Chicago magazine 05/21

1O GREAT HIKES MAY 2021

B LU F FS , C A N YO N S , DU N E S , WI LD LI F E , AND MORE W ITH I N A N E A SY D RI V E PLUS

A guide to the Outerbelt, Chicago’s new megahike This waterfall in Matthiessen State Park is just two hours from downtown.

What COVID Survivors Know Abe Lincoln’s Slippers and Other Hidden Museum Treasures The Local Arts Scene Faces Its Race Problem

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FIND YOUR PERFECT BEACH® IN SOUTH WALTON, FLORIDA

Located in Northwest Florida, South Walton draws visitors from across the Southeast to 26 miles of the world’s most beautiful sugar-white sand and turquoise water. With 16 unique beachside neighborhoods, each with its own personality and style, South Walton offers luxury accommodations, outdoor adventure, eclectic shopping, unique art galleries, and award-winning restaurants to visitors who treasure the area’s distinctive character and relaxing atmosphere.

FAMILY ROMANCE

Surrounded by pristine natural beauty, the 16 beach neighborhoods of South Walton, Florida are filled with romantic diversions for the perfect getaway you deserve—from a couple’s spa treatment to a sunset glass of wine or a dinner overlooking the shimmering Gulf of Mexico.

Some of the best sunsets you’ll see all year happen in the fall.

More than 200 miles of trails invite nature lovers to observe rare birds while hiking through state parks and forests. The 19-mile Timpoochee Trail beckons runners and bicyclists past beautiful white sand beaches, rare coastal dune lakes, and panoramic views of stunning scenic beauty.

Ideally located along the beautiful white sand beaches of Northwest Florida, South Walton is easily accessible from nearly every part of the United States. With more than 40 percent of the land in South Walton under conservation, vast nature preserves create a relaxed respite not often found in beach destinations and offer visitors endless opportunities to explore.

NATURALIST GIRLS GETAWAY

Simple walks on the beach and time spent with loved ones are the moments that become memories. With a relaxing atmosphere of sugar-white sand beaches, open spaces, natural beauty, and a vast array of activities throughout the year, South Walton is the home you’ll want to return to season after season.

Generations of families have flocked to South Walton’s sugar-white sand beaches, where the turquoise waters of the Gulf of Mexico set the backdrop for treasured memories. While modern amenities offer luxury and adventure, South Walton is still anchored by the simplicity of time spent with loved ones in a beautiful, natural setting.

Beautiful beach vistas, eclectic shops, and luxury accommodations are all part of South Walton’s distinctive character and relaxing atmosphere. This upscale yet laid-back destination was named one of “The World’s Greatest Places” by TIME Magazine, making it the perfect place for your next getaway with friends at any time throughout the year.

Unique outdoor activities are abundant, with four state parks, a 15,000-acre state forest, 15 rare coastal dune lakes, and the Gulf of Mexico.

Beyond traditional sunning and swimming, adventurous travelers will enjoy stand-up paddleboarding and kayaking, fishing on the Gulf of Mexico, or exploring near shore reefs.

Experience a diverse culinary scene at one of more than 200 restaurants highlighting a fusion of flavors created by award-winning chefs using fresh-from-the-Gulf seafood and locally sourced ingredients. South Walton, Florida’s 16 unique beach neighborhoods offer a diverse array of tasty eats, from casual beachside restaurants to perfect date night dining.

www.VisitSouthWalton.com

PARADISE SHARED Framed by pristine natural beauty, South Walton offers endless opportunities to relax and make cherished memories.

Find your perfect beach at VisitSouthWalton.com.

MIRAMAR BEACH • SEASCAPE • SANDESTIN • DUNE ALLEN • GULF PLACE • SANTA ROSA BEACH • BLUE MOUNTAIN BEACH GRAYTON BEACH • WATERCOLOR • SEASIDE • SEAGROVE • WATERSOUND • SEACREST • ALYS BEACH • ROSEMARY BEACH • INLET BEACH

F E AT U R E S

Volume 70 Q Number 5

CHIMAY 78 Chicago’s Arts Scene Has a Race Problem Can a 7-year-old antiracism nonprofit solve it? The city’s biggest cultural institutions are betting heavily that it can.

By J. Howard Rosier

PHOTOGRAPH: ON THE COVER (MATTHIESSEN STATE PARK) MTRUCHON/GETTY IMAGES

Pictured: Enrich Chicago director Nina Sánchez

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58

68

THE 10 BEST DAY-TRIP HIKES

WHAT COVID SURVIVORS KNOW

OBJECTS OF FASCINATION

Forget the tent or hotel room. These destinations offer abundant natural beauty, from canyons and waterfalls to prairies and dunes, within three hours of the city.

By Deborah D. Douglas

As these testimonies reveal, those who have had the most severe cases face profound and often lasting effects that experts are still struggling to understand.

By Cindy Kuzma

Among the hundreds of thousands of treasures carefully stashed away at the Chicago History Museum are eight unique artifacts, each a window into the city’s past.

Photography by Powell Jordano

Photograph by MICHAEL ZAJAKOWSKI

M AY 2 0 2 1 | C H I C AG O

5

D E PA R T M E N T S

CHIMAY 19 THE 312 The unraveling of the Illinois Republican Party … The twominute guide to the Exelon split and what it means for ComEd customers … A mansion with a mobile history in Lake Forest.

Ben Lustbader and Sarah MispagelLustbader of Loaf Lounge, page 38

27 FOUND A treasure-trove of antiques in Northfield … Ireland’s favorite fast-fashion spot comes to the Loop … A vibrationpowered workout … How Real Housewives of New York City star Tinsley Mortimer stays strong.

35 TABLE Cocktail mixers that couldn’t be easier … A spring veggie recipe from Dear Margaret … Four new options to get your bread fix …

Where to eat this month.

Page 27

85 GO On their new album, Damon Locks and Black Monument Ensemble channel a chaotic time of pandemic and protest through a highenergy musical mix.

IN EVERY ISSUE Q From the Editor, 12 Q Inside Peek, 12 Q Talk to Us, 14 Q Instagram Contest, 16 Q Backroom: George Wendt, 104

Page 24

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PHOTOGRAPH: (BREAD) JEFF MARINI; (HOME) JEFF BARA; (TABLE) RYAN SEGEDI

43 CHICAGO STORIES LaVelle Sykes, who owns a sneaker and fashion boutique on the South Side, is a Black man with a plan in a city that too often eats its own.

By Scoop Jackson

We’d like to give you A TRIBUNE PUBLICATION EDITOR IN CHIEF AND PUBLISHER

Susanna Homan EDITORIAL EXECUTIVE EDITOR Terrance Noland DESIGN DIRECTOR Katherine Bryja Shady FEATURES EDITOR David McAninch SENIOR WRITER Bryan Smith SENIOR EDITORS Tal Rosenberg, Lauren Williamson DINING EDITOR Amy Cavanaugh CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Mark Bazer, Kim Brooks, Mark Caro, Tom Chiarella, Marcia Froelke Coburn, Deborah D. Douglas, Ted C. Fishman, Alison Goldman, Adrienne Gunn, Nina Kokotas Hahn, Cate Huguelet , John Kessler, Cindy Kuzma, Rebecca Makkai, Jake Malooley, Edward McClelland, Datrianna Meeks, Heidi Mitchell, Mike Thomas CHIEF CONTRIBUTING DINING CRITIC Jeff Ruby CONTRIBUTING CULTURE CRITICS

Meaghan Garvey, Graham Meyer, Kris Vire, Claire Voon, Lauren Warnecke CONTRIBUTING COPY EDITORS

Robert Loerzel, Amy Schroeder EDITORIAL INTERNS Molly Bryson, Megan Sauer DIGITAL PRODUCER Lynette Smith CONTRIBUTING DIGITAL EDITORS

Skyler Aikerson, Whet Moser

ENJOY A NIGHT ON US!

Plan a getaway to Springfield, Missouri, between April 1 and June 27, 2021 and we’ll pick up the bill for one of your hotel nights!

Participation is simple and is designed to fill your trip with some of the best food and fun that Springfield has to offer.

How it works:

Visit the local attractions and food and drink establishments participating in this program between April 1 and June 27, 2021. Then, make a qualified purchase at THREE (3) attractions, THREE (3) food & drink establishments and spend at least TWO (2) nights in a participating hotel, and we will pay for one of your nights! *Hotel rooms must be reserved 48 hours before you plan on arriving. *Limited to the first 3,000 participants.

Point your smartphone camera at this QR code to go to the registration page on our website or go to

springfieldmo.org/night-on-us Be sure to check out the Terms and Conditions so you know exactly how to get your free night.

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C H I C AG O | M AY 2 0 2 1

Explore Springfield at

SpringfieldMo.org

DEPUTY DESIGN DIRECTOR Emily Johnson PHOTO DIRECTOR Michael Zajakowski ART DIRECTOR Jessica Sedgwick CONTRIBUTING DIGITAL IMAGING SPECIALIST

Andrew Davis CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

Jeff Marini, Lisa Predko, Ryan Segedi CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATORS

Pablo Lobato, Kathryn Rathke PREPRESS/DESIGN MANAGER Tom Kadzielawski PRODUCTION SPECIALIST Julie Szamlewski GRAPHIC DESIGNER Haleigh Brown

Member, American Society of Magazine Editors ASME works to preserve editorial independence and speaks out on public policy issues, particularly those pertaining to the First Amendment.

Chicago (ISSN 0362-4595; Vol. 70, No. 5, May 2021) is published monthly by Chicago magazine, 560 W. Grand Ave., Chicago, IL 60654, 312222-8999, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tribune Publishing Company.

Periodicals postage paid at Chicago, IL, and additional mailing offices.

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Lyric On Demand DISCOVER LYRIC’S VIRTUAL SEASON

Explore an exciting and dynamic selection of FREE virtual programs, available for streaming whenever you like, on Lyric’s Facebook and YouTube channels.

In-depth masterclasses

Behind-thescenes features

Virtual concerts

Audio streaming on demand

More info at lyricopera.org/OnDemand Programming innovations from Lyric Opera of Chicago are generously made possible by Sylvia Neil and Daniel Fischel, Patricia A. Kenney and Gregory J. O’Leary, Susan and Robert Morrison, an Anonymous Donor, and Virginia Tobiason.

Photos: Kyle Flubacker, Lyric Opera of Chicago

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C H I C AG O | M AY 2 0 2 1

Cozy wide open Up sp acand es

with happy faces

When you’re in a pre y great place, the pace is what you make it. It’s where you can pour out your energy, or sit back for a second pour.

And where every speed---or lack thereof--- is another reminder you’re in a pre y great place.

TraverseCity.c TraverseCity.com

INSIDE PEEK

Life After COVID

Behind the Mask TURNS OUT THAT SHOOTING A REM-

VEN WITH THE WORST OF THE PAN-

demic seeming ly behind us and Contributing writer vaccines more widely available, the tes- Cindy Kuzma timonies in “What COVID Survivors Know” (page 58) remain vital reading. “It’s important to remember that there are still going to be people dealing with this,” says contributing writer Cindy Kuzma, who interviewed 10 Chicagoans who had severe cases. Most now face long-term effects, ranging from inexplicable hair loss to life-threatening heart trouble.

They were ravaged not only by the disease but by what was necessary to keep them alive, including long stints on ventilators and in hospital beds. Long after being discharged, some found themselves at rehab centers learning to swallow, walk, and talk again. One survivor was relearning to kneel because he wanted to properly propose to his girlfriend, who had been at his side throughout his recovery.

Another told Kuzma he believes he pulled through so that he could share his harrowing tale and prompt people to get vaccinated. In late March, when I talked to Kuzma, she had an appointment for the first of her two shots. She was looking forward to being able to visit her parents, whom she hadn’t seen in more than a year. “Everyone has their own calculus,” she said. “To me, getting the vaccine is an easy one.”

nant of John Dillinger is more difficult than actually shooting John Dillinger. For our glimpse of the Raiders of the Lost Ark– esque collections storage of the Chicago History Museum (page 68), photographer Powell Jordano had to elegantly portray the bank robber’s death mask, but its former owner had mounted it in a wooden box, and removing it would have caused damage. The workaround? Jordano gingerly slipped a linen cloth beneath the mask under the watchful eyes of the anxious museum staff.

E

Susanna Homan Editor in Chief and Publisher 12

C H I C AG O | M AY 2 0 2 1

For his first story for Chicago, lifelong South Shore resident Robert “Scoop” Jackson, senior features writer at ESPN and author of The Game Is Not a Game, wrote a moving account of his friendship with sneaker store owner LaVelle Sykes (page 43). But Jackson points out this is not his first time in our pages: “You all did a story on me, one of the Frontlines joints, January 2001.”

On March 18, Us Weekly reported that Real Housewives of New York City star Tinsley Mortimer “was at a photo shoot” when her fiancé, local entrepreneur Scott Kluth, called off their engagement. Our team thought back to our Regimen shoot (page 32) one week earlier, where she said she was having “the worst day of my life.”

Chicago sends our best wishes, Tins!

PHOTOGRAPHY: (HOMAN) MICHAEL ZAJAKOWSKI; (KUZMA) JAMES WIRTH; (MASK) KATHERINE SHADY; (JACKSON) JASON VERDIN; (MORTIMER) THOMAS CONCORDIA/GETTY IMAGES FOR BIG APPLE CIRCUS

FROM TH E EDITOR

Sunshine warms your skin. Sand between your toes. The sip of your ƂTUV EQEMVCKN .KXG NQECN OWUKE 9JGP [QWoTG TGCF[ EQOG GZRGTKGPEG VJG UKIJVU UQWPFU CPF UEGPVU QH VJG #NCDCOC )WNH %QCUV 9GoXG OKUUGF [QW

877-341-2400

Gulf Shores.com

OrangeBeach.com

TA L K T O U S Wow. Just wow. @KendraErk via Twitter

Senator’s War Story This is a really incredible telling of a horrific period of time [“The Day Tammy Duckworth’s Black Hawk Went Down,” April]. Proud to call Senator Duckworth my rep and awed by her strength then … and now, to tell her story in such vivid and visceral detail.

WHERE TO FIND US

Email us at letters@ chicagomag.com.

Chicago may edit letters for conciseness, clarity, and accuracy.

@reallyhillary via Twitter

I’d love to know her “calm routine.” Always amazed at how she keeps herself so levelheaded when having to report about the latest updates. @karicarboneco via Instagram “Trust the system”? The system is broken. @ginatrimble62 via Instagram THE LOOP, POSTPANDEMIC It’s true that companies will have fewer employees in the office [“Digging Out,” April], but those who are onsite will require more

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C H I C AG O | M AY 2 0 2 1

space. How many desks are six feet apart?

Shari Schmidt via Facebook More large plants. Create places for homeless and needy people to get to services so they aren’t impeding foot traffic. Close the streets to traffic on part of the weekend and have food and live music. Reduce parking fees so it’s easier to come downtown.

Naomi Eklund via Facebook How about a downtown that doesn’t suck up more than its fair share of resources?

Jeffrey Littleton via Facebook CHAMPAGNE FITNESS May we all go through life with the spirit and energy of Charles Whitaker and his postworkout, pre-work mimosa [The Regimen, April]. @ellabrockway via Twitter

PHOTOGRAPH: MICHAEL ZAJAKOWSKI

ASSESSING ARWADY I can attest to the fact that this compassionate genius does have a darn good plan [“Allison Arwady Has a Plan,” April].

She’s the best. We’re so lucky to have her. @planetanel via Twitter

Be Inspired.

When you’re ready to explore again, visit the timeless, uncrowded Theodore Roosevelt National Park near the old west town of Medora.

Here among the wild horses and bison, wide open spaces and trails through ancient canyons, it becomes clear: the wait was worth it.

Visit us online to plan your getaway.

LegendaryND.com

I N S TA G R A M C O N T E S T

Best Plant Photos Winner!

Mothers are the great heroes (and victims) of the pandemic.

Help us help mothers of all faiths at catholiccharities.net @sosandyyy This year, Sandra Hernandez of Vernon Hills bought her first house and her first houseplant, Liberty (yes, she named it).

The string of pearls came from an Etsy seller in New York — hence the moniker. “She’s beautiful,” Hernandez says. And, we might add, photogenic.

WE ALSO LOVED …

@lwhalen2219

@shannaque

@seejaneallison

@arcadianfare

NEXT CONTEST Post your best shot of your patio on Instagram

by June 15. Follow us at @chicagomag, tag us, and include #chimagcontest to be considered. The winner will be featured in the August issue and will receive a free one-year subscription to the magazine.

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C H I C AG O | M AY 2 0 2 1

© Detroit Outpost

THIS IS HOW WE MOVE

Catch a wave or make your own, in Detroit, there are no limits. Kayak around — and through — Belle Isle, Michigan’s state Scan to explore more

park that’s entirely on an island. Climb aboard a floating tiki bar on the Detroit River to enjoy a beverage and breathtaking city views. Take to two wheels and tour bold, engaging public art installations, architectural masterpieces or urban agriculture that explores our unique farm-to-fork food system. Ready to go all out? Detroit’s ready for you.

%AST 2ACE 7ATERWAY

,.&& + "' -! 5 ' Whitewater rafting in the heart of downtown is just one adventure waiting less than two hours away from the city.

Find your escape in The Bend this summer.

, 6' -( )%6' 2(.+

-! 5 '

Vivian Maier: In Color

Talking Points This month’s essential Zoom happy hour chatter

PHOTOGRAPH: GIFT OF JEFFREY GOLDSTEIN, © THE ESTATE OF VIVIAN MAIER

1 After a limbo year that saw internal conflicts and racism claims aired in the New York Times, the Second City reopens May 7 with a new executive producer. How will the edgy improv show navigate these new waters?

2 On May 8, the Chicago History Museum will roll out Vivian Maier: In Color, an exhibition featuring 54 never-beforeseen snapshots from the enigmatic photographer better known for her black-and-whites.

3 After a guitarsmashing ceremony, a 200,000-squarefoot Hard Rock Casino opens in Gary on May 14, just in time for you to put your stimulus check on 22 black.

4 Street dining, one of the positives to come out of the pandemic, returns midMay, taking over even more parts of town. The city’s marketing arm, Choose Chicago, is issuing grants to help set up areas on the South and West Sides.

Illustration by DAN PAGE

Razed From Within Illinois Republicans have lost their mojo, and it’s going to take a major recalibration to rebuild. By EDWARD McCLELLAND AMMY DUCKWORTH IS RUNNING FOR REELECTION TO THE U.S. SENATE NEXT YEAR.

So far, she has two Republican opponents. Neither has held office, so you probably haven’t heard of them. Allison Salinas, from Pekin, organized an “open graduation” at the Illinois State Capitol for students whose commencements were canceled due to COVID-19. Peggy Hubbard, from Belleville, describes herself as a “pro-God, pro-life, pro-Trump, pro-veteran, pro–first responder conservative.” Governor J.B. Pritzker’s leading challenger, Darren Bailey, is a bit better known. Last May, the state senator from Xenia was ordered to leave the Capitol for refusing to wear a mask, then led an anti-lockdown protest at Buckingham Fountain.

Illinois Republicans have been drawing most of their candidates for the state’s two most important offices from the right-wing periphery of Trumpers, COVID deniers, Second Amendment absolutists, and All Lives Matter sloganeers. (Also in the governor’s race is paving and roofing contractor Gary Rabine, who refuses to definitively say Trump lost the election.) In the Land of Lincoln, the once-dominant party of Lincoln — 25 years ago, Republicans controlled the full legislature and every constitutional office — has been reduced to a fringe outfit. Consider these facts: Q Illinois is one of only six states where Democrats hold supermajorities in both houses of the legislature, all the statewide offices, and both Senate seats.

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THE 312

Q This century, Republicans have taken just five of the 38 statewide elections — a winning percentage of 13.2.

Q The last Republican Senate candidate to win more than 50 percent of the vote was Peter Fitzgerald — in 1998.

Q Going into the 2020 election, Illinois Republicans had $3.6 million, compared with $26.9 million for the Democrats.

“We’re as poor as a church mouse,” says the party’s new chair, Don Tracy.

Q Republicans hold five of Illinois’s 18 U.S. congressional seats, their lowest total since the Civil War. Republicans have become a permanent minority party here and have no chance of running the state anytime soon.

Here’s why.

ILLINOIS IS A BLUE STATE

In the 1990s, Illinois voted for moderates of both parties. Bill Clinton won our electoral votes in 1992. Two years later, Republican governor Jim Edgar was reelected in a 101-county landslide.

In the red-versus-blue era of the 21st century, though, political polarization has turned most states monolithically Democratic or Republican. Ticket splitting is at an all-time low. Cities and states that are winning in the modern economy vote Democratic, while those left behind vote Republican. With a major city that attracts the college-educated, Illinois votes more like a coastal state.

REPUBLICANS HAVE LOST THE SUBURBS

Look at a map of Clinton’s 1992 victory.

He swept southern Illinois and lost suburban Chicago. Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by winning big in the suburbs despite losing big downstate. Suburbia once saw itself as a counterweight to Chicago’s Democratic machine; now its voters align with the city on social issues. The trend of urban areas voting Democratic and rural areas Republican has been a bad deal for the Illinois GOP: DuPage County, once the premier Republican county in the state, has 180 times more voters than Gallatin County, formerly the most Democratic.

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REPUBLICANS DON’T HAVE MIKE MADIGAN TO KICK AROUND ANYMORE

In 2020, Republicans’ biggest wins were defeating the so-called Fair Tax and the retention of Democratic Supreme Court justice Thomas Kilbride. In both elections, the party ran against the former House speaker, seen as the embodiment of Democratic corruption. “I chaired the campaign that ousted Kilbride, but our real opponent was Mike Madigan,” says Jim Nowlan, a former Republican state representative, newspaper columnist, and coauthor of Fixing Illinois, who lives in Princeton. “We saw Kilbride as a Madigan toady, and it worked, because most voters knew and detested Madigan. The Republicans will try to keep that alive.”

the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University: “Kinzinger has statewide ambitions, but strikes me as a much stronger general election candidate than a candidate in the Republican primary” — which is dominated by proTrump voters. That’s a conundrum for the entire party. “The kinds of Republicans that always won in Illinois — Jim Edgar, George Ryan, Mark Kirk — were not Trump people,” Jackson says.

Republican national committeeman Richard Porter sees a glimmer for the party in the rejection of Pritzker’s Fair Tax. Republicans, he believes, can bond again with suburban voters on economic issues. “The game is won in the suburbs,” he says. “They slipped away from us in

“The game is won in the suburbs,” says Republican national committeeman Richard Porter. “They slipped away from us in ’18 and ’20.”

BRUCE RAUNER MOVED TO FLORIDA

The ex-governor donated $36.8 million to the Illinois Republican Party between 2014 and 2018. Then he lost the governorship, left the state, and stopped writing checks. Ken Griffin, the conservative movement’s new sugar daddy, realized that funding Republican candidates here is futile and spent his money to defeat the Fair Tax, rather than to build the party.

TRUMP HAS DIVIDED THE PARTY

U.S. representative Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Channahon, voted to impeach the former president for inciting the storming of the U.S. Capitol, then started the Country First PAC to “reject the politics of fear and all who practice it.” That’s a popular stance in Kinzinger’s exurban district, but the farther south you travel, the more popular Trump remains. Both southern Illinois representatives, Mary Miller and Mike Bost, voted against certifying Joe Biden’s Electoral College win. Bailey, the ultraconservative candidate for governor, called Kinzinger a Democrat and suggested he resign. Says John Jackson of

’18 and ’20. Can they swing back in ’22?

We need to connect with suburban voters where they are. They tend not to be cultural conservatives, but they believe in providing government at a reasonable price.” It’ll help too, he says, if Democrats “overplay their hand by promoting ultraliberal policies.”

In recent decades, Republicans have won statewide elections only when running against weak or unpopular Democrats: Peter Fitzgerald vs. scandal-plagued Carol Moseley Braun; Mark Kirk vs. Alexi Giannoulias, whose campaign was tainted by allegations against his family’s bank; and Bruce Rauner vs. Pat Quinn, who raised corporate and individual taxes during his single full term as governor. Now they have to hope Pritzker shoots himself in the foot so badly that not even his billions can bail him out. (In March, he preemptively dropped $35 million in his campaign coffers without even committing to a reelection bid.) That’s what it has come to for Illinois’s second party: Republicans don’t win elections here anymore; Democrats lose them. C

THE 312

THE TWO-MINUTE GUIDE

The Exelon Split The company is severing ComEd and its other utilities from its power generation — the Brad and Angelina of Chicago corporate breakups. But how will this affect your bill? By GRACE PERRY

THE BIG PICTURE

THE DIVORCE

Let’s talk Exelon Corporation.

The Loop-headquartered energy company with a comic-book villainous name is enormous.

As in: $34 billion in annual revenue, 10 million utility customers, one of the largest owner-operators of nuclear power plants in the United States, with six in Illinois (two will close this fall).

It also has six utility companies across the Midwest and midAtlantic regions, including northern Illinois’s favorite frenemy, Commonwealth Edison, unpopularly known as ComEd. ComEd, an Exelon subsidiary since 2000, is the only electricity provider in Chicago. It doesn’t make power — it simply transports it from plants to your home. Consumer rights advocates have long argued that Exelon owning ComEd is a conflict of interest: The power generator has every incentive to overcharge the power provider, right?

In February, Exelon announced it would split into two separate companies: one for its regulated utilities (ahem, ComEd) and one for its unregulated generation of nuclear, natural gas, solar, and wind power. It’s aiming to complete this conscious uncoupling by the first quarter of 2022.

Why now? It’s not totally clear. Exelon says its customers expect it to “continuously innovate to stay ahead of growing demand for clean energy.” While Governor Pritzker has vowed to make Illinois carbon-free by 2050, there’s no indication that his plan informed Exelon’s decision to split, so J.B. doesn’t deserve all that much credit.

Some suspect it’s an attempt to boost shareholder confidence after the ComEd bribery scandal broke in the summer of 2020 — ComEd is accused of paying off Mike Madigan’s cronies for legislative help (real classic Chicago stuff!) — though that’d be a pretty drastic move, considering Chicagoans can’t ditch ComEd even if they wanted to. But likely it’s still a way to appease investors.

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WHAT’S IN IT FOR STOCKHOLDERS

WHAT’S IN IT FOR CONSUMERS

Exelon is a peculiar investment because energy producers and providers have different business models. ComEd has a predictable, reliable one: It’s a regulated monopoly, everyone needs electricity, and power use doesn’t fluctuate wildly each year. But with Springfield and D.C. issuing carbon reduction goals and directives, energy production companies are changing course. Exelon says isolating its power generation business will give it the dexterity to innovate new forms of clean energy. In that transition away from nuclear fuel, Exelon could strike gold or, you know, fail spectacularly.

Right now, buying Exelon stock means you’re investing in a stable, boring company and a high-risk, high-reward one.

Which is … financially confusing!

Splitting into two distinct entities might encourage new investors who want to be more targeted with their money. Both of these companies will still be run by actual humans, not Lex Luthor.

Abe Scarr, director of the nonpartisan consumer rights advocacy group Illinois PIRG, has a relatively optimistic take on this corporate split. ComEd will have more leeway to buy energy on the free market — potentially, Scarr says, lowering customer bills. The dissolution could also mean that ComEd, now separate from Exelon’s nuclear plants, could get greener. “ComEd’s PR talks about clean energy all the time,” says Scarr. “But in Springfield, they’ve been fighting clean energy for years because clean energy is a competitor to Exelon’s nuclear plants.” (Wait, are multibilliondollar corporations … not … honest with consumers?)

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. PIRG thinks the split only scratches the surface of the sordid alliance of ComEd, Exelon, and Springfield. The group is still calling for utility policy reform and customer restitution, postscandal. So don’t worry, there’s no reason to get too optimistic about Illinois’s climate future!

Illustration by SHONAGH RAE

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PROVOCATEUR? A retrospective of the provocative work by two-time Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Bill Mauldin about our nation’s time of war, civil rights, and social justice.

Opening to the Public on May 14, 2021.

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Tuesday – Saturday, 10am– 4pm Admission $10. Seniors, students and teachers w/valid ID, $8.

Free for Members, active military and children under 12.

104 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60603

whoisbillmauldin.com

THE 312

SQUARE FEET

The grand manse at 400 Washington Road in Lake Forest is more than 120 years old — but it hasn’t always had that address. By ALISON GOLDMAN

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C H I C AG O | M AY 2 0 2 1

way dow n L ake Forest ’s Rosemary Road circa 1916, you might have encountered a gigantic house rolling down the middle of the street. Albert Volney Foster, vice president at North Shore Gas, and his wife, Margaret Baxter Foster, who opened the celebrated Lake Forest Shop, purchased a Colonial Revival–style mansion at Sheridan and Rosemary Roads around that time and decided to move it threetenths of a mile to 400 Washington Road.

The Fosters nabbed the 1890s home from its original owners, banker and broker Granger Farwell and his wife, Sarah Goodrich Farwell. A renowned architect definitely designed it — it’s just unclear which one: either Illinois state architect William Carbys Zimmerman or Henry Ives Cobb, whose résumé includes the Newberry Library. It’s also possible both contributed. “The architect situation is murky,” says Laurie Stein, curator of the History Center of Lake Forest–Lake Bluff. “If both worked on it, Cobb would likely have been first and Zimmerman second, since Cobb moved away from the area in 1897.” We do know the house needed major work following a 1924 fire that wrecked the roof and third floor and caused water damage throughout.

Now the handsome seven-bedroom, 8,991-square-foot brick house is listed with Patrick Milhaupt of Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty for $2.23 million. “They don’t make houses like this anymore,” says owner Kurt Kohlmeyer, Barclays Investment Bank’s head of Midwest investment banking, who moved in with his family in 2002. “It’s got great bones. And it’s got great memories.”

Past the elaborate front entrance — a Dutch door accented by sidelights, a fanlight, Corinthian pilasters, and a broken-arch pediment — you can look straight down the 43-foot-long grand foyer to the also elaborately surrounded, also Dutch back door. On the north side, a 782-square-foot living room steps up into a library and onto the screened-in porch, which at 705 square feet is an ideal postpandemic party spot.

I

Code Cures Our wish list for the vaccine-wrangling whiz kid Thirteen-year-old Eli Coustan from Evanston succeeded where adults with more than a year to prepare failed: He created ILVaccine.org, a database that pulls in open COVID-19 shot appointments from all available locations, eliminating the need to check dozens of websites ad infinitum. So we wondered: What other inexplicably convoluted processes would we like to see him hack next?

Q Transferring money from one Ventra card to another Q Getting to the Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre in Tinley Park without a car Q Registering for Chicago Park District summer camps Q Finding restaurant patios where you can bring your dog Q Obtaining legal records from the Circuit Court of Cook County Q Navigating the zoned parking in Wrigleyville Q Identifying which forest preserves in Cook County have bathrooms Q Merging into the Logan Square traffic circle

PHOTOGRAPHY: (WASHINGTON ROAD) JEFF BARA; (COUSTAN) COURTESY OF ELI COUSTAN

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FOUND Hunter-Gatherer A staple for North Shore antique collectors relocates, eclectic POV intact. By LAUREN WILLIAMSON Q Little did Lisa Carlson Chrisopoulos know when she bought the building at 190 Northfield Road in Northfield in early 2020 that its crowning feature would be the ventilation system. (The previous owner used the space as a garage for his exhaustspewing Ferrari collection.) Seeing its white floor and walls and corrugated metal ceiling, she knew she could transform the place into an expansive new home for Heritage Trail Mall, the antique bazaar she ran with her parents and sister in Wilmette for nearly 28 years. With a name tweak, Heritage Trail Mercantile opened in the new location in October with 42 vendors, many of them carryovers from the original spot. Chrisopoulos now runs the market solo, but pandemic-friendly HVAC system aside, much about it will be familiar to her regulars: booths packed with smartly curated antique, vintage, and handmade wares, ranging from substantial 19thcentury worktables to spindly midcentury modern lamps to trendy-again ’90s costume jewelry.

If you don’t see what you’re looking for, just ask: Chrisopoulos has a crazy good memory and will keep an eye out during her regular picking trips.

“It just sticks in my brain,” she says. “On my day off, it’s still the thrill of the hunt.”

From left: Francoise Gerard oil painting, $595; vintage Knoll chrome chair, $425; 1970s acrylic chair, set of six for $1,200; 1980s brass swan sculpture, set of two for $195; ceramic vase, $145

Photograph by RYAN SEGEDI

M AY 2 0 2 1 | C H I C AG O

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FOUND

Ask a Budtender

1 2

Featuring Datrianna Meeks

3 4

5

6

HOW TO SPEN D $75: PRIMARK

Flash of Style Ireland’s favorite purveyor of trends proves that State Street remains undefeated for one-stop shopping. By HEIDI MITCHELL &M MAY HAVE STARTED THE FAST-FASHION EXPLOSION, BUT

Ireland’s Penneys — known everywhere else in the world as Primark — comes in a close second. Trading in up-to-thesecond style on the cheap, the department store has expanded from a little clothing retailer founded in Dublin in 1969 into a juggernaut that now spans 13 countries and 390 stores — at last including one in Chicago. In March, the 12th U.S. shop (and only the second in a downtown area) took over what was once the Gap, thus filling an actual gap on State Street, where shoppers are starting to trickle back after a long year of lockdowns. The nearly 37,000-square-foot space provides plenty of excuses for a postpandemic purchasing spree: You can find $14 fauxleather mules to pair with a $6 faux-leather crossbody bag, or $25 men’s skinny check trousers with their $45 bomber jacket partners, and fulfill pretty much all your beauty, home, gift, and baby desires. Browse online all you want, but you’ll have to come in to purchase. The reason? By keeping shipping costs down, Primark can ethically produce all those Batman onesies and sustainable jeans without driving up the prices. Look for exclusive Bulls merch (the black sweatshirt dress is to die for) and Disneybranded kidswear that could pass as edgy fashion on a grownup any day (we see you, Thumper sketch sweater). 35 N. State St., Loop

H

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1 Men’s trousers, $25 2 Kids’ trainers, $13 3 Youth Bulls T-shirt, $12 4 Swim cover-up, $17 5 Jasmine jar candle, $2.50 6 Straw sun hat, $5

A: It’s easier than ever, mostly because the list of medical conditions accepted by the state has grown to include more common ailments like chronic pain, irritable bowel syndrome, and migraines. And you no longer have to visit a doctor’s office. I know people who got a card through the telemedicine service Veriheal; the $199 online appointment took about 15 minutes, and a provisional license came within 24 hours.

My, how times have changed.

Why bother when recreational use is legal? More products are available to cardholders, and the cannabis comes cheaper. An eighth of an ounce runs about $60 with a card and $75 without. Keep in mind the additional costs — for the medical consultation and the state fee ($100 a year or $250 for three years). But if you smoke an eighth a week, you’ll still save close to $500 your first year.

Illustration by JOHN KENZIE

PHOTOGRAPHY: COURTESY OF PRIMARK

Q: Are there any new ways of getting a medical card?

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Tinsley Mortimer Socialite, reality TV star, boxing buff By ROBIN LINN NCE DUBBED “THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED SOCIALITE IN

New York City,” Mortimer is probably best known to Chicagoans for her stint on Bravo’s The Real Housewives of New York City. She’s a local gal these days, having moving to River North in 2019 to be with her now-former fiancé, CouponCabin founder Scott Kluth. (They broke up in March, and she is keeping mum on whether she plans to stay in Chicago.) Here’s how the 45-year-old, who serves on the development board for PAWS Chicago, stays mentally and physically strong in front of the cameras.

O

FITNESS RETHINK “I was a nationally ranked tennis player. I played in junior high through university, for five, six hours a day. My whole life, I had a schedule of working out built in. So as an adult, it was hard for me to figure out what to do for a workout. During Real Housewives, I was doing interval training, which was 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there. It was broken up enough that I could really do it.

Your mind isn’t fighting it.”

STRENGTH GOALS “During the pandemic, I took a year off from everything. It was just a freefor-all. And then I was like, OK, I have to get back in shape. I ended up hiring a trainer. We box, which is so fun, because you’re hitting something, and you feel strong and good about yourself. We also do intervals and a lot of weight training, too. Cardio is great, but I find that weights and boxing, it tones your body more. It starts to cut my arms in a way that I like.”

BEAUTY ESSENTIALS “I can’t even be by myself, or around my dogs, without having lashes on.

It’s just who I am. I love super-basic Neutrogena face wipes just to take off makeup or refresh my face. Then I use Sunday Riley Good Genes, which is lactic acid. There’s a moisturizing face gel from Winky Lux. It smells great and it’s super hydrating.

A lot of things that I’ve tried break me out, but these do not.”

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C H I C AG O | M AY 2 0 2 1

HIKING HIGH “Earlier this year, I went to this place called the Ranch in Malibu.

It changed my life forever. For a week, I woke up at 5:30 and went on four-hour hikes. This wasn’t just strolling; this was legit hiking, and I’d never hiked in my life. They give you a little snack — sometimes you get six almonds, or one day we got an apple. The first hike was super inclined, so high up. I’m walking in the dark, and I turn the corner, and I saw the sun. I decided to eat the apple then, and I just started crying. I was like, This is the best apple ever.”

FOOD TRUTHS “During COVID, I started to cook, which I was super impressed with myself about, because I never knew how. Look, there’s a time when I’m really good about eating healthy and a time when I’m letting myself go a little bit. When I’m good, it’s hard-boiled eggs, it’s chicken, it’s salad. And that’s pretty much it — two meals a day, not three. I’ve decided that there’s no more wine in the house. It’s only gonna be when I go out and have a glass or two with dinner.”

TEA TIME “Sleep is hard for me. My brain is just so overactive that I can’t. You need to make it dark — scary as that is with the bogey monsters. No TV. That’s a new thing for me, and it’s helped. Tea at night is such a lovely experience. Before, I would think I needed red wine to go to bed, but no: tea, darkness, no TV.”

Photograph by LISA PREDKO

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FOUND

WOULD NEVER CALL MYSELF AN ATHLETE. IT’S

true that a few years ago I rode a bicycle a hundred miles in one day, but that was powered more by naive optimism than a natural inclination toward cycling. I’ve done enough Pilates to know what “navel to spine” means but still get nervous when it’s time to plank. I can’t do a pushup, and the one time I tried to run the Shamrock Shuffle, I was literally shuffling down State Street because I’d peed my pants in front of the Chicago Theatre. In my subsequent race photo, it looks like I’ve been shot.

So when I walk into Vibez Fit, a new fitness studio in River North that uses the Power Plate, the “leading technology in whole-body vibration training,” I’ve left my “Slay” tank top at home because I don’t want anybody to get the wrong idea. While I’m smiling and saying hello to my perfectly fit instructor, Asia, I’m under no illusion that I’m going to be good at this, and as I gaze down the gangway of purple-lit machines, inside I feel like 11-year-old Adrienne whose gym teacher won’t stop screaming “C’MON GUNN!” when she can’t magically levitate from the floor onto a four-foot wooden box.

I’m looking for a spot in the back when I’m informed this will be a private class in which I’m the only student. Oh. Good.

But it’s only 30 minutes, so things are looking up. I’m told that the Power Plate was developed for Russian cosmonauts, that

I

I’m glad no one can see my face under my mask because it’s all twisted up and grunty like an Olympic powerlifter’s.

T H E E X P E R I M E N TA L I S T

Shake and Baked Can working out on a vibrating plate make me as fit as a Russian cosmonaut? By ADRIENNE GUNN 32

C H I C AG O | M AY 2 0 2 1

it “stimulates the body’s natural reflexes, causing an involuntary muscle contraction,” and that this is going to burn more calories, lead to detoxification, and reduce the appearance of cellulite. To be honest, worrying about cellulite feels like a luxury; I’m still figuring out how to lose the COVID 19.

Asia directs me to a Power Plate right next to her. She turns it on, and I swear to God, my teeth are rattling. It’s not vibrating so hard that I think I might fall off, but it is vibrating so hard that I suddenly have an awareness of my eardrums. The only muscle that’s ever experienced this much vibration is my vagina. I’m doing Fusion Vibez, which is a mix of cardio, barre, and Pilates, and very quickly I’m breathless. We’re working with a small rubber stability ball — holding it between our legs while we squat, holding it in the crook of our knee while we squat, making ballet arms while we squat. We’re doing leg lifts and triceps dips and planks, and I’m glad no one can see my face under my mask because I know it’s all twisted up and grunty like an Olympic powerlifter’s, except they’re just asking me to hold up my own body weight. But afterward I feel energized and happy, like I’m digging the vibez. Until the next day, when my quads hurt so bad I can barely walk and my vibez are lie down on the couch forever. C

Illustration by PABLO LOBATO

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TABLE

Party Starters Bartender Tim Williams’s high-end cocktail mixers go with whatever spirit you have on hand. By AUDARSHIA TOWNSEND Q “I knew I could put something in a bottle that’s going to help people make a great drink in 10 seconds,” says bartender Tim Williams of his new line of cocktail mixers. Mission accomplished: These handcrafted concoctions, sold through Pour Souls, the barconsulting company he runs with the help of Danielle Lewis, are made with fresh juices and ingredients that are locally sourced whenever possible. The best part: After years of being asked by finicky bargoers to swap one booze for another, Williams, who used to manage the bar at Blind Barber, developed mixers that work with more than one kind of spirit.

Take the Paloma-inspired Pink Pigeon, made with agave syrup and grapefruit and lime juices. Adding tequila or mezcal keeps it

Photograph by JEFF MARINI

classic, but if you go with vodka or gin, you’ll end up with a citrusbright drink that’s just as good. Or consider the Fancy Fu*kin Mule, a Moscow mule riff made with apricot juice, vanilla, and ginger: Vodka, the traditional choice, works just fine, but the mixer is robust enough to stand up to gin or bourbon. Same for the five-spice oldfashioned, which is bolstered with coffee and brown sugar.

Each $15 bottle (they can be ordered at pour-souls-llc.square. site) contains enough mixer for eight drinks and can be made into a highball by adding sparkling water or a toddy by using hot water.

“People can use the starters as they see fit,” Williams says. “They’re extremely user friendly.” What better way to make the most of your booze until we’re all toasting in bars again?

M AY 2 0 2 1 | C H I C AG O

35

TA B L E

Combine water, vinegar, sugar, and ¼ cup salt in a saucepan.

Bring to a boil and remove from heat. Meanwhile, place radishes, lemon peel, coriander seeds, ¼ teaspoon chile flakes, thyme, and bay leaf in a 16-ounce canning jar. Pour hot brine over radish mixture and let cool to room temperature.

Heat a large cast-iron skillet or griddle over high. Toss broccoli with olive oil and ¼ teaspoon salt. Sauté broccoli, turning frequently, until tender-crisp and charred in spots, 6 to 8 minutes.

I N TH E KITC H E N

Spring Green HARRED BROCCOLI ANCHORS THIS

spring side dish from Dear Margaret’s Ryan Brosseau, but the star may just be the quick-pickled radishes, which provide a sharp counterpoint. Perhaps it’s no surprise, given that preserving is a hallmark of Ontario cuisine, the food of Brosseau’s childhood and the inspiration of the new Lake View restaurant. You’ll want to scatter these tangy pickled radishes on just about everything, and you’re in luck: Brosseau’s recipe makes plenty, and they’ll keep in the fridge for a couple of months. — CATE HUGUELET

C

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C H I C AG O | M AY 2 0 2 1

RYAN BROSSEAU’S CHARRED BROCCOLI WITH PICKLED RADISHES AND LEMON Makes 4 to 6 servings Active time 30 minutes Total time 1 hour 30 minutes 2 1 ½ ¼ 1 1 ½ 2 1 2 2 ¼

cups water cup Champagne vinegar cup sugar cup plus 1⁄4 tsp. kosher salt, divided, plus more to taste bunch radishes, thinly sliced Peel of 1 lemon tsp. coriander seeds tsp. chile flakes (like gochugaru), divided sprigs fresh thyme bay leaf heads broccoli, cut into large spears and stems peeled Tbsp. olive oil cup lemon vinaigrette (like Briannas Lively Lemon Tarragon, available at Jewel) Pine nuts and torn mint and parsley

In a large bowl, toss broccoli and a 1⁄4 cup of the radishes with vinaigrette and remaining chile flakes. Taste and add more salt, if desired. Transfer to a serving platter and generously garnish with pine nuts, mint, and parsley.

Photography by JEFF MARINI

C HEF A N D OWN E R

YASMIN CURTIS

TA S T E M A K E R

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TA B L E

Bread Winners Ready to give your sourdough starter a rest? Try the delicious loaves from these enterprising newcomers instead. By PETER FROST Roasted garlic, lemon, and chile butter spread ⊲

▲ Hoagie roll

▲ Olive and polenta ⊳ Asiago and black pepper

LOAF LOUNGE

LYMAN AVE. BREAD

The players Ben Lustbader and Sarah Mispagel-Lustbader.

The chefs left their restaurant gigs (she was the pastry chef at Sepia and Proxi, he was a chef at Giant and Chef’s Special) to go all in on bread and pastries.

The bread Country-style sourdough loaves embellished with gourmet twists like roasted ramps or caramelized onions and Gruyère. Start off with the giardiniera bread, which is rolled in sesame seeds and fennel, or the whole wheat bread with polenta and two types of olives.

How to get it A permanent location is in the works; for now, place orders ($5 for small loaves; $10 for large) on Tock or Toast and pick up at Superkhana International (3059 W. Diversey Ave., Logan Square), or order on DoorDash for delivery.

The player Tim Giuffi. A chefturned-stay-at-home-dad, the sourdough savant bakes around 75 loaves a week in a makeshift bakery in his Oak Park basement.

The bread Crusty countrystyle sourdough loaves made with heritage grains, such as Turkey Red, emmer, and einkorn wheats. This bread is so good, he’s got a waitlist.

How to get it Move to Oak Park, or tap a friend who lives there. Giuffi delivers his loaves in a 20-square-block area on a bicycle outfitted with a breadbox. He also offers pick up at his home. A loaf-a-week subscription is $90 for 12 weeks, or $33 for four weeks. Order on Instagram at @lymanavebread.

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C H I C AG O | M AY 2 0 2 1

⊳ Seed mix THE BLACK BREAD COMPANY The players Charles Alexander, Mark Edmond, and Jamel Lewis.

Following George Floyd’s death last summer, Edmond pledged to buy from more Black-owned businesses but couldn’t find a Black-owned sliced-bread company. So in February he and his pals from high school launched their own by contracting out of a Midwest bakery.

The bread Old-school sandwich bread, available in white and honey wheat. Both are perfect for a PB&J or grilled cheese.

How to get it The loaves ($4.99) are available at many small area markets, including food co-op Dill Pickle (2746 N. Milwaukee Ave., Logan Square). You can also order at blackbreadco.com.

BREADBX The player Ian Savas. The former management consultant launched a company to connect subscribers to better bread during the pandemic and teamed up with a local bakery.

The bread Quintessential sourdough, with a chewy crust and tender crumb, baked in an oblong shape that falls somewhere between a country-style loaf and a batard.

How to get it Deliveries are available within Chicago city limits every Saturday: $12.99 a loaf for weekly, biweekly, or monthly subscriptions, or $13.99 for a one-time single-loaf order.

Order at breadbx.com.

Photograph by JEFF MARINI

TA B L E

The Hot List 10 places everyone’s talking about (in order of heat)

Andros Taverna

1

Soul & Smoke

ANDROS TAVERNA What Modernized Greek favorites from Doug Psaltis and Hsing Chen Why Order the roasted lamb shank or grilled seabass straight out

of a wood-burning oven, but leave room for the baklava-topped Greek-style frozen yogurt. Where 2542 N. Milwaukee Ave., Logan Square 2

STEINGOLD’S OF CHICAGO What A new location and expanded menu for the

FUNERAL POTATOES What Chef-caterer Alexis Thomas and underground dining chef Eve Studnicka pay homage to Midwest comfort eats. Why Soothe yourself with kimchi-ranch potatoes. Where Order on Instagram at @funeral.potatoes.

3

4

ISFAHAN What An exploration of the Armenian diaspora from musician Liam Kazar, who has played with Jeff Tweedy Why Cross borders with dishes like

Persian tadig and Artsakh pies. Where Order at eatisfahan.com/reserve.

WAY OUT What A trippy bar with fun snacks and cocktails from Longman & Eagle vets Why Pizza pot stickers, the chile-crisp-spiked love child of a dumpling and a pizza roll Where 3213 W. Armitage Ave., Logan Square

5

RÊVE BURGER What A pandemic pivot from fine dining chef Curtis Duffy that’s here to stay Why Double cheeseburgers and spicy fried chicken sandwiches will always be in style. Where 1363 W. Fulton St., West Town

6

SOUL & SMOKE What Two new virtual kitchens from the Evanston barbecue and soul food spot Why Whether it’s baby back ribs or collard greens with turkey, D’Andre Carter knows his way around a smoker. Where 3517 N. Spaulding

7

Ave., Avondale; 2537 S. Wabash Ave., Bronzeville PILSEN YARDS What An airy neighborhood hangout with a Mexican-ish menu and plenty of drinks Why Think piña colada ceviche, asada and frites, and $8 house margs. Where 1163 W. 18th St., Pilsen

8

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@mozartchocolateliqueur Imported by Marussia Beverages USA Cedar Knolls, NJ PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY

40

C H I C AG O | M AY 2 0 2 1

FRENCH QUICHE What Chez Moi chef Dominique Tougne expands his French footprint in Lincoln Park with this casual café. Why Quiche, obviously — from a spring pea and Swiss version to a take with lobster Where 2210 N. Halsted St.

9

COCOA CHILI What Niquenya Collins blends Afro-Caribbean and soul flavors at this carryout and delivery spot. Why Her namesake spice mix adds sweet heat to dishes — you can take a jar home. Where 3101 W. Lake St., East Garfield Park

10

PHOTOGRAPHY: (ANDROS TAVERNA) COURTESY OF ANDROS TAVERNA; (SOUL AND SMOKE) NEIL JOHN BURGER

Jewish deli Why Get the pastrami and kimchi sandwich, then try the Duck Inn hot dog in an everything bagel. Where 3737 N. Southport Ave., Lake View

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W

CHICAGO STORIES

E CALL EACH OTHER TWIN.

Been doing that for years. We share shit: height, weight, style, sneaker DNA (and size), ideologies, skin color, love for our people, this city. Not that we are a reflection of one another, but we reflect on each other.

“I remember the first time I met you,” LaVelle Sykes tells me. “You came into Tony’s Sports one day and it was like you were famous already. And I said, ‘I’ma be friends with this dude.’ ” LaVelle Sykes in front of SuccezZ, his South That day was in the mid-’90s. I know Michigan Avenue because LaVelle started working at Tony’s store, seven months in 1994, two years after his cousin was killed, two years after he was in a car accident after it was ransacked that nearly took his life (the same happened to me in 1987), a crash that forced him to make a choice: Find yourself or let these Chicago streets find you.

The former choice led him into what was — for us in Black Chicago — the “University of Urban Fashion”: Tony’s Sports under the Red Line stop on Sheridan. ’Velle was already a customer, but needed a life raft before he drowned in the Robert Taylor Homes concrete that raised him. Tony gave him a job.

Stockroom. Thus began his hustle.

“Selling sneakers saved my life,” ’Velle says. “I promised God after the car accident, ‘If you get me out of this coma and let me walk again, I’ll become something.’ He woke me up and I became something.” I met ’Velle because he sold me my sneaks every time I stepped into Tony’s. He’d moved to the front of the store by then, behind the counter, over the cash register.

I clowned him one day, asking, “Are you signing the checks yet?” Not joking, he said: “Not yet.” By 2001, ’Velle was running Tony’s business for him.

My mother always told me that the one thing America feared the most was a Black man with a plan. LaVelle had a hella plan.

He noticed during his 12 years at Tony’s that there was a void in the sneaker retail business. “I wanted to have the first minorityowned sneaker boutique franchise in the city,” he says. So when he and Tony had a disagreement in 2004, ’Velle gave notice, quit, found an investor, kept the industry connects he’d built, started selling sneakers out of the trunk of his car, bought storefront property on a $30K loan, and in July 2005 opened Self-Conscious, his first store.

“What developed at Tony’s I took with me to Self-Conscious,” he says. He also took it to his next store, EnCore (get it?), which became the only high-end sneaker consignment store in the country at the time. No sneaker below $200. Bad and bougie way before Migos and the spell change. It lasted two months. Business deal goes left and he ends up in court with his investor. They found a way to settle without ’Velle losing his visibility equity.

In the neighborhoods, they weren’t calling ’Velle’s stores by their names — back then, we were all like: “You going to ’Velle’s?” On friendship, sneakers, and being He’d personally become the brand of something he’d wanted to a Black man with a plan in a city that simply be a business. “V-Dot” is what everyone started calling too often eats its own By SCOOP JACKSON

LaVelle and Me

Photograph by MICHAEL ZAJAKOWSKI

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CHICAGO STORIES

Don’t Forget About Us.

Eugene

Alphie

Adopt an overlooked animal like Eugene or Alfie today.

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C H I C AG O | M AY 2 0 2 1

him, associating his hustle directly to him, making him the Chicago focal point of a subculture that was moving into America’s pop culture bloodstream.

With EnCore closed, Sykes was without brick or mortar. All he had was inventory and ideas. One of those ideas found life in 2008, when he and former DePaul and NBA player Bobby Simmons opened up SuccezZ (“two z’s because we don’t sleep,” says ’Velle) on Michigan Avenue just off Roosevelt Road. Their come-up nothing compared to their sustain. Because over the next 10 years, it seemed as if the rest of the city (and country) finally caught up to ’Velle’s intuition on the societal relevance of urban fashion and sneakers. SuccezZ became one of the most prominent Black-owned retail spaces in the nation. ’Velle and I have watched each other dream our way through bars that wouldn’t bend, navigating careers through the racial and racist waters of industries — fashion for him, media for me — where the color of our skin had less to do with everything we’ve been forced to face than the color of our voices. Both of those industries telling us to shut up and shut up. The struggle more than real, every day attempting to suck the soul and culture out of us until we conformed.

Then. Now. Still. The white-rise of counterparts who’ve done 10 times less yet benefited 10 times more. The weight that comes from trying to survive (literally) and thrive in a city with a rep for genocidal behavior while running small Black Chicago businesses in all-Black Chicago neighborhoods. As ’Velle puts it: “The corporate brands not letting you run your business like you want to run your business. Being a minority in this game, we get overlooked a lot — collaborations, funding, accounts, getting respect.

Yeah, I have a brand, I have a store, but they’ve never acknowledged what I’ve done for this culture. I built this thing here in Chicago. I’ve never left it.”

I was with ’Velle the early morning of August 10 last year, when the hood we’ve always held up and tried to be examples for turned on him. He was sitting on his

car across South Michigan Avenue from SuccezZ’s new location and watched it all unfold. One brotha saying to ’Velle as Black folx looted 16 years’ worth of his life business: “Just because you Black don’t mean shit.” Next to ’Velle and his wife as people and product left his edifice: a police officer. Sitting and watching, too.

A group of us got together the next day, going into salvage-and-recovery mode to get V-Dot’s spot back to where it had been (because that’s what we do: survive, at all costs). I sat in awe of how he’d already reconciled it all. “I was able to get past it because I saw that they needed it more than I needed it,” he said. “I know, because I was that kid that was hurting from something. And I cannot judge them without judging myself.”

What’d Nietzsche claim? What doesn’t kill you makes you Blacker? Or was that Damon Young? Either way. ’Velle’s Black, I realized, was Blacker than my Black in that moment. Twins, just not identical. “I wish I coulda given the merchandise to them,” he said. “I’d have rather give it to them than them take it from me. I grew up with these people. I am these people.”

I nodded in solidarity. His tone strengthened. “I see the crime every day, I see the violence, I see the murder, see somebody die every day, get shot, I hear the story every day, brah, like, I know these people. And that’s the hard part about this whole industry, and me being who I am. The dude who comes in my store to buy a pair of sneakers, he’s not just a kid from the corner: I know his moms, I know his dad, I know his auntie and uncle, I know his cousin. I know my people. These other stores, they don’t.”

There’s a hoodie that I walk around in that reads as motto and reminder of not only who ’Velle is but why we’re twins: “While I’m Watchin’ Every Ni**a Watchin’ Me Closely, My Shit Is Butter for the Bread, They Wanna Toast Me, I Keep My Head, Both of Them, Where They Supposed to Be.” Message by Hov, product by SuccezZ. A memorandum.

Whatever affects one directly, affects the other indirectly. Tied in a single garment of destiny, we coexist. C

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One of the dozens of bison at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie

THE 10 BEST DAY-TRIP

FO RG ET TH E TE NT O R H OTE L ROO M .

PHOTOGRAPHY: (BISON) RICHARD SHORT/USDA FOREST SERVICE; (STARVED ROCK) KATHY CASSTEVENS/STARVED ROCK LODGE AND CONVENTION CENTER

TH E S E D E STI N ATI O N S O F F E R A BU N DA NT N ATU R A L B E AUT Y, F RO M C A N YO N S A N D WATE R FA LL S TO PR A I R I E S A N D D U N E S , W ITH I N TH R E E H O U R S O F TH E C IT Y.

By Deborah D. Douglas

Bluebells at Starved Rock State Park

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Chasing Waterfalls Amid Sandstone Canyons S TA RV E D R O C K S TAT E PA R K

Summer may be peak season at this crown jewel of Illinois parks, but its legendary canyons, bluffs, and trails are arguably at their most appealing between March and May, when snowmelt and spring rains feed Starved Rock’s stunning waterfalls. Follow the trails marked in green to the falls at French, Wildcat, LaSalle, Ottawa, Kaskaskia, Illinois, Aurora, and St. Louis Canyons. The sandstone formations, carved millennia ago by glacial forces, make for eye-popping scenery in their own right — and are best admired from the trail, because climbing the notoriously crumbly rock is ill advised.

Or tackle the Starved Rock and Sandstone Point Overlook Trail, a four-mile loop, rated moderate in difficulty, that offers a commanding view of the Illinois River. The park’s name comes from the death by starvation of a band of Illiniwek seeking refuge on a butte here during a battle over the death of Ottawa chief Pontiac in the 1760s — a solemn reminder of whose land you’re hiking through and the privilege of communing with it.

LOOK FOR Bald eagles. The Plum Island Eagle Sanctuary, which occupies a 45-acre island in the Illinois River opposite the park’s visitor center, is a wintering area for the birds. In spring and summer, you’ll have a chance of seeing a mating pair that are permanent residents.

WHILE THERE Reward your exertions with a pint at the Lone Buffalo, a taproom in nearby Ottawa operated by Tangled Roots Brewing Company.

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Communing With Illinois’s Original Landscape M I D E W I N N ATI O N A L TA L LG R A S S P R A I R I E Northeastern Illinois DRIVE TIME About an hour

PHOTOGRAPHY: (STARVED ROCK) EJ RODRIQUEZ/ISTOCKPHOTO

North-central Illinois DRIVE TIME 1 hour 45 minutes

Breathtaking Views of America’s Mightiest River M I S S I S S I P P I PA L I S A D E S S TAT E PA R K Northwestern Illinois DRIVE TIME Just under 3 hours

PHOTOGRAPHY: (MISSISSIPPI PALISADES) ILLINOIS OFFICE OF TOURISM; (MIDEWIN) ALLISON CISNEROS/ USDA FOREST SERVICE

The riverbank bluffs, or palisades, that are the centerpiece of these 2,500 acres make for exhilarating hiking and gorgeous panoramas. Fifteen miles of relatively short, interconnected trails ascend the bluffs and plummet into cool, fern-filled ravines, offering views of erosion-carved limestone formations with names like Indian Head and Twin Sisters. But you don’t have to scramble to earn your views: Several paved paths lead to platformed overlooks that take in the confluence of the Mighty Miss and the Apple River.

Have an old-fashioned picnic in one of the shelters built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. In spring and summer, look for the colorful splendor of brightly blooming lobelias and bluebells.

LOOK FOR Woodland mammals. Weasels, muskrats, and badgers make their home here.

WHILE THERE The historic downtown of nearby Mount Carroll has rightly earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places. It features brick-paved streets and remarkably well-preserved 19th-century Victorian houses.

Bison, the prairie’s once-abundant original inhabitants, were reintroduced in 2015 as part of a conservation initiative at this 18,500-acre preserve, which occupies the site of a former ammunition plant and is the first federal tallgrass prairie in the country. You can’t walk among the bison — currently the herd numbers around 50 — since they roam in pastures fenced off from the park’s 33 miles of trails, but sightings are common. Years of painstaking restoration of the area’s tallgrass habitat has resulted in an unparalleled variety of birdlife. Keep your eyes out for sandhill cranes, black-necked stilts, dickcissels, Henslow’s sparrows, and the rare black-billed cuckoo. Created in 1996 and considered one of the most significant conservation triumphs of the 20th century, Midewin offers a chance to experience the natural prairie that covered much of the Midwest but is now all but obliterated.

LOOK FOR A prehistoric glacial erratic. Follow the Henslow Trail to where it crosses Route 53 to see this 19-ton boulder that was pushed south by an ice sheet, possibly from as far as present-day Wisconsin.

WHILE THERE The nearby village of Elwood boasts a rare attraction: a paved section of the original Route 66 — America’s Mother Road — that you can actually drive on. (It’s on what’s now Douglas Street.)

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PA LO S P R E S E RV E S Southwestern Cook County DRIVE TIME 45 minutes

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This 12,000-acre complex of trails and protected lands — constituting the largest forest preserve system in Cook County — is about as remote-feeling as you can get without leaving the metro area. The Yellow Trail is an eight-mile gravel loop that offers a decidedly away-from-it-all vibe and traverses the Cap Sauers Holding Nature Preserve, the largest roadless area in the county.

Bring binoculars: Bald eagle sightings are common, and the preserve hosts an exceptional variety of less glorified birds, including summer tanagers, eastern phoebes, pileated woodpeckers, and Louisiana waterthrushes. Seeking a workout? Enter the Swallow Cliff Woods off Calumet Sag Road and sprint up the limestone stairs leading to the top of a 100-foot bluff. Worried about getting lost in all that wide-open space? Relax: Virtually all Cook County Forest Preserve trail maps are accessible on your phone.

LOOK FOR Baby wood ducks falling from the sky. The waterfowl nest in tree cavities, says Cook County Forest Preserves ecologist Kristin Pink, and the babies will occasionally plummet out and scamper toward water.

WHILE THERE Make the day an action double-header by also hitting the Forge: Lemont Quarries, a new adventure park eight miles away featuring aerial rope courses, laser tag, and more.

PHOTOGRAPHY: (CRANE) REDMAN THUNDERSNOW/FOREST PRESERVES OF COOK COUNTY; (MATTHIESSEN) ERIK LYKINS/GETTY IMAGES

A Birding Bonanza Less Than an Hour From Downtown

Cliffs, Bluffs, and Dells Without the Crowds

M AT TH I E S S E N S TATE PA R K North-central Illinois DRIVE TIME 2 hours This 4,500-acre expanse of woods, canyons, glens, and creeks possesses virtually all the natural beauty of Starved Rock — the bigger and better-known state park just a few miles to its north — minus the throngs of nature-deprived city folk. Situated along the Vermilion River near its junction with the Illinois, Matthiessen has a less extensive trail system than Starved Rock’s (just five miles of groomed paths), but those trails traverse remarkably variegated terrain and can take you deep into the park’s signature wooded valleys, or dells.

Watch for white-tailed deer along the trails, some of which cross the rushing creeks that empty into the Vermilion and sluice over the dells’ terraced rocks in sprightly cascades. Sorry, no swimming, no matter what you’ve seen on TikTok. LOOK FOR Winsome yellow lady’s slipper orchids (a.k.a. moccasin flowers). They flourish in the nature area bordering the dells.

WHILE THERE What’s better than a blood orange margarita after a vigorous hike? One accompanied by some light shopping for handcrafted jewelry, teas, scarves, and soaps. The Ottawa wine bar Cat’s Eye and its gift boutique, A Mess of Things, offer both.

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From Forest to Beach in a Few Bounding Steps INDIANA DUNES N ATI O N A L PA R K Northwestern Indiana DRIVE TIME About an hour

An Unsung Woodland Gem SEVEN BRIDGES TR A I L I N G R A N T PA R K Southeastern Wisconsin DRIVE TIME 1 hour 30 minutes An invitation by Romantic poet William Cullen Bryant beckons at the entrance of this easily overlooked county park south of Milwaukee: “Enter this wild wood and view the haunts of nature.” Inscribed on a covered wooden bridge, the words offer a fitting welcome to this beguiling expanse of deeply shaded ravines and stone paths that abuts an intimate Lake Michigan swimming beach. Flanked by trout lilies and trilliums, the trail weaves through birch, maple, and white ash trees and leads to steep stone staircases, nooks with benches for resting, and those seven footbridges — creating an enchanted-forest vibe that kids will dig. Keen observers crossing another of the bridges will notice a second Bryant verse, one that captures the appeal of the place: “May the Godgiven peace of this leafy solitude rest upon and abide with thee.”

LOOK FOR The distinctive limestone pavers on the trail. Those and the ones forming the retaining walls came from the nearby Lannon stone quarry, which produces a pretty dolomite used to clad countless buildings in the area since the 1850s.

WHILE THERE In Milwaukee, just 10 minutes north, pick up a dry-brined rotisserie chicken from the beloved bistro Goodkind or sip a cortado on the patio of Colectivo Coffee.

PHOTOGRAPHY: (DUNES) ZBIGNIEW BZDAK/CHICAGO TRIBUNE; (SEVEN BRIDGES) JEREMY IUSHEWITZ; (KETTLE MORAINE) WIWOODS/GETTY IMAGES

Encompassing rivers, woodlands, prairies, wetlands, and, of course, the eponymous hills of sand, Indiana Dunes National Park is one of the most ecologically diverse preserves in the nation. With 14 trail systems totaling more than 50 miles, the park is as welcoming to visitors seeking a little birdwatching as it is to those intent on an all-day trek. “You’ve got incredible natural features that aren’t found anywhere other than the south end of Lake Michigan, including oak forests that grow right out of the sand,” says hiking advocate Jay Readey. A great introduction is the 4.7-mile Cowles Bog Trail, which takes in oak savanna, ponds, marshes, swamps, and beaches, as is the justifiably popular Dunes Succession Trail, which rewards hikers who scramble to the top of the dunes with gorgeous lake views sheltered by fragrant jack pines.

LOOK FOR The distant Chicago skyline.

Seen from the tranquil heights of the dunes, it’s one of the most memorable views of the city you’ll ever have.

WHILE THERE Grab a burger at Industrial Revolution Eatery & Grille in Valparaiso, 20 minutes due south, and make a night of it by catching a movie at the 49er Drive-in Theatre, open April through October.

K E T T LE M O R A I N E S TATE F O R E S T, S O UTH E R N U N IT Southern Wisconsin DRIVE TIME About 2 hours When the ice sheet that covered much of North America retreated some 12,000 years ago, it left a distinctive landscape of hills, kettles (surface depressions), ridges, and lakes across a great swath of what is now Wisconsin. Those natural features take pride of place on any stretch of this 23,000-acre forest’s 100-plus miles of trails. A good option for glacially minded first-time visitors is hiking the segment of the 1,000-mile Ice Age National Scenic Trail that cuts through a particularly gorgeous stretch of the park. You’ll see ancient sedimentary formations such as kames (gravel or sand mounds) and eskers (long, winding ridges) and, if you’re observant, plenty of flora and fauna too: The park is home to red foxes, turkeys, and coyotes and an abundance of wildflowers, including forked aster, yellow gentian, and eastern prairie fringed orchid. Families and dog owners can tackle any of the loops in the Nordic Trail system, which extends across gently rolling terrain traversing pine and hardwood forest and open plains.

LOOK FOR The ruins of an old resort. Complete with a still-active artesian spring and trout pond, it rises alongside the half-mile loop trail Paradise Springs.

WHILE THERE Venture to the nearby mill town of Whitewater for a farm-to-table meal at the Black Sheep, which sources from nearly a dozen local farms and fisheries.

A Journey Into the Ice Age

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A Riverside Ramble K A N K A K E E R I V E R S TAT E PA R K Northeastern Illinois DRIVE TIME About an hour A mostly flat, woods-shaded trail forms the backbone of this 4,000-acre park hugging both banks of the river.

Hardcore hikers might call the 10.5-mile paved and gravel route more of a walk than a hike, but for parents with stroller-age kids, it’s a chance to plunge into a distinctive natural habitat without having to put the kid in a carrier. A three-mile spur along Rock Creek, a tributary, leads to limestone canyons and a waterfall. That creek is rated as one of the cleanest streams in Illinois, and the naturally channeled Kankakee was recently ranked No. 1 for water quality in the state by the Illinois River Watch Network. All the more reason to bring your fishing gear: Smallmouth bass, channel catfish, northern pike, and walleye abound.

LOOK FOR The grave of Potawatomi chief Shaw-wawnas-see. The trail running alongside Rock Creek leads to a boulder that marks it.

WHILE THERE Scuba diving in Illinois? You bet. Nearby Haigh Quarry is a spring-fed, limestone-lined lake that’s been turned into a diving refuge.

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Hidden Lakes and Pristine Dunes G R A N D M E R E S TAT E PA R K Southwestern Michigan DRIVE TIME 1 hour 30 minutes

PHOTOGRAPHY: (KANKAKEE) NAGA FILM/GETTY IMAGES; (GRAND MERE) JOSHUA NOWICKI/SOUTHWESTERN MICHIGAN TOURIST COUNCIL

This 985-acre jewel hugging Lake Michigan’s eastern shore harbors a tranquil dunes habitat and three ancient inland glacial lakes called, prosaically, North, Middle, and South.

A handicapped-accessible paved trail departs from the picnic shelter; a half mile in, the pavement gives way to a sandy footpath that forks right toward a mile-long beach backed by dunes, and left toward South Lake, which is nestled in an undeveloped natural preserve that’s home to waterfowl and songbirds. Beach-bound hikers can summit Baldtop, a 760-foot dune, before sprinting (or tumbling) toward the crystal waters of Lake Michigan. The National Park Service has named Grand Mere a National Natural Landmark, owing to its unique terrain and ecological diversity.

LOOK FOR The geological phenomenon known as aquatic succession. This transformation of glacial lakes into terrestrial habitat is happening right before your eyes with the three interdunal lakes. (Two other lakes beyond the park have already turned into bog forest.)

WHILE THERE Southwest Michigan’s Makers Trail features more than 45 breweries, cideries, wineries, and distilleries within 25 miles of the park. Try a barrel-aged cider at Peat’s Cider Social, just across the road from the park.

SOURCE: CHICAGO OUTERBELT ALLIANCE

Beginning and ending in Grant Park, the Outerbelt extends as far south as Tinley Park and as far north as Libertyville, connecting many of the county forest preserves that surround the city. The length of each day’s hike on this suggested itinerary ranges from five to 15 miles. More ambitious hikers can tackle the loop in less time.

Others can choose to complete it over the course of many months, or just hike a portion of it on a day trip. For a detailed, interactive map of the route and other suggested attractions and campsites, visit www.outerbelt.org.

The Great Chicago Thru-Hike

Illustration by Melissa McFeeters

IT M AY N OT B E A S LO N G (O R A S M O U NTA I N O U S) A S TH E A P PA L AC H I A N A N D PAC I F I C C R E S T TR A I L S , B UT TH E 2 0 0 - M I LE O U T E R B E LT R O U T E , E S TA B LI S H E D I N 2 0 1 8 , I S TH E C IT Y ’ S OW N B U C K E T- LI S T M E G A H I K E .

H E R E ’ S A P L A N F O R TAC K LI N G IT I N 1 9 DAYS .

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WHAT COVID

SURVIVORS

KNOW As these testimonies reveal, those who have had the most severe cases face profound and often lasting effects that experts are still struggling to understand.

By CINDY KUZMA Illustrations by SCOTT BAKAL

T

HE DEATH TOLL FROM COVID-19 — MORE THAN

half a million nationally and 21,000 in Illinois as of early April — is nothing short of devastating. But to focus on mortality alone drastically understates the impact of this disease. For every Cook County resident who’s succumbed to it, more than 58 have pulled through, and many of them are still contending with lifealtering consequences.

Chicago talked to 10 survivors of severe cases. Some caught the virus during the early days of the pandemic, when testing and treatment protocols were being frantically developed, while others contracted it more recently. Most could be described as “long-haulers,” people who suffer physical and mental aftereffects months after first testing positive. A few are dealing with long-lasting complications from the emergency intubations and medically induced comas required to save their lives.

The very sickest describe harrowing hospitalizations, weeks or months of isolation, and a terrifying struggle to draw breath.

Even those with milder cases now have mysterious, lingering physical effects — thinning hair, rashes, brain fog, tongue discoloration, out-of-control heart rates — most of which doctors aren’t sure how to alleviate.

These survivors, who range in age from 23 to 68, hope that the details of their ordeal will persuade others to take the virus seriously, so that they will roll their sleeves up for a vaccine shot.

They all expressed gratitude for modern medical care and second chances, but each experienced the disease in a distinctly different way. Their stories, presented here in their own words, serve as postcards from the brink, and sometimes from beyond it.

I.

“Help me, there’s something wrong” I CAUGHT IT RIGHT AT THE START OF ALL THIS, AND I’M GRATEFUL FOR THAT. IF I WAS GONNA GET SICK, AT LEAST I DIDN’T SEE IT COMING.

It was allergy season, and for a while I thought that’s what it was. But I felt worse that night, and I was like, OK, maybe this is something more.

I was still thinking, It’s probably a sinus infection. But then I started losing my voice.

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I was watching Tiger King, and I totally missed large sections of it. I just remember fading in and out of awakeness. My husband was out of town, so I was just curled up on the couch by myself. And I’m like, This is a really shitty flu.

I went from a cold and sneezing to this massive headache that would not go away. It lasted about five days. I think the most alarming thing for me was my hair started falling out.

I felt like I was having an anxiety attack because I couldn’t breathe.

IT WAS LIKE THE FLU TIMES A THOUSAND.

It was a Saturday. I said, “Something’s not right.” And then a few hours later, it just hit me all at once: I couldn’t breathe, I was gasping for air.

I had a dull headache and my stomach was kind of upset, and then in the middle of the night it felt like there was an elephant on my chest.

You feel short of breath.

It’s almost like an air hunger — you can’t get enough.

We decided to play it safe, and my husband moved out of our bedroom.

He walked around with all the Lysol bottles, spraying everything. He moved to the basement for a month — it might have been longer. Eventually, I was like, “Are you ever gonna come back to our bedroom?” Maybe he likes it down there too much? Because, you know, 21 years of marriage.

I just got sicker and sicker. That night, I had the worst sore throat I have ever had in my life. It was like swallowing glass. It consumed everything. At 4:30 in the morning, I messaged my doctor and literally said, “Help me, there’s something wrong.”

It was like, If I go into the hospital, I’m gonna die. They don’t know what to do with this whole thing. Maybe I’ll take my chances, stay right here. I’ll just keep drinking Gatorade, maybe it’ll be OK.

THE X-RAY CAME BACK WITH SIGNS OF WHAT THEY CALL GROUND-GLASS OPACITIES, WHICH ARE INDICATIVE OF COVID. BUT I WASN’T CONSIDERED SICK ENOUGH TO GET A TEST. NOW YOU GET IT IF YOU HAVE A SNIFFLE.

My boyfriend would buy me groceries and set them outside. Then I would put on all my PPE because I didn’t want to contaminate anything on the elevator. Then I’d go down and get the food and come back up.

By the time I was begging to be allowed into the hospital, I couldn’t get in because I could not prove that I had been near someone who had confirmed COVID.

II.

“I really didn’t know if I’d wake up the next morning” Hospitals are already scary enough, but these people show up in the equivalent of moon suits. The first person was a very stern young nurse. And she said, “We can only be in here for a few minutes at a time. Therefore, if you need anything, you need to think about it.”

It wasn’t just the fact that you feel like you’re dying, but they’re literally telling you, “We don’t know what else to do except to give you intravenous solutions and some Tylenol.”

I had fabulous nurses, fabulous doctors.

All very attentive. But they were scared.

You find yourself trying to comfort the people that are trying to help you. Because they can’t do anything to fix it.

I remember more than a couple of days when my sheets were just soaked.

I couldn’t even sit in them. So I grabbed the coat that I had come with and wrapped myself in the coat because it was drier than my sheets.

I WAS LIVING FOR THE HOUR AT WHICH I COULD TAKE THAT VICODIN AGAIN.

I don’t remember getting sick. My fiancée said she took me to the hospital. I don’t remember that. The only thing I remember is waking up. It’s tough because I want to remember so bad. But it’s probably a good thing that I don’t.

They didn’t want my wife or daughter to even come into the ER. The nurses met me at the door, and my daughter fell apart because they grabbed me and pulled me in so fast that she wasn’t able to give me a hug or say goodbye.

The horrible thing was hearing people groaning and dying around you. That was horrendous.

You don’t see humans as humans in the ICU because everybody comes to your room in masks and goggles and gloves and gowns. You only see their eyes, and they’re looking at you. And everybody looks alike.

YOU DON’T DO ANYTHING EXCEPT FOCUS ON TAKING ANOTHER BREATH. YOU FOCUS ON MAKING SURE THAT YOUR OXYGEN IS IN YOUR NOSE. I WOULD TRY TO STAND UP, STRETCH OUT MY ARMS TO TAKE IN DEEPER BREATHS UNTIL I PHYSICALLY COULDN’T. AND THEN I’D JUST COLLAPSE INTO THE BED.

When my wife dropped me off at the door, the thought that this could possibly be the last time that I see her — that was probably the hardest part. I just felt like I was dying.

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I DON’T THINK I SLEPT MUCH, EXCEPT WHEN I WOULD PASS OUT. I WAS JUST BASICALLY PULLING ALL-NIGHTERS, JUST COUNTING MY BREATH, ALMOST LIKE A YOGA EXERCISE. I WAS VERY CONSCIOUS OF MY BREATH. IT WAS THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERED.

I had to have the nasal cannula. And it got to a point where the oxygen would dry my left nostril so bad, I would get gushing nosebleeds.

Each time they took the oxygen off me, my level would just drop instantly.

The doctor said to me, “There’s a possibility that we may have to intubate.” The only thing I could do was say OK, because I knew that I couldn’t continue, the way I was feeling. The next thing I remember, it was about seven days later, and I came to in the ICU, and I had no functions — my arms, my legs, no strength at all.

MY WIFE AND DAUGHTER WERE CALLING ME, AND I PRETTY MUCH COULDN’T TALK. SO I HUNG UP. I FELT LIKE I WAS GONNA DIE. AND I THOUGHT, DO I CALL THEM BACK AND SAY GOODBYE? BUT WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO DO? THEY CAN’T COME HERE, THEY CAN’T DO ANYTHING. I DECIDED NOT TO MAKE THAT PHONE CALL.

I never went on a ventilator. When they started talking about it, I said, “Just turn up the oxygen. I’ll take my chances.”

When they mentioned the ventilator, I was like, “Hey, go ahead, knock me out. I’ll either wake up or it’s done. I can’t lie here and suffer like this anymore.”

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Supposedly the last thing people lose before dying is the hearing, so the nurse would have my phone in my room, fully charged all the time, and my wife would call me every day and the nurse would put the phone to my ear. And then my family would talk to me for about five minutes, just say stuff. I don’t remember any of it, but I had dreams about my wife next to me in the room crying.

I woke up from two weeks being sedated and I thought I’d been asleep for a night. What happened to Memorial Day? What happened to my buddy’s birthday? And why are there roses in the room? How can I have missed saying “Happy anniversary” to my wife?

I was taken off the ventilator after two weeks, had some issues breathing again, so they put it back in again for two more weeks. I was sedated, totally, the whole month of May. When you’re in a horizontal position for that long, you lose a lot of muscle mass and you lose a lot of abilities. You basically cannot walk, you cannot swallow. You can’t shave, clip your nails, brush your teeth.

MY SON TOOK A PICTURE OF ME WHILE I WAS INTUBATED, AND TO LOOK AT THAT PICTURE, IT’S HUMBLING. IT IS A LIFECHANGING EXPERIENCE TO BE SO CLOSE TO THE OTHER SIDE.

I remember specifically they’re like, “What year is it?”

And I’m like, Oh no.

I was told my lungs did give out at one point, and out of nowhere, they just restarted. I know there was about two or three occasions where they let my family know, “Hey, you better come see her.” But only through the glass. They weren’t able to go in the room, hold my hand, nothing.

I told my boyfriend, “Look, if you want to move on, it’s OK.”

A thought in the back of my head was:

EVERYBODY WAS AMAZED WHEN THEY SAW ME ALIVE. THE OFFICE WAS PRAYING FOR ME EVERY DAY AT 3 O’CLOCK, A MOMENT OF SILENCE FOR ME.

My wife definitely had the prayer warriors out there. Because when I got home and I finally looked at my phone, there had to be 200 or 300 texts and voicemails.

My son showed me a video he took of people standing outside the hospital

My first doctor’s appointment after I got out, I go in and everybody in the office is standing up and clapping and cheering. They all said, “You’re our hero, you made it!” I guess it just wasn’t my time.

I don’t want to leave my parents, I don’t want to leave my little sisters, my dog.

I just want to keep going. I want to finish everything I started.

with candles. And they were praying

THERE WERE MORE THAN A FEW TIMES THAT I REALLY DIDN’T KNOW IF I’D WAKE UP THE NEXT MORNING, AND I KIND OF JUST FIGURED, MAYBE THIS IS HOW I GO.

for me to survive. I was very emotional when I saw it.

III. I had the worst hallucinations. In my mind, I thought I was kidnapped.

I would dream about horrible, horrible things.

I had vivid dreams about just having cold ice water on a balcony or in the backyard.

My dad’s been gone now for 20 years, but I remember seeing my dad and aunt and uncle, my grandparents, and I remember saying, “I’m not ready to go yet.”

I literally had a Jesus moment. I explained it to a relative who’s a clinical psychologist and who wanted to use all types of terminology to explain it: hallucination, delusion. I said, “No, this was a Jesus moment.”

It was a physical touch of assurance.

An overwhelming, deep sense of assurance that everything is going to be OK. A feeling of wholeness, a feeling of completeness, a feeling of universal connection.

Two things kept me focused on surviving and living. One, my family. The second thing was, I wanted to live so I could enjoy a gin and tonic.

“Please tell me this is going to go away at some point” I had to relearn how to drink stuff, how to eat stuff, make sure I was even swallowing properly, or else anything would go into my lungs.

I was like a little baby trying with both hands to get this little piece of Popsicle up to my mouth. The first piece I dropped, and I could just feel this cold Popsicle sliding down my stomach. And I started looking at the other piece that was still on the tray. Finally, I managed to get my one hand on the stick and the other hand up under the Popsicle, and I slowly worked it up to my mouth. And it was like heaven.

THERE’S SPEECH THERAPY THAT YOU HAVE TO DO BECAUSE YOUR VOCAL CORDS GET DAMAGED FROM THE VENTILATOR.

I cracked a tooth in the hospital. I didn’t realize it until months later. It was from the stress of biting down because of the pain. Now with COVID they’re finding large numbers of people who have cracked teeth.

I was so stressed and anxious that my entire body was jammed up. I still have a frozen shoulder that I’ve been working on for months.

THERE ARE THE ACUTE INFECTIONS, AND THEN THERE ARE THE LONG-HAUL INFECTIONS — ACTUALLY, WE DON’T EVEN KNOW IF IT’S AN INFECTION ANYMORE. WE DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT IT IS.

My immune system basically brought a bomb to a gunfight. It just went nuts trying to get rid of this virus. The problem is that it doesn’t really shut off.

I said to myself, I may have made it, but how much is broken?

A lot of stuff that COVID throws at people feels like a fight-or-flight response: You can’t catch your breath, your heart’s pounding. It’s really hard to endure that over and over again without giving it power over you.

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The accelerated heart rate and tachycardia stuff is really unpleasant, scary. It feels like you’re dying.

IN OUR FACEBOOK GROUP, WE CALL THAT ELEPHANT ON YOUR CHEST THE “COVID STRANGLE,” BECAUSE IT’S JUST THIS TIGHTNESS FROM YOUR THROAT TO YOUR CHEST, WHERE IT’S CONSTRICTIVE AND HARD TO BREATHE. IT’S REALLY HARD TO PUT IT INTO WORDS, BUT EXTREMELY UNCOMFORTABLE AND SCARY, AND VERY COMMON AMONG LONG-HAULERS.

The hair loss — as a woman, it’s really embarrassing.

I have zero alcohol tolerance now.

At my friend’s house last night, I had two

I’ve always been a big smell person. I’ve worn the same perfume for 25 years that I pay too much money for. I’ve always just loved smells and scents. So it’s remarkably disconnecting to not be able to smell anything. It just creates a sense of detachment.

It just doesn’t feel like you’re quite part of the world.

THAT LOVELY SMELL OF RAIN AND WARMTH AND DIRT. THAT WONDERFUL SMELL WHEN YOU APPROACH A BODY OF WATER — YOU JUST MISS THAT WHOLE TRANSFORMATIVE PART OF HOW WE THINK AND REMEMBER. HAVING IT GONE IS JUST PROFOUNDLY DISORIENTING. AND NOT BEING ABLE TO SMELL YOUR BABIES? IT’S AWFUL. BUT ALSO KIND OF A BLESSING.

beverages and had to sit on the couch for hours.

I think I’ve napped more than I’ve ever napped in my entire life.

You get aftertastes when you eat certain foods — spicy foods or foods heavy on the sauces. They said it’s the taste buds basically trying to recover.

A year in, I still can’t smell anything. Which is really something that I grieve about.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve burned food because I can’t smell it burning.

My boiler went out the other day, and I was trying to relight my pilot light and I was just terrified because I couldn’t smell if there was gas.

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I vacuumed once in May and I was down for three or four days, and by “down,” I mean I couldn’t do anything.

I would shower, and then I would lie down on the carpet, wrapped in my towel, because I didn’t have enough energy to actually get dressed.

The fatigue is hard to describe. It’s pretty overwhelming.

I HAVE TO DIVVY UP MY ACTIVITY. IF I WANT TO DO A WORKOUT, I CAN’T GO TO THE GROCERY STORE OR MAKE DINNER THAT NIGHT.

Making dinner is not supposed to be an event. I’ve been doing it for 20 years now. But it has become one now.

My voice is not the same. I used to be very high-pitched. I used to sing a lot.

Now it’s really hard.

There’s a thing called COVID rash. Out of nowhere, you’ll get random rashes on your hand.

They’re like, “You should see a liver doctor.” I’m like, “OK, maybe I will, but that’s not why my hands look like I’m an 85-year-old woman.”

You’ll have irritable bowel syndrome one week, and then the next week it’s rheumatoid arthritis.

AFTER A SHOWER, MY CALVES WOULD BE JUST ALL BLOTCHY. ALL KINDS OF FUNKY STUFF LIKE THAT. I HAD A WHITE TONGUE FOR A WHILE. I REMEMBER ASKING MY HUSBAND, “WHY IS MY TONGUE WHITE?” AND THEN I READ AN ARTICLE LAST WEEK. APPARENTLY THE CDC JUST ADDED THAT AS A SYMPTOM.

I’ve lost night vision in my left eye.

My stomach and guts have been the most disturbed thing. I still have a very uncomfortable and complicated relationship with the toilet.

I was having a period every month until I got sick, and then I never had a period again. I went through instant menopause.

I wouldn’t be surprised if I woke up one day and COVID made me grow a dick. I’d be like, Yeah, of course, COVID grew me a dick. It’s just like any fucking thing could happen.

I’M CURRENTLY TRYING A DRUG CALLED IVERMECTIN. IT’S SOLD AS A LIVESTOCK DEWORMING MEDICATION. THAT’S THE ONLY WAY I CAN GET IT. IT DOES MAKE YOU FEEL KIND OF DESPERATE TO TAKE HORSE MEDICINE. BUT I AM DESPERATE.

My two younger children got COVID, too, and had what I would say was just a typical kids’ illness, like stuffy noses and puked a couple times. But my son who is almost 18 has been on his own long haul. He still has headaches and has a hard time returning to his previous level of activity. He has his own relationship with a headache doctor now.

He and I are always trying different things, which is kind of fun to have a partner where I’m like, “All right, this week we’re eating powdered hypothalamus.”

“What is this supposed to help, Mom?” “I don’t know, something about your mitochondria — just eat up. Eat your hypothalamus.”

POTS stands for postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. You have a hard time when you change positions from lying down or sitting up to standing up.

Your heart is not efficiently moving that blood around your body. Compression socks help. I’m like, OK, my grandma wore those.

I’ve never in my life had high cholesterol. It’s always been conspicuously low. But I had it tested and it went sky-high out of the clear blue. I had some liver enzymes that were off, stuff that’s worrisome down the road. And then you read about all this potential for dementia later. It’s pretty alarming.

They call it COVID brain fog. It’s like I couldn’t seem to put two and two together. I would forget people’s names, forget what I was saying.

I still have what I would call very good associative thinking, associative memory. But then I won’t be able to pull a simple word, or I’ll sub in the wrong word. Someone was telling me they’d gone to a chiropractor, and I was like, “Oh, that’s interesting, have you worked with a choreographer before?” They’re like, “It’s a chiropractor.” And I’m like, “Right, a choreographer.”

Being someone with fibromyalgia, I know what cog fog is like. But this kind of cog fog is literally like you’re looking at the Sears Tower and the clouds roll in and block off the whole top. That’s what it feels like. It’s just like your brain’s done. I’m like, “Please tell me this is going to go away at some point.”

I’m a reader. I read a lot of philosophy, theology, history.

I’d read two, three pages and then realize I hadn’t retained a single thing. It was the first time facing up to a significant diminishment, one like I’d never had in my life. It was psychologically overwhelming.

I DON’T SEND OUT EMAILS IN THE AFTERNOON ANYMORE. I DON’T MAKE ANY BIG DECISIONS IN THE AFTERNOON. I’D FIND MYSELF AT WORK THE NEXT MORNING, SEEING A PILE OF DRAFTED EMAILS THAT I SWORE I HAD SENT OUT. THE GRAMMAR WAS BAD, THERE WERE MISSPELLINGS. I’M A VERY GOOD WRITER, VERY GOOD ORGANIZER OF THINGS, BUT NOW IF SOMETHING HASN’T BEEN WRITTEN DOWN, I’LL FORGET IT.

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A lot of times, I’ll lose a word and I’ll be like, “All right, kids, come on, it’s tall, it’s brown, it’s green on the top.”

They’re like, “A tree?” I should make a board game out of it. We’ll call it Aphasia: The Board Game.

I was like, I’m losing my mind.

THERE’S A LOT OF RELAPSING. WELL, THAT’S WHAT WE CALL IT. WE DON’T REALLY KNOW WHAT IT IS. WE DON’T KNOW IF IT’S JUST SOME MECHANISM IN THE BODY WHERE THERE’S LIKE HEIGHTENED INFLAMMATION OR SOMETHING ELSE KICKS IN.

IV.

“I am not the person I used to be” This illness has humbled me greatly, and it’s just knocked out any need that I have to be seen in a particular kind of way. So I suppose, you know, it’s a pewter lining? A gray lining? I don’t know that I’d call it silver.

I still cry almost every day.

I don’t sit around feeling sorry for myself or constantly thinking about it. You know, because who would you get angry at?

The two big things: an overwhelming sense of helplessness and a diminishment of self.

That is, you lost a bunch of stuff, and you still don’t know all that you’ve lost. My world

There’s nothing like thinking you’re getting better only to then have the disappointment of not being better. That’s where the Prozac comes in.

WILL MY BODY EVENTUALLY GET RID OF THIS? WILL THESE DIAGNOSES BE BEHIND ME? WILL THEY BE SOMETHING THAT WILL FLARE UP IF I GET SICK AGAIN? THAT’S ALL UNKNOWN RIGHT NOW.

today feels way smaller than the prospects that I thought I’d have. Everything is reassessed.

This has by far been the biggest, most extended shitshow of my life. There’s no contest.

I pray a lot more. I’m grateful a lot more.

I take my family a lot less for granted.

And I certainly have a much deeper appreciation for every day.

I never had a will before this.

You can be sure my advance directives and my will are very clear now.

THEY DID SOME BLOODWORK AND SAID, “WE THINK YOU NEED SOME MORE TIME.” I WAS KIND OF LIKE, “OK, THIS IS THE END OF AUGUST. I GOT SICK IN MARCH. HOW MUCH MORE TIME ARE WE TALKING?”

I feel like I’ve aged physically somewhere between 10 and 15 years.

I AM NOT THE PERSON I USED TO BE. THAT’S FOR SURE.

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IT’S BEEN HARD ON MY KIDS HAVING A SICK MOM. THEY’RE REALLY KIND CHILDREN, BUT EVERYONE’S KINDNESS TAKES A FEW HITS WHEN YOU’VE SEEN THE INSIDE OF THE SAME FOUR WALLS AND EACH OTHER’S FACES FOR A YEAR.

I’m so profoundly grateful to have my mind alive, even though the rest of me sits here like Jabba the Hutt after a bender.

Outside of health care, people were like, “You had COVID? Was it just like the flu?” They had no concept of how it can impact your day-to-day life.

It’s not as if doctors have this magic answer that they’re refusing to give.

Finding someone to take it seriously is about the best you can hope for.

There’s only one postCOVID specialty guy that I’m aware of, and he’s booked out through 2022.

It worries me that so many people who have been affected by long COVID are middle-aged women. It doesn’t give me a lot of hope for it being prioritized.

I have good insurance. I know a lot about the health care system and how to use it. If I can’t figure out how to get effective help, it’s got to be damn difficult to get effective help. And all these pills and potions and nostrums aren’t cheap. And all these lost productivity days are not cheap.

COVID helped me to learn how to ask for help, how to just open up and realize that you need your friends and family, you need that support system.

I didn’t really think I needed it until I got this sick.

I don’t do social media, but I broke my social media rule to join a long-haulers’ group.

And it’s definitely been helpful to have a cohort who is going through the same stuff in real time. Everyone has a tendency to start wondering if it’s all in your head. And then you can open up any one of 10 long-hauler chat boards or Facebook groups, and you see the same stuff.

It’s just nice to have a little bit of affirmation — not necessarily that you’re going to get better, but that at least you’re not fucking nuts or a wimp.

I was connected with another longhauler, who lives in Washington.

We’ve actually never met, but we have talked on the phone and we text each other constantly. We send each other articles, we give each other updates about doctor’s appointments. If I’m having a bad day, she’s the person who gets it, because she is living it. That’s been just a true gift. I had an episode with my prednisone, and I texted her and said, “You have a minute?” And it’s dinnertime. And she has four kids. And she’s like, “Yeah, absolutely.”

What are we long-haulers going to look like in a year? Are we just seen as this cohort of people who, oh well, they didn’t die? Or is it going to be something that mobilizes health care in any kind of significant way?

Or do we all die in two months?

For all I know, I spontaneously combust tomorrow. I would not be that surprised.

I do think that a lot of the stuff that will come out of this as official treatment protocols will have been originally mined by the community of sick people who couldn’t get answers, and that’s kind of cool.

There’s a real temptation to go down the rabbit hole of making illness your identity. When you’re housed in a body that’s badly malfunctioning, it’s hard not to feel like that’s who you are.

After a while, it can just only take up so much of your life, and you think, Well, I’m functioning. I feel like shit, but I’m functioning.

I JUST WANT TO BE ABLE TO HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR THAT FEELS REAL AGAIN, AS OPPOSED TO SOMETHING THAT I’M UTILIZING AS A COPING STRATEGY.

When I could taste something again for the first time, I was so happy. I put cayenne pepper in everything, made everything super spicy.

In our house, I have a thing about making posters. For everyone’s birthday, I make a poster and I decorate the house the night before. But then I was like, No one ever makes me a poster. So I’m making a poster on my 100day anniversary, because I’m surviving this crap. C

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Joh n Di l l i nger ’s D e at h Mask Little documentation accompanied this macabre curiosity when it was donated to the museum by Charles R. Walgreen Jr., scion of the drugstore chain family, so its maker is not known.

Death masks were not exactly commonplace in 1934, when the 31-year-old bank robber was gunned down by FBI agents, but given his fame at the time, one can imagine an enterprising coroner making a few to sell off. Indeed, other Dillinger death masks have turned up in private and public collections around the country. That crescentshaped mark below the right eye? A bullet exit wound.

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Ja me s Hora n’s F i re Hel met

Ma r y To dd L i ncol n’s Fa n

In the early hours of December 22, 1910, James Horan and dozens of other firefighters responded to a massive blaze at a meatpacking operation in the Union Stock Yards.

The well-loved fire chief and 20 of his men died when one of the buildings caved in.

It was the greatest loss of life for any city fire department in a building collapse until September 11, 2001. Horan’s white leather helmet was retrieved from the smoldering ruins and sat atop his casket in a funeral procession viewed by thousands.

As any devotee of period movies or John Singer Sargent’s paintings knows, women of the Victorian era often carried fans, both for fashion and, in the absence of air conditioning, for comfort. This one, made of painted black chiffon, belonged to Mary Todd Lincoln, and while the museum’s collections experts can’t confirm it, the color suggests that Mrs. Lincoln might have carried this fan after her husband’s assassination in 1865.

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B er t h a Pa l mer ’s Dia mond Choker The museum has a large collection of clothing and accessories worn by the famed turn-of-thecentury socialite and philanthropist. This necklace, from around 1900, is adorned with several large European-cut diamonds and 1,169 smaller rose-cut ones; it was used to embellish a hat that Palmer was fond of wearing. How much is it worth? “For insurance purposes, we put a value on all our objects,” says senior collection manager Britta Arendt, “but we don’t share that information.”

Teacups Melte d i n t he Ch ica go F i r e

A bra ha m L i ncol n’s Buck sk i n Mo ccasi ns

The museum possesses hundreds of objects rescued from the 1871 fire — or from its ashes. “A lot of people saved pieces like these as mementos when they returned to their homes and businesses,” says Arendt.

These four white china teacups, donated by one Max Rosenfeld, who may have inherited them from a family member, were fused together by the heat of the conflagration, which destroyed three and a half square miles of the city. The streaks of color are believed to be melted glazing. (The teacups will be on display in October, as part of an exhibition commemorating the 150th anniversary of the fire.)

The tongues of these glass-beaded slippers — which for years belonged to the Lincoln artifact collector Oliver Barrett before being acquired by the museum in 1952 — bear the initials A and L. Arendt surmises that the moccasins were handmade for Lincoln as a gift. “If you look at ladies’ magazines from the 1860s,” she says, “you’ll see patterns to make slippers similar to these.” Whether Lincoln wore them is open to question: The 11-inchlong moccasins correspond to a size 11; Lincoln is said to have worn a 14.

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B ot t le of P roh i bit ion-Era W h iskey

Cer t i f icate of F re e dom of Joh n Jone s

An inscription on the unopened bottle reads: “From the first shipment received after the repeal of the 18th Amendment in 1933.” The words were written by the donor, Lawrence O’Toole, whose father had apparently acquired at least some of that shipment and, presumably having quenched his thirst, set aside a bottle for posterity. A few ounces of the Chapin & Gore whiskey (which was sold as Kentucky bourbon even though it was distilled in Chicago) have been lost to evaporation, but what remains would be perfectly fine to drink.

This remarkably well-preserved document, drafted in 1844 by a court clerk in Edwardsville, Illinois, attests to John Jones’s status as a free man. (The museum has the nearly identical certificate for his wife, Mary.)

The certificate gives a physical description of Jones and declares him “a resident or citizen of the State of Illinois, and entitled to be respected accordingly, in Person and Property, at all times and places.” This was a precious paper indeed, offering the formerly enslaved person at least nominal protection from being resold into bondage. Jones went on to become the first African American commissioner of Cook County.

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Chicago’s Ar t s Scene

By J. Howard Rosier

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Illustration by Simone Martin-Newberry

Photography by Michael Zajakowski

Has a Race Problem Can a seven-year-old antiracism nonprofit solve it?

The city’s biggest cultural institutions are betting heavily that it can.

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This was 2013, and Brett Batterson, the executive director of the Auditorium Theatre at the time, had just read about a survey by the advocacy group Americans for the Arts that revealed that 92 percent of arts executive directors and CEOs in this country were white. “It was unbelievable to me,” Batterson recalls. “The arts are supposed to be the place that’s inclusive and accepting and promotes differences.”

He sent an email to colleagues throughout the city alerting them to the survey and suggesting a meeting. “My thinking was, if we can address it in Chicago and create a program, then other cities can follow suit.”

One of the people who responded was Angelique Power, then the culture program director at the Joyce Foundation, which awards $30 million to $50 million in grants a year. Power, who has since become president of the Field Foundation of Illinois, has a background in the arts herself, having studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and served as the director of community engagement and communications at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. “She had some instant credibility,” Batterson says. “Whereas I was just an old white guy who was pissed off.”

Power leveraged her contacts to call about 20 directors, executives, and other leaders of local arts organizations together at the Joyce Foundation’s Loop offices for a conversation on the topic. That’s when things went bad.

Batterson was stunned by some of the comments. “We heard things like ‘This problem is going to resolve itself in 50 years because the world’s changing and there’s interracial marriage.’ I thought to myself, Really?

You want to wait 50 years instead of doing what we can do now to make it better?” At that time, Power points out, discussions about diversity were different than they are now: “It was, ‘How do we keep the system — a white-dominant system — the same, but tinker at the margins?’ ” Carlos Tortolero, the founder and president of the National Museum of Mexican Art, was also there. Listening to the abstract talk about resources and training, he grew increasingly frustrated. “Finally, I said, ‘Why aren’t we talking about racism?’ Angelique likes to say it was like a grenade fell in the room.”

The worry of being painted as racist in front of Power, who represented one of the biggest arts benefactors in town, put the attendees on the defensive. “There was fear of repercussion,” Power recalls. “People heard ‘racism’ and thought it meant they personally were harboring racist 80

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thoughts — not that the entire art and philanthropic ecosystem was designed to reify and fund white culture, and that if we weren’t actively aware of this and working against it, then we were complicit in upholding it.”

Tortolero kept pressing the issue.

“You yourself, you’re not a racist,” he said to the group. “But if 10 people — 10 white men like you — make decisions for the city of Chicago, that’s racism.” As he explains now, “You can throw all these terms out, but if you don’t talk about antiracism, it’s a waste of time.”

Batterson agrees. “Angelique and I took a while to come around to what he was saying. It is lack of opportunity, it is lack of equity in funding, it is lack of equity in hiring. It is all of those things, but at the core it’s racism.”

FA ST- FORWARD E IGHT YE ARS, AND

the word “racism” hardly lands like a bomb in meetings at arts organizations anymore. That’s due to changing times but also, in no small part, to Enrich Chicago, the nonprofit eventually formed out of that first meeting. These days, cultural groups around town are clamoring to sign on with Enrich, which is devoted to helping them increase diversity and inclusion in their hiring, funding, and programming. Enrich doesn’t intervene directly on specific decisions. Its approach is more conceptual and intellectual: Broaden the perspectives and change the minds of the individuals at the top of Chicago’s arts community — curators, artistic directors, executives, and philanthropists — and that will lead to more equitable practices.

Already, more than 50 arts organizations participate, including some of the city’s most prominent institutions, such as the Art Institute, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Chicago Humanities Festival, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the Joffrey Ballet, as well as smaller niche ones, such as the Puerto Rican Arts Alliance and Red Clay Dance Company. Then there’s the money end. In addition to the two groups with

PAINTING: JADE FOREMAN, SEE US, WOULDN’T WANT TO BE US, 2020

Enrich Chicago director Nina Sánchez at Hyde Park Art Center, a member of the nonprofit

links to Power — Field and Joyce — Enrich works with other big arts benefactors, including the MacArthur Foundation and the Alphawood Foundation. At a time when cultural institutions risk being publicly criticized for not doing enough to create equitable environments, it may come as no surprise that Enrich has a waiting list of organizations seeking to hire it.

Getting to this point, though, has been a push. The work began right after that 2013 meeting, when Power and Batterson decided to enlist outside help for a fresh look at how to deal with the issue. They consulted Spark Design Strategies, a now-defunct Chicagobased design firm specializing in human behavior. A group of 22 top arts

executives from 11 local organizations started meeting weekly to discuss systemic and institutional racism.

Initially, their efforts focused on areas traditionally considered solutions to a lack of diversity, like increasing the pool of qualified minority job candidates and making sure they were given full consideration. But they soon felt they needed to press further, giving diversity and inclusion training to people in charge of not just staffing but programming, administering grant money, and other facets. In mid-2014, the group decided to host a two-and-a-half-day workshop in Steppenwolf’s Merle Reskin Garage Theatre, conducted by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, a New Orleans–based collective of antiracism educators.

For Batterson, the training was a shock to the system. “It opened my eyes to the ways I was failing,” he says. “How the systems of power in America that had benefited me throughout my life were in fact set up

“If we’re saying we want to be ar t s institutions for the whole cit y, what are we willing to do differently?”

Sánchez asks.

to keep certain people down, and how I had implicit bias within me of which I was not previously aware.”

Even Power, who is of mixed race (her mother is Jewish, her father Black), recalls getting her “clock cleaned.” The workshop made her look at her own situation as a person of color differently. “Many of us who are even allowed to succeed bear markers of privilege,” she says, “be it lighter skin, ‘talking white,’ demeanors that make us more palatable.”

Those involved in that summit wanted to create something that would be ongoing: If select leaders in arts institutions could undergo this kind of training, they could operate as “warriors” within their organizations, coaching trustees and executives and advocating change. Power, Batterson (who has since moved to Memphis), Tortolero, and the other founders of Enrich — including Joffrey CEO Greg Cameron, former Steppenwolf executive director David Schmitz, and Hyde Park Art Center executive director Kate Lorenz — imagined a “cohort model,” in which institutions wouldn’t go through this process alone but rather as part of a community with shared interests, holding each other accountable.

Enrich was formed later that year.

Here how’s it works: At least three representatives of each member organization are required to complete a two-and-a-half-day group workshop called Understanding and Analyzing Systemic Racism, conducted by the nonprofit Chicago Regional Organizing for Antiracism (Chicago ROAR). In addition, Enrich visits larger organizations twice a year, and smaller ones once a year, to conduct coaching sessions exploring themes like “the manifestations of white supremacy culture in our institutional lives.” Then quarterly, the representatives from all member organizations, including at least one person of color from each, meet as a group to create goals and assess progress.

Members pay annual dues ($1,000 for those organizations with budgets over $1 million, and $250 for the rest), but much of Enrich’s funding comes from the partner foundations, which undergo the same training, and other grant givers. It received $356,000 from these sources last year.

Enrich also brings in money — $60,000 last year — by providing additional consulting to member organizations and allowing nonmembers to attend workshops for a fee.

Whether you see antiracism training as educational or, as our last president did, indoctrination, whether you slant progressive (acknowledging

Angelique Power, Enrich’s cochair and the president of the Field Foundation, doesn’t care if organizations join just to stave off their “cancel culture” moment: “The benefits that come out of doing the work are there, no matter what your intention is.”

that society must finally come to terms with the wretched ground on which it is built) or cynical (recognizing that without at least the pretense of pursuing equity, you leave yourself vulnerable to attack), the language of critical race theory has become as normalized in 2021 as corporate-speak and sports metaphors. Absorbing and repeating it carries a Rosetta stone–like quality in terms of being able to explain how the world works today. But in 2014, when it began espousing this thinking and

terminology, Enrich was an outlier, at least in Chicago.

So how much does membership in Enrich reflect a genuine desire from these institutions to change, and how much is merely an appearance-driven effort to bulletproof themselves from accusations of racism? “Of course cooptation happens,” Tortolero says. “Not everybody is gonna be in Enrich Chicago because they believe in what they’re doing. That’s just being honest.”

To Power, the question is beside the point: “Even if you enter thinking that this may benefit you in one way, I guarantee it will benefit you on a spiritual and professional level. The benefits that actually come out of doing the work are there, no matter what your original intention is.”

W I T H A S TA F F O F T W O F U L L-T I M E

and three part-time employees and an operating budget of $459,000 last year, Enrich is still so small that many people in the local arts community tend to associate it with one person: Nina Sánchez, its director. She has been with Enrich for three and a half years and conducts the in-house sessions and facilitates many of the group workshops herself.

Sánchez, 42, grew up in Pilsen, right off 18th Street, and attended the same Catholic grammar school as her mother.

Her father was a singer and a musician, and she describes her mom as a “crafty, creative person.” As a youth, Sánchez did community theater and sang in the church choir. She also dabbled in writing; to this day, she considers herself a lapsed poet. “Enrich Chicago has really been the moment for me to bring together all the things I love and care about and I would be doing anyway, even if no one was paying me to do it,” she says.

That includes promoting inclusion.

When she was 9, Sánchez’s family moved to McKinley Park, an Irish neighborhood that was experiencing white flight amid an influx of Latinx residents. “We were the second Mexican family on our block,” she recalls. “Not only was the first

The idea isn’t to tear everything down. The change happens in the leadership’s m i n d s e t — one executive, then one staff member, at a time.

Mexican family not happy to see us, nobody else was either. And so it really put us in this place of being subjected to regular, nearly daily bullying and racial slurs. Because we were fortunate to grow up in a really strong community context, it became pretty clear to me early on that there was nothing wrong with me but there was certainly something wrong with these people.”

She graduated from St. Ignatius College Prep, a prestigious Jesuit high school on the Near West Side that has come under fire in recent years because of accusations by students of color that they were discriminated against by teachers and fellow students. “I was definitely alienated,” says Sánchez, who describes the school’s approach to inclusion as “diversity icing.” She adds: “When it came to speaking up about issues of discipline, which were disproportionately wielded on students of color, when it came to speaking up in your classroom space around political ideas that were not aligned to what was being shared, when it came to standing up and advocating for the queer teachers who were being wrongfully terminated, there was very little tolerance for that kind of behavior.”

The experience had a profound effect on her — as did, in the opposite way, her earlier education. “I had a group of teachers in grammar school who were all lay ministers, who had spent time in Central America during the height of the ‘dirty wars.’ We had what I now understand to be a very liberatory education. So that politicization, paired with some very fortunate levels of access to education in private school, really propelled me. I moved away from writing and more toward direct action and advocacy.”

Sánchez double-majored in anthropology and international affairs at Colorado College, then got a master’s degree in Latin American and Caribbean studies at the University of Chicago. Before Enrich, she was at Teach for America for nearly three years; she initially worked in leadership development but soon shifted to lead the organization’s regional diversity, equity, and inclusiveness initiatives. In a way, Sánchez had spent her life preparing for her role at Enrich.

“If we’re saying we want to be arts institutions for the whole of the city, what are we willing to do differently?” Sánchez asks. “What are we willing to stop doing so that someone who looks like me can come to an institution and feel welcome? It’ll be the year 2111 before Black people have been free in this country longer than they were enslaved. You don’t undo that even in a five-year plan, but it does mean that you have to work really hard every day.”

ENRI CH ’ S PH I LOSO PH Y — CH A N G I N G TH E VA LU E S O F TH OS E W H O

administer funding, rather than simply donating money to “good causes” — runs counter to traditional philanthropic wisdom dating (Continued on page 99) M AY 2 0 2 1 | C H I C AG O

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The Sound of Spectacle On their new album, Damon Locks and Black Monument Ensemble channel a chaotic time of pandemic and protest through an energetic sonic collage. By JACOB ARNOLD

Photography by BRITTANY SOWACKE

GO

in Maryland and moved here in 1988 to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Nowhere is that more evident than on Now’s second track, “The People vs the Rest of Us,” which includes a haunting sample of a little girl saying “They don’t like me” and clips of a talk show host asking a Black man why he didn’t take a plea deal. The response: “If I was guilty, I probably would have taken it. I’m not guilty.”

Now exudes all of Locks’s formative inf luences — the interplanetary

Monument Ensemble concert is designed to stun. Half a dozen dancers, barefoot and dressed in black costumes with thick diagonal white lines, move in graceful arcs. Six singers sway in unison as they harmonize. Two percussionists pound out rhythms while a clarinetist and a cornetist blast out melodic lines and free-jazz wails. All the while Locks, operating a digital sampler, is triggering electronic squiggles or sound bites from civ il r ights act iv ists.

Intermittently, he’ll issue spoken-word missives of his own over a microphone that sounds like a bullhorn.

In short, it’s a spectacle. “You’re like, Is this theater? Is this a band?

What is happening? ” Locks says. He wants audiences to have the same response he had when he’d catch cuttingedge acts like Bad Brains and Sun Ra Arkestra as a youth. “You would go, Oh my God, I’ve never seen this before! ” For the socially conscious elements — the parts that feel “connected to the world around us” — he drew inspiration from Public Enemy. “They would put Performing at the Chicago Cultural out an album, and then Center in 2019 they’d be on the news.”

On Black Monument Ensemble’s just-released second LP, exotic jazz of the Sun Ra Arkestra, the Now, Locks channels the dynamism hardcore zeal of Bad Brains, and the of the group’s concerts while also dense sound mixing and political underspeaking to current events. Last sum- current of Public Enemy. It also feels mer, dur ing t he civ il unrest over like a culmination of his previous projthe police killing of George Floyd, ects: Trenchmouth, the punk band he he received feedback on Instagram fronted in the 1990s, (future Saturday from fans telling him they found solace Night Live and Portlandia star Fred in the group’s first album, 2019’s When Armisen was its drummer), and the Future Unfolds. “It inspired me to wonder Eternals, the still-running dub regwhat Black Monument could say contem- gae and avant-garde jazz group Locks porarily,” says Locks, 52, who was raised formed in 1997.

A

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C H I C AG O | M AY 2 0 2 1

On When Future Unfolds, Locks replicated the energy of the group’s live performances, at least sonically, by recording a concert at the Garfield Park Conservatory. With the pandemic raging, that was impossible for the new album.

He couldn’t even gather the full band in a studio. So Locks recorded Now in two sessions — with clarinetist Angel Bat Dawid and the six vocalists in August and the rest of the musicians in September — in the garden of the nonprofit sound-art facility Experimental Sound Studio in Edgewater.

In a couple of places on Now, you can hear the group’s chatter between takes, even insects droning in the background. “I was really interested in capturing the moment of the pandemic,” Locks says. “The electricity of the nervousness, that desire to be in community with each other.” After the title track, Dawid can be heard exclaiming, “That is a forever momentary space!

I hope y’all don’t cut the cicadas out.”

They did not. C

PHOTOGRAPH: DARIS JASPER

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Enrich Chicago (Continued from page 83)

back to at least the 1880s, when Andrew Carnegie’s “ The Gospel of Wealth” posited that the best way to close the gap between the haves and have-nots was through thoughtful, targeted giving: “All we can profitably or possibly accomplish is to bend the universal tree of humanity a little in the direction most favorable to the production of good fruit under existing circumstances.”

The arts have become a significant place for philanthropists to unload money, w it h Car neg ie’s namesake classical music venue, Carnegie Hall, serving as an archetypal case. However, an unspoken rule of the art world is that dirty money can fund clean gallery installations. The Sackler family of OxyContin infamy contributed millions of dollars to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Institution for decades. Safariland CEO Warren Kanders was allowed to sit on the board of the Whitney Museum of American Art, despite his company’s sale of tear gas that, in all likelihood, was used against protesters of racial injustice.

The art world has only recently begun to question the wisdom of being financed by benefactors whose wealth may have been earned through unseemly means.

“We know philanthropy in its current form isn’t yet doing what communities of color really need and want it to do,” Sánchez says. As a first step toward envisioning an alternative model, Enrich is collaborating with the Chicago Park District on a project to identify overlooked arts organizations in town, particularly on the South and West Sides.

That database will be made public, and Enrich plans to offer grants to organizations in it that demonstrate innovative approaches to antiracism.

Enrich’s trajectory overlaps with a recent evolution: how the definitions of “racism” and “white supremacy” now focus more on institutional structures than on people. That is central to the organization’s approach. The idea isn’t

to tear everything down but, counterintuitively, to keep august institutions in place. The change happens in the leadership’s mindset — one executive, then one staff member, at a time. “That’s how it becomes real,” Power says. In this light, the culture war back-and-forth over what people are and aren’t allowed to say is frivolous. It’s what institutions do that’s important.

So what concrete things have Enrich’s members done? Hyde Park Art Center, a member from the start, has begun allowing families to pay what they can for its art classes in an attempt to provide more equitable access. Its staff has also formed an equity team, which is currently at work on developing transparency in organizational decision making and training employees in equitable hiring processes.

The Joffrey has been going well beyond its membership requirements, hiring Enrich to provide staff-wide antiracism workshops. Last November alone, more than 80 employees attended these multiday sessions, including administrative staff members, musicians, teaching artists, wardrobe personnel, and crew members. Through its work with Dance/USA and the International Association of Blacks in Dance, the company has also actively sought to get more Black dancers on the stage. And during the pandemic, it launched Joffrey for All, a series of affordable courses (as low as $13) for people interested in dance at various ages and ability levels.

Several people affiliated with Enrich cite the MacArthur Foundation as one of its greatest points of impact. Every one of t he foundat ion’s 181 st a f f members has been through Enrich’s training. And after the 2019 appointment of a white man, John Palfrey, as president sparked questions about the hiring process, Palfrey himself took the course. Under his leadership, Power points out, the foundation is “one of the most impactful organizations working on racial justice to this day.” Of its 21 “genius” grant recipients last year, 15 were people of color.

But what happens when an organization doesn’t do enough — or at least faces such accusations? The Chicago-based Poetry Foundation, which began tapping Enrich in the summer of 2018 for antiracism workshops but didn’t become a member until this January, is a cautionary tale. In June 2020, following the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the foundation put out a four-sentence statement expressing its “solidarity with the Black community” and asserting that it was “committed to engaging in this work to eradicate institutional racism.” Three days later, a who’s who of 30 Chicago poets — including Eve Ewing, Nate Marshall, Jamila Woods, and Fatimah Asghar — issued a letter of their own, calling the statement “worse than the bare minimum” and demanding the “immediate” resignations of the foundation’s president, Henry Bienen, and board chairman, Willard Bunn III. Soon after, both stepped down.

In collaboration with Enrich, the Poetry Foundation is now setting up an in-house group to craft and oversee a five-to-10-year plan that will transform the organization into what it terms an “antiracist institution.” In addition, says Sarah Whitcher, the foundation’s media and marketing director, all staffers “have attended a daylong workshop on systemic racism and dismantling white supremacy.” The board of directors also completed a workshop tailored specifically for them.

Victor y Gardens Theater, one of Enrich’s founding members, is another example. Last June, it was hit with public criticism on a couple of fronts: that it hadn’t pressed hard enough to find a diverse hire for its vacant executive artistic director spot, and that during last summer’s civil unrest, it boarded up its windows instead of providing a safe space for protesters in Lincoln Park. Amid the tumult, executive director Erica Daniels, who had absorbed the open position, resigned and board president Steven Miller stepped down.

Victory Gardens replaced Miller with Charles Harris II, a Black partner at

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Mayer Brown LLP who had been on the theater’s board for seven years. In March, Ken-Matt Martin, a Black former associate producer at Goodman Theatre, was named Victory Gardens’ artistic director. Victory Gardens had let its Enrich membership lapse in the meantime, but is now considering rejoining, according to Sánchez. (The theater declined to comment for this story.)

The commitment Enrich demands is formidable. Of the 12 organizations that formed the nonprofit, five are no longer actively involved. In addition to Victory Gardens, Black Ensemble Theater, Court Theatre, the Old Town School of Folk Music, and Muntu Dance Theatre have stepped away for a variety of reasons.

In the case of Black Ensemble Theater, founder and CEO Jackie Taylor points to time demands but says she is still supportive of Enrich’s mission. “If my staff were larger and not weighed down with multiple responsibilities, we would be active members,” she says. “We are adding our voices at other tables.” Those include the boards of Uptown United, Collective Chicago, Bet t y Shabazz International Charter Schools, and the National Association of Black Theater Building Owners.

Changes at the top are behind the interruption of Enrich’s relationships w it h t he Old Tow n School of Folk Music, whose longtime CEO, James “Bau” Graves, retired in 2019 (though his replacement, Jim Newcomb, took antiracism training through Enrich), and with Court Theatre, whose executive director, Stephen Albert, died in 2017. Which is why Sánchez says institutions should be careful not to hinge their inclusion efforts on any one leader.

“This work should never be about an individual. My goal is to make sure that antiracism work becomes a part of institutional life, that it’s reflected in their budget, that it starts to be increasingly reflected in their values and their ways of operating. If you remove that person, the people that put them there and the structure that put them there are still in place.”

THE SAME CONCERN SÁNCHEZ HAS

about institutions building their efforts around an individual holds for her own organization. “Right now, I basically do everything,” she says. Between courting new members and fielding calls from existing ones, between leading discussion after discussion on the heaviest of topics and worrying about the financials, the burnout risk is real. “We’ve been trying really hard to slow it down,” she says. “Twice now in the last year, we’ve closed for an entire week and said, ‘OK, everybody, just go do something else. Rest, sleep, binge Netflix, whatever you need to do.’ ” Power, who serves as Enrich’s cochair alongside Puerto Rican Arts Alliance executive director Carlos Hernandez, knows this is an issue. “We have to do better to support Nina and protect her.

We’re working really hard to figure out how to give her better scaffolding.” The organization has already brought on six contractors as new facilitators to help run workshops, and now it’s actively looking to hire a codirector to share the workload of running the organization.

Sánchez welcomes the help. She understands it’s critical that she never let herself get too worn-down and jaded by the taxing work. “You can’t do this if you aren’t coming to it with some sense of compassion and caring for the people you’re holding these conversations and spaces with. If you can’t do that, then you owe it to yourself and your community to step back.”

How much lasting change can Enrich make? We will have to wait until current anxieties decline to know whether these institutions will sustain their commitment to making Chicago’s arts scene more equitable. But if nothing else, Enrich’s model has demonstrated how collective action can change the conversation in a community. “Anyone could’ve started Enrich Chicago,” Power says. “It survives because of so many who are willing to risk the bad meetings, the wrong words, the missteps — all for the promise of something different we will build together.” C

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My friend Pat Finn always reminds me what the audition was for Cheers: I needed to look like a guy who wanted to have another beer.

George Wendt The actor, 72, on causing a stir at a Sox game, cleaning out Royko’s office, and dancing in heels Interview by MIKE THOMAS Q Norm is just me with better writing. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of actors who could have delivered on the absolute gems that I was handed on a silver platter every Wednesday morning.

Q I prided myself on going out and not worrying about being recognized. I thought, If Jack Nicholson can do it, we can all do it. I remember I was at an Oakland A’s—White Sox game. We were sitting on the right field line, and around the seventh inning I had to pee. I had to walk up about 20 rows to get to the restrooms. People were like, “Oh my God!” and cheering and clapping. After the game, I went to say hi to one of the players, Steve Lyons, and he said, “Did you see that fight in the right field stands?”

I said, “No, I didn’t.” He said there were cops and a whole bunch of people rushing over. On the train back, I went, Oh, fuck, that was me.

Q I was only too happy to be one of the faces of beer. I used to run into Ed McMahon now and then. He was the Anheuser-Busch guy for probably 30 years. I said, “Dude, I’m a heartbeat away from your contract.”

Q When I was home from school the summer of 1966, I needed a job. So my mom made a few calls, and I got hired at the Daily News. I started in the wire room. It was an eventful summer with Martin Luther King Jr. here, the Cicero march, the Richard Speck murders. My shift was from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., and I was a jack-of-all-trades. I’d run 104

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out to the Billy Goat to get the most godawful lunches for everybody. When the proofreading ladies went to lunch, I’d sit where they sat and do the proofreading.

And before Royko got in each day, around noon, I had to clear out all the coffee cups and cigarette butts from his office. The next June, I met with Sun-Times editor Emmett Dedmon. He looked at me with scorn and said, “Why should I hire you?”

I thought and thought and thought and said, “Because my grandfather used to work here?” And he goes, “Get out of here!”

I spent that summer on a Pepsi truck.

Q The night before my Second City audition, I got beat up in a bar near Sox Park.

We had parked at 33rd and Princeton and, after the game, thought, Let’s get a drink and let traffic die down. We were sitting there when this one guy punched a friend of mine and knocked him off the barstool.

We all stood up like, What the hell? We didn’t know there were a bunch of other guys lurking. I was lucky to get away without serious injury. I had a swollen face and a cut on my head that bled quite a bit. It wasn’t a good look for my audition.

Q When my pals and I got into Second City, it was right when Saturday Night Live hit. We cruised into this sweet spot where we didn’t have to build an audience.

The place was packed with 330 people eight shows a week. When I got demoted after a year, I was crushed, but it made me reexamine myself. It was my first “What?

They don’t like me?” Which made me think, Well, I guess I’m an actor. Because that had never really occurred to me.

Q Playing Edna Turnblad in Hairspray on Broadway was a blast. It was one of my two favorite roles, apart from Norm.

Absolute utter joy and entirely different from anything in my world. Old friends from college would come see it and go, “Jesus Christ,” because I had seven song-and-dance numbers. Mind you, my dances were choreographed for an obese middle-aged man, but it was plenty.

Everyone says, “How’d you dance in those high heels?” They were the best shoes I’ve ever had. I had like four fittings with a little old Italian cobbler. My back never felt better than when I wore them. C

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