meaningful adjustments in his practice, changing the personnel and focus of his bands to explore groove-based electric settings or plush, acoustic contexts. His recent album Noir en Rouge: Live in Paris (HighNote) suggests he’s found a sweet spot with his current quintet, which made an impressive debut on last year’s Make Noise! (The group appears with him for this week’s engagement, though Allan Mednard will sub for regular drummer Jonathan Barber.) According to Michael West’s liner-note essay, the new album was planned to extend the rich history of live jazz recordings cut in Paris, and the results prove the band played with a heat that matched the sweltering temperatures blanketing the City of Light that weekend. Most of the tunes are Pelt originals, save “Sir Carter,” a brisk swinger by the group’s pianist, Victor Gould, and a tender reading of “I Will Wait for You,” a Michel Legrand theme used in Jacques Demy’s classic film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. On the muscular “Evolution” the outfit’s elastic rhythm section, which also includes bassist Vicente Archer and conguera Jacquelene Acevedo, produces a powerfully springy foundation, filled with eddies and swells with surprising accents, that allows Pelt’s high-octane improvisation to sparkle and accrue energy. Then the band suddenly shifts gears a la the classic Miles Davis Quintet to recede for an introspective solo

from Gould. Though this quintet isn’t interested in a revolution, its meticulously measured heat could certainly cause one in the right setting. —PETER MARGASAK

Yamantaka//Sonic Titan Gold Dime and Radiant Devices open. 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $12, $10 in advance. 21+

Expansive Canadian rock outﬁt Yamantaka//Sonic Titan describe their sprawling blend of psych, metal, prog, and punk as “Noh-wave,” a name that’s derived from a classical form of musical theater developed in 14th-century Japan. Naturally, the band’s albums are big, dynamic, and dramatic, with blast beats, hyperdriven guitar solos, and taut vocal melodies that land with might. Last month’s Dirt (Paper Bag) adds to the unfolding story of the world of Pureland that the band began on its 2011 album YT//ST. Though the name of their fantastical universe is derived from a strand of Buddhism that ﬁrst blossomed in China, its narratives are inspired by the Iroquois story of the creation of North America. The members of Yamantaka//Sonic Titan keep the history of indigenous people close to them and their work, even incorporating hand drums and traditional rhythms into songs such as “Beast.” “It’s Native American music,” founding member and drummer Alaska B recently told Toronto’s Now magazine. Despite its otherworldly setting, Dirt is focused on our own earthly concerns about climate change, though you don’t need to know the narrative details for the percussive crashes that animate the swirling “Dark Waters” to quicken your pulse. In concert, Yamantaka//Sonic Titan play up the theatrics; when I caught them at Schubas in 2012 their handmade stage props and adroit movements brought me a little closer to Pureland. —LEOR GALIL

FRIDAY20 Khruangbin See Pick of the Week. The Mattson 2 open. 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, sold out. 18+

APRIL 19, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 27

MUSIC continued from 27

Jeremy Pelt Quintet See Thursday. 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase, 806 S. Plymouth, $20-$25. 21+

Stephan Crump’s Rhombal 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $15. 18+

Bassist Stephan Crump has established himself as a magnificent team player. He provides muscle and bone in the limber trio led by pianist Vijay Iyer, and lets his fluency with tender melody sparkle in intimate groupings including his duo with guitarist Mary Halvorson and the Rosetta Trio, with guitarists Liberty Ellman and Jamie Fox. Crump shows off a different side of his personality with his agile quartet Rhombal, which formed as a response to the death of his brother, Patrick, from an aggressive sarcoma. The foursome’s eponymous 2016 debut album on Crump’s Papillon Sounds label is grounded by the bassist’s deeply resonant, calmly measured, woody lines that consistently carve out deep grooves. Buffeted and buoyed by the brilliant drumming of Tyshawn Sorey, the band’s loose gait sometimes erupts with spasmodic, nubby accents, but the players never surrender their propulsive focus. That foundation gives loads of space to the front line of rising trumpeter Adam O’Farrill, who knocked me

out when his own quartet debuted in Chicago earlier this year, and veteran tenor saxophonist Ellery Eskelin, who like Crump has a beautifully considered improvisational voice and well-proportioned tone. The music rarely hurries: the opener “NoD for Nelson” is a relaxed salute to Oliver Nelson replete with lines indebted to his classic tune “Stolen Moments.” “Grovi” is a ballad with a draggy feel, but within it lies Sorey’s forceful, sporadic kick-drum accents. The pieces are structured to allow the horns to roam freely, ranging from loose unison patterns to simultaneous improvisation to telepathic give-and-take interactions, but the quartet cleaves to the transparent forms embedded within each elegant original, such as the oﬀ-kilter funk of “Esquina Dream” and the gorgeous crawl of “How Close Are You.” For the group’s Chicago debut, kinetic powerhouse Kassa Overall subs for Sorey. —PETER MARGASAK

SATURDAY21 Jeremy Pelt Quintet See Thursday. 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase, 806 S. Plymouth, $20-$25. 21+ Sarah Davachi 8 PM, Graham Foundation, Madlener House, 4 W. Burton. Free with RSVP

4.20-21

to eventbrite.com/e/lampo-sarah-davachiregistration-44993923035. b For years Canadian composer Sarah Davachi has created stunning works of meditative sound art that deal with psychoacoustics, drone, and site-speciﬁc acoustic properties, often through hypnotic longform pieces. She developed much of this material alone, using either strictly synthetic sources or subtle manipulations of long tones played on various keyboard instruments. In recent years, though, Davachi—who’s currently a doctoral student in musicology at UCLA—has increasingly collaborated with other instrumentalists. On last year’s stunning All My Circles Run (Students of Decay) she bathed live sounds produced on strings, piano, or voice in immersive, transformative electronics, but her new album, Let Night Come on Bells End the Day (Recital), suggests she hasn’t left her older methodologies in the past. Two of the record’s longer pieces, “Mordents” and “Buhrstone,” embroider minimal patterns created with Mellotron and piano, and manipulate natural overtones to form billowing sonic clouds that hang over her articulated notes. Those sounds seep into each tone she produces, muddying them up and enveloping them in viscous harmonies. Tracks such as “Hours in the Evening” and “At Hand” are spectral drones, and as microscopic shifts sneak by almost imperceptibly, they give each piece a trance-inducing character. For this performance

Kevin Nealon

1200 W RANDOLPH ST, CHICAGO, IL 60607 | 312.733.WINE

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ON SALE AT NOON THURSDAY 4.19 ON SALE TO VINOFILE MEMBERS TUESDAY 4.17

7.11 ANTHONY DAVID 7.15 WAYNE ‘THE TRAIN’ HANCOCK & SCOTT H. BIRAM 8.1 SAWYER FREDERICKS 8.19 DON MCLEAN

4.22

& the Painkillers 4.25

ELIANE ELIAS THE IDES OF MARCH FEAT. JIM PETERIK GRAHAM PARKER W/ JAMES MADDOCK KAT EDMONSON W/ MATT MUNISTERI THE MANHATTANS FEATURING GERALD ALSTON

28 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 19, 2018

Tyrone Wells with Gabe Dixon

DON’T MISS

5.2 5.3 5.10 5.15 6.24

Tommy Castro

4.29

Red Molly

Sarah Davachi é RICHARD SMITH

Davachi will once again appear with live musicians to reprise work she premiered in LA last year. The material was built from pipe organ improvisations, and she has adapted them for her reed organ and two baroque string instruments, violin and viola da gamba, which will be performed here by Whitney Johnson (Matchess) and Phillip Serna, respectively. —PETER MARGASAK

UPCOMING SHOWS 4.19

DELBERT MCCLINTON

4.21

WASABASSCO BURLESQUE 10:30 PM SHOW

4.22

WDCB JAZZ BRUNCH

4.26-27

A SOLO/ACOUSTIC EVENING WITH KEB’ MO’

4.28

A TOAST TO GEORGE FREEMAN W/ BILLY BRANCH - 12PM SHOW

4.28

DAVE BARNES

4.30

SIMRIT KAUR

5.5-6

SUZANNE VEGA

5.11

SAM BUSH

5.13

GLEN PHILLIPS W/ HEATHER LYNNE HORTON

5.14

BRENDAN JAMES W/ SPECIAL GUEST PETE MULLER

5.16

GHOST LIGHT FEAT. HOLLY BOWLING & TOM HAMILTON

5.17-18

HEATHER MCDONALD

5.19

ELIZABETH COOK W/ CALEB CAUDLE

5.20

STORY JAM - 12PM SHOW

5.20

SQUIRREL NUT ZIPPERS

5.21

SARAH VAUGHAN LIVE AT MISTER KELLY’S

5.22

ANA POPOVIC

MUSIC

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

Gunn-Truscinski Duo Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society open. 9:30 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $15. 21+ Philadelphia’s Steve Gunnhad made a name for himself with both his exploratory acoustic ﬁngerstyle guitar playing and his more turbulent, noisy improvisational excursions before finding a new voice as an introspective singer-songwriter with a big sound; his songs meld lyrics that reflect a refined introspection with dusky, sometimes raucous folk rock that borders on the anthemic. In the wake of his 2016 album Eyes on the Lines (Matador) he’s been building an audience the old-fashioned way—as a road dog leading a well-oiled band. But despite his change in direction, he hasn’t abandoned his more experimental side. On last year’s Bay Head (Three Lobed), his third duo album with longtime drummer John Truscinski, he lets his guitar do the talking. The record’s ten tracks range widely, with coruscating textures, hypnotically resonating long tones, reverb-soaked curlicues, and motific variations that enfold between alternately elegant, almost jazzy riﬀs and searing leads that quickly lodge in the memory. Truscinski deftly propels the performances without ever deploying a backbeat; instead he uses his kit as an orchestral spellcaster. “Seagull for Chuck Berry” pivots from a melodically serene vibe, where Gunn plays dry, gritty guitar licks that suggest Bill Frisell caked up in desert sand, into a wonderful, hallucinogenic frenzy. “Quiet Storm (Taksim III)”—taksim is the Turkish word for “improvisation”—is one of several tracks that draw upon Middle Eastern sonorities without a lick of cultural tourism. Gunn’s guitars are kept afloat by his partner’s exploratory rumble; the piece is less concerned with narrative than with casting a mood of restless wandering. —PETER MARGASAK

Hurray for the Riff Raff Waxahatchee headlines; Hurray for the Riff Raff and Bedouine open. 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, sold out. 17+ Thanks to icons such as Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, and Joni Mitchell, the pop-culture stereotype is that most folk musicians are white. But that image has always been a deceptive one, and today numerous artists like Rhiannon Giddens, Valerie June, and Haley Heynderickx are following in the footsteps of POC folk greats like Odetta and Josh White, reminding audiences that the genre has always been a place for any number of voices and perspectives. One of the most innovative of this new crop of musicians is Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Alynda Segarra, a Puerto Rican-American performer born in New York and now based in New Orleans. Her 2013 record My Dearest Darkest Neighbor (This Is American Music) was a stirring expansion of the definition of folk music; Segarra and her band placed songs by performers like Billie Holiday and John Lennon next to traditional tunes so that all American popular music seemed set to the same old-timey swing. Her most recent release, 2017’s The Navigator (ATO), takes that approach even further in a loose concept album about Puerto Rico. On songs such as “Hungry Ghost” Segarra shows she’s as comfortable nicking Bruce Springsteen melodies as she is incorporating Latin percussion into her music. And on “Rican Beach,” she sings with her distinctive quaver over a stinging guitar line, “They stole our language / And they stole our speech / And they left us to die on Rican Beach,” reclaiming her heritage and basking in folk’s tradition of protest and rock squall all at once. For Segarra, folk isn’t corny or out-of-date; it’s the music of everyone: sophisticates, scruffy riffraff, and those who are both at once. That’s worth a hurray. —NOAH BERLATSKY J

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APRIL 19, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 29

3855 n lincoln ave.

chicago THE RIGHT NOW

MUSIC JPEGmaﬁa é CELINI KIM

10TH ANNIVERSARY! + 56 HOPE ROAD 20TH ANNIVERSARY!

FRI APRIL 27

PROJECT/OBJECT MUSIC OF FRANK ZAPPA

SAT MAY 5

FT. ZAAPA ALUMS

NAPOLEON MURPHY BROCK & DENNY WALLEY

for complete listings, tickets, and social updates...

martyrslive.com

facebook.com/martyrslive

@martyrslive

continued from 29 Rlyr Sweet Cobra, Fotocrime, and Paletazo open. 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, $10. 21+ Those familiar with Chicago’s heavy-music scene got what they were expecting with Delayer, the 2016 debut record from Chicago experimentalmetal supergroup Rlyr. On it Pelican guitarist Trevor De Brauw, Locrian and Cleared drummer Steven Hess, and former Russian Circles/sometimes Bloodiest bassist Colin DeKuiper combined their powers to make an album of expansive instrumental postmetal that steamrolled their aggressive and pretty sides together. On the brand-new Actual Existence (The Flenser), Rlyr bust out of the formula they set up on Delayer and throw the world a curveball: they went ahead and made a pop record. While Hess and DeKuiper lay down hard-hitting, rock-solid rhythms, De Brauw uses the epic song structures as a foundation upon which to explore his appreciation of emo and pop-punk (full disclosure, he and I teamed up for a spot-on Screeching Weasel cover band a few Halloweens ago), layering everything with introspective melodic shifts, nostalgia-inducing chord progressions, and over-the-top ﬁnger tapping. Rlyr’s collective heaviness still exists, and their long, knotty, ten-minute-plus arrangements still nod to the prog giants of the 70s—they’re named after a Yes record, after all—but the new album displays a sunnier side of the band than has been heard before. This show doubles as the band’s welcome-homefrom-tour gig and the release party for Actual Existence. Rlyr also perform at the Reckless Records on Milwaukee at 4 PM as part of the shop’s Record Store Day celebration. —LUCA CIMARUSTI

30 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 19, 2018

SUNDAY22 Jeremy Pelt Quintet See Thursday. 4, 8, and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase, 806 S. Plymouth, $20-$25. 21+ JPEGMafia See also Monday. Injury Reserve headlines. 6:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, sold out. b A few days after a fire killed 36 people at an Oakland warehouse space called the Ghost Ship in December 2016, Baltimore city officials quickly shut down and condemned the Bell Foundry, a two-story multidisciplinary arts space filled with recording studios and living areas; dozens of tenants were evicted with expedience. While these spaces were thrust into the spotlight as hazards run by the willfully ignorant, they’ve long had a history of importance in underground communities—they offer spaces to the kind of voices who are often barred from traditional venues. They also remain part of Baltimore’s lifeblood, so the loss of the Bell Foundry continues to send tremors throughout the city’s creative community and its brightest participants. Those feelings remain right on the surface of Veteran (Deathbomb Arc), the January album by rapper Barrington Hendricks, better known as JPEGmafia (he styles his name in all caps, and also goes by Peggy). Veteran opens with “1539 N. Calvert,” which is the Bell Foundry’s address, and also one of the best opening tracks I’ve heard all year, a brawny, succinct shot of bristling noise-rap. An air-force veteran who decamped for Charm City after serving in Iraq, Hendricks moved to Los Angeles about a year ago, but Veteran is Baltimore to its core—a grimy collage of unconventional shards of samples that comes together to form something both gnarly and beautiful. —LEOR GALIL

bottom lounge Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

MONDAY23 JPEGmafia See Sunday. Injury Reserve headlines. 7 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, $13. b

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ANTAGONIZERS ATL • ASSAULT AND BATTERY BAD MOTHER • TRUTH PEDDLER

FOR TICKETS, VISIT OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG THURSDAY, APRIL 19 7PM

UPCOMING SHOWS

WEDNESDAY25

Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre

04.20 CHROME SPARKS X MACHINEDRUM

Caroline Davis Group Ron Perrillo opens. 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $10. 18+

FRIDAY, APRIL 20 8PM

Saxophonist Caroline Davis was based in Chicago for seven years before relocating to New York in 2013, and her five years there have demanded serious adjustment. She’s spent much of that time gigging as a side person while forging new partnerships and developing new music of her own. Last month she revealed what she’s achieved since leaving on Heart Tonic (Sunnyside), the ﬁrst recording she’s released under her own name since 2015’s Doors (Ears & Eyes), a session made with Chicago musicians and inspired by veteran Chicago musicians like Lin Halliday and Von Freeman. The title of the new record refers to her personal research on the human heart, a subject she began exploring after discovering her father had been diagnosed with arrhythmia. Some of the tunes draw upon ventricular rhythms as metrical devices—an idea previously explored by one of her mentors, fellow alto saxophonist (and Chicago native) Steve Coleman—and on the Wayne Shorter piece “Penelope” she deploys a pulse that is purposely similar to the beats of her father’s conidtion. Despite that thematic focus, the core of the music ultimately revolves around the connections she’s made with a new group of musicians who now surround her— though her ties to trumpeter Marquis Hill date back when they both lived and worked in Chicago. The quintet is rounded out by drummer Jay Sawyer, bassist Tamar Schmerling, and keyboardist Julian Shore, and together they shape tunes of impressive rhythmic elasticity and harmonic exploration on hard-swinging, dynamically explosive multipartite pieces such as “Constructs” (which shows the ongoing influence the classic Miles Davis Quintet with Wayne Shorter has had on Davis) or jittery, tensionfueled moments where the drummer seems to control everyone on a long string. I’m curious how the material will sound with the mostly midwestern band she’s leading tonight. From the quintet, only Sawyer will be joining Davis for the gig; trumpeter Russ Johnson, bassist John Tate, and keyboardist Ron Clearfield will round things out. —PETER MARGASAK v

Company Showcase & Sneak Preview, In Szold Hall

In Szold Hall

SATURDAY, APRIL 21 5 & 8PM

Marshall Crenshaw & The Bottle Rockets SUNDAY, APRIL 22 4 & 7PM

Del McCoury Band SUNDAY, APRIL 22 7PM

John Doyle, Cathy Jordan & Eamon O'Leary performing as The Alt In Szold Hall

ELA MINUS

04.21 FORTUNATE YOUTH 04.22 RED SUN RISING

MOLEHILL / BALLROOM BOXER

LUNAR TIDE FESTIVAL PRE-PARTY

04.26 FREDDY TODD b2b ESSEKS

CHARLESTHEFIRST / TSURUDA / KROMUH

REACT PRESENTS

04.27 DUMBFOUNDEAD 04.28 IAMX

SAT APRIL 21

7PM 17+

REVEREND PEYTON’S BIG DAMN BAND

ROD HAMDALLAH • LIARS TRIAL

REACT PRESENTS

05.01 YUNG GRAVY BBNO$

05.05 H2O

MAJOR THREAT

REACT PRESENTS

05.06 TRICKY TRICKY

YOUNG MAGIC REACT PRESENTS

05.13 JOYNER LUCAS ELI

05.18 EMMURE

FRIDAY, APRIL 27 8PM

COUNTERPARTS / KING 810 / VARIALS

In Szold Hall

SUNDAY, APRIL 29 7PM

Jodee Lewis SUNDAY, APRIL 29 8PM

Sam Amidon

RIOT FEST PRESENTS

05.19 FU MANCHU

MOS GENERATOR

REACT PRESENTS

05.20 BHAD BHABIE ASIAN DOLL

05.31 COMBICHRIST

WEDNESDAY 13 / NIGHT CLUB / PRISON DEATH VALLEY HIGH RIOT FEST PRESENTS

THU APRIL 19

8PM

BURLESQUE / PUNK

BLACK BEAR RODEO

TOP SHELF LICKERS • POST CHILD

BURLESQUE BY SHIMMY LAROUX

FRIDAY, MAY 4 7PM

06.01 MAD CADDIES 06.07 BAD WOLVES / FROM ASHES TO NEW

Hot Rize

06.08 BURNA BOY

ACROSS THE STREET IN SZOLD HALL

06.23 SLOAN 07.08 ANTHONY GREEN

BLACK ROAD • AMPLIFIED HEAT LADY BEAST • PROFESSOR EMERITUS SMOULDER

with special guest James Elkington, In Szold Hall

40th Anniversary Tour with special guest Brennen Leigh & Noel McKay

4545 N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL

4/13 Global Dance Party: ¡ESSO! Afrojam Funkbeat 4/21 Pavithra Chari & Anindo Bose: Contemporary classical music from India

WORLD MUSIC WEDNESDAY SERIES FREE WEEKLY CONCERTS, LINCOLN SQUARE

4/25 Nano Stern 5/2 Patsy O'Brien and Dick Hensold 5/2 Daymé Arocena

Caroline Davis é JACOB HAND

1833 PRESENTS

TATANKA / CONCRETE ROOTS

Patty Larkin

Peter Case

7PM 18+

BOOZE & GLORY

OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG

DIAMANTE

AN EVENING WITH...

GOOD OLD WAR / FOUND WILD

CREATE YOUR SUMMER TOUR FEATURING:

07.28 KARINA GARCIA, WENGIE & NATALIES OUTLET RIOT FEST PRESENTS

08.10 SPARTA

REACT PRESENTS

08.18 SPAG HEDDY

PORN AND CHICKEN

LILLY RASCAL • FAE BEGUILE • RUBY CLARET

FRI APRIL 20

PM STONER ROCK DOOMED AND STONED AND EMPIRE PRESENTS

SAT APRIL 21

PM SKA / PUNK JUMP UP RECORDS & SKA BREWERY RECORD STORE DAY PARTY

GREEN ROOM ROCKERS THE BISHOPS • DJ CHUCK WREN

SUN APRIL 22

2PM PLANNED PARENTHOOD BENEFIT

JUDAS RISING JUDAS PRIEST TRIBUTE HIGH ALERT • THE CAVE DWELLERS WICKED SOUL • ACOUSTIC IMPULSE

10.05 THE BOXER REBELLION

TUE APRIL 24

www.bottomlounge.com 1375 w lake st 312.666.6775

WED APRIL 25

7PM

FREE SHOW / NO COVER

MR BLOTTO • SCHOOL OF ROCK 8PM

WIN PRIZES / FREE

LIVE BAND KARAOKE APRIL 19, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 31

FOOD & DRINK

OLD HABITS/LUDLOW LIQUORS | $$ R 2959 N. California 773-754-7492 ludlow-liquors.com

Clockwise from top: lumpia, crab “dragoon,” the Beefy Boy, rib tips, old-fashioned é ANJALI PINTO

RESTAURANT REVIEW

Old Habits is bar food reborn

The kitchen at Avondale’s Ludlow Liquors is so good it gets its own name. By MIKE SULA

he phrase “permanent food installation” sounds like the result of an unpleasant medical procedure. But in Avondale at a new cocktail bar called Ludlow Liquors, it’s what’s used to describe the activity in the kitchen, its food, and its chefs—Nick Jirasek and his sous chef and collaborator Eric Valdivia, who go about their business under the rubric of Old Habits. The menu, posted above the far end of a bar that glows atomic orange, reads like a ransom note from a desperately famished kidnapper: rib tips, egg rolls, mostaccioli, french fries. In execution the selection does what bar food since the dawn of time was designed to do—keep the customers drinking. But it does much more than that. Ludlow Liquors is the third bar born out of the partnership between Wade McElroy and Jeff Donahue, aka Leisure Activities, the duo also behind Sportsman’s Club, Estereo, and Larry’s. It’s their first bar to serve food. OK, really it’s their second bar to serve food. Ludlow inhabits the space that once housed the Orbit Room, a dependable neighborhood watering hole with lousy grub— until the partners took it over last summer. They made smart updates; the drinking got better, and so did the menu, which was originally put together by Mark Steuer. I was all set to publish a mash note to that chef’s mortadella sandwich when I learned that Donahue and McElroy were planning to shut the whole place down and reopen as a totally new concept.

32 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 19, 2018

I haven’t heard many laments for the Orbit Room, but I sorely begrudged the loss of that creation. Until, that is, I sunk my face into the Beefy Boy, a voluptuous sandwich of pressure-cooked beef cheek and brisket served, on the occasions I ate it, on a pillowy poppy-seed bun (now it’s Texas toast), with salt-and-vinegar chips on the side. Its satiny fat-and-collagen finish cut by tangy giardiniera aioli and fried onion crisps (a la Durkee), it’s a tribute to the late Depot Diner’s

beef sandwich, and the only thing that can interrupt its rapid disappearance is the occasional quick slurp on a cocktail. Jirasek has an uncommon resumé for a chef, with a lot of his experience occurring in the context of the local art scene. That’s ranged from cooking on camp stoves at openings to making vegan mac and cheese with nutritional yeast and chicken hot dogs as (pre-heart surgery) Tony Fitzpatrick’s personal chef to running the cafe at Gaslight

Coffee Roasters. He also consulted at the opening of Theaster Gates’s Currency Exchange Café, where he created the transporting collard greens, notably spiked with Huy Fong sriracha and Topo Chico mineral water. The Old Habits menu pays homage to the chef’s Chicago upbringing, and in an act of audaciousness that wouldn’t be possible were he not a native, he’s smoking rib tips (the city’s barbecue signature) and chunks of belly meat, glazed in a reduction of their drippings, and serving them not with cottony, grease-absorbent white bread but on flour tortillas with melted SarVecchio and cotija cheese. These chewy, fatty, charred nuggets of porky goodness are at once a paean to masters of the form such as Honey 1 and Lem’s and a so-crazy-it-just-might work inspiration that are in a class by themselves. I didn’t believe I really enjoyed lumpia, the iconic, cigar-bore, and often too-dry Filipino egg rolls, until I tried Jirasek’s, which are fat, tubular vessels for a pleasingly greasy farce of finely ground pork, beef, and Spam. These are in fact served upright in an empty Spam can with soy-dashi-coconut vinegar and lightly fermented chile sauce to the side. Jirasek is an assassin with such condiments. The coriander chutney that comes with his vegetarian egg rolls is part and parcel of an ingenious conceptual leap from the original Cantonese-American standard to its Indian analogue, stuffed with curried mashed potato and peas, samosa style. The menu contains other improved mashups of beloved but frequently disappointing junk food. The lightly crispy crab Rangoon—here “dragoon”—is packed with meaty crustacean meat in an everything-bagel-seasoned cream cheese and served alongside sweet-and-sour sauce and a sinus-scouring hot mustard. Three pasta dishes, all with ruffly campanelle noodles, feature thick, soul-coddling preparations like a riff on Hamburger Helper with cheddar and American cheese and a tangy variant of McDonald’s special sauce broiled on top with sesame bread crumbs, or an expression of baked ziti with a thick, gravity-resistant pork-jowl-and-beef-cheek bolognese that’s also available as an upgrade for the french fries.

○ Watch a video of C.J. Jacobson working with dried scallops in the kitchen—and get the recipe—at chicagoreader.com/food.

FOOD & DRINK

Shaved celery salad with dried scallops é JULIA THIEL

KEY INGREDIENT

Bolognese fries é ANJALI PINTO

The fries themselves are the greatest triumph at Old Habits. Thick and long, they have creamy interiors and crispy exteriors that capably withstand that kind of treatment along with beef gravy or garlic butter, though they have a more difficult time when dipped into a small tub of malted vanilla ice cream. The combo already seems like a ghost of 80s-era MicroMagic frozen meals, so why not serve an actual milkshake? Jirasek promises an improvement when the patio opens and a shake machine goes into service. My only half-hearted grumble about the food at Old Habits is its general saltiness, something that’s difficult to complain about under the circumstances in which it’s eaten. If this is even a problem, there are plenty of solutions behind the bar, which offers an allbatched, largely brown liquor-based cocktail list, each drink available in one-, two-, and three-ounce sizws. The old-fashioned is particularly memorable, a large serving poured into a hefty cut-glass tumbler that feels made for the hand (or for a bar fight), the drink’s typical sweetness tamed by salted simple syrup. The Escapist is a decidedly adult, nontropical rum mix with white vermouth. The Careless Whisper echoes a Sazerac with its rye and absinthe lethality camouflaged by chokecherry liqueur, while the Delicious #7 is the requisite mezcal proffer, its vegetal bite softened by applejack and herbal Benedictine. The space, toned down from its Orbit Room days, very much looks like it was designed by Kevin Heisner (Sportsman’s Club, Lone Wolf,

‘Who just has dried scallops on hand?’ A chef gives an Asian ingredient some Mediterranean ﬂair. By JULIA THIEL

The Escapist é ANJALI PINTO

Bar DeVille) because it was. It features the requisite stuffed birds and an illuminated glass-rod-back bar staffed by some of the most enduringly chummy bartenders in town, like Luke LeFiles and general manager Uby Khawaja. We might be in the midst of a surge of quality bar food when you look at recent openings like the Moonlighter and Fort Willow—chef-driven places where the menu is an attraction in its own right rather an antidote to fermented-and-distilled toxins. That’s certainly true of Old Habits, whose novel takes on classic junk foods trigger primal urges that can weaken your inhibitions just as easily as the booze. v

m @MikeSula

hen BRENT BALIKA (MARGEAUX BRASSERIE) challenged C. J. JACOBSON of EMA to create a dish with dried scallops, Jacobson knew what he wanted to make. First, though, he had to get his hands on the scallops (also called conpoy). “It’s been a journey,” he says. “H-Mart didn’t have them, so I had to go to Chinatown, and finally I called Brent.” As it turns out, Balika dries his own scallops in-house and offered to drop some off for Jacobson. “Who just has dried scallops on hand that they do themselves?,” Jacobson asks. “He does. I don’t know why. I don’t think it’s on the menu at Margeaux.” Jacobson says the flavor of the dried scallops is “superdank, musty umami . . . very caramelly seafood flavor. It’s really cool, adds a lot of flavor.” Traditionally, dried scallops are used in XO sauce, a spicy seafood sauce popular in China that also includes dried shrimp, garlic, ginger, chiles, and spices. Because Ema is a Mediterranean restaurant, Jacobson added tomatoes and herbs to his sauce to give it a Mediterranean flair. After rehydrating the dried scallops and some dried shrimp, Jacobson pulsed them in a food processor with Fresno chile, ginger, garlic, shallot, green garlic, basil, and oregano until the mixture was roughly chopped, then

panfried it in oil for about 15 minutes to caramelize it. He added white wine, ﬁsh sauce, and tomatoes and simmered the sauce over low heat until the tomatoes were broken down. “I’m not going to strain this,” he said. “I like how crunchy it is; I like that there’s shrimp faces in here.” Jacobson used the sauce, together with lime juice and olive oil, to dress a simple salad of celery and chrysanthemum. For extra brightness and spice, he also added some lemon kosho (like yuzu kosho but with different fruit), which he made by fermenting lemon rind and jalapeño with salt for about two weeks. Finally, he microplaned a little bit of dried scallop over the top of the salad. “Kind of like scallop two ways, but not enough to really say anything stupid like that,” he says. Tasting it, Jacobson commented, “It’s great and vibrant, has that umami I wanted, but hazelnuts would make it so much better. Shit.”

WHO’S NEXT:

Jacobson has challenged JIMMY PAPADOPOULOS of BELLEMORE to create a dish with ARGAN OIL, a Moroccan oil that’s extracted from the kernels of the argan tree v

m @juliathiel APRIL 19, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 33

JOBS

REAL ESTATE

SALES & MARKETING Telephone Sales Experienced/aggressive telephone closers needed now to sell ad space for Chicago’s oldest and largest newspaper rep firm. Immediate openings in Loop office. Salary + commission. 312-368-4884.

General EC&R

SERVICES,

LLC

also known as E.ON Climate & Renewables North America (E.ON) seeks a Senior Market Risk and Credit Analyst in Chicago, Illinois to actively monitor and report risk analytics on energy trading programs including VaR, stress tests, tail risk assessment, portfolio position alignment, correlation breakdown risk, extreme value theory, etc. Position requires a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Finance, Accounting, or Economics or foreign equivalent, 5 years of experience in commodity trading risk management, of which 4 years are in energy and renewable energy industry, and includes an understanding of statistical techniques. Qualified candidates submit resumes to katie.edwards@eon.com.

ADVISORY ADVISORY MANAGER, MICROSOFT DYNAMICS, PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory Services LLC, Chicago, IL. Consult, design & implement Microsoft Dynamics apps-based solutions. Req. Bach’s deg or foreign equiv. in Bus Admin, Engg, Comp Sci or rel. + 5 yrs post-bach’s progressive rel. work exp; OR a Master’s deg or foreign equiv. in Bus Admin, Engg, Comp Sci or rel. 3 yrs rel. work exp. Travel up to 80% is req. Apply by mail, referencing Job Code IL1723, Attn: HR SSC/Talent Management, 4040 W. Boy Scout Blvd, Tampa, FL 33607. GROUPON, INC. IS SEEKING A SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENGINEER IN TEST i n Chicago, IL w/ the following responsibilities: Design & implement s/ware testing tools, test plans & test infrastructure for Consumer Front-end Test team at Groupon; refine tests by using Groupon specific framework Goblin i-Tier which is based on Java 1.8, Selenium Web Driver, Custom Networking & API Components. Apply on-line at htt p s:/ / jo b s.g ro u p o n . com/jobs/R16593

Northwestern University seeks Assistant Professor of Instruction for Evanston, IL location to teach all levels of Chinese language & related courses. Master’s in Chinese Language req’d. Req’s: Near-Native Fluency in Mandarin & English req’d. Send resume to: Jean Deven, REF: JJ, asianlac@ northwestern.edu COMPUTER/IT: IMC AMERICAS,

Inc. (Chicago, IL), a proprietary trading company, seeks an experienced professional to fill an opening in its Chicago office for a FPGA Engineer. To apply, submit resume and cover letter to talent@imc-chicago.com with “FPGA Engineer” in subject line. No calls. EOE.

RENTALS

STUDIO $500-$599 CHICAGO, BEVERLY/CAL Par k/Blue Island: Studio $625 & up; 1BR $700 & up; 2BR $885 & up. Heat, Appls, Balcony, Carpet, Laundry, Parking. Call 708-3880170

STUDIO $600-$699 CHICAGO, HYDE PARK Arms Hotel, 5316 S. Harper, maid, phone /cable, switchboard, fridge, priv bath, lndry, $165/wk, $350/bi-wk or $650/mo. Call 773-493-3500

HARBORSIDE APARTMENTS ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS for SECTION 8 1,2,3 & 4 Bedroom Apartments. Apply Wednesdays ONLY from 12pm to 4pm at 3610 Alder St. Applications are to be filled out on site. Adult applicants must provide a current picture ID and SS card.

99TH & YATES. fully furnished

FOREST PARK: 1BR new tile, energy efficient windows, lndry facilitities, a/c, incls heat - natural gas, $955/mo Luis 708-366-5602 lv msg

û NO SEC DEP û 6829 S. Perry. 2.5 room. $475/mo. HEAT INCL 773-955-5105

CLEAN ROOM W/FRIDGE & micro, Near Oak Park, Food -4Less, Walmart, Walgreens, Buses & Metra, Laundry. $115/wk & up. 773-637-5957

CROSSROADS HOTEL SRO SINGLE RMS Private bath, PHONE,

CABLE & MAIDS. 1 Block to Orange Line 5300 S. Pulaski 773-581-1188

GARY NSA ACCEPTING applications for SECTION 8 STUDIO UNITS ONLY. Apply Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10am to 2pm ONLY at 1735 W 5th Ave. Applications are to be filled out on site. Adult applicants must provide a current picture ID and SS card.

AVAILABLE

STUDIO OTHER

LARGE SUNNY ROOM w/fridge & microwave. Near Oak Park, Green Line & Buses. 24 hr Desk, Parking Lot $101/week & Up. (773)378-8888

WEST

TOWN

storefront 1040 sq ft open space, with kitchen, high ceiling, track lights, lower basement level, secured parking in rear. Two story building. Perfect for retail, gallery or office, Architect, Graphic Designer, Photographer. $1795.00 security deposit 1 month with good credit, utilities extra.

Ashland Hotel nice clean rms. 24 hr desk/maid/TV/laundry/air. Low rates daily/weekly/monthly. South Side. Call 773-376-5200

1 BR UNDER $700 THE PARKWAYS APARTMENTS Will be accepting applications for the low income housing waitlist at 6720 S. East End Ave. The following bedroom types will be open for 1 day only: Studio & 1 Bedroom apartments only, Wednesday, April 18, 2018, 9:00am – 1:00pm; 2 & 3bedroom apartments only, Thursday, April 19, 2018, 9:00am – 1:00pm. Eligibility Determined by Resident Selection Criteria - Income Limits Apply. 6718 S. East End Ave, Chicago, IL 60649. 773-493-7300; TYY: (800) 7352989

{ { rooms for rent. Utilities & bed included. Seniors & Veterans Welcome $500/per month. 773-412-9873.

R U O Y AD E R E H

7022 S. SHORE DRIVE Impeccably Clean Highrise STUDIOS, 1 & 2 BEDROOMS Facing Lake & Park. Laundry & Security on Premises. Parking & Apts. Are Subject to Availability. TOWNHOUSE APARTMENTS 773-288-1030

1 MILLION

PEOPLE MONTHLY IN PRINT & DIGITAL.

25 N Latrobe, 4BR and enclosed back porch, 2nd floor apt, hrdwd flrs, remodeled bathroom & kitchen, appls & heat incl’d. $1200/ mo. Call/text, 708-655-1228 BRONZEVILLE - 4312 S. King Dr. 1BR. $555/mo. Heat included Move-in fee $275. Call 773-548-7286 for application

SEC 8 WELC 7446 S. Vernon. 1BR, 1st flr, remod hdwd floors, appls & heat incl, laundry on site. $700/mo & up. Z. 773-406-4841

CHICAGO - Lovely 4 rm apt, 1BR, liv rm, din rm, kitchen/bath, heated and carpet flrs. Close to trans. $700/mo. Avail now. 773-264-6711 7425 S. COLES - 1 BR $620, 2

BR $735, Includes Free heat & appliances & cooking gas. (708) 424-4216 Kalabich Mgmt 6930 S. SOUTH SHORE DRIVE Studios & 1BR, INCL. Heat, Elec, Cking gas & PARKING, $585-$925, Country Club Apts 773-752-2200

Newly Remod. Studio $550, 1BR $650 w/Heat. 2BR and up starting at $750. Qualified Applicants rcv. up to $400/month off rent for 1 year. No App Fee. (773)412-1153 Wesley Realty

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)

PRE-SPRING SPECIAL - CHICAGO South Side Beautiful Studios, 1,2,3 & 4 BR’s, Sec 8 ok. Also Homes for rent available. Call Nicole 312-446-1753; W-side locations Tom 630-776-5556; 7520 S. COLES - 1 BR $520, 2 BR $645, Includes appliances & AC, Near transp., No utilities included (708) 424-4216 Kalabich Mgmt

GENERAL

2032 EAST 72ND PL . 2BR, 1BA, condo, 2nd floor. appliances incl. No Pets. $1,050/mo plus security. heat included. 312-497-2819

BURNHAM 1BR, $700, no sec., newly remodeled, w/w cpt, Balcony, appls, free heat & gas, AC, Laundry rm, credit check. 773-619-3587 CHICAGO, 107TH & KING DR. Totally Rehabbed 1BR, carpeting, appliances & heat incl. $725/ mo. Call Frank, 708-670-8727

1 BR $800-$899 HUMBOLDT PARK. 1 bedroom

apartment for rent. Newly remodeled. Next door to food store. $880/ mo plus security deposit. Includes gas. Near shopping area. Tim, 773-592-2989.

bright, across from park, heat/ gas included. Miniblinds/ ceiling fans. Free laundry, private porch, block Montrose Harbor. $935. 773-9733463.

1 BR $1100 AND OVER

NICE ROOM w/stove, fridge & bath Near Aldi, Walgreens, Beach, Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry. $133/wk & up. 773-275-4442

ROSCOE VILLAGE MODERN

WEST HUMBOLDT PK, 1 & 2BR Apts, spacious, oak wood flrs, huge closets. heat incl, rehab, $820 & $935. Call 847866-7234 75TH/EBERHART & 70TH/ MAPLEWOOD 1 & 2BR apts, c- fans, appls, hdwd flrs, heated, intercom. $700/mo & up. 773-881-3573

GENERAL

APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. Ltd. SUMMER IS HERE!! Most units Include.. HEAT & HOT WTR Studios From $475.00 1Bdr From $550.00 2Bdr From $745.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000**

ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL

BIG ROOM with stove, fridge, bath & nice wood floors. Near Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry, Shopping. $121/wk + up. 773-561-4970

1 BR $700-$799

HEAD OF HOUSEHOLD MUST BE AT LEAST 62 YEARS OLD!! Maximum income limits apply State photo ID or drivers license will be required to fill out waiting list application. Only one pre-application per household allowed. Open House held at 400 E 41st St Chicago IL 60653 773.924.2100 Applications will only be accepted on the dates listed above.

PTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. Ltd. SPRING IS HERE!!! HEAT, HW & CG Plenty of parking 1Bdr From $845.00 2Bdr From $925.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000***

Newly updated, clean furnished rooms in Joliet, near buses & Metra, elevator. Utilities included, $91/wk. $395/mo. 815-722-1212

NO SEC DEP

loacated at 401 E. Bowen Ave. SUBSIDY waiting list for studios and one bedrooms. Open House Dates: Saturday, April 14, 2018 from Noon until 3:00p.m. Saturday, April 21, 2018 from Noon until 3:00p.m. Saturday, April 28, 2018 from Noon until 3:00p.m.

1 BR $900-$1099 MONTROSE/ CLARENDON VINTAGE one bedroom. Sunny/

5401 S. Ellis. 1BR. $625/mo. Call 773-955-5106

7801 S. Bishop. 2BR. $610/mo. HEAT INCL 773-955-5106

Newly rehabbed apartments for IMMEDIATE OCCUPANCY

5-ROOM, 2-BDRM, 8149 S. Jeffery Blvd. Clean, Quiet, Heated. $850/mo + 1 mo. Security. 773-768-6554

Chicago - Hyde PARK

2018 NEW YEAR SA VINGS!

S. SHORE 7017 S. Clyde. 1 & 2BR, reno Kit/BA, hdwd flrs, ten pays heat, nr Metra & shops. $600-$685 + move In fee 773-474-0363

REACH OVER

Chicago, Bronzeville Rooms for rent. $450-600 all utilities incl. Share kitchen/BA. SSI welcome. No Sec Deposit Req 312-9273929

CHATHAM 736 East 81st (Evans), 2 bedroom garden apt, $700/mo. Please call Mr. Joe at 708-870-4801 for more info

LOFT. Parking included! 1148 sq. ft. 1 bedroom + den, overlooking park. Hardwood ﬂoors, ﬁreplace, whirlpool, washer/dryer. Shared rooftop deck, skyline views. Near public transportation. July 1. $1899/mo. 708-819-2229

Cedar Villas is accepting applications for subsidized 1BR apts. for seniors 62 years or older and the disabled. Rent is based on 30% of annual income. For details, call us at 847-546-1899 ∫

ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL

1 BR OTHER

Cedar Villas is accepting applications for subsidized 1BR apts. for seniors 62 years or older and the disabled. Rent is based on 30% of annual income. For details, call us at 847-546-1899 ∫

6748 CRANDON & 7727 COLFAX MOST BEAUTIFUL APARTMENTS! 1 & 2BR, $625 & UP. OFF STREET PARKING. 773-947-8572 / 312-613-4424

SUNNY & LARGE 2 & 3BR, hd wd/ceramic flrs, appls, heat incl’d, Sect 8 OK. $900 plus. 70th & Sangamon/Peoria. 773456-6900

GENERAL

MARKETING ANALYST –

Research/analyze market conditions of sportswear/shoes. Collect data from oversea vendors. Req’s a Bach in BA, business, marketing, statistics & econ plus 1yr exp as marketing or data analyst. Job in Chicago. Res to: Palm USA, Inc., 5050 W. Lawrence Ave., Chicago, IL 60630

Drivers Needed: Street Sweeper Operators Must have CDL w/air brakes endorsement and a clean MVR Experience Preferred. Apply at address. 16247 S Brennan Hwy, Tinley Park, Illinois 60478. 9am3pm

FAMILY-OWNED AND OPERATED grocery store looking for en-

ergetic, punctual and hard working individuals ready to work. Cashier and Stocker positions are available. We are open 7 days a week. Come in and apply today!

34 CHICAGO READER | APRIL 19, 2018

Cyril Court Apartments, a Section 8 Apartment Community located in the quiet South Shore Community, just minutes away from Lake Michigan. Enjoy living in our spacious studio and one-bedroom apartments designed for your comfort and convenience. You can enjoy an array of amenities including a clubhouse, elevators, laundry on site, and gated secure parking lot. We as well offer controlled access, and after hours emergency maintenance assistance. Residents enjoy monthly activities with their neighbors which creates a sense of community. Come in and ﬁll out an application and see why Cyril Court Apartments should be your new home.

FREE APPLICATION! JUST WALK IN, IT’S THAT EASY! *Must have valid state ID to apply

312-222-6920

Applications accepted 10AM-3:30PM Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday

BUILDING HAS A SENIOR PREFERENCE!!

Preference as well given to disabled, homeless or displaced. Applicants subject to HUD income eligibility and other screening requirements. Rent based on 30% of adjusted monthly income.

7130 S. Cyril Court, Chicago, IL 60649 Half Block West of Jeffrey Ave.

(773)773-717-2008 588-7767 ext.•108 TTY (711 National TTY•(711 National Relay)Relay)

www.CyrilCourtApts.com • Email: CyrilCourt@m2regroup.com

CHICAGO - BEVERLY, large studio, 1 & 2BR Apts. Carpet, A/ C, laundry, near transportation, $680-$1020/mo. Call 773-2334939 CHATHAM 88TH/DAUPHIN.

2BR. 74th/King Dr. 1BR. Both bright & spac, great trans, laundry on site, security camera. 312-341-1950

SUBURBS, RENT TO OW N! Buy with No closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708868-2422 or visit www.nhba.com CHICAGO, RENT TO OWN! Buy with no closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708868-2422 or visit www.nhba.com ACACIA SRO HOTEL Men Preferred! Rooms for Rent. Weekly & Monthly Rates. 312-421-4597

AVAILABLE NOW. ROOMS for

rent. Utilities incl’d. Seniors Welcome. $500/mo. Call 773-431-1251

2 BR UNDER $900 CHICAGO 7600 S Essex PRE-SPRING SPECIAL - 2BR $599, 3BR $699, 4BR $799 w/apprvd credit, no sec dep. Sec 8 Ok! Also Homes for Rent avail. Call Nicole 773-287-9999; W-side locations Tom 630-776-5556

ADULT SERVICES

BRONZEVILLE SEC 8 OK! 4950 S. Prairie. Remod 1BR. $700+. Heat, cooking gas & appls inc, lndry on site. Z. 773.406.4841 8316 S INGLESIDE 1BR $725/ mo Newly remodeled, Dining room, laundry, hrdwd flrs, cable, Sec 8 welc. 708-308-1509 or 773493-3500 CHICAGO SW 1516 W. 58th St.,

Updated 2Br, quiet, ceiling fan,ceramic kit/Ba, Lr/Dr, intercom, encl. porch, close to trans, $775, 312719-3733

MUST SEE! 86TH & Yates, 1st floor, 2BR, incl free heat & appls, A/C, ceiling fans, intercom system, $850/mo. Call 773-375-6797

2 BR $900-$1099 CHICAGO, Quiet 2BR, 2nd floor, incl. dining room, heat, enclosed back porch. $850/ mo. + security. Call 773-8481858 SECT 8 WELCOME, 2 & 3BR

Houses. Also Sharp 2 & 3BR Apts, fenced yard. $985-$1200/mo. Will accept 1 or 2BR Voucher. 708-573-5628

ADULT SERVICES

SECTION 8 WELCOME 110th & Vernon. 2BR, Quiet Bldg w/ long term tenants, Heat/appls incl, Laundry Rm, $950/mo. No sec/appl fee. 312-388-3845 HUMBOLDT PARK, near North & Homan, huge 6 rooms 2.5BR! Newly remodeled, no pets. $1400/ mo + deposit. Call 312-914-0110 6812 S. ROCKWELL. 2 & 3BRs, newly rehabbed, no pets, appls incl. $1000/mo + elec & cooking gas. 773-507-8475 GLENWOOD, Updated lrg 2BR Condo, HF HS, Balcony, C/A, appls, heat/water incl. 2 pkng, laundry. $990mo. 708.268.3762

CHATHAM AREA, Gorgeous, 2BR, 1st flr, updated kit & bath.

$900/mo + 1 mo sec. Clean & Quiet. No Pets. 773-930-6045

2 BR $1100-$1299 ASHBURN 7927 S WHIPPLE,

Beaut rehabbed 3+2BR, 2BA house, granit ctrs, ss appls, ca, fin bsmt, 2 car gar. $1675/mo 708-288-4510

2 BR $1300-$1499 FOREST PARK 1300 SF 2BR, 2BA, 2 parking spots, heat & water paid. Safe & quiet, Close to xpressway. $1350. Roland 708224-8520

2 BR OTHER ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar

Villas is accepting applications for Subsidized 2 and 3 bedroom apt waiting list. Rent is based on 30% of annual income for qualified applicants. Contact us at 847-546-1899 for details

CITY: 5 7 9 CALUMET Wentworth, 2BR, 2nd fl,LR, sun porch. Avail 5/1. $775/mo + 1 mo sec dep. Utilities NOT incl. Sect 8 ok. 708-420-8150 CHICAGO, DELUXE, NEWLY

Decorated 2 & 3 BR, by 71st & Union. Free heat. $750-$850/mo. Section 8 Welc. Mr. Wilson, 773-491-6580

SECTION 8 WELCOME. NO SECURITY DEPOSIT. 718 W 81st St, 5BR, 2BA house, appls incl., $1300/mo. 708-288-4510

MATTESON, RICHTON PARK, HAZEL CREST & UNIV PARK.

ADULT SERVICES

2 & 3BR Houses & T.H. Sec 8 OK. Call 708-625-7355

NEWLY REMOD 3BR in up & coming Englewood. (W. 65th /S. Green) Sec 8 Welc, close to public trans. $1100/mo. 708-845-9399

3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200 3 BEDROOM $1050 a month. quiet block in southshore. 67th & clyde 1st ﬂoor of a 6 ﬂat. take section8 1 or 2 bedroom voucher. call 312-771-3236

MARKHAM - 3BR, 2 full bath, C/A, near shopping & trans! No pets! Dep req’d. Nice neighborhood! Avail Now! $1500. Call 708-906-6122

CHICAGO, 1945 S. Drake, 3rd floor, 2BR, 2BA, newly renovated, hardwood floors, storage, no dogs, $1050/mo. Call 773-4853042 SECTION 8 WELCOME No Deposit 13356 S Brandon. NICE 4BR/1BA w/d hook up $1300. 225 W. 108th Pl. 2BR, 1BA w/ ht & hot wtr. $950. appls inc 312-683-5174 CHICAGO, 4200 BLOCK Grenshaw, studio bsmt Apt, newly decor, utils incl., $750/mo + $750 sec dep. Senior pref. 773785-5174

CHICAGO HEIGHTS, 3BR, 1BA, NEWLY REMODELED, APPLS INCL , SECTION 8 OK. NO SEC. DEPOSIT. 708-822-4450

3832 W. LEXINGTON, Beautiful 3 and 4 bedroom, 1 bath units, in recently remodeled unit. Sect 8 welcome. Clean sunny asking $1200 to $1250. call or text 312-459-9635 or email vmmproperties@gmail.com , please leave your name and number. showings Saturdays from noon til 2pm. free 42 inch tv to best applicant that gets accepted.

ALSIP, IL 3 BR/1.5 BA 2 story townhouse for rent. $1100/mo without appliances. $2200 due upon signing. Call Verdell, 219-888-8600 for more info.

NR 77TH & STONY ISLAND 2 story, Spacious 3BR/2BA, w/ yard, appls. $1250/mo + utils. Credit check

RIVERDALE: MUST SEE! 3BR Apt Newly decorated. Carpet, near metra, no pets, $925/mo + sec dep Available Now 708-8291454

AUSTIN 1143 S. Monitor Newly

BRONZEVILLE: SECTION 8 WELCOME. No Security Deposit. 4841 S Michigan. 4BR apt, appls incl., $1400/mo. Call 708-2884510

3 BR OR MORE $1800-$2499

Chicago, Newly remod, 3BR, hardwood floors, 4643 W. Monroe. $975/mo, water incl. Tenant pays all utilities. Contact Alvin, 773-865-0060 SECTION 8 WELCOME. No Security Deposit. 7721 S Peoria, 3BR apt, appls incl. $1050/mo. 708-288-4510

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499

req. Sec 8 OK Quiet area 646-202-3294

GENERAL THE RESURRECTION PROJECT’S

waitlist is open for our affordable units. Please complete a preapplication by visiting http:// resurrectionproject.org/applynow. If you have any questions, please contact pm@resurrectionproject.org or call 312-248-8355.

FIRST MONTH RENT FREE

Remod 3.5BR, ceramic BA & kitch, LR /DR, hdwd flrs, C/A, appls incl. $1200+. Sect 8 ok. 773-474-3266

OLYMPIA FIELDS Newly remodeled 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath house, full basement. Beautiful area. $1995/mo.. 708-935-7557.

3 BR OR MORE OTHER

PRE-SPRING SPECIAL Chicago Houses for rent. Section 8 Ok, w/ app credit $500 gift certificate 3, 4 & 5 BR houses avail. Call Nicole: 773-287-9999; W-side locations: Tom 630-776-5556

BUDLONG WOODS, 5500N/ 2600W. Three bedrooms, full

TOUHY & WESTERN , Newly remodeled 3BR & 1BR apts available hdwd flrs, granite countertops. Sec dep req’d. 773-908-1080

ADULT SERVICES

dining room, spacious living room, 1.5 baths, many closets, near transportation, $1485 includes heat. Marty 773-784-0763.

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Furnished, Private 2.44 Acre Estate, 3 Homes in Rancho Mirage, CA (Palm Springs). Features: Tropical Setting w/Mtn.Views, Lakes, 2 Golﬁng Holes, 5K Btl. Wine Cellar, Tennis, Pool & Spa, 5 Car Garage Angela Maciel-Gibbons 760-880-8568

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BUYING OLD WHISKEY/ BOURBON/RYE! Looking for full/

sealed vintage bottles and decanters. PAYING TOP DOLLAR!! 773-263-5320 TOY SIZE. Vet Checked. Shots/Worming. Health guar. 708-299-2850

PUPPIES,

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SOUTH SHORE, Senior Discount. Male preferred. Furnished rooms, shared kitchen & bath, $450/mo. & up. Utilities included. 773-710-5431

JANITORIAL SERVICE

FOR SALE BRICK 2-FLAT - 2231 W. Augusta

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Office cleaning, pressure washing, common areas cleaning, carpet cleaning 773-218-6699

HEALTH & WELLNESS

HIGH QUALITY MASSAGE Offered by experienced, welltrained female massage therapist. From 9am-9pm 7 days. DesPlaines-Touhy Ave & Lee St. 773-592-3908. www.chicagobestmassage.com

ADULT SERVICES

please recycle this paper APRIL 19, 2018 | CHICAGO READER 35

REAL PEOPLE REAL DESIRE REAL FUN. DISCREET BILLING

Try FREE: 773-867-1235 More Local Numbers: 1-800-926-6000

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STRAIGHT DOPE By Cecil Adams Q : Years ago I was deer hunting on my

friend’s farm in Ohio. As the sun rose I noticed I was in the middle of a large cow pasture. Some cows walked toward me slowly. When they were about 100 feet away, I decided I had better leave. As I was walking I could see the cows picking up their pace. I got pretty nervous and decided to run toward a fence. I looked behind me and saw the two cows were now running toward me. I got over the fence in the nick of time. Since that incident I’ve wondered: What would have happened if I hadn’t made it to the fence? —CRAFTER MAN, VIA THE STRAIGHT DOPE MESSAGE BOARD

SMOKEYBEAR.COM

36 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 19, 2018

ION OF STA IAT TE OC

STERS RE FO

Only YOU Can Prevent Wildﬁres.

NATIONAL A SS

A : When it comes to menacing humans, cer-

U N D E D 192

tain cows hog all the attention. One in Rajasthan, India, made tabloid headlines in February for attacking a British tourist who had begun singing the Black Eyed Peas song “My Humps” at it; the cow understandably took this as a provocation and charged. A few years earlier the UK press had gotten on a story about an English farmer who’d tried to raise cattle from a stock originally bred in the 1920s and ’30s by Germans hoping to re-create the aurochs, an extinct bovine master race once prevalent in the Fatherland. The present-day herd proved to be so aggressive that the farmer had to send at least half of them off to slaughter: “They would try to kill anyone,” he told the Guardian. In the United States, you’re more likely to be killed by cows than you are by alligators, spiders, sharks, and venomous snakes combined, according to a 2015 analysis of Centers for Disease Control data by the Washington Post. Granted, these are still exceedingly small numbers we’re talking about. When I say it’s 20 times more likely you’ll be killed by a cow than by a gator, that’s only because the country averages roughly one death by gator per annum, and 20 DBCs. As you’d guess, farms, ranches, and feedlots are the main venues for cow-on-human violence. In 2016 the Bureau of Labor Statistics tallied 19 workplace deaths primarily caused by bovines, half the total attributed to nonhuman mammals in all. These numbers are fairly typical, meaning it’s a notably unlucky civilian who goes out this way. How, specifically, does one come to grief via cow? Blunt injury, mainly, reports a 2013 article from the journal Trauma. “Cattle can weigh more than a car,” the authors remind us, and so when a cow gets a good piece of you, the results tend to be “high energy injuries with severe crushing tissue damage.” Overall, they found, kicking is the most common form of

SLUG SIGNORINO

HOT GIRL BODY RUBS

impact, though in a cited 2001 study of U.S. cow-related occupational deaths, the leading mechanisms of fatal injury were, in order, (1) charging, (2) trampling or stomping, and (3) pinning victim against (e.g.) a gate or wall, with kicking in fourth place. If the cow has horns, that’s a whole other story: penetrating injuries “most commonly affect the abdomen followed by the perineum,” another way of saying that if they miss you in the stomach they’ll get you in the crotch. The complex mechanics of goring— wherein the victim often gets hoisted up on the horn, then wrenched around—means doctors see a lot of internal damage “even with seemingly small wounds.” To paw this ground a little further, I’ll refer you to the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which in 2009 included a study called “Fatalities Caused by Cattle—Four States, 2003-2008.” This one isn’t straight statistics but presents some grim case summaries as well. We read about a 65-yearold woman who “was removing a dead, newborn calf from a pasture when a cow knocked her down, stomped her, and butted her while she was lying on the ground”; a 65-year-old man loading beef cattle onto a truck who was subsequently crushed against the barn door; and a 63-year-old man who was butted, pinned against a fence, and stomped in his dairy barn by a bull with a rep for being threatening. The CDC editors note a few themes here. One is that cows can be prone to aggression when their young are present. Another is that cattle victims tend to be getting on in years: of the 21 cases examined, 14 involved people above the age of 60, and the report pointed to other data on higher injury rates for livestock farmers who used hearing aids or experienced arthritis or rheumatism. A presumably still-spry hunter out on the open field, not trying to get too near a calf? You might’ve been fine anyway, Crafter. Still, it’s always best to take precautions: head for the fence pronto, and for god’s sake don’t start singing till you’re on the other side. v Send questions to Cecil via straightdope.com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 30 N. Racine, suite 300, Chicago 60607.

SAVAGE LOVE

By Dan Savage

Going down there Can anal sex cause constipation? and other burning questions Q : Background: I, a 21-year-

old male, enjoy receptive ﬁsting. I’ve also had constipation problems all my life. Question: I saw my doctor recently, and he tried to link my enjoyment of anal sex to my constipation. (Granted, I didn’t tell him EVERYTHING I do down there.) My understanding was that there was no causal relationship, assuming no serious injuries occur. Is there something I don’t know? Was my doctor just trying to be helpful? —FEARING INNER SANCTUM TARNISHED

A : “There are many myths

about anal sex, but this is the ﬁrst time I’ve heard this one,” said Dr. Peter Shalit, a physician in Seattle and a member of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association. It’s also the first time I’ve heard anyone associate fisting with constipation—typically when fisting is mentioned in the same sentence as constipation, FIST, it’s as a cure. But it’s a myth that fisting cures constipation, of course, just as it’s a myth that anal sex is inherently dangerous. “Fisting is a safe activity, provided that both the top and bottom are sober at the time,” said Shalit. “It does not cause damage or constipation or any other type of bowel problem. The same applies to other anal sexual activities. There is a misconception that these activities can cause damage by stretching or tearing the tissue, when actually the anus is very elastic.” Despite the fact that millions safely engage in anal play, many people believe that it does irreparable harm to the anus—or the soul—and that, sadly, includes many doctors. “If a person suffers from constipation, that should be

addressed as its own problem and not blamed on any type of anal sexual activity,” said Shalit. Finally, FIST, if you don’t feel comfortable telling your doctor EVERYTHING you’re doing “down there,” you can look for a new doctor under “find a provider” at GLMA. org.

Q : I’m a 35-year old straight

male, engaged to my girlfriend of eight years. While we have a good sex life, she often won’t let me ﬁnger or lick her. When she does, she enjoys it and easily climaxes while receiving oral sex. But her higher brain functions get in the way, as she has internalized our culture’s body shaming. She has likened me “sticking my nose down there” to “sticking my head in the toilet.” Whenever I sexy-talk about licking her, she reacts with a mood-killing “eww.” But she says she would enjoy it if she could let me. I can’t make heads or tails of it! When we have sex, she cuts foreplay short and gets straight to penetration. She feels pleasure and moans, but she really does not value her own orgasm. But I do, and I miss seeing her climax! I wish I could help her overcome her body issues— but when I “use my words,” she feels pressured and can’t relax. I am at a loss. Please help! —LOVES INHIBITED CARNAL KILLJOY

A : Try again to use your

words—but don’t use them when you’re about to have sex, LICK. Do it at a neutral time when you can’t have sex, so she doesn’t feel like you’re attempting to initiate by raising the subject. First, ask her if she enjoyed oral when she allowed you to go down on her. If oral is pleasurable for her when she can allow

you to go down on her, ﬁgure out what was diﬀerent about those times—had she just stepped out of the shower? was she a little tipsy or high?—and give it another try.

Q : My boyfriend and I just

got back from Berlin, and we had a great time—until the last night. There was a dark room in the basement of this gay bar, and my boyfriend wanted to check it out and I did not. We are monogamous for now—I’m open to opening things up down the road— and I didn’t see the point of going down there. I told him that drunk in a gay bar at 3 AM wasn’t the right time to open up our relationship, and he angrily insisted he wasn’t trying to do that. But if we’re monogamous and want to stay monogamous, why go into a dark room at all?

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—DUDE INTO MONOGAMY

A : If it was your boyfriend’s

intent to reopen negotiations about monogamy while horny men circled you in a dark room, DIM, that wouldn’t be OK. But it is possible for monogamous couples to enter sexually charged environments like dark rooms, sex parties, or swingers’ clubs and emerge with their monogamous commitments intact. It’s advisable even—or at least I’ve advised monogamous couples who want to keep things hot—to visit those kinds of spaces. So next time, go down there. You might have to bat a few hands away, but once the other guys realize you two aren’t there for anyone else, they’ll turn their attentions to others who are. v Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at savagelovecast. com. m @fakedansavage

Never miss a show again.

EARLY WARNINGS

chicagoreader.com/early

APRIL 19, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 37

UPDATED Megative 9/25, 7 PM, Cobra Lounge, rescheduled from 5/1, 17+

UPCOMING

New Pornographers é JENNY JIMENEZ/COURTESY BILLIONS

NEW Alvarez Kings, Anarbor 6/30, 7 PM, Cobra Lounge, on sale Fri 4/20, 10 AM b Arrested Development 5/23, 8 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 4/20, 10 AM, 17+ Bad Wolves, From Ashes to New 6/7, 5:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 4/20, 10 AM b Martin Barre 10/27, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Baseball Project 8/4, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 4/20, 10 AM b Bodega 6/19, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Boxer Rebellion 10/5, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, Fri 4/20, 10 AM, 17+ David Allan Coe 6/16, 8:30 PM, Joe’s Bar Dark Star Orchestra 9/29, 8 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri 4/20, 10 AM, 18+ Anthony David 7/11, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 4/19, noon b Al Di Meola 6/24, 7:30 PM, Park West, on sale Fri 4/20, 10 AM, 18+ Dinosaur Jr. 7/18, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 4/20, 10 AM, 17+ Do Division Street Fest with La Luz, Ted Leo & the Pharmacists, Antibalas, Deerhoof, Bear vs. Shark, Wooden Shjips, Martin Rev, Bad Bad Habits, Frankie Rose, Low Down Brass Band, and more 6/1-3, Division between Damen and Leavitt b Drunks With Guns 5/5, 9 PM, Liar’s Club 88 Fingers Louie, Rehasher 8/24, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, on sale Fri 4/20, 11 AM, 17+

Tito El Bambino & Ivy Queen 5/22, 8 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 4/20, 10 AM, 17+ Enchantment 5/13, 7:30 PM, the Promontory b Jeremy Enigk 6/30, 8:30 PM, Subterranean, on sale Thu 4/19, 10 AM, 17+ Eric B & Rakim 5/10, 8 PM, Portage Theater Evidence 5/25, 9 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Sawyer Fredericks 8/1, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 4/19, noon b Dana Fuchs 7/27, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 4/20, 10 AM b Ggoolldd 7/27, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Anthony Green, Good Old War 7/8, 6:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 4/20, 10 AM b Wayne “the Train” Hancock, Scott H. Biram 7/15, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 4/19, noon b Immersion 7/6, 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ Vijay Iyer Sextet 5/12, 8:30 and 10 PM, Constellation, 18+ Simon Joyner 6/10, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Kem, Anthony Hamilton, Eric Benet 5/11, 8 PM, Arie Crown Theater Miranda Lambert, Little Big Town 8/25, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park, on sale Fri 4/20, 10 AM Let’s Eat Grandma 9/6, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 4/20, 10 AM Mamby on the Beach with Common, Spoon, Grizzly Bear, Russ, Cold War Kids, Gorgon City, Tune-Yards, and more 6/23-24, Oakwood Beach Drew McDowall 6/13, 9 PM, Hideout

38 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 19, 2018

Don McLean 8/19, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 4/19, noon b Men I Trust 6/27, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Pat Metheny 10/12, 7:30 PM, Chicago Theatre, on sale Fri 4/20, 10 AM Michigan Rattlers 6/7, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ MU330 8/17, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, on sale Fri 4/20, 11 AM, 17+ New Pornographers 6/21, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 4/20, 10 AM, 17+ Pelican, Cloakroom 7/26, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Plies 5/25, 8 PM, Joe’s Bar Polo & Pan 6/14, 9:30 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 4/20, 10 AM, 18+ Project Pat, Lil Wyte, Gangsta Boo, La Chat 4/27, 9 PM, Joe’s Bar Racquet Club 7/9, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen Scarface, DJ Quik, MC Lyte, KRS-One, Twista 5/25, 8 PM, Arie Crown Theater Sir the Baptist 6/15, 8 PM, Chop Shop, on sale Fri 4/20, 10 AM, 18+ Sister Hazel 4/28, 9:15 PM, Joe’s Bar Sistine Chapel Choir 7/21, 7 PM, Arie Crown Theater Smoke DZA 5/22, 6 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club b Snow tha Product 6/2, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Us the Duo 7/27, 8 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 4/20, 10 AM b Yeek 6/18, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Mike Zito, Bernard Allison, and Vanja Sky 8/10, 10 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 4/20, 10 AM b

Alt-J 6/7, 8 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Apocalypse Hoboken 7/13-14, 7:30 PM, Chop Shop, 18+ Big Sean, Playboi Carti 5/27, 7 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Bing & Ruth 5/11, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Bongripper 7/13, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Cactus Blossoms 4/29, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Cannabis Corpse, Elbow Deep 5/24, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Citizen, Angel Dust 6/5, 6:15 PM, Cobra Lounge b Counting Crows, Live 9/8, 6:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Dimmu Borgir 8/21, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Diplomats 7/28, 9 PM, Portage Theater Erasure 7/28, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre Faust 7/11, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Follakzoid, Lumerians 5/3, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Full of Hell, Gatecreeper 6/6, 8 PM, Cobra Lounge A Hawk and a Hacksaw 5/30, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Hop Along 6/10, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Iamx 4/28, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Jimmy Eat World, Hotelier 5/8, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard 6/10, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b King Tuﬀ, Cut Worms 5/25, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ La Luz, Gymshorts 5/31, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Lavender Country 4/26, 9 PM, Hideout Jeﬀ Lynne’s ELO 8/15, 8 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont The Make-Up 7/6, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Melvins 7/31, 7:30 PM, Park West b Messthetics 5/5, 9 PM, Hideout Kevin Morby 4/28, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Mutoid Man 5/14, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Raelyn Nelson Band 6/22, 8 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint No Age 5/10, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Obituary, Pallbearer, Skeletonwitch 5/13, 7 PM, Metro, 18+ Occult Burial 5/25, 8 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Panda Bear 4/30, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+

ALL AGES

WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK

EARLY WARNINGS

CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME

Never miss a show again. Sign up for the newsletter at chicagoreader. com/early

Primus, Mastodon 6/6, 7 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Jeﬀ Rosenstock 4/26, 6:30 PM, Logan Square Auditorium b Saint Jhn 5/3, 8 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint, 18+ Slayer, Anthrax, Testament 5/25, 5 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Sleep 8/1, 7 PM, Riviera Theatre b Spits 5/25, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Tech N9ne 6/9, 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Tory Lanez 7/1, 7 PM, House of Blues b Jeﬀ Tweedy 4/27-28, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Wand 6/18-19, 9 PM, Hideout Yanni 6/30, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre Yob, Bell Witch 7/8, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+

SOLD OUT Alice in Chains 5/15, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Animal Collective, Lonnie Holley 7/27, 7:30 PM, the Vic b Courtney Barnett 5/21, 8:30 PM, Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center Big K.R.I.T. 4/28, 7 PM, Metro b Bishop Briggs 5/12, 8 PM, Metro, 17+ Bon Iver 6/3, 7 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park b Boombox Cartel 4/28, 9 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ David Byrne 6/1-3, 8 PM, Auditorium Theatre, sold out Dinosaur Jr. 7/19, 7:30 PM, Temperance Beer Company, Evanston, part of Out of Space Flatbush Zombies 5/10, 7:30 PM, the Vic b Gaslight Anthem 8/11, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Grouplove 6/1, 7:30 PM, Metro b Ides of March 5/3, 8 PM, City Winery Kooks 5/30, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Tom Misch 4/26, 8 PM, Metro, 17+ Mt. Joy 5/11-12, 9 PM, Hideout New Pornographers 6/22, 7:30 PM, Temperance Beer Company, Evanston, part of Out of Space Shakey Graves 5/22, 7:30 PM, the Vic, 18+ Sum 41 5/18, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall b Yeah Yeah Yeahs 5/29, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom b v

GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene THIS PAST FALL, the board of local nonprofit Pure Joy, who came together in 2013 to launch an ADA-accessible, LGBTQsafe all-ages punk venue, reached a crossroads when the latest in a series of potential spaces fell through. “We were like, ‘OK, that was our best bet,’” says board member Jes Skolnik. “‘We should probably figure out what to do, because it’s been four years and we’re not gonna get closer than that.’” The board decided to shift focus: while continuing to search for a space, Pure Joy will present shows and host workshops at other people’s spaces, as well as build a skill-share database to connect the punk community with arts nonprofits. On Friday, April 20, Pure Joy will throw a relaunch benefit at a DIY gallery and share the proceeds with radical black collective Assata’s Daughters. It’s a combination art show and concert with sets by hip-hop and punk acts Semiratruth & Anaiet, Liquids, the Breathing Light, and C.H.E.W. For info e-mail chicagotcc1@gmail.com. Gossip Wolf has long ranked Varsity among the city’s best indie-pop bands, and the world is catching up—their album Parallel Person, due Friday, April 27, on D.C. label Babe City, has attracted coverage on NPR and a bazillion blogs. They’ll sell copies at their Empty Bottle show on Friday, April 20. Need more Varsity news? Three members—Jacob and Paul Stolz and Dylan Weschler—have a new band called Discus with Arthur Velez of Clearance. They just debuted with the jangly “One Step.” Since debuting in Los Angeles in 1998, the International Pop Overthrow festival has expanded to Vancouver, Stockholm, and Liverpool, among other places— and it’s been in Chicago for 17 years. For 2018 more than 60 acts play the Heartland Cafe in 12 shows that run from Friday, April 20, till Saturday, April 28. Gossip Wolf is stoked for the Stones-y psych of Soft Candy, the bent garage of Gal Gun, and the reunited original lineup of 90s Chicago power-pop experts the Lilacs. —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

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JINKX MONSOON & MAJOR SCALES:

LUCKY BOYS CONFUSION

THE GINGER SNAPPED DEATH VALLEY GIRLS SAT MAY 9 9PM / 18+

ZOMBIE SCHOOLBOY THE LINDEN METHOD TAKE THE REINS FRI APR 27 / 9PM / 17+

New music and dance classes start April 30

ON SALE FRIDAY! Empire Productions Welcomes

EARLY SHOW ADDED!

DEAFHEAVEN

FEVER RAY

MONO / DRAB MAJESTY UNIFORM MON JUL 30 7PM / 18+

FRI MAY 18 6PM / ALL AGES

Learn to play with us this spring! We’ve been teaching Chicago to play music since 1957. Come join the band with a class in guitar, banjo, dance, ukulele, and more!

To sign up today or browse our full class schedule, visit us online at

oldtownschool.org

SMARTBARCHICAGO.COM 3730 N CLARK ST | 21+

Glenn Underground b2b Boo Williams Michael Serafini

Fri 4.20 TICKETS AVAILABLE VIA METRO + SMART BAR WEBSITES + METRO BOX OFFICE. NO SERVICE FEES AT BOX OFFICE!

APRIL 19, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 39

322 W. Armitage • parkwestchicago.com

SPECIAL GUEST:

MIYA FOLICK

THIS FRIDAY! APRIL 20

SPECIAL GUEST:

ALBIN LEE MELDAU

APRIL 30

JessieWare.com

THURSDAY, MAY 3

SPECIAL GUESTS:

MELKBELLY

FRIDAY APRIL 27

AL DIMEOLA NOTORIOUS ELECTRIC TOUR 2018/2019

SPECIAL GUESTS:

THE KICKBACK

SATURDAY, MAY 12

THURSDAY JUNE 21

ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM!

JEFF TWEEDY – April 27 & 28 • FLATBUSH ZOMBIES –May 10-SOLD OUT! • THE BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE –Friday, May 11 • ANTHONY JESELNIK –May 13-SOLD OUT! TOOL MUSIC CLINIC –May 14 • SHAKEY GRAVES –May 22-SOLD OUT! • THE KOOKS –May 30-SOLD OUT! • LITTLE DRAGON –June 7 • BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE –June 13 GOMEZ –June 15 & 16 • MICHAEL CHE –Saturday, July 14 • ANIMAL COLLECTIVE –July 27-SOLD OUT! • DIMMU BORGIR –Aug. 21 STEREOPHONICS –Sept. 11 • DARK STAR ORCHESTRA –Saturday, Sept. 29 • BELLY –Saturday, Oct. 6 • RUFUS WAINWRIGHT –Nov. 20

BUY TICKETS AT

SUNDAY JUNE 24

MUSIC FROM ELEGANT GYPSY TO OPUS AND MORE

ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM!

RAG N’ BONE MAN – June 12 • GIN WIGMORE – June 13 • THE POSIES / MATERIAL REISSUE – Saturday, June 23 DAVE LORY (JEFF BUCKLEY BOOK Q&A) – June 28 • MELVINS – July 31 TOAD THE WET SPROCKET – Saturday, Aug. 18 • LUCIA MICARELLI – Friday, Oct. 12