Print Issue of February 1, 2018 (Volume 47, Number 17)

C H I C A G O ’ S F R E E W E E K LY | K I C K I N G A S S S I N C E 1 9 7 1 | F E B R U A R Y 1 , 2 0 1 8

Lit Ben Austen’s HighRisers delivers a long-overdue requiem for Cabrini-Green. 20

Food & Drink As Chinatown bleeds into Bridgeport, a new generation of restaurateurs emerges. 31

Are tiny houses a solution to homelessness in Chicago?

The push for a small answer to a massive problem

By DEANNA ISAACS 10

Plus:

Chris Ware looks back on his life in comics. 13

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EDITOR JAKE MALOOLEY CREATIVE DIRECTOR VINCE CERASANI DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY JAMIE RAMSAY INTERIM CULTURE EDITOR AIMEE LEVITT FILM EDITOR J.R. JONES MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO ASSOCIATE EDITORS STEVE HEISLER, JAMIE LUDWIG, KATE SCHMIDT SENIOR WRITER MIKE SULA SENIOR THEATER CRITIC TONY ADLER STAFF WRITERS MAYA DUKMASOVA, LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, PETER MARGASAK, JULIA THIEL SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR RYAN SMITH GRAPHIC DESIGNER SUE KWONG MUSIC LISTINGS COORDINATOR LUCA CIMARUSTI FILM LISTINGS COORDINATOR PATRICK FRIEL CONTRIBUTING WRITERS NOAH BERLATSKY, ANNE FORD, ISA GIALLORENZO, JOHN GREENFIELD, ANDREA GRONVALL, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, IRENE HSIAO, DAN JAKES, BILL MEYER, MICHAEL MINER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, LEAH PICKETT, BEN SACHS, DMITRY SAMAROV, OLIVER SAVA, KEVIN WARWICK, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERNS MADELINE HAPPOLD, ASHLEY MIZUO, MELISSA PARKER, RACHEL YANG ---------------------------------------------------------------ADVERTISING DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER BEST SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER EVANGELINE MILLER MARKETING AND EVENTS MANAGER BRYAN BURDA DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY ADVERTISING COORDINATOR HERMINIA BATTAGLIA

FEATURES

IN THIS ISSUE 4 Agenda Mother of the Dark Water, Colin Quinn, the film In Syria, and more goings-on about town

CITY LIFE 22 Movies The Insult explores social tensions in Lebanon before turning into yet another courtroom drama.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE 7 Chicagoans A straight go-go dancer on how performing in gay nightclubs can be tricky, even dangerous 8 Transportation The city should beef up transit instead of widening roads by the Obama center.

HOUSING

Are tiny houses a solution to homelessness in Chicago?

ARTS & CULTURE

FOOD & DRINK

17 Theater In Hatfield & McCoy, the House Theatre takes liberties with the legendary mountain feud.

The push for a small answer to a massive problem

BY DEANNA ISAACS 10

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18 Theater In Hinter, a murder investigation in 1922 Germany reveals all sorts of hidden horrors.

19 Theater The Chicago Musical Theatre Festival is like an in-person Netflix binge.

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COMICS

‘Writing and art are about finding, not telling’

ON THE COVER: PHOTO BY JAMIE RAMSAY

23 Shows of note K. Flay, the Bad Plus, Chicago Psych Fest 9: Icicle Star Tree, and more of the week’s best 26 The Secret History of Chicago Music Blueswoman Mary Lane has shared stages with the likes of Buddy Guy and Otis Rush.

Chris Ware talks about higher education, creating art as a Chicagoan, and making peace with self-doubt.

BY DMITRY SAMAROV 13

20 Lit High-Risers delivers a long-overdue requiem for Cabrini-Green.

21 Visual Art ISO 6346: Ineluctable Immigrant, a site-specific installation at the Spertus, links the current refugee crisis to the Jewish diaspora.

31 Restaurant review: A Place by Damao As Chinatown bleeds into Bridgeport, a new generation of young restaurateurs emerges.

33 Key Ingredient: Eggplant Kevin McCormick, pastry chef at Beacon Tavern, transforms eggplant into a sweet-savory dessert.

CLASSIFIEDS

34 Jobs 34 Apartments & Spaces 35 Marketplace 36 Straight Dope When a hurricane blows over an island, as Maria did in Puerto Rico, what happens to the birds?

37 Savage Love How to give a workplace romance a fly 38 Early Warnings Cut Copy, Erasure, Albert Hammond Jr., and more shows you should know about in the weeks to come 38 Gossip Wolf Chicago rapper the Boy Illinois plays his first headlining show since dropping the triumphant Windy EP, and other music news.

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THEATER More at chicagoreader.com/theater Charlotte Interviews Narcissists Given that they’re playing some of the most caricatured public figures alive—Kim Kardashian, Donald Trump, Bill Cosby—it’s unclear why no one in Charlotte Hamilton’s Rhinofest piece attempts any verbal impressions. At least in the case of Cosby, who’s played by a white woman (gulp), the expressionless line readings are probably for the better. Many playwrights have worked out arguments with themselves onstage, but Hamilton does so literally here, playing herself in talk-show-style exchanges and putting her own perceived narcissistic tendencies as an artist against those of celebrities, moguls, and figures from her past. The social commentary doesn’t really penetrate far past surface level: Kardashians like selfies, Trump says “winning” a lot, Travis Kalanick is a human train wreck. —DAN JAKES Through 2/25: Sun 3 PM, Prop Thtr, 3502 N. Elston, 773492-1287, rhinofest.com, $15 or pay what you can at the door, $12 in advance.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat Bouncy, flashy, and loud, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s earworm-filled pop-opera retelling of the Old Testament story of Joseph and his brothers is pretty thin stuff. Which may be why director Alan Souza felt the need to reimagine the show, moving the action from Egypt to Las Vegas, where an average Joe (Evan Alexander Smith) trying to catch a few zzz’s in his hotel room dreams he’s the title character and lives out his story, or at least the Webber-Rice version. This changeover gives Souza and company plenty of excuses to tart up an already tarty production. The best part of it is Christina Bianco, who brings her YouTdube act as a vocal impressionist to her role as narrator, belting out Rice’s serviceable lyrics in the style of pop-cult divas like Britney Spears, Celine Dion, and Cher.

—JACK HELBIG Through 3/25: Wed-Thu 1:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 5 and 8:30 PM, Sun 2 PM, Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane, Oakbrook Terrace, drurylaneoakbrook.com, $59.

4 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 1, 2018

King Arthur: The Fall of Camelot Part of the 29th annual Rhinoceros Theater Festival, this one-act written by Jake Green and directed by Olivia Lilley covers the later, sadder part of the Arthurian legend. Before the opening curtain, Green announced that the show only came together in the past month, and it shows in the confused tone and acting throughout. Following the doomed affair between Queen Gwenivere and Sir Lancelot, the script—and also the performances—teeters between drama and comedy in ways that don’t seem entirely intentional. Neither do the shifts from Shakespearean rhyme to modern sarcasm and affectation. The “strippeddown” nature of the production offers an interesting opportunity to explore meaty ideas related to love, monarchy, and heroism, but a lack of emotional depth in the performances and incoherence throughout make it difficult to empathize with the characters.

—MARISSA OBERLANDER Through 2/23: Fri 9 PM, Prop Thtr, 3502 N. Elston, 773492-1287, rhinofest.com, $15 or pay what you can at the door, $12 in advance.

The Locketeer In a review last year, Reader critic Justin Hayford asked if Bucktown’s tiny, spartan Trap Door Theatre was “Chicago’s greatest theater success of the last quarter century.”

Hell if I know, but this I can say for sure: walking down the company’s slim corridor for the first time since the presidential election, I’ve never felt more grateful to have a company in our own backyard that’s been churning out intellectually rigorous, emotionally challenging, fiercely political work for decades.

For the European-focused company, dystopia has never been a futuristic fantasy. This production of Elias Canetti’s 1956 play The Numbered, adapted and directed by Catherine Sullivan, though, is uncharacteristically declawed.

Though the premise—an authoritarian regime implementing predetermined life spans—is rich, much is muddied by broad embellishments like labored movement pieces and outsize operatic performances that aren’t held together by much of an emotional core. —DAN JAKES Through 3/3: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W. Cortland, 773-384-0494, trapdoortheatre.com, $20-$25.

librarian and aspiring writer in California, returns to his boyhood home of Philadelphia after the death of his mother, Esther (Shadana Patterson). The homecoming stirs memories of Monarch’s upbringing as the only child of a single mom; Esther had told young Monarch that his dad (Michael Anthony Rawlins) was an astronaut, marooned on the moon, to hide the fact that the father was in jail—a truth revealed only when the adult Monarch goes through Esther’s effects.

Under the skillful and sensitive direction of Tyla Abercrumbie, this Definition Theatre Company production supports the actors’ fine performances with evocative visual design, bringing to life the play’s poetry as well as its realistic aspects. While the story is rooted in the specifics of its characters and setting, it also speaks to the near-universal experience of the parent-child relationship, a bond of trust sometimes disfigured by well-intentioned deception. —ALBERT WILLIAMS Through 2/25: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Victory Gardens Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln, 773-871-3000, definitiontheatre.org, $25.

Mother of the Dark Water R Through the clamor of a storm, an uncanny invocation erupts, mournful

and resonant. A woman walks down the steps, clasping hands with the people in the aisle, joined in song by four others.

Mari (Lynsey Ann Moxie) is the priestess of the ceremony, leading Amariss Harris, Johari Nandi, Jordan Rome, and Kiayla Ryann through a series of stories about black womanhood that seem intensely personal yet familiar to anyone who’s ever felt alien. Why does the image of the Madonna exclude the possibility of color? they ask. Does that mean I am not beautiful or good? What is beautiful?

What is good? Anchored in the timelessness of schoolyard rhymes, contemporary in its consideration of powerful women of color, MPAACT’s Mother of the Dark Water, directed and devised

by Lauren Wells, is a necessary ritual for our time. —IRENE HSIAO Through 3/4: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln, 773-6094714, mpaact.org, $28-$32.

Mother of the Dark Water

The Near Future Julia Williams is a fine actor whose performances I’ve admired for some time in plays that are wildly beneath her talents. Now she’s written and directed a show for Rhinofest that is wildly beneath even those plays. In the future, I guess, people have mechanical doubles, more attractive versions of themselves. The scenes that ensue based on that concept are a ramshackle hour of forlorn yammering. They include long sidebars on fish, flesh, and typewriters.

There’s one good tape recorder scene with Brook Celeste, invoking Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape. Celeste sits at the machine and listens to Williams’s own droll voice giggle, “It’s all closing in, isn’t it? Ha-ha!” Williams at least feels the spirit and the intention of the thing. Briefly, so do we. But either Williams wasn’t able to instill this in her cast, or there was nothing to instill. —MAX MALLER Through 2/24: Sat 7 PM, Prop Thtr, 3502 N. Elston, 773-492-1287, rhinofest.com, $15 or pay what you can at the door, $12 in advance.

Spark One is tempted to make snide use of the title. But let’s just say that Caridad Svich’s 2012 play is an earnest, angry, tedious thing that takes cliches about poor but strong Appalachian women, mixes them up with familiar tropes about the suffering of the returning warrior, and—well, that’s pretty much it. Just mixes them up. Evelyn is the bossy older sister who thinks she has to be hard for the family’s sake; Ali is the baby sister with dreams; and Lexie is the troubled vet self-medicating on the cheap with beer. They fight a lot, usually invoking their dead mama. There’s some backwoods mysticism and a guy named Hector who insists that he loves prickly Evelyn, though who knows why. Then everybody reconciles: again, who knows why. Denise Yvette Serna’s miscast staging adds a whole other layer of stasis and opacity to this 20% Theatre production. —TONY ADLER Through 2/24: Wed-Sat 8 PM, Collaboraction, 1579 N. Milwaukee, 312-226-9633, twentypercentchicago.com, $20.

Women in Jeopardy Directed by Janice L. Blixt, this production of Wendy MacLeod’s dark comedy about two friends who become convinced a third is dating a serial killer is unsettling—but

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Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of February 1

John Mulaney The stand-up, who R recently appeared on Broadway with Nick Kroll in Oh, Hello, stops in

Brodsky/Baryshnikov ò JANIS DEINATS not in a good way. MacLeod tells her story well, her witty dialogue feels unforced, and her script is packed with quirky, well-drawn characters. But something is amiss in Blixt’s production. The performances feel restrained, the actors not fully committed to the material; again and again the cast deliver lines that could win big laughs, and instead they only earn polite titters. Even performers who usually kill onstage, like Joe Foust, who plays two roles—a creepy dentist and a depressed police sergeant—are merely OK. Only Hayley Burgess, playing a spoiled millennial stereotype, consistently earns big laughs.

—JACK HELBIG Through 2/25: Wed 8 PM, Thu 3 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, First Folio Theatre, Mayslake Peabody Estate, 31st St. and Rt. 83, Oak Brook, firstfolio.org, $34-$44, $29-$39 students and seniors.

DANCE Brodsky/Baryshnikov This oneR man show, based on the poems of Nobel Laureate Joseph Brodsky

and performed by Mikhail Baryshnikov, makes its Chicago debut. Through 2/4: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph, 312-334-7777, harristheaterchicago.org, $45.

Keeper of the Floor Hosted by Chicago Dance Crash, this competitive dance battle is action-movie-themed.

Don’t stop moving! Sat 2/3, 9 PM, Den Theatre, 1329-1333 N. Milwaukee, 773609-2336, thedentheatre.com, $20.

COMEDY R

American Carnage: A Solo Staged Reading of Select Screenplays by Stephen K. Bannon Zack Mast plays former White House chief strategist and Breitbart News executive Stephen K. Bannon, who presents his magnum opus, a “dramatic portrayal of the struggle between good and evil.” 2/5-2/19: Mon 8 PM, Annoyance Theatre, 851 W. Belmont, 773-697-9693, theannoyance.com, $8.

Groundhog Day Spectacular This show reenacts the story behind America’s best-loved marmot, Punxsutawney Phil, on the 25th anniversary of Ground-

his hometown (he was raised in Lincoln Park) to perform as part of his Kid Gorgeous tour. Through 2/3: Wed 7 PM, Thu-Fri 7 and 10 PM, Sat 7 PM, Chicago Theatre, 175 N. State, 312-462-6300, thechicagotheatre.com, $49-$50.

Colin Quinn Comedian, actor, R and political stand-up Colin Quinn presents his show One in Every Crowd.

Fri 2/2, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, 312-526-3851, thaliahallchicago.com, $28 in advance, $31 at the door.

LIT & LECTURES A People’s History of Chicago Author Kevin Coval reads from his 2017 poetry collection A People’s History of Chicago, whose 77 entries (for the city’s 77 neighborhoods) tell stories from Chicago history that often remain untold. Wed 2/7, 6 PM, Legler branch library, 115 S. Pulaski, 312-746-7730, chipublib.org.

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We Still Like You Comedians and storytellers share shameful moments, after which the audience cheers and toasts them, saying, “We still like you!” Includes complimentary beer.

Sat 2/3, 10 PM, Collaboraction, 1579 N. Milwaukee, 312-226-9633, $10.

him to Kenya (where he gets involved in diamond smuggling), to Tahiti, and eventually back to the U.S., where he becomes a movie star and business titan. This 1975 adventure yarn plays like a dozen episodes of a 1930s serial condensed into a single feature, with some pulpy, preposterous twist every few minutes. It might have been fun, but Denney’s narcissism is fatally distracting—he presents the protagonist as a genius and a hero while heaping contempt on anyone who disagrees with him (not least the women, who tend to be whores, shrews, or helpless waifs).

—BEN SACHS 96 min. Fri 2/2-Sat 2/3, midnight. Music Box. Bilal: A New Breed of Hero This handsome computer animation (2015) from the United Arab Emirates dramatizes the life of Bilal ibn Rabah, a freed African slave who became the first muezzin (the town crier who signals the hour of Muslim prayer) in the early seventh century. Against a sweeping desert landscape, the soulful Bilal clashes with his master, a cruel pagan merchant who traffics in religious idols and fears the growing spiritual movement rumored to wed egalitarianism and monotheism.

There are no explicit references to the prophet Muhammad or the Muslim faith, but even a viewer with only a rudimentary knowledge of early Islam should be able to follow the straightforward, action-oriented plot. The tone is grim, befitting a tale of oppression; a climactic battle brings relief if not closure (a coda explains that there’s more war

account, and nearly kills a man. That he’s surrounded by thugs and corrupt officials who want a piece of his action further compounds his difficulties, and his financial schemes begin to collapse.

Director Mohsen Gharaie reserves the most sympathy for the female characters, especially the inspector’s trapped wife (Baran Kosari). In Farsi with subtitles. —ANDREA GRONVALL 82 min.

Sat 2/3, 8 PM, and Sun 2/4, 3 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

Django First-time director Étienne Comar sets this biopic of Django Reinhardt in 1943, when the Romani jazz guitarist and composer (Reda Kateb) was performing in Paris for packed houses of civilians and Nazi officers and also plotting his escape. Stark and affecting depictions of the Romani genocide bookend the narrative, which traces Reinhardt’s personal evolution from appeasement and irresponsibility (“It’s not my war,” he argues when considering a German tour) to embracing his music’s power to inspire hope and solidarity in the Romani people. Based on a 2013 novel by Alexis Salatko, the film contains a number of fictionalized characters and scenarios that ring false (Reinhardt’s moral questioning is activated by a groupie with a heart of gold), but the extended musical numbers by

VISUAL ART

MOVIES More at chicagoreader.com/movies NEW REVIEWS The Astrologer Tired of scamming tourists on the fairground circuit, a California fortune-teller (Craig Denney, who also directed) takes off in search of adventure and wealth; his travels take

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Power Suits and Selected Objects Chicago artist Sara Engimann reflects on grief, anxiety, and love in this multidisciplinary exhibit. Opening reception Sun 2/4, 8:30 PM. Mon-Wed 5 PM-2 AM, Thu-Fri 3 PM-2 AM, Sat 11 AM-3 AM, Sun 11 AM-2 AM. Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 773-276-3600, emptybottle.com. $5 suggested donation.

Speak Truth to Power This touring exhibition makes its midwest debut with portraits by Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Eddie Adams highlighting more than 40 human rights activists from six continents. Through 6/24. Mon-Fri 10 AM-5 PM (Thu till 8 PM), Sat-Sun 11 AM-4 PM. Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center, 9603 Woods Dr., Skokie, 847967-4800, ilholocaustmuseum.org, $15.

51 years!

RSM

hog Day. Thu 2/1, 8-9:15 PM, Annoyance Theatre, 851 W. Belmont, 773-697-9693, theannoyance.com, $10.

For more of the best things to do every day of the week, go to chicagoreader. com/agenda.

celebrating

www.BrewView.com 3145 N. Sheffield at Belmont

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In Syria

ahead). Directed by Khurram H. Alavi and Ayman Jamal. —ANDREA GRONVALL PG-13, 105 min. City North 14, Harper.

Blockage In this gritty, suspenseful Iranian drama (2017), a cash-strapped permit inspector (Hamed Behdad) responsible for removing illegal vendors from the streets of Tehran proves to be his own worst enemy. The protagonist denies reports to his supervisor that he’s shaking down peddlers and petty criminals, but gradually he reveals himself to be thoroughly manipulative: he lies to his colleagues and family, diverts his wife’s inheritance into his own bank

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Justice League Reinhardt’s Quintette du Hot Club de France are wonderful, featuring Ketab on guitar, Australian multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis, and the Dutch jazz band the Rosenberg Trio. In French with subtitles. —LEAH PICKETT 117 min. Fri 2/2, 2 and 8 PM; Sat 2/3, 5:45 PM; Sun 2/4, 3 PM; Mon 2/5, 6 PM; Tue 2/6, 8:15 PM; Wed 2/7, 6 PM; and Thu 2/8, 8 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

Fri, Sun, Feb 2 & 4 @ 8:45pm Tue-Thr, Feb 6-8 @ 8:45pm

Blade Runner 2049

In Syria Chamber drama doesn’t R begin to describe this gripping French feature (2017) by writer-director

Philippe Van Leeuw, because the chamber in question is a dingy apartment µ

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B building in Damascus at the height of the Syrian civil war. Inside, a young couple with a baby review their plans to escape to Beirut that evening, but no sooner has the husband (Moustapha Al Kar) left the building than he’s taken down by a sniper; though this incident is witnessed by a maid next door (Juliette Navis), she and her mistress (Hiam Abbass of The Visitor) are too frightened to run outside and help him, so they resolve to keep the news from his unsuspecting wife (Diamand Bou Abboud) until nightfall. Van Leeuw captures the terror and claustrophobia of a city under siege, where savagery seems to lurk around every corner and people must choose between others’ survival and their own. In Arabic with subtitles. —J.R. JONES 86 min. Facets Cinematheque.

from his business to discover that his pregnant wife has miscarried and died, leaving him alone with his demented old mother-in-law. Needing a partner, the trader marries his premenstrual 12-year-old niece (Luana Nastas) and then leaves her alone for long periods with his house staff of African slaves, which turns out to be a bad idea. The long frame suits Thomas’s preoccupation with the mountainous terrain and the movement of human bodies across it, which are beautiful to witness but can’t compensate for the story’s ever-dwindling momentum. In Portuguese with subtitles.

—J.R. JONES 116 min. Fri 2/2-Mon 2/5, 2 and 7:10 PM; Tue 2/6-Wed 2/7, 2 and 4:30 PM; and Thu 2/8, 2 and 7:10 PM. Music Box.

The 317th Platoon French soldiers retreat through the jungles of Vietnam following the disastrous Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Pierre Schoendoerffer, who wrote and directed this 1965 screen adaptation of his own novel, served in the French army as a cinematographer, was taken prisoner by the Viet Minh, and later became a noted photojournalist before branching out into movies. Shot in Cambodia in sober black and white, his authentic portrayal of guerrilla warfare and French soldiers prone to drugs and pillaging would have come as a shock to U.S. viewers a full three years before Hollywood could muster a response to the Vietnamese conflict with its old-fashioned John Wayne adventure The Green Berets.

Schoendoerffer went on to direct several more films about the debacle in French Indochina, including the Oscar-winning documentary The Anderson Platoon (1967). In French with subtitles. —J.R. JONES 100 min.

Nora Annesley Taylor of the School of the Art Institute lectures at the Tuesday screening. Fri 2/2 and Tue, 2/6, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

The Florida Project R Writer-director Sean Baker (Starlet, Tangerine) takes a sympa-

Vazante Shot in wide-screen black and white, this panoramic period drama from Brazilian filmmaker Daniela Thomas takes place in 1821 in the Diamantina Mountains, where a hardened slave trader (Adriano Carvalho) returns home

REVIVALS

thetic look at a couple of motels in Orlando that serve as home for a variety of working-poor individuals.

The film unfolds mainly from the perspective of a six-year-old girl, whose single, twentysomething mother supports herself and the child through prostitution and scamming tourists; Baker also broadens his focus occasionally to consider the activities of their motel manager (Willem Dafoe), a paternal figure to both mother and daughter. The subject matter may be sordid and sad, but the tone is generally upbeat, reflecting the little girl’s cheery, naive outlook.

This also conveys with remarkable vividness a small child’s sense of time: Baker places no dramatic emphasis on any individual scene, granting a sense of wide-eyed wonder to major and minor events alike. —BEN SACHS R, 115 min. Fri 2/2, 2 and 6 PM; Sat 2/3, 8 PM; Sun 2/4, 5:15 PM; Mon 2/5, 8:15 PM; Tue 2/6, 6 PM; Wed 2/7, 8:15 PM; and Thu 2/8, 6 and 8:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

Mother! The devoted wife (Jennifer Lawrence) of a revered poet (Javier Bardem) finds her privacy breached when he invites into their baronial old house an elderly doctor (Ed Harris) and the doctor’s

rapier-tongued spouse (Michelle Pfeiffer); by the end of the movie, as the heroine prepares to give birth, the house is besieged by the poet’s rabid fans, who help themselves to everything in sight and trash the place. Written and directed by Darren Aronofsky, this allegorical and finally pretentious psychodrama often recalls his Requiem for a Dream (2000) in its depiction of a home rotting into madness, though functionally the film is just an old-fashioned woman-in-peril thriller (with the gutsy Lawrence badly miscast as a shrinking violet) crossed with Monty Python’s nihilistic big-screen comedy The Meaning of Life. —J.R. JONES R, 120 min.

Screens as part of the “Cinema Slapdown” series; a debate on the film’s merits follows the screening.

Wed 2/7, 7 PM. Columbia College Film Row Cinema. F Underground Though R slightly trimmed by director-writer Emir Kusturica for

American consumption, this riotous satirical and farcical allegory about the former Yugoslavia from World War II to the postcommunist 1990s is still marvelously excessive. The outrageous plot involves a couple of anti-Nazi arms dealers and gold traffickers who gain a reputation as communist heroes. One of them (Miki Manojlović) installs a group of refugees in his grandfather’s cellar, and on the pretext that the war is still raging upstairs he gets them to manufacture arms and other black-market items until the 60s, meanwhile seducing the actress (Mirjana Joković) that his best friend (Lazar Ristovski) hoped to marry. Loosely based on a play by cowriter Dušan Kovačević, this sarcastic, carnivalesque epic (1995) won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and has been at the center of a furious controversy ever since for what’s been called its pro-Serbian stance.

(Kusturica himself is a Bosnian Muslim.) However one chooses to take its jaundiced view of history, it’s probably the best film to date by the talented Kusturica (Time of the Gypsies, Arizona Dream), a triumph of mise-en-scene mated to a comic vision that keeps topping its own hyperbole. In German and Serbo-Croatian with subtitles.

—JONATHAN ROSENBAUM 167 min.

Sat 2/3, 2:30 PM; Mon 2/5, 6:30 PM; and Wed 2/7, 6:30 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

SPECIAL EVENTS Why We March A short documentary about the 2017 Women’s March on Washington, D.C., directed by Chicago filmmakers Laurie Little, Jess Mattison, and Theresa Campagna. 22 min. An open screening follows, with attendees invited to share their own video of the 2018 march. Sat 2/3, 8 PM. Chicago Filmmakers, 5243 N. Clark. v

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CITY LIFE come up with an escape plan.”

One time I was leaving a club, and one of the customers offered to walk me to my car, and I thought “No big deal, I’m right around the corner, it’ll be fine.” We get to my car, and I go to open my door, and he puts his hand against the door to keep it closed. He’s like, “You sure you want to go home? What do you want to

Chicagoans

The go-go dancer Ben Krane

have cash on them to tip. The older men are very respectful. The older women are just happy to be there, really.

A typical night is usually two to four hours, with probably only an hour or two of actual dancing. The rest of the time you’re mingling, talking to the customers and keeping them happy. The first question people ask me is “Where are you from?” Meaning “What ethnicity are you?” I guess that’s their way of doing it nicely. I always tell them, “I’m from here, but my father’s from Guadalajara.”

And then the second question is usually “Is it real?” They think there’s a sock or a prosthetic or who knows what. And then the third question is “Are you gay or

straight?” When I say I’m straight, people go, “Oh, and you work in a place like this? You don’t mind when guys touch you?” I tell them, “I’m very comfortable with who I am. I’m here to make money. I’m not here to hook up.” Some of them are like, “No, you’re not straight. You’re messing with us.” And some of them take offense, like, “You don’t have to lie. It’s OK if you’re not into me.” It’s like, “Well, I’m straight. I don’t know what to tell you.”

If people try to hit on me, I stay gracious. I try to play along a little bit without getting too flirty. If it crosses a line, I excuse myself from the conversation as nicely as I can.

I don’t know if I’ve ever felt unsafe, but I definitely have felt like, “This could go in a bad direction if I don’t

ò SARAH JOYCE

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN the dancing guy in my circle of friends. Somebody knew somebody who knew the owner of Hydrate, and he said, “You know, they’re always looking for dancers.” The first time, it’s like you’re trying to focus on Be sexy, be sexy, be sexy, and it didn’t work.

After that, I decided Do your own thing. Do what you want to do up there, and maybe it’ll work out, and it did. I would like to quit my day job and make this my full-time thing.

When you’re up there dancing, you’re scanning the crowd, looking for where to throw attention to. I definitely prefer the older crowds.

Young drunk people tend to be very grabby. They’ve already blown all their money on the drinks they’re buying; a lot of them don’t even

do?” I’m like, “No,” and I open the door, and he kind of grabbed at my pants, and I was like, “No-no-no-no,” and I pushed his hand away and said, “Have a good night,” and got in my car and shut my door and drove off.

I don’t even pretend to know what women go through on a daily basis, but I feel like I have a peek at what it might be. —AS TOLD TO ANNE FORD

Ñ Keep up to date on the go at chicagoreader.com/agenda.

SURE THINGS THURSDAY 1

FRIDAY 2

SATURDAY 3

SUNDAY 4

MONDAY 5

TUESDAY 6

WEDNESDAY 7

Ê Myq Ka plan Known for his quick timing and wordplay, comedian Myq Kaplan was a finalist on Last Comic Standing and released his No Kidding album last February.

8 PM, Zanies, 1548 N. Wells, chicago.zanies.com, $25 plus two-item minimum.

Ô Images Now! Ch icago Artist Showc ase Eleven Chicago artists, including Mac Blackout and Sick Fisher, display their work in this group exhibit. 6-10 PM, Uncle Art Gallery, 1359 N. Maplewood, uncleart.com. F

ö Ur ba n Livesto ck Ex po Learn how to raise goats, chickens, ducks, and bees in your yard—complaints from neighbors be damned.

11 AM-2 PM, Southside Occupational Academy, 7432 S. Hoyne, southsideacademycps. org. F

 Pu ppy Bowl Vi ewing Pa rty Watch the real Super Bowl with a specialty cocktail in hand. Adoptable puppies will be in attendance as well.

Noon-3 PM, Park & Field, 3509 W. Fullerton, parkandfieldchicago.com. F

2 Mea n Gi rls Trivia This onetime revival tests your knowledge of the 2004 movie, which was written by Tina Fey and stars a pretabloid-sensation Lindsay Lohan. 7-10 PM, Woodie’s Flat, 1535 N. Wells, woodieschicago.com. F

· Triibe Tues days Some of the city’s leading black voices in media, like A.V. Club’s Ashley Ray-Harris and Erica Watson of Showtime’s The Chi, lead a panel discussion on the topic of on-screen portrayals of Chicago’s black community. 7-11 PM, Refuge Live, 416 S. Clark, refugelivechicago.com. F

( Lati nx D isambiguati ons Responding to the poem “Mexican American Disambiguation” by Jose Olivarez, four Latinx artists discuss Latinidad—the idea that shared characteristics among Latin American people can’t be reduced to a single trait.

6:30-8:30 PM, Threewalls, 2738 W. North, three-walls. org. F

FEBRUARY 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 7

CITY LIFE Model of the proposed Obama Center ò RICH HEIN/SUN-TIMES MEDIA

TRANSPORTATION

The change we seek

The city should beef up transit instead of widening roads by the Obama center.

By JOHN GREENFIELD

A

t last May’s unveiling of preliminary designs for the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park, Barack Obama voiced support for boldly reconfiguring the Frederick Law Olmsted-designed green space to make it more people friendly. The proposal calls for converting most of Cornell Drive, a road through the park that ballooned to six lanes during the urban renewal era, to parkland between 59th and 67th Streets to connect the presidential center site to the rest of the lagoon-filled natural area. A section of Marquette Road would also be removed to unify the two halves of Jackson Park Golf Course.

Some community leaders argued that the

8 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 1, 2018

road closures would create carmageddon for south-side commuters. But Obama noted that the plans call for building a sledding hill next to Cornell, plus plenty of new open space.

He added that it’s important not to get so “fixated on traffic that we lose sight of what’s possible.”

However, when the city of Chicago presented transportation plans for the center in August, the proposal was still fairly traffic obsessed, with relatively little attention paid to improving transit, walking, and bike access to the area as a strategy to reduce driving.

To handle expected rush hour overflow traffic from the Cornell closure (Marquette isn’t a major commute route), the proposal

calls for widening other nearby roads. Specifically, the city’s plan calls for adding a new southbound lane to the five-lane segment of Lake Shore Drive between 57th and Hayes Drive, the southern border of the presidential center site. Parking would be stripped from Hayes to expand it from two travel lanes to four. And parkland would be gobbled up to add two lanes to Stony Island between 59th and Hayes and one lane to Stony from 63rd to 67th.

All told, there would be a net gain of three to five acres of green space. While the Chicago Department of Transportation hasn’t released an official cost estimate for the expansions, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has indi-

cated that the widening of LSD alone would cost upward of $100 million, which he hopes to pay for with state funds.

In addition to being expensive, the expansions would actually encourage more driving. Even with the closure of Cornell, the widening of Lake Shore Drive and Stony Island would create enough capacity for 95,000 vehicles per day, 7,900 more than are currently using the three roadways in the area, and a full 14,800 more cars than are projected to use LSD and Stony by 2040, according to CDOT. This is the wrong strategy for a city with the stated goals of reducing car dependency and fighting climate change.

This approach also ignores the phenomenon of “traffic evaporation”—when road capacity is decreased, some drivers respond by avoiding unnecessary trips or switching to other modes. So if we closed Cornell without adding capacity elsewhere, it’s likely many of the current trips would disappear, especially if CTA and Metra service were increased.

So far the city has released relatively few details on plans to improve walking, biking, and transit access to the campus. Proposed sidewalk bump-outs and pedestrian islands will make it easier to cross nearby streets, although the widening of Stony Island will generally increase crossing distances, and four new pedestrian-bike underpasses may be added to Jackson Park. CDOT may also stripe some of the bike lanes recommended for local roadways in the city’s Streets for Cycling 2020 plan. But that’s about it, and the city has said even less about boosting bus and rail access.

Transit advocate Mike Payne, a native of South Shore, voiced his displeasure with the car-centric Obama center plan when he spoke before the CTA board at its January meeting. Since 1996 he’s been pushing for

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CITY LIFE the Gray Line, his proposal to convert the Metra Electric District line to rapid transit and integrate its fare system with the CTA as a strategy to improve job access and encourage investments on the south side. In 2016 a consortium of 14 south-side groups formed to advocate for similar goals.

Payne noted that the Gray Line would provide direct CTA train service from downtown’s Millennium Station to the MED’s 59th Street stop, just north of the Obama center. It could also reduce the number of car commuters on LSD and Stony Island. He added that the city’s and the foundation’s

submitted plans for the campus offer “no type of improvements to public transit in the area—only road modifications.”

Independent of the Obama center plans, in September Metra increased service between Millennium Station and Hyde Park so that trains run every 20 minutes or so until 7 PM. The train trip to the presidential center takes about 20 minutes. Metra is also planning to rehab the 59th Street station, including adding elevators and reopening the 60th Street entrance, according to spokesman Michael Gillis.

On the other hand, the CTA hasn’t an-

nounced any plans to boost bus and rail service to the center—spokeswoman Irene Ferradaz says it’s “premature” to do so. As it stands, the #2 Hyde Park Express, #6 Jackson Park Express, #15 Jeffery Local, and #28 Stony Island bus lines run past the site on Stony Island.

The campus location makes the 1997 amputation of the Jackson Park branch of the Green Line particularly regrettable. At the time, community leaders led by Bishop Arthur Brazier argued that the elevated tracks were a blight that discouraged development.

But if they hadn’t been torn down east of

CDOT plans to add two travel lanes to Stony Island from 59th to 63rd Streets; CDOT plans to add a southbound lane to Lake Shore Drive from 57th to Hayes. ò CDOT

Cottage Grove Avenue, the old Stony Island station would have been kitty-corner from the new attraction.

Last month there was a small victory for making the presidential center less auto-centric when the foundation bowed to pressure from various community groups who opposed plans for an aboveground parking garage on the east end of the nearby Midway Plaisance. Instead the facility will be built below the campus, although it will still hold a whopping 400 to 450 cars.

When I asked Obama Foundation spokesman Sam Michel whether the foundation has looked into beefing up noncar access to the center as an alternative to costly road expansion, he referred me back to Metra and the CTA. Since the foundation and transportation officials expressed little interest in the idea of increasing sustainable transportation access to the center as a way to avoid road widening, I ran it by local transit gurus Steve Schlickman, a former Regional Transit Authority chief, and DePaul transportation professor Joe Schwieterman. Schlickman was skeptical that even $100 million would be enough to pull off Payne’s Gray Line proposal, arguing that the MED would need costly switching improvements and electrical system upgrades in order to accommodate el-trainstyle frequency.

But both experts argued that offering nonstop CTA bus service from the Loop to the Obama center and the nearby Museum of Science and Industry would be a relatively inexpensive way to encourage visitors to take transit to these attractions instead of private cars, taxis, or ride hailing. (The #6 bus covers this route but makes many stops in Kenwood and Hyde Park on the way to Jackson Park.)

While the MED is also a quick, direct route to the park, Schwieterman noted that Metra is more intimidating for tourists because “it requires doing some homework by studying scheduling and local stops.”

Unfortunately, decision makers seem dead set on widening roads to facilitate driving to and past the Obama center, even though the numbers show that the current plan is overkill. All the same, residents should continue to push for excellent CTA and Metra service to the campus, so that those supersize streets don’t simply clog up with cars again. v

John Greenfield edits the transportation news website Streetsblog Chicago. v @greenfieldjohn

FEBRUARY 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 9

T

Are tiny houses a solution to homelessness in Chicago?

The push for a small answer to a massive problem

By DEANNA ISAACS ò JAMIE RAMSAY

10 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 1, 2018

he fetish for upscale tiny houses has been around long enough for some of the novelty to wear off. In the wake of the mortgage meltdown, the micro dwellings flourished as McMansion antidotes. They made a statement about carbon footprints and financial restraint, even if equipped with hot tubs and high-end sound systems. And they tickled our fancy, their peaked roofs and window boxes evoking the whimsical playhouses of childhood.

They inspired their own reality television shows, lifestyle websites, and magazines, as well as numerous listings on Airbnb ($138 a night on a lake near downstate Carbondale, for example; $195 in Schaumburg, up a tree).

They turned out to be great for one-night escapes and committed minimalists; not so good longer-term for folks with offspring, an average pile of possessions, or a susceptibility to cabin fever.

But now the mini abodes are finding a new, potentially larger niche at the opposite end of the income spectrum—as the hot topic in discussions about the homeless. Experimental tiny-house communities for the homeless have already been built in at least a half-dozen cities (Madison, Detroit, Dallas, Austin, Portland, and Seattle), and if advocates have their way, one may soon be coming to Chicago.

All it’ll take to get the residential concept here is the will to overcome the likely NIMBY response, money, and—the hardest thing to come by—changes in the zoning law. Chicago, like many cities still leery of the shacks and shantytowns that were the blighted tiny homes of the Great Depression era, stipulates a minimum size for free-standing dwellings of 500 square feet, and forbids multiple free-standing houses on a single lot. Tiny houses range from about 125 to 400 square feet; those envisioned for Chicago would typically be about 325 square feet, or roughly the size of a single-car garage. Chicago

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Tiny House Inc., the newest of a half-dozen organizations trying to bring the little homes here, held a fund-raiser on January 26 in Uptown. An audience of about 75 people, scattered on folding chairs and looking sparse in the ample auditorium of Wilson Abbey, heard Scott Ingerson, the group’s director of community engagement (and resident balloon sculptor), say that they’re raising money for a pilot cluster of five tiny houses for veterans— and what they need is volunteers, sponsors, and donations.

Alan Mills, executive director of the Uptown People’s Law Center, was the keynote speaker for the event, which included live music (by former Rez band front man Glenn Kaiser and an inspired set by the Jazz Robots), a silent auction, and a raffle. Mills said homelessness “is a choice we make as a society,” and “in Uptown alone, we’ve lost 1,000 affordable housing units in six years.”

According to Mills, if you count all the “double-ups” and couch surfers, there are 100,000 homeless people in Chicago. La Casa Norte, which provides housing and services to homeless youth and families, estimates 125,848 in the Chicago area. “The city’s solution is to criminalize it,” Mills says, referring to the Chicago Police Department’s use of an ordinance intended to keep businesses from storing goods on the public way to confiscate the tents and other possessions of those who are homeless. Meanwhile, “we in Chicago are spending $95 million for a police training facility,” Mills told the audience. “That would build a lot of tiny houses.”

Chicago Tiny House founder and president Brien Cron said the event raised “a little over $1,000” of the $125,000 the organization will need to build five houses for veterans. But the group will start with a prototype, of 320 square feet or less, and it won’t be doing it in Uptown. Cron says that—in spite of a recent starring role in a video in which he advocated for tiny houses to combat homelessness—46th Ward alderman James Cappleman has made it clear that Uptown, which for decades has been home to the city’s most visible homeless populations, “has no space for them.” The Chicago Tiny House Inc. cluster would be built in the Humboldt Park area, where First Ward alderman Joe Moreno says he’s working with them to find a location. Cappleman’s chief of staff, Tressa Feher, says the alderman definitely would support tiny houses for homeless people in Uptown, but he hasn’t been presented with a proposal for them.

Cron’s group launched last fall, after the cops’ removal of tent dwellers who’d been living under Lake Shore Drive bridges at Wilson and Lawrence attracted a lot of media coverage. Chicago Tiny House meets at 7 PM every

Monday at 920 W. Wilson—across the street from the Abbey—in the long-standing communal home of Jesus People USA (JPUSA). “We’re a group of Christians, out of Jesus People USA, and we’re dedicated to helping our city with homelessness,” Cron told me. “Our basic need right now is public awareness of who we are and what we’re trying to do.”

Cron had no comment on a 2014 documentary film, No Place to Call Home, made by former JPUSA resident Jaime Prater, that included allegations of child sexual abuse decades ago at the commune, or on lawsuits filed against JPUSA over the same issues.

an important role.” And All Chicago CEO Nonie Brennan says the tiny houses are especially valuable for “their ability to bring attention to the issue of homelessness.” But talking to any of the people in the field about tiny houses and homelessness leads pretty quickly to a surprising expert on the subject: Tracy Baim, editor and publisher of the Windy City Times.

Baim traces much of the current activity to a summit Windy City Times sponsored on youth homelessness in the LGBTQ community four years ago. One of the ideas that came out of the summit was that a community of tiny homes could work for homeless college

porch, and fully functioning bathroom and kitchen—was built during a tiny-homes summit on the University of Illinois at Chicago campus in 2016, and was subsequently moved to Back of the Yards, where it was open for tours until last fall.

“Having that model was hugely part of our goal, because once people stepped inside of it, they understood what we were talking about”—separate structures, more like real homes, as opposed to warehousing, Baim said. “They have a little plot of land. They’re lower cost and quicker to build. They’re also lower cost to operate in the long term, because

The 2015-2016 Tiny Homes Competition was won by three Chicago architects: Terry Howell, Marty Sandberg, and Lon Stousland.

Their design is a 336-square-foot, brick-walled, shed-roofed home with loft, porch, and fully functioning bathroom and kitchen.

If that’s enough to give you pause, rest assured that Chicago Tiny House Inc. isn’t alone in its enthusiasm for this approach to the problem of homelessness. Besides the predictable interest of companies manufacturing some of the little structures, organizations such as the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless and All Chicago (a nonprofit providing emergency funds, research, training, and more to “make homelessness history”)—which estimates that close to 6,000 homeless people are on the streets of Chicago on any given night—welcome tiny houses as a part of the solution. CCH executive director Douglas Schenkelberg says the tiny houses, while not the sole solution, “can play

students; another was the launch of a new nonprofit, Pride Action Tank, dedicated to “inquiry, advocacy, and action,” on LGBTQIA issues. In 2015, Pride Action Tank teamed up with the American Institute of Architects, Landon Bone Baker Architects, and the Alphawood Foundation to conduct a tiny-homes design competition that drew more than 250 entrants from around the world. The contest was won by three architects who met as students at Notre Dame and now live and practice in Chicago: Terry Howell, Marty Sandberg, and Lon Stousland.

Their winning design—a 336-square-foot, brick-walled, shed-roofed home with loft,

you’re just air-conditioning this one unit—no hallways or elevators. And you can build them on one lot or on a whole city block.”

Last fall, after Catholic Charities expressed an interest in tiny houses, 14th Ward alderman Ed Burke introduced a City Council resolution calling for consideration of them, and a joint committee hearing was held. “They approved the concept of tiny homes being added to the tool kit of responses to homelessness in Chicago,” Baim says. Her group is now working on plans for a pilot project and (with the other interested groups) facilitating the policy changes that’ll make it possible to build in Chicago.

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FEBRUARY 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 11

continued from 11

“There are other cities where tiny homes don’t make sense—it’s a density issue,” Baim says. “But Chicago and Detroit [with plenty of vacant lots] have great opportunity in this area. The heavy lifting will be about the minimum size and the issue of multiple free-standing buildings on a single lot.”

Pride Action Tank has partnered with La Casa Norte for the pilot, which will consist of ten tiny homes for homeless college students in the West Englewood area, about a mile from Kennedy-King College. The wood frame houses of about 350 square feet are being designed

by Landon Bone Baker Architects, and will be attached in pairs. The cluster will include two slightly larger ADA-accessible homes and a common house for group events. Casa Norte will operate the finished cluster.

After months of planning and meetings, Baim says the project is now in the money-raising phase and is offering naming rights for $50,000 per house. (Baim has committed to raising that amount in order to name one house after her deceased mother.) The project already has some foundation support (from the Polk Bros., Alphawood, and Pierce Family Foundations), but organizers will be looking to more foundations, individual supporters, and the city for the remaining funding. They aim to raise between $1.5 and $2 million, the projected total budget for the project.

That’s definitely not cheap, but Baim says the houses themselves will each cost about $70,000 for construction and a possible additional $20,000 if environmental mitigation is necessary. And a pilot is always more expensive than subsequent building on a larger scale. Still, she says, it’s a relative bargain. “Typical affordable housing in Chicago, believe it or not,” she says, “is about $400,000 a unit.” Chicago could address the need for more affordable housing for the working poor if major entities like CHA “got on board” with this idea, Baim says. “CHA could be building, on a for-profit basis, for people who could afford a mortgage on a $50,000 to $70,000 tiny home that’s brand-new, versus spending all the money they do on inadequate housing. They’re subsidizing slumlords out there and landlords in general, but they’re not building anything new.

“I believe tiny homes can solve a lot of different types of needs out there—not just youth homelessness, which we’re focused on, but also some of the working poor, and seniors and veterans who are just getting warehoused,” she adds.

“We’ve lost tens of thousands of units in this city in the last 20 to 30 years, and there’s vacant land everywhere, including lots near the Green Line. We don’t need towers, but we could build tiny homes that people could get

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The winning Tiny Homes Competition design was built during a tiny-homes summit on the University of Illinois at Chicago campus in April 2016, and was subsequently moved to Back of the Yards, where it was open for tours until last fall.

mortgages on and own, and CHA could get their money back because most of the people out there who are struggling are people who, with help on housing, could make it. And then you could concentrate all the rest of the money on people who need the supportive services— substance abuse treatment, mental health services, medical support.

“We’re talking about a city with excellent land and transportation. The ‘housing first’

model has proven itself in most cities that have tried it. It’s lower cost to house someone than to have them on the streets, utilizing services like Streets and San, police, jails, emergency rooms, not to mention their own physical and mental stress.

“We’re not saying that anything that’s currently being done should not be done. [The tiny houses] are not for everybody, and they won’t all be the same. What we’re saying is

that this should be added to the tool kit for those who it’s appropriate for.”

Finally, Baim said, she’s often asked if the tiny houses will be on wheels (as they are in some locations). Her answer to that is a firm no. “It’s not meant to be portable. It’s meant to be a smaller-footprint home. Like studio apartments, but with a plot of land.

“People should think about this as ‘Honey, I shrunk the house.’”

Alderman Burke’s office says he’s “waiting for someone to come to us with a solid plan and a clear ask.” Chicago deputy commissioner of planning and development Peter Strazzabosco says that “pending community input and other standard review and approval processes,” the city “is encouraging financially viable [tiny house] proposals and think[s] they can have a positive role within the city’s housing market.”

The zoning changes that will make them possible for homeless Chicagoans will likely also open the door for anyone who still wants to live the upscale downsized fantasy. v

v @DeannaIsaacs

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COMICS

‘Writing and art are about finding, not telling’ Chris Ware talks about higher education, creating art as a Chicagoan, and making peace with self-doubt.

By DMITRY SAMAROV

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h r i s Wa re ’s M o n o g ra p h (Rizzoli) is part autobiography, part art manifesto, part greatest hits, all contained in a 13 x 18-inch hardcover. Throughout his 30 years of writing and drawing comics, Ware has always pushed the medium forward through his inventive layout and compositional schemes, his questioning of the relationship between word and image, and his deep examination of how memory and imagination shape the way we tell our stories. Monograph touches on many of his career highlights with Ware himself as our often caustic, selfdeprecating, but ever-insightful guide.

Ware generously took the time to answer a few questions about his life and work over e-mail.

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FEBRUARY 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 13

continued from 13 How did you settle on the size of this book?

My personal experience in carrying, handling, and reading this book was the surprising but delightful one of being transformed from a 6’1” nearly 50-year-old man into a six- or seven-yearold boy first falling in love with reading. Was that your intent or am I totally out of my mind?

Not out of your mind at all; I greatly appreciate your very kind words. I only wanted to find a size and format that would suit both the reproduction of the printed strips and the original art itself, which is considerably larger. I’d hoped to make something dense, textured, and hopefully sort of fun to look at, though by its ungainliness it might seem an overcompensation for some deep-seated inadequacy. Comics are still in their infancy of appreciation, and I aimed for a book that presented them (mine, unfortunately) as a direct, worthy, and freeingly valueless artwork of reproduction. In a lot of ways, the book has young cartoonists most in mind as its audience, so I tried to include every dumb, weird thought about the difficulties of cartooning I could, as well as highlight the oddities, obstacles and peculiarities of trying to tell stories in printed pictures.

Ultimately, however, it’s just a standard coffee-table art book made in answer to the generous invitation of Rizzoli, but with the usual art criticism replaced by personal recollections of what I was thinking and going through when making the stuff pictured. Not for everyone, needless to say.

I don’t think it was a waste of time—nothing ever is—but it maybe wasn’t what I initially expected coming from undergraduate art school in Austin and its “anything goes” attitude. In the early 1990s SAIC was more of a “why are you doing that?” sort of place. Then again, it was good to have something to work against, and at the time I was pretty much the only student drawing comics regularly and seriously, and there were no classes in it at all; now there are lots of instructors teaching cartooning. I did sometimes find it difficult to get my painting and printmaking professors to actually read my stuff rather than critique the way it was printed or visually composed. (Comics, while they seem like a visual art, are really only semivisual; they’re an art of reading, and one of reading pictures rather one of just looking at them.) Not that I’m complaining, since I had some

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RIZZOLI USA

How do you look back at your time at the School of the Art Institute? I personally can’t ever decide whether it was a waste of time or not. What are your thoughts on higher education in this country?

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“Art is a language through which one thinks, not a skill one learns. Coming up with an idea and then ‘executing’ it is about as fun as it sounds.”

wonderful teachers like Richard Keane, Bob Loescher, and Jeanine Coupe-Ryding who took what I did seriously—the most valuable thing any student can experience—as well as provided useful life advice. Plus I got to take two classes with Jim Nutt and meet Karl Wirsum, both two of the greatest Chicago artists there are and longtime heroes of mine. Chicago has always been a city of approachable pictures and stories; it’s an unpretentious place with no glamour or glitz to rub off on its inhabitants. Being an artist here puts you in touch with humanity and the means, if not the meaning, of everyday life. It frees one up to do whatever one wants.

As for higher education, your guess is as good as mine. Really, you get out of it what you put into it. A couple of years back I taught a short class at SAIC at their kind invitation (my wife, a CPS high school teacher whose life and work are much more valuable than mine, shamed me into it), and all the students were industrious, smart, and congenial, so I tried to return the favor. They didn’t make or talk nonsense. They focused on making serious comics that communicated directly and warmly with their own voices and approach- J

FEBRUARY 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 15

continued from 15 es. I found the whole experience very inspiring and reassuring. At the same time, the possibility for supporting oneself as an artist or cartoonist is very uncertain; I think it’s very important for anyone who wants to be an artist to never expect anything beyond the satisfaction of making the art itself. In a way, to have the freedom to work a regular job and make art “on the side,” as it were, is really ideal, since then one’s survival doesn’t depend on the success of the artist in a gallery or wherever. Success in art should always be only about the art itself, not how it’s received. Of course, paying off one’s student loans is another matter.

“One sort of makes peace with self-doubt and sets aside a little spot for

You write that you work improvisationally and that oftentimes the developing drawings suggest the narrative and the accompanying words. Do words ever suggest the next drawing or are images always first?

16 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 1, 2018

a weird pet.”

RIZZOLI USA

It goes both ways; sometimes I even start with a feeling or a sense of a place and I go from there. And despite my regular, crushing fears, it always ends up going somewhere, because art is a language through which one thinks, not a skill one learns. Coming up with an idea and then “executing” it is about as fun as it sounds—that’s like trying to predict a marriage or the personality of one’s child.

Starting from somewhere is fine, but knowing how one is going to end seems crazy to me. The moment an artist draws or makes something, all bets are off. Previous ideas vanish and new ones suddenly come to the surface, and those are the ones the artist should probably pay attention to. Besides, these ideas all more or less come from the same place that the original impulse did, and it’s the responsibility of the artist to find a shape that accommodates them rather than the other way around. It’s the same with writing: we’re told as teens to know what we want to say before we start, but nothing crushes the creative spirit more than that; otherwise, why write at all? No wonder so many people go into business administration or recreational drinking. Fortunately, kids know better: writing and art are about finding, not telling. Anyone reading this interview, whether they consider themselves an artist or not, could draw a series of squares on a piece of paper, start in the first with a memory of some random object or place of their childhood, and have a story they wouldn’t have otherwise remembered by the end of the page.

it to sit, like

You write movingly about your many artistic heroes, from George Herriman to Scott Joplin to Lynda Barry, et al. How do you deal with younger artists and writers considering you one of their heroes?

I try not to think about it, but I won’t lie that it buoys me immeasurably whenever someone without wrinkles passes along a compliment or says something kind to me. It’s one function of art to “give permission” to other artists to do certain things that they otherwise might be too afraid to try. We’re not solitary artists; we’re all part of a larger continuum. Weirdly, though, that continuum isn’t universal but specific and unique to each of us; every one of us creates our own person-

al art history, trying out parts and pieces of consciousnesses with which we sympathize until our own comes into focus. Needless to say, if I’m a small part of someone else’s art history, I’m flattered and grateful, just as I am to those whom you mention above, along with about 100 seemingly unrelated others. Along these lines, one of my favorite local painters is Andy Paczos, who captures the hidden corners and edges of the city—the trash, the mud, the dirty snow—in careful canvasses of great clarity and beauty; he seems to blend both the feeling of Chicago and the sense of being a Chicagoan into one. I think about his stuff a lot, as I do my friend Ivan Brunetti’s, and Frank King’s, who died decades ago.

Do you think your self-doubt/self-loathing will ever go away? Is there anything someone else could do or say to make it disappear? Would you be able to make art if it were gone?

Wow, I never thought about that last question. I wonder. Probably not, because then I wouldn’t ask if what I was doing was any good or not. I used to think as a younger artist that my doubts would disappear as I got older and more “confident,” but they’re all still here, always waiting to jump me. Some artists don’t have this problem at all. I think it’s simply a matter of how one is manufactured, like a car with heated seats: either you’ve got them or you don’t. I don’t, and I won’t ever, and I’ve just gotten used to it.

One sort of makes peace with self-doubt and sets aside a little spot for it to sit, like a weird pet. In short, if you’re crushed by selfdoubt, it’s best to stop trying to force confidence and simply take solace in the fact that you are not alone. Reading interviews with other artists sometimes helps, but not for very long. v

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ARTS & CULTURE

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Jenni M. Hadley, Michael E. Smith, Jeff Mills, Marika Mashburn, Kyle Whalen, and Robert D. Hardaway ò MICHAEL BROSILOW

THEATER

Hatfield & McCoy, true & false The House Theatre takes liberties with the legendary mountain feud.

By TONY ADLER

I

n 1865, Asa Harmon McCoy made the miscalculation of his life, figuring he could return to his home on the Tug Fork River, where Kentucky and West Virginia meet, after serving on the Union side in the Civil War. A Confederate guerrilla unit led

by Jim Vance soon showed up and killed him.

Jim being a relative of Devil Anse Hatfield, patriarch of the Hatfield clan, and Asa being a member of the mountain dynasty led by Randolph “Ol’ Ran’l” McCoy, the incident has come to be considered an early tussle in the legendary Hatfield-McCoy feud.

Other incidents followed. Loads of them, across decades—ranging from a legal dispute over ownership of a certain hog to the New Year’s Day Massacre of 1888, in which a Hatfield squad (led by the same bloodthirsty

Vance) attacked Ol Ran’l’s home, killing two of his children, bashing his wife’s head in, and burning his compound to the ground. Read about the feud if you get the chance. It’s an intimate, brutal, jaw-dropping tale that suggests Huns and Vandals one minute, Machiavelli the next, and involves cameos by bounty hunters, state governors, and the United States Supreme Court. Cliven Bundy, David Koresh, Warren Jeffs, John Brown, and Nat Turner got nothing on these folks.

Shawn Pfautsch crams most of the high points into Hatfield & McCoy, his 2006 play with music, currently getting a mostly delightful revival (featuring folksy new songs

by Pfautsch and Matt Kahler) at the House Theatre of Chicago. But the heart of this telling is the star-crossed romance between Ol’

Ran’l’s daughter Rose Anna and Devil Anse’s son Johnse.

The reputedly sheltered Rose Anna met the reputedly rakish Johnse in the spring of 1880, during Election Day festivities. They evidently consummated their love at the first opportunity, and Rose Anna went to stay with the Hatfields for a time. Nobody seems to have celebrated their relationship, though.

While Devil Anse was merely wary, refusing to allow a wedding, Ol’Ran’l considered it a blot on the McCoy honor. A group of his men waylaid Johnse, either to turn him over to the law or kill him outright. Rose Anna alerted the Hatfields, who intercepted the kidnappers and freed Johnse. After that, things between the two families only got uglier. Rose Anna is said to have died of a broken heart.

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If this narrative of feuding families and hapless lovers reminds you of something out of Shakespeare, you’re not alone. Most accounts I’ve seen draw the analogy to Romeo and Juliet—and so does Pfautsch, with what you might call a vengeance. Structurally, H&M is a kind of an Appalachian West Side Story.

Which has its good and bad points. On the plus side, the idea opens a path to vast fields of charm. Kyle Whalen’s Johnse and Haley Bolithon’s Rose Anna are styled, a la Romeo and Juliet, as playful, sweetly precocious teens.

Early on their allure is compounded by their seeming awareness of the Shakespearean ramifications of their love: they court each other by quoting (copiously) from the Bard.

Later, their tragedy is deepened by the same device, suggesting their belated recognition that they may suffer the same fate those Italian kids did. The approach is consistent with the House aesthetic, which tends toward ingratiatingly whimsical theatrics even when the subject matter is grim.

But Pfautsch’s fidelity to his literary source forces him to shortchange the historical one.

He’s got to ignore or distort some inconvenient facts in order to make the concept work out right. The real Johnse, for instance, wasn’t quite the doll he’s made out to be here. Where Pfautsch, Whalen, and director Matt Hawkins frame him as the sensitive Hatfield—an artistic sort, too tender for the family business— the record notes that he abandoned Rose Anna when she was pregnant and married one of her cousins instead. Pfautsch also has to do some fancy, not to say implausible, plotting to explain how a guy as nice as Johnse could end up doing 13 years in prison for murder. Weakness may have dictated his behavior. Or obedience to his dad. Or simple heelishness, I don’t know.

I’d be interested to see it dealt with, though.

Similarly, Pfautsch more or less inverts Devil Anse, turning him from a Bible skeptic into a Bible thumper in order to advance a subtheme about the evils of religion.

I know it’s a dirty trick to fault a show for not being what it never set out to be. Still, Rose Anna, Johnse, and the rest were real people, and it seems to me that Pfautsch took on a solemn responsibility to them when he chose to tell their story. v HATFIELD & MCCOY Through 3/11: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division, 773-769-3832, thehousetheatre.com, $30-$35.

v @taadler FEBRUARY 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 17

ARTS & CULTURE February 6–11, 2018 go.iu.edu/1PGx

Sasha Smith, Alex Gillmor, Nate Whelden, Lauren Sivak, Peter Moore, and Sigrid Sutter

THE MEDIA SCHOOL INDIANA UNIVERSITY

ò LEE MILLER

THEATER

In cold blood

By JUSTIN HAYFORD

O

{ { R U O Y AD E R E H

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are museum-goers, book readers, and culture vultures.

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n Friday, March 31, 1922, at a remote farm outside the Bavarian town of Kaifeck, someone slaughtered six people— the Gruber family and their maid—striking each one repeatedly on the head and face with a pickax. Four days later neighbors found the bodies. They also discovered that the farm and livestock had been well tended all weekend; the killer had apparently moved in for a while before vanishing.

In Hinter, Chicago playwright Calamity West transforms this grisly unsolved murder into a theatrical centrifuge of violence: not only criminal but familial, cultural, and international. The Great War has left a hinterland full of widows, including Viktoria, the murdered farm owner; Klara, the devout farmhand; and Frieda, the stone-faced nearest neighbor. When the cosmopolitan Munich investigator arrives to investigate the case, he barely bothers to care about a handful of murdered hicks. And the further he proceeds, the more it becomes clear that Viktoria lived in domestic terror. (Historically, her father— Andreas in real life, Andres in the play—previously served a year in prison for committing incest with her, but the script makes no reference to his imprisonment.)

It’s ultimately the family horror, and the efforts of an unlikely rural ally to rescue Viktoria from it, that forms the spine of West’s play. In typical fashion, West writes taut dia-

logue full of sublimation and misdirection as well as sudden bursts of frankness, creating a menacing unpredictability that aptly suits the situation—not only the unexplained carnage, but also the possibility of supernatural goings on at the farm.

A few key plot points strain credulity. Andres “accidentally” admits to a horrific act with little provocation. Viktoria’s former maid Elizabeth, who recently fled because she believed the farm was haunted, returns and stays for no reason beyond theatrical expediency.

Maria, the new maid, speaks so insolently to Andres it’s hard to fathom she wouldn’t be discharged immediately.

Still, West has assembled potent incidents into an explosive mix, as is her wont. But the script’s bifurcated structure short-circuits the whole affair. West sets act one just after the murders and act two just before, switching the focus to new characters after intermission, resetting the dramatic course, and dropping almost everything set up for payoff in the first half. In essence, she’s created separate halves of different plays. And the conclusion brings little meaningful resolution.

Just as problematic, director Brad DeFabo Akin doesn’t capitalize on the script’s strengths. Rather than establishing a stage world of unsettling peculiarity, he’s created one of stilted disjointedness. The characters relate to one another as relative strangers rather than as lifelong inhabitants of shared isolation. It’s hard to discern who these people are to one other, and thus their collective stake in the tragedy never comes into focus. v HINTER Through 3/3: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Steep Theatre Company, 1115 W. Berwyn, 773-6493186, steeptheatre.com, $27-$38.

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The cast of Numbers Nerd from last year’s Chicago Musical Theatre Festival ò MICHAEL COURIER

THEATER

The Chicago Musical Theatre Festival is like an in-person Netflix binge

PUTTING TOGETHER ONE MUSICAL is hard. Wrangling multiple original productions from different creators and producers sounds like a nightmare, but it’s how Underscore Theatre Company advances its mission to support new musicals. Since 2014, the Chicago Musical Theatre Festival (CMTF) has enabled local and national artists by helping them develop full productions that will be performed before a paying audience.

After three years of summer festivals, Underscore is making a big change for the fourth CMTF, moving to February to take advantage of Chicago Theatre Week and avoid pesky street-fair conflicts. “The holidays are over, people are looking for things to do, [in] a nice warm theater where you can stay in the same complex but get a lot of entertainment,” says Underscore executive director Laura Stratford. “Like an in-person Netflix binge.”

The benefits of this shift are already clear:

ARTS & CULTURE

the festival has sold two-thirds of its tickets, and David Gosz and Leo Fotos’s “Tru”— described as a mix of the first ten minutes of Up and the last ten minutes of La La Land— has sold out its entire run.

Participants are responsible for the specific elements of production, but Underscore provides the venue, technical equipment, and lessons learned from years of experience. “We’re sharing institutional knowledge with differents groups so that no one breaks the bank, but also so no one feels like they’re getting less of a show than they deserve,” says Underscore artistic director Alex Higgin-Houser.

That education is the festival’s most valuable gift: it creates well-rounded theater professionals ready to navigate a challenging industry. —OLIVER SAVA CHICAGO MUSICAL THEATRE FESTIVAL 2/5-2/25: various day and times,

Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln, 773404-7336, cmtf.org, $23 per show, $120 festival pass.

February 10–August 12, 2018 STYLE. CRAFTSMANSHIP. INNOVATION. POSTURE.

Thirty-seven exceptional chairs show all.

The Art of Seating is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville, in collaboration with the Thomas H. and Diane DeMell Jacobsen Ph.D. Foundation and is toured by International Arts & Artists, Washington, D.C. Designed by Harry Bertoia (1915-1978), Manufactured by Knoll Associates, New York City, NY, Large Diamond Lounge Chair, c. 1952 Photo by Michael Koryta and Andrew VanStyn, Director of Acquisitions, Conservation and Photography

FEBRUARY 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 19

ARTS & CULTURE

Harvey and Michael Reynolds sit in the window of their ninth-floor Cabrini-Green apartment.

They were friends of Dantrell Davis, a seven-year-old killed by a sniper as he walked to school. ò JOHN H. WHITE/SUN-TIMES MEDIA

LIT

High-Risers delivers a long-overdue requiem for Cabrini-Green

Ben Austen reminds us why public housing mattered, and why it matters still.

By MAYA DUKMOSOVA

S

ince 1999, when the Chicago Housing Authority launched its $1.6 billion Plan for Transformation and began the slow process of tearing down all its high-rise public housing projects, a cottage industry of books has sprung up to fill in the mental spaces left by those destroyed buildings: in the last 18 years, no fewer than 20 volumes have been published devoted to the history, sociology, public policy, and personal stories of life in public housing. Most of these have been written by scholars and policy wonks whose important and incisive accounts of the Chicago Housing Authority and its residents often lack narrative ease and engaging characters. The last time a local journalist attempted to tell a national audience why public housing matters and present readers with a long-form narrative about the lives of people who called it home was 26 years ago, when Alex Kotlowitz published There Are No

20 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 1, 2018

Children Here.

Now Ben Austen, a magazine writer and Hyde Park native, has produced High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing, the result of seven years documenting the story of Cabrini-Green. Austen handled his book more as a chronicler than an embedded reporter. This is perhaps the most reasonable and respectful approach to the subject matter that a middle-class white writer who’s never lived in public housing could take. Rather than posturing as an intrepid journalist on a poverty safari, Austen sets out to give the general audience a long-overdue history lesson on where Cabrini-Green came from, who lived there and how they lived, and why the 23-building project ultimately became the primary symbol of a national public policy failure. (Full disclosure: My name appears in the acknowledgments section, as do those of many others in the small cadre of local jour-

nalists who regularly cover public housing issues and have gotten to know Austen over the years.)

High-Risers traces the life span of that 70-acre neighborhood on the near north side through the shifting tides of federal policy and local politics. The saga of the development is interspersed with the histories of four individuals who spent their lives there: Dolores Wilson, Kelvin Cannon, J.R. Fleming, and Annie Ricks. Austen follows them through the decades with a fierce attention to detail.

Their voices crop up throughout the narrative to add notes of personal perspective and at times surprising counterpoints to the noisy politics and policy decisions that swirled around and within the development. Even in the years when their neighborhood became the stuff of horror movies and if-it-bleedsit-leads news reports, these residents were shaped as much or more by the joys of their jobs and friendships, their hobbies and public service commitments, the comforts of their homes and the love of their families. Vignettes about other Cabrini residents also appear through the book—prominent activists like Marion Stamps and Carol Steele, politicians like Jesse White, and the crime victims whose names were used to crucify the entire notion of government-provided housing for the poor: Dantrell Davis and Girl X. The resulting mosaic of lived experiences leaves the impression of looking inside Cabrini-Green’s history the way we saw its buildings back in the early 2000s, when the walls were being torn off, revealing the colorful interiors of so many people’s well-tended homes alongside long-abandoned units.

Austen demonstrates the centrality of Cabrini-Green to Chicago’s sense of itself.

At first the development was a symbol of the city’s devotion to alleviating poverty and blight, then its drive to keep low-income black residents out of its neighborhoods, then its crime and corruption problem, and finally Cabrini-Green became the justification of the fiscal, political, and physical transformations that brought Chicago from a 20th-century machine town to today’s “world-class” city.

“Defining Cabrini-Green as the big civic problem also meant it couldn’t be ignored,” Austen writes; “it needed to be dealt with, solved.”

One drawback of the narrative is that some moments in history that were emblematic of massive intellectual and ideological shifts in the way America positioned itself vis-a-vis the poor are glossed over in a couple of sentences: the movements from the direct provision

of housing to vouchers that benefit fewer people and feed segregation, and from the dominance of modernist architectural design to low-density “New Urbanism.” Perhaps it’s not so important for a general audience to get too deep into these public policy weeds. But if we’re ever to understand that the fate of Cabrini-Green and public housing as a whole wasn’t fated, that the ultimate results weren’t inevitable but rather designed, then it’s necessary to denaturalize what has so long been presented as unavoidable. Austen could have handled the words and ideas of Plan for Transformation architects with more skepticism; he could have presented urbanists’ reasonable-sounding notions of how cities should be in their fuller, contested context; and he could have eschewed the focus on some of the chaos and violence that erupted in people’s lives as the buildings and schools of Cabrini-Green closed in favor of a closer interrogation of how city leaders justified making decisions that would ultimately cause immense harm.

But even without these critical perspectives from Austen himself, the book is hardly approving of Chicago’s decision to dismantle Cabrini-Green, and demonstrates that in many ways the solutions to its problems created more problems than they resolved. It’s also a reminder that the American way is to treat failures as absolute, as the flaws of ideas rather than flaws of execution. That’s why we try things once, do a bad job, and then give up.

It’s why we make the same mistakes, inflict the same harm again and again, even when we think we’re doing something new, and seem to have no interest in doing better as long as the people on the receiving end of our bad decisions are poor and black. v R HIGH-RISERS: CABRINI-GREEN AND THE FATE OF AMERICAN PUBLIC HOUSING By Ben Austen (Harper).

Release party 2/6, 7 PM, the Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park, 312-801-2100, eventbrite.com. F

v @mdoukmas

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164 North State Street

ARTS & CULTURE Among the pieces from the Spertus archive that Ellen Rothenberg used in ISO 6346: Ineluctable Immigrant was a special Lil Abner comic Al Capp drew for the Anti-Defamation League in 1956. ò COURTESY THE ARTIST

VISUAL ART

Temporary homes ISO 6346: Ineluctable Immigrant, a site-specific installation at the Spertus, links the current refugee crisis to the Jewish diaspora.

By AIMEE LEVITT

A

s any history of the Jews will tell you, we are a wandering people, and any collection of Jewish artifacts will be filled with relics of immigration. When the Spertus Institute commissioned Chicago artist Ellen Rothenberg to do a site-specific installation last year, Rothenberg spent several weeks combing through its vast archive.

She found plenty of evidence of the Jews’ long history as refugees, including immigration papers and records of mutual aid societies, and many wonderful and marvelous artifacts, like the shoes of a Jewish opera singer and an enormous postcard collection, but nothing seemed a likely foundation for an installation until one day, while poring over a list of holdings, she came across a description of a photo of blockade runners bursting through barbed wire above the coast of Palestine. In her mind, it evoked other, more recent images of people traveling by rafts in the opposite direction, from Turkey and North Africa to Europe. “The picture gave me an orientation,” she says now. “It was an aha moment.”

In May, Rothenberg went to Berlin, where she spends part of every year. A friend introduced her to THFwelcome, a charity that works with refugees living in the camp at what was once Tempelhof Airport. Tempelhof itself has a complicated history: Hitler built one of his first concentration camps there and used it as a slave labor site during World War II. After the Berlin Wall went up, the hangar housed refugees from East Germany. Since 2015, refugees have been living there again, but last year the German government decided to build a more comfortable “village” out of shipping containers, which it called Tempohome Dorf.

Rothenberg felt drawn to the site and spent five months taking photos documenting the construction.

Back in Chicago, Rothenberg returned to Spertus and began thinking about the relationship between her photos and the various objects in the archives and how they connected to the institute’s gallery space. “I didn’t want to talk about individuals,” she says. “I wanted to talk about systems.” She found she could get the sense of historical distance and disorientation she was aiming for by photographing objects from oblique angles. A photo of a passport of a Jewish refugee who came to the United States via Mexico, for instance, focuses on the taped and frayed edge of the cover, not the information inside about its owner. “It requires you to look at it,” says Rothenberg, “and think about what it represents.” (In an online component of the exhibition, visitors will be able to look at more conventional photos of the objects and learn about their history.)

On the floor of the gallery, Rothenberg has painstakingly taped a floor plan of the shipping containers at Tempohome (the exhibit’s name, “ISO 6346,” refers to the containers’ international standard organization code).

Situating the visitor in the camp and in the gallery simultaneously brings home how to be a refugee is to live in multiple times and places all at once. v ISO 6346: INELUCTABLE IMMIGRANT 2/1-4/22: Sun 10 AM-5 PM, Mon-Wed 9 AM-5 PM, Thu 9 AM-6 PM, Fri 9 AM-3 PM. Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership, 610 S. Michigan, 312-322-1700, spertus.edu. F

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ARTS & CULTURE Adel Karam in The Insult

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Ziad Doueiri’s The Insult follows the legal battle between a Lebanese Christian and a Palestinian refugee.

BY J.R. JONES

T Find hundreds of Readerrecommended restaurants, exclusive video features, and sign up for weekly news chicagoreader.com/ food.

here’s never any point in nursing a grudge, unless you’re telling a story— then it’s a great idea. Ziad Doueiri’s Lebanese drama The Insult, nominated for an Oscar in the foreign-language category, tracks the escalating conflict between two stubborn men in Beirut. Tony Hanna (Adel Karam), an auto mechanic hopped up on the nativist politics of a right-wing Christian party, is hosing down his apartment balcony overlooking the street when Yasser Salameh (Kamel El Basha), a Palestinian refugee supervising a nearby construction project, comes to Tony’s door to complain about a leaky gutter that’s dropping water on passersby. Tony slams the door in his face, and when Yasser orders his workmen to repair the balcony gutter, Tony uses a hammer to smash the connecting pipe they’ve just installed, provoking an obscenity from Yasser below. Various attempts by Yasser’s boss to smooth over the situation culminate in Tony telling Yasser, “I wish Ariel Sharon had wiped you all out,” and Yasser punching him in the ribs. ssss EXCELLENT

22 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 1, 2018

sss GOOD

These early scenes kept reminding me of Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning Iranian drama A Separation (2011), which followed the antagonism between a secular family man and a hotheaded Muslim fundamentalist. In both films a personal conflict spirals out of control, becoming a matter of honor for the aggrieved parties and tapping into their deeply held prejudices. Tony and Yasser’s mutual antipathy reaches back to the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre in Beirut, when hundreds (or, more probably, thousands) of Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites were slaughtered by militiamen allied with Lebanon’s right-wing, Christian Kataeb Party and ignored by Sharon’s Israeli Defense Forces. Given this fraught history, I was eager to learn more about Yasser’s life inside a refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut, and about the city’s Christian political forces that adopt Tony as a mascot.

Unfortunately The Insult heads straight into court, where Yasser is acquitted of assault, Tony retaliates with a civil suit, and his Ariel

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•

Sharon remark ignites a media circus. Doueiri, who shot some of Quentin Tarantino’s early films, enthuses in press notes that “Americans have always used court trials to put historical and societal issues on the table. . . . It’s a sort of modern take on the western, but played in a closed setting.” Tony’s cause is taken up by a pinky-ring lawyer (Camille Salameh) partial to the Christian right, and Yasser reluctantly accepts a pro bono defense from a young liberal attorney (Diamand Bou Abboud) who— wouldn’t you know it?—is the prosecutor’s daughter. Indulged by a passive judge, these two showboats turn the trial into a public forum on the Palestinian question and the main characters into silent men with folded hands. We may not be able to export democracy to the Middle East, but exporting Law & Order has been a piece of cake. v THE INSULT ss Directed by Ziad Doueiri. R, 112 min. Arclight, Landmark’s Century Centre

v @JR_Jones

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MUSIC

Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week of February 1 b

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THURSDAY1

PICK OF THE WEEK

Chicagoland native K. Flay goes big by bridging the worlds of rap and rock

The Bad Plus See also Friday. 7 PM, 210 Live, 210 Green Bay Rd., Highwood, $35. b

ò COURTESY THE ARTIST

K. FLAY, SIR SLY

Last year pianist Ethan Iverson announced he was leaving the Bad Plus, the singular piano trio he cofounded in 2000 with bassist Reid Anderson and drummer Dave King. Together they forged a new jazz paradigm, bringing postpunk concision to a style of music famous for its expansiveness. They attracted some derision for building a repertoire largely from pop, rock, and electronica hits, but anyone who was paying attention figured out that their interpretations were both sincere and inventive. Following Iverson’s departure, the group decided to soldier on with a new pianist, the superb postbop veteran Orrin Evans. Evans’s playing has always been more soulful, intuitive, and raw than Iverson’s, and I was skeptical about how he’d fill his shoes, since the Bad Plus has such a distinctive sound. But on the new Never Stop II (Legbreaker)—a sequel to the group’s first album of all-original material, Never Stop, which was released in 2010— the trio carries on without a hiccup. Part of that fluidity can be explained by the quirky writing styles of Anderson and Reid, who each meld gorgeous poplike melodic ideas with convoluted, masterfully executed structural conceits; the path is easy for a pianist of Evans’s skill, as he demonstrates on the exhilarating opener “Hurricane Birds.” Throughout the recording Evans determinedly functions as an ensemble member intent on fitting into the group’s sound. While he clearly respects Iverson’s legacy, he leaves his own imprint on the music as well: he drops an insistent, driving solo within Reid’s tightly coiled “Trace,” and pushes the band toward luxuriant grace on his own tune “Boffadem,” braiding toy piano and standard piano into a timbre that suggests cycling kalimba patterns. I can only imagine that as he settles into the band he’ll exert his personality even more, which holds the promise of new directions from one of the most consistently rewarding groups of the last two decades. These are the first Chicago performances by the trio featuring Evans. —PETER MARGASAK J

Fri 2/2, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall, 2047 N. Milwaukee, sold out. b

WILMETTE NATIVE KRISTINE FLAHERTY, aka rapper K. Flay, had to

cater to rappers, I’d mostly see her name printed in think pieces about

leave home to find inspiration in another onetime local: Liz Phair. Last

women in hip-hop, which often flattened her distinctiveness; what she

year Flaherty told Billboard that when she discovered Exile in Guyville

had to say, and how she expressed herself in music, would always feel

in the late 2000s, it introduced her to a universe of alternative rock

secondary to her part in a loose cabal of other female musicians who

acts fronted by women “who are such bad asses—and not being bad

were convened for the purpose of a single story. With Every Where Is

asses for the sake of it, just being themselves and saying something

Some Where she’s gained more definition in the public eye, and largely

and standing behind something.” The Billboard story skewed toward

through the lens of rock; her stomping, industrial-flecked “Blood in

Flaherty’s interest in rock because the genre is all over her second

the Cut” earned her a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Song along

album, last spring’s Every Where Is Some Where (Interscope/Night

with veterans such as Foo Fighters and Metallica. Whatever genre you

Street), but in a year where emerging rappers were celebrated for

want to call Every Where Is Some Where, it’s definitely huge, succinct,

embracing the genre, K. Flay was largely left out of the conversation.

and razor-sharp. I like to imagine that decades down the line a young

Unfortunately, that’s not new. Even in her days as a road dog on the

woman from the northern suburbs will discover this album en route to

club circuit, when she frequently played venues that don’t traditionally

her own bright musical future. —LEOR GALIL

The Bad Plus ò SHERVIN LAINEZ

FEBRUARY 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 23

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MUSIC

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

continued from 23

(Merge), pushes toward a more traditional vision of folk rock than Mount Moriah. It luxuriates in the confessional mode of a singer-songwriter, with gorgeous arrangements including passages of aching pedal-steel caresses from Allyn Love; honeyed harmony singing from Angel Olsen (with whom she’s been touring as a keyboardist), Tift Merritt, and Amy Ray; and lilting melodies shaped by guitarist William Tyler. McEntire made the record at home, with the instrumental support constructed piecemeal by her various helpers in remote locations, but it feels wonderfully whole. Her lyrics and country-flavored melodies convey the ardor she feels for the south. In her gospel song “When You Come for Me,” she pleads, “When you come for me / Let the mountains hold my bones,” while in “Baby’s Got the Blues” she artfully paints the setting with lines like “The dogwood and the chicory / And a silent wood stove flue.” In Mount Moriah McEntire gives listeners a kind of sideways take on country music; on her own she takes it on headfirst. —PETER MARGASAK

Radio Dept. Dehd and Sunjacket open.

8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $20-$25, $18 in advance. 17+ If not for the longing and deep-seated dread characteristic of many dream-pop songs, artists like the Radio Dept. would float right out of our collective consciousness like a lost balloon— there’d be nothing to keep them grounded and present among the overlapping celestial washes of synthesizers and vocals if not for the foil of gloom.

Blending a detached cool with Krautrock-vibing rhythms and heavy hues of synth, the Swedish duo of Johan Duncanson and Martin Carlberg create engaging and enveloping melodies. And memorable ones at that (see “Where Damage Isn’t Already Done”). Their most recent full-length, 2016’s Running Out of Love (Troubador), is an example of astute songwriting that plays shoegaze-like elements off danceable ones through chilling electronic beats. On first approach, “Occupied” has an almost playful sinisterness—nothing to keep you away from an LED dance floor. But once you go four minutes deep into its seven minutes, this standout track begins to feel more like an ornate, haunting maze—which only helps to magnify its beauty. —KEVIN WARWICK Rock, Pop, Etc Jon Allegretto, Matthew Alfano 8 PM, Cubby Bear F Rachel Baiman, Elk Walking 9 PM, Hideout Cloud Castle Lake, Max Subar 9 PM, Schubas 18+ Curious Grace & Black Rabbit, Viaducts, Local Motive 8 PM, Wire, Berwyn Diet Cig, Great Grandpa, Spook School 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Dirty Mules, Dan Whitaker & the Shinebenders, Dennis J. Leise & Tiny Horse 8 PM, Martyrs’ Austin Fillmore, Varsity, Minor Wits, Underclass, S. Joel Norman 7:30 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Althea Grace, Kara Cavanaugh 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Jimmy Degenerate & the Notseez, Toxic Rocket, Cheatin’ at Solitaire, Jason Alarm 7:30 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Lever, Telethon, Damn Tracks, Rare Ms. Steak 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon Mo, Cashmere Cat, Darius 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Mother Earth, Off Days, Books, Regular Oatmeal, Ronin 9 PM, Heartland Cafe Railway Gamblers, Town Criers, Tomblands 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle San Fermin, Mikaela Davis 8 PM, SPACE, sold out b Wood Chickens, Wet Wallet, Tijuana Hercules 9 PM, Cafe Mustache Hip-Hop Jay Electronica 9 PM, Park West, 18+ Dance Kraak & Smaak, Redux 9 PM, 1st Ward, 18+ Lane 8, Attias 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Folk & Country Devil in a Woodpile 6 PM, Hideout Lil Smokies, Kind Country 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Blues, Gospel, and R&B BTS Express, Shirley Johnson 9 PM, also Fri 2/2 and Sat 2/3, 9 PM, Blue Chicago

H.C. McEntire ò HEATHER EVANS SMITH

Jazz Big Bari Band 8 and 10 PM, also Fri 2/2 and Sat 2/3, 8 and 10 PM; Sun 2/4, 4, 8, and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Ni-ck Mazzarella Quintet 9 PM, Elastic b Joel Paterson Trio 9:30 PM, California Clipper Experimental Jim Becker, Nathaniel Braddock, Lia Kohl, and Junius Paul 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ John Daniel, Corey Lyons, and Ben Billington; Allen Moore; Katherine Young 8 PM, Whistler F Classical Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti, conductor (Stravinsky, Higdon, Chausson, Britten). 8 PM; also Fri 2/2, 1:30 PM, and Sat 2/3, 8 PM, Symphony Center Soundpost 6 PM, Buntrock Hall, Symphony Center

FRIDAY2 The Bad Plus See Thursday. Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln, $38, $36 members. b Chicago Psych Fest 9: Icicle Star Tree TALsounds & Matchess headline with a collaborative set; Glyders, Hair, Los Black Dogs, and Spiral Galaxy open. See also Saturday, when Brett Naucke performs as part of the festival’s second and final day. 8 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $12. 21+ One of the best bargains in the Chicago scene, this well-established festival—currently organized by Plastic Crimewave, aka Steve Krakow (a Reader contributor), and artist Matt Ginsberg (Dark Fog, Underground Symposium)—celebrates its ninth installment. Named after a 1968 song by

Marc Benno and Leon Russell, Icicle Star Tree has a killer lineup that showcases the diversity of what psychedelic music can be. Friday includes a collaboration between TALsounds (Natalie Chami) and Matchess (Whitney Johnson), two mesmerizing electronic artists. They duke it out with gritty fuzzmeisters Glyders, the greasy and galloping Hair (about to release an EP on February 25), the note-faithful Camaro boogie of MexicanChicagoans Los Black Dogs, and the hearts-of-space drone of Spiral Galaxy (Plastic Crimewave with flautist Sara Gossett). What a deal, right?

Saturday brings trippy synth trio Bitchin’ Bajas, sound wizard Brett Naucke (who’s about to drop a new album in March that will feature collaborations with Chami and Johnson), the groovy eerie duo Courtesy, and Milwaukee jam unit Names Divine. None of these artists sound at all alike, but all lounge about happily together in the realm of the psychotropic. Beware: the fest sold out well in advance last year. Also, come prepared for the temptation of the merch table when you discover your new favorite artist. —MONICA KENDRICK

K. Flay Sir Sly opens. 7 PM, Concord Music Hall, 2047 N. Milwaukee, sold out. b H.C. McEntire See also Saturday. Justin Townes Earle headlines. 8 PM, City Winery, 1200 W. Randolph, $25-$35. b When Heather McEntire’s longtime collaborator in Mount Moriah, Jenks Miller, became busy with the demands of parenthood, she found herself piled up with songs without an outlet to release them.

Spurred on by her friend Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill, the songwriter decided to step out on her own. The music on her debut solo album, Lionheart

Rock, Pop, Etc Avatar, Brains, Hellzapoppin 6:45 PM, Bottom Lounge, sold out b Big Wreck, Attica Riots 9 PM, Lincoln Hall Boxsledder, Burst & Bloom, Father Figures, Pelafina 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon Bryce Cashman, Corral, Spacebones 10 PM, Cole’s F Cell Phones, Absolutely Not, Ganser, Avantist 9 PM, Co-Prosperity Sphere Zach Deputy 9 PM, 1st Ward, 18+ Dirty Fences, Ask, Human Error 9 PM, East Room Earnest & Troubled, New Zeitgeist 9 PM, Heartland Cafe Evil Engine, Dracu-Lahs, Stay Up All Night and Fight, Lemon Knife 8 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Hitsleep, Sour Bruthers, Motions 7 PM, Elbo Room Kuinka, Wild Skies 10 PM, Schubas, 18+ Low Swans, Forty Piece Choir, Farkus, DeYoung & Jones 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ O’My’s, Drama Duo, Oddcouple 9 PM, Theater on the Lake, 18+ Quiet Hollers, Avondale Ramblers 8 PM, Beat Kitchen Randy Rogers Band, Mike Ryan 8:30 PM, Joe’s Bar A Silent Truth, Polarizer, Craving Strange, Via Clara 8 PM, Cobra Lounge Staring Problem, Bev Rage & the Drinks, Pledge Drive Ag47 benefit show. 9 PM, Cafe Mustache J. Roddy Walston & the Business 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Wombats 6 PM, Durty Nellie’s, Palatine Rachael Yamagata, Hemming 8 PM, SPACE b Young Cub, Honeystone, Matt Burke, Brian Allison, Where’s Fernando 7:30 PM, Cubby Bear Ariel Zatina, Grun Wasser, RXM Reality, Wiggle Room 9 PM, Empty Bottle Hip-Hop J-Live, Pseudo-Slang, Makaya McCraven, DJ 3rd Rail 9 PM, Martyrs’ Dance Marco Faraone 10 PM, Spy Bar Gramatik, Haywyre 9 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 18+ Intermodal, DJ Spin 10 PM, Sound-Bar Josh Jacobson 7 PM, Schubas b Simian Mobile Disco, Matthew Dear 10 PM, Smart Bar Trippy Turtle 10 PM, the Mid

J

FEBRUARY 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 25

MUSIC continued from 25 Folk & Country First Aid Kit, Van William 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, sold out, 18+ Blues, Gospel, and R&B Big James, Joanna Connor 9 PM, also Sat 2/3, 9 PM, Kingston Mines BTS Express, Shirley Johnson 9 PM, Blue Chicago Cash Box Kings, Kent Burnside 9 PM, Buddy Guy’s Legends Rico McFarland Band with Jimmy Johnson 9:30 PM, Rosa’s Lounge John Primer & the Real Deal Blues Band 9 PM, also Sat 2/3, 9 PM, B.L.U.E.S. Jazz Glen David Andrews 9 PM, FitzGerald’s Big Bari Band 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Double Monk 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Brad Goode Quartet 9 PM, also Sat 2/3, 8 PM, Green Mill Russ Phillips Quartet 7:30 and 9:30 PM, Winter’s Jazz Club Sam Trump, Dassit, Elton Aura 9 PM, Emporium Arcade Bar F Trumpet Summit 9:30 PM, also Sat 2/3, 9:30 PM, Andy’s Jazz Club Western Elstons 10:30 PM, California Clipper Experimental IE, Curt Oren & Rose Bouboushian, Matt Mehlan, Katherine Young 8:30 PM, Hungry Brain F Classical Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti, conductor (Stravinsky, Higdon, Chausson, Britten).

1:30 PM, Symphony Center Kevin Puts & Mark Campbell 6:30 PM, Armitage Concert Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music F b

SATURDAY3 Brett NauCke Part of Chicago Psych Fest 9: Icicle Star Tree (see Friday). Bitchin Bajas headline; Brett Naucke, Courtesy, and Names Divine open. 8 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $12. 21+ Chicago electronic artist Brett Naucke has been a scarce presence on the local scene in recent years, suggesting that his commitment has shifted toward forging new terrain in his home studio rather than performing. He’s released a steady stream of underground cassettes since his acclaimed 2014 album The Seed, but next month he’ll drop The Mansion, his second for the Spectrum Spools imprint. The record, a deeply personal effort that reflects on memories of his childhood home, registers as his greatest achievement thus far, and it’s instructive to hear what he’s worked through leading up to it. As its title suggests, his 2016 cassette Executable Dreamtime (Umor Rex) delivers music of ravishing, contemplative beauty in seven themes of quietly gurgling, hypnotic synthesis, while last year’s Multiple Hallucinations (Hausu Mountain) embraces a more visceral side of his work, with abrasive noise, a grimy low end, and beats studding the long-form multipartite suite—which holds together despite feeling like a series of studies.

Naucke blends those various ideas into cohesion on his new album; its lush array of ambience, mel-

26 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 1, 2018

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ody, and texture is aided by the wordless cooing of Natalie Chami (TALsounds) on a couple of tracks and the grainy, probing viola of Whitney Johnson (Matchess) on “Clocks in the Mansion.” These pieces are built with much greater compositional rigor than his earlier works, as one fascinating passage folds into the next with a slippery but clear logic. I can’t suss out the connection to Naucke’s youth in the music, but it’s hard to miss the emotion he poured into its creation. —PETER MARGASAK

H.C. McEntire See Friday. Justin Townes Earle headlines. 8 PM, City Winery, 1200 W. Randolph, sold out. b Shredders Astronautalis and Lamon Manuel open. 9 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $20. 17+ Minneapolis rap collective cum label Doomtree have figured out a sustainable source of inspiration that could very well carry them through the decades: each other. Seven members strong (with five MCs among them), Doomtree have released a flurry of solo and group albums over the years, not to mention the offshoot projects in which some members team up with a hodgepodge of other musicians to try something new. In 2010 Doomtree rappers Dessa and P.O.S. hooked up with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, Har Mar Superstar, and about a dozen others to form the soft-rock group Gayngs (Doomtree eventually released a remix EP of Gayngs’ debut, Relayted). Several members of that project, including P.O.S., went on to form the experimental, noiseadjacent band Marijuana Deathsquads. Shredders is the latest outfit from Doomtree’s members, and with a lineup of rappers P.O.S. and Sims along with producers Lazerbeak and Paper Tiger, it keeps things squarely in the family. Those who’ve loved Doomtree’s bone-crushing, percussion-centric instrumentals and verbose, punk-inflected lyrics should

MUSIC

have no trouble getting into Shredders’ 2017 debut, Dangerous Jumps (Doomtree)—this configuration of the umbrella organization is leaner, meaner, and invigorated. On “Xanthrax” P.O.S. and Sims sound as energized as the nervy, New Orleans bounce production, which is to say, Shredders come in high and stay that way. —LEOR GALIL Rock, Pop, Etc Arluck Time 2018: Teri & the Tendertones, Cooler by the Lake 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon Beyond Deth, Never We See, Reign, Molder, Evil Warning 8 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Blues Traveler, Los Colognes 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Kimbra, Arc Iris 7 PM, Concord Music Hall b Madema, Where’s Jameson, Mnor, Goalie Fight 8 PM, Elbo Room Ben Miller Band, Chicago Farmer 9 PM, Schubas Minor Moon, Luke Henry 8:30 PM, Hungry Brain Muvves 10 PM, Cole’s F Phonographs, Sam Stucky, Casimir Effect, Daniel Young 6:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Sedgewick, Astro Samurai, Bianca Muniz, Miss Remember 10:30 PM, Beat Kitchen Steep Canyon Rangers, Henhouse Prowlers 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Too Many Zooz, My Boy Elroy 10 PM, Bottom Lounge 18+ Weakened Friends, the Flips, Engines, Lettering 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Rachael Yamagata, Matt Sucich 8 PM, SPACE b Dance Animal Collective (DJ set) 10 PM, the Mid Borgore, Axel Boy 11:45 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ DJ Tess 9 PM, East Room Nifra, 4 Strings, Solid Stone 10 PM, Sound-Bar Prok, Fitch 10 PM, Spy Bar Folk & Country James Hill 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b

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Shredders ò ZOE PRINDS

FEBRUARY 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 27

1800 W. DIVISION

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(773) 486-9862 Come enjoy one of Chicago’s finest beer gardens!

JANUARY 11..................

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EVERY TUESDAY (EXCEPT 2ND) AT 8PM OPEN MIC HOSTED BY JIMIJON AMERICA

MUSIC

JUST ADDED • ON SALE THIS FRIDAY! 2/20 3/24 3/25 4/4 4/11 4/15 4/17 4/18 4/20 5/4 5/19

Ladysmith Black Mambazo Tuesday show just added!

Kaia Kater / Big Sadie Betsayda Machado and Parrando El Clavo World Music Wednesday: The NIU Steelband Ian Maksin & Friends Kids show: Little Miss Ann with Red Yarn The Residents 9:30pm show just added!

Alash Nancy And Beth (Megan Mullally, Stephanie Hunt) Hot Rize Lucy Kaplansky

FOR TICKETS, VISIT OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2 7:30PM

The Bad Plus Never Stop II

featuring Reid Anderson, Orrin Evans, and David King

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3 8PM

James Hill

In Szold Hall

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8 8PM

John Oates and The Good Road Band FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9 8PM

Tom Paxton

with special guest The DonJuans

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10 3PM

Alasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas In Szold Hall SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10 8PM

Sexteto Milonguero

In Szold Hall

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 11 7PM

Jay Farrar

with special guest Kevin Andew Prchal

ACROSS THE STREET IN SZOLD HALL 4545 N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL

2/2

2/2

A New Canon of Classical Music: Composer Kevin Puts and Librettist Mark Campbell (at Armitage Hall) Global Dance Party: Salsa Congress

WORLD MUSIC WEDNESDAY SERIES FREE WEEKLY CONCERTS, LINCOLN SQUARE

2/7 2/14

Derek Gripper 12 Tiempos Flamenco Company

OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG 28 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 1, 2018

Anna Meredith ò ANNA VICTORIA BEST

continued from 27 The 13th Annual Barn Dance Apocalypse with Golden Horse Ranch Band 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall 17+ Blues, Gospel, and R&B Big James, Joanna Connor 9 PM, Kingston Mines Billy Branch & the Sons of Blues, Alex Wilson 9:30 PM, Buddy Guy’s Legends BTS Express, Shirley Johnson 9 PM, Blue Chicago John Primer & the Real Deal Blues Band 9 PM, B.L.U.E.S. Mavis Staples, Congregation 8 PM, the Vic 18+ Mike Wheeler Band 9 PM, Rosa’s Lounge Jazz Big Bari Band 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Brad Goode Quartet 8 PM, Green Mill Bobby Lewis Quartet 7:30 and 9:30 PM, Winter’s Jazz Club Morry Sochat & the Special 20s 10:30 PM, California Clipper Trumpet Summit 9:30 PM, Andy’s Jazz Club Experimental Elysia Crampton, Thoom Midnight, Hideout Zelienople 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ International Dos Santos: Anti-Beat Orquesta, Trio Mokili 9 PM, Martyrs’ Nikos Markropoulos 10 PM, Joe’s Live Classical Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti, conductor (Stravinsky, Higdon, Chausson, Britten). 8 PM, Symphony Center

SUNDAY4 Rock, Pop, Etc Judy Collins 5 and 8 PM, City Winery b Folk & Country Al Scorch’s Winter Slumber 2 PM, Empty Bottle F

Jazz Jimmy Bennington & the Colour and Sound 7 PM, Heartland Cafe Big Bari Band 4, 8, and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Fat Babies 8 PM, Honky Tonk BBQ Classical Daniel Druckman & Jamie Jordan 8:30 PM, Constellation Lyric Opera’s I Puritani 2 PM, also Wed 2/7, 7:30 PM, Lyric Opera House

MONDAY5 Rock, Pop, Etc Carpoolparty, August Hotel, Tiny Fireflies 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Great American Ghost, Limbs 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Los Colognes 8 PM, SPACE b John Mead’s Conspiracy Theories, Boundary Waters, Steph & the Elements 8 PM, Martyrs’ Salvation, Touched by Ghoul, Canadian Rifle, Luggage 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle F Folk & Country Chicago Barn Dance Company Barn dance featuring Rare Privilege with caller Paul Watkins. 7 PM, Irish American Heritage Center b Jazz Restroy, Bill MacKay & Charles Rumback 9 PM, Elastic b Classical Lawrence Brownlee, Anthony Clark Evans, and Ann Toomey Tenor, baritone, and soprano. 7:30 PM, Harris Theater b Kyong Mee Choi, Tansy Davies, Ryan Ingebritsen, Ted King-Smith, Angelica Negron, Kaija Saariaho, Steven Snowden, Jacob TV 7:30 PM, Davis Theater In-Stores Anton Hatwich & Skyler Rowe Bass and drums.

7:30 PM, Myopic Books F b

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TUESDAY6 Igorrr Spotlights, Zaius, and Scientist open.

7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2105 S. State, $18, $16 in advance. 17+ “Raaaah! Aaaaaaaaaah! Raaaaaaaaaayaaaaaaah!”

French producer Gautier Serre, aka Igorrr, starts off his 2017 album with three hysterical quivering shrieks that segue into a headbanging deathmetal crunch, courtesy of Teloch from Mayhem and drummer Sylvain Bouvier. Over it all, vocalist Laurent Lunoir emits a phlegm-flecked ranting burble—like chipmunks being devoured by piranhas, or vice versa. Serre, who’s also part of the deathmetal band Whourkr, has been releasing Igorrr material for 13 years, and Savage Sinusoid (Metal Blade) continues what is by now an expected tradition of unexpected what-the-fuckery. Severed segments of Baroque keyboard Bach bits, metal riffs, electronic glitch spasms, and polka (yes, polka) are stitched together into a crazy-quilt collage of fearsome silliness. Igorrr’s hyper goof-metal has some precedents—Sleepytime Gorilla Museum comes to mind—but it’s hard to think of anyone else who combines such disparate elements with such concussed grandiosity. The five-minute “Opus Brain,” for example, smooshes together Aphex Twin-like blasts of beats with opera vocals from Laure Le Prunenec and throws in distorted psychedelic atmospheric film music; it sounds as if Ennio Morricone grabbed a bagful of electronics and used them to mug Queen. Watching Serre and his associated assemble their cracked songs live is sure to provoke giggles, gasps, and joyous headbanging. —NOAH BERLATSKY

Marilyn Manson Amazonica opens. 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 4746 N. Racine, $59. 18+ A lot of Manson fans will tell you that Marilyn Manson’s ninth studio album, 2015’s The Pale Emperor, was a massive artistic sidestep for the shock rocker. Instead of his usual industrialized hard rock, the album dabbles in goth, blues rock, and spaghettiwestern flourishes—eliciting both love and hate from longtime fans. On October’s Heaven Upside Down, Manson’s returned to form, conjuring up the crushing sounds and dark energies that made him an (antichrist) superstar in the 90s. With one foot firmly planted in the Ministry lite of 1996’s Antichrist Superstar and the other in the glorious electro-glam of 1998’s Mechanical Animals, Manson— working on the second album in a row with engineer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Tyler Bates and former Dillinger Escape Plan drummer Gil Sharone—has created a record that pounds, creeps, and pulls you in with giant hooks, much like the material of his glory days. But despite the strength of the album, it hasn’t been easy to get a support tour in motion. Just days before its release, Manson was crushed by a gigantic steel stage prop during a show in New York, and a couple of weeks later he fired longtime bass player Twiggy Ramirez due to allegations of sexual assault. With the New Year things finally seem to be in line for Manson to bring his signature industrial-pop metal to the masses. —LUCA CIMARUSTI

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Anna Meredith Gentle Leader XIV opens.

8 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, $15. 18+ Scottish composer Anna Meredith has found a niche working with classical institutions in their efforts to engage new listeners. Her piece “Connect It,” which demonstrates a canon using body percussion and beatboxing—with rhythmic patterns passed around between performers—was part of the BBC’s Ten Pieces program, an endeavor to get kids ages seven to 14 interested in classical music. Her more serious works for the likes of the London Sinfonietta have used similar sonic and performative elements.

Meredith’s interest in reaching larger audiences and generating greater immediacy has led her to create pop music too. On her 2016 debut, Varmints (Moshi Moshi), bits of indie rock, video-game sounds, and techno collide with ideas from symphonic music.

The album opens with the instrumental “Nautilus,” which refracts stentorian brass a la Wagner within a sonic house of mirrors and eventually jacks it up with punishing electronic beats. A vaguely complementary swirl of rapidly churning electronic arpeggios follows on “Taken,” before Meredith and guitarist Jack Ross begin singing a straight-up indierock melody that sounds like a shined-up sliver of a Nirvana song. Over a straight-up four-on-the-floor techno pulse, Meredith evokes the frothy sweetness of Sarah Cracknell’s singing in St. Etienne.

At moments I find the record a bit too fizzy, as if Meredith is making music for aerobics, but most of the time she strikes a fascinating balance. Her collision works because she clearly loves and understands both sides of the blend. —PETER MARGASAK

CAN YOU SING???

Recording choir needs volunteer

singers for debut CD and YouTube video projects. ALL VOICES (especially SOPRANO and ALTO) for multi-cultural, non-denominational, adult community choir.Widely varied repertoire includes traditional and contemporary gospel, anthems, spirituals, hymns, international, and acappella. Saturday rehearsals, 9:30 am to 11:30 am, Chicago (SE Side) – close to the University of Chicago. Text or Call NOW – slots are filling quickly. ClaimYour Star Power!

(312) 883-0716

Rock, Pop, Etc Michael Glabicki & Dirk Miller 8 PM, SPACE b LBJ & Marcell Bellinger 9 PM, the Promontory b Magical Beasts, Jessica Marks 6 PM, Whistler F Trunkweed 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Hip-Hop The Boy Illinois, Adam Ness, London Lo, Vo, Tynece Allen 8 PM, Wire, Berwyn Blues, Gospel, and R&B Case 7 and 9:30 PM, City Winery b Jazz Fat Babies 9 PM, Green Mill Erwin Helfer 7:30 PM, Hungry Brain F New Context 9:30 PM, Whistler F Greg Ward 9 PM, Hungry Brain F

WEDNESDAY7 Chris Farren Adult Mom headlines; Chris Farren, Gia Margaret, and Richard Album & the Singles opens. Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, $12. 17+ Chris Farren is the best kind of punk prankster; he pokes fun at himself as much as anything else, but is also full of earnestness. Although the 31-year-old is a punk-scene veteran, he’s still relatively green to recording and performing as a solo artist—the result of a circuitous path. Farren’s previous band Fake Problems went on hiatus roughly five years ago, and in 2014 he teamed up with contemporary underground punk hero Jeff Rosenstock J

FEBRUARY 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 29

MUSIC

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

Chris Farren ò ERICA LAUREN

continued from 29

to form Antarctigo. In a 2016 Clrvynt interview, he said that partnership gave him the confidence to pursue making music on his own. His full-length debut, 2014’s Like a Gift From God or Whatever, was inauspicious: an irreverent collection of original Christmas songs that was surprisingly good considering his initial goal was simply to see if he could actually make any solo recordings worth releasing. Fortunately the album benefited from Farren’s sharp songwriting sensibilities, his keen self-awareness, and what I’ve read as a certain amount of joy from toying with conventions of holiday and scene genres (“Emo Revival Christmas 2014” is so on the nose in the best way possible). Farren’s proper solo full-length debut, Can’t Die (SideOneDummy), is similarly clever, but more personal. He sings about depression, aging, and heartache while rolling out clean, pop-leaning punk ditties. The post-Graceland bop of “Still Beating” shows he’s using his powers to achieve everything a musician could aim for: songs that appeal to the heart, head, and any part of the body that likes to dance. —LEOR GALIL Rock, Pop, Etc Adron, Half Gringa 9 PM, Hungry Brain F

30 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 1, 2018

Blake, Advorsa, Ashen Furies 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon Everything Must Die, Air Raid, Handsome Prick, Predator 8 PM, Subterranean Sun Speak 9:30 PM, California Clipper Hip-Hop Freddie Old Soul, Jade the Ivy, SunBLVD 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Folk & Country Big Sadie & Quarter Mile Thunder 9:30 PM, Whistler F Dustbowl Revival 8 PM, SPACE b Blues, Gospel, and R&B Melanie Fiona Early show sold out. 7 and 9:30 PM, City Winery b Jazz New Standard Quintet 8 PM, FitzGerald’s Rooms Trio, Hanging Hearts 9 PM, Hideout International Derek Gripper 8:30 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music F b Mumiy Troll 8 PM, Thalia Hall 17+ Classical Akropolis Reed Quintet 12:15 PM, Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center F b Lyric Opera’s I Puritani 7:30 PM, Lyric Opera House v

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FOOD & DRINK

A PLACE BY DAMAO | $ R 2621 S. Halsted 312-929-2088 bydamao.com

Clockwise from left: duck heads; bell dumplings; spicy soft bean curd ò MATTHEW GILSON

I

RESTAURANT REVIEW

A Place by Damao is a Sichuan joint unlike any other

As Chinatown bleeds into Bridgeport, a new generation of young restaurateurs emerges.

By MIKE SULA

’ve recently learned there’s no more appropriate viewing when gnawing on a cold duck neck than the Syfy vampire gorefest Van Helsing, which can be a colorful primer on how to eat your way around cervical vertebrae.

Well, maybe you’d approach a human neck differently, but at Bridgeport’s A Place by Damao, you just pick up the bird’s nape from each end and get in there, nicking precious scraps of spice- and soy-braised flesh out of the curves and angles of the tiny vertebrae like a merciless, red-fanged predator. If you happen to have a higher opinion of your manners, you can slip on a pair of the thin, clear plastic gloves you’ll be offered. You’ll miss some of fun, though—like licking the thick Sichuan peppercorn rub from your fingertips. It buzzes like it’s still alive.

Same thing applies to the duck wings, duck feet, duck tongues, and duck heads you’ll find under a glass display case by the register at the rear of this tiny strip-mall storefront. The prominent flat-screen television throws a glow on hotel pans full of chewy chicken gizzards, snappy pork ears, and wiry chicken feet. These various bites are served cold, as you’d find them on the street in Chengdu, China. A Place by Damao doesn’t have a liquor license, so if you imbibe, you want to be sure you come prepared with your favorite poison, because this is ideal drinking food. I drank cheap Riesling one night and three different kinds of mezcal on another.

Doesn’t matter. You’ll be working at it, and the booze helps you enjoy it more.

A Place by Damao is the creation of 24-year-old Aishan “Damao” Zhong and partner Mori Guo, who are emblematic of a new Chinatown that’s bleeding into Bridgeport and becoming ever more interesting with the arrivals of young fresh blood. Opening last August to daunting lines, the tiny space is smartly appointed with painted wooden boards on the walls announcing the dishes in Chinese.

Illustrator Qin Ma also designed the menu with an eye to its clarity for non-Chinese speakers; its hand-drawn and -labeled cartoon diagrams of eight iconic “Chengdu Famous Plates” will let you know that, e.g., the soft spicy bean curd is topped with minced green onion, pickled cabbage, and soybeans as well as house-made chile oil. What it doesn’t show is what a luxurious pleasure this dish is: diaphanous clouds of tofu slip down the throat on a J

FEBRUARY 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 31

Search the Reader’s online database of thousands of Chicago-area restaurants—and add your own review—at chicagoreader.com/food.

FOOD & DRINK

Clockwise from left: iced water cake combo; spicy noodle soup with braised beef; roasted pig feet ò MATTHEW GILSON

continued from 31

warm, red tide, the crunchy soybeans adding a reversal of texture, the cabbage’s pungent punch and the onion’s grassy bite adding another. I’d purchase screen prints of these illustrations if they were for sale.

The menu is a bit more obtuse in its rendering of the handmade bell dumplings hiding a dark deposit of sweet “Secret sauce by Damao.” These are slim but stout-walled flat half moons wrapped tightly around tightly molded gobs of gingery ground pork. In terms

32 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 1, 2018

of dumplings, they’re nearly as satisfying as the wontons in hot soup, fat but relatively thin-skinned, bulging with ground pork and nestled winsomely in a volcanic full-bodied chicken-and-beef broth that’s clear evidence of the compatibility of pleasure and pain.

That soup is among the spiciest dishes on hand at Damao. Another is a deceptively innocuous-looking pile of crinkle-cut french fries, intentionally just cooked to a state of softness that helps absorb another gently sweet and spicy “secret sauce,” the crack that

compels you to reach for these steadily and repeatedly until they’re gone. It’s a flavor profile similar to the marvelous thick handmade noodles, cut with sesame and showered with crushed peanuts. A sliced chub of crimson-stained, fat-flecked pork sausage poses the same threat of heat; its look says Oktoberfest, but its slow, menacing burn doesn’t exist anywhere in Europe.

I realize that—to at least a few of you— brains are a tough sell. But remember how good I said the aforementioned soft spicy

bean curd was? Imagine what you’d do if you had lots of pigs, but no soybeans. This is a small dish of brain matter, a current special I hope remains forever on the roster, its distinctive anatomical characteristics obscured by chile oil and chopped fresh cilantro. It’s an empty vessel that absorbs these seasonings and transmits them to your own nervous system via soft, custardlike lobular formations.

A special spicy noodle soup with braised beef is no slouch either. Deeply rich, almost a balm to some of the more assertive liquids on the menu, it harbors fatty slices of meat that fall apart at the touch of the tongue. Firm spaghetti–bore wheat noodles are the third player in this remarkable bowl.

A trio of barbecued meats fills out this focused menu. Shredded caramelized rabbit bits are the Sichuanese answer to classic Chicago-style ribs tips. I’ll never understand cigars, but I imagine their appeal is similar to that of the lingering smokiness these bits provide as you deliberately work through the shattered skeletal structure. Equally smoky roasted pig feet are easier to deal with, the warm, jellylike collagen being the draw here, with bigger and fewer bones to get in the way. Tiny pork riblets may be the gateway meat: dry-rubbed, with a hint of sweetness, the flesh separates from the bones with little effort or interference.

There’s a singular sweet on the menu: a “teardrop cake” (here “iced water cake”), a parfait-like assemblage of clear water, sugar, and agar jelly that was blowing up the Internet last summer. Usually served inverted, at Damao it’s presented in a bowl in a couple of variations: one with subtly boozy and astringent fermented rice; one with brown sugar, dried hawthorn, sesame seeds, and raisins; and one that’s a combination of the two. It’s a cool, Achatzesque reward for your palate’s previous exertions.

Some people maintain Sichuan food is one-dimensional, all tongue-numbing oily burn and buzz. But that neglects the variety of diverting visceral textures it offers. More than most Sichuan restaurants in Chinatown, Damao is a place with food for lingering over important ideas, gesturing emphatically with denuded duck tongues and chicken feet.

This style of eating may be old hat in Chengdu, but in Chicago it looks like a bright future for Chinese food. v

v @MikeSula

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○ Watch a video of Kevin McCormick working with eggplant in the kitchen at chicagoreader.com/food.

FOOD & DRINK Eggplant cake, cardamom ice cream, eggplant chips, sunflower seed streusel, and raisins soaked in riesling ò JULIA THIEL

KEY INGREDIENT

’Plant food

By JULIA THIEL

B

otanically, the EGGPLANT is a berry, but culinarily it resides firmly in vegetable territory. That makes it challenging to incorporate into a dessert, says BEACON TAVERN pastry chef KEVIN MCCORMICK, who was tasked with just that by Kymberli DeLost (the Gage, Acanto, the Dawson). “It doesn’t have a lot of flavor on its own, but you can manipulate it in a million different ways,” McCormick says. “Every manipulation gives us a different quality of the eggplant itself.”

McCormick says his goal was not to mask the eggplant’s vegetal qualities but to highlight its other qualities—some more appeal-

ing than others. “I wasn’t quite expecting how bitter some of the elements [of the dish] would get,” he says. “It was a trial and error of minimizing the bitterness.” McCormick started with an eggplant spice cake, inspired by “the savory qualities of a carrot cake,” he says. He roasted eggplants on the grill until they were smoky, peeled and pureed them, and added classic carrot cake spices like cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg. Instead of cream cheese frosting, he made a mousse with goat cheese: “This is, for me, the link between sweet and savory,” he says.

McCormick also roasted small cubes of eggplant and glazed it with a mixture of orange and lemon juice, honey, aniseed, and orange zest for brightness and sweetness.

Spices were key to the dessert: the aniseed, he says, “draws that bridge between the savory elements of the eggplant and the sweetness of the dessert.” He made a cardamom ice cream to add complexity and more spice notes, and put coriander seeds in the pickling liquid for Japanese eggplant. “One of the cool qualities of eggplant is the unbelievable purple color,”

McCormick says. “When we pickled it, it brought out more of that color.”

The last eggplant element was a chip: After charring, peeling, and pureeing eggplant, McCormick cooked it on the stove to eliminate as much moisture as possible, then spread it thin on a silicone mat and dehydrated it. “It tastes like an eggplant potato chip,” he says.

McCormick also made a sunflower seed streusel, which he says adds texture and toasty flavor, and raisins soaked in riesling (for a sweet-tart flavor). Eggplant wouldn’t be his first choice for a dessert ingredient, McCormick says, but he was pleased with the result. “We get a lot of layers and depth with all the different elements. It’s got characteristics of a carrot cake, but you get some of those vegetal notes, a lot of spice.”

WHO’S NEXT:

McCormick has challenged CHRIS THOMPSON of CODA DI VOLPE to create a dish with CHEF BOYARDEE BEEF RAVIOLI. v

v @juliathiel

king crab house 1816 N. Halsted St., Chicago

Valentine’s V Day Specials February 14th

Four Course Dinner $51.95 6 oz Lobster Tail • 6 oz. Filet

Appetizers

Choose from Popcorn Shrimp, Fried Calamari or Mussels

Desserts

Key Lime Pie, Chocolate Cake, Tiramisu, Limoncello Cake or Cheese Cake

Entrees

1/2 lb. Snow Crab Legs & 1/2 Slab Ribs $35.95 1 /2 lb. Large King Crab Legs + Skewer or Filet Kabob $48.95 (Includes a choice of soup or house salad & vegetable, glass of house wine or champagne, well drink or beer)

Ask Us About Our Super Bowl Specials!

Regular Menu Available

Lenten Specials $19.95 February 14th thru March 31st All You Can Eat Fried Perch

Call For Reservation 312-280-8990

FEBRUARY 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 33

JOBS SALES & MARKETING Telephone Sales Experienced/aggressive telephone closers needed now to sell ad space for Chicago’s oldest and largest newspaper rep firm.

Immediate openings in Loop office. Salary + commission.

312-368-4884.

General ITCCS TECHNOLOGY GROUP is seeking Senior Software Developers in Rolling Meadows, IL w/ the following requirements: BS degree in Engineering, Computer Science or related field or foreign equivalent degree. 5 yrs of related experience. Required skills: Apply Object Oriented Programming principles and N-tier architecture to design and develop applications using .Net framework, programming languages (C#/VB.Net), ADO.NET, ORM and Visual Studio (5 yrs); Create interactive and responsive web applications using client side web development technologies (XML, HTML, CSS, AJAX, JavaScript /jQuery) (3 yrs); Create database objects, complex queries, triggers, stored procedures and schedule jobs using Microsoft SQL Server/ Oracle PL-SQL (5 yrs); Develop custom reports and integration packages using BI tools (SSRS, Crystal Reports, SSIS) (2 yrs). Apply at www. ccstechno lo g y gro up .co m , Careers, & upload resume.

TTX CO. IS seeking a MANAGER FMO INVENTORY & ASSET CONTROL in Chicago,

Find hundreds of Readerrecommended restaurants, exclusive video features, and sign up for weekly news chicagoreader.com/ food.

34 CHICAGO READER | FEBRUARY 1, 2018

IL with the following requirements: MS in Industrial Engineering, Logistics or Supply Chain and 1 year related experience. Prior experience must include 1 year of experience with the following: co-direct Kaizen, Lean and Six Sigma projects focusing on process optimization and improvement using the tools of Fishbone Diagrams, Value Stream Maps and Supermarket Models; manage end to end SAP Material Requirement Planning implementations which automate the material inventory ordering process across a service network; prepare and deliver presentations to senior management and hourly workforce regarding inventory ordering automation project status and change management; manage the Supply Chain of a service network serving the North American Rail system; manage projects that adhere to the federal regulations that govern U.S. Railroads including the Association of American Railroad inventory rules and the Federal Railroad Administration operating requirements. Apply on-line at jobs. ttx.com.

Lead Microwave Network Engineer Oversee development, implementation, validation and assessment of high bandwidth, low latency microwave and free space optics point to point networks, including custom use of RF technology and deployment for commercial use using Pathloss and Matlab Requirements: Master’s degree or equiv in Telecommunications Engineering or related field and 1 year experience as a Microwave Network Engineer developing, validating and assessing microwave free space point to point networks using RF technology, Pathloss and Matlab Forward resume and references to SMG Holdings LLC d/b/a Anova Technologies, HR, 205 N. Michigan Ave, Ste 4230, Chicago IL 60601.

NO calls or walk ins TECHNOLOGY ADVISORY MANAGER, BUSINESS APPLICATIONS (Mult. Pos.), PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory Services LLC, Chicago, IL. Design & implement tech. solns used across fin., ops & human capital sectors, & advise clients on industry-specific bus. apps. Req. Bach’s deg. or foreign equiv. in Comp Sci, IT, Engg, Bus Admin or rel. + 5 yrs post-bach’s progress. rel. work exp.; OR a Master’s deg. or foreign equiv. in Comp Sci, IT, Engg, Bus Admin or rel.

+ 3 yrs rel. work exp. Travel req. up to 80%. Apply by mail, referencing Job Code IL1563, Attn: HR SSC/ Talent Management, 4040 W. Boy Scout Blvd, Tampa, FL 33607.

Sr. Software Engineer 1, BMW Tech Corp., Chicago, IL. Reqs: BA (or for equiv) in CS, Eng., Math, PHYS, or rel fld, + 5 yrs post-degree exp in job offered or dir. rel., or MA (or for equiv) + 2 yrs exp. Exp must incl: Dev exp w/command of multi modern progr lang: Java, JS, C#, Swift, & C++ or Objective-C); Android & iOS mobile app dev; design/ implement RESTful APIs & web svcs; Internet tech: web svcs, browsers for mobile devices, HTML5, XML, JS, & HTTP; & Script Lang, VMs, Cloud Svcs, Mobile Widgets/Web Apps, Open Source & Agile. Travel req. 1-2 w ks/yr. Resume to L. Ianchello, BMW, 300 Chestnut Ridge Rd., Woodcliff Lake, NJ 07677. No hh.

(Glenview, IL) DRL Enterprises, Inc. seeks Lead Application Developer w/ Bach or equiv for deg in CS, CIS, MIS, CE or Math & 5 yrs progr exp in job offered or in applic devp w/ .Net & Sharepoint, incl 5 yrs exp in web devp using Sharepoint tools & web devp using .Net; 4 yrs exp w/ relational databases (DB2, MS SQL) w/ ability to fine tune designs to improve perf; 3 yrs exp in Angular JS, Jquery, Json, Ajax; 1 yr exp w / Workflow tools (Blackpearl K2 or Ninetex workflow); & 6 mnths exp w/ Cust Rltnshp Mngmt Tools (SugarCRM).

Apply to A. Kandelman, 2301 Ravine Way, Glenview, IL 60025.

SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIST: Manage soc. media mktg campaigns & SEO. BA & 1y esp. req. Mail res: Kroto Inc, 8280 Austin, Morton Grove, IL 60053

REAL ESTATE RENTALS STUDIO $500-$599 CHICAGO, BEVERLY/CAL Par k/Blue Island: Studio $625 & up; 1BR $700 & up; 2BR $885 & up.

Heat, Appls, Balcony, Carpet, Laundry, Parking. Call 708-3880170

STUDIO $600-$699 CHICAGO, HYDE PARK Arms Hotel, 5316 S. Harper, maid, phone /cable, switchboard, fridge, priv bath, lndry, $165/wk, $350/bi-wk or $650/mo. Call 773-493-3500

STUDIO OTHER LARGE SUNNY ROOM w/fridge & microwave. Near Oak Park, Green Line & Buses. 24 hr Desk, Parking Lot $101/week & Up. (773)378-8888 CROSSROADS HOTEL SRO SINGLE RMS Private bath, PHONE, CABLE & MAIDS. 1 Block to Orange Line 5300 S. Pulaski 773-581-1188

Ashland Hotel nice clean rms.

24 hr desk/maid/TV/laundry/air.

Low rates daily/weekly/monthly.

South Side. Call 773-376-5200

1 BR UNDER $700 2018 NEW YEAR SA VINGS! Newly Remod. Studio $550, 1BR $650 w/Heat. 2BR and up starting at $750. Qualified Applicants rcv. up to $400/month off rent for 1 year. No App Fee. (773)412-1153 Wesley Realty 7022 S. SHORE DRIVE Impeccably Clean Highrise STUDIOS, 1 & 2 BEDROOMS Facing Lake & Park.

Laundry & Security on Premises.

Parking & Apts. Are Subject to Availability. TOWNHOUSE APARTMENTS 773-288-1030

CHICAGO, 1305-1307 W. 78TH ST., (2) COZY 1BR APTS, $690/ MO. $350 MOVE IN FEE. CALL 708-932-6000 MIDWAY AREA/63RD KEDZIE Deluxe Studio 1 & 2 BRs. All modern oak floors, appliances, Security system, on site maint. clean & quiet, Nr. transp. From $445. 773582-1985 (espanol)

PRE-SPRING SPECIAL - Chicago South Side Beautiful Studios, 1,2,3 & 4 BR’s, Sec 8 ok. Also Homes for rent available. Call Nicole 312-4461753; W-side locations Tom 630-7765556

CHICAGO 92ND AND M a r quette, Good location, 2BR, 3rd floor, quiet bldg, Nice! Heat included, $700 w/1 mo rent & 1 mo sec.

773-505-1853

CHICAGO: 67TH & Clyde 2BR apt, sunroom, LR & separate DR, carpet, lndry facilities, parking space, $900. Sec 8 Welc. (773) 429-0988 CLEAN ROOM W/FRIDGE & micro, Near Oak Park, Food -4Less, Walmart, Walgreens, Buses & Metra, Laundry. $115/wk & up.

773-637-5957 NEWLY REMOD 1BR & Studios starting at $580. No sec dep, move in fee or app fee. Free heat/hot water. 1155 W. 83rd St., 773-619-0204 HARVEY - New decor 1BR Apt, stove/fridge, c-fan, parking space.

Nr Sibley Metra train/bus & shopping. $600/mo + sec. 773597-8490 7520 S. COLES - 1 BR $520, 2 BR $645, Includes appliances & AC, Near transp., No utilities included (708) 424-4216 Kalabich Mgmt CHICAGO, 6838 S. JEFFERY. Studio, $575 & 1BR, $650.

Hardwood floors, gas & heat incl. No security deposit! Call 773-412-5368 7601 S. SOUTH SHORE. 1BR, $650. Laundry room, in elevator bldg. Appls, gas & heat incl. Parking avail. No Deposit. 773-908-3076 Newly updated, clean furnished rooms in Joliet, near buses & Metra, elevator. Utilities included, $91/wk. $395/mo. 815-722-1212

û NO SEC DEP û 1431 W. 78th St. 2BR. $605/mo.

6829 S. Perry. Studio/1BR. $465$520. HEAT INCL 773-955-5106 NICE ROOM w/stove, fridge & bath Near Aldi, Walgreens, Beach, Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry. $133/wk & up. 773-275-4442 BIG ROOM with stove, fridge, bath & nice wood floors. Near Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry, Shopping. $121/wk + up. 773-561-4970

CHICAGO - South Shore Large 1BR, $680/mo. Free heat.

Near Transportation. Section 8 Welcome. Call 708-932-4582 76TH & PHILLIPS: 2BR, 1BA $825-$875; Remodeled, Appliances available. FREE Heat.

312-286-5678.

7425 S. COLES - 1 BR $620, 2 BR $735, Includes Free heat & appliances & cooking gas. (708) 424-4216 Kalabich Mgmt 6930 S. SOUTH SHORE DRIVE Studios & 1BR, INCL. Heat, Elec, Cking gas & PARKING, $585-$925, Country Club Apts 773-752-2200

1 MONTH FREE South Shore Studios $600-$750 Free Heat, Fitness Ctr, Lndry rm. Niki 773.808.

2043 www.livenovo.com Chicago - Hyde PARK 5401 S. Ellis.

1BR. $625/mo.

Call 773-955-5106

Irving/Kimball 2BR new tile, laundry facilities, energy efficient windows, central heat/ac, $999/mo Call Luis 708-366-5602, lv msg N Riverside: 1BR new tile, engery efficent windows, lndry facilitities, a/c, incls heat- natural gas, $955/ mo Luis 708-366-5602 lv msg

1 BR $700-$799 CHATHAM 742 EAST 81ST (EVANS), 1 bedroom, 3rd floor, $700/ mo. Please call Mr. Joe at 708-870-4801 for more info

1 BR $800-$899 HUMBOLDT PARK. ONE bedroom apartment for rent. Newly remodeled. Next door to food store. $880/mo plus security deposit.

Includes gas. Near shopping area.

Tim, 773-592-2989.

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OAK LAWN, Spacious 1BR, appliances, heat incl, close to Christ Hospital, $840/mo. 708-422-8801

1 BR $900-$1099 LARGE ONE BEDROOM APARTMENT near the Metra and Warren Park. 1902 N. Wolcott. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. $900/month.

Heat included. Available 3/1.

(773) 761-4318

1 BR OTHER APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. Ltd. Hot Summer Is Here Cool Off In The Pool OUR UNITS INCLUDE HEAT, HW & CG Plenty of parking 1Bdr From $795.00 2Bdr From $925.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000** APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. Ltd. SUMMER IS HERE!!

Most units Include..

HEAT & HOT WTR Studios From $475.00 1Bdr From $550.00 2Bdr From $745.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000** ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar Villas is accepting applications for subsidized 1BR apts. for seniors 62 years or older and the disabled.

Rent is based on 30% of annual income. For details, call us at 847-546-1899 ∫

CHICAGO - BEVERLY, large studio, 1 & 2BR Apts. Carpet, A/ C, laundry, near transportation, $680-$1020/mo. Call 773-2334939 SOUTHSIDE, newly remodeled room for rent near CTA, $350+/mo + $100 sec dep. Parking available.

All utils incl. 708-299-7605.

2 BR UNDER $900 CHICAGO 7600 S Essex PRE-SPRING SPECIAL - 2BR $599, 3BR $699, 4BR $799 w/apprvd credit, no sec dep. Sec 8 Ok! Also Homes for Rent avail. Call Nicole 312-446-1753; W-side locations Tom 630-776-5556 8001 S COLFAX, 1BR $650, newly remodeled, hrdwd floors, cable. Sec 8 welc. On street parking, Great location! 708-308-1509 or 773-493-3500

BELLWOOD - 2BR, appl incl tenant pays heat, gas & electric, $850/mo + 1 month sec dep, no pets, close to trans.708-450-9137

dining room, living room, near everything, tenant pays utils. $950/mo. 773-964-1733

SUBURBS, RENT TO OWN! Buy with No closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708868-2422 or visit www.nhba.com CHICAGO, RENT TO OWN! Buy with no closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708868-2422 or visit www.nhba.com

NO SECURITY DEPOSIT NO MOVE IN FEE 1, 2, 3 BEDROOM APTS (773) 874-1122 ACACIA SRO HOTEL Men Preferred! Rooms for Rent. Weekly & Monthly Rates. 312-421-4597

Villas is accepting applications for Subsidized 2 and 3 bedroom apt waiting list. Rent is based on 30% of annual income for qualified applicants. Contact us at 847-546-1899 for details

RECENT REHAB, 4-6BR SF Homes. Dolton, Harvey, Markham, S. Holland.

Section 8 OK. (630)247-5146

3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200

CHATHAM AREA, 2BR House, $900/mo.

1 mo rent + 1 mo sec required. Section 8 Welcome.

Call 872-2075184 7530 S. LANGLEY, 2 & 3BR Apts, hdwd flrs, updated kitchen & Bath, heat incl. Sec 8 Welc. $900-$1200.

773-383-4718 or 773-221-8550

2 BR $1100-$1299 ROGERS PARK, 1547 W. Birchwood (at Ashland) Very large 2 bedroom vintage flat with Hardwood floors and updates. 3 blocks from lake. $1100.00 (no utilities included).

Call EJM at 773-935-4426

EVANSTON 2BR: 1 MO FREE/ NO DEP, new kit, SS appl, granite, oak flrs, OS lndry, $1295/incl heat.

773-743-4141 www.urbanequities. com BEAUTIFUL REMODELED 1, 2 & 3BR Apts, hdwd flrs, custom cabinets, avail now. $1000-$1200 /mo + sec. 773-905-8487. Section 8 Ok SECTION 8 WELCOME. NO SECURITY DEPOSIT. 6717 S. Rhodes, 5BR, 2BA house, appls included. $140 0/mo. 708-288-4510

2 BR $1300-$1499 4346

NORTH

Clarendon (at Montrose) Very large 2 bedroom vintage apartment with hardwood floors and updates.

2 blocks from lake. $1350.00 Heat Included. Call EJM at 773-935-4425

2 BR OTHER HICKORY MANOR APARTMENTS Will open their waiting list for 2 bedroom Apts. on February 5, 2018 at 9:00am Interested Applicants Should Apply At 4160 Continental Dr – Waukegan, IL Selection will be made on a 1st come, 1st serve basis.

The waiting list will close on February 9, 2018 at 3:00pm.

Property Managed by Ludwig And Company

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499 CHICAGO 12120 S. Lasalle. 3BR, 1 Full Bath, bsmt, Sect 8 OK. $1400 plus 1 month security.

708-351-9053 Smith

80TH & DREXEL, 3BR, 2BA, $1200. 79th & Aberdeen, 2BR. $750.

Tenant pays utils. Sec 8 ok. Hdwd & ceramic tile. 773-502-4304 121ST & PARNELL: SEC. 8 WEL. $500 Cash Back! $0 Security for Sec 8. 3BR, $1400/mo. Fine condition. ADT alarm. 708-715-0034

GENERAL LAKE PARK APTS will be accepting applications on 2/12/28/18 for Section 8 Waiting lists for 1, 2, 3 bdrm apts. Waiting lists at 4048 S. Lake Park in the Mgmt.

Off. from 2pm-4 pm. Units include appliances, on-site laundry, offstreet parking. Applicants must have income at or below HUD income guidelines. Applicants are screened and must meet tenant selection criteria. On 3/31/18 waiting list will be closed.

65TH AND CARPENTER 3BR, 2BA, carpeted, heat & appls incl, 1 mo free rent (with Sec 8). No Sec Dep. $1250/mo. 773-684-1166

2 BR $900-$1099

UPTOWN, 2457 W. HADDON. 3BR,

ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar

6920 S. CRANDON will be accepting applications on 2/12/28/18 for Section 8 Waiting lists Avail Now! 11728 S. Harvard, Well for 1, 2 & 3 bdrm. apts. at 6900 S. maint 3BR, 1BA, bsmt, fenced in Crandon in Mgmt. Off. from 2pmbkyd, 2 car garage avail w/ fee.

4 pm. Units include appliances, $1195/mo. 630-240-1684 on-site laundry, off-street parking.

To be considered for occupancy, applicants must have income at or below HUD income guidelines.

Applicants are screened and must meet the tenant selection criteria.

LARGE 3 BEDROOM apartment On 3/31/18 waiting list will be near Wrigley Field. 3820 N. Fremont. closed.

Two bathrooms. Hardwood Floors.

Cats OK. $2175/month. Special!

Sign a lease starting by March 1, get April rent free! Available 3/1. 773-761-4318.

MICHIGAN TOWERS will be accepting applications on 2/1-2/28/18 ROGERSPK 3BR, 2BA+DEN, 1 for Section 8 Waiting lists for 1, 2, 3 MONTH FREE! No Dep. New kit w/ bdrm. apts. Waiting lists at 3812 S. granite, SS appl, Close to lake! $18 75/incl ht 773-743-4141 urbanequ Michigan in the Mgmt. Off. from 2pm-4 pm. Units include appliances, ities.com on-site laundry, off-street parking.

Applicants must have income at or OLYMPIA FIELDS Newly below HUD income guidelines. Appliremodeled 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath cants are screened and must meet house, full basement. Beautiful tenant selection criteria. On 3/31/18 area. 708-935-7557. waiting list will be closed.

3 BR OR MORE $1800-$2499

6601 S. LANGLEY. Gorgeous newly renovated 3 BR, 1.5 bath apt.

Section 8 welcome. All New Appliances: New stove, Stainless Steel Refrigerator, New Cabinets, New Countertops, New Sinks, Updated Bathrooms.

Hardwood Floors, Freshly Painted.

Extremely spacious! Safe passage area. Heavily monitored neighborhood. Across the street from a grammar school. Tenants pay utilities. One month security deposit. Background checks performed. Rob: 773-719-3210 7134 S. NORMAL, 4BR/2BA.$1100.

225 W. 108th Pl. 2BR w/heat. $950.

9116 S. So Chgo Ave, 2/1. $675.

312-683-5174

VIC. 118TH/WENTWORTH. 3BR, 1.5ba house, encl yard. full bsmnt, No Garage. No pets. $1150/mo + $500 move-in fee.

773-817-4680

CHICAGO, 68TH & STONY ISLAND, $935/MO. 3BR, 1BA, WASHER & DRYER IN UNIT. TENANT PAYS ALL UTILITIES. CALL 858-699-5096 SOUTH CHICAGO 7824 S. Champlain. 3BR, bsmt apt, close to transportation, no pets, $675/mo. Call 708-692-9177 SECTION 8 WELCOME. No Security Deposit. 7721 S Peoria, 3BR apt, appls incl. $1050/mo.

708-288-4510

3 BR OR MORE $2500 AND OVER GARY NSA ACCEPTING applications for SECTION 8 STUDIO, 1 & 2BR UNITS ONLY. Apply Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10am to 2pm ONLY at 1735 W 5th Ave. Applications are to be filled out on site.

Adult applicants must provide a current picture ID and SS card.

FOR SALE STOP RENTING-SELLER FINANCING : Buy a single family house in Gary, IN for $7,000 down & $600/mo MTG payment. 2&3BR’s.

Available 2/1. Call Mike 847-280-1204

WE BUY HOUSES AND BUILDINGS FOR CASH! Investors and Lenders Weclome.

Call 773-703-8400

non-residential

MARKETPLACE GOODS CLASSICS WANTED ANY CLASSIC CARS IN ANY CONDITION. ’20S, ’30S, ’40S, ’50S, ’60S & ’70S. HOTRODS & EXOTICS! TOP DOLLAR PAID! COLLECTOR. CALL JAMES, 630-201-8122

2 GREAT LOC !! SALON & RES-

Dauphin Apartment accepting applications on 2/1-2/28/18 for Section 8 Waiting lists for 1, 2, 3 bdrm apts. Waiting lists at 9200 S. Dauphin in the Mgmt. Off. From 2pm4pm. Units include appliances, onsite laundry, off-street parking.

Applicants must have income at or below HUD income guidelines. Applicants are screened and must meet the tenant selection criteria.

On 3/31/18 waiting list will be closed.

TURANT, GREAT POT !! NAIL SHOP, PHONE SHOP, OFFICE...CLOSE TO BUS STOP ON BUSY 79TH ST..$1600$1000 (312)882-5938 SELF-STORAGE CENTERS. T W O locations to serve you. All

units fully heated and humidity controlled with ac available. North: Knox Avenue.

773-685-6868.

South: Pershing Avenue. 773-523-6868.

roommates FURN RMS, $350. Rm w/ Pvt BA. $525. Utils incl. Nr good trans. $200 clean up fee req.

Fixed income invited.

Call 312-758-6931

RIDGELAND ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS on 2/1-2/28/18 for Section 8 Waiting lists for 2, 3 bdrm apts. Waiting lists at 6001 S. Vernon in Mgmt. Off. from 2pm-4 pm. Appliances included. , applicants must have income at or below HUD income guidelines. Applicants are screened and must meet tenant selection criteria. 3/31/18 waiting list will be closed.

AURORA - SLEEPING ROOM. $90 weekly, clean and quiet plus deposit. Fridge access.

Call 630-247-1031

AVAILABLE NOW! Spacious Rooms for rent. $400/mo. Utilities and bed incl. Seniors Welcome.

No Sec Dep. 312-973-2793

SERVICES

SPRING CLEANING SERVICERELIABLE,PROFFESIONAL,TR USTWORTHYAND punctual with

over 12 years of experience. We offer exceptional quality and detailed cleaning in your home or office. Call Marta 773-732-5424

WE FINANCE EVERYONE Good Credit - Bad Credit No Credit. We Get It Done!

224-600-8200 www.washingtonautogroup.com

HEALTH & WELLNESS FULL BODY MASSAGE. hotel, house calls welcome $90 special. Russian, Polish, Ukrainain girls. Northbrook and Schaumburg locations. 10% discount for new customers. Please call 773-407-7025

MUSIC & ARTS CHICAGO SOUTH - You’ve tried the rest, we are the best.

Apartments & Homes for rent, city & suburb. No credit checks.

773-253-2132 or 773-253-2137

ADULT SERVICES

CHICAGO 55TH & Halsted, male pref. Room for rent, share furnished apt, free utils, $ 440/mo.

No security. 773-614-8252

ADULT SERVICES

MALE LEAD SINGER NEEDED. Chicagoland. Play 4-10+ times a month. Authentic rocker-classic rock and current pop. Send audio or video to gk@nettind.com. Visit gooroosrocks.com for more info.

ADULT SERVICES

3 BR OR MORE OTHER PRE-SPRING SPECIAL CHICAGO Houses for rent. Section 8 Ok, w/app credit $500 gift certificate 3, 4 & 5 BR houses avail. Call Nicole: 312-446-1753; W-side locations: Tom 630-776-5556

HARVEY - 167 W. 157th St., 3BR Home, 1BA, 2 car garage, $1100/mo +utilities.

Call 708-299-0055

337 W. 108TH ST., N e w l y refurb, 5BR, 1.5BA, on quiet street, semi-fin bsmt, new appls. $1300 + sec. Mr. Williams. 773-752-8328

Austin Area, huge remodeled 3BR heated, eat in kitchen, formal DR appliances avail. $1200 +sec.

Call after 3pm 708-857-7507

Huge immaculate 3BR, 1BA close to trans & shops newly remodeled, Sec 8 Welcome 312-519-9771

WIN F R E E E TS TICK

ADULT SERVICES

LEIGH JOHNSON IS accepting applications on 2/1-2/28/18 for Section 8 Waiting list for 2br & 3br at 1108 E. 73rd in the Mgmt. Off. from 1pm-4 pm. Units include appliances, on-site laundry and off-street parking. To be considered for occupancy, applicants must have income at or below HUD income guidelines. Applicants are screened and must meet tenant selection criteria. On 3/31/18 waiting list will be closed.

HUMBOLDT PARK -

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STRAIGHT DOPE

By Cecil Adams

SLUG SIGNORINO

FIND HUNDREDS OF

Q : When a hurricane blows over an island,

as Maria did in Puerto Rico, what happens to the birds? I’m pretty sure a bird can’t just hunker down and wait it out. —J.C.

More Local Numbers: 1-800-811-1633

vibeline.com 18+

SMOKEYBEAR.COM

36 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 1, 2018

NATIONAL A SS

YOU Can Prevent Wildfires.

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Only

A : That depends, J.C.—what sorts of birds are

FO

U N D E D 192

0

we talking here? Migratory? Nonmigratory?

Seabirds? Shorebirds? Cavity-nesting birds?

It’s a little like asking how humans fare during a hurricane. Broadly we can say it’s not the greatest experience, but beyond that, it’s all variables: whether we live inland or on the coast, in the hills or in the flats; whether we’ve got access to sturdy shelter; etc.

So it is with the feathered set. Mostly this breaks down along species lines, but it can be as simple as where one particular flock calls home. Case in point: The long-suffering Puerto Rican parrot, whose numbers were down to the single digits in the mid-70s. It came back only to be nearly eradicated again by 1989’s Hurricane Hugo. In the intervening years the parrots managed to bounce back once more, so a lot of fingers were crossed during this latest, particularly brutal hurricane season. Results varied depending on locale: one flock’s habitat on the eastern end of Puerto Rico was devastated, producing a number of post-storm parrot corpses. The flock in the hilly western region, by contrast? Did just fine.

The bottom line is that these birds don’t really go anywhere when they feel a storm coming—which, by the way, they’re able to do. Birds are sensitive to changes in barometric pressure and temperature, and to some extent they’ll adjust their behavior accordingly, eating in a hurry or seeking shelter before the onset of bad weather. Some migratory birds will reroute to avoid an approaching hurricane, but there’s no evidence of island species fleeing en masse. Instead, they really do just hunker down and see it through. With no place to shelter, aquatic birds like pelicans and herons bear the brunt of a storm, accordingly suffering worse mortality rates; some land birds have it easier, though storm-related defoliation will cause problems for birds that nest in the hollows of fragile older trees.

With a little bad luck, a bird population can take a serious hit. Check out the chimney swifts, a bunch of whom were migrating down the east coast in October 2005 when Hurricane Wilma showed up. The storm carried individual birds as far off as Europe, and

at least 727 flock members turned up dead.

We don’t know what fraction of total casualties that represents, but the next spring, chimney swift numbers were down by 50 percent in their Quebec roosting grounds.

Meanwhile, even the birds that do the best hunkering may still be displaced. Again, think what humans often experience following a catastrophic storm: they emerge from the root cellar unscathed, only to discover a radically changed landscape, scarce food and water, etc. Ditto for the birds. Survivors may wander afield looking for food if their usual sources have dried up. In the worst cases their habitats have been destroyed, with nectar drinkers and seed eaters (hummingbirds, doves, et al) being particularly vulnerable.

That’s relative, anyway, to the insectivores and raptors, not that they’re exactly on easy street. One Caribbean bug eater of particular concern is the near-endangered Barbuda warbler, at least some of whom made it through the recent storms down there; there’d been worries that the species (prestorm population: 2,500, tops) might get wiped out altogether. In the aftermath, conservationists had to scramble to get the birds some food.

But stepping up for the warblers was the least we could do, honestly, seeing as we’re the reason they’re having trouble to begin with—there’s really no such thing as a “natural” disaster anymore. As plenty of ornithologists have pointed out, birds have weathered big storms for ages, or not; that’s called natural selection. It’s people who’ve ratcheted up the environmental pressures: shrinking avian habitats, disrupting food sources, putting in oil pipelines and chemical plants that rupture and leak, and, of course, altering the climate such that more and stronger storms are increasingly inevitable. It’s a good thing, I suppose, that the birds are getting so much practice battening down the hatches—they’re going to need it. v Send questions to Cecil via straightdope.com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 30 N. Racine, suite 300, Chicago 60607.

l

l

SAVAGE LOVE

By Dan Savage

How to give a workplace romance a fly

Dan advises an out lesbian interested in a mystery coworker, and more.

Q : I’m a 38-year-old lesbian,

very femme, very out, with a coworker I can’t figure out. We’ve worked together for a year and gotten very close. I never want to put out the wrong signals to coworkers, and I err on the side of keeping a safe but friendly distance. This is different. We are each other’s confidants at work.

We stare at each other across the office, we text until late at night, and we go for weekend dog walks. Her texts aren’t overtly flirty, but they are intimate and feel more than friendly. I’ve never had a “straight” girl act like this toward me. Is she into me? Or just needy? Is it all in my head? —WORKPLACE OBSESSION ROILING KNOWING-IF-NERVOUS GAL

A : Five weeks ago, a letter

writer jumped down my throat for giving advice to lesbians despite not being a lesbian myself. Three weeks ago, I responded to a man whose coworker (not his boss) asked him if he might want to sleep with the coworker’s wife and people jumped down my throat for entertaining the idea because it is NEVER EVER OK to sleep with a coworker and/or a coworker’s spouse. And now here I am responding to a question from a lesbian who wants to sleep with a coworker.

Farewell to my mentions, as the kids say.

Here we go, WORKING . . .

Your straight-identified workmate could be straight, or she could be a lesbian (lots of lesbians come out later in life), or she could be bisexual (most bisexual women are closeted)—and lots of late-inlifers and/or closeted folks don’t come out until some hot same-sex prospect works up the nerve to ask them out.

If your coworker isn’t cur-

rently under you at work and you’re not an imminent promotion away from becoming her supervisor and your company doesn’t forbid workplace romances between peers, ask her out for a date.

And this is important: do it unambiguously, WORKING, and before she can respond invite her to say “no” if the answer is no or “straight” if the identity is straight. Good luck!

Q : I’m a lesbian, and

my partner recently reconnected with a childhood friend. At first I felt sorry for him, as he was having a health crisis.

But he’s better now, and his pushy behavior really gets to me. He texts her at all hours—and when he can’t get in touch with her, he bugs me. When I refused to go on a trip with him and his husband, he guilttripped me for weeks. He constantly wants us to come to his house, but they’re chain-smokers. I’m going to Los Angeles to interview a celebrity for a project, and now he’s trying to insert himself into this trip because he wants go starfucking!

He also wants to officiate at our upcoming wedding!

My partner won’t stand up for me when I say no to this guy. How can I get my partner to listen to me or get her jackass friend to leave me be? —CAN’T THINK OF A CLEVER ACRONYM

A : Burn it down, CTOACA.

Call or e-mail your partner’s old friend and tell him you think he’s a pushy, unpleasant, smelly asshole and that you don’t want to hang out with him—not at his place, not on a trip, and not at your wedding, which he not only won’t be officiating but, if you had your druthers, he wouldn’t be attending. That should do it.

Q : I’m a woman in my early

60s with a healthy lifestyle and an even healthier libido.

I’ve had almost exclusively hetero relationships, but I’ve been attracted to women all my life, and all of my masturbation fantasies involve women. The thought of being in love with a woman, making love with her, sharing a life with her—it all sounds like heaven. The trouble is that it’s really hard to see how I’ll meet women who would be interested in me. There’s rarely anyone my age on dating apps. Also, who’s going to be interested in a rookie? Advice?

REAL PEOPLE REAL DESIRE REAL FUN.

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—ENERGETIC LONELY DAME ENVISIONING RELATIONSHIP

A : Emmy Award-winning

actress Sarah Paulson is 43 years old and Emmy Awardwinning actress Holland Taylor is 75—and they’ve been girlfriends for almost three years. Emmy Awardwinning talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres is 60 years old and Screen Actors Guild Award-winning actress Portia de Rossi is 45 years old— and they’ve been together for 13 years and married for almost ten. There are lots of non-Emmy/SAG Awardwinning lesbians out there in relationships with significant age gaps—and at least one lesbian in Alabama who desperately wants to be in one. So don’t let the lack of older women on dating apps prevent you from putting yourself out there on apps and elsewhere, ELDER. As for your rookie status, there are two examples of lesbians pining over rookies in this very column! v Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at savagelovecast. com. v @fakedansavage

Never miss a show again.

EARLY WARNINGS

chicagoreader.com/early

FEBRUARY 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 37

b Haim 5/11-12, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 5/11 sold out, 5/12 added, on sale Sat 2/3, 10 AM b Ben Harper & Charlie Musselwhite 7/30-31, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 7/31 added, 17+ Khruangbin 4/19-20, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 4/20 sold out, 4/19 added MGMT 3/3-4, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 3/4 added, on sale Fri 2/2, 10 AM b

UPCOMING

Low ò ZORAN ORLIĆ

NEW

Tony Allen & Jeff Mills 2/28, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Joan Armatrading 6/9-10, 8 PM and 6/12-14, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/1, noon b ATB 3/3, 10 PM, the Mid Banditos 2/25, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 2/2, 10 AM Black Pussy 3/23, 7:30 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Creed Bratton 4/1, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Tommy Castro & the Painkillers 4/22, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/1, noon b Counterfeit. 5/11, 6:30 PM, Beat Kitchen b Cut Copy 4/5, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, on sale Fri 2/2, 10 AM, 18+ Jonathan Davis 5/6, 8 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 2/2, 10 AM, 17+ Devin the Dude 3/22, 9 PM, the Promontory, on sale Fri 2/2, 10 AM Doomed & Stoned Chicago with Black Pyramid, Brain Tentacles, Attalla, Sixes, and more 6/1-3, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Kurt Elling Quintet 3/20-21, 8 PM, the Promontory b Erasure 7/28, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre, on sale Fri 2/2, 10 AM Essaie Pas 4/12, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 2/2, 10 AM Forlorn Strangers 4/27, 10 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 2/2, 10 AM, 18+ Froggy Fresh 4/28, 6:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club b Gaslight Anthem 8/11, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, on sale Fri 2/2, noon b Gogo Penguin 6/13-14, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+

Albert Hammond Jr. 4/6, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 2/2, 10 AM, 17+ Hollow Coves 4/7, 8 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 2/2, 10 AM King Krule 4/27, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Diana Krall 6/9, 8 PM, Paramount Theatre, Aurora Lawrence Arms, Banner Pilot 4/12, 8 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 2/2, 10 AM, 18+ Lo Moon 4/5, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Jeremy Loops 5/1, 8 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 2/2, 10 AM Lord Huron 4/21, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, on sale Fri 2/2, 10 AM, 18+ Low 3/7, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Lynyrd Skynrd 8/3, 6 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park, on sale Fri 2/2, 10 AM Dave Matthews Band 6/29-30, 8 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion, on sale Fri 2/2, 10 AM Delbert McClinton 4/19, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/1, noon b Messthetics, Dress Circle 5/5, 9 PM, Hideout Night Game 3/29, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ No Age 5/10, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle No Vacation, Hot Flash Heat Wave 3/20, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Okey Dokey 3/22, 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ Margo Price, Blackfoot Gypsies 4/12-13, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 2/2, 10 AM, 17+ Primus, Mastodon 6/6, 7 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion, on sale Sat 2/3, 10 AM Princess Nokia 3/24, 7 PM, Metro b

38 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 1, 2018

Russian Circles, King Woman 4/22, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Christian Sands 4/27, 7 PM, the Promontory b Sofi Tukker 5/2, 6 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 2/2, 10 AM b Spag Heddy 3/14, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Tauk 4/13, 9 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Tossers 3/17, 9 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 2/2, 10 AM, 18+ Frank Turner & the Sleeping Souls 6/23, 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom, on sale Fri 2/2, 10 AM b Veil of Maya 2/16, 6:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b Weedeater 3/28, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 2/2, 10 AM Whipstriker, Negative Vortex, Angelust 3/23, 8 PM, Cobra Lounge, 18+ Betty Who 3/7, 7 PM, 1st Ward, 18+ Wolf Alice 3/30, 7:30 PM, Metro b Roy Woods 3/22, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 2/2, 10 AM b Wye Oak 5/17, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 2/2/, 10 AM, 17+ X Ambassadors 4/27, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom, on sale Fri 2/2, 10 AM b Yawpers 3/2, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Yung Pinch 3/29, 6:30 PM, Portage Theater b

UPDATED David Byrne 6/1-3, 8 PM, Auditorium Theatre, 6/2 and 6/3 sold out, 6/1 added, on sale Thu 2/1, 10 AM Benjamin Clementine 2/6, 8 PM, Metro, canceled

Alice in Chains 5/15, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Fabian Almazan 4/12, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ American Nightmare, No Warning 2/25, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Trey Anastasio Band 4/20-21, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre Baths 4/11, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Black Angels, Black Lips 3/26-27, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 18+ Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Night Beats 2/10, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Terry Bozzio 9/18, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Cactus 3/3, 7 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Calexico 4/25, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Circuit Rider Trio 2/26, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Clean Bandit 4/11, 7:30 PM, the Vic b Darkest Hour, Whores. 2/22, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Earthless, Kikagaku Moyo 3/24-25, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Enslaved, Wolves in the Throne Room 2/23, 7 PM, Metro, 18+ Brian Fallon & the Howling Weather 4/19, 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Fortunate Youth, Tatanka 4/21, 8:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Godspeed You! Black Emperor 3/18-19, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Haunted Summer 2/20, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Helloween 9/10, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Peter Hook & the Light 5/4, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Hop Along 6/10, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Hot Snakes 3/9, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Iamx 4/28, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Iced Earth 3/29, 7:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Integrity 4/6, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 18+ J Boog 2/28, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Jeezy 2/21, 7 PM, House of Blues b Jorma Kaukonen 2/13, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b

ALL AGES

WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK

EARLY WARNINGS

CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME

F

Never miss a show again.

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Kesha & Macklemore 7/14, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard 6/10, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Kendrick Lamar, Sza, Schoolboy Q 6/15, 7:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Lightning Bolt 3/28, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Lorde 3/27, 7 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Majid Jordan 2/21, 7:30 PM, the Vic, 18+ John Maus 2/18, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Miguel 3/5, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Nada Surf 3/13, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Nap Eyes 4/6, 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ Oh Sees 2/18, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Pedro the Lion 8/24, 9 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Portugal. The Man 2/16, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom b Primitive Man 3/20, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Radio Moscow 2/11, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Rogue Wave 3/22, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Jeff Rosenstock 4/26, 6:30 PM, Logan Square Auditorium b Screaming Females 3/10, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Joan Shelley 4/28, 9 PM, Hideout Shopping 3/28, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Soft Moon 3/31, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Suuns 5/30, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle They Might Be Giants 3/17, 7:30 PM, the Vic, 14+ Titus Andronicus 3/15, 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Tortured Soul 2/8, 8 PM, City Winery b Tune-Yards 3/3, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Unknown Mortal Orchestra 5/3, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ U.S. Girls 4/17, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Suzanne Vega 5/5-6, 8 PM, City Winery b Watain, Destroyer 666 3/2, 7 PM, Metro, 18+ Wedding Present 3/26, 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall Weepies 4/14, 8 PM, Thalia Hall b Bob Weir & Phil Lesh 3/10, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre v

GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene IN OCTOBER one of Gossip Wolf’s favorite local rappers, the Boy Illinois, dropped Windy, a triumphant EP featuring a great slate of Chicago guest MCs, among them YP, Rico Recklezz, and Pivot Gang members Saba and Frsh Waters. Windy is the Boy Illinois’s first release since signing a distribution deal with Priority Records through his label, Born Leaders, in May 2017. Those of you keen to see these feelgood tracks performed live are in luck: the fine folks at music site Illanoize are throwing the Boy Illinois’s first big show of the year on Tuesday, February 6. He headlines Wire in Berwyn with openers Adam Ness, London Lo, Tynece Allen, and Vo. Since 2015, Los Angeles-based website Waywords and Meansigns has been soliciting readings of James Joyce’s notoriously difficult novel Finnegans Wake set to music—it’s compiled the unabridged book three times, and now focuses on shorter passages. Hundreds of people from more than a dozen countries have participated (including Minutemen broom handler Mike Watt, longtime Mekons member Sally Timms, and veteran vocal improviser Phil Minton), and all the audio is free to download. On Friday, February 2 (Joyce’s 136th birthday), the website will post a three-minute clip by a trio of Gossip Wolf faves: Reader contributor Brian Costello reads to music from Laura “Lulu” Callier of Gel Set and guitarist Bill MacKay. Costello and Callier are both former Chicagoans now in LA, but MacKay still lives in our fair city—please don’t leave, Bill!

Through its Ag47 mentorship program, Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble pairs kids ages 11 to 17 with local artists and musicians “to lift up the voices of girls, femme identities, trans and gender nonconforming folks and individuals seeking brave space through creativity and community.” On Friday, February 2, it fires up the 2018 program with a Cafe Mustache fund-raiser featuring sets by Staring Problem, Bev Rage & the Drinks, and Pledge Drive. —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

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@martyrslive FEBRUARY 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 39

®

SPECIAL GUESTS:

THE CONGREGATION THIS SATURDAY! FEBRUARY 3 VIC THEATRE

ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM!

SUNDAY, MARCH 18

VALERIE

JUNE

SPECIAL GUESTS:

BIRDS OF CHICAGO

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 15

HIPPO CAMPUS – Feb. 16-Sold Out! • MAJID JORDAN – Feb. 21 • CELEBRATING DAVID BOWIE –Friday, Feb. 23 BIANCA DEL RIO – Feb. 24 • RAILROAD EARTH – Friday, Mar. 9 • OMD – Mar. 16-Sold Out! • THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS –Saturday, Mar. 17 PUDDLES PITY PARTY –Friday, Mar. 23 • DIXIE DREGS –Saturday, Mar. 24 • BUCKETHEAD – Mar. 25 • ROB BELL –April 5 “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC – April 6 & 7 • CLEAN BANDIT – April 11 • THE WOOD BROTHERS – April 13 & 14 • JEFF TWEEDY – April 27 & 28 STEVEN WILSON – May 1 & 2 • UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA –May 3 • THE BREEDERS –May 8 • THE BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE –Friday, May 11 • ANDREW W.K. –May 12 • ANTHONY JESELNIK –May 13 • SHAKEY GRAVES –May 22 • THE KOOKS –May 30

ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM! FIRST AID KIT –Friday, Feb. 2 -SOLD OUT! • MARILYN MANSON –Feb. 6 JOE RUSSO’S ALMOST DEAD –Feb. 17-SOLD OUT! ROBERT PLANT AND THE SENSATIONAL SPACE SHIFTERS –Feb. 20-SOLD OUT! LETTUCE / GALACTIC –Friday, Feb. 23 • MIGUEL –Mar. 5 • MAT KEARNEY –Friday, Mar. 9 MANIC FOCUS –Saturday, Mar. 10 • JUDAH & THE LION Friday, Mar. 23 DAN AUERBACH –April 2 • MINISTRY –Saturday, April 7 • TY SEGALL April 8 AFGHAN WHIGS / BUILT TO SPILL –April 12 • MATT AND KIM –April 17 KING KRULE –Friday, April 27 • GEORGE EZRA –April 29 • DR. DOG –Saturday, May 5 JIMMY EAT WORLD –May 8 • ALICE IN CHAINS –May 15 KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD –June 10 • SYLVAN ESSO –July 23 THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM –Saturday, Aug. 11 - On Sale This Friday at Noon

SATURDAY, APRIL 21 ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM!

BUY TICKETS AT

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