Chicago Reader: print issue of October 6, 2016 (Volume 46, Number 1)

C H I C A G O ’ S F R E E W E E K LY | K I C K I N G A S S S I N C E 1 9 7 1 | O C T O B E R 6 , 2 0 1 6

Politics Teachers’ strike deja vu 8 Visual Art Calling out catcallers 21

The Goldberg variation

Bertrand Goldberg’s Hilliard Homes are an overlooked example of high-rise public housing that works.

By MAYA DUKMASOVA 14

2 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 6, 2016

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THIS WEEK

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EDITOR JAKE MALOOLEY CREATIVE DIRECTOR PAUL JOHN HIGGINS DEPUTY EDITOR, NEWS ROBIN AMER CULTURE EDITOR TAL ROSENBERG DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS FILM EDITOR J.R. JONES MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO ASSOCIATE EDITORS KATE SCHMIDT, KEVIN WARWICK, BRIANNA WELLEN SENIOR WRITERS MICHAEL MINER, MIKE SULA SENIOR THEATER CRITIC TONY ADLER STAFF WRITERS LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, AIMEE LEVITT, PETER MARGASAK, JULIA THIEL SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR RYAN SMITH GRAPHIC DESIGNER SUE KWONG MUSIC LISTINGS COORDINATOR LUCA CIMARUSTI EDITORIAL ASSISTANT CASSIDY RYAN CONTRIBUTING WRITERS NOAH BERLATSKY, DERRICK CLIFTON, MATT DE LA PEÑA, MAYA DUKMASOVA, ANNE FORD, ISA GIALLORENZO, JOHN GREENFIELD, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, DAN JAKES, BILL MEYER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, LEAH PICKETT, DMITRY SAMAROV, KATE SIERZPUTOWSKI, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERNS ISABEL OCHOA GOLD, JACK LADD

FEATURES

IN THIS ISSUE 4 Agenda Hasan Minhaj, Eat Your Words with Dave Eggers, the film Command and Control, and more recommendations

25 Theater Dave Maher once again falls into his Coma Show.

CITY LIFE

7 Impact City Hall reacts to Reader revelations about the Chicago Police Department’s secret budget.

26 Movies In Chronic, a private nurse gets a little too private.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

PUBLIC HOUSING

The Goldberg variation

Bertrand Goldberg’s Hilliard Homes are an overlooked example of high-rise public housing that works.

BY MAYA DUKMASOVA 14

8 Politics | Joravsky What’s changed—and what hasn’t— since the last teachers’ strike.

10 Transportation Requiring truck side guards could save the lives of pedestrians and cyclists.

35 In Rotation Current musical obsessions include Hieroglyphic Being, critic Ben Ratliff, and the app Soundscaper.

39 Shows of note Brujeria, Kanye West, Brain Tentacles, and more

FOOD & DRINK

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12 Identity & Politics People who give racism a free pass are part of the Trump problem.

ARTS & CULTURE

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Anthony Cheung has turned foghorns and out-of-tune piano into a Guggenheim Fellowship

ON THE COVER: THE FIRST TENANTS OF BERTRAND GOLDBERG’S HILLIARD HOMES MOVED IN 50 YEARS AGO THIS FALL. PHOTO BY ORLANDO CABANBAN.

43 Restaurant review: The Loyalist The casual subterranean spot in the West Loop injects culinary purpose into the everyday.

45 Cocktail Challenge: Mojo A bartender turns his aunt’s sauce recipe into a Puerto Rican drink.

The award-winning composer, who teaches at the University of Chicago, presents a new viola concerto at this weekend’s Ear Taxi Festival.

BY PETER MARGASAK 29

21 Visual Art “Graphic Relief” calls out an all-too-common form of sexual harassment: catcalling.

22 Visual Art Black video game characters finally get their due in Dateline: Bronzeville.

24 Lit A U. of C. sociologist catalogs the perils of overpolicing in Down, Out, and Under Arrest.

48 Straight Dope Could the U.S. wipe out the heroin epidemic by bombing the poppy fields of Afghanistan?

49 Savage Love Can long bike rides cause clit damage?

50 Early Warnings Average White Band, RP Boo, Weezer, and more shows on the horizon 50 Gossip Wolf The Era throw a listening party for their first “footwork mixtape,” and more music news.

OCTOBER 6, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 3

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b ALL AGES

F 11/6: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PM, Heartland Studio Theatre, 7016 N. Glenwood, 773-791-2393.

Hillary! The Musical Actress R KellyAnn Corcoran assembled a half-dozen fringe scribes from veterans

The Last Wife o LAURA GOETSCH

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The Bardy Bunch Set in 1974, Stephen Garvey’s musical parody almost literally mashes up the Brady bunch and the Partridge family, locking them into mortal scenarios out of Shakespeare.

Keith P. and Marcia B. have gone all Romeo and Juliet even as Laurie P. and Greg B. are backing into romance a la Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado. Mike and Carol B. are advancing their careers using the Macbeth method while Danny P. has Hamlet-like notions about his stepdad. And so on and on, packing in the references, from Antony and Cleopatra Halloween costumes to Titus Andronicus meat pies. Inasmuch as the show is all premise, it takes some ingenuity to keep things going. Mostly, they go. I can see cutting 20 minutes and tightening some of Jay Stern’s staging, but there’s a lot of groany fun here, especially if you’re well versed in the original sitcoms. Music director/arranger Logan Medland gets surprisingly fine results from Brady and Partridge hits.

Who knew “I Woke Up in Love This Morning” would sound so good as a ballad? —Tony Adler Through 11/20: Wed and Fri 8 PM, Thu and Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Mercury Theater, 3745 N. Southport, 773-325-1700, mercurytheaterchicago.com, $30-$58.

Bobbie Clearly What were the odds that two Chicago theater companies would begin their fall seasons with dark-comic critiques of Christianity involving therapeutic hand puppets?

First Victory Gardens opened Robert Askins’s Hand to God, in which a Texas teen’s Muppet-esque manikin takes on a demonic life of its own; now Steep presents Alex Lubischer’s new play about a small-town Nebraska boy, home again after serving time for the murder of one of his high school classmates, whose various bids for acceptance include ventriloquism. Both shows are designed to expose the hypocrisies of piety by jamming the ridiculous up against the dead serious. But only Hand to God succeeds. Rather than generate

energy from incongruity, Bobbie Clearly director Josh Sobel lets it drain away. In his uncertain staging, the title character and his neighbors come off as (mostly oafish) rhetorical mechanisms. —Tony Adler Through 11/5: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Steep Theatre, 1115 W. Berwyn, 312458-0722, steeptheatre.com, $10-$35.

Fantasy Island for Dummies For her new music-theater piece, iconoclastic playwright Ruth Margraff begins with a story line from a 1980 episode of Fantasy Island in which Annette Funicello plays a ventriloquist with a domineering dummy, then interpolates hymns to the highly sexual Babylonian goddess Inanna and sections from 50-year-old home-ec magazine Party Perfect. The piece spends 70 minutes investigating the problematization of female desire in a male-dominated society, but the results of the investigation are far from clear—Margraff’s intentionally fractured narrative lacks structural cohesion, and too often significance is imposed on the material rather than allowed to emerge organically. Director Kate Hendrickson packs it all into an uncharacteristically fussy production. It’s the rare Trap Door show that can’t manage its own ambiguity. —Justin Hayford Through 11/5: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W. Cortland, 773-384-0494, trapdoortheatre.com, $20-$25.

Fly by Night Nobody pulls off vocal harmonies quite like Theo Ubique.

Partly, that’s because few other companies utilize cozy spaces like the No Exit Cafe with as much blocking and acoustic aptitude. In this revival of a 2015 off-Broadway “darkly comic rock fable,” director Fred Anzevino and music director Jeremy Ramey achieve many of the surround-sound, spine-tingling moments the ensemble is known for.

Whether or not the indie-pop show—set during the 1965 New York blackout—has legs of its own is a different question.

A guitar-strumming dreamer played by James Romney finds himself in a love triangle with an actress and her sister, Meredith Kochan and Kyrie Anderson respectively. The central problem is an uneasy schlockiness to the score that just doesn’t jibe with themes intended to be weighty. —Dan Jakes Through

like Greg Allen and Jenny Magnus to relative newcomers like Jennifer Moniz and asked them to “write the Hillary they imagined.” The resulting 65 minutes of songs, scenes, and monologues is less an exposé of Mrs. Clinton’s character than a skewering of the systems that sustain her—or anyone in high political office. While the show gets off to a shaky start with a couple overly cautious musical numbers, once Hillary’s confronted by an egomaniacal, indecipherable Donald Trump (a doofy, menacing Mark Chrisler), the show takes off. By the final section, in which Hillary finally speaks her unfiltered mind about the horrors of America’s global interventionism, you may be ready to leave the planet for good. —Justin Hayford Through 10/15: Fri-Sat 10 PM, Prop Thtr, 3502 N. Elston, 773-539-7838, propthtr. org, $10.

How We Got On What we’re gonna do right here is go back, way back, back in time to August 1988. Five years after Wild Style took hip-hop from the Bronx to the big screen, Fab 5 Freddy and Yo! MTV Raps said “here’s a little story that must be told,” this time for TV audiences. The message came through to the bedrooms of suburbia, far from the jungle that made Grandmaster Flash wonder how he kept from going under.

Idris Goodwin’s How We Got On, set in just such a dull midwestern nowhere place called the Hill, tells the story of the hip-hop generation from an out-ofthe-way perspective. It remembers the regionalism that would necessitate trips (pilgrimages!) to New York City just to hear the beats, loops, and rhymes of rap. That three decades later rap could inspire salubrious theatrical entertainment seems almost as strange today as it would’ve back in ’88. —Max Maller Through 11/12: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Den Theatre, 1329-1333 N. Milwaukee, 773-609-2336, thedentheatre.com, $32, seniors $20, students $12.

I Am Who I Am: The Story of Teddy Pendergrass Black Ensemble Theater continues its 40th-anniversary season with a fourth musical biopic, this time centered on R&B legend Teddy Pendergrass. A 15-person cast and a sevenperson band run down nearly two dozen hits from its titular star, here played by Rashawn Thompson and Deverin Deonte at different musical and personal phases of his life. Deep cuts by Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes and tributes from Teddy 25—a 2007 fund-raiser and salute to the performer a quarter century after his spinal-cord injury—round things out. The ensemble is the true star here, especially company regulars like Jessica Seals, Kyle Smith, and Rueben Echoles. —Dan Jakes Through 10/30: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun PM, Black Ensemble Theater Cultural Center, 4450

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N. Clark, 773-769-4451, blackensembletheater.org, $55-$65.

The Last Wife The title of Kate R Hennig’s 2015 play refers to Catherine Parr, who managed not only to

survive her marriage to England’s King Henry VIII but to make her influence felt in important ways. Among other things, she got Henry to issue the decree that ended up legitimizing the reign of Elizabeth I. Naturally, Hennig treats Parr as a proto-feminist heroine, connecting her to our times and struggles by surrounding her, Henry, and the rest of the cast with all the appurtenances of modernity.

This isn’t dull hagiography, though. Hennig also imagines a smart, funny screwball-style relationship between Parr and Henry, with a grim frisson: one lover can have the other executed at any moment.

Steve Pickering is the perfect charming thug as Henry, while AnJi White pushes Parr to white-knuckle levels of nerve, always arrogant, always overreaching.

—Tony Adler Through 12/18: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun2 PM, TimeLine Theatre Company, Wellington Avenue United Church of Christ, Baird Hall Theatre, 615 W. Wellington, 773-281-8463, timelinetheatre. com, $28-$51.

The People’s History of the United States Quest Theatre Ensemble, which takes pride in “making theatre accessible to everyone” with free performances, offers an updated version of its 2008 populist pageant. Alternately celebratory and satirical, idealistic and ironic, the show juxtaposes the noble rhetoric of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and Barack Obama with musical vignettes dramatizing the darker realities of American history: Native American genocide, slavery and Jim Crow, the Cold War “Red Scare,” the atomic bomb, etc. Well performed by a large multiracial cast, the production has an engaging homemade feel thanks to its use of oversize papier-mache puppets and masks. But writer-director Andrew Park’s insistent focus on America’s shortcomings make the rousing finale—a choral anthem calling on the nation to end gun violence and racial animus—feel more than a little naive.

—Albert Williams Through 11/6: Fri 8 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Blue Theatre, 1609 W. Gregory, 312-458-0895. F Psmith, Journalist P.G. Wodehouse’s 1909 tale about an elegant young Englishman’s adventures in the rough-and-tumble world of New York journalism and politics is entertainingly brought to the stage by writer-director Terry McCabe. While on vacation in the States, Cambridge University student Rupert Psmith takes charge of a sleepy newsweekly and reboots it as a crusad-

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Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of October 6

CO-ED

Furniture Making Classes ✧ Safely learn basic hand & power tools ✧

Anna Elise Johnson, Two Suits at Weinberg/Newton Gallery o COURTESY THE ARTIST

ing reform paper dedicated to exposing a corrupt slumlord running for alderman.

The lightweight story’s chief appeal is Psmith himself, a plucky, monocled dandy with a comically elaborate rhetorical style and unruffled optimism—even when faced with gun-toting gangsters hired by Psmith’s antagonist. —Albert Williams Through 11/6: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, City Lit Theater, 1020 W. Bryn Mawr, 773-293-3682, citylit.org, $32, seniors $27, $12 students and military.

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The Stor(ies) of You and Me Ballet 5:8 presents new works by choreographers Caleb Mitchell and Julianna Slager. Fri 10/7-Sat 10/8: 7:30 PM, Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn, 312-337-6543, ballet58.org, $25.

COMEDY

Are You Still Afraid of the R Dark? An improv show inspired by the 90s television series Are You

o MEGAN HASTINGS

Afraid of the Dark? 10/7-11/11: Fri 9 PM, Under the Gun Theater, 956 W. Newport, 773-270-3440, underthegun.theater, $12.

Bianca Del Rio “Not Today R Satan!,” the new comedy tour from the season-six winner of RuPaul’s

Drag Race, chronicles her adventures while becoming “gay famous.” Sun 10/9, 8 PM, the Vic, 3145 N. Sheffield, 773-4720449, victheatre.com, $37.50.

Hasan Minhaj The comedian and R Daily Show correspondent presents his stand-up show Homecoming

✧ Classes are limited in size ✧ ✧ 10 week course/

One 3 hour class per week ✧ ✧ All materials included ✧

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Lloyd Sachs The writer, reviewer, and longtime Reader contributor discusses his book T Bone Burnett: A Life in Pursuit accompanied by live performances from Steve Dawson, Kelly Hogan, and Nora O’Connor. Mon 10/10, 7 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, 773227-4433, hideoutchicago.com.

Fall Classes start

Fall Classes start2015!

October 2016 October WOODSMYTHS WOODSMYTHS

King. Sun 10/9, 4 and 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 1227 W. 18th, 312-526-3851, hasanminhaj. com, $25.

Nightmares on Lincoln Ave. 8: R The Faculty’s Disturbing Craft Corn Productions’ parody of the 90s

high school horror genre. 10/7-10/29: Wed-Sat 8 PM; also Mon 10/31, 8 PM, Cornservatory, 4210 N. Lincoln, 773-6501331, cornservatory.org, $15.

ensemble. 10/7-10/29: Fri-Sat 10 PM, Public House Theatre, 3914 N. Clark, 773230-4770, thepubtheatre.com, $10.

VISUAL ARTS Chicago Artists Coalition “Exhaustion and Exuberance,” this exhibition takes its title from the essay by critic Jan Verwoert, who writes about the pressures of performing, and features works from this year’s Hatch project artists Bobbi Meier, Bryan C. McVey, and Raul De Lara. Opening reception Fri 10/7, 6-9 PM. 10/7-10/27. “Seven Sculptures,” solo exhibition from David Bodhi Boylan, a sculptor who works with wood. Opening reception Fri 10/7, 6-9 PM. 10/7-10/27, Mon-Thu 9 AM-5 PM, Fri 9 AM-noon, 312491-8887, 217 N. Carpenter, chicagoartistscoalition.org.

Pilsen Outpost “Mujeres Poderosas,” Chicago artist Sam Kirk pays tribute to the poderosa (“powerful”) women in history in this exhibition of new paintings.

Opening reception Fri 10/7, 5-10 PM. Artist talk with journalist Sandra Trevino Fri 10/21, 1 PM. 10/7-10/30, Wed 10 AM-8 PM, Sat 10 AM-7 PM, Sun 10 AM-5 PM, 773-492-2412, 1958 W. 21st, pilsenoutpost. com.

Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art “Axiom,” this exhibition presents the works of tapestry and textile artists Frank Connet, Lialia Kuchma, and Anne McGinn. Opening reception Fri 10/7, 6-9 PM. 10/7-12/4, Wed-Sun noon-4, 773-2275522, 2320 W. Chicago, uima-chicago. org/axiom, $5 suggested donation.

Weinberg/Newton Gallery “Sapphire,” in this group exhibition, artists

1907West N. Mendell · Chicago · 773-477-6482 1835 SchoolSt.St. - Chicago 773-477-6482 www.woodsmythschicago.com www.woodsmythschicago.com.

Anna Elise Johnson, Jason Pallas, Deb Sokolow, and Danh Vō react to the 2016 presidential election. Opening reception Fri 10/7, 5-8 PM. 10/7-1/14, Tue-Sat 10 AM-5:30 PM, 312-529-5090, 300 W. Superior, #203, weinbergnewtongallery. com.

LIT

Pay 2 Slay A late-night HallowCreating Shakespeare A literary R een-themed sketch show from the R exhibit exploring Shakespeare’s members of the Public House Theater life and influence through his own works

DANCE

class projects ✧

couch videos.” Sat 10/8, 7 PM, Quimby’s Bookstore, 1854 W. North, 773-342-0910, quimbys.com.

and the work of actors, writers, printers, artists, and filmmakers he inspired. Part of Shakespeare 400 Chicago. Through 12/31, Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton, 312-255-3700, newberry.org.

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Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz The writer discusses her new book, All the Real Indians Died Off: And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans, with educator, author, and activist Bill Ayers.

Sat 10/8, 3 PM, 57th Street Books, 1301 E. 57th, 773-684-1300, semcoop.com.

Eat Your Words This 826CHI R fund-raiser features writing, food, and music from Dave Eggers, Luis Alberto Urrea, JC Brooks, and Anna D. Shapiro. Thu 10/6, 7-10 PM, Ovation Chicago, 2324 W. Fulton, eatyourwords. gives, $195-$250.

Fictlicious: Falling The Hideout R presents a collection of songs and short fiction with an autumnal theme.

Sun 10/9, 7-9 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, 773-227-4433, hideoutchicago. com, 21+.

Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib The R Silver Room hosts the book release of Willis-Abdurraqib’s collection

of poems, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much.

He reads from and signs copies of the collection, accompanied by guests Jessica Hopper, Nate Marshall, José Olivarez, and Eve L. Ewing. Wed 10/12, 6-8 PM, the Silver Room, 1506 E. 53rd, 773-9470024, thesilverroom.com.

John Olson The writer reads R from Life Is a Rip Off, a collection of his record reviews written over the course of a year. He’ll be joined by Alan Hoffman premiering his novella Auditions, about “internet-porn-casting-

o COURTESY THE ARTIST

Skooby Don’t Zoinks! This play is, like, totally strange. Hell in a Handbag’s totally, 100 percent noncopyrightinfringing Halloween spectacle turns the animated detective gang into an identity-politics extravaganza, with Scoob—oops “Skoob”—the erstwhile Shaggy (now “Skaggy”), the reliably cis “Daffy,” gay “Fredd,” and the perhaps asexual “Velva” visiting a secluded inn to track down a monster. (Spoiler alert: there is dog sex.) —Max Maller Through 11/4: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 6:30 PM, Mary’s Attic Theatre, 5400 N. Clark, 773-784-6969, hamburgermaryschicago. com, $28-$160.

✧ Build three take-home

GR O S S

“

HI L ARIO U S , has to be experienced

Lindsey Vonn Olympic gold medR alist Lindsey Vonn reads from her new book Strong Is the New Beautiful.

Fri 10/7, 7 PM, Anderson’s Bookshop, 123 W. Jefferson Ave., Naperville, 630-3552665, andersonsbookshop.com, $33.

MOVIES

More at chicagoreader.com/movies NEW REVIEWS

to be believed.”

– Consequence of Sound

DISGUSTING

“

deviant and pleasurably

The Birth of a Nation Purchased for a record sum by Fox Searchlight, this debut feature by writer-director-star Nate Parker re-creates the 1831 slave revolt led by Nat Turner, a literate slave in Virginia whose Baptist fervor curdled into messianic delusion. Parker stages all this with the utmost sobriety, following the lead of 12 Years a Slave in his graphic depiction of slaveholders’ cruelty (one hunger-striking slave gets his teeth W

,

w e i r d at heart.

If Barton Fink was made by John Waters, this is the sort of movie he’d write.”

R

American Honey In this entrancing road movie from British filmmaker Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank), an abused teen (Sasha Lane) joins a cadre of other wayward young adults who sell magazines door-to-door across the midwest. For a Brit, Arnold demonstrates an eerie understanding of quintessentially American shortcomings and despair, and her attention to detail is extraordinary; she and her protagonist, sharing an acute female gaze, survey the disparity between wealth and squalor across Oklahoma (standing in for Kansas and Missouri). Lane, whom Arnold discovered lounging on a Miami beach, recalls Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone, balancing an inherent toughness with the fragility of girlhood. Her character is so endearing that, when her story ends, you can’t help but wonder what will become of her. With Shia LeBeouf, Riley Keough, and Arielle Holmes. —LEAH PICKETT R, 162 min. Landmark’s Century Centre

,

– Indiewire’s The Playlist

“

Fearless , explicit and over the top,

Uproariously

and often disturbingly funny.”

– The Film Stage

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B knocked out with a file and hammer). The narrative structure is crude, a pile-up of white crimes building to an explosive and bloody payback, but the real problem is the central character: wearing so many hats at once, Parker fails to communicate the madness and God fever that enabled Turner to mobilize his people in a suicide attack against their captors. With Armie Hammer, Roger Guenveur Smith, Gabrielle Union, Penelope Ann Miller, and Jackie Earle Haley.

—J.R. JONES R, 118 min. ArcLight Chicago, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Cicero Showplace 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, Landmark’s Century Centre, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON, Webster Place 11 Command and Control R Produced for the PBS series American Experience, this hair-rais-

ing documentary revisits the 1980 accident in which the fuel tank of a U.S. nuclear missile in Damascus, Arkansas, was ruptured and the fuel ultimately ignited. Director Robert Kenner interviews the former U.S. Air Force technician who, having chosen the wrong wrench, dropped a six-pound bolt down the silo of a Titan II missile and punctured the tank. Denial turned to panic as the crew realized they were facing a nuclear catastrophe, though when the fuel exploded eight hours later, the missile warhead landed on the ground without detonating. Adapted from a book by Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), the documentary periodically departs from the tense narrative in Damascus to review the proliferation of nuclear missiles during the Cold War and to replay other close calls in our nuclear-defense history, most notably the 1961 crash of a B-52 bomber in Goldsboro, North Carolina. The inescapable conclusion is that we have more to fear from our own human error than from our enemies’ malevolence. —J.R. JONES 92 min. Schlosser attends the Friday night screening. Fri 10/7, 2 and 8 PM; Sat 10/8, 3 PM; Sun 10/9, 4:45 PM; Mon 10/10, 7:45 PM; Tue 10/11, 6 PM; Wed 10/12, 7:45 PM; and Thu, 10/13, 8:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center

the 1996 libel case that British writer David Irving filed against Lipstadt, an American historian, after she called him a Holocaust denier.

Irving and Lipstadt may have been the opponents in court, but in the movie most of the friction is between Lipstadt, who wanted to turn the case into a great moral statement, and her legal team, who understood that, within the narrow confines of British law, they would have to prove Irving purposely published false statements in order to rehabilitate the Third Reich. As Lipstadt, Rachel Weisz delivers her usual brand of exquisite distress, but a frightfully gaunt Timothy Spall walks away with the movie as Irving; slimmed down, he’s even more fearsome, his cheeks like hard parentheses and his eyes furiously large in his face. Mick Jackson directed a script by David Hare (The Hours, The Reader); with Andrew Scott and Tom Wilkinson.

—J.R. JONES PG-13, 110 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark’s Century Centre, River East 21 Hieronymus Bosch: Touched by the Devil The otherworldly landscapes of Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch are tailor-made for the moving picture, because a panning shot in extreme close-up can pick up so many of his tiny, macabre details. When this documentary sticks to Bosch’s florid imagery, lucidly explicated on the soundtrack by a team of art historians, it’s fascinating. But director Pieter van Huystee, needing a story arc, punctuates the scholarly material with dry bureaucratic sequences in which five art historians try to organize a major retrospective of the painter’s work for

his hometown of Den Bosch in the Netherlands. The academics travel to Venice, Madrid, and Washington, D.C., to negotiate for loans of major works, but they’re such buttoned-down personalities that their jet-setting fails to add any zip to the movie. As one historian points out, Bosch was consumed by the idea of moral choice and consequence, his characters suffering hideous fates for indulging their appetites; the primal drama of his work couldn’t be further removed from the cold maneuvering of museum administrators. In English and subtitled Dutch, Spanish, and Italian. —J.R. JONES 86 min. Fri 10/7, 2 and 6 PM; Sat 10/8, 4:45 and 8:15 PM; Sun 10/9, 3 PM; Mon 10/10, 6 PM; Tue 10/11, 8 PM; Wed 10/12, 6 PM; and Thu 10/13, 8:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center Three the Hard Way This paranoid 1975 actioner by Gordon Parks, Jr. (Super Fly) concerns a white supremacist plot to cleanse America ethnically by poisoning the water supply in three predominantly black urban areas. Parks has assembled a dream team of the blaxploitation genre—Jim Brown, Fred Williamson, and Jim Kelly—to fight back and save the race. Like many other conspiracy thrillers of the era (e.g. The Parallax View), the movie uses cold industrial and urban environments to convey the long odds the heroes face; other elements, such as the trio of topless female bikers brought in to torture one white supremacist, nudge this toward Russ Meyer territory. There’s rarely a dull frame.

—DMITRY SAMAROV R, 89 min. Thu 10/13, 7 PM. Northwestern University Block Museum of Art v

®

Denial Adapted from Deborah E. Lipstadt’s book History on Trial, this capable courtroom drama recounts

6 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 6, 2016

Command and Control

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CITY LIFE

“CRAZILY HILARIOUS! I WAS BLOWN AWAY.”

IMPACT

Revelations about CPD’s hush-hush slush fund make noise at City Hall

-CHICAGO TRIBUNE

“HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! IRRESISTIBLE.”

By JOEL HANDLEY

T

he Reader’s September 29 cover story, an investigation into the Chicago Police Department’s civil forfeiture program, caused a stir in a recent City Council Finance Committee meeting. The revelation that CPD maintains a secret slush fund of tens of millions of dollars outside of its City Councilapproved public budget surprised the city’s longest-serving alderman, Ed Burke, and elicited a statement from Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s budget director that City Hall is working to bring oversight and transparency to the fund.

The story revealed that CPD has brought in close to $72 million in forfeiture proceeds (both cash and assets) since 2009. The department has used its share of that money (nearly $47 million) to fund the day-to-day operations of its drug- and gang-related investigative units and to buy controversial surveillance equipment.

Reading aloud from the story at the committee meeting on September 30, Burke said, “The department has made 4,700 individual purchases since 2009 totaling—are you listening?—$36.8 million,” according to Fran Spielman’s account of the meeting for the Chicago Sun-Times. He continued, “I’ve been here for 47 years. Gone through 47 budget hearings.

And I can’t recall once that this has been disclosed to the City Council.”

During the same committee meeting, Burke successfully championed his proposal to outfit CPD officers with a quick-clotting gauze, to be used in giving first aid to police officers shot in the line of duty. He suggested CPD’s civil forfeiture money should be used to fund it.

Reached by phone, Burke affirmed his belief not only that the City Council should have oversight and control over the forfeiture fund, but that it must also have control in order to comply with the law. “There can’t be any money expended that is not subject to an appropriation,” he said.

“With this being brought to light even in a grand sense, that spending does need to be scrutinized,” said Emanuel’s budget director, Alexandra Holt, according to the Sun-Times.

“No disagreement from me at all. We’re putting tighter controls on them to make sure it’s done in a way that’s transparent.”

-CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

At a City Council Finance Committee meeting on September 30, Alderman Ed Burke, the committee chairman, read aloud from the Reader’s investigation into CPD’s civil forfeiture program. o BRIAN JACKSON/SUN-TIMES MEDIA

Illinois law allows police departments in the state to keep the majority of cash and assets they seize and successfully retain through civil forfeiture. CPD keeps 65 percent of its forfeiture revenue, passing on 25 percent to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office and 10 percent to the Illinois State Police. The state law allows police and prosecutors to use the money at their own discretion.

Left unsaid in the city’s scramble to bring oversight to CPD’s forfeiture fund is whether the money should be collected in the first place. As the Reader’s investigation revealed, the people whose cash, vehicles, and other assets are seized by Chicago police face an uphill battle when trying to reclaim their property.

The burden of proof is on claimants to demonstrate their innocence with regard to the case in which a seizure was made, they must pay hundreds of dollars in fees just to start civil court proceedings, and cases can take many months to years to resolve. Claimants can lose their property even if they’ve not been charged nor convicted of a crime.

Asked whether he believes there should be some effort to curtail the collection of money through forfeiture, Burke said, “That’s a subject for the state legislature to take up.”

The ACLU of Illinois is currently working on reform legislation, which it hopes to introduce in Springfield in January. The civil liberties group wants to make it more difficult for police and prosecutors to keep assets. It’s also seeking to put the burden of proof on the state and to usher in greater transparency about how forfeiture money is collected and spent. “What we need is legislation that not only shines a light on the business of forfeiture,” the ACLU said in a statement, “but also protects the rights of innocent property owners and discourages law enforcement agencies from seizing property out of financial motives.” v

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ß @Joel_Handley OCTOBER 6, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 7

CITY LIFE POLITICS

The more things change . . .

Four years later we’re staring down the prospect of another teachers’ strike.

M

ore than four years have passed since Chicago’s last teachers’ strike, but in many ways it seems as if time has stood still, what with teachers recently voting to authorize another strike as soon as October 11.

OK, some things have changed: Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s chief educational appointees during the last strike, Jean-Claude Brizard and Barbara Byrd-Bennett, have left the scene (the latter to eventually serve some prison time).

But unfortunately, when it comes to the mayor’s lousy relationship with teachers, so much remains the same: Emanuel is still irritating the hell out of ’em with his fabrications about contract negotiations, his charter

school allies are once again attempting to exploit the turmoil to lure students away from neighborhood schools, and we still have Republicans on the national scene looking to make hay out of the showdown during a heated presidential race.

And, of course, then as now, the mayor has the money for labor peace hidden in his TIF treasure chest—money he doesn’t want to spend, at least not on teachers.

Now that I’m sufficiently depressed about the state of things, let’s break them down, starting with the mayor’s fabrication.

Emanuel says he’s offering teachers a 13 percent pay raise. He says it so often he almost sounds convincing.

Think again, folks!

The mayor’s proposed giving teachers about 8.75 percent in cost-of-living increases over the four years of the contract, which would go through 2019. He’s also offered “step” and “lane” increases.

A “step” is a raise a teacher gets for having survived another year in the system—though I don’t think anyone phrases it quite that way. A “lane” is a pay hike a teacher gets for receiving more training.

If you add the cost of living raises to the step

Ô BOBBY SIMS

By BEN JORAVSKY

and lane hikes, then, yes, the mayor’s offering teachers a 13 percent raise.

But that doesn’t take into consideration what the mayor’s taking away from teachers.

Emanuel neglects to mention this when he talks about how he’s offering the teachers such a great deal.

Counterbalancing these raises is the mayor’s proposal to have teachers make a greater

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Read Ben Joravsky’s columns throughout the week at chicagoreader.com.

contribution to their pension and health care plans.

To explain, let’s say that a hypothetical teacher in this scenario makes $100,000— hardly any do, but let’s use that nice round number just to keep the math simple. Under the current contract, Chicago Public Schools contributes the equivalent of 7 percent of that teacher’s salary to the general teacher’s pension fund, while that teacher contributes 2 percent of his or her salary. For CPS, that means the real cost of the teacher is $107,000.

And for the teacher, that means his or her gross pay is $98,000.

Under the mayor’s proposal, the teacher would pay the full 9 percent pension contribution. Thus the teacher in our example would have a gross pay of $91,000, and the mayor would have an extra $9,000 to play around with. (Maybe he could use it to build a basketball arena for Loyola—you know, to match the one he’s building for DePaul.) The point is, when you subtract what the mayor wants to take from what he’s offering to give, it’s clear that he’s not actually extending a 13 percent

raise, if by that we take to mean a paycheck that would be 13 percent higher at the end of the contract than it is now.

I think we’d all agree that’s how most people would define a raise.

In fact, some older teachers—who’ve already tapped out on their step and lane hikes—face the prospect of a pay cut under Emanuel’s contract proposal.

Now you know why teachers laugh derisively when you ask them about the mayor’s supposed pay hike.

It’s not much better for charter school teachers. As I write this, teachers in the UNO Charter School Network are locked in their own heated contract negotiation. Which is ironic. Four years ago, during the last strike, UNO’s then-CEO, Juan Rangel, held a press conference to remind everyone that his teachers weren’t on strike. He invited parents, fed up with CPS labor strife, to enroll their kids at UNO. Like Brizard and Bennett, Rangel’s long gone from the scene—he resigned in 2013 after a contracting scandal. Soon thereafter the

teachers at UNO joined a union. And—more irony—their lawyer in these contract negotiations is Robert Bloch. That’s the same lawyer representing the Chicago Teachers Union in its talks with CPS. So Bloch spends his days running from one heated negotiation to the other. That dude may be the hardest-working labor lawyer around.

Taking a page from Rangel, the operators of the Noble Network of Charter Schools recently mailed a batch of postcards to public school students throughout the city, inviting them to stop on by and visit their nearest Noble campus. The recruitment post cards were addressed to the children—not the parents. Now many parents want to know how Noble got their kids’ names and addresses. Noble hasn’t said, and CPS officials say the matter has been turned over to the inspector general.

Charter school boosters used to brag of waiting lists filled with thousands of kids begging to get in. But if charters are still desperate to recruit from the ranks of CPS, it looks like those waiting lists are about as real

as Emanuel’s 13 percent raise.

Meanwhile we have as a backdrop the madness that is this presidential election.

Back in 2012 I lost a bunch of bets with teachers after I insisted that President Obama would pressure Rahm into cutting a deal with CTU president Karen Lewis, so as to avoid a hometown headache on the eve of his old buddy’s re-election battle with Mitt Romney.

This time around the only bet I’m making is that Donald Trump will make a big deal out of any teachers’ strike in Chicago, what with Emanuel being a former aide in Bill Clinton’s White House and all.

Now it’s Hillary Clinton’s turn to get on the horn to talk some sense into Emanuel, her old friend and ally, if for no other reason than to help her campaign.

If the mayor protests, Madam Secretary, feel free to remind him of the hundreds of millions of dollars he’s got in his TIF piggy bank.

He won’t listen to the teachers—or to me for that matter—but maybe he’ll hear you out. v

ß @joravben

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Chicago OCTOBER 6, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 9

CITY LIFE TRANSPORTATION

Truck, stop

Requiring truck side guards could save the lives of pedestrians and cyclists.

By JOHN GREENFIELD

I

t’s every bicyclist’s nightmare: You’re riding on an arterial street when a truck appears on your left. The driver fails to check for bikes before making a right turn, causing a “right-hook” crash. You fall under the massive vehicle. The rear wheels roll over your body, causing severe, likely fatal, injuries.

As previously reported in this column, variations of this worst-case scenario resulted in the deaths of two young adults in Chicago this summer—25-year-old Virginia Murray and 20-year-old Lisa Kuivinen. Late last month two more fatalities were added to the list.

On September 22, Northwestern student

Chuyuan Qiu rolled out of a parking lot on the university’s Evanston campus and collided with a concrete truck that was heading north on the 2000 block of North Sheridan Road. Police said the 18-year-old was struck by one of the wheels and fell under the vehicle. And four days later, 23-year-old health coach Anastasia Kondrasheva was fatally struck while biking to work in Edgewater. She’d been heading north on Damen at Addison in Roscoe Village when a flatbed truck driver turned right in her path, killing her instantly.

Chris Spicer, co-owner of Lakefront Supply Company, told WGN-TV that he witnessed Kondrasheva’s crash, and that the flatbed truck (belonging to a different company) was just like the ones his employees drive.

“In my mind, I saw [one of my trucks],” Spicer said. “I saw my driver on the ground sobbing uncontrollably because he just took someone’s life.”

In an effort to make sure that never happens, Spicer had fender-mounted mirrors installed on all nine of Lakefront’s trucks later that week.

That may be a good approach for helping truckers see bicyclists more easily. Meanwhile,

there’s a growing movement to require side guards or side rails on large trucks as a strategy to reduce the damage if a crash occurs.

These devices—already widespread in Europe, Japan, Brazil, and other countries— prevent cyclists who are struck by trucks from going under the vehicle and being crushed by the rear wheels. After 1986, when Great Britain began requiring the equipment on most new trucks, the fatality rate for turning-truck crashes dropped by 20 percent for pedestrians and 61 percent for cyclists.

It’s likely that side guards could’ve also made a difference for Murray, Kuivinen, Qiu, and Kondrasheva. Therefore, we should push Chicago’s City Council to require the equipment on large trucks operating in the city, in order to prevent more truck-bike crash fatalities.

Some east-coast cities have already begun installing side guards on their municipal truck fleets. In 2014, after two fatal bike-truck crashes, Boston passed an ordinance requiring side guards on all city-contracted vehicles weigh-

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Firemen rescued Naperville resident Danielle Palagi, 26, after she was struck by a right-turning semi driver while riding her bike at Roosevelt and Wood in Chicago on September 23. Palagi survived, but one of her feet had to be amputated. o DREW DEMOTT

ing more than 10,000 pounds. The safety gear proved its value that year when a man riding a Hubway bike-share cycle survived being struck by a turning garbage truck equipped with the guards.

Similarly, last year New York mayor Bill de Blasio signed a law mandating side guards on all municipal trucks of more than 10,000 pounds by 2024. That time line will allow the city to phase in the equipment with new truck purchases rather than taking the more expensive route of retrofitting vehicles.

“The best thing to do, of course, is to avoid crashes in the first place,” Paul Steely White, director of NYC’s Transportation Alternatives advocacy group, told Streetsblog New York last year. “But these side guards are like airbags for pedestrians and cyclists.”

In 2013 the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board issued a recommendation that large trucks be fitted with side guards. But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which sets the rules for truck design, hasn’t passed regulations to require them.

According to the agency’s data, 53 bicyclists were killed in truck crashes in the U.S. in 2015.

So if it’s clear that that side guards can help prevent deaths like the four recent ones in the Chicago-area, what will it take to make the safety gear standard in our region?

Chicago recently announced the upcoming release of a Vision Zero plan later this fall, with the goal of eliminating traffic fatalities by 2026.

“We are aware that [requiring side guards] is a step taken in other cities and countries, and it’s one of many potential safety steps we are looking [at] as part of the Vision Zero planning process,” transportation department spokesman Mike Claffey said in a statement.

The state, meanwhile, hasn’t made any recommendations regarding the strategy, according to a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Transportation.

But resistance from the trucking industry could be a roadblock to passing legislation requiring this safety gear. In 2012 the Active Transportation Alliance lobbied for Illinois legislation, sponsored by state representative Kelly Cassidy, requiring convex mirrors for the front of all large Illinois-licensed trucks. But the Illinois Trucking Association balked at the

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CITY LIFE $500-per-vehicle cost, and testified against the bill; the legislation died in committee.

“We decided not to include side guards [in the proposed legislation] because it was clear we’d lose with that in the bill,” says Active Trans director Ron Burke. “Needless to say, we support side guards and convex mirrors. . . .

How you make it happen is the question.”

Active Trans is now preparing recommendations for Chicago’s Vision Zero plan, Burke says, which could include a proposal for a city ordinance requiring truck side guards and/or convex mirrors. On September 30, the group e-mailed its members about “the urgent need to address the disproportionate threat . . . large vehicles pose to people biking and walking.” “We are asking the Mayor, Chicago City Council, and relevant city agencies to immediately put into place proven strategies that can prevent more fatalities due to crashes involving large vehicles,” the group wrote.

Active Trans listed requiring side guards, strengthening commercial driver licensing rules, and limiting large vehicle traffic during rush hours as possible solutions. The group

asked supporters to sign an online petition urging the city to take immediate action to address preventable traffic fatalities as part of Vision Zero. Jay Stefani, a Chicago-based personal-injury lawyer who works with survivors of car and truck crashes, says a local law to require the safety gear can’t come soon enough.

“What makes the truck right-turn incidents all the more tragic is the refusal of lawmakers to require side guards,” he says. “Sadly, to make them mandatory here, there needs to be a tipping point where enough people are fed up with the deaths.”

Hopefully the City Council can be persuaded to follow Boston and New York’s example by requiring side guards for municipal trucks and other large vehicles operating in Chicago. While it’s painful to think that this safety gear might have prevented the tragic deaths of the four recent truck-crash victims, passing such an ordinance could help save lives in the future. v

John Greenfield edits the transportation news website Streetsblog Chicago. ß @greenfieldjohn

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CITY LIFE

Donald Trump at the RNC in July o JOEFF DAVIS

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12 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 6, 2016

The problem we all live with People who give racism a free pass are part of the Trump problem.

By DERRICK CLIFTON

R

epublican presidential nominee Donald Trump has made Chicago’s gun violence problems the linchpin of his “law and order” message yet again. During a 20-minute discussion about “racial healing” at the first presidential debate, Trump bypassed Hillary Clinton’s remarks about systemic racism in law enforcement and instead doubled down on calls to revive stop and frisk in Chicago and other major cities—despite the fact that this tactic has been ruled unconstitutional principally because the practice disproportionately affects minorities.

Trump’s comments during the debate align with his campaign’s promotion of the view that talk of institutional racism is “the rhetoric of division.” In other words, he’d have us believe that talking about racism is the problem rather than rather than acknowledging the problem of racism itself.

This mind-set, which sadly of course long predates Trump’s candidacy, dismisses or casts doubts about the existence of systemic

racism. So much so that it’s taken more than 200 police killings of black men and women— and countless stories, investigations, and protests—just to convince some people that systemic racism is real and problematic. For these people at least, the result of all this fervor has been a reformed consciousness around issues of race. Yet recent polling suggests that there’s still a sizable fraction of people who harbor more subtle, insidious racist beliefs—and who can count on coddling from their peers.

Just a week before the first presidential debate, a YouGov/Huffington Post survey showed that more than half of all Americans don’t believe being prejudiced makes someone a “bad person.” Even more disturbing, roughly a quarter of those polled said holding negative views of black people makes someone “neither prejudiced, nor a bad person.” Thirty-two percent said the same regarding Muslims.

Folks, this is what happens when systemic racism gets treated as a matter of opinion and not as a fact of life: it allows white supremacy to persist. Trump’s campaign has breathed

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Read Derrick Clifton’s columns throughout the week at chicagoreader.com.

new life into this problem by galvanizing overt racists—people once driven underground by the civil rights movement who have now reemerged as mainstream. But the survey suggests that even before the current election cycle many people have continued to allow subtler forms of racial prejudice to fester by looking the other way.

In the constellation of Trump voters, some people support his views outright. But others will look past his repugnant beliefs, perhaps holding their noses at the ballot box, and vote for him anyhow.

“It’s not that I love Trump, I get how everyone hates his ego, and he’s had a couple bad one-liners throughout his 30 or 40 years,” a real estate appraiser who attended Trump’s recent golf fund-raiser in Bolingbrook said in an interview with the Sun-Times. “He’s not a perfect person. But he’s not the status quo.”

I don’t know how on earth you could construe calling Mexicans “rapists and murderers,” proposing a ban on all Muslims entering the country, calling a Venezuelan Miss Universe winner “Miss Housekeeping,” or condoning and inciting the beatings of Black Lives Matter protesters, among numerous other examples of racist remarks and actions, just a “couple bad one-liners.” Voters like these may not realize what they’re doing, but when people overlook or take a neutral position on racism, they’re tacitly approving it.

Part of that problem lies in a broader unwillingness to recognize and challenge racism when it rears its ugly head. Bigots like Trump often find ways to conceal their otherwise brazen disgust for people of color. For every outwardly racist thing he’s said, he’s followed up with half a dozen other coded remarks designed to evade scrutiny.

For a recent example, let’s examine Trump’s address at the Polish National Alliance, in Chicago’s Sauganash neighborhood, delivered just two days after the debate. He pledged his support to Poland and Polish-Americans, while promising to impose “extreme vetting” of immigrants (his new spin on his Muslimban proposal) and naming Syrian refugees as a threat to America’s security. Trump also praised Poland’s opposition to bringing in Syrian refugees, and drew parallels between his campaign and the right-wing movement that prompted the United Kingdom to vote to leave the European Union.

“We want our independence back,” Trump said. “We want our freedom back. We don’t want to take people into our country that we don’t want. We don’t want to take people

into our country that possibly have very bad intentions.”

But Trump’s remarks in Chicago demonstrate that his problem isn’t so much with immigration in general as much as it is with the immigration of nonwhites in particular.

As Dara Lind previously noted at Vox, research shows that for many white Americans, immigration isn’t so much a question of legal versus illegal; it’s about protecting their idea of American culture. In so many words, it’s “Make America white again,” even though, as any Native American would tell you, this land wasn’t white in the first place.

So does failing to call Trump out for such beliefs make his less-racist supporters “bad people?”

Generally speaking, I refrain from characterizing other people in absolute terms such as good or bad, given that individuals are usually much more complex and nuanced.

But the survey results—and the relative success of Trump’s campaign—suggest that a good number of Americans are tacitly giving a free pass to people with racist attitudes, despite the real-world consequences of those beliefs. And I’d say that’s pretty bad.

Like all human beings, these voters have the potential to do good—but they also have the potential to cause great harm. And on matters of racism, their tacit approval wreaks havoc on people of color. It’s precisely what Hillary Clinton was getting at when she called the other half of Trump’s supporters a “basket of deplorables”—a remark she shouldn’t have had to walk back in the context of this election.

But if you think the “deplorables” are the only ones at fault, then it’s time to dig deeper.

The results of the poll held up consistently with Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike—suggesting that this casual attitude towards bigotry can’t be limited to one corner of the GOP. It’s everyone’s problem.

Even in a Democratic stronghold like Chicago, systemic racism remains apparent in public budget priorities, in policing, and many other facets of city life. Yet most people never do a thing about it.

Retiring Senate minority leader Harry Reid called Trump the “Frankenstein monster” Republicans built; but broader acceptance of racism helped create this beast too.

And until more people recognize and confront all forms of racism, bigotry will continue to be the problem we all live with. v

ß @DerrickClifton

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The

Goldberg variation Bertrand Goldberg’s Hilliard Homes are an overlooked example of highrise public housing that works.

By MAYA DUKMASOVA

Completed in 1966, the Raymond Hilliard Homes were the CHA’s final attempt at high-rise public housing. o ORLANDO CABANBAN

14 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 6, 2016

I

t was July 1966, and Chicago architect Bertrand Goldberg was celebrating his 53rd birthday at the construction site of his latest development. Although not yet complete, the four concrete towers of the Raymond Hilliard Homes emerging just east of Chinatown already had what would come to be Goldberg’s signature bulbous, organic shapes, reminiscent of corncobs or honeycombs.

Goldberg, likely dressed in the gold suspenders, speckled shirt, and gold sneakers he often wore for such occasions, had the construction site decorated with Japanese lanterns strung up on bulldozers and other heavy equipment, and set trays of canapes out on two-by-fours. His 50-odd guests, culled from the city’s social, cultural, and business elite, chatted and danced to live music. Some even donned hard hats, but as the night wore on and fear of falling construction debris was subdued by gin martinis, the hats disappeared.

Goldberg was at the peak of his career, having already garnered international acclaim for his now-iconic Marina City, a city within a city meant to showcase the wonders of dense, urban living to an American public increasingly fleeing to the suburbs. And years later the architect would clearly remember one of his wealthy guests strolling up to him at the party, looking around the site, and asking: “Why can’t you build this for us?”

Unlike the recently completed Marina City, Hilliard Homes was a public housing project, intended to shelter not the well-heeled elite but the poorest of Chicago’s citizens. Goldberg designed the two 17-story round towers for senior citizens, and the two 22-story crescent towers for families with children. His goal was to demonstrate that public housing didn’t have to be bleak, ticky-tacky boxes like the ones that dotted the landscape to the south of the site.

Eventually, upon its completion, the grounds of the Hilliard Homes would be planted with honey locust, maple, and flowering crabapple trees. A community center would be built for activities ranging from literacy classes for the elderly to dances for teens. A playground with slides, swings, and concrete animal figures for climbing would be situated within easy view of the mothers who would come to look down from the open-air gallery hallways. A dragracing path for bikes would wind around the periphery. Goldberg was particularly proud of a sunken amphitheater at the heart of the site that could seat 800 people, “a first in public housing” the Chicago Housing Authority Times declared in January 1966.

“I hope that the people who will live in these units will not feel that because they are poor they are being punished,” he explained at the

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completion of the project.

But less than a decade after Hilliard opened, America began to embrace the idea that highrise public housing doesn’t work. This mantra has been repeated countless times by politicians, planners, and policy makers alike, ever since the televised demolition of the Pruitt– Igoe development in Saint Louis in 1972. The notion that high-rise public housing is inherently flawed gained so much traction that by the 1990s the federal government launched a National Commission on Severely Distressed Public Housing. The commission determined that public housing high-rises in most cities were in such poor condition that the only way forward would be to demolish them, cementing the notion in the minds of observers across the country that high-rise buildings weren’t viable spaces for poor families.

Chicago’s own so-called Plan for Transformation—the 1999 overhaul that ultimately led to the demolition of two-thirds of the agency’s housing stock and nearly all of its highrises—was predicated on the commission’s findings. Most of the CHA’s buildings failed the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s viability test, which meant to determine whether it was cheaper to rehab a property or demolish it and give all the tenants Section 8 rental vouchers.

But while the towers of Cabrini-Green and the Robert Taylor Homes were torn down, Hilliard conspicuously survived. Today the quality of life at the development flies in the face of conventional wisdom about high-rise public housing and serves as a call to reexamine the root causes of dilapidation and despair at CHA’s more infamous projects.

“Hilliard is here to prove to you that it can work, and will work,” as one longtime residents puts it. “It depends on management.”

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illiard’s uniqueness couldn’t have been predicted by its planners’ choice of location.

The project site along the State Street Corridor was proposed in 1963, much to the chagrin of civil rights groups like the Urban League and NAACP that were already planning to sue the city for concentrating nearly all of its public housing in segregated areas. The four-mile stretch from 18th to 54th Street was already home to the largest project in the nation, the Robert Taylor Homes, and three other developments housing tens of thousands of black residents; with the completion of Hilliard the corridor would hold more than 8,000 subsidized apartments.

Nevertheless the CHA pushed on, justifying the choice of site as “slum clearance.” The 12.5-acre parcel at State and Cermak was part

of what a 1966 article in Architectural Forum magazine called “one of the city’s worst concentrations of junkyards and shabby bars.”

But right from the start, the vision for Hilliard was unlike that for any other CHA development.

Whereas other high-rise projects along the corridor were built on the cheap, the CHA brought in Goldberg to design the new project, hoping to mollify the protesting civil rights groups and promising that better architecture would lead to better social outcomes. It would be the agency’s final high-rise project, and “this last ‘statement’ was to indicate progress in Chicago’s treatment of its public housing problem,” Goldberg wrote in 1968. “The design was encouraged to provide a ‘crown’ for the new five mile ghetto to the south, as well as an oasis of park, recreation and housing near the loop.”

Indeed, when families moved in just a few months after Goldberg’s construction-site birthday party, Hilliard Homes was instantly recognized as a model community, socially as well as architecturally. Though the project’s residents were predominantly AfricanAmerican, Hilliard managed to attract some Chinese, Hispanic, and even elderly white residents too—a first for the corridor.

“The grubby cross-section of Cermak and State suddenly has gone mod,” declared a Chicago Daily News article in November 1966.

“It was beautiful—something that we had never seen before,” says Maner Wiley, who was 11 when she, her parents, and her seven siblings moved into Hilliard that fall from nearby Robert Taylor Homes. To her, the new project was “a paradise compared to Robert Taylor,” where she and her siblings were frequently beaten up by other kids.

Whereas other developments were planned to accommodate very large and often very poor families, Hilliard was planned and managed in such a way that there were more working people and fewer large families.

At Robert Taylor, 80 percent of the apartments had between three and five bedrooms; of the approximately 27,000 residents around 20,000 were children.

“In no sizeable residential community in modern history had so many youths been supervised by so few adults,” writes historian Brad Hunt in the 2015 anthology Public Housing Myths: Perception, Reality, and Social Policy. The overwhelming number of kids led to “debilitating social disorder” and the deterioration of the physical site. Trash chutes, mailboxes, playground equipment, and especially elevators took a beating from children’s games, he writes; vandalism was a growing problem as the kids grew older.

Simultaneously, President Lyndon B. John-

Although Hilliard was home to fewer children than other public housing high-rises, the complex hosted activities and included child-friendly features like an amphitheater and drag-racing path. o ORLANDO CABANBAN

son’s “war on poverty” in the early 1960s opened public housing up to the most financially struggling families, not just the “deserving” working poor. This would present a new problem: CHA building maintenance budgets were tied to rents, and with more very poor families there was less money for building upkeep.

The combination of these factors was a “blueprint for disaster,” according to Hunt.

Despite the new, progressive vision for public housing on the federal level, the planning and management of projects in Chicago would doom them to failure.

But at Hilliard, things played out differently—at least at first.

The average Hilliard apartment had just two bedrooms, and the complex as a whole had just four kids for every three adults; most families had between one and three children (Wiley’s was one of just seven that had eight or more).

A more balanced kid-to-adult ratio helped maintain social control. “Mothers volunteered to make sure that we didn’t overpack the elevators,” Wiley says. “That kept down fighting.”

And unlike the older developments, the applicant screening for Hilliard was intense— Wiley remembers that the father, mother, or both parents had to work to qualify. The tenant screening led to larger number of what the CHA then called “normal” rather than J

OCTOBER 6, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 15

Designed to accommodate smaller families than other projects, most Hilliard apartments featured two or three bedrooms; with the completion of Hilliard in 1966, the State Street Corridor had more than 8,000 units of public housing across five developments. o AIC RYERSON & BURNHAM LIBRARIES

Hilliard Homes continued from 15 “broken” families. In 1968, 78 percent of the households had two parents, while on average just 43 percent of CHA households did.

More parents, more of whom worked and paid higher rents, assured a higher maintenance budget for the property. Robert Taylor Homes and other high-rises were plagued by broken elevators and incinerators, heating that was either scorching or nonexistent, and constant vandalism in hallways and stairwells. But Hilliard was in good shape until the late 70s, by which time other CHA projects already had notorious reputations for dilapidation and disorder.

Goldberg thought the reason why it looked like poor people couldn’t live in high-rises was because planners hadn’t thought about how to compensate for the kids’ lack of entertainment options. And the kids, who felt stigmatized, found ways to bolster their self-esteem that wound up being destructive, such as forming gangs and “wrecking elevators,” Goldberg theorized in a 1992 oral history interview with the Art Institute of Chicago.

To combat this problem, the architect set forth a vision for activities and programming.

Indeed, after Wiley’s family settled into a seventh-floor four-bedroom apartment, she and her brothers and sisters were quickly engulfed by the bustling social life of the new development. “They had different activities

16 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 6, 2016

going on for the kids over here,” Wiley says, recalling dance contests and talent shows in the amphitheater. “All year round we were doing something creative.” She even remembers meeting Goldberg a few times—he and his wife would occasionally throw a party for the kids, with pizza, soda, and games.

To Goldberg, there was nothing unnatural about housing families with children—even poor ones—in tall buildings. You just had to make sure the buildings were well designed, well built, well programed, well managed, and well maintained.

“That children can lead a very exciting and happy life in a high-rise building,” he said years later, “is demonstrated daily in the upper classes on Lake Shore Drive.”

D

espite the initial harmony achieved at Hilliard, it was still part of the CHA—an increasingly dysfunctional institution.

Wiley says things got really bad toward the end of the 1980s. She remembers a new manager arriving and having the feeling that the CHA had lost interest in the property.

“It started deteriorating,” she says. Maintenance calls went unanswered. Heating and water systems malfunctioned. Rats invaded.

Then tenants weren’t screened, and “the drug scene came on,” she says. Eventually Hil-

liard, like all the other projects, was besieged by crime.

In 1988 an eight-year-old boy was found hanged in a stairwell with his hands and feet bound. Wiley recalls the incident with a shudder.

“People were scared about that,” she says.

“People were locking up their kids for months after that because we didn’t know what happened.” The murder was never solved.

Despite this terrifying episode, Wiley claims the project never had a serious gang problem like other developments. “I’d say about 15 or 20 little boys called themselves a little gang,” she says. “I think we did have two killings here, but besides that the only problem we had was drugs. This being a small development made a big difference.”

Still, those who could moved out. Vacancy rates crept higher as tenants left without being replaced, and the rental revenue for management and maintenance eroded further. When Wiley became the president of the resident leadership group in the 90s, she lobbied the CHA to close down one of the family buildings altogether and consolidate all the remaining households in the other.

By then public opinion nationwide had turned squarely against high-rise public housing. Chicago’s dilapidated projects were seen as proof of the government’s “failed experiment” of providing shelter for the poor.

Goldberg hoped Hilliard would offer the same quality of life to poor residents that Marina City did to rich ones. o AIC RYERSON & BURNHAM LIBRARIES

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Those opinions were bolstered by the growing “New Urbanist” movement of planners and architects who, starting in the 70s, positioned themselves against the tower-in-the-park idea of city living exemplified by Streeterville and the State Street Corridor in favor of more “human-scale” development. Visions of dilapidated public housing projects solidified the notion that architecture and design had set these places up for failure. In 1995 Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin produced a six-part series on New Urbanist improvements to public housing across the country to offer an alternative vision to Chicago’s modernist “vertical ghettos.” Some of the profiled architectural innovations “enable low-income housing to blend with its surroundings,” Kamin wrote. “Others help decrease crime or turn once-nightmarish towers into decent places to live. All provide interiors that lift the spirit instead of crushing it.”

In addition, social scientists produced mounting evidence that growing up in segregated communities with high concentrations of poor families severely limited children’s future opportunities. “Young blacks who grow up in areas of concentrated poverty are much less likely to learn how to get and keep a job or to advance in school,” sociologist Douglas Massey wrote in American Apartheid, his 1993 study of urban segregation. “Rather, they come to expect a life of joblessness, single parenthood, and welfare dependency.”

By the mid-90s this multidisciplinary movement convinced policy makers and politicians that high-rise public housing was a scourge on American cities. Ultimately, city leaders deemd the demolition of high-rise projects the only way forward.

Richard Monocchio, now the director of the Housing Authority of Cook County, came to the CHA in 1995, after years of corruption and mismanagement led HUD to take over the agency.

“We walked into a situation where we really felt we had to do something dramatic to make people’s lives better,” he said in a recent interview. “It was a really scary time in Chicago back in the mid-90s, and unfortunately the public housing buildings were so distressed and had so much deferred maintenance and the people weren’t being helped.”

Monocchio still thinks the decision to tear down the overwhelming majority of the city’s high-rise public housing developments was the right one. “I personally believe those buildings that were torn down on the State Street Corridor absolutely should have been demolished,” Monocchio says. “It was really a failed system—13-, 14-, 15-story high-rises were no places for people to live, especially when you concentrated people in poverty.”

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Maner Wiley has lived at Hilliard since it opened 50 years ago. “If I die, build me a little plot right here,” she says. o SUNSHINE TUCKER

Eventually, high-rise projects in Philadelphia, Detroit, Saint Louis, Baltimore, Newark, and elsewhere also came down.

The noteworthy exception, however, was New York City, home of the nation’s largest concentration of high-rise public housing: 2,600 towers, some as high as 30 stories, with almost half a million residents. These towers were a conspicuously overlooked example of functional projects. As historian Nicholas Dagen Bloom explains in Public Housing That Worked, his study of New York City’s projects, they too have problems with vandalism, drugs, and violence. But, Bloom argues, the New York City Housing Authority’s commitment to management and the political impossibility of wholesale demolition kept these buildings livable through the darkest period in the country’s experiment with public housing.

“What distinguished New York from the housing authorities that later adapted New York’s high-rise style was administrators who understood the difference between low-cost and shoddy high-rise housing,” Bloom writes.

“These decently constructed buildings, when paired to sound practices of daily management, have stood the test of time.”

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y the time of HUD’s takeover in the mid-90s, Hilliard “was just like everything else in CHA—it was pretty much a disaster,” Monocchio recalls.

But Hilliard’s design pedigree spared it the wrecking ball. “Because of the architecture, there was a definite sense that [the buildings] should be preserved,” he J

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Hilliard Homes continued from 17

explains. Despite the dilapidation, “there was never any thought in our mind of demolishing those buildings.”

Joseph Shuldiner, then the head of the CHA, says Hilliard was offered up for sale to private bidders because it was “in tremendous need to upgrade, and there was absolutely no public funds available.”

The CHA’s offer caught the eye of Peter Holsten, an energetic Chicago developer who’d already garnered a reputation for successfully cobbling together the sophisticated financing packages needed to make affordable housing development affordable for developers too.

And Holsten was keen on mixed-income projects, the new federally and locally preferred model of creating subsidized housing.

Holsten had loved fixing things since he was a kid growing up in the western suburbs. He went to college for engineering, and worked construction during the summers. “I always wanted to have my own business,” he says now, but after getting an MBA, he took a sales and marketing job in the steel industry.

Still, by 1975 he’d amassed enough savings to buy his first fixer-upper, a small apartment building in Albany Park he renovated during evenings and weekends.

18 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 6, 2016

Peter Holsten, who purchased Hilliard from the CHA in 1999, believes the key to maintaining high-rise buildings for low-income families is vigilant management. o MAYA DUKMASOVA

Holsten says his financial limitations in those early years kept his real estate acquisitions to low- and moderate-income neighborhoods where he was catering to people who “didn’t have a lot of options for good housing.”

Providing a place to live and social services to low-income families also appealed to his concerns with social justice.

“As a young person, I saw people discrimi-

nated against in all sorts of ways, and that was a lump in my stomach,” he says. The contrast between his white, middle-class neighborhood and the decrepit slums along the southside railroad lines he’d regularly pass as he traveled to see family in New York bowled him over.

“There would be kids playing in the rubble close to the line,” he recalls. “It just made me sad.”

Today, Holsten owns about 3,000 housing units across 14 properties, ranging from single-room occupancies to mixed-income developments. While two of these, in the Cabrini-Green area, are New Urbanist-style town-house complexes, he’s always been more interested in the restoration of architectural gems such as the Belle Shore Apartment Hotel in the Bryn Mawr historic district and the Strand Hotel in Woodlawn. His glitzy rehabs of these stately structures as affordable housing have him dubbed “the anti-gentrifier.”

And so it was Hilliard’s unique look that caught Holsten’s eye in the late 90s. Three of his four children had been born at the now-demolished Goldberg-designed Prentice Women’s Hospital, so he had a soft spot for the architect’s work. Taking a closer look at the Hilliard site, he saw potential.

“The uniqueness of [the buildings], the good location—with all the market-rate development to the north, all the McCormick Place development to the east—we could actually do mixed-income here and it would work,” Holsten says. And he knew that the property had potential to get on the National Register of Historic Places, which would make it eligible for valuable tax credits meant to support the rehab of historically significant buildings.

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Wiley still remembers the day she met Holsten. “The head janitor called us and said ‘We got two white men out here walking the property.’” She was curious and introduced herself as a resident leader. After that meeting, she had a good feeling. “I fell in love with Peter,” she says, describing Holsten as the development’s knight in shining armor. “He really cared about Hilliard.”

Like Wiley, then-CHA head Shuldiner had a great first impression of Holsten. “He clearly was somebody who appeared to care about the buildings architecturally and was interested in serving the people who were there,” he says, adding that while the idea of a “compassionate developer” is normally an oxymoron, Holsten seemed to fit the bill.

On New Year’s Eve 1999, with all the financial and contractual matters settled, Holsten completed the takeover of Hilliard. His company now owned the buildings and had a 99-year lease on the CHA’s land. As the clock struck midnight, he heard gunfire ring out across the development.

“Apparently that was a tradition in the public housing projects, that New Year’s Eve everybody shot off their gun,” Holsten says.

“Our staff was ducking for cover under tables and stuff, not really knowing what to expect.”

Holsten says it became clear that some of the tenants had to be evicted. “We did that process and got out of here a handful of people that were causing a lot of trouble,” he says. “We brought in security and set up checkpoints so that people from the outside couldn’t get in unless they were authorized.”

He also set about making $100 million worth of repairs and renovations: central air and heating, expanded apartments in the family towers, new landscaping, remodeled community spaces on the roofs of the senior buildings, and all-new appliances in kitchens and laundry rooms. Like Goldberg, Holsten believes that people of lesser means should not be confined to substandard homes.

Wiley notes with satisfaction that virtually no residents were displaced from the site by the renovations. When the rehab was complete in October 2006, the Tribune echoed the ecstatic reviews of 40 years prior, announcing that Hilliard now felt “like a school campus.”

Unlike Holsten’s other mixed-income properties, which include public housing, “affordable” (i.e., tax-credit financed), and market-rate units, Hilliard was maintained as public and affordable housing for seniors and families, without the market-rate component. Today all Hilliard households earn below 60 percent of area median income, which means that a household of three makes

Though she likes the peace and quiet of life at Hilliard, resident Jocelyn Trotter wonders whether its strict rules are necessary. o DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

less than $41,580 annually.

To qualify, residents have to pass a criminal background check, which Holsten says focuses on convictions for serious offenses, though a lengthy recent arrest record will also raise a red flag. “We do look at the nature of crimes and how far back they were,” he explains. “We try to give the prospect the benefit of the doubt whenever possible.”

Holsten also screens for past money judgments, such as court-order payment of debts. And unlike in CHA’s public housing, there’s an annual drug screening to remain lease-compliant at Hilliard, as well as at Holsten’s other rental properties.

The nonelderly, nondisabled residents of the development today are mostly working families, just as they were 50 years ago. However, there are fewer children at Hilliard now than when it opened: just 200 kids under 18 live in the family towers, with 304 adults.

“That’s a normal number of children,” Hunt says, explaining that this ratio is reflective of America’s shrinking family sizes.

Nevertheless the development contains a concentration of low-income residents living in high-rise buildings. Though this has come to be seen as a recipe for disaster in housingpolicy circles, a stroll through Hilliard today makes it seem like a utopia.

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n a sunny weekday in August, seniors lounge on benches and wicker chairs under lush trees. In the community center, some play cards while others work out in the fitness room. Most of the people around the development are either Chinese or African-American. Wiley says everyone gets along, but folks tend to socialize among their own groups for the most part. As she strolls the grounds she stops to catch up with residents. “This is my dream,” she says. “I love Hilliard.”

Every inch of the property brings up memories for her. She met her husband here, raised six kids, and fostered many others. She recalls how in the project’s early years the fire department would fill the amphitheater with water to make a swimming pool in the summer. She points out a concrete turtle with chipping orange paint that she made sure was saved during Holsten’s renovation. “I wouldn’t let them get rid of my turtle,” she says with a laugh. “This is where I got my first real rearend whupping from my parents, ’cause I kissed a boy up on this turtle.”

Wiley says she still feels the same pride in the property as she did when she was younger.

She recalls taking the State Street bus from downtown and seeing the curiosity in people’s faces as the bus pulled up to Cermak Road.

“When I was getting ready to get off the bus I was spreading my wings like a peacock because it was so unique,” she says. “The buildings, they draw you to them.”

“I make everybody laugh because I say if I die, build me a little plot right here,” she adds.

“I love Hilliard just that much.”

Later that month Holsten strolled the grounds, periodically stopping for long chats with residents who quickly recognized him. For him there’s no inherent reason why poor families with kids or the elderly can’t live in highrise buildings. Neither does he buy into the notion that design has much to do with a property’s success. “It’s all management,” he says. “If you have the resources that are required, if you have the law on your side—that you’re allowed to screen and select residents that you feel will be successful in that atmosphere—and you’re allowed to carry out the established principles of property management, I think [high-rises for low-income residents] can be managed.”

(In recent years residents of mixed-income developments have filed lawsuits challenging drug-testing policies.)

There are 18 staff members working at Hilliard, from clerical workers to resident activity managers to maintenance personnel. Holsten adds that, in addition to the staff who are on the property every day, he periodically J

OCTOBER 6, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 19

Hilliard Homes continued from 19 has an outside staffer walk through to identify problems that might go unnoticed by people used to seeing them. He also makes sure management works with tenants on any behavioral problems or other lease noncompliance, which “heads off small tenant problems that would become big tenant problems.” He says they try their best to refrain from evictions, but that’s not always possible.

Holsten ascends to the third f loor of a family building in an elevator equipped with a security camera. There, in the open-air gallery, he pauses to clear bags of trash that have clogged up the garbage shoot. Later, while touring an empty model unit, he picks a dead mouse off the floor with his bare hands. This sort of vigilance is needed “every day, day after day, seven days a week,” as Holsten puts it. “If you do that, you really can manage any building.”

But there’s also a restrictive side to Holsten’s management at Hilliard, which raises the question of whether stricter rules are necessary to make high-rise housing for the poor work.

Jocelyn Trotter has lived in a first-floor unit in one of the family towers for 14 years. Her apartment smells pleasantly of incense and is filled with photos of her five children and 24 grandchildren.

Trotter spent more than 20 years living in the Robert Taylor Homes, losing one 17-yearold son to gun violence. Her sister lived in Hilliard when it was still a CHA property, and she remembers coming to visit. “Back in the day this was a mess—drugs, gangs, fighting, shooting, killing,” she says, “but since they did it over it’s real nice down here—no shooting, no gangbanging, no none of that. It’s peaceful.”

Like Wiley, she attributes the environment to good management. But Trotter is ambivalent about some of the rules: there’s a 9 PM curfew in the park; kids aren’t allowed to trickor-treat at the property; and there’s a $100 fee for renting the community room ($50 of which is returned if the room is left clean).

Holsten says that the playground and basketball courts are closed in the evening for noise abatement, and trick or treating was disallowed due to resident complaints. Similar rules exist in affluent high-rise communities. A representative for the Downtown Apartment Company, which manages luxury high-rises, confirmed that plenty of buildings close outdoor spaces like rooftop gardens and pools in the evenings, and that paying to use community rooms is common.

But whether these rules are onerous or helpful in a low-income development is a matter of perspective.

20 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 6, 2016

Residents of the development today are elderly, and working families, just as they were 50 years ago. o ORLANDO CABANBAN

Trotter recalls the sense of community she felt at Robert Taylor with a warm smile.

“Everybody knew everybody,” she says. “They still was fighting each other, but everybody knew everybody. It was like a family down there.” Though she loves living at Hilliard, she says she mostly keeps to herself indoors, and can’t shake the feeling that “it’s like we’re in jail somehow.”

Wiley, on the other hand, sees the rules as part of community building. “Over 90 percent [of people] always abide by the rules here at Hilliard because we want to live in a safe, decent environment,” she says. “If we as adults break

the rules, what do you expect the kids to do?”

Holsten says management can get pretty tough on young people if there’s word of fighting or drug use. “We don’t do anything illegal,” he explains, “but it’s like, ‘Hey, stop this shit, this is not acceptable,’ and in talking to teenagers, we’ll basically tell them, ‘If this keeps going on, your mother is at risk of losing her apartment. Is that what you want?’”

The move to stricter rules for public housing residents is also evident in CHA’s remaining properties—where contracted management companies provide tight security and CCTV cameras abound—and throughout

mixed-income developments. University of Chicago sociologists have documented that the rules governing the use of communal spaces in mixed-income communities can lead to a sense of social isolation among the lowestincome residents, as Trotter described. But Holsten has tried to mitigate this at Hilliard by providing structured activities. Residents’ feelings of isolation is something “we’re always very concerned about,” he says.

The architecture and design of modernist public housing buildings seen as “warehouses” for the poor have been blamed for years for the inhumane conditions in the projects.

But Hilliard’s history shows that poor social planning and management can lead to the dilapidation of even the most well-designed properties, just as good management is critical to ensuring their success. For some, Holsten’s success with Hilliard signals that, as Goldberg once argued, there’s nothing antithetical about high-rise living for low-income families. After all, Holsten is maintaining an aesthetically pleasing, multigenerational, racially integrated community for poor people in a high-rise superblock, just as Goldberg wanted.

Hilliard’s success also raises the question of whether it might be possible to try high-rise public housing again—but this time, do better.

For many people who remember the high-rise project dystopia well, outsiders and residents alike, this idea is a nonstarter. Others say this is only possible if public housing is in private hands, like Holsten’s. In Chicago as elsewhere, there’s an obvious trend in the privatization of public housing: Over the last 15 years the CHA has increasingly withdrawn from its role as a landlord. Most of Chicago’s former public housing residents now rent in the private market with Section 8 vouchers. They continue to live in some of the most segregated and impoverished areas of the city, farther than ever from the amenities and opportunities of downtown.

And because most vouchers are tied to individuals, and not their apartments, they do little to assure long-term housing stability.

But Holsten is the first to say that the principles of good property management are universal. As the early history of Hilliard proves, if the political will and the money are there, the government can do it too. Hilliard stands between a growing forest of luxury downtown skyscrapers and the segregated private rental market of the south side like a beacon, signaling that if ever we wanted to reconsider what housing we may owe the least fortunate in our society—and how we can built it—a tower in a park may still be an answer. v

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By AIMEE LEVITT

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eing catcalled on the street is annoying. It makes you feel exposed and unsafe. But the biggest problem with it is that, like so many forms of sexual harassment, it makes you feel powerless. You can’t stop it, you can’t confront it without escalating the harassment, and there’s no authority to defend you from it. In the past, I’ve been advised to ignore it, to cross the street, to avoid walking in certain areas without a male escort (including the block outside my apartment), and to laugh at the man in an otherwise empty subway car who decides to show me his penis. All of these strategies have their benefits and their detriments, but mostly what I do is freeze. What I’d really like to do is to transform from a mild-mannered female pedestrian into a superheroine who has the power to make these men shut the fuck up and put their junk away.

This happens to be a common enough desire among women—and if you’re tired of hearing about it by now, imagine how tired we are of having it happen—that the Awakenings Foundation Gallery in North Center has curated an entire show devoted to it: “Graphic Relief,” a collection of cartoonists’ response to catcalling.

“When people read comics,” says Liz Moretti, the gallery manager, “they read a story about victims who find a superhero. We wanted to take the experience and showcase it and help women feel validated and give them a sense of agency and the feeling that they’re part of a larger community that understands.”

Moretti was inspired to create “Graphic Relief” by Trigger Warning: Breakfast, a comic that originally ran on the website the Nib. The anonymous artist recounts how she made breakfast for a man the morning after he raped her. She didn’t fight back, and beats herself up about it. Breakfast is a form of justification:

“Women do not make their rapists breakfast, and I made breakfast.”

This sort of work fits in with the larger mission of Awakenings, which exhibits art about healing, mostly from sexual violence. Moretti sees catcalling as a form of sexual assault, on the same continuum as groping or rape.

“When you’re catcalled, you’re not consenting,” she explains. “When there’s an assault, no one consents.”

Ten artists contributed work to “Graphic Relief.” Their pieces range from single-panel comics to excerpts from longer graphic memoirs; one, Céline Loup’s You Should Know Where You Come From, is a series of GIFs projected onto the wall so they flash like a porn site.

The artists all have different ways of handling the problem of catcalling. Some are

descriptive: Ursa Eyer’s three-page strip, Cat Call, Moretti says, “perfectly sums up what it’s like to be harassed.” Men yell at a woman from all directions—“Hey, baby!” “Hey, sexy!”—but as soon as she lets them know she’s not interested, they shout “What a bitch!” An excerpt from Ulli Lust’s graphic memoir Today Is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life is a portrait of the artist as a teenage girl traveling alone in Italy. She takes refuge from the constant street harassment in a restaurant but can’t help wondering if the waiters would be so kind to her if she’d encountered them outside.

Others, like Chicago artist Isabella Rotman’s Not on My Watch, offer prescriptive, step-by-step solutions, both during and after the fact: Rotman calls for rallying what she’s named the “Consent Cavalry”—bystanders

who can intervene when they see catcalling.

Nina Burrowes, a therapist, explains how the brain processes a harassment incident: most responses are fight-or-flight, but, Burrowes notes, “what’s good for short-term survival isn’t necessarily good for long-term health.”

In How to Scare Creepy Dudes Away, Emilie Gleason also offers practical tips for women to make themselves unattractive, since, as we all know, only hot women get catcalled, so it must be a compliment. (Note: this is true only inasmuch as rape is about uncontrollable sexual passion.) These include “Don’t be afraid to drool!” and “8-bit yodel music helps.” She recommends carrying a mirror and a hammer in the subway to reflect and then whack flashers.

“My reaction,” Moretti says, “was ‘I love this!

I’d never be able to do this!’”

The one man in the exhibit, Guy Thomas, submitted several pieces that are also prescriptive. Moretti elected to use just one, How to Be a Good Ally, which reflects Thomas’s experience as a man observing women being harassed, as opposed to his pieces advising those women or explaining what harassment is. “I don’t want people to feel like they’re being told what to feel,” Moretti says. “It’s part of the curation process.”

This is the gallery’s first curated group show, and Moretti wanted to include as many experiences as possible. Her one regret is that she received no submission of art that included examples of men being harassed or women doing the harassing. “It can happen to anyone,” she says. “It’s important to get that sentiment out there.” v R “GRAPHIC RELIEF” Through 1/31/17: Opening reception Thu 10/13, 6-9 PM, Awakenings Foundation Gallery, 4001 N. Ravenswood, 773-904-8217, awakeningsfoundation.net. F

ß @aimeelevitt OCTOBER 6, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 21

ARTS & CULTURE VISUAL ART

Bronzeville, bit by bit

By RYAN SMITH

B

lack people are rarely portrayed in video games as anything other than stereotypes or ciphers. The few African-American characters who inhabit virtual worlds—whether Grand Theft Auto or Street Fighter—are typically gangsters, athletes, or sassy comic-relief types like Augustus “Cole Train” Cole, the thinly drawn professional sports star turned soldier from the Gears of War series—he’s primarily defined by his imposing physicality

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Screenshots from Dateline: Bronzeville

ARTS & CULTURE

o PHILIP MALLORY JONES/ALCHEMY MEDIA PUBLISHING

and profane one-liners. More recently people of color in video games seem like props or extras, their personalities so stripped that their inclusion appears to be simply for the sake of diversity.

Such caricature is part of what makes Philip Mallory Jones’s Dateline: Bronzeville, now on display as part of an exhibit of the same name at the Dorchester Art and Housing Collaborative Center, so welcome—the Atlanta multimedia artist’s depiction of African-Americans is as three-dimensional as the graphics. Players walk in the spit-shined shoes of Runny Walker, a fictional photojournalist and columnist for a newspaper (based on the Chicago Defender)

called the Chicago Advocate. There’s a lurid murder mystery for Walker to solve, but the true draw of the game is immersing yourself in the people and places of Bronzeville in 1940, back when the south-side neighborhood was the bustling Black Metropolis, a cultural and economic hub filled with influential residents like Louis Armstrong, Gwendolyn Brooks, and a host of other black intellectuals, musicians, and artists.

Jones, a Bronzeville native, depicts the blackness of his characters in all its many shades, literally and figuratively. The cast is full of sinners, saints, and everything in between. They’re complicated—in other words,

they’re human beings.

“It’s not supposed to be simplistic,” Jones says. “It’s not to compromise who these people were. In this small 15-block plot of land, you had artists, entrepreneurs, thinkers, inventors, religious leaders, hoodlums, hustlers, and ordinary people—all at the same time. It was vibrant, ingenious, nuanced, and complex.”

Contemporary first-person video games usually take thousands of hours of manpower to produce. It’s impossible for one artist—especially one without game-developing experience—to capture the soul and complexity of an entire neighborhood during a specific time period. Dateline: Bronzeville is incomplete, and won’t be released until at least 2017, which means this particular exhibit isn’t a sample of a game so much as a skeleton of one. The show includes vivid prints of screenshots, a virtual tour of Walker’s office, a slide show of additional scenes, and a display of Jones’s vintage family photos and historical material, much of which has been scanned and digitized into the game for authenticity. The black-and-white

snapshot of a three-year-old boy perched on Walker’s desk? That’s actually a picture of Jones’s father.

“It’s a blend of the fictional and the real,” Jones says. “It’s hard to call it a video game, really. I have a somewhat elusive idea: to go for an experience beyond distraction and come to a point where you can understand and experience the context and the environment of this amazing and electric place.”

But until Jones secures enough funding to hire help for the engineering, programming, debugging, and dozens of other tasks needed to flesh out the project (a 2013 Kickstarter campaign fell short of its $75,000 goal), the current state of Dateline: Bronzeville is a what-if, a tantalizing preview of what could happen if someone cared enough to author a game that depicts blacks as thoughtfully as Jones does. v “DATELINE: BRONZEVILLE” Through 12/18, Dorchester Art and Housing Center, 1450 E. 70th, 773-324-2270, dorchesterarthousing.com. F

ß @RyanSmithWriter

• International Exhibition - Midwest Premier • 40 Magnificent Lighted Displays

OCTOBER 1-30, 2016

• Cultural Exhibits and Demonstrations

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• Multiple Stage Performances Nightly • Asian and American Food & Beverage Available • A Wonderland of Light, Art & Culture • $15.00 Adult Admission - Parking Included

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Policing the poorest

By MAYA DUKMASOVA

A

s the Chicago Police Department plans to flood the city with nearly 1,000 more cops, University of Chicago sociologist Forrest Stuart’s first book couldn’t be more timely.

Down, Out, and Under Arrest is a study of life in Los Angeles’s Skid Row community relevant to every city where segregated, poor African-American communities and aggressive policing policies intersect.

During his graduate studies at UCLA, Stuart started visiting Skid Row, a 50-block neighborhood in the heart of downtown Los Angeles that’s been called the homeless capital of the United States. A base of low-rent housing since the 19th century, the area today has become a repository for the most shunned demographics in American society: working-age (but unemployed) black men and people struggling with addiction, physical disability, or mental

illness. According to Stuart, Skid Row is the primary destination of ex-convicts from all over California—the neighborhood has the largest concentration of single-room occupancies and subsidized housing units in the state.

It’s also home to several huge facilities for the homeless, which Stuart, following others, calls “mega-shelters.”

Studying Skid Row’s history, Stuart found that the criminalization of the neighborhood’s poor residents—typified by the heavy-handed policing of poverty-driven behavior such as drug abuse or sleeping on the sidewalk—has been a cyclical phenomenon. In the 19th century, at the urging of social welfare organizations, the police department enforced “morality” standards under which residents could be arrested for a variety of infractions identified by religious charities as deviating from “approved ways of living.”

But with the onset of the Great Depression, which put so many—affluent whites included—in harm’s way, the policing of Skid Row became less punitive. In the 1970s, social service providers united under the progressive leadership of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker organization to successfully lobby for the preservation of affordable housing and homeless shelters in the neighborhood even as downtown business leaders pushed for redevelopment and gentrification. The efforts of this coalition weren’t enough to combat forces that hurt the population, such as economic recessions and drug epidemics; nevertheless, the groups successfully managed to make Skid Row a safer place, providing its denizens at least with food and places to sleep.

The advent of “broken windows” policing and welfare reform in the 1990s, however, revived 19th-century law enforcement and social service practices, as the LAPD and the “megashelters” teamed up to carry out what Stuart calls “therapeutic policing,” a strategy that relies on heavy surveillance and constant intervention on the part of the cops, with basic services like food and shelter contingent on formal participation in various rehabilitation programs like job training and addiction counseling. During the author’s time in the neighborhood, between 2007 and 2012, he recorded not only the oppressive effects of this policing strategy on residents but the shortfalls of this coercive rehabilitation approach as well.

The effects of overpolicing on individual citizens and the community at large are something Chicagoans especially need to think about given that more cops than ever may

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soon be targeting our poorest, most segregated neighborhoods. Stuart focuses on surveillance—an aspect of policing in black communities that has been overlooked in the national conversation about police killings and misconduct but remains at the forefront of some local groups’ calls for change.

In doing so, he sheds light on something that might surprise those who don’t live in aggressively policed communities: when you’re in an area under constant police surveillance, refraining from criminal activity doesn’t mean the cops will leave you alone.

Toward the end of the book he describes the daily routines of teens in Woodlawn, which he began to document through interviews and observational research after arriving in Chicago in 2012. “The teens conveyed that their preoccupations about being stopped altered how they dressed, how they wore their hair, which streets they walked down, and who they associated with in public,” Stuart writes. In an interview with the Reader, he described the pressure and “cognitive nonsense” his subjects faced while constantly trying to avoid anything cops might interpret as signs of criminality—a standard that can change drastically and without warning.

“These young people in Chicago on their way to school are thinking, ‘What do I need to do at this moment to signal to the cops that I’m not a bad person?’” Stuart explained in the interview. “In other neighborhoods in the city, kids get off the bus and they’re thinking about the math test, and who they’re gonna take to prom, and what am I gonna do after high school.” This stripping of childhood innocence might sound familiar to observers of race and poverty in Chicago—it’s been consistently described as a key part of the psychological pressures of living in neighborhoods besieged by gang violence, recently documented in Steve Bogira’s Reader stories on trauma and PTSD. And with the city’s shooting rate climbing, the psychological toll of that street violence has not abated.

As Stuart writes, the end result of aggressive policing is not only the absence of community trust in the force but the development of hostility between neighborhood residents. As citizens are forced to compete in outmaneuvering police attention—striving to be a person not worth stopping as opposed to someone who appears to be an easy target for arrest—they enter into an isolated struggle for survival.

DADA chicago

One chapter of Down, Out, and Under Arrest is devoted to a group of health-conscious Skid Row weight lifters who lead highly regimented, disciplined lives and support each other while shunning the police-sanctioned “mega-shelters” and the social services there because they feel infantilized by staff (“All they wanna do is talk to you like you’re some kind of retard, like you’re a little kid,” one of the weight lifters says). These are men who might have the potential to become leaders and positive role models for others but who, Stuart suggests, have been forced by constant policing to actively disaffiliate from anyone who appears weaker, undermining the building of empathy and solidarity among community residents. But the weight lifters’ survival tactic backfires: looking too clean and healthy in Skid Row is a magnet for police attention. The LAPD ultimately forbids them from congregating, and later on some of the weight lifters fall back into addiction, or move out of Skid Row into the neighborhoods they’d been trying to escape for a fresh start.

Stuart also found examples of organized resistance to police that have the potential to stimulate reform. Chief among them is a group of “cop watchers” who film police encounters and document civil rights violations. This evidence eventually leads to successful lawsuits against the LAPD. He devotes another chapter to the cops tasked with patrolling Skid Row, many of whom believe they’re acting for the benefit of both the individuals and the community.

When society polices the minutiae of how people live (or how they are forced by poverty to live), as Stuart writes, the resulting fines, arrest records, and loss of self-confidence block myriad opportunities for those citizens to make it out of their marginalized positions. This is an urgent problem for Chicago, a city that already struggles with segregation, an eroding tax base, and rampant inequality. Stuart amply demonstrates that doubling down on aggressive policing of the poorest people in the poorest neighborhoods will only undermine them further. v R DOWN, OUT, AND UNDER ARREST By Forrest Stuart (University of Chicago Press).

Stuart is joined in conversation by Invisible Institute founder Jamie Kalven, Wed 10/12, 6 PM, Seminary Co-op Bookstore, 5751 S. Woodlawn, 773-752-4381, semcoop.com. F

AS A PERFORMER, comedian Dave Maher is a high-concept mischief-maker. During his recent six-week stint at the Annoyance, he spent one night intentionally shirking his responsibilities, setting up a microphone and announcing that anyone in the audience could get up on stage and say anything; he would do nothing but listen and ask questions. Another night he dressed as the devil and spent most of the show insulting the audience.

But in his one-man autobiographical piece Dave Maher Coma Show, he’s comparatively well-behaved. He recounts in exquisite, excruciating detail his descent into a diabetic coma, caused, he readily admits, by his own stupidity. (He sold his test strips to support his voracious pot habit and saw no pressing reason to measure the amount of insulin he injected— he figured he was smart enough to just wing it). Ketoacidosis, coma, and a month on life support followed. When he returned to consciousness, he discovered that his friends had assumed he was done for; his Facebook feed was a virtual memorial service.

It’s a carefully observed, discomfitingly intimate, disarmingly funny monologue. But for all his candor, Maher finds time to let his inner imp out—for starters, he rates the eulogies his friends composed for him, even naming the worst. And late in the show he invites audience members to ask him any question they want—then reaches into his pocket, hands them a paper to read, and insists, “Here’s a better question.” —JUSTIN HAYFORD DAVE MAHER COMA SHOW Fri 10/7-Sat 10/8, 8 PM,

Sunday, October 30, 7:30 Chicago Calling: Dan Godston, Penelope Rosemont and others

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Friday, November 4, 7:30 “Marvelous Freedom,” film by Devin Cain Saturday, November 5, 7:30 John Malarkey, guitar and song Sunday, November 6, 8:00 Do It Yourself Dada sculpture

Join

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OCTOBER 6, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 25

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MOVIES

Too close for comfort

By J.R. JONES

S

ince the advent of cinema, people have been drawn to the screen by the promise of intimacy: the facial close-up, an overwhelming experience for early movie audiences, allowed them far inside the personal space of a stranger. Mainstream movies tend to celebrate intimacy—that quiet moment with a child or lover that redeems the stress and strain of being an astronaut or a hostage negotiator. But intimacy can also be a terrible burden. In Daniel & Ana (2009), the debut feature of Mexican writer-director Michel Franco, a college student and her younger brother are kidnapped, driven to a deserted house, and forced to copulate for a sex tape. They survive the ordeal, but it leaves them frightened and ashamed, saddled with greater knowledge of each other than any siblings should have.

Franco’s latest feature, Chronic, pushes the burden of intimacy to its extreme. Tim Roth stars as Dave Wilson, a private nurse in southern California who cares for a series of critically and terminally ill clients: a young woman dying of AIDS, an elderly man felled by a stroke, a woman struggling through chemotherapy. Dave ministers to these people gently

and patiently, bathing and clothing them. He cleans up their piss and shit and vomit, accepting the awful reality of their bodies even though the patients’ loved ones might recoil.

Dave seems almost Christlike, yet there’s something weird going on here: he’s so devoted to his patients that he begins to cross personal boundaries with them, getting himself in trouble professionally. Even as these problems are developing, Franco pulls us deeper into Dave’s past, fostering a greater sense of intimacy with him than we might like and challenging us to shoulder the burden as he does.

One of Franco’s favorite visual motifs is shooting through a door into a lit room, a composition that divides public from private, and often these spaces are bathrooms where Dave tends to his suffering patients. The emaciated Sarah (Rachel Pickup) is introduced in just such a shot, sprawling Pietà-like on a white plastic chair in the shower, her eyes closed and her head resting against the white tile as Dave gingerly soaps and rinses her. Franco lingers over these sickroom scenes, stressing the quiet communion between nurse and patient. Dave dresses Sarah, asking her to raise her arms so

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Get showtimes at chicagoreader.com/movies. sss GOOD

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he can get a blouse over her head, then kneels down, wraps her arms around his neck, gives her a countdown, and braces her to stand up with him. He’s the consummate caregiver: quiet and steady, with an empathic understanding of his patients’ pain, he makes himself a partner in their performance of simple physical tasks.

That sort of bond must be hard to sever, and once Sarah dies, Dave’s devotion begins to seem more like obsession. Upon hearing the news, he rushes over to her apartment, barges past the neighbor who phoned him, and seals himself inside Sarah’s bedroom to bathe and dress her one last time, raising her legs in the air and wiping them down with a wet cloth. Dave is deeply protective of Sarah’s memory, privileging himself above her loved ones because of his physical intimacy with her. After the funeral, Sarah’s young niece implores Dave to have coffee with her so she can ask him about her aunt.

He brushes her off, but that evening, striking up a conversation with a young couple at a bar, he passes himself off as Sarah’s grieving husband, recalling their 21 years of marriage and his many years at her bedside.

Dave may be inserting himself into his pa-

s POOR

•

WORTHLESS

tients’ lives, but he’s only filling the breach between them and their family members, some of whom can’t handle the nasty details of physical decay and some of whom just don’t care. When Sarah is visited by her sister, brother-in-law, and nieces, the children are bored and can’t want to leave; ushered out at last, they wave casually at their exhausted aunt, whom they’ll never see again. John (Michael Cristofer), the stroke victim who becomes Dave’s next patient, barks at family members but bonds with his new nurse, who lets him watch porn on a laptop and indulges his salacious train of thought. At one point, when Dave has finished bathing John, the old man’s grown son walks in on them and turns away at the sight of his father’s genitals. Later, after John’s respiration has taken a turn for the worse, his daughter interrupts another private moment between the two men, when John has burst into tears and Dave has enfolded him in an embrace. Franco doesn’t reveal what the daughter whispers in John’s ear to comfort him, but from the stricken expression on his face, you can tell her words have had the opposite effect.

John’s strong rapport with Dave only encourages the nurse to identify with him. After Dave learns that John is an architect with several houses and small buildings to his credit, he loads up on architecture books at a local shop, passing himself off to the clerk as an architect himself. Later Dave shows up at one of the houses John has designed, introduces himself to the owner as John’s brother, and asks if he might have a look around. When his boss asks him why he’s been working extra hours without permission, Dave replies, “John needed me.”

Chronic won the prize for best screenplay at the Cannes film festival in 2015, and for good reason—even as Dave invades his patients’ personal lives, his own past is revealed little by little, through shaded and oblique dialogue.

Dave has just returned to the area after a long time away; in the opening sequence he spies on Nadia (Sarah Sutherland), the teenage daughter he hasn’t seen in years, and studies her photos on Facebook. Later, when he shows up at his ex-wife’s door, they speak of a son who died years earlier. “What does Nadia know?” he asks. The wife replies: “About Dan? Everything.” By the end of the movie you can probably piece it all together, but then again, you may not want to. Some things are too private. v CHRONIC sss Directed by Michel Franco. R, 92 min. Facets Cinematheque, 1517 W. Fullerton, 773-281-4114, facets.org, $10

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ANTHONY CHEUNG

Anthony Cheung has turned foghorns and out-of-tune piano into a Guggenheim Fellowship The award-winning composer, who teaches at the University of Chicago, presents a new viola concerto at this weekend’s Ear Taxi Festival.

By PETER MARGASAK

Photos by BEN GEBO

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nthony Cheung hates facing a blank sheet of staff paper when he sits down at his desk. “I completely dread having to start each piece,” says the 34-year-old composer. “It really is a feeling of—just, like, ‘I’ve never done this before.’ Somehow the notes get on the page.” Lots of creative people have trouble getting new projects off the ground, but Cheung makes his own problem worse. His roving, curious mind constantly latches onto “ideas of things that happen to catch my ear or catch my attention,” and he fills hundreds of notebook pages a year with such material—every one of these myriad conceptual fragments waits to lead him down its own path to a distinctive composition.

The paralyzing profusion of options that Cheung faces is redoubled by his wonderment at everyday sounds. His 2010 composition Fog Mobiles was inspired by the way the foghorn notes that drift and ricochet across San Francisco Bay vary according to distance, weather, and the natural overtones of the horns themselves. His 2012 “sonic travelogue” SynchroniCities reflects his fascination with relatively quotidian noises from around the world: the swipe of a subway card, the electronic-sounding chirping of cicadas, the quiet shuffling of visitors in sacred spaces.

He incorporates field recordings from his travels as well as piano sounds representing musical languages from different eras and places—the piece combines piano parts in

INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ENSEMBLE WITH STUDENTS FROM THE PEOPLE’S MUSIC SCHOOL, BIENEN CONTEMPORARY/EARLY VOCAL ENSEMBLE, BIENEN CONTEMPORARY MUSIC ENSEMBLE Part of the Ear Taxi Festival.

Conducted by, respectively, Ben Bolter and David Fulmer, Donald Nally, and Ben Bolter. Anthony Cheung (Assumed Roles), Marcos Balter (Divertimento Concertante), Hans Thomalla (Wonderblock), Ted Hearne (Consent). Thu 10/6, 7:30 PM, Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph, $20, $10 students, festival passes $24-$200, all ages

conventional Western intonation, passages that use pitch-correction software to approximate ancient tuning systems, and samples of Cheung playing an out-of-tune piano used by 19th-century composer Franz Liszt during his stays in Rome.

Cheung’s overflowing imagination also takes cues from music history, classical and otherwise. He often finds new life in older pieces—he’s based part of one composition on the Thelonious Monk jazz standard “Epistrophy,” for instance, and alluded to Debussy’s piano prelude Feu d’Artifice in another. He says that drawing from so many potential sources can be “incredibly liberating and also crushing at the same time, because you don’t know where you want to start.”

J

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continued from 29 Cheung also feels a strong drive to introduce new things each time he begins to write.

“I never really want to repeat myself,” he says.

“If the last piece was about a certain kind of thing or with a particular kind of effect, I try to go in a different direction. It’s not even very conscious—it’s more that I would get bored with myself if I wrote the same kind of piece over and over.”

Despite the huge variety of inspirations Cheung works into his compositions, though, they share a recognizable set of commonalities. They clearly belong to a lineage that’s connected to classical tradition—Cheung embraces conventional forms such as the sonata and concerto grosso—but at the same time he uses a modern sonic language that includes samples, microtones, and even manipulations similar to Auto-Tune. On Thursday at the Harris Theater, Chicagoans will get a chance to hear Cheung’s new viola concerto Assumed Roles, given its local premiere by the acclaimed International Contemporary Ensemble as part of this week’s Ear Taxi Festival.

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heung has served as an assistant professor of music at the University of Chicago since 2013, though he’s on leave this academic year. He was born and raised in San Francisco and began studying classical piano at age six. His parents weren’t musically inclined, but they subscribed to concerts by the San Francisco Symphony to encourage their son—this exposed him to a wide range of sounds, including daring

20th-century works. He remembers being blown away as a preteen by concerts conducted by avant-garde Polish composer Witold Lutosławski. “When you’re that age and no one’s telling you that you’re not supposed to like it, you just naturally like it,” he says.

In high school Cheung joined the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, and he became obsessed with writing his own music, using as models the pieces he’d studied. His appetite extended beyond standard 18th- and 19th-century repertoire into contemporary music—but in the 90s, with the Internet still in its infancy, scores and recordings of new compositions were often difficult to obtain.

Cheung tracked down scores for some of his favorites, and to try to learn how they were composed, he meticulously compared written and recorded versions of each piece.

“The thrill of actually finding something on your own and curating a listening experience based on that and going to the next step, the next degree of separation from that—that was all very thrilling,” he says.

The budding composer also got remarkable opportunities to hear his early work performed: in 1999, when he was 17, the adventurous Berkeley Symphony included his first orchestral piece in a public reading series. Cheung started at Harvard in fall 2000, earning a double major in music and history—at first he wasn’t committed to the idea of pursuing composition as a career. “At the very beginning I was very open to whatever I might fall in love with there,” he says. “But my biggest passion was still writing music, and J

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ANTHONY CHEUNG continued from 31 that never wavered. It only increased, and the enthusiasm for other things, proportionately, grew less.”

Upon graduation in 2004 he went directly to grad school at Columbia University in New York, where his classmates that year included future Wet Ink Ensemble founders Kate Soper and Alex Mincek (the latter of whom has just joined the composition faculty at Northwestern University). He began studying under composer Sebastian Currier, but by his second year his primary instructor was the great French spectralist composer Tristan Murail; he also took classes from George Lewis and Fred Lerdahl. Absorbing the city’s cornucopia of live music was also a key part of his education. While still in San Francisco, Cheung had developed an interest in jazz and improvised music, so he especially appreciated the chance to learn from Lewis, a longtime member of the AACM. “George is so eloquent—obviously as a performer and composer, but also in how he’s able to verbalize some of these ideas and make it relatable and to draw connections to, let’s say, more strictly notated European music or whatever we happen to be discussing,” he says. “Or at a very meta level, talk about things like improvisation as a way of life, which were all really relevant ideas.”

In 2007 Cheung cofounded Talea Ensemble, one of the most important new-music groups to emerge in the past decade. He’d been involved on an administrative level with the Manhattan Sinfonietta, and in 2006 he’d met Talea’s other founding director, percussionist Alex Lipowski, at a music festival in Aspen.

They both wanted to start a group to play modern music that wasn’t being programmed in New York at the time, such as the monumental late-50s Karlheinz Stockhausen work Kontakte, with which Talea opened its 2009 season. Due to geographic separation and the demands of his teaching job, Cheung rarely plays with Talea anymore, but the ensemble will perform as part of the University of Chicago’s Contempo series on December 2 at the Logan Center.

Cheung played an improvised gig with saxophonist and composer Steve Lehman this past spring at U. of C., but in general he rarely performs as a pianist these days. He notes that playing and composing are difficult practices to balance. “They’re two such different uses of time,” he says. “As a performer, you just put in your energy on an almost athletic level—you put in your practice, you put in your hours, you get the notes down and eventually an interpretation comes. But certain things just need to be done. With composition I can J

The Ear Taxi Festival tours Chicago’s rich contemporary classical scene Composer Anthony Cheung recommends five of the more than 80 new works at this sixday extravaganza.

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his week the Ear Taxi Festival celebrates Chicago’s rich new-music scene on a large scale. From Wednesday, October 5, through Monday, October 10, it presents a dazzling potpourri of new work, curated by composer Augusta Read Thomas and musician Stephen Burns (leader of Fulcrum Point New Music Project), at a variety of venues around town: the Harris Theater, the Chicago Cultural Center, Rockefeller Chapel, Constellation, Daley Plaza. More than 350 musicians will perform pieces by 88 different composers—including 54 world premieres—at nearly two dozen shows. (That’s not even counting the sound installations, meet and greets, and other nonconcert events.) It’s no exaggeration to say that almost every important Chicago-related ensemble and composer is represented in some way.

It can be a dizzying task to navigate all that music. So when I profiled brilliant composer Anthony Cheung, whose Assumed Roles will get its Chicago premiere on Thursday at the Harris Theater, I asked him to pick five Ear Taxi performances he was especially excited about. In every case, the piece he’s singled out is part of a larger program; a variety of festival passes are available for between $24 and $200.

— PETER MARGASAK

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Stephen Burns conducts Fulcrum Point. o DAVID CORTEZ Alex Mincek’s Pendulum II: Yap, Yaw, Yawp, performed

by Fulcrum Point with conductor Stephen Burns (midwest premiere) Wednesday, October 5, 7:30 PM, Harris Theater, $20, $10 students, all ages I’ve known Alex since we entered Columbia University’s doctoral program in composition together in 2004, and this was one of the first works of his that I had the pleasure of hearing. Part of his series of Pendulum pieces, Yap, Yaw, Yawp makes full use of the resources of its chamber-orchestra instrumentation, shifting its focus in constantly changing modules with rotational shades of repetition, each a self-contained universe of rhythmic concentration. The piece travels through many states, but a constant sense of movement is present throughout its exuberant and unrestrained reinventions.

This year Alex joins the faculty at Northwestern (and his Wet Ink partner Sam Pluta joins me at the University of Chicago), and I’m especially excited to see the city gain two vital new members of the new-music community.

Composer, trombonist, and early AACM member George Lewis o JOHN J. KIM/SUN-TIMES George Lewis’s String Quartet 1.5: Experiments in Living, performed by Spektral Quartet (world premiere) Friday, October 7, 7:30 PM, Harris Theater, $20, $10 students, all ages Any new piece by the multifaceted George Lewis promises to yield unexpected delights and provoke many thoughts on the nature of music making, and that’s partly because you can never know exactly what to expect. I can’t think of many artists who have such broad interests in so many different areas of music making, including improvising, composing, researching, and documenting—as well as

literally inventing new methods of interactivity. In the dozen years since I met him when he began teaching at Columbia, George has increasingly turned his attention to acoustic ensemble music. Ensemble dal Niente just recorded four of his recent works for an upcoming release, and Spektral Quartet—who are tackling this world premiere— relish any challenge that comes their way. In addition I’ll converse with George earlier in the day as part of a University of Chicagosponsored colloquium.

Basquiat, Brice Marden), and psychoacoustic states of temporal expansion and contraction. His Ear Taxi premiere ought to be very experiential and site specific, with musicians surrounding the audience at the Harris Theater to create a theatrical, interactive, and individualized adventure for everyone involved. Spatialized music and music “for the concert hall” are ideas that have redefined the musical experience—Henry Brant, Benedict Mason, and John Luther Adams come to mind as particularly visionary practitioners—and Drew’s new piece promises to be a major contribution to the evolution of the genre.

PRESENTS

Keyboardist Winston Choi o CHAD JOHNSTON

Igor Santos’s Etudes, performed

by Winston Choi on piano and synthesizer (world premiere) Saturday, October 8, 3 PM, Claudia Cassidy Theater, Chicago Cultural Center, free, all ages Powerhouse pianist Winston Choi has been collaborating with University of Chicago doctoral student Igor Santos for the past two years—ever since they worked together as part of the studentorganized Project Incubator. And I am intimately familiar with the first of these remarkable pieces, as Igor was my student the year it was written. By blending acoustic piano with a synthesizer that’s tuned and retuned in various microtonal configurations, Igor creates a shifting tonal palette in which the synth both extends and envelops the acoustic piano. New etudes will be gradually introduced to this longterm project, which focuses on piano “prosthetics” such as pedals, resonances, and touch techniques.

It also serves as a springboard for a series of pieces for other solo instruments and electronics.

Drew Baker’s NOX, performed by various Ear Taxi musicians (world premiere) Saturday, October 8, 7:30 PM, Harris Theater, $20, $10 students, all ages Drew’s music has drawn on a range of ideas and inspirations, including timely political themes (torture at Abu Ghraib, patriotism), contemporary art (Cy Twombly, Jean-Michel

Bassoonist and composer Katherine Young o PETER GANNUSHKIN

Katherine Young’s The Moss Glows and the Water Is Black, performed by the CSO’s MusicNow (world premiere) Monday, October 10, 7 PM, Harris Theater, $27, $15 students, all ages A protege of Anthony Braxton at Wesleyan and a current doctoral student at Northwestern, Katherine Young is active as a performer (creating a whole new vocabulary and performance practice for the bassoon) as well as a composer (mixing elements of free improvisation with electronic processing, visceral physicality achieved through extended techniques, and highly collaborative decision making with performers). The multimovement piece she created with new JACK Quartet violinist Austin Wulliman, Diligence Is to Magic as Progress Is to Flight, is a great example of this new composer-performerimproviser paradigm: hands-on experimentation results in a distinctive world of heavily detuned violin strings, electronics, a sound installation, and even a chamber ensemble shadowing a solo line.

Katherine’s new MusicNow commission will also feature amplified performers and electronics. v

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NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY NO EXPERIENCE LIKE IT

continued from 32 sit at my desk for days and weeks and not write a single note and just marinate the ideas, and that would never work as a performer. So I appreciated being in those two spaces, but I also found them to be really incompatible sometimes.”

Cheung eventually earned his PhD from Columbia in 2010, and from 2009 till 2012 he pursued a postdoc at Harvard. Even before he finished his formal education, he’d begun racking up honors for his work. He received the prestigious Rome Prize in 2012, and he won composition competitions that led to commissions from some of the greatest new-music ensembles in the world: the International Composition Seminar held by Germany’s Ensemble Modern in 2008 and the Tremplin commission awarded by France’s Ensemble Intercontemporain in 2012. Cheung’s wife, composer Wang Lu, was awarded the other Tremplin commission that year. “We thought that there was some kind of cruel joke that one of our friends was playing on us when we both got the same e-mail,” he says.

Cheung’s relationship with Ensemble Modern blossomed, to the point where the group released his first portrait album, Roundabouts, in 2014 on its own Ensemble Modern Medien imprint. (At that point he’d only had a handful of pieces appear on other releases.)

The great German new-music label Wergo just released a second collection of Cheung’s music, Dystemporal, with performances by Talea and Intercontemporain.

Last year Cheung became the Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellow of the Cleve-

land Orchestra for a term that runs through 2017. He’s currently spending his leave from the U. of C. in Providence, Rhode Island, where Lu teaches at Brown University. Cheung was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for composition this year, and he’s using it to write a commission for his Cleveland appointment.

Like many composers these days, Cheung makes his living as a professor, but he treats it as more than just a day gig to support his writing. “People sometimes look at teaching as something to fall back on or something of secondary importance to your main creative activity—and if you’re thinking of it in any way like that, you shouldn’t get into it at all,” he says. “It totally takes over your life, and you have to have a passion for it. You have to think it’s the most important thing, because you’re also affecting the lives of everyone else that you’re mentoring. That’s a heavy responsibility to have.”

Though Cheung will spend this academic year away from Chicago, he says he’s been greatly energized by the city’s music scene, particularly its communal quality—he’s impressed by the mutual respect and cooperation demonstrated by many of the ensembles that have formed here over the past decade or so. “I feel like that’s been missing from the other kinds of music scenes that I’ve seen and that I’ve been around, whether in New York or Boston,” he says. “The willingness to absorb it all and be part of it all, and this kind of fresh energy, this new wave—that’s been incredibly refreshing.” v

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ß @pmarg OCTOBER 6, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 35

MUSIC staffer shares three musical obsessions, then IN ROTATION AasksReader someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn.

Jupiter’s auroras, whose radio signals NASA has converted into a kind of “music” o NASA/ESA/HUBBLE

Julius Eastman o VIA WIKI COMMONS

PETER MARGASAK

AREIF SLESS-KITAIN Drummer for Brokeback, the Eternals, and I Kong Kult

FRED WELLS

Julius Eastman, Femenine Julius Eastman, a proudly black and gay composer, pianist, and singer, died penniless in a Buffalo hospital in 1990 at age 49, and apart from a three-CD set of his compositions called Unjust Malaise released in 2005, virtually none of his music has reached a general audience. Finnish label Frozen Reeds recently dropped this recording of a thrilling 1974 performance of Eastman’s Femenine, shedding light on his peculiar genius. Performed by S.E.M. Ensemble, of which he was a member, it pulses relentlessly for 72 minutes, leavening its overlapping minimalist motifs with bits of improvisation— including the composer’s piano elaborations.

Various artists, Music of Morocco: Recorded by Paul Bowles, 1959 A decade after publishing The Sheltering Sky, Bowles lugged an Ampex 601 reel-to-reel across his adopted homeland, braving sandstorms and sun to document the regional musical culture. The variety of sounds he captured is entrancing and exhaustive. First issued as a double LP by the Library of Congress in 1972, Music of Morocco was recently expanded by Dust-to-Digital into a 30-track, four-CD set. After several listens, I’ve barely wrapped my head around it, though I suspect some good hash might help.

Equiknoxx, Bird Sound Power I’ve been obsessed with Demdike Stare for a while now and pretty much blindly pick up anything they release. So when their DDS label put out Equiknoxx’s Bird Sound Power earlier this summer, it was a no-brainer that I would get a copy. It’s such a great thrill to listen to—dancehall via wormhole transmissions. The members of this Jamaican production crew combine dancehall rhythms with cinematic orchestra blasts, warm synth beds, and of course their signature birdcalls.

Reader music critic

Game Theory, The Big Shot Chronicles This new edition of my favorite Game Theory record includes bonus tracks and terrific liner notes by WNUR alum Jason Cohen, but the original 12 songs still stand on their own— they’re pop perfection, albeit larded with dizzying wordplay, convoluted structures, and Mitch Easter’s weird production. Game Theory auteur Scott Miller died at 53 in 2013, but with this 1986 album he created the kind of masterpiece most artists spend a lifetime chasing.

Negro Leo, Água Batizada The underground sound of Rio de Janeiro reaches a new apotheosis with this album from the prolific Negro Leo (aka Leonardo Campelo Gonçalves), which collides the idiosyncratic psych of Syd Barrett with noisy art-rock and the gnarled Brazilian roots of tropicalia. I haven’t been paying close attention to Brazilian music of late—it’s time for me to wake up.

36 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 6, 2016

Hieroglyphic Being I was jogging in Brooklyn recently when an otherworldly pulse poured from my earbuds, transporting me to what felt like another galaxy. The sounds, though, were straight out of Chicago. Jamal Moss keeps a low profile in town, but he’s moving plenty of bodies abroad with the Afrofuturistic posthouse music he pumps out as Hieroglyphic Being. On The Disco’s of Imhotep and K.M.T. (with side project Africans With Mainframes), Moss uses vintage drum machines and analog synths to push house into the next millennium.

Ben Ratliff I met this music critic in the New York Times cafeteria before his August departure from the paper, and he was as thoughtful and incisive as his coverage has been over the past two decades. (See his new book, Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to Listen in an Age of Musical Plenty, for a wide-view guide to music appreciation.) Ratliff’s final NYT Popcast and recent appearance on Marc Maron’s WTF are essential for anyone missing his byline.

Bassist for I Kong Kult

Juno listens to Jupiter’s auroras These aren’t actual wormhole transmissions, but they’re something even better: kilometer-wavelength radio signals from Jupiter’s intense auroras picked up by the Juno spacecraft on its first orbit around the planet. I guess this isn’t music in the strict sense, but I’m still obsessed with listening to it. It’s 13 hours of data shifted into audible frequencies and compressed into 24 seconds of outer-space bliss.

Soundscaper Soundscaper is a sample-based sound generation app for the iPad. You can load a different sample into each oscillator, add filters and effects, and then combine them in the spatial mixer. I don’t understand how everything works, but that’s part of the fun—turning things on and off and coming up with strange textures and sounds.

So of course I zone out to weird ambient noises I made with this app using the Juno transmissions.

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Recommended and notable shows, and critics’ insights for the week of October 6 b

ALL AGES

F

PICK OF THE WEEK

With their first album in 16 years, death-grind legends Brujeria have a few choice words for Trump

Pirulo y La Tribu o MICHAEL KOVAC

o MF/NUCLEAR BLAST PUBLICITY

BRUJERIA, CATTLE DECAPITATION, PIÑATA PROTEST

Fri 10/7, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2105 S. State, sold out. 17+

IT’S BEEN 16 YEARS since Mexican-American death-grind legends Brujeria released a new album—and with their latest they’ll no doubt pick up some fans who weren’t even born then. The band is keeping with their guise of semi-anonymity, and while members Asesino and Guero Sin Fe left during the intervening span, the lineup that made the new Pocho Aztlan (Nuclear Blast) sound as solid and cohesive and unified as ever. Brujeria all but pick up where they left off, dispensing churning, howling riffs and agonizing Spanish-language screeds about violence and the occult—but not without a hefty dose of Chicano pride. Their triumphant return is well-timed: Can you imagine a more effective barrier to chainsaw right through than the metaphorical Trump wall? They even wind down their 13-track apocalypse with a favorite live cover, “California Uber Aztlan” (Dead Kennedys’ front man Jello Biafra was an early member of the band). —MONICA KENDRICK

THURSDAY6

FRIDAY7

Pirulo y La Tribu 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln, $75. b

Brujeria See Pick of the Week. Cattle Decapitation and Piñata Protest open. 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2105 S. State, sold out. 17+

Percussionist, singer, and composer Francisco “Pirulo” Rosado had plenty of playing experience by the time he got around to forming his popular band Pirulo y La Tribu earlier this decade. The Puerto Rican musician has worked behind Latin music heavies such as Giovanni Hidalgo and Pupy Santiago, and after graduating from the Berklee School of Music in 1998 he spent time on the road with Bob Dylan and Maceo Parker. In 2013 his group dropped Calle Linda, which got international distribution last year via Universal Music Latin. The album reveals a savvy mix of Afro-Caribbean roots and modern flavors that collides New York-style salsa and Cuban son with timba, hip-hop, and contemporary R&B— though nothing threatens the primacy of Rosado’s infectious work on timbales. From track to track he tosses in bits of auto-tuned singing, atmospheric synthesizers, and funky bass, while also interpolating bits of the Delfonics hit “Ready or Not Here I Come” and the Bob Marley standard “I Shot the Sherriff.” The energy is nonstop, and as much as it incorporates pop-radio conventions, the polyrhythmic angle and nonchalant soulfulness of Rosado’s throaty singing keep the music decidedly Afro-Caribbean. Tonight the group performs as part of a 45th anniversary celebration of Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center, Chicago’s oldest extant Latino social-service organization. A cocktail reception in Szold Hall (4545 N. Lincoln) precedes the performance and is included in the price of admission.

—PETER MARGASAK

Nick Fraser Quartet 7:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $10. 18+

Toronto drummer Nick Fraser has been through town before, playing behind trumpeter Lina Allemano in a couple groups, but he works as a leader in his own right too. Last year he got top billing on Too Many Continents (Clean Feed), a turbulent trio outing with pianist Kris Davis and saxophonist Tony Malaby for which the drummer composed three tunes; the group improvised the other four.

The music is wide open, and honestly, there’s not much immediately discernible in the two batches.

Ultimately the focus is on fluid, spontaneous interaction, particularly in the way Fraser responds to Davis. The latter powerfully works the left hand of the keyboard, dropping bass-heavy clusters (“I Needed It Yesterday”) or hammering out insistent notes (“Nostalgia for the Recent Past”), while Malaby conjures Arabic modalities with snaking soprano lines and Fraser lays down fragile cymbal patter and all-over-the-kit splatter. Malaby also turns up on Fraser’s new self-released Starer, a quartet album with cellist Andrew Downing and double bassist Rob Clutton. As with Too Many Continents, Fraser calls most of his pieces “sketches”—an acknowledgment of the freedom he gives his cohorts—but the strings frequently trace out written passages, providing a degree of structure as well as melodic raw material. Perhaps due to the chamber vibe of the instrumentation, both Fraser and Malaby exercise J

OCTOBER 6, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 37

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

MUSIC continued from 37

more restraint together than on their trio recording, settling into the melodic warmth of the pieces quite effectively. This is the quartet’s Chicago debut.

—PETER MARGASAK

Matt Ulery’s Loom See also Saturday. 9 PM, Green Mill, 4802 N. Broadway, $15.

Few musicians in Chicago have worked as diligently and rigorously to combine postbop with the voicings and compositional richness of classical music as bassist Matt Ulery, who improves with every new recording whether leading his long-running quintet Loom—his most jazz-oriented vehicle— or shifting through a variety of projects that focus more on composed material. His latest effort, Festival (Woolgathering), opens with two of his most expansive pieces: a sumptuous arrangement of the Jimmy Rowles ballad “The Peacocks” and an original piece called “Hubble” that features a 27-piece group. “The Peacocks” is especially stunning, with lush reeds, brass, and strings gracefully alternating between sophisticated, prismatic harmony and generous contrapuntal melodic expression. The sturdy rhythm section, pianist Rob Clearfield and drummer Jon Deitemyer, along with the leader himself give the performance a backbone that eschews potential Third Stream affectations. Still, it’s with the 11 new pieces performed by Loom—a trio that includes reedist Geof Bradfield and trumpeter Russ Johnson—that Ulery blends stylistic concepts most seamlessly. The soaring horn melodies and unbroken pastoral beauty of “Middle West” evoke the spirit of Copland-esque Americana, while “Ethery” establishes a subtle Middle Eastern tone (Ulery has traversed related sounds in the Roma-inspired Eastern Blok, which features Goran Ivanovic). For the final section Ulery switches to tuba and Clearfield to pump organ, conveying an old-time rusticity.

—PETER MARGASAK

Kanye West See also Saturday. 8 PM, United Center, 1901 W. Madison, $29.50-$189.50. b Kanye West has described The Life of Pablo (Def Jam/UMG/Good Music) as a gospel album, though his vocal performances often do a good-ass job of convincing people otherwise. His brash, sexist bars on “Famous” or “Father Stretch My Hands, Pt. 1” (“If I fuck this model / And she just bleached her asshole / And I get bleach on my T-shirt / Imma feel like an asshole”) suggest his concerns are about as tangible as the afterlife. What moves with the fervor and unbridled joy of gospel music are the sounds Kanye wields: he manipulates and shapes performances from an army of big-name contributors (Chance the Rapper, Vic Mensa, Sia, Desiigner, Young Thug, etc), he melts samples till they sound like they’ve been doused in toxic waste, and he beams his glassy synths to the sky. Kanye’s postrelease tinkering with Pablo is a good case study in how technology has transformed the feedback loop between artists and listener, and how constantly “updating” a once immovable format amplifies and mutates the religious devotions of fans. Some have tracked the modified versions just as Deadheads have sought out decades of live bootlegs—Japanese producer Toyomu even made his own version of Pablo based on scraps of info available to those unable to hear the album due to streaming restrictions. The “Saint Pablo” tour also plays with religious dynamics. Kanye moves around an arena on a small platform suspended from the ceiling—the mini stage rests high enough above not to risk physical harm while low enough that members of the crowd have jumped up in an attempt to touch it. The platform beams bright orange lights onto the attendees standing directly beneath it, shifting the focus away from Kanye while encouraging those below to respond with abandon. —LEOR GALIL

Kanye West o ROBB COHEN

38 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 6, 2016

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Slow Mass o MADI ELLIS

SATURDAY8 Alumbrados See Bardo Pond on page 41.

Mark Shippy with Mako Sica and Poison Arrows open. 9 PM, Burlington, 3425 W. Fullerton, $7.

Brain Tentacles Gorguts headline; Intronaut, Brain Tentacles, and Without Waves open.

7:15 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $20, $18 in advance. 17+ Relapse Records’ press release for Brain Tentacles’ new self-titled debut calls the trio’s output “metallic jazz,” but I want to get one thing straight: it takes more than a horn to make something jazz.

As weird and all over the place as this record is, it’s basically riff-based noise-rock with oddball instrumentation—drummer Dave Witte (Municipal Waste, Melt-Banana) and bassist Aaron Dallison (Keelhaul) are joined not by a guitarist but by saxophonist Bruce Lamont (Yakuza, Bloodiest), who occasionally adds vocals, electric piano, or synth. The music doesn’t meaningfully depend on interaction among the players, so as far as I’m concerned, it’s not jazz. It’s not even “jazzy.” But it’s pretty great. Lamont’s battery of pedals and processors often splits his horn into a demented cluster of parallel tones, which on his more frantic lines makes it sound like a bumblebee the size of a beanbag chair trapped in your car and bouncing from window to window.

Witte’s crisp, authoritative drumming pinballs from style to style: busy black-metal blasting, thrashy skank beats, sassy half-time stomps, or freight-train death-metal double kick. Even when his bandmates settle into mellow psychedelic moseying, he keeps up a tense Krautrock groove. Brain Tentacles’ livelier material has some of the bratty, brainy energy and nightmare-circus vibe of early Mr. Bungle, and I suspect they crank up its brashness in part

because they know they need to sell this odd lineup to the heavy-music crowd. They open “Gassed” with a sample of some guy complaining about a horn player ruining a great song: “Fuck rock ’n’ roll sax!” he concludes. In Brain Tentacles, though, the sax can’t ruin the song—it carries the song. You have to get down with it or get out of the way.

—PHILIP MONTORO

Laurel Halo Steve Summers, Ulla Anona, and Spa Moans open. 10 PM, Laura, musicfordowners@gmail.com, $10. b Berlin-based Michigan native Laurel Halo is a solo electronic artist who crafts music both transcendent and immediate. By working within two textural extremes, she forges a sound that’s a refreshing addition to modern experimental techno: At times her deep, washed-out bass is so expansive and melodic it creates a harmonic foundation in a way that mids and highs just couldn’t, while her floating synth hits provide more of a driving rhythm rather than anything hummable. But at other times she deploys the tight, punctuated bass that drives her music aggressively forward, providing clubgoers at Berlin’s Berghain with the out-of-body sonic experience for which they wait in line hours to experience.

Laurel Halo wants to make intelligent music that’s danceable but also decidedly free of the constraints of hypermasculine club music. Her use of bass is matched only by producer Blawan, though his pounds furiously like a war drum, while Laurel Halo measures hers in thunderous booms—she gives it a spotlight on “Drift,” from her recent In Situ. She’s in some great company as a signee of Hyperdub, and her 2012 debut album, Quarantine, was named best album of that year by experimental-music bible the Wire. A bit elusive, she rarely tours, which should up the anticipation for tonight’s performance.

—MEAGAN FREDETTE J

OCTOBER 6, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 39

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

MUSIC

LYDIA

WE ARE SCIENTISTS

GUEST

THE NOISE FM + HIGHCHAIR KINGS

11/16

12/01

ROONEY

CRACKER & CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN 01/07

ROYAL TEETH + ROMES

12/04

LEWIS DEL MAR 10/13 THE DUSTBOWL REVIVAL 10/14 SUNFLOWER BEAN 10/21 FOY VANCE 10/28

THE BOXER REBELLION 10/29 GRAMPS THE VAMP 10/30 MR LITTLE JEANS 11/10 CASPIAN 11/13

Thalia Zedek Band o BEN STAS

continued from 39

WWW.LH-ST.COM

SLOW CLUB GUEST

11/15

Owen Victor Villareal opens. 8:30 PM, Chicago Athletic Association, 12 S. Michigan, $20.

WLUW WELCOMES...

ANDY SHAUF 11/29

SLØTFACE

DEAD HORSES

12/05

12/14

GUEST

GUEST

BJ BARHAM 10/13 SALES 10/19 CLEAR PLASTIC MASKS 10/20 WHISKEY SHIVERS 10/14 TALL HEIGHTS 10/21 ELEPHANT STONE 10/17 MATT HIRES 10/22 KELSEY WALDON + K PHILLIPS 10/18

40 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 6, 2016

When Mike Kinsella launched his solo project Owen in 2001 he’d already had a hand in more indelible punk-qua-indie bands than any one person should legally be allowed: Cap’n Jazz, Joan of Arc, Owls, and American Football, whose shadow still looms large over the emo renaissance and indie rock at large. Fifteen years into Owen, by far his longest-running effort, Kinsella has attracted a small, devoted cult with his hushed, sometimes morose recordings. Here his relatively bare template focuses on modest songs that are strippeddown and intimate even when played out in blustery, full-band arrangements—and it’s provided him with a seemingly bottomless well of creativity. On July’s The King of Whys (Polyvinyl), produced by Bon Iver drummer S. Carey, he cuts serene, lush orchestrations with lyrics about the everyday anxieties that come with settling into your own skin and advancing age. On “Empty Bottle,” Kinsella, a family man in his late 30s, stirs up a squeamish, late-night tension shared between two very different people drawn together out of mutual loneliness (“You’ve got a lot of nerves / Will you please touch mine with yours?”). —LEOR GALIL

Matt Ulery’s Loom See Friday. 8 PM, Green Mill, 4802 N. Broadway, $15.

Slow Mass Xerxes open. 10 PM, Landland, 1735 N. Ashland, $7 suggested donation. b The posthardcore/emo boom of the late 90s and early 2000s probably appears much closer in the mirror than it actually is for many thirtysomethings, consequently making the by-comparisons easy and fun for those who have been paying attention to the upstarts currently offering homage to the giants of

that era. On their debut six-song EP, Treasure Pains (Landland), local foursome Slow Mass glean from plenty of ’em—Fugazi, Hey Mercedes, Small Brown Bike, Sparta, Elliott, the list goes on—without being defined by those influences. This is mostly a result of the record’s tightness and supersolid production and the subtle magic with which the band’s wistfulness glows. Beginning with “Dark Dark Energy,” vocalist-guitarist Dave Collis shows off a keen—and perhaps underappreciated—ability to sound vulnerable and reflective within a sparse verse, but similarly vulnerable and reflective when the shit kicks in and he scuffs and gruffs his voice. “Bruce Lee” highlights how Slow Mass can make a melodic rock song technical without sounding convoluted (drummer Josh Sparks in particular deserves a tip of the hat), while bassist Mercedes Webb goes lead vocalist on “Clint Eastwood,” offering an unexpected transition from Collis that’s welcome regardless of whether you’re ready for it. For as full-bodied and well-rounded as Treasure Pains is—”Portals to Hell” being the truest single—I imagine a long player will be a gutsy saga. —KEVIN WARWICK

Kanye West See Friday. 8 PM, Allstate Arena, 6920 Mannheim, Rosemont, $29.50-$170. b Thalia Zedek Band Dinosaur Jr. headline; Steve Gunn and Thalia Zedek Band open. 9 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $31. 18+ Unlike wine, most rock musicians don’t improve with age, and of those who don’t flame out, very few with decades-long careers manage to keep generating excitement and fresh ideas. Boston’s Thalia Zedek proves to be a thrilling anomaly. As the focal point of Dangerous Birds, Uzi, Live Skull, and Come, she’s steadily evolved, transforming a brooding, sometimes nihilistic ennui into a wounded, often tender humanism with no place for bromides or shallow optimism. Last month the 55-year-old Zedek dropped one of her strongest records with J

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Eve (Thrill Jockey), a collection of bittersweet ballads and midtempo rockers marked by dark, bruised melodies delivered in her weary voice. She’s always been a dynamic vocalist, but she’s become a genuinely brilliant singer, masterfully controlling her mahoganied wail to balance stark beauty and devastating vulnerability. Her band deserves a lot of credit, especially the way violist Michael David Curry and pianist Mel Lederman meld with Zedek’s guitar, toggling between vintage Stones at their most frayed and Patti Smith when she’s flexing her poetic muscle. Zedek’s lyrics convey wisdom through elliptical narratives, empathic entreaties, and frustrated scoldings, addressing loneliness in “Afloat” and embracing a fighting spirit in “Try Again.”

—PETER MARGASAK

SUNDAY9 Bardo Pond Poison Arrows and William Fowler Collins & James Jackson Toth open. 9 PM, the Owl, 2521 N. Milwaukee. F Philadelphia-based quintet Bardo Pond have been mining heavy psychedelic ore for 25 years. Their music comes in two essential modes: slow, blasted rock songs illuminated by the spacey singing and flute playing of Isobel Sollenberger and droning, feedback-heavy improvisations that flow as inexorably as a river of lava. Peace on Venus (2013), their last album of original songs, is the acme of the former approach. But 2015’s Record Store Trilogy (Fire), a three-CD collection of covers originally released as limited-edition 12-inches, affirms Bardo Pond’s peculiar versatility. Though capable enough and happy to turn any song into an epic sludge fest, they still don’t sacrifice the unfiltered tragedy of Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain,” the cosmic bliss of Pharoah Sanders’s “The Creator Has a Master Plan,” or the nonsensical jubilance of Brian Eno’s “Here Come the Warm Jets.” The group’s members have also formed a number of side projects over the years to explore variations on the latter improvisational method—on the most recent LP

by Alumbrados, 2009’s Monochord, guitarists John and Michael Gibbons and a few confederates use found vocals and acoustic strings to get into an especially late-night zone. The group’s core members perform a set of free-form jams under that name in a concert at the Burlington on Sat 9/8 (see page 39). And never mind whatever alias they’re using, Bardo Pond haven’t played in Chicago since 2006. —BILL MEYER

TUESDAY11 Dylan Golden Aycock Slow Planes, Lake Mary, and Scott Tuma open. 9 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $8.

The Internet has brought music to places that local record shops and libraries didn’t. For proof, one needn’t look further than Tulsa guitarist Dylan Golden Aycock. His introduction to music came via local radio and skateboarding videos, and his

earliest obsession was hip-hop. But thanks to his folk-guitarist father, he soon encountered Daniel Lanois and Bill Frisell, and from there his interests billowed forward, particularly his ardor for the American Primitive school of fingerstyle guitar. On his new album Church of Level Track (released on his own Scissor Tail imprint) Aycock has forged a lovely sound that dispatches aesthetic purity, mixing elements he first heard on John Fahey albums from the 60s with postmodern music by Jim O’Rourke made early this century. “Lord It Over” opens conventionally enough, with a rolling movement of arpeggios, individually plucked notes, and countermelodies made on his acoustic guitar, but liquid pedal-steel swells quickly join the soundscape, followed by electric-guitar embroidery, and finally a shuffle pattern on drums, all overdubbed by Aycock. On “Drenched Remnants Emerging All Mesmerized,” his woozy pedal steel crosses into ambient territory—leaning closer to B.J. Cole than to Pete Drake—with rapidly plucked acoustic figures extending out of the flowing lines. A couple of minutes into the closing epic “Scratch the Chisel” tumbling newage synths trickle down, but they end up generating tension more than easing the music toward meditation. Aycock, 30, only picked up the guitar six years ago, and though he seems fully formed, I can’t wait to hear what he’s doing in another six.

—PETER MARGASAK

WEDNESDAY12 Nate Young, Aaron Dilloway Nate Young headlines; Aaron Dilloway, Hogg, and Andy Ortmann open. 9 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $10.

Recently Detroit’s Nate Young has been busy hitting the road with Wolf Eyes, the veteran trio of lo-fi experimentalists he founded in 1996 that’s obtained a vibrant new life since “Crazy” Jim Baljo replaced Mike Connelly in 2013. The downside of this renewed activity is that Young’s excellent solo project Regression hasn’t dropped a new record in three years—but there’s always hope. His last effort, Blinding Confusion (NNA Tapes), distilled his queasy electronic vision into its sharpest, most effective manifestation yet. There, using cheap keyboards, manipulated tapes, and analog synthesizers, Young creates an unsettling series of pieces that evoke pure dread, as if he’d scored an imaginary low-budget horror flick where the lead-up to the grisly murder is all lead-up and no murder. Sharing tonight’s bill is Aaron Dilloway, an early member of Wolf Eyes who left in 2005 to focus on his own warped tape music. Since branching out on his own he’s been wildly prolific, churning out limited-run releases on loads of different labels, including his own Hanson imprint. It’s hard to keep up with, but his work mirrors the often nausea-inducing vibe of Young’s music, though its provenance is much harder to parse, with gunky environmental sounds drifting over industrial-like loops, muffled electronic tones, grinding low-end rhythmic patterns, lacerating white noise, livewire sizzle, and a million more antisocial elements. —PETER MARGASAK v

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OneBeat

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Darlingside

with special guest Frances Luke Accord

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15 10:30AM

Elizabeth Mitchell and You Are My Flower Kids' concert

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15 8PM

Ida

featuring Elizabeth Mitchell and Daniel Littleton In Szold Hall

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20 8PM FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21 8PM

Rhett Miller / Joe Purdy FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28 7:30PM

Jonas Friddle & The Majority / Tangleweed SUNDAY, OCTOBER 30 7PM

AMIRA Queen of Sevdahlinka

Featuring Amira Medunjanin, Ante Gelo (guitar), Zvonimir Sestak (double bass)

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5 8PM

Mohsen Namjoo ACROSS THE STREET IN SZOLD HALL 4545 N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL

10/7 10/14 10/16 10/21 10/22 10/28

Global Dance Party: Swing Brasileiro Global Dance Party: Hoyle Brothers Michael J. Miles with Darol Anger Alasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas The Good Lovelies International Mandolin Spectacular featuring the Don Stiernberg Trio & Carlo Aonzo 10/31 PigPen Theatre Co. Residency

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OCTOBER 6, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 41

S P O N SO R ED CO N T EN T

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THU

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FRI

“Hoppy Hour” 5-8pm = 1/2 price IPAs + pale ales

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S AT

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$6 Firestone Walker Opal pints, $6 Finch Vanilla Stout 16 oz. cans, $7 house wines, $8 Few Spirits

SUN

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Brunch 11am-2pm, Bottomless Bloody Mary’s & Mimosas $15 w/food purchase, 50% off apps & $3 Bud Light pints. Industry Night 10% off reg. price items.

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$6 Firestone Walker Opal pints, $6 Finch Vanilla Stout 16 oz. cans, $7 house wines, $8 Few Spirits

MON

$4 Half Acre brews, FREE POOL, “Hoppy Hour” 5-8pm = 1/2 price IPAs + pale ales

TUE

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The Loyalist shows its true colors John Shields and Karen Urie Shields’s casual subterranean answer to the Smyth elevates the everyday.

By MIKE SULA

Broiled sea trout bathes in a broth boosted with glutamic sake lees; the dim basement space is illuminated in part by a long, glowing bar. o DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

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oyalists were “persons inimical to the liberties of America,” as was said by patriots during the Revolutionary War. On their worst days they were often subject to arson and tarring and feathering, but at war’s end many of them—including former slaves—were granted asylum in Canada.

Maybe chef John Shields and pastry chef Karen Urie Shields chose to name their high-volume hangout below their fine-dining flagship, Smyth, after the king’s men for its subterranean qualities. With its darkened walls barely illuminated by candlelight and a long, glowing bar, it’s the sort of place where counterrevolutionaries might meet to J

OCTOBER 6, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 43

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continued from 43

In addition to being vastly outnumbered by cars, bike riders are much more exposed. So, even when a rider does something boneheaded, remember—your broken headlight is easier to fix than their broken bones. Take the high road and give bicyclists the space they need to ride safely. Check our website for more road sharing tips.

VISIT ORTHOINFO.ORG/BIKESAFETY ota.org

44 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 6, 2016

orthoinfo.org

plot over their syllabub. Maybe so, but what the dim room dominated by communal hightops mostly communicates is a conceptually blank slate.

At a brief glance, the menu doesn’t seem particularly revolutionary either, not in the way you’d expect from vets of Trotter’s, Tru, and Alinea who’ve returned to Chicago after a celebrated stint at their rural Virginia restaurant Town House. It has that familiar something-for-everyone vibe, with the usual heirloom tomatoes, chicken liver mousse, aged rib eye, and, of course, a cheeseburger.

But upon closer inspection, something more unexpected is afoot.

There’s a luscious broiled sea trout fillet bathing in a broth boosted with glutamic sake lees (aka sakekasu, the solids left over after sake is separated from fermented rice), enhancing both the fish and the scarfable bits of charred cucumber floating in the brew.

There’s a pair of lightly fried boneless chick-

The standout among a trio of desserts from Karen Urie Shields is a sort of collapsed pavlova—shattered dry meringue concealing smooth blackberry sorbet. ! DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

l

l

○ Watch a video of Pito Rodriguez making this cocktail with mojo at chicagoreader.com/food.

en thighs flanking a bed of rice grits creamier than any risotto, along with green beans, and bits of toothsome pickled tripe that lend a surprising acidity. And there’s a barbecue plate—a chunk of roasted pork shoulder slathered in an understated sauce, the meat so tender you won’t mind that it’s billed as “BBQ.” Slippery rings of calamari tangle with charred eggplant and fruit bombs of Fresno chiles, while fat, sweet charred carrots are draped with ropes of dueling acidic-creamy salsa verde and bearnaise sauce.

A casual hangout like the Loyalist is legally beholden to have fried potatoes on the menu (there are two versions, in fact); nevertheless its “smokey” potatoes, while not particularly smoky tasting, are a happy surprise, bedded on a fried egg showered with tart sauerkraut, the whole baby spuds’ crispy outer shell jacketing an ethereal interior. That’s not the only apparently boring menu item that turns out to be loaded with culinary purpose. The chicken liver mousse, slathered on toast, has an iron-rich minerality offset by sweet cherry and a blanket of crisp, cool radishes. A panzanella with a gob of fresh cheese and hunks of black-garlic sourdough is summer’s last caress. And that cheeseburger? It has its own Twitter and Instagram accounts attesting to its lacy smashed-patty crackliness and curtains of molten cheese and grilled onions—a sloppy champion of the form.

The standout among a trio of desserts from Urie Shields is a sort of collapsed pavlova—shattered dry meringue concealing smooth blackberry sorbet. But you won’t do much worse with a dense, stygian chocolate layer cake balanced with a dollop of whipped creme fraiche, or a light lemongrass sundae drizzled with salted black-licorice caramel.

The Loyalist has an extensive and approachably priced wine list for a restaurant with such a tight menu—and so too is its cocktail list, ten potions ranging from the boozy straight-up Hemingway Daiquiri to the Tarantella, a chuggably fruity concoction built with pisco and sparkling wine, to the No True Scotsman, with two kinds of scotch and creme de violette.

If this basement barstaurant exists only to help underwrite the significantly more costly prix fixe operation upstairs, it’s doing way more than it needs to. It may be difficult to spot right away, but the Loyalist has an identity all its own. v

ß @Mike Sula

FOOD & DRINK

COCKTAIL CHALLENGE

Hitting the sauce

By JULIA THIEL

The I Found Mi Mojo cocktail

by Pito Rodriguez of Sable Kitchen & Bar o CHRIS BUDDY

I FOUND MI MOJO 3⁄4 OZ LIME JUICE 3⁄4 OZ SPICED PINEAPPLE SYRUP* 2 OZ DON Q RUM 1⁄4 OZ MOJO TINCTURE** CILANTRO Add all ingredients to a shaker with ice; shake and strain over a large ice cube.

Garnish with a cilantro leaf. *PINEAPPLE SYRUP

W

hile the sauce called mojo originated in the Canary Islands, varying forms of it are popular in Cuba, the Caribbean, and Puerto Rico. But for SABLE KITCHEN & BAR bartender PITO RODRIGUEZ, the truest form is made in Puerto Rico by his aunt Titi. Rodriguez says that MATTHEW JANNOTTA, the SOHO HOUSE CHICAGO bartender who challenged him to make a cocktail with MOJO, visited Puerto Rico with him a couple years ago and got a chance to try his aunt’s mojo, which consists simply of cilantro, garlic, olive oil, and salt.

“I actually called my aunt when I got challenged with this and was like, ‘Titi, how do you make your mojo?’” Rodriguez says. “I was thinking, How the hell do I use mojo in a cocktail?” He settled on a tincture, which is usually one ingredient infused into neutral grain spirits. In this case, though, Rodriguez used them all apart from the olive oil, subbing in roasted garlic (in mojo it would typically be raw, but he wanted to make it less sharp tasting). A sliver

of habanero pepper added warmth—“but not spice,” Rodriguez says. “Puerto Ricans generally don’t like a lot of heat.”

For the spirit he considered tequila, thinking that its vegetal qualities would fit well with the vegetal mojo. But the sweetness of rum turned out to be a better match—happily for Rodriguez, since the spirit fit right into the Puerto Rican theme of his cocktail, which he dubbed I Found Mi Mojo. “Essentially it’s a daiquiri,” he says. For the sweetener he used spiced pineapple syrup; the only other ingredient is lime juice. “I get the best of both worlds: the mojo and the daiquiri,” he says. “Two things I’m very fond of.”

WHO’S NEXT:

“Since I got racially profiled with mojo,” Rodriguez says, “I’m challenging CHRISTOPHER MARTY at BEST INTENTIONS with MATZO.” v

ß @juliathiel

2 QUARTS WATER 2 QUARTS SUGAR 2 CINNAMON STICKS 2 STAR ANISE 1 VANILLA BEAN (SLICED LENGTHWISE) 2 DICED PINEAPPLES Make simple syrup and add cinnamon, star anise, and vanilla bean. Allow to cool to room temperature and add pineapple.

Allow to sit for 24 hours and fine strain. **MOJO TINCTURE

8 CUPS EVERCLEAR, 190 PROOF 43 GRAMS MINCED CILANTRO 28 GRAMS FINELY CHOPPED CARIBBEAN SWEET PEPPERS 1/16 OF ONE HABANERO PEPPER 3 ROASTED GARLIC CLOVES HEAVY PINCH OF SALT Let sit for four hours and strain out the solids.

OCTOBER 6, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 45

JOBS

SALES & MARKETING USHEALTH Advisors is a National Organization that specializes in providing Business Services and Support to small businesses. We utilize our extensive resources to help America’s Small Business owners cut money off their overhead, while supplying them with products and services they need to run their business effectively and efficiently. We have several different pay structures depending on the position offered. We are looking for Account Executives and District Managers. Please submit your resume to: rita.sprudzs@ushadvisors.com

RADIO TELESALES. EXCELLENT opportunity for a good, expe-

rienced radio sales pro to sell public service announcements. If you want respect, this is the place. High commissions and bonuses in relaxed environment in Skokie near transportation. 847-679-7660.

TELE-FUNDRAISING: FOR VETERANS DAY. American Veterans helping Veterans.

Felons need not apply per Illinois Attorney General regulations. Start ASAP, Call 312-256-5035

food & drink FOOD PREP - EXPERIENCE PREFERRED, but not required.

Full-Time Monday-Saturday. Call 312-428-8955

General PRODUCTIVE EDGE, LLC. is

seeking a Senior Technical Architect, Team Lead for Chicago, IL. Will supervise team of Developers who are using their knowledge of & exp. with the following technologies & tools to perform duties: .NET Framework, C# .NET; Sitecore CMS; HTML, CSS, JavaScript; SOAP & REST Web Services, Java, Oracle DBMS; PL/SQL, SQL Developer; Ruby on Rails, Agile/ SCRUM, XML/XSD/XSLT, SAML,

MVC, Visual Studio, JIRA, & VersionOne. Manage team of Developers who are using their knowledge of & exp. with acquiring business requirements in the domain of health & wellness incentive programs, ensuring their consistency & translating them into systems qualities & designing strategies that enable high adaptability, scalability, availability, nonrepudiation & reusability of the application. Email resumes to: careers@ productiveedge.com

CONCURRENCY INC. SEEKS

Technical Architects for Chicago, IL location to architect, design, implement & troubleshoot complex enterprise solutions around public, private & hybrid clouds. Master’s in Comp.

Sci. or Info. Sys. +2yrs exp. OR Bachelor’s in Comp. Sci. or Info. Sys. + 5yrs exp. req’d. Must have exp/ proficiency w/ architecting solutions, designing, implementing, & troubleshooting Microsoft cloud platform tech. (Azure, System Center & Windows Server, incl. AD, DNS, DFS, DHCP), SCOM, SCCM, VMM, DPM, SCSM, & ITIL concepts, Scorch, SMA, Azure Automation, scripting & automation using PowerShell, Hyper-V, SQL, VMware, UNIX/Linux. Must hold MCSE certification in server infrastructure, Private cloud. 20% travel ( U.S.) req’d. Apply online: http://www .concurrency.com/whyconcurrency/careers, Job ID: ???

ACCOUNTING ADVISORY FINANCIAL SERVICES Risk and REGULATORY MANAGER (MULT. POS.),

PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory Services LLC, Chicago, IL. Provide mgmt, tech. & risk consulting services to help fin. institutions respond to complex bus. challenges.

Req. Bach.’s deg or foreign equiv. in Fin, Accounting, Econ, or rel. +5 yrs post-bach.’s prog. rel. work exp.; OR a Master’s deg or foreign equiv. in Fin, Accounting, Econ or rel. +3 yrs rel. work exp. Travel up to 80% req.

Apply by mail, referencing Job Code IL1004, Attn: HR SSC/Talent Management, 4040 W. Boy Scout Blvd, Tampa, FL 33607.

STONE CUTTER - cut & crave stone according to diagrams. 2y ex p.req. Mail res: IL Granite & Marble Ltd, 1374 Jarvis, Elk Grove Village, IL 60007

CAMPAIGN JOBS

CUSTOMER SERVICE REP. (Des Plaines, IL). Provide info on monitor repair services; consult customers; take & place orders; record transactions & services; communicate with manufacturers; & resolve customer complaints. High school & at least 2 yrs of exp. Send resume to A.V.C. Tech, Inc. 1723 Marshall Dr. Des Plaines, IL 60018.

EOE. NUTS ON CLARK POPCORN

Stores now hiring in Chicago for all locations...Earn $ while working with a team. Get paid while training.

Jobs Available Now Midway/O’Hare Airports. Apply in person @ corp. office: 3830 N. Clark St. Chicago.

9am-10am Mon-Fri. Must bring ID’s and Social Security Card to apply.

LIFERAY, INC. SEEKS Principal

Consultant in Chicago, IL.: Develop customizations for clients. BS degree +5 yrs wk exp or MS degree +2 yrs wk exp. 10% travel req’d. Email resume to Liferay, Attn: Katharine, careers@ liferay.com HANDYMAN

Full-time position open f o r northside LTC. Apply in person between 10AM-3PM CST: 2155 W Pierce Ave Chicago, Illinois 60622

REAL ESTATE RENTALS

STUDIO $500-$599 Chicago, Beverly/Cal Park/Blue Island Studio $575 & up, 1BR $665 & up, 2BR $885 & up. Heat, Appls, Balcony, Carpet, Laundry, Prkg.

708-388-0170 SOUTH SHORE AREA Newly remod Studios. Near Metra & CTA, appls incl. $500-$525/mo.

Steve 312-952-3901

STUDIO $600-$699 ROGERS

PARK! 7455 N .

Greenview. Studios starting at $675 $695 including heat. It’s a newly remodeled vintage elevator building with on-site laundry, wood floors, new kitchens and baths, some units have balconies, etc. Application fee $40. No security deposit! For a showing please contact Samir 773627-4894 Hunter Properties 773477-7070 www.hunterprop.com

EDGEWATER!

1061 W. Rosemont. Studios starting at $695 to $725, All Utilities included! Elevator building! Close to CTA red line train, restaurants, shopping, blocks to the lakefront, beaches and bike trails, laundry onsite, remodeled, etc. For a showing please contact Jay 773835-1864 Hunter Properties, Inc. 773-477-7070 www.hunterprop.com LARGE STUDIO APARTMENT

near Loyola Park. 1339 W Estes.

Hardwood floors. Heat included.

Laundry in building. Cats OK. $695/ month. Available 11/1. 773-761-4318, www.lakefrontmgt.com

CHICAGO, HYDE PARK Arms

Hotel, 5316 S. Harper, maid, phone, cable ready, fridge, private facilities, laundry avail. Start at $160/wk Call 773-493-3500

MARQUETTE PARK: 6315-19 S California, Studios, 1beds, 2beds from $600-$800, Free heat, no deposit. 773.916.0039 7500 SOUTH SHORE Dr. Brand New Rehabbed Studio & 1BR Apts from $650.

Call 773-374-7777 for details.

STUDIO $700-$899 EDGEWATER: Dlx Studio: full kic, new appl, DR, oak flrs, lndy, cats ok. $795/incl ht, water, gas, 773-743-4141 urbanequities.com

STUDIO $900 AND OVER Hyde Park West Apts., 5325 S. Cottage Grove Ave., Renovated spacious apartments in landscaped gated community. Off street parking available. Studios $950, 1BR $1150 - Free Heat, 2BR $1400 - Free heat; 3BR Townhome $1775, 4BR Townhome, $2200 Call about our Special. Visit or call 773-324-0280, M-F: 9am-5pm or apply online- www.hydepark we st.com. Managed by Metroplex, Inc

STUDIO OTHER

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 QUALITY

APARTMENTS,

Great Prices! Studios-4BR, from $450. Newly rehabbed. Appliances included. Low Move-in Fees. Hardwood floors. Pangea - Chicago’s South, Southwest & West Neighborhoods. 312-985-0556

FALL SPECIAL: STUDIOS starting at $499 incls utilities. 1BR $550, 2BR $599, 3BR $699. With approved credit. No Security Deposit for Sec 8 Tenants. South Shore & Southside. Call 312-4463333 7022 S. SHORE DRIVE Impecca-

bly Clean Highrise STUDIOS, 1 & 2 BEDROOMS Facing Lake & Park.

Laundry & Security on Premises.

Parking & Apts. Are Subject to Availability. TOWNHOUSE APARTMENTS 773-288-1030

MIDWAY AREA/63RD KEDZIE Deluxe Studio 1 & 2 BRs. All

BLUE ISLAND, completely remod 2BR. New appls., heated, lndry, prkg incl. $900/mo Sec dep req’d.

708-638-6687, 708-638-9742 77 RIDGELAND 3BR. $850.

75th/Evans 2BR, dining rm, $925.

76th/Drexel. 2BR. $700. heat incl 773-874-9637 or 773-493-5359

GALEWOOD 2.5BR, HARDWOOD floors, security cameras on property, near trans. $825/mo.

Tenant pays utils. 773-882-2688

CHATHAM 80TH & St.

Lawrence. Lrg studio $525, 1BR $585$630. 113th & Indiana, XL 1BR heat incl. $640. 773-660-9305 NICE ROOM w/stove, fridge & bath Near Aldi, Walgreens, Beach, Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry. $130/wk & up. 773-275-4442

NEAR 83RD/ELIZABETH. Spac 1BR apt, décor, c-fans, near trans & shops, tenant pays heat. $550 +

76TH & PHILLIPS Studio $575$600, 2BR $750-$800. Remodeled,

1 mo sec. Brown Realty 773-239-9566

CHICAGO SOUTH - YOU’VE tried the rest, we are the best.

Apartments & Homes for rent, city & suburb. No credit checks.

773-221-7490, 773-221-7493 WEST PULLMAN (INDIANA

Appliances avail. Free Heat. Section 8 welcome. 312-286-5678

CICERO: 1 Bedrooms & 2 Bedrooms Heat included. No dogs.

Call Ken 773-391-1460

1 BR $700-$799 8001 S COLFAX; very lrg studio,

Ave) Nice, lrg 1 & 2BR w/balcony.

1BR $550, 2BR $650. Security deposit $650. Sec 8 Welcome. 773-9956950

$600, 1BR $650, newly remod, hdwd floors, cable. Great location! Sec 8 welcome. 708-308-1509, 773-4933500

FALL SPECIAL $500 Toward

CHICAGO, 1 LARGE BR, 2nd Flr, Heat Incl, Large Yrd & Front Porch, $700-$750/mo. Also 2BR. 1st flr, $800-$850/mo. Call 847-454-6124

Rent Beautiful Studios 1, 2, 3 & 4 BR Sect. 8 Welc. Westside Loc, Must qualify. 773-287-4500 www.wjmngmt.com

CHICAGO - HYDE PARK

Newly remod 1BR & Studios starting at $500. No sec dep, move in fee or app fee. Free heat /hot water. 1155 W. 83rd St., 773-619-0204

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

3BR apt, no pets, sec 8 Welcome $780/mo + 2 months security.

708-862-8285

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

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,

406 W. 119TH St. Large Unheated

modern oak floors, appliances, Security system, on site maint. clean & quiet, Nr. transp. From $445. 773582-1985 (espanol)

LARGE SUNNY ROOM w/fridge & microwave. Near Oak Park, Green Line & Buses. 24 hr Desk, Parking Lot $101/week & Up. (773)378-8888 5401 S. Ellis.

STUDIO $470/mo.

Call 773-955-5106

CHICAGO - SOUTH SHORE Large 1BR, $660/mo. Free heat.

Near Transportation. Section 8 Welcome. Call 708-932-4582

û NO SEC DEP û

6829 S. PERRY. 1BR. $520/mo.

HEAT INCL 773-955-5106

THE LATEST ON YOUR FAVORITE

RESTAURANTS AND BARS

FOOD & DRINK

WEEKLY E-BLAST GET UP TO DATE. SIGN UP NOW.

8324 S INGLESIDE: 1BR, 1st flr, newly remod., lndry, hdwd flrs, cable. Sec 8 welcome.$660/mo.

708-308-1509 or 773-493-3500

1 BR $800-$899 LAKESIDE TOWER, 910 W

Lawrence. 1 bedrooms starting at $875-$925 include heat and gas, laundry in building. Great view! Close to CTA Red Line, bus, stores, restaurants, lake, etc. To schedule a showing please contact Celio 773-3961575, Hunter Properties 773-4777070, www.hunterprop.com

NEAR DEVON & KEDZIE, Four large rooms, One bedroom. 1st flr, new paint, new carpet, Clean, quiet, Cultured area. Near shopping, transportation. No dogs. $825. Credit/background check.

773-441-5183

1 BR $900-$1099 LARGE ONE BEDROOM apart-

ment near Loyola Park. 1341 W Estes.

Hardwood floors. Heat included. Cats OK. Laundry in building. Available 11/ 1. $925/ month. Small one bedroom apartment available for $750/ month.

773-761-4318, www. lakefrontmgt.com

LARGE ONE BEDROOM apart-

ment near Red Line. 6822 N Wayne.

Hardwood floors. Pets OK. Laundry in building. $900-$925/ month. Heat included. Available 11/1. 773-761-4318, www.lakefrontmgt.com

ONE BEDROOM APARTMENT

near Warren Park and Metra, 6802 N Wolcott. Hardwood floors. Heat included. Laundry in building. Cats OK. $900/ month. Available 11/1. 773761-4318, www.lakefrontmgt.com

HYDE PARK 1BR. $975/MO + sec dep. Newly

$12.25/HOUR 872-203-9303 A P P LY

46 CHICAGO READER | OCTOBER 6, 2016

N O W !

CHICAGOREADER.COM

decor, hdwd flrs, stove, fridge, free heat & hot water, laundry facilities, Free Credit Check. 773-667-6477 or 312-802-7301

WRIGLEVILLE 1BR, 1000SF, new kit/deck, FDR, oak flrs, Cent H eat/AC, prkg avail. $1295 + util, Pet friendly, 773-743-4141 www. urbanequities.com ROGERS PARK:

Deluxe 2BR + den, new kitchen, FDR, oak floors close to beach. $1250/heated, 774-743-4141 www.urbanequities.com

EDGEWATER 1000SF 1BR; new kit, sunny FDR, oak flrs, Onsite lndy; PKG Avail., $1095/incl heat.

773-743-4141 www. urbanequities.com

1 BR $1100 AND OVER WEST ANDERSONVILLE GORGEOUS 1 bedroom, soft loft.

Turn of the century farmhouse.

Laundry in unit, marble bath, maple kitchen, private deck, vaulted ceilings, 2nd floor, owner occupied, cats OK. Non-smoking. $1500/mo + utilities. Available immediately.

Call 773-506-1125

1 BR OTHER APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. Ltd. IT’S THAT TIME AGAIN! OUR UNITS INCLUDE HEAT, HW & CG Plenty of parking 1Bdr From $750.00 2Bdr From $925.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000***

APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. Ltd. TIME TO TURN THE FURNANCE ON!!!

Most units Include..

HEAT & HOT WTR Studios From $495.00 1Bdr From $550.00 2Bdr From $745.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000** CHICAGO, CHATHAM NO SECURITY DEPOSIT Spacious updated 1BR from $600 with great closet space.

Incl: stove/fridge, hdwd flrs, blinds, heat & more!!!

LIMITED INVENTORY ** Call (773) 271-7100 ** ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar Villas is accepting applications for subsidized 1BR apts. for seniors 62 years or older and the disabled.

Rent is based on 30% of annual income. For details, call us at 847-546-1899 ∫

ONE OF THE BEST M & N MGMT, 1BR, 7727 Colfax ** 2 Lrg BR, 6754 Crandon ** 2 & 3BR, 2BA, 6216 Eberhart ** Completely rehabbed.

You deserve the best ** 773-9478572 or 312-613-4427 CALUMET CITY 158TH & PAXTON SANDRIDGE APTS 1 & 2 BEDROOM UNITS MODELS OPEN M-F, 9AM-5:30PM *** 708-841-5450 *** 70TH & CALIFORNIA, 1 & 2BR, modern kitchen & bath, dining room. Starting at $65 0/mo & up. Section 8 Welcome. 847-909-1538 NO SECURITY DEPOSIT No Move-in fee! No Dep! Sec 8 ok. 1, 2 & 3 Bdrms. Elev bldg, laundry, pkg. 6531 S. Lowe.

Call Gina. 773-874-0100

South Shore Apts:7240-48 S Phillips 1BRs 450-650SQFT. Utils & heat incl, gated parking $50/mo. Call 312-619-8517 71ST/HERMITAGE. 3BR. 77th/ Lowe. 2BR. 69th/Dante, 3BR. 71st/ Bennett. 2 & 3BR. New renov.

Sec 8 ok. 708-503-1366 CHICAGO 55TH & Halsted, male pref. Room for rent, share furnished apt, free utils, $365/mo.

No security. 773-651-8824.

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 BELLWOOD 2BR, 1BA apt, encl porch, parking available, near transportation and shops. $825/mo. 773-849-5314

CHICAGO SOUTH SIDE Beauti-

ful Studios, 1,2,3 & 4 BR’s, Sec 8 ok. $500 gift certificate for Sec 8 tenants. 773-287-9999/312-446-3333

l

l

CHICAGO - BEVERLY, large 2 room Studio, 1 & 2BR Apts. Carpet, A/C, laundry, near transportation, $650-$975/mo. Call 773-233-4939

MOVE IN SPECIAL B4 the N of this MO. & MOVE IN 4 $99.00 (773) 874-3400 ACACIA SRO HOTEL Men Preferred! Rooms for Rent. Weekly & Monthly Rates. 312-421-4597

2 BR $900-$1099 2BR+

NR

83RD/JEFFREY,

heated, decor FP, hdwd flrs, lots of storage, formal DR, intercom, newly remod kitchen & bath. $950. Missy 773-241-9139

RIDGEWAY & THOMAS 1st floor apt for rent, 5 rooms, 2BR possibly 3, recently updated/remodeled. $1050/mo. 773-392-6713

ROYALTON HOTEL, Kitchenette $135 & up wk. Free WiFi. 1810 W. Jackson 312-226-4678

CALUMET CITY - 2BR, 1BA fully rehabbed with gorgeous finishes & hardwood floors, Section 8 Welcome. $925/mo. Call 510-735-7171

2 BR UNDER $900

NORMAL /94TH ST REHABED 2 BEDS HOUSE! SEC 8 WELC! GATED, PARKING, 773-260-2631

CHICAGO 5246 S. HERMITAGE: 2BR bsmt $400. 2BR 1st floor, $525. 3BR, 2nd floor, $625.

1.5 mo sec req’d. 708-574-4085.

CHICAGO SOUTHSIDE BRAND new 2 & 3BR apts. Excel-

lent neighborhood, near trans & schools, Sect 8 Welc., Call 708-7742473

LOGAN SQUARE 2 bedroom apartment, 2-flat building, modern kitchen & bath, balcony, washer & dryer. $800/mo. Near Blue Line.

773-235-1066

ROGERS PARK: 1700 Juneway, 2-3 bedrooms $900-$1200, Free heat, No deposit -312.593.1677

2 BR $1100-$1299 4300 BLOCK OF AUGUSTA, 2BR, 1st & 2nd floor, laundry facility on site, $1125/mo, utilities incl.

Sect 8 ok. No pets / no smoking.

773-418-0195

Evanston 1100sf 3BR, W/new Appl, oak floors $1275/mo incls CHICAGO, 5552 W. Gladys. 2nd heat. 773-743-4141 www. & 3rd flr, 2BR apts. Heat incl, $905/ urbanequities.co mo. 5215 W. Augusta Blvd. 2BR. $865/mo. Sec Req. 773-251-6652 5510 S. WOOD ST. 4 room, 2BR Apt, near bus stop, no pets.

Section 8 Welcome. $825/mo.

Call 773-873-6479.

EVANSTON 2BR, 1100SF, great kit, new appls, DR, oak flrs, lndry, $1250/mo incls heat. 773743-4141 www.urbanequities.co

CHICAGO: 7233 S KIMBARK 5 Rooms, 2BR, 1st flr, heat incl. $700/ month + 1 month security, Call 773-218-0557

Elmhurst: Sunny 1/BR, new appl, carpet, AC, Patio, $895/incl heat, parking. Call 773-743-4141 www.urbanequities.com

VICINITY 65TH AND St. Lawrence, modern, tenant heated, 2BR Unit. $725/mo. No Sec Deposit Agent Owned, 312-671-3795

2 BR $1300-$1499

9116 S. SO. Chicago Ave., Nice 2BR 1BA Apartment, carpet & appliances included. $670/mo.

Call 312-683-5174

CHATHAM - 22 E 70th 2BR,

$750/mo. 1BR. $640/mo. Sec 8 OK. Heat & appl. Call Office: 773-9665275 or Steve: 773-936-4749

CHICAGO

7600 S Essex 2BR $599, 3BR $699, 4BR $799 w/apprvd credit, no sec dep. Sect 8 Ok! 773287-9999 /312-446-3333

REMODELED LARGE 2 Bdrm,

No deposit, free heat. 312.208.1771

2 Bath Split level. Hardwood floors in Lv Rm & Dn Rm. Carpet in Bedrooms. AC & ceiling fans thru out.

One Bdrm & Bath on 2nd Fl, One Bdrm & Bath in 3rd Fl with separate exit. Great for roommates. Pet friendly. Unit has its own furnace.

Laundry & Storage room on 3rd Fl. Art Gallery on 1st fl.Rent $1,450.M plus securities AVL 10/1/16 Lease.

Call Karly @ 574-806-1049

ADULT SERVICES

ADULT SERVICES

Chicago, 8851 S. Muskegon, Recently decorated 2BR, stove & fridge included, $575/mo + security deposit. Call 773-374-8254 AUBURN GRESHAM, 1401 W 80TH , 2bed for $895 – No app fee,

Meet sexy friends who really get your vibe...

Try FREE: 312-924-2066 More Local Numbers: 1-800-811-1633

2 BR $1500 AND OVER

LARGE TWO BEDROOM, two

bathroom apartment, 3820 N Fremont. Near Wrigley Field. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. Laundry in building.

Available 11/1. $1695/ month. Parking available. $150/ month for single parking space. $250/ month for tandem parking space. 773-761-4318, w ww.lakefrontmgt.com

2 BR OTHER CHICAGO, PRINCETON PARK HOMES. Spacious 2-3 BR Townhomes, Inclu: Prvt entry, full bsmt, lndry hook-ups. Ample prkg. Close to trans & schls. Starts at $844/ mo. w w w . p p k h o m e s . com;773-264-3005 BEAUTIFUL NEW APT! 72nd and Evans 2 & 3BDRM 77th and Phillips 2 & 4BDRM 62nd and King Dr 3BDRM Stainless Steel!! Appliances!!

Hdwd flr!! marble bath!! laundry on site!!

Sec 8 OK. 773- 404- 8926

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 CHATHAM, 738 E. 81st (Evans), 2nd flr, 1BR, 4 rms. $650/mo.

Call Mr. Joe at 708-870-4801

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RECENT REHAB, 4BR/2BA, 2 BR/ 2BA & 3BR/1BA SF homes in Harvey. Professionally Managed.

Section 8 ok. 630-247-5146

MATTESON, 2BR, $990$1050; 3BR, $1250-$1400.

Move In Special is 1 Month’s Rent & $99 Sec Dep. Sect 8 Welc. 708-748-4169

CHICAGO, 7028 S. Green, 3BR,

3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200 6421 & 6416 S. May St, 3BR, 1BA, 1st or 2nd fl avail ,laminated floors, newer cabinets, $775-$825/mo Sec 8 Welcome.

Sandy 773-505-6399

3 BDRMS/1BATH, APPLIANCES and garage. $1,050. Section 8 welcome NO Sec. Dep.-$600 nonrefundable move in fee. 708-214-3674

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RIVERDALE 3BR, 1.5BA Townhome, hdwd flrs, 1 car garage, near Metra & PACE, pets OK. $800/mo + sec. 708-539-8962

RIVERDALE, Newly decorated 3BR Apartment. New carpet, near metra, no pets, $925/mo + security deposit. Call 708-829-1454

SOUTH SIDE - 7112 S EUCLID, renovated 3BR apt, hardwood flrs, $825/mo; 2BR $750. Call 773-285-3206

CHICAGO, 3BR APARTMENT, 1.5BA, 80th & Wolcott, Section 8 Welcome. No Pets. Available November 1st. Call 773-209-5075

80TH & DREXEL, 3BR, 2BA, $1100. 79th & Aberdeen, 3BR. $950 +utils. Sect 8 ok. Both apts Hdwd flrs & ceramic tile. 773-502-4304

3 BR OR MORE

CHICAGO, 4019 W. Arlington,

86TH/INGLESIDE 3BR, 1.5BA

Townhouse, hdwd flrs, part fin bsmt, nr trans. Tenant pays elec and gas. $1150/mo. 773-960-6791

SECTION 8 WELCOME 8037 S. HOUSTON 4BR, hrdwd flrs, lndry.

2nd flr, Sec. 8 ok. 3 or 2 BR Voucher ok. HEAT FREE 847-312-5643.

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3BR, 2nd flr, tenant pays all utilities, back porch,stove, $1075/mo. Price Neg. 773-966-4821

OTHER

lrg living room, dining room, hardwood flrs, 1.5BA, 3 unit, $900/mo + heat. 708-204-9881

SUBURBS, 2-3 BR TH, 1.5BA, ceiling fans, newly remod BA & updtd kitchen, W/D hookups, patio, quiet area. Call 773-233-6673

CALUMET CITY CONDO for lease with option to buy, 2BR, 2BA. For details call 312-3426607, serious offers only.

3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200 CHICAGO, LARGE 3BR, f o r mal dining room, hardwood floors, ceiling fans, stained glass windows, heat included. $1050/mo.

Call 773-2336673

REAL PEOPLE REAL DESIRE REAL FUN.

60 MINUTES FREE TRIAL

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

ADULT SERVICES Ahora español Livelinks.com 18+

COLLEGE GIRL BODY RUBS $40 w/AD 24/7

224-223-7787

THE HOTTEST GAY CHATLINE

1-312-924-2082 More Local Numbers: 800-777-8000

www.guyspyvoice.com

Ahora en Español/18+

THE LATEST ON WHO’S PLAYING AND WHERE THEY’RE PLAYING

EARLY WARNINGS

WEEKLY E-BLAST GET UP TO DATE. SIGN UP NOW. CHICAGOREADER.COM

vibeline.com 18+

OCTOBER 6, 2016 | CHICAGO READER 47

HARVEY: 3BR, 2 bath house, basement, available immediately, 2 car garage. $1100/mo + utils. Call 708-702-5439

2805 E 77TH St, Newly remodeled 3BR, liv rm, din rm, hdwd floors, finished basement, Section 8

7221 S. STEWART. Reno’d 3br.

CHICAGO SOUTHSIDE 9615 S. Bishop, 3BR, Sect 8 ok, include, Stove, refrig, $1200/mo, call 708755-0707. will callback after 5pm.

773-314-6604

11748 S. BISHOP. 3BR, 2BA, full

finished bsmt, 20x20 covered deck, 2.5 car gar, sect 8 welc. $1500 / mo.

708-889-9749 or 708-256-0742 CALUMET CITY, 3BR, 2 full BA, fully rehab w/gorgeous finishes w/ hdwd floors, appls incl., porch, Sec 8 OK. $1100/mo Call 510-735-7171

SECTION 8 WELCOME. No Security Deposit. 7721 S Peoria, 3BR apt, appls incl. $1050/mo.

708-288-4510 ROSEMOOR, 10344 S Green. beaut. rehab 3BR, 2BA house, granite ctrs, SS appls, fin bsmt, 2car gar, $1500/mo. 708-288-4510 BEAUTIFUL REHABBED 3BR, 2BA house, 11701 S Bishop, granite counters, SS appls, fin bsmt, 2 car gar, $1450/mo. 708-288-4510

80th/Phillips , Beautiful, lrg newly renovated 3BR, 1.5BA, hdwd flrs & appls inc. quiet apt. $900 & up 312-818-0236

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499

3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799

LINCOLN SQUARE AREA, 2023 W. Balmoral , 3 bdrm. Central AC, newly decorated, 1st fl. apt. laundry fac. hardwood floors. Quiet area.

Tenant pays utilities. No dogs. Credit/ background check. $1,500 + security

3 BR OR MORE $1800-$2499 AUGUSTA APT. ELEGANT , spacious 6 sun-lit rooms 3 bedrooms new bathroom in lovely owner occupied 3-flat, basement, Central Air, laundry, big back yard $2000/mo + security deposit.

773-428-8149, 773-276-8149

3 BR OR MORE OTHER

CHICAGO, 7617 S. Eggleston Newly Remodeled 5BR House, 2BA, finished basement, appliances included. Section 8 ok. 708539-6239 SOUTH: MATTESON, COUNTRY CLUB HILLS, SAUK VILLAGE

2, & 4BR, House /Condo, Sect 8 ok. For info: 708-625-7355

NEWLY REHAB 98th & Yates, 3B R,$1200/ mo, 81st & Kenwood 3BR $1200/mo, 99th & Hoxie 3BR $1200/mo Sect 8 Welcome 312804-3638 RIVERDALE, 4 BEDROOMS, 1 Bath, finished basement, spacious home, $1250/mo. incl alarm system. Call 708-715-3169

114TH & ABERDEEN NICELY REMODEL 4 BEDROOMS BRICK HOUSE! SEC 8 WELC! 2 CAR GARAGE! HWD FLOORS 773-260-2631.

MUST SEE! MOVE-IN SPECIAL. AVAIL

72ND AND ABERDEEN, Newly rehab 5BR, 1.5BA, new kitchen, cabinets, granite, carpet & windows. Sect 8 OK. 773-407-0005 NEWLY RENOV 5BR, 2BA

Now! 732 W. 50TH ST. 3BR 2BA. 3rd flr. nr trans, hdwd flrs, Sec 8 Welcome. $1250/mo. 773-507-2868

House, 8820 S. Yale.

Sec 8 OK. A/C. Start at $1350/mo. 773-895-2867

BRAND NEW, TWO rehabbed 3BR apts with new everything.

Just $1250/montly. 55th & Carpenter. A must see! Call 919-5200753

NEAR 83RD & Yates. 5BR, 2BA, hdwd flrs, fin basement, stove & fridge furn. Heat incl. $1600 + 1 mo sec. Sect 8 ok. 773-978-6134

SEC8 WELCOME LARGE SFH

STRAIGHT DOPE

By Cecil Adams REM BEVERLY HOME, 4 bed,

2.5ba, 1/2 blk from Metra, 30 min to Loop. Detached garage w/ side drive. 42” cherry cab, granite tops, SS, wood beamed ceiling in living room, formal dining room. wd floors, porcelain tile in kitchen and foyer, 9’ ceilings New doors, windows, wiring, gorgeous new Mission style front door, new granite gas fireplace, fin basement, rear deck with hot tub. $364,000. 630669-9822 10334 S WOOD OPEN HOUSE 10/9 1-3PM

non-residential SELF-STORAGE CENTERS. T W O locations to serve you. All

units fully heated and humidity controlled with ac available. North: Knox Avenue.

773-685-6868.

South: Pershing Avenue. 773-523-6868.

SELF-STORAGE CENTERS. T W O locations to serve you. All

units fully heated and humidity controlled with ac available. North: Knox Avenue.

773-685-6868.

South: Pershing Avenue. 773-523-6868.

roommates CHICAGO - 4928 WEST Gladys. Room for rent. Basement, $400, furnished, free internet/ cable, util incl. No dep. 773-2871270 PULLMAN ROSELAND AREA, a senior would like to share with another senior, no smoking, $125 a week 773-264-0745

1 WEEK FREE. 96th & Halsted &

other locations. Large Rooms, shared kitchen & bath. $100/week and up.

Call 773-848-4020

2005 CADILLAC CTS 89K Low Miles,Automatic,Silver with Gray.3.6L 6 CYL,$ 3K,call or txt to my #:(616) 275-0850

HEALTH & WELLNESS FULL

BODY

MASSAGE.

hotel,house calls welcome $90 special. Russian, Polish, Ukrainian girls. Northbrook and Schaumburg locations. 10% discount for new customers.

Please call 773-407-7025

FOR A HEALTHY mind and body.

European trained and certified therapists specializing in deep tissue, Swedish, and relaxation massage. Incalls. 773-552-7525. Lic. #227008861.

UKRAINIAN MASSAGE. CALLS in/ out. Chicago and sub-

urbs. Hotels. 1234 S Michigan Avenue. Appointments. 773-616-6969.

MUSIC & ARTS JAZZ IN THE SANCTUARY The Empress of Soul, TERISA GRIFFIN, performs 8-10pm Sat., Oct. 15 at ST. MARTIN’S CHURCH 5700 W. Midway Park, 60644. Tickets $40. Order at: JazzintheSanctuaryFeaturingTerisa Griffin, or 773 378-8111.

GNR REPORT. HOLLYWOOD

Rose (Tracy Guns) is wild. I like Aerosmith, M Crue, Sabbath, La G, Britney S is hot, Bieber fun. Love, Guns N Roses, 773-481-7429.

YURIY TARNAWSKY! NOVEL-

reading/signing IST/ESSAYIST “Claim to Oblivion,” 3PM Sunday Oct. 9, Frugal Muse 7511 Lemont Rd. Darien

SOUTHSIDE - 55TH & Ashland, Clean Rooms, use of kitchen and bath. Available Now. Call 773-434-4046

MARKETPLACE GOODS

legal notices NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pur-

2BR GARDEN, 3BR & 4BR, 2BA apts, (421 S. Homan. $1400/ mo)newly rehabbed, hdwd flrs, appls. 773-590-0101

EDGEWATER BEACH 5555 N.

Sheridan Rd. Unit 1904 - $130,000 1 bedroom, 1 bath, new kitchen & new bathroom, hardwood floors, wonderful views, garage, indoor pool, fitness center, outdoor gardens, door man, beautiful lobby. Call 847-724-0743 or 847-204-8022

MASSAGE TABLES, NEW and used. Large selection of professional high quality massage equipment at a very low price. Visit us at www. bestmassage.com or call us, 773764-6542.

suant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16148261 on September 28, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of LAW OFFICES OF SHARON SHI with the business located at: 500 N. MICHIGAN AVE., STE. 600, CHICAGO, IL 60611. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner (s)/partner(s) is: XIAOMING SHI, 2152 N. LAKEWOOD AVE., CHICAGO, IL 60614, USA

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new rehab 116&Sangamon 3bd 2bth& full bsmnt w/xtra bdrms&bthrm.

Fenced yard.Call Alice 773.744.7411 HAZEL CREST - 3BR, 1.5BA, appls incl. 2.5 car garage, C/A, Full fin bsmt. $1300/mo.

Section 8 Welc. Call 708-846-6180

CHICAGO HOUSES FOR rent.

Section 8 Ok, w/app credit $500 gift certificate 3, 4 & 5 BR houses avail.

312-446-3333 or 708-752-3812

FOR SALE

48 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 6, 2016

CLASSICS WANTED ANY CLASSIC CARS IN ANY CONDITION. ’20S, ’30S, ’40S, ’50S, ’60S & ’70S. HOTRODS & EXOTICS! TOP DOLLAR PAID! COLLECTOR. CALL JAMES, 630-201-8122

q : Why haven’t we bombed the poppy

fields in Afghanistan, wiping out the world’s largest source of opium and blocking the exportation of heroin that’s killing so many Americans? —BILLY FROM PHILLY

A : Hearts and minds, Billy, hearts and minds.

We can’t just go around unloading death from above on everyone and everything we don’t like. True, our nonlethal attempts over the last 15 years to curb Afghan opium-poppy production—which accounts for about 90 percent of the world’s supply—have come up short. And it’s not like we’ve been stingy with air strikes generally: U.S. forces hit Afghanistan with more than 140 in the first seven months of 2016 alone. But simply obliterating a nation’s most lucrative crop just might cheese off a hard-working farmer or two, and that’s a bad plan when a fundamentalist militia stands ready to hand out Kalashnikovs to the disgruntled and dispossessed.

Total war, in fact, helped make Afghanistan the world poppy-growing champ in the first place. Among many dubious accomplishments during their ten-year occupation of the country, Soviet troops tore up orchards, destroyed irrigation systems, and generally flattened the Afghan agricultural infrastructure. But farmers gotta farm, so they turned to a hardy plant that doesn’t require much intervention to thrive, and also happens to net its cultivators stacks of cash.

The Cold War ended: out went the Russkies, in rushed the Taliban. For a spell Mullah Omar and his cronies taxed poppy production, but in 2000 they shifted gears and implemented a total ban—less, it seems, out of Islamic principle than as a PR move to get in good with the U.N. and gain international recognition for Afghanistan’s pariah government. Apparently the Taliban were very good at terrifying their constituents into abandoning the drug trade. Afghan poppy cultivation dropped 91 percent; the opium supply worldwide plummeted 65 percent.

After 9/11, though, Omar stuck by his buddy Osama, and the U.S. swooped in. We basically trampled the Afghan economy in the process, though to be fair the Taliban’s prohibition effort had already brought it to the brink of collapse. The farmers who’d been terrorized out of the drug biz resumed planting poppies, and the U.S. military pretty much ignored them. There was a country to be rebuilt from scratch, after all—oh, and did I mention the Northern Alliance warlords helping keep the

SLUG SIGNORINO

Hdwd flrs, appls, ceil. fans, blinds, ldry rm, 55+ ok $890/mo. + utils.

welcome $1300/ mo 708-474-6520

peace had a drug hustle going on the side?

It wasn’t till 2006 that the Bush administration tried a no-poppies policy, where we went beyond targeting drug traffickers and processors and got into crop eradication. This was a strictly ground-level campaign of plowing and burning—not only weren’t we bombing anything, we weren’t even doing as much aerial spraying. Such self-restraint came at the insistence of Afghan president Hamid Karzai: spraying from the air would alienate farmers and imperil his government, he argued, though critics noted that many of Karzai’s supporters were cashing in on the opium trade.

Meanwhile the U.S. assisted poppy farmers in planting alternative crops like almonds or wheat, but this was like telling a successful American street dealer he should look into managing an Arby’s. The drug trade offered tastier carrots than we did, and the Taliban, whose protection the farmers sought, wielded bigger sticks. And Taliban insurgents were now profiting off the opium market themselves. Violence flared up, and expectations were soon adjusted accordingly: “American officials hope that Afghanistan’s drug problem will someday be only as bad as that of Colombia,” the New York Times reported in 2007.

Obama ended the crop-eradication plan in ’09. “The poppy farmer is not our enemy,” declared special representative Richard Holbrooke, “the Taliban are.” Economic stability in Afghanistan, the current reasoning goes, is more important than stemming the heroin tide. Counternarcotics efforts have continued, but U.S. soldiers aren’t even allowed to trespass in poppy fields nowadays. Eradication is left to the Afghans, who collect $250 from the U.S. per hectare knocked out—though corruption has led to selective enforcement.

The U.N. reported a slight dip in Afghan poppy cultivation for 2015, the first downturn in six years. But it sure wasn’t cheap: as of 2014, the U.S. had sunk $7.6 billion into curtailing Afghanistan’s drug trade. I know, I know— that sure could’ve bought a lot of air strikes, right? v Send questions to Cecil via straightdope.com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 350 N. Orleans, Chicago 60654.

l

l

SAVAGE LOVE

By Dan Savage

Ask a Kinsey Institute expert: Can cycling damage the clit?

Plus: VULVA’s vexing condition could be outside her gynecologist’s scope.

Q: I’m a woman in my

forties, and I love biking! My husband and I often go for long rides on the weekend.

Unfortunately, this makes various parts of my crotch sore, especially the clitoris.

Certain bike seats are better, but none eliminate the soreness. Two years ago, we had a baby, which not only made my crotch more prone to soreness but makes it a lot less likely that we’ll have sex except on weekends, often after biking.

The sore clit makes sex more painful, but it also increases sensitivity, so the whole thing can be an alternating experience of “Ow!” and “Wow!” Am I causing my clit any permanent damage? Any suggestions for decreasing crotch soreness? —BIKE RELATED INJURY TO CLIT; HELP EASE SORENESS

a: There’s far more research

on men and cycling, due to the risks of bike-seatrelated erectile dysfunction specifically and our society’s tendency to prioritize boners generally. “The few studies that have been conducted on women and cycling—generally cisgender women as far as I can tell— found that cutout seats are linked with a higher risk of genital symptoms, as are handlebars that are lower than the saddle,” says Dr. Debby Herbenick, a research scientist at Indiana University, sexual health educator at the Kinsey Institute, and the author of Read My Lips: A Complete Guide to the Vagina and Vulva and numerous other books.

“So broader saddles and higher handlebars may be the way to go. Some of the research notes higher rates of genital symptoms among people who go on longer rides, spending hours in the saddle.”

To decrease your risk of un-fun genital symptoms, BRITCHES, Herbenick recommends mixing it up. “Go biking some weekends and try other activities on other weekends. You might also take Dan’s ‘fuck first’ Valentine’s Day advice and apply it to your weekend rides.”

Q : I’m having a problem

with the microbiome of my vulva and vagina. I’ve been going to my gyno for the last six months for recurrent bacterial vaginosis and yeast infections. She shrugs, gives me a script, the symptoms go away for a week or so, then they come back. I understand the infections are likely due to an imbalance in my vaginal pH, but I don’t know what to do to fix this. The problem started when I stopped using condoms with my partner, but it’s not an STI. We’ve both been tested.

How the hell can women with this problem fix their pH?! —VEXED UND LACKING VAGINAL ANSWERS

a: “I love that she used the

word ‘vulva,’” Herbenick says.

“Most people have no idea what that even is!”

The vulva is (the vulva are?) the external genitalia of the female—the labia, clit, vaginal opening, some other bits and pieces. The vagina, aka “the muscular tube,” runs from the vulva to the uterus.

People tend to use “vagina” when referring to a woman’s junk generally, but saying “vagina” when you mean “vulva” makes scientists like Herbenick rather testy.

She recommends seeing a “true vulvovaginal health expert” about your problem, VULVA, and your gynecologist presumably qualifies as a TVHE . . . right? “Not necessarily,” Herbenick says.

“Gynecologists know far

more about vaginal and vulvar health issues than most health care providers, but many gynecologists haven’t received deep-dive (pun not intended) specialized training in difficult-to-treat vulvovaginal health conditions. And if they have, it was likely when they were in med school—so years ago. They might not be up to date in the latest research, since not all doctors go to vulvovaginal-specific conferences.”

As for your particular problem—a tough case of bacterial vaginosis—Herbenick, who isn’t a medical doctor but qualifies as a TVHE, has some thoughts.

“There are many different forms of bacterial vaginosis and different kinds of yeast infections,” Herbenick says. “These different kinds respond well to different kinds of treatment, which is one reason home yeast meds don’t work well for many women. And all too often, health care providers don’t have sufficient training to make fine-tuned diagnoses and end up treating the wrong thing. But if VULVA’s recurrences are frequent, I think it’s a wise idea for her to see a true specialist.”

Herbenick warns that it may take more than one visit with a TVHE to pinpoint and solve the problem.

“BV remains a challenging diagnosis and often does come back at some point,” Herbenick says. “There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to BV, which is also why I think VULVA is best off meeting with a health care provider who lives and breathes vaginal health issues.” v Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at thestranger.com. ß @fakedansavage

OCTOBER 6, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 49

Weyes Blood o KATIE MILLER

NEW

Joseph Arthur 11/25, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 10/6, noon b Average White Band 12/16, 7 and 10 PM, the Promontory, early show is all ages, on sale Fri 10/7, 10 AM Tab Benoit 12/17, 7 and 10 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 10/6, noon b Bonerama 1/20, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Sat 10/8, 10 AM b Joe Budden 11/22, 8:30 PM, the Promontory, 18+ Cage the Elephant, Catfish & the Bottlemen, Weathers 12/2, 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom, on sale Fri 10/7, 10 AM Casualties 12/11, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 18+ Cracker, Camper Van Beethoven 1/7, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 10/7, noon CRX 11/11, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Dead Horses 12/14, 8 PM, Schubas Deadbeats 12/10, 8 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, on sale Fri 10/7, 11 AM Diiv, Moon King 11/10, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 10/7, 11 AM, 17+ Drive-By Truckers 2/2, 8 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri 10/7, 10 AM, 18+ Emancipator, Tor, Edamame, Lapa 12/16, 10 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Fitz & the Tantrums, Grouplove, Switchfoot 12/3, 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom, on sale Fri 10/7, 10 AM Freaky Deaky with Disclosure, DJ Snake, Tiesto, DJ Khaled, Schoolboy Q, Travis Scott, and more 10/28-30, Toyota Park Frigs 11/30, 9 PM, Hideout

Gories, Heavy Times 11/5, 8 PM, Double Door, 18+ Kristin Hersh 12/10, 7 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Hoops 11/17, 9 PM, Hideout Lizzo 12/8, 8 PM, Subterranean, on sale Fri 10/7, 10 AM, 17+ Logan Square Food Truck Social with Steve Gunn & Jim Elkington, RP Boo, Open Mike Eagle, Brokeback, and more 10/15-16, 11 AM, Humboldt between Armitage and Bloomingdale b Lumineers, Andrew Bird 1/20, 7 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont, on sale Fri 10/7, 10 AM Mud Morganfield 12/23, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Sat 10/8, 10 AM b Mystery Lights 12/6, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 10/7, 10 AM O’Connor Band 11/28, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 10/6, noon b Omara Portuondo 10/21, 8 PM, Symphony Center P.O.S 1/28, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 10/7, noon, 17+ Rebirth Brass Band 1/14, 7 and 9 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Sat 10/8, 10 AM, all-ages and 1/15, 7 PM, the Promontory, on sale Fri 10/7, 10 AM, 18+ Remember Jones 12/2, 9 PM, Schubas Rooney 12/4, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Sander Van Doorn 12/24, 10 PM, the Mid Weezer, Phantogram 12/1, 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom, on sale Fri 10/7, 10 AM Weyes Blood 10/31, 9 PM, Hideout White Panda 12/22, 8 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 10/7, 10 AM, 17+ William Control 10/17, 7:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+

50 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 6, 2016

Peter Wolf & the Midnight Travelers 11/14, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Sat 10/8, 10 AM and 11/15, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 10/6, noon b

UPCOMING Adam Ant 1/31, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Ashanti 11/19, 7 PM, Portage Theater Attila 10/26, 5:45 PM, House of Blues b Band of Horses 11/16, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom b Big Bad Voodoo Daddy 11/27, 5 and 8 PM, City Winery b Broncho, Sports 11/5, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Children of Bodom, Abbath 11/26, 6 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Clutch, Zakk Sabbath 10/25, 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Cookers 10/20, 7:30 and 9 PM, Constellation, 18+ Andra Day 11/18, 9 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Deerhunter, Aldous Harding 10/21, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Dickies, Queers 11/17, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Earthless, Ruby the Hatchet 12/2, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Ensemble Pamplemousse & Mocrep 11/4, 8 PM, Constellation, 18+ Foals, Bear Hands 11/9, 7 PM, Riviera Theatre b Frankie Cosmos 10/26, 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall b Ginuwine 11/23, 7 and 10 PM, City Winery b The Good Life 11/11, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Hiss Golden Messenger, Tift Merritt 11/6, 7 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b

b Honeyblood 10/28, 8 PM, Subterranean Jamestown Revival, Johnny Fritz 10/22, 8 PM, Park West, 18+ Jesu, Sun Kil Moon 11/13, 8 PM, Park West, 18+ Johnnyswim 11/12, 8 PM, Thalia Hall b King, Nick Hakim 10/11, 7 and 9:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston b The King Khan & BBQ Show 12/3, 9 PM, Empty Bottle La Sera, Springtime Carnivore 10/30, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Natalia Lafourcade 11/27, 7 PM, Portage Theater Jens Lekman 11/2, 7 PM, Lincoln Hall Letters to Cleo 11/4, 8 PM, Double Door Lotus 11/4-5, 8:30 PM, the Vic, 18+ Nick Lowe 10/15-16, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Malevolent Creation, Incantation 10/19, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Marc Ford, Neptune Blues Club 11/23, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston Marillion 10/27-28, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Maxwell, Mary J. Blige 12/14, 7 PM, United Center Napalm Death, Black Dahlia Murder 11/10, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Natural Child 11/4, 9 PM, Empty Bottle North Mississippi Allstars 11/6, 5 and 8 PM, City Winery b Nots 10/20, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Oh Wonder 10/27, 7:30 PM, Metro b Okkervil River 10/14, 9 PM, Metro Overkill, Nile 2/17, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Paper Route 11/4, 7 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Partynextdoor, Jeremih 11/29, 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom b Pigface 11/25, 9 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Quinn XCII 10/16, 7 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Ben Rector 10/21, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre Rites of Thy Degringolade 10/14, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Royal Canoe 11/9, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen Saigon Kick 12/2, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 18+ Screaming Females 11/2, 9 PM, Subterranean Screeching Weasel, Bowling for Soup, Ataris 11/4, 6:30 PM, Concord Music Hall b Skinny Lister 11/3, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall Patti Smith 12/30, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Snow Tha Product 11/17, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ St. Lucia, Baio 10/22, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+

ALL AGES

WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK

EARLY WARNINGS

CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME

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Sign up for the newsletter at chicagoreader. com/early

Sunflower Bean, Lemon Twigs 10/21, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall b Thee Oh Sees 11/19, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Two Tongues, Backwards Dancer 11/16, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Uniform 11/12, 9 PM, Empty Bottle White Fang, No Parents, Birth Defects 10/16, 9 PM, Empty Bottle White Lung 10/27, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Wood Brothers 11/3, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Xeno & Oaklander 1/28, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Yellowcard 11/3, 5:30 PM, House of Blues b YG 11/7, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Young the Giant, Ra Ra Riot 11/4, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom Jenny Owen Youngs 10/21, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+

SOLD OUT Bear vs. Shark 10/29, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Bongripper 10/29, 9 PM, Hideout Failure 10/21, 9 PM, Double Door, 17+ Philip Glass 11/3, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music Lukas Graham 1/17, 7 PM, House of Blues b The Head & the Heart, Declan McKenna 10/14, 8 PM, Aragon Ballroom b Highly Suspect 11/18, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge b Jason Isbell 11/18, 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall and 11/19, 7 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn Kaleo 10/14-15, 7:30 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Marshmello 11/25-27, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Mr. T Experience, Nobodys 12/9, 7 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint, 17+ Conor Oberst 11/26 and 11/27, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Pup 11/12, 7:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b Simple Plan, Hit the Lights 10/16, 6 PM, House of Blues b Tegan & Sara 10/21, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Timeflies 11/4, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge b Tricky 10/30, 7 PM, Double Door v

GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene LONGTIME READERS KNOW Gossip Wolf rides hard for self-described “Marxist body horror act” Forced Into Femininity—aka the experimental solo project of former Coughs saxophonist Jill Flanagan.

She says that on her new EP, I’m Making Progress, due October 7 via New York label Decoherence Records, she’s shifted away from “allegory and extended metaphor, instead addressing political concerns from the opposite perspective of punk—especially our own real positions as gatekeepers maintaining racism, classism, and sexism.” After a successful GoFundMe drive this summer to cover costs, Flanagan began a three-month tour of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico this week.

Speaking of former Coughs, front woman Anya Davidson (who later played guitar in Cacaw) has spent the past few years focusing on her surreal and hilarious comics. Her strip Band for Life, previously serialized in Vice, follows a crew of Chicago weirdos who make noise-rock as Guntit—and try to keep their failing relationships, dicey finances, and far-from-new tour van in working order. Fantagraphics will publish a Band for Life collection as a graphic novel on October 25; Davidson celebrates the book’s release at Quimby’s on Thursday, October 6.

Last year the five core members of Chicago dance crew the Era began recording themselves rapping over footwork tracks—cofounder Jamal “Litebulb” Oliver calls it “footworking with words.” On Sunday, October 9, the Era host a listening party for their first “footwork mixtape,” In the Wurkz, which shares its name with the stage show they debuted at Hamilton Park in August. In the Wurkz includes contributions from Teklife producers DJ Manny, DJ Spinn, and DJ Rashad as well as DJ Clent of Beatdown House; Gossip Wolf got an early listen to In the Wurkz, and it slays. The listening party is at Chatham footwork incubator Battlegrounds (1716 E. 87th St.); doors open at 9 PM, and cover is $5. —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

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o d n o u t r o P a Omar r u o T 5 8

FROM THE BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB™

SPECIAL GUESTS

Roberto Fonseca Anat Cohen Regina Carter

OCT

21 FRI 8:00

With a voice that is “rich, shapely, dynamic and still sultry” (The New York Times), famed Cuban balladeer and Buena Vista Social Club member Omara Portuondo is renowned for her soulful blend of Latin music and American jazz. Experience an undoubtedly dazzling evening as she makes a rare Symphony Center appearance alongside an all-star ensemble of acclaimed pianist Roberto Fonseca, Israeli clarinet and saxophone master Anat Cohen and the great jazz violinist Regina Carter.

SYMPHONY CENTER PRESENTS JAZZ SERIES SCP Jazz series sponsor:

Yandy Martinez bass Ramses Rodriguez drums Andrés Coayo percussion

cso.org 312-294-3000 Media sponsors:

OCTOBER 6, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 51

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