SSW 02.25.15

2 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 25, 2015

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is a nonprofit newsprint magazine written for and about neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago. We publish in-depth coverage of the arts and issues of public interest alongside oral histories, poetry, fiction, interviews, and artwork from local photographers and illustrators. Started as a student paper at the University of Chicago, the South Side Weekly is now an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting cultural and civic engagement on the South Side, and to providing educational opportunities for developing journalists, writers, and artists.

Editor-in-Chief Bea Malsky Managing Editor Hannah Nyhart Deputy Editors John Gamino, Meaghan Murphy Politics Editors Osita Nwanevu, Rachel Schastok Music Editor Jake Bittle Stage & Screen Olivia Stovicek Editor Visual Arts Editor Lauren Gurley, Robert Sorrell Editor-at-Large Bess Cohen Contributing Editors Maha Ahmed, Lucia

Ahrensdorf, Christian

Belanger, Mari Cohen, Social Media Editor Web Editor

Emily Lipstein Sarah Claypoole

Visuals Editor Head Photographer Layout Editors

Ellie Mejia Luke White Adam Thorp, Baci Weiler

Senior Writers Jack Nuelle, Stephen Urchick Staff Writers Olivia Adams, Julia Aizuss,

Max Bloom, Austin Brown,

Amelia Dmowska, Mark

Hassenfratz, Maira Khwaja,

Jeanne Lieberman, Zoe

Makoul, Olivia Myszkowski,

Jamison Pfeifer, Hafsa Razi,

Sammie Spector, Kari Wei Staff Photographers Camden Bauchner, Juliet

Eldred, Kiran Misra, Siddhesh Mukerji Staff Illustrators Jean Cochrane, Lexi

Drexelius, Wei Yi Ow,

Amber Sollenberger, Javier Suárez, Teddy Watler, Julie Wu Editorial Intern

Clyde Schwab

Webmaster Business Manager

Shuwen Qian Harry Backlund

The paper is produced by an all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We distribute each Wednesday in the fall, winter, and spring, with breaks during April and December. Over the summer we publish monthly.

Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to: South Side Weekly 1212 E. 59th Street Ida Noyes Hall #030 Chicago, IL 60637 For advertising inquiries, contact: (773)234-5388 or advertising@southsideweekly Read our stories online at southsideweekly.com

Cover photo by Todd Diederich. A group gets ready for the House of Herrera Ball.

IN CHICAGO

A week’s worth of developing stories, odd events, and signs of the times, culled from the desks, inboxes and wandering eyes of the editors All You Have to Do Even as activists are rallying on behalf of an ordinance, supported by twenty-seven aldermen, seeking $20 million in reparations for acts of torture committed by just one CPD officer and those under his command, the police union is suing to destroy records of police misconduct that recently became public information. In the wake of Kalven v. Chicago, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) has argued that records over five to seven years old are not the city’s to keep and give away—essentially, placing the private interests of public officials above the interests of the public. If Jon Burge is not counterevidence enough, perhaps the fact that just the list of complaints since 1967 came to more than 7,000 pages is enough, or perhaps what a FOP spokesman told the Tribune in October—after police shot seventeen-year-old Laquan McDonald sixteen times—is enough: “When police tell you to drop a weapon, all you have to do is drop it.” Let the records show if that’s true.

Vanilla Is My Favorite Flavor Bronzeville residents who crave the deeply processed flavor of twenty-first-century self-serve frozen yogurt joints will soon need to go no further than the 35th Street Green Line station to get their fill of the strangely colorful (and yet somehow also flavorless) icy goop that’s taken America’s retail spaces by storm. Last October, CityLab reported that New York had reached “Peak Froyo,” as shoe stores and butcheries across the city got “mall-ified” (read: gentrified) by froyo joints. The North Side has seen a similar flood of mochi and artificial berry sauce, but this new Bronzeville shop, Forever Yogurt, will only be the second froyo shop on the South Side. The first went up a year ago on, you guessed it, 53rd Street in Hyde Park.

IN THIS ISSUE the vice and virtue growth of a neighborhood

Imminent greenery and the whir of the plant’s assembly lines will be a huge change. olivia stovicek...4 childcare in crisis

“The entire infrastructure of early care and education in this state is crashing and burning.” hafsa razi...6 music school finds a home in hyde park

“Where do you go in Hyde Park to really experience music?” he asks, not rhetorically. peter xu...7

of todd deiderich

He depicts scenes of life, most frequently black life, in U.S. cities: funerals and fights, homes and tattoos, and—most famously—AfricanAmerican queer balls. rachel schastok...8 an architect of letters

“Everything can use some design and color. Even refrigerators need artwork.” amelia dmowska...11 the aftermath of the school closings

“Fewer kids means fewer resources.” christian belanger and hafsa razi...12

dual degrees

“There’s no more preparing for college; we’re in college now.” michal kranz...14 they don’t give a damn

“Everyone felt that the ‘projects’ were just an experiment that failed.” robert sorrell...15 thaddeus tukes makes the most

“ Yeah it’s been that real / see it’s way way bigger than the music / a revolutionary movement, it’s more of an attunement.” sammie spector...17

FEBRUARY 25, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3

Growth of a Neighborhood

Pullman will soon have the largest rooftop farm in the nation. Will its impact be proportional to its size?

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BY OLIVIA STOVICEK

y this spring, a factory roof in Pullman will be home to a farm that grows over sixty thousand heads of lettuce a week. As 9th Ward Alderman Anthony A. Beale says, “That amount of lettuce is unreal!” When it opens up on top of eco-friendly cleaning product company Method’s new manufacturing plant, Gotham Greens’ rooftop farm will be the largest of its kind in the world. Not only will it grow produce year-round, but, along with Method’s plant, the farm will also bring close to 150 new jobs to the community. The plans are an exciting development for an area that has historically had a higher unemployment rate than the city as a whole, but they also highlight a divide be-

4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 25, 2015

tween Pullman proper and the surrounding area.

Gotham Greens designed and will operate the 75,000 square feet of greenhouses on the Method plant’s roof, growing leafy greens and culinary herbs and producing up to a million pounds of pesticide-free produce a year (for comparison, the median size of Chicago’s 350-odd vegetative roofs is only 5,234 square feet). Viraj Puri, Gotham Greens’ co-founder and CEO, describes the collaboration: “Method... wanted to integrate food production into the plant,” he said. “They were seeking a greenhouse partner who had the experience and ability to execute the design, construction, and operations of a large scale rooftop greenhouse facility, which led them to Gotham Greens. The rest of the story developed organically.”

Although Gotham Greens’ other farms are in New York City, the opportunity to contribute to the revival of Pullman, as well as Chicago’s combination of strong local food culture and scarcity of fresh produce during the lengthy winters, made Chicago, Puri said, “a logical next step for us.”

Huge as the factory is, it’s dwarfed by

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the windswept fields of snow and browning weeds around it. It’s easy to tell that the roof ’s greenery and the whir of the plant’s assembly lines will be a huge change for the Pullman site, which for nearly a decade housed only an abandoned steel processing facility. Yet these changes simultaneously recall the site’s past; this plot of land was also, in its heyday, home to part of the historic Pullman rail car plant. The Pullman neighborhood traces its beginnings back to 1880, when George M. Pullman bought a huge tract of land to create a model industrial town where employees of his rail car company would live and work.

According to David Doig, president of the nonprofit community development organization Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives (CNI), which as master developer of the Pullman Park development worked to help bring Method to Pullman, this historical background was one of the things that drew Method in (Method did not respond to requests for comment). “They really liked the idea of what they represented juxtaposed [with] what Pullman represented,” he explained. “So, much the way that Pullman was innovative in the nineteenth century, you have Method now as...the new

DEVELOPMENT green economy, representing the new innovations of the twenty-first century.”

Another factor was the company’s desire to participate in a larger community development strategy. Over the past five years, Doig says CNI has completed over $100 million in developments, including the Walmart that opened next to Method’s lot in 2013. Ultimately, CNI plans to add recreation and park space, mixed-income housing, and more big-box stores. In press releases, Method has touted its own contribution to the area’s revitalization, stating that the factory will create nearly a hundred manufacturing jobs in an area with relatively high rates of unemployment.

Method did not choose Pullman entirely of its own accord: CNI had been looking for potential industrial real estate buyers for Pullman Park, and together with Alderman Beale and community members, they undertook what Beale described as a “full-court press” to persuade Method that the area was the right choice for its plant.

CNI put together a package that included about $8 million in tax increment financing (TIF) money from the city and did much of the infrastructure work on the site itself.

Beale brought several Pullman community leaders to a meeting with the company; Method said their discussion with those leaders sold them on coming to Pullman.

The difference the factory and farm would make in the community is the center of Beale’s argument for the project. “Number one,” he told me, “I believe it’s going to have an impact on the quality of life that people lead, having a void of fresh produce that’s being filled.” Pullman has been called a food desert by both Pat Quinn and the research firm Mari Gallagher that helped popularize the term; the construction of Walmart a couple of years ago (despite some residents’ concerns about its labor practices) provided the neighborhood with its only major grocery store. Combining that with Gotham Greens’ farm could improve Pullman’s situation even further.

“Walmart is only about fifty feet away from Gotham Greens,” Beale pointed out, “so they’ll be able to grow, package, and deliver fresh produce right across the street.”

Gotham Greens spokesperson Nicole Baum says that the company has not finalized a full list of retailers for the produce, but is in discussions with restaurants, farmers’ markets, and stores across the South Side and the greater Chicago area. Beale, meanwhile, is just as effusive about the project’s potential to put people to work: the farm alone is projected to create more

than fifty jobs.

Area residents, however, are concerned about the type and availability of the jobs Gotham and Method claim they’ll provide. Kemba Chambers, who lives nearby, looked up the job postings on Method’s website after seeing the factory’s towering wind turbine, but was disappointed. “They seemed to only be looking for specialized engineers,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s really what the community needs.”

Though Method’s current postings do include multiple kinds of engineers, they also include opportunities such as “the mover and the maker: operation technician,” i.e. production line worker. There’s little middle ground between the two, however, and the whimsical naming of several of the positions (maintenance technicians are referred to as “MacGyvers”) is not likely to make things any clearer. And Chambers is not alone in raising questions: Chris Campagna, a member of local group Pullman Urban Gardeners, mentioned that he had heard from other locals that it was difficult to find a job through Method, although he expressed confidence that the company would clear up any confusion soon.

Still, community groups seem enthusiastic about the project on the whole.

Though there are gripes about the details of the project’s implementation, it’s hard to find a downside to fresh lettuce. The Cooperation Operation, a nonprofit organization that grows free organic produce, expressed its support. “As far as the project goes, in a conceptual way I think it’s awesome,” co-founder Justin Booz says. “Personally, I think the more food that can be grown locally and sustainably, the better.” Having met with them, he thinks Gotham Greens is doing a good job of reaching out to the neighborhood, “They’ve been really forthcoming in offering support,” he said.

As for Pullman residents in general, Campagna gave the impression that most were thrilled. “I’ve not heard one negative comment at all, not one, about the rooftop farm from Method, which is unusual,” he chuckled. “I think what Method [and Gotham Greens] are doing is fantastic...and I’m sure many Pullmanites are behind what they’re doing.”

That may be true of Pullman residents, but what about those outside Pullman’s borders? The neighborhood tapers as one moves south, squeezed between the Metra tracks and the Bishop Ford Freeway; the farm’s location is near the vertex, so it is only blocks from Roseland, South Deering,

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and even suburban Riverdale. Speaking to a dozen individuals from those neighborhoods, outside the Pullman Walmart— yards from Method’s factory, in the shadow of the prominently branded wind turbine— few had any idea what the factory was, and only one had heard of Gotham Greens’ farm.

Beale, whose ward extends ten or twenty blocks beyond Pullman in several directions, has been trying to keep locals informed: he tells me that he has mentioned Method in his newsletters, that he had them present information at his town hall meeting when they started hiring and even made a phone blast about it, and that he will employ similar efforts when Gotham Greens begins their hiring. “We’re doing everything we can to let the community know that Method is here and Gotham Greens is here,” he said.

Is everything Beale can do not enough, and should Method and Gotham Greens themselves be doing more? Either way, the contrast between the Pullman residents’ pep and the blank stares of members of other neighborhoods raises questions about the breadth of the project’s impact. Pullman has slightly higher per capita income than its neighbors, at $20,588 to Roseland’s

$17,949 and South Deering’s $14,685, according to the Chicago Department of Public Health’s 2008–2012 estimates. By the numbers, there is not much else that sets the neighborhood apart from its surroundings, but the neighborhood’s history has conferred on it a certain degree of prestige. That has some concrete benefits: the Pullman Historic District was just designated a national monument, which is likely to bring more jobs and development to the area, and the organizing locals did over the years to preserve that history has given them a strong foundation for creating change in the community. It creates a narrative, too: the rhetoric about the opening of the plant and farm, consistently Pullman-centered, includes individuals such as Doig pointing to the neighborhood’s “strong workforce,” calling to mind a history of industry and industriousness.

Semaj Bailey lives near the Method factory but not in Pullman. “The rooftop farm would be a good idea if it’s shared,” she said, “but it doesn’t help if it only goes to Pullman...what do people do on this side of the [Metra] tracks?” As great of a story as that may make, the focus on Pullman— both in word and in deed—may run the risk of being exclusionary.

FEBRUARY 25, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

Childcare in Crisis

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etty Skorusa has a lot to worry about. stitute one of these families. Over a year Whelan said.

Funding shortfall As the director of Montessori Foun- ago, Velazquez decided to send her kids to Right now, Karla Velazquez says her dations of Chicago, a McKinley Montessori Foundations after a long search family is staying afloat, though she’s had threatens early Park daycare center, Skorusa depends on for a daycare that met the practical needs of to cut down on a lot of expenses, including payments from the Childcare Assistance her employment, and the educational needs some regular groceries and outings with (CCAP), which subsidizes child- of her children. With the help of a CCAP her kids. But eventually, she’ll have to start education programs Program care for low-income families and parents subsidy each month she could afford to send looking at other options, dipping into her in school statewide. But on January her sons there, but as of February, she’s pay- savings or even taking a second job. statewide enrolled 29, Skorusa and thousands of other child- ing the full price.

“It’s kind of a catch-22 because I do

BY HAFSA RAZI

care providers across the state received a letter from the Illinois Department of Human Services announcing that, due to a $300 million shortfall in funding for CCAP, providers that serve children on financial assistance will experience payment delays until the end of the fiscal year in June.

Three weeks later, Skorusa still doesn’t know when—or if—the next check will come. “If [CCAP funding] doesn’t go through, it’s going to be very, very difficult because it’s fifty percent of our income,” Skorusa said. “It’s going to be difficult to meet our obligations like rent, like insurance for my staff, like payroll taxes, and payroll in general.”

CCAP funding pays for about half of the seventy children Skorusa serves at her daycare center. And due to that funding, she also receives grant money from Preschool for All and a USDA lunch program—all of which is now in jeopardy.

Maria Whelan, president of the childcare advocacy organization Illinois Action For Children (IAFC), characterizes the situation as “the Titanic going down.” Whelan said, “The entire infrastructure of early care and education in this state is crashing and burning.”

IAFC, which also acts as a referral agency for CCAP in Cook County, works with 50,000 local families who use the program. The typical CCAP family, Whelan said, is composed of a single parent with one or two kids working in one or more lowwage, usually service sector job(s), earning an income that’s only 150 to 160 percent of the poverty level (about $30,000 per year).

Karla Velazquez and her two sons con-

6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 25, 2015

“Without the help that I do get from funding, it’s a lot tighter at home. I’m pretty much just working to pay the bills and pay tuition. There’s zero leeway for anything else,” Velazquez said.

The $300 million hole in the CCAP budget is the result of an underfunding of the program at the start of the fiscal year, with the expectation of bolstered funding down the line. Additionally, structural changes that unexpectedly increased the number of families qualifying for CCAP have only compounded the problem.

Now, the CCAP budget, which used to combine both state money and federal money from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ Child Care Development Fund, is relying wholly on federal money.

This provides less than half of the necessary funds. As a consequence, half of Illinois’ CCAP providers will receive their monthly payments late; the other half will be put in the queue for the next month’s payments.

The next month, the process will repeat— half of providers will be paid, the other half won’t—so that each month, thousands of providers will be put on a waiting list for payments that may never come.

By June, the result of the funding crisis will be a huge backlog and tough choices for parents and childcare providers.

According to Whelan, families that rely on childcare assistance will either have to find a way to pay the full price or, the more likely decision, take their children out of daycare. This means parents will either have to quit their jobs and drop out of school—or leave their kids alone at home. “That’s not a choice that parents should have to make,”

need to work to provide for [my kids], so I see myself forced to take them there,” she said. “It’s either that or lose my spot.”

Skorusa also argues that losing early childcare not only prevents parents from keeping jobs and going to school, but it also deprives the children themselves of a vital resource. Early and consistent childcare is linked to childhood development and later success in school and work, Skorusa says; taking that away only worsens a family’s situation.

But the impact on low-income parents and children is just the beginning.

Childcare is an industry in itself, with nearly 30,000 childcare providers statewide who use CCAP funds. But most centers are non-profits or small businesses, and, Whelan says, “None of them have a cushion of six months or five months.”

Already, some childcare centers have dropped families on financial assistance, hoping to fill out an entire roster with full-paying clients. Others are trying to stretch things out until the funds return.

Some centers are shortening their hours or implementing lay-offs; eventually, some may close entirely. As daycares close, Whelan says, they’ll take with them many of the state’s pre-K and Headstart programs, which are often housed in small locally-owned childcare centers.

“There won’t be a childcare system at the end of the fiscal year,” Whelan predicted. “People will have gone out of business.”

Based on the extent of the crisis, groups like IAFC have been lobbying substantially for the CCAP to be refunded immediately, and lawmakers have responded. An emer-

Music School Finds a Home in Hyde Park gency Senate appropriations meeting on the issue was held in early February. But any changes they make will have to come in the next few months. In the short term, Skorusa has asked regular-paying parents to pay their tuition in advance to subsidize the families on financial assistance, but it won’t be enough to keep her afloat until June. If worse comes to worst, Skorusa says she’ll have to terminate all the families who pay through the CCAP—including some children she’s cared for since infancy.

“I’m hoping [lawmakers] fund this program and honor their obligation, not only to us, but also to the families and children that they promised to pay for,” Skorusa said. “I’m hoping they’re going to do that.

If they don’t honor their obligation, I can’t honor my obligation to them and pay real estate taxes and payroll taxes. It can’t just be one way.”

According to Velazquez, keeping the CCAP alive is simply the most productive course of action, for both parents and the state.

“If I’m not able to take my kids to daycare, then I need to take care of them, so that would mean that I have to stay home and I no longer have that source of income,” Velazquez said. “So [with CCAP] it’s more beneficial, because at least you have this person who’s paying taxes. It’s helping out the economy as well. If not, then you just have more people who are at home and relying on state income.”

Whelan too expressed frustration at the irrationality of the funding cuts, the burden of which falls on those who least deserve it.

“These are people who are doing what we want them to do. They’re working, they’re going to school, they’re taking care of their kids. The struggles that they face are incredible, but they’re trying to do what they’re supposed to do,” Whelan stated.

“And we’re going to pull this critical rug out from under them.”

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EDUCATION

BY PETER XU

hen the Chicago Academy of Music opened its doors at University Church on 56th Street and University Avenue on February 1, there was no need for redecoration: the art and posters on the church library’s walls seem to have been placed just so as to pave a path to creativity. The eclectic furnishings make the room look like it was always destined to be a music school.

But the opening was a long time coming—CAM, which was founded in 2011, struggled for nearly four years to find a brick-and-mortar home for its founder’s vision.The new school, opened in collaboration with the Chicago Metamorphosis Orchestra Project, makes children’s programming its centerpiece, with a youth orchestra, music activities, and group lessons. Older students may enroll in private lessons, and the school offers a limited number of instrument and tuition scholarships.

Michael Scott Carter, CAM’s executive director and founder, has far broader ambitions, however. “Where do you go in Hyde Park to really experience music?” he asks, not rhetorically. “Nowhere,” is his apparent answer.

Carter wants CAM to become the musical center of Hyde Park, a place to host performances and foster musical collaboration in the community. As a supplement to its children’s programming, CAM is also organizing a volunteer orchestra for neighborhood residents.

As he discusses the project, Carter grows nostalgic about the lively, frequent music performances he experienced as a youth in Roseland.

“When musicians come to Chicago, I want them to stop here,” he says with earnest, syncopated bounciness. It’s hard not to get caught up in his vision.

These expansive ideas flow easily from Carter, who seizes on grandiose projects with sincerity. His own colorful and varied experiences are evidence of this ambitious idealism: he serves on the United Nations’ Leading Group on Innovative Financing for Development, ran for Illinois state treasurer in 2013, and is chief economist of the Chicago Urban League’s Entrepreneurship Center.

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It’s difficult to tease out just why Carter’s added a music school to that resumé, but it’s consistent with a goal he returns to again and again: creating an enduring South Side enterprise that will provide a community haven for youth.

“It’ll give these kids some place to go to. Where else will they go?” he asks. “If you live here, there’s not much for you, unless you have well-informed parents or park events nearby.”

An excess of ambition, though, was part of the reason for CAM’s four-year struggle to launch. The organization’s original goal was to establish twenty free conservatories for children on the South and West Sides, funded by revenue from an associated café and a daycare service. The project ultimately lacked financial footing, as CAM failed to attract the big donors it needed to fund the conservatories.

At that time CAM didn’t have partnerships with organizations like the University Church and ChiMOP, and Carter hadn’t yet

had the idea to fundraise through performances. He also struggled to find a location large enough to house the daycare service.

“Eventually, we realized that we needed to give up on the idea of getting ourselves one building to house everything,” he says.

But even now, Carter has not given up on his original goal, as he points out that CAM’s new music school is currently receiving plenty of funding. He attributes this victory to the impressive array of musicians working with the school, a group he assembled with the help of his friend George LePauw, a concert pianist and the creative director of the International Beethoven Project. The concert fundraisers have also helped, including a New Year’s event featuring a flamenco-Beethoven fusion performance. And in the end, part of Carter’s original vision will be realized: CAM’s University Church space will feature a café adjacent to the library room. It’s not the entire original plan, but it’s a first step in catching up with Carter’s unrestrained optimism.

FEBRUARY 25, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

The Vice and Virtue of Todd Diederich What are the stakes of photographing Chicago’s South Side?

BY RACHEL SCHASTOK

P

am is standing in front of a rusted metal wall, unafraid and expressionless. She faces the camera of Todd Diederich, who tells me they’ve lost touch as of late, but that he still worries about her whereabouts.

“She matches the wall, she’s wearing her bleached shirts, the rust, it’s just like, that’s her environment. This is her world,” Diederich says. This is how she appears in Luminous Flux, a book of photographs he released last year. “I wish that’s the only picture I ever took of her, ‘cause that’s really how I see her,” he says.

Diederich depicts scenes of life, most frequently black life: funerals and homes, fights and tattoos, and—most famously— African-American queer balls. These are private moments and spaces laid bare for public viewing. How were these images made, and how does Diederich imagine they’ll be seen?

The portrait of Pam in Luminous Flux isn’t his only image of her. In an August 2011 installment of his now-defunct Vice series, “Todd’s People,” she’s “Pam With the Knife,” a hardened curiosity whose life has been irreparably marred by violence, drugs, and misfortune. Accompanying the series of Diederich’s portraits is an interview between the two.

What’s your name?

Pam.

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8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 25, 2015

I’m Todd.

What’s up man?

Nothing. Hey, you wanna put that knife down?

Why, you scared? And no.

She’s farther away from the camera there, confrontational, holding up a knife between her body and Diederich’s camera.

And yet she’s behind a fence, encaging her in a way that feels safer for the viewer.

These Vice photos recall the work of Diane Arbus, a photographer famous for images of social outcasts in the mid-twentieth-century U.S. Decades of viewers have questioned Arbus’s relation to her subjects—whether she shared any connection with those she photographed, or whether she saw them as freaks to exhibit to the world. The people and the fashion in Diederich’s photos are also not unlike an American Apparel ad: exposed skin, neon short-shorts, faces bare or vividly made-up, and a distinctly millennial cool that draws on the aesthetics of decades past. Many of Diederich’s photographs have captioned locations or include visible street signs, setting them in Chicago’s South and West Sides or in Los Angeles’s Compton.

Last year Diederich published Luminous Flux with the help of Matt Austin, head of Pilsen-based organization The Perch, which acts as a nonprofit, limited-edition publisher alongside other

VISUAL ARTS

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supportive roles for local artists. After a successful Kickstarter fundraising campaign, Luminous Flux sold its full edition of eighty-one copies in presale. The Perch is dedicated to publishing in the service of artists, and takes no money from sales.

Austin is a personal fan of Diederich’s work, and invited him to collaborate on the book project in late 2012.

I ask Austin how he thinks Diederich manages to gain access to the communities and scenes he photographs. He chalks it up, enigmatically, to Diederich’s personality and openness about himself. “He’s asking us to look at things the way he looks at them,” he tells me.

This begins to make sense to me when I arrive at Diederich’s second-floor Pilsen

apartment. Bounding up the unsalted, icy steps to meet me at the gate, Diederich explains that he’s been “partying, cleaning,” despite having gotten home at four that morning from photographing a queer ball in South Shore. He clears pairs and pairs of basketball shoes, including one with “DIEDERICH” stitched on the side, out of the way so I can sit down. The house is toasty thanks to an old-fashioned boiler in the front room, but, as Diederich points out, his apartment lacks both a stove and fridge.

The Pink Line rumbles by every few minutes behind the building as we sit in front of his computer, Diederich frequently pulling up photographs as we speak.

He’s bubbly and engaging, informal in a way that feels welcoming. He ushers me

into his world of photographs, not hiding works in progress or shots that aren’t his favorites. As Diederich sees it, his ability to connect with people results from the open structure of his life. “Life interacts with me a lot,” he says. “People just stop me in the street.”

His photographic output from a recent trip to Los Angeles includes a series of a male model friend, flaunting and posing at 2am in a wooded area, and photographs of boxers Diederich approached during their workout in a storefront gym. These are scenarios he walked into or created. He tells me it’s just a matter of pinballing through the world in the right way.

Diederich has a simultaneous visibility—his sense of style catches eyes and

prompts questions—and a lack of widespread fame, a combination that often works to his advantage. His head is shaved, apart from a tuft of brightly dyed hair.

He is tall and thin. When we meet he is dressed sleekly in black, set off, naturally, by a pair of basketball shoes.

“I don’t usually explain to them what I do,” he says of his subjects. “I just tell them the light looks really nice on them. Like, ‘Let me take a picture of you, homie, the light looks really good right now.’ As long as you compliment them, you’re in—usually.”

In part, Diederich sees his success in finding subjects as the reward of a calculated effort. “I literally will just lay down and try to visualize the kind of images I want,”

FEBRUARY 25, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

In Deiderich's photographs, mainly of African Americans in Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods, many portrayed in situations of marginalization or hardship, an ambiguity arises that’s hard to shake. Is the viewer— perhaps a reader of Vice or the Chicago Reader, far removed from the situations and places shown—being guided to see power and swagger, or weakness and vulnerability?

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he says. He considers himself unique in his way of moving through the world and capturing it. Diederich finds most art lacking in the quality that comes when an artist is “willing to die for it.” When pressed, he cites Larry Clark’s 1971 “Tulsa” series as an example of what can happen when artists do fully immerse themselves: “He probably couldn’t have got those pictures if he didn’t do drugs with them.”

I

nternal inconsistencies start to appear when our conversation moves beyond the theoretical to talk about his photography on the South and West Sides of Chicago. One recurring focus of Diederich’s work is the queer balls in these parts of the city. It’s a subculture he became aware of by searching the Web, a scene closely guarded due to both its unlicensed use of spaces and the marginalized identities of its participants.

Diederich, who has also attended balls in New York and LA, considers Chicago’s balls the least self-conscious, free from excessive concern about image and status.

In Chicago, ball culture is linked back to the turn-of-the-century First Ward Balls, which notorious aldermen “Bathhouse”

John Coughlin and Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna hosted for residents of the city’s vice district. Contemporary balls also draw from the traditions of drag balls, which were kept under wraps in an era when both black and queer cultures lacked spaces in which to gather openly. In Chicago today, queer balls are typically held late at night in warehouses or other out-of-the-way spaces.

After several years photographing balls and getting to know the scene’s mainstays, Diederich tells me, he’s gained a sort of ambassadorial status. He’s often the only white person present, and usually the only trusted photographer. The night before we spoke, he was welcomed further into the fold with an offer to join Infiniti House, one of the tightknit subgroups of Chicago’s ball scene. “They were like, ‘This is your welcoming ball.’ I’m Todd Infiniti,” he says.

Despite this, it’s still with something of an anthropologist’s distance that Diederich looks at balls and their participants.

He remembers his first time seeing a ball, in a YouTube video. “Still to this day, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a group of people as authentic, as pure,” he says.

A complete look at Diederich as a producer has to be based in the difference be-

10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 25, 2015

tween the way he sees his artistic practice and the ways it might appear to the rest of the world. In his photographs, mainly of African-American residents in Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods, many portrayed in situations of marginalization or hardship, an ambiguity arises that’s hard to shake.

Is the viewer—perhaps a reader of Vice or the Chicago Reader, far removed from the situations and places shown—being shown power and confidence, or weakness and vulnerability?

“Photographing on the South Side, I feel like people would want to see more grit from me, and more grime, but I feel like I’m just trying to find power,” Diederich says.

“And maybe your first time rollin’ around the hood trying to take pictures, maybe all you do see is the grime, you know, but you realize, like, kids live here. Children play here.”

Diederich’s photos might invite the viewer to see power, but in the way they publicize other people’s pain and hardship, they run the risk of perpetuating racist stereotypes and appealing to the same curiosities as a photographic genre like “ruin porn,” which features photographs of urban spaces in decay. It’s that risk, and the very

idea of extracting images from “the hood” for display in galleries or online, that is left unexamined in Diederich’s search for the power in his subjects, even as he looks past what some see only as grit and grime.

“To me it’s rude, people thinking that people in front of my lens need help and I’m okay. I’m totally not okay,” he says. “Everyone needs help, everyone’s life could be better.” Diederich feels, or wants to feel, that his intentions are enough, but if you consider a viewing public that might lack access to that information, that defense falls flat. In the end, there are certain dynamics and histories—of identity, and of Chicago’s pervasive racial segregation—that can’t simply be willed away in the processes of making or showing images.

It’s like Pam’s story. I read “Pam With the Knife” on Vice and learned of her as one of “Todd’s People.” In the short interview he talks to her about her illness, her suicide attempt, her cynicism—the distance between her life and Diederich’s seems absolute. I talk with Diederich and I learned of the time they spent together, of her warmth and strength. But not everyone gets to talk with Diederich.

VISUAL ARTS

An Architect of Letters

courtesy of mauricio ramirez

W

alking into Mauricio Ramirez’s studio in Lacuna Artist Lofts, it’s evident that his art is a creature with its own agency—free to jump from wall to canvas, from bicycle to CTA car, from iPhone case to shoes. With graffiti crawling out from the hanging canvases onto the walls beneath it, Ramirez’s design space is constantly changing and mutating.

And with new projects, collaborations, and exhibitions in the works, it’s unlikely anything will be static for long.

Ramirez’s designs aren’t confined to the inside of the building, either; they slink out through cracks in the windows and seep out underneath the doors onto the exterior brick facade of the Lacuna space in Pilsen.

An abandoned CTA car is perched outside on a heap of snow, guarding one of the side entrances to the center. Ramirez’s designs have even snuck onto the train car’s metal walls, with vibrant colors that blossom into a bright camouflage composition.

Today, Ramirez is a young and promising artist-in-residence at Lacuna. But just a few years ago he was eating, breathing, and sleeping for soccer—investing time and energy in the sport in the hopes of getting a scholarship for college. The devotion paid off, and Ramirez landed at the University of Illinois at Springfield with a soccer schol-

arship.

Ramirez first started playing with typography and art as a teenager, when he would sneak out with his cousins to paint graffiti on abandoned freight trains and tunnels in Chicago. This was his introduction to the world of paint, shapes, and color, but it wasn’t until college that he first got the idea to transfer the graffiti onto a canvas.

As an English major at UIS, he started to examine more closely the role of letters in shaping the way we view the world.

A self-proclaimed “architect of letters,” Ramirez continues to think through the ways letters and language serve as representations of background, character, and personality, by building letters into his paintings, murals, and designs.

As we sit in his studio, surrounded by his colorful designs, he points to a twisted, bubbly “E” on one of the canvases across the room.

“You see that ‘E’?” he says. “I mean, how do I take that ‘E,’ and how do I shape it and bend it? How do I make it look like you want to take it out of the canvas? How do I play between realism and exaggeration to build it with the other letters in the painting?”

With help from mentors and friends, Ramirez learned how to stretch and frame

Pilsen artist Mauricio Ramirez brings color to the everyday

BY AMELIA DMOWSKA

canvases, how to prime them, and what kinds of paints to use. He started to display his work in various cafés in downtown Springfield, and slowly gained recognition from peers and professors. For a year after he graduated, he worked sanding and painting airplanes.

After moving to Chicago, he found work with Hebru Brantley’s team of artists at Lacuna. Inspired by the space’s creative energy, Ramirez started taking on more projects, joining arist Davide Nannit on some interior design assignments. Eventually, Ramirez became a full-time employee at Lacuna and now has his own studio space.

Ramirez says his successes are nothing but “lucky coins” that he managed to catch, but it’s evident that his hard work, persistence, and willingness to try new things have contributed tremendously to his accomplishments. Recently, his artwork was featured in a human-size Pac-Man maze, a creative installation for Bud Light’s “Up For Whatever” Super Bowl commercial. As part of his sponsorship with Bud Light, Ramirez was also flown out to Colorado, where he worked with other artists to paint an entire town, called “Whatever, USA,” in blue designs and murals.

Ramirez’s mainstream commercial success doesn’t stop at beer advertisements—

he’s had a number of collaborations with hip-hop musicians Vic Mensa and Alex Wiley. He transformed his studio into a creative installation concert venue with Wiley, drawing crowds into Lacuna. Ramirez has even partnered with Adidas to create the design for a pair of sneakers.

“Sure, I can sell a painting here and there, but how can I really give art to the people?” Ramirez asks. “I want to transfer it to things people can use or buy so that it can really become a part of their lives.” As we’re speaking, he picks up an iPhone case. Sure enough, his characteristic vibrant strokes cover the plastic.

Ramirez is taking this design even further with his next big project: “The Garage Sale.” Like a massive Ikea floor set, he will display a wide variety of items and objects— ranging from couches and chairs to lamps and shelves—decorated with his prints. Visitors will be able to walk through the massive exhibition, choose their favorites, and buy any of the products on display.

“I hate being a salesman,” he says. “I want to transfer my work and my experiences into products that everyone can have, but I want to sell my stuff in a cool, tasteful way.”

“How can I transfer my skills to all parts of life?” Ramirez continues. “Everything can use some design and color. Even

FEBRUARY 25, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

2011

2012 OCT. 26

CPS Chief Portfolio Officer Oliver Sicat presents school performance and population findings to the Board of Education, suggesting that a large number of school closings may occur in the near future. Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, says the city is “scaring 100,000 parents.” Sicat would resign from CPS in January of 2013.

OCT. 31

FEB. 22 The CPS School Board votes to phase out two high schools, close two elementary schools, and turn around a record-high ten schools.

CPS releases draft guidelines to determine decisions around school closures for the 2012-2013 academic year, and gives the public twenty-one days to provide feedback.

The Aftermath I

Report shows that families made hard choices in wake of the school closings

n January, the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research released a report titled “School Closings in Chicago: Understanding Families’ Choices and Constraints for New School Enrollment.” The report, which is available online, presented a variety of data on how families chose where to send their kids for the 2013-2014 school year after Chicago Public Schools closed the doors of forty-seven elementary schools. While CPS assigned designated “welcoming schools” for students whose schools closed, not all families automatically sent their kids to these schools, and a variety of factors influenced their final decisions. In a two-part series, the Weekly aims to provide contextual background and in-depth reporting on some of the reports’ findings. This week, we present a timeline on the school closings process and the political controversy it generated, and an examination of the CPS performance ratings that influenced closing decisions.

12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 25, 2015

I

NOV. 26 In a press release, the CTU calls for a full moratorium on all school closings, phase-outs, restarts, and turnarounds in the 2012-2013 academic year. It calls all school actions part of a “draconian method,” and later adds that “no school should face destruction while the Chicago Public Schools admits to a flawed and unclear process.”

CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett announces that CPS is committed to a five-year moratorium on school closings after the current round is over, but only if the Illinois General Assembly grants them an extension on when the list of school closings must be released, from the original December 1 deadline to March 31.

BY HAFSA RAZI

n a January 29 endorsement interview with the Sun-Times, Rahm Emanuel defended his decision to close nearly fifty schools, arguing that many students were “trapped in a school that was not only under-enrolled, but consistently under-performing.” The closings, he said, gave students a chance at “a better future at a better school.” Emanuel’s defense refers to the rankings of closed and designated welcoming schools—the closed schools were all relatively low-performing (Level 2 or 3 on CPS’s now-outdated “Performance, Remediation, and Probation” rating scale), and the schools that students were assigned to were all rated higher.

However, the system of ratings that was used to designate higher- and lower- performing schools is controversial.

Research on previous school closings had shown that only students who attended schools with substantially higher ratings showed improvement after their school closed; as a result, CPS claimed they would only send students to higher-rated welcoming schools. According to the “School Clos-

ings in Chicago” report, though, only thirty-nine percent of students were assigned to a “much higher-rated” welcoming school (designated by a difference of at least twenty performance policy points on a scale of one hundred). Also, many parents opted to send their children to non-designated schools, which sometimes had even lower ratings than their closed school.

This, the report said, was because parents often don’t judge schools based on “official markers” of academic quality, relying instead on factors such as class size, extracurricular programs, and school environment. Cassie Creswell, of the anti-standardized testing coalition More Than A Score, points out that these issues don’t factor into school rating policies at all: at the time of the closings, schools were solely rated by student performance on the ISAT test and attendance rates.

“What you can’t keep apart in Chicago is that school ratings are almost entirely based on test scores,” Creswell said.

“We know that test scores are primarily a measure of income. They’re also a measure

EDUCATION

2013 DEC. 4 CPS identifies 330 schools as underutilized, using enrollment figures as a metric.

DEC. 19

FEB. 13 CPS releases a downsized list of 129 elementary schools potentially slated for closure; high schools are eliminated from list.

MAR. 21

APR. 25

Final list released, with fifty-one elementary schools and one high school to be closed, and another two to be phased out.

MAR. 27

The Tribune obtains a September 10 document showing that the Emanuel administration has already weighed how many schools it will close.

CPS officials claim no such list exists.

Thousands of CTU-organized protesters march to City Hall to protest the closings. On the same day, Mayor Emanuel announces that he will be moving forward with the plan to close fifty-four schools.

The third phase of community meetings, for each school to solicit feedback on the closings, begins. The Tribune reports that this final round of hearings is sparsely attended, with several community leaders suggesting that there is now a sense of inevitability about the closings, especially in the wake of Emanuel’s comments.

MAY 2 CPS announces that school closings will save the district $437.8 million over the next ten years, down $122 million from its initial estimate of $560 million.

MAY 18-20 of some other socioeconomic factors—we know that African-American students score disproportionately low on these tests, even when you factor out income.”

Attendance rates are closely tied to social factors as well, like neighborhood safety and home stability—factors that schools can’t control, Creswell said.

The current “School Quality Rating Policy” (implemented in 2014-15) uses similar criteria of test scores and attendance rates, with the addition of the “5 Essentials” score, a survey-based measure of not usually quantified markers of school success.

But even this measure, Creswell claims, has been skewed because it has been made highstakes; she cites reports of principals asking students and teachers to give favorable answers on the surveys.

Charles Tocci, assistant professor at Loyola University’s School of Education, says school ratings aren’t particularly useful to parents compared to the local reputation of the school. This is in part because school rating systems are highly complicated. While parents may know roughly what schools are being graded on, the specifics of CPS’s rating algorithm and the weighting of

TIMELINE COMPILED BY CHRISTIAN BELANGER

different components are for the most part undisclosed.

“It’s hard to understand; it isn’t clear what all these categories are, what all these numbers mean,” Tocci said. “And then, when you mix in the wild card component—that the district CEO can change school rankings of her own volition—it makes the process unpredictable for parents.”

In the days after the closings decision, CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett defended the action in a press release, citing the high cost of maintaining “underutilized, under-resourced schools.” School performance ratings were a secondary factor in the decisions, she said, and an important mechanism in reassigning students to new schools.

However, Creswell claims that arguments about utilization have been walked back in favor of rhetoric around “saving” students from poor schools, in order to validate closings that weren’t as economical as they promised to be (CPS is still paying millions of dollars in utility costs for the closed school buildings). In the end, she argues, it all boils down to demographics—the test scores, the attendance rates, the ratings, and the closings.

At the end of the school year, Byrd-Bennett insists that the closings were successful, saying in a statement, “The promising trends we saw mid-year of increased student attendance, slightly higher grade-point averages and fewer rates of misconduct reaffirm the District’s commitment to investing so heavily in the transition process.”

JUN. 13

The closed schools were mostly located in low-income areas on the South and West Sides, which many critics saw as a targeting of vulnerable communities. Tocci says this was mostly a byproduct of a decades-long trend in Chicago demographics of shrinking populations on the South and West Sides. Underutilized schools, in turn, tend to be low-rated, since school funding is distributed on a per capita basis.

“Fewer kids means fewer resources, fewer enrichment activities, fewer extracurricular activities, fewer options in terms of elective activities, fewer resources in things like computer labs, which schools have discretionary funding for,” Tocci said. “So those are all indirect effects that [low populations] might have on academic performance.

“Ideally, the district would’ve been working off that model of demographic change for the past twenty years as they’ve allocated resources—which schools to keep open, which schools to phase out, where to direct limited resources in the district,” she continued. “They were not doing that, so they were left with the situation where they had to make those decisions very quickly.”

The CTU releases a report on the school closings one year after the announcement, alleging, in part, “that promises made to receiving schools were hollow in many cases and only partially fulfilled in others.”

The CTU holds three days of protests against the school closings.

MAY 22 The Board of Education votes on proposed closings and chooses to close forty-seven elementary schools at end of 2013 academic year, phase two more elementary schools out, and close one high school.

JUN. 3 CPS announces that seventy-eight percent of students at closed schools have been enrolled at another school through enrollment drives.

JUN. 12 Families not yet enrolled in a school are automatically enrolled in district-designated schools.

JUN. 14 CPS lays off 855 employees, some of whom are expected to be rehired at new schools.

JUL. 19 CPS lays off another 2,100 employees. The total number of layoffs since May 2013 is now over 3,500.

AUG. 26 The first day of the 2013-2014 academic year for CPS.

MAY 21

2014 FEBRUARY 25, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

EDUCATION

Dual Degrees

CPS students get a jump on college credit through dual enrollment with City Colleges

zelda galewsky

“T

here isn’t an instruction manual for college,” says Franco LaPorta. Like many students at Chicago Public Schools, LaPorta believes that his transition from high school to college would have been tough had he been forced to brave it alone.

“Leaving high school and going to college is a big leap, especially when we might not have the knowledge to overcome it,” LaPorta says. However, during his senior year at Hancock High School in West Elsdon in 2013, LaPorta took part in the City Colleges of Chicago’s Dual Enrollment program, in which high school students are given the opportunity to take courses at local community colleges for college credit—for free.

As one of approximately three thousand students involved in the program, LaPorta was able to get a taste of college life and a head start on his college education,

BY MICHAL KRANZ all while saving thousands of dollars in fees and still enrolled in his local high school.

“Still being a senior in high school, I’m able to witness first-hand the way that a college class is like, and how it differs from, a high school class,” he says.

According to Nikole Muzzy, senior communications officer at City Colleges of Chicago, the program is only growing in terms of enrollment rates and funding sources. It was expanded substantially in 2011, and is expected to increase again during the 2016-2017 school year, with seats opening for 6,100 CPS juniors and seniors.

Because students take classes for free, the City Colleges of Chicago has had to cut “administrative redundancies” in order to funnel money towards the program, which, in combination with donations from private donors like General Electric, has allowed

14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 25, 2015

it to continue to grow in the face of school closures and other city policies affecting public education.

The dual enrollment program can be a godsend for low-income students who want to save money on college, says Nikole Muzzy. “We have had students accumulate enough credits during high school that when they matriculate to City Colleges after high school graduation, they are able to complete an associate degree in one year,” Muzzy explains. “Most students need two years to complete an associate degree.”

High school students must meet certain academic criteria to be able to participate in the dual enrollment program.

In order to be eligible to take any college classes, students must meet an overall 2.5 grade point average and have at least ninety-percent class attendance. Some classes come with more specific requirements. “In

order to take this class [English 101],” says LaPorta, “you need a nineteen or higher on the reading part of the ACT.” Similar scores are mandated in the writing and math sections of the test as well.

While the barrier to entry remains high for the vast majority of CPS high schoolers, the dual enrollment program seems to be earning positive marks so far from students and teachers alike, and offers a light at the end of the tunnel that high school life can be.

As both a transition into the real world of college and a valuable way to save money while earning college credit, the Dual Enrollment program is slowly making adults out of young high school teenagers. When asked about how the program was helping him prepare for college, LaPorta’s friend Jose Angulo replied, “There’s no more preparing for college; we’re in college now.”

SCREEN

They Don’t Give a Damn

“E

veryone felt that the ‘projects’ were just an experiment that failed... Everyone felt they were built for political reasons, and torn down for political reasons,” director and actor Kenny Young remarked in an interview a day before the premiere of his new documentary, They Don’t Give a Damn: The Story of the Failed Chicago Projects at the University of Chicago’s Film Studies Center this past Friday. The documentary is based on a book written by Chicago native Dr. Dorothy Appiah on the Chicago Housing Authority’s (CHA) “projects” and their nebulous “Plan for Transformation” titled Where Will They Go?: Transforming Public Housing in the City of Chicago. The “Plan for Transformation” was a large-scale public housing restructuring undertaken by the CHA starting in 2000 that involved the demolition of many of the largest developments such as the Robert Taylor Homes, Stateway Gardens, and most of Cabrini-Green.

Director and actor Kenny Young grew up in Morgan Park, “one block from the Jackie Robinson West Little League,” as he’ll proudly tell you. For most of his professional life, however, Young has lived and

courtesy of kenny young

worked in Los Angeles working on narrative feature films as a writer, actor, and director.

In order to expand the reach of Appiah’s work, Young and his crew, including his LA producer Phil James as well as Chicago producer Karon Hamlet, set out to attempt to tell the story of the “projects” through the experiences of five women who appear in Appiah’s book. However, only three of them agreed, and Appiah, Young, and company decided to just interview everyone they could find. During the course of their research, they interviewed around forty-five different individuals connected in some concrete or tenuous way to the CHA developments or the Plan for Transformation, ultimately compiling thirty hours of interview footage that Young boiled down to the final 105-minute cut.

The appeal certainly seems substantive: the auditorium was so full that some audience members stood during the entire screening, even after rows of extra seating had been set up. A few employees from the National Public Housing Museum who showed up a little late couldn’t even get in and asked about future screening

dates during the Q&A. Young and James promised that there would be screenings in the future, at festivals and in other forms, though they couldn’t say for certain where and when quite yet.

As UofC professor Jacqueline Stewart added in a Q&A session after the screening, the greatest strength of the documentary is the way that it manages to “live with many of the contradictions” surrounding discourse and opinion on the amorphous and vast public housing situation. Nearly the entire documentary utilizes the “talking head” format, allowing subjects to voice their own opinions relatively unhampered and enabling comments to contrast with each other rather than challenging them through the documentary mainstays of voice-over narration and factual exposition.

The result is a swirling, dissonant muddle whose very triumph is its complexity.

This is not to imply that the documentary is unorganized or confusing in itself, however; the complexity occurs merely within the topic. Young and James insisted that the version of the film screened on Friday was still a rough cut, and at times the film’s unfinished status and low budget

A documentary tackles public housing in Chicago

BY ROBERT SORRELL

FEBRUARY 25, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

SCREEN

courtesy of kenny young

The result is a swirling, dissonant muddle whose very triumph is its complexity. were obvious. However, any evident roughness didn’t detract much from the emotional impact of the juxtaposed interviews, which jumped from place to place, tracing the rise and fall of the CHA developments, as well as the dispersal of their tenants, in a relatively chronological fashion. Attempting to capture, as Young put it, “the experience of [the ‘projects’],” They Don’t Give a Damn articulates the impossibility of capturing one single narrative from so many unique experiences. It takes one massive high-rise monolith and illuminates the stories upon stories, rooms upon rooms that make up this imagined singularity.

The documentary is divided into sections, all bearing titles from comments made by interviewees, such as a “city within a city,” or “put on reservations.” The title, They Don’t Give a Damn, also tumbles out of the mouth of one interviewee near

the beginning. This decision is telling, reflecting the course the filmmakers took throughout the project. Young mentioned in an interview, “When we started, we had one direct goal, one direct focus, but then people brought their own elements to it, so it grew into something we initially didn’t plan on.” As producer Phil James added during the Q&A session after the screening, that original goal was almost exclusively anti-CHA. After compiling hours of interviews, though, Young and James realized that the story was leading them somewhere else when their interviewees gave vastly diverse and sometimes conflicting opinions.

One perspective that inevitably came to the fore in the process of crafting the documentary was the filmmakers’ own bias toward the “projects” and CHA. Young noted, “I had some family members who

16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 25, 2015

lived in the ‘projects’ at the time. I grew up hearing horror stories. Even though they were my family members, I only remember maybe one time going to visit. So I grew up with a great bias against the ‘projects,’ ....

When I started to work on the documentary and got the actual stories from the actual people who were displaced, it was really eye-opening.” Young asserted, however, “Eventually [my own bias] really helped me to humanize the entire thing from everyone’s perspective.”

And the documentary certainly doesn’t shy away from expressing controversial or painful opinions, made evident by the gasps and chuckles from the crowd, particularly when individuals expressed the opinion that the dispersal of tenants from the projects caused a supposed rise in crime and decline of stability in traditionally middle-class neighborhoods on the South Side like Chatham.

Throughout the documentary, the word “they” is repeated over and over again.

It refers to the CHA, the tenants of public housing, the “projects” themselves, the Chicago city government, the rich, the poor, white people, black people. “They did it without any dignity, they did it without any remorse,” one interviewee said of the

Plan for Transformation. It even shows up in the title of the documentary, They Don’t Give a Damn, and the title of the book on which it is based, Where Will They Go?.

The host of “they”s haunts the film and particularly in its interviewees’ attempts to articulate something clear and definitive about their own experiences with the CHA “projects.” This search mirrors one story that flashes briefly across the screen near the end of the documentary, in the section “Ain’t no structure.” The segment features interviews with multiple gang members, three younger men and one older, all with their faces covered and voices disguised.

They argue for the necessity of the gang structure for survival in certain living situations, decrying its breakdown in their former haunts. They seem to believe that the creation of a “they” can be essential.

In contrast, the documentary, in its dissonance, its complexity, and expansive range, resists the idea of “them,” even if some of the people whose stories the documentary shares do not. They Don’t Give a Damn: The Story of the Failed Chicago Projects exists in this complex universe, and despite the title, it doesn’t tell the story — it tells stories.

MUSIC

The past, present, and future of Thaddeus Tukes

Making the Most

courtesy of thaddeus tukes

BY SAMMIE SPECTOR

“I

never considered myself a rapper or a musician by profession. But jazz, jazz is everything,” says South Side native Thaddeus Tukes of his musical career so far. In only his early twenties, Tukes is working to make a name for himself through crafty rapping and a classical background.

“I’m trying to innovate. You can’t just listen to one thing. You need the knowledge of it all. That’s what I’m trying to do, something unheard before.” Tukes’s music, available on SoundCloud, is a mélange of soft jazz and high-spun rap. Some songs feature catchy, upbeat melodies and others are based on lighter rhythms and frequent

wordplay. “BlackJack,” along with other songs on his album of the same title, relies heavily on eclectic, percussive beats that could be mistaken for fun lounge music if not for the clever lyrics.

Tukes started his musical career quite young—at three years, on his grandmother’s piano. In the third grade he began private percussion lessons with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and joined the Percussive Arts Society. While his original leanings were classical, Tukes gradually turned to jazz, and by seventh grade had joined jazz programs at Whitney Young Magnet School.

Throughout high school Tukes’s

friends grew into fellow musicians, including Vic Mensa and Nico Segal of SAVEMONEY and experimental band Kids These Days. In 2012, Tukes played with Whitney Young’s band at Carnegie Hall, the only concert in which he’s played all of the instruments he knows. This arsenal extends from piano to almost every percussive instrument imaginable, including xylophone, timpani, marimba, snare drum, and vibraphone.

Now majoring in music and journalism at Northwestern University, Tukes has watched peers like Mensa and Chance the Rapper gain acclaim and respect while he works toward his degree. He tells me there

FEBRUARY 25, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

MUSIC BULLETIN Queering Black History

are times when he feels he should be out making music rather than sitting in class, but he knows it will soon pay off.

“For my specific situation, college will be more advantageous; it’s helping me make connections, find access to things I wouldn’t be able to do otherwise,” says Tukes. “I’m not on the typical rapper hustle, it’s not something I’ll necessarily have to do, in the long run, [college] will make my life easier.”

Tukes grew up in the Pullman neighborhood, and tells me he’s grateful to have had both parents around to raise both him and his sister. “They were good at keeping me away from a lot going on in the neighborhood,” he says. “I don’t have the typical story of being harassed by gangs, but I’m sure a lot of it was around me. So far, everything they’ve done has been paying off.”

The Tukes family moved near Midway airport for a year and then settled in Hyde Park. Most striking to Tukes about this move was the increased number of police

overcompensating,” Tukes says. But despite these hiccups, he has found Northwestern enjoyable, as well as a playground for performing, producing, and socializing. Indeed, he seems to have enjoyed success at Northwestern: as a junior he’s the founder of a music production club on campus and has been the opening rapper for Northwestern’s Dillo Day concert two years in a row.

“There are institutional things that can stop someone, no matter how much you put your mind to something,” he says. This fact is what humbles Thaddeus, himself a first-generation college student. Reflecting on his South Side upbringing, juxtaposed with his experiences at Northwestern, he understands his life could have gone either way. This is why he’s not a fan of watching the local night news: he hates seeing the faces of kids who’ve been shot, or arrested for committing a crime.

“You know how when you go through things, you know they’re cool, because peo-

Chicago’s black LGBT community is the focus of Queering Black History, an evening of story-sharing at the Chicago Urban League hosted by oral history project StoryCorps and Affinity Community Services, a social justice group that has served Chicago’s black LGBT community for two decades. The event will be emceed by Kai M. Green, a writer active in the black trans community and a Postdoctoral Fellow in Sexuality Studies and African American Studies at Northwestern. Attendees are asked to RSVP to Chicago@StoryCorps.org. Chicago Urban League, 4510 S. Michigan Avenue. Thursday, February 26, 6pm-8pm. (773)285-5800. storycorps.org (Osita Nwanevu)

Nielsen’s S.A.B.L.E. To celebrate Black History Month, Nielsen’s S.A.B.L.E. (Sustaining Active Black Leadership & Engagement) division will stage a panel this Thursday, February 26, with three African-American business and community leaders to discuss “their journey of taking chances in a challenging environment and persevering to reach a level of business success through their passion.” The three participants will be Clifford Rome, Lamont Robinson, and Andre Guichard, whose Gallery Guichard, located in Bronzeville, will also provide the venue. Rome, for his part, currently owns and operates Rome’s Joy Catering, and has worked at the Cannes Film Festival and under Wolfgang Puck. Lamont Robinson is Nielsen’s Vice President of Supplier Diversity, and the recent author of TransformNational: Journey of a Bastard, a memoir detailing his personal journey from Chicago’s projects to Nielsen. Gallery Guichard, 436 E. 47th St. Thursday, February 26, 5:30pm-8pm. Free. Refreshments will be served.

(Christian Belanger)

WTF Is the IWW

"There are institutional things that can stop someone, no matter how much you put your mind to something.”

Thaddeus Tukes officers in the neighborhood, which he noticed in the years before he left for college.

“I know exactly why they do it, but I don’t necessarily like it. It affects the kids who live in the neighborhood who are not students. We might fit a description, but we weren’t making trouble.”

Tukes has found some of these same troubles at Northwestern. He has never personally had problems with police officers, but he tells me of issues that surrounded friends before his time. Northwestern’s demographic is strikingly different from Whitney Young’s, which Tukes describes as relatively diverse, whereas Northwestern is “well, honestly, very white.”

“I think the main problem is everyone tries to be politically correct, rather than come off as ignorant, but everyone ends up

ple don’t normally get that opportunity, but you don’t stop to really comprehend it?” he says. “It takes perspective and opportunity to really understand your current situation, and be thankful for it, and do something with it.”

Tukes has just won the Luminarts Jazz Improvisation Competition, is playing at a Northwestern concert this Friday, and is planning on releasing a new single in the near future. His next big project will focus on Robin Hood as a theme, but that’s all Tukes will reveal for now. He promises me that it will be “musically different than anything we’ve heard before.” Right now, however, his biggest goal is graduation; his future plans are large, but he has some time—after all, he’s only a junior.

The International Workers of the World have spent more than a hundred years playing an important role on the left wing of the labor movement. Their goals include creating “One Big Union” and abolishing the wage system. The Chicago branch of the IWW is conducting a roughly three-hour, presumably well-run, workshop on how “to hold meetings that are shorter, democratic and more productive.” The workshop will also provide content for the meetings by introducing attendees to the IWW and the group’s arguments for the importance of class consciousness and workplace organizing. Chicago IWW Office, 1700 S. Loomis St. Saturday, March 14, noon3pm. Free, donations encouraged. iww.org/branches/US/IL/ chicago (Adam Thorp)

STAGE AND SCREEN 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed The societal collapse of the late twelfth century BC is a sort of locked room murder mystery, allowing for a very large room. The occupants of the Eastern Mediterranean—Babylonians, Egyptians, Mycenaeans, and more—had spent three centuries building sophisticated and interwoven civilizations, but the opening of the eleventh century found these civilizations disappeared or dispersed. The metaphorical gun of civilizational destruction has been traditionally placed in the hands of the mysterious Sea People, who supposedly swarmed across the region, upending all that came before. At this free event at the Oriental Institute, Eric Cline, a classics professor at George Washington University, will argue that the blame has been unfairly pinned on the Sea People, rather than a more realistic collusion of environmental catastrophes and human conflicts. The Oriental Institute, 1155 E. 58th St., Breasted Hall. Wednesday, February 25, 7pm-9pm. Free. (773)702-9520. collapse. eventbrite.com (Adam Thorp)

Missing Pages Lecture Series Did our high school history textbooks cover everything we needed to know? The DuSable Museum doesn’t think so. Aiming to reveal the people, places, and events that haven’t gotten proper credit for shaping history, the lecture series “Missing Pages,” which started November 20 and runs through March, is designed to address larger themes of politics, culture, race, and personal identity. The largely unknown figures and topics will be presented and discussed by nationally known speakers, and while their subjects never received much recognition in common memory or the media, now they take center stage. All this series asks of its audience members is that they remain open to what they might not have known and be willing to pick up a pencil and fill in history’s forgotten pages. DuSable Museum, 740 E. 56th Pl. Through March. Various Thursdays, 6:30pm. $5. dusablemuseum.org (Emiliano Burr di Mauro)

Space Is the Place & The Last Angel of History Science fiction fans, rejoice! On March 6, Black Cinema House will be showing a double feature: the 1974 movie Space is the Place followed by short documentary The Last Angel of History. Space is the Place, written by and starring Sun Ra, begins when the Chicago jazz legend mysteriously disappears while on tour, eventually landing with his “Arkestra” on another planet. He decides it’s well suited for an African-American colony, and so he “returns to earth in his music-powered space ship to battle for the future of the black race and offer an ‘alter-destiny’ to those who would join him.” After Space, director John Akomfrah’s The Last Angel of History—an exploration of the relationship between Pan-African culture and science fiction—will be shown. Originally released in 1996, the movie digs into the works of black cultural figures such as Sun Ra and Octavia Butler, discussing the ways in which their works emerged as centerpieces of the Afrofuturism movement. Black Cinema House, 7200 S. Kimbark Ave. Friday, March 6, 7pm. Free. RSVP recommended. blackcinemahouse.org (Christian Belanger)

Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable Day Jean Baptist Pointe DuSable was the first nonnative settler of Chicago and now, nearly two hundred years after his death, the DuSable Museum of African American History is hosting a celebration of his life and look back at the development of Chicago. Though little is known of DuSable’s life, he is believed to have been born in Haiti, and he spent time as a fur trader and manager of an Indiana trading post before, in 1790, he was recorded as Chicago’s first settler, living on a farm on the bank of the Chicago River. The event will include a Native American drumming workshop and cuisine samples, an archery demonstration and lesson, historical reenactors, and Illinois habitat exploration. There will also be a showing of several short films by Studio A Chicago, including Leaving New Orleans, Council House, Meeting Kittihawa, and DuSable meets Clark. DuSable Museum of African American History, 740 E. 56th Pl. Sunday, March 1, 1pm4pm. Free. dusablemuseum.org (Clyde Schwab)

Task of the Translator Google Translate is not an infallible tool. Though handy for words and short phrases like “Hi!” and “Where can I find the bathroom?”, when asked for more complex grammatical structures with subjunctives and relative clauses, what it spits back may not make much sense.

That’s why David Bellos, professor of comparative literature at Princeton University and award-winning author, thinks that translation has a greater future in the pencil-wielding hands of humans than in the cyber-hands of computer programs like Google Translate. After all, scholars have been translating the works of ancient writers for thousands of years and don’t show signs of stopping any time soon. A steadily growing field that often goes overlooked, translation lies at the foundation of more than just the humanities. Bellos’s lecture “The Task of the Translator” promises a thorough treatment of just how translation keeps the world running smoothly and how it is at the heart of all we do. Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. Thursday, March 5, 6pm. Free.

(773)702-2787. arts.uchicago.edu (Emeline Posner)

Precious 18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 25, 2015

CALENDAR In Lee Daniels’s film Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire, life seems to buffet sixteen-year-old Claireece “Precious” Jones like a ship in a gale. Outwardly, she seems wooden, indifferent, despite her mother’s emotional and physical abuse; despite the difficulty of getting through high school while being illiterate; and despite her father’s having assaulted her multiple times, leaving her with a young daughter and pregnant with a second child. But there’s a lot going on in this thoughtful, perceptive young woman’s head. A masterful cast anchors the story of how Precious’s life changes— how she changes it—after she is sent to an alternative school and begins to find her voice as a writer. Black Cinema House is screening the film this Friday: both the deftly handled narrative and first-time actress Gabourey Sidibe’s powerful, evocative performance as Precious are well worth the trip. Black Cinema House, 7200 S. Kimbark Ave. Friday, February 27, 7pm. Free. RSVP recommended. blackcinemahouse.org (Olivia Stovicek)

An Evening with Ernie Gehr Ernie Gehr has had an illustrious, varied career. One of the most influential and boundary-pushing artists of the structuralist tradition of the late 1960s and 1970s, Gehr began working with video in the early 2000s. In this digital medium, he still applies the same playful curiosity of his older work. Gehr’s films have screened internationally everywhere from the Museum of Modern Art in New York to the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Musée du Cinéma in Brussels. On Friday, Ernie Gehr will visit the Film Studies Center at UofC to screen and discuss his latest work in HD, including Photographic Phantoms, Picture Taking, Winter Morning, Brooklyn Series, and A Commuter’s Life (What a Life!).

Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. Friday, February 27, 7pm. Free. (773)702-2787. filmstudiescenter.uchicago. edu (Meaghan Murphy)

Dear White People What started as a concept trailer has since made its way to the big screen, and Justin Simien’s debut film Dear White People is both comedic and thought-provoking in its portrayal of “being a black face in a white space.”

The DuSable Museum will be having a special screening of the film that follows the lives of four very different students: Sam, a biracial girl struggling with her identity and her controversial radio show; Troy, the dean’s son with dreams of being a comedic writer; Coco, the diva met with rejection due to the color of her skin; and Lionel, a writer assumed to be an expert on black culture just because of his race. Met with critical acclaim after its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2014, Dear White People explores issues with identity and differences in mass culture due to race through the lens of an Ivy League school. DuSable Museum, 740 E. 56th Pl. Friday, February 27, 6:30pm. $10. (773)947-0600. dusablemuseum.org (Shelby Gonzales)

VISUAL ARTS Nacelle Do you like watching train tracks speed by out of the window of a train car? Do you like staring wistfully at large bodies of water? Do you like bridges, industrial landscapes, and large boats? Well, Marco Ferrari, a video artist who creates “video essays” in and of Chicago, does too. In the past few years his lens has captured elevators, train tracks, the Skyway, and that body of water with which the city has a never-ending fascination: Lake Michigan. His newest video, “Nacelle”—a word which, according to the artist, refers to the “streamlined car of an aircraft”—promises to be equal parts abstract and mesmerizing. Blanc Gallery, 4445 S. King Dr. Saturday, February 28, 6pm-9pm. Free. (773)373-4320. blancchicago. com (Robert Sorrell)

Bridgeport Art Center’s Third Annual Art Competition For the past month, Chicago artists-turned-judges Amanda Williams and Monika Wulfers have taken off their smocks and put on their critic’s caps for the

Bridgeport Art Center’s third annual art competition.

The judges have now selected a number of the works submitted by amateur and professional artists living and working within one hundred miles of Chicago, to be put on display at the Bridgeport Art Center. The selected pieces, which include a full array of media—photography, painting, drawing, sculpture, and mixed media— will be unveiled on Saturday evening alongside a spread of prizes of up to $3,000, drinks, and food. Come see the artwork for yourself and size up these Chicagoans’ talent.

Bridgeport Art Center, 1200 W. 35th St, 4th floor. February 28-April 5. Monday-Saturday, 8am-6pm; Sunday, 8am12pm. Awards ceremony Saturday, February 28, 7pm-10pm.

Free. (773)247-3000. bridgeportart.com (Lauren Gurley)

ArtShop Every year, the Hyde Park Art Center (HPAC) dedicates Gallery 5 to ArtShop, and every year Gallery 5 is filled with the artistic creations of kids from all across the South Side. The ArtShop is an extension of Pathways, an arts education program based out of HPAC that serves CPS students from kindergarten through 12th grade.

The program aims to enrich students with rigorous art training and provide them with the opportunity to refine their talents and showcase their work to large audiences. ArtShop is one of the showcasing events for teens involved in the Pathways program. Every work is entirely self-directed: the artists execute their vision with no source material. The title of this year’s ArtShop is Collective Possibilities—each piece is inspired by a myth of each student’s choosing, including their own imagination. Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Avenue. March 1-April 19. Monday-Thursday, 9am-8pm; Friday-Saturday, 9am-5pm; Sunday, noon-5pm. Free. (773)324-5520. hydeparkart.org. (Kanisha Williams)

The Density of the Actions Density is the distribution of a mass per unit of volume or, for London-based, Argentine-born artist Varda Caivano, the substance of labor that can be packed into each square inch of canvas. Her first solo exhibition in the states, The Density of the Actions, will open at the Renaissance Society on February 22. Each piece in the series presents a rumination on the physicality that it took to make the painting—layers of paint are “rubbed, scratched, and reworked” so that each stroke is dense with time, invoking not just one moment, but many. The exhibition is sure to be dynamic, the paintings “vulnerable, unfolding, failing, becoming, and disappearing.” The Renaissance Society, 5811 S. Ellis Ave. February 22-April 19. Tuesday-Friday, 10am-5pm; Saturday-Sunday, noon5pm. Free. (773)702-8670. renaissancesociety.org (Kristin Lin)

Until It Becomes Us Rituals—actions and beliefs prescribed by traditional, regulatory performance for the sake of individual progress—are both personal and communal. Jesse Butcher, an artist and current photography instructor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, intends to showcase his investigation of these private rituals, beliefs, mantras, and longings in his solo exhibition, “Until it Becomes Us.” This is Butcher’s first solo exhibition in Chicago since 2010, sure to be a culmination of his most recent exploratory work, which starts from the claim that we are all “cognizant islands longing for a personal Pangaea.”

Ordinary Projects at Mana Contemporary Chicago, 2233 S. Throop St., fifth floor. February 20-March 20. Opening reception Friday, February 20, 6pm-9pm. ordinaryprojects. org (Zach Taylor)

Objects and Voices: A Collection of Stories Rummaging through a family attic, you might find collections of past significance that have accumulated with the long-settled dust. After seeing these disparate objects in the same space, patterns of meaning begin to emerge.

“Objects and Voices” is exactly this type of eclectic collection, a celebration of the objects both forgotten and validated by time. Curated by a diverse array of individuals ranging from university professors and artists to graduate students and professional curators, this show is the second of the Smart Museum’s fortieth anniversary exhibitions. Curator Tours, led by some of the

twenty-five collaborators featured in the exhibition, will give you a foray into micro-exhibitions like “Fragments of Medieval Past” or “Asian/American Modern Art.” It might be worthwhile to add this exhibition to your own collection of memories. Smart Museum of Art, 5550 S. Greenwood Ave. February 12-June 21. Tuesday-Sunday, 10am-5pm; Thursday, 10am-8pm. Opening reception Wednesday, February 11, 7:30pm-9pm. (773)702-0200. smartmuseum.uchicago.edu (Kristin Lin)

Ground Floor Marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Hyde Park Art Center, “Ground Floor” features artworks from prominent Chicago MFA programs, creating a biennial showcase of emerging talents so new they haven’t even begun their careers yet. The twenty artists, selected from over one hundred nominations, represent a wide range of mediums, forms, and universities: Columbia College, Northwestern, SAIC, the UofC, and UIC. These artists have also had the chance to exhibit at September’s EXPO Chicago in HPAC’s booth. This unique program, showcased throughout the entirety of HPAC’s ground floor gallery space, offers the chosen artists a helpful push toward a career in the art world; “Ground Floor” alumni include two artists who have recently displayed artwork at the Whitney Biennial. Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. Through March 22. Monday-Thursday, 9am-8pm; Friday-Saturday, 9am-5pm; Sunday, 12pm5pm. Free. (773)324-5520. hydeparkart.org (Sammie Spector)

Migrant Files Life exists in transitory setting—we find ourselves in different places for different reasons, and sometimes not by choice. The Migrant Files presents three studies of the forced mobility imposed upon the modern lower class.

Through video, Austen Brown transports viewers to the oil fields of North Dakota, where laborers work on shortterm contracts and live in mobile homes, simultaneously transitory and stationary. Billy McGuinness takes us to the kitchen floors of Cook County Jail, where he painted three monochromatic canvases. And, finally, Jaxon Pallas shows us the aesthetics of abandonment in his print works on the great falls of the American economy.

ACRE promises an expanded public program to supplement this exhibition. Catch the exhibition before it moves on; travel in discomfort through America. ACRE Projects, 1913 W. 17th St. February 8 through March 2.

Sundays and Mondays, 12-4pm. acreresidency.org (Kristin Lin)

The Aesthetics of Struggle Chicago artist Raymond Thomas brings forward a collection of his recent works in his exhibition “The Aesthetics of Struggle,” an exploration of the idea of art as its own form of activism. Exhibited at the United Foundation for Arts and Technology, these mixed-media presentations seek to understand the connections between identity, religion, race, politics, and culture in the twenty-first century. Drawing inspiration from the impact of AFRICOBRA and the Black Arts Movement of the sixties and seventies, Thomas analyzes collective social existences of our times. United Foundation for Arts and Technology, 1833 S. Halsted St. February 13-March 6.

Free. ufat.org (Lauren Poulson)

MUSIC House of the Holy: Zoso at Reggies Good times, bad times: we’ve all had our share. No one understands that better than Zoso, billed as the Ultimate Led Zeppelin Tribute Experience. The band, hailing from the land of the ice and snow, from the midnight sun where the hot springs flow, features Matt Jernigan, John McDaniel, Adam Sandling, and Greg Thompson as Plant, Page, Jones, and Bonham impersonators so convincing that audience members are routinely fooled into believing they are at the Riot House in 1971. With eighteen years of touring and 2,400 live shows under their belts, Zoso has the signature chords, riffs, and haunting lyrics down to a science. This Thursday, get as close to The Biggest Band in the World as is possible without an actual stairway to heaven. RIP Bonzo. Reggies, 2105

S. State St. Thursday, February 26, 7pm. $15-$18. 17+.

(312)949-0120. reggieslive.com (Olivia Myszkowski)

Beyoncé’s Backup Dancers Beyoncé is many things: singer, songwriter, inspiration behind Kanye West’s stage invasions. But part of what keeps her performances memorable (and keeps her fans bowing down) are Queen Bey’s dances and the dancers behind them. The “Single Ladies” and “End of Time” dance sequences, which have both become cultural phenomena, could not have been done by Beyoncé alone.

This week at the Shrine, you can see two of Bey’s best dancers (and two of the best dancers in show business, period), Ashley Everett and Kimberly Gipson, take center stage. The Beyhive will recognize Everett and Gipson, with their bright red and black Afros, and as two of Mrs. Carter’s most treasured dancers (Ashley was the best friend from Bey’s recent video “Heaven”). Both have gained a fan base of their own and have turned backup dancing into a mainstay in Beyoncé’s art. Come see Everett and Gipson pop, lock, break, slay, turn up, and then slay again on the dance floor. The Shrine, 2109 S. Wabash Ave. Sunday, March 1, midnight. $10-$30. 21+.

(312)753-5700. theshrinechicago.com (Jola Idowu)

Aniba Hotep at Promontory Trapped in the midst of a bitter winter and surrounded by dozens of rhetoric-spouting politicians, Chicagoans may find it easy to believe that capital-S Soul has disappeared from the city (or the world altogether). Concerned citizens are advised to come to the Promontory this weekend for a hearty dose of life from one of the (self-described) “BEST SOUL BANDS TO COME OUT OF CHICAGO SINCE EARTH, WIND & FIRE.” Aniba Hotep, whose voice has been described as resembling “thunderous honey,” will lead her eight-piece Sol (get it?)

Collective in a set of half-spiritual, half-futuristic tunes of their own composition. Fellow soul artists Noah the Genius and Erthe St. James will also be in attendance.

Promontory Chicago, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. Sunday, March 1, 7pm, doors 6pm. $15-25. (312)801-2100. promontorychicago.com (Jake Bittle)

88 Fingers Louie at Reggies The punk band 88 Fingers Louie is poised to bring real punk back to the band’s hometown of Chicago. Formed in 1993 by vocalist Denis Buckley, guitarist Dan Wlekinski (aka “Mr. Precision”), drummer Dom Vallone, and bassist Joe Principe, the band disbanded after three years due to fights between band members, reformed in 1998, and disbanded once again in 1999. Punk is punk.

Afterward, Principe and Precision formed the popular punk band Rise Against. During their on-again-offagain period, 88 Fingers pumped out various songs and records composed of fast beats, harsh guitar and catchy riffs, all interrupted by wailing vocals not so different from those of their successor. Whether you’re reliving your 1993-96 nostalgia (good times) or in need of any old punk rock show, come check out the re-re-reformed 88 Fingers Louie at Reggies next Friday. Reggies, 2105 S. State St. Friday, March 6, 8pm. 17+. $15-$20. (312)9490120. reggieslive.com (Clyde Schwab)

The Persian Concert The Middle Eastern Music Ensemble, affectionately referred to as MEME, is taking the Logan Center stage one more time, back by popular demand. Directed by the brilliant Wanees Zarour, this fifty-piece orchestra celebrates the contemporary, traditional, and folk music of Persia (modern-day Iran and Afghanistan).

Compositions by composers such as Majid Derakhshani, Homayoon Khorram, Hossein Dehlavi, and others will be performed. Tender banter will be had between the orchestra members in between the numbers, and hearts will break over the power of a densely ornamental and lyrical music repertoire, the full-bodied representation of a centuries-old culture. Logan Center, 915 E. 60th St. Sunday, March 8, 7pm. Free. (773)702-2787. arts.uchicago. edu (James Kogan)

FEBRUARY 25, 2015 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ FEBRUARY 25, 2015