Chicago Reader print issue of October 30, 2025 (Vol. 55, No. 5)

Five and a half feet under

By Andrew Stojkovich, p. 7

The gravediggers of Rosehill Cemetery

THIS WEEK

Fashion Chicago Fashion Week centers small-scale designers and everyday consumers.

Reader Bites | McFadden Fish fillet with green peppercorn soup at YooYee

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07 Feature The gravediggers of Rosehill Cemetery

13 Q&A Kelly Hayes’s new directory for activists in crisis

14 Q&A Hal Schrieve goes fangs out in hir latest young adult book

15 Feature First Nations Film and Video Festival screens the vast spectrum of Indigenous filmmaking 16 Movies of Note Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia is a disturbing eco-satire; Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind steals audiences’ approval.

16 Moviegoer There’s wisdom in feeling scared

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17 Secret History of Chicago Music Aura helped build Chicago’s famous horn-rock sound.

19 Shows of Note Previews of concerts including Jeff Tweedy, Ak’chamel, Three 6 Mafia, and Fugu Dugu 22 Gossip Wolf | Galil The Empty Bottle gets a free (jazz) refill.

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CITY LIFE

FASHION

Putting Chicago fashion on the map

Chicago Fashion Week returned for its second year to an industry in flux.

By MAIA MCDONALD

Chicago Fashion Week wrapped up Sunday after nearly two weeks of fashion education and social events, exhibitions, in-store activations, retail markets, galas, and runway shows, all aimed at elevating the city to be a major player in the international fashion industry. Launched last year, the second iteration again focused on local designers, designers of color, sustainability, and low-cost or free events, important at a time when prices are continuing to rise across the fashion industry.

While a majority of last year’s slate of Chicago Fashion Week (CFW) events were collaborations with other local fashion organizations like the Chicago Fashion Coalition, the Costume Council of the Chicago History Museum, and the Curio—which split from CFW after curating last year’s opening runway show and held their own Chicago fashion showcase earlier this month—this year’s events were primarily spearheaded by founder John Leydon and ten advisory council members.

beyond something just for celebrities and industry professionals to something that “dispels the mystery,” Leydon said.

Stephanie Neuerburg, a well-known Chicago-based actor and fashion creator, was among the local fashion influencers who attended this year’s events.

During the first weekend, Neuerburg attended the Kone Ranger Fall ’25 Runway Show at the Royal Palms Shuffleboard Club; the Aesthete and Decadent of the 1990s exhibition (a tribute to the late fashion editor and stylist

“Chicago has a long history of being a fashion and shopping destination that I don’t think it necessarily has on a global scale anymore, especially compared to other cities. New York and Paris, and all these places are just like these hotbeds for established, upcoming, and established designers. But I think that’s what’s so cool about Fashion Week for Chicago is that it’s creating a platform for the creative people who live here and have lived here forever and have been making this work for so long.”

Though the brainchild of Leydon and his collaborators, there have been previous local fashion events that some cite as laying the groundwork for CFW, one of the most notable being Fashion Focus Chicago, created in 2005 by former mayor Richard M. Daley to invigorate the city’s fashion industry through runway shows and exhibitions.

In the year since CFW got its start, the fashion industry has gone through major shake-ups. President Donald Trump’s tariffs have a ected key manufacturing countries like China, Bangladesh, India, and Vietnam, and an executive order nixed the de minimis loophole that once meant any packages under $800 imported from abroad could avoid being charged extra taxes and duties, making it more expensive for both small-scale designers and consumers.

Following the success of the first CFW last year, which featured over 50 events across the Chicago area, Leydon aimed to expand subsequent iterations. Over 60 were planned for this year, and Leydon added new members

“How do we keep these talented folks in the midwest, in the city of Chicago?”

to the 2025 CFW advisory council, hoping the group of fashion retailers, designers, academics, stylists, brand founders, and creatives would help to build on the diversity of the previous year.

Unlike other regional and international fashion industry events, CFW was designed

with everyday consumers in mind, making learning about and engaging with fashion more accessible to those outside of the industry. “Our model is completely different from the major fashion weeks: New York, Paris, Milan, those are the trade events. So the general population usually never has an opportunity to attend those kinds of shows,” Leydon said ahead of the October 9 CFW launch party at the venue formerly home to Chez Paree nightclub. “We’re excited about evolving the concept. It has been proven that there is an appetite for this type of programming.”

Tickets to attend events ranged from free to $200, with many being around $10 to $50, expanding the concept of fashion week events

Isabelle Blow); and Insidious Studios’s spooky Freak City Core Runway show.

For Neuerburg, who also works at a Ravenswood clothing store, it’s been exciting to see CFW give a platform to talented people within the fashion industry and attempt to grow the city’s impact in the space, even when there are several other things the city is already known for.

“I’ve heard it firsthand. Everything is more expensive. . . . So with the tariffs, obviously, raw materials are more expensive if [designers] can get them at all,” Leydon said.

This can make producing clothing more expensive, and in turn leads to higher prices for consumers. But Leydon said intentionally supporting designers whose prices may rise, opting to invest in higher-quality pieces less often, instead of frequently buying cheaper mass-produced items, will ultimately be a better financial decision for consumers.

“Starbucks doesn’t need my money, and these big retailers don’t need my money, but these small designers do, and one piece can make a significant di erence in their ability to continue to buy fabric and produce garments,” he said.

As the fraught economic state of the fashion industry persists, Leydon said consumers will

Looks from Chicago Fashion Week’s Runway LatinX fashion show (le ) and VIP launch party MAIA MCDONALD

“[CFW is] creating a platform for the creative people who live here . . . and have been making this work for so long.”

have to adopt new ways of thinking about investing in fashion, especially as prices rise and alternatives to fast fashion like vintage fashion become more popular, leaving easier-to-acquire, cheaper brands behind.

Neuerburg, who often makes her own clothing, agrees.

“I think we’ve been seeing it for years, but especially in 2025, we’re really seeing this kind of severe dissonance between having as much as possible and getting it as quickly as possible versus there’s still a group of people who are interested in and devoted to the handiwork and the art and the craft behind creating things deliberately and slowly,” Neuerburg said.

“So many people I know, even from a social media perspective, are spending most of their time and money at places like Amazon or super-fast fashion companies.”

CFW hosted several events geared toward vintage fashion, clothes swapping, and sustainability, including pop-ups from Design at

There was also Fleurotica, an annual fundraiser for the Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance’s nature education programs, in which floral designers, local business owners, and landscape artists crafted lush, wearable garments made entirely from plants. Many of the pieces featured in the Fleurotica runway show were put together onsite at the Garfield Park Conservatory just hours before the show’s start by designers including A. Hunt Design, Dominique

329, a local vintage design collective, where Studio TMS presented a capsule collection of upcycled menswear made from vintage clothing with antique fabrics, trim, and findings.

Struck, Kiola Millan, Luz Cardenas, Latino- and immigrant-centered arts collective Somos Hechos en México, and several others.

Melody Boykin is the founder and producer of the Chicago-based Black Fashion Week, a series of events highlighting emerging and established Black designers and fashion industry professionals since 2015. She called the Fleurotica show a way to give “exposure to other creative visual artists” and “cultivate the industry.”

Events that prominently featured designers of color were among those that returned from last year’s CFW, including the Runway LatinX Gala, Surround Sound of Fashion, and the Shadow and Silk Fashion Gala (When Urban Streetwear Meets Dandyism) event from Support Your Hommes. The gala’s backstage manager, Lanee Bailey—who’s also a creative director and photographer who professionally goes by “Boogie”—believed fashion events in which ethnic and cultural identity is at the forefront are important at a time when “Black voices are being silenced.”

It’s events like the Shadow and Silk Gala, which had its fourth iteration during CFW, that can create opportunities for Black creatives within the fashion industry.

“So for us to kind of be able to express that creatively through our clothing and through representation, it’s so important,” Bailey said.

The planning of events like Quinceañera Fashion: Your Ultimate Guide, hosted by 15Fashion at the Chicago History Museum, began months before the Trump administration began its aggressive immigration and

CITY LIFE

deportation campaigns in Illinois this year, strongly impacting communities that may have attended this year’s CFW.

However, Estelle Walgreen, cofounder of 15Fashion, believed that this made it even more important for CFW to prominently feature Latine culture and dress. She felt highlighting quinceañera fashion and history was especially poignant as research indicates the celebrations’ falling popularity in the U.S. Arabel Alva Rosales, a member of last year’s CFW steering committee and founder of the annual Runway LatinX show, said that, given the challenges many in her community are facing currently, those in leadership positions should do what they can to provide opportunities to people, both Latine and not. In addition to being a part of CFW, Runway LatinX serves as a fundraiser for Pivoting In Heels, a nonprofit organization that provides internships, scholarships, and leadership development to young women.

“I learned a long time ago that it’s not just about doing something, but it’s being at the table and being one of the leaders involved in what you’re doing,” Rosales said.

For Leydon, building a strong local fashion industry that can grow alongside CFW will require creating opportunities for local designers, who often have to leave for other cities due to limited jobs at home. The more people working in local fashion who can communicate this to the city’s political leaders, the closer that growth will be, he said.

“Many people don’t realize we have six design schools in this greater region. Part of the problem is that these students graduate, and they have to flee to the coasts because there’s no opportunity here. . . . How do we keep these talented folks in the midwest, in the city of Chicago?” Leydon said.

“It’s a bigger question, and it’s a question that we have had with City Hall, and it’s obviously not something that’s going to be solved overnight, but we’re up for the conversation, and the first way of solving a problem is acknowledging that it exists.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Looks from Chicago Fashion Week’s VIP launch party (center) and annual Fleurotica fashion show

MAIA MCDONALD

Let’s Play!

FOOD & DRINK

peppercorn soup at YooYee

Afew years ago, a cognitive behavioral therapist recommended sensory distraction to me as a tool for overcoming panic attacks. If the stresses of life are overwhelming your brain so much they’re manifesting in uncontrollable physical symptoms, she advised, surprise your body with something unexpected: Bite into a lime wedge. Take a cold shower. Play loud music. Supposedly (and in nonprofessional terms), this can start a hard reset.

In a massive, handled metal bowl comes a generous portion of vibrant green soup dotted with jalapeño slices. Mild, flaky pieces of fish bob above a bed of glassy noodles, bean sprouts, and green vegetables, but the sensory distraction lies in the green Szechuan peppercorns, which infuse the dish with a strong spice that produces a satisfying numbness.

Right now, the stresses of life are many. It’s a terrifying time to be a Chicagoan, but how neighbors are banding together is inspiring. If you need some help interrupting all the feelings, head to Uptown’s newish Chinese restaurant YooYee for a steaming vat of the chef’s special fish fillet and green peppercorn soup.

Compared to their red Szechuan cousins, green peppercorns bring a brighter, more citrusy zing, oftentimes yielding a stronger tingling sensation. From the first bite till the last, your entire mouth—tongue, lips, and roof—will vibrate delightfully with fiery sensation. I’d advise trying this tangy, nearelectric soup in smaller portions over rice, but for those who can handle the heat, it’s stimulating, addicting, and—dare I say— healing. —TARYN MCFADDEN YOOYEE 4925 N. Broadway, $25, yooyeechicago.com v

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.

NEWS & POLITICS

FEATURE

Five and a half feet under

The gravediggers of Rosehill Cemetery

By ANDREW STOJKOVICH

Rosehill’s gothic entrance gate o Ravenswood Avenue casts a puzzle-piece shadow onto the pavement and grass. The sky is all blue, and the sun is already too hot on this late July morning. Looking west into the cemetery, there’s a line of maple trees, a verdigris statue of someone named Charles J. Hull, and headstones. Lots of headstones.

I walk toward the main o ce. A simple, white logo on its door reads “Dignity Memorial.” Inside, I’m greeted by a woman I later learn is Sara De La O, one of Rosehill’s four groundskeepers. She’s about five feet tall, with a square jaw, sharp brown eyes, and thick black hair. She smiles when I tell her I’m here to follow Rosehill’s grounds crew for the day, then disappears through a door behind the front desk.

I pick up a visitor’s map. Looking at it, I realize just how big Rosehill is. It’s shaped a bit like Nevada: an uneven hexagon with an angled jut for its southern boundary. At 350 acres, it’s the largest (and oldest) cemetery in Chicago, bordered by about six neighborhoods and nearly the size of one itself.

The map is dotted with the final resting places of notable Chicagoans. People like Julius Rosenwald, founder of the Museum of Science and Industry, and Charles G. Dawes, vice president to Calvin Coolidge. John G. Shedd, Aaron Montgomery Ward, and Richard W. Sears are all interred inside architect Sidney Lovell’s historic mausoleum. Rosehill is also home to eponyms I never knew were eponyms, like Ignaz Schwinn of Schwinn Bicycle Company and Norman Harris of BMO Harris. Finally, there’s a smattering of semi-notable Chicagoland mayors, civil war generals, publishers, actors, religious leaders, gangsters, horticulturists, bankers, and athletes buried throughout. Rosehill is a six-by-six-block composite of Chicago history.

But Rosehill isn’t just a historical site. It’s an active graveyard. That’s part of what makes it—or any cemetery, really—so fascinating. It’s a threshold where people transition from loved ones to memories to monuments. And because Rosehill is both large and old, you can see that interaction in real time: burial services next to headstones so weathered they’re no longer legible.

I hear the o ce door open. A man wearing a black hat and a blue polo enters. A patch on the left side of his chest

Rosehill groundskeeper Steve Schmidt digs a grave. KIRK WILLIAMSON

NEWS & POLITICS

continued from p. 7

bears the same Dignity Memorial logo. A patch on the right tells me his name is Dominic. He beckons me forward with his two-way radio, and I follow Rosehill superintendent Dominic Reyes out of the building and to the cab of a Dignity-branded Ford F-250. He turns the ignition and tells me there’s much to see.

Reyes starts us down an arcing road. Again, Rosehill’s size is made obvious. We drive past the large mausoleum complex, the gardens, and the ponds. We drive past obelisks that stand stories tall, crypts with bronze doors, and memorials with crosses and crescents and flowers. We drive past rows of centuries-old markers that lie flat and flush with the grass, none more unique than the last. Somehow, every headstone is profound.

We finally park along the road before meeting another groundskeeper, Jose Sanchez. “He’s kind of reserved,” Reyes tells me of Sanchez, “but he knows a lot of shit.”

Rosehill is organized, from largest to smallest, by sections, then lots, then sublots, then graves. On this hot July morning, we’re at a grave in section 121—a shadeless crop across from the cemetery’s large NeoGrec mausoleum complex. Here, Sanchez taps his shovel near where the grass meets the road.

Sanchez is about five feet, seven inches tall and in his mid-50s. He wears the same thing all groundskeepers wear: a navy blue Dignity baseball cap, a light blue button-up, and navy blue slacks. Sanchez’s mildly unkempt beard

(an image I strain not to think about, given the context). At Rosehill, these lot pins are centuries old, meaning they’re often overgrown with dirt and grass and have shifted after decades of rainfall, snowfall, and frost heaves. The ground, like the ocean, swells and drifts. Sanchez taps until we hear a clink. He shovels away a square of earth and exhumes the lot pin.

Reyes tells me he recently bought the grounds team new shovels, but Sanchez turned down the o er, opting instead for his old, all-steel shovel. He prefers it; it’s more precise. “It’s important,” Sanchez says, “because we’re trying to do it perfect and not make mistakes. We have to do right for the family.”

creeps onto his cheekbones and neck beyond his blue surgical mask. I’ve never seen his nose.

Reyes and I quietly watch Sanchez tap. Occasionally, Reyes whispers an aside, for texture or context. The first step to digging a grave, Reyes tells me, is making certain you’ve found it. That means finding the correct lot pin. The numbered metal skewer-meets-disk looks a bit like an oversize meat thermometer

With gravedigging, the job changes with the terrain and the environment—and environment is a term that can be applied to both natural elements and the broader endof-life industry. Consider that, two decades ago, 11 Rosehill groundskeepers performed even more tasks than they do now, including mowing, weeding, pruning, and general landscaping and ground maintenance. Now, most of that work is contracted out to landscaping companies, and the four full-time groundskeepers have three main tasks: measuring, digging, and interring.

The grounds, literally and metaphorically, have been slowly shifting beneath them.

After he finds the lot pin, Sanchez measures the grave and outlines it with small, red flags. While he works, he tells me he’s been at the cemetery since 1994. Given that Rosehill averages about 460 burials per year, it’s not an exaggeration to say that Sanchez has measured thousands of graves, perhaps even tens of thousands. The economy of his measurements makes this apparent.

After marking the grave, Sanchez picks up a drill that’s been hiding in the grass. The drill bit is nearly as long as Sanchez is tall. Starting with his hands at his head, he bores into the ground to check for debris, like rocks or pipes, that might impede the backhoe. He steps to the right and probes again. He does this again and again around the grave. When he finishes, he places green and yellow flags in the center of the grave. Good to dig. The whole process takes about 20 minutes. Much of the tedium involves double- and triplechecking that everything is correct. As I’m told repeatedly throughout the day: You only get one shot.

I ask Sanchez if the job is hard. He takes a beat and waggles his head. “Sometimes,” he finally says. “Winter is hard—hard ground, lots of snow—or when it’s raining.”

The sole item of note in Michael Weidman’s o ce is the noirish black fedora resting on the back of the door. Weidman is Rosehill’s director of family services, and he looks the part. He’s tall, pale, and garbed in black. He wears a pocket watch. He even drives a handsome, glossy-black 1953 Buick.

Weidman is Rosehill’s de facto historian. During our conversation, he tells me that Rosehill predates the light bulb by 20 years, the telephone by 17 years, and the typewriter by a dozen. “We represent the 19th century, the 20th century, and the 21st century,” says Weidman. “But it’s not just a tourist destination. This is a cemetery that exists to respectfully take care of the dead and to give comfort to their families.”

That’s one of the most charming aspects of Rosehill. It’s both an active site of grief and historical curiosity. For instance, a few summers ago, a class of students visited Chicago from Germany, and Rosehill was one of their destinations. Why? To see the grave of Oscar Mayer. I imagine those students enjoying their tour while a burial happens somewhere nearby, Sanchez somewhere measuring.

Weidman is sure to mention that Rosehill, like Chicago, is a city of neighborhoods. “It’s very organic. They just happen, like Chicago neighborhoods just happen,” he says. In Rosehill, these sections can be loosely divided into, among others, Greek, Romanian, Jewish, Latine, Chinese, Japanese, Muslim, Christian, and nondenominational. Weidman speculates that’s mostly because people want to be buried with the people they spent time with in life.

Religious congregations sometimes purchase plots—sometimes whole sections of the cemetery—for later use. On this day, the sole burial service is in a Muslim section, where all the graves face northeast toward Mecca.

Interior of Rosehill’s Horatio N. May Chapel, built in 1899 KIRK WILLIAMSON

But for the most part, Rosehill is, and has always been, nonsectarian. Over the years, groundskeepers have performed more than 193,000 traditional burials with room for many, many more.

Nevertheless, things have been changing. Since the pandemic, the percentage of people opting for cremations has surged nationwide. Some counties in Florida and Washington have seen cremation rates upwards of 90 percent. At both Rosehill and in Chicago as a whole, cremations are on pace with traditional burials.

“Just before COVID, we were seeing about 25 percent cremation. Today we’re right at 50 percent,” says Steve Mize, Rosehill’s general manager. He’s dressed in a suit and has a number four buzz cut, large hands, and a gravely midland accent that makes me remember Illinois shares a border with Kentucky. He continues, “Probably the biggest [cremation] challenge we’re faced with is . . . families don’t know what options they have. We all hear the stories [about how] grandma’s ended up in a closet somewhere because they didn’t know what they could do with grandma.”

answer is cost.

“The ossuary is a communal resting place. It’s a one-way trip to a communal vault with other cremated remains,” says Weidman. “And when you go in, you never come out. That’s $295.”

Compare that to the starting price for a gravesite—$4,795, which doesn’t include things like the price of the casket, body

“I have pride in this place.”

preparation, funeral service, or headstone—and it starts to make sense. Why should someone choose burial over cremation?

To a growing number of people, traditional burials seem antiquated, especially as many religious institutions—including the Catholic Church—have begun to accept cremation and cremation burials as viable alternatives.

Cremation began to gain popularity in the U.S. during the 1980s. Since then, the rate of people opting for cremation over burial has only increased. Journalists and academics have posed a broad and rich selection of reasons, like changing cultural values, religious and practical flexibilities, and environmental concerns. But anecdotally, the most common

But with new trends and changing values, other problems sprout. As Mize points out, relatives often end up on mantels, in closets, and in basements. When generations of cremains begin to accumulate, the question isn’t just “What do we do with grandma?” but also “What do we do with the great-great grandma no one alive has ever known?”

The John Deere 710L backhoe is a baroque, yellow monster that rips up earth with ease. Julio Vargas, seated in the beast’s belly, jerks the joysticks. As Vargas operates, Steve Schmidt stands on thin, 1.5-by-six-foot wooden planks that outline the soon-to-be grave. By late morning, the sun is piercing and mean. Everyone is sweating. Vargas is tan and clean-shaven, with close eyes and a gray cul-de-sac of hair that wraps

his head. He first started at Rosehill in 2000 as a janitor in the mausoleum complex. After a few years as a seasonal employee, Vargas began working outside. Eventually, a coworker asked if he wanted to help with a funeral. “I didn’t want to help with the funeral, but . . . I wanted to learn how to operate the tractor,” he says. Twenty years in, Vargas does nearly all the mechanical digging, and it’s easy to see why. He directs the machine with the rhythm,

Rosehill groundskeepers Steve Schmidt (top) and Julio Vargas (bottom R) prepare a grave for a burial. KIRK WILLIAMSON

NEWS & POLITICS

intensity, and precision of an orchestra conductor.

Vargas is candid, smart, and has a rich sense of humor—not gallows humor, but something close to it. “People always ask me, ‘Are you scared?’” he says. “No. The way you do something on your phone is like me in the tractor.”

The grounds crew’s work is a balance between quotidian and tragic. Reyes buried an infant on his first day at Rosehill. “It was terrible,” he says. “I was like, ‘Is this what I’m getting into? Will I be able to handle it?’” But as time went on, it got easier. He avows that you don’t need to be a special type of person to work in cemeteries. It just takes some getting

used to is all, and some type of faith.

That doesn’t mean groundskeepers are impenetrable or anesthetized. There are always those days that bite. When funeral mourners weep, their emotional response can evoke the same in the groundskeepers. Nearly universally, the groundskeepers find burials of infants and children distressing. Vargas tells me about a recent funeral for a young man the same age as his son. “It’s scary,” he recalls, “but life is that way.” Vargas tells me that Schmidt has a son the same age; Schmidt stayed away.

The deeper the hole, the less Vargas can see. But Schmidt, a weather-beaten blonde with a freckle-pink face and an orange beard, has a way of communicating with thumbs and open

palms that describe the exact movements the backhoe should make. The machine rips up earth, mostly clay and gravel, and heaps it into the bed of another Dignity-branded truck, which begins to sag under the weight.

All the while, Vargas sings and Schmidt jokes. It’s not unnatural or forced, like they’re trying to counteract the emotional weight of it all. Rather, it’s entirely normal. “You get to the point where it’s numb, but you still have feelings for the family. You want to make everything just right for them,” says Schmidt. In conversation, it doesn’t seem like Schmidt’s use of “numb” is callous or impersonal. It evokes a sense of emotional integrity.

Schmidt’s been at Rosehill for just three years, which makes him the cemetery’s shortest tenured groundskeeper, but his experience at Rosehill goes back decades. Schmidt grew up across the street. He tells me he learned to drive on Rosehill’s roads, how to fish in its ponds, and has family members interred in its grounds. “I have pride in this place,” he says. “It’s just nice to be here, take care of my family’s graves and other people’s graves.” Schmidt, along with all the other groundskeepers, is sure to tell me how valuable, impactful, and enjoyable the work is. “Sometimes the elements are bad. But this is my o ce. It’s better than being in a cubicle,” he says.

As Vargas digs, I catch glimpses of the soil-blackened vault—the large concrete box that holds the coffin—of a neighbor to the right. Schmidt makes Vargas aware with an arcane pointer-meets-palm motion, and Vargas proceeds with caution as he claws out tight corners of the grave, so the vault can rest easily. Vargas pats down the dirt with the claw, and the hole’s dug.

The final step is getting the vault into the grave. De La O and Schmidt attach chains to anchors inside the concrete bin and the back of the backhoe’s claw. Vargas lifts the vault over the grave while De La O and Schmidt negotiate the angles. Vargas lowers it into the earth, and Schmidt removes the chains from the anchors. Vargas returns the bucket to the earth before turning o the engine and stepping out of the cab. We all can speak a bit quieter now.

“People always say ‘six feet,’” jokes Schmidt, lowering his shovel into the grave. It’s the depth of the grave, from blade to handle. He pulls it out and holds it next to his body for scale. Schmidt looks to be at least six feet tall, and the shovel barely reaches the bottom of his ears. Safe to say the hole is, at most, five and a half feet.

Service Corporation International (SCI) is a name that tells you nothing. And yet, it is the nation’s largest death-care provider. According to Christopher James, SCI’s external communications specialist, SCI currently owns 1,485 funeral service locations and 498 cemeteries. It employs roughly 24,000 people and trades on the New York Stock Exchange at $83.86 per share at the time of writing, which is the highest its stock price has been since SCI’s inception.

Su ce to say, death has proven a lucrative undertaking for SCI, but you wouldn’t know it, because SCI’s cemeteries, funeral homes, crematoriums, and related enterprises typically operate under a melange of names. To make matters more confusing, these businesses are typically nested within 13 subsidiaries, with names like Funeraria del Angel, Neptune Society, National Cremation, LHT Consulting Group, Dignity Memorial, Dignité (in Quebec), and Dignity Memorial Premier Collection. Ostensibly, these brands o er di erent services, but to the common observer, the benefit is the guise of independent local businesses. Without a bit of digging, you’d never know that SCI has captured roughly 17 percent of the North American death-care industry. In the greater Chicago area, SCI owns 36 properties, including Rosehill, which it purchased in January 1991.

From the 90s through the 2010s, SCI was the subject of antitrust scrutiny. In 1994, the company faced federal antitrust charges over its acquisition of LaGrone Funeral Chapel and Crematory in Roswell, New Mexico. In 2006, SCI merged with Alderwoods Group, its largest competitor, for $1.23 billion. The Federal Trade Commission initially blocked the merger, but SCI agreed to divest locations in other markets, and the FTC allowed the merger to proceed. In 2013, SCI purchased Stewart Enterprises, which was, again, its largest competitor, for $1.4 billion; the FTC likewise forced SCI to sell 91 businesses before allowing the merger to take place.

SCI plays all sides of a rapidly changing death-care industry. It owns so many types of businesses—cemeteries, crematories, funeral homes, even the businesses that produce the products necessary for burials and cremations—that from an operational perspective, it doesn’t much matter how Rosehill’s, Chicago’s, Illinois’s, or even the country’s endof-life practices change. Consider that SCI’s gross profit hovered at around $1.1 billion in 2023 and 2024, with 2025 projected to be continued from p. 9

NEWS & POLITICS

even more lucrative. As long as people die, SCI stands to make money.

So, it’s not the corporation that will be most a ected by the cremation versus burial dilemma driving major changes in the deathcare industry, but rather the people working at the ground level of SCI’s operation. If the industry changes enough, and the number of traditional burials continues to trend downward, it’s easy to speculate that SCI could look to downsize. While it seems like the job of cemetery groundskeeper will never go away entirely—I’ve been assured that people will always want to be buried—the number of groundskeepers could be (and has already been) drastically reduced.

Roughly two months after my first day with the groundskeepers, I visit Rosehill again.

This morning, like the last, is humid and sunny, though a bit cooler now that fall has begun. I walk toward a small green tent where about 15 chairs have been set up for a funeral service for cremated remains. About one-third of Americans who opt for cremation prefer their ashes be buried, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. At Rosehill, Sara De La O handles these interments.

De La O stands with her arm on a small lowering device. The rectangular, syntheticstrapped device does what its name suggests: it lowers caskets into a grave. The one next to her is small; it’s designed for urns and infant cas-

“The way you do something on your phone is like me in the tractor,” says Vargas. KIRK WILLIAMSON

NEWS & POLITICS

continued from p. 11

kets. My eyes are drawn to the Dignity logo—on her hat, on her shirt, and on the trucks. Standing in front of the small hole, De La O explains that urns come in various shapes, sizes, and materials. Unlike caskets, urns are not so beholden to surface area, volume, weight, and biohazard limitations. For today’s funeral, De La O has already dug a hole about 18 inches deep—just large enough for a boxy urn.

De La O has worked at Rosehill for nearly

ed and buried—but not at Rosehill. “This is not cheap. Maybe $16,000,” she says, gesturing to the open ground.

While cremation burials are still typically cheaper than traditional burials, funeral costs still mount: the service, grave, urn, etc. These burials still amount to thousands of dollars, especially in Rosehill’s older, more historic sections. Even if an urn takes up less space than a casket, a plot’s still a plot (although you can typically fit at least two urns per). So, why would someone bury an urn? “It’s always good

cremation options here. I need more.”

As I watch the funeral, the importance of cemeteries—especially for cremated remains—becomes obvious. A home (or a closet within) is a space designated for the living, where the dead can be forgotten, lost among files and boxes and photographs. The cemetery gives the dead some existential weight. It’s a place for closure, reflection, and, yes, dignity.

After the funeral, De La O lays a wet, reddish patch of dirt over the urn. She packs it tight

two decades. She also claims, proudly, to be one of only two women groundskeepers in all of SCI. In her earlier years, she often worked upwards of 80 hours per week, divided between Rosehill and a Subway sandwich store, to a ord a life in Chicago with her son. Throughout her tenure, De La O has become the go-to for cremation burials. She also handles funerals for babies and infants, which involve roughly the same physical effort as cremation burials, but are far more emotionally taxing.

As we wait for the mourners, our conversation naturally drifts to mortality and afterlife plans. De La O tells me she’d like to be cremat-

The question isn’t just “What do we do with grandma?” but also “What do we do with the greatgreat grandma no one alive has ever known?”

gether, they know each other well. A Dignitybranded truck is parked about 30 feet away, a large pile of earth waiting in its bed. The grave is framed by wooden planks. Once all the attendees arrive, about 40 in total, the procession begins, and the groundskeepers get to work. They place the body, wrapped in a white shroud, on the straps of the lowering device. After a few moments, Vargas and De La O drop it into the grave and remove the contraption. Some male mourners and the imam step into the hole in the earth. The imam recites a prayer. Vargas ignites the backhoe and lifts the concrete vault lid. The backhoe pops and whines. As Schmidt backs the truck toward the grave, swerving past headstones, the mound of dirt jostles in its bed. Schmidt raises its bed, and the mound quietly cracks in two, both halves falling into the grave. Vargas removes the wooden planks. Sanchez fixes the dirt with his shovel. The quartet returns to the gum tree.

As Sanchez touches the tree’s bark, he recalls boring holes into the cemetery’s hundreds of trees some 15 years earlier to check for invasive Asian long-horned beetles. Further away, mourners pray, cry, and embrace. Vargas and De La O discuss the different names—sincuya, soncuya—for annona purpurea, a fruit native to Central and parts of South America. Vargas says it’s delicious when cooked in oil. De La O agrees. Mourners leave flowers of orange, red, pink, and white on the grave. The groundskeepers turn to another fruit, sapote. “Muy rico,” says Vargas. The others nod in approval. Clusters of mourners disperse, each toward a di erent car, in a long line that snakes the road. One of them tips the groundskeepers. The workday is over.

to have an end spot for cremated remains, because you don’t want them to end up in a closet,” says Katie Sullivan Frideres, vice president of the Cremation Society of Illinois. Like Rosehill, she says the Cremation Society has seen an increased demand for cremations since the COVID-19 pandemic. For deathcare professionals, the ashes-in-the-closet problem is seemingly ubiquitous.

One way Rosehill is responding to the changing deathscape is by o ering options on top of options. “We’re doing pedestals. We’re doing glass-front niches. We’re doing benches, where the cremations go inside the bench,” says Steve Mize, the general manager. “I’ve got plenty of

with her boots and places a square of grass over top. I realize there’s already a headstone. The final year reads 1982. I think, again, about boxes in closets.

In the late afternoon heat, we—Reyes, De La O, Sanchez, Vargas, Schmidt, and I—find reprieve from the July sun under a gum tree near an open grave in a predominantly Muslim section of Rosehill.

As mourners arrive, they’re greeted by an imam, who, like many of the funeralgoers, wears a kufi and flowing attire. The imam greets Reyes and the rest of the groundskeepers with familiarity; after years of working to-

As Reyes drives me back toward the main entrance, he explains that there’s still more to do. Tomorrow, the groundskeepers will return to flatten the earth and cover the grave with sod. In the weeks after, they’ll place a headstone. And even after that, there’s always maintenance and upkeep.

Watching the headstones float past the window, I realize graves aren’t just markers of people who’ve passed. They’re also memorials to 166 years of Rosehill’s groundskeepers—the people who make sure everybody, and every body, is treated with care. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

KIRK WILLIAMSON

R READ THIS WHEN THINGS FALL APART

edited by Kelly Hayes

AK Press, paperback, 172 pp., $16 50, akpress.org/ read-this-when-things-fall-apart.html

BOOKS

RBOOK LAUNCH

Wed 11/5, 7 PM, Pilsen Community Books, 1102 W. 18th St., pilsencommunitybooks.com/events, free

A care package for activists

Kelly Hayes collects letters from fellow organizers in Read This When Things Fall Apart.

By REEMA SALEH

“We’re living in unprecedented times”—it’s a phrase so often said that it feels like an infinite loop. From Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids to environmental catastrophes, Big Tech’s authoritarian lean, and genocidal violence on a constant stream, it’s hard not to feel like we’ve inherited a world on fire.

For activist Kelly Hayes, organizing in terrible times comes with a special kind of grief and despair. “When you allow yourself to really feel the stakes of a struggle—knowing that people’s lives and livelihoods hang in the balance, and that people may die or suffer horribly if you lose—there is profound grief in the experience of defeat,” she says. So much can go wrong while organizing, including state repression, intracommunity conflicts, burnout, or losing the good fight against those in power—and she wanted to create something people could reach for while in crisis.

At first, she and some friends wanted to create a zine to offer insight, hope, and advice to organizers and activists going through it. As more people jumped on, Read This When Things Fall Apart became a directory for activists in crisis.

This interview was edited for clarity and length.

Reema Saleh: What inspired you to frame this as a series of letters rather than traditional chapters?

Kelly Hayes: There’s something very human and personal about letter writing. It’s not an essay that’s trying to convey an argument or an idea. And it’s not an email, where brevity is prioritized, or a social media post, bound up in norms shaped by algorithms. It’s a deeply personal

communication—and in this case, it’s an e ort to speak directly to a friend or co-struggler you haven’t met yet, to offer them something you hope is useful during a di cult hour.

In your ending letter, you write about a time you tried to walk away from activism only to be pulled back in again. Why are these moments so painful for organizers?

I’ve seen and felt it many times over the years, from the ecological devastation of losing a land struggle to lost battles in defense of people on death row—or people who said they would die if they lost their clinics, and were proven right. Grief is a consequence of love, and hurting is a consequence of caring. We

ARTS & CULTURE

lose more often than we win, and those losses can break people. And sometimes, we break each other. People are flawed, and we cause harm and disappoint each other.

What kinds of care and community work are needed in this moment?

We need so many kinds of care right now. People are organizing “walking school buses” to make sure the children of immigrants can safely make their way to class. There are folks running workshops, and people o ering peer counseling and emotional support for activists. There are countless ways that we can show up for each other and for our neighbors who are being threatened right now, and all of it is crucial. Whether you’re putting on a gas mask to protest, folding zines in your living room, or making food for a community event, you are getting it done.

You and your collaborators wrote these letters in 2024, which now seems like a lifetime ago. What would you tell an activist now that you didn’t include in your letter?

We surrender nothing and no one. Make them fight for everything and everyone they take from us. It’s on us to be the people who fought this. It’s not always going to go our way, but when we lose the battle in front of us, let’s make it count and show other decent people what the hell they’re made of. No matter how bleak things may seem, no matter how long the odds, we are worth fighting for.

There are countless ways that we can show up for each other and for our neighbors who are being threatened right now, and all of it is crucial.

That includes your sense of possibility. Victory is possible, but even beyond that, life is precious. So fight for it. Fight for what is sacred to you. And if you don’t know what’s sacred to you yet, I suggest you get out there, amongst other people fighting the good fight, and I suspect you’ll find it. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

ARTS & CULTURE

‘It’s

important to write for teenagers’

YA author Hal Schrieve uses vampire tropes to create a queer fantasy world.

By MICCO CAPORALE

Young adult author Hal Schrieve approaches vampire stories from the monster’s perspective. Hir third book, Fawn’s Blood , alternates between two characters: Rachel, a slayer-turned-vampire, and Fawn, a runaway who’s looking for her recently turned friend. Schrieve wanted to tell a story with the fun and sophisticated teen camp of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that centered the vampires and their needs and experiences. Throughout fiction, vampires are often queer or queer-coded, and Schrieve saw an opportunity to savor what’s sensual and exciting about vampires while also providing guidance on entering queer adulthood.

At 29, Schrieve enjoys writing for teens because it connects them with past selves. Ze can open age-appropriate doors that bring younger readers into the queer present while (hopefully) inspiring better queer futures. In hir latest book, the titular character is inspired by local Jolene Saint, a former bartender at Berlin and co-organizer of the nightclub’s union who Schrieve describes as indefatigable in her faith in a better future. Using real-life problems, from the influence of Big Pharma to community infighting, Schrieve creates a gritty, fascinating world that teaches readers what’s really out there—and what’s worth holding onto.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Micco Caporale: Why do you think you keep returning to YA?

Hal Schrieve: I wrote my first YA novel when I was [18]. I was really writing for my younger self. I continue because it’s important to write

for teenagers. They are mentally plastic and can envision dramatically di erent worlds in ways adults can’t or don’t. They’re also legally disempowered, so it’s useful for teenagers to hear, “You can do something to change the world.”

You work as a children’s librarian, too. How does that impact your writing?

I’ve been a librarian since 2019, and I worked a lot of jobs with kids before that. I love public libraries and connecting people with free resources. I love talking about books and comics and art with kids because I think that their ideas are really interesting, and they queer things on their own.

It’s strange to alternate between interacting with children almost full-time at my job and then going to an almost all-adult queer world where a lot of people don’t interact with kids. I have to do a lot of compartmentalizing and code-switching. I’m envious of people who can focus more on their own work for longer. But I also developed a comics practice via doing comics with kids. They would come up with really insane, beautiful ideas, and then we would draw them together. Children are just a living part of society—they’re not separate.

Why a vampire book?

RFAWN’S BLOOD by Hal Schrieve

Seven Stories, hardcover, 352 pp., $20 66, sevenstories.com/books/4753 -fawn-s-blood

teenagers—focus on romance. Falling in love is part of youth, but another big part is emerging into the communities you will navigate as an adult. For queer people, that means understanding the dynamics and problems that can exist in a queer community. Part of what I do in writing books for teens is talk about community and what it looks like—how people have competing allegiances, commitments,

Vampires have been having a moment for a while. I like Bu y, and I was rewatching it as I was writing Fawn’s. Bu y is simultaneously terrible and insightful. I was watching and wanting to know what vampire nightlife and community is. There are many scenes in Bu y where she finds vampires just chilling in a cemetery, and she stakes them. The show is really ambivalent about whether vampires are actually evil. She kills them without ever wondering if there’s another solution that allows coexistence. I empathize more with monsters in almost every horror work about nonhuman others because there are a lot of parallels to queer people.

How did you grow that into a universe?

A lot of YA novels—for straight and queer

relationships, but their desires are exciting. Anne Rice made me realize that I had a crush on my best friend, who also turned out to be trans masc.

I’m not going to write something as delightfully deranged as Poppy Z. Brite’s vampire world, because I would like my work to trickle through the hands of people who provide books to kids. If I’m going to have an unhinged, shady mentor character, he’s going to have characters check him and get a come-up. You don’t have to put up with the vampire Lestat. Those people are striking and hold a lot of possibilities, but I’m trying to write about a community where these larger-than-life figures actually see consequences. I think that social model distinguishes YA books.

or desires. So much is shaped by people’s material circumstances, too. I’m trying to write about that with vampires, with the premise that blood drinking is sexy and something vampires must do to live.

As an openly queer and trans adult who professionally caters to children, do you receive pressure to curate your persona a certain way or pushback for your work?

I’m not reaching a massive audience with my books because I’m published by a sort of radical, lefty publisher. I’m one of their only YA authors. I don’t face any pressure to censor myself or my private life for the sake of my career—with the counterpoint that I am not, perhaps, reaching as large an audience as YA authors who do face that kind of pressure or censorship.

Personally, I’m anti-censorship and anti–telling kids what to read. Teenagers should read City of Night and Stone Butch Blues if they want. If a teenager wants to read Poppy Z. Brite [a trans horror author who writes gratuitously gay vampire books], they should. I read a lot of Anne Rice when I was a teenager: All those vampires are in emotionally abusive

Tell me more about the inspiration for Fawn.

The human main character is Fawn, who’s based on Jolene, a friend and ex of mine I met on Twitter back in 2021. She tried hard to unionize Berlin for years and approached the situation with radical trust. She inspired Fawn’s naivete as much as her belief in a world where it’s possible that everyone’s needs are met and people heal. Fawn is approaching this vampire community’s problems and thinking about how she can help, even as she is in crisis herself. I watched Jolene be disappointed and forgive people constantly for the two years she was organizing. She wasn’t the only person trying, but I watched her really care about this thing because she wanted to preserve a space where queer people could experience great art and make it a sustainable institution. I’m really inspired by that determination and willingness to mediate between people who don’t like each other—to show up again and again for the possibility of a community where everyone belongs and feels safe. Because of people like Jolene, more people can imagine a better world. It’s easy to be cynical and pick each other apart. Meanwhile, the powers that be are going to steamroll us. It’s like, what if we did something else? What if everybody took care of each other more? It’s a book about that. v

m mcaporale@chicagoreader.com

Author Hal Schrieve L: COURTESY SEVEN STORIES; R: NICHOLAS SHANNON

Indigenous filmmakers have their lenses aimed

First Nations Film and Video Festival shows the only thing Indigenous films have in common is Indigenous filmmakers.

By KAT SACHS

November is National Native American Heritage Month—a period when public attention is briefly directed toward Indigenous people more out of obligation than moral responsibility. So says Ernest M. Whiteman III, a Northern Arapaho filmmaker and codirector of the First Nations Film and Video Festival (FNFVF).

“The only time people think about Native peoples is Thanksgiving,” he says. “That’s probably the only time all year they give Native Americans a thought.”

FNFVF organizers try to get people thinking about Indigenous people at other times of the year, too. That’s why they hold similar screenings every May: It helps maintain visibility, says codirector Samantha Garcia, a member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe tribe. Over the last 35 years, the festival has evolved from a single-day event into its current biannual, multiday lineup, and it has organized screenings at colleges, museums, and other cultural institutions throughout the city. This year, programming runs from Wednesday, November 5, through Thursday, November 13, at Facets, Skokie Public Library, Citlalin Gallery, and Music Box Theatre.

FNFVF keeps its programming criteria simple: Films must be made within the past five years, and they must be made by an Indigenous filmmaker. “If they tell us that they’re not Native but someone they know is Native and helped them with the film, they don’t qualify,” says Garcia.

Whiteman sees the all-volunteer-run organization as embodying the collective spirit necessary for filmmaking. “Filmmaking is not a single artist production,” he says. “It’s very much a collaborative effort. There’s always somebody in charge giving direction, but there’s also a whole community that helps. It does remind me of Native communities when they have to pull something together.”

Throughout its tenure, the festival’s mission

Wolves or Indian Horse or stories about a Native American person and their family or whatever,” Garcia says. “We show everything: science fiction, animated, horror. These stories can be about anyone. You might not even see a Native person on screen. That doesn’t always connect with someone’s assumption about what they’re gonna see at a screening.”

There’s universality in specificity, and the festival is programmed to touch on a variety of concerns. “Almost every issue in the United States is an Indigenous issue, if you break it down,” Whiteman notes. “Because we’ve ig-

has stayed consistent because, as Whiteman explains, “Society’s perspective of Native people hasn’t changed at all.” He’s been involved since 2005, when the festival was still part of the American Indian Center. “We’re still seen as historical figures. Even in the 21st century, some still don’t believe we exist, or they still believe they’re at war with us somehow. It’s unfortunate. But this makes what we do vital, I think, to the fabric of Chicago.”

“We’re not showing films like Dances with

a screening of NiiMisSak: Sisters in Film (2024), Jules Arita Koostachin’s documentary about Indigenous women navigating the film industry. It will be followed by a conversation between Koostachin, joining by video, and FNFVF founder Beverly Moeser (Menominee). The next day, Facets is showing a selection of short fi lms for a program called The Other 51%: Native American Women Directors, followed by a panel discussion with some of the filmmakers, including Jennifer Varenchik (Tohono O’odham) and Michelle Hernandez (Wiyot).

On Friday, November 7, the Skokie Public Library is showing a free short film retrospective to celebrate Wapikoni Mobile. For 20 years, Wapikoni Mobile has been an ambulatory studio that travels to Indigenous communities to provide workshops about filmmaking and music recording, especially for young people. On Saturday, the library will also screen a collection of animated shorts.

On Sunday, November 9, Geraldine Zambrana Velez ( Quechua) and Martin Trabalik’s documentary Incendios (2021) will screen at the Citlalin Gallery. It’s a film about volunteer firefighters in Bolivia trying to save swathes of land after burning forests is legalized.

The festival closes with two feature films at the Music Box. On Wednesday, November 13, Nyla Innuksuk’s (Inuk) Slash/Back (2022) will screen in the small theater. It’s a Canadian science fiction film about four Inuit girls who ward o an alien invasion. On Thursday, the main theater will play Cody Lightning’s (Cree) Hey, Viktor! (2023), a mockumentary-style film in which Lightning, as a fictional version of himself, finds creative ways to keep his career going 25 years after his breakthrough role as the young Victor in Smoke Signals (1998).

nored Native issues for so long, we’ve become very practiced at ignoring them when they happen in other communities, too.”

“Generational trauma is definitely a recurring [theme],” says Garcia, “people sharing their stories of colonization, boarding school stuff. Lots of environmental themes and reclaiming culture, reclaiming language, reclaiming tradition.”

The festival kicks off at Facets—where it began 35 years ago—on November 5 with

“Unfortunately, films are how we learn our history,” says Whiteman. “If this is the space [where] we can enter people’s consciousness about who Native people really are, flaws and all, then that makes us some equal member of the society that we’re supposed to be participating in.”

Ultimately, however, watching and supporting Native movies isn’t enough.

“I get that people honestly want to help with Native issues,” Whiteman continues, “but watching a film about them, by them, isn’t going to be a major step in that direction. It will make you more aware of the issues. You can start from there.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

From top: stills from Slash/Back (2022) and Hey, Viktor! (2023) COURTESY FIRST NATIONS FILM AND VIDEO FESTIVAL

Ov er the weekend at the Alamo Drafthouse, I partook in my second horror marathon of the season, Dismember the Alamo, programmed by my friend John Dickson of the Oscarbate Film Collective. Though there were only five films scheduled, the selection was quite varied, which made me consider horror broadly.

Shown under its alternate title, Blood Orgy, Herschell Gordon Lewis’s X-rated The Gore Gore Girls (1972) really demonstrated why he’s considered the father of gore; among other violence, the killer destroys victims’ faces by digging into them like an animal. The film’s gratuitousness is balanced with humor, including a queer-coded investigator seemingly ripped from the pages of an Agatha Christie novel who delivers one-liners like a Bravo housewife. (Fun fact: The Gore Gore Girls was shot in Old Town and other locations on the north side.)

The second film was Riccardo Freda’s The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962), an Italian Gothic horror that’s slow but perverse. Hichcock is a doctor who “accidentally” kills his first wife after drugging her to indulge his necrophiliac fantasies. Here, the horror is evoked through suggestion. I appreciated this observation by critic Glenn Erickson: “That a film about the frustrated passions of a necrophiliac could even be released in 1962 is a censorial mystery—or, perhaps, a clear testament to the way horror films were officially ignored on every cultural level back then.”

N ext was A. Edward Sutherland’s Murders in the Zoo (1933), which was initially banned in multiple countries upon its release (later cuts passed censors). The killer is played by Lionel

Atwill, a familiar presence in 1930s horror and, according to Dickson, a renowned orgy host, too. What makes the film particularly brutal is the killer’s methods. For example, he sews shut the mouth of a man who tried to kiss his wife, then leaves him to be eaten by tigers at a municipal zoo.

The next film was supposed to be Shun’ya Itô’s Curse of the God Dog (1977). It couldn’t be shown, and then the screen stopped working. Dickson, Alamo sta , and even queer film darling and Muscle Distribution founder Elizabeth Purchell (in town for a few other screenings) kept audiences entertained as they worked on troubleshooting. Their e orts kept the evening entertaining, even as things didn’t work out. That’s showbiz, baby.

We jumped to the night’s final movie, Michael Laughlin’s Dead Kids (1981), which also goes by other titles, most frequently Strange Behavior . Though filmed in Australia, it’s set in Galesburg, Illinois, and includes Michael Murphy in a leading role and a high school party with a choreographed dance sequence. It’s an excellent film driven by an Alan J. Pakula–esque conspiracy.

I’m fascinated that so many di erent kinds of horror could evoke the same kind of primordial terror. Horror reminds us that, though sources may vary, the feelings stay the same. If nothing else, the wisdom of our experiences is something to hang onto in these horrific times.

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.

NOW PLAYING

R Bugonia

Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia is a feverish mix of ecological panic and conspiratorial mania. It feels newly prophetic as it returns to the familiar nightmare of Jang Joon-hwan’s cult masterpiece, Save the Green Planet! (2003). It’s is a delirious eco-satire that skewers latestage capitalism by asking, Why would anyone destroy the planet on purpose? No human would wreak such havoc willingly—only extraterrestrials would poison the Earth’s soil with such malice. Right?

Lanthimos’s adaptation follows the life of a beekeeper named Teddy, played with unnerving precision by Jesse Plemons. Teddy lives in the Georgia countryside with his pliant cousin, Donny (Aidan Delbis), who’s helping him plan to kidnap Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), a powerful pharmaceutical CEO whom he believes is an alien. It’s a conspiracy that feels plucked straight from a distant relative’s Facebook posts.

Lanthimos underscores the wealth divide separating the kidnappers and their target by splicing shots of Teddy and Donny “training” with shots of Michelle running through her daily high-performance routines. At one point, Donny expresses fears of being caught, and Teddy consoles him with a reminder that no one cares about them.

When they finally capture Michelle—a er one hell of a fight—they shave her head and chain her to a bed in a basement. Teddy knows the aliens plan to ravage Earth. Michelle must admit her alienness and arrange an audience with her emperor. What follows is a tense standoff between Teddy’s fanatical conviction and Michelle’s corporate poise, as they both begin to crack under the weight of the situation.

The movie’s uncomfortable tone, amplified by Jerskin Fendrix’s spine-tingling score, swings between absurdist humor and pure horror. Teddy’s fury feels like it springs from a familiar psychic exhaustion witnessing the world collapse under the weight of greed and paranoia, and Michelle makes the perfect

figurehead for the system driving that decline: sleek, unyielding, and terrifyingly composed. Lanthimos’s hand is steady as he spins us deeper into chaos, always withholding just enough to keep us questioning what’s real.

But what’s most startling about Bugonia is how little a story from 2003 had to be adapted to fit the present. Bugonia calls attention not only to the inhumanity saturating our everyday lives but also to how long it’s been happening—and how deranged everyone’s become as a result. —MAXWELL RABB R, 118 min. Wide release in theaters Fri 10/31

RThe Mastermind

Acclaimed director Kelly Reichardt, best known for placid character dramas, veers into genre work with the moody heist film The Mastermind. Reichardt’s first solo screenplay, The Mastermind manages to be both a family drama—quiet and searching like her films First Cow (2019) and Certain Women (2016)—and a methodical crime movie in the vein of Rififi (1955) and Le Samouraï (1967).

Set in the 1970s, The Mastermind follows J.B. Mooney (played rumpled and dreamy by Josh O’Connor), an unemployed carpenter and family man in Framingham, Massachusetts, who attempts to steal four paintings by Arthur Dove. His wife Teri (Alana Haim) says little but constantly watches. The film is built around Mooney’s process, closely tracking his careful planning of the crime and its a ermath. The period setting, seemingly incidental at first, becomes vital in the film’s final act as the waning Vietnam war and the protests against it go from a subtle murmur to an all-out roar. Hazily shot on film by Christopher Blauvelt, no visual detail is out of place. Rob Mazurek’s ragged jazz score is perfectly timed, yet the most crucial moments play out in silence. The Mastermind is a slow-burning thriller, directed with a thief’s precision by Reichardt and anchored by an excellent performance by O’Connor. —ROB SILVERMAN ASHER R, 111 min. Limited release in theaters v

The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962)

VINEGAR SYNDROME

Bugonia

THE SECRET HISTORY OF CHICAGO MUSIC

Aura helped build Chicago’s famous horn-rock sound

This short-lived and underappreciated eight-piece created an ambitious fusion of soul, funk, acid rock, and jazz on their sole LP.

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.

The Windy City birthed a world-famous horn-rock sound in the late 1960s, led by the likes of the Mob and the band Chicago (formerly the Chicago Transit Authority). The city’s rich jazz, R&B, and soul scenes prepared the ground for this development, producing horn players such as Eddie Harris, Von Freeman, Gene Barge, and Johnny Pate, who learned tuba as a kid and later arranged songs for the likes of Jackie Wilson, Major Lance, and Curtis Mayfield.

When it came to merging a horn section with groovy, expansive rock ’n’ roll, two of the most grievously underappreciated outfits are former garage band the Flock and the headier Aura. Unsurprisingly, they shared members, and I got more of their story from bassist Jerry Smith, who played in both groups and helped organize the Return of the Flock lineup last year.

The roots of Aura go back to the mid-60s and teenage band the Big City 5. Originally the Big City V, they were singer Al Lathan, guitarists Lenny Swiatly and Denny Giovannini, bassist Mike Walsdorf, and drummer Demetri-

us “Larbi Ruslan” Lapychak. Lapychak’s classmate Nick Vitullo, a fan of the band, served as their manager for their first four years, and in 1966 he got them their first proper gig. For the occasion, they chose a new name: 4 Days & a Night, a reference to their soulful direction

and racially diverse lineup (Lathan was Black, the other four members white).

This crew loved the Flock, so with Vitullo’s help they bolstered their lineup with sax player Tom “T.S. Henry” Webb and trumpeter Frank Posa, who’d played together in Webb’s

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continued from p. 17

cover band, the Smith Henry Group. Since they now had seven members, not five, they changed their name to For Days & a Night. “Promotion-wise, it didn’t make a lot of di erence,” wrote historian Ken Voss in a 2021 story for his Illinois Music Archives series, “as most clubs mis-spelled the band’s name in their club flyers.”

Posa and Webb didn’t last long, leaving in September 1967 to join the Flock, where they felt they could play more progressive music. For Days & a Night recruited trumpeter John Priola and alto saxophonist Fred Entesari to replace them, in one of a dizzying number of lineup changes. Over the next few years, around 50 members came and went.

By 1969, For Days & a Night’s soul-pop sound wasn’t current anymore, and to make it on the college bar circuit in Illinois, they had to update their style by taking on an expansive acid-rock flavor—more like the Flock, ironically. They changed their name again, this time to Giant City, after a state park south of Carbondale (where they often played a club called Bonaparte’s Retreat). In 1970, the band included Sam Alessi on keys, Andy Foertsch on trombone, and Dennis Horan on drums. Then bassist Jerry Smith of the Flock entered the picture.

Smith was born on March 8, 1947, at Edgewater Hospital and raised in Albany Park, Skokie, and Niles. “When I was ten years old, I wanted to play guitar,” he says. “My parents enrolled me in a group lesson series at the downtown Lyon & Healy store. I only started playing bass guitar when I joined the Exclusives.”

The Exclusives formed after Smith heard that two Rogers Park musicians, guitarist Fred Glickstein and saxophonist Rick Cano , were looking for a bass player who could sing. “I went to Cano ’s home with my electric guitar, and Glickstein and [guitarist] Rick Mann blew me away with their playing,” Smith says. “I started to sing some songs with Glickstein, and they liked the results. So I said I would learn bass. We played some local clubs and schools under the Exclusives name.”

The Exclusives became the Flock in late 1965, Smith says, when he was 18 years old. I wrote up the Flock’s history long ago, so let’s fast-forward to 1970, when the Flock decided to pack it in. “We just struggled to come up with new tunes for a third Columbia album,” Smith says. “Being on the road for several years—touring Europe, et cetera—took its toll

on us. We simply needed a break.”

At the beginning of 1971, Smith got a call from Horan, the drummer in Giant City. He had an o er to make. “We knew each other from playing the same venues. He knew the Flock broke up, so he invited me to see Giant City

Free,” which runs nearly seven minutes, shows o Aura’s melancholic, progressive side, with fuzzy multitracked guitars by Waidner (from undocumented garage band the Bots, later renamed the Boston Tea Party).

“Cross-Eyed Eagle” also features Waidner’s

It was never easy to keep an eight-piece band going, and Aura rarely broke even. An abundance of work didn’t necessarily mean an abundance of work that paid enough.

perform at a club on Rush Street,” Smith says. “I was blown away! Very powerful music with an incredible lead singer in Al Lathan.”

Smith soon joined the group, whose sound had evolved to fuse progressive soul, psychedelia, and funky rock. They signed to Mercury Records with the help of new manager Scott Doneen of American Tribal Productions. (According to Smith, the label also signed Lathan to a solo contract, in case the group didn’t pan out.) “Robin McBride was the A&R director for Mercury,” Smith told Voss for his 2021 piece. “He really wanted to sign the Flock, but of course, we ended up signing with Columbia. Now with Doneen managing us, he had a connection to Mercury Records and we signed with them.”

At the label’s suggestion, Giant City renamed themselves yet again, becoming Aura.

“It’s been said while they were recording the album, Lathan had noticed an ‘aura’ around the moon,” Voss wrote. “The new name stuck.”

Aura recorded their 1971 self-titled LP in New York City (at A&R Recording Studios and Mercury Sound Studios) and mixed it in Chicago at Paragon Studios with engineer Marty Feldman. Onstage Aura were an eight-piece,

sizzling ax crunch, and the addition of Alessi’s rippling Hammond organ somehow makes this blaster sound like Iron Butterfly jamming with Sly Stone. “Can You Imagine” combines acid rock with melodic horns and Lathan’s urgent and soulful singing; Greenberg (later the leader of jazz fusion band Shadowfax) adds a spacey break of flute flutters.

Smith recalled playing the local scene with Aura. “All the bands during the early 70s were generally playing the same circuit from Rush Street. Lally’s, Barnaby’s, and several other clubs were popular. Also, all the Dex Card and Don Manhart venues. Turning a VFW hall into a weekend teen club was popular back then. All the bands knew each other, and there was no tension at all. Plenty of work for everyone.”

This said, it was never easy to keep an eightpiece band going, and Aura rarely broke even. An abundance of work didn’t necessarily mean an abundance of work that paid enough. “We never hooked up with a national tour,” Smith says. “We were all still in our early 20s, and I believe there were some social pressures that arose also.”

“We could have kept working close to home and doing road gigs,” Foertsch told Voss. “But

Aura broke up shortly after the release of their sole LP. “Mercury released the album,” Voss wrote, “but for all practical purposes, it was in the cut bins by the time it came out.”

and the lineup on the album was even bigger: Smith, Lathan, Horan, Foertsch, Alessi, Entesari, guitarist Bill Waidner, trumpeter George Barr, flutist and baritone saxophonist Chuck Greenberg, and conga player Terri Quaye.

“I coproduced the album with Robin McBride,” Smith says. “I love ‘Show Me the Way’—a very powerful tune with a ton of energy!” This author digs “No Opportunity Needed, No Experience Necessary,” a funky, catchy Richie Havens cover, which benefits from Smith’s mobile, jazzy bass playing. “Life Is

Heights. In 1976, Foertsch joined the Chicago Grandstand Big Band, who have a 50thanniversary show at FitzGerald’s on Sunday, November 2. He moved to Florida in 1980, but he’s continued to play on and o with the Grandstand group (and with other jazz bands) in the decades since. Vitullo later founded Front Row Productions, which promoted concerts around the midwest, and appears to have left the music business in the 80s.

Smith restarted the Flock in 1973, and they parted ways in ’75 following a European tour. At that point, he went to work on the manufacturing side of the biz, eventually becoming director of North American sales for Zildjian cymbals. “I needed to sink my teeth into something new,” he says.

In 1999, Smith met with Horan and singer Jimy Rogers, who re-formed Rogers’s soulful, horn-driven garage band, the Mauds. “I brought in Mike Flynn on guitar as well as Quent Lang on sax and flute, who then put together our three-piece horn section,” Smith says. Rogers died in 2010, putting an end to that project. Smith later tried to re-form Aura, but that e ort was short-lived—Lathan passed away in 2017.

What would’ve become the new Aura instead became Dinosaur Exhibit, whose name certainly sounds like a nod to the Flock’s second LP, 1970’s Dinosaur Swamps . That group included Barr from Aura and featured appearances by the Flock’s virtuosic violinist, Jerry Goodman (also of the Mahavishnu Orchestra). When Goodman moved back to the midwest, members of Dinosaur Exhibit brought back the Flock name as well—the Return of the Flock now includes Smith, Goodman, Flynn, Lang, harmonica master Howard Levy, and trumpeter Mitch “the Lip” Goldman.

management had this big dream and it wasn’t happening.” Aura broke up shortly after the release of their sole LP. “Mercury released the album,” Voss wrote, “but for all practical purposes, it was in the cut bins by the time it came out.”

In the decades since Aura’s brief run, many of the musicians in the band’s complicated family tree have left this plane—including Canoff, Glickstein, Lathan, Horan, and Waidner. Barr still lives nearby in Arlington

Unfortunately, a concert by the Flock at Park West on November 1 has been postponed because Goodman has injured his left hand. I’m keeping an eye out for a rescheduled date—and I’ll be there, annoying the band with requests for Aura songs! 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.

PICK

Jeff Tweedy makes the long road sound inviting

Sat 11/1,

POP STARS NO LONGER have to think about their music as confined by physical format, and they all know they can take advantage of streaming’s endless flow by cranking out more material than most fans will endure in one sitting. If you’ve got a marquee name, releasing albums with lots and lots of tracks makes it easier to chart and earns you more money, and it doesn’t matter if your albums are basically data dumps. Country superstar Morgan Wallen isn’t the sole reason so many artists do this (Drake definitely shares the blame), but the title of his recent 37-track album, I’m the Problem, might as well be a confession. By contrast, Je Tweedy’s decision to make a triple disc of his fifth solo album, September’s Twilight Override (dBpm), feels almost quaint. Rather than just spilling the biggest heap of tracks he could manage, Tweedy specifically chose to work within the space a orded by three LPs, inspired by listening to the Clash’s Sandinista! on a road trip with his kids. From its title on down, Twilight Override is an idealistic attempt to push back the tide of despair, destruction, and bad news at the end of empire. The album feels immersive for its entire length—if you’re as taken as I am with its 30 tenderly arranged, lived-in songs, its hour and 51 minutes will pass faster than you expect. To achieve this, Tweedy drew on the

deep and sometimes literal kinship he has with his collaborators: On Twilight Override, he’s joined by his sons, Spencer (drums, piano, synth, vocals) and Sammy (synth, piano, electronics, vocals); Brokeback’s James Elkington (guitar, mandola, piano); Liam Kazar (bass, piano, guitar, vocals); Liam’s sister, Sima Cunningham (piano, vocals); and Sima’s Finom bandmate Macie Stewart (violin, zither, keyboards, vocals). Twilight Override exudes a spirit of togetherness, guided gently by a wise, venerated leader. Je Tweedy’s lilting, scu ed-up singing often extends an invitation—not just to listen but also to find your own way to participate in that togetherness, even if that just means giving Twilight Override more of your time and attention than streaming platforms would prefer. This invitation feels explicit in the case of the last song on disc two, “Feel Free,” where Tweedy casually strums an acoustic guitar and sings about all the ways you can and should open yourself to the world around you. A cloud of featherweight background vocal harmonies carries home the final line: “Feel free to make a record with your friends / Sing a song that never ends.” It’s a fitting way to close the album’s longest track—“Feel Free” is a hair over seven minutes, but every time I listen to it, it’s over too soon. —LEOR GALIL

FRIDAY31

Three 6 Mafia Pouya, Project Pat, Suicide Silence, 1900Rugrat, Terror, Lil Wyte, Candy, 200 Stab Wounds, Snuffed on Sight, Knuckle Sandwich, Bodybox, Empty Shell Casing, and No Cure open. 6 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 1106 W. Lawrence, $51.05–$102.25. 17+

Time has been kind to Three 6 Mafia, the Memphis group who back in the 1990s helped make their hometown the epicenter of one of the country’s greatest regional hip-hop scenes. They also achieved remarkable crossover success, which has a lot to do with their enduring reputation. In the 2000s, Three 6 Mafia released five albums that peaked in the top ten on the Billboard 200, including four in a row—and in the middle of that streak, they won the “Best Original Song” Oscar for “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” their theme for the 2005 film Hustle & Flow. But Three 6 Mafia’s grimy early recordings also continue to make the group new fans: Those albums’ molten mix of horror-score dread and cartoonishly malevolent lyrics have le their mark on midwest death-metal bands, lo-fi Russian hip-hop producers, and countless other artists who like to play with fear. Three 6 Mafia helped shape a sound that’s become almost mythical, such that it sometimes seems that every Memphis MC who put out one poorly recorded cassette in the 90s has attracted some kind of cult following since. As this fan interest accelerated, Three 6 Mafia called it quits in 2012, rendering them just as inaccessible (and therefore sought-a er) as those forgotten MCs. This magnified their legend enormously. In the years since, three of the six members on the crew’s first album have passed on; Lord Infamous suffered a heart attack in 2013, Koopsta Knicca succumbed to a stroke in 2015, and Gangsta Boo died from an accidental overdose in 2023. Rapper-producers DJ Paul and Juicy J, the only two members of Three 6 Mafia upon the group’s breakup, initially reunited in 2019. Tonight’s Halloween concert has a festival-size bill that includes their peers (Juicy J’s older brother, Project Pat, and Memphis veteran Lil Wyte) and a broad variety of acts influenced by Three 6 Mafia, including Miami rapper Pouya, LA beatdown hardcore band Terror, Cleveland death-metal group 200 Stab Wounds, and Fort Worth nu-metal band Empty Shell Casing. No matter where Three 6 Mafia put on a show this big, it’d have the celebratory feeling of a longawaited homecoming. —LEOR GALIL

SATURDAY1

Ak’chamel Traysh, Sarah Lutkenhaus & erψn temp3st, and Cambodian SIM Card open. 8 PM, Burlington Bar, 3425 W. Fullerton, sold out, $13.39 if available via wait list. 21+

Ak’chamel are an avant-garde Texas-based musical duo who bring ancient ideas of ritual folk magic to contemporary audiences. They perform in ancient-looking costumes with shamanic features, concealing their identities behind wooden masks, gloves, disintegrating fibrous shrouds, and bulbous, textured robes. Ak’chamel usually attach an epi-

JEFF TWEEDY, MACIE STEWART

7:30 PM, Salt Shed, 1357 N. Elston, $64.65. 17+

Jeff Tweedy (in glasses) and members of his band: Macie Stewart, Sima Cunningham, Liam Kazar, Spencer Tweedy, and Sammy Tweedy RACHEL BARTZ

MUSIC

continued from p. 19

thet to the group’s name, which they frequently change: They’ve released albums as “Ak’chamel, the Giver of Illness” and “Ak’chamel, the Crazed and Sunchalked Bones of the Vanished Herds,” which invite a foreboding sense that their arrival is something to fear. But what they bring are psychedelia-infused sociopolitical critiques of the sickness that is modern life. Ak’chamel’s music articulates a truth about a psychic pain that’s easy to pathologize. In the famous words of Kyoami, the jester in Akira Kurosawa’s 1985 classic Ran: “In a mad world, only the mad are sane.”

Ak’chamel sometimes make their own instruments (among them a homemade zither they call a “shahi baaja”), and their music draws from a plethora of styles from around the world, including American psych and surf rock, Indian raga rock, Saharan desert blues, Indonesian folk, and Arabic maqam. They also borrow imagery from diverse folkloric and spiritual traditions, including Thai ghosts called phi am (believed to sit on people’s chests at night and likely connected to sleep paralysis) and the women known as brujas (practitioners of witchcra rooted in specific Latine and Afro-Caribbean lineages). The result is a strange but measured sound that reflects some of the cross-cultural exchanges inherent to globalization and emphasizes the common human need for psycho-spiritual rituals to help us process our lived and observed experiences and the emotions that arise from them. Ak’chamel address ugly realities in their songs, including environmental destruction (“Clean Coal Is a Porous Condom” from 2022’s A Mournful Kingdom of Sand) and loss of indigenous sovereignty (“Amazonian Tribes Mimicking the Sound of Chainsaws With Their Mouths” from the same album). But they balance this acknowledgment of evil with a subtle but indefatigable playfulness (“Take a Scripture, It’ll Last Longer” from 2024’s Rawskulled).

Ak’chamel’s live performances vary unpredictably, and the group o en abandon strict set lists in favor of improvisation. Recently they’ve experimented with adding elements that feel a little like skits. While they’ve been a band for 15 years, Ak’chamel don’t play Chicago o en and usually do so in underground spaces. This is a rare opportunity to catch these cult favorites at a venue with a working toilet. —MICCO CAPORALE

Tweedy See Pick of the Week on page 19. Macie Stewart opens. 7:30 PM, Salt Shed, 1357 N. Elston, $64.65. 17+

MONDAY3

Molested Divinity Embodied Torment, Desecrated Ubiquity, and Carrion Throne open. 8 PM, Reggies Music Joint, 2105 S. State, $27.29. 21+

Turkey has no shortage of badass metal bands, but Molested Divinity stand out. Formed in the capital city of Ankara in 2016, the trio specialize in raw, brutal death metal that churns like the pitch-

black smoke of a burning oil spill. The hallmarks of the genre are all in force—guttural growls, gnashing down-tuned riffs, squealing pinch harmonics, typewriter kick drum, tin-can snare—but the band also manage to surprise you with their ambitious arrangements and musical chops without once diverging from the filth at the core of their sound. On 2020’s Unearthing the Void , Molested Divinity fuse brutal and slam metal in a delightfully grimy, grinding, unrelenting onslaught. Their third and most recent album, 2023’s The Primordial, takes aim at the dangers of organized religion and raises the bar they’ve already set for themselves with their airtight chemistry and intricate songwriting. Molested Divinity are currently on tour with two of their labelmates on Ohio imprint New Standard Elite— Sacramento grinders Embodied Torment and fellow Ankara brutalists Desecrated Ubiquity—en route to a headlining slot at the label’s NSE Fest in Texas in early November. Go get your rage out so you can face another day. —JAMIE LUDWIG

WEDNESDAY5

Fugu Dugu 7:30 PM, Maurer Concert Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln. F b

Chicago folk-punk band Fugu Dugu have built their fan base with raucous, rousing live shows that dazzle indie-rock and folk audiences alike. Their fierce music deftly blends Eastern European traditional songs with Americana, and a DIY punk sensibility. Singer and violinist Madame Broshkina wields her virtuosity like a rapier, light and sharp. Guitarist Bucky Wanko, who also sings, serves as her cranky foil, unloading his wit like he’s swaying on a barstool and about to fall into your lap. Fugu Dugu’s sound is rich with piano and drums, and they sing in a mix of English, Romanian, Ukrainian, and Russian, creating a musical vortex that whirls you back and forth

between the shtetl, the cabaret stage, the Romani caravan, and the Chicago dive bar.

The songs on Fugu Dugu’s debut album, last year’s Lunatic Parade , are linked by a strong spirit of resistance that transcends their disparate influences. That makes the yearning swing of “St. Gerome,” the pulsing boogie rock of “Not Now,” and the anxious atmospheres of the title track (which ends in an eerie, buzzing hiss reminiscent of cicadas) flow seamlessly with the righteous anger of the bouncy, folky “God’s Little Children.” Also among the album’s highlights is the bluesy jazz manouche of the wistful “Emma Says,” with its gorgeous flourishes of double-stopped fiddle and its

lyrics that nod to Emma Goldman and her famous opinion about revolutions—she won’t join if she can’t dance.

Fugu Dugu returned late in 2024 with a couple singles in time for the holiday season. For Hanukkah, they provided a rollicking version of “Hanukkah Bell” (an adaptation of the Klezmatics song “Hanukkah Gelt,” which uses lyrics from an otherwise lost Woody Guthrie tune). And on Christmas Eve, they released a heart-squeezing cover of the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl’s 1987 anti–holiday classic “Fairytale of New York.” Fugu Dugu have been hard at work on a second album, and they’ll premiere some upcoming material at this show. —MONICA

Jeff

KENDRICK

One of the masked members of Ak’chamel COURTESY THE ARTIST Juicy J and DJ Paul of Three 6 Mafi a COURTESY THE ARTIST

Molested Divinity COURTESY THE ARTIST

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/musicreviews

Little Simz La Reezy opens. 8 PM, Salt Shed, 1357 N. Elston, $50.15$114.15. b

British-Nigerian rapper and actor Little Simz is among the UK’s modern legends.

Born Simbiatu Abisola Abiola Ajikawo, she has a knack for wielding topical and deeply personal subject matter with beautiful clarity, and she’s been a compelling force in hip-hop since she dropped her debut album, A Curious Tale of Trials + Persons, in 2015.

Simz’s Mercury Prize–winning fourth album, 2021’s Sometimes I Might Be Introvert , has been hailed by critics as one of the best hip-hop albums of the decade. Her live show is equally heralded: Her refreshing presence and raw delivery feel even bigger than the halls and festivals she plays.

MUSIC

Over the past few years, Simz has overcome canceled tours and financial turmoil to come out swinging. Her reflective sixth album, June’s Lotus, details those personal and professional challenges—most notably the dissolution of her relationship with a childhood friend and longtime collaborator, Inflo (aka Dean Josiah Cover) of hip-hop collective Sault, whom she sued last year for allegedly failing to repay £1.7 million in loans.

The project exposes Simz in a new way. A decade into her career, she’s an established star with “mo’ money, mo’ problems” to discuss, and she does so

brilliantly. Contemplative, vulnerable, and carrying a bit of a chip on its shoulder, the stripped-down Lotus shoves Simz to the fore, showcasing her resilience and gratitude among flashes of fang.

Album single “Young” is campy in the best way. Simz lectures on financial immaturity and aging out of the party scene, and the hilarious accompanying video—where she plays an older punk musician struggling with bills and Peter Pan syndrome— is a cinematic reminder of Simz’s flair for acting.

At this indoor Salt Shed show, you can expect a night of bright, fun, and thought-provoking hip-hop.

—CRISTALLE BOWEN v

Little Simz THIBAUT GREVET

GOSSIP WOLF

A furry ear to the ground of the local

music scene

IN FEBRUARY 1996, VETERAN improvising musician Joe McPhee made his Chicago debut at the Empty Bottle, which had established itself only a few years prior as a go-to rock club. McPhee, who’s best known as a saxophonist and trumpeter, came at the invitation of reedist and composer Ken Vandermark and curator and Reader contributor John Corbett . Earlier that year, the two of them had launched the Empty Bottle Jazz & Improvised Music Series , which would run most Wednesday nights till 2005. “I don’t think anyone thought of it as an important series yet,” Corbett says. “For us, this was an outgrowth of all sorts of activities that we were doing in such a huge number of different places.”

Corbett wanted a stable home for the adventurous concerts he was already booking, and he found one at a rock club whose friendliness to younger audiences helped the series become a crucial driver of Chicago’s 1990s creative-music renaissance. On Saturday, November 1 , Corbett and Vandermark present an evening of eclectic music at the Bottle as part of the venue’s 33⅓ Anniversary Series, an 11-day festival that runs till November 10. The show features performances by McPhee, Vandermark, and several others, and it doubles as a release party for a new six-CD box set, The Bottle Tapes: Selections From the Empty Bottle Jazz and Improvised Music Series 1996–2005

Corbett and Vandermark’s series developed an international reputation, in part because they began throwing an annual festival (also at the Bottle) in 1997. As longtime Reader critic Peter Margasak wrote of the fest in 2000, “in its brief history it has presented the local—and sometimes national—

debuts of some of the most important and interesting players in Europe and Asia.”

For its first few weeks, the series struggled. In his lovingly detailed Bottle Tapes liner notes, Corbett writes that he and Vandermark were sure the Bottle would pull the plug, and they booked McPhee assuming it’d be one of their last shows. But McPhee surprised everyone, including himself, by drawing more than 200 people. The concert got an adoring Tribune review from Howard Reich, and Corbett and Vandermark had the support of the Bottle team too.

Corbett understood that the Bottle wouldn’t continue the series if it couldn’t stay in the black. “But I think they had a longer view, which was really refreshing,” he says.

“So we were lucky in that sense.” This “longer view” meant the series continued even a er the first four-day fest lost thousands of dollars. “That was money we’d never even imagined before,” Corbett says. “But [the fest] got a lot of publicity, and it was a great success on every other front—the house was packed every night. So from all standpoints except for the expenses, it was a success. We just had to figure out how to do it a little bit less expensively, and that’s what we did.”

Corbett’s liner notes capture the character of the scene he helped build. The Empty Bottle series fostered collaborations among musicians from far-flung countries and developed long-standing relationships with locals, among them visual artist Dan Grzeca (who designed and silk-screened posters for many shows) and show taper Malachi Ritscher (who by Corbett’s estimate recorded half of the series’s 500 or so concerts). Ritscher gave CD-Rs to Vandermark, Corbett, and the performers, and Corbett occasionally revisited

them as he mulled the idea of a retrospective compilation. All the music on The Bottle Tapes comes from Ritscher’s recordings.

“A bout a year ago, I started thinking to myself, ‘Maybe I could boil this down to a cogent single CD,’” Corbett says. “Then that started to sound ridiculous when I was putting it together.” Vandermark joined Corbett in choosing music for a box set, but even after they’d settled on a performance, they had a hard time picking a single piece. The 1999 first meeting of Chicago tenor saxophonist Von Freeman and two Dutch musicians, pianist Misha Mengelberg and drummer Han Bennink , was a real challenge for the curators—Corbett and Vandermark eventually chose the trio’s take on Charlie Parker’s “Confirmation.”

“What was striking to me was that listening back to some of those recordings, I was right back in it, and there were events within the music that I remembered distinctly,” Corbett says. “If you’d asked me if that would be the case, I would never have thought so.” Half of Corbett’s Bottle Tapes notes are detailed recollections of each track, fleshed out with wide-screen views of the scene in Chicago— his blurb for Dutch ensemble Clusone 3, for instance, includes a shout-out to Margasak’s consistent, insightful coverage. Today Corbett can see the impact of the series everywhere in the city.

“It is a really incredible period in creative music in Chicago,” he says. “I think that’s true, in part, because it has matured a lot since the days that we were doing those things. And a lot of the things we were doing then are, in another way, kind of givens at this point.” Saturday’s performance draws upon the history of the Bottle series and its present-day legacy—Corbett points out that local cellist and sound artist Dorothy Carlos had yet to begin performing publicly when the series ended. In addition to a solo set by Carlos, the bill features a duo of Vandermark and Black Monument Ensemble bandleader Damon Locks and a duo of McPhee and Norwegian drummer PNL . In the spirit of the festivals the series presented, the night will also include a surprise set—as Corbett puts it, “It’s gonna be a doozy.”

Saturday’s concert is your first chance to buy The Bottle Tapes, released on Corbett vs. Dempsey, the label run by the gallery of the same name that Corbett founded with Jim Dempsey . Tickets cost $26.78, and the show begins at 5 PM. —LEOR GALIL

Got a tip? Email your Chicago music news to gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

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Architectural Staff I (Chicago, IL) Full-time, entry-level professional performing a variety of basic architectural assignments requiring the application of standard architectural techniques for small projects or selected segments of a larger project. Performs design layouts and features, which require researching, compiling, and recording information for project work. 5-year Bachelor of Architecture Professional Degree. Required skills: AutoCAD, SketchUp Pro, Rhinoceros 3D, Adobe Creative Suite, building design + building technology skills as demonstrated in an architecture portfolio. Mail resume to von Weise Associates, 1049 North Ashland Ave, Chicago, IL, 60622.

ASSISTANT PROJECT MANAGER (MULTIPLE OPENINGS)

Griggs Mitchell & Alma of IL, LLC d/b/a GMA Construction Group seeks Assistant Project Managers in Chicago, IL to be responsible for management, supervision, coordination & completion of construction projects to meet time & cost objectives with respect to contracting, scheduling, estimating, bidding & contract administration functions; under direction, responsible for development & implementation of an assigned project. Duties: take ownership of project life cycle; manage all aspects of multiple related projects; serve as point of contact for project construction administration; define project scope & objectives & develop work plans, schedules, project estimates, resource plans & status reports; interpret project plans, specifications, details for subcontractors & craft persons; inspect & review projects to monitor compliance; conduct project meetings; discuss & resolve matters such as work procedures, complaints or construction problems; ensure adherence to quality standards; provide on-site leadership for project team; direct and supervise workers, often in outdoor weather conditions & cold, hot, wet/humid, high &/or confined spaces; prepare contracts or negotiate contract revisions; prepare, submit budget estimates, progress reports, cost tracking reports. Travel required to work sites within Chicago-Naperville-

Joe McPhee will play at the release party for The Bottle Tapes on Saturday, November 1. ŽIGA KORITNIK

Elgin, IL-IN-WI MSA.

Salary: $77,300-$110,000/ year. Benefits: 401(k); dental, health, vision, life, worker’s compensation & AD&D insurance; 10 days PTO & 5 paid sick days/year; paid holidays, bereavement leave, voting time off & jury duty; merit bonuses; professional development & training; employee assistance program; unpaid FMLA/ military leave. Email resume: sjackson@ gmaconstructiongroup. com

AWS Platform/API Engineer, AbbVie Inc., Waukegan, IL. Hybrid (onsite 3 days a week/ 2 days WFH/remote). Participate in design of APIs for reusable services. Develop APIs & services that enable seamless workflow across multiple platforms. Employ handson experience developing solutions with Python or Java. Utilize experience in engineering & delivering AWS-hosted APIs & solutions. Implement integration protocols & techniques to ensure systems interact efficiently. Work on connecting cloud & on-premises applications to create a cohesive IT infrastructure. Help to automate using native AWS technologies & DevOps. Implement security measures across integration solutions to protect sensitive data. Provide guidance & training to junior integration engineers & other staff members. Must have a BS in computer science or computer engineering or related field, & 5 years of work experience as a platform engineer or API Engineer. Of experience required, must have of 5 years of experience with each of the following: (i) coding on the AWS platform with at least 2 of the following programming languages : Python, Java. Java Script, &/or Node.JS; (ii) designing & developing with integration solutions using TIBCO & APIGEE; & (iii) using Bash or Python scripting languages for automation & system management. Of experience required, must have of 1 year of experience with each of the following: (i) using AWS CloudFormation or Terraform (IaC) to define cloud resources & provision them in an automated, repeatable manner; (ii) deploying solutions using containerization technologies, including Docker & Kubernetes, & monitoring/logging tools; & (iii) designing & implementing CI/CD pipelines (DevOps) using AWS code pipeline & Azure DevOps & using GitHub version control system. Work experience may be gained concurrently. Salary Range: $157,510.05 - $178,500.00 per year. Apply online at https:// careers.abbvie.com/en

or send resume to Job. opportunity.abbvie@ abbvie.com. Refer to Req ID: REF45978H.

Bodorlaser Inc. - Service Engineer - Remote position in Ames, IA. Master’s in Engrg, Elec Engrg, Elec & Comp Engrg, or related. Six mos work exp in the field of mech engrg. Proficient in AutoCAD software. Familiar w PLC sys. Familiar w/ elec testing & diag equip. Email: grace.jin@bodorlaser. com; 1230 Remington Rd, Schaumburg, IL 60173. $101,442.00/Yr. Note* (This is a remote position in Ames, IA, requiring some domestic travel 2 - 3 wks a mo for a few days each week to client sites (up to 75% time), as assigned.)

exp U.S. Services Inc. is seeking an Architectural Designer in Chicago, IL to design initial concepts ideas for prjcts using principles of design that are important for creating aesthetically pleasing & functional buildings. Less than 20% domestic trvl reqd. Up to 20% remote work allowed. Must live w/in normal commuting distance of the worksite. Apply at www.exp. com, search for job #111228. Full time. The pay range for this role is $62,000.00 to $79,000.00. Actual compensation pkgs are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, depth of exp, certifications, & specific work location. This may be different in other locations due to differences in the cost of labor. In addition to competitive pay, we offer a comprehensive benefits pkg for all full-time employees, including health insurance, vacation time, & 401(k) retirement benefits.

Manager, Statistics. AbbVie Inc., North Chicago, IL. Hybrid, 3 days in office/2 days WFH. Work independently to provide statistical support to research & development org. Contribute to design, analysis & reporting of clinical trials or other scientific research studies. Act as lead statistician on clinical trial design & protocol development. Develop statistical analysis plans w/details for programming implementation. Define & implement sound statistical methodology in scientific investigations utilizing exp w/ missing data, multiple imputation & mixed effects model for repeated measures. Identify scientifically

appropriate data collection instruments. Identify & report data issues or violations. Provide programming algorithms for derived variables & analysis datasets. Must have a PhD in Statistics, Biostatistics, Public Health, or related field & 2 years of academic or industry experience in the following: (i) using SAS, R, & other statistical software; (ii) applying & implementing statistical methods in clinical trials; (iii) performing statistical computations, simulations, and utilizing statistical methodologies for study design including sample size determination & analysis & statistical inference including missing data imputation on various endpoints; (iv) using regression analysis, multivariate analysis, design & analysis of experiments, categorical data analysis, linear models & statistical inference including Bayesian & survival analysis in clinical trials; (v) conducting clinical trial designs, protocol development, statistical analysis plan, database activities, and scientific review & interpretation of clinical trials’ results. Experience may be gained concurrently. Salary Range: $146,069.48$202,500.00 per year. Apply online at https:// careers.abbvie.com/en or send resume to Job. opportunity.abbvie@ abbvie.com. Refer to Req ID: REF45974R.

Bounteous, Inc. Chicago, IL Product Mgr. Lead strategic vision, devt. & exec. of digital tools w/ end-to-end ownersh. of capab., features & upgrds. Reqd. Bach degree in Comp. Sci. or CIS or for. equiv. & 2 yrs of exper. as a Prod. Mgr. or Prod Owner. 2 yrs exper w/ Agile Methodology Scrum Tool Jira, Design XD Tool Figma, Project mgmt. & Collab. tool Confluence, MS Teams, & Jasper soft Reqd. Sal: $153,200 Med, Dntl, LInsur, Disablty, 401k, EAP benf. Occ. U.S. travel up to 10% and/or reloc. to various sites in U.S. No fixed itinerary. May allow WFH on an occas. or hybrid basis, at discretion of employer. Contact: Qual. Applcnts send resume to talent@bounteous. com and Ref. job title & Job #B0011 in subj. line.

Principal Scientist (Formulation Development), AbbVie Inc., North Chicago, IL. 100% Telecommuting permitted. Drive formulation & process development activities for late-stage clinical & commercial programs. Lead scale-up, tech transfer, & validation to commercial manufacturing sites (internal & external). Manage manufacturing activities including

monitoring production campaigns, reviewing of batch records, & process batch data. Support resolution of quality investigations or events. Author & review CMC sections for regulatory submissions. Present technical data & strategic decisions to cross functional teams & senior management. Must have a BS in pharmacy, pharmaceutics, chemistry, chemical engineering, pharmaceutical engineering, biotechnology or related discipline, & 5 years’ experience as a functional area lead managing small molecule oral solid drug product development. Of experience required, must have 5 years: (i) leading late-stage oral tablet formulation development, scale-up, formulation characterization, & optimization, and process validation; (ii) operating under cGMPs & associated regulatory & quality compliance in the pharmaceutical development & manufacturing environment; (iii) overseeing clinical supply manufacturing; & (iv) preparing, written & oral reports, for peers, management & business stakeholders within a matrixed organization. Alternatively, would accept MS in pharmacy, pharmaceutics, chemistry, chemical engineering, pharmaceutical engineering, biotechnology or related discipline & 2 years’ experience as a functional area lead managing small molecule oral solid drug product development. Of experience required, must have 2 years of (i), (ii), (iii), & (iv). With either combination of education & experience required, must have experience writing CMC sections in at least 3 regulatory submissions for late stage clinical or commercial applications. Experience may be gained concurrently. Would accept any suitable combination of training, education & work experience.Salary Range: $164,800.00 - $230,000.00 per year. Apply online at https://careers.abbvie. com/en or send resume to Job.opportunity.abbvie@ abbvie.com. Refer to Req ID: REF45973K.

Principal Strategic Medical Writer (Oncology), AbbVie US LLC, North Chicago, IL. 100% Telecommuting permitted. Serve as a lead on complex clinical & regulatory documents. Work closely with the team(s) on document authoring & content strategies. Coordinate review, approval, & quality control of other functions involved in the production of clinical & regulatory projects. Communicate deliverables needed,

writing process, & timelines to team members. Hold team members accountable to agreed-upon project dates. Work independently with Regulatory Quality Assurance to address inquiries & draft responses. Must have a Bachelor’s degree in a scientific discipline or foreign education equivalent & 5 years of academic &/or industry medical writing experience. Of experience required, must have 3 years with each of the following: preparing & presenting written & oral scientific presentations to peers, business stakeholders & management; interpreting statistical data to prepare written medical and scientific reports for regulatory bodies; clinical regulatory writing experience following regulations ICH & FDA regulatory requirements; working with stakeholders in drug development, clinical research, study designs, & biostatistics to author clinical regulatory documents; performing medical writing in the biopharmaceutical industry; & managing project delivery timelines. Work experience may be gained concurrently. Salary Range: $144,715.00$202,500.00 per year. Apply online at https:// careers.abbvie.com/en or send resume to Job. opportunity.abbvie@ abbvie.com. Refer to Req ID: REF45979T

Senior Project Engineer, API Pilot Plant, AbbVie Inc., North Chicago, IL: (Onsite/5 days a week) Lead the planning & execution of small to medium sized capital projects related to process equipment, facilities, & utilities for the API Pilot Plant. In addition, this role will support R&D pipeline by providing day-to-day technical support of the plant & collaborating with process engineers, chemists, & operations technicians on the introduction of new processes & plant improvements. Must have a Bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering or Mechanical Engineering or related field, & 2 years of progressive project & manufacturing engineering work experience. Of experience required, must have 2 years in each of the following: (i) utilizing Maximo asset management system to schedule work orders & track & manage asset lifecycles; (ii) utilizing SAP for procurement; (iii) planning, executing, & delivering capital projects w/in budget, while ensuring adherence to production schedule & quality requirements; (iv) applying validation principles & knowledge to ensure accuracy &

compliance in all aspects of project execution; (v) designing chemical process equipment to ensure product quality & production reliability; & (vi) preparing written & oral reports & presentations, using Excel, PowerPoint, Word, for business stakeholders, peers & management. Work experience may be gained concurrently. Salary Range: $113,792.00$157,500.00 per year. Apply online at https:// careers.abbvie.com/en or send resume to Job. opportunity.abbvie@ abbvie.com. Refer to Req ID: REF45977R.

exp U.S. Services Inc. is seeking an Architectural Designer in Chicago, IL to lead the dvlpmnt of design alternatives including the use of a variety of media, including computer visualization like AutoCAD, Rhino, Revit, Enscape & physical models w/ 3D Printing study models. Up to 20% domestic trvl reqd. Up to 20% remote work allowed. Must live w/in normal commuting distance of the worksite. Apply at www.exp. com, search for job#111236. Full time. The pay range for this role is $62,000.00 to $72,000.00. Actual compensation pkgs are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, depth of exp, certifications, & specific work location. This may be different in other locations due to differences in the cost of labor. In addition to competitive pay, we offer a comprehensive benefits package for all full-time employees, including health insurance, vacation time, & 401(k) retirement benefits.

Serac, Inc. seeks Automation Engineer w/ bach or for deg equiv in EE Tech or rel fld & 2 yrs exp in job offrd or trblsht ind cont syst. Empl also acpts assoc or for deg equiv in EE Tech or rel fld & 3 yrs exp in job offrd or trblsht ind cont syst incl exp w/ B&R cntrlrs; Var freq drives; PLCs; HMIs; SCADA; Proc instrmtn; 480VAC elec cntrl equip. Slry $113,027/yr. Stdrd Bnfts. Occas dom & Euro (France) trvl reqd when condctng tests on protyp at cust fclty dur extd fld trials up to 15%. Hybrid Telecom perm 2 days/wk w/ mand in-office 3 days/wk. Apply to mary. diaz@serac-group.com or HR, 160 E. Elk Trail, Carol Stream, IL 60188

Vertex Consulting Services, Inc. in Schaumburg, IL is seek’g Lead Data Engineer(s) to oversee archt. & mgmt of data systs. Salary: $126,755/ yr. WFH anywhere in U.S. Email resumes to smk@thevertexgroup. com & note job title.

Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company: Senior Principal Scientist, Product Development Global R&D InnovationChicago, IL. Directing & overseeing the scoping & execution of global product innovation quality governance initiatives within the R&D innovation organization. Job reqs Bach’s deg in Chemistry, Biochemistry, Engg, Food Sci, Technical Sci, or rltd fld & 5 yrs in any job title involving exp in a leadership capacity managing new product devel projects on cross-functional teams, including oversight of qual & food safety process & system audits. In lieu of deg as stated, employer will accept 2 add’l yrs in any job title involving exp in a leadership capacity managing new product devel projects on cross-functional teams, including oversight of qual & food safety process & system audits. Up to 30% dmstc & int’l travel for global collaboration, factory trials, & external engagement. Tlwrk permitted up to 3 days/ wk. Salary: $210,423.00 per year. To apply, send resume identifying Job Code 141 to MarsTA-PIC@ effem.com. No calls.

Anton Paar USA Inc. seeks 1 In-House Service Specialist to provide engg & technical support to customers on the use, operation, maintenance, & specs of complex instruments; conduct technical repairs of instruments; calibrate instruments. Position requires: (i) a bachelor’s, or foreign equiv, in Engg Tech, or a closely related scientific or engg field, or the equivalent; (ii) 2 yrs exp providing engg support in troubleshooting, repairing, & maintaining highly complex analytical instruments, using ERP SAP, CRM SAP, IBM Notes, Confluence, & Jira. The employer will accept any suitable combination of education, training, or experience. Salary of $91,874/yr & standard company benefits provided. Position in Vernon Hills, IL but position requires up to 40% travel within the U.S. Applicants should apply to careers. us@anton-paar.com

MARKETPLACE

Go Store It Chicago Northside StorageLakeview, 2946 N Western Ave, Chicago, IL 60618 hereby gives NOTICE OF PUBLIC SALE of the storage space(s) listed below, containing household and other goods will be sold for cash on Nov 17th,2025 2:00pm with the contents being sold to the highest bidder. Owner reserves the right to bid. The sale is being held to satisfy a landlord’s lien, in accordance with Illinois Compiled Statutes Chapter 770 ILCS 95/, and will be held online at www. storagetreasures.com. C44 Hector Arce Jr; C51 George Hull; H05 Cian Omahony; O02 Karl Sullivan; P26 Cian Omahony; T058 Cipriano Venegas; T165 Yesi Barzaga; Z05 Michael Newton; Z38 Mercedes Christmas Chicago Northside Storage

MATCHES

McDonald’s Winnetka - You asked if I’d been at Sherwin-Williams. I said no-wish I had been. Your smile melted me! Tell me what I was wearing and how I look. xiamin57@gmail.com

SERVICES

CHESTNUT ORGANIZING AND CLEANING SERVICES: especially for people who need an organizing service because of depression, elderly, physical or mental challenges or other causes for your home’s clutter, disorganization, dysfunction, etc. We can organize for the downsizing of your current possessions to more easily move into a smaller home. With your help, we can help to organize your move. We can organize and clean for the deceased in lieu of having the bereaved needing to do the preparation to sell or rent the deceased’s home. We are absolutely not judgmental; we’ve seen and done “worse” than your job assignment. With your help, can we please help you? Chestnut Cleaning Service: 312-332-5575. www.ChestnutCleaning. com www. ChestnutCleaning.com

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