Chicago Reader print issue of May 1, 2025 (Vol. 55, No. 30)
SKATE MEETUP by Kirk Wi iamson and Sava ah Hugueley, page 6
PUBLIC ART IN TRUMP TIMES by Jonah Nink, page 13
ZEN AND THE ART OF POWERLIFTING by Mi o Cap ale, page 8
GARFIELD PARK
FRONT
03 Editor’s Note | Hugueley Recreation for all
04 The To-Do Free Comic Book Day and a list of stores
& DRINK
05 Reader Bites | Sula Kimchi-roasted Bar Harbor mussels at Community Tavern
SPORTS & REC
06 Essay | Caporale Zen and the art of powerli ing
08 Cover Story | Williamson & Hugueley Garfield Park hosts skate meetups.
11 Essay Learning to swim as an adult is both humbling and exhilarating.
12 The To-Do (sports edition) Free and low-cost workouts
13 Feature The uncertain future of Chicago’s public art
14 Cra Work | Hugueley Crossbar’s Maciej Herda upcycles off-the-wall soccer jerseys.
NEWS & POLITICS
15 Make It Make Sense City Council considers expanded curfew, tactical officers suspended over traffic stops, and more
THEATER
16 Plays of Note Bust at the Goodman explores the transformative power of rage; Redtwist’s Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus is a bloody (good) clown show; A Tale of Two Cities at Shattered Globe finds fresh relevance in Dickens’s epic.
FILM
18 Moviegoer So random
19 Movies of Note Bonjour Tristesse is an intellectual exercise rather than a moving piece of cinema, and The Accountant 2 is a mishmash of tropes that leans more on action than character.
MUSIC
a jersey collaboration with Li a Club
PUBLISHER AMBER NETTLES
CHIEF OF STAFF ELLEN KAULIG
EDITOR IN CHIEF SALEM COLLO-JULIN
ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR
SAVANNAH RAY HUGUELEY
PRODUCTION MANAGER AND STAFF
PHOTOGRAPHER KIRK WILLIAMSON
SENIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNER AMBER HUFF
GRAPHIC DESIGNER AND PHOTO RESEARCHER SHIRA
FRIEDMAN-PARKS
THEATER AND DANCE EDITOR KERRY REID
MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO
CULTURE EDITOR: FILM, MEDIA, FOOD AND DRINK TARYN MCFADDEN
SENIOR WRITERS LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, MIKE SULA
FEATURES WRITER KATIE PROUT
SOCIAL JUSTICE REPORTER DEVYN-MARSHALL BROWN (DMB)
STAFF WRITER MICCO CAPORALE
MULTIMEDIA CONTENT PRODUCER SHAWNEE DAY
SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT
ASSOCIATE CHARLI RENKEN
VICE PRESIDENT OF PEOPLE AND CULTURE ALIA GRAHAM
DEVELOPMENT MANAGER JOEY MANDEVILLE
DATA ASSOCIATE TATIANA PEREZ
MARKETING ASSOCIATE MAJA STACHNIK
MARKETING ASSOCIATE MICHAEL THOMPSON
VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES AMY MATHENY
SALES REPRESENTATIVE WILL ROGERS
SALES REPRESENTATIVE KELLY BRAUN
MEDIA SALES ASSOCIATE JILLIAN MUELLER
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READER INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITY
20 Chicagoans of Note | Brown Brok Mende, chief engineer at Friends of Friends Recording
22 Secret History of Chicago Music Local heroes Hot Mama Silver might’ve gotten too out-there for rock stardom.
24 Shows of Note Previews of concerts including Hell No! Songs of Protest and Resistance, Obituary, and Mereba
27 Jobs
27 Announcements
27 Matches
ON THE COVER
At the Garfi eld Park Skate Meetup on Thursday, April 17, Patty Key is posted up in the middle of the gym fl oor, dance-skating in sleek black suede skates with deep purple accents. “I love the vibes and love supporting the community,” Key says. A er 25 years away from skating, she came to a Garfi eld Park meetup a year and a half ago and hasn’t stopped skating since. “[These skate meetups are] part of my personal history of coming back to roller skating.”
JOURNALISM, INC.
CHAIRPERSON EILEEN RHODES
TREASURER TIMO MARTINEZ
SECRETARY TORRENCE GARDNER
DIRECTORS MONIQUE BRINKMAN-HILL, JULIETTE BUFORD, DANIEL DEVER, MATT DOUBLEDAY, JAKE MIKVA, ROBERT REITER, MARILYNN RUBIO, CHRISTINA CRAWFORD STEED
READER (ISSN 1096-6919) IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY THE READER INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITY JOURNALISM 2930 S. MICHIGAN, SUITE 102 CHICAGO, IL 60616, 312-3922934, CHICAGOREADER.COM
Clockwise from top le : Audio engineer Brok Mende MOUNA TAHAR ; powerli ing SHIRA FRIEDMAN-PARKS ; (L-R) Cameron Austin Brown, William Delforge, and Hannah Rhode in Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus at Redtwist Theatre TOM MCGRATH/TCMCGPHOTOGRAPHY;
MACIEJ HERDA P.
I’ve never been very good at soccer, but I love it. In the summers, and even sometimes on snowy winter days, I play weekly with a queer and trans soccer club. The group formed about two years ago with the central tenets of being safe, fun, and free. The title of Sai Selvarajan’s short documentary about Swish—Chicago’s first QTBIPOC-centered basketball group, which inspired our soccer club—captures their, and our, central conceit perfectly: We Clap for Airballs. New and seasoned players alike, anywhere from 20 to 50 years old, come together to just play, regardless of the outcome.
Athletics tend to have a competitive, costly, and high-barrier-to-entry track, but most, like soccer or streetball, have always been for everyone—played in alleys or on corners of parks with makeshift trash can goals. Strangers play together and get quickly comfortable, shouting names they just learned and shaking out the day’s stresses. From Davis Square to Chase Park, a few new people always join or watch us play, cheering at goals and passing the ball back when it goes out of bounds.
Considering our approach to this issue, the Reader editorial team wanted to explore sports and recreation free from profit and prestige, the movement and connection that makes us relax, focus, and clear our minds.
As we anticipate the summer, Paul D’Amato’s photo series “Water for the People” comes to mind; it captures the free pleasures of life (difficult now at a time when, as my friend says, you spend $20 every time you step outside). Shot partially in Chicago’s often oppressive summer heat, mostly in Pilsen and Lawndale, the series captures the communal joy and
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relief of cooling off in water. While green space and even shade remain inequitably distributed, sometimes water is one of the only solaces from the heat for working-class people.
So, as we discussed this topic, our writers and editors became naturally fixated on the spaces we move, exist, and live in, and the ways access to them—particularly parks—is restricted, policed, and politicized. Curfews on teens have been put in place, rims and nets have been removed from basketball courts, Riot Fest will continue to be in Douglass Park despite community concerns, and people are being actively pushed out of their homes in Gompers Park. People will find places to play or cool down anywhere, but blacktops
and rims, pitches and nets, pools and tracks, all of it should not just be available to adults and pay-to-play groups—they’re for the people. v
—Savannah Ray Hugueley, assistant managing editor m shugueley@chicagoreader.com
CORRECTIONS
The Reader has updated the online version of the article “Nowhere to go,” written by Devyn-Marshall Brown and first published as our cover story for the April 24 issue.
The story has been updated to reflect that Illinois state senator Kimberly Lightford’s of-
fice told the Reader Illinois currently spends $9.3 million on the Intensive Community Reintegration Program. The previous version of the story incorrectly attributed that statement to the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC).
Additionally, after publication IDOC spokesperson Naomi Puzzello claimed that the amount budgeted for housing placement in the 2025 fiscal year is $5,010,875.
The Reader has also updated the online version of Brown’s music feature “Pictoria Vark starts a new chapter with an album about endings,” which appeared in our April 10 print issue. This story has been corrected to say that Park’s aunt, not her mother, studied piano at Juilliard (though both were pianists). v
Paul D’Amato, K-Town, Chicago, 2011 PAUL D’AMATO/COURTESY STEPHEN DAITER GALLERY
CITY LIFE
The To-Do
Places to find the funny pages
By SALEM COLLO-JULIN
Saturday, May 3, 2025, is Free Comic Book Day! It’s the 23rd annual celebration of independent comic book stores, and local retailers are participating with events (and some plan to give away free issues of select calendar
comic books).
The official website of national organizers (freecomicbookday.com) lists out a slate of special titles—some made specifically for the occasion—that distributors will make available for free. In recent years, the big guys like Marvel have used this as a way to o er a tease; this year’s model is Amazing Spider-Man/Ultimate Universe #1, which is billed as a prequel story to Ultimate Spider-Man: Incursion, a series due to debut in May which features the Miles Morales character donning the webbed mask.
Participating stores are welcome to make their own rules, so check individual vendors to see if they’ll have the titles you’re looking for.
Many stores are planning special appearances by local illustrators and writers, including Challengers on Western, which will host local creator Dave Scheidt (Mayor Good Boy, Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures), and First Aid in Hyde Park, which will be visited by graphic novelist Kevin Krull (Timewise).
Some of the following stores will be open, but not necessarily participating in the o cial Free Comic Book Day proceedings, so be sure to call ahead or check out the stores’ websites to see what they are planning.
First Aid Comics Hyde Park 1617 E. 55th Street 773-752-6642
fi rstaidcomics.com
First Aid Comics Taylor
1142 W. Taylor 312-733-2080
fi rstaidcomicstaylor.com
Graham Crackers Comics
Eleven Illinois locations, including three in Chicago Loop: 77 E. Madison 312-629-1810
Andersonville: 5028 N. Clark 773-561-5010
Lakeview: 3120 N. She eld, Unit C-1 773-665-2010 grahamcrackers.com
Quimby’s 1854 W. North 773-342-0910 quimbys.com
Challengers Comics & Conversation
1845 N. Western 773-278-0155 challengerscomics.com
Chicago Comics 3244 N. Clark 773-528-1983 chicagocomics.com
Dark Tower Comics
Three Illinois locations, including two in Chicago Lincoln Square: 4835 N. Western 773-654-1490
Logan Square: 2641 N. Kedzie 773-384-0400 darktowercomics.com
Note: Dark Tower’s Logan Square location used to be G-Mart Comics. G-Mart shifted to an online-only model in 2023 and transferred ownership of the store to Dark Tower. You can still shop G-Mart at their website (g-mart.com).
Alternate Reality
3149 W. 111th 773-881-4376 myalternatereality.com
Goblin Market 2868 N. Lincoln 872-262-6601 goblinmkt.com
AlleyCat Comics
5304 N. Clark, rear 773-907-3404 alleycatcomics.com
Third Coast Comics 6443 N. Sheridan 847-863-7450 thirdcoastcomics.com
Raw Comics 2512 W. 47th Street 773-823-1760 raw-comics.square.site
Zombie Unicorn Comics 3417 W. Peterson 773-754-7388 zombieunicorncomics.com
Howling Pages 4354 N. Milwaukee howlingpages.com
Maximum Distractions 4405 N. Milwaukee 773-454-7140 facebook.com/maximumdistractions
Manga Spot Chicago
The Shops at North Bridge 520 N. Michigan, Suite 222 312-285-2499 instagram.com/mangaspotchicago v m scollojulin@chicagoreader.com
POETRY CORNER
FOOD & DRINK
Kimchi-roasted Bar Harbor mussels at Community Tavern
Not for nothing is the term “pulling mussels” Cockney slang for doing it, or more specifically, the act of digital pleasuring.*
Shellfish are considered aphrodisiacs due in part to their high levels of D-aspartic and N-methyl-D-aspartate acids, aminos that send testosterone and estrogen flooding from their respective glands and into the libidinal transmission.
So you’d be forgiven if your mind wanders over a bowl of bivalves at this ten-year-old Portage Park spot, which transformed over time from a vaguely Asian steakhouse to a fully pan-Asian neighborhood standby, o ering something for everyone.
cilantro and a jolt of lime juice, the bivalves have a robust, oceanic flavor that can hold their own against this powerful potion.
After you’ve bolted each one down, hot and dripping, with the greed of a starving sea otter, you’ll be tempted to soak up the remains of the aquatic brew with the grilled sourdough slices they arrived with.
But get a grip on yourself. You’re probably second-coursing Community’s superb double cheeseburger and thinking about that personal Baked Alaska to finish anyway. So save some room. Besides, you have a latenight hookup scheduled with that broth. Take it home. In the darkness, as you dream of mermaids, mermen, or merthem, you’ll suddenly bolt upright in your billet and rush to the kitchen. Transfer that broth from deli cup to saucepan, bring it to a boil, and drop in a raw brick of instant ramen. Don’t bother with a bowl. Chopstick those slick tangles straight up through your slurping lips, and chase them with the remaining broth.
“Filter
For us”
I became an adult
When I bought a brita filter
Filled to the brim with purified water
And bougie
Free of sediment and grime
Clear
Transparent
Free of stain or blemish
Clean
Clean and crisp like ones
Never felt more like grown
Never felt more like clean
Except my body hates me
I think we miss the park district
The concrete fountain
That never stopped flowing
And ranneth over
Much like my spirit at 9
Among the dan dan noodles, dry-aged duck fried rice, and short rib dumplings, Chef Joey Beato pulses a seductive seasoning paste for the house kimchi, with onions and garlic, lemongrass, ginger, fish sauce, rice wine, and chili flakes.
But the mix leads a double life when he tosses it with plump Bar Harbor mussels (alive, alive, oh!) in a ripping-hot cast-iron skillet, along with chicken stock, kimchi juice, and the mollusks’ liquor, then mounts the sauce with a knob of cold butter for a glossy richness. Finished in the bowl with
Slowly, the fire in your belly moves south. I hope you have someone to pull mussels with. —MIKE SULA COMMUNITY TAVERN 4038 N. Milwaukee, $20, 773-283-6080, communitytavern.com v
*(h/t Chris Di ord)
Reader Bites celebrates dishes, drinks, and atmospheres from the Chicagoland food scene. Have you had a recent food or drink experience that you can’t stop thinking about? Share it with us at fooddrink@ chicagoreader.com.
MONDAY NIGHT
FOODBALL
Head to chicagoreader.com/foodball for weekly menus and ordering info!
By The Third
Tasted like concrete and metal
I think we miss ‘concretal’
Water not so clear
Water SO not clear
We didn’t even call it water
Between games we just said
“I’ll be right back”
Ran as fast as possible to the edge of the park
Buried our faces so deep into the concrete we almost touched the little metal ball in the middle
Thirsty enough to move the Dorito bag out of the way of the spout
Allowed city water to invade our ways
Made us stronger
Made us weird
Made us invincible
Cuz once you’ve had park district water
What’s a little sickness
This poem is not about water.
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
Opening Hours
Wednesday, Friday, Saturday: 11:00 AM–5:00 PM
Thursday: 11:00 AM–6:00 PM
Antigone Reimagined
Danielle Davis and Cage Sebastian Pierre present their original mixtape as chorus poets, Songs from the Poets, followed by a talkback with Antigone director
Gabrielle Randle-Bent. May 8, 2025 at 6:00 PM
Learn more at PoetryFoundation.org
weekly series curated by the Chicago Reader and sponsored by the Poetry Foundation.
SPORTS & Rec
Zen and the art of powerlifting
A reflection on finding the strength to make peace with my body and spirit
By MICCO CAPORALE
My body has never felt like a safe place to inhabit. It doesn’t match my gender. People often think I have the wrong emotional reactions or that my feelings exist in the incorrect amounts. Certain sounds, smells, or textures overwhelm my senses, and any time the thermometer climbs higher than 80 degrees, it feels like lava is pooling in my stomach and my flesh is burning from the inside out. Growing up, my body was the subject of physical and sexual violence, so I’ve mastered the art of dissociation. It wasn’t until I began powerlifting that I learned how to tether my mind to my skin. Now, every time I pick up a barbell, I experience my body as a temple.
When I first started lifting at 30, all I knew was that I wanted to get stronger. I didn’t know what powerlifting was or how it’s distinguished from sports like weight lifting or bodybuilding. Powerlifting focuses on moving the absolute most weight possible in three categories: squatting, benching, and deadlifting. Weight lifting—sometimes called Olympic weight lifting—has the same goal but with more complicated movements called the snatch and the clean and jerk, while bodybuilding uses strength training to sculpt the body. Though this was all foreign to me, I wasn’t a stranger to exercise; by 23, I’d landed in eating disorder recovery and had probably spent more time on treadmills than on dates. I knew a lot about losing weight but absolutely nothing about building muscle or even enjoying exercise, and that continued well after I learned to enjoy eating. Then I saw GLOW in 2017.
GLOW is a fictional Netflix series about an early 80s women’s wrestling league. The show stars Betty Gilpin and Alison Brie; during interviews, both actors described how training for the show empowered them and trans-
formed their relationships with their bodies.
For the first time in their careers, how their bodies looked mattered less than how they performed—and the actors were constantly amazed to learn their own capabilities. I wanted to know that wonder and confidence. On Instagram, I’d catch glimpses of Brie training. Her pull-ups stuck out to me the most: long sets of pull-ups, one-armed pull-ups, pull-ups with a medicine ball in her lap. . . . How does one even learn to do a pull-up?
When I entered the weight room for the first time, that was my only desire: learning to do exactly one pull-up. It seemed like a very basic feat of strength and also totally ba ing. There are a lot more online resources for getting to your first pull-up now than when I committed to this in 2017, but goddamnit, I was going to figure it out. Also, maybe I could get some visible muscles along the way? That seemed like something that came with strength, but I wasn’t sure.
Looking back, those early days feel almost like a hazy dream or a memory of someone
else. I had absolutely zero idea what I was doing and made so many “mistakes” that are completely unthinkable now—incorrect movements, unsupportive eating habits, and workouts plucked from random websites that were completely misaligned with my goals. But I gained so much wisdom by working through that chaos. When people, especially women or those assigned female at birth, tell me they’re interested in getting stronger but don’t know where to start, the biggest thing that comes up is fear. They’re afraid of doing it “wrong” and being judged for it. Or worse, what if they train so wrong that they injure themselves? The first lesson I learned in the weight room was how to tune out others and trust myself.
I consider myself a self-taught lifter. In all my years of working out, I’ve only met with a trainer twice, yet I can safely lift a barbell twice my bodyweight. It’s become second nature to plant my feet shoulder width apart, tuck them under the bar so it hovers above my midfoot, hinge at the hip so my shoulders fall
just slightly ahead of the bar, then grip it while squeezing my lats so tight it’s like I’m trying to juice oranges hidden in my armpits. As I iron out my spine, my mind scans my body for the vaguest hint of pain or discomfort—it’s like running a flashlight over my insides looking for risk. Are we feeling OK? Does everything feel placed in the right spot? Are we grounded and centered? Does it feel alright there? How about here? Take a deep inhale into the stomach, hold it so the torso gets rigid, thrust the hips forward while grinding the feet into the floor, and pull. I didn’t even know the term “dead lift” when I started. Before my curiosity got that far, I had to learn to sit with the discomfort of being perceived (spoiler: most people don’t notice what you’re doing at the gym because they are too focused on themselves) while assessing what “OK” feels like. Having a body and not understanding how to make it stronger is strange—it’s like having a car but no idea how to repair or alter it. Yes, you can pay other people to achieve certain results. Also? You
can do it yourself. The latter approach promises its fair share of mistakes and setbacks, but for me, the losses have been as rewarding as the wins.
Strength training is about mastering the mind–muscle connection, and that starts by practicing elegantly simple, low-stakes movements—a bicep curl or a lunge, perhaps. How does an exercise feel physically? And emotionally? What does “too easy” feel like? What does it feel like to be challenged in a safe way? How can you sense when a weight or movement is dangerous? Are there steps you can take to avoid that? Our bodies are tremendously wise and generous with feedback. If you practice slowing down and tuning inward, yours will tell you a lot about what it’s capable of right now and what’s too soon. Lifting with your ego—a hunger for pride or accomplishment that can make you try to dominate your muscles with your mind—is what leads to injury. And guess what? An injury will make your goals take longer to achieve than going slowly and simply rehearsing how to connect with your body.
It wasn’t until I began powerlifting that I learned how to tether my mind to my skin.
into developing them, or I’ve had an aptitude that’s made me lazy about refinement. Teaching myself something so far outside my comfort zone has been humbling—and proves a constant reminder that good things only become great with time and consistency. Lifting is not about any one training session but the accumulation of work. Do you want to eat an entire pie? Start with a slice. How do you eat a slice? One bite at a time. Just show up and do it. Then do it again. Keep doing it. And eventually, you’ve done it. When I’m not lifting regularly, I forget this in every other area of my life, and quickly. It’s kind of shocking how fast it happens, though it’s getting slower. Without that recurring and tangible reminder, I can intellectualize that all change happens gradually, and patience is a virtue—but I struggle to feel and live it as truth.
enlightenment or God-realization, and some spiritual traditions include movement as preparation. The most widely known example is postural yoga. In the West, postural yoga is treated as part of a physical or mental health regimen, but it emerged as a way to prepare practitioners for meditation by grounding them in the mind–muscle connection. This is the beginning of deepening one’s awareness of God. Tai chi and qigong are other movement practices with similar histories. But if these things can become mere health regimens divorced from any spiritual significance, it seems other forms of movement could be imbued with spiritual meaning, too. Lifting heavy and hard is my favorite thing to do before meditating.
led me to some of those long-term benefits, and I look for opportunities to use my physical strength for others’ benefit, like volunteering for a free moving service that primarily helps people with lower incomes and disabilities. But I don’t need any of that to motivate me to continue. None of that will last.
When I got to my first pull-up, it felt amazing, but training for it taught me to appreciate the journey over the destination. I wouldn’t have learned to deadlift—now my favorite lift of all time—had I not first wondered about pull-ups. A few months before COVID hit, I cleared my biggest dead lift ever. It was a weight that felt unfathomably huge at the time, and I was obsessed with telling people about it and even showing them a video, like I needed reassurance that my achievement was real because I still couldn’t believe it. Then lockdown happened.
By the time gyms reopened, I felt like I’d gone back to square one. Muscles have memory. In theory, consistent training and adequate rest and nutrition should’ve brought me back to deadlifting that weight in faster time, especially knowing what pitfalls to avoid, but training was a much lower priority for me in those early pandemic years. It took three years to regain my strength. In that time, my form and efficiency improved so much that when I finally hit that number again, it felt like a brand-new achievement. Surpassing it gave me an indescribable sense of accomplishment and fortitude.
I have many skills I take for granted, either because I can’t remember the work that went
Powerlifting has taught me a lot about mindfulness—practicing detachment, observing without judging, and showing up with more intention. I can feel how di erent foods impact my workouts and make choices accordingly without any urge to restrict. I’m better at protecting my time and energy so I can get to the gym. Plenty of sleep and very little alcohol make recovery way easier. At the same time, I’m not too rigid about any of it; I can provide myself a structured flexibility that long felt impossible. Learning what movements can shape my body in which ways—and eating to support that—has been useful for managing gender dysphoria, but establishing the ritual of showing up and reorienting my life to support that has been its own gift.
I wasn’t a spiritual person when I started powerlifting, but I’ve become one in recent years. It’s hard for me to see these things as unrelated. Western thought treats the mind and body as separate, but many Eastern traditions do the opposite. The Enlightenment era advanced this idea through Cartesian dualism (“I think, therefore I am”), but it was already present in Christianity via the duality of God and humanity or heaven and earth. In a nondualist perspective—which is at the heart of Zen and many other Eastern spiritualities—the body and spirit are one and the same. Enlightenment is a spiritual awareness of the nature of reality (that everything is one) and can be part of the path to God-realization.
Meditation is a key part of working toward
No spiritual practice can be sustained through the body alone. Bodies are fleeting, and even the most well-maintained ones will decay and eventually die. A lot of Western arguments for exercise rely on living for a future self—maybe a version of you who’s slimmer or has lower blood pressure—when today is all we have. Taking it day by day has
When I’m feeling too in my head or totally disconnected from my body or friends, or I’m not behaving mindfully in my day-to-day, nothing anchors me better than training. Every session feels like a fresh opportunity to thank the universe for the privilege of showing up not just to the gym but in life that day. In doing that, I cultivate more discipline and clarity while coming into a deeper awareness of myself and, by extension, God. I feel more whole and connected to something larger. There will come a time when I have to stop, as there have been times in the past. Eventually, that will be for good. Before I started lifting, I didn’t understand strength. Now that I do, I don’t need a barbell for mine to endure. v m
mcaporale@chicagoreader.com
SPORTS & Rec
Rolling toward community
A winter roller skating series brings generations together on the west side.
By KIRK WILLIAMSON & SAVANNAH RAY HUGUELEY
On Thursday, April 17, as glimpses of spring are just starting to appear, Garfield Park’s Gold Dome Building is filled with sounds of R&B guiding you down to the gym floor. There, you’re greeted by a room filled with skaters, young and old, some inching forward, some gliding, and some dance-skating to the music. This is the last indoor Garfield Park Skate Meetup of the winter season.
In its third winter, the monthly indoor roller skating pop-up series was started by HP Skate Meetup in partnership with the Garfield Park Advisory Council, the West Side Cultural Arts Council, and the Chicago Park District. Other organizations, like Youth Guidance, Breakthrough, and Garfield Park Community Council, have sponsored events this season.
HP (Humboldt Park) Skate Meetup started in August 2020 after founder Justine Ingram saw people skating from her window while working from home. She grew up going to the Rink on 87th, but she hadn’t skated much since she was nine or ten and wanted to pick it back up. “Getting back into skating just itself was very nostalgic.”
Ingram wanted to build a space where others could skate and find community during the pandemic lockdown, so she posted on Humboldt Park’s community Facebook group. From there, Ingram and others began regularly meeting around the neighborhood. She wanted to “create a space where people could decompress, that was open and accessible to everyone.”
Over time, Ingram and co-organizer Jessica Maldonado began doing bigger events and collaborating with creators, organizations, and skate instructors, like Lucid Laces, SkyART, and Somos Arte Chicago. In October 2022, the organizers planned a Halloween event, for which the group Freewheeling provided some free skates. The organizers expected a big turnout, so Ingram called the Chicago Park District, since Garfield Park had just unveiled their outdoor roller rink. Ingram got in touch with the park district’s director of programming and special events, Derrick Faulkner, who set them up with more skate rentals and added that if they ever wanted an indoor space, they could use the Gold Dome.
Ingram had been dreaming of hosting indoor skates for the winter months, so she started planning with the partner organizations and, in January 2023, launched the Garfield Park Skate Meetup. The event runs on the third Thursday of each month through the winter, at the Garfield Park gymnasium from 6–8 PM, and includes concessions, free skates, DJs curating the roller rink’s vibe, and often a group lesson.
“You’ll see people out who have been skating for years, maybe some people decades, and some people are putting on skates for the first time, so we wanted to kind of be this space that is welcome to everybody, regardless of experience,” says Ingram. v
m kwilliamson@chicagoreader.com m shugueley@chicagoreader.com
Two skaters zig-zag along the Garfi eld Park gymnasium fl oor. ALL PHOTOS BY KIRK WILLIAMSON
Le : Leonicia Berry and her daughter, Billie Berry-Burns, have been coming to all of the Garfi eld Park Skate Meetups this winter, learning how to skate together.
Above: Mike Kinzig hasn’t been on skates since he was a kid, but he learned about the roller skating pop-up through his kids’ school and decided to lace up.
DJ Teddybear, or Tim Teddybearmusiq Hall, is on the decks all night, playing high-energy songs that get everyone moving and dancing. Another regular DJ for HP Skate Meetup, DJ Cobra B (Sherell Barbee, not pictured), joined him earlier in the night.
Follow @hp_skate_meets on Instagram or join their Facebook group, HP Skate Meetup, for more events
SPORTS & Rec
Passion Jackson (center) arrives, lighting up the fl oor as she dances to Foxx and Lil Boosie’s “Wipe Me Down” in her knee-high skates. She quickly starts teaching the dance to others before beginning lessons for the whole crowd.
Passion has been skating since October 2020. “I saw a video on Instagram and was like, ‘That’s hot. I wanna do that,’” she says. “I was at a point in my life where I wanted to challenge myself to just do something different outside of my comfort zone, and I started skating. I fell in love with it, and I instantly knew it was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”
Passion also knew that her love was so strong that she needed to share it with others. “The way the community is, it’s like, each one, teach one. So I just always wanted to reciprocate the love that was shown to me. People always would help me, so it was natural for me to start returning that favor.”
She specializes in outdoor roller skating and is a professional dance-skater, and she started teaching kids how to skate about two years into her journey. “It kind of chose me, and I just stepped up to the plate, even though it was scary,” she says.
Passion has been a longtime collaborator with HP Skate Meetup and has taught at the Garfi eld Park Skate Meetup numerous times. “I feel like I was blessed with this gi , and I feel like it’s my purpose to just share that joy with everybody, so I really take pride in being able to do stuff like this. All the fancy gigs are cool, but stuff like this is priceless to me.”
A er lessons, people went on to skate and dance to the “Cha Cha Slide,” “Wobble,” and more.
Rachel Colias (le ) has been to the Garfi eld Park Skate Meetup four or fi ve times and always brings friends along. This time, she’s joined by Kim Drew, Lindy Carrow, and Joan McDonald.
Anne Nicklin (le ) and Ann Panopio lace up their skates for their annual April skate to celebrate Ann’s birthday.
Michael Suarez’s kids saw roller skaters on TV and told their parents they wanted to try it. A er their fi rst Garfi eld Park Skate Meetup, they all immediately fell in love with skating, and this is their fi h time back; Michael and his wife are also learning along with their kids.
Tia Lorenna—who grew up around Washington Park and Bronzeville and now lives in Greater Grand Crossing—is at ease on her skates. “I’ve been skating all my life, really. Like, it’s a Chicago thing, and I’ve always gone to MLK,” she says. v
SPORTS & Rec
Facing the deep end
Learning to swim as an adult is both humbling and exhilarating.
By SHERI FLANDERS
“So let me get this straight—you want me to jump into the deep end of the pool, but you’re not getting in with me?” My high school swim instructor stood on the edge of the pool wearing khaki shorts and New Balance kicks. Not the ideal ensemble for water rescue. “So what happens if I start to drown?” She laughs and says, “I’ll just use this to save you.” She points to a large hook on a stick on the wall across the room.
Needless to say, I did not learn to swim that year.
says if you didn’t learn certain things as a child, you must give up on them forever, like being an astronaut or a ballerina, or, apparently, a swimmer. Middle age is about being respected and chalking up the next promotion, marriage, child, house, divorce, remarriage, and boob job.
But as an artist who grew up in a modest household, I have always walked a nontraditional path: I graduated from college later, then moved from retail to fashion design to consult-
I have a deep respect for the mightiest force in nature. A tsunami can level a city. One drop of humidity can ruin your hair. You can survive a month without food, but without water, you will die a thirsty bitch in three days.
H2O is not 2B fucked with.
My husband, Josh, is like a sleek, longhaired jolly otter who grew up in the sea. I grew up in landlocked Indianapolis, Indiana, and like a malcontent house cat, I avoid water fastidiously. Yet somehow, powered only by love and pluck, he once convinced me to go scuba diving in the Cayman Islands. Submerged, arm’s length from being able to pet turtles and sharks, I set a goal to one day get certified through the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI). That meant I had to learn how to swim.
So, I signed up for swim lessons at my local YWCA.
When I share with people that I’m taking swim lessons, they say: “Wow. WOW, you’re learning to swim? At your age? That’s SO BRAVE of you!” (I’m Gen X.) But they say “brave” in the way that “brave” means “crazy.” There’s an unwritten rule of middle age that
young adult who has been swimming since childhood, gracefully sliding through the water like a happy leaf in a stream. I awkwardly lower myself into the pool, all spindly legs and right angles. She asks me to try to float. I sink to the bottom of the pool faster than the dumbass who tried to visit the Titanic in a tuna can with a Nintendo controller.
On the upside, it turns out that I have a fairly decent freestyle stroke! I have speed and power, but no control or coordination, and my left foot is permanently on a smoke break and prone to cramping. We work on isolating movements: fine-tuning my arms, legs, and breathing. I’m fearless, careening directly into the side wall at top speed.
ing, theater, and journalism. The older I get, the more I realize how liberating it has been to be free from the rigid “adulting” timeline.
I can’t imagine robbing myself of joy over something as cheap as pride.
On the day of my first lesson, I walk through the locker room and a gaggle of naked seventysomething white women surround me and loudly crow about my neon orange bathing suit and how disgustingly scrawny my body looks in it. Triggered, I am immediately transported back to high school, and I brace myself in case they decide to slam me against a locker.
Later, I order a modest black Speedo swimsuit, wrap myself from head to toe in my oversize Florida beach towel, and hustle past them with my head down as they gossip about their children’s shortcomings.
Three months later and they’ve never said anything else to me, never introduced themselves or asked my name.
As I anxiously walk toward the pool, I try not to think about scary things, such as underwater horror movies like The Abyss or the history of swimming pools in America.
My instructor is a kind, bubbly, no-nonsense
Rotate the body
Quick automatic gasp of air
OH SHIT, MY HIPS ARE SINKING
Barbie toes
Kickkickkickkickkick
Arm back up and around
One cycle complete
OH WOW, I’M ACTUALLY SWIMMING
Smile with pride
MOUTHFUL OF WATER
THRASHING
Sinking
Fin
Did I mention that I suck at breathing, the foundational action that keeps us alive? After the pandemic, I was diagnosed with asthma. (Fun times!) To swim, one must breathe and move, perfectly in sync, like a Swiss Army watch. Yet I am a cheap digital Casio, constantly flashing an emergency lowbattery alarm. I snarf water constantly.
I begin to micromanage every movement, creating a meditative internal monologue that will eventually, hopefully, become second nature.
Breathe in
Push off the wall
Cheeks puffed, breathe out
Pointy Barbie toes
Kickkickkickkickkickkick
From the hip
Knees slightly bent
Right arm up and around
That’s one stroke
OH SHIT, MY HIPS ARE SINKING
BARBIE TOES
KICKKICKKICKKICKKICKKICK
REALLY FAST TO BRING THE HIPS UP
Left arm up and around
Two
GET IT TOGETHER LEFT FOOT
Barbie toes
Kickkickkickkickkickkick
Arm back up and around
Three
Cheeks puffed
Blow out ALL THE AIR
Turn head, but DON’T LIFT SHOULDERS
My instructor and their occasional sub, both buoyant twentysomethings, are wise and calm natural teachers. Have you ever tried to learn from someone older, who gets increasingly frustrated that you “aren’t getting it” quickly enough? After you try a few di erent times, they throw up their hands in frustration. It makes learning scary. But these young ladies patiently hold space for my bad anxiety-driven jokes and allow time for me to get my reps in, for my weak leg muscles to grow, for me to hit my rescue inhaler, for my lungs to expand, for my adrenaline to subside, for me to experience the buoyancy of the water pushing back onto me.
One day, my lesson goes long and I stand up in the three-foot pool to see half a dozen little kids with goggles and water wings sitting on the bench waiting to start their lesson, staring at me, the grown-ass lady struggling to do a thing that adults are supposed to know already. I understand why some adults are so afraid to try new things. Nobody wants to admit that a little kid can do something better. When I went skiing in Park City for the first time, a toddler sailed past me backward on a snowboard. I’ll never be as good as that little bastard, but at least I was having the time of my life doing—instead of sitting on the sidelines wondering “What if?”
Finally the day comes when I swim more than half a lap without stopping, before inevitably snarfing water. As the filthy pool water filters through my sinuses, I smile, realizing that one day soon, I’m going to swim the whole lap. Without snarfing. And then two. And then I’m going to float, then tread water, then get my diving certification. Maybe I’ll do a triathlon.
Then maybe I’ll try something completely new that I’m really terrible at, like ballet. Hell, I can’t even touch my toes. v
m letters@chicagoreader.com
Sheri Flanders in the locker room and under the sea SHERI FLANDERS; NANCY GOLDENBERG
SPORTS & Rec
Inspired to get on the fitness train and live your best life? You don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars per month on gym fees, as there are low-cost and even free choices in Chicago for moving your body and working on wellness. And sometimes even the most exclusive gyms o er discounts. Read on for some options!
Chicago Park District
With over 600 parks and 26 miles of lakefront under its jurisdiction, the Chicago Park District tends to our shared natural spaces and keeps many of them open to the general public. Larger and more formalized groups will want to check in with their local park about permitting, but it’s common to see smaller groups of people just using the outdoor spaces and facilities of the district. Depending on where you are in the city, you’ll find meeting spots and mile markers for runners, basketball courts, or open fields for soccer. For those looking to get into a game or a group, or get a supervised training session, go to the district’s website and search for activities based on the age group and park you want to visit. I had good luck using the “Drop-In” filter under the Activity type in the district’s class finder; there I found ongoing open spots in 360° Core Strength conditioning classes at Pullman’s Gately Park (days and times vary, but you can drop in for $6 per class) and open spots for individuals in the Men’s Basketball League at Field Park near Northeastern Illinois University’s north-side campus (Monday and Wednesday evenings from June 16 to July 30; $25 to join). It’s a good way to learn a new sport, test your skills, and meet new people that you might continue working out with even after the class sessions end.
chicagoparkdistrict.com
For early risers
Millennium Park programs a special Summer Workout series on Saturday mornings from May 17 to August 30, where a variety of instructors are scheduled each week to o er a beginner’s class in various disciplines. Last year’s slate included weeks devoted to yoga, cardio, kickboxing, and Zumba. It’s totally free (participants are asked to bring their own mats and water bottles), but early birds will do best as the lawn fills up some weeks before the 8 AM start time.
chicago.gov
move your body
The To-Do (sports edition)
Free and low-cost options for exercise
By SALEM COLLO-JULIN
November Project is an alliance of free early morning workout groups that are open to the public. It started as an agreement between friends in Boston to hold themselves accountable for getting out and moving during the winter months (the name comes from the title of the Google Doc that the founders created in November 2011 to track their progress).
Over a decade later, the group now has participants in 52 cities worldwide, including several active groups in Chicago. Workouts start at 6:06 AM on Wednesdays and Fridays year-round in various locations and are led by chipper and friendly instructors who will modify for newcomers. A recent Wednesday was hosted at the boathouse in Humboldt
Park, and the group planned to keep the social vibe going following the workout with an optional breakfast at Star Lounge. Leaders are encouraging, and the general spirit of the Chicago group embodies their motto, “Just Show Up!”
linktr.ee/novemberprojectchicago
At the gym
Many local gyms o er a trial day or period to prospective members so they can check out the facility and perhaps even take a class to see what the trainers are like. Fitness Formula Clubs ask for $40, which isn’t the cheapest option out there for a day pass, but it gives
you a lot of access: free use of the indoor pool at facilities that have one, childcare at eligible locations, entry for any class throughout the day, use of saunas and steam rooms, and access to a “recovery lounge,” where you can try out cryotherapy and massage chairs postworkout to soothe your muscles.
FFC has ten clubs throughout the city and suburbs, including the South Loop (1151 S. State), Oak Park (1114 Lake Street), and Lakeview (3657 N. Pine Grove). Contact individual locations to schedule a tour.
c.com/day-pass v
m scollojulin@chicagoreader.com
Clockwise from le : biking the Lakefront Trail; Rainbow Beach; Douglass Park ABEL ARCINIEGA/CHOOSE CHICAGO; ALEJANDRO REYES/CHOOSE CHICAGO; CHICAGO PARK DISTRICT
SPORTS & Rec
PUBLIC ART
Will DOGE set its sights on Chicago’s public art?
Public art’s death by a thousand cuts
By JONAH NINK
Over 1,400 pieces of public art in Illinois, 815 of which are in Chicago, are in limbo after the Department of Government E ciency (DOGE) and the Trump administration downsized branches of the General Services Administration (GSA) responsible for preserving and maintaining a collection of over 26,000 government-owned artworks.
GSA workers told the Washington Post that five regional o ces had seen major cuts, and the organization expects another round of sweeping cuts in early May. According to NPR, Trump and DOGE want the GSA, which supports a workforce of roughly 12,000, reduced by half.
Since 1949, GSA has been responsible for managing federal properties, acting as a sort of landlord for government offices. Illinois’s federal properties are managed by GSA’s Great Lakes Region o ce, which handles 144 federal buildings and over 800 leases across six states.
A federal preservation employee (who asked to remain anonymous out of concern for their job) told the Reader that the department’s roughly 30-person team, which handled federally owned artworks, has seen substantial cuts. The Great Lakes division has been reduced to a single arts preservation worker.
Those fired are fine arts and architecture historians and preservation experts—people committed to ensuring the longevity and accessibility of public art.
GSA art preservation employees are tasked with accessing works and facilitating repairs, often through outside contractors. Employees have voiced concerns that the Trump administration’s cuts have made an already di cult job nearly impossible.
“The new administration’s [GSA] leadership already broached the idea of ‘what if we just sell it all,’” our source said.
Alexander Calder’s Flamingo sculpture, which Chicagoans will know as the centerpiece of Federal Plaza in front of the Kluczynski Federal Building since 1974, has become the unofficial face of the public art crisis, referenced in dozens of articles covering the GSA cuts. But for Preservation Chicago executive director
Ward Miller, Flamingo has been endangered since 2017.
“We were seeing the disappearance of many downtown sculptures,” Miller said. “We saw Universe removed from the [Willis Tower] lobby, also by Alexander Calder. He dedicated Universe and Flamingo the same day.”
Universe seems to have sat in storage since 2017, a casualty of Sears’s messy bankruptcy and loss of the Willis Tower. ( Universe , a whimsical installation, was commissioned for the lobby of the Sears Tower.) Calder saw Flamingo and Universe as sister pieces, the beginning and end of a parade through the city, as Miller puts it. The two pieces were commissioned separately, however: Flamingo through GSA, and Universe privately through Sears Roebuck & Co. Federal pieces have protections that privately commissioned pieces, beloved as some are, simply don’t.
Miller has seen public art pieces dismantled
and sold outright, but says the biggest danger to public art is death by neglect. All works require constant maintenance. If a federal property is sold, there are legal statutes to ensure the attached art is maintained and kept visible.
The best protection for public art and historic buildings in Chicago is a landmark designation. “[Preservation Chicago] is suggesting that the Chicago Federal Center, one of Mies van der Rohe’s largest commissions, if not the largest commission, be considered for a Chicago landmark designation,” Miller said.
Buildings granted a landmark designation by the Chicago Landmarks Ordinance must have any alterations beyond general maintenance approved by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks.
In 2024, GSA saved the Century and Consumers buildings at State and Quincy, built in 1915 and 1913, respectively, from demolition. Miller said the GSA facilitated around 20 pub-
lic meetings before determining that the properties would be reused. The properties were awarded landmark status this past February.
In 2012, the GSA oversaw an intensive $213,000 restoration and repainting of Flamingo. GSA art preservation workers and contractor McKay Lodge Conservation Laboratory, underwent an intensive research initiative to replicate the exact shade of Calder Red the artist had used for the piece.
Other recognizable artworks managed by the GSA include Claes Oldenburg’s Batcolumn outside the Harold Washington Social Security Center and Iñigo ManglanoOvalle’s La Tormenta/The Storm , inside the federal building. Preservation workers are expected to facilitate dozens of renovation and maintenance projects, often simultaneously.
“It was barely being addressed with the sta we had in place, and now there’s no sta in place,” the anonymous source said.
All federal workers, GSA arts preservation employees included, are used to a shift in priorities as a natural part of the onboarding process for a new administration. GSA’s 2024 fiscal year budget was $61 billion, consistent with their usual budget, but the Trump administration aims to cut that in half. Our source called the current administration’s cuts “unprecedented.”
“[Newly appointed leaders] were saying, ‘Hey, we want to get rid of all these buildings.’ We were saying, ‘Well, you know, there’s very expensive art in these buildings.’ And they said, ‘Oh, we can just sell it.’ Again, by statute, that is illegal, but that has not stopped [the administration],” the source said.
Public art won’t impact people’s retirement, it won’t lower grocery prices. It can’t give people free health care or clean the pollution from the atmosphere. But to preservation advocates like Miller, its quiet erasure, maliciously deliberate or just from bullish oversight, is a five-alarm bell.
“It seems like it’s breaking a public promise, that these great pieces of 20th-century art are being lost,” Miller said. v
m letters@chicagoreader.com
Alexander Calder’s Flamingo at Federal Center Plaza CAROL M. HIGHSMITH/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
SPORTS & Rec
CRAFT WORK
The community spirit of footy
Crossbar resists the commodification of soccer by reworking already existing materials into one of a kind creations.
BY SAVANNAH RAY HUGUELEY
“Crossbar!” is a word you can hear on any soccer pitch, anywhere, that makes you jump out of the way of the net and wait for that sonorous ding. That universality—the community spirit of footy— is exactly what Maciej Herda has been building o of with his creative studio, Crossbar Collective, which fosters connection through soccer, art, and local events.
Herda and his high school best friend, Rene Vilchis, started the collective around 2018 with some help from Vilchis’s brothers. Herda and Vilchis saw how soccer brought them together—two people from di erent walks of life able to connect and find their similarities through the game—and wanted to celebrate Chicago’s expansive cultures that find community through soccer. “We wanted to make jerseys that were kind of representative of every neighborhood, working with an artist or org within that neighborhood for each. . . . Ideally raise some funds for the neighborhood that would stay in the neighborhood,” Herda says. “Life just kind of did what life does,” Herda explains, and that project couldn’t come to fruition (though he hopes to revisit it one
day), but he was ready to keep going and pivoted into smaller-scale projects with the same spirit. “It kind of turned into a little bit of a Franken-studio,” he says. He started sourcing secondhand jerseys, mostly online from eBay, Mercari, and Poshmark—often looking for cheap jerseys with a specific pattern, collar, or knit type that drew him in. “The 80s, 90s, early 2000s, the designs of these kits, especially the keeper versions, were so o -the-wall and out there. Like the people were, I don’t know, drunk or high on acid just to even come up with some of this stu , it seems,” he jokes. Herda started to amass quite a bit of old polyester—including anything from major brands like Nike, Adidas, and Puma, to Score or High Five jerseys for youth or recreational leagues in the States—to reuse and repurpose for projects. The jerseys are often blanks or templates he customizes using heat-transfer vinyl or applique. Or he crafts something entirely new from damaged goods he finds or leftover scraps, turning jerseys into bucket hats, jackets, or different types of bags, experimenting with “weird kind of intricate slap-together methods” for building things like a Palestinian flag or a giant mural he’s planning. Rather than feeding into the hype of the commercialization and commodification of the game—where professional teams now put out multiple expensive jerseys each year—Herda is interested in finding ways to recirculate materials, extending the joy they can bring people.
With every project and collaboration Herda tries to “repurpose already existing, cool shit that we have and not buy new, not buy fast, and just buy less, period.”
Herda also thrives on collaboration, and one of his upcoming projects is with New York–based Lifta Club, a multilayered project inspired by the town of Lifta in occupied Palestine. Working with Lifta’s Noor Ahmad and photographer Marwan Shousher, Herda has created cut-and-sew jerseys that envision what potential Lifta Football Club team uniforms could look like in the present day. Herda in part sourced material from old Puma
jerseys, made before they were on the BDS list for their contract with the Israel Football Association (IFA), but removed their logo to reclaim the fabric. Part of the sales from the jerseys will go to Lajee Celtic, a football club in Aida refugee camp. Herda originally got into creating through leatherwork and has continued that through Crossbar, reworking cleats and balls. “I got something in the works of making soccer balls completely from garbage. Which, again, is not a novel idea,” he says, explaining that creating from scraps is what people have always done. “Folks that don’t have much are ingenious—making things kind of out of nothing, or what they have available. [I heard] stories of my dad growing up in communist Poland and taking the cows out to the pasture before school. They didn’t have a fucking soccer ball at the time, so they would supposedly pick hairs o the cow and spit into it and make, like, this ball—hair ball—that they would kick around occasionally, until they got a little older and found some way to get some money and get a communal soccer ball that the farm team would use. But, I mean, you see it all over the world, right? People making balls out of trash bags or other found items and kicking that shit around, because we don’t have nice quality balls accessible everywhere, for everyone.”
collaborations and community. While playing, he met Thaddeus Barton of Sidewalk FC and Freddie Cristiano of Stay True Supply, all of whom bonded over their shared love of the game to create Crossbar Syndicate.
Together, the Syndicate is hosting pop-ups outside at Avondale’s Solidarity Triangle every other Saturday, starting April 26, from noon to 4 PM, where they’ll have DJs, small footy games, food, coolers for people to bring drinks, and racks of their merchandise, including both reworked and vintage jerseys for accessible prices.
The kind of football Herda reveres isn’t payto-play; it’s the kind he played as a kid or plays recreationally today, which captures the “true essence” of the game. “We were playing at the local park for free after school, with some randoms or my best friends, or some randoms that literally then turned into acquaintances turned into friends and turned into family.” And the game is how he’s continued to foster
Most importantly for the syndicate, they’ll bring in different community organizations, footy and non-footy related, throughout the weeks to fundraise and share their work. Herda describes football as not only therapeutic and fun, but also a grassroots catalyst to build relationships and make change. “We’re coming together with other folks, and just enjoying our time, our space, our company, and then building on top of that to exchange ideas and see what else we can do. You play with people. You get to know them. You see di erent experiences, di erent cultures, di erent folks, di erent areas of the city.” v
m shugueley@chicagoreader.com
A Crossbar Syndicate pop-up in Avondale DELANEY EUBANKS
NEWS & POLITICS
Policing public space
Alder Brian Hopkins has been trying to ban teens from the Loop for a year—and it seems he might finally have the votes to do it.
According to WBEZ, more than 30 alders are backing his proposal to allow the Chicago Police Department (CPD) to declare on-the-spot curfews when they anticipate groups of 20 or more people anywhere in the city could engage in “criminal conduct,” such as “disorderly” behavior. The ordinance doesn’t specify how cops would delineate the area subject to a curfew or even what criteria to use when predicting that a gathering could, at some point in the future, become “unlawful.”
Hopkins’s plan would entrust a police department that has a long practice of civil rights violations with broad powers to profile and potentially arrest young people. It would no doubt open the city to lawsuits, and there’s little evidence supporting the e cacy of curfews. That’s apparently no concern for the majority of the City Council that signed on as sponsors.
Hopkins, whose ward includes parts of Streeterville, Gold Coast, and Lincoln Park, has been pushing since last June to ban young people under 18 from the downtown business district after 8 PM—an expansion of the existing 10 PM citywide curfew. He agreed to modify his proposal in April after negotiations with Mayor Brandon Johnson’s o ce. According to
WBEZ, discussions are ongoing, and sponsors could introduce another substitute.
Meanwhile, a coalition of 20 civil rights groups sent a letter to alders on Monday urging them to reject the proposal, calling it an “overreaction” to a few large gatherings that “relies on tired, failed ideas centered on fines and arrests.” —SHAWN MULCAHY
Tactical team suspensions
A team of tactical police officers should be suspended for repeatedly violating CPD rules involving traffic stops in the months before they fatally shot Dexter Reed, according to recently released findings from the city’s police oversight body.
The Civilian O ce of Police Accountability (COPA) found on four separate occasions that members of the 11th District tactical team engaged in illegal stops and searches and failed to document them as required. Police didn’t find any guns or weapons or issue any citations as a result of the stops, which occurred between June 29, 2023, and March 6, 2024. Weeks later, on March 21, four of the o cers named in the investigations fired 96 shots into Reed’s car, killing the 26-year-old after pulling him over for supposedly not wearing a seat belt.
In all, COPA recommended suspensions for 11 officers, ranging from two to 60 days, and police superintendent Larry Snelling
Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton, who recently launched her federal political action committee, was the first out of the gate. She announced her candidacy for Durbin’s seat the following day, and she quickly notched the endorsements of Governor J.B. Pritzker and Senator Tammy Duckworth. Other potential candidates range from the expected, like U.S. representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi and Robin Kelly, to the lesser-known, like state treasurer Michael Frerichs, to the downright disgraceful (I’m looking at you, former mayor Rahm Emanuel).
—SHAWN
MULCAHY
Pathways for reproductive justice
At the end of March, the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF) hosted a webinar to unpack the findings of a 2024 research study on reproductive health in Chicago titled Reproductive Justice Pathways for Chicago
concurred.
The same day COPA published the results of its investigations, the CPD released a revised draft of its new tra c stop policy. The policy expressly allows for pretextual tra c stops, in which cops legally stop someone for an alleged tra c violation with the explicit intention of finding evidence of an “unrelated” crime.
After Reed’s killing, community members and some on the city’s Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA) called on officials to ban stops for minor violations like expired vehicle registration. Ultimately, the policy must be approved by the CCPSA, the Illinois attorney general’s o ce, and the independent monitoring team overseeing court-ordered reforms. —SHAWN MULCAHY
Durbin calls it quits
Dick Durbin has been a U.S. senator for as long as I’ve been alive, but, after nearly 30 years in o ce, the high-ranking 80-year-old last week decided it’s time to throw in the towel.
On April 23, Illinois’s senior senator announced he would not seek reelection when his term expires in January 2027. Many had anticipated that Durbin, who has served in Democratic leadership as Senate whip since 2005, wouldn’t run again, and his decision ensures a crowded primary for a coveted seat.
The Chicago Reproductive Justice Coalition (RJC)—composed of NAPAWF and other local organizations Apna Ghar, Ba Nia, Kan-Win, Palenque: Liberating Spaces Through Neighborhood Action, and SisterReach—collaborated with the Black Researchers Collective (BRC) to host focus groups and create a qualitative report based on their findings. The project emerged amid dire threats to reproductive health care. Despite the legal protections afforded to us in Illinois, there has long been data proving that reproductive health care in Chicago and beyond mirrors societal inequities: People of color and LGBTQ+ communities face disproportionate barriers to reproductive health care based on race, class, immigration status, language, education, representation, and more.
BRC and RJC sought to back up these data trends by directly involving the communities they support and proposing concrete policy changes based on their lived experiences. Seven 90-minute focus groups with 40 individuals total resulted in these key findings: Chicagoans face “violations of bodily autonomy and undignified care due to racism, ageism, and classism”; “inadequate access to reproductive healthcare services and information”; and “unsafe and unsustainable communities for raising children.”
—TARYN MCFADDEN
v
Make It Make Sense is a weekly column about what’s happening and why it matters.
m smulcahy@chicagoreader.com
Le : Senator Dick Durbin. Right: body camera footage from the police killing of Dexter Reed COURTESY STATE OF ILLINOIS, COPA
THEATER
OPENING
RRage against the machine
Zora Howard’s Bust presents a vision of Black people’s anger as a source of transcendence.
Rage as a tool for rebirth is a familiar trope in social justice circles, but what if rage literally gave you the ability to transcend and escape oppression into a different realm of your choosing? That’s the premise behind Zora Howard’s Bust, now in a world premiere at the Goodman as a coproduction with Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre (where it played this past winter), directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz.
The opening of Howard’s play is broadly comic with hints of menace. Retta (Caroline Stefanie Clay) is sitting on the balcony of her apartment, giving a play-by-play over the phone to her friend about the neighborhood goings-on. Two cops follow a fellow resident, Randy Woods, into the parking lot, and things look like they could get bad in a hurry when a white cop draws his gun. (This all happens offstage—but Clay’s virtuoso storytelling makes us feel like it’s right in front of us.) Retta and her husband, Reggie (Raymond Anthony Thomas), and their grandson Trent (Cecil Blutcher) duck down. But then Mr. Woods just . . . disappears. Poof.
The cops, racist Tomlin (Mark Bedard) and his new partner, Ramirez (Jorge Luna), a Honduran-born officer who Tomlin keeps calling Mexican, struggle to come up with a cover story, and they fight over the body cam footage. Things escalate even more when Trent, whose cell phone footage of the incident hits the media, stands up for his classmate Krystal (Renika Williams-Blutcher), who is being targeted by a white teacher and assaulted by a white school security officer. Trent also disappears in the middle of a righteous roar of rage—and finds himself in an alternate world with Mr. Woods.
Howard calls her piece “Afrocurrentism,” which asks audiences to deal with the world right now. Growing out of a poem Howard wrote a er the murder of Trayvon Martin, Bust bursts with possibility, sorrow, and big ideas rendered with sharp performances in Blain-Cruz’s staging. The alternative universe here reminds me a bit of James Ijames’s Kill Move Paradise, in which Black victims of police killings occupy a kind of limbo. But Howard grants Trent and Randy the power to choose, and she also focuses on the power of community as Trent’s family and schoolmates try to figure out how to harness the energy through vocalization and movement to find him, wherever he may be.
Matt Saunders’s set incorporates a series of boxlike rooms (apartment, classroom, police station) to suggest the confines the characters face in the real world, contrasted with the brilliant receding, tunnel-like backdrop for the world where Trent and Randy end up. Special effects by Jeremy Chernick and Yi Zhao’s lighting help immensely with the transitions, as does the “sonic dramaturgy” of DJ Reborn. But Howard’s play, though it may feel a little overstuffed at times (I wanted to know more about Trent’s quartet of classmates), makes a gorgeous and o en compelling case that the most magical transformations of all come when we listen to the anger inside us and channel it into remaking the world—right here, right now. —KERRY REID BUST Through 5/18: Wed 7:30 PM, Thu 2 and 7:30 PM, Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Sun 5/18 7:30 PM; ASL interpretation Fri 5/9 7:30 PM, touch tour and audio description Sat 5/10 2 PM (touch tour 12:30 PM), Spanish subtitles Sat 5/10 7:30 PM, open captions
Sun 5/11 2 PM; Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312-443-3800, goodmantheatre.org, $25-$85
RBlood clowns
Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus is a gory valentine to hope amid despair.
To the victors belong the glory, and to the servants belong the guts. In Taylor Mac’s Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, we’re in the banquet room of the deceased general of Shakespeare’s bloodiest tragedy (which was, not coincidentally, the last play produced by Redtwist). The “maids,” as they’re called here, are responsible for cleaning out the pile of corpses le in the wake of the coup (which, as you may recall, included cooking a couple people into a revenge pie: not even Minny in The Help went that far!).
Mac’s dark comedy clearly takes some inspiration from Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by putting minor players in Shakespeare at the forefront. The title character—a nameless clown who in the original is condemned to death for bringing a knife as a message to Emperor Saturninus—finds joy in his second chance away from the gallows. “A maid just enters, and he gets applause? Best first day on the job there ever was,” crows Gary (William Delforge), who delights in speaking in rhyme.
But the entrance of the choleric Janice (Hannah Rhode) soon clues him into the grotesque realities of their job, as if the entrails and bodies strewn over the long table and hanging from the ra ers in Eric Luchen’s set weren’t enough of a hint. (Robin Manganaro’s props are also top-notch.) Dealing with bodily fluids and postmortem flatulence (and in Janice’s case, finding physical reminders of her dead mistress—the raped, mutilated, and eventually murdered Lavinia, daughter of Titus) are just some of the horrors. The lack of respect also gnaws at Janice. “I’m the best there is, and nobody remembers my name,” she laments.
Gary aspires to move from clown to fool. The distinction, he explains, is that the former “encourages the idiotic,” whereas the latter can “tease out our stupidity.”
The return of nurse Carol (played by Cameron Austin
Brown, we first see her delivering a prologue with jets of blood streaming from her neck) adds a layer of pathos to the ribaldry and gallows humor.
Underneath the gore and jokes, Mac has cra ed a defiantly optimistic play (moreso than Stoppard’s sardonic existentialist masterpiece, certainly). Steve Scott’s production in the tiny Redtwist space allows plenty of room for both joy and horror. The people in charge will always find ways to destroy and butcher the good. When Mister Rogers said, “Look for the helpers,” he probably didn’t have a trio like Mac’s in mind. But you clean up the messes of empire with the crew you have, not the crew you want. —KERRY REID GARY: A SEQUEL TO TITUS ANDRONICUS Through 6/1: Thu–Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3:30 PM; understudy performances Thu 5/15 and Sun 5/25; Redtwist Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr, 773-728-7529, redtwisttheatre.org, $35 (pay what you can Fri)
RRecursive absurdity
The Infinity Play shows us how humans keep getting it wrong.
If history repeats, as Karl Marx said, first as tragedy and then as farce, what happens if the repetitions keep coming, while those who forget the past (or actively erase it) are doomed to repeat it? If that seems like a lot of abstract theorizing to keep in mind, we need only look at the news to see how apt and relevant it all is.
Paul William Brennan’s The Infinity Play, now in a world premiere with Curious Theatre Branch under the codirection of the playwright and Maya Odim, takes us through a series of scenes that grow increasingly maximalist (and perhaps hence grimmer) over time. In the beginning, we just have A and B, two people (Julie Williams and Leny Brün) walking along a white circle and trying to establish who gets to start the story. From this near-Beckettian starting point, Brennan builds a world where no matter who tries to control the story, the endgame is always chaos, whether the characters are playing checkers or plotting revolution.
Incorporating dollhouses, puppets, and recurring PSAs from institutions like “the New School of Fate,”
it’s a messy but heady journey that runs out of steam a little bit before the ending arrives. “Cleanliness fixes the mistakes of the past,” a character proclaims at one point. But as we see the wholesale erasure of our own country’s history of “mistakes” like racism and colonization, Brennan’s play feels less like an absurdist philosophical exercise and more like a cunning Alicethrough-the-looking-glass take on the nihilistic death cult controlling our nation’s current timeline. —KERRY REID THE INFINITY PLAY Through 5/18: Fri–Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 5 PM; Jarvis Square Theater, 1439 W. Jarvis, curioustheatrebranch.com, pay what you can (suggested donation $20)
REternal youth
Red Theater’s Kairos ponders the pros and cons of immortality.
A casual holiday fender bender in a mall parking lot is the meet-cute for Gina (Tamsen Glaser) and David (Johnard Washington). He’s an Audi-operating classics professor. She works in advertising, steers a Subaru, and slugs overpriced snail slime on her skin in a campaign against epidermal creasing. They’re 33, sitcom clever, and ready to become each other’s everything at first sight.
It all seems light and forgettable—until Prometheus enters the scene: not the titan who stole fire from the gods, but a new medical procedure (coincidentally also based on the essence of escargot) that halts aging. Childless humans between the ages of 25 and 34 can now be made immortal—selected by lottery and vetted through mental and physical evaluations. In the same way death crystallizes feelings muddled by our mundane existence into sharp relief, eternal life creates newfound urgency among prospective perpetuals. For Gina and David, the possibility of permanence only makes loss more profound, whether of parents, siblings, or each other. Variously lit in blazes of colors, a tree forms the main image beyond their acts and emotions, petrified and impervious to wind, time, and weather (scenic design by Manuel Ortiz).
Lisa Sanaye Dring’s Kairos, directed by Clare Bren-
Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus; A Tale of Two Cities TOM MCGRATH/TCMCGPHOTOGRAPHY; MICHAEL BROSILOW
nan, is winsomely presented in Red Theater’s production, with naturalistic performances by Glaser and Washington. Yet, in the script, Dring specifies that the role of Gina be cast “AANHPI or any ethnicity.” One
wonders why, in the current climate, Red Theater went with white. —IRENE HSIAO KAIROS Through 5/18: Mon and Thu–Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Sat 5/10 2 PM; the Edge Off Broadway, 1133 W. Catalpa, redtheater.org, $30 (limited $10 access tickets, $50 pay-it-forward tickets)
RMother and child reunion
Poor Queenie traces dysfunction, grief, and isolation.
If you’ve ever wondered what The Gilmore Girls might be like if Shirley Jackson were the showrunner, wonder no more. In Poor Queenie, now in its world premiere with Subtext Studio Theatre Company, playwright Eliana Theologides Rodriguez skillfully traces the suffocating, dysfunctional relationship between a mother and daughter who, not unlike the siblings in Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, create their own reality amid grief, guilt, and loss.
Amber (Soleil Pérez) is the long-absent mom to teenage Queenie (Natalia Rivera), whose father has just died a er a long, debilitating illness that apparently robbed him of speech. We soon learn Amber is much younger than her husband and chooses to spend her time (and his money) traveling the world away from her daughter, who feels more connected to her father’s nurse than to her mom. Returning home a er the funeral, Amber gazes at her daughter as if she’s an exotic animal in the zoo. “You are so old. And I am so jet-lagged.”
Amber’s idea of bonding includes keeping Queenie,
who is already socially awkward, out of school for long stretches at a time and introducing her to alcohol and pot. Through the show’s 90 minutes, Rodriguez shows us the coming together and falling apart of these two strangers related by blood, sometimes with humor, and (increasingly) with a sense of aching foreboding. The introduction of Queenie’s classmate, Livi (Jordan Levene), provides the outsider perspective that reminds us how messed up the dynamic between Queenie and Amber is. Sonya Madrigal’s sharp direction keeps the tension strong, but just when we think there might be something supernatural at work (Gina Montalvo’s atmospheric and jolting sound design is a highlight), we realize that the only ghosts here are the lost opportunities of a real mother–daughter bond. —KERRY REID POOR QUEENIE Through 5/11: Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2:30 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2:30 PM; Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, subtextstudiotc.org, $30 ($15 students and military with ID)
RThe French Revolution, remixed
Shattered Globe breathes new life into A Tale of Two Cities
Compressing a 450-page classic novel into a two-act play is a tall order, and turning that text into engaging and dynamic theater is an even greater hurdle. Brendan Pelsue’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’s 1859 epic A Tale of Two Cities, presented by Shattered Globe at Theater Wit, succeeds in this endeavor thanks to
Mikael Burke’s production. Following the interconnected fates of the Manette family, Charles Darnay (Diego Vazquez Gomez), a Frenchman living in England, and the lawyer Sydney Carton (Glenn Obrero), Pelsue’s adaptation chronicles the turbulence of the French Revolution, oscillating between England and France as the characters’ proximity to the warring factions affect their places in society.
While Pelsue’s text occasionally equivocates in attempting to elicit sympathy for both revolutionaries and aristocrats, Burke’s character-driven direction and the stellar ensemble warrant even-handedness. Played on a sparse stage with a spectacular mirrored backdrop designed by Eleanor Kahn and Milo Bue, all eight cast members play several roles, spearheaded by Shattered Globe ensemble member Daria Harper as an Our Town-esque narrator. But it’s Penelope Walker’s deeply felt performance as the traumatized political prisoner Doctor Alexandre Manette that is the play’s emotional center, and Walker’s performance breathes new life into the character and Dickens’s text itself. Demetra Dee, as his daughter Lucie, is a luminous embodiment of a literary heroine, torn between two suitors while also asserting her own humanity. Shattered Globe’s A Tale of Two Cities, by centering the people at the text’s core, vividly brings Dickens’s 166-year-old work to today’s Chicago. —ROB SILVERMAN ASCHER A TALE OF TWO CITIES Through 5/31: Thu–Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Sat 5/31 3 PM; audio description and touch tour Fri 5/23 (touch tour 6:15 PM), open captions Sun 5/23; Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-975-8150, sgtheatre.org, $15-$52 v
MAESTRA MEI-ANN CHEN
BY JORDAN HARRISON
CO-DIRECTED
BY DAVID CROMER AND CAITLIN SULLIVAN
A “brilliantly imagined drama” (The Wall Street Journal) for anyone whose computer has asked them to prove that they’re a human. Which is to say, everyone.
At the Museum of Late Human Antiquities, the curators are fiercely committed to bringing a lost civilization to life again: What were humans really like? What did they wear, what did they eat, how did they die out? By casting us into the far future, Jordan Harrison’s “compelling” and “beautifully drawn” (The New York Times) new play gives us an uncanny view of the present moment, as we straddle the analog world that was and the post-human world to come. MAY 3 – JUNE 1
SPECIAL OFFER: Get $30 main floor seats for select dates with code READER
GoodmanTheatre.org | 312.443.3 800 Groups of 10+: Groups@GoodmanTheatre.org
FILM
It’s been fun to excavate themes in my moviegoing; without even looking for them, they’ve abounded in the past (almost!) year of writing this column. That said, this may be the first week where there’s been little to no connection between what I’ve watched. It was a random but otherwise gratifying week at the cinema, and sometimes that’s just how it is.
To start, I saw the restoration of Filipino filmmaker Lino Brocka’s Bona (1980) at the Gene Siskel Film Center, with an introduction by José B. Capino, film studies professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who helped rediscover the film. It was an absolute blast—the film stars Nora Aunor (who passed away just a few days before the screening), a hugely famous Filipino actress and singer, as a young woman so obsessed with a bit actor that she leaves her family to go and live with him in the slums of Manila as a glorified housemaid.
The film is excellent, but it was the audience that really made it. The crowd was composed of more Aunor superfans than cinephiles, and their reaction to the film—in which the extra’s treatment of Aunor’s character becomes increasingly egregious—was moviegoing at its essence, the oohs and aahs a live soundtrack of sorts. A few days later, I was at the Film Center again to see Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1978), which I’ve seen several times before. Like Bona, it was a restoration, with an illuminating prerecorded introduction about that process, but the reaction was, instead (and appropriately), one of quiet reverie, the film more a feeling than any kind of solidified narrative.
On Friday, I went to see The Shrouds (2024)
with David Cronenberg in person for a postscreening Q&A at the Music Box Theatre. I think I liked seeing Cronenberg more than the film itself; of his recent, late-period work, I much prefer Crimes of the Future (2022). Many reviews of The Shrouds proclaim that it’s the most personal of his films, as it’s about a man whose wife has passed away (Cronenberg’s own wife died in 2017, following a long illness). He rejected that assumption, which I found interesting—a gap between a filmmaker’s vision and the critical perception of it. But in many ways, even the most venerated auteurs don’t have the final word on their films, as once they go out into the world, they assume lives of their own (which is fitting for a Cronenberg film!).
Finally, over the weekend, I spoke at Mubi Fest following a screening of Elaine May’s Ishtar (1987). I was in conversation with Mubi Notebook editor Chloe Lizotte, with whom I, somewhat recently, wrote a piece on May in connection with a new biography of the filmmaker. I’ve seen the film many times and have even written about it here, but it didn’t fail to make me laugh my ass off—as I said after the film, I discover something new to laugh at with each viewing. Someone may have said that the fictional songs in it by the duo Rogers and Clarke (Warren Beatty and Dustin Ho man) are actually pretty good, and that person may have been me. On that note . . . 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.
A still from Bona (1980) COURTESY
FILM
NOW PLAYING
The Accountant 2
The Accountant 2 ratchets up nearly every aspect of its predecessor. Sometimes that’s a good thing—we get more alternately affecting and hilarious interactions between Ben Affleck’s autistic one-man-killing-machine accountant, Chris, and his neurotypical one-man-killing-machine hitman brother, Braxton (Jon Bernthal). Sometimes it’s a bad thing, upping the already overly complicated and overly populated narrative ante.
But that doesn’t mean The Accountant 2 is a serialized sequel. It opens with the murder of Treasury agent turned private investigator Ray King (J.K. Simmons), then the brothers and Treasury agent acquaintance Marybeth (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) band together to continue Ray’s investigation. Besides an ungraceful bit of explicative backstory from Marybeth when she’s called in to identify the dead man, the setup all plays smoothly enough, allowing for viewers who haven’t seen the first film to get what they need.
From there, the plot involves a mystery assassin, human trafficking, facial reconstructive surgery, and a somewhat awkwardly revealed conspiracy. It’s a mishmash of tropes that gets the job of delivering character moments and action sequences done but leaves a good amount to be desired.
Much of that desire for a better story stems from the genuine greatness of the character interactions.
Affleck, Bernthal, and director Gavin O’Connor de ly move between aggravated annoyance, loving camaraderie, and pained vulnerability in scenes with the brothers. There’s a realism to the complications of their relationship and love for one another matched by cartoonish comedy; at one point, a freeze frame gives way to a static exterior shot of a bar before men are thrown out its windows. That mix makes the movie work best not as an action thriller, but as a dramedy about estranged brothers figuring out how to be in each other’s lives.
Sadly, the genre balance tips in favor of the former, leaving us with an enjoyable but frustrating film that
overall fails to live up to its best moments. —KYLE
LOGAN R, 124 min. Wide release in theaters
Bonjour Tristesse
Celebrated essayist and first-time filmmaker Durga Chew-Bose’s new adaptation of Françoise Sagan’s 1954 novel Bonjour Tristesse shi s from the technicolor melodrama of Otto Preminger’s dreamy 1958 version to a 21st-century minimalist bildungsroman. Visual pleasure still abounds—it would be difficult for an upper-class summer vacation in the south of France to be unappealing—but Chew-Bose seems more interested in composition than emotion.
Chew-Bose creates some beautiful images with production designer François-Renaud Labarthe and costume designer Miyako Bellizzi. The blues of the sky and the sea play with the blues of painted walls and tablecloths, and all that blue contrasts wonderfully with the oranges, reds, and yellows of furniture and fruit.
Yet within these frames, there’s never a sense of drama, largely because Chew-Bose leaves the juiciest moments offscreen as understated intrigue.
The intrigue doesn’t grow from teenage Cécile’s (Lily McInerny) scheme to get her father, Raymond (Claes Bang), back from his domineering old friend and new fiancee, Anne (Chloë Sevigny). Rather, it grows from the glances of pain, anger, jealousy, pity, and empathy that flit between Cécile, Anne, and Raymond’s quickly dropped girlfriend, Elsa (Nailia Harzoune).
This is a film about the ways women relate to one another, aiming to communicate as much as possible in pure visual language. Chew-Bose allows her static camera to highlight how differently these women sit in the same chair, eat apples, and style their hair. Metaphors crowd the film, from tangled headphones to the creation and destruction of towers of shakers on a dinner table; you can feel the excitement in the medium from the debut filmmaker.
But it’s all a bit too pat, leaving this Bonjour Tristesse feeling like a formal and intellectual exercise rather than a moving piece of cinema, gorgeous as it may be. —KYLE LOGAN R, 110 min. Limited release in theaters v Get showtimes and see reviews of everything playing this week at
Bonjour Tristesse
MUSIC
CHICAGOANS OF NOTE
Brok Mende, chief engineer at Friends of Friends Recording
“The process of creating a record is ambitious because it costs time and money, and asking somebody to be a part of your creative process is scary.”
As told to DEVYN-MARSHALL BROWN (DMB)
Brok Mende is chief engineer at Friends of Friends Recording, a studio he owns with partner DeAnna Doersch. He’s worked with many Chicago artists on local label Sooper Records—including Nnamdï, Sen Morimoto, and Kaina—as well as with Tasha, Serpentwithfeet, Madison McFerrin, and others.
Mende grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, and went to high school at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, the local equivalent of ChiArts. He played in bands and developed his talents on multiple instruments, but he found the scene in Jacksonville lacking. He wanted to pursue music somewhere else. “And I just was in love with everything coming out of Chicago or Chicago,” he says.
Mende briefly enrolled at Columbia College before interning at Electrical Audio under Steve Albini in 2012 and ’13. He worked as a staff engineer at Audiotree from 2013 till ’19, and he and Doersch opened Friends of Friends in 2020.
Everything cool comes from Chicago. It’s a place where people are able to create unabashedly. They can play and collaborate while still having access to the larger market a bigger city gives you. Obviously, I wish there was a lot more [industry support], but you have all these abilities to create and develop a new sound.
When you’re in Los Angeles, you have to hit in a certain shape—you have to fit. And same with New York. But here, you don’t have those barriers as much. You can do something strange and develop it in whatever way you need to find your audience. I identified that early—like, I have to be in Chicago.
The process of creating a record is ambitious because it costs time and money, and asking somebody to be a part of your creative process is scary.
Mykele Deville was one of the first Chicago artists I worked with, and I’ve worked on a
the goal, you know?
Other, bigger things I’ve worked on too. I worked on one of the Serpentwithfeet records. [Grip] was kind of a funny record, because all of my communications were through an A&R [rep]. Never really got to meet the artist, which is di erent for me. I was working on one of the songs, and I thought I recognized this feature, and it turned out to be Ty Dolla $ign. There’s a Mick Jenkins feature on that record too.
Our studio is in kind of a nondescript location. You go up a scary staircase to get in, and then you walk through the front door and have one of the best views of downtown Chicago through our window. We have bamboo on the ceiling, and everything’s organic and wooden. There’s a lot of fun shapes and colors, and it’s supposed to be warm and inviting and comforting.
I have to give credit to my partner, DeAnna Doersch. She comes from the experiential design world and helped me develop a space that feels good to walk into. “Experiential design” is a broad term that can be as crazy as the person who designs the entrance to a theme park, like a Disney Imagineer, or something as simple as who’s designing the layout of a restaurant so it feels optimal for welcoming people.
majority of his music and side projects. I did Nnamdï’s last LP, Please Have a Seat , and the Warm Human record Hamartia. I did the [Dolby] Atmos mixing and mastering for Madison McFerrin’s debut LP. I have a good relationship with Sooper Records, and that’s part of why I’ve been able to work on so many di erent types of Chicago artists. Sooper is run by Nnamdï, Sen, Glenn [Curran], and a couple other people. Sen Morimoto is like my brother. He’s like blood to me. It’s been great to develop that relationship as collaborators but then also as friends. And honestly, that’s kind of why [the studio] got the name we have. Because everybody I’ve worked with has been a friend or a friend of a friend. It doesn’t always get to be that way. But that’s
I spend most of my life in that room, so it’s got to have a lot of natural light, and it’s got to be a place that I want to be. The recording experience in a studio space can be intimidating, so [we do] whatever we can to help our space feel welcoming and comforting and like a place you want to take your shoes o , sit, hang out, and be creative. It’s also highly functional. We don’t have a ton of space, so we have to use it to the best of our ability.
I got into recording and producing music as a musician, so everything in the room is stu that I wanted to have if I were creating music. My first mentor was Steve Albini back in 2012, when I was working at Electrical Audio, and I always loved how all of the individuals there
“You just want to make a record, but you’ve got to learn how to install a proper HVAC system and troubleshoot electrical grounding.”
valued utility. When it came to instruments, gear, and the way things were set up, everything had to be grabbable and usable. If anything wasn’t being used that year, then it was sold and flipped for something that was going
MOUNA TAHAR
to be used. So I believe in that too. Everything in [Friends of Friends], I touch at least once every year.
Most of the time, from ten to six you can find me at the studio, working on five to seven projects at the same time. One day I might be working on a country record; one day I might be working on a rock record; one day I might be working on a hip-hop record. At the end of every year, the number of artists who have been through the door is always within 100 to 200. A lot of times people will bring in things
metal touching metal. You order all the raw pieces, and then you can cut it down to exactly the size and type of adapter and whatever you need to connect all your gear. You need a soldering iron and scissors and knives. Most of the gear, I’ve taken apart and fixed at some point or another, because things break—and I learned that early on working at Electrical.
The next year I was hired as a sta engineer at Audiotree, where day-to-day I worked on their live-from-the-studio broadcast. There were a lot of people involved in every session.
that are past produced, maybe in a bedroom. Or it’s something that they’ve been working on with di erent collaborators over the past few years, and they’re coming to me because they need to get it over the finish line. But I’m flexible and try to work with whatever constraints we have, because that is the creative process in itself—figuring out what we can do with what we have, either time or budget.
When I was an intern at Electrical Audio from 2012 to 2013, I’d sit in on sessions and take all my notes. I’d spend my afternoons and evenings just asking [engineers] questions, having them go through things. And then later on, I started doing my own sessions there, recording bands and mixing and stu like that. The cool thing about that studio is, it’s a digital and analog studio, but the focus when I was there was recording to two-inch tape. I got a good education in the fundamentals, because everything in the digital world is based on the analog world: recording to a physical piece of tape, and then cutting that piece of tape physically, and then taping it to another piece of tape to create the arrangement you want. It also made me very tech-minded. All of the cabling in our studio I hand made. It’s all just
sions for a week and mixing at my house. That was our life until the pandemic happened. I was like, “Well, shit, I don’t know what to do, because I can’t hop on a flight and go to LA or Chicago for a week to work. What do we do?” And my partner went, “Well, maybe you should start a studio. Maybe we should do that for real.”
Through a lot of her ideas and motivation, I thought, “Let’s start to build it with whatever we have and go from there.” At the time, we were living in a nice old house in Florida. It’s a lot cheaper there, and we converted the downstairs floor to our recording studio. We actually had a couple Chicago artists come down and stay with us and work on their records. We worked on Reno Cruz’s album early on. He came down with Wyatt Waddell and a couple other people.
They did their record in Jacksonville in our first version of our studio. In terms of finances and gear and everything, it was super DIY. It was whatever we could a ord and figure out. I learned a lot about things I didn’t want to know about. You just want to make a record, but you’ve got to learn how to install a prop-
er HVAC system and troubleshoot electrical grounding.
Eventually we decided to move back to Chicago. We moved into the space that we have, and we’ve been there now for over three years. The very first record we did at our current studio was Nnamdï’s Please Have a Seat. He reached out to me and was like, “Hey, I need you to mix this record, but I need you to do it like in two weeks.” And I was like, “OK, well, we move into the space a couple days before that, so if you’re willing to help me wire up speakers and sit among, like, cardboard boxes, then great, yeah, we can do that.” We’ve just been making it better every month.
We just want to be a space where people can have access to a professional but safe and comfortable recording experience—where they know they’re going to be listened to and not bulldozed for their ideas. We want to keep protecting that Chicago thing, you know, where you get to be creative and make the next cool thing. v
m
dmbrown@chicagoreader.com
There’s somebody live editing and there’s typically two audio engineers and four camera people. There’s a host. Everybody was so good at their job—everybody kind of just stayed out of everybody’s way and did their thing, and it worked. We had it dialed down to a science.
We would have a broadcast in the morning, and it would be a French metal band, and then a broadcast in the afternoon would be, like, a bluegrass trio from Nashville. You’d have two hours to get the band in and comfortably sound check, and then you were live. We were doing over 300 of those sessions every year.
But then we would also broadcast from South by Southwest festival stages. Audiotree [co-owns] Lincoln Hall and Schubas, so we would do live sets from those places too. While I was there, we developed their Far Out series, which was recording bands in weird or remote locations. One of my favorites was the band Rezn. We recorded in a haunted graveyard and carried all of our gear a mile down a path to record this band.
At the end of my time at Audiotree, early 2019, my younger brother passed away, so I went back to Florida with my partner, DeAnna. I was traveling all over the country, doing ses-
Brok Mende (right) at work with Chase Carson of the band White Lucy MICAH BOYCE
THE SECRET HISTORY OF CHICAGO MUSIC
Local heroes Hot Mama Silver might’ve gotten too out-there for rock stardom
They hooked me with a 1970s promo photo where they look like glam werewolf superheroes—and they were at least that interesting in real life.
By STEVE KRAKOW
Since 2005 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.
Sometimes all I need to set me on the trail of a subject for the Secret History of Chicago Music is a single photograph. I’d heard about but never heard the band Hot Mama Silver when I found a 1970s promo pic that instantly hooked me. They looked like glam-rock werewolf superheroes, and I had to know their story.
“It was just kind of a British moody thing,” says HMS bassist Herb Eimerman, by way of explanation. Thankfully he’s also shared more information about the band, as well as some recordings that aren’t already on the Internet—and Hot Mama Silver turn out to be at least as interesting as the group I’d imagined when all I had was that photo.
Eimerman was born in Waukegan in 1950. “I would run home from kindergarten at noon to watch the Liberace Show,” he says. “He was my Mister Rogers.” He started playing clarinet in grade school, and by junior high was teaching clarinet and saxophone at a nearby music store. “There was a guitar teacher there that had 60 beginner students, and he was going to be gone for six weeks,” Eimerman says. “The owner of the store gave me an acoustic guitar and a Mel Bay beginner chord book and said, ‘You have 60 guitar students starting next week.’”
Getting tossed into the deep end prepared Eimerman to join his first rock group, led by a friend who played percussion in their school’s
concert band. “I was at his house and there was a jazz bass and a Fender Bassman amp,” he says. “We played ‘Louie Louie’ and ‘Hang On Sloopy’ for probably seven hours, and I was hooked.”
Eimerman loved the Beatles, the Byrds, and other melodic rockers, and at age 15 he played in a garage band called the Mourning Sorrows, who covered the hits of the day. “I probably played the bass part to ‘In the Midnight Hour’ wrong for the first year—same with the bass lead in ‘My Generation,’” he says.
His other teenage bands included Prod and then 9 Hours, a nine-piece group with a full horn section. Eimerman likens them to Tower of Power and Chicago. “They were good at what they did, but I hated that music and quit,” he says.
Eimerman joined Hot Mama Silver in 1971, after he went to see them perform. A friend of his, guitarist Bob “Yarddog” Stanley, had just started the band. “It was very hard blues rock for the most part, and the band was great, but I thought their bass player was weak,” Eimerman says. “I called Bob the following day, and I told him I loved what they were doing but I wanted to be the bass player. He said that they had one, and I told him he needed a better one. He called me back 20 minutes later, and we started rehearsing that night.”
At first they practiced at Eimerman’s parents’ house. “We only vibrated a bottle of my dad’s gin o the bar, which we replaced,” he says. Eimerman took over on lead vocals, and in the band’s early years, they replaced drum-
mer Je Payne with Bill Bobrowski. Eimerman especially enjoyed playing with keyboardist Dore Capitani—they’d been friends since seventh grade, when they’d been in the same junior high concert band. “We’d look across the stage at each other every night and just laugh,” he says.
The only document of this HMS lineup is a muddy demo, and though you can find it online, Eimerman disavows it—he doesn’t think it’s a fair representation of what they were doing. “We were listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin, but then Capitani got one of the earliest Moogs, and that sound really changed our direction to much more spacey, Eno-inspired rock,” Eimerman explains. “We loved Roxy Music.”
In the glammy promo photo I mentioned earlier, I left out an important detail: The whole band is holding what looks like a Christmas wreath made from strung-together doll arms. According to Eimerman, that was Capitani’s doing. “Dore Capitani is a really great
guy, but a bit of an oddity,” he says. “Back in the day, he said if he had all of those doll arms packed into his Volvo and smashed the car into the Lake Forest Oasis building on the tollway and the car would burst on fire, he felt that with the doll arms it for sure would make the front page of the National Enquirer.”
This version of Hot Mama Silver lasted about five years. “Like most bands, we exploded on a road trip,” Eimerman says. “We had pushed and pushed and hadn’t gotten to where we wanted to, and the band just got tired of each other. We broke up in Rock Springs, Wyoming.”
Hot Mama Silver split in 1976, and it took Eimerman till ’78 to put together the next version of the band.
“I would go out looking for guitar players, and one night I stopped at the Pineapple Lounge in Zion. The guitar player I saw, Tom Rutledge, was so, so good. The next night I went back sober and introduced myself,” Eimerman says. “He had seen the old Hot
Mama Silver play for years. I o ered him a job, and he quit his band on the spot.”
Rutledge’s old band had another guitarist, Randy Massey, and he also wanted to audition. “I really hadn’t paid that much attention to him, but I told him his equipment wasn’t pro gear,” Eimerman says. “The next day he showed up with a new Les Paul and Marshall amp, so I just thought, this guy is hungry for it!” Eimerman completed the lineup by asking Bobrowski to return on drums.
MUSIC
imprint in ’79, the self-titled album includes the lean, hard-ri n’ tune “Aliens” (which has a sinister Blue Öyster Cult vibe), the glittery horror rocker “House on the Hill” (which sounds like a meeting of Alice Cooper and Danzig), and the funky mock-disco number “Nozzle Squeeze.” Capitani and his Moog are missing, of course, but Rutledge plays guitar synthesizer (he’s also credited with “concepts”). The band distributed Hot Mama Silver to shops themselves and sold it at shows.
In the glammy promo photo I mentioned earlier, I left out an important detail: The whole band is holding what looks like a Christmas wreath made from strung-together doll arms.
The new Hot Mama Silver leaped back into gigging. “Every time we’d come back to a club on our circuit, I would always try to have a new song written,” Eimerman says. “We had probably 30 songs of mine at that time that we were playing live every night.”
HMS hooked up with local promoters Jam Productions, who helped them land highprofile opening slots—they played with the likes of Cheap Trick, the Outlaws, and Rush. Eimerman also remembers a 1980 festival they played on Credit Island outside Davenport, Iowa, with Sammy Hagar, REO Speedwagon, and the J. Geils Band. “Hagar was the nicest man in the business. He treated us like gold,” he recalls. “Peter Wolf of J. Geils was married at the time to Faye Dunaway, and she was not pleased but they had a ping-pong table with two blondes playing each other totally nude.” REO Speedwagon, Eimerman says, were “total jags.” They had security clear a path from their dressing room to the stage, and Eimerman considers it karmic payback that they were badly out of tune. “Their separate guitar roadies had tuned on separate Peterson strobe tuners. They grabbed their backup guitars with the same result, and then they came o stage and had to retune everything.”
Hot Mama Silver started working on their lone LP in 1978 at Hedden West Recording Studio in Schaumburg, choosing the nine tunes that got the best audience responses. “We did the first three songs and ran out of money,” Eimerman says. “We played a bunch of live shows and saved all of that money and went back and recorded the rest of them in another day or two.”
Released on the band’s own Silver Star
HMS broke up for the second and final time in 1982. “We had worked our butts off, and one of the guitar players left,” Eimerman says. Eimerman is still making music today, and he has a long string of solo records, beginning with Story in Your Eyes (1990) and From Your Window (1992), both produced by Jeff Murphy of beloved power-pop band Shoes. In 1995, Murphy and Eimerman formed the duo Nerk Twins, who played the inaugural International Pop Overthrow Festival in Los Angeles in 1998. In 2004 Eimerman joined long-distance band the Britannicas, who have members in Australia and Sweden, and they released a couple albums in the 2010s.
Eimerman has also mentored his 17-yearold grandson Gavin, who just released his first album, To Inherit All Prevalence, after years of work. Eimerman taught Gavin how to play guitar, and he appears on the album with one of his Britannicas bandmates. He calls it the best musical experience of his life.
Stanley and Massey are still writing and recording too, and I’d love to see any version of Hot Mama Silver play a few reunion gigs. A proper reissue of their LP is also long overdue—and I’m pretty curious about where all those doll arms ended up! v
The radio version of the Secret History of Chicago Music airs on Outside the Loop on WGN Radio 720 AM, Saturdays at 5 AM with host Mike Stephen. Past shows are archived at outsidetheloopradio.com/tag/secrethistory-of-chicago-music.
Recommended and notable shows with critics’ insights for the week of May 1
Hell No! invites Chicagoans to a night of protest songs
HELL NO! SONGS OF PROTEST AND RESISTANCE
Luna Blues Machine headline; the Crooked Mouth, Kyra Leigh, and Escargatoire open. Thu 5/1, 8:30 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $10–$20. 21+
BACK IN FEBRUARY , Jenny Magnus, cofounder of stalwart Chicago fringe theater company Curious Theatre Branch and cabaret band the Crooked Mouth, put out a call on Facebook to bring together artists and activists to discuss ideas for creative resistance. The folks who gathered at Labyrinth Arts ended up calling the informal group the WELP Collective, and as one of their first public acts, they’re presenting “Hell No!,” an evening of protest songs at the Hideout. (I was part of the initial gathering, but I’ve had no involvement with the show.) The concert will support two nonprofits—the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and the Transformative Justice Law Project of Illinois—and fittingly enough, it’s happening on May Day.
The Crooked Mouth grew out of the ashes of Maestro Subgum & the Whole, a cabaret rock band begun by Magnus’s Curious cofounder Beau O’Reilly in the late 70s. (It lasted through the early aughts, and Magnus joined in the 80s.) They released their self-titled debut album on Madison label Uvulittle in 2011 (the title of opener “Assume the Worst” now feels eerily prescient), following it with 2013’s Yes Face and 2016’s LoveloveloveloveSTOPlovelovelove. In addition to Magnus (who drums and sings) and O’Reilly (who sings and banters), the Crooked Mouth’s lineup includes longtime musical and theater collaborators Troy
“T-Roy” Martin on banjo, guitar, ukulele, and trombone; former NeoFuturist Heather Riordan on accordion; and Curious Theatre ensemble member Vicki Walden on bass. The group’s songs recall Maestro in their echoes of Brechtian cabaret, but they incorporate more of an alt-country and bluegrass feel, which the musicians leaven with whatever else grabs their fertile imaginations.
For the Hell No! show, the Crooked Mouth have invited several local artists to help turn up the protest heat. Escargatoire, formerly Snail Band, includes core members Emmy Bean (who presented Her Only Light, a celebration of Connie Converse’s 100th birthday, at Constellation last year), Ronnie Kuller (who collaborated on the Converse project), Julie Pomerleau, and Joey Spilberg. Kyra Leigh, a busy musical theater composer, performer, and music director with credits at Prop Thtr, Music Theater Works, and Kokandy Productions, has also served as the musical director for Trans Voices Cabaret Chicago. And the Luna Blues Machine, founded in 2001 by sisters Belinda and Maritza Cervantes, combine acoustic hip-hop, Latin music, and folk-soul. Their 2020 single “I Can Do It” starts with a slow chant of the title, as if in self-a rmation, before bursting forth with an anthemic fist-in-the-air call to action—a perfect metaphor for growing collective power. —KERRY REID
THURSDAY1
Hell No! Songs of Protest and Resistance See Pick of the Week at le . Luna Blues Machine headline; the Crooked Mouth, Kyra Leigh, and Escargatoire open. 8:30 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $10–$20. 21+
SUNDAY4
Morgan Garrett YHWH Nail Gun headline. 8 PM, Sleeping Village, 3734 W. Belmont, $20. 21+
Morgan Garrett is a homegrown American freak who makes music for car wrecks. The Philadelphiabased artist o en performs his slapdash variety of electronic music while wrestling an acoustic guitar. Where other artists become one with their instrument, Garrett plays his as if it’s something he can’t quite control—an object attempting to slip from his fingers or lash at his face. He performs as though possessed, creating sound less through traditional chord or song structures and more through noises via gestures. Across five full-lengths, Garrett has created an impressive body of noise, which he’s classified as “no metal” and “noise country.” His latest release, last year’s Purity (Orange Milk), reflects on discovering the dead body of his neighbor and what that experience forced him to confront about his own suicidal ideation. Opener “Alive” starts with Garrett imploring “I want to be kept alive by something” in a whisper that recalls Korn’s Jonathan Davis. He’s accompanied by a creeping, astructural nu- metal track that’s sometimes restrained in delightfully uncomfortable ways—the audio equivalent of a hollow metal vessel holding a tangle of sparking wires, with no coherent organization in its pockets of emptiness or its parts that crackle. The rest of the album is exactly as pained and haunting as you’d expect given its inspiration, and it delivers exciting, profound atmospheric twists and turns. With his sequencer and guitar, Garrett is a poet of contemporary Appalachia.
—MICCO CAPORALE
TUESDAY6
Mereba Anaiis opens. 8 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $30, $25 in advance. 18+
For Ethiopian-American singer Mereba, music is a refuge and a means of connection. Born Marian Azeb Mereba, she moved from city to city as a kid, following her professor parents as they took jobs at different schools; she turned to songwriting to cope with this instability and with the outsiderness she felt as the child of an immigrant father. When she briefly dropped out of college, her father insisted she stay with family in Ethiopia, and the experience transformed her outlook and her music: As she told Sway Calloway on his podcast in 2019, she discovered “a wider context for myself and for the people I’m hoping to inspire.” After returning to her studies, she moved away from straightforward acoustic folk and began incorporating electronic beats and grooves, which she taught herself to
Luna Blues Machine (le ) and Escargatoire perform as part of Hell No! Songs of Protest and Resistance. COURTESY THE ARTISTS
MUSIC
make in Ableton.
Following a handful of EPs over a six-year stretch, Mereba dropped her debut album, The Jungle Is the Only Way Out , on Interscope in 2019. It showcases her lilting vocals and genre-blending songwriting amid blues and folk guitar, hip-hop beats, and haunting atmospheres. Her second full-length, February’s The Breeze Grew a Fire (Secretly Canadian), continues that journey with its mix of soul, pop, and indie folk. Its sound and production are relatively understated, but this intimate feel invites you to step into Mereba’s private world as she contemplates motherhood, her heritage, and her path in life. On “Breeze Grew Fire,” she delivers a poem about overcoming grief and trauma to find confidence and inspiration, her recitation draped in wordless vocals and delicate guitar. The sweet lullaby “Starlight (My Baby)” is so airy that its thumping beat might be the only thing keeping it from floating away on a cloud. On “Spirit Guiding,” Mereba’s self-assured vocals slink through a slow R&B groove as she sings about tapping into the universe to find her inner strength. “They gonna tell my tale, I’m gonna make it ’bout / How I broke out and not how I broke down,” she sings. “I outgrew my shell, so I’m breaking out.” —JAMIE
LUDWIG
Obituary Nails, Terror, SpiritWorld, and Pest Control open. 6 PM, House of Blues, 329 N. Dearborn, $41.25–$81.50, VIP $100–$200, opera box $1,500 (up to 14 people). 17+
Over the past two decades, Florida Man has emerged as a mythical avatar of disorder—he might throw a live alli-
gator through a Wendy’s drivethrough window or break into jail to hang out with his friends. But go back another 20 years, to the mid-80s, and you’ll find a bunch of Florida men doing something arguably weirder and definitely cooler: inventing death metal. (I know I’m generalizing, but the early bands were basically all male.) The Florida scene played a key role in the genre’s birth, thanks to the likes of Death, Morbid Angel, Atheist, Deicide—and of course Obituary. Founded as Executioner in 1984 and renamed Obituary in ’88, they released their sophomore album, Cause of Death—a foundational document of death metal—in 1990.
On this tour, Obituary celebrate 35 years of Cause of Death, and three original members have never left: vocalist John Tardy and his brother, drummer Donald Tardy, plus rhythm guitarist Trevor Peres. Bassist Terry Butler (one of several people who’ve played in Death as well as Obituary) has been aboard since 2010, and lead guitarist Kenny Andrews joined in 2012.
In 2022, Obituary released a lockdown livestream of the album called Cause of Death: Live Infection The classic recording adds so much reverb to the drums that they sound like they’re at the other end
Mereba VINCENT HAYCOCK
Morgan Garrett SHANNON RYAN
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of a dungeon, and the vocals are louder than the rest of the band put together. Live Infection is denser and more overwhelming, with a modern mix that cranks up the guitars to compete with the vocals— for better or worse, it sounds more like what you’ll get onstage.
Cause of Death erupts into frenzied double-time stomps and digs deep into midtempo grooves engineered for maximally satisfying headbanging. The songs make lots of gear-stripping tempo changes, but the riffs stay simple, blocky, and instantly catchy. Garrote-fine guitar leads gleam through the grotty murk, bright as blades. To my ears, the most distinctive thing about Obituary is John’s hoarse, elastic voice, which doesn’t just describe horror but also seems to feel it. You can sense the desperate, weary weight of every syllable in the effort he takes to push it out. Nobody in death metal can match the character of the singers who developed their styles
before anybody knew how the music was “supposed” to sound.
Obituary are probably more popular now than they’ve ever been, thanks to a revival of old-school death metal that’s been thriving since the early 2010s. When I saw them at Cobra Lounge in 2013, the circle pit took up three-quarters of the live room. House of Blues will be a different vibe for sure—it’s crawling with security staff—but I’m sure the crowd will do their part.
At this show, Obituary plan to mix songs from Cause of Death with material from some of their ten other studio records, the most recent of which is 2023’s Dying of Everything (Relapse). If you don’t have Cause of Death memorized, you might not even be able to tell which songs are the new ones— because Obituary have just kept on doin’ what they’ve always done. They’ve recorded their five most recent albums at what they call “RedNeck Studios,” built into a soundproofed 500-square-
foot outbuilding on John and Donald’s property in Gibsonton, Florida, an unincorporated community south of Tampa.
This self-sufficiency ensures they can work their own way. “There is no sound replacement, or triggers, or fixing everything every millisecond,” Donald told Tape Op in 2023. “I made sure that I was happy with the sound of the drums in the room.” And John wants to make music face-to-face with other people, not by emailing files back and forth. “It doesn’t work for us like that,” he explained to Rolling Stone in 2017. “Donald, Trevor, and I get there and have a few beers and plow through some songs and just jam and have a good time with it.”
—PHILIP MONTORO
WEDNESDAY7
Etran de L’AïR Rich Ruth opens. 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, $25. 18+
Etran de L’Aïr’s latest album is titled 100% Sahara Guitar (Sahel Sounds), and no one can accuse them of false advertising. Moussa, Abdoulaye, and Abdourahamane Ibrahim—the three Nigerien brothers at the core of the family collective, founded in 1995 by Aghaly Migi—are each a mighty force on Tuareg guitar. Together, switching leads and solos, they combine into a veritable sandstorm of desert blues whose loping, swaying grooves, stinging surfdune reverb, and heartfelt yodeling choruses spiral up to the stars.
The band’s real secret weapon, though, may be young drummer Alghabid Ghabdouan, a looselimbed powerhouse whose unflagging energy and exuberant fills anchor the spacey, psychedelic guitar pyrotechnics to effortless boogie. Many of the album’s songs, such as “Imouha,” start off at a slower-rolling, feel-good tempo, building tension before the band hits the accelerator and blasts off. It’s no coincidence that the song’s video features a bunch of beat-up trucks driving through the desert, kicking up giant dust clouds as camels run alongside them—and all the while, the band members float suspended in space, magically elevated by the power
of all those guitars. Etran de L’Aïr are billed as the longest-running wedding band in Agadez, and when you listen to their music, it’s easy to close your eyes and see the joyous bodies shake and shimmy all day and into the night. —NOAH BERLATSKY
leya Lia Kohl opens. 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $20, $15 in advance. 18+
Leya, the New York duo of violinist and vocalist Adam Markiewicz and harpist Marilu Donovan, strike a curious balance between medieval folk, classical music, and avant-garde pop. Using vocals, processed violin, and a harp tuned to specifications Donovan designed for the project, they make music that shi s fluidly from sparse to overwhelming—sometimes it provides space for contemplation, sometimes it envelops you like a thick fog, and sometimes it bombards you like a flurry of raw, slightly unhinged emotion. Leya’s projects are just as varied: They’ve collaborated with experimental musicians such as Eartheater and Claire Rousay, they’ve teamed up with choreographers and video artists, they’ve scored an adult film, and they’ve worked with fashion brands, including Louis Vuitton and Calvin Klein.
On Leya’s 2018 debut, The Fool , Markiewicz’s expressive, operatic tenor ebbs and flows as though he has a second violin that speaks in a human voice. Their most recent EP, last year’s I Forget Everything (NNA Tapes), brings the music into sharper focus without forcing its drifting ambience into a clear structure. “Baited,” where Markiewicz blends pop and classical vocal styles, builds from a close whisper into a lush expanse; “Corners” uses his singing to amplify the palpable tension between his shape-shi ing violin and Donovan’s cascading harp. I Forget Everything is Leya’s first release to incorporate elements of electronic production, and though they’re very subtle, they add to the music’s uncanny atmospheres. Closer “Mia” feels like a dream sequence in a ghostly German expressionist film, with its gossamer, orchestral textures and foreboding sense that everything is not quite right.
—JAMIE LUDWIG v
continued from p. 25
Obituary TIM HUBBARD
Etran de L’Aïr ABDOULMOUMOUNI HAMID
Marilu Donovan and Adam Markiewicz of Leya REBEKAH CAMPBELL
CLASSIFIEDS
Associate Attorney. Research and analyze intellectual property legal issues. Conduct legal analysis and draft documents such as legal briefs and contracts.
Employer: Flener IP Law, LLC. Location: Chicago, IL. Mail resume to Z. Flener at 77 W Washington St., Suite 800, Chicago, IL 60602.
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Health Care Service Corporation seeks Project Delivery Specialist (Chicago, IL) to act as a functional liaison between Intake team & operations teams. Review project scope support biz needs across delivery cycle & handle production & system change request to deliver on enterprise initiatives. REQS: Bach & 3 yrs exp. Telecommuting permitted. Pay: $95,306$123,400/yr. Benefits: https://careers. hcsc. com/totalrewards. Email resume to hrciapp@ bcbsil. com, ref R0041609.
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Health Care Service Corporation seeks Sr Systems Analyst (Chicago, IL) to design enhancements & new business applications or information systems solutions through integration of technical & business requirements. REQS: Bach & 4 yrs exp. Telecommuting: Hybrid, 3 days a week in office. Pay: $127,754 - $164,200/yr. Benefits: https://careers. hcsc.com/totalrewards. Email resume to hrciapp@bcbsil. com, ref R0041275
Health Care Service Corporation seeks IT/IS GRC Consultant (Chicago, IL) to plan, design, enforcement & audit of IT & info security policies, standards and procedures
which safeguard integrity & access to enterprise systems, files & data elements. REQS: Bach & 4 yrs exp. Telecommuting: This is a Flex role (3 days in office / 2 days remote). Pay: $126,755$149,300/yr. Benefits: https://careers.hcsc.com/ totalrewards. Email resume to hrciapp@ bcbsil.com, ref R0041410.
Law Clerk sought by Liston & Tsantilis, P.C., Chicago, IL. JD/law related degree + strong oral/written communication, attention to detail, interpersonal communication, organizational, research skills reqd. Assist attorneys/supervise paralegals w/ case prep, support & analysis. Salary $86,819 + health ins coverage. Resumes to: rhaydar @ ltlawchicago.com.
Primary Therapist (Chicago, IL) Eating Recovery Center LLC, dba ERC PathlightGroup therapy, Psychoeducation/ skills-based groups; DBT, ACT, CBT; Milieu management; Train new hires; Covering groups & meals for other employees. Min Reqs: Master’s in mental health counseling or rltd field with 9 months work exp in mental health counseling or therapy; Mental Health License. Salary $75,400 / yr. Resumes to megan. perry@ercpathlight.com
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Senior Data Engineer (League Corp, Chicago, IL): Dsgn, bld, & optmz scalable stream & batch pipelines; Maxmz effctvnss of microsrvcs that serve backend cpblts; Revolutnz Data Platfrm DevOps prcss; Drive archtctrl choices & implmnt data platfrm tools; Guide & mentor data engnrs, educate & encourage adptn of s/w best prctcs; Translte needs into data & anlytcs reqs; Anlyz, tune, trblsht & spprt data infrastrctre; Imprv, trblsht, & admnstr pipelines. Reqd Exp: Exp performg root cause anlys of prdctn issues, tuning & optmztn; hlthcare datasets: EMR & Claims, interoperablty standrds: FHIR; coding scrpts in python & SQL, & microsrvcs in python; HL7’s FHIR framewrk; implmntg deploymnts, error hndlg & monitorg for scalable pipelines; cloud
Data Stack: GCP, AWS or Azure; spprtg rprtg tools as a platfrm: Looker, Tableau, or Power BI; ingestg, storing, & anlyzg data in SQL, w/ tools: Snowflake, BigQuery, MySQL, or PostgreSQL; dsgng, dvlpg, & dplyg server-less functns for deploymnt of microsrvcs using Python as language for tools: AWS Lambda, Azure, or GCP Cloud Fnctns; using, dvlpg, & maintng task orchestratn systms. Reqs Bachelor’s degree or frgn equiv in Comptr Sci, Data Sci, S/W Engrg or rltd fld, & 4 yrs exp as Data Engr or rltd occ in Hlthcare Tech Indstry. Optn to WFH. Trvl reqdless than 1% to Toronto, Canada. Salary: $138,715 - $210,000. Send C.V. to todukoya@league.com .
Software Developers / Itasca, IL: Analyze, design, dvlp & test the programming apps using Agile methodologies (SCRUM). Dsgn sftw or customize sftw for client use w/ the aim of optimizing operational efficiency. Dvlp & design the “Enterprise Applications.” Travel/ relocate to various unanticipated U.S. locs as reqd. Telecommuting permitted. Salary: $149k$150k standard company benefits. Send res to: Prorsum Technologies, Inc. 650 E Devon Ave. Ste. 175 Itasca, IL 60143 Send res to: Prorsum Technologies, Inc. 650 E Devon Ave. Ste. 175 Itasca, IL 60143
Statistical Programmer (Immunology), AbbVie Inc., North Chicago, IL. Create specifications for the structure of ADaM data sets for individual studies. Develop SAS programs for creation & validation of ADaM data sets following CDISC standards, & of Tables, Listings & Figures. Ensure accuracy of SAS programs by reviewing code, log & output files. Review output to ensure consistency with output for other activities (CSR, ISS, ISE). Create documentation for regulatory filings including reviewers guides & data definition documents. Participate in development of SAS Macros. Must possess a BS or foreign academic equivalent in Statistics, Biostatistics, Computer Science or a related field & 2 years of statistical programming experience analyzing clinical trial data in the pharmaceutical industry. Of experience required, must have 2 years of work experience in the following: (i) developing, reviewing & executing code using SAS Enterprise Guide & /or SAS Studio; (ii) performing programming tasks including data processing & manipulation using SAS BASE, data analysis using SAS STAT, & data reporting using SAS ODS; (iii) using SAS macro variables & macro functions including debugging the macro; (iv)
developing & validating programming code for derivation of key variables in Trial Design SDTM domains; (v) developing & validating ADaM datasets in compliance with CDISC standards & developing Tables, Listings, & Figures; (vi) developing & validating programming code using SAS procedures to implement statistical methodologies for analysis of categorical & continuous variables including linear regression, categorical data analysis, survival analysis, & significance testing; (vii) creating or reviewing documentation for regulatory filings including reviewers’ guides & data definition documents; & (viii) complying with FDA, EMA, & other regulatory agencies/ICH guidelines & relevant regulatory requirements. Alternatively, would accept a MS in Statistics, Biostatistics, Computer Science or a related field or foreign academic equivalent, & 6 months of statistical programming experience. Of experience required, must have 6 months in each of i. through viii. Experience may be gained concurrently. Any suitable combination of education, training or experience is acceptable. Apply online at https://careers.abbvie.com/ en & reference REF38574A. Salary Range: $92,820.00 - $118,500.00 per year.
The Dept of Surgery, at the Univ of IL Chicago, located in a large metropolitan area, is seeking full-time Assistant Professor of Clinical Surgery/Physician Surgeon to assist the department with the following responsibilities: Under direction and supervision, teach, train, and advise medical students, residents, and fellows in the field of surgery and robotic surgery; Provide full-time clinical care, to an underserved patient population, using new technologies in the diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer; Execute interventional robotic bronchoscopies and conduct robotic surgery in the chest and upper GI (esophagus, stomach); Conduct research in the field and participate in committee assignments, curriculum development, and administration as needed; Other duties and University service as assigned. No travel is required for this position. This position minimally requires a MD degree or its foreign equivalent, 6 yrs of general surgery residency, and a valid State of Illinois medical license or eligibility for an Illinois medical license. For fullest consideration, please submit CV, cover letter, and 3 professional references by 06/01/2025 to Arlin Aldaba, University of IL Chicago, 840 South Wood Street, Suite 402, Chicago, IL 60612 or via email to aaldab1@uic.edu. UIC
is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action employer. Minorities, women, veterans, & individuals w/ disabilities are encouraged to apply. UIC may conduct background checks on all job candidates upon acceptance of a contingent offer letter. Background checks will be performed in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act. As a qualifying federal contractor, the University of Illinois System uses E-Verify to verify employment eligibility. The University of Illinois System requires candidates selected for hire to disclose any documented finding of sexual misconduct or sexual harassment and to authorize inquiries to current and former employers regarding findings of sexual misconduct or sexual harassment. For more information, visit https://www. hr.uillinois.edu/cms/One. aspx?portalId Arlin Aldaba
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Microfiction Judges & Contestants Wanted 100 words or less. Lokhuza.com
MATCHES
Thirty year old man looking for the love of his life. Must be female, 25-30, and willing to travel to western suburbs. Call/text any time at number below. Ask for Jake. 630-518-8015
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
Cello lessons in the Fine Arts Building. All ages, beginner to early advanced Free intro consultation. Saturdays. heatherdunncello.com
