Chicago Reader print issue of June 19, 2025 (Vol. 54, No. 37)
Prop Thtr cofounder Scott Vehill leaves a legacy of fostering new plays and fringe voices by Kerry Reid, p. 16
Chicagoans of Note: Jettila Lewis, artist and illustrator by Micco Caporale, p. 20
How an unconventional ball player inspired Chicago with his self-expression by Jack M Silverstein p. 4
CITY LIFE
04 Sports Dennis Rodman’s Chicago days inspired LGBTQ+ youth.
FOOD & DRINK
08 Feature | Sula Umami From Scratch chef Divs Ray makes mind-bending, savory-sweet pastries.
NEWS & POLITICS
10 Labor Uber and Ly drivers feel exploited.
12 Make It Make Sense | Mulcahy ICE eyes immigration court for deportations, and the Illinois Secretary of State decries “illegal” use of license plate readers.
ARTS & CULTURE
14 Cra Work | Renken Ben Infinite Summer breathes new life into old wigs.
15 Art of Note Recommended shows at Intuit and the Swedish American Museum THEATER
16 Feature | Reid Remembering Prop Thtr cofounder Scott Vehill, who leaves a legacy of fostering new plays and fringe voices
The Reader’s weekly chef popup series, now at Frank and Mary’s Tavern, 2905 N. Elston, Avondale
Follow the chefs, @chicago_reader, and @mikesula on Instagram for weekly menu drops, ordering info, updates, and the stories behind Chicago’s most exciting foodlums.
THE LINEUP
June 23 Sweet and savory spice route pastry with Umami From Scratch @umamifromscratch
June 30 Innovative Latin-fusion cuisine from Mother Prepper @mother_prepper
July 7 Submit to Pizza Dom with Death by Dough @deathbydough
July 14 Piscine xuisine of Xicágoland with Xicágo Cevicheria @xicagocevicheria
July 21 A delicious haunting by Eat Ghosts @eat.ghosts
July 28 The re-eruption of FilipinoHawaiian Panlasa @_panlasa
Aug. 4 The Foodball debut of Windy City Burger Social Club @windycityburgersocialclub
Aug. 11 Return of the Boricua Jedis Moncho Moncheo @monchomoncheo
Aug. 18 Annual pizza carb load with Belle and the Beast of Bad Johnny’s @badjohnnysgoodtimes
Aug. 25 Panza llena, corazón contento con Hija de Maria @hija_de_maria
Head to chicagoreader.com/foodball for weekly menus and ordering info!
The Socio-Economic Reality of Closet Monsters (or Black Boy Vs. Frankenstein)
if you are Black and scared that a monster is in your closet you may not say so for if you do your brothers will mock you and make noises to scare you In the bed that y’all share
and your father will not check the closet for monsters and there is no money for warm milk to calm you
if you are Black and scared that frankenstein is in your closet you may not say so For if you do Your mother will not hug you or make space for you in her bed instead she will give you a cleaver and tell you to go to bed and if you see a frankenstein and you are scared Cut him
By Aurelius Raines II
Aurelius Raines II is a teacher, writer, and maker. His works can be found in Apparation, Fiyah, and Strange Horizons magazine. Since he was born and raised in Chicago soil, he hopes his work will be a remediation of the city he loves. (And, yes, he knows Frankenstein was not the name of the monster. Chill and READ THE POEM.)
Poem curated by The Third. Third is a SouthSide born rapper and teacher with a deep affinity for words. As a lyricist and storyteller, Third is always looking to tell the stories of the underrepresented, challenge the norm, and inspire a higher tier or art.
A weekly series curated by the Chicago Reader and sponsored by the Poetry Foundation.
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CITY LIFE
“I was
SPORTS AND CULTURE
Dennis Rodman’s gay 90s Dennis Rodman’s gay 90s Dennis Rodman’s gay 90s Dennis Rodman’s gay 90s
How an unconventional ball player inspired Chicago with his self-expression
JACK M SILVERSTEIN
“Everybody has an image in their mind of what it means to be an athlete in our society.
I paint my fingernails. I color my hair. I sometimes wear women’s clothes. I want to challenge people’s image of what an athlete is supposed to be. I like bringing out the feminine side of Dennis Rodman.”
—Dennis Rodman, in his bestselling 1996 memoir Bad As I Wanna Be
The year was 1996, and Leslie Feinberg had a hot new book and a press tour and a revelation: Her subtitle was wrong.
A self-described transgender butch lesbian and leading voice on the LGBTQ+ experience, Feinberg had published Transgender Warriors: Making History From Joan of Arc to RuPaul in the spring. Changing your book subtitle for the paperback edition is not the norm.
icon unlike any in the popular culture. In his first season with the Chicago Bulls, Rodman reached the culmination of a four-year journey of self-actualization, one with a significant influence on queer culture that resonates today.
And his ability to be himself was aided in no small part by being in the city of Chicago—a pioneering city of gay advocacy—and playing for the cultural force that was the Bulls.
But that was Dennis Rodman for you—he made you pay attention.
“I originally subtitled this book Making History from Joan of Arc to RuPaul in order to breathe recognizable meaning into the word transgender, and to convey the sweep of time and cultures in my work,” Feinberg wrote in her new afterword, dated September 1, 1996. “But that was before Dennis Rodman, the greatest rebounder in basketball history, proudly came out as a cross-dresser—and before millions of people of every age and nationality hailed a cross-dressed Dennis Rodman with love and
“When you move from one city to another, you have to feel wanted,” Rodman wrote in 1996. “I felt wanted in Chicago from the beginning from a basketball sense [because] they weren’t interested in taming me or keeping me in line. That’s the only feeling of comfort I needed.”
have been the most unusual player in the NBA. But then: Sports Illustrated. The magazine that dictated who and what mattered in sports pegged the Spurs forward for its May 29, 1995 cover and introduced the world to Rodman’s fluid sexual identity. On the cover, Rodman held a macaw and wore a tank top, hot pants, and a dog collar. Inside, he talked about his trips to San Antonio gay bars and his gay fantasies.
“Everybody visualizes being gay—they think, ‘Should I do it or not?’” he said. “The reason they can’t is because they think it’s unethical. They think it’s a sin. Hell, you’re not bad if you’re gay, and it doesn’t make you any less of a person.”
What happened in between Feinberg’s publication in early 1996 and her afterword and new subtitle, Making History From Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman, in the late summer of 1996 was the flowering of an
Rodman spent the late 80s and early 90s with the Detroit Pistons, where he began shaving words in his hair and tattooing his torso. In his first weeks with the San Antonio Spurs in 1993, he kicked his bodily expression up a notch when his new hairdresser set him up with the Demolition Man ’do: a bright-blonde mohawk. Over the next two seasons, Rodman added piercings, more tats, and a host of hair colors, and if he’d stopped there, he still would
The story sent shockwaves through the NBA. When the Spurs failed to even reach the NBA Finals despite having the NBA’s best record and the league MVP, they effectively blamed Rodman and traded him to the Bulls. Despite Rodman’s personal dominance, he was never a clean fit on the Spurs like he was on the Bulls. It’s not that he didn’t act out here—you might recall his suspensions for headbutting a referee and kicking a cameraman—yet where
Dennis Rodman meeting fans at his nightclub, Illusions, at 157 W. Ontario on June 16, 1998
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
the Spurs shamed, the Bulls kept an open mind.
“Dennis’s antics are not as important as his heyoka component,” Bulls head coach Phil Jackson told the Tribune during the Finals, referring to a shamanic figure for the Sioux nation known as “the sacred clown.” Jackson explained it as, “A backwards-walker, a cross-dresser,” adding, “Dennis loves these comparisons.”
Bulls general manager Jerry Krause’s initial reluctance toward acquiring Rodman was based on his assessment that Rodman was not “OKP” (“Our Kind of Person”). Krause’s longtime assistant Jim Stack thought otherwise. Stack had studied Rodman during the Pistons’s “Bad Boys” era as part of his scouting duties, and his persistence with Krause, along with Krause’s and Jackson’s respective due diligence, eventually led the entire organization to push past Rodman’s image and see the player.
“Phil Jackson was cool,” Rodman wrote. “He said, ‘These are the rules, and if there’s anything here you don’t think you can handle, then let us know.’”
With Rodman, the Bulls flourished. With the Bulls, Rodman did too. He led the NBA in rebounding for the fifth straight year, made first team All-Defensive, and became a pop culture phenomenon. The 1995 Sports Illustrated article led to a book deal. Bad As I Wanna Be was released during the 1996 playo s and included two of Rodman’s most memorable moments: a book signing in May at Borders on Michigan Avenue, to which he arrived in heavy makeup, silver hair, and a red feather boa; and another signing in New York in August, in which he announced on Late Show with David Letterman that he was going to get married the next day, only to show up as a bride in a full wedding gown and yellow bangs.
“We all live through Dennis,” Michael Jordan said after the 96 Finals. “How many times have you ever wanted to wake up and change your hair four or five times in a week? I’m pretty sure people have, and they live that moment through Dennis.”
Trans journalist Parker Molloy was one of them. Molloy, 39, writes The Present Age, a newsletter on media criticism, culture, and politics. She transitioned in her late twenties. Sixteen years earlier, she was a ten-year-old sports fan in Manhattan, Illinois, meaning she was exactly where we all were: in the midst of a Bulls frenzy that took a booster shot in the form of the wildest, most thrilling, most nervous player acquisition ever. I think a lot of
kids found Rodman exhilarating. I know I did. I bought every piece of Rodman merchandise on the market, even his here-today, illegaltomorrow tattoo shirt.
“I asked my mom if I could dye my hair,” Molloy says. When her mother asked why, Molloy pointed to a picture of Rodman. “He did it!”
Rodman’s approach to basketball had always been paradoxically unique: He created on-court independence by being deeply subservient to the team mission. Now, his individuality as a person served as a sales tool for his on-court unselfishness. Rodman made it cool to do nothing but board, bail out loose balls, and play D.
“I was like, ‘I’m gonna be like Rodman. I’m gonna get all the rebounds,’ because I wasn’t good at shooting,” Molloy says. “I really respected his game and general attitude. I thought it was cool to see a player who didn’t care about what he was ‘supposed to do’ and did his own thing.”
Molloy had a second reaction. By eight or nine years old, she was “figuring out that I was di erent from the other kids in class.” At ten, she sensed a deeper kinship with this new Bull.
“As a young, closeted trans person, seeing someone who was very fully himself, dressing up in a wedding dress to marry himself, pushing the boundaries of gender and presentation—I didn’t know what words to put to that at the time, but that was definitely a big moment growing up,” she says.
Otis Richardson was older, not a basketball fan—and equally enthralled. In 1996, he was a 32-year-old artist and illustrator living in Uptown. He identified as a Black, gay male—“and [I] still do”—and came to Rodman through just the daily experience of simply, you know, being awake in the 90s.
the owner of Lavenderpop Greeting Cards. “He was never in those thigh-high boots, but it just seemed very appropriate.”
Rodman brought that out in people. His impact was palpable, including in Chicago’s gay club scene. His venue of choice: Crobar, on Kingsbury, where he hosted his birthday party in 1996 and was known for his regular appearances.
“This is Dennis Rodman’s second home,” as one bartender told Knight Ridder reporter Gerry Volgenau in 1998.
hair doesn’t bother me,” Jordan said. “He’s going to go wacko every now and then. We’ve come to live with that. We’ve come to accept that. But you can’t find another player on the basketball court who works just as hard as Dennis Rodman. Gives 110 percent. Dives at loose balls even if he can’t get them. That’s Dennis Rodman.”
What also stood out about Rodman was his other major fanbase: kids. My generation gravitated toward him. As Bulls teammate and former Pistons teammate John Salley noted, “They think, ‘My mother said not to go there. Let’s see why not.’”
The magazine BLACKlines launched in Chicago in 1996, with Richardson as a contributing illustrator. For the publication’s Pride issue, Richardson was inspired: He drew Rodman in a pinup style, underwear only, with nipple rings connected by chain, among other touches.
“He was just so over-the-top and so outrageous that I was like, ‘I gotta draw this guy. He’s too fun,’” says Richardson, who today is
My generation gravitated toward him. As Bulls teammate and former Pistons teammate John Salley noted, “They think, ‘My mother
“The youth in my neighborhood—they have Feinberg told the PBS In the in 1996. “They
“The youth in my neighborhood—they have jackets with his name,” Feinberg told the PBS news series In the Life in 1996. “They
As a young, closeted trans person, seeing someone who was very fully himself, dressing up in a wedding dress to marry himself, pushing the boundaries of gender and presentation—I didn’t know what words to put to that at the time, but that was definitely a big moment growing up.
wear his number proudly and a lot of them have even dyed their hair his color.
wear his number proudly and a lot of them have even dyed their hair his color. He’s given great freedom to youths growing up to express themselves.”
In March of 1996, Sports Illustrated ran another Rodman cover story, this time on his rebounding genius. The piece included a scene of Rodman studying film while wearing a shirt reading “I DON’T MIND STRAIGHT PEOPLE, AS LONG AS THEY ACT GAY IN PUBLIC.” In game one of the 1996 Finals, Rodman dyed an AIDS ribbon into his hair. He had done it in the ’95 playo s with the Spurs, too, but the spotlight of this Bulls team brought greater attention.
“I went to my hairdresser, who is gay, and told him to dye my hair green and dye the red AIDS ribbon into the back of my head,” Rodman wrote. “I figured, let’s put it on TV and recognize it. Let all the AIDS victims know they’re recognized and respected by Dennis Rodman.”
an AIDS ribbon into his the and ing:
ing up to express themselves.”
The kids saw Rodman’s freedom of expression. The Bulls saw his dedication to craft. In Jordan’s press conference if MJ wanted the team to re-sign the free
The kids saw Rodman’s freedom of expression. The Bulls saw his dedication to craft. In Jordan’s press conference after the 1997 Finals, a reporter asked if MJ wanted the team to re-sign the free agent Rodman.
“Sure. His dresses doesn’t bother me. His
“I thought he was pushing back at a lot of societal norms—to be in full makeup and wearing the boa and a wedding dress at a book signing: That’s some over-the-top stuff,” Richardson says. “I think he did it for the shock value of it and the fun of it, but I don’t think it was, ‘I’m going to be disrespectful of the LGBTQ community as I do this.’ I felt he did it out of a genuine respect for the community.”
For a player who did everything di erently, and had an eye for image, these questions around sincerity were natural. In June 1996, San Francisco writer Joan Ryan brought the topic into a gay sports bar in the Castro area, asking patrons about Rodman while they watched him and the Bulls play in the Finals.
“What Rodman is doing helps us,” one said. “He’s saying you don’t have to be a stereotype
CITY LIFE
continued from p. 5
to succeed, that you can wear a boa and dye your hair and still excel. I think it’ll make it easier for the next athlete to come out.”
Added another: “Gay kids thinking about suicide, he can change the way they look at themselves. When someone in the public eye comes out, especially an athlete, it helps kids not feel ashamed of what they’re feeling.”
At the beginning of 1997, The Advocate put Rodman on its yearin-review cover, explaining that Rodman had “created so much awareness for gay people.” They talked about his sex life and his thoughts on sex with men, but Rodman also focused simply on the challenges that gay people faced in the 1990s.
“Athletes are very scared to come out and say ‘I’m gay’ unless they come down with AIDS. Then they’re accepted because people feel sorry for them,” Rodman said. “God, I think that’s wrong. So I go out and support the idea that an athlete can be gay. People think that I actually am gay or bisexual, but they still accept me. So I’m opening the door.”
“Growing up being trans, especially around that time, the onscreen culture representation of trans people was so horrible,” Molloy says. “It would be like, Ace Ventura , episodes of The Jerry Springer Show , episodes of The Maury [Povich] Show where they’d have ten women and say, ‘Which five are secretly men?’ Stu like that, that was super insulting. Then you have other things that are not necessarily trans but are kind of a gateway to looking at the possibilities of being who you can be. Dennis Rodman is a great example of that.”
And in the late summer of 1997, Chicago became the first city in the country to o cially sanction a gay district with the Northalsted neighborhood.
anyone to change the image of sexual identity,” Chicagoan Don Rose said during the launch of Northalsted.
something that ties back to Rodman: He was just himself. I don’t think he was trying to influence the world as much as he was just 100 percent being himself.”
Acceptance of Rodman wasn’t solely because he was winning championships. The “Chicago” in “Chicago Bulls” mattered too. We have a rich history of gay culture. In 1924, Chicago was home to what’s considered the country’s first gay rights organization, the Society for Human Rights. In 1970, the year anniversary of the Stonewall riots, Chicago held what is considered by some to be the nation’s first Pride Parade.
“You also had LGBTQ bars on the south side,” Richardson says. “There were Black gay bars—Jeffery Pub may have been one of the oldest Black gay clubs not only in Chicago but in the United States. . . . Everything that people were doing, whether it’s the drag queens or the gay clubs, the gay businesses, entrepreneurs, creative people—I think all of that inspired Dennis to be as open and as bold as he was.”
And vice versa.
“In some of the tough Chicago neighborhoods, Dennis Rodman has done more than
During the Bulls’s 1996 playoff run, Feinberg’s book tour brought her to Chicago. In her appearances both live and on local radio, she spoke of “how important it was to defend Dennis Rodman’s courage.”
defend Dennis Rodman’s
Jack M Silverstein is Chicago’s Sports Historian and author of Why We Root: Mad Obsessions of a Chicago Sports Fan. Research and interviews for his forthcoming 1990s Bulls are at readjack.substack.
context of a history of transgender people answers the bigoted charges
“ Transgender Warriors puts Dennis Rodman into the context of a history of transgender people who have helped alter the course of humanity,” Feinberg wrote in her afterword. “This book answers the bigoted charges that Dennis Rodman’s selfexpression—as well as my own—is ‘not natural.’ And this book reveals why Rodman, or anyone who is transgender, is a target of reaction.”
m chicagoreader.com
own—is ‘not natural.’ And this to pin down. More than a decade
Rodman’s influence on gay acceptance in the NBA is tough to pin down. More than a decade after Rodman joined the Bulls, John Amaechi became the first former NBA player to come out. Rodman’s influence didn’t stop future Hall of Famer Tim Hardaway from exclaiming that he wouldn’t want a gay teammate, nor can we really credit Rodman for Hardaway’s transformation and his subsequent support of Jason Collins, who in 2014 became the first active NBA player to come out.
former NBA player to come didn’t stop future Hall of
want a gay teammate, nor can we really credit Rodman for
of Jason Collins, who in 2014 became
What is clear is that 30 years after
ing in Chicago, where just two years ago he attended a drag show at Roscoe’s Tavern and
What is clear is that 30 years after joining the Bulls, Rodman remains a supporter of the LGBTQ+ community, including in Chicago, where just two years ago he attended a drag show at Roscoe’s Tavern and tipped a drag queen $100.
the chance to explore who they are, just being in a more accepting city,” Molloy says. “When I first came out as trans, it was scary. Every
at work be weird to me?’ You have to get into this mindset of, ‘I’m just being me and
“I feel like the city in general gives people the chance to explore who they are, just being in a more accepting city,” Molloy says. “When I first came out as trans, it was scary. Every day going to work, it was like, ‘Am I going to get yelled at by random people? Will people at work be weird to me?’ You have to get into this mindset of, ‘I’m just being me and there’s nothing wrong with that.’ And that is
Dennis Rodman at his book signing event at Borders on Michigan Avenue, May 4, 1996 BRIAN JACKSON/CHICAGO SUN-TIMES VIA CHICAGO SUN-TIMES COLLECTION, CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM
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FOOD & DRINK
Umami From Scratch takes the spice road to the next Monday Night Foodball
Check out Divs Ray’s mindbending, savory-sweet pastries at the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at Frank and Mary’s Tavern.
By MIKE SULA
Divs Ray was too young to remember the French baking classes her mother, Manasi, taught in the remote northwestern Indian steel town of Rourkela.
And yet Ray’s guava gochugaru pâte à choux somehow embodies the improvisational style of her mother, who had no problems experimenting with alternatives in a town not well provisioned with the traditional ingredients of French pastry.
“My mom was very flexible,” says Ray, proprietor of the minibakery Umami From Scratch. “She was like, ‘Whatever is available is available. Make the most of it. We can make it another way and make it more interesting.’”
“Say a Black Forest gateau needed to be served for a dinner party but there are no cherries or kirsch,” Ray says. “She made a ginger orange marmalade for filling and ginger syrup for the soak. It’s not Black Forest gateau anymore. But who cares? The guests have never been abroad and don’t know about that German cake anyway. Back in the day, she used to stu medjool dates with nuts and toasted vermicelli, then dip them in peanut butter and chocolate. She was fearless.”
For lack of demand, her mother, a professor of home economics, gave up on the private classes when Ray was a toddler. But she continued bak-
ing and cooking enthusiastically—experimentally—for friends and family. “There were no fixed rules in her kitchen,” says Ray, and she was not bound by the rigidity of traditional Indian cuisine. The family traveled frequently, always eating local food, which fed her inspiration. She never prepared the same thing twice.
Not that it mattered much to Ray, who wrote that she “grew up as a strange child who disliked eating and food in general.” She was focused on school and writing, acting, and directing plays and choreographing musicals with her friends in local drama clubs.
Still, as a ten-year-old latchkey kid, she had already absorbed some of her mother’s instincts. “I always cooked instant ramen in leftover dal or rasam instead of water for a more flavorful result, saved a handful of raw noodles and crumbled them with the packet seasoning, and mixed [in] cilantro and lime.” But, “It was necessity. I was never actively into cooking or baking for most of my formative years.”
It wasn’t until 2011, when she married her husband, Anshuman Acharya, and discovered they shared a love of pasta and East Asian food, that she began to cook, with him as an occasional backup. She took to it right away.
“I was like, ‘OK, we gotta do it,’” she says, and attributes her immediate natural ability
Find more one-of-a-kind Chicago food and drink content at chicagoreader.com/food.
to the unconscious influence of her mother. “I felt like one of those people who are good at math, and two hours of studies is enough, and they can ace the test. I felt something similar [in] cooking. Everything seemed very natural and instinctive. And how did that happen? ‘Subconscious’ is the word that I use.”
In 2015, when she and Acharya arrived in the city to attend graduate school at the University of Chicago—public policy and business, respectively—she got into bread baking, once again inspired by her mother. But she didn’t have much time to pursue it.
Two years later, she discovered her second great inspiration when she was given a copy of the Israeli British chef Yotam Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem: A Cookbook, coauthored with his Palestinian chef–partner Sami Tamimi. Ray was enamored with Ottolenghi’s vegetable-forward dishes and the “excessiveness” of his plating—the texturing, layering, and vivid coloring, and the innovative flavor profiles that draw on ingredients from all over the world, not just the Mediterranean. She also appreciated his equitability in crediting the cooks and chefs that work for him, especially women and people of color.
During COVID lockdown, Ray and Acharya began an involved Friday night ritual, eating
an elaborate mezze spread of six to eight dishes, of which she would post images on her private Instagram just for friends: say, harissa-spiced ratatouille, baharat-spiced mushrooms in tarragon cream, preserved lemon, roasted asparagus, marinated feta, and orange blossom radicchio and orange salad. Ray says she never stopped exploring the world of Ottolenghi. In 2022 on a trip to London, she visited all eight of his restaurants and delis and ate one of the five best dishes of her life at Rovi: a now signature celeriac shawarma. “It was a dish all-encompassing,” she says. “It was so well-balanced and executed to perfection.”
At the same time, she returned to baking bread and French pastry, plus more subtle, delicate, less sweet Asian pastries after a summer internship in New York City in 2017. That was another revelation. “Growing up in India, I hated all desserts. I still don’t eat any Indian desserts. I feel that people are extremely lazy about it. It’s just around dairy. There are only three flavors: cardamom, sa ron, and rose.”
“When I moved to America, I found everything too sweet again. Why don’t they use salt? People don’t understand the concept that salt actually brings out the flavors, and the sugar actually overpowers the flavors.
Divs Ray of Umami From Scratch; sweet potato chaat galettes garnished with pomegranate seeds, cilantro, and herb sauce
WILLIAMSON
R UMAMI FROM SCRATCH AT MONDAY NIGHT FOODBALL
Mon 6/23 at 6 PM, Frank and Mary’s Tavern, 2905 N. Elston, umamifromscratch.com, chicagoreader.com/food/monday-night-foodball
Exploring Asian patisserie—Japanese bakeries, Korean bakeries—that’s what opened my mind. You can actually enjoy dessert and not have a sugar blast in your face and still taste the flavors.”
For her Instagram recipes, she gradually began incorporating the flavors of the spice routes—the historic, maritime tradeways that linked Japan, Indonesia, India, the Middle East, and Europe, spreading cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, clove, ginger, tea, pepper, star anise, and other flavors all over the world.
Channeling her mother, she’d often pair ingredients in unusual ways, like miso sweet potato chocolate custard bars instead of a traditional sweet potato pie for Thanksgiving.
Ray wasn’t yet thinking about baking as a moneymaking venture, but in September 2020 she decided to make her account public, for recipe and concept sharing and as a way to document her self-taught journey.
Her husband came up with the handle @umamifromscratch: “He kept saying that with everything I would create, there was something mysterious about it, and he couldn’t put his finger on it. ‘This feels so different and so delicious, but I don’t know why,’ he said. As the least understood and mysterious of the five basic tastes, ‘maybe you should use something like [umami].’”
Over the years she became more adventurous. She started with madeleines, the scallop-shaped French sponge cakes: blood orange and cardamom; a savory cornmeal version with onions, chives, and gochugaru; and an Old Fashioned madeleine with chocolate bitters, whiskey, and whiskey-orange syrup. She baked everything from nectarine focaccia with fennel and chili glaze, to tapioca fritters with orange syrup and star anise, to kimchibrioche bread pudding with chives and sesame salsa—everything vegetarian, never too sweet, and always nut free (she has an allergy).
Meanwhile, her Instagram following was growing. Ray held her first bake sale in 2021, an online presale and pickup from her home during which she sold out of everything: 72 tangerine oolong tea, Turkish co ee, and Earl Grey–lavender madeleines; 15 cardamom and ginger–spiced tea loaves; and 36 za’atar and fresh oregano milk buns stuffed with herbs, feta, and halloumi.
She was also baking tea parties for friends, and friends of friends, but her big break came when she was invited to contribute to the first Over the Moon - Chicago online bake sale in the fall of 2023: a curated collection of a dozen mooncakes created by Asian American bakers
to celebrate the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival.
Her ginger-infused pastry skin, filled with Okinawan purple sweet potato and white miso, resonated with organizer Anna Desai, who connected her to serial entrepreneur and Side Practice Coffee owner Francis Almeda (Kanin, Del Sur Bakery, Novel Pizza). That led to her first real pop-up the following month.
Side Practice was already an incubator for the post-COVID pop-up explosion, with an established community of regulars that began
under a cottage food license. “It’s a oneperson, one-mixer, one-oven operation,” she says, though she’s currently seeking out a commercial kitchen to increase volume. She still works a full-time day job in corporate finance, but eventually she hopes to open a brick-and-mortar bakery. “My training in finance has always told me that there is no money in a food business. But there is joy. After pulling all-nighters, consistently
“It’s a one-person, one-mixer, one-oven operation.”
lining up at 7:30 AM for her sa ron madeleines with Amaretto glaze, black garlic miso focaccia, and Baharat-spice cauliflower minicakes with tomato chutney. She sold out in two hours.
“Whenever I would talk about my concept, at the tea parties, or the catering I would do for friends, every single time I would be asked, ‘What is umami? You are not Japanese. Why aren’t you doing Indian food? What is cardamom? What is black garlic? I’m so confused.’ But that moment at Side Practice, people knew. Like, ‘We get you. We understand.’ I felt like these were my people.”
Since then, she’s tried to do one pop-up each month and launched occasional website bake sales for presale and pickup outside her Streeterville home.
Last week she dropped a ten-piece Pride box, featuring a sumac-thyme semolina tea cake, gochujang plum focaccia, and char siu eggplant milk buns, among others. (It sold out.) Ray figures the LGBTQ+ community are her biggest supporters, making up some 70 to 75 percent of her most regular customers. “They’re just more adventurous and fearless in general. So that’s probably why they don’t shy away from trying new things.” Among ethnicities, it’s East Asian, 85 percent, mostly Korean and Chinese.
Oddly enough, Ray says her work doesn’t seem to resonate with South Asians. “I’m very thrilled about all the amazing fusion happening with South Asian cuisine worldwide. I love what Indienne and Mirra are doing. However, I think as a community most South Asians aren’t very open to new, inventive flavors, and [would] rather seek familiarity and nostalgia. I used to get requests—gulab jamun cheesecake, mango mousse. They just assume that you’re Indian, you must have mango juice in your veins. I’ve never had chai in my life.” (Though she does incorporate it into a few pastries.)
Ray works out of her own home kitchen
being on my feet for 48 hours, the joy I see in the faces of people when they are discovering a flavor combination or item that they had never thought of before—that just makes up for it.”
Since that first pop-up in late 2023, Ray’s done 21 in total, though all but one of them have taken place in the evening. That all changes this June 23 when Umami From Scratch bakes for the next Monday Night Foodball, the Reader ’s weekly chef popup at Frank and Mary’s Tavern in Avondale.
She’s designed a banger of a menu to alleviate possible sweaty temperatures, with starters like tomatoes, peaches, and crumpets with wasabi mascarpone. “This is a funky Japanese Italian fusion,” says Ray. “It takes a classic Italian agrodolce—refreshing and sweet tomatoes and peaches are marinated in white wine vinegar and Italian sweet basil—with splashes of Japanese tamari and toasted sesame oil.”
FOOD & DRINK
then finished with a sticky harissa honey glaze and caraway and nigella seed. Served along with a zingy fennel, pomegranate, and feta salad perfumed with orange blossom water.”
And then come the (subtle) sweets: a pandan co ee pudding with toasted coconut meringue. Strong arabica co ee and vanilla-like
pandan leaf pudding are topped with toasted coconut French meringue, spiced coconut chips, and co ee syrup.
She’s frying gochujang tots with charred corn slaw, “because one of the top ingredients that imparts umami in one stroke is gochujang. It’s savory, spicy, sweet, bitter, and full of depth. Paired with crispy tots and creamy corn coleslaw, this bowl is my true homage to my love for all things Korean.”
And there’s the black garlic shokupan with watermelon gazpacho: feather-light Hokkaido-style milk bread with layers of black garlic and miso butter, rolled into a miniloaf to dip in a side of cool watermelon gazpacho.
She’s ri ng on an item from her recent Pride box, a harissa sweet potato galette with orange blossom fennel salad. It’s “flaky polenta pastry slathered with a black cardamom and lime ricotta filling, topped with roasted sweet potato,
And finally, there’s the sumac strawberry labneh shortcakes, “amped with sumac then stu ed with a fresh strawberry-mint compote and dollops of rosewater-infused labneh cream.”
“People ask me,” she says, “‘How do you pair flavors? I would have never thought of combining these two things.’ I don’t have a solid answer to that, mostly because it comes very instinctively to me. I do get ideas in the middle of the night, and I’ll have a scribble pad next to me, and I will write it down. And then I will not rest until I have tested out this weird combination that came to my mind.”
Ray’s pop-ups are typically pick-up only, but this is Monday Night Foodball. Stay. Have a drink. Eat your pastries and meet Divs Ray. She’d love to know what you think. v
m msula@chicagoreader.com
Ray’s menu for the upcoming Monday Night Foodball pop-up KIRK WILLIAMSON
NEWS & POLITICS
‘Most drivers aren’t making money’
Gig work with apps like Uber and Ly was supposed to be a lucrative side hustle offering workers freedom and flexibility. Now, drivers say they feel stuck, exploited, and unsafe.
By BINGHUI HUANG AND CLAIRE MURPHY, ILLINOIS ANSWERS PROJECT
Joe Negrau has been a rideshare driver for Uber and Lyft for nearly ten years, but he has not been rewarded for his years of experience.
“In that time, I’ve seen pay drop year after year, without fail.”
When he started driving around 2015, rideshare companies took about 20 percent of his earnings, he recalled. Now, the app is using an algorithm to determine the driver and app split, and he’s getting half of the passenger fares.
“I have to drive twice as long to make the same money.”
The gig economy, where people pick up work on an as-needed basis, has grown over the past decade to become a significant part of the low-wage service economy and a major point of conflict in the labor rights movement. Gig work has been around for a long time
in different forms: babysitters, handymen, artists, street vendors, writers, and designers. But around the turn of the millennium, tech companies accelerated the trend by turning anyone with a smartphone into a potential gig worker. The trend of converting jobs into gig work, researchers say, is expected to grow, and with it some of the questions around fair pay and job security.
As gig work like rideshare driving has become facilitated by tech companies that set terms for pay and job security through control of the applications used to connect workers to clients, some workers say they’re being exploited and kept in unstable and low-paying jobs that prevent them from getting ahead in life.
In Chicago, this tension is most prominently playing out in the fight for worker protections at rideshare companies, most notably Uber and Lyft, where labor rights organizers are
calling for due process for termination, minimum pay, safety protocols, and even negotiating power.
Drivers say that tech companies are using algorithms to depress their pay—with some workers saying they are making less than Chicago’s minimum wage—and to kick them o the app without any due process. Both are labor rights that many workers rely on to feel secure in their jobs. Drivers are demanding the city intervene and set standards for pay, safety, and stability for tens of thousands of people working in the rideshare industry.
A representative for Lyft said the company has addressed safety and pay concerns through its rider verification program, improved deactivation appeals process, and is committed to paying drivers at least 70 percent of weekly fares after fees. The Chicago Rideshare Living Wage and Safety ordinance
currently proposed in City Council, the company spokesperson said, would increase fares for riders and make it harder to keep unsafe drivers o the road.
Uber and city officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Because gig work is informal and there’s limited to no tracking of the industry, there is also limited information about the demographics, wages, and working conditions of this economy. The city doesn’t collect demographic data on who works rideshare jobs. But residential data shows that some of Chicago’s most diverse neighborhoods, like Rogers Park, North Park, Near West Side, Belmont Cragin, and Auburn Gresham, have the highest number of drivers.
A survey of 502 drivers from 2021 to 2022 by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Illinois Economic Policy Institute gave more insight into the work. Researchers found that most drivers work full-time and depend on their earnings for basic expenses, like rent and utilities. Yet, at the time of the study, some four in ten drivers earn less than Chicago’s minimum wage of $15 an hour, with the average driver making less than $13 an hour. The survey also revealed key problems with the current rideshare model. Nearly 80 percent of respondents said they feel unsafe at least once a month while driving. Some 40 percent have experienced sexual harassment on the job. In fact, the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health named Uber and Lyft among the most unsafe employers last year, alongside certain meatpacking, industrial farm, and lumber mill companies.
Despite such issues with these jobs, drivers say they depend on them because they need a flexible schedule, Negrau said. As more work becomes temporary, seasonal, or part-time, there are fewer options for well-paying, stable jobs that don’t require degrees or specific skills.
“There are drivers who are stuck, either for health reasons or they’re taking care of somebody and they have to have flexibility in their work, ” Negrau said.
“Most drivers aren’t making money.”
Camila Hudson, who has driven for Uber and Lyft in Chicago occasionally since 2016,
Camila Hudson has been driving for Uber and Ly since 2016. She says the algorithms the apps use impact how much a driver can make.
AKILAH TOWNSEND/ILLINOIS ANSWERS PROJECT
doesn’t think the algorithm—which determines the fares, fees, and driver–app splits of the profits—is just a driver’s issue. It impacts riders too.
Two people who need to go from the same place to the same location often have di erent fares depending on how much they’re willing to pay, which is information the rideshare companies can figure out from personal data, such as when you’re likely to need a ride and how reliant you are on ridesharing.
The same goes for drivers. Two different drivers might have the same route but earn different pay depending on the fare they’re willing to accept, she said.
Hudson is picky about what rides she accepts, only driving routes that she finds lucrative.
“I’ve rejected and said hell no to 85 percent of the rides offered to me because they’re trash,” she said.
But not everyone has that luxury. And, drivers say they’ve noticed the more low-paying trips they accept, the more low-paying trips they are sent by the algorithm.
“Most drivers aren’t making money. They are just not. And they’re killing their cars,” she said.
Drivers and others have sued rideshare companies for misclassifying employees as freelancers, using that legal threat to negotiate for higher pay and more stability for workers, but with limited success.
In many states, such as California and Pennsylvania, Uber and Lyft have successfully won legislative fights, court battles, or had the cases dismissed to maintain drivers as independent contractors.
A number of states used the lawsuits to force rideshare companies to negotiate with them on pay and benefits for drivers. In Massa chusetts, lawmakers negotiated with Uber and Lyft for a $32.50 per hour minimum pay for a driver’s “engaged time,” in addition to sick leave, accident insurance, and healthcare stipends.
According to the settlement, a driver’s “engaged time” is the period between when a driver accepts a ride and drops o the rider.
The agreement also includes $148 million from Uber and $27 million from Lyft in back pay to current and former drivers who were underpaid.
“For years, these companies have underpaid their drivers and denied them basic benefits,” said Massachusetts attorney general Andrea Joy Campbell. “This agreement holds Uber and Lyft accountable.”
Campbell credited labor allies and rideshare drivers in Massachusetts for being instrumental in achieving a settlement.
“[Uber and Lyft] saw the wave coming,” said Franswa Jan-Ena de Vertières, an Uber Black driver in Massachusetts who supported the settlement. “They monitored [drivers] around the state and saw what was going on. They decided to get out in front of it,” he said.
Vertières said social media advocacy and outspoken organization helped avoid a trial.
Voters in the state also approved a proposal allowing rideshare drivers to unionize.
“We have the opportunity to continue organizing, I believe we should push on,” he said.
Seattle workers pushed for protections from unjust deactivations. There, app-based delivery and rideshare companies have to provide notice of deactivations, and in some cases, allow for workers to appeal the decision.
A Lyft spokesperson said in an email that the app has been updated for “deactivated drivers to display why they were deactivated, applicable next steps and common questions on how to get their deactivation resolved or appealed.”
In Chicago, drivers are hoping to come to an agreement with Uber and Lyft about setting standards for work in the city before putting it to a vote among city lawmakers.
Will Tanzman, executive director of the People’s Lobby—a Chicago-based organization that helped launch the Chicago Gig Alliance, committed to fighting for fair labor and working conditions—said drivers are actively pushing for their own approach to collective bargaining by fighting to establish a pay floor and pass a living wage and safety ordinance.
The ordinance is backed by dozens of human rights organizations and hundreds of rideshare drivers in the city.
Tanzman said the draft resulted from years of organizing and negotiating with the city to establish a prospective pay floor for drivers.
“Earlier this year, we got to a version [of the ordinance] that the city agencies in charge of implementing believe is implementable, and preserves the key elements that the drivers wanted to make sure was in this ordinance,” Tanzman said. “We shared that draft with the [rideshare] companies, and have had some conversations over the past couple of months with the companies.”
The People’s Lobby is hoping to pass the ordinance before July 1, when Chicago’s minimum wage inflation adjustment goes into e ect.
“It’s a great victory for the city that thousands of low-wage workers are going to get a raise, and sadly, tens of thousands of rideshare drivers are going to be excluded from that raise,” said Tanzman.
If the ordinance is passed before the wage increase goes into e ect, “we can make sure the rideshare drivers at least know they’re in the pipeline for a raise,” he said.
Hiding behind the algorithm
When Uber first emerged in American cities in the 2010s, it offered lower-cost rides compared to taxis and more competitive pay because it was flush with investor money.
That financial backing helped to push out taxi companies across the country.
Lori Simmons, a gig work organizer and rideshare driver, remembers making as much as $60 to $70 an hour when she drove for Uber in 2014. Now, her net hourly earning looks more like $20 to $25 an hour.
“They had a lot of promotions back then because they were trying to lure people to work during busy times,” she said.
But those wages started to decrease. The first wave of drivers was replaced by drivers willing to take lower pay, Simmons said.
This trend of converting jobs into gig work, and depressing pay, is expected to grow, claiming more jobs in industries like health care, said Jennifer Sherer, the deputy director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Economic Analysis and Research Network.
For example, to squeeze out more profit and cut costs, some health systems are considering hiring nurses for just the days they are needed.
Apps like CareRev and ShiftKey connect health-care workers with hospitals, but like rideshare drivers, nurses have expressed similar concerns over poor pay and safety issues, as reported in March by Stat News.
While Silicon Valley tech companies accelerated the growth of low-wage self-employment jobs, the destabilization of full-time work started before then, said Erin Hatton, a sociology professor at SUNY University at Buffalo and author of the 2020 article “Gig Work: All Hustle and Little Gain,” published in the journal Contemporary Sociology . In the 2000s, FedEx, like Uber and Lyft, faced lawsuits when they classified their drivers as independent contractors, which would have required them to buy the provided trucks and uniforms. The company paid hundreds of millions to settle these claims.
“They view themselves as tech companies who create algorithms and computer programs to do jobs, which, of course, ignores the actual human beings doing vast proportions of the work,” Tanzman said.
Tech companies created a “veneer of direction connection between a worker and a consumer,” Hatton said.
“They can effectively hide behind the platform, behind the algorithm, and they can therefore claim that ‘we’re just a platform company, we’re just an app,” she said.
Lack of protections and benefits is becoming increasingly common as the gig economy grows and employers are distancing themselves from workers to avoid the cost and responsibility of ensuring safety, said Sherer. It’s not just people who are self-employed in the informal economy who face these problems. Part of the way employers are increasingly engaging in the gig economy is by outsourcing work and using more seasonal and temporary workers.
The use of outsourcing for jobs like janitors and security guards, not just abroad but to smaller and lesser-known sta ng companies, is another way companies sometimes skirt responsibility and lower pay.
Such workarounds are a reversal of the decades spent by workers fighting for labor protections and rights.
“In that long historical arc, we created that system [of labor rights] to avoid the rampant types of precarity and abuses and instability that went along with informal economies, where lots of work across all sectors was often, ‘gig work’ or ‘piece work,’ or ‘day labor,’ or whatever you want to call it,” Sherer said.
But workers are pushing back, hoping to claw back some of those standards. Negrau hopes that once Chicago passes an ordinance establishing pay, disciplinary due process, and safety standards, they can try to expand those wins to the state.
“That’s what happened in Minneapolis. That’s what happened in Boston and Massachusetts. And so we’re expecting that to be the next fight,” he said.
This report was produced as part of Making it in Chicago, a series produced by Illinois Answers Project about detours on the path to opportunity. Illinois Answers Project is a nonpartisan investigations and solutions journalism news outlet published by the Better Government Association. v
m letters@chicagoreader.com
NEWS & POLITICS
ICE kidnappings at immigration court
A Kyrgyzstani man stands before Judge Patrick M. McKenna at Chicago’s immigration court on June 12 when a lawyer for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asks that his case be dismissed.
Normally, this would be welcome news; the government doesn’t want to move forward with his deportation proceedings. But as he leaves courtroom four, he’s stopped by a man in a button-down, baggy olive-colored cargo pants, and tan work boots. The man tells him he’s under arrest, pending deportation, and escorts him to a service hallway in the building’s bowels. I can’t see inside, but I can hear the metallic clang of chains used to bind people’s waists and wrists.
This is a regular occurrence on the 15th floor of 55 E. Monroe—and other immigration courts across the country. Federal agents, many but not all with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), stalk the narrow hallways armed with full-page black-and-white photographs of the people they’re looking to disappear. They grab people in twos and threes, load them into unmarked vans and SUVs, and send them off into a vast network of concentration camps across the U.S. and abroad.
It’s part of a broader strategy to aggressively scale up deportations under an impossible
mandate from top aide to President Donald Trump (and unabashed white nationalist) Stephen Miller that ICE arrest 3,000 people per day. After immigration judges dismiss a person’s case, and in some cases even when cases are still pending, agents immediately swoop in and arrest them.
The Kyrgyzstani man’s lawyer explains that the man is seeking asylum and has a wife at home who’s five months pregnant. He arrived at the U.S.–Mexico border legally five years ago, via an appointment he made with DHS’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) One mobile app. When the lawyer heard DHS was planning to dismiss his client’s case, he filed a 20-page motion in opposition, but he says Judge McKenna tossed the case anyway. “This is not justice,” he tells me, exasperated.
On the other side of the U-shaped hall, a trio of agents stops two more people. As they’re escorted away, one of their loved ones follows the agents, pleading with them in Spanish for information. Her cries become more frantic as they approach the service hallway door, but the agents don’t pay her any mind. The door closes behind them, and she’s alone in the hallway, wailing, frantically searching for answers that don’t exist.
Outside, protesters surround the entrance to the building’s parking garage, attempting to block a gray minivan that’s shu ing masked ICE agents to court from the agency’s field
o ce at 101 Ida B. Wells. A lone demonstrator plants herself on the ground in front of the van, quiet and resolute. Agents scream and yell, pleading with, then threatening, her to move. At last, they give up and leave.
On Monday, June 16, however, they return, and today they’re itching for a fight. At least a dozen masked ICE agents in tactical vests, armed with extendable metal batons and dripping with chud energy, charge protesters, violently pushing and beating them. They arrest three of them, visibly injuring one, and load them into a black passenger van that drives beyond view into the building’s parking garage. The protesters—Chicagoans, community members, citizens—are detained for hours before being released one at a time.
Despite it all, early Tuesday morning, a crowd of 15 to 20 is back in front of the immigration court building, the parking garage entrance on Monroe barricaded shut.
ICE agents don’t show up to court this time, but they’ll surely be back. Protesters say they’ll be here, too. —SHAWN
MULCAHY
They’re always watching
Who could have predicted that a national database cataloguing car movements would be used to surveil people’s activities across state lines? Last month, 404 Media broke the story of Texas police using automated license plate
readers (ALPRs) from Flock Safety to track down a woman suspected of self-administering an abortion. With a network of over 83,000 cameras, Flock is a private security technology, available to law enforcement, that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to capture license plates. Illinois law prohibits authorities from sharing ALPR data for investigations into reproductive care, but records show the Mount Prospect Police Department’s data was accessed through Flock’s “national lookup” feature, which the department has since opted out of.
Illinois also prohibits using ALPR information for immigration-related inquiries, but that hasn’t deterred the DHS. According to 404 Media, ICE is using Flock to track immigrants, including in Illinois. According to the Chicago Tribune, the Illinois Secretary of State’s o ce “instructed Flock Safety to immediately shut off access for out-of-state authorities to use the system illegally.” The secretary of state also intends to develop more guardrails for accessing ALPR information and an auditing system to ensure protections are working. Meanwhile, local license plate data remains something of a free-for-all, especially for ICE.
—MICCO CAPORALE v
Make It Make Sense is a weekly column about what’s happening and why it matters.
Le : Masked federal agents violently push protesters away from Chicago’s immigration court on June 16, 2025. Right: A cop uses Flock Safety’s ALPR system in a patrol car. RAVEN GEARY, FLOCK SAFETY
Dilla’s
ARTS & CULTURE
Gettin’ wiggy with it
Wig stylist and makeup artist Ben Infinite Summer isn’t Mother or Father, he’s Uncle.
By CHARLI RENKEN
“This wig is stunning! Did you make it?” I asked my friend and fellow drag thing (a nonbinary or androgynous drag performer) Pegatron as we got ready for their Chappell Roan number in the drag competition Oh Snap! held in March at the Northalsted bar Scarlet. The wig in question was a recreation of Roan’s hair during her MTV Video Music Awards performance of “Good Luck, Babe!,” but with a killer twist. Instead of chain mail rings, the braided pigtails featured silver spikes to match Pegatron’s more punk aesthetic.
“No, my uncle made that. He’s incredible,” Pegatron told me. The uncle in question wasn’t Pegatron’s blood relative, but their drag uncle Ben Infinite Summer, a member of the Haus of Summer, a drag family here in Chicago.
Having spent time with Ben at many shows, I can say he exudes the supportive energy of an uncle. At every show one of the Summers are in, Ben can be found in the background with a soft, supportive grin, ready to hold up a phone flashlight for postshow pictures. More often than not, his family has hair styled by Ben atop their heads, usually whipped around into endless tangles he’ll later brush out for the next show. Thankfully, Ben is a pro at revitalizing wigs, so the Summers can do all the hairography they want without fear of ruining anything.
Ben used to do drag—he was a queen in Tampa before moving to Chicago last year— but he now sees himself as a drag supporter. He’ll turn out a look and hop on stage if the occasion calls for it, but these days he prefers to work behind the scenes as a wig stylist and makeup artist.
Ben began working with wigs when the pandemic hit and quarantine temporarily shut down the drag scene. Since he wasn’t performing, he started experimenting with wigs, learning from YouTube videos.
“I realized during that time that I learn really quickly by consuming media and information. If I can see the way something is happening, I can recreate it,” he says.
When venues reopened, he returned to the drag scene but found he wasn’t connecting with people the way he wanted to. He put away the wigs for a while, focusing on doing makeup for fashion events in the Tampa area until that too started to feel unsatisfying.
“I just hit a ceiling with it and I really wanted an opportunity to expand. Chicago has such a history of a rich drag and performance scene that I wanted to be a part of that and give myself a chance to thrive somewhere that was bigger,” Ben says.
So he packed his bags and moved from the warm sands of Tampa to Chicago during last year’s cold February. However, Ben’s introduction to the city was anything but frigid.
During his first night in town, Ben headed to the Northalsted drag venue and bar Splash and bumped into a gaggle of queens who immediately took him in and started introducing him to those who would become his family.
“Veronica Pop took my phone that night and followed so many drag queens for me that my Instagram actually got shut down because Meta thought I was a spam account,” Ben recalls with a laugh. Kimberly Summer was one of the queens Ben met that night, and not long after he began making and styling wigs for her, starting with recreating another of Roan’s iconic looks.
“[Kim and I] went through some of her old wigs and found some things that would work and restyled stuff that she already had into Roan’s Tiny Desk look,” Ben says. “I love that wig and I really wanted to push and elevate it, so I added a rhinestone pack of cigarettes instead of just one [like in the NPR video] and I rhinestoned the butterfly clips.”
Kim isn’t the only one to wear the wig. It’s also adorned the top of other drag queens’ heads, such as Bae Root.
“That wig has seen a lot of use,” Ben says with a laugh.
From there, Kim gave Ben a bag of over 40 wigs with the instructions to just go for it. He experimented with them, revitalizing old pieces and combining others to make larger looks.
“Kim paid me for every single one of those wigs, too,” he says. “That really gave me the benefit to learn in a way that is not accessible to everyone. Like, not a lot of people are just going to give you a bag of 40 wigs and be like, ‘Hey, do whatever.’”
That friendship helped Ben start to grow his expertise and clientele. The drag scene here quickly took notice and now Ben says he has a steady stream of about six wigs he’s working on any given week. In fact, when I visited Ben’s apartment and workspace, he had a bag of my own drag mother’s wigs he was revitalizing. Two weeks later, Zenon TeaVee somersaulted across the makeshift stage of Uptown bar My
Buddy’s in one of Ben’s pieces for her monthly show Glamorama.
Revitalization is a big part of Ben’s work. He strongly believes in using what’s already available, rather than buying something new. He also believes there’s no wig too tangled to breathe new life into.
“It’s rare that I find something where I’m like, ‘That’s not worth it,’” he says.
When he has a wig in need of repair, he starts with brushing. Then if there’s a lot of product buildup, he’ll steam it or use alcohol to get the residue o .
Some of Ben’s wigs have been restyled over and over again. As he showed me some of his work, he pointed out how many times a wig has been reworked. “That one eight times, that one ten, I’ve had that one since 2020. . . . ”
It’s not just cheaper to use an old wig for a new project—often it’s easier to give them more volume.
“There’s nothing wrong with just using what you have, making do and making new something that was loved. With these tariffs, it’s going to be really important that we do that,” he says.
You can usually find Ben somewhere along North Halsted, cheering on a Summer or two at places like Roscoe’s Tavern, Scarlet, and the bar that started it all for Ben, Splash. v
m crenken@chicagoreader.com
Ben Infi nite Summer infuses old wigs with new life. CHARLI RENKEN; BEN
KIRK WILLIAMSON
ARTS & CULTURE
EXHIBITIONS
R‘Icons’ imagines a different world
At the Swedish American Museum, models with Down syndrome depict archetypes with earnestness.
Look too quickly at “Icons: An Exhibition About the Right to Exist” and you might think you are simply seeing blown-up posters of James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, or that famous painting of Queen Elizabeth I, or an advertisement for Barbie dolls. But the models in this show have Down syndrome. The effect shi s the earth a few inches.
The project, which has traveled the world since its 2016 debut, is a collaboration between Fotografiska Museum Stockholm and the Glada Hudik Theatre, whose ensemble includes adults with intellectual disabilities. The photographer Emma Svensson and costumers Linda Sandberg and Helena Andersson are a few of the many creatives involved.
The recognizability and professionalism of the 21 color photo portraits is a key part of how they work: the subjects are meticulously costumed and made-up, the sets are just right, the lighting is spot-on, the motifs are universal. Here is a bride, a prima ballerina, a rock star, a revolutionary, a prime minister, a superhero, a saint. In our culture at large, individuals with Down syndrome do not play these roles, not for real and not
for TV. They are mostly absent from public view, from popular imagination, from art history, from politics, from historical records. Advances in genetic testing and, in the U.S. at least, governmental cutbacks to Medicaid as well as the termination of grants to community cultural organizations threaten to further that invisibility.
“Icons” temporarily imagines a different world, in which the familiar dreams of these individuals—to be a police detective or a diva or a film starlet—become palpable to all. From these visions emerge something deeply and urgently necessary: expanded notions of personhood, diversity, and inclusivity. —LORI WAXMAN
“Icons: An Exhibition About the Right to Exist” Through 7/6: Tue–Fri 10 AM–4 PM, Sat–Sun 11 AM–4 PM, Swedish American Museum, 5211 N. Clark, swedishamericanmuseum.org, adults $6, children, students, and seniors $4, free on second Tuesdays
R‘Catalyst’
highlights the
ingenuity of immigrant artists
Intuit Art Museum relaunches with a major group exhibition charting the rise of self-taught artists.
For decades, self-taught immigrant artists in Chicago have collected, sculpted, woven, painted, built, and sustained a creative practice in their everyday lives.
“Catalyst: Im/migration and Self-Taught Art in Chicago” at the Intuit Art Museum is a celebration of these works made since the 1940s.
Many of the working-class artists on view used tools from their trade. Stanislaw “Stanley” Szwarc used metal from dental equipment. Marion Perkins sculpted figures with baling wire from bundled newspapers at his newsstand. The troubled faces from his Skywatcher series—made in response to the Hiroshima bombing—were carved from the stone of abandoned buildings. Shopkeeper Aldobrando “Aldo” Piacenza filled his yard with small Italian cathedrals he built for birds.
Themes of activism and social justice come alive in “Catalyst.” Alfonso “Piloto” Nieves Ruiz repurposed trash in his haunting portrayal of the Statue of Liberty. Carlos Barberena’s relief prints center the dignity of undocumented laborers and how the U.S. exploits them.
“Catalyst” also highlights the role of community art centers in championing self-taught artists. Works from two Arts of Life members, a studio that supports artists with disabilities, are featured: Stefan Harhaj’s colorful skyscrapers and Isamu Guy Conners’s peaceful painting of North Avenue Beach.
Whispered notes are cradled in crocheted fibers of Pooja Pittie’s Be in So ness, the vessels honoring stories she carries as an immigrant. María Enríquez de Allen made glossy, glittering wreaths of artificial flowers for Día de los Muertos altars; their hues an ever-blooming prayer.
Thomas Kong, a prolific collage artist, transformed his store, Kim’s Corner Foods, into a studio. He cut food packaging and rearranged it onto cardboard, o en including his mantra: “Be Happy.”
With whatever materials they had around them, these artists bore witness to their experiences as immigrants. The heartaches and injustices are traced with purpose, dedication, and love, humming with the joy of creating, of the miracle of making new. —CASSIDY KLEIN “Catalyst: Im/migration and Self-Taught Art in Chicago” Through 1/11/26: Wed–Sun 11 AM–6 PM, third Thu 11 AM–8 PM, Intuit Art Museum, 756 N. Milwaukee, art.org/exhibitions/catalyst, adults $15, free for members, youth under 24, and visitors with disabilities v
Thomas Kong installation at Intuit Art Museum
THEATER
Scott Vehill 1956–2025
The cofounder of Prop Thtr leaves a legacy of fostering new plays and fringe voices.
By KERRY REID
Ifirst met Scott Vehill in 1987, when I was directing a student production at Columbia College Chicago of Tom and Jerry , a play by Jim Geoghan about two squabbling stand-up comedians tearing each other apart in the green room. Someone told me that Prop Thtr (then located on North Clybourn) had a poster of Lenny Bruce, which I thought would be perfect for the set. With the insouciance of youth, I sauntered into the Prop space and asked about borrowing the poster. A big man, wearing (in my recollection, anyway) a long black jacket and a beret, kindly told me that they weren’t able to lend it out—it was a treasured gift from a friend. But he certainly wished me the best with my show. It makes sense that Bruce would be one of Vehill’s influences, but his tastes and sensibilities were expansive. So too was his sense of building a genuine community for fringe theater artists, first as a cofounder of Prop, and later as one of the organizers for the National New Play Network (NNPN), which gives theaters devoted to new work the opportunity to share “rolling world premieres” of scripts across the U.S. That he was gracious even in rejecting a request from a presumptuous college kid seems very much in character in retrospect.
Prop’s board chair, Keith Fort, had been arranging monthly Scotty Salons in the Vehill home, with artists and musicians sharing songs, visual artwork, and readings. It was a way of giving back to a man who had always made a home for other artists across genres. I got to know Vehill better over the years, and back in 2012, I wrote a chapter on Prop for
Vehill died on June 5 from complications of Parkinson’s disease. He had been diagnosed about 15 years ago, and in recent years, getting out to performances had been di cult. But he was surrounded by friends and loved ones, including his wife, Kristen Kunz Vehill. The two met through a Reader Matches ad and married in 1995, and her work behind the scenes with Prop and other companies (including NNPN, where she serves on the board) has also been crucial for the fringe theater community.
streets—Lincoln, Clybourn, and most recently Elston (that venue, which also served as a home for Curious Theatre Branch and Factory Theater, closed down during COVID in 2020). That seemed fitting for a company that resolutely cut across the grain of Chicago theater for decades.
In its early years, Prop provided a home for what Vehill called “hall drifters.” As Vehill described it to me for the book, “You didn’t have a room. You could have a bunk, and there were lots of crash spaces, or you could carve out your own crash space.” It was an early sign of how Prop evolved to create literal space for new artists and people who maybe didn’t quite fit in anywhere else.
Prop brought work from the underground to the stage. Playwright Charles Pike, longtime Prop associate and friend of Vehill who now lives in New Mexico, told me when I interviewed
tionaries, and smut peddlers.”
Early on, the company also presented a series called Momentary Purgatory, providing a home for performance artists away from the theatrical mainstream, like Karen Finley, and experimental filmmakers like former Reader cartoonist Heather McAdams. Over time, playwrights like Pike, Neil Gray Giuntoli, Paul Peditto, and Karen Goodman Forsberg (who died in February of this year) found space for their own visions and voices on Prop’s stage. Peditto’s 1994 adaptation of Nelson Algren’s Never Come Morning (directed by Jennifer Markowitz) won a record-setting nine Non-Equity Je Awards.
Vehill’s background included performing in everything from Renaissance fairs to Greek drama festivals. But in talking to Kristen Vehill, Pike, and Brün in a recent Zoom call, the common thread was that he was a synthesizer as much as a creator—someone who saw the creative potential in other artists at all stages of their development and in nontheatrical texts. As Pike tells me, “Scott essentially brought me in and I learned how to adapt pretty much the phone book to put onstage from working with him. Because he believed that anything out there was fit to be examined.”
a never-published book on Chicago’s “established alternatives”—those companies that didn’t want to become “the next Steppenwolf,” but were instead interested in finding sustainability while staying true to their mission. Prop was founded by Vehill and his Columbia College classmate Stefan Brün. Their first production, Bertolt Brecht’s Puntila and Matti, His Hired Man (directed by Brün, with Vehill playing Puntila) opened on Friday, February 13, 1981, at a former strip club on North Lincoln. Most of Prop’s venues were on diagonal
him for the book that Prop’s programming “was largely built about Scott [Vehill’s] curatorial whims and his fascination with shocking and profound writing and cultural ethnography— stu that you might not get out of the history books about what was happening at a certain point in time.” As I noted in the chapter, “The tastes and sympathies of the founding members and those who have joined subsequently lay with society’s underdogs. Prop’s stages over the years have hosted a gallery of grifters, mass murderers, street people, Beat poets, revolu-
But collaboration wasn’t always smooth. Brün recalls that at the first rehearsal for Puntila, “We got into an actual physical fight, and some people left and never came back. And the ones who stayed, some of them we’re still talking to today. And that’s something that I would really mark with Scott in rehearsal processes. Right at the beginning, something broke the frame of ‘This is going to be just exactly what you expected,’ or ‘You are going to control what’s gonna happen here.’”
When Kristen arrived in Vehill’s life, she brought more stability, not only to him personally but to the company. As she told me at the time I was writing the book chapter, citing the housing arrangements of the hall drifters, “They don’t have any problems cutting any corners. Whatever it takes, whatever you can make happen, you make happen. What’s the classic adage—it’s easier to ask for forgiveness rather than permission? It was that sort of mentality.”
Kristen came from an advertising and marketing background. On one of her first dates with Vehill, she ended up being sprayed with blood
Scott Vehill at Ska Brewing in Durango, CO (L) and at an unknown event COURTESY ZOË PIKE; KRISTEN VEHILL
from a chicken piñata at the National Museum of Mexican Art, where Vehill was working alongside Pike as a preparer at the time. Undeterred, she entered into the blood and guts of fostering a fringe theater company. As Brün describes Prop in the early days of the Reagan years, “The idea of being a recognized and legitimate fundable institution didn’t feel like what we were doing.” Kristen helped them find ways to expand funding without losing their vision.
But though Vehill’s health meant he’d stepped back from Prop in recent years, his spirit continued to animate the company, and lives on too in the NNPN, which was founded by David Goldman in 1998. The organization grew out of conversations about the continuing life of new plays that Goldman had with Vehill and Prop’s then artistic director, Jonathan Lavan. Prop became one of the inaugural member companies (and one of the smallest).
As Vehill’s primary caregiver during his long illness, Kristen tells me that one of the things she and his other family and friends faced “was a lot of letting go of who Scott had been. He [started] to care a lot about the stakes and rules, and stu that he never cared
THEATER
about. The part of the brain that gets a ected by Parkinson’s took this man, who was not a rule follower at all.”
When I talked to Vehill about Prop’s history, he had some advice for anyone interested in starting a company: “Celebrate the small victories. Rejoice in the fact that you are able to produce because 99 percent of the people who want to do it never take that chance.”
Vehill, a man with a big heart and a voracious appetite for the weird and the untried, took big chances and provided them for others. At a time when artists are under attack, his best legacy may be the model he and Prop provided for going against the trends of the time and building families of a nity. In addition to Kristen, he is also survived by siblings Julie “Gigi” Paddock (Dave), Trisha Peck, Jaime Freiler (Kurt), and Raoul Vehill. There will be one final Scotty Salon in celebration of his life at Facility Theatre on Friday, July 18, 5-11 PM, on what would have been his 69th birthday. The family requests donations to Prop Thtr in lieu of flowers. v
m kreid@chicagoreader.com
FILM
REVIEW
Materialists autopsies the rom-com genre
Celine Song’s sophomore feature is an honest exploration of
By MAXWELL RABB
Dating apps have made us all amateur matchmakers. As if writing a résumé, singles list out credentials like education and occupation—with the addition of political beliefs, smoking preferences, and, most divisive of all, height—and hope for a match, swiping past anyone who falls short. Digital dating has unlocked Pandora’s box, an endless scroll of singles, yet no one meets the mark. This is nothing new. Love—or really, dating— has always been a system of standards and expectations.
That’s the terrain of Materialists , Celine Song’s sophomore film, the follow-up to her soul-bruising 2023 debut Past Lives . Lucy (Dakota Johnson), a professional matchmaker at a high-end Manhattan dating service called Adore, is a love engineer. Her job is part psychology, part social math—crunching data on compatibility, looks, ambition, and class. It’s love as a luxury service.
But what if the numbers just don’t add up? You have to take a look at the formula.
Materialists is billed as a rom-com revival, but that’s a misdirect. Song’s film may wear the clothing of a rom-com—attractive leads, glossy settings, lightning-fast chemistry—but it quickly undresses the genre’s illusions. Song lays bare the tricky parts of love, holding the messiness accountable without overplaying the drama. Instead of sweet escapism, it pulls us into the gray areas of desire, power, and performance. Many of us still find comfort in the luxurious settings of Nancy Meyers’s Something’s Gotta Give (2003) or the brighteyed optimism of Gary Winick’s 13 Going on 30 (2004). Still, Song o ers something sharper: a barbed investigation of modern love. And right now, that feels exactly right.
Lucy knows her way around matters of the heart. As Materialists opens, she’s just orchestrated her ninth successful marriage and is attending the lavish wedding of her client, Charlotte (Louisa Jacobson). But the celebration is short-lived. Lucy is pulled aside by a squad of bridesmaids in crisis; they bring the matchmaker to Charlotte, who’s face down on the bed in her bridal suite. Overwhelmed with regret, Charlotte confesses she feels like
the contemporary dating world.
a sellout—a woman who built her own life only to surrender to the pressures of tradition.
Here, in one of the film’s best exchanges, Lucy tells Charlotte she isn’t forced into anything, but asks why she even liked her soonto-be husband to begin with. Charlotte, in a bout of surreal honesty, admits that he makes her sister, who is married to a less wealthy and less successful guy, jealous. Lucy, with poise, provides her love engineer interpretation and says, “He makes you feel valuable.” Voilà. Wedding bells.
That’s Lucy’s job. She assesses value, later comparing herself to an insurance agent or mortician. In a montage of first-date-esque meetings with clients, she hears everything single people really want: Graying men are looking for women in their 20s, and women are looking for the total package—a nonbalding man making well over six figures and standing six feet tall. No wonder the jaded matchmaker tells her coworker, Daisy (Dasha Nekrasova), that when Lucy marries, it won’t be for love, but for money.
And then, the brother of Charlotte’s fiancé, Harry (Pedro Pascal), appears—the dream client and dream partner rolled into one. He’s tall, charming, and rich, a match that fits the bill for nearly every client—what people in the biz call a “unicorn.” At first, Lucy tries to recruit him, but Harry cleverly turns the o er around to try and win her over. Just then, Lucy’s messy and unresolved past comes knocking in the form of an old flame: John (Chris Evans), a struggling actor working as a catering waiter at the wedding. Love has a nasty habit of popping up when you least expect it. John and Lucy have undeniable chemistry, sharing a cigarette (which are back in, according to the New York Times ) outside the wedding. He drives her home in his shitty (but endearing) green Volvo—and, in a damning flashback, we learn that Lucy and John broke up in the middle of the street, driving the same Volvo, on their fifth anniversary. The problem was money. We live in a material world, after all.
That sequence doesn’t just give us a better understanding of John and Lucy, but it also
reveals why Lucy leans into Harry’s wine and dine routine. Money means something. So do fancy dinners, private drivers, and the cherry on top, a $12 million Manhattan apartment. But money aside, Song makes sure that the choice between these two men—the scruffy lover boy and the matchmaker’s unicorn—is a hard one. Both are doting and handsome. John’s flaws are out in the open; Harry’s are behind a sleek veil.
Lucy peels back the veil and discovers a mild omission Harry made about his physical appearance. But instead of triggering a dramatic confrontation or a cinematic meltdown, Song chooses restraint. The moment unfolds quietly, almost anticlimactically, and at first, it feels like a flimsy plot device—hardly enough to fracture a relationship. But that’s precisely what makes it work. Harry doesn’t get a big send-o or a redemptive arc; he simply fades. It captures a subtle, lived-in truth: that some people pass through our lives with a kind of forgettable weight. The film resists drama in favor of something more elusive and, in many ways, more honest.
Just as Lucy questions her heart, her work demands its own reckoning. A client is sexually assaulted on a date, and her company reacts as if this is a normal day at the office. Lucy, appalled while her company handles it with a bureaucratic coldness, is thrown into an existential crisis over the possibility that her involvement in her client’s love life might have caused this. She has no choice but to rethink her calculated approach to love, which isn’t as foolproof as she thought.
116 min. Wide release in theaters a 24films.com/films/materialists
without easy fixes and drawing parallels to the emotional messiness of one of the most honest rom-coms from the turn of the century: My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997). Materialists occasionally dips into cheesiness or genre traps, but always with a sincere, brutally earnest core. It follows Lucy as she questions her formula, investigating if love works even when the pieces don’t fit perfectly. Song is doing the same, probing the tropes and trappings of the much-beloved genre.
Perhaps we don’t get movies like the canonical 90s and aughts rom-coms—How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003) or Failure to Launch (2006)—because we don’t live in that world anymore. We can’t be as bright-eyed because everything is out in the open, and it’s a mess. But love is messy, even if it’s distilled into
Materialists inhabits the rom-com genre but only to find what still beats beneath the cliches. This isn’t homage—it’s autopsy. As Lucy moves between John and Harry, the film resists clear resolutions, surfacing problems
scrollable profiles. Through Lucy, a matchmaker who can predict everyone’s happy ending but her own, Song reveals the chaos beneath the algorithm. Love isn’t just one formula, and we are going to be OK when things don’t add up. v m letters@chicagoreader.com
Dakota Johnson as Lucy in Materialists COURTESY A24
Movies are my life, but what happens before, after, and between them is also my life. Technically, that’s my “real” life as I experience it physically, rather than the 24 frames per second onscreen that take me into other lives, other places—not real in a tangible sense but still somehow very much real in my perception of them.
I was thinking about this over the weekend as I went from one activity to the next, moviegoing interspersed throughout. On Saturday, my husband and I joined 75,000 other Chicagoans downtown for the No Kings protest. One person had a sign that simply read, “You all give me hope,” a feeling I shared at the moment and one I also experience during crowded movie screenings. This is not to conflate the importance of standing up for people’s rights with the act of moviegoing, but simply to say both inspire in me a hope of shared togetherness that’s otherwise running low nowadays.
We followed the march up until we could break off to get to the AMC River East for a movie, Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme (2025). Going from something so tactile to something so a ected gave me a bout of existential whiplash that made it hard to fully enjoy the film, so I’m resolved to see it again soon. I was also distracted by what I thought to be poor projection (Anderson is nothing if not a master at composition, and much of what I saw seemed to be cut o , causing the tableaus to feel arbitrarily askew) and a phone call from our veterinarian about our sick cat. I’ll wait until I see it again before committing to an assessment. I remain wary of Anderson’s shtick, though I was intrigued by its frenetic pacing.
On Sunday morning, we went to see Tony Scott’s Crimson Tide (1995) at the Music Box Theatre. I was enraptured, though its plot— dueling leadership onboard a Navy submarine tasked with launching a nuclear missile, the ultimate dilemma stemming from unclear follow-up orders that may have negated a pre-
FILM
A still from The Phoenician Scheme (2025)
vious directive to strike— was chilling in light of recent events. The idea of nuclear war is abstract to me, something I’ve only contended with in cinema, really. Scott manifests the tension brilliantly; it’s shot in widescreen yet takes place almost entirely in the sub. Beautiful close-ups of the actors (Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman are the leads) convey the inner turmoil of the two men, one hell-bent on firing, the other set on waiting until the updated command can be confi rmed. There are faint existential considerations of morality surrounding war and even race; I was reminded of Sidney Lumet’s films, with Michael Mann-esque aesthetics in the way the lighting of the sub’s technical instruments add dynamism to the compositions.
More happily, I enjoyed writing for CineFile about the Gender Benders program that screened at Facets on Wednesday as part of the Projecting Homosexuality: Queer and Trans Visions from Cinema’s First Decades series taking place in conjunction with “The First Homosexuals: The Birth of a New Identity, 1869-1939” exhibition at Wrightwood 659. Two of the films included were Charlie Chaplin’s A Woman (1915) and Ernst Lubitsch’s I Don’t Want to Be a Man (1918). In the former, it’s Chaplin himself who dresses as such; he’s surprisingly sexy and commits to the role in a way that goes beyond mere movie drag. Lubitsch’s film depicts a woman dressed as a man kissing a man who doesn’t realize she’s a woman. It’s legitimately sensual and presented for laughs but also as part of life’s follies, funny only because of the context and not the fact that the men are necking.
Lubitsch is always a palate cleanser, rarely realistic, per se, but always a reminder to find the humor and irony in life.
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.
MUSIC
CHICAGOANS OF NOTE
Jettila Lewis, artist and illustrator
“I
hate the way that art has been commodified. . . . I would much rather make a poster for a punk show.”
As told to MICCO CAPORALE
Jettila Lewis is an artist and illustrator whose hand is animated by music. Growing up in Pasadena, the 38-year-old artist rarely spoke but drew obsessively. Always attracted to the esoteric and strange, they had ambitions to work in comics and animation, and in high school, they had a secret life as a yaoi artist—that is, a manga-inspired cartoonist who focuses on romances between male characters. That helped them get hired to illustrate a writer’s graphic novel, but at age 25, they developed a bad case of tennis elbow, which combined with burnout to put their artistic ambitions on hold indefinitely.
Since moving to Chicago in 2017, Lewis has slowly rekindled their creative passions. For three years, they worked for Dark Matter as a barista, where they also contributed to a mural and created artwork for the 2021 Intellectual Curiosity coffee blend. That experience—along with the local connections they made, particularly in the music community—inspired them to return to art full-time, and later in 2021, they began working entirely for themselves. Their output runs the gamut—they’ve illustrated games and comics as well as made clothing and other functional art—but they’re particularly focused on art for the music community, and they’ve collaborated with artists such as Mother Fortune, Patrixia, Lengua Salvaje, and the Breathing Light. To Lewis, every image is a song—a rhythm made concrete—and they hope their artwork carries future generations toward something hopeful.
with people in poverty. When I saw The Crow as a kid, I’m like, “Yeah, that’s what I want in my life.”
Ithink music is the most powerful art form because it transcends species and time. Chicago is such a musical and artistic city. I’m learning most amazing art comes from Chicago. I didn’t know Smashing Pumpkins is from Chicago until I moved here. As a child, I was so gloomy, and I was a near mute. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness—like, imagine a seven-year-old going, “Wow, this music sounds like how I feel.” It went from soft and kind of sad to rage and screaming. Every song was its own universe. Billy Corgan’s music spoke for me.
Growing up in Pasadena was a nightmare. I was just really cold all the time. My body couldn’t regulate itself to the weather. I was always uncomfortable. Everyone around me thought I was a weirdo, so I was an easy target
to be picked on. I would just hide and draw. I come from a really big family. I’m number 11 of 14. My dad was a jazz musician and my mom was a fashion designer, so they taught us a lot of art. They wanted us to be self-su cient and not another cog in the machine. Every single one of my siblings, we all know how to sing and make music and be creative. Only some of us were able to utilize it for our livelihoods. It’s just the circumstances of living in the hood and being Black and Indigenous. The world that we live in wasn’t designed for us to do well.
We grew up Catholic but not very strict, so we saw all sorts of shit. I was always drawn to the esoteric, but I’m also a huge science and space nerd—just anything that was the opposite of being raised in a Catholic house filled
Then I learned what a gimp was, and that resonated with me too. I mean, the word itself: gimp. There’s not another word like it. You hear the word, and you’re like, “What’s a gimp?” And then you see it, and you’re like, “Just . . . what is that?” I knew, in the future, I’m going to be associated with these types of people somehow. I was always like, “The world is bizarre.” I never really associated any of that stu with sex. I just thought, “Oh, when you grow up, you get to do weird shit.” I thought that’s what being an adult is.
I always knew I wanted to be an artist. I started out wanting to be an animator, and as a kid, I’m like, “Well, if I’m gonna be an animator, I have to learn how to draw everything.” And once I figured out I’d be drawing other people’s cartoons, I was like, “Fuck that, I’m just going to do comics instead.” I wanted to have variety [in my skills] so I could make anything in any style I wanted, so all I ever did was draw.
Everyone knew I drew, but in high school, I
had a secret life where I was a yaoi artist. I was doing pretty well. I had a fake name and a small following. The yaoi world was good to me. Then [at 19] I got work with this guy doing comics, which knocked me off the yaoi course. I worked with him until I was 25. He did the writing. I did the art. Back then, I’d do a sketch, then go over the sketch with pens, scan it,
I realized I needed to start giving my own work ethic to myself.
go into Photoshop and edit it—it was so much work for so little. At the time, I didn’t realize how little [money] I was receiving because all this was new to me. I had no time, and because drawing was everything I did, I developed a lot of pain in my arm and hand. I was not sleeping or eating right, and my family life was really chaotic. I was very depressed. We finished the graphic novel, and he’s like, “OK, time to do another.” I developed tennis elbow and told him, “Hey, I can’t work on this anymore. I need a break because my arm hurts.” And he’s like, “You’re not hungry enough. You don’t want this enough.” I stopped working for him after that. Like, what the fuck. I am telling you it hurts to hold a pencil, and I will be permanently unable to draw if I don’t take some time off to recuperate. I can’t just will my way past tennis elbow. He saw me as a tool rather than, like, a fucked-up kid who needed guidance.
The last five years before moving here were so chaotic. I was floating all over the place and couldn’t land anywhere. My experience in LA was mostly like, “Oh, you look cool. I want to be seen next to you.” Or, “You look like I could eat o of you.” I used to go to this goth club, and they hired me to be a go-go dancer. I stopped straightening my hair, so it was big and awesome. After that, I noticed a
Self-portrait JETTILA LEWIS
switch in people—it felt like they just wanted to consume me, like this exotic thing.
I was still doing art here and there, knowing that at some point I would get back into it full-time. I just needed to heal first, which turned out to be a slow process. It took years. I took a job at a grocery store, which wasn’t bad. I love physical labor. I was the best bagger and cart pusher. I worked in a grocery store for a long time. I was still getting freelance jobs through Craigs list. It was pretty awful because I didn’t have a lot of guidance on, like, how to not get scammed.
While I was go-go dancing, I was friends with a lot of sex workers, and some of them were camgirls. I decided to see if that’s something I wanted to do. LA is this horrific place with predators at every turn. I wanted to flip that around and make money o these creeps. I cammed for about a year but stopped because all my clients started telling me their sad life stories. I was like, “Oh, these guys aren’t even jerking it to me. I’m like their therapist.” But I didn’t want to absorb their sadness.
My brother Henry is a big-deal tattoo artist. One of his friends was a painter [in Chicago], and she insisted on fl ying me out for her art show. She was like, “You should go to Chicago. You’ll love it.” [In 2017,] I came to visit and was only supposed to be here for a couple of days, and I ended up staying a couple of weeks. Then a month later, I’m like, “See ya—I’m moving to Chicago.”
I honestly moved here to die. A bunch of stuff happened in my family, and I’m like, “You know what? I’m just gonna come here and die in the snow.” I had a stupid thing with a boy, and that broke me. Then I’m like, “Of all the things that have happened, this is the thing that breaks me?” I did a complete reevaluation of my life and looked back at all the stu that I love and the things I sacrificed. Yaoi was one of them.
[Coming out of lockdown,] I knew it was my time again. I had tried several times to freelance full-time, and it didn’t work out. This time, I realized that I’m such a good worker wherever I have a job, to the point where I feel my coworkers are slacking. I realized I needed to start giving my own work
ethic to myself.
I didn’t know what the art world was before I moved here. I had an idea of what it might be, and I was wrong. [I didn’t know about]
I want to be one of the many artists that helps light the way for people who feel like they have nothing.
MUSIC
I want to inform younger generations that you’re not doomed. When you’re young, you feel like, “Oh, the world’s ending and everything sucks, and we don’t have a future.” I’m like, “No, you do. It just feels like shit right now, but it’s always kind of shitty!”
the whole idea of, like, “I’m going to collect this because it might be worth more later,” and people not even hanging things on their wall or connecting with the pieces—just letting them sit in a file cabinet. I hate the way that art has been commodified and used for status instead of, like, a time capsule of when it was made or what it’s reflecting on. I would much rather make a poster for a punk show or something, because that has more significance and meaning to me.
My dad was born in the 30s, and my mom was born in the 40s. They had to overcome so much, and even them having so many of us, and us being Black and Indigenous—they had intentions that we would help create art for the next generation. I was like, “I have to carry this torch.” What else is there to do? This fake-ass world—made by what I call “bleach demons”—is so artificial and insucient and fake.
I think we’re experiencing the collapse of that. I want to be one of the many artists that helps light the way for people who feel like they have nothing. Like, no, you have everything. I’m proof, because I come from extreme poverty. I come from a place where we’re set up to fail, and I fought against it with my art. Art is for everyone. Creativity is a key to freedom. v m mcaporale@chicagoreader.com
Clockwise from top: fl yer for a showcase by singer-songwriter Liv Warfi eld, album cover for Lengua Salvaje, and fan art for Nebraska act Plack Blague JETTILA LEWIS
Recommended and notable shows with critics’ insights for the week of June 19
Classmates turned collaborators Resavoir and Matt Gold capture summer’s swelter on Horizon
RESAVOIR & MATT GOLD, V.V. LIGHTBODY Sat 6/21, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $20, $18 in advance. 18+
AFTER ATTENDING Oberlin Conservatory together, trumpeter and producer Will Miller and multi-instrumentalist Matt Gold both ended up in Chicago. Their subsequent careers have taken different directions—Gold is an on-call guitarist with drummer and composer Makaya McCraven and singer-songwriter Jamila Woods, while Miller, who writes music as Resavoir, has built up that project’s synthy aesthetic between tours with Whitney—but they converge creatively in the wide world of jazz fusion. Perhaps unsurprisingly, as inspirations they share Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, especially the collaborations on Shorter’s 1975 record Native Dancer , which introduced singer and multi-instrumentalist Milton Nascimento and the 60s and 70s Brazilian musical milieu he represented to a wider stateside audience.
That musical lineage is audible on the duo’s new album, Horizon , which came out last month on International Anthem. The music wraps Gold’s nylon-string guitar lines—an aural watermark of bossa nova and Brazilian jazz—in verdant production and swimming synths. A consortium of collaborators further fill out the sunbaked sound: Tim Bennett on saxophone, Macie Stewart on strings, Claire Chennette on oboe, Wills McKenna on flute, Lloyd Billingham on French horn, and Eddie Burns, Peter Manheim, and Carter Lang on percussion. Singersongwriter Mei Semones contributes vocals and string arrangements (with help from her bandmates, violist Noah Leong and violinist Claudius Agrippa) to the dreamy “Diversey Beach”—a must on any Chicago summer playlist worth its salt. —HANNAH EDGAR
THURSDAY19
Preservation Hall Jazz Band See also Fri 6/20, Sat 6/21, and Sun 6/22. 8 PM, Garcia’s Chicago, 1001 W. Washington, $60.30 general admission. 21+
It’s impossible to overstate Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s dedication to the alchemy of their lineage— but the long-running group does much more than sustain the buoyant brass sound that distinguishes New Orleans jazz. The ensemble started in 1961 as a motley crew of old-school jazz players performing at Preservation Hall, an art gallery turned nightclub that remains open today in the heart of the French Quarter. In their 64 years, they’ve become a touring behemoth, and a variety of talents—homegrown and international, young and old—has passed through their lineup. They’ve built their legacy not on any one person’s contribution but through their consistent ability to cast a whimsical, breezy spell with one of the most distinctive styles of American music. In a live setting, Preservation Hall Jazz Band treat the audience like an integral part of the show, which makes every performance feel magical. The players tap into a sense of excitement and togetherness that further animates their sets. The band members aren’t shy about reminding you that they’re here to make a living (come with cash for tips), but they earn every dollar with music that vibrates the heart. At Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s four-night stint at Garcia’s, they’ll take plenty of opportunities to show off their skills, but their down-to-earth concerts focus less on showmanship than on cultivating intimacy and camaraderie. The band members o en dress unfussily, and their instruments might be weathered or painted to catch the eye or honor the dead. They like to use call-and-response gimmicks, stomping, and clapping, and their improvised lines wiggle and thrum like a beautiful drawing rendered on a moving train. With every warm, infectious performance, Preservation Hall Jazz Band promise to make you feel alive. —MICCO CAPORALE
TJ Kennedy, who makes music as Uncle Sexy, has been playing around Chicago for close to a decade. While he’s long past due for a big break, obscurity suits him as well as his big beard and shapeless hat. Backed by a revolving cast of musicians he calls the Nephews, Kennedy belts out weathered, sloppy outlaw country, with an emphasis on odes to working and failing while ingesting various mind-altering substances. His 2020 self-released single “Too High to Cross the Street (and Too Drunk to Care),” a collaboration with Nashville’s DeeOhGee (under their previous name, Blackfoot Gypsies), is a fine encapsulation of his oeuvre: It’s a staggering, dragging lament, part cowpunk and part cowdrunk, about his woman leaving him when he’s too stoned to stand up and ask her to take him back.
“Starin’ at the Wall,” from the same year, treads a similar ground (or a similar couch). Uncle Sexy has quit the shitty job he hated, but now he’s got new problems: “I’m laying in my bed / Staring at
Matt Gold (left) and Resavoir mastermind Will Miller TIM NAGLE
Uncle Sexy & the Nephews Kneafsey headline; Lydia Cash and Uncle Sexy & the Nephews open. 8 PM, Color Club, 4146 N. Elston, $18.03. 18+
the wall / Hopin’ that the landlord don’t give me a call,” he sings, while the tinkling honky-tonk piano in the background wavers as if it’s about to pass out on the floor. In a live setting, Uncle Sexy & the Nephews are predictably unpredictable, even beyond the shifting personnel. Some sets are electric, others are acoustic. Sometimes Uncle Sexy sticks to his originals, and sometimes he wades into covers by songwriting greats such as Billy Joe Shaver, Neil Young, and David Bowie. Whatever he’s singing, though, he’s got ragged charisma and hooks to spare, along with a genius for making going nowhere fast sound like the best gig in town. —NOAH BERLATSKY
FRIDAY20
Lyrical Lemonade Summer
Smash See also Sat 6/21 and Sun 6/22. Don Toliver x Yeat headline; the rest of the day’s lineup, spread out across three stages, is Trippie Redd, Ski Mask the Slump God, NLE Choppa, Young Nudy, Nettspend, DDG, Che, DC the Don, Molly Santana, Benji Blue Bills, Karrahbooo, Weiland, Clip, Prettifun, Thirteendegrees°, Ekat19, and Boss r. DJ sets by Zack Bia. Set times and stage assignments available through the Summer Smash mobile app. Gates open 3 PM, Seatgeek Stadium, 7000 S. Harlem, Bridgeview, $140 single-day pass, $375 three-day pass. b
’Tis the season to get hurled through a crowd of teenyboppers (and older rowdy fans) clawing for a choice spot near the stage—your funnel cake be damned—
in their pursuit of a sweet angle and closer look at their favorite artists. I’m not particularly jazzed for abysmal traffic, $18 glizzies, and booty-sweatinducing temperatures, but otherwise, I’m amped
MUSIC
for another summer of stellar festivals.
If you’re young or young at heart, you’ll be overjoyed to know that the Lyrical Lemonade Summer Smash is returning for its sixth year, having survived the pandemic and a move from Douglass Park to Seatgeek Stadium in Bridgeview. Given that fans have no shortage of great events to choose from within city limits, to bring droves out to the suburbs, you gotta go gargantuan with the talent.
Summer Smash is the brainchild of Lyrical Lemonade founder, video director, and label head Cole Bennett, and it’s massive: The festival spans three days, with live music, vendors, and hypebeasts as far as the eye can see. The lineup highlights established and emerging artists, and it reliably contains multitudes. During last year’s event, homegrown drill pioneer Chief Keef made his triumphant return to Chicago(land) after being essentially blacklisted for more than a decade.
This year, local giants are woven into the bill once again: G Herbo, Chance the Rapper, Saba, and Famous Dex share the schedule with rising acts such as TikTok sensation Adamn Killa and luxury trap rapper Thirteendegrees°. The lineup also gets some he from recognizable names from across the country, including beloved Atlanta toxic-rap godfather Future, Memphis rapper turned hot-boy model NLE Choppa, and infamous St. Louis rapper Sexyy Red. Other highlights include the joint live debut of experimental hiphop artists and collaborators Don Toliver and Yeat as well as performances from mumble- rap princess Karrahbooo and one of my personal faves, Atlanta powerhouse Bktherula. Sure, choosing between dozens of sets over three days may seem like a daunting task for hip-hop fans of a certain age, but I’d invite anyone with reservations to consider Lyrical Lemonade’s Summer Smash a learning experience— now that hip-hop’s vast landscape stretches from fringe Soundcloud rappers to towering pop-rap stars, the music is more vibrant than ever. —CRISTALLE BOWEN
Preservation Hall Jazz Band
See Thu 6/19. 8 PM, Garcia’s Chicago, 1001 W. Washington, $60.30 general admission, $113.65 table seating. 21+
SATURDAY21
Edith Frost Sima Cunningham and Fran open. 8:30 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $18.65. 21+
Texas singer-songwriter Edith Frost makes soulful fusions of country rock and folk in step with moody indiecountry architects such as Susanna Clark and Townes Van Zandt. Whether she’s singing about depression, love, or hitting hurdles while trying to move forward,
Preservation Hall Jazz Band
MUSIC
continued from p. 23
the messages in her lyrics are crystal clear. Set to easy back-porch piano, guitar, and drums, her songs evoke obscure early-70s private-press releases as well as the talkative, heady styles that flavored the early-90s indie-folk scene.
Frost was immersed in country music during her childhood, which she spent moving with her mother between San Antonio, Austin, and Guadalajara, Mexico. In 1990, she traded Texas for New York, where she made her way through a string of country bands. In 1996—the height of the coffee-shopsand-cigarettes era—she relocated to Chicago, where she released her self-titled debut EP on Drag City. She put out a couple more EPs and four fulllengths on the Chicago label before she returned to Austin to be closer to family in 2014.
During the early part of the pandemic, Frost began writing material for what eventually became her first record in two decades, February’s In Space The record picks up right where 2005’s It’s a Game le off, with inviting songs colored by moments of quirky introspection. “Hold On” asks questions about an odd man on public transport and shuffles into a pleasant, melodic series of suggestions for what he might do to pass the time instead of standing still with his hands in his pockets (“Maybe get off there or maybe get on / Take it along with you”). “In Space” is a contemplative dirge that shows off the evolution of Frost’s vocal chops: She can still hit the higher notes of her range, but there’s a deeper core. While much of In Space traverses the same sort of losses and worries that characterized her earlier records, she sounds more solid and grounded than ever. —SALEM COLLO-JULIN
Lyrical Lemonade Summer Smash day two See Fri 6/20. Future headlines; the rest of the day’s lineup, spread out across three stages, is Sexyy Red, Lil Tecca, Destroy Lonely, Sahbabii, Soulja Boy, OsamaSon, Babytron, PlaqueBoyMax, Lazer Dim 700, Glokk40Spaz, Yung Bans,
Chuckyy, VonOff1700, 1900Rugrat, Nino Paid, Jasiah, 10Neam, Adamn Killa, Xtsy*, and Komla. DJ sets by F1lthy and Lotto. Set times and stage assignments available through the Summer Smash mobile app. Gates open 1 PM, Seatgeek Stadium, 7000 S. Harlem, Bridgeview, $140 single-day pass, $375 three-day pass. b
Preservation Hall Jazz band See Thu 6/19. 8 PM, Garcia’s Chicago, 1001 W. Washington, $64.40 general admission, $137.35 table seating. 21+
Resavoir & Matt Gold See Pick of the Week on page 22. V.V. Lightbody opens. 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $20, $18 in advance. 18+
SUNDAY22
Lyrical Lemonade Summer Smash day three See Fri 6/20. Young Thug headlines; the rest of the day’s lineup, spread out across three stages, is Chance the Rapper, Lil Yachty, Quavo, Ken Carson, Nav, G Herbo, Saba, Insane Clown Posse, Homixide Gang, Lil Tracy, Bktherula, D. Savage, Skaiwater, Nine Vicious, BabyChiefDoit, Yuno Miles, Tiacorine, DC2Trill, K3, Smokedope2016, and Ronshach. DJ Sets by Harmony Korine/Edglrd and DJ Bonerboy. Set times and stage assignments available through the Summer Smash mobile app. Gates open 1 PM, Seatgeek Stadium, 7000 S. Harlem, Bridgeview, $140 single-day pass, $375 three-day pass. b
Preservation Hall Jazz Band See Thu 6/19. 7 PM, Garcia’s Chicago, 1001 W. Washington, $58.25 general admission. 21+ v
Edith Frost SAM TELLEZ
A few of the artists at this year’s Lyrical Lemonade Summer Smash, listed le to right: top row, Saba and Bktherula; middle row, Sexyy Red and G Herbo; bottom row, Don Toliver and Yeat, who perform a collaborative set
LEMONADE SUMMER SMASH
SEX AND RELATIONSHIPS
Had to get away
Why do I feel ashamed about my vacation fucking?
By DAN SAVAGE
Dear readers, I’m at a family event (a happy one) this week. This column originally appeared on July 10, 2013. Back with a new Savage Love next week. —DAN
Q : I’m a 26-year-old straight female. I’m writing because I need to ask someone what to think right now. I just fucked a guy while on holiday in Costa Rica. I thought I was sex-positive and adventurous, so why do I feel so ashamed? I’m dating a boy back in the U.S. who I absolutely adore, but we’re not necessarily exclusive. The guy on holiday was a 22-year-old local—I thought he was so sweet. But he did that “fuck her and then get her out of bed and drive her home” shit. I told him
it wasn’t OK, and he made excuses. I feel so fucking pathetic right now. Is this because I did something stupid? Is this a natural feeling? Or is it a result of some deep psychological self-induced slut-shaming? Why would he kick me out like that? Please help me wrap my head around this. —TRULY UNDERESTIMATED RISK IN SEXY TRAVEL ADVENTURE
a : My hunch—and it’s just a hunch—is that before you could give yourself permission to fuck this guy, TURISTA, you had to convince yourself the encounter wasn’t just two strangers using each other for sex. Like a lot of people who wanna have one-night
stands—men and women, gays and straights, locals and tourists—you “virtue-washed” a sleazy sexual encounter by convincing yourself that you shared a meaningful instaconnection with this boy. (“I thought he was so sweet.”) You convinced yourself that if circumstances were different (if you were single or if you lived in Costa Rica) you could see yourself dating this guy. You rounded this dude up to boyfriend material, TURISTA, but the way he treated you a er the sex was over stripped away your illusions. He was a player (probably), and you had been played (most likely), and you wanted to be played (with). Was your reaction sexnegative? Yes, it was. Are you slut-shaming yourself? Yes,
you are. You did something kind of sleazy on vacation, TURISTA, just like millions of other people before you, and you misjudged someone. Who hasn’t? I’m assuming the sex was good but it was just the aftermath that sucked. As for why he kicked you out, TURISTA, I couldn’t tell you. Maybe he’s in a relationship that’s “not necessarily exclusive,” and his girlfriend was coming over in the morning and wouldn’t appreciate finding a turista—yet another one—in her boyfriend’s bed.
Q : Never thought I’d be writing to you for advice, but here goes: I’m a straight guy with a long-term girlfriend who has a choking fetish. She needs to be choked during sex to get off. I’m more of a vanilla kind of dude, but in the spirit of being GGG (good, giving, and game), I’ve been doing this for her. The thing is, it kind of scares me. I don’t particularly get off on it, and it actually brings out parts of me that I don’t like. More importantly, I’m really scared of hurting her. Recently while on vacation, hotel security was called
because our neighbors thought I was assaulting her, as she’s a screamer and likes to struggle during sex. I’m trying to be GGG, but now it feels like every fuck needs to be a rape scene, complete with choking. She doesn’t like it any other way. I don’t want to accidentally hurt her or kill her and wind up in jail, but she’s dismissive when I share my concerns. My friends in the BDSM scene scold me and say that breath play is never okay.
Your thoughts? —THROAT HARM REALLY OBSESSES THIS TERRIFIC LADY ENTIRELY
a : Here’s what kink author, educator, and activist Jay Wiseman has to say about choking in his book SM 101: A Realistic Introduction
“I know of no way whatsoever that suffocation or strangulation can be done that does not intrinsically put the recipient at risk of cardiac arrest. . . . I know of no reliable way to determine when such a cardiac arrest becomes imminent. If the recipient does arrest, the probability of resuscitating them, even with optimal CPR, is small.”
Choking might be less dangerous than some make it sound. Most news stories about people getting killed during “breath play” involve solo scenes, not being choked by a partner. But even if choking weren’t dangerous, being this woman’s boyfriend/assailant has become tedious. Setting choking and its dangers aside, THROTTLE, you need to ask yourself if you wanna spend the rest of your life with someone who’s as inconsiderate, selfish, and sexually limited as your girlfriend appears to be.
Q : I am a 29-year-old lesbian. My best friend has an incredibly hot sister to whom I am very attracted. Let’s call her Gladys. Gladys is about ten years older than
me and happily married to a man. We talk about life on Facebook and text each other frequently. Recently, things have gotten a bit more flirtatious. I am dying to say to her, “I am superattracted to you and I don’t want to assume anything about your agreements with your hubby. If you ever want to explore your sexuality with a girl, I would love to be that girl.” It seems like a delicate situation. I love my best friend’s entire family. I love their mom. I have spent holidays at their house and vacationed with them. I don’t want to embarrass myself. But I know she couldn’t ask me that same thing. It just wouldn’t be right from her side, since I am her little sister’s best friend. Is there a way to roll this out?
—LESBIAN UNDER STRAIGHT TEASE
a : Let’s do a quick risk/ reward analysis, LUST. By hitting on this woman, you risk screwing up your relationship with your best friend, your best friend’s sister, and your best friend’s mom—and you risk losing all future family holiday/ vacation invites—for the potential reward of getting into the pants of your best friend’s hot married older sister once or twice. Seems like a lot to risk if you ask me, LUST, and you did ask me. That said, there are a lot of married bi women out there. But if Gladys has an open relationship with her husband—or if they’re actively seeking a unicorn— it would be better if they made the first move. So, keep flirting and live in hope. v
Got problems? Yes, you do! Email your questions for the column to the address below or record an audio question for Savage Lovecast at the URL savage.love, where you’ll also find full column archives.
m mailbox@savage.love
CLASSIFIEDS
JOBS
PROFESSIONALS & SERVICES
JOBS
Advisor Security Compliance is needed by Inbound-Partners LLC in Chicago, IL to oversee and implement comprehensive IT security procedures across client environments, ensuring compliance with corporate, government, and industry regulations. Travel and relocation possible to unanticipated client locations throughout the U.S. Telecommuting permitted from anywhere in the U.S. Rate of pay is $145,974/yr. To apply, send resume to Seema, Manager, Immigration, seema@inboundpartners. com, Inbound-Partners LLC at 30 N. Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60602.
Associate Director, Global Direct Procurement Process Lead (Procurement), AbbVie Inc., North Chicago, IL: Design/Implement Global Procurement Process & strategies to optimize efficiency, reduce costs & mitigate risks in Direct Procurement; Standardize Procurement workflows across regions to ensure consistency & best practices; Lead Procurement digital transformation initiatives for Direct Spend categories collaborating with cross functional stakeholders across the organization & regions; Drive Continuous Improvement initiatives & ensure compliance with global procurement policies, regulations & industry standards. Must have a Bachelor’s degree in Supply Chain Management, Procurement, Management Information Systems, Engineering or related field, & 6 years of experience in Direct Procurement. Of experience required, must have 5 years of experience: (i) leading global procurement processes across multiple regions/ countries; & (ii) using SAP S4 HANA (procurement system), data analysis tools (Excel, Power BI) & MRP (planning systems for direct procurement). Of experience required, must have 3 years of experience (i) leading Business Process Integration including integrated testing (verification, user acceptance, Regression); & (ii) managing lean processes or similar methodologies for process improvement & managing complex, global projects & cross-functional teams. Experience may be gained concurrently. Hybrid (onsite 3 days a week/ 2 days WFH/remote). Apply
online at https://careers. abbvie.com/en or send resume to Job.opportunity. abbvie@abbvie.com and reference REF40495F.
Salary Range: $164,439.50 - $261,000.00 per year.
Associate Scientific Director, Gastroenterology Care (GIC), AbbVie Inc., Mettawa, IL: Provide medical and scientific strategic input into core medical affairs activities, including interactions with healthcare professionals, societies, & conferences, leads clinical & real-world data generation, and medical educational initiatives. Work closely with sales, marketing, & commercial teams to provide subject matter expertise for brand strategies & timely & accurate promotional material review. Contribute to generation of Medical Information response letters & development & training for product & disease state information for field medical teams. Responsible for vendor management within budget. Must have a PhD in a scientific field, & 3 years of work experience aligning medical education & scientific initiatives w Scientific Communication Platform in the pharmaceutical industry. Of experience required, must have 3 years: (i) gathering, synthesizing, and communicating scientific and technical information for internal and external stakeholders; (ii) leading clinical trial design and execution, including design of protocols, utilizing methodology, regulatory requirements governing clinical trials; & (iii) consulting & liaising with scientific societies & patient advocacy groups to advance medical education. Alternatively, would accept PharmD, Physician Assistant, or Nurse Practitioner & & 3 years of work experience aligning medical education & scientific initiatives w Scientific Communication Platform in the pharmaceutical industry & 3 years in each of (i) through (iii). Work experience may be gained concurrently. Any suitable combination of education, training, or experience is acceptable. 100% Telecommuting permitted. Apply online at https://careers.abbvie. com/en or send resume to Job.opportunity.abbvie@ abbvie.com and reference REF40496D. Salary Range: $228,757.85]$296,500.00 per year
Bounteous Inc. Perform IT project scoping, reqts. gathering & timeline creation & maintenance. Reqd.-Master’s degree in IT or Comp Sci or for. equiv. plus 2 yrs exp. as IT Proj. Mgr or Bus Anal. & 1 yr exp. w/Scrum Master, SQL, XML, & Power BI. US travel up to 4 wks/ time &/or relo to various
US sites. Std. emp. benfs. Sal. $168002. Qualif. applic. resume to talent@ bounteous.com, Ref. Job Title & Job #B025.
We are seeking for a loyal and experienced Driver for my Elderly Parents
We are seeking for a loyal and experienced Driver for my Elderly Parents on a parttime basis (Mondays & Fridays) weekly pay $437 must Have a valid state-issued driver’s license Must be professional, safe and patient at all time email: l64194814@gmail. com 7739049407
Legal & General Investment Management America
Address: 71 S Wacker Dr, Suite 800, Chicago IL 60606 Head of US Equity & FX Trading sought by Legal & General Investment Management America in Chicago, IL to lead strategic planning, owning, and implementing Global Trading Team’s Equity, Foreign Exchange, Listed Derivative (Equity/Foreign Exchange) & Commodity trading strategy in the Americas. Position requires a US Master’s degree, or foreign equivalent, in International Business, Business Administration or related field and five (5) years of experience applying algorithmic trading for Equities, Foreign Exchange, Listed Derivatives & Commodities; trading for index funds as well as understanding methodology around index fund composition; trading OTC (Over The Counter) Derivatives for Equities, Foreign Exchange, Listed Derivatives & Commodities, with emphasis on specifically Total Return Swaps (TRS) and Options; analyzing International Equity Capital Markets deal structures and applying deal structures to specific investment profile of a company’s funds; analyzing and interpreting large trading data sets using Tableau, Microsoft Excel and utilizing the data to develop an optimal trading strategy for Equities, Foreign Exchange, Listed Derivatives & Commodities; working and communicating with a global team including fund managers across difference time zones on Equities, Foreign Exchange, Listed Derivatives & Commodities; maintaining and growing relationships with international syndicate desks at major banks; trading for US and non-US fund structures including
UK Pooled Funds, UCITS Compliant Funds, Segregated Mandated and Unit Trust Funds. Specific Tools: Order Management System (OMS), Execution Management System (EMS), Charles River, factSet Portware, FXAll, Tradeweb, Tableau, Microsoft Excel, and Bloomberg. Any suitable combination of education, training or experience is acceptable. Telecommuting allowed two (2) days per week. Salary range: $181,000 - $210,000. The starting salary offer will vary based on multiple factors, including but not limited to the applicant’s education, job-related experience, skills, and abilities, geographic location, and market factors. This position is also eligible to participate in the company’s annual discretionary bonus plan. Full time employees may be eligible for health insurance with an optional HSA, short term disability, long term disability, dental insurance, vision care, life insurance, Healthcare, Dependent and Limited Care Flexible Spending Accounts, 401K, vacation, sick time, an employee assistance program, and commuter and transit programs. Additional voluntary programs include: supplemental health benefits including accidental injury, critical illness and hospital indemnity insurance and pet insurance. Send resumes to katie. edeus@lgima.com.
Geoscience Specialist: Using LiDAR & Photogrammetry, perform various height, surface survey analysis. Conduct geological & geophysical field studies or surveys, sample collection, or drilling & testing programs used to collect data. Analyze & interpret geological, geotechnical, or geophysical info from sources such as survey data, well logs, bore holes, or aerial photos. Utilize trigonometry, coordinate geometry, & mapping standards to eval/feed data into GIS. Generate maps by measuring survey points, drawing AutoCAD sheets, & export to ArcGIS. Min Reqmnts: Mstr’s deg in Geoscience, Geosensing Engrg, reltd degr or Equiv Foreign Degr + 2 yrs of exp in the position offered or as a Geospacial Engineer, Geographical Information Science Engineer or Site Engineer. Exp must incl. Generating final maps by measuring survey points, deploying GNSS device, drawing AutoCAD sheets, & finally exporting to ArcMap, ArcGIS Pro. $81,328/yr. Med, Dental, Vision, PTO & more. Send resume to: GSG Consultants, Inc., 735 Remington Rd., Schaumburg, IL 60173, Attn: Ala E. Sassila.
MENTAL HEALTH
PROFESSIONAL
Pilsen Wellness Center is seeking a Mental Health Professional. Duties: Support patients and psychotherapists in the implementation and continued adherence to each patient’s treatment plan. Wage: $53,498.00 / year. Employment Site: 2319 S. Damen Ave, Chicago IL U.S. 60608. Resumes/ Interested Applicants: Email vlinares@ pilsenmh.org.
Northwestern Memorial HealthCare seeks Medical Laboratory Scientist (multiple positions) in Chicago, IL to perform test procedures in clinical laboratory & convey results to physician or designee in accurate & timely manner for the purpose of patient diagnosis & treatment. BS in Medical Tech or Lab Sci, Clinical Lab Sci, Chemistry, Biology, or Allied Health, qualifying applicant for req’d ASCP cert exam. ASCP MLS/ MT req’d (ASCPi also accepted). Drug test & background check req’d. Must be willing & able to work a specified shift. Base salary: $59,997.81$83,996.93/year. For position details & to apply, visit: https://jobs.nm.org ; ref. job ID#: REF80009T
Process Leader & Decision Metrics needed EXACT Sport, Chicago, IL: Perfm Metr & Data Anlys - implmnt KPIs that align w/bus objctv. Guide cret., updt, & mntn of comprhns doc of BAU. Lead & mng cont imprvmt proj aimed at optimz proc, red costs, & incrs overall oper effic. Col w/leadrshp to prov data-drvn insgt & recmnd inf strtgc plan & bus decs. Work w/fin team to prov fin rep, ensur align w/co goals. Req 2 yrs exp. in bus mngmnt; F/T, mail resume to 140 S Dearborn St, Ste 310, Chicago, Illinois, 60603.
Senior Creative Services Lead (Chicago, IL) Aero Payments, Inc. - lead development of web strategies supporting brand identity. Reqs: Bachelor’s in Web Design, Graphic Design, Digital Media, or related field & 2 yrs exp in Web development, digital design, brand management, brand identity development, UX/UI design & product development. $111,779/ yr. Send resume to 121 West Wacker Dr., Ste 1250, Chicago, IL 60601
Senior Engineer, Technology II - BI & Analytics (Operations), AbbVie, Inc., North Chicago, IL. Conceive,
design, engineer, & implement software & technology solutions by studying information needs; conferring with users; studying systems flow, data usage, & work processes; investigating problem areas; Demonstrate the ability to resolve key project hurdles and assumptions by effectively utilizing available information & technical expertise. Demonstrate high proficiency across a wide range of technologies & platforms related to software design & development, programming languages, data integration, data warehousing, data analysis & visualization tools, data storage, network connectivity, & virtualization/ cloud environments. Demonstrate knowledge of the pharmaceutical & healthcare business, & utilize this knowledge in the rapid advancement of agile, impactful, & cost-effective solutions. Highly autonomous & productive in performing activities, requiring only minimal direction from or interaction with supervisor. Matures & leverages relationships with affiliates, subsidiaries, vendors, & industry peers. Must have a Bachelors in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Data Science or related area of study and 5 years of work experience designing, developing, & implementing analytical software solutions. Of work experience, must have 2 years in each of the following: (i) developing business intelligence solutions leveraging Qlik & Power BI platforms; (ii) developing data products including the following components: ETL logic (Informatica), Data Models & SQL queries leveraging the AWS Redshift platform; & (iii) managing BI & Analytics projects including resource allocation (onsite & offshore), financial budget, project timelines, SLC deliverables, & business relationship management. & must have 1 year in each of the following: (i) developing advanced analytical solutions leveraging Python & R; (ii) defining standards for BI reporting & ETL development; & (iii) solving pharmaceutical operational business problems. Experience may be gained concurrently. Salary Range: $153,382.45 - $197,000.00 per year. Apply online at https:// careers.abbvie.com/en or send resume to Job. opportunity.abbvie@ abbvie.com. Refer to Req ID: REF40506R.
skills to analyze clinical, survey, claims & electronic medical record databases. Serve as the point of contact for the assigned therapeutical area (TA) or product/ indications to manage analytical activities on multiple assigned projects/ studies focusing on RWE analyses from large databases (e.g., medical claims, EMR/ EHR, registries) across various therapeutic areas. Responsible for analytical components of reports describing studies, outcomes, & method used & provide specifications to the HEOR researchers. Support clinical trial PRO (patient-reported outcome) endpoint strategies by executing statistical analysis plans & providing consultations to design needed. Interact with HEOR TA scientists & other relevant stakeholders regarding studies design & execution & with other members of the RWE analytics team or other external stakeholders CRO’s to perform QC activities on their studies. Must possess a Master’s degree in Statistics, Health Economics & Outcome Research, Epidemiology, Health Service Research, or Analytics, or closely related field & 2 years of work experience in data analytics. Of experience required, must have 2 years’ experience analyzing data using & demonstrating deep competency with SAS and SAS SQL programming. Of experience required, must have 6 months experience: (i) performing data management/analysis using clinical trial data; (ii) designing and conducting real-world observational study analysis (claims, surveys, & EMR analyses) & disseminating the results; (iii) conducting RWE analysis by using Instant Health Data (IHD) system; & (iv) analyzing real-world data to generate RWE with at least 2 of the following databases (MarketScan, OPTUM, OM1, Symphony, & JMDC). In a work or academic setting, must have performed 2 projects utilizing advanced statistical modeling. Work experience may be gained concurrently. Apply online at https://careers. abbvie.com/en or send resume to Job.opportunity. abbvie@abbvie.com & reference REF40502F. Salary Range: $121,000.00 - $230,000.00 per year
Application Developer(s) RedMane Technology LLC seeks Application Developer(s) in Chicago, IL to perform analysis, design, and development for RedMane no code / low code, highly configurable SaaS product. Rate of pay $106,558 per year. Telecommuting permitted. Email CV to yourcareer@redmane. com; reference job code D7038-00140. E.O.E.
Infrastructure Svc Eng
Sr Adv. Elevance Health, Inc. Chicago, IL. Integrate container platform w enterprise core svcs. BS: CS, IT, Engg, Data Sci or rel. 8 yrs exp. Alt Reqs: MS & 6 yrs exp. Other exp reqd. Pay: $160,001$161,001/yr. Apply: https:// careers.elevancehealth. com/ Job Ref: JR152881
Les Enluminures, Ltd is seeking Art Director to review and approve art materials developed by staff members, Cataloguing of manuscript and miniature, etc. Position requires a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts or related, must have knowledge of Manuscripts etc. Any interested applicants can mail their resume with code LE25 to: Les Enluminures, Ltd. 980 N Michigan Ave, Suite 1330, Chicago, IL 60611.
Lycee Francais de Chicago seeks Primary School Teacher (Multiple Openings) in Chicago, IL: Teach primary school students in a rigorous bilingual French and English program. Reqs. bachelor’s in education, early childhood education, or rltd & 2-yrs exp. teaching at primary or elementary school (K-6). Must speak, read & write French fluently at native or near-native level. For pay, benefits & apply online visit https://www. lyceechicago.org/careers
Senior Software Engineers, Schaumburg, IL: Plan, design and develop technical solutions and alternatives to meet business requirements in adherence with standards, processes and best practices. Lead day to day system development and maintenance activities of the team to meet service level agreements (SLAs) and create solutions with high level of innovation, cost effectiveness, high quality and faster time to market. Travel/reloc to various unantic U.S. locs. Standard Company Benefits apply. Salary $148,949 - $150,000/ yr. Send res to: Rigelsky, Inc at info@rigelsky.com
Software Developer(s) RedMane Technology LLC seeks Software Developer(s) in Chicago, IL to participate in designing, developing, testing, maintaining and delivering customized missioncritical solutions to clients. Hybrid work schedule. Rate of pay $85363$94000 per year. Email CV to yourcareer@redmane. com; reference job code D7038-00144. E.O.E.
Software Developers, Schaumburg, IL: Develop, Test and Maintain COBOLDB2 and COBOL- IMS batch applications. Develop JCLs and Procs for executing COBOL programs and DB2 / IMS stored procedures. Build/ Modify REXX programs and sub routines as per project requirements. Travel/reloc to various unantic U.S. locs. Standard Company Benefits apply. Salary: $148,949 - $150,000/ yr. Send res to: Rigelsky, Inc at info@rigelsky.com
Software Developers, Schaumburg, IL: Develop the proof of concepts, contributes to the documentation as biweekly sprint cycles of Agile Scrum methodology workflow through grooming and Involved in sprint planning meetings which demonstrates to the business. Analyzing business requirements with the existing system and business models like User Interfaces, Production Issues, blockers, and risks and later resolving and developing them using tool PEGA PRPC rules. Travel/reloc to various unantic U.S. locs. Standard Company Benefits apply. Salary: $148,949 - $150,000/ yr. Send res to: Rigelsky, Inc at info@rigelsky.com
WebSphere Application Support Engineer(s) RedMane Technology LLC seeks WebSphere Application Support Engineer(s) in Chicago, IL to play key role in deploying, configuring, maintaining, supporting, upgrading and patching software components and
cloud services. Hybrid work schedule. Rate of pay $113,901 to $148,000 per year. Email CV to yourcareer@redmane. com; reference job code D7038-00141. E.O.E.
Zensar Technologies Inc. seeks Assoc. VP-Sales. Req.: Bach. or equiv. in Comp. Sci., Comp. Eng., Info. Sys., Bus. Admin., or related & 7 yrs’ progressive exp. in job offered, technical sales, bus. dev., or related. Alternatively, will accept a Master’s or equiv. & 5 yrs.’ in stated fields & occups. Also, all must possess exp. managing global sales accts. Positions based out of Chicago IL HQ & subj. to reloc to various unanticipated locations in the US. Rate of Pay: $199,597/yr.
Benefits offered: medical, dental, vision, HSA, FSA, STD, LTD, Life & voluntary supplemental insurance, EAP, 401(k), PTO, discounts & commuter benefits. Qualified applicants submit resume to gmus greencard@zensar.com or HR Manager, Zensar Technologies, Inc., 55 W. Monroe St, Ste 1200, Chicago, IL 60603.
Exelon Business Services Company LLC seeks Senior Software Engineer in Oakbrook Terrace, IL to dsgn, build, test, implmnt, & maintain IT solutions by eval. tech. standards, mrkt avail. of products, & risks & benefits of selected tech., incl. dvlpmnt of apps, web, mobile app, full stack or integrations hosted on premises, data centers, or in the cloud; serve as admin. for Informatica & Apigee platforms; wrk collab. to ensure compliance w/ apps. project reqs; dvlp & improve new & existing features of IT products; write product specs. & dsgn doc. for assigned sys. components; use error reports to est. priorities & assign out bugs for resolution; supp. dvlpmnt of version control principles, Cl/CD pipeline, & various automations; dsgn, dvlp, & rev. complex code to ensure functional reqs & technical specs. are
met. Reqs U.S. or foreign equiv. bach.’s deg. in Comp. Sci. & Engr., Comp. Info. Sci., Info. Tech., or rel., + 5 yrs progressive exp. in database admin. &/ or softw. Engr. translating bus. reqs into sys. specs. to dvlp install. procedures, coord. build & dplymnt activities w/ softw. dvlpmnt & QA teams; providing supp. for production, testing & dvlpmnt environments; improving app. & Informatica platform perf.; & anlyzng database queries & table structures to resolve perf. iss. Salary range from $148,949 to $154,800. Telecomm. 2 days/ wk from w/in normal commuting distance of Oakbrook Terrace, IL is perm. Reply by email with resume to jobposting@ exeloncorp.com.
SERVICES
CHESTNUT
ORGANIZING AND CLEANING SERVICES: especially for people who need an organizing service because of depression, elderly, physical or mental challenges or other causes for your home’s clutter, disorganization, dysfunction, etc. We can organize for the downsizing of your current possessions to more easily move into a smaller home. With your help, we can help to organize your move. We can organize and clean for the deceased in lieu of having the bereaved needing to do the preparation to sell or rent the deceased’s home. We are absolutely not judgmental; we’ve seen and done “worse” than your job assignment. With your help, can we please help you? Chestnut Cleaning Service: 312-332-5575. www.ChestnutCleaning. com www. ChestnutCleaning.com
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UPCOMING SHOWS
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JUNE 24 & 25
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WITH KORELESS AND DJ SPEEDSICK
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JUNE 20 JACK’S MANNEQUIN
FAIRGROUNDS WITH THE EARLY NOVEMBER
JUNE 21 CHASE RICE
THE SHED WITH TYLER HALVERSON
JUNE 23 JAMES BLUNT
THE SHED WITH FOREST BLAKK
JUNE 26 TREATY OAK REVIVAL
FAIRGROUNDS WITH THE WYATT WEAVER BAND
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JUNE 28 & 29 MOTOBLOT
JULY 3 WORLD’S LARGEST KARAOKE
FAIRGROUNDS
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