Print Issue of February 9, 2017 (Volume 46, Number 18)

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 9, 2 0 1 7

Women of color call the shots in the Chicago-based webseries Brown Girls. 15

Can a video game convey the experience of living in a high-crime neighborhood? 18

Chicago musicians speak up about the Affordable Care Act Before the ACA, musicians were uninsured at more than twice the average rate—and with Trump pushing a repeal, they’re already suffering.

By LEE V. GAINES 27

ALL-NEW 2017 SHOW WITH LIVE ORCHESTRA

Connecting Heaven and Earth

“

I’ve reviewed about 4,000 shows.

None can compare to what I saw tonight.”

—Richard Connema, renowned Broadway critic

“Absolutely the No.1 show in the world.

No other company or of any style can match this!”

— Kenn Wells, former lead dancer of the English National Ballet

“Absolutely the greatest of the great!

It must be experienced.”

—Christine Walevska, “goddess of the cello”, watched Shen Yun 5 times

“This is the highest and best of what humans can produce.”

—Oleva Brown-Klahn, singer and musician

“AWE-INSPIRING!”

—

“The 8th wonder of the world. People have no idea what they're missing until they come here and see the show.”

—Joe Heard, former White House photographer, watched Shen Yun 6 times

FEB 11-19

HARRIS THEATER

205 E Randolph Dr., Chicago, IL 60601 2 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 9, 2017

Feb 11, Sat 2:00pm & 7:30pm Feb 12, Sun 1:00pm Feb 16, Thu 7:30pm

ORDER TODAY!

Sold out in many cities across the country.

Feb 17, Fri 7:30pm Feb 18, Sat 2:00pm & 7:30pm Feb 19, Sun 1:00pm

Tickets ShenYun.com/Chicago 888-99-SHOWS (74697)

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THIS WEEK

C H I C A G O R E A D E R | F E B R U A R Y 9, 2 0 1 7 | V O L U M E 4 6 , N U M B E R 1 8

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ON THE COVER: ILLUSTRATION BY BOBBY SIMS. FOR MORE OF HIS WORK, GO TO BOBBYSIMS.DESIGN.

FEATURES

SMALL SCREEN

GAMING

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

Brown girls make it

Can a video game be the ultimate empathy machine?

Chicago musicians speak up about the Affordable Care Act

With the new Englewood-set We Are Chicago, indie developer Michael Block attempts to convey the psychological experience of living in a high-crime neighborhood.

Before the ACA, musicians were uninsured at more than twice the average rate—and with Trump pushing a repeal, they’re already suffering.

A mostly female cast and crew come together to tell the story of the friendship between Fatimah Asghar and Jamila Woods in the Chicagobased webseries Brown Girls.

BY BRIANNA WELLEN 15

BY LEE V. GAINES 27

BY RYAN SMITH 18

IN THIS ISSUE 4 Agenda Merce Cunningham Dance Company alums at the MCA, Rhonda Wheatley’s solo exhibition “A Modern Day Shaman’s Hybrid Devices, Power Objects, and Cure Books,” the film The Red Turtle and more recommended things to do

CITY LIFE

7 Street View A self-styled evangelist takes fashion advice from the Bible.

8 Space Inside the former Hammond Organ factory, a sculptor has carved out an ideal studio.

9 Joravsky | Politics Fifteenth Ward alderman Raymond Lopez rebels against Rahm’s rebate proposal.

12 Transportation Why did the drunk driver who killed Bobby Cann get only ten days in jail?

ARTS & CULTURE

20 Theater Police violence haunts the west side in Ike Holter’s The Wolf at the End of the Block.

21 Theater Notes from the fringe at Rhinofest 22 Visual Art ATOM-R’s exhibit at the International Museum of Surgical Science returns to the physical to present the virtual.

23 Theater Karen Finley fights back.

24 Movies Three takes on the Oscar nominees for best short film 25 Movies Gene Siskel Film Center revives Marcel Pagnol’s “Marseille Trilogy,” the beloved family dramas that treated cinema as an extension of the theater.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

35 Shows of note Priests, Carmen at Lyric Opera, Lordi, and more

FOOD & DRINK

CLASSIFIEDS

45 Jobs 45 Apartments & Spaces 46 Marketplace

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41 Restaurant review: Gorée Cuisine A family’s Kenwood spot is a sibling to their restaurant in Africa.

42 Cocktail Challenge: Nutella The beloved chocolate-hazelnut spread— now in drinkable form!

44 Bar review: Whiner Beer taproom The brewery is making sour beer that’s served in a sweet space inside the Plant.

48 Straight Dope What does it take to get charged with manslaughter when your negligent driving kills someone?

49 Savage Love “How can we achieve sexual equality?” and other questions 50 Early Warnings Tortoise, Huey Lewis & the News, Jonathan Richman, and other shows in the weeks to come 50 Gossip Wolf The Co-Prosperity Sphere hosts 32 DJs in 24 hours to benefit Lumpen Radio, and more music news.

FEBRUARY 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 3

AGENDA R

READER RECOMMENDED

b ALL AGES

GAME CHANGERS 4 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 9, 2017

F 13-person ensemble—including Brian Parry as failed traveling salesman Willy Loman, Jan Ellen Graves as his anxious wife, Linda, and Matt Edmonds as his alienated, disillusioned son Biff—respond with an unaffected honesty that places the playwright’s sometimes preachy critique of capitalism (a system that feeds people false values and discards them when they can’t measure up) in its necessary heartbreaking emotional context. —ALBERT WILLIAMS Through 3/5: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Redtwist Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr, 773-7287529, redtwist.org, $30-$35, $25-$30 students and seniors.

Faceless Selina Fillinger’s new R play, receiving its world premiere production at Northlight, is much

Death of a Salesman o KIMBERLY LOUGHLIN

THEATER

More at chicagoreader.com/ theater The Assembled Parties In this Raven Theatre production Cody Estle directs Richard Greenberg’s Tony-nominated dramedy, which follows an Upper West Side family across a 20-year time period.

In act one the Bascov clan converge at their 1980 holiday gathering, where the audience is introduced to a family focused on assimilation and upward mobility. Charismatic matriarchs Julie (Loretta Rezos), the Christmas-loving German Jew, and her sister-in-law Faye (JoAnn Montemurro), a Woody Allen stock character full of Yiddish quips and Jewish anxiety, share a familial bond and love for Julie’s son Scotty (Niko Kourtis), on whom they’ve pinned the family’s future. His overbearing parents may have presidential dreams for him, but Scotty doesn’t, and the 20 years and multiple misfortunes between acts send the Bascovs on an entirely different course. While Greenberg’s smart and musical language delights throughout, a greater focus on character development would make for a more impactful landing. —MARISSA OBERLANDER Through 3/25: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark, 773-338-2177, raventheatre.com, $46 ($43 online), $41 seniors/teachers ($38 online), $22 students/military ($21 online).

The Book of Joseph Karen R Hartman’s rich, multilayered play begins as a straightforward stage

FEB 15–26

Send your events to agenda@chicagoreader.com

adaptation of Richard Hollander’s 2007 book Every Day Lasts a Year: A Jewish Family’s Correspondence From Poland, which recounts his refugee father’s efforts to stay in the USA in the late 1930s and early ’40s and get his extended family out of Nazi-occupied Poland. But halfway through, the play turns meta, moving the focus from the heroic father to the American-born son, and to the gnarly question of how much the son fictionalized his father in his book. Seasoned by years of directing Shakespeare, Barbara Gaines has crafted a simple, powerful production for this world premiere, uncluttered

by unnecessary sets or props. Instead the story is carried by Hartman’s words and an A-list cast—Francis Guinan and Sean Fortunato are riveting as the shy, self-effacing son (and storyteller) and his fierce, focused, and idealized survivor father. —JACK HELBIG Through 3/5: Wed 1 and 7:30 PM, Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Tue 7:30 PM, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 800 E. Grand, 312-595-5600, chicagoshakes. com, $48-$58.

Bootycandy Playwright and director Robert O’Hara revives his 2011 play for this Windy City Playhouse season premiere, consisting of semi-autobiographical vignettes about growing up queer and black. It’s the most provocative and assertive work to come out of the young company to date; it’s also an incredibly frustrating hodgepodge of compelling story fragments and overbaked sketch comedy. At center is an author (played

by Travis Turner and transparently based on O’Hara) who seeks misguided advice from his parents, skewers academia’s tokenism of black artists, and dabbles with infidelity. Scenes with limited premises, like a lesbian couple partaking in an ironic beachside divorce ceremony, start strong with bitingly funny performances, then run out of steam long before they’re over. Worse, metatheatrical flourishes undercut dramatic scenes just as they’re beginning to gain momentum.

—DAN JAKES Through 4/15: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM (no show Wed 2/15), Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM (no show 2/12); also Sat 2/11 and 4/15, 2 PM; Tue 2/14, 7:30 PM, Windy City Playhouse, 3014 W. Irving Park, 312-374-3196, windycityplayhouse. com, $25-$45.

subtler than its glib premise might lead you to believe. An ambitious, Harvard-educated Muslim lawyer is forced to face faith and family when she’s asked to lead the prosecution against a hijab-wearing white suburban teen (and recent convert) who fell for a terrorist on Twitter and subsequently announced her allegiance to ISIS. Fillinger has a great ear for dialogue and a knack for creating believable, fascinating characters, which director BJ Jones takes full advantage on in his well-cast and tidily paced production. In an ensemble full of fine, experienced performers (among them Ross Lehman, Joe Dempsey, and Timothy Edward Kane) Susaan Jamshidi stands out, ably embodying the many fine nuances Fillinger has built into her protagonist. —JACK HELBIG Through 3/4: Wed 1 and 7:30 PM, Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 2:30 and 8 PM, Sun 2:30 PM, Northlight Theatre, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie, Skokie, 847-673-6300, northlight.org, $30$81, $15 students.

Hobo King In this Congo Square Theatre production, homeless tap dancer Lazy Boy (Kyle Smith) is gunned down by police in his makeshift Chicago encampment. His death inspires a ragtag band of revolutionists to revolt for justice, compassion, and recognition. The group includes clairvoyant street artist Blind Man (Lionel Gentle), animalistic Freda (the uproarious Velma Austin), and wheelchair-bound Preacher

Man (Lyle Miller), whom the movement crowns, with a tinfoil coronet, its Hobo King. Javon Johnson’s script is a palpable call to action, stitching together dance elements and rousing rhetoric to convey a timely and urgent message.

The play’s demands are forceful and its execution is fluid, but some of the passages are excessively turgid. —MAX MALLER Through 3/5: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, 773-9356860, congosquaretheatre.org, $27, $25 students and seniors.

The Magic City Here’s a brilliant R idea: Take an abandoned police station in the West Loop, invest millions

of state dollars, and create a multiroom theater for a worthy company. Remind us that art might still be our best hope in these uncertain times. At Chicago Children’s Theatre’s new permanent space, the Station, Manual Cinema presents a play about nine-year-old Philomena, an orphan raised by her much older sister, Helen. When Helen gets married, Philomena’s life changes radically—she gains not only a stepfather but an annoying stepbrother, Lucas.

The four actors alternately perform and create shadow puppetry, using overhead projectors, cutouts, and everyday household items. Once Philomena lets Lucas into her attic “city,” things change for both kids—their journey becomes a shared one of making meaning (a kind of magic) out of loss. —SUZANNE SCANLON Through 2/19: Wed-Thu 10 AM, Fri 7 and 9 PM, Sat 2 and 6 PM, Sun 11 AM and 2 PM, Chicago Children’s Theatre, the Station, 100 S. Racine, 872-222-95555, manualcinema.com, $25.

The Nether As people increasR ingly pay attention to screens instead of the physical world, I hope

Jennifer Haley’s staggering script will rally more playwrights to engage virtual reality through theater. A shadowy corporation called the Nether has enabled users to fulfill their fantasies in hyperrealistic digital “realms” without fear of consequence. Reclusive Web developer Sims (Guy Van Swearingen) is under arrest at the Nether for encouraging pedophilia in his private, quaintly Victorian paradise, the Hideaway. What

Death of a Salesman A fine cast R under Steve Scott’s direction for Redtwist Theatre delivers a moving,

emotionally intimate rendition of Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer-winning 1949 masterpiece—the story of a Brooklyn family whose belief in an illusory American dream (in which being “well liked” is the key to happiness in “the greatest country in the world”) has locked them into destructive patterns of denial and dishonesty. Scott’s bare-bones, alleystyle staging places Miller’s tragedy in arm’s reach of the audience. The

The Nether o MICHAEL BROSILOW

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Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of February 9

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

COMEDY

Anything Goes A musical theR ater-inspired improv show hosted

by George David Elrod. Mon 2/13, 8 PM,

Tammy Pescatelli o NATALIE BRASINGTON

plays out, in half the scenes, between plugged-in avatars at the Hideaway and, in the other half, between their human counterparts in Sims’s interrogation chamber blurs all the boundaries between appearance and reality, questioning the effectiveness of laws when people live in a disembodied existence.

Directed by A Red Orchid ensemble member Karen Kessler, the show is impeccably staged, and all of the performances are deeply moving. —MAX MALLER Through 3/12: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 N. Wells, 312-943-8722, aredorchidtheatre. org, $30-$35.

Starrs Is Getting Up There R Actor and poet John Starrs has been a contributor to Rhinofest

for about 25 years—the exact number eludes his memory; nowadays, he admits, a lot of things do. In a free-form, mesmerizing hour, veteran storyteller Starrs gets frank and relays how aging affects his body and artistic process.

Accompanied by an improvised score and video projections by Doug Chamberlin, Starrs blends haiku about Chicago neighborhoods, stories about reacclimating to everyday life after being released from a polio hospital, and backstage anecdotes about the midcentury comedy and theater scenes in New York and Chicago. The show is a whirlwind of history, whimsy, and melancholy, all of which are delivered with gallows humor and succinct poignancy.

—DAN JAKES Through 2/26: Sun 5 PM, Prop Thtr, 3502 N. Elston, 773-539-7838, rhinofest.com, $12 in advance, $15 or pay what you can at the door.

DANCE

Game Changers The Joffrey R Ballet presents three works: Wayne McGregor’s Infra, Christopher

Wheeldon’s Fool’s Paradise, and Justin Peck’s Year of the Rabbit. 2/15-2/26: ThuFri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Wed 2/15, 7:30 PM, Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress, 800-982-2787, joffrey.org, $34-$159.

MCA Cunningham Event To R celebrate the opening of the exhibit “Merce Cunningham: Common

Time,” Andrea Weber, a veteran of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, stages two performances featuring other former dancers from the troupe.

Sat 2/11-Sun 2/12: 1:30 and 4 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago, 312-280-2660, mcachicago.org.

iO Theater, 1501 N. Kingsbury, ioimprov. com/chicago, $12.

Tammy Pescatelli The comedian R comes to Chicago to promote her new album, Finding the Funny. 2/9-2/12: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 and 10:15 PM, Sat 7 and 9:15 PM, Sun 7 PM, Chicago Improv, 5 Woodfield, Schaumburg, 847-240-2001, $22.

Sex Positive A sex-oriented variR ety show, followed by a panel discussion. Sat 2/11, 8 PM, Crowd Theater, 3935 N. Broadway, thecrowdtheater. com, $5.

R

The Sklar Brothers Live taping of the twin brothers’ hour-long comedy special, with opener Dan Van Kirk. Sat 2/11, 7 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, 773-525-2501, lh-st.com, $10.

VISUAL ARTS Galerie F “Bromance: The Unconventional Story of Bernie and Clyde,” an exhibition of work by street artists T-Money and Penny Pinch. Opening reception Fri 2/10, 6-10 PM. 2/10-2/26.

Tue-Sun 11 AM-6 PM. 2415 N. Milwaukee, 773-819-9200, galerief.com.

Hyde Park Art Center “A Modern Day Shaman’s Hybrid Devices, Power Objects, and Cure Books,” Chicago sculptor Rhonda Wheatley’s first solo exhibition. Opening reception Sun 2/26, 3-5 PM. 2/12-5/7. Mon-Thu 9 AM-8 PM, Fri-Sat 9 AM-5 PM, Sun noon-5 PM. 5020 S. Cornell, 773-324-5520, hydeparkart. org.

Museum of Contemporary Art “Merce Cunningham: Common Time,” a retrospective devoted to the celebrated choreographer, organized by the Walker Art Center. 2/11-4/30. Tue 10 AM-8 PM, Wed-Sun 10 AM-5 PM. 220 E. Chicago, 312-280-2660, mcachicago.org, $12, $7 students and seniors, free kids 12 and under and members of the military, free for Illinois residents on Tuesdays.

“Farewell, Father, Friend” explores how Lincoln was memorialized in music and letters. o NEWBERRY LIBRARY Night at Comiskey Park. Thu 2/9, 7 PM, Book Cellar, 4736 N. Lincoln, 773-2932665, bookcellarinc.com.

neighborhood. Of course, the roofer is a handsome, commitment-phobic lothario, and the fashionista wears high heels and an engagement ring from a man. Why these two women are attracted to each other beyond looks is a mystery; eventually they swap backstories, but neither is compelling enough for one to invest in the character. The movie is notable for its all-female crew and somewhat redeemed by its strong female gaze, evident in its emphasis on tenderness and its attentiveness to female pleasure in the many realistic love scenes. April Mullen directed. —LEAH PICKETT 92 min. Fri 2/10, 8 PM; Mon 2/13, 8:30 PM; and Wed 2/15, 8:30 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center

Thomas Kernan, Roosevelt University assistant professor of music history, discuss American responses to Lincoln’s death in music and letters. Wed 2/15, 6 PM, Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton, 312-255-3700, newberry.org.

BY TODAY’S MOST

BRILLIANT CHOREOGRAPHERS

Punk Ethnography Musical R scholars and writers read essays and play music in honor of the new book

of essays about the record label Sublime Frequency. Sat 2/11, 2 PM, Corbett vs.

Dempsey, 1120 N. Ashland, third floor, 773-278-1664, corbettvsdempsey.com.

MOVIES

More at chicagoreader.com/movies NEW REVIEWS Below Her Mouth In this threadbare, sex-heavy romance (2016), a roofer (Erika Linder) and a fashion magazine editor (Natalie Krill) meet and fall in love in Toronto’s gay Church and Wellesley

tered classics such as Majid Majidi’s Children of Heaven (1997) and The Color of Paradise (1999). As the protagonist and narrator, a schoolgirl during the early years of the Islamic Revolution, first-time actor Sareh Nour Mousavi walks a fine line, her character a disarming, gap-toothed daddy’s girl but also an exasperating little rebel inclined to pilfer any interesting book, however unsuitable for her, in their low-income surroundings. When the shah flees Iran, her step-grandmother and widowed father rejoice, but the long war with Iraq increases the family’s hardships and the grown-ups worry about the girl’s marital prospects. Writer-director Narges Abyar peppers her film with simple 2D animated sequences showing the child’s comical takes on the adult world and her love for her father (Mehran Ahmadi), a truck driver more hapless than heroic.

In Farsi with subtitles. —ANDREA GRONVALL 110 min. Sat 2/11, 8 PM, and Sun 2/12, 4:45 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center

JOFFREY.ORG

LIT R

WORKS

Farewell, Father, Friend James Breath An unsentimental perR Cornelius, Abraham Lincoln PresiR spective distinguishes this 2016 dential Library and Museum curator, and Iranian drama from earlier youth-cen-

Sector 2337 “Graft,” the Green Lantern Press and Sector 2337 present a solo interactive show by Edra Soto. Opening reception Fri 2/10, 6-9 PM. 2/10-4/7.

Wed-Sat noon-6 PM, Sun noon-4 PM. 2337 N. Milwaukee, 773-687-8481, sector2337.com.

Disco Demolition Author Dave Hoekstra and photographer Paul Natkin discuss their book about the debacle that was 1979’s Disco Demolition

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AGENDA B The Lego Batman Movie Warner Bros. follows The Lego Movie, its hit children’s animation based on the beloved construction-block toys, with a sequel that digests the whole eight-decade history of Batman. A vast mosaic of pop culture in-jokes, the movie touches on the character’s various incarnations from the comics to TV to the apocalyptic Christopher Nolan movies (which are wickedly parodied). I was dazzled by a sequence that reunites the dozens of supervillains, some familiar and some less so, who have accumulated around Batman over the years.

Unfortunately the filmmakers embrace a perpetual-motion ethic that prevents them from sticking with any idea for long, and despite all the material they’ve got with the Batman legend, they feel compelled to drag in King Kong, Godzilla, the Wicked Witch of the West, and the Justice League of America. A movie of endlessly hurtling momentum, this is Mad Max: Fury Road for five-year-olds, and not nearly as much fun as snapping those bricks together. Chris McKay directed. —J.R. JONES PG, 104 min. ArcLight Chicago, Century 12 and CineArts 6, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON, 600 N. Michigan, Webster Place 11 1 Night A married couple in their mid-30s (Anna Camp, Justin Chatwin) bump into their teen selves (Isabelle Fuhrman, Kyle Allen) at the hotel where they fell in love on prom night. Written and directed by Minhal Baig, this romantic fantasy works on a conceptual level, but not in execution; the younger actors don’t look, sound, or behave much like their older counterparts. Some of the acting is terrific—”Are you someone’s mom?” the younger woman asks the older when they meet in a public bathroom, and the way Camp’s face crumples is heartbreaking—but the performers fight a rambling script that focuses on repetitive arguments between the pairs of lovers instead of the reasons the couple might have come together in the first place. —LEAH PICKETT 80 min. Fri 2/10, 7:30 PM; Sat 2/11 and Sun 2/12, 6:30 PM; and Mon 2/13-Thu 2/16, 7:30 PM. Facets Cinematheque The Red Turtle In this gorR geous, completely wordless animation, a shipwrecked man

suffers in solitude on a desert island until the day he encounters a giant red turtle and it turns into a beautiful woman with wild red hair. Dutch artist Michaël Dudok de Wit, who has directed four short films since 1992, makes his feature debut partly under the auspices of Japan’s beloved Studio Ghibli, whose founder, Haya Miyazaki, took a shine to his short Father

The Red Turtle and Daughter (2000). De Wit’s characters are more plainly drawn than Ghibli’s, but fans of the studio will probably be enthralled by his richly colored, finely textured, and powerfully immersive natural backgrounds. This is one of those animations that creates a world so beautiful the characters need only wander around in it. —J.R. JONES 80 min. Fri 2/10, 1:20, 3:20, 5:20, 7:45, and 9:45 PM; Sat 2/11, 11:20 AM, 1:20, 3:20, 5:20, 7:45, and 9:45 PM; Sun 2/12, 11:20 AM, 1:20, 5:20, 7:45, and 9:45 PM; Mon 2/13 and Tue 2/14, 1:20, 3:20, 5:20, 7:45, and 9:45 PM; Wed 2/15, 1:20, 3:20, 5:20, and 9:45 PM; and Thu 2/16, 1:20, 3:20, 5:20, 7:45, and 9:45 PM. Music Box Sophie and the Rising Sun The premise of a white woman (Julianne Nicholson) and a Japanese-American man (Takashi Yamaguchi) falling in love in a South Carolina fishing town prior to Pearl Harbor demands more heat and complexity than this hokey 2016 drama provides.

Racial tensions boil from the opening scenes: the man shows up in the village nearly beaten to death, and the white townsfolk immediately refer to him as “the Chinaman.” Flashbacks to the woman’s childhood indicate that she tried to befriend a black girl against the wishes of her racist mother; her character might have been more interesting had her views on interracial relationships evolved over the course of the film instead of traveling the path of righteousness from the start.

Maggie Greenwald directed her own script, adapting a 2001 novel

by Augusta Trobaugh; with Margo Martindale, Diane Ladd, and Lorraine Toussaint. —LEAH PICKETT 116 min. Fri 2/10, 7 and 9:15 PM; and Sat 2/11, 5:30 and 7:45 PM; Sun 2/12, 1, 3:15, 5:30, and 7:45 PM; and Tue 2/14-Thu 2/16, 7 and 9:15 PM. Facets Cinematheque The Space Between Us A 16-yearold (Asa Butterfield), the first human to be born on Mars, visits earth for the first time in 2034 to

meet his online girlfriend (Britt Robertson) and track down the father he never knew. This corny sci-fi drama abounds with annoying plot holes and product placements, and the 2017 teenspeak (“You ghosted me!”) will probably sound dated to anyone watching the movie even a few years from now.

Butterfield’s monotone performance fails to strike sparks with anyone around him, which leaves Robertson to carry their characters’ romance. Director Peter Chelsolm (Hector and the Search for Happiness) amps up the anthemic pop music for each emotional swell, rather than relying on the actors, most of whom are good (Gary Oldman, Carla Gugino, B.D. Wong).

—LEAH PICKETT PG-13, 120 min.

River East 21

REVIVALS Cemetery of Splendor Thai R filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Uncle Boonmee

Who Can Recall His Past Lives) crafts another of his mysterious tales dissolving the boundaries between past and present, people and nature, the conscious and the unconscious. Calm and quiet, but nicely paced, the film centers on a kindly middle-aged woman volunteering at a small-town medical clinic for soldiers afflicted with a strange sleeping sickness. According to two Laotian goddesses (who appear to the heroine in modern casual wear), the clinic sits on the site of an ancient cemetery whose dead kings enlist the sleeping men as dream warriors. The film has been called an allegory for the current political tumult in Thailand; that part went right over my head, but a dazzling shot in which Weerasethakul superimposes the rows of occupied hospital beds with shoppers on a bank of mall escalators encapsulates the sense of a voyage taking place in complete stillness.

In English and subtitled Thai.

—J.R. JONES 122 min. Filmmaker Melika Bass lectures at the Tuesday screening. Fri 2/10, 8:30 PM, and Tue 2/14, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center v

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CITY LIFE

Ç Take a video tour of Jyl Bonaguro’s studio at chicagoreader.com/space.

Street View

Whiteout

space

o ISA GIALORENZO

A room of one’s stone

o KERRI PANG

Inside the former Hammon Organ factory in Hermosa, sculptor Jyl Bonaguro has carved out an ideal art studio.

FOR MARBLE SCULPTOR Jyl Bonaguro, moving from her old art studio in East Garfield Park to a new one in Hermosa was a heavy decision. Literally.

“I’d come back [last summer] from a trip to Italy where I’d bought over 3,500 pounds of marble to take back to Chicago and start carving,” she recalls.

The fine marble, called statuario, weighed nearly two tons, and her then-studio was located on the second floor. “It turned out I was going to have a very difficult time moving my marble up there, because I

NOT ONLY DOES the self-styled evangelist who goes by the name Brother Hollis habitually quote the Bible, he also dresses in accordance with scripture. His daily all-white look is inspired by a verse in Revelation 3:4: “They shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy.” “I’m trying to live righteously,” Hollis says, “and wearing white reminds me to do everything with a sincere heart.” —ISA GIALLORENZO

was lacking really good ground-loading and truckloading docks.”

In October 2016, Bonaguro was among the first tenants to move into Workshop 4200, an enormous industrial facility at Diversey and Pulaski that housed the Hammond Organ factory from 1949 to 1986 and is currently being renovated into studios and workshops for artists and entrepreneurs. “And I have the piles of plaster dust mixed with marble dust to prove it!” she says.

J

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

SURE THINGS THURSDAY 9

FRIDAY 10

SATURDAY 11

SUNDAY 12

MONDAY 13

TUESDAY 14

WEDNESDAY 15

[ Black Gi rl Ma gic A dance party celebrating black femininity and queerness, featuring performances by drag queens Shea Coulee, Dida Ritz, the Vixen, and Lucy Stoole. 10 PM-4 AM, Berlin, 954 W. Belmont, berlinchicago.com. F

9 With Love From Andersonville Milk Handmade (5137 N. Clark) and other Andersonville businesses donate 14 percent of their sales to nonprofit causes like Planned Parenthood, Equality Illinois, the ACLU, and more for Valentine’s Day weekend.

2/10-2/14, various times and locations, andersonville.org.

× Claw XXVI The Chicago League of Lady Arm Wrestlers hosts a benefit match to raise funds for Sideshow Theatre Company and Chicago Women’s Health Center. 9 PM, Logan Square Auditorium, 2539 N. Kedzie, cllaw.org, $15.

♥ Love Dos e 2017 Dose’s Valentine’s market features goods from local small businesses like Dearborn Denim, Glamrocks, IntoxiCakes, and Reppin Pins, plus Valentine-making stations, cocktails, matchmaking, and the bridal-focused Dose Trousseau. 10 AM-4 PM, Morgan Manufacturing, 401 N. Morgan, dosemarket.com, $10.

♥ Love Ba ll : A Ma squerade Red Tape Theatre hosts a masquerade ball on Valentine’s Eve featuring music, dancing, food, a cash bar, a silent auction, performances, and more. 6-11 PM, Uptown Underground, 4704 N. Broadway, uptownunderground.net, $25.

& Po p - Up D inner: Valenti ne’s for (Food) Lovers A five-course meal— including red beet carpaccio, salmon with passion fruit, and chai-spiced flourless chocolate cake—for couples prepared by chef Ronak Patel. 6:30-9:30 PM, Read It and Eat, 2142 N. Halsted, readitandeatstore.com, $75-$95.

® Ac tivism Series: Ch icago Women’s Hea lth Ce nter A monthly series highlighting a social justice organization in Chicago. The February event features a presentation, Q&A, and action plan from Chicago Women’s Health Center. 7 PM, Women & Children First, 5233 N. Clark, 773-769-9299, womenandchildrenfirst.com.

FEBRUARY 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 7

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Space continued from 7 With tall windows and soaring ceilings, the studio provides her with plenty of sunlight and room to work, as well as access to equipment (forklifts, floor cranes) to load in her marble haul. Wide barn doors were made to her specifications and, along one wall, Bonaguro built custom cabinetry to store materials out of sight, “so things that don’t need dust, don’t get dust.” A collection of variously sized tools, including carbide chisels and diamond rasps acquired from Italy, sit atop the cabinets, and large prints of bird illustrations by John Audubon, inspiration for her ongoing “wings” series, adorn the opposite wall.

Bonaguro purposefully leaves her studio fairly empty and uncluttered, “because when you’re [chiseling] marble”—a process she lik-

8 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 9, 2017

ens to doing push-ups or lifting weights—“it flies everywhere.”

She came to the incredibly labor-intensive art form in 1998. “I carved a little hunk of limestone,” she says with a wry smile, “and even though it was difficult, and even though I had all the wrong tools and a teacher who didn’t know anything, I was smitten with stone.”

She’s largely self-taught, consulting with fellow sculptors occasionally, as well as old Italian carvers willing to share their knowledge, as on her recent trip to Pietrasanta and Carrara. In addition to sculptures of wings, Bonaguro is currently in the early stage of work on a 15-foot Athena sculpture. “It will be of the modern woman: strong yet at peace, especially with herself.” Spoken like someone who’s truly at home in her art practice.

—LAURA PEARSON

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Read Ben Joravsky’s columns throughout the week at chicagoreader.com.

CITY LIFE Alderman Raymond Lopez, right, at a City Council meeting in May o BRIAN JACKSON/SUN-TIMES MEDIA

POLITICS

An unlikely resister

Fifteenth Ward alderman Raymond Lopez rebels against Rahm’s rebate proposal.

By BEN JORAVSKY

O

ver the last few months Mayor Emanuel has repeatedly vowed to use every tool at his disposal to help end the murders on the city’s south and west sides.

And yet, time and time again, we’ve seen him use these tools for other things. No, I’m not plunging into another fun-filled treatise on the city’s unfair distribution of TIF money to wealthy communities.

Instead, I want to discuss the mayor’s developing battle of wills with 15th Ward alderman Raymond Lopez, a heretofore obscure southwest-side legislator, over how to spend roughly $17 million of the so-called property tax rebate funds.

That’s a newly created mayoral slush fund that most of you probably didn’t even know existed.

The mayor established the approximately $20 million fund last year to provide property tax rebates to home owners who couldn’t af-

ford his tax hike, intended to finally pay off our pension obligations.

The fund had enough money for roughly 155,000 home owners. But only 11,000 applied.

So suddenly the mayor had a windfall to spend on anything his little heart desired. Thankfully, he resisted the temptation to add another wing to the DePaul basketball arena.

Now, already I see you wondering: How can the mayor have money to pay for property tax rebates if, as he claims, we’re pretty much broke?

Excellent question. The answer, as I may have told you before, is that there’s always a “banana stand” for a clever mayor to find or stash some money in. In this case, the money was generated from the taxes paid on the 2015 resale of the Skyway.

You remember the original Skyway deal, don’t you? In 2005, the City Council approved former Mayor Daley’s proposal to lease it for 99 years to a consortium of investors from

Australia and Spain. In return, the city got $1.8 billion.

Indulge me for a moment as I return to a happier time in Chicago finances, when former alderman Richard Mell offered this breathless ode to Daley during the council’s debate on the Skyway deal: “If you ever decide to change careers, there’s truly a place in Las Vegas for you,” Mell gushed. “You have [pulled] not a rabbit out of a hat. You’ve been able to pull a $1.8 billion gorilla out of a hat.”

Oh, I miss you, Alderman Mell.

Anyway, in 2015 that gorilla fetched $2.8 billion when the Aussies and Spaniards sold it to a consortium of three Canadian pension funds.

That means it appreciated about 55 percent over the last decade. I told you we should have held on to it.

Now the Skyway tolls—it’s up to $3 a ride— will help fortify the pensions of retired teachers and other municipal employees in Canada for years to come.

It’s good to know that pensioners somewhere are benefiting from our largesse—too bad they’re in another country.

But back to the property tax rebates. After Rahm realized he literally couldn’t give these millions away to home owners—apparently, not enough people knew to apply for the rebate—he decided to use it to buy himself some good publicity. In January, he announced he was using the property tax rebate money for, among other things, body cameras for cops, rehabbing vacant buildings, community college cybersecurity courses, and planting a bunch of trees.

“These are investments in job creation, neighborhood improvement, public safety,” the mayor told reporters. “Things that we want to invest in that are right to do.”

To which Alderman Lopez said—enough.

A few words about Lopez: he’s an unlikely source of aldermanic opposition—a 38-yearold rookie alderman who won his 2015 runoff in part because Mayor Rahm’s backing helped him win votes from black residents. His opponent in the runoff, Rafael Yañez, actually took most of the votes in the Hispanic areas.

(Yes, folks, there was a time, before the release of the Laquan McDonald video, when having Rahm’s endorsement was an advantage in black precincts—especially

when your opponent was supported by Jesus “Chuy” Garcia.)

So don’t blame Rahm if he figured Lopez would be more of the Richard Mell persuasion when it came to worshipping at the mayoral altar.

Lopez says recent shootings in his ward— particularly in West Englewood and Back of the Yards—jolted him into action.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Lopez says. “Not a week goes by when my neighborhood is not in the newspaper for shootings or murders. I’ve had shootings in front of my house. I realize this money won’t solve everything. But we have to do everything we can.”

On January 12, Lopez sent out a press release urging the mayor to use “the leftover money” for “public safety, violence reduction and youth job development, rather than pet projects.”

Ouch.

On January 25, Lopez followed up with a press conference in which he proposed to spend the tax rebate money on programs that might keep people from shooting each other— on youth employment and mentorship programs, on outfitting houses in high-crime areas with surveillance cameras, and on street-level intervention programs like Ceasefire.

“This money should be used not for things that get headlines, but for things that make an impact,” Lopez told reporters at that press conference.

How did the mayor react to Lopez’s counter proposals? Well, he didn’t exactly welcome the alderman’s suggestions. Instead, Lopez says, the mayor cornered him in the back room of the council chambers and lit into him with F-bomb-laced invective for daring to embarrass him.

Oh, if only Rahm were so tough on President Trump.

Anyway, both Lopez’s and Rahm’s spending plans have been shuttled off to the budget committee for further review. It will be interesting to see whether a compromise gets hashed out, and if so, how.

Of course, as Lopez continually points out, the $17 million is a relative drop in the bucket, especially when you consider that Trump’s proposing to spend $20 billion building his wall.

“Our priorities are all wrong,” Lopez says.

Amen to that, Alderman Lopez. Give ’em hell. With Rahm, as with Trump, it’s always good to see a little resistance. v

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FEBRUARY 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 11

TK refer to Straight Dope on page 48

CITY LIFE

TRANSPORTATION

A slap on the wrist, a slap in the face

Why did the drunk driver who killed Bobby Cann get only ten days in jail?

By JOHN GREENFIELD

Pins bearing pictures of Bobby Cann were distributed to his family’s supporters during last month’s sentencing hearing. o JOHN GREENFIELD

T

he family and friends of fallen cyclist Bobby Cann were outraged late last month when Cook County circuit court judge William H. Hooks sentenced motorist Ryne San Hamel, who killed Cann while speeding and drunk, to just ten days in jail.

In the early evening of May 29, 2013, after partying in Wrigleyville, San Hamel was driving his Mercedes downtown on Clybourn at about 60 mph, twice the speed limit, when he slammed into Cann, 26, who was biking north on Larrabee on his way home from his job at Groupon. The impact severed the cyclist’s left leg, and he died soon afterwards. When San Hamel’s blood was drawn more than three hours later, he was still found to have a blood alcohol level of .15 percent, nearly twice the legal limit.

It was shocking that Hooks chose to give San Hamel this minimal sentence (plus four years of probation and $25,000 in restitution to cover Cann’s funeral expenses). After all, the minimum sentence in Illinois for aggravated DUI causing death is three to 14 years in prison, except for in cases where the court finds

12 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 9, 2017

“extraordinary circumstances.” Moreover, San Hamel, now 32, had on two different occasions previously been arrested for alcohol-related offences while behind the wheel.

In an effort to understand what might have motivated the judge’s ruling, last week I viewed security-camera footage of the crash and analyzed the transcript of the January 26 sentencing hearing. (To my knowledge, I’m the only reporter who has seen these materials.) Having done so, I still think Hooks made a terrible decision.

The video footage shows the moment when the two young men’s paths tragically crossed, around 6:35 PM. Cann appears as a small figure on his bicycle. Heading north on Larrabee, he slowly approaches Clybourn, then proceeds north through the intersection, through a red light.

As he enters the intersection, a southeast-bound driver is stopped in the turn lane northwest of the intersection, waiting to turn north onto Larrabee. We see a second car approaching from the northwest, and then a third car, San Hamel’s silver Mercedes, which

passes the second car on the right at a high rate of speed. (A crime-scene reenactment expert later estimated that San Hamel was doing between 58 and 64 mph.)

The crash takes place in the center of the intersection. The video shows San Hamel slamming his Mercedes into the left side of Cann’s body. His bicycle flies off to the west side of the street, tumbling over a parked car, while Cann rolls over the hood and windshield of the Mercedes and is carried off on the roof. The front right side of the car is crushed and the windshield is shattered. San Hamel swerves left into oncoming traffic.

San Hamel then swerves sharply again, this time to the right, in an effort to avoid an oncoming black Infiniti. As he does, Cann’s limp body is thrown from the roof to the street, coming to rest at the east curb. Then, the front left side of San Hamel’s car collides with the front left side of the Infiniti.

About a minute later, San Hamel gets out of his badly damaged Mercedes, walks over to Cann and kneels by his body. Then a nurse arrives on the scene and applies a tourniquet

to the cyclist’s leg. Roughly four minutes after the crash, Chicago Fire Department paramedics show up and rush Cann to Northwestern Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:09 PM. In October 2014 San Hamel hired high-profile defense attorney Sam Adam Jr., who had previously defended R. Kelly and Rod Blagojevich. Adam tried various strategies to get the charges dropped, such as claiming that San Hamel’s blood-alcohol testing had been mishandled. It wasn’t until mid-December of last year, about a month after Hooks was retained as judge during the November election, that Adam announced the defense’s intention to seek a plea deal.

At last month’s hearing, following a conference between the defense, prosecution, and Judge Hooks, San Hamel pleaded guilty to all charges.

During the sentencing, Cann’s girlfriend, Catherine Bullard; his uncle, John Santini; and his mother, Maria, read victim-impact statements. Maria Cann described Bobby as a high achiever and loving son who was thoughtful enough to write her a letter on her 50th birthday thanking her for 50 things she’d done for him.

“I was . . . very, very proud of the man that Bobby had become,” she said. “The defendant’s decision to drink and drive rendered that all meaningless.”

Then, the defense and prosecution presented arguments in regard to sentencing.

Adam noted that more than 100 letters had been submitted in support of San Hamel, and that, since the crash, the defendant had been volunteering as a coach in a youth baseball league, undergone evaluation for drugs and alcohol, and earned two associate’s degrees.

“The one thing that’s for sure here is that Mr. San Hamel is accepting responsibility, your honor, and is extremely remorseful,” Adam said. “A penitentiary sentence would not serve society.”

Assistant Cook County state’s attorney Jennifer Coleman made the case for prison time, but Hooks seemed largely unconvinced by her arguments. When she brought up the two previous alcohol-related arrests behind the wheel, both in 2003, the judge argued that since one of the charges, for misdemeanor DUI, had been dropped as part of a plea deal, it wasn’t relevant to San Hamel’s current case.

“I cannot . . . punish him [for] something that he can’t confront,” Hooks said.

Coleman asserted that the now-defunct website that San Hamel was working for at the

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CITY LIFE

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Security cameras southeast of Clybourn and Larrabee captured the aftermath of the crash that killed Bobby Cann. Top: Ryne San Hamel drives his silver Mercedes into oncoming traffic with the injured Cann on his roof. Bottom: Immediately after San Hamel crashes into another car, Cann lies in the street near the curb. o NEW ZAIKA

time of the crash, allyoucandrink.com, encouraged binge drinking.

“That’s not persuasive,” Hooks responded.

Finally, San Hamel addressed Cann’s loved ones. Weeping, he described kneeling before the dying man and “cupping blood out of his mouth,” holding his hand and cradling his shoulder.

“I just hope that you can feel some type of remorse [from] me, or forgiveness in your

heart,” he concluded. “I wish I could change everything that happened, but I can’t.”

Before announcing the sentence, Hooks explained his rationale to the courtroom. He acknowledged that Cann was an “extraordinary person” but argued that San Hamel was “another driven person. . . . Both of these young men had a drive for life that [was] so vital, so strong . . . of such great potential. But, after that collision, only one could walk away.” J

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The judge added that he factored San Hamel’s “remorse” about the killing into his sentencing decision. He noted that in the past he had sentenced other defendants to prison terms as long as 45 years because they were dangers to society. (Indeed, in 2015, Hooks sentenced Andrew L. Jones to three years prison after Jones pleaded guilty to aggravated DUI and reckless homicide in the 2013 death of his girlfriend Chantelle Jones.)

“If I have someone who gets it, and is remorseful, and understands the seriousness of the matter before the court,” Hooks said, “I really got to weigh whether or not that prison sentence is what he needs.”

Adam and Hooks didn’t respond to my interview requests; San Hamel was serving his tenday sentence while I researched and wrote this article and was not available for comment.

But for their part, Cann’s friends and family, as well as cycling advocates, say the sentence was unjust.

Former Active Transportation Alliance crash-victim advocate Jason Jenkins, who attended the hearing, told me he thought San Hamel’s remarks “border[ed] on repulsive.”

“It reminded me of the Brock Turner rape case, in which the perpetrator presented himself as the injured party who bore no responsi-

bility for the crime,” Jenkins said. “It reeked of willful obliviousness and privilege.”

Jenkins said Hooks also gave an inordinate amount of weight to the fact that San Hamel had the green.

“Bobby made a mistake,” Jenkins said. “But the judge . . . equated Bobby’s one poor choice with San Hamel’s multiple choices to be a selfish and dangerous public menace.”

Bullard argued that the claim that San Hamel felt remorse rang false because the defense had sought, over nearly four years, to use technicalities to throw out the charges, and had argued that Cann was the one responsible for the crash because he ran a red.

In addition, Bullard and Jenkins both say that Hooks didn’t seem to take the scientific evidence of San Hamel’s intoxication seriously. Instead, the judge said during an earlier hearing that, taking into account the defendant’s “gait” and “arm swing” in the video footage, he didn’t appear drunk, so he wasn’t convinced that San Hamel was impaired.

Hooks also painted a picture of two equally bright, productive, potential-filled men who happened to meet under tragic circumstances.

“But San Hamel and Cann couldn’t have been more different,” Jenkins said. “Bobby was someone who lost his father to cancer young, was raised along with his three siblings by a single mom, . . . biked halfway across the country, taught himself to write software code, and volunteered helping recently released convicts to reintegrate into society, and who inspired the people he met with his boundless enthusiasm and lust for life. Ryne San Hamel was a child of wealth and privilege who got a couple of associate’s degrees and went in on an online business called All You Can Drink.”

Bullard says a sentence of three years in prison—but better yet eight to ten—would have been the appropriate penalty.

“The sentence, as it is, shows us that even if you get drunk and get behind the wheel— already a crime—and then kill someone—a yet more egregious crime—it’ll still be OK,” she said.

Bullard and Jenkins’s logic makes sense. The judge basically ignored the plentiful evidence as to why San Hamel needed a longer sentence, and the public is less safe because of his decision. Hopefully voters will remember this case six years from now in 2022, when William H. Hooks will again be up for reelection. v

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

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A mostly female cast and crew come together to tell the story of the friendship between Fatimah Asghar and Jamila Woods in the Chicagobased webseries Brown Girls.

BY BRIANNA WELLEN

Brown girls make it

Fatimah Asghar and Jamila Woods o MEGAN LEE MILLER

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hen the trailer for Brown Girls, a new Chicago-based webseries, was released this past November, more than 20,000 people watched it over the course of a month. Writers at sites like Autostraddle, Black Nerd Problems, and Vibe were calling it their new favorite webseries of 2017 before the first full episode was even completed. A short preview of the show shared on NowThis’s Facebook page in December currently has more than two million views. So what is it about the story, written by Fatimah Asghar, that’s causing such a stir?

For one, it’s not a common narrative. The series focuses on the friendship between Leila (Nabila Hossain), a queer South Asian writer,

and Patricia (Sonia Denis), a black musician— it’s partially based on the real-life relationship between Asghar, 27, and her best friend, musician Jamila Woods, also 27. During the past year Woods’s career as a singer-songwriter has blown up, thanks to the release of her acclaimed debut album, Heavn, and her collaboration with Chance the Rapper on Coloring Book’s “Blessings.” Asghar has had her work published in journals like Poetry magazine and Academy of American Poets, and released the chapbook After (Yes Yes Books) in 2015.

But before all that, they were just two twentysomething artists in Chicago struggling with relationships, finances, family expectations, and identity issues.

“There’s not a lot of stories that put two

women of color at the forefront that are of different races,” Asghar says. “Usually when women of color of different racial backgrounds are put in media they’re at odds with each other like, ‘Oh, that person took my man,’ or ‘Oh, that person took my job.’ And I don’t like that, because that’s just not true to my experience in my communities.”

To accurately depict the story, director Sam Bailey assembled a crew of people of color, queer people, and women, some with direct personal connections to Asghar and Woods—for example, Hossain was childhood friends with Asghar and her sisters. With a crowd-funded budget of $20,000, the team shot the series entirely in Pilsen, highlighting the real places where Asghar and Woods spent their time J

FEBRUARY 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 15

Brown Girls continued from 15

while living in the neighborhood together.

The result is an authentic and funny look at a meaningful friendship between two women.

The excitement surrounding the seven-episode season’s debut has spawned release parties in at least a dozen cities around the world, including London, New York, and Asghar’s family’s hometown of Lahore, Pakistan.

“That’s such an important city to my family,” Asghar says. “To see them reach out [like that], I was bawling, because that’s incredible—these places that kind of mean something to you, in a family lineage of immigration, are responding.”

ASGHAR’S PARENTS MOVED from Lahore to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the mid-80s, but her father died of a heart attack and her mother died from cancer when she was five. She and her sisters were brought up by a collection of aunts, uncles, and neighbors in Cambridge, then a vibrant community full of immigrants.

While growing up Asghar struggled with her Muslim culture, both as it related to how others saw her post-9/11 and how it affected her own thoughts about her ethnicity, sexuality, and burgeoning queerness. It wasn’t until college—the same time she met Woods—when she pursued writing and the arts seriously, that she started coming to terms with her identity.

“Poetry helped me understand my race,” Asghar says. “It helped me understand things about being an orphan. It helped me understand these things that have been deep wells of pain that I had bottled up and then was like, ‘I don’t want to tell people that, I don’t want people to know this about me because then they’re going to pity me or think badly of me.’

Being able to say, ‘No, there’s a lot of strength in these things, this is who I am,’ that would not have happened for me without poetry or without art.”

Asghar and Woods met as freshmen at Brown University in 2007 after connecting on Facebook through a shared interest in poetry.

They instantly hit it off, attending on-campus events together, studying together, and eventually moving in together. While living with two other college friends in Providence, they built a meaningful support system. After graduation, the pair moved to Woods’s hometown, Chicago, to explore the city’s artistic community. That time in their lives and the bond they formed is at the center of Brown Girls.

“We’ve both helped each other get through many things,” Asghar says, “ranging from small stuff, like picking out outfits for each other when we have shows or an event to go to, to much larger things. She’s helped me deal with artistic rejections and low points,

16 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 9, 2017

Brown Girls cast and crew on location in Pilsen: actors Nabila Hossain and Sonia Denis; key grip Mawie Talion, cinematographer Hannah Welever, assistant director Sarah Coakley, and director/producer Sam Bailey o MEGAN LEE MILLER; GREG STEPHEN REIGH

moments where I didn’t think that my art was important. She’s helped me deal with feeling really lonely in this country, as a Muslim and as a South Asian, when I felt like those identities were being attacked by mainstream American rhetoric. She’s helped me navigate a lot of stuff around creating healthy, positive relationships—that last thing I feel is represented in the series.”

The script began as something Asghar intended to read only for friends—she had no experience in screenwriting and wanted creative feedback. But two of the people present at the private reading, actor and director Bailey and Open TV founder-producer Aymar Jean Christian, immediately approached her about turning it into a series hosted on the site, which focuses on projects created by queer people and people of color.

Bailey and Asghar knew each other from Chicago’s live-lit scene, and Asghar shadowed Bailey on the set of her popular Open TV webseries You’re So Talented. Bailey wrote, directed, and starred in two seasons of the show, which followed a young black artist growing up in Chicago. Bailey, who studied theater at Columbia College, started the project when she noticed a lack of roles that she could relate to in the theater world. She promised herself she wouldn’t do another webseries after that—the amount of work left her exhausted— but when she heard Asghar and Woods’s story, she knew she had to direct it.

“I’m really interested in talking about communities of color and queer people and women, but mostly because that’s just my life,” Bailey says. “Normally when you see those people mixed together in a series in

media, it doesn’t feel authentic, and I think that’s because when that happens people are trying to check boxes, so these people aren’t fully complex humans. But for me, these are my friends—it’s very obvious to me how they are multilayered, so it’s not hard for me to then put their stories in front of the camera and make it feel palpable and real. ” ASIDE FROM PLAUSIBLY depicting the relationship between the two main characters, Asghar felt it was important to portray the journey of a South Asian woman figuring out her queerness and sexuality. When she was growing up, there was no one who looked like her in movies or TV shows having sex or exploring those issues. She says she can imagine a completely different life for herself if there had been, and wants to provide an example in the media for others.

“If I can I want to help someone young like me who felt so alienated and felt all of this is taboo, and I can’t talk about desire and can’t talk about whatever, just feel like they can,” Asghar says. “I think that comes in a lot of ways. It comes in silly conversations about pink eye to direct, explicit poems that are about sex and desire. All of those things are important.”

While some aspects of each character and their scenarios are fictionalized, others, like Leila and Patricia’s constant run-ins with pink eye, are not—Asghar used to get the infection all the time. In the series, when a character contracts pink eye, a conversation arises about best hygiene practices during sex (“Stop eating dirty butt,” Patricia says to their infected friend). And Leila and Patricia’s struggle to pay

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BROWN GIRLS RELEASE PARTY FEATURING PERFORMANCES BY SONIA DENIS, JAMILA WOODS, AND JEEZ LOUEEZ

Wed 2/15, 6 PM, Chicago Art Department, 1932 S. Halsted, browngirlswebseries.com. F

bills and rent while trying to pursue their artistic careers was pulled directly from real life.

“Fati’s sister would come visit us and be like, why don’t you guys have a plunger or food in your fridge? Why are you living like this?”

Woods says. “I think that’s definitely represented—how we all knew that we wanted to be artists and do all these things, but had these restrictions on it.”

When assembling a crew, Bailey thought it was important that the people behind the camera had an understanding of what was happening onscreen. And in the maledominated field of television production, safe spaces for everyone else to freely provide their input are few and far between.

“It just ended up that the people who were most interested and most qualified to do it were these women, people of color, and queer people,” Bailey says. “Our production designer is thinking as a young queer woman, ‘What is she interested in?’ It’s not something that she gets to do often, put her point of view in that.”

The actors were also able to bring their own experiences to the production. Because of their history, Hossain was able to translate the subtle nuances of Asghar’s personal life to the character of Leila.

“When it comes to acting I think that the closest thing you can do to being yourself is being the kind of friends you grew up with,” Hossain says. “You know the mannerisms and

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February 11, 2017 - January 7, 2018

Script supervisor Judy Febles, wardrobe stylist Vincent Martell, and production designer Suzannah Linnekin o GREG STEPHEN REIGH

the accents and the quirky movements. It was nice to see the script and be like, of course that’s your family.”

Woods says that despite the obvious similarities between herself and Patricia, she sees Denis’s portrayal more as the alter ego she wishes she could be. Denis, a local stand-up comic who recently moved to New York, balances her larger-than-life onstage charisma with implicit sympathy.

But Woods doesn’t just serve as inspiration for the project—in full best-friend fashion she worked through the script with Asghar during its early stages, making suggestions to further develop the character of Leila. She’s also the series’ music consultant: the soundtrack is filled with contributions from local hip-hop artists like Drea Smith the Vibe Dealer, Ayanna Woods, and Daryn Alexus, and the theme song was created by Woods in collaboration with Indian musician Lisa Mishra. The duo will perform “Brown Girls Theme” live at the Chicago premiere party at Chicago Art Department on February 15.

“I thought it would be really cool to mix something with her voice and her writing, especially with what she wrote in Hindi, with something that I would write,” Woods says, “kind of mimicking what Fati was doing by portraying an interracial friendship.”

Pilsen has been featured in film and television before, but Asghar and Woods wanted to highlight lesser-known locations. The characters end up at places like La Catrina Cafe, DIY space the Dojo, and, in an especially beautiful shot from the first episode, the bus stop at 18th and Peoria.

Thanks to the combination of experienced

artists working behind the cameras and quality talent in front of them, Brown Girls escapes the homemade camera-phone feel that cheapens many webseries. And everyone involved got paid for their work.

During production Asghar and Woods were both poetry teachers at Young Chicago Authors and would bring their kids from the program to the set. Asghar learned the ins and outs of creating a series while on the job—she wanted to share that experience with others, who wouldn’t normally get to see the process.

“I think having someone in your community make something, it’s like, ‘Oh, I can do that,’” Asghar says. “I don’t know if I would have written Brown Girls if I had not seen You’re So Talented, had I not seen someone I knew and loved make something like that.”

Asghar is already writing season two of the series, and she and Bailey hope to work together on larger television projects in the future. But for now they want to keep Brown Girls independent to maintain their creative control. It’s the best way for Asghar to continue telling the story of her strong, funny, and supportive relationship with Woods, so that others like them can see themselves onscreen.

“I wrote [Brown Girls] because I think that it’s really hard here to be a brown or black person, and a person of color and queer and a woman,” Asghar says. “To kind of navigate this space that I think so often tells you that you’re not worth anything. And I wanted to create something that would make my friends laugh. That was the goal. But to see it take off is really inspiring.” v

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jane Avril, Photograph by John Faier, © Driehaus Museum, 2016

Presenting Sponsor:

Sustaining Sponsors:

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40 East Erie, Chicago ILJ DriehausMuseum.org

ß @BriannaWellen FEBRUARY 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 17

We Are Chicago protagonist Aaron Davis and a friend are confronted by gang members in virtual Englewood. o COURTESY CULTURE SHOCK GAMES

Gaming empathy

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ou’re seated at the kitchen table, chatting with your mother, sister, and a classmate between bites of spaghetti when a gunshot rings out from somewhere near your house. Are you in danger? It’s possible, but you’ve lived in Englewood all your life and now that you’re 18 years old, you’re relatively used to the disruptive sound of random gunfire. And so you remain seated. “I’m so tired of all these shootings,” your ten-year-old sister, Taylor, says. “It’s like we’re prisoners in our own houses!” “We hear shots all the time,” your mom says, “but we don’t hear police sirens half as much.” Eventually dinner

18 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 9, 2017

Can a video game convey the psychological experience of living in a highcrime Chicago neighborhood?

BY RYAN SMITH

continues as usual, though the mood of the room has darkened considerably.

If that scenario had taken place in a typical video game, a player would’ve been given an opportunity to grab a pistol and leap from the table straight into a gunfight. But as the ordinary teenage character Aaron Davis in the not-so-ordinary video game We Are Chicago, you resume conversation as if nothing had happened. When James, your classmate, brings up the subject of post-high school aspirations, you’re presented with some dialogue options: Do you prompt Aaron to declare that he’s hoping to get away to college—or will you let him joke and say he’d

rather stay home and annoy his family?

With We Are Chicago, which will be released February 9 on PC through the Steam distribution platform, independent local developer Michael Block of Culture Shock Games has essentially built an antigame: a stubborn retort to the massacre-happy action titles that tend to top best-seller lists. While the Grand Theft Autos and Call of Dutys rely on gunplay and fisticuffs as the primary language for interacting with the world, acts of violence in We Are Chicago feel like aberrations that distract from the game’s real concern—managing the interpersonal relationships between Aaron and those around

him, including two friends who are members of rival gangs. Ultimately, We Are Chicago attempts to give a gamer some modicum of insight into the everyday existence of marginalized African-Americans living on the city’s south side, who cope with joblessness, divestment, and violence at disproportionately high levels.

As Aaron traverses a virtual version of Englewood the week before graduation, a player chooses phrases for him to utter during scenarios such as a slam poetry competition, a confrontation between gang members in a park, and a candlelight vigil for a friend who’s been gunned down. Will Aaron be polite and honest, or callous and selfish? Those choices in turn affect how others treat him. In the end, no choice Aaron is confronted with is kill-or-be-killed, and there’s no tidy or conventional narrative arc.

“Most gamers will say, ‘I need more violence and more action and more things happening,’ but we are trying to go a different direction. To me the interesting stuff comes out of experiencing the discussions people are having [in the game],” Block says. “I think if people are questioning whether or not your game is a game, you’re probably doing something right because you’re pushing boundaries.”

We Are Chicago isn’t a total anomaly. It’s the latest “empathy game,” a small but influential genre trying to change the industry’s status quo by aiming directly at players’ hearts instead of their adrenal glands. The game Papers, Please earned critical acclaim when it was released in 2013 for its exploration of immigration policy by way of putting the player in the role of a fictitious country’s border patrol officer, who decides the fate of migrants based on the government’s arcane and circuitous laws. Illustrator Richard Hofmeier’s Cart Life (2011), another empathy game, offers a study of working-class poverty from the perspective of a crudely animated street vendor the player inhabits.

We Are Chicago represents a big change for Block, a 28-year-old designer whose previous effort was as a programmer on a Chicagomade zombie-apocalypse-themed parody of the 80s “edutainment” game Oregon Trail.

Block wanted his next game to be something more serious. He found inspiration in May 2013 during a stint volunteering for the All Stars Project of Chicago, a nonprofit focused on aiding youth in low-income communities.

He listened to what he describes as “depress-

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“I think if people are questioning whether or not your game is a game, you’re probably doing something right because you’re pushing boundaries.”

-Michael Block, creator of We Are Chicago

Culture Shock Games developer Michael Block tapped longtime Englewood resident Tony Thornton to heighten the realism of the dialogue and setting in We Are Chicago. o CAROLINA SANCHEZ

ing and terrifying” firsthand accounts from residents who’d been assaulted, robbed, or shot in their neighborhoods, and he felt compelled to tell their stories.

That summer, Block began conducting interviews with disadvantaged black residents on the south and west sides about their dayto-day lives. He then hired Tony Thornton, 62, a longtime Englewood resident and former postal worker turned communications student at Kennedy-King College and aspir-

ing writer, to help fashion a narrative around those discussions. As a white north-sider, Block relied on Thornton to add a sense of realism to the dialogue and setting.

“I’d note things like that black folks don’t respond the same way to gunshots ringing out as white folks because we’ve experienced it,” Thornton says. “If we freaked out every time a gun fires, we’d never get anything done. That’s the world we live in.”

The game’s stark realism also dictates

that witnessing acts of violence is a rarity, although the threat of a shooting or other turbulence hangs over the community like a dark cloud. A gun is fired only twice in the four hours it takes to complete We Are Chicago, and the player isn’t directly involved in either instance—though he is jumped and held at gunpoint briefly. Much of the game feels like regular life, which is to say, it’s mostly a chore: Aaron walking his sister to and from school, taking math tests, helping

his overworked single mother with chores.

A significant portion is devoted to the teen’s time behind the counter of a fast-food restaurant—taking orders, completing transactions at a cash register, and delivering food to customers.

The idea of employing forced tedium to heighten the sense of realism was inspired by a talk Block heard by Hofmeier, the creator of Cart Life.

“He wanted the [games within the game] to feel tedious to the player, because that was what his character was feeling,” Block says.

“I loved that idea, so I wanted to duplicate it by having Aaron doing all these boring things like setting a table and manning the cash register. Then when drama, when the violence does happen, you can feel the contrast in a greater way.”

Block is working with the antigang organization Reclaim Our Kids to use We Are Chicago as a teaching tool as part of a pilot program for at-risk youth, but the game was initially designed for people like himself: middle-class or affluent whites for whom Chicago’s violent-crime statistics may seem like a distant abstraction. As a virtual slice of the lives of those directly affected by street gangs and rampant gun-related homicides, Block reasoned, the game could potentially help those removed from the violence consider the complex web of socioeconomic factors that give rise to and reinforce those conditions.

“We have these deep, complex characters instead of stereotypes—it helps to break down the idea that everyone on the south side is violent, a criminal, or lazy and not getting a job,” Block says. “I think putting privileged people in this space makes you identify more

FEBRUARY 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 19

We Are Chicago continued from 19 and not just say, ‘Hey, why join a gang? Why wouldn’t you just go out and get a job or go to school?’”

The objective, Block says, is also to refute the kind of law-and-order approach that people like President Donald Trump take when addressing problems in Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods. “Police may be a part of the solution, but they’re not going to fix it.

There are deep underlying social problems we talk about in the game—about [lack of] employment and educational opportunities.”

Block believes that a video game like We Are Chicago can be a tool for creating compassion—one even more effective than a newspaper article or documentary film because of the medium’s interactivity.

“It’s much more impactful to make a choice rather than simply watch someone else make it for you,” Block says. “The power that games have is that they give you agency and force you to think more deeply about what’s happening in order to make decisions to progress the story.”

But there’s no evidence that even empathy games successfully engender empathy. Video games, particularly first-person shooters, are thought to function in the opposite way, corroding our humanity despite designers’ attempts to f lesh out characters and add depth to story lines. That’s one reason games are such an easy target for politicians and media commentators in the aftermath of a school massacre.

Proof of video games’ inf luence on our minds is scant perhaps because walking in someone else’s shoes in a game means pushing a control stick to move a character’s pixelated feet rather than identifying with their attitudes and emotional state. The emotional response evoked by a game is usually more physical than psychological, the result of some kind of a simple external thrill: the giddy rush while leaping across rooftops in Assassin’s Creed or the white-knuckled anxiety that comes from navigating a sharp turn at high speed while behind the wheel of a sports car in Gran Turismo.

Using a video game to influence someone’s deeply held stereotypes about a segregated city’s marginalized communities is infinitely more complicated—but that’s not to say it’s impossible. Roger Ebert once described film as “a machine that generates empathy.” If We Are Chicago works as intended, the next great empathy machine may run on Windows. v

ß @RyanSmithWriter 20 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 9, 2017

ARTS & CULTURE Gabriel Ruiz as Abe o JOEL MAISONET

THEATER

The wolf of the west side

By JUSTIN HAYFORD

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ith his consuming 85-minute drama The Wolf at the End of the Block, given a compelling Teatro Vista world premiere under Ricardo Gutiérrez’s air-tight direction, Chicago playwright Ike Holter shows he’s gloriously out of step with current trends among big-name, award-winning American playwrights. While like many of them he writes about pressing social issues, here the debilitating effects of police oppression on a majority-nonwhite community like Humboldt Park, he never wastes a moment, never lets his characters dawdle through extended demonstrations of their quirks, never diddles around the edges of his story in search of “interesting” but dramatically irrelevant encounters. He avoids moral schematics and easy sympathy. And most uniquely, he never mistakes forced poesis or overworked metaphors for dialogue.

In short, Holter’s written a play rather than a display. Given recent tendencies, he’ll never win a Pulitzer Prize or MacArthur Fellowship. But most playwrights who have could learn a lot from him.

Holter seems not to fully understand his own achievement. He calls Wolf a thriller, a notion amplified by promotional materials that tout the play’s “escalating mystery” with clues that “spiral into a razor sharp jigsaw.” But Wolf is simply the story of three working-class people—perpetual underdog Abe, his smothering sister Miranda, and his big-hearted boss Nunley—whose lives are upended by violence, in particular the kind of state-sanctioned violence these characters believe stalks them around every corner.

Sure, it’s not entirely clear at first who assaulted Abe in a dark alley moments before the play begins. But what really matters is the community’s perception of the attack: no one has any difficulty believing it was an off-duty cop who, out of the blue, called Abe much worse than a spic. These are people trained to see themselves as targets, and dispensable ones at that.

The question that matters to Holter is not who attacked Abe but what, if anything, anyone is going to do about it. At first, the answer seems to be “nothing, as ever.” While Abe’s story is overly familiar to everyone in

his circle (Nunley’s uncle, a lawyer, got three years in prison for raising his hands nondefensively when a police officer tackled him), Abe is an unlikely champion of political resistance.

He has stumbled through life, drinking too much, losing dead-end jobs, learning early from his father to keep his eyes down in the face of white authority. But with zealous encouragement from Miranda, Abe meets with Frida Vertalo, a television investigative reporter who, in Miranda’s words, is “the biggest brown lady blowing up since Oprah.” If she airs his story, maybe things will change. And more than likely, Abe’s increased visibility will turn him into an even bigger magnet for police harassment. Abe’s conflicted stance in the face of media exposure becomes the play’s defining crisis.

Yet Frida’s passionate interest in Abe’s story is the play’s great misstep. If a single report from Frida could seriously challenge systemic police misconduct—and nothing in the play makes us question everyone’s belief that it might—then she must be a prominent national media figure (her assertion that anyone would kill for a producer’s credit on her piece makes it clear she’s not working for local news). As such, she’s scrupulous, schooling Miranda, “You need to double-check the sources, and the work and get backups, and testimonial, and a lawyer, video, voices, facts.” Yet she’s ready to air Abe’s allegations 48 hours after the attack with no corroborating witnesses, no surveillance video, no filed court case or IPRA charge, not even a medical opinion that his injuries likely resulted from an assault rather than, say, falling down a flight of stairs.

Still, it’s a testament to Holter’s razor-sharp dramatics and Gutiérrez’s breathless pacing that this enormous lapse in plausibility feels like a minor quibble. Perhaps that’s in large part because Holter’s ultimate interest lies not in the actions his characters take to challenge injustice but the ethical compromises they’ll accept—or disguise—in order to achieve that goal. In this complicated, slippery world, a step toward the truth is always compromising.

It’s a thrilling human mess. v R THE WOLF AT THE END OF THE BLOCK Through 2/26: ThuSat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Victory Gardens Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln, 773-871-3000, teatrovista.org, $20-$30.

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b ALL AGES

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E Kat Christensen and Ariana Silvan-Grau in Mine-Haha, or On the Bodily Education of Young Girls o ANNA H GELMAN

Adapted from the novel by EDITH NESBIT

JAN 31 - FEB 12 AGES 6 & UP

THEATER

Notes from the fringe at Rhinofest

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or two years now I’ve been giving the producers of the Rhinoceros Theater Festival a hard time over whether they can legitimately call their curated event a fringe fest.

Last week I even offered them an alternate term, “tribal convocation,” which I consider more accurate and even kind of sweet. Will they use it? They have my permission.

For all that, the 2017 Rhinofest proceeds through February 26 with a distinctly fringey air. The 14 entries I’ve seen vary widely in scope, style, subject matter, creativity, eccentricity, and, yes, quality. Also, practically all of them involve Chicago-based artists, which makes the fest a good place to find out who’s who and what might be next. My first report covered seven shows worth talking about.

Here are some more: The best of this batch is BEST OF “THE BOWMAN BROTHERS RADIO HOUR” (Fri 7 PM), an odd, loose, funny variation on the liveradio-style theatrical format. The Bowmans (Mitch Salm and Brian Byrne) stand at a single microphone and narrate scenes from the exquisitely hapless life of a schlemiel named Jonathan. We meet his impatient wife, crass in-laws, manipulative therapist, and outperforming colleague, all of whom seem bent on confirming his growing sense that he’s “nothing.” Jonathan looks for a new job only to find his current one posted as available, lets a waitress eat from his plate, has an epiphany nobody wants to hear about. Perhaps worst of all, Salm and Byrne switch off playing him, as if not even they acknowledge his being. It’s contemporary Kafka, played for laughs.

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By TONY ADLER Adam Webster’s FOOTNOTES FOR AN APOLOGY (Sat 5 PM) comprises ten brief mono- and duologues on subjects ranging from anguish (a woman angrily refutes the idea that she’s beautiful) to acceptance (a divorced couple rebond by phone). Some of the ten feel fragmentary: speeches from as yet unwritten plays.

But several convey a quiet, everyday grace.

Like the antibeauty character in Footnotes, Eileen Tull obsesses over body image and failed intimacy. In BAD DATES, OR WHAT KILLED THAT MONKEY IN INDIANA JONES ONLY MAKES ME STRONGER (Thu 9 PM) she uses her unnatural attachment to Harrison Ford as cover for some fairly retrograde—i.e., pre-Amy Schumer—loser-woman comedy. What saves the evening is Tull’s easy style, candor, and apparently encyclopedic knowledge of Ford’s filmography.

Ending on a down note, Penultimate Mohicans’ .44 CROMAGNUM (Wed 9 PM) aims to be a Platonic disquisition on the relative value of brain vs. brawn vs. skill but misses badly thanks to intellectual cutesiness and a perfect lack of momentum. A bleak, didactic take on ballet training (picture Edward Gorey sans humor), Organic Theater’s MINE-HAHA, OR ON THE BODILY EDUCATION OF YOUNG GIRLS (Thu 7 PM) fails to communicate anything richer than its own indignation. vRHINOFEST Through 2/28: Wed-Fri 7 and 9 PM; Sat 2, 5, 7, 9, and 10:30 PM; Sun 2, 5, and 7 PM; Mon 7 and 9 PM, Prop Thtr, 3502 N. Elston, 773-539-7838, rhinofest.com, $12 in advance, $15 or pay what you can at the door.

1 0 0 S . R AC I N E AV E N U E

WORLD PREMIERE

C H I C A G O C H I L D R E N S T H E AT R E . O R G

US IS THEM January 27 – May 14, 2017

US IS THEM is a powerful exhibition of works by 42 international artists who confront issues of politics, religion, and racism. The exhibition presents more than 50 individual contemporary artworks across a diverse range of media including painting, sculpture, photography, and video.

Art from the Pizzuti Collection Kehinde Wiley, Design for a Stained Glass Window with Wild Man (detail), 2006.

Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts uica.org

ß @taadler FEBRUARY 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 21

ARTS & CULTURE

Kjell Theøry o GRACE DUVAL

VISUAL ART

Alan Turing, the prophet Tiresias, and 40,049 newborn babies

By SASHA GEFFEN

D

eveloped during the past two and a half years by Chicago-based collective ATOM-R (Anatomical Theatres of Mixed Reality), the performance piece Kjell Theøry bores virtual holes in the traditional theater experience.

Staged in the Graham Foundation ballroom over the last three weekends, the work made extensive use of wall projections, live streams, and algorithmically generated text to create a layered, hypnotic dream space. Its four performers engaged with technology on a visceral level, drawing the familiar tools of iPhones and MacBooks into a luminous collaborative dialogue between human bodies and machines programmed to speak to them.

ATOM-R plays in the liminal areas between defined categories, and “Kjell Theøry,” the third and final installment of its artist’s residency at the International Museum of Surgical Science, blurs multiple lines: between performance art and theater, theater and installation

22 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 9, 2017

art, installation art and video, video and poetry. The group aims to question formal practice, the boundaries and binaries that tend to delimit image making and performance. By confounding form, ATOM-R simultaneously grapples with historical mechanics of homosexuality and queerness, and with how queer aesthetics have carried over to a society newly augmented by technology.

“There’s a sense of vaudeville, a sense of debauchery, a sense of working on a very theatrical manner,” Mark Jeffery, ATOM-R’s choreographer, told me after a rehearsal. “It feels quite new to me, to be playing with these techniques. It’s a sort of returning to the physical, returning to the historical, to understand how you present that in the virtual.”

Accompanying the performances but still on view through April 9 is “Kjell Theøry: Prologue,” an interactive exhibition spanning two rooms at IMSS. One room of the experience is a filmed re-creation of the performance itself,

captured in three different environments: a “film shoot room,” as Jeffery describes it, at the School of the Art Institute; another room in the IMSS; and the Lucky Horseshoe, a gay bar in Boystown. The exhibit’s second chamber, filled with objects, merges ATOM-R’s past work with its current performance: A table from The Operature, the group’s second work with the IMSS, is split into five pieces that each stand vertically. There’s a scale model of an anatomical theater—a structure once used to teach anatomy and surgery, beginning in the 16th century—whose aesthetics guided the development of The Operature.

“Kjell Theøry: Prologue” builds on these recycled images by hanging an augmented reality viewer—an iPad with AR software loaded onto it—in the center of the room. Visitors can point the device’s camera around the space and see text mapped on top of their surroundings; they can also see renderings of ATOM-R’s performers, modeled from 3-D scans of the

collective’s bodies. The group appears in the performance and its prologue, in one space virtually and the other physically.

The project braids together three distinct historical sources. It’s named for a theory of biology formulated by Alan Turing, the British scientist now known as the father of modern computing, toward the end of his life. Turing himself named Kjell theory after a young Norwegian man who was likely his lover. In 1952 Turing was convicted of crimes of indecency for having a relationship with another man. He was given the choice of being imprisoned or chemically castrated—he chose the latter and was injected with synthetic estrogen, which caused him to grow small breasts.

Mingling with Turing’s theories and writings are The Breasts of Tiresias, a 1917 play

by French poet Guillaume Apollinaire about a Frenchwoman who transforms into the prophet Tiresias, and her husband, who with other Frenchmen becomes female and gives birth to 40,049 babies. The play, for which Apollinaire coined the term “surrealism,” was written after World War I to encourage men to replenish the country’s population. “Kjell Theøry” also draws upon 1928 film footage of the ’Obby ’Oss festival, an annual fertility ritual held in the Cornwall town of Padstow, in which performers dress up as horses who “impregnate” young women by gathering them under their skirts.

None of these source texts is reenacted in the piece; instead, they’re interwoven, and the harmonies among them grow clearer the longer the performance goes on. “We borrow from the containers of the past, but actually it’s through those lenses that suddenly you start to see a sense of the contemporary, a sense of the uncanny, a sense of the surreal,” Jeffery says.

Even the initial stages of the piece’s development came together through an uncanny simultaneity. While Jeffery was digging into the ’Obby ’Oss festival, Judd Morrissey, who writes scripts and computer code and also performs in ATOM-R, had begun researching Turing’s final years. “Turing had visited Norway towards the end of his life because of the oppression that he had been facing in Britain,” Morrissey says. “I just had this image of him in Norway with small breasts, and that image made me think of Tiresias in the sense of Turing being really a prophet of the age we live in now. You can trace almost anything to him—computer science, biology, even computer music—anything having to do with the computational age.”

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CENSORSHIP, UNICORNS, SEXISM—no topic is too sensitive or outrageous for Karen Finley. The Chicago native will visit Steppenwolf for a pair of shows: Written in Sand, on February 10 and 11, and Unicorn Gratitude Mystery, on February 17 and 18.

This Friday and Saturday, Finley presents Written in Sand, a spoken-word performance of her writings from the 1980s and ’90s, which criticize the homophobia and governmental indifference surrounding the AIDS crisis.

Informed by Finley’s own experiences, the show commemorates the hundreds of thousands of AIDS victims in America who lost their lives during the peak of the epidemic. Many of Finley’s pieces have been staples in her performance repertoire for decades; a number of them were censored by the National Endowment for the Arts and led to her famous 1998 Supreme Court case against the organization.

The following weekend, Finley returns to the theater for a presentation of her one-woman show Unicorn Gratitude Mystery.

The production exposes the complicated intersections of psychology, sex, and gender seen throughout the 2016 presidential election. Finley first enters the stage as a sequinclad unicorn and returns for the second act as an apologetic, overly thankful rendition of Hillary Clinton—a satirical portrait, representative of the excessive gratitude and politeness female politicians are expected to command when they run for office. The show hits its peak in the third act, when Finley dons an ill-fitting suit and red baseball cap for a ruthless, unrestrained impression of Trump that rips at his numerous lies and hypocrisies.

—ABBEY SCHUBERT WRITTEN IN SAND, Fri 2/10-Sat 2/11, 8 PM; UNICORN GRATITUDE MYSTERY, Fri 2/17-Sat 2/18, 8 PM, Steppenwolf The-

ß @sashageffen

atre, 1700 Theatre, 1700 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, steppenwolf.org, $25.

o MAX RUBY

The image of Turing as Tiresias brought Morrissey to Apollinaire’s play, itself a kind of fertility ritual echoing the festival of the ’Oss. Images of fecundity and transformation drove Kjell Theøry, which was developed across multiple iterations during the past two years at residencies in Finland and the United Kingdom. “There’s something really strange about the sources that are sort of timeless,” Morrissey says. “They have very different readings when enacted in different contexts, and are mutated by those contexts—both the political context and the technical context.”

“I think both the play and the ritual are disrupting each other,” Jeffery adds. “I think that allows for us to open up that conversation a bit more around the sense of queerness, the sense of strangeness, the sense of something that’s surreal, the sense of something between gender or between animal and ritual or between mythical and mystical. With the work that we do, the material always has to be transformed. There’s a sense of excavation or exhuming, pulling something out of the ground and treating it.”

Witnessing that exhumation live is thrilling in the way it speaks to the surreal juxtapositions inherent in everyday, digitized life. Tweets jumble on top of each other—the app makes no distinction between bad news and bad jokes, and the continuity of experience within the screen alone feels disjointed, to say nothing of the discordance between the screen and physical space. In Kjell Theøry, moments of comedy, absurdity, and solemn reverence appear spontaneously.

At one point in the performance I saw, Morrissey spoke to a wall projection, and the computer attached to the projector appeared to “hear” his words and repeat them back to him in a synthetic female voice. Often, it got them wrong. At one point, when Morrissey was describing Tiresias, the computer added, as if from nowhere, the words “he has long hair.” It was as if it were witnessing the prophet’s gender transformation firsthand, as if the machine could see it better than any of us. v R “KJELL THEØRY: PROLOGUE” Through 4/9: Tue-Fri 10 AM-4 PM, Sat-Sun 10 AM-5 PM, International Museum of Surgical Science, 1524 N. Lake Shore, 312-642-6502, imss.org. $15, $10 seniors, students, and military, free for members and children four-13

THEATER

Karen Finley fights back

FEBRUARY 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 23

Get showtimes at chicagoreader.com/movies.

ARTS & CULTURE ssss EXCELLENT sss GOOD ss AVERAGE s POOR • WORTHLESS

MOVIES

Stars of stage and screen

By J.R. JONES

Fanny

F

or the next two weeks Gene Siskel Film Center presents a new digital restoration of Marcel Pagnol’s beloved “Marseille Trilogy,” three long dramatic features—Marius (1931), Fanny (1932), and César (1936)—about a fractured family in the French seaside town. A tale of parenthood and its heartache, the movies struck an emotional chord in France and were enormously successful. Critics noted their lack of visual invention, calling them “canned theater,” but the movies, arriving near the dawn of the talkies, laid down a marker of sorts with their resolutely theatrical style. Pagnol was a popular playwright in Marseille before he got into movies, and both Marius and Fanny had originated on the stage before he produced them for the screen. “The talking film is the art of printing, fixing, and propagating theatre,” he once wrote, and to that end, the trilogy’s sedate visual style focuses one’s attention on the actors and their simple, eloquent dialogue.

None are shown to greater advantage than Orane Demazis as the self-sacrificing mother figure in Pagnol’s story and Raimu as the disappointed father figure.

As film scholar Ginette Vincendeau has pointed out, Pagnol was versed in the various theatrical entertainments available in Marseille, which rivaled Paris as a cultural hot spot, and the trilogy is steeped in the conventions of stage melodrama. Fanny (Demazis) and Marius (Pierre Fresnay) have known each other since they were toddlers, and she adores

24 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 9, 2017

him; Marius can look forward to inheriting the seaside bar owned by his widowed father, César (Raimu), but he dreams of going to sea.

At the end of Marius, Fanny urges Marius to accept an opening on a commercial ship headed to Australia and even sleeps with him before he departs; in Fanny, she discovers that she’s pregnant and, unable to reach Marius, shields herself, her mother, and her unborn child from disgrace by marrying Panisse (Fernand Charpin), a widowed sail merchant 30 years her senior, and passing the child off as his. César picks up the story 20 years later, when Panisse has died and the child, now a young man, discovers the truth about his upbringing and brings Marius and Fanny together again to reckon with their past.

Pagnol’s accomplishment with the Marseille Trilogy was to embrace the keen emotion of stage melodrama and yet, working with directors Alexander Korda and Marc Allégret, scale it down to the intimate space of the cinema.

Demazis, who had been working with Pagnol in the theater since 1927 (and would give birth to his child in 1933), is extraordinary in all three movies, playing the central female character in a story governed by the desires of men. Fanny loves Marius with a devotion so pure it seems almost spiritual; in Marius, when he announces that he’s going off to sea, she finally reveals her feelings to him. “For years I’ve waited to grow up so I could become your wife,” she confesses, painfully vulnerable. Someone knocks at the door to collect Marius, which so startles

THE MARSEILLE TRILOGY ssss Marius, directed by Alexander Korda. 127 min. Sat 2/11, 2:45 PM, and Mon 2/13, 6 PM. Fanny, directed by Marc Allégret.

127 min, Sat 2/11, 5:15 PM, and Wed 2/15, 6 PM. César, directed by Marcel Pagnol.

142 min. Sat 2/18, 3 PM, and Mon 2/20, 6:30 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center, 165 N. State, 312-846-2800, siskelfilmcenter.org, $11 each or $25 for all three films.

Fanny that she throws her arms around him in a panic; the movement would seem too big for the screen if her emotion weren’t so palpable.

A later scene in Fanny shows how subtly Demazis draws on the swoon, an archetypal gesture in melodrama: after Fanny and César have read over a letter from the departed Marius, with all the strong emotion it brings, they stand up, and for just a moment Fanny falls back against the old man.

The bearish Raimu had gotten his start in the French music halls before breaking into the legitimate theater, and his range is formidable; all three movies call on him to perform comedy and pathos in relatively quick succession, sometimes in the same scene. Drinking at the bar with his buddies, a crew of seaside eccentrics whom Pagnol employs as a sort of Greek chorus, César is an expansive figure, bobbing around and waving his arms as they work their way through various comic arguments. In other scenes Raimu is more restrained, underplaying powerful moments so artfully that you understand why Orson Welles thought highly of him. In Marius, when Fanny reveals to César that Marius has left home, the old man is hit so hard by his son’s rejection that he seems dazed and exhausted, weakly pulling Fanny’s arms from around his shoulders and struggling to stand up. In a sense, he and Fanny are bound by their helpless love for Marius.

By the time Pagnol turned his attention to completing the trilogy with César, he’d founded his own movie studio in Marseille and assumed the director’s duties himself.

The last film is noticeably more polished than its predecessors, largely because the techniques for recording film soundtracks evolved so rapidly in the interim, and Pagnol makes a concerted effort to open up the movie with more location shooting. The original cast members, whom Pagnol took great pains to reunite, are more experienced in front of the camera as well. César, taking place two decades after Marius left home, shows how heavily the fiction surrounding Fanny’s son, Césariot (André Fouché), has weighed on both Fanny and César. Fanny has accumulated years of anger toward Marius, her mother, and the circumstances that crowded her into a false marriage; César loves his illegitimate grandson and regrets the tangled situation his son created. The Marseille Trilogy, with its heavy debt to the theatrical experience, may seem like a relic now, but in emotional terms it hasn’t aged a day. v

ß @JR_Jones

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ARTS & CULTURE

R

OSCAR NOMINATED SHORT FILMS 2017

Animation: 87 min. Landmark’s Century Centre, 2828 N. Clark, 773-509-4949, landmarktheatres.com, $12.50

MOVIES

The little envelope, please

Documentary: Program A, 76 min. Sat 2/11 and Sun 2/19, 11:30 AM. Program B, 85 min. Sun 2/12 and Sat 2/18, 11:30 AM. Music Box, 3733 N. Southport, 773-871-6604, musicboxtheatre.com, $11 per program Live Action: 134 min.

Landmark’s Century Centre, 2828 N. Clark, 773-509-4949, landmarktheatres.com, $12.50

Three takes on the Oscar nominees for best short film Sing

ANIMATION According to the online bookmakers, the oddson favorite to win this year’s Oscar for best animated short film is Alan Barillaro’s PIPER (6 min.), an adorable frolic in which a baby sandpiper discovers the ocean as a source of food and fun. Created by Pixar, this pixel-perfect short was distributed last summer as an opening attraction for the studio’s monster hit Finding Dory, which grossed more than a billion dollars worldwide; that means Piper was seen by more than four times as many people as have seen La La Land, the top-grossing nominee for best picture. I’d hate to be one of the other animators sitting hopelessly in the Dolby Theatre on Oscar night—especially since most of them have better films in competition than Barillaro’s innocent piece of fluff.

One of those films is Robert Valley’s adult-oriented Canadian short PEAR CIDER AND CIGARETTES (35 min.), which screens last on the program should parents want to shoo their children out of the theater. Resembling a graphic novel, Valley’s drama unfolds from the visual perspective of its voice-over narrator, a twentysomething guy recalling the rocky

life of his old high school pal Techno Styles.

A gifted athlete with a thirst for booze and a talent for getting into trouble, Techno suffered a great misfortune during senior year by getting badly banged up in a car accident, and an even greater misfortune a few years later by receiving a $1.5 million insurance settlement to spend as he pleased. The party never ended, and as the film opens, the narrator is flying out to China, at the behest of Techno’s father, to mind Techno as he awaits a liver transplant at a military hospital in Guangzhou. The narration is crafted like a short story, measuring the shifting distance between two people as life rolls on, and the sleek, meticulously shaded images reinforce the sense of a shabby jet-setter on a one-way journey to destruction.

Tear open my envelope and you’ll find the rightful winner to be Theodore Ushev’s BLIND VAYSHA (8 min.), a tale so simple, strange, and paradoxical it may leave both children and adults awestruck. Funded by the invaluable National Film Board of Canada and adapted from a 2001 story by Georgi Gospodinov, the short is drawn in spare woodcut style, its landscapes roiling with clouds that call to mind Van Gogh. In a little village, a girl is born with a left eye that perceives the past and a right

eye that perceives the future, and no folk remedy available to her family or community will resolve this bifurcated vision. Presented with suitors as a young woman, she sees children in her left eye and doddering old men in her right; as a voice-over narrator explains, she has no sense of the present. For grown-ups, Blind Vaysha is an allegory about the difficulty of living in the moment; for kids, it’s just freakin’ weird. —J.R. JONES

DOCUMENTARY Like millions across the world, Oscar voters have their eyes on Syria, as evidenced by three of the five films nominated for best documentary short. 4.1 MILES (22 min., program A), by Greek-American director Daphne Matziaraki, follows a coast guard captain from the Greek island of Lesbos as he and his beleaguered crew save some 200 refugees a day, mostly Syrian, who’ve fled Turkey on flimsy dinghies.

The terror and desperation of the migrants bobbing in the choppy Aegean waters unsettle the captain, who is nearly undone by fatigue and sorrow over those claimed by the sea.

Marcel Mettelsiefen’s German short WATANI:

MY HOMELAND (39 min., program B) tells the bittersweet story of an Aleppo woman who loses her husband to ISIS, then finds sanctuary and hope when her family is embraced by a German town.

But the strongest entry this year is Orlando von Einsiedel’s British short THE WHITE HELMETS (40 min., program B), about the 3,000 volunteers of the Syria Civil Defense who serve as neutral, noncombatant first responders to victims inside rebel-controlled areas. Relentlessly attacked by Bashar al-Assad’s regime, its Russian allies, and ISIS, these civilians are the primary targets of high-explosive barrel bombs that rain down on homes, hospitals, and wedding halls. With no tracking devices, the White Helmets watch from rooftops for approaching aircraft and then follow the smoke clouds to find the living and bury the dead. Eventually the Helmets themselves are targeted in “double-tap” air strikes, in which planes bomb a site and then resume their pounding when the responders have arrived.

The cinematography has an immediacy not seen in TV news reports (especially since few Western journalists get inside Syria anymore), with vivid images of a White Helmet team as they rejoice over saving a week- J

FEBRUARY 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 25

ARTS & CULTURE RSM

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Sunday, February 12 @ 8:00pm Mon-Tue, Thr, Feb 13-14, 16 @ 9:00pm

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Blind Vaysha

continued from 25 old infant and uncover the body of a girl, still wearing her oxygen mask, from the rubble of a medical center. Much of the Aleppo footage was shot by 21-year-old Khaled Khateeb, a local who first began recording the war as a teenager. Von Einsiedel took over filming the White Helmets when they arrived in Turkey for advanced training in emergency aid, and shows them in drills and individual interviews. These one-on-ones are the soul of the movie, as the men—in their former lives, a builder, a blacksmith, a tailor—affirm their belief in humanity and a better tomorrow.

—ANDREA GRONVALL

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Of the five live-action shorts nominated this year, three focus on personal fulfillment. Juanjo Giménez Peña’s Spanish short TIMECODE (15 min.), which won the Palme d’Or for short film at the 2016 Cannes film festival, centers on two security guards, Luna and Diego, who work the day shift and night shift, respectively, at a parking lot in Madrid. Luna, asked by her boss to check a time code on one of the security cameras, catches Diego, on his shift, dancing through the lot with abandon, which inspires her to join him. In Aske Bang’s Danish short SILENT NIGHTS (30 min.), a woman struggles to care for her senile, racist mother even as she volunteers at a homeless shelter in Copenhagen; there she serves and eventually falls in love with an immigrant from Ghana, though unbeknownst to her he has a wife and

three children waiting for him back home. And Timo von Gunten’s resplendent Swiss short LA FEMME ET LA TGV (30 min.) takes place in a storybook village where a lonely septuagenarian (Jane Birkin) waves at the TGV train each morning as it rushes by her window. One day the conductor tosses a letter into her garden, and they begin a passionate correspondence.

Recurring pops of robin’s-egg blue—in her bicycle, her scarf, and the shutters of her cottage—suggest an internal wellspring of romance and vitality that she poignantly uncaps.

The other two shorts are overtly political, and they throb with an urgency the others lack. The French short ENNEMIS INTERIEURS, or “Enemies Within,” (28 min.) takes place in the 1990s, as an Algerian man applying for French citizenship faces off with an inspector who questions his allegiance (“Did your father take the Algerian side during the Algerian War?”) and prods him about “meetings” with Muslim friends. Written and directed by Selim Azzazi, the film sharply rebukes nationalism and xenophobia without preaching; the human element takes precedent, complicated by the fact that both the inspector and his subject are brown skinned. The most powerful film of the bunch, Kristóf Deák’s Hungarian short SING (25 min.), makes a strong political statement through an allegory involving a school choir. Miss Erika, the conductor, accepts every child who wants to join, but she instructs the untalented ones to mime the pieces so the choir can keep winning national competitions. Eventually the children as a group wise up, and the climactic scene, which I won’t spoil, is simple, chilling, and stirring all at once. —LEAH PICKETT v

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Chicago musicians speak up about the Affordable Care Act Before the ACA, musicians were uninsured at more than twice the average rate—and with Trump pushing a repeal, they’re already suffering.

By LEE V. GAINES Illustrations by BOBBY SIMS

T

he Trump regime’s flood of attacks on democratic norms, rule of law, and vulnerable populations—most prominently its widely contested ban on immigrants and refugees from seven majority-Muslim countries—can seem calculated to induce outrage fatigue in Americans determined to oppose it. But it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, remains a high priority of this administration.

A week before Trump’s inauguration, the Republican-controlled House and Senate took the first steps in dismantling Obama’s health-care law—which has helped provide medical insurance to J

FEBRUARY 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 27

MUSICIANS & THE ACA

roughly 20 million people over the past three years—with votes that set the stage for eliminating some of its most important provisions.

This year’s deadline to enroll for insurance through the ACA exchanges was January 31, and in the week preceding, the Trump administration attempted to stop all ACArelated advertising and outreach.

Trump has promised repeatedly to repeal and replace the law, but so far the GOP has failed to provide a coherent proposal for a replacement— much less a replacement that would allow so many Americans to afford coverage. Losing the ACA would hit certain populations especially hard—among them people with preexisting conditions, the poor, and the self-employed, including artists and musicians.

Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law in 2010. It aimed to make health insurance less expensive for people with employer-provided plans and to reduce health care costs in general. Individual plans had previously cost too much for most Americans to afford on their own, but the ACA paved the way for government-administered state and federal exchanges through which people can buy insurance—more than 85 percent of those who’ve signed up via the exchanges have received subsidies to help cover the cost of their policies.

The law also expanded Medicaid eligibility, allowed young adults to stay on their parents’ plans till age 26, and barred insurers from denying coverage due to preexisting conditions—which include not just chronic illnesses but also, in a uniquely insurance-company way of viewing the world, pregnancy.

The most maligned component of the ACA is probably its insura nce mandate, wh ich requires that all eligible citizens get some form of health insurance or face a tax penalty. The mandate was intended to motivate healthy people to sign up through the exchanges, in order to spread out the cost of covering the sick—that is, to help insurance work the way it’s sup-

posed to. The mandate also protects insurance companies’ profits in an attempt to keep them participating in the ACA marketplace.

This dynamic underlines the ACA’s major f law—it diverts a vast amount of taxpayer money to insurance companies, and its effectiveness remains subject to their whims. Like any large, complex government program, it’s also ridiculously vulnerable to sabotage by political opponents. After the GOP fought for years against using Health and Human Services funds to pay insurers the full amount they’d been promised under the ACA, people who’d bought plans through the exchanges saw their premiums rise steeply, in some parts of the country more than 100 percent. (To be fair, subsidies rose along with premiums—and in other areas, premiums actually fell.) Another result of this obstructionism is that many insurance companies have sued the government and pulled out of the exchanges.

Despite its problems and limitations, though, the ACA reduced the proportion of uninsured adults from 17 percent in 2013 (right before the mandate took effect) to 11 percent in 2016, according to Gallup. And because the public and the insurance marketplace have adapted to the ACA, a repeal of its key provisions—the Medicaid expansion, the exchange subsidies, the individual and employer mandates—could cause such serious disruption that the country would be left worse off than before it was enacted.

A December 2016 paper by the Urban Institute (a think tank founded in 1968 by the Lyndon B. Johnson administration) predicts that by 2019 the number of uninsured people would rise from 28.9 million to 58.7 million, an increase to 21 percent of the nonelderly population.

And whether or not you’re insured can be a matter of life or death.

A 2012 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found significant reductions in mortality rates in states that had expanded Medicaid coverage. The year before

28 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 9, 2017

the ACA passed, a study conducted at Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance concluded that uninsured working-age adults have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured peers. And musicians are much more likely than the general population to be uninsured.

A 2013 survey of more than 3,400 musicians by the Future of Music Coalition (a nonprofit engaged in education, research, and advocacy) found that 43 percent didn’t have health insurance, well more than double the rate among working-age adults nationwide. Of those uninsured, 88 percent said they simply couldn’t afford coverage. Additionally, a survey of more than 2,200 artists conducted by the University of Westminster (and published by the charity Help Musicians UK) found that musicians suffer from depression and anxiety at greater rates than average, linking those struggles to their precarious working conditions, including difficulty making ends meet.

If you have a stable job and employer-provided health insurance, you may have a tough time imagining how hard it can be to

make music for a living. “This is a population that is more vulnerable on this issue than the general population,” says Kevin Erickson, national organizing director for the Future of Music Coalition.

“Musicians are often working on a freelance basis, balancing multiple gigs and income streams.”

Because few bosses will accommodate an employee who takes time off to play gigs or tour, most full-time musicians are shut out of employer-provided insurance. Their incomes often fluctuate wildly from month to month. Before the ACA, Erickson says, musicians generally couldn’t afford the individual plans offered by insurers—or else they failed to qualify for coverage due to preexisting conditions.

Preventive care is important to touring musicians, who often put in long hours without sleep, load heavy equipment, and do without healthy food on the road. But without affordable health insurance, it’s unlikely they’ll get such care, Erickson says. Illness, accident, or injury can easily end the career of musicians without insurance, if not bankrupt them.

The Future of Music Coalition

hasn’t been able to secure funding for a follow-up survey to find out how many musicians have gained health insurance thanks to the ACA, but Erickson has plenty of anecotal evidence. “We’re seeing so many stories of musicians getting insurance for the first time,” he says, “so we anticipate the numbers of uninsured musicians to be way, way down.”

Even today, with the ACA still in full effect, uncertainty about the GOP’s plans for the law has thrown the insurance market into turmoil— more insurers may leave the program or hike their premiums, trying to hedge their bets against a repeal of the mandate or further Republican underfunding. And musicians are feeling the pain.

The Reader put out an open call inviting Chicago musicians to share their experiences with the ACA, and despite the taboos surrounding the public discussion of health and finances, more people replied than this piece could accommodate. The responses that the Reader elected to publish, which have been edited for clarity, call attention to the sacrifices these artists make in order to contribute to the city’s culture.

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MUSICIANS & THE ACA

o CHANDLER WEST; C.B. LINDSEY; JIM NEWBERRY; KEN GE; MEET THE CHUMBEQUES; JUSTIN CORBETT

Che Smith, 39 AKA RAPPER RHYMEFEST As the national debate builds about the repeal and replacement of the ACA, all I can do is contemplate how long a 39-year-old AfricanAmerican male musician with type 2 diabetes can survive without proper care. That musician would be me.

Regardless of how many awards I’ve won, none of them came with cash prizes. The cost of health care is still an outrageous expense for many entrepreneurs.

I’ll be the first to admit that the ACA was far from perfect and even affordable, depending on the month in politics. However, I was able to get coverage that wasn’t previously available and a $20,000 cornea operation that saved my sight. That has to count for something.

Americans aren’t asking for “free stuff.”

We’re just asking our politicians to stop hurting their constituents by setting progress backward.

Ask yourself: How long can you live without the proper care? Let the answer be your guide to better policy.

Natalie Grace Alford, 29 SOLO POP ARTIST

I am a homemaker by day and musician by night. My fiancé supports me financially and has done so

since I began having serious problems with bipolar disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder.

I was diagnosed when I was 24, but my serious breakdown began around age 26. I started to have vivid hallucinations, both audial and visual.

Part of the reason I quit my job as a waitress was because my symptoms were getting worse and worse.

Believe me when I say the last place you want to have hallucinations is during a dinner rush with six full tables. It got to the point where I could not leave my apartment or I would begin crying and have an episode. I thought people were following me and going to attack me.

I was suicidal every day, and I can’t begin to tell you how dangerous I was to myself. Before long I couldn’t listen to music. I’d get angry due to a delusional thought pattern in which songs reminded me of my failure as a musician. I refused to play or go to shows, and I wouldn’t see my friends.

I was a prisoner, and my mind was the warden. Because of this, I applied for Medicaid, and once I was approved I went to Community Counseling Centers of Chicago (C4), which saved my life. I finally saw a psychiatrist, started taking medication, and began group therapy.

I would have died by my own hand if it were not for the ACA’s Medicaid expansion. My medications cost around $400 a month combined, and they are the only reason I am able to go out, be active, and slowly but steadily work more. Because there’s no cure for bipolar disorder, I will always need treatment. My fiancé has decided to put me on his insurance, but I know that because of my preexisting condition, I will be a huge financial burden. I am currently worried about how much my medications are going to cost per month. But I know I need them, and we will be paying out of pocket. What makes me sad is that because of my mental illness, I will always be an emotional and financial burden to those I love the most.

ly concerned about what may happen if it is dismantled.

Alison Chesley, 57 AKA CELLIST HELEN MONEY

Matt Piet, 30

Before the ACA, I was without coverage for about 20 years. Getting coverage meant either getting a job or applying for insurance independently, which was incredibly difficult.

I’ve had asthma since I was two years old. Years of going to the emergency room well into my adult life meant that, if I applied for individual insurance, I’d either have to lie about my preexisting condition or, if I told the truth, know that the company might not accept me or cover anything related to my asthma. Because individual insurance plans were also incredibly expensive, it wasn’t an option for me anyway because I wasn’t making much money.

I made a commitment early in my life to be a musician. It’s very hard to find an employer that lets you take off time to tour and play shows.

Also, spending hours at a “straight job” feels like throwing away something you’ve been given and you’ve nurtured for many years. At some point it’s just not a choice anymore— you do your art.

When Congress finally passed the ACA, it was such a relief to me. I signed up for a plan with a $3,000 deductible. I paid $80 per month and the government subsidized the rest. Finally I didn’t have to go to Cook County Hospital when I got sick, and I could do my music without sacrificing my health. The ACA has made a huge difference in my life. Being able to get a physical and have a regular doctor has allowed me to stay healthy, to focus on my music, to write and tour and teach and do what I’ve worked so long and hard to do.

I’ve been a freelance pianist and music instructor since I graduated from college in 2008. Health insurance wasn’t an issue for me until I turned 26 and was no longer covered by my parents’ plan. In 2013 I began applying for coverage. I had a history of mental health issues, with no other preexisting conditions, and I honestly disclosed my medical history on my applications for insurance. I was denied by several insurance companies, all of which cited my mental health disclosure as the sole reason for denying me coverage. I had no choice but to choose a provider that offered me a policy with a high monthly premium and no benefits worth noting.

In 2014 the ACA made it possible for me to find affordable coverage that allowed me to seek proper psychiatric care, which resulted in a bipolar-disorder diagnosis and subsequent psychotherapy and prescription drug coverage. I started taking a medication that, in my opinion, saved my life by minimizing my symptoms. This medication, along with psychotherapy, has allowed me to live a much more stable life. Without insurance, my medication would cost me over $2,000 per month. Without a diagnosis and treatment, I doubt I’d be able to focus on my creativity and be as proactive as I have been as an improviser in Chicago’s vibrant music scene.

As a freelance musician, there’s no way I could afford a higher premium and/or out-of-pocket drug costs. The medical care I received in the past few years has, without hyperbole, saved my life and my career. I don’t know where I would be without the ACA, and I am deep-

JAZZ PIANIST

John Herndon, 50 DRUMMER IN TORTOISE

I signed up with the ACA but never used it. And the only reason I signed up in the first place was because I got fined almost $800 for not signing up the year before. After I got married in 2016, I switched to the insurance provided by her employer. I think that insurance is going to end in 2018, so we will most likely switch to whatever the mess ends up being.

Daniel Binaei, 42 GUITARIST IN RACETRAITOR

In 1998 I was on tour with my band Racetraitor. We were meeting up with Brother’s Keeper in Salt Lake City to watch their first show and then continue down the west coast with them. The morning after the show, our “roadie” and I were doing some very light sparring drills. He kicked me in the stomach and something felt very wrong. I realized I needed to go to the hospital to make sure I was OK. Two years before this incident, I had been diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. I had also recently experienced a rough episode after J

FEBRUARY 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 29

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MUSICIANS & THE ACA

continued from 29 a doctor prescribed me an antiinflammatory that exacerbates the condition. I had been taking prescription steroids following this bad flare-up. When I went to the hospital, I found out my intestine had burst due to an undetected hole that was causing my intestine to develop gangrene.

Health insurance has been a constant concern for me over the years.

Before the ACA, you could not reasonably buy health insurance with a preexisting condition. I was forced to work for a company that offered a group plan so I could get health insurance that would cover medications, and securing health insurance was a top priority.

The medication I am on now, Remicade, is an infusion that I get every two months. It costs $10,000 per treatment. It has been extremely effective. I lost 40 pounds when I was first diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. I have been able to gain and retain 30 pounds because of this medication.

Because of the ACA, I was able to quit my full-time job three years ago and work as an independent contractor. The ACA allowed me the opportunity to buy my own insurance and gave me the flexibility to leave town for recording and shows as needed while maintaining my own business. My plan costs $425 per month for a treatment that would otherwise cost between $60,000 to $100,000 a year. Before the ACA, I couldn’t accept offers to play with bands that would go on to become successful enough to become fulltime jobs. If the ACA is repealed, I’ll be faced with the possibility of closing my business, and it may limit my ability to fully pursue opportunities with the recently reunited Racetraitor.

Blaine Welsh, 27 PERFORMS IN THE BAND PRESS As someone who has been uninsured before, I can say that being on the ACA has been extremely

beneficial to me, though there are still a plethora of issues with it.

When I was 19, I was diagnosed with general anxiety disorder with depression and obsessivecompulsive tendencies. I take a few different medications, some daily and some on an as-needed basis. I take Effexor daily. Without health insurance, it would cost me $71 per month. I take Xanax on an as-needed basis, and that prescription costs $12 per month. Currently, I pay nothing for these prescriptions. In order to stay on this medication, I have to see my doctor once every three months or he legally can’t prescribe me this medicine.

If I lose my insurance, I’ll end up paying $398 for my medicine and my required doctor visits every three months. This doesn’t include getting sick or any potential emergency room visits.

I am grateful for the ACA and critical of it—particularly the fact that health insurance companies, after a certain number of years, were allowed to back out, and that most companies have free rein on how much they raise their premiums. It’s ridiculous. But it’s better than not being covered at all.

William Steffey, 46 SOLO ROCK ARTIST

Before the ACA , my premiums were about $600 per month. With the ACA and its applied tax credit, I pay only about $150 per month.

I have bipolar disorder, so having health insurance is extra important for me. Before there was a generic version on the market, my medication cost $750 a month without insurance.

Without that medication, I invari-

ably end up in the psych ward. The ACA made quite a difference in my life, and I don’t know how I’m going to get by without it!

Erin Page, 36 GUITARIST AND VOCALIST IN REIVERS, FORMERLY ALMA NEGRA I grew up in a lower-middle-class family with two teachers for parents who struggled but who still took care of me. I’ve been plagued by chronic sinus problems since I was a child and subjected to endless doctor visits and a tonsillectomy.

After college, I had no insurance. I couldn’t afford it, because my sinus problems were con sidered a preexisting condition.

One time I developed pneumonia because I couldn’t afford to go to the doctor and put it off. The doctor I eventually went to wanted to prescribe me antibiotics that cost $100 per pill. I sat and cried because I couldn’t even afford to be at the office in the first place.

The doctor felt sorry for me and brought me free samples, and I cried more—but this time because I was relieved. By the time the ACA was implemented, which was a half decade after that doctor visit, I had taken many antibiotics and was plagued by an abundance of physical pain, including severe and recurrent migraine headaches.

Because of the ACA, I was finally able to see a specialist, who told me I basically had a sinus infection that had never been completely cured for most of my life. I was put on antibiotics and steroids for a month and monitored closely.

After getting sick every four months for more than 30 years,

I’ve only had one sinus infection in the last two years. I’ve had to go to the emergency room twice in the past year for migraines, and if it weren’t for the ACA, I would never have received treatment for my condition. My stress levels have decreased because I know that, if I get sick, I can see a doctor—and I don’t have to wait until I’m almost dead to do so.

As the end of the ACA looms, I’m preparing myself to potentially go back to square one, and I fear I may possibly go broke or end up paying hospital bills for the rest of my life— despite the fact that I’ve worked and paid taxes since I was 14.

Kami de Chukwu, 24 AKA RAPPER KAMI

My parents used to help me out with health care, and then last year I had to apply by myself because I had to get a physical and shots to go out of the country. I got insurance through Medicaid. Basically, if it weren’t for that, that stuff would have cost an arm and a leg. Luckily, I applied and I got the coverage I applied for.

I know a repeal will affect a large group of people and me, personally. I don’t know the logistics of what it would be moving forward or what to expect. That’s the biggest part of it. Insurance might become too expensive or unrealistic to pay for.

I feel like, especially because the whole point of the ACA is to make it accessible for everybody, without it health insurance becomes a thing like dental insurance. Health insurance isn’t a luxury. Without the ACA, it will be less commonplace for a regular person to have it.

Carl Hauck, 29 SOLO ARTIST AND VOCALIST, GUITARIST, AND SYNTH PLAYER IN SUNJACKET

Since I was first hospitalized and diagnosed with Crohn’s disease as a junior in college, I’ve been fortunate enough to not have to worry about having access to quality health insurance. I was on my parents’ insurance plan up until the end of college. During my seven years as a high school English teacher after college, I was enrolled in a solid Blue Cross Blue Shield PPO plan offered by my employer. When I left teaching at the end of the 2015-2016 school year, I turned to the ACA marketplace. One of the reasons I felt secure in my decision to leave teaching and pursue freelance/ part-time employment (alongside music) was the existence of the ACA, which offers protections for people like me who have preexisting conditions.

I quickly discovered, however, that the ACA was not without its problems. For example, in 2016, there was only one provider in the entire marketplace (Harken Health) that listed my GI doctor as in-network. Within a month of my enrollment in a Harken Health plan, I was informed via e-mail and letter that Harken would no longer be offering ACA marketplace coverage in 2017. When I searched for an alternative provider on the 2017 marketplace website, none of the listed plans covered my GI doctor or Humira (a self-injectable drug that I take weekly to prevent/ reduce intestinal inflammation).

After spending several hours on the phone with various marketplace, insurance-company, and hospitalnetwork representatives, I was J

FEBRUARY 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 31

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continued from 31 told that if I enrolled in a specific Blue Cross Blue Shield HMO plan (with a monthly premium $50 higher than my already expensive 2016 PPO plan), I would be able to continue seeing my GI doctor, provided that I first scheduled an appointment with a primary-care doctor and had him/her refer me.

D e s p i te t h e s e i s s u e s (a n d despite the well-documented need to make ACA plans more affordable), as a musician with a flexible employment situation (which makes touring possible), as someone who’s been hospitalized twice and had a colon-resection surgery, and as someone who requires annual colonoscopies, blood tests, DEXA scans, and Reclast infusions to stay healthy, I’m thankful for the ACA. Then again, as someone who believes that health care is a human right, I personally don’t think the ACA goes far enough.

With the prospect of the ACA’s inevitable repeal looming large,

however, I’m worried about people drowning in the likely alternative: Republican-sponsored highrisk pools.

Eiren Caffall, 45 SINGER-SONGWRITER

When my nephrologist told me at 22 that I had polycystic kidney disease, he said I’d lose my kidneys in five years, never have children, be dependent on dialysis to survive, and maybe qualify for a transplant, only to be on lifesaving drugs for that for the rest of my life. With PKD your kidneys

are choked by multiplying, fluidfilled cysts, like they are slowly turning into organs made not of tissue but of bubble wrap.

During the years when I wrote and recorded my first records, I had no insurance at all. I was not allowed to purchase it, thanks to this preexisting condition. If I’m not insured, touring is impossible. If I’m on Medicaid, an accident at a gig in Maine could land me in a hospital that doesn’t accept Illinois Medicaid. And because I have a family history of illness and the poverty that goes with it, I don’t have a safety net of any kind to cover medical bills. Imagine trying to conduct a career when one wrong move can mean not only failure and physical collapse but also financial ruin.

When the Affordable Care Act came into law, everything changed for me. More than 20 years after my diagnosis, I could make music, work freelance (something I do to balance my frequent periods of illness and my parenting duties),

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MUSICIANS & THE ACA

deeply limited. By taking the ACA from me, and any other socially vulnerable musician, the country is making itself poor in every way we can be—in empathy, care, and art.

Jonathan Zeng, 34 SOLO VOCALIST AND TENOR WITH THE GRANT PARK CHORUS, CHICAGO FRINGE OPERA, AND THE WILLIAM FERRIS CHORALE Until the implementation of the ACA, I went without health insurance for years. I’m a performing artist and teacher. I’m self-employed without the option of employerprovided health insurance. My income can vary substantially from year to year, and since I am lucky enough to be in good health, without the need of any regular medications, it didn’t seem necessary for me to purchase my own plan.

When I finished graduate school and my school-provided health insurance expired, I went without insurance, knowing that I was one medical emergency away from financial turmoil. When the ACA came to be, I was nervous about the mandate and the possibility that I wouldn’t be able to afford a required plan. I was happy to find that, because of the subsidies provided, I could afford a plan—at the silver level, with dental even! My out-of-pocket expense has been under $125 a month, and hasn’t increased.

I’m thankful for the peace of mind that health insurance provides, the option to go to the doctor when I need it, and biannual dental cleanings/exams at no additional cost! If the ACA is repealed, I would not be able to replace my plan at a comparable rate.

J

o JASON CREPS; MIKKI SCHAFFNER

and still purchase the right to care.

This is my third year on the ACA, scraping together enough money to pay my premiums, but only just.

But honestly, it’s too late for me to build a safety net that would make my career easier. I’m too sick now to take the risks I wanted to take when I first started.

Without the ACA I cannot get insurance. Without some theoretical future insurance, all my medical costs will be out of pocket. I am not currently on dialysis or facing a transplant, but I might be soon.

Even so, I require regular blood work, blood-pressure monitoring, pain medication, and regular MRIs to check for brain aneurysm—something that PKD patients experience at an 80 percent higher rate, and something that killed my aunt.

An MRI can cost up to $3,500. My blood work (done every three to six months) costs $1,600, covered now by the ACA. A hospitalization a few years ago cost upwards of $10,000, not including the ambulance.

I might go onto dialysis, something that is largely covered, for now, by Medicare, but a transplant would be optimal. The cost in 2014 of a kidney transplant was $334,300, and that only covers 180 days of post-transplant costs. The transplant would save my life, but I’d require immunosuppressant drugs, which cost between $2,500 and $3,500 a month. For life.

It is enough that I have this disease, that I’m in constant pain, that my every decision is altered by PKD, that my partner, family, friends, and son have to cope with the emotional cost of it. Without the ACA, the illness will also cost us everything else—our home, our security, my child’s college tuition. The ACA meant that I had options. I could freelance, be a single parent, try to save money, and still be ill. Without the ACA, we’re ruined. The ACA meant I could imagine a time when I would be well, post-transplant— when I could sing without breathlessness and pain, tour without fear, and record with enough energy for the studio. Without it, I can’t picture a future for my career that is not

FEBRUARY 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 33

34 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 9, 2017

MUSICIANS & THE ACA

continued from 33 I’m fortunate to have no preexisting health conditions, but millions of Americans aren’t so lucky, and many could not get insurance before the ACA. Those people’s lives literally depend on being able to afford quality, comprehensive health care.

I truly hope that our new presidential administration considers the gravity of what’s at stake for the 20 million people who’ve gained health care thanks to the ACA, including self-employed artists like me.

to Chicago and freelance once I saved up enough money, and to get back on the ACA until I found full-time employment there. That is no longer possible. With insurance and medications, I can slow the inevitable physical and cognitive deterioration that this disease will bring to me. Without it, that deterioration will occur more swiftly.

The loss of the ACA means I can’t return to Chicago.

Matthew Oliphant, 32

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I just moved away from Chicago after 12 years living there. During my last year in the city, I was on the ACA. I couldn’t afford health insurance through the University of Chicago, where I was finishing my PhD (and which required I be insured in order to be enrolled).

The ACA was crucial for me. I was diagnosed with a degenerative neurological disease in January 2016, but had begun exhibiting symptoms the previous year (which included the loss of sight in my right eye for several months).

Without the ACA , I would not have been able to receive the MRIs required for diagnosis or pay for my thrice-weekly injections, which cost $5,000 before insurance. Without insurance, it would have been impossible to finish school, much less make music or do much else.

I currently live in Northampton, Massachusetts, and am a visiting assistant professor of classics at Trinity College because I needed stable employment after I finished school. My plan was to move back

HORNIST WITH ENSEMBLE DAL NIENTE, THE MILWAUKEE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, LYRIC OPERA, AND THE CHICAGO PHILHARMONIC I’ve been a full-time freelance musician since 2009. In 2010 I was diagnosed with a seizure disorder.

At the time I did not have health insurance. I was only a couple years out from college. I ignored it at first, but after a few incidents I decided I needed to see a neurologist. I was able to get a bare-bones insurance plan through the state of Illinois. The program was ICHIP (Illinois Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan).

After the ACA passed, I was able to get insurance through the now defunct Land of Lincoln Health.

Since then I’ve had to change to Blue Cross Blue Shield. My premium spiked this year, but the coverage is good and I need it to pay for neurologist visits, medication, et cetera. I absolutely need health insurance because my medication can be very expensive, and I’m afraid that were the ACA repealed it would be unavailable to me due to my preexisting condition. v

ß @LeeVGaines

o SIERRA THOMPSON; ALEKS KARJAK

Lakshmi Ramgopal, 32

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Recommended and notable shows, and critics’ insights for the week of February 9

MUSIC

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PICK OF THE WEEK

o COURTESY THE ARTIST

THURSDAY9 Ravyn Lenae Noname headlines. 7 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, sold out. b

o AUDREY MELTON

Thur 2/9, 7 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, $16, $13 in advance. b

EARLY ON, as with their 2012 seven-inch “Radiation” b/w “Personal Planes,” D.C.’s Priests were propelled by the sheer will to be a raging mass of hell and punk protest. Vocalist Katie Alice Greer writhes and grits her teeth over stiff, stripped-away rhythms and discordant, busted guitar lines that pretend melody before being fed into a baler, shredding any semblance of it. The tracks are guts and nerve, each threatening to fracture under its own tension like a pane of spider-webbing glass. The foursome’s awesome debut LP, Nothing Feels Natural (Sister Polygon), retains that fire—while shoveling in a few heaps of coal to boot. The hard-nosed, powerhouse opener, “Appropriate,” chugs along with Greer as she leads its bare rhythm toward a devolving mess of noise and chaos. It quickly recalibrates and rapidly builds to a crescendo that’s diced by sax skronk and flailing drums. Not only a statement of defiance, the album’s longest track jars you into coherence prior to Priests settling into their melodic freak-surf riffs and more tempered introspection (“JJ” and “Nicki”). Poetic in its discontent and disenchantment with the American dream—up to and through the spoken-word angle on “No Big Bang”—Nothing Feels Natural is never painfully bleak or dismal even though it comes from a socially conscious and activist-aware D.C. punk band in a very uncertain (and uncharted) era in which socially conscious and activist-aware punk bands are hyperfocused on exactly D.C. —KEVIN WARWICK

F

Ravyn Lenae

D.C. punk band Priests let their discontent with the American dream be heard

PRIESTS, STEF CHURA, BLIZZARD BABIES

ALL AGES

In 2013 LA collective cum indie label Soulection launched a digital white-label series, dropping an EP by local beat maker Monte Booker in October 2015. For that EP’s closer, “Baby,” Booker recruited Chicago R&B singer Ravyn Lenae—a fellow member of local collective Zero Fatigue, along with ascending rapper Smino—whose luminescent vocals playfully swerve around fluttering Spanish guitars.

Roughly a year later Soulection, which also produces events and runs a clothing company, interviewed Lenae for its radio show, and during the program she talked about finding the right balance between her budding career and her education at Chicago High School for the Arts: “It’s superhard juggling that with lack of sleep and regular personal issues— and then music issues.” Those struggles, fortunately, don’t bleed into her work—she gracefully handles the complex, loose-limbed instrumentals on her debut, Moon Shoes, suggesting that she’s been navigating these odd, burbling pulses since birth. Moon Shoes originally came out as free download in 2015, but last summer Lenae rereleased it through Flossmoor-based label Three Twenty Three Music Group with a couple brief bonus tracks. From the start the EP is a knockout, with Lenae layering her yearning vocals into a palpitating pattern on opener “Venezuela Trains.” —LEOR GALIL

Darren Johnston & Tim Daisy 9 PM, Elastic, 3429 W. Diversey, $10 suggested donation. b Superb Bay Area trumpeter Darren Johnston has been a regular visitor to Chicago for nearly a decade, and over that time he’s fortified his connection to the local improvised music scene. Last year he dropped three recordings, two of them featuring Chicagoans. On Neutral Nation (Aerophonic), saxophonist Dave Rempis sparred with him and veteran Bay Area reedist Larry Ochs of the Rova Sax Quartet, unfurling high-energy improvisation in patient, gritty arcs. On Shipwreck 4 (No Business) former Chicago drummer Frank Rosaly joined John-

ston in a west-coast quartet that also included bassist Lisa Mezzacappa and tenor saxophonist Aaron Bennett. They spontaneously created compositional shapes, moving fluidly between abstraction and groove, pure sound and melody. While in such contexts the trumpeter judiciously sprinkles in bits of extended technique, his gift lies in his lyric playing, where he always provides something easy to latch on to. My favorite of his recent albums, though, is Everybody’s Somebody’s Nobody (Clean Feed), an intimate series of duets with experimental guitarist Fred Frith that allows Johnston to explore his full range—by turns tender, melodic, sere, brittle, and plush, sometimes all at once. Tonight Johnston plays two sets with percussionist Tim Daisy, a regular collaborator during his trips here. —PETER MARGASAK

Priests See Pick of the Week. Stef Chura and Blizzard Babies open. 7 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, $16, $13 in advance. b

FRIDAY10 Easy Not Easy V 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $10. 18+

Chicago musician Matt Mehlan (Skeletons) has occasionally organized a project he calls Easy Not Easy, which is his response to an endeavor by experimental composer and musician David Behrman that focuses on “deceptively simple scores,” compositions that offer performers significant leeway and input. Mehlan’s effort began in New York in 2010 and enlists a number of composers from different disciplines to provide what he calls “easy pieces” that require no rehearsal—a response to the time and resources scored music generally demands. Both the composers and performers reflect a diverse array of backgrounds, and ideally the project works to tear down the institutional walls that typically separate the classical, experimental, rock, and jazz communities. For the latest installment of the project Nicolas Collins, Michael Zerang, Dave Rempis, Whitney Johnson, Doug Kaplan, Alejandro Acierto, Jenna Lyle, Nnamdi Ogbonnaya, Sherae Rimpsey, and David Hall submitted pieces, while Rempis, John- J

FEBRUARY 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 35

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MUSIC

Isaaca Byrd of Myzica o COURTESY THE ARTIST

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continued from 35

son, Kaplan, Acierto, Lyle, Mehlan, Rob Frye, and Brian Sulpizio will interpret and perform them.

In a time when our country has been divided, any effort or project designed to bring people together is worthy—and when the participants are as dynamic as this cast, it’s hard to resist joining in.

—PETER MARGASAK

Fred Hersch Trio 7:30 PM, Logan Center for the Performing Arts, University of Chicago, 915 E. 60th, $35, $5 students. b Mainstream jazz is very often an art of refinement: it’s a well-defined tradition with set parameters within which the most skilled players balance chops, improvisational elegance, and subtle boundary pushing. Those qualities can make it feel insular, but pianist Fred Hersch has developed such brilliant chemistry with bassist John Hébert and drummer Eric McPherson that the simpatico trio’s music feels writ large even as the outfit cleaves to an introverted attack—the group transcends jazz tradition while nestling snugly within it. Last year the trio released Sunday Night at the Vanguard (Palmetto), its second live album recorded at the famed New York jazz mecca and one that captures a band moving as a single organism even within the head-solo-head format of postbop. As usual, lesser-known standards—including a brisk, airy reading of the Richard Rodgers tune “A Cockeyed Optimist” and a de rigueur take on Monk’s “We See”—are complemented by a slew of Hersch originals, such as the multivalent “Serpentine” and the hurtling “Blackwing Palomino.” The group won’t knock you down with the force of its playing, but it can certainly floor you with its exquisite touch and high-level interaction.

—PETER MARGASAK

Myzica Karma Wears White Ties open. 7 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, $8. 18+

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For years I’ve been low-key obsessed with the Bridges’ 2008 album Limits of the Sky (Verve Forecast), what with its infectious melodies, close harmonies, and the irresistible, sweetly hoarse vocals of Brittany Painter. Bridges bassist Issaca Byrd has since started this Nashville-based project with producer Micah Tawlks, and though I miss her old folk-rock roots, Myzica retain some of those virtues. Their 2016 full-length debut, Love & Desire (Peptalk/Tone Tree), is even less apologetic than the Bridges were about embracing the cheesy hook: “We Belong Together” could just about be an Abba track, complete with pattering synths, a sweeping chorus, and an earnest break on which Byrd repeats in multitracked ecstasy, “We belong together / Baby we belong together.” The decision to cover “Drive” by the Cars might seem like too obvious a retro-80s move, but the band pull it off— both Tawlks’s production and Byrd’s vocals are colder and less engaged than the original’s, nudging the track from bathos toward spooky alienation. I’m slowly coming to terms with never getting another Bridges record, but I’d still like to see a sophomore record from Myzica sooner rather than later.

—NOAH BERLATSKY

Svart Crown Marduk headline; Incantation, Svart Crown, Sons of Famine, and Mordatorium open. 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2105 S. State, $25, $22 in advance. 17+ Formed in Nice in 2004, this French blackened-death-metal band has been slowly and surely paving a path through the global metal world, upping the dose of menacing noise with each subsequent record. Profane (2013) evokes exis- J

FEBRUARY 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 37

MUSIC MIKE DOUGHTY WHEATUS

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38 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 9, 2017

continued from 37

tential angst and body horror with a tool box full of vicious, atonal weaponry and an almost abstract sense of splatter from an all-dark palette. Now signed to Century Media and poised for their first North American tour in five years, Svart Crown are about to drop their fourth full-length, Abreaction, which brings their powers to bear on more occult and mystical themes—I suppose calling a song “Carcosa” carried more nerd cachet before True Detective, but I’ll take it. Headliners Marduk were prevented from playing here last year due to visa issues, but hopefully the Swedes will have better luck this year despite the current climate.

—MONICA KENDRICK

T’Monde Part of the University of Chicago Folk Festival. See also Saturday. Ida y Vuelta, Joel Paterson & Oscar WIlson, Bucking Mules, and Mike Feagan & the Fiddlegrass Band also perform. 8 PM, Mandel Hall, University of Chicago, 1131 E. 57th, $25, $20 senior, $10 students. b This lively Louisiana trio instill classic Cajun sounds with loads of vitality on their latest album, Yesterday’s Gone (Valcour). Accordionist Drew Simon, guitarist Megan Brown, and fiddler Kelli Jones-Savoy—wife to Joel Savoy, the record producer, musician, and scion of the famous Cajun musical family—percolate with energy, swapping vocal responsibilities from song to song and harmonizing with one another in casual fashion. Following in the foot-

steps of the great D.L. Menard, T’Monde tease out the connections between Cajun tradition and oldschool honky-tonk, whether covering Hank Williams or Webb Pierce or deftly adding steel guitar to a Cajun French-language cover of George Strait’s “When Did You Stop Loving Me.” Jones-Savoy’s richly striated violin offers a dazzling counterpart to the gorgeous singing on the ballad “South Crowley Waltz,” imbuing tradition with something fresh.

—PETER MARGASAK

SATURDAY11 Lyric Opera’s Carmen See also Wednesday.

7:30 PM, Civic Opera House, 20 N. Wacker, $17$349. b In a press release for Carmen, Lyric general director, president, and CEO Anthony Freud says the company’s intention is to present this most popular of all operas with “the energy the piece had when it was new.” That’ll be tough, because the promiscuous title character was a shocker to audiences when the work premiered in 1875. What is sure to still fascinate, however, are Carmen’s fierce independence and Bizet’s melodic score. This new-to-Chicago production, directed by Rob Ashford, transports the action to the 20th century, ramps up the gypsy dancing, and is double cast in the major roles: Ekaterina Gubanova and Joseph Calleja play the seductress and her jealous lover, respectively, in the first five performances, Anita Rachvelishvili and Brandon Jovanovich in the final six. Even the conductor

Lordi o COURTESY THE ARTIST

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MUSIC

bottom lounge

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T’Monde Part of the University of Chicago Folk Festival. See Firday. Ethan Leinwand, Liz Carroll & Laurence Nugent, Bucking Mules, Mike Feagan & the Fiddlegrass Band also perform. 7:30 PM, Mandel Hall, University of Chicago, 1131 E. 57th, $30, $25 senior, $10 students. b

TUESDAY14 Lordi Rival, Wrath, and Spare Change open.

8 PM, Double Door, 1552 N. Damen, $28, $25 in advance. 17+ On Mon 2/6 Double Door closed; at press time the Reader had not received info about whether this show would be moved or canceled.

Plenty of metal bands use horror to sharpen their fangs, but few are as transparent about their interest in courting pop music with goblins and ghouls as Finland’s Lordi. And few have been as successful as Lordi. In 2006 the band performed dressed in elaborate monster costumes—as is their signature—for the long-running, multinational Eurovision Songwriting Contest. Long-haired front man Mr. Lordi wore platform boots, demonic battle armor, makeup that’s essentially a collection of deep gashes and horns, and black wings that emerged from his back during the breakdown of “Hard Rock Hallelujah,” a ballad filled with lyrical riffs on horror cliches. Weird, sure, but they did something right and won the contest. Since then Lordi haven’t strayed far from their love of bloody horror and hard rock.

Last year’s Monstereophonic (Theaterror vs. Demonarchy) (AFM) twists their obsessions into cheeky and cheesy shapes: the thin 80s synths on “Let’s Go Slaughter He-Man (I Wanna Be the Beast-Man in the Masters of the Universe)” are as self-aware as the send-up of the old animated TV show is silly.

It’s not often that Lordi comes stateside, but this show might also be extraspecial given the calendar date—there are few more unique ways to celebrate Valentine’s Day than seeing Lordi perform the chugging nu-metal single “Hug You Hardcore.” The

lyrics, which blur carnality and carnage, say it all: “I wanna rip you open / Swing a wrecking ball inside.”

—LEOR GALIL

WEDNESDAY15 Dave Douglas Quintet 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $25, $20 in advance. 18+ Throughout his career omnivorous trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas has deployed his innate curiosity as a calling card. While he’s had certain bedrock bands, like the excellent quintet he brings to town this week, he also pours his energy into a steady profusion of disparate projects. His output from 2016—all of it on his own Greenleaf imprint— was remarkable in this regard. In April he dropped Dark Territory, the cohesive second album by his liquid quartet High Risk, on which the propulsive grooves of drummer Mark Guiliana and muscular electric bass of Jonathan Maron support both the leader’s lyric, high-energy blowing and the fluid electronic ambience and fractal patterns of dance-music producer Shigeto. Following in September was the eponymous album from the New Sanctuary Trio, a dynamic improvisation-driven combo with guitarist Marc Ribot and percussionist Susie Ibarra. October’s Dada People, featuring a new quartet with sensitive French pianist Frank Woeste, bassist Matt Brewer, and drummer Clarence Penn, is a set of brooding, tonally rich originals (half by the pianist) inspired by trickster Dada artists Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp. The results are warm and multilayered, with a sly puckish edge that hints at the titular conceit. Meanwhile, it’s been a couple of years since Douglas dropped an album featuring tonight’s superb quintet with pianist Matt Mitchell, bassist Linda Oh, saxophonist Jon Irabagon, and drummer Rudy Royston. But as a series of digital-only live recordings cut in 2015 proves, this protean outfit has the energy and imagination to endlessly reconfigure its sturdy, soulful repertoire in plenty of new directions. —PETER MARGASAK

Lyric Opera’s Carmen See Saturday. 2 PM, Civic Opera House, 20 N. Wacker, $17$349. b v J

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FOOD & DRINK

GORÉE CUISINE | $$ R 1126 E. 47th 773-855-8120

goreecuisine.com

The “house” tiebu djeun, a deconstructed version of the national dish of Senegal o DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

NEW REVIEW

Gorée Cuisine serves up a return to Senegal A family’s Kenwood spot is a sibling to their restaurant in Africa.

By MIKE SULA

T

here are a lot of secrets in the kitchen at Gorée Cuisine, a new Senegalese restaurant in Kenwood. There are secrets in the soupe khandje, a thick stew of lamb neck, red snapper, and okra that is the most elemental and forthright expression of surf and turf I’ve ever encountered. There’s a secret going in the Senegalese omelets the cafe is planning to serve during breakfast. And there are some very old secrets in the tiebu djeun, a sort

of West African paella revered as the national dish of Senegal, which accepts a multitude of interpretations but demands that one firm rule be obeyed: “You have to use some secret ingredients that your grandma created,” owner Adama Ba says.

According to Ba, secret ingredients are a staple at Gorée Cuisine, which opened in late October, shortly before the lizard people took over, as the third restaurant in the city

cooking the food of a country whose links to certain foods of the African-American south are so clear and direct you can taste them.

The tiebu djeun that Adama’s grandma made was the one that’s currently served in the family’s restaurant, Chie Nene, on Île de Gorée, a 45-acre island and one of the 19 communes d’arrondissement of Dakar, just off that city’s eastern coastline. Gorée is a UNESCO World Heritage Site for the role it played in the Atlantic slave trade, so Ba and his siblings served countless orders of their grandma’s tiebu djeun to tourists from all over the world long before he came to the U.S. as a designer who opened his own clothing store, Gorée Shop, some 15 years ago in the space next door. He was there to pounce when Zaleski & Horvath MarketCafe closed and the space opened up. “I saw the opportunity and said, ‘We need to have a Senegalese restaurant,’” he says.

So Adama, his older sister Fatou, and younger brother Djibi went into business, offering outsourced pastries, coffee, and tea in the morning and, at lunch and dinner, the hearty, deeply flavorful food of their home— food that could have only evolved through decades upon decades of international colonialism, commerce, and slavery. Africans, Arabs, the French, the Portuguese, and even the Vietnamese have made some contribution to the food of Senegal.

At Gorée Cuisine, all three siblings contribute to the cooking, which means a fixed number of permanent dishes on the menu and a few rotating “dishes of the day,” each requiring a good five to six hours of preparation. You might get lucky one day and find they’ve got the spicy fish meatball thiou boulette on hand.

Another might feature dakhine—lamb, rice, and beans stewed in peanut sauce—or tiebu djeun itself, fish stuffed with parsley and onion, cooked down for hours with cabbage, carrots, and rice in tomato, with a seasoning paste of dried fish and hot peppers that lay a salty marine funk at the bass line of the dish. A more deconstructed “house” version of tiebu djeun is available daily, featuring a whole tilapia scored and deep-fried or grilled to preference, and joloff rice—jambalaya’s J West African antecedent.

FEBRUARY 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 41

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

FOOD & DRINK

Gorée Cuisine continued from 41

Yassa, perhaps Senegal’s second-most prominent dish, is a protein such as fish or chicken cooked down in onions and mustard—and perhaps most familiar to south-siders as the name of Chicago’s first Senegalese restaurant. (Rogers Park’s Badou was the second.) At Gorée yassa is available with lamb, whole fish, shrimp, or chicken, each appearing smothered in sweetly caramelized onions with the occasional green olive.

The tendency to mingle land and sea creatures is repeated again w ith saka saka—shrimp, crab, and lamb in braised cassava leaves—which resembles Caribbean callaloo and is given another hint of the umami-boosting preserved fish found in the aforementioned soupe khandji. These substantial, stewy dishes are often lubricated with palm oil, which necessitates ample amounts of white rice to absorb them. That applies to the mild, vaguely sweet lamb curry and the maffe, fatty lamb and root vegetables cooked down in a tomato-peanut sauce that will resonate with anyone regularly nourished by peanut butter in their formative years.

Finally, there’s a remarkable dessert available at Gorée, one that foreshadows the Ba family’s plans to introduce a number of porridgelike dishes at breakfast. Called thiakry, it’s a mildly sweet and tart mixture of sour cream, yogurt, raisins, shredded coconut, and tiny grains of millet, scented with barely a hint of orange water. It’s a refreshing, restorative way to end a generous meal at Gorée, but a more demanding sweet tooth might be satisfied by a glass of bouye juice, made from the baobob fruit and tasting like a mash up of coconut, lychee, and pineapple. More assertive drinks such as the pineapple-and-ginger gingembre and the tart hibiscus bissap are on hand, as well as deep cups of mint tea overflowing with fresh herbs and imported Café Touba, sweet coffee brewed with peppery grains of selim, aka Guinea pepper.

The food at Gorée might seem unfamiliar on paper, but it bridged the Atlantic hundreds of years ago with the arrival of the first African-Americans. Senegalese cuisine is, in essence, soul food—something that’s not so secret after all. v

ß @MikeSula 42 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 9, 2017

COCKTAIL CHALLENGE

How to make a Nutella cocktail

By JULIA THIEL

Deeez Nuuutella cocktail by Watershed bartender Jacob Huelster o CHRIS BUDDY

F

or a product that enjoys a reputation as a cult favorite, NUTELLA is surprisingly ubiquitous: it’s sold in 75 countries at a rate of one jar every 2.5 seconds worldwide and its maker, Ferrero, buys a quarter of the world’s hazelnut supply, producing enough jars of Nutella each year to cover the Great Wall of China eight times over. There’s even something called World Nutella Day—essentially an excuse to eat the chocolate-hazelnut spread—which just occurred on February 5.

Not surprisingly, WATERSHED bartender JACOB HUELSTER was already quite familiar with Nutella when DAVID MCCABE of OSTERIA LANGHE challenged him to create a cocktail with it. “At first I was a little worried,” Huelster says. “It seemed a bit pedestrian. But when I started working with it, I found that it’s actually pretty difficult.” Huelster first consulted the book The Flavor Bible to see what it recommends pairing with hazelnut.

Garlic was one suggestion. “Garlic does go well with hazelnuts, and it does not go great with chocolate, I found out. That was a dead end,” Huelster says.

Even after rejecting garlic as an ingredient, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Because Nutella

contains palm oil, it doesn’t mix easily into liquids, Huelster discovered. He remembered using egg to emulsify salad dressing, and found that the technique worked in his cocktail as well—though he says that a whole egg made the cocktail “rather yolky,” so he decided to use only the white.

Egg also worked with Huelster’s theme: after reminiscing about how he used to eat Nutella on toast for breakfast growing up, he says, he went for a “breakfasty feel” for his cocktail. Wheat whiskey added a bit of bready flavor, while milk stout whipped cream “has a nice little yeast flavor, almost a bit Marmiteish, sticking with the toast concept.” Amaro added depth to the cocktail, which he dubbed Deeez Nuuutella. Still, Huelster says, “chocolate and hazelnut are the stars.”

WHO’S NEXT:

Huelster has challenged PAUL KIM of CAFE MARIE-JEANNE to create a cocktail with CABOT CHEDDAR SHAKE, a dehydrated and powdered cheddar cheese. v

Ç Watch a video of Jacob Huelster making a Nutella cocktail at chicagoreader.com/food.

DEEEZ NUUUTELLA

ONE EGG WHITE 1 T NUTELLA .5 OZ CH AMARO 1.5 OZ JOURNEYMAN BUGGY WHIP WHEAT WHISKEY MILK STOUT WHIPPED CREAM* HAZELNUT Add all ingredients except whipped cream and hazelnut to a shaker with a few ice cubes and shake until the Nutella is incorporated. Strain into a glass filled with crushed ice and top with milk stout whipped cream and a hazelnut. *Milk stout whipped cream: Combine one part Noon Whistle Bernie Milk Stout with two parts heavy cream and whip, then add sugar to taste.

ß @juliathiel

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S P O N S O R E D

N E I G H B O R H O O D

C O N T E N T

Chicago has always been a city of distinct neighborhoods with their own sense of identity and tradition — and each with stand-out bars and restaurants that are worthy of a haul on the El or bucking up for parking. Explore some local faves here, then head out for a taste of the real thing!

ALIVEONE // LINCOLN PARK Wednesday: 1/2 price aliveOne signature cocktails

PHYLLIS’ MUSICAL INN // WICKER PARK Everyday: $3.75 Moosehead pints and $2.50 Hamms cans

REGGIES // SOUTH LOOP $5 Absolut & Bacardi Cocktails Every Day special

ALIVEONE .COM

7 7 3 . 4 8 6 .9 8 62

REGGIESLIVE.COM

EATALY, LA PIAZZA // RIVER NORTH Tues: 5-9 pm, $15 housemade beer + Margherita pizza alla pala

LINCOLN HALL // LINCOLN PARK All Lagunitas beers are $6

RED LINE TAP // ROGERS PARK $3 PBR drafts & well drinks, $5 wine, M-Su Happy Hour 5-7pm

E ATA LY . C O M / C H I C A G O

L H - S T. C O M

R E D L I N E TA P. C O M

FITZGERALDS // BERWYN Two Brothers Cane & Abel Red Rye Ale $5 pints

SCHUBAS // LAKEVIEW All Lagunitas beers are $5.50

MOTOR ROW BREWING // NEAR SOUTHSIDE Thu, Fri, Tue, Wed: Happy Hour noon-6pm, $2 off all beers

FITZGER ALDSNIGHTCLUB .COM

L H - S T. C O M

MOTORROWB REWI NG .COM

R I V E RB N RT E ROW YH N

FAVE > CHAR-GRILLED SURF & TURF

OLIVER’S // 6 9 0 8 W I N D S O R // C H E F - O L I V E R S.C O M Oliver’s features contemporary American with seasonal international dishes—that includes prime cuts, fresh seafood and farm to table specialties in a relaxed casual environment.

Appetizers include oysters, shrimp, sliders and delicious small plates. Chef Oliver’s famous scallops merited a special TV appearance on ABC’s 190 North and several mentions in Chicago publications. The exceptional fare is complimented by a wide variety of signature martinis, extensive selection of craft beers and a unique wine list.

“Outstanding! Wonderful appetizers & martinis!”

— PAMELA B. / YELP

FEBRUARY 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 43

Hundreds of bar suggestions are available at chicagoreader.com/ barguide. Bottoms up!

FOOD & DRINK

Tasting flight of all nine of the beers on draft at the Whiner taproom; the P on the Peer sign atop the former Peer Foods meatpacking plant in Back of the Yards has been flipped to spell “beer”; the Miaou, a Belgian-style dry-hopped wheat is aged in cabernet barrels and fermented with brettanomyces. o NICK MURWAY

BAR REVIEW

Unusual beer for an unusual space

Whiner Beer Company’s taproom inside the Plant, a vertical farm in Back of the Yards, serves beer that’s wild, sour—and not at all scary.

By JULIA THIEL

T

he most obvious indication that there’s a taproom inside the Plant is that the P on the Peer sign atop the former Peer Foods meatpacking plant in Back of the Yards has been flipped to spell “beer.” Though Whiner Beer has been brewing inside the massive building since fall 2015, it still looks like an unlikely spot to have a drink, much less a tasting flight of craft beer. But walk in the front door and up a long ramp, and chalkboard signs direct you toward a spacious room filled with Edison bulbs, massive concrete columns, and wood tables with built-in planters.

Bright yellow tap handles adorned with cheese-munching mice pour a variety of beer from Whiner, located down the hall. The brewery is integral to the operations of the Plant, a vertical farm and food business incubator that aims to eventually be a closed-loop, zero-waste system: Whiner’s spent grains function as a growing medium for the mush-

44 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 9, 2017

room farm also located on-site, and will feed the anaerobic digester once it’s up and running. (In 2011, I wrote about the Plant and the first brewery slated to move in there, New Chicago Brewing Company, which then turned into Ale Syndicate and found another home.)

An aquaponics farm, kombucha maker, coffee roaster, and bakery also call the building home.

It’s an unusual space, so it’s fitting that Whiner brews unusual beer: French and Belgian styles, many of them barrel aged and inoculated with wild yeast or bacteria to turn them sour or funky. Sour beers have exploded in popularity recently—a year ago, when I asked local brewers what they were most looking forward to drinking in 2016, every single one mentioned at least one sour—but the average consumer may still find them challenging. After all, a sour flavor is often an indication that something has gone bad; many breweries go to great lengths to avoid

WHINER BEER COMPANY TAPROOM R 1400 W. 46th, 312-810-2271, whinerbeer.com. Sun 1-8 PM, Thu-Fri 2-10 PM, Saturday 11 AM-10 PM.

the yeasts and bacteria that turn beer sour, like lactobacillus, brettanomyces, and pediococcus. Last year Goose Island recalled its 2015 Bourbon County Brand Stout and three variants after discovering that they’d been infected with lactobacillus. However, Goose Island is also well known for its lineup of winebarrel-aged wild ales that Whiner co-owner Brian Taylor helped develop when he worked there several years back.

All this is to say that under the right circumstances, wild yeast and bacteria can be used to create some very desirable beers. And Whiner has done just that, from the entry-level Le Tub—a refreshing, easy-drinking blend of sour and nonsoured saisons that’s barely tart—to the Fur Coat, a Belgian-style dark ale with a

bite sharp enough to make your mouth pucker a little. In fact, none of the core lineup of four beers is particularly challenging. Besides Le Tub, it includes Et La Tete—an apple-infused kolsch that’s surprisingly tasteless, the only real disappointment of the nine beers on tap— and Rubrique a Brac, a biere de garde with brettanomyces that tastes like a brown ale that was left in a barnyard, light in body but with a slightly funky blue-cheese finish. I was most intrigued by the Miaou, a Belgian-style dryhopped wheat aged in cabernet barrels and fermented with brettanomyces, which starts out grassy, earthy, and dry but develops a subtle sweetness and wine flavor as it warms up.

The rest of the taps change regularly—and thanks to the $3 tasting portions available for all the beers, it’s possible to try everything in the taproom on one visit. In addition to the Fur Coat, the somewhat less sour Pretty Bird is a yeasty, funky, and entirely enjoyable barrel-aged saison. The two sweetest beers on the menu turned out to be among the least interesting: a saison called Fast Food was redolent of creamy bananas and bubble gum, pleasant enough at first but cloying after a few sips; Candy Darling, a barrel-fermented and barrel-aged wild ale with plums, had plenty of woody, smoky barrel flavors but also delivered a bit too much of the sweetness suggested by its name. The kettle-soured saison Soupe Du Jour, however, had a fascinatingly complex flavor, funky and less sharp than the Pretty Bird or Fur Coat, rounded out by yeasty notes and pineapple.

As good as its beers are, Whiner could offer patrons a little more guidance on what to order. The menu descriptions are brief and don’t give much indication of what the beer will taste like. And the bartender, who stayed glued to his phone except when he was serving customers, wasn’t particularly approachable.

Still, what the brewery is doing with wild yeasts and barrel aging is undeniably fascinating, and the results speak for themselves. v

ß @juliathiel

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ota.org

orthoinfo.org

FEBRUARY 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 45

JOBS SALES & MARKETING

Prasun Maharatna, 2107 North First Street, Suite 100, San Jose, CA 95131.

Include job code & full job title/s of interest + recruitment source in cover letter. EOE

THE NORTHERN TRUST COM-

TELE-FUNDRAISING: COLD CASH FOR WINTER American Veterans helping Veterans.

Felons need not apply per Illinois Attorney General regulations. Start ASAP, Call 312-256-5035

General Senior Designer sought by VSA Partners, Inc. in Chicago, IL. 40 h rs/wk. Duties: Conduct conceptual exploration, develop design solutions, and ensure successful implementation of that solution through production; use digital illustration, photo-editing software, and layout software to create designs; design layouts and select colors, images, and typefaces; help establish design solutions; develop design aspects, thinking in both print and digital forms in concept phase; participate in internal presentations and presentations to the clients; integrate design within the creative direction and process; work on multiple projects and work with multiple disciplines at one time; work within schedules and deadlines established for given projects.

Requires: Bachelor’s degree in Design, Liberal Arts, Graphic Design or related field or foreign equivalent. 5 years’ experience in Graphic Design, to include 2 years of experience designing for a large brand(s) (at least Fortune 100), 2 years of experience at a brand agency, marketing agency, advertising agency, or in-house corporate marketing department, 2 years of experience designing complex enterprise websites, 2 years of experience being the design representative/lead on a project team or agile team, 2 years of experience translating information and architecture schematics into design. 5 years of experience working with Adobe Creative Suite. Please reply with resume to: Traci Pratt, 600 West Chicago Avenue, Suite 250, Chicago, IL 60654.

PANY is seeking a Sr. Consultant, Applications in Chicago, IL w/ the following reqts: BS degree in Computer Science and/or Engineering or related field or foreign academic equivalent. 5 yrs of related experience. Maintain and Support the Peoplesoft Finance and Supply Chain application using Crystal tool, SQR, Web services and PeopleTools (4 yrs); design & develop using Peoplesoft Development, Reporting, Workflow and Integration Tools to address process and technology needs (4 yrs); design, develop, test, upgrade and implement PeopleSoft Financials modules AP, Purchasing & GL using ERP Development Lifecycles (4 yrs); utilize development tools such as App Designer, App Engine, Integration Broker, BI Publisher, Component Interface and Workflow Engine to provide technical solutions (4 yrs). Please apply on-line at www. northerntrustcareers.com and search for Req. # 17013

PRODUCTIVE EDGE, LLC. is seeking a Team Lead SW Engineer for Chicago, IL. Manage team of Developers who are integrating the Dynatrace mobile perf. monitoring framework with complex white-label mobile apps. in order to monitor data, including but not limited to app runtime performance, network communication speed, event, checkpoints & establish reporting/support frameworks to react to alerts. Email resumes to: careers@productiveedge .com .

REHABILITATION SPECIALIST: Counsel individ to max independence, employability, minimize social, vocational difficulties from birth defects, illness, accidents.

Coord activities at treatment facilities. Assess clients’ needs, design, impl rehab programs. Bachelor in Psychology. The Douglas Center: 3445 W Howard St, Skokie IL 60076

NUTS ON CLARK POPCORN stores HIRING FOR NEW LOCATION: Sales, cooks, stock, paid training.

Starts immediately when working with a team. Apply in person @ corp. office, 3830 N. Clark St. Chicago 9 am to 10 am Mon Thru Fri. Must bring ID’s to apply

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

CHICAGO - HYDE PARK 5401 S. Ellis.

1BR. $535-$600/mo.

F/T

BILINGUAL

(FRENCH/

ENGLISH) Seasonal Travel Consultant Rail Europe, Inc., a European based company is in search of F/T Bilingual (French/English) Seasonal Staff employees to start work in January for the launch of its new 2017 product line. The sales oriented consultants we seek must enjoy working w/our customer base via phone and/ or email in a Customer Care Center environment. Strong customer service minded individuals are a must. All paid training will be done in-house at our Des Plaines office location.

Fluency in French is required. Our $15/hr. w/monthly sales incentive and Loyalty Bonus is just the start of our compensation package. We offer excellent Health and Travel benefits.

Applicants may fax resumes to Attn: JW at 847-916-1002 or EMAIL to: 2hr@raileurope.com EOE

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 WINTER SPECIAL: STUDIOS starting at $499 incls utilities. 1BR $550, 2BR $599, 3BR $699. With approved credit. No Security Deposit for Sec 8 Tenants. South Shore & Southside. Call 312-4463333

REAL ESTATE RENTALS

WOW!! MUST SEE!

Chicago, Beverly/Cal Park/Blue Island Studio $575 & up, 1BR $665 & up, 2BR $885 & up. Heat, Appls, Balcony, Carpet, Laundry, Prkg.

708-388-0170

STUDIO $600-$699 LARGE STUDIO NEAR Morse el.

6824 N Wayne. Hardwood floors.

Pets OK. Laundry in building. $695/ month. Heat included. Available 3/1.

773-761-4318, www.lakefrontmgt. com

ZENSAR TECHNOLOGIES, INC. has openings in Oak Brook, IL. All positions may be assigned to various, unanticipated sites throughout the US. Job Code USOBIL122 Computer Architect (Infrastructure Solutions): design & develop+ technical resolutions. Job Code USOBIL123 Computer Systems Analyst (Oracle Apps): prep documents, map req.s & analyze system. Job Code USOBIL124 Computer Systems Analyst (SOA Integration): analyze, prep, design & development. Job Code USOBIL125 Computer Systems Analyst (Testing Monitoring): prep test scenarios & monitor tools. Mail resume to:

TTX CO. is seeking a Technical

CHICAGO, HYDE PARK Arms

Lead in Chicago, IL with the following requirements: BS in Computer Information Systems or foreign academic equivalent and 7 years experience. Required skills: design, implement and support information systems using .Net, service oriented architecture, MVC and SQL Server; lead offshore and onshore development resources to develop software solutions; evaluate technology options and convert legacy application technology to JavaScript, Angular, Bootstrap and front-end technology; design and lead the development of ticket pipeline management system with integrations into System Center; document system architecture and best practices and lead project design and architecture. Apply on-line at ttx.indeedjobs.com.

Hotel, 5316 S. Harper, maid, phone, cable ready, fridge, private facilities, laundry avail. Switchboard. Start at $ 160/wk Call 773-493-3500

7500 SOUTH SHORE Dr. Brand New Rehabbed Studio & 1BR Apts from $650.

Call 773-374-7777 for details.

STUDIO $700-$899 LARGE STUDIO APARTMENT near Metra. 1904 W Pratt. Cats OK. Laundry in building. $725/ month.

Heat included. Available 3/1. 773-7614318. www.lakefrontmgt.com

W. HUMBOLDT PK 900 sq ft 1/

MIDWAY AREA/63RD KEDZIE Deluxe Studio 1 & 2 BRs. All

Ave) Nice,lrg 1BR $575; 2BR $650 & 1 3BR $850, balcony, Section 8 Welcome. 773-995-6950

79TH & WOODLAWN 2BR $775-$800 76th & Phillips 2BR $775-$800 Remodeled, Appliances avail. Free Heat. 312-286-5678

+sec. 70th St 2BD $695 1mo + sec.

1505 S Kasten. Dolton 3BD house, $1000 1mo + sec. 773-651-8673

NOW

LEASING!!

NEWLY

Rehabbed Single Family Homes & Townhomes in the South Suburban Area. For Info Call 708-748-4570

61ST/MICHIGAN, Modern, cozy 4rm, 1BR, Tenant heated. $595/month, No security deposit, agent owned 312-671-3795 Newly updated, clean furnished rooms, located near buses & Metra, elevator, utilities included, $91/wk. $ 395/mo. 815-722-1212

modern oak floors, appliances, Security system, on site maint. clean & quiet, Nr. transp. From $445. 773582-1985 (espanol)

BIG ROOM with stove, fridge, bath & nice wood floors. Near Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry, Shopping. $121/wk + up. 773-561-4970

CHICAGO, 8907 S. Cottage Grove, 1BR, living room, eat in kitchen, appliances.

Individually heated. $625 + sec.

Shawn, 773-221-7221

CHICAGO 70th & King Dr, 1BR, clean, quiet, well maintained bldg, Lndry + Heat. Section 8 ok. $680/ mo. 773-510-9290.

ward Rent Beautiful Studios 1, 2, 3 & 4 BR Sect. 8 Welc. Westside Loc, Must qualify. 773-287-4500 www.wjmngmt.com

CHICAGO SOUTH - YOU’VE tried the rest, we are the best.

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

773-221-7490, 773-221-7493 8200 S. DREXEL XL 1BR $665 /MO.HEAT & APPLS INCL. LR, DR, NEWLY REMODELED. NO SEC DEP. SECTION 8 OK. CALL 312-915-0100.

CLEAN ROOM W/FRIDGE & micro, Near Oak Park, Food -4Less, Walmart, Walgreens, Buses & Metra, Laundry. $115/wk & up.

773-637-5957

BR, large kit, new appl FDR, oak floors, new windows & blinds $825/ mo + util 773-743-4141 www. urbanequities.com

APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. LTD. OLD MAN WINTER IS HERE!!!

MOST UNITS INCLUDE..

HEAT & HOT WTR STUDIOS FROM $475.00 1BDR FROM $495.00 2BDR FROM $745.00 3 BDR/2 FULL BATH FROM $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000**

WEST PULLMAN (INDIANA

Newly Remodeled 1, 2, & 3 Bd Apts $650 & up. Chgo. So. & West side No SD, & 1 Mo. Free Rent w/aprvd NICE ROOM w/stove, fridge & Credit. Sect 8 & All Credit Welc. to bath Near Aldi, Walgreens, Beach, Apply. (773) 412.1153 Wesley Rlty.

Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry. $130/wk & up. 773-275-4442

WINTER SPECIAL $500 ToCOMPUTER SYSTEMS ANALYSTS/ COMPUTER ARCHITECT

û NO SEC DEP û 6829 S. Perry.

Studio/1BR. $465-$520/mo.

1431 W. 78th St. 2BR. $605/mo.

HEAT INCL 773-955-5106

CHICAGO 87th St 1BD, $595 1mo

bly Clean Highrise STUDIOS, 1 & 2 BEDROOMS Facing Lake & Park.

Laundry & Security on Premises.

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

STUDIO $500-$599

RVSWOOD 4800N spacious 3/ rm studio; full kitchen, new appl, oak floors, vintage built-ins $850 /incls ht 773-743-4141 urbanequities.com

Call 773-955-5106

7022 S. SHORE DRIVE ImpeccaCustomer Service

CHICAGO - South Shore Large 1BR, $660/mo.

Free heat.

Near Transportation.

Section 8 Welcome. Call 708932-4582

WEST RIDGE STUDIO: new kit, new appl, carpet AC, new windows $ 825/heated 773-743-4141 urbanequities.com

1 BR $900-$1099

SMOKE FREE BUILDING!!!

SOUTH SIDE 5 rooms, 1BR deluxe. 101st/King Dr. well maint. a ONE OF THE BEST M & N ppls/heat incl. $795/mo. plus sec. MGMT, 1BR, 7727 Colfax ** 2 Lrg BR, 6754 Crandon ** 2 & Mr. Ben. 312-802-9492.

3BR, 2BA, 6216 Eberhart ** Completely rehabbed.

You deserve the best ** 773-947HOMEWOOD- Sunny 900sf 1BR 8572 or 312-613-4427 Great Kitc, New Appls, Oak Flrs, A/C, Lndry & Storage, $995/mo Incls heat & prkg. 773.743.4141

1 BR $1100 AND OVER EDGEWATER 1000 S FT 1/B: new kit, ss appl, formal DRm, oak floors, new windows, Red Line/Lake MI $1150/incl ht 773-743-4141 urban equities.com

1 BR OTHER APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. LTD. THE HAWK HAS ARRIVED!!!

OUR UNITS INCLUDE HEAT, HW & CG PLENTY OF PARKING 1BDR FROM $750.00 2BDR FROM $895.00 3 BDR/2 FULL BATH FROM $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000***

1 BR $700-$799 HUMBOLDT PARK. ONE

ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL

bedroom apartment for rent. Newly remodeled. Next door to food store. $800 per month plus security deposit. Near shopping area. Monica, 773-592-2989.

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, 8018-20 S. Eberhart, large, newly renovated, 1BR in Chatham. Heat & appliances. $775 + sec. Shawn, 773221-7221

126 EMERALD 5 & 2, 2 story, $1450.

142 Lowe 3 & 1, App Inc., $1150.

143rd Emerald 6 & 4, $1695.

Appts 773.619.4395 Charlie 818.679.

1175

LARGE 3BR $895 LARGE 1BR $725 Section 8 OK, free cooking gas, newly decorated, carpeted, stove/ fridge, laundry, elevator, NO APPLICATION FEE 1-773-919-7102 or 312-802-7301

1BR, 7726 S. Jeffery Ave., $750 1BR, 6822 S. Michigan Ave., $725 Studio 104 E. 70th. $575.

Heat and appliances Included.Shown

by Appt. 773-874-2556 www.archerinvestmentco.com

CALUMET CITY 158TH & PAXTON SANDRIDGE APTS 1 & 2 BEDROOM UNITS MODELS OPEN M-F, 9AM-5:30PM *** 708-841-5450 ***

CHATHAM CHARM , Vintage, newly rehab, 1 BR, h/w flrs, sec alarm, heat & hot water incl, laundry, Sec 8 & Seniors Welc. Call for appt (773)418-9908

RIVERDALE - NEWLY decor, 1 & 2BR, appls, heated, A/C, lndry, prkng, no pets, near Metra. Sec 8 ok. $675-$800. Call 630-4800638

CHICAGO SOUTH SIDE BeautiROYALTON HOTEL, Kitchenette $135 & up wk. Free WiFi. 1810 W. Jackson 312-226-4678

ful Studios, 1,2,3 & 4 BR’s, Sec 8 ok. $500 gift certificate for Sec 8 tenants. 773-287-9999/312-446-3333

4200 BLOCK OF W. Grenshaw, newly decor bsmt studio apt, kit appls, heat & elec incl. $700/mo + 1 mo. sec. dep. Senior pref 773-785-5174 BURNHAM, 1 BR, balcony, wall to wall carpet, appl, heat, AC, laundry rm, $700 mo, 1 mo sec, credit check, 773-619-3587

Never miss a show again.

EARLY WARNINGS Find a concert, buy a ticket, and sign up to get advance notice of Chicago’s essential music shows at chicagoreader.com/early.

46 CHICAGO READER | FEBRUARY 9, 2017

7939 S. EBERHART. 3BR, 1.5BA, hdwd flrs, new kitchen and bath, spacious nice block in Chatham. $1300/mo. 773-375-3323

AUSTIN AREA 1-2 BR apts, $750-1000, heat & appliances incld Section 8 OK, close to transportation 708-267-2875

1 BR $800-$899 MONTROSE/ CLARENDON VINTAGE one bedroom. Sunny/ bright, across from park, heat/ gas included. Miniblinds/ ceiling fans.

Free laundry, private porch, block Montrose Harbor. $895. 773-9733463.

REAL PEOPLE REAL DESIRE REAL FUN.

Try FREE: 773-867-1235 More Local Numbers: 1-800-926-6000

ONE BEDROOM APARTMENT near Warren Park and Metra, 6804 N Wolcott. Hardwood floors. Heat included. Laundry in building. Cats OK. $875/ month. Available 3/1. 773-7614318, www.lakefrontmgt.com

Ahora español Livelinks.com 18+

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Best Price, Best Location.

Jackson Highland. Studio, $590.

1BR, $690. 2BR, $790.

Call 312-443-2300 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

2 BR UNDER $900 CHICAGO SOUTHSIDE BRAND new 2 & 3BR apts. Excel-

CHICAGO 7600 S Essex 2BR $599, 3BR $699, 4BR $799 w/apprvd credit, no sec dep. Sect 8 Ok! 773287-9999 /312-446-3333 2 BEDROOMS, LIV Rm, Dining Rm, Computer Rm, encl porch, 5400 block of Seeley. $760. Free heat. 630-924-5155

VICINITY 65TH AND St. Lawrence, modern, tenant heated, 2BR Unit. $725/mo. No Sec Deposit Agent Owned, 312-671-3795

80TH & PAULINA, completely remodeled, 4 room, 2BR, tenant heated, $750/mo. No security deposit. Agent Owned, 312-6713795

CHICAGO - 7630 S Emerald, 2BR, separate living & dining room $650/mo. 1 mo sec + 1 mo rent + all utils.

Call Dee 773-818-3340

CHATHAM BEAUTIFUL REMOD 2 & 3BR, hdwd flrs, custom cabinets, avail now. $1100$1200/mo + sec. 773-905-8487 Sec 8 Ok

2 BR $1300-$1499

8947 S. COTTAGE Grove, Unit 3C. 3rd flr, 2BR Apt. Ten htd, lndry / appls incl. Credit check $700 mo + $350 move in fee 773-721-8817

2 BR $900-$1099

3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200

SANGAMON/118TH REHABED 2BED apartment on 1st fl. sec. 8

welc!!parking, laundry, apliance, hardwood floors throughout. 773260-2631

2BR LOGAN SQUARE, New reno

SS appliance $1400/mt Avail now Ed-773 895 4466

West Ridge: 2B 7000N New kit, granite, SS appl, FDR, oak floors, new windows $1300/heated 773-743-4141 urbanequities.com FREE HEAT! CALUMET CITY 2BR, 1BA Condo Style, A/C, heat incl, LR, DR, Balcony, W/D, off street pkng, nr Hwy. $925 + sec.

312-310-7887

new kit, new appl, oak floors, AC, yard, garage $975/+ util 773-7434141 urbanequities.com

SECTION 8 WELCOME 5545 S. LASALLE, 6227 S. Justine & 25 W 103rd Pl, All three 3BR/1BA 7134 S Normal Ave, 4BR,/2BA, 225 W 108th Pl, 2BR/1BA, incl crpt, appls & heat, $300 Cash Move-In Bonus, No Deposit 312-683-5174 3BR, 5729 S. MICHIGAN, $950 + sec.

3BR, 5723 S. Michigan, $900 + sec.

2BR Grdn 720 W 61st St $800+sec. Ten pays utils. Call 773-858-3163 80TH/PHILLIPS, 3 lrg BR,

2 BR OTHER 5331 W BARRY 2/BR: spacious

Stop Renting ...You Can BUY a Home this year!!! Down payment assistance avail. 708713-4477 www.ths4you.com

Ryan on 73rd/Harvard Ave. NO SEC or 1 MO FREE, if qualified!, XL 1BR w / den. 773-895-7247

East Chicago, IN 2BR $675 heat incl; tenant pays utils. 1 mo. free rent w/lease. Call MIKE 773-5779361

BLUE ISLAND - Freshly remodeled, 2BR Apartment, 1.

5BA, heat included. $900/ mo + 1 mo sec. Call 708-5293836

ENGLEWOOD 2-4BR unit apts in 2 unit gated bldgs, hdwd flrs, pets OK, no sec dep, W/D & appls incl, tenant pays own utils 872-3153900

FREE HEAT nr 74th/The Dan

LANSING - 18346 Torrence Ave. 1 Bedroom Apartment, $650/mo. Heat & Water included.

No pets. Call 708-895-4794

lent neighborhood, near trans & schools, Sect 8 Welc., Call 708-7742473

2 BEDROOM APARTMENT in Calumet City, nice neighborhood, quiet building, newly remodeled, heat, gas/water incl. Security Dep. required. $850/mo. 708-288-5358

2 BR $1100-$1299

BEAUTIFUL NEW APT! 6150 S. Vernon, 4BDRM 743 E. 72nd St, 2BDRM 8129 S. Ingleside, 2BDRM 7649 S. Phillips Ave 1, 2 & 4BDRM Stainless Steel!! Appliances!!

Hdwd flrs!! Marble bath!! Laundry on site!!

FREE 42IN TV Sec 8 OK. 773- 404- 8926

CHICAGO - BEAUTIFUL 2BD/ 1BA in a 2 unit bldg, large enclosed backyard, new carpet, utils incld. $950/mo. Contact 773-680-4174 CHICAGO, PRINCETON PARK HOMES. Spacious 2-3 BR Townhomes, Inclu: Prvt entry, full bsmt, lndry hook-ups. Ample prkg. Close to trans & schls. Starts at $844/ mo. w w w . p p k h o m e s . com;773-264-3005

ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar 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

BEAUTIFUL

1.5BA, new reno, hdwd flrs & appls incl, intercom. Avail Now! $1000/mo & up 312-818-0236

7651 S DREXEL, 1st fl, 3BR, liv rm, kitch., newly remodeled, ceramic tiles, heat not incl, $ 950/mo plus 1 mo sec. 708-474-6520 4010 S. KING DR. 3BR, heat incl, $1025. 1535 W. 79th St. 4BR, 1.5BA Apt ($925) & resturant for rent, 708-4217630 / 773-899-9529 68th/Hermitage 2BR. $725. 3BR, $825. 68th/ Emerald, 3BR. $800. 63rd/May. 3BR. $900 heat incl. 65th/Aberdeen. 7BR, 2BA House. $1175. 847-977-3552 SOUTH SUBURBS 4BR, 1.5BA, modern kitchen and bath, section 8 OK, 2 car garage, basement. $1075 and up + sec. 847-909-1538

RIVERDALE 3/4BR, 1.5BA Townhome, hdwd flrs, 1 car garage, near Metra & PACE, starts at $900/mo + sec. 708-539-0522

83 Eliz.. Huge 3BR remod, ceramic &

BEAUTIFULLY RENOVATED

beaut. wd flrs, no pets / smoking.

Ten pays heat. $950+sec. Credit check. 773.354.9750

3-5BR Single Family Homes, new kit, fridge & stove included, hardwood floors. 708-557-0644

VICINITY OF 61ST & King Dr,

CHICAGO SOUTHSIDE, Newly remodeled 3BR/2BA with appls & w/d Also, newly remod 2BR with appls. Call 773-908-8791

modern 3BD, 1BA, tenant heated apt, 1st flr, $1100/mo, no sec dep, Sec 8 Welc agent owned 312-671-3795

Not Sec 8 reg. 773-771-0785

ROSELAND, SINGLE FAMILY Home, 3BR, 1.5BA, C/A, newly renov. 9600 Blk Wentworth, $1400. Sect 8 ok. Call Mr. Johnson, 630-424-1403

757-236-0998

SQUARE

2600W/5224N 2 BR/1 BTH. Apartment in quiet owner occupied building. $1600/month, includes heat, water. Hardwood floors, minblinds, new kitchen, laundry in building, easy street parking laundry. $2000 security deposit. Tenant pays cooking gas and electricity. Please see our online ad for more info. Call Joe 773-339-4673 only after checking out the online ad.

3 BR OR MORE $1800-$2499 ROGERS PK 2000 sft/ 3BR-2BA: new kit, SS appl, FDR, oak flrs, new windows, private deck & sunroom, nr lake/Red Line; $1925/inc ht 773-7434141 urbanequities.com

5900 W & 300 N. 1/2 block from G reenline & Oak Park. Renovated 3BR, sanded floors, heat incl. $1200/mo + sec deposit. Call 773626-8993

3 BR OR MORE

OARK PARK, 405 S. Maple.

2BR, 1.5BA. Heat, C/A, appls & parking spot incl. Near trans. $13 00/mo + 1 mo sec. 773-671-3826

NEWLY REHAB 5BR $1500, 84th & Peoria; 4BR, $1300 97th & Oglesby; 3BR, $1200, 97th & Jeffrey. Section 8 Welcome 312-8043638

OTHER

MARQUETTE PARK AREA 72nd and Talman Ave., 2nd flr, 4br., heat incl.,1 yr. lease, $1250 mo., plus 1 mo sec., no pets 708-268-5321

RENT WITH OPTION TO BUY 912 E 75th St, 4BR, 3BA, off st pkg, new remod, c/a, w/d, stove & fridge Sec 8 ok $1500/mo

1436 S TRUMBULL, 3BR $1300/ month, no security deposit. New rem. Hrdwd flrs, lndy.Sec system in bldg .Section 8 Wel 708-308-1788

773-251-7501

3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799 EVANSTON VINTAGE 1100 S FT 3/BR: New Kit, new appl, oak floors, sunny corner apt; large windows $1500/incl ht 773-7434141 urbanequities.com 10742 S LASALLE, 3BR, 1BA hdwd flrs, tenant pays utils, $ 1300/mo. no sec dep. Will accept 2BR Sec 8 Vouchure.

773-221-0061 MARQUETTE PARK 7313 S Artesian, beaut rehab 3BR/2BA house, granite ctrs, SS appls, whirlpl tub, fin bsmt, 2-car gar. $1575. 708-288-4510 SOUTHSIDE 72ND/PEORIA, 4-5 BR, 2 full BA, fin. bsmnt, all appls, Sect 8 OK. $1,650/mo.

1 mo sec. 708-351-3538

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

WE BUY HOUSES CASH

LINCOLN

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499

HEALTH & WELLNESS urbs. Hotels. 1250 S Michigan Avenue. Appointments. 773-616-6969.

FOR SALE

SECTION 8 WELCOME. No Security Deposit. 7721 S Peoria, 3BR apt, appls incl. $1050/mo.

708-288-4510

û16880 S. ANTHONY- 3BR, wall to wall carpet. $1175/mo.

Section 8 Welcome. 773-285-3206

fied buyer will pick up and pay CASH for cylinders of R12. 312-2919169; sell@refrigerantfinders.com

UKRAINIAN MASSAGE. CALLS in/ out. Chicago and sub-

NR 87TH & Stony Island, 3BR, 3rd flr Apt, $1000 + heat, 1 mo sec + 1 mo rent, rec renov ba & kit,

Chicago 1646 W. Garfield.

3 bdrm, 1 bath, newly renovated, hardwood floors, appliances included. $825/mo. 773-285-3206

WANTED: R12 FREON. Certi-

non-residential

FULL BODY MASSAGE. hotel, house calls welcome $90

CHICAGO & ASHBURN - 80th & Western, commercial store front for rent 1200sqft +. Suitable for many businesses. $1350/mo. + security. Broker owned. Call 708704-2313

special. Russian, Polish, Ukrainain girls. Northbrook and Schaumburg locations. 10% discount for new customers. Please call 773-407-7025

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.

FINANCING AVAIL. FOR PROP. OWNERS: From Prog.

Lenders for Bus, RE, Personal or Maj. repairs. Call 773-703-8400, fax 773-568-5990

legal notices roommates FURNISHED ROOMS for Rent, cable ready, utilities incl. $350/mo.

773-580-4630 or 708-720-0084

SOUTHSIDE - 55TH & Ashland, CHICAGO HEIGHTS, 3BR, 1BA, NEWLY REMODELED, APPLS INCL , SECTION 8 OK. NO SEC. DEPOSIT. 708-8224450

Clean Rooms, use of kitchen and bath. Available Now. Call 773-434-4046

AVALON PARK - 4BR, 1BA, fenced yrd, full bsmnt, close to schools & park. Sec 8 wel. $1300/mo + sec. Available Now! 773-902-7011

MARKETPLACE

FAR SOUTH CHICAGO - around 127th and Sangamon. Ranch Style 3BR, no basement. Avail Now! Please call: 312-720-1264

CHICAGO HOUSES FOR rent.

Section 8 Ok, w/app credit $500 gift certificate 3, 4 & 5 BR houses avail.

312-446-3333 or 708-752-3812

NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pur-

suant to "An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State," as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D17149438 on January 26, 2017, under the Assumed Business Name of The Journey of She with the business located at 3858 W 124th Pl, Alsip, IL 60803. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner( s)/ partner(s) is: Taneisha Fleming, 3858 W 124th Pl, Aslip, IL 60803, USA.

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

13131 S. FORRESTVILLE. 3BR. 19 E. 120th Pl. 4BR. 8243 S. Marquette. 4BR. Sec 8 Welcome, SS appls. 847-778-8808

LOVELY HEART HOME Care, LLC. High Quality Affordable Caretakers, 833 W. Chicago, Chicago, IL. Call Luz 312-243-7501. Licensed, Bonded, Insured.

MASSAGE TABLES, NEW and used. Large selection of professional high quality massage equipment at a very low price. Visit us at www. bestmassage.com or call us, 773764-6542.

NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D17149332 on January 19, 2017 Under the Assumed Business Name of CAFE COLAO with the business located at: 2638 W. DIVISION ST, CHICAGO, IL 60622. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/partner(s) is: WANDA COLON 2638 W. DIVISION ST., CHICAGO, IL 60622, USA

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FEBRUARY 9, 2017 | CHICAGO READER 47

SLUG SIGNORINO

STRAIGHT DOPE

By Cecil Adams Q : What does it take to get charged

with manslaughter when your negligent driving kills someone? Last year the driver of a semi entered a bike lane and killed a Chicago bicyclist. He was issued tickets for driving in a bike lane and failure to take due care with a bicyclist.

Why mere tickets instead of a more serious charge? —ALAN G. THOMAS

A : Accidents happen, and when they do

the person enclosed in a big metal box has a pretty clear advantage over anyone walking around or rolling by on nonmotorized wheels. Our laws mostly acknowledge this imbalance—drivers are supposed to be extra careful not to run anyone down—but we’re still reluctant to criminalize auto-inflicted deaths.

As with most criminal matters, prosecutors have the discretion to choose how to proceed, and they’re not only constrained by the laws on the books but discouraged by their odds in the courtroom.

With bicyclists on the streets in ever greater numbers—as of 2012, bike commuting was up by 60 percent over the decade prior— incidents like the one you cite (involving the 20-year-old rider Lisa Kuivinen) have predictably become more common. There are now more than 700 bicycle deaths in the U.S. annually and upward of 40,000 injuries, nearly a third of which involve cars—more than any other single factor. The stats for what happens to the party at fault after these collisions are trickier to track. One look at the D.C. region found that less than half of at-fault drivers were prosecuted. In New York City, which sees ten to 20 cycling deaths each year, motor vehicles caused more than 14,000 pedestrian and cyclist injuries in 2012, but only 101 citations were issued for careless driving.

Surely reckless bike behavior was a factor in some cases, but by any estimate, prosecution rates are certainly low, requiring the injured (or the family of the deceased) to bring private criminal complaints or pursue civil suits.

And that’s baked into the system. As a society—one that drives too much, many would argue—we’ve made choices about allocating the risk that ensues when people get behind the wheel. Our traffic laws are basically designed on the assumption that collisions occur even when drivers exercise a reasonable amount of care. Unless one driver clearly hasn’t done this, the state generally opts not to pursue a criminal conviction, leaving the parties to duke it out in court themselves.

And gauging negligence—legally, the failure to take reasonable care—is a slippery matter.

48 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 9, 2017

Just as driving laws vary by state, so too do definitions of negligence (thanks a bunch, federalism). This isn’t a law school torts lecture, though, so let’s just say there are differing degrees of it, and at the tippy top is criminal negligence, what you’d have to show to support a charge of vehicular homicide.

Since negligence is tough to demonstrate to a jury, prosecution becomes way likelier when the driver’s behavior is notably egregious. A DUI is the gold standard here, but a hit-and-run incident also helps a struck cyclist’s chances at obtaining a guilty verdict. Hit a biker while committing some obvious traffic infraction, like running a red light, or violating a new distracted-driving law, and a prosecutor’s likely to come after you. So for many cycling-safety advocates the idea is to make more laws, bike specific or no, and so create more ways to establish that a driver was negligent. In 2007 Oregon passed a “vulnerable user” law, modeled after a Dutch regulation, and eight states have followed suit: these laws increase penalties when a driver strikes anyone who’s not in a car—pedestrians, cyclists, skateboarders, et al—typically setting a minimum fine around $1,000.

But legislation alone won’t deter drivers from driving aggressively around bikes, or even guarantee enforcement, much less prosecution—a common complaint among cycling activists is that the legal system, from cops and DAs to judges and juries, identifies too readily with drivers. Advocates thus try to gently nudge the debate in their direction, using the term “bike crash” rather than “bike accident” to imply the cause is driver error rather than mere chance. Meanwhile, recent research suggests that the biggest boost to bike safety might simply be more bike use: a 2014 Colorado study found that per-rider crash rates were lower at intersections with heavier bike traffic.

The more often drivers have to share the road, seemingly, the better they get at not running everyone else off it. v Send questions to Cecil via straightdope.com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 350 N. Orleans, Chicago 60654.

l

l

SAVAGE LOVE

By Dan Savage

‘How can we achieve sexual equality?’ and other questions

Dan Savage continues his Q&As with live audiences in Boston and New York.

LAST WEEK I SPOKE at the Wilbur Theatre in Boston and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

Audience members submitted their questions on tiny cards before the show, allowing them to remain anonymous while forcing them to be succinct. Here are some I didn’t have time to get to . . .

Q : My girlfriend wants to explore her sexuality with another woman but be “heterosexually exclusive” with me. She wants me to have equal freedom but doesn’t think it’s fair for me to be with another woman.

I am a heterosexual man.

How can we achieve sexual equality?

A : An open relationship

for her but a closed-on-atechnicality relationship for you? Yeah, no. Want to achieve sexual equality?

Explore your sexuality with other women—as a single man.

Q : I am a 50-year-old queer

man who never really came out—except to people I’m cruising or fucking. Oh, and to my wife. Is there any social or political value to coming out now, in the shadow of a Trump presidency?

months later, he’ll contact me and we’ll hook up again.

Should I say no? What do you think is up?

A : Your friend’s head is

what’s up—up his own ass.

Stop letting him stick his dick up yours. (P.S. His regret has me wondering if his marriage is actually open or if he’s cheating on his wife. If you’ve never discussed their polyamorous arrangement with her, that probably what’s up.)

Q : Please elaborate on your

suggestion that an open relationship could save a marriage.

A : Here’s an example:

married couple, together a long time, low-conflict relationship, good partners.

Spouse #1 is done with sex— libido gone, no interest in taking steps to restore it—but Spouse #2 isn’t done with sex.

This can play out two ways: (1) Spouse #1 insists on keeping the marriage closed, and Spouse #2 opts for divorce over celibacy. (2) Spouse #1 allows for outside contact— they open the marriage up— and monogamy is sacrificed but the marriage is saved.

Q : How do you get over the

and political value to being out, whoever the president is. There’s also social and political risk, whoever the president is. If you’re in a position to come out—and you must be, otherwise you wouldn’t be asking—not coming out is a moral failing.

guilt of being a straight guy?

I used to feel a lot of sexual shame from hearing that men are pigs all the time. I got over most of it, but I still have leftover shame. I want to be respectful of women without having to take responsibility for the actions of every asshole straight man out there.

Q : I’m a 31-year-old

A : As a gay man, I’m not

A : There’s tremendous social

straight female. I have an intermittent sexual relationship with a married polyamorous friend. Each time we hook up, he says he regrets it. But several

responsible for the actions of Roy Cohn, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Peter Thiel. Likewise, I deserve no credit for the accomplishments of Michelangelo, Alan Turing,

and Stephen Sondheim.

When you feel the shame and guilt welling up, all you can do is remind yourself that you’re not responsible for the piggishness of Donald Trump or the awesomeness of Chris Kluwe.

60 MINUTES FREE TRIAL

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Q : What’s the healthiest

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way to address jealousy in a relationship with a jealous and confrontational partner?

www.guyspyvoice.com

Ahora en Español/18+

A : The healthiest thing

would be for your jealous and confrontational partner to address his or her issues with a therapist after you’ve DTMFA.

Q : I see you’ve resurrected your ITMFA campaign (itmfa. org). My question: If Trump is removed from office—if we “impeach the motherfucker already”—we’ll have Mike Pence. Do you really think he’d be any better?

A : We already have Mike

Pence. And Pence, as awful as he is, oscillates within a predictable band of Republican awfulness. With a President Pence, we’ll get shitty Supreme Court nominees, attacks on queers and people of color, and fiscal mismanagement. With President Trump, we get all that plus war with Mexico and Australia.

Speaking of my ITMFA campaign: We’ve already raised $100,000, with all proceeds going to the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and the International Refugee Assistance Project. Get your ITMFA hats, buttons, and T-shirts at ITMFA.org! (Coming soon: coffee mugs and stickers!) v Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Listen to the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at savagelovecast. com. ß @fakedansavage

OFFER ENDS AT MIDNIGHT ON 02/14/2017. COUPLES ADMITTED UPON MANAGERS DISCRETION.

please recycle this paper FEBRUARY 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 49

Black Angels o ALEXANDRA VALENTI

NEW

Steve Aoki, Krewella, Cash Cash 3/15, 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom, on sale Fri 2/10, 10 AM b Dan Baird & Homemade Sin 4/6, 8 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn Paul Barrere & Fred Tackett 5/5, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Sat 2/11, 11 AM b Kishi Bashi 4/11, 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 2/10, 10 AM b Big Bad Voodoo Daddy 3/18, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 2/10, 8 AM b Black Angels, A Place to Bury Strangers 5/11, 9 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 2/10, 10 AM, 18+ Jimmy Buffett & the Coral Reefer Band, Huey Lewis & the News 7/15, 7 PM, Wrigley Field, on sale Fri 2/10, 10 AM Chameleons Vox 9/14, 8:30 PM, 1st Ward, 18+ Kweku Collins 3/24, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Shawn Colvin 5/12-13, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Cool Kids 4/14, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 2/10, 10 AM Christopher Cross 5/22, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/9, noon b Def Leppard, Poison, Tesla 6/24, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park, on sale Fri 2/10, 10 AM Desiigner 5/2, 7:30 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri 2/10, noon b Eptic, Must Die 4/21, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall Expendables 4/14, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 2/10, noon, 17+ Flux Pavilion, Kayzo 5/19, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall

Fortunate Youth 5/5, 8 PM, 1st Ward b Kinky Friedman 5/1, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Sat 2/11, 11 AM b Goapele 4/27, 7 and 9:30 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/9, noon b Half Waif 3/24, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Peter Himmelman 5/25, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Sat 2/11, 11 AM b Homeboy Sandman 4/13, 7 PM, Subterranean Bruce Hornsby & the Noisemakers 6/4-6, 8 PM and 6/8, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/9, noon b I See Stars 4/14, 6:30 PM, Wire, Berwyn b Frank Iero & the Patience, Dave Hause & the Mermaid 4/29, 6:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 2/10, noon b Ibn Inglor 3/4, 8:30 PM, 1st Ward, 18+ Salif Keita 4/14, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 2/10, 8 AM b Kolars 3/30, 8 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 2/10, noon, 18+ Lady Gaga 8/25, 7 PM, Wrigley Field, on sale Mon 2/13, 10 AM Legions of Metal Fest with Ross the Boss, Armored Saint, Avalon Steel, Battleaxe, Brimstone Coven, Brocas Helm, Carriage, and more 5/19-20, 5 PM, Reggie’s Jenny Lewis, Springtime Carnivore 3/12, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 2/10, 10 AM Lil Debbie 3/26, 7:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Local H 5/27, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 2/10, 10 AM Magpie Salute 7/28, 9 PM, Metro, on sale Fr1 2/10, 10 AM, 18+

50 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 9, 2017

Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds 6/10-11, 7:30 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion, on sale Fri 2/10, 10 AM Me First & the Gimme Gimmes, Masked Intruder 4/13, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall, on sale Thu 2/9, 10 AM, 17+ Nancy & Beth 6/16, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/9, noon b New Bomb Turks 4/15, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 2/10, 10 AM Nickelback, Daughtry 8/12, 6 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion, on sale Sat 2/11, 10 AM The 1975, Jimmy Eat World, Bleachers, Highly Suspect, Sum 41 5/20, 1 PM, Hollywood Casino Ampitheatre, Tinley Park, on sale Fri 2/10, 10 AM Of Montreal 4/22, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 2/10, 10 AM, 17+ Omni 4/5, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Alice Peacock 5/6, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Sat 2/11, 11 AM b Pegboard Nerds 4/22, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall Quintron & Miss Pussycat, Nobunny 3/25, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 2/10, 10 AM The Revolution 4/23, 8 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 2/10, 10 AM, 18+ Jonathan Richman 4/15, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Rise Against, Deftones, Thrice 6/9, 6:30 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion, on sale Fri 2/10, 10 AM RP Boo 3/11, 10:30 PM, 1st Ward Juelz Santana 5/13, 8 PM, Portage Theater, 17+ Savoy 2/25, 10 PM, 1st Ward, 18+ Shadows of Knight 6/16, 7:30 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Corky Siegel’s Chamber Blues 6/2, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/9, noon b

b Somi 3/22, 7 PM, the Promontory b Steel Wheels 5/11, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 2/10, 8 AM b Tortoise 3/26, 6 and 9:30 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 2/10, 10 AM Tuck & Patti 4/19, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Sat 2/11, 11 AM b Vaster Than Empires 3/5, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Leif Vollebekk 5/12, 9 PM, Schubas Max Weinberg & the Weeklings 4/7, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Sat 2/11, 11 AM b The World Is a Beautiful Place and I am no Longer Afraid to Die 3/26, 6 PM, Cobra Lounge b Zakk Sabbath, Beastmaker 6/2, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Dweezil Zappa 7/7, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/9, noon b Zeshan B & the Transistors 2/28, 8 PM, the Promontory

UPDATED Billy Bragg 2/21, 7 and 9:30 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, late show added b Taylor Hicks 5/18, 8 PM, City Winery, rescheduled from 4/13 b Zombies 4/13-14, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 4/14 added, on sale Fri 2/10, 10 AM, 17+

UPCOMING Allah-Las, Babe Rainbow 3/16, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Richard Ashcroft 3/30, 9 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Devendra Banhart 3/6, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Adrian Belew Power Trio 4/1, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Besnard Lakes 5/15, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Big Wild 4/7, 9 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Brave Combo 4/14, 9 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn Zac Brown Band 8/26, 7 PM, Wrigley Field b California Guitar Trio 3/3, 7 PM, Schubas C.J. Chenier & the Red Hot Louisiana Band 2/24, 9 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn Clap Your Hands Say Yeah 3/10, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Dawes 3/1, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Dan Deacon, Marijuana Deathsquads, Air Credits 2/19, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Dead & Co. 6/30-7/1, 7 PM, Wrigley Field

ALL AGES

WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK

EARLY WARNINGS

CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME

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Deep Purple, Alice Cooper, Edgar Winter Band 9/6, 6:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Mark Eitzel & Howe Gelb 4/15, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Noah & Abby Gundersen 3/8, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b GZA 2/28, 8:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Inc. No World 3/13, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Wanda Jackson 4/1, 8 PM, City Winery b Juicy J, Belly, Project Pat 3/17, 8 PM, House of Blues, 18+ Valerie June 2/20, 8 PM, Park West, 18+ Stephen Kellogg, Humming House 2/17, 8 PM, Park West, 18+ Meat Wave 2/25, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Mild High Club 5/16, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Bob Mould 4/21, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Nothing 3/2, 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Chris Stapleton 6/29, 7 PM, Wrigley Field Power Trip, Iron Reagan 3/12, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Powers, Brigit Mendler 3/31, 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall b Real Estate, Frankie Cosmos 5/12, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Lionel Richie, Mariah Carey 3/25, 7 PM, United Center Rival Sons, London Souls 5/14, 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Steep Canyon Rangers 5/13, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Al Stewart 3/23, 7 PM, City Winery b Gloria Trevi, Alejandra Guzman 6/17, 8:30 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Trollphace 3/3, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Tropical Trash, Thee Open Sex, Bitchin Bajas 2/19, 9 PM, Hideout Sofi Tukker 3/12, 7:30 PM, Schubas, 18+ Tycho 4/28, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ The Weeknd 5/23, 7:30 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Whitechapel, Cattle Decapitation, Goatwhore 3/4, 6 PM, House of Blues b Betty Who, Verite 4/20, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall b Why? 3/17, 9 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ The XX 5/1, 6:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom v

GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene LAST MONTH, GOSSIP WOLF’S brain was pleasingly scrambled by instrumental jazz rockers Monobody, who opened for Tortoise at Lincoln Hall as part of Tomorrow Never Knows. The local five-piece includes this wolf’s favorite musical polymath, Nnamdi Ogbonnaya, on drums, and his bandmates are stone rippers too—fans of progressive fusion monsters the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Weather Report should take note! On Wednesday, February 15, they drop a self-released split album with time-signature-tweaking math rockers Pyramid Scheme, who share a member with Monobody—and that night they headline a Beat Kitchen show with Slow Mass and Great Deceivers.

In September, Gossip Wolf mentioned 24x24, where 24 DJs spun hour-long sets for a full day. Now the organizers are back with 32x24—and as you can probably guess, 32 DJs will spin 45-minute vinyl sets for 24 hours, beginning at noon on Saturday, February 11, and ending at noon on Sunday. The diverse DJ roster includes K Sity, Mixtress Annie, Maria’s music chief Joe Bryl, WLPN Lumpen Radio station director Logan Bay, and Mykol of WLPN show In-Between. The Co-Prosperity Sphere hosts the event, which doubles as a WLPN benefit (it’s free, but donations are accepted). The station will also broadcast the whole thing. Vendors will be on hand selling records, music gear, and art.

When does Savage Sister guitarist Michael Tenzer sleep? He has a million irons in the fire, including tape label Wild Patterns and shoegaze band Lazy Legs, whose EP Chain of Pink came out in January. Last week his dream-pop project Soft Lashes dropped the chilled-out Hypersensuality, where he says he tried “to capture that spectrum of late-night romance— the thrum of yearning, fun, kinetic attraction, sanctuary, intimacy—and drape it all in my love for misty 80s everything.” Its glistening synth jams will definitely have you reaching for a John Hughes movie!

—J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

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