Chicago Reader: print issue of February 18, 2016 (Volume 45, Number 20) by Chicago Reader

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politics Why can’t our mayor be less like Bill Clinton and more like Bernie Sanders? 8

Food & Drink The Sixth is the cocktail bar Lincoln Square has been waiting for. 38

IN PU RSU IT OF

JUSTICE

On a summer night in 2011, 2011 Chicago police officer Marco Proano fatally shot 19-year-old Niko Husband outside a dance party. The Independent Police Review Authority said the shooting was justiﬁed. What would a civil jury say? By STEVE BOGIRA 10

2 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 25, 2016

THIS WEEK

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EDITOR JAKE MALOOLEY CREATIVE DIRECTOR PAUL JOHN HIGGINS DEPUTY EDITOR, NEWS ROBIN AMER CULTURE EDITOR TAL ROSENBERG FILM EDITOR J.R. JONES MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO ASSOCIATE EDITORS KATE SCHMIDT, KEVIN WARWICK, BRIANNA WELLEN SENIOR WRITERS STEVE BOGIRA, MICHAEL MINER, MIKE SULA SENIOR THEATER CRITIC TONY ADLER STAFF WRITERS LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, AIMEE LEVITT, PETER MARGASAK, JULIA THIEL SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR RYAN SMITH GRAPHIC DESIGNER SUE KWONG MUSIC LISTINGS COORDINATOR LUCA CIMARUSTI EDITORIAL ASSISTANT CASSIDY RYAN CONTRIBUTING WRITERS NOAH BERLATSKY, DERRICK CLIFTON, MATT DE LA PEÑA, ANNE FORD, ISA GIALLORENZO, JOHN GREENFIELD, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, DANIEL KAY HERTZ, DAN JAKES, BILL MEYER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, DMITRY SAMAROV, ZAC THOMPSON, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERNS MANUEL RAMOS, CHRIS RIHA, SOPHIA TU ---------------------------------------------------------------SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER EVANGELINE MILLER ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE BRIDGET KANE MARKETING AND EVENTS MANAGER BRYAN BURDA DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY BUSINESS MANAGER STEFANIE WRIGHT ADVERTISING COORDINATOR HERMINIA BATTAGLIA CLASSIFIEDS REPRESENTATIVE KRIS DODD

IN THIS ISSUE

4 Agenda The musical All the World’s a Stage, Lord of the Dance, the improv show Redux, the week’s ﬁlm openings, and more recommendations

21 Comedy Stand-up Sam Gordon puts together the perfect Combo. 22 Small Screen HBO’s Vinyl is a broken record. 22 Dance The Great and Terrible Faustus is great indeed. 23 Lit In Madonnaland, Aline Simone investigates the pop star’s biography. 24 Visual Art Word-art’s the word during Typeforce at Co-Prosperity Sphere in Bridgeport. 25 Movies A War locates the ﬁne line between duty and war crime.

CITY LIFE

MUSIC

8 Joravsky | Politics Why can’t our mayor be less like Bill Clinton and more like Bernie Sanders? 9 Transportation How can we ﬁx the most treacherous part of the Lakefront Trail?

27 In Rotation Current musical obsessions of Store Brand Soda blogger Lorena Cupcake, Dumpster

cocktail bar Lincoln Square has been waiting for.

CLASSIFIEDS

24 Babies guitarist Tom Puschautz, and Reader music editor Philip Montoro. 27 Gossip Wolf Dance party Bump & Grindcore gets nasty in memory of Amy Winehouse, and more music news. 29 Shows of note Waco Brothers, Animal Collective, Beach House, Julia Holter, and more

41 Jobs 41 Apartments & Spaces 43 Marketplace 44 Straight Dope How is hospital wastewater handled? 45 Savage Love What’s the deal with my depressed-and-oﬀ-his-meds BF? 46 Early Warnings Huey Lewis & the News, Cheap Trick, DJ Harvey, Alkaline Trio, Wilco, and more shows you should know about in the weeks to come

FOOD & DRINK

37 Restaurant review: Vivial The Southport corridor spot oﬀers cold comfort to those who miss Spencer’s Jolly Posh. 38 Bar review: The Sixth Here’s the

ARTS & CULTURE

21 Theater Contrivance makes for a half-limp Cocked.

FEATURE ON THE COVER: ILLUSTRATION BY BOBBY SIMS

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Street View

---------------------------------------------------------------THE READER (ISSN 1096-6919) IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY SUN-TIMES MEDIA, LLC, 350 N. ORLEANS, CHICAGO, IL 60654. © 2016 SUN-TIMES MEDIA, LLC. PERIODICAL POSTAGE PAID AT CHICAGO, IL. POSTMASTER: SEND CHANGE OF ADDRESS TO CHICAGO READER, 350 N. ORLEANS, CHICAGO, IL 60654. CORRECTIONS: A RESTAURANT REVIEW IN THE 2/18 EDITION INCORRECTLY IDENTIFIED CRISTIANA DELUCCA AS THE BEVERAGE DIRECTOR OF MAPLE & ASH. DELUCCA LEFT THE RESTAURANT A WEEK AFTER THE REVIEWER’S FINAL VISIT. IT ALSO MISIDENTIFIED THE RESTAURANT’S CHEF. DANNY GRANT HAS BEEN THE CHEF SINCE NOVEMBER. ALSO THE REVIEWER OVERESTIMATED THE NUMBER OF SEATS AT MAPLE & ASH. THE RESTAURANT SEATS ABOUT 160.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

In pursuit of justice

On a summer night in 2011, Chicago police oﬃcer Marco Proano fatally shot 19-year-old Niko Husband outside a dance party. The Independent Police Review Authority said the shooting was justiﬁed. What would a civil jury say? BY STEVE BOGIRA 10

The gentleman thrifter BY DAY, JULIUS ADORSU JR. is a supervisor at a major retailer’s tire center. He spends his off-hours elevating secondhand shopping to a science. On his personal style blog, Thrift Like a Gentleman (thriftlikeagent.tumblr.com), he offers advice on “dressing well without breaking the bank.” “Biggest tip, I’d say, is be patient, persistent, and consistent,” he says. “It takes time to find great deals that may be worth it to you. There will be months where you strike out, and days you hit fashionable home runs.” —ISA GIALLORENZO See more Chicago street style on Giallorenzo’s blog chicagolooks.blogspot.com.

FEBRUARY 25, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 3

AGENDA R

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F so tightly wound she’s often exhausting to listen to. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 3/19: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 4 PM, Strawdog Theatre Company, 3829 N. Broadway, 773-528-9696, strawdog.org, $28. My Solo Show of All Duets R What makes this show so delightful? Not just the repertory of Broadway

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WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY TOBIAS LINDHOLM

STARTS FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26 4 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 25, 2016

Doo Wop Shoo Bop " DANNY NICHOLAS

THEATER

More at chicagoreader.com/ theater All the World’s a Stage Andrew Park’s original musical for Quest R Theatre Ensemble takes inspiration from

Shakespeare’s soliloquy breaking down the seven stages of life, and borrows from its cast’s real-life stories as examples. Scott Lamps’s music is too schlocky to resonate beyond pleasantness; I still left a blubbering mess—earnestly relayed life experiences about addiction, marriage, and loss cut through any of the softness. There’s a genuine feeling of compassion throughout, and any of these monologues would hold up to the best episodes of This American Life. —DAN JAKES Through 3/20: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Blue Theatre, 1609 W. Gregory, 312-458-0895, questensemble. org. F

Doo Wop Shoo Bop The Black R Ensemble celebrates the doo-wop era of African-American popular music

with a slick, rousing revue of some 25 R&B hits of the 1940s and ’50s. Written by Jackie Taylor and Jimmy Tillman, the show—directed by Taylor—salutes such vocal groups as the Mills Brothers, the Chords, the Five Satins, the Shirelles, the Platters, the Chantelles, the El Dorados, the Flamingos, and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers. As is usually the case with Black Ensemble productions, the cast of dynamically talented singer-dancers is top-notch. Their renditions of such classic tunes as “Sh-Boom,” “Only You,” “In the Still of the Night,” “Dedicated to the One I Love,” I Only Have Eyes for You,” “Crazy Little Mama,” and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” perfectly capture doo-wop’s distinctive mix of driving rhythm and cool, creamy close harmony. Tribute is also paid to solo artists such as Fats Domino (“I’m Walkin’”), Dinah Washington (“This Bitter Earth”), LaVern Baker (“Jim Dandy”), and the great Ruth Brown (“Please Send Me Someone to Love”). Taking particular care to honor artists who launched their careers in Chicago, the production also oﬀers concise historical commentary on matters ranging from how the artists

were cheated out of royalties and songwriting credits to the influence of doowop crossover hits on mainstream (i.e., white) pop culture. —ALBERT WILLIAMS Through 3/20: Fri 8 PM, Sat-Sun 3 PM, Black Ensemble Theater Cultural Center, 4450 N. Clark, 773-769-4451, blackensembletheater.org, $45-$65. I & You Hokey, clunky, tricksy, and contrived, Lauren Gunderson’s 2014 two-hander nevertheless possesses an (almost) saving sweetness—along with acting opportunities that are nicely exploited in this collaboration between the Yard and Jackalope Theatre Company. We find teenage Caroline in the bedroom to which, we’re told, she’s confined now due to a life-threatening liver disorder. In barges classmate Anthony, announcing that he’s been assigned to partner with her on an American Lit class project: a presentation on the use of pronouns in Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” Naturally, they work up more than a presentation. Director Dana Murphy can’t finesse Gunderson’s sloppy progress toward a cheap, Twilight Zone-esque revelation. Still, Tevion Lanier’s ingratiating Anthony and Olivia Shine’s endearingly idiosyncratic Caroline combine with glimpses of the Good Gray Poet’s greatness to produce a gentle 90 minutes. —TONY ADLER Through 3/6: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, the Frontier, 1106 W. Thorndale, jackalopetheatre.org, $15, $10 students. In a Word In one inattentive moment, Fiona’s seven-year-old was abducted. Now, two years later, Fiona’s barricaded herself behind grief, guilt and denial, leaving her long-suffering husband, Guy, to wonder whether adultery might be his surest route to emotional healing. It’s a promising setup, but playwright Lauren Yee never moves beyond her premise. Instead she devotes 85 minutes of fractured, at times hallucinogenic scenes to filling in Fiona’s backstory with little dramatic purpose beyond justifying Fiona’s psychological state (as if losing a child doesn’t explain enough). In lieu of drama, Yee embellishes stasis with incessant, overwrought poetic flourishes. There’s no shortage of pathos in director Jess McLeod’s sure-footed production, although Mary Winn Heider’s Fiona is

staples, which we hear sawed in half for these hilariously maimed solo renditions. Not just the deadpan of accompanist T.J. Shanoff, who brings the house down wordlessly from the bench many times, fingers flying. Not just the whole conceit of having a one-woman show of duets. It’s all that—for who can explain the incredible clowning of Shirley Lame (pronounced la-MAY, natch), her complete grasp of the audience, her instant shifts from showbiz glitz back into the heavyhearted pathos of a dream somewhat past its prime? It’s all so wonderful, such a trip. As Shirley reminds you between songs, she is a star. Don’t worry if you haven’t brought flowers to throw, she has extra. It’s a pity this show runs just once a week. —MAX MALLER Through 3/24: Thu 8 PM, Annoyance Theatre, 851 W. Belmont, 773-697-9693, theannoyance.com, $15, $10 students.

Rock Baby Rock This live dinner R show is a groovy cure for your Million Dollar Quartet closing blues. For-

mer cast member Lance Lipinsky—Jerry Lee Lewis in the long-running Chicago staple—takes center stage, leading a retrospective concert featuring hits from the 50s and 60s, the “golden age of rock ’n’ roll.” Songs like “Great Balls of Fire” are crowd-pleasers, but Lipinsky oﬀers a much more broad and nuanced performance with his band the Lovers and backup singers the Lovettes. Interstitial bits on the history of Chicago’s “record row” add some locational interest, along with nods to relevant memorabilia around the Hard Rock Cafe itself, but music is what matters here, and the cast deftly builds momentum, moving from the big-band era all the way to the British Invasion. On the night I attended several audience members even got up to dance. —MARISSA OBERLANDER Through 5/3: Tue 7:30 PM, Hard Rock Cafe, 63 W. Ontario, 312-943-2252, hardrock.com/chicago, $45 (includes $20

First Draft " MATTHEW GREGORY HOLLIS

voucher for food or beverages). The Shape of Things In Neil LaBute’s cruel and cunning take on Pygmalion, grad student Evelyn makes over dorky Adam as an art project, all the while letting him believe she’s falling for him. Director Katherine Siegel updates LaBute’s 2001 script for the Snapchat age in her staging for Eclectic Full Contact Theatre, which prominently features projections (designed by Patrick Iven) of the characters‘ social media profiles. This manages to connect the play’s point about the heartlessness of art for art’s sake with the way we habitually and sometimes recklessly exhibit ourselves online for the appraisal of others. Unfortunately, the effect is marred by one-note acting; Andy Blaustein’s Adam is unvaryingly dopey, while the lack of vulnerability in Michelle Annette’s Evelyn gives away the game from the start. —ZAC THOMPSON Through 3/6: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, 773-935-6860, eclectic-theatre.com, $27-$32, $17-$22 students and seniors. Sister Act It’s hard to hate a show like the unpretentious 2011 musical version of the high-grossing 1992 Whoopi Goldberg vehicle, packed as it is with so many sweet if forgettable tunes (by Alan Menken and Glenn Slater), many of them loving imitations of disco hits. But it’s also hard to be passionate about a silly, shallow script that aims low and still, frequently, misses. In Marriott’s loud, cartoonish version, the first act just drags. Director Don Stephenson allows his actors to indulge in the kind of overthe-top punch-line telegraphing that kills comedy. The music numbers fare better, thanks in part to Melissa Zaremba’s pleasing choreography and Nancy Missimi’s playful costuming. —JACK HELBIG Through 4/3: Wed 1 and 8 PM, Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 4:30 and 8 PM, Sun 1 and 5 PM, Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, 10 Marriott, Lincolnshire, 847-6340200, marriotttheatre.com, $47-$52. Those Sensational Soulful 60s R Black Ensemble Theater’s 40th anniversary season is essentially a vic-

tory lap for executive producer Jackie Taylor, who’s polishing up and showcas-

Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of February 25

programs. A reception honoring Silver Camera Award winner Barbara Crane will precede the auction. Thu 2/26, 5:30 PM. $175. 195 E. Delaware Deadly Prey Gallery “Flesh and Stars,” an exhibition by artists Dana Grossmann and Jeﬀery Eckel. Opening reception Fri 2/26, 6-10 PM. 2/26-2/28: Fri noon-7 PM, 1433 W. Chicago, 312-563-0977, thearchitrouve.com.

Claire Zulkey at the Hideout’s Funny Ha-Ha ò COURTESY CLAIRE ZULKEY ing the company’s biggest jukebox hits over the years. Playing in repertory with its 50s counterpart Doo Wop Shoo Bop, this compilation lacks deep biographies or side plots to get mired in, so the spotlight stays on what Taylor and company do best: rapturous, roof-burning renditions of singles that thrive in the hands of the superb house band. Performances of Aretha Franklin and Jackie Wilson hits, in particular, showcase the electricity BE exemplifies. —DAN JAKES Through 3/19: Wed-Thu 7 PM, Sat 8 PM, Black Ensemble Theater Cultural Center, 4450 N. Clark, 773-769-4451, blackensembletheater.org, $45-$65. Ziryab, the Songbird of Andalusia The poet and musician Ziryab was one of the luminaries of southern Spain’s medieval Islamic period, particularly when it came to playing the lutelike oud. In this solo show from Silk Road Rising, writer-performer Ronnie Malley argues that the flowering of Ziryab’s art came about in part due to the confluence of cultures—Islamic, Christian, and Jewish— he encountered in ninth-century Andalusia. Malley, the child of Palestinian immigrants, links that earlier example of multiculturalism to his own upbringing on the city’s southwest side. The show’s first-person accounts are stirring and Malley is a skillful musician; in addition to singing and strumming the oud, he plays percussion and the electric guitar. The production only drags in the middle, when things get too technical. —ZAC THOMPSON Through 2/28: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 4 PM, Silk Road Rising, 77 W. Washington, 312-8571234, silkroadrising.org, $20, $15.

DANCE R

First Draft Winifred Haun & Dancers present a showcase featuring works by Wendy Clinard, James Gregg, and Lucy Vurusic. Fri 2/26-Sat 2/27: 7:30 PM, Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn, 312-337-6543, ruthpage.org, $20-$30.

The Great and Terrible Doctor Faustus Striding Lion and the Athenaeum present an “immersive

dance-theatre soiree” in which the audience follows Faustus and the seven deadly sins through “the darkest quarters” of the century-old theater. See review, page 22. Through 2/29: Fri-Sat 10:30 PM, Sun-Mon 7 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, 773-9356860, athenaeumtheatre.com, $30, $20 students and seniors. Lord of the Dance The R renowned Irish dance troupe visits the Chicago Theatre on its “Dan-

Living Room Gallery “To Heed Nature’s Call,” Ryan Duggan’s exhibit featuring a “treasury” of shitting dogs is coming to a close. All prints will be on display and available for sale. Fri 2/26, 7 PM. By appointment. 1530 W. Superior, 312-2263020, livingroomgallery.org.

LIT

Funny Ha-Ha The Hideout hosts R its comedy reading series featuring comedians, writers, and bloggers from around the city. Fri 2/26, 7 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, 773-2274433, hideoutchicago.com, $10 suggested donation.

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

stunt work, though the hero’s quieter moments with his coach, and even more so with his parents (Jo Hartley and Keith Allen, both wonderful), are equally stirring. With Jim Broadbent and Christopher Walken. —LEAH PICKETT PG-13, 105 min. City North 14, Webster Place 11 The Last Man on the Moon As commander of the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, astronaut Eugene Cernan became the last person to walk on the moon’s surface (he wrote his daughter’s initials in the dirt before reboarding the lunar module). That may not be enough of a distinction to justify a documentary, but Cernan did participate in three space missions altogether, and his recollections of them, nicely re-created with archival footage and sound eﬀects, make for an interesting memoir (2014). Director Mark Craig struggles to construct a terrestrial portrait of Cernan, now a Houston retiree in his 80s, and one senses a man powerless against the gravitational pull of his career. Inter-

““ALL ALL HEART raw and real, and emotionally genuine.” - Prairie Miller, ,!#+")'(-$(' %'&-* ,!#+")'(-$('

STARTS FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26 CHICAGO SOUTH BARRINGTON AMC RIVER EAST 21 AMC SOUTH BARRINGTON 30 322 E Illinois St amctheatres.com 175 Studio Dr amctheatres.com

gerous Games” tour, featuring the ﬁnal onstage performances of leader Michael Flatley. Wed 3/2, 7:30 PM, Chicago Theatre, 175 N. State, 312-462-6300, thechicagotheatre.com, $29.50-$149.50.

COMEDY Meow What? The comedy group behind ﬁlms including Super Troopers, Club Dread, and Beerfest performs a one-night beneﬁt show for Halcyon Theatre. Thu 2/25, 8 PM, Park West, 322 W. Armitage, 773-929-5959, parkwestchicago.com, $25-$45. Redux Sirens, a septet of smart, R seasoned female comics, bring back their improvised evening of

short, subtly interconnected scenes. There may not be much plot, but who cares, because Sirens have perfected something more interesting. Namely, a method for exploiting unintended moments of awkwardness: when a scene fails, it’s replayed in a more persuasive context (hence the show’s title, Redux). The tactic allows even the most labored of starting points to be proﬁtably and hilariously recast.—JENA CUTIE Through 4/9: Sat 7:30 PM, Under the Gun Theater, 956 W. Newport, 773-270-3440, undertheguntheater.com, $12.

VISUAL ARTS Casino Club Darkroom, the Museum of Contemporary Photography hosts its annual beneﬁt auction, with all proceeds supporting MoCP exhibitions and

Eddie the Eagle

MOVIES

More at chicagoreader.com/ movies NEW REVIEWS Eddie the Eagle Based on the R true story of Eddie Edwards, an amateur ski jumper who deﬁed the

odds to represent Great Britain at the 1988 Winter Olympics, this inspirational heart-warmer from director Dexter Fletcher (Bugsy Malone) is the cinematic equivalent of a hug. Taron Egerton plays the sweet, pudgy, farsighted hero; Hugh Jackman is his American coach, an alcoholic former Olympian whose bristly veneer Edwards gradually softens. Fletcher produces some breathtaking jump scenes, combining thrilling aerial shots with nicely blended CGI and

views with his family members conﬁrm that, like many former astronauts, he regards himself as an angel among men; at the same time, he seems trapped in his own past, still second-guessing his performance during the troubled Gemini 9A mission in 1966. —J.R. JONES 95 min. Fri 2/26, 2 PM; Sat 2/27, 5 PM; Sun 2/28, 2 PM; Mon 2/29, 6 PM; Tue 3/1, 6 PM; Wed 3/2, 8 PM; and Thu 3/3, 8:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center Magical Girl Conservatively R paced but always compelling, this Spanish suspense ﬁlm (2014) takes

so many psychological left turns that after a while it begins to feel like a vortex. A single father, wrestling with the news that his 12-year-old daughter has leukemia, resolves to buy her an expensive dress she covets, and following a random sexual encounter with a married woman, he embarks µ

FEBRUARY 25, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 5

AGENDA Jewish maﬁa—is so murky it leaves the whole cast looking tentative, if not defensive. As Hillcoat proved with his Virginia bootlegging drama Lawless (2012), he ain’t from around here, and his treatment of Atlanta never amounts to more than a few onscreen titles announcing streets and neighborhoods. Really the movie takes place in a world of subterranean garages where anyone sitting in the driver’s seat of a car is just asking to get his head sprayed across the windows. With Norman Reedus, Michael K. Williams, and Clifton Collins Jr. —J.R. JONES R, 115 min. Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, 600 N. Michigan, Webster Place

The Witch

B on a blackmail scheme to get the money. Writer-director Carlos Vermut distinguishes himself with his willingness to court melodrama; the layers of perversion, betrayal, and revenge verge on the operatic, but the action is played with impressive sobriety. In Spanish with subtitles. —J.R. JONES 122 min. Fri 2/26, 7:30 PM; Sat 2/27, 5:15, 7:30, and 9:45 PM; Sun 2/28, 5:15 and 7:30 PM; Mon 2/29, 7:30 PM; Tue 3/1, 7:30 PM; Wed 3/2, 7:30 PM; and Thu 3/3, 7:30 PM.

Facets Cinematheque Triple 9 Do actors even read scripts anymore? Woody Harrelson, Kate Winslet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anthony Mackie, and Casey Aﬄeck all signed on for this underworld drama, probably banking on the reputation of Australian director John Hillcoat (The Proposition, The Road). But Matt Cook’s maiden feature-length screenplay—something about dirty Atlanta cops being blackmailed by the Russian

6 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 25, 2016

The Vanished Elephant The writer’s journey has been a subject of innumerable ﬁlms, though this dreamlike second feature (2014) from Peruvian writer-director Javier Fuentes-León is better woven than most. An allegory about artistic illusions feeding personal obsession, it makes art and life interchangeable, as a celebrated crime novelist (Salvador del Solar, excellent) receives clues to the whereabouts of his missing ﬁancee (Vanessa Saba) and becomes embroiled in a mystery

that mimics his own stories. Set in Lima and Paracas, this picturesque whodunit fuses police procedural drama with elements of art house and Hollywood noir, while also paying tribute to Latin American writers such as Jorge Luis Borges. Fuentes-León leaves many narrative loose ends, but the ﬁlm’s surrealism enhances its meditation on the artist’s creative process. In Spanish with subtitles. —LEAH PICKETT 109 min. Fri 2/26, 7 and 9 PM; Sat 2/27, 5, 7, and 9 PM; Sun 2/28, 5 and 7 PM; Mon-Thu 2/29-3/3, 7 and 9 PM. Facets Cinematheque The Witch In the tradition of R William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973), this chilling low-budget

horror movie taps into the same temporal fear that sparks religious feeling. A New England farmer (Ralph Ineson), cast out of his Puritan community for heresy, repairs with his wife and children to a cold and remote forest clearing, where privation and the mysterious disappearance of the infant child begins to eat away at them. The oldest child (Anya Taylor-Joy in a ﬁercely focused performance) confesses early on that she’s violated all God’s commandments in thought, and as the elements begin to grind her parents down, she senses a

supernatural temptation. Writer-director Robert Eggers (who based his dialogue on historical records) makes good use of the wild northern Ontario country where this was shot, draining the woods of life with a cold, gray color palette. —J.R. JONES R, 92 min. For venues visit chicagoreader.com/movies.

SPECIAL EVENTS The Iron Ministry U.S. director J.P. Sniadecki (People’s Park) shot this experimental documentary about railway travel in China entirely on moving trains, his crew using mini DV cameras to buzz around the various commercial and social activities like curious insects. Like Leviathan, another recent documentary produced by the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab, this takes the viewer on one heck of a ride (at some points even venturing underneath the cars). But compared to the earlier ﬁlm it’s too familiar to inspire a sense of discovery; the overheard conversations touch on social issues (e.g., China’s rapid industrialization and rampant unemployment) addressed more thoroughly in numerous recent Chinese ﬁlms. In Mandarin with subtitles. —BEN SACHS 82 min. Sniadecki attends the screening,

which will be preceded by a 6 PM reception. Fri 2/26, 7 PM. Logan Center for the Arts Kuzu In this 2014 Turkish drama by Kutlug Ataman (Lola + Bilidikid), a family in eastern Anatolia contrives to find a lamb for an upcoming feast. 87 min. Ataman attends the screening. Fri 2/26, 7 PM. Northwestern University Block Museum of Art F Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival For a critical roundup of the festival see the March 4 issue; for a full schedule see onioncity.org. Wed-Sun 3/2-3/6. Otros Usos: Beatriz Santiago Muñoz Short films and videos by the Puerto Rican artist, who “draws from anthropology and experimental theater to craft exquisite films about the physical and symbolic histories of the Caribbean.” Muñoz attends the screening. Thu 3/3, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center Those Who Feel the Fire Burning Morgan Knibbe directed this 2014 documentary about illegal immigration to the EU nations. 74 min. Sat 2/27, 8 PM, Chicago Filmmakers; also Tue 3/1, 6:30 PM, Columbia College Hokin Hall v

FEBRUARY 25, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 7

CITY LIFE

SUE KWONG

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

POLITICS

Left turn

Why can’t our mayor be less like Bill Clinton and more like Bernie Sanders?

By BEN JORAVSKY

s with all crazes and phenomena, I was slow to “feel the Bern.” Oh, man—it was just the opposite. When I ﬁrst saw images of Bernie Sanders campaigning in Iowa, I figured any candidate who dresses as shlumpy as I do would never, ever appeal to a mass audience. Plus, he’s old. I was watching him on The View—I know, the things I watch—and as a gag they had him shooting baskets. Folks, he was shooting a two-handed set shot—a shot that went out of style sometime in the 50s. I mean, for all the shit I’ve taken over the years for my lumbering shooting style, let me assure you that even I get at least a quarter of an inch off the ground when I shoot my jumper. So I was thinking, there’s no way anyone this old will ever appeal to young people. Then I watched in disbelief as he won and nearly won in New Hampshire and Iowa. And I realized—holy shit, this thing’s for real. I still don’t think he’s going to beat Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, but he’s clearly tapping into a deep and righteous rage over a system that’s rigged. Especially with young people. So now I’m thinking, if Bernie’s brand of politics plays so well on a national stage, how come we elected and then reelected Mayor Emanuel, whose economic policies fit right in with the Mitt Romney wing of the Republican Party?

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What’s the matter with Chicago? I blame it on Richard Nixon. More to the point, to understand where Rahm’s coming from, you need to know a thing or two about his chief political mentor—Bill Clinton. Clinton’s view of politics—like that of so many other baby-boomer Democrats—was largely shaped by the bitterly disappointing presidential campaign of 1972. That’s the one where George McGovern—a left-of-center presidential candidate—got coldcocked by Richard Nixon’s propaganda machine. Having mercilessly smeared McGovern as a soft-on-crime, tax-and-spend liberal wimp, Nixon went on to win every state but Massachusetts. And the District of Columbia. God bless the Democratic voters of the District of Columbia—they weren’t fooled by Reagan either. In the ’72 campaign, Bill Clinton was an idealistic 25-year-old McGovern campaign worker facing the hopeless task of bringing out the Democratic vote in Texas. Nixon clobbered McGovern there, winning about 67 percent of the vote. To understand how that defeat transformed the future president, I urge you to read First in His Class, David Maraniss’s biography of Bill Clinton. The chapter on Texas ends with a priceless scene of Clinton and his pals nursing their collective wounds as they sit around a campﬁre, passing a bottle and a joint—though I’m sure

Clinton didn’t inhale—and ﬁguring out what to do next. It was right about then that Clinton started devising the center-based policies and tactics he needed to ensure that Republicans would never do to him what they did to McGovern. Or as McGovern tells Maraniss: “Clinton seemed to take away the lesson of not being caught too far out on the left on defense, welfare, crime. From there on he would take steps to make sure those were marketed in a way to appeal to conservatives and moderates.” Eventually, Clinton’s nimble maneuvers took him to the White House, where he passed harsh get-tough-on crime drug laws, essentially criminalizing thousands of young black people.

If Bernie’s brand of politics plays so well on a national stage, how come we elected Emanuel, whose economic policies fit right in with the Mitt Romney wing of the Republican Party? Just so you know who paid the biggest price for his ambitions. Helping him shape and market those policies was, of course, Rahm Emanuel, a top aide in the Clinton White House for several years. In many ways, Emanuel has now out-Clintoned Clinton, even though at age 56 he was too young to have a ﬁrsthand experience of the 1972 presidential campaign.

For most of his political career, Emanuel’s shown open contempt for the Bernies of the world and their supporters. It’s as though he figures he can mock and taunt progressive Democrats because he takes their votes for granted. What are they going to do—vote Republican? I’m willing to cut Clinton some slack on these tactics. Like President Obama, he was up against a combative right-wing Congress that demonized his politics. So he had to give nuance to his positions, as though he was constantly trying to win over nervous voters in some suburban swing district in northern Virginia. But Emanuel doesn’t operate with such handicaps. He’s governing in one of the most liberal cities in America and has rock-solid support from a rubber-stamp City Council. He can dare to take chances. And yet . . . Not wanting to look soft on crime, he stayed mum about police shootings, even though they cost the taxpayers millions in settlements. That is, until the Laquan McDonald shooting video forced him to take a stand. His economic policies are like something out of Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down playbook. He endorsed tax breaks and TIF handouts for the well-to-do while attempting to balance the budget by closing schools and mental health clinics. He’s determined to stake his reputation as a union-bashing Democrat who closes union schools, opens nonunion charters, and demands that teachers shut the fuck up and get in line. As for any new and progressive forms of taxation, like a LaSalle Street tax on brokerage transactions? Please—he rejected it out of hand. Wouldn’t want to offend his donors. He even took a page from Nixon’s “war on drugs,” proclaiming his moral opposition to legalizing and taxing marijuana. Now look at us. We’re so broke we have to throw ourselves at the mercy of Wall Street lenders who charge exorbitant fees and interest on loans. Well, with Hillary Clinton inching left to cut off Bernie’s momentum, maybe Rahm can try the same thing in Chicago. If it’s good enough for the Clintons—right Mr. Mayor? Don’t count on it. Just once I wish we had a mayor who led the charge, instead of running to catch up. v

v @joravben

CITY LIFE The Oak Street curve becomes dangerous when icy. ò JOHN GREENFIELD

TRANSPORTATION

Slippery slope

How can we ﬁx the most treacherous part of the Lakefront Trail? By JOHN GREENFIELD

ust southeast of Oak Street Beach, there’s a bend in the Lakefront Trail where it turns south, hugging Lake Shore Drive. As you head downtown, there’s a wall on your right, and the path’s concrete surface slopes down toward the water’s edge, where there’s a sheer drop of several feet into Lake Michigan. During the winter, this hump of land is pounded by waves. After it snows, the waves turn the path into an arctic wasteland of ice boulders, forcing bike riders to dismount and walk their steeds or detour to Inner Lake Shore Drive. At other times, the surf transforms the trail into an angled skating rink that’s also a serious hazard. The curve is especially dangerous for southbound riders, who often fail to see the slick conditions before they round the blind curve. By then it’s usually too late to hit the brakes. When such conditions exist, the Chicago Park District, which is responsible for maintaining the bikeway, barricades the curve with sawhorses and sends out alerts on Twitter

that the section of lakefront is closed. But bike riders like Joe DeCeault hope a permanent solution can be found to fix the most perilous spot on the 18.5-mile-long trail. DeCeault, who works as a Web producer for WBEZ, knows all too well what a death trap the ice-glazed incline can be. In February 2012, during his first season of winter biking, he was doing a training ride on a skinny-tired road bike on a particularly windy morning. Convinced by what he saw farther north that the curve would be ice free, he confidently rounded the bend at a high speed. Then he looked down and saw he was entering a long, slippery stretch. He realized he had to pump his brakes. “As I did, I noticed the wheels start to slide,” he wrote in an e-mail. “My body and bike tilted sideways. Shit!” DeCeault fell from his bike and landed hard on his side and stomach. “It stung like a bitch,” he recalled. “I grabbed at the ground to halt my journey towards the lake.” He came to a stop, but when he lifted his head, he saw his bike continue to slide towards the edge of the

path. “My bike kept going and going and going until—bloop—it dropped off the edge of the concrete and into the lake.” DeCeault is far from the only local cyclist to crash due to perilous conditions at the Oak Street curve. An NBC Chicago clip from January 2014 showed 18 riders wiping out on black ice at the spot, sometimes two at a time, over the course of a few minutes. The mayhem resembles something out of a Keystone Cops ﬂick. “There goes another one, down, down, down,” chuckles the cameraman. The persistence of this problems isn’t so funny. I checked out the path in the middle of last week, a few days after a couple inches of snow had fallen. The Oak Street curve was shellacked with ice and snow, and the trail was barricaded between the beach and the construction site of the Navy Pier Flyover. This $60 million elevated path will soar over Grand Avenue and Illinois Street, eliminating a dangerous trail bottleneck. Much of this stretch was impassable for bike riders, and treacherous for people walking and jogging. So are there any plans to ﬁx the Oak Street curve problem in the long term? Park District spokeswoman Jessica Maxey-Faulkner says there aren’t. However, she noted that this summer the Park District launched a planning process with the Active Transportation Alliance and the Chicago Area Runners Association (CARA) to improve trail safety, including an online survey for residents. Oh, and those cyclists in the NBC video? Maxey-Faulkner says the curve was barricaded at the time the video was shot, so those riders had disregarded the sawhorses. “We ask that patrons respect and adhere to the signage for their own safety,” she says. Accordingly, the CARA group runs take a detour off the lakefront when there are dangerous conditions, staff member Greg Hipp says. “There’s not really a feasible way to address the problem in the short term,” he says. “Even if the Park District salted the trail, it would just get washed off by the waves, because there’s not really a way to block Mother Nature.” Building a seawall at the edge of the path near Oak Street might be a potential solution to that problem, but such a change to the lakefront may require approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The corps might be open to such a project if it was initiated by the

city or the Park District, says Lynne Whelan, spokeswoman for the corps’ Chicago office. The expansion of the shoreline and rerouting of the path at Fullerton could serve as a good model for other parts of the trail, including Oak Street, Active Transportation Alliance campaign director Kyle Whitehead says. (Active Trans tweets about the condition of the trail at @activetransLFT and encourages cyclists to share updates via the hashtag #ChiLFT.) Local architecture ﬁrm VOA Associates has proposed widening the lakefront between Navy Pier and North Avenue via inﬁll, which would create an estimated 60 acres of new green space.

“MY BIKE KEPT GOING AND GOING AND GOING UNTIL— BLOOP—IT DROPPED OFF THE EDGE OF THE CONCRETE AND INTO THE LAKE.” —cyclist Joe Deceault

Whitehead also noted that a solution for the curve could be brainstormed as part of the public-input process for the North Lake Shore Drive reconstruction study. Residents have identiﬁed the need to improve safety on the Lakefront Trail as a top priority for the highway overhaul, which could begin as early as 2019. As for DeCeault, he was never able to retrieve his bike from its watery grave. By the time he returned to the lakefront with a grappling hook and rope, there had been heavy winds and high waves. Nearly the entire path near Oak Street was caked with a thick layer of ice. “After some time in the windy, freezing cold, tossing the hook into the lake over and over and over again—looking a bit deranged, I’d imagine—I gave up,” DeCeault said. “I just decided to be glad that I made it out with a decent-ish story, and the knowledge not to ride too fast or too close to the edge during winter at that curve by Oak Street Beach.” v

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

FEBRUARY 25, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 9

In pursuit of

justice

On a summer night in 2011, Chicago police officer Marco Proano fatally shot 19-year-old Niko Husband outside a dance party. The Independent Police Review Authority said the shooting was justiďŹ ed. What would a civil jury say? By STEVE BOGIRA Illustrations by BOBBY SIMS

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hicago police officer Marco Proano and his partner were driving back to their station when a report came over the radio about a man with an AK-47. It was a warm summer evening, just after midnight, Saturday becoming Sunday. The man with the assault rifle was near 80th and Laflin, a caller had said. Proano, who was 36, and his partner, Robert Johnson, were four blocks away, at 79th and May. Their shift was nearly over. Proano made a U-turn and headed back toward Laflin. Before they got there, another report from a caller said the man with the assault rifle was now a block west of Laflin, at 80th and Ashland. He was described as black, with dreads, wearing a white T-shirt and white or khaki shorts. Proano double-parked near 80th and Ashland. Other officers responding to the calls were also pulling up. This was in the Gresham neighborhood, a low-income, black community long plagued by violence. As Proano and Johnson stepped out of their unmarked Crown Victoria, they heard another report on their radios that the man had entered a party at 8004 S. Ashland. The squat brick storefront at that address was a former Masonic lodge. Its front window was covered, and two men whose black shirts read SECURITY on the back were in folding chairs near the door. Music and raucous voices resounded from within. A dance was going on, the security guards said. A sergeant, Phillip Orlando, told them police had heard a man with an AK-47 was inside. That couldn’t be, the security guards said—they’d frisked everyone who’d entered. Orlando said he was going in nonetheless. The place was crammed with teens. Orlando announced that the party was over and that everyone had to leave. The lights came on, and the partygoers began filing out. As they exited, Proano and other officers patted down the males and checked the females’ purses. Then a girl emerged from the storefront in the tight clasp of the young man behind her. She was 16-year-old Keoni Jackson, he was 19-year-old Niko Husband. Niko, five-foot-ten and slender, had braided hair and was dressed in a green T-shirt and blue jeans. The front of his body was pressed against Keoni’s back, and either one or both of his arms were around her, below her neck. Police would maintain that Jackson was clearly distressed, demanding to Niko, “Who are you? Let me go.” A scuffle began between Niko and the officers, and ended suddenly with three blasts from Proano’s semiautomatic. Niko pulled a

pistol on them, police would maintain, and Proano responded by shooting him three times in the chest. He died almost instantly on the pavement in front of the storefront. This was in July 2011. Two years later, at an annual awards dinner, Proano received the Superintendent’s Award of Valor for his response at 8004 S. Ashland. A press release said a man had pulled a gun on police, and Proano had shot him, “neutralizing the lethal threat.” By the time Proano received the award, Niko Husband’s mother had sued him. The lawsuit, filed in September 2011 by Priscilla Price, alleged that her son had posed no lethal threat to anyone, and that his death had resulted from Proano’s “willful and wanton” conduct. Chicago police fatally shot 44 civilians in the years 2010 through 2012, according to the Independent Police Review Authority. Twenty-four lawsuits stemming from fatal shootings by Chicago cops were filed in those years. Such lawsuits don’t always make it to trial: the weaker suits often are withdrawn or dismissed, and the stronger ones settled. Of the 24 suits, five were dismissed or withdrawn, seven have been settled, and three are still pending. Nine were tried—including Price’s suit last fall. Price’s case tested diametrically opposed accounts of what happened the night her son was killed. If Proano had needlessly killed Niko Husband, and his fellow officers had covered for him, that was certainly an injustice. If Proano was a hero being wrongly maligned, that was likewise unjust. IPRA, which investigates all shootings by Chicago police, rendered its verdict on this incident in 2013. It found Proano’s use of deadly force to be “in compliance with Chicago Police Department policy.” That’s almost always IPRA’s conclusion, however, and, as in many of the agency’s investigations, the finding was based on the accounts of the shooter and other police witnesses. The incident wasn’t captured on video. A lawsuit, perhaps, had a better chance at getting to the truth. Proano and the other police witnesses would be questioned not by an IPRA investigator constrained by police union

rules, but by a lawyer hunting for contradictions. Proano would have his own lawyers to help him tell his story. And the jury would hear from Keoni Jackson, the 16-year-old who police maintained was held against her will. (A spokesperson for IPRA said the agency made “multiple attempts” to reach Jackson for an interview but was unsuccessful. My phone messages to Jackson to ask about this weren’t returned.) On the other hand, in our adversarial justice system, the goal of lawyers on both sides isn’t uncovering truth—it’s winning. At least the trial would offer 12 laypeople a say. They’d have a power seldom granted to ordinary citizens: to review and judge the actions of police. In the rare trials in which the defendant is a law enforcement officer, a jury serves as a truly independent police review authority.

n a morning in late October, Proano and Price sat a dozen feet apart in a courtroom on the 20th floor of the Richard J. Daley Center. The trial was about to start, and the lawyers who’d usually sit between Proano and Price were meeting with the judge in her chambers. Price, 53, has worked in food service for the University of Chicago Medical Center for 20 years. She’s tall and broad-shouldered. Her arms were wrapped around herself, her expression was grim, and her eyes were ﬁxed on the table in front of her. The moments when she was left alone with Proano were especially hard, she told me later, given that “I didn’t care to be in the same room with him.” Price knew that the trial would rub salt in a wound that had yet to close for her. She’d have to sit through more than a week of exhaustive testimony about the moments leading to Niko’s death. She said she was willing to endure that because “I want justice for Niko.” What would justice be? “I want to see Proano punished,” she said. “I don’t want him to have a job as a police officer.” The lawsuit wouldn’t accomplish that, however, regardless of its outcome, since IPRA had already cleared Proano. Nor would the lawsuit punish Proano ﬁnancially: he and the city were both defendants, but if they lost, only the city would pay. Niko’s father, Mark Husband, sat in the spectators’ gallery. The gallery is small, but there was plenty of room on its benches that morning. Husband, 54, dressed in suit and tie, had taken unpaid leave from his job as a cook at Chili’s to watch the trial. He and Price split

up years ago, but he continued to see Niko regularly. Husband was also a plaintiff, as were Niko’s three siblings. “It’s not about the money—we just want to find out what happened to our son,” he told me. Plaintiffs usually say it isn’t about the money. But when the case was over, the city would either owe Price, Husband, and Niko’s siblings a substantial sum, or it would owe them nothing. The climate for such lawsuits has certainly been improving for plaintiffs, in light of the recent series of notorious police shootings captured on video. The climate for Price’s suit would have been even better had the trial been delayed a month: it began four weeks before the city released the video of the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald, the 17-year-old who was carrying a small pocket knife when a police officer shot him 16 times. The city made no offer to settle Price’s suit. Donald Shapiro, Price’s lead lawyer, says he doesn’t know why, and officials in the city’s law department wouldn’t discuss the case or allow the lawyers who tried it for them to talk with me. Proano, also in suit and tie, sat at a corner of the long lawyers’ table, his hands folded in front of him. He’s short and a bit pudgy, with a large head and an impish face. He was born in Ecuador, but he’s lived in Chicago since at least high school. He graduated from Holy Trinity, then worked as a baggage handler at O’Hare for ten years. He earned a criminal justice degree from Daley community college and applied unsuccessfully for law enforcement jobs several times—as a Border Patrol agent, and with the police departments in suburban Brookfield and Chicago. He was accepted on his second try here, and became a probationary beat cop in April 2007. He declined to talk with me for this story. Judge Elizabeth Budzinski soon entered the courtroom, along with the lawyers—three for the city, two for Price. A deputy then ushered jurors to the jury box. Shapiro had ﬁled the case in Cook County circuit court rather than federal court in part because it’s easier to get a “more liberal” jury in Cook County, he said. The local federal district pulls jurors not just from Cook but also from six nearby counties whose populations are whiter and wealthier. Still, of the 14 jurors (12 and two alternates) on this jury, 11 were white and only three were black. Shapiro, 65, grew up in South Shore and has been a trial lawyer for almost 40 years. In 2003 he won a judgment of $9.6 million for the estate of Robert Russ, a 22-year-old Northwestern University football player slain by a Chicago police officer on the Dan Ryan. In J

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his one other previous police-shooting lawsuit, he won a $4 million verdict. To win Price’s suit, Shapiro would have to persuade the jury that Proano’s shooting was legally unjustified. As Judge Budzinski would later instruct the jury, a police officer’s use of deadly force is legally justifiable “only when he reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or another.” The plaintiff’s burden of proof in a civil suit is not “beyond a reasonable doubt,” but “more probably true than not.” As in a criminal case, the verdict must be unanimous. Shapiro began his opening statement by setting the scene for the jury: Niko, an engineering student at Kennedy-King College, lived with his mother and a sister. Shortly after midnight on a July night in 2011, Price called Niko, to check on him. He told his mother he was at a dance party, and that he’d call her afterward. Shapiro recounted how reports about a man with an AK-47 had prompted police officers to end the dance early and search the partygoers as they stepped out the door. He said Niko walked out with his arms around his good friend, Keoni Jackson. “Nobody was choking her,” Shapiro said. “That’s just one of the lies the cops are gonna tell.” Several officers grabbed Husband and Jackson to separate them, Shapiro told the jury. The officers then began “manhandling” Husband, and one of them tased him, causing him “to jerk and scream out in pain.” When that officer dropped his Taser, Proano thought he’d dropped his gun, Shapiro said. Proano shot Niko—“boom, boom”—then put his gun against Husband’s chest, and shot him once more. “Wanton, willful, and malicious? You bet it is,” Shapiro said. Proano had “snuffed out yet another black life on Chicago’s south side.” The city’s lawyers objected in unison to that jab, and Judge Budzinski sustained their objection. But Shapiro had made his point. Shapiro said that Proano and two other officers who wrestled with Husband would claim he pulled a gun on them, but no physical evidence would link Husband to that gun; four other officers who were near the shooting would testify that they never saw Husband in possession of a firearm. That’s because he didn’t really have one, Shapiro said: the pistol that police claim he had was a “throw-down gun,” planted by officers to justify the shooting. In his opening statement for the defense, assistant corporation counsel Jonathan Green told the jury that Proano had “a split second to

12 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 25, 2016

Niko Husband and his mother, Priscilla Price

react to save lives, and he and his fellow officers are still alive, thanks to his quick actions.” Green said that during the scuffle between Husband and the officers, Husband pulled a stainless-steel semiautomatic from his waistband and aimed it at one of the officers, Lionel Piper. That’s when Proano pulled his own gun and shot Husband. “The death of a young man is always a tragedy,” Green said. But the tragedy in this case resulted from “the choices Niko Husband made.” He chose to carry a gun, grab a bystander, and resist police, Green told the jury. “And most of all, Niko Husband chose to pull his gun out and point it directly at Officer Piper. It was Niko Husband who made those choices—not Officer Proano.”

uries are asked to consider whether a defendant committed a particular act; they’re not supposed to decide cases based on evidence suggesting a tendency to commit such acts. “Propensity” evidence— which indicates that a defendant has done similar things on other occasions—is therefore usually inadmissible. So the jury wouldn’t hear about a shooting by Proano two years after he killed Niko Husband—a shooting that was captured on video. On the evening of December 22, 2013, police officers curbed a Toyota carrying six black teens in the Roseland neighborhood near 95th and LaSalle, after it sped out of an alley. Proano and his partner arrived to assist. Video from the dash cam of Proano’s own car showed him rushing on foot towards the Toyota with his gun drawn, held sideways and aimed at the car. When the Toyota started backing up, Proano, though not in its path, began firing. Proano fired more than a dozen rounds into the car, according to a January 2014 lawsuit filed by the teens’ mothers. One of the passen-

gers was wounded in the shoulder, and bullets grazed his forehead and cheek. Another was wounded in the hip and heel. The car came to a stop against a light pole. After the suit was filed, the city won a protective order prohibiting the plaintiff’s lawyers from publicizing the video. The city settled the lawsuit in January 2015 for $360,000. The video may never have seen the light of day but for the actions of Andrew Berman, a recently retired juvenile court judge who’d been on the bench for 18 years. Berman saw the video because one of the juveniles in the car had been charged with possession of a stolen motor vehicle; the Toyota had been stolen, though police didn’t know it when they curbed the car. That juvenile’s case came before Berman in January 2015—on his second-to-last day as a judge. “This was the last trial in my career—and by far the most outrageous,” he told me. Proano’s actions infuriated him. “You can see from the tape that the moment the car moves, he’s just blasting away, even though there’s no threat [from the car] to anybody. He’s shooting into the car itself. It was a miracle no one was killed. The first thought I had was, ‘If the kids in the car are white, he never fires.’” Berman felt that the video needed to be widely seen—so he copied it and leaked it to the Chicago Reporter, which published it online last June. Berman didn’t know then about the Husband shooting, “but I wanted to make sure Proano was never allowed on the street with a gun again. I think he’s just a trigger-happy guy.” Proano has been on desk duty since the 2013 shooting. Just five days after that episode IPRA found his shooting of Niko Husband justified. When Illinois attorney general Lisa Madigan asked U.S. attorney general Loretta Lynch last December for a Justice Department probe of the CPD, Proano’s 2013 shooting was

listed among the “troubling” incidents she named in her letter. IPRA has yet to conclude its investigation of the 2013 incident—it suspends its probes when a law enforcement agency steps in to scrutinize an officer’s conduct. Last week, an FBI spokesperson conﬁrmed to me that its Chicago field office has opened an investigation into Proano’s “actions on December 22, 2013.” Shapiro learned of Proano’s 2013 shooting when the Reporter published the video. It didn’t change the way he planned to try Price’s case, because he knew that evidence of the Roseland shooting would be inadmissible. “But did I have a little more comfort in my own mind in saying [Proano] was trigger-happy? I sure did,” he told me.

he rule about propensity evidence also applies to alleged victims, so the jury wouldn’t hear about Niko’s criminal record either. Niko was arrested three times as a juvenile and ten times after he turned 18. Most of these were for minor offenses—trespassing, gambling, damaging public property, possession of a small amount of pot. The charges were usually dropped at his ﬁrst court appearance. But on New Year’s Day 2009, police investigating a reported theft at the Ford City shopping center at 76th and Cicero found Niko and a security guard in a tussle on the ground in a parking lot. Court records are sketchy—it’s not clear how the scuffle ended—but when the arresting officer searched Niko, he found a loaded semiautomatic pistol in his coat pocket. Niko pled guilty to unlawful use of a weapon two months later, and was sentenced to 18 months of probation. On New Year’s Eve 2009—almost a year exactly after his first felony arrest—police raided an apartment party in Niko’s neighborhood and caught him with a .45-caliber clip in his pocket. He pleaded guilty a month later to unlawful use of a weapon by a felon, and was sentenced to three years in prison. He was accepted into the state boot camp instead, and after completing the four-month program successfully was paroled in July 2010. Niko was a “people person” who liked math and tutored friends in it, Price told me in an interview at Shapiro’s office. When I asked her why he’d been arrested so often, Shapiro’s partner, Matt Basinger, shut down that line of questioning: “She’s not comfortable talking about that aspect of Niko, and, quite honestly, neither are we as her lawyers.” Husband’s rap sheet did suggest an im-

provement in his behavior. He wasn’t arrested again after his release from boot camp in July 2010. Basinger was comfortable with Price discussing this change. Price said that being away from a neighborhood dominated by gangs seemed to allow Niko to switch paths. She said he was well aware that he’d used up his second chances: if he committed another felony, he’d be going to prison. He enrolled at Kennedy-King in the fall of 2010 and was enthused about school, she said. Niko happened to be attending Kennedy-King at the same time as his father, because Mark Husband had returned to school at age 50 to study culinary arts. Niko “might have made some bad decisions earlier, but he was turning his life around,” Husband told me.

roano testiﬁed ﬁrst in the trial. Shapiro pressed him on the circumstances that led to the shooting, his tone ranging from skeptical to incredulous. Proano was elusive and sometimes combative. He recounted seeing Niko and Jackson emerge from the storefront, with Niko hanging on to her from behind. Shapiro confronted him with his 2012 deposition testimony. (In civil suits, most of the witnesses have already given sworn testimony in response to questions from opposing lawyers.) In his deposition, Proano had maintained that Niko had been choking Jackson’s neck with his hands. Proano backed off that in the courtroom, saying he meant arms, not hands. Jackson appeared distressed, Proano told Shapiro, maintaining that she said to Niko, “Who are you? Let me go. Get away from me.” Proano said he then told Niko, “Let her go, dude.” When Niko didn’t, Proano and two other officers—Lionel Piper and James Whigham— grabbed his arms and tried to pry him off her, Proano said. During this scrum, he wedged his arm between Niko and Jackson. That was when he felt the gun in Niko’s waistband. “Gun!,” he said he yelled three times, to alert the other officers. Shapiro wondered why he didn’t simply grab the gun away from Niko. “In a movie, that

might work perfectly,” Proano said with a sniff, “but in this case, I mean, it was a fast-case scenario.” Niko’s T-shirt was over the gun, he said, so he couldn’t quite grab it—especially with the way Niko “was struggling with us, pushing us off.” Proano said he was also concerned about yanking the gun away with Jackson so close: “I didn’t want this gun to go off on her back.” Shapiro asked him how the gun could have gone off if no one fired it. Proano said that during a struggle, “all sorts of things can happen, as far as like it could catch on to his zipper or pull on his belt buckle, and, I mean, accidentally hit the trigger.” Proano said he didn’t draw his own pistol after discovering that Niko had a gun because he was concentrating on trying to hold onto Niko’s arms. He allowed that as far as he knew, none of the other officers drew their guns after he yelled “Gun!” either. Shortly after he felt the pistol, Jackson got away from Niko, Proano said. Then, Proano said, he heard Officer Whigham yell “Taser!” He said he didn’t see Whigham tase Niko, but soon after he heard “Taser!,” Niko and the three officers went to the ground, the officers still hanging on to or grabbing at Niko’s arms. Niko ended up flat on his back on the pavement, Proano said. The officer told the jury he was crouched near Niko’s left shoulder, and that Piper and Whigham were also crouched or kneeling next to Niko. But none of the officers could grab the gun out of Niko’s waistband, Proano said, because he was thrashing “like a fish without water.” The officers kept telling Husband to stop resisting, but he wouldn’t. Proano maintained he didn’t hear a word from Husband through the entire episode, just “grunting and growling.” Soon after Niko landed on his back, he pried himself up on his elbows, reached into his waistband, drew the gun, and aimed it at Piper, Proano told the jury. Piper grabbed the barrel of the gun and tried to push it away. Proano said that was when he drew his own gun and shot Niko three times in the chest. Shapiro noted that Proano weighed 180 pounds, Whigham 240, and Piper 250. He wondered how the 135-pound teen had managed to pry himself up and draw a gun from his waistband with “670 pounds of police beef” on top of him. Proano said the officers weren’t directly on top of Niko. He said he was crouching when he fired the first shot, and standing when he fired the second and third. “Isn’t it a fact that you never gave Niko a warning, just stood up and shot him dead?” Shapiro asked.

I wanted to make sure Proano was never allowed on the street with a gun again. I think he’s just a triggerhappy guy.

—retired Cook County judge Andrew Berman

“It was a struggle,” Proano said. “I didn’t even have a chance to, sir.” “One of the shots you literally placed the muzzle against Niko’s chest and point-blank ﬁred, true?” “As Niko was raising himself up, is that the part you’re referring to? Yeah. My muzzle does make contact with it, yes, with his chest.” Wasn’t it true, Shapiro asked, that “Officer Whigham dropped his Taser, but you thought he’d dropped his gun?” Proano insisted he’d never said that. Shapiro read from Proano’s deposition, in which he said it appeared to him at one point that Whigham was “looking for something on the ground . . . I thought he had dropped his gun or something.” Proano conceded the point. Shapiro zeroed in: “Isn’t it a fact that at the point when Whigham dropped what you thought was his gun . . . you panicked, and you drew your own gun and shot Niko?” “No, sir,” Proano replied. Brian Gainer handled most of the questioning of witnesses for the city. A former police officer, Gainer now works for Johnson & Bell, a private firm, and was retained by the city for the case. When he questioned Proano, he focused on the moment when Niko, according to Proano, drew his gun. “When he pulled the gun out of his waistband and pointed it at Officer Piper, what did you think?” “I thought Niko was going to kill Piper.” “Did you have time to say, ‘Sir, please drop the gun’?” Gainer asked. “No, sir. I had no time.”

iper was a more effective witness for Proano than Proano was for himself. Like Whigham and most of the other officers, he’s black. At the time of the shooting, he was with a unit that specialized in confiscating guns and had been on the force for 12 years. On the trial’s second day, Piper testified that when he and other officers were trying to get Niko to let go of Jackson, he heard an officer say “something to the effect that he’s got a gun in his waistband.” He didn’t draw his own gun then because he was worried about Jackson’s safety. He heard the crackle of a Taser, after which Niko crumpled to the ground. Piper went down with him, trying to hang on to Niko’s right arm to keep him from reaching for the gun. While he, Niko, and the other officers were “rolling around on the ground fighting,” he lost hold of Niko’s right arm and grabbed his left. J

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continued from 13 Niko was “almost flat on his back,” but kept “twisting, flailing,” doing “everything he could to keep us from gaining control of him,” Piper said. And then Niko got his right arm free, drew the gun, and “pointed it in my direction,” Piper said. Shapiro noted that in Piper’s deposition, he’d said Niko was never able to point the gun at him, because he (Piper) kept pushing it away. Piper acknowledged that he’d said that. Then he grew emotional. “Once that gun came out, and he pointed it towards me . . . ” Piper paused and bit his lip. His voice was trembling when he resumed: “I didn’t see anything. I didn’t care about anything. Because I was about to die. That’s what happened.” Piper had also told an IPRA investigator a few hours after the shooting that he’d grabbed the barrel of the gun when Niko pointed it at him. When Shapiro asked him about that, Piper allowed that he never actually grabbed the gun until after Niko was shot. Then Piper got upset again. He pushed a palm against an eye, turned toward Judge Budzinski, and said faintly, “Sorry.” The judge peered at a tissue box on a ledge at the front of her bench, but it was out of her reach. The court reporter rose from her seat near the witness stand, plucked a tissue from the box, and delivered it to Piper. Budzinski asked him if he needed a break. “No, I’ll be all right,” Piper said. The prolonged moment was difficult not only for Piper but also for Shapiro, who knew the jury was soaking it in. Piper told Shapiro he took the gun from Niko after Proano fired. He said he then stood up and checked to see if he was wounded, because he’d thought at first it had been Niko’s gun he’d heard. Once he saw he hadn’t been shot, he checked Niko’s gun and found a bullet in its chamber, which he moved to the gun’s magazine for safety. The magazine was otherwise empty, he said.

fficer Whigham testiﬁed that he drew his Taser instead of his gun because he didn’t want to risk shooting Jackson or his fellow officers. He used the Taser in “drive-stun” mode, because he was too close to Niko for the conventional “probe” mode to be effective. (A Taser in probe mode can incapacitate a subject; drive-stun mode merely causes pain, but the pain stops some subjects from resisting.) He pressed the Taser against Niko’s upper back, stunned him three or four times, then accidentally dropped the device. Niko fell to the ground.

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Oﬃcer Marco Proano put the gun he said police recovered from Niko in his waistband for safekeeping.

Shapiro asked Whigham when Niko drew his gun. Whigham was uncertain. “I mean, it happened real quick,” he said. “One second . . . I seen him standing, the next second, I saw him on the ground with a gun in his hand.” A few hours after the shooting, an IPRA investigator had asked Whigham if Niko went to the ground after the shots were ﬁred, and Whigham had said yes. In the courtroom, Whigham said he made that statement to IPRA because “I was under duress that night.” Gainer later helped him clarify for the jury that he didn’t mean Niko was standing when he was shot—he meant Niko was propped up on his elbows, and went to the ground from that position. The four officers who were near the shooting—but never saw Niko with a gun—each had an explanation as to why. Proano’s partner, Robert Johnson, was close enough to the shooting that Niko’s blood spattered his shirt. He didn’t actually see the shooting, though, he told the jury, because he was facing the other way, focusing on crowd control. Officer Cory Junious, likewise, was busy with crowd control. (Estimates of the size of the crowd outside the club from the officers who testiﬁed varied widely: Proano and Piper said there were 100 to 200 people; Junious said there were “at least 20.”) Officer Ryan Winfrey was occupied with Jackson, whom he handcuffed because he thought she might have been obstructing Niko’s arrest. Winfrey allowed that he glanced toward Niko after he heard the

gunﬁre, but said his view was blocked by other officers. Officer Bob Weatherly was so close to the shooting that Proano’s gun ﬂashed by his face right before he heard the shots. He didn’t see Niko with a gun, but “once the shots rang out, I couldn’t visualize anything because my hearing was distorted.” The police testimony was raising suspicions among jurors. Fred Morg, an electrician from south-suburban Alsip, would tell me later that he found it “completely believable” that the officers weren’t able to quickly subdue Niko, even though there were more of them and they were bigger. Morg, who’s white, has worked security at a nightclub, “and if somebody’s wound up, nobody’s able to grab them that fast.” But he doubted that Proano would have yelled “Gun!” without any of the other officers drawing theirs. “They love to pull that damn gun, you know,” he said. Betty Brugger, a black juror from Evanston, didn’t believe the officers who said they couldn’t see whether Niko had a gun because they were too busy with other things, or were looking the other way. Brugger, who was director of management systems at Northwestern University before she retired a couple of years ago, thought “anybody would have turned around” after they heard the shots to see what happened. “I could tell that they were lying,” she said.

hapiro’s claim about a throw-down gun was bolstered by the curious account police gave of how the pistol made its way from the shooting scene to the mobile crime lab, which arrived about an hour after Niko was killed. The gun he allegedly pulled was safeguarded during that hour not by one of Proano’s supervisors, as would be standard procedure, but by Proano himself. Proano testiﬁed that he helped brieﬂy with crowd control after the shooting, then headed over to Sergeant Orlando’s police SUV, parked nearby on 80th Street. He said he intended to move it to the corner and put crime-scene tape around it to begin forming a barrier between the crime scene and the crowd. Proano said the SUV was unlocked—and that the gun Niko had pointed at Piper was lying on the driver’s seat. He said he picked it up and shoved it in his waistband. “I was afraid somebody was going to break the windows and take that gun,” Proano told the jury. Shapiro asked him if, when he saw the gun, he thought of getting a pair of rubber gloves from a supervisor and putting the gun in an evidence bag, as department policy directs.

Proano said department policy makes exceptions for “exigent circumstances”—and these were such circumstances. “You have to understand, there was still a large mob of crowd trying to attack us, sir,” he told Shapiro. “Did anybody attack you?” “Thank goodness, no, sir.” Shapiro: “Now, you knew when you shoved it in your waistband that by doing so you were providing a possible explanation for why there would not be any forensic evidence found on the gun linking it to Niko Husband, true?” “I’m not a forensic expert, sir, so I wouldn’t know,” Proano said. He stayed in the car about an hour, until he was told to walk over to the mobile crime lab, where he handed the gun to the forensic investigators. Sergeant Orlando testified later that he was inside the storefront when he heard gunshots. When he stepped outside, he saw Piper holding a gun. Piper “obviously was shaken,” Orlando told the jury. “He was saying, ‘He just pointed a gun at me.’” Orlando said he took the gun from Piper and brought it to his SUV. Orlando said he might have retrieved rubber gloves before handling the gun “if the scene was a little more secure.” But “there were people all over the place—running around, screaming.” He said he put the gun on the driver’s seat of his vehicle. He then summoned Proano to stand by the car, and headed back to the crime scene to help set up the perimeter. When he returned to the SUV a few minutes later, he saw that Proano had the gun tucked in his waistband, he said. “I asked him why he was holding the gun, and he said the crowd started to gather . . . and he felt it was unsafe to leave it there.” Orlando said he told him to hold on to the gun until forensics arrived. Orlando acknowledged that he told an IPRA investigator that he’d locked the SUV after he put the gun in it. But that didn’t concur with Proano’s account of finding the vehicle unlocked. Orlando testiﬁed that he must have left the SUV unlocked. He told the jury that when he’d spoken with IPRA, “Obviously, I made a mistake.”

n the trial’s fourth day, Keoni Jackson took the stand. Niko was “like a brother,” she told the jury. Jackson, now 21 and training to be a dialysis technician, said she’d lived a few blocks from Niko. They were friends, but not romantically involved, she said. He tutored her in algebra, and they were in a dance troupe together. The day of the

dance, she’d retwisted his hair, and Niko had bought her lunch at a gyros stand in return. She and a couple of her girlfriends went to the dance that evening. Niko came later. He called and told her he was coming, so she was near the front door when he arrived; she said she saw him get patted down by one of the security guards. She and Niko danced together and “had the crowd’s attention,” she said. Jackson was plainly nervous on the stand, but she smiled at this memory. “We were going through some routines we did in the dance group.” Niko took his shirt off because he was sweating, so she had a clear view of his waistband. Shapiro asked her if he had a gun there. “Absolutely not.” When the police shut down the party, she walked out the door, but not with Niko. She saw the officers doing the pat downs. Then she remembered that she’d left her keys inside, and went back in to get them. Niko saw her, and teased her. “He was like, ‘Did you lose anything else? Are you sure?’ ” And then “he just wrapped his arms around me,” and they walked out the door. His arms were on her shoulders, and her hands were resting on his arms, she told the jury. “He was not holding me hostage, he was not choking me.” “Did you ever look up at Niko and say, ‘Who are you?’” Shapiro asked. “No!” Jackson nearly shouted. “I know who Niko is.” She said an unmarked Tahoe pulled up out front, and two black officers in plainclothes stepped out and signaled to the officers already doing the pat downs “to grab Niko and me.” Officers seized Niko’s arms, and both she and Niko were thrown against the window of the storefront. Shapiro asked her if Niko was refusing to cooperate. “Absolutely not,” she said. “I don’t know where they got that from.” Officers pushed her to the ground, she said. She heard an officer threaten to tase Niko, and then she heard Niko scream. His arms were behind his back, and it looked to her like he’d been handcuffed. She was trying to get up off the ground when she heard the gunshots—two of them, a pause, then a third. She didn’t see who shot Niko. The officers who had been holding his arms when he was shot then laid him down on his back. Shapiro asked her if Niko had pulled a gun. “Never,” Jackson said. “He did not pull out a gun at all.” Soon after Niko was shot, one officer got her off the ground and “handed me off to a female police officer,” who handcuffed her. She was

led to a nearby police Tahoe, where she said they kept her, handcuffed, until 5 AM. (The city later recalled Officer Winfrey in rebuttal; he said Jackson was handcuffed for only a few minutes.) The pause Jackson described between the second and third shots was important, because it ﬁt Shapiro’s assertion that Proano had shot Husband twice, then had maliciously put the muzzle of his gun against Niko’s chest for the ﬁnal shot. So on his cross-examination, Gainer, the city’s lawyer, pressed Jackson on how long the gap had been. “A minute,” Jackson said. “A few seconds. It could have been 30 seconds. I couldn’t tell you exactly . . . maybe 20 seconds.”

On redirect, Shapiro tried to help Jackson clear that up. “I’m going to show you what 20 seconds would be,” he said. Standing in the center of the courtroom, he crooked his arm in front of him and stared at his wristwatch. “So let’s go—boom, boom!” The courtroom was eerily silent for the next 20 seconds. “And, boom. Was it something like that?” Jackson was obviously supposed to say no, it wasn’t nearly that long; even Shapiro didn’t believe that Proano had shot Niko twice, then a full 20 seconds later had put his gun against Niko’s chest and shot him again. But Jackson said yes. At the lawyers’ table, Gainer couldn’t suppress a grin. Later, Shapiro told me with a shrug: “You give them a big softball to hit out of the park, and sometimes they whiff.” Jackson also told Gainer that Niko was standing when the ﬁrst two shots were ﬁred, but could have been on the ground when she heard the third shot. Gainer reminded her of her deposition testimony, in which she said Husband was standing when she heard all three shots. Jackson conceded that she wasn’t really sure. She also allowed that she did say “Get off me, let me go,” during the incident “but it wasn’t to Niko. I was saying it to the police officers who were grabbing me.” And she acknowledged that when a detective questioned her in the SUV right after Niko was shot, she didn’t tell the officer how appallingly police had acted, as she later told the jury.

Gainer: “You had just witnessed a friend who was like a brother get shot and manhandled by multiple police officers, while handcuffed behind his back. You’re speaking to a detective about what happened—and you didn’t say what you saw?” No, Jackson said, she didn’t. Something else Jackson said on the stand hurt Shapiro’s claim about a throw-down gun. She said that while she was still near the storefront after the shooting, she saw an officer holding a gun that he said he’d recovered. “And that gun was silver?” Gainer asked. “Correct.” Gainer was occasionally sarcastic in his questioning of Jackson, and Betty Brugger, the juror from Evanston, didn’t appreciate it. “I didn’t like how he grilled her,” she said after the trial. “Niko was her friend, so she might have been exaggerating. But she was 16 at the time, and it was four years ago. I thought the questioning wasn’t respectful.” Shapiro called one other friend of Niko’s, 22-year-old Donovan Moore. He said he’d witnessed the shooting from down the street. He’d seen two or three white officers tasing Niko, and then an officer in a white uniform shirt shooting him. No one else, Jackson included, had seen that. (Proano, working in plainclothes, had been wearing a T-shirt and vest.) Shapiro had considered putting on other civilian witnesses he’d interviewed, but their stories kept shifting. He realized that if he were going to win the case, it wouldn’t be on the strength of the civilian eyewitnesses, but on the shortcomings he could highlight in the police testimony.

he only neutral witness in the trial was Dr. Mitra Kalelkar, the forensic pathologist who did Niko’s autopsy. Price and Mark Husband left the room before she began testifying. Kalelkar told the jury that the bullets perforated Niko’s aorta and right lung, and fractured his sternum and trachea. The injuries caused by any of the three would have been fatal, she said. Shapiro asked her if Niko lived brieﬂy after he was shot. Damages can be awarded for a victim’s suffering from the moment he’s injured until his death. Kalelkar said Niko aspirated blood into his lungs, which indicated he’d taken some breaths. On cross-examination, Green, the assistant corporation counsel, sought to stress the brevity of this period: “He actually only lived for a breath or two—isn’t that correct?” Kalelkar: “Maybe two or three or four— enough to bring blood down into his lungs.”

The toxicology test showed that Niko had no alcohol, opiates, or cocaine in his system, Kalelkar said. Two of the entrance wounds were near each other on the right half of his chest. The third wound, on the left half of the chest, had bloody, blackened margins, indicating that it was a contact wound: “The muzzle of the gun was touching the skin as it was being ﬁred.” She couldn’t determine the order in which the wounds were sustained, or what position Husband was in when he was shot, or whether his body was in motion. On a projection screen facing the jury, Shapiro displayed an autopsy photo of Niko’s body from the waist down, as it was clothed when it arrived at the morgue: in loose-ﬁtting jeans sagging well below the waist. Kalelkar said on cross that she didn’t know the position of the jeans when Niko was shot. But the photo made an impression on jurors, both Morg and Brugger told me: they wondered how a gun could have stayed in the waistband of such saggy jeans during Niko’s scuffle with police.

n addition to neutral experts such as Kalekar, civil trials often feature dueling, well-paid expert witnesses, and this trial was no exception. Shapiro’s expert, Brookfield, Wisconsin-based Dennis Waller, had held a variety of positions in small police departments, from officer to chief, in a 20-year law enforcement career. In 1992 he founded Waller & Associates, a firm that consults on police-related litigation. Shapiro had retained him to review records and depositions and offer his opinions, for which he had thus far made $20,000. Waller said Proano and his fellow officers didn’t have the right to pat down Husband as he left the party, because his clothes didn’t match the description of the man with the AK47, and because such riﬂes are far too big to conceal on a person, especially one in summer clothing. He doubted that Proano had ever yelled “Gun!”—if he had, the other officers would have drawn theirs, he said. He found it incredible that an officer would respond to such a warning with a Taser. “You don’t take a Taser to a gunﬁght,” he told the jury. Proano’s purported handling of the gun he claimed Niko drew was also suspect, he said. “If indeed he [Niko] had the gun, I wouldn’t want to contaminate it with my biological material” the way Proano had when he shoved the pistol into his waistband. Waller said he couldn’t imagine officers “doing anything J

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more to cover up or contaminate evidence” than the officers had done in this case. If Husband had a gun in his waistband to begin with, Waller said, it likely would have fallen out or slipped down a pants leg as he wrestled with police. Officers are trained to keep their own guns holstered because of how guns in waistbands slip, he said. Proano sat impassively through most of the trial, but he scowled at times as Waller testified. The defense’s expert, Aaron Brudenell, had worked for five crime labs, had a background in chemistry, and specialized in shooting-incident reconstruction. The cost to the city for his work had been $60,000 to date, he acknowledged. Brudenell noted that not all AK-47s are large: if the stock is removed or the weapon cut down, the rifle could possibly fit in a purse, he said. He’d visited the scene of the shooting, photographed and analyzed the pavement, studied the autopsy report, considered the condition of the recovered bullets, and concluded that the contact shot was likely the first one fired. Niko was probably “seated up slightly” when that bullet struck him; the other two shots were likely fired as he fell from that position. This corroborated the city’s and Proano’s version of the shooting.

“I bought him some Burger King, and he came home and got the Burger King.” She called him shortly after midnight. “He said he was at a party.” Her voice cracked as she added, “He said, ‘Mom, I will call you back.’” “Was that the last time you ever spoke to him?” Basinger asked. “Last time,” Price murmured. She said that when she and her daughter visit his grave in the Mount Hope cemetery in Morgan Park, “We pray and we talk with Niko, and just have a conversation, and tell him we love him and miss him.” Since Niko died, she’s had trouble eating and sleeping, she said, and she’s started smoking. She’s missed some work, and she’d started seeing a therapist. Basinger asked her what about Niko she missed most. “I miss his smile. I miss him saying he love me, and saying it to him. I miss giving him a hug and a kiss.” Mark Husband also testiﬁed brieﬂy, telling the jury how much he missed his son. Niko’s felony record constrained Shapiro’s ability to build a case for the extent of the loss caused by his death. Shapiro could touch lightly on Niko’s attributes with his parents, but if he pushed for more from them about his virtues, or if he put on, say, a teacher or a pastor to extol Niko’s character, the city could argue that it ought to be able to rebut such claims with his criminal record. This in turn would likely limit the damages the jury would award if they found for the plaintiff. It may have been one of the reasons the city was willing to roll the dice on a trial.

he testimony of Niko’s mother was short and mournful. Price’s eyes were vacant, her voice hollow. She pulled tissues from the box on the witness stand in front of her. Shapiro’s partner, Matt Basinger, had to strain to get responses to the requisite questions. What did she like doing with Niko? “Taking him shopping, buying him clothes.” Did he help out around the house? “He did.” Was he affectionate? “Yes. He’ll hug me, give me a kiss.” How often? “Mostly every day.” She saw him a few hours before the dance.

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n the night in question, “a group of African-American teens were having fun,” Shapiro told the jury in his closing argument—until some police officers, acting as “stormtroopers” provoked the fatal episode. They could have acted more respectfully, he said, but “that’s not the way that they treat the kids in this neighborhood.” He scoffed at the defense’s account of the shooting. Wouldn’t the other officers draw their own guns after Proano yelled “Gun!”? Why did only three of seven officers see Niko with a gun? How could Niko possibly have drawn a pistol if three much larger officers had him on the ground? “What, was Niko the world’s strongest 135-pound kid?” Shapiro noted that the negative toxicology result showed that Niko wasn’t “hyped up on drugs.” Would he really pull a gun on a bunch of officers? Shapiro wondered aloud. A gun loaded with a single bullet?

Sometimes the truth is messy. It’s not a movie. It’s not a novel. It’s not CSI. It’s real life.

—defense attorney Brian Gainer

About Jackson’s testimony, he said: “We really got to give this girl some slack. Her friend Niko was blown away right in front of her eyes. Have a few details gotten fuzzy? Sure. Did she get nervous and intimidated by Mr. Gainer? Sure.” But she was consistent about what mattered, Shapiro maintained: that Niko was hugging her as they left the dance, not choking her—and that he didn’t have a gun. When Whigham dropped his Taser and Proano thought it was Whigham’s gun, it may have “spooked Proano,” Shapiro said. So he shot Niko—“once, twice, and then the third time, with the gun right up against Niko’s chest.” Shapiro observed that Piper’s work on a gun team gave him access to untraceable weapons. “You don’t think he carried a throw-down gun for use in situations like this?” If police had really recovered a gun from Niko, they’d have treated it “like a supercrucial piece of evidence,” Shapiro said, instead of the way they’d handled it. “Can I prove it’s a throw-down gun beyond a reasonable doubt? No. But is it more probably true than not? You bet it is.” Most telling, he said, was the city’s failure to test the swabs taken from the gun to see if Niko’s DNA had been on it. “That’s an absolute clincher,” Shapiro said. “They knew his DNA wasn’t gonna be on the gun—because they knew it wasn’t his gun!” He turned to the subject of damages. Niko had “his whole life ahead of him,” Shapiro said—and then suddenly it was taken from him by a “trigger-happy police officer.” Now jurors had the chance to “balance the scales.” By awarding damages to Niko’s survivors, Shapiro said, “you will do justice to the concept that all lives matter.” He said Price was a woman of few words, but it was clear she loved Niko deeply. “What are you gonna tell her about the value of her son?” He suggested $10 million for the “loss of society” to Niko’s family, and $5 million for their “grief and sorrow.” A family’s grief “doesn’t end when the casket goes in the ground,” he observed. Niko’s own pain and suffering also merited damages, he said. He reminded the jury that the teen didn’t die until the blood he aspirated into his lungs “choked him to death.” He didn’t put a dollar ﬁgure on Niko’s pain and suffering, but asked the jurors what they’d tell the youth was “full and fair compensation” if he were “standing here before you.” “Do what you think is just,” Shapiro concluded, “but let justice be done.”

Shapiro returned to his seat next to Price, and Gainer, buttoning his suit coat, stepped to the podium. “Any death is a tragedy,” he told the jury. But the plaintiff shouldn’t win merely because “Niko Husband’s family is sad,” he said. “It’s OK to be sympathetic. But it’s not OK to base your verdict on sympathy. “This case is about that moment when Niko Husband’s gun was pointed at Lionel Piper,” Gainer said. “It’s about the decisions that Niko Husband made . . . that forced Marco Proano to use deadly force to save Lionel Piper’s life.” Moments after admonishing jurors not to decide the case based on sympathy, Gainer reminded them of how Piper told them “with tears in his eyes that he thought he was gonna die.” Piper “could not have been more honest and forthright on the stand, including his emotion.” The reason some of the officers didn’t see Niko with a gun was simple, he said: “People have different vantage points. That’s how life works. It would be a thousand times more suspicious if every police officer came in here and told you exactly the same thing. Sometimes the truth is messy. It’s not a movie. It’s not a novel. It’s not CSI. It’s real life.” He ridiculed the plaintiff’s theory that police conspired to hide a bad shooting. “Think about the scope of this conspiracy, how vast it had to be,” he said. One of the officers at the scene would have had to have been carrying an extra gun “every day, just in case they needed it . . . and then spring into action in seconds to get that gun where it needs to be.” He dismissed what he called Jackson’s “made-up” testimony—with one exception: her account of seeing an officer holding a silver gun at the scene after Niko was shot. That “major slipup” corroborated Piper’s account. With a hostile crowd nearby, of course Proano wanted Niko’s gun as close to him as possible after the shooting, Gainer said. “What’s more secure . . . than having it on your person?” The fact that the city didn’t test to see if Niko’s DNA was on the gun “goes both ways,” he said: the plaintiff didn’t test, either, and so didn’t offer any evidence “to exclude Niko Husband from that gun.” Gainer returned to Piper’s poignant testimony a couple of times, lest the jurors forget it. “I saw what you saw,” he said. “He was not acting. By day two of this trial, you know that this shooting was justiﬁed.” The “willful and wanton conduct” requirement for a verdict against Proano meant he wasn’t liable if he simply made a mistake, Gainer said, or “if he didn’t yell ‘Gun!’ loud

enough,” or if he shouldn’t have put Niko’s pistol in his waistband. “He’s only liable if you think he intended to hurt Niko Husband without legal justification.” Proano “didn’t fire 16 times, he didn’t fire 13 times,” Gainer reminded the jury. “He fired three times.” It was easy to sit in the “safety of this courtroom” and “pick apart” the decisions the officers made on a summer night four years ago, Gainer said. But the bottom line was that “Proano acted quickly and did what he had to do.” In his rebuttal, Shapiro said the shooting was indeed traumatic for Piper—not because Niko almost killed him, but because Proano almost did. He reminded the jury that Piper said he was leaning over Niko right before Proano fired. “You bet he saw his life pass before his eyes, but it wasn’t because of anything Niko Husband did.” Shapiro had spent seven days telling the story of an unarmed victim. But there was a less sympathetic story he knew he must also offer, which he did at this point. “I’m not going to pretend that you haven’t heard evidence that Niko Husband had a gun,” he said. “Is it possible that Niko Husband had a gun in his pants that the cops saw? Is it possible that when they threw him to the ground, that gun fell out? Even if you think, ‘Well, maybe he did have a gun,’ that doesn’t make it a justified shooting.” The fundamental issue wasn’t whether he had a gun, Shapiro said—it was whether he drew it and pointed it “such that Proano needed to shoot.” After Shapiro sat down, Judge Budzinski read the jury their instructions. Then she said she had to do “the worst part of my job”—excusing the alternate. (One juror had been dismissed a few days earlier for airing her views on the case prematurely, so only one alternate remained.) Alternates are the last ones picked before the trial, but to make sure they remain

engaged, the judge and the lawyers don’t make it clear to the jurors who’s an alternate and who’s a regular juror. Budzinski announced that Betty Brugger was the alternate, and excused her. Brugger was disappointed, and the handful of friends and family members of Niko’s in the courtroom were clearly dismayed. They liked their chances better with three black jurors, one of them told me later, and now they were down to two.

his was a Friday, and none of the jurors were thrilled about the prospect of returning the following week to ﬁnish deliberations, so they began immediately, over lunch. Morg, the electrician, was chosen as foreperson. “Nobody else wanted the job,” he said later. “I’m a foreman at work all day, so I’m used to it.” Morg, 45, sings and plays guitar in a metal band in his free time. His electrical work often takes him to the south and west sides, so he was familiar with the neighborhood in which the shooting had taken place. When lawyers were selecting the jury, he’d informed them that his cousin was a Chicago police detective, so Morg was stunned that he’d been picked. Early in their deliberations, the jurors discussed whether they thought Niko really had a gun. Morg himself was uncertain. He doubted Sergeant Orlando’s account. “If the crowd was that hostile, nobody’s throwing a gun on a seat of an unlocked car and walking away.” He was troubled that Orlando initially said he locked the car, then changed his story after Proano said the car had been unlocked. “It had the feeling of somebody stepping up and getting rid of a problem after a mess.” Morg also believed that if Niko was carrying a gun, he had no intention of using it. He thought the officers could have separated Niko

and Jackson without starting a confrontation. “It sounded like they put hands on him without really trying to talk sense into him,” he told me. “Understood, they’re in a tough area. But you’re going to have more problems if you don’t try to talk with people like humans. Keeping the peace is still the best way to get it done.” Morg’s fellow jurors were even more skeptical about the accounts of the police witnesses. He said most of them thought Niko didn’t have a gun. After about an hour and a half, one of the jurors suggested they take a vote to see where they stood. Besides verdict forms, the jury had been given two “special interrogatories” to answer. Special interrogatories are often submitted to civil juries to try to ensure that their reasoning has been sound. Illinois law, like that of most states, allows either party to ask a few such questions, but they’re usually asked by the defense (as they were in this case). If there’s a conflict between a jury’s answer to a special interrogatory and its verdict, the verdict is negated. The Illinois Appellate Court observed in 2007 that special interrogatories “provide the defendant with a ‘magic bullet’ that he can use to upset the verdict against him.” Plaintiff lawyers have argued in vain for the elimination of these questions. As is standard procedure, Judge Budzinski had not told the jury what impact the special interrogatories could have on the verdict. Morg thought they were worksheets meant to help the jury with its deliberations. “They almost seemed insulting,” he told me, “like, ‘Are you saying that we’re not really going to talk about this?’ ” He proposed that the jury begin by voting on the second interrogatory, because it was more “succinct” than the ﬁrst one. The second interrogatory asked: J

FEBRUARY 25, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 17

continued from 17

Was Officer Proano’s conduct in shooting Niko Husband willful and wanton? Morg read to the jurors the definition they’d been given by Judge Budzinski for “willful and wanton”: “A course of action which shows actual or deliberate intention to harm, without legal justification.” Morg said he and other jurors believed that Niko was either flat on his back or almost so when Proano shot him. That, combined with the fact that one of the wounds was a contact wound, made the shooting seem willful and wanton to the jurors who believed Niko was unarmed, Morg said—and even to Morg, who was unsure about whether Niko had a gun. Very quickly, the jury voted “yes” unanimously. That quickly led the jury to undivided agreement on the fundamental issue: they were finding for the plaintiff. They then set about calculating damages. The written instructions for this step were murky and complicated. The jury was to decide how much money would fairly compensate Niko’s next of kin for the “pecuniary loss” resulting from his death. “Pecuniary loss” could include the “grief, sorrow, and mental suffering” of the next of kin, and the “loss of money, benefits, goods, services, and society.” “Society” included “love, affection, care, attention, companionship, comfort, guidance, and protection.” The instructions directed the jury to consider the age and sex of the defendant and his life expectancy. A 19-yearold male had a life expectancy, on average, of 59 additional years, the instructions said. The jury also had to determine how much money would fairly compensate Niko’s estate for the pain and suffering he’d suffered from the time he was shot until he died. Morg was surprised there wasn’t any guidance on how to translate all these factors to dollar amounts. Since he was an electrician, the jurors asked him how much an electrical engineer would make annually; he said about $70,000. On a chalkboard, another juror multiplied $70,000 by 40 years of work, which came to $2.8 million. Morg thought this was an overly generous way to calculate damages. And the $2.8 million was just for Husband’s potential future earnings; it didn’t include damages for the family’s “grief, sorrow, and mental suffering,” or compensation for Niko’s pain and suffering. The jury agreed on $500,000 for the latter. Morg went along, even though he thought that was a little high: “I don’t want to sound like a bad guy, but they’re saying he was dead within seconds,” he told me.

18 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 25, 2016

Morg said that during deliberations, “I kept saying, ‘We do have to be responsible with taxpayers’ money. We don’t have a black-andwhite case here. We have no way of being sure if he had a gun or not. Don’t you think this is an exceedingly high amount of money?’” He asked the jurors to each write down a total amount of damages they thought would be fair. Their folded scraps of paper went into a candy dish. Morg had intended that the jury would then continue its discussions, but once the candy dish was full, everyone was eager to get on with calculating the damages. He yielded to that idea, but suggested that the highest and lowest suggestions be eliminated and the others averaged. His fellow jurors agreed. The highest proposal, $5.7 million, and the lowest, $500,000, were removed; the others averaged out to $3.5 million. After that, it was just a matter of what numbers to put where on the verdict form. The $500,000 went on the line for Niko’s pain and suffering. Morg proposed that the jury divide the other $3 million into $1.2 million for “grief, sorrow, and mental suffering,” and $1.8 million for “loss of society.” Having calculated damages, the jury returned to the ﬁrst interrogatory: When Officer Proano shot Niko Husband, did Officer Marco Proano reasonably believe that Niko Husband’s actions placed him or his fellow officers in imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm? This one perplexed the jury. “I swear I read that thing back to everybody 15 times,” Morg told me. No one was sure what it meant or whether it would affect the verdict. The jury voted 11-1 to answer the question “yes”—but, according to Morg, that was because Niko had “resisted arrest and caused a big struggle,”

not because the jury thought Proano was justified in shooting him. Someone suggested that Morg ask the judge for clarification regarding the question. Morg’s subsequent note to Judge Budzinski said the jury had unanimously agreed that Proano’s conduct had been willful and wanton. “However, what is the purpose of Interrogatory 1 with regard to the verdict, damages, and jury decision?” he asked. “Can it in any way reverse the jury’s verdict?” And he added in his note: “Hypothetically, what would occur if Interrogatory 1 cannot be decided unanimously?” Judges are reluctant to offer a jury guidance in response to questions during deliberations, lest they tilt it one way or another. After consulting with the lawyers for both sides, Budzinski responded with this note: “We cannot tell you the affect of your answer to the Interrogatory 1 on the verdict. You must answer the interrogatory and your answer must be unanimous. If you are unable to reach a unanimous answer to Interrogatory 1, please let us know.” After the jurors got the judge’s response, they continued discussing the meaning and impact of the question. Morg told the jury he thought it was getting at whether Proano felt he’d been in danger. He speculated that a “yes” answer might slightly discount the damages the plaintiff received. The lone “no” vote on the question was from one of the remaining two black jurors, a woman. According to Morg, “She was talking about how we didn’t understand how white people treat black people.” Morg reminded her that most of the officers who’d testified had been black. And the other black juror, a man, also pressed the woman to reconsider, Morg said. “He told her, ‘I don’t think you’re going to find a jury this liberal again,’” and that if the jury deadlocked on the interrogatory and the case had to be retried, the defense would probably prevail next time. It was getting late and some of the jurors were growing restless. The black woman switched to “yes” on the first special interrogatory.

ust after 8:30 PM, the jury returned to the courtroom. Morg handed the verdict and the findings on the interrogatories to the deputy, who brought them to Judge Budzinski. She read the results to the parties, then thanked the jurors for their service. The courtroom deputy ushered them back to the jury room, and they began gathering their things. Budzinski visited the room a few minutes later, and she brought startling news. The jury’s finding on the first interrogatory nullified

its verdict for the plaintiff. Price and her family would get nothing. The stunned jurors sat in dead silence initially, Morg said. He recalled silently mouthing “sorry” to the black woman he’d helped convince to change her vote. Morg said the judge explained that the jury’s conclusion that Proano’s fear was reasonable made the shooting justified. “I said right away, ‘That’s not fair—we understand what a justified shooting is.’” Budzinski went on to tell the jury that although it was inadmissible at trial, Niko had two convictions for gun offenses. This seemed to relieve the jurors, Morg said. But then she informed the jurors of Proano’s 2013 shooting. When Morg left the jury room, “I was hot, because I felt like I was tricked.” He was especially upset because the juror who’d changed her vote on the interrogatory had done so under the assumption that it wouldn’t affect the verdict—and he’d helped persuade her of that. Morg said she reassured him before they left the jury room that the confusion over the interrogatory wasn’t his fault. (I wasn’t able to reach this juror.) Morg was still fuming as he rode the elevator down with some of the other jurors. When they stepped out at the first floor, he stayed on and punched the “20” button. “What are you doing?” one of the jurors asked him. Morg said he thought he owed the plaintiff an explanation. In the hallway outside the courtroom, he told Shapiro that the jury hadn’t intended the result. Shapiro said he realized that. Morg also told the lawyer, “It’s bullshit, because it’s not clear. It all gets wiped away because of a misunderstood question.” Morg was reluctant to talk directly with Price, but she and her family were near Shapiro, “and I kind of half made eye contact” with her, “and I said, ‘I’m really sorry.’” Price thanked him for saying that. She told me later she appreciated Morg’s gesture. Morg’s ire grew on his way home. On the Orange Line, he did a Google search for Proano, and found the video of his 2013 shooting. He was shocked that Proano had fired repeatedly into the car. Morg thought about how angry the woman who switched her vote would be when she saw the video. He thought of the relationship between Proano’s shooting of Niko and this shooting two years later. “You can go two routes after something traumatic like that happens, where you shoot a kid [Niko] point-blank. You either become the last one in a group to pull your gun, or now you’re a wild cowboy. He’s the wild cowboy to me.”

n November 30, three weeks after Judge Budzinski entered judgment in favor of Proano and the city, Shapiro filed a motion asking her to reverse herself, enter judgment for Price, and award her the $3.5 million. Shapiro’s brief in support of his motion pointed to case law holding that unless a jury’s answer to a special interrogatory is “absolutely irreconcilable” with its verdict, the verdict prevails. While the first special interrogatory asked if Proano reasonably believed there was an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm, it failed to ask whether deadly force was necessary to answer that threat, Shapiro argued. The jury could have believed that Niko’s flailing and wrestling endangered officers, but that police could have responded by simply restraining and handcuffing him. Or, Shapiro wrote, the jury may have concluded that Husband created a threat by having a gun in his waistband, but that the officers could have grabbed it away from him; or, it might have decided that Husband had a gun that fell out of his waistband during the struggle, and police should have grabbed it or kicked it away. Shapiro noted that in the other special interrogatory, the jury had found the shooting to be willful and wanton—which had been defined for the jury as a course of action showing an intention to harm “without legal justification.” Thus the jury had specifically found Proano’s use of deadly force was unjustified, Shapiro maintained. In support of the motion, Shapiro filed affidavits from Morg and two other jurors. All three jurors said that at the time they rendered their verdict, they didn’t believe Niko had a gun on him during the incident. They said they’d answered “yes” to the first special interrogatory because they thought that Proano believed Niko’s actions in resisting arrest put him in danger of serious bodily harm. But they said they didn’t think Proano “reasonably” believed deadly force was necessary to prevent that harm, and that they thought he and his fellow officers could have eliminated the threat by restraining Niko. Shapiro acknowledged in his brief that juror affidavits can’t be used to directly challenge a verdict. He said he was offering the affidavits to show that the wording of the first special interrogatory allowed for interpretations in which the “yes” answer was consistent with the jury’s verdict in favor of the plaintiff. The city responded in its own brief that Shapiro had failed to object to the first spe-

cial interrogatory when the city proposed it in a jury-instruction conference during the trial, and asserted that Price had thus waived her right to raise the issue posttrial. (In a reply brief, Shapiro contended that case law clearly held that this was an issue that could not be waived.) The city said the affidavits from the jurors were “wholly improper.” Illinois case law ﬁrmly prohibits the use of juror affidavits to impeach a verdict, the city said, because their use could lead to “harassment, bribery and imposition of undue influence” upon jurors after a trial. It would be especially unfair to consider such affidavits in the “current political climate,” the city’s lawyers said. They pointed to the torrent of media coverage of the Laquan McDonald killing, after the Proano trial concluded on November 6 but before the affidavits were submitted. The city accused the plaintiff of exploiting the “state of unrest” in Chicago and the “nationwide denigration of Chicago police officers” by persuading the three jurors to submit the affidavits. There was, of course, another video that may have biased the jurors who signed affidavits more than the McDonald video: the one showing Proano shooting into the car full of teens in 2013. The city didn’t mention that video in its brief. Budzinski will rule on Shapiro’s posttrial motion on March 16. Whoever loses will probably appeal, and it could be years before that appeal is decided. The judge’s canceling of the jury’s verdict baffled Price. “I didn’t understand it,” she said a week after that decision. “I still really don’t too much understand it. I’m glad the jury was in my favor, though.” She said she hopes the judge’s ruling will ultimately be overturned, “and that way I will have justice for Niko.” I asked Mark Husband if he thought he learned from the trial what exactly happened between police and Niko on that July night in 2011. “Not really,” he said. “Just that they didn’t have to kill him.” Like Price, he’s hopeful that the judge’s decision will eventually be reversed. But the way the jury’s verdict was wiped out has left him feeling that the game is rigged. “It seems like everything’s tilted in the favor of the city,” he said. “It’s like they know they’re gonna win. Where’s justice for the people? That’s all I want to know.” v Manny Ramos helped research this story.

v @SteveBogira

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“HILARIOUS. LAUGH-OUT-LOUD FUNNY. TRIGGERS BOTH SHOCK AND AMUSEMENT.” -BROADWAY WORLD CHICAGO

By Annie Baker Directed by Dexter Bullard

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ARTS & CULTURE

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Kelli Simpkins, Mike Tepeli, and Patrese D. McClain ò MICHAEL COURIER

THEATER

The half-cocked Cocked is half limp By TONY ADLER

en. You can’t live with ’em, and you’ll want to stay out of range of ’em, too. That’s pretty much the concept behind Cocked, Sarah Gubbins’s provocative but overly schematized new play, getting its world premiere now at Victory Gardens Theater. The title refers both to the act of preparing to fire a pistol and to the male appendage most closely identiﬁed with testosterone production. The two come together, as it were, in an unlikely place: the Andersonville condo belonging to Izzie and Taylor, an affluent lesbian couple. Izzie is a black TV reporter and the more traditionally feminine of the two, not only in terms of dress but also with regard to her preference for conciliation—even surrender—over combat. Taylor, by contrast, is a white lawyer who dresses in man-tailored suits and isn’t above brawling to win an argument. The pair have their problems. Taylor has confessed to a sexual indiscretion, shaking Izzie’s trust in their relationship. More fundamentally, Izzie feels that her partner has no idea how to listen.

And then there’s Ron, the neighbor from hell—an angry ex-marine with a dog that won’t shut up, a mailbox full of gun-andammo catalogs, and a penchant for playing Call of Duty REAL LOUD. Izzie finds him so intimidating that she wants to sell the condo and move. Unwilling to take a loss, however, Taylor tries to minimize Ron’s baleful inﬂuence over their lives. Into this stew walks Taylor’s ne’er-do-well brother, Frank. Actually, he sneaks into it, nearly earning himself a kitchen knife in the chest when Taylor mistakes him for an intruder. Which is really what he is. A classic of his type, Frank is a small-time criminal who’s been sleeping in mom’s basement while getting ﬁred from menial job after menial job. AutoZone let him go most recently, over the disappearance of some brake pads. None of this has kept Frank from maintaining perfect confidence in his opinions and skills. When he isn’t spouting off about the coming social collapse, he styles himself an all-purpose handyman and demonstrates his expertise by taking on various household remodeling jobs, unbidden. Frank offers Gubbins and director Joanie

Schultz some great opportunities for farce, as his DIY projects get progressively bigger and more reckless. But Gubbins also makes him the linchpin of the very serious point she’s making about male aggression and its culturally determined means of expression. And that’s where things get dicey. As one of the swinging dicks of Cocked, Frank is convinced that nothing short of all-out war will solve Izzie and Taylor’s Ron problem, so he sets about starting one. His first move? Selling Izzie a gun. Which isn’t believable. Granted, Gubbins makes a concerted and careful effort to moot all objections. Frank is depicted as irresistibly, not to say deviously tenacious once he’s become fixated on an idea. Taylor, for all her masculine-role-appropriating swagger, is pretty much useless in any practical sense. And Izzie herself feels defenseless—partly because she’s accepted the mythology of female defenselessness, and partly because she supposes that her black skin would make her look like the perp rather than the victim if she were to call the police. But, as I’ve already mentioned, Izzie is a TV reporter. And not the kind that sits behind a desk, either, but one who’s wearied herself reporting Chicago’s everyday violence. It strains credulity to suggest that she’s utterly without resources in her struggle with a fellow condo owner. That she doesn’t have one cop, one alderman, one city lawyer she can call when she needs to put a scare into Ron and protect her home. It seems that, in her zeal to make a programmatic point about the dangers of conventional gender roles, Gubbins has deprived Izzie of feasible alternatives. She’s been disarmed, in short, just so Frank can arm her. That pivotal contrivance compromises Cocked when it starts to turn dark, but until then the show is lots of fun. A cross between Ellen DeGeneres and the sitcom-era Dick Van Dyke, Kelli Simpkins makes a fine, exasperating Taylor. Mike Tepeli’s Frank is appropriately ambivalence free. But the shortcomings of the script fall most heavily on Patrese D. McClain, who comes off as precisely half of a plausible Izzy. v COCKED Through 3/13: Tue-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Victory Gardens Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln, 773871-3000, victorygardens.org, $20-$56.

LOCAL STAND-UP SAM GORDON gathers some of the best Chicago comedians every week for her variety show The Combo. The BYOB event at the North Center storefront Bughouse Theater features stand-up, improv, music, sketch comedy, and anything else that Gordon deems a worthy addition. It’s a fun, relaxed night that gives stage time to underrated comedic talent, not least of which is Gordon herself. She talks about her day job as a nanny with verve and charm— when she goes into detail about getting into fights with privileged toddlers, it’s hard to not be on her side. On the night I attended, the lineup included stand-up from Josh Ejnes, Rebecca Loeser, Connor King, and Andy Boyle; improvised folk songs from Wilem & the Warning (Billy Walsh and Ethan Goldman); and improv from a team called Droday. While the stand-up was hilarious and genuine (Ejnes and Boyle used their medical ailments as punch lines), it was the improv that really stood out. Walsh and Goldman took the audience’s suggestions of “hockey” and “Australia” and created two dynamic folk songs off the cuff. There was some clever wordplay and lots of humor in the lyrics and midsong banter, but the melancholy music added an emotional layer to the playful performance. Droday, on the other hand, were silly, jumping into a scene about Twister that required the entire team to contort themselves onstage while trying to hold back bursts of laughter. They’re an experienced group whose members clearly know each other very well, setting up scenes that force them to the brink of uncontrollable giggling. Between the performers, the host, and the laid-back audience, The Combo was exactly what comedy is supposed to be: fun. —BRIANNA WELLEN R THE COMBO Through

v @taadler

3/30: Wed 10:30 PM, Bughouse Theater, 1910 W. Irving Park, bughousetheater.com, $10.

Sam Gordon ò COURTESY SAM GORDON

COMEDY

Sam Gordon puts together the perfect Combo

FEBRUARY 25, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 21

ARTS & CULTURE

SMALL SCREEN

Vinyl is a broken record By LEOR GALIL

ex, drugs, cursing, violence, New York City, the 1970s, mirrors smudged with cocaine residue, the Brill Building, a label acquisition, racial epithets, booze,

22 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 25, 2016

broads, orgies, cooked books, deals made under the table, the enticing thought of Ray Romano vacuuming up lines of coke with his architecturally handsome nose, the sound of a skull cracking, cash stuffed in envelopes and record sleeves, Brooklyn accents, murder, a punk brawl, a trashed living room, and, ﬁnally, rock ’n’ roll. There’s not much of an order of importance to the list of things crammed into Vinyl, the new HBO show brought to you by

continued on 25

ò COURTESY THE ARTIST

Bobby Cannavale in Vinyl ò HBO

DANCE

The Great and Terrible Faustus is great indeed By BRIANNA WELLEN

triding Lion’s The Great and Terrible Faustus guides the audience through a devilish fun house of sorts, offering seven different paths with seven different characters, each of whom gets a different glimpse of Faustus as the doctor tries to resist Lucifer’s temptations. Every character represents a different deadly sin; during my journey I followed the velvet-suit-clad Lust (Erik Strebig). The performance, which shifts between group dance numbers and smaller vignettes featuring individual characters, is staged everywhere from the theater’s lobby to the backstage to the basement boiler room, where Strebig gracefully swings from pipes on the ceiling. He plays a complex character, burdened with luring Faustus to Lucifer’s side while possessed of true affection for Pride, a clean-cut character danced by Garth Johnson. Performers are often given the shield of distance and the wings of a stage to recover from a physically and emotionally taxing performance like Strebig’s; but in this case, the audience is privy to every single breath as well as to every movement and interaction. And once in a while, things get even more up close and personal—characters grab audience members and take them to undisclosed locations, while others are asked to dance or partake in some sleight of hand, and everyone gets stared straight in the eyes by the performer leading him or her through the story. It’s impossible not to immediately become invested in the lives

of these characters. There were moments that I found myself close to tears, wanting to reach out and comfort Lust as he pined for Pride and reluctantly fell to the side of Lucifer, danced by a commanding and mesmerizing Jacinda Ratcliffe. While the dancing is impressive, perhaps even more so are the silent acting and eerie singing; the music all comes from the stage of the main theater, where different groups are led to sit and watch as their leaders sing standards like “Dream a Little Dream” and “Fever.” The songs echo in every crevice of the theater, adding to the performance’s haunted air. The most tantalizing thing about this immersive show may be its potential for revisiting and rewatching. From glimpses around the corner or down a hallway, it was clear that each group got a completely different performance—what to me was a heartbreaking story may well have seemed a comedy to the audiences following Gluttony or Sloth. Those with enough time and money might even consider attending the show multiple times, comparing and contrasting each adventure. What Striding Lion manages to pull off is not just entertaining and skillfully executed, but sui generis, unlike any dance-theater experience I’ve ever had. v R THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE DOCTOR FAUSTUS Through 2/29, Fri-Sat 10:30 PM, Sun-Mon 7 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, stridinglion.com, $30.

v @briannawellen

ARTS & CULTURE

LIT

Let your body move to the music By DMITRY SAMAROV

hy write a book about a singer whose music you hate and whom you don’t even respect? For singer-turned-writer Alina Simone, it’s because she was commissioned to do so, but the task ends up more rewarding than she initially anticipated. In Madonnaland, and Other Detours Into Fame and Fandom, Simone travels to Madonna’s birthplace—Bay City, Michigan—from her New York City home. She documents the Material Girl’s career: from humble beginnings as an aspiring dancer outside Detroit to her time as a scenester on the New York dance-club circuit to her meteoric rise to fame. The writer contrasts that ascent with her own decade-plus effort as an indie singer-songwriter, which brings up a lot of her unresolved frustrations about the music career she eventually abandoned. She resents Madonna for her undisguised ambition, while questioning the quality and authenticity of her music. None of Simone’s indie-rock friends are Madonna fans either. It turns out that there’s much to discover in Bay City. Simone meets Gary Johnson, a schoolteacher and self-appointed leader of a mission to compel the town to give Madonna a commemorative sign. Johnson is also not much of a fan of her music, but he is opposed to the conservative local government, which canceled a plan to give Madonna the key to the city after nude photos of her were leaked to

the press in the 80s. Johnson has a secondary cause: to make Question Mark and the Mysterians’ “96 Tears” the town’s official song. All the members of that one-hit-wonder band grew up in the area, so Simone sets about tracking them down and learning their history. After achieving some success in the mid-60s the band members have been wandering in the shadows and backwaters of showbiz for decades. Simone repeatedly asks why one talented person succeeds while another falters. Once she spends some time with a hardcore fan—a suburban New Jersey man who has a tattoo of nearly every Madonna album cover—Simone has a revelation. Unlike herself and her sad-sack, overly serious music-snob friends, the people who love Madonna’s music love it simply because it makes them happy. And she can’t think of anyone she idolizes the way this man idolizes Madonna. Though Madonnaland seems to be about other musicians, at heart it’s a meditation on the author’s own career, which provides a convenient entry point for readers. Going in, I had even less interest in Madonna and her music than Simone did. But this is not a book for Madonna fans, nor is it a book for music nerds— it’s a meditation on success and failure and an attempt to come to some sort of peace with one’s place in the world. v MADONNALAND, AND OTHER DETOURS INTO FAME AND FANDOM By Aline Simone (University of Texas Press)

FEBRUARY 25, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 23

ARTS & CULTURE

VISUAL ART

May the Typeforce be with you

By NOAH BERLATSKY

t’s a nerd-out for people who love typography.” That’s how entrepreneur and Lumpen publisher Ed Marszewski describes Typeforce, the annual typographic-art show he cocurates with Dawn Hancock, the founder and managing director of local design studio Firebelly. This is Typeforce’s seventh year, and the event continues to grow in stature: Marszewski and Hancock received around 200 entries from all around Chicago, the country, and the world. Unfortunately, they can only showcase around 20 artists. Typeforce may appeal to typography enthusiasts, but it’s not exactly devoted to typography. Instead the show is a celebration of text-based artwork, created in a number of mediums: ceramics, sculptures, embroidery, and an annual 40-foot-wide, site-specific window display. “There tend to be a lot of [type] designers in the show, because obviously designers are geeks about typography,” Hancock told me. “But it’s really more about

24 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 25, 2016

the expression of letters and using them in artwork.” In fact, she said, “I would say you get people who are actually designers of typefaces get kind of angry at us because we call it typeface artwork. They’re like, ‘This isn’t type! This is letters!’” Whether type or letters, the range of work is impressive. Andy Gregg’s installation Lives & Times is made up of ten televisions with a video-game-like animation on each one devoted to a letter of the title phrase. The first one, for the letter l shows a garish, orange-green spaceship shooting a laser at a reflective-armored space critter while clouds clunkily stream past. Jenna Blazevich’s The Angel in the House consists of six framed embroidered feminist declarations, including “I am still writing my way towards the place that I fit,” from Roxane Gay’s essay collection, Bad Feminist, and “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being,” from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. A traditionally

Clockwise from left: work by Scott Reinhard, Bud Rodecker, and Matthew Hoﬀman

feminized and domestic art form is transformed into, or revealed to be, a kind of political resistance. Carlos Segura’s Streets of Sadness project is even more explicitly activist: he collects hand-lettered signs created by homeless people in an effort to raise awareness and donations for homeless shelters. The signs are purchased from their creators in the U.S. and Europe, an act that further encourages direct contributions to those in need and a prompt to value their words.

ò KYLE LAMERE

Turning type into art underlines (or rather, italicizes) how both language and art are forms of communication. Artists use images as a kind of speech, or, with the work in this exhibit, vice versa. All art talks to you, though in Typeforce the message may be a little easier to read. v R TYPEFORCE Through Fri 3/11; opening night Fri 2/26, 6 PM, Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219 S. Morgan, 773-862-1232, coprosperity.org. F

v @hoodedu

A WAR sss Directed by Tobias Lindholm. 115 min. Landmark’s Century Centre Get showtimes at chicagoreader.com/ movies.

ARTS & CULTURE

Cannavale and Olivia Wilde ò HBO

Vinyl continued from 22 Mick Jagger, Martin Scorsese, Terence Winter (Boardwalk Empire), and journalist and author Rich Cohen (The Record Men, Tough Jews). Vinyl centers on the music industry— but all too often the drama places more weight on anything but the music. Directed by Scorsese, Vinyl’s two-hour pilot opens with Richie Finestra (Bobby Cannavale), the relapsed drug addict and founder of a ﬁctional ailing label called American Century, stumbling into a New York Dolls show at the crumbling Mercer Building in August 1973. Finestra has hit a low point, and the rest of the episode delves into the recent and notso-recent events leading up to his Damascus moment. American Century, which Finestra turned into a hit maker thanks to his “golden ear,” is preparing for a buyout at the hands of Polygram. Finestra, American Century head of promotions Zak Yankovich (Romano), and head of sales Skip Fontaine (J.C. MacKenzie) meet with Polygram executives in Germany to go over the paperwork. It gives Finestra an opportunity to give a curse-strewn monologue about his label’s meteoric rise and fall. The looming buyout at the hands of Germans also opens the doors for plenty of cracks about Nazis—Scorsese never met an ethnic slur he didn’t like. Finestra is also trying to secure a deal with Led Zeppelin to make American Century look more attractive to Polygram. Back at American Century’s headquarters the A&R team scrambles to make their own deals to enliven the label’s roster (Robert Goulet and Donny Osmond are the primary punching bags) and assistant Jamie Vine (Juno Temple) thinks she’s busted through the glass ceiling after taking a demo tape from the leader of a fictional punk band called the Nasty Bitz. (Jagger’s son James plays the lead singer.) The Zeppelin deal falls through and other things go to shit as Finestra seeks out the bottle against the wishes of his wife, Devon (Olivia Wilde), whose big, watery eyes say more than much of the dialogue she’s given. Finestra’s bender leads him to the Mercer Building, which falls apart at the hands of the New York Dolls. It’s a blunt metaphor for Finestra’s reawakening. He opens the second

episode by punching out his American Century partners, tearing up the buyout contract in front of the Polygram executives, and reclaiming his label for the sake of the music. It’s less a radical move than a narrative match thrown at a powder keg, one that can sustain explosiveness for an entire season—or, really, a whole show. Finestra is blessed with more than a golden ear. He’s got historical hindsight on his side. While stuck in nighttime traffic on the Cross Bronx Expressway he orders his driver to head back to the city and is immediately drawn to the funk groove emanating from a high-rise. It’s a hip-hop party thrown by the genre’s real originator, DJ Kool Herc, of course, but Finestra’s attraction flies in the face of logic; Dan Charnas’s engrossing account of the business side of hip-hop, The Big Payback, lays out how the genre’s struggle to get many labels to give them the time of day spilled over into the 1980s. But Finestra’s instinct to follow his ears toward the beats is merely a narrative point to bring him back into the life of Lester Grimes (Ato Essandoh), the broken blues musician who was Finestra’s first client. Still, it’s one of many moments that makes Finestra look like the Forrest Gump of the music industry. Factual flubs are par for the course with any work of fiction based on a well-documented series of events, but history suffocates Vinyl. Sure, certain moments are rearranged to suit the show—in reality the Mercer Building collapsed during the day, not at night, and it happened a week before Kool Herc hosted his first hip-hop party; on Vinyl Finestra overhears Herc several days before the walls of the Mercer fall around him. However the more omnipresent past isn’t chronological but canonized—it’s the musical figures who have transcended their corporeal selves to become mythical ideas in the public. No cinematic hand could make the actor hired to play, say, Robert Plant appear like anything more than an avatar. When Vinyl builds a fictional canon it’s able to breathe; when it’s bound to our musical heroes it crumbles like the Mercer Building. v VINYL Sundays at 8 PM on HBO

v @leorgalil

A War

MOVIES

Hanging on the telephone By J.R. JONES

War, the third dramatic feature from Danish writer-director Tobias Lindholm, has been widely touted as the ﬁnal installment of a trilogy about “desperate men in small rooms.” In R (2010) the perpetually haunted Pilou Asbæk stars as a frightened young man trying to learn the ropes in prison; in A Hijacking (2012) he plays a crew member aboard a Danish ship seized by Somali pirates; and in A War he’s a Danish officer in Afghanistan who stands trial for a war crime. Lindholm himself recently punctured this notion of a trilogy, explaining to Cineuropa that a bad phone connection had caused him to misunderstand a question from a U.S. reporter. These Danes! Doesn’t he know that, to get anywhere in this business, he needs to have a trilogy? A sense of confinement links the three movies, but the real companion pieces are A Hijacking, Lindholm’s first movie to win theatrical distribution in the U.S., and A War, up for an Oscar this weekend as best foreign ﬁlm. Both are international thrillers

ssss EXCELLENT

sss GOOD

in the truest sense: unlike globe-trotting spy movies, which use their locales mainly as scenery, these films draw suspense from actual geopolitical tensions, and from tension between the first and third worlds. In each movie the action bounces back and forth from starchy-white Denmark to a more savage land, and each story becomes not just a power struggle but a clash of values between two different societies. Lindholm stresses the characters’ sense of disconnection, and electronic communications become a key story device. Much of A Hijacking transpires over international telephone lines, and Lindholm often stages these conversations from only one speaker’s perspective. The suspense is heightened when the person on the other end falls silent—or, God forbid, hangs up. In the very first shot, Mikkel (Asbæk), the ship’s scruffy, bearded cook, bends over a phone set, listening eagerly for any response from his wife or daughter back home. But once the pirates have boarded the ship and taken the crew hostage, Mikkel is pressed into ser- J

ss AVERAGE

s POOR

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FEBRUARY 25, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 25

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chicagoreader.com/early 26 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 25, 2016

ARTS & CULTURE continued from 25 vice as a negotiator, announcing a ransom demand of $15 million in a call to the company’s crisp, silver-haired CEO, Peter C. Ludvigsen (Søren Malling). Lindholm holds tight on the cook’s frightened face as Ludvigsen, explaining that he won’t allow Mikkel to become part of the negotiations, ends the call. Later, in the company’s brightly lit conference room, Ludvigsen will have his own moment of dread when a gunshot on the other end of the line suggests that Mikkel has been executed, and the line goes dead. As the negotiations unfold, cultural misunderstandings become almost as dangerous as loaded weapons. Ludvigsen unintentionally torpedoes one session when he refers to the Somali negotiator, Omar, as a pirate and the irate Omar, shouting that he’s not responsible for the hijacking, hangs up on him. Connor Julian, the professional negotiator brought in by the company, reminds Ludvigsen that the divide between them and the pirates is mental as well as geographical. “We can’t rush these people,” he tells the impatient executive. “Time is a Western thing. It means nothing to them.” Lindholm may not explore the tribal chaos that fosters Somali piracy or the Western commercial exploitation that nurtures that chaos (for this side of the story, check out Thymaya Payne’s documentary Stolen Seas ). But A Hijacking does show how pirates use the tenuous physical connection between the ship and its owners to reverse the power equation between a rich nation and a poor one. Asbæk dropped a few pounds to play Claus Pedersen, the military man of A War, but again his character is separated from his family and grappling with a strange culture. Claus commands a company of 135 men in Afghanistan’s southerly Helmand province, and his leadership skills are put to the test after one soldier is blown up by an IED during a foot patrol. As in the earlier movie, Lindholm uses electronic communications to raise the stress level: as the situation unfolds, Claus monitors a radio transmission back at the camp, listening helplessly as violence erupts on the other end. Concerned about morale in the wake of this incident, he summons the men to announce that he’ll begin leading patrols himself. “You’re here to safeguard and help civilians,” he reminds them. “So they can have a life. So they can rebuild their country.” Once again Lindholm’s screenplay cuts back and forth between the first and third

worlds, though in this case the action is divided between Claus and his wife, Maria (Tuva Novotny), who tends to their three children back home. When she takes his phone call in the evening, stepping outside onto their patio so the kids can’t hear, Claus’s end of the conversation is absent from the soundtrack, but Maria’s replies to him reveal that he’s telling her about the IED fatality. There’s an even greater sense of disconnection here between the two worlds, because Maria’s crises back home—one of the boys becomes a discipline problem at school, another one swallows some pills and must be taken to the emergency room—pale in comparison to the intractable conflicts, no-win decisions, and bloody life-ordeath situations that engulf Claus. Lindholm is more attentive this time to the society in which his protagonist finds himself, though Claus will be haunted by his mishandling of the locals. (Spoilers follow.) When a civilian father approaches the patrol seeking medical care for his young daughter, Claus gladly gives it, but then the father and his children show up at the camp, seeking sanctuary. The Taliban have learned that the Danish soldiers aided the family, and they’ve threatened to kill the family unless the father joins them. To the father’s dismay, Claus promises to bring another patrol the next day but refuses to shelter them. “I have three children of my own,” Claus tells the father. “I understand your situation.” This doesn’t satisfy the father: “Your children live in a safe place.” Even Claus’s interpreter presses him to let the children stay, but he stands firm. The next morning, when the patrol arrives, the entire family has been slain. The two sides of the narrative merge at the film’s midpoint when Claus, having fraudulently ordered a rocket attack on a village compound to save another soldier during a firefight, is court-martialed and comes home to stand trial. Søren Malling returns as Claus’s cagey defense attorney, and the ensuing legal drama lives up to Lindholm’s reputation for serving up desperate men in small rooms. “You can’t imagine what it’s like out there,” one of Claus’s men tells the court, and his statement defines not only this movie but A Hijacking as well. The defense and the prosecution may be trying to construct competing narratives of what happened, but ultimately the trial is an instance of two different realities colliding head-on. v

v @JR_Jones

MUSIC IN ROTATION

A Reader staﬀer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn.

GOSSIP WOLF

A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene

The artwork twork for Batushka’s sol sole album to date, Litourgiya

The second issue of Chicago-based zine No Friends Canadian singer Alessia Cara ò GETTY

PHILIP MONTORO

LORENA CUPCAKE Social media at Do312, cofounder of Store Brand Soda

TOM PUSCHAUTZ Guitarist in Dumpster Babies and Jollys

Batushka, Litourgiya The sole album from this new Polish band augments lush black metal and its traditional sand-blasting shrieks with beautifully austere liturgical chants that seem to belong to a diﬀerent kind of orthodoxy. The stately melodies move like interlocking celestial spheres, while the rhythms crank up their mechanical gnashing, stomping, and chattering to inhuman speeds. This music asks us to imagine what monastic self-denial can produce when animated by furious intensity—terrifying holy warriors who don’t seem to feel the forest of bloodied arrows bristling from their torsos.

The Madcaps, “Taco Truck” I’m a little obsessed with French label Howlin’ Banana Records. Brainless garage pop about stoner snacks is practically a genre unto itself, but the Madcaps’ ode to thwarted taco desire (from their 2016 full-length Hot Sauce) includes a rare touch of funky bass and saxophone. If only Darkside Taco, the late-night Logan Square taco purveyor, operated across the Atlantic.

Terry Malts, Killing Time I imagine this album to be the perfect soundtrack for cynical, miscreant outsiders and angsty teenage skater punks alike. Bay Area three-piece Terry Malts makes catchy, fuzzed-out pop songs with plenty of sarcastic satire to sink your teeth into. Lead singer and bassist Phil Benson belts out the lyrics of a man disenchanted with the human race, tackling issues like consumerist mall culture, hating your day job, and emotional inadequacies. While songs such as “Nauseous” (as in “Your love makes me . . . ”) take a darker outlook on typical pop affairs like relationships and girls, others create a melodic and melancholic sense of hope.

Reader music editor

Not caring about Kanye West Kanye has made some brilliant records, but when a star learns how to game the media, it’s time for the media to cut the puppet strings. Given how many great music stories never get told, it’s depressing to watch journalists scrambling to be the ﬁrst to cover Kanye’s every blurt. Nonsun, Black Snow Desert Ukrainian duo Nonsun made their full-length debut in January with an arid sprawl of hypnotizing instrumental doom. This stark, pitch-black music drapes crawling drones atop distorted chords as huge as hills, while icy arpeggiated guitars meander in and out of phase with tolling bass and tumbling drums. Fried desert-rock riffs and clip-clopping percussion give the darkness a vaguely rustic flavor, but the album’s eerie ambient passages and eruptions of distant thunder mostly bring to mind vast uninhabited spaces—the kind that make you think about how far away the wind comes from.

Alessia Cara, “Here” I share an office at Do312, and we all try to stay on top of trends in music. So I was probably playing some “Teen Chill It’s Lit” playlist when I was surprised to hear a robust, sultry voice sing a song that perfectly describes the experience of having an anxiety attack at a party. Ribbon Around a Bomb podcast Erin Eyesore’s show on Radio Valencia digs up incredibly obscure female-fronted punk and postpunk from the 70s and 80s. You could spend a hundred hours listening to the archives and hundreds more researching all the artists you’ve never heard of. It’s where I found out about the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black and countless other dark, abrasive, and confrontational bands.

No Friends, issue number two I once tried to make a zine but was discouraged by a malfunctioning glue stick. The feel of newsprint and black ink in No Friends immediately made me nostalgic for opening up my ﬁrst issue of Maximum Rocknroll, and the layout is rather similar as well. This ambitious second issue features interviews with Australian rockers Royal Headache and a founding a member of the Cure, and it’s jam-packed full of reviews— plus it comes with a rad ﬂexi disc. The Sueves, “Liquid Hounds” b/w “Bricks ’n’ Bones” This sounds like a 60s psych record tossed into a blender and sped up into a punk frenzy. Local rockers the Sueves have been ripping it up live for years, so it’s nice to have them recorded on a piece of wax. Released on Chicago imprint HoZac, this seven-inch meanders and grooves, driving the echoey, frantic vocals.

THE ORGANIZERS OF local R&B dance party Bump & Grindcore want each and every one of their monthly ragers to be “a safe space for people of all shapes, colors, orientations, and gender expressions to get nasty all up on each other.” Gossip Wolf has attended their R. Kelly tribute and one or two totally mental Pitchfork afterparties, and they definitely aren’t just blowing smoke. Do you know how hard it is to get purple lipstick out of fur? Anyway, on Fri 2/26 Beauty Bar hosts the next installment, “What Kind of Fuckery Is This? A Tribute to Amy Winehouse,” featuring DJs All the Way Kay, CT (of the duo Redux), and White Owl plus a photo booth from Glitterguts. Way back in April 2015, Gossip Wolf heard that Chicago punks Daylight Robbery were tracking their new LP, Accumulated Error, with engineer Mike Lust, and last week they finally posted a stream to Bandcamp (a full-length vinyl release via Canadian label Deranged should arrive on Fri 2/26). It’s almost a pleasure to wait so long for a rager this solid! Listeners searching for propulsive, Wipers-style riffing, dueling male/female vocals a la X, and spiky chunks of postpunk guitar won’t find many errors in these jams! Late last week Gossip Wolf got word of a last-minute booking at the Wicker Park Emporium Arcade Bar on Thu 2/25—a show headlined by Florida fourth-wave emo heroes You Blew It! The exclamation point is part of the band’s name, but it’s also appropriate to this wolf’s excitement about the show. Into It. Over It. main man Evan Weiss recently posted a couple Instagram photos of YBI! in the studio, and their Facebook page says they began tracking their third album this month. Gossip Wolf recommends arriving at Emporium early to catch the openers: local bands Lifted Bells (who’ve got some new tunes in the works) and Merit Badge. The show is free, and it starts at 8 PM. Don’t, um, blow it. —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL

Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

FEBRUARY 25, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 27

28 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 25, 2016

Recommended and notable shows, and critics’ insights for the week of February 25

MUSIC

b ALL AGES F

PICK OF THE WEEK

As raucous as ever—and now with a new record—the Waco Brothers remain a sight to behold onstage

Rudresh Mahanthappa ò COURTESY THE ARTIST

THURSDAY25 Pop. 1280 Toupee headline; Pop. 1280, Dim, and Gentle Leader open. 9 PM, Club Rectum, $7 suggested donation. b

ò PAUL BEATY

WACO BROTHERS, AUNTEAKS

Fri 2/26, 9 PM, FitzGerald’s, 6615 W. Roosevelt, Berwyn, $15.

WHEN JON LANGFORD FORMED THE WACO BROTHERS two decades ago, he considered them his own cozy bar band, a bunch of pals with low expectations regularly playing around town. Over the years some members moved away, while others gave up on trying to make a career in music, but even with both of those factors in mind I’m still surprised that the group’s new Going Down in History (Bloodshot) is their first studio album of original material in a decade. The album title together with the first line from Dean Schlabowske on the opener “DIYBYOB” (“This is the first track from the last album”) and the fact that the narrator on the jaunty “Receiver” is hooked up to a life-support machine suggests the record may be their swan song, but I won’t be

shocked if the Wacos are still at it 20 years from now. Some of the songs on Going Down veer away from the group’s typically brash, extroverted twang. There’s steamrolling, fuzzed-out hard rock on “We Know It,” a cover of the early Small Faces nugget “All or Nothing”—on which we learn Schlabowske is no Steve Marriott, let alone Otis Redding—and some straight-up Brit punk complemented by mandolinist Tracey Dear’s snarls on “Had Enough.” But tweaking a sound isn’t that important for a band who pride themselves so much on their no-frills energy and raucousness, of which there remains plenty. The Wacos always make decent records, but it’s live that you can be convinced that they’re one of the best rock bands on the planet. —PETER MARGASAK

Beginning with their 2010 EP The Grid, Brooklyn’s Pop. 1280 have been smashing together punk, noise rock, and industrial to create their self-designated genre of cyberpunk. Because of an ever-changing lineup that’s shifted with each release, their records and tours have had totally distinct attitudes. I saw the band for the first time shortly after The Grid was released, when they were a synth-heavy, moody postpunk outfit, but when I caught them a couple years later opening for Metz at the Burlington, they’d morphed into a nu-metal-leaning posthardcore quartet complete with shrieking vocals and aggro stage moves that aped Refused—and that kind of instability caused their records to suffer. Often lopsided affairs, they bounced from synth punk driven by drum machines to dissonant noise rock and back again, lacking any direction or cohesion, but the brand-new Paradise (Sacred Bones) finally finds Pop. 1280 settling into a fully realized sound. They’ve fused together their industrial and noisy influences to create a dark, grimy, extremely fun record full of heavy-handed synth playing and dramatic flair—it’s the first of their releases that can hold its own. Tonight’s show takes place at northside DIY space Club Rectum; you can send an e-mail along to rottedtoothrecordings@gmail.com for the address. —LUCA CIMARUSTI

Walters Joe Bordenaro & the Late Bloomers and Troy Anderson open. 8 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, $5. 18+

Many of the songs on December’s Young Men, the second self-released EP from Chicago poprock group the Walters, are so warm and soft that in comparison they make the Snuggle fab- J

FEBRUARY 25, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 29

30 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 25, 2016

Where are the rest of the music listings? Find them at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

MUSIC Beach House ò SHAWN BRACKBILL

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continued from 29

ric-softener bear look and sound look like a burly Hell’s Angel. If the next step in underground rock involves plundering soft rock’s past—maybe in response to how loud, fast, and overcrowded everything is these days—then the Walters are certainly a step ahead. Their cozy melodies are ﬁlled with nap-time coos and sun-kissed, strolling guitars, and they’re powerful enough to hypnotize and divert attention from the band’s machinelike precision and unbreakable gears that keep humming along—like the smoothed-over funk bounce of the bass. When the Walters do crank the volume—the ﬁrst emergence of the chorus in “City Blues” is a good example—it feels like a shaft of sunlight has punctured a gray sky to make the whole world feel a little bit warmer. —LEOR GALIL

Wolf Eyes Timmy’s Organism and Video open; Eye Vybe DJs spin. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $12, $10 in advance. Veteran low-budget experimentalists Wolf Eyes haven’t exactly mellowed with time, but as the trio’s latest album, I Am a Problem: Mind in Pieces (Third Man), suggests, their peculiar brand of bad vibes has transformed into something more remote and sinister. Rather than unleash blurts of noise on opening track “Catching the Rich Train” Wolf Eyes give us snake-charmer saxophone lines and a maddeningly repetitive Fender Rhodes chord, all while founder Nate Young chants a message of existential misery. The band revs up on “Twister Nightfall” and loops what sounds like the central lick of “I Wanna Be Your Dog” over a primal thud and the churning guitar ﬁlth of James Baljo—who took over for Mike Connelly a few years back—while “Asbestos Youth” ominously slides and slithers along, with a highpitched sine wave slaloming across a nauseous mix of feedback, synth squiggles, percussive splats, and relentless, spinning bass ﬁgures. All along Young’s vocals impart a mix of dread and suspense: he sounds bummed out, like he just might do some-

thing horrible, and that only enhances the suﬀocating tension Wolf Eyes have long been so eﬃcient at building. —PETER MARGASAK

FRIDAY26 Rudresh Mahanthappa Bird Calls Stefon Harris & Sonic Creed open. 8 PM, Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan, $24-$76. b There are a ton of highly skilled young jazz musicians today, but as the genre continues deeper into its second century, technique and fluency aren’t enough to make a new talent stand out. That’s a fact long understood by protean alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, who brings conceptual rigor to his music and regularly cooks up themes that put his ﬁery playing in fresh contexts. This week he debuts his latest project, the quintet that made last year’s explosive Bird Calls (ACT). Like many jazz artists before him, Mahanthappa is paying homage to bebop giant Charlie “Yardbird” Parker, but he doesn’t merely revisit his hero’s repertoire and adopt his sound. Rather he isolates specific DNA from some of Bird’s most important compositions and solos to create new tunes that are, in most cases, utterly unrecognizable. His piece “Maybe Later” retains the rhythmic patterns of Parker’s definitive solo on “Now’s the Time” but totally changes the notes, while “Both Hands” rejiggers the melody line of Bird’s “Dexterity” by removing all of its rests, transforming the tune into a breakneck tangle. Jazz musicians have a long tradition of writing new tunes based on the chord changes of standards, but Mahanthappa indulges in this practice only once: the lovely ballad “Sure Why Not?” is derived from both “Confirmation” and “Barbados,” songs that moved at much swifter tempos. He’s helped immensely by a superb band that includes hot young trumpeter Adam O’Farrill, pianist Matt Mitchell, bassist François Moutin, and drummer Rudy Royston, who sounds especially frenetic. —PETER MARGASAK J

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HIBER, MOLEHILL, ZOO TRIPPIN, TREE FEBRUARY 25, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 31

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Where are the rest of the music listings? Find them at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

MUSIC Julia Holter ò TONJE THILESEN

continued from 31 Meridian Akosuen and Sabertooth Dream open. 9 PM, Elastic, 3429 W. Diversey, $10 suggested donation. b The credits to Hoquet (Accidie Records), the debut album by Meridian, don’t disclose whether the music is improvised or composed. Percussionists Greg Stuart, Sarah Hennies, and Tim Feeney are each capable of either approach, but together their work focuses on something more basic. A snare drum, for instance, is a hard rim and a skin, and the sound that

comes from dragging an object against one of those two components is as valid as the one you get by whacking the drum with a stick to produce its more familiar sound. On their second and latest recording, Tuyeres (Caduc), the three musicians engage in parallel play, layering sounds that seem to resonate in sympathy with each other without noticeably interacting. Each element transforms slowly, but not in unison, which only makes you more aware of the physical presences of the collective sound. The guitar-drums duo Sabertooth Dream open, sound and video artist Akosuen performs second, and Meridian headline. —BILL MEYER J

We’re waiting for you. What are you waiting for? Join up with people from all walks of life, from all over Chicago and the world. When you’re here, you’re part of it. Come strike a chord with us this winter. Find your folk at the Old Town School of Folk Music. New classes start February 29. Sign up at oldtownschool.org

FEBRUARY 25, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 33

MUSIC

THIS FRIDAY & SATURDAY!

Walters ò KRISTINA PEDERSEN

NEXT THURSDAY & FRIDAY! MARCH 3 & 4 • VIC THEATRE 8:00pm 8:00pm •• 18 18 & & Over Over

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continued from 33 Waco Brothers See Pick of the Week on page 29. Aunteaks open. 9 PM, FitzGerald’s, 6615 W. Roosevelt, Berwyn, $15

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Animal Collective are at their giddiest on the new Painting With (Domino). The synthetic Day-Glo licks and splatters and spring-loaded rhythms support equally hyperactive, hocketing, up-and-down vocals from Panda Bear (Noah Lennox) and Avey Tare (Dave Portner) that seem to indulge a Beach Boys fantasy (one further aided by the record’s having been cut at Hollywood’s EastWest Studios, where Brian Wilson shepherded some of his greatest achievements). The album was made by a trio version of the collective, with Geologist (Brian Weitz) helping to craft the dozen sugary ditties that never stop to catch their breath—though the jacked-up energy can prove a bit exhausting after a while. The pogoing grooves inject an almost primitive punk drive to the music, but ultimately they sound like a series of old Casio presets on overload, and they often diminish the melodic joy spilling from every track. —PETER MARGASAK

Victor Villarreal Julia Steiner and Rich Salamander open. 7 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $8. 17+ Guitarist Victor Villarreal’s solo compositions are no less freakish in construction—and no less mind-boggling in their rapid-fire chill—than his crystalline work with indie-emo powerhouses Cap ’N Jazz, Owls, and Joan of Arc, and even though you’ve long heard his unique cascading style of picking for decades now, it never fails to hypnotize. On his

latest full-length for Joyful Noise, last year’s Sleep Talk, Villarreal ﬂirts with being discordant as he ﬂutters around the neck of his guitar, but you come to realize he’s toying with melody, hopping along the edge of it on one leg because he can. Tracks like “Dirtbike Girls” and the awesome seven-minute-long journey “A Mad Dad Dash” are held together more by Villarreal’s frenetic improvisational-like playing than his off-kilter vocals, which are often paper thin enough to blow by in the breeze left by his guitar. At the core of it all, as with the majority of his projects, is a kind of indescribable beauty and awe, bolstered by the realization that Chicago gets to claim him as its son. —KEVIN WARWICK

SUNDAY28 Ashtray Boy John San Juan opens. 8:30 PM, Township, 2200 N. California, $10. Though many bands struggle to keep it together even when all their members live in the same city, Ashtray Boy have persevered for more than two decades while occupying two continents. Front man Randall Lee and bassist-percussionist Carla BruceLee live in Melbourne, Australia, but the group’s long called Chicago home too—they both lived in town off and on for years—though Ashtray Boy’s membership behind the husband-and-wife team often changes (occasionally with the former Lee even hitting the road without Carla). Tonight is their ﬁrst show in Chicago since the release of their tenth album, September’s Painted With the Mouth (Minty Fresh). Lee’s resounding vocals can enliven the driest indie-rock melody, and he often acts as a prism to the mood of a song—on the sauntering “IL Sorpasso” he sings, “I need some smokes and the use of your bones.” Ashtray Boy speckle colorful ﬂourishes throughout the 17 tracks, and I’m particularly fond of “Oh Gilberto,” which sounds like a meditative Durutti Column number left to bake in the sun. They perform as a “power trio” tonight, Lee backed by bassist Mark Yoshizumi and drummer (and onetime Reader contributor) J. Niimi. —LEOR GALIL

Where are the rest of the music listings? Find them at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

MUSIC Wolf Eyes ò ALIVIA ZIVICH

TUESDAY1 Beach House Wume open. 8 PM, the Vic, 3145 N. Sheffield, sold out. 18+ There’s no band today like Beach House. Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand are the rare musicians who’ve evolved past their primary influences to remarkably and consistently explore a sound they’ve perfected. Dream pop is their starting point, but the journey through their six-album discography reveals a soaring tenderness that is pained and rapturous—reminiscent of the kind of love that feels like a gust of frigid air one moment, and a gentle crackling fire the next. Legrand’s voice is as cloudy as her words, as though she’s remembering rosy memories from several lifetimes ago. When caught up in the anthemic swirls of songs like “On the Sea” or “Levitation,” it’s easy to forget that their music is composed with just a guitar, keyboard, and drum machine. Their two fulllength releases for Sub Pop in 2015, Depression Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars, are distinct entities, though the latter’s release came as a surprise. Scally and Legrand have added two members to their touring lineup to make a big sound bigger, but they’re equally adept at paring down a song to its most yearning parts—and some of their new material allows Legrand to step away from her keyboard for the first time. During “All Your Yeahs,” for example, she plucks at a bass while her voice floats airily over quiet moments. And like their music, the minimal set production—which includes a dazzling light display during a showpiece like “10 Mile Stereo” from Teen Dream—gives us exactly what we need and nothing more. Beach House pull on our heartstrings, cradling us along the way. —MEAGAN FREDETTE

beauty in Holter’s work that I’m always wondering what comes next, but I often need to remind myself to bask in the splendor of what she’s doing right now. —PETER MARGASAK

Rivers of Nihil Dark Sermon, Warforged, Air Raid, and Epitasis open. 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2105 S. State, $12, $10 advance. 17+

In 2012 Pennsylvania technical-death-metal band Rivers of Nihil released their first full-length, The Conscious Seed of Light, and won the hearts of at least a few jaded critics—though the components of their formula were familiar, their songwriting skills and sense of pacing made them into something special, with a lot of future potential. Their latest, last August’s Monarchy (Metal Blade), rewards that optimism: it’s a solid and assured album that’s taut, fierce, agonized, and filler free; the instrumental tracks in particular come at a point where their elegance and clarity are much appreciated. The band intends to pull a Vivaldi and release four albums that each evoke a season. Monarchy is the “summer” record, poised perfectly at the point where welcome light and warmth begin to turn blinding and sweltering. —MONICA KENDRICK v

WEDNESDAY2 Julia Holter Circuit des Yeux open. 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, sold out. 18+ Julia Holter has explained that last year’s stunning Have You in My Wilderness (Domino) is missing the conceptual thread that ties together the material of her previous three recordings—last year she told the New York Times that the songs “didn’t really belong on any record.” I ﬁnd a few of the pieces toward the end a bit lackluster myself, but the bulk of the album is her strongest work yet. Holter brilliantly uses her strong foundation in classical and experimental music to warp and manipulate exquisite pop melodies into something uncanny and special, and though the tunes here are more direct than anything she’s done before, they still sound sui generis. The fundamental oomph of “Feel You,” with its brittle harpsichord lines and angelic wordless vocal accents, and “Silhouette,” which features surging string arrangements that add drama to the twirling confection, come from Holter’s ever-strengthening gift for melody and her improving ability to control her voice in delivery. She has no problem moving between a husky, almost Germanic sternness on “How Long?” to a full-bodied sunshine on the Brian Wilson-esque “Sea Calls Me Home” to a Joni Mitchell-like expansiveness on “Betsy on the Roof.” There’s so much substance and

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From left: potato skins; apple and blueberry crumble; French toast; the Honestly, I Spilled White Out cocktail; crudo; duck scramble; braised and roasted chicken; duck conﬁt; and twisted toﬀee creme brulee ò JEFFREY MARINI

NEW REVIEW

The cold comfort of Vivial

Nicholas Spencer gives the Southport corridor the “ﬁne comfort food” restaurant it deserves. By AIMEE LEVITT

’m not a homesick Brit, but I’ve read enough English novels, both historical and contemporary, to feel like I could be one. There’s probably a German word to explain the feeling of nostalgia for things you’ve read about but have never experienced in real life, and I felt a wave of this the ﬁrst time I went to Spencer’s Jolly Posh, when the cafe was still in its original location on Irving Park Road. It was the middle of the winter of the 2014 polar vortex, and the sight of bacon sandwiches on the menu, and sausage rolls, and scones served with real clotted cream cheered me up considerably. It was like stumbling into a real-life version of a meal served to a hungry British orphan or a hobbit.

The shelves of imported British groceries— digestive biscuits and crisps and Maltesers and spotted dick and, naturally, tea—were equally enchanting. That summer, owner Nicholas Spencer moved Jolly Posh to larger premises on Southport and expanded the menu to include very British dinners (but in the good hearty-meatpie way, not the overcooked-Sunday-roast way) and a satisfying afternoon tea that cost far less than the exorbitant prices charged by downtown hotels. He added beer and wine and cocktails. He cut back on the groceries. And then this past November, he abruptly closed Jolly Posh altogether, citing slow business and high rents, though he promised to continue

selling his sausages and black-and-white puddings at Mariano’s and Gepperth’s Meat Market. Nine days later, the space reopened as Vivial, a restaurant and cocktail bar. I cannot help but feel that Vivial is a rebuke to me and everyone else in this city who professed to love Jolly Posh but did not visit nearly as often as we should have. Would it have fared better someplace other than the once shabby, now shiny Southport corridor where, over the past 15 years, auto body shops, vintage stores, and tiny mom-and-pop cafes have given way ﬁrst to boutiques and fake British pubs and now to upscale chain stores? Maybe homesickness is not as effective a restaurant inspiration as one might think: a few years ago

and a few blocks south, Leo’s Coney Island, a mecca for members of Chicago’s large Michigan diaspora who yearned for the chili dogs of their youth, also shut down because business wasn’t good enough. Is Vivial Spencer’s attempt to give the neighborhood what he thinks it wants? Or in the wake of the demise of Jolly Posh, is he giving his customers what he thinks we deserve? Whatever the reason, he has given us yet another restaurant with seasonal ingredients, purchased from farmers, this one billing itself as “fine comfort food.” (Its neighbor, Grassroots—formerly Deleece—promises almost exactly the same thing.) I’m not quite sure what that means, because I usually don’t associate comfort food with fine dining—I associate it more with what Jolly Posh was— but maybe chef Garrett Christiansen, who cooked at the Aviary before he came to work for Spencer at Jolly Posh and has been given free rein in the kitchen at Vivial, doesn’t know either. Or maybe he’s decided to serve dishes he and his staff personally find comforting, which would explain how TGI Fridays-style potato skins, steak tartare, and spring rolls all ended up together on the same menu. (But for $65, Christiansen will assemble a five-course tasting menu, which, if what arrived at the table next to ours was any indication, may be more coherent.) The quality of the dishes also varies widely. There’s a very flavorful braised and roasted chicken with a crisp skin, moist interior, and a nice peppery kick. But there’s also a sad and dry duck confit served with baked beans that I think were supposed to serve as a contrast to the fattiness of the meat but instead added some necessary moisture. There’s a delightfully tangy and acidic crudo, served in an adorable little jar with a toggle lid, but the aforementioned potato skins crossed the line between well done and slightly charred. At brunch, I had a bowl of vanilla-bean Greek yogurt with granola and honey that was so good I vowed to figure out how to prepare it at home so I could eat it every day. But I also had a duck scramble with soggy potatoes and almost no egg. It’s possible that the comfort aspect of Vivial comes from the fact that, unlike the rest of

continued on 40

FEBRUARY 25, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 37

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Bombs $4, Malibu Cocktails $4, Jack Daniel’s Cocktails $5, Tanqueray Cocktails $4, Johnny Walker Black $5, Cabo Wabo $5

Moosehead pints $3.75, Hamms cans $2.50, Special Export Bush Longneck bottles $3, Foster Big cans $5

Wine by the Glass $5, Jameson $5, Patron $7, Founders 12oz All Day IPA Cans $3.50

$6 Firestone Walker Opal pints $6 Finch Vanilla Stout 16 oz. cans $7 house wines $8 Few Spirits

Moosehead pints $3.75, Hamms cans $2.50, Special Export Bush Longneck bottles $3, Foster Big cans $5

Heineken Bottles $4, Bloodies feat. Absolut Peppar Vodka $5, Original Moonshine $5, Corzo $5, Sailor Jerry’s Rum $4, Deschutes Drafts $4

$6 Firestone Walker Opal pints $6 Finch Vanilla Stout 16 oz. cans $7 house wines $8 Few Spirits

$5 Martinis, Lemon Drop, Cinnamon Apple, Mai Tai, French, Cosmo, On the Rocks, Bourbon Swizzle, Pomegranate Margarita

WICKER PARK

PHYLLIS’ MUSICAL INN

FITZGERALD’S

$6 Firestone Walker Opal pints $6 Finch Vanilla Stout 16 oz. cans $7 house wines $8 Few Spirits

1800 W Division 773-486-9862

2105 S State 312-949-0120

S AT

$6 Jameson shots $3 PBR bottles

SUN

$6 Jameson shots, $3 PBR bottles, $4 Temperance brews, $5 Absolut bloody mary’s

$4.75 Bloody Mary and Marias

$6 Firestone Walker Opal pints $6 Finch Vanilla Stout 16 oz. cans $7 house wines $8 Few Spirits

Moosehead pints $3.75, Hamms cans $2.50, Special Export Bush Longneck bottles $3, Foster Big cans $5

Buckets of Miller & Bud Bottles (Mix & Match) $14, Guinness & Smithwicks Drafts $4, Bloodies feat, Absolut Peppar Vodka $5, Ketal One Cocktails $5

MON

$6 Jameson shots, $3 PBR bottles, $4 Half Acre brews, FREE POOL, “Hoppy Hour” 5pm8pm = 1/2 price IPAs + pale ales

$1 oﬀ all beers including craft

CLOSED

Moosehead pints $3.75, Hamms cans $2.50, Special Export Bush Longneck bottles $3, Foster Big cans $5

All Draft Beers Half Price, Makers Mark Cocktails $5, Crystal Head Vodka Cocktails $4

TUE

$6 Jameson shots, $3 PBR bottles, $2 and $3 select beers

$2 oﬀ all Whiskeys and Bourbons

$6 Firestone Walker Opal pints $6 Finch Vanilla Stout 16 oz. cans $7 house wines $8 Few Spirits

Moosehead pints $3.75, Hamms cans $2.50, Special Export Bush Longneck bottles $3, Foster Big cans $5

Jim Beam Cocktails $4, Jameson Cocktails $5, Cabo Wabo $5, Malibu Cocktails $4, Corona Bottles $3.50, PBR Tall Boy Cans $2.75

WED

$6 Jameson shots, $3 PBR bottles, 1/2 price aliveOne signature cocktails, $4 Goose Island brews, “Hoppy Hour” 5pm-8pm = 1/2 price IPAs + pale ales

$6 Firestone Walker Opal pints $6 Finch Vanilla Stout 16 oz. cans $7 house wines $8 Few Spirits $10 classic cocktails

Moosehead pints $3.75, Hamms cans $2.50, Special Export Bush Longneck bottles $3, Foster Big cans $5

Stoli/Absolut & Soco Cocktails $4, Long Island Iced Teas $5, Herradura Margaritas $5, Stella/Hoegaarden/ Deschutes Drafts $4, Goose Island 312 Bottles $3.50

OUR READERS LOVE GREAT DEALS! CONTACT YOUR READER REPRESENTATIVE AT 312.222.6920 OR displayads@chicagoreader.com FOR DETAILS ON HOW TO LIST DRINK SPECIALS HERE.

38 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 25, 2016

PHOTO: ALEXEY LYSENKO/ GETTY IMAGES

BAR REVIEW

The bar Lincoln Square has been waiting for By JULIA THIEL

distinct aroma reminiscent of hookah smoke hangs in the air at the Sixth. The cocktail bar doesn’t allow patrons to smoke—but the bartenders can and do. The smoke created by grinding up cedar wood, dried citrus peel, and shisha, and putting the mix into a handheld smoker is a key element of one of the most popular drinks: the mescal-based Spaceman Spiff, which is served atop a small, smoke-filled bowl. Lifting the conical, stemless glass allows the smoke to waft out and affords a glimpse, through the haze, of a diorama inside the bowl that’s meant to be evocative of something Spaceman Spiff—Calvin’s alter ego in the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip—might’ve seen on another planet. It’s a neat concept, and the smoke combined with the smoky mescal, grilled pineapple juice, hazelnut orgeat, and barbecue bitters is the closest I’ve come to drinking a campﬁre. While the cocktail is far from subtle, the sweet, savory, nutty notes cut through the over-the-top smokiness. The Sixth has been open since only the end of December, but it’s already wildly popular. Maybe that’s because it’s the only true cocktail bar in Lincoln Square; maybe it’s because the Sixth is a cozy, pleasant space with a good selection of wine, beer, whiskey, and $12 cocktails. Beverage director Benjamin Schiller, who lives in the area, wanted to create a neighborhood cocktail bar for the north side, and this place feels like one, with cheap beer on the menu alongside top-shelf single-malt scotch. Another drink, the Silly Rabbit—served over brightly colored Trix-inspired ice

cubes—is even more interactive. The cocktail itself, essentially a gin sour with soda, is served alongside the glass of ice and comes with a dropper bottle of mint tincture. Add the cocktail a little at a time to get the fruity flavor of just one ice cube, or all at once to combine the flavors; adding the tincture creates a cooling effect. It’s a pleasant, refreshing drink, but for flavor rather than entertainment value it’s best to look further down the menu to whiskey-based drinks like the port-barrel-aged Old Money. The barely sweet cocktail, made with Aperol and finished with aromatic garnishes of allspice and orange zest, tastes of dark fruit and dates, with a subtle but pervasive bitterness and a nice port flavor that comes at the end. The cocktail that sticks in my mind, though, is the Weston: a riff on an old-fashioned made with wheated bourbon; syrup infused with vanilla, cinnamon, and Dark Matter Unicorn Blood coffee; and tobacco “essence.” It’s sweeter than the Old Money, with notes of milk chocolate, coffee, and vanilla, but not syrupy—and the tobacco adds a slightly smoky nose and a mysterious but compelling flavor that lingers post-sip. While there’s plenty more of the menu to explore on other visits, I can’t imagine going wrong with any of Schiller’s carefully composed concoctions. The Sixth fits right in with the high-end cocktail bars downtown—but Lincoln Square is the neighborhood that needs it. v

v @juliathiel

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FEBRUARY 25, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 39

FOOD & DRINK Vivial continued from 37

Straight Shooting about Straight Bourbon Please join us for a special Bourbon Pairing Dinner with Executive chef Anthony Bernal of Mastro’s Steakhouse Chicago and Proprietor Dan Garrison of Garrison Brothers Distillery. WHERE

Mastro’s Steakhouse Chicago 520 North Dearborn Street Chicago IL 60654

Thursday evening, March 3rd, 2016 from 7 to 10. Seating is limited and will sell out quickly. Please call (312) 521-5100 for reservations.

the stroller-clogged Southport corridor, the place is distinctly inhospitable to children. (A disclaimer: I do not hate children. Not all children, anyway. But even people who love them tell me that they sometimes like to enjoy meals where they don’t have to supervise other people’s table manners or wipe food off of them afterwards.) During dinner, the room is dimly lit, with lots of candles. (If you have no sense of romance, you may complain that you can’t read the menu.) The tables are the right size for discreet hand-holding. At brunch, it’s flooded with natural light and there is a waiter, handsome in the manner of a scheming nephew on a soap opera, who will happily stand at attention beside a table of two women in their 30s so they can better imagine the six-pack abs beneath his crisp white shirt. (Really what we wanted was cream for our coffee. And that’s not a euphemism.) On a busy Friday night, meals are leisurely, the staff is courteous, and nobody seems to be in a hurry to push you out into the cold—not even after you’ve paid your check. The desserts are worth sticking around for, especially the twisted toffee creme brulee and a lightly caramelized vanilla bread pudding with an aroma you can sniff out a table away. It’s by far the most comforting thing on the menu. But the aspect of Vivial that is most, yes, convivial, is the bar, tucked away in a back corner. The bartenders appear to be enjoying themselves more than the rest of the staff, and they do excellent work with Kelsey Edington’s cocktails. The names suffer from an overabundance of whimsy—if you can say “I’d like an Honestly, I Spilled White Out, please,” without feeling like a sorority girl on spring break and then laughing like an idiot, you have more self-control than I do—but the drinks themselves are not silly. They are smooth and well balanced and miraculously stay cold longer than you’d think they would. One night I saw several people come in, walk past the tables laden with food, and sit down to order nothing but a round of cocktails. If starting up a place like Vivial is how Spencer thinks he can keep the doors open and the lights on, I guess I’m in no position to blame him. And maybe the kitchen will figure out what it means by “fine comfort food” and find a way to distinguish itself from every other fine/upscale/elevated comfort-food restaurant in the city. But it’s sad, to me anyway, that Vivial has to work so hard to be what Jolly Posh was so effortlessly. v

v @aimeelevitt 40 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 25, 2016

JOBS

ADMINISTRATIVE SVP DIRECTOR OF Strategy &

Media: Provide sr exec leadership & guide strategic development & direction of ad agency’s strategy & media business units working on all agency accounts, including global accounts. Chicago, IL location. Req’s Bachelor’s in any field & 15 yrs ad agency acct mgmt exp at Acct Dir level or above. Send resume to: Two By Four, Ltd., 10 N Dearborn St, Ste 1000, Chicago, IL, 60602, Attn: L. Allen.

SALES & MARKETING DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT De-

velopment – Social Media 4C Insights, Inc. Chicago, IL Gather business requirements and outline technical specifications for 4C internal engineering teams in a form of clear, and structured internal collateral. Interpret complex sets of data and information related to 4C product and turn it into actionable insights for clients. Create presentations with key reporting insights showing trends, success cases, forecasting future client growth and driving optimization of client brands through a review of the analytical information provided by social media. Min Requirements: Must have a Bachelor’ degree in Business Administration, Mass Communication, Marketing or a closely related field. Must have five (5) years of progressive experience in Marketing, Account Management, Media Solutions, Product Management or a related field. Within the five years, must have experience in social media advertising; interpreting large sets of data and deriving trends data perfor mance/Big Data analytics; direct management of client and/or agency accounts; leading communications with large client accounts; outlining technical requirements for business applications or company product. We offer a competitive salary and benefits package. If you are interested in applying for the career opportunity listed above, please e-mail your resume to us at Submissions-ca reers@4cinsights.com and reference DPD0216.

TELEMARKETING. PAID TRAINING. No cold calling. Full-

time or part-time, days or evenings. Excellent salary plus substantial bonus. Students/Retirees also welcome Touhy/Cicero, Lincolnwood. 847-675-3600.

HOME REMODELING COMPA-

NY seeks enthusiastic telemarketers. $10/ hour plus 1% commission. Must have good phone skills. Bonuses for top producers. Call Jim after 2:30pm, 773-227-2255.

food & drink SERVERS FULL/PART-TIME ,

Experienced. Please apply in person: Sabatino’s Restaurant. 4441 W Irving Park Road, Chicago. 773-283-8331.

NOW HIRING SOUS C H E F

DISHWA-HER BUSPERSON SERVERS VIA ROMA ITAIAN EATERY VIARO-M A.DESPLAINES@YAHOO.COM

General ASSOC ATTY: MANAGE 25-35 wage/hour cases on Rule 23 class action litigation under IL Day & Temporary Labororer Services Act for U.S. & foreign national workers. Litigate related civil & administrative claims. Perform normal litigation related tasks. Conduct community outreach on workers rights & U visas. Draft legislation & participate in rule making process. Secure govt agency cert for U visas. Chicago, IL loc. Reqs a JD & IL law license. Reqs 2 yrs exp, incl’g: 1) litigating Rule 23 class actions under IL Day & Temp Labororer Services Act, 2) drafting leglislation in empl law, 3) drafting rules/regs in empl law, 4) providing advice to one or more foreign Consulates on U.S. & IL labor law & worker protections, 5) applying for govt agency cert for U visas & working w/govt agencies to develop U visa protocols, & 6) developing know your rights materials w/ community orgs in empl law. Send resume to: Workers’ Law Office, P.C., 53 W Jackson Blvd, Ste 701, Chicago, IL, 60604. Attn: C. Williams.

Wine Distributer Office Manager wanted. High schl education min. Multi tasker, order entry, answer phones, rcvbls, bookkeeping. 9-5 M-F, Burr Ridge Email res rick@ purewine.com

ACCOUNTING/FINANCE: The Northern Trust Company is seeking a Team Leader, Cross Border Pooling in Chicago, IL w/ the following requirements: BS degree in Business, Finance, Accounting, or related field or foreign academic equivalent. 2 years of related experience. Calculate net asset values on tax transparent fund structures, Irish UCITs, Dutch FGRs, and Luxembourg FCP; ensure withholding tax on dividends is calculated with the correct tax treaty rates using SunGard Enterprise, and entitlements application database; Use cross border pooling methodology, to calculate performance returns and reconcile them to appropriate tax treaty rates; Prepare financial accounts on tax transparent on multi-class, multi-currency, and master feeder fund structures using SunGard Enterprise. Please apply online at www.northerntrustcareers. com and search for Req. # 16019

COMPUTER/IT: VALENCE HEALTH in Chicago, IL seeks Data

Analyst II to lead the dvlpmnt effcnt SAS prcesses to intgrte & anlyze pyer dta frm mult srces. Req BS in Pub Hlth, Epdmlgy, Stats, Econ, Comp Sci, or rltd + 3 yrs exp or in altrntve MS in Pub Hlth, Epdmlgy, Stats, Econ, Comp Sci, or rltd + 1 yr exp. Req 1 yr hlthcre indstry exp in SAS. Req exp w/: SAS incldng SAS macros & proc SQL; SAS & SQL prgrmng exp, incldng SAS macros, PROC SQL & Enterprise Guide; data manipultn & anlysis, incldng acsng raw dta in vrd frmts w/ diff mthds; anlyzng & prcsng dta. Employer will accept any suitable combination of education,

training, and experience. Send resume to Beth Arbetman at 540 W. Madison, Suite 1500, Chicago, IL 60661.

IT: THE NORTHERN TRUST CO . is seeking a Senior Consultant,

Applications in Chicago IL, with the following requirements: BS in Computer Science, Information Technology or Engineering and 8 years of related experience. Prior experience must include: design and implement IBM Cognos TM1 toolset version 10.2; design, develop and implement Financial Performance Management Applications; implement business software applications utilizing TM1 architect, performance modeler, Turbo Integrator, rules & feeders,

CAMPAIGN JOBS

SEEKING A COLLEGE educated

individu-al for a permanent part-time employ-ment in Evanston working with chil-dren and adults in a Behavioral Vi-sion Training program with Dr. Jeff Getzell, O.D. Experience preferred but not required for the right individual. Dr. Getzell is willing to work with an individual as an entry level person, should there be no previous medical experience. Requirements: -Exceptional problem solver -Bright -Curious -Open minded Work schedule: -Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays 2pm-6pm -Saturdays 8am-12pm Please note that the employment hours are not flexible. Resume submission options: Email: behavioraloptometry@gmail. com No phone calls please.

DEPLOYMENT MANAGER (Bensenville, IL) Coord new release support, ongoing production support, continuous production improvement, & product enhancements & provide tech leadership. Mng defect triage during test execution. Coord code deliv ery/builds, early integration test’g, environ build-up, & performance testing. Reqs: MS comp sci/comp eng’g + 2 yrs telecom/digital commerce mgmt rltd sftwr dvlpmt exp; proficient w/ Oracle 9i/10g, Unix, Linux, Eclipse, Flash Builder, Charles Proxy, Wily, DreamWeaver, Adobe Flex, UI Editor, J2EE (Servlets, JSP), Struts, Springs, Hibernate, RestServices, myBatis, HTML 5, JavaScript, XSLT, CSS, SCSS, Java, and C/C++/C#; signif knwlg of Underscore.js, backbone.js, re quire.js, knockout.js, and jquery. Resumes: Amdocs Inc., careerst a@amdocs.com; Ref: HR-0380-2 Technical Project Manager II (Akamai Technologies, Inc.; Chicago, IL): Will be responsible for creating & delivering integration of enterprise solutions by providing technical & architectural expertise in positioning & integrating internet products & services. Must be avail. to travel to dom. cust. sites 10% of time. Min. req’s: Mast. Deg. in Comp. Sci., Elect. Eng., or rel’d tech. field. Alt. req’s: Bach. Deg. in same + 5 yrs exp. in consulting &/or proj. mgmt in IT customer-facing environment. Must have: understanding of 1 or more web devel. tech., methodologies, or architectures including J2EE, HTTP, DNS, .NET, C#, JSP, ASP, Tomcat, & Apache. Send resume: Caitlin Cygan, HR, Akamai Technologies, Inc., 150 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02142. Reference: SL-AY-TPMII-0216. Technical Project Manager II (Akamai Technologies, Inc.; Chicago, IL): Will be responsible for creating & delivering integration of enterprise solutions by providing technical & architectural expertise in positioning & integrating internet products & services. Must be avail. to travel to dom. cust. sites 10% of time. Min. req’s: Mast. Deg. in Comp. Sci., Elect. Eng., or rel’d tech. field. Alt. req’s: Bach. Deg. in same + 5 yrs exp. in consulting &/or proj. mgmt in IT customer-facing environment. Must have: understanding of 1 or more web devel. tech., methodologies, or architectures including J2EE, HTTP, DNS, .NET, C#, JSP, ASP, Tomcat, & Apache. Send resume: Caitlin Cygan, HR, Akamai Technologies, Inc., 150 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02142. Reference: SL-AY-TPMII-0216.

drill-throughs and MDX; perform troubleshooting in a multi-tier production Cognos TM1 environment utilizing TM1 and BI tools. Please apply on-line at www.northerntrustcareers. com and search for Req. # 16021

Sr Software Engineer (Akamai Technologies, Inc.; Chicago, IL w/ telecommuting benefit). Design, implement, enhance & maintain enterprise web content mgmt system. Implement & deploy solutions using Standard J2EE dev stack. Resolve complex problems. Min. req’s: Master’s in Comp Sci, Elec Eng, Info Sys, or related; Alt: Bachelor’s in same + 5 yrs progressive exp in softw. develop. Must have: ability working in eng. capacity for web content mgmt sol’ns. Telecommuting from anywhere w/ in commuting dist. from Akamai’s Chicago office permitted. Send resume: Caitlin Cygan, HR, Akamai Technologies, Inc., 150 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02142. Ref. SL-HA-SSE-0116. SINAI MEDICAL GROUP seeks Internist, Chicago, IL: Provide primary medical care to adult patients. Conduct med evals of patients, prescribe meds & perform f/u care & refer patients to specialists. Reqs. medical degree & IL physician lic. Send CV to J .Vazquez, SMG, California Ave. at 15th St, Chicago, IL 60608

SYSTEMS SOFTWARE ENGINEER. Design/build/test/deploy

comp. systems designed for financial trading. U.S. Bach. Degree or foreign equiv. (Comp. Sci.) req’d. 5 yrs.’ prog. resp. post-baccalaureate exp. in posn’s involving software design req’d. Must have exp. w/ posn’s involving: in-depth knowledge of C++, JAVA and GUI; visual studio and SQL Server; Linux admin. and shell scripting; and object-oriented programming. Must pass Wolverine computer proficiency exam. Wolverine Trading Technologies LLC, Chicago, IL. Send resumes to: Recruiting, PO Box 641152, Chicago, IL 60664.

QUADRATIC SYSTEMS, INC. seeks Systems Analysts for Chicago, IL to design, develop & test sw applications. Master’s in Comp Sci +2yrs exp or Bachelor’s in Comp Sci +5yrs exp req’d. Must have exp w/ developing sw apps, data analysis using JEE, EJB, Spring, Eclipse, Hibernate, Servlets, JSP, JAXP, RMI-IIOP, SOAP, SSL, MySQL, SQL Server, Sybase, Oracle 8i/10g, PostgreSQL, Apache, Tomcat, Web logic 8.x/10.x, JBOSS, Oracle AS, Web Services (JAX-RPC, JAX-WS, RESTful). Send resume to: anilk@quadratics. com, Ref: SL SALES CONSULTANT (Chicago, IL) needed to dev & manage customer acct,sales & distribution of dry cleaning & laundry supplies. Req. 2 yr sales exp. Resume to Lipke Kentex Corp. Attn. HR, 4309 S. Morgan St. Chicago, IL 60609

STONEMASON. Construct, erect, install, and repair structures and fixtures of stone. Shape or cut materials to specific measurements. Remove and replace damaged or defective parts of stone surfaces. 2 years of exp required. 40h/wk, M-F. Send resume to: Action 1 Construction, Inc. 1855 N. Laclaire Ave, Chicago IL 60639

Field Service Engineer(Batavia, IL) needed to service indus. Turbo Mach. at client sites in US & Canada. Req. AA in Engineering & 2yr field serv. exp incl. maint, repair of turbo Mach. &variable speed driver, travel (50%). Resume to Kturbo USA,1183 Pierson Dr.STE118, Batavia, 60510 Marketing Analyst, Research market conditions of logistics services. Collect data from oversea vendors. Req’s a Bach in BA, Marketing or rel fd. Job in Itasca, IL. Res to: Suntrans International, Inc. 1550 W. Glenlake Ave., Itasca, IL 60143 SR. APP. ARCHITECT-

St. Charles, IL Req: MS in CS+2 yrs exp. OR BS in CS & 5 yrs exp. Travel/reloc. req. Smart-Source, Inc. sourcesmart15@gmail.com

REAL ESTATE

RENTALS

12.25/HR

STUDIO $600-$699

FOR 90 DAYS THEN

STUDIOS. CLOSE TO Public Transport at Howard/Rogers/ Greenview. Economy Rentals 3 Blocks from Howard CTA Station. Rent $650. Heat/Water Included. Move-in Fee $350. Kathy 312.566.6567

A P P LY N O W 8 7 2 . 2 0 3 . 9 3 0 3

7500 SOUTH SHORE Dr. Brand New Rehabbed Studio & 1BR Apts from $650. Call 773-374-7777 for details.

15.00/HR BECOME A

HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONAL

WE LOVE OUR JOBS

THINGS ARE HEATING UP AT THE COOLEST PLACE TO WORK IN CHICAGO

WE’RE HIRING TOUR GUIDES & DRIVERS!

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• MRI Technologist • Health Information Technology (includes 3 certiﬁcations: Medical Billing, Coding, and Medical Ofﬁce Administration) • Non-Invasive Cardiovascular Sonography (diploma & degree options) • Diagnostic Medical Sonography (diploma & degree options)

Now offers Associate of Applied Science Degrees

For OPEN HOUSE info, visit WWW.MCCOLLEGE.EDU

Diploma & Certiﬁcate Programs:

• Medical Assisting (also includes Phlebotomy & EKG) • Cardiology/Monitor Tech/EKG • Dialysis Technologist • Phlebotomy Technologist • Surgical Technologist (also includes Sterile Processing certiﬁcation) • CNA • Pharmacy Tech • ESL

Ofﬁce hours, programs, and class schedules vary by location. Please call us or visit our website for details.

We accept international students.

MIDWESTERN CAREER COLLEGE

Chicago 20 N. Wacker Dr. (@downtown) (312) 236-9000

Naperville Blue Island 200 E. 5th Ave. 12840 S. Western Ave. (@Metra Station) (@Metra Station) (630) 536-8679 (708) 926-9470

Midwestern Career College is approved by the Division of Private Business and Vocational Schools of the Illinois Board of Higher Education. Gainful Employment information for each program is available on our website at www.mccollege.edu under program descriptions.

Our positions are ideal for actors, comics, writers, musicians, students, and teachers. You will learn about history, architecture, and culture while getting paid. After training, you will meet people from around the world and be the host of their Chicago experience.

WE’RE THE BEST AT WHAT WE DO AND WE ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT!

-OPEN INTERVIEWS4400 S. RACINE

FRIDAYS, SATURDAYS & MONDAYS

FEB 26-MARCH 6 · 10AM-5PM VISIT

CHICAGOTROLLEY.COM T O S E E YO U R F U T U R E

STUDIO $900 AND OVER

LINCOLN PARK 545 West Arlington Place. 2450 North. Available now. Courtyard building set off by our lovely courtyard. Exposed brick hallways, oak floors, modern kitchens and baths. Resident engineer. 2-1/2 room studio $1125. Heat and appliances included. For appointment call 312-822-1037 weekdays until 5:30pm, Saturdays until 3pm. WE’LL PUT YOU in our place. DePaul District. 2901 North Seminary. Available now. Cabinet kitchens and updated baths. Heat and appliances included. Studio $1095. For appointment call 312-822-1037 weekdays until 5:30pm, Saturdays until 3pm.

STUDIO OTHER CHICAGO, HYDE PARK Arms

Hotel, 5316 S. Harper, maid, phone, cable ready, fridge, private facilities, laundry avail. $160/wk Call 773-4933500

CROSSROADS HOTEL SRO SINGLE RMS Private bath, PHONE,

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BIG ROOM WITH stove, fridge, bath & new floor. N. Side, by transp/ shop. Clean w/elevator. $116/wk + up. 773-561-4970 CLEAN ROOM WITH fridge and microwave. Close to Oak Park, Walmart, Buses & Metra. $115/wk & up. 773-637-5957 EDGEWATER - NICE Room with

stove, fridge & bath, by Shopping & Transp. Elevator, Lndry. $116/wk. & Up. Call 773-275-4442

1 BR UNDER $700 DAYCARE FOR LEASE:

4930 W Diversey, 4200sqft, $4975/mo., furniture included. Call 312-617-5936 for more information

FEBRUARY 25, 2016 | CHICAGO READER 41

$395. FURNISHED GARDEN Bedroom in private home. Irving Park/Western. Laundry, bathroom, refrigerator. Wifi. Private entrance. NO KITCHEN. Yards. April 1. Nonsmoking! References, lease. 773485-3363, bjsilverbeam@msn.com. 7022 S. SHORE DRIVE Impecca-

bly Clean Highrise STUDIOS, 1 & 2 BEDROOMS Facing Lake & Park. Laundry & Security on Premises. Parking & Apts. Are Subject to Availability. TOWNHOUSE APARTMENTS 773-288-1030

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

CHICAGO SOUTH - YOU’VE tried the rest, we are the best. Apartments & Homes for rent, city & suburb. No credit checks. 773-221-7490, 773-221-7493 AUBURN GRESHAM. 8105 S. PAULINA ST. 1 & 2BR APTS, CREDIT CHECK, SECTION 8 WELCOME. $650-$750/MO. TOM 708205-1448

1 BR $700-$799 PLAZA ON THE PARK 608 East 51st Street. Very spacious renovated apartments. 1BR $722 - $801, 2BR $837 - $1,009, 3BR $1,082- $1,199, 4-5BR $1,273 - $1,405. Visit or call (773)548-9300, M-F 9am-5pm or apply online at www.plazaonthepark apts.com Managed by Metroplex, Inc

BLUE

ISLAND

- MOD 1BR

Apt, newly decorated, carpet, A/C, stove, fridge, lndry room, private parking, $740/mo + sec. Vic. of 119th & Western, 773-238-7203

SPACIOUS UNIT, A lot of light. Walk-in closet, pantry, central AC, laundry, private porch and rear yard. $1,085. Carl, GDarchs@gmail.com, text 773.230.5810.

1648 W. CATALPA 1 bdrm

$950. Heat included. Call Rosie 773782-7627 or Paul J. Quetschke & Co., 773-281-8400 (Mon.-Fri. 9-5).

1 BR $1100 AND OVER

NEW REMOD 1, 4 & 5BR Apt &

Houses w/ 1-2 full bath. Sec 8 Welc. All SS appls are incl. $700 & up. Move In Fee. 773-220-0715

CALUMET CITY, HUGE 1BR, 1Ba, Newly rehabbed, appliances incl., $700/mo. + 1 month security. Section 8 ok. Call 510-735-7171 BERWYN - CICERO: STUDIOS & 1 Bedrooms, Heat included. No dogs. Call Ken 773-391-1460

WICKER PARK LOFT APART-

MENTS for rent, Beautiful 1 & 2+ Bedrooms, brick, new SS apps., a few steps from the Damon Blue line, coin laundry, no sec. deposit, credit check required $1850$2850/mo. 773-319-7060

EVANSTON. 818-1/2 FOREST CO-OP APARTMENTS AFFORDABLE LIVING, Chat-

ham, 83rd & Langley. Dep. Req, Pymt Plns Avail. heat incl, no appliances. Credit chk fee $50. Call 773-723-1374

CHATHAM, 708 E. 81st (Langley), 1BR, 3rd flr. 738 E. 81st (Evans), 1BR, 3rd floor. $650/mo + security. Call Mr. Joe at 708-870-4801 CHICAGO, BEVERLY / Cal Park

/ Blue Island Studio $530 & up, 1BR $650 & up, 2BR $875 & up. Heat, Appls, Balcony, Carpet, Laundry, Prkg. 708-388-0170

WEST PULLMAN (INDIANA

Ave) Nice, lrg 1 & 2BR w/balcony. 1BR $650, 2BR $750. Move-In Fee $300. Sec 8 Welcome. 773-995-6950

EXCHANGE EAST APTS 1 Brdm $575 w/Free Parking,Appl, AC,Free heat. Near trans. laundry rm. Elec.not incl. Kalabich Mgmt (708) 424-4216 6930 S. SOUTH SHORE DRIVE Studios & 1BR, INCL. Heat, Elec, Cking gas & PARKING, $560-$850, Country Club Apts 773-752-2200

NEAR 83RD AND Maryland.

Large 2BR. Recently remodeled, all hdwd flrs, new kitchen and bath, heat incl. $800/mo. 708-921-9506

NO SEC DEP 6829 S. Perry. Studio $460. 1BR. $515. HEAT INCL 773-955-5106 CHICAGO - HYDE Park 5401 S. Ellis. 1BR. $535-$600/mo Call 773-955-5106

85TH/PAULINA - 1BR, 2nd flr Apt $600/mo + $600 sec dep & ref check. Quiet Bldg, Incl heat & fridge. Avail now. 773-297-8575. 85TH & HERMITAGE , 2BR, $100 0/ month plus security deposit. Hardwood floors,heat included. Section 8 ok. 708-794-6485 CHICAGO 1 BR, complete rehab, $575, utils not incl, section 8 welcome, 10810 S. Calumet Ave. 773-928-6244 or 773-206-3715

HAMMOND, IN. 5604 Claude

1 BR $800-$899 ROGERS PARK/ EVANSTON!

7665-7703 N. Sheridan Rd. 1 bedrooms starting at $875 to $925, includes heat and cooking gas! Hardwood floors, free WiFi. Vintage courtyard building, by Evanston Northwestern University, long-term private ownership, cats ok, dogs upon approval. For a showing please contact Samir 773-627-4894. Hunter Properties 773-477-7070 www. hunterprop.com

EDGEWATER. 1055 W Catalpa 1

bedrooms starting at $875 to $925 heat and cooking gas included! Application fee $40. No security deposit. Parking available for an additional fee. Laundry room in the building, wood floors, close to grocery stores, restaurant, CTA Red Line train, etc. For a showing please contact Millie 773-561-7070 Hunter Properties,Inc. 773-477-7070 www.hunterprop.com

LAKESIDE TOWER, 910 W Lawrence. 1 bedrooms starting at $825-$895 include heat and gas, laundry in building. Great view! Close to CTA Red Line, bus, stores, restaurants, lake, etc. To schedule a showing please contact Celio 773-3961575, Hunter Properties 773-4777070, www.hunterprop.com ONE BEDROOM APARTMENT

near Warren Park and Metra. 1904 W Pratt. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. Heat included. Laundry in building. $ 830/ month. Available 4/1. 773-7614318, www.lakefrontmgt.com

SECTION 8 OK. 5BR, 2 full baths SFH, newly fin. hdwd flrs, quiet block, avail. immed., $1500/mo. Experienced landlord, 773-2252372

1 BR $900-$1099 TERRIFIC LARGE 1 bdrm gar-

den apt in beautiful vintage Ravenswood building: only 1 blk to Metra stop, Mariano’s grocery, LA Fitness! Hdwd flrs, built-in china cabinets, loads of windows/daylight! Heat AND cooking gas incl in monthly rent! $1,015.00. Avail April 15. (773) 381-0150. www.theschirmfirm.com

Ave, 1BR, newly decorated. Tenant pays utilities. $500/mo + security. Call 773-507-8475 EVANSTON, 1404 CENTRAL, Apt 107. Near Evanston Hospital and shuttle bus to Northwestern. Beauti79th & Woodlawn and 76th & Phillips 1BRs $650-$700, Remodeled, ful courtyard. Spacious vintage appls avail. Free Heat. Sect 8 wel- apartment, laundry and storage on premises. Near public transportation come. Call 312-286-5678 and el and super shopping on Central. Heat and appliances included. 3N RIVERSIDE: 1BR new tile/ 1/2/1 bedroom. Available now-6/30. windows, lndry facilitities, a/c, Renew optional. $1050. For appointincls heat & natural gas, $849/mo ment call 312-822-1037 weekdays until 5:30pm, Saturdays until 3pm. Luis 708-366-5602 lv msg

42 CHICAGO READER | FEBRUARY 25, 2016

Ave Apt C-3. Stately building on quiet street, near Sheridan Road. Sedate residential area. Near Main Street, shops, restaurants and transportation. Heat and appliances included. We will fax floorplans upon request. 1 bedroom. Available now-6/30 option to renew. $1250. For appointment call 312-822-1037 weekdays until 5:30pm, Saturdays until 3pm.

GORGEOUS ENGLISH TUDOR building with stunning de-

tails in apt! Lovely hdwd flrs, builtin bookshelves, built-in china cabinet, formal Dining Room. Onsite ln dry/storage. Only 2 blocks from Irving Park "EL"! 4237 North Hermitage. Avail MARCH 1. (773) 381-0150 www. theschirmfirm.com

AVAIL APRIL 1! Gorgeous Eng-

lish Tudor courtyard building! Beautiful hdwd flrs, built-in bookshelves, onsite lndry/storage. Only 2 blks to Irving Park "EL"! $1160.00 ht incl. (773)381-0150. www.theschirmfirm. com

WE’LL PUT YOU in our place. DePaul District. 2901 North Seminary #103. Available 2/1. Cabinet kitchens and updated baths. Heat and appliances included. 2/1 bedroom $1225. For appointment call 312-822-1037 weekdays until 5:30pm, Saturdays until 3pm.

1748 W. WABANSIA 1 bdrm

$1150. Water included. Call Daniel 773-875-8085 or Paul J. Quetschke & Co., 773-281-8400 (Mon-Fri. 9-5).

1 BR OTHER APTS. FOR RENT PARK MANAGEMENT & INVESTMENT LTD. THE HAWK HAS... ARRIVED!!! MOST INCLUDE HEAT & HOT WTR STUDIOS FROM $510.00 1BDR FROM $575.00 2BDR FROM $745.00 3 BDR/2 FULL BATH FROM $1175 **1-(773)-476-6000** CALL FOR DETAILS

LAWSON HOUSE FURNISHED Single Room Occupancy, Now Leasing SRO’s from $435 to $578. 00. *Inquire about special programs* Twin Size Bed, Micro-

wave & Mini-Refrigerator Incl. Heat, Hot Water, & Electricity! Hot meal ea. month & On-Site Laundry Community Room & Computer Lab, 30 W. Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL 60654, 312-506-2674. Holsten Management Corporation Equal Housing Opportunity. Handicap Accessible

APTS. FOR RENT PARK MANAGEMENT & INVESTMENT LTD. THE HAWK IS HERE! HEAT, HW & CG INCLUDED 1BDR FROM $725.00 2BDR FROM $895.00 3 BDR/2 FULL BATH FROM $1175 **1-(773)-476-6000** CALL FOR DETAILS

7637 S. PHILLIPS. Large 3BR, 2 Full Bath, hdwd flrs, renovated kitchen with appls, A/C. $1100/mo. Sec 8 Welc. 773-343-1808 before 6pm

WEST HUMBOLDT PK 1 & 2BR Apts, spacious, oak wood flrs, huge closets. heat incl, rehab, $755 & $865. 847-866-7234 CHICAGO SOUTH SIDE Beauti-

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

WAITING LIST O P E N IN G

Beginning, March 1, 2016 through March 31, 2016 Bryn Mawr Apartments, will be accepting applications for our (1) one and (4) four bedroom waiting list. Interested persons may pick up an applicaiton at 1809 E. 72nd Street between the hours of 10:00a.m. and 4:00p.m. Equal Housing Opportunity.

ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar Villas is accepting applications for subsidized 1BR apts. for seniors 62 years or older and the disabled. Rent is based on 30% of annual income. For details, call us at 847-546-1899 ∫ CALUMET CITY 158TH & PAXTON SANDRIDGE APTS 1 & 2 BEDROOM UNITS MODELS OPEN M-F, 9AM-5:30PM *** 708-841-5450 ***

ok. 1, 2 & 3 Bdrms. Elev bldg, laundry, pkg. 6531 S. Lowe. Ms. Payne. 773-874-0100

8514 S. Burley. New rehab 3BR apts, Hdwd flrs, Stove, fridge and heat incl. Free 50in TV. 312-678-9065

CHATHAM- 718 E. 81st St. Newly remodeled 1BR, 1 BA, Dining room, Living room, hdwd flrs, appliances. & heat included. Call 847-533-5463

MOVE IN SPECIAL!!! B4 the N of this MO. & MOVE IN 4 $99.00 (773) 874-1122

Ashland Hotel nice clean rms. 24 hr desk/maid/TV/laundry/air. Low rates daily/weekly/monthly. South Side. Call 773-376-5200 ACACIA SRO HOTEL Men Preferred! Rooms for Rent. Weekly & Monthly Rates. 312-421-4597

SUBURBS, RENT TO O W N ! Buy with No closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708-868-2422 or visit w ww.nhba.com

SECTION 8 WELCOME 80th/ Ashland - Beautiful, newly remod, 2BR Apt w/office, 1BA. Near schools & transp. $800/mo, tenant pays all utils. $500 move in fee. Avail Now. 773-775-4458

SECTION 8 WELCOME SOUTHSIDE, RECENTLY RENOVATED, 1, 2 & 3BR APTS. $800-$1250/MO. CALL SEAN, 773-410-7084 CALUMET CITY 1 & 2BR condo style apartments, all appliances & utilities, laundry & off street parking included. Call Mike, 708-3726774 CHICAGO - BEVERLY, LARGE 2 room Studio & 1BR, Carpet, A/C, laundry, near transportation, $640-$750/mo. Call 773-233-4939

61st/Rhodes. Newly Decorated 3BR, 7 rooms, $875. 74th & East End, 2BR/DR, $825. 76th & Drexel, 2BR $725 Heat incl. 773-874-9637 or 773-493-5359 WINTER SPECIAL $500 To-

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

Large Sunny Room w/fridge & microwave. Nr. Oak Park, Green Line, bus. 24 hour desk, parking lot. $101/week & Up. 773-3788888

2 BR UNDER $900

CHICAGO, 2BD, 1BA, $850 per month, $850 sec dep, heating included, near buss/train, Please call 773416-8345 for more information. RIVERDALE SPACIOUS 2BR, 1 newly remodeled BA, eat-in-kit. & Living room, ready now. Call 773-621-9385

CHICAGO, 9631 S. Forest, freshly painted 2BR Apt, hardwood floors. off street parking, $650/mo + utilities. Call 708-655-8518 $725/MO. LRG 2BR 75th & Union. Near public trans, schools and shopping, appl incl. Sect 8 Welc. 708-334-5188 CHICAGO, NEAR 64TH & Ashland. Cozy, 2BR Basement Apt, New-

ly Remodeled, $650/mo + sec, heat incl. Available Now. 773-307-1030

73rd & King Dr Completely Remodeled, tenant heated, 4 room, 2BR, $825/month, NO security deposit, agent owned 312-671-3795

CHICAGO 7600 S Essex 2BR $599, 3BR $699, 4BR $799 w/apprvd credit, no sec dep. Sect 8 Ok! 773287-9999 /312-446-3333 CHICAGO SOUTHSIDE, Newly remodeled 3BR w/ appliances,

& 3BR w/ appliances. Call 773-908-8791

WEST PULLMAN, Cute 2BR, 120th & S. Halsted, hardwood floors, individual heat, appliances. $630 / mo. Call Mr. Orange, 773-230-9195

EVANSTON 818 FOREST Ave Apt A-1. Stately building on quiet street, near Sheridan Road Sedate residential area. Near Main Street, shops, restaurants and transportation. Heat and appliances included. We will fax floor plans upon request. Large 5.5 rooms/ 2 bedrooms/ 2 baths. Available 3/1. $1650. For appointment call 312-822-1037 weekdays until 5:30pm, Saturdays until 3pm. LINCOLN PARK 518 West Addi-

son. Available 2/15. Magnificent apartments, super light and airy, set off by a beautiful courtyard. Laundry room, storage lockers. Steps from the lake, steps from transportation and steps from shopping and recreation. Resident engineer. 5/2 bedroom $1750. Heat and appliances included. To see call 312-822-1037 weekdays until 5:30pm, Saturdays until 3pm.

1BR 3RM, $940 Section 8 heated.

6959 S May All new nice clean, Quiet. Gina 773-467-8200, 773-405-9361. Huge!

2 BR OTHER ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar

IRVING PARK & KOSTNER, (Old Irving area) Remodeled large 2BR includes heat & water. $1000/mo. Call 773-764-8681

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

BURNHAM , 2BR, large liv/ din, new carpet appls, ceramic tile CHICAGO, PRINCETON PARK kitchen/bath, lndry, quiet area, Sec HOMES. Spac 2 - 3 BR Townhomes, 8 ok, $950/mo. 708-534-6440 Inclu: Prvt entry, full bsmt, lndry

2 BR $1100-$1299 2BR, STAINLESS APPLS, NICE AREA, HDWD FLS, CERAMIC KITCH & BATH, CLOSE TO SCHOOLS & TRANS. SEC 8 WELCOME $1100/mo 312-852-1260 SOUTH SHORE 2BR, sp ac sunny front & back, updated BA & kitchen, heat incl, no pets, Sec 8 Ready. $1300mo. Text only 773-636-4566

4153 N. LINCOLN 2 bdrm $1125.

CHICAGO - 1 & 2BR apts, Vicinity of 83rd & Ashland. Newly remodeled. Heat included, Section 8 OK. No smoking/pets. 708-565-6973

ette $135 & up wk. 1810 W. Jackson 312-226-4678

Prairie, $950 + security deposit. Tenant pays heat. Sec. 8 welcome. 773-972-3230

CHICAGO, NEWLY renovated 2BR Apartment. 69th & Maplewood, unheated. $650/mo. Call 773-905-4567

NW 2BR, QUIET Garden Apt on quiet block. Furn, Free heat & utils, extra clean and neat. $850/ mo+sec. 773-342-4364

ROYALTON HOTEL, Kitchen-

CHICAGO - 2 bedrooms, 6927 S.

4014 N. HOYNE, 2 bdrm $1100.

5636 King Dr. Single Rooms for rent from $390, $450, to $510 a month. For more info call 773-359-7744

Beautifully renovated, new kitchen, hardwood floors. 708-557-0644

6117 S. CAMPBELL, newly decorated 4BR Apt. Heat included. Stove & refrigerator. $1000/mo + $1000 sec dep. Sect 8 welc. 312719-0524

7701 S. South Shore Dr. 2 BDs with 1.5 Baths, Large Combo Living-Dining Rm, FREE Heat & cking gas. Prkng extra. $785-$800, Kalabich Mgmt (708)424-4216

WASHINGTON PARK -

CHICAGO, 3-4BR TOWNHOUSE & Single Family Homes.

BEAUTIFUL 2BR BRICK bungalow, hdwod floors throughout, finished basement, freshly decorated, laundry room, $900/mo. Available now. Near 127th & Union. 773-964-8325

NO MOVE-IN FEE! No Dep! Sec 8

CHICAGO, 7727 S. Colfax, ground flr Apt., ideal for senior citizens. Secure bldng. Modern 1BR $595. Lrg 2BR, $800. Free cooking & heating gas. Free parking. 312613-4427

CHICAGO, RENT TO OWN! Buy with no closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708-868-2422 or visit www. nhba.com

2 BR $900-$1099

Water included. Call Daniel, 773875-8085 or Paul J. Quetschke & Co. 773-281-8400 (Mon.-Fri 9-5)

Water included. Quetschke & Co. (Mon.-Fri 9-5)

Call Paul J. 773-281-8400

CHATHAM

BEAUTIFUL

hook-ups. Ample prkg. Close to trans & schls. Starts at $816/mo. www. ppkhomes.com;773-264-3005

MATTESON 2 & 3 BR AVAIL. 2BR, $990-$1050; 3BR, $1250-$1400. Move In Special is 1 Month’s Rent & $99 Security Deposit. Section 8 Welcome. Call 708-748-4169 SEC 8 WELCOME 7 1 S T / HALSTED. Very Spacious & clean, newly remod 2BR, 1BA 1st flr apt, LR, DR, no sec dep req. Call/Text Brian 708-439-6877 7359 S. DORCHESTER, 1 & 2BR Apartments, brand new, heat & appliances included. Section 8 OK. Call Miro, 708-4737129

Free Flat Screen!! ! 109th/ Princeton and 75th/Honore, 35BR, Remodeled w/ hdwd flrs. $700-$1500. Sect 8 OK. 773-4942247

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

CHICAGO 7842 S. Prairie, 5rm,

3752 N. SOUTHPORT 2 Bdrm $1100. Water included. Call Daniel, 773-875-8085 or Paul J. Quetschke & Co. 773-281-8400 (Mon.-Fri 9-5)

BURNHAM - 14500 S. Torrence

2 BR $1300-$1499 EAST L A K E V I E W / WRIGLEYVILLE Newly renovated, sunny, 2 bedroom apartment in elegant vintage greystone building w/hardwood floors, dishwasher, air-conditioning, backyard patio, washer/dryer on premises. $1400/ month. Call Nat 773-880-2414.

OLD IRVING PARK 2BR apartment, 1300-SQFT. hardwood floors, granite countertops, breakfast area in kitchen, SS appliances, close to Blue Line, laundry in building, $1400/mo. 773919-0221

2 BR $1500 AND OVER

FANTASTIC WRIGLEYVILLE

2 bdrm apt avail April 1! Dec. fireplace, lovely hdwd flrs, glassed in sunporch off of Living Room! Formal Dining Room, remodeled BIG Kitchen with pantry! Onsite lndry/storage. Close to Jewel/El stops! $1575, tenant htd. (773) 381-0150 www.theschirmfirm. com

2BR, 2nd flr Apt Avail, near transportation, no pets. 312-415-0939

Beautiful 2 BR in a class of it’s own, tile floors, appls, lndry room, a/c, heat incl. 773-731-5010

SECTION 8 WELCOME 7334 S. Jeffery & 7620 S. Colfax New remodel, 2 Bedrooms, heat/appl incl. 312493-5544

3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200 61ST/LANGLEY. 3BR/1BA. 2ND flr of 2 unit bldg. Avail Now. Sect 8 ok. Beaut apt, New fridge & stove. W/D in bsmt. Hdwd flrs. Nr Transp, 1blk from schl. $950/ mo. 312-464-2222 EAST GARFIELD PARK, West Side Newly Rehab 3BR Apts. $1195 - $1295 / month 773-230-6132 or 773-9316108 AUGUSTA/SPRINGFIELD 5 ROOMS,

7015 S. DANTE, 3BR 2nd flr Apt, encl back porch, LR, DR, EIK, pantry, hdwd flrs, c-fans. $899/mo + 1.5 mo sec.. Lv Msg, 630-854-7983 8001 S. DOBSON: 3BR $900, H/W flrs. stove, fridge, heat incl.

1 mo. free, Sec. 8 Welcome 312.208. 1771, 708.890.1694

CHICAGO S - NEWLY renov, Large 3-4BR Apts, In unit laundry, hrdwd floors, very clean, No Dep! Avail Now! 708-655-1397 CHICAGO-3 BEDROOM, APPLIANCES included in Chatman

area, tenant pays utilities Section 8 welcome. $850/mo 773-208-0321

5025 S. RACINE, 3BR, 1.5BA, fenced front & back yards, 1 level, Section 8 ok. 1.5 mo sec req’d Call 708-922-9069

PARK FOREST - South Suburbs. 3 BR, 2BA ranch, $1,150/mo + security. Section 8 OK. Appls incl. No calls after 5pm. 708-756-7918

3BDR/1 FULL APT. for Rent. Recent Rehab. $1000. NoSecDep.Heat in-c.Sect8 welcome. 1BDR Voucher OK. 773-386-4110. 6343 S. ROCKWELL - 3BR, incl heat. hdwd flrs, lndry facility, fenced in bldg, fireplace, appiances

$995/mo. Sec 8 ok. 773-791-1920

WOODLAWN, 2 Bedrooms, newly rehabbed, tenant heated. $1 000/mo. Hardwood floors. Section 8 Welcome. 773-520-7293

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499 4 BR, 1.5 BA, 2 car garage, section 8 OK. $1100-$1300 + security, modern kitchen & bath, wood fireplace & 2 car garage.847-9091538 7409 S EVANS 2nd Fl. 3 bed $1,350 Heat Incl. Greystone fence building, Great area, Corner of Tanner Elem. Hrdw Fls. Appls incl 773298-1022 CHICAGO: E. ROGERS Park 6726 N. Bosworth Ave. Beaut. 3BR, 2BA, DR, LR, Hrdwd flrs. Nr trans/ shops. Heat, appls, laundry incl. $1375. Available now. 847-475-3472 EAST GARFIELD PARK Newly

Rehabbed 3 Bed, 1 Bath House! Section 8 Vouchers Welcome! Hardwood, Large. 312 989 9943.

CALUMET CITY 3BR, 2BA apt, carpeted, tenant pays utils, laundry on site, credit check. $1225/mo. 708758-7362 NEWLY

REHABBED,

6 rms,

3BR, Dining rm, hdwd flrs, laundry rm, parking space, tenants pay utils. $1250/mo. 773-744-0763

3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799 RICHTON PARK, 22822 East Dr., 3BR Split Level, 2.5BA, eat in kitchen, separate DR, spacious LR, close to trans, screened in back porch. Avail now. $1600/mo. 847-4178449 ASHLAND AUGUSTA GREYSTONE. 2nd floor, sunny

3BR, laundry, close to downtown, train, buses, all utilities free except lights. $1500/mo. 773-384-2772

MARQUETTE PARK 7313 S Artesian, beaut rehab 3BR/2BA house, granite ctrs, SS appls, whirlpl tub, fin bsmt, 2-car gar. $1585. 708-288-4510

2 bedrooms, $750 per month plus security, tenant pays heat. 312-401-3799

ROSEMOOR 10230 S Rhodes, beaut rehab, 2+ 2BR, 2BA house, granite ctrs, SS appls, fin bsmt, 2 car gar., $1300/mo. 708-288-4510

CHICAGO, 3BR, 1.5BA, very clean house! No security deposit. Section 8 welcome. $1200/mo. 80th & University. 312-909-7128

SEC 8 WELCOME, no security dep., 6717 S Rhodes, 3-level, 5BR, 2BA house, appls incl, $1300/mo. 708-288-4510

3 BR OR MORE $1800-$2499 EVANSTON. 1703-1713 RIDGE

near Northwestern, downtown Evanston, shops, restaurant, movies, el, Metra. Large kitchens, spacious closets, laundry on premises, hardwood floors. Heat and appliances included. 4 bedrooms, 2 baths. Available now. $2395. For appointment call 312-8221037 weeekdays until 5:30pm, Saturdays until 3pm

CHICAGO- 9446 S. Wabash. 7BR, 3BA House, tenant pays utils., very close to CTA train, Sect. 8 Welc, $1,800/mo., 773-221-0061

3 BR OR MORE $2500 AND OVER EVANSTON 1125 DAVIS, 1603

Ridge. Near Northwestern, downtown Evanston, shops, restaurants, movies, el, Metra. Large kitchens, spacious closets, laundry on premises, hardwood floors. Heat and appliances included. 4 bedrooms, 2 baths. Available now. $2750. For appointment call 312-822-1037, weekdays until 5:30pm, Saturdays until 3pm.

3 BR OR MORE OTHER

CHICAGO, RENT/BUY, 3+BR, full basement, garage, $900/ mo. Other Properties Also Available in the City & Suburbs. Call 708-441-2475 RECENT REHABBED. 3-5BR Single Family Homes. South Holland, Dolton & Harvey. Sec 8 ok. $1,000. Sec & bkgrnd chk. 630247-5146 NEWLY REHAB’ED 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6BR single family homes with 2BA, Sect 8 Welcome, located in Southside Chicago & South suburbs. 224-436-5000, 708-203-6491 A MUST SEE! 1BD-W/W crpt,s/

s appl inc.4bd-hrdwd flrs, s/s appl inc. Near schools&pub trans. Prkg is opt.Tent pay utils.Shawn 7739161861

CHICAGO HEIGHTS 4 OR 5 BR,

3743 WEST MONTROSE Store 555 Sq Ft. Water included. Call Paul J. Quetschke & Co., 773-281-8400 (Mon-Fri 9-5).

roommates 1 WEEK FREE. 96th & Halsted & other locations. Large Rooms, shared kitchen & bath. $100/week and up. Call 773-848-4020 7721 S. KINGSTON. Clean & Sunny room, Incl Bed, TV, mini blinds, utils, Share Kitchen & Bath, c-fans. $425/mo. 312-513-1999

MARKETPLACE GOODS

CLASSICS WANTED Any classic cars in any condition. ’20s, ’30s, ’40s, ’50s, ’60s & ’70s. Hotrods & Exotics! Top Dollar Paid! Collector. Call James, 630-201-8122 MASSAGE TABLES, NEW and

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

SERVICES LEGAL SERVICES- Need A

Lawyer? For as low as $19.95 CONSULTATIONS: Credit Repair, Bankruptcy, Divorce, Foreclosure, Evictions, Contract Review, Traffic T ickets/DUI, Expungement, Criminal Defense & more. Call Theresa 312806-0646

HEALTH & WELLNESS LOW COST BLOOD Test. CBC $10; LIPID $15 and more. Unilabinc, OakPark. Phone: 708-848-1556. GROUPON Special on Wellness Blood test with Doctor visit $49. www.BloodTestInChicago.com KINDRED CHIROPRACTICDR. Kat Aleman serving wellness

to Bucktown- Wicker Park families. Short walk from Damen blueline stop. Call to-day! 872-802-4096

2 BATH, NEWLY REMODELED, APPLS INCL , SECTION 8 OK. NO SEC. DE- UKRAINIAN MASSAGE. POSIT. 708-822-4450 CALLS in/ out. Chicago and suburbs. Hotels. 1234 S Michigan AveMORGAN PARK, Split Level, nue. Appointments. 773-609-6969.

11658 S. Watkins, 4BR, 1.5BA, finished basement, $1250/mo. Section 8 welcome. 773-779-4229

MATTESON, SAUK VILLAGE &

UNIVERSITY PARK. 4, 3 & 2BR, House/Condo, Section 8 ok. For information: 708-625-7355

CHICAGO HOUSES FOR rent. Section 8 Ok, w/app credit $500 gift certificate 3, 4 & 5 BR houses avail. 312-446-3333 or 708-752-3812

GENERAL From February 29 – March 4, 2016 the Management Office at HICA, 5046 ½ W. Washington St., will be accepting applications for the waiting list for their 1 and 2 bedroom apartments. This will only be at the HICA Management Office from 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m., Monday – Friday. The office phone number is 773-379-4363. HICA is Section 8 eligible. Equal Housing Opportunity, handicapped accessible, and professionally managed by East Lake Management Group. WICKER PARK LOFT APART-

MENTS for rent, Beautiful 1 & 2+ Bedrooms, brick, new SS appliances, hottest location across from El, $1850-$2850/mo. 773-895-4778

FOR SALE OPEN HOUSE, SAT 2/27, 11a3p. Sun 2/28, 12 noon-4pm. 3BR, 2BA, full bsmt, 7343 Sacramento Ave. Real People Realty, Bev Hudson, 773-991-1241 / 773-425-8077

non-residential SELF-STORAGE

CENTERS.

T W O locations to serve you. All units fully heated and humidity controlled with ac available. North: Knox Avenue. 773-685-6868. South: Pershing Avenue. 773-523-6868.

legal notices NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to "An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State," as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16145536 on February 22, 2016, under the Assumed Business Name of Clear the Smoke Teaching Enterprises with the business located at 4305 N Damen, Apt 1E, Chicago, IL 60618. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/ partner(s) is: Ben Harpe, 4305 N Damen, Apt 1E, Chicago, IL 60618, USA. NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16145440 on February 10, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of PARADIGM SHIFT PRODUCTIONS with the business located at: 1332 W HOOD AVE #202, CHICAGO, IL 60660. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner (s)/partner(s) is: AARON EISCHEID 1332 W HOOD AVE #202, CHICAGO, IL 60660, USA NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16145284 on January 27, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of CRIMSON CAT STUDIOS with the business located at: 3239 W. LELAND AVE #1, CHICAGO, IL 60625. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner (s)/partner(s) is: SUSAN INVERSO 3239 W. LELAND AVE #1, CHICAGO, IL 60625, USA

NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to "An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State," as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16145335 on February 2, 2016, under the Assumed Business Name of Belly Rub Empire with the business located at 6151 N Winthrop Avenue Apt 306, Chicago, IL 60660. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/ partner(s) is: Elise Lyn Soeder, 6151 N Winthrop Avenue Apt 306, Chicago, IL 60660, USA. NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to "An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State," as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16145542 on February 22, 2016, under the Assumed Business Name of Heidi’s Treasure Chest with the business located at 5044 N Kedvale, Chicago, IL 60630. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/ partner(s) is: Heidi Galati, 5044 N Kedvale, Chicago, IL 60630, USA. NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to "An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State," as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16145534 on February 19, 2016, under the Assumed Business Name of Fitz&Cushman with the business located at 1441 S 61st Court, Cicero, IL 60804. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner( s)/ partner(s) is: Omar Depaz Moreno, 1441 S 61st Court, Cicero, IL 60804, USA. NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to "An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State," as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16145448 on February 10, 2016, under the Assumed Business Name of Brooke & London with the business located at 8140 S Calumet Avenue 3, Chicago, IL 60619. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/ partner(s) is: Alize Henderson, 8140 S Calumet Avenue 3, Chicago, IL 60619, USA. NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to "An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State," as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16145282 on January 27, 2016, under the Assumed Business Name of BRM Ministries with the business located at PO Box 288063, Chicago, IL 60628. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner( s)/ partner(s) is: Barbara R Mayden, 10737 S Prairie Ave, Chicago, IL 60628 USA.

of Jose Gustavo Rocha Case# 2016CONC000111 For Change of Name. Notice of Publication Public Notice is hereby given that on March 28, 2016 at 2:00 PM being one of the return days in the Circuit Court of the County of Cook, I will file my petition in said court praying for the change of my name from Jose Gustavo Rocha to that of Gustavo Breton-Wold, pursuant to the statute in such case made and provided. Dated at Chicago, Illinois, February 2, 2016.

IN THE MATTER of the Petition of Caitlin Mireille Enos Case# 2016CONC000114 For Change of Name. Notice of Publication Public Notice is hereby given that on March 30, 2016 at 9:30 AM being one of the return days in the Circuit Court of the County of Cook, I will file my petition in said court praying for the change of my name from Caitlin Mireille Enos to that of Cameron Mireille Feidh Sidhe, pursuant to the statute in such case made and provided. Dated at Chicago, Illinois, February 3, 2016.

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male in D.C. My boyfriend of three years has been acting strange—not taking his antidepression meds, says he’s feeling weird. He has withdrawn from me, sleeps 15 hours a day, and has been canceling on commitments to socialize with friends. That I am ﬁne with—he’s blue and I get it. Here’s why I’m writing: He was doing an online crossword, and when he got up, I was going to write a message in it—to be funny and sweet. What I saw messed me up. There was a browser window open about meth and depression. He is 48 and successful, and isn’t a clubber or partygoing type. METH? What the hell? I snooped further, and there was a detailed search history on meth, meth and depression, meth and sex. He doesn’t seem to have been high around me—and I would never use meth, it’s not my thing and I have a security clearance (no drugs for me, ever)—but I don’t want to date an addict. I don’t want to be with someone who would take such a dumb risk. And for what? Dude! You’re 48, you have a career, a business, and a guy who cares for you! WTF?!? I know what you’ll say: Use your words— and, trust me, I will. But am I totally crazy? I feel shitty for having snooped, but it started innocently enough with me wanting to write a goofy note on his crossword puzzle. —SNOOP NOW ALL FUCKED UP

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A : Meth addicts aren’t known for sleeping 15 hours a day, SNAFU. Meth addicts aren’t known for sleeping at all. So perhaps your boyfriend abused meth before you met—and there’s no using meth, only abusing meth—and conquered his

addiction and/or stopped abusing meth years ago. And now he’s depressed and oﬀ his meds, and he went online to investigate whether his past meth abuse could be contributing to his current depression. As for the snooping angle . . . When we snoop, we sometimes find out things we don’t want to know, don’t need to know, and don’t need to do anything about. For example, the new boyfriend has a few sexts from his ex tucked away on his computer, your dad is cheating on his third wife, your adult daughter is selling her used panties online. But sometimes we find out things we needed to know and have to do something about. For example, your 14-year-old daughter is planning to meet up with a 35-year-old man she met on Instagram, your “straight” boyfriend is having unsafe sex with dozens of men behind your back, your spouse is planning to vote for Ted Cruz—in those cases, you have to intervene, break up, and file for civil commitment, respectively. Learning your depressedand-off-his-meds boyfriend may have—or may have had—a meth problem falls into the needed to know/ have to do something about category. So, yeah, SNAFU, you gotta use your words. Go to your boyfriend, tell him what you discovered and how you discovered it, and demand an explanation while offering to help. Urge him to see his doctor—whoever prescribed the antidepressants he stopped taking—and go into the convo armed with a list of the resources available to him. “We’re lucky to have a lot of great resources in D.C.,” said David Mariner, executive director of the DC Center for the LGBT Community.

“The Triangle Club (triangleclub.org) is an LGBT recovery house, and they host all sorts of 12-step meetings. Crystal Meth Anonymous is really active here. And we’re just kicking off a harm-reduction group here at the DC Center.” I asked Mariner if your boyfriend sounded to him like someone currently abusing meth. “I’m not an expert,” Mariner replied, “but he doesn’t sound like it to me. He may be having a hard time talking to his boyfriend about this because for folks who have a history of meth use, sex can be tricky. Meth use and sexual activity are often so intertwined that it can make it hard to talk to a partner.” Finally, SNAFU, don’t make it harder for your partner to be honest with you by threatening to break up with him. You don’t have to remain in a relationship with an addict, if indeed he is an addict, forever. But start by showing him compassion and offering support. You can make up your mind about your future—whether you have one together—during a subsequent conversation.

Q : I just posted a new

word on the Physician Moms Facebook group and was told that I should send it to you. I got tired of hearing “She’s got balls”— “chutzpah”—so I made up a new word, “clitzpah” (klitspe, n.): a woman with guts! I hope this is useful! —JILL BECKER, CLITZPAH.COM

A : It’s a lovely word, Jill—and I’m happy to help you roll it out! v Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at thestranger.com. v @fakedansavage

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By Cecil Adams Q : The recent Ebola scare in the U.S. got me wondering: How is hospital

A : Boy, do they ever. And is such sewage, like

Chicago recycling, commingled? You bet it is. In developed countries that don’t regularly enjoy epidemics of intestinal diseases, the World Health Organization figures it’s generally OK for hospitals to dump their wastewater right into the municipal system with all the other crap. It’s worth spending some time on what it is we’re flushing, though. If you’re picturing hospital discharge brimming with Ebola-laden blood and other infectious effluvia, my friend, you’re not quite thinking big enough—there are viruses and bacteria, of course, but the stuff we use to treat various maladies also has the potential to cause real headaches despite significant concentrations of pain relievers in the wastewater mix. Here’s a grab bag: Chemicals. Estrogens, for instance, which can at certain concentrations lead to birth defects, reduced fertility, and breast and testicular cancer in humans, and in male fish can essentially induce a sex change—an effect that’s been observed at the discharge sites of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs, in the lingo). Interacting with the chlorine used by WWTPs, estrogens can also form chlorinated by-products whose effects are unclear. (In general, as I explained a few years back, the fact that we don’t know how the various medical residues in the sewage system interact with one another is a matter of slight concern.) Painkillers like acetaminophen, meanwhile, are found in relatively high concentrations in hospital wastewater. And don’t forget about inorganic chemicals, such as those found in X-ray and MRI contrast media, and disinfectants. Radioactive waste. Hospitals aren’t dumping it directly down the drain, one hopes—but still, patients who ingest radioactive isotopes, say, as part of an imaging procedure, will pass some into the toilet. Studies have found radioactive medical residues in sewage, surface water, and food chains, including high levels of technetium and radioactive iodine in algae, seaweed, fish, and freshwater mussels that had the misfortune of living downstream from plants that treat hospital wastewater. (And that humans might subsequently be dining

on.) The workers in such plants were found to have received measurable doses too, but nothing sufficient to cause alarm. Antibiotics. If you’re concerned about picking up Ebola while splashing around in the municipal sewer, Scott, you’ll be heartened to learn that some studies have found that the concentration of bacteria and viruses can actually be lower in hospital wastewater than it is in your given municipal effluent, largely due to the antibiotics that are also in the system. Unsurprising, really: we use a lot of antibiotics overall (more than 50 million pounds are produced annually in the U.S.), and 25 to 75 percent of what’s administered passes through the recipients’ bodies unmetabolized. Antibiotics running wild in the water system encourage the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, such as the famously unpleasant methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA; hospital wastewater has been found to have antibiotic-resistant bacteria at two to ten times the level of regular domestic wastewater. So we know there’s a bunch of questionable stuff in hospital wastewater, though our understanding of what it’s doing to the environment (and, in turn, us), is limited and varies depending on the substance. Currently, as I mentioned, hospitals direct their effluent to the nearest municipal treatment plant by way of the sewer. OK, but: Are those plants actually equipped to filter all this stuff out? With what’s going on in Flint, Michigan, I can’t say the American way of water filtration’s looking all that robust right now. And what happens when, for instance, heavy rains cause the system to overflow? Better to dump the effluent into the sewers, I say. Other options exist, but are rarer: some hospitals treat their wastewater in situ and then release it into the nearest stream—which technique requires strict public oversight, for obvious reasons—and some use a combination of the foregoing, treating their output on-site and then pouring it into the municipal system for a second round of treatment. Where does that leave us? At the reality that, as a 2010 study in the Journal of Hydrol-

SLUG SIGNORINO

wastewater handled? Does it just go straight into the regular sewer? It would seem like they must rinse some pretty nasty stuﬀ down their drains. —SCOTT

ogy put it, there remains “no specific treatment to remove, at high percentage, all the kinds of micropollutants typically found” in hospital wastewater; another paper bemoaned the “remarkable paucity” of information regarding the downstream impacts of such untreated waste, and suggested that what’s needed are separate systems for treating hospital wastewater—a “matrix of treatment scenarios.” Reverse osmosis, for instance, could remove endocrine-disrupting compounds such as estrogen. Nanofiltration takes out certain pharmaceuticals. Patients whose treatment involves taking in radioactive materials could relieve themselves into a separate system, their waste set aside for special processing. Given the expense of such technologies, though—and an absence thus far of any clear medical-wastewater horror stories—you couldn’t call this a number one priority. v Send questions to Cecil via straightdope.com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 350 N. Orleans, Chicago 60654.

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FEBRUARY 25, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 45

EARLY WARNINGS

CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME

b Never miss a show again. Sign up for the newsletter at chicagoreader. com/early

Freakwater 3/18-19, 9 PM, Hideout, 3/18 sold out, 3/19 added Boban Markovic Orkestar 3/9, 8 PM, City Winery, canceled Patti Smith & Family 3/24-26, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, 3/24 and 3/25 sold out, 3/26 added b

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Antibalas 7/24, 9 PM, Subterranean, on sale Fri 2/26, 10 AM Archgoat, Valkyrja 3/27, 7:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Atlas Genius, Skylar Grey 4/12, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ B Boy 5/6, 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ David Banner 4/14, 9:30 PM, the Promontory, on sale Fri 2/26, 10 AM, 18+ Count Basie Orchestra 4/3, 4 and 7 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, on sale Fri 2/26, 11 AM Big Wild 4/21, 9 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Lee Brice 4/9, 7:30 PM, Rosemont Theater, Rosemont, on sale Fri 2/26, 10 AM b Jimmy Buﬀett & the Coral Reefer Band, Huey Lewis & the News 6/25, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park, on sale Mon 2/29, 10 AM Jake Bugg 3/19, 8 PM, Metro b Hayes Carll 6/17, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 2/26, noon Cave Singers 5/26, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 2/26, 10 AM Cheap Trick 4/1, 7 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 2/26, noon, 18+ Coasts 4/28, 7 PM, Lincoln Hall b Avishai Cohen Quartet 4/29, 8:30 PM, Constellation, on sale Fri 2/26, 8 AM b Cracker 5/14, 7 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/25, noon b The Darkness 4/27, 8 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 2/26, 10 AM b DJ Harvey 3/19, 10 PM, Smart Bar

DJ Nobu 3/5, 10 PM, Smart Bar Lila Downs 10/28, 8 PM, Auditorium Theatre, on sale Fri 2/26, noon Elephant Revival 5/13, 9 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Kurt Elling 5/15, 5 and 8 PM; 5/16, 6 and 8:30 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/25, noon b Roman Flugel 3/12, 10 PM, Smart Bar Gigamesh 3/25, 8 PM, Double Door Goo Goo Dolls 7/26, 7 PM, FirstMerit Bank Pavilion, on sale Sat 2/27, 10 AM Tim Hecker 4/15, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Saul Hernandez 9/17, 9 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Intronaut 4/3, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Damien Jurado, Ben Abraham 5/28, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 2/26, noon King’s X 6/23, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Michael Kiwanuka 4/9, 8 PM, Double Door b Koji 4/6, 8 PM, Township Las Cafeteras 4/9, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 2/26, 10 AM, 17+ London Souls 4/15, 9 PM, Subterranean, on sale Fri 2/26, 10 AM, 17+ Marah 6/10-11, 8 PM, Schubas Metal Church 4/4, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Miracle Legion 7/22, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 2/26, noon Mood II Swing 3/26, 10 PM, Smart Bar Mutoid Man 4/24, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Erkan Oguy & Ismail H. Demircioglu 4/9, 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 2/26, 8 AM b

46 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 25, 2016

Phish 6/24-25, 7 PM, Wrigley Field, on sale Sat 2/27, noon b Pink Talking Fish 6/25, 11:30 PM, the Vic, 18+ Polyrhythmic 3/31-4/1, 8 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, on sale Fri 2/26, 11 AM Random Rab 4/16, 10 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Relapse Symphony 3/23, 6 PM, Wire, Berwyn Reverend Horton Heat, Nashville Pussy 6/25, 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ David Shaw 3/30, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/25, noon b 312 Day with Alkaline Trio and Jeﬀ the Brotherhood 3/12, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge F Tony Visconti & Woody Woodmansey’s Holy Holy 4/10, 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Voodoo Glow Skulls 3/27, 8 PM, Cobra Lounge Wave Racer 3/18, 10 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Weatherbox 4/6, 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Weedeater, Author & Punisher 5/15, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ White Buﬀalo 4/20, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Wilco 8/21, 6:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, on sale Fri 2/26, 11 AM b You Won’t 5/12, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 2/26, 10 AM Yuna 5/6, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 2/26, noon, 18+

UPDATED Beyonce 5/27-28, 6 PM, Soldier Field, 5/27 sold out, 5/28 added, on sale Thu 2/25, 10 AM b

Abbath, High on Fire, Skeletonwitch 4/8, 6:45 PM, Metro, 18+ Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. 3/29, 9 PM, Empty Bottle American Nightmare 3/6, 5 PM, Double Door b Basement, Defeater, Turnstile 4/19, 6 PM, Bottom Lounge b Black Sabbath 9/4, 7:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park b Cloud Cult 4/3, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Copyrights 5/13, 8 PM, Cobra Lounge The Cult 3/25, 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Dead & Company 7/9-10, 7:30 PM, Alpine Valley Music Theatre, East Troy Dr. Dog 3/12, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Dragged Into Sunlight 7/6, 7:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate) 4/24, 7:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Alejandro Escovedo 5/6-7, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Fat White Family, Dilly Dally 4/27, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Freddie Gibbs 4/20, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Selena Gomez 6/25, 7:30 PM, United Center b Steve Grimmett’s Grim Reaper 3/30, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Hall & Oates, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings 7/22, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park b Hayseed Dixie 5/4, 8 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Heart, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, Cheap Trick 7/19, 6:30 PM, FirstMerit Bank Pavilion Coleman Hell 3/10, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Helloween 3/4, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+

High Kings 3/6, 8 PM, City Winery b Hillsong Worship, Kari Jobe, Jesus Culture, Martin Smith 4/17, 7 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Hiromi 4/10, 6 and 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Honky 4/29, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Peter Hook & the Light 10/28, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard 5/8, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Kinky 4/9, 7:30 PM, Portage Theater Simon Kirke & the Empty Pockets 3/10, 8 PM, City Winery b Habib Koite & Vusi Mahlasela 4/6, 7 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Leo Kottke 4/8-9, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Lukas Graham 4/21, 7:30 PM, Double Door b Lumineers, Soak 6/19, 7 PM, Chicago Theatre b Made of Oak 4/7, 9 PM, Schubas Magic Man, Griswolds 4/23, 7:30 PM, Metro b Magma, Helen Money 3/25-26, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Michael McDermott 3/12, 7:30 PM, City Winery b Pat McGee 4/22, 8 PM, City Winery b Megadeth, Suicidal Tendencies, Children of Bodom 3/13, 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 17+ Metal Threat Fest with Absu, Exciter, Inquisition, Kommandant, and more 7/15-17, 5 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Miguel Gutierrez and Mind Over Mirrors 4/19, 8 PM, Thalia Hall b Milk & Bone 4/8, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Chris Mills & the Distant Stars 4/1, 7 PM, Schubas Thurston Moore Group, Promised Land Sound 3/24, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Parquet Courts 4/20, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Peter & the Test Tube Babies 4/2, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 18+ Madeline Peyroux Trio 3/14-16, 8 PM, City Winery b Pig Destroyer 4/8, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Polica 4/16, 8 PM, Thalia Hall b Iggy Pop 4/6, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre b Prince Rama 4/8, 10 PM, Schubas Chuck Prophet 3/23, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Protomen 4/30, 6 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club b

Joe Pug, Langhorne Slim 3/28-29, 8 PM, City Winery b Punch Brothers 5/13-14, 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall b Chris Pureka 4/30, 7 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Pusha T 4/5, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Quilt 4/6, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ R5 3/10, 7 PM, Chicago Theatre Ra Ra Riot 4/8-9, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Radiation City 3/9, 9 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Radical Face 5/22-23, 8 PM, Thalia Hall b Bonnie Raitt 3/22, 7:30 PM, Chicago Theatre b Red Elvises 6/10, 9 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn Ike Reilly Assassination 3/18, 8 PM, Double Door Residents 4/18, 6:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Restorations 4/1, 8 PM, Cobra Lounge Rocket Summer 4/2, 8:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Carrie Rodriguez 3/5, 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Rogue Wave 5/26, 8 PM, Thalia Hall b Uli Jon Roth 3/27, 6 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Rufus Du Sol 4/9, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ St Germain 4/10, 8 PM, the Vic b Santigold 4/17, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Joe Satriani 4/15, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre b Savages 4/7, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Spill Canvas 4/17, 6:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b Spunk 3/16, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Mavis Staples 3/19-20, 8 PM, Thalia Hall b Tauk 4/2, 10 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Livingston Taylor 3/11, 7 PM, SPACE, Evanston b James Taylor, Jackson Browne 6/30, 7 PM, Wrigley Field b Tech N9ne 4/28, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ TFDI 5/28, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Thao & the Get Down Stay Down 4/1, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall b That 1 Guy 3/19, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Thermals 4/20, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall Teddy Thompson, Kelly Jones 4/11, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Titus Andronicus, Craig Finn 3/13, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Tortoise 5/10, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Washed Out (DJ set) 3/25, 10 PM, the Mid

ALL AGES

Weezer 7/10, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Gin Wigmore 4/13, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Pete Yorn 3/24, 8 PM, Park West, 18+ Yung Lean 3/26, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall b

SOLD OUT Alabama Shakes 7/19, 7:30 PM, Civic Opera House and 7/20, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom b At the Drive-In 5/19-20, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Courtney Barnett 4/28, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Leon Bridges 3/11, 7:30 PM, Chicago Theatre b Chvrches 3/13-14, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Gary Clark Jr. 4/1, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ The Cure, Twilight Sad 6/10-11, 7:30 PM, UIC Pavilion b Daughter 3/11, 8 PM, Metro b Andra Day 3/15, 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Greg Dulli 3/18, 8 and 11 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Experience Hendrix with Billy Cox, Buddy Guy, Zakk Wylde, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, and more 3/12, 7:30 PM, Chicago Theatre b Father John Misty, Tess & Dave 4/14-15, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Glenn Hughes 3/24, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Carly Rae Jepsen 3/12, 8:30 PM, Metro b Lake Street Dive 3/11-12, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Less Than Jake 3/3-4, 7 PM, Double Door, 17+ Los Crudos, MK Ultra 3/26, 6:30 PM, Beat Kitchen b Lucius, Pure Bathing Culture 3/24, 8:30 PM, Metro, 18+ Melanie Martinez 3/17, 7:30 PM, the Vic b Rachel Platten 3/19, 7:30 PM, Park West b Charlie Puth 3/22, 7 PM, Park West b Shellac, Mono 3/30, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Snails 3/25, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ They Might Be Giants 3/20, 3 PM, the Vic b Thrice 6/23, 6:30 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Underoath 4/7, 7 PM, Riviera Theatre b The Used 5/17-18, 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Widespread Panic 5/5, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre X Ambassadors 4/6, 6 PM, House of Blues b v

FEBRUARY 25, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 47