Print Issue of March 1, 2018 (Volume 47, Number 21)

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

Faces of DACA 8 Evanstonian helped shape Water 10

Chicago’s highest rapper

Towkio flies to the stratosphere with his new album. Literally.

In a balloon.

BY LEOR GALIL 21

TOP 10 REASONS TO TAKE 2 VACATION DAYS 1. Hike to canyons with seasonal waterfalls for amazing selďŹ es.

2. Unwind in our indoor pool complex with a hot tub and sauna 3. Book a room or cabin with great midweek rates 4. Ride on the Starved Rock Trolley 5. Relax with a therapeutic massage 6. Enjoy Starved Rock Signature Ale and other craft beer 7. Indulge in Artisan Ice Cream and Fudge 8. Sleep late or watch the sunrise 9. Travel light while staying close to home 10. Reconnect with Mother Nature

If you miss having a Spring Break, take one.

If you have unused vacation days, use them.

If you work weekends, escape mid-week.

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(800) 868-7625 2 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 1, 2018

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THIS WEEK

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INTERIM EXECUTIVE EDITOR DAVE NEWBART CREATIVE DIRECTOR VINCE CERASANI DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY JAMIE RAMSAY CULTURE EDITOR AIMEE LEVITT FILM EDITOR J.R. JONES MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO ASSOCIATE EDITORS STEVE HEISLER, JAMIE LUDWIG, KATE SCHMIDT SENIOR WRITER MIKE SULA SENIOR THEATER CRITIC TONY ADLER STAFF WRITERS MAYA DUKMASOVA, LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, PETER MARGASAK, JULIA THIEL SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR RYAN SMITH GRAPHIC DESIGNER SUE KWONG MUSIC LISTINGS COORDINATOR LUCA CIMARUSTI FILM LISTINGS COORDINATOR PATRICK FRIEL CONTRIBUTING WRITERS NOAH BERLATSKY, ADESHINA EMMANUEL, ANNE FORD, ISA GIALLORENZO, JOHN GREENFIELD, ANDREA GRONVALL, KT HAWBAKER, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, IRENE HSIAO, DAN JAKES, MONICA KENDRICK, H. MELT, BILL MEYER, MICHAEL MINER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, LEAH PICKETT, JANET POTTER, BEN SACHS, DMITRY SAMAROV, KATE SIERZPUTOWSKI, OLIVER SAVA, TIFFANY WALDEN, KEVIN WARWICK, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERNS MADELINE HAPPOLD, ASHLEY MIZUO, MELISSA PARKER, RACHEL YANG ---------------------------------------------------------------ADVERTISING DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER BEST SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER EVANGELINE MILLER MARKETING AND EVENTS MANAGER BRYAN BURDA DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY ADVERTISING COORDINATOR HERMINIA BATTAGLIA ---------------------------------------------------------------DISTRIBUTION CONCERNS distributionissues@chicagoreader.com CHICAGO READER 30 N. RACINE, SUITE 300 CHICAGO, IL 60607 312-222-6920 CHICAGOREADER.COM

FEATURES

PHOTO FEATURE

LIT/MOVIES

Here are the faces behind the DACA program with an uncertain future.

An idea Evanston’s Daniel Kraus had when he was 15 is now the Oscarnominated film The Shape of Water.

BY JANET POTTER 10

Dream on or dream over? Just add water

BY MICHELLE KANAAR 8

Towkio is officially Chicago’s highest rapper

The Save Money MC’s balloon trip to the stratosphere wasn’t just to promote his first album for Rick Rubin—it’s also about inspiration, perspective, and togetherness.

BY LEOR GALIL 21

IN THIS ISSUE 4 Agenda Stand-up comic Matteo Lane, the Chicago Feminist Film Festival, and more goings-on about town

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ON THE COVER: WE DIDN’T GO TO THE MOON WITH TOWKIO — BUT HE DID STOP BY THE STUDIO OF LISA PREDKO FOR A PHOTO SHOOT. SHE ROUNDED OUT THE PHOTO ILLUSTRATION WITH SOME DANCING ALIENS, BECAUSE, C’MON — THE SPACE-OBSESSED RAPPER’S MUSIC MAKES ANYONE WANT TO GET DOWN.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

CITY LIFE

6 Street View Aspiring designer and entrepreneurJason Bell Jr. rocks the “dapper grandpa” look.

7 Joravsky | Politics Trump cuts food stamps while looking for a handout for his hotel in Mississippi.

ARTS & CULTURE

13 On Culture Are interest-rate swaps a bad bet for cultural nonprofits?

14 Theater Playwright Keith Huff overdoes everything in Six Corners.

14 Dance Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan combines words, history, and movement in Formosa.

15 Theater Goodman Theatre’s The Wolves starts strong—then chokes on too many sports movie cliches.

17 Museums Everybody’s a drinking vessel at the American Toby Jug Museum.

18 LGBTQ Trans attorney Owen Daniel-McCarter looks back on a decade of activism in Chicago.

19 Movies Annihilation preserves the source novel’s biological nightmare but dispenses with its mounting paranoia.

20 Movies Loveless places narrow lives inside a wide-screen frame.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

27 Shows of note Miguel, Low, Maayan Nidam, and more of the week’s best 29 Secret History Blues drummer Sam Lay has made five careers’ worth of music.

FOOD & DRINK

32 Restaurant Review: Aloha Wagon The erstwhile island food truck parks it on South Western Avenue.

34 Booze If you can’t go on a tasting trip to Mexico, Jay Schroeder’s cocktails at Todos Santos may be the next best thing.

CLASSIFIEDS

34 Jobs 35 Apartments & Spaces 35 Marketplace 36 Straight Dope What’s happened in states that have legalized marijuana?

37 Savage Love “Should I be worried about STDs from oral sex?”

38 Early Warnings Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Speedy Ortiz, Oh Sees, and more shows to look for in the weeks to come 38 Gossip Wolf Harold Washington Library celebrates the Reverend Clay Evans with a free gospel concert, and other music news.

MARCH 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 3

AGENDA R

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P Send your events to agenda@chicagoreader.com

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F Newport, 773-251-1539, thelincolnlodge. com, $15.

220 E. Chicago, 312-280-2660, mcachicago.org, free with admission ($15, $8 students, seniors, and teachers).

LIT & LECTURES MOVIES

Luis Alberto Urrea book tour launch Urrea, a former Pulitzer Prize finalist, celebrates the publication of his new novel, The House of Broken Angels.

The book is about a Mexican-American family in San Diego trying to achieve the American dream. Tue 3/6, 6 PM, Sulzer Regional Library, 4455 N. Lincoln, 312744-7616, chipublib.org.

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THEATER More at chicagoreader.com/theater Hail Hail Chuck: A Tribute to Chuck Berry This stage biography of rock ’n’ roll pioneer Chuck Berry, written by L. Maceo Ferris and directed by Daryl D. Brooks, follows the formula of the Black Ensemble Theater to a T: present lots of kick-ass live versions of the subject’s most popular tunes intercut with a few scenes from the artist’s life. In this case, we get rousing cover versions of Berry hits such as “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” and “Nadine.”

The nonmusical portions of the show are less satisfying. Ferris’s storytelling is often flat and awkward—even the section dealing with Berry’s racially motivated conviction at the height of his career for violating the Mann Act lacks drama—and large swathes of Berry’s long life are just left out. —JACK HELBIG Through 4/1: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 and 7:30 PM, Black Ensemble Theater Cultural Center, 4450 N. Clark, 773-769-4451, blackensembletheater.org, $49.50-$65.

Some Like It Red Chicago playwright and Plagiarists cofounder Gregory Peters reworks Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night with a savvy updating of ancient Illyria to 1980s Albania (they share territory) in the final week of brutal “great leader” Enver Hoxha’s four-decade rule.

Thus the festive cross-dressing high jinks in Shakespeare’s original become a life-and-death farce for a trio of shipwrecked female American musicians captured, or perhaps rescued, by Hoxha’s milquetoast decoy double. That is, it should be a life-and-death farce, but director Jack Dugan Carpenter pushes his cast to such ham-handed, shtickheavy extremes for nearly the entire first act that it all feels like a silly goof with little at stake for anyone. When things calm down in act two, the evening’s missed potential becomes manifest. Despite the title, the show bears no meaningful relation to Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot. —JUSTIN HAYFORD

Through 3/17: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM; also Mon 3/12, 7:30 PM, Berger Park Cultural Center, 6205 N. Sheridan, theplagiarists. org, $20, $15 students and seniors.

DANCE Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan Formosa, the territory now known as Taiwan, serves as inspiration for choreographer Lin Hwai-min’s evening-length piece of the same name. See page 15 for more. Fri 3/2-Sat 3/3, 7:30 PM, Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph, 312-3347777, harristheaterchicago.org, $22-$65, $15 students.

Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo: La Belle Monaco’s premier dance company performs Marius Petipa’s The Sleeping Beauty, set to music by Tchaikovsky. Sat 3/3, 7:30 PM; Sun 3/4, 2 PM, Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress, 800-982-2787, auditoriumtheatre.org, $41-$120.

Winning Works The Joffrey Dance Academy highlights rising African, Latinx, Asian, Arab, and Native American choreographers. This iteration features Telmo Moreira, Omar Román De Jesús, Claudia Schreier, and more. Sat 3/3, 2 and 7:30 PM; Sun 3/4, 2 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago, 312280-2660, mcachicago.org, $25.

My Dad Wrote a Porno When British comedian Jamie Morton found out his dad had penned an erotica book under the name Rocky Flintsone, he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to tell everyone.

He and the friends behind his podcast My Dad Wrote a Porno now tour around the world reenacting scenes from the sordid tome. Wed 3/7, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre, 175 N. State, 312-462-6300, thechicagotheatre.com, $39.50.

Zizobotchi Rises Actors and writers share selected novellas from the novella-focused literary journal Zizobotchi Papers. Subjects range from shuttle bus drivers to ancient cults and secret agents. Fri 3/2, 7 PM, Quimby’s Bookstore, 1854 W. North, 773-342-0910, quimbys.com.

VISUAL ART Kimono to Kawaii This Japanese fashion show includes entries from the Chicago Wahoo Club and the Chicago Street Fashion community. Sat 3/3, 5-7:30 PM. Japanese Culture Center, 1016 W. Belmont, 773-525-3141, japaneseculturecenter.com, $10.

OTV: Open Television Tonight OpenTV, a Web platform for television, screens new pilots and series. The creators are on hand to answer questions. Tue 3/6, 6-8 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art,

More at chicagoreader.com/movies NEW REVIEWS The Animation Show of Shows R When producer Ron Diamond launched his touring “Animation Show

of Shows” in 1998, it was often confused with the cheaper, edgier “Spike & Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation.” But the Spike & Mike series soon petered out, whereas Diamond’s annual international program of fine animation still maintains high standards of technique and originality. The 16 shorts collected here are so fully conceived that they expose the derivative quality of most commercial animation.

Take Quentin Baillieux’s French short Can You Do It?, whose precise digital imagery mimics the posterlike 2-D of traditional cutout animation. Set to a jubilant, hypnotic soul tune by Los Angeles artist Charles X, the film opens in the musician’s gritty Pacoima neighborhood, where folks stroll around in the dusk, a kid weaves around on a bike, and, improbably, five black jockeys step out of an auto garage with their racehorses, mount up, and take off through the city streets. They gallop down the freeway, threading through stalled traffic, and arrive in downtown LA after nightfall, bringing images of their neighbors that play across the steel-and-glass buildings like movie projections. Graceful in its simplicity, the film is a novel statement of black pride and aspiration, typical of the program’s idiosyncrasy. —J.R. JONES 92 min. Fri 3/2, 8 PM; Sat 3/3, 6 and 8 PM; Mon 3/5, 6 PM; Tue 3/6, 8 PM; Wed 3/7, 6 PM; and Thu 3/8, 8:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

Red Sparrow This thriller about Russian and U.S. spies was adapted from a novel by a former CIA operative, but it plays

COMEDY Jane Bond: Funny but Deadly Every Friday during March, Women’s History Month, an all-female cast pays tribute to James Bond with a show featuring hallmark Bond-movie elements—evil villains, henchmen, exotic locales, and more. Through 3/30: Fri 8 PM, Laugh Out Loud, 3851 N. Lincoln, 773-857-6000, laughoutloudtheater.com, $15.

Matteo Lane The Chicago native turned New York comedian headlines a weekend at the Lincoln Lodge. Fri 3/2-Sat 3/3, 8 PM, Lincoln Lodge, 956 W.

Matteo Lane

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Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of March 1 For more of the best things to do every day of the week, go to chicagoreader. com/agenda.

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Mervyn LeRoy’s Depression-era classic I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang.

—J.R. JONES R, 80 min. 35mm. Fri 3/2, 2 PM, and Thu 3/8, 8:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

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SPECIAL EVENTS Blue Strait Independent Jon Jost directed this 2014 film about the breakup of a middle-aged gay couple, his elliptical narrative focusing on mood more than story. 85 min. Jost attends the screening. Sat 3/3, 8 PM. Chicago Filmmakers.

Hangman is one of the shorts featured in the “Animation Show of Shows.”

like a Hollywood movie from the 1940s. A cool-blond Jennifer Lawrence shows off her best Russian accent as the heroine, a young ballerina whose career is cut short by an onstage disaster; Matthias Schoenaerts is her cagey uncle, who drafts her into a government spy program that’s based on the art of sexual and emotional seduction. Director Francis Lawrence, a veteran of the Hunger Games franchise, seems to have reasoned that, because Russian literature is so long and slow, making his movie long and slow would be the path to authenticity; minus 30 or 40 minutes, Red Sparrow might have been a winning piece of international tomfoolery. With Jeremy Irons, Charlotte Rampling, Ciarán Hinds, and Joel Edgerton as the love interest, a rugged CIA agent who winds up on the wrong end of a skin-grafting razor. —J.R. JONES R, 139 min. ArcLight, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Chatham 14, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, Landmark’s Century Centre, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, 600 N. Michigan, Webster Place.

Werewolf Canadian filmmaker Ashley McKenzie makes a notable feature debut with this unsparing portrait of two homeless young dope addicts. Blaise (Andrew Gillis) and Vanessa (Bhreagh MacNeil) spend their nights in a rusting RV out in the woods and their days pushing an ancient lawnmower around their small town in search of employment and drug money. When the mower breaks down, Vanessa gets into a methadone program and lands a job at the local DQ, which leaves Blaise with nothing to do but scratch around for drugs and toss a dead fly from palm to palm.

McKenzie is a big fan of the abstracting close-up, favoring inanimate objects in a room and often cutting her actors off at the neck or wrists to incorporate their bodies into the surroundings. Her characters are a little too blank to sustain interest through an entire film, but this modest indie generates a haunting mood of 21st-century despair. —J.R. JONES 80 min. Fri 3/2-Thu 3/8. Facets Cinematheque.

REVIVALS Blind Spots of Memory Two R films by German documentary-essay filmmaker Harun Farocki: Respite

(2007) and Images of the World and the Inscription of War (1988). Jonathan Rosenbaum called the latter “a fascinating 1988 film essay about photography

by Harun Farocki, one of Germany’s most interesting independent filmmakers. Farocki combines the freewheeling imagination of Chris Marker with the rigor of Alexander Kluge, and his materialist approach to editing sound and image suggests both Fritz Lang and Robert Bresson. Central to the argument of this film are some aerial photographs of Auschwitz taken by American bombers looking for factories and power plants and missing the lines of people in front of the gas chambers—which are contrasted with Nazi photographs and images drawn by an Auschwitz prisoner, Alfred Kantor. Farocki’s provocative reflections on these and related matters and his highly original manipulation of music make this an excellent introduction to his work, which has seldom been visible in this country.”

In German with subtitles. 115 min. Thu 3/8, 7 PM. Northwestern University Block Museum of Art. F

School of the Art Institute lectures at the Tuesday screening. 35mm. Sat 3/3, 5:30 PM, and Tue 3/6, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

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Wendy and Lucy Kelly Reichardt’s masterful low-budget drama (2008) tells a story a child could understand even as it indicts, with stinging anger, the economic cruelty of George Bush’s America. Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain) is impressively restrained as Wendy, a young homeless woman who’s living in her car with her beloved mutt, Lucy. After the car breaks down in an Oregon hick town, she makes the mistake of tying Lucy up outside a grocery store before going in to shoplift, and when she gets busted and taken to the local police station, the dog disappears. Reichardt (Old Joy) and cowriter Jonathan Raymond began working on the story after hearing conservative commentators bash the poor in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and their movie is a stark reminder of how easily someone like Wendy can fall through our frayed safety net. The climax is a heartbreaker, and in its haunting finale the movie recalls no less than

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Chicago Feminist Film Festival Shorts and features addressing gender, sexuality, and race in mainstream media. For a full schedule visit chicagofeministfilmfestival.com. Wed 3/7-Fri 3/9. Columbia College Film Row Cinema.

Chicago Irish Film Festival This year’s festival runs Thursday, March 1, through Sunday, March 4, at Logan, Society for Arts, and Theater on the Lake. For a full schedule visit chicagoirishfilmfestival. com.

Onion City Experimental Film & Video Festival opening night This year’s festival opens with a screening of Basma Alsharif’s experimental feature Ouroboros, which uses the figure of a man traveling through five different landscapes to consider the state of the Gaza Strip. 77 min. A 7:30 PM reception precedes the screening; for a full festival schedule visit onioncity.org. Thu 3/8, 8:30 PM. Chicago Filmmakers.

Storm Children, Book One Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz (Norte, the End of History) directed this 2014 documentary about the devastation caused by Typhoon Yolanda. In Filipino and Tagalog with subtitles. 143 min. Fri 3/2, 7 PM. Logan Center for the Arts. F v

Hearts and Minds A masterful R documentary (1974), one of the most unsettling discussions of Vietnam

and its aftermath ever to appear in any medium. Peter Davis, known for his expert television special The Selling of the Pentagon, portrays the war as a widening spiral of insanity, a vortex that pulled otherwise rational, decent men and women into the depths of deceit, degradation, and destruction—both moral and physical. More than a few spectators at the premiere wept openly; it’s a tribute to Davis’s integrity as a filmmaker that he keeps his indignation firmly under control and allows his images, his subjects, and the events his camera witnesses to speak for themselves.

Highly recommended. —DON DRUKER R, 110 min. Nora Annesley Taylor of the

Werewolf

MARCH 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 5

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I KNEW I WAS BOUND to get a few pictures in today, so I had to bust a fit,” admits Jason Bell Jr., a 19-yearold fashion student and entrepreneur from Bloomington, Indiana. Dressed in a coat handed down by his grandfather, he considers his style “a work in progress”: “clean and comfortable, like a dapper grandpa. It’s the thin line between old fashion and this generation’s style,” Bell says. The apparel merchandising student at Indiana University was in Chicago to direct a photo shoot for Urban Genius, a streetwear brand he created in high school with friends Drelen Williams and Derreke Johnson. “We were the group of kids that always stood out because of the way we dressed. We had everyone trying to keep up with us,” says Bell, who’s now making a business out of his precocious sartorial expertise. Find his designs at Urbangenius216.com and on Instagram at @ug216. —ISA GIALLORENZO

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CITY LIFE Dominique Huntley, 26, and her four-yearold son Tyler at Saint James Food Pantry at 29th and Wabash. Under the Trump administration’s plan, food stamp recipients would receive boxes of shelf-stable food. ò MAUDLYNE IHEJIRIKA/SUN-TIMES

POLITICS

Do as I say . . .

Trump cuts food stamps while looking for a handout for his hotel in Mississippi, and other acts of hypocrisy.

By BEN JORAVSKY

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n the category of do as I say not as I do, President Trump recently proposed cuts in the federal food stamp program right around the same time his family and business partners maneuvered to win a healthy handout from taxpayers in Mississippi to build a hotel.

The food stamp cuts will affect millions of poor people throughout the country. The handout will benefit, ugh, the Trumps.

And their business partners, of course.

Trump’s food stamp cuts are based on the notion that in order to make life better for the poor we must first make it worse.

Which is much the same argument Mayor Rahm made when he closed six mental health clinics in high-crime areas on the grounds that somehow fewer mental health services would be a benefit to those who desperately need it.

The handout from Mississippi is predicated on the notion that everyone benefits when a rich man gets even richer.

That’s another economic principle we see all the time around here. For instance, when Governor Rauner proposes to cut pension payments to retired clerks, cops, firefighters, and teachers, he calls it “reform.”

But when he and Mayor Rahm propose to give $2.25 billion to Amazon, the world’s richest company, he calls that “economic development.”

In other words, a monthly payment to ordinary retirees is viewed as an albatross, weighing us down. Even if the retirees will use their pension payments to shop in local businesses in their neighborhoods.

But a payout to the world’s wealthiest company is seen as an investment in our future.

The handout from Mississippi comes in the form of a $6 million tax break for a Trump hotel that a couple of developers—Dinesh and Suresh Chawla—are building in a town called Cleveland. (It’s a classic Trump deal—the Chawla brothers will build the hotel and pay

the Trump family to slap their name on it.)

“The Chawlas estimated that the project would draw tens of thousands of visitors, including many from out of state, and that it would eventually create more than 100 jobs,” according to the New York Times.

You know, that sounds like one of those may-be-true-but-probably-not press releases Mayor Rahm releases to justify one of his TIF handouts.

In fact, I’d say this Mississippi handout is sort of Trump’s TIF moment. Not TIF in the literal sense—as in Chicago’s tax increment financing program. But TIF in the metaphorical sense—as in public money taken from people who need it and given to those who don’t.

Trump’s food stamp cuts work like this. Instead of offering electronic coupons to eligible households, as the program does now, Trump wants to deliver boxes of “shelf-stable food like cereal, peanut butter, beans and canned vegetables,” as the Tribune puts it.

The president says the food boxes will wind up saving taxpayers $129.2 billion over the next ten years. If so, that’s just a roundabout way of freeing up even more money for handouts like the one Trump and the Chawlas are getting to build that hotel in good ol’ Mississippi.

Not surprisingly, folks in the grocery store industry are up in arms over the program. I don’t blame them. If you mail food boxes to people, there will be fewer customers for the

grocery stores. In the face of protests from grocery store chains, there’s a good chance the food box idea will die.

Well, you don’t think they’d kill it because poor people complained.

I’d say the juxtaposition of cutting food stamps for poor people with giving millions to the Trumps for a hotel is the single most hypocritical act of the year. Except there’s so much competition. To pick just one example . . .

In the wake of the high school massacre in Parkland, Florida, Iowa Republican senator Chuck Grassley declared: “We have not done a very good job of making sure that people that have mental reasons for not being able to handle a gun getting their name into the FBI files and we need to concentrate on that.”

Well, there used to be a federal rule intended to keep mentally ill people from buying guns. Except Trump, at the National Rifle Association’s urging, reversed it. And Grassley supported that reversal. So in effect Grassley was denouncing himself.

I know that Grassley’s hypocrisy has no direct bearing on the issue of governmental handouts. But it just goes to show you how Republican politicians will tie themselves into knots rather than defy the NRA—a subject weighing on my mind in the aftermath of Parkland.

Actually, there is a correlation. It’s yet another example of how the welfare of the many is jeopardized for the benefit of the few.

Speaking of which—I saw Rauner’s latest campaign commercial where he pledges to do away with the “Madigan tax hike.” That tax hike—so named for Illinois house speaker Michael Madigan—enabled the state to distribute hundreds of millions of school aid dollars. The legislature barely passed that tax hike over a veto from Rauner, who called it “a two-by-four smacked across the forehead.”

The governor agreed to sign another bill that distributed the school aid only after Madigan backed a tax credit for rich people who donate to private schools. Rauner hailed that measure as—you guessed it—school reform. That word again.

My guess is that Rauner will fight like hell to kill the tax hike, even if it means less aid for schools throughout the state. But he will fight hard to keep that tax credit, whose benefit will be limited to people in his tax bracket.

It must be the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do time of the season. ’Cause there’s a lot of that stuff in the air. v

v @joravben MARCH 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 7

DREAM ON OR DREAM OVER? DACA recipients face uncertain future with no compromise forthcoming

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By MICHELLE KANAAR

he fate of hundreds of thousands of “Dreamers” hangs in the balance even as President Trump’s deadline for winding down DACA appears to be on hold. Monday, March 5, was the date Trump had planned to start unwinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program—created

by President Obama to allow undocumented immigrants who were brought to this country as children to work or go to school. But although the courts have delayed Trump’s plan to end DACA, federal lawmakers have been unable to come up with a long-term solution that would allow the program to continue. Last weekend photographer Michelle Kanaar sat down with several DACA recipients who all came to Chicago from Mexico years ago, and who remain in limbo.

Here are the faces behind the numbers.

Yadira Alonzo, 21

Monzerrath Gaytan, 23

Biology major at Northeastern Illinois University Years in U.S.: 11

Communications student at Northeastern Illinois University Years in U.S.: 19 “The biggest struggle . . . is being undocumented and always trying to stay positive. . . . I just think that there’s this stereotype that we’re here, not doing what we’re supposed to. We’re trying to go to school. We’re trying to make a living.

We’re not trying to bother anybody or take anything away from them. . . . I just hope that one day we’re able to change the minds of those who think that we’re horrible people. I hope that one day we’re able to really welcome immigrants and make them feel welcome and comfortable. . . . Some people know what their tomorrow is going to be. I don’t know what’s going to be my tomorrow.”

“You know they tend to call us the Dreamers. In reality I think the dreamers are my parents because they came here first looking for a better life, giving me opportunities to go to school and get an education.”

Vicente Del Real, 28

Organizer for Big Shoulders Fund; theology student Years in U.S.: 15

Victor Guzman, 25

Line cook and community organizer Years in U.S.: 14 “I was looking on the news how they were talking about illegals. And I was looking at people just like me: brown, short, that typical stereotype Mexican. And I was like: ‘Is that what they see as illegal? A brown person? Like wow, that’s so wrong.’ That’s when I became afraid.”

8 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 1, 2018

“I hope that we get a reform of the laws of immigration reform that is comprehensive, humane, and holistic. . . . The country itself has benefited from immigration greatly.

“It’s convenient for the United States to have us in the shadows.

We don’t have any rights, but then we pay like everybody else. . . . I hate that people say, ‘Oh, you don’t pay taxes.’ Are you kidding me? I live in a house. I pay property taxes. I get money taken away every single paycheck of my life.”

Gissel Escobedo, 31

Dual-language kindergarten teacher at Emerson Elementary Years in U.S.: 26 “We are more than that single narrative of illegality. We are more than the politics of illegality. You know we are people and, like people, we have deep complex emotions, lived experiences, were put in situations where we have to confront issues and make tough choices.

We are still a part of this country that we call home.”

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Karen Perez, 27

Educator; engagement coordinator at Kids for Chicago Years in U.S.: 21 “I just feel that all the blame is put on our parents.

I feel like it’s common sense: If something bad is going on, you flee, right? You want a better future for your kids, and so, you bring your kids.”

Tania Adame, 24 Maria Teresa Gomez Carmona, 30

Dual-language teacher at Emerson Elementary Years in U.S.: 18

“I’m always kind of feeling like there is an end coming because anything, everything could be taken away any moment. . . . So there’s a lot of emotional distress around it that impacts obviously everything. But at the same time there’s always this kind of knowing that you have to push a little harder to get things done. Because we’re human. I mean, we are very resilient.”

“I think that’s an issue that a lot of people don’t talk about: the mental health that goes with the struggles of like not knowing what’s going to happen even though you’re trying superhard to have control of your life. . . . I also want [politicians] to know that all those decisions they make have a face and consequence. To them it might just be a law and it might just be a job. But to me it’s literally my whole life.”

Union organizer Years in U.S.: 24

CALL 773-257-7298 TO SCHEDULE YOUR VISIT TODAY!

MARCH 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 9

JUST ADD WATER

Evanston writer Daniel Kraus had an inspiration when he was 15. It’s now the Oscar-nominated film The Shape of Water.

By JANET POTTER

Daniel Kraus ò KEVIN PENCZAK

10 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 1, 2018

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aniel Kraus remembers the exact moment the idea hit him. He was 15 years old, and he was standing on a tennis court in Fairfield, Iowa, where he grew up. “The extent of the idea,” he says now, “was the Creature from the Black Lagoon is put in a lab; a janitor finds him and decides to break him out and put him in her tub. And that was it for many years.”

Why did this particular story stay with him all those years? “I think I just really liked Creature of the Black Lagoon. Anybody with a heart who watched Black Lagoon, you have to feel bad for the creature. He does nothing wrong, and the guys come in and just torture him and possibly kill him. And he’s not doing anything, he’s just hanging out in the Black Lagoon!”

Kraus always carries a small black notebook around to jot down ideas in. Whenever one is full, he makes a list of the ideas he hasn’t gotten to yet at the beginning of the next one.

The creature’s happy ending had been transferred from one notebook to the next for years.

“It was always on the list,” he says, “but was never first or second.”

It made it to the top of the list 20 years later when he met Guillermo del Toro. And if the story sounds familiar, it’s because del Toro turned it into the 2017 film The Shape of Water, which was recently nominated for 13 Academy Awards. It also became a book by the same name, cowritten by del Toro and Kraus, that will be published on March 6.

For any author, having a film auteur turn one of your ideas into a critically acclaimed movie would be a career pinnacle. And yet Kraus’s next project is just as surreal, if not more so. It was announced on February 14 that Kraus had been chosen by the estate of George Romero, the legendary director of horror classics such as Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, to finish a novel the filmmaker left behind before his death in 2017.

Kraus, 42, lives in Evanston with his wife and two dogs. He’s worked as an editor at Booklist, nnnnnnnnnnnna magazine published by the American Library Association, since 2008.

He’s also published six young adult horror/ fantasy novels, which he writes on weekends and holidays. He admits that writing novels while working a full-time job is difficult, “but the upside is that I have a whole week to think

Sally Hawkins as Elisa Esposito in the film version of The Shape of Water

about the scenes I’m going to tackle over the weekend, so when that weekend comes, I’m really ready to go.”

He found success with his second novel, Rotters, the story of a 16-year-old boy who goes to live with the father he’s never known after the death of his mother, only to discover that his father is a grave robber. The book was nominated for a 2011 Bram Stoker Award, and won a 2011 Odyssey Award for best children’s audiobook. It also brought Kraus to the attention of del Toro, who called it “uncompromising, dark, and true.”

After reading Rotters, del Toro asked Kraus if he would be interested in collaborating on Trollhunters, a novel about a boy pulled into a community of trolls living under San Bernardino, California. Del Toro had sold the concept of the book to an editor at Disney-Hyperion, but he wanted Kraus to be the cowriter. In December 2011, Kraus met with del Toro in Toronto, where the director was filming Pacific Rim. At their first breakfast meeting, del Toro asked Kraus if he was working on anything else, and Kraus mentioned the idea he’d had when he was 15 and had never forgotten.

It turned out del Toro had always felt the same way about The Creature From the Black Lagoon. During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in December, the director told a story about watching the 1954 movie on TV when he was a child. “The creature swims underneath

Julie Adams, and I just thought, ‘What a great love story.’ I was six, I thought, ‘I’m sure it’s going to end well.’ But . . . they kill the creature at the end of the movie! So I said, ‘I’m going to correct that.’”

So when Kraus mentioned his janitor-meets-creature idea, Del Toro was immediately intrigued, but Kraus steered the conversation back to Trollhunters, the project at hand. “I didn’t want to be, like, pitching him ideas, so I was kind of embarrassed,” he says now, but del Toro kept coming back to the creature idea. He told Kraus it was going to be his next movie, and optioned the idea from him the same day.

Del Toro’s next movie would turn out to be Crimson Peak. After Trollhunters was finished, Kraus spent the next few years finishing The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, a two-volume YA novel about a teenaged Chicago gangster who rises from the dead and lives for another century. Ideas are optioned all the time, he figured, so it was anybody’s guess whether del Toro would actually make the film. When del Toro told him in 2016 that he was finally ready to make the movie that would become Shape of Water, Kraus hadn’t even started writing the book. He also knew that he wouldn’t be able to get to it right away. Del Toro didn’t want to wait for Kraus to write the book, nor did he want for Kraus not to write the book, so he offered his services as a coauthor. He planned to work on the movie at the same time.

Kraus had no qualms about del Toro coming in as a cowriter on the book he’d been wanting to write for years. In fact, it felt like a natural choice. “The book wouldn’t exist without him, because I clearly hadn’t cracked it,” he says.

“It was missing something the whole time.

The ideas he started adding at that first breakfast was when it really started making sense. It didn’t make sense for me to do it without him.”

Kraus describes the coauthorship process as “both complicated and simple.” Del Toro devised the main plot, which combined Kraus’s idea of a janitor befriending the creature with his own idea that it would be a great love story.

Kraus took that outline and started writing, filling in details of his own, and then he would send drafts to del Toro.

Although the book and movie share the same plot, neither was beholden to the other.

Audiences are accustomed to both movies based on books and novelizations of movies, but this situation is unique in that neither the book or movie is the source material. “The idea is the seed,” Kraus explains, “but then Guillermo’s story is sort of the source material [for both the book and the movie].”

The projects were produced simultaneously, and while del Toro worked on both, Kraus kept himself completely isolated. He never visited the set or even saw production stills in order to avoid being influenced by them. But while each work stands alone, the coauthors thought J

MARCH 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 11

continued from 11

making them too different would be too gimmicky, like producing an alternate ending. “We didn’t want to be quirky about it,” says Kraus.

“Often books come out before movies, but why? Why can’t it be the other way around?

We just wanted to make a piece of literature that was a work of art on its own, but didn’t feel like it had to be showily different.”

The story beats are the same. Elisa Esposito, a mute janitor working the graveyard shift at a secret lab outside Baltimore, befriends and eventually falls in love with an amphibious creature kept in the lab. Richard Strickland, the Korean war veteran who brought the creature from the Amazon to Baltimore, has been tasked with safeguarding it on the military’s behalf. When Elisa learns that Strickland is planning to kill the creature, she breaks it out and keeps it in her bathtub until the water in the harbor is deep enough that she can set it free in the ocean.

While the love story between Elisa and the creature—called Deus Branquia, or “gill god,” in the novel—is the focus of both versions of the story, the book spends more time on the inner lives of the supporting characters, especially Strickland. It opens with Strickland’s trek into the Amazon to capture the creature, a journey that pushes him and his crew to the edge of madness.

Kraus says writing the character of Strickland was one of his favorite parts of the project. “I always saw the story almost with Elisa and Strickland as co-main characters.

Guillermo really does a nice job hinting at Strickland’s pain and the stress he’s under, but I really wanted to dig into that. I’m really interested in the villains, humanizing the villains, for better or worse.”

When viewers of the movie meet Strickland, played by Michael Shannon with his trademark unsettling intensity, he’s not a sympathetic character. He’s not exactly likable in the book either, but his inner struggle to reconcile his mind-shattering experience in the jungle with the life of duty he intends to lead is laid out much more clearly.

Strickland’s wife, Lainey, who appears for only a few minutes in the movie, is also a prominent character in the book. Having essentially become a single mother while Strickland was away for more than a year, she chafes against her return to the role of a doting wife, and embarks on an ambitious endeavor of her own that will bring her into contact with Elisa’s neighbor and friend, Giles, and Elisa herself.

The book’s obvious advantage over the visual medium is that Elisa and the creature, both of whom never speak in the movie (save for one fantasy sequence), can have voices. Elisa’s memories of her childhood in an orphanage

12 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 1, 2018

Del Toro on set with Sally Hawkins and Octavia Spencer

help to illustrate why she immediately empathizes with the creature, itself uprooted and objectified. The creature too narrates sections of the novel, in a voice that, like him, is some combination of sensitive and wild. Deciding to write from the creature’s point of view, Kraus says, is something he and del Toro spent a lot of time thinking about. “There’d be no point in doing it if you weren’t going to add something to it. A lot of thought was given to what his point of view would feel like, and how it would enhance your understanding of what he is.”

With two books under their collective belt, del Toro and Kraus seem to be a successful partnership. “There’s great potential when working with a collaborator for things to go horribly wrong,” Kraus says. “They haven’t yet with Guillermo. We’ve been very simpatico.”

While he was a fan of del Toro’s before they met, “I wasn’t his biggest fan,” Kraus says. “I think that’s what makes us interesting collaborators. The best collaborations might be with

people who were not the obvious collaborators, in a way.” But he does think del Toro was the perfect guy to make the movie. “This felt to me like his movies that I really love, so I hoped that he would make it.”

Kraus first saw The Shape of Water at its premiere at the Venice Film Festival in August 2017. He recalls getting emotional when the film ended, even though he usually never cries at books or movies. “It was all very fun, but it wasn’t until the movie was ending that it really did hit me. You see these hundreds of names, and all these people who are applauding for 15 minutes, and you think, how did this happen? How did this silly little idea I had when I was a dorky teenager, how did it turn into all these hundreds of people having jobs, and this huge theater going nuts for this thing, and all these people applauding and crying, how is this all possible?”

In a tweet a few months later, when the movie was released in the U.S., Kraus mar-

veled again at the “strange, impossible trip” from the cornfields of Iowa to the big screen.

Del Toro responded, “I often wonder: What if I had not asked ‘What else are you working on these days?’ that cold Winter morning six years ago? The key to this all was your seminal idea. I bless that egg sandwich breakfast!”

Kraus has moved from one dream project to the next as he now focuses on finishing Romero’s The Living Dead. “I really, truly grew up on George Romero,” Kraus says. “The first movie I ever remember watching was Night of the Living Dead. He’s probably my favorite artist of any kind. If I could name somebody in the world I would have wanted to do something with, it would have been him.”

Kraus is writing about 70 percent of The Living Dead, which will be published in fall 2019.

It’s an epic zombie novel that takes place all over the world in three different time periods.

Romero was famously fiercely independent, often running into budget problems on his movies, and Kraus’s theory is that the book was his way of doing all the things he never had the resources to do in a movie.

“This book is of huge importance,” says Brendan Deneen, Kraus’s editor at Tor Books. “It is the conclusion to Romero’s entire body of work, at least as far as zombies are concerned.”

There were clues in the unfinished manuscript as to where the book was going, and toward the end, Kraus says, “it was almost like he was writing notes to himself.” Kraus plans to combine the existing manuscript with an enormous amount of research into Romero: reading his interviews, rewatching his films and commentary tracks, talking to his widow, and reading and watching all the things he liked.

“He was obsessed with this movie called The Tales of Hoffmann,” Kraus says, referring to Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1951 Technicolor version of the opera by Jacques Offenbach. “He mentioned it in every interview almost in his entire life. So I’m going back to that text and saying, What was so important to him about this, what was he getting out of this?, and using stuff like that to create structural elements in the book. It’s almost like I’m building a George Romero AI.” “It’s impossible to ever truly get inside another human’s mind,” Deneen says, “but Daniel is coming pretty damn close!”

If there’s anything that would have made 15-year-old Kraus happier than knowing his creature idea would one day be a stunning movie, it might have been this. “This is really big to me,” he says. ‘It couldn’t get bigger to me.” v

v @sojanetpotter

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ò PHOTO BY RICHARD A. CHAPMAN

ARTS & CULTURE

ON CULTURE

A bad bet?

During a decade of low rates, cultural institutions paid dearly for interest-rate swaps.

By DEANNA ISAACS

G

etting ready to write about the future of Lyric Opera a couple of weeks ago, I was scrolling through its latest annual report when three words caught my eye: interest-rate swaps.

The swaps are a financial management strategy that was popular among governments and nonprofits in the early years of this century.

But for the last decade they’ve looked like a costly folly.

Two years ago a group called the ReFund America Project issued a laudably readable report on the hundreds of millions of dollars Illinois was (and still is) paying on complicated financial swap deals it entered into during the Blagojevich years.

As the report explained, the swaps were sold as a kind of insurance—a way to protect borrowers using variable-rate bonds from ris-

ing interest rates on those bonds in the future.

As in home mortgages, the adjustable rate is usually cheaper than a fixed rate to begin with, but if interest rates climb, it can turn out to be much more expensive.

In the case of multimillion-dollar variable-rate bonds, steeply rising rates can turn into the kind of budget-busting interest payments that keep chief financial officers up at night. And this is where the swap agreement comes in: it’s a side bet that can turn a variable rate into a fixed rate.

Here’s how it works: The bond borrower agrees to pay the opposite party in the swap, usually a bank, a flat rate of interest (along with a fee for entering into the agreement).

The bank, in turn, will pay the bond borrower the fluctuating, variable rate of interest.

If interest rates rise, as they did in the early

years of this century, the bond issuer will never have to pay more than the agreed-upon fixed rate.

But if interest rates swoon, as they did after the economic collapse of 2008, and if they remain very low for a decade, as they have, the bank will pay almost nothing, while the bond borrower will shell out a fortune.

This is the pickle the city, the state, and—it turns out—many of our major cultural institutions have found themselves in.

Lyric Opera entered into a swap agreement in 2006 to cover $40 million in bonds. The fixed rate that Lyric’s paying is 3.8 percent, while the variable rate it’s getting in return is now 1.58 percent. Over the 12 years that the swap has existed, Lyric’s paid about $16.8 million for it.

During that same period, the cost of interest on the bonds amounted to about $4 million.

But Lyric is hardly alone in this. A look at financial statements from a few randomly selected cultural organizations suggests that it’s the rule for our major institutions, not the exception. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, for example, spent $2.8 million on swaps in 2017, and $3 million on them the year before. Interest payments on its bonds for the same years were only $950,000 and $135,000 respectively.

The Chicago History Museum, with an annual operating budget of only $9 million, paid $2.1 million in interest last year on a swap that runs through 2035. Over the last decade the swap has cost the museum $18.6 million.

So, in a low-interest environment, why not pay the swaps off and refinance? If only it were that simple. The agreements are generally equipped with early termination fees hefty enough to thwart escape. For example, in the case of the Field Museum—which is paying 3.7 percent and 3.4 percent interest on two swaps totaling $88 million in coverage— it would have cost $18.6 million to opt out at the end of 2016. And both of those swaps run through 2032.

Saqib Bhatti—who coauthored the ReFund Illinois report and is now codirector of a new nonprofit, ACRE (the Action Center on Race and the Economy)—recently told me, “The use of interest-rate swaps by nonprofits has been riddled with a lot of the same issues that government swaps have.

“In the corporate world, interest-rate swaps are much shorter—say three to seven years— which limits the potential liability,” Bhatti continues. “For governments and nonprofits, these deals end up being 20, 30, even 40 years long, which gives them much more exposure.

In pretty much all cases, nonprofits would have been better off if they had not entered into the swaps. Conventional 30-year fixedrate bonds are still the safest instruments.”

But Carl F. Luft, academic director of DePaul University’s Arditti Center for Risk Management, says the people who bought the swaps were making “a hedging decision,” like buying insurance for your car: “What they were doing was eliminating the need to worry about rising interest rates.”

Also, says Luft: “Hindsight is 20/20. Nobody knows what will happen to interest rates in the future.”

Right now, in the Trump moment, it looks like they’re headed up. v

v @DeannaIsaacs MARCH 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 13

ARTS & CULTURE Byron Glenn Willis and Lyric Sims ò MICHAEL BROSILOW

THEATER

Keith Huff over-everythings Six Corners A potentially great urban fable gets done in by excess.

By TONY ADLER

F

or years, Keith Huff was your typical Chicago playwright, slogging along with script after script at storefront after storefront. Then, in 2007, he came up with A Steady Rain—the tale of two corrupt Chicago police detectives forced to confront their criminal incompetence—and all that changed. A Steady Rain went to Broadway in 2009, with a cast consisting of Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig; by 2010, Huff was writing for AMC’s Mad Men. But the new Hollywood Huff clearly hasn’t lost his taste for Chicago cops—especially the dirty ones. His Six Corners offers us another pair of detectives with their own set of bad acts to confront.

And more such acts in the pipeline. At the top of this 90-minute one-act, getting its world premiere now with American Blues Theater, partners Nick Moroni (Peter DeFaria) and Bernadette Perez (Monica Orozco) are negotiating their first after-work assignation, even though Perez wisely points out that sex-with-a-coworker “bullshit does nothing but tear happy up and piss on it.” Add to that

14 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 1, 2018

Perez’s evident contempt for the old-school Moroni (“Do you even have an I.Q.?!”), his less than Adonis-like looks, and the fact that they’re both married, and you’ve got to wonder why they’d even entertain the notion of a tryst, if not for their shared commitment to poor judgment.

But they can’t add adultery to their travesty scorecard until they’ve cleared the case of a man who was gunned down on an el platform earlier in the evening. Two witnesses (Brenda Barrie and Manny Buckley) are waiting to be interviewed. Before the shift ends, secrets will be revealed and more awful choices made.

Moroni is a fascinating character: the model of good-natured fecklessness, he can rationalize any failure and justify every transgression.

Even his flirtations with virtue are corrupt.

What’s more, Huff has placed him and Perez at the nexus between the law they’re supposed to uphold and the tribal loyalties reflected in traditions like the code of silence. Once the witnesses and their agendas become part of the mix, mordant ironies grow thick and fast.

Six Corners has the makings of a great urban

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fable, in short. But Huff can’t seem to get out of its way. The play is overwritten in every possible sense: connections among the characters are made unnecessarily elaborate, apparently in order to touch on as many social issues as possible in the time allotted, and they’re communicated in dialogue rather than dramatized, so that important details are easy to miss. Huff even over-Chicagos things, throwing around (occasionally inaccurate) geographical references as if to demonstrate his bona fides and

READER RECOMMENDED

b ALL AGES

F

indulging in sub-Mametian idioms like the one about people who can’t find their asses with both hands and a flashlight. Even the show’s polished director, Gary Griffin, can’t tame the excess. v SIX CORNERS Through 3/24: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2:30 PM; also Mon 3/5, 7:30 PM, and Wed 3/21, 2:30 PM, Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont, 773-327-5252, americanbluestheater.com, $19-$49.

v @taadler

YOU GOT OLDER MUST

“Sincere, honest…

Barron is writing what she knows, and she does so with eloquence”

C LOCSHE11 MAR

— Chicago Tribune

“Multilayered…

filled with an emotional truth” — Chicago Sun Times

“Richly acted production…

hits all the right emotional and elegiac notes” ò LIU CHEN-HSIANG

— Daily Herald

DANCE

Cloud Gate Dance Theatre combines words, history, and movement in Formosa WRITING AND DANCE have always been connected for choreographer Lin Hwai-min.

The founder and artistic director of Taiwan’s Cloud Gate Dance Theatre began his professional career as a writer, and his dancers study calligraphy because the two art forms share a core philosophy of releasing and controlling energy to create. “A writer does this with a brush, a dancer with the core of the body,” says Lin. As he approaches retirement in 2019, Lin returns to his writer’s roots with Formosa, a tribute to the land and people of Taiwan. The piece’s conception began with Lin collecting Taiwanese poems and essays for inspiration, and words play an even bigger role in the design of the production. Projected Chinese characters are readable at first, but then they warp and become the raw material for an abstract landscape of the world, shifting as

disorder takes over the dance. “‘Formosa’ is not only the name of an island, it’s a metaphor,” says Lin. “A beautiful place with harmonious community that turns into chaos and rivalry and devastation.” Foreign viewers have responded to the piece by projecting their own country’s problems onto it.

UK audiences see Brexit reflected in the cracking and dissolution; Americans see what’s currently happening in the White House.

“The most exciting part of dance is ambiguity,” says Lin. “It opens to all kinds of interpretation. It took me almost 20 years to erase the words of my mind. After all these years, what did I do? Words, but in a contradictory way from when I started. I completed my journey.”

—OLIVER SAVA CLOUD GATE DANCE THEATRE OF TAIWAN Fri 3/2-Sat 3/3, 7:30 PM, Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph, 312-334-7777, colum.edu, $22-$65, $15 students.

By Clare

Barron

Major Production Sponsor

Directed by Jonathan

Berry

steppenwolf.org 312-335-1650 MARCH 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 15

ARTS & CULTURE

Aurora Real de Asua, Natalie Joyce, Sarah Price, and Erin O’Shea ò LIZ LAUREN

THEATER

The Wolves starts strong—then chokes on too many sports movie cliches

By IRENE HSIAO

T Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan Formosa

Concept / Choreography: Lin Hwai-min

March 2 and 3, 2018 7:30 p.m. at the Harris Theater Tickets start at just $22. colum.edu/cloudgate

“When you’re talking about Cloud Gate, magic is not too strong a word.”

Time Out

The Dance Center presentation of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan is supported by Alphawood Foundation Chicago.

This tour is made possible by the grants from the Ministry of Culture, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of China (Taiwan).

Photo: LIU Chen-hsiang

16 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 1, 2018

hey bust out onto the scene like champions, faster and larger than life, feet flying, balls in the air, to Beyoncé’s “Run the World (Girls).” When the colored lights stop strobing and the cheers of the crowd die away, nine teenage girls in red uniforms stand on an Astroturf field in Middle America. They pass a disjointed conversation among themselves as they put themselves through a set routine of warm-ups and drills in unison, a single slap of the hand as it grabs the foot for a quad stretch: They discuss whether Khmer Rouge leaders should be jailed 40 years after the Cambodian genocide, where Cambodia is, whether they have been to Cambodia, how to pronounce “Khmer Rouge,” whether the girl who is an Episcopalian is a bitch, whether it’s OK to use the word “bitch,” snake handling, and how to use a tampon. “We should definitely not, like, take our liberties for granted,” says one of them, smart and stupid like every teenager everywhere.

The girls face each other in a circle nearly the entire length of the Goodman’s production of Sarah DeLappe’s Pulitzer-nominated The Wolves. Seating is in the round, so the primary view from the ground floor is their shiny red backsides as they stretch and lunge and shake out their joints. Their faces are distant, their society insular—they perform for no one but each other, but in sport as in the military, hierarchy and a certain degree of pageantry are always on display. Number 46 (Erin O’Shea) is the new girl, plus she lives in a yurt—which

the others call a “yogurt”—so if she weren’t a prodigy at soccer, which she calls “football,” she’d be sunk.

The American Youth Soccer Organization was founded in 1964 on several principles, including “everyone plays” and “balanced teams.” US Youth Soccer followed suit a decade later with the tagline “The game for all kids.”

In other words, soccer in our country claims to produce an equality we do not yet share as a culture. The Wolves is a play for nine girls and a woman, written by a woman, directed by a woman (Vanessa Stalling), on a set designed by a woman (Collette Pollard). In that sense alone, it ought to be cause for celebration.

However, the play itself is emphatically a play for and about adolescents that seems modeled on mainstream teen sports flicks, never quite living up to the pitch of its eye-popping opening number. The snatches of conversations sketch out character types—the brainy one, the bossy leader, the bad girl, the sidekick, and so on—but none is given the means to develop, and the drama produced by a nasty twist of fate is contrived and then left unexplored. As far as landmarks in feminist theater go, The Wolves is not quite a stepping stone. v THE WOLVES Through 3/18: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 and 7:30 PM (2 PM only 3/11), Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312-443-3829, goodmantheatre.org, $15-$52.

v @IreneCHsiao

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ARTS & CULTURE has also given him a sixth sense for knowing when a new vessel will go on the market.

The night before our interview Mullins had a hunch that Black Panther might inspire a character jug. Sure enough, there was one in the shape of the superhero’s helmet for sale on eBay that he quickly purchased for $20.

Mullins isn’t exactly thrilled by his own mug. The piece wasn’t his decision but rather a gift he was given 11 years ago by his family, who modeled the vessel after his two passions—Toby jug collecting and competitive swimming. (He is a recent world champion in 800-meter freestyle in the 85-plus age group.)

The curator quickly turned my attention to the classifications and origins of the other, less personal characters filling the display case, notably the rows of English prime ministers and American presidents. Mullins collects for completion rather than interest: new Theresa May and Donald Trump character mugs should arrive at the museum later this month. v AMERICAN TOBY JUG MUSEUM Wed-Fri and first and third Sat 10 AM-5 PM or by appointment, 910 Chicago Ave., Evanston, 877-862-9687, tobyjugmuseum.com. F

v @KateSierz

Character mugs line the shelves at the American Toby Jug Museum in Evanston. ò SANDRA LACHLER/AMERICAN TOBY JUG MUSEUM

MUSEUMS

Mug shots

Everybody’s a drinking vessel at the American Toby Jug Museum.

By KATE SIERZPUTOWSKI

S

helved to the left of Barack Obama and directly below a scowling Clint Eastwood sits a hand-painted mug bearing the image of collector Stephen M. Mullins. The 85-yearold is recognizable in mug form because of the bespectacled face and balding crown. A smaller, bathing-suit-clad version of Mullins perches on the figure’s right shoulder. The placard below the mug announces his title: CURATOR, AMERICAN TOBY JUG MUSEUM. The white label is equal in size and grandeur to those identifying Obama and Eastwood, a hint at the lack of hierarchy found among the nearly 8,300 figural pieces in the Evanston-based collection.

Toby jugs are ceramic pitchers in the shape of well-known popular or generic characters, an art form that dates back to 1760s England.

Their appearance was originally inspired by a notorious Yorkshire drunk named Toby Philpot, and they were intended to serve copious amounts of ale. The art has evolved in the 250 years since its invention, most notably to include character jugs—vessels that depict a character only from the neck or shoulders

up. Mullins first purchased six of the latter at age 15, though he no longer remembers whom they specifically depicted. In the six decades since, he’s collected enough to outgrow both his home (800 works), and his office (1,500 works). In 2005 he finally opened up the museum in the basement of a corporate building, where it remains. Currently the collection fills 100 uniform display cases and includes jugs that bear the likenesses of everything from pop stars to mythical creatures.

“I scroll on eBay about once a week,” explains Mullins. “It used to be every day, but I figure now I have better things to do with my time. I will get on there for a couple of hours on the weekend, and can scroll through about 1,000 of them in about 20 minutes.”

As we walk through the aisles, Mullins stops every now and again to subtly rotate a jug, microadjusting to a degree imperceptible to anyone’s eye but his own. His brain is an extensive catalog of inanimate faces that he easily recalls when either collecting new works or appraising old ones. Sixty years of collecting

MARCH 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 17

Owen Daniel-McCarter

ARTS & CULTURE

ò COURTESY OWEN DANIEL-MCCARTER

and privilege meant that my life was removed from the criminal legal system. My understanding of racism, mass incarceration, and the LGBT movement was largely through a white lens. At SRLP, nearly everyone I worked with had had some contact with the criminal legal system. I will never forget the first time I went to a maximum-security men’s prison to visit two women locked up there. It was my experience in New York that shaped what would become TJLP. With so many LGBTQ people locked up, particularly trans women of color, I didn’t understand why there weren’t organizations doing criminal defense work for queer and trans people. TJLP was born out of the clear need to reduce the harm of that system on our communities.

LGBTQ

‘We live in a world that for the most part still doesn’t acknowledge that trans people exist’

Owen Daniel-McCarter looks back on a decade of organizing in Chicago.

By H. MELT

O

wen Daniel-McCarter is a longtime activist, lawyer, and Chicagoan. As one of the founders of the Transformative Justice Law Project of Illinois and the outgoing executive director of the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, Daniel-McCarter has fought for the past decade to make this city and state a better place for trans people to live. He’s guided me and many other Chicagoans on legal matters related to trans identity, and he’s taught me how to build a community that works towards trans liberation. He’s leaving Chicago for Vermont later this spring; recently he took some time to reflect with me on his years of organizing here.

What’s your relationship to Chicago? How has Chicago shaped your activism?

I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I moved to Oak Park between sixth and seventh grades.

My mom was in graduate school in Milwaukee. After getting her PhD, she got a job at the University of Illinois at Chicago and we moved down here. I think people in Chicago shaped my activism. My mom is a rabble-rouser. I tagged along to picket lines, volunteered in a tutoring program at StreetWise in the late 90s, worked at Jobs With Justice, and was part of my mom’s activism in the Chicago Coalition to Protect Public Housing.

18 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 1, 2018

The first time I heard of you was at the University of Vermont, which we both attended. You founded the Translating Identity Conference (TIC) roughly a decade before I arrived. Early on, TIC was formative in shaping my trans identity. I met the writer Eli Clare and heard the activist Miss Major speak there. Who were some of the first trans people you met and the first trans spaces that shaped you?

I grew up with a lot of queer people in my life.

I have some recollection of hearing that one of my childhood babysitters was transitioning and then learning more about trans folks in college in an anthropology class. I remember wanting to know everything about gender fluidity.

I was drawn to books like Stone Butch Blues

by Leslie Feinberg and remember reading Sylvia Rivera [cofounder of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries] for the first time in the anthology GenderQueer, edited by Joan Nestle, Clare Howell, and Riki Wilchins.

The first trans person I remember meeting was Dean Spade [law professor and founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project]. I went to a conference at Brown called Transecting the Academy around 2002 and I remember Dean making connections about how systems of punishment and control are linked to gender and racism in the U.S. legal system.

You are one of the founders of the Transformative Justice Law Project of Illinois (TJLP), a collective of radical social workers, lawyers, and activists who provide legal services to the trans community, focusing on low-income people and people of color. Why did you see a need to create this organization?

I wanted to learn from Dean and his work at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP) in New York City [which provides legal services for trans people]. I went to law school at the City University of New York. I started volunteering for SRLP and then interned there. My power

One of TJLP’s ongoing programs since 2011 is the Name Change Mobilization, which takes place the last Friday of every month at the Daley Center. It’s how I legally changed my name, which was such an affirming moment in my life. Why is naming so important in trans communities?

We live in a world that for the most part still doesn’t acknowledge that trans people exist.

Often conversations about who we are or what we need to survive begin with getting cis people to acknowledge that trans people are real. Our goal isn’t always to pass as cis people. From basic health care to partnership, family, employment, and education—we have less power, access, and autonomy for the sole reason that we are transgender.

I’ve had the honor of being part of this project that has helped literally thousands of people legally change their names and other aspects of their identity documents over the past decade. I changed my own legal name here in Cook County at the Daley Center just like you did. The role of naming in the trans community is about reclaiming power. It’s about being able to self-determine how we want to be seen and recognized. There is an important distinction between changing our names and having that choice legally recognized. Many people aren’t able to legally change their names because they don’t want to, they’re not out to their employer, or due to criminal barriers. Whether the state of Illinois recognizes it or not, our names are changed when we say they are. v

v @HMeltChicago

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Get showtimes at chicagoreader.com/movies.

ARTS & CULTURE Natalie Portman in Annihilation

MOVIES

Fear and biosphere

Annihilation preserves the source novel’s genetic nightmare but dispenses with its mounting paranoia.

By J.R. JONES This review contains spoilers.

I

haven’t read all of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy, a series of scifi novels about a mysterious biosphere steadily taking over the earth, but the first one, Annihilation (2014), really got under my skin. Four women—a biologist, a psychologist, an anthropologist, and a surveyor—head toward a quarantined coastal area on a government mission to secure a base camp, investigate a lighthouse several miles away, and explore the surrounding wilderness.

Theirs is the 12th expedition to Area X, previous ones having ended in horror: the second team committed mass suicide, the third split into factions and killed one another, and the members of the 11th all died of cancer after returning home. Shortly after the women penetrate Area X, they encounter a mysterious cylindrical tunnel into the earth, with a spiral staircase leading ever downward and, growing ssss EXCELLENT

sss GOOD

from its outer wall like a fungus, an apocalyptic incantation that draws the explorers ever closer to its monstrous author.

This tunnel is seriously creepy stuff, but it never enters into Alex Garland’s new screen version of Annihilation, which beautifully realizes the book’s biological nightmare but mainly dispenses with its silent psychodrama. Garland wrote two superior sci-fi movies for British director Danny Boyle (28 Days Later . . . and Sunshine) and adapted to the screen Kazuo Ishiguro’s dystopian novel Never Let Me Go before debuting as writer-director with the acclaimed artificial-intelligence thriller Ex Machina (2014). That project must have burned him out on pondering the intricacies of the human mind; along with the tunnel, he’s dropped the hypnosis subplot that winds through VanderMeer’s novel like a creeping vine of paranoia. Without these two psychological elements, the screen version relies heavily on visual effects that conjure

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up the book’s sometimes magical, more often fearsome world of genetic mutation.

Losing these aspects of the story is a shame, if only because the idea of human volition figures so heavily in what VanderMeer is trying to say. The biologist, who narrates the novel, becomes entranced by the writing on the tunnel wall, an endless prophecy with the ring of scripture: Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner I shall bring forth the seeds of the dead to share with the worms that gather in the darkness and surround the world with the power of their lives . . . With each successive trip to the tunnel, the biologist descends deeper into the consciousness behind the writing, which she nicknames “the Crawler.” Inevitably she begins to see in the text references to her own situation.

The biologist’s willpower, or lack thereof, also figures into the hypnosis subplot. The psychologist, an older woman who commands the team, places her three companions under hypnosis to endure the rigorous crossing into Area X. But after the biologist, leaning too close to the funguslike script, accidentally inhales a shower of spoors expelled from one of the flowers, she becomes impervious to the psychologist’s powers of suggestion and learns that she and her fellows are being programmed to enact a secret agenda on behalf of the Southern Reach, the organization that administers the exploration and study of Area X. These developments turn the biologist into the most unreliable of narrators: Has she stumbled onto a government conspiracy, or has she begun to hallucinate after being infected by the weird growth in the tunnel? Even after her suspicions are confirmed, the idea that she may still be acting on the psychologist’s commands heightens the suspense.

Unfortunately a drama of perception happening inside a single character’s head is a tough prospect for a visual storyteller, which may explain why Garland gave it the ax.

Though the psychologist becomes a central character in the later books of the trilogy, Garland had only the first novel to work from when he began his adaptation, and like any good screenwriter he privileges the cinematic experience over the source material. His

screenplay is framed by a scene in which the biologist (the hypersensitive Natalie Portman) is questioned after the ill-fated mission by a government official in a hazmat suit; a mosaic of flashbacks lays out the biologist’s marriage to a military man (the hyper-insensitive Oscar Isaac), who came back from the previous expedition an empty husk, then the forward progress of the biologist’s expedition as her companions are successively picked off by mutant beasts. The latter developments sometimes reminded me of Jurassic Park without the one-liners, the earlier movie’s amusement-park crunch and munch replaced by a spectral sense of dread.

VanderMeer leaves much to the imagination, but Garland and production designer Mark Digby present the terrors of Area X in sharp detail. Crossing into the quarantined area, the explorers pass through a force field shimmering pink and blue like an oil slick; marching toward the forest, they pass a rainbow of flowering fungus that creeps along the trees. At an abandoned recreation center they recover video from the previous expedition, and the biologist watches in horror as her husband slices open the abdomen of a comrade and peels back the flesh to expose a gigantic worm coiling through his trunk. Shortly thereafter the women descend into an empty swimming pool and find the poor sufferer’s remains: his seated body has been blown apart, his skull and rib cage pasted up the side of the pool’s wall by a white, crusty mass of dried tissue.

As the biologist eventually concludes, the shimmering force field over Area X functions like a prism, refracting the DNA of any living thing inside it. At one point she stumbles upon a pair of slender white deer, who bound off in perfect synchronization, and outside an abandoned home the women find green, flowering shrubs in human form. These doppelgangers lead Garland back to the question of whether people have individual will or whether they only obey the dictates of their programming (in this case, biological). Given Annihilation’s poor showing at the box office last weekend, we may never get an answer to that question onscreen. But luckily I’ve got two more books to read. I’m inclined to think of VanderMeer’s version as the true story anyway, though Garland’s version is a worthy mutation. v ANNIHILATION sss Directed by Alex Garland.

R, 115 min. For listings visit chicagoreader.com/ movies.

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MARCH 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 19

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MOVIES

Narrow lives in a wide-screen frame

The Russian drama Loveless uses empty spaces to define a dead marriage.

By BEN SACHS

E

xcept for The Return (2003), Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev has shot all his films in wide-screen. The format is crucial to the thematic content because Zvyagintsev uses negative space within the frame to convey his characters’ sense of alienation. This technique peaked with the searing anti-Putin allegory Leviathan (2014), Zvyagintsev’s best film to date, in which his compositions take on a political dimension, making the characters seem like pawns in a system beyond their control. His latest feature, Loveless, which opens Friday at Music Box, is no less cold or bitter than Leviathan and uses its wide-screen frame almost as effectively. The characters tend to be isolated from each other, the physical space between them reflecting their emotional distance.

From the start of the film, the principal characters recoil from one another. Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) and Alyosha (Matvey Novikov), a Moscow couple going through a divorce, have long since lost any sympathy they had for each other; when they meet, they argue over the sale of their apartment or the custody of their 12-year-old son, Boris.

Zvyagintsev and cowriter Oleg Negin devote the first half of Loveless to the couple’s daily routines, showing the partners separately as they go to work, run errands, and meet with their respective lovers. Alyosha is afraid to tell

anyone at his office that he’s getting divorced, because his boss is a fundamentalist Christian who pressures his employees to marry. In fact Alyosha is more worried about his job than about his son, whom neither he nor his wife wants to raise. Zvyagintsev periodically cuts away from the principal story to show Boris as he navigates life on his own; unloved by his parents, the boy seems destined to become as alienated as they are.

At the midpoint of Loveless, Boris disappears, forcing his parents to put aside their differences as they and the police search for him. The hunt inspires some of Zvyagintsev’s most impressive wide-screen imagery, long shots capturing groups of characters as they roam open landscapes in pursuit of the boy.

These images are more powerful than any of the characterizations, which are less complex than one usually finds in the director’s work.

Zvyagintsev and Negin reveal early on that Zhenya and Alyosha are selfish and spiteful, and everything that follows reinforces these initial observations. The director may be a master at setting a mood, but his insights here don’t cut especially deep. v LOVELESS ss Directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev. R, 127 min. Music Box, 3733 N. Southport, 773-871-6604, musicboxtheatre.com, $11.

v @1bsachs

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Towkio is officially Chicago’s highest rapper The Save Money MC’s balloon trip to the stratosphere wasn’t just to promote his first album for Rick Rubin—it’s also about inspiration, perspective, and togetherness.

By LEOR GALIL

ASSISTANTS: TAYLOR CAIRNS, TOM MICHAS GROOMING: KAREN BRODY ALIEN: TAYLOR CAIRNS RETOUCHING: TOM MICHAS

Towkio couldn’t bring the same helmet to the photo shoot that he wore to the stratosphere, but this one looks pretty similar. ò LISA PREDKO

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ast Wednesday, February 21, two days before he released his major-label debut, WWW., Chicago rapper Towkio was in Minnesota, where he put on a space helmet and a yellow high-altitude flight suit and strapped himself into a tiny capsule suspended beneath a helium balloon.

The suit was equipped with an oxygen hose and emblazoned with the album’s logo—a stylized globe bisected by a sawtooth waveform (WWW. stands for World Wide .Wav). At 11:11 AM this unconventional aircraft took off, eventually reaching an altitude of more than 92,000 feet, well into the stratosphere.

(Commercial jetliners usually cruise no higher than 35,000 feet.) Towkio wanted to listen to his own new album while looking down at the earth, so the 24-year-old paired a Bluetooth speaker in the capsule with his phone.

Many astronauts have described what’s called the “overview effect,” a profound shift in awareness that occurs when they see their home planet floating in space: they understand the earth holistically, as a fragile collective organism needing our care and protection, and the importance of national boundaries and other divisions between people dissolves. Towkio hoped to experience it himself. He spent about four and a half hours in the capsule, and as soon as it had floated back J

MARCH 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 21

continued from 21

to earth on its parachute, he rushed out of it with a whoop, pumping his arms over his head, and flopped face-first into the snow. He slowly drew himself up to his knees, then into a thoughtful crouch. “It’s like I came back from the dead,” he says of that moment. “That’s the best way I can describe it.”

A week before his trip, Towkio had told me, “I do plan on going to space and being one of the first artists to do it. I will be doing that very soon.” I didn’t realize how soon. He’d been fixated on space for a few years, since visiting Malibu, California, to talk to Rick Rubin about signing to American Recordings, Rubin’s imprint of the Universal Music Group’s Republic label. (It was Republic that would eventually finance Towkio’s balloon trip, which he claims cost $75,000.) “In Malibu I’d seen every fucking star in the sky, and it blew my mind,” he says.

He’d been convinced to accept American’s deal by a dream: “It was Rick driving me and my manager down PCH [the Pacific Coast Highway], and it was a beautiful pink sunset the whole way home,” Towkio says. “Then PCH turned into Lake Shore Drive, and he dropped us off at the crib. It was a beautiful house—I don’t know whose house it was.”

After his dream, Towkio wrote a letter to Rubin—the record-industry guru who’d signed Slayer in 1986 and resuscitated Johnny Cash’s career in the 1990s. Beloved by hip-hop heads the world over for founding the iconic Def Jam label in his NYU dorm in 1984, Rubin had gone on to lend his magic producer’s touch to LL Cool J, Run-DMC, the Beastie Boys, Jay-Z, Kanye West, and many others—but until Towkio, he hadn’t signed a rapper in two decades.

Rubin noticed Towkio thanks to his 2015 breakthrough mixtape, .Wav Theory, which includes an all-star roster of guests from the Save Money collective the rapper had cofounded as a high school freshman: Vic Mensa, Joey Purp and Kami (as the duo Leather Corduroys), and Chance the Rapper on two tracks. Towkio sees his connection with Rubin as an inevitability. “All the legends are cosigning us—our frequencies are aligning,” he says. “The fact that Vic signed with Jay-Z—the Kanye thing was happening. And the Kanye and Chance thing.

And now me and Rick. It all seems like it’s unreal. Now it’s my chapter in the story.”

When Rubin initially reached out in 2015, Towkio was on the fence. And the first time he was ready to put his name on the paperwork, he heard from a friend who changed his mind—at least for a while. “Chance calls me, and he says, ‘Are you about to go to Rick Rubin’s house? Are you about to sign?’

I’m like, ‘Yeah.’ He’s like, ‘Don’t do it. I’m gonna put you on a song with Justin Bieber,’” Towkio says. “Chance has been my brother, so without even questioning it I said, ‘OK.’ I went to Rick’s house—I just didn’t sign. I met with him, just talked a little bit, told him I didn’t really want to sign at the time. He was really understanding, like, ‘Just let me know when you’re ready.’” Chance included Towkio on “Juke Jam,” which appears on his astronomically successful third mixtape, Coloring Book; a sweet, sensual number about finding love at a roller rink, it features a supple hook by Bieber.

But Towkio already saw the value of the support Rubin could give, not just financially but spiritually and creatively.

Once he signed, Rubin offered him full access to Shangri-La, the borderline mythical Malibu recording studio built in the early 70s by engineer and producer Rob Fraboni to meet the high standards of Bob Dylan and the Band. Before Rubin bought the place in 2011 for $2 million, the stars who’d recorded there included Eric Clapton, Willie Nelson, Neil Young,

22 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 1, 2018

Van Morrison, Metallica, Weezer, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Adele. These days, Kanye has taken to escaping to Shangri-La for peace and quiet.

Towkio could find basically everything he wanted at Shangri-La, and he recorded almost all of WWW. there. “I can stay there and be separated from the world and make music,” he says. “It allowed me to really dig into my brain and my psyche, and understand who I was as a person and an artist—and really helped me grasp full hold of my concepts, and advance on them. I call it the hyperbolic time chamber, ’cause I just go there and I just get better, every time.” By his own admission he’s still growing, still working toward reaching his ultimate artistic form, but he can already envision his face on the Mount Rushmore of Chicago hip-hop. On Tuesday, February 27, he appeared on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show alongside Bruce Willis. “They gonna bring my name up whenever they bring up Kanye’s name and Chance’s name,” he says. “I’m something that hasn’t existed before—there’s never been a Mexican-Japanese artist-rapper, none of that, from Chicago.”

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orn in 1993 as Preston Oshita, Towkio describes himself as a product of World War II. His paternal grandparents met at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, a Japanese internment camp in northwest Wyoming.

They moved to Chicago’s south side so his grandfather could find a job. His mother took a similar path to the city—her oldest brother moved here from Nuevo León, Mexico, and she followed suit in her teens. Towkio says his parents met while students in the Chicago Public Schools, at “a high school dance or something.” A lot of his friends’ parents have similar

stories. “The same thing happened with Chance’s parents, Joey’s parents, Kene’s [Kami’s] parents,” he says. “All of this, it’s all been bubbling up to this situation. Like, if I wasn’t born in ’93, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to do what I’m doing right now.”

Towkio grew up in Avondale and met most of his closest friends before he turned 16. “I met Joey in kindergarten, Vic in like eighth grade,” he says. “By the time high school came, you know, CPS gonna connect everybody.” A Lane Tech alum, Towkio credits the universe for putting him in the orbit of people who challenged him to think deeply. “I had this homie named Todd—he’s my white friend—and we used to talk about trippy shit. ‘What if we could fly? What if we could do all of this shit?,’” he says. “I think that a lot of times people just don’t have anybody to talk to. You know, their ideas will stop at, ‘What if we could fly? Oh, never mind, I’m high. No, never mind, I’m tweaking.’”

However Towkio’s mind was opened, he’s glad it was. When he was younger, he didn’t always appreciate his Japanese father’s life lessons—“about discipline, and about being a good person, and right and wrong”—or the richness of his family’s history. “I didn’t really identify with my Japanese side as much, because all my friends were Hispanic and black,” he says. But both sides of his family helped imprint creativity on his DNA. “My abuelo, he was a music teacher in Mexico,” Towkio says. “I didn’t know that my dad was an artist. I knew my uncles—my tios—played music, and they had a little poppin’ band in Mexico. But I didn’t think about that having anything to do with me rapping. I was writing poems and shit, and music just turned into my vehicle.”

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The cover of Towkio’s new WWW.

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24 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 1, 2018

continued from 22 Under the name Preston San, he dropped his debut in July 2012, a collaborative EP with producer Mojek called Community Service. He soon changed his stage name to Tokyo Shawn, but he was Towkio by the time of his next release in May 2014, the EP Hotchips N Chopstix.

He came into his own in April of the following year with the second advance single from .Wav Theory, “Heaven Only Knows.” The gospelhits-the-club track features Chicago soul singer Eryn Allen Kane, Norwegian producer-singer Lido, and Chance the Rapper, who closes it with an ad lib: “This song is already so hot, I’m just glad you let me rap on that bitch.” Towkio provides a hard-to-pin-down X factor with the mischievous spark in his unpredictable, loose-limbed flow.

Before he dropped .Wav Theory at the end of April 2015, Towkio had already begun work on what would become WWW. “Towkio’s always working on the next thing simultaneously,” says Kevin Rhomberg, aka producer and singer Knox Fortune, who worked on part of the new album. “When .Wav Theory was getting finished up, he was like, ‘Let’s keep recording songs all the time.’”

Towkio could do just that after he signed with Rubin. At Shangri-La, runners supplied him and his crew with audio equipment, food, and anything else that would help them stay focused on music. “I was making the whole album on Bob Dylan’s tour bus,” Towkio says. “The bus was facing the water, so the sunset would come through the windows of the bus and just shoot in. I’m looking at a crazy view every day, just channeling this high. I felt like I was in another world. I felt like I was on acid the whole time.”

Towkio assembled a sizable production team, including Knox, Lido, Chicago DJ and beat maker Smoko Ono, genre-fluid Bay Area musician Garren Sean, Chicago-based SZA collaborator Carter Lang, and Social Experiment members Peter Cottontale, Nico Segal, and Nate Fox. They had a truckload of drool-worthy equipment to work with too. “There’s a song on the upcoming record that I produced called ‘Disco,’ and it’s one of my favorite ones—it’s super ratchet,” Knox says. “I made the beat really fast on an 808 [drum machine] at Shangri-La—like, Rick Rubin’s personal 808.” Knox says using it was “like calling a ghost,” since that very machine had contributed to an untold number of historically important hip-hop tracks. Finishing the track was a much longer process than finishing the beat, though. “I continued to work on it with him for two years and was like, ‘Oh my God, dude,’” Knox says.

“But it’s cool ’cause he pushed me to make it a better product.”

Towkio also learned from Rubin what to focus on. “Rick really taught me about intention,” he says. “Like, ‘What is your intention behind every frequency?’ I see him like a tuning fork. He moves, he shakes back and forth, bounces his head, and he’ll come out of the frequency and then tell you what he saw. Working with him allowed me to try to tune my frequency to my purest, so that I knew I could just bounce back off of him and know when I was doing a good job.”

Towkio describes his album in terms of frequencies, waves, and interconnectedness—especially the kind of interconnectedness that he felt while suspended in the stratosphere. “World Wide .Wav, the WWW.—I connected the Ws together so that it makes an actual wave— it’s the frequency that goes across the earth,” he says. “I was trying to make an album that’s this high that can be felt by every human on earth—it doesn’t matter what language you speak, where you’re from, any of that. We’re just floating on this small little blue planet in this vast universe. And that right there is the ultimate high. How much higher can you be than in space?” In the album’s black-and-white cover photo, Towkio wears a brilliantly white space suit in front of the Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacán, northeast of Mexico City.

“I was blessed enough to go to a place like Shangri-La, where I’d freakin’ seen the stars for the first time,” Towkio says. “I had never seen that many stars in my life.” While celestial bodies populate the lyrics of WWW., Towkio gives his stargazing extra depth by draw-

Towkio’s capsule was even more cramped than economy class. ò CLARK CODY

ing upon his life as a Chicagoan. On one of the album’s best tracks, “Forever,” he raps, “All we know is Now & Laters, and skyscrapers / Yeah, it’s concrete, where the kids at, let me go speak to ’em / But if you never seen any mountains or the stars, how you ever supposed to know that’s the thing you’re supposed to reach for?” The spirit of Chicago animates the song, and not just because Towkio is rapping about young people of color trying to imagine a better and more just future: the instrumental (by Garren Sean and Smoko Ono) refashions the hook from Kanye’s College Dropout track “We Don’t Care,” building it into a grandiose soul melody. Vic Mensa shows up for a verse too.

Towkio knows young Chicagoans look up to him, and he wants them to look higher. It’s one of the reasons he climbed into that capsule.

“When they see a kid like me or a kid like Chance leave and go do all of this stuff—we are their hometown heroes,” he says. “Just like other people inspired us, we are doing the same thing for them.” The day Towkio flew partway to space, many of those kids must have been in class, sneaking peeks at his Instagram and Twitter.

During his flight, when he wasn’t contemplating all the life choices that had brought him there, Towkio took the opportunity to appreciate WWW. in a radically new context. “It felt like I made the soundtrack to the exact thing I was doing,” he says. “I’m just glad that now people can understand where I was coming from when I made the album.”

The experience was bigger than he could’ve prepared himself for.

“I cried, it was beautiful,” he says. “I’m not the same man—I can’t even believe I put myself through that. That was the most intense life training. Every time I started thinking about how I was gonna die, I started praying and I started listening to my music.”

As humbling as his trip was, though, he’s feeling more than just humility now. “I feel unstoppable,” he says. “Fuck music, bro—I defied gravity.” v

v @imLeor

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

MUSIC

b ALL AGES F

THURSDAY1

PICK OF THE WEEK

Adam o’Farrill’s Stranger Days 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $10. 18+

Pop auteur Miguel steps toward political songwriting without sacrificing sexiness on War & Leisure

ò TIMOTHY SACCENTI

MIGUEL, SIR, NONCHALANT SAVANT

Mon 3/5, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 4746 N. Racine, sold out. 18+

ON HIS FOURTH album, December’s War & Leisure (ByStorm/RCA), California pop auteur Miguel wants you to know that politics and the state of the world are front and center in his mind (hey, look, the word “war” is even in the title!). But Miguel’s best political statements are similar to any of the other messages in his sultry R&B songs, which can make rooms steam like a sauna—his astute, activist affirmations come forth easily and feel as unique to him as his right index finger. On “What’s Normal Anyway,” off 2015’s Wildheart, he draws on his personal experience to make a complex, powerful statement about racial identity. But as successful as Miguel is when he approaches subjects from a place of firsthand knowledge, he steps into overtly political songwriting gingerly and awkwardly.

Though his heart is in the right place when he lays into Trump on “Now,” his lyrics lack the insight and resonance he’s capable of putting to music. War & Leisure is otherwise on par with Miguel’s high standards as he continues his sojourn into unseen corners of the pop lexicon where art-pop, hip-hop, soul, R&B, and funk do the things consenting adults do.

On the slow-burning “Wolf,” he plays with tension so well that the song feels as though it could catch fire at any moment, and if music supervisors knew what was good for them, the shimmering, icy “Sky Walker” would be used for every slow-motion scene in films for the next couple years. —LEOR GALIL

Trumpeter Adam O’Farrill is just 23, but there’s already plenty of weight attached to his name. His father is the acclaimed, innovative Latin jazz bandleader and pianist Arturo O’Farrill, and his grandfather was the great Afro-Cuban bandleader Chico. He began to forge his own path early on in his career, making waves playing alongside saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa on the latter’s 2015 album Bird Calls (ACT) and establishing himself as an improviser of protean strength and melodic clarity. On his debut as a bandleader, 2016’s Stranger Days (Sunnyside), Adam eschews any connection to the lineage carved out by his forebears, pursuing a limber but sharply articulated strain of free bop that sparkles with erudition, soul, and precision. Leading a quartet with tenor saxophonist Chad Lefkowitz-Brown, bassist Walter Stinson, and his older brother Zach O’Farrill on drums, Adam proffers a vanguard postbop sound with rhythmic, elastic structures and harmonic thickets that support his sneaky, snaking melodies. A year ago I saw the group play a fiery but measured set in New York, and that performance, along with the group’s forthcoming second full-length, El Maquech (due in June from Biophilia), has completely convinced me that his band is the real deal. The album, which was recorded in the midst of a tour, captures the band playing with serious heat and interactive brio. This time out Adam explicitly draws upon nonjazz sources, opening with a thrilling adaptation of a northern Mexican folk tune called “Siiva Moiiva” and ending with a smoldering rendition of “Pour Maman,” an electro-soul song by New York singersongwriter Gabriel Gárzon-Montano. While it’s early in 2018, I haven’t heard a better jazz record yet this year. —PETER MARGASAK

laborative spirit that balances the musicians’ vibrant personalities without muting any one of them. The songwriters wrote all 12 songs together, and their attack shifts from one to the next: “Game to Lose” embraces the prog-bluegrass sound purveyed by Watkins’s Nickel Creek bandmate Chris Thile in the Punch Brothers, the instrumental “Waitsfield” melds Celtic flavor with a bluegrass picking session, and “Wild One” shimmers with a gorgeous pop melody and gossamer vocal harmonies. Those harmonies pervade just about every track—a connective tissue testifying to a common purpose. The songs’ subject matter is less remarkable, even though the lyrics are well crafted: “Overland” is a classic road tune about leaving one’s home behind in search of greener pastures; “Ryland (Under the Apple Tree)” is a sweet love ballad, with the narrator gently explaining her seductive plot; and “Pangaea” offers hopeful existentialism. Each of these women has delivered stronger music on her own, so I don’t expect I’m With Her to become a primary vehicle, but with See You Around they’ve proven that this project’s anything but a trifle. —PETER MARGASAK

Aperiodic 8 PM, Elastic, 3429 W. Diversey, $10. b

Since 2010 this invaluable Chicago ensemble directed by composer Nomi Epstein has been the city’s most stalwart advocate for post-John Cage experimental music, working at various times with text scores, indeterminacy, and other open-ended modes of composition. For this unusual concert Aperiodic joins new-music scholar Jennie Gottschalk to illustrate some of the threads from her book Experimental Music Since 1970 (Bloomsbury), an accessible survey of some of the most interesting if misunderstood through lines in J

FRIDAY2 I’m with Her Andrew Combs opens. 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, sold out. b The communal traditions of folk music encourage musicians to play together in the most casual settings—a common repertoire can erase the issues of learning a song so that singers and players can instantly focus on melding their talents.

Such gatherings can lead to more sustained partnerships, which is certainly the case with I’m With Her, a dazzling trio featuring three of the most distinctive and thoughtful figures in contemporary folk and sophisticated pop: Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan, and Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek. These days the phrase “I’m with her” immediately connotes Hillary Clinton, but the musicians had been playing together for 18 months before the politician unwittingly borrowed their name as the slogan for her 2016 presidential campaign. Jarosz, O’Donovan, and Watkins are all strong writers and singers, and while I wouldn’t say the music on their debut album, See You Around (Rounder), delivers more than the sum of its parts, it reveals an infectious col-

I’m With Her ò LINDSEY BYRNES

MARCH 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 27

bottom lounge ON SALE NOW

MUSIC continued from 27

UPCOMING SHOWS REACT PRESENTS

03.02 AUTOGRAF

RAMZOID / EDAMAME REACT PRESENTS

03.03 NIGHTMARES ON WAX ODDCOUPLE

03.07 THE EXPENDABLES

THROUGH THE ROOTS / PACIFIC DUB AMPLIFIED

03.09 JUSTIN NOZUKA / GOOD OLD WAR RIVER MATTHEWS

03.10 MYLLHOUSE

BURY ME IN LIGHTS / TAKE THE REIGNS THE GLORY YEARS / THE BURST & BLOOM REACT PRESENTS

03.14 SPAG HEDDY

ELIMINATE / PORN AND CHICKEN

03.22 ROY WOOD$ 03.28 FOZZY

THROUGH FIRE / SANTA CRUZ DARK SKY CHOIR THE NOISE PRESENTS

03.29 ICED EARTH

SANCTUARY / KILL RITUAL

04.06 ALBERT HAMMOND JR. THE MARIAS

new music over the last five decades. Gottschalk will introduce the seven-piece program and briefly discuss it and how it relates to sections in her book.

The first half of the concert focuses on indeterminacy and includes pieces that are loosely designed to achieve unknown results. Alvin Lucier’s “(Chicago) Memory Space” is an adaptable work from 1970 that asks any number of musicians to go out into the city and record, notate, or remember sounds and then re-create them on their given instruments according to a meticulously charted score, where (obviously) the various components and the way they come together are different every time. This section also includes Taku Sugimoto’s “VII” and Carolyn Chen’s “Declaration.” The second half of the performance is focused on silence, specifically, on works that deal with extended duration, hushed articulation, and the absence of performer-driven sounds.

Ryoko Akama’s “A Proposal,” for example, combines long tones with an instrument voicing very minor pitch changes over an extended period. Catherine Lamb’s “Periphery (for Two)” is built around long tones sung by two vocalists standing close to each other while an instrumentalist produces sustained, soft pitches that are projected around the performance space in irregular patterns laid out in the score. In both works, the instrumentation is open to interpretation by the performers. The other pieces in this section are Antoine Beuger’s “Vegetable Rustling” and Matthew Shlomowitz’s “Letter Piece No. 5, Northern Cities.” —PETER MARGASAK

04.07 COAST MODERN

BAD BAD HATS / REYNA

04.11 TURNSTILE

TOUCHE AMORE / CULTURE ABUSE RAZORBUMPS / BIB 1833 PRESENTS

Maayan Nidam CCL opens. 10 PM, Smart Bar, 3730 N. Clark, $20, $15 before midnight, $12 in advance. 21+

TATANKA / CONCRETE ROOTS

04.22 RED SUN RISING

MOLEHILL / BALLROOM BOXER NOTION PRESENTS

04.26 FREDDY TODD b2b ESSEKS

CHARLESTHEFIRST / TSURUDA / KROMUH REACT PRESENTS

04.27 DUMBFOUNDEAD 04.28 IAMX REACT PRESENTS

YUNG GRAVY MADISON BEER ALICE GLASS HELMET PRONG

05.18 EMMURE RIOT FEST PRESENTS

05.19 FU MANCHU

MOS GENERATOR RIOT FEST PRESENTS

06.01 MAD CADDIES 06.23 SLOAN www.bottomlounge.com 1375 w lake st 312.666.6775

28 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 1, 2018

Tyler’s edging toward 30 (he turns 27 a few days after these Chicago shows), and his latest album finds him pouring out a jumble of feelings that accompanied his evolution from postadolescence into adulthood while the world ate out of the palm of his hand. His musical and personal growth energizes the album, and in his lyrics he acknowledges his past as part of what’s allowed him to arrive at the present. On “I Ain’t Got Time!” he twists the narrative of his earlier homophobic lyrics, rapping, “Next line will have ’em like, ‘Woah’ / I’ve been kissing white boys since 2004.” While the line is lightly trolling his audience, it also seems like a supportive nod to the community he once ostracized. Tyler retains his aggressive punch while exposing his vulnerable underbelly; the skittish instrumental for the modern funk number “911/Mr. Lonely” makes his most revealing confessions about the sadness of success ring loud and clear. —LEOR GALIL

SATURDAY3

04.20 CHROME SPARKS X MACHINEDRUM 04.21 FORTUNATE YOUTH

05.01 05.08 05.09 05.17

Maayan Nidam ò LEANDRO QUINTERO

Tyler, the Creator ò COURTESY THE ARTIST

Tyler, the Creator See also Saturday. Vince Staples opens. 6:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 1106 W. Lawrence, sold out. b After Tyler, the Creator dropped his fourth solo record, Flower Boy (Columbia), in July it quickly became cliche to describe it as his “mature album.” Granted, Tyler and his pals in the Odd Future collective made an indelible impression on music culture when they broke out in 2011—and his presence as a violently foul-mouthed miscreant with a predilection for homophobic, misogynistic lyrics was partially responsible for their initial infamy. Imagine the challenge of trying to convince the public you have more to offer than that! Now

Throughout the years, Israeli techno producer Maayan Nidam—who’s been based in Berlin since 2004—has juggled a variety of pseudonyms, including Laverne Radix, Miss Fitz, and Spunky Brewster, along with collaborative musical projects, such as Mara Trax, the Waves & Us, and the Kicks. These various names and configurations have given her flexibility in terms of her approach to electronic music. The music she’s released under her given name skews minimal, and her forceful use of the empty space adds shape to its distinct personality.

On her most recent vinyl release, the 2016 ten-inch Deep Under Sobriety Regime (Perlon), the quietest moments have a ghostly quality that leads the way like a spectre. The rest of the music seems to respond in kind—the percussion occasionally lurches forward as if startled, and the sparkling synths give off an anxious air, as if clinging to the walls. By contrast, the echoing drum hits that punctuate the title track recall the best early 2000s dubstep, and it’s similarly fluid in form and function. This is prime mood music—it’s perfect for moments of solitude, but when cranked up in a dim sub-basement club it can get bodies moving. —LEOR GALIL

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Tune-Yards, SUDAN ARCHIVES 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, sold out. 17+ Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards walks the walk when it comes to advocacy and political awareness. In 2015 she started the Water Fountain, an organization that raises funds for antipollution and clean water efforts around the world. She’s also the host of C.L.A.W. (Collaborative Legions of Artful Womxn), a radio program that champions the work of female-identified musicians working on the fringes of pop. On her new Tune-Yards album, I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life (4AD), she dives headfirst into evolving ideas about white privilege and eroding privacy. Though there’s no faulting her for coming to terms with how tilted

the scales are in this country these days, as with so many artist’s attempts to address politics in pop music, her messages come off as heavy-handed; in “ABC 123” she sings, “But all I know is white centrality / My country served me horror coke / My natural freedom up in smoke.” Making her lyrics harder to swallow is that the album’s melodies and production (created with longtime collaborator Nate Brenner) suffer from similar issues; she seems to be trying to reach a broader audience, but in the process has flattened out the crafty arrangements of her previous records, instead revealing a mostly electronic soundscape that veers toward aerobics workout music. Garbus is a massively talented artist, so I’m hoping this is a temporary descent into pop mediocrity.

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MUSIC

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

continued from 29 Tonight, I’m more excited about opening artist Sudan Archives, the performing name of Los Angeles resident Brittney Denise Parks. Last year she released her self-titled debut for Stones Throw, on which she serves up homemade electro-soul with serious sensuality and inventiveness. Her hypnotic, tightly coiled vocal melodies cast a narcotic spell, while her tracks meld hip-hop-style rhythmic loops and highly effective violin and kalimba riffs (both of which she plays herself) summoning musical traditions of East and West Africa. The music has insinuated itself into my brain over the last week, and I hope she doesn’t ditch the rustic charm when she records her next one. —PETER MARGASAK

Tyler, the Creator See Friday. Vince Staples opens. 6:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 1106 W. Lawrence, sold out. b Rob Clearfield Joel Ross opens. 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $10. 18+ Keyboardist Rob Clearfield’s ubiquity on Chicago’s jazz scene says plenty about his talents and adaptability. He’s a musician who can lend sophisticated harmonic support to any setting—I’ve especially admired his simpatico contributions to bassist Matt Ulery’s Loom. While his ardor for fusion and prog rock—where he busts out his digital keyboards— leaves me cold, his touch on piano is another story.

He’s just dropped his second solo album, Wherever You’re Starting From (Woolgathering), an impressive extension of its 2009 predecessor A Thousand Words in forging a feathery jazz-classical hybrid with often weightless lines of gossamer beauty.

Clearfield says the album’s material was inspired by conversations with drummer and sometime collaborator Makaya McCraven about using spontaneous improvised snippets to build fully formed compositions. As he spins out elegant melodies in glistening strands of notes, Clearfield’s phrasing is so imbued with the language of classical music that when he serves up a familiar Brahms work (the Intermezzo no. 2 in B-flat Minor) it sounds as if it

could be a piece of his own writing. Likewise, his reading of John Coltrane’s hard-bop masterpiece “Giant Steps” recasts it as a rhapsodic fantasia. The bulk of the album consists of original works steeped in the delicate feel of romanticism and impressionism with the unmistakable influences of Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett. By the end of the album I definitely yearn for something a bit more upbeat, but Clearfield without question creates his own zone here.

—PETER MARGASAK

SUNDAY4 Septicflesh Dark Funeral, Thy Antichrist, Withering Soul, and Fin open. 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2105 S. State, $25, $22 in advance. 17+ After a four-year hiatus between 2003 and 2007, Greek death-metal band Septic Flesh returned to the scene with a one-word name and a new, refined sound. Three members of the band—bassist-vocalist Spiros Antoniou, multi-instrumentalist Christos Antoniou, and drummer Fotis Benardo—had stayed active during those years as the Devilworx, in which they honed a sweeping symphonic palette. When Septicflesh made their triumphant return with Communion in 2008, they put the aesthetic they’d developed during their break to good use on the mothership. The idea of combining symphonic music with death metal is hardly unique to this band and no longer new, but it’s still got its detractors, and even its fans are fussy about the calibration. On their tenth album, last fall’s Codex Omega (Season of Mist), Septicflesh find a rich, careening balance between the brutal and the beautiful, with layers of strings adding high-wire tension to chugging riffs.

Add their impressive fashion sense and the album’s subjectively beautiful cover art by Antoniou—which features a creature made of skulls, snakes, and a human fetus—and the band are the whole package.

Their Chicago show also provides a rare chance to see Sweden’s black-metal legends Dark Funeral, who underwent some significant personnel changes in 2010; 2016’s Where Shadows Forever Reign (Century Media) was the first with new vocalist Andreas Vingbäck, aka Heljarmadr. —MONICA KENDRICK

Pierre-Laurent Aimard ò MARCO BORGGREVE

30 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 1, 2018

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Low ò ZORAN ORLIĆ

MONDAY5

ingly complex player-piano rolls of Conlon Nancarrow to Indonesian gamelan and balafon and mbira music from central Africa. The end result makes it clear that Ligeti’s conception was entirely his own.

Aimard recorded all of the then-extant etudes, as well as Ligeti’s early solo piano study “Musica Ricercata,” as part of his exhaustive György Ligeti Edition series in 1995 and 1996, under the composer’s supervision. Ligeti wrote three final etudes by 2001, but even without them Aimard’s third collection stands as one of the most authoritative, bracing documents of the works today. Though they still sound utterly modern and challenging in their virtuosic reach, Ligeti’s etudes have become part of the standard repertoire even if most institutions are hesitant to program them. They serve as a fitting conclusion to the concert seriese. Tonight’s program also includes Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, Op. 106.

—PETER MARGASAK

Miguel See Pick of the Week, page 27. Sir and Nonchalant Savant open. 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 4746 N. Racine, sold out. 18+

TUESDAY6 Pierre-Laurent Aimard 6:30 PM, Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago, 915 E. 60th, $38, $20 under 35, $10 students. b The University of Chicago’s concert series has distinguished itself with a season-long celebration of Hungarian composer György Ligeti, one of the most formidable voices of 20th-century music. That series concludes this weekend with a solo recital by French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard—one of the greatest exponents of Ligeti’s music—performing all three books of his Etudes for Piano. Ligeti wrote these pieces late in his career, reviving a form that had largely been banished by modernists when he published his first group of them in 1985. Though Ligeti loved playing piano, by his own admission he possessed “inadequate technique.” But these pieces demand monster skill, and they remain some of the most complex works in piano litera-

WEDNESDAY7 ture. While his writing was influenced by composers like Scarlatti, Chopin, Schumann, and Debussy, Ligetti looked elsewhere for inspiration in creating these polyrhythmic—and sometimes polymetric— marvels, from the jazz of Bill Evans and the harrow-

Low 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, sold out. 18+ The phrase “glacial pace” could have been invented solely to describe Low, a trio from Duluth, Minnesota, who specialize in slow-burning minimal-

MUSIC

ism. It’s the kind of aesthetic that would have grown old after a few years for most bands, but after nearly a quarter of a century together Low instead continue to expand their boundaries with songs that mix the fervor of gospel into spectral soundscapes. Any sense of artistic indulgence has not overshadowed the standout beauty of their melodies, as evidenced a few years ago when rock god Robert Plant chose two Low songs (“Monkey” and “Silver Rider”) for his newly launched group Band of Joy. Low’s most recent album, 2015’s Ones and Sixes (Sub Pop), is decisively more sparse than previous efforts; the constant thread remains the bright, emotionally rich harmonies of guitarist Alan Sparhawk and drummer Mimi Parker, who tends to rely on only a snare and hi-hat (Steve Garrington rounds out the group on bass). On “Spanish Translation,” a chilled backdrop of leisurely beats and thin guitar lines is suddenly shattered by a chorus powered by a wall of voices that belong within church rafters. Dynamics like that are what makes Low’s live shows such brawny experiences; despite the laid-back pace, the band possess a strong element of aggression, which comes out unexpectedly in performances that leave concertgoers at the edge of their seats. Low don’t cavalierly flip from soft to loud; instead, they dwell within spaces that lead to both ends of the spectrum. Their stop at Constellation is part of a mini tour that—according to early reports—features new songs. —MARK GUARINO v

MARCH 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 31

FOOD & DRINK

ALOHA WAGON | $

1247 S. Western 312-888-9613 alohawagon.com

Clockwise from top left: spicy pork plate, loco moco plate, aloha burger, banana bread and aloha bar, Spam musubi ò JAMIE RAMSAY

RESTAURANT REVIEW

Aloha Wagon rolls out Hawaiian plate lunches

The erstwhile island food truck parks it on South Western Avenue.

By MIKE SULA

I

s there anything more seductive to a Chicagoan at the start of a cold, soggy March than the idea of Hawaii? About this time of year, when the winter weary dream of torching all the dibs on the streets in a massive spring bonfire of rebirth, a little vision of sunshine and seawater

32 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 1, 2018

sounds pretty good. Not many of us have the ability to drop thousands of dollars on an island escape, but on the cold, car-swept corner of Western and Ogden, there’s a tiny outpost that provides a fix.

Aloha Wagon is the vision of Rebecca Romo and Richard Manongdo, a married couple

who’ve reimagined the food truck they ran on Oahu for six years into a brick-and-mortar take-out counter. After returning to Tri-Taylor, where Romo grew up, they’ve opened in a former po’boy/Chinese food joint where they’re pushing the signature food of Hawaii.

No, it isn’t another goddamn poke stand.

Romo and Manongdo are trafficking in the iconic Hawaiian plate lunch, a carb-loaded power platter of rice, pasta, and protein, the latter some expression of the islands’ historic working-class immigrant mix: Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, and Portuguese.

For the past 14 years or so, Lincoln Park’s Aloha Eats has existed as the city’s sole outlet for the Hawaiian plate lunch. More recently Wicker Park’s Mahalo has provided a cheesy, ersatz version, but there’s something about the coordinates of this lone outpost in the

territory between Garfield Park, Little Italy, and North Lawndale that seems appropriate; it’s a convenient spot for those in need of fuel to get through a figurative day of bolting steers on the killing floor, plodding through the mail route, or heaving the contents of black plastic trash carts into the stinking maw of a powder-blue garbage truck.

From behind the counter Romo takes orders while Manongdo griddles barbecue chicken thighs, sweet-and-spicy Korean-style pork butt, or bulging beef patties, two of which are employed in the consummately comforting loco moco, where they’re mounted on rice, drenched in beef-onion gravy, and topped with a crispy fried egg. Plunging into this pile of gratification, with its attendant creamy elbow macaroni amalgamated with potato and a superfluous pile of salad, requires you to immediately get moving once finished, lest your plodding metabolism finish you.

One can build a combo plate with any of the proteins, including pulled pork tossed with shredded cabbage, panko-fried katsu chicken cutlet, and grilled chicken with banana peppers. All of these, along with grilled fish and tofu, are available as sandwiches, which include the signature aloha burger lacquered in teriyaki sauce, the entirety of which can barely stand up to the thick slice of grilled pineapple topping it. The resulting messy deconstruction is just as satisfying as the plates.

Naturally there’s Spam musubi, that Japanese-GI mashup of processed pork product and molded, nori-wrapped rice: here two fat, rectangular specimens come per order, each sustaining enough in its own right. Dense, moist banana bread and thin sheet pineapple-coconut cheesecake with a buttery cookielike crust provide similarly substantial finishes.

There are a few nods to the neighborhood as well—fish and pork tacos, and posole rojo on Thursdays and Fridays—but the simple model of Aloha Wagon fits snugly into a tropical niche you wouldn’t have known we needed until it got here. v

v @MikeSula

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TODOS SANTOS | $$

2456 N. California 312-878-8571 todossantoschicago.com

FOOD & DRINK

Opening drinks at Todos Santos ò JAY SCHROEDER

BOOZE

Todos Santos serves all the agave you could ever want—except tequila If you can’t go on a tasting trip to Mexico, Jay Schroeder’s cocktails may be the next best thing.

By JULIA THIEL

Q

uiote, the Logan Square Mexican restaurant from former Salsa Truck owner Dan Salls, has had a mezcal bar in its basement since it opened early last year. Last fall, though, the bar got its own name along with a new beverage director when Jay Schroeder (formerly of Mezcaleria Las Flores) came on board. Now known as Todos Santos, the space looks the same as before—wood everywhere, including the floor, ceiling, walls, stools, tables, and bar—but has an entirely new cocktail menu.

Todos Santos could more accurately be called an agave bar, since the menu includes lesser-known agave-based spirits like sotol and raicilla along with mezcal—but, Schroeder says, “agave bar just doesn’t sound as good.” He prefers the term mezcaleria, though he says he’ll include as many nonmezcal spirits as he can. The one agave spirit he won’t offer, though, is the best-known of them all: tequila.

“I have no love lost for tequila as a category,” Schroeder says. “It has chosen to go directions that are not traditional in order to

meet international consumers where they are.

Whereas most mezcal being produced today is not necessarily created with an international consumer in mind; it’s created the way folks locally would want to have it. The cool thing about the category is we can use it to offer a window into a different world.”

The recent popularity of both tequila and mezcal has led to agave shortages; in the last month alone dozens of articles have warned of impending shortages of tequila since agave prices have more than quintupled in the last two years. Mezcal prices are likely to rise as well, though Schroeder says he hasn’t seen it happen yet. Tequila is made from blue agave, whereas mezcal uses a variety of agave types, the most common being espadín. (Tequila is technically a type of mezcal, but the production methods for the two are different, as are the results.) Demand varies by type of agave, but for both espadín and blue agave it’s higher than the supply—and it takes most agave plants seven years or more to mature enough to be harvested, so planting more now won’t help anytime soon.

J

MARCH 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 33

FOOD & DRINK

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

continued from 33

One solution for mezcal is to use varieties of agave that are less in demand. At Todos Santos, two of the cocktails include mezcal made from the doba-yej agave, while two others feature Banhez ensemble, a mezcal that combines espadín and barril agaves. (“Ensemble” refers to mezcal made with multiple varieties of agave that are roasted and distilled together rather than blended after distillation.) As at Mezcaleria Las Flores, Schroeder’s cocktails span a wide range, demonstrating how versatile agave spirits can be. They’re fairly complicated—most have seven or eight ingredients—but entirely approachable.

Geodesic Domes, for example, pairs Banhez ensemble with cognac, fresh pineapple, and green cardamom (among other ingredients) for a complex, barely smoky drink with a pronounced pineapple flavor and very dry finish. It Might As Well Be Spring includes cantaloupe, but the raicilla, green Chartreuse, and tarragon combine to give the cocktail a savory, herbal quality rather than a fruity one. The smokiest of the drinks we tried was Life During Wartime, which combines mezcal with scotch, apricot liqueur, pasilla chile, and a rim of smoked pepita salt I could have eaten with a spoon. The booziest was Five Steps to Conquer, made spicy by morita chiles, dark and chocolaty by cacao, and rounded out by Calvados apple brandy and Ramazzotti amaro.

The drinks that feature seasonal ingredients will change regularly, Schroeder says, while a few others will be on the menu permanently.

Come spring he’ll add a few more cocktails to the list to bring the total closer to ten—includ-

ing a couple he’s working on with agave spirits he hasn’t been able to include before, like a bacanora that recently came on the market. In the years he’s been focusing on agave spirits he’s cultivated connections with quite a few producers, which he sees as an integral part of his job. When I talked to him recently, he happened to be in the state of Chihuahua exploring sotol country and meeting producers. “People look to us to guide them through this complex world of spirits,” he says. “I take it very personally to be as well informed as I can.” v

v @juliathiel

king crab house 1816 N. Halsted St., Chicago

Lenten Specials $19.95

February 14th thru March 31st All You Can Eat Fried Perch 10 Fresh Fish of the Day During Lent (from regular menu)

DAILY SPECIALS Mon - King Crab Legs $24.95 Tues - Snow Crab Legs $19.95 Wed - Crab & Slab $19.95 Thur - Fried Jumbo Shrimp $19.95 Not Valid with any other Promo, Discounts, VIPs, etc BYOB / $10.00 Corkage Fee

Call For Reservation 312-280-8990

34 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 1, 2018

From top: Geodesic Domes; Life During Wartime ò JAY SCHROEDER

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

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

HARVEY - New decor 1BR, sto ve/fridge, c-fan, parking space. Nr Sibley Metra train/ bus & shopping. $600/mo + sec. 773-5204430 MIDWAY AREA/63RD KEDZIE Deluxe Studio 1 & 2 BRs. All modern oak floors, appliances, Security system, on site maint. clean & quiet, Nr. transp. From $445. 773582-1985 (espanol)

PRE-SPRING SPECIAL - CHICAGO South Side Beautiful Studios, 1,2,3 & 4 BR’s, Sec 8 ok. Also Homes for rent available. Call Nicole 312-446-1753; W-side locations Tom 630-776-5556;

CHICAGO, 1BR APT, newly decorated, heated, appliances, $645/ mo + security. 7603 S. May. Call 1-773-881-4182 NICE ROOM w/stove, fridge & bath Near Aldi, Walgreens, Beach, Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry. $133/wk & up. 773-275-4442

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

NO SECURITY DEPOSIT South Shore 1bdrms $900, Free Heat, Fitness Ctr, Lndry Rm . Niki 773.808.

2043. Section 8 Welcome.

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

STUDIO OTHER LARGE SUNNY ROOM w/fridge & microwave. Near Oak Park, Green Line & Buses. 24 hr Desk, Parking Lot $101/week & Up. (773)378-8888

CROSSROADS HOTEL SRO SINGLE RMS Private bath, PHONE, CABLE & MAIDS. 1 Block to Orange Line 5300 S. Pulaski 773-581-1188

NEWLY REMOD 1BR & Studios starting at $580. No sec dep, move in fee or app fee. Free heat/hot water. 1155 W. 83rd St., 773-619-0204 NEWLY REMOD 1BR & Studios starting at $580. No sec dep, move in fee or app fee. Free heat/hot water. 1155 W. 83rd St., 773-619-0204

7425 S. COLES - 1 BR $620, 2 BR $735, Includes Free heat & appliances & cooking gas. (708) 424-4216 Kalabich Mgmt

6930 S. SOUTH SHORE DRIVE Studios & 1BR, INCL. Heat, Elec, Cking gas & PARKING, $585-$925, Country Club Apts 773-752-2200

Chicago - Hyde PARK 25 N LATROBE, 4BR 2nd floor apt, hrdwd flrs, remodeled bathroom & kitchen, appls & heat incl’d. $1200/mo. Call/text, 708655-1228 MAYWOOD, 2 & 3BR APARTMENTS, new Stainless Steel appliancess, Section 8 Welcome. Available Now. Call 708-790-2354.

5401 S. Ellis.

1BR. $625/mo.

Call 773-955-5106

1 BR $700-$799 58TH & UNION: Available Now. 2BR+, newly decorated, hdwd flrs, fenced in yard, appls incl. Near bus stop. $760/mo. Call 847-274-6936

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

APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. Ltd. SUMMER IS HERE!!

Most units Include..

HEAT & HOT WTR Studios From $475.00 1Bdr From $550.00 2Bdr From $745.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000**

ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar Villas is accepting applications for subsidized 1BR apts. for seniors 62 years or older and the disabled.

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

CHICAGO - BEVERLY, large studio, 1 & 2BR Apts. Carpet, A/ C, laundry, near transportation, $680-$1020/mo. Call 773-2334939

2402 E. 77TH St. (77th & Yates) Ashland Hotel nice clean rms.

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

Low rates daily/weekly/monthly.

South Side. Call 773-376-5200

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

773-637-5957

1 BR UNDER $700

7520 S. COLES - 1 BR $520, 2 BETH ANNE EXTENDED Living BR $645, Includes appliances & Now Leasing. Subsidized 1Bedrm, AC, Near transp., No utilities instudio’s 1 bath w/ walk in shower, cluded (708) 424-4216 Kalabich Kitchen includes appliances conven- Mgmt iently located near transportation and shopping mall, Tenant pays no utilities, security deposit & 1st month required. Eligible applicants 62 & older. Call now for tour 773-786-0259

2018 NEW YEAR SA VINGS! Newly Remod. Studio $550, 1BR $650 w/Heat. 2BR and up starting at $750. Qualified Applicants rcv. up to $400/month off rent for 1 year. No App Fee. (773)412-1153 Wesley Realty

N RIVERSIDE: 1BR new tile, energy efficient windows, lndry facilitities, a/c, incls heat - natural gas, $955/mo Luis 708-366-5602 lv msg CHICAGO Lovely 4 rm apt, 1BR, liv rm, din rm, kitchen/bath, heated and carpet flrs. Close to trans. $685, avail now. 773-264-6711

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

Includes gas. Near shopping area.

Tim, 773-592-2989.

1 BR $900-$1099 LARGE ONE BEDROOM APARTMENT near the Metra and Warren Park. 6804 N Wolcott. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. $925/month.

Heat included. Available 4/1.

(773) 761-4318

1BR nr Elston & Milwaukee, Newly Remod, all new appls, all hdwd flrs. $900/mo heat incl.

Call 847-370-9777

7022 S. SHORE DRIVE Impecca-

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

6829 S. Perry. Studio/1BR. $465$520. HEAT INCL 773-955-5106

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

Newly updated, clean furnished rooms in Joliet, near buses & Metra, elevator. Utilities included, $91/wk. $395/mo. 815-722-1212

HUGE Chatham 900 SF , 1BR, 1BA, newly remod, spac, dining and LR, quiet blk & bldg, nr trans & shops. Won’t Last.

Section 8 Welc. Call 312-519-977

GENERAL

GENERAL

GENERAL

1 BR OTHER

Sunny & clean rooms w/Bed, TV, mini-blinds, Shared Kit & Bath, $450/mo. (312)479-5502

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

JUST WALK IN, IT’S THAT EASY! *Must have valid state ID to apply

Applications accepted 10AM-3:30PM Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday

LARGE 2 BEDROOM APT $750/MONTH, TENANT PAYS GAS AND ELECTRIC. AUGUSTA / SPRINGFIELD AREA. CALL 312-401-3799

Chicago, Roseland Area, 2BR, basement, fridge & stove incl. $900/month.

Background check required. Call 773-8794304 CHICAGO, NEWLY DECORATED 2BR Apartment, hardwood floors, blinds, $650/mo.

Call 773-617-2909 AUSTIN AREA, Best deal, Senior discount available, 2BR. $695.

Credit check required. 6 N. Lockwoood. Call 708-204-8600

BEAUTIFUL REMOD 1, 2 & 3BR Apts, hdwd flrs, custom cabinets, granite cntrs, avail now. $1000-$1200 /mo + sec. 773-905-8487.

Section 8 Ok WICKER PARK/UKRAINIAN VILLAGE; 2 Bedrooms, hardwood floors, vintage, spacious, yard, laundry, 2025 W. Cortez, great location near Division/Damen, Available 3/1 or sooner. $1250. 773-616-4056.

2 BR OTHER 4300 BLOCK OF AUGUSTA, 2BR, 2nd flr, laundry facility on site, utils incl. Section 8 1 & 2 BR Voucher ok. No pets/smoking 773-418-0195

CHICAGO AVE NR Laramie, 2BR Apt, 1st flr rear, hdwd flrs, freshly decorated, tenant pays all utils. Call 773-378-2866

3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200

CHICAGO, 727 N. Monticello,

SECTION 8 WELCOME No Dep. $200 Move-in Bonus 7134

2 BR $900-$1099 CHICAGO, 7944 S. Clyde. 1st floor, 2BR, 1BA, all hardwood floors, newly remodeled kitchen, $1 000/mo. Call 773-614-9876 CALUMET CITY 2-3BR, 2 car gar, fully rehab w/ gorgeous finishes & hdwd flrs. Beautiful bkyd.

Sec 8 ok. $900-$1150. 510-735-7171 Chatham Area, 2BR House, $900/mo. 1 mo rent + 1 mo sec

required. Section 8 Welcome.

Call 872-207-5184 2, 3 & 4BR Central/Jackson. $900-$1550. 5BR House. $1600. 3BR. Pulaski/Cermac $900. Tenant pays utils & sec 847-720-9010

BUDLONG WOODS, 5500N/ 2600W. Three bedrooms, full dining room, spacious living room, 1.5 baths, many closets, near transportation, $1500 includes heat. Available May 1. Marty 773-784-0763.

3 BR OR MORE $1800-$2499 LARGE 3 BEDROOM apartment near Wrigley Field. 3820 N. Fremont.

Two bathrooms. Hardwood Floors.

Cats OK. $2175/month. Special!

Sign a lease starting by April 1, get May rent free! Available 4/1. 773761-4318.

S. Normal, Lg 4BR/2BA incl ht wtr. $1100. 225 W. 108th Pl. 2BR, 1BA w/ ht & hot wtr. $950. 312-683-5174

1500 Block of S Kostner , 2nd fl, 3BR, close to pink CTA line. newly renov, new carpet & C-fan $1050. Sec 8 OK 312-818-0236 7824 S. CHAMPLAIN. 3BR, 1st flr, Cent A/C, hdwd flrs. W/D, stove & fridge incl. $1075/mo.

No Move-in Fee. 708-692-9177

GARDEN APTS: 70th/Aberdeen.

Studio. $495, 3BR. $725. 1 mo rent + 1 mo sec. laundry rm, heat incl, hdwd flrs Sec 8 Welc 773-651-8673 JEFFREY MANOR 3BR, 1BA Townhouse, Newly Remod, gar, side driveway, $900/mo. Nr trans. Call

PRE-SPRING SPECIAL Chicago Houses for rent. Section 8 Ok, w/ app credit $500 gift certificate 3, 4 & 5 BR houses avail. Call Nicole: 773-287-9999; W-side locations: Tom 630-776-5556 10234 S. CRANDON, small home, 3BR, 1BA, kit & util room, totally ren a/c, all appls incl, nice bkyrd. CHA welcome. 773-3174357

2BR, LR, DR, enclosed back porch, 1BA, kitchen, fully remod front to back, brand new carpet & blinds throughout, new SS appls., W/D in bsmt. $1100/mo.

Call 773885-2867

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

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

773-253-2132 or 773-253-2137 2122 W. 68TH PL. Remodeled 5BR House, 2BA, Central Air, Tenant pays utilities, security system.

Sec 8 ok. Call Roy 312-405-2178

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

No security. 773-614-8252

MARKETPLACE 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

DOGO ARGENTINOS PUPS, 1F,

6M, Bear tested, wormed, UTD shots, champ bloodline, import parents. $2000. 815-343-2251

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

non-residential NOTICES

25’ X 155’ Commercial Lot For Sale 210K O.B.O. 1915 S. Jefferson Chicago Serious Inquires only 312-388-1705

NOTICE OF CLOSURE OF MEDICAL PRACTICE Effective March 31, 2018, Dr. Toussaint G. Toole M.D., is retiring from practice and will permanently close his practice TOUSSAINT G. TOOLE, M.D., S.C. Copies of patient medical records are available by calling 773-245-4198.

ADULT SERVICES

ADULT SERVICES

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

773-685-6868.

South: Pershing Avenue. 773-523-6868.

AUSTIN 1143 S. Monitor Newly Remod 3BR, 1ba garden apt, C/A, ceramic tile, all SS appls incl.

Sect 8 Welc. 773-474-3266

CHICAGO, SOUTH SIDE, $300 Move in Special! Utilities, bed, appls & TV included. Security Deposit Required. Call 773-563-6799

Fridge & stove incl. Hdwd flrs.

Cash Welcome. 708-557-0644

SELF-STORAGE CENTERS. T W O locations to serve you. All

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499

WASHINGTON PARK 5636 King Dr. Single Rooms for rent from $390, $450, to $510 a month.

Call 773-359-7744

BEAUTIFULLY RENOVATED 3-5BR Single Family Houses, new kit.

Mr. Brown, 312-459-6618

2 BR $1100-$1299

roommates

GOODS

3 BR OR MORE OTHER

CHATHAM - 70th and Wabash 2BR. $750 and 1BR. $640. Sec 8 OK. Heat & appl. Call Office: 773966-5275 or Steve: 773-936-4749 2 bedroom, living room, dining room, kitchen, $850/mo. 630-915-2755

3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799

LOOKING TO MOVE ASAP? Remodeled 1, 2, 3 & 4 BR Apts.

Heat & Appls incl. Sec 8 OK. Southside Only. 773-593-4357

ADULT SERVICES

ADULT SERVICES

NO SECURITY DEPOSIT NO MOVE IN FEE 1, 2, 3 BEDROOM APTS (773) 874-1122

2 BR UNDER $900 6343 S. ROCKWELL 2BR Garden. $800/mo incl all utils & 3BR incl heat. $1000/ mo. laundry, fenced, move-in fee.

773-791-6100

GENERAL

Cyril Court Apartments, a Section 8 Apartment Community located in the quiet South Shore Community, just minutes away from Lake Michigan.

Enjoy living in our spacious studio and one-bedroom apartments designed for your comfort and convenience. You can enjoy an array of amenities including a clubhouse, elevators, laundry on site, and gated secure parking lot. We as well offer controlled access, and after hours emergency maintenance assistance. Residents enjoy monthly activities with their neighbors which creates a sense of community. Come in and fill out an application and see why Cyril Court Apartments should be your new home.

FREE APPLICATION!

CHICAGO 7600 S Essex PRE-SPRING SPECIAL - 2BR $599, 3BR $699, 4BR $799 w/apprvd credit, no sec dep. Sec 8 Ok! Also Homes for Rent avail. Call Nicole 773-287-9999; W-side locations Tom 630-776-5556

BUILDING HAS A SENIOR PREFERENCE!!

Preference as well given to disabled, homeless or displaced.

Applicants subject to HUD income eligibility and other screening requirements.

Rent based on 30% of adjusted monthly income.

7130 S. Cyril Court, Chicago, IL 60649 Half Block West of Jeffrey Ave.

(773) 588-7767 ext. 108 • TTY (711 National Relay)

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Q : Have any studies been done in states that have legalized marijuana? How much tax revenue has been generated?

Have there been more traffic accidents?

More minors indulging? In short, has it been successful? —ERIC

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A : I’d say the market for studies on marijuana

legalization is currently about as hot as the market for late-night gas-station taquitos in the greater Denver area: i.e., torrid. Much as the public craves results, though, it remains that legalized recreational weed is just a few years old in the handful of states that allow it.

Data’s coming in steadily, but it’s preliminary, and therefore wide open to interpretation.

Your traffic-accident query is a good example of how far into the weeds one can get here. Take Colorado, where recreational marijuana has been legal the longest—since 2012, officially, though business really started booming in 2014 with the advent of licensed retail outlets. According to an analysis by the Denver Post, the number of drivers there who died in car crashes with THC in their systems more than doubled between 2013 and 2016.

OK, that doesn’t sound great. But in context it’s not so clear. For one, crash fatalities in Colorado (and in Washington, another legalization state) over roughly this period have remained in line with stats from control states where marijuana remains outlawed, per 2017 research in the American Journal of Public Health. And multiple earlier studies had previously found reduced traffic fatalities following the passage of state medical-marijuana laws.

And two, the relationship between THC and impairment remains poorly understood, even down to establishing intoxication. For the moment, what we’ve got is data to confirm anyone’s preexisting prejudices. Opposed to recreational marijuana? Legalization’s made the roads deadlier. In favor? Plenty of evidence suggests that’s not really happening.

This was a provisional conclusion offered in a 2016 report by the Drug Policy Alliance, which found “stable” traffic-fatality numbers in pot-friendly states, and also that no, legalization doesn’t seem to be contributing to any increase in kids getting high.

The tax angle is more straightforward: legal pot equals big bucks. As of last year, Colorado had taken in $500 million in weed taxes, with half going to K-12 education. Municipalities can impose their own levies too, which is how Pueblo County ended up spending $420,000

(heh heh) on scholarships for 210 local students in 2017.

Another place legal weed appears to be leaving its footprint: the opioid crisis. An AJPH study from last fall found that in the first two years of recreational marijuana being legal in Colorado, opioid-related deaths declined 6.5 percent, reversing an upward trend going back more than a decade. On the one hand, these are (once again) preliminary numbers, but on the other they track with what we know about places where medical marijuana had already been legalized—a 2014 paper calculated a 25 percent reduction in opioid-related fatalities in states with medical marijuana laws on the books compared to those without.

Meanwhile, in a survey of 224 patients in Michigan from 2016, respondents reported a 64 percent reduction in opioid use associated with their medical-pot habit, plus “decreased number and side effects of medications, and an improved quality of life.” What all this seems to be telling us is that, where possible, pain sufferers are substituting weed for opioids, and doing better for it. Switching to another reliable painkiller that poses neither a massive addiction problem nor an OD risk— who’d have thunk, right?

Predictably, this reasoning hasn’t found a home at today’s Department of Justice, where attorney general Jeff Sessions has adopted an unmistakably weed-hostile stance overall— in January he revoked Obama-era directives telling the feds to quit prosecuting pot offenses in states that have legalized it—and specifically scoffed at the theory that marijuana’s painkilling properties could help on the opioid front. Last winter he waved off the very idea as “almost a desperate attempt to defend the harmlessness of marijuana,” adding, “Maybe science will prove I’m wrong.” Again, early studies appear to be doing so—not that Sessions is likely to care. v Send questions to Cecil via straightdope.com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 30 N. Racine, suite 300, Chicago 60607.

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SAVAGE LOVE

By Dan Savage

‘Should I be worried about STDs from oral sex?’

And other no-brainers from the slush pile Q : About three years ago

my wife declared an end to sex. (We are in our late 60s.) However, she insists on “taking one for the team” once a month. She makes it clear she derives no enjoyment from sex, but I cannot refuse to participate without a huge fight. I find that I have developed a sexual attraction to other men my age. Every man I encounter in gay bathhouses considers oral sex safe, and no one wants to use a condom. Most of these guys seem very experienced and are not worried about STDs from oral sex. Should I be worried? —CONCERNED OLDER MAN ENQUIRES

A : You can get all sorts of things from giving and receiving oral sex: gonorrhea, syphilis, chlamydia, herpes, etc. My advice: stop having sex with your wife so long as you’re seeking out men in bathhouses. Tell her you’re also done with straight sex (the “straight” can be silent), have one last huge fight, and then go suck some dick.

Q : Gay and married here.

My dad got on Instagram, followed me and some of my friends, and then requested to follow a friend whose account is private.

There were some R-rated photographs of my husband and me having some pretty kinky (and pretty great) sex with our friend on his account. My dad called me screaming about how he and my late mom were faithful to each other for 42 years and that’s what marriage means and my husband and I shouldn’t have gotten married at all if we were going to be having sex with other people. Just before my mother died she confided in me about an affair she’d had and asked me to retrieve and

destroy some letters and cards, which I did. I’ve had three screaming fights with my dad about monogamy in the last two weeks. Can I tell him his marriage wasn’t monogamous? —SON BLOWS

FRIEND, DAD BLOWS GASKET

A : No, SBFDBG, you can’t.

You have every right to be angry—your dad is being an asshole—but poisoning his memories of his marriage isn’t a proportionate response to his assholery. Instead, tell your dad your sex life is none of his business and that you refuse to discuss it with him any further. If he brings it up, hang up. Repeat as necessary.

Your mom wanted to take this to the grave and you promised her—on her deathbed—that you would help her do just that. Don’t betray her.

Q : I’m a 52-year-old woman who has been in an open relationship with my partner for 2.5 years. Great sex, intense connection, best friends! Early on he expressed a desire for me to play with his ass. At first I did, but I was never comfortable with it. I’m not into anal myself, and doing anal with him turns me off.

Over the course of the 2.5 years he’s become very frustrated. I tell him to go find a woman or a man who enjoys ass as much as he does and play with them. We are in an open relationship, after all. He claims he has no time to date anyone else.

We are at a crossroad in our relationship. He’s suggesting that I play with his ass or we go our separate ways. It’s ludicrous to me that it has come to this. Any words of wisdom? —ASS PLAY OR ELSE A : Your “best friend” is

a petulant, manipulative asshole. DTMFA.

Q : The idea of spanking

my wife really captures my sexual imagination. I don’t want to inflict a lot of pain, but seeing her over my lap with a bit of pink on her ass is the hottest thing in the world to me. My wife indulged me once—it was incredibly hot for me—but she found it degrading and refuses to do it again. By her own admission, I treat her with respect in our day-to-day lives. I would be ecstatic even if we only did this rarely, say, once a month. Again, no dice from the wife—it’s degrading, end of discussion. Otherwise, our sex life is fantastic. I believe that Dear Prudence would side with my wife: if you don’t enjoy it, don’t do it. My view is that it’s a small inconvenience that brings your husband an incredible amount of joy, so of course you should do it! What are your thoughts? —WIFE IS SO HOT OVER THE KNEE

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A : If I were your wife,

WISHOTK, your argument would carry the day—but I’m not your wife. Your wife is your wife, and she gave spanking a try, found it degrading in a nonsexy way, and doesn’t want to do it again. And that’s the notthe-least-bit-pink end of it.

Being treated with respect by our romantic partners— literally the bare-ass minimum—doesn’t obligate us to indulge our partners in sex acts we find unpleasant, degrading, or disgusting.

So you’ll have to settle for that otherwise fantastic sex life. v Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at savagelovecast. com. v @fakedansavage

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b Robin & Linda Williams 4/8, 7 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 3/2, 8 AM b Victor Wooten Trio, Sinbad 4/26-27, 7 and 9:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Yeah Yeah Yeahs 5/29, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom, on sale Thu 3/1, 10 AM b

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Jason Aldean 5/18, 7:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park, on sale Fri 3/2, 10 AM Sam Amidon 4/29, 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Anvil 6/9, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Apocalypse Hoboken 7/13-14, 7:30 PM, Chop Shop, 18+ Armored Saint, Act of Defiance 7/21, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Joan Baez 10/5, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre, on sale Fri 3/2, 10 AM Allman Brown 5/6, 7 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Cactus Blossoms 4/29, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 3/2, 10 AM The Clarks 5/5, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen Charley Crockett 5/25, 8:30 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, on sale Fri 3/2, 11 AM De La Ghetto 3/24, 9 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Dispatch 9/15, 7 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion, on sale Fri 3/2, 10 AM 5 Seconds of Summer 4/16, 7 PM, House of Blues, on sale Sat 3/3, 10 AM b Flatbush Zombies 5/10, 7:30 PM, the Vic b Alice Glass, Pictureplane 5/9, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Gomez 6/15-16, 7:30 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri 3/2, 10 AM, 18+ Gospel of the Serpent with Birth A.D., Black Devotion, Blaspherian, Unhuman Disease, and more 7/19-21, 7 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Goody Grace 4/2, 6 PM, Subterranean b

Robby Hecht & Caroline Spence 5/11, 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Hovvdy, Half Waif 5/3, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Imagine Dragons 7/13, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park, on sale Sat 3/3, 10 AM Injury Reserve 4/22, 6:30 PM, Beat Kitchen b Jump, Little Children 10/1, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 3/1, 8 PM b Simrit Kaur 4/30, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 3/1, noon b Kishi Bashi 6/1, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 3/2, 8 AM b Mark Kozelek 9/11, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 3/2, 10 AM, 17+ Lake Street Dive 5/15, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 3/2, 10 AM, 17+ Ravyn Lenae 4/10, 7 PM, Lincoln Hall b Jodee Lewis 4/29, 7 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Lil Boom 5/4, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Lillingtons 4/20, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Mad Caddies 6/1, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 3/2, 10 AM, 17+ MC Chris, Bitforce 4/25, 8 PM, Schubas Brian McKnight 6/6-7/7, 7 and 9:30 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 3/1, noon b Mutoid Man 5/14, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, on sale Fri 3/2, 10 AM, 17+ Mike Nesmith & Micky Dolenz 6/14, 7:30 PM, Copernicus Center b Night Riots 6/22, 7 PM, Subterranean, on sale Fri 3/2, 10 AM b

38 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 1, 2018

Nunslaughter, Cardiac Arrest 5/12, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Oh Sees, Timmy’s Organism 10/12, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Alan Parsons Project 6/5, 7:30 PM, Copernicus Center b Pitchfork Music Festival with Tame Impala, Raphael Saadiq, Japandroids, Dram, This Is Not This Heat, and more 7/20-22, Union Park Ana Popovic 5/22, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 3/1, noon b Sarah Potenza 5/17, 8:30 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, on sale Fri 3/2, 11 AM Puddle of Mudd 4/20, 6:30 PM, Portage Theater Ralph Rosario 4/20, 9 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 3/2, 10 AM Shame 7/7, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 3/2, 10 AM Rejjie Snow 5/9, 7 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 3/2, 10 AM b Speedy Ortiz 5/12, 9 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Har Mar Superstar 6/30, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Thunderpussy 5/21, 8:30 PM, Cobra Lounge, on sale Fri 3/2, 10 AM, 17+ Tomorrows Bad Seeds 5/18, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, on sale Fri 3/2, 10 AM, 17+ Tower of Power 8/8-9, 8 PM and 8/10, 7 and 10 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 3/1, noon b Tracyanne & Danny 6/27, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 3/2, 10 AM, 18+ Jessie Ware 4/30, 7:30 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri 3/2, 10 AM b Max Weinberg’s Jukebox 4/18, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 3/1, noon b Wicca Phase Springs Eternal 5/3, 6:30 PM, Subterranean b

Eagles 3/14-15, 8 PM, United Center, second show added, on sale Fri 3/2, 10 AM Mountain Goats 5/27-29, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, third show added b Radiohead 7/6-7, 7:30 PM, United Center, second show added, on sale Fri 3/2, noon Smashing Pumpkins 8/13-14, 7:30 PM, United Center, 8/13 sold out, 8/14 added, on sale Mon 3/5, 10 AM

UPCOMING Acid Mothers Temple, Melting Paraiso U.F.O. 4/14, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen Afghan Whigs, Built to Spill 4/12, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Alt-J 6/7, 8 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Dan Auerbach & the Easy Eye Sound Revue, Shannon & the Clams 4/2, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Belly 10/6, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Black Angels, Black Lips 3/26-27, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 18+ Black Moth Super Rainbow 6/16, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Terry Bozzio 9/18, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Brian Jonestown Massacre 5/11, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Calexico 4/25, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Charly Bliss 5/17, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Citizen, Angel Dust 6/5, 6:15 PM, Cobra Lounge b Lucy Dacus, And the Kids 4/6, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Darlingside 4/19, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Dead Meadow 4/4, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen Depeche Mode 6/1, 7:30 PM, United Center Earthless, Kikagaku Moyo 3/24-25, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Kat Edmonson 5/15, 8 PM, City Winery b Billie Eilish 3/31, 8:30 PM, Lincoln Hall b Erasure 7/27, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre Faith Healer 4/10, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Fall Out Boy, Rise Against 9/8, 7 PM, Wrigley Field

ALL AGES

WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK

EARLY WARNINGS

CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME

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Eleanor Friedberger 5/5, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Frigs 4/4, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Geographer 4/14, 10 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Helmet, Prong 5/17, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Hop Along 6/10, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Hot Snakes 3/9, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Iced Earth 3/29, 7:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Joey Badass 5/23, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard 6/10, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b L7 4/20, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Natalia Lafourcade 5/3, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall b Lightning Bolt 3/28, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Lorde 3/27, 7 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Melvins 7/31, 7:30 PM, Park West b Messthetics 5/5, 9 PM, Hideout No Age 5/10, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Oneida 3/17, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Lindi Ortega 4/17, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Pedro the Lion 8/24, 9 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Pill 3/19, 9 PM, Hideout Primus, Mastodon 6/6, 7 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Rogue Wave 3/22, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Jeff Rosenstock 4/26, 6:30 PM, Logan Square Auditorium b Saxon 4/1, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Screaming Females 3/10, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Ty Segall 4/8, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Spits 5/25, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Suuns 5/30, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Timber Timbre 4/14, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall Timeflies 4/6, 6:30 PM, Concord Music Hall b Titus Andronicus 3/15, 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Turnstile, Touche Amore, Culture Abuse 4/11, 6:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b U.S. Girls 4/17, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Vance Joy 5/25, 7:30 PM, Rosemont Theater, Rosemont We Are Scientists 6/22, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Yo La Tengo 3/29-30, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ v

GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene SINCE NOVEMBER, the Harold Washington Library Center has hosted an excellent free exhibit on the life and career of Reverend Clay Evans, corresponding with the establishment of a permanent archive devoted to him. The 92-year-old retired in 2000, after serving as an anchor for the city’s faithful for decades: among his countless achievements, the pastor and activist founded the famed Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church, cofounded Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH, hosted the What a Fellowship Hour on radio and TV, and released a series of seriously smoking gospel recordings (which is why he’s in this music column). The exhibit runs through Sunday, March 4, and the preceding Saturday at 2 PM, Evans’s sister Dr. Lou Della Evans-Reid leads a 60-strong gospel choir in a joyous, rafter-raising free performance in the library’s Cindy Pritzker Auditorium. Amen!

Gossip Wolf digs the Hideout’s monthly experimental-music series, Resonance, which celebrated its third birthday in December. Resonance happens every second Wednesday, and recently its organizers launched a dance-centric spin-off, Midnight Resonance, that’s every first Saturday. So far it’s featured local footwork veteran Jana Rush (December), Philly Discwoman affiliate DJ Haram (January), and trans Bolivian-American producer Elysia Crampton (February). On Saturday, March 3, the series welcomes Bergsonist, aka Morocco native Selwa Abd, who works with blood-pumping house, lo-fi techno, and screeching acid to make her beautiful but disfigured electro tracks.

Tickets for the midnight show are $5.

On Saturday, March 3, local four-piece the Evening Attraction drop their second album, The End, Again, whose advance singles recall the Zombies in their lovely baroque touches. That night they celebrate with a release show at the Empty Bottle that doubles as a Treehouse Records showcase; Lucille Furs and Rookie open. —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

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MARCH 1, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 39

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