04 Feature | Sula Mintza abides by the food of northern Kerala.
06 Labor Pains | Brown Actors at Second City ratify a new contract, home and childcare workers secure raises, and more.
08 Make It Make Sense | Mulcahy CPD expands surveillance on public transit, Chicago fails to notify residents of contaminated drinking water, and Walter Burnett is leaving City Council.
09 Street View A stylish Avondale seamstress
10 State of the State Illinois, according to Chris Ware
11 Labor Law Child labor pervades agriculture and that’s unacceptable.
12 Review “Steelmakers” shows the people power behind Chicago’s steel industry.
12 Art of Note Sawhorse’s “Far Down the Phantom Air” collapses the time between dinosaurs and machines.
13 Plays of Note Theatre L’Acadie’s Big Time Toppers, Circus Abyssinia: Ethiopian Dreams at Chicago Shakespeare, and Hell in a Handbag’s Queen for a Day FILM
14 Feature Arousal meets art in the films of Arthur J. Bressan Jr.
16 The Moviegoer Labor and Looney Tunes
18 Cover Story How will Chicago artists and presenters rebuild a er Trump’s brutal funding cuts?
22 Shows of Note Previews of concerts including Novos Baianos, West Fest, and Le y Parker
25 Gossip Wolf | Galil Cocojoey plays a homecoming show to support the new Stars, Roy Kinsey inaugurates the Rapbrary’s physical home, and more. BACK
26 Savage Love Is monogamy ethically wrong if one partner wants a different arrangement?
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The stage of the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, at which programming has been subject to Trump’s funding clawbacks. Original photo by Kyle
READER (ISSN 1096-6919) IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY THE
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Last week, I attended the 2025 AAN conference in Madison, Wisconsin. AAN, formerly known as the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, is an international consortium of media outlets who, like the Reader, have roots in community and alternative news with many committed to embodying progressive politics and reporting on arts and
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culture in their local areas. The Reader was a founding organizational member in 1978 along with publishers like the Willamette Week (Oregon), Phoenix New Times (Arizona), and the San Francisco Bay Guardian (California).
It’s always invigorating to take a moment and talk to other people doing the hard work of bringing local journalism to the world. However, this conference is always particularly illuminating as the majority of the attendees have deep experience in exactly the kind of reporting, audience engagement, and publishing that we do at the Reader. They just do it from a di erent backyard.
I spoke to newspaper sta members from all over the country, including Florida (Orlando Weekly), Arizona (Tucson Sentinel), Vermont ( Seven Days , Burlington Buzz), California (Santa Barbara Independent, Coachella Valley Independent ), Mississippi (Mississippi Free Press), Maryland (Baltimore Beat), Iowa (Little Village), and Wisconsin (Volume One, Shepherd Express, and our conference hosts, Isthmus). And most everyone shared common struggles.
Revenue for media advertising is down. Readers are overwhelmed with news, getting inaccurate information from bad actors, and/or not making the leap from social media apps directly to our news websites. We had discussions about dealing with the constant and confusing deluge of federal disinformation and were delighted when one of the keynote speakers, cartoonist Dan Perkins, showed us that he’s decided to continually portray J.D. Vance as wearing a hotelier’s bellhop uniform “because it just feels right.”
Perkins, creator of the longtime comic strip This Modern World , testified to us that he owes both his career and his child to AAN. He was published early in his cartooning career by the Bay Area alternative publication SF Weekly and subsequently syndicated his strip to many alt-weeklies publishing in the 1990s. (He met the mother of his son at an early AAN conference and joked that his son “remains grateful to the AAN membership for his existence.”)
But back to the publishers: Even though
there are many obstacles in the way of our outlets’ success, so many of the publications represented at this year’s conference continue to both persevere and thrive. Isthmus, founded in 1976, is confident that they will hit their 50th anniversary next year after going through a conversion to nonprofit status in 2021 to save the paper. Little Village (a “mere” 24 years old this year) publishes a monthly print publication that averages 70 to 80 pages and is distributed to over 800 venues in Des Moines, Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, and other Iowa locations. And City , the independent publication of Rochester, New York, is celebrating 54 years in print in 2025. It’s hard to do this work, but we know that reporting on local concerns with accuracy is a necessary art. Journalism is essential to our way of life. Solidify your support of local journalism by becoming a Reader member, monthly donor, and/or sharing our work with your friends today. v
—Salem Collo-Julin, editor in chief m scollojulin@chicagoreader.com
A tiny Devon Avenue storefront is focused on the South Indian state’s meaty Malabar region. But more is coming.
By MIKE SULA
When Sajadmon Nechiyan was looking for a space for his third restaurant, he chose the unlikely location of Devon Avenue, just a few blocks east of Western.
The neighboring restaurants are “majority Hyderabad cuisine,” says Nechiyan, who opened the storefront Mintza in January. “But they don’t have any unique, different cuisine. So that’s why we say, ‘OK, let’s do it on Devon.’ There is a high demand for Keralan, or South Indian.”
Seems like there’s high demand everywhere for the cuisine of India’s southwestern coastal state these days. Trilokah, a six-year-old Keralan restaurant that originated in Mount Prospect, relocated to Lincoln Park in March
with a sprawling menu, while Indienne chef Sujan Sarkar’s fine-dining Nadu, which opened a month later in the same neighborhood, features a handful of Keralan dishes on its regional Indian menu.
The seven-year-old Thalavia’s Indian Kitchen in Park Ridge—which is focused on food from the southern Indian Kongu Nadu region, overlapping part of Kerala—might be Chicagoland’s longest-standing restaurant representing the cuisine. Within the city, Thattu is the oldest and most prominent Keralan restaurant, and recently introduced a new summer menu that includes a green mango curry, with mango curd rice and mango pickle, and a trout special, with a gravy made from
the sour cambodge fruit.
But the recent burst of activity doesn’t necessarily mean there are more Keralans around. When I first wrote about the Glenview graband-go Malabar Foods in 2009 (then called Royal Malabar Catering), it was the only game in town, despite the fact that about 50 thousand Keralan expats called the Chicago area home. As I wrote back then, the food of Kerala was “shaped by its position at the epicenter of the spice trade, resulting in centuries of exchange with Phoenicians, Arabs, Jews, Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Chinese, Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British.” Dominant ingredients include curry leaf and coconut—the milk, the oil, and the grated fruit itself—along with
fennel, peppercorn, cardamom, ginger, garlic, and star anise.
About the same number of Keralans held steady a decade later when I covered Malabar’s competitor Kairali Foods. And the same number applies now, according to Jessy Rincy, president of the Chicago Malayalee Association. “Maybe a little bit more,” she says.
So what accounts for this sudden interest in Keralan food?
“Folks are finally more open-minded and food curious,” according to Thattu chef Margaret Pak. “I sometimes think that if we did this ten years ago, we wouldn’t have done as well.”
For his part, Nechiyan, who earned a degree in tourism and hotel management from his hometown’s University of Calicut, is ready to seize the moment, with big plans for each of his restaurants. After arriving in the U.S., he opened Indian Clay Pot in Irving Park in 2018 with a menu dominated by familiar Northern Indian dishes. But that’s also where he snuck in a couple of hallmark signatures from the south: lamb or chicken cooked in the restaurant’s namesake unglazed ceramic chatti, with potatoes, chilis, and, more importantly, curry leaf, and grated and extracted coconut milk. He opened Wicker Park’s Indian Paradise in 2022 with a similar northern menu, minus any South Indian dishes.
But changes are afoot in both restaurants. Clay Pot currently only seats 32 but is undergoing a major expansion, adding a bar and more than quadrupling its seating capacity and kitchen footprint, which will allow Nechiyan to add more Keralan dishes, including biryani and crab curry, both cooked in the chatti. He’s planning his grand reopening in late October with a 14-to-19–course tasting menu: a version of a sadya, the Keralan vegetarian feast, served on banana leaves, which he expects to repeat each month.
In the coming year, at Indian Paradise, he’ll introduce Wicker Park to Keralan breakfast, featuring puttu, cylinders of steamed coconut rice served with the black chickpea kadala curry; dosas; appam, thin rice and coconut crepes; and idiapam, steamed rice flour noodles.
Though it boasts more exclusively Keralan dishes than any of his other restaurants, Mintza is also a work in progress.
Nechiyan grew up in Kozhikode (or Calicut)
in the northern Malabar region of Kerala, which is reflected in the menu: many meaty dishes, relative to the more vegetableinclusive central and southern regions.
This includes beef—most notably beef dry fry, spicy, jerky-like nuggets of meat tossed with toasty shredded coconut.
“In Kerala, when I came here,” said
Nechiyan, who spoke to me while on a visit to his home state, “I get out from the airport [and] the first meal I prefer is beef dry fry with porotta.”
In Kerala, porotta, similar to roti canai, is made with low-gluten maida wheat flour, which makes it flakier, more spiralized, and easier to pull apart than similar flatbreads.
Apart from the fat, rustic grains of red matta rice and the fragrant, spice-kissed, Malabar-style ghee rice, this is the ideal starchy vehicle for many of the dishes on the menu.
There’s also northern Kerala Thalassery–style chicken and mutton biryani at Mintza, made with medium-grain, golden kaima rice instead of the usual basmati.
On the other hand, a rich, gingery stew with chunks of jiggly mutton and potato, delicately spiced with star anise, cinnamon, and cardamom, is best soaked up with idlis—soft, steamed, saucer-shaped fermented rice and lentil cakes.
Similarly, there are only a few seafood dishes on the menu, such as fish pollichathu: pompano smothered in a thick masala paste and cooked in a banana leaf.
Another outlier is the all-seafood samudra sadya, with a dozen di erent dishes including spice-rubbed shrimp and squid roast, kingfish curry, and minced peera thoran, made with steamed shredded fish cooked with mustard seed, curry leaves, and grated coconut.
The thoran is an analogue to the broad family of dry, minced vegetable and grated coconut stir fries, which Nechiyan will add to the menu at Mintza in the coming weeks, along with avial, coconut-based mixed vegetable curry; a duck curry; and chatti choru, a set meal of rice and various curries and vegetable dishes served in the clay pot.
“The butter chicken, the chana masala are more popular,” he says. “But people also want to try di erent food, di erent tastes.” v
For now, there are just a handful of vegetable-forward dishes departing from the Malabar region’s meaty profile, notably kadala curry, enriched with coconut milk and as decadent as anything else on the menu, with aromas of fennel, cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg blossoming from the bowl. There’s also a mushroom curry, redolent of curry leaves, fennel, and coriander.
m msula@chicagoreader.com
LABOR PAINS
Plus: raises for home and childcare workers, Northwestern postdocs demand a union, and more.
By DEVYN-MARSHALL BROWN (DMB)
This month in the Chicago union landscape, Second City actors and stage managers are enjoying the security of steady wage increases in their new contract. State-funded home care and childcare workers are also celebrating a fresh influx of cash from the state and the city, hoping it will o set the number of workers who leave the profession because of low pay. Lastly, workers at the Chicago Botanic Garden and Northwestern University postdoctoral fellows are both trying to establish unions of their own.
Performers at the Second City, Chicago’s historic improv and comedy club, last month signed off on a new, five-year contract with their employer that raises wages across the board. The agreement averts a looming strike and guarantees raises of almost 20 percent at the club where Tina Fey, Bill Murray, Steve Carell, John Belushi, and hundreds of others got their start. As part of the deal, Second City committed to raising wages 40.5 percent by 2030.
Second City performers and stage managers are affiliated with the Actors’ Equity Association, a national union representing more than 51,000 actors and stage managers in live theater and entertainment from Broadway to the small theaters across the country.
Many Second City Workers are paid a weekly salary for up to eight performances a week on contracts that range from six months to a year. Sometimes, those contracts are renewed, but actors often feel their creative path and income is dependent on the success of their shows, according to David Kolen, a senior business representative at Actors’ Equity Association in Chicago.
“Second City has always been one of the heartbeats of the Chicago entertainment community,” Kolen says. “Our workers who develop, who write, who create, who improvise, and who perform those shows, and the stage managers who oversee those processes, are
an incredibly important part of that Chicago theatrical landscape,”
The contract also guarantees pay increases for workers in Second City’s touring companies.
childcare workers
After years of organizing for better wages and despite a tight state budget, home care work-
Margaret Heywood-Smith. “We went to Springfield to talk to our elected representatives and to rally for it—over and over and over again.”
Heywood-Smith took a job in home care after retiring from 45 years as a nurse. She works seven days a week for more than 14 hours per day—visiting clients, preparing medication, cleaning, and cooking—but still struggles to survive. “I shouldn’t have to choose between paying my utilities or paying for my medications or my rent,” she says. “I’m
20,000 older people in Illinois are without care, the union says.
Separately, Mayor Brandon Johnson announced in May that he was committing $7 million for raises for childcare workers at publicly funded day cares, who are also a liated with SEIU. Some sta will see their pay increase as much as 13 percent.
Alice Dryden, who works at the Mary Crane Center in Rogers Park, says childcare workers serve kids during crucial years of growth and learning and provide year-round care without the breaks and shorter hours afforded to public school teachers. Low wages and long hours have spurred high turnover, which she says forces publicly funded childcare centers to close. “In order to provide the care we want . . . we have to have everyone working there do as much as possible. A lot of people feel very stretched thin by that,” Dryden says.
ers at the Illinois Department of Aging are celebrating a $0.75 hourly raise. Home care sta , who work with older people and people with disabilities, had been pushing for increases of $2 per hour and say they’ll cozntinue to fight for better pay.
“This raise was about survival—and we fought hard for it,” says home care worker
always at risk having the lights cut o or being homeless.”
Home care workers leave their jobs at a rate 50 percent higher than the average occupation, according to Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Healthcare Illinois, which represents home care workers in the state. The dearth of workers means more than
Just north of Chicago, sta at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe are organizing a union with the help of the Chicago and Midwest Regional Joint Board of Workers United.
Karina Herrera is a seasonal worker and mother of four who has been at the garden for almost two years. She says she and her coworkers are constantly understa ed and feel that their work isn’t valued. She makes $18.30 per hour and is considered entry-level, despite the painstaking work of designing, cleaning, detailing, weeding, and watering plant beds.
Beginning July 1, workers earning minimum wage in Chicago will notice a bump on their paychecks. Chicago’s Minimum Wage Ordinance increased the base hourly wage from $16. 20 to $16.60 for any workplace with four or more employees. The minimum hourly wage for subsidized youth employment programs and subsidized transitional employment programs increased to $16 50
Under the One Fair Wage Ordinance, tipped workers—such as servers, bartenders, bussers, and runners—will receive annual, 8 percent raises until the subminimum wage reaches parity with Chicago’s standard hourly minimum wage on July 1, 2028. On July 1, the minimum hourly wage for tipped workers rose to $12 .62 .
As a seasonal worker, Herrera works seven months a year. She only receives health insurance and benefits while employed; workers like her are terminated at the end of the season and then rehired. She hopes a union will provide greater job security and benefits.
Herrera says she installs 3,500 plants a year, and at the end of every season, she faces
Under the Paid Leave and Paid Sick and Safe Leave Ordinances, Chicagoans who work at least 80 hours within any 120 -day period are guaranteed up to five days of paid leave and five days of paid sick leave. Employees accrue paid and sick leave at a rate of one hour for every 35 hours worked (up to 40 hours in a 12-month period). Employees can use paid leave for any reason.
Beginning July 1, the Fair Workweek Ordinance covers workers in seven industries—building services, health care, hotels, manufacturing, restaurants, retail, and warehouse services—who earn $ 32 60 per hour or less ($ 62, 561 90 per year) and are employed by a company with at least 100 employees anywhere in the globe (or 250 employees and 30 locations working at a restaurant). The Fair Workweek Ordinance requires employers to provide predictable work schedules and compensation for changes.
matter,” says horticulturalist Lorilin Meyer.
“If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can really mess things up. The standards are high. We are held to the standard, but the work that we’re putting into that is not always acknowledged.”
Meyer was promoted from a seasonal position to one year-round. With her promotion
an intense walk-through where her bosses painstakingly review her work. Herrera says she receives the highest score—a four—every season, “but that’s only a number for me. That’s nothing that goes on my pay,” she says.
“If they see that I’m a four—I’m an excellent worker—then I should get better pay.”
“We’re a living museum, so these plants
came new responsibility for two additional garden areas, in addition to designing beds and cataloguing plants, but she only received a $0.19-per-hour raise. Meyers says there is a strong disconnect between the people in charge and workers on the ground.
Meyer and Herrera say the Chicago Botanic Garden has hired anti-union lawyers and
workers are afraid of retaliation for discussing union matters. The company’s management has sent sta video messages expressing anti-union sentiments, like claiming that staff would be barred from working additional jobs if they unionized. Workers filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board in response to one such video from vice president of human resources Aida Z. Giglio.
Northwestern postdocs demand union
Northwestern University postdoctoral researchers are unionizing with United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America. They are among the last sects of workers on the school’s campus to organize.
On July 8, postdoc workers marched on the Evanston campus to deliver a petition asking school officials to voluntarily recognize the union. Northwestern graduate students, maintenance employees, and food service employees are all unionized.
The workers are pushing for higher salaries, better health insurance, job protections, and safeguards for international sta .
After graduating with a doctorate, many people work in postdoctoral roles, often called postdocs, for three to five years to further specialize and develop research projects. Postdocs work under experienced professors, joining their labs and creating projects related to the labs’ focuses. Northwestern has 1,300
postdocs across its Chicago and Evanston campuses working in the sciences, economics, history, and arts, who would be eligible to join the union.
“Postdocs are in a very vulnerable position,” says Ahmad Othman, who has a PhD in tumor biology and is currently a postdoctoral scholar in the urology department and is focusing on bone metastasis of prostate cancer. “We don’t have the protections of being a student, and we also don’t have stable contracts as the faculty do.”
Postdoctoral contracts tend to be renewed on a yearly basis, which leaves researchers without recourse if their assigned lab closes due to funding cuts. Othman says many postdocs work second and third jobs to cover their expenses. In addition to his research job, Othman says he’s also an adjunct faculty member at Saint Xavier University and is looking for a third job as a biology tutor because he still doesn’t make enough to cover his expenses.
“The university will say, ‘We’re in a budget crunch. Funding is halted.’ But the reality is universities across the country have unionized under similar circumstances without issue,” Othman says. “It can be done.”
Postdocs are also hoping to secure better health care coverage and protections for international students. The average postdoc at Northwestern is between 40 and 45 years old. Othman says health care is a concern for many postdocs.
Additionally, 70 percent of postdocs are from outside the U.S., and a majority are living in the country on visas tied to their employment. Frequently, professors leave for jobs at other universities, shutting down their labs and leaving postdocs in a spiny financial situation, unsure of whether to break their leases and travel to a new state or to leave the country.
“The reality is we come to work every day, and we work in good faith to answer questions that nobody knows the answer to. We developed the new generation of drugs, the new generation of screening technologies and treatments for diseases. Material science and engineering departments, they develop stronger, better materials, better batteries, better computers. We bring the future to the people. And I think given the amount of work that we do and e ort we put into what we’re doing, we deserve equitable pay,” Othman says. “We’re looking for enough money to be able to put bread on our table and a roof over our head without having to work a second job.” v
m dmbrown@chicagoreader.com
On July 10, Chicago police brass, in partnership with the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), touted a beefed-up surveillance center that grants authorities real-time access to tens of thousands of cameras aboard buses and trains, on platforms across the city, and even in a handful of suburban locations.
The Chicago Police Department launched the so-called strategic decision support center (SDSC), based in First District police station, in February 2020 to serve as a “24/7 nerve center” for o cers in the department’s public transportation section, according to a CPD press release.
At a mid-July press event, the CPD claimed an upgraded surveillance center was necessary to address robberies on public transit. As part of its e orts to expand the First District SDSC, detectives from the CPD’s robbery task force will join officers from the public transportation unit to monitor the CTA’s roughly 40,000 cameras.
Crime on CTA property has fallen from its
peak at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when ridership plummeted. That mirrors a similar trend of falling violent crime rates citywide.
In April, the CTA’s board of directors approved a $1.2 million contract extension with ZeroEyes, an artificial intelligence–powered gun detection system—which will run on up to 1,600 cameras by summer 2026—despite numerous concerns about its efficacy. And a proposal before state lawmakers to reform Chicagoland’s transit agencies would create an entirely new police force overseen by public transportation o cials.
Each of the city’s 22 police districts has an SDSC, which grants cops real-time access to the city’s network of hundreds of thousands of public and private security cameras in addition to surveillance technology like license plate readers and social media monitoring tools.
Chicago’s lead problem persists
Chicago o cials failed to notify more than 90 percent of homeowners, renters, and landlords with lead water pipes that their drinking
water is at risk of contamination, in violation of a federal deadline that required them to do so before November 2024, report Grist, Inside Climate News, and WBEZ.
As of early July, Chicago had sent notice to just 7 percent of the more than 900,000 residents with lead service lines. Megan Vidis, a spokesperson for the Chicago Department of Water Management, tells the outlets that the city mails out roughly 3,000 letters per week and will likely not complete the process until 2027. Milwaukee, on the other hand, sent out more than 100,000 notices in a single day, the outlets report.
The city required new buildings to install lead service lines until 1986, when federal regulators banned them nationwide. According to Grist, Inside Climate News, and WBEZ, roughly 412,000 out the city’s 490,000 service lines are at least partly made of lead.
Health experts say no amount of lead consumption is safe—and the dangerous consequences of lead water pipes can be particularly deleterious to children. Nonetheless, Chicago has made little progress replacing them. The
city set a goal of replacing 40,000 lead service lines by 2027, yet has struggled to even keep pace with that.
Alderperson Walter Burnett , currently the City Council’s longest-serving member, plans to step down at the end of the month, he tells Block Club Chicago—and, in typical Chicago fashion, Burnett’s son wants to take over the post his father has held for three decades.
Burnett was first elected to the City Council in 1995 after working for 11 years as a special assistant to Jesse White, who was then Cook County’s recorder of deeds. Burnett is now the city’s vice mayor and chairs the powerful Committee on Zoning, Landmarks, and Building Standards.
According to Crain’s Chicago, Burnett is one of three people being considered to lead the embattled Chicago Housing Authority. If that move is unsuccessful, Burnett tells Politico he’s also considering a run for the Seventh Congressional District seat currently held by Representative Danny Davis. (State representative La Shawn K. Ford has already thrown his hat into the ring for that contest amid speculation Davis won’t seek reelection.)
Burnett tells Block Club his son, Walter Redmond Burnett , is jockeying to replace him as 27th Ward alderperson. The elder Burnett stopped short of endorsing his son outright, but he ticked off a list of accomplishments that sure read like an endorsement nonetheless. Burnett’s stepson, state representative Jawaharial Omar Williams, was reportedly also eyeing the seat but has since changed his mind.
Politics has long been a family a air in Chicago. As recently as 2022, after alderperson Michael Scott Jr. stepped down for a role at the poltically connected CineSpace Chicago film studio, then mayor Lori Lightfoot selected his sister Monique Scott to replace him. Both are children of Michael Scott Sr., a close ally to former mayor Richard M. Daley (who is himself a nepo baby!).
Mayor Brandon Johnson will ultimately select a replacement to serve out the remainder of Burnett’s term, which expires in May 2027.
—SHAWN MULCAHY v
Make It Make Sense is a weekly column about what’s happening and why it matters.
m smulcahy@chicagoreader.com
STREET VIEW
An Avondale seamstress needs no special reason to dress up.
By ISA GIALLORENZO
Ihave a confession to make. Even though I’ve always loved fashion—and firmly believe in the reinvigorating powers of a great outfit—I often dress like I just got yanked out of
bed in the middle of a fire. I’m not proud of it. That’s why I’m impressed by people who manage to look effortlessly put together, no matter the occasion. Seamstress Dorothy Godawiec is one such blessed soul.
A regular at Saint Hyacinth Basilica in Avondale, Godawiec demonstrates great style daily—even at the 6 AM masses she often attends. She likes to look polished, yet comfortable, and always accessorizes to add additional flair.
The day I photographed her, Godawiec couldn’t have looked more on-trend. She wore a pastel pink blazer and pants she made herself, in a relaxed fit, with a white T-shirt and sneakers. She paired the ensemble with an o -white leather crossbody bag, a woven bucket hat embroidered with strawberries, a
Godawiec in her pastel pink blazer outfit and at her sewing table ISA GIALLORENZO
pearl necklace she bought at Ewa’s Glamour Boutique (a women’s clothing and accessories shop in Dunning), and a turquoise bracelet and ring. Neutral and casual, yet fun, elegant, and effortlessly intentional; that’s what the best looks are, and few fashion influencers could have done it more proficiently.
“I am always dressed up, every day. I definitely like clothes. They make me feel good,” Godawiec said. Other tonics for her spirit include gardening and staying active in her church along with attending mass. “The church is beautiful. I feel much better after mass,” she adds. “I also do lots of stu for the church, such as decorating and sewing.”
Having moved from Kraków, Poland, 37 years ago, Godawiec still carries a charming Polish accent. She originally came to Chicago
on vacation with a friend—and decided to stay. She fell in love with the city and its people, and for the past 20 years has worked as a seamstress, collaborating with several local fashion designers until the pandemic hit.
Since then, she’s struggled to find designers to partner with, though she’s eager to reengage with the fashion world. “I make samples, and I like working with fashion design students,” she said. “I also work with someone who does cutting, pattern making, and garment pressing.”
In a city like ours, where fashion infrastructure remains limited, Godawiec is a valuable resource. She asked that potential clients or collaborators reach out to her via email (odorota@comcast.net). v m
By CHRIS WARE, THE NATION
This column originally appeared in the Nation magazine’s 160th anniversary issue—“These Dis-United States”—out now and available at thenation.com/ issue. Founded by abolitionists in 1865, the Nation has chronicled the breadth and depth of political and cultural life from the debut of the telegraph to the rise of Twitter, serving as a critical, independent, and progressive voice in American journalism.
In retrospect, while driving with my 12-year-old daughter from our home near Chicago to an empty cornfield in southern Illinois to see the 2017 total solar eclipse, I should’ve been a little more alarmed by the number of Confederate flags we counted along the way.
Four years later, when the pandemic seemed to have eased and we wanted to just go somewhere, anywhere, a day trip through central Illinois took us past not only more Stars and Bars but also “Trump 2024” placards and Trump-asRambo banners flapping over apartment balconies, as well as “Piss on Pritzker” lawn signs—all of which seemed a little overdone, given how laughably Trump had emceed the pandemic. (Also nasty, since I’d thought Governor J.B. Pritzker’s daily briefings were a heartwarmingly awkward spectacle of human anxiety and vulnerability, the corn-fed answer to New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s o cious, patronizing scolding.)
Illinois basically has two regions: Chicago and “downstate.” Dense Chicago is reliably Democratic, whereas downstate skews conservative, but rarely enough to flip the electoral switch. (The last time Illinois voted in the federal elections for a Republican president was in 1988.)
A fragment of a street called Blue Island Avenue still runs southwest from Chicago toward the town of Blue Island (the name apparently inspired by the low moraine
that early 19th-century travelers could see gently bellying up from what Frederick Law Olmsted called the “flat, miry, and forlorn” Illinois landscape), a place that was then a day’s wagon ride to the city, where beleaguered
immigrants could stop for a rest and a beer. Overlaid on the scar of a Native American trail, the route endures as a diagonal slice of spacetime through the gridlocked blocks of Chicago and its suburbs.
Chris Ware created stamp artwork for 250 Years of Delivering , a new pane of 20 interconnected stamps issued this month by the United States Postal Service. USPS art director Antonio Alcalá worked with Ware on design. The stamps will be available starting Wednesday, July 23. CHRIS WARE
“Blue island,” however, could just as easily describe our state, bordered to the north by purple Wisconsin and to the east by reliably red Indiana. Illinois has had the highest property taxes in the nation in recent years, and my painter and sculptor friends who migrated to Indiana over the past few years didn’t do so because of the weather.
We’re losing population at an alarming rate: Between 2010 and 2019, Illinois disgorged more people than any other state (and, embarrassingly, many of them were African American, in a sort of reverse Great Migration to a more affordable— and less Chicago-level-policed—south).
Nowadays, my drive to the empty eclipse-viewing cornfield seems ominous. I find myself second-guessing my words, my thoughts self-braking. Did downstaters feel the same way as me hearing about “cancel culture” and “woke” DEI? How can it be that nearly half of the American population voted for all of this?
I’m originally from Nebraska, and I love the midwest. The brown-and-gray humility of its homes and streets, its flat talk averaging out from all corners of the world. I realize I live in a blue state, if not a blue island. But how did we all let ourselves get so red with anger at one another?
Chris Ware is a Riverside-based artist and the author of the 1995 graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan: the Smartest Kid on Earth . Ware was a cartoonist for the Reader from 2002–2006 and is a regular contributor to the New Yorker. A traveling retrospective of his work began at the Centre Pompidou in 2022 and concludes this year at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona. v
m letters@chicagoreader.com
From agriculture to restaurants, more and more food in this country is produced by child labor. That’s putting whole communities at risk.
By TODD LARSEN AND CHARLOTTE TATE, OTHERWORDS
When deciding what to make for dinner, many of us think about how to balance making something affordable, delicious, and healthy. And we might consider ethical questions, like whether our food is locally sourced, our meat is humanely raised, or our meals have a low climate impact.
We probably don’t wonder whether child labor is involved. But unfortunately, that’s increasingly likely. In recent years, federal investigations have uncovered children working in dangerous conditions to create the food we eat.
Tyson Foods, Perdue Farms, Cargill, and JBS Foods have all been found to have children working in slaughterhouses. Many of these children are immigrants and are unlikely to be safe to speak up when they’re in danger. They need these jobs to survive, but the jobs put their lives at risk.
Children all over the country, some as young as ten, are working in agriculture, restaurants, and meatpacking. An estimated 300,000–500,000 children are working in agriculture alone.
Their jobs can be dangerous—kids often go to school with burns from restaurant stoves or cleaning chemicals. In the last two years, at least three children have died on the job. Fueling this rise are politicians attempting to roll back child labor restrictions. They insist that children will benefit from these so-called opportunities to work.
But child labor involves work that’s harmful to children’s development and health—like cleaning dangerous machinery in a slaughterhouse overnight, or being exposed to hazardous chemicals. Other kids may simply work so many hours that they fall behind in school and drop out.
Child labor puts an additional strain on local health care, education, and social services when kids are injured or fail to keep up at school. It also harms the labor market by depressing wages—and puts businesses that actually abide by labor laws or ethical standards at a competitive disadvantage.
Some federal and state laws, such as federal
For instance, consumers sounded the alarm on child labor in cocoa, resulting in some of the world’s largest chocolate companies making commitments to address child labor concerns. And consumers are increasingly looking for more ethical options, such as small chocolate brands dedicated to fair and direct trade.
At GreenAmerica.org, you can sign a petition to get child labor off our dinner plates
“youth wage laws,” even allow businesses to pay children and teenagers less than adult wages for the first 90 days of employment. This lets companies increase their bottom line at the expense of children and their communities.
Under the Biden administration, the Department of Labor issued multimillion-dollar fines and carried out investigations that were widely covered in the media, which served as a deterrent. But it remains unclear if the Trump administration will follow suit.
States are also backsliding. Many are lowering the ages at which children can work in unsafe jobs and increasing the hours they can work. According to the Economic Policy Institute, more than 20 states have introduced bills to weaken child labor protections in recent years. Eight, including Illinois, have introduced such laws this year alone.
Time and time again, we’ve seen companies violate laws and rights when they know they can get away with it. But regardless of what the administration does, we can ensure that corporations still feel pressure to uphold human rights.
At our organization, we’ve seen how campaigns where people shift their purchases to more responsible companies—and speak out against irresponsible ones—can send a strong message to corporations that they need to move in a more ethical direction.
and send a message to Tyson, JBS, Cargill, and Perdue to strengthen their policies and procedures around child labor. Consumers can also take action in their state to oppose legislation weakening child labor protections and support positive bills.
Together, we can ensure that multibillion-dollar companies don’t profit from the exploitation of children. Making sure you and your family can enjoy delicious meals shouldn’t come at the cost of other children’s lives and futures.
Todd Larsen is the executive codirector for consumer and corporate engagement at the nonprofit Green America. Charlotte Tate is Green America’s labor justice campaigns director. This column was originally published by OtherWords. Find more original op-eds at otherwords.org. v
m letters@chicagoreader.com
ATTENTION: PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD FOR CHA’S PROPOSED FY2026 MTW ANNUAL PLAN SCHEDULED FOR JULY 17-AUGUST 22, 2025
If you listed Lawndale Complex or the Lawndale Community Area on your Housing Choice Survey as a place you would like to permanently live, please read the information listed below.
The Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) is releasing its proposed FY2026 MTW Annual Plan for public comment from July 17th through August 22nd, 2025. The proposed annual plan and summary documents are available for review on CHA’s website at www.thecha.org.
CHA welcomes questions and comments from residents, program participants and the general public, but participation in the public comment is not required and will not impact your housing options at CHA.
The Draft Tenant Selection Plan (TSP) and Lease for Ogden Commons, a mixed-income community is available for review. The Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) has worked with its development partner to develop a Draft TSP and Lease for use at the private development known as Ogden Commons (previous site of the Lawndale Complex). The units within this development will be used as replacement public housing units for Lawndale Complex and the Lawndale Community area. If you listed Lawndale Complex/Lawndale Community area on your Housing Choice Survey as a place you want to live or maintain a right to return to new CHA replacement housing per the Relocation Rights Contract (RRC), you can comment on the Draft TSP and Lease during the 30-day public comment period.
You can submit comments on the proposed plan by email, fax or mail:
Chicago Housing Authority
60 E. Van Buren St, 12th Floor Chicago, IL 60605
The 30-day public comment period will be held for CHA to receive written comments starting April 7 through May 7, 2021. The Tenant Selection Plans (TSP) will be available on CHA’s website beginning April 7, 2021.
Attn: Proposed FY2026 MTW Annual Plan Email: commentontheplan@thecha.org | Fax: 312-913-7837
Due to COVID-19, CHA has suspended all in person public meetings and instead, CHA will livestream one public comment hearing. The date and time of the public comment livestream hearing is as follows:
CHA will also host two livestream and one in-person public comment meeting:
Tue, April 20, 10:00am: https://youtu.be/QBGG47BHXMg
• Livestream: Tuesday, July 22, 2025, at 11:00 am Monday, August 4, at 11:00 am Links to the livestreams will be available at www.thecha.org and a sign interpreter will be present. Comments can be submitted in the livestream chat and recordings of the livestream sessions will be available on CHA’s website following the meetings.
We ask that comments pertaining to the TSP & Lease be submitted electronically to commentontheplan@thecha.org at least 48-hours prior to the comment hearing. Comments will be read live during the time outlined above. Comments received after the hearing will be added to the comment grid.
• In-person: Wednesday, July 30, 2025, at 6:00 pm, FIC 4859 S Wabash Sign language and Spanish interpreters will be present, and comments can be submitted in person.
If you require translation services, please read the attached notice or check with your property manager for more details. Do not mail comments to CHA.
E-mail or Fax comments to: commentontheplan@thecha.org Fax 312. 913.7837
If you require additional translation services, please read the enclosed notice, or check with your property manager for more details.
All comments must be received by August 22, 2025.
Ifyouhaveaquestionaboutthisnotice,pleasecalltheCHAat312.913-7300. Torequestareasonableaccommodation,pleasecall312.913.7062. TTY 866.331.3603
If you have a question about this notice, please call 312-913-7300. To request a reasonable accommodation, please call 312-913-7062. TTY 866-331-3603
MSI exhibit spotlights steelworkers in the Calumet region.
By JOE ENGLEMAN
Afew years ago, David Vance brought some visiting family members to the Museum of Science and Industry (MSI).
Coming out of the “Coal Mine” exhibition, he fielded their questions about the history of coal mining in the city.
“It’s a beautiful coal mine,” Vance said, “but we never mined coal here in Chicago.” Where, he wondered, was the exhibition on steel? It’s a story that Vance, a 30-year veteran of Inland Steel and a member of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees, knew all about. A petition and a yearlong letter writing campaign asking the museum to add an exhibition on steel in the region soon followed.
MSI’s previous head curator, Kathleen McCarthy, started a dialogue with the steelworkers. In 2023 the museum received a Broadening Narratives grant from the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, which helped fund “Steelmakers.”
The three-year show, one of the museum’s first on steel since the 1960s, utilizes artifacts and objects from the Southeast Chicago Historical Society (SECHS) and the Calumet Heritage Partnership. Some were part of the recent, roving “Calumet Voices, National Stories” exhibition.
Unlike “Coal Mine,” “Steelmakers” won’t drop you into an open hearth or blast furnace. It recognizes that social history at the science museum doesn’t always require a ride down a hundred-year-old mine shaft.
R“ STEELMAKERS”
Open end: summer hours (through Sun 8/ 17 ) daily 9:30 AM– 5 : 30 PM, regular hours daily 9: 30 AM– 4 PM, Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, 5700 S. DuSable Lake Shore, msichicago.org, adults $25 95, children 3 –11 $14 95, free for members, discounts for Chicago residents
“The heart of the exhibit is the community story. Who are these people who built the Chicago skyline? Why did this industry grow in this part of the country—the Calumet region?” says MSI head curator of collections and archives Voula Saridakis. “It’s people who were the power and force behind this industry.”
It’s quite striking that so much of “Steel-
makers” centers on the importance of worker power when MSI leadership is reportedly stalling negotiations with the Museum of Science and Industry Workers United (MSIWU). A video posted to MSIWU’s Instagram account in late June indicated first contract negotiations were at a standstill after 22 meetings and nearly a year and a half of bargaining. “Steelmakers” doesn’t directly invoke the words of famed Chicago steelworker and labor leader Ed Sadlowski,
A panel on the history of environmental justice, activist Hazel Johnson, and organizations like People for Community Recovery and the Southeast Environmental Task Force is timely. These organizations, the exhibit text reads, “emphasize that no one’s livelihood should come at the expense of their health.” If the ordinance bearing Johnson’s name gets out of City Council committee purgatory and passes, it might start to move city policy toward that sentiment.
who spoke of “workers right now who are full of poems,” during his campaign to lead the United Steelworkers, but the detailed exhibit text and artifacts on display make it clear that steelworkers (including women, Black, Latine, immigrant, and migrant laborers) and their communities contained multitudes.
There are also panels dedicated to artists these workers inspired, like muralist Vincent Mendoza and sculptor Richard Hunt. Hunt’s eye-catching Angle Form (1968) points to the position Chicago still holds in steel’s regional economic ecosystem. Steel gets transformed here, through metalworking and shaping, into outputs like tools and die-casts.
“Far Down the Phantom Air” joins the prehistoric and the postindustrial.
There is less distance between the prehistoric and the postindustrial than might first seem apparent. On view at Sawhorse, “Far Down the Phantom Air” unites these subjects into a devotional that poses worship as the pleasure of and profound responsibility to beauty.
Dealing in the Mesozoic, paintings by Jane Leipold glow from within. Each of the artist’s seven paintings references an aspect of the ancient past without the need for scientific verity. Rejecting favored representations of neatly diagrammed skeletons or 3D-modeled dinosaur battles, Leipold activates a more intuitive understanding of form, visible in closely cropped dinosaur heads phasing into view and incandescent stacks of bones rising from murky backgrounds.
Vessel, featuring the glimmering inside of a gargantuan rib cage with scattered columnar crystals emerging from a darkened floor, transforms a biological specimen into the cavernous holy interior of a cathedral. Opalescent light and tender treatments of prehistoric subjects encourage spiritual encounters through Leipold’s paintings, positioning beauty as divinity.
The stairwell installations and pass-through galleries at MSI have long been the museum’s unsung heroes, and now your pathway to the U-505 submarine and the Apollo 8 spacecraft runs right through “Steelmakers.” It’s an accessible entry point to the interconnected environmental, industrial, immigrant, and labor histories of the Calumet region. To learn and see more on steel in the region, follow Lake Shore Drive south of the Obamalith to the ore walls at Steelworkers Park and the SECHS, which is open on Thursday afternoons at the Calumet Park Field House. Their extensive digital archive is accessible anytime. v
m letters@chicagoreader.com
Standing solemnly on the gallery floor, geometric sculptures by Alex Adkinson are obelisks pointing towards a parallel postindustrial future. With their harsh steel frames and vestigial features evolved from once-functional handles and shelves, the monuments are removed from familiar conceptions of factories and machinery.
Because of their architecture and printed polyester panels resembling stained glass, Adkinson’s pieces yearn for some unknown ritual to bring them to life. With time, that ritual is revealed to be conscious observation: witnessing the slow filtering of dappled light through plastic and metal, or noticing awkward metal appendages hidden behind ready-made grates.
“Far Down the Phantom Air” is proof of an enduring beauty—one that collapses the eons between dinosaurs and machines. In the fraction of a second that humans have existed, we inherit the responsibility to bear witness to this beauty sincerely, deeply, and without fear. —NATALIE JENKINS ” Far Down the Phantom Air” Through 8/24: Sun noon AM–4 PM or by appointment, info@sawhorsespace.net, Sawhorse, 4222 W. Fullerton, sawhorsespace.net/home v
Big Time Toppers looks at “circus dreams during late-stage capitalism.”
Things I wish had happened in Patrick Vermillion’s Big Time Toppers: I wish I had brought my earplugs because my phone’s “loud environment” alarm went off on multiple occasions, warning me of potential risks to my hearing. Redtwist Theatre is the most charming and cozy of Chicago storefront theaters, seating 50 people on a good day, so feral screaming was not essential to get the tragicomedy across. To be fair, there were a couple of incidents (stabbings and such) that would warrant some screaming, but the rest could have been delivered enthusiastically in an indoor voice.
I wish I had seen just a few minutes of a circus art performed, especially juggling, because clowns o en do juggle, and our villain, Jimmy Knives himself (played with main-character panache by Quinn Leary), was apparently famous for it. I get it, though: This is a spoof, and it isn’t really about the circus—it’s more of a metaphor. But as a fan, when I see circus accoutrements, and the cast talks about the joys and tribulations of the circus for 90 minutes, it feels like a taunt to deny the audience even a wink of it. Whether it was an artistic choice (because blending circus and theater well is a tricky and distracting business) or a budget reality (extra rehearsals are costly!), I’m not sure. Beyond that, director Brandii Champagne made sure Big Time Toppers had everything you’d dream about to make a hilarious and meaningful plot with twists, including jokes about French culture and midwest weather, magical knives, sprinkles of avant-garde humor to counter the physical theater, and increasingly macabre scenes as two best buddies attempt to live out their circus dreams during late-stage capitalism.
ically funny character, serving overly polite and sweet sister energy until driven to a murderous rage over the loss of her cat.
Featuring great scenic design (Rose Johnson) and costumes (Benjamin Mills, who is also assistant director) to accompany a riveting and bold plot, Theatre L’Acadie once again serves Chicago something it needs—a taste of absurd, surreal, and over-the-top theater. Just bring earplugs. —KIMZYN CAMPBELL BIG TIME TOPPERS
Through 7/26: Mon and Wed–Sat 8 PM (understudy performance Mon 7/21); Redtwist Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr, theatrelacadie.com, pay what you can ($30 suggested donation)
Ethiopia’s Circus Abyssinia takes over Chicago Shakes.
cast of about 15 acrobats, jugglers, and aerialists cycled through the classic circus acts that never fail to wow an audience, beginning with a lively hoop diving routine, which set the high energy level for the show. Notable acts include the rolla bolla act by Ermiyas Sima where balancing becomes complicated by increasing height. Similarly, the handbalancing act became more thrilling as the handbalancer eventually did a handstand three canes high. Sima returned to amuse and astound with a ladder walking act, and a lively group Chinese pole act rounded out the show. They really pack in a lot of jaw-dropping skills and feats in a 70-minute show, but it felt like it was short an act or two. Perhaps the tour has had to adjust the lineup, which might explain the absence of women on the stage.
The clown act stood out for its ability to involve the audience without language, leaning into the universal need for shenanigans, as the clown character enlisted two people to help him do a jump rope act.
Circus Abyssinia offers performances by and from Ethiopians, and that is unique and powerful. Instead of one act by Ethiopian artists sandwiched in between many international acts, the show centers Ethiopian culture, starting with the music (like Ethio-jazz) and costumes. That celebration travels right into the energy of the circus artists, making it a joyous event for audiences of all ages and giving us a chance to celebrate circus and Ethiopia in a beautiful venue. —KIMZYN CAMPBELL CIRCUS ABYSSINIA: ETHIOPIAN DREAMS Through 8/3: Wed 7 PM, Thu 2 PM, Fri 2 and 7 PM, Sat 11 AM and 2 PM, Sun 2 and 5 PM; Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 800 E. Grand, 312-595-5600, chicagoshakes.com, $57 adults, $39 13-18, $29 3-12
Merry We: An Elite Comedy marks Split Lip as a DIY company to watch.
emergency plumbing situation shut down its original venue.) Not only does the play find levity in showing its seams (for instance, Roitz shaved the top of his head to create the effect of someone much older and balder with fresh stubble underscoring the show’s two-week run), but it uses a Hays Code–level of restraint to make some extremely—extremely—sexual jokes. Most of the dialogue is delivered facing the audience rather than one another, with each character also reacting as they face the audience. While this proved hard for the cast to maintain toward the end, it adds a remarkable level of hilarity overall. Merry We has just enough self-awareness to punch up where it needs to and even challenge some tired character tropes, but it doesn’t try to be anything besides what it is: absurdly entertaining during some very dark times. —MICCO CAPORALE This production is closed, but see splitliptheater.com for info on upcoming shows.
Hell in a Handbag’s Queen for a Day is a spectacular high-concept comedy.
There are high-concept plots—and then there’s Tyler Anthony Smith’s Queen for a Day, whose concept is so high it could replace Starlink. (I mean, something needs to, right?) Smith’s latest for Hell in a Handbag imagines a 1984 encounter between designer Halston (please don’t use Roy, his first name, because he hates that) and Queen Elizabeth. No, not that one. The first one. The one who died in 1603.
Enter the clowns—the malleable and flexible Stubbs (Jamaque Newberry) and the determined Harlow (Hannah Antman). Unfortunately for them, their chosen art form is dying out; they work three jobs to get by and afford their training; their boss, Eddie (Shane Rhoades), is a stereotype; and they had really awful circus coaches. But fortunately for us, their optimism borders on the hysterical while zooming in with clownish technicolor on toxic ambition, highlighting the kind of stick-to-itiveness that has allowed circus artists over the eons to nail that acrobatic three-high and risk their bodies daily for adoring audiences.
It also emphasizes the type of tenacity that has caused burnout and PTSD among the global workforce for believing that if they give their entire life over to work, it will someday pay off Stubbs’s premed student sister, Billie (Kandace Mack), shows that side of things, but not before she is inspired to jump off the hamster wheel to join in the circus fun. Mack delivers as a hyster-
Circus Abyssinia: Ethiopian Dreams, now playing at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, is about the boyhood dreams of brothers and cocreators Binyam “Bichu” Shimellis (who also directs) and Mehari “Bibi” Tesfamariam (credited as producer). Circus Abyssinia’s show highlights the colorful and lively artistic heritage of Ethiopia with a celebratory vibe.
The Ethiopian National Circus Association Consortium (ENCAC) has been a fixture in Addis Ababa for over 50 years and has helped gain recognition for Ethiopian artists globally, eventually resulting in more than 50 circus schools. But Tesfamariam and Shimellis didn’t have the privilege of attending any of them. As the stellar jugglers in the show, they command the stage with lively juggling passes. But their origin story has an inspirational arc. They started as self-taught street jugglers, went on to perform at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and were cast in Smashed, a world-renowned contemporary juggling show by Sean Gandini. They eventually returned home to start their own circus school and soon began Circus Abyssinia.
Traditional circus shows o en feature Ethiopian women doing impressive contortion routines, but in this show, women were unfortunately not present. The
If A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Great Gatsby were given the Dadaists’ cut-up treatment to create a script for a troop of acid-dosed hooligans, you’d have Merry We: An Elite Comedy (written by Caleb Roitz and Stephen Patterson and directed by Roitz). Robber baron–type Johnny Babcock (Ambrose Cappuccio) invites his longtime friend and obsessive dog trainer Magnus Fader (Roitz) to join him and his family at their country estate. Johnny’s wife, Bianca (Annaleigh Stone), is an impossibly interesting and accomplished artist, while Magnus’s wife, Glee (Moriah Martel), is an eccentric mystic. Soon they’re joined by Bianca’s brother, Curtis Flagg (Hannah Cruz), a bumbler of sorts who can’t relinquish a disgusting conch shell that’s only brought him bad luck since finding it on a childhood trip with the group.
That same trip, Johnny found a white lobster that’s only attracted endless good luck and now lives in a tank on the mantel. Are the conch and the lobster really why these men’s lives turned out how they did? And why is Magnus so jealous that he le that trip empty-handed? Would he really have preferred going home with a smelly, cursed seashell to nothing? When a hapless stranger, Fred Hump (Zoe Thibault), appears looking for his lost children, he’s hired as the Babcocks’ nanny. Things only get stranger from there in a play where everything feels just familiar enough while resisting any traditional logic. If you think you know love triangles and magic, think again.
One of the performance’s greatest strengths is its power of suggestion. As the second production by newly formed underground theater company Split Lip, it’s a sparse show. (When I saw it, Merry We had to be adapted for an apartment living room a er an
In Smith’s play (directed by Stephanie Shaw), she’s getting ready for her deathbed and has deposited a pretty he y chunk of cash in a savings account for Halston, provided he gives her a new gown to, well, die for. Smith plays Queen Elizabeth with a mix of haughty and doughty, leavened by flashes of vulnerability that show us that the distance of 381 years isn’t that much of a barrier between the dying queen and the designer who is losing his own kingdom. At the start of the play, Will Lidke’s Halston is snorting coke in the office he’s supposed to be vacating, licking his wounds from signing away his name to JCPenney. He turns on the radio, only to quickly turn it off again as soon as he hears Morrissey crooning, “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want.”
If you want a more straightforward account of Halston’s rise and fall, there’s the dishy 2021 Netflix series, Halston, starring Ewan McGregor. But if you want an over-the-top but wise look at the isolation of fame and power, then Queen for a Day delivers with panache. The secret weapon here is Dakota Hughes as Liza Minnelli, who is working out her mommy issues with a new act in which the Statue of Liberty pursues her creator, Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi. Hughes delivers a long and loopy overview of the show (“It’s both commercial and avant-garde”) that is nearly impossible to summarize, but which should put them on the short list for one of the best performances of the year.
Does it all make sense? Hell no. Does it mostly captivate and entertain? Hell yes. And there’s also an earnestness and poignancy to the stories of both Elizabeth and Halston (Liza too!) that make the connections seem somehow inevitable. As befits a show about fashion, Rachel M. Sypniewski’s costumes, Sydney Genco’s makeup design, and Keith Ryan’s wigs capture the iconic looks of Liza and Liz. The performances capture the people beneath the clothes. —KERRY REID QUEEN FOR A DAY Through 8/3: Thu–Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 4 and 7:30 PM, Sun 4 PM; also Mon 7/28 7:30 PM (industry night); Bramble Arts Loft, 5545 N. Clark, handbagproductions.org, $35 ($43 VIP reserved) v
SEX, LOVE, & LIBERATION: THE FILMS OF ARTHUR J. BRESSAN, JR. Fri 7/ 18 –Sat 7/26, Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport, $11 general admission, $ 8 Music Box members, most screenings 18 +, musicboxtheatre.com/series-and-festivals
An upcoming series at the Music Box Theatre explores the work of the pioneering queer filmmaker.
By KAT SACHS
We’ve all heard the jokes: “I read it for the articles.” “I watched it for the plot.” They echo a recognizable dissonance: the desire to engage with so-called dirty material cloaked in a gesture of respectability, claiming artistic interest rather than arousal.
That very tension between arousal and art is where Arthur J. Bressan Jr. built his career. A pioneer of gay adult cinema alongside figures like Fred Halsted and Wakefield Poole, Bressan didn’t just make pornographic films; he made films that demanded to be seen as cinema, worthy of appreciation, interpretation, and serious study.
Born in New York City—on the street where West Side Story (1961) was shot, as he liked to remind people—Bressan began his film career in earnest while living in San Francisco, despite having no formal film education. (Although he did make a short film, Boys, while living and teaching in New York City in 1969.) Among his initial endeavors were a short documentary, Coming Out (1972), and a feature documentary, Gay USA (1977), both centered on pride celebrations; the latter is also the first American feature-length documentary by a queer person about queer people. Between making these two films, he began a serious foray into porn with Passing Strangers in 1974, which kicks off the series Sex, Love, & Liberation: The Films of Arthur J. Bressan, Jr., programmed by Zack Paslay, at the Music Box Theatre on Friday, July 18.
I should disclose here that I programmed a double feature of Passing Strangers and Forbidden Letters (1979) at the Music Box several years ago, with introductions by filmmakers and queer film historians Jenni Olson and Elizabeth Purchell. Olson, along with Bressan’s sister, Roe, had started the Bressan Project, devoted to preserving and promoting the work of the late filmmaker. Because of them, these films have enjoyed a resurgence, complete with 2K restorations and DVD and Bluray releases by distributors Altered Innocence
and Vinegar Syndrome. Their advocacy and its resultant output—as well as the work of Caden Mark Gardner, K.J. Shepherd, and Tyler Thomas, all of whom, with Purchell, did audio commentaries for the DVDs and Blu-rays—have been instrumental to this renaissance.
The upcoming screenings are not just great opportunities for people to see the aforementioned films, but three others as well: the X-rated Daddy Dearest (1984) and Juice (1984), and his nonpornographic narrative Buddies (1985), the first feature-length film about AIDS. (Bressan himself died from complications of the disease in 1987.)
What distinguishes Bressan as a filmmaker is the preternatural quality he brought to adult cinema, employing undeniable craftsmanship and passion to an area in which it’s often either underrealized or underappreciated. Passing Strangers (which screens on
also in genuine and oftentimes tender stories about people looking not just for sex or love, but connection. A closeted gay teenager, Robert (Robert Adams), answers the man’s ad, and the two begin exchanging letters. (Age-gap relationships are a common theme in Bressan’s films, resulting in problematic effects in his 1983 film Abuse.)
In the scene to which we’re introduced to Robert, he masturbates while watching D.W. Gri th’s 1919 film Broken Blossoms, an impetus unlikely to occur in a porn film. In another scene, he looks in a mirror and observes his youthful acne, the vulnerability of which is also unusual. This gives way to an extended orgy between Robert and several men who help him appreciate his body and the pleasure he derives from it. (There are also stunning
Friday, July 18, at 9:30 PM) was shot in grainy black-and-white and opens in a porn theater, with beautiful silhouetted shots of people watching an adult film shifting to similarly beguiling shots of a projection booth, where the story takes hold. A projectionist calls his friend, Tom (Robert Carnagey), who’s placed a personal ad in a paper looking for a lover. It quotes Walt Whitman’s poem “To a Stranger.” It begins: “Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you, / You must be he I was seeking”; it’s a poem about the search for a meaningful connection with another person, which also alludes to Whitman’s queer tendencies.
This encapsulates the beauty of Bressan’s films, rooted as they are in an appreciation for classical art—and even mainstream American pop culture (he was particularly obsessed with musical film star Jeanette MacDonald)—and
shots of an engorged penis in silhouette, which is a throughline in Bressan’s films.) When Tom and Robert finally meet in the wooded beaches of San Francisco and consummate their relationship, the film switches to color. This cinematography is as exquisitely lush as the black-and-white cinematography is stark; the sex is accordingly exuberant and playful, as romantic as it is sexual.
Forbidden Letters , screening on Saturday, July 19, at 9:30 PM, is similarly epistolary— though less happily so, as it was dangerous for queer people to send love letters to and
from prison—and centers on the relationship between a young man, Larry (Adams again), and his older lover, Richard (Richard Locke), who’s going to jail. (Locke is the original “daddy” figure and a fascinating person in his own right; he started a small microcinema in San Francisco and later became a passionate advocate for safe sex.) The black-and-white cinematography is grittier and more forlorn than that of Passing Strangers . In one sequence, Larry goes to a porn theater and seems to transport into the film, observing the goings-on while wearing the shearling denim jacket he’s donning in chilly San Francisco. We then see a flashback of the couple, in color and in happier times.
The film’s pièce de résistance is an extended sequence that was shot on Alcatraz, wherein
the two lovers stand in separate cells, masturbating. Dream sequences such as these are common in Bressan’s films. They expand the ability for creativity while keeping the sexual interludes connected to the central plot. In contrast to that which takes place in the jail, there’s a brilliant color scene of the characters at a drag party, perfectly exhibiting the way Bressan handles tonal fluctuations between the maudlin and the joyful. It’s especially noticeable in this film because, as Purchell and Mark Gardner discussed in their commentary, between Forbidden Letters and
Passing Strangers , Robert Hillsborough was murdered and Anita Bryant emerged as an antigay crusader. The former event, Purchell has explained, was the impetus for Bressan’s Gay USA, a reflection of joy and resistance.
Bressan ends Forbidden Letters on an audacious note, reading the names of the cast and crew aloud like Orson Welles at the end of The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), finally concluding with, “My name is Arthur J. Bressan Jr., and I made this motion picture.” Bressan loved classic Hollywood, especially Frank Capra; he wrote his college thesis on Capra and even interviewed the director for Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. (Bressan had also written to Capra telling him about Passing Strangers , and even though Capra was a formidable conservative, Capra replied saying that if it’s truly about two people in love, he can support it.)
Bressan was a consummate cinephile and filmmaker, so it thus makes sense that the act of creation would play a role in his films. Daddy Dearest , screening on Monday, July 21, at 9:30 PM, is about an adult filmmaker,
a-film is being shot. It takes place in New York City, and there’s a Scorsese-like grittiness to some scenes that complement the self-reflective tone of Edward, who recollects happier (and sexier) times with a former lover. He also spies on a couple across the way (à la Hitchcock’s 1954 film Rear Window) while seeming to dislike the direction of his filmmaking and resenting the notion that perhaps some of his lovers only want him for the opportunity to appear in a film.
This and Juice , which screens on Friday, July 25, and Saturday, July 26, at 11:45 PM, are more naturalistic than Passing Strangers or Forbidden Letters, but there are still some of Bressan’s through lines, such as the use of red lighting during sex scenes and people passing through doorways and waving at one another. Red, of course, connotes love, passion, and sex, and it serves such sequences well in distinguishing them from the nonsex scenes. This is contrasted by the waving, which is a humanizing and even somewhat vulnerable action. Edward is seen directing one of the young men who appears in his fi lms to wave
Edward (Daniel Holt), who’s making a new film about some college boys and their dalliance with a “daddy” figure (Locke again). The concept is very meta—at times an industry sendup—and aside from the sex scenes, the most interesting are those in which the film-within-
more slowly; the actor, Dean Johnson, was a mainstay of gay New York, a six-feet-sixinch-tall “glam-punk drag queen” who here is stripped down (literally and fi guratively), evocative of how Bressan depicted identity through embodied physical presence.
Juice was Bressan’s final adult film and penultimate film altogether. Similar to Daddy Dearest , it’s about another creative type, a photographer (proto-himbo Michael Christopher) for a gay magazine who wanders around the city looking for people to photograph all while fantasizing about someone he’d previously met. Again, there’s an element of yearning that adds pathos to the passion. The formal construct is also interesting, as it’s not one sex scene after another, necessarily, but intercutting between several sex scenes supposedly taking place at the same time over one long, steamy night.
Perhaps his best-known film, Buddies , which screens on Tuesday, July 22, at 7 PM, centers on the relationship between an AIDS patient, Robert (Geoff Edholm), and David (David Schachter), a volunteer “buddy” who keeps him company. The two are opposites in most every way and at first seem also to be oppositional toward one another. David is a typesetter who’s been in a monogamous relationship for five years, while Robert, having been diagnosed with HIV, has been abandoned by his lover and friends. Robert is also more politically involved, while David is woefully sheltered from the harsher realities of gay life. Tertiary characters such as nurses and David’s lover are only heard offscreen, compacting the film to truly just these two people, these “buddies” whose bond ends up evolving far past their original, tenuous connection. Edholm died from AIDS-related complications two years after Bressan, in 1989.
An obvious deviation from his earlier fare, Bressan, as quoted by Michael Koresky in his Queer & Now & Then column on the film, proclaimed, “We had a decade of parade films and coming-out films, and I made a lot of those movies. But when something like AIDS comes up, it is important for our artists to deal with what is going on.”
Bressan’s was a life cut short, but his legacy, with the help of advocates, lives on, not just as a formidable queer or adult filmmaker, but as one worthy of recognition across the various stratospheres of film history. As Bressan said in an interview, “A lot of critics claim it shouldn’t be done. That bringing in technique and emotion will destroy the hard-on factor. . . . I’ve always tried to bridge the gap between the commercial and the artistic. . . . I want to see porn not get decent, but get credited as being movies.” v m
No, I haven’t forgotten about my resolution to try to see, on average, one movie per day in theaters. To be honest, I’ve lost track, but that isn’t to say I’ve abandoned my endeavor—I’m merely hoping to catch up and, when I finally do make count again, magically find myself back on track. A busy cinephile can dream.
I had an especially jam-packed week at work, so I’ve been sad to miss a few movies I would have liked to see. But some of what I have been watching lately has been centered around labor, so it’s gotten me thinking about that. Nellie Kluz’s The Dells (2024) screened at the Gene Siskel Film Center this past week, and I wrote about it in advance for Cine-File. Full disclosure: Kluz is an old friend, but that has nothing to do with how much I appreciate her incisive documentary about young, foreign workers at the popular Wisconsin vacation destination.
I also revisited Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront (1954) at home, as it’s expiring at the end of the month on the Criterion Channel. Labor is a tertiary concern, but the film is also about a kind of exploitation, in this case that of mobsters engaged in union racketeering. (It’s a great film, in no small part due to Marlon Brando’s staggering performance and Leonard Bernstein’s blustering score. The politics, though, are questionable, as it was a response to the scorn Kazan faced for testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952. That’s the thing about great art—it can’t help who makes it.)
Less thematically, I really enjoyed two other
things I watched that are expiring on the Criterion Channel at the end of the month: Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat (1981) and Michael Mann’s The Keep (1983). The first is a steamy erotic thriller, and the latter is . . . in a category of its own, really. It’s Mann’s second film (after Thief in 1981), and it’s crazy to think that he made the quintessential Michael Mann movie and then made whatever this is. It’s not bad, though, and it’s definitely worth watching if you’re a Mann completist.
On Sunday, I went to the Southport Art Fest, which came with the opportunity to watch hours of Looney Tunes cartoons on 35 millimeter at the Music Box Theatre for free. I was lucky and went into the theater right as a great one started: Chuck Jones’s Feed the Kitty (1952). It features Marc Anthony, the bulldog, and Pussyfoot, the kitten, with Marc taking a liking to and then adopting Pussyfoot, a fact that he then tries to hide from his owner, who’s angry at the dog for bringing random things into the house. (Summarizing a short, inane cartoon is weirdly di cult.) I love cats, so I particularly enjoyed that one. Another, Friz Freleng’s Ballot Box Bunny (1951), features Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam facing o in an election for mayor of a small western town. I haven’t yet seen Ari Aster’s Eddington (2025), which opens this Friday, but I imagine it’ll be something like that.
Until next time, moviegoers. —KAT SACHS v
The Moviegoer is the diary of a local film bu , collecting the best of what Chicago’s independent and underground film scene has to o er.
Trump’s brutal cuts to federal arts funding demonstrate the vulnerability of a culture sector tied to state ideology. How will Chicago artists and presenters rebuild?
By DANIELLA MAZZIO
May 2, 2025, was a much anticipated date for the Harris Theater. That night—a Friday night—was the U.S. premiere of a revival of Scott Joplin’s sole surviving opera, Treemonisha . Despite Joplin’s legacy as a composer, Treemonisha had nearly disappeared from history. No copies survive of Joplin’s original orchestrations, only a 1911 score for piano and voice. The opera didn’t receive its first performance until 1972, when it was staged at the Atlanta Memorial Arts Center, 55 years after Joplin’s death. Productions since then have been few and far between.
The reimagined version of Treemonisha that premiered on May 2 had been in the works for nearly a decade. Toronto production company Volcano Theatre had helped assemble a group of Black women artists: Composers Jessie Montgomery and Jannina Norpoth adapted and orchestrated the music, while Leah-Simone Bowen adapted the story and wrote the new libretto with Cheryl L. Davis. Crucially, both the 2023 world premiere in
Harris Theater for Music and Dance
America dovetailed with its multifaceted celebration of Black American music in dialogue with European classical tradition. At 7:30 PM, following a Black carpet celebration, the curtain rose on Treemonisha. Three minutes later, Harris Theater president and chief executive o cer Lori Dimun received an email from the NEA: The theater’s $20,000 grant supporting Treemonisha had been terminated.
The Harris Theater is among many organizations and artists nationwide to get late-night emails from the NEA notifying them that their funds had been terminated or withdrawn. And because the NEA pays its grants by reimbursement, this didn’t just throw a wrench in the theater’s planning—it created a deficit by stripping funds that had already been spent.
The NEA was the third federal grant-making agency in the cultural sector to claw back promised funds on the orders of the Trump administration. Its actions follow a March 14 executive order calling for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to reduce its functions and sta to the minimum allowed by law and April directives terminating or
Award: $20,000 NEA grant to support a production of Treemonisha—A Musical Reimagining Grant status: TERMINATED
Toronto and the U.S. premiere at the Harris Theater received support from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The 2025 production, a collaborative e ort in cultural preservation, linked the past, present, and future—and its exploration of Black identity in
and inconsistent communication from the administration’s hatchet-wielding functionaries. The NEH grants were rescinded via an email from Grant_Notifications@ nehemail. onmicrosoft.com, which might explain why so many notices went to spam. One grant recipient tells me that they couldn’t decide whether to trust a message about a discontinued grant, because it was filled with odd punctuation errors. NEA notices (which at least came from a government email address) provided the option to appeal the decision, but they only gave grantees a week to file—without any indication of next steps. Both rounds of notices arrived after working hours, and because the NEA sent its out on a Friday night, many organizations didn’t see them till Monday, losing two days of their appeal window.
As with many of the Trump administration’s other clawbacks, lawsuits have been flying in an attempt to stall or block these cuts. But even when these suits succeed, the resulting back-and-forths (the IMLS is a particularly messy example) only add to the sense of uncertainty and instability.
SAIC associate professor Pablo Garcia
Award: $40,000 NEH grant to support writing and research for the digital publication A User’s Guide to Drawing Machines From the Renaissance to Artificial Intelligence Grant status: PARTIALLY DISBURSED, TERMINATED
withdrawing grants made by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
The workers at these agencies have been thrown into turmoil, with many either placed on leave or announcing their resignations. The turmoil has been aggravated by confusing
visual artists. I spoke to representatives of institutions with massive operating budgets or substantial endowments and tiny groups with little to spare. Some have been around since the 19th century, long before the category “nonprofit” existed. Others were born out of and persevered through the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the people I talked to were blunt about the politics of the day. Others were careful not to use Trump’s name. But nearly everyone spoke with anger, frustration, or grief—something you don’t often hear in these sectors. Even prior to this administration, cultural workers were accustomed to never quite having enough, a condition that demands resilience and optimism.
“I worry about the resilience narrative,” says Kate Dumbleton, executive and artistic director of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, which lost nearly a third of its core artist budget to an NEA grant withdrawal. “Why do we have to be resilient all the time? It’s because the people in power have decided that communities need to be resilient, should be resilient.” To meet this moment, impacted organizations
Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance
Award: $10,000 NEA Challenge America matching grant to support the Music Under Glass concert series Grant status: RESCINDED, PROGRAM DISCONTINUED
I conducted more than 30 interviews for this story. This sample includes organizations and artists across every facet of Chicago’s cultural sector: museums, venues, curators, educators, dancers, musicians, festival producers, poets, translators, historians, filmmakers, and
will need to call upon their communities to collaborate, but Dumbleton doesn’t think their capacity to do so is “an excuse for not addressing the issue of a scarcity of resources.” She poses a key question: “Who are we asking to be resilient, and why?”
The NEA announced its first round of fiscal year 2025 grant awards on January 14—less than a week before inauguration. Out of the nearly $36.8 million in funding, $1,903,000 was awarded across 80 grants in Illinois. Seventy-four of those grants, amounting to 95 percent of the state’s NEA funds in this cycle, were awarded in Cook County. NEA funding isn’t limited to direct grants, though: Per Arts Alliance Illinois, 40 percent of the NEA’s budget goes to state arts agencies that make their own grants, including the Illinois Arts Council.
“For smaller to midsized organizations, particularly for smaller organizations, public funding is just a much larger share of their budget,” says Claire Rice, executive director
The Harris Theater lost a $20,000 NEA grant supporting a revival of the Scott Joplin opera Treemonisha KYLE FLUBACKER
of Arts Alliance Illinois. “They don’t have the deep pockets and six- and seven-figure donors, so for them, public funding is one of the most equitable forms of funding that we have.”
A grant for a one-off project can represent years of work. Multiple rescinded NEA grants awarded to Chicago-area organizations were dedicated to the process of commissioning, developing, and premiering a single piece, such as Silk Road Cultural Center’s Road Less Traveled, conceived by artistic director Jamil Khoury and written by Lyra Nalan. This new production—which connects Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” to the story of human rights crusader Tye Leung Schulze, the first Chinese American woman to vote in a U.S. presidential election and the first to receive a federal appointment—evolved from a project announced in 2023 as Silk Road’s return to live theater.
NEA-funded projects often have complex timelines, but the agency tends to award grants by fiscal year, which makes planning
relatively straightforward. An added layer of complexity can arise for NEH and IMLS grants, which are frequently awarded for periods that span years. The kind of work that goes into this multiyear planning process can be seen in an IMLS sample application that features excerpts from a National Public Housing Museum (NPHM) project proposal. IMLS awarded the museum $129,050 to expand upon the “History Lessons” exhibition marking the museum’s new permanent location at the last of the Jane Addams Homes. (Substantial NEH funding also supported the capital campaign behind the museum’s new location.) This 12-page sample application includes several pages of narrative, a schedule of completion running from September 2024 through September 2026, and a chart outlining the data the museum will collect to demonstrate its performance.
Once an organization has a grant application approved by a federal agency, the agency o ers a grant amount, and an extended administrative process follows. Grantees revise and resubmit their proposals, agencies adjust the amount, and both parties finalize a contract. Weeks or months pass between an organization or individual being notified of their grant and the actual announcement of the final amount. (This piece uses several terms
for rescinded grants. If the feds claw back a grant after it’s finalized, it’s been terminated. If they end the process before finalizing a contract, the grant has been withdrawn.) Because NEA funds and some NEH funds are provided via reimbursement, organizations may not receive the money until long after the award commitment, and to be paid they must complete extensive reporting to prove they’ve met the grant requirements.
Money to be reimbursed represents promises already made by grantee organizations. They can’t rectify their budgets by unspending their grants once the government claws back the funds. And groups involved in education have to deal with extra complications because of the way school years and fiscal years overlap. The rescinded NEA grant awarded to Art Encounter, a multifaceted arts nonprofit based in Evanston, would’ve covered just over 25 percent of the organization’s school-based residency, which serves “about 900 students every year in about 28 classrooms across six or seven public schools,” per executive director Lea Pinsky.
Community TV Network (CTVN), a small 51-year-old organization that provides youth with media production opportunities, would’ve used its $30,000 NEA grant to support stipends and salaries for year-round media arts education programs at Austin College and Career Academy. “That’s the disaster,” says executive director and founder Denise Zaccardi. “When you finally have a program in a neighborhood that needs programs, and you cut it.”
Some organizations end their fiscal years on June 30, and axed grants left them with less than two months to reconcile their budgets. And while some organizations were fortunate enough to be reimbursed before the rescissions happened, they’ve already approved budgets for the next fiscal year that depend on federal funds no longer forthcoming. Adding to the confusion, some organizations neither received their funds nor were notified they were withdrawn or terminated. Arts of Life director of development and
continued from p. 19
communications Anne Cauley says that the organization received a $25,000 NEA grant o er at the end of last year. “[When the NEA o er] shows up in portal, we revise the budget to match what they will be funding,” she says. But Arts of Life’s grant has neither been withdrawn nor confirmed as awarded.
Cauley says the organization typically would’ve completed the project and invoiced by June. “I have reached out to them several times since January to check in on the status, and each time I received a very similar
773 Dance Project
sector were key for survival and sanity. The National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), founded in March 2020, launched a campaign that succeeded in getting the Save Our Stages Act passed in December of that year. Its provisions included the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG) program, which provided relief to venue operators and promoters, including concert halls, live theater venues, movie theaters, and museums.
“Right now is the time for us to get very entrenched with the advocacy of it all,” says Chicago Independent Venue League (CIVL)
Award: $10,000 NEA Challenge America matching grant to support a production of A Bronzeville Nutcracker Grant status: RESCINDED, PROGRAM DISCONTINUED
response: ‘We are comparing our grantees to the executive orders.’” Cauley says she’s been reaching out weekly with no movement in the process. “The federal government might just ghost us.”
The past five years had already been a complicated time for the arts and culture sector, even before Trump’s second inauguration. “The end of COVID relief dollars is, in my view, the biggest strain on our sector in the moment, regardless of this administration and regardless of these cuts,” says Claire Rice. The American Rescue Plan passed during the Biden administration in 2021 included $470 million in relief to the arts and culture sector, with provisions that ensured that federal agencies as well as state and regional organizations were substantially supported. Many organizations I interviewed for this piece underlined the importance of this infusion of government money.
“It is a weirdly idealistic thing for the federal government to do,” says Rebecca Hall, director of communications and operations at Chicago Film Archives. “It sort of assumes that we live in a society instead of every person for themselves, every organization for themselves.” For an all-too-brief moment, it looked like the crisis of the pandemic had revived the notion of government support for a cultural commons. Erica Bittner, founder and president of Artistic Fundraising Group, says her firm connected many organizations with aid during the worst of the pandemic, much of it from the federal government—what separates today from those years is that the feds aren’t addressing the crisis but causing it. At the height of the COVID pandemic, solidarity and communication across the culture
support for the arts and social services, followed by a conservative backlash to undo these investments.
Art critic Ben Davis describes “a culture whose forms and functions are reshaped by cataclysmic events” in the introduction of his 2022 book, Art in the After-Culture: Capitalist Crisis and Cultural Strategy. In 1935, in response to the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched Federal Project Number One under the Works Progress Administration (WPA), creating national programs to support art, music, theater, and
Elastic Arts Foundation
Award: $20,000 NEA grant to support the tenth Afrofuturist Weekend Grant status: RESCINDED
cochair Jimalita Tillman. Beginning in June, some SVOG recipients began receiving rescission notices from the Small Business Administration (SBA) that gave them 30 days to repay their grants or challenge the decision. NIVA and CIVL have attempted to reassure their members that these clawback attempts are in line with eligibility guidelines and criteria in place since 2021. A July 2024 report from SBA’s Office of the Inspector General recommended expediting the review and termination process for recipients “identified as high-risk of potential ineligibility,” aiming to finish by September 30, 2024.
These rescission notices have their roots in Biden-era actions, but it’s di cult to trust
Cedille Records
Award: $25,000 NEA grant to support a recording project as part of America250 Grant status: UNCERTAIN
the Trump administration not to make things worse. Tillman advises that everyone stay connected and informed on what’s happening in both legislation and advocacy “before it gets to crisis-crisis mode.” A number of moving parts are in play, she says, including funding cuts, changes to nonprofit tax code, and the e ects of the alleged One Big Beautiful Bill. “It’s di cult to do as a lone wolf,” she says.
The severity of attacks on the arts under Trump may be unprecedented, but culture workers have come to expect a cycle of boom-and-bust: a familiar waltz where a period of national crisis provokes a substantial but temporary surge of federal
Rendezvous Arts
Award: $10,000 NEA Challenge America matching grant to support a chamber music series in Dixon, Illinois Grant status: RESCINDED, PROGRAM DISCONTINUED
writing as well as founding the Historical Records Survey. WPA director Harry Hopkins famously spoke to the plight of unemployed artists: “Hell! They’ve got to eat just like other people.”
The NEA and NEH were established in 1965 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, during the civil rights era and the implementation of Johnson’s Great Society programs. Notable in this era is the government’s increasing use of nonprofits as facilitators.
“The nonprofit industry is such an important part of our social safety net because our government doesn’t provide so many things that it should,” says Devon VanHoutenMaldonado, executive director of SkyArt. For
Hyde Park Jazz Festival
Award: $30,000 NEA grant to support the festival, including artist fees Grant status: WITHDRAWN
the fact that nonprofits are tools of the state, positioned to piece together services that the government should be providing. People who might otherwise dissent against a government that neglects its responsibilities—health care, labor protections, education, infrastructure, solutions to housing insecurity and poverty— are instead turned into service providers who rely on the government for the tax- exempt status and legitimacy that allows them to fundraise. And that money frequently has strings attached, whether it comes from government agencies, philanthropic entities, or corporations. This means nonprofits can end up prioritizing the funders who keep the lights on over the people who benefit from their services.
The idea of a “nonprofit industrial complex” may sound like a metaphor, but the Trump administration seems hell-bent on making it bluntly literal. The Revolution Will Not Be Funded warned of the danger of getting in bed with the feds precisely because they can do what they’re trying to do right now. The slashing of federal budgets is explicitly intended to force nonprofits to conform to the administration’s ideology if they don’t want to risk losing the funds they need to survive. Cultural organizations may even be squeezed by cuts or ideological targeting affecting agencies outside the culture sector.
The EPA just declined a six-figure grant proposal from the Garfield Park Conservatory
Brookfield Zoo Chicago
Award: $245,912 IMLS grant to build the capacity of K-12 educators
Grant status: RESCINDED, LATER REINSTATED
17 years, SkyArt had reliably received funding from the NEA, including a $40,000 grant awarded for this year. But then the 2025 grant was withdrawn. “There is a problem with the fact that this social safety net that has been created by nonprofits will never have enough resources to serve all the people that we need to serve,” he says. “And we have to be honest with ourselves about why that is and the fact that it’s designed that way on purpose.”
In the 2007 essay collection The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, academics and activists critique the historical role and structure of nonprofits. The collective argument is that good intentions and earnest efforts don’t change
Alliance to train community gardeners and aspiring young horticulturists on the west side. Arts of Life, which provides programming for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, receives nearly 50 percent of its income through Medicaid, which is under assault by the Republican murder budget. In 2023, SkyArt received $250,000 from the Illinois Department of Human Services for violence prevention, but they’re no longer eligible for such funds. Fearmongering about crime has also helped shift resources away from community programming and toward policing, despite evidence that the arts improve outcomes for at-risk youth.
Conditions of scarcity in the culture sector
can pit “the arts” and “the public” against each other, in that arts organizations may feel pressure to pander to the largest possible audience in order to compete for funding. An increasing emphasis on accessibility can make it di cult to preserve the integrity and history of art that knows it isn’t for everyone.
That the arts and culture sector could be so easily thrown into existential chaos probably says less about investment under Biden or
the attacks under Trump and more about the fundamental asymmetry of the relationship between nonprofits and the state. It’s also a reminder that the state has always put capitalistic interests ahead of the public good—the main difference from administration to administration is a matter of degree, not of kind.
“Should this regime fall flat and it goes away, and we spend a couple years in a reconstruction period, I worry that the kind of hypercapitalist mentality will just persist,” says School of the Art Institute associate professor Pablo Garcia. “The next person in charge on the other side of the aisle, I don’t know if a priority [for them] would be ‘let’s reinvest.’”
Garcia took a sabbatical this year to work on a digital publication covering what he describes as “the history of drawing technologies,” expecting his NEH grant to supplement the temporary loss of salary. The agency’s disbursement schedule meant that Garcia received $30,000 of his $40,000 NEH grant before
it was terminated, but his project still ended up stalled just as he was going to hire animators, Web developers, and other assistants. Thankfully, some alternative funders are stepping up and filling a few gaps. At the end of April, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation announced a “$15 million emergency funding commitment to the Federation of State Humanities Councils.” In early July, the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation announced a $600,000 NEA Relief Fund available to current grantee partners. And organizations note that their established audiences have really come through with stopgap donations.
Despite these demonstrations of support and enthusiasm, circumstances in the federal government aren’t likely to improve anytime soon. Artists and organizations may look to state and city agencies to step up, but the loss of federal money will surely have ripple e ects on the Illinois Arts Council and Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE). And DCASE in particular already faces tension with the local arts community.
could reapply for CityArts grants immediately after completing a funding cycle. But this year, DCASE announced that the consecutive funding restriction would return beginning in fiscal year 2026, requiring grantees to take a year o .
“Chicago does a fantastic job of supporting the arts overall, but this simultaneous tumult at the city and federal levels is a ecting our future planning and other organizations’ future planning,” says David Skidmore, ensemble member and executive director of Third Coast Percussion. “While we know that Chicago’s philanthropic community is strong and passionate, any disruption in one part of the funding ecosystem puts undue strain on another part.”
many of whose names have been lost to time.
“The place is about Jane Addams, but it’s really Hull House that made Jane Addams,” she says. “It’s the tens of thousands of people who came through the doors of Hull House who created Jane Addams. Those are the histories we’d like to tell.”
She recites the final lines of the novel Middlemarch, written by Mary Ann Evans under the pen name George Eliot, as a reminder of how Addams herself thought about history: “For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
The slashing of federal budgets is explicitly intended to force nonprofits to conform to the administration’s ideology if they don’t want to risk losing the funds they need to survive.
Since the appointment of commissioner Clinée Hedspeth in early 2024, the department has suffered from high turnover and allegations that Hedspeth has bullied and mistreated staff. At the February 25 meeting of DCASE’s Cultural Advisory Council—less than three weeks after the NEA announced the discontinuation of the Challenge America program, a key portal to federal funding for small organizations from underserved communities—Hedspeth attended only briefly via video. Her sta ers were left to deal with the council’s questions and concerns around the potential loss of federal funds. (DCASE did not respond to a request for comment.)
A coalition calling itself Artists for Chicago sent a DCASE letter of concern to Mayor Brandon Johnson in April, blaming the department for late grant payments, broken relationships with long-standing grantees, and a lack of communication around grant administration. Several organizations I interviewed for this story noted a regressive change in grant eligibility for the CityArts program. In 2022, DCASE had expanded CityArts to provide two-year support and removed its restriction on consecutive funding, so that organizations
“At the end of the day, it’s not really about our bottom line,” says Illinois Humanities executive director Gabrielle Lyon. “We are really trying to remind people we need more public spaces. We need more ways to get together.” Illinois Humanities lost $2 million in NEH funds—a third of its annual budget. This puts more than operating funds and grants at risk: It also threatens the organization’s public programs, which support free events at libraries, continuing education for adults, and initiatives that explore alternatives to mass incarceration.
In mid-June, the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum presented a one-week workshop to encourage University of Illinois Chicago faculty to use the museum’s exhibits and archives to bring the humanities into the curriculum of any department. This workshop was the initial phase of a three-year project that would have been supported by a terminated NEH grant of nearly $150,000, but it was important to museum director Liesl Olson to go through with it anyway. Faculty learned about “the histories that literally are beneath the feet of UIC students, that help people understand where they are and why they’re here.”
The systems supporting arts and culture haven’t worked for a long time, and this has taught artists and the public that cares about them to come together, to refuse to stand down, and to imagine new ways forward. Olson talked about the artists and immigrants who’ve passed through Hull House since 1889,
The Trump administration has routinely cited DEI and “waste, fraud, and abuse” as key targets of its aggressive actions targeting arts funding. This is a white supremacist project that has declared its aim to disappear marginalized people of all kinds from public life, and its tactics so far have relied on the invisibility of much of the cultural labor it is destroying. The jobs lost to these cuts won’t just include people you might see onstage: We’re at risk of losing teaching artists, preservation workers, small businesses who vend at festivals, costume designers, museum curators and researchers, people who build sets or rent out equipment, and so many more it’s di cult to count. And when they’re gone, will we know who to blame and why?
The 30-plus interviews I conducted weren’t nearly enough for me to grasp the magnitude of what we’ve lost or predict if we’ll ever get it back. This piece only scratches the surface when it comes to the history of the artists, academics, and administrators I’ve spoken to, the lives they’ve touched, and the diverse experiences and stories they honor with their labor. Tyler Thompson, an executive director of 773 Dance Project, doesn’t think communities will immediately realize the impact of the cuts, but she knows that coming together will only get more important. “Our involvement with each other is mandatory,” she says. v
m letters@chicagoreader.com
Recommended and notable shows with critics’ insights for the week of July 17
b ALL AGES F
THE PHRASE “JOY IS AN ACT OF RESISTANCE” (usually attributed to poet Toi Derricotte) gets thrown around a lot these days, and not without reason—but for Brazilian experimental rock band Novos Baianos, it was a way of life. They made eight studio albums in the 1970s, while their country was ruled by a military dictatorship, revolutionizing Brazilian music and making an impact that’s still felt today. The band formed in 1969 in Salvador (capital of the northeast state of Bahia), a countercultural hotbed that incubated the tropicália movement. They caught a buzz with their 1970 debut album, É Ferro na Boneca, and moved to Rio de Janeiro, but after authorities targeted members for their long hair and hippie lifestyle, they relocated with their families to a large communal farm on the west side of the city. Meanwhile, the band’s lyricist, the late Luiz Galvão, had reached out to bossa nova pioneer João Gilberto, a fellow Bahian he’d known for years, seeking advice. Gilberto’s first
visit didn’t start auspiciously—the band thought the guy at their door was a cop—but he soon became a close friend and mentor. He was fascinated and impressed by Novos Baianos, and he encouraged them to look deeper into traditional Brazilian styles (including samba, choro, and frevo), which they integrated into their heady fusion of psychedelic rock, tropicália, and música popular brasileira (MPB). That blend fueled the band’s iconic second LP, 1972’s Acabou Chorare, which in 2007 Rolling Stone Brasil named the greatest Brazilian album of all time.
Novos Baianos wrote and refined the album over a two-year period, when they weren’t busy raising kids, playing soccer, or otherwise enjoying their communal life. They recorded it at their home, sometimes using handmade instruments and effects (including a distortion pedal that cannibalized the vacuum tubes from their TV). Acabou Chorare feels fresh
Mon 7/21,
and light, despite its 53 years, because the band set out to stand apart from the angry and melancholy music that had become common place during the dictatorship. The title Acabou Chorare is baby talk that means “no more crying”—Gilberto’s young daughter, Bebel Gilberto, used to say it to reassure him when she’d bumped into something or taken a fall. Combining all the styles on this album was no simple task, but Novos Baianos made it seem easy. Guitarist Pepeu Gomes sounds fluid and relaxed, even at his most bustling or bombastic, and just seconds into opener “Brasil Pandeiro,” sprightly acoustic guitar and the energetic vocals of Baby Consuelo, Paulinho Boca de Cantor, and Moraes Moreira warm you like the rays of the rising sun. That song (written by Assis Valente and first released in 1941) calls for the world to dance samba, and Novos Baianos celebrate Brazilian culture throughout the record. They also take an open-minded look at bigger-picture questions: When Boca de Cantor ponders the mysteries of the cosmos on “Mistério do Planeta,” it’s with an unabashed sense of wonder, and the song expands as his mind does, growing from just vocals and twinkling guitar to a Jupiter-size rock ’n’ roll ending.
Acabou Chorare became immensely popular upon its release, and Novos Baianos continued to put out new records (notably 1973’s Novos Baianos F.C., named after their informal soccer team) for the rest of the decade. They parted ways in 1979, with members going on to pursue solo careers and occasionally come together for reunions. Somehow they’ve never toured the United States, though—not until this summer. If recent concert footage is any indication, Novos Baianos’ first-ever Chicago appearance should be one for the history books. Come immerse yourself in the positive energy and learn from the masters of serving up defiance with a smile.
—JAMIE LUDWIG
West Fest day one See also Sat 7/19 and Sun 7/20. Les Savy Fav, Edging, and Cel Ray play the West Stage; Bianca Oblivion, Phantom 45, Intel, and others play the East Stage. Complete schedule at westtownchamber.org/west-festchicago. 5–10 PM, Chicago Avenue between Wood and Damen, $10 suggested donation. b
Since 2004, West Town has been home to West Fest, a fantastically curated summer festival that mixes local and touring musical talent, an assortment of homegrown vendors, craft beer, and fun activities for the whole family. With three days of nonstop entertainment, including two stages of live music, this year’s West Fest is one of the summer’s most highly anticipated bashes. Empty Bottle Presents books the West Stage (Damen and Chicago), the Bass by the Pound DJs book the East Stage (Wood and Chicago), and together they’ve once again assembled a thoughtful, eclectic bill that showcases emerging and established acts. In fact, I’d recommend clearing your schedule so you can come out all three days. Among the highlights
ensemble Radio Outernational (Sunday at 3 on the West Stage), alt-soul singer Sparklmami (Sunday at 4:15 on the West Stage), and posthardcore group Ira Glass (Saturday at 3 on the West Stage). On Sunday evening, groundbreaking Chicago DJ and producer Derrick Carter will close out the East Stage at 8 with an epic dance party, and North Carolina rapper Mavi will headline the West Stage at 8:45 with his soulful, existential hip-hop. Put on comfortable walking shoes, grab your sunscreen, and arrive early. Big, fun crowds are the norm at West Fest, and space fills up quickly—but even when it’s a tight squeeze, this neighborhood gathering is totally worth it. —CRISTALLE BOWEN
Lefty Parker Adelaide and Morgan Powers open. 8 PM, Color Club, 4146 N. Elston, $15. 18+
Le y Parker makes quiet, intimate folk music that can melt your heart as easily as break it. The singersongwriter is a New York native and lives there now, but he’s spent most of his life in Texas, where he learned to love the slow, plaintive country of Townes Van Zandt and his ilk. Parker began playing around Austin in 2018, developing a dedicated following. His recording career is only a few years old—he dropped his first full-length, Love on the Guadalupe , in 2019—but last year KVRX, the studentrun radio station of the University of Texas at Austin, was already hailing him as a “folk legend.” On Parker’s third studio record, 2024’s 13 , he tells stories with the sound of his voice as much as with his words. “Illusions” confronts disenchantment and loss, and as Parker moves forward through despair, the song’s straightforward, earnest country- folk shifts moods. You can almost see his eyes well up as his measured singing gives way to anguished croons (he can sound an awful lot like Thom Yorke), and his fluttering guitar builds in intensity with each passing second. Acid-folk pioneer Dave Bixby was so moved by Parker’s music that he interviewed him last year for his online magazine Harbinger, describing him as “a troubadour and a poet.”
are Brooklyn art-punks Les Savy Fav, who headline the West Stage at 8:45 on Friday night. In 2024, the five-piece put out Oui, LSF, their first album in 14 years, and hearing the material live should be a sweet treat.
On Saturday afternoon at 4:15, south-side trio Blood Club will bring deliciously tragic postpunk to the West Stage—and make sure you stay till 7:15 for uncompromising New Orleans dance punks Special Interest, one of my personal favorite punk bands. But those sets just scratch the surface of a great weekend of music that also includes many more local artists, including psychedelic Ethio-funk
Parker has spent much of the past couple years on the road, and he’s become a familiar face in Chicago. In spring 2023, he released Live in Chicago, Illinois, which captures a Humboldt Park house show from his first U.S. tour. (Its cover nods to Van Zandt’s 1977 album Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas .) Last June, Parker played a month of Thursdays at Color Club, where he shared bills with local friends, including Andrew Sa, Fran, and Friko. He maintains a strong connection with the venue, which he describes as his “home club in Chicago,” and he tries to play there a couple times each year. At this Color Club date, he’ll play new tunes and material from 13 , sharing the stage with what he’ll only call “special guests”—so come prepared for happy surprises and sad songs. —JAMIE LUDWIG
continued from p. 23
West Fest day two See Fri 7/18. Narrow Head, Special Interest, She’s Green, and others play the West Stage; Hiroko Yamamura Hyperactive, Frankie Vega, and others play the East Stage. Complete schedule at westtownchamber.org/west-fest-chicago.
Noon–10 PM, Chicago Avenue between Wood and Damen, $10 suggested donation. b
West Fest day three See Fri 7/18. Mavi, Priyanka, Amantes del Futuro, Sparklmami, and others play the West Stage; Derrick Carter, DJ Heather, Julius the Mad Thinker, and others play the East Stage. Complete schedule at westtownchamber.org/west-fest-chicago. Noon–10 PM (music begins at 1 PM), Chicago Avenue between Wood and Damen, $10 suggested donation. b
Tom Henry Mod Lang, Alga, and Joe Glass open. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 21+. F
Los Angeles–based singer-songwriter Tom Henry belongs to the ever-expanding constellation of young indie rockers with a deep affection for the underground sounds of yore and at least one foot in the Chicago scene. Henry was born in Chicago and grew up here, and he’s close friends with Kai Slater, a pillar of the Hallogallo crew who fronts postpunk trio Lifeguard and records power pop as Sharp Pins. Slater also produced and plays on Henry’s delightful debut album, Songs to Sing and Dance To! (Royal Oakie). Henry arranges his buoyant, multi tracked vocal melodies and laid-back flower-power guitar riffs into exultant, quasi-symphonic tunes that plant big wet kisses on the power pop, psychedelia, garage rock, and folk of the 60s and 70s. These songs are economical in length, but in the brief time they occupy your stereo, they brim over with Henry’s youthful vigor and enthusiastic conviction that guitar-based pop is the greatest music in the world. One listen to the sentimental, bittersweet “But I Loved Her” and you’ll be a believer too. —LEOR GALIL
Novos Baianos See Pick of the Week on page 22. Joe Bataan and DJ Rudy de Anda open. 6:30 PM, Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph. F b
Whirr Nothing and Sleepwalk open. 8 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, sold out. 18+
Ten years ago, Modesto shoegaze band Whirr vanished from public life a er someone with access to their Twitter account posted a rash of transphobic insults directed at G.L.O.S.S., an Olympia hardcore band with trans members. Whirr had already developed a reputation for trolling (if not flat-out abusing) fans and critics alike on social media, and this outburst essentially got the group blacklisted from the wider worlds of punk and indie. Two labels that had worked with Whirr, Run for Cover and Graveface, announced that they were severing ties, and the band went silent for years. In 2024, Whirr guitarist Nick Bassett, the band’s de facto spokesperson, gave a rare interview to Eli Enis for his Chasing Sundays newsletter. Bassett stood by his initial claim that a friend had written and posted the transphobic messages and insisted that he’d never supported them. But he acknowledged that the responsibility for the messages fell squarely in his lap. His proclivity for shit-talking online had created
a permission structure where something was bound to go off the rails. “I knew there was a line I would never cross,” Bassett said, “but maybe I would’ve said something else that would’ve been offensive. That shit would’ve probably happened either way in some regard. I was on that warpath, we were gonna hit that level.” Bassett expressed remorse at playing any part in spreading transphobia.
Whirr’s influence has grown in the ensuing decade. Among the new class of shoegaze artists powering the continuing resurgence of the genre, many cite Whirr as a foundational band—and some of them are young enough not to know that Whirr got run out of town. Whirr resurfaced in 2019 with the album Feels Like You , released via their own label, Free Whirl, without any promotion or press. They followed that up this past Christmas with Raw Blue , a sprawling, gauzy shoegaze album whose huge 90s-style sound is scuffed up by the band’s aggressive personality: the heavy, laid-back drum-
Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/musicreviews
ming gets prickly in some of the big climaxes, and the drowsy, murmuring vocals occasionally erupt into coarse screams. Whirr returned to the stage in April and May for the second annual Slide Away, a shoegaze festival curated by Nothing bandleader Dominic Palermo, who’s advocated for Bassett. (Bassett also played bass in Nothing for a spell.) This year, Slide Away had shows in New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, and Whirr headlined all three. In a May interview for Enis’s newsletter, Palermo spoke at length about how Bassett and his band have put money into LGBTQ+ causes—last year, when Whirr and Nothing reissued their 2014 split EP, they donated the test pressings to the Trevor Project. (Vinyl copies of Feels Like You sell for hundreds of dollars on Discogs, so this surely helped the Trevor Project raise quite a bit of money.) A portion of tonight’s ticket sales benefit Center on Halsted, though the show has already sold out. —LEOR GALIL v
A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene
UNDERGROUND CHICAGO pop experimentalist Cocojoey (aka Joey Meland ) recently wrapped a two-week tour supporting their new album, Stars , and on Saturday, July 19, they play their first local show since returning home. An irreverent, unpredictable blur of frothy City Pop euphoria, bleak blackmetal pummeling, and digitally processed freak-outs, Stars charmed Reader music editor Philip Montoro when it came out last month. Meland’s approach, he wrote, sounds “as though they built a robot brain that could generate show tunes and then turned all its knobs up to 11.”
Meland began developing their wild, shape-shi ing sound while making their 2022 solo debut, Cocojoey’s World . “I was letting my intuition take over completely and writing from the heart—and primarily writing to make myself laugh, ’cause I was feeling really bad,” Meland says. “That was the first time I figured out what my voice was, or could be. Maybe there’s another period of reinvention that lies ahead, but I think it’s cool because it sort of encapsulates all of the musical experiences that I’ve had in my life up until that point.”
Meland says they started playing piano at age four. “My older brother was taking piano lessons, and I wanted to do everything he was doing,” they say. “Since then, I have really only known making music as the primary thing that I wanted to do with my life.” They played in metal bands in grade school and studied composition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “I graduated, and the track is to keep going all the way through your doctorate and become a composition professor,” Meland says. “I realized I wasn’t interested in doing that—or at least interested in trying to do that right now—so I decided to take a gap year. That’s become a gap decade.” A er finishing undergrad, Meland played in a variety of bands whose disparate styles informed their own. Cocojoey’s World was big for Meland, creatively and personally. “The people that I’ve met through releasing Cocojoey’s World have changed my life so much for the better,” they
say. Meland invited several of those folks to open Cocojoey’s Bookclub record-release show last month, including Fire-Toolz , Blind Equation, Trust Fund Ozu, and Maxwell Allison, aka Mukqs. Allison and Doug Kaplan run the Chicago label Hausu Mountain , which released Stars on cassette and CD.
Anne Hellen Wells and Oux will open Meland’s Saturday show at Cole’s Bar. Meland will perform solo with a wireless keyboard strapped to their chest. “I love to run around and jump into the audience and make it a real intimate experience that way,” they say. “My goal is to crowd-surf and play a keyboard solo at the same time—which hasn’t happened yet.”
The show kicks off at 10 PM, and advance tickets cost $14.45.
LAST FRIDAY, PHILADELPHIA indie
Three Dollar Pistol Music released a collaborative album called Comemos by Chicago rapper-singer Rich Jones and New Jersey producer Good Food . The album’s sly,
dren’s book, Deangelo and the Dandelion , and on Thursday, July 17, he’ll host Dandelions: Out West—Root Work in the field house at Austin Town Hall Park . The free, all- ages event, which runs 4–7 PM, inaugurates the field house as a physical home for Kinsey’s nascent hip-hop library (which he’s calling the Rapbrary ) and showcases several of his other projects. He’ll perform Dandelions, read Deangelo and the Dandelion , and screen an excerpt from a documentary he’s working on called Reading Came First
suave instrumentals complement Jones’s easygoing charm and casual performances— on “Flotation,” he flits between smooth singing and speedy verses that skip across tightly strummed guitars. The same day Jones and Good Food dropped Comemos , they hit the road together, and they’ll wrap up their brief midwestern tour with a show at the California Clipper on Thursday, July 17. Qari, 18andCounting, Asha Omega, AMS., and Spliffany Evans open; tickets cost $10, and the music starts at 8 PM.
IN APRIL, CHICAGO RAPBRARIAN Roy Kinsey dropped the album Dandelions: Gods Don’t Cry, and he’s continued to build on that momentum. In May, he launched a GoFundMe to support the publication of his first chil-
SINCE SUMMER 2022 , Chicago musician Ben Kinsinger (front man of Lawrence Tome) has presented informal concerts atop a concrete bridge pile in the Chicago River just south of Belmont. Kinsinger’s Secret River shows haven’t been much of a secret since Gavin Michaelson wrote a great Block Club piece about them in 2023, and they’ve attracted a growing number of influencers. To support previous years’ programming, Kinsinger has received grant money from the city and the local chapter of the Awesome Foundation , and this year he’s received an additional $5,000 from the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events . He’ll put that funding to use on Saturday, July 19, when his Secret River Parade presents a day of bands floating downstream along the Chicago River’s North Branch to play each of three stages in turn. The parade runs from noon to sunset, and precise location details are available on Lawrence Tome’s Instagram. The three river stages are near Addison, near Belmont, and on the Wild Mile, which will host the finale.
IF YOU’VE BEEN TRYING to see Eric Richter’s hard-to-find 2018 documentary, 2350 Last Call: The Neo Story, you’re in luck. It just got a Blu-ray release, and you can pick up a copy at this year’s annual Neo reunion, held at Metro on Saturday, July 19. As usual, reunion organizer and original Neo DJ Suzanne Shelton has assembled a top- tier lineup of folks who DJed at the club to keep the party going; Jeff Moyer, Glenn Russell, Rob Kokot, Scary Lady Sarah , and Shelton herself will spin records. Advance tickets are $27.24, and the fun begins at 8 PM. —LEOR GALIL
Got a tip? Email your Chicago music news to gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.
Is monogamy ethically wrong if one partner would prefer a different arrangement?
By DAN SAVAGE
Q: I’m a 44-year-old woman with a history of childhood sexual trauma. I enjoy sex if I’m with a partner I feel very connected to emotionally, but I’ve never had an orgasm.
Because of this, I tend to rely on pleasing my partner during sex rather than my own arousal. It works OK for me at this point while I try to heal, which is taking forever. (I am in therapy.) I’ve been married for about 12 years. My husband has a high sex drive and has had a hard time with the ways trauma can lower my interest in sex. He has worked hard to try and find ways we can be intimate that don’t involve penetrative sex (including his wearing a cage as a turn-on for him, sharing fantasies, etc.), but his needs have not been met recently, as the trauma symptoms have been on top of me.
Recently, we had a major misunderstanding. I thought I was giving him the green light to go to strip clubs and burlesque shows to get his sexual needs met. He thought I was giving him the green light to have an open relationship. We had a huge struggle about this.
partner would prefer a different arrangement? He is right that I am setting the terms of the relationship, and he has to comply to stay with me, which feels unilateral to him.
How do we navigate this in a way that is fair to both partners?
—VERY CONFUSED RECLUSE
a : If your husband walked away from that conversation thinking he had permission to fuck other people, and you walked away thinking you’d only given him
the terms . . . even though that’s what you’re doing, VCR, and need to do for your mental health.
Ultimately, your question— whether monogamy is ethically wrong if one partner wants something else—isn’t one many people even bother to ask. Monogamy is presumed to be the morally superior choice, even in cases where one person is imposing it on the other. We talk a lot about “ethical nonmonogamy,” and monogamy is presumed to be ethical. But there are lots of people who are monogamous not because it’s what they want, VCR, but because their partner requires or demands it. If monogamy is the price of admission your husband is willing to pay to be with you—if being MUD (monogamous under duress) is worth it—you should take his “yes” for an answer and let him pay that price. But you can’t ask him to pretend it doesn’t cost him anything.
having sex with other women makes you feel threatened (what if he caught feelings for someone else?) and insecure, but knowing your husband is feeling resentful and sexually unfulfilled creates its own kind of emotional pressure. You’re doing the work, you’re in therapy, you’re working toward healing—to your credit—and you’re entitled to your boundaries. But the longer your current sexual drought lasts, the more pressure you’re both going to find yourselves under. Again, for now, I think you should take your husband’s “yes” for an answer. But you have to own that this is something he’s doing—or not doing—for you, VCR, because he wants to prioritize your mental health and your marriage. The least you can do is not ask him to pretend it’s fair. It’s not, and it doesn’t have to be, and very few things in life are.
P.S. You wrote, “I can’t remain in the marriage if he wants to sleep with other people.” People in monogamous relationships are attracted to other people all the time—they still wanna, but they’ve promised their partners that they won’t.
For now, he has decided to accept my decision that I cannot remain in the marriage if he wants to sleep with other people. It does not feel emotionally safe to me to open the marriage to others. However, I can see that he was much happier when he thought he had the option to pursue others. What does any of this mean? Is monogamy ethically wrong if one
the green light to go to strip clubs or burlesque shows, then that conversation wasn’t explicit enough. I suspect you both had your reasons for keeping things vague. Your husband may have avoided pushing for clarity because he didn’t want to hear “no,” and you may have hesitated to be clear because you’re not comfortable unilaterally setting
If the three of us were, say, having drinks in a strip club, I’d want to ask your husband whether his sexual needs can be met with lap dances. And I would ask if you weren’t also a little happier during that brief window when he was a little happier . . . back when he believed he had permission to fuck other people. I understand why the idea of your husband
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P.P.S. While lap dances might meet some men’s needs (or come close), no one of any gender is getting their sexual needs met at modern burlesque shows. Contemporary burlesque is about celebrating, empowering, and affirming the performers, not getting audience members off. Which is great! I’m all for celebrating, empowering, and affirming performers of all stripes, especially male ballet dancers. But a quick look at the audience at a burlesque show—which is always more than half hooting, hollering women—demonstrates that the show isn’t about the needs of lonely, horny men. v
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AEM Architect (Corporate Web), AbbVie Inc., North Chicago, IL. Hybrid (onsite 3 days a week/2 days WFH). Advise code, security & user provisioning process & procedures to ensure longevity of platform. Design & oversight of configuration of all technologies including AEM, servers, CDN, WAF. Enforce & be the spokesperson of security & safe use of the teams technologies. Must have a BS in computer science or related field & 6 years of full-stack experience in AEM as an SME. Of experience required, must have 6 years: (i) leading SDLC processes; (ii) developing code with HTML5, CSS, JQuery, Angular, Bootstrap, Node, React, JSP, JSTL, AJAX, XML JSEE, JEE, Hibernate, SpringBoot, OSGI, SQL, JSON, REST, SOAP, AEM Query applied to AEM; (iii) troubleshooting issues; (iv) configuring & administering CDN with Akamai or Cloudfront; (v) configuring & administering automation tool with Git, MVN, Adobe Cloud Manager & Azure or Jenkins; (vi) configuring & administering Cloud servers with AWS or GCP; (vii) leading projects with at least 1 of: agile methodologies: scrum & Kanban frameworks using Jira & Service Now; (viii) presenting training, troubleshooting summaries, & periodic updates orally & in writing to peers, business leaders, & senior management; & (ix) integrating web ecosystem tools using Adobe or Google analytics, Coveo & DTM. Of experience required, must have 2 years synthesizing business needs to develop a roadmap, using existing technologies to define novel solutions. Must have Adobe developer certificate. Work experience may be gained concurrently. Salary Range: $163,483.00 - $202,500.00 per year. Apply online at https:// careers.abbvie.com/en or send resume to Job. opportunity.abbvie@ abbvie.com. Refer to Req ID: REF41630R.
Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago seeks Associate Director for Chicago, IL to oversee department residency, fellowship, medical student & continuing medical education activities, incl. Educational & compliance coordination between attending physicians, residents, & institutional & regulatory admin offices.
Bachelor’s in Public Health/Health Admin or related field + 5yrs exp req’d. Req’d: 5yrs w/ each: multidisciplinary team mgmt; exp must incl: academic healthcare setting: hiring firing demotion, training mentorship, performance eval & staff dev; Mgmt. of operations, admin, & financials associated w/ academic medical center; onboarding of physicians & participating in the annual recruitment process for trainees; mgmt of revenue, expenses, external funds incl. grants & philanthropy, & the mgmt of external contracts; implement new policies & procedures relevant to accreditation, maintain accreditation surveys; lead large-scale projects, partner w/ stakeholders, & provide consultative feedback on recruitment branding; supervising graduate medical edu programs & coordinating tuition scholarship programs. Duties are onsite 3-4 days/ wk. $129,501/yr-$164,736/ yr. Apply online: https:// careers.luriechildren. org REF: JR2025-2050
BTS MDM Architect, AbbVie Inc., North Chicago, IL. Collaborate with stakeholders for MDM, define data quality requirements, & design reliable and scalable MDM solutions for International Commercial projects. Define new data entity requirements & cooperate with business teams in Data Governance. Evaluate & recommend MDM architecture, continuously improve solutions, & resolve project hurdles. Manage MDM roll outs, partner with Data & Analytics teams, & ensure high data quality. Utilize knowledge of pharmaceutical industry & master data sources. Execute projects on time, inspect vendor deliverables for quality assurance. Must possess a Bachelor’s degree or foreign academic equivalent in Computer Science, Electronics Engineering, or a highly related field of study & 5 years designing data management modeling. Of experience required, must have 5 years in: (i) project management & delivery; (ii) modeling with at least 1 of the following Veeva Network MDM, Reltio MDM, &/or Informatica MDM; & (iii) working with each of the following master data entities: customer, product,
geographical, & affiliations data & other data sets.
Work experience can be obtained concurrently.
100% remote position.
Salary Range: $163,570.35 - $202,500.00 per year
Apply online at https:// careers.abbvie.com/en or send resume to Job. opportunity.abbvie@ abbvie.com. Refer to Req ID: REF41629X.
Construction Supervisor: Sup, coord activities of constr workers. Inspect work progress, eqpt, construction sites. Read specs, blueprints. Assign work. Conceptual dvlpt of constr project, oversee org, sched, budgeting, impl. 2 yrs exp in managerial position related to any constr trade. MK Construction & Builders, Inc. 2000 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago IL 60647
Elevance Health, Inc. has the below positions available in Chicago, IL. - Sr. Manager of Engineering. Assist w budget development & deployment. BS: CS, Buss Admin, MIS, or rel. 5 yrs rel exp. Other exp reqd. Pay: $196,123 - $197,123/ yr. Job Ref: JR156551 - Bus Info Developer Cons Sr. Dev & support complex Data Warehouse-related apps. BS: CS. 6 yrs IT or rel exp. Other exp reqd. Pay: $157,967.57 - $158,967.57/yr. Job Ref: JR156554 Apply: https://careers. elevancehealth.com/
Health Care Service Corporation seeks Senior Business Analyst (Chicago, IL) to lead the development of functional & non-functional business req’s. REQS: Bach + 4 yrs exp. 100% telecommuting permitted. Pay: $116,334 - $149,300/yr. Benefits: https://careers.hcsc. com/totalrewards. Email resume to hrciapp@bcbsil. com,ref R0042866
Health Care Service Corporation seeks Sr Analytics Consultant (Chicago, IL) to construct healthcare analytics sltns, recs & strategic/tactical plans based on pharmacy biz data & mkt knwldg. REQS: Bach + 5 yrs exp or Master + 2 yrs exp. Flex role (3 days in office / 2 days remote). Pay: $138,715 - $149,300/yr. Benefits: https://careers. hcsc.com/totalrewards. Email resume to hrciapp@bcbsil. com, ref R0043393
Kraft Food Group Brands LLC seeks Scientist - R&D to work in Glenview, IL and be responsible for leading product development across the Philadelphia cream cheese category. Degree & commensurate exp. req’d. For pay scale & benefits and to apply online search keyword R-94035 at careers. kraftheinz.com Kraft Foods Group
Brands LLC seeks Global Manager, FSQ Regulatory Affairs, Export in Glenview, IL to work within the export regulatory team & be responsible for enabling & reviewing nutritional and regulatory compliance for Kraft Heinz products globally. Degree & commensurate exp. req’d. For pay scale & benefits and to apply online search keyword R-94300 at careers.kraftheinz.com
Kraft Heinz Foods Company seeks Manager, IT - Finance SystemsOracle Data Governance to work in Chicago, IL and partner with the various Finance organizations within Kraft Heinz to build process and technology capabilities. Degree & commensurate exp. req’d. For pay scale & benefits and to apply online search keyword R-94170 at careers.kraftheinz.com
Project Engineer sought by Resource Innovations Inc. in Chicago, IL. Reqs: BE in Mech. Engg., Energy Engg. or rltd field & 2 yrs exp w/in Energy Efficiency or Bldg Efficiency industry. Must have exp w/ conducting industrial & commercial energy assessments (ASHRAE level I & II); producing tech deliverables focused on energy savings calcs & dvlpmt of new measures; working w/ US DOE sponsored Industrial Assessment Center, etc. Must have following certs/ Licenses: EMIT or CEM) & FE license on track to receive Prof’l Engg. license. 10% domestic travel req. Telecommuting permitted w/in commutable distance to office. Salary: $113,298. Apply at: https://www.resourceinnovations.com/careers
Relativity (Chicago, IL) seeks Lead Software Engineer to provide tech. expertise on Core Toolchain team’s product architecture & mentor teammates. Remote work option from anywhere in the U.S. Salary: $185,600/yr. Submit resumes to Recruiting@ relativity.com, to be considered, ref. Job ID: 25-0381 in the subject line.
Relativity (Chicago, IL) seeks Lead SRE Engineer resp. for driving customer confidence by assuring the quality of current & future software products & to contribute to a motivating environment that empowers teams & individuals to engineer performant & reliable software through SRE best practices & principles. Remote work option from anywhere in the U.S. Salary: $150,000/ yr. Submit resumes to Recruiting@relativity. com, to be considered, reference Job ID: 250382 in the subject line. SAP RTR Architect: Product Costing and
Margin Accounting, AbbVie Inc., Waukegan, IL: Conceive, design, engineer, & implement data and SAP software solutions that solve significant business problems. Investigate, identify, & implement state-of-theart technology platforms that drive productivity & efficiency gains in own function & throughout multiple business areas. Work closely with other SAP Enterprise Architects, Technical Architects in resolving complex enterprise IT architectural issues, mitigate risks, and optimize cost savings & efficiencies. Manage SAP systems development life cycle, client area’s functions & systems. Using knowledge in SAP Finance & Controlling, recommend technological alternatives for Application program development. Support Material Ledger, Actual Costing, Group costing & Standard costing in SAP. Provide Parallel Valuation, Multi-currency Valuation & Actual Costing & COGS. Integrate Product Costing & Material Ledger to SAP Profitability Analysis (COPA). Intercompany profit tracking through product supply chain, Group costing, transfer pricing, margin consolidation & reporting solutions with SAP S/4 HANA experience. Must have a Bachelors Degree in finance, accounting, computer science, information technology, engineering, or related field of study. Must have 5 years of progressively responsible work experience in end-toend SAP implementation in controlling & finance. Of experience required, must have 5 years of experience: (i) configuring SAP Controlling & Finance submodules including General Ledger, Product Costing, Group costing, Material Ledger, Actual costing, Intercompany Reinvoicing, Profitability Analysis, Order & Overhead management, Cost center accounting, Profit Center Accounting, Inventory management & reporting; (ii) developing & directing software system testing & validation procedures, programming, & documentation SAP testing & end user training; (iii) leading SAP project implementations of the Finance & Controlling modules, including integration of Finance & Controlling modules with SAP Materials Management, Production planning, customer service & Sales & Distribution Modules; (iv) consulting with end users on designing the SAP systems to support following business processes: material & order cost calculation, product variance analysis & reporting, cost center variance analysis & reporting, & product & customer profitability analysis & reporting; (v) partnering with business unit IT to gather business
requirements in the areas of finance, accounting, & controlling & facilitating blueprint workshops; (vi) resolving complex issues in high stress & high-pressure situations & recommending technical solutions to business problems; & (vii) building optimized solutions for Life Science process, supported by consultants, to formulate application strategies & roadmaps, define templates, standards, & patterns to be used across project teams. Alternatively, would accept a Master’s Degree in finance, accounting, computer science, information technology, engineering, or related field of study & 3 years of progressively responsible work experience in end-toend SAP implementation in controlling & finance. Of experience required, must have 3 years of experience in (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) & (vii). Experience may be gained concurrently. Will accept any reasonable combination of education, work experience & training. Hybrid (onsite 3 days a week/ 2 days WFH).
Salary Range: $179,827.70 - $230,000.00 per year. Apply online at https:// careers.abbvie.com/en or send resume to Job. opportunity.abbvie@ abbvie.com. Refer to Req ID: REF41635U.
Senior Consultants, Software Engineers sought by Focused Labs Inc., Chicago, IL, to collaborate w/ stakeholders to dsgn, query, & maintain relational & NoSQL d/bases, etc. Deg’d applicants exp’d w/ react.native, Vue, Swift, Java, SpringBoot, Kotlin, etc. Benefits incl sick & vacation pay. Salary range: $148,949.00$149,000.00/yr. Send resume to recruiting @focusedlabs.io.
Senior Data Engineer, Chicago, IL, for Team TAG Services, LLC (TAG). Provide data engineering & data analytics expertise, working alongside developers who are modernizing legacy systems by developing new software & services using cloud-native GCP technologies. Req’d: Bachelor’s in Computer Science, Data Science, or a closely related field and 4 years exp. in informational technology, analytics & data science OR Master’s & 2 years of exp. May work from home 2 days/ wk. Salary: $153,650/ year. A generous benefits package that includes paid time off, health, dental, vision, and 401(k) savings plan with match. Resumes to code AA-SDE, c/o Juliana Ximenes, TAG, 800 W Fulton Market, Chicago, IL 60607 (juliana. ximenescoutinhodias @teamtag.com).
- Senior Developer - SAP. Investigate probs in systems, processes & services. BS: CS, Engg (any), or rel. 2 yrs dev or rel exp. Other exp req. Pay $134,680 - $135,680/ yr. Job ID 352460.
- Tech Lead. Design overall tech architecture of the product w help of the team. BS: Info Sys, CS, or rel. 5 yrs sw dev exp. Other exp req. Pay $160,014 - $161,014/ yr. Job ID 370921. Apply: https://careers. ulta.com/careers/
Wargaming (USA), Inc. has multiple openings in Chicago, IL: - Sr. DevOps Engineer: Deploy, configure, & maintain multiple web servers containing numerous game infrastructure services. Salary: $148,949-$160,000/yr.
- Senior Infrastructure Engineer: Design, analyze, evaluate, test, debug & implement applications programs. Salary: $106,558-$116,558/yr. Email resume to: usajobs@wargaming.net. Comprehensive benefits include PTO, parental leave, flexible schedules, full health coverage, 401K plan, wellness programs, employee recognition, & workplace amenities. An EOE.
Workday Configuration Specialist & Administrator, AbbVie Inc., North Chicago, IL. (Onsite position/2 days a week WFH eligible). Elicit & communicate organization’s business strategy. Work directly with business unit clients to understand specific business processes & needs & opportunities for improvement. Identify IT capabilities & information required to support the business processes & collaborates in the development of appropriate information management strategies, developing them as an integrated part of the business strategy. Configure HCM Business Processes, Compensation Plans, System Notifications & Dashboards in Workday System as per business partner’s requirements & assist on the options & risk identification. Create & assist QA teams to develop test scenarios
Sr PreSales Engineer for Forsk US Inc, 200 S Wacker Dr, Ste 3100, Chicago, IL 60606; BS in Electrical/Electronics Eng or closely related, foreign degree accepted; 3yrs exp in Eng role using RF planning & optimization software product (Atoll, Asset or Planet).$95k/yr.plus discretionary benefits. Send resume to Nicolas Dubois at Forsk address Ulta Beauty Credit Services Corporation has 2 positions available in Bolingbrook, IL. Below positions can work remotely/ telecommute up to 100%.
that are in scopeBusiness Processes like Hire, Compensation changes, Job Movements, Terminations, Employee master data changes, Employee Self Service process, & Manager Selfservice processes. Must possess a Bachelor’s in Computer Science, Information Technology, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or a related field, & 3 years building Workday systems configuration work experience. Of work experience required, must have 3 years: (i) constructing HR processes in Workday Human Capital Management, including each of the following: Recruitment, Payroll, Benefits & Performance; & (ii) managing IT system life cycle. Work experience may be gained concurrently. Salary Range: $132,795.03$178,500.00 per year Apply online at https:// careers.abbvie.com/en or send resume to Job. opportunity.abbvie@ abbvie.com. Refer to Req ID: REF41636S.
Bodorlaser Inc. seeks a Service Engineer (Remote in Whitmore Lake, MI). Master’s in Mech Engrg, Sys Engrg & Design, or a reltd field. 6 mos work exp in the field of mech engrg. Proficiency in mech design w/ CREO. Familiar w/MS Visio & AutoCAD. X’lnt analytics skillsw/ a strong problem-solving mindset. Email: grace. jin@bodorlaser.com or mail: 1230 Remington Rd, Schaumburg, IL 60173. $108,826/yr. Remote position in Whitmore Lake, MI, reqs some dom trvl 2-3 wks/mo for a few days each wk to client sites (up to 75% time), as assigned. Software EngineerMapletag Corp (Roselle,
IL). Master’s in CS, or a related field; Proficiency in Python, Java, JavaScript, HTML, & CSS3; Understanding of db app designs & implementation using MySQL/MongoDB; X’lnt comm, multi-task, & analytical skills. Email: ywu@mapletag.com or 22 Congress Cir W, Roselle, Illinois 60172. $106,558/yr.
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