Chicago Reader print issue of February 22, 2024 (Vol. 53, No. 10)

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IN THE 2023 CHICAGO READER ‘BEST OF’ AWARDS

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LETTERS

06 Readers Respond Cheese, plus behind-the-scenes photos

FOOD & DRINK

08 Sula | Review The camera eats first when omurice comes to the table.

NEWS & POLITICS

10 Brown | Politics City council calls for a ceasefire in Gaza.

BEST OF CHICAGO

12 Introduction Dear Chicago, sound off!

13 Best of Chicago | City Life Gregorian chants at the Monastery of the Holy Cross, daydreaming in El Paseo Community Garden, building community at Chicago Liberation Center, and more

23 Best of Chicago | Buy Local Real hippie-made incense, vintage readers at the Gallery Bookstore, wigs and ruffles at Chicago Costume, and more

31 Best of Chicago | Sports & Rec Sands that can carry a tune, dancing at Pier 31, Shakeia Taylor’s sports reporting, and more

35 Best of Chicago | Food & Drink Kid-sized cooking at Impact Culinary Training, icy treats at Kedzie and Lawrence, and more

43 Best of Chicago | Cannabis Dog-friendly dispensaries, cannabis

WRITERS

Taryn Allen, Jacob Arnold, Jake Austen, DMB (Debbie-Marie Brown), Kimzyn Campbell, Micco Caporale, Kerry Cardoza, Salem Collo-Julin, Jordana Comiter, Sydney Cox, Charlie Dykstal, Joe Engleman, Leor Galil, Isa Giallorenzo, Amber Gibson, Gonzalo Guzman, Jack Helbig, Alejandro Hernandez, James Hosking, Deanna Isaacs, Dan Jakes, Charlie Kolodziej, Steve Krakow, Nicole Lane, Emily McClanathan, Maia McDonald, Marissa Oberlander, Annette LePique, Tara C. Mahadevan, Steve Melendez, Shawn Mulcahy, JT Newman, Jonah Nink, Kayleigh Padar, Richard Pallardy, Janet Potter, Katie Prout, Bridgette M. Redman, Chris Reeves, Jon Rosenthal, Dmitry Samarov, Stuti Sharma, Shannon Nico Shreibak, Courtney Sprewer, Mike Sula, Anca Szilágyi, Erin Toale, Sandra Trevino, Wendy Wei

community builders, edibles-friendly river strolls, and more

51 Best of Chicago | Arts & Culture Students for Justice in Palestine Chicago, free art at Harold Washington Library, Thomas Kong forever, and more

61 Best of Chicago | Music & Nightlife Queer and country at

Charlie’s Chicago, elderly adventures at CHIRP Vinyl Listening Bar, dollar beer nights, and more

THEATER

72 Review Joffrey’s Studies in Blue colors in moods from ominous to lighthearted.

74 Plays of Note The Band’s Visit at Writers, The Matchbox Magic Flute at the Goodman, and Silent Sky at Citadel

FILM

78 Review The experimental films of Shirley Erbacher will screen at Sweet Void Cinema.

COPY EDITING AND PROOFREADING

Taryn Allen, Kerry Cardoza, Salem Collo-Julin, Savannah Hugueley, Jamie Ludwig, Philip Montoro, Shawn Mulcahy, Kerry Reid, Jackson A. Thomas, Sheba White

ADDITIONAL BEST OF CHICAGO BALLOT AND WEB MANAGEMENT

Chasity Cooper, Shawnee Day, Jillian Mueller, Amber Nettles, Ayana Rolling, Tyra Nicole Triche

VISUAL CONCEPT, ART DIRECTION, AND PHOTOGRAPHY OF MINIATURES

James Hosking

CREATIVE CONCEPT AND FABRICATION

Itty Bitty Mini Mart, a Chicago-based group of five artists making contemporary miniatures with a little levity: Margie Criner, Lucie Van der Elst, Wendi Napoli, Natalie Birholtz, Brian Schuth

79 Movies of Note Drive-Away Dolls is a fast-paced jumble of gags, and Madame Web is so-bad-it’s-good junk food.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

80 City of Win Damon Williams carries AirGo Radio’s revolutionary conversations onto his debut album.

82 Shows of Note Previews of concerts including Friko, OsamaSon, María José Llergo, and the Chicago Psych Fest

86 Early Warnings Upcoming shows to have on your radar

86 Gossip Wolf Rapper-producer Sidaka throws two parties for a debut five years in the making, AMS. connects his hip-hop to his father’s legacy, and more.

CLASSIFIEDS

88 Jobs

89 Housing

89 Auditions

89 Matches

OPINION

90 Savage Love Nonconsensual monogamy (it’s just cheating)

LOGO AND SECTION TEMPLATE DESIGN

Kirk Williamson

GRAPHIC DESIGN AND PHOTO EDITING

James Hosking, Amber Huff, Kirk Williamson

ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY

Jake Austen, Micco Caporale, Kerry Cardoza, Brian Cassella, Isa Giallorenzo, Gonzalo Guzman, James Hosking, Dan Jakes, Emily McClanathan, Maia McDonald, Shawn Mulcahy, Bridgette M. Redman, Jonathan Rosenthal, Dmitry Samarov, Stuti Sharma, Anca Szilágyi, Sheba White, Andi Zaragoza

ADDITIONAL THANKS TO THESE MINIATURISTS

Bicycle: Magdalena Odette

Bird Statue: Elizabeth Gaul

Dog: Heart Felt Canines

Lamp: Mod Pod Miniatures

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EDITOR’S NOTE Reader Letters m

Re: “The cheesemonger: Alisha Norris Jones,” from the People Issue (November 10, 2022; volume 52, number three); interview by Mike Sula

Brilliant article. Cheese is definitely Food of the Gods. —Angela Sasso, via X

Re: “Kent Rose hits 50 years in Chicago country music,” written by Steve Krakow and published online February 14, 2024

The Bar Double R! Did many a going away party there for LaSalle Street bankers changing jobs. —Diana Williams, via Facebook

Re: “Owners of beloved Chicago lesbian bar plan queer-focused event space,” written by Kayleigh Padar and published online February 15, 2024

Yas, kweens! Keep opening and closing those businesses! Get that community money! Also, as others have pointed out, you’re definitely not the first queer-owned wedding venue in Chicago. Quit lying. —Kristan Lieb, via Instagram

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The Chicago Reader accepts comments and letters to the editor of less than 400 words for publication consideration.

m letters@chicagoreader.com

During my first visit to Chicago, I fell hard for the Thorne Miniature Rooms at the Art Institute. The rooms’ immaculately detailed visions of the past, careful use of light, and suggestion of the worlds beyond the tiny walls were transportive. For me the rooms became synonymous with Chicago, and when I moved here I would often visit them to say hello.

When I joined the Reader as Art Director last November and knew the challenge of Best of Chicago was approaching, the first idea that came to mind was miniatures. I was very lucky to come across the work of Margie Criner and Itty Bitty Mini Mart, a team of artists with an aesthetic that fit the Reader’s . I was delighted when Margie said yes.

They’ve created a wonderfully eclectic and slyly funny version of a Chicago apartment replete with hand-stained floorboards and mini blinds. The behind-the-scenes photos on this page convey a bit of the time and effort that went into realizing this idea. I appreciate Margie and her team’s commitment to the project and their connection to the Reader . I’ve enjoyed the challenge of creating the images for this issue.

It might seem counterintuitive to try to capture the breadth of Chicago in items that can fit in the palm of your hand, but a change of perspective can help you see everyday details and the city in a new light. v

—James Hosking, art director m jhosking@chicagoreader.com

Behind-the-scenes at the miniature “apartment” created by Itty Bitty Mini Mart JAMES HOSKING

Demystifying Acupuncture provides answers for the curious skeptic

Acupuncture is a form of Traditional East Asian Medicine (TEAM) that involves the placement of hair-thin needles into specific meridian points across the body to stimulate the body’s energy flow (Qi), and promote physical and mental well-being. While the method has been practiced for more than 2,500 years, it is often misunderstood because of differences in approach to diagnosis and treatment between TEAM and conventional medicine. TEAM approaches people’s health issues from a holistic perspective, while conventional medicine approaches them from a reductionist perspective. Still, that hasn’t dampened a growing public interest as people seek alternatives to conventional medical practices and pharmaceuticals for a variety of ailments, including headaches, chronic pain, hormonal imbalances, fatigue, and much more.

board-certified, licensed acupuncturist and integrative medicine practitioner.

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Asset & Use Restrictions apply. Preferences & Income Limits Apply. List of Amenities can be found at .PershingPlaceApts.com

For more information, language assistance, or reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities please call (872) 299-8445 | TTY: 711 or PershingPlace@tcbinc.org

Professionally Managed by The Community Builders, Inc.

In her new book, Demystifying Acupuncture: Modern Answers About Ancient Medicine, Dr. Sina Smith pulls back the curtain on acupuncture, sharing the art and science behind the ancient practice with evidence-based principles to educate readers and encourage them to take control of their wellness journey. Inspired by the many questions she’s received from patients and community members, each chapter follows a Q&A-style structure that breaks down the complexities, applications, and potential benefits and drawbacks of acupuncture in a straightforward reference guide that anyone could follow, whether they’ve previously undergone acupuncture treatment, or are exploring it for the first time.

Demystifying Acupuncture is written as a translation between conventional western medicine and acupuncture, an approach that was informed by her own experiences as an acupuncture patient. Smith had attained her MD at the University of Illinois Chicago in 2004, followed by general surgery training. In 2009, she developed radial tunnel syndrome, which temporarily paralyzed her hands and destroyed her lifelong dream of being a surgeon. Smith was inspired to change her career path after receiving acupuncture treatments for the condition, eventually becoming a

Smith says, “By the time I heard about acupuncture, I had been steeped in science—I had two master’s degrees and an MD. I was skeptical about it because I didn’t understand that acupuncture could be reconciled with modern anatomy and physiology.” She began studying acupuncture by reading books for a general audience and looking up articles in medical journals, trying to determine if acupuncture was really effective or just a placebo. As her interest grew, she took courses at Harvard Medical School, Yo San University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Midwest College of Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine. She then went on, over the next 15 years, to study functional, culinary, and homeopathic forms of medicine with the same rigorous, scientific curiosity about how the body works from these other perspectives.

“I came to understand that holistic forms of medicine like acupuncture do not have to be delivered at the expense of conventional medicine and vice versa. There is a place for each, and they are mutually compatible, not mutually exclusive,” says Smith.

Because Dr. Smith was a skeptic herself, she decided to write Demystifying Acupuncture for other people who might be curious about acupuncture, but wary to try it. “I don’t want to dissuade anyone from conventional medicine. I take pharmaceuticals. I see a surgeon when my ankle needs to be addressed. But I also use many integrative therapies—like acupuncture and herbs—–alongside conventional medicine,” says Smith. “I want to empower people reading this book to do the same, if they so choose.”

“My hope is that, because I am dual trained as an MD and a licensed acupuncturist, I can help to bridge the misunderstandings that exist on both sides,” Smith says. “I wrote this book to empower people to make informed health decisions about acupuncture, hopefully opening the door to living their best lives.”

Visit https://SinaSmithMD.com/ for more information about Dr. Sina Smith or to purchase your book copy today.

FOOD & DRINK

FOOD TREND

The camera eats first when omurice comes to the table

Eldritch horror or comfort on a plate? The Japanese fried rice omelet has taken over social media, if not Chicago restaurants.

By MIKE SULA

Omurice, depending on your wiring, either elicits a stomach-churning Lovecraftian revulsion, or a soothing autonomous sensory meridian response. I’m in the latter camp.

Either way, it’s hard to escape. Omurice is the Japanese fried rice–omelet duo whose current social media virality was presaged in the classic 1985 food flick Tampopo

In its elemental form, it features a molded pedestal of chicken fried rice supporting a soft, jiggly French omelet, dramatically sliced open Un Chien Andalou– style, sending a cascade of creamy curds down onto the plate. Typically, it’s drenched in rich, brown demi-glace, or a ketchup-based sauce, though variations abound.

Lincolnwood’s Renga-Tei, which doesn’t serve it) by a harried chef who required a spoonable meal during his busy shift.

dim sum chain MingHin—though it doesn’t appear on the menu—and the Izakaya at Momotaro used to o er it, but it’s apparently been eighty-sixed. The great West Rogers Park Korean bar Yeowoosai does it, but it’s not much of a spectacle—the omelet arrives already split, opened, and drizzled with ketchup over Spam fried rice. (Izakaya Shinya in Wicker Park also has one on its menu, though I can’t personally vouch for it.)

But you can get an excellent version at the ramen megachain Kyuramen, which first arrived in Oak Park in 2018, but more recently in River North, when Tony Hu opened a branch on Hubbard last year.

Otherwise known as the “Starbucks of ramen,” according to its founder, Kyuramen offers two varieties of omurice. There’s the classic chicken fried rice with curry sauce or demi-glace ($19), and an upgrade topped

RFor mysterious reasons, in the last few weeks, the algorithmic gods have flooded my Instagram feed with a parade of thoroughly bonkers versions, say, draped in white Bolognese sauce, or stacked with chubby burgers or tonkatsu cutlets and curry. While chef Motokichi Yukimura of Kichi Kichi Omurice in Osaka appears to be the reigning omurice master, the dish has been around for at least a century or more.

Others have it that it was first served at Hokkyokusei in Osaka in 1925 (also still open), where they fried the rice with ketchup and served it to a customer who was experiencing gastric distress.

It’s an irresistibly scarfable security blanket on a plate.

It’s an early standard bearer in the realm of yōshoku, or the Western-influenced Japanese cuisine that arose during the latter part of the Meiji era, the name a portmanteau of “omelet” and “rice.” One account says it was first created in 1900 in Tokyo’s Ginza district at the still-humming diner Rengatei (no relation to

Despite its online ubiquity, it’s not common around these parts. I’m not sure why. It does require a somewhat advanced level of egg wrangling skill that (for now) is beyond me, as I’ve practiced it in my own kitchen—but it shouldn’t be di cult for any decent line cook. I’d reckon its rarity has more to do with a stolid midwestern aversion to undercooked eggs. If that’s not your struggle, you can definitely get your omurice fix in Chicago.

There have been omurice sightings at the

with a deep-fried pork tonkatsu cutlet ($23.99).

Of course, servers are aware that the camera eats first when it comes to omurice, and they’ll patiently wait for you to set up your shot before they produce a textbook curdfall over the rice. How else will you prove to the world that you exist?

Once the show is over, and the rich gravy, silky eggs, and wok-smoky rice are amalgamated, it’s an irresistibly scarfable security blanket on a plate. v

m msula@chicagoreader.com

Kyuramen’s omurice, still unsliced MIKE SULA

The omurice fi nished with demi-glace MIKE SULA

Nakba. Again.

By Linda Abdullah

Linda Abdullah is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and daughter of Historic Palestine. Her father was born in the village of Zarnouqa in AlRamleh. At age 6, the Nakba forced his family to flee Palestine, through Egypt as refugees, and arrive stateless in the United Arab Emirates. Linda majored in Visual Communications at the American University of Sharjah, UAE, and earned an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art Media and Design from OCAD University in Canada, where she was the first person in her family to obtain citizenship. Her critical graphic design practice examines social, cultural, and political identity through the lens of diaspora, displacement, and intellectual exile. Linda showcases her work regularly and currently resides in Chicago.

Poem curated by Faisal Mohyuddin. Faisal Mohyuddin is the author of Elsewhere: An Elegy (forthcoming March 2024 from Next Page Press), The Displaced Children of Displaced Children, and The Riddle of Longing. He teaches high school English in suburban Chicago and creative writing at Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies; he also serves as a Master Practitioner with the global not-forprofit Narrative 4 and is a visual artist.

A biweekly series curated by the Chicago Reader and sponsored by the Poetry Foundation.

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Celebrating the Visiting Teaching Artists of Forms & Features

Join us for a virtual reading featuring 2023 Forms & Features

Visiting Teaching Artists Gabriela Denise Frank, Naoko Fujimoto, Nathan Xavier Osorio, and Sarah Ann Winn. Forms & Features is the Poetry Foundation’s series of free online creative writing workshops for adults.

Thursday, February 29 at 6:00 PM CT

Learn more at PoetryFoundation.org

NEWS & POLITICS

Chicago City Council calls for a ceasefire

The historic January 31 vote made Chicago the largest U.S. city to demand an end to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

By DMB (DEBBIE-MARIE BROWN)

Green and red squares lit up on the projector screen in the Chicago City Council chamber on January 31 as members voted “yea” or “nay” on a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Alderpeople Rossana Rodríguez, of the 33rd Ward, and Daniel La Spata, of the First Ward, spearheaded the resolution calling for “a permanent ceasefire to end the ongoing violence in Gaza,” as well as “humanitarian assistance including medicine, food, and water, to be sent into the impacted region; and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.” It also stipulated that copies of the resolution would be sent to President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and the Illinois congressional delegation.

As members cast their votes, Reverend Jesse Jackson, the prominent civil rights leader, stood to the side of the assembly in a dark gray jacket peering over the crowd, chin up and arms crossed. Twenty-three alderpeople voted for the resolution, 23 against, and four chose not to participate, leaving Mayor Brandon Johnson with the opportunity to use his rare tiebreaking vote.

Johnson added his “yea” to the mix, officially making Chicago—which is in the county with the largest population of Palestinians in the nation—the biggest city in the nation to take a symbolic stand condemning the ongoing genocide in Gaza. (At least 70 U.S. cities have passed similar resolutions, including Seattle, San Francisco, Detroit, and Atlanta.)

“We, here in Chicago, made history,” said Frank Chapman, executive director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NAARPR) and field organizer for the group’s Chicago chapter. The vote, he said, “lines us up in harmony and consistency with the international community.”

“What makes it so courageous is that [the resolution’s supporters] went up against the powerful forces of Zionism. And I’m not being anti-Semitic,” Chapman told the Reader . He continued to opine, “I’m being factual because the Zionist lobby in Chicago is powerful.”

In October 2023, after Hamas’s initial Oc-

tober 7 attack killed more than 1,100 people, the council passed a resolution on a voice vote expressing support for Israel. Chapman criticized that earlier resolution, saying it lacked historical context and didn’t acknowledge the three-quarters of a century Palestinians have been denied entry to their country or the ongoing apartheid conditions that precipitated Hamas’s attack. “It talked about the event that happened on October 7 like it had no history, like there was no damn reason for it.”

The historic January 31 vote was originally slated for a week earlier, on January 24. But more than half the council’s 50 members— including the council’s only Jewish member, Alderperson Debra Silverstein, of the 50th Ward—signed a letter asking proponents of the resolution to postpone consideration out of deference to International Holocaust Remembrance Day (which takes place annually on January 27).

The Chicago chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow released a joint statement condemning attempts to delay the vote. “As Chicago Jews, we will not be silent about the genocide being carried out in our name,” the groups wrote. (Rodríguez and La Spata ultimately agreed to postpone the vote.)

Maren Rosenberg is a Jewish Chicago resident who grew up in Washington, D.C., and spent four years playing Anne Frank at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in the nation’s capital. Rosenberg also serves on the board of directors of the Chicago Independent Venue League (CIVL) and as co-artistic director of Uprising Theater (a Chicago theater company that prioritizes producing work that presents the Palestinian experience), where she works alongside Palestinian American professor and actor Iymen Chehade.

After the January 24 vote on the resolution had been postponed, Rosenberg told the Reader she found it abhorrent for people to call “upon the name of the Holocaust to deny Chicago the opportunity to take an appropriate stand to prevent a genocide and a secondary mass extermination of people. Having worked in Palestine, alongside Palestinians, for many years, and as a person who was open about

my Jewish faith, I was never mistreated. I was never made to feel unsafe. I was made to feel welcome.”

S.D. is one of the hundreds of Chicago residents who arrived at 7 AM on January 31 trying to secure a place in City Hall’s seating gallery. The crowd packed the first-floor hall, waiting to enter the chamber.

S.D. asked to be referred to by her initials in this article because she said Palestinians like herself have been doxxed and exposed to the Israeli military, which has subsequently denied Palestinians entry back to their homeland. S.D. returns to the region every two years and believes having her name printed in an article supporting a ceasefire would negatively impact her chances of returning.

S.D. is an artist and activist raised on the southwest side. That momentous Wednesday marked her third time visiting City Hall in anticipation of a ceasefire vote. She arrived feeling optimistic, saying the chamber felt different than previous visits. She said the crowd was “a lot bigger. There’s a lot more people today. I think there’s more positive energy because we know that the mayor has spoken out in support of the ceasefire.”

By 10 AM, a large crowd of onlookers were already seated. The press box overflowed with local and national reporters alike, trying to cram themselves in their allocated section. As progressive City Council members shu ed in, the gallery let out eruptions of applause and praise.

Public comment came first, and the first speaker slotted for that day was Rabbi Shoshanah Conover from Temple Sholom of Chicago. She used her three minutes to o er a prayer. Conover said she knows it’s hard for some to remember the October 7 victims after two million Palestinians have been displaced and tens of thousands have been killed by Israel. But she prayed for God to be with Palestinian children and Hamas’s hostages alike, both of whom are “alone and afraid.”

Martin Levine spoke next. Levine is a retired chief executive o cer of the Jewish Community Centers of Chicago and a member

of Jewish Voice for Peace. “You cannot sit silently because these are Palestinians and not Israelis,” Levine told the council. “‘Never again’ is not [just] for some people—it is for all.”

Activist Ayah Ali spoke next, and said the atrocities unfolding in Gaza “would move a rock.” She asked members, “What kind of military objective does this fulfill? Is this what people consider winning the war to be? By traumatizing children and making them orphans?”

Ali pointed out that there are so many Palestinians in Chicago today because their relatives were ethnically cleansed and replaced by settlers. “We are here today as a direct result of Israeli violence.”

When Pamela Scheinman took the mike, she vehemently asked the council to vote against the resolution. Scheinman pointed out that the second paragraph of the Hamas charter says that “Israel will exist until Islam obliterates it.” In Article 13, she continued, the charter reads that there is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad. It says that initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are a waste of time.

“Hamas embeds itself among Gazan civilians, intentionally building their war apparatus under, within, and adjacent to hospitals, kindergartens, mosques, and crowded civilian areas with the sole purpose of using them as human shields,” Scheinman said.

The crowd grew audibly more agitated as she spoke. She condemned the City Council for opining on the one conflict where she said the Jewish state is facing a “terrorist genocidal enemy,” instead of addressising issues facing the city.

Scheinman’s reference to “human shields” mirrors arguments made by Israeli officials in defending the indiscriminate targeting of Gazans. However, Marc Weller, chair of international law and international constitutional studies at the University of Cambridge, told Al Jazeera in November that Israel must be able to prove the killing of civilians is proportionate to the military advantages it gains from doing so. Issuing an evacuation order to the millions of people living in Gaza, then launching a wholesale attack on the occupied territory, as Israel has done, does not meet that threshold, Weller said.

He continued, “Israel cannot discharge its obligation of distinction by wishing the civilians away. This places the burden of protection on victims, rather than attackers.”

In the months preceding his tiebreaking ceasefire vote, Johnson had been slow to evacuate the chamber when rowdy visitors interrupted speakers. But on this occasion, he was more serious. “If you want to participate in this democratic process, I would ask for you to allow those who are speaking to finish their presentation,” Johnson told onlookers, who repeatedly interrupted speakers with cheers and jeers. “I do not want to have to direct the sergeant at arms to clear the chamber, but you will leave me no choice.”

Shortly after public comments concluded, Silverstein launched into a ten-minute speech opposing the resolution. In light of Israeli negotiators in Paris trying to broker a peace deal, she said, the resolution would reduce and undermine the power of the U.S. government.

“The October 7 attack featured a level of barbarity rarely seen in modern society. Terrorists murdered babies, burned homes, and decapitated victims,” she said. (Part of those claims have been disproven.) “The attack also prominently included gang rape, sexual mutilation, and torture.”

A few members of the crowd screamed, “Liar!” Soon after, Johnson called for a recess and directed the sergeant at arms to clear the chamber.

The next 45 minutes felt like chaos. No one, not even the police shuffling people back downstairs to the first floor of City Hall, knew if members of the public would be allowed back in to watch the vote. Police officers informed a smaller group being ushered out that they would all have to be rescreened and would only be able to watch from the third-floor gallery, which is separated from the chamber by a large glass window.

Mass protests erupted on either side of City Hall’s first floor, with drumming, chanting, and call-and-response cheers from members of the public. “Getting into the chambers is very hard to begin with,” Ali, the activist, told the Reader. “They kicked us all out before the voting could happen. I’m in tears. So we’re gonna stay here, and we’re gonna make some goddamn noise until we hear this damn vote—and it better pass.”

Hatem Abudayyeh, national chair of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network and spokesperson for the Chicago Coalition for Justice in Palestine, was among those waiting to be let back up. Working alongside NAARPR in the weeks leading up to the vote, he and other local organizers amassed a Black and Brown

coalition that worked to flood alderpeople with constituent phone calls.

At this point in the afternoon, Abudayyeh was terrified the recess could impact the outcome of the vote. Though he understood the passion of young people who pestered council members, he worried onlookers may have committed a fatal error. “I understand that young people who are not a part of the intimate organizing in this thing don’t fully understand [political] strategy, but the point is that they were not educated about how you win these things,” he said.

“You can’t win by trying to disrupt the other people that you don’t agree with. Yes, it was bothering me a lot as well. But we knew that we couldn’t disrupt because [it would] potentially cause people to shift their vote,” Abudayyeh said.

Conversely, Chapman was encouraged to see youth express such militancy, and said he wasn’t going to go against young people for raising hell after Silverstein denigrated their relatives. “She was saying things that have been proven to be a lie. And she was saying it like it was gospel,” Chapman said.

By the time proceedings resumed, Johnson had permitted some of the public to repopulate the third-floor viewing area. Because of the interruptions that provoked the recess, the mayor—at the request of Alderperson Nicholas Sposato, of the 38th Ward—allowed Silverstein to restart her remarks.

As council members spoke on the resolution, it was clear many votes were not based on fixed, cut-and-dried opinions about the Israel–Palestine conflict. Many of their feelings about the resolution lie somewhere in the middle. Even most with firm opinions for or against the measure had no bitterness against their peers on the other side. At the heart of an otherwise polarizing discussion was a blanket sense of mutual respect.

“I decided to vote yes today, despite not being aligned with 100 percent of the words on this page, because I believe that we must send a message that we stand for peace,” said Alderperson Nicole Lee, of the 11th Ward. “To those that have reached out to me to ask me to vote no . . . I share your alarm at the rising anti- Semitism that we’ve seen. I also share your disgust with Hamas’s brutal attack.”

Alderperson Samantha Nugent, of the 39th Ward, told the council that she and 22 alderpeople had signed onto a statement opposing the ceasefire vote. She said they’re saddened by the ongoing conflict and condemn all acts of violence aimed at Palestinian and Israeli

civilians. But she worried how a vote in favor of Gaza would weaken the U.S.’s influence on the international stage and contradict the White House’s position on foreign policy. “We believe that the United States is the best peace broker in the conflict,” Nugent said.

Alderperson Byron Sigcho-Lopez, of the 25th Ward, a staunch supporter of the resolution, told the council he was proud of Chicago public school students for “seeing the obvious” and “seeing what’s right” when they walked out of class and down to City Hall on January 30 in solidarity with Gazans. He reminded his peers that an international court ordered Israel to take steps to prevent a genocide. “This is a resolution that is not controversial. I think some of the arguments here on the floor defy some logic,” he said.

Alderperson Jessie Fuentes, of the 26th Ward, shared that her experience as a person whose family was displaced from Puerto Rico by colonialism and global gentrification informs her solidarity with Palestine.

Forty-third Ward alderperson Timmy Knudsen said he feels equally “gutted” by both Hamas’s October 7 attack against Israel and Israel’s killing of more than 25,000 Palestinians in Gaza. But he would be voting “no” on the resolution, he said, because direct negotiations by world powers is the best bet for ensuring long-term peace for all involved.

Ultimately, the vote passed. Booming applause, chants, drumbeats, and cries of joy rang through City Hall’s first floor and poured out onto LaSalle Street. A few blocks away, supporters gathered for a rally at Daley Plaza. “We don’t get to celebrate very much,” Abuddayah said with a smile.

A pickup truck parked near the rally carried two large speakers and a Palestinian flag, which waved in the wind. Sigcho-Lopez and Rodríguez joined the crowd to celebrate.

“Martin Luther King said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,’” Sigcho- Lopez said. “Today, Chicago took a stance, and we are proud of Chicago today.”

Abudayyeh said he was grateful the city took this stance just a few months before it hosts this summer’s Democratic National Convention. “The mainstream Democratic Party is now saying to the president of the United States: ‘You have to change your policies. The base that you have in Chicago does not support you on this question.’” v

m dmbrown@chicagoreader.com

Hundreds fi lled City Hall on January 31 as alders voted on a ceasefi re resolution. DMB (DEBBIE-MARIE BROWN)

Introduction

If there’s one Chicago Reader special issue guaranteed to elicit considerable commentary, it’s the Best of Chicago issue. That’s to be expected when attempting to capture what is especially notable in such a large, vibrant, dynamic city as Chicago, and yet it’s still a surprise to witness the depth of thought and feeling that readers have for Best of Chicago even long before the issue is published.

To note, back in September we received a letter from a reader who ardently laid out what’s at stake. “More often than not, ‘Best’ issues are the ‘Worst’ issues,” they declared. Great umbrage was taken with the number of “undeserving” winners in Best of Chicago, particularly in the category of Best Newspaper. Perhaps there were reasons why certain winners won that didn’t have to do with questionable methods, they surmised, “Nevertheless, it looks foul.” (You know it's serious when “nevertheless” is employed.) To wit, “What organization includes themselves as a category?” A possible answer to that question: Voters, well, voted?

Nay, hazards the reader, “Sadly, a very insecure one.”

It’s both a deliciously withering and endearing Chicago criticism, in that it speaks to how deeply the people who love the city feel about it—did we mention that this was sent via snail mail?—and how much they want others to get it right and be worthy of the honor of Best of Chicago.

Rest assured, we’re very serious about what makes Chicago great. It’s why we go to such lengths to publish what people find most valuable about it, why we take on this arduous and monthslong task of compiling votes, and why we encourage our editors and writers to also put in their two cents about what they most love in a city notoriously known for having a lot of options and a lot of opinions.

For the 2023 Best of Chicago issue, you’ll find deserving winners picked by 44,720 voters casting 372,187 votes, as well as Chicago Reader picks from our editorial team and contributing writers covering everything from “Best TikTok presence setting the record straight about Chicago culture for a national

audience” to “Best new legislation that supports freelance workers” to “Best rapper who also collects luchador masks.”

You’ll also find incredible artwork by Itty Bitty Mini Mart. They’ve spent weeks making the miniature objects that grace our pages. Each piece represents some aspect of Chicago and the Chicago Reader, and spotting the connections brought smiles to our faces. We couldn’t be more delighted by the results.

As with every Best of Chicago issue, you’ll also find a list of things to do and see in Chicago in the year ahead. That’s the best part of the Best of Chicago. It’s an opportunity to discover more about the city, form your own strongly held and worded opinions, and debate seriously and unseriously about what should be considered next year. We wouldn’t undertake

this annual logistical challenge if we didn’t want to encourage a dialogue among Chicagoans. So please, enjoy this very special labor of love. And let us know what you think.

—SHEBA WHITE, MANAGING EDITOR v

Artist's Statement

Curiosity is inherent to the human condition. It should be nurtured, engaged, at any age. It is the cornerstone for problem-solving, for understanding each other and situations, for building a better future. The goal of storytelling with miniatures is to engage that curiosity we sometimes forget still stirs in us, to celebrate what we have in common, to remind us that we are all in this together; if you look further during those everyday moments in life, you may find something that surprises you.

—MARGIE CRINER, ITTY BITTY v

Miniatures by Margie Criner and Itty Bitty Mini Mart, dog by Heart Felt Canines, and lamp by Mod Pod Miniatures. Below, artist Margie Criner. JAMES HOSKING

BEST OF CHICAGO 2023

City Life

BEST PLACE TO HEAR GREGORIAN CHANTS BY BENEDICTINE MONKS

The Monastery of the Holy Cross in Bridgeport

Nestled two miles from downtown Chicago in Bridgeport, a neighborhood that once had the most churches in the entire city, is the Monastery of the Holy Cross. Holy Cross is the only urban monastery in the country. The eight monks live according to the Rule of Saint Benedict, which encapsu-

lates a quiet, solitary life in their neo-Gothic building.

Days start early for the Benedictine monks, with a 3:30 AM vigil. They pray eight times a day, with the last nighttime prayer at 7:15 PM.

The monastery—whether you're religious or not—feels like an oasis. Every day, these monks

sing the entire liturgy during mass in both Latin and English in Gregorian chant. It's secondary to them, as natural as breathing in air. The monks face one another and sing low but strong. Reverberating o of the glazed walls, their ethereal voices feel medieval. You almost forget you're in a modern blue-collar neighborhood.

Miniatures by Margie Criner and Itty Bitty Mini Mart JAMES HOSKING

City Life

continued from p. 13

Moreover, once a month, a professional choir arrives at the monastery to chant—entirely in Latin—masterworks from the Renaissance with the monks.

This ancient music is sung in melody without instruments. It strips our complexities away and leaves the raw, honest voice. To listen in the audience is pretty exhilarating, no matter what God you pray to.

While some monks in rural areas farm, these city dwellers had to find another opportunity to fund their service. The monastery is self-supporting and operates a popular bedand-breakfast on-site, where there are three apartments in their guesthouse.

The Chicago-landmarked building itself is worth a visit, as it was in 2022's Open House Chicago and is an example of high German Gothic Revival.

Whether it's for your faith or for the song, hearing the monks who specialize in Gregorian chant will take you somewhere sacred. chicagomonk.org —S. NICOLE LANE

BEST WAYS TO USE THE $20 FLOATIES YOU BOUGHT FOR FRIDAY MORNING SWIM CLUB

Furniture, recreation, parties, and trophies

When my roommates and I attended our first Friday Morning Swim Club last summer, we unknowingly committed a faux pas.

As we approached Montrose Harbor, inflatable fruits, animals, and colorful designs

were everywhere in sight. By showing up empty-handed, we disobeyed the unspoken rule to bring a floaty. Rookie mistake.

I vowed to never make that mistake again after struggling to tread the freezing waters. When we got home, before we even took our swimsuits o , we ordered a pack of three floaties o of Amazon for $20—a watermelon, a lemon, and an orange. The next week, we finally felt like part of the club. But one week later, swim club was canceled due to complex communications between the Chicago Park District and the city.

But there they were, our colorful fruit floaties resting in the corner of our living room. Whenever we glanced their way, they seemed to exude a sense of sadness, as if their untouched state mirrored real rotting fruits. (And I hate letting food go to waste.)

Floaties are waterproof, mobile, and make the perfect cushion—I saw the beauty in their versatility. Here’s how you can, too:

Balcony furniture: Life hack—if you use pool furniture, you’ll never have to worry about furniture being ruined in the rain.

Living room furniture: The fruits provide extra seating anytime we have people over, and in the week before we moved out and had already sold our couch, thank goodness we had those floaties.

Recreational activities: The inflatables can be used as picnic seating, pool games equipment, or photography props.

Costume parties: Pair a fruit floaty and wings to resemble a fruit fly, or a donut floaty and running attire to characterize running on Dunkin’.

A trophy: Having floaties as a decorative mainstay in your apartment is a signal of your accomplishment and the ultimate conversation starter. Like, did YOU conquer your fears and jump into the freezing waters of Lake Michigan at 7 AM?

Whether or not Friday Morning Swim Club resumes this summer, there’s one thing for certain—the $20 floaties can live on! fridaymorningswimclub.com

—JORDANA COMITER

BEST TIKTOK PRESENCE SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT ABOUT CHICAGO CULTURE FOR A NATIONAL AUDIENCE

Chima “Naira” Ikoro (@nairabills)

In January 2023, @nairabills aka Chima “Naira” Ikoro posted a video asking men with loud opinions about women’s hair and makeup, “Aren’t you supposed to be building a house? You worried about the wrong stuff. . . . Men used to be artisans, used to be craftsmen—go shine a shoe, bro.” The TikTok, now liked by half a million users, would eventually be digitally shared by the likes of Erykah Badu, Leslie Jones, and Katt Williams; this doesn’t include regular reposts by city-what-to-do accounts like Secret Chicago, which has two million followers across all platforms. A year later, Ikoro is regularly spouting out content. Ikoro’s following on TikTok has skyrocketed to 131K with her Instagram following behind at 17.5K. The majority of her TikToks iterate the basic tenets of Chicago supremacy for a national audience, or just include day-to-day hilarious, pithy commentaries from a mid-20s Black Chicago girl. In one video, Ikoro lays out her conspiracy theory that construction happening where I-90 diverts from 290 is a ten-years-running money laundering scheme. One of their posts from April 2023 shows Ikoro in two sweatshirts with both hoods up saying, “Y’all think I got trust issues because of

past relationships—no, it’s because I’m from Chicago. It was 70 degrees the other day.” Another post shows Ikoro walking through New York City with a look of reserved surprise to a caption that reads, “POV: Chicagoans visiting New York and finally see a skyline they can’t complain about.” Ikoro is already loved locally as a poet, organizer, journalist, and frequent emcee. She is the very best to talk on the record about Chicago to the rest of the country.

—D MB (DEBBIE-MARIE BROWN)

BEST HALLOWEEN COSTUME TROLLING ONE OF THE WORST ALDERPEOPLE ON CITY COUNCIL

Andre Vasquez’s Little Free Library Costume

Chicago’s most outspoken right-wing voices raised objections to the City Council’s recent resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza on the grounds that it's a distraction from issues in the city, which I consider an insult to so many Chicagoans with deep ties to Israel–Palestine. (Cook County

Monks singing at the Monastery of the Holy Cross in Bridgeport COURTESY THE MONASTERY OF THE HOLY CROSS

Alderperson Andre Vasquez COURTESY 40TH WARD OFFICE

has the largest Palestinian population in the U.S.; I’m an American Israeli who has long advocated for Palestinian liberty and equity, and found some solace in the resolution.)

I find it funny that one of the alders most fervently opposed is the same putz who proposed an ordinance to regulate Little Free Libraries. I love these tiny kiosks people manufacture to share books with neighbors. They can be a vehicle for individual creativity while encouraging people who live nearby to share a bit of themselves with their neighbors.

The books we once owned, and what they say about our interests and experiences, can

City Life

be a bridge to someone who lives across the street. I often peek into these small boxes on my way to retrieve holds from my local Chicago Public Library (CPL) branch—any Little Free Library o ering that piques my interest is generally not something I’d find at CPL. To wit, my favorite recent find is Yooper Bars , a 2011 self-published guidebook for Upper Peninsula drinkeries. Its shabby design has so thoroughly charmed me, a person who doesn’t drink alcohol.

It takes a special type of perverted bureaucrat to think it’s reasonable (or useful) for the city to dedicate any time and resources to

City Life

continued from p. 15

policing how Chicagoans erect small kiosks to share a love of literature, and 15th Ward alderperson Raymond Lopez is that type of guy. Lopez often expresses himself and his political ideology like a troll firing o message board missives after midnight.

Sometimes the best way to counteract that behavior and energy is to troll ’em right back. On Halloween, 40th Ward alderperson Andre Vasquez dressed up as a Little Free Library, a fun costume that also demonstrated Lopez’s crusade as a silly bit of playtime. Vasquez succinctly described the proposal as “a solution in search of a problem.”

—LEOR GALIL

BEST CHICAGO COMEDIAN DOCUMENTING THEIR CANCER JOURNEY ON TIKTOK

Anthony “Toeknee” Corrado

If a TikTok from Toeknee (@toekneecorrado) hit your “For You” page within the last year or so, it was probably a video of actor and comedian Anthony “Toeknee” Corrado expressively dancing in his northwest-side apartment, or maybe causing mild chaos around Chicago from “acting up” and “just playin’” too much. It might’ve been a skit in which he’s your awkward first date, or your best friend crushing on your brother. Or, it could’ve been a hilarious and bittersweet documentation of his cancer journey.

Corrado, 27, is a fulltime content creator who, in May 2023, was diagnosed with lymphoma. While it could’ve easily halted his on-camera career, Corrado and his partner, Ashley Lorenz (@ashleyylorenzz), who films all of his videos, decided to instead accompany their usual content with vlogs about his treatment and recovery.

to Ashley, that once we start chemo and everything, our main focus was just trying to keep things as normal as we could, and try to have as much fun with it as we can,” Corrado told me in January.

And so, Corrado’s TikTok series and cancer support network “Toeknees Lymphomies” was born. In the series, Corrado is honest about his struggles—feeling frustrated, not looking like himself—but more often, he’s a force of positivity, dancing through the halls of Northwestern’s Cancer Center and cracking jokes to the sta .

“I kind of just made it a point, to myself and

That positivity quickly started opening doors. Corrado described the highlights of his year: “We got invited to New York to go on Good Morning America—that was awesome. We did a lot of really good work with the Lymphoma Research Foundation. We raised, I think, $40,000, which was insane for me, because I had never done any sort of charity

work before. And we got invited to the White House for a holiday party—that was another, like, ‘what the fuck’ moment.”

Corrado’s been in remission since November. “I’ve been recovering well, working out, and eating healthy, and doing all the right things,” he said. “We’re getting there! Slowly but surely, we’re getting back to where we were before all this happened.” tiktok.com/@toekneecorrado —TARYN ALLEN

BEST FREE PLACE TO DAYDREAM

El Paseo Community Garden

Igrew up in the Devon area, but as a teenager I moved out of the city when rent got too expensive. As an adult, when I abruptly landed back in Chicago, I missed the forest preserves of my old home in the south suburbs—I frantically searched for nature, biking to the lake or the Jackson Park cherry blossoms.

One morning a friend told me to meet him at the community garden by 21st Street. He gave me tea and some herbs to burn for good luck. This began my long, beautiful relationship with El Paseo Community Garden. The garden taught me to daydream through grief. When my cousin died during the peak of COVID in India, the first thing I did was get high and walk to my favorite bench at El Paseo. The butterflies, murals, and wildflowers grounded me in simplicity and hope through the wild chaos of loss. I later brought a friend to the garden who’d lost his grandfather this past year, and he marveled that we could har-

vest tomatoes, peppers, and mint for free.

The organizers of El Paseo Community Garden also coordinate free or low-cost community programming, including yoga, dance, tools workshops, and sound-healing sessions where practitioners play cymbals, drums, and flutes. This past summer, while riding to Millennium Park with my crew to cry at the Carla Morrison show, I fell o my bike (and jumped a fence). The next day, the garden hosted free acupuncture, cupping, and other forms of alternative healing that gave me instant relief. I love seeing my people from all over the city at these events.

The stewards of the garden harvest honey for the public, and I’m so grateful for their labor. This past June, I pulled up to the Pilsen Arts & Community House and, for a suggested donation of $10, I pulled a lever on a giant vat of honey and watched it pour, bright and golden and smelling like all the flowers in the garden, into my recycled mayonnaise jar. Having this honey every day in my tea or drizzled on bread helps me keep the best parts of the garden always with me, even when it’s quiet during the winter. elpaseogarden.org —STUTI SHARMA

BEST LITTLE-KNOWN NEIGHBORHOOD

East Side

When painter John Salhus invited me to put up an art show in his new space, Buena Vista Projects, in the East Side neighborhood, I welcomed the opportunity not only because it’s always flattering to be asked, but also for the chance to spend some time in a part of the city I don’t know so well.

Over two weeks of daily bike rides between Bridgeport and 10056 S. Ewing, I gained a new appreciation not only for this quiet corner of the city near the Indiana state line but also a renewed respect for the patchwork tapestry that is the south side of Chicago.

The East Side is separated from the rest of the city on its north and west boundaries by the Calumet River, so perhaps it’s no surprise it’s little known except to those who live there. Much of its economic lifeblood was drained by the shuttering of the nearby steel mills, but the neighborhood retains much of its classic Chicago bungalow look. As one of the first areas in the city to be populated by Mexican immigrants, the businesses continue to reflect that heritage.

El Paseo Community Garden STUTI SHARMA

Anthony "Toeknee" Corrado HADLEY PAIGE

If you ever wondered where the fabled green parrots of Hyde Park have settled, the answer can be sighted among the girders beneath the Chicago Skyway. Giant nests are visible where that highway passes over the intersection of Indianapolis Boulevard and Ewing Avenue.

On my first visit to Buena Vista Projects in the spring of 2023, a busload of high schoolers filed into the gallery. Saturday students of SkyART on 91st Street, they gave the room a youthful energy that made me want to be part of what is being sown in this long-dormant enclave. Next door to Buena Vista is local legend Roman Villarreal’s Under the Bridge Studios, forming the beginning of a new arts district.

The steel mills may not return, but longtime residents and newcomers are planting the seeds for other enterprises to spur this neighborhood’s rebirth.

—DMITRY SAMAROV

BEST COMMUNITY LIVING CHICAGO’S WELCOMING CITY VALUES

19th District Mutual Aid

Mister Rogers told us, “If you look for the helpers, you’ll know that there’s hope.” That’s come to mind in the last 18 months, as over 35,000 asylum seekers, primarily from Venezuela, joined our most vulnerable neighbors. You’re probably saturated with politicized headlines on this humanitarian issue. But it’s not an issue. It’s parents and children who endured unimaginable trauma to escape hunger and violence. In my district, the helpers o ering assistance and advocacy are the 350-plus people engaged with 19th District Mutual Aid.

This group formed in spring 2023 as neighbors, community leaders, religious organizations, and elected o cials partnered on how to support this steady stream of new arrivals. In their WhatsApp group, I’ve witnessed a real-time level of engagement from everyday heroes with empathy-filled hearts. Since April 2023, this group provided nearly six months of meals at the local police station (up to 180 people at a time), 1,500 coats, nearly 3,000 showers, and more than 250 welcome kits.

Group leader Blair Janis, 32, continues to be awed by this outpouring of support and the long-term relationships built. Volunteers step in with everything from petitions for change of venue for out-of-state immigration appointments to navigating medical emergencies. In one instance, volunteers helped a family whose young daughter suffered from congenital heart disease get expedited for shelter placement, connected to critical medical appointments, and transitioned into stable noncongregate housing to prepare for surgery for her life-threatening condition.

19th District Mutual Aid is one of many community groups across the city showing up for new arrivals and existing unhoused Chicagoans. As a child of immigrants in a city of immigrants, it’s opened my eyes to the transformative power of collective action and direct service. Asylum seekers are still coming. Think about the brave members of your family tree who risked everything to help future generations flourish. Call your alderperson. Offer what you can to show our new neighbors that every Chicagoan has their back.

Instagram: @ 19districtaid —MARISSA OBERLANDER

BEST ACTIVIST

Winner: Shermann "Dilla" Thomas

First Runner-up: Jahmal Cole

Second Runner-up: Miracle Boyd

BEST ADVOCACY ORGANIZATION

Winner: My Block, My Hood, My City

First Runner-up: Chicago Abortion Fund

Second Runner-up (TIE): Clean Air Club

Second Runner-up (TIE): Brave Space Alliance

BEST ALDERPERSON

Winner: 40th Ward - Andre Vasquez

First Runner-up: 33rd Ward - Rossana Rodríguez

Second Runner-up: 49th Ward - Maria Hadden

BEST BLOCK CLUB

Winner: Heart of Lincoln Square Neighbors Association

First Runner-up: Edgewater Glen Association

Second Runner-up: Roscoe Village Neighbors

BEST CHARITY

Winner: Greater Chicago Food Depository

First Runner-up: PAWS Chicago

Second Runner-up: Care for Real

BEST CHICAGO INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT TO FOLLOW

Winner: 6figga_dilla

First Runner-up (TIE): agirlaboutchicago

First Runner-up (TIE): chicagoismyboyfriend

Second Runner-up: chicagoburgerbible

BEST CHICAGO TIKTOK

Winner: @6figga_dilla

First Runner-up (TIE): @agirlaboutchicago

First Runner-up (TIE): @explorechicago

Second Runner-up: @lisabevolving

BEST CHICAGOAN TO FOLLOW ON TWITTER

Winner: Barry Butler

Photography @barrybutler9

First Runner-up: Sherman "Dilla" Thomas @6figga_dilla

Second Runner-up: Chicago Bars @chicagobars

BEST CHIROPRACTOR

Winner: Proper Balance Healthcare

First Runner-up: Division Chiropractic

Second Runner-up: Ries Wellness

BEST COLLEGE FOR 18-25 YEAR OLDS

Winner (TIE): DePaul University

Winner (TIE): University of Illinois Chicago

First Runner-up: University of Chicago

Second Runner-up: Loyola University Chicago

BEST COLLEGE FOR LIFELONG LEARNERS

Winner: Northwestern University

First Runner-up: Northeastern Illinois University

Second Runner-up: University of Chicago

An artist's view of the East Side ILLUSTRATION BY DMITRY SAMAROV

City Life

BEST COWORKING SPACE

Winner: Guild Row

First Runner-up: The Honeycomb Network

Second Runner-up: Creative Coworking

BEST DENTIST

Winner: Dr. Scott Stiffle (Always There Dental Care)

First Runner-up: Dr. Louis Santini (Santini Dentistry)

Second Runner-up (TIE): Dr. Kimberly Dyoco (One Mag Smile)

Second Runner-up (TIE): Dr. Brittany Dickinson (Sugar Fix Dental Lo )

BEST DOCTOR (GENERAL OR PRIMARY CARE)

Winner: Dr. Ronnie Mandal (Swedish Hospital)

First Runner-up: Dr. Kellyn Marks (Northwestern Medicine)

Second Runner-up: Dr. David Meyerson (Mind Chicago)

BEST ELECTED OFFICIAL IN CHICAGO

Winner: Cook County Board

President Toni Preckwinkle

First Runner-up (TIE): Alderperson Rossana Rodríguez

First Runner-up (TIE): Alderperson Andre Vasquez

Second Runner-up: Mayor Brandon Johnson

BEST ELECTED OFFICIAL IN COOK COUNTY

Winner: Cook County Board

President Toni Preckwinkle

First Runner-up: Cook County

Treasurer Maria Pappas

Second Runner-up (TIE): Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi

Second Runner-up (TIE): Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx

BEST EMAIL NEWSLETTER

Winner: Block Club Chicago

First Runner-up: WBEZ Rundown

Second Runner-up: Chicago Public Square

BEST FEDERAL OFFICE HOLDER FROM ILLINOIS

Winner: U.S. Senator

Tammy Duckworth

First Runner-up: U.S. Senator Dick Durbin

Second Runner-up: U.S.

Representative Delia Ramirez

BEST HOTEL

Winner: Chicago Athletic Association Hotel

First Runner-up (TIE): Four Seasons Hotel Chicago

First Runner-up (TIE): The Guesthouse Hotel

Second Runner-up: The Hoxton, Chicago

BEST HVAC MAINTENANCE OR REPAIR

Winner: Four Seasons Heating, Air Conditioning, Plumbing, & Electric

First Runner-up: My Guy HVAC

Second Runner-up: All Temp Heating & Air Conditioning

BEST INDEPENDENT WEBSITE OR BLOG

Winner: Block Club Chicago

First Runner-up: Chicago Public Square

Second Runner-up: CHIRP Radio Blog

BEST LABOR UNION

Winner: Chicago Teachers Union

First Runner-up: SAG-AFTRA

Second Runner-up: SEIU Healthcare

BEST LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION

Winner: DANK Haus German American Cultural Center

First Runner-up: Alliance Française de Chicago

Second Runner-up (TIE): City Colleges of Chicago

Second Runner-up (TIE): Deaf Communication by Innovation

BEST LAWYER

Winner: Joey L. Mogul (People's Law Office)

First Runner-up: Eddie Sanders (Protect and Collect, LLC)

Second Runner-up (TIE): Jamaal Buchanan (Disparti Law Group)

Second Runner-up (TIE): David Oppenheim (Bock, Hatch, and Oppenheim, LLC)

BEST LIBRARY BRANCH

Winner: Harold Washington Library Center

First Runner-up: Sulzer Regional Library

Second Runner-up: Logan Square Branch

BEST LOCAL TV BROADCAST NEWS

Winner: WGN-TV Channel 9

First Runner-up: Chicago Tonight WTTW

Second Runner-up: ABC 7

BEST NORTH-SIDE NEIGHBORHOOD

Winner: Andersonville

First Runner-up: Logan Square

Second Runner-up: Lincoln Square

BEST PUG LIFE IN CHICAGO

Parker the blind Park Hyatt pug (RIP)

For eight years, Parker the Pug lived a life of luxury and celebrity.

In 2016, the then-manager of Park Hyatt Chicago adopted the five-year-old rescue pug and made her the latest hotel employee. She gained a posh lifestyle and attracted the attention of the national media, her hiring making headlines on the Today Show , in Time magazine, and even in newspapers in the UK and New Zealand. While her time at the Park Hyatt was marked by VIP attention from guests and hotel staff—she had plush beds in the lobby, wore a Burberry bandana, hung out in the rooftop garden, and received regular walks and meals from the front desk team members—her life before the Park Hyatt had been rough.

She was rescued from a situation in Tennessee as one very sick pup. Her left eye was so damaged that the rescue organization, PAWS, had to do surgery to remove it and then sew the empty socket. They removed her oozing skin tags and rotten teeth and then performed surgery so that she could breathe better. Parker quickly became a favorite at the

Park Hyatt, even getting her own Instagram tag—#barkhyattchicago.

In later years, though, she’d started to slow down. Still happy to accept pets from guests, Parker had gone completely blind and, as aging folks do, had lost most of her hearing. Her back legs were no longer working.

At the end of 2023, Parker bid farewell to the Park Hyatt and the celebrity life. She entered hospice in a private home where she lived her final days with plenty of personal attention and care, dying at the end of January. Michelle Giunti, concierge at Park Hyatt, said the sta was heartbroken. “She lived eight beautiful, glorious years here.”

—BRIDGETTE M. REDMAN

BEST PLACE TO BUILD A MOVEMENT

Chicago Liberation Center

Art collective, social movement incubator, union meetinghouse—the Chicago Liberation Center wears many hats, but its goal is always the same: to build community among Chicago’s working class.

Not much larger than your average Chicago bungalow, the Center is tucked away in an old storefront in Little Village. Founded in 2021 by members of the Chicago branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Center serves as a community space and education hub where Chicagoans can gather to build political power. Sta ed entirely by volunteers, the Center is dedicated to hosting a wide range of organizations—Black Alliance for Peace, Rebuild Collective, Organized Communities Against Deportations—that need a space to gather on the city’s south and west sides.

The Center is also a space for political

Chicago Liberation Center @HIIKOFI

Parker the blind pug BRIDGETTE M. REDMAN

Help the United Negro College Fund provide scholarships to Illinois students by playing the $200,000! Bingo

(UNCF), an interracial coalition dedicated to supporting Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and making higher education more accessible for marginalized students.

Tripler!

For nearly two decades, the Illinois Lottery has been a pioneer in creating specialty lottery tickets dedicated to raising awareness and funding for specific causes that impact our local communities. In January 2024, the organization introduced their joint specialty ticket, the $200,000! Bingo Tripler! Instant Ticket, which will provide a portion of its funds to the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) to help provide educational scholarships and support college students in Illinois. The ticket costs $5 and is available for purchase at more than 7,000 Illinois Lottery retailers throughout the state. With its bright yellow background and colorful, eye-catching design, $200,000! Bingo Tripler! makes a

great present for friends, family members, neighbors, and colleagues 18 and over—or play it yourself for a chance to win up to $200,000. Visit the Illinois Lottery website for more information about $200,000! Bingo Tripler! and its other good causes. Read on to learn more about the United Negro College Fund, and the valuable work it is doing to empower Illinois students pursuing higher education.

In 1944, civil rights activist William J. Trent, educator and activist Mary McLeod Bethune, and Tuskegee Institute president Frederick D. Patterson founded the United Negro College Fund

Under the motto, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste, but a wonderful thing to invest in,” UNCF firmly believes that supporting minority students is a crucial investment in the future of families, communities, and the United States as a whole. Furthermore, it’s the right thing to do. To date, the philanthropic organization has raised more than $5 billion for scholarships and other direct support for its member institutions and has helped more than 500,000 students graduate from college.

In the 2021-2022 fiscal year alone, UNCF awarded 12,153 scholarships to 10,756 students—including 508 scholarships for 387 Illinois students—for a total sum of $69,979,542. That’s not to mention their hundreds of internships and professional development training programs, the college readiness resources they provide for parents and students in kindergarten through 12th grade, and their advocacy work on the state and national level to promote minority education and community engagement.

“What most people don’t understand about UNCF is we just don’t provide scholarships for our 37 member schools, we don’t just provide scholarships to the 107 HBCUs based on what the donor requires,” says UNCF Chicago regional director - workplace initiatives Lisa Rollins. “We fund students at over 1,100 schools, and we are the largest funder of minority students in the country.”

This sponsored content is paid for by Illinois Lottery

Jasper Hagan.

Photo by Jason McCoy

Huff

From their office in the heart of the Loop, UNCF Chicago functions as a midwestern hub, supporting students and their families across Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, and Wisconsin. Their website (uncf.org/scholarships) is regularly updated with scholarship and fellowship opportunities, with information about eligibility requirements, application process, and deadlines for each. The awards include merit- and financial-based opportunities and the award amounts range from large to small, but Rollins says it doesn’t take as much money as one might think to make an impact on a student’s education.

“The number one reason students drop out of school is because they can’t afford to be there,” Rollins says. “When people say ‘Well, what is the amount that can make a difference?’ We know that $5,000 can make a difference, but for every one scholarship we give, there’s seven other people that need it.”

Jasper Hagan first applied for a UNCF’s scholarship program as a west-side high school student with his eyes set on becoming the first member of his family to attend college. He was awarded a UNCF Chicago Public Schools scholarship, which he used to help pay his expenses at Atlanta HBCU Morehouse College. He remained a UNCF scholar for four years. “The impact UNCF has had on my life has been tremendous, and I can never repay them for investing in my education,” he says.

After graduating in 2011, Hagan returned to Chicago, where he eventually founded Full Court Marketing, a full-service market-

ing agency specializing in high-impact partnerships. Through his business and personal endeavors, he remains committed to passing along the lessons he’s learned through his education and uplifting the next generation.

“One of my big things is that not everyone can attend Morehouse College, but they can be taught by a Morehouse man,” he says. “It’s no different than if you were to go off to the army— we’re charged with coming back and servicing the communities from which we come from. . . . I don’t just want to be a recipient. I also want to grow and continue to be a driving force to make this opportunity an option for others.”

Rollins says one of the biggest misconceptions she encounters regarding UNCF scholarships is that students must attend a UNCF member school to apply. However, UNCF scholarship recipients attend a wide range of schools, including private universities and state colleges. In fact, DePaul University, University of Illinois Chicago, and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign were among the top ten schools attended by Illinois students who received UNCF scholarships in 2021-2022. She also notes that people are often surprised to find out that UNCF provides scholarships to a diverse student base. “We don’t ask you what color you are on the UNCF scholarship application,” she says. “So therefore, I think we find a lot of people don’t know the extent of the funding that we do.”

That all makes UNCF’s collaboration with the Illinois Lottery even more exciting. Under Illinois Senate Bill 1508, sponsored by Senator Mattie Hunter and signed into law last summer, every dollar UNCF receives from the proceeds of the new $200,000!

Bingo Tripler! ticket must go directly to the organization’s scholarships. So, with every purchase, you can help make an Illinois student’s dreams for their education and future come true—and you might just win a prize in the process.

“I’m excited that UNCF will be a recipient of the funds from the ticket” Hagan says. “And I think what I love most is that people who traditionally may not have been able to sow a seed into education can now do so through a portion of their Lottery ticket.”

This sponsored content is paid for by Illinois Lottery

Infographic design by Amber

City Life

continued from p. 18

education, hosting monthly “liberation forums” where folks can gather to discuss topics ranging from the war in Ukraine to the 50th anniversary of hip-hop. The organization recently began hosting its Rhythm and Art Build series where they pair protest banner making with political education and good old-fashioned movement-building techniques: shaking hands and exchanging names. Their most recent build was used to make posters, banners, and bucket drums for the January 13 March on Washington for Gaza, a proPalestinian protest organized by the American Muslim Task Force for Palestine.

Since October of last year, the Center has shifted much of its programming to respond to Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. In collaboration with like-minded groups like Healthy Hood Chicago and Palestinian Assembly for Liberation, the Center has helped organize Artists Against Apartheid events where people can purchase art from Palestinian vendors, the proceeds of which go toward organizations directly supporting Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Signing up for Chicago’s PSL newsletter is a great way to get involved with the organization. You can also donate to the Center or attend one of their upcoming events! There are few spaces where Chicagoans can gather to

BEST OB-GYN

Winner: Chicago Women's Health Center

First Runner-up: Planned Parenthood Wicker Park Health Center

Second Runner-up: Birth Center of Chicago

BEST OVERALL RADIO STATION

Winner: WBEZ 91.5 FM

First Runner-up: WXRT 93.1 FM (93XRT)

Second Runner-up: CHIRP Radio

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A WORK EVENT

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First Runner-up: Punch Bowl Social Chicago

Second Runner-up: Game Night Out

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Winner: Chicago Botanic Garden

First Runner-up: Garfield Park Conservatory

Second Runner-up: Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool

tackle the issues a ecting their communities, so get organized, get informed, and get out there! instagram.com/chicagoliberationcenter —CHARLIE

KOLODZIEJ

BEST NEW LEGISLATION THAT SUPPORTS FREELANCE WORKERS

Freelance Worker Protection Act (HB1122)

Freelance workers have historically had few rights in the state of Illinois. The treatment of freelancers—broadly, self-employed independent contractors who get paid per task or project—has been more or less up to the client’s discretion. For example, clients could take months to pay for completed work, and workers had little recourse if their clients failed to honor their agreed upon compensation.

Thanks to the new Freelance Worker Protection Act (HB1122), cosponsored by Rep. Will Guzzardi, Illinois freelancers will soon be required to receive a written contract, compensation within 30 days of completing work, and protection from discrimination and retaliation when pursuing payment. It will also allow for double damages if free-

BEST PLACE TO THROW A PARTY

Winner: DANK Haus German American Cultural Center

First Runner-up: Guild Row

Second Runner-up (TIE): Big Delicious Planet

Second Runner-up (TIE): Him & Her Vintage

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Winner: PAWS Chicago

First Runner-up: Mind Chicago

Second Runner-up: Above and Beyond Family Recovery Center

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Winner: City Cast Chicago

First Runner-up (TIE): This Is Hell!

First Runner-up (TIE): THIS IS CHICAGO

Second Runner-up: Every Day Is a Yay!

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Winner: Terri Hemmert (WXRT)

First Runner-up: Meagan Panici (WZRD)

Second Runner-up: Ninja (CHIRP Radio)

lancers aren’t paid on time. What’s more, entities that repeatedly violate the law may be subject to investigation by the Illinois Department of Labor. (Full disclosure: The National Writers Union, of which I’m a member, worked to pass this legislation.) Signed by

BEST REASON TO STAY IN CHICAGO

Winner: Culture

First Runner-up: Food

Second Runner-up: The people

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Winner: Garfield Park Conservatory

First Runner-up: Horner Park Natural Area

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First Runner-up: Hyde Park

Second Runner-up: Chinatown

BEST STATE ELECTED OFFICIAL

Winner: Governor J.B. Pritzker

First Runner-up: Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias

Second Runner-up: State senator Mike Simmons

Gov. J.B. Pritzker in August 2023, the law goes into e ect on July 1, 2024. Of course, the law is only useful if impacted workers are aware of their new rights—so be sure to pass along the good news. We’re stronger together.

—KERRY CARDOZA v

BEST SUBURB

Winner: Evanston

First Runner-up: Oak Park

Second Runner-up: Skokie

BEST TOUR

Winner: Chicago Architecture

Center River Cruise

First Runner-up: Brick of Chicago

Second Runner-up: Tours With Mike

BEST WEST-SIDE NEIGHBORHOOD

Winner: Humboldt Park

First Runner-up: West Town

Second Runner-up: Garfield Park

Organizers for the Freelancer Worker Protection Act KERRY CARDOZA

BEST OF CHICAGO 2023

Buy Local

BEST GENDER NEUTRAL, NATURE-INSPIRED CLOTHING COMPANY

Ronny Bass

Some tag Remember the Titans (2000) as a heartfelt racial parable by way of sports drama, but for local clothing designer Dana Jordan, the early aughts film was an avenue toward discovering their queerness. As a child (and still), Jordan worshiped Ronnie “Sunshine” Bass, the T.C. Williams Titans’ doe-eyed quarterback. With time, Jordan

realized that not only did they want to be with Bass, they also wanted to be him. For Jordan, Ronnie has endured as a symbol of authenticity and expansiveness, a legacy so powerful that Jordan named their clothing company after their personal queer icon.

Like many others, Jordan forayed into sewing via COVID-era mask making. Jordan’s community care e orts soon transformed into a catalyst for confidence and self-expression.

Enchanted by the world of textiles, Jordan began teaching themself patternmaking, crediting “instinct, taste, and YouTube University” to their growing knowledge base. With time,

Jordan expanded their practice from limited runs of organic socks and wool knits into a full-fledged brand providing high-quality basics and couture custom items for all genders. Honoring their undergraduate studies in marine biology and their stint on the Shedd Aquarium’s penguin and otter team, Jordan’s designs are reflective of a deep kinship with nature: think merino wool balaclavas glazed in the colors of a great blue heron, organza smocks that ruffle like bird feathers, and wa e-knit pants naturally dyed in an array of sandy neutrals that match prairie grasses.

In June 2023, Jordan launched the RB Red

Building off of the line’s success, Jordan is plotting to offer “unique, functional garments [and] steady shipping times,” along with an exploration of bridal and formal wear pieces in 2024. Jordan’s personal shibboleth—and Ronny Bass brand motto—is “excelsior, baby,” a commitment to continued momentum aimed onward, upward, and forward. These two words serve as inspiration and invitation, both of which are extended to everybody and every body. ronnybass.com

—SHANNON NICO SHREIBAK

Label series, which o ers pants, dresses, and smocks custom fit to each customer.

Miniatures by Margie Criner and Itty Bitty Mini Mart JAMES HOSKING

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BEST APARTMENT FINDER

Winner: Domu Chicago Apartments

First Runner-up: The Apartment Source

Second Runner-up: Marti LaHood, Keller Williams Preferred Realty

BEST AUTO DEALERSHIP

Winner: Berman Subaru of Chicago

First Runner-up: Chicago Northside Toyota

Second Runner-up: Fletcher Jones Audi

BEST AUTO REPAIR SHOP

Winner: Ashland Tire and Auto

First Runner-up: Garcia’s Auto Parts, Tires, and Service

Second-Runner-up (TIE): Kalamper Auto Repair and Tire Shop

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BEST BARBER

Winner: Mitch Koonce (Father and Son Barbershop)

First Runner-up: Jamie DiGrazia (Logan Parlor)

Second Runner-up: Colette Lundin (Old Dog Barbershop)

BEST BARBERSHOP

Winner: Old Dog Barbershop

First Runner-up: Fernwood Barbers

Second Runner-up: The Public Barber

BEST BICYCLE SHOP

Winner: Uptown Bikes

First Runner-up: BFF Bikes

Second Runner-up: Roscoe Village Bikes

BEST BOARD GAME STORE

Winner: Chicagoland Games Dice Dojo

First Runner-up: Prism Games Chicago

Second Runner-up: Goblin Market Manga, Games, and Curiosities

BEST COMICS SHOP

Winner: AlleyCat Comics

First Runner-up: Howling Pages

Second Runner-up: Challengers Comics

BEST DANCEWEAR SHOP

Winner: Chicago Dance Supply

First Runner-up: Plié Dancewear

Second Runner-up: Wear Moi

BEST FINANCIAL

INSTITUTION OR BANK

Winner: Chase Bank

First Runner-up: Wintrust Bank

Second Runner-up: Beverly Bank & Trust

BEST FLORIST

Winner: Flowers For Dreams

First Runner-up: Fleur

Second Runner-up: Planks and Pistils

BEST GARDEN SUPPLY

Winner: Gethsemane Garden Center

First Runner-up: Adams and Son and Daughter Gardens

Second Runner-up: Farmers Market Garden Center

BEST HAIR DRESSER

Winner: Krista Burke (Spruce Salon)

First Runner-up: Sam Stahl (Hairitics)

Second Runner-up (TIE): Starresha

Renae (Penny Lane)

Second Runner-up (TIE): Benjamin Simkins (Bleach)

BEST HAIR SALON

Winner: Isaac Crawford Salon

First Runner-up: Bang! Salon

Second Runner-up (TIE): Smith and Davis Salon

Second Runner-up (TIE): Salon Aken

BEST HOME FURNISHINGS

Winner: District

First Runner-up: Spaced Out Studio

Second Runner-up (TIE): Rare Form

Second Runner-up (TIE): Wilderhouse

BEST INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE

Winner: Women and Children First

First Runner-up: The Book Cellar

Second Runner-up: Sandmeyer’s Bookstore

BEST JEWELRY STORE

Winner: Bryn Mawr Jewelry

First Runner-up: Adornment and Theory

Second Runner-up: Winifred Grace

BEST KIDS CLOTHING

Winner: Lilla Barn Clothing

First Runner-up: Cloud and Bunny

Second Runner-up (TIE): Kido

Second Runner-up (TIE): Sandbox Baby Boutique

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Winner: Christy Webber Landscapes

First Runner-up: Patch Landscaping and Snow Removal

Second Runner-up: Red Stem Native Landscapes, Inc.

BEST LOCAL CLOTHING DESIGNER

Winner: Milk Handmade

First Runner-up: Richard Dayhoff

Second Runner-up: Squasht

BEST PET ADOPTION OR ANIMAL SHELTER

Winner: PAWS Chicago

First Runner-up: One Tail at a Time

Second Runner-up: The Catcade

BEST PLACE TO REMIND YOURSELF PRINT ISN’T DEAD

City Newsstand and City News Cafe

Many coffeeshops now function primarily as coworking spaces for the laptop-bound, but City Newsstand and City News Cafe in Portage Park is still unabashedly devoted to the printed word, with racks upon racks of magazines, both famous and obscure.

There are magazines for serious photographers, budding musicians, and fans of fashion and fine art. Comics and graphic novels have a section, too, as do coloring books and sudoku puzzles, and the cafe offers an unparalleled selection of regional publications hailing from towns from Maine to California. There are periodicals about planes, trains, and automobiles, and an extensive selection of Fire Apparatus Journal (which is exactly what it sounds like). City News has books, too—music biographies, science, popular history, and plenty of Chicago-centric fare, often at discount prices. And yes, adult magazines still exist, it turns out. They’re in their own little back section, roped o and shrink-wrapped for their protection.

Up front, the cozy cafe section serves hot beverages, scones, and kołaczki, along with City News signature chocolate truffles. And on weekends, an old-school co ee shop vibe sets in, as folk and jazz musicians play to singalong crowds who happily slide their change into the tip jar. Other customers simply enjoy a background soundtrack for their reading, browsing, and munching. A chess club plays

on Sundays, and City News also regularly hosts silent film screenings complete with live music, just to add to the retro sensation.

But it would be a mistake to think of the cafe as merely a 20th-century throwback. For starters, there’s Wi-Fi—in fact, there are three wireless networks linked to three different Internet providers, with speed test data from each posted alongside the passwords. And City News has a robust social media presence: recent posts urged customers to hurry down while Time’s Person of the Year edition was still in stock and to order a box of those chocolate tru es in time for Valentine’s Day. Rather than just a cozy anachronism, City News Cafe feels like a portal to a more hospitable dimension, where the digital and analog manage to peacefully coexist. citynewsstand.com

—STEVEN MELENDEZ

BEST PLACE TO BUY INCENSE FROM ACTUAL HIPPIES

Gallimaufry Gallery

With the demise of Lakeview’s Waxman Candles last year, finding quality incense in the city got a lot more challenging. Sure, the creepy, sterile, kratom-hawking head shops o ering crappy bulk incense from Amazon will do in a pinch. But that assumes you can tolerate five minutes of excruciating fluorescent lighting and navigate past an alarming array of marijuana substitutes that may as well be labeled “unanticipated emergency room visit.”

Where is the discerning incense connoisseur to turn? Gallimaufry Gallery, a delightful

Bendición Dry Bar COURTESY CRISTINA TORRES

little hippie hole in the wall, has perhaps the best incense selection I’ve come across in the city. The Lincoln Square shop, which has been in operation since 1975, boasts some true hippie bonafides—it’s staffed by dyedin-the-wool hippies, forged in the crucible of the true hippie era.

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walking into a sober man’s paradise.

Potted plants and succulents of all sizes fill the space, which make the Humboldt Park storefront feel like an indoor botanical garden. Deeper inside, a television, couch, table, and chairs beckon you to relax.

of all, they seem to have upselling, despite the

The proprietors are mild and friendly. And, best of all, they seem to have evaded the ravages of boutique syndrome. No sour attitudes toward casual browsers and no hovering or intrusive upselling, despite the modest proportions of the shop. These folk have boutique management down to an art.

Gallimaufry trades in a variety of handicrafts from around the world: exquisite boxes, jewelry, and carved figures, all displayed in museum-lit cases that somehow remain casual and unintimidating. There’s not even a whi of the Target-does-Ikea aesthetic that permeates Chicago shops these days.

Most importantly to me, they o er a wide selection of high-quality, natural incense. There are no tawdry boxes of chemicallyscented, mass-produced fragrances like “Love” and “Good Luck” in sight. (Well, perhaps one or two, but just ignore those.) Rather, the owners have curated a selection of hard-to-find Japanese, Indian, and American brands, devoting most of their back wall to this richly scented array.

Looking for fat, resinous wands of copal to exorcise the fog of garlic and cannabis from your studio apartment? Plenty to choose from. Or, are you on the hunt for delicate, tiny sticks from Japan in fragrances like cinnamon and jasmine? Also accounted for. Upmarket incense is certainly a tiny niche in the Chicago bazaar, but Gallimaufry fills it and then some. gallimaufry.net

—RICHARD PALLARDY

BEST DRY BAR TO HANG, SOCIALIZE, AND BUY ANY NA DRINK IMAGINABLE

Bendición Dry Bar

As someone who loves the taste of beer paired with a nonalcoholic Seedlip spirit shot—and as someone who is eight months deep into a lifetime of sobriety—walking into Bendición Dry Bar feels like

But the magic, for me, lies

But the magic, for me, lies further inside. Hundreds of nonalcoholic wines, beers, rums, whiskies, and other spirits and cocktail ingredients line the shelves in more quantities and varieties than I would have ever thought possible. At least one shelf is dedicated to FeverTree sparkling drinks like pink grapefruit, lemonade, ginger ale, and club soda (“because 3/4 of your drink is the mixer,” reads a nearby sign).

The bar’s owner, Cristina Torres, has been running the space at 2540 W. Division for a year and a half. She was inspired to open the space after more than a year of hosting mocktail pop-ups at venues like bars and yoga studios.

“I got sober and knew I’d have nowhere to hang out,” says Torres, who is celebrating four years of sobriety this month. “I thought other people might feel the same.” She tells the Reader that she imports all of the store’s beers from England and sources the rest of the products locally.

A quick look at the events tab on Bendición’s website shows upcoming events, including “Sober Speed Friending,” a queer Tarot workshop, a “sober(ish)” book club, and a monthly acoustic variety show. People in recovery throw many of the bar’s events and are among its sta . bendicionbar.com —DMB (DEBBIE-MARIE

BROWN)

BEST FILM DEVELOPMENT SERVICE OUT OF A KITCHEN

Dos Fotos Film Lab

As bottles of chemicals heat up in a bubbling stockpot of water, Alejandro Flores’s hands grasp a film canister and disappear into a black bag on the counter. By feel alone, he pops open the canister and carefully wraps the film around a metal spool. His wife, Kris, sits at the kitchen table, their oneyear-old, Selena, on her hip, as she folds a zine for customers. Their eight-year-old daughter,

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BEST PET STORE

Winner: Jameson Loves Danger

First Runner-up: Ruff Haus Pets

Second Runner-up: Urban

Pooch Canine Life Center

BEST PLACE TO BUY GENDERNEUTRAL CLOTHING

Winner: Hazel

First Runner-up (TIE): Fad2Fresh

First Runner-up (TIE): Big Bud Press

Second Runner-up: Uncommon Closet

BEST PLACE TO BUY LOCAL WARES

Winner: Andersonville Galleria

First Runner-up: Midwest Nice

Second Runner-up: Haven 1890

BEST PLACE TO BUY

MEN’S CLOTHING

Winner: Cowboys and Astronauts

First Runner-up (TIE): Cardinalis Cardinalis

First Runner-up (TIE): Hazel Apparel

Second Runner-up: The Denim Lounge

BEST PLACE TO BUY

WOMEN’S CLOTHING

Winner: Winifred Grace

First Runner-up (TIE): Squasht Boutique

First Runner-up (TIE): Moondance Chicago

Second Runner-up: Belle Up Boutique

BEST PLACE TO GET MARRIED

Winner: Chicago Cultural Center

First Runner-up: Salvage One

Second Runner-up: The Joinery

BEST PLACE TO GET PICTURES FRAMED

Winner: Foursided

First Runner-up (TIE): Blackbird Framing

First Runner-up (TIE): Artists Frame Service

Second Runner-up: Heritage Gallery

BEST REAL ESTATE AGENT

Winner: Nolan Code (Berkshire Hathaway Home Services)

First Runner-up: Marti LaHood (Keller Williams Preferred Realty)

Second Runner-up: Tyson Schutz (The Apartment Source)

BEST REAL ESTATE COMPANY

Winner: @properties

First Runner-up: LivingRoom Realty

Second Runner-up: Compass

BEST RECORD STORE

Winner: Reckless Records

First Runner-up: Rattleback Records

Second Runner-up: Bucket O’ Blood Books and Records

continued from p. 25

Julia, runs by chasing their dog, Archer.

Dos Fotos Film Lab develops black-andwhite and color film for 35 mm, 120 mm, and disposable cameras, all from their kitchen. They have drop boxes at Plant Shop Chicago, Four Letter Word cafe, Side Practice Coffee, and In Good Spirits. On Mondays, they pick up film; in about a week, each roll is developed and scanned, and digital copies are emailed to each customer. Every negative is handled with the love and care of two longtime photographers.

“In high school, I got my first 35 mm film camera, a Pentax K1000, at the Maxwell Street flea market for $25,” said Kris. “I got excited to take photos after looking through all my mother’s photo albums of her traveling.”

Alejandro began by photographing concerts and friends in the music scene. “I told myself I should start at the very beginning, with film photography. After learning the basics of analog, I sort of just stayed interested.”

Kris learned how to develop black-andwhite film through a high school arts program, and Alejandro learned the color process by watching YouTube videos during lockdown. The Irving Park couple was inspired to o er their own development services after their beloved neighborhood film lab and store, the Pursuit Supply, went out of business. “We wanted to fill the need that Pursuit left,” the couple recalled.

Dos Fotos installed their first box in Plant Shop Chicago in April 2023. “We love the new people and experiences we get to have with Dos Fotos,” said Kris. “People still take the time to capture moments that are special to them, and we’re happy to find a place within art, film, and community.” As they expand, they hope to open a community space for photographers to connect, offering workshops and a photo studio. For now, you can drop off your beloved work in any of their boxes and know it’ll be in trusted hands. dosfotoschicago.com

—GONZALO GUZMAN

BEST PLACE TO PUT DOWN YOUR FUCKING PHONE

The Gallery Bookstore

Ibarreled into the Gallery Bookstore, off Belmont and Clark, with earbuds in, backpack on, and eyes to my phone—unaware that there would be consequences. An ornery voice sounded over my Ween playlist. Behind the front counter was an old man with a snow-white beard, his arms crossed in dissat-

isfaction. He barked the store’s ironclad “no phones, no photos, no bags” rules. Conflictavoidant Reader contributor I am, I went into apology mode, fully ready to roll up into a ball like an armadillo, if necessary. The man’s tone softened, and he explained that the rules are in place to avoid theft and to encourage visitors to focus on the books.

I put my backpack by the door and began to explore the Gallery’s impressive stockpile of musty vintage reads, which fill the place from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. It’s a collection that began when the store first opened in 1927, nearly a century ago, and has continued to grow under the ownership of Bill Fiedler, who

acquired Gallery in 1989.

Online reviews of the store are their own rabbit hole. Negative reviews dominate. “Save your time and faith in humanity by buying a book on Amazon,” says Reed S. on Yelp. “No. Keep Walking,” adds James M. on Google. In opposition to the jeers are just as many reviews praising the store’s staggering breadth of inventory.

Is the store’s antagonism toward electronics just the totalitarian will of a Luddite Ozymandias (“Look on my Rules, ye Customers, and despair!”)? Or is there merit to yanking visitors out of their digital bubbles to explore its literary labyrinth? Either way, the Gallery Bookstore should be on the radars of Chicago bookworms looking for a unique experience. gallerybookstorechicago.com —JONAH

NINK

BEST PLACE TO PICK UP CUTE FLORA AND CLEAN UP THE NEIGHBORHOOD

Node Plant Shop

Located near the busy, dirty, car-ridden intersection of Archer and Loomis is a little slice of paradise. The warm space, with large windows and a collection of plants, is a life-size terrarium.

Ivon Rodriguez first opened Node Plant Shop on April 23, 2023, for Earth Day weekend after realizing that her nine-to-five corporate job was taking a toll on her. She decided to focus on what makes her happy—and that is plants.

But Rodriguez o ers more than just potted grasses, saplings, flowers, or a little shrub. She’s taking the idea of a plant shop and breathing in new life to what it means to shop for your home. Patrons of the store enjoy her delicate care for and understanding of plants, and she hosts events (and millennials love events). Rodriguez is taking the timeless, simple activity of buying plants and giving extra incentives for folks to enter her shop.

Last year she hosted a baby plant swap where folks could bring in cuttings that were propagated in water, share baby potted plants that they didn’t want anymore, or arrive and take a new plant home.

Node has partnered with Trash People, a city-wide trash pickup service that wakes up early to clean up the neighborhood on Saturday mornings. At the most recent event, Bridgeporters filled up trash bags with grabbers and gloves provided by Trash People and then traded plants afterward.

Alejandro and Kris Flores with their daughter, Selena GONZALO GUZMAN

Node Plant Shop COURTESY IVON RODRIGUEZ

Contemporary Voices in the Blues: Amythyst Kiah & Carolyn Wonderland

Sat, Mar 30 • 7:30–9:30pm • Performance Hall

Tickets: $30 General / $10 Students, Seniors, Children 12 & under

This performance brings to the Logan Center stage two powerhouse leading voices in the Contemporary Blues scene. Singer-songwriters and multi-instrumental musicians Amythyst Kiah and Carolyn Wonderland immerse themselves in traditional blues and roots music while imbuing a fresh perspective in the music of their ancestors. See them together on one stage for the first time!

Photo by Mamadi Doumbouya.

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continued from p. 26

The shop has hosted a facial workshop with Evelia Torres from bath and body company De Mi Tierra, surrounded by plantitas. Rodriguez says the store also plans to host yoga classes in collaboration with the Latina Sweat Project. Also on the horizon: a workshop where patrons can design plant-themed earrings with a gem.

She says, “My goal is to collaborate with as many small businesses as I can and create that open table concept of camaraderie.”

The south side needs more green space, and if that means walking into Rodriguez’s space for a bit of photosynthesis,

BEST RESALE SHOP

Winner: The Brown Elephant Andersonville

First Runner-up: Village Discount Outlet

Second Runner-up: The Brown Elephant Lakeview

BEST SEX TOY SHOP

Winner: Early to Bed

First Runner-up: The Pleasure Chest

Second Runner-up: Egor’s

Dungeon and Night Dreams

BEST SHOE STORE

Winner: Alamo Shoes

First Runner-up (TIE): Wesley’s Shoes

First Runner-up (TIE): Lori’s Shoes

Second Runner-up: Fluevog Shoes

then by all means, step into her sanctuary. instagram.com/nodeplantshop —S. NICOLE LANE

BEST PLACE TO UPGRADE YOUR WARDROBE

Chicago Costume

It’s common to hear that Chicagoans lack style, that we privilege a midwestern asceticism and conformity over distinguished taste. I don’t think that’s true, but I understand why it feels true, especially as someone born and raised in the heartland who lost years struggling to feel at home in my body. I also used to believe good taste was something

BEST STREETWEAR BRAND

Winner: Dearborn Denim

First Runner-up: Chicago Girls Do It Better

Second Runner-up: Soundoff Design

BEST TATTOO ARTIST

Winner: Julia Campione (Good Omen)

First Runner-up: Cloey Zikmund (Supplementary)

Second Runner-up (TIE): Jonny

Watson (Fudo Tattoo)

Second Runner-up (TIE): Vanessa Vargas (Tattoo Avenue)

BEST TATTOO SHOP

Winner: Evoke Tattoos

First Runner-up: Great Lakes Tattoo

Second Runner-up: Fudo Tattoo

you needed money to have. Money a ords a lot more choice and autonomy, but I’ve lived long enough to know most people with fat bank accounts lack the confidence and imagination to move through the world in an aesthetically interesting way. Singular style comes from a sense of self that embraces possibility and imagination. That’s why discovering the discount vintage theater costume room at Chicago Costume was the best thing to happen to my wardrobe this year.

In 2022, Chicago Costume, everyone’s favorite Halloween warehouse, absorbed Broadway Costumes, a century-old purveyor of stage clothes. The company found itself with an abundance of inventory that didn’t quite work for any of its businesses, so at the end of September they collected some of the surplus—

BEST T-SHIRT SHOP

Winner: Strange Cargo

First Runner-up: Raygun

Second Runner-up: Transit Tees

BEST VETERINARIAN

Winner: Ravenswood Animal Hospital

First Runner-up: BLVD Vet Ravenswood

Second Runner-up: BLVD Vet Logan Square

BEST VINTAGE STORE

Winner: Broadway Antique Market

First Runner-up: Fad2Fresh

Second Runner-up: Andy’s Art Antiques & Oddities

brilliantly feathered headdresses, weatherworn mascot suits, retired chorus-line looks, and more—within a modest-sized room at Chicago Costume’s Montrose location and opened it to the public through Halloween.

Sometime mid-October, I stumbled in looking for a wig and wound up spending four hours in the special room trying on everything from a long 70s brown leather jacket with exaggerated lapels and a cinched waist to removable sleeves that swallowed my arms in white and red ruffles. Among the things I took home were a flamingo-pink jeweled twopiece suit appropriate for the Cosmic Country Showcase ($30), black velvet lederhosen with intricate floral detailing ($10), and a pink top with shoulders blossomed with thick layers of weathered ta eta in a spectrum of reds ($15).

Chicago Costume MICCO CAPORALE

I spent $10 on face paint and used the shirt to create a sad mime look that I wore to the second night of Sanctum later that month. Within ten minutes of arrival, a man from Spain asked to take a photo with me as emblematic of the Chicago culture he’d come to experience, and I continued receiving compliments on the look for a solid two weeks. This April, Chicago Costume anticipates opening a new store just for this kind of merchandise. I expect to be one of its first shoppers. chicagocostume.com

—MICCO CAPORALE

BEST PLACE TO FIND ACTUAL AND AFFORDABLE MODERN FURNITURE AND ACCESSORIES

Velvet Goldmine

Istumbled into Velvet Goldmine, at the corner of Division and Damen, after failing, for the second time, to outlast the breakfast line at Kasama, a few blocks south. (That’s another, less happy, story.) It was August and witheringly hot outside, but inside this vintage building with its Moorish fantasy keyhole windows, the vibe was as cool as the welcome was warm—more Mad Men than Ziggy Stardust to my eye. Owner Jon Gorske is happy to chat or to let an obvious “just-looker” like me browse his ever-changing stock of actual and relative-

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original (mostly) woody splendor. The Wicker Park store, which has been there since 2015, is open weekends (check their Facebook or Instagram page for news and updates). And now, one weekend each month (usually the second), shoppers can also browse their Pilsen warehouse space at 329 W. 18th Street, along with spaces housing a cluster of other vintage dealers in the same building. The Velvet Goldmine mother lode on display at the warehouse last month included a Danish architect’s drafting desk and a set of Norwegian nesting tables, both in glowing teak, and something I would have purchased if only I had the Playboy Mansion parlor for it: a major statement co ee table of curving glass with a formidable driftwood base. facebook.com/velvetgoldminechicago

—DEANNA ISAACS

BEST AUCTION HOUSE FOR THE FASCINATING AND RARE

Potter & Potter

Potter & Potter isn’t your typical auction house. The eclectic items it’s sold over nearly two decades comprise a long and varied catalog of American history, nightmares, and illusions both real and manufactured. Their notable sales include an exceptionally rare Houdini poster for $180,000, a 1914 su ragette medal for nearly $19,000, and an original lightning rifle prop from The Matrix for $78,000.

ly affordable midcentury modern furniture and accessories at her own pace. As is Ella, the waggy part–pit bull greeter in the lamb suit. During the week, Gorske scours the countryside, rounding up well-used Scandinavian imports and American MCM pieces, and works at restoring those that need it to their

Gabe Fajuri, who cofounded Potter in 2007, has been a magic fan since childhood. Early in his career, he led the appraisal of Jay Marshall’s estate. Marshall was dean of the Society of American Magicians and the opening act in Frank Sinatra’s early Vegas shows. His collection of 250,000+ items took more than six months to sort and led to multiple sales. In Fajuri’s words, those auctions “put Potter on the map.”

Over the years, Fajuri’s personal collecting habit has been somewhat cured, given the time he has with the items pre-auction. Potter’s

Gabe Fajuri leads an auction at Potter & Potter. JADE PODSCHWEIT/POTTER & POTTER AUCTIONS

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continued from p. 29

covetable o erings are culled from collectors and institutions, as well as the positive word of mouth the auction house has built—or, as Fajuri says, “letting preparation meet opportunity.” Beyond magic, Potter has recently presented sales that o er an obsessive, completist zeal for iconic literary figures (Lewis Carroll’s Alice, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes) and for photos, art, and objects that capture the bygone peak era of American sideshows and circuses.

dividends can be then put toward other gallery purchases, a turn which not only supports midwest artists, but in Braughton’s words, creates a sustainable arts ecosystem.

With a onetime fee of 20 dollars and no expiration date, a Middle Child Gallery membership not only o ers a way to support local artists but, honestly, is a steal. The member-

Last year Potter presented 22 auctions, and this year they are planning for 24, including a collectors’ trove of Napoleon memorabilia and deaccessioned material from the collection of Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. Potter plans to grow their sales focused on fine art and pop culture, including movie memorabilia and toys. When asked if he has a dream future sale, Fajuri says, “I don’t have a dream sale. My dream sale is the next sale. The dream is who is going to call today?” potterauctions.com

—JAMES HOSKING

BEST GALLERY MEMBERSHIP THAT SUPPORTS LOCAL ARTISTS

Middle Child Gallery

Founded and run by BFFs Abel Braughton and Christina Nafziger, Middle Child Gallery is just plain fun. Now in a new location in the Cermak Center, and modeled after one of the artist-run spaces that shaped Braughton and Nafziger’s teen years in Indiana, Middle Child is not only a gallery that centers midwestern artists but also a space to hang out, make friends, and find community. While the gallery’s inaugural programming ranged from Katie Neece’s glitched graphic oils to the BFF Reading Series with local poets and the vibrant fabric work of Udita Upadhyaya and Nina Littrell, Middle Child also o ers a unique opportunity to support their artists.

Gallery membership—the way that you too can be an “honorary middle child”—is the brainchild of Braughton, who modeled the program after REI’s co-op membership. Members of the gallery receive annual dividends that are calculated through member purchases of the artwork shown at the gallery. These

ship also works as a gift for all occasions. In need of a Valentine’s Day gift for an arty crush, longtime partner, or sometime lover? Get them the gift of honorary middle childhood and supporting the local arts community.

Both Braughton and Nafziger are extraordinarily open about the hurdles of starting an arts space that is not only financially sustainable but also a source of social and professional support for early career artists. Yet their dedication to their artists, the midwest arts community, and one another makes this extraordinary feat possible. Head to the gallery’s online shop, get a membership, and see for yourself. Middlechildgallery.org

the Brewed in a storefront adjacent to Bric-aBrac’s Avondale shop, naming it after David Cronenberg’s grisly 1979 divorce allegory, The Brood . The coffee shop is filled with a collection of tchotchkes that create a homey and campy vibe, as if Pee-wee Herman had outfitted his Playhouse with memorabilia ordered from Fangoria. Their drink specials also embody that spirit; last spring, for example, they served cherry Mochanomicons to celebrate the arrival of Evil Dead Rise. The Brewed also hosts the occasional movie screening, which leads to the following disclosure: In May, the Brewed invited me to introduce The Fanatic, the third film directed by Limp Bizkit front man Fred Durst, in which Devon Sawa’s character turns to his son and asks if he likes Limp Bizkit before proceeding to play a song by Limp Bizkit. I’ve spent a lot of money at the Brewed, and not just on co ee. Next to the front counter, the shop has two glass cases filled with new Blu-rays of horror and cult movies released by boutique film distributors, including Vinegar Syndrome, Severin, Terror Vision, and the American Genre Film Archive. In an era when corporations remove TV shows and movies from streaming services for tax write-o s, I consider collecting films a necessity: it’s one small thing I can do to prevent important works from slipping into oblivion. This is what I told my wife when I returned home from the Brewed with a copy of The Plaga Zombie Trilogy , a double-disc reissue of a 1990s Argentinian horror trilogy a couple teens shot on VHS. thebrewedco ee. com —LEOR GALIL

during high school. When school required her to wear a uniform, she expressed herself through her nails. Later, as a young adult, she’d paint her friends’ nails when they’d come over for a visit. “I wouldn’t let them get a word out until I had the kitchen table set up with all the supplies,” she remembers.

After a career of nannying and a stint traveling with her psychedelic garage group, Outer Minds, Lira was working as a nail technician at the Beauty Bar in West Town when she began exploring nail art as a full-time profession. She spoke to local nail legend AstroWifey (Ashley Crowe), who encouraged her to go for it. “I did, and I haven’t regretted it since,” Lira says.

These days she operates out of her quirky Irving Park home studio, and business is booming. “If there were two of me, clone Gigi would be booked solid as well,” she quips.

—ANNETTE

BEST HORROR-THEMED COFFEE SHOP THAT SELLS CULT BLU-RAYS

The Brewed

For years, I’d notice Bric-a-Brac Records & Collectibles’s owners and spouses, Jen Lemasters and Nick Mayor, manning a table at every big horror event I’d attend. I’d often spot Jason “DJ Intel” Deuchler, who I first met when he cohosted a cult movie night at the nearby Burlington in 2010. So, when Deuchler, Mayor, and Lemasters decided to collaborate on a horror-themed coffee shop, I had an instinct it would be a success, by my standards anyway. In 2022, the trio opened

BEST NAIL ARTIST WHO MAKES EVERY MANICURE A MASTERPIECE

Gigi Jiggles

Gina Lira, aka Gigi Jiggles, makes fun, creative nail art that is simultaneously breathtaking, jaw-dropping, and heart-stopping. And considering a single nail art session can span one to four hours, with limited opportunity for phone scrolling, her delightful vibes and conversational skills are just as crucial to her service as her sense of taste and impeccable skill. (She also keeps a well-positioned television tuned to something light, such as The Great British Baking Show or an 80s cult classic, for those who prefer quiet.)

Now 42, Lira was raised in the Humboldt Park area and says she was a “bit of a scalawag”

Lira’s nail art is informed by a variety of influences, including vintage fabrics and textiles, 60s and 70s print art, food (especially fruit!), and imagery from the natural world, though she says she’s always open to new ideas and challenges. As for materials, she describes herself as a “gel girly,” for her love of the long-wearing polish. “I use gel in almost all its forms,” she says. “Soft gel if we need an easy removal, to semihard or hard gel for more structure and durability, art gel for hand-painted designs, and molding gel for sculptural 3D art. I also specialize in Après Gel-X for extensions and am an educator for the brand.” Lira’s prices range from $65 to $140, and her manicures can last more than three weeks or, as she recommends, “until you come back to get them redone!” instagram.com/thegigijiggles —ISA GIALLORENZO v

Middle Child Gallery COURTESY MIDDLE CHILD GALLERY

Gina “Gigi Jiggles” Lira ISA GIALLORENZO

BEST OF CHICAGO 2023

Sports & Recreation

BEST PLACE TO BRUSH UP ON YOUR SWORDSMANSHIP SKILLS DURING RENAISSANCE FAIRE OFFSEASON

Forteza Fitness

Self-described as “Chicago’s most unique martial arts studio,” Forteza Fitness has got you covered if you’re interested in fencing, swordplay, archery, or many other antiquated “battle sports.” It boasts a full schedule of classes every weeknight and all

weekend long, kids camps in the summer, and conditioning for all of the above.

Forteza is unique in the Chicagoland area (and, in fact, in the country) because it claims to combine the best of modern physical training with old-school methods. Just what do they mean by “old-school”? They throw it all the way back to the 1400s as the midwest’s only full-time school for traditional Western martial arts and historical swordplay.

According to Nic Cabrera, the new communications officer for the Chicago Swordplay Guild, “What we study—and one of the books

is right there in front of you—are actual historical manuscripts.” Cabrera points to a copy of The Flower of Battle: MS Ludwig Xv13 by Fiore dei Liberi, a 14th- and 15th-century weapons master. The copy was translated by Colin Hatcher and laid out by Tracy Mellow, so as to be as faithful as possible to the original Latin and Italian texts.

When I visited Forteza, the walls were covered in swords and antique-style weapons and gear, and it was full of people conducting private swordfighting lessons, practicing sparring, and working out with weights and

exercise equipment. Facilities include a lofted lounge with a library and tons of books to study battles, fighting styles, and contemporary physical training. It also includes a pro shop where attendees can pick up gear specifically designed for their sport.

Alexis Renk, another member of the Guild, sums up the experience: “There is a lot to discover here. Like, I never did martial arts as a kid . . . So to come into this as an adult and discover that mindset and how I can listen to my body and push myself in new ways, it’s almost meditative. . . . I’ve made a lot of friends along

Miniatures by Margie Criner and Itty Bitty Mini Mart JAMES HOSKING

Sports & Recreation

the way; it’s just a great experience.”

Classes start at $25 for a one-time archery drop-in (plus equipment rental costs) and can include unlimited monthly options with a variety of packages. fortezafitness.com —JT NEWMAN

BEST TIME TO JUMP INTO LAKE MICHIGAN ALONE WITH AN ILLEGAL FLOATIE

Sunset at Montrose Harbor

I’m anti-fun, hate mornings, and don’t want anyone to show me their cool mug when I’m jumping into a freezing cold lake just to feel something. If you make your way to the very end of Montrose Harbor on a weeknight at sunset, everyone else feels the same way.

The winding green patch in the middle of the lake is always pretty busy with cookout smells and boombox bass, but the six feet between every small group is sacred and untouchable. There’s just enough commotion to remind me that I’m part of a community—but it’s paired with the unspoken pact that we’ll all mind our own businesses.

I usually warm up on the concrete steps with a library book, eavesdropping on first dates and teenage gossip, until the skyline turns a hazy shade of lavender. Pleasantly toasted from the last rays of the day, the promise of a better sunset view melts any resistance I feel about jumping into the lake.

The visceral anticipation that comes from curling my toes over the edge of the “No Swimming” sign is almost as good as the splash. The shock of the cold water surges through my body and releases all of the workday pressure until my thoughts flow with the waves.

Bobbing along in a floatie filled with air from my own lungs, the lake feels like the edge of the world. The sounds of the harbor are muted while the last gasps of the sun bathe the skyline in a pink glow, and I ride the dips in the waves until Chicago’s glimmer is caused by light bulbs instead.

There’s no line for the ladder to get out and there’s nowhere else I need to be. Even the traf-

fic, created by the crowd as it trickles back up the harbor, feels precious; we all take our time relishing in this liminal space between the water and our city. —KAYLEIGH

PADAR

BEST CHICAGO DAILY SPORTS JOURNALIST WHO ENCOURAGES US TO EXPLORE HOW SPORTS INFLUENCE AND DRAW FROM WIDER CULTURE

Shakeia Taylor, Chicago Tribune

As a culture journalist, I always aim to write stories that nourish readers’ curiosity. I pursued a career focused on documenting culture with a critical eye because it’s also an exercise I did, and continue to do, in my free time; I don’t experience visual art, film, or music passively, and I like communicating my perspective and insights with those who also view every facet of our shared culture with an intellectual curiosity.

As a reader, I seek out journalism that opens me up to, say, subcultural phenomena I know little about and stories that can challenge my understanding of our

shared culture. I love when another journalist’s work supplies me with a shot of adrenaline and gets me excited to try something unfamiliar—or revisit a piece of art through their eyes. I also love when a piece of journalism gives me a pang of envy; when I wish I’d come up with a story someone else wrote, I’m going to keep reading that person’s work for a long time.

In December, Tribune deputy senior content editor Shakeia Taylor published a trio of sports stories linking professional athletics with music, and I found myself especially won over by her profile of the Chicago Bears’ DJs: Jay iLLa, DJ JayFunk, DJ Marquee, and DJ Sasha. Most newspapers separate sports stories from, well, everything, but I’ve long loved the way athletics can be an expression of our shared culture; often it feels like it’s the only culture so many of us have in common, and I love when I can read stories that capture what it means to participate in a league’s broader universe. All of us who’ve ever spent an unreasonable amount of money on an NFL jersey, or who’ve blocked o calendar days for MLB games months before opening day, know what it means to love sports, and how that love manifests in parts of our lives. Taylor’s work shows how sports color our lives beyond box scores and standings. Her best stories also make me optimistic about journalism’s future— and I can never have enough of that sensation.

—LEOR GALIL

BEST 14TH-INNING STRETCH

Game one of the American Association of Professional Baseball’s Miles Wolff Cup Finals (Chicago Dogs versus Kansas City Monarchs, September 16, 2023)

Nothing prepared me for the peculiar ennui that settled into my bones as I watched my favorite Chicagoland minor league baseball team fail to bring their first championship game to a decisive conclusion on a crisp September evening. The Chicago Dogs of Rosemont won the American Association of Professional Baseball’s east division on Thursday, September 14, and the first game of the Miles Wol Cup Finals began on a sunny afternoon two days later.

Minor league baseball has a lot of foibles I find charming: sloppy gameplay, threadbare entertainment between innings, and the general sensation that entire operations are held together with a lot of duct tape and pluck. The games are inexpensive and draw a lot of young families on budgets, which isn’t exactly the kind of audience that can be expected to drop anything for a baseball game on two days’ notice, no matter how high the stakes may be. The Dogs made their big Wol Cup debut before an eerily half-empty stadium, which made the game feel less like a momentous milestone and more like walking into Walgreens on a cold, rainy night just before closing. This didn’t dampen the joy I felt experiencing one last round of baseball at Rosemont’s Impact

Person jumping into the lake with a fl oatie KAYLEIGH PADAR

Shakeia Taylor BRIAN CASSELLA

Chicago Dogs of Rosemont MATT ZURO

Field in 2023, but after the Kansas City Monarchs tied the game at 2–2 in the top of the ninth inning, the vibes began to fray. Every new half inning proceeded to make me restless and disgruntled, and every time a batter returned to the dugout after failing to get on base, I questioned all the decisions that brought me to the stadium that day.

When the Dogs staff marched onto the field to introduce a 14th-inning stretch, my body shook from a fit of exhausted laughter. Extra innings had tested my understanding of time. This sequel to a late-game ritual, performed during a long period of extended gameplay with no discernible end, symbolized the bizarre realities of postseason minor league baseball that drove me borderline feral. I left midway through the 15th inning. The Dogs won in the 16th, but lost the series, all of which feels moot to me after I experienced the delirium of that rare extra innings 14th-inning stretch; that’s something only minor league baseball can give me, and I’ll cherish the memory of that strange gift. thechicagodogs.com —LEOR GALIL

floor together until the restaurant closes for the night. And if you’ve got two left feet, no one’s going to twist your arm—just pull up a chair and enjoy the Latin music.

The Pier also has house nights on Thursdays, and it’s hosted influential DJs such as Gene Hunt and Farley “Jackmaster” Funk. With legends like that on the decks, you’ll be lucky to find a spot on the sand, let alone the dance floor.

BEST PLACE TO LEARN SALSA, BACHATA, AND MAMBO FOR FREE

Pier 31 Restaurant

Pier 31 is out under the open sky, with no cover charge, and offers a full food and drink menu. You can ride your bike there or even dock your boat there. No shirt, no shoes? No problem.

Located at 31st Street Beach, Pier 31 Restaurant hosts events seven days a week, including DJ sets by house-music legends, concerts by R&B bands, and big-screen projections of Bulls games.

Every Tuesday at 6 PM during its open season, the Pier hosts a free hour-long mambo, salsa, and bachata dance lesson. It’s still light out, and everyone is unabashedly, soberly learning dance moves, either alone or with a partner. It’s a chance to meet new people and dance with strangers, all in the warm, sticky sun. Once the lesson ends, everyone hits the

If you’d rather brag about your wheels, you can usually find skateboarders, Polaris Slingshots, or ATVs around the harbor building next door. The beach has an unobstructed view of the skyline, which makes for a night you could only have in Chicago. Though Pier 31 closes before some clubs even open—it’s required by ordinance to shut down at 10 PM—that just means the dance floor lights up before the sun sets. facebook.com/Pier31Restaurant —S. NICOLE

LANE

BEST PLACE TO CHANNEL YOUR INNER OLYMPIAN

McFetridge Sports Center

When I think of my small hometown in northwestern Illinois, one of the more idyllic memories I can conjure up is of learning to ice-skate on a frozen creek in our local park—a tributary of a tributary of a river that eventually flows into the mighty Mississippi at the Illinois–Iowa border. Most winters when I was a kid, the ice grew thick enough that the park district would open a stretch of the creek for public skating.

Sports & Recreation

Obsessed with Olympic figure skating from an early age, I’d lace up my hand-me-down, double-bladed skates and glide around the ice—usually studded with leaves and other mementos of autumn—for as long as my mom would stay out in the cold with me.

Without much access to indoor rinks growing up, skating remained a seasonal pastime, and I didn’t keep up with it during my early adulthood in Chicago. However, I caught the bug again during the 2022 Winter Olympics, when life was not yet back to its normal pace coming out of the pandemic and I had more time at home to watch figure skating. After skating one session on rentals, ensuring that the skill did indeed come back like riding a bike, I bought my own pair and sought out the nearest indoor rink—McFetridge Sports Center in east Irving Park, at 3843 N. California.

Much is made of Chicago’s outdoor skating options during the winter months, but McFetridge is one of only two Chicago Park District rinks that are open year-round. (The other, Morgan Park Sports Center, is on the far southwest side at 11505 S. Western.) McFetridge’s 90-minute public skating sessions on Saturday and Sunday afternoons cost $5 for adults ($4 for 12 and under) plus $3 for skate rentals. On a typical weekend, there’s a mix of trained figure skaters practicing jumps or spins in the middle of the rink, groups of hockey kids racing each other (beware), newbies hugging the walls, and solid amateurs like me blissfully skating laps. Although I’ve never taken a lesson in my life, I’ve come to count the ice at McFetridge among my happy places. mcfetridgesportscenter.com —EMILY MCCLANATHAN

BEST CHICAGOLAND HIKE EQUIPPED WITH MOTHER NATURE’S MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT

Indiana Dunes National Park’s singing sands

If you find yourself particularly anointed by luck, you may become one of the chosen few hikers to harmonize with the “singing sands’’ of the Indiana Dunes. Lying at the intersection of geography and serendipity, singing sand dunes are a well-documented fascination of nature lovers around the world, cropping up from Dubai to Japan. But Chicagoans needn’t travel far to revel in these rare arias; Indiana Dunes National Park is home to its own chorus of droning sands. When the sound of the swelling waves of Lake Michigan recedes into the background and the skitter of short-tailed shrews quiets, one may hear the sounds of a natural netherworld, a guttural hum that haunts the dunes.

A scant few patches of the Dunes’ lakeshore—Miller Beach, Kemil Beach, and Mount Baldy—are equipped with the conditions to summon the singing sands. But finding yourself in the proper patch of dunes isn’t the only hurdle to witnessing the singing sands; physics needs to follow suit. Each grain of sand, which is mostly comprised of quartz and silica, must erode to millimeter-sized spheres and reside in the proper level of humidity to emit sound. Sometimes, the wind skates over these particularly exceptional grains to conjure up a song; other times, rubbing your boot soles over a parcel of the dunes is enough.

McFetridge Sports Center Ice Rink EMILY MCCLANATHAN

Indiana Dunes SMITH DONOVAN

Sports & Recreation

How exactly the dunes produce this music— sometimes several notes at a time—continues to befuddle experts.

Growing up in the shadow of the Indiana Dunes, I’ve only heard the singing sands once. As a cold wind whipsawed across the Miller Beach lakeshore one winter, I was gobsmacked by the warbling tones, as if the dunes were inviting me into some ancient secret. With a spread clocking over 15,349 acres, the Indiana Dunes National Park offers a bounty of possibilities beyond hearing the singing sands. Even if you aren’t one of Mother Nature’s favored listeners for the day, there’s still plenty at which to marvel. nps.gov/indu/index.htm

—SHANNON NICO SHREIBAK

performed by a one-man band impersonating a 90s SNL Superfan. That’s clearly a mouthful, but nothing sums up Chicago sports fandom as succinctly as Dave Swerski’s devotional Bears love filtered through the quixotism of tirelessly composing, recording, and shooting songs and jokes so specific they have a half-life of Sunday’s halftime.

The 41-year-old joined the fandom in his youth when he played Nintendo’s Tecmo Bowl as the ’87 Bears. That, along with his SNL Best of 90s Cast DVDs, sealed his fate. Born and raised in Iowa, Swerski never resided in our fine city, though he came as far as Chicago apartment shopping and his blues-rock band gigged at Elbo Room. Instead, Swerski headed west, where he parlayed a role as a member of Hannah Montana’s pretend TV band into a gig as Billy Ray Cyrus’s touring guitarist. He went so Hollywood that when the writers and actors strikes paused a directing project of his last spring, he had the connections to get the blessing of George Wendt, who played SNL Superfan Bob Swerski, to develop his character throughout the ensuing months.

BEST CHICAGO BEARS–INSPIRED ONE-MAN BAND

Dave Swerski

My most listened-to song of 2023 was “It’s Friday, Da Bears Won,” a TikTok Thursday Night Football recap in the form of a Cure parody (“Friday, I’m in Love”)

Working solo (though his makeup-artist fiance scored his perfect mustache), Swerski rapidly gained followers in the surprisingly robust 30–55 TikTok demographic. By week nine of football season, his Simon & Garfunkel soundalike lamenting Justin Fields’s injury made him the world’s first Bears fan to pay rent with song parody revenue. Swerski had previously abandoned social media, disturbed by its toxicity. But he came back after the realization that the magic

BEST AMATEUR SPORTS LEAGUE

Winner: Chicago City Soccer Club

First Runner-up: Chicago Sport & Social Club

Second Runner-up: Chicago Metropolitan Sports Association

BEST ATHLETE

Winner: Connor Bedard (Chicago Blackhawks)

First Runner-up: Kahleah Copper (Chicago Sky)

Second Runner-up (TIE): Justin Fields (Chicago Bears)

Second Runner-up (TIE): Alyssa Naeher (Chicago Red Stars)

BEST BOWLING ALLEY

Winner: Waveland Bowl

First Runner-up: Diversey River Bowl

Second Runner-up: Avondale Bowl

BEST DOG PARK

Winner: Montrose Dog Park

First Runner-up: Horner Park Dog Park

Second Runner-up: Jackson Bark

BEST EXERCISE CLASS

Winner: YogaSix Hyde Park

First Runner-up: Full Circle Pilates

Second Runner-up (TIE): Bender Martial Arts and Fitness

Second Runner-up (TIE): Studio Three Fulton Market

BEST GYM

Winner: Fitness Formula Clubs

First Runner-up: Cheetah Gym

Second Runner-up (TIE): Anthos Training Clubs

Second Runner-up (TIE): Midtown Athletic Club

of the Superfans was their optimism. In the original character’s 1991 debut, Todd O’Connor (Chris Farley) predicted that even if the Bears were 14 inches tall then the mini Bears would win 31–7 against the Giants. Sure, it’s delusional, but it’s a fun delusion. Likewise, Swerski held onto his ’23 Bears playo hope until their mathematical elimination. He

BEST LAKE SWIMMING SPOT

Winner: Montrose Beach

First Runner-up: Promontory Point

Second Runner-up: Osterman Beach

BEST NEIGHBORHOOD PARK

Winner: Humboldt Park

First Runner-up: Winnemac Park

Second Runner-up: Horner (Henry) Park

BEST PERSONAL TRAINER

Winner: Shannon Toulabi

First Runner-up: Joey Thurman

Second Runner-up: Full Circle Pilates

BEST PLACE TO SKATE (ROLLER OR BOARD)

Winner: Maggie Daley Park

First Runner-up: Logan Blvd. Skate Park

Second Runner-up: The Rink

BEST PROFESSIONAL MEN’S SPORTS TEAM

Winner: Chicago Cubs

First Runner-up: Chicago Blackhawks

Second Runner-up (TIE): Chicago White Sox

Second Runner-up (TIE): Chicago Bulls

BEST PROFESSIONAL WOMEN’S SPORTS TEAM

Winner: Chicago Sky

First Runner-up: Windy City Rollers

Second Runner-up: Chicago Red Stars

BEST SPORTS FACILITY

Winner: Wrigley Field

First Runner-up: United Center

Second Runner-up: Guaranteed Rate Field

BEST SPORTS TV OR RADIO ANNOUNCER

Winner: Pat Hughes

First Runner-up: Jason Benetti

Second Runner-up (TIE): Pat Tomasulo

Second Runner-up (TIE): Stacey King

believes this dramatic Bears o season bodes well for his character’s longevity, and he could be right. (As I write this, all the prime dinner reservations are taken at Ditka’s.) Never underestimate the fan loyalty and inspirational qualities of a certain Chicago football team, my friends.

—JAKE AUSTEN v

Indiana Dunes sand ripples SMITH DONOVAN

Interview with “Dave Swerski” JAKE AUSTEN

Food & Drink

BEST OF CHICAGO 2023

BEST FREE COOKING SCHOOL (FOR YOUNG ADULTS)

Impact Culinary Training

Aperennial question among aspiring kitchen professionals: is culinary school a waste of money? Factoring average tuition and the line cook’s typical starting wage, the numbers rarely seem to add up. Yet, at the west side food and bev incubator

the Hatchery, the next generation of Chicago chefs is coming up with a solid foundation in kitchen fundamentals and job readiness—debt and bullshit free. Prioritizing west and south siders aged 16–24 and not currently enrolled in high school, the three-month donor-funded training program has unleashed 74 prep cooks, line cooks, and other entry-level grinders into an industry starved of responsible, properly trained workers. The first eight weeks focus on hands-on kitchen and classroom training—from knife skills and fish butchery to

résumé writing and conflict resolution—often under the tutelage of some of the best in the business (guest OGs like Rob Levitt, Jennifer Kim, and Rick Bayless, a program founder, often drop in). For the last month, students are placed in a paid internship at a serious restaurant (Lula Cafe, Publican Quality Meats, Frontera Grill, and others) which often leads to steady employment. Not only is it free, but the program provides continuing support including bus fare, childcare, and job placement. impactculinary.org —M IKE SULA

BEST BOBA FROM FINEDINING CHEFS

Gathers Tea Bar

“Not too sweet” is the ultimate Asian compliment for desserts, and Gathers Tea Bar definitely caters to an Asian palate with tea-forward, less sweet bubble tea. When you’re investing in high-quality teas from Rare Tea Cellar and sourcing matcha and hojicha directly from

Miniatures by Margie Criner and Itty Bitty Mini Mart JAMES HOSKING

Food & Drink

farmers in Kyoto, you want to let the tea shine.

Peter Li opened Gathers Tea Bar in Little Italy in 2019, and his partner Victor Lei joined Li full-time about a year ago. With experience working at the late Acadia, a two–Michelin star restaurant in Chicago’s South Loop, Lei brings a unique fine-dining perspective and attention to detail to every drink.

“We’re trying to push the boundaries of boba,” Lei says. “There’s a lot of thought that goes into each drink, and we make as much as possible from scratch.” That’s a stark contrast to bubble tea franchises that rely on powders, mixes, and syrups for consistency and to keep costs low. Gathers’s boba has a superlative springy QQ texture that no Chinatown shops or bubble tea franchises can match.

The menu is broad, and every time I visit, there’s a new drink on the menu—I have FOMO about missing a limited-time special. There’s everything from pumpkin cream chai, a fall favorite (made with real pumpkin puree, of course), to popular Hong Kong–style milk tea, made with a proprietary blend of teas. Korean-inspired banana milk was a summer special that is now a permanent menu item due to popular demand. Osmanthus oolong is one of my favorites; the fragrant floral aroma recalls childhood memories of visiting my grandparents in Taiwan. Warm longan honey jasmine milk tea is my soothing go-to if I’m feeling under the weather.

Even the service at Gathers feels more heartfelt and high-end rather than transactional. Regulars are greeted warmly by name, and knowledgeable staff are happy to make recommendations for drink toppings or explain any ingredients you might not be

familiar with. Everyone is welcome, even if you don’t have an Asian palate and prefer your drink extra sweet.

“On weekends, we get people coming from as far as Indiana or Iowa for our tea, and that’s so awesome to hear,” Li says. gathersteabar.com —AMBER GIBSON

BEST BAGELS

Winner: New York Bagel & Bialy

First Runner-up: Steingold’s of Chicago

Second Runner-up: Tilly Bagel Shop

BEST BAKERY

Winner: Lost Larson (Andersonville)

First Runner-up: Sweet Mandy B’s Bakery

Second Runner-up: Mindy’s Bakery

BEST BANG FOR YOUR BUCK

Winner: Redhot Ranch

First Runner-up: Sultan’s Market

Second Runner-up: Ghareeb Nawaz Restaurant

BEST BANH MI

Winner: Nhu Lan Bakery & Sandwiches

First Runner-up: Ba Le Sandwiches

Second Runner-up: Chicago Lunchbox

BEST BARBECUE

Winner: Smoque BBQ

First Runner-up: Green Street Smoked Meats

Second Runner-up: Soul & SmokeAvondale at Rockwell on the River

BEST BARISTA

Winner: Maris Wimmer (Beatrix Fulton Market)

First Runner-up: Ryan Haynes (Ridman’s Coffee)

Second Runner-up: Ricardo Acebedo Diaz (Magnifico Coffee)

BEST BARTENDER

Winner: Courtland Green (Dove’s Luncheonette)

First Runner-up (TIE): Dan Smith (Queen Mary)

First Runner-up (TIE): Kate Iwinski (Take Flight Spirits)

Second Runner-up: Santiago Cobar (Etta)

BEST BEER GARDEN

Winner: Hopleaf

First Runner-up: Central Park Bar

Second Runner-up: Cody’s Public House

BEST BEER SHOP

Winner: The Beer Temple

First Runner-up: Beermiscuous

Second Runner-up: Bitter Pops

BEST BREAD

Winner: Publican Quality Bread

First Runner-up: Bungalow by Middle Brow

Second Runner-up: Lost Larson (Andersonville)

BEST BURGER

Winner: Little Bad Wolf

First Runner-up: Small Cheval

Second Runner-up: Redhot Ranch

BEST BUTCHER SHOP

Winner: Paulina Market

First Runner-up: Gene’s Sausage Shop and Delicatessen

Second Runner-up: Publican Quality Meats

BEST CARIBBEAN RESTAURANT

Winner: 90 Miles Cuban Cafe

First Runner-up: Jibaritos Y Mas

Second Runner-up: BienMeSabe Venezuelan Cafe & Restaurant

BEST CHEESEMONGER

Winner: Beautiful Rind

First Runner-up: All Together Now

Second Runner-up: Stamper Cheese Company

BEST CHEF

Winner: Jason Hammel (Lula Cafe)

First Runner-up: Joe Flamm (Rose Mary)

Second Runner-up: Won Kim (Kimski)

BEST CHINESE RESTAURANT

Winner: Sun Wah BBQ

First Runner-up: Chef’s Special Cocktail Bar

Second Runner-up: MingHin Cuisine

BEST CHINESE TAKEOUT OR DELIVERY

Winner: Lao Sze Chuan

First Runner-up: Sun Wah BBQ

Second Runner-up: 3 Little Pigs Chi

BEST COCKTAIL

Winner: The Violet Hour

First Runner-up: The Victor Bar

Second Runner-up: Bokeh

BEST COFFEE ROASTER

Winner: Dark Matter Coffee

First Runner-up: Metropolis Coffee Company

Second Runner-up: Hexe Coffee Co.

BEST COFFEE SHOP

Winner: The Understudy

Coffee and Books

First Runner-up: Hexe Coffee Co.

Second Runner-up: The Brewed

BEST COOKING CLASSES

Winner: The Chopping Block

First Runner-up: The Wooden Spoon

Second Runner-up: Get in the Kitchen

A chef at Impact Culinary Training KIRK WILLIAMSON

Matcha being sieved at Gathers SANDY NOTO

continued from p. 35

Food & Drink

BEST PLASTIC CUP OF WINE I HAD ALL YEAR

The Domaine La Bohème G&M from Los Naturales

Would you believe me if I told you the best glass of wine I had all year (the Domaine La Bohème G&M) was served in a plastic cup and enjoyed from a stool at one of Pilsen’s oldest dive bars? No? Well, let me and the Los Naturales boys make you a believer.

Pick a Saturday between 2 PM and 6 PM and plan a visit to Los Caminos de Michoacan at 19th and Cullerton. This watering hole and community staple is famous for their karaoke nights and pool table (which you can almost always expect a line for). But on Saturday afternoons, you’ll find that the plastic buckets that house beers any other day of the week have been repurposed to chill di erently hued bottles of wine. And a bright-red neon sign is illuminating the back wall like a Krispy Kreme hot light, signaling to all that Los Naturales is open for business.

Staking their claim in Chicago’s burgeoning wine scene as Pilsen’s very own (TBH, only) natural wine headquarters, Los Naturales is

the brainchild of best friends and Chicago natives Oscar Salinas, Adam Jiménez, and August Marron. This trio met as students at

DePaul University and turned a shared passion for natural wine into an approach that is just as refreshing as the wines they pour. Their mission: “to quench the hood’s thirst with wines worth chugging.” Their effect? A way to reinvest in their neighborhood, a fresh new crowd at Jiménez’s family-run business, and, most importantly, a way to remove all the pretentiousness surrounding drinking and purchasing wine.

The approach is no fuss and no frills, but the wines are most certainly not.

They set out to serve great wine, and what they ended up with was part distribution company, part event series, and part philosophy. The wines are great no matter where you drink them or what you drink them out of. But the way Los Naturales curates their selection to reflect care for the grapes, the regions they’re grown in, and the people that alchemise them is where you find the real magic. I suggest you pull up in person to get the full experience, but they insist you can DM them @los.naturales on Instagram to get your hands on a few bottles as well. losnaturales.com —COURTNEY

SPREWER

OUR MISSION IS TO END HUNGER.

To achieve our mission, we work in partnership with a network of community-based organizations and individuals. Together, we connect our neighbors with healthy food, lift our voices and advance solutions that address the root causes of hunger – poverty, systemic inequity and structural racism. Together, we are greater. Together, we can end hunger.

A wine display at Los Caminos de Michoacan in Pilsen LOS NATURALES

Food & Drink

BEST NEIGHBORHOOD COFFEE SHOP FOR TOURS OF ANTIQUE HOMES

Pullman Club Coffee Shop

It seems a bit obvious to say that there are plenty of coffee shops in a city as large as Chicago—small, hole-in–the-wall places where you can expect to smell fresh coffee beans and pastries dusted with crystals of sugar each morning before the work commute, or even more popular chains where the menu selections are familiar and easy to grab in a pinch.

For me, though, a native of the far south side where co ee shops like these can be few and far between, it’s the Pullman Club Co ee Shop in the historic Pullman neighborhood that’s so special, especially as the first business of its kind in the area in decades. It’s one of many businesses to have recently cropped up in the neighborhood, originally constructed in the 1880s by Pullman Company founder George M. Pullman to house his workers, who built the company’s world-famous train cars.

You’ll know the co ee shop at 605 E. 111th (also known in the neighborhood as One Florence Boulevard) by its warm atmosphere and antique, stately wooden structure courtesy of 19th-century architect Solon Spencer Beman.

The cafe itself is situated in one corner of a former multilevel Pullman home, with the usual coffee shop fare of coffee, tea, hot chocolate, biscotti, and muffins. It’s a nice experience if you’re ever exploring the Pullman neighborhood, but it’s the other parts of One Florence Boulevard that really sell the visit.

The shop doubles as the headquarters of the Pullman House Project, an endeavor from neighbors who volunteer to give tours of actual homes Pullman Company workers once lived in. Customers are free to explore the rest of the building’s first floor or wait with a warm drink for their own tour to start. There’s a library and sitting rooms to enjoy, teeming with original Pullman artifacts, either donated or acquired over the years by Pullman House Project volunteers.

BEST PLACE TO BE ABSOLUTELY ANYONE YOU WANT TO BE WITH A SEXY ART DECO FLAIR AND MAYBE A MARTINI

Sparrow

Sometimes we all need to escape reality, and there are a million ways to do it.

Some of us turn to TV, others to music. Me? I turn to candlelit rooms full of interesting people and good cocktails.

Originally established in 1927, the Sparrow cocktail lounge in the Gold Coast is by far my favorite place to relax and create a fake life, sipping all the while. There isn’t one thing on the menu that I haven’t loved—but the drinks still manage to be the least interesting part. Between the plush sofa booths and the eclectic living room decor dotted across the ceiling, there is a timelessness and a sensuality that oozes from every corner of the ground-level bar.

Agree to start at a standing table, and you’re off: first through a foyer and then into the bar itself where you’re led to a cocktail table and promptly handed glasses of water and a faux leather–bound menu. As your eyes adjust to the sultry candlelight, you’ll be able to assess your real table. Will you be on the plush bench near the old lobby phone? Or maybe up a few steps and around the corner in mismatched living room chairs?

Even if you’re not the biggest history buff (believe me, I haven’t always been), you shouldn’t pass up the Pullman Club Coffee Shop and Pullman House Project. pullmanathome.org

—MAIA MCDONALD

Wherever you are, the drinks will complement. Try the La Floridita (the signature) and become an undercover detective, coyly surveying the visitors for your prime suspect. Follow with the Astoria and you’re a 1920s New Yorker: sexy, bold, twirling an unlit cigarette. The Grasshopper (billed as sippable joy), makes you a touring artist looking for a place to crash—but only for the night. You could also grab a glass of the Matthew Fritz, a lovely pinot noir, but only if the life you’re stepping into is mine. At Sparrow, you can truly be anyone you want to be, and you can do it with sophisticated Cuban flair. sparrowchicago.com —SYDNEY COX

BEST DESSERTS

Winner: Sweet Mandy B’s

First Runner-up: Daisies

Second Runner-up: Beatrix

BEST DOUGHNUTS

Winner: Do-Rite Donuts

First Runner-up: Stan’s Donuts

Second Runner-up: Firecakes Donuts

BEST FALAFEL

Winner: Sultan’s Market

First Runner-up: Pita Inn

Second Runner-up: Middle East Bakery & Grocery

BEST FARMERS MARKET

Winner: Logan Square Farmers Market

First Runner-up: Green City Market Lincoln Park

Second Runner-up: Lincoln Square Farmers Market

BEST FOOD RELIEF EFFORT

Winner: Greater Chicago Food Depository

First Runner-up: Love Fridge

Second Runner-up: Common Pantry

BEST FOOD TRUCK

Winner: DonerMen

First Runner-up: The Fat Shallot Food Truck

Second Runner-up: Chicago Lunchbox

BEST FRIED CHICKEN SHACK

Winner: Honey Butter Fried Chicken

First Runner-up (TIE): Harold’s Chicken

First Runner-up (TIE): Parson’s Chicken & Fish

Second Runner-up: Roost Chicken & Biscuits

BEST GLUTEN-FREE PIZZA

Winner: Paulie Gee’s Logan Square

First Runner-up: Spacca Napoli Pizzeria

Second Runner-up: Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria

BEST GOURMET MARKET

Winner: Gene’s Sausage Shop and Delicatessen

First Runner-up: Dom’s Kitchen & Market

Second Runner-up: L&M Fine Foods

BEST GREEK RESTAURANT

Winner: Greek Islands

First Runner-up: Andros Taverna

Second Runner-up: Athenian Room

BEST HOT DOG

Winner: Superdawg Drive-In

First Runner-up: The Home Depot

Second Runner-up: The Wiener’s Circle

Artifacts at the Pullman home MAIA MCDONALD

BEST HOSPITALITY ON A HOSPITALITY PODCAST

Joiners podcast

Danny Shapiro and Tim Tierney may be the public faces of, respectively, the Scofflaw Group nightlife empire (Slippery Slope, the Heavy Feather, the Moonlighter) and Stock Mfg. Co. (couturiers to restaurant stars), but their faces are arguably more suited to radio. For nearly two years, the city’s chefs, bartenders, owners, producers, publicists, and food writers have made the pilgrimage to their occasionally sweaty podcast studios (one occasionally haunted by a phantom garbage truck) to spill tea on the food and beverage world. Genial roasting abounds between the hosts (and sometimes the guests), which fosters an easy vibe whether they’re jawing with the most gregarious top chefs in town or its orneriest back-of-house lifers. (Disclosure: I was an early guest.) They seem to know just about everybody but don’t pretend they know everything—all of which makes listeners feel like they’ve been invited to stay for a shift drink and then 4 AM slingers at the Diner Grill. joiners.podbean.com —MIKE

SULA

BEST (SORT OF) SECRET BAKERY

Au Levain

On any given Sunday, you’ll find me in a line of people on Lincoln Avenue waiting to pick up my weekly dark chocolate treat from a walk-up window. Inevitably, a passerby will stop, eye the line, and

ask, “What’s going on here?”

What’s going on is Au Levain, a weekly bakery run by chef Angel Chavez. A pastry chef at Bistro Campagne, Chavez started Au Levain as a side project during the pandemic. Each week, he releases a menu to his email newsletter and social media followers, taking orders until Friday night for pick up on Sunday morning out of a window at Lincoln Square’s DueLire Vino & Cucina. Or, if you get there early enough, you can sometimes snag some pastries that morning.

The menu contains excellent versions of bakery classics: croissants, pain aux raisins, quiche lorraine, key lime pie, and chocolate chip cookies. But the real reason to keep your eye out for the preorder announcement is the items Chavez adds week to week, many of which nod to the season, the Mexican flavors he grew up with, or whatever he dreams up. Recent options have included a chocolate mole croissant, cacio e pepe escargot (the spiral pastry, not the snail), chorizo danish, and chocolate babka. You can get hot cross buns for Easter, pan de muerto leading up to Día de los Muertos, and pies and cookies for the winter holidays.

My personal favorite is the dark chocolate pistachio escargot—a flaky swirl layered with smooth chocolate and crushed pistachio— which began as a temporary menu item and immediately became a staple. No matter what else I order, I have to add it. I once walked a mile on a rainy October day to pick one up. After trudging back home, I stuck it in the oven for five minutes to revive the luscious, gooey chocolate (and I recommend you do the same).

Chavez is working toward opening a brickand-mortar, and for now, his pop-up bakery deserves a spot in your weekend routine.

aulevainchicago.com —JANET POTTER

BEST ICE CREAM

Winner: Margie’s Candies

First Runner-up: Jeni’s

Second Runner-up: Pretty Cool Ice Cream

BEST INDIAN RESTAURANT

Winner: Ghareeb Nawaz Restaurant

First Runner-up: The Spice Room

Second Runner-up: Thattu

BEST ITALIAN BEEF SANDWICH

Winner: Al’s #1 Italian Beef

First Runner-up: Johnnie’s Beef

Second Runner-up: Portillo’s & Barnelli’s Chicago

Food & Drink

BEST ITALIAN RESTAURANT

Winner: Monteverde

Restaurant & Pastificio

First Runner-up: La Scarola

Second Runner-up: Bar Roma

BEST KOREAN RESTAURANT

Winner: Parachute

First Runner-up: San Soo Gab San

Second Runner-up: Cho Sun Ok Restaurant

BEST LIQUOR STORE

Winner: Binny’s Beverage

Depot - Lincoln Park

First Runner-up: Andersonville

Wine & Spirits

Second Runner-up: Bottles & Cans

From le : Jonathan Zaragoza (guest), Tim Tierney, and Danny Shapiro ANDI ZARAGOZA

Food & Drink

BEST PLACE TO SHOCKPROOF A DATE

Sideshow Gelato

How do you like your gelato? Nutty? Fruity? In Italy? Me too! But when I can’t scoop it up in Milan, my next favorite place is at Sideshow Gelato, where every scoop of their in-house artisan gelato palette comes with a side of sideshow history and action—and on weekends, with an actual sideshow. This quirky spot in Lincoln Square defies all of the rules of a gentrifying neighborhood and proudly flies its freak flag.

One charming aspect of the place, outside of the curated carnival and circus atmosphere, is that the gelato zone is staffed by magicians and sideshow performers in training who will scoop out your favorite flavor and chat with you before they wow you onstage with their performing prowess. They feature weekend family shows, after-hours shows, and even some show-and-tell through the display of historical sideshow objects (via the museum of the transmundane). They’ve even become a celebrity destination: Penn & Teller performed at Sideshow last October. (Penn Jillette is an investor and partner in the business.)

Sideshow Gelato hits the mark by being 100 percent unapologetically itself. The sideshows are willing to go there, showcasing the most obscure circus and carnival acts that Chicago has continued to nurture over the decades and providing a

much-needed venue for niche performers. You might see sword swallowers, nail-bed acts, burlesque artists, magicians, contortionists, and acrobats. The show leans steeply toward the absurd, the shocking, the hilarious, and the stupefying, guaranteeing you will not leave the building without picking your jaw up off of the floor at least three times. They offer many flavors of gelato, even ones with interesting twists (potato latke gelato anyone?).

But most of all, they offer their mantra: “Being different is cool.” This is the closest you’ll ever get to vaudeville and a great way to shockproof your date and make sure they’re the right kind of geek for you. sideshowgelato.com

—KIMZYN CAMPBELL

BEST CORRIDOR FOR SAFFRON ICE CREAM

The intersection of Kedzie and Lawrence

If sa ron is, according to Bibi Kasrai, author of The Spice Whisperer, “the world’s most expensive Prozac,” saffron ice cream should be an ideal mood enhancer. I took it upon myself to investigate.

In Albany Park, near Kedzie and Lawrence, several venues boast that treat. Kabobi Grill serves a nottoo-sweet pistachio saffron bastani (traditional Persian ice cream).

Upon first bite, my palate was unprepared for the lack of sweetness; I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it. But my fondness for it grew with each spoonful studded with pistachio chunks. Long after I finished my scoop, I stepped off the 92 bus, brain aswirl with all the upsetting news I’d read on my phone, yet my head buzzed uncannily with a feeling I could only ascribe to eating a bowl of saffron ice cream. Dutifully, I returned weeks later to try the saffron mango bastani—sweeter, creamier, a real treat.

After loading up on saffron-lentil soup and saffron rice (among other delectable foods) at Noon-O-Kabab, I could not finish all of my luscious saffron bastani topped with a delicate sprinkle of ground pistachio. Lucky for me, it came in a plastic cup and it was cold outside, so I whisked my leftovers home to my freezer and gleefully added a scoop to my toaster waffle the next morning, one of the best things I have done for myself in recent years. A sense of well-being permeated.

Dukan International Food Market and Sahar International Supermarket both carry rose saffron bastani in the form of an ice cream sandwich. The rose adds an air of romance to the delicacy, strong enough to know it’s there but not overpowering. I ate mine on the rainy first day of winter with a cedar candle burning and a mug of tea to warm me up afterward.

The constant barrage of violence in the news is hard to take, but even just thinking of the color of saffron ice cream is a welcome respite. —ANCA L. SZILÁGYI

BEST LOCAL BEER

Winner: Half Acre Beer Co

First Runner-up: Off Color Brewing Taproom The Mousetrap

Second Runner-up: Maplewood Brewery & Distillery

BEST LOCAL BREWERY

Winner: Revolution Brewing - Brewery & Taproom

First Runner-up: Half Acre Beer Co

Second Runner-up: Metropolitan Brewing

BEST LOCAL DISTILLERY

Winner: KOVAL Distillery

First Runner-up: CH Distillery and Cocktail Bar

Second Runner-up: Judson & Moore Distillery

BEST LOCAL FARMER

Winner: Mick Klug Farm

First Runner-up: Nichols Farm & Orchard

Second Runner-up: Global Garden Refugee Training Farm

BEST LOCAL FOOD PRODUCT

Winner: Soothsayer Hot Sauce

First Runner-up: Komunity Kombucha

Second Runner-up: Gemma Foods

BEST LOCAL GROCER

Winner: HarvesTime Foods

First Runner-up: Fresh Market Place

Second Runner-up: The Dill Pickle Food Co-op

BEST LOCAL SPIRIT

Winner: Jeppson’s Malört

First Runner-up: Koval Cranberry Gin Liqueur

Second Runner-up: Sasha Gin (Take Flight Spirits)

BEST MEXICAN RESTAURANT

Winner: Mi Tocaya Antojería

First Runner-up: 5 Rabanitos Restaurante & Taqueria

Second Runner-up: Cafe El Tapatio

BEST MIDDLE EASTERN RESTAURANT

Winner: Noon O Kabab Chicago

First Runner-up: Galit

Second Runner-up: Middle East Bakery & Grocery

BEST NEW FOOD TREND

Winner: dumplings

First Runner-up: plant-based meats

Second Runner-up: farm to counter or to table

Teller performing at Sideshow Gelato COURTESY SIDESHOW GELATO

Noon-O-Kabab’s saff ron bastani ANCA SZILÁGYI

Food & Drink

BEST NEW POP-UP

Winner: Motorshucker

First Runner-up: Johnny’s Table

Second Runner-up (TIE): Grumpy Pies Pizza

Second Runner-up (TIE): Diaspora Chicago

BEST OUTDOOR DINING

Winner: Piccolo Sogno

First Runner-up: Aba

Second Runner-up: Easy Does It

BEST OVERALL RESTAURANT

Winner: Lula Cafe

First Runner-up: Daisies

Second Runner-up: El Che Steakhouse & Bar

BEST PALETERIA

Winner: La Michoacana Premium Pilsen (1855 S. Blue Island)

First Runner-up: Michoacana Delight Ice Cream Shop (7213 W. Irving Park)

Second Runner-up: D’Fruta La Vida

BEST PIEROGI

Winner: Kasia’s Deli

First Runner-up: Gene’s Sausage Shop and Delicatessen

Second Runner-up: Staropolska Restaurant

BEST PIZZA

Winner: Pequod’s Pizza

First Runner-up: Spacca Napoli Pizzeria

Second Runner-up: Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria

BEST PIZZA BY THE SLICE

Winner: Jimmy’s Pizza Cafe

First Runner-up: Paulie Gee’s Wicker Park

Second Runner-up: Dante’s Pizzeria

BEST PIZZA DELIVERY

Winner: Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria

First Runner-up: Pat’s Pizza and Ristorante

Second Runner-up: J.B. Alberto’s Pizza

BEST PLACE WORTH A WAIT

Winner: Kasama

First Runner-up: Batter & Berries

Second Runner-up: Warlord

BEST POLISH RESTAURANT

Winner: Staropolska Restaurant

First Runner-up (TIE): Podhalanka

First Runner-up (TIE): Red Apple Buffet

Second Runner-up: SMAKTAK! Polish Restaurant

BEST PRESERVES

Winner: Pickled Prince

First Runner-up (TIE): Spoken Cafe

First Runner-up (TIE): Wild Witch Preserves

Second Runner-up: Twidley Bits

BEST RAMEN

Winner: Ramen Wasabi

First Runner-up: RAMEN-SAN

Second Runner-up (TIE) : High Five Ramen

Second Runner-up (TIE): Monster Ramen

BEST RESTAURANT GROUP

Winner: Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises

First Runner-up: Hogsalt

Second Runner-up: Boka Restaurant Group

BEST SANDWICH

Winner: J.P. Graziano Grocery

First Runner-up: J.T.’s Genuine Sandwich Shop

Second Runner-up: Tempesta Market

BEST SEAFOOD RESTAURANT

Winner: Lowcountry

First Runner-up: Shaw’s Crab House

Second Runner-up: Half Shell

BEST SOUL FOOD RESTAURANT

Winner: Luella’s Southern Kitchen

First Runner-up: Virtue Restaurant

Second Runner-up: Soul & SmokeAvondale at Rockwell on the River

BEST HOT POT SPOT FOR VEGANS

Qiao Lin Hotpot at 88 Marketplace

When my partner went vegetarian, my mom didn’t know what to do with him. In her mind, the handmade bao she o ered was vegetarian because she used “only a little bit of pork!” The seafood stew she served up would obviously comply because it’s shrimp-based and “shrimp are vegetables!”

Enter Qiao Lin Hotpot, the answer to all our prayers. Located in the massive 88 Marketplace on Jefferson Street, Qiao Lin is home to Chicagoland’s most authentic “Southern-style” hot pot. Huo Guo ( 火锅 ), literally “hot pot” in Chinese, is traditionally centered around thinly sliced meats and various other fixings, dipped into a communal steaming pot of flavorful broth. Every region of China boasts their own variation on hot pot, but Chongqing, a major southern China hub, is famous for its numbing spice broth and

Miniatures by Margie Criner and Itty Bitty Mini Mart JAMES HOSKING

Food & Drink

continued from p. 41

vegetable, mushroom, and seafood-forward o erings given the city’s subtropical location between the Yangtze and Jialing rivers.

Qiao Lin offers a fully vegan mushroom broth, and, for those meat-eaters sensitive to spice like myself, I recommend the flavorpacked but spice-free tomato broth or the collagen-infused chicken broth. Whether you choose one, two, or three broth flavors, the price is the same and comes in divided sections of the same pot so no one feels left out of the experience of fishing for their food from the communal pot of goodness, which, let’s be honest, is the real spirit of hot pot.

When I bring my partner, he’s not just sipping on vegan broth either—an extensive plant-based menu awaits the curious palate of meat-eaters and plant-lovers alike. Five types of tofu and five types of mushrooms and fungi await, including my favorite, wood ear, a gelatinous, ear-shaped Chinese mushroom that laterally attaches to wood.

At Qiao Lin, my mother can happily eat layer upon succulent layer of sliced New Zealand lamb shoulder and American Kobe beef, while my partner still gets his fill. qiaolinhotpot.com —WENDY WEI

BEST DAIRY-FREE, USUALLY PLANT-BASED PRECOLONIAL MEXICAN

FOOD POP-UP

Piñatta

Piñatta serves delicious precolonial Mexican food accompanied by heaping sides of scientific, historical, and cultural knowledge. Founders Emilio and Santiago Guerrero are brothers with long tenures in the service industry. They started Piñatta during quarantine in 2020, providing allinclusive, adorably packaged, heat-andeat meal kits. They have since expanded their offerings to include wildly popular pop-up dinners (including appearances at the Reader ’s Monday Night Foodball) and packaged goods. They serve pre-Columbian Mesoamerican food with a focus on dishes that elevate masa (nixtamalized ground corn). In the Aztec language Nahuatl, nixtli means “ashes,” and tamalli “cooked maíz masa.” Nixtamalization is an ancient process that makes corn’s bounty of nutrients bioavailable and digestible. Corn, or maíz, prepared in this fashion is so nutritionally

dense that it’s considered a superfood by modern standards.

Santiago shares that Piñatta strives to “tell the story of what Indigenous Mexicans ate prior to colonization and emigration,” while including ingredients native to the midwest, such as the “three sisters,” corn, beans, and squash. As the business has grown, so has the brothers’ passion for gardening and fermentation. They have a core menu that rotates monthly and features house-made sauces ranging from spicy to tangy; a recent event at Ørkenoy featured tamales (turkey tinga and vegan rajas), rice, beans, and pumpkin flan. You won’t find pork, wheat, or dairy—all ingredients resulting from Spain’s colonization of the Americas. Their seasonal menus also highlight partnerships with local farms like Nichols or Slagel, while celebrating the Guerrero’s Mexican American heritage.

Although they grew up around a familyowned casual Mexican restaurant, the brothers’ first exposure to fine-dining was as employees at GT Fish & Oyster. Socioeconomic accessibility is a priority, as reflected in their very reasonable price points and comfortable, unpretentious vibes. There is not much precedent for luxurious food in unfussy settings—as Emilio says, “We are always fighting the perception that Mexican or ethnic food should be cheap.” Elitism is one of several industry-wide problems the brothers are tackling; they also prioritize sustainability. Their operation is extremely low-waste (even the corn cobs are utilized for vinegar), and they are conscientious about developing an ethical business that won’t result in burnout. pinattachicago.com

—ERIN TOALE v

BEST SOUP

Winner: Taste of Lebanon Restaurant

First Runner-up: Lao Peng You

Second Runner-up: Middle East Bakery & Grocery

BEST SOURDOUGH

Winner: Publican Quality Bread

First Runner-up: Bungalow by Middle Brow

Second Runner-up: R&A Sourdough

BEST STEAK HOUSE

Winner: Bavette’s Bar & Boeuf

First Runner-up: Gibsons Bar & Steakhouse

Second Runner-up: Boeu aus

BEST SUSHI

Winner: Lawrence Fish Market

First Runner-up: KAI ZAN

Second Runner-up: Tanoshii

BEST TAQUERIA

Winner: Taqueria Chingón

First Runner-up: Taqueria El Asadero

Second Runner-up: Edgewater Tacos

BEST THAI RESTAURANT

Winner: Sticky Rice Thai

First Runner-up: Cozy Noodles n’ Rice

Second Runner-up: Same Same

BEST UP-AND-COMING CHEF

Winner: Oscar Samayoa (Birria Ta-Ta-Tacos)

First Runner-up (TIE): Richie Farina (Adorn Bar and Restaurant at Four Seasons Hotel)

First Runner-up (TIE): Jamie Davis (Motorshucker)

Second Runner-up: Christopher Cuellar (Cooking With Cuellar)

BEST URBAN FARM

Winner: Urban Growers Collective

First Runner-up (TIE): The Urban Canopy

First Runner-up (TIE): Global

Garden Refugee Training Farm

Second Runner-up: Big Delicious Planet

BEST VEGAN RESTAURANT

Winner: Alice & Friends’

Vegan Kitchen

First Runner-up: Bloom Plant Based Kitchen

Second Runner-up: Kale My Name

BEST VEGETARIAN RESTAURANT

Winner: Handlebar

First Runner-up: The Chicago

Diner, Logan Square

Second Runner-up: Kale My Name

BEST VIETNAMESE RESTAURANT

Winner: HaiSous Vietnamese Kitchen

First Runner-up: Le Colonial Chicago

Second Runner-up: Pho 888

BEST WINE BAR

Winner: Volo Restaurant Wine Bar

First Runner-up: Websters

Wine Bar Chicago

Second Runner-up: Easy Does It

BEST WINE LIST

Winner: Websters Wine Bar Chicago

First Runner-up: Easy Does It

Second Runner-up: Uvae

Kitchen and Wine Bar

BEST WINE SHOP

Winner: Vin Chicago

First Runner-up: BottlesUp!

Second Runner-up: Easy Does It

Le : A selection of meat at Qiao Lin COURTESY QIAO LIN HOTPOT Right: Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican food at Piñatta SANTIAGO GUERRERO

Cannabis

BEST

OF CHICAGO 2023

BEST DISPENSARY TO TAKE YOUR DOG TO SO THAT EVERYONE GETS A TREAT

nuEra Chicago Dispensary

As a dog parent, I regularly do the worst thing: leave my little Dean at home all alone while I run errands. Dean, like most dogs, has separation anxiety and, having been previously abandoned in his home state of Arkansas, lacks a sense of security when I’m not around. It isn’t fair to him, and it always

makes what should be fun (going out and buying weed) an emotional roller coaster.

When I first became a nuEra patron a few years ago as a recreational consumer (nuEra serves both recreational consumers and medical patients), I couldn’t help but notice a glass container of a popular brand of dog treats on the counter. “That’s nice,” I would think to myself. “You can take your dog here.” It wasn’t until I got Dean that I had the epiphany: I can take my dog here! No more painful guilt, and it’s a nice walk from my place, to boot.

NuEra’s employees are always excited to

see Dean during his regularly scheduled visits, and while I pick up various kinds of treats for myself, he gets to enjoy far more of his own (and more than I would generally give him at home). NuEra was already my favorite dispensary in the area to begin with, but being able to take my little buddy here absolutely sealed the deal. During our last visit, Dean, who is a very shy little man, even braved meeting someone new for an extra two treats. Plus, I had enough accrued points for 20 percent o my purchase. Treats: acquired. nueracannabis.com —JON ROSENTHAL

BEST CANNA COMMUNITYBUILDING ORGANIZATION

High Focus Media

Stoners can all agree that weed has a special way of bringing people together. Strangers quickly turn into friends as ideas are shared along with a joint.

High Focus Media is a Chicago organization that uses regular pop-ups to capture the magic of these simple human interactions in a way that’s accessible to everyone. Led

Miniatures by Margie Criner and Itty Bitty Mini Mart JAMES HOSKING

Cannabis

BEST “ADULT USE” (REC) BUDTENDER

Winner: Matt Trinidad (Grasshopper Club Logan Square)

First Runner-up: Darrell Flynn (Ivy Hall Montgomery)

Second Runner-up: Andrew Santucci (Ivy Hall Bolingbrook)

BEST “ADULT USE” DISPENSARY

Winner: Grasshopper Club

First Runner-up: OKAY

Cannabis Dispensary

Second Runner-up: Dispensary33

BEST CANNABIS ACCESSORY BOUTIQUE (NON-DISPENSARY)

Winner (TIE): Made Gallery

Winner (TIE): Saint Lucia’s Smoke Shop

First Runner-up: Consume Cannabis Co.

Second Runner-up: Canna Bella Lux

BEST CANNABIS ACCESSORY SELECTION IN A DISPENSARY

Winner: Ivy Hall Dispensary (Bucktown)

First Runner-up: RISE Mundelein

Second Runner-up (TIE): Consume Cannabis Co.

Second Runner-up (TIE): nuEra Chicago Dispensary

BEST CANNABIS ADVOCACY OR RESTORATIVE JUSTICE ORGANIZATION

Winner: Last Prisoner Project

First Runner-up (TIE): Chicago NORML

First Runner-up (TIE): Cannabis Equity IL Coalition

Second Runner-up: 1937 Group

BEST CANNABIS SUPPER CLUB, HOME CHEF, OR CATERER

Winner: Brunch of Stoners

First Runner-up: High Minded Events

Second Runner-up: Crybaby Sweets

BEST CLINIC TO GET CERTIFIED FOR A MEDICAL CARD

Winner: Consume Cannabis Co

First Runner-up (TIE): Dr. Consalter, Ketamine Infusion Center

First Runner-up (TIE): Modern Compassionate Care

Second Runner-up: Innovative Care

BEST CONSUMABLE, OTHER (MINT, TABLET, SNACK FOOD, ETC.)

Winner: 1906 Chill Drops

First Runner-up (TIE): Beboe

First Runner-up (TIE): PTS the Antidote RSO

Second Runner-up: nuEra x Sweet Life by Hannah Ruby Chocolate Drops (BCA Edition)

BEST HOME GROW SUPPLY SHOP

Winner: Chicago Roots

Hydroponics and Organics

First Runner-up (TIE): Brew & Grow

Hydroponics and Homebrewing

First Runner-up (TIE): Verilife

Second Runner-up: Homegrown Supplies Inc.

BEST INFUSED BEVERAGE (DRINK, DROP, SYRUP, TEA)

Winner: PTS Tonic

First Runner-up: Cann

Second Runner-up: Zero Proof Squeeze

BEST INFUSED CHOCOLATE

Winner: West Town

Bakery Brownie Mix

First Runner-up: Mindy’s

Second Runner-up: Incredibles

BEST INFUSED GUMMIES

Winner: Mindy’s

First Runner-up: Beboe

Second Runner-up (TIE): Goody Bag Gummies

Second Runner-up (TIE): nuEra

Sativa Live Resin Gummies

BEST LOCAL CBD SOURCE (LOCAL NON-DISPENSARY SHOP OR BRAND)

Winner: Cubbington’s Cabinet

First Runner-up (TIE): CBD Kratom

First Runner-up (TIE): Soul and Wellness

Second Runner-up: Momma Verde Apothecary

BEST MEDICAL BUDTENDER OR PATIENT CARE REP

Winner: Chloe Geneve (NuEra)

First Runner-up: Zoe Sitarz (Ivy Hall Crystal Lake)

Second Runner-up: Marc

Morehouse, Verilife

by a team of industry veterans—Shayna Helm, Nicole Vaughn, and Maddie Scanlon— High Focus originated as a collective of cannabis influencers. They soon expanded into organizing community-based events for any and everyone: creators, cannabis connoisseurs, and casual consumers alike.

High Focus hosts “Profesh Sesh” networking events where cannabis enthusiasts from all demographics can come together and get high, regardless of whether they work in the industry. These free monthly events are held at various venues including arcade bars like Replay and Emporium, and outdoor sites during the summer. Despite the lack of legal consumption lounges in Chicago, guests still enjoy plenty of free goodies and smoke outside in designated smoke areas such as “sesh busses.” High Focus also hosts events in collaboration with other cannabis groups like Runner’s High and the Herban Legends (to host the Herban Legends Cup, a competition that highlights some of the best local cultivators in Chicagoland).

After their first year as an active group, High Focus Media hopes to host bigger and

better events while also providing more places for Chicagoans to comfortably smoke. Attending any of these events would open a newbie’s eyes to the diversity of those who enjoy smoking, and hopefully break any preconceived notions one might have about who enjoys cannabis. highfocusmedia.com —ALEJANDRO HERNANDEZ

BEST NATIONAL CORPORATION BASED IN CHICAGO THAT SELLS OVERPRICED DESIGNER WEED

Cresco Labs

“Gov. Pritzker Signs Most Equity-Centric Law in Nation to Legalize Adult-Use Cannabis,” his office triumphantly declared in 2019. The measure created a “social equity” program for communities of color that have for decades been ruthlessly criminalized through the war on drugs. A portion of the 75 available dispensary licenses at the time were earmarked for social equity applicants, a move the state said would spur much-needed diversity in an industry dominated by rich, white men.

Naturally, then, four years into legalization, Chicago’s largest cannabis company is Cresco Labs. The multistate corporation is headquartered in the Windy City and run by—you guessed it!—rich, white men. Cresco operates six dispensaries in the Chicagoland area under the Sunnyside brand, along with two cultivation centers in the state. That’s in addition to 60 other dispensaries spread across another six states.

Cresco has revolutionized the weed-buying experience. Gone are the days of purchasing $100 half-ounces of Chemdawg or OG Kush, portioned into Ziploc bags, from your dealer’s living room. Sunnyside dispensaries offer a dizzying array of designer sativa, indica, and

Dean the dog enjoys a treat from a nuEra budtender. JON ROSENTHAL continued from p. 43

Spend a day at Lincoln Park Zoo where everyone wins with free fun at every turn!

Cannabis

BEST MEDICAL CANNABIS DISPENSARY

Winner: Dispensary33

First Runner-up: nuEra Chicago Dispensary

Second Runner-up: Consume Cannabis Co.

BEST NON-VAPE CONCENTRATE (STRAIN & BRAND/PRODUCER)

Winner: RYTHM Solventless Brownie Scout

First Runner-up: Grassroots MAC Live Sugar

Second Runner-up: nuEra Fire Berries Live Budder

BEST PET CBD PRODUCT

Winner: Cubbington’s Cabinet P’Nut Budder Drops

First Runner-up: Doctor Solomon’s

Second Runner-up (TIE): Chicago Cannabis Company Pet CBD Drops

Second Runner-up (TIE): Cubbington’s Cabinet Chik’N-Licious Drops

Second Runner-up (TIE): Garden Of Life Pet CBD

BEST PRODUCT FOR INCREASED LIBIDO

Winner (TIE): 1906 Love Drops

Winner (TIE): RYTHM

A ernoon Delight #4

First Runner-up: Incredibles 1:1 Dark Cherry Chocolate Bar

Second Runner-up: Rythm A ernoon Delight #7

BEST STRAIN OR CONSUMABLE PRODUCT FOR PAIN RELIEF (INCLUDE PRODUCER)

Winner: Black Afghan (RYTHM)

First Runner-up: Jenny Kush (Aeriz)

Second Runner-up (TIE): Pure Essentials Cronuts #4 Capsules (Consume Cannabis Co.)

Second Runner-up (TIE): Cobra Milk Flower (nuEra)

BEST STRAIN OR PRODUCT FOR RELIEF OF ANXIETY (INCLUDE PRODUCER)

Winner: Cubbington’s Cabinet Classic Tincture

First Runner-up: RYTHM Orange Herijuana

Second Runner-up (TIE): Interstate 420 White Truffle flower

Second Runner-up (TIE): 1906 Chill Drops

Second Runner-up (TIE): Jenny Kush (Aeriz)

BEST STRAIN OR PRODUCT FOR SLEEP (INCLUDE PRODUCER)

Winner: incredibles Snoozzzierberry (GTI)

First Runner-up: Nighttime Reserve (Cubbington’s Cabinet)

Second Runner-up: nuEra

Peyote Cookies flower

BEST TOPICAL

Winner: Doctor Solomon’s

First Runner-up (TIE): PTS Body Oil

First Runner-up (TIE): Avexia

1:1 Harmony Balm

Second Runner-up: Cloud 9 Lotion (Nature’s Grace and Wellness)

BEST VAPE CONCENTRATE (STRAIN & BRAND/PRODUCER)

Winner: RYTHM Solventless Brownie Scout

First Runner-up (TIE): Northern Lights (Cresco)

First Runner-up (TIE): Select BRIQ Pineapple Express

Second Runner-up: Interstate 420 Dankarooz Live Sauce Cart

continued from p. 44

hybrid strains like Flan (with its “muted green buds” and “a fine icing of trichomes and dull, golden hairs”) or Gas Station Sushi (which has “a strong gassy diesel aroma paired with the refreshing fragrance of lemon Pledge and Murphy’s Wood Cleaner”—delectable!).

After a warm greeting from a pair of off-duty cops stationed outside, you’re welcomed with a charming Disney World feel as you navigate a labyrinthine maze of stanchions to a row of budtenders stationed behind an L-shaped counter. Once there, employees grab your order from metal safe deposit boxes— like cabinets or industrial drive-through transaction drawers. It’s perfect for those who’ve always thought, “Gee, I wish buying weed could feel more like going to the bank.”

Speaking of banks, make sure you hit one on your way. With taxes, an eighth could run

you a cool $80—a little steep, but at least you’re buying local and supporting a good cause (white people profiting off a drug for which thousands of people of color have been incarcerated). sunnyside.shop

which thousands of people of color have

—SHAWN MULCAHY

BEST ROUTE FOR A PREMOVIE EDIBLE COME-UP

A lap down the River Esplanade Park to AMC River East 21

There are certain times and places when downtown Chicago, for all its grit and grayness, really preens around its more hospitable and picturesque side. For me, one of the more special ones is about 15 minutes before showtime, walking along the Ogden Slip and down to the river.

(L-R) Maddie Scanlon, Shayna Helm, and Nicole Vaughn of High Focus Media at their July 2023 “Dabs’ & Dough” event in Chicago. HIGH FOCUS MEDIA

Cannabis

continued from p. 48

Vape

The route: starting at the southeast corner of Illinois Street and McClurg Court, walk south toward the gorgeously framed St. Regis tower. Then take a left onto the south-side canal walkway, lined with bushes and canopied by trees—and with less foot tra c than the Art Center Promenade on the north side, but with the same view of the harbor. Take a right at the east end, and walk south down the pedestrian path; peek through the fences, and wave at a local celebrity (the abyss-sized Spire hole, slowly being reclaimed by nature). Take a pen hit or two while walking west along the River Esplanade Park toward the amphitheater-shaped fountain, and take in the backdrop of boats, ducks, and skyscrapers; then back north on New Street to ascend the

occasionally operating escalators of the AMC River East 21.

Thanks to AMC’s interminable prefeature trailer and ad segment, if you start the lap just shortly before showtime, you’ll be in your reserved reclining seat and warmly baked just in time for Nicole Kidman to describe that indescribable feeling. Chicago is inarguably home to better and more unique movie houses than the world’s largest chain—the Music Box, the Gene Siskel Film Center, and Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema are good starting points—but for flicks like Wonka or The Beekeeper, there’s a je ne sais quoi of cinematic magic to getting stoned and settling into the bone-rattling bass of Dolby, especially after a one-of-a-kind Chicago riverside entr’acte. —DAN JAKES v

Sunnyside in Wrigleyville SHAWN MULCAHY

A mellow journey to AMC River East 21 includes a picturesque walk west along the south side of the Ogden Slip. DAN JAKES

BEST OF CHICAGO 2023

Arts & Culture

BEST ONLINE COALITION THAT CONSOLIDATES CHICAGO ORGANIZING EFFORTS FOR PALESTINE

Students for Justice in Palestine Chicago (@sjpchicago)

If you’re looking for Instagram pages to keep you plugged into U.S.-based organizing and protesting e orts that support the Palestinian people—more than 25,000 of whom have been mercilessly slaughtered by the U.S.-funded Israeli military since October 7—there are a couple accounts I can recommend—but none

better than Students for Justice in Palestine Chicago (@sjpchicago). Arab Chicago (@arabchicago ), U.S. Palestinian Community Network (@uspcn), and Jewish Voice for Peace Chicago (@jvpchicago) are all excellent online resources to stay up to date on local pro-Palestine organizing work. But, what distinguishes SJP Chicago from these other accounts is its specificity on Chicago-based Palestinian-specific actions, its nearly 26,000 followers, and the fact that it’s a unified front of SJP chapters at the many colleges and universities across Chicago. SJP and USPCN both often go “live” on their Instagrams during whatever events they’ve recently promoted, and SJP Chicago has some of the most consistent info dumps

about ways for you to participate. Regardless, you should follow all four accounts. —D MB (DEBBIE-MARIE

BROWN)

BEST UNION FOR CHICAGO CULTURAL WORKERS

AFSCME Council 31

Since 2021, workers at the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) and the School of the Art Institute (SAIC), Field Museum, Museum of Science and Industry (MSI), Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, Newberry Library, and suburban libraries (including Niles, Oak Lawn,

Waukegan, and St. Charles) have formed worker organizations, each a liating with the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 31. Collectively, these cultural institutions represent more than 2,000 newly unionized workers and “the bulk of [AFSCME’s] organizing here in Chicago” over the last few years, according to AFSCME Council 31 spokesperson Anders Lindall. AFSCME is often thought of as a public sector union, but “a public service union” is a better way of thinking about the 90,000 workers AFSCME Council 31 represents across Illinois, Lindall says.

One reason for this is that the issues that motivated union drives at AIC and MSI reso-

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Arts & Culture

BEST ART GALLERY

Winner: Wrightwood 659

First Runner-up: Chicago Truborn

Second Runner-up (TIE): Jackson Junge Gallery

Second Runner-up (TIE): A Very Serious Gallery

BEST ART GROUP OR COLLECTIVE

Winner: Englewood Arts Collective

First Runner-up: Sixty Inches from Center Second Runner-up (TIE): SpaceShi Collective

Second Runner-up (TIE): Cherry Knot Curation

BEST CHOREOGRAPHER

Winner: Farlanda Buchannon

First Runner-up: Rachael Leek

Second Runner-up: Dawn Xiana Moon

BEST COMEDIAN (NON STANDUP)

Winner: Rogue Schmidt

First Runner-up: Conner Stumm

Second Runner-up: Ruby Avina

BEST COMEDY SHOW

Winner: My Best Friend is Black

First Runner-up: Rat Mass

Second Runner-up: Lights

BEST COMICS ILLUSTRATOR

Winner: Chris Ware

First Runner-up: Bianca Xunise

Second Runner-up: Whitney Wasson

BEST COMICS WRITER

Winner: Eve Ewing

First Runner-up: Bianca Xunise

Second Runner-up: Tim Seeley

BEST DANCE PRODUCTION

Winner: The Fly Honeys at Thalia Hall

First Runner-up: Deeply Rooted Dance Theater at Logan Center for the Arts

Second Runner-up: Queer Dance Freakout at Steppenwolf

BEST DANCE STUDIO OR TRAINING PROGRAM

Winner: Trinity Academy of Irish Dance

First Runner-up: Hyde Park School of Dance

Second Runner-up: Extensions Dance Center

BEST DANCE TROUPE

Winner: Trinity Irish Dance Company

First Runner-up: Deeply Rooted Dance Theater

Second Runner-up: Movement Strengthens Balance Elite Performance Ensemble

continued from p. 51

nate across the cultural and nonprofit sector. Sheila Majumdar, a member of the Art Institute of Chicago Workers United organizing committee, and Santi Van Lysebettens, a member of the MSI Workers United organizing committee, say endemic institutional issues like low wages and “opaque decision-making” were exacerbated by the pandemic. Majumdar, who spoke at the 2022 AFSCME national convention, says, “We were already overworked and doing even more because we care about this workplace so much and management didn’t take any of it seriously.”

Lindall echoes that sentiment. “Workers are organizing because they love these institutions deeply and want to make them better,” he says, noting that AFSCME can support emergent worker organizations with everything from communications sta to attorneys to negotiators. “Each individual union belongs to those workers.”

Van Lysebettens, who was laid o by MSI in 2020 and returned in 2022, says they and their colleagues would often joke, “‘We should form a union,’ whenever something went wrong.” If you reach that point (or if you’re already there) it just might be worth starting to take those jokes seriously. afscme31.org

—JOE ENGLEMAN

BEST WAY TO PRACTICE YOUR PRECISION KICKLINE SKILLS WHILE CHANNELING YOUR INNER VINTAGE VIXEN

Chicago Chorus Girl Project

“Aone and a two and a three!”

Inside the comfortable and well-appointed Ravenswood Loft, vintage social dance expert Nicolle Wood has produced swing, Lindy Hop, Charleston, and Balboa events since the explosion of interest in the dance forms in the late 90s. As the entertainment director for the Galaxie (once housed in a 10,000-square-foot space in Avondale), Wood has directed the Chicago Chorus Girl Project since 2015, when it was a pop-up 90-person performance in conjunction with SummerDance. Wood is the choreographer of this group, which reassembles with new members and a new number every three months or so. The project, in which Wood conducts classes and rehearsals to recreate an iconic group chorus girl number from days of yore, often culminates in an (optional) public

performance with vintage-style costumes, hair, and makeup. Drawing inspiration from jazz dance, vintage films, burlesque, and other dance sources, the Chorus Girls perfect a dance in person over a ten-week rehearsal process at the Ravenswood Loft (or via Zoom). Chicago rehearsals are Monday 7–8:30 PM and Saturdays 9:30–11 AM at the Ravenswood Loft, 4437 N. Ravenswood; $140 for a ten-week session. Instagram @chicagochorusgirls —JT NEWMAN

BEST LATE-NIGHT ADULTCONTENT PUPPET SHOW

Rough House Theater Co.’s Nasty, Brutish & Short

The name of the show says all you need to know about Rough House Theater Co.’s edgy late-night puppet cabaret: Nasty, Brutish & Short. This is certainly not Sesame Street , or even The Muppet Show , though some of the puppets may remind you, in an Avenue Q-like way, of feral cousins of Kermit or Oscar the Grouch. They may not look like conventional puppets at all. They may look like animated sculptures. Or surreal animated reproductions of everyday objects. Or a wild, whirling postmodern multimedia magic lantern show, part PowerPoint presentation, part multiplayer video game, part Javanese shadow puppet play. One of the more enlightening messages of this cabaret seems to be that almost anything is puppetry in the hands of the right artist. And the beauty of Nasty, Brutish & Short is that it provides a forum for so many artists (local, regional, and international) to try out new work.

Yes, some of the material explores the dark side of an art form most often associated in the U.S. with adorable, wisecracking plush toy wannabes. But some are more playful in their subversion, evoking the spirit of the Dadaists’ Cabaret Voltaire. Still, others steal a page from live lit and autobiographical graphic novels, presenting material that is achingly personal

The Chicago Chorus Girl Project TED BERANIS

Nasty, Brutish & Short RICHARD TERMINE

THROUGH MARCH 2

BEGINS MARCH 14

BEGINS APRIL 25

(OR THE HOUSE WHAT WAS RAVINE)

WORLD PREMIERE BY MATTHEW PAUL OLMOS

DIRECTED BY LAURA ALCALÁ BAKER

“UNDENIABLY

CAPTIVATING!”

- BROADWAYWORLD

A powerful and poetic collision between youth activism and the forces of injustice

WORLD PREMIERE BY BRANDEN JACOBS-JENKINS

DIRECTED BY PHYLICIA RASHAD

Featuring ensemble members ALANA ARENAS, GLENN DAVIS and JON MICHAEL HILL with AYANNA BRIA BAKARI, HARRY LENNIX and TAMARA TUNIE

A spirited, funny and epic drama about a Chicago family who are pillars of Black American Politics

BY LARISSA FASTHORSE

DIRECTED BY JESS MCLEOD

Featuring ensemble members AUDREY FRANCIS and TIM HOPPER with PALOMA NOZICKA and NATE SANTANA

A skewering comedy about everything right, wrong and woke in America

Arts & Culture

continued from p. 52

(in a recent show, Madigan Burke presented a piece about their recent top surgery). Some of the acts are rough. Some of the pieces are half-baked. But at its best, the show is a kind of three-dimensional sketchbook in real time. The company is taking a much needed break after producing four editions of the cabaret during this past January’s Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival; the next one will be May 6 at Links Hall, 3111 N. Western, Chicago (linkshall.org). But you can find videos of past editions of Nasty, Brutish & Short on the company’s YouTube channel (youtube. com/@roughhouse1272). roughhousetheater. com —JACK

HELBIG

BEST CHICAGO ARTIST TO UNVEIL COMMISSIONS AT BALLY’S AND THE SMITHSONIAN IN 2023

Shawn Michael Warren

If you visited Bally’s temporary casino around the time of its opening in September and happened to look down the well of its atrium, you might have spotted something unexpected: Chicago artist Shawn Michael Warren, brush and paint in hand, turning the basement-level atrium wall into a mural tribute to the Medinah Temple’s colorful past. For many generations of Chicago children, this ornate venue, completed in 1912, was the home of the Shrine Circus. As Warren worked, visual touchstones to that history— from the architect’s plans to elephants and acrobats—took shape. Three months later, Warren was at the Smithsonian Institution for the unveiling of his full-length portrait of Oprah Winfrey, commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery for its own collection. Warren—who grew up in Chicago and trained here at the American Academy of Art and in Florence, Italy, where the influence of work by artists like Caravaggio and Bernini proved to be life-changing—is our own master of portraiture and visual storytelling. His superreal Oprah moves across a verdant lawn under twisting oaks, offering a knowing smile and an olive branch, resplendent in a ta eta gown of the color purple that’s a shout-out to the book by Alice Walker (Winfrey’s performance as Sofia in the 1985 film adaptation earned her an Oscar nod; she’s since produced the musical version onstage and onscreen). For

a more complete look at how Warren applies his figurative skill and classical training to Black American history, check out his website. shawnmichaelwarren.com —DEANNA ISAACS

BEST (AND LARGEST) PUBLIC ART COLLECTION THAT IS FREE AND ACCESSIBLE

Harold Washington Library

Inside the Harold Washington Library Center downtown is a diverse and surprising collection of art from names both familiar and esoteric. When entering the lobby, pick up a brochure by the main information desk and embark on a self-guided tour through all eight floors. According to the brochure, the art is culled from several public collections, including those of the library itself and the City of Chicago.

If you have time to see only one floor, visit the second. The walls there are packed with paintings by inimitable Chicago luminaries such as Christina Ramberg, Roger Brown, Ed Paschke, and Hollis Sigler. The 1974 Ramberg painting Stretch Her depicts a figure dotted with barb-like forms and defined by folds and

cinches of skin and hair. (Hopefully it will appear in Ramberg’s upcoming—and overdue— retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago, opening April 20.)

Visiting each additional floor is an art scavenger hunt, with works sometimes appearing in unexpected places. Some of my favorites include an elegant, sparse Marisol sculpture entitled Women Leaning (by the elevators on the seventh floor) and eight sculptures and wall pieces by the self-taught master William Dawson (on the east side of the fourth floor). Behind the circulation desk on the eighth floor is a 1963 painting by female pop artist Marjorie Strider. With three-dimensional decolletage springing off the canvas, it’s a vivid example of the technique that Strider dubbed a “build-out.” Elsewhere, there’s work by Lorna Simpson, Karl Wirsum, Faith Ringgold, and a diminutive, encased maquette for Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor, best known as The Bean. On the third floor is a sleek new sculpture by Theaster Gates consisting of steel, neon, and banned books, entitled Altar for the Unbanned. It’s part of CPL’s larger initiative to designate the city’s libraries as book sanctuaries, spaces “supporting the freedom to read, learn, and discover.” chipublib.org/ locations/34 —JAMES HOSKING

BEST ODE TO WICKER PARK IN THE 90S

Wellness by Nathan Hill

“You know about Wicker Park?” asks a character in Nathan Hill’s 2023 novel Wellness. “Take the Blue Line six stops and it’s a completely di erent world.”

“Di erent how?”

“Primarily, it’s real. It is a place of substance. That’s where the real art is happening. . . . And real music too.”

It hardly needs to be said that these words were spoken in the 90s. Wellness is the story of Jack and Elizabeth, who arrive in Chicago to attend SAIC and DePaul, respectively. They meet for the first time at the Empty Bottle, where Liz Phair is onstage, “not exactly singing the lyrics but also not exactly talking.” They leave the show and get black bean burgers and soy milkshakes at Earwax, and then move on to Urbus Orbis, “the one place in the neighborhood where everyone gathers nightly, the place that is now, at two o’clock in the morning, teeming with the local after-bar crowd, and the two of them manage to find a table way in the back corner and they order their dollar co ees and smoke their cigarettes.”

Oprah Winfrey portrait SHAWN MICHAEL WARREN

Women Leaning by Marisol Escobar JAMES HOSKING

Arts

BEST DANCER

Winner: Taylor Mitchell

First Runner-up: Emani Drake

Second Runner-up: Dawn Xiana Moon

BEST DRAG PERFORMER

Winner: Lucy Stoole

First Runner-up: Coco Sho-Nell

Second Runner-up: Derry Queen

BEST DRIVE-IN MOVIE PROGRAMMING

Winner: Music Box Theatre at ChiTown Movies

First Runner-up: ChiTown Movies

Second Runner-up: McHenry Outdoor Theater

BEST ESTABLISHED THEATER COMPANY

Winner (TIE): Steppenwolf Theatre Company

Winner (TIE): The Neo-Futurists

First Runner-up: Goodman Theatre

Second Runner-up: Hot Clown Company

BEST FILM FESTIVAL

Winner: Chicago International Film Festival

First Runner-up: Chicago Latino Film Festival

Second Runner-up: CHIRP Music Film Festival

BEST FILM PROGRAMMING

Winner: Music Box Theatre

First Runner-up: Gene Siskel Film Center

Second Runner-up: Alamo Dra house Cinema

BEST FILMMAKER

Winner: Kin Marie

First Runner-up (TIE): Urban Pebble Productions

First Runner-up (TIE): Henry Hanson

Second Runner-up: Ricardo Bouyett

BEST INDEPENDENT BOOK PUBLISHER

Winner: Haymarket Books

First Runner-up: Half Letter Press

Second Runner-up (TIE): Iron Circus Comics

Second Runner-up (TIE): Tortoise Books

BY MARGARET ATWOOD

DIRECTED BY SUSAN V. BOOTH

Arts & Culture

BEST LECTURE SERIES

Winner: Chicago Humanities Festival

First Runner-up: Family Action Network

Second Runner-up: Chicago Public Library’s Voices For Justice series

BEST MOVIE THEATER

Winner: Music Box Theatre

First Runner-up: The Logan Theatre

Second Runner-up: The Davis Theater

BEST MOVIE THEATER BAR

Winner: Music Box Lounge and Garden

First Runner-up: The Logan Theatre

Second Runner-up: Video Vortex at Alamo Dra house

BEST MURAL

Winner: Robin Williams

mural by Jerkface and Owen Dippie, 2051 N. Milwaukee

First Runner-up: Great Wall of Chicago by Rahmaan Statik, 87th and Vincennes

Second Runner-up: For My Neighbors, with Love by Ponnopozz, Ravenswood and Berteau

BEST MUSEUM

Winner: The Museum of Post Punk & Industrial Music

First Runner-up: The Art Institute of Chicago

Second Runner-up: National Museum of Mexican Art

BEST MUSICAL

Winner: The Who’s Tommy (Goodman Theatre)

First Runner-up (TIE): Rich People in Space: an Anti-Capitalist Musical (Bughouse Theater)

First Runner-up (TIE): American Psycho (Kokandy Productions)

Second Runner-up: Rat City: the Musical (Redline VR)

BEST NEW LOCAL OPERA PRODUCTION

Winner: The Life and Death(s) of Alan Turing (Chicago Opera Theater)

First Runner-up: The Factotum (Lyric Opera of Chicago)

Second Runner-up: Proximity (Lyric Opera of Chicago)

BEST NEW NONFICTION

BOOK BY A CHICAGOAN

Winner: A Kids Book About Pronouns by Dr. Courtney Wells and Lee Wells

First Runner-up: Country & Midwestern Chicago in the History of Country Music and the Folk Revival by Mark Guarino

Second Runner-up (TIE): Correction: Parole, Prison, and the Possibility of Change by Ben Austen

Second Runner-up (TIE): Inner Workout: Strengthening Self-Care Practices for Healing Body, Soul, and Mind by Taylor Elyse Morrison

BEST NEW NOVEL BY A CHICAGOAN

Winner: Shadow State by Frank Sennett

First Runner-up: The Heights by Ray Franze

Second Runner-up: The Robbery

Across the Hall by Emilie Barage

BEST NEW PLAY

Winner: Daryo’s All-American Diner (CIRCA Pintig)

First Runner-up: Goodnight, Gladys (Annoyance Theatre)

Second Runner-up: Spider-Ben: A SpiderMan Parody (Annoyance Theatre)

BEST NEW POETRY COLLECTION

BY A CHICAGOAN

Winner: Promises of Gold by José Olivarez

First Runner-up: We Are Reckless by Christy Prahl

Second Runner-up: The Water We Swim In by Christian Aldana

BEST NEW THEATER COMPANY

Winner: Two Chairs Theatre Co.

First Runner-up: Bramble Theatre Company

Second Runner-up: LegLand

BEST NONFICTION WRITER

Winner: Taylor Elyse Morrison

First Runner-up: Megan Stielstra

Second Runner-up: L’Oreal

Thompson Payton

BEST NOVELIST

Winner: Rebecca Makkai

First Runner-up: Erika L. Sánchez

Second Runner-up: Luis Alberto Urrea

continued from p. 54

Soon they are living together in a warehouse loft filled with artists; frequenting Czar Bar, Ragstock, Quimby’s, and Myopic; and stealing from the Gap as performance art. They see Veruca Salt at Double Door

before they’re famous. “We’re shocking the squares,” they say.

The novel follows their relationship and eventual marriage to the present day, where they still live in Wicker Park, a neighborhood that has changed around them. They too have lost their rough edges, taken respectable jobs, and started planning a move to the suburbs. Although their artsy college days are a small part of the novel’s timeline, they play an outsized role in the characters’ ideas of themselves. The dream of the 90s in Chicago never really lets them go. penguinrandomhouse.

—JANET POTTER

com

BEST EXHIBITION POP-UP IN A THRIFT STORE

Camille Casemier’s dressing room curatorial work at Mount

Sinai Resale Shop

Artist Camille Casemier has worked at Lincoln Park’s Mount Sinai Resale Shop since 2021, and in that time has helped to turn the relatively conventional thrift store into an event. Handling the store’s Instagram account, Casemier highlights donations from

COURTESY KNOPF

Hai-Wen Lin, Sunday April 2nd 5:13-7:31pm , 2023 HAI-WEN LIN

the novel and collectible variety (Oscar de la Renta cardis, hand-stitched quilts) to the bizarre or slight (Facebook-branded travel co ee mugs, grade school photographs). In the summer of 2023, as something of an extension to this Instagram activity, Casemier began curating weekly pop-up art exhibitions in the store’s fitting rooms, showing donated objects ranging in provenance esteem from Hindman Auction House to amateur paintings on Hobby Lobby canvases.

For Casemier, the pop-ups are an occasion to play with the scales and shades of art exhibition, playfully exploring the muddy interaction of value, art, and concept when removed from conventional white cube modes of production. There’s a complicated nature for an exhibition occurring in a resale shop. This was magnified when Ben, a high school sophomore and a fan of the pop-up exhibitions as they were shown through Instagram, donated his own artwork to be shown. A small painting of a flower, ceramic vase, and three hand-knit hats were installed in the fitting room and were all sold, although whether the purchaser understood they were buying a work of art from an unconventional gallery remains unknown.

Casemier’s canny use of art world logistics in a nonart space speaks to a broader and

prevailing question around how and where art incurs value in our contemporary moment. While not explicitly institutional critique, Casemier’s process of developing and producing a communal arts ethos in the confines of her retail life nonetheless brings into focus the seemingly arbitrary systems that continue to hold currency (figuratively and literally) around modes of creative activity. The popup events at Mount Sinai might suggest that the slightest shift in physical location or artist resumé is actually a seismic one in its possibilities for altering the tenets of the art world ecosystem. instagram.com/mtsinairesaleshop —CHRIS

REEVES

BEST LITERAL HIGH ART

The kite works of Hai-Wen Lin

Look to the skies for the art of Hai-Wen Lin. Using materials such as sunlight, sweat, and a shivering body alongside more conventional ones such as silk and cotton, Lin’s kite works are formally and conceptually astonishing creations. In their work, Lin crafts mobile relationscapes, not content to simply produce objects but rather assemblages of

Arts & Culture

BEST OFF-LOOP THEATER COMPANY

Winner: The Neo-Futurists

First Runner-up: Kokandy Productions

Second Runner-up: The Newport Theater

BEST OPEN MIKE

Winner: Cole’s Bar

First Runner-up: Annoyance Theatre & Bar

Second Runner-up (TIE): Open Mic

Comedy at the Logan Theatre Lounge

Second Runner-up (TIE): Respect the Mic

BEST OPERA COMPANY

Winner: Lyric Opera of Chicago

First Runner-up: Chicago Opera Theater

Second Runner-up: Third Eye Ensemble

BEST ORIGINAL DIGITAL CONTENT (DANCE)

Winner: Chicago Black

Dance Legacy Project

First Runner-up (TIE): Raks Inferno

First Runner-up (TIE): Queer

Dance Freakout

Second Runner-up: Hiplet Ballerinas

BEST ORIGINAL DIGITAL CONTENT (THEATER)

Winner: The iO Theater

First Runner-up: Teatro Vista Productions

Second Runner-up: Playground Social

BEST PERFORMING ARTS FESTIVAL

Winner: Chicago Humanities Festival

First Runner-up: Chicago International

Puppet Theater Festival

Second Runner-up: Latina Comedy Festival

BEST PHOTOGRAPHER

Winner: Steven Piper

First Runner-up: Ambercita

Second Runner-up: Sanjana Elina

BEST PLAYWRIGHT

Winner: Miranda Hunter

First Runner-up (TIE): India Nicole Burton

First Runner-up (TIE): Andrew Piechota

Second Runner-up: Andy Rowell

BEST POET

Winner: Eve L. Ewing

First Runner-up: avery r. young

Second Runner-up: Angelica Julia Davila

BEST POETRY ORGANIZATION

Winner: Young Chicago Authors

First Runner-up: Poetry Foundation

Second Runner-up (TIE): Chicago Poetry Center

Second Runner-up (TIE): Poems While You Wait

continued from p. 57

life that challenge conventional dichotomies of art and life. Lin’s Sunday, April 2nd 5:137:31pm gets its name from the four-mile walk that brought it into being. A garment made from the tracings of clouds and subsequently dyed with photosensitive chemicals, Lin wore and walked Sunday into Lake Michigan, embedding a cyanotype of movements into the garment. In a kind of post-garment chrysalis, Sunday was affixed with string and taken to the skies. While products of various processes, Lin’s work resonates with an underlining of new possibilities within that old stalwart of artistic creation, the communion between maker, material, and object. Considering Lin’s work as a means of transformation suggests that no longer does the creation of art have to remain a lone or hermetic endeavor, but one that insists on being in and bringing in the world.

Lin’s recent exhibition at Prairie, “As You Wish,” continued to mine the relationship between the grounded artist and their potential ungrounding. Focusing on biographical, cultural, and broader notions of wish making, “As You Wish” featured a number of dynamic objects, notable among them a large new kite, Cloud Collar, that seemed to be barely containable within the white cube setting of the gallery, patiently awaiting takeo . Made of dyed silk, feathers, gold beads, wood, string, hair extensions, and one wish, Cloud Collar evoked the Chinese yunjian (雲肩 ) a detachable collar with cloudlike patterns worn by Qing dynasty women. Cloud

formally evokes the visuals within a kaleidoscope, and perhaps this visual symmetry is fitting given the way Lin simultaneously captures time, space, life, and the interconnected transformative power of all of these, in their work. haiwenlin.com —CHRIS REEVES

BEST MEMORIALIZING OF A CHICAGO LEGEND

S.Y. Lim’s efforts in holding Thomas Kong’s legacy

Small businesses in Chicago come and go, particularly when it comes to convenience stores, but it is particularly heartbreaking to see Rogers Park’s Kim’s Corner Food labeled with a “permanently closed” banner on Google. Google described the store as a “simple convenience store o ering snacks and basic groceries,” but anyone who set foot in Kim’s knew it was something far from “simple” or “basic.” Kim’s was both the muse and studio for Chicago’s most prolific collagist, Thomas Kong, who passed away in May of 2023. Kong’s collages, made from product boxes and store signage, filled every inch of Kim’s, merging a functional convenience store with a public art exhibition that seemingly transformed both.

While Kong’s death meant the end of operations for Kim’s—a double loss for Chicago—his friend, and occasional collaborator, S.Y. Lim has taken on the task of sorting, exhibiting, and managing his work. In the past year, Lim has shown Kong’s work in spaces local and abroad, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, where the familiar Kim’s exterior building signage made its international debut. Perhaps most notable is Lim’s work in negotiating the acquisition of Kong’s voluminous work at Wisconsin’s Kohler Arts Center, giving his archive a stable location and the potential for new life in various future public exhibitions and archival encounters. Stewardship, particularly posthumously, is a di cult endeavor, and Lim’s commitment to honoring and maintaining the tricky legacy of Kong’s always overlapping life and work is a gift for all of us.

—CHRIS

REEVES v

Thomas Kong’s Rogers Park convenience store was the artist’s muse. KERRY CARDOZA; ROSARIO ZAVALA

DANCE

23/24 SEASON

NEW YORK CITY BALLET

Artistic Director: Jonathan Stafford

Associate Artistic Director: Wendy Whelan

AN EVENING WITH NEW YORK CITY BALLET

Peter Ilyitch Tschaikovsky / George Balanchine — Serenade

Arvo Pärt / Christopher Wheeldon — Liturgy

Caroline Shaw / Justin Peck — Partita

March 20, 2024 / 6:00 PM

MASTERS AT WORK: BALANCHINE + ROBBINS

Peter Ilyitch Tschaikovsky / George Balanchine — Serenade

Frédéric Chopin / Jerome Robbins — In the Night

Paul Hindemith / George Balanchine — The Four Temperaments

March 21, 2024 / 7:30 PM

March 23, 2024 / 2:00 PM

21 ST CENTURY CHOREOGRAPHY

Caroline Shaw / Justin Peck — Partita

Arvo Pärt / Christopher Wheeldon — Liturgy

Caroline Shaw / Pam Tanowitz — Gustave le Gray No. 1

James Blake / Kyle Abraham — Love Letter (on shuffle)

March 22, 2024 / 7:30 PM

March 23, 2024 / 7:30 PM

Photo © Erin Baiano.

LISTENBOLDLY 2023/24 SEASON

BRINGING THE WORLD’S BEST MUSIC TO CHICAGO FOR 80 REMARKABLE YEARS.

Tickets start at just $10!

chicagopresents.uchicago.edu

773.702.ARTS (2787)

@uchicagopresents

BEST READING SERIES

Winner: Read Some Shit at aliveOne

First Runner-up (TIE): Sunday Reading Series at Hungry Brain

First Runner-up (TIE): Grandma’s House Poetry Show at Guild Row

Second Runner-up: Test Literary Series at the Whistler

BEST SKETCH/IMPROV TROUPE

Winner: Whimsy Lohan

First Runner-up (TIE): Friends with Benefits

First Runner-up (TIE): Part Dog

Second Runner-up: Missed Call

BEST STAGE ACTOR

Winner: Caroline Neff

First Runner-up (TIE): Kayla Higbee

First Runner-up (TIE): Van Ferro

Second Runner-up: Kevin Rink

BEST STAGE DIRECTOR

Winner (TIE): Ron O.J. Parson

Winner (TIE): Sam Locke

First Runner-up: Dado

Second Runner-up: Mikael Burke

BEST STAND-UP COMIC

Winner: Deanna Ortiz

First Runner-up: Lucia Whalen

Second Runner-up: David Feinberg

BEST STORYTELLING SERIES

Winner: The Moth

First Runner-up: The First Time (CHIRP Radio)

Second Runner-up: You’re Being Ridiculous

BEST STREET ARTIST

Winner: JC Rivera (The Bear Champ)

First Runner-up: Sentrock (Joseph Perez)

Second Runner-up: Sick Fisher

BEST THEATER BAR OR LOBBY

Winner: Chicago Magic Lounge

First Runner-up: Steppenwolf Theatre Company

Second Runner-up: The Den Theatre

BEST THEATER DESIGNER (SETS, LIGHT, SOUND, ETC.)

Winner: Sam MacNerland

First Runner-up: Mallory Swisher

Second Runner-up: Eleanor Kahn

Second Runner-up: Danny Rockett

Arts & Culture The Sit Down

BEST THEATER PRODUCTION

Winner: Spider-Ben: A Spider-Man Parody (Annoyance Theatre)

First Runner-up: The Writer (Steep Theatre)

Second Runner-up: The Pragmatists at Trap Door Theatre

BEST THEATER TRAINING PROGRAM

Winner: DePaul Theatre School

First Runner-up: The Second City Training Center

Second Runner-up: Annoyance Theatre & Bar

BEST VENUE FOR DANCE

Winner: Harris Theater for Music and Dance

First Runner-up: Auditorium Theatre

Second Runner-up: The Newport Theater

BEST VENUE FOR IMPROV

Winner: Second City

First Runner-up: Annoyance Theatre and Bar

Second Runner-up: The iO Theater

BEST VENUE FOR STAND-UP

Winner: The Lincoln Lodge

First Runner-up: The Den Theatre

Second Runner-up: Laugh Factory

BEST VENUE FOR THEATER

Winner: Steppenwolf Theatre Company

First Runner-up: Goodman Theatre

Second Runner-up: The Den Theatre

BEST VENUE TO SEE DRAG

Winner: Berlin

First Runner-up: Roscoe’s Tavern

Second Runner-up: The Baton Show Lounge

BEST VISUAL ARTIST

Winner: Rialin José

First Runner-up: Daniel Eggert

Second Runner-up: Beatriz E. Ledesma

BEST ZINE

Winner: How to Be Sober by Sober Rabbit (Whitney Wasson)

First Runner-up: Caboose by Liz Mason

Second Runner-up (TIE):

Locals Only by Nikki

Second Runner-up (TIE): No Pants Revolution by Andrea Pearson

The latest episode can be streamed on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

BEST CLASSICALLY TRAINED CELLIST WHO’S LIKELY TO DO SOMETHING UNEXPECTED ONSTAGE

Katinka Kleijn

A

ppreciating Katinka Kleijn’s cello playing is an exercise in active listening, feeling, and imagining possibilities—in other words, an opportunity to be fully present. It is also a lesson in empathy, since her practice generously invites the audience into her world, a fantastic place of wonder and

exploration, both strange and beautiful. Listeners can almost literally put themselves in her shoes. That was the case with Synthsation, a piece she did with performance artist Rin Peisert, where Kleijn wore sky-high heels, an unyielding, skintight minidress, and fiercely long nails. Spoiler alert: Kleijn couldn’t really

play her cello under such constrictive circumstances. She then created a human cello with Peisert’s body by attaching parts of the cello to Peisert’s back and playing it/her. It is almost impossible to watch such an act and not make meaning out of it—the human body as an object, the cello as a human body, the intrinsic

Miniatures by Margie Criner and Itty Bitty Mini Mart JAMES HOSKING

Music & Nightlife

continued from p. 61

vulnerability in playing the cello as a woman, and on and on and on. Next thing you know, you’re there collaborating with her.

Dutch-born Kleijn has come up with numerous ideas to explore the instrument she has dedicated her life to. A daughter of musicians, she’s been playing the cello since she was seven years old, and she’s been a cellist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1995. In Water on the Bridge, Kleijn partnered with cellist, composer, and sound artist Lia Kohl to perform at

BEST 4 AM BAR

Winner: The Owl

First Runner-up: The Hangge-Uppe

Second Runner-up (TIE): Alice’s Lounge

Second Runner-up (TIE): The Continental

BEST BLUES BAND

Winner: Billy Branch & the Sons of Blues

First Runner-up: John Primer & the Real Deal Blues Band

Second Runner-up: Big Mike & the R&B Kings

BEST CLASSICAL ENSEMBLE

Winner: Chicago Symphony Orchestra

First Runner-up: Lakeside Pride Music Ensembles

Second Runner-up (TIE): Eighth Blackbird

Second Runner-up (TIE): Chicago Philharmonic

BEST CLASSICAL MUSIC EVENT

Winner: Ravinia Festival

First Runner-up: Grant Park Music Festival

Second Runner-up: Thirsty Ears Festival

Eckhart Park’s natatorium . . . in the water! Yes, at some point they placed the (mostly broken) cellos in the pool and created a quasi-aquatic ballet with the instruments. Kleijn has also performed with a mylar blanket around her cello, with a nine-volt circuit attached to her body to create sounds to accompany her music, and while wearing a gown featuring a long train made of trash—and that’s just scratching the surface of her accomplished career. Speaking of which, inspired by a fairly misogynistic quote by famous late conductor Sir Thomas Beecham,

BEST COUNTRY BAND

Winner: Olivia & the Lovers

First Runner-up: The Hoyle Brothers

Second Runner-up: The Lawrence Peters Outfit

BEST DANCE PARTY

Winner: Nocturna at Metro

First Runner-up (TIE): Global Currency at Sleeping Village

First Runner-up (TIE): Heart of Chicago Soul Club at Color Club

Second Runner-up: Gyrate at Bourbon on Division

BEST DIVE BAR

Winner: Simon’s Tavern

First Runner-up: Rainbo Club

Second Runner-up: Liar’s Club

BEST EMERGING BAND

Winner: Olivia & the Lovers

First Runner-up: wht.rbbt.obj

Second Runner-up: Lollygagger

BEST EMERGING LOCAL LABEL

Winner: Sooper Records

First Runner-up: Ur Mom Records

Second Runner-up: What’s for Breakfast? Records

Kleijn will soon feature a piece called Scratching at the Momentary, part of the renowned Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas. katinkakleijn.com —ISA GIALLORENZO

BEST PLACE TO BE QUEER AND COUNTRY

Wild Wednesdays and Shindig Saturdays at Charlie’s Chicago

BEST ESTABLISHED BAR

Winner: California Clipper

First Runner-up: Gman Tavern

Second Runner-up: Liar’s Club

BEST GAY BAR

Winner: Big Chicks

First Runner-up: Sidetrack

Second Runner-up: Roscoe’s Tavern

BEST GIG POSTER DESIGNER

Winner: Ryan Duggan

First Runner-up: Mikaela Jane

Second Runner-up: Screwball Press

BEST HIP-HOP DJ

Winner: DJ Ca$h Era

First Runner-up: DJ Shon Dervis

Second Runner-up: DJ Bonita Appleblunt

BEST HIP-HOP GROUP

Winner: Pivot Gang

First Runner-up: Mother Nature

Second Runner-up: The Microphone Misfitz

“S

ilence is deadlllly!” chided a man in cowboy boots and leather harness as he tossed a pointed look at the DJ. The DJ, good-natured, shouted something back. Even with a lull in the music, it was still raucous inside Charlie’s bar. Outside, it was 14 degrees, but inside, paper fans beat the air, and condensation from our warm bodies clouded the bar’s glass door. We were here for Shindig Saturday, one of two free, weekly country dance nights (the other being Wild Wednesday) hosted by the Second City Country Dance Association.

Above us, a silver disco ball turned next to a silver disco cowboy boot, throwing tiny droplets of light onto the dancers spinning to a cover of “Hit ’Em Up Style” by the Carolina Chocolate Drops. A white woman with a gorgeous “beehive mullet” (reminiscent of Loretta Lynn) heel, toe, do-si-doed with a flourish. A Black woman line dancing in overalls dropped into the splits to whoops and yee-haws.

Growing up in a small town in the early 90s, I learned how to square dance in gym class, but I didn’t know any out queer adults. One reason I go to Charlie’s is because it’s nice to be around other people who also know all the words to “Neon Moon.” Another is because it means something to me to see elders who are both gay and country. This night, like every night I’ve been to so far, ended with a two-step. The majority of those who took to the floor had gray hair: men who were alive when Uptown was called Hillbilly Heaven, men who survived the 1980s. The last song, a medley of “I Will Always Love You” and “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” began. Here they are now, in pressed Wranglers and pearl-button shirts. There they go, coupled o and waltzing. instagram.com/ charlies_chicagobar —KATIE PROUT

Le : Katinka Kleijn ALIYA ULTAN Right: Line-dance lessons on a Wild Wednesday at Charlie’s Chicago COURTESY SECOND CITY COUNTRY DANCE ASSOCIATION

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UPCOMING SHOWS

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FEB 26 porno for pyros

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WITH TIGERCUB

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FEB 23 COLD WAR KIDS

WITH JOE P

FEB 24 INZO

WITH EAZYBAKED, CHMURA X DAGGZ, BLOOKAH AND LHASA PETIK

FEB 25 NECK DEEP

WITH DRAIN, BEARINGS AND HIGHER POWER

FEB 29 JASON ISBELL AND THE 400 UNIT

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–MAR 1 WITH PALEHOUND

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ON SALE NOW

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Music & Nightlife

BEST INTERPRETATION OF MIDWESTERN EMO BY ARTISTS OUTSIDE THE SCENE

Jamila Woods and Gia Margaret’s

“I Miss All My Exes”

Emo has always been a slippery category, not least because the small D.C. punk community that birthed the style wanted nothing to do with the term. I could write a book unpacking emo’s lineage from Rites of Spring to Machine Gun Kelly. I love all the variety inside the idea, right up to the thriving URL-centered underground of today that’s stretched fifth-wave emo to accommodate bedroom-skramz auteur Your Arms Are My Cocoon, folk-punk idealists Home Is Where, and quasi-symphonic experimentalists Glass Beach. I also like hearing musicians who have little or nothing to do with emo make great art that directly references or samples it. Ohio outre-pop artist Brakence, for example, adorns the melancholy “5g” with lonesome, looping guitars straight out of the midwestern emo playbook; London rapper-singer Jim Legxacy uses the same kind of guitars even more nakedly on “Old Place” and “DJ,” goosing them with vocal samples and heart-pumping percussion.

Chicago singer, songwriter, and poet Jamila Woods isn’t emo, of course—she’s never been any one genre. “Betty (for Boogie),” one of my favorite songs on her 2019 album, Legacy! Legacy!, combines the relentlessness of house

music with the sumptuousness of R&B. On “I Miss All My Exes,” from last year’s Water Made Us, Woods tenderly recites a poem over a placid instrumental by Chicago singer, songwriter, and ambient artist Gia Margaret. When her svelte guitars surface in the middle of the song, I hear the same arresting, bittersweet resonance I look for in midwestern emo. I know I’m doing emo a favor by considering “I Miss All My Exes” part of its broader context— any genre would be lucky to be held in conversation with the two artists who made this song. But after everything emo has given to me, it’s the least I can do. jamilawoodsmusic. bandcamp.com —LEOR GALIL

BEST EXPERIMENTAL NETLABEL THAT GREW OUT OF A BIZARRO CASSETTE LABEL

Blorpus Editions

In October, the University of North Carolina Press published Marc Masters’s history of the cassette, High Bias , which singles out experimental Chicago tape label Hausu Mountain for praise. Doug Kaplan (who records as MrDougDoug) and Max Allison (aka Mukqs) founded the label in 2012, when they both played in a drone trio called Good Willsmith (alongside Natalie Chami, aka TALsounds). From day one Hausu Mountain has maintained a dependably unpredictable eclectic

streak, working with avant-pop act Eartheater, outre dance project Potions, unrelentingly intense juxtaproducer Angel Marcloid (best known from her project Fire-Toolz), and many more. As Masters writes, Hausu Mountain’s catalog—nearing 150 releases— has “put them somewhere near the center of the international cassette underground.” It’s also one of the best labels in town. But even HausMo’s impressive output isn’t enough to contain the entirety of either founder’s creative interests.

In July 2022, Allison launched the netlabel Blorpus Editions with First Thought, a glitchy live Mukqs EP. By December of that year, he’d issued the 15th Blorpus release, M. Geddes Gengras’s Twister (2) , a 73-minute edit of a two-hour ambient composition intended as an alternate score to the 1996 blockbuster Twister . Many of Blorpus’s o erings feel stranger than HausMo’s, though it’s often the same kind of strangeness—if you stop trying to quantify the degree of weird, the two labels’ Venn diagram is practically a circle. Two of the most recent Blorpus projects are from HausMo veterans: Marcloid (recording as Angelwings Marmalade for Kill Me in My Man Cave) and Mike Meegan (aka RXM Reality, whose frenetic Here is credited to When 2). HausMo’s Doug Kaplan has contributed to Blorpus Editions, predictably, and to my ears his entry is the oddest. MrDougDoug’s I Am Sitting in a Cloud reimagines Alvin Lucier’s famous 1969 soundart piece, “I Am Sitting in a Room.” First

Kaplan re-creates the spoken-word portion of Lucier’s work as a babbling collage of pop-song samples; then, instead of degrading the words by repeatedly playing them into a physical space and rerecording them as Lucier did, he achieves a parallel e ect by uploading, downloading, and reuploading them to low-quality audio platforms thousands of times. If that sounds enticing, then I’ve got dozens more releases to sell you! blorpuseditions.bandcamp. com

—LEOR GALIL

BEST SECRET VENUE TO SEE NOISECORE OR HYPERPOP

Bookclub

Between venue closings, tour cancellations, and an increasingly unclear virological situation, it’s been a depressing year to look for a new, comfortable live-music experience. Mostly I’ve been relying on the hallowed and impressive venues I already know, which on the whole are a bit more commercial than I’d like. In one case, though, I’ve actually caught up to the proverbial carrot: Bookclub is an underground DIY venue on the north side, and for most of the pandemic it’s been presenting music and sometimes comedy in a wholesome space run by a closeknit group of folks who are enmeshed in and accountable to the subcultures they serve.

Bookclub is carved out of a second-floor apartment, and on my most recent visit, as is custom, I was instructed to close the door behind me—ensuring that neither the cold winter air nor untrustworthy eyes could find the sanctuary within. It’s a pocket of punk culture in its purest form: a makeshift and secret space to crank an amp, jump in rhythm with a bass, and scream at the top of your lungs. The music may be tinnitus inducing (the venue often offers earplugs), but it comes with a feeling of comfort. Bookclub is an intimate place—queer friendly, antiracist, and COVID safe—and it makes this clear with flags that dress the walls and with proclamations on makeshift signs (mostly paper plates). The things that separate it from a typical venue are the things that make it appealing.

Recently, I’ve been wondering who owns certain venues and whether I should support them. Because Bookclub is so sensitive to its community, though, I don’t have to ask the same question there. In all the ways that matter, it belongs to us. instagram.com/ bookclubchi —CHARLIE

DYKSTAL

Jamila Woods (top) and Gia Margaret JAMILA WOODS BY ELIZABETH DE LA PIEDRA; GIA MARGARET BY ASH DYE

The Bookclub crowd for a Halloween-themed show in October 2023 KARLA PONCE

Music & Nightlife

BEST HIP-HOP PARTY

Winner: 606 Open Mic at Subterranean

First Runner-up: Open Beats at Dorian’s

Second Runner-up: Breaking Bread

BEST HIP-HOP PRODUCER

Winner: Peter CottonTale

First Runner-up: Renzell.Wav (L Boogie)

Second Runner-up: BoatHouse

BEST HOTEL BAR

Winner: Coq d’Or (Drake Hotel)

First Runner-up: Z Bar (The Peninsula Chicago)

Second Runner-up: Alma (Hotel Zachary)

BEST HOUSE MUSIC DJ

Winner: DJ Lady D

First Runner-up: DJ Bonita Appleblunt

Second Runner-up: DJ Patricia of Chicago

BEST INDIVIDUAL BLUES MUSICIAN

Winner: Buddy Guy

First Runner-up: Joanna Connor

Second Runner-up: Toronzo Cannon

BEST INDIVIDUAL HIP-HOP ARTIST

Winner: Rich Robbins

First Runner-up (TIE): Rizzi Konway

First Runner-up (TIE): Super King Reza

Second Runner-up: Yung Odio

BEST INDIVIDUAL JAZZ MUSICIAN

Winner: Isaiah Collier

First Runner-up: Shawn Maxwell

Second Runner-up: Ben LaMar Gay

BEST INTERNATIONAL OR WORLD MUSIC ACT

Winner: Funkadesi

First Runner-up: SamaSama Project

Second Runner-up: Dos Santos

BEST JAZZ ENSEMBLE

Winner: Chicago Cellar Boys

First Runner-up: Isaiah Collier & the Chosen Few

Second Runner-up (TIE): Bonzo Squad

Second Runner-up (TIE): Chicago Jazz Philharmonic

Music & Nightlife

BEST MODULAR SYNTH NIGHT AT A BREWERY IN NORWOOD PARK

Day Glow Modular’s Night Beams at Illuminated Brew Works

I’ve been a fan of abstract electronic music for decades, but I generally associate the genre with late-night radio, art spaces, or o nights at music clubs. In early November, a close friend, dub techno producer OVC, encouraged me to drive out to Norwood Park for the eighth installment of Day Glow Modular’s series Night Beams—it runs every two months at Illuminated Brew Works, and he’d performed as part of the September installment. I discovered a fun new musical community in a relaxed, welcoming space.

The brewery and taproom, also known as IBW Lodge #1, feels like a 1990s throwback. Decorations inspired by secret societies, occultism, and horror movies abound yearround, B movies play on a screen in the corner (I remember seeing bits of the 1989 Patrick Swayze classic Road House ), and smokers drift out to the back patio.

Under the Night Beams name, the Day Glow Modular organizers present free showcases of local artists jamming on cable- sprouting modular synthesizers, button-studded samplers, and hybrid laptop setups. They perform in front of open shelves of brewery supplies, but the sound is loud and reasonably clear, thanks to a pair of stovepipe-shaped PA speakers. The artists come from a wide range of backgrounds, but the music is generally approachable, including techno and synthwave with vocals.

On the Saturday night I visited, Caro Arroba, Margaret’s Apartment, the duo DBL, and TRQPiTECA cofounder La Spacer all performed live. VideoWaste lit up the room with colorful animations, both projected and fed through stacks of CRT monitors. An emcee ra ed o a Modbap synth module in support of a charity providing housing opportunities for women, and film director Michael Gabriele wandered in to show bar regulars the Midwest Emmy he’d just won for the audioengineering-themed slasher short Room Tone. Where else can you sip a beer, listen to loud, trippy music, and geek out about expensive Eurorack modules with a bunch of gearheads? As long as the series continues, I’ll gladly go back for more. dayglowmodular. com —JACOB ARNOLD

BEST NEW DEEP-LISTENING SERIES WHERE AGING MUSIC NERDS CAN ARRIVE EARLY, NOT TALK TO ANYONE, AND THEN GHOST

Both Sides Now: A CHIRP Vinyl Listening Bar

Last fall I heard from CHIRP DJ Alli Klein about a new monthly DJ night that the station had launched in the upstairs lounge at Schubas. Both Sides Now: A CHIRP Vinyl Listening Bar is modeled after the “listening bars” that arose in postwar Japan, and each month DJs pick three or four albums to showcase—at least one of them local—for an audience that’s there specifically to soak up the music. Klein curated the December 2023 session, whose theme was “What a Trip! A Psychedelic Experience,” and I was surprised to learn that her local pick was Thunderbolt of Flaming Wisdom —a 2017 platter by my own space-rockin’ trio Plastic Crimewave Syndicate.

“Both Sides Now is your sanctuary,” says CHIRP’s promo copy, “an introvert’s dream where the focus is on the music, not loud conversations or bustling dance floors.” I wasn’t quite clear what sort of experience this promised, or even if I wanted to hear my own album at all (I rarely do). But I went anyway, and I was pleasantly surprised. Everyone in attendance was silent, heads down, and peo-

ple who wanted to communicate with fellow attendees about the music were instructed to use WhatsApp—thankfully, I’d installed it on my phone in advance of my recent overseas travels. When loud talkers unclear on the concept came into the room, they were handed cards that politely explained the situation. The setup really worked to promote deep listening, and the booming sound system was excellent. I enjoyed immersing myself in and messaging about the United States of America’s groundbreaking self-titled psychedelicelectronic LP from 1968, the 13th Floor Elevators’ acid-rock godhead Easter Everywhere from 1967, and even my own band’s album. In

the chat, I answered a few questions about our recording and the guests we’d used on that LP (and I was reminded of a few musical decisions I’d probably make differently today). Other themes for Both Sides Now have included “Oops All Davids!” (Bowie, Byrne, Gilmour, and David Cohn, aka Chicago rapper Serengeti), “New Year, New View: Modern Masters Pushing the Limits of Genre” (the Cinematic Orchestra, Jamila Woods, and Recoil), and this February’s “The Breakup Album,” just in time for Valentine’s Day (Fleetwood Mac, Fiona Apple, and American Football).

You don’t have to be going gray to treasure the chance to appreciate music in a like-minded group without enduring jostling crowds or chattering fans who nearly drown out the tunes. But to this aging head, that arrangement is sounding more and more seductive. chirpradio.org/events

—STEVE KRAKOW

BEST RAPPER WHO ALSO COLLECTS LUCHADOR MASKS

Chébaka

Chébaka has created his impressive repertoire of multifaceted hip-hop by experimenting with field recordings, samples, and creatively recorded vocals and raps. He tops off his aesthetic onstage by performing in whimsical outfits that incorporate an element of his cultural heritage—he invokes the sport and spectacle of Mexican wrestling, aka lucha libre, by obscuring his face with any one of a number of colorful

Caro Arroba performs at Night Beams in November 2023. JACOB ARNOLD

Both Sides Now in December 2023, when DJ Alli Klein played psychedelic records JENNA CHAPMAN

luchador masks.

He began wearing the masks in 2016, and as his collection has grown—he owns 42 and counting—they’ve also become more meaningful to him. He has even been inspired to design his own.

“The reason I wear a mask now di ers from when I first put one on. Then, I thought it looked cool. I still do, but now I’ve grown with it, and my idea and purpose grew with it,” he explains. “It’s performance art, and the simple answer is it makes me feel pretty. When I wear a mask now, I am presenting a strong Mexican. The people who wear these masks make me feel strong. I see luchadores as these big warriors who go into battle wearing really beautiful masks.”

When Chébaka wears a lucha libre mask outside the ring, it’s an artistic statement about the lucha (struggle) of life as a Mexican American. He refers to the often-quoted lines that Abraham Quintanilla Jr. delivers to his children in the biopic Selena: “Being Mexican American is tough. . . . We’ve gotta be twice as perfect as anybody else. . . . We gotta be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more Amer-

“DENNIS

ican than the Americans, both at the same time! It’s exhausting!”

Chébaka feels that everyday life is challenging, and wearing these masks makes him feel powerful. “When I wear a mask, I like to show the strength of just being,” he says. “This is my way of painting my people in the most beautiful light I know.” chebaka.bandcamp.com

—SANDRA TREVIÑO

BEST AMAPIANO PARTY Pushin Piano

Only real music lovers come to the amapiano party Pushin Piano. That’s partly because the more-or-less monthly event charges a cover—and also because the DJs who run the show don’t just

play open-format sets. Bonita Appleblunt, DJ Mochi, and Ko Kasi go all in, spinning amapiano deep cuts as well as remixes and flips that run the gamut of rap, R&B, pop, soul, Afrobeats, and Bollywood. This sonic mélange, all of it underpinned by amapiano’s distinctive melodic bass lines, reliably transfixes the crowd.

Amapiano is a South African dance genre foundationally characterized by those bass lines, often built from synthetic log-drum tones, plus syncopated rhythms, shaker loops, piano runs, synth chords, and rolling cymbals. Tracks generally stick to relaxed tempos, between 112 and 115 BPM (though they mostly sit at 113). Amapiano may be getting special love in Chicago due to its ties to house music: the sound is rooted in kwaito, which also emerged in South Africa and blends house beats and hip-hop.

Chébaka with his lucha libre masks JOSÉ CALVO

Music & Nightlife

continued from p. 67

The bass has to knock, and that’s what draws people in, especially at Pushin Piano. The four hosts—Ko Kasi is actually two DJs, the duo of Kimanisho and Modise—go back-to-back at this traveling soiree. The party has taken place at several spots, including the Point, Podlasie Club, Subterranean, the Giant Penny Whistle, and the Virgin Hotel. But so far, Pushin Piano has been at its best at the Listening Room, a small, dimly lit basement venue that’s part of River North restaurant the Exchange.

At December’s installment of Pushin Piano, all four founders were in their respective bags, and Kimanisho and Modise kicked it up a notch in matching Men in Black –esque suits. DJ Cut-Cuz made a cameo in the booth, blowing a whistle at key moments while flips of Jorja Smith, Michael Jackson, and Lumidee peppered the crowd’s ears. In that sticky basement, Chicago’s musical breadth expanded in real time—and the DJs made every effort to craft an authentic experience. The enveloping bass made it feel almost like you were inside the sound, as though the speakers were stacked four high, a la Kool Herc. You could imagine yourself transported to South Africa, or at least outside Chicago. The bodies swaying to the slowed-down house beats, dancing without pretense, created a sense of freedom that can’t be bound to a single place.

—TARA C. MAHADEVAN

BEST PRO-LIBERATION DJ COLLECTIVE AND DANCE PARTY

Go Baba! Worldwide

The dynamic DJ duo of Nanoos and QuJo created the roving party series Go Baba! Worldwide to fill a void in Chicago nightlife. They aim to provide a welcoming space for people in the African, Arab, and Caribbean diasporas and harness the liberatory power of music for Black and Brown people, enabling freedom of self-expression and resistance to mainstream culture. Since debuting their dance party in July 2023, the Go Baba! crew have quickly built a dedicated following and become the city’s hottest new monthly. When they teamed up last year after meeting through a mutual friend, Nanoos hadn’t even started DJing publicly yet—she was interested in learning, though, and she easily picked up skills from QuJo, who’s also her manager. Two months ago she went viral on TikTok with a

clip where she blends footwork with merengue, and she’s a star in the making in the real world too.

Because Go Baba! was born from a place of resistance, QuJo and Nanoos naturally agitate against all forms of imperialism anywhere in the world. Nanoos herself (real name Nancy Bartekian) is Palestinian and Armenian, and her sets have become a refuge for local activists who want to bathe in the healing sounds of their homelands after days spent protesting against the genocide in Gaza. QuJo and Nanoos also collaborate with fellow DJs in the African, Arab, and Caribbean communities, giving them an avenue to share their personal styles and expertise in the art of mixing.

Resistance against Western imperialism can be spiritually draining, but Go Baba! Worldwide provides a space for catharsis to anyone fighting the good fight. In 2024 the organizers plan to expand their reach from

Chicago all the way to both coasts, hosting events in cities such as Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, and Miami. instagram.com/ gobabaworldwide —ALEJANDRO HERNANDEZ

BEST WEEKDAY SHOW SERIES FOR ARTISTS AND PATRONS ALIKE

Dollar Beer Night at Sleeping Village

Whether you’re a performer or a patron, if you’re headed to the famous Tuesday Dollar Beer Night at Sleeping Village, chances are you’ve been looking forward to it—no matter who’s on the lineup. When I go, I often don’t even check fi rst to see who’s playing. The formula for a perfect weeknight show is simple. Admission is always $5, not the more typical Sleeping

Village price of $15 to $20. PBRs are a dollar apiece for the duration, and there’s no catch.

You might be in the mood for metal, indie rock, R&B, or shoegaze, but regardless, there’s a Dollar Beer Night lineup for you—each show caters to a new audience or a different part of your musical palate, with no single genre reigning supreme. It’s just a bonus that Dollar Beer Night reliably falls on a Tuesday, so that it’s easy to plan around. As an artist, if you’re booked to play DBN, you can safely expect a good turnout, because you’ll be drawing your fans plus fans of the series who don’t even know you’ll be there—everybody loves a cheap show, and Sleeping Village can easily hold 300 people. You’re guaranteed a decent payout from the venue, and you’re likely to leave with dozens of new converts. Plus if you need a break from the music, you can leave the performance space to hang out in Sleeping Village’s alluring main bar, where it’s easier

Boom!

Top le : Pushin Piano cofounders Modise and Kimanisho of the duo Ko Kasi, with guest DJ Cut-Cuz at right LAYO ADELAKUN

Bottom le : QuJo and Nanoos DJ a Go Baba! Worldwide party at the Point in January 2024. ERIC ORTIZ Right: Sleeping Village VICTORIA SANDERS

Holidays a cappella

Music & Nightlife

BEST LESBIAN BAR

Winner: Nobody’s Darling

First Runner-up: Dorothy

Second Runner-up: Whiskey Girl Tavern

BEST LGBTQ+ PARTY

Winner: Queen!

First Runner-up: Slo ’Mo

Second Runner-up: Strapped

BEST LOCAL ALBUM OF THE YEAR

Winner: Be Gay Have

Fun by Pinksqueeze

First Runner-up: Essential by the Bollweevils

Second Runner-up: Vs. the Worm by Ovef Ow

BEST LOCAL LABEL

Winner: Pravda Records

First Runner-up: Delmark Records

Second Runner-up: Sooper Records

BEST NON-ORCHESTRA CLASSICAL ENSEMBLE

Winner: Lakeside Pride Music Ensembles

First Runner-up: Third Coast Percussion

Second Runner-up: Windy City Performing Arts

BEST POP ARTIST

Winner: Kelsey Montanez

First Runner-up: Sacha Mullin

Second Runner-up: Rhea the Second

BEST PUNK BAND

Winner: The Bollweevils

First Runner-up: Sweetie

Second Runner-up: Lollygagger

Cambridge Concert

BEST MUSIC FESTIVAL

Winner: Riot Fest

First Runner-up: FitzGerald’s American Music Festival

Second Runner-up: Pitchfork Music Festival

BEST R&B ARTIST

Winner: Jamila Woods

First Runner-up: Ifeanyi Elswith

Second Runner-up: Liv Warfield

BEST RECORDING STUDIO

Cambridge Concert

BEST MUSIC PODCAST

Winner: Car con Carne

First Runner-up: CHIRP Radio

Second Runner-up: Sound Opinions

BEST MUSIC TEACHER

Winner: Harlan Lee Terson (Old Town School of Folk Music)

First Runner-up: Tiffany Leard (Music House)

Second Runner-up: Sacha Mullin (The Ultimate School of Guitar)

BEST MUSIC VENUE

Winner: Salt Shed

First Runner-up: Metro

Second Runner-up: Thalia Hall

BEST MUSIC VENUE BARTENDER

Winner: Gary Kessler (Liar’s Club)

First Runner-up: Lawrence Peters (Hideout)

Second Runner-up: Kelly Wey (Metro)

BEST NEIGHBORHOOD BAR

Winner: The Gman Tavern

First Runner-up: Queen Mary

Second Runner-up (TIE): Cody’s Public House

Second Runner-up (TIE): Cary’s Lounge

BEST NEW BAR

Winner: Whiskey Girl Tavern

First Runner-up (TIE): Consignment Lounge

First Runner-up (TIE): Central Park Bar

Second Runner-up: The Meadowlark

Winner: Electrical Audio

First Runner-up (TIE): Classick Studios

First Runner-up (TIE): Rax Trax Recording

Second Runner-up: Friends of Friends Recording

BEST ROCK BAND

Winner: Local H

First Runner-up: Impulsive Hearts

Second Runner-up: OK Cool

BEST SINGER-SONGWRITER

Winner: Kelsey Montanez

First Runner-up: Sacha Mullin

Second Runner-up: Dawn Xiana Moon

BEST STREAMING CONCERT SERIES

Winner: Audiotree

First Runner-up: Lollapalooza

Second Runner-up: The Hideout

BEST SUBURBAN MUSIC VENUE

Winner: FitzGerald’s

First Runner-up: SPACE

Second Runner-up: Ravinia Festival

BEST VENUE FOR BLUES MUSIC

Winner: FitzGerald’s

First Runner-up: Kingston Mines

Second Runner-up: Rosa’s Lounge

BEST VENUE FOR CLASSICAL MUSIC

Winner: Chicago Symphony Orchestra

First Runner-up: Ravinia Festival

Second Runner-up: Lyric Opera of Chicago

History OF Harmony

BEST VENUE FOR DANCE MUSIC

Winner: Smart Bar

First Runner-up: Beauty Bar Chicago

Second Runner-up: Podlasie Club

BEST VENUE FOR HIP-HOP

Winner: The Promontory

First Runner-up: The Salt Shed

Second Runner-up: Metro

BEST VENUE FOR JAZZ

Winner: Green Mill

First Runner-up (TIE): Dorian’s

First Runner-up (TIE): Constellation

Second Runner-up: Jazz Showcase

BEST VENUE FOR MAGIC SHOWS

Winner: Chicago Magic Lounge

First Runner-up: Sideshow Gelato

Second Runner-up: Liar’s Club

BEST VENUE FOR ROCK MUSIC

Winner: The Empty Bottle

First Runner-up: Metro

Second Runner-up: Thalia Hall

Music & Nightlife

to have a private conversation, or its outdoor patio, where it’s easier to bum a cigarette. Cheers to Dollar Beer Night. sleeping-village. com —DMB (DEBBIE-MARIE BROWN)

BEST BIT BY A HIP-HOP OUTLET TAKEN TO ITS MOST JOYFUL CONCLUSION

Real Ones interviewer and Zack Fox lookalike Tyrel Tchinchinian interviewing Zack Fox at Metro

Posting and resharing any work you care about on social media is a recipe for despair—how do you hang onto hope that you can build an audience in the hyperfi ckle attention economy when you’re competing with millions if not billions of other accounts on the same platform? Thankfully Real Ones seems to have found its footing. What began in 2020 as a podcast focused on Chicago’s grassroots hip-hop and R&B scenes has since expanded into event production and concert

promotion while maintaining a foothold in music journalism with a video-interview series run by a handful of local young heads.

The loose Real Ones collective even includes a current Reader contributor, Alejandro Hernandez.

What stands out about Real Ones is the crew’s energy, earnestness, and optimism.

Peep their Instagram reels to get a sample of the artists they’ve talked to, including Chicago greats (Mick Jenkins, Sen Morimoto) and national stars (Maxo Kream, JPEGmafia). My favorite recent Real Ones interview is with rapper and comedian Zack Fox, whose nonchalant charisma and quick wit have helped make his recurring role on Abbott Elementary a highlight of the show. When Fox performed at Metro in November, he sat down backstage with Real Ones interviewer Tyrel Tchinchinian. Fox can give a charming, funny interview under any circumstances, but this one had an extra punch line: Tchinchinian looks a little like Fox, and not only had the Real Ones team played up that bit before their meeting, but Tchinchinian made sure to dress as much like Fox as he could on camera. Fox even opens the clip by rolling with the

shtick and introducing himself as Tchinchinian. “I think it’s cool,” Fox says about the swap. I’m inclined to agree: it makes for a fun and memorable interview, and Real Ones had no trouble finding people to watch it. hoo.be/ realones —LEOR GALIL

BEST NEW METAL ALBUM TO PAIR WITH STARING INTO YOUR CHEAP WHISKEY WHILE YOUR EX MOVES OUT OF YOUR CONDO

The Glass Garden by Flesh of the Stars

OK, so maybe I didn’t experience this exact scenario when my ex and I parted ways last year, but it was close— and on their fifth and latest album, 2023’s The Glass Garden, Chicago progressive doom band Flesh of the Stars capture the tense restraint of such a departure. Though the record opens with one of the most explosive moments I’ve heard to date from the five-piece, it’s defined by the duality of determined blastbeats and the subdued singing of vocalist and guitarist Matt Ciani. Even at their most energetic, Flesh of the Stars remain somber and downcast in the face of brutal adversity.

Ciani considers The Glass Garden “arduous” compared to Flesh of the Stars’ previous releases. “I feel like [it’s] less nostalgic. It’s heavier and less saccharine than our other albums,” he says. The band have tamped down their more atmospheric and progressive impulses, leaving only the stark essentials, and rather than romanticize heartbreak and despair, The Glass Garden feels soul-crushingly real. It’s purged entirely of rose-hued reminiscence, and it is bleak. Few experiences are more gut-wrenching than being consumed by intense negative emotions as they arise, and Flesh of the Stars tackle that sensation head-on.

When I listened to The Glass Garden in the aftermath of my breakup, it brought on a catharsis. My partner of seven years was gone, and everything was totally di erent. Though it had been months since I’d first played the record, I was immediately transported back to those final moments before my world changed forever. Maybe I’m hardwired to attack my emotions with music—I did stare a bit that night as The Glass Garden exorcised a large portion of my life on repeat—but the best music does that, right? By the time this is published, I also will have moved out of that condo; sometimes closure comes a little later than expected. fleshofthestars.bandcamp. com

—JON ROSENTHAL v

Tyrel Tchinchinian of Real Ones and Zack Fox backstage at Metro in November 2023

ELIZABETH ROSALES

Flesh of the Stars SARAH HINES

continued from p. 68

THEATER

Dancing a picture

Joffrey’s Studies in Blue colors in moods from ominous to lighthearted.

By JT NEWMAN

Visual art and dance have a long history of coexisting in the same spaces. Consider the famed Robert Rauschenberg collaborations with Trisha Brown; the modern and spare sets designed by the “dream team” of Martha Graham and Isamu Noguchi; Salvador Dalí’s sets for the Ballets Russes; Comme de Garçons designer Rei Kawakubo’s creations for Merce Cunningham; and, more recently and locally, the influence of Marc Chagall’s America Windows on One Thousand Pieces by choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. Visual art and dance have inspired and intertwined throughout the decades.

Jo rey Ballet joins this rich tradition with Studies in Blue. Moments suggest echoes of painting: the color fields of Mark Rothko, the abstract meditative grids of Agnes Martin, and even some draped figures from paintings of the Romantic era. Wildly di erent subject matter hangs together as a cohesive whole through repetition, color, shade, and hue. The e ect is not just visual, though there are certainly nods to paintings with various blues and grays in set, lighting, and costuming.

Unlike others in the spectrum, the color blue can have a range of meanings and feelings. From the conveyance of “truth, mercy, and love” to “sadness” to “peacefulness and tranquility,” and even “formality and conservatism,” blue can run the gamut from being innately calming to expressing deep mournfulness. Jo rey’s Studies in Blue explodes the multiplicity and chameleonlike nature of the color blue onstage in a sometimes contemplative, sometimes ominous, occasionally lighthearted evening of contemporary ballet.

The evening begins with Andrew McNicol’s piece Yonder Blue (2019). With music by Peter Gregson (live scores performed admirably all evening by the Lyric Opera Orchestra, conducted by Scott Speck), the looping composition is reflected in music and movement onstage. Set on an abstract stage boxed in by three walls, the backdrop varies by section as a scrim is raised and lowered. Lights (in pink, golden peach, stark white, and pale gray-blue) and atmospheric fog (and possible cloudlike

video projections) by Jack Mehler are used to demarcate the sections of the dance. Gorgeous extensions, lyrical partner work, and sensual and abstract melancholy characterize the piece—quick angular movements and a luscious looping contrast these.

Yonder Blue also has a disconcerting section that contrasts with the rest. A mechanical noise in the score (faint at first and growing louder) becomes an overwhelmingly eerie hum in this middle portion. This section feels vaguely futuristic or medical (at that moment, the blue in the costumes transformed into hospital scrubs for me). Because it was created in 2019, one can assume this section didn’t reference the recent pandemic. Still, it took me to the feeling of pandemic and post-pandemic as dancers performed in exact and geometric unison patterns, as one dancer stood in stillness. This section includes some lovely partner work and balances and counterweight work, as one dancer dips the other nearly to the floor in an extended arabesque penchée and then holds her calves in an extended cambré derrière as he sits on the floor.

BLUE

Dancers Anais Bueno and Hyuma Kiyosawa beautifully portray the e ects of addiction on a couple set against the ensemble background dancers, who serve as an inchoate world of ups and downs behind and in front of raised and lowered gauzy scrims. These background dancers abstract the way opioids can create highs and lows, with group lifts depicting Bueno climbing with her legs in the air and then being dropped back down. The group also typifies the effects of opioids with rhythmic rocking, blank expressions, and a trancelike unison that draws Bueno’s character in and out of its gravitational pull.

Light, shadow, and facial expressions are used to significant effect here, as are sound and Jeremy Birchall’s score. A repeated sound

of visual interest.

In particular, the set for this piece is a showstopper. Scenic design by John MacFarlane stands out with a sizable rolled-up backdrop and a sloped Marley floor. The backdrop—white with gestural black strokes cascading down from the flies (think: giant, thick, pencil-drawn, or ink-splattered Franz Kline)—bloused out at the bottom. This scrim, which appears to roll up and down (and, in moments, actually breathe), conceals and reveals dancers entering and exiting the stage, dancing up- and downhill on a sloped floor toward the back. The costumes, also designed by MacFarlane, underscore the approachability and delight in this work. Dancers in pintucked, short-sleeved midi dresses and button shorts and pants float by in various shades of pale blue, blue-gray, and lightest gray (almost white) as they magically lift, curl, and twist toward, away from, and around each other.

In one visually stunning moment, the choreography gesturally drapes six ballerinas across the top of the backdrop, as a pair dances a duet on the flat foreground. This moment, and many others throughout the evening, suggest—even openly connect and shorten—the distance between dance and visual art. It is lovely when an audience can feel the dancers’ love for the movement in a piece. It makes the heart full to watch them perform with authentic smiles; this piece is filled with that energy.

While McNicol’s piece takes the audience on a journey from light to dark and back again, Hungry Ghosts , choreographed by Stina Quagebeur, is clouded in a somber atmosphere. This piece, dealing directly with the subject matter of the opioid crisis, shows the real e ects of addiction as characterized by a relationship between a person with addiction, the person who loves them, and the shadowy world of narcotic use. In Buddhism, a hungry ghost or preta is a being whose hunger is a tormented desire that can never be sated.

like a sharp match being lit, the use of a black background, and dancers in shadow (creating a uniform look and making indistinguishable the features of individual dancers) nod to the way that drug dependence can render people incapable of anything but servitude to themselves and their addiction. In particular, how the couple’s dances progress (from active, flirtatious, and engaged to desperate, grasping, and numb) reflects what this phenomenon does to connections between human beings and their loved ones. The piece feels gutting and avoids the cliches of redemption and the “happy ending” an audience would like to experience in narratives of these kinds.

Hummingbird, with choreography by Liam Scarlett and music by Philip Glass ( Tirol Concerto for Piano and Orchestra), perfectly encapsulates the delight that is contemporary ballet, with its virtuosic and gorgeous dancing; its play with levels; and its contrast of legato sections with more playful, springy movements. It’s graceful and lovely with a lot

Overall, this program is an excellent example of contemporary ballet. The virtuosity and artistry of the evening, the thematic choice of “blue” as a subject, and the interwoven gestures and patterning of some of the gestures, moves, lifts, and curling nature of the choreography of the pieces created a cohesive whole. It’s a visually stunning evening with much energy and a study in contrasts.

My only criticism of the whole piece was I expected a program called Studies in Blue to use a lot more variation of the actual color (in all its vibrant and wildly distinct permutations). The restrained palette suited the contemplative native of the night. (Indeed, I thought Hummingbird , with its blacks, whites, and grays, could have easily fit into an evening called Studies in Gray—but perhaps that’s too suggestive of other titles using the word “gray” of a more racy nature.) But this program o ers much to appeal to fans of the Jo rey, ballet enthusiasts, and people interested in the intersections of visual art and dance. v m letters@chicagoreader.com

Victoria Jaiani (le ) and Dylan Gutierrez in Hummingbird

TODD ROSENBERG

THEATER

OPENING

RHarmony in the Middle East

The Band’s Visit offers a musical balm at Writers.

Scheduled long before the current conflagration in the Middle East, Writers Theatre’s lovely, intimate staging of The Band’s Visit, the multiple Tony Award–winning musical, which premiered off Broadway in 2016 featuring music and lyrics by David Yazbek and a book by Itamar Moses, feels like a wishful relic in some ways now. But that’s not the fault of Zi Alikhan’s production nor of the show itself. It’s based on a 2007 Israeli film (written by Eran Kolirin) about an Alexandrian police band that, due to a misunderstanding at the bus station, is stuck overnight in the dreary Israeli town of Bet Hatikvah instead of the lively city of Petah Tikvah. (The former is fictional, made up for the story.) The Egyptian musicians and the Israeli townspeople make small connections through the night, providing a counterpoint to the top-of-show assertion that what happened “wasn’t very important.”

Stiff-necked band leader Tewfiq (Rom Barkhordar) spends the evening with Dina (Sophie Madorsky), the straight-talking but vulnerable cafe owner. Clarinetist and thwarted composer Simon (Jonathan Shaboo) stays with fighting young parents Itzik (Dave Honigman) and Iris (Dana Saleh Omar). Trumpeter Haled (Armand Akbari) helps shy Papi (Sam Linda) learn how to talk to girls at the roller rink. And Telephone Guy (Harper Caruso) stands by the town’s pay phone, waiting for his girlfriend to call (captured in the aching “Answer Me”). With most of the cast playing instruments (including violin, oud, and percussion) to bring Yazbek’s spritely score to soulful life (Andra Velis Simon is music supervisor), the theme of music and culture as connective spiritual forces comes through clearly (particularly in Dina’s standout number, “Omar Sharif”). Madorsky and Barkhordar shine as the sadder and wiser duo (though on opening night, their chemistry didn’t feel fully developed, I suspect greater richness will emerge over the run). I saw The Band’s Visit on Broadway and in its brief 2019 touring stop here. Writers’ take on this sweet, aching show may make you long for a world where people just accept and listen to each other—even in a fictional town.

—KERRY REID THE BAND’S VISIT Through 3/24: Wed-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 and 6 PM; also Wed 2/21 and 3/6 3 PM, Sun 2/25 and 3/10 2 PM only; Writers Theatre, 325 Tudor Ct., Glencoe, 847-242-6000, writerstheatre.org, $35-$90

RCoal miner’s dancer

Billy Elliot at Paramount is both soaring and grim.

I spent a semester studying in London in the winter of 1985, and one of the first concerts I attended was a benefit at Brixton Academy for the striking coal miners, featuring Aztec Camera and Everything but the Girl. It was an amazing show. Unfortunately, the strike ended six weeks later, with the miners returning to work without any concessions from the National Coal Board on pit closures; 23 mines closed in 1985, followed by nearly all the others.

That’s the background for Billy Elliot, the 2005 musical based on the 2000 film of the same name, featuring a supple and sturdy score by Elton John and book and lyrics by Lee Hall. And like that concert, it’s disquieting to realize that the perhaps unintentional message of the show (now in an absolutely corking production at Paramount under Trent Stork’s direction) is that individual

artists can prevail even when systems fail.

Billy (played to perfection by Neo Del Corral at the performance I saw; Sam Duncan alternates in the role) is a 13-year-old kid in a northern England coal town. His mother is dead, his father (Ron E. Rains) and older brother, Tony (Spencer Davis Milford), are on strike, and he hates the boxing lessons his dad scrapes together 50 pence for him to take. When salty dance instructor Mrs. Wilkinson (the splendid Michelle Aravena) sees talent in him, she starts giving him lessons on the sly to help him audition for the Royal Ballet School.

At first, his father, brother, and the gaggle of other hard-bitten working men in the town don’t understand. But the beautiful thing about Billy Elliot is that it allows each person to find their own voice and feet throughout the show. Billy’s Grandma (Barbara E. Robertson) sings about how she and her late husband would dance together—when he wasn’t getting drunk and slapping her around. Billy’s best friend, Michael (the show-stealing Gabriel Lafazan), loves wearing his big sister’s clothes and strutting his stuff.

If you know the movie, you know that the town comes together to support Billy even as their own life support in the mines is being hollowed out. (“Merry Christmas, Maggie Thatcher” comes close to Elvis Costello’s “Tramp the Dirt Down” as a bitter ode to the late prime minister.)

Stork’s staging features a huge, ominous scenic framework (designed by Michelle Lily) that sets the characters inside the grimy scaffolding of the mines. When that disappears for the red-velvet glitz of the Royal Academy, we feel the same awe that Billy and his dad exhibit. Of course, a show like this requires exquisite choreography, and Isaiah Silvia-Chandley delivers. (Even the deliberately bad dancing here from Mrs. Wilkinson’s wannabe bunheads is utterly captivating.)

dialogue about anti-Semitism—downplayed in the 50s to make Anne’s story more “universal.”

Kesselman’s version received a further revision to turn it into a one-act play more appropriate for younger audiences (at least in terms of length). That had its world premiere at Nashville Children’s Theatre in September 2022, and now makes its Chicago debut in a raw, poignant, and heartfelt production with Young People’s Theatre of Chicago under artistic director Randy White. The company has mostly focused on shows for kids under eight or so, but this staging (which comes with a very informative lobby display, courtesy of the Anne Frank Center at the University of South Carolina) is a timely and well-acted piece. It’s a good introduction for older children to the difficult but important history Anne has come to symbolize.

Esther Fishbein’s hyperkinetic and self-dramatizing Anne is just this side of annoying—which is very much in keeping with restless teenage girls, even the ones not facing the horrible times Anne is stuck in. The marital tensions of Mr. and Mrs. van Daan (David Krajecki and Amy Stricker) also feel honest and raw.

The Matchbox Magic Flute

with being Jewish, while celebrating how wonderful being Jewish is.

Edelman has a kinetic energy, with bouncing expressive gestures juxtaposed with quiet observational moments. Despite being about encountering the far right, it’s not political. No Middle East conflict (that will be his next show). He taps into common human traits while pillorying his family with love in the tradition of great Jewish comics.

Edelman admits he is able to empathize with white supremacists while simultaneously making fun of himself for feeling so smug about it and joking that perhaps he is “the hero we need for these times.” Empathy, he points out, is the most fundamental Jewish value, and he believes we can sympathize with anyone. Even if they hate us. Even if their views are abhorrent.

He de ly unpacks privilege and the o en contradictory identities of whiteness and Jewishness, and makes it fun, differentiating who he is as a performer and a person. He admits we might not like the real him, reminding us that the intimacy we feel with him is a construct. It’s a journey we want to take, and one we will certainly enjoy. —JOSH FLANDERS JUST FOR US

Through 2/25: Wed-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, steppenwolf.org, $52-$88

RA box of treasures

Mary Zimmerman’s The Matchbox Magic Flute is a feast of fabulous shenanigans.

Billy Elliot is upli ing, but only to a point; Hall and John understood that when they cra ed this show. Stork and his ensemble also know that Billy’s individual success stands against a grim background of broken promises, changing environments, and depressing prospects for his town and family.

—KERRY REID BILLY ELLIOT

Through 3/24: Wed 1:30 and 7 PM, Thu 7 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 1 and 5:30 PM; Paramount Theatre, 23 E. Galena B lvd., Aurora, 630-896-6666, paramountaurora.com, $38-$79

RBearing witness

Young People’s Theatre presents a new adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank

Wendy Kesselman’s 1997 adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank did some things that original adapters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett didn’t back in 1955 (slightly more than ten years a er Anne’s death from typhus at Bergen-Belsen). In Kesselman’s version, Anne, like any adolescent, complains a lot about her mother, Edith. (Reportedly, Anne’s father, Otto, the sole survivor among the eight Jews hiding in the secret annex in Amsterdam, had a hand in smoothing out some of the diary’s rougher edges for the earlier stage version.) She talks about menstruation. And there is more direct

Jonathan Berg-Einhorn’s alley-style set, which places the audience on either side of the cramped simulacrum of the annex apartment, lets us witness and feel the ever-present tensions of living in such close quarters, when any sound at the wrong time could bring death. Yet both Kesselman’s adaptation and White’s staging also let moments of joy linger—which makes the fate of Anne, her family, and the other people in the annex (as well as so many millions of others murdered by the Nazis) even more sobering. —KERRY REID THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK Through 3/24: Sat 4 and 7 PM, Sun 1:30 PM; Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln, 773-404-7336, yptchi.org, $35 ($24 16 and under); recommended for age ten and over.

R Just for Us unpacks Jewish identity

When Alex Edelman met white supremacists

Alex Edelman’s Just for Us is a ridiculously funny show about going to a white supremacist meeting in Queens, NY, falling for a girl, and wondering if it could work. Edelman interrogates our views of others and whether we can empathize with those who hate us. And most delightfully, in a time when it’s difficult to be Jewish, it’s the most Jewish show about being Jewish, wrestling

The view is sumptuous even before the curtain rises on Mary Zimmerman’s The Matchbox Magic Flute: chandeliers dripping with gems, stars on a painted firmament, a cascade of crimson velvet, musicians in satin and fezzes, over which Mozart’s silhouette presides. Spirit enters (fantastically fae Reese Parish), and three beats of her staff begin the action: Prince Tamino (Billy Rude), pursued by a dragon in a magic wood, faints dead away before three ladies (Lauren Molina, Tina Muñoz Pandya, Monica West) slay the serpent. When he awakens, another vision: birdman Papageno (Shawn Pfautsch)—who can’t catch birds or women, swing his net though he may—who is of course (he says), the hero! Now that prince and squire are assembled, the Queen of the Night (Emily Rohm), horned liberally with crescent moons, commands them to rescue her daughter, Pamina (golden-tongued Marlene Fernandez), who has been abducted by the evil (she says) Sarastro (Keanon Kyles). To aid them in their mission, she offers them enchantments: a flute for Pamino and bells for Papageno. Adventure!

Sung and spoken in English and o en musical theater–style, with a hilarious translation of Emanuel Schikaneder’s libretto adapted by Zimmerman, fabulous shenanigans whip by in the blink of an eye. The scale is wonderfully Alice. Sometimes players are gargantuan, other times tiny. Trees tower, birds are big as oxen. This Magic Flute is a matchbox as full of visions as Andersen’s Little Match Girl’s—a box of treasures, a haze of marvels, a banquet of dreams, the very word delight—gossamer and fleeting. —IRENE HSIAO THE MATCHBOX MAGIC FLUTE Through 3/24: Tue-Wed 7:30 PM, Thu 2 and 7:30 PM, Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM; Thu 2/22 7:30 PM only; touch tour and audio description Sun 3/3 (touch tour 12:30 PM), ASL interpretation Sat 3/9 2 PM, Spanish subtitles Sat 3/9 7:30 PM, open captions Sun 3/10; Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312-443-3800, goodmantheatre. org, $35-$105

LIZ LAUREN

THEATER

continued from p. 74

High on mythology

Factory’s Party at the Pantheon is unabashedly cartoony.

Despite my years of research in the fields of using cannabis and watching funny things, I have to confess: I have no idea what qualifies as “stoner comedy.” Is it when the characters are high, like in Pineapple Express? Or is it when I should be high to get the full experience, like The Drew Barrymore Show?

In the case of Michael Jones’s one-act Greek myth adventure-fanfic, the answer seems to be a little of both—but it’s hazy. Orpheus (Jamaque Newberry) sets out across the cosmos with party planner extraordinaire Dionysus (Malachi Marrero) and happy-for-a-vacation Sisyphus (Donovan Mullings) to prepare a bash for their celestial brethren. Along the way, the trio faces off against a nightmare blunt rotation of cyclops, minotaurs, and sneaker auction dweebs (Hermes, duh).

And lest you think the feminist content of the evening is passé, consider this: when physicist Anne L’Huillier accepted the 2023 Nobel Prize, she observed, “120 years ago, Marie Skłodowska-Curie was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. I am the fi h.” Silent Sky is a delight, reminding us how the theater can expand our minds as well as our emotions. —KELLY KLEIMAN SILENT SKY Through 3/17: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Wed 2/21 and 3/6 1 PM, no performances Thu 2/22 and 3/7; Citadel Theatre, 300 S. Waukegan Rd., Lake Forest, 847-735-8554, ext. 1, citadeltheatre.org, $40-$45

Director Kamille Dawkins’s production for Factory Theater fits in the children’s-theater-a er-dark mold of sketch-style comedy, which makes sense when you consider Jones’s program note about wanting to “write a cartoon.” Underneath the risqué veneer of ass-eating jokes and sparked joints is a fairly wholesome and LARP-y quest-driven narrative populated with a chorus of broad, shticky takes on Greek lore. In some cases, that equation spells out lobotomized levels of silliness, like a long and earnest “who’s on first?” routine with a cyclops. But when it clicks—like a vaudeville-type gag where the trio of heroes play hot potato with Atlas’s (Garrett Wiegel) burden of the heavens—Dawkins’s production achieves an earnest goofy fun synonymous with Factory Theater. —DAN JAKES PARTY AT THE PANTHEON Through 3/23: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM; accessibility performance Sun 2/25, understudy performance Sun 3/3; Factory Theater, 1623 W. Howard, 312-275-5757, thefactorytheater.com, $25

RStellar drama

Citadel’s Silent Sky honors an early woman astronomer.

This is a perfect production of Lauren Gunderson’s biographical drama about Henrietta Leavitt and her sister astronomers at Harvard in the early 20th century. Under Beth Wolf’s direction, the five-person ensemble brings touching human-scale emotion to a story about the vastness of the universe. As Leavitt, Melissa Harlow— new to Chicago; let’s hang onto her!—is persuasively brilliant, endearing, and aggravating. We root for her because her stubbornness is so obviously necessary to overcome the obstacles presented by the men in academe. Those men are ably represented by Peter Shaw (the charmingly awkward and abashed Adam Thatcher), who falls under Henrietta’s spell almost as soon as we do. Anne Lentino and Cameron Feagin are a study in contrasts as Leavitt’s coworkers, the former as buttoned-up as the latter is ebullient, and Laura Michele Erle reveals unexpected depths in Leavitt’s sister, Margie. The beauty of Leavitt’s quest to ascertain where the Earth fits into the universe is breathtakingly represented by Chris Owens’s projections of the night sky and Joel Zishuk’s clever lighting design.

RA gripping game

Topdog/Underdog at Invictus is powerful and compelling.

Invictus Theatre Company’s production of Suzan-Lori Parks’s Topdog/Underdog is gripping from start to finish.

Since being abandoned by their parents as teens, brothers Lincoln (Mikha’el Amin) and Booth (DeMorris Burrows) have contended with poverty, racism, violence, struggles at work, and complex relationships with women. As they attempt to fight their demons and the perils of a society working against them, they’re also at odds with each other, as prophesied by the names given to them in jest by their father. Now they’re living under the same roof again a er the dissolution of Lincoln’s marriage.

Lincoln and Booth are plagued by their past and tormented by possibility. Lincoln’s former hustle of running lucrative games of three-card monte remains a complicated option for them both and looms over every decision and interaction.

Under the direction of Aaron Reese Boseman, Amin and Burrows excel in their respective portrayals of the brothers’ shi ing power dynamic and the devastating circumstances that have trapped them there. They also leave plenty of space for the genuine humor and affection between them that persists despite their constant struggle to remain on top.

The show is consistent in its power but is particularly compelling when the brothers attempt (in Booth’s case) or demonstrate (in Lincoln’s) the card game. Its destruction and potential haunt them, and both men are fearless in portraying its impact on their characters’ psyches. —KATIE POWERS TOPDOG/UNDERDOG Through 3/31: Mon 7 PM, Fri 7 PM, Sat 2 and 7 PM, Sun 2 PM; Windy City Playhouse, 3014 W. Irving, invictustheatreco.com, $25-$45 v

Silent Sky

The dancing films of Shirley Erbacher

A local filmmaker and librarian will screen Erbacher’s experimental films in 8 mm at Sweet Void Cinema.

By SHERI FLANDERS

Experimental film has been a significant contributor to the Chicago arts scene and is deeply rooted in intimate creative spaces such as the Hyde Park Art Center, the Chicago Cultural Center, and the Beverly Arts Center. Because of the less institutionalized nature of experimental film, less lauded artists can easily slip through the cracks of history, especially artists who hail from historically marginalized groups.

Enter Josh B. Mabe, an experimental filmmaker who has also worked as a librarian for the last 16 years at the Harold Washington branch of the Chicago Public Library. While poking around in the archives as part of his research for a history project, Mabe discovered what he describes as “some odd old Chicago films left in the back room for decades.” As it turns out, he had discovered the films of Shirley Erbacher, an obscure experimental filmmaker.

Though Erbacher is frequently mischaracterized as a New York artist, Mabe’s research reclaims her as a homegrown Windy City filmmaker. Mabe explains, “Specifically in the mid-60s, there was a huge explosion of underground filmmaking—as most people called it back then. And Chicago saw an explosion of that as well, with John Hines showing films at the Hyde Park Art Center, the Chicago Film Festival starting, and the Jane Addams Film Festival starting. Spaces like the Aardvark and the Second City Film Center and Film Distribution Co-Op started popping up, and film writings and magazines and film newsletters [appeared], and there was a real explosion nationwide—but also in Chicago. And that’s when Shirley started her filmmaking and continued it for about a decade.”

Mabe continues, “Lots of ink has been spilled about the underground film explosion in the 60s, but not enough has been written about Chicago’s place in that story. Chicago was a very important place for people to come to learn how to make art, at the School of the Art Institute, at Northwestern, and the [University of Illinois at Chicago] Circle Campus.”

During that era, many artists were making

their names in the field and founding the Center Cinema Co-op, an influential midwestern filmmaking organization. Some of the better-known contributors of the era include Tom Palazzolo, John Heinz, Barbara Scharres (former director of the Gene Siskel Film Center), Tom Deegan, Joe Guzaitis, Ron Nameth, Byron Grush, Wayne Boyer, and Larry Janiak. Erbacher was also there creating and making her modest mark on history.

An elusive figure, not much is known about Erbacher, but Mabe was surprised to discover through his research that Erbacher’s history was closer to him than he realized.

Mabe recounts, “I found a little bit of a reference in the Chicago Tribune and saw a picture of her participating in a Happening [ Editor’s note: a “Happening” appears to be similar to an artistic salon, an avant-garde variety show ], and found out she was actually a librarian and worked until the end of her life in this very building I’m standing in. She worked in the arts and music department for decades and decades. . . . So I talked to some coworkers who had been around for a long time, and they remembered Shirley and her unique personality, but they were shocked to find out that she made films. So I decided to show the films, and I’m excited to share them.”

ter. . . . I asked their daughter Cora about that, and she said they were art obsessives in the neighborhood and would drag their kids to all the events—with varying degrees of interest.”

Erbacher was a bit of a contradiction, being both known and unknown to other Chicago artists in the community. Mabe explains, “Stan Brakhage was a major name in experimental film, and he lectured at the School of the Art Institute for many decades, and he was sort of a towering figure . . . and [through interviews] Shirley’s name came up as a person who was a friend of his and an acolyte, sort of. People would always mention how she attended

every Brakhage lecture front row, taking notes, and was really just a superfan. Not a ton of people knew a lot about her life. Even the people who were friendly with her just knew she was somebody who lived in Hyde Park and somebody who made films.”

Sweet Void Cinema, 3036 W. Chicago #1W Free, masks required and provided

Mabe’s research led him to discovering Erbacher’s children, some of whom still live in Chicago. “Shirley and her husband, William, were denizens of the Hyde Park arts scene and were really involved in the Hyde Park Art Cen-

Mabe will show Erbacher’s films at Sweet Void Cinema, an organization he discovered completely by accident in his neighborhood. “I would drive past the building, and they had a handwritten sign in the window . . . and I goo-

gled it and found it was a production studio by some young, energetic, awesome, film-loving people. Within their studio they have a small screening space where they digitally screen movies all day long, and they have shifted into more formal screenings, and I believe I am their first celluloid screening. . . . I’m excited about it because in the last several years, a lot of microcinema spaces in Chicago have closed, [like] the Nightingale. Filmfront in Pilsen hasn’t o cially closed, but I don’t think they are currently doing screenings. So I’m very excited there’s a new venue and that they’re open to adventurous programming.”

Visitors to the Erbacher screening on March 3 at 6 PM can expect an intimate and engaging body of work. Mabe describes Erbacher’s creative aesthetic: “[The films] definitely [have] a unique voice, as they show a lot of Chicago beyond just a time capsule, and they show a fascinating progression from beginning to end. They gained complexity as the years went on. The first couple are definitely close to home movies, but then she shifted into a series of films that she called the Dances, and out of the 14 films, eight of them are Dances, and some of them include dancers, some of them don’t. I think that’s a poetic title and the way she thought about the way she makes films. The camera moves around very freely and very rhythmically, so I think she thought of the films themselves as dances. . . . They also gain in complexity, so by the fifth Dance she’s integrating superimpositions, a lot more heavy editing, and it gets more complex and more fascinating as they go along.”

Through the screening, Mabe is sharing a quiet piece of Chicago film history that might have otherwise faded to black without an opening night. Mabe muses, “Not nearly enough has been written about our homegrown artists and our homegrown practitioners, and some of that is starting to be rectified. I hope that I’m helping out in my own small way.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

A still from Erbacher’s 1971 fi lm Chiaroscuro THE FILM-MAKERS’ COOPERATIVE/ NEW AMERICAN CINEMA GROUP

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NOW PLAYING

RDrive-Away Dolls

Once you acclimate to Margaret Qualley’s outrageous Texan accent, Drive-Away Dolls is a fun—albeit bumpy—ride. The latest Coen travel odyssey—written by Ethan Coen and his wife Tricia Cooke—wavers between a fun romp and a jumbled mess, complete with psychedelic interludes polished with Y2K graphics. Nevertheless, amid the twists and turns, there are enough scenic detours to keep you entertained.

Drive-Away Dolls first drops us into 1999 Philadelphia, where a nervous man wearing pink glasses is clutching a silver case in a dive bar booth. This man is Santos, played endearingly by Pedro Pascal. He’s jumpy and paranoid, and we quickly find out he’s got real reason to be. A short story made shorter, Santos is promptly butchered (in too literal a sense) by the waiter, and the ominous metal case is taken away by men in suits.

Immediately a er the campy mafia killing, we meet Jamie (Qualley)—who is having purple-lit, passionate sex with Carla (Annie Gonzalez). We quickly find out Carla is not Jamie’s girlfriend, as they’re repeatedly interrupted by calls from Jamie’s best friend, Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan), and her current girlfriend, Sukie (Beanie Feldstein). It all blows up in Jamie’s face, and in the wake of the breakup, she impulsively invites herself on the much more prudent Marian’s trip to Tallahassee. Together, they rent a one-way “drive-away” car and hit the road. The twist: the silver case is in the trunk.

Here, revealing any more details would ruin many of the brazen pit stops along the way. That said, what you can expect are lighthearted performances from Colman Domingo as an evil secret agent, two morally diametric henchmen played compassionately by Joey Slotnick and C.J. Wilson, Matt Damon as a conservative Florida senator, and, last but not least, Miley Cyrus (but her role is best le a secret).

Drive-Away Dolls succeeds in its die-hard punchiness and only works because the entire cast is genuinely charming. And I won’t forget Feldstein as Jamie’s bitter, angry cop ex-girlfriend. Still, it occasionally feels hastily composed, with Scott Pilgrim subtones and too many gags to keep tally. —MAXWELL RABB R, 84 min. Wide release in theaters

Madame Web

Sony and Marvel’s latest entry in their shared SpiderMan cinematic universe has no better comparison than that of a rickety wooden coaster you’d find at a family-owned amusement park: brutal on the body and precariously constructed.

Directed by S.J. Clarkson and cowritten by Claire Parker and screenwriting duo Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless, Madame Web could only synthesize into its final state from the particular alchemy of sleepwalking producers, drastic script rewrites, and an obvious disinterest from the cast. Audiences are starting to feel

belabored by the diminishing returns of superhero interconnected universes a er a recent string of misfires and flops. Alas, the machine must stay fed, and Sony executives seem eager to bleed their properties despite clear creative fatigue and mismanagement.

Set in 2003, the film follows Cassandra “Cassie” Webb (Dakota Johnson), an aloof Manhattan paramedic who develops clairvoyant powers a er a near-death experience. Cassie seems to awaken to these visions and pulses of the future and learns she can connect to a sort of dimensional, interconnected Spider-World. Thirty years earlier, Cassie’s pregnant mother gets betrayed and le for dead on an Amazonian expedition by her bodyguard Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), who claims a fabled spider with healing properties for his own.

Sims’s physical capabilities are enhanced by the spider venom, but he’s perpetually haunted by visions of three Spider-Women who are fated to kill him in the future. He orders his hacker and research assistant, played by Zosia Mamet, to track them down now as teenagers, usually with his back turned to the camera and a he y helping of ADR. Soon, teenagers Mattie Franklin (Celeste O’Connor), Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), and Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced) team up with a reluctant Cassie in a bid to protect themselves and uncover what truly connects them.

Despite Sony going out of their way to establish the film as a “suspense thriller” in promotional pushes, the only suspense Madame Web can muster between scenes is the tepid anticipation to see how the film will squeeze in yet another conspicuous Pepsi advert. It doesn’t help that the cast is checked out beyond belief. Sweeney, Merced, and O’Connor are entirely unconvincing as a unit, with lame jokes and put-upon vulnerability suffocating the pleasure in the absurdity of the film. It’s clear Johnson would rather be anywhere else judging from the blase performance she turns in here.

Madame Web’s ludicrous logistical leaps, dodgy visual effects, and aloof performances are o entimes primetime so-bad-it’s-good junk food, though it can be hard to have fun when every hit of ironic dopamine is sandwiched between uninteresting scenes of prolonged nothing. —CAM CIESZKI PG-13, 116 min. Wide release in theaters v

Drive-Away Dolls

MUSIC

CITY OF WIN

Damon Williams carries AirGo Radio’s revolutionary conversations onto his debut album

The podcast he cohosts makes other organizers’ voices accessible; his first record will make his own voice danceable.

By ALEJANDRO HERNANDEZ

City of Win is a series curated by Isiah “ThoughtPoet” Veney and written by Alejandro Hernandez that uses prose and photography to create portraits of Chicago musicians and cultural innovators working to create positive change in their communities.

The late revolutionary artist Gil ScottHeron released the definitive recording of his most famous poem, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” more than 50 years ago. “You will not be able to stay home, brother,” he says. “You will not be able to plug in, turn on, and cop out.”

That sentiment may seem dated in our current era of instantaneous global connectivity, when it’s virtually impossible to open an app or news channel without being bombarded with video of protests against fascism and genocide, including those in Chicago and abroad in support of a free Palestine. But Scott-Heron’s words have lost none of their wisdom: he wasn’t literally talking about television but rather the idea that any political revolution begins within people and communities. That transformation can’t be filmed.

“You have to change your mind before you change the way you live and the way you move,” Scott-Heron says in a 1991 interview with PBS. “It will just be something you see and all of a sudden you will realize, ‘I’m on the wrong page,’ or ‘I’m on the right page but I’m on the wrong note, and I’ve got to get in sync with everyone else to understand what’s happening.’” Right now more people every day are realizing that it’s time for them to get in sync.

Today, Chicago activist and media maker Damon Williams carries the torch lit by Scott-Heron and his peers. He’s a poet, rapper, educator, and organizer, and he cohosts the podcast AirGo Radio , which presents longform conversations with organizers, artists, scholars, and anyone else trying to change the future for the better. He anchors everything

he does with the steadfast drive to build a liberation movement, and as such he likes to refer to himself simply as a “movement builder.”

Williams and AirGo cohost Daniel Kisslinger started the podcast in part to create a record of the other people in that movement. “Conversation is, one, a historical tool, but also an artistic practice. And how are we using dialogue to humanize the folks that are doing the work that is transforming our world?” Williams says.

“When we started in 2015, a lot of folks were using the language of renaissance. We also saw, at the same time, the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, and for me and Daniel, what needed to be highlighted is the intersection of those two communities.”

As a regular at local open mikes, Williams saw that many of the performers also attended protests— he specifically names Jamila Woods, Charlene Carruthers, Asha RansbySporn, and Saba. All of them combine art and activism in their work, and Williams believes they’ll continue to influence Chicagoans for generations to come.

more on a di erent aspect of his own voice. He’s adding studio work as a hip-hop musician to his multitude of creative expressions, and since 2021 he’s been developing his debut album, In Process. He says that creating the project has been important for his healing journey.

“As a teaching artist, I did hip-hop writing workshops, and then I would perform something a cappella. People would be like, ‘You got any songs out?’ And then I’d have to tuck my tail and say no to these 15- and 16-year-olds,” he says. “It was depressing. My partner Jennifer [Pagán] would later connect me to my production partner Galaxy Francis. I was coming out of the loss of my brother-in-law, Malik Alim, and he was able to come in a time of grief and mourning and help me just get back into the practice of going to the studio every week.”

“One of the big inspirations for me at the time was that I was eager to learn as much as I could about the Black Power movement in the 60s,” he says. “In the city, Fred Hampton has this legacy that’s almost spiritual. He kind of looms over us like a saint or orisha, and if you

look on YouTube, there’s less than an hour of his voice out there. So we wanted to make sure [for] folks participating in these movement spaces [that] there’s at least 60 minutes of them telling their story. So that 40 years from now, when folks look back at this time, they’ll be able to understand.”

Over the past decade, Williams has archived the voices of hundreds of influential organizers and artists, and lately he’s started to focus

Once Williams developed a consistent routine, core themes and ideas began to emerge, shaping what he wanted his first full-length to sound like. So far he’s released one single, “Messy Moments,” which came out in September 2022. Its bouncy production complements its uplifting lyrics, which highlight the importance of forming genuine, intimate bonds with our community that can fortify us in the fight for liberation. After more than two and a half years of work, Williams plans to finally drop In

Damon Williams plans to release his debut album, In Process , in March.

THOUGHTPOET FOR CHICAGO READER

“How are we using dialogue to humanize the folks that are doing the work that is transforming our world?” says Damon Williams. THOUGHTPOET FOR CHICAGO READER

Process on Thursday, March 21.

“I really try to toe the line where none [of the songs] are just explicitly political songs. I’m making sure that each of these pieces are things that you can dance to,” Williams says.

“You don’t need to have read Frantz Fanon or Angela Davis or have been to a protest, but for those who are connected to those traditions, there is a coding that folks can receive and know that all of this is about being in the process of revolution, being in the process of

evolving our humanity, being in the process of making a state of freedom, and being in a process of healing.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Photos by ThoughtPoet of Unsocial Aesthetics (UAES), a digital creative studio and resource collective designed to elevate communitydriven storytelling and social activism in Chicago and beyond.

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Recommended and notable shows with critics’ insights for the week of February 22

MUSIC

Friko aim for rock greatness with their big debut album

FRIDAY23

Chicago Psych Fest 14 night one

See also Sat 2/24. Cabeza de Chivo headline; Plastic Crimewave Syndicate with Mac Blackout, Satin Banshee, and Free Times open. DJ Psychedalex spins at doors and between sets. 8:30 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $18, $30 two-day pass. 21+.

The Chicago Psych Fest is a long-running local celebration of trippy synergy that brings together all things loud and weird. It fully embraces the wideopen definition of psychedelic music to encourage moments of glorious serendipity and showcase the sonic diversity and collaborative spirit of the local scene. This year is the fest’s 14th edition, and it returns to its home planet of the Hideout for the occasion. Night one is headlined by tropical psych outfit Cabeza de Chivo, a Chicago quartet whose fluid, potent Latin percussion can move feet as dely as it does brain cells. Festival mainstays Plastic Crimewave Syndicate, one of the bands anchored by cocurator (and Reader contributor) Steve Krakow, will be joined by saxophonist and beloved local mural artist Mac Blackout. Rounding out the bill are hard rockers Satin Banshee, whose 2023 album A Town Called Doom slings buckets of mesmerizingly heavy riffs, and prolific groovy outfit Free Times. Night two features Who Is the Witness?, a local supergroup of sorts featuring Tim Kinsella, Liv Mershon, Jenny Pulse, Whitney Johnson, and Jon Mueller, with powerhouse jazz bassist Joshua Abrams as a special guest. Before that, you can trance out and meditate with Jake Acosta, float and drone with Erik Kramer, and explore with sound collective Omit/Transit Orchestra. Before and between the other acts, DJ Psychedalex (night one) and Sara Gossett (night two) will spin records. It’s a lot to breathe in, but if high-quality sensory overload is your jam, this $30 two-day pass is an excellent deal.

—MONICA KENDRICK

CHICAGO’S TEEN INDIE-ROCK SCENE established itself as a nationally important cultural force with Horsegirl’s beachhead 2022 debut for Matador, Versions of Modern Performance . This grassroots community continues to produce bands interpreting underground rock in vastly di erent ways. Among the best of the bunch are Friko, who began as a trio led by ambitious singer-guitarist Niko Kapetan (founding bassist Luke Stamos has since departed). Kapetan’s clear emotional commitment to Friko’s music makes the band’s scrappy, homemade aesthetic feel as grand as a symphony. Friko have supersized their big pop gestures and expanded the range and nuance of their variegated songs on their striking debut album, the brand-new Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here (ATO). This lovingly crafted LP balances the wild brawn of its rock ri s with the sparser and more acoustic

sound of its warmhearted folk arrangements, and Kapetan’s singing has enough magnetism in its vulnerable quaver to enthrall you all by itself for the album’s too-brief running time. Kapetan and drummer Bailey Minzenberger (who also has a folk project called Morinda) have focused their rapport, and their duo version of Friko is sophisticated and showy when it needs to be, loose and o anded when it doesn’t. The tense rhythms that propel “Chemical” juice up one of the album’s best hooks—when Kapetan yelps the title in a rapid call-and-response with his own overdubbed voice, it shoots so many sparks I’d advise against playing it at a gas station. I hope Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here will launch Friko into a pantheon of great contemporary Chicago bands—and it should definitely reinvigorate your love of rock. —LEOR

GALIL

FRIKO, SMUT, NEPTUNE’S CORE

Fri 3/1, 8 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $20, $17 in advance. b

Bailey Minzenberger and Niko Kapetan of Friko POONEH GHANA

Cabeza de Chivo headline the fi rst night of the Chicago Psych Fest. TAYLOR DONSKEY

MUSIC

Militarie Gun Pool Kids, Spiritual Cramp, and Spaced open. 6:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 1375 W. Lake, sold out. b

Rock cliches exist for bands like Militarie Gun. The Los Angeles group’s visceral but heady mix of beefy hardcore and hooky pop all but throws you bodily into the nearest mosh pit—whether it “rips” or “slaps” or “rocks” is just splitting hairs. In Militarie Gun’s hands, even a single thwack on a drum— cleanly recorded but swinging with a Neanderthal weight—can sound like a resounding declaration. On their 2023 debut album, Life Under the Gun (Loma Vista), drummer Vince Nguyen and bassist Waylon Trim keep the high-momentum songs on the rails while guitarists William Acuña and Nick Cogan grind out meaty, sunny alt-rock riffs. The depth and texture of the band’s two-guitar arrangements complement the melodic sensibilities of front man Ian Shelton, who combines sweetness and acid in his serrated shouts. (You can hear more of the former on January’s Life Under the Sun , an EP of borderline acoustic reworkings of Militarie Gun material.) Life Under the Gun is a lot of things: a great debut, a great rock record, and a great argument for hardcore as an oasis for young people. Lots of new bands are eager to sublimate hardcore’s spirit into something more freewheeling and expansive than hardcore, and I hope at least a few of them can come up with something as euphoric as Militarie Gun’s “Never Fucked Up Once.” That song rips. —LEOR

GALIL

SATURDAY24

Chicago Psych Fest 14 night two See Fri 2/23. Who Is the Witness? with Joshua Abrams headline; Jake Acosta, Erik Kramer, and Omit/Transmit Orchestra open. DJ Sara Gossett spins at doors and between sets. 8:30 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $18, $30 two-day pass. 21+

Flyana Boss Honey Bxby opens. 8 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, sold out. 18+

Flyana Boss, the Los Angeles rap duo of Bobbi LaNea Tyler and Folayan Omi Kunerede, have worked hard to get where they are. They’ve been accused of being “industry plants” since going hyperviral in 2021 and landing a record deal with Atlantic. But their TikTok account—where for more than two years they’ve posted three or four times per day—proves their dedication. Who else has shared video of themselves rapping while running laps? Flyana Boss’s commitment to the bit has helped propel their career.

Guerrilla marketing works. So do hate views. I remember several viral posts on Twitter (please don’t make me call it X) about how awful Flyana Boss are, yet those tweets only added to their success. Someone would declare, “I hate this video,” but sharing the content rather than ignoring it increased the duo’s visibility, allowing thousands of new viewers to add their own polarizing remarks. You can’t buy that type of engagement! And before long, everyone knew the hilarious lyrics to last year’s hit “You Wish”: “Hello, Christ? / I’m ’bout to sin again.” As Flyana Boss’s star power has risen, they’ve caught the ears of alt-hip-hop godmother Missy Elliott (who contributed a feature to a remix of “You Wish”) and Janelle Monáe (who invited them to open her fall 2023 tour). Their latest single, “Candyman,” celebrates famous women—its music sounds like a Doja Cat mashup, while its lyric video pays tribute to Minnie Riperton with a fun riff on the album art for the soul singer’s classic 1974 LP, Perfect Angel

This show at Schubas begins Flyana Boss’s Bosstanical Garden Tour with YouTuber and social media influencer Honey Bxby. The leap from phonescreen darlings to IRL standouts is becoming the new route to success. As these ladies kick off what looks to be a fun, good-vibes rap tour, they’re giving you a chance to see what all the hype is about.

Kwaidan Post Doom Romance, Steve Fors, and Norman W. Long open. 8:30 PM, Tritriangle, 1550 N. Milwaukee F13, $10-$15 suggested donation. b

The three Chicago musicians who formed Kwaidan in 2011 come from diverse backgrounds: drummer Mike Weis has long played meditative solo percussion on his own and indie rock with Zelienople; synthesizer jockey Neil Jendon, formerly a guitarist with 1990s shoegazers Catherine, has since joined various improvisational ensembles; and multi-instrumentalist André Foisy, a longtime member of art-metal combo Locrian, would later host a heavy metal ’n’ candles yoga class. Improvising with a commitment to cohesion, Kwaidan synthesized their interests into atmospheric instrumentals that combined fragile melodies, propulsive Koreaninfluenced grooves, and roiling waves of low-end

electronic sound. The trio went on hiatus in 2017 after Foisy and Weis both moved to other states, but when Foisy booked a Chicago date for a tour he was undertaking this winter with ambient musician Steve Fors (a fellow former Chicagoan), he suggested getting the band back together for one night. This headlining set will be Kwaidan’s first concert since 2015. The rest of the bill consists of sound artists with midwestern roots who combine crafted and collected sounds to explore relationships with imagined and inhabited spaces. Norman W. Long leads soundwalks around Chicago, and his music judiciously stirs synthetic accents into recordings of places where nature and human activities combine, such as Lake Calumet. Fors lives in Switzerland, but in the late aughts he was half of local drone duo Golden Furs. On his recent LP, It’s Nothing, but Still (Hallowed Ground), field recordings of urban loca-

Flyana Boss SJ SPRENG

Militarie Gun DANIEL TOPETE

Kwaidan CONNIE TOEBE

MUSIC

continued from p. 83

tions frame yearning, slow-motion melodies played with synths, cellos, and distorted guitars. Post Doom Romance, aka Mykel Boyd and Chelsea Heikes (who also records as Seah), take a similar approach on the audio portion of Prairie Transmissions‚ a book and digital album released late last year by Somnimage: these sound artists based in Bradley, Illinois, layer electronics and field recordings that evoke the humbling sense of smallness you can get from watching interstate traffic and sunsets on the flatlands. —BILL MEYER

WEDNESDAY28

Author & Punisher Morne and Glassing open. 8 PM, Reggies Rock Club, 2105 S. State, $20. 17+

A man staring down 20 years of soldiering alone in the darkness might sound like the synopsis of a horror novel, but for Tristan Shone it’s a milestone worth celebrating. The San Diego artist, who makes doomy industrial metal as Author & Punisher, is a mechanical engineer by trade, and in January 2004 he launched this one-man project by inventing and building his own musical machines—over the years his arsenal has grown to include a rail- mounted rhythm controller with a button- studded pistol grip, microphone-equipped masks, pitch-shifting slides, and giant solid aluminum knobs that he can map onto any signal parameter. Though Shone had played in several bands, he was having difficulty finding consistent collaborators, and he felt that his evolving aesthetic called for new instruments. He’s created a sound big enough to pierce the stratosphere, and his live shows have a menacing sci-fi vibe. Tech worship is baked into Author & Punisher, and the music communicates clear disdain for the shortcomings and misdeeds of our

species, but Shone’s recordings have increasingly revealed a human warmth beneath the armatures of wires and steel. On his latest album, 2022’s Krüller (Relapse), he incorporates lush postmetal, goth, and alt-pop textures, as well as contributions from two members of Tool, drummer Danny Carey and bassist Justin Chancellor. Krüller responds to present-day political and social divisions and to the potential for this powder keg to explode into violence. As he told Forbes at the time, he was inspired by Octavia E. Butler and the survivalist mentality.

“We are living that moment, this ‘dystopic’ moment that we read about and watched movies about,” he said. “I’m not on the side that wants to kill people, but rather part of the people that still want to remain humans and maintain art and humanity.” This show is part of Author & Punisher’s 20th anniversary tour, and Shone will share the bill with Boston doom- and postmetal outfit Morne (who put out the magnificently bleak Engraved With Pain last fall) and scathing Austin black-metal and hardcore trio Glassing. —JAMIE

LUDWIG

Domo Genesis Fly Anakin and Thelonious Martin open. 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, $25, $22 in advance. 18+

Los Angeles rapper Domo Genesis, aka Dominique Cole, first emerged in the early 2010s as the token stoner in anarchic rap and R&B crew Odd Future. But long before the collective went on hiatus in 2016, he began building up an impressive catalog of his own, self-releasing five mixtapes, including a 2012 collaboration with the Alchemist titled No Idols. He dropped his full-length debut, Genesis, in 2016, and more recently he’s put out two collaborative albums, 2022’s Intros, Outros & Interludes with Los Angeles rapper Evidence and October’s What You Don’t Get?! with Seattle producer Graymatter.

Much like his stylistic forefather Curren$y, Genesis spices his laid-back cool with the fiery confidence of someone who’s sustained a lengthy rap career in the face of ever-changing technologies and tastes. On the What You Don’t Get?! track “Plank Walk,” he boasts about getting features through camaraderie, not by paying steep fees, and contrasts his long-term vision with those of his short-sighted rivals. He raps slightly ahead of the beat, like he’s eager to drop his gems—or trying to keep himself from sinking into the organ and guitar filigree of the instrumentals.

Domo’s show at Lincoln Hall features support from Virginia rapper Fly Anakin, promoting his excellent softcore-themed 2023 project Skinemaxxx , and local producer and streaming personality Thelonious Martin, who’s provided beats to Curren$y as well as G Herbo and Mick Jenkins. Expect an evening of swinging drums and laid-back flows that invite you to nod your head in appreciation.

—JACK RIEDY

Samuel “Savoir Faire” Williams 9-11 AM, Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted. F b

It wasn’t Samuel Williams’s idea to start going by “Savoir Faire.” But his friends gave him that nickname in the 90s, and a er his headlining debut at Fred Anderson’s beloved Velvet Lounge in 2002, it really stuck. He remembers them chanting a famous

line from the 1960s cartoon series Klondike Kat : “Savoir Faire is everywhere!”

Williams now finds the name apropos. Classically trained from age three, he grew up improvising in church and flowered as a jazz artist under the wing of Anderson and other greats in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). (He became an AACM member in 2000.) In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he was voted best jazz violinist multiple times in the prestigious DownBeat Critics Polls. “‘Savoir faire’ literally means ‘to know’ and ‘to do’—and I know what I’m doing,” Williams tells me.

These days, you can catch Williams on weekends at both locations of the Soul Food Lounge (Lawndale and Beverly) or gigging around town with the Chicago Gypsy Project (which plays a fusion incorporating jazz manouche) and the Savoir Faire Jazz Quartet. Williams and his quartet are working on recording an album of originals titled Medea, which he plans to release later this year—two decades a er making his full-length debut with Ran Out of Time. This performance at Center on Halsted commemorates Black History Month and introduces a new monthly series celebrating heritage months more generally (Women’s History Month, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Hispanic Heritage Month) under the Center’s first Black CEO, Joli Robinson. —HANNAH EDGAR

THURSDAY29

OsamaSon 7 PM, Avondale Music Hall, 3336 N. Milwaukee, $20. b

I can’t separate South Carolina rapper OsamaSon from the Internet, which has served as an accelerant for his career by directly feeding his muddy music to the young heads who can make sense of his woozy, discombobulating, and sometimes suffocatingly layered style. OsamaSon began self-

releasing tracks in 2021, and his breakout came in April 2023 with the swirling, stuttering “CTS-V.” In December, Atlantic Mod released OsamaSon’s second full-length of the year, Flex Musix, and his current tour is sponsored by big-time hip-hop festival Rolling Loud. OsamaSon traffics in extremes. Bass saturates Flex Musix so powerfully it could open a sinkhole in your basement, and his synths have the sweet bite of crystallized sugar. It’s a lot to take in for the 17 tracks on Flex Musix—I could go for a little more variety. OsamaSon is a great singles artist, though, and when he lands a song, he does it with a sure hand; one of his best tracks, “X & Sex,” lasts just 57 seconds, which is plenty of time for his serrated, chopped-off lines and watery voice to leave an impression. If you like the idea of a hip-hop show that’s sonically assaultive enough to call for earplugs, get yourself to Avondale Music Hall on Thursday.

—LEOR GALIL

FRIDAY1

Friko See Pick of the Week on page 82. Smut and Neptune’s Core open. 8 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $20, $17 in advance. b

SATURDAY2

Jhariah Piao opens. 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, $18. 17+

Jhariah has become one of the freshest-sounding artists in indie rock by pairing their imaginative ear for pop with their ability to reflect the music industry back on itself. Their music resists tidy categorization but leans heavily on pop punk, funk, gospel, show tunes, and video-game music that recalls the simplicity of an NES menu screen. You can also hear a bit of the 90s ska revival—buried in their passion-

Domo Genesis JUSTIN JAMES

Samuel “Savoir Faire” Williams CHEEKS PHOTOGRAPHY

ate, spasming wails is a Tragic Kingdom–era Gwen Stefani.

Many rising independent artists wrestle with industry pressure to make great work while also operating as their own creative director and publicity team, but Jhariah makes it especially apparent. The Pratt-trained animator and illustrator, who’s based in New York, has a hands-on approach and a knack for world-building, both of which extend beyond their songs into their website, album art, and music videos. “Risk, Risk, Risk!” and “Eat Your Friends” (created with Baltimore band Pinkshift) land like tense but excited audiovisual love letters to the current indie-rock scene. They’re punctuated with references to cult icons (Junji Ito, Harmony Korine) and use narrative and aesthetic elements that evoke comics such as Watchmen and aughts Playstation games.

Jhariah’s self-confidence makes their hustle look easy when it’s anything but. On their latest single, January’s “Pin Eye,” they open up about the stress of being a public figure and content faucet. Jhariah recognizes that some of the pressure comes from within, as they convince themselves that suffering for their art will be worth it in the end: “Good enough might be good enough for those other kids / Don’t you stomach it / Put your excuses and your knots / Inside a million-dollar box / When you come to, you’ll see it’s more than worth the / Years you think you lost.”

In the song’s video, Jhariah wanders around looking for answers in a velvet dress coat that’s seen more glamorous days, their face scabbed with glitter and jewels that are more unsightly than alluring. “Pin Eye” is as exuberant as it is sad, as Jhariah questions a drive that brings immense joy at a serious cost. That makes it feel like a perfect anthem for a cultural moment marked by creative and professional burnout. —MICCO CAPORALE

Aoife Scott Accompanied by guitarist Andy Meaney. 7 PM, Irish American Heritage Center, 4626 N. Knox, $25. b

Irish singer Aoife Scott is part of the second generation of professional musicians in her family. Her mother, Frances Black, is one of five siblings in the Black Family, a folk group that started performing in Dublin in the mid-1970s and became widely popular in Ireland and beyond as traditional Celtic music experienced a resurgence in the 80s.

Scott entered the spotlight early in life; she took her first national tour at age ten, accompanying her mother and her aunt, Mary Black, in support of a 1992 compilation celebrating Irish female singers called A Woman’s Heart , on which they’d both appeared. She spent a few years studying communications in college and then working in television production, partly to avoid jumping right into the family business (in a 2016 interview, she told the Belfast Telegraph, “I was trying to be a rebel”). Fate intervened, though: While Scott was working as a crew member for the 2010 Irish miniseries 1916 Seachtar na Cásca, an actor with an all-singing part had to leave early. She was asked to fill in, and wound up singing on the rest of the episodes and contributing to the show’s soundtrack.

That experience reignited Scott’s love for singing. On her 2016 debut, Carry the Day , her pure tone and emotional phrasing shine out on “All Along

the Wild Atlantic Way” and “We Know Where We Stand,” written with Michigan-based Celtic folkie Enda Reilly. Her years of vocal training show in how she drops from her highest notes to lower ones, especially while singing in harmony. In 2020, she self-released her latest album, Homebird, where she moves between original material and interpretations of traditional songs. Expect the same at her Chicago appearance, where she’ll be joined by her guitarist and longtime musical companion, Andy Meaney. —SALEM

COLLO-JULIN

SUNDAY3

MUSIC

María José Llergo Part of the Chicago Flamenco Festival. 7 PM, Instituto Cervantes, 31 W. Ohio, $35. b

Composer and singer María José Llergo proudly foregrounds the fl amenco traditions of her native Andalucía, where she was raised in the rural sierra town of Pozoblanco. But don’t come to her concerts expecting her to sing melismas while swirling in a ruffl ed, polka-dotted dress—she uses her formidable, pliant voice to propel contemporary, experimental tunes that incorporate electric guitar, keyboards, and electronic beats while embracing flamenco’s rhythmic and melodic subtexts. “Aprendiendo a Volar” (“Learning to Fly”), from her 2023 debut album, Ultrabelleza , opens with heavily processed sashaying percussion that evokes the polyrhythms of flamenco palmas—and then Llergo’s cascading vocals add the genre’s visceral, gutpunch emotionality, enveloping those rhythms in pop hooks and a soaring, anthemic melody. When I recently connected with her over Zoom, she commented on the central infl uence in her music: her abuelo. When she was a young child, he encouraged her to improvise and sing along to his ballads while he worked his fi elds and tended to his animals. His presence can be felt in her music to this day: on the title track of her 2020 EP, Sanación , she samples the sound of his hoe breaking the earth. Llergo’s songs are also shaped by regional infl uences from her upbringing, by her conservatory training on classical violin, and by her subsequent studies at Barcelona’s Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya. She approaches her art as an exploration, and she told me that she seeks to balance “the world where I came from and the world where I am going.” But Andalucía’s music will always be her primordial sustenance and source, because, as she put it, “Flamenco contains truths that never expire.” —CATALINA MARIA JOHNSON v

4544 N

NEW SHOWS ANNOUNCED • ON SALE NOW!

5/17 Junior Brown

5/19 Asleep At The Wheel

6/11 Avi Kaplan

8/2 Tinariwen

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22 7:30PM

Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre

Inside/Out with American Catracho In Myron R. Szold Music & Dance Hall

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24 10AM

Black History Folk Futures Symposium

Free, Please RSVP in Szold Hall

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 25 7PM

Beausoleil avec

Michael Doucet In Maurer Hall

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 25 7PM

Matt Andersen

with Old Man Luedeke In Szold Hall

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 29 8PM

Masters Of Hawaiian Music

George Kahumoku Jr, Daniel Ho & Tia Carrere In Maurer Hall

FRIDAY, MARCH 1 8PM

Jess Williamson

with Esther Rose In Maurer Hall

FRIDAY, MARCH 1 8PM

William Fitzsimmons In Szold Hall

SUNDAY, MARCH 3 3PM & 7PM

Lúnasa In Maurer Hall

THURSDAY, MARCH 7 8PM

Alan Doyle In Maurer Hall

SATURDAY, MARCH 9 5PM & 8PM

Charlie Parr In Maurer Hall

WORLD MUSIC WEDNESDAY SERIES

María José Llergo (at center) ALEJANDRO MADRID

Aoife Scott RUNWAY ARTISTS

EARLY WARNINGS

MARCH

FRI 3/8

Bouncing Souls, Brendan Kelly 8 PM, Epiphany Center for the Arts, 17+

Oh He Dead 8:30 PM, Hideout The Strokes, Beach Bunny, Nnamdï (fundraiser for politician Kina Collins) 7 PM, Credit Union 1 Arena b

SAT 3/9

Sam Barsh, Jon Deitemyer, and Matt Ulery 8:30 PM, Constellation

Bouncing Souls, Blind Adam & the Federal League, Vic Ruggiero 8 PM, Bottom Lounge b

Omni, This Is Lorelei 9 PM, Schubas, 18+

SUN 3/10

Bouncing Souls, Smoking Popes, Vic Ruggiero 7 PM, Bottom Lounge b

THU 3/14

Bombay Bicycle Club, Mustard Service 8 PM, Metro, 18+

FRI 3/15

Mclusky, Ganser, Martha’s Vineyard Ferries 7:30 PM, the Vic, 18+

SAT 3/16

Skizzy Mars, Brake, Moonlander 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+

Sons of the Silent Age 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b

SUN 3/17

1K Phew, Aha Gazelle, Jon Keith, 1K Pson 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+

THU 3/21

Sleater-Kinney, Black Belt Eagle Scout 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b

SAT 3/23

Henry Geraghty, Cloudbelly, Burr Oak 8 PM, Color Club, 18+

SUN 3/24

Mong Tong, Facing 9 PM, Empty Bottle

UPCOMING CONCERTS TO HAVE ON YOUR RADAR b ALL AGES

Early Warnings newsletter: sign up here

BEYOND

WED 5/1

claire rousay, Dorothy Carlos, Imani Elizabeth Jackson 8:30 PM, Sleeping Village

FRI 5/3

APRIL

THU 4/4

Lao Dan Chicago Quartet (Lao Dan, Mabel Kwan, Joshua Abrams, Michael Zerang) 8:30 PM, Elastic b

One Hallelujah featuring Tasha Cobbs Leonard, Jonathan McReynolds, and others 6:30 PM, Auditorium Theatre b

FRI 4/5

Pelada 9:30 PM, Sleeping Village

SAT 4/6

Kamaiyah 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+

SUN 4/7

Deerhoof, Half-Scratches 7 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+

THU 4/11

Paula Cole 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b

FRI 4/12

George Freeman’s 97th Birthday Bash night one (George Freeman, Mike Allemana, Pete Benson, Bernard “Pretty” Purdie) 8 PM, Green Mill

SAT 4/13

George Freeman’s 97th Birthday Bash night two 8 PM, Green Mill

WED 4/17

División Minúscula, Jumbo 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+

SAT 4/27

Girl in Red, Momma 8 PM, Aragon Ballroom b

Pg. 99, Cherubs, Massa Nera, Heet Deth, Blackwater Sniper 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Sheer Mag, Dusk 9 PM, Sleeping Village

SUN 4/28

Shaggy 2 Dope, DJ Clay 6 PM, Cobra Lounge b

TUE 4/30

Helado Negro, Marem Ladson 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+

GOSSIP WOLF

A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene

Legions of Metal Fest day one with Unleash the Archers, Striker, Greyhawk, and more 5:30 PM, Reggies Rock Club, 17+

Legions of Metal Fest day one with Theandric, Dysplacer, and more 6 PM, Reggies Music Joint Jesse McCartney 7:30 PM, the Vic b

SAT 5/4

Legions of Metal Fest day two with Watchtower, Hirax, Dawnbringer, and more 3:30 PM, Reggies Rock Club, 17+

Legions of Metal Fest day two with Leather Duchess and more 5 PM, Reggies Music Joint

THU 5/9

Donny Benét, Otnes 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+

THU 5/16

Ghost-Note 8 PM, Chop Shop, 18+ Ride 7:30 PM, Metro, 18+

FRI 5/17

Nova Twins 8 PM, Cobra Lounge b

THU 5/23

Neil Young & Crazy Horse 7:30 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion b

TUE 6/18

They Might Be Giants 8 PM, the Vic, 17+

WED 6/19

They Might Be Giants 8 PM, the Vic, 17+

MON 7/8

Iron and Wine 8 PM, Salt Shed (indoors), 17+

FRI 7/26

Jennifer Lopez 8 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont b

FRI 8/30

Bikini Kill 8 PM, Salt Shed (indoors)  b

TUE 11/12

Dehd 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+

WED 11/13

Dehd 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ v

EARLIER THIS MONTH , Chicago rapper, producer, and songwriter Sidaka dropped his debut album, Resurgence of the Bliss (Creative Mansion), where he raps with stubborn poise atop warm, clattering instrumentals. He’ll celebrate its arrival with two events this weekend: Miyagi Records hosts an albumlistening party at 4 PM on Friday, February 23, and Sidaka headlines the Empty Bottle on Sunday, February 25.

Sidaka began working on Resurgence of the Bliss in 2019. By the time he finished it last summer, he says, he’d made nine different versions of it. As he worked, he’d learn new skills, and his drive to use those skills would change the album’s direction. “I picked up guitar on Valentine’s Day of 2021,” he says. “I wanted to do my own guitar riffs, ’cause I have sampled so much—I know how a guitar should sound, and these samples are way too clean.’” Sidaka didn’t begin to approach the jazzy, earthy sound he wanted till he’d gone through the first four or five versions.

Sidaka’s father died in 2021, which dealt the rapper a huge blow. “He helped me build my studio,” Sidaka says. “He was the very first person to tell me to start DJing—I’ve done so many DJ gigs. He taught me—not everything, but he taught me the means of motivation and perseverance that was almost unsaid, ’cause he was a very so -spoken person. I call him a quiet storm.” Sidaka says working on Resurgence helped him heal from the loss.

Chicago rapper Qari , a longtime favorite of Sidaka’s, will open Sunday’s concert. Sidaka’s punk band, Brinstarr, will play second of three. Tickets are $12, and the show starts at 9 PM.

BEFORE THE END of February, Chicago rapper Edward “AMS.” Moses will release the latest single off his forthcoming eighth album, Edward. AMS. shares his full name with his paternal grandfather and father, and his dad played a major role in bringing music into his life. “He was the person with the odd music taste—the handmade cassette tapes that I asked him to make for me o en, made from his record collections and his CD collections,” AMS. says. “He was a gigantic audiophile, and he just seemed to have this breadth of understanding with respect to music that, as a kid, I thought I’d never really catch.”

AMS., 39, began playing music as a kid

and fell for hip-hop as a teenager. His cousin Bobby turned his head around by giving him Company Flow’s 1997 debut album. “Funcrusher Plus messed my whole world up,” AMS. says. “I’m like, ‘These dudes were [teenagers] when they made this album. How did they sound like this?’” He realized at that moment how he wanted to rap. By the time he reached his early 20s, AMS. knew he was on the right track: he electrified a mid-2000s party at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with a performance of his song “Nom de Plume.” “The end of that song happened,” he says, “and the house party went up.”

With Edward. AMS. testifies to his longevity and fortitude as a musician and connects his legacy to his father’s. He dropped the first few singles for it late last year, close to his dad’s birthday, and decided on the album’s name during a conversation with him. “My first name was always something so sensitive to me,” AMS. says. “It was always something I held in an honorific regard. I’m just sitting there, my dad is chuckling—he sees the wheels in my head turning furiously—and I just go, ‘OK, maybe we name it Edward.’”

FOUNDED IN 2005 , Girls Rock! Chicago is dedicated to the development and empowerment of girls and trans and genderexpansive youth through music education. Each summer, it hosts two camps for youth ages eight to 16 to help them learn about music making, build self-confidence, and discover who they can be, no matter what preconceived notions they encounter. Each session ends with a live concert featuring all the camper bands, and in the Reader ’s Best of Chicago issue in 2011, music editor Philip Montoro named these End-of-Camp Extravaganzas the “Best place to hear a band of nine-year-old girls that sounds like the Urinals.” That’s a cause this wolf can get behind! You can help support Girls Rock! Chicago at a benefit concert at SPACE in Evanston on Wednesday, February 28. Waltzer headline; fellow Chicago acts Oux and Macie Stewart open. The all-ages show starts at 7:30 PM, and tickets cost $15—though of course you’re welcome to donate more if you can. —TYRA

NICOLE TRICHE AND LEOR GALIL

Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or email gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

Mong Tong COURTESY OF STEREO SANCTITY

Make time to learn something new with music and dance classes at Old Town School! We offer flexible schedules for all skill levels both in-person and online.

CLASSIFIEDS JOBS

JOBS

Drupal Developer NPV Staffing, LLC (Chicago, IL) seeks Drupal Developer. Research, design, & develop computer & network software or specialized utility programs & functionalities for the Drupal applications. Req: MS in Comp Sci or rel/ equiv. 6 mos exp as Software Developer or rel. 6 mos exp w/ PHP, MySQL, Html, CSS, JavaScript, JQuery, Composer, Apache, JIRA, Git, & IntelliJ req. Travel or relocation to various unanticipated worksites throughout US. Telecommuting allowed. Send resumes: hr@npvstaffing.com

Operations Manager

multi open’gs: A) Sr. .Net Developers to participate in problm mgmt process/ continuous imprvmnt process. Apply at: https:// medline.taleo.net/career section/md_confidential/ jobapply.ftl?lang=en&

Senior Security Operations Analyst

Apex Fintech Services

Director, Technical Product Management

Apex Fintech Services

MATCHES

Operations Manager: Des Plaines IL. Direct, coord activities of employees to obtain optimum efficiency to max profits. Plan, develop policies, goals. Coord activities: marketing, sales, advertising. Comm w/ clients, employees, mgnt. Review financials, sales, reports to measure prod, cost reduction, program impr. Direct admin activities related to prov supp services for transp industry. Recruitment of talented workers. Analyze clients’ needs, dev networks of partners overseas for effective collaboration. Prep work schedules, assign duties. Process payroll. Develop company’s network, gain new clients, foster existing relationships. Identify business opportunities. Bachelor’s in any field. 2 yrs exp as op manager or director of operations. Res: Fulga, Inc; support@ safetyexpertsconsulting. com

Senior Architectural Designer Senior Architectural Designer: Rosemont IL. Direct projects; design dvlpt, architectural & constr phases spec in private healthcare practices. Design, constr documents, permit & pricing. Quality control. On-site investigation. Review tech constr drawings, coord w/engineering. Support Interior Design & Project Technical team w/project code reviews. Sketch tech details. Lead review of subcontractors’ submissions to ensure compl w/design intent. Bachelor’s degree in Architecture or closely related field. Working knowledge of MS Office Applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Photoshop). Res: SMJ Corporate LLC dba Apex Design Build; michellel@ apexdesignbuild.net

Multiple Openings

Medline Industries, LP in Mundelein, IL has

job=INF01010A B) Sr. Software Tester(s) to Create and run performance test to evaluate areas that need imprvments. Apply at: https:// medline.taleo.net/career section/md_confidential/ jobapply.ftl?lang=en&job=INF010108 Both post’ns: No trvl. WFH benefit avail.

General Manager General Manager Direct and coordinate sales and distribution, formulate policies, hiring, training, firing employees, purchasing, sales and promotion activities, operational records, security measures and procedural changes. BBA required. Mail resume: HR on Clark Inc.; Attn: R. Siddiqui, 3326 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL 60657.

Software Engineer Software Engineer: Dvlp & modify comp apps software & specialized utility programs. Analyze user needs & dvlp software solution. Dsgn software or customize software for client use w/the aim of optimizing operational efficiency. Modify existing software to correct errors, allow it to adapt to new hardware, or improve its performance. Analyze user needs & software reqmnts to determine feasibility of dsgn w/in time & cost constraints. Reqs knowledge on NET Framework, incl Visual Studio, C#, ASP.NET. Advanced knowledge on data structures, algorithm dsgn & prob solving. Advanced skills in designing & working w/n-tier architectures, capabilities in handling high-volume web & mobile apps dvlpmnt. Skills in dsgnng & delivering large-scale, highly avail, low latency, high quality web based systems. Skills in building scalable fault tolerant systems, troubleshoot performance issues, perform SQL optimization & bench-marking. Remote working from anywhere in the U.S. is req’d. Mser deg in Comp Sci & 1 yr reltd exp are req’d. Mail your resume to Beyondmenu Inc, 3432 W Diversey, Flr 2, Chicago, IL. 60647

Business Development Specialist Req’d: Bachelor’s in Bus. Admin., Int’l Bus. and Econ., or rel. Wage: $46,051/

Yr. Work Site: Wood Dale, IL, 60191 Mail Resume: ALLSTATE INT’L FREIGHT USA INC, 1250 W Artesia Blvd., Compton, CA 90220

LLC seeks Senior Security Operations Analyst in Chicago, IL dvlp’ing plans to safeguard computer files against unauthorized modifications, destruction, or disclosure to meet emergency data process’g needs. Reqs. Bachelor’s degree or foreign equiv in IT, Comp. Sci., or rel. field & 5 yrs of post-bacc. exp. as Threat Intell. Anlyst, Cyber Security Consultant, or rel. role. Exp. must incl. SIEM techs., MITRE ATT&CK frm’wrk, IOCs/ IOAs, TTPs, exploits, vulnerabilities, & Threat Intell. Pos’n will be HQ’d in Chicago, IL but is a telecommuting pos’n, allowing for remote employment from various unanticipated worksites throughout U.S. Email resume: bsprague@apexfin techsolutions.com.

Northwestern Memorial Healthcare seeks Medical Laboratory Scientists for Chicago, IL location to perform test procedures in a clinical lab & convey results to physician or designee. Bachelor’s in Med Tech/Lab Sci/ Clinical Lab Sci/Chem/ Bio or Allied Health field qualifying applicant for ASCP certification examination req’d. ASCP MLS/ MT req’d (ASCPi also accepted). Drug test & background check req’d. Must be willing to work 3rd shift. Apply online: http://jobseeker.nm.org/

Req ID: REF61680W

Northwestern Memorial Healthcare seeks Medical Laboratory Scientists for Chicago, IL location. Bachelor’s in Med Tech/Lab Sci/ Clinical Lab Sci/Chem/ Bio/Allied Health field qualifying applicant for ASCP cert exam req’d. Req’d Skills: ASCP MLS/ MT req’d (ASCPi also accepted). Drug test & background check req’d. Must be willing to work 2nd shift. Apply online: http://jobseeker.nm.org/

Req ID: REF61734S

Technology Consultant, Cloud Engineer, Sr. Slalom’s Chicago, IL office has multiple openings for Technology Consultant, Cloud Engineer, Sr. (various types/levels): Research, design, and develop computer and network software or specialized utility programs. Must be available to work on projects at various, unanticipated sites within commuting distance of Slalom, Inc.’s Chicago, IL office. TO APPLY: Go to www.jobpostingtoday. com, search for job ID 87056 & submit resume.

LLC seeks Director, Technical Product Management in Chicago, IL to lead Apex Cloud Pltfrm PM team & be accountable for the successful delivery of the prgrms, internal products & services in portfolio that enable Apex to operate w/ higher perf., efficiency, transparency, & profitability. Reqs. Bachelor’s degree or foreign equiv in Comp Sci, Comp Eng., Electronic Eng., or rel. field & 5 yrs of postbacc. exp. as Tech Prgrm/Product Mngr, Mngr, Eng., or rel. role. Exp. must incl. product mgmt tools: Bitbucket, Artifactory, Jenkins, & Docker; product & prgrm mgmt of AWS & technologies that build pltfrm, infrastructure & CI/CD; & collection & transl. of biz reqmts into tech reqmts. Pos’n req. 25% trvl. Email resume: bsprague@apexfin techsolutions.com

Morningstar Investment Management LLC seeks a Manager of Software Engineering (multiple positions) in Chicago, IL to drive technical vision for our data, BI & analytics initiatives & execute on that vision. BS deg. in Computer Application, Computer Science, Mathematics, or rltd field, or foreign equivalent & 8 yrs of relevant data engineering & BI exp req’d. This position supervises a team of Software Engineers. Add’l specific skills req’d. For position details & to apply, visit: https://www. morningstar.com/careers; ref. job ID REQ-043419.

Software Project Engineer Software Project Engineer. TRUMPF. Hoffman Estates, IL. 50% travel in US, Canada, Mexico. Member of software group for Industry 4.0 solutions for next generation Smart Factory. Detail, implement, support system for large automation projects. Must have bachelor’s in indust eng or related & 2 university courses or 6 months exp in (may be concurrent w/degree): Integrated mfg sys, MES or MRP mfg software, or production sys planning; CAD, CAM, or simulation software; Programming; Ops mgmt. Apply at www.trumpf.com.

Director of Children’s Ministry & School Director of Children’s Ministry & School at Greenhouse Movement in Oak Park, IL. Responsible for spiritual formation of children 6 mos to 6 yrs in Sunday Worship & outreach children’s ministry. Develop & implement religious teachings. Oversee religious instruction.

Engage with parents. Supervise Assistant Directors. $50-80K/year. Must have bachelor’s in early childhood ed or special ed & 2 years early childhood or special ed teaching & curriculum dev. As faith-based religious org, Greenhouse requires candidates to affirm Christian faith & Confirmed membership in local Anglican Church. Apply to apply@ greenhousemovement. com.

Quality Director, West Chicago. Review/ update SOPs. Inspect facilities, test samples, conduct audits. Evaluate quality dept, equip; oversee team. Bach in engineering/closely related; exp. w/ audits, PPAP, APQP, industry prob-solving techniques required. Mail res., cov. let. to C. Price, Chicago Industrial Fasteners, 450 Fenton Ln., Suite 904, West Chicago, IL 60185.

(Chicago, IL) Maximum Healthcare Solutions, Inc. seeks Director of Operations/Finance Manager w/bach or for deg equiv in bus admin, fin or rel fld & 1 yr exp in job offrd or in sr ldrship role. Must have exp dev budgets & bus plans; negot for both internal & extnl purposes; & perfrm data anal & perfrm metrics using bus mgmt sftwr such as SAP, ERP or CRM. Apply to HR, Amane@ maximumhs.com

Sr. Supervisor, Manufacturing Operations (Chicago, IL): Be resp for oversight of pharma manufacturing processes; producing high quality pharma products in accordance w/ regulatory reqs to achieve the ops production plan; as well as oversee daily s’vision of personnel on the efficient use of equipt & materials to produce quality products under cGMP in accordance w/ the production plan, incl scheduling & resource coord. Req’s Master’s degree (or foreign equi. degree) in Pharmacy, Pharmaceutics, Pharmaceutical Science or related with knowl of IQ, OQ, PQ, preparing standard protocols & reports for testing & analyzing Injectable products; as well as overseeing & managing regulatory compliance.

Apply HR, Kashiv BioSciences LLC, 3440 S. Dearborn Street, Suite 300, Chicago, IL-60616.

What’s Next Media & Analytics, LLC. d/b/a PYMNTS.com seeks Managing Editors (Antitrust Law) for various & unanticipated worksites throughout the US (HQ: Chicago, IL) to oversee/ edit content for over the top media line dedicated to antitrust & competition law content (online,

books, audio, video).

Master’s in Law/Legal Studies +2yrs exp req’d.

Req’d skills: antitrust & competition law editing & publishing; client-facing dev of advocacy programs/ conferences relating to antitrust & competition law; editing in compliance w/ Chicago Manual of Style; HubSpot; WordPress, SEO; MailChimp, Adobe InDesign, dev of marketing initiatives & media campaigns.

Telecommuting permitted. 50% travel req’d. Apply by email: careers@ pymnts.com, REF:ER

Periodontist Periodontist – Millennium Periodontics (Chicago, IL): Provide periodontal treatment such as perform. surgical proc. such as gum grafting, bone regen, dental implants.

Req. DDS/DMD/ BDS or foreign equiv., Periodontics cert. from accredited res. program, board cert. (or elig.), IL dental specialty licenses (or elig.) &; profic. as demo. by assessment. Send resume to hr@ millenniumperiodontics. com.

Sr. Associate, Card Product Strategy & Associate, Channel Analytics Avant, LLC seeks in Chicago, IL (1) Sr. Associate, Card Product Strategy (job ID 67913) to work across financial prdcts. Telecomm prmtd. (2) Associate, Channel Analytics (job ID 18979) to drive strtgc anlytcs. Telecomm prmtd. Apply at jobpostingtoday. com w/job ID.

Business Intelligence Engineer III Cars.com d/b/a Cars Commerce seeks a Business Intelligence Engineer III in Chicago, IL to work closely with internal stakeholders across multiple lines of business to gather BI project requirements and assess scope. Telecommuting permitted. Apply at jobpostingtoday.com/ Ref #51550.

Machine Learning Operations Engineer

Enova Financial Holdings, LLC seeks Machine Learning Operations Engineer in Chicago, IL. Assist analysts in testing & preparing their models for production. Applicants may apply at www.jobpositingtoday. com/ Ref# 26400.

Senior Data Scientist

Arthur J. Gallagher in Chicago, IL seeks Senior Data Scientist to identify specific workflows that can be improved by using advanced machine learning techniques. Reqs MS + 2 yrs exp. Hybrid in-office / remote. To apply: mail resumes to HR, Ref. Senior Data Scientist 000385; 2850 Golf Road, Rolling Meadows, IL 60008.

Fintech Social Media Coordinator: Chicago, IL. Develop & execute fintech and debt-specific social media strategies; Create and curate content; Manage & schedule posts on all social media; Monitor social media for customer feedback, complaints, & inquiries & respond promptly; Analyze industry-specific social media metrics; Collaborate w/mktg team to align social media content w/overall mktg campaigns; Stay up-to-date w/latest fintech, debt, & social media trends. Requires min of Bach. degree or equiv. in mkt research, comm., int’l relations, or closely related. Also requires personal familiarity w/social media platforms & respective features; Strong written & verbal comm. skills; classes in econ or fin theories. Mail resumes: ChangED INC, 433 W. Van Buren St, Ste 1100J, Chicago, IL 60607.

Lead Data Engineer

Thoughtworks seeks Lead Data Engineer to work in Chicago, IL & various unanticipated U.S. locations to develop modern data architecture approaches for largescale, custom-designed, enterprise-level business intelligence and analytics projects using software development languages, such as Python and Java, and cloud-based data management technologies. Must have Bachelor’s in Computer Science, Computer or Electrical Engineering, Information Systems, or related field. Must have 5 years exp in the job offered, Consultant, Software Architect/Engineer, or related IT position. Must have at least 36 months experience in: (1) Participating at all stages of the software delivery life-cycle, including analysis, development, testing and deployment; and (2) Leading a team of software and data engineers to oversee project activity, manage project deliverables and progress, prioritize plans for future iterations, and manage team performance. Must have at least 24 months experience in: (1) Developing applications that are cloud ready/cloud-native using at least one of the primary cloud providers (AWS, GCP, or Azure); and (2) Working with data warehouse architectures, data lake architectural patterns, and streaming data architectures for real-time processing. Must have at least 12 months experience in: (1) Using Agile development methodologies including Continuous Integration, Extreme Programming, Continuous Delivery, Test-Driven Development and pair programming; (2) Serving as a liaison between client and de-

velopment team to define scope and technical direction of the project including requirements gathering and design discussions and managing project deliverables and timeframes; (3) Working on projects with distributed teams, including managing coordination across countries and time zones; and (4) Coaching and mentoring junior developers and data engineers in all aspects of data solution development, including Agile development methodologies. At least 80% travel across U.S. Email resume to ijobs@ thoughtworks.com w/ Job ID RB-LDE2024.

Lead Consultant/Quality Analyst Thoughtworks seeks Lead Consultant/ Quality Analyst to work in Chicago, IL & various unanticipated U.S. locations to independently lead large-scale, custom-designed, enterprise-level software development projects that use object-oriented technologies, such as Java, Ruby or .NET. Must have Bachelor’s in Computer Science, Computer or Electrical Engineering, Information Systems, or related field. Must have 5 years exp in the job offered, Consultant, Software Testing Engineer or related IT position. Must have at least thirty-six (36) months experience in: (1) Using Selenium, Cucumber, TestNG testing tools to test custom-designed, object-oriented software applications using Java, Ruby or .NET; (2) Planning automation test strategies by analyzing business requirements and design specifications; (3) Writing test plans, test objectives and test cases for manual regression and automating

them using unit, functional and integration tests; (4) Leading full life-cycle software solutions including analysis, development and testing; (5) Investigating, assembling and maintaining system test data; (6) Using Agile methodologies, including Extreme Programming, Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, Test-Driven Development and pair programming; (7) Coaching and mentoring developers on Agile Best Practices and various languages and testing tools; and (8) Working on distributed Agile teams across countries and time zones. At least 80% travel across U.S. Email resume to ijobs@thoughtworks. com w/ Job ID LQA2024.

Senior Consultant/ Developer (Professional Services) Thoughtworks seeks Senior Consultant/ Developer (Professional Services) to work in Chicago, IL & various unanticipated U.S. locations to work on largescale, custom-designed, enterprise-level software development projects that use object-oriented technologies, such as Java, Ruby or .NET. Must have Bachelor’s in Computer Science, Computer or Electrical Engineering, Information Systems, or related field. Must have 5 years exp. in the job offered, Consultant, Developer, or related IT occupation. Must have at least twelve (12) months experience in: (1) Analyzing, developing, designing, and testing object-oriented and full life-cycle software development projects using Java, Ruby, JavaScript, JUnit, Spring, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle or Selenium; (2) Using Agile development methodologies including Continuous Integration,

Extreme Programming, Continuous Delivery, Test-Driven Development and pair programming; (3) Writing automated tests using automation test frameworks, including unit, functional, and integration testing; (4) Developing software applications using Java, Ruby or .NET; (5) Developing applications that are cloud ready/cloud-native using technologies such as Docker; (6) Working on projects with distributed teams, including coordinating across countries and time zones; and (7) Coaching and mentoring junior developers in all aspects of software development, including Agile development methodologies. At least 80% travel across U.S. The volume and destination of travel is not known in advance as it’s client dependent. Email resume to ijobs@thoughtworks. com w/ Job ID SCD2024.

(Itasca, IL) Fellowes, Inc. seeks Oracle Functional Analyst w/ Bach or for deg equiv in Comp Sci, IT, Eng or rltd fld & 3 yrs exp in job offer or util Oracle EBS modls or Oracle Cloud ERP incl exp w/Order Mgmt w/in retail, mnfg or dist envrn. Occ dom trvl reqd. Apply online at https:// www.fellowes.com/us/ en/our-company/careers or to HR 1789 Norwood Ave, Itasca, IL 60143

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SAVAGE LOVE

I’m cheating but I need to

Navigating nonethical nonmonogamy and etiquette tips for sex party attendees

By DAN SAVAGE

Q : My heart is breaking and it’s my own fault. I started cheating on my husband of 29 years, casually at first—making out, getting groped, no penetrative sex—and then I met a man and we just clicked. I caught feelings and we started to have an intense, kinky, and very sexual and emotional relationship.

I love my husband. We are extremely compatible in so many ways, except this one: I am kinky and poly whereas he is vanilla and monogamous. Even though I haven’t disclosed my cheating to him, we have been talking about my desire to be nonmonogamous. He knows I’m kinkier than he is, although I can’t disclose how I came to know I need BDSM in my life. I have also discovered that I am bisexual, but not biromantic. Because of this, my husband has moved on monogamy and agreed to be a little monogamish: he consents to me exploring sexual encounters with women, primarily because he guiltily admits that he finds it a nonthreatening turn-on since I am not romantically attracted to women.

I have presented to my husband that I WANT to be nonmonogamous and that I am capable of polyamory. He hasn’t consented. Even though he says he doesn’t want to say no or hold me back from exploring my sexuality, he says if I were to issue an ultimatum, we would get divorced. So, this is basically his ultimatum.

Meanwhile, my lover and I have recognized that the struggles in our relationship stem from the fact that I am cheating on my husband. It raises doubts for my lover about whether I am deceiving him, since I am obviously capable of deceit. I hate this. When I ask him what he wants, my lover says he wants me not to hate myself so much. And so, we have decided to “pause” our affair until I can figure out how to get right with my husband and be able to be ethically nonmonogamous.

Adding to my heartbreak: I NEED both these relationships. My husband can only flex so far in the kink direction. He cannot be the dominant partner I need. I’ve told him this, more or less. And he takes it as saying that without that he is nothing, which is not true. He is almost everything, but he can’t stand being not “enough.” He is afraid that I will resent him if he doesn’t agree to nonmonogamy. Which I don’t. But if we divorce so I can feel fulfilled, that will destroy him. I don’t think he believes I would choose nonmonogamy or kink over him. And I really don’t want to leave him or lose my lover. I cannot choose between them. I need them both. My heart is BREAKING. Help. —BROKENHEARTED AND SEEKING

INSIGHTFUL COUNSEL

a: I’m sorry about your heart but I can’t with your problem.

The mail this week—actually, for weeks—has been nothing but letters from

long-married straight people thinking about cheating, already cheating, desperately trying to renegotiate monogamous commitments they made decades ago, or desperately pretending that’s what they’re doing (i.e., they’re going through the motions of discussing ethical nonmonogamy in the hopes of legitimizing the nonethical nonmonogamy they’re

already practicing).

I don’t mean to come across as unsympathetic, BASIC, but you’ve been smashing your pussy down on the self-destruct button for a while now. You didn’t get the answer you wanted from your husband (permission to fuck other men) and instead of countering his ultimatum (“No fucking around with other men or it’s over”) with an ultimatum of your own (“Permission to fuck around with other men or it’s over”) you went out and started fucking around with other men. You may not have been consciously aware that you were smashing your pussy down on the self-destruct button, but you either knew or should have known you were setting something

“I am capable of polyamory. He hasn’t consented.” RON LACH/PEXELS

in motion that would blow up your marriage.

This is all going to come out. Your husband is going to find out about your lover and then you’re going to find out whether your husband’s threat to divorce was serious. Threatening to divorce someone you love is easy; actually divorcing someone you love is hard. And divorce is a long, drawn-out process and your husband will have time to reconsider his decision before it’s final.

But only the truth can free you from the miserable corner you’ve painted yourself into. And while it’s going to be unpleasant, telling the truth—the messy, painful truth—is the only way out. Sometimes married people smash their hands, mouths, pussies, or dicks down on the self-destruct button and wind up destroying their marriages. Sometimes that’s what they want. But sometimes the marriage survives the explosion and something new and beautiful is built on the rubble. Maybe you’ll be one of the lucky ones. But there’s only one way to find out.

All right, I dug through the mail, looking for questions that were not about cheating, negotiating nonmonogamy, or embracing tolyamory [my word for someone who is willing to bear some outside sexual contact for their partner but doesn’t want polyamory], and managed to find . . .

Q: I am invited to a (gay) sex party. When invited for dinner you bring a bottle of wine. But what is the proper etiquette for a sex party? Come showered and douched, I guess? What else? Do I bring something for the host? —NEWBIE AT SEX PARTY

a: A host gi is a thoughtful idea, NASP, but slipping your host a little cash may be a better idea. Paper towels are

way more expensive than they used to be.

“I usually ask for a £5 tip to cover the costs of food, soft drinks, and hard drinks I provide at the parties I run,” said Ali Bushell, author of the Sex Party Handbook. “Even if the host of NASP’s first sex party doesn’t ask for money, being willing to tip the host $10 or so is always appreciated. It’s especially appreciated when the guest acknowledges the time and effort that went into making the event happen and mentions that they’re grateful.”

While Bushell makes alcohol available at the parties he hosts at his home in London, not all sex party hosts serve booze. “Bringing alcohol isn’t a terrible idea,” said Bushell, “but NASP needs to bear in mind some people might prefer the party to be dry. So, if he’s thinking of bringing a six-pack of beer or bottle of wine to share, best to check with the host about whether that would be welcome.”

And big ups to arriving very recently douched and very freshly showered. Also: don’t wear cologne, put your phone away, be polite when you decline to play with someone, be just as polite to someone who declines to play with you, get on PrEP (prevents HIV infection), look into DoxyPEP (offers some protection against other sexually transmitted infections), and maybe consider using condoms (they offer excellent protection against HIV and other STIs).

Ali Bushell’s Sex Party Handbook is available on Amazon. When he’s not hosing sex parties, Bushell hosts the The Healers Guild, a podcast for people seeking or offering healing. v

Ask your burning questions, download podcasts, read full column archives, and more at the URL savage.love. m mailbox@savage.love

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