Chicago Reader print issue of December 18, 2025 (Vol. 55, No. 12)

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THIS WEEK

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IN THIS ISSUE

FRONT

04 Staff Note | Caporale The Reader is getting thicc with our new monthly format debuting in February.

INTERIM PUBLISHER ROB CROCKER CHIEF OF STAFF ELLEN KAULIG ----------------------------------------------------------------

FOOD & DRINK

ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR SAVANNAH RAY HUGUELEY PRODUCTION MANAGER AND STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER KIRK WILLIAMSON SENIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNER AMBER HUFF GRAPHIC DESIGNER AND PHOTO RESEARCHER SHIRA FRIEDMAN-PARKS THEATER AND DANCE EDITOR KERRY REID MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO CULTURE EDITOR: FILM, MEDIA, FOOD AND DRINK TARYN MCFADDEN CULTURE EDITOR: ART, ARCHITECTURE, BOOKS KERRY CARDOZA NEWS EDITOR SHAWN MULCAHY PROJECTS EDITOR JAMIE LUDWIG DIGITAL EDITOR TYRA NICOLE TRICHE SENIOR WRITERS LEOR GALIL, MIKE SULA FEATURES WRITER KATIE PROUT SOCIAL JUSTICE REPORTER DEVYN-MARSHALL BROWN (DMB) STAFF WRITER MICCO CAPORALE

06 Feature | Sula Bier Omakase is the social lubricant beer drinkers need right now.

NEWS & POLITICS

P. 14

08 Feature | Mulcahy Cook County law enforcement agencies fly drones outside the public eye.

10 Make It Make Sense | Mulcahy Greg Bovino reemerges in Chicago, the city’s deadline to pass a 2026 budget inches closer, and the chief judge unveils reforms to the county’s youth legal system.

ARTS & CULTURE

12 Craft Work Chicago Pulp wants to make papermaking more accessible.

13 Comic A new exhibition at the National Museum of Mexican Art unearths the history of Mexican railroad workers.

P. 06

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THEATER

VICE PRESIDENT OF PEOPLE AND CULTURE ALIA GRAHAM

14 Feature Going behind the scenes with The Not That Late Show 16 Plays of Note Couch Penny Ensemble’s Everybody updates a 15th-century morality play, City Lit’s Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Clowns is a goofy seasonal caper, and Cirque du Soleil’s ’Twas the Night Before . . . flies high at the Chicago Theatre.

---------------------------------------------------------------DEVELOPMENT MANAGER JOEY MANDEVILLE DATA ASSOCIATE TATIANA PEREZ ---------------------------------------------------------------MARKETING MANAGER MAJA STACHNIK MARKETING ASSOCIATE MICHAEL THOMPSON

FILM

16 Feature Last month, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago laid off three of five employees at Video Data Bank, upending the nearly 50-year-old video art nonprofit.

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P. 08

SALES REPRESENTATIVES WILL ROGERS, KELLY BRAUN, VANESSA FLEMING

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

19 City of Win Fred Hampton Jr. keeps the revolution alive in Chicago’s music scene.

21 Gossip Wolf DeffJam honors late founder Ryan Deffet with its biggest fest yet.

22 Chicagoans of Note Hannah Sandoz, DIY touring musician 24 Shows of Note Previews of concerts including Tomorrow Kings, Won’t Stay Dead, Ayler Xmas, and Moth Cock

CLASSIFIEDS 27 Jobs 27 Marketplace

(Clockwise from top left) Fred Hampton Jr. in front of a mural of his father, Fred Hampton Sr., at 2746 W. Madison THOUGHTPOET FOR CHICAGO READER

Mike Catron and Sage Huston of The Not That Late Show at Lincoln Lodge KIRK WILLIAMSON A can of Rogue’s Dead Guy Ale at Bier Omakase KIRK WILLIAMSON

Drone command center from manufacturer DJI COURTESY DJI

2 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 18, 2025

ON THE COVER Design by Kirk Williamson

CORRECTION The Reader updated the Secret History of Chicago Music story “Feral postpunks Bag People finally have a proper album release,” by Steve Krakow and published in the December 11, 2025, print issue (Volume 55, Number 11). This story has been corrected to say that Carolyn Master, not Diane Wlezien, currently works for the Chicago Public Library. v

Find us on socials: facebook.com/chicagoreader twitter.com/Chicago_Reader instagram.com/chicago_reader linkedin.com search chicago-reader The Chicago Reader accepts comments and letters to the editor of less than four hundred words for publication consideration. m letters@chicagoreader.com

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STAFF NOTE TL;DR: We’re going monthly!

S

ome years feel like several; this year at the Reader felt like a decade. Only two weeks into 2025, we learned the paper was in a severe budget crisis.

Six of our colleagues—including two nonunion members of the editorial team— were laid off the day we found out.

For the next few months, we worried every week’s issue was our last, and while we always somehow found more time, the constant uncertainty took its toll. To continue our trademark arts, fi lm, theater, music, and food coverage, several staffers volunteered for pay cuts or furloughs, and many of our freelancers donated work. Still, that wasn’t enough for everyone to make it to 2026. Since January, we’ve lost eight more people across the organization to a combination of layoffs, buyouts, and resignations. The goodbyes never got easier.

But the news doesn’t stop just because a

newsroom shrinks. Shortly after the Reader’s fi nancial woes became public, President Donald Trump began his second term in office.

Every day, we’ve witnessed him artlessly extend his swollen, spray-tanned digits dangerously close to dictatorship, and his racist preoccupation with Chicago resulted in months of state-sponsored terrorism in our streets, against our neighbors. Despite the paper’s reduced circumstances, the Reader still showed up.

Social justice reporter Devyn-Marshall Brown talked to rideshare workers being illegally targeted at O’Hare. Features writer Katie Prout tracked unhoused people whose kidnappings went uncounted among reports of those abducted. News editor Shawn Mulcahy has dedicated at least one day each week to providing live updates from Broadview and other hot spots of ICE misbehavior on Bluesky, even providing a declaration for

a federal lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security for using excessive force to undermine free speech. I was the fi rst to report on DHS’s multimillion-dollar contracts with Lake Forest–based PepperBall manufacturer United Tactical Systems. Did I mention some years feel like ten?

Chicago is a vast and complicated city, but its people are indefatigable. After surviving 54 years and several close calls, the Reader can say with some pride that we are, too. In late August, we announced that we were joining the Noisy Creek family, which includes two other legendary alt weeklies: The St ranger i n Seatt le a nd t he Por tland Mercury. We couldn’t be more thrilled to share an umbrella with such stellar, unionrun papers—and to trust we’re on a path toward sustainability. Among our highest immediate priorities are working staff less, paying freelancers more, and better meeting our audience where you are—not just at our newsboxes but in your inboxes and on your social media feeds, too. If we can accomplish these, we trust the Reader has many years

ahead (and maybe most of them will feel like single years, too).

With those goals in mind, I have some bittersweet news: This is the Reader’s fi nal issue as a weekly—because we’re going monthly. Switching our print cadence will help us play to our strengths harder while growing our capacity across the organization. We’re taking a short (short!) print break to catch our breath, but we’ll continue packing the website and social platforms with unexpected interviews; outlandish essays; in-depth reporting; concert previews; art, fi lm, and theater reviews; and more. (Afraid you’ll miss an update? Sign up for our newsletters.) In January, Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter Sarah Conway joins the Reader as our new editor in chief, and in early February, we debut as a monthly.

Mark your calendars because we’ll emerge from our power nap shiny and thicc—exactly as a free and freaky paper should be. v —Micco Caporale, staff writer m mcaporale@chicagoreader.com

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FOOD & DRINK

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FEATURE

Bier Omakase is the social lubricant beer drinkers need right now Jenny Pfäfflin and Shana Solarte’s sudsy storytelling series is restoring connection and conversation to the craft beer scene.

By MIKE SULA

S

hana Solarte balanced a glass of soju on a pair of chopsticks set parallel atop a glass of pale Korean lager.

“You have to find a way to get the shot glass into the beer,” she said, raising a fist. “Some people will bash their head on the table—if they’re on their tenth one. I prefer to just—” BAM! She slammed her fist onto the table, and the glass plunged, launching a geyser of suds upward and back into the glass, which she then threw back and drained to the hoots and applause of some 16 fellow beer nerds.

This was “Year One,” the fifth and final Bier Omakase of 2025, held last Thursday, December 11, at the 80s-themed art gallery Hammy Wammy in Ravenswood. It’s a beer-focused storytelling event that Solarte, a marketing manager for a hops company, and Jenny Pfäfflin, a brewer and marketer for Dovetail Brewery, launched last January. They don’t serve sushi, but over the last year, it’s become one of the most refreshing yet unintentionally exclusive tasting events in town—largely by word of mouth.

Pfäfflin and Solarte met at the peak of Chicago’s craft beer movement when they both worked for the Cicerone Certification Program in Ravenswood. Back then, there was a vibrant social scene centered around the craft beer and home-brewing movement, where drinkers gathered at beer dinners every time a brewery dropped something new, major events like the Festival of Wood and Barrel-Aged Beer, or monthly “First Thursday” brewer talks at the erstwhile Goose Island Brewpub.

“When we first landed in Chicago, there was this robust, lively, and social beer community,” says Pfäfflin, who came here after graduating from the University of Wisconsin– Madison with a degree in agricultural jour-

6 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 18, 2025

nalism. “There was a lot of social interaction around beer at that time—and just excitement. It was beer that brought us together, but also being at this place that we met was probably key to our accumulation of professional experience.”

“We organically became drinking buddies,” says Solarte, who came to Chicago after teaching English for two years in Spain. “We had a lot of similar interests. We’re both really interested in the culture around beer, and drinking, and bar culture.”

Things look a lot different today. COVID shut down breweries and taprooms, and much of the social momentum in the scene shut down with it. This coincided with a general downturn in the craft beer industry that continues

today. In 2025 alone, at least a half dozen local breweries and brewpubs closed their doors, not to mention the imminent relocation of the Siebel Institute of Technology, the more than 150-year-old brewing school whose alumni have included August Anheuser Busch III, August Pabst, John W. Stroh Jr., and countless brewers from all over the world since.

“It started in the Notes app, as all good ideas do,” says Pfäfflin. “We’ve been friends for more than ten years, and we like drinking beer together. And when you drink beer with people, ideas happen. We started wondering, how do we reconnect on a personal level, on a social level, through beer?”

“It was simply based on an idea that we had—four or five, six different things that we

Jenny Pfäfflin shows off her special Czech Budvar glass; soju is dispensed; attendees peruse the Bier Omakase zine.

KIRK WILLIAMSON

can connect together,” says Solarte. “We’ve both been to omakase-style sushi joints.

The idea of someone coming because they trust the chef.

They trust that they’re going to have a good experience, and they don’t really know what to expect. Why not apply that to beer?”

Pfäfflin and Solarte organized a test run in June of last year, inviting a few friends for a program titled “A-Ha Beers,” welcoming them with a cold bottle of Old Style, and walking them through a series of short pours of beers (with snacks) that were formative in their personal development as drinkers and celebrants of beer culture. These included common beers like the Czech Pilsner Urquell served with nakládaný hermelín, the pickled, bloomy rind cheese you’d naturally eat if you were drinking in an underground pub in Prague. There were also rarities like the Sri Lankan Lion Stout, no longer distributed in the U.S., and the irregularly available Belgian Trappist pale ale Orval, which Solarte laments is often collected and hoarded, rather than enjoyed.

“Don’t hang on to beer,” she told Thursday’s gathering. “That’s my advice to everyone: Just drink your beer. Because then you hold on to it too long, and then you’re like, ‘Oh, I should have opened this seven years ago. It tastes like a butt.’”

Early the next year, they opened it up to the public with a deep dive into Korean drinking culture, pouring samples of makgeolli, soju, and the dull, mass-produced lagers that dominate the South Korean beer industry, but also samples from its burgeoning craft beer scene.

That event was headlined with the astonishing story of how Kim Jong Il kick-started South Korea’s craft beer movement by rebuilding a British brewery in the north and brewing a beer the Western media declared was better than anything made in the south.

In March, they focused on 1988, a landmark year when Sports Illustrated published a cover story about beer, Congress declared a National Homebrew Day on May 7, and a number of im-

FOOD & DRINK portant breweries opened, such as Deschutes, Rogue Ales, Great Lakes, and Goose Island.

July’s program was followed by “Temples of

look at something you might pass over on a menu just because it’s not perceived as rare or interesting,” says Pfäfflin. “Now you might

L: Shana Solarte lines up a shot of soju to fall into a Korean lager. R: Solarte speaks while Pfäfflin pours Firestone Walker Union Jack IPA. KIRK WILLIAMSON

Talk,” about Belgian brown cafes as sanctuaries for conversation, reflection, and beer.

Most Bier Omakases feature a few common drinks and snacks. “By featuring things that are pretty accessible, you might take another

have a cool story to connect to it.”

Likewise, each menu features a few that are exceedingly rare or hard to come by, such as Sierra Nevada’s seasonal Celebration IPA in bottles; Lion Stout; Tierenteyn-Verlent mustard,

not available outside Belgium; or even pizza.

September’s meetup was a celebration of midwestern “Garage Beers” held in the Ravenswood garage of charitable alleyway pizza auctioneer John Carruthers of Crust Fund Pizza.

Another critical component of Bier Omakase is their Substack, in which they flesh out the stories told during live events and announce upcoming ones. Besides that, Pfäfflin and Solarte have done little marketing.

To date, attendees have been friends—and increasingly friends of friends—but that has begun to change, too. This year, Wine Enthusiast included them among their Future 40 Tastemakers; the North American Guild of Beer Writers also dubbed them Emerging Voice of the Year, and their Substack was given a nod in the Best Blog/Newsletter category. “Year One” was their first omakase with a waiting list.

Still, they plan to keep things intimate.

Subscribers to the Substack get first dibs on tickets. Solarte can’t imagine hosting more than 20 folks at a time in 2026.

They’re also planning to beef up the newsletter. “We are sitting on dozens and dozens of essay ideas,” says Pfäfflin. Their goal is to host

an omakase every other month, with potential subjects such as baseball and beer, or Latin American beer culture.

“I think what they do is so exciting because of their innate instinct for the social narrative of beer,” according to Carruthers, himself a certified cicerone and the onetime comms mouthpiece for Revolution Brewing. “Bev alc as a hobby tends to use knowledge as something to gatekeep, or hit you over the head with. The way they present information to make you feel like a part of something is just tremendous.”

I also felt that too at last week’s “Year One” retrospective of Bier Omakase’s first five menus.

As the stories unfolded, and the beer poured, the group got progressively louder, more exuberant, and conversational. When it was over, many adjourned to Max’s Place down the street for frosty mugs of Old Style. “Once people understand what the night is about, they open up a bit,” says Pfäfflin. “[They] make friends with their neighbors, and get into chatting with one another, which is exactly what we want: to bring back social connections over beer.” v

m msula@chicagoreader.com

DECEMBER 18, 2025 - CHICAGO READER 7

NEWS & POLITICS

DRonIng n INVESTIGATION

Chicagoland law enforcement agencies fly surveillance drones outside the public eye.

By SHAWN MULCAHY

T

he Cook County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO) missed a state-mandated deadline to report that it owned and operated ten surveillance drones between April 2024 and March 2025, the agency confirms to the Reader.

It’s the second time in as many years a Chicago-area law enforcement agency has violated the state’s drone surveillance law, which requires police report to the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority (ICJIA) the time, date, location, and reason for every drone flight. ICJIA then compiles and publishes that information annually in a public report.

“It’s a law, and law enforcement is breaking it,” says Beryl Lipton, a senior investigative researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) who studies drone use. “When agencies are lax about complying with existing transparency rules, that often indicates that there is a culture within the department that doesn’t take as seriously as it should the public’s right to know.”

During a separate two-week period earlier this summer and fall, the sheriff ’s office tells the Reader, it tested multiple drones from surveillance technology company Skydio that were loaned at no cost by Axon, a major police contractor. The previously unreported trial

8 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 18, 2025

of Axon’s so-called drone as first responder (DFR) system was conducted without any agreement governing the ownership or use of sensitive data collected by the devices, the agency confirms.

Taken together, the CCSO’s failure to adhere to transparency mandates and its lack of safeguards for private data are “really, really problematic,” says Khadine Bennett, advocacy and intergovernmental affairs director at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Illinois. In particular, she questions whether Axon—which has received more than $78 million from Cook County over the past decade— has access to information collected during the trial and what the company might do with it.

“That, plus not being transparent about the drones [the CCSO has], makes me concerned about them acquiring even more,” she says.

In response to the Reader’s questions, CCSO spokesperson Matthew Walberg writes in an email that the agency did eventually provide the required drone flight data, “but ICJIA declined to list the information in its report due to it being provided too late for inclusion.” He acknowledges the sheriff ’s office did not sign a data-sharing agreement with Axon prior to the trial but notes the company has an active contract with the CCSO.

a “joint training session” between the sheriff ’s office’s canine and drone units, members of the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System (a statewide emergency response team), and the zoo’s own police department. But Julianne Olivo, the Brookfield Zoo’s director of public relations, says the organization has “no record of notification regarding the referenced training.” The confusion underscores the importance of accurate and transparent information about drone use by law enforcement.

The CCSO isn’t the only Chicago- area agency that has flouted state transparency mandates. The Chicago Police Department (CPD) likewise failed to disclose owning or using drones during the prior reporting period, which spanned April 2023 to March 2024, as first reported The Cook County Sheriff ’s

by Noir News. A police spokesOffice tested Skydio drones person writes in an email to the earlier this year. COURTESY SKYDIO Reader that the agency “did not report drone usage informaDuring the 2025 reporting period, the tion . . . because CPD was not utilizing drones CCSO’s ten drones took 18 previously undis- as it was in the process of implementing a closed trips. The agency’s drone flight logs, department policy.” The policy, the statement like those from most police departments notes, wasn’t implemented until May 2024. shared them with ICJIA, are relatively sparse However, public records obtained by the Readaside from a few words broadly describing the er in March of that year show the CPD owned reason for the flight (e.g., “Vehicle Hijacking” 11 drones, all of which had been registered or “Fatal Car Crash”) and a single time, date, with the Federal Aviation Administration in and address. The only reason listed for a Sep- August 2020.

ICJIA spokesperson Cristin Evans says tember 2024 flight in Sauk Village, for example, is “Aggravated Battery,” making it difficult the accuracy of its information “depends on to tell whether officers used the drones within agency compliance. ICJIA relies on agencies the relatively narrow parameters allowed by to self-report, and the quality and detail of reporting can vary.” The agency continues to state law.

The flights spanned Cook County, as far improve its data-collection efforts, she says, north as Arlington Heights and as far south “however, the completeness of the data is as Steger, on the Cook–Will County border, limited by the responses received. There is no records show. The sheriff ’s office used drones statutory recourse or penalty for agencies that three times around the south suburb of Ford fail to report.”

To Bennett, the solution is clear. “If you Heights between May and July 2024 to investigate two deaths and a shooting. In February, have the drones and you’re not reporting it, the CCSO launched a drone from the bank of there should be a consequence. And if you’re the Little Calumet River in Calumet City, fewer not reporting it accurately, there should be a than 500 feet from the Indiana border, as part consequence,” she says. As a growing number of police departments across the state add the of a missing person investigation.

One flight in May 2024, reportedly for devices to their surveillance arsenals, “it’s training, occurred around 8 AM inside the very clear that we need stronger penalties” for Brookfield Zoo, near what appears to be the agencies that violate the law.

Bennett and her colleagues at the ACLU of bison habitat. Walberg tells the Reader it was

NEWS & POLITICS Illinois have long fought against the expansion of drone surveillance in the state. Their organization was instrumental to the passage of the Freedom From Drone Surveillance Act, passed in 2013, which prohibited police across Illinois from using drones except in limited circumstances, such as if they obtained a search warrant or “to prevent imminent harm to life, . . . the imminent escape of a suspect or the destruction of evidence.”

Over the next decade, however, the tide began to turn. Then, in 2022, a young man opened fire on a crowd gathered for suburban Highland Park’s annual Fourth of July parade, killing seven people and wounding another 48.

Police insisted to the Illinois General Assembly that the state’s ban on drone surveillance limited their ability to monitor crowds and protect people from similar attacks in the future.

After much haggling—and over opposition from the ACLU and others—state lawmakers in 2023 approved legislation that opened the door for police to use drones at special events, such as parades, races, and concerts. Crucially, however, cops cannot use drones to monitor protests or other activity protected by the First Amendment.

Perhaps more important, the measure

sold by ISPRA (Israeli Product Research). Illinois law currently bans police from equipping drones with onboard facial recognition or any “lethal or non-lethal weapon.”

In an interview with the Reader, state representative Barbara Hernandez, a chief sponsor of the 2023 law, says lawmakers proposed the bill “specifically for the action of what happened in Highland Park and the concern that we heard from people across the state of going to any public event.”

They tried to find “middle ground,” opening up drone use to police while requiring transparenc y. Hernandez says she hasn’t had any conversations about the issue with colleagues since the measure passed, but she’s “interested in

“it’S a laW,

Chicago police owned 11 DJI drones as of March 2024.

COURTESY DJI

cleared the way for local police departments to establish drone as first responder programs. As the name suggests, DFR systems use networks of drones that are positioned throughout a city to respond to 911 calls in place of or in addition to emergency personnel. The devices can be equipped to deliver “payloads,” such as EpiPens or Narcan. Some companies have even outfitted them with weapons, such the “riot control drone” system

way that existing transparency and accountability mechanisms get circumvented,” says Lipton, of the EFF. “Just because something is free doesn’t mean that its consequences are not as serious as if taxpayer money had gone into funding and acquiring it.”

Earlier this year, Axon reached out to the

anD lAw EnfOrcEmeNt Is BreAkiNg It.”

knowing and seeing what we can do that could actually put some type of enforcement into this.”

In recent years, surveillance companies have aggressively marketed DFR systems as the next generation of security technology. To the public, they paint these systems as a solution for long 911 response times, understaffed law enforcement agencies, and even police violence. But the push is also part of a broader strategy on the part of technology companies to lock law enforcement agencies into costly software subscriptions, making it difficult for police to switch to a competitor. Axon, in particular, is known for using free trials to get its customers hooked on products in its growing lineup.

“These free trials are a pretty unsettling

CCSO with an offer for a two-week free trial of its DFR system. Marketing materials claim it can “multiply your agency and provide real-time situational awareness,” especially when connected to other Axon services, such as the real-time surveillance platform Fusus.

Drones from Skydio, in which Axon invests, can reportedly capture three-dimensional scans of locations and navigate autonomously in complete darkness both outdoors and inside.

Yet, in the lead-up to the test run, the sheriff’s office did not sign an agreement with either Axon or Skydio to protect any data collected during the two weeks their drones would be hovering above Cook County. Bennett says that decision “raises huge red flags.”

Such agreements are common between police and private businesses, especially when a service involves the exchange of sensitive information. “When it comes to data, nothing is free,” Bennett adds.

Walberg, the sheriff’s spokesperson, tells the Reader, “Axon reached out to inquire whether the Office was interested in testing the company’s suite of Drone as First Responder

(DFR) applications.” He says that, while the CCSO didn’t sign a data-sharing agreement prior to testing the drones, it is “evaluating whether tests, pilots, or demonstrations of new technologies may require a unique agreement between the parties, even in cases where one of the parties is an approved vendor under contract.”

A real-time crime center in Atlanta, Georgia, uses Axon’s Fusus product.

COURTESY AXON

Axon spokesperson Rasleen Krupp did not answer questions about the company’s data collection, usage, and privacy practices. In an email, Krupp refers the Reader to the CCSO and claims the “trial was not conducted with Axon technology.” Krupp didn’t respond to follow-up questions by press time.

More than any one technology, though, Lipton worries about the ways they work in concert to track virtually every aspect of our lives. The fear is more dire under a regime that has weaponized so much of the digital environment—tax records, airline passenger data, artificial intelligence—to target and disappear its perceived enemies.

“One of the big concerns that I have is what this growing mapping of the world, as done by our law enforcement officers, is actually going to be used for and where that [data] is going to end up,” Lipton says. “Regularly, they tell us to trust them when they acquire these tools, and it’s difficult to do that when they violate the laws that are already on the books.” v

m smulcahy@chicagoreader.com DECEMBER 18, 2025 - CHICAGO READER 9

NEWS & POLITICS

Greg Bovino in Chicago earlier this fall PAUL GOYETTE/FLICKR VIA CC BY 4.0

Bovino’s back On Tuesday, U.S. Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino crawled out of whatever sewer he calls home to inflict yet more terror across Chicago and the near suburbs.

Videos posted to social media around 8 AM show Bovino and roughly half a dozen troops, all outfitted in green, abducting a person from a Walmart parking lot in Cicero. Before long, reports of abductions surfaced across the city’s southwest side, including Brighton Park, Pilsen, Little Village, McKinley Park, and Garfield Ridge. Outside the city, immigration agents abducted people from Hanover Park, Bridgeview, Broadview, Rosemont, and Forest Park.

Community members and rapid responders wasted no time jumping into a now familiar if not bleak routine. They followed the caravans of feds, honking and blowing whistles, to warn their neighbors. Group chats ignited with activity, tracking the agents’ moves. At times, groups of community members surrounded the teams of mostly masked Border Patrol agents.

A day earlier, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) helicopter often used in conjunction with immigration raids was spotted looping Chicago’s southwest side—a harbinger of the violence that was to come.

10 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 18, 2025

Lawyers for the DHS recently argued in federal court that, despite assertions from civil rights attorneys, Bovino had not been chased from Chicago and operations in the city remained very much ongoing.

Was this an effort to demonstrate that point? Did Bovino just get tired of posing for photos with known Proud Boys in New Orleans? The world may never know.

Playing chicken Negotiations between Mayor Brandon Johnson and various factions of the City Council over Chicago’s 2026 budget continue ahead of a December 31 deadline.

A vocal bloc of alderpeople are opposed to Johnson’s suggestion to restore a corporate head tax, which would charge companies with five hundred or more employees a $33-per-person monthly fee. A competing proposal from the City Council sought to raise the municipal garbage collection fee and cut spending on summer youth employment programs.

The group of alders unveiled the full terms of their counterproposal on Tuesday. Their plan suggests raising the city’s plastic bag tax from $0.10 to $0.15. It also matches Johnson’s call for instituting a 15 percent tax on cloud computing services and equipment leases;

however, unlike the mayor’s proposal, the services—that will oversee the Juvenile alders’ plan would sunset the tax after a year. Temporary Detention Center’s (JTDC) They’re pushing for a vote by December 24. superintendent and chief probation officer, On December 10, young people rallied at according to a Monday press release. The new City Hall against proposed job cuts and de- administrator “will also work directly with manded alders pass Johnson’s budget. “These juvenile court judges to improve coordination, alders would rather cut youth jobs and raise accountability, and policy implementation garbage fees than raise taxes on rich corpora- across the system.” tions, this is shameful,” said Miracle Boyd of The chief judge’s office plans to convene a the People’s Unity Platform. “These alders search committee, the roster of which will be want to stunt youth growth, they would rather released in the coming days. In addition, Beach give you a curfew than give you a job.” announced he’s tweaking the job descriptions On Monday, alders backed off many of their for both the JTDC superintendent and chief previously hard-line positions, attempting to probation officer “to support a more integratwin over a veto-proof majority of the council and ed approach to detention, supervision, and buttress against criticism that their budget at- rehabilitation.” He pledged that the public will tacked working Chicagoans. They agreed to fully have opportunities to “share ideas and provide fund youth employment and also scrap major input as the search process moves forward.” proposed cuts to the Chicago Public Library.

The county’s youth jail, which is overseen Johnson and the coterie of alders have by the chief judge’s office, has been embroiled been at odds for weeks.

The mayor has vowed to veto any proposal that includes new fees on working people. On Monday, the City Council adjourned without conducting business because it lacked a quorum. A meeting later that day between the mayor’s office and alders reportedly ended abruptly without an agreement.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday ,faith leaders gathered at City Hall for an interfaith vigil in support of Johnson’s so-called “Protecting Chicago” budget. “The real miracle Cook County JTDC SEAN BIRMINGHAM/FLICKR VIA CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 of Hanukkah,” said Rabbi Suzanne Griffel, “is that there was a small, with scandal for years—including multiple dedicated, faithful, committed group of peo- lawsuits that collectively allege hundreds ple that believed they could triumph over a of cases of sexual abuse. The previous JTDC powerful, well-resourced establishment.” superintendent, Leonard Dixon, resigned Time keeps ticking. at the end of the term of previous chief judge Timothy Evans.

Once the new director of juvenile services is The plan to “humanize” youth jails in place, they will lead the hiring process for Newly installed chief judge Charles S. Beach both the youth jail’s superintendent and chief announced a slight reorganization of the probation officer, the chief judge’s office says. county’s youth legal system that his office says —SHAWN MULCAHY v will “modernize and humanize the Circuit Court of Cook County’s Juvenile Justice Make It Make Sense is a weekly column about [Division].” what’s happening and why it matters.

Beach plans to create a new, senior-level leadership position—director of juvenile m smulcahy@chicagoreader.com

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UPCOMING SHOWS

DEC 31

GIMME GIMME DISCO

NEW YEAR’S

EVE!

DEC 20

TRAP KARAOKE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . THE SHED DJ DIESEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . THE SHED

JAN 2 & 3

UMPHREY’S MCGEE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . THE SHED

JAN 16

ARMNHMR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . THE SHED DRAMA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . THE SHED

DEC 19

JAN 24

WITH RIOT TEN, HE$H AND CELO

WITH ANDY FRASCO & THE U.N.

WITH FELIX DA HOUSECAT, BLANK SENSE AND M.E.H.

. . . . . . . . . THE . . . . . . SALT . . . . . . . SHED . . . . . . . THE SALT SHED THE SALT THE SALT . . SHED THE JAN 31SHEDATMOSPHERE SHEDSALT SHED THE SA WITH SAGE FRANCIS, R.A. THE RUGGED MAN, THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED T KOOL KEITH AND MR. DIBBS SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT S ALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE S THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED T ON SALE NOW SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT S ALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SA THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED T DECEMBER 18, 2025 - CHICAGO 11 SH SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE READER SALT SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SA

ARTS & CULTURE

CHICAGO PULP R 1100 West 37th St., Suite #002, by appointment only, info@chicagopulp.com, chicagopulp.com

CRAFT WORK

Chicago Pulp brings paper to life A new Bridgeport studio wants to make papermaking accessible to everyone.

By REEMA SALEH

ing plant fibers into handmade paper sheets.

Artists make paper for scrapbook pages, cards, sculptures, and mixed-media art. Some incorporate dyes into the papermaking process, or paint on it with watercolors as it dries.

Frierson’s love for papermaking

Aidan Anne Frierson (L) and Dave King opened their studio in September. REEMA SALEH

I

n a basement studio in Bridgeport, Aidan Anne Frierson and Dave King are turning wet, squelchy pulp into handmade paper.

On any given day, you can find them shredding and cooking plant fibers like cotton, flax, kozo, or abaca until they turn into pulp, then mixing them in giant, watery vats to soak overnight. From there, they dip a mould and deckle box into the slurry, pulling out the pulp that floats in the water. “As long as you’ve got cellulose, then you can make paper,” Frierson said.

Donning heavy-duty aprons and waterproof boots, they often get their hands and feet wet while working. They stamp sheets of pulp onto a damp tablecloth until they hold their shape, then press the liquid out onto the table. After squeezing the rest out with a hydraulic press, they hang the pieces of paper on a clothesline or stick them in their dryer.

Their studio, Chicago Pulp, opened this past September, offering classes, open studio sessions, and custom pulp to artists and curious beginners alike. The space features professional-grade equipment, including a fiber shredder, hydraulic press, dryer, and more—tools typically found only in institutional or classroom settings.

Frierson and King are perhaps an unlikely pair of friends, starting their business togeth-

12 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 18, 2025

er at 27 and 65, respectively. King came to papermaking after a 30-year career running his family’s HVAC and sheet metal business in Oak Park. While pursuing his bachelor’s in fine arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), he took a papermaking class on a whim and became enamored. Frierson fell in love with papermaking nearly a decade ago and had dreams of opening her own paper mill in Chicago. One thing brought them together: a dire need for pulp.

They became fast friends two years ago in a papermaking class taught by Andrea Peterson at SAIC. Frierson was a teaching assistant and King a student. After the semester ended, King found himself cut off from the materials he needed to continue his work and turned to Frierson for help processing pulp.

A year later, they were making pulp from scratch in King’s 200-square-foot basement in Oak Park and mixing their vats outside on sunny days. They wanted to process pulp for people outside higher-ed institutions but realized they needed more space, which pushed them to start their business together.

Since opening, Chicago Pulp has offered open studio and workshop sessions, helping spread the craft regardless of experience.

Their process is entirely manual, transform-

started while studying at SAIC and Dieu Donné, a renowned paper mill in New York.

Just as formative was an internship at Andrea Peterson’s paper studio and farm in northwest Indiana, where she learned to harvest and work with the natural materials outside the confines of a studio.

For her, papermaking creates a deeper relationship with nature and appreciation for materials that are often taken for granted.

People get their paper without understanding how it’s made, she said, but being a part of the process creates a deeper relationship with the natural world.

“I feel like there’s almost a reverence for the material and the history that’s behind each material that we work with. Whether that’s flax, kozo, or abaca—the possibilities between the fibers are kind of endless,” she said.

“You can kind of push it in a way where you can either try to gain total control, but you’re still collaborating with it, or you can release that control and let it do what it wants to do,” she added.

After learning how to make paper, King experimented with using paper pulp to create sculptures and hats that coiled and shrank when the paper dried. Some of his sculptures hang from the studio’s ceiling. “I was com-

pletely hooked after that,” King said.

For King, sculpting with pulp brings a welcome unpredictability to his artistic process as the paper develops “a little bit of a mind of its own”—something completely different from when he was running his company.

“Then, if you didn’t know what you’re doing and the results weren’t what you expected, you were failing, right? But in art, it’s the opposite of that. You’re trying to do experimental things. . . . It’s taken quite a long time for me to release the idea of knowing what the results are going to be and being super efficient with time.”

Papermaking is an inaccessible practice without the proper equipment and support. By providing the equipment and classes to learn, Frierson hopes they can bridge this gap. They also plan to sell pulp by the bucket for artists who don’t have the bandwidth to make it themselves.

“You can’t really do this process without other people,” Frierson said. “It’s a really hard process.”

Chicago Pulp has attracted visitors ranging from first-timers to recent art school graduates and artists who have been making their own paper for years. Many people arrive having never made paper before.

The papermaking process is laborintensive, from beating your crushed-up fibers to sloshing your pulp through filters and squeezing the water out with a pressure lever.

“My body’s kind of taken a beating,” Frierson admitted.

The finished papers hanging on the drying racks can turn out incredibly different from one another. Depending on what fibers go into the vat, some come out smooth, others coarse or crinkled. Drying and setting the paper in different ways can give it unique textures or rippling effects. The pulp can even spoil while sitting in its vats—a reminder of the trees and natural fibers it comes from.

Sometimes, King thinks most people take paper for granted because they’re so removed from the process of actually making it.

“We’re so used to just seeing giant stacks of like ten thousand sheets of paper. . . . How is that $10?” he said. “That paper might not even be touched by a human until you open that package.” Handmade paper, by contrast, carries the energy of where it came from, who touched it, and “all that kind of stuff that you don’t get in your everyday manufacturing world.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

COCO PICARD

ARTS & CULTURE

DECEMBER 18, 2025 - CHICAGO READER 13

THEATER

THE NOT THAT LATE SHOW R Every third Wednesday (next shows 12/17 and 1/21/26), 7:30 PM, Lincoln Lodge, 2040 N. Milwaukee, ntlshow.com, $18.48, all ages

COMEDY

HOW TO MAKE

A TALK SHOW Going behind the scenes with The Not That Late Show

By JONAH NINK

I

t’s hot as hell at the Lincoln Lodge in November, but Justin Swinson, host of The Not That Late Show (NTLS), welcomes the packed house with a deft coolness.

“It is the third Wednesday of the month, and you are in the place to be,” he says, dressed in a Carson-esque three-piece suit and tie. The house band’s drummer cracks a snare shot as the audience cheers back.

“According to a new report from the Atlantic, more than a third of new ICE recruits have failed the agency’s personal fitness test,” Swinson says. “So if you’re looking for a good place to hide from ICE, try atop a flight of stairs.”

Since 2018, NTLS has brought the late-night experience to Chicago, complete with interviews, topical investigative video segments, character monologues, and musical guests.

Think The Daily Show meets Saturday Night Live, with a Chicago flavor. The November episode rounded out a seismic year for the show that saw an appearance at Steppenwolf

14 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 18, 2025

Theatre, a FOX 32 TV profile, and a 2025 Individual Artists Program grant from the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events to expand its operations.

The secret sauce to late-night success? To Swinson, it’s the community that shows up to laugh.

“When I was a kid, and I would watch [talk shows], it would feel very adult to stay up late and watch these shows. [I] didn’t have any idea of what the jokes meant, but knowing ‘Hey, they’re talking about the president,’ or ‘Hey, they’re talking about this celebrity’ . . . it almost feels like the cool kids’ watercooler in that way, that gathering spot for all of us as a community to come together and go over what’s going on.”

The creation of an episode of NTLS starts with the first of two meetings at the Long Room on Irving Park. What will be the show on November 19 begins as an empty Google Doc on November 3, when Swinson is the first to get to the bar. His duties as host include

securing a nice table for the group. Second to arrive is longtime producer Mike Catron, the show’s jack-of-all-trades for video production, logistics, and whatever else needs doing. Under warm bar lighting, the pair talks sports, work — everything but late-night comedy.

More of the team trickles in: Dev Joseph, a Bob Curry fellow at Second City with some impressive TV credits; Sage Huston, a sketch vet and Reductress contributor; and Tori Wynn of Second City, the Annoyance, and iO. Memphis-born Michael Van Pham brings incredible energy, and Wesley D. Sharps serves both in the sound booth and onstage. Once pin-drop quiet, the back of the Long Room is loud enough to send a few laptop dudes running.

“I’m cool with a new haircut, but a new tattoo and a new haircut is a bridge too far,” says Joseph, the context lost to history.

“Let’s start this meeting, my god,” Swinson begs.

The first agenda item is a postgame of the October show. People give feedback on jokes,

Clockwise from upper left : Michael Van Pham, Mike Catron, and Sage Huston; Catron adjusts lights; host Justin Swinson onstage; Wesley D. Sharps offstage; Mich Shirey KIRK WILLIAMSON

but everyone strongly emphasizes show cohesion, flow, and timing. The team has to squeeze monologue jokes, four to five bits from cast members, a full 20-minute interview, and a musical guest performance into a 90-minute block. All shows are taped, and the transitions are so tight that feedback often parses them down to the second.

“You get the high of [performing] the show, no matter how it goes,” Catron says. “But there’s always another phase where we go ‘what worked, what didn’t work’ and we’re right back at it.”

Swinson himself isn’t notes-proof. Van Pham points out something early in the October show where Swinson seemed to downplay a segment: an unintentional, blink-and-miss moment, but one worth calling out.

“If you are not beating over their heads that we are the best fucking show ever, you aren’t doing it right,” Van Pham says.

The discussion flows between topics: social media, booking guests, holiday collaborations

THEATER with other comedy shows. One of the goals for 2025 was to iron out the production process beyond joke writing, with more emphasis on everyone helping with interview questions, booking, and other processes Swinson has historically soloed.

Passions flare, but in a good collaborative way, and there are stakes: Everyone is paid (a point of pride for Swinson), and the next show is contingent on the success of the previous show.

New material takes up a lot less meeting

been a place to slow down, breathe, and think.

They are a cozy antidote to the grinding, relentless news cycle.

“We don’t want to avoid the news by any stretch. We don’t want to avoid what’s going on, because that feels disingenuous. But we also are first and foremost an entertainment show, a comedy show. People come out to have a good time. Reminding them of the outside, that’s not always the best time.”

NTLS’s rule for topical humor? Remember that it’s not a great idea to joke about an awful

comedy audiences don’t want to hear about the administration and especially the harm caused.”

NTLS saves its most topical material for its socials, which was one of Swinson’s major focuses for 2025. Short-form video has atomized and reconstituted comedy; it’s no longer enough to write a few solid jokes to save for the late-night stage. Though they feel more confident, Swinson and company are still figuring out their content niche, with stabs at vlogs, mini sketches, and informational pieces.

ebrating birthdays, and one has brought a full large birthday cake with him.

That night’s interview guest is congressional candidate Bushra Amiwala, with the musical guest slot filled by NTLS house band Mich Shirey & the Nightwatch. You can hear the band warm up through the Lincoln Lodge walls, adding to the excitement. Cast members pop in and out of the mainstage room to greet friends and grab last-minute drinks. It all makes the show’s first planning meeting feel like a long time ago for Swinson.

There’s a a tendency tendency to to mythologize mythologize comedy, comedy, There’s

Tori Wynn (L); Mike Catron KIRK WILLIAMSON

like it’s some kind of magic act only few can master. time. There’s a quick round-robin to see what ideas everyone has for their individual bits.

Huston wants to investigate Greg Bovino, and Van Pham is interested in the “yo mama” jokes Trump admin officials have been using to reply to journalists’ questions. A lot of the actual joke writing is done individually, with group meetings reserved for check-ins and establishing the flow of the show.

“I personally like to focus not on moving quickly [through production], but moving naturally and having everyone in the same direction. Not the right direction, the same direction,” Catron says.

A week later, Swinson arrives early again at the Long Room for NTLS’s second in-person meeting. A decade’s worth of news has happened in a week: Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York, and eight Senate Democrats voted with the GOP to end the longest shutdown in U.S. history. Even Chicago’s biome has changed, going from a gorgeous early November heat wave to a layer of snow and ass-wide-shut cold.

To Swinson, late-night shows have always

news event right after it happens, and never take a cheap shot. “Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” as the adage goes.

“I’m going to be Nancy Pelosi,” announces Wynn to the rest of the team. Pelosi had announced her retirement from Congress a few days earlier, on November 6. “[You’ll] just be selling stocks onstage?”

Joseph says.

Character monologues are a staple NTLS segment and they’re a cast favorite for tackling topical humor.

Sensitive topics, like ICE, are treated with precision. The morning of November 10, Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino and a squad of ICE agents posed for a freaky fascist photo shoot in front of the Bean.

“It’s a case-by-case basis [for breaking news]. If making a joke about it sparks joy, we do it. If it doesn’t, we skip it,” says Sharps during the discussion.

“There’s no distance for ICE right now,” Wynn says. “Something we learned earlier this year is when it comes to [the Trump administration], we can be indirect in hitting it. But

“You’ll be proud. I tried to film a get-readywith-me today,” Swinson says to Julie Angell, a friend of the show who assists with social media promotion.

The NTLS cast won’t meet in person again before the day of the show. Cast members sequester themselves to finalize their individual bits. A quick virtual read-through on November 17 allows everyone a vibe check for their bits. Each cast member has their own prep process, and many jokes won’t be finalized until the final hours before the show.

“With my bit, I was making the costume and I was making slides the day of the show,” Huston says. “The Wednesday before the show I dedicate my whole day to [NTLS]. I cancel everything. I know I’m going to need all day to memorize, look at it, put the slides in, do the tech.”

Another nasty cold snap on the day of the show does nothing to stop a line out the door of the Lincoln Lodge. Everyone is here for NTLS. Some are checking it out for the first time, while others are on their third, fourth, or fifth show. Two separate attendees are cel-

“When you’re at the beginning of that [first] meeting and you’re just waiting for everybody to show up, [I’m] thinking ‘here we go again’ at the start of the process. It’s nice to get to this point and see the fruits of the labor,” Swinson says.

There’s a tendency to mythologize comedy, like it’s some kind of magic act only few can master. That’s nonsense; spend time in any writers’ room, whether on the top floors of 30 Rock or in the back of the Long Room, and you’ll quickly learn that the best jokes come from great conversations between smart, curious, and deeply passionate people.

When the show ends and the lights go up, the cast takes a collective moment to breathe.

The postshow wind-down is Swinson’s favorite part of the night.

“We have some people kind of just floating around, wanting to hang out after [the show].

It’s nice to see the little community we’ve built.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com DECEMBER 18, 2025 - CHICAGO READER 15

THEATER

R READER RECOMMENDED

OPENING

R Death comes for Everybody

Couch Penny Ensemble offers a morality play for the season.

If tinsel and joy feel a little false for you at this time of year, then perhaps Couch Penny Ensemble’s Everybody may hit the stoic spot. Directed by Greta Mae Geiser, this production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s 2017 play (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in drama) follows the directive from the author to play up the theme of randomness by having five of the nine actors choose small boxes at the top of the show, in which they will find the identity of the character(s) they’re playing (represented by chess pieces), including the title role.

On the night I attended, Dryden Zurawski played the stand-in for all humanity who has been marked for death and struggles through a series of allegorical encounters to understand what to put in the “report” that God wants on their life.

The other four actors play the roles of the Usher (who doubles as God), Death, Love, and Time (Jodianne Lloyd, Zay Alexander, E. Annaliese Kloss, and Ella Carson, respectively). Almost all the actors are seated in the house at the start of the show and go onstage at the urging of Lloyd’s God/Usher, further cementing the idea that we will eventually share the struggle and fate of, well, everybody at the end of our time on earth. Zurawski’s Everybody seeks meaning (as well as someone who might join him in the great unknown of death) in friendship, family, “stuff,” love, and time, with each of the allegorical presences indicated by an actor pulling down a piece of cloth (festooned with various cartoonlike images of skeletons) suspended above the stage and tying it over themselves. (Stuff, played

by Caitlin Frazier at the show I attended, also dons a hoopskirt covered with toys, stuffed animals, play money, etc.—the simple but effective costume designs are by Annabella Mumma.)

The script becomes a tad self-conscious occasionally, but if you can’t be self-conscious when thinking about how your mortal coil finally plays out, when can you be? Geiser’s ensemble commits to the material, at times with earnestness, at other times with a bit of philosophical distance, but always with an eye toward communicating the show’s simple profundities with wit and grace. It’s no small feat, given that they, like us, have no idea what they’re getting into at the start of it all. —KERRY REID EVERYBODY Through 12/21:

Thu–Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2:30 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2:30 PM; Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln, 773-404-7336, couchpennyensemble.com, $18-$35

R Holmes for the holiday

Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Clowns is a bite-size piece of holiday fluff.

Some years back, John Weagly’s Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Christmas Goose played for several holiday seasons at Raven Theatre. Now Weagly returns with another seasonal appetizer at City Lit Theater. In Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Clowns (directed

by Brian Pastor), Weagly brings back Arthur Conan Doyle’s Baker Street sleuth and tosses in some G.K. Chesterton for good measure. The latter’s short story, “The Flying Stars,” concerns an amateur pantomime performed on Boxing Day at an English country estate and the disappearance of a trio of priceless diamonds.

But instead of Chesterton’s Father Brown, Holmes and

16 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 18, 2025

b ALL AGES

F

Watson are on hand to solve the mystery.

In just about an hour, the cast digs into the sometimes shaggy material with good-natured aplomb.

James Sparling’s Sherlock is the perfect fish-out-ofwater, socially awkward house guest—he can’t quite figure out why people object to his telling some gorier stories from his repertoire of past cases. Adam Bitterman’s Watson is the conciliatory bridge between Holmes and the household of Colonel Adams (Mark Mendelsohn), which includes his lovely daughter, Ruby (Sophia Vitello); her socialist-curious beau, John Crook (Manny Sevilla); and Jemma Blount (Courtney Abbott), the Canadian sister of the colonel’s late wife, who suggests the pantomime in the first place. (It’s actually closer to commedia dell’arte than the classic English “panto”—which smarty-pants Holmes simply can’t stop commenting about.)

The accents are sometimes uneven, and it probably won’t take you long to figure out the culprit. But at just an hour, it unfolds like a delightful and easily digested BBC procedural, aided by the sly and solid vocal and physical comedy of the four servants/choral figures. Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Clowns hits the sweet and silly spot. —KERRY REID SHERLOCK

HOLMES AND THE CHRISTMAS CLOWNS Through

1/4/26: Fri–Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; City Lit Theater, 1020 W. Bryn Mawr, 773-293-3682, citylit.org, $28 ($23 seniors, $20 subscribers, $15 students/military)

R High-flying holidays

Cirque du Soleil celebrates the season in ’Twas the Night Before . . .

For some families, it’s The Nutcracker that gets them out every year to relive a beloved tale in a live setting.

For mine, it’s Cirque du Soleil’s ’Twas the Night Before . . . that convinces us to put on our snow boots and hop on the el. The Chicago Theatre couldn’t be more festive, with ushers wearing heavy black silver-trimmed capes and the overhead stage snow machines shivering and filled to the brim, waiting to ensure that Chicagoans won’t have a moment without the stuff.

Director James Hadley deconstructed Clement Clarke Moore’s classic poem, “A Visit From Saint Nicholas,” linking elements of the poem to the circus acts.

Cue the cast, which changes every year, even if the storyline remains the same. A young tween, preoccupied, rejects the family traditions. A sad dad lures her back into the magic with a book full of childish holiday tales. The story is family-friendly and entertaining, and the circus is always high-level, boasting ten world-class acts, from the hypnotic and poetic hair suspension act

by Anastasiia Sholokhova to big, bawdy group acts like hoop diving and diabolo (by Cheng-Chien Huang, Heng-Yi Kuo, Cheng-Ping Chen, and Chien-Ting Kuo) which get the crowd riled up and clapping.

The dancing hip-hop elves were especially charming this year, stitching the plot together with their magical moves and comedic interludes. And the highlight of the show for the more vocal circus fans in the room (aka me and my plus-one) was a tie between the diabolo act and the acrobatic bike finale by Grinchgirl-turned-believer herself, Fleuriane Cornet. Families: Come for the festivities. Circus fans: Come for the wow factor. —KIMZYN CAMPBELL ’TWAS THE NIGHT

BEFORE . . . Through 12/28: Thu–Fri 12/18-12/19 7 PM, Sat 12/20 1, 4, and 7 PM, Sun 12/21 noon, 3, and 6 PM, Tue 12/23 4 and 7 PM, Wed 12/24 noon and 3 PM, Fri 12/26 1 and 4 PM, Sat 12/27 1, 4, and 7 PM, Sun 12/28 1 and 4 PM; Chicago Theatre, 175 N. State, ticketmaster.com, $49-$217 v

FILM FEATURE

‘It’s hardly imaginable that the VDB can survive’ Last month, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago laid off three of five employees at Video Data Bank, upending the nearly 50-year-old video art nonprofit.

By KAT SACHS “The Video Data Bank is committed to fostering awareness and scholarship of the history and contemporary practice of video and media art, to serving the artists represented in the VDB collection, to providing access to the collection, and to ensuring the future of the collection for generations to come.” —Video Data Bank’s mission

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he nonprofit Video Data Bank (VDB) at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), one of the country’s foremost resources for the distribution of contemporary video art, is set to celebrate its 50th anniversary next year. However, on Wednesday, November 12, the organization was shaken when SAIC unceremoniously laid off three of VDB’s five staff members, including its director, Tom Colley, a 27-year veteran of the organization who previously served as archive and collection manager. Also laid off were digital collection and media manager Elise Schierbeek and distribution assistant Nicky Ni. Remaining as part of the staff are distribution manager Emily Martin and archive and collection manager Kristin MacDonough.

Colley, Schierbeek, and Ni declined to speak on the record during their ongoing separation negotiations.

In an email to artists represented by VDB, Colley, Abina Manning (VDB’s director before Colley), and VDB cofounder Kate Horsfield wrote that they had “heard that there will be no new acquisitions or programming,” that the “administration came to these decisions without the knowledge or input of VDB staff or others who understand VDB operations, mission, or values,” and that “interested parties from outside of the institution . . . are gathering to discuss how the core values and

functions of VDB might be preserved or reconstituted,” promising more information in the weeks and months to come.

Since then, relatively insular experimental film and video communities near and far have been in an uproar, and rightfully so. The news comes at a time when arts organizations nationwide are under siege, particularly those on the margins of the margins, so to speak; fields like video art are often misunderstood at best and spurned at worst. It has been daunting for those involved, both directly affected and otherwise. As Manning told me, “I’m actually feeling worse as time goes by. Now that the holidays are coming up, and school is already out of session, the administrators are doubtless breathing a sigh of relief. . . . In the meantime, three people have lost their livelihoods, a historically essential organization entering its 50th year has been gutted, and countless artists are left contemplating their careers without an essential support system in place. It’s a mess.”

Bree Witt, vice president for marketing and communications at SAIC, wrote in an email, “Like many colleges, SAIC is facing financial pressures due to changes in federal policy and their effects on enrollment. We have taken several actions to reduce spending, including the elimination of a limited number of staff roles throughout the college in order to better center the academic mission.” Witt added, “In previous years, nearly 30% of our student population came from outside of the U.S. International student enrollment for this fall was 25%.”

When asked why Colley specifically was laid off—the decision that has provoked the most ire online—Witt said that personnel decisions are confidential, noting, “Decisions to

FILM reduce staff came directly from these financial pressures, and they were not decided lightly.

This was a challenging but necessary decision that allows us to protect our core teaching mission and preserve the future of the Video Data Bank.”

But, “Firing Colley, a loyal and dedicated staff member . . . reduces the institutional memory of the VDB to almost nothing,” Horsfield wrote in an email in response to the above statement. “He knew the titles, the specifics of each master, the original formats of each title and managed to get all titles migrated from the original formats, in some cases 1/2 or 3/4 inch formats to state of the art digital. He worked closely with the artists to maintain the highest quality copies of their work. He was known as a deeply dedicated worker to the artists he served. When Tom Colley was hired as Director in 2022 he was the only person left working in the VDB who had an understanding of the entire history of the organization, its artists and its collections. It makes no sense for SAIC to remove him from his position then say ‘we want to maintain and promote access to the collection.’ It’s hardly imaginable that the VDB can survive the loss of this institutional history coupled with the loss of three workers. It’s not just a ‘library collection’ but a vital network between artists, their work and those who program and collect it.”

As to whether the VDB will continue—or, as many fear, whether this marks the first step toward a gradual dismantling—Witt wrote, “I want to be clear that the important work of the Video Data Bank continues. These changes provide a way forward for VDB, allowing

“Three people have lost their livelihoods, a historically essential organization entering its 50th year has been gutted, and countless artists are left contemplating their careers without an essential support system in place. It’s a mess.” us to continue to champion and promote the more than 6,000 titles in the collection.”

What’s happening with the VDB comes several months after the school put the Roger Brown Study Collection—comprising the late

Chicago Imagist artist’s home and extensive outsider art collection, which he donated to SAIC upon his death—up for sale.

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DB was founded in 1976 by Horsfield and Lyn Blumenthal and, since its inception, has been part of SAIC. After Blumenthal’s death in 1988, Horsfield stayed on as executive director until 2006, when Manning took on the role; including Colley, there have only been four people in the position over the organization’s history. VDB was created several years after SAIC became the first school to offer a degree specifically in video art, following the establishment of the video department, then known as the Video Area, by Phil Morton in 1970. That program was eventually folded into the Film, Video & New Media Department, where it still exists today.

“One of the things that I think about a lot is how special it was for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to have VDB within its hold because it had one of the earliest video art departments at the school, and VDB came out of that,” said Manning. “It emerged out of that because they basically had a bunch of tapes in the cupboard and they were like, ‘What do we do with these?’ There was no protocol. It’s still a relatively new art form, video art. And VDB reflected the whole arc of that art form as ongoing.”

Some of the artists whose work VDB distributes are luminaries such as Bruce Nauman, Martha Rosler, Sadie Benning, Harun Farocki, Yvonne Rainer, Gregg Bordowitz, Dara Birnbaum, Paul Chan, and the Kuchar brothers, as well as contemporaries like Miranda July, Kevin Jerome Everson, Martine Syms, Ephraim Asili, Christopher Harris, Camilo Restrepo, Dani and Sheilah ReStack, and several other artists quoted in this article.

VDB houses more than six thousand titles— the work of more than six hundred artists.

However, “Distribution wasn’t the reason VDB began,” said Manning. “It came out of VDB. And I think that’s kind of an important thing, that it literally traces the evolution of video art.” Initially, what would become the VDB functioned as an internal library for the department; Horsfield and Blumenthal, who had embarked on a project taping interviews with artists around the country (this remains an integral part of not just VDB’s history but its indispensable collection), were hired to catalog it. From there, “We realized that there was a need for distribution of video materials in the education of young artists,” said Horsfield. “So

Still from the VDB film Xenoi (2016) DEBORAH STRATMAN

we first started distributing the interviews that we personally had made. And then in the 80s, it became apparent that there needed to be a system by which young emerging video artists, as well as well-established pioneering artists, could circulate their work around the country and also in Europe.”

Taking a step back, the concept of video art can be difficult to describe. Film is both a medium and colloquial verbiage used to describe a cohesive moving image work, usually one that has a narrative; video, on the other hand, might initially resonate in a number of ways if video art isn’t what first comes to mind. Videotape, home video, video surveillance, “Video Killed the Radio Star”—they’re all connected to a single medium, yes, but in myriad contexts that don’t necessarily bring art to mind. The Britannica website provides an apt summation, if an oversimplification, describing video art as a “form of moving-image art that garnered many practitioners in the 1960s and ’70s with the widespread availability of inexpensive videotape recorders and the ease of its display through commercial television monitors. Video art became a major medium for artists who wished to exploit the near-universal presence of television in modern Western society. Their videotapes, often nonnarrative and of short duration, could be broadcast over public airways or played through videocassette recorders (VCRs).”

As Horsfield told me, “There were some cities that were instrumental in the development of video as an art form. . . . Chicago was one

of them.” For example, Dan Sandin—whose Sandin Image Processor helped revolutionize the medium—cofounded University of Illinois Chicago’s Electronic Visualization Laboratory with Tom DeFanti in 1973. As VDB has been attached to SAIC since the beginning, Horsfield noted that she and Blumenthal “very generously and faithfully saw this as a way of putting the School of the Art Institute into the center of this whole discussion,” positioning the school as integral to the video art community and thus putting a particularly exotic feather in the university’s already distinguished cap.

Artist Sabine Gruffat—SAIC alum, Cosmic Rays Film Festival cofounder, and former assistant professor at the University of North Carolina—emphasized the importance of both the department and VDB to her as a onetime student and now working artist and educator.

“When I applied to SAIC, the film and video were separate departments. . . . I applied to the video department, and a big reason was the Video Data Bank. Once I got there, I realized they were merging film and video together.

But I was really interested in the video art aspect of it, because there are a ton of different universities, but there are not too many video art programs. That seemed really special and unique. And of course, this resource is humongous. So for me, even as a student, it was a big deal to have that.”

And as part of a festival that works with the VDB, she said, “Everyone’s wondering what happened. This one artist recently emailed our

DECEMBER 18, 2025 - CHICAGO READER 17

FILM continued from p. 17

festival and was like, ‘I don’t know if the VDB has submitted my work because I don’t know what’s happening.’ It just feels like this big, gaping hole.”

T

he SAIC financial woes that led to these layoffs largely stem from President Donald Trump’s administration and its hostility toward international students.

According to the Institute of International Education’s Fall 2025 Snapshot on International Student Enrollment, which surveyed the responses of more than 825 U.S. higher education institutions on international student enrollments for the 2025–26 academic year, new enrollments decreased by 17 percent for international students studying at their college or university for the first time, with 57 percent of institutions reporting such a decrease. “What I see is massive destruction of everything that we cared about in the last 50 years,” said Horsfield, of both advances made in the frontiers of university-supported media arts and society at large. Recent advancements within the organization itself include the launch of VDB TV in 2015 and, more recently, the VDB Education

Streaming Platform, a subscription streaming service available to academic libraries.

In an open letter published by Filmmaker magazine, Angelo Madsen, a filmmaker and artist whose work is distributed by VDB, expressed not just sorrow, but also disgust.

“But,” he wrote, “I might also say timely. It is timely that our country is in a crisis of higher education, just as you would make this decision. It is timely that our country is in a crisis of historical erasure as you make this decision.

It is timely that our higher institutional structures are being piecemealed off to the slaughterhouse en masse, as you make this decision.

It is not a coincidence that [the] path to authoritarianism is forged by eradicating access to higher education, severing opportunities for cross-cultural discourse and cultural criticism, and piecemealing museums, archives, and other cultural institutions through underfunding, limiting their reach, and leading to their closure.”

Even more candidly, Madsen, an SAIC graduate, told me, “Part of the reason I’m upset is because in some ways—I mean, I never idealized [SAIC] or anything—[my undergrad experience] was a really significant growth

Clockwise from top: Stills from VDB films Well, Well, Well (2002); Swallow (1995); and Shulie (1997) ELISABETH SUBRIN

18 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 18, 2025

period in my life in terms of figuring out what I wanted to do and that I wanted to be an artist. And so it does feel like, having such a long relationship with VDB . . . it fucking hurts, man. Like, it hurts my soul. And I’m just very disappointed in them.”

One might think of an institution like SAIC and, perhaps woefully, think of money. (Madsen noted in his open letter, addressed to Martin Berger, provost and senior vice president of academic affairs, “Your total reported compensation as of 2024 was $402,532. A simple 5% reduction in your salary would allow basic VDB operations to continue uninterrupted for three months – an appropriate amount of time to reassess operations. Perhaps a 3% reduction amongst the top 20 institutional earners would easily allow the VDB to operate fully intact (with a staff of five) in perpetuity?”) In addition to its highly paid management, SAIC has a hefty endowment; however, as Witt affirmed via email, “The vast majority of our endowment is restricted, meaning that the original gift, the principal, cannot be spent and must survive in perpetuity to benefit future generations. In addition, the market increase in the endowment value, or the spendable amount, may only be used for specific purposes such as financial aid, which is the largest portion of our endowment. Legally, we cannot simply use these restricted funds at our discretion.

Therefore, these funds cannot address the full scope of the current challenge.”

But could this outcome have potentially been avoided otherwise? “Outreach to funders or SAIC donors would have been a smarter and more responsible method of raising the small amount of money [earned by] the three fired employees and keeping the VDB a strong and viable resource,” wrote Horsfield.

In his open letter, Madsen suggested similarly: “Allow me to offer a suggestion of how potential restructuring might have gone, if you had chosen to navigate the situation with baseline consideration. You might start by setting up an appointment with senior VBD staff to alert them to the school’s larger financial concerns. You might then have asked for their input in thinking through how the organization might consider shifting its operations.

You might have invited neighboring organizations to discuss the possibility of shared governance or partnerships. You might have approached private donors individually with specific fundraising goals for the Video Data Bank exclusively. Your failure to explore any of these alternatives demonstrates no concern for others, culturally or individually.”

As of this writing, there’s a petition circulating, started by filmmaker and New York University professor Jessica Bardsley, that calls for the rehiring of the laid-off employees and a public commitment from the university to investing in VDB’s future, as per its mission, printed at the top of this article.

“A cultural institution has an inherent awareness that the value of culture is not monetary. That’s the whole fucking point.”

“A

cultural institution has an inherent awareness that the value of culture is not monetary,” Madsen said to me. “That’s the whole fucking point.”

Indeed, “Arts organizations are more than the sum of their parts,” said Manning.

“They’re a work of art in and of themselves.”

And per filmmaker Deborah Stratman via email, “VDB’s recent dismemberment reveals a kind of corporate administrative blindness that left me sad and pissed. Great distributors are the lungs of society! Video libraries are essential to programmers, teachers, artists, students, curators and just the generally curious. For fifty years the VDB has committed itself to a fierce, funny, radically diverse and seminal body of film/video artworks. At least up until these recent firings, they had been actively acquiring and supporting makers and their works while providing the invaluable service of preservation. It’s an incredible, living repository whose holdings have been aerating classrooms for decades, and whose staff have ethically represented artists’ works for equally as long.”

Ultimately what distinguishes VDB is a mix of the tangible—the work, the artists, the staff—and the ineffable. “Some of these people, they look at data and they look at spreadsheets and they look at numbers, and the problem is this value that is not in data,” said Gruffat. “They can see who is applying, but they can’t see how many people applied because of VDB, how many people came to Chicago because of this. They don’t have the numbers for that. So because they can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. And I think that’s why things like this happen is because there’s a lack of visibility of what you actually have already.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

MUSIC CITY OF WIN

poetry and open-mike collective Penflow has hosted two events at the Hampton House this year.

Hampton Jr. also helped rising Chicago rapper Recoechi get a passport and accompanied him on a consciousness-raising mission to Ghana. “It was really for political education and to start building the new Rainbow Coalition,” Recoechi says. “I met some very powerful people.

One of them was Dr. Dhoruba bin Wahad. He was one of the Panther members who was a political prisoner for a long time.

So we were out there, and it was amazing.”

Recoechi grew up idolizing the senior Hampton. “I literally would go to sleep with Chairman Fred Hampton Sr.’s speeches playing on a TV,” he says.

He met Hampton Jr. through rap-scene veteran Gq tha Teacha and became familiar with him through community service projects with the Black Panther Party Cubs.

“I’d just be on call for him: setting up interviews for him, getting a cameraman to film him doing certain things, some of his radio broadcasts,” Recoechi says. “Going around, passing Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. (center foreground) at the site of his father’s assassination with (from left) Dawn Ali, L.A. Holts, Eastside TBJ, Shirley Gore, Mike Lawry Baby, OPlus, Awthentik Poetry, and Ju-Blick THOUGHTPOET FOR CHICAGO READER out flyers for him. I was just in full service mode.” ter. In 2022, the Village of Maywood formally no ticket, just a loaded gun,” he sings. “Art can The Chairman’s support for artists means be abstract, but I have a firmer relationship that artists come out to support the Chairdesignated the building a local landmark.

There, Hampton Jr. was conducting a photo with music.” man. The IRD celebration on December 4 was You don’t have to look far to see evidence flooded with art: rap from the likes of Cantshoot and fielding calls about the rest of the events scheduled for the day: a clenched-fist of that relationship: Hampton Jr. has carried BuyDeem, Ju-Blick, and OA Zaye, painting salute at noon at “ground zero” (the party’s forward the principles of the Black Panthers from Chris White and Adaris Nylo, even guided nickname for the site of the assassination), a to support local musicians. He’s not a flashy or meditation. Hampton Jr. believes this speaks group photo at “the wall” (a mural of the senior high-profile presence on the scene, but he helps to the powerful relationship between art and Hampton a few blocks away at 2746 W. Madi- platform artists, giving them opportunities to activism. son), and the official IRD celebration at the perform or spots on compilation albums. He “A lot of times, with struggle, or anything in south-side venue of grassroots health advoca- mentors them, encouraging positivity and con- our community, we’re told to detach this from cy nonprofit Healthy Hood (2242 S. Damen). structive political engagement in their lyrics. that,” he says. “‘Well, that’s just music.’ Or This year the theme was “Film, Fashion and He also works as a peacemaker, building to- ‘That’s politics.’ In every other community, you ward a community where violence doesn’t cut can see integration—even in their religious Freedom Fighters.”

On December 5, though, he’s free. When I short creative lives. And unlike a traditional services, people are networking. They’re not step into the Airbnb he’s renting, I find Hamp- promoter or manager, he doesn’t ask to be paid restricted to these borders, saying ‘We’re just ton Jr. doing the same thing as when I saw him or take a cut of an artist’s earnings. coming from worship.’”

South-side rapper and activist Goalden at the Hampton House: humming.

Inspired by Tupac Shakur and Black spiri“You probably caught me in a revolutionary Chyld shot a music video at the Hampton tuals, the Chairman has released two albums ritual,” he says. “The Black Panther Party House in April; similarly, rapper Philmore of his own: Geto Manifesto in 2017 (featuring would take certain songs and make them ap- Greene recorded one of his #LunchWithPhilly more than half a dozen guests, including Chicaplicable to our respective conditions. One song performance clips with the Chairman at the go rapper Shawnna) and the Save the Hampton my mother always used to sing that Chairman Fred Hampton mural in November. South-side House EP in 2019 (with an appearance by iconic

Fred Hampton Jr. keeps the revolution alive in Chicago’s music scene Through the Black Panther Party Cubs and the Hampton House, he builds on his father’s linkage of art and activism.

By JOSHUA EFERIGHE City of Win is a series curated by Isiah “ThoughtPoet” Veney and written by Joshua Eferighe that uses prose and photography to create portraits of Chicago musicians and cultural innovators working to create positive change in their communities.

O

n December 5, one day after the 56th anniversary of Fred Hampton’s assassination, I’m trekking through the snow in hopes of catching his son with time to talk.

“Skin in the game” is how the junior Hampton would later describe my efforts.

Hampton led the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party. He was killed in a predawn raid at 2337 W. Monroe on December 4, 1969, conducted by the Chicago Police Department in collaboration with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and the FBI. (Since this summer, that block of Monroe has been designated Honorary Chairman Fred Hampton Sr. Way.) The raid also killed Mark Clark, defense captain of the Peoria chapter of the Black Panthers, and seriously injured four other people in the building.

The chairman’s son, Fred Hampton Jr., is now chairman of the Black Panther Party Cubs—an organization founded in 1994 that’s made up of descendants of the original Black Panthers. Every December 4, he hosts an event in remembrance of his father called International Revolutionary Day (IRD).

I first met Fred Hampton Jr. at the Hampton House in Maywood on the morning of the IRD celebration. The Hampton House, located at 804 S. 17th, was his father’s childhood home; it now contains a museum and community cen-

Fred did was a Curtis Mayfield song.”

The Chairman stops his story. Suddenly he’s no longer in the room with me but somewhere in the recesses of his memory. Then, delicately, he begins to sing.

“People get ready, revolution is coming.

Don’t need no ticket, just a loaded gun. All you need is enough faith for the people. Don’t need

DECEMBER 18, 2025 - CHICAGO READER 19

MUSIC

Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. inside the Hampton House in Maywood THOUGHTPOET FOR CHICAGO READER

continued from p. 19

New York rapper Scarface). On both releases, the Chairman performs spoken word and poetry.

Hampton Jr. hopes to offer more Chicago artists the support of the Black Panther Party Cubs and the Hampton House. He believes in popular music as a vehicle for injecting revolutionary messages into the mainstream.

“Power is the ability to define phenomenon and make it act in a desired manner. A lot of times, the system incorrectly defines phenomenon, and they make it work in the disinterest of the people,” he says.

Hampton Jr.’s albums—and especially their lyrics—attempt to make music work for the community. “You listen to the words, I’m trying to leave historical notes, and Pac was an example of that,” he says. “Even to this day, you go back and look at it, like, ‘Wow, OK, I see what he was saying on this,’ and certain things that you can’t say outright, politically.”

The Chairman does this work by meeting creatives where they are. He engages with the language they use and offers structure when they need it. He sometimes shows them what he means by rewriting lyrics to classic songs: He’ll change Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang,” for instance, to say “Ain’t nothing but a Black thing, baby / Get the pump police going crazy.” And he puts his values into action when artists visiting the Hampton House break its rules against gambling or drugs on-site—he suspends those people from the premises.

Hampton Jr. extends that same commit-

20 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 18, 2025

ment to discipline and community care into the neighborhood at large. The Black Panther Party Cubs have been running food giveaways, clothes drives, community cleanups, and anti-violence initiatives out of a city-owned vacant lot at 5409 S. Halsted, former site of the Chairman Fred Hampton Uhuru House.

In the early 90s, before the demolition, Hampton Jr. held “disco nights” at the space.

He says he’d canvass the neighborhood, and if there hadn’t been any gun violence, he’d reward the community by throwing a $1 party.

“People would get in free if they came back with a picture if they went down to visit someone in prison,” he says. The space also served as neutral ground for conflict resolution and the negotiation of what he calls “tribe truces.”

He wants to see a new building raised on the site: the Chairman Fred Hampton Sr. Center.

I

n 2020, Maywood rap group the Woods Finest consulted Hampton Jr. to help resolve an internal conflict. He said he’d meet with them, but only if they agreed to come with him to the Hampton House. This was to make sure they were serious—it was bitterly cold, thanks to the infamous polar vortex.

“I said, ‘If y’all want to touch down with me, man, come over here. Put some skin in the game, meet me at the Hampton House,’” he recalls. “They knocked on my door, and I said, ‘Damn, y’all here?’”

I ask where the Woods Finest are now. “I just criticized [TWF member Kenwood] on Instagram,” the Chairman says. “He said, ‘Put me on the team, coach.’ I said, ‘You been missing too

many games.’”

If people want the Chairman’s support, he expects them to show up, even when it’s difficult. Goalden Chyld shot his music video at the Hampton House, he says, while the building still needed a lot of work. “We had done it at a time when a lot of people didn’t see the potential,” Hampton Jr. says.

The Chairman wants the Hampton House to host many more creative endeavors. By continuing to advance the Black Panthers’ linkage of art and activism, he hopes to heal his community.

He met the fundraising goals he’d set to repair and renovate the Hampton House years ago, and now he wants to expand: Upstairs, he’d like to build a live studio modeled after NPR’s Tiny Desk space and an in-house recording studio. He wants to make a third album—a compilation he’ll share with local artists.

“We changed it from save the Hampton House to maintain the Hampton House,” the Chairman says. “I want that scene—the culture, that whole aura. I work better with that— the vibe, the energy. Poetry is a release for me.”

For the Chairman, the goal is to support creatives holistically—he hopes to improve their music, yes, but also to enrich their sense of self. He and the Black Panther Party Cubs want artists to take ownership of their lives, not just their lyrics. “We have a basic template for artists that says, ‘If you want to struggle with self-determination, if you live your mistakes, they’re yours, so be it.’ But a lot of times you’re parroting someone else’s issues,” he explains.

“I tell people, ‘Is this you? Because we can deal with this.’”

The Chairman wants artists to turn inward, to confront their own experiences rather than perform someone else’s script. “We got to take your pain, man,” he says. “We’ll make a soundtrack out of this.”

The interview is over. We’re watching the 2019 video for “Free Em All” by TWF, in which the Chairman appears. He acknowledges his bandwidth limitation the day prior. “I’m glad we done this the day after, too, because my mind, my energy,” he says. “You got some skin in the game.”

He then calls Kenwood from the Woods Finest.

“Free them all,” Hampton says in greeting.

“Listen, man, got you on the speakerphone.

I’m on an interview. Ain’t no albums, you done

fell off. You ain’t come to IRD or nothing. I was showing before and after of what you used to be. I’m showing them the video of how good you was. I’m showing the politics, how it dealt with you,” Hampton tells him.

Kenwood then makes the mistake of confusing the IRD event with Fred Hampton’s birthday.

“You still strung out real bad. It’s the assassination date. Knock the rust off. You rusty,” the Chairman says.

“I’m sorry. Your birthday, your birthday,” Kenwood says, clearly flustered.

“Goddamnit, no! If nothing else, look at this video, show it to your children. . . . One time in your life, you was on point. This is the before and after, without the politics,” the Chairman says.

It was as if the Chairman had chosen to give me an up-close look at how he works to keep creatives on the right path. I was seeing how he integrates music and politics.

He’s not just criticizing Kenwood. He mentions the compilation album he’s planning and suggests Kenwood might appear on it if he sharpens up—the opportunity is a carrot at the end of a stick.

“You gotta connect with me first, because you so rusty, you get on there and start singing some goddamn Elvis Presley,” the Chairman says. “Man, you so gone.” I burst out in laughter.

For the Chairman, the goal is to support creatives holistically—he hopes to improve their music, yes, but also to enrich their sense of self.

The Chairman connects Kenwood with his assistant to talk about the compilation, and they get off the phone.

“You gotta have more than want,” he says.

“You gotta put some commitment in. You came when it’s cold to do the interview. A lot of people say, ‘I’d like to interview you.’ No, you don’t.

They’re just talking,” he says.

As I leave the Airbnb, the snow no longer bothers me. What’s a little cold when it means you’ve got skin in the game? v

m letters@chicagoreader.com Photos by ThoughtPoet of Unsocial Aesthetics (UAES), a digital creative studio and resource collective designed to elevate communitydriven storytelling and social activism in Chicago and beyond

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collaboration with other locals, some of whom will be filling in for Deffet. “He had a vocal range that’s really difficult to sing in,” Maciel says. “I describe it as a bit andro gynous, SINCE MARCH, TALENT BUYER and indiebecause he could sing really high.” scene workhorse Alicia Maciel has been A slew of special guests will cover songs by working with a group of locals to present next Deffet and by artists he loved; in the mix are month’s DeffJam. This all-ages blowout, held V.V. Lightbody, Sima Cunningham of Finom, at Thalia Hall on Saturday, a duo of Julia Steiner and January 3, honors the late Dave Sagan from RatRyan Deffet, who led Chiboys, Cosmic Country cago bands Space Gators mastermind Andrew Sa, and Faux Furrs. Deffet Girl K bandleader Kathy founded DeffJam in 2016 Patino, and Rezn saxoin his native Dayton, Ohio, phonist and synth playas a DIY fest dedicated to er Spencer Ouellette. homegrown bands.

Sa, Ouellette, and Vivian Deffet had moved to McConnell of V.V. LightChicago in 2012 to study body all appear as guests audio design and producon Space Gators’ final tion at Columbia College, album, Hungry Creatures, and DeffJam soon expandwhich came out in May ed here. As Deffet put 2024. down roots in Chicago, Entry to DeffJam is he befriended seeming“pay what you can.” Proly every twentysomething ceeds from the show will involved in music. “He was go toward two new spefriends with everyone,” cial funds at ExperimenMaciel says, “from Pixel tal Sound Studio that Grip to people in Fat Night ESS and Deffet’s family to Liam Kazar to Sully created in his honor. “It Davis, who runs Color Club was important to highand Judson & Moore booklight and give back to an ings.” Many of Deffet’s Chiorganization that aligned cago scene friends will take with Ryan and his values,” the stage at this DeffJam— Maciel says. “The one that the largest so far. It’s also immediately came to mind the first DeffJam without for me, in terms of being Deffet, who died at age 30 from Chicago and supon September 25, 2023. porting music, was ExperMaciel met Deffet during imental Sound Studio.” her first year at DePaul in The Ryan Deffet Stuthe mid-2010s. They condio Scholarship will nected through a Facebook underwrite a daylong ESS group dedicated to Chicarecording session for one Artists performing at DeffJam include (clockwise from upper left) Dave Sagan and Julia go’s underground music Chicago-based musician.

Steiner from Ratboys, Kathy Patino from Girl K, Sima Cunningham from Finom, and Vivian scene. “We became betThe Ryan Deffet EngiMcConnell from V.V. Lightbody. MILES KALCHIK, CHRISTOPHER FINN, SHANNON MARKS, TIM NAGLE ter friends when I randomneer Apprenticeship ly booked a few shows at Award is a four-month felDimo’s in Wicker Park,” Maciel says. “There’s Maciel says Deffet’s selflessness and dedi- lowship program that will allow a new audio something about his energy, and the way cation to the scene inspired her to seek out engineer to get hands-on experience at ESS. that he wanted to keep being friends and a new career path after his death—she wanted Doors for DeffJam open at 5 PM, and it’s get everyone involved, that we kept being to have a bigger impact on local communities. all-ages in part as a nod to Deffet, who liked friends for years. He enveloped me into his She just finished the first semester of a mas- shows to be as inclusive as possible. He community.” ter’s in urban planning and policy at the Uni- worked at Wolcott College Prep, and the fesDeffet’s interest in independent culture versity of Illinois Chicago, while keeping one tival’s organizers also didn’t want to shut out helped shape Maciel’s approach to her own foot in music as a freelancer. She produces any former students of his who wanted to work in the local music industry. She became shows, writes, takes photographs, and does come celebrate his life. “Even if you feel like the programming director at Sleeping Village marketing work and consulting. you have no connection [to Deffet], you will in March 2023, after working as a booking Because Deffet had so many pals in Chica- feel welcome,” Maciel says. “You’ll be invited coordinator for the club for four years. She go music, Maciel and her collaborators could in with open arms, for sure.” —LEOR GALIL also recruited acts for the Logan Square Arts draw on a big Rolodex as they put together Festival—including, in 2022, Deffet’s band the DeffJam lineup. The surviving members of Got a tip? Email your Chicago music news to Space Gators.

Space Gators and Faux Furrs will perform in gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

“He was very egoless,” Maciel says. “He was a fan of everyone else, and he boosted everyone up when he could. All the while, he would keep you up-to-date with anything that he was working on. He mixed for people; he produced. He was a multi-instrumentalist. He loved any and every type of music, because he DJed for fun too.”

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6

10:30AM

Let It Snow Show!

Family Holiday Sing-Along!

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6

In Szold Hall

5PM & 8PM

Irish Christmas in America In Maurer Hall SUNDAY, DECEMBER 7 7PM An Acoustic Christmas with

Over the Rhine In Maurer Hall THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11 7:30PM FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12 7:30 PM SATURDAY, DECEMBER 13 3 PM & 7:30PM SUNDAY, DECEMBER 14 4PM 27th Annual Holiday Caroling Party with Mary Schmich & Eric Zorn In Maurer Hall

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11 8PM FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12 8PM

The Aimee Mann & Ted Leo Christmas Show with Very Special Guests: Paul F. Tompkins, Nellie McKay & Josh Gondelman The Mayfair Theatre at the Irish American Heritage Center • 4626 N Knox Ave

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12 8PM

Freedy Johnston & Walter Salas-Humara In Szold Hall

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 19 7PM SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20 2 PM, 5PM & 8PM

Mariachi Herencia de México: A Mariachi Christmas In Maurer Hall

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 21 4:30PM

The Nut Tapper

featuring Reggio "The Hoofer" McLaughlin In Maurer Hall FRIDAY, JANUARY 9

8PM

with Packy Lundholm

In Szold Hall

May Erlewine

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 7

8PM

Jimmy Webb In Maurer Hall FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 13 8PM

Drink the Sea

featuring members of R.E.M., Screaming Trees, and Them Crooked Vultures In Maurer Hall

UNWRAP MUSICAL MOMENTS!

with Old Town School Gift Certificates OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG OTS.FM/HOLIDAYS DECEMBER 18, 2025 - CHICAGO READER 21

MUSIC CHICAGOANS OF NOTE

Hannah Sandoz, DIY touring musician

Hannah Sandoz (they/he) is a 25-year-old touring musician, content creator, and audio engineer. In 2021, Sandoz graduated from the Technology in Music and Related Arts (TIMARA) program at Oberlin Conservatory, and they moved to Chicago that same year.

They’ve toured most years since then, and their 2025 tour to the west coast and back covered six thousand miles and 13 dates in two weeks. Sandoz has released a full-length LP and six EPs and has done “literally everything” on each one: played every instrument, recorded every part, engineered the final product. His next full-band show is a free Monday at the Empty Bottle on February 16.

“I want my energy and my skills to be contributing to the music scene outside of just my act,” Sandoz says. “So I’m gonna grind as hard as I possibly can to get an entry-level job in the entertainment industry before I run out of savings.” Early next year, they’ll launch their own indie label, Snart Snart Records, by releasing a cassette edition of their recent split EP with Mirror Fish.

S

“I’ve started managing my artist act as a business through things like tour managing and online daily content creation.”

As told to DEVYN-MARSHALL BROWN Hannah Sandoz on tour in San Francisco DIEGO DIAZ-LUNDQUIST

22 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 18, 2025

Max, a programming language. I operate both of those with a foot switch called a Behringer FCB1010, a MIDI [controller] that you can trigger with your feet. It’s basically like guitar pedals, but they’re connected to my computer, and instead of just impacting the sound of my guitar, they also impact the sound of my voice.

When I first moved to Chicago in 2021, playing gigs was a way of getting my name out there. I knew maybe ten people overall, and I was going to take every single gig I could get.

That made sense for me early on. But once it got to the point where I was playing out like one or two times a month, I started to reckon with the idea that I would like to build a reliable draw. And I’m not going to know how high my draw is until I stop playing so many gigs all the time and give my audience an opportunity to see I’m playing just one.

I’ve been strategically building a platform as an artist over the last two years, and I’ve started managing my artist act as a business through things like tour managing and online daily content creation.

Content creation, for me, is a way to get more eyes on anything I post about my music. I think about it less as a creative act and more as me building an online ecosystem. The more people I have who are engaged with this ecosystem, who are looking at what I’m posting, the more people are likely to come to my next show or listen to my next single or hop on the next bill I’m booking. Content creation is just one cog in this system of ways that I’m getting people to look at what I’m doing.

I have a lot of different repeat ideas that I cycle through. Probably the most straightforward is short-form content that centers around a show. This last tour that I booked was the west coast, where I was introduced to ten new markets. Nobody who lived in those ten had ever heard my name—unless it’s, like, my two friends. But I had a vested interest in getting people out to all of these gigs, because I wanted the person who booked me in LA to say, like, “Oh yeah, we got pretty close to selling out. It was a small room, but we did get pretty close to selling out.” I want people in Phoenix to be able to vouch for me and say that I booked a strategic lineup, say that I got some heads in the door, because that’s how you get invited back to play

“I think a lot of people shy away from managing their act as a business or thinking of their act as a business, because people don’t want to sell out and they don’t want to engage in capitalism.”

omeone described m y t h re e - p i e c e act that I played with at Sleeping Village several months ago as “gauzy” in a Reddit comment. And I just love that, so I’m using the label “gauzy alt-folk” for my music. It’s thick and it’s fuzzy and luscious and vulnerable and, like, all these awesome different textural descriptors that aren’t being used every single day.

I grew up in a smaller town called Lafayette, two hours outside of New Orleans. And once you get outside of the immediate city, it’s got that classic south Louisiana look of cypress trees, swampy areas, bayous, coulées, and moisture. The thick understory of a swampy area, the cypress knees jutting up, and the Spanish moss hanging down—all of this saturation of, like, life and texture has informed my music. Not so much in a songwriting or storytelling way, but very texturally and spiritually, I’ve been inspired by swamps and the nature of south Louisiana.

In my solo act I play guitar, I sing, and I do live electronics, which is a fancy way of saying I have a laptop onstage that is doing jobs for me. I operate my laptop running Ableton Live 12 and

MUSIC in these markets. That’s how you build legitimacy with other talent buyers.

So it’s just a video of me being goofy in front of the camera, saying, “Hey, do you live in Phoenix? I have a show in Phoenix. I’m going to be on tour, driving six thousand miles by myself to come see you. I want you to come to my show.”

And I made 13 TikToks like that, posted them on Reels too. And it took so much time. But I really cannot overemphasize what a difference it made.

Basically, every single show, I had two or three sweetie pies at the end of the merch line come up to me and say, like, “We found you on TikTok. We came just to see you.” I got offerings from two baby queers in Bismarck—they brought me little tchotchkes, and they requested I play an obscure song of mine.

I built a cult following across this six-thousandmile span of cities that I had never been to just by Hannah Sandoz in Chicago LAUREN GANDY posting on TikTok, being broke even by at least $50, but this last one, I strategic about my hashtags, and not being would’ve broken even by seven hundred bucks afraid to be embarrassing—like, not being afraid to be labeled “cringe,” not being afraid to if I hadn’t had to leave my car in Albuquerque and get it towed. So every time I do this, it gets be silly in front of a camera.

I take my solo act on tour by the skin of my a little bit more sustainable. I make a little bit teeth. I was employed full-time for the last more money. I have a little bit more to show for it when I get home. three years. I was sort of backed into a corner I can only break even because of merch. I’m where, in the month leading up to my westgonna be so honest with you—I’m not a particcoast tour, my job wanted me in the office three ularly talented visudays a week. And I al artist. My T-shirts just looked at the aren’t perfect. I do numbers, and I was all the designing and like, if I’m in the all the merch making office three days a myself, basically. week the month beAnd I don’t think fore I leave for tour, people are seeing I cannot rehearse, my merch and being I cannot promote, I cannot make my TikToks. And I really just had like, “Wow, I covet this object.” What people are thinking the majority of the time they buy to pick the thing I cared about more.

Financially, this was not such a great deci- merch from me is that I was a really special sion. But the other great thing is that I have bro- performer, and they want to take a piece of this ken even on every tour I booked since COVID. I experience home with them to remember it by.

“The other great thing is that I have broken even on every tour I booked since COVID.”

So I have something for everyone. I have really cheap stickers. I have slightly nicer, more expensive stickers. I have T-shirts; I have tapes.

People love it, and they will buy it, and they will do it for no reason other than they want to feel like they did me a favor, and they want to take a piece of the experience home.

I think a lot of people shy away from managing their act as a business or thinking of their act as a business, because people don’t want to sell out and they don’t want to engage in capitalism. But the reality of the matter is, we are all going to have to engage in capitalism in order to survive in some way, shape, or form. I did not grow up with money. I do not have rich parents, so it’s like, I have to figure out how to fend for myself, and I want to keep making music. So this is how I have to think about it.

I love to trade, because that’s where the community part of it comes back in—even if you’re operating something as a business, or even if you have a bottom line that you need to meet in a certain month.

Thinking about something that you really, really care about as a business can be really degrading. It can be really degrading to admit

to myself that, like, my music isn’t particularly marketable. I’m kind of weird. I have a lot of influences from a lot of different places. My music doesn’t perfectly fall into the softcore box or the shoegaze box or any of these genres that are really trendy. And I think something that you can get lost in, that I have gotten lost in, is putting on the manager hat in a way that is solely looking at the numbers and not thinking of my employee, who’s also me.

I have to take care of me. As tour manager, my job isn’t just to get my client to their gig on time. My job is to make sure that they have enough rest and that they’re well-fed and that they’re nourished and hydrated. Those are things that I’m getting better and better at every time I tour, every time I play a gig, every time I have to negotiate something with someone locally—taking my own boundaries into account, taking my own needs into account, and making sure that those come before the bottom line and before the financial decisions. That’s been something I’m getting better and better at every time I do it. v

m dmbrown@chicagoreader.com

THIS WEEK AT

KISS KISS BANG BANG DEC 26-29 AT 11 PM

2646 N. MILWAUKEE AVE | CHICAGO, IL | THELOGANTHEATRE.COM | 773.342.5555 DECEMBER 18, 2025 - CHICAGO READER 23

MUSIC

Recommended and notable shows with critics’ insights for the week of December 18

b ALL AGES F

PICK OF THE WEEK

THURSDAY18

Underground hip-hop crew Tomorrow Kings hit Schubas to celebrate their first album in 12 years

Tomorrow Kings See Pick of the Week at left. Defcee and the Opus open. 8 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, $33.25, $27 in advance. 18+

FRIDAY19 The cool Kids 10 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $33.17. 21+

CARLO LIOU

TOMORROW KINGS, DEFCEE, THE OPUS Thu 12/18, 8 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, $33.25, $27 in advance. 18+

LAST MONTH, UNDERGROUND CHICAGO HIP-HOP crew Tomorrow Kings dropped their first album in 12 years, Salt, via Swiss label Buenaventura. They clearly took their time with it, and not just because getting all six current members together presents scheduling challenges and not everyone involved is still in town. Gravel-voiced rapper Skech185, for example, now lives in New York City, where he’s built some notoriety with solo material released through Backwoodz Studioz, the hip-hop label run by star independent rapper Billy Woods.

Backwoodz Studioz is one of the strongest gravitational centers in a national hip-hop underground that prizes the kind of music Tomorrow Kings make: old-school rap with intellectually stimulating lyrics, knotty

24 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 18, 2025

flows, lived-in production, and declarative beats. That underground is thriving in a way it hasn’t since the early 2010s (for reference, Aesop Rock moved to Rhymesayers in 2012), so while it may have taken the crew a while to bring Salt into the world, the timing is just right.

Throughout the album, Tomorrow Kings deliver brain-melting verses in an endless variety of shifting cadences, playing off one another with a chemistry informed by almost 20 years of collaboration. Their roughhewn voices bear the marks of the passage of time, but every member sounds charged up by the task in front of them—when you’re sharing the mike with so many people, you’d best not waste a moment. And Salt proves that Tomorrow Kings spend their time well. —LEOR GALIL

The release of a new album from Chicago blogera rap legends the Cool Kids is a high point in what’s been a banner year for authentic hip-hop.

It’s mind-boggling to realize that the duo of Mikey Rocks and Chuck Inglish (Antoine Reed and Evan Ingersoll, respectively) dropped their breakthrough track, “Black Mags,” 18 years ago, but time is just a social construct, right? After five years of changing the game in alternative hip-hop, the Cool Kids went on hiatus in 2012. Since regrouping in 2016, they’ve remained one of Chicago’s most influential and stylish hip-hop acts.

While many artists wax poetic about zeitgeists and being “ahead of their time,” the Cool Kids actually were—and that’s what makes their music timeless. Rocks is an underrated MC whose bombastic bars and toolbox of flows are simultaneously mellow and unmistakably sharp, while Inglish’s production has surpassed his contemporaries since day one. He has a great ear for detail, and his beats, which pull from bass-heavy 70s funk and a mix of 80s styles, sound simultaneously retro and futuristic without being corny or overproduced. Beyond his own projects, he’s crafted intricate instrumentals for a wide range of collaborators, including the late Mac Miller and west-coast phenom Larry June.

The Cool Kids’ seventh album, October’s Hi Top Fade (Fool’s Gold), is for sure an ode to the iconic hairstyle, but it also evokes the vibe of a freshly waxed vintage Benz. The album is a love letter to getting fly and pulling baddies, and though we’ve come to expect those themes from these two, the music never sours. One of my favorite tracks is “Banana in the Tailpipe,” because its staccato everything—hi-hats, snares, 808s, auxiliary bass—make it sound like LL Cool J’s “Rock the Bells” on a bender.

Some artists mature; some just get old. The Cool Kids may be “unc” age now, but their music is as fun and new-fashioned as ever. If you manage to score

Iron Years FERNANDO RUIZ

MUSIC tickets to this hometown show, make sure to wear your very best ’fit. —CRISTALLE BOWEN

Iron Years The Children’s Crusade, Darkling I Listen, [Melter], and DJ Philly Peroxide open.

8 PM, Cobra Lounge, 235 N. Ashland, $17, $15 in advance. b Since 2018, Little Village band Iron Years have been releasing frigid, danceable postpunk—a sound most associated with its 80s UK iteration—and reshaping it into something a little more midwestern. Their latest album, July’s self-released Rituals, hardwires glassy synths to snappy grids of looped electronic percussion and cavernous bass lines—it feels like running through the Loop on a subzero night to get to the nearest Red Line stop. Iron Years’ light-footed production evokes the nocturnal thump of grimy Chicago house, and the group really lean into that on the album’s sprawling closer, “We Have a Need,” whose insistent, seesawing beat is perfect for pushing sound systems into the red. —LEOR GALIL

The Cool Kids JOSH SPNR

Won’t Stay Dead The Reaganomics, Boybrain, and Robin Graves (aka Brendan Kelly playing Misfits covers) open. 9:30 PM, Liar’s Club, 1665 W. Fullerton, $20, $17 in advance. 21+ Local horror-punk four-piece Won’t Stay Dead

Won’t Stay Dead KENNEDY COTTRELL ED. VINNY MALAVE

purge their demons through breakneck riffs and passionate harmonies. Bassist Saffron Lair (aka Saffron Lehrer) and guitarist Violet Staley, who share vocals, forged their bond over years in the Chicagoland punk scene. They met as teenagers in a Girls Rock! Chicago camp and played in several bands, including hardcore punk group When Flying Feels Like Falling and punk-ska outfit Ultrahazard, before forming Won’t Stay Dead in 2017. Onstage, where they’re joined by guitarist and vocalist Tyler Wright and drummer Sloane Fitzgerald, the two women carry themselves like the protagonists of cult films such as Jennifer’s Body or Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me—young women confronting the violence of everyday relationships with supernatural determination.

Won’t Stay Dead’s brand-new second album, Vindication (Red Scare), showcases their no-frills songwriting while broadening their horizons beyond punk rippers played at super speeds. It also leans into the cult-film thing: In a recent interview with New Noise, Lair cites Heathers and The Craft as direct influences. Album opener “River’s Edge,” named for the 1986 thriller, is a prototypical Won’t Stay Dead tune. The narrator rejoices in committing a murder as an act of self-fulfillment, and then both vocalists transform quotes from the movie into a glorious chorus: “Bury her so she is never found / Nobody has to find out.” The song ends in less than 75 seconds, leaving no time for dread to settle in. “Let It Go” forgoes drums completely. Instead,

the band builds tension through spacious, watery strummed guitar—and on the next track, “Drag,” that tension explodes into a medley of double-time drums and slow, lighters-up tempos whose singalong quality recalls Green Day’s pop-punk opera American Idiot.

Lair and Staley revel in breaking out of bad situations—romantic, musical, or otherwise—with the joy and confidence of survivors at the end of a horror movie. If you’re looking for an antidote to the cheer of peak holiday season, swap your ugly Christmas sweater for an all-black outfit and celebrate Vindication’s release at reliable Chicago punk dive Liar’s Club. —JACK RIEDY

SATURDAY20 An Ayler Xmas Josh Berman (cornet), Dave Rempis (saxophones), Peter Maunu (guitar, violin), Brian Sandstrom (bass, guitar, trumpet), Kent Kessler (bass), and Steve Hunt (drums) celebrate the music of Albert Ayler and the spirit of Mars Williams. 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $20.72. 18+ If you ever heard him trading rippling lines and paint-stripping not-quite-notes with Peter Brötzmann or Hal Russell, you don’t need me to tell you that Mars Williams was a fire-breathing free-

DECEMBER 18, 2025 - CHICAGO READER 25

MUSIC continued from p. 25

jazz reeds player par excellence. But he was also a showbiz kind of guy—the kind who delighted in juxtaposing woolly music with acrobats and trained dogs in his Soul Sonic Circus—and in showbiz, you milk your audience’s favorites for all they’re worth. Fifteen years ago, the Elmhurst-born multiinstrumentalist began presenting holiday concerts where he layered the gospel-steeped themes of free-jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler over holiday classics such as “Jingle Bells,” “Twelve Days of Christmas,” “Ma’oz Tzur,” and “Feliz Navidad” (plus some-

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/musicreviews.

times “Christmas Wrapping,” by Akron new wavers the Waitresses, one of Williams’s old bands). These seasonal concerts, originally performed in Chicago with Williams’s group Witches & Devils (which included his bandmates in total-improv unit Extraordinary Popular Delusions), proved so popular that he took his songbook on the road. Between 2017 and 2021, pandemic permitting, he played this material with locals in cities around the U.S. and Europe.

Williams died of cancer in 2023, but his Ayler Xmas concept lives on. This year it’s being revived by saxophonist Dave Rempis, who organized the GoFundMe campaign that helped support Williams during the last year of his illness and who has inherited his soprano saxophone. Rempis has recruited fellow Ayler Xmas veterans Steve Hunt on drums, Jim Baker on keyboards, Peter Maunu on violin and guitar, Josh Berman on cornet, and Brian Sandstrom on bass, guitar, and trumpet. Come celebrate the season and Williams’s legacy in your finest holiday attire. —BILL MEYER

TUESDAY23 An Ayler Xmas honors a tradition started by the late Mars Williams. RICARDO ADAME

Moth Cock Tasha’s Hideous Laughter (aka Max Allison and Joey Meland), Naturalblkinvention, Support (aka Nicole Alonso and Melon Sprout), and Paige Naylor open. 9 PM, Cole’s Bar, 2338 N. Milwaukee, $14.45. 21+

All Chicago’s goodest little boys and gargoyles get a special treat this year: a merry Moth Cock Christmas. For more than 20 years, Doug Gent and Pat Modugno have produced a squalling hybrid of noise and improvisational jazz under the name Moth Cock. They’re from Ohio, but several of their releases have appeared on local label Hausu Mountain. Gent and Modugno use live instrumentation, such as trumpet or sax, to produce flutters, skronks, and groans that wrap around twitchy lo-fi Moth Cock JOEL BERK electronics, creating atmoappropriate to the darkness of the movie’s premise. spheric discord that’s a lot of fun—and only a little What might be the internal experience of an eightbit fearsome. In 2019, the duo became possessed year-old abandoned by his family at Christmas and by the holiday spirit, so they funneled it into the then forced to defend their expensive home against self-released A Very Moth Cock Christmas. burglars?

The record includes nine face-melting tracks that To get at the creative tone of the album, imagsuggest Moth Cock like acid in their eggnog. It feaine the Log Lady from Twin Peaks if she carried a tures all the themes and sounds one associates with yule log around town and it caught fire in her arms.

Christmas—Rudolph references, anxiety about gift I can only assume Moth Cock will bring a similar giving, jingling bells, lines lifted from carols, and so energy to the Cole’s stage. The duo will be joined by on—approached in Moth Cock’s singular way. Standseveral members of the expansive Hausu Mountain out track “Kevin” pairs dialogue samples from 1990 universe for an extremely happy Hausuday concert. holiday classic Home Alone with glitchy, warped —MICCO CAPORALE v music that takes you on an emotional journey

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CLASSIFIEDS JOBS MARKETPLACE

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& other visualization tools that support the d e p a r t m e n t ’s d a t a analysis & reporting needs. Collaborate with department to understand data needs & requirements & translate into technical solutions. Synthesize client needs & utilize data analytics architecture, tools, & teams to deliver solutions. Work with the IT dept & others to ensure data is properly integrated & structured for reporting & analysis.

Analyze data to identify trends & provide insights to stakeholders. Monitor/ maintain the integrity of data. Perform analysis using SQL, modeling, & other quantitative techniques to resolve business data issues and/ or recommend courses of action. Utilize strategies that reduce data issues with a bias for preventing recurrence & increase the consistency/confidence of data used for decision making. Create & maintain documentation for data management processes, reports, & analysis, including documenting data sources, data definitions, data transformations, & other relevant information.

Learn new data analytics technologies & participate in data analytics tool evaluation, selection, & implementation. Train stakeholders on the use of Tableau and/or Power BI & other data visualization tools. Coordinate & develop data education programs to enhance data literacy. Participate in project activities & provide project status to stakeholders. Escalate issues & assess & address risks to ensure project success. Provide input & support for upgrades, capacity planning, & best practices. Other duties as assigned. Position minimally requires a Bachelor’s degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science or a related field & 5 years of professional IT experience with Business Systems Analysis including demonstrated experience with analysis & i n t e r p re t a t i o n o f functional business & data requirements. Salary Range (commensurate with experience): $63,746-$95,619. For fullest consideration, email CV, cover letter, & 3 professional references by 01/07/26 to Rosa Setterstrom at rosalbaa@ uic.edu. UIC is an EOE including Disability/Vets.

This position is intended to be eligible for benefits. This includes Health, Dental, Vision, Life Insurance, a R e t i re m e n t P l a n , Paid time Off, & Tuition waivers for employees & dependents. For a complete list of Employee

Benefits go to https:// w w w. h r. u i l l i n o i s . e d u / cms/One.aspx?portalId= 4292&pageId=2461262.

Please visit Required Employment Notices &Posters at https:// w w w. h r. u i l l i n o i s . e d u / cms/one.aspx?portalId= 4292&pageId=5705 to view our nondiscrimination statement & find additional information about required b a c k g ro u n d c h e c k s , sexual harassment/ misconduct disclosures, & employment eligibility review through E-Verify.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools may be used in some portions of the candidate review process for this position; however, all employment decisions will be made by a person.

3730 N CLARK ST METROCHICAGO.COM @METROCHICAGO

FRI JAN 16

FRI JAN 09 TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS FESTIVAL

TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS FESTIVAL

WITH

Real Estate

Swamp Dogg

Second Hand News

RESIDE NORTH AMERICA TOUR

Summer Salt

A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac: Through the Years

F RI D E C 19 / 7 P M / A L L A GE S METRO & KICKSTAND PRODUCTIONS PRESENT

THE SYMPOSIUM

WITH Cheerleader Roadkill / mtvghosts

W E D D E C 3 1 / 9 P M / 2 1+ A L L -B U IL DIN G E V E N T METRO, SMARTBAR, AND QUEEN! PRESENT

CELESTIAL SOIRÉE: NEW YEAR’S EVE

SAT JAN 10 / 7PM / ALL AGES

BACKBITER COME CORRECT VULGE ORBITAL GATE ACHE

FT. Ariel Zetina / Brenda / DJ Heather

Harry Cross / Jojo Dancer and more!

S A T J A N 0 3 / 9 P M / 18 + DAVID BOWIE'S 79TH BIRTHDAY

Debbie’s Homegrown CBD & THC Products We m a n u f a c t u re and sell the purest, highest quality, CBD and THC products available! Featuring specialty gifts, bake mixes, bar syrups, caramels, chocolate bars, gummies, hard candies, painre l i e v i n g b a l m s , powdered drinks, skin care, tinctures, pet treats and more!

Visit us online for more information! https://Debbies Homegrown.com

fantasy of a broken heart

FRI FEB 20

THU FEB 12

Boyscott / Wabie

2017 KIA SOUL +WAGON, 5 SEAT. VIN: KNDJP3A57H7491570.

2.0 L, 4-CYL. 6 SPEED A U T O M AT I C , F W D .

HEATED SEATS AND STEERING WHEEL. PREMIUM SOUND, NO CD. NAVIGATION SYSTEM. NEW BATTERY. BRAKES 1 YEAR OLD. TIRES 4 YEARS OLD. PASSED EMISSIONS. $8800. 312487-1430 - GLENVIEW - ooglia@gmail.com

WITH

Marijuana Deathsquads

WITH

MARKETPLACE

CELEBRATING THE ALBUM ATLAS

BOWIE BALL

FT. Heaven Malone and more!

MISTRESS OF CEREMONIES: Lucy Stoole BOWIE-ESQUE PERFORMANCES BY: Nico / Sally Marvel

JAN 30 JAN 31 FEB 12 FEB 20 FEB 26 FEB 27 FEB 28 MAR 05

MAGIC CITY HIPPIES SONS OF THE SILENT AGE SUMMER SALT SECOND HAND NEWS JOEY VALENCE & BRAE JOEY VALENCE & BRAE MARGO PRICE REDVEIL

SMARTBARCHICAGO.COM 3730 N CLARK ST | 21+

FRI DEC 19

Format presents

OSCAR MULERO JIA BRENDA SAT DEC 20

CHIRP Radio welcomes

TEED: DJ TOUR ARIEL ZETINA SHAUN J WRIGHT FRI DEC 26

Lake Effect ft.

JOHNNY FIASCO DJ HEATHER

Laid Back | Cold Beer | Live Music

21+

@GMANTAVERN GMANTAVERN.COM 3740 N CLARK ST

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANNA WAGNER FOR CHICAGO READER

DECEMBER 18, 2025 - CHICAGO READER 27

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