Print Issue of November 2, 2017 (Volume 47, Number 5)

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 | N O V E M B E R 2 , 2 0 1 7

Chicago’s Amazon HQ2 bid: money for nothing, TIFs for free 8

Knox Fortune’s big

leap

The producer also known as Kevin Rhomberg learned his trade in hip-hop, but he wants to make his name in pop.

By LEOR GALIL 23

CPS students get an EDUCATION IN EMPATHY through playwriting. 12

2 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 2, 2017

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THIS WEEK

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EDITOR JAKE MALOOLEY CREATIVE DIRECTOR VINCE CERASANI CULTURE EDITOR TAL ROSENBERG FILM EDITOR J.R. JONES MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO ASSOCIATE EDITORS STEVE HEISLER, JAMIE LUDWIG, KATE SCHMIDT SENIOR WRITER MIKE SULA SENIOR THEATER CRITIC TONY ADLER STAFF WRITERS MAYA DUKMASOVA, LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, AIMEE LEVITT, PETER MARGASAK, JULIA THIEL SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR RYAN SMITH GRAPHIC DESIGNER SUE KWONG MUSIC LISTINGS COORDINATOR LUCA CIMARUSTI FILM LISTINGS COORDINATOR PATRICK FRIEL CONTRIBUTING WRITERS NOAH BERLATSKY, ANNE FORD, ISA GIALLORENZO, JOHN GREENFIELD, ANDREA GRONVALL, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, IRENE HSIAO, DAN JAKES, BILL MEYER, MICHAEL MINER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, LEAH PICKETT, BEN SACHS, DMITRY SAMAROV, OLIVER SAVA, KEVIN WARWICK, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERNS MOLLY O’MERA ---------------------------------------------------------------ADVERTISING DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER BEST SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER EVANGELINE MILLER ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES FABIO CAVALIERI, BRIDGET KANE MARKETING AND EVENTS MANAGER BRYAN BURDA DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY ADVERTISING COORDINATOR HERMINIA BATTAGLIA CLASSIFIEDS REPRESENTATIVE KRIS DODD

FEATURES

4 Agenda The Comedy of Errors, Gwendolyn Brooks: A Centenary Celebration, the film Princess Cyd, and more recommended goings-on about town

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE 29 Shows of note Kelela, LCD Soundsystem, Lee Ranaldo, and more of the week’s best

Empathy onstage

Silk Road Rising introduces a new kind of arts education to Chicago Public Schools students: the Empathetic Playwriting Intensive Course.

BY AIMEE LEVITT 12

CITY LIFE

7 Shop Window Festive Collective celebrates in style.

8 Joravsky | Politics Rahm and Rauner’s Amazon HQ2 bid offers Jeff Bezos money for nothing and TIFs for free.

10 Transportation How Chicago cab drivers were relieved of liability for dooring crashes

FOOD & DRINK

35 Restaurant review: Portsmith The Fifty/50 Group brings an oceanfocused menu to the Dana Hotel.

ARTS & CULTURE

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21 Movies Ai Weiwei’s Human Flow portrays the refugee crisis as an single issue facing all humanity.

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IN THIS ISSUE

16 Theater Second City’s new Trumpfocused main-stage revue runs only orange-skin-deep.

17 Theater Artistic Home revives the civil rights-era play Wedding Band with indispensable, corruscating results.

18 Visual Art “Black Panther Party 50 Year Retrospective” isn’t just an in-depth history lesson.

20 Dance A pole show puts a new spin on politics.

38 Jobs 38 Apartments & Spaces 39 Marketplace

20 Movies Thank You for Your Service reflects the growing divide between U.S. soldiers and civilians.

40 Straight Dope Why are some English names pronounced so differently than they’re spelled?

41 Savage Love Yes, small penis humiliation is a thing.

42 Early Warnings George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, Guided by Voices, and more shows you should know about in the weeks to come 42 Gossip Wolf Joanna Brown and Mark Freitas launch the Homocore Chicago series, and other music news.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

Knox Fortune learned his trade in hip-hop, but he wants to make his name in pop

The producer also known as Kevin Rhomberg headlines his first show as a solo artist to celebrate his debut album, Paradise.

BY LEOR GALIL 23

37 Bar review: Leviathan The Dana Hotel’s sea monster-inspired bar is easy to love.

CLASSIFIEDS

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The Basement Company Adam Harrell’s dark comedy is luxuriantly derivative, pulling from precedents as seemingly diverse (but basically similar) as Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy, Stephen King’s Misery, and the Saw movie franchise. But a game of name-that-allusion is the only fun it offers—especially in Madison Smith’s flat-footed staging for Death & Pretzels.

Basement posits a frustrated, nebbishy playwright named Howard who kidnaps three actors, imprisons them in his basement, and forces them to rehearse and perform his stupid little play. Harrell’s script makes all the least interesting choices, and Smith’s production fails to capitalize on the tiny opportunities it offers. And sloppy? Howard may be a fool, but it’s important that we view him as a genuine threat. That impression is hard to maintain when, at one point, his security arrangements consist of bungee cords tied to a folding table. —TONY ADLER Through 11/18: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Nox Arca Theatre, 4001 N. Ravenswood, suite 405, deathandpretzels.com, $18.

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The Comedy of Errors Shakespeare All-Stars’ production of the Bard’s classic comedy draws inspiration from “another fast-paced, heightened world,” cartoons, according to director JT Nagle. The plot is summarized in the program in three comic strip panels: two sets of identical twins are separated at birth; one set goes looking for the other set; everybody mixes them up, and high jinks ensue. With the use of goofy sound effects and larger-than-life vocals and physicality, the cast enhance the 16th-century text’s humor and accessibility. As Dromio of Syracuse, Polley Cooney exudes a Charlie Brown aesthetic, while as Adriana, Arin Mulvaney recalls another sort of caricature—one of Bravo’s Real Housewives. With such perfectly slapstick source material, the production could explore the depths of live animation even further, embracing all of the senses. —MARISSA OBERLANDER Through 11/19: Fri-Sun 7:30 PM, Filament Theatre,

4041 N. Milwaukee, shakespeareallstars. com, $15.

In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play In typical fashion, playwright Sarah Ruhl concocts a precious diorama (here the 1880s drawing room of serious-minded Dr. Givings, expert in female hysteria) and populates it with gossamer geegaw characters (here excruciatingly repressed Victorians for whom a peck on the cheek is the height of indecency).

Imagine the high jinks when Givings, in historically accurate fashion, starts shoving newfangled electric vibrators up his patients’ skirts to produce therapeutic convulsions. As farce, it might work beautifully, as director Mechelle Moe’s astutely starched cast demonstrate when given the chance. But also in typical fashion, Ruhl waxes pop-philosophical—about art, love, sex, and female self-empowerment—from amid the whimsy, making for ample cheap sentiment.

At two and a half hours, TimeLine’s handsomely designed production long overstays its welcome. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 12/16: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM (no show 11/23), Fri 8 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont, 773-327-5252, timelinetheatre.com, $42.50-$56.50.

In Sarah’s Shadow: The Eleonora Duse Story Portraying a human life in the span of an hour is inevitably a challenge, and director-playwright Olivia Lilley’s In Sarah’s Shadow: The Eleonora Duse Story does not rise to the occasion. Duse, an Italian actress whose unadorned sincerity drew praise from George Bernard Shaw and whose affairs included actors, playwrights, poets, and the dancer Isadora Duncan, is hardly a dull subject. However, adulation alone does not suffice for artistry. Here, in place of biographical events, are dances verging on vaudevillian pantomime, set to music that can only be described as deeply irritating, while episodes in Duse’s life, whether tragic or triumphal, are reduced to cartoonish dialogues.

The play hints at Duse’s potentially fascinating female relationships with rival actress Sarah Bernhardt and her alleged lover Duncan but misses the opportunity to pursue them with depth or substance.

—IRENE HSIAO Through 12/9: Fri-Sat

Park, 5917 N. Broadway, 312-742-7502, jackalopetheatre.org, $25-$30, $20 students and seniors.

usa’s 1999 musical reworks Greek myth into horrific tragedy, imbued with race and class tensions, against a creole backdrop. Euripides’s Medea, dark-skinned granddaughter of a sun god, heiress to black magic and kindred bloodshed, is here transformed into Marie Christine (Kyrie Courter), a mulatto sorceress whose indiscreet affair with Dante, a white sailor (Ken Singleton), disgraces her before cruel patriarchal society.

LaChiusa’s score is spooky and angular, but the singing in this staging from Boho Theatre is uneven—not everyone in Lilli-Anne Brown’s cast proves up to the task. That said, those who do—especially Curtis Bannister, Nicole Michelle, and the always excellent Pavi Proczko—infuse the witchy atmosphere of the play with all the voodoo of which Marie stands accused. —MAX MALLER Through 12/10: Thu-Sat 8 PM (no show 11/23), Sun 2 PM, Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-9758150, theaterwit.org, $33-$35.

The Tiger Who Wore White Gloves Adapted from a 1974 children’s book by Illinois poet laureate Gwendolyn Brooks by her daughter, Nora Brooks Blakely, this sweet, graceful musical (lyrics by Blakely and Valerie King) tells the story of a status-hungry tiger thirsty for respect (ably played by Izaiah Harris), desperate to outshine the current king of the jungle, a hilariously flashy but shallow lion (played with flair by Marc Rogers), even if it means suppressing his true self. The moral of this cautionary fable bears repeating—to thine own self be true—but the charm of it is in the telling. Aaron Mitchell Reese and Kemati J. Porter direct with a light touch, fashioning a winning production, choreographed by Destiny Casson and packed with strong triple threats, that doesn’t have to work too hard to win us over. —JACK HELBIG Through 12/23: Fri 8 PM, Sat-Sun 3 PM, ETA Creative Arts Foundation, 7558 S. South Chicago, 773752-3955, etacreativearts.org, $40, $25 seniors, $15 students.

1980 (or Why I’m Voting for John Anderson) In 1980 John Anderson was a U.S. congressman from north central Illinois, mounting a pro-feminist, antitrickle-down independent campaign for the presidency against Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. His story should carry loads of resonance after Sanders/ Clinton/Trump. But playwright Patricia Cotter ignores all the pesky issues and echoes it raises. Hell, she pretty much ignores the race itself. Instead, she uses Anderson’s bid as the occasion for a coming-of-age comedy set at a campaign office and chock-full of sitcom-esque contrivances, including a rich-bitch conniver and a staff romance that seemingly happens only because the format demands it. Still, if 1980 is a disappointment, it’s at least an amusing one thanks to Kaiser Ahmed’s assured direction and engaging cast. Hillary Horvath, in particular, manifests more than the requisite charm as Kathleen—i.e., she who comes of age. —TONY ADLER Through 12/2: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM (no shows 11/23-11/26), Broadway Armory

Upstairs: The Musical Like a lot of LGBTQ-themed theatre, Wayne Self’s fictionalized account of the 1973 arson attack that killed 32 people at New Orleans gay bar the UpStairs Lounge operates from a place of cautionary nostalgia.

A loose-knit family of hustlers, drag queens, and guys looking for a sense of community have their lives upended when a jilted lover takes indiscriminate revenge. Honoring queer trailblazers and the subculture they pioneered while celebrating the social progress that threatens to make them obsolete is a fine line to walk, and this Pride production codirected by Eric Coleman and Gary Trick navigates it to occasionally stirring effect. But too much of what works is dampened by what doesn’t—like the vocals, consistently off-key, the plodding musical score, and a supremely silly device involving the apparition of a sanctimonious uncle who for some reason sounds like Fred Schneider of the B-52s. —DAN JAKES Through 11/26: FriSat 7:30 PM (no shows Fri 11/17 and 11/24), Sun 2 PM; also Thu 11/16, 7:30 PM, and

In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play

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Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of November 2

Dana Gould Personal stories told R

by Gould are tight, witty, and full of unexpected twists. Catch this former

Simpsons writer when he comes to town.

11/2-11/4: Thu 8 PM, Fri 8 and 10:30 PM, Sat 7 and 9:30 PM, Zanies, 5437 Park Pl., Rosemont, rosemont.zanies.com, $25 plus two-item minimum.

Danez Smith o HIEU MINH NGUYEN Sat 11/25, 3 PM, the Broadway at Pride Arts Center, 4139 N. Broadway, 800-7370984, pridefilmsandplays.com, $35.

Yerma On one level, director Max Truax’s brutalization of Federico García Lorca’s 1934 poetic drama is illuminating. Truax sets the action in a dark, dirt-covered nowhereland, where dirty, slip-wearing women and dirty, shirtless men move, sing, and converse in stark, stylized fashion, often as though communicating across miles of emptiness. The approach highlights the title character’s traumatic isolation, cursed as she is with a barren womb when all she desires is to bear children. But on a more fundamental level, the conceit is obfuscating. As in much of Lorca’s work, social context is key, and the external forces that should imprison Yerma—orthodox Catholicism, rigid gender roles, mythic superstition— are barely evident, leaving a cast of 14 to wander and wallow through nearly two hours of undifferentiated lamentations. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 12/10: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 4 PM, Theatre Y, 4546 N. Western, theatre-y.com, $25, $20 students and seniors, $15 industry.

DANCE 664 Miles Chicago-based Salty Lark Dance partners with Philly’s the Naked Stark to present new works by choreographers Madeleine Reber and Katherine Kiefer Stark, respectively. 11/3-11/5: Fri-Sun 7 PM, Links Hall at Constellation, 3111 N. Western, 773-281-0824, linkshall.org, $15.

Rooming House This synthesis of theater and dance cocreated by Julia Rhoads (Lucky Plush Productions) and Leslie Buxbaum Danzig begins with an onstage conversation (in both Spanish and English) then spins out into a movement piece inspired by the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Through 11/18: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 4 PM; also Mon 11/13, 7:30 PM, and Wed 11/15, 8 PM, Steppenwolf Theatre, 1700 Theatre, 1700 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, steppenwolf.org, $30-$40, $30 seniors and military, $20 industry, $15 students.

COMEDY Edgar Allan Poeprov Poe receives the improv treatment in a show inspired by his spine-chilling works. Through 12/15: Fri 11 PM, Cornservatory, 4210 N. Lincoln, 773-650-1331, cornservatory.org, $10.

Suppress Yourself Kevin Fergus, who came out when he was 24, makes light of the ten previous years he spent in the closet. The show includes songs, Powerpoint presentations, a radio show in which straight men ask Fergus questions, and a video game that determines if its player is making enough whoopee.

11/6-11/27: Mon 10 PM, Crowd Theater, 3935 N. Broadway, thecrowdtheater. com, $5.

SOFA Chicago The annual expo of sculpture and functional art returns to Navy Pier. Notable works include Max Sansing’s paintings of abandoned basketball backboards and Brent Kee Young’s glass sculptures. Thu 11/2, 5-9 PM; Fri 11/3-Sat 11/4, 11 AM-7 PM; Sun 11/5, noon-6 PM. $20 in advance, $25 at the door, $30 Fri-Sun pass. Navy Pier, Festival Hall, 600 E. Grand, sofaexpo.com.

You, Me and Everyone Else This second annual portrait exhibition, sponsored by C.C.’s Art Garage, features 20 Chicago artists who’ve been asked to include a favorite portrait, be it a photo or a painting, or something else entirely. Fri 11/3, 6-9 PM, and Sat 11/4, 11 AM-4 PM. C.C.’s Art Garage, 2727 S. Mary, 312-361-0281, elephantroomgallery.com.

MOVIES More at chicagoreader.com/movies NEW REVIEWS

Gwendolyn Brooks o AP PHOTO/FILE

LBJ Bryan Cranston disappeared into the role of Lyndon Johnson for the excellent HBO drama All the Way; Woody Harrelson, encased in prosthetic makeup for this big-screen biopic of the 36th president, still looks like he’s about to belly up to the bar on Cheers.

He gives a resourceful performance

For more of the best things to do every day of the week, go to chicagoreader. com/agenda.

min. Arclight, Block 37, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Crown Village 18, Landmark’s Century Centre, River East 21, Showplace ICON, 600 N. Michigan, Webster Place.

Novitiate Early in this drama R about cloistered life, a nun declares, “There can be no love without

sacrifice,” her words presaging the self-abnegation to follow for novices in a strict Roman Catholic order, circa 1964. A 17-year-old survivor of a broken home (Margaret Qualley) finds solace and purpose in her decision to become a “bride of Christ,” but her excessive piety alarms her protective mother (Julianne Nicholson). As the reforms of Vatican II arrive, the convent’s oldschool abbess (Melissa Leo) grows cruel and erratic, destabilizing her more vulnerable charges. Writer-director Maggie Betts balances the naturalistic exchanges of her sympathetic young cast with bravura set pieces for the seasoned actors, such as Leo’s standoff with Denis O’Hare as a smug archbishop come to lay down the law.

—ANDREA GRONVALL R, 123 min.

Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark’s Century Centre, River East 21.

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LIT & LECTURES Gwendolyn Brooks: A CentenaR ry Celebration CM Burroughs, Reginald Gibbons, Quraysh Ali Lansana,

Angela Jackson, and Ed Roberson read poetry by the late Gwendolyn Brooks— the first black winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

Wed 11/8, 3 PM, UIC Institute for the Humanities, 701 S. Morgan, 312-996-6352.

Danez Smith [Insert] Boy, Smith’s R 2014 poetry collection, won that year’s Lambda Literary Award for gay

poetry. His second collection, Don’t Call Us Dead, is an imagining of what the afterlife must be like for black folks shot by the police. He reads from this new work, then has a conversation with poet and sociologist Eve Ewing as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival. Fri 11/3, 8:30 PM, Gallery Guichard, 3521 S. King, 773-373-8000, galleryguichard.com, $15, $10 students and teachers.

VISUAL ART Knots and Loose Ends Leeah Joo’s latest exhibit is a series of oil paintings of colorful drapery, each related to a particular landscape. Opening reception Fri 11/3, 5 PM. Through 12/16. Tue-Sat 10 AM-6 PM. Andrew Bae Gallery, 300 W. Superior, 312-335-8601, andrewbaegallery.com.

• Business • Property Taxes • Real Estate • Auto Accidents • Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect Novitiate nonetheless, matched in some scenes

by Richard Jenkins as Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, the president’s segregationist mentor. Screenwriter Joey Hartstone has narrowly framed the story from President Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963 to Johnson’s State of the Union speech the following January, which allows plenty of psychodrama between the new president and U.S. attorney general Bobby Kennedy, played by Michael Stahl-David, but adds little to the cinematic understanding of Johnson’s presidency already supplied

by All the Way (which celebrated his civil rights victories) and an earlier HBO movie, Path to War (which charted his disastrous Vietnam policy). Rob Reiner directed. —J.R. JONES R, 98

Okja This eccentric children’s R fantasy from South Korean writerdirector Bong Joon-ho (Snowpiercer,

The Host) premiered on Netflix, to the consternation of art-house moviegoers, so this limited theatrical engagement represents a rare chance to consider its grand scale. Tilda Swinton, an exceptionally cultured woman with a documented weakness for donning fake teeth, stars as the heartless CEO of an agrochemical corporation that genetically engineers 26 “superpigs” and places them with farmers around the globe as part of a goodwill campaign. Ten years later the company comes back to collect the giant pigs (which look more like rhinoceroses with their rounded snouts and gray, leathery skin), and a South W

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BUS/TROLLEY TOURS

HOLIDAY LIGHTS, CITY LIGHTS Fridays & Saturdays at 4:15 and 6:15pm starting Nov. 24

Don’t let the cold weather deter you from admiring Chicago’s stunning architecture! Hop aboard Big Bus Chicago and hear the stories of great architects and leaders who shaped the city while taking in twinkling holiday and building lights.

SKYLINE VISTAS Fridays at 1pm & Saturdays at 11:30am See Chicago’s expansive downtown parks, emerging residential neighborhoods, and commercial developments.

ART DECO Fridays at 10:30am & Saturdays at 1:45pm Ride the trolley to the Chicago River, then step off to tour the lobbies of six opulent Art Deco skyscrapers.

224 S. Michigan Ave. | 312.922.3432 | architecture.org 6 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 2, 2017

AGENDA at all, and the murder mystery is a Hollywood hand-me-down along the lines of The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001). Clooney directed; with Oscar Isaac as a toothsome insurance investigator. —J.R. JONES R, 105 min. Arclight, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark’s Century Centre

Princess Cyd B Korean farm girl, played by Ahn Seo-hyun, must rescue her beloved pet, Okja, from the slaughterhouse.

(In a haunting scene near the end, superpigs low piteously in their stockyard as they’re dragged one by one up a ramp to the rendering plant.) With Paul Dano, Jake Gyllenhaal, Giancarlo Esposito, and Shirley Henderson. —J.R. JONES 118 min. Fri 11/3, 8 PM; Sat 11/4, 3 PM; Wed 11/8, 6 PM; and Thu 11/9, 8:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

The Paris Opera Swiss director Jean-Stéphane Bron recalls Frederick Wiseman in subject and verite style with this involving chronicle of the Paris Opera’s 2015-’16 season. Wiseman’s documentary La Danse (2009) focused on the Paris Opera Ballet; Bron covers not only the ballet but also the opera and concert performances of the tony, centuries-old institution. Eschewing interviews, he, cinematographer Blaise Harrison, and editor Julie Lena craft a compelling narrative through a mosaic of scenes, from droll, bureaucratic meetings to pulse-quickening backstage drama to somber personal moments (notably, when the company members learn of the November 2015 terror attacks). Unfortunately Bron glosses over one of the biggest internal controversies at the time: the endof-season departure of Benjamin Millepied, the young and, at one time, ballyhooed director of dance, who has since cited the company’s racial insensitivity as one motivation for leaving. The overwhelming whiteness of the organization’s performers and administrators—not to mention the Parisian artistic elite—is a worthy topic left unplumbed. In English and subtitled French, German, and Russian. —LEAH PICKETT 110 min. Fri 11/2, 2 and 6 PM; Sat 11/4, 3 and 7:45 PM; Sun 11/5, 5 PM; Mon 11/6, 8 PM; Wed 11/8, 6 PM; and Thu 11/9, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

Princess Cyd WriterR director Stephen Cone (The Wise Kids) ventures into Eric

Rohmer territory with this philosophical, dialogue-driven comedy about a bright 17-year-old girl (Jessie Pinnick) spending the summer in Chicago with her novelist aunt (Rebecca Spence). The girl is in the process of discovering herself both intellectually and sexually, and her development sparks the curiosity of the solitary older woman. Their relationship evolves over the course of leisurely conversations about the nature of fulfillment, which lead both women to question whether they’re happy (as in Rohmer’s films, the characters use philosophy to mask discussion of their feelings). With great delicacy, Cone metes out details about his subjects through refined dialogue and everyday behavior; this is the sort of movie that makes you feel you’ve befriended the characters.

—BEN SACHS 97 min. Fri 11/3, 8:15 PM; Sat 11/4, 5:15 PM; Sun 11/5, 3 PM; Tue 11/7, 6 PM; Wed 11/8, 8:15 PM; and Thu 11/9, 8:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

Suburbicon The title refers to a picture-perfect (read: lily-white) American suburb in 1959, where two stories transpire in adjacent houses: in one, a black family who have just moved in meet with a torrent of abuse from their white neighbors, while next door, a bespectacled, white-collar dad (Matt Damon) tries to cope with the prying questions of his young son after a home invasion that left the boy’s mother (Julianne Moore) dead. George Clooney and Grant Heslov (Good Night, and Good Luck) reworked an old script by Joel and Ethan Coen, and one can see why the brothers might have unloaded it: the black characters are barely characters

Thor: Ragnarok New Zealand actor-filmmaker Taika Waititi (What We Do in the Shadows, Hunt for the Wilderpeople) brings his anarchic sensibility and cheeky humor to this third entry in the Marvel Studios franchise, proving himself just as skilled at action-adventure as at quirky indie comedy.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth), the Norse god of thunder, spars again with his trickster stepbrother (Tom Hiddleston), whose usurpation of their father’s throne has created a power vacuum in the realm of Asgard and allowed the rise of their evil sibling (Cate Blanchett, vamping in a catsuit and antlers).

The story unfolds largely on a planet ruled by a fey gadfly (Jeff Goldblum), which makes this colorful mashup of Scandinavian myth, interplanetary sci-fi, Old Testament references, and crossover comic book characters (Hulk, Doctor Strange) a goofy lark. With Anthony Hopkins, Mark Ruffalo, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Tessa Thompson. —ANDREA GRONVALL PG-13, 130 min. Arclight, Block 37, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Chatham 14, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, Lake, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON, 600 N. Michigan, Webster Place.

SPECIAL EVENTS Cinepocalypse Continuing through November 9, this eightday festival includes new genre films, related documentaries, and retrospective screenings. For a full schedule visit musicboxtheatre.com.

Thu 11/2-Thu 11/9. Music Box. MOSTRA VIII Brazilian Film Series Founded in 2010, this annual festival of recent films from Brazil spans three weeks at multiple Chicago venues, offering “a unique opportunity to learn about Brazilian culture, history and social issues through outstanding film productions and engaging conversations.”

All programs are free except for the opening and closing events; for a full schedule visit mostrafilmseries. org. Fri 11/3-Sat 11/18.

Polish Film Festival in America The 29th annual festival opens Saturday, November 4, at Rosemont 18 in Rosemont; Monday, November 6, at Society for Arts; and Friday, November 10, at Facets Cinematheque. See next week’s issue for more; for a full schedule visit pffamerica.com. Sat 11/4-Sun 11/19. v

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LIKE MANY BUSINESSES, Bash Party Goods began life as a creative answer to a relatively mundane problem. “I could never ďŹ nd paper plates that I liked, so I decided to make a few,â€? says designer Angela Wator, who started the company in her Logan Square studio apartment in 2015. Inspired by the Memphis Milano movement of the 1980s, she covered her products in grids, polka dots, and squiggly lines, and used unconventional combinations of color. “Some Australian shops found me on Instagram, coaxed me into wholesaling them, and the brand took o,â€? she says.

In January of this year, Wator partnered with local party industry comrades Elaine Frei of Luft Balloons (source for high-end inatables) and Kate Jensen of Anne and Kate (maker of screen-printed stationary and invites) to found Festive Collective. The venture’s bright Logan Square storefront serves as a studio workshop for its members and a showroom for their wares—everything from party decor to paper goods to vintage clothing. It also houses periodic pop-up markets featuring the work of up-and-coming Chicago brands and plays host to workshops with local makers and traveling artists. —ISA GIALLORENZO Festive Collective 3279 W. Armitage, 773-917-7984, festivecollective.com.

THURSDAY 2

FRIDAY 3

SATURDAY 4

Why Oh Why Andrea Silenzi hosts a live taping of this podcast, which covers the intimate world of modern dating.

The event also includes a game for Chicago’s most eligible singles to hopefully ďŹ nd love. 7:30 PM, Chicago Theater Works, 1113 W. Belmont, chicagotheaterworks. com, $25.

S ing the Teenage Mut ant Ninja Turtles Theme Song at the Bean Bean-related events have been populating Facebook recently (“Mansplain to the Bean�), and this one hosts heroes in a half shell with serious sewer pipes. 5 PM, the Bean, 1 N. Michigan, facebook.com/events. F

B ienvenidos TĂş y Yo Recent UIC graduates, along with Jose Luis Benavides and Amanda Cervantes, use photography, installation art, and more importantly gifs (!) to start a dialogue about the death of loved ones.

Opening reception: 7-10 PM. The Overlook, 3323 W. Armitage, theoverlookplace.com. F

SUNDAY 5

MONDAY 6

TUESDAY 7

WEDNESDAY 8

Video Game Art Reader Launch Party The new VGA Gallery is leaving the console for the newsstand. Their magazine includes news, reviews, and essays about the history of gaming.

Editors Tiany Funk and Mick Reed answer questions. 11:30 AM, VGA Gallery, 2418 W. Bloomingdale, videogameartgallery. com. F

LCD Soundsystem The Reader’s Kevin Warwick writes, “[James] Murphy and LCD have retained the acumen to write tongue-in-cheek yarns that boogie along with an air of self-aware pretension. That’s really what the band does best, and, well, it’s nice that they’re still doing it.� 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 1106 W. Lawrence, aragon.com. Sold out.

First Tuesdays with Mick & Ben The Reader’s own Ben Joravsky joins ProPublica Illinois’s Mick Dumke to discuss the latest political shitstorms: Rahm Emanuel’s proposed budget and the city’s desperate bid to become home to Amazon’s second headquarters. (For more on the latter, see page 8.)

6:30 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, hideoutinn. com, $5.

Up All Nite In addition to a plethora of improv, sketch, stand-up, and storytelling acts—all featuring women—this slumber party of sorts connects female performers with each other to talk shop.

9 PM-2 AM, iO Theater, the Mission Theater, 1501 N. Kingsbury, ioimprov. com/chicago, $10 suggested donation.

Keep up to date on the go at chicagoreader. com/agenda.

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

CITY LIFE

A proposed site for Amazon’s HQ2 is a development called the 78 that was master planned by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill for the 62 acres south of the Loop also known as Rezkoville. ò RENDERING BY ICON ARCHITECTURE

similar boondoggles, such as our bid for the 2016 Olympics: 1.) Elected officials tend to overstate the public benefit of such deals. In this case, Chicago hasn’t commissioned an independent analysis to see if it’s worth spending so much money to bring Amazon to town.

2.) The eventual price tag is almost always higher than the original bid. That’s for sure.

POLITICS

Money for nothing, TIFs for free

Rahm and Rauner promise to shower Jeff Bezos with tax breaks and real estate if he chooses Chicago or Illinois to be home to Amazon’s HQ2.

By BEN JORAVSKY

A

s city and state officials head into the next phase of their courtship of Amazon and its second headquarters, Mayor Rahm and Governor Rauner are starting to resemble the pitchmen from those Celozzi-Ettleson Chevrolet commercials that appeared on late-night TV back in the 1980s.

I half expect R and R to show up in an ad wearing outdated sport coats, waving wads of bills, and asking Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to come on down to Chicago, “where you always save more money.”

8 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 2, 2017

I joke, but the first-round offer submitted on October 16 doesn’t give Chicagoans much to laugh about—unless you’re tickled by your elected representatives handing over your tax dollars to one of the wealthiest men in the world.

The letter sent to Amazon was signed by Emanuel, Rauner, Cook County Board president Toni Preckwinkle, and the four Republican and Democratic leaders of the statehouse, among them house speaker Michael Madigan and senate president John Cullerton. Apparently, the only thing this bunch agrees on is

that it’s a good idea to give away prime real estate and at least a couple billion dollars in tax breaks, grants, and other incentives to one of the world’s richest corporations.

Bezos got things going in early September, when he announced he’d build a second headquarters, dubbed HQ2, for the Seattle-based behemoth online retailer in the North American location that offered him the best deal.

Since then, more than 200 cities or states have responded, lured in part by the promise of some 50,000 relatively high-paying jobs.

There are two things to remember from

This sucker is a bidding war largely controlled by Bezos, who’s already said there could be two or three rounds before Amazon makes its decision next year. Expect that initial sum of $2.25 billion to go way up.

As it is, Rahm and Rauner have already offered Bezos about $1.32 billion in Economic Development for a Growing Economy (EDGE) tax credits. This is the program in which the state essentially lets a corporation keep the income tax dollars that its employees would normally pay to the state.

For example, say Amazon hires someone at $100,000 to program computers at HQ2. Normally that employee would pay $4,950 to the state for things like road repaving, policing, education, and so forth. With the current tax rate of 4.95 percent, the hipster essentially pays up to $4,950 to his boss at Amazon.

I think there should be a legislative hearing to examine why this isn’t a form of wage theft in which the state forces an employee to kick back a portion of his salary as a condition of his job.

As with the private school tax credits Rauner forced the Democrats to swallow this summer, EDGE tax credits are a great way to cripple government by taking money from programs intended for the common good and turning it over for private consumption.

In addition, Rahm and Rauner have offered Amazon a property tax break of at least $60 million. Bezos hasn’t even selected a site J

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CITY LIFE Proposed Chicago sites for Amazon’s HQ2 as included in the official bid ò CITY OF CHICAGO

continued from 8

and he’s already getting a break in Amazon’s taxes. (Usually he’d have to hire Madigan’s or Cullerton’s law firm before he was able to cut such a deal.) And we’re not talking about bargain-basement land next to a toxic waste dump. In the city and state’s bid, Rahm and Rauner have given Bezos his choice of ten sites: eight high-priced properties in and around the Loop and two in the suburbs.

Of course, a property tax break for Bezos means a property tax hike for the rest of us schmoes as the government tries to compensate for money it’s not getting from some of its most valuable properties downtown. This is regressive taxation as the tax burden shifts from the wealthy to everyone else. Ordinary citizens will pay more so Bezos pays less.

What a cop-out by my fellow Democrats. All year long they’ve been telling us we need more progressivity to wipe out the inequities in education between the Chicagos and Winnetkas of the world. Then in one fell swoop they caved on their principles—just as they caved on the school distribution bill. They say one thing and, under pressure, do something else.

And you wonder why working-class voters in swing states like Wisconsin and Michigan fell for Donald Trump’s bullshit? It can be hard to trust anything a mainstream Democrat says.

By the way, Rahm and Rauner still haven’t told us who’ll pay to buy this land on which Amazon will settle. I’m pretty sure Bezos will

10 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 2, 2017

demand that he not pay for it, and I don’t think the current owners will give it away. Unless, of course, Amazon decides to settle on the old Michael Reese Hospital site, which is owned by the city. In which case, Rahm would be like, “Take our land, please!”

My guess is the acquisition costs will come out of TIF funds, as they generally do in such deals.

Amazon required that applicants “provide a timetable for incentive approvals at the state/province and local levels, including any legislative approvals that may be required.”

And so, to soothe the company’s worries that our City Council or state legislature might summon up the gumption to torpedo the deal, Rahm, Rauner, Madigan, et al added this assurance in their letter: “Please know that we are prepared to undertake legislative action as a condition to your selection and look forward to better understanding your timing needs in that regard.”

Translation: We’ll twist their arms into submission!

Once again, our leaders seemed determined to take the city’s wealth and throw it away.

Mayor Richard M. Daley tried the same thing with his pitch for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

I can only hope that, as with the Olympics bid, Chicago gets bounced in the first round. v

v @joravben

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The curbside dropoff requirement “had been a powerful arrow in our quiver,” bike-focused attorney Brendan Kevenides says. ò STEVEN VANCE

TRANSPORTATION

Curbside surrender

Chicago’s taxi rules no longer require curbside dropoffs, relieving cabbies of liability for dooring crashes. Bike advocates worry the change could endanger cyclists.

By JOHN GREENFIELD

T

axi doorings can happen to anyone on a bike, including yours truly.

About 20 years ago I was cycling southeast on Lincoln toward Fullerton, pulling up to the late, great rock club Lounge Ax for a Jesus Lizard show.

A cabbie came to a sudden stop in front of me and his passenger popped open the rear right door in my path, sending me flying onto the pavement. Unbelievably, I was unhurt, but my bent front wheel resembled a Pringles potato chip. The taxi driver sped away, and when I asked the passenger who doored me for $20 to cover repairs, he sneered and disappeared into a sports bar.

In recent years Chicago has taken steps to prevent doorings, which have the potential for tragic consequences. As of 2012 the city’s Public Chauffeurs Rules and Regulations, which cabbies must study in order to pass a licensing test, included the text “Chauffeurs, when discharging passengers, shall do so in a safe and legal manner. Chauffeurs shall discharge passengers curbside.” That’s key, because when passengers exit at the curb, rather than in the middle of the street or in a bike lane, there’s no chance of them opening a door on a bike rider.

In 2013 the city doubled the fine for dooring a cyclist from $500 to $1,000, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that all 7,000 of the city’s cabs would be required to display “Look!

Before Opening Your Door” decals, featuring symbols of a cyclist, a pedestrian, and a car.

“Taxicab drivers need to be aware of cyclists traveling near their vehicles, but their customers must also take the time to look before opening doors into traffic,” Emanuel said at the time. “These stickers will remind

taxi customers to be more conscious of their surroundings before they exit the vehicle.”

Local design firm Minimal studios created the decals after employee Neill Townsend, 32, was fatally struck in 2012 by a semitruck driver when Townsend swerved on his bike to avoid an open car door near Walter Payton High School. Four years earlier 22-year-old art director Clinton Miceli had been killed in a similar incident three blocks southeast on the 900 block of North LaSalle. An SUV driver opened a door in the cyclist’s path, and he was thrown into the street and run over by another motorist.

There were 302 bicycle dooring crashes in Chicago in 2015, the year of the most current data available from the Illinois Department of Transportation. These figures don’t reveal how many of the collisions involved cabs, but that year there were 114 taxi-involved bike crashes with injuries, including 13 with incapacitating injuries, according to IDOT. While these stats suggest that more work needs to be done to prevent doorings, including those involving taxis, last year the city took a step backward in this regard.

Recently attorney Brendan Kevenides from the bike-focused firm FK Law (a Streetsblog Chicago sponsor) was doing research on behalf of a 34-year-old male cyclist who suffered a dislocated shoulder and broken arm from a July 2015 crash. The man was doored when a taxi driver discharged a customer in a travel lane on Madison near Dearborn, immediately to the left of an under-construction Loop Link bus lane. The lawyer noticed that the latest version of the Public Chauffeur Rules, which went into effect in September 2016, omits the language requiring curbside drop-offs.

“That had been a powerful arrow in our quiver when it came to holding taxi drivers responsible when a passenger doored a bicyclist in the common circumstance of the driver letting the passenger disembark in the middle of traffic or into a bike lane,” Kevenides says.

Indeed, this seems to be a widespread phenomenon. Fifteen cyclists responded to my recent query on Facebook, reporting that they’d sustained minor-to-moderate injuries while biking after a cabdriver discharged a customer somewhere other than the curb. Several of the crashes occurred on Milwaukee south of North Avenue in Wicker Park, a narrow, congested stretch where it’s common for taxi drivers who are stuck in traffic to drop off passengers, blocking the bike zone.

Kevenides says he himself was doored by a cab customer at that location a few summers ago. Fortunately the front rack of his sturdy Long Haul Trucker touring bike took the brunt of the blow.

Two other cyclists said they’d been doored by passengers leaving Uber or Lyft vehicles.

Chicago’s current Transportation Network Driver Training Curriculum for ride-share operators notes that “passengers and driver cannot open car doors into traffic” and drivers must “pull all the way over to the curb when picking up or dropping off a passenger.”

And when customers exit in the middle of the street, it can also create a hazard for other types of road users. Marketing professional Rebecca Resman says that about three years ago she was on an eastbound Belmont bus at Broadway when a cabbie let out a passenger who flung open the left rear door as the bus passed. “Scrape! The door was bent backwards and then it fell off.”

Kevenides told me he was curious why the recent change to the chauffeur rules came about. “I wonder if the taxi lobby got sick of being held liable for causing injuries to bikers when a driver decided to drop someone off wherever.”

Dave Kreisman, spokesman for the Chicago-based union Cab Drivers United, which represents several hundred Chicago cabbies, told me he didn’t believe that was the case.

“My understanding is that they changed these rules to streamline them and get rid of micromanaging.”

Kreisman, who said he often bikes to work himself, argued that the requirement for curbside drop-offs is covered by remaining language in the chauffeur rules that requires cabbies to operate “in a safe and lawful manner at all times” and abide by all state driving laws. “Whether or not [the curbside drop-off] rule is in place, clearly dropping people off in the middle of the block, off-curb, is not safe.”

However, Lilia Chacon, spokeswoman for the Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, which regulates the taxi and ride-share industries, later confirmed that another reason for the language change was to relieve cabbies of liability for doorings.

“The 2016 Public Chauffeur Rules eliminated redundancy in the previous version,” she wrote via e-mail, and made “passengers responsible for what side they choose to exit.”

But Kevenides, who says the change could make it harder for dooring victims to recover damages, argues that drivers who fail to discharge passengers curbside should also be held liable in these cases. “Cabbies will often blame their customers. Well, you didn’t give them any choice but to exit somewhere other than the curb, so the inevitable happened.”

Active Transportation Alliance director Ron Burke agrees. “All too often, taxi passengers fling car doors into the path of people on bikes.

We share Brendan’s concern about this change and will reach out to BACP to find out what’s going on.”

In the meantime, when you’re a passenger in a cab or ride-share vehicle, politely insist that your driver pull up to the curb to let you off and, as the sticker says, look before you open the door. Someone’s life could depend on it. v

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

NOVEMBER 2, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 11

Emp athy pa o n s ta ge ge Silk Road Rising introduces a new kind of arts education to Chicago Public Schools students: the Empathetic Playwriting Intensive Course.

By AIMEE LEVITT

12 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 2, 2017

Teaching artist Alex Stein works with students as part of an EPIC class at Westinghouse College Prep in East Garfield Park. ò AIRAN WRIGHT

What is a conflict?”

Levi Holloway asks.

It’s 7:30 AM on a Wednesday in the first-period senior drama class at Morgan Park High School on the southwest side. About 20 students are already here; a few more will filter in later. Some slouch in their seats or hunch over their desks, but they’re listening. Holloway looks around the room and waits for someone to answer his question.

“A problem,” one student answers.

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Stein teaches an EPIC SPARK class as part of the history of democracy unit of a world studies class at Westinghouse. ò AIRAN WRIGHT

“A turning point,” another student ventures softly, “when something goes wrong.”

Holloway and the students are talking about playwriting, specifically how to build a story, but they’re also talking about the state of the world. It’s the last week of September, and there are examples of the three classical forms of conflict everywhere. The weekend before, NFL players had protested against police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem, much to the displeasure of President Donald Trump. (Man versus Man.) Puerto Rico, ravaged by Hurricane Maria, was underwater and without power. (Man versus Nature.) “Everything is horrible,” one student told Holloway before the bell rang. “I just want a day to sleep.” (Man versus Himself.)

Today’s discussion addresses these things obliquely.

Holloway asks the students to identify examples of different forms of conflict from movies they’ve seen, which they’re more than happy to do. (For Man versus Nature, someone mentions The Revenant. “That was traumatizing,” she adds. “The bear scene was way too long,” another student adds. “For no reason.”) Conflict, they learn, is what moves a play along.

By the end of the semester, the students will have learned enough about playwriting to write their own

ten-minute plays. But, if all goes according to plan, they will also be learning empathy. That sounds like a grandiose goal, but it’s one of the main reasons for the existence of EPIC, or Empathic Playwriting Intensive Course. For the past four years, the Silk Road Rising theater company has been sending actors and playwrights, like Holloway, into Chicago Public Schools classrooms to teach students the fundamentals of dramatic writing. When you write a play, the thinking behind EPIC goes, you’re forced to assume the voices and, therefore, the perspectives of multiple characters. Making them believable requires a degree of empathy.

Brenna Reilly, the regular teacher of first-period drama, believes the lessons of EPIC go beyond playwriting. “The students have a lot to say,” she says. “Trump, the NFL, the refugee crisis. There’s a lot of people sharing facts and views and saying ‘Here’s my opinion.’

But there’s not a lot of ‘Let’s talk about how the person we’re talking about might feel.’ EPIC opens up that discussion more.”

Malik Gillani, who was born in Pakistan, and Jamil Khoury, whose father was born in Syria, founded Silk Road Rising 15 years ago as a response to the rise of Islamophobia after 9/11.

“There was a very dramatic shift, an overt fear of South Asian or Middle Eastern people, as if they were all complicit,” Khoury recalled in 2011. “On a community level, people were dealing with hostility, thrown on the defensive. One’s Americanness was called into question.”

Gillani and Khoury decided that the best way to fight rising xenophobia in the United States was to show that people who lived in Asia and the Middle East were J

NOVEMBER 2, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 13

continued from 13

human beings, too, not cliched terrorists who wanted to bomb America back to the Stone Age. They would do this by producing plays by Asian and Middle Eastern playwrights. These glimpses of lives in other communities, they believed, would generate, yes, empathy in American audiences.

From the beginning, Gillani and Khoury wanted to expand their mission beyond the small world of Loop theater. “The idea has been that, as a public trust, we should serve all peoples of the community,” Gillani says.

They were particularly interested in serving the city’s young people. Since many of them were unlikely to find their way to Silk Road Rising, Silk Road Rising would go to them, via CPS. Initially, the theater ran a program called “Myths to Drama” that incorporated mythology from five Silk Road civilizations into schools’ regular curriculum. But about five years ago, during a review of Silk Road Rising’s programs, Gillani and Khoury decided that they wanted their school program to better reflect the theater’s mission of building audience empathy through drama. In early 2013, EPIC made its debut at Lindblom Math and Science Academy in West Englewood (which, Gillani notes, requires all its students to study either Arabic or Chinese, two of the main languages of the historic Silk Road). It now works with approximately 500 junior high and high school students every year.

14 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 2, 2017

“It’s a way of giving back, a way to give to a system that’s underfunded and underserved.”

—Malik Gillani, Silk Road Rising

Usually the EPIC program lasts ten weeks, with two sessions a week with a teaching artist. The curriculum is a mix of classroom activities, writing exercises, workshops, and individual tutoring sessions. It costs $5,000.

Silk Road Rising always pays for at least half and helps schools find and apply for grant money to make up the difference. Still, Gillani says, “no matter how many schools we find, no matter how much money we raise, it’s never enough.”

The program culminates in a staged reading of the students’ plays by professional actors of color, many of whom have previously performed in Silk Road Rising productions. The staged reading is one of the most exciting parts of the program for the students, Reilly says: hearing their words read aloud by a real actor—instead of a friend or a classmate—makes them sound more important, more real. The readings are recorded and posted on the Silk Road Rising website so, as Gillani puts it, “Work migrates from the island of the school into the mainland of the community.”

This is no small feat. Khoury and Gillani intended for EPIC to serve communities that have traditionally been underserved, mostly on the south and west sides, where people, especially young people, may not think their voices are heard or valued. While the curriculum emphasizes the writing process, the teaching artists and the students also spend a lot of time talking about social issues, especially power.

“Power became a good lens to understand how someone would say and act on things,” says Brent Ervin-Eickhoff, the former EPIC coordinator at Silk Road Rising. The day after the 2016 presidential election, several EPIC classes met and the discussion, naturally enough, turned to Trump and the people who had voted for him. Teaching artist Lindsay Hopkins asked her students at Solorio Academy High School in Gage Park (who, ironically, that week had been discussing antagonists) why people who felt powerless would feel compelled to vote for someone like Trump.

If they couldn’t empathize with the candidate himself, they could at least try to empathize with his supporters.

Some of the power also belongs to the students.

Through writing, they have a way of making their voices heard by their classmates, their teachers, and people in their communities. This can be a revelatory experience.

“For me,” says teaching artist Alex Stein, “the end goal is not to create 28 students who want to be playwrights, but giving students an opportunity to have a voice and to work through having that voice.”

Ervin-Eickhoff recalls that a few years ago, during his first residency as a teaching artist at Julian High School in Washington Heights, one student told him she wanted to write about the news. He thought she meant something from the news. “No,” she told him, “I want to write about what they’re doing to us.” “What are they doing to you?” he asked. “The news wants us to think that people like me are hurting other people like me,” she said, “and no one

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else [outside the community] wants to help because they think it’s not their problem.”

One of the requirements of the EPIC curriculum is that each student write from at least one perspective that’s different from their own. Some students have used their plays as a way to examine issues that are relevant to their own lives, or the lives of people they know, such as what to do about a teen pregnancy or how police violence affects a community. Others use the play as a way to imagine themselves in other times or places, like France during the Revolution or present-day North Korea.

“Against a backdrop of politicized culture,” Khoury says, “there’s something profound about 16-year-olds crafting debates that are respectful toward opposing viewpoints. EPIC is also teaching democracy and the ability to hear and appreciate other views. That’s something sorely missing among adults.”

The question, though, is whether students will continue to think and, more importantly, act empathetically after their EPIC session is over. For the past two years, Tom O’Brien has been using EPIC SPARK, an abbreviated seven-session version of the program, as part of the history of democracy unit in his world studies class at Westinghouse College Prep in East Garfield Park.

O’Brien thought the course would be an interesting way to break up his usual classroom routine of assigned reading and lectures, giving students a different way of looking at social issues.

“Empathy is difficult to measure,” O’Brien says. Which is true. It’s not something that usually comes up on standardized tests. He does note, though, that for the past two

years, the unit of the history of Islam has immediately followed one on the history of democracy—and EPIC. Most of his students aren’t Muslim. “There’s an immediate need for them to be able to think empathetically and have discussions that are empathetic, touching on topics that are pretty sensitive and have the potential to bring out the worst in students,” he says. “The last two years, though I can’t claim it’s been a direct result of having done EPIC just previously, I’d say that the Islam unit has been been very successful and that, yeah, there’s no question that there’s been an increase of empathy in the discussions we’ve had.”

EPIC is far from the only outside arts-enrichment program in CPS classrooms—the Poetry Foundation, Goodman Theatre, Smart Museum of Art, 826CHI, among many, many others, have developed programs of their own—but it’s one of the longest, and also one of the few that emphasizes playwriting. “Several decades ago, CPS started to whittle away at its own internal arts programming, cutting the arts programs in schools,” Khoury explains. “The nonprofit arts sector in the city has taken on the mantle of providing arts education. In many ways, we’re looking at deficiencies, what’s lacking, and how can art provide for that, how can art fill in those gaps. No one’s going to innovate, no one’s going to lead, if they’re not able to think creatively.”

“It’s a way of giving back,” Gillani adds, “a way to give to a system that’s underfunded and underserved.”

Back at Morgan Park High School, Levi Holloway is guiding his students through a five-minute free write on the idea of “struggle.”

“How did it go?” he asks.

“It was a struggle,” one of the students quips.

“We’re on theme,” Holloway replies drily.

“I got things off my chest,” another student says. “I see people who don’t have tools to change their living situation. They don’t have clothes to go interview for a job. Then there are people who sit around all day and complain. That really irritates me.” A few of his classmates snap their fingers to show agreement.

“We’re onto something if we’re putting words on a page and reacting and responding,” Holloway says. “It may sound trivial, but maybe there’s something to it in terms of your play. Does anyone want to share your free write?”

“Struggle is hardship,” one girl reads. “After my parents got divorced, I kept to myself. My dad’s new wife is not my favorite person. It took years to get over the resentment. Struggle is something you survive.”

“Can anyone empathize?” Holloway asks.

And all across the room, hands go up. v

@alevitt

NOVEMBER 2, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 15

ARTS & CULTURE

R

Ryan Asher, Tyler Davis, and Tien Tran ò TODD ROSENBERG

THEATER

Skewering Trump with Pixy Stix

By STEVE HEISLER

S

econd City is in denial. Donald Trump is our president, and along with that comes a host of issues regarding race, gender equality, LGBTQ rights, and police brutality, among other things. The cast of the brand-new yet already outdated main-stage revue Dream Freaks Fall From Space tackle these loaded topics by mentioning them, then moving right along.

And speaking of denial, scenes break one of the most fundamental rules of improvisation—embody the spirit of “yes, and . . . ” to complement your partner onstage. Here instead actors deny ideas with “What are you talking about?” Second City is the tentpole of Chicago comedy for the rest of the country, but Dream Freaks feels like it was concocted in an intermediate-level improv class where

16 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 2, 2017

mere nods get laughs and politics get skewered with Pixy Stix.

Let’s start with the brightest of beacons, President-in-name-only Trump. Right before intermission, the cast members don Trump masks and shimmy their way onto the stage to Judy Collins’s “Send in the Clowns.” For, you see, Trump is a clown, a horrible president who is roasted by this show with insults ranging from “he sucks” to “he really sucks.”

Tyler Davis sings a hopeful love song with the caveat that his feelings will change if his beloved voted for Trump. When the men in the cast catcall the women, one woman responds, “How presidential!” Blackout.

These finger taps on Trump and other hot buttons rarely develop any further. Tien Tran has a sweet voice, and she’s commited to every

scene she’s in, but her song “Maybe Your Baby Is Gay” doesn’t move beyond the title joke, which is just one of plenty at the expense of white people. Sure, white people are bland and naive—how about tackling their willful blindness and myopia? Instead, female orgasms and Waldo (the picture-book character from what now feels like the enlightened year 1986) take the spotlight.

On opening night, the closest Dream Freaks came to anything surprising was in a scene where Nate Varrone plays a detective on the hunt for a jewel thief played by Davis. As Varrone asked a woman in the audience questions about the aforementioned thief, Davis, in the background, mimed the responses he sought.

How had she not seen this deviant? Davis made the “sleep” gesture. Later, when Varrone

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asked the woman what type of chicken she’d been eating at the time, Davis pointed to his arm, and rather than saying “dark,” she replied “black.” Davis nearly collapsed onstage.

Varrone just told her she was wrong.

In improv comedy nobody is wrong. Denying an idea is the first step toward a flop of a bit, and Dream Freaks lives in denial. In an improvised scene that began with the suggestion of “earrings,” Ryan Asher walked out and asked Varrone if she could get her baby’s ears pierced. Nope, Varrone replied—this was a place that only inserted gauges. Another sketch took place in a postapocalyptic wasteland where a few survivors discussed pragmatic solutions to food shortage and dirty water as Varrone—well, it was hard to tell just what he was supposed to be doing. But he had a leather jacket, a torn yellow shirt, and a gun down his pants he used to shoot one of the others before denying it—no, he hadn’t.

There’s also a running gag that begins with the cast lip-syncing to Chicago’s “Saturday in the Park”; when they get to “I think it was the Fourth of July,” they’re interrupted by Asher, who says it was actually the fifth. Other interruptions in the same vein follow: Earth, Wind, and Fire’s “September”—wait, it was actually October! A conceit this slight hardly merits a return, much less one leading back to the fifth of July.

Bits that were more interactive fared far better. In what was the highlight, Tran and Jeffrey Murdoch rushed into the audience to test the hypothesis that all people are connected via six degrees of separation. They started with a man whose favorite actor was Chris Pratt, then asked for others with an affinity for Star-Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy, then questioned another volunteer about a different topic, and so forth for roughly five degrees until a woman said her favorite movie was Forrest Gump—which also happened to be the first audience member’s fave.

This synchronous moment captured just what was missing throughout the evening: for all too much of its two-hour running time, Dream Freaks refuses to embrace the unexpected, instead remaining only orange-skindeep. Trump sucks, yes, and . . . now what? v DREAM FREAKS FALL FROM SPACE Open run: Wed-Thu 8 PM, Fri-Sat 8 and 11 PM, Sun 4 PM, Tue 8 PM, Second City, 1616 N. Wells, 312-337-3992, secondcity.com, $29-$46.

v @steveheisler

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“A unique American love story, hilarious yet deeply moving, profound and beautiful.”

–OakPark.com

Susan Anderson and Myesha-Tiara ò JOE MAZZA

THEATER

Who’s Alice Childress? We should all know

By TONY ADLER

R

aise your hand if you’re familiar with the work of Alice Childress. I thought not. Me neither. Sure, it’s easy enough to ID her as one of a constellation of black playwrights who flourished in New York during the civil rights era. But until I checked I’d have had a hard time telling you what exactly it was that she wrote. Childress’s ten plays died before her own death, in 1994. The Reader’s online archives record only three Chicago productions in 28 years.

So praise the Lord, as one of its characters would certainly say, for the Artistic Home revival of Childress’s Wedding Band, which offers an indispensable look at what we’ve been missing.

Written in 1962 but unseen onstage until 1966 because, the story goes, Broadway theaters were afraid to touch it (the premiere finally took place at the University of Michigan), Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White is set during the summer of 1918 in South Carolina. The United States is throwing troops into World War I and Jim Crow confines urban blacks to dirt-poor ghettos. Julia Augustine has just rented a room in one such ghetto located in a “city by the sea”—presumably Charleston, where Childress spent part of her childhood. Julia tries to keep to herself, but that’s impossible given the close quarters, not to mention the keen interest of her landlady and neighbors. Soon enough it comes out that she’s spent the last decade in a loving relationship with Herman. Who’s white.

Shit can’t help but hit the fan, and it does so at high velocity when Herman comes down with influenza during a visit to Julia’s room.

He can’t be moved, yet a doctor can’t be called because Herman’s very presence is illegal.

Though his sister and mother are summoned, the former is stunted and the latter a vicious racist. The tensions set loose by this situation lead not only to brutal exchanges, but to a series of the most nakedly savage, laceratingly honest speeches about America’s racial psychosis that I’ve heard uttered on a stage.

Cecilie Keenan’s staging has its drawbacks.

Attempting to bring a sense of realism to a small space, Kevin Rolfs’s set ends up creating confusion over how and where everybody lives. More important, Raina Lynn’s Julia is awkward and artificial in the early going. Still, she more than compensates when it comes time to explode. And she gets powerful support from Susan Anderson’s comic/tragic landlady as well as Lisa McConnell, Myesha-Tiara, and Kevin Patterson as vividly sketched neighbors.

Donna McGough and Reid Coker are as horrific as they need to be as Herman’s mother and a despicably Harvey Weinsteinesque salesman.

Scott Westerman’s Herman is stunning in his absolute everydayness. v R WEDDING BAND: A LOVE/HATE STORY IN BLACK AND WHITE Through 12/17: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, the Artistic Home, 1376 W. Grand, 866811-4111, theartistichome.org, $28-$32

v @taadler

YASMINA’S NECKLACE

BY ROHINA

MALIK

DIRECTED BY ANN

FILMER

Newly arrived in Chicago from her homeland, Iraqi artist Yasmina has hardened herself against the possibility of finding happiness. But when she meets Sam, a man with his own emotional setbacks, what had seemed unthinkable becomes tantalizingly real.

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NOVEMBER 2, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 17

ARTS & CULTURE The exhibit “Black Panther Party 50 Year Retrospective” highlights the group’s community service work, including a program that provided neighborhood children with free breakfast. ò SUN-TIMES PRINT COLLECTION

VISUAL ART

Black Panthers live on

By KERRY CARDOZA

O

n March 4, 1968, then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover described in a memo his department’s renewed focus on hindering the efforts of various black-led political organizations.

Hoover wrote how he feared the rise of a black “messiah” who “could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist movement.” Tellingly, the memo was sent exactly one month before the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., whom Hoover describes as “a very real contender for the position.” But King wasn’t the only leader the FBI had an interest in defeating. In 1969, Illinois Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton was killed at the age of 21 during an FBI-directed raid of his apartment. The story of the promising Hampton’s

18 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 2, 2017

brief life, and that of the BPP’s Illinois chapter, is the subject of “Black Panther Party 50 Year Retrospective,” now on view at the Westside Center for Justice.

Hoover’s memo comes from COINTELPRO, short for counterintelligence program, a covert, and illegal, FBI initiative that began in 1956 with the explicit purpose of protecting national security and maintaining existing social and political order. In later years, COINTELPRO focused on new groups and leaders that the FBI believed threatened national security. The Black Panther Party— along with other black-led groups such as the Nation of Islam and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—became a target in 1967. As the Westside Justice Center show

demonstrates, you can’t tell the story of the Panthers without telling the story of the FBI’s efforts to take them down.

The retrospective, which is housed in the Movement & Justice Gallery at the rear of the center, begins with a wall statement that details the “conflicting values” the U.S. was founded on. On one hand, it notes, the Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal,” although the founding fathers “were unwilling to abolish an economic system tied to a legacy of slavery.” The history of the U.S. to the present day, the statement continues, “has been the struggle of reconciling these conflicting values.” The Illinois BPP, which began in 1968, two years after the national party started in Oakland, California,

was established to continue that struggle for peace and justice.

Numerous archival documents are on display, dating from the late 1960s through 1977, when a lengthy civil suit brought by the families of Hampton and Mark Clark, another Panther killed in the 1969 raid, came to a close.

The show was organized by surviving members of the BPP and its sister group, the Intercommunal Survival Committee, and is displayed chronologically. A back wall highlights much of the party’s community service work, including photos of a program that provided neighborhood children with free breakfast, and articles on the BPP’s People’s Medical Care Center. Former Panther John Preston told me that during that time the party was offering services to upward of 150 to 200 people per week.

Nearby, a headline from a 1973 edition of The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service, the BPP’s nationally distributed paper, which at its height had a circulation of 250,000, reads: “Chicagoans Unite for Community Control of Police.” Neighborhood control of policing was an important issue for the Illinois chapter, which hosted several citywide conferences on the subject. At the Survival Conference to End Police Brutality and Establish Community Control, held in 1972, the BPP offered attendees bags of food, shoes for children, and sickle cell anemia tests, all free of charge. These calls for ending police brutality and gaining community control of the police should sound familiar to anyone following local news—such demands are just a few of the similarities between the Illinois BPP and other groups, such as Black Lives Matter, that are struggling for political change today.

“So much of what we see that’s going on is very reminiscent of what happened then,” says Tanya D. Woods, the executive director of the Westside Justice Center. She notes the way the Panther newspaper helped surveil police encounters in communities, in the same way that people now use cell phones to record the police. “I think the parallels are abundant, actually,” she remarks.

Another similarity appears in the latter half of the show, which deals with the 1969 raid and its aftermath. In the early morning hours of December 4, 1969, 14 Chicago police officers descended on Hampton’s apartment

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A schoolchild eats a free breakfast provided by the Black Panthers; Bill Hampton, brother of Fred Hampton, reads a statement during a 1974 press conference with, to his right, family members of slain Panther Mark Clark. ò SUN-TIMES PRINT COLLECTION

at 2337 West Monroe. There were nine people inside, including Clark, Hampton, and Hampton’s eight-months-pregnant fiance, Deborah Johnson. The police were assigned to Cook County state’s attorney Edward V. Hanrahan; initial statements from Hanrahan named the Panthers as the aggressors.

“The immediate, violent, criminal reaction of the occupants in shooting at announced police officers emphasizes the extreme viciousness of the Black Panther Party,” Hanrahan said in a media statement. “So does their refusal to cease firing at the police officers when urged to do so several times.” He also claimed Fred Hampton himself fired at police.

After the raid, police failed to contain the crime scene. “So we took control of the property for about two weeks, where we were able to give tours to at least 20- or 30,000 people,” Preston told me. Photos on display show

neighborhood kids protecting the stoop, the blood-stained mattress where Hampton died, and crowds of people waiting to enter the apartment. “Long lines just to see what happened,” he said.

Police had a warrant to search the property, based on an alleged tip that the Panthers were storing an illegal stockpile of weapons. Years of litigation eventually brought the truth: the FBI had orchestrated the raid as part of its COINTELPRO plan to disrupt Panther activities and the rise of a black “messiah.” As the Nation reported during the civil trial in 1976, the FBI first approached CPD to conduct the raid, but were twice turned down; Hanrahan eventually agreed. FBI documents would later show the weapons story to be false. William O’Neal, an Illinois BPP member who was working as an FBI informant, provided information to the bureau, well ahead of the raid, that the

party’s weapons were legally obtained. (This information is among the documents displayed in the show.) O’Neal also provided the FBI with a thorough floor plan of the Monroe apartment, including the location of Hampton’s bed.

In the course of the civil trial, many details about the FBI’s involvement, as well as its later cover-up of details and withholding of evidence, came to light. Lawyers for the Panthers’ families discovered that the FBI, along with the presiding judge, had suppressed more than 25,000 documents that showed the depth of the COINTELPRO operation. While the plaintiffs lost this case, on appeal the court found that the FBI had “obstructed justice”— according to a document produced by the December 4th Committee—and, in collusion with Hanrahan’s office, had participated in a conspiracy to “eliminate the Black Panther Party and its members,” in addition to concealing evidence and harassing survivors. In the end, the federal government, Cook County, and the City of Chicago agreed to settle the suit for $1.85 million.

“Black Panther Party 50 Year Retrospective” isn’t just an in-depth history lesson. As much as it recounts the history of the Illinois Panthers, it also relates a story of present-day political activism. In its time COINTELPRO, which was eventually discovered by Congress

to have engaged in illegal tactics, was at least partly responsible for the downfall of various organizations, not to mention the death of promising political leaders. Today we are hardly strangers to government surveillance.

Foreign Policy magazine recently published an FBI internal report that warns about the threat of “black identity extremists” in an account eerily similar to Hoover’s 1968 memo.

“The FBI assesses it is very likely Black Identity Extremist (BIE) perceptions of police brutality against African Americans spurred an increase in premeditated, retaliatory lethal violence against law enforcement and will very likely serve as justification for such violence,” the report reads. Although the FBI wrote to FP that the organization “cannot initiate an investigation based solely on an individual’s race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or the exercise of First Amendment rights,” the history on display at the Westside Justice Center tells a different story. v R “BLACK PANTHER PARTY 50 YEAR RETROSPECTIVE” Through 4/2018: Mon-Wed, Fri, 10 AM-3 PM, Thu 10 AM-8 PM, Westside Justice Center, Movement & Justice Gallery, 601 S. California, 773-940-2213, westsidejustice.org. F, to arrange a group visit go to westsidejustice.org

v @booksnotboys NOVEMBER 2, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 19

Thank You for Your Service

ò SERENA VALENTI

ARTS & CULTURE

DANCE

Wrap yourself around this one

POLITICAL COMMENTARY and pole dancing may sound like a preposterous pairing, but new troupe Polaris Dance Theatre wants to prove that the form can be topical as well as titillating. Its first production, Poleitico: A Pole Show on Politics, addresses pressing issues from climate change to Black Lives Matter, and deliberately debuts on the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s election.

After training herself in pole dancing over the last two years, Kelly Smith created Polaris to explore the creative opportunities posed by an apparatus that elevates dancers and allows them to contort their bodies in novel ways. “It’s kind of scary sometimes,” she says.

“You can create different shapes upside down, in the air. And then when you hold those shapes, when you spin around or do a certain combo, it’s basically like vertical gymnastics. It adds this entirely different element of strength and grace. It’s almost like you’re flying half the time.”

Maybe strange times call for strange measures. Poleitico was shaped by what mattered most to the troupe, which combines pole dancers with those classically trained.

“Being in Chicago, you’re in this big diverse hub and you see these issues every day,” says Smith. “It came out during our [first] meeting that this is what we care about, this is what we need to talk about.” If nothing else, pole dancing gives politics a new spin. —OLIVER SAVA POLEITICO: A POLE SHOW ON POLITICS Wed

11/8, 7:30 PM, Den Theatre, 1329-1333 N. Milwaukee, 773-609-2336, polarisdance.org, $25-$30.

20 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 2, 2017

MOVIES

When Johnny comes crawling home

By J.R. JONES

I

n a year of sorry national spectacles, none seems more bitter or pointless than the feud that broke out last month between the Trump administration and the family of Sergeant La David Johnson, one of four U.S. soldiers killed in Niger during an ambush by Islamist militants. The president’s clumsy handling of a condolence call to Johnson’s widow, the unprincipled disclosure of his words to the media by U.S. congresswoman Frederica Wilson, the false charges leveled against Wilson by White House chief of staff John Kelly, the congresswoman’s gratuitous accusation of racism as a factor in the administration’s actions—no one emerged unsullied from the conflict, in which Johnson’s sacrifice for his country was steadily obscured by bickering over who had dishonored his memory.

More than anything, the fracas called attention to the ever-widening gulf between U.S. soldiers and civilians. As Kelly pointed out during his televised lecture to the Washington press corps, only a tiny percentage of the population serves in the military. “Most of you, as Americans, don’t know them,” he said. “Many of you don’t know anyone who knows any of them. But they are the very best that this country produces. And they volunteer to protect our country when there’s nothing in our country anymore that seems ssss EXCELLENT

sss GOOD

to suggest that selfless service to our nation is not only appropriate but required.” Americans have grown used to this kind of military exceptionalism, which Kelly compounded by prioritizing the questions of reporters who knew Gold Star families, and which White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders cast in even more ominous terms by implying that no one should question the word of a four-star general.

Arriving in the middle of all this, Thank You for Your Service dramatizes David Finkel’s best-selling 2013 nonfiction book of the same name, which exposes the mental health crisis among Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans that has led to an epidemic of suicides among returning servicemen and -women. The book is heartbreaking, and every American should read it, but the best one can say about the well-meaning movie version, written and directed by Jason Hall, is that it might lead some moviegoers back to the source material. The people who risk their lives overseas deserve not only better mental health care but a clearer, more candid account of what they experience than Hall is prepared to deliver. At critical moments in the story he seems to back away from the trauma of his real-life subjects, hamstrung by the sort of careful respect demanded by Kelly and Sanders.

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Finkel’s book unfolds as a series of intimate personal portraits, not only of returning veterans but of family members who endure their violent episodes of posttraumatic stress disorder and counselors who battle bureaucratic red tape to get them the therapy they need. Letters, journal entries, and text messages drive home the soldiers’ sense of alienation as they bring horrifying memories of combat back to a country that barely knows the war is happening. Isolated and angry, they drink too much, turn on their loved ones, and become a threat to their families and themselves. In the cruelest of ironies, men who’ve already made an inordinate sacrifice for their country are driven to suicide by a sense of guilt over the buddies they couldn’t save.

Such is the case with 28-year-old Adam Schumann of Junction City, Kansas, whose experience provides Finkel with his sturdiest plotline. Two years after having returned from a third tour of duty as a victim of combat stress, Schumann accidentally lets his baby son roll off a bed onto the floor, and the sense of having let someone down triggers feelings of guilt and worthlessness over the death of another soldier who took his place on a patrol. Schumann and his wife, Saskia, argue endlessly; eventually she discovers him in their basement furnace room with the barrel of a shotgun under his chin, and spends an eternity begging him to surrender the gun before the baby’s cry from the floor above jolts Adam from his tunnel vision. Following this incident, Adam wins admission to the Pathway Home, an independent treatment facility located on the grounds of the California Veterans Home, and the rest of the book turns on whether he can banish his demons before his overburdened wife finally walks out on him.

One of the book’s most significant characters is Tausolo Aiete, a soldier from Schumann’s old company who suffered a traumatic brain injury when his Humvee was blown into the air by an improvised explosive device. Back in Kansas, Aiete is plagued by memory problems and tortured by nightmares about another man in the same Humvee who burned to death before Aiete could pull him out. (“Why didn’t you save me?” the man asks.) Assigned to the Warrior Transition Unit, which is composed entirely of severely wounded soldiers, Aiete drinks heavily and explodes periodically; Finkel excerpts a

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ARTS & CULTURE 911 call placed by the soldier’s wife, Theresa, as she cowered in the bathroom after a beating.

Jason Hall makes his directing debut with the screen version of Thank You for Your Service, having been catapulted into the big time with his script for Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper. Adapted from the autobiography of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle (who was murdered by a fellow veteran in 2013), American Sniper opened in the postholiday dead zone of January 2014 and—in one of those pre-Trump blips that signaled how little the national media understood the red states—surprised industry observers by storming the box office to the tune of $547 million. Some critics praised Hall and Eastwood for their portrait of Kyle as a soldier who couldn’t bring himself to rejoin the civilian population, though the movie was attacked from both the left and the right for its inaccuracies. Hall takes a similarly lackadaisical approach to the facts in Thank You for Your Service, inventing characters and scenes as he tries to create a story arc moviegoers will recognize.

Hollywood has never produced a better film about veterans than The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), William Wyler’s Oscar-winning drama in which three soldiers return from the Pacific to their small Ohio town but can’t pick up where they left off. The opening sequence shows the men bonding as they sit in the nose of an air transport plane, the countryside rolling by beneath them; Hall concocts a similar opening for Thank You for Your Service, showing Schumann (Miles Teller), Aiete (Beulah Koale), and an invented character, Billy Waller (Joe Cole), shooting the shit during an army flight back to Topeka. In The Best Years of Our Lives, one of the veterans returns to his parents’ home to learn that his wife has moved out and moved on; in Thank You for Your Service, Billy finds his old place empty and his fiance unwilling to answer his calls. After spending the night with Adam (and leaving his bedding neatly folded on the couch), he shows up at the bank where his fiance works as a teller and shoots himself in the head.

More additions follow: To give Aiete a fuller story line, Hall has added an overheated subplot in which the veteran falls in with a local hood, drops the ball when entrusted with an illegal gun sale, and has to be rescued from a hail of bullets by Adam. True or not, this story adds nothing, and it leaves less screen time for the fractious relationship between Adam and his wife, Saskia (Haley Bennett, the movie’s biggest asset aside from Teller). The real-life couple granted Finkel access to their personal

communications, and their back-and-forth texts, often quoted at length, illuminate the messy business of a husband and wife trying to reconnect as one of them is immobilized by psychological trauma. Hall gives a pretty good sense of their strained family life, but he drops the book’s central confrontation, when Saskia finds Adam in the furnace room and tries to talk him down. I can’t imagine a more gripping scene—or how painful it might be for the real-life Schumanns to see blown up on a movie screen.

The biggest difficulty in dramatizing Finkel’s book is the sense of anticlimax at the end—though Adam Schumann finally begins to work through his emotional issues at the Pathway Home, Finkel is too honest to suggest that his struggle will ever really end.

Unfortunately Hall addresses this narrative challenge by lopping off the last chapter of the Schumanns’ story: the movie ends shortly after Adam confesses to war widow Amanda Doster (a woebegone Amy Schumer) that her late husband died taking his place on patrol, and she responds by ordering him to get better. (“You live!” she insists. “That’s how you honor him.”) This might feel more conclusive than Finkel’s ending, but it smacks of self-help literature (in which half the battle is admitting you’ve got a problem) and Hollywood corn (like an old social drama whose final credit reads not “The End” but “The Beginning”).

Thank You for Your Service grossed a meager $3.7 million when it opened last weekend, so apparently what drove American Sniper through the roof was its crosshairs suspense, not its downer stuff about dysfunctional veterans. The gulf between soldiers and civilians isn’t just widening—it’s deepening, as the military and their families begin to think of themselves as a separate class (whether exalted or exploited). Bringing back compulsory national service might alleviate that, but no politician will go near such an expensive solution, and for decades the Pentagon has been working toward a smaller, more specialized fighting force, the better to wage war against jihadist enemies in far-flung corners of the world (like Niger). And Americans are who they are: we may sing hosannas to the nation’s fighting men and women, but we prefer to view the human ravages of war the way a sniper does— through a telescopic sight, and far, far away. v THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE ss Directed

by Jason Hall. R, 108 min. For venues see chicagoreader.com/movies.

v @JR_Jones

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Human Flow

MOVIES

Many people, one issue

By BEN SACHS

H

uman Flow, in which Chinese artist and filmmaker Ai Weiwei documents ongoing refugee crises around the world, is designed to be experienced on a big screen. Ai uses staggering landscape shots and dynamic low-angle compositions to frame his subjects against great expanses of sky, and when he shoots people in close-up, he excludes almost anything that might distract from their faces or bodies, rendering them monumental. The effect of this large-scale imagery is twofold: It conveys the immense number of human beings that have been displaced in the 2010s—as many, if not more, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, than the number of people displaced by World War II. Moreover, the imagery encourages viewers to adopt a global perspective in considering the subject matter.

Near the beginning of the film, Ai cuts from an overhead shot of a solitary bird flying across an ocean to another overhead shot of a raft filled with refugees—an invitation to take a bird’s-eye view of events and consider the big picture. From there, he presents short profiles of refugees (from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Palestine, Burma, and sub-Saharan Africa) and the people who help them in more than a dozen different countries (including Jordan, Greece, Bangladesh, and Turkey); by never focusing on one location for long, Ai draws attention to the similarities between

refugees everywhere. Some of the transitions are inspired by geography (at one point Ai cuts from an interview with an Iraqi refugee in Greece to a profile of Syrians living in a refugee camp in Iraq); other times, Ai edits together material shot in disparate locations if it shares a similar mood. The film is structured rather like a poem, one observation flowing into the next.

One can easily get lost in all the statistics Ai presents or lose count of all the places he visits, but that seems to be the point of Human Flow. Ai wants viewers to think of refugee crises as a single issue facing all humanity; discerning the specific details is less important than recognizing the terror refugees feel when they’re trying to cross borders or the dehumanization they experience when going through the legal procedures required to secure lodging in a foreign nation. Despite the heavy subject matter, Ai finds reason for hope, sharing scenes of refugees as they find safe living spaces in their adopted countries. Still, he argues that even more people are going to be displaced in the coming years and that the current efforts by stable nations to host refugees aren’t enough to tackle a problem this vast. v HUMAN FLOW sss Directed by Ai Weiwei. PG-13, 140 min. Music Box, 3733 N. Southport, 773-871-6604, musicboxtheatre.com, $11.

v @1bsachs

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Knox Fortune learned his trade in hip-hop, but he wants to make his name in pop The producer also known as Kevin Rhomberg headlines his first show as a solo artist to celebrate his debut album, Paradise.

I

nternational record club Vinyl Me, Please has been surprising its subscribers with a different LP every month since 2013, and in 2015 it launched a parallel seven-inch series with a new gimmick: the records, which contain previously unreleased material, come with generic white sleeves and center labels that don’t identify the artist or the songs. Roughly 3,000 of the club’s more than 20,000 members (chosen at random) receive each one, and they gather on the Vinyl Me, Please online forum to try to figure out whose music they’re listening to each month. In June the mystery seven-inch had dreamy, easygoing pop on the A side and candy-coated but slightly distorted funk on

By LEOR GALIL Photos by COLLEEN DURKIN

the B side. People made all sorts of guesses, among them the Blow, M.I.A., Kate Nash, and both of Hot Chip’s vocalists, Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard. Eight pages into the thread, with a hint from a Vinyl Me, Please staffer, the subscribers identified the mystery artist: Chicagoan Kevin Rhomberg, aka Knox Fortune.

It’s hard to blame the Vinyl Me, Please subscribers for not realizing they were listening to Knox Fortune songs. That’s not

to say that Rhomberg’s falsetto singing and collage-heavy writing style are generic or forgettable—the problem was more that, as of June, he’d barely released any music under that name. Of the three singles he had out at the time, the oldest was a gleaming, swaying indie-pop tune called “Seaglass,” which he posted to Soundcloud in March 2016. (He formally released the songs on the Vinyl Me, Please seven-inch, “Lil Thing” and “24 Hours,” later this summer.) He’s worked extensively as a hip-hop producer, but the tracks he makes in that context don’t sound much like his solo work. And his voice isn’t exactly ubiquitous: though he’s sung on roughly half a dozen rap tracks, only one of them, Chance J

NOVEMBER 2, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 23

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No matter what Kami says, this is not Daniel Radcliffe.

continued from 23 the Rapper’s “All Night,” is well-known. After more than a decade in music, he self-released his first solo full-length, the Knox Fortune album Paradise, in September.

Rhomberg, 25, began tinkering with beats early in high school, and he’s been engineering or producing professionally for about five years. As an engineer he’s largely invisible to the public, contributing technical expertise but no actual music. As a producer, of course, he’s easier to hear—he’s made instrumental tracks for some of the city’s best rising rappers, including Save Money members Vic Mensa, Joey Purp, and Kami. But that’s no guarantee he’ll get a credit in the track listing, which is as far as most people ever look for it. Though he worked on half of Season, the 2015 debut full-length by Joey Purp and Kami’s duo, Leather Corduroys, you’d be hardpressed to tell which half. “There’s seven or eight songs total that I worked on, and there’s literally no way to know that I did anything on that project except ‘Mexican Coke,’ because ‘Mexican Coke’ was labeled as such,” Rhomberg says. “That was an eye-opening experience too, where I’m like, ‘Producers just really don’t get that much credit.’”

Before April, when the promotional cycle for Paradise kicked off with the single “Help Myself,” to most folks Rhomberg was basically the guy who’d sang the upbeat, frictionless vocal hook on “All Night,” an easygoing dance track from Chance’s mammoth third mixtape, Coloring Book. When Chance won three Grammys in February, Rhomberg got a piece of the award for Best Rap Album.

Last month, when I met him at the Logan Square headquarters of his management team, Haight Brand, Rhomberg had just received his Grammy certificate in the mail—or rather his father had. He’s had a few apartments in Chicago, so he uses his parents’ Oak Park address for some of his mail. Unlike some of his collaborators, he can still enjoy the pleasures that relative anonymity can offer. “I still live with the same people, in an apartment in Wicker Park—I didn’t move to LA,” he says. “I still work with pretty much the same people; I pretty much have the same daily routine. It’s kept me grounded.”

Rhomberg got interested in music through skateboarding. After classes at Oak Park and River Forest High School, he’d usually hit a neighborhood skate park, and the skate

videos he watched were often soundtracked with hip-hop—before long, he was mainlining the likes of Eric B. & Rakim, MF Doom, Gang Starr, the Beastie Boys, and Kanye West. When he was about 14, a friend started making mashups using Final Cut Pro. “I was like, ‘Wow, this looks easy,’” he says. “‘You’re just throwing this stuff together—it’s more math than some higher knowledge of musical theory.’” Within a year Rhomberg was

use a bass to do something a bass wouldn’t normally do, not because I was trying to be groundbreaking, but I just did not know what a bass did,” Rhomberg says. “I was misusing everything, but in a pretty interesting way.”

By 2010 he’d finished what he describes as the first track to reflect his evolving identity as a musician, called “Shark Attack.”

“It’s really chill—it was the first song I sang on,” he says. “The satisfaction I earned

KNOX FORTUNE WITH LIDO AND PETER COTTONTALE, GRAPETOOTH Mon 11/13, 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, sold out, all-ages

tinkering with a digital audio program called Reason 4. “It felt like an extension of a video game,” he says. “It was fun, but you actually wound up with something at the end that was real, as opposed to playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 for five hours and coming away being like, ‘I beat it!’”

His brother Mark compares Rhomberg’s early tracks to the Zelda soundtrack and other video-game music. “I didn’t have a straightforward musical knowledge—I would

from singing on something and hearing it become a complete thing actually was what made me comfortable with my voice.”

After graduating from OPRF in 2010, Rhomberg stayed in Oak Park. “I didn’t think about college,” he says. “Everybody else was so stressed about it senior year. I was like, ‘I don’t want to be stressed out about this.

I don’t think I wanna go immediately to a Big Ten school or something.’” Instead he worked for his father’s company, Northern

Lighting & Power, and took general education classes at Triton College, a two-year school in nearby River Grove.

“All my friends had gone to college, and they were having the time of their lives freshman year,” he says. “But it was nice, because if I had gone to one of those bigger schools, my life could’ve been completely different. I met Vic and all those guys while in community college.”

By “Vic” he means Vic Mensa, who was still in Kids These Days at the time. Rhomberg knew Cody Kazarian, who managed the band and now manages Vic as a solo artist—they’d grown up in overlapping social circles, though they didn’t really become friends till after high school, when a buddy of Rhomberg’s roomed with Kazarian at DePaul.

That connection turned out to be an important one. In 2011, Kazarian played Rhomberg’s beats for Mensa and Kids These Days trumpeter Nico Segal (formerly Donnie Trumpet). The next day, Mensa and Segal asked Rhomberg to help them out at a studio called See Music—and the studio’s creative director, Chuck Bein, hired him on the spot.

Rhomberg’s first job was engineering Segal’s solo debut, the EP Donnie Trumpet, which would come out in 2013.

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continued from 25 Rhomberg worked at See Music for three years. “They would let me do after-hours stuff, but I wasn’t really making money,” he says. “I think the studio owner was giving Vic and Nico deals, ’cause we were young. His way around doing that was, like, ‘If you’re not gonna pay a lot of money, then you can’t get me, but you can get Kevin—he’ll do it for free.’”

Rhomberg cared more about access to the studio than about money—he’d decided he wanted to be a hip-hop producer, and See Music gave him a place to do it. Working outside one didn’t always pan out: “Vic and I were trying to record in Cody’s bedroom while he was out of town, and we were up till, like, 3 AM,” Rhomberg says. “We were calling the Avid hotline—the company that makes Pro Tools—at three in the morning, like, ‘Why does the mike not work?’ And they were like, ‘We don’t know. That’s a signal-chain thing.’” Rhomberg was friends as well as professional partners with Mensa, and through him got close to other future collaborators, including Joey Purp and Kami.

“We were in the studio one of the first couple times we met, and I realized he looked like Daniel Radcliffe,” Kami says. “We was trying to kick it right after the studio, ’cause we got out pretty early. It was funny because I was telling people, ‘Yo, this is Daniel Radcliffe, but he has a throat infection—he can’t talk right now.’ He’d be playing along and only say, like, one word in a British accent. People would believe us. And we instantly became friends.”

Their compatibility was aesthetic as well as social. “It was just crazy to see somebody approach making music the same way we were,” Kami says. “He wasn’t sending me, like, obvious beats. He was sending me challenging beats that were still amazing.”

Kami and Joey Purp recruited Rhomberg for their first full-length mixtape as Leather Corduroys, 2015’s Season. The four tracks where he’s sole producer are among its best and most stylistically adventurous, with ingenious touches such as the industrial clank of “RMS/Launch” and the wistful reversed melody on “Badmon.” Season features vocal contributions from only two guests: Chance the Rapper and Rhomberg, who appears on the Krautrock-flavored club cut “Remember Me” (which he also produced).

As Rhomberg became entrenched in Chicago’s hip-hop community, he also beavered away on his own nonrap projects. He worked intermittently with high school friends on an indie-pop project called Edith Beake, which got a bit of buzz in 2013 from well-known

“I didn’t move to LA. I still work with pretty much the same people; I pretty much have have the same daily routine. It’s kept me grounded.”

—Kevin Rhomberg, aka Knox Fortune

music blogs, including Passion of the Weiss and Gorilla vs. Bear, but disbanded that same year. They never played live—their lineup was two producers and a drummer—but Rhomberg says they were invited to open for Twin Shadow at the Logan Square Auditorium. Edith Beake released just three songs, and today the only one I can find online is a glistening down-tempo 12-inch mix of “Always in Love,” on the Soundcloud account for UK blog Not Many Experts.

About four years ago, when Rhomberg was using the name Fume Fort, he released a beat tape called Stolen Goods, which consisted of finished instrumentals he’d saved before someone stole his backpack full of production equipment while he went skating near Wrigley Field. “I put my backpack down—it had my computer, hard drive, a MIDI keyboard, so much stuff,” he says. “It was just horrible.” He uploaded Stolen Goods to Bandcamp, but its tracks weren’t all that useful as raw material—he’d lost the stems and work files needed to remix them. That release, like much of Rhomberg’s earlier solo material, is also missing from the Web now—after Vic Mensa christened him Knox Fortune in 2012, he deleted everything he’d made under other names to avoid confusing audiences.

Over the past decade Rhomberg has had a lot of trouble with losing gear, and most of it he can’t blame on a thief. He spilled water on one laptop while he was asleep, and he dropped another down a flight of stairs. He’s currently on laptops five and six, and the fifth—which he uses to DJ—was a Christmas gift in 2015 from Joey Purp and Social Experiment bandleader Peter Cottontale, who

bought it from Chance’s assistant, Colleen Mares. But Rhomberg sees every time he’s busted a laptop as an opportunity to improve his production skills—in many cases, he’s had to step up his game to adapt to the updated versions of his favorite production software that he installs on a new machine.

He started working on the material that would become Paradise after he spilled coffee on a laptop in 2014. Counterintuitively, that accident helped his productivity. While studying audio engineering at Columbia College (he graduated in 2015), he was also working at LPZ Studios in the Fulton River District, which was suddenly the only place he had reliable access to a computer. “I had to go to the studio I worked at just to do anything—even to do homework,” he says.

“Go to the studio super late, do a paper, and then work on stuff for, like, four hours. I was already there, so I was like, ‘Might as well just work on music.’”

Rhomberg cobbled together Paradise from a few years’ worth of songs. The oldest is the sedate “Stun” (featuring Joey Purp), which he says he finished around the time Season came out in January 2015. But the track that convinced him he could make an entire full-length is the first Paradise single, “Help Myself,” which he released this past April. “It stood out to me as, like, ‘I like this, I would listen to this even if it weren’t me,’” he says. “‘How can I bring all of my other songs to this caliber?’”

One thing that elevates “Help Myself” is the guest musicians: multi-instrumentalist and Sza collaborator Carter Lang on acoustic guitar, Ohmme cofounder Macie Stewart on strings, and Colin Croom of Twin Peaks on organ. Though Rhomberg is no stranger to collaboration, he was initially reluctant to bring outsiders into his own songs. “I was always really guarded about my music,” he says. “Like, ‘I think this sounds distinct because it’s exclusively me and that’s what makes it distinct.’ But then I realized I could only do so much.”

Rhomberg also had reservations about releasing his own material, since he’d seen the big changes disrupting the lives of his friends who’d found fame—for the first time, he saw it as a real possibility that he’d become successful enough to be stripped of his relative anonymity. “I’m not a super out-there sort of person,” he says. “I do enjoy privacy.”

Fortunately, his friends encouraged him. Kami, whose April retro-synth album Just Like the Movies Rhomberg executive produced, remembers a birthday party in 2013 when Rhomberg played him the stillunreleased track “80 Oz of OE.” “It was the

best thing I ever heard—it was the thing that I wanted to listen to all day,” he says. He tried to convince Rhomberg to do something with his music, even though he knew his friend would have to take that step himself. “I think he just found his comfort, especially doing the Chance record,” he says. “I think he was just finally, like, ‘What else can I do?’”

Rhomberg’s connections to Kami and the rest of the Save Money crew have drawbacks as well as advantages—they’ve opened lots of doors and created lots of opportunities for him, but they’ve also kept him stuck in the shadow of his more famous friends. When he released the first Paradise singles, the media write-ups he got usually described him in terms of his links to Chance and Joey Purp, even though his solo music has little in common with the work he’s done with them.

(Rhomberg executive produced Purp’s breakout 2016 mixtape, iiiDrops.) Because his most prominent associations are with rappers, his music often ended up on sites whose audiences expected him to release hip-hop.

“I would drop singles and they would get picked up by, like, HotNewHipHop,” Rhomberg says. “People would be like, ‘These suck.’ Duh, you’re not gonna like this song, ’cause it’s on HotNewHipHop. If you saw on HotNewHipHop a new Toro y Moi song or something, people would be like, ‘What is this?’” Rhomberg considered changing his pseudonym again to create a new space for his solo output, but he’s hoping that the pop-centric Paradise will work to broaden what the name “Knox Fortune” means instead.

Rhomberg headlines a sold-out show at Lincoln Hall on Monday, November 13—a belated release party for Paradise and his first time performing Knox Fortune material live.

He’s no stranger to the stage—he’s toured as Joey Purp’s DJ for a couple years, and he frequently spins records around town—but he’s never been the main attraction. Peter Cottontale and Norwegian rapper-producer Lido will both be part of his band, though their rigorous schedules mean Rhomberg will have to build a different group to tour.

Paradise came together piecemeal across three years, but Rhomberg made sure to give it a stable thematic and emotional center. “I chose to stick with timeless elements—lovesong-type stuff—stuff that I knew I would never change my mind about,” he says. “This was thinking about, like, human things that everybody deals with—broad topics, but also talking about them with honesty.” v

v @imLeor NOVEMBER 2, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 27

MISTER HEAVENLY

NOV 11

BLITZEN TRAPPER

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MINOR MOON

THE CORONAS

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JAN 12-13

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TWO FEET

FEB 25

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BRASSTRACKS

MAR 24

ANNA BURCH

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SONREAL

NOV 18

NOMO

NOV 24

MORNING TELEPORTATION

NOV 28

JESSICA ANDREA

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NOV 30

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THE DEARS

MAR 21

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Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week of November 2

MUSIC

b ALL AGES F

THURSDAY2 Jack Cooper A. Savage headlines; Jack Cooper and Ethers open. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $12, $10 in advance. 21+

PICK OF THE WEEK

Kelela conjures dreamlike intimacy on her debut album, Take Me Apart

KELELA, LAFAWNDAH

Jack Cooper, best known as half of UK guitar-pop combo Ultimate Painting, turns inward on his solo debut, Sandgrown (Trouble in Mind). The album is charming and low-key, with songs that reflect on his teen years in Blackpool, England—specifically the summers he spent working menial jobs in the seaside resort town. Observing how tourists came and went with little thought to the town’s life and experiences during its long off-seasons, Cooper conveys a sense of broken-down hopelessness with unadorned beauty. Sandgrown was recorded on a four-track tape machine, enhancing its handcrafted feel. A stripped-down group tinkers behind Cooper on most of the nine tunes, but the focal point is his conversational delivery, which recalls Lou Reed’s most intimate, hooky tunes with the Velvet Underground. Simple guitar patterns cast spells, while Cooper’s tender voice caresses and lulls. Each song feels like a bittersweet entry in a diary the singer stumbled upon a decade after escaping his hometown to explore bigger possibilities, but rather than sounding naive, they come across as observant in an untouched, bitingly sincere fashion. Cooper’s touring band features Parquet Courts guitarist Andrew Savage, Jarvis Taveniere on bass, and Aaron Neveu on drums (the latter two both play in Woods). —PETER MARGASAK J

ò DANIEL SANNWALD

Mon 11/6, 8 PM, the Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park, sold out. 18+

R&B SINGER-SONGWRITER Kelela Mizanekristos, a D.C.-area native who was raised by Ethiopian parents and performs and records under her first name, makes music that sounds like it could’ve emerged from a dream. On her new debut album, Take Me Apart (Warp), she sings with an hard-to-place otherworldly quality—her vocals are both ethereal and exact; she cuts a striking presence even as it feels as though you could run your fingers through the plume of her layered and overdubbed melodies. Kelela also has an ear for blending outre electronic instrumentation that seems to swoon

under her powerful voice. The collage of percussion on “Truth or Dare”—a smidgen of 808s along with finger snaps and sparse whacks of marching-band toms put together by UK producers Jam City and Kwes—provides just the right nudge to accentuate the sensual thrill in her lyrical exploration of romantic agency and equality. Throughout Take Me Apart, Kelela asks her listeners to meet her in the middle in order to feel the full gravity of its most intimate moments—fortunately, it’s quite easy to get wrapped up in. —LEOR GALIL

Jack Cooper ò TSOUNI COOPER

NOVEMBER 2, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 29

MUSIC Big Tymers ò COURTESY THE ARTIST

continued from 29

FRIDAY3 Tyler Childers William Matheny opens.

10 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, sold out. 18+ I can’t say I mind the recent shift of young country singer-songwriters embracing the 70s as creative inspiration—the tar-black darkness of Jamie Johnson or the cosmic vibes of Sturgill Simpson are both good examples. There’s something about the music these folks are making that doesn’t feel retro; the way their acoustic guitars, pedal steels, and rhythms support their observation-rich storytelling feels timeless. Earlier this summer Tyler Childers entered the fray with his impressive Simpson-produced debut album, Purgatory (Hickmen Holler/Thirty Tigers). Childers sings with a deep, natural twang that seems to be scuffed by a recurring catch in his throat, and it makes some of the extreme behavior he describes in his lyrics sound believable; on “Banded Clovis,” the narrator recalls how, drunk and high and “broke ass and busted,” he killed a friend

30 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 2, 2017

for an old Native American arrowhead. On the bluegrass-driven title track he pleads with his lover to pray for him, as he feels she is his “only hope for heaven.” Childers’s bad boys may have a weakness for vice, but they also have a conscience. Purgatory features a killer band including Simpson on guitar, onetime Del McCoury bassist Mike Bub, Nashville fiddler Stuart Duncan, and pedal steel whiz Russ Pahl. Rather than sounding like they’re all phoning in yet another recording session, the veterans bring real spark to their arrangements and playing.

—PETER MARGASAK

SATURDAY4 Big Tymers Part of Fake Shore Drive’s tenth anniversary party. Tee Grizzley opens. 8 PM, Portage Theater, 4050 N. Milwaukee, $15. 18+ In February, when Chance the Rapper won his first Grammy (Best Rap Performance for “No Problem”), the first thing he uttered when he accepted the award was “Yo, Andrew Barber.” The story

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MUSIC

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

reflector of Chicago hip-hop, I wouldn’t be shocked if the list of surprise performers was longer than this preview. —LEOR GALIL

Chicago Opera Theater presents Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Consul 7:30 PM, Studebaker Theater, Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan, $45-$145. b

Kacy & Clayton ò DANE ROY behind that shout-out starts a decade ago: At a time when few outlets cared about Chicago’s rap exports (beyond maybe Kanye West), Barber launched a blog called Fake Shore Drive with the sole intent of covering the city’s hip-hop scene. Since then, he’s engrained the site into the local music community like no one else, in part because of his passion for covering both up-and-coming and veteran artists, some of whom were so unknown outside the scene that to say they were ignored by the media would wrongly suggest folks were even paying attention.

Since Fake Shore Drive’s inception, it’s branched out from Chicago to cover the midwest at large, and Barber has also found ways to support the scene beyond the blog. Over the past several years he’s partnered with Red Bull Sound Select for showcases that pair rising local rappers with national heavyweights. In celebration of the site’s tenth anniversary, tonight is a supersize version of its usual festivities. Bryan “Birdman” Williams and Byron “Mannie Fresh” Thomas—who helped transform Wil-

End the year on a high note.

liams’s Cash Money Records from a New Orleans regional rap concern into a mammoth international hitmaker and one of the most successful labels in hip-hop history—make their return as Big Tymers.

This will be their first live performance in roughly a decade, though cuts such as “Still Fly” remain firmly embedded in hip-hop’s DNA. Detroit rapper Tee Grizzley opens the night. On his recent studio debut, My Moment (300/Atlantic), he stretches his rugged flow over smooth, radio-friendly R&B instrumentals (“Day Ones,” “Real Niggas”), and takes noticeable pleasure doling out lyrically gritty, cumbersome bars on big-footed bass on the single “First Day Out.” In the past plenty of Chicago MCs have popped up at FSD showcases for unannounced performances—I still remember when King Louie appeared at the Double Door in May 2016 for an impromptu short set before Soulja Boy—he’d been shot in the head roughly five months before, and the crowd went wild when he took the stage.

Considering that tonight’s party is an important

It’s hard to think of an opera more timely for 2017 than The Consul, which was first performed in 1950. Composer and librettist Gian Carlo Menotti’s expressive meld of words and music—both lyrical and dissonant—tells the story of a family trapped by an unresponsive bureaucracy as they desperately try to escape a nameless “large European city” in a violent police state. Born in Italy, Menotti came to America at age 17 and stayed for 30 successful years before returning to Europe. He wrote The Consul in the wake of World War II, when hundreds of thousands of people were still living in postwar displaced persons camps; it won a Pulitzer Prize the year of its debut, during a time when fear of fascism and communism (but especially the latter) fueled a climate of suspicion in the United States— and its portrayal of political limbo speaks to the refugee crises of today. This Chicago Opera Theater production features a major international star, the admirable soprano Patricia Racette, in the central role of Magda Sorel, a woman stranded for lack of a visa while her husband (sung by baritone Justin Ryan) is hunted by local authorities and her baby is critically ill. Andreas Mitisek, who led COT from 2012 through last summer, is back as director. (The show is a coproduction with Long Beach Opera, which Mitisek still heads.) Kristof van Grysperre conducts. Expect it to be excruciating and memorable. —DEANNA ISAACS

SUNDAY5 kacy & Clayton Thompson Springs opens.

8 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, $15, $13 in advance. 18+ When I first heard the music of Saskatchewan cousins Kacy Anderson and Clayton Linthicum, J

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11.29 EKALI

MEDASIN / JUDGE

12.02 THE WHITE BUFFALO ALICE DRINKS THE KOOL AID

STAND TOGETHER 2017 - NIGHT ONE

12.09 EL FAMOUS

DEADSHIPS / RYNO / VCTMS / SKYLINES STAND TOGETHER 2017 - NIGHT TWO

12.10 EL FAMOUS

DAVLIN / SPIT / ERABELLA RIOT FEST PRESENTS

12.15 THE LAWRENCE ARMS

3RD ANNUAL WAR ON X-MAS “MIDNIGHT MASS” TEENAGE BOTTLEROCKET BLOOD PEOPLE

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3RD ANNUAL WAR ON X-MAS “SEXY XMAS” NOTHINGTON SASS DRAGONS

12.17 THE SPILL CANVAS WILD / SUPER WHATEVR

“SO MUCH BEWTEEN US” 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

12.23 INEPT 12.31 MURDER BY DEATH THE LIFE AND TIMES

01.17 ANTI-FLAG & STRAY FROM THE PATH THE WHITE NOISE / SHARPTOOTH

02.02 AVATAR

THE BRAINS / HELLZAPOPPIN

03.01 GABRIELLE APLIN 03.17 CLAN OF XYMOX www.bottomlounge.com 1375 w lake st 312.666.6775

32 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 2, 2017

continued from 31

who’ve been performing folk music together as Kacy & Clayton since they were children, I found it a bit too polished; it summoned the spirit of Judy Collins more than Anne Briggs. But something about the duo’s third album, last year’s Strange Country (New West), transformed my initial opinion. There was an earnestness to the songs; it was clear the duo weren’t trying to pretend to be OG folkies, and that self-awareness came through when Anderson sang lyrics such as “Because everything I’m doing has already been done,” in “If You Ask How I’m Keeping.” Kacy & Clayton’s fantastic new release, The Siren’s Song, was recorded with bassist Shuyler Jansen and drummer Mike Silverman girding Linthicum’s guitar and the cousins’ exquisite vocal harmonies, and was produced in Chicago with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, who deftly toughens up the combo’s attack; the end result falls somewhere between the sound of Fairport Convention and the Jefferson Airplane.

Still, the arrangements would be nothing without Anderson’s stunningly clear and precise singing, which inhabits songs ruminating on loneliness and rejection. As in classic folk material, the themes are universal, but the details are unique to these songs: “Cannery Yard” laments how a stretch of the singer’s neighborhood is scarred by a suicide; withering midtempo folk-rocker “The Light of Day” channels the sadness of a much older woman lamenting a decision not to follow her heart earlier in her life.

The artistic growth on The Siren’s Song is impressive and heralds a bright future, but Kacy & Clayton have already earned my attention. —PETER MARGASAK

OMni Facs and Gentle Leader XIV open.

9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $12, $10 in advance. 21+ On its tensile second album, Multi-Task (Trouble in Mind), Atlanta trio Omni continues to serve up wiry postpunk without a wasted gesture, summoning a sound built on twitchy rhythms and lean melodic armatures. Singer and bassist Philip Frobos unfurls existentially tinged lyrics with little sense of ceremony, occasionally accenting a line or a phrase with a well-placed dip or hiccup in his voice. Once again the taut rhythms sculpted by guitarist Frankie

Broyles—who got his start playing in Deerhunter and who doubles on drums on the new record (drummer Doug Bleichner has since joined the group)—recall the hyperactive sound of Scotland’s Postcard Records, particularly the manic drive of bands like Josef K and the Fire Engines. Still, there’s something distinctly American about the clenched, nervous drawl and reticence of Frobos’s singing.

Omni has developed its sound since it released Deluxe last year; many of its new songs have more explicit melodic thrusts than their predecessors, such as the sweetly chiming guitars on “Equestrian” or the tentative, awkward vocal curves that slink into the otherwise jagged “Date Night.” The emotional remove at Omni’s core doesn’t ever feel like boredom or perfunctoriness so much as resemble an anxiety that seems appropriate given the world we currently find ourselves in. —PETER MARGASAK

Lee Ranaldo Joshua Abrams Natural Information Society opens. 8:30 PM, Subterranean, 2011 N. North, $17, $15 in advance. 21+ Lee Ranaldo has always had literary predilections.

During his years in Sonic Youth he was the guy who’d often unleash quasi-Beat language in carefully spoken rushes, and in recent years his solo projects have made it obvious that he was the source of his previous band’s classic-rock flirtations. Both of those qualities are slathered all over Electric Trim (Mute), his latest album with his working band the Dust—guitarist Alan Licht, bassist Tim Luntzel, and drummer Steve Shelley, his former Sonic Youth cohort. Sharon Van Etten provides gorgeous, simpatico vocal harmonies on most of the songs, and a number of high-profile musicians, including guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Kid Millions, make cameo appearances. About half of Electric Trim features lyrics Ranaldo cowrote with popular novelist and essayist Jonathan Lethem. Among them is “Uncle Skeleton,” which neither of them should’ve allowed to reach the public. Over a moody opening groove with characteristically dreamy lead guitar, Ranaldo intones, “We’re coming in for a landing . . . all right, here we go.” He then abuses the old spiritual “Dem Bones”—try not cringe when he sings

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Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

“The face bone’s connected to the hand bone / Bite the hand the skeleton feeds” in an attempt to convey some notion that flesh is impermanent and deceptive while bones are the real deal. Despite these occasional recitations and overly ponderous lyrics, the music arrives as one of the most graceful and lovely things Ranaldo has ever created. “Let’s Start Again” is awash in stinging orchestral guitar textures and plangent brass from Xavi de la Salud, while “Purloined” sparkles within a thudding groove and a lovely, soulfully delivered melody. —PETER MARGASAK

MUSIC

dle (see: “Other Voices”). Even a headier track like “How Do You Sleep?”—which is steadied by a dark electro pulse as Murphy wails in the background— percolates and bristles thanks to LCD’s steadfast allegiance to their eclectic percussive elements.

Which is all to say, the rhythms are still fun and interesting, and as a cut like “Emotional Haircut” shows from its title on down, Murphy and LCD have retained the acumen to write tongue-in-cheek yarns that boogie along with an air of self-aware pretension. That’s really what the band does best, and, well, it’s nice that they’re still doing it. —KEVIN WARWICK

MONDAY6

TUESDAY7

Kelela See Pick of the Week on page 29.

Lafawndah opens. The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park, sold out. 18+

LCD Soundsystem See Monday. 7:30 PM, Aragon, 1106 W. Lawrence, $56.75, sold out. b

LCD Soundsystem See also Tuesday and Thursday. 7:30 PM, Aragon, 1106 W. Lawrence, $56.75, sold out. b It feels like it was yesterday when dance-punk top dog James Murphy bid adieu to LCD Soundsystem, his often cheeky—but also often pensive—mutating hit machine of the 2000s. Maybe that’s because 2011, the year the band split, doesn’t seem too far gone, and 2015 (when they officially reunited) feels like last week—or maybe we pray that it does? The new LCD album, American Dream (Columbia), affirms that even though it’s the band’s second round, Murphy still hasn’t shaken his desire to reflect on his own coolness while standing behind a microphone.

That’s just fine, because he can still write stuttering hooks that are simultaneously beholden to the subtlety of NYC’s great art-punks Liquid Liquid or the Talking Heads and big enough that a glitzed-out disco ball could be dropped smack-dab in the mid-

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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 5 7PM

Slaughter Beach, dog Shannen Moser and Emily Jane Powers open. 8 PM Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, $14, $12 in advance. 17+

Richard Shindell

Jake Ewald, best known as a guitarist and singer for Philly fourth-wave-emo heartthrobs Modern Baseball, launched this solo project under inauspicious circumstances a couple years ago—he’d hit a wall with the personal, almost diaristic songs he was writing for his main band. So he uprooted his imagination from the soil of his own day-to-day and instead populated a fictional town called Slaughter Beach, bringing it to life in euphoric, slightly rambunctious rock songs that make a beeline for the heart as surely as any Modern Baseball tune. Now that Ewald’s main band is on hiatus, having said good-bye with a few hometown shows last month, he’s focusing on Slaughter Beach, Dog, which just dropped its second album, Birdie (Lame-O). It’s more acoustic than the first SBD album, suggesting a deference to the easygoing affectations of 70s country—espe- J

Liz Vice

In Szold Hall

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9 8PM In Szold Hall

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10 7PM

Cassandra Wilson and Liam Ó Maonlaí with special guests

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11 5 & 8PM

Dar Williams

In concert including a reading and discussion from her new book, What I found In A Thousand Towns

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11 8PM

Lera Lynn

In Szold Hall

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 12 7PM

Peter Himmelman with special guest Heather Stryka

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 12 7PM

Tom Rush

In Szold Hall

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11/2 11/3 11/10

Special Thursday Jam – Welcome the New Songbook Global Dance Party: Milonga Cumparsita with DJ Charrua Global Dance Party: Carpacho y su Super Combo

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Omni ò SEBASTIAN WEISS

Yassir Chediak Élage Diouf

OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG NOVEMBER 2, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 33

MUSIC

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

Mariza ò CARLOS RAMOS

continued from 33

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cially its smooth, drawling slide guitars. Emo still dominates Ewald’s musical vocabulary, of course, to the extent that I’m pretty sure the chorus for “Fish Fry” (which includes the lyrics “Delaware, where oh where are we”) is a twist on the line “Delaware are you aware of the air supply” from the Promise Ring’s “Is This Thing On?” It’s nice to see Ewald nod to emo’s past while he rambles down whatever path he’s clearing to its future. —LEOR GALIL

WEDNESDAY8 LCD Soundsystem See Monday. 7:30 PM, Aragon, 1106 W. Lawrence, $56.75. b mariza Up Close & Personal opens. 8 PM, City Winery, 1200 W. Randolph, $45-$65. b

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ota.org

orthoinfo.org

Portuguese singer Mariza has built an impressive career essaying and stretching the sound of fado.

Arguably the most celebrated indigenous music of Portugal, fado is traditionally played on acoustic guitar, bass, and trebly 12-string Portuguese guitar, with plaintive vocals that express saudade—a deep, melancholic sense of longing that is ineffably tied to the

Portuguese spirit. Since she rose to fame at the start of the century Mariza has toggled between embracing fado in its purest form—following the lead of the genre’s ultimate diva, Amalia Rodrigues—and more modern pop sounds. Her 2011 album Fado Tradicional explicitly delved into her roots, but in 2015 she counterbalanced that excursion with her most commercial and expansive record to date, Mundo (Nonesuch). That album marks her second collaboration with the producer and composer Javier Limón, who’s found great success applying a sophisticated pop veneer to modern flamenco artists such as Buika and Niño Josele. There are moments of bracing directness on the new album, such as the opener, “Rio de Mágoa,” or Mariza’s take on the Rodrigues classic “Anda O Sol Na Minha Rua,” where her phrasing and tonal control are beyond compare. She also serves up a stirring version of the Carlos Gardel tango “Caprichosa.” But the presence of drums and keyboards on many of Mundo’s songs, to say nothing of a more Western flavor, leaves little doubt that Mariza wants to expand her reach to wider audiences rather than cater strictly to traditionalists. I’m not crazy about the glossy finish Limón applies to a version of “Padoce de Céu Azul,” a poppy Cape Verdean mourna previously recorded by the great singer Lura, but the crystalline beauty and precision of Mariza’s voice is so riveting I don’t mind. —PETER MARGASAK v

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FOOD & DRINK

PORTSMITH | $$$ R 660 N. State 312-202-6050 portsmithchicago.com

A pair of lightly charred jumbo shrimp were so sweet and silky that the horseradish cocktail sauce accompanying them was essentially unnecessary. ò GREG MOHR

RESTAURANT REVIEW

Portsmith is a safe harbor for quality seafood The Fifty/50 Group brings an ocean-focused menu to the Dana Hotel.

By JULIA THIEL

D

espite plenty of examples to the contrary, hotel restaurants have a reputation for being stodgy and overpriced, the last resort of business travelers with expense accounts who are too tired to venture out in search of more interesting options. (To be fair, there are also plenty of mediocre or downright bad hotel restaurants.) The Dana Hotel has struggled for the last ten years to figure out what works in its restaurant space, starting with Ajasteak, a steak and sushi spot that was later rebranded as Aja. That was followed

by Argent, then by Freestyle Food & Drink, which the hotel managed itself instead of bringing in a restaurant group as it had done for the previous concepts. With Portsmith, the Dana returns to partnering with a restaurant group: the Fifty/50 Group, which first branched out into hotel fine dining last year with Steadfast (in the Kimpton Gray Hotel) after building its brand on its namesake sports bar and the Roots minichain of pizzerias.

The Fifty/50 is also behind Apogee, which in May replaced Vertigo Sky Lounge as the hotel’s rooftop bar, and Leviathan, a cocktail bar on the mezzanine level that overlooks Portsmith (see page TK). That means that Fifty/50 beverage director Benjamin Schiller (the Sixth, the Berkshire Room) created the drink menus, which at both bars are varied and inventive. Portsmith’s cocktail list is more traditional and quite brief: a martini, a mojito, and twists on an old-fashioned and a Sea Breeze. The mojito and the old-fashioned (here called the Westin and made with bourbon,

Aperol, walnut liqueur, and allspice) are solid renditions of classics—and if it’s creativity you’re after, Leviathan is just up the stairs. The well-curated wine and beer lists are just a bit longer, and our server was familiar enough with them to guide our beverage choices.

Portsmith, helmed by chef Nate Henssler (Homestead on the Roof), specializes in seafood—another concept that’s often maligned, in this case because several hundred miles lie between Chicago and the nearest ocean. The decor references nautical themes without being kitschy or hokey. If you weren’t looking for them, you might miss them entirely. A wood design on the mirrors suggests a ship’s rigging, abstract art on one wall is evocative of barnacles, and the fabric on the banquettes is a deep sea blue.

The space is open and airy, striking a balance between fancy and casual that means neither jeans nor suits look out of place.

Portsmith’s website boasts that the restaurant believes in restraint, a “less is more” approach—and, unusually, the menu mostly bears out that claim. A pair of lightly charred jumbo shrimp were so sweet and silky that the horseradish cocktail sauce accompanying them was essentially unnecessary. A bowl of tender marinated and grilled squid, served chilled with nothing more than olive oil, lemon, and pepper, had me puzzling over what the secret ingredient might be. I finally concluded that it was the olive oil adding layers of vegetal flavor to the dish and the warm spice was nothing more than freshly ground black pepper.

Seared halibut was even less adorned, and while it could’ve used a little more acidity and salt, the simplicity of the preparation let the meaty flavor of the fish shine through. Unfortunately, some of the beans that accompanied the fish were undercooked, leaving them chalky and hard, while the romanesco was slightly bitter and acrid. An equally simple appetizer of raw hamachi was cut into tiny cubes and served with petite pieces of golden beet, an odd pairing in which the earthy root vegetable nearly overwhelmed the fish’s delicate, perfect flavor. Bao with king crab (Portsmith’s take on a lobster roll) is as delicious as anything drenched in brown butter should be, but the butter and mayo drown the subtleties of J the crab.

NOVEMBER 2, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 35

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36 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 2, 2017

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Brioche filled with cream cheese and topped with smoked salmon, caviar, and edible flowers ò GREG MOHR

continued from 36 Other than those minor missteps, however, the rest of the dishes were flawless. The cheeseless cacio e pepe tasted creamy and cheesy thanks to the addition of uni butter, which together with a sprinkle of caviar gave the pasta a slightly briny flavor. Both the scallops with pork belly and ahi tuna with seared foie gras were a study in contrasts, with the fresher and lighter flavor of the fish sparring pleasantly with the richer, fattier meat (or organ meat).

The two-inch-thick chunk of tuna, seared on the outside and perfectly raw everywhere else, came with a bordelaise sauce made with Luxardo amaro along with the creamy foie gras. The seared scallops and lightly charred pork belly were served atop a smear of lemongrass-carrot puree that tasted purely (and oddly) of lemon zest, with a refreshing tangle of green papaya that acted like a palate cleanser between bites.

Bread service and dessert is in the capable hands of Chris Teixeira, a Fifty/50 veteran who’s served as pastry chef for Homestead on the Roof and Steadfast. Like many new restaurants, Portsmith charges for bread, offering rolls a la carte for $2 apiece. Each comes with a different butter: a fluffy cheddar Parker House roll gets Old Bay butter; crusty sourdough with bonito flakes is accompanied by a mildly funky black garlic butter that goes beautifully with the mildly fishy bonito. Brioche with smoked salmon and caviar is a bigger portion, intended for two people—but you’ll have to split it yourself, a slightly messy process that

squishes the flaky pastry. It’s rich and decadent, filled with cream cheese and topped with gold leaf and edible flowers, and I wish I could eat it for breakfast every morning.

Desserts are where Portsmith strays from its philosophy of restraint. Each is inspired by a country that borders one of the seven seas, and the ones we tried each involved at least a halfdozen elements. They were all beautiful, both in appearance and in their flavor combinations, but after the simplicity of the savory dishes it was a shock to the system to try to appreciate mango bavaroise, coconut ganache, black rice ice cream, pieces of crunchy puffed black rice, little pieces of mango, and mango gel all at the same time. That one’s called Philippines, while Greece pairs phyllo cake with ground pistachio and tart frozen yogurt for a dessert that evokes the flavors of baklava without any actual phyllo dough. The desserts for lunch are more traditional—key lime pie, creme brulee—but a chocolate tart filled with gooey caramel was just as fancy as the dinner desserts.

For those who aren’t on an expense account, there’s likely to be some sticker shock at Portsmith; it’s possible to spend a lot of money on very little food. The simplicity of the dishes, though, makes them memorable.

I can still almost taste every bite of seafood I had there. If there’s a place that can change the bad reputation of hotel restaurants, Portsmith may be it. v

v @juliathiel

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LEVIATHAN R 660 N. State, 2nd floor 312-202-6050

Hundreds of bar suggestions are available at chicagoreader.com/ barguide. Bottoms up!

portsmithchicago.com

The Cthulhu is served in a conical glass set on top of a small bowl filled with driftwood and seaweed smoke. ò LEIGH LOFTUS

BAR REVIEW

Leviathan is easy to love, tentacles and all

The sea monster-inspired bar in the Dana Hotel brings the ocean to downtown Chicago.

By JULIA THIEL

C

thulhu is a fictional creature described by H.P. Lovecraft in the short story “The Call of Cthulhu” as a terrible monster that simultaneously resembles an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, with “a pulpy, tentacle head” atop “a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings.” It’s also one of the drinks on the menu at Leviathan, the new bar from the Fifty/50 Group on the mezzanine level of the Dana Hotel adjacent to sister restaurant Portsmouth (see page 35).

Itself inspired by (and named for) another sea monster, Leviathan aims to plumb the depths of the ocean through cocktails.

Those drinks, created by the talented Benjamin Schiller (Apogee, the Sixth, the Berkshire Room), explore various ways to conjure the sea. Some incorporate ingredi-

ents that come from the ocean, like wakame (a type of seaweed), bonito f lakes (thin flakes of dried, smoked fish), or squid ink; many involve rum, which has a long history on sailing ships (until 1970, the Royal Navy gave sailors a daily rum ration). One alcove of the bar looks like it belongs belowdecks on a 19th-century ship, and if you settle into a booth with a glass of rum or Dansk Mjød Viking Blod mead, you can almost feel the roll of the waves. Some care has obviously gone into the beer list, which includes the aforementioned mead and both Finnish and Swedish porters alongside Amstel Light and Stella Artois. In fact, every single aspect of the bar feels carefully considered, right down to the menus—thick leather-bound tomes crafted to look like a ship’s logbooks, with a few pages of menu listings followed by many empty ones

for recording conditions like ocean currents and wind speed and direction.

Anyone familiar with the Sixth and Apogee will be unsurprised to learn that the serving vessels for the cocktails are varied and often unusual. The Below Deck Sazerac arrives in a metal-clad mate gourd that absorbs the wakame-infused absinthe used to rinse the glass and then slowly releases it, causing the drink to evolve slightly over time. It’s a simple cocktail that adds cognac (which was traditionally used in the Sazerac before whiskey replaced it) to the rye; the only other ingredients are simple syrup and Peychaud’s Bitters, but the result is remarkably complex, with flavors that blend so harmoniously it’s hard to pick out much beyond a tingle of spice from the rye and a whisper of brininess from the wakame.

The other standout drink, the Cthulhu, is served in a stemless conical glass set on top of a small bowl filled with driftwood and seaweed smoke, along with some actual dried seaweed and a small metal octopus.

When you lift the glass to take a sip, smoke drifts out (it’s the same concept used for the much-Instagrammed Spaceman Spiff at the Sixth). The cocktail combines rum with single-malt scotch, lemon, and demerara syrup; the tarragon in it is subtle, and so is the peatiness of the scotch (though that may only be in comparison to the actual smoke you’re breathing in while drinking it).

Both the Leviathan and the Kraken are less intense but dangerously drinkable—particularly the latter, which includes three rums, two of them overproof. As you might imagine, it’s a rum drinker’s cocktail, but grapefruit and lime brighten things up, though a crunchy squid-ink tuile has more of a flavor of burnt sugar than ocean. The Leviathan’s combination of rum, ginger, angostura, and mint steer it into tiki territory, but the gin and aquavit add a backbone of herbal anise notes, while the bonito flakes that garnish it add a faintly fishy smokiness.

As I waited at the bar to settle my bill, a hotel guest asked the bartender whether she could order a cocktail to take to her room.

The answer was yes, but it had to be in a plastic cup—which the bartender chilled before pouring in the cocktail. It’s the kind of attention to detail that’s abundantly clear in every other aspect of the bar, and makes me look forward even more to my next visit. v

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v @juliathiel NOVEMBER 2, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 37

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QUALITY ASSURANCE LEAD.

Chicago, IL. Develop, create, modify and test general computer applications software or specialized utility programs. Work with: Object Oriented Programing, Test Planning, Test Automation Development and Technical Troubleshooting. Required: Master’s Degree (US or foreign equivalent) in Engineering/Computer Science/Information Technology and Management/related. Bachelor’s Degree (US or foreign equivalent) in Engineering/Computer Science/ Information Technology and Manage ment/related plus 5 years related, progressive experience will substitute for Master’s Degree in Engineeri ng/Computer Science/Information Technology and Management/ related. Employer will accept any suitable combination of education, training and experience equivalent to a Master’s degree in Engineering/ Computer Science/Information Technology and Management/related. NO PHONE CALLS. Forward resumes to: Arroweye Solutions, Inc., Attn: Mr. Michael Cogan, Ref. AB, 550 W. Washington Blvd., Suite 202, Chicago, IL 60661.

Corporate Accountant, compile financial stmts. Req: Master’s in ac counting/rel. fld. Apply: BV USA LLC, 1680-1682 Carmen Dr, Elk Grove Village, IL60007, Attn HR

38 CHICAGO READER | NOVEMBER 2, 2017

tronc, Inc. is seeking a Software Engineer III in Chicago, IL with the following requirements: Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology and Engineering, Computer Science, or related field or foreign academic equivalent. 5 years of related experience. Required skills: Design & implement solutions based on requirements using Java/J2EE, Spring and Hibernate to integrate multiple systems (5 years); Work with multiple teams across globe (on-site and off-shore) to develop services with Web Services (RESTbased), XML technologies (XPATH, XQuery, XSLT), Elasticsearch (1 year); Implement caching solutions based on Java and open source tools like Memcached and JMeter to test and improve performance of web application (1 year); Work with Subversion (SVN) (1 year), Jenki ns/Hudson (1 year), Maven (2 years) plugins (MOJO) using Yahoo’s YUICompressor and Google’s Closure Compiler modules (1 year) for maintaining custom build process. Submit resume to despaag@tronc.com, subject line must reference K121581.

TRANSUNION, LLC SEEKS Sr.

Analysts - IT-Batch Credit Services for Chicago, IL location to independently collaborate w/internal & external customers to gather & understand business requirements. Master’s in Comp. Sci./Comp. Info. Systems + 2yrs exp. or Bachelor’s in Comp. Sci./Comp. Info. Systems + 5yrs exp. req’d. Skills req’d: exp. with & ability to analyze moderate to complex data using logic & quantitative reasoning, & an intuitive capacity for problem solving, exp. w/ Unix/Linux operating systems, relational databases, data transformation using sw utilities (Ab Initio, Informatica), AutoSys, Control M, delivering high-quality output on time in a fast-paced environment w/ competing priorities. Exp. w/sw development lifecycle & quality assurance, transforming data using various ETL tools. 40% telecommuting permitted. Send resume to: C. Studniarz, REF: SBA, 555 W Adams, Chicago, IL 60661

THE NORTHERN TRUST CO. is

seeking a Data Quality/Data Governance Project Specialist in Chicago IL, with the following requirements: MS in MIS, Comp. Sci. or Info. Tech. and 3 years related experience. Prior exp. must include: design, develop and implement Data Governance or data management initiatives & the Data Policies and Standards (1 yr.); implement Data Dictionaries in IBM InfoSphere Information Server & Information Governance Catalog (1 yr.); utilize Information Analyzer for profiling results, Data Quality rules, thresholds, metrics and other key performance indicators (1 yr.); manage Data Governance or Data Management projects using Microsoft Project (3 yrs.); utilize Agile and Waterfall methodologies to run projects, programs and other operational initiatives (3 yrs.) Please apply online at www.northerntrustcareers. com and search for Req. #17129

TRANSUNION,

LLC

SEEKS

Consultants, Insurance Analytics for Chicago, IL location to apply statistical, analytical skills on all aspects of the insurance value chain. Master’s in Statistics/Applied Mathematics/ related Quantitative field + 2yrs exp. or Bachelor’s in Statistics/Applied Mathematics/ related Quantitative field + 5yrs exp. req’d. Skills req’d: statistical and predictive modeling using linear, logistic and multiple regression, time series, Survival Analysis, variable selection, GLM, tree models, GBM, Cluster analysis, Principal component analysis, Geospatial analysis, feature creation, validation, data mining, text mining, SAS, R, SAS macros, Emblem, SQL, Hadoop, Hive, Pig, Python, C/C++, Java, VBA. Send resume to: C. Studniarz, REF: JL, 555 W Adams, Chicago, IL 60661

TECHNOLOGY ADVISORY MANAGER, QUALITY ASSURANCE & TESTING (MULT. POS.) ,

PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory Services LLC, Chicago, IL. Prvd E2E soln offerings incl. App Devpmt & Intgrtn, App Arch, User Exp, Quality Mgmt & Testing, & help clients determine best apps for their bus. needs. Req. Bach’s deg. or foreign equiv. in Comp Sci, Engg, Bus Admin or rel. + 5 yrs post-bach’s progress. rel. work exp.; OR a Master’s deg. or foreign equiv. in Comp Sci, Engg, Bus Admin or rel. + 3 yrs rel. work exp.

Travel req. up to 80%. Apply by mail, referencing Job Code IL1466, Attn: HR SSC/Talent Management, 4040 W. Boy Scout Blvd, Tampa, FL 33607.

Ashland Glass & Mirror Design, Inc. seeks Operations Managers Chicago, IL location to direct operations, implement admin co policies, incl customer payments, employee & safety policies. Bachelor’s in Business +2yrs exp req’d. Req’d Skills: Must have exp developing co. policies, pricin g/costing analysis by evaluating/ selecting vendors for small & large retail & design jobs ($1500$30K), dev proposals, scheduling jobs, creating & monitoring inventory & client database; monitoring compliance & costs, accurately consolidating & reporting cost statements, P&L, due diligence, reporting monthly & annual close; training staff; Quest. Send resume to: Sam Musa ashlandglas @gmail.com

Sr Developer, Quantitative Trading/Python- Akuna Capital LLC; BS in Compu Sci, Eng, Math or related field + 5 yrs of exp as a Developer or related role that included dvlping applications in python and C++. In lieu of BS + 5 yrs of exp, will accept MS in stated fields + at least 1 yr of exp in developing applications in python & C++. In lieu of MS + 1 yr of exp, employer will accept MS in stated fld with coursework in python & C++. Must pass proprietary exam in Python. Send resume to: Megan Suerth, Akuna Capital LLC 333 S Wabash, Ste 2600, Chicago, IL 60604

Pinterest, Inc. seeks Ad Measurement Lead in Chicago, IL: Design & execute research to help Consumer Packaged Goals & Retail Partners understand & improve the effectiveness of advertising on Pinterest. Conduct indepth stdrd & custom research studies for Pinterest’s partners to analyze advertising effectiveness via a combo of intrnl & extrnl measurement tools. Req’s: MS(or equiv.)+2 yrs. exp. OR BS(or equi v.)+5 yrs. exp. Please mail resume w/ ref. to: Req.#: 16-2287 at: ATTN: Amy Jennison, Pinterest, Inc., 651 Brannan St., San Francisco, CA 94107.

USA COMMERCE, LLC seeks Sales Managers for various & unanticipated worksites throughout the U.S. (HQ: Chicago, IL) to plan & direct the acquisition & distribution of steel scrap in international markets. Master’s in Business/ Economics +2yrs exp OR Bachelor’s in Business/Economics +5yrs exp req’d. Skills req’d: 2 yrs w/steel inspection, loading, & shipping; contract negotiation for heavy metal scrap & plate metal. May telecommute. Send resume to: E. Hardiman, Ref TV, 77 W. Washington St, Ste 600, Chicago, IL 60602.

C++ Developer, Trading Services-Akuna Capital LLC- BS in Compu Sci, Eng, Math or related + 5 yrs of exp as a Developer, Engineer, or related role that included developing applications in C++. In lieu of BS + 5 yrs of exp, will accept MS in stated flds + at least 1yr of exp in stated field, developing applications in C++ or coursework in C++. Send resumes to: Megan Suerth, Akuna Capital LLC 333 S Wabash, Ste 2600, Chicago, IL 60604

TECHNOLOGY ORACLE AMERICA, INC. has openings for APPLICATIONS DEVELOPER positions in Chicago, Illinois. Job duties include: Analyze, design, develop, troubleshoot and debug software programs for commercial or end-user applications.

Write code, complete programming and perform testing and debugging of applications. May telecommute from home. Apply by e-mailing resume to Nitin.Malik@oracle.com, referencing 385.18162.

Oracle supports workforce diversity.

Curriculum Developer: Oversee planning & review of curriculum, including course schedules, course materials, course goals & methodologies for a full immersion foreign language program provider (predominantly Spanish).

Chicago, IL location. Req’s BA in Education & 2 yrs exp as Spanish foreign language teacher. Send resume to: Lango of Chicago South Side, Inc., 5530 S Shore Dr, #19-D, Chicago, IL, 60037, Attn: M. Marshall.

QUALITY ASSURANCE ENGINEER for Vibes Media LLC in Chica-

go, IL conduct testing & analysis of mobile mktg technology; implement methods to improve system functionality; implement QA metrics; ensure applications meet quality standards; analyze user issues; track defects Bachelor’s in Computer Engineering + 1 yr of exp in job off’d req’d Respond CC/Vibes PO Bx 4241 NYC 10163

IMANAGE LLC SEEKS in Chica-

go, IL: Senior Product Manager with MS in Bus Admin or Comp Sci plus 2 yrs post baccalaureate exp in job offered or sub sim pos, or BS in Bus Admin or Comp Sci plus 5 yrs exp in job offered or sub sim pos. Send resume to Peopleops@imanage.com (ref. no. L3149) or Attn: Recruiting, 540 W. Madison St, Ste 300, Chicago, IL 60661.

EVANSTON, PROFESSIONAL, FRIENDLY Dental office is looking

for a quality part-time potentially full time experienced receptionist with the ability and/or desire to help with dental assisting occasionally as needed. The hours initially are M 7:45 - 2, Weds 8:45 - 6, alternating Fridays and the first and third Sat of the month 8-2. Please

SOFTWARE ENGINEER. Jobsite: Chicago, IL. Req. Min.

BS Deg. in Comp. Sci. Elec. Engr. or similar. Req. knowledge or class using ASP.NET or JAVA. Send resume to: 360 Factor Consulting, 401 S. LaSalle #800A, Chicago, IL 60605.

REAL ESTATE RENTALS

STUDIO $500-$599 CHICAGO, BEVERLY/CAL Par k/Blue Island: Studio $625 & up; 1BR $700 & up; 2BR $885 & up.

Heat, Appls, Balcony, Carpet, Laundry, Parking. Call 708-3880170

STUDIO $700-$899 ONE BEDROOM APARTMENT near Loyola Park, 1329 W. Estes.

Hardwood floors. Cats OK. Heat included. Laundry in building. $900950/month. Available 12/1. 773-7614318.

LARGE STUDIO APARTMENT

near Warren Park, 6802 N. Wolcott.

Hardwood floors. Cats OK. Heat included. Laundry in building. Available 12/1. $725/month. 773-761-4318

STUDIO OTHER LARGE SUNNY ROOM w/fridge & microwave. Near Oak Park, Green Line & Buses. 24 hr Desk, Parking Lot $101/week & Up. (773)378-8888 CROSSROADS HOTEL SRO SINGLE RMS Private bath, PHONE,

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

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 FALL

SAVINGS!

NEWLY

Remod. 1 BR Apts $650 w/gas incl.

2-5BR start at $650 & up. Sec 8 Welc. Rental Assistance Prog. for Qualified Applicants offer up to $200 /month for 1 yr. (773)412-1153 Wesley Realty

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 FALL SPECIAL: Studios starting at $499 incls utilities, 1BR $550, 2BR $599, 2BR $699, With approved credit. No Security Deposit for Sec 8 Tenants. South Shore & Southside.

312-656-5066 or 773-287-9999

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

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

FALL SPECIAL - Chicago South

Side Beautiful Studios, 1,2,3 & 4 BR’s, Sec 8 ok. $500 gift cert. for Sec 8 tenants. Also Homes for rent available. 773-287-9999. Westside Locations 773-287-4500

FALL SPECIAL $500 Toward Rent Beautiful Studios 1, 2, 3 & 4 BR

Sect. 8 Welc. Westside Loc, Must qualify. Also Homes for Rent available . 773-287-4500 www.wjmngmt.com

7500 S. DAN RYAN EXPRESS-

WAY near Hyde Park, 1BR 1200S.F., stove & refrigerator included. $600/ mo. Free heat. 2 blocks to the Red Line. John, 773-230-6966

CHICAGO: 67TH & Clyde 3BR apt, sunrm, LR/DR, fpl, hdwd flrs, $950. 55th & Honore bsmt apt, 2BR, $700; Sec 8 welc. 773-4290988.

NEWLY REMOD 1BR & Studios starting at $580. No sec dep, move BR in fee or app fee. Free heat/hot water. 1155 W. 83rd St., 2 MONTHS FREE 6600 S. Ingle773-619-0204 side, 1 & 2 Bedrooms, $850-$1000

1

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

773-637-5957 108TH & PRAIRIE: 1BR $690 &

2BR $785, Newly decorated, heat & appls incl. Section 8 ok. 888-2497971

SOUTHSIDE - 8535 S. Green, 1 & 2 BR Apts, well maintained, hdwd/ crpt flrs, $650-$750/mo, sec dep req. Call 773-874-8451

CHICAGO 70TH & King Dr, 1BR, clean, quiet, well maintained bldg, Lndry, Heat incl. Sec. 8 Ok Starting at $720/mo 773-510-9290 7425 S. COLES - 1 BR $620, 2

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

1 MONTH FREE South Shore Studios $600-$750 Free Heat, Fitness Ctr, Lndry rm. Niki 773.808.

2043 www.livenovo.com CHICAGO - $299 Move In Spe-

cial! 110th & Michigan, 1BR & 2BR Apts, $580-$725/mo. Avail. now Secure building. 1-800-770-0989

û NO SEC DEP û 6829 S. Perry.

Studio/1BR. $465-$525.

HEAT INCL 773-955-5106

Newly updated, clean furnished rooms in Joliet, near buses & Metra, elevator. Utilities included, $91/wk. $395/mo. 815-722-1212 NICE ROOM w/stove, fridge & bath Near Aldi, Walgreens, Beach, Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry. $133/wk & up. 773-275-4442 BIG ROOM with stove, fridge, bath & nice wood floors. Near Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry, Shopping. $121/wk + up. 773-561-4970

$650/MO. LARGE 1BR 75th & Union. Near public trans, schools and shopping, appl incl.

Sect 8 Welc. 708-334-5188 JUST WANT OUT,

Can’t afford the payment Please 630-452-0516

1 BR $700-$799 HYDE PARK STUDIO $785.

1BR. $1095.

Newly decorated, appliances, free credit check no application fee 1-773-667-6477 or 1-312-802-7301 62ND & MAPLEWOOD, 1 BR $725, new remod, lrg LR, DR, kitc., utils not incl, Sec 8 ok. No sec dep, $4 50 move in fee.

773-406-0604

232 E 121ST Pl.

1BR, 7910 S. Ridgeland, $600$850. Section 8 welcome. 2BR, 1633 E. 83rd St., $800. 312-493-2344

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

BACK TO SCHOOL SPECIAL - $300 Move in Fee - Nice lrg 1BR $565; 2BR $650 & 1 3BR $800, balcony. Sec 8 Welc.

773-995-6950

7520 S. COLES - 1 BR $520, 2 BR $645, Includes appliances & AC, Near transp., No utilities included (708) 424-4216 Kalabich Mgmt CHICAGO - HYDE PARK 5401 S. Ellis.

Studio/1BR Apartments. $475-$570/mo.

Call 773-955-5106

$800-$899

Free heat and Laundry Room, Sec 8 OK. Niki 773.808-2043. www.livenovo.com

1 BR $900-$1099 HOMEWOOD- 1BR new kitchen, new appls, oak flrs, ac, lndry/ stor., $950/mo incls ht/prkg, near Metra. 773.743.4141 Urban Equit ies.com ONE BEDROOM APARTMENT near Warren Park. 1902 W. Pratt.

Hardwood floors. Cats OK. Heat included. Laundry in building. Available 12/1. $900/month. 773-761-4318.

LARGE STUDIO APARTMENT .

6824 N. Wayne. Hardwood floors.

Heat included. Pets OK. Laundry in building. Available 12/1. $710/month 773-761-4318.

E ROGERS PARK: 1800 SF. 3BR / 2BA + den, new kitchen, SS appliances, FDR, $1900/heated, walk to Red Line & Beach 773-743-4141 www.urbanequities.com EDGEWATER 900SFT 1BR, new kit, sunny FDR, vintage builtins, oak flrs, Red Line, $1095/mo heated www.urbanequities.com 773-743-4141 NO. SOUTHPORT 1500SF 2BR: new kit w/deck, SS appl, oak flrs, cent heat/AC, lndry $1595+util pkg avail 773-743-4141 www.urbanequities.com E Rogers Park: Deluxe 1BR + den, new kitc., FDR, oak flrs close to beach. $950-1050/heated, 773743-4141 ww.urbanequities.com NORTHSIDE 1920 West Fargo Deluxe 1 Bedroom, $1025 Free heat included, Please Call 847-477-2790

1 BR $1100 AND OVER HEART OF RAVENSWOOD

4883 N Paulina, Large 1BR 650SF completely remodeled apartment, brand-new kitchen w/new appliances, separate dining room, ample closet space, floors sanded, painted throughout, mint condition, heat & cooking gas included. Cable, storage locker, on-site laundry. Near transportation. Must be seen. Available immediately. $1200/mo. No security deposit. Call/text 773-230-3116 or call 773-477-9251, email: herbmalkind @comcast.net

EDGEWATER 1000SF 1BR: new kit, SS appls, quartz ctrs, built-ins, oak flrs, lndry, $1050/ heated 773-743-4141 www. urbanequities.com EDGEWATER 2 1/2 RM STUDIO: Full Kit, new appl, dinette, oak flrs, walk-n closets, $850/mo incls ht/gas. Call 773-743-4141 or visit www.urbanequities.com

1 BR OTHER

heat incl. $700-$750/mo.

773-716-6740

APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. Ltd. Hot Summer Is Here Cool Off In The Pool OUR UNITS INCLUDE HEAT, HW & CG Plenty of parking 1Bdr From $795.00 2Bdr From $925.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000**

LARGE 1 BR hdwd floors, updated kitchen, ceiling fan, secure bldg, heat & hot water incl $795 /mo + move in fee 773-233-6673

SOUTHSIDE, newly remodeled room for rent near CTA, $350+/mo + $100 sec dep. Parking available.

All utils incl. 708-299-7605.

CHATHAM CHARMER! S u n n y 1BR, 4 rms, 2nd flr, Heat incl & dbl door sec. $735/mo 708-524-0428. stevensonap artments.com NORTH WEST, 1 Lrg. BR, 2nd floor. fresh paint,

l

l

APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. Ltd. SUMMER IS HERE!!

Most units Include..

HEAT & HOT WTR Studios From $475.00 1Bdr From $550.00 2Bdr From $745.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000** THE RESURRECTION PROJECT

is reopening their waitlist on November 1st. Please complete a Pre-Application by visiting http://resurrectionproject.org/ trp-apartments-rent/apply-for-anapartment/. If you have any questions please contact pm@resurrectionproject.org or call 312-248-8355.

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 ∫

MOST BEAUT. APTS! 6748 Crandon, 2BR, $875. 7727 Colfax, 2BR, $875.

6220 Eberhart, 2 & 3BR, $850-$1150.

7527 Essex, 2BR, $950 773-9478572 / 312-613-4424 CHICAGO WEST SIDE Attn: Sec 8 holders!

No Sec Dep + $100 Back 1- 5 Bdrms. Everything New + Lndry & A/C. Call 312-493-6983

F PALOS HILLS -REALLY NICE! E 1 bedroom, Heat/water included. Laundry facility. Close to 294 & Rt. 83. Call 708-9744493 CHICAGO - BEVERLY, large studio, 1 & 2BR Apts. Carpet, A/ C, laundry, near transportation, $680-$1020/mo. Call 773-2334939 LOOKING TO MOVE ASAP? Remodeled 1, 2, 3 & 4 BR Apts.

Heat & Appls incl. Sec 8 OK. Southside Only. 773-593-4357

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

108th St., Lovely 4 rm, 1BR, liv rm, din rm, updated kitchen, heated Close to transportation.

Available now 773-264-6711.

ACACIA SRO HOTEL Men Preferred! Rooms for Rent. Weekly & Monthly Rates. 312-421-4597

2 BR UNDER $900

66TH & ROCKWELL, $775/mo.

2 large bedrooms, utilities not included. No deposit. $300 Move in Fee. Section 8 ok. Call 708-3392594, btwn 8-6.

CHATHAM: QUIET NOSMOKING building. 2BR, 1BA, 2nd floor, appls incl, intercom, $850/mo, heat incl, 1/2 blk to CTA & Metra.

708-261-6566

Chicago, King & 73rd St. , Beautiful 2BR Apt. Newer rehab, new cabinets, $750/mo + heat.

MUST SEE! Call Irma, 847-987-4850

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

77th/Ridgeland. 3BR. $875.

74th/East End. 2BR. $775.

773-874-9637 or 773-493-5359

SECTION 8 WELCOME $400 Cash Move-In Bonus, No Dep.

2nd floor, AC, modern kitchen, well kept, $1000/month, 312-451-7495

225 W 108th Pl, 2BR/1BA . 7134 S. Normal, 4BR/2BA. ceiling fans, Ht & appls incl 312-683-5174

RICHTON PARK 3 - 4BR Ranch.

University Park 1 - 2BR Townhome. Sect 8 OK. Call 708-625-7355 for info.

8324 S INGLESIDE 2BR, newly remodeled, laundry, hardwood floors, cable, Sec 8 welcome. $780 /mo. 708-308-1509 or 773-4933500

cious 2BR & 74th/King. 1BR. Great trans, laundry on site, security camera. 312-341-1950

9235 S LAFLIN. 2BD 3rd flr,

2BR APT IN newer building, com-

no stove/fridge, heat incld, quiet building. $800/mo. Sec credit check.

773-445-1524 leave msg

88TH/DAUPHIN. Bright, spa-

pletely rehabbed, laundry in unit, heat incl. 59th & California. Sec. 8 welcome. Call 773-517-9622

2 BEDROOM near 85th &

Escanaba, newly decorated, stove included, $550 plus 1 month security.

773-716-9554

CHICAGO, 3BR APARTMENT, newly remodeled, heat included, $ 900/mo. Also, Storefront, $800/ mo. Call 773-297-4784

2 BR $900-$1099 7011-13 S. Union, 2BR, $900/ mo, tenant pays utilities. Lg LR, DR, hdwd flrs, Sec 8 OK, no pets, 1 mo rent + 1 mo security.

708-921-6354

SECT 8 WELCOME, 2 & 3BR

Houses. Also Sharp 2 & 3BR Apts, fenced yard. $985-$1200/mo.

Will accept 1 or 2BR Voucher.

708-573-5628

2 BR $1100-$1299 EVANSTON 2BR, BEAUT. new kit, SS appl, granite, oak flrs, spac.

BRs, OS lndry/storage $1295/incl heat 773-743-4141 urbanequities. com 4300 BLOCK OF AUGUSTA, 2BR, 2nd flr, laundry fac on site utils incl. Sec 8 1&2 BR Voucher ok. No pets/smoking 773-418-0195

3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200 BRONZEVILLE, 4542 S King Dr. 2nd flr, 3BR, 2BA, hdwd flrs, kitchen, pantry, LR & DR, lots of closets, sun porch, ten pays gas & heat.$1100 +$1200 sec. 773965-1584 aftr 6pm ALSIP, IL 3 BR/1.5 BA 2 story townhouse for rent. $1100/mo without appliances. $2200 due upon signing. Call Verdell, 219-888-8600 for more info.

JOLIET W BELLARMINE. Beautiful townhome, 3BR, 1.5BA, remod., Close to I-80, tenant pays util. $980/mo 815-302-5729 or 708-422-8801 3BR, 5258 S. HERMITAGE. $665. 5246 S. Hermitage: 3BR, 2nd floor, $625 & 2BR basement $400. 1.5 mo sec required. 708574-4085.

CHICAGO, 68TH & STONY ISLAND, $935/MO. 3BR, 1BA, WASHER & DRYER IN UNIT. TENANT PAYS ALL UTILITIES. CALL 858-699-5096

NEWLY DECORATED - HEAT INCL

CALUMET CITY, Spacious 3 bedroom, 2 bath,

80TH/DOBSON. Nice 2.5-3BR,

4200 BLK GRENSHAW. Secure Rehab, 1st flr, quiet bldg, 3BR, hdwd flrs, heat & c-fans incl. $1000/mo + 1 mo sec 773-785-5174

HARVEY 156th & Dixie Hwy. 3BR 1.5BA. Newly Remodeled. Section 8 OK. $850/mo. Call 312-622-7702.

BRONZEVILLE: SECTION 8 WELCOME. NO SECURITY DEPOSIT. 4841 S Michigan, 3BR apt, appls incl’d, $1200/mo. 708-288-4510.

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

708-288-4510 12415 NORMAL. 4BR w/appls, bsmt w/ laundry. $1300/mo. 69th/ Wabash. 2BR, bsmt w/laundry. $950. No Sec Dep. 773.568-0053

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

SOUTHSIDE - 6 room, 3BR Apt, 1.34BA, formal dining room, 2nd floor, very clean, heat included, $1,000/mo. 773-213-7129

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499 107TH & EDGEBROOK: Beautiful 2BR, newly remod. hdwd flrs, LR/DR, kit./frig., washer/ dryer, enclosed porch. No pets. $1000/mo. 708-227-0878 11339 S. CALUMET. 3BR, 2nd flr,

fully carpeted, brand new ceramic tile bath, new kit w/tile & counter, elec incl. $1200/mo. 773-519-7011

stove, brand new hdwd flrs, remod BA, fin bsmt. No Pets. $1150+ non-ref fee. Sec 8 OK. Kay 773.370.8018

welcome. Call 312.806.1080.

$40 w/AD 24/7

224-223-7787

levels, DR, spacious LR, 1.5 baths plus, many closets, first floor, near transportation. $1600 includes heat.

Available now. Marty, 773-784-0763.

WRIGLEYVILLE 1800 SF 3BR, Sun-

ny New Kit, SS appl, deck, close to be ach/ Cubs park, Ldry/storage, One Month Free! $1995/heated 773-7434141 urbanequities.com

W.HUMBOLDT PK 1500W remod spac. 1BR, new kitc/appls, OS lndry, storage. $825-$975 + util NO DEP 773-743-4141 www. urbanequities.com

OFFICE 20 MI from Downtown Chicago, 4000SQFT, brick bldg, can be used for Medical office or retail space, 20 car pkng. $699,000.

708-906-2853

non-residential OFFICE FOR RENT – CHICAGO (NEAR NORTH) Small unfurnished office for rent 375 sq.ft. incl. single restroom HVAC and burglar alarm $1000/mo. References required.

209wGoethe@gmail.com 312-2666262

855 W. MARGATE Terrace –

Gorgeous 8 room, 3 bedroom, 2 bath renovated apartment in attractive 3 unit building. Apartment features two sunrooms, large living room, dining room, new appliances, and A/C. $2200 includes heat. Chad: 312-720-3136

3 BR OR MORE OTHER

LAWNDALE AREA, Newly remodeled Spacious 4BR, 1.5BA Apt, hdwd floors, Heat & appls incl, Sect 8 Welc.

773-593-1456

ALBANY PK 3100W 3BR, gran. ctrs, SS appls, wood flrs, OS ldry/ stor. $1495-$1575 + utils NO DEP. 773-743-4141 www.urbanequities. com

IRVING PARK & CALIFORNIA,

Wrigleyville 1800 S.F. 3BR, new kit, private deck & yard, FDR, oak floors, sunroom, One Month Free! $1950/ heated 773-743-4141 urbanequities. com

CHICAGO HOUSES FOR rent.

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

Call 708-752-3812 for

MAYFAIR 1600 SF 3BR, new kit, SS appl, granite, oak flrs, onsite lndy, prkg, $1495/+ util. 773743-4141 www.urbanequities.com

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

NEAR BEVERLY Huge 2BR on 1st floor. Sect 8

COLLEGE GIRL BODY RUBS

BUDLONG WOODS, 5500N/ 2600W. Three bedrooms plus, two

LARGE 3 BEDROOM apartment near Wrigley Field. 3820 N. Fremont.

Two bathrooms. Hardwood Floors.

Cats OK. $2175/month. Special!

Sign a lease starting by December 1, get January rent free! Available 12/1. 773-761-4318.

ELMHURST: Dlx 2BR, n e w appls & carpet, a/c, balcony, $1195 /mo. incl heat, prkg. OS lndry, 773743-4141 www.urbanequities.com

ADULT SERVICES

FOR SALE

3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799

3 BR OR MORE $1800-$2499

WEST ROGERS PARK: 2BR, new kit. FDR, new windows, $1295 /heated, 773-743-4141 www.urbanequities.com

ADULT SERVICES

CHICAGO Southside Brand New 2BR & 3BR apartments. Exc. neighborhood, near public transp.

For details call 708-774-2473

Morgan Park Fenced yard, hardwood floors, Sec8 welcome.

11658 S Watkins. $1350/mo.

773.779.4229 Beautiful brick 4BR , 1.5 BA, off st prkg, ADP alarm $1300/ mo. Move-in Fee $650, Sec 8 Ok. 773-720-9787 or 773-483-2594

ALB PK 1600SF 3BR + den, new kit, SS appl, granite, oak flrs, onsite lndy, $1495/+ util. 773-7434141 www.urbanequities.com

93RD/JEFFREY. 2BR T.H,

2 BR OTHER

Ave. Studio, 1 and 2BRs. Heat incl, nr park and great trans. $525-$875.

708-473-7129

bathroom apartment on the 1 st floor of a classic Chicago Graystone just East of Hyde Park. Hardwood floors throughout apartment with carpeting in bedrooms (no cold feet getting out of bed). Flexible move-in anytime after November 1st . All kitchen appliances included. Washer, dryer, and alarm system is in unit. Back porch for relaxing. Parking in rear or on the street. $1,200/month.

312-420-4136

1.5BA apt, Stove, c-fans, frpl, hdwd flrs, sec 8 welc. $985/mo. Tenant 4 BR, 1.5 Bath, Beautiful home in pays utils. Avail Now 312-504-8592

MONTROSE & KIMBALL , good transportation. 2BR, new appliances, newly decorated & more. No pets. $1150/mo + security deposit.

847-965-1508

CHICAGO 7600 S Essex FALL SPECIAL 2BR $599, 3BR $699, 4BR $799 w/apprvd credit, no sec dep. Sect 8 Ok! Also Homes for rent available. Call 773-287-9999 Westside Locations 773-287-4500

SOUTH SHORE 6724 S. Chappel

AMAZING 3 BEDROOM , 1.5

ADULT SERVICES

Large 3 Bedroom, newly renovated, wood floors. Close to Brown Line, schools, good transportation. Available immediately. 773-588-0359

Westside locations 773-287-4500

7217 S. WOLCOTT. SFH 4 RENT! Need Longterm tenant for 2 story.

3BR/2BA, hardwood, finished bsmt, CHA/Sect 8 ok. 312-860-4814.

CHICAGO HEIGHTS, 3 OR 4BR, 1BA, NEWLY REMODELED, APPLS INCL , SECTION 8 OK. NO SEC. DEPOSIT. 708-822-4450

HUMBOLDT PARK -

Huge immaculate 3BR, 1BA close to trans & shops newly remodeled, Sec 8 Welcome 312-519-9771

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.

CHICAGO, BUSY 110TH & Mich-

igan Retail 525-1500 SqFt / $12 SqFt & office suites from $275. Move In Ready. Call Kamm, 773-520-0369

roommates SOUTH SHORE, Senior Discount. Male preferred.

Furnished rooms, shared kitchen & bath, $545/mo. & up. Utilities included. 773-710-5431 CHICAGO 67th & Emerald - furn.

rooms, 45 + male pref, share kitchen & bath, utils incl, cable ready.

From $350. 773-358-2570.

MARKETPLACE

GOODS

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 AKC BLACK & Red German Shep-

MUSIC & ARTS WILD CHEETA CAT, Sweet Tra-

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MESSAGES SPIRITUAL PSYCHIC READER Tells you past, present , future,

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legal notices

STATE OF ILLINOIS County of Cook In The Circuit Court For Cook County, Illinois. In the Matter of the Petition of Cheryl Marie Malden, Case# 001077 For Change of Name. Notice of Publication Public Notice is hereby given that on December 18, 2017 at 2:00 PM being one of the return days in the Circuit Court of the County of Cook, I will file my petition in said court praying for the change of my name from CHERYL MARIE MALDEN to that of Cheryl Marie Malden, pursuant to the statute in such case made and provided. Dated at Chicago, Illinois, October 19, 2017, Signature of Petitioner Cheryl Marie Malden

STATE OF ILLINOIS County of

Cook In The Circuit Court For Cook County, Illinois. In the Matter of the Petition of JEFFREY RAYNARD SANDERS, Case# 001129 For Change of Name. Notice of Publication Public Notice is hereby given that on December 29 2017 at 10:00 AM being one of the return days in the Circuit Court of the County of Cook, I will file my petition in said court praying for the change of my name from JEFFREY RAYNARD SANDERS to that of Jeffrey Raynard Sanders, pursuant to the statute in such case made and provided. Dated at Chicago, Illinois, October 31, 2017, Signature of Petitioner Jeffrey Raynard Sanders

NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pur-

ROOM FOR RENT Logan Sq. 1917 N. Kedzie Greystone. Mostly furnished, C.A., proof of income, background check, non-smoker. $420 per month, sec. deposit $240. Looking for snow shoveler and handyman, money off the rent. 773-227-5549, 312-343-0804(C)

FULL BODY MASSAGE. hotel, house calls welcome $90

special. Russian, Polish, Ukrainain girls. Northbrook and Schaumburg locations. 10% discount for new customers. Please call 773-407-7025

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: D17152402 on October 12, 2017 under the Assumed Business Name of The Chocolate Shoppe with the business located at 5337 W Devon Ave, Chicago, IL 60646. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/ partner(s) is: Ronald Mondel, 6301 N Sheridan Road Apt 23H, Chicago, IL 60660, USA

ADULT SERVICES

ADULT SERVICES

ADULT SERVICES

WANT TO RENT 4 BR+ House Call Mr. Wright 773-431-1251

GENERAL

herd Pups - father is a newly imported IPO3 male & both maternal grandparents are imported. $1500, 260-593-0160 x 3

HEALTH & WELLNESS

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NOVEMBER 2, 2017 | CHICAGO READER 39

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STRAIGHT DOPE

By Cecil Adams Q : Why are some English names pronounced so differently than they’re spelled? I’m thinking of Churmondley (pronounced “Chumley”) and Featheringstonehaugh (pronounced “Fanshaw”). —JENNY

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40 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 2, 2017

A : I almost hate to point out that those two

names are actually spelled Cholmondeley and Featherstonehaugh. On the other hand, if you were making a joke about how tricky it can be to spell something as simple-sounding as “Fanshaw,” well—touche. The English language has got some strange orthographic conventions: as one famous example has it, using pronunciation as your guide, it’s possible to spell the word fish g-h-o-t-i.

Featherstonehaugh is an extreme example, but the tendency to pronounce a word more succinctly than its spelling would suggest pervades the language in both Britain and North America, particularly when it comes to place names. When was the last time you heard a Canadian, for instance, pronounce all three syllables, or the second t, in “Toronto”? It’s “Tronno,” more like.

With names like Cholmondeley, the simplest explanation is that the pronunciation of words shortens over time—it’s a mark of our familiarity with them. Beyond that it’s hard to stake out a unified theory, particularly since British names often derive from a tangle of mismatched lexical roots, what with all that invading. The element haugh, e.g., is from the Old English, denoting a nook or secret place. The -cesters, meanwhile—as in Gloucester, Worcester, et al—come from the Latin castrum, a fort or a town. Worcester— that is, “Wooster”—is already a truncation of what was once spelled Wigoraceaster, the Wigora evidently being a tribe that lived in that particular ceaster. “Wigoraceaster” is a bit of a mouthful; it’s a hell of a lot easier just saying “Wooster.”

Ease is essentially what this boils down to: physical laziness, as exhibited in the linguistics phenomenon called vowel reduction.

Because it takes more muscle work to clearly enunciate every syllable in a word, English speakers tend to downgrade the vowels in the unstressed syllables (the less important ones, intelligibility-wise) to a single all-purpose sound: the schwa, represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet by an upside-down e symbol and pronounced (approximately) “uh.”

Think about the first a in amazing, the second e in basement, the u in lettuce. Three different

vowels, but because the accent doesn’t fall on the syllable they’re in, they come out of our mouths the same: schwa.

Thence a second phonetic tendency, schwa deletion: having reduced your previously distinctive vowel to a generic unstressed vowel, you start skipping that syllable altogether.

You see this with words like family, probably, or corporate, which many folks pronounce with only two syllables. English speakers everywhere share a fondness for eliding their schwas, but the Brits seem particular fans: e.g., the contracted penultimate syllable in a word like secretary.

That’s pretty clearly what happened in the Cholmondeley-to-Chumley transition.

We can suppose Featherstonehaugh took roughly the same route, though it’s notable that the two-syllable version contains a sh found nowhere in the spelling. What gives?

Hazarding a few guesses, the British phonetician Jack Windsor Lewis breaks Featherstonehaugh down to its constituent parts: featherstone, likely meaning “an assemblage of four stones,” and haugh, discussed above.

Eventually those shriveled to two syllables: fan-shaw, which at some point, Windsor Lewis figures, got transcribed somewhere as “Fanshawe” and subsequently read incorrectly as fan-shaw.

The transcription is an important element in this story. Pronunciation changes constantly, while spelling fixes words in time; it’s probably more helpful to think of the phenomenon you’re asking about as a quirk of spelling rather than speaking. English adheres to what the literary scholar Seth Lerer calls “etymological” spelling: our language “preserves the earlier form of words even when those forms no longer correspond to current speech.” For instance, words like knight and through now sound nothing like they’re spelled—but back in Chaucer’s day they were indeed pronounced “k-nicht” and “throoch,” with a guttural ch as in the Scottish loch. 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

When SPH invites DTMFA . . .

When it comes to kink, it’s all about consent. Plus: still more harassment!

Q : I am a pretty handsome

gay (I have been told) and I am dating a gorgeous man. I am 34, and he is 31.

I am bottom only, and he is top only—so it’s a good match. He seems sincerely interested in me and we are talking about being together. But here is the thing: He noticed that I have a rather small penis. I am under the average, and his dick is quite big and long.

Since he discovered this, he fancies about “humiliating” me about my “small peepee.” He would even like me to show it to his friends. I am not ashamed of the size of my penis because it’s how I am made and I can’t change it. But I wonder what this idea means for him. I would somehow understand that he would put me down if he suffered from a “small dick complex,” but since he is so well-endowed, I don’t get it.

Is it a common turn-on for some top guys to imagine that their partner is smaller than them? Does it hide something else maybe?

—HUMILIATED OVER TACKLE

PS: English is not my mother tongue. I apologize for this.

A : I don’t have a problem

with your English—it’s doubtless better than my [insert your mother tongue here]. I have a problem with your potential boyfriend.

Small penis humiliation (SPH) is a kink popular enough that there are more than 76,000 SPH-themed porn videos on XTube. Over at PornHub, there are SPH videos with more than two million views. That’s all anecdote, not data, HOT, but it’s anecdote enough to confirm that, yes, small penis humiliation is definitely a thing. And it can be a very good thing for guys whose erotic imaginations transformed their anxieties about having small

dicks into a kink they enjoy.

But you are not one of those guys. You like your dick fine, and you’ve got the exact right attitude about your dick—indeed, all men everywhere, regardless of size, should embrace their dicks the way you’ve embraced your own. Your dick is your dick, you can’t change it, and you shouldn’t be ashamed of it. And big or small, HOT, your dick has all the same nerve endings as that big and long thing on the guy who might be your boyfriend someday (but who’s definitely a presumptuous asshole right now).

The real issue here of course, HOT, is whether you’re into SPH. Are you into power play? Do you like being degraded? Does the thought of this dude ordering you to show your dick to his friends—friends who presumably want to see your dick— turn you on in any way? If the answer is no, no, and FUCK NO, then tell your potential new boyfriend to knock it off. If the answer is maybe, maybe, and maybe under the right circumstances, then talk it over with him and work out when, where, and how you’re willing to indulge his SPH kink, which, like most kinks, requires advance discussion and the consent of both parties. This guy didn’t bother with obtaining your consent in advance, HOT, and if he doesn’t recognize that and swear not to make a similar mistake in the future, well, then you’ll have to DTMFA.

Q : I am in a relationship

with a lovely and amazing man. Everything could be really good, if only his father would stop being a creep.

He’s constantly telling me how beautiful, smart, and attractive I am. Last year around Christmas, I sang a few songs when we were

visiting, and his father commented that I have an “erotic” voice. A few days later, I received an e-mail from him with a poem calling my voice “angelic” and “pure.” It made me really uncomfortable, and I told him that I don’t want to receive poems from him and that he should stop complimenting me all the time. He didn’t. I talked to my boyfriend’s mother, and she said she’s “given up” and ignores her husband’s behavior. It turns out that he behaved similarly with ex-girlfriends of my boyfriend’s brothers. I’m so angry and don’t know what to do. My boyfriend supports me, but it’s hard to talk about the topic, because it’s his father. —FUCKING ANNOYED THAT HE ENGROSSES RIGHTFULNESS

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A : I’m curious what your

boyfriend’s “support” looks like, FATHER. Does he tell you privately that his father is a creep and that he wishes his dad would knock this shit off? Or does he tell his father directly that he’s being a creep and insist he knock it off? The latter is support, the former is not.

I’m thinking there’s a reason your boyfriend’s brothers only have ex-girlfriends, FATHER—and it’s not just because their dad is a creep.

It’s because no one in the family is willing to stand up to him. However “lovely and amazing” your boyfriend might be when you two are alone, if he’s useless in the face of his father’s sexual harassment, you’ll have to DTMFA too. v Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at savagelovecast. com. v @fakedansavage

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please recycle this paper NOVEMBER 2, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 41

George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic ò ETHAN MILLER

NEW

Dan Auerbach & the Easy Eye Sound Revue, Shannon & the Clams 4/2, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, on sale Fri 11/3, 10 AM, 18+ Bahamas 3/10, 8:30 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 11/3, 10 AM, 18+ Brasstracks 3/24, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 11/3, 10 AM, 18+ Chikamorachi 12/13, 9 PM, Hideout Kelly Clarkson, Andy Grammer 12/5, 7:30 PM, Rosemont Theater, Rosemont, on sale Thu 11/2, 10 AM b George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic 1/31, 7 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 11/3, 10 AM, 17+ Judy Collins 2/4, 5 and 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 11/2, noon b Dangerous Summer 2/10, 7 PM, Cobra Lounge b Dears 3/21, 8 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 11/3, 10 AM Brett Dennen 3/15, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 11/3, noon, 17+ Alejandro Escovedo Band 1/25-27, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 11/2, noon b Brent Faiyaz 1/30, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Brian Fallon & the Howling Weather 4/19, 8 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 11/3, 10 AM, 17+ FKJ 12/7, 9 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 11/3, 10 AM, 18+ Frightened Rabbit 2/16, 7 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Guided by Voices 12/30-31, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 11/3, 10 AM Anne Heaton 12/28, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Helloween 9/10, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+

Igorrr 2/6, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Inquisition, Nader Sadek, Fin, Pig’s Blood 12/9, 8 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ K.Flay 2/2, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall, on sale Fri 11/3, 10 AM b Kid Rock 3/16, 7:30 PM, United Center, on sale Fri 11/3, 10 AM Kindred the Family Soul 2/16, 7 and 10 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 11/2, noon b Kirko Bangz 1/5, 7 PM, Portage Theater b Nina Kraviz 12/22, 10 PM, Smart Bar Kygo 5/5, 7:30 PM, United Center, on sale Fri 11/3, 10 AM Pokey LaFarge 1/12-13, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 11/3, 10 AM, 18+ Los Lobos 12/9, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 11/3, 10 AM b Demi Lovato, DJ Khaled 3/9, 7:30 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont, on sale Fri 11/3, 10 AM Made Violent 12/13, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Marked Men 12/8, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 11/3, 10 AM Maroon 5 9/14, 8 PM, United Center, on sale Sat 11/4, 10 AM Mest, Mr. T Experience 12/1, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Mo, Cashmere Cat 2/1, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, on sale Fri 11/3, 10 AM, 18+ Nerves 12/29, 9 PM, Empty Bottle New Holland 12/14, 8 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 11/3, 10 AM, 18+ Joshua Radin 3/27-28, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 11/2, noon b Rapsody 12/10, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 18+ Rebirth Brass Band 1/12, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 11/3, 10 AM, 17+

42 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 2, 2017

Rico Nasty 11/30, 6 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club b Sabaton, Kreator 2/27, 7:30 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 11/3, 10 AM, 17+ Scarface 12/8, 8 PM, Portage Theater, 17+ Shredders 2/3, 9 PM, Subterranean, 17+ They Might Be Giants 3/17, 7:30 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri 11/3, 9 AM, 14+ Joe Lynn Turner 1/20, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Two Feet 2/25, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 11/3, 10 AM, 18+ Varukers, Resistant Culture 11/17, 8 PM, Sweet Bar, Berwyn Vinyl Theatre 11/29, 7 PM, Beat Kitchen b Wallows 2/22, 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 11/3, 10 AM b Lee Ann Womack 1/20-21, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 11/2, noon b

UPDATED Red Red Meat 11/22 and 11/24, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, second show added Shy Girls 11/8, 8:30 PM, Subterranean, canceled

UPCOMING Jessica Andrea 11/29, 7 PM, Schubas b Jessica Aszodi 12/10, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Barely Alive, Virtual Riot 11/24, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Beach Slang, Dave Hause & the Mermaid 11/25, 7:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b Big Brave 12/11, 9 PM, Empty Bottle F Black Heart Procession 11/10, 9 PM, Empty Bottle

b Black Marble 12/12, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Brave Combo 12/15-16, 9 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn Broncho 12/2, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Cherubs 11/11, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Cloud Rat 12/30, 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Dear Hunter, Family Crest 12/8, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Lana Del Rey, Jhene Aiko 1/11, 8 PM, United Center The Drums, Methyl Ethel 11/9, 7 PM, Metro b Exhumed 12/5, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Flying Lotus in 3D 11/14, 7 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Liam Gallagher 11/21, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Ghostemane 11/15, 6:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club b Halsey, Partynextdoor, Charli XCX 11/19, 7 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Hotelier 11/16, 6 PM, Cobra Lounge b Iron Chic, Off With Their Heads 12/1, 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Jay-Z 12/5, 8 PM, United Center Killers 1/16, 7:30 PM, United Center Talib Kweli, K’Valentine 1/6, 7 and 10 PM, City Winery b Alex Lahey 11/24, 8:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Phil Lesh & the Terrapin Family Band 11/15-16, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Lorde 3/27, 7 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Majid Jordan 2/21, 7:30 PM, the Vic, 18+ Barry Manilow 12/5, 7:30 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Marilyn Manson 2/6, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Milky Chance 1/26, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b No Age 1/20, 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ Gary Numan, Me Not You 11/29, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Angel Olsen 12/9, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Orchestral Movements in the Dark 3/16, 7:30 PM, the Vic, 18+ Parquet Courts, Meat Wave 11/15, 9 PM, Empty Bottle A Perfect Circle 11/24, 8 PM, UIC Pavilion Plain White T’s 12/2, 7 PM, Metro b Queens of the Stone Age, Run the Jewels 12/2, 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom b Radio Dept. 2/1, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Andrew Ripp 12/22, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall b Ritual Howls 11/19, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Todd Rundgren 12/16-17, 8 PM, Park West, 18+

ALL AGES

WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK

EARLY WARNINGS

CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME

F

Never miss a show again.

Sign up for the newsletter at chicagoreader. com/early

Sleigh Bells, Sunflower Bean 1/31, 8 PM, Metro b Slow Magic 11/15, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 18+ St. Vincent 1/12, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre b Suicide Machines, Bad Cop/ Bad Cop 12/31, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 18+ Thor & Friends 11/15, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ The Verve Pipe 11/24, 7:30 PM, City Winery b Wax Fang 12/6, 9 PM, Empty Bottle George Winston 12/13, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Jamila Woods 11/22, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ “Weird Al” Yankovic 4/6-7, 8 PM, The Vic b Zombies 3/19-20, 8 PM, City Winery b

SOLD OUT Aminé, Pell 11/18, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Brendan Bayliss & Jake Cinninger 12/15, 8 PM, Park West, 18+ Andrew Bird 12/11-14, 8 PM, Fourth Presbyterian Church b Bleachers, Bishop Briggs 11/11, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Borns 1/27, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre b Daniel Caesar 11/20, 9 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 18+ Greta Van Fleet 11/30, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ H.E.R. 11/9, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Jesus Lizard 12/9, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Johnnyswim 11/10, 7:30 PM, the Vic b Knox Fortune with Lido and Peter Cottontale, Grapetooth 11/13, 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall, 17+ Mura Masa, Tennyson 11/16, 9 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ The National 12/12-13, 7:30 PM, Lyric Opera House b Noname 11/21, 9 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Robert Plant & the Sensational Space Shifters 2/20, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Rich Chigga 11/11, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge b Suicideboys 12/14, 8 PM, Metro b Turnpike Troubadours 11/11, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Grace Vanderwaal 11/15, 7 PM, Park West b v

GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene ON NOVEMBER 13, 1992, Joanna Brown and Mark Freitas launched the Homocore Chicago series with a show by Toronto band Fifth Column—their drummer and guitarist, G.B. Jones, is also a filmmaker, and in 1985 founded influential queer punk zine J.D.s with director Bruce LaBruce.

The series booked the likes of Bikini Kill, Los Crudos, Sleater-Kinney, Pansy Division, Tribe 8, and God Is My Co-Pilot, and its May 2000 swan song was Le Tigre’s local debut. Homocore Chicago celebrates its 25th anniversary with a threeday exhibit at Defibrillator Gallery stuffed with photos, films, and ephemera. It opens Thursday, November 2, at 5 PM, and Thalia Zedek (Come, Live Skull) plays that night.

Friday’s hours begin at 2 PM, and local mainstay Scott Free performs with Jenny Urban in the evening. Saturday the gallery opens at noon, and at 2 PM it hosts a panel on 90s queer punk with Brown, Freitas, early Homocore volunteer Chris Kellner, trans activist Ed Varga, Jane Danger (Three Dollar Bill), and Martin Sorrondeguy (Los Crudos, Limp Wrist). Berlin regular DJ Larissa spins on closing night.

In May, Gossip Wolf mentioned the Indiegogo campaign run by Kenny Childers of Bloomington alt-rockers Gentleman Caller, who needed money to press LP copies of No One’s Daughter, a song cycle responding to the 2016 shortstory collection Heartbreaker by Chicago writer Maryse Meijer. On Thursday, November 2, at Pilsen Community Books, Meijer reads selections from her stories and Childers plays an acoustic set of album tracks and sells copies of the LP. On Saturday, November 4, Smart Bar opens at 7 AM for an ambitious event: “23 Hour Party People” features DJs spinning all day and night (with a few in the “chillout tavern” next door at GMan), ending with a sunrise set by house legend Derrick Carter on Sunday morning. The lineup includes Justin Long, Olin, Eris Drew, and DJ Heather—let’s hope there’s coffee too! —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

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THIS TUESDAY! NOVEMBER 7 • MARTYRS’

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