Chicago Reader print issue of April 4, 2024 (Vol. 53, No. 13)

Sex workers live here p. 16

WHAT

HAPPENED TO HEARTLAND ALLIANCE?

THEATER

44 Early Warnings Upcoming shows to have on your radar

44 Gossip Wolf Sunroom celebrates three years of its Monthly Flyer Club, and Live Young Productions and Whats the Word TV launch a concert series.

OPINION

45 Savage Love Dan Savage gives advice to a heartsick heartbreaker.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

40 Shows of Note Previews of concerts including the Courts, Jandek, Scarface, Oumou Sangaré, and Dear Nora

Comprehensive arts and culture news and reviews, deeply researched coverage of civic affairs, and unique voices from every part of Chicago.

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EDITOR’S NOTE

Re: “Saving the Point, again,” written by S. Nicole Lane and published in the March 21 issue (volume 53, number 12)

I’m a third-generation Chicagoan and photographer working on a project on Alfred Caldwell. I can honestly say that I think Mr. Caldwell will haunt whoever tries to remove and destroy his design. It was one of his favorite landscapes that he designed . . .

The lack of transparency says volumes in a city where the original gra and corruption was born in the Park District in the 1860s. Multiple park commissioners who were working to make Chicago parks places of respite and recreation for all Chicagoans were fired to make way for the Gilded Age real estate speculators. The history of the Emerald Necklace of the parks and boulevards systems was designed with speculation in mind, and enticed newcomers to build and buy where they could make a profit. —Liz Strause, via Facebook

Re: “Primary election recap,” the weekly online Make It Make Sense column written by Shawn Mulcahy and published at chicagoreader.com on March 22

There was so much lying about what Bring Chicago Home was. For example, the Republican Tribune framed it as a tax increase when it was actually a tax cut for the majority of Chicagoans. I heard from some progressive people who voted “no” because there wasn’t a specific plan for how

the money would be spent. There needed to be a better plan because it’s difficult to trust government. We’re o en used to politicians who don’t care about the well-being of all constituents. —Frank J. Schneider, via Instagram

He never had a referendum in the first place. He’s an incompetent fool who benefited from low voter turnout. —Christopher Bevard, via Instagram

Re: “Twihard embraces the cringe,” a play review written by Amanda Finn and published in the March 7 issue (volume 53, number 11)

Theater commenting on a weak-ass movie franchise . . . how meta. Are we running out of ideas in the theater as well? —Andrew Farrell, via Facebook

Re: “Best place to hear Gregorian chants by Benedictine Monks,” written by S. Nicole Lane and published in our February 22 Best of Chicago issue (volume 53, number ten)

Thank you Chicago Reader! We hope many of your readers will visit and experience our chanted prayer. You may find the schedule here: chicagomonk.org/visit-us/prayer/ —Monastery of the Holy Cross, via Facebook

Re: “2023 Chicago Police District Councils Voter Guide,” written by Jim Daley and J. Patrick Patterson, and published in January 2023 at chicagoreader.com

That was some important reporting to raise awareness about a brand-new system of elective public bodies. Thanks for your work. —Charlie Isaacs, via X

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

m letters@chicagoreader.com

At the intersection of 47th Street and Halsted, you can often find groups of people waiting for the bus that represent almost every background. Sure, a diversity in race and socioeconomic status is fairly easy to find at our downtown bus stops. But 47th Street, as it draws closer east between Ashland and the Dan Ryan, is crowded with neighborhood boundaries that aren’t physical but psychological. Every kind of body frequents that Walgreens on the corner. So many di erent kinds of people put money on their CTA pass at the currency exchange opposite.

It’s a significant corner to me because my home office is nearby, the Reader offices are ten minutes away by car (an hour sometimes by CTA . . . but that’s for another editorial). And the corner is also used by a variety of people seeking help from a nearby clinic and recovery center, which was started under a program run by Heartland Alliance.

People of all walks of life and from all circumstances can find themselves in need of help: mental health, addiction, and recovery know no specific boundaries. Our neighborhoods are full of people who, just like us, deserve the best health care available. And many programs that serve the most marginalized of our fellow Chicagoans link back to only a handful of nonprofit organizations that may or may not have solid footing in foundation funding, management,

or process. It’s a delicate and fragile balance already to live life while one is dealing with poverty, worried about migrant status, living in fear of another bout of depression. What happens to all of us as a city when these organizations and systems fail some of our citizens?

In this issue, writer Dilpreet Raju dives into the situation at hand for Heartland Alliance, and writer Gretchen Sterba writes about the also-precarious situation that many Black and Brown sex workers face in an e ort to support themselves and their families. Both stories are linked by precarity that may or may not be necessary. It’s up to all of us together to decide what our city should look like; and if we choose diversity we need to be prepared to unite together and support our neighbors, regardless of migrant status, mental health, or profession.

Gretchen and Dilpreet were both participants in the Reader Institute for Community Journalism’s Racial Justice Writers Room program. Both are talented writers who have been a joy for us to work with, and this issue, both writers brought us stories that we hope will spur lively discussion and the kind of analysis that we know our readers are fantastic at participating in. v

—Salem Collo-Julin, editor in chief m scollojulin@chicagoreader.com

Queen, a 29-year-old sex worker and graduate student ORIANA KOREN FOR CHICAGO READER

Stanton and Anthony LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Make time to learn something new with music and dance classes at Old Town School! We offer flexible schedules for all skill levels both in-person and online.

CITY LIFE

STREET VIEW

Color scheming

Defy disappointing temps and times with radiant threads

By ISA GIALLORENZO

As Alfred Wainwright wrote in A Coast to Coast Walk (his 1973 book on long-distance walking across England), “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.” A version of the adage is often used in Norway (“ikke dårlig vær, bare dårlig klær,” which translates literally to “not bad weather, just bad clothes”).

The phrase is a wise reminder that the right choice of fabric and structure is crucial in the battle against the elements. But such advice doesn’t only apply to thermal comfort. We can also fight a gloomy day armed with bright hues, emanating the very rays our retinas so desperately crave. We can be the change we wish to see in the seasons, even when the weather doesn’t cooperate with our desires.

Spring has sprung, but spring in Chicago means that we can’t always count on rainbows or sunshine. At this point in the season, it’s advisable to take matters into our own hands and mirror the flowers soon to pop up everywhere.

That’s exactly what Alex French, 21, did on a cloudy early March afternoon. They opted for a very yellow 90s puffer coat that originally belonged to their mom, and a matching pair of flower-powered, wide-leg pants gifted to them by a drag queen. French is also a drag performer and told the Reader that they are influenced by the 1970s and disco fashion.

Professor of communications and mental health trainer Shelita Shaw, 48, is another fan of the color yellow. “No matter what I’m dressed in, I’ll always have on yellow somehow. Not only is it my favorite color, but it reminds me that no matter what life throws my way—if I watch for the yellow, it gets better,” she said.

Shaw speaks with authority on the benefits of dopamine-boosting clothes. After a season of mourning the loss of her parents (“The sun didn’t seem to shine as bright,” she said), Shaw finally “felt free of sadness and picked an outfit that reflected that freedom.”

On her way to brunch with friends, supply chain analyst and business administration graduate student Amber Davis, 29, amped up the sparkling mimosa vibes with a hot pink,

feathered sleeve blazer that said it all. “I like to include color however I can. Whether it be in accessories or main garments, I’m not afraid to wear bold and bright colors. When I am wearing neutral clothing my favorite thing to do is throw on a colored pair of sunglasses or a purse to add a pop of color,” Davis shared. This spring she is looking forward to wearing shades of pastel green and blue.

Pastels are a little more sedate than bright yellow, but still uplifting. They can be a good choice for a chill, yet joyful experience—especially if paired with fun prints. Case in point: visual effects producer Janel Naumann, 32, was sporting a long polka-dot dress in bub-

blegum pink matched with pearls, rose-tinted glasses, and white basics.

“I’ve been exploring wearing more white in the place of black as my go-to neutral,” Naumann told the Reader. Her white motorcycle jacket could come in handy during unexpectedly cool temps.

Another fun and functional piece was on display with the denim utility jacket worn by tea educator and community organizer Marco Namowicz, 33. “I find incorporating color into my wardrobe is all about balance and coordination. Sometimes, it’s about finding a statement piece like the spicy mustard work pants or a vibrant hoodie and then grounding

the look with more neutral pieces like denim jackets or plain tees,” Namowicz said. “Other times, I enjoy experimenting with color blocking or mixing and matching unexpected hues to create a visually stimulating ensemble. Ultimately, it’s about expressing myself and my mood through the colors I wear,” he continued. Or, as Shaw suggested, fake it till you make it. “Even if you don’t feel like wearing something, trust those clothes to speak to you and for you,” she told the Reader. “[The clothes] can represent you and re-present you in ways you only dreamed.”

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Colorful in Chicago (clockwise from top le ): Amber Davis, Marco Namowicz, Shelita Shaw, Janel Naumann, Alex French, and Jewels ISA GIALLORENZO

CHESS NIGHT AT GALWAY ARMS

Tue 4/9 at 8 PM, 2442 N. Clark, 21+ @chess_night_

Two University of Chicago students are cultivating the community of chess

Chess nights at the Cove (and beyond) honor the legacy of beloved local bartender and chess player Diego Damis.

By S. NICOLE LANE

Dylan Sunjic started playing chess when he was five years old at his grandparents’ house in Tampa, Florida. After learning the basic openings, Sunjic says, “I already knew that it was the kind of game for me.” Now, at 22 years old, he says it’s still the game for him.

Sunjic would go on to play tournaments and was the four-time junior state champion for his age group and a two-time national runner-up. He currently plays on the University of Chicago’s chess team, which is sixth in the nation.

“I don’t have quite the credentials of Dylan over here,” says Ross Shapiro, Sunjic’s roommate, “but I played a lot when I was a kid.”

Shapiro was a part of his elementary school chess team and participated in several tournaments, where he went to the nationals in Orlando in first grade. But that’s where his career ended. “I had a record of one and four and subsequently retired from the sport competitively,” says Shapiro.

However, once Shapiro and Sunjic met at the University of Chicago, Shapiro says it lit a fire back inside of him. As a result, chess night was born.

The duo is a perfect combination: Sunjic has chess teaching experience, and Shapiro has hosted comedy events in New York City. Shapiro says, “I love chess, he loves chess, and I was like, ‘Let’s do chess at a bar.’”

After emailing bars in the neighborhood, the owner of the Cove, a historic Hyde Park watering hole, took ten minutes to respond with a resounding yes. At that point, Sunjic and Shapiro had no idea about the botched robbery of Diego Damis—an Italian immigrant who worked at the Cove and was an avid chess player and chess teacher before he was robbed and killed in 2022. Sonnie Kireta, the owner of the Cove, had been wanting to do a chess night

in Damis’s honor, and so this connection with Shapiro and Sunjic felt divine.

The first chess night event brought out 40 people, and by the time they held their third event, 140 participants with 25 tables and 25 boards totally packed the bar from 8 PM until closing time. Opponents are matched randomly, with grand masters and novices playing together in one room, giving newbies the ability to learn something new.

The Cove became a teaching ground for chess, with Damis at the helm.

Herring describes Damis as a natural, irrepressible teacher. “He was the stronger player, and he would often pause our game to patiently show me why a move was incorrect—a true synthesis of teacher and competitor. When I improved enough to be able to win the occasional game from him, he would always double down in his intensity in the next game.”

Before Damis was killed, he gifted Bankole a chessboard for him to take on a recent move to Texas for a job. Damis told Bankole to use the board to meet new people, find friends, and teach others the game. “A beautiful thing— providing that mechanism and encouragement to keep playing, keep improving, keep connecting with others,” says Herring.

As a bigger way to honor Damis and this tradition of learning, Sunjic and Shapiro decided that their chess night would also be a fundraiser to help continue teaching and spreading the love of the game. They raise money for the Hyde Park Neighborhood Club (HPNC), which helps underserved children have access to extracurricular activities like sports, cooking

Through it all, Shapiro and Sunjic have learned about the man their events honor. Despite never meeting Damis in person, they know his character through stories told by others.

“Diego was just a beautiful person,” says Michael Herring, who has lived in Hyde Park for 15 years and started playing chess at age 13 in Cincinnati, where he grew up.

When Herring moved to Hyde Park, he started hanging out at the Cove. Eventually, Herring, Diego, and regulars Temi Bankole and Leo Douglas called themselves the “chess brothers.”

classes, acrobatics, and chess classes.

Earlier in the year, a donor who had originally pledged money to the HPNC pulled funding for the spring session, leaving kids who had begun their chess classes with no upcoming classes available to them for spring.

Ten-week sessions for 24 students would come out to $2,200, so that was the fundraising goal for Sunjic and Shapiro’s third chess night event, which they admit was an audacious amount. However, in just that one night, they ended up exceeding their goal and raising $2,400. In addition to donations, Kireta pledged

CITY LIFE

50 percent of the bar’s proceeds to the HPNC.

“We figured out that using our money . . . we would be able to carry on these classes throughout the spring and even into the summer,” says Sunjic. “What are the odds that these donations came in at the perfect time so that these kids could continue their chess learning experience?”

With the funds raised, the chess night set up a scholarship fund where students won’t have to worry about the stress of paying fees for their chess courses.

It was a full circle moment for everyone, and it continued Damis’s chess-teaching legacy.

Now, Sunjic and Shapiro are expanding their events after the success at the Cove. “People have been driving 45 minutes from the north side to come,” says Shapiro.

Galway Arms, an iconic Irish pub in Lincoln Park, will host the next chess night on April 9. And over the next few weeks, they hope to expand to other areas of Chicago.

The demand for chess nights in Chicago should come as no surprise.

Chess is happening everywhere in the city. It’s in the Whole Foods food court, in public libraries, at Red Line stops, on sidewalks outside of the Art Institute, and even at the 24-hour Starbucks underneath Second City. Once you notice it, it’s hard to unsee how often Chicagoans have their boards out. The Chicago Park District has even installed permanent boards at many parks around the city.

Playing chess in Chicago goes back to the late 1800s when one of the oldest chess clubs in the country—the Chicago Chess Club—was formed. What followed were high-profile tournaments, the country’s top chess players, and a long-standing reputation of being a chess-playing mecca. Although the club would ultimately dissolve in the 1980s, the legacy of chess has carried on in Chicago.

For Sunjic and other players today, chess is about community, about meeting the people you play against. And, of course, it stimulates the mind, improving focus and tactic. But regardless of the strategy involved, Herring says that playing at the Cove is “just good, consistent, humbling fun.”

Sunjic and Shapiro encourage beginners to come out, saying the bar setting makes the entire environment more inviting. You can have a drink or listen to music, and it’s not exclusive or high nose. Sunjic says, “It’s dive bar chess. What could be more fun and casual than that?” v

Ross Shapiro (le ) faces an opponent at chess night. KRIS DOWNING

FOOD & DRINK

Get to know chef Stephen Sandoval through Diego

The late-night West Town restaurant is a culmination of Sandoval’s upbringing, experience, and travels—with a distinctly Chicago execution.

By LEE BOSCH

On a Friday night in late May, a friend and I were leaving Bottom Lounge after a show. The band that night was touring an acclaimed album from the early aughts, and the show wrapped up before 10:30 PM. It was a rare treat for both of us to be out late, the weekend ahead of us. For our next move, ambiance was a goal, but food was the priority. Walking back to our bikes, the big, bright lights and french fry smell of Small Cheval were calling, but its doors were closed. As we headed west toward home, Big Star’s signage teased us as well, but it too had closed at ten. With no other late-night options visible between West Loop and West Town, a regrettable food decision (very underwhelming tacos) was eventually made at the expense of necessity over desire, ending the night early.

Had this show at Bottom Lounge happened a couple months later into the summer, however, my friend and I would have ended up on the corner of Ogden and Grand. We would’ve been enjoying a Rosarito cóctel, sipping on spiritfree ponche (poached guava, cinnamon, and orange), convinced we’d lost ourselves, for a moment, at a seaside restaurant in Ensenada, Mexico. We would’ve been at Diego, an homage to Baja Norte street food by chef Stephen Sandoval. His culinary career stretches from a McDonald’s franchise in San Diego to Rick Bayless’s Leña Brava in Chicago, bringing with him connections to seafood suppliers in Baja California and a culinary skill set shaped by Mexico, Argentina, Spain, and New Orleans.

“I have a love for classic cuisine [and] street food, and here at Diego, I’m able to share that,”

Sandoval says.

While growing up in San Diego, Sandoval’s father owned a car wash in Tijuana—the taco capital of the world (protect your peace, no need to debate it), the birthplace of the Caesar salad, and a gateway to some of the best mariscos the country has to o er.

“After school, we would go with him [to Tijuana] and eat at taquerías and [eat] mariscos, so that became something I loved,” Sandoval says.

His restaurant experience started at a young age through his father’s McDonald’s franchise and inspired Sandoval’s path of culinary reconnection with his Mexican background on his father’s side and New Orleans cuisine on his mother’s.

As a young, 21-year-old punk Sandoval

showed up at Tender Greens in Los Angeles, a farm-to-fork restaurant specializing in making everything in-house, from their bread to dressing and everything in between.

“‘I want to help you guys out,’ I told them,” Sandoval says.

He went through all the stations at Tender Greens, from dishwasher to prep cook, and eventually to sous-chef.

“I loved the intensity of the kitchen,” Sandoval says. “I think there’s a lot of people that love to cook, but you have to love that kind of environment to propel yourself in this

Chef Stephen Sandoval outside of his restaurant, Diego, featuring the logo designed by graffiti artist Neen GONZALO GUZMAN FOR CHICAGO READER

Find more one-of-a-kind Chicago food and drink content at chicagoreader.com/food

(From top) Tuna tostada, puerco rojo taco, and Hokkaido scallop tostada

GONZALO GUZMAN FOR CHICAGO READER

sort of career.”

He compares it to sport, noting he’s always been athletic and competitive, and enjoys the team environment of a kitchen line. That inspired a yearning to open his own restaurant with his menu and vision. But cooking that up had its own complicated steps.

Sandoval came to Chicago via Leña Brava, brought onto the team by Rick Bayless, whom he had met through a culinary immersion trip to Mexico a few years back. For those next three years, Sandoval and a group of chefs took trips with Bayless to Mexico City, Oaxaca, and Mérida, but most importantly, it fortified the relationship that brought Sandoval to Chicago.

In his second year at Leña Brava, the pandemic hit, the business partners split, and

Sandoval was left without his mentor or a clear path in his career.

“I reached out to my now business partner Oscar [Sotelo],” he says. “He had acquired an event space. We had co ee one day and wrote out a plan on how we were going to do this.”

They went on a run of pop-ups called Entre Sueños, selling out 20-seat dinners for the next five months. A residency at Soho House Chicago followed, where he would hear about the lease of Diego’s current home.

“We had a lot of fun with the concept [at Soho House],” he says. “We were able to do our tasting menus there [and] kind of R&D’d this concept.”

Diego was supposed to be a small window for late-night drinks and eats within Entre Sueños, Sandoval’s original concept with a

more elevated menu. Now, Diego is more of a window to his childhood street food favorites, his journey to Chicago, and his love for his new home. For locals (and, thankfully, late-night showgoers), it provides a liveliness to an otherwise slow-paced intersection after business hours, bringing inspired tastes from Baja California with a Chicago edge.

Everything about Diego’s aesthetic feels like Chicago: the logo was designed by gra ti artist Neen, the murals on the side of the building were painted by his morning prep cook Andres Galván, inside there is work from Raspy Rivera, along with other art he’s picked up around the city. Even the menu has its local touch, like the tacos de canasta inspired by Gloria Laguna, Diego’s tortillera, as an homage to her favorite food growing up in Guanajuato.

From regular chef pop-ups and collaborations to a paint-and-sip with Sentrock, Sandoval emphasizes community involvement through his restaurant.

“Now that I created my life here, it’s really important that we not only reach out to the culinary world and do our chef collaborations but also [to] the art [world] and Latino culture, supporting them and diversifying ourselves, not only as a restaurant but as a place to showcase other artists in the Chicago area,” he says. “It tells the community, ‘Hey, we’re here for you guys, we want to interact with you all, and thank you for supporting us.’ We just want to have something where we are in celebration of each other.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

(Top) Sliced yellowfi n tuna; (bottom) two plates of Hokkaido scallop tostadas GONZALO GUZMAN FOR CHICAGO READER Sandoval at the site of his upcoming restaurant near Diego GONZALO GUZMAN FOR CHICAGO READER

NEWS & POLITICS

A rip in the social safety net

NONPROFITS

After nearly 140 years, Heartland Alliance will close its doors, raising questions about the future of its services both locally and globally.

By DILPREET RAJU

Editor’s note: a name in this story has been changed to protect anonymity; it is marked on its first instance with an asterisk.

Carol Moreno* hadn’t gotten through the first couple days of her weeklong vacation last fall when her cell phone started to ring. The clock in her room read 5 AM as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes and answered the call. On the other end of the line were a pair of her bosses from Heartland Alliance Health, a branch of the social services behemoth Heartland Alliance. The call was urgent, they said. And unavoidable. Within a couple weeks, Moreno, along with more than 50 of her coworkers, would be furloughed— five days before Thanksgiving.

“I asked them how their accounting team didn’t prevent this. And the answer was, ‘I’m really sorry,’” says Moreno, who asked that her real name not be used for fear of retaliation, in an interview with the Reader

A Heartland Alliance advertisement displayed on a train DILPREET RAJU

Heartland Alliance, originally formed in 1888 as a chapter of Travelers Aid, is one of the oldest social welfare institutions in the country. It was founded by legendary activist and reformer Jane Addams, the second woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and whose name is etched across Chicagoland parks, schools, and one tollway.

In the century and a half since its inception, the nonprofit has grown to become a household name in Chicago, receiving millions of dollars annually from the city, state, and federal governments for services including health care, housing, immigration assistance, and violence prevention, for low-income and other marginalized communities.

But amid financial turmoil, the umbrella organization Heartland Alliance plans to close, marking a new chapter for the organization as it transitions some subsidiaries to become independent. The dissolution of a storied parent nonprofit leaves the potential for major gaps in Chicago’s social safety net, eroded by many

timistic that as a result of these changes the newly independent organizations will be able to continue providing care and necessary resources to our communities’ most vulnerable for decades to come.”

Siddharta Neal, a formerly licensed paramedic, worked at HAH for eight months as a mental health worker before he heard about furloughs coming. He was under a union contract but had limited seniority. Neal ultimately left his position in early November—because of both the looming furlough and the working conditions at Pathways Home, an HAH community housing program for people with mental illnesses and substance use disorder.

“I had to make a tough decision. I was in several meetings where workers were pretty much crying and saying they’re about to lose their apartments,” he recalls. “I’d have been terminated and there was nothing else to do about it.”

Pathways Home was already understaffed prior to the furloughs, Neal says. He worked the night shift, from midnight through 8 AM, and says there were usually only three employees to care for roughly 50 patients across two floors. “You’re not supposed to touch [patients] at all. If she can’t get up by herself, we’re supposed to call 911. Now, what type of shit is that?”

years of neoliberal policies that saw public needs increasingly outsourced to nonprofit and private enterprises. As early as May 1, the organization hopes to spin o its subsidiaries and one program—Heartland Alliance Health (HAH), Heartland Alliance International, Heartland Human Care Services, and the National Immigrant Justice Center—into their own nonprofit entities, multiple sources tell the Reader, raising questions about the future of the many services the organization provides both locally and around the globe.

Ed Stellon, Heartland Alliance’s chief external affairs officer, calls the organization’s financial troubles “undoubtedly a challenging situation” in a statement to the Reader. “Our mission to help the most vulnerable and our local communities remains unwavering, and we will always make the right decisions to fulfill this commitment, even when those decisions are hard ones.”

Stellon notes HAH has not cut any programs. He writes that the organization remains “op-

Many of the workers furloughed before Thanksgiving relied on unemployment to get by, says union representative and case manager Michael Brieschke. In addition to furloughs at HAH, around 100 non-HAH support sta were also furloughed, Brieschke says, including those in accounting, human resources, and research. “Most of these sta have since been laid o .”

A majority of the people temporarily discharged—43—were members of the union, which represents some 500 workers across Heartland Alliance’s branches.

Stellon writes that 42 positions were reinstated by the end of January, with the other ten HAH positions eliminated, though Brieschke said most people had moved on to work elsewhere. (Stellon states HAH today employs 147 people, union and nonunion, about half what HAH reported in its most recent tax filing, 270 employees.)

“Staff that have continued on and our participant-facing positions have been burdened with extra work,” Brieschke tells the Reader . “As a union, we’re really concerned about how we can provide quality care to our participants.”

Tax filings show the median salary for executives at Heartland Alliance was more than $200,000 in 2021 and 2022, while Brieschke said the median salary for a Heartland Alliance union employee is less than one-quarter of that, roughly $47,000. He also says Heartland leadership has not provided any monthly employee data, as required by their contract. “There are several other monthly reports mandated by the [collective bargaining agreement] that Heartland is failing to provide at this time, despite multiple requests,” Brieschke says.

It’s unclear which of the more than one dozen programs operating within HAH will remain operational as it becomes its own entity. Currently, patients seeking mental health counseling are being referred to other agencies in the city or they can choose to receive short-term treatment from HAH capped at eight sessions.

During his time at Pathways, Neal says other HAH programs were increasingly consolidated into the same building space. One employee, who asked to remain anonymous, says another of HAH’s community housing

programs, Antonia Safe Haven, moved into the same building in December due to the mounting financial constraints.

The timing of the furloughs was a two-fold disaster, Moreno says. She and other current and former employees tell the Reader that Heartland flung workers into financial limbo during the holidays, a time when a large portion of HAH’s clientele—refugees and asylum seekers—faced retraumatization amid the ongoing mass displacement caused by Israel’s bombardment of Palestinian territories.

“I work with people who struggle with mental health,” Moreno says. “With what’s going on in Palestine and Israel, a lot of my participants have been experiencing retraumatization through traumatic symptoms, PTSD symptoms.”

Moreno was one of a

handful of sta who decided to return when the organization recalled workers in the new year, almost two months after they were temporarily let go. That’s a long time for HAH’s clientele to receive what she describes as inconsistent care. Many of her clients need intensive mental or medical care but lack the means to afford it. Some cried when she returned to work.

“I was overwhelmed by their emotions. I just didn’t expect them to consider us like their family. I was very grateful,” she says.

Still, the return doesn’t guarantee services will continue through the year. “Because of what happened in November, I think all of us are still very wary. I think we lost—I, at least—lost trust,” Moreno told the Reader in February. “I’m very cautious that we could be fired again. Anything can happen.”

The turmoil at Heartland Alliance shares a number of parallels with the downfall of Hull House, another social services organization founded by Jane Addams in the late 1800s that closed its doors and filed for bankruptcy in 2012. Its leaders at the time cited financial strains due to general economic turmoil, but multiple postmortems found Hull House faced cash shortages and negative balance sheets more than a decade before it shuttered.

Reliance on government grants for a behemoth like Hull House, which grew exponentially, ultimately became part of its end, according to a report by the Northwestern University Heartland Housing ceased operations in late 2023.

SHAWN MULCAHY

NEWS & POLITICS

continued from p. 11

Kellogg School of Management. It reads, “Overdependence upon a single, increasingly unreliable source of funding with complicated regulations had hurt the organization.”

Fractures likewise appeared in the facade of Heartland’s programs. All of the now-defunct Heartland Housing’s employees were laid o in recent months, and the organization aimed at creating “a ordable and supportive housing” is transferring properties under receivership to “new owners,” Stellon writes. Heartland Housing was the smallest-sta ed subdivision of Heartland Alliance in 2022, according to the organization’s most recent tax filings.

At the beginning of 2023, months before Heartland Housing began laying o employees, its parent organization attempted to find a new owner for the cash-strapped entity’s portfolio. By that April, Heartland Alliance had made the decision to “no longer support Heartland Housing’s operations,” according to audited financial documents.

“Heartland Alliance has never had financial responsibility for the operating results of the other Heartland companies,” Stellon writes. “When Heartland Housing encountered financial problems arising at least in part from the pandemic, Heartland Alliance took steps to try to make sure that the residents of the Heartland Housing properties remain housed.”

Executives at Heartland Alliance told the Chicago Tribune in early February they hadn’t learned of financial troubles at HAH until last fall. Stellon writes in response, “As soon as the current management team became aware

of the cash flow challenge,” they engaged with “pro bono consultants from Boston Consulting Group to develop a detailed transition plan. The independent organizations will handle the administrative functions through a combination of outsourcing and building their internal sta s.”

Audited financials, posted to Heartland’s website, indicate that even as financial diculties mounted among its subsidiaries, cash shortages were on the horizon for the main organization well before the final months of 2023. In 2022, for example, Heartland Alliance’s total liquid cash and cash equiv-

alents—the benchmark for the amount of money a nonprofit has on hand for operations and programming—were the lowest they had been since 2013. That same year, Heartland’s total expenses climbed by more than ten percent, more than at any other point in the past decade, to $189 million, before write-o s.

The deficit followed a 2021 rebound from the onset of COVID-19. But in 2022, “net cash provided by operating activities”—a measure of an entity’s ability to generate revenue—was in the negative for every subsidiary except HAH.

Multiple people the Reader spoke with at

Heartland say the nonprofit experienced delays in receiving reimbursements from Medicaid and from local grants that contributed to the organization’s financial issues.

“I just can’t imagine they would just learn about this in September,” says one current employee who asked to remain anonymous. “[Heartland] had to have known this way before. They sent people out of work around the holidays. People have families, it’s just—I’m really sad.”

Jennifer Mosley, a University of Chicago professor who researches the impact of nonprofits on underrepresented communities, questions why the organization didn’t have an up-to-date annual report on its website. Reports from previous years were di cult to find, she adds.

“That is very unusual for an organization of this prominence in the city. If I was a major donor, I would have been like, ‘Wait, what?

How is that something you’re not reporting?’”

Turnover among Heartland Alliance executives mounted alongside the organization’s growing financial strain. Elias Rosario, former Heartland chief financial o cer, resigned from his position in February 2023, according to his LinkedIn profile. Former Heartland president Evelyn Diaz resigned from her position just six months later in August 2023, according to a LinkedIn update. Neither responded to various calls and voicemails.

Rosario’s resignation came in the middle of the failed sale of Heartland Housing, during a 60-day due diligence period (from January 2023 to March 2023, according to audited

financials) when the potential buyer had time to inspect Heartland’s properties and ultimately decided to not move forward with the purchase.

In February, the Reader attempted to reach Heartland Alliance’s interim CFO, Marcelo Presser, but an automatic email reply directed inquiries to a new interim CFO, Sally Beach, because Presser had left the company. Emails to Beach, however, advised they, too, had left the company and directed inquiries to a third person, David Wells. Wells did not respond to the Reader ’s request for an interview about Heartland’s financial situation.

All the o cials reached by the Reader , including members of HAH’s board of directors, declined to speak on the issue and instead directed inquiries to Stellon. In a statement, he writes that the leadership team at Heartland determined “a substantial restructuring was necessary” to keep its most vital services operational. And each of the nonprofit’s subsidiaries would become “independent entities.”

“What has emerged is a dynamic plan that lays out a pathway to success for the organizations and programs that are currently part

of Heartland, details the activities necessary to achieve an ideal outcome, and provides a high-level budget for the transformation,” the statement continued. “Our priorities during this transition are to continue serving those who depend on us and to forge pathways to financial sustainability for each newly independent program.”

The most financially secure division of Heartland’s network is Heartland Human Care Services (HHCS). It operates a similarly large number of programs as HAH—but it’s propped up by hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants. More federal dollars flow to HHCS than to all other Heartland branches combined.

Since the 2013 fiscal year, HHCS has received $480 million from the federal government. Federal grants to other Heartland divisions during the same time period total $130 million, about one-third of the money sent to HHCS. Eighty percent of HHCS’s federal funding comes through the Unaccompanied Children Program (UCP), run by the U.S. O ce of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).

ORR takes custody of unaccompanied immigrant children based on referrals from other federal agencies, then places them in detention centers across the country while the government works to verify their sponsors. Most of the children in ORR’s control were detained by immigration authorities at the border. HHCS’s current contract under the UCP runs through early 2026. (Stellon writes, “HHCS has over 20 program areas. . . . The Unaccompanied Children shelter program represents 48 percent of HHCS’s overall budget.”)

Yearslong reporting into the HHCS UCP program by ProPublica, first published in 2018, revealed allegations of neglect and abuse, sta who were ill-equipped to care for the children in their custody, and bathrooms without locks. In 2019, HHCS closed four of its facilities (all in Des Plaines) and said it would invest in sta , training, and resources at the five remaining ones.

According to Stellon, “Reports that surfaced when children were separated from their parents in 2018 were thoroughly investigated. The investigation included DCFS, the ORR Inspector General, and an independent law firm

reviewing hours of taped footage, and the conclusion was that the reports were unfounded.” (The Reader was unable to independently confirm the outcome of the investigation by press time.)

Stellon adds, “Heartland moved out of the Des Plaines facilities because we were unable to renew the lease on acceptable terms,” stating one of the disagreements was that it did not allow the organization to provide reproductive care to teens in its facilities.

In 2021, citing ProPublica’s reporting, Senator Dick Durbin asked the inspector general of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department to investigate “the welfare of Afghan children and teens placed in shelters nationwide by [ORR] and, in particular, the children being cared for at the Heartland Alliance shelter located in Bronzeville.” It’s unclear whether any investigation happened.

The Office of Inspector General for the Health and Human Services Department said in an emailed statement the “OIG takes seriously any allegation of harm and we are currently undertaking work that will touch on some of the concerns raised in Chairman

NEWS & POLITICS

continued from p. 13 Durbin’s letter,” referencing a forthcoming report titled “National Snapshot of Recent Trends in the Refugee Resettlement Program,” expected to be released by 2025.

Sarah Gourevitch, an organizer with the Free Heartland Kids campaign, says children end up in Heartland facilities from across the country, regardless of where the children’s families may be. The increase in migration from South American countries “would impact how many kids Heartland’s detaining,” she says, as they’re a proxy of the ORR. “I imagine they see that as a huge opportunity to possibly expand.”

In his response, Stellon wrote, “ORR determines the shelter placement of children. HHCS has no plans to expand shelter services.”

Delon Black was in a halfway house after he left prison in 2021 when he discovered the Rapid Employment and Development Initiative, or READI. The one-year Heartland program “connects people most highly impacted by gun violence to cognitive behavioral interventions, paid transitional jobs, and wrap-around support services.”

Black first joined as a participant. Through the program, he received regular stipends to attend career readiness classes. He learned he was drawn to case management, what he describes as helping others be their best selves. So, after completing READI as a participant, he landed a job at the organization and continued on as an outreach worker. Part of the job required connecting with hundreds of young people on Chicago’s south side. Many, he says, are “struggling financially” and are simply “looking for opportunities to put money in their pocket.”

But fewer than two years into the job, Black and everyone else employed by READI was laid o when Heartland Alliance transferred ownership of the program to another of the city’s large social services nonprofi ts, Metropolitan Family Services (MFS), in late January.

“It was work that I absolutely loved and met some amazing people along the journey,” Black tells the Reader . “Witnessed a lot of human victories.”

Marlon Hammond, a READI outreach worker for nearly six years before he was laid o with the rest of the team, praises the program’s foresight in preventing gun violence. “The whole process was more organic and intimate, original. And I like that approach because it’s not like we’re gonna go somewhere

where a shooting already happened. Man, we [were] being proactive,” he says.

In a response to emailed questions from the Reader, Vaughn Bryant, executive director of Metropolitan Peace Initiatives (the division of MFS now responsible for READI Chicago), writes the organization “expects to keep most of the current programming the same” for the rest of the fiscal year but will still “take the next few months to observe and learn how the program is delivered” before making changes.

Bryant continues, “As a part of this program transfer, Metropolitan Peace Initiatives has welcomed aboard a number of former READI sta members whose expertise and dedication will be invaluable.”

Black and Hammond say they, and none of the former READI outreach workers they know, have been contacted by MFS about how they operated the program, raising concern for the program’s future amongst a wide variety of violence interruption programs. Black says the former READI sta brought on were likely program managers with college degrees, not on-the-ground outreach workers with certificates and life experience to bolster connections with READI’s clients.

Eddie Bocanegra launched the READI program with Heartland Alliance and served as its executive director from 2017 until 2022, when he took a leave of absence to work as a senior adviser at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Community Violence Intervention (CVI) O ce. The program has been on shaky footing since then, Hammond says.

“We were pretty much abandoned a long time ago. Once Eddie Bocanegra, the senior director, became assistant to Merrick Garland and went to Washington, that was a shake-up,” Hammond explains. “It just never recovered from then.”

In his response, Stellon writes, “READI consistently had strong leadership. . . . In fact, READI’s leaders have been recruited to top positions at other CVI organizations.”

Hammond says he’s now working assorted part-time, short-term jobs to get by. He recently worked as an election judge at a primary election polling site. “I’m surviving, I’m not living,” he says.

Black hopes to find another outreach job. But for the time being, he might put that dream on hold. “Man, I’m just gonna get my [commercial driver’s license] or get in the construction trade,” he says. “I won’t have to deal with the uncertainty of this line of work.” v m

NEWS & POLITICS

Sex workers live here

Black and Brown sex workers have long been part of Chicago’s culture but must care for each other when the community fails to do so.

By GRETCHEN STERBA Photography by ORIANA KOREN

Keke, 23, stopped working for an Indiana strip club when management took more than 50 percent of her tips from dances. ORIANA

Editor’s note: the main subjects in this story are referred to by their chosen names; some last names have been omitted for the subjects’ privacy. The first appearance of each is denoted by an asterisk.

It’s a Thursday night in late September, and Dorothy, Ukrainian Village’s sexy and dimly lit basement cocktail lounge, is packed with patrons raining dollar bills. Dorothy’s usual lesbian and queer-heavy crowd is accompanied by a palpable bad bitch energy. The lounge is hosting an event featuring queer

and Black pole dancers accompanied by live DJ sets and soul food selling for $20 a plate.

Supporters lay back with their friends and partners on couches, drinks in hand, or inch forward to get a closer look at the night’s lineup of performers, which includes Ava*.

Ava is the founder of Black Skrippa Brigade (BSB), a Chicago-based collective that formed in March 2023 to provide mutual aid and safer workspaces for Black queer dancers and sex workers. BSB’s events and activities create community and serve to combat the lack of equitable, accessible spaces for queer and

extralegal, “under the table,” or otherwise cash-based jobs, the aid was few and far between. For marginalized folks in marginalized professions like sex work, most financial aid was only available through community crowdfunding. Some people in the sex work community did initiate fundraisers and benefits, and at the height of the pandemic lockdown in 2020, the donations seemed to keep rolling in.

From June through November 2020, a Black and nonbinary queer sex worker named Lynzo the Heartthrob* managed a GoFundMe (while also soliciting additional donations through CashApp and Venmo) that raised over $62,000 for Black and Brown sex workers. The fundraiser prioritized distributing the donations to sex workers who self-identify as trans and/ or disabled.

While sex work may be the oldest profession in the world, and has been an active part of the culture in Chicago for centuries, it is still criminalized in most municipalities. This forces those in the industry to rely on themselves and their respective communities—if they have access to them—for various forms of support.

“What I saw is that the people can want to, desire to, and truly, me putting that [GoFundMe] up there was just a vessel for them to put their money into the community that they care about,” Lynzo said. “[Around] $60,000 . . . people gave a shit about Chicago Black, queer, Indigenous, and of color sex workers. That is the takeaway. People do not not give a shit; people give a shit. They want to put their money where their mouth is.”

Those who aren’t entrenched in the world of sex work may recall how during the pandemic sites like OnlyFans surged after some people quit their jobs or were laid o and took to the risque platform in hopes of making a lucrative income. Even Beyoncé shouted out the company when rapping on Megan Thee Stallion’s song “Savage Remix,” “On that demon time / she might start an OnlyFans.”

Black sex workers financially, physically, and emotionally.

“I care about these communities,” Ava said. “I try to uplift everybody. It’s just so di cult when there’s so many odds stacked against us.”

The days of COVID-19 relief funds seem long gone. Some dancers and sex workers who had taxable employment pre-pandemic were able to benefit from these funds, in addition to some collecting unemployment. For some, this cash relief ended up totaling more than their average paycheck. But for those with untaxed,

It’s important to note that there are different levels of intimacy traded under the umbrella that is sex work. There are online sex workers who stick to Internet-based services such as selling nude photos and videos on OnlyFans or streaming live on webcam sites like Chaturbate or MyFreeCams. People who concentrate on online sex work might also do kink work, such as selling pictures of their feet.

There are dancers, and those who work in clubs. This is perhaps the kind of sex work that many people think of first, because of the presence of strip clubs in the mainstream zeitgeist

KOREN FOR CHICAGO READER

and because of the clubs’ relative legality in many cities.

Full-service sex work can consist of escorting or being a sugar baby. Sex workers advertise themselves on websites like Seeking (formerly known as Seeking Arrangements) or Tryst, make profiles where clients can see their rates, and schedule meet-ups where paying clients or “tricks” trade money for sex. In addition, some sex workers can be found working in public in areas that are sometimes referred to as “hoe strolls” across popular metropolitan areas in America.

Four years after the pandemic took over the world, the shock-value exposés of nineto-fivers switching over to sex work have died down, but for sex workers nationwide—and specifically here in Chicago—the work, whether it be on OnlyFans or in real life, doesn’t stop. The COVID-19 pandemic perpetuated income disparity and a lack of resources impacting marginalized populations in an already stigmatized profession where they are left to rely on themselves—not the local or federal government—for support.

In May 2023, a study was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health exploring the experiences of sex workers in Chicago during the pandemic. The study found that COVID-19 exacerbated previous physical and mental health disparities and contributed to additional economic instability and lack of safety among sex workers in Chicago. Criminalization and the stigma of this work greatly contribute to these disparities, specifically in marginalized communities.

It’s important to note within this context where the city is at when it comes to the legality of sex work. In 2018, Chicago’s city council passed an ordinance allowing law enforcement to give sex workers who were suspected of prostitution-related loitering allowance to simply disperse from the area. If the people suspected of prostitution return to that same location anytime up to eight hours after the police issued the initial order, they are possibly subject to a $3,000 fine and could be incarcerated for up to six months. Prostitution is considered a Class A misdemeanor in the state of Illinois, but for those with multiple convictions or subsequent o enses, the penalty can be increased to a Class 4 felony, per Illinois law.

In 2023, the ACLU doubled down on the importance of decriminalizing sex work, citing findings from 2020 that criminalizing sex work negatively impacts the LGBTQ+ com-

munity—particularly LGBTQ+ people of color, LGBTQ+ immigrants, and transgender people—who are more likely to be sex workers. Anti–sex work laws disproportionately a ect marginalized people, which can make a tough existence even tougher, and can force marginalized people to have continually negative

beings and fully actualized contributors to society.

The lack of mainstream support and criminalization of sex work are key reasons why Black Skrippa Brigade was created by Ava, a queer, disabled, Black multihyphenate sex worker from the south side of Chicago. BSB’s initial mission was to bring Black sex workers together in mutual aid, especially after COVID19 impacted so many. BSB also serves as an entity to create financial aid for those excluded from working in local sex work spaces based on their identities.

After experiencing racist interactions in strip clubs in cities such as Nashville and Denver, Ava returned to Chicago (her hometown, which she loves to rep) but still faced racist discrimination from some of the city’s most renowned clubs.

“Even Admiral [Theatre] was like, ‘Please stop coming here,’” Ava said. “I’ve auditioned three times there. They were like, ‘We’re not hiring you, I need you to stop showing up. Let this be your last audition.’ [I] didn’t get hired, of course. . . . What am I doing wrong? I’ve come in there with di erent hairstyles, di erent wigs, di erent fucking costumes, di erent shoes, di erent stage names. What the fuck do you guys want?”

Ava, who has been in this work for nearly a decade, has faced the brunt of discrimination from strip clubs across the city, even the ones who pride themselves on being the most elite.

“People don’t understand the politics that go along with the clubs,” Ava said. “I can get hired at any club in Vegas. But when I come back here, to my city, where I was born, where I’ve paid tax dollars for several years of my life, they are not going to give me a job. The girls who work at Rick’s [Cabaret Chicago, a gentleman’s club in the North/Clybourn district] will never, ever have to deal with some of the shit that we deal with. And that’s why when you talk to [the dancers], and you tell them what the fuck is going on, they’re shocked and chagrined because they have a much better work environment. The city doesn’t care about that as far as like, cracking down on them.”

Thus, BSB creates events and opportunities for their members, since safe and lucrative employment can be few and far between.

experiences with police and law enforcement.

While the Reader acknowledges and understands the implications of these laws and statutes, we believe that telling the stories of people on the margins of society is crucial. Those who participate in work that is currently criminalized (and stigmatized) are still civic

“I’m not going to sit around and wait for opportunities for us to be told ‘No’; for us to be told ‘Come back’; [and] all this bullshit,” Ava said. “So because of that, I’m like, ‘You know what, let’s just do what we got to do.’ I’m gonna host the shows. I’m gonna provide this opportunity. I’m putting my friends and

Ava, 25, has faced discrimination from clubs that refused to hire her. ORIANA KOREN FOR CHICAGO READER

continued from p. 17

family on to come and sell their food and make money. I’m putting my friends on to come and make money from the ticket sales, the door sales. That’s how I’m paying everybody.”

Keke*, a 22-year-old pansexual, Black sex worker based in Chicago, who started working as a sex worker during the pandemic, has expressed similar sentiments as Ava; she claims that certain strip clubs in or around Chicago didn’t fully accept her as a Black woman, which led her to crossing state lines to dance in Indiana.

“Management would even say stu like, ‘Oh, yeah, we don’t play this certain type of music because we don’t want to attract XYZ crowd,’” Keke said. “Then, to be a Black girl, to even try to audition and get hired at these clubs is so hard. You have to have a certain hairstyle, skin tone, or body type; it gets really bad. All the customers [at Illinois clubs] would literally ignore me.”

Because of this discrimination—causing Keke to seek out sex work in other places—she narrowly escaped a trafficking situation in 2022. A sex trafficker found Keke’s information on social media and contacted her pretending to be a photographer who wanted to

work with her. She drove out to the Illinois and Indiana state line, where she quickly escaped after her intuition flared up, triggering her fight-or-flight response.

After police in Gary got involved, Keke was informed that the person who contacted her and successfully got her into Indiana was a serial o ender.

“I’ve taken my time to heal and process and all that,” Keke told the Reader. “Even still, I’m not fully back into the club scene the way I used to because [of that].”

A 2017 study published by BMC Women’s Health concluded that mental health issues disproportionately a ect women in sex work, especially those who fall into a sexual/gender minority. Researchers in this study also found a connection between trauma and mental health, citing further research needed within this intersection.

Regular, nine-to-five folks who are not in this line of work may not understand that while sex work can be debilitating and emotionally exhausting, it is also a means of accessibility for those who may face significant barriers in a standard o ce job.

“I also have chronic pain,” Ava said. “I’m disabled, I’m Black, I’m a sex worker, I’m Top: Ava teaches pole classes.

queer. I’m in the intersection of so many communities that are marginalized, and I have to constantly dig myself out of this hole every single day. That is why I do sex work. I don’t have the capacity to be on a schedule at a fucking T-Mobile. I have my grandmother at home [who] I need to check on. I love the flexibility of this work, despite all the bullshit.”

Though Ava has experienced rejection and discrimination from clubs in Chicago, she makes it her mission to be inclusive of sex workers of all identities and backgrounds, because, as she asked the Reader, if not her— then who?

“Stop disrespecting our labor,” Ava said. “We are coming out here to build a life for our families, build a legacy. You don’t have insurance, you’re paying out-of-pocket insurance, or you’re on your parents’. Any stripper over 26 years old is struggling. The reason why we choose to do our jobs despite having to pay these fees, despite having to deal with hospitals, doctors, despite having to deal with a stigma, is honestly the peace of mind and flexibility for me.”

Lynzo, who formerly worked at the Black and trans-led LGBTQ+ nonprofit Brave Space

Bottom: Keke does OnlyFans and gig work.

Alliance (BSA), added that sometimes organizations that seem to be safe spaces for Black and Brown trans and queer people fail to show up for their communities. In November 2022, LaSaia Wade, then CEO of BSA, was fired for misappropriating funds—some of these funds were earmarked for sex workers who had been incentivized by the organization to attend pandemic-related programs. The programs have since been cut, and Lynzo told the Reader that they have heard that some of the sex workers who participated have never received compensation.

Queen*, one of the remaining few employees of Chicago’s Sex Worker Outreach Project (SWOP), echoed many of the same sentiments about inclusion and emphasized the importance of white sex workers showing up for their colleagues. When sex workers show up for their Black and Brown comrades in this industry, they are not just standing in solidarity, but also help to spread wealth amid a very

and presenting her COVID-19 vaccination card (per the requirements of the event), she was turned away. Keke said that it was because although she had her first booster shot documented, she was told she needed her second booster to attend, even though she didn’t see that requirement advertised. Keke added that she noticed that the white people in line in front of her weren’t asked about boosters. She left feeling unwelcome, citing hints of “racial undertones” the situation embodied.

When organizations, spaces, and collectives are less accessible, especially during the times of a health pandemic, Black and Brown sex workers take the biggest hit, specifically ones who are trans and/or disabled, and the work becomes even more unsafe. While the last few years have seen more white sex workers earning money through platforms like OnlyFans, Black and Brown sex workers, especially immigrants and undocumented people, have been pushed further into the margins of harm and discrimination.

“We need money [to] be able to go to events,” Queen told the Reader . “[If] you’re able to host benefits . . . pay people to perform their actual real rate. They don’t want to pay

Black and Brown sex workers their rate.”

Queen stressed that since 2020, many programs and initiatives have dissolved—like certain health care programs at organizations like Howard Brown and transportation financial relief funds—leading sex workers to face instability and fend for themselves in a city, state, and world where it can feel like no one is on their side and government sustainability programming is hard to come by.

“You can’t get mad when people are [working] on the stroll when you’re not giving them any other options,” she said. “You’re taking away everything from [them]; what else are they supposed to do? You’re literally making it impossible for people to safely work.”

Black and Brown sex workers must continuously adapt to life without sustainable mutual aid e orts in a post-pandemic city, in addition to the widespread stigma and safety precautions they have to take every day just being in the industry. With countless political and legislative obstacles stacked against them, they persist.

“Black and Brown sex workers are working so hard to build capital with such limited resources, [creating] a survivalist perspective,

stark financial gap.

While working at SWOP since 2020, Queen has seen other pop-up queer strip club collectives receive more favorable treatment compared to the people SWOP serves, who are mainly poor Black and Brown sex workers.

“[A local group] came to us before wanting to collaborate, but we’ve expressed to them we’re not in a space where we can work for free,” Queen said. “They wanted us to pop up at their event, and that’s cool, but [they’re] constantly getting donations and are able to because we don’t have money like that. You’ll see [SWOP] constantly posted about how we need funds and how we’re trying to get more resources . . . and it’s like, OK, why don’t you guys care?”

Keke also told the Reader about an unsettling and upsetting experience regarding an event that another group hosted last year. Keke noticed that she was one of two Black people in attendance. While waiting in line

Lynzo The Heartthrob, (“late 20s,”) is a nightlife icon and DJs. ORIANA KOREN FOR CHICAGO READER

Queen, 29, works for Sex Workers Outreach Project and is a grad student. ORIANA KOREN FOR CHICAGO READER

continued from p. 19

which is inherently not indicative of community and how [a] community can build,” Lynzo told the Reader . “The greater community believes in helping people under the poverty line, helping sex workers, helping Black and Brown trans and queer sex workers and disabled sex workers.”

For so long, Americans have had a polarizing view of sex work in our society—and it doesn’t help that the media often depicts sex workers as victims of their consensual labor or as hypersexualized objects—but these

women of all di erent sexualities and abilities are often multifaceted in their identities and interests. And this work is, like all other kinds of work, a job.

“There’s a stigma that a lot of sex workers have trauma, or daddy issues, or whatever issues, and a lot of times that’s true, but at the same time, how is that our fault?” Keke said.

“How is it our fault that we’ve been assaulted?

How was it our fault that we’ve been slutshamed since we were 13 years old? We’re just dealing with what the fuck life handed us. I wish people understood that more. We’re just

still people at the end of the day.”

Ava said that the bottom line is that Black sex workers need two things: money and support. And, for those that can’t fathom why sex workers deserve your respect, Ava asked a simple, one-word question: why?

“If you have a problem with sex work, that’s OK,” she said. “I get it. Not everybody’s comfortable. But I want you to look inward and figure out what that stems from. Is it a fear because you think all of us are being trafficked? Is it a fear because you think that we shouldn’t be doing what we do? Is it jealousy?

And you know, it’s OK to be jealous because you know, I’m jealous of rich people. I’ll say it. Be jealous of what you want to be jealous of, but do I take it out on people? No. Understand what your route is with our work. If you’re super enthralled with our work in an overly fetishized way, why? Start unpacking what your issues are with our jobs, with us as people, and don’t let that bleed over into another year of your life. Go get your bag. Don’t worry about mine.” v m

Lynzo DJs in establishments across the city, including Dorian’s (pictured). ORIANA KOREN FOR CHICAGO READER

Queen hosted an exhibition for SWOP that featured art by sex workers. ORIANA KOREN FOR CHICAGO READER

Heart Condition

a golden shovel after Frank Ocean

the doctor says heart condition & i think this could be a poem. a sick swelling of my heart. a stethoscope is dreaming across the surface of my chest & my heart is a cardinal trying to get out. let me try again. my heart is a dented soup can. an oil spill glimmer. it doesn’t matter. we hear the whir of a murmur so quiet it might be God.

the machine dreams electricity through my body. heart shudders & i do not move. electrodes on my chest like flies. i tell myself anything that moves can die. the doctor says my heart has been broken for years. my blood flows upstream. despite it all the doctor says you still have a strong heart. still, my blood loses itself in my heart. in the hospital i draft poems. i dream backwards. my blood is the loneliest sleepwalker making circles in the dark.

i don’t want to be sick anymore. i have written enough poems. the doctor thought it was strange that

i asked for my electrocardiogram. i wanted to tape it to my fridge. it was a drawing my heart made, dreaming of itself. my heart dreams in cursive. when i showed you the pink-marked paper you said i should make a poem from it. i said it already is a poem. this is where you & i diverge. i have written enough love poems. this one was written for me.

By Felix L.

Felix Lecocq is a writer with a weird heart. While he was writing about his hospital care in Chicago, there were no fully functioning hospitals left in Gaza. While he was writing about his American doctor, Israeli forces killed 627 Palestinian healthcare workers in 115 days. Felix hopes his readers will join him in committing to Palestinian liberation. He hopes this with all his heart. (World Health Organization, 30 January 2024.)

Poem curated by Stuti Sharma. Stuti is a poet, stand up comic, writer, filmmaker, but most importantly, a lover. She grew up on Devon street and the south suburbs. They are a Tin House 2023-2024 Reading Fellow. Stuti will not stop fighting for a Free Palestine and uplifting Palestinian voices & poets.

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

Hours

Wednesday & Friday: 11:00 AM–5:00 PM

Thursday: 11:00 AM–7:00 PM

Saturday: 10:00 AM–5:00 PM

Immutable, later: Ulrich Jesse K Baer + olivier

Join us for the book launch of Ulrich Jesse K Baer’s Deer Black Out, featuring a dialogue between Baer and artist olivier. This is a hybrid event, which will be offered in-person and via livestream.

Thursday, April 18 at 7:00 PM CT

Learn more at PoetryFoundation.org

ARTS & CULTURE

From rubbish to runway

The WasteShed’s annual fundraiser unites a community of dumpster designers—and teaches people how to sew.

By JULIA LOWE

One year ago, José Ochoa, 50, found himself backstage at a fashion show, in the middle of a frenzied spectacle of clothing made from would-be trash. A flashy flock of designers and their models hustled around in upcycled garments, most made from the common ingredients of DiscarDisco’s “mystery boxes”: jewel-tone tulle wads, assorted buttons, paper straws, and multicolored wire.

Two months earlier, Ochoa, along with his fellow DiscarDisco entrants, had ordered a box of hand-selected scrap materials from Chicago nonprofit the WasteShed. DiscarDisco is the nonprofit’s annual fashion show fundraiser, and the first step in participating is uploading an “unboxing” video to social media. Most entrants narrated their videos with oohs, cheers, laughs, and curious assessments of their materials. But when Ochoa opened his mystery box last year, he realized, “Oh, crap. I have to make a garment.”

Ochoa, former founding executive and artistic director of Chicago High School for the Arts (ChiArts), had never sewn before he entered DiscarDisco: Rags to Riches, the WasteShed’s fourth annual fundraiser. Even now, one year after winning an honorable mention, Ochoa still thinks that the judges messed up their math.

“Most of my life I’ve had imposter syndrome, and I could easily find myself with that here,” Ochoa says. “But that’s not what this is about.” Ochoa has entered DiscarDisco again this year, and even as a returning designer with more experience, winning the competition is the last thing on his mind—he’s ready for another creative challenge.

The WasteShed is a creative reuse center for art, craft, and school materials founded by Eleanor Ray in 2014. The nonprofit’s two locations in Humboldt Park and Evanston serve as donation centers and stores for used art materials.

Since opening, the WasteShed has diverted over 150 tons of waste from landfills—an estimated $3.2 million worth of materials. Over half of the WasteShed’s intake and income comes from textiles, fabrics, yarn, and other sundries, and in 2020, the nonprofit began holding an upcycled fashion show competition to highlight the impact of textile and materials waste. The fifth annual DiscarDisco, themed PatchWERK, will be held on April 13 at the Chicago Athletic Association.

Ochoa, now president and CEO of the National Museum of Mexican Art, has a completely different vision for his creation this year. His design takes inspiration from printmaking and topography, and will somehow incorporate the contents of his mystery box: brown faux fur, tie-dyed blue cotton, coral accordion mesh, zippers, novelty buttons in the shape of rabbits, and plastic bear pencil toppers. Despite the array of unconventional materials, Ochoa says his biggest challenge this year is to finish dyeing the salvaged fabrics. “Once I get that done, I’m hoping I can deconstruct the plastic bears.”

Following the loss of his mother and his close friend Jim Mabie—founding chairman of ChiArts—within months of each other in 2021, Ochoa found himself at both a personal and a creative loss. After spending nearly 20 years as an arts administrator, he felt his artistic nature diminishing.

“I’ve never sewn before, I’ve never done anything like it. And I thought: why not?”

“I had all of these piles of clothes and I don’t know how or why, if it was Jim, if it was my mom, if it was both of them,” says Ochoa, “but I just started making art out of my old clothes. I had no idea what I was doing. And it was fun.”

After hearing about the WasteShed from his students, he became a regular customer himself, buying canvases, fabrics, and other materials to experiment with. Sta members asked about his projects and supported his “little hobby,”

RDISCARDISCO: PATCHWERK

4/ 13 : Sat 7 PM, Chicago Athletic Association’s White City Ballroom, 12 S. Michigan, thewasteshed.com/discardisco, $75 general admission, $150 VIP, 21+

and soon, his collages and mixed-media landscapes were on display at art shows and galleries in a handful of states. Ochoa began volunteering, too, and heard about the 2023 DiscarDisco just before the application deadline.

“I’ve never made a garment in my life. I’ve never sewn before, I’ve never done anything like it. And I thought: why not?” says Ochoa. “Our time is limited. What do I have to lose? And if anything, I was going to get a box of fabric.”

He leaned on ChiArts alumni to get started; a former student taught Ochoa how to slip stitch and that “90 percent of art making is problem-solving.” He eventually met and took a sewing lesson from Blair Goldman, 30, a DiscarDisco veteran and volunteer at the WasteShed.

Like Ochoa, very few of DiscarDisco’s entrants consider themselves designers. The competition draws a wide range of backgrounds: fine arts, cosplay, costume design, historical costuming, sewing, and more. It is this diversity that brings the excitement to DiscarDisco, says Goldman, who is one of this year’s judges. “It’s people who really care about our community and sustainability,” Goldman says.

Goldman, a self-taught sewist of over 15 years, was a longtime WasteShed customer before she heard about DiscarDisco—just weeks before COVID-19 lockdown forced the WasteShed to temporarily close. Goldman was afraid it would close permanently, so as soon as she heard about the virtual 2021 DiscarDisco, she ordered a mystery box.

“I had been sewing my whole life, and I was in retail. Then, during the pandemic, I had a crisis of consciousness like everybody else and was thinking: I want to be sewing. That’s what I want to do with my life,” says Goldman. “I had no idea where to start.”

Through her first DiscarDisco, Goldman connected with Høvet Fashion Studio, where she became a sewing instructor for hopefuls of all ages, especially teenagers. Ochoa became one of Goldman’s students in the middle of assembling his skirt, which he managed to temporarily hold together with iron-on hemming. A few days before the deadline to submit his “work in progress” video, he had his first lesson with Goldman, who showed him how to use a sewing machine—and he finished the job.

“What I was so absolutely impressed with was his ability to marry storytelling, sewing, and artistry within the context of this one project,” Goldman says.

Ochoa called his completed look Jardín para Elfida (Garden for Elfida), a matching blouse and ballroom skirt in royal blue, with a landscape artwork of bright tangerine florals blooming from tulle vines. Honoring the life that inspired him to begin making collage art, Ochoa’s final creation was a memorial for his mother.

José Ochoa and model Aeris Brown at DiscarDisco 2023 GLITTERGUTS

ARTS & CULTURE

“My mom had started painting watercolors in the last year of her life: very simple things, flowers and birds. We found about 20 little paintings as I was cleaning out her assisted living unit,” Ochoa says. “I found, when she passed away, pictures of her as a teenager, and there was this cool dress. It just sort of evolved into this thing that I made.”

While Ochoa was proud of his creation, he never expected to win an honorable mention. It wasn’t until he saw Goldman shoot up from her chair and his model walking up the runway that it dawned on him: “Oh, they’re talking about me.”

Goldman saw Ochoa’s creative drive—his “spark”—immediately. “And to see what he created with just sheer force of will and love of art, it blows my mind just to think about it,” she says.

DiscarDisco is one of the most fun and creatively fulfilling opportunities that Ochoa has ever taken. And his new sewing skills have

come in handy for his other art projects, ranging from collages to sculptural garments.

Though creative reuse is a project in sustainability, it has to be rooted in fun, says Ray, founder and executive director of the WasteShed. “That way, the corporations can’t get it. It’s something that’s yours.”

Ray says “materials literacy”— knowing what constitutes our clothes, the difference between natural and synthetic fibers, and how to care for and mend garments—is a knowledge that has been intentionally taken away from the average consumer by the fashion industry. When people don’t know how to repair their clothing, or when cheaply made garments can’t be mended, they often become waste. The EPA estimates that 1.7 million tons of clothing were recycled in 2018, while 9 million tons went to landfills.

Donating a scrap of unused fabric might not extract anything from landfills, but giving textiles new life through mending and donation is a form of stewardship that the WasteShed promotes through their programs and by providing accessible art supplies to Chicagoans.

“Now more than ever, artists have had to engage with what it means to love your art. And right now, that means being sustainable and finding any way you possibly can to keep creating,” Goldman says.

Ochoa says he has entered a “new season of his life” since participating in DiscarDisco, one where he’s thinking about things differently, starting with his approach to art. He uses exclusively secondhand materials in his projects, and he relishes the challenge of the creative process instead of trying to please a viewer or fit a brief. In Ochoa’s classical arts background, he was “taught to always seek perfection,” but now he doesn’t care about anyone’s expectations.

“Because I have that freedom, people are enjoying it,” Ochoa says. “I see perfection in a di erent way now.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Apr 17 - 21

A look by Hereaclitus modeled by Erik the Red GLITTERGUTS

GALLERY OPENING

With Tala, Francine Almeda brings her curatorial eye to West Town

The new gallery opens during EXPO Chicago.

By CHRISTINA NAFZIGER

Astar is something you wish upon as it travels across the night sky, sinking down into the horizon like a droplet of water returning to the lake. A star is also a guiding light; it is a point of reference and anchor bringing you home, reorienting you towards the place you’re meant to be. These are the elements and sentiments Chicago curator Francine Almeda aims to bring to life in her next project: Tala.

Tala, which means “bright star” in Tagalog, is the namesake of Almeda’s new gallery, opening in West Town’s gallery district on April 12 during EXPO Chicago. The gallery is an evolution of Almeda’s ongoing curatorial work, including her previous project, Jude Gallery. Located in Pilsen, Jude hosted groundbreaking exhibitions, unforgettable performances, and countless parties. For Almeda—a talented DJ herself—these moments of gathering, celebrating, and finding collective joy on the dance floor were abundant at Jude and will luckily be a part of Tala’s programming as well. But Tala will not just be more of the same—it is truly a transformation. It is the embodiment of Almeda’s growth as a curator, community builder, and dreamer.

If you know Almeda, you know how thoughtful her creative projects are: her concepts run deep and wide. If you haven’t experienced her curatorial work through Jude, you may know her work as manager of Wicker Park’s Heaven Gallery. Before leaving the gallery to launch Tala, Almeda was a friendly staple at Heaven for over three years, curating thoughtful shows like “Space to Say,” which explored the in-betweenness of language. The approach and process of creating Tala is no different. Using its namesake as a guiding pillar, the space is designed to emulate the path of a shooting star moving across the sky. This metaphor was embodied into an architectural space from the collective e orts of Chicago’s creative community, with designers including Roland Knowlden, Katie Lee, Josué Esaú, Serena JV Elston, Sam Algas, and David Beltran. In the front is a sunny, yellow-beige welcom-

ing space for the public to sit and stay awhile, complete with custom seating that wraps around the room—perfect for intimate conversations, small gatherings, or chill hangs. This section of Tala, which is intentionally low-pressure, will be filled with accessible art objects for sale that are meant to be explored and touched, like ceramics and zines.

In the middle, a more formal gallery space takes form where Almeda will be curating her dynamic exhibitions. A rich blue office sits adjacent to this area, where you can find the curator planning her next event (but more likely, she will find you and welcome you gladly, filling you in on her space and vision).

Tala ends in a lush, midnight purple room where you’ll find a community art library meets listening room. Meant to be public, this area will house a handpicked art book collection as well as collections of other community organizations whose work focuses on libraries, collections, and archives. For example, you’ll find books from the library of Chuquimarca, whose collection includes contemporary art discourses happening within diasporas, the Global South, and Indigenous perspectives, amongst other conversations.

programming, and other community events that Almeda has in mind for the future. No matter which area of Tala you are in, the concept of the space can be deeply felt, and with it, the concept of the first show. Like most of Almeda’s practice, everything she builds informs the next; it all goes hand in hand. While discussing the inaugural exhibition, Almeda describes the multisensory elements that will come into play. For her, it is about grounding the viewer in the space, leading them in and through. During our conversation, the word “shepherd” came to mind. This is how Almeda approaches curation: she embeds herself deep into the feel of the artwork, the worlds the artists are building. Then she ushers in not only the artists featured in the show, but also her audience and community, on a path towards her artistic vision of openness, care, and deep

painting to sculpture, photography to installation. Through sometimes unconventional methods such as sound and smell, the art calls you on a journey. And on this journey, we are given an o ering in the form of writing by isra rene, whose prose will be written on handmade paper for the opening. The writing—an art piece in and of itself—acts as a participatory artwork and a takeaway for audience members to keep and remember.

All of Almeda’s work is connected; it is a through line whose remnants can be found within each of her projects. This inaugural exhibition is no exception. Included in the show is a photograph made from the scans of flowers used at the last performance that took place at Jude Gallery, which ran from 2021-2024. Junio took flowers from At Rest, a performance by Ále Campos in collaboration with Vince Phan, and scanned them while they were still alive. The inclusion of this piece pays homage to the artists, spaces, and collaborators that nurtured Almeda and continue to do so.

This area will also feature amphitheaterlike seating complete with a custom hi-fi sound system. Tucked underneath the library bar, a curated fridge by Monday Co ee—run by Amanda Christine Harth and Felton Edward Kizer—will house a rotating selection of bottled coffees, NA wines, kombucha, and sparkling water, encouraging visitors to nourish themselves and linger. This multifaceted space makes it a perfect container for screenings, panels, music

connection.

Tala’s opening exhibition will feature Chicago artists like Kushala Vora, Kiam Marcelo Junio, Knowlden, Farah Salem, Roland Santana, Corrine Slade, and Jasmine Huaimin Yeh, as well as artists from all over the world, such as Nicole Ji Soo Kim (Toronto), Ang Ziqi Zhang (NYC), Chaveli Sifre (Berlin), and Pierre-Alexandre Savriacouty (Paris). Each artist’s work is vastly di erent from the next, but the thread that ties them together is undeniably present. Sitting somewhere adjacent to abstraction and transcendentalism, the works range from

Moving through the space, it is as if you are the shooting star traveling across the sky as the light of day transitions to the deepness of night. Light and dark, night and day—it is within this dichotomy that Almeda’s strength lies. She can do both/ and. She has the ability to curate unique exhibitions that are both complex and challenging, and then switch over to raver and throw a damn good party. And lucky us—we’re invited! At Tala’s public opening, you will find cocktails, DJs, art, tattoos by Jaxx (available on the spot!), and community. Congratulations, you are now in Tala’s orbit.

Almeda is the warm center that her community gravitates towards as she approaches every project as an opportunity for collaboration and lasting friendship. Tala is not just one star. It is the vehicle with which Almeda forms a constellation: her community. v

Francine Almeda at Tala STEVEN PIPER

CRAFT WORK

Jessi Woska’s one-of-a-kind chain stitched works

“True perfection is ultimately boring.”

By ERIN TOALE

Jessi Woska’s cozy home studio in Logan Square is located in her former dining room, just off her kitchen. Technicolor pegboards filled with cotton and wool thread spools line the walls, and plants cover the floor. Two giant tabletop chain stitch machines (a vintage and newer model) are situated in the corner. Both are operated by a hand crank on the right underside of the machine (chain stitch machines are exclusively made for right-handed operators, or those willing to learn ambidexterity).

Chain stitch is a loop-based embroidery stitch (hence the term “chain” stitch—a series of interlocking loops) that can also be done by hand. Fashion historians and country music fans alike will be familiar with this form of embellishment as popularized by Hollywood designer Nudie Cohn (aka the Rhinestone Cowboy), whose “Nudie Suits’’ brought chain stitching to the stars and into the mainstream.

The original machines, from the brand Bonnaz, debuted at the 1889 Paris Exposition. To operate, the sewist hand-guides the direction of the embroidery needle with the hand crank, activating the machine via a large pedal on the floor (or, in the original pre-electricity model, a treadle pumped by foot). An important distinction: this is entirely di erent from the operation of a classic sewing machine, where stitching or mark making is accomplished by moving the fabric, not the needle. Designs are either freehand (no pattern) or follow an outline that has been transferred onto the fabric. Fill-ins, or solid areas of color, are made by making meticulously concentric circles.

left on top gently stabilizing the fabric. It’s just like drawing, once you get the hang of it, she assures me. In the chain stitching “Bible,” Chain Stitch Embroidery “Bonnaz,” sewist Ruth E. Franklin—who assisted Cohn with his elaborate suits in the 1950s—illuminates the mysterious process as such: “Once you have learned, the machine is like a pencil to an artist.”

The process is fascinating, tedious, and done by a machine quieter than one would think. Woska operates with dexterity, right hand under the table driving the needle and

Woska has a background in fashion, business, and sales. She moved to Chicago to attend Columbia College Chicago’s fashion business program, and worked as an account executive in the fashion wholesale industry for almost a decade before becoming, in her words, completely burnt-out. “It was a

struction, application of notions, and backing; each banner takes approximately six weeks to complete. Woska also handles all of the administration and bookkeeping herself, down to designing bespoke shipment packaging and carrying cases for her products.

high-stress, soul-sucking environment that took up the majority of my emotional and physical energy, leaving me with very little to allocate to any creative endeavors. I was sleep-deprived and pretty depressed, and I just felt like there had to be more to life.”

A hobbyist embroiderer with a lifelong knack for creativity, it was around this time that Woska started to focus her e orts on acquiring a machine and making a career out of chain stitching. Eight years later, she has grown her passion for the artisanal practice into a full-time business, J. Woska Custom Chainstitch. In addition to her experience in the fashion industry, Woska attributes her acumen to her artist grandfather and her parents, who she describes as “incredibly resourceful DIYers” who raised her with an “everything is figure-out-able” philosophy. She writes, “I definitely got my work ethic from my parents, and I often say I got my audacity from them.”

Woska specializes in large custom banners and works primarily with tattoo artists and small businesses, who utilize the banners for both in-shop branding and convention booth displays. She’s also made memorial banners for deceased loved ones, as well as a marriage proposal banner. She works with clients to create digital mockups of the banners, either adapting an extant design or creating an entirely new one—incorporating her signature hand-lettering, bold colors, fringe, and tassels. Using Procreate for the rendering is the only step that involves a computer—everything else is entirely handmade. These designs (Woska calls them each “puzzles to solve”) are scaled and transferred onto wool felt fabric for embroidery, con-

Woska also dabbles in commissions like jackets and patches, and o ers live chain stitching for brands, retailers, and special events—hauling a machine to stores or venues to customize items like tote bags, dust bags, and bandanas with freehand script embroidery. She has worked with brands including Anthropologie, Disney, and Louis Vuitton. Woska describes her process as niche, independent, and often nocturnal, hunched over her machine late into the night as the world sleeps. Podcasts and bingeable TV keep her company—“I consume a lot of media,” she says.

The fraught dynamics between the automated and the handmade have at times derailed Woska’s practice; she was originally discouraged from pursuing a fine arts degree lest she become a “starving artist.” When she considered switching her major to illustration, the professor she sought mentorship from declined to take her on, warning that illustration would be obsolete within the decade because everything was “going digital.” Obviously, Woska’s thriving business is evidence to the contrary.

She’s also struggled with the role of social media in running a small business; as a naturally private person (Virgo), she was hesitant to share works publicly or online until clients asked her to do so. When she made a public Instagram account and website, the results were almost instantaneous. “Once I started posting my work online, I was stitching full time less than a year later,” she says.

Because all of the chain stitching is done freehand, each piece is completely unique. While there may be an easier or faster way to produce the banners (using digital embroidery machines, for example), Woska is averse to the sterility of these methods, saying “perfection isn’t what makes things good.” In describing the inevitable visibility of the human hand in her heirloom creations, she writes: “In a world of automation and mass production, there will always be an equal and opposite response; a desire for unique one-of-a-kind pieces, a craving for character, dimension, and feeling. What it really comes down to is that as much as we strive for it, true perfection is ultimately boring.” v

J. Woska with custom tattoo convention banner for @chaisetattoos COURTESY JWOSKA.COM

THEATER

UrbanTheater Company

grows

with the times

The Humboldt Park gem flourishes by standing with the community.

By KERRY REID

Stages of Survival is an occasional series focusing on Chicago theater companies, highlighting their histories and how they’re surviving—and even thriving—in a landscape that’s become decidedly more challenging since the 2020 COVID-19 shutdown.

There are theater companies who end up in neighborhoods by happenstance, often dictated by financial circumstances and available space. And then there are organizations like UrbanTheater Company (UTC) of Humboldt Park, whose mission is so entwined with the neighborhood that it’s di cult to imagine them being anywhere else than on Division Street, between the big metal Puerto Rican flags that serve as gateways for the community.

Founded in 2005 by Marilyn Camacho, Madrid St. Angelo, and Ivan Vega, UTC now operates under the triumvirate of executive director Vega, producing artistic director Miranda González, and company manager Tony Bruno. Their first production was a revival of Short Eyes by Miguel Piñero (the celebrated Puerto Rican playwright and cofounder of the highly influential Nuyorican Poets Café), directed by Court Theatre resident director Ron OJ Parson. After staging two more Piñero plays (The Sun Always Shines for the Cool and Eulogy for a Small Time Thief—both midwestern premieres), UTC has gone on to produce many other midwest and world premieres, as well as hosting comedians, musicians, multidisciplinary performances, and other events in their small storefront space—all with the purpose of embracing BIPOC working-class artists and audiences alike.

As González wrote in an essay for the Reader in 2020, “We’ve never had the privilege of putting up art, just for art’s sake. Our mere existence is a rebellious act. We exist because of need.” That dual sense of rebellion and celebration has been reflected in their programming, which has included Guadalís Del Carmen’s 2018 look at gentrification in Humboldt Park, Not for Sale, and González’s 2019

tribute to the glory days of the 1980s house music scene, Back in the Day , based on José “Gringo” Echevarría’s memoir The Real Dance Fever: Book One.

In October, UTC was one of 52 organizations in the U.S. to receive funding through a regranting program of the National Latinx Theater Initiative: $300,000 to be spread over three years. It’s the largest grant in the company’s history, and it’s allowed Vega, after almost 19 years with UTC, to begin drawing a full-time salary (he’s been employed by the Puerto Rican Cultural Center for 11 years), with Bruno and González taking part-time salaries. Though UTC had been planning a couple of years ago to move in as a resident company at the Nancy Franco Maldonado Paseo Boricua Arts Building, they are now thinking instead of buying a building in the neighborhood to build long-term stability. At the end of 2023, their operating budget was just under $389,000. Vega notes, “Being a part of an organization like this, I’ve been able to strengthen the skills that I could not utilize in any other larger theater for some reason. And I applied and I tried because I wanted that, and I knew that I needed those skills. But also in the very beginning, [we knew] that we wanted to be in Humboldt Park, we needed to be in Humboldt Park, and not only did we want to be a theater that existed in between these flags, but [we wanted to be] a theater that was really integrated in the fabric of the community.”

In last fall’s “Navigating Recovery: Arts and Culture Financial and Operating Trends in Chicago,” a study released by the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) and SMU DataArts, the report’s authors noted that, unlike other arts groups, BIPOC-led organizations had seen increases in individual donations and in hiring since the 2020 shutdown. As González notes, “For the majority of the folks who I know who are running BIPOC-founded and BIPOC-led organizations, we’ve grown. But that’s because of the fact that we were so underfunded that just $100,000 made a huge di erence in our opera-

tions and our ability to increase capacity.”

She also notes that she was a part of the theater advisory committee for the DCASE report.

“It got to a point where a lot of the larger [theaters] were telling [Mayor] Brandon Johnson, ‘We’re su ering and we’re having trouble getting people back.’ And I had to disrupt it. I was like, ‘Congo Square, are you having trouble getting people back?’ And [former Congo Square executive director Charlique Rolle] was like, ‘Nope.’ ‘Definition? Are you having trouble?’ We’re not suffering in the same ways. And I think that a lot of predominantly white institutions are people who don’t work with BIPOC theaters and don’t understand how rooted we are, not just in community, but how those communities are also our own. We see ourselves in them. So there’s a different type of reciprocity that occurs.”

That reciprocity was clear to me when I attended UTC’s Gay Panic (or Los Expulsados del Paraiso) in January. This devised show, codirected by González and Kidany Camilo, was presented largely in Spanish and both celebrated and sent up Latine LGBTQ+ culture and performance through music, personal stories, and videos, while also recognizing the threats faced by members of the community. (González’s love of, and gift for, devised theater was honed during her several years as a member of Teatro Luna, the former Chicago-based all-Latina performance troupe.)

While UTC doesn’t have a full-run production scheduled this spring, they are currently developing a major world premiere, Chicago Lore(s) , which is what González describes

as “an ethnographic play” about the Young Lords and the Black Panther liberation movements, written by Chicago actor Sammy A. Publes from several hours of interviews he conducted with Young Lord founder José “Cha Cha” Jiménez. González is collaborating with Publes and will direct. Part of it will be presented at UTC’s ongoing Real Aggressive Writing (R.A.W.) series in May.

Bruno says that a show like Gay Panic is “a perfect example of how Urban works. They came to us with a project idea before it was what it is now. They just had this idea and wanted to expand on it, but didn’t really know the process of getting it to a certain place.”

This weekend, comedian and solo artist Melissa DuPrey performs A Cabaret of Comedy, and later in the month, UTC hosts producer and friend Mike Oquendo’s presentation of the solo show Quarter Rican, written and performed by Gabriel Diego Hernández.

Vega says, “The hardest thing for us was getting the audience that was next door to us to value and come see our work. But over time, that trust was gained and they knew that if they wanted to see work that represented them, that was Puerto Rican, that was Latinx, that looked like them, it was us.” He also sees UTC as part of the larger economic ecosystem for the neighborhood. “How do we get people to come into our community and spend money in our community and then see a show? Because if they just come see our show and don’t spend money here, then we haven’t done our work.” v m

From le : Miranda González, José “Cha Cha” Jiménez, and Sammy A. Publes COURTESY URBANTHEATER COMPANY

THEATER

OPENING

Low-budget journey

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the NightTime doesn’t require high tech gadgetry.

British playwright Simon Stephens has been produced here so o en, he’s practically an honorary Chicagoan. So it’s perhaps puzzling that his adaptation of Mark Haddon’s 2003 novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which won the 2015 Tony Award for best play, has only been seen locally in a 2016 touring production with Broadway in Chicago and with Steppenwolf for Young Adults in 2018.

Part of why may be that the original production, directed by Tony-winner Marianne Elliott, used a daunting array of technical elements to illustrate the sensory overload experienced by protagonist Christopher Boone—a teenage boy with autism whose investigation into a neighbor’s dog’s death leads him on a hero’s journey of sorts from his small town to the heart of London, where navigating the tube is just one of the hurdles he faces.

This revival by MadKap Productions, directed by Steve Scott and starring Senn High School student Leo Spiegel as Christopher, is generally sturdy enough to hold one’s attention without the technical bells and whistles. While the Broadway production used complex light-up screens to illustrate Christopher’s journey (among other things inside his head), this production uses green lines and dots on moveable black backdrops.

Stephens’s script turns Haddon’s story into a play within a play, so Christopher’s teacher Siobhan (the sympathetic Danielle Kerr) serves as the mediator for his story. It’s not wholly effective, and nor is the line of “voices” at the back of the stage who awkwardly pop up as various neighbors, commuters, and other teachers from time to time. But the central relationship between Christopher and his beleaguered father, Ed (Michael Wollner), who has been hiding a major secret, is strong enough to generally carry us through some of the more wincing moments. —KERRY REID THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME

Through 4/21: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Wed 4/17 1:30 PM; Skokie Theatre, 7924 Lincoln, Skokie, 847-677-7761, skokietheatre.org, $42 ($38 seniors and students)

RThe Good, the sad, and the funny

A night in the mind of Jenny Magnus

Jenny Magnus, as a theater cofounder, surely has a lot on her plate: working at Curious Theatre Branch for 35 years, producing the amazing Rhino Fest, being a human in 2024. Perhaps that explains the existential angst she succumbs to in The Good (directed by Stefan Brün), a bare-bones solo show that examines our assumptions around morality and the roles we feel we must fulfill. But I like to think it’s more than that. I like to think it’s a lifelong predilection she has as a sensitive soul to overthink her role, her decisions, her relationships. To reflect back with a piercing sort of hindsight. To be a restless seeker of certainty in the most uncertain of ages and at the most uncertain age. Not because I wish that on anyone, but because that’s the same exact cocktail of circumstances and thought patterns that create my internal monologues, all of which line up with alarming accuracy with her observations about life.

The Good is a theoretical framework set in a play that o en breaks into song in the same way you might hum your way through a stressful driving scenario, just for courage. At the heart of the theory is black-andwhite thinking—or in Magnus’s case, red-and-blue thinking. She uses humor, music, and rapid-fire confessionals to explore the logic traps of polarized thought. She oozes claustrophobia—not towards the physical realm, but towards the situational, having trapped herself in a box of her own making. Well, to be fair, in society’s and her own making. And why and for what exactly? All for the expectation to be seen as good. This philosophical peek into Magnus’s brain is a familiar character study with an entertaining and moving new method of presentation, which turns away, towards, and against itself with gaper’s block fascination, like a snake eating its own tail. I so wish that she had had another hour to examine the implications of feminism, internalized misogyny, and radical self-acceptance upon her soul! But I am so glad she was able to sing through some of the meaty stuff, like “Do the secret shitty thing” (a perfect, passive-aggressive mantra for the disillusioned among us). Most impressively, a er the applause and hooting on opening night died down, she took a beat to say hello, welcome feedback through online communication, and say “Don’t look for me in the lobby. I’m heading home!” Just exactly what we all need a er a good night of thought-provoking theater. Hopefully followed by a good hot bath. —KIMZYN CAMPBELL THE GOOD Through 4/21: Fri-Sat 8 PM; also Sun 4/7 and 4/14 3 PM; Chicago Dramatists, 798 N. Aberdeen, curioustheatrebranch.com, pay what you can ($20 suggested donation)

Sign of love

Inanimate doesn’t quite blend all its whimsical elements.

All the ingredients for a whimsical look at unlikely love are in place in Nick Robideau’s Inanimate now in its local premiere at Theater Wit under Jeremy Wechsler’s direction. But like a Dairy Queen Blizzard that doesn’t have quite the perfect blend of creamy and crunchy, it’s ultimately short of satisfying.

A DQ is the setting for much of Robideau’s play about a young woman, Erica Grillo (J.G. Smith), who has fallen in love with the big red neon sign outside the fast-food joint. (The sign, called “Dee,” is played with stoic sensuality by Aaron Latterell.) Erica, whose sister Trish (Jodi Gage), a selectwoman in the town, has big plans for revitalizing downtown, ends up working at DQ when she’s fired for being amorous with a can opener at her grocery store gig. Her old high school friend, Kevin Russell (a splendid William Anthony Sebastian Rose II), who longs to be more than a friend, also works at the DQ. Eventually, they learn to see the connections between his pansexuality and her object sexuality (also known as “objectophilia”).

Robideau doesn’t treat Erica’s desires (represented by a trio of actors who portray a teddy bear, a lamp, and that sexy can opener, among other things) as a cheap punch line or as a sign of a darker psychological problem. That’s good. What’s not so good is the unevenness in tone in Wechsler’s production, which seems to both encourage us to simultaneously yuk it up over the personifications of Erica’s object crushes and to try to understand the roots of her desires. Parental loss seems to be suggested as one possible source (Trish and Erica’s mother died of cancer and their dad ran off years earlier), but it’s not fully developed.

But when the production pulls back from the over-

the-top object work and puts Rose and Smith together in simple heart-to-hearts, Inanimate finds a rich relatable vein. —KERRY REID INANIMATE Through 5/4: Thu-Sat

7 PM, Sun 2 PM; Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-975-8150, theaterwit.org, $36-$44 ($30 seniors and under 30)

R Jersey Boys sound even better up close

Mercury Theater Chicago’s production is transcendent.

I’ve seen Jersey Boys at least six times, which I mention not as a flex but for context. It’s a fantastic show, but over the years the various productions have blurred together and become interchangeable in my memory. That’s something unlikely to ever happen with the Mercury Theater’s spectacular take on the jukebox story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Directed by Brenda Didier and L. Walter Stearns (music direction by Eugene Dizon and Linda Madonia), the production has an emotional spectrum as vast as Valli’s four-plus octave vocal range.

Jersey Boys has previously only been seen hereabouts on the palatial Broadway in Chicago houses. On the smaller Mercury stage, the ensemble serves up intensely resonant emotional nuances you never get when there’s an orchestra pit and a few dozen (or hundred) people between you and the performers. Watching the Mercury’s Jersey Boys is akin to seeing the show in HDTV a er years of watching it on a Zenith.

Musically, the boys—vocal wunderkind Michael Metcalf as Valli, Broadway vet Adrian Aguilar as the swaggering Tommy DeVito, Jason Michael Evans as the tragically overlooked Nick Massi, and Andrew MacNaughton as pragmatic prodigy Bob Gaudio—hurtle some two dozen Jersey Boys hits not just out of the park but into the damn ionosphere.

The supporting cast is ridiculously fine. Trust me when I say you absolutely do not want to miss Adam Fane as the astrologically obsessed and fabulously dressed Bob Crewe. If scene-stealing were a crime, he’d be in the hoosegow.

And oh, that music. When the entire cast launches into the likes of “Who Loves You,” it’s a triumphant reminder of the galvanic power of live musical theater. —CATEY SULLIVAN JERSEY BOYS Through 7/28: Wed-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 7:30 PM; Sun 2 PM; also Sun 4/7 7:30 PM; Mercury Theater Chicago, 3745 N. Southport, 773-360-7365, mercurytheaterchicago. com, $70-$90

R Sound and movement in MERGE

Helen Lee’s curated LookOut performance series is a powerhouse.

Now in its third iteration, Steppenwolf’s LookOut Series invites a local dancer to curate performances over a two-week period. This time around, interdisciplinary artist

Helen Lee has put together the stellar MERGE, featuring two programs (one last weekend and one this weekend) that bring together sound and movement artists.

At the sold-out performance I attended on Saturday, bones fragile, an opening act of sorts—created and performed by Hannah Marcus and Milo Sachse-Ho eimer—set a watchful tone. The two artists, dressed in similar attire, moved through the black box space, o en in mirrored movements—laying on the floor or pushing and pulling against one another.

Using a microphone and a loop pedal, the artists’ vocalizations followed a human development–like trajectory, starting with nonverbal chants and moving into descriptions of memories. A er a burst of movement across the space, Marcus and Sachse-Ho eimer collapsed together, seemingly finding some comfort in the end.

Comfort doesn’t factor into Mitsu Salmon’s Desert Turtle, the headlining performance. Combining music created with Kikù Hibino, video projections, movement, and frank storytelling, Desert Turtle reflects on the artist’s mother’s migration from a subtropical city in Japan to the Mojave Desert. Salmon, an SAIC graduate who now lives in Utah, is a powerhouse. Mixing in vignettes about the creosote bush, desert turtles, the atomic bomb, and Salmon’s own foray into parenthood (at one point, she pumps her own breast milk), the audience was enraptured by the artist’s confident, moving artwork.

MERGE’s final weekend of performances offers something else entirely: an iteration of Cristal Sabbagh’s popular Freedom From and Freedom To, which pairs movement and sound artists in chance improvisations, followed by Kissing The Earth by Kinnari Vora. If Lee’s initial curation is any indication, it’s sure to be another magical night. —KERRY CARDOZA MERGE (PROGRAM 2) 4/4-4/6: Thu-Sat 8 PM; Steppenwolf 1700 Theater, 1700 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, steppenwolf.org, $35

R Trade secrets

The Unfair Advantage gives us a peek behind the cards.

When Harry Milas makes a royal flush materialize from the chaos of a deck we just inarguably saw shuffled at the hands of several of his 35 audience members, it’s not magic. Instead, he explains, it’s the work of magic’s slipperier, black sheep sister: card sharpery, better known as cheating.

Tomayto, tomahto. Either way, it’s one of many uncanny skills Milas displays as he explains how you too can make sure you wind up with a winning hand the next time you sit down to cards. At 16, Milas tells an audience gathered in a semicircle around a small card table in Steppenwolf’s otherwise empty Merle Reskin Garage space, he was working at “gaming control,” i.e., watching casino gamblers and alerting the authorities when he spotted a cheater.

But he found casinos to be “unpleasant places,” he notes, so these days, he’s putting his talents to work in the quietly astounding 70-minute show The Unfair Advantage, the first piece in years to set up shop in the bare-bones venue. The vibe is cozy (only 35 people are allowed in the audience per show), conversational (questions are encouraged), and convivial—to a point: You must sign an NDA before being allowed in.

Milas—his sleeves rolled up, hands always in view, that card table bare but for a deck of Bicycle cards that are inspected and reinspected, shuffled and reshuffled, cut and recut—is both a charming storyteller and a killer card sharp.

He doesn’t divulge all his secrets. A bit involving quarters is utterly boggling. Yet even when he explains precisely how he pulled four aces seemingly at random from a deck shuffled and reshuffled by multiple audience members, his sleight of hand is so quick and subtle that it looks, for all the world, like real magic. —CATEY SULLIVAN THE UNFAIR ADVANTAGE Through 4/21: Tue-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 7 and 9 PM, Sat 4, 7, and 9 PM, Sun 2, 4, and 7 PM; Steppenwolf Theatre Merle Reskin Garage, 1624 N. Halsted, unfairadvantage. show, $75-$85 v

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MAY 3

WITH NOFUN! AND HEBL

APR 11 JEFF ROSENSTOCK .... . THE SHED WITH SIDNEY GISH AND GLADIE

APR 20 WAXAHATCHEE ....... . THE SHE D WITH GOOD MORNING

APR 26 STRFKR ............ . THE SHE D WITH RUTH RADELET

MAY 4 BELLE & SEBASTIAN ... . THE SHE D WITH THE WEATHER STATION AND HALEY HEYNDERICKX

MAY 9 TREY ANASTASIO ..... . THE SHE D & CLASSIC TAB

MAY 10 THE TESKEY BROTHERS . THE SHE D WITH THE HEAVY HEAVY ON SALE NOW

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Have dinner with DeMar DeRozan

Two local filmmakers team up with the NBA all-star for Dinners with DeMar, a web series about mental health.

By NOËLLE D. LILLEY

For Ramone Hulet, Chicago will always be home. He’s one of the latest in a long list of filmmakers born and molded in the city, so when he got the opportunity to return to his hometown to produce a digital series on mental health starring Chicago Bulls forward DeMar DeRozan, he jumped at the opportunity.

Dinners with DeMar is a new web show following the six-time NBA All-Star as he sits down one-on-one with friends, many of them fellow basketball players, to discuss mental health. DeRozan made headlines in 2018 when he posted on X (formerly Twitter) about struggling with depression. Since then, he’s become a mental health advocate, particularly for Black men, who are statistically less likely to receive the support and services they need. It’s an issue close to the hearts of Hulet, a Black male filmmaker, and director Justin Casselle, an avid basketball fan who spent some of his formative years in Chicago.

“There’s this pull, there’s this tie that Chicago has on all of us,” Casselle says. The two are part of a growing Chicago transplant community in Los Angeles. Hulet says it’s hard to overstate what Chicago means to him, having influenced every part of his identity and work. Dinners with DeMar has three episodes out so far on YouTube with guests like Dwyane Wade and Draymond Green. The latest episode, released on March 19, features Damian Lillard and brings Hulet and Casselle back to Chicago. The guests are no strangers to public scrutiny for both positive and negative causes, from Wade’s unwavering advocacy for transgender youth to Green’s multiple controversial suspensions over on-court skirmishes. In the episodes, Green and Wade speak candidly about their experiences, shedding a rarely seen light on the reality that even the rich and famous have problems.

“Both D. Wade and Dame said [people] think because we have money, we’re OK,” Hulet explains. The Wade interview is a standout episode. Wade opens up about learning alongside and growing with his daughter, Zaya, who came out publicly as transgender in 2020. Wade has faced transphobic backlash for sup-

porting his child but has remained steadfast, even recently serving as an executive producer of The Dads, a short Netflix documentary following the fathers of trans children. Wade and DeRozan discuss the importance of admitting their mistakes to their children so that they can recognize their humanity.

Hulet was brought into the project by Podium Pictures, the Emmy Award–winning studio behind the documentary The Weight of Gold, which explores the mental health of Olympians like Michael Phelps. Hulet says Po-

dium Pictures and Brett Rapkin (The Weight of Gold director) brought him onto Dinners with DeMar with the intention of ensuring that a story focusing on Black men’s mental health would have Black men behind the camera, not just in front.

For Hulet and Casselle, it led them to refl ect on their own experiences. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, in the early 2010s, only 26.4 percent of Black and Hispanic men between the ages of 18 to 44 who experienced daily feelings of anxiety

(Top) Ramone Hulet; (bottom, from le ) Dwyane Wade, Justin Casselle, and DeMar DeRozan QURISSY/

PODIUM PICTURES

or depression were likely to have used mental health services, compared to 45.4 percent of non-Hispanic white men.

“It’s easy for fans to see [professional athletes] as superheroes and forget they are human,” Casselle says. “As someone who has dealt with mental health myself, it reminded me that the things I deal with aren’t specific to me.”

Both Casselle and Hulet have extensive experience working in short films, commercials, and more, but a digital series is new. They say a show that serves a purpose works best in a medium that’s accessible to everyone. However, working with celebrities who come with media training in tow can present different obstacles. The camera work in Dinners with DeMar is subtle and intimate, shot in blackand-white, making the viewer feel like a fly on the wall in a conversation between two friends. Casselle said it was a conscious e ort to put the show’s guests at ease by steering the overarching themes and direction of the series but not each individual conversation, as well as striking the balance between their comfort with the need for transparency.

“They all came in with larger-than-life stories. It was important to figure out where the line was and let them know that their wishes would be respected,” Casselle says. “Our goal is to be honest and raw, but also guests need to feel comfortable with such vulnerable convos.”

For Hulet, the show also highlights the pitfalls of “grind culture.” As an artist, he’s experienced firsthand the pressure to achieve success in a culture where one viral moment can change a creative’s life.

Ultimately, the two want the show to lead others, especially Black men, to keep having conversations like these.

“A lot of people will grind and neglect everything else,” Hulet says. “Well-rounded mental health a ects everything.” v

If you or someone you know needs mental health resources and support, please call, text, or chat with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline or visit 988lifeline.org for 24/7 access to free and confidential services.

m letters@chicagoreader.com

FILM

NOW PLAYING Baghead

Alberto Corredor’s Baghead has a lot of parallels with 2022’s Talk to Me, from directors Danny and Michael Philippou. In both films, the moral is, “Talking to dead people is a really bad idea—WTF is wrong with you?!”

It’s a solid horror premise, and Baghead (like its predecessor) exhibits a suitable ruthlessness in the follow-through. Unfortunately, it gets trapped in its own overcomplicated narrative contrivances, which suggest not the inevitable grip of death, but the endless try-hard of not-quite-baked genre product.

The concept is solid enough: pub owner Owen (Peter Mullan) dies, and his daughter Iris (Freya Allan) inherits the property. When she does, she discovers there’s a creature in the basement with a bag over its head who has the power to summon back the dead for two minutes. Grieving relatives, like local Neil (Jeremy Irvine), will pay exorbitant sums to speak to their lost loved ones. Iris, who is destitute, thinks she’s found the answer to all her problems. But of course, dealing with

R Easter Bloody Easter

If the seasonal glut of doe-eyed bunnies, jellybeans, and Jesus elicits more of an epic eye roll than an impetus to celebrate, as it does for me, know that producer-director-star Diane Foster sees you. Easter Bloody Easter has the budget of a B movie and the soul of a rabid rabbit that’s been inhaling nitrous.

eldritch evil has some serious downsides.

The rituals for summoning the dead are inventively disturbing, and the film’s characters follow the horror tradition of being selfish, naive, and self-destructive in ways that have you yelling advice and imprecations at the screen.

The problem is that in the third act, the story is ambushed by the curse of horror films: excessive exposition. Talk to Me was so successful in part because it let its dream logic unfold unimpeded by reason or rationale; it understood that the grave is terrifying in part because it has no explanation, only a simple, terrifying, and final end. In contrast, Baghead keeps wanting to tell you how everything works, whether through Neil, the witch, or the plot itself. Like the characters, the script insists on pulling off that bag and letting death talk. That’s illadvised. —NOAH BERLATSKY 94 min. Shudder

In all, this deliriously campy, wackadoodle tale of killer jackalopes unleashing their fury on a small, deeply Christian Texas town is a proper antidote for those of us who feel like an insulin shot would not be out of place amid the season’s annual barrage of cutesiness.

Easter Bloody Easter is certainly not The Birds (1963), although the antlered rabbits herein are similarly hell-bent on homicide. Still, this tale of a small-town southern gal who goes to war with an army of red-eyed demon lagomorphs is worth its weight—if not quite in gold, then certainly in boiled eggs, and I mean that as a total compliment.

It begins with an irreverent take on the tiredunto-exhausted trope that o en opens horror movies: a sex scene among nubile young things that ends in carnage. As quick as you can say, “Fuck me like a muffin-top, Jesus” (screenwriter Allison Lobel’s script is full of such gems), there’s a furry bloodbath.

Our heroine/final girl (more or less), Jeanie Cooper (Foster), is the first in town to sound the alarm about the homicidal cottontails running riot. In tried and true fashion, those who scoff at her wisdom are among the first to die.

And, oh, those death scenes: Cooper and Lobel (who also plays a manically controlling church lady) have worked in a riotously ridiculous tribute to The Rocky Horror Picture Show (featuring a rapper named Carrot Cake) that unfolds at the church lawn just before all rabbit

hell breaks loose. Before the bloodbath, the choreo is a hoot and a half.

Is this movie ridiculous throughout? Yes. But if you’re looking for an alternative to the machismo nonsense of the 1959 “classic” Ben-Hur and/or the seasonal onslaught of ill-advised Peter Rabbit adaptations, Foster has you covered. —CATEY SULLIVAN 104 min. Wide release on VOD

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

The latest Ghostbusters film is a direct sequel to 2021’s Ghostbusters: A erlife, but the opening chase sequence sets the scene for casuals outside the franchise’s inexplicably dedicated Gen X fanbase. Paul Rudd is the ersatz stepdad to Carrie Coon’s Ghostbusters family, with two grandkids of the departed Harold Ramis’s Egon Spengler, and the whole crew races through midday NYC traffic to capture a giant ghost beast wreaking havoc. Beloved though they are by the city’s populace, the nu-Ghostbusters are chastised by the mayor, played by William Atherton in the first of many returning roles from the 1984 original, and teenage Phoebe, played by Mckenna Grace, is prohibited from busting ghosts until she’s an adult. Grace is charming despite the material, playing the peculiar arc of a teen who’s rebelling against not being allowed into the family business as child labor and caught in a chaste same-sex ghost romance.

Dan Aykroyd brings his real-life enthusiasm for the paranormal to Ray Stantz, now the owner of a magic and antiquities shop. The once-and-future-’buster buys a cursed artifact from Kumail Nanjiani’s character—a burnout pawning family heirlooms—unleashing a centuries-old, overly serious mythological threat with the icy monochromatic aesthetic of mid-10s fantasy-chasing Game of Thrones. Patton Oswalt brings a similar sparkle to his few scenes as a librarian and paranormal expert, while James Acaster channels some of Bill Murray’s irony as a droll scientist in the ever-expanding Ghostbusters lab. The younger generation, like Celeste O’Connor and Stranger Things’s Finn Wol ard, aren’t given much to do in comparison, though Logan Kim’s Podcast has a few surprising bits of physical comedy. The parts, focus grouped though they may be, don’t add up to a movie

worth the two-hour runtime, but it’s a fun copy of a copy of Spielbergian family sci-fi adventure.

The film’s threat of environmental collapse hints at interesting intergenerational themes, like when Annie Potts, surveying a piece of public safety technology strained to its limits by neglect, says, “It was the 80s, we weren’t thinking about the future.” The emotional highpoint is Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson in a brief, tender dialogue about how to spend their retirement years, age visible on their faces. But by the climax, the four oldtimers, even Murray, are straining to shove the ghosts back in the same old machine, and Aykroyd and Hudson share a chuckle about their “golden years.” —JACK RIEDY PG-13, 115 min. Wide release in theaters

R La Chimera

“You were not meant for human eyes.” A chimera—not the fire-breathing hybrid monster from Greek myths—is colloquially understood as a symbol of our wildest dreams. It’s the unreachable desire that hovers above our grasp. It’s a visceral pull, stirring a grotesquely pure emotion that tethers us to the unabating march of time. In La Chimera, Alice Rohrwacher makes a film that asks, what do you do once you get that dream in your hands?

Arthur (Josh O’Connor), an unkempt Englishman in a cream-colored suit, awakens from a dream on a train. His detached demeanor unfurls as he wakes up, eventually frightening the young girls in his train car a er bucking at a peddler. He smokes his perennial cigarette alone until he arrives in Tuscany. Once there, Pirro (Vincenzo Nemolato) is waiting for his arrival, but Arthur is anything but pleased to see him—as well as the larger group of ruffians in town.

Instead, the one person he appears delighted to see is Flora (Isabella Rossellini), the mother of his late love Beniamina, who, in his dreams, is following a red string from her dress into the ground. Flora’s villa, though restrained, also exudes a dreamlike quality. The gaggle of Flora’s daughters bounce conversations off each other like a Greek chorus. And Flora keeps a live-in singing student, Italia (Carol Duarte), who is dismissed as tone-deaf and distracted. This is our first taste of the magical undertones enmeshed in La Chimera

Not long a er, we infer that Arthur is a former archaeologist, and the motley crew from before are tombaroli, grave robbers pillaging Etruscan relics to make a living. Arthur’s archaeological prowess is otherworldly; he’s referred to by his coconspirators as a mystic who can find bountiful gravesites with a T-shaped branch.

The first half of La Chimera swallows you. Its style and subtle fantasies thicken until suddenly, you are thoroughly enmeshed with the whimsical tombaroli. The movie picks up as Arthur’s dreams of Beniamina intensify, as Arthur and Italia’s affinity for each other grows, and as the tombaroli discover a priceless statue in a grave beneath the beach. It’s an intense marvel, strung together by the very act of yearning. —MAXWELL RABB 130 min. Gene Siskel Film Center v

La Chimera GENE SISKEL FILM CENTER

Baghead REINER BAJO/SHUDDER

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CHICAGOANS OF NOTE

Melon Sprout, ceramicist and noise artist

“I’ve always appreciated the sounds that ceramics make when you’re eating out of them and the clinking and everything, but I hadn’t considered that it would be chill if you, like, forcibly amplified that.”

As told to MICCO CAPORALE

Noise artist Melon Sprout lives to create new sounds. In 2018, they moved from a Boston suburb to Chicago to study at the School of the Art Institute, where they focused on ceramics and analog synthesis. They never planned to combine the two; it was just a happy accident that during a pandemic-lockdown jam session with friends, a hot mike landed in one of Sprout’s sculptures and created feedback so rapturously bizarre that it sent them down a sonic rabbit hole from which they never want to emerge.

Since then, Sprout has delved into the vast and diverse history of ceramic instruments. Out of this study has emerged their own practice of instrument making, and they’ve showcased their handmade creations at more than 30 frenzied concerts at Tritriangle, Not Not, and other DIY spaces. Their February release Collected Ceramic Memories (Blorpus Editions) is a diary of sound exercises that captures the range of these instruments’ otherworldly possibilities. The sound might be wet, sharp, playful, or corroded—but it’s always distinctly Melon Sprout.

When I came here, I was really thrilled with how Chicago supports all of our artistic endeavors. It’s really easy to communicate your passion to people and find others to share it with here. In Boston, I wasn’t part of a community of artists and didn’t know anyone personally who was remotely queer. I felt pretty isolated and wanted to medically transition. Learning about SAIC and Chicago, I saw there’s such a thriving scene of artists who collaborate without a lot of unnecessary professional hierarchy—you don’t have to jump through as many hoops to communicate with other artists.

New Englanders are cold—[they] really brush people o . That’s how I was raised. People don’t want to talk to you if they don’t know

with myself for making a lot of sculptures that didn’t have a function. I want to be able to return to my ceramics and view them again and again, the way that you view a mug every day. When you choose that mug for co ee in the morning, you’re thinking about nothing else but “I want this mug!” And then you feel it in your hands. And that’s very important. And it shapes your entire day. Or maybe you don’t think about it at all, and you just grab it. And it’s a subconscious support that is nourishing you. I really was excited that a sculpture could become an instrument in a similar way. I had a casual background in piano and gui-

tar—so a very rudimentary understanding of music theory. Really, really rudimentary. That kind of helped me. But as I was coming back to music-making with physical instruments like guitar and bass, my roommate and I were making music with my partner. There was a very hot microphone, and it made some feedback. My roommate put the microphone inside one of my ceramic sculptures—it was kind of a column, like a three-foot-tall pipe—and the air pressure inside of that column changed the pitch of the microphone, which was feeding back.

I became really interested in how di erent

you. And even if they do, good luck getting them to listen.

Boston art culture is very steeped in whiteness—as it is everywhere. But because of how old Boston is, it’s just a lot harder to find your community and voice outside of that [whiteness], at least for me. I was told that in Chicago there were more opportunities to be expressive or experimental without institutionalized funding—more opportunities for artistic endeavors that are based on a person-to-person passion rather than part of large public arts projects. No negativity towards that; it’s just a bit inaccessible.

I was dedicated to the visual arts in high school, so my teachers really encouraged me to go to Chicago. I was painting and drawing, but I knew I wanted to explore ceramics because Chicago has a lot to offer for that.

I’ve always appreciated the sounds that ceramics make when you’re eating out of them and the clinking and everything, but I hadn’t considered that it would be chill if you, like, forcibly amplified that. Through 2020, I’d been doing a lot of movement work that felt like searching for a way to connect these ceramic sculptures I’d been making to a purpose.

“Ceramics have always been an extension of my physical body to me, so when I perform, I really want to emphasize that.”

I love that ceramics can be functional, and I was upset

Melon Sprout demonstrates a hybrid ceramic instrument that combines a trumpet and drums. CLARK WOODS

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vessel shapes can function to change the pitch of microphone feedback. Ceramic already makes so many sounds when you don’t want it to. I grew really interested in the resonance of ceramic when it was struck and ceramic instruments in general.

Early in 2018, I had started experimenting with sound-making with digital audio workstations and software instruments. I was really curious how music is made. Before coming to Chicago, I had only experienced music through, like, radio and Spotify. I was hearing celebrities’ songs, but I didn’t understand where the sounds come from and what makes some stand out over others.

I studied analog synthesis in school, but once I was taught how songs on the radio are made, I was kind of like, “OK, I’m not really interested in that. I’m actually interested in experimental sounds that no one’s ever heard before.” My excitement over sound is learning a sound’s source. I’ve never heard a sound like the feedback that comes out of ceramics.

I started learning about this rich world history of ceramic instruments. There have

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been a lot of ceramic instruments, especially in Africa. I’m really captivated by the water whistle, which many countries have, but I’m especially drawn to a lot of Mexican water whistles. They use the air pressure created by pushing an open vessel form into a body of water. The water can be small, like a little bowl of water, or a great big lake—but it pushes air out of a pot that’s a whistle.

You could have a bottle that’s an open form with a lip chiseled on its edge, like a flute. The bottle could be bottomless, so you could push the air via the water as you push this bottle into the water. It forces air up into that skinny channel. And through this whistlelike aperture, you have a flutelike mouthpiece. Many of them have di erent bellies, so they take a lot of di erent forms. They sound very, very interesting.

Some of these water whistles are very large and have bottoms, so you can pour water into them and shake the water around. You know, maybe it has three bellies in the pot. You can move the water from one belly to the other, and it will create di erent tones or di erent pitches in the whistle, because there’s di erent pressures of air. If you’re playing the flute, you’re

changing the notes with your fingers by changing the amount of air in the vessel—you’re changing the pressure and pitch of each note.

I also think the Indian ghatam is a really, really powerful instrument. It’s just a very well-made pot that is quite large and has some brass filings in it, nothing more. And there are—I don’t love the word “master,” but there are master ghatam makers in India who create these traditional instruments that are very important in Carnatic and Hindustani [music]—basically classical south and north Indian music, which I really enjoy.

The music is very hypnotizing, and I really value a tradition of melodic reference that’s not hierarchical but more based in virtuosity. The ghatam is one I’m thinking a lot about right now, because it’s pretty discrete yet you can get incredible tones just by striking it.

The udu is a similar instrument. It’s just a pot with a hole in the belly. It’s also used in India and I believe some West African traditions. I don’t think I could choose just one instrument that I’m most influenced by, though.

I organize a lot of shows and am really excited when sharing my instruments. They exist to be performed with. Performances are really interactive, and the instruments mystify people. People always come up and ask me questions afterward, and that’s the kind of engagement I’ve always wanted. When recording, I try to do as little overdubbing and editing as possible to preserve the connection to the live sound. This summer I’m trying to perform in as many places as I can. A lot of people are making ceramic instruments, and I would really like to connect with them in ways where I can further document and showcase our experiences as music and sound makers.

I chose the name Melon Sprout when I came out. I don’t think anything else is weird enough for me. [ Laughs. ] I get a lot of dysphoria performing with, like, a costume or a moniker. When I perform, it’s just me—I don’t have to be anything else.

“Ceramic already makes so many sounds when you don’t want it to. I grew really interested in the resonance of ceramic when it was struck and ceramic instruments in general.”

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I really like the way that clay relates to the body. I think most potters and ceramicists do. Pot parts are named like the body—a vase can have a long neck, a big belly, and so on. Ceramics have always been an extension of my physical body to me, so when I perform, I really want to emphasize that. I’ve even started putting charms inside my shaker boxes— like little sprouts—so that when they’re broken, the charms explode out, and there’s that connection back to me. v

m

mcaporale@chicagoreader.com

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THE SECRET HISTORY OF CHICAGO MUSIC

Hip Linkchain played blues guitar like he meant it

He was more journeyman than star, but his raw west-side style continues to reverberate 35 years a er his death.

By STEVE KRAKOW

Since 2005 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.

Winter is technically over, but March in the midwest never agrees—as I write this, Chicago is still seeing occasional flurries and temperatures below freezing. So I’ll obey the spirit of the law, not its letter, and publish one last entry in the Secret History of Chicago Music’s Winter Blues series. Singer and guitarist Hip Linkchain didn’t just have one of the best stage names in the business— he was a no-bullshit bluesman to his core, and he played with many of the canonical talents of the genre.

Willie Lee Richard, the future Hip Linkchain, was born November 10, 1936, in Yazoo County, Mississippi, just northwest of Jackson, and grew up picking cotton in the tiny nearby town of Louise. Depending on how you draw your borders, Louise is in or near the Mississippi Delta region, the birthplace of many a great blues artist, and as a kid Linkchain heard and was inspired by the likes of Elmore James, Little Milton, and Sonny Boy Williamson II. Linkchain got the nickname “Hipstick” as a lad, but I haven’t found any sources that agree about why. His father, reputed to have been seven feet tall, liked to wear logging chains around his neck—white folks took to calling him “Linkchain,” and his son adopted it as part of his stage name (though some recordings bill him as “Linkchan” or “Lankchan”).

Linkchain moved to Chicago at age 18 and got right to work in the city’s blues clubs, mostly on the west side. In the latter half of

the 50s he was inspired by Jimmy Rogers, Magic Sam, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, and other heavy hitters active at the time. He developed a solid but unflashy style, well-crafted and distinguished by deep feeling. Linkchain often gigged with harmonica players, including Lester Davenport, Little Willy Foster, and Dusty Brown—for a time he and his bassist brother, Jug, were members of Brown’s regular band.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Linkchain found quite a few opportunities to record, especially considering he was generally more journeyman than star. His first sessions, with Brown’s band, produced a 1959 single on Bandera (and all four tracks from those sessions would be released on a compilation decades later). Linkchain committed one of his own bands to vinyl for the first time in 1966, when “Hips Linkchan & the Chicago Twisters” (as their name appears on the hub label) released a single via an almost completely forgotten local imprint called Lola’s Recording Co. On the A side, “Millionaires Blues,” Linkchain’s guitar rings out with raw ri s and bell-toned solos, making for as fine an example of blistering Chicago blues as you’ll hear anywhere.

The Twisters single doesn’t credit a singer, but lore has it that a young Tyrone Davis fronted the band. This seems plausible—Brown claimed he’d given the future soul star his first gigs, and at the time Linkchain often played in Brown’s band. Davis wouldn’t release his own first single till two years later.

Linkchain’s second single, which arrived in 1969, doesn’t have any credits either. (It came out on a di erent local label, the equally tiny Sanns Records.) He released his first proper LP, 1977’s I Am on My Way , through French label MCM Records, which put out a slew of vital Chicago blues recordings in 1976 and ’77. (Danish imprint Storyville reissued it nearly two decades later.) Thankfully it included liner notes, so we know that Linkchain recorded it live on November 1, 1976, at Ma Bea’s at Madison and Sacramento. His blown-out guitar is absolutely feral, and the first time I heard his unhinged solos they literally made my jaw drop. He’s backed by guitarist Jimmy Miller, bassist Ernest Gatewood, and drummer Tyrone Centuray, and together they sound like a roof-on-fire house party I wish I’d been at. Several unused tracks from the same performance appear on the 1977 compilation Chicago Blues Nights Vol. 1, which also includes future Linkchain collaborator Jimmy Dawkins. Among the other essential Chicago blues comps that feature Linkchain’s recordings are 1979’s Chicago Jump (which features all four Bandera sides) and 1980’s The Blues Guitar Album (where he keeps company with Jimmie Lee Robinson, Jimmy Rogers, and Buddy Guy).

The 1980 collection Hip Lankchan: Original Westside Chicago Blues Guitar combines a few of his hard-to-find singles with unissued cuts and even some acoustic demos.

Linkchain released his first album of new studio-recorded material, Change My Blues , in 1981 on Illinois label Teardrop. He’s backed by legendary pianist Pinetop Perkins, guitarist Rich Kirch, bassist “Right Hand” Frank Bandy, and drummer Fred Grady, which makes for a more polished sound—but Linkchain’s spindly, gritty guitar moves still threaten to push things into the red.

The early 80s were good years for Linkchain’s music career. He and his idol Jimmy Rogers recorded an album of acoustic countryblues guitar duos, Stickshift , on October 6, 1982, at Soto Sound Studio in Evanston. That same year Linkchain released a blazing full-band live LP split with fellow west-side guitar hero Jimmy Dawkins, titled Jimmy and Hip Live! and issued by Illinois label Rumble (founded by Craig Moore, former bassist for long-ago Secret History subjects Ilmo Smokehouse). Also in ’82, he and Dawkins recorded the studio album West Side as guitarists in the Oasis Band, and original copies sell for an average of $54 through Discogs today.

STEVE KRAKOW FOR CHICAGO READER

Unfortunately, the blues world wouldn’t get to hear how far Linkchain could ride that hot streak. His swan song would be his 1987 album Airbusters , released by Dutch label Black Magic. Recorded between ’84 and ’87, it combines more sessions from Soto with live cuts from venerable north-side club B.L.U.E.S. (which has stayed closed since the arrival of COVID but might yet reopen with a new owner). Linkchain played with three di erent lineups across the record, and his sidemen included great players such as pianist Barrelhouse Chuck and drummer Robert “Huckleberry Hound” Wright.

Blues scholar David Whiteis nailed it with his Reader review in 1988: “Hip is most effective when he’s either evoking his music’s acoustic roots—as in ‘Bed Bug Blues’ or ‘Bad News’—or driving straight ahead with rawedged west-side blues energy,” he writes. “In the standard ‘Blow Wind Blow,’ his guitar solo unleashes an intensity that is more muted on his medium-tempo numbers.”

Linkchain passed away in Chicago at age

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52 on February 13, 1989, from a cancer called mesothelioma that’s strongly associated with asbestos exposure. But his legacy persists. A 2000 rerelease of Eddie C. Campbell’s 1985

LP The Baddest Cat on the Block includes six Linkchain tracks recorded in 1976, and his own albums are still being reissued as well. Linkchain’s music continues to appear on compilations, at least as recently as The Chicago Blues Box 2 in 2017. Though he’s not as well-known as some of his collaborators—I’m thinking especially of Dawkins, Rogers, and Perkins— that’s exactly why I wrote this story. Not many musicians get more famous 35 years after they die, but here’s hoping the winds blow fair for Linkchain and he ascends to guitar- god status. v

The radio version of the Secret History of Chicago Music airs on Outside the Loop on WGN Radio 720 AM, Saturdays at 5 AM with host Mike Stephen. Past shows are archived at outsidetheloopradio.com/tag/secrethistory-of-chicago-music.

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PICK OF THE WEEK

Chicago indie band the Courts could give rock radio an orbital boost

COURTS, NORTH BY NORTH, LLO LLO, ST. MARLBORO

Thu 4/4, 9 PM, Cole’s Bar, 2338 N. Milwaukee, $15, $13 in advance. 21+

CHICAGO INDIE-ROCK BAND the Courts have been releasing music for less than two years—usually a single every few months—but their towering, high-energy psychedelic sound has won people over in a hurry. They might not have the biggest fan base in town, at least not yet, but they’ve attracted some illustrious supporters: when they headlined Sleeping Village in August to celebrate the release of the chamber-pop epic “Don’t Let It Melt You,” midwest shoegaze icon Scott Cortez helped open the show with his cultishly beloved Astrobrite project. In January, the Courts dropped their debut EP, Is a Place (Maladaptive), whose

noisy fog of dreamlike guitar ri s feels like it slows down time even as the band’s succinct hooks propel you into the present with supersize radio-friendly pop. In “On Yr Mind,” bassist Nick Litman churns up giddy energy with a simple but seductive ascending lick; drummer Shravan Raghuram snaps o a crisp two-note fill that’s the cue for guitarist and front man Korgan Robb to stomp on all his pedals and propel the song to the stars on a flaming pillar of distortion. If you need proof that rock radio playlists aren’t determined by merit, all you need to know is that “On Yr Mind” isn’t already on the airwaves everywhere. —LEOR GALIL

THURSDAY4

Courts See Pick of the Week at le . North by North, Llo Llo, and St. Marlboro open. 9 PM, Cole’s Bar, 2338 N. Milwaukee, $15, $13 in advance. 21+

Lao Dan See also Sun 4/7. Tonight Dan plays two sets with his Chicago Quartet: bassist Joshua Abrams, pianist Mabel Kwan, and percussionist Michael Zerang. 8:30 PM, Elastic Arts, 3429 W. Diversey #208, $15, $10 with student ID. b

Lao Dan’s Bandcamp page offers three descriptions of his music: “free improvisation, Chinese New Folk music, Modern pioneer music.” The first two are accurate, and though I don’t know what he means by the third, it rings truest. Dan picked up the alto saxophone and the bamboo flute in his youth, and he showed such promise on the latter that he majored in it at the Shenyang Conservatory of Music. Rather than pursue a career as an orchestral musician, though, Dan chose a nonconformist path, applying his substantial technical skills to more exploratory ends. He’s added outboard effects and a piercing Chinese double-reed horn called the suona to his tool kit, which he employs in a variety of mostly improvised settings where idioms may clash (assuming anyone is operating in an idiom at all). His trio Red Scarf plays metallic math rock, and the duo bBb bBb mixes up traditional gestures and squelchy electronics. One recent solo recording, Empty Mountain Calling Suite, is an unsentimentally respectful combination of Chinese classical aesthetics and modern extended techniques; Shaolin Iron Leg Stunt, on the other hand, is dense harsh noise studded with samples of fight-scene dialogue.

Recordings from Dan’s 2018 U.S. visit tilt heavily toward free jazz. On Live in Somerville, an encounter with bassist Damon Smith and drummer Luther Gray, he moves among coarse sax cries, densely drawn suona trills, and pungent flute flurries that alternately match timbres with or surf over the surging rhythms of the other players. Dan’s first concerts in Chicago are mostly opportunities to improvise with locals, but he’ll also renew his collection with Smith, whose attuned, emphatic playing made him the standout collaborator on Dan’s 2018 recordings. On Thursday, April 4, Dan will play two sets in a quartet with bassist Joshua Abrams, pianist Mabel Kwan, and percussionist Michael Zerang. On Sunday, April 7, Dan and Zerang will play with Smith.

—BILL MEYER

FRIDAY5

Pelada JS Alvarez opens. 9:30 PM, Sleeping Village, 3734 W. Belmont, $23, $18 in advance. 21+

If Chicago hardcore legends Los Crudos made acid house, they’d sound like Pelada. On their second album, September’s Ahora Más Que Nunca (New Label), the Montreal-based duo pair ferociously political lyrics with elements of techno, industrial, reggaeton, and jazz, creating a sound that unifies the liberatory drives at the hearts of multiple underground party scenes. “Cerdo” is an anticop anthem Recommended

OSMAN SYED

that could score the training-for-battle montage that precedes an action film’s big Matrix -style brawl, while “Agua ≠ Mercancía” decries the privatization of water against a drum ’n’ bass beat. “Cállate la Jeta” opens with a gush of shimmering liquid audio that gives way to a D-beat–style rhythm overlaid with scuzzy synthesizers and scorching vocals, and its lyrics rail against all the people and institutions who need to shut the fuck up. This is music for moshing at the rave—a soundtrack for people on acid and molly to heave themselves into one another as they chase the freedom of being alive, whether they’re wearing latex or dip-dyed tees.

Opening for Pelada is JS Alvarez, who helps run mutant techno party Research & Development, which has bounced between Smart Bar, the Whistler, Podlasie Club, and various underground spaces since 2017. Between these two acts, this night is guaranteed to work you into a mechanical frenzy that’ll make you want to brick a Starbucks on the way home. —MICCO CAPORALE

Scarface 8 PM, Ramova Theatre, 3520 S. Halsted, $49.50-$59.50, meet and greet $149.50, “Scarface Experience” $549.50. 18+

Street music can sound like soul or even gospel when it’s done right. Houston rapper Scarface, born Brad Jordan, has been serving up beautifully constructed noir rap since the late 80s. He’s since become your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper and a fixture on any list of the best lyricists of all time.

Face’s songs are poetic, tragic, and cathartic all at once. He paints vivid and o en violent images, embracing life and death with scholarly accuracy. Suicidal ideation, religion, cautionary tales, and gangsta motivation define his catalog, yet his wisdom and acceptance provide a sobering beauty and have contributed to his relatable longevity.

A true OG with immense talent, Face has been a member of southern hardcore rap group Geto Boys since 1989, and he was part of their classic lineup with Willie D and the great Bushwick Bill (who

passed away in 2019). A proven lyrical standout, Face went on to release iconic solo albums, including one of my personal favorites, 2002’s The Fix , which features Jay-Z, Nas, and some signature Ye production. Face’s Chicago ties also extend to the underground; in 2010 he discovered Chicago rapper Griffen on Twitter (of all places) and signed the unsung legend to his FaceMob record label.

In December 2023, Face performed an exceptional NPR Tiny Desk set, and this spring he’s hitting the road to channel that experience for his fans in person. Along with rapping, he’ll be leading a full band and playing guitar. Face’s storytelling, musicianship, and authenticity make him an indisputable architect of street rap, and the chance to hear him bring his classic tracks to life in a new form is a rare treat. —CRISTALLE BOWEN

Zombi Overcalc and Ryan Sullivan open. 8 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, $20. 18+

Zombi bassist and keyboardist Steve Moore and drummer A.E. Paterra have carved out a specific niche for themselves. Inspired by hard rock, 70s space rock, and the synth-driven scores to decades of spooky movies, the Pittsburgh duo have created a series of albums that each serve as a gripping soundtrack to a film that only exists in dreams. Formed in 2001, they’ve gradually become a slow-burning band, dropping a new record only every four or five years. That made the announcement of their seventh, Direct Inject (out last month on Relapse), a much-anticipated event.

The title track opens the album with a jaunty little synth-pop flourish that wouldn’t be out of place in a late-80s video-game soundtrack (I also sense a bit of Rush homage), while “So Mote It Be” has a hint of boogie swagger and a dark, noirish tone. Breezy saxophone snakes its way through synth ripples and rolls in the hazy intro to “Sessuale II,” which suggests a seabird skimming the waves in the opening credits of a yacht-rock murder mystery; then the horn fades out and the song turns into a

softcore porn soundtrack. In stark contrast, “The Post-Atomic Horror” is the sort of thick, chunky riff monster that’s earned Zombi well-justified comparisons to Blue Öyster Cult—both groups can tell a grand, frightening sci-fi horror tale without words. The eerie, elegiac opening of “Insurmountable Odds” builds to a proggy trek through landscapes sketched in pencil, revealing cold stars and craggy cliffs. Then, at about the five-minute mark, Zombi introduce a new element: an aurora, perhaps, or at least a sign of hope, as the rhythm winds down and eventually blinks out altogether. “Sessuale I” closes the record with a circular, trancelike lick as darkness falls. In January, Moore told Stereogum that Zombi wrote “Sessuale II” and “Sessuale I” in the early 00s but didn’t officially release them at the time. So you could take the pairing of new and old on Direct

Inject as Zombi’s spin on an infinite time loop—which is thematically very fitting. —MONICA KENDRICK

SUNDAY7

Brittany Bindrim Panic Priest and DJ Jeff Moyer open. 8 PM, Sleeping Village, 3734 W. Belmont, $15, $12 in advance. 21+

Decades a er the golden era of Wax Trax!, Chicago’s electro-goth-rock and darkwave scenes continue to thrive. Brittany Bindrim stands out among a rising crop of eclectic acts that includes Replicant, Panic Priest, Kill Scenes, I Ya Toyah, and Iron Years. Though she’s the front person of long-running

Lao Dan COURTESY THE ARTIST Pelada REBECCA STORM

Brittany Bindrim EMILY GUALDONI

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continued from p. 41

electro-pop and industrial group I:Scintilla, where her crisp vocals add panache to the band’s pummeling rhythms, she’s also beginning a promising solo career.

After teasing fans with a series of singles, Bindrim released her debut solo album, Velella Velella, last month on Metropolis. The title nods to her new musical path—it’s the taxonomic name of a vividly blue, jellyfish-like sea creature, also called a “by-the-wind sailor,” that dri s with the wind using a sail-like vane atop its body and can end up far from home. “One Fixed Point” is awash in atmospheric flourishes and Bindrim’s breathy vocals, while on “Volcano” she switches to a more straightforward delivery paired with symphonic synths for a track that would’ve fit right in at Neo. “Currents” could even pass as a B side to Madonna’s 1998 goth-pop staple, “Frozen.” Velella Velella features the handiwork of producer Matt McJunkins, who’s been a touring or studio member of A Perfect Circle, Puscifer, the Beta Machine, Eagles of Death Metal, and the band of metal-pop crossover artist Poppy—he stamps Bindrim’s work with a layered rock-forward approach that speaks to his résumé. This Sleeping Village show is a belated record-release party.

—SELENA FRAGASSI

Civitas Ensemble 2 PM, Holtschneider Performance Center, Allen Recital Hall, 2330 N. Halsted, $30, $20 seniors, $3 students. b

Last month, Pilsen-based composer and violinist Jessie Montgomery made history as the first Black composer awarded the Grammy for Best Contemporary Classical Composition, winning for her work Rounds . The recognition feels like an appropriately gilded capstone to her fruitful tenure as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Mead composerin-residence, a position she’s held since July 2021. This spring, Montgomery ends her CSO stint with a bang—several, in fact. On May 3, Third Coast Per-

cussion will unveil her new work for percussion quartet, Study No. 1, in a program that also spotlights Montgomery as a violinist. May 30 through June 1, the CSO’s fearless principal percussionist, Cynthia Yeh, will premiere Montgomery’s new concerto, Procession, with the orchestra.

Before all that, Civitas Ensemble will salute Montgomery in a program inspired by friendship. (The group’s core members are pianist Winston Choi and two CSO string players, violinist Yuan-Qing Yu and cellist Ken Olsen.) The selections include Montgomery’s restively inventive Duo for Violin and Cello (2015), which she wrote for herself and cellist Adrienne Taylor. Though the work is by now a vintage piece in her catalog, its immediacy and hearton-sleeve ardor hold up against any of her recent chamber opuses. Olsen and featured guest Yeh will bring to life Distance (2017), an elegiac cello and marimba duo by prolific, variegated composer and Wheaton College professor Shawn Okpebholo, which memorializes his late friend and colleague Roger Lundin. Choi will sit out this concert, but for its second half Yu and Olsen have invited three CSO colleagues to join them for Schubert’s great String Quintet, D. 956, which is scored for an unusual group with two cellos: violinist and Music of the Baroque concertmaster Gina DiBello, violist WeiTing Kuo, and cellist Brant Taylor. —HANNAH EDGAR

Lao Dan See Thu 4/4. Dan headlines in a trio with bassist Damon Smith and percussionist Michael Zerang; a duo of bass clarinetist Emily Rach Beisel and drummer Bill Harris opens. 9 PM, Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont, $15. 21+

Dreamwell Thotcrime, Wounded Touch, and Teeth Kids open. 8 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $17, $14 in advance. 17+

Providence five-piece Dreamwell describe themselves as “emo post skramz,” but I’m hard-pressed

to hear anything but screamo on their October album, In My Saddest Dreams, I Am Beside You (Prosthetic). Sure, the record opens with a sweeping, sentimental melody, clean vocals, and a layer of ornamental guitar that sounds like wind chimes tinkling in the breeze—but Dreamwell give that moment only enough time for the bait and switch to work when they dive into a torrent of pummeling rhythms and scorched screams. (Admittedly, you might’ve suspected as much of a song called “Good Reasons to Freeze to Death.”) Throughout Saddest Dreams , Dreamwell take every identifying feature of emo and blow it up to staggering proportions: spindly guitars played at lacerating speeds, drums that blur into a roar like Blue Line trains pulling into Damen, and feral caterwauls that make you worry about whoever they’re coming out of. I don’t care what Dreamwell want to call what they’re doing as long as more bands follow their lead. —LEOR GALIL

MONDAY8

Early Moods Morbikon open. 7 PM, Live Wire Lounge, 3394 N. Milwaukee, $17.82. 21+

Early Moods were formed by members of the Los Angeles death- and thrash-metal scene in 2015. But the band’s classic hard-rocking doom metal sounds so fresh it’s tempting to imagine an Encino Man scenario—maybe they were frozen solid in a freak ice storm in the 70s, only to thaw out a half century later well-rested and ready to go hard. On their second full-length, A Sinner’s Past (out last month on RidingEasy), the five-piece worship at the amps of Scorpions, Coven, Candlemass, and other stalwarts, modifying the ancient liturgy with newer heavy influences that include thick grunge guitar and power-metal ballads. The riffs are solid, the swagger is on point, and if you already like horror and occult tales, you’ll love them from the pipes of vocalist and keyboardist Alberto Alcaraz. I haven’t had a chance

to catch Early Moods in action yet, but I’ve seen some live videos—and judging from those clips, few places in Chicago this Monday night will be more fun than their Live Wire show.

—JAMIE LUDWIG

FRIDAY12

LTJ Bukem MC Armanni Reign, Stunna, and Northside open. 10 PM, Smart Bar, 3730 N. Clark, $25, $20 in advance, $20 with student ID before 12 AM. 21+

LTJ Bukem is the kind of talent that’s made Smart Bar an institution. If you’re looking for a drum ’n’ bass legend, he’s it. The British DJ brings a breezy, jazzy atmosphere to Detroit-style techno that feels dreamy and contemplative, and his emphasis on liquidity over density helps create a sound that’s both streetwise and sophisticated. His DJ name (pronounced “book ’em”) comes from the classic police procedural Hawaii Five-O ; the show’s protagonist, Steve McGarrett (played by Jack Lord), would shout the catchphrase “Book ’em, Danno!” to his partner upon apprehending a bad guy. That pop-culture nod grounds Bukem’s music in the interstitial party spaces of the early-90s British rave scene, where he combined his formal training as a classical pianist with his jazz-funk background to challenge the intense breakbeats that dominated the era’s speakers.

Bukem’s vision was to make things slower, stretchier, and smoother. Throughout his career, he’s used elements of jazz fusion, dubstep, and ambient music to distinguish himself as a vibe master for all things mellow, sexy, and cool. He was one of the first electronic DJs to use nature sounds (usually birds) in dance tracks, and his sets o en include live vocals and slow breakdowns. As a performer, Bukem is frequently described as relaxed and unpretentious—a real DJ’s DJ who dresses modestly, loses himself while mixing, and delights in every sonic glimmer

Dreamwell JARED SHUTE

Ken Olsen and Yuan-Qing Yu of Civitas Ensemble SANDRO MILLER

and curve that helps night wanderers welcome the light. As the headliner on a bill that includes local drum ’n’ bass explorers MC Armanni Reign, Stunna, and Northside, Bukem won’t take the tables till late—but this once-in-a-lifetime producer is well worth the wait. —MICCO CAPORALE

SATURDAY13

Dear Nora 9 PM, Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont, $15. 21+

Singer-songwriter Katy Davidson cofounded Dear Nora in Portland, Oregon, at the end of the 90s. By then the Pacific Northwest had already produced an outsize amount of storied indie rock, but in the liner notes for the 2020 Orindal Records reissue of the 2008 Dear Nora rarities compilation Three States, Davidson wrote that the group formed without knowing about any of it. “Our favorite bands and artists—and a source of deep inspiration at the time—were Weezer, Liz Phair, Guided by Voices, They Might Be Giants, R.E.M., Cub, and U2,” Davidson wrote. “My main source of music news was SPIN magazine. We hadn’t even heard of K Records.”

Based in Olympia, Washington, K Records had developed a distinctive indie-rock aesthetic by the late 90s, characterized by naive playfulness and wide-eyed earnestness. Entirely on their own, Dear Nora managed to arrive at the same point, except that their spunky music added off-the-cuff confidence and hard-hitting energy. Within a couple years, Davidson and their Dear Nora bandmates began connecting with other artists on their wavelength, including indie-pop duo Mates of State (with whom Dear Nora issued a split-seven inch on Polyvinyl in 2003) and singer-songwriter and Microphones collaborator Mirah (with whom Dear Nora toured heavily). By the mid-2000s, Davidson’s interest in recording and touring had begun to wane, but they booked a few trips with Casiotone for the Pain-

fully Alone main man Owen Ashworth, ending with the final round of Dear Nora shows in early 2008. In the years that followed, Dear Nora grew a sizeable cult. In 2020, when Joyce Manor front man Barry Johnson interviewed Davidson for Talkhouse, he said he’d spent nearly a year listening obsessively to Dear Nora in the mid-2010s a er drummer Jeff Enzor joined Joyce Manor and introduced him to the band. In 2017, two years a er Girlpool titled a song on their debut album “Dear Nora,” Davidson rebooted their band with a completely new lineup and hit the road. Since then, Dear Nora have released two new full-lengths through Orindal, Ashworth’s Chicago-based label: 2018’s Skulls Example and 2022’s Human Futures , the latter of which adorns Davidson’s dry singing and diaristic lyrics

with electronic flourishes. This spring trek is a solo endeavor for Davidson, and according to their Instagram post about the tour, the Chicago date will lean heavily on Three States tracks and other obscurities. Need more convincing? “This is gonna be the last USA tour for probably a while,” Davidson’s post says. “I really don’t know.” —LEOR GALIL

SUNDAY14

Jandek 8 PM, Elastic Arts, 3429 W. Diversey #208, sold out. b

Who doesn’t love a good mystery? In the early 90s, when the dubious term “outsider artist” was still in fashion, Jandek personified it: this enigmatic folkblues singer-songwriter sounded like he’d invented his own creative world in a total vacuum. So little was known about him that my friends and I would sit around and pontificate about what his backstory could possibly be. His impossibly downtrodden lyrics provided few clues, though his lo-fi production, lethargic vocal delivery, distinctive sense of rhythm, and use of guitar tunings previously unknown to humankind suggested an isolated figure, disconnected from any scene or mentor. Theories abounded: Some folks imagined Jandek was a regular sports bar–type guy pulling a fast one. Others believed he’d died long ago, leaving behind a mountain of recordings that was being slowly, posthumously excavated by the equally obscure Corwood Industries label—which to date has put out more than 120 Jandek releases, starting with 1978’s Ready for the House, and nothing else.

Jandek is almost surely a native of Houston, Texas, and most folks who’ve cared enough to look into the matter think his real name is Sterling Smith. The 2003 documentary Jandek on Corwood, though endorsed and facilitated by a “representative from Corwood Industries,” contains no interviews with the artist, leaving Jandek’s puzzling mystique intact. The following year, the weirdo music

world was shocked when he made his live debut— unannounced, of course—at the Instal Festival in Glasgow, Scotland, with experimental musicians Richard Youngs on bass and Alex Neilson on drums. Then Jandek began announcing more shows. I was extremely lucky to catch him at the 2006 Adventures in Modern Music Festival, presented by the Wire and the Empty Bottle, where he was backed by two illustrious locals, bassist Joshua Abrams and drummer John McEntire.

Eighteen years later, I was shocked once again when Elastic Arts announced that Jandek would play its intimate space. True to form, no details about his set have been revealed. Will he enlist the aid of an overcompensating, funky slap-bass player, like he did at his befuddling Houston debut in 2009? Will he perform extended pieces for wordless solo piano, like he did on his nine-disc 2013 box set, The Song of Morgan? Will he rattle a tambourine by his lonesome or join forces with a full-tilt jazz band? It’s anyone’s guess! Late-80s Jandek is my favorite Jandek, so I’ve long hungered for a set of voice-and-guitar tunes from 1986’s Telegraph Melts and 1987’s Blue Corpse , but I’m glad I don’t know what’s in store. I love that Jandek can remain a glorious conundrum, even in a high-tech world where it seems like everything ends up public and no information is unfindable. No matter what shape this concert takes, I’ll be front and center—every time I’ve heard Jandek, on record or in person, he’s melted my brain to a perfect degree.

—STEVE KRAKOW

Oumou Sangaré 7 PM, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln, $45, $43 for Old Town School members. b

It’s been nearly 15 years since beloved Malian diva Omou Sangaré performed in Chicago, and her return is cause for celebration. The singer and composer has been a global superstar since she released her revelatory 1989 debut album, Moussolou (“Women”), at age 20, and she’s now recognized for her committed feminist stance as well as her music. Known as the Songbird of Wassoulou, Sangaré builds upon the traditional music of southwestern Mali, which centers a six-string harplike instrument called the kamele ngoni and is believed to be a West African ancestor of the blues. She’s an innovative songwriter whose compositions fold contemporary folk, blues, and rock into ancient foundations, and her bold lyrics often denounce patriarchy and abuse of authority while celebrating women’s empowerment. But no matter what she’s singing about, her velvety, smoky voice is captivating. It takes no prisoners as it drives and adorns joyful grooves by a crack team of musicians from Mali, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, and France: background vocalists Kandy Guira and Emma Lamadji, kamele ngoni player Abou Diarra, electric guitarist Julin Pestre, keyboardist Alexandre Millet, bassist Elise Blanchard, and drummer Mike Dibo. Together, they’ll showcase songs from Sangaré’s 2022 album, Timbuktu , as well as reworkings of some of her classic hits. Sangaré is a superb, charismatic performer who can charm audiences just by explaining the significance of her songs, which continue to influence new generations of African musicians. Come join the Songbird of Wassoulou for what promises to be an ecstatic, healing evening. —CATALINA MARIA JOHNSON v

Early Moods COURTESY THE ARTIST

Oumou Sangaré COURTESY THE ARTIST

EARLY WARNINGS

APRIL

THU 4/18

Daniel, Me Estás Matando 7:30 PM, Park West b Hardrock 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+

SAT 4/20

Redline 4/20 featuring Lindsey Herbert, Neek, Agent Provocateur (Germany) 9 PM, Park West, 18+

Sematary, Buckshot, Anvil 7:30 PM, the Vic b

MON 4/22

Hiromi’s Sonicwonder 7 and 9:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston b

TUE 4/23

Hiromi’s Sonicwonder 7 and 9:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston b

Oneohtrix Point Never, Arushi Jain 8 PM, Metro, 18+

FRI 4/26

Johnny Manchild & the Poor Bastards 8 PM, Gman Tavern

MAY

FRI 5/17

Angela James, Blue Cactus 8 PM, Judson & Moore Distillery

SAT 5/25

Sueños Music Festival day one featuring Rauw Alejandro, Young Miko, Bizarrap, Elena Rose, and more Noon, Grant Park, 18+

SUN 5/26

Sueños Music Festival day two featuring Ivan Cornejo, Peso Pluma, Maluma, Bad Gyal, and more Noon, Grant Park, 18+

THU 5/30

Serpentwithfeet, Miles. 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+

BEYOND

TUE 6/4

Alien Ant Farm 7 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+

TUE 6/11

Shannon & the Clams, Tropa Magica 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+

THU 6/13

Sound of Summer featuring Kid Quill, Capital Soirée, Oston, Nico Segal 7 PM, House of Blues, 17+

FRI 6/14

Wilco, Cut Worms 6:30 PM, Salt Shed (outdoors) b

SAT 6/15

Wilco, Cut Worms 6:30 PM, Salt Shed (outdoors) b

MON 6/17

Nourished by Time, Urika’s Bedroom 8 PM, Schubas, 18+

WED 6/26

Pallbearer, Rezn, Keening 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+

SAT 7/6

Eidola, Royal Coda, Wolf & Bear, Sani Bronco 7 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+

WED 7/10

L’Éclair 9 PM, Sleeping Village

WED 7/17

Hobo Johnson & the Lovemakers 7:30 PM, the Vic b

FRI 7/19

Pitchfork Music Festival day one featuring Black Pumas, Jai Paul, 100 Gecs, Jeff Rosenstock, and more Noon, Union Park b

SAT 7/20

Pitchfork Music Festival day two featuring Jamie XX, Carly Rae Jepsen, Jessie Ware, De La Soul, Unwound, Bratmobile, and more Noon, Union Park b

SUN 7/21

As I Lay Dying, Chelsea Grin, Entheos 7:30 PM, House of Blues, 17+

Pitchfork Music Festival day three featuring Alanis Morissette, Brittany Howard, Muna, and more Noon, Union Park b

GOSSIP WOLF

Early Warnings newsletter: sign up here

WED 7/24

Vacations 7:30 PM, the Vic b

FRI 7/26

Out of Space night one featuring Courtney Barnett, Bob Mould 6 PM, North Field, Illinois Science and Technology Park, Skokie, 18+

SAT 7/27

Out of Space night two featuring Thee Sacred Souls, St. Paul & the Broken Bones 6 PM, North Field, Illinois Science and Technology Park, Skokie, 18+

SUN 7/28

Out of Space night three featuring Guster, Lone Bellow, Devon Gilfillian 6 PM, North Field, Illinois Science and Technology Park, Skokie, 18+

THU 8/8

Buffalo Tom 8 PM, Metro, 18+

WED 8/28

Glen Hansard 8 PM, Salt Shed (indoors), 17+

THU 8/29

Gaslight Anthem, Joyce Manor, Pinkshi 6:30 PM, Salt Shed (indoors) b

SUN 9/8

Pulp, Escape-Ism 8 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 17+

SAT 9/28

Korn, Gojira, Spiritbox 6:30 PM, Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre, Tinley Park b

Pissed Jeans 9 PM, Empty Bottle

TUE 10/1

Twenty One Pilots 8 PM, United Center b

WED 10/2

Twenty One Pilots 8 PM, United Center b

SAT 10/5

Ocie Elliot 7:30 PM, Metro b

FRI 10/11

Sodom, Dismember, Nunslaughter 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+

SUN 10/27

Sammy Rae & the Friends, Wic Whitney 7:30 PM, Salt Shed (indoors) b

THU 11/7

Black Keys, the Head and the Heart, Jeremie Albino 7 PM, United Center b v

A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene

FIVE YEARS AGO, visual artist Clare Byrne and musician Jacob Stolz formed Sunroom as an umbrella for their creative collaborations. Sunroom has since released records by Pool Holograph and Central Heat Exchange (two of Stolz’s bands), sold shirts and hats, and published zines and even a crime novel (David McCoubrey ’s Detective Detective ). In May 2021, Sunroom launched its Monthly Flyer Club , mailing subscribers a small Risograph print for $5 per month. On Friday, April 5, Sunroom hosts an opening reception for a Monthly Flyer Club gallery show at LivingRoom Gallery (1530 W. Superior).

Byrne and Stolz met around ten years ago at Schubas. Byrne worked at the venue, and Stolz often played there; his long- running indie band Varsity asked Byrne to make artwork for their 2015 self-titled album. “I guess that was technically our first collab,” Byrne says. She and Stolz became romantic partners and married in May 2023.

In the late 2010s, Byrne and Stolz bought a Risograph machine. “Clare began to heavily incorporate it into her design process,” Stolz says. “We would also experiment on it. We would make album art for my music projects and collaborate with friends.” Stolz and Byrne came up with the idea for the Monthly Flyer Club partly in response to the pandemic. “The USPS was in crisis, and it was at that time when people were promoting buying stamps,” Stolz says. “We were thinking of a way to use the Risograph as a way to connect with friends and family—and an excuse to buy stamps and send snail mail out.”

“And to generate art,” Byrne adds. The Monthly Flyer Club has given the pair a rewarding, long-term creative outlet. “I’ve never kept a written diary—this is by far the longest-standing consistent project I’ve ever had,” Byrne says. “Looking back now, we can pick out certain flyers and be like, ‘This was the month that we even got married.’ It’s pretty cool to have this visual diary.” Monthly Flyer Club prints sometimes incorporate song lyrics, and the project is connected to the couple’s work in music in other ways too.

tain LPs or cassettes.”

The gallery show will also include a listening station where visitors can hear Sunroom music releases, plus Risograph-printed elements produced for their lyric booklets, cassettes, and obi strips. Sunroom will also sell merch on-site, including zines, prints, and matchbooks; 10 percent of proceeds benefit the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. The opening reception runs from 6 PM to 9 PM, and the show will stay up till a closing event on Saturday, April 27. Hours are 11 AM till 3 PM on Saturdays and Sundays (though the gallery is closed Sunday, April 7).

LIVE YOUNG PRODUCTIONS and local blog Whats the Word TV are collaborating to bring a new live-music series to the campus of Chicago State University. Live Young CEO and founder Demetrios Layne says he started the company 11 years ago as an undergraduate at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. “The purpose was to distribute live entertainment, specifically catering to university campuses,” he says. Live Young’s mission has grown to “extend local artists’ reach, while expanding on the live-entertainment experience of concerts.” This partnership with Whats the Word TV (also founded by an SIU alum) will help promote and amplify the artists for whom Live Young builds stages. On Friday, April 12, Ausar headlines the fi rst concert in the series, with fellow locals Hxllywood, 2am, Jae Ivlie, Sye K, and Y.K Supe. WGCI’s Bree Specific will host the free show, held in the Breakey Theatre of CSU’s Douglas Hall

For Layne, Chicago State University is the perfect place to debut this collaboration. For south siders like him, he says, “It’s in our backyard.” He says the campus is also “a great stomping ground for where we can build community.” Layne plans to host concerts at other universities, but because he knows the positive effects live music can have on communities, he wanted to invest in the south side first.

“The Flyer Club is also the bread and butter of Sunroom that allows us to do more experimental music projects,” Byrne says. “It helps fund, essentially, our practice—not that it’s just to fund things, but that’s a huge perk of it. If we didn’t have the Flyer Club, we probably wouldn’t have been able to put out cer-

Layne recently attended a showcase at Chicago State, where he saw the two student musicians he picked to help open the show. It’s important to him that Live Young continues to discover talented artists and put them in front of audiences. You can RSVP for next Friday’s concert via Eventbrite.

—TYRA NICOLE TRICHE AND LEOR GALIL

Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or email gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com. UPCOMING

Courtney Barnett comes to Skokie in July. COURTESY OF TBA

Underhanded upper hand

A heartbreaker wants to avoid getting heartbroken.

By DAN SAVAGE

Q: I have a history of dating men I’m not attracted to physically or emotionally. I always found it weirdly comforting to know my boyfriend was obsessed with me while I had minimal feelings for him. I have explored this in therapy and chalk it up to a lack of self-confidence.

But a month ago, I started hanging out with this guy. It’s the first relationship I’ve been in that isn’t one-sided. It’s also the first relationship I’ve been in where the guy wasn’t pushing me to “define the relationship” after a month. This has led to me feeling quite vulnerable and afraid. For the first time in a long

time, I’m dating a guy that I not only like but find very attractive, and now I’m terrified it will end. This fear has led me to keep my feelings to myself. In previous relationships where I was the one with the upper hand, I found it easier to speak up because I felt in control and didn’t really care if it ended. I am now in a place where I’m afraid to speak for fear of saying the wrong thing.

I want to know what his intentions are, but I don’t want to place undue pressure on him either. I’m craving more validation than I’m getting from him, because I got used to being smothered with validation in all my

previous relationships, but I don’t know how to bring this up without making it seem like I am trying to define the relationship (DTR). Any advice? —NAKED AND AFRAID

a: I wouldn’t chalk up the choices you’ve made in the past (only dating men you weren’t attracted to, only dating men you could take or leave, only dating men you held in what sounds like contempt) to a lack of self-confidence. Frankly, I’m a little mystified that your therapist endorsed that interpretation.

You either had one of those therapists who thinks it’s their job to help clients construct self-serving rationalizations for their shitty behavior—explanations that center their clients as victims—or you came up with that rationalization on your own and your therapist never got around to challenging you on it. So, I’m going to challenge you.

I don’t think you have self-confidence issues, NAA, I think you have control issues. You only dated men you didn’t care about, or, you only dated men you weren’t attracted to physically or emotionally, because you wanted to have “the upper hand.” You wanted all the power, all the leverage, and all the control. You not only dated only men you could take or leave, NAA, you seemed to go out of your way to find men who couldn’t leave you. That is not the weak-ass move of a person who lacks self-confidence, NAA, that’s a coldhearted power play executed by a control freak. I’m glad you got into therapy, and it seems

to have done you some good—you’re currently dating someone you’re attracted to and for the first time experiencing feelings most humans experience when we meet someone we like. And if that shallow, pseudo-epiphany you had in therapy (“I lack self-confidence!”) helped you make different and better choices, NAA, then it did you some good. But I think you have more to unpack, perhaps with a different therapist.

Zooming out for a second: lots of us have been there. We were dating someone we could take or leave and realized that person was falling in love with us. When that happens—when someone we could take or leave is a lot more invested in the relationship and wants to have those DTR convos—we need to end

things as quickly and considerately as possible. But if we only date people we could take or leave, one after another, then we’re leading people on and, even worse, we’re stealing from them. We’re stealing time and energy they could’ve invested in finding a person who cared about them and wanted to take them. A good person doesn’t do that sort of shit—not to people they care about, not to people they don’t care about, not to anyone.

All right, NAA, what’s going to happen to this new guy? It’s only been a month, so you don’t know him that well, and most new relationships peter out after a month or two. So, there actually isn’t that much at stake here, at least not yet. Most of what you have is hope: you like this guy, and you’re hoping you

continue to like him as you get to know him better, and you’re hoping he likes you too. But if it doesn’t go anywhere—if you have that DTR convo a month or two from now and you learn he’s not as into you as you are him—you may wind up with a broken heart. But getting your heart broken is proof you have one.

Whatever happens, NAA, don’t return to your old, shitty, and heartless modus operandi. It wasn’t good for the men you dated, and it wasn’t good for you either. Being open to love means being open to pain. You’re open now. Stay open. It’s better this way. You’re better this way. v

Ask your burning questions, download podcasts, read full column archives, and more at the URL savage.love. m mailbox@savage.love

Are you wrecking yourself? HENRY DE GUZMAN/PEXELS

CLASSIFIEDS

JOBS

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(Franklin Park, IL) U.S. Heritage Group, Inc. seeks Architectural Conservator-Restorer rs exp in o o er or in conserv or restor of arch dtls incl exp conser o histrc facad & bldgs or histrc o per rm conser using color merg techn or colorstc unifctn. Freq dom trvl reqd. Apply online at https://usheritage.com/ contact/careers/ or to 10 2 ran lin e ran lin ar 01 1

(Buffalo Grove, IL) Yaskawa America, Inc. seeks Supervisor, Repair w/bach or for deg equiv in EE, EE Tech, Electron eng or rel fld 2 rs exp in o offer or in tech en ir. ust ha e exp tr lsht rpr tst dr r r i ouse Pwr Drv, AC Servo Drv, & AC & DC motrs; wrk w hi curr incl 0 elec sfty rules; & perf 001 201 td. ppl to 2121 orman ri e outh u alo ro e 008 or https://www.yaskawa. com/about-us/careers.

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Telesto Strategy LLP seeks Senior Strategy & Sustainability Consultant in Chicago, IL to consult with clients on long-term strategies & implementation plans for making business activities more sustainable & climate-friendly, incl clients operations manufacturing, distribution, etc. MS deg in Bus Admin, Public Policy, Public Admin, Environmental Sci, Engg rs o rl nt exp in Strategy, Sustainability Consulting or a related position. May require domestic travel less than 20%. emote or rom same/similar time zone as Chicago is permitted. Must have the ability to pass a case-driven interview with Telesto employees. For position details & to apply, visit: https://telestostrategy. com/open-positions/.

ENGINEERING DRW

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Senior Graphic Designer lp dsgn isuall appealing graphics that effectively communicate our rand s message & align w/ our overall branding strategy. lp isual assets to support mktg campaigns incl sales collateral materials such as product brochures, sell sheets, & packaging. anage prepress processes w/ packaging & print vendors to convert graphic dsgns to packaging, print materials, & brochures for Co. consumer products. olla orate closel w/ the mktg, product, & sales teams to create engaging visual content for digital, print, & social media platforms. on igure adapt visual content dsgns for posting on social media platforms such as X, LinkedIn, Instagram, ou u e oogle d. Website content & video dvlpmt using HTML, CSS, Wordpress, video production & editing skills. lp user riendl engaging e-commerce store on website to display & sell Co. consumer products. sgn produce a ariet of creative assets, incl but not limited to: illustrations, logos, icons, infographics, presentations, social media graphics, & motion graphics using Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, After Effects, & Premiere Pro), Figma, & other relevant dsgn tools. anage multiple pro ects simultaneousl ensuring timely delivery exceptional lt . ro ide dsgn guidance

& creative direction for the team members. ontinuousl explore & implmt new dsgn trends, techniques, & technologies to elevate our visual storytelling. Req Bachelor in Graphic Dsgn 18 mths exp in graphic dsgn & commercial package dvlpmt. Apply to: Cyclopure nc. 2 0 . alsted t th lr hicago 0 1 . ttn .

Network Engineer in Chicago, IL to configur, instal & suport netwrk eqpmt. Colab w/ analysts/ engrs. Monitr netwrk prfrmnce & intgrity. utline ethod o Procedure. Idntify threats & create solutions. Dploy re als routrs s itchs. Configur firewal policies to/frm internl users to internt, DMZ & impose high-level security fr risk fctors. Troblshoot routng & switchng isues. Dvlp security measurs w/ firewals, ntwrk security audits, disaster recovery plans con guration. e adept on Fortinet & Palo Alto threats & feature sets (firewal rule set to convert to Fortinet). nge pro cts deli era ls. Remote mngmt & monitr systms of ntwrk apliancs & client systms. Use monitorng tools Argus, SolarWinds, Wireshark, & Cisco Packet Tracer. Mthly reprts on Firewal access conections. e d et or omputer ng g. ro l exp ntwrk technlgis e.g. metro ethernet, gigabit ethernet, . ail s to anette angen onShore Security LLC, 21 ac son l d te 201 hicago 0 0 . Senior Salesforce & Pardot Business Analyst Harbor Capital Advisors, Inc. seeks a Senior Salesforce & Pardot Business Analyst to work in Chicago, IL to work with teams across the enterprise to better understand their individual or department needs and work on initiatives to meet those needs in innovative ways. Must ha e achelor s degree or foreign equivalent in Information Technology, Engineering, Data Analytics or a related ield and i e ears o experience in the o offered, Technology Analyst or related. ust ha e experience ith 1 + ears o experience or ing ith Salesforce technologies as Salesforce, Pardot, ar eting loud. 2 Salesforce skills in system administration, including user and security configuration, reporting, and advanced troubleshooting. 3) Advanced Salesforce configuration requiring in-depth knowledge of Salesforce fundamental architecture o ect model, data, and security model. d anced

SQL Query skills along with working knowledge of relational database structures/schemas.

on iguration and troubleshooting of Pardot / Account Engagement plat orm. ro icienc in creating professional technical/system and end-user/training documentation and video training materials as needed. *Telecommuting/ working from home allowed. Apply online at www.harborcapital.com/ careers

Multiple Openings

Medline Industries, LP in orth ield has multi open gs r. nal st s (SAP MFG) to contribute to g roduct team. 10% dom. tr l re d to prfrm site visits. WFH benefit up to 3 days/wk. Apply at: https://medline. taleo.net/careersection/ md_confidential/ o appl . tl lang en o 01011 r. igital Automation Business Systems Analyst(s) to d lp digital automat n str tg implmt n. o tr l. ene t must e able to attend reg mtgs in the orth ield o ice. Apply at: https://medline. taleo.net/careersection/ md con dential o appl . tl lang en o 01011

C) Sr. IS Systems Analyst(s) (MDM) to deli r solut ns across Master Data Mgmt (MDM) s stms. o tr l. benefit; must be avail to come into the orth ield o ce or mtgs as needed. Apply at: https://medline. taleo.net/careersection/ md con dential o appl . tl lang en o 01011 r. a a Developer to be res. for dsgn g implemnt g solut ns or i initiati es. o tr l. ene it.

Apply at: https://medline. taleo.net/careersection/ md con dential o appl . tl lang en o 01011

Software Developers

Software Developers, a roo denti architectural reqs & design the solution to meet the re s. Automate build & deployment by leveraging AWS CodeBuild and Code Pipeline services. Design & dvlp an automated pipeline for generating quotes using AWS services which include am da unction 2 ser ices. end res to axil Technology Solutions, nc. 2 2 utter ield d. uite 1 8 a roo 0 2 .

Software Engineer

lalom s hicago o ce has multiple openings for Software Engineer (various types/levels): Develop, create, and modify general computer application software or specialized utility programs. o to . o postingtoda .

com search or o 1 2 su mit resume.

Software Engineer(s) Software Engineer(s) RedMane Technology LLC seeks Software Engineer(s) in Chicago, IL to develop and implement o ect oriented n tier software applications, including web-based applications, using Curam software. Telecommuting permitted. Email resume to yourcareer@redmane. com re erence o code 0 8 0010 . . . .

Lecturer Loyola University Chicago is seeking a Lecturer in Chicago, IL to teach introductory & upper-level courses in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) including Introduction to GIS, Advanced GIS, Remote Sensing. Please send res to chippert@ luc.edu re o 0 28 1.

Sr. Software Engineer Groupon, Inc. is seeking a Sr. Software Engineer in Chicago, IL w/ the following responsibilities: Dvlp, construct & implement the next generation of company prdcts & features for roupon s e mo ile applications; design high-performance RESTful service-oriented architectures & software that is fast & efficient for millions of users. Up to 100% remote or allowed from anywhere in the U.S.; can live anywhere in the U.S. Co headquarters in Chicago, IL. Apply at www.grouponcareers. com by searching e ord 282 . Software Developers Software Developers–Multiple openings a roo errace Amvotech Solutions Inc needs professionals: Work using isco o xon cti e irector . e . achelor s + 2 ears exp omp. salary, Relocate to unanticipated site. o ational nternational travel. Please mail resume to Ref: Director, 18 1 0 utter ield d te a roo errace 0181.

IT Lead I – SAP Purchasing IT Lead I –urchasing Batavia, IL. Provide SAP specialist support & deliver SAP solutions in Materials Management Purchasing (MM-PUR, uppl et or olla oration . Troubleshoot SAP PI (Process integration) communication issues (no coding). Deliver accepted change requests. Lead a team in pro ect deli er & support environments. ust ha e ssociate s Degree in supply chain, finance, accounting, or rel ield rs exp in (i) design, configuration pro ect deli er in MM-PUR, MM-IM

through minimum 2 full lifecycle projects; & (ii) troubleshooting in customized MM-PUR, MM-IM environments. Of exp required, must also have 3 yrs exp in: (i) design, configuration & project delivery in SAP SNC-PO Collaboration and in SAP SNC-Release processing through minimum 2 full lifecycle projects, (ii) design, configuration & project delivery in SAP PI using EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) standards ANSI X12 and EDIFACT & (iii) troubleshooting in customized SAP SNC and SAP PI environments. Exp. May be gained concurrently. Up to 20% domestic and international travel. Hybrid position eligible for remote work up to three days per week. Apply online at https:// careers.agcocorp.com.

Senior Electrical Engineer exp U.S. Services Inc. is seeking a Senior Electrical Engineer in Chicago, IL to lead, supervise & mentor Designer level staff. 20% telecommuting allowed, 20% domestic & international trvl reqd; must live w/in normal commuting distance of Chicago, IL & near a major airport. Co headquarters in Chicago, IL. Apply at www.exp.com, search for job# 108041

Project Manager Syte Corporation in Chicago, IL seeks Project Manager to coordinate entire project lifecycles. Reqs BS + 3 yrs exp. To Apply: email resumes to applications@ sytecorp.com, reference job title: Project Manager.

Kenway Consulting, LLC

Kenway Consulting, LLC seeks Data Scientist in Chicago, IL to anlyz info & dvlp prctl biz sltns by utlzg stat anlys, smltns, & prdctv mdlng. Reqs BS in Dta Sci, Comp Sci, or clsly rltd fld + 18 mnths exp in a clsly rltd ocptn. Reqs 18 mnths exp w/ fllwng: Dta Vslztn tls, sch as Pwr BI, Qlk, Lkr; Sytm dev mthdlgs (Agl, SDLC, UAT, Scrm); Prjt Mngmt, incldg SOWs, chrtrs, & RAIDS; Dta Anlys tls sch as SQL & R. Telecommuting is

Chicago, IL 60601.

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CLEANING SERVICES

CHESTNUT ORGANIZING AND CLEANING SERVICES: especially for people who need an organizing service because of depression, elderly, physical or mental challenges or other causes for your home’s clutter, disorganization, dysfunction, etc. We can organize for the downsizing of your current possessions to more easily move into a smaller home. With your help, we can help to organize your move. We can organize and clean for the deceased in lieu of having the bereaved needing to do the preparation to sell or rent the deceased’s home. We are absolutely not judgmental; we’ve seen and done “worse” than your job assignment. With your help, can we please help you? Chestnut Cleaning Service: 312-332-5575. www.

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Gossip Girl at Chicago Public Library YouTube

Librarian Mike Jay Dubensky looking for distinctively dressed woman to buy lunch. He is willing to read out loud from Cecily’s novel. Video games? VR? Massage? RSVP vrbreakchicago@gmail.com.