Echo Magazine 2023

ECHO

Roots Issue

Spring ‘23

Seed: stories about the past

Sprout: stories about the present

Spread: stories about the future

SHAPE WHAT’S NEXT? ARE YOU READY TO

Creative Careers Made Here

At Columbia College Chicago, we focus on fostering environments where individual self-expression is celebrated, creativity is nurtured, and opportunity is abundant. You will be immersed in practicebased multidisciplinary education in the heart of a city bursting with culture–and all from day one.

About Echo

Echo magazine is produced by students in the Journalism, Photojournalism and Photography programs at Columbia College Chicago. They wrote, edited, copy edited and fact-checked all the stories, shot all the photos, and designed all the pages.

Our faculty advisors are Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin (Journalism) and Julie Nauman-Mikulski (Graphic Design).

Special thanks to freelance illustrator Randy Olsen and graphic design assistant Freddy Husbands.

Photo by Liina Raud.

Table of Contents

4 - Letter from the editors

Seed

6 - Worn out

How battle vests help music fans band together by

Justice Petersen

10 - Wounds we can’t see

Acknowledging the hurt we’ve inherited by

Yoselyn Castro

13 - Fear factor

Is your response a fright or a phobia? by

Aileen Carranza

15 - How did we get here?

A conversation about the intrinsic ties between politics and gender by

Yoselyn Castro

17 - Seven decades in Bronzeville

A walking tour through time

by Yasmin Mendiola and Karolina Dziatkowiec

19 - Identity lost and found

For Korean adoptees from the 1960s, connections are crucial

by Karolina Dziatkowiec

21 - Growing into myself

My experience as a neurodivergent person in a neurotypical world

by Bianca Kreusel

24 - From Chicago with love

Half a century later, house music still rocks

by Yasmin Mediola

Sprout

28 - Talk dirty to me!

How your houseplants respond to your voice by

Aileen Carranza

29 - Small space gardening

Yes, you can grow your own groceries

by Karolina Dziatkowiec

32 - Lions and dolphins and polar bears, oh my!

What zoos are doing to help animals adapt into their urban habitats

by Riley Schroeder

36 - Talking about roots

A salon where political conversations are always in style

by Riley Schroeder and Liina Raud

39 - Eating around the world

Take your tastebuds on a trip without leaving the city by

Riley Schroeder and Karolina Dziatkowiec

41 - Sending queer signals

Flagging isn’t new, but the rules have changed by

M Miller

44 - Catching the beat

Fans find community through K-pop by

Aileen Carranza

46 - Invisible ink

A safe space for the girls, gays and theys by

Justice Petersen

49 - Anything but ketchup

Take this quiz to find out which Chicago hot dog restaurant you are by

M Miller

Spread

52 - An education in empathy

A local Waldorf school reminds us about what really matters

by Liina Raud and Yoselyn Castro

57 - The next generation Clubs have closed and musicians have died, but Chicago still has the blues by

M Miller

60 - Wear this, not that

A guide to sustainable, affordable fashion by

Khaliyah Franklin

63 - Vintage venue

A drink and a dance at Dorothy by

Dorothy Green

66 - Shifting gears

The Recyclery is queering the bike repair scene, one frame at a time by

Dorothy Green

69 - That’s a wrap

A crossword puzzle to thank you for reading by

M Miller

70 - The things we carry

Meet the Echo staff by

Taylor Priola

Letter from the editors

For this issue of Echo, we chose the theme “Roots” to reflect a collection of stories that focus on our journeys and experiences through life: past, present and future. We also consider the idea of re-rooting ourselves—not letting the past define where we are destined to go.

The first section, “Seed,” features stories about the events that began to shape us, whether they occurred during our childhood or before we were even born. We also take a look at the seeds planted in our society and how they take root in both the world around us and in ourselves.

A seed begins to sprout only after it has been nurtured by its environment. With outside factors that inevitably affect us, we grow into our own kind of sprout. Often, we are expected to grow in the soil we are planted in. However, depending on how much water we were given or denied, we may choose to re-root and grow someplace else. In the second section, “Sprout,” we feature stories about what people are doing in the present to shape themselves and their identities.

As a plant grows, its roots and foliage spread. Where or how we grow and affect our communities is ultimately up to us. As we reflect on how we were planted and how we choose to mature and develop, this will affect how we spread ourselves in the future. In the last section, “Spread,” we provide stories of those who are concerned with the seeds of tomorrow.

Our roots are whatever grounds us, shapes us or shows us where we belong. They can be the communities we find ourselves in or choose for ourselves, our youth, our careers or even our niche interests. In the “Roots” issue of Echo magazine, we challenge readers to ask themselves:

“What are my roots?”

M Miller

Dorothy Green Justice Petersen

Photo by Liina Raud

Worn out How battle vests help music fans band together

By Justice Petersen

Photos by Taylor Priola

You see them in lines outside concert venues and the crowded fields of Riot Fest, but rarely on the city streets. These iconic garments not only express the passionate outcries of the wearers, but serve as symbols of belonging, identity and heavy metal.

They are a fashion statement known as battle vests or battle jackets.

The garments are denim and covered in various patches. These patches typically display the wearer’s favorite rock bands, whether they be classic rock, punk or metal. Battle vests come in various themes and designs. They can focus on a single music genre or band — they can even be horror movie themed. Since each person has put their heart, time and energy into creating their vest, no two are the same.

Lauren Alex O’Hagan, PhD, a researcher of material culture, has written two research articles on how battle vests became a part of metal culture and what they mean to people who wear them. She says the vests of today evolved after World War II, when ex-

military members of motorcycle clubs decorated their jackets with patches of cartoon characters or pin-up models reminiscent of their old ornamented military uniforms.

“Then it sort of evolved into their motorcycle club. They would mark out which club they belong to, which geographical location they belong to,” O’Hagan says. “Then, as time went on ... they got involved in rock ‘n’ roll, later on rock [and] heavy metal. They started to then reflect their bands on their jackets.”

O’Hagan laments the lack of research into battle vests, which she attributes to scholars overlooking the significance of fashion in the metal community. “The denim, the leather, the studs ... people don’t seem to look beyond that and think: It’s not just clothing. It’s an expression of identity,” O’Hagan says.

A labor of love

Creating a battle vest takes many hours, but devotees consider it time well spent. Justin Stockton, the guitarist for Chicago rock band Primal Moon, has made 10 battle jackets so far, and he doubts he’s going to stop there.

Stockton made his first battle vest to show his “obsessive” love for music to the world in a way that band t-shirts couldn’t. “The original one I made ... [is] full of nearly every band I can think of,” he says. “In my mind it was like, I wear band shirts all the time, but what can I wear that has a general view of a lot of my favorite bands on it? So, it was almost a convenience thing originally.”

Rush, Foo Fighters and Slayer, among others. She was known by her peers for being the only metalhead at her Baltimore high school and learned about battle vests through Reddit.

“You want to know what I’m interested in? Just take a look at what I’m wearing,” Lowther says. “It’s like that whole expression of wearing your heart on your sleeve.”

As alternative music subcultures, and the fashion that they embody, are gaining more recognition, it is becoming more apparent that the rock music scene has changed since the ‘70s. Heavy metal fans are no longer primarily white, straight, cisgender men. There are a lot of women, people of color and LGBTQ+ people in the community now.

“I think people in the heavy metal community tend to get a bit of a raw deal where they’re sometimes associated with extreme right views, or it tends to be very heavily male oriented,” O’Hagan

Convenience soon turned into an artistic venture as Stockton began to decorate his vest with additional patches and embellishments, like studs.

“It’s almost like a sports jersey,” Stockton says, “But the thing is, with sports jerseys, usually people have one team they root for, whereas music lovers, we have many teams we root for.”

Aurora Lowther, 19, has made five battle vests. Her favorite is a black denim one completely covered in patches from Ghost,

says. “But actually, there’s been a lot of research recently that finds [the community] is more balanced. There are more women in that culture, and there are all these alternative views out there.”

Courting controversy

While the community is a lot more diverse than it used to be, and battle vests are worn by a variety of fans, there are some drawbacks that come with the power of a battle jacket to display the wearer’s affiliations. Often, the patches aren’t just favorite bands, they’re also statements of political affiliation.

Dante “Dammit” Mercado, 21, says alternative subcultures, like punk or goth, use political imagery on battle vests for several

“You want to know what I’m interested in? Just take a look at what I’m wearing.”

- Aurora Lowther

Dante Mercado (left) and Aurora Lowther in their battle vests.

Justin Stockton wears his Primal Moon battle vest when he performs, seen here at Subterranean.

reasons, including to scare people or to reclaim hateful symbols. However, some genuinely support the ideas behind racist and anti-semitic images. In the punk community, specifically, some people wear Nazi swastikas on their vests.

Two of the people who inspired Mercado to start making vests were metal musicians Rob Zombie and Lemmy Kilmister. The latter was known for wearing Nazi symbols, like the Iron Cross, on his vest.

“We don’t talk about that shit and it sucks. We should have to talk about that shit because it should have never happened,” Mercado says. “There are young, impressionable people who want to dress like their idols, and their idols are just oh so conveniently wearing very problematic, heinous, terrible things.”

Although many political patches are harmful, there are good ones that people wear to communicate feminist, anti-Nazi, or LGBTQ+ activism. “If you really believe in something, whether that be ‘this band fucking rocks’ or ‘cops are fucking disgusting’, wear that shit. Be proud of that shit,” Lowther says. Just be sure to put those patches on the front of the jacket, she cautions, because if someone sees those and really doesn’t agree with you and wants to confront you about it, you want to see them coming.”

While battle jackets do come with the risk of confrontation, they ultimately provide a sense of belonging. Wearers find safety and comfort when they see somebody else with a battle vest featuring familiar patches, and many

younger fans seek guidance from the older metal heads on how to fashion their own battle jackets, according to O’Hagan.

Battle jackets also serve as a means of communication or as conversation starters for a lot of metal fans. Lowther and Mercado met when they began a conversation over Lowther’s Dio patch. “If you see someone who has this specific piece of attire and you also have that specific piece of attire, we’re instantly friends,” Lowther says. “It’s because we’re both in this subgroup of weirdos.”

Whether it’s The Cramps or low-budget Ed Wood films, Mercado loves anything “alternative.” As horror movie fanatics and diehard rock fans, Mercado and Lowther both love music and film for the same reasons.

“It’s a nice way to stand out from the crowd but also being yourself,” Mercado says. “That’s alternative to me. To stand out from the crowd.”

Forward thinking

Stockton thinks battle vests may have reached their heyday, however. He says he’s seen fewer of them at concerts in recent years. “I don’t see it as necessarily a bad thing. It just makes people that have them even more of an individual,” he says. He thinks perhaps if Gen Z TikTok influencers were to promote battle vests, they would become more mainstream.

They might also be helped by the recent spark of interest in the metal subculture from Eddie Munson from the hit show “Stranger Things.” While many metal fans were happy to see metal get some recognition, others were upset that it was suddenly being glorified when for years fans were judged for the music they listened to and the way they dressed.

Aurora Lowther named this vest “Vera.”

“[Stranger Things] made people realize what battle jackets were,” Lowther says.

“I think [Eddie Munson] is good for the metal community of just giving it the normalization,” Mercado says. “We’re able to walk down the street now without too many people giving us the evil eye.”

In her research, O’Hagan found that there are some strict rules about battle vests. Certain bands’ patches are worn with caution, for example, and patches must fit along the seams of a vest perfectly.

But Mercado rejects such rigidity. “There are so many pretentious people that get really snobby about battle jackets,” Mercado says, “It doesn’t matter what other people like ... The only person you need to impress is you.”

Lowther agrees. “If someone calls you a poser, kick them,” she says. “The only thing that, in my opinion, qualifies someone to be a poser is if you call someone else that.”

Stockton encourages people who start working on their own battle vests to ignore how others might judge the way they look or dress.

“Don’t care what anyone else thinks ... that means you’re standing out and people notice you. Do it for yourself. Let your creativity flow,” Stockton says. “So I say to anyone that reads this –go for it. Make one. Make a million of them. Trust me, it’s a great thing to do, even if it’s just a hobby.”

“It doesn’t matter what other people like ... The only person you need to impress is you.”

- Dante “Dammit” Mercado

A Primal Moon patch and a Cramps t-shirt?!

Wounds we can’t see

Bianca Aguirre says her mother has a “guilty hold” on her. “I can never feel anything negative towards her.”

Ackowledging the hurt we’ve inherited

By Yoselyn Castro

Photos by Liina Raud

Sometimes I’ll catch myself snapping at my siblings, getting frustrated really easily when things don’t go my way and it’ll hit me, ‘Oh shit, I’m acting like my mom right now,’” says Bianca Aguirre, 22, a psychology student at Elmhurst University.

It’s not that she doesn’t love her mother. Through tears, and often avoiding eye contact, she describes her relationship with her mother as “strenuous sometimes, emotionally.”

Aguirre’s mother was quick to anger, particularly in the way she talked to her. Aguirre found that she sometimes lost her temper, too, directing anger at people who didn’t deserve it. She decided this wasn’t a behavior she wanted to inherit.

Carolina Ayala, 21, a creative writing student at Columbia College Chicago, was the oldest of their siblings and often recruited to help their mother keep the younger ones in line. To do so, they mirrored their mother’s approach. “That’s how she keeps us in line at the store, she’ll snap at us. I tried to figure out how to snap because I wanted to snap at my siblings too,” Ayala says.

Neither Aguirre nor Ayala wanted to replicate these parenting strategies; they just found themselves doing it. Gisel Martinez, MA, a psychotherapist at Fig Tree Counseling in Chicago, says the recognition of inheriting our parents’ negative behaviors is “a painful process.”

“Oftentimes it hurts [the child] to go through that experience,” Martinez says. “It can be hurtful to name that these experiences were internalized, and you ended up mimicking or mirroring them.” This is especially true for daughters who are expected to take on parenting duties for their younger siblings.

“Oftentimes, my clients that are the eldest daughter feel like they have a lot of responsibility, or end up mimicking a lot of the roles that the mother is in,” Martinez says. “That can create another source of tension. It’s like, ‘I was as responsible as she was’ or ‘I ended up taking over because she couldn’t.’”

Inherited issues

Both Aguirre and Ayala were raised in Mexican-American households, where family members were reluctant to talk about upsetting events and mental health issues. Kimber NicolettiMartínez, director the Multicultural Efforts to End Sexual Assault program at Purdue University, writes that Latine family relationships “are often dictated by a definite authority structure

of age, gender and role: Elder over younger, men over women, father over family.” As the head of household, the father “is the final authority on all decisions made by any of the family members,” she writes. “His power and authority is to be respected by all the family.” Respect is essential in Mexican households, and it suppresses conversations about trauma.

Intergenerational trauma doesn’t have a cemented frame, and oftentimes the trauma that we’ve inherited from our mothers comes from the trauma they’ve inherited from theirs, curating a lineage of hurt. That inherited trauma can play out in various ways. In individuals it can be seen in symptoms such as anger issues, substance abuse, emotional negligence or untethered grief. In families, it can manifest in stigmas around mental health and a hesitancy to initiate emotional conversations, extreme overprotectiveness around children and elderly family members, and mild responses to severe events.

The concept of intergenerational trauma is sometimes referred to as the “transgenerational transmission of trauma.” Past research into Holocaust survivors and their children found that both trauma and resilience can be transferred or adapted by

on both ends.”

children from their parents. Since then, researchers have studied it among other genocide survivors, like the Alevi Kurds.

Genocide isn’t the only cause of intergenerational trauma. Everyone brought into this world is influenced by the people who raised them, from the way they parent to the way they move through the world. Negative experiences from one generation can filter down to the next. They may come from a single event or an ongoing emotionally destructive environment. A field of counseling has emerged in response: trauma-informed therapy, which provides a physically and emotionally safe space to prevent re-traumatizing people during treatment.

Ayala recalls their mother’s strict obsession with keeping up a good family image. “It was directly influenced by her parents and that was directly influenced by their parents,” they say. “[My grandparents] couldn’t appear weak in the U.S.”

Refusal to talk about emotions is part of keeping up prideful appearances. Alex Diaz, 24, says nobody in her household spoke about hurt and trauma, or any other emotional topics, but she knew her mother had been through a lot.

Carolina Ayala says their relationship with their mother “lacked a lot of respect

“It can be hurtful to name that these experiences were internalized, and you ended up mimicking or mirroring those experiences.”

—Gisel Martinez

“It trickles down,” she says of her mother’s trauma. “I see that, and I recognize that, but I don’t know if I can get away from that enough to get closer to my mom. The damage has been done.”

Because she lacked emotional support growing up, Diaz says she developed an independent mentality. As soon as she could move out, she rarely saw the rest of her family. But she still regrets that her mother didn’t open up to her about her struggles. “I know that it’s not really going to change or fix anything,” she says. “I think it’s still important to me to at least know what she was like growing up and what she went through... I just wish that we could’ve had a stronger bond.”

As Diaz and Ayala became adults, they began fearing how they would be as parents. “I’m afraid of turning into my mother at that point,” Ayala says. “I’m not afraid that I’m going to have to work my ass off, because I know I will. But I’m afraid that I’m going to resent my kids for it. I’m afraid that I’m going to be mad that I have to work all the time, and then I’m going to miss their lives and I’m going to miss them growing up and having school projects and having to help each other.”

While Diaz doesn’t plan on having kids, she says that her poor relationship with her parents is a big reason for that. “I didn’t know if I wanted to have children [because I] actually want to raise someone or just to see if I can raise them better,” she says. “That’s not a real reason to have a child. I can prove that I can break the cycles without having a child.”

The path forward

How many of us have found ourselves despising or critiquing our mothers for the way they parent, rather than acknowledging what made them the way they are? Despite the pain and guilt we’ve inherited from them, if we try to understand our mothers as human beings or women, instead of just mothers, that will allow us to reflect on our past, our roots, and plant new seeds when it comes to our own forms of parenting, or simply living. It’s the first step towards healing.

Martinez urges people to identify the hurt in mother/daughter relationships in order to move past them. “It’s just been a beautiful journey, to go through my own healing process and to help others go through a similar one, or to go through their own because sometimes they’re not even similar,” she says. “There’s just a lot of beauty in all of it, in the culture, in the relationship and the variety in which it can show up.”

Aguirre has worked hard to bridge that understanding. “Living in that [negativity] all the time, sometimes that’s all you can see,” she says, adding that she holds no animosity toward her mother and now works on understanding that “she’s still a person, she’s still hurting.”

Martinez applauds this approach. “Building that empathy is helpful in being able to contextualize mom, [as long as you’re] being mindful that it’s not excusing the behavior, right?” she says. “You can have empathy, you can contextualize the person, but also not condone the action.” She calls this an “inner conflict between love and hurt.”

At the end of the day, Aguirre, Ayala and Diaz are learning to acknowledge the hurt and still appreciate their mothers. “I want to showcase my mom as her still being the best mom she could be, while recognizing her flaws,” Diaz says.

When asked to describe their mothers in three words, their choices reveal this disonnance: Aguirre says “strong, funny,” and “cariñosa.”Diaz says “caring, intimidated,” and “almost unvulnerable.”Ayala says “stubborn, sensitive and bright.”

When explaining their choice of the word “bright,” Ayala says “[think of] a lamp that you can change the brightness on. Sometimes you can change the brightness to where it just illuminates your workspace, and you’re able to do whatever you need to do there. Sometimes you accidentally unplug the lamp, and it resets when you plug it back in so it’s brighter than the goddamn sun and burns your eyes. I don’t control that lamp, she does. Sometimes she’s [bright] enough to just fill the room with light, and sometimes she’s so much that my corneas burn and I have to close my eyes and look away.”

“You can have empathy but also not condone the action.”

—Gisel Martinez

Alex Diaz often asks herself, “Do I even know my mom?”

Fear factor

Is your response a fright or a phobia?

By Aileen Carranza Illustrations by Randy Olsen

Sunny Gandy doesn’t know what caused their thalassophobia, the fear of large bodies of water. “The opening scene of Finding Nemo maybe? I’m actually not sure,” they say.

Grace Bafundo loves the outdoors but is always “freaked out when in nature.” Bafundo lives with insectophobia, the fear of insects, a phobia they developed while in middle school.

Gandy and Bafundo are among the estimated 9% of American adults who live with phobias. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, phobias are defined as “intense, irrational fear of something that poses little or no actual danger” and for those who have them “even thinking about facing the feared object or situation brings on severe anxiety symptoms.”

Phobias are not caused by trauma, says Karen Cassiday, owner and managing director at Anxiety Treatment Center of Greater Chicago, who specializes in anxiety disorders, including phobias. Rather, Cassiday says the main cause of phobias is genetic—they run in families. Phobias often appear in people between the ages of seven and nine.

Phobias can induce a severe anxiety response with symptoms such as increased heart rate, sweating, shaking, gastrointestinal upset, and the desire to flee. People with phobias tend to avoid situations where they might encounter what they fear. However, Cassiday says, most people with phobias are able to recognize “the irrationality of their fear.”

“As a kid, this fear made it hard for me to swim, and often in science classes, images of the ocean made me distressed,” Gandy says. Now 19 years old, they feel anxious crossing bridges in Chicago and avoid eating fish or seafood because of its connection to their phobia.

Cassiday says many people living with phobias feel misunderstood. They can tell when others don’t understand their desire to flee when faced with a reminder of their phobia. It’s not something people can just “snap out of.”

A common misconception is that “phobias express some underlying need to avoid confrontation with life or express a way to show anger to others around you. This is incorrect,” Cassiday says. Research shows those who recover from phobias do not have “increased interpersonal problems or psychological deterioration because they no longer have their ‘crutch’ of a phobia,” she adds.

“I think the biggest misconception is that a phobia equals something you dislike,” says Bafundo. “I don’t dislike bugs. I feel full body terror.”

To ease the anxiety of their phobia, they remind themself that insects are creatures, and “not inherently creepy or dangerous.”

One of the most successful treatments for phobias is exposure therapy. “Once a phobia begins, it tends to be chronic unless it is treated with exposure-based therapy,” Cassiday says. This involves

a person gradually experiencing situations and reminders of their phobia. For example, a person might look at photos or videos, or touch objects that symbolize the phobia, until eventually they can look at the fear in-person or even touch or hold it.

“Treatment outcome research shows that specific phobias have a very high success rate when people do exposure practice, up to 90%,” Cassiday says. “It is great fun for me to work with these patients because I know they can make great progress.”

“I don’t dislike bugs. I feel full body terror.”— Grace Bafundo

Uncommon phobias you might not know you have

Neophobia: The fear of new or unexpected things

Nomophobia: The fear of being without your cellphone

Ablutophobia: The fear of bathing

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia: The fear of long words

Globophobia: The fear of balloons

Ergophobia: The fear of working

How did we get here?

A conversation about the intrisic ties between politics and gender

By Yoselyn Castro

The political climate in which we find ourselves today has regressed back to a time where attacks on queer lives by legislation dominate broadcast news coverage. From the “Don’t Say Gay” bill that was passed by Florida’s Senate in early 2022, to the most recent law against drag performances passed in Tennessee, these are very public displays of hostility that impact people on both micro and macro levels across the country. Despite the overwhelming amount of hate in media coverage, queer communities have still consistently found a way to evolve our social discussions about all things sexuality and gender.

How did we get to this point? We sat down with Lisa Diamond, Ph.D., a professor of psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah, to discuss the evolution of public opinion. Her coverage in the vast field of gender studies includes her 2020 paper, “Gender Fluidity and Nonbinary Gender Identities Among Children and Adolescents” and her 2021 paper, “The New Genetic Evidence on SameGender Sexuality: Implications for Sexual Fluidity and Multiple Forms of Sexual Diversity.”

Something I struggled with when I tried to find professors to interview is that they fall under that gender studies umbrella, but what they really focus on is feminism. What are your thoughts on grouping the issues of nonbinary gender identities, transgender people and women into one field?

Diamond: Oh my gosh, it’s so complicated. These things are all situated in a very specific historical context. When I first joined the faculty at the University of Utah in 1999, the program was actually still called women’s studies. It was really in the ‘70s that you started to see women’s studies programs going up, following the historical developments and activism that was like, “Oh, my God, women are being left out. Let’s put women back in the picture.” Then, as that field of research grew and expanded, it became clear that this isn’t just about women.

Once you start to critically analyze gender, it’s really about everything, You can’t talk about gender without talking about race, and you can’t talk about race without talking about class. So around the time that we became “gender studies” instead of “women’s studies,” that was happening nationwide.

Over the years, a lot of us, at least in my own program, we’ve asked, “What are we doing here in gender studies?” We have a parallel program in ethnic studies and a program in disability studies. At Utah, they’re all combined together in the same school for cultural and social transformation. In other universities, they’re grouped with the humanities or other groups. Nobody knows what categories to put things in! I think the explosion in our awareness of sexual and gender fluidity and transformation has thrown yet another wrench into everything.

How have things changed since you started?

Diamond: When I took the job as a joint appointment in psychology and gender studies, my line of research in gender studies was all on sexual fluidity and non-categorical ways of thinking about sexual orientation. As I started to do that work, it

became clear that all of that applied to gender. In the earlier days of gender studies, there was a small number of us who were like, “Oh, lesbian and gay issues,” then it was like, “No, this is really an issue of sexual and gender diversity and how those things take different forms in different cultures and have different historical epochs.”

I think back in the ‘80s and ‘90s and in the early 2000s, there was a very identity-centric approach that was about underrepresented identities. Women are underrepresented relative to men. People of color are underrepresented relative to whites; lower class or first-generation students are underrepresented relative to other students; queer people are underrepresented relative to straight people. That just generated a plural operation of identities. It was LGB, and then the T, and then the Q, and then the I and then the A… and that just shows that once you open Pandora’s box to diversity, you see the world differently.

Now there’s this shift to trying to understand the whole system through which people are categorized as types of people. And that approach can be very destabilizing for individuals whose entry into gender studies was an identity-based entry. That makes it really, really difficult to say, “Oh, we’re going to have an event that is going to be for queer people,” because then you have to say, what does that mean? Who is included and who is excluded in the early days of the transition between women’s studies and gender studies?

Has there been any resistance to this change?

Diamond: Some of the people who identified as women at the time said, “It’s hard to be a woman, and I appreciated having a classroom context that was defined as being a women’s space and women’s studies because I wanted a break from the otherwise domination of men.” We talk about that a lot as a faculty and we get that. We [also] don’t want anyone’s gender to be a precondition for what we’re trying to do by destabilizing gender.

Photo by Nicole Diamond

So we really want to be open to everyone. And yet we know that one of the things that happens, when you exclude those categories, is you do lose a little of the collectivity and community and emotional energy that comes when marginalized individuals are able to come together and feel their sense of community. We know that’s still important.

How does this discussion carry over into other social issues?

Diamond: Those of us who now get the bigger picture are like, “Abortion isn’t a women’s issue. Abortion is a human issue.” There’s no way you can think of abortion as a women’s issue. When you see people speaking about who’s affected by abortion legislation, there were some old style feminists who fought back and said, “Don’t talk about it as people with uteruses. These are women! Can we just talk about women?”

And yet, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to use the word “woman” unproblematically any more. We’re in this really difficult time right now because we’re in a transitional space. There is no way anyone’s going back to totally binary ways of thinking about gender, at least among those of us who are thinking about this stuff all the time. And yet, we don’t know exactly how to study and even talk about gender in this changed landscape.

Some trans people feel threatened by the growth of nonbinary identities. They’re like, “You know how hard I’ve worked to have my gender? To have this side of the binary and to achieve it, just to have other people in my community [say] that’s reductionistic and that’s anti-liberation?” The truth is, there’s a million ways to liberate, there’s a million ways to oppress and it’s hard. We know that for folks with boots on the ground, this is the most threatening time for trans and gender diverse people I have ever witnessed in the modern age.

How does that make you feel?

Diamond: It’s almost hard to believe for someone like me who’s in my 50s. We’ve seen this kind of gradual increase in acceptance and diversity and broadening, and then to have legislators actually trying to outlaw people even saying certain words. We’re in this space where the direction of intellectual thought and political safety are inverse, which normally doesn’t happen. It’s extremely fraught and extremely challenging. I know that in my classroom, if I want to be intellectually responsible, I’ll say we’re not even sure what gender and sex really are.

You label it as a transitional period. It’s something that we’re still in, where our language and the identities that we use are still changing, and it has been changing for decades. Can you pinpoint some point in time, where this transitional period that we’re in right now kind of started?

Diamond: A lot of this can be traced to the backlash against Obama. I don’t think any of us on the progressive wing of the world anticipated just how frightening an African American president would be to a broad cross-section of Americans. I had no idea of the degree of thinly veiled panic and rage that was absolutely responsible for the Trump presidency.

I think in a lot of ways that [was a] stark power shift that the white elites suddenly felt. There’s no way to explain that other than racism. I mean, racism is America’s mother tongue.

I think the period between 2008 and 2016 was a period of a lot of retrenchment. A lot of us didn’t realize how much of that was going on under the surface until Trump got elected. The impact of our successes as progressives were fomenting a lot of opposition that has now hardened and crystallized into crack cocaine of rage.

A lot of the stuff that queer and trans youth are dealing with right now is affecting their identities and their self-expression in really negative ways. Can you speak a little on that?

Diamond: The adolescent brain is not an adult brain. One of the things we know about the period of time between age 13 and 20 is that the parts of your brain that are sensitive to what other people think of you are dialed up about as high as they can go. If you’re queer or trans or nonbinary, you’re gonna get a lot of judgment, you’re gonna get a lot of shame. Take that, combined with this incredible backlash, and it’s kind of a perfect storm.

This is partly why we’re in the single biggest mental health crisis for adolescents in this country. All the data is coming out; we’re not imagining it. It’s very, very real.

Adolescents need to be physically with their friends, not just online. They need to be with people who just like and love them just for no reason at all. We’ve lost a little of that sense. There’s this constant evaluation that everyone is feeling that is just stressing everybody out. They feel scrutinized all the time and all of that on top of questioning your gender and your sexuality is too much. Uncertainty is the most stressful thing, especially since the pandemic.

I think that a lot of it is also impacted by the fact that our education system doesn’t really touch on subjects such as sexuality and gender, and now even less than before.

Diamond: I know a lot of us at the gender studies program here have spent a lot of time talking about that. What do we need to do differently? This is a different world. The way we taught gender studies and ethnic studies and disability studies before needs to be updated. And yet, we’re not really sure how to do it. So how do we create a space where we can talk about hard stuff, and open ourselves up to feeling uncomfortable? And know the difference between feeling uncomfortable and feeling pain?

Something that I want to focus on is the evolution of the discussion around gender identity, and how that directly impacts the expression of gender identity.

Diamond: When the internet made it possible for anyone on the planet, in their own home, to see moments of gender expression around the world that they never would have seen otherwise— that was a social intervention of a magnitude that cannot be underestimated. In the old days, you only knew what was around you. Now, every kid in the world can be like, what does gender look like in Zimbabwe? What does it look like over here? What does it look like over there?

You’ve definitely touched on some points that I’ve thought about but I’ve never been able to put into words. Is there anything you want to say?

Diamond: No, [educators are] just hoping that the next generation will tell us what they want, because we want to hear it.

Seven decades in Bronzeville

A walking tour through time

By Karolina Dziatkowiec & Yasmin Mendiola

Photos by Liina Raud & Taylor Priola

On a chilly evening in March, Bernard Williams, 76, rests in the armchair of the home where he grew up in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood.

“We were the third Black family to move down here,” he says of the neighborhood where he’s lived since 1948.

Williams’ family was part of the Great Migration, when millions of Black people from the South moved north and west seeking to escape Jim Crow laws and find jobs and better living conditions. His great grandmother, Hattie Latimer, moved to Chicago in 1893 and found work as a laundress.

At that time, Black people were not allowed to purchase property, but Latimer was able to buy a building in Hyde Park through a lawyer. That’s where Williams’ grandmother lived and his mother was born. His great grandfather, Frank Williams, came North from Pocahontas, Mississippi in 1904 at the age of 14. His grandfather began working in Chicago’s Union Stock Yards in 1918, one year before the Stock Yard race riots.

By the 1940s, Bronzeville had become a great Black metropolis—Chicago’s version of New York’s Harlem. Over the years, it was the home of Black luminaries including Ida B. Wells, Richard Wright, Louis Armstrong and Gwendolyn Brooks. The offices of the essential Black newspaper, the ChicagoDefender , were located in Bronzeville. It was a cultural center, featuring live music at nightclubs and theaters. Black businesses provided all the necessities residents needed. “The Black community became self sufficient because you couldn’t go downtown to shop,” Williams says.

Despite moving North for better opportunities, Black families still faced discrimination in housing and employment, which is one of the reasons they were concentrated in neighborhoods like Bronzeville.

At the time, Williams’ childhood was a time of great adventure. He recalls an abandoned mansion that he and a friend explored together. “We called it the castle,” he says. “We used to play in that mansion. It had a great view of the lake [when] you would go up to the third floor. The stairs were kind of worn out, so you was risking crashing and falling into the basement. It was reminiscent of the time when this was sort of a haven.”

During the 1950s, Williams had a paper route. Delivering the newspaper connected him to his neighbors, nearly all of whom were Black. There were only a few elderly white people left, and Williams’ mother made sure they were cared for. She and other people in the community would check on them, and Williams was sent to run errands when they needed anything from the store. He was only a young boy.

“That was the environment,” he says. “People looked out for each other. There was a sense of family.”

Williams and his friends loved to sneak down to the lake on warm summer days. “I found a spot right there on the lake where there was clear water, you could look down to the bottom and see sand,” he says. “It’s like taking a vacation from the crime of the city. You got a place where you can get fresh air.”

Persistent racism led some wealthier residents to leave for the suburbs after World War II. Williams recalls how his intelligent Black peers were often held back in school, placed in remedial classes and discouraged from continuing their education.

Bernard Williams, 76, in his Bronzeville home.

Not Williams, however. His mother, Hattie Kay Williams, was a social worker and activist. After the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, she worked on integrating and improving Oakenwald School in Bronzeville. She was the first Black Parent Teacher Association president at Oakenwald, and later the president of the Southeast Council PTA, comprised of more than 40 schools. She is credited with successfully fighting against sub-standard facilities at schools serving primarily Black students, and for creating a study center that became a Head Start pilot location. Head Start is a program that helps children with their early education. When it first began, they provided for lowincome communities, and they still do.

As a teenager, Williams led after-school study sessions for eighth graders to help them pass their constitution tests—a requirement to pass eighth grade. Soon, gang members were asking Williams to help them learn to read. Williams and his mother required them to give up their guns in exchange—the start of a gun purging initiative. His mother was such a beacon in the community, there is a park named after her and another local activist: Williams-Davis Park in Bronzeville.

Williams recalls the period of school integration and white flight from Bronzeville. He is now living through the neighborhood’s revitalization and the impacts on longtime residents. “I grew up in the transition from being white to Black, [and] now to multi-ethnic gentrification,” Williams says. Between 1998 and 2005, the Robert Taylor homes were demolished. It was the largest public housing project in America. This displaced many Black families and began a new era of gentrification. “When the projects were dismantled, white people found out that there was a lakefront down here and it was beautiful,” Williams recalls.

The housing project that was once known for gang violence is now being marketed as a quiet neighborhood. “White people and other people began to move from the north side and the suburbs back into the city, into the Bronzeville area and buying up the houses and hiking the [rent] of the houses,” Williams says. Today, the median price of houses sold in Bronzeville is well over $550,000, according to data from the Chicago Association of Realtors.

This has benefitted homeowners, but not renters. Williams and his mother bought two houses years ago for $24,000. His mother lived in one and also operated a food pantry from it; his sister and her family lived in the other. In her later years, Williams’ mother’s medical expenses required him to sell her house, and his sister lost the other house during the recession of 2008. Williams has lived in his current apartment for the past 25 years, but now he sits among boxes and suitcases, needing to move out after his landlord hiked the rent again.

Williams fears that Bronzeville is losing its character, and yet so much of what he loves remains. On a warm spring day, Williams walked through Bronzeville, highlighting evidence of its storied Black history. He noted the new row houses that replaced the demolished Robert Taylor Homes. He pointed out the Chicago Defender building where Black journalists created the most influential African American newspaper of the mid-20th century. He stopped to admire the Ida B. Wells home and monument, and the Southside Community Art Center which was once owned by poet, artist and writer Margaret Taylor-Burroughs—a space where Black artists could show their work.

Williams has left his mark on this neighborhood, too. He helped the Army Corps of Engineers survey 41st Street Beach— his childhood hangout spot. He designed part of a sculpture on the lakefront that commemorates Bessie Coleman, the first African American woman to fly an airplane.

And the neighborhood as left an indelible mark on him. He lived in New York during college, and lived in Harlem, but Bronzeville brought him back. “I prefer Chicago to New York,” he says. “The real charm of where we are, in a hidden gem along the lakefront.”

Ida B. Wells-Barnett home in Bronzeville.

Chicago park dedicated to Bernard Williams’ mother, Dr. Hattie Kay Williams, and Ms. Izora Davis.

SSCAC, founded in 1940 in Bronzeville.

Identity lost and found

For Korean adoptees from the 1960s, connections are crucial

By Karolina Dziatkowiec Photos courtesy of Mark Hagland

Mark Hagland, 63, was adopted as an infant from South Korea by his Norwegian and German-American adoptive parents. Suddenly the dark-haired, darkeyed infant was part of a blue-eyed, English-speaking family in Milwaukee, Wisc., surrounded by people who looked nothing like him.

The Korean War ended in 1953, and Seoul was flattened. By 1960, there were hundreds of thousands of children who were orphaned or abandoned by desperately poor parents who wandered the streets picking food out of garbage cans.

“The vast majority of children who ended up at orphanages were abandoned children, and that was undoubtedly a result of the rapid poverty and also the rapid number of mixed race children resulting from the military occupation,” says documentary filmmaker Glenn Morey, 63, who was adopted from Seoul when he was six months old. The U.S. passed special legislation to sidestep the Asian immigration limits still in place from the early 20th century. South Korea and the U.S. set a precedent for inter-country and transracial adoptions. According to the South Korean Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family affairs, more than 110,000 children from Korea were adopted into America between 1953 and 2008. That’s ten times the number of Korean adoptees in France, and the next highest country.

Adoptions out of South Korea were popularized by churches that persuaded religious couples into believing that this was a great opportunity to “save” children. “Finding the perfect healthy white infant was very difficult, even in 1960,” Hagland says. “But this Norwegian missionary told my father that people were adopting from South Korea.” The missionary went to churches across the country with what Morey calls a “kind of road show” promoting adoptions as an opportunity “to save the lives and

souls of these children.” They didn’t address how to nurture children experiencing abandonment trauma, and there weren’t many resources for adoptive parents on raising children from other cultures at the time. “There were no resources of any kind,” Hagland says. “There was no literature on adoption.”

As he grew older and realized he was from another place, he sought information at the library. “I remember as a child reading the book, The Land and People of Korea. That was better than nothing, but it was close to nothing,” he says.

Morey says the only time there was any sort of post-adoption interaction with the agencies that placed South Korean children in American homes was if things were going badly. Hagland’s adoptive parents sought to do better. They joined EastWest Circle, a group that connected adoptive couples with one another. But that didn’t provide any support for the children.

Growing up, physical self image was a big issue for Hagland. He was surrounded by white people and felt marginalized. Looking back, he says he needed his adoptive parents to provide a cultural mirror, but that wasn’t something they knew or knew how to do at the time.

Mark Hagland at age 8.

“I say that I’m Korean and I’m American. Because if you say Korean-American, people will instantly assume you have strong connections with KoreanAmerican families.”

—Mark Hagland

Hagland didn’t experience a diverse environment until he attended Northwestern University in Evanston. “You feel attracted and you want to be a part of it, but inside you know you’re completely white. So you have to find your identity as a person,” he says. For that reason, he never called himself Korean- American. “I say that I’m Korean and I’m American because if you say Korean-American, people will instantly assume you have strong connections with Korean-American families,” he says. He calls this a “narrative burden,” which is when someone who doesn’t fit in is asked “what they are.”

Hagland has visited South Korea three times, not to meet his birth parents but to connect to his roots. Most adoptions from South Korea were closed, meaning the adoptee doesn’t know who their biological parents are. “During that time, again, the first wave of international adoption, no one even thought we would ever want to go back,” Hagland says.

Hagland says East Asian societies have a high barrier culture: “There’s the tribe and not the tribe.” When they see his Korean face, they expect him to speak flawless Korean, be connected to the culture and follow their customs, but that is not what Hagland grew up with. When he explains his identity to Koreans in Korea, they typically feel ashamed of their past and apologize. These interactions are exhausting for him. “I tell people, it was as though I were a Martian in a spaceship that had happened upon a convention of Martians,” he says.

Hagland didn’t truly find community until he started a Facebook group for transracial adoptees, which he moderates in English, Scandinavian and Spanish. He has built a community full of people with complex and multi-faceted identities which he can identify with. Years of getting to know friends of color and piecing his identity together have been transformational for him. He describes his support system as different pieces of a single quilt, all relating to different parts of his identity.

The journey has been difficult, but no more than if he hadn’t been adopted. “Growing up in an institutional environment is terribly unhealthy,” Morey says. It’s also not enough for a child to be adopted into a loving home when no one in their family, neighborhood or schools look like them and they have no way to connect to their roots. Today, adoption agencies support parents seeking to connect their international or interracial children to the communities they were born into, and many parents know to seek out opportunities to help their adopted children connect to others who share their origins. The National Council for Adoption encourages parents to learn about the lifelong impacts of adoption, and not to assume “that love and nurture will undo all past trauma or that a child adopted as an infant will not have experienced any trauma.” They also urge parents to “stay connected with other adoptive families and agencies that support adoptive families upon return to the U.S. Far from being over, the journey to becoming a family is just beginning.”

“There isn’t nearly enough done in terms of adoptive parents and adoption services oversight to ensure that good practices are followed,” Morey says. But more awareness can help change that for the bettere

Mark Hagland at 16 in San Francisco.

Mark Hagland, 63, author and Editor-in-chief of Healthcare Innovation.

“I remember as a child reading the book, The Land and People of Korea. That was better than nothing, but it was close to nothing.”

—Mark Hagland

Growing into myself

My experience as a neurodivergent person in a neurotypical world

But I was too different. My peers made my life difficult through constant bullying, and my teachers had no training on how to support autistic children. This, in turn, spiraled into regularly being sent out of class, and my mother showing up at school to support me after unsuccessfully arguing for me to receive extra help or aid.

I was in elementary school from 2006-2011, and although my memory is hazy, I do remember being pulled out of my classroom to see a speech therapist, a social worker and other specialists whose titles and names I can’t remember. Being pulled out of my classes caused me to be an outcast and, for awhile, I knew that people were afraid of me or laughing about me.

By Bianca Kreusel Photos from the Kreusel family

WhenI was born, my mother said I did not immediately cry. Instead, I looked around the room full of doctors and midwives with awe and wonder. As a baby, I never liked to be cuddled, and when I was held, I wanted to face the world and look around.

As I grew older, I never understood social cues or how people were able to naturally make friends and keep them. I was always “that” kid. Someone who got angry easily and had violent outbursts, someone who never had many friends, and someone who was prone to the ruthless torment of my peers.

“I knew there was something. I just didn’t know what it was because autism [awareness] was just starting,” my mother, Kathleen “Kathy” Kreusel says.

I was officially diagnosed at the age of six with a now outdated diagnosis: Asperger’s Syndrome. This term is no longer used because of the controversy around the man who coined the term and because doctors came to understand that Asperger’s and autism are one the same. My mom explained to me, a young child who didn’t really understand anything about herself, that it meant I was special. I was different.

Outside of school, I was also put into occupational therapy, social therapy, and speech therapy. Not all of it was covered by insurance, and my parents were supporting the family on one income. “[Your] dad was working 16 hours a day, seven days a week,” my mom says.

But not being diagnosed would have been far worse. Even now, many children aren’t diagnosed—or aren’t diagnosed early— which denies them many essential accommodations, therapies and resources that I was able to get. This is especially true for many autistic children of color. As recently as 2020, research shows that nearly 25% of children are undiagnosed, but the numbers are 1.7 times higher among Black children and 1.6 times higher among Latinx children than they are among white children.

I was among the fortunate ones, and the therapies I received were helpful. I was able to learn to identify emotions. According to my mom, I was never in applied behavioral analysis, or ABA therapy, a controversial treatment that some claim forces many autistic children and individuals to “mask”—a term used when autistic people suppress their natural behaviors because they aren’t considered “normal.” Critics of ABA therapy say it “forces the autism” out of autistic children because they don’t behave the same way as their neurotypical peers. “It might be teaching clients to kind of fit in or hide their neurodivergence rather than celebrating some of their strengths or building on those strengths,” says Nicole

My parents would take my brother and me on family trips around Michigan. Family trips were a time I was able to spend with my family without having to worry about peer criticism.

Francen Schmitt, a clinical psychologist who sometimes works with ABA therapists.

Still, I did learn to mask. I felt myself conditioned to always act “normal” and began to feel embarrassed about having autism. Even now, as I am about to graduate college, I still sometimes struggle to understand social cues.

Though my mother will claim that I was the one who did all the work and fighting when I was growing up, she was the real hero in my life. Countless times, my mom went to school to fight for necessary accommodations. When my elementary school, my peers and everyone else felt like an enemy, I always knew that my mother was on my side. I am so lucky to have her.

I moved to Illinois when I was 13. As a child with autism, I had an extremely difficult time adjusting to a new environment with new kids and teachers. But things got significantly better through middle school and into high school. I no longer had the baggage from my time in elementary school. I could reshape myself into someone I had always wanted to be. I began to mirror my peers, copying how they reacted to what their friends told them. I also accepted any person who wanted to be my friend, without

understanding whether or not they were truly good friends. It was exhausting constantly trying to act “normal” at school.

In high school, I tried to erase the word “autism” from my identity. I began blocking out the memories that had followed me from elementary school, refusing to think about those experiences. I had internalized the ableist voice in my head that said I should be ashamed and embarrassed to even admit that I had autism. I treated my autism as a dirty, mortifying secret that must never get out. I did my best to mask at school and in front of my peers. I still do.

But something changed. I began making new friends, and although I still saw the school social workers and had accommodations, I started noticing how many other kids also had accommodations. It was almost not weird to test in other rooms or have extended testing time. The way it was normalized and accepted in high school was a completely new experience for me.

I still struggled to accept the fact that I have autism. Throughout high school, I was torn between how much I wanted to reveal to my friends and how much I felt I should keep to myself. I feared that if my new friends found out too much about me, they

For a long time, rocks, including Petoskey stones, were my “special interest.” I collected rocks from every place I went.

would push me away or treat me differently. Out of cautiousness, I just never mentioned it.

In my junior year of high school, I finally told my current best friend. I had just put the kids I was babysitting to bed. I was nervous, but she accepted me wholeheartedly and didn’t treat me any differently because she knew. It was a small moment in my life that suggested maybe, just maybe, I could surround myself with people who would accept me for who I am. All of me.

I didn’t truly get over my fears of rejection until my junior year of college. Columbia College, which has a lot of accepting people and embraces differences, helped with this a lot. As I went through my classes, I met all kinds of neurodivergent people, and I learned to advocate for myself. Slowly, I began to share who I really am with my peers.

Even now, as I get ready to graduate college and go out into the working world—a world made for neurotypical workers—I hesitate to speak about being autistic, and I find myself masking at my job and internship. I know, however, that the world is becoming more accepting of those with disabilities. That helps me and others like me to make room for self acceptance.

“I think, working with a therapist about self love and self acceptance, and working through how to talk to [your] peers or other people about your autism and what it’s like for you, is really helpful,” Schmitt says, “I think, as a society, we need to keep working towards understanding and accepting neurodivergence, recognizing how common it is and how it really enriches our human experience.”

Though I still struggle with fully accepting that part of myself, I know one of the biggest steps I can take is sharing my experience. Everyone’s experience with autism is valid and unique. I sincerely hope that others with autism also find the confidence to share their experiences, both the bad and good, and gain strength to take on life head first.

My dad attended online college and worked nearly every day when I was a kid, but there were always moments he was there for me.

There are a lot of moments where I would get overstimulated, including weddings.

From Chicago with love

Half a century later, house music still rocks

By Yasmin Mendiola

Mario “Liv It Up” Luna, 56, remembers how he fell in love with DJing back in 1982. He was born and raised in Pilsen, where summer days were filled with block parties. A DJ would set up in the middle of the street with speakers and turntables while everybody danced.

“I just seen the DJs mix vinyl from record to record and it was a skill that not everybody could do it. You could try to do it. But if you weren’t good enough, you could tell you weren’t good enough as far as blending,” Luna says. DJs used two turntables, mixing and blending the records on each side and creating smooth transitions.

Luna was a witness to and a participant in the birth of house music, which goes back to underground clubs in Chicago and New York in the late 1970s. In Chicago, Black, Latino and LGBTQ+ music and dance fans gathered at The Warehouse, the nightclub that opened in 1977 and popularized house music. Chicago was also home to “Disco Demolition Night,” an event in 1979 where many people blew up disco records. But while disco lost its mainstream appeal, DJs across cities kept playing it in the underground scene.

An early Warehouse DJ was Frankie Knuckles, who changed tempos and layered songs with percussion. He played underground disco, soul and European electronic disco, and his experimental sound influenced other DJs and producers. It was a safe space for the LBGTQ+ community.

Lori Branch, a DJ, stepped in the Warehouse and was inspired by Frankie Knuckles. The music was so loud, you could hear it outside and feel the bass in the concrete. For her, The Warehouse is a special place.

“This was an important building in my story because it’s where I sort of came out as a bisexual person. I found safety, community and friends there,” Branch told Sasha-Ann Simons, host of the WBEZ show “Reset.”

In 1982, Knuckles opened his own club, Power Plant, where he was known for using beat drums. His 1987 release, “Your Love” under Trax Records, spread like wildfire across Chicago, expanding house music’s reach beyond the clubs.

Ron Hardy is another influential DJ of the time. His fastpaced, high-pitched experimental beats blared out of speakers at

Luna is a self-taught DJ. He owned the record “Live It Up” by the Time Bandits, and was inspired by the name. He remember DJs throwing the song into their mixes.

He also threw it into his name. Mario ‘Liv It Up,’ that sounds pretty cool! Nobody has that name,” Luna says. “Back in the ‘80s it was more creative. You had to be more creative as far as your name—it had to be catchy. You had to have a cool name to get recognized,” Luna says.

Luna recorded himself DJing and handed out cassette mixtapes everywhere he could. They quickly spread throughout Pilsen, helping him connect with other DJs. He joined the DJ group Dimensional Sounds in 1987. He was recruited by the Ultimate Party Crew the next year, when they hosted their first party. “I was like ‘Wow, check this out.’ My eyes were

House parties were smoky, hot, crowded and loud, with a bass you could feel throughout your body. Each crew wore jackets with their own emblems. They also tried to distinguish their sounds from one another.

Luna found inspiration from the Columbia College Chicago radio station WCRX, which played underground tracks he didn’t hear elsewhere. “You wanted to buy music that nobody else was playing, or if you play a record, they never played the other side,” he says. “You always wanted to have a certain style from the other guys.”

He also listened to The Hot Mix 5 on WBMX, where a team of DJs would mix songs every Friday night. Their high-energy mixes included rare records. He wasn’t the only one listening in and getting inspired. Houz’Mon, then known as Slick Master Rick, 56, from Chicago’s West Side, was also tuning in, the joy and excitement rushing through his body as he heard the mixes. “It was like a treat to me. I thought to myself if these guys could do it, I could do it,” he says.

A friend, who was a DJ, took Houz’Mon to The Factory, a club on west Madison Street, where he was invited to spin some records. He didn’t do well, but an experienced DJ, “Great the Master,” saw potential in him and gave him another chance to come back under one condition: he had to practice.

“I practiced every single day, right after school, and went straight to his place to practice,” he says. He returned and dominated the turntables. “The people would let you know if you did not do so well, they would just get off the dance floor,” he says.

Houz’Mon’s ghetto house mixes included synthesizers and drum machines. This style of house is more raw, with repetitive sampled vocals. The bass is heavy and the beats are fast, with highly danceable, dirty lyrics. He eventually landed a record deal at DJ International Records, a Chicago house-music label, and released “Brothers and Sisters House on 13th Street.”

“I was there at the right time, at the right moment,” he says. In 1993, he came up with his own label, Beat Boy’s Records, where he released “Fear Tha World” under his new name, Houz’Mon.

Meanwhile, house music was gaining popularity in neighborhoods on the southwest and South Side, where local DJs made it their own. “Latinos were making a lot of house music but with a salsa beat, with the timbales,” Luna says. “I think that made the Latino house sound different from the other artists because you had that Latin flavor in there.”

These days, Luna still finds comfort in music. He goes up to his man cave where he has his DJ equipment and his 15 crates of records and puts his headphones on and lets the music take him away. “You just shut the world off and you go into your own world as far as music and you get into it. You forget about everybody, forget about all your problems, you’re in your own zone.”

House music, he says, is timeless music. “It’s something about it that is never going to go away. It’s never going to die out. It’s got that one certain sound to it that people like to this day.”

Houz’Mon, 56, throwing down some tunes.

Talk dirty to me!

How your houseplants respond to your voice

By Aileen Carranza

Plants react and like the sound of our voices. Although plants don't understand our words, scientists in the field of phytoacoustics have found that plants detect and respond to sound.

According to “Sound perception in plants,” a 2019 research article in the journal Seminars in Cell & Developmental Biology, plants respond to sound by changes in their genes, pathogens and nectar.

But it doesn't take a scientific study to find that people like talking to their plants.

Taryn Callion often apologizes to her plants when she forgets to water them. "I think they look greener, but it could be me deluding myself," she says.

Natalia Boria credits the “good vibe” in her grandmother’s house to the houseplants there and the love given to them. Her grandmother often asks them whether they are thirsty. “I just know her plants were always so bright and uplifting,” Boria says. But don’t take it from them. We interviewed three plants to see what they thought about the words their people said to them. The illustration above provides their answers.

Illustration by Randy Olsen

Small space gardening

Yes, you can grow your own groceries

By Karolina Dziatkowiec

Photos by Taylor Priola

Even if you live in a small apartment, it’s possible to grow some of the vegetables you love. The key is hydroponics, a gardening method that doesn’t require soil. It won’t replace your trip to the grocery store, but you’ll have the pleasure of growing some of your own herbs and vegetables.

Andy McGhee, aquaponics specialist at Windy City Harvest, suggests beginner-friendly veggies like herbs and greens, including chard, kale, arugula, watercress, bok choy and looseleaf lettuce. “What most people would want to do is have a little variety,” says Marius Berman, the manager at Chicago Roots Hydroponics and Organics.

Although you can purchase a complete hydroponic system, you’ll save money by creating your own set-up. “Indoors, you need to have light and you need to have a space for your plants,” Berman says. “You got to have water, you got to have airflow no matter what.”

“The more time you spend with them and the less you overthink it, the better your plants will grow.”

—Marius Berman

Get growing

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Seeds

• Rockwool

• Tupperware or reused container

• Expanded clay (aka leca)

• One three-inch net cup per plant

• Ten to 15 gallon tote with lid

• An aeration stone with air pump

• Clear tubing

• Drill with three-inch hole dozer attachment

• LED grow light

• Botanicare Pure Blend Pro Grow nutrient solution

Begin with germination:

1. Soak the rockwool in water for 24 hours.

2. Use a toothpick to puncture a hole in the cube.

3. Insert two seeds into one rockwool cube.

4. Put the rockwool cubes containing the seeds into a food container and close the lid.

5. Let the seeds germinate in a dark place.

6. After a few days to a week, the seeds should have sprouted.

Build the reservoir:

1. Prepare the reservoir by using your hole dozer to make holes five inches apart in the tote’s lid—one for each plant.

2. Create a hole on the side of the reservoir above the water line, big enough for the clear tubing to fit through.

3. Rinse the reservoir, then fill it with water and set it in your new hydroponic area. Let the water sit for 24 hours.

4. After 24 hours, mix the nutrient blend.

5. Thread the clear tubing through the hole on the side of the reservoir. Attach the air pump to the tubing on the outside of the reservoir and the aeration stone on the other end. Drop the stone in, elevate the air pump and plug it in.

6. Cover the tote with the lid and hang or attach your LED lighting above the reservoir so it's ready to use when the seedlings sprout.

Plant in the reservoir:

1. As soon as you see the seeds sprouting in the container, it’s time to move them.

2. Fill the bottom of the net cup with the expanded clay pebbles and place the rockwool with the seedling on top. Fill the rest of the cup with the pebbles, until the rockwool isn’t visible.

3. Place the net cup in the holes you drilled into the lid of the reservoir.

4. Turn the LED grow light on and wait for the plants to grow. Once the reservoir is up and running, it’s important to maintain it. “Usually after about 14 to 21 days, you’re going to want to go in there, remove the lid and dump that water out, clean the reservoir and then replace it with a fresh batch of nutrients and water,” Berman says. Let your water sit for 24 hours to naturally dechlorinate before mixing your nutrients. Checking the Ph balance of your water daily is optimal for successful vegetable growth. McGhee also recommends “ensuring there is enough airflow, staying on top of pests and nutrient level management.”

As your vegetables start growing, watch for evidence they’re getting too many or too few nutrients. “If you’re feeding them too much, you’ll have burnt edges or the leaves will be dark green and they won’t be growing very fast,” Berman says. “If they’re nutrient deficient, there’ll be lime green on the bottom leaves and it will kind of work its way up.” If that’s the case, add nitrogen. But don’t panic. “The more time you spend with them and the less you overthink it, the better your plants will grow,” Berman says.

Above are the nutrients recommended by Marius Berman. Marius Berman, manager of Chicago Roots Hydroponics and Organics, at the shop.

Going for the green Inspiration from a large-scale hydroponics business

By Karolina Dziatkowiec

Photos by Liina Raud

The Garfield Produce Company grows micro greens and petite greens hydroponically, then distributes them to restaurants and stores including WhatsGood, Urban Canopy and Village Farmstand.

The hydroponics nutrient film technique (NFT) uses pumps to raise water to the towers of micro and petite greens. They use a curated mix of nutrients to feed the plants.

Garfield Produce is one of several successful hydroponic farms in Chicago, including Gotham Greens, Urban Eden and Homestead Farm.

Zlanpea Wehyee, the supervisor of Garfield Produce Company, cuts freshly grown micro bulls blood beets for packaging.

By Riley Schroeder

Lions and dolphins and polar bears, oh my!

What zoos are doing to help animals adapt into their urban habitats

When I was five years old, my kindergarten class went on a field trip to the Milwaukee Zoo. After what seemed like a long bus ride, we entered the front gates and began searching for the animals that corresponded to the pictures inside our cubbies (mine was a giraffe). I was awestruck seeing it in person. A real life giraffe! What more could a kid want?

Since then, I have grown more wary of zoos. I find myself asking: Is there enough space for the animals? Are they becoming desensitized to their surroundings and losing their natural instincts? In general, are they OK?

But I am aware that many of these animals have nowhere else to be. Natural wildlife is vanishing due to human encroachment and climate change. Lions used to live on a wide range of thick brush in open plains in Africa’s savanna. Now, they live on only 8% of their previous range, according to the World Wildlife Foundation. Dolphins are exposed to both man-made and natural threats in the ocean, including fishing gear left in the water, bio-toxins and oil spills, which cause habitat degradation. Additionally, climate change is melting the Arctic sea ice that polar bears depend on to hunt, live, breed and create dens.

For these reasons, very few of the animals at Brookfield Zoo near Chicago are able to return to the wild. In recent years, only the golden lion tamarins and Mexican gray wolves were reintroduced. “The unfortunate news is that a lot of those reintroduction programs, aren’t happening anymore,” says Tim Sullivan, the zoo’s director of behavioral husbandry.

One of the main reasons is habitat loss. “There’s ... very little safe habitat to reintroduce them to, and actually, reintroducing animals to what remains there is unsafe for them,” Sullivan says. “So the unfortunate thing is, it’s not about getting animals back to the wild. It’s about protecting the animals that are there and trying to protect the remaining habitat.”

So the zoo is their home — now and forever.

Staff at Brookfield Zoo try to make animals’ zoo lives reminiscent of the wild. Sullivan says the main way they do this is through monitoring behavioral repertoires.

The key is to replicate the natural behaviors they experience in the wild. “Are they sleeping as much as they do in the wild? Are they active and foraging as much as [they] would in the wild? If there’s discrepancies between that, we try and use original

strategies to bring out that behavior if it’s not being exhibited. Or if it’s not in the right proportion,” Sullivan says.

Ultimately, the zoo can’t replicate everything about the wild, and it doesn’t need to. “There’s not a drought in Brookfield Zoo. There’s never a food shortage at Brookfield Zoo,” Sullivan says. “So they don’t have those particular demands on their body. But we do want to make sure that because we provide all their resources that they need, we do so in a way that gives them their jobs, keeps their skills up.”

To maintain their skills, Lance Miller, vice president of conservation science and animal welfare research at the Chicago Zoological Society and Brookfield Zoo, says each animal is provided the following: 10 to 20 minutes of daily enrichment time (when their brains are stimulated by their surroundings), appropriate social circles, specific diets, and thermally regulated habitats designed with natural environments in mind. There’s also a veterinary service providing vaccines and check-ups.

Although the animals at Brookfield Zoo are well taken care of, Sullivan says some guests believe they are not happy. He cautions visitors against making anthropomorphic assumptions about how “happy” animals are in their habitats. “You’ll hear people say, ‘Oh that animal is happier, they look bored, they’re sad.’ But they’re basically overlaying human characteristics and expectations on animals that are completely different than humans,” he says.

Many zoo animals are desensitized to humans because they are a constant presence. Not the dolphins, however. “The dolphins will be swimming by under water and all the sudden, they’ll just stop for some reason and get really interested in a person wearing a certain thing or doing a certain thing,” Sullivan says. “To me, that’s when I know they’re still paying attention to the guests.”

The zoo’s behavioral research manager monitors whether visitors are affecting animals in a negative way. “In general, the guests are not a welfare concern for the animals. Usually, when you see them interested in the guest, it’s because they’re interested in a good way,” Sullivan says.

Here’s how Brookfield Zoo is maintaining their African lions, bottlenose dolphins and polar bears to mimic life in the wild, according to Miller and Sullivan:

“It’s about protecting the animals that are there and trying to protect the remaining habitat.”

—Tim Sullivan

Habitat: In their legacy habitat, built in the 1930s, there is a heated cave for basking in the winter, as well as a chilled, shaded area for the summer heat. A pool simulates watering holes, which lions drink from and play in. Large, heated rocks allow the lions to monitor the land while staying warm.

Activities: Bungee poles with meat attached to the end simulate prey. At night, when it’s easier to sneak up on animals, the bungee cord allows the animals to fight and hunt as they would in the wild. Zookeepers also anoint the exhibit and toys with smells that draw out a rubbing behavior, where lions brush against the toys to get the smells on them.

Socialization: Miller says lions in the wild are very social in their large prides. When they come to an age where they are kicked out, they form bachelor groups. At Brookfield Zoo, these groups consist of two brothers.

Diet: Their diet consists of meat every day, bones once a week and a whole carcass every other week. Pulling meat off the bones and licking them using papillae (minute hooks on their tongues) keeps the lions’ mouths healthy.

Health: The lions are given complete CT scans every three years to assess their organs. They also get regular dental cleanings, physical exams and vaccines.

Lions in their habitat compared to the threat of drought caused by climate change and habitat loss due to human encroachment. Photo courtesy of Brookfield Zoo

Illustration by Randy Olsen

DOLPHINS

Habitat: Dolphins swim freely in a temperature and salinitycontrolled water tank that simulates the ocean. Right now, the Seven Seas dolphin arena is under construction—a noisy process for creatures with extremely sensitive hearing—so they’ve been temporarily transferred to the Minnesota Zoo.

Activities: Their enrichment includes foraging, echolocating and hunting. They take “cat naps,” as Miller calls them, throughout the day. During these naps, they sleep by shutting off half of their brain, which is called unihemispheric sleeping. The other half stays alert to allow for breathing and search for danger with one eye while they swim.

Social: In the wild, Miller says dolphins are a “fission-fusion species, where individuals associate in groups that often change in both size and composition.” The zoo mimics this by providing different habitats where dolphins can choose who to spend time with.

Diet: The dolphins eat Atlantic herring, menhaden and ladyfish throughout the day.

Health: The dolphins receive semi-annual exams and quarterly diagnostic testing that includes assessments of gastric and fecal samples, blood tests, ultrasounds and breath analysis. They are also weighed weekly.

Dolphins enjoying space in their habitat compared to the threat of oil pollution and fishing nets in the wild.

Photo by Liina Raud

Illustration by Randy Olsen

POLAR BEARS

Habitat: Polar bears live in a chilled indoor habitat paired with an outdoor setting, which includes a 50- to 60-degree pool, waterfall, sand pit and logs. During the winter, they are given dens that “simulate ice caves they would dig out” in the wild, Miller says. In the summer, an ice machine creates snow to cool them down.

Activities: Timed feeders simulate foraging on land when sea ice is unavailable in the wild. The polar bears sleep about 10 hours a day at the zoo. They don’t hibernate during the winter, but they do slow down.

Social: Polar bears are solitary creatures. “Males and females only come together during breeding season. Moms raise their cubs for up to two years before they disperse,” Miller says. They replicate this at Brookfield Zoo by only introducing males and females during the spring to breed.

Diet: Polar bears eat fish, meat, lard, lettuce, carrots and bones.

Health: Their health care is the same as what is provided for African lions.

Polar bear walking around the habitat compared to the threat of melting ice due to climate change in the wild.

Photo by Riley Schroeder

Illustration by Randy Olsen

Talking about roots

By

Kariman Diab is no stranger to working at hair salons. She has extensive training, as well as experience as a hairstylist at a previous salon. But there, she was unable to provide more than a cut and color. She wanted to discuss real world events that were more substantial than pointless conversations.

“It was a very small salon and the owner there was very careful on the conversations that we had,” Diab says. “There were no politics, no religion, just very, very basic conversations so nobody would get offended by anything political or religious.”

As a Palestinian Muslim, Diab was unable to talk about her life. When her clients asked questions during the second Palestinian uprising in September 2000, the salon owner hushed the conversations. Diab felt stifled.

“I’m not doing any kind of activism while I’m doing my client’s hair. I’m just speaking from personal experience,” she says. “It was a little bit unjust for me that she could speak about her suburban upbringing because it was not political. But mine was more political.”

That changed 22 years ago when Diab and her sister, Nariman, opened Roots Hair Salon in River West. Although they never aspired to be business owners, they knew they wanted to change the hair industry. They had no business plan, so Diab learned how to write one within a week to present to the landlord. “We were like, no, we have clients. We know that we’ll be successful,” she says.

As Muslim business owners, they had to follow some cultural rules, such as not being in direct competition with their previous salon and not taking loans from a bank. “You’re not supposed to fall into the bank scheme of interest,” Diab says. Instead, the Diabs borrowed money from friends and family, which they paid back as soon as they could.

Little by little, through trial and error, they got their business going. “Yeah, everything seemed to be going well,” Diab says.

“And then 9/11 hit.”

Although they received hate mail, Roots Hair Salon stayed strong. “It was crazy times, people were really buying into the propaganda of Muslims being terrorists and all that stuff. But we still were consistent,” she says.

Today, Roots is a salon where everyone is welcome, but it especially caters to Muslim women, whether that’s because they wear a hijab, or they just want to be able to talk about politics and religion while getting their hair done.

Their stylists and clients are very diverse, but in the salon they “talk real talk,” Diab says. “But if people were open minded to listening, we would definitely take that opportunity to be able to talk about our history and the way that things are twisted in the media,” Diab says. She feels that besides their craft, Roots has a safe space to “welcome diversity and allow people to be themselves, to be heard, no matter what they are.”

One thing that’s unique to Roots is a safe and comfortable space for people who cover their hair in public. “They’re usually thrown into a little room or they have to walk in without a hijab just to get their hair done,” Diab says. Diab has created a space right next to the washing station where a curtain can be drawn so that only the hair stylist and the client see her hair.

“I can’t over emphasize how hard it is to actually find a high quality salon that will accommodate just, you know, a little bit of privacy, especially in the city,” says Nermin Moufti, who wears a hijab and has been coming to Roots for the past seven years. When she lived in Arizona, she had to get up around 6:45 a.m. for an appointment to avoid other customers seeing her hair.

A salon where political conversations are always in style

Riley Schroeder

Photos by Liina Raud

Kariman Diab wants her salon to be welcoming to everyone, no matter their ethnicity, religion or political values.

“We welcome diversity and allow people to be themselves, to be heard, no matter what they are.”

— Kariman Diab

“It’s a vulnerable thing to give your hair to someone at their mercy, and she makes you feel very comfortable right from the beginning,” Moufti says, adding that when she gets her hair done, it feels like a therapy session. “Talent is one half of the equation,” she says. “The rest of it is just like a sisterhood.”

Unlike the previous salon they worked at, when a client asks a question about Palestine or being Muslim, Diab answers. “We have the opportunity to speak our narrative, but our narrative is not one that’s easily found,” she says.

Her story is that she and her sister were born in Palestine and raised in Chicago. “I don’t really feel American in general, but I do feel very Chicago,” she says. Her parents didn’t assimilate as much as she did, she says. “In the home, it was Palestine,” where her mom would have Palestinian food always ready.

Her family experienced a lot of trauma before living in Chicago. Her dad fled his home in May 1948 during the Nakba in Palestine, which was the appropriation of their land in order to create the state of Israel. At age 12, he became an electrician. Meanwhile, her mother’s family was settling in Chicago. They met after he emigrated to the U.S.

Diab’s daughter, Ruqayyah, grew up in the salon. She has been doing her own hair since she was in seventh grade. “I got my hair done a few times, like one of the ladies did it for me,” she says, “And then I would watch how she did it a few times and then I went home and like, I did it myself.”

She appreciates her mother’s roots, and she feels a close connection to the Palestinian food and music, especially the holiday Eid al-Fitr. Diab maintains the traditions, shares them with others, and is pleased to see more people learning about Palestine and supporting the Palestinian people.

“I saw all these people that were non-Arab wearing keffiyeh, you know, the black-and-white checkered scarf and carrying protest signs with Free Palestine, stuff like that. That made my heart,” Diab says.

Some potential clients are skeptical when they see Diab wearing a hijab, wondering what to make of a hairdresser whose own hair they can’t see. To Diab, that’s absurd.

“I care about your hair more than you care about your hair because it’s my artwork, and that’s part of my character. And what builds my character is Islam,” Diab says. No matter what, she says, “I’m gonna do 110%, because this is my work.”

Diab has created a comfortable, safe space for women who wear hijabs to get their hair styled.

Eating around the world Take your tastebuds on a trip without leaving the city

By Karolina Dziatkowiec and Riley Schroeder

Photos by Liina Raud

Filipino

Kubo located at 1232 W Belmont Ave., Chicago

Kubo’s bartender (also the host) was jamming to funky music playing throughout the restaurant during the late afternoon. As he brought me to my table, he recommended the kansi soup served with white rice, which he says is perfect for days when you’re feeling sick or in need of comfort. Kansi soup is a sweet and sour bone broth. Large pieces of bone were used to make the broth. It includes citrusy lemongrass, meat-like jackfruit and tender beef shank. When the soup is poured over the rice, it soaks up the broth and produces a slightly spicy flavor.

Chicago is known for its deep dish pizza and specific hot dog combos (no ketchup!), but we found six restaurants that remind us that there’s more to Chicago than its staple cuisines. We contacted staff at the Philippine, Czech, Haitian, Jamaican and Belizean consulates in Chicago to ask where to find staple dishes from their countries. Here’s what they recommended and how we liked them.

Mediterranean/Palestinian

Al Bawadi Grill located at 7216 W 87th St., Bridgeview

This Mediterranean restaurant is in a section of Bridgeview that’s now dubbed “Little Palestine.” In the kitchen, pita bread is being cooked on an open fire, and the restaurant is warm from the flames and smells of charred foods. I ordered the chicken toshka: eight sandwiches made with Arabic flatbread and filled with shredded chicken, melted cheese and cilantro. The chicken was very tender and lightly seasoned. For the main course, I enjoyed hearty lamb chops that came on a bed of two varieties of rice adorned with charred tomatoes and onions. The lamb practically fell off the bone into my mouth, its light seasoning complementing the kick of spice in the rice. The baklava, a flaky pastry filled with nuts and covered with honey, was overwhelmingly sweet but impossible not to finish alongside a small cup of coffee.

Czech

Cafe Prague located at 6710 W Belmont Ave., Chicago

At Café Prague, a Czech-inspired restaurant, I ordered the farmer schnitzel. Martina, an associate at the Consulate General of the Czech Republic in Chicago, says that on their menu, “any Czech specialty is great,” so I chose this dish. The steaming schnitzel is paired with lightly mashed potatoes. The schnitzel itself was made from juicy farm-raised Amish chicken with crunchy breading on the outside. The gooey, melted cheese paired with grilled mushrooms gave the schnitzel added depths of flavor.

Haitian

Kizin Creole Restaurant located at 2311 W Howard St., Chicago

The walls of Kizin are adorned with framed photos and awards. The banquet hall in the back has a faux grass wall for photos. At another customer’s recommendation, I ordered the diri djondjon rice, which is made with black mushrooms, along with legim, a traditional Haitian stew made with a variety of vegetables and served with a side of fried plantains and coleslaw, and a fruitflavored Jamaican Kola. The legim stew was very thick and the mellow flavors paired amazingly with the salty sweet plantains. The rice was purple and tinted black from the mushrooms; it was moist and had a distinct, earthy flavor. The Kola was not the best pairing for this meal, as it disrupted the earthy palate of the dish with a seriously sweet fruit flavor, similar to cherry cough syrup.

Jamaican

Uncle Joe’s Jerk Chicken located at 1461 E Hyde Park Blvd., Chicago

After I introduced myself to Katrina, who was taking orders at Uncle Joe’s, she promised I’d be back tomorrow once I tried their food. Although I was busy, I kept thinking about my meal the next day! Besides the meal, the vibe of Uncle Joe’s is simple and inviting. Katrina welcomes each customer to the walk-up restaurant with “Hi, sugar! Welcome in love.” Following Katrina’s recommendation, I had the half chicken with jerk seasoning and gravy, which had a building spice level from the red pepper in the jerk seasoning. On the side were salty red beans and rice, a caramelized plantain and a slice of white bread. I also got a side order of mac and cheese. Although the star of the meal is the jerk chicken, the mac and cheese, with its powerful black pepper flavor, stole the show.

Belizean

Redz Belizean Restaurant located at 7605 N Paulina St., Chicago

In Rogers Park, a neighborhood scattered with Caribbean flavors, Redz was already brimming with people on a Friday afternoon. I ordered the oxtail breakfast, served with fried beans, avocado and fried jack, a deep-fried dough. The oxtail came in a stew-like sauce, filled with flavor and melting off the bone. The red beans had a pleasant, peppery kick that complemented the savory oxtail. The perfectly fresh avocado cleanses the palate to enjoy the sweet and puffy fried jack.

Sending queer signals

Flagging isn’t new, but the rules have changed

Story and photos by M Miller

From the hanky code to carabiners, queer people have continuously used fashion to signal their shared identity.

Flagging is defined by Anna Campbell, PhD, associate professor of gender & women’s studies and art history at University of Wisconsin-Madison, as how “queerness is expressed visually.”

The hanky code, which rose in popularity in the ‘70s, is the most well-known flagging tactic, in which queer men wear a specific color handkerchief in one of their back pockets to signal both their queerness and their kinks.

The history of flagging is largely linked to sexuality and safety. When it was not as safe to be openly queer in public, flagging was a way to signify to other people your identity without being noticed by those outside of your community. “The code is dependent on signals not intended to be legible beyond a queer audience,” Campbell says in her essay, “Flagging: Aesthetic Tactics and Queer Signification.”

Flagging may no longer look the way it did in the ‘70s, but many queer youths still regularly make use of the signaling tactic for a number of different reasons such as self-expression or finding a sense of community.

“Having my appearance be a signal to others that I’m queer is extremely important to me hugely because of my childhood... I was never surrounded by queerness,” says Francisca Garcia, 21. “Shaping my style to look more queer has helped me create relationships with people I would have never had before.”

Flagging can be especially important for femininepresenting people, as they can often be mistaken as straight by even their queer peers.

“I think when you are femme-presenting you almost have to try harder,” says Khai Howard-Nance, 20. “I have to include small things like a carabiner even though men will never get it, like straight men will always hit on you.”

While there isn’t one set way to “dress queer” there are little things like Dr. Martens, facial piercings or colored hair, especially when seen in combination, that may tip others off that you’re queer. However, this becomes complicated as queer fashion trends become mainstream.

“I feel like regardless of what I’m wearing that my haircut and piercings specifically give off a pretty queer look,” says Beth Carey, 21. “But it’s hard these days to see one thing about a person’s appearance and try to discern their entire identity through it.”

Catching the beat Fans find community through K-pop

By Aileen Carranza

It’s Saturday night at Tsaocaa, a boba shop in Chinatown, and the space is packed with K-pop fans. At the entrance, a table is covered with keychains, photo cards of Korean idols, fanmade tote bags and decorated “cup sleeves”—a ubiquitous feature of K-pop events that can be wrapped around a drink or kept as a souvenir and give these events their name.

“Cup-sleeve events are basically an event hosted at a café to celebrate an idol or a group for a debut anniversary, birthday, album release or concert,” says Jay Zamiska, one of the event hosts.

Chicago’s Chinatown has become a K-pop hotspot. Zamiska has hosted seven cup-sleeve events since June 2021, as well as monthly K-pop music club nights with fellow host, Jas De Guzman.

“I originally came up with the idea as a joke with my friend. We had a habit of just dancing to K-pop music together in their apartment and I commented how fun it would be if we could actually go to a club that played K-pop,” Zamiska says. Shortly after, Zamiska and De Guzman reached out to Sidetrack, a bar in Northalsted, and proposed the idea of a night for K-pop music and dance performances.

Zamiska and De Guzman heard from the bar soon after their inquiry. After the success of the first night, K-pop parties became a monthly event.

De Guzman has been a K-pop fan since 2009, when K-pop began to grow in the Philippines, where they’re from. They say the Philippines’ proximity to South Korea caused K-pop to grow faster there than it did in the U.S. “Dara from 2NE1’s a great example of this relationship and growth because she became famous in the Philippines before she went to South Korea and joined 2NE1,” De Guzman says. “She was one of my idols growing up because of that.”

Besides the K-pop club nights and cup-sleeve events, De Guzman has also been a part of concert meet-ups and banner projects.

Evodie Kanku, a barista and K-pop fan, works at Vannie’s House, which has welcomed K-pop fans to host events.

“Although it’s busy, it makes me really happy seeing people in my area enjoy K-pop and these events,” Kanku says. “You can

Photos by Bianca Kreusel

(Above) Jay Zamiska hosting the 2023 Happy Yoongi Day Café event, handing out tote bags they've designed and other fanmade merchandise.

“It makes me really happy seeing people in my area enjoying K-pop and these events.”

— Evodie Kanku

tell even the people who just come in for a drink during a cupsleeve [event] are very interested in what’s going on and find it enjoyable.”

Usually the only condition boba shops ask of hosts is that every attendee must buy a drink. Everything else, like merch, freebies, decorations and cup-sleeves are paid for by the hosts themselves.

“I limit myself to a max budget of $400 of my personal income,” De Guzman says. “It makes me happy that my events can be a meeting place for new friends, old friends, collectors, people to discover local fan artists.”

Chicago event host Sharita Lira, 51, says a common misconception is that all fans are teenagers. Lira got into K-pop in 2019, when her daughter became a fan of BTS and they went to the 2019 BTS concert at Soldier Field. Although K-pop was new to her, Lira had experience 20 years earlier hosting picnics in the Chicago area for fans of Duran Duran. “I’m a Durannie so I love pop music and I love live music and performances, and since K-pop artist[s] put on the best performances, it seemed inevitable that I would get into it,” Lira says.

Within the past year ,she’s hosted about eight cup-sleeve events, and has assisted the ATEEZ community and Hello 82 with album release parties. Her daughter has been part of these events as well.

Lira says K-pop has helped bridge a gap between her and her daughter. “I believe sometimes that it’s hard for a mother and daughter to have a relationship, especially when the daughter is a teenager and pretty much growing on her own,” she says. “K-pop has helped us build a better relationship so that she knows that she can talk to me about everything.”

That’s a common theme among cup-sleeve organizers and fans: the events bring people together to celebrate a shared love of K-pop. “Personally, it’s the sense of belonging and being surrounded by people who understand me and my love for K-pop that make these events so important to me,” De Guzman says. “It’s healing, a healing space.”

Invisible ink

A safe space for the “girls, gays and theys”

By Justice Petersen

Photos by Bianca Kreusel

“I’m going to tell you something, and don’t get offended,” the stranger on the Orange Line says when he overhears my friend and me talking about our plans for future ink. (I was planning to get my first tattoo; my friend already had six.) “Tattoos are for men,” he says. “Women shouldn’t get tattoos. They’re for men only.”

His misogyny was the perfect setup for our visit to In The Clouds Tattoo, where the Alvarado sisters, Mila and Dania, say blatant sexism like this is extremely common in their industry. Mila says it’s the main reason most of their clientele is women.

Mila, 25, has worked in the tattoo industry for six years, starting when she was pregnant. Because of this, and being a woman, Mila faced many obstacles when trying to get apprenticeships—obstacles that straight, cisgender white men don’t experience. Like many female apprentices, Mila was stuck with grunt work like cleaning, managing the front desk and doing piercings instead of tattooing clients.

“I had men who started with the same amount of experience as me move a lot faster, and it had nothing to do with talent,” Mila

says. “We’re doing the same tattoos, but they were getting paid for their work and I was still cleaning up after everyone.”

Gender disparity in the tattoo industry is not exclusive to Chicago; it’s a national issue. According to 2023 statistics from career research company Zippia, only 25% of tattoo artists are women and only 6% of tattoo artists are LGBTQ+. In addition, women earn 97 cents for every dollar their male colleagues make.

Sexism in the industry isn’t exactly a new concept, either. In her 2016 women’s history thesis, “The Art of Misogyny: The Struggle Of Female Tattoo Artists In An Industry Of Men,” Alison Waller, who earned her MA in women’s history at Sarah Lawrence College, documents the struggles of women who work in maledominated tattoo shops.

“Both traditionally and today, women typically enter the industry with the help, mentorship—and thus permission—of men,” Waller writes. “Women who do not have prior connections struggle to get a foothold. Due to the culture and rules of the space, it is difficult if not impossible for female artists to gain respect within the confines of the shop.”

Mila Alvarado has several books she requires artists at the shop to study for training.

Mila worked in several tattoo shops over the past six years. At one shop, she recalls a male co-worker who sexually harassed a female client and faced no repercussions, even after the client complained to the shop. By contrast, Mila was scolded when she needed to leave early one day.

“Then I found out from one of the other artists that they had a meeting excluding me ... and the boss is telling them, ‘Oh, you’re really gonna let a girl out-tattoo you?’ because I was one of their biggest earners,” Mila says. “So I ended up leaving there.”

In The Clouds Tattoo originally opened in Pilsen in February 2021, but moved to its new location in the Scottsdale neighborhood in October 2022. The shop’s name comes from how Mila’s family responded to her tattooing goals.

“I think that was a big thing for my family, telling me that my head was in the clouds, because I had a baby and pursuing tattooing was so hard and I wasn’t making any money,” she says. “My family kept telling me ‘get a real job.’ And then I opened my own shop.”

Dania, 22, compares the difficulties female tattoo artists face to hazing. While men often put them down, they also tell women that the reason they’re great tattoo artists is because of their potential sex appeal.

“I know it was said to me as a young woman in the industry, where they’re like, ‘Sex sells. Everyone’s gonna ask for a woman tattoo artist,’” Mila says. “But it’s actually quite the opposite. Men don’t trust us to tattoo them. They think we’re incapable or not as talented for some reason.”

Women aren’t the only ones underappreciated and underrepresented in the inustry. So are people of color. According to Zippia, as of 2023, only 9.3% of tattoo artists are Black and 20% are Latinx, while 57.4% are white.

Since their recent grand opening, the Alvarado sisters say business has been good and they’re hopeful business will grow as summer comes along.

“Men don’t trust us to tattoo them. They think we’re incapable or not as talented for some reason.”

- Mila Alvarado

The shop employs several artists, all of them women. Mila trains them for free (not common in tattoo shops) and teaches the history, art and science of tattooing—basics that even some well-qualified artists don’t know. The artists are also required to read books about the history of tattooing within different cultures. Once the artists finish training, Mila encourages them to start working with clients and making money as soon as possible to create a brand for themselves.

“I love seeing a unique collective of people, so the fact that they all came to me with their own art styles and I could see it in their work ... I wanted them to focus on that,” Mila says.

Tina Islas, 24, who began working at In The Clouds in January 2022, says the shop provides an inviting environment that other tattoo shops don’t have.

“I feel like we’re all very much welcoming to everybody who comes in,” Islas says. “Any time we have clients, we talk to them like they’re our friends.”

In other tattoo shops, Islas says there is often competition between coworkers or the artists won’t take each other seriously.

“Working with a lot of girls that I consider not just my coworkers but my friends ... we all want to be part of a team where we want to work together and support each other,” Islas says. “I like supporting women and I like supporting small businesses, so I want to be there to provide anything I could do so I could help no matter what.”

Mila wishes this wasn’t so uncommon. “I hope we’re not that different from other tattoo shops in Chicago. I hope that other

tattoo shops are aspiring to be better and push boundaries and change up how the industry works,” she says.

The Alvarado sisters would like to see changes to the apprenticeship system that’s keeping women from advancing in the field. Part of the problem is the low barrier to entry: to work in a tattoo shop in Illinois, all you need to do is pass a bloodborne pathogen test—a $15, 10-question, true or false quiz. The rest of the path relies on being mentored by owners and established tattoo artists.

Mila and Dania would like to see artist trainings that qualify for college credits and break the hold that tattoo shops have on their employees. “There’s so much to learn with tattooing, especially the science behind it,” Mila says. “I still learn stuff myself, reading scientific things about tattooing and how the ink is injected into the skin.”

Mila and Dania aim to change the industry, but they’re starting with In The Clouds. They’re going to finish remodeling their current location and, by next October, they plan to open a second location in Pilsen. They also aim to expand their current offerings. Right now, their services include piercings, lip tints, facials, waxing, tooth gems, and eyelash and eyebrow services. Eventually, In The Clouds will become a half spa/half tattoo shop. The Alvarado sisters envision the shop providing spa services during the day and tattooing in the evening.

What do they encourage others to do?

“Get more tattoos,” Dania says. “Get more tattoos by women tattoo artists.”

Sisters Dania (left) and Mila Alvarado give aspiring female tattoo artists a safe space to work.

Anything but ketchup

Take

this quiz to find out which Chicago hot dog restaurant you are

By M Miller Illustrations by Randy Olsen

Chicago is known worldwide for its harsh wind, beautiful architecture and hot dogs. Hot dogs have been an integral part of Chicago culture since the ‘30s, when the Chicago style dog became a staple. But whether you prefer Vienna Beef or Beyond Meat, just don’t ask for ketchup.

Echo asked Monica Eng, an Axios Chicago reporter and author of Made in Chicago: Stories Behind 30 Great Hometown Bites, to tell us about the best hot dog places in Chicago. Now get ready to find out which one you are!

Q 1: Pick a deadly sin

a - Wrath

b - Greed

c - Envy

d - Gluttony

e - Pride

Q 2: Pick a forbidden snack

a - Lava

b - Salt lamp

c - Polly Pocket clothes

d - Packing peanuts

e - Orbeez

Q 3: Pick a song

a - “Kill Bill” by SZA

b - “She Will Be Loved” by Maroon 5

c - “Pink + White” by Frank Ocean

d - “Life is a Highway” by Rascal Flatts

e - “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac

Q 4: What is your zodiac sign?

a - Aries, Capricorn or Sagittarius

b - Cancer or Pisces

c - Leo or Libra

d - Aquarius or Gemini

e - Scorpio, Virgo or Taurus

Q 5: Pick a conspiracy theory

a - Birds aren’t real

b - The moon landing was faked

c - The royal family planned Princess Diana’s death

d - Avril Lavigne is dead and was replaced with a clone

e - The Titanic was sunk on purpose

Q 6: Pick a planet

a - Mars

b - Earth

c - Venus

d - Pluto

e - Mercury

Q 7: Pick a source of light

a - Your microwave at 2 a.m.

b - Fluorescent overhead lights

c - Candlelight

d - Fairy lights

e - Sunlight

Q 8: Pick a very specific love language

a - Bullying them

b - Sending them funny videos

c - Knowing their coffee order

d - Making them playlists

e - Peeling fruit for them

Q 9: Pick a hot dog topping

a - Peppers

b - Mustard

c - Relish

d - Onions

e - Tomatoes

Q 10: Lastly, pick a random item from our staff page

a - A painting of a clown

b - A necklace

c - A Nintendo DS

d - A tissue box cover that looks like a bathroom

e - A blanket

Mostly A - You are Wieners Circle

You are Wieners Circle. The food here isn’t the star of the show; it’s being verbally berated by complete strangers. You either show people affection by being playfully mean or you have a degradation kink. Either way, maybe ease up on bullying your friends—they’re literally crying, dude. Weiners Circle is open until the wee hours of the morning, so you probably stay up late and have more caffeine in your system than water. Very chaotic neural energy.

Mostly B - You are Portillo’s

You are Portillo’s. It’s is a Chicago classic and you’d be hard pressed to find a Chicagoan who doesn’t like Portillo’s hot dogs. You’re very likeable and friendly, but you’re so concerned with how other people see you that you care more about being nice than anything else. You would probably rather eat something you didn’t order than inconvenience your waiter. Grow a backbone! Try something new! Don’t give that person your last piece of gum. They won’t kill you; it’s OK.

Mostly C - You are Gene and Jude’s

You are Gene and Jude’s. Even though Gene and Jude’s is technically in the suburbs, it has remained a renowned favorite among Chicagoans for 77 years. Basically, you’re the “it” girl—a classic, if you will. Boo-hoo everyone wants to be you; it must be so hard being so hot and sexy and fun to be around. You’re so popular, some people might even think you couldn’t possibly have any flaws. That would be because they only see the version of you that you’ve perfectly curated for the world to see! Try letting people in some time, or maybe some therapy.

Mostly D - You are Superdawg

You are Superdawg. It’s unique for its car-hop ordering that has been maintained since it opened in 1948, you and Superdawg aren’t like other girls. Just like the wide variety of menu options, you likely have many different facets to your personality, yet you still manage to have an individuality complex. You might even be the type of person who says they were “born in the wrong generation.” You’re different, but you’re still just a hot dog stand, babe. Stay humble.

Mostly E - You are Fat Johnnie’s

You are Fat Johnnie’s. With classsically predictable menu items, you know exactly what you’re getting when you go to here. What you see is what you get. You’re so reliable that you’re probably at the top of your friends’ list for who they’d call to help them hide a body. You’re blunt and don’t care what others think, which might get you into some shit. You’re probably really good for the trash talking phase after a breakup, but maybe leave the “I told you so” at home.

An education in empathy

A

local Waldorf school reminds us about what really matters

By Yoselyn Castro

Photos by Liina Raud

It’s the morning rush in Chicago: time to drop the children off at school, hurry to work and get things done. The expressways are full of cars and the trains run faster and more frequently. You can’t slow down time on the corner of Ashland Avenue and West 13th Street, but there it is: cracking wood, baaing sheep and children skipping through a garden.

This is Urban Prairie Waldorf School. One of the school’s gardens faces Ashland Avenue, giving passersby a glimpse of green in the spring and summer. Inside, toddlers to preteens are learning to prosper academically and socially.

The first Waldorf school was opened in Germany in 1919. It was founded by Austrian philosopher and scientist Rudolf Steiner, with support from the owner of the Waldorf-AstoriaZigarettenfabrik tobacco company, Emil Molt. Steiner considered the arts and physical movement to be as important as academics in the growth of emotionally strong adults who can be positive forces in the world. He believed that children’s capacities unfold in three developmental stages: an early childhood of imitation and play, a middle childhood of imagination and art, and an adolescence of cognitive learning. Those stages are the foundation of the school’s focus on the head, hands and heart as each child grows into a “whole” person.

In the photos that follow, photographer Liina Raud captures the intricacies that come with engaging children’s heads, hands and hearts into productive learning. Instead of sitting at a desk and listening to lectures or watching slides about animals, the children are taught to care for sheep. They gain a sense of community from caring for a classroom pet. They understand that individualism will take us only so far, so they collaborate on multiple levels. Taking care of animals requires empathy, teamwork and community. Shared labor helps the children appreciate everyone’s input.

Raud seeks to capture the children’s experience of active learning through productive explorations. These lessons are the seeds of the cycle and the children are the sprouts. They’ll take what they learn and apply it to their adult lives, spreading their compassion and eagerness to learn. The learning doesn’t stop with them, however. Stringing these photos together is a thread of hope that anyone who sees these photos, regardless of age, will consider making empathy an essential factor in the way they engage with society.

An education that centers children’s heads, hands and hearts.

The day is divided between academics, group and private music lessons, and hands-on activities such as baking and woodworking.

The school has its own farm where children can tend to sheep, goats and plants. Children are also trusted to roam the area and create their own games.

The next generation

Clubs have closed and musicians have died, but Chicago still has the blues

By M Miller

Photos by Taylor Priola

The migration of legendary artists like Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and Howlin’ Wolf from the South to Chicago was a catalyst for the birth of the Chicago blues as we know it. Derived from predecessors like the Delta blues, one of the earliest styles of blues music, which originated in Mississippi, Chicago blues has always been unique in sound.

Although it’s known for featuring impressive rhythm sections, amplification and an electric flare in the music, Chicago blues also prioritizes community. “There’s blues fans and blues clubs and blues festivals all over the world, but Chicago is the birthplace of modern music,” says Linda Cain, publisher and managing editor of the Chicago Blues Guide

The history of Chicago blues is so extensive that there are countless books, articles and documentaries detailing everything from Maxwell Street to the life and death of Chess Records. But what does the future of the blues look like?

Fernando Jones, founder of Fernando Jones’ Blues Kids Foundation, has one answer: younger generations of blues artists.

“The blues are the root of American music, right? And what is the root of that root? Kids,” Jones says. “In order to keep that tree healthy, and those roots healthy, you got to nurture those kids.”

Every year, children as young as five years old join Fernando Jones’ Blues Camp, where they learn about blues history, song writing, performing and more. Several of the kids who’ve gone through the program later enrolled at Columbia College Chicago, where the blues camp was founded, to further their education.

As a result of the camp and the endurance of blues in Chicago, there are countless young people, many under the age of 30, making their mark on the blues scene.

“So I know for me, when I’ve seen younger people or not your stereotypical person doing blues or whatever, I’ve gotten inspiration from that,” says 30-year-old blues musician Ivy Ford. “And then, when I’m performing, other young people see me and they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s cool. I want to do that.’ And it’s kind of [cyclical].”

Still, younger people are sometimes taken less seriously when they perform a type of music typically associated with a previous generation. “I’ll go up on stage, knock their socks off, and then I have two mother*ers who just saw me on stage come and ask me, ‘What do you have to sing the blues about?’” says Nick Alexander, 22, the son of legendary Chicago blues artist Linsey Alexander. “Experience is one of the greatest things in the world, but experience doesn’t [correlate with] age.”

Regardless of age, the blues seem to draw people in for the same reason—how honest the music is. The lyrics can be witty or suggestive, but they are consistently emotive. No matter the subject matter, a good blues musician just needs “to feel what [they’re] doing,” says Alexander.

“Blues are very authentic and very raw,” says Mark Maddox, talent buyer at Buddy Guy’s Legends. “Sometimes people think [the blues are] just sad, but no, it’s happy [too]. It just encompasses a range of emotions.”

Ivy Ford playing her weekly set at Rosa’s Lounge.

Gen Z and Millennials’ adoration for the blues isn’t surprising when you look at the world they’ve inherited. Between concerns about climate change, racial injustice, gun violence and personal finances, most young people have plenty to sing the blues about.

Younger musicians don’t just love listening to and playing the blues—they’re innovating it. By changing up rhythms and styling and defying expectations, they’re creating a new sound for the future of blues.

“I love that aspect of fusing old school stuff with new music because it’s straightforward paying homage to the original blues and roots music, but then it also kind of, in turn, makes for a rather unique style,” Ford says.

Even though liberties are being taken with blues music, there is still room to pay homage to the past, whether it’s through styling, using old songs as inspiration, or even doing covers. Jones believes in teaching kids to try something new to ensure the growth of the blues genre.

“I believe programs that nurture and foster kids give that opportunity to know that it’s OK to be original and OK to pay respect to the past, but you got to have something happening for the future,” Jones says.

However, some younger artists are determined to uphold tradition. “I want someone to come and hear me and I want them to hear me as a real blues musician. I don’t think what other people are doing is bad. I love it. I just can’t [do that],” Alexander says.

Whether they choose to stick to tradition or branch out and try something new, this new generation of blues musicians is making their scene more inclusive. Black women were at the forefront of blues history, but they didn’t always get as much credit for their contributions.

“I’m not the only female guitar player and singer by any means, but you don’t see a lot of us,” Ford says. “And so that in itself [makes me] stick out kind of like a sore thumb just by default.”

Additionally, being a queer blues musician can complicate things. There have always been queer blues musicians, like Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday, but their identities were often glossed over and ignored. When matters of toxic masculinity are thrown into the mix, it can be even harder to be accepted as a queer man in the industry.

“I’ve had musicians in the scene tell me [my] sexuality doesn’t have to be into it, whatever the fuck that means,” Alexander says. “You’re telling me not to be myself. And here’s the thing. I’m gonna talk about [whatever]. If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

These new sounds and diverse experiences are ensuring that the blues will remain not just alive, but healthy because, as Jones says, when the pioneers of Chicago blues are gone, there needs to be someone to carry the torch.

“The greatest song [is] always yet to be written,” Jones says.

Fernando Jones (above) mentoring kids in the Fernando Jones’ Blues Camp. (Photo courtesy of Fernando Jones.)

Wear this, not that A guide to sustainable, affordable fashion

By Khaliyah Franklin

Photos by Taylor Priola

Loving fashion and loving the planet can seem like a contradiction, especially if you’re on a budget. Fast fashion is harmful in many ways, from the pollution caused by factories to the sweatshops many workers suffer in to the waste that’s produced when clothing is discarded.

We sought out tips on dressing sustainably from Lauren Downing Peters, a fashion studies scholar and professor at Columbia College Chicago who helps brands and designers develop more inclusive and sustainable business and design practices, and from Jada Moore, who is working toward her BFA in fashion design, wears only thrifted clothes, and sells clothing on Depop.

Here is what we learned:

Thifted hat +

Columbia jacket +

Air Jordan Retro 11 low basketball shoes

Do’s

Reduce: Focus on combining elements of your wardrobe to create something new rather than buying new items. Downing Peters says it’s not difficult to take something old and upcycle it into something new. Dyeing your old jeans, cutting up an old t-shirt into a crop top, or using a string belt from a dress as a headband are some examples of what you can do.

Reuse: If you don’t like what’s in your closet, buy something from someone else’s. “It is quite simple in 2023 to find whatever you could want secondhand and for less,” Downing Peters says.

Recycle: A lot of clothing, unfortunately, ends up in land fills. To prevent this, when you’re done with a garment, don’t throw it away. Attend a Chicago clothing swap event where you can trade clothes you no longer wear for ones you want. You can also donate old clothing to the Brown Elephant, Salvation Army or Goodwill.

Repair: A rip or snag doesn’t have to be the end of a garment. Instead of discarding a damaged item, you can learn to patch your pants or jacket or sew a new button on a shirt.

Don’ts

Get

“greenwashed”:

Many fast fashion brands are claiming that their garments are more environmentally friendly than they are. Even though a company may have increased the percentage of recycled fiber in their products or reduced the quantity of plastic packaging, they still have a heavy carbon footprint due to their manufacturing processes and the eventual landfilling of garments that aren’t designed to last. “I feel like greenwashing is just a marketing strategy for some fast fashion brands to get people to believe they want better for the environment, so be on the lookout for brands like that,” Moore says.

Over wash: Every time you wash your clothes, you shorten their lifespan. You also use energy and water. If your clothing is made of polyester, you add microplastics to the environment. “We don’t really know what the long-term effects of microplastics are in our water system,” Downing Peters says. When you must wash your clothes, use cold water and minimize your use of laundry soap.

Vintage venue A drink and a dance at Dorothy

By Dorothy Green

Photos by M Miller

Past a red door off a street in Ukrainian Village, there’s a stairwell down to a large, 1970s-themed room filled with vintage furniture and a classic, u-shaped bar. Populating this space on any given night, as the clock ticks past 8 p.m., are young lesbians searching for a drink and a dance. Though spaces catering to them exist, they’re few and far between in Chicago. The only lesbian bars are on the far north side of the city. For those who don’t live near the glut of queer spaces that make up Andersonville and Northalsted, Dorothy is the place to be.

According to The Lesbian Bar Project, there are only 27 lesbian bars operating in the U.S. today. These numbers shift a little bit, depending on who you ask and what day of the week it is, but when compared to the 200 lesbian bars across the country in 1980, the trend is self-evident. These watering holes are an important part of queer history, from the first gasps of queer revolution at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco in 1966, to the roar felt when the first bricks

landed on cop cars at Stonewall two years later, to today.

Gay bars aren’t just bars, they’re places of community meant for those who aren’t allowed to gather with the rest of polite society. While bars for gay men rise and take over whole neighborhoods like Northalsted, they can be singular in their clientele, favoring a certain type of cisgender homosexual man.

“The majority of people feel very comfortable and safe. They don’t really understand what it feels like to walk into a space and feel like you’re the only one of something,” says Zoe Schur, owner of Dorothy. “To walk into a space and feel surrounded by like-minded people who are a part of your community, I think that’s important.”

Greta X, who cohosts the burlesque event Lust For Life at Dorothy, says the space directly contributes to the feel of their show. Lust For Life is one of several of Dorothy’s events, ranging from screenings of Yellow

Jackets and The L Word to open mic events like Fruit Salad.

“We’re just able to offer a different experience because of the venue we’re in,” says Greta X, citing the presence of an art gallery to use as a dressing room as opposed to a kitchen as a major sell when trying to lure performers. Their shows are part of a new wave in queer nightlife as well, selling out all seven of their shows since their founding a little under a year ago.

“[When] we think of the queer neighborhoods in Chicago, we think Boystown and Andersonville. Dorothy is one of the handful of queer bars, let alone lesbian bars, that’s really outside of these areas,” says Schur, who’d like to see queer spaces make a mark on neighborhoods outside of the north side enclaves they’ve traditionally been kept inside. After all, queer people don’t only live in these small slices of Chicago. They populate the entire city. If places like Dorothy keep growing, other lesbian spaces will, too.

Shifting gears

By Dorothy Green

Photos by Liina Raud

On Sunday afternoons in Rogers Park, the Recyclery does what it does on most days: teach open shop classes on bicycle repair. Participants can bring in their own bicycles, or they can refurbish ones from the pile of donated and rescued bicycles that rest in the back of the space, waiting to be fixed and ridden away to a new life.

But on Sundays, no one in the shop is a cisgender man. Everyone with a wrench is there for the same reason: to learn to work on bicycles in an environment that doesn’t focus on masculinity.

“The cycling community all over the nation is very centered on masculine people. I would say it’s hard for femmes to get into biking because there’s a lot of gatekeeping around knowledge about repair,” says mechanic Kingston Smartt-Nalli, 29, the host of the open shop. These masculine influences can be intimidating and keep marginalized people out of the shop, or frustrate them by not allowing them to learn.

The Recyclery’s Femme, Trans, Women and Non-Binary open shop night provides space that’s free from macho culture. On FTWN-B night, Smartt-Nalli teaches anyone who identifies as femme, trans, a woman or nonbinary how to repair their bike and ride it on Chicago’s streets, while also introducing them to the Recyclery’s bike repair and refurbishment-based mission.

Smartt-Nalli has run the program for the past year, after it died out when the last host left.

The Recyclery hosts other educational programs and open shop spaces, but this is the only gender-specific one.

“When I first started learning bike repair, it was really hard for me. I didn’t feel comfortable going to bike shops,” says Smartt-Nalli, who recalls bringing his bike to a shop to complete a repair he didn’t have the tools for. “They didn’t fix the bike...They just did something that I knew wouldn’t fix the issue. So when I said that, they were like, ‘Oh, just trust me.’”

Bailey Braun, 33, who’s been working on bikes for 16 years, has had similar experiences.

“Something that keeps me from going into more random bike shops is the fact that I’m trans, and cycling culture does have a tendency to be pretty masculine and macho,” she says.

These are the experiences that make the Recyclery’s open shop nights so important. So is the opportunity to get a bike for cheap.

Rain Rothman, 23, a non-binary person, found the Recyclery while searching for

ways to find an affordable bicycle. Rothman is part of the Recyclery’s “Earn-a-Bike” program, which offers a free bicycle to anyone who puts in 16 hours during the open shops, learning to take a bike apart and fix it so that they will be able to repair their own bike and keep it working.

“I saw the ‘Earn-a-Bike’ program and was like, ‘Oh my God, this is perfect,’” Rothman says. They hadn’t ridden a bicycle since they were 13, and the high price point of a new bicycle had kept them from getting back into cycling as an adult. “This was a good opportunity to get a bike, so I started [the program] and I’ve come to really enjoy bike repair along the way.”

Tzippora Rhodes, 37, has been with the Recyclery for over a decade. She has watched this event shift from a monthly event to its current weekly schedule. “When I see that I’m the only non-cis man in the room, and there’s nine or 10 other people, I get sad,” Rhodes says. Now, she looks around the room and sees people like Braun and Rothman, who are regulars. That’s the goal of the program.

“We’re a largely volunteer-led organization. The way people become program leaders and hosts is by coming and building their skills and deciding to take on added responsibility,” Rhodes says. She hopes that even one or two attendees who’ve stopped in to get their first bike or to learn more about repair will stick around and pass that knowledge along. That’s how spaces like the Recyclery survive—by creating a community.

The Recyclery is queering the bike repair scene, one frame at a time

Top left: Bailey Braun tests the brake lever on a bicycle.

Top right: Rainn Rothman inserts a seating tube.

Bottom left: Kingston Smartt-Nalli demonstrates taking brake calipers apart.

Bottom right: Smartt-Nalli (left) explains a repair to Braun (right).

That’s a wrap! A crossword puzzle to thank you for reading

Across

4. The city Glenn Morey was adopted from

8. Gender studies professor Lisa Diamond says 2008-2016 was a period of ____

10. Scientists in what field found that plants respond to sound?

15. Mila and Dania Alvarado run “In the ____ Tattoo Shop”

16. Ewe might be surprised to find this farm animal at Urban Prairie Waldorf School

17. Age Bianca Kreusel recieved her autism diagnosis

18. One of the biggest causes of wildlife depletion

21. Term for the fear of insects

23. Name for a type of headcovering worn by some Muslim women

Down

1. The process of gardening without the use of soil

2. Justin Stockton, who owns 10 battle vests, plays guitar in this rock band

3. Dish that stole the show at Uncle Joe’s Jerk Chicken

5. The four do’s of sustainable fashion are reduce, reuse, recycle and ____

6. Number of lesbian bars in the U.S.

7. The state where Delta blues originated

9. The Recyclery’s free bicycle program

11. Echo member with a Nintendo DS in their staff photo

12. Breaking the cycle of generational trauma doesn’t have to include having children, according to this source

13. Number of cup-sleeve events hosted by Jay Zamiska since June 2021

14. Hot dog restaurant with car-hop style ordering

19. Abbreviation for the first Black art institution in the U.S. (located in Bronzeville)

20. The name of Frankie Knuckle’s club that opened in 1982

22. Name of the accessory that was famously part of the flagging trend called the ____ code

Story and photo by M Miller

The things we carry Meet the Echo staff

Photos by Taylor Priola

“My brother stole this from an undisclosed, abandoned location. After I left Missouri, I took it with me. It’s a cool thing to hang on the wall, but it’s also a good reminder where home is.”

M Miller Seed Section Editor, Writer & Photographer

“It [tissue box] was my great grandparents’ from the ‘40s. It was passed down to my sister, so I stole it from her when she went to college.”

Justice Petersen

Spread Section Editor & Writer

“My mom gave me this necklace for Christmas two years ago. I put it on that day and I’ve never taken it off. The pendant is a bear walking through the mountains under the sun. My mom says I’m the bear and she’s the sun watching over me.”

Photo Editor & Photographer

“The tattoo on my arm is a copy of a print that my twin sister made. The two figures are supposed to symbolize the two of us. She’s my best friend, so its nice to carry something from her with me at all times.”

Photo Editor & Photographer

“It’s a piece of Greenland gold shaped like a heart. It’s from my Danish host family, who reshaped my cultural and visual intelligence 17 years ago.”

Production Manager & Writer

“Hershey is a polar bear stuffed animal I got from my boyfriend as a Christmas gift in 2019. Hershey’s not as pristine as he once was, from all the traveling he does, but he’ll always be my favorite stuffy.”

Taylor Priola

Liina Raud

Riley Schroeder

Dorothy Green Sprout Section Editor & Writer

Changeis inevitable. Whether we’re moving with houses, traveling away from home for school, or getting a new job, the items we keep with us throughout these experiences symbolize the different versions of ourselves we have been and the people

we have yet to become. We chose momentoes we have kept throughout big changes in our lives and still carry with us to this day. These are the things we carry.

Yoselyn Castro Story Editor & Writer

“My grandma passed away seven years ago and I’ve slept with her favorite blanket every night since then. Over time, I’ll lose my memories of her voice and her familiar scent of rose, but I’ll always feel her when I touch this blanket.”

Khaliyah Franklin

Story Editor & Writer

“Pooh bear has always been my best friend and it’s dear to me because my mom bought it when I was a little girl.”

Bianca Kreusel Story Editor & Photographer

“The [Webkinz bunny] is the very first stuffed animal that I could remember getting. It has watched me grow and mature through the years.”

Aileen Carranza Copy Editing Chief & Writer

“My Nintendo DS was a gift from my parents. My younger sister has a matching DS and growing up, we always played as duos, whether it was racing in Mario Kart or fighting over who was Mario in Super Mario Bros. Even as an adult, I hold my DS close to my heart.”

Karolina Dziatkowiec

Fact-Checking Chief & Writer

“This book, The Yellow Chick, has stayed with me since third grade. In my elementary school, we wrote and illustrated our own books. I wrote mine about my mom. This book reminds me how much I’ve loved writing since I was young.”

Fact-Checking Chief & Writer

“La Virgen de Guadalupe bracelet holds a special place in my heart. For the first time in 29 years, my mom went back home to Guerrero, Mexico. She gifted me this once she came back to Chicago in 2021. I’m proud of who I am.

Estoy orgullosa de mis raices.”

Yasmin Mendiola

Photo by Liina Raud

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