Print Issue of April 12, 2018 (Volume 47, Number 27)

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

How many emotional support animals is too many? 4

“Women are the most powerful political force in American right now” 16

A dearth of ice rinks in Chicago and long history of racial tension has hampered efforts to diversify hockey’s ranks—but that’s changing

By EVAN F. MOORE 8

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THIS WEEK

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INTERIM EXECUTIVE EDITOR DAVE NEWBART CREATIVE DIRECTOR VINCE CERASANI DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY JAMIE RAMSAY CULTURE EDITOR AIMEE LEVITT FILM EDITOR J.R. JONES MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO ASSOCIATE EDITORS STEVE HEISLER, JAMIE LUDWIG, KATE SCHMIDT SENIOR WRITER MIKE SULA SENIOR THEATER CRITIC TONY ADLER STAFF WRITERS MAYA DUKMASOVA, LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, PETER MARGASAK, JULIA THIEL SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR RYAN SMITH GRAPHIC DESIGNER SUE KWONG MUSIC LISTINGS COORDINATOR LUCA CIMARUSTI FILM LISTINGS COORDINATOR PATRICK FRIEL CONTRIBUTORS NOAH BERLATSKY, ALLISON DUNCAN, JORDANNAH ELIZABETH, ANNE FORD, ISA GIALLORENZO, JOHN GREENFIELD, ANDREA GRONVALL, KT HAWBAKER, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, TANNER HOWARD, IRENE HSIAO, DAN JAKES, MONICA KENDRICK, H. MELT, BILL MEYER, ANGELA MYERS, MICHAEL MINER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, MARK PETERS, LEAH PICKETT, JANET POTTER, BEN SACHS, DMITRY SAMAROV, KATE SIERZPUTOWSKI, OLIVER SAVA, TIFFANY WALDEN, KEVIN WARWICK, BRIANNA WELLEN, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERN ASHLEY MIZUO ----------------------------------------------------------------

FEATURES

IN THIS ISSUE

CITY LIFE

4 Education How many emotional support animals is too many?

18 Movies You Were Never Really Here updates Taxi Driver for an even colder world.

20 Movies Reviews of this week’s openings, plus special events

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

5 Media Former Chicago gossip columnist Liz Crokin now trades in far-right conspiracy theories.

SPORTS

25 Shows of note Avantist, Margo Price, Greenbeard, and more of the week’s best 27 Secret History Bluesman Cash McCall hasn’t written a hit in more than 50 years, but that’s not stopping him.

ARTS & CULTURE

Racism on ice

A dearth of ice rinks and long history of racial tension has hampered efforts to diversify hockey’s ranks—but that’s changing.

FOOD & DRINK

BY EVAN F. MOORE 8

ADVERTISING DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER BEST SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER EVANGELINE MILLER DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY ADVERTISING COORDINATOR HERMINIA BATTAGLIA

12 Comedy Second City E.T.C.’s Gaslight District examines the perils of living in the age of alternative facts.

13 Theater Nothing is as it seems in Ike Holter’s The Wolf at the End of the Block.

13 Theater Reviews of this week’s shows, including our recommended picks 14 Lit Linda Gartz’s memoir Redlined tells the story of a 1960s childhood in West Garfield Park.

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ON THE COVER: PHOTO BY JAMIE RAMSAY AND VINCE CERASANI. FOR MORE OF JAMIE’S WORK, GO TO JAMIERAMSAYPHOTO.COM.

31 Restaurant Review: Tied House Schubas Tavern’s fine-dining annex is the rarest of neighborhood restaurants: a destination.

33 Booze From fuck-up to Fortuitous Union, or how high-end whiskey-rum blends get made

CLASSIFIEDS

34 Jobs 35 Apartments & Spaces 35 Marketplace

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

Tink remembers the trial by fire that launched her career

The crowds at Adrianna’s wouldn’t rock for just anybody, but as a Calumet City teenager she won them over with a mix of drill rap and R&B.

BY THE TRIIBE, WORDS BY TIFFANY WALDEN 21

16 Lit “Women are the most powerful political force in America right now,” says Cecile Richards.

17 Movies In Lean on Pete, a neglected teen finds a kindred spirit in a worn-out stallion.

36 Straight Dope “Why oh why did the USPS decree a two-letter abbreviation for states?”

37 Savage Love What to do when casual sex is appealing in theory, awful in reality 39 Early Warnings Andrew Bird, Cold Cave, Faust, and more shows to look for in the weeks to come 39 Gossip Wolf La Armada return with another record of Dominicanborn hardcore, and other music news.

APRIL 12, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 3

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CITY LIFE EDUCATION

Cats or dogs

A debate is under way at Columbia College over how many emotional support animals is too many.

By DEANNA ISAACS

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ou may have noticed recently that there are a lot more animals (usually, but not always, dogs) in places where they didn’t used to be. Like on the floor in front of the airplane seat next to you, sans carrier, eagerly awaiting takeoff.

You might wonder why Fido is no longer in the cargo hold, where most pets used to fly.

The answer is likely to be that the pup is a certified emotional support animal, whose presence has been deemed medically necessary for the well-being of its master.

And that’s the same reason dogs, cats, bunnies, and birds are showing up in college student housing.

But should emotional support animals go to college? And if so, how many should each student be allowed? The Columbia College Chicago student newspaper, the Chronicle, recently featured a story about a student driven out of campus housing because her request for an emotional support dog—along with the emotional support cat she already had—was denied.

First, a few definitions are in order. Emotional support animals are a relatively new phenomenon that has been growing in popularity over the past decade. They’re not the same thing as service animals, like seeing-eye dogs, which are trained to perform specific tasks. They fetch, guide, or pull, and can even sense when a dangerous medical episode is under way or about to happen and summon help. Their utility and necessity are obvious.

Emotional support animals are not required to have any special training. But they’re not just pets, either. Their role is to provide a psychological anchor for their owner that enables the owner to function in an environment he or she wouldn’t otherwise be able to handle. According to proponents, the emotional support animal is more like a prescription drug: it has

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an effect on the psyche of its owner that makes it possible for that person to live a normal life.

Federal regulations govern the rights of people with emotional support animals.

They’re allowed to take their animal with them on airplanes, and thanks to the Fair Housing Act, must be given “reasonable accommodation” in most rental housing, even when the property owner has forbidden pets. In order to exercise that right, they’re required to have an evaluation letter from a mental health professional that explains their condition and the animal’s function.

Like so many other government regulations, these can be exploited. Emotional support animals fly free on commercial airlines, and evaluation letters (along with paraphernalia like ID tags and personalized harnesses) are available through several websites. The letter, which requires only a phone consultation with a mental health professional provided by the websites, can be had for about $100 to $150.

Getting permission to bring an emotional support animal to campus housing, however, is likely to require an explanation from a healthcare professional who’s actually been treating the student (that’s a requirement, for example, at Roosevelt University, which like other Chicago-area colleges and universities allows emotional support animals). In the Columbia College incident, the student, sophomore Lindsey Barrett, says she had documentation from the therapist she sees regularly.

Originally enrolled as a Columbia freshman in 2015, Barrett says the same anxiety, panic attacks, and depression that her support animals now help with caused her to take a medical leave halfway through her first term.

“I was hospitalized,” she says, “and when I got out, my brothers got me a cat, and he became my support animal.” When she returned to Columbia for the spring term last year, the cat, Leonitis, came along.

This year, living in a four-bedroom apartment at the Arc, a historic apartment building affiliated with the college, Barrett requested permission for a second support animal, a dog. She began the process in the fall with Columbia’s Services for Students With Disabilities office. Barrett says she knows of at least two other emotional support animals in the building.

Barrett says her letter from her therapist indicated that the two animals would be serving different purposes: while the cat would counter her depression, the dog would help with panic attacks. “The doctor’s note is supposed to be like gospel,” she adds. “But they ignored it and launched their own investigation.” Barrett says she finally went to dean of students John Pelrine. Although two of her three apartmentmates submitted letters in support of the second animal, she says Pelrine ultimately told her it was “a space issue,” and denied her request; she could keep the dog or the cat, but not both.

In February, Barrett moved to an apartment in Bronzeville, where she’s able to keep both Leonitis and Theodore, her 16-week-old puppy. She says that while Leonitis has been a help in getting her out of bed on days when depression wants to keep her down, Theodore’s already fending off her panic attacks.

“He can sense my anxiety, and whenever he does, he comes up to me and will not leave me alone until I sit down with him. And I have that grounding moment where I have to calm down. And as soon as I’m done, he’s off, being his puppy self,” she says. “He’s already worth his weight in gold to me.”

Columbia spokesperson Anjali Julka, citing student privacy regulations, responded to questions with this e-mail statement: “Columbia College Chicago’s student housing policies and procedures are consistent with federal and state law, including without limitation, the FHA pertaining to assistance animals, and the ADA, which governs service animals. The college carefully reviews each situation on a case by case basis.”

Chronicle editor in chief Zoë Eitel, in an editor’s note about the story, wrote that “Columbia needs to re-evaluate how it’s adapting [to changing times],” and has a responsibility to support the mental health of its students.

Barrett has asked Columbia to refund her spring term rent and tuition, and originally turned to Equip for Equality, a disability legal and advocacy organization, for help. Barry Taylor, Equip for Equality’s civil rights team vice president, told me that because of limited resources, they “can’t accept every case” and “we’ve not accepted [hers].” Barrett says HUD referred her to the Illinois Department of Human Rights, and IDHR spokesperson Teagan Shull said last week that “We have a charge filed. It is pending investigation.” v

m @DeannaIsaacs

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CITY LIFE

FIND YOUR ,

Liz Crokin and Roseanne Barr

MEDIA

é ALBERTO E. RODRIGUEZ; VALERIE MACON

Conspiracy theorist to the stars

Former Chicago gossip columnist Liz Crokin is under the spotlight courtesy of Roseanne Barr’s comeback.

By RYAN SMITH

W

hen Liz Crokin’s name appeared in national news stories due to her surprising connection to a controversy involving Roseanne Barr last week, it felt like an ironic twist of fate. Crokin, a Winnetka native, dished tabloid-style gossip about the lives of Hollywood stars for Chicago print media for almost a decade. But now it’s the former Tribune and Sun-Times columnist’s name popping up in other journalists’ lurid news stories.

The Barr story emerged in response to one of her tweets about President Trump. The actor-comedian recently regained mainstream relevance due to the success of her new Roseanne reboot, which struck ratings gold for ABC, attracting more than 18 million viewers in its first week. All of that extra attention has increased the public scrutiny of her bizarre political views. That’s why it suddenly became national news when Barr tweeted: “President Trump has freed so many children held in bondage to pimps all over this world. Hundreds each month. He has broken up trafficking rings in high places everywhere,” she wrote, adding that Trump gets the benefit of the doubt from her.

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That “hundreds each month” claim was traced directly back to Crokin, who has a combined 79,000 followers on Twitter and Facebook. She had written a blog post in early 2017 for the conservative website Townhall titled “Why the MSM Is Ignoring Trump’s Sex Trafficking Busts.” The article alleged that law enforcement agencies under Trump had freed more kids from bondage in one month than in any year during the Obama administration.

She cited “a staggering 1,500-plus arrests” of sex traffickers arrested in Trump’s first 30 days, compared to just 400 in 2014 under Obama. Crokin’s post, which has since been debunked, commended the current president as someone who “genuinely does care about children and [who has] vowed to make solving the human trafficking epidemic a priority.”

Barr’s now-deleted tweet that recycled Crokin’s thesis caused an uproar in mainstream circles but drew unabashed praise from a fringe sector that believes in a vast conspiracy called QAnon—also known as “the Storm.”

“QAnon” refers to a user on the anonymous message board 4chan who claims to be a high-ranking government employee with inside knowledge of the White House. This J

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self-described official has posted what the user says is leaked inside intel about how Trump is planning mass arrests of top Democrats—including the Clintons—for their alleged involvement in a satanic child-sex-trafficking ring. It’s essentially a virulent strain of Pizzagate, the conspiracy theory claiming a D.C. pizza parlor was part of a child sex-trafficking operation led by Hillary Clinton. A North Carolina man named Edgar Welch was so taken in by this baseless theory in December 2016 that he drove to the capital and commandeered the restaurant with a military-style assault rifle— even firing off a shot while inside.

Crokin appears to be swayed by many of these same QAnon theories. She is among a cadre of conspiracy-minded Internet users propagating information and links about it on social media, YouTube, and fringe podcasts like The Richie Allen Show. It’s a tiny but very active slice of the mediasphere who now say they have a more prominent voice due to Barr.

In a video posted to YouTube on Easter, Crokin described Barr’s tweets as “nothing short of a miracle”—praising the actor-comedian as her only celebrity ally in the fight to expose a cannibalistic satanic sex cult among Hollywood power players and political elites—one that utilizes a CIA mind-control program.

“Roseanne has been supporting my work exposing child sex trafficking, elite pedophilia, Pizzagate, and Pedogate for close to a year,” Crokin said in a video that’s been viewed more than 22,000 times. “She tweets my stuff and has been very supportive of me . . . and she’s been very supportive of the community exposing the pedophilia problem in Hollywood.”

In an article explaining Barr’s tweet, the Washington Post described Crokin as an “obscure conservative writer,” but the 39-year old journalist wasn’t particularly right-wing (or obscure) for most of her career. Publicly, at least. During her college years, she worked as an intern for the U.S. State Department during the George W. Bush administration and for conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News show The O’Reilly Factor. But her politics remained relatively invisible when she started working for Chicago media.

Crokin’s first reporting job came in 2002 with the Tribune’s City News Service, but she soon moved to the back pages of the Trib’s daily tabloid the RedEye (full disclosure: I was also a RedEye freelancer, but I never met Crokin). For seven years starting in 2003, she wrote Liz in the Loop (once called Eye Contact), a celebrity gossip column; “Liz Crokin stalks celebrities so

you don’t have to” read a RedEye tagline. The column obsessively reported on movie, music, and TV stars who visited Chicago and what they ate, where they partied, who they made out with, and (sometimes because of who they made out with)—who they broke up with.

News of celebrity breakups became Crokin’s journalistic calling card. “I don’t mean to be, but I seem to be the breakup queen,” she told Michigan Avenue Magazine in 2009, citing her big scoops on the Jessica Simpson-Tony Romo and the Hilary Duff-Joel Madden decouplings.

It’s unclear why RedEye didn’t renew her contract in 2010. Crokin didn’t respond to interview requests, and most former editors and staffers contacted for this story also declined to comment. Her former colleagues who responded say they didn’t know Crokin well or have much contact with her. Multiple sources say she was a regular at a lot of upscale (and booze-filled) social events and ritzy parties.

Crokin left Chicago for Los Angeles in 2010 to work at a host of tabloid mags: Us Weekly, National Enquirer, Star, and InTouch. As a reporter and editor, Crokin further solidified her credentials as Queen of the Breakup. She’s bragged that she obtained exclusive pictures of Ashton Kutcher’s affair and then broke the story of the end of the actor’s marriage to Demi Moore. Crokin also says she got her hands on “exclusive information on Katy Perry’s crumbling marriage to Russell Brand several weeks before he filed for divorce” and broke news about John Travolta’s “gay affairs.”

She returned to the Chicago journalism world in 2012—this time as a freelance celebrity columnist for the glossy “fashion and lifestyle” magazine Splash, a Sun-Times publication launched by the paper’s former owner Michael Ferro (who took Splash with him to the Tribune Company when he left the Sun-Times in 2016). Splash publisher Susanna Homan tapped Crokin to write LA LA Liz—a column that once again specialized in pithy chatter about romantic relationships in Hollywood (“The Kardashians are krumbling and Hollywood divorce updates from our Chicagoan in Hollywood, Liz Crokin” read the headline from a post in 2012).

But during the year and a half she freelanced for Splash, Crokin’s professional and personal life took a turn for the worse. She fell ill in late September 2012 and checked into a hospital in Los Angeles. Doctors diagnosed her with a viral form of meningitis that developed into menigoencephalitis, a dangerous swelling of the brain that Crokin says caused daily migraines and vertigo as a result of photophobia (an extreme

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CITY LIFE aversion to light) resulting from brain damage.

The sickness began affecting her to the point that she struggled to work and lost her main job at American Media Inc.—the publisher of the Star and National Enquirer—in 2013. Crokin was laid off during a wave of downsizing, the Associated Press reported in a story about accusations of sexual harassment against Dylan Howard—the chief content officer of American Media. Crokin is one of several former employees who say Howard harassed them.

Splash killed Crokin’s column in February 2014. “I was unable to take care of myself; I couldn’t read or write the same way, or sit up in a chair for more than a few minutes at a time because my brain was so swollen,” she wrote in a piece about her ordeal for the website Elite Daily. “I flew to Chicago so my parents could take care of me full time.”

Several weeks after her initial diagnosis, Crokin says, she learned that her meningitis was caused by genital herpes, an STD she claims was passed to her by her ex, a wealthy California businessman. In February 2014, Crokin filed a personal injury case for battery and negligence against her former lover (who has denied giving Crokin the STD).

The businessman later responded with his own lawsuit alleging invasion of privacy and slander after she published Malice, a thinly veiled novel about her life. The book “goes to incredible lengths to humiliate Plaintiff, spreading vulgar and scathing lies” including scenes in the book in which her lover has sex with prostitutes, is imagined as being part of a pedophile ring, and is described as ‘having slipped [club drug] ecstasy into his wife’s drink several times before they were married.’” A partial settlement was reached earlier this year in the case.

Crokin has said her brain “started healing itself” in 2015, and by 2016 she was writing again. This time, though, it was for the farright conservative magazine and website Townhall—particularly about the issue of child sex trafficking. Reading the leaked Democratic National Committee e-mails “really woke me up to how real of a problem this is,” she said in an interview with the YouTube show Through the Black.

Over the last year and a half, colleagues and former friends of Crokin say, her social media posts began to become more “delusional” (“I had to hide her posts because they were so crazy,” said one friend).

Crokin’s posts push a theory that “one-third of the government” is part of a satanic Illumi-

nati-like cult that sexually enslaves, kills, and even eats children. And to maintain power, they draw on Project MK Ultra, an experimental CIA program from 1953 to 1973 that used LSD and other drugs for mind control, information gathering, and psychological torture. Last month Barr tweeted the words “MK Ultra”—which would have been well-known to those deep in the QAnon world.

John Legend and Chrissy Teigen threatened to sue Crokin at the end of 2017 after the journalist said the celebrity couple “flaunt illuminati symbolism,” have satanist friends, and ‘run in circle [sic] with people who rape, torture & traffic kids.’ “You need to take my family’s name out of your mouth before you get sued,” Legend tweeted at Crokin.

Last Thursday, Crokin tried to tie in Nasim Aghdam, who shot and wounded three people at YouTube’s California headquarters before killing herself, to the QAnon conspiracy theory. “These videos strike me as mind control videos probably used on sex trafficked kids!”

Crokin tweeted with a link to YouTube videos

by Aghdam.

Crokin has a similar outlandish take on the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.

“You have the [Creative Artists Agency], this horrific, evil company that was driving this campaign,” Crokin said on The Richie Allen Show. “They are actually trying to distract from the bigger picture, and the bigger picture is that these elites are involved in raping little kids, eating babies, drinking blood, sacrificing, and that kind of stuff. So they are using the #Time’sUp and the #MeToo movements as a distraction.”

To Crokin and others disciples of the “Storm conspiracy,” Trump is a hero on the verge of shutting down the satanic Democratic child-abusing cult. He just needs a little more time to get the public ready for it.

“That’s very hard for the public to process,” Crokin said on Dave Hodges’s The Common Sense Show. “So President Trump and his people understand that they can’t just come out one day and be like, ‘Oh hey, one third of the government is raping children and sacrificing them and drinking their blood and they’re satanists.’ . . . The Trump administration is slowly trying to condition the public and try to prepare them.”

That’s why Crokin is so ecstatic about the return of Roseanne Barr to national prominence. “She has been at the forefront of this.

She’s an absolute beacon of light,” Crokin said. v

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é JAMIE RAMSAY

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IWA S

GETTING A HAIRCUT

A dearth of ice rinks and long history of racial tension has hampered efforts to diversify hockey’s ranks—but that’s changing

By EVAN F. MOORE

at Madison Street Barbers on the near west side recently when I casually mentioned that I play hockey just down the street at Johnny’s IceHouse, one of the city’s few indoor rinks and the only sheet of ice in a 16-square-mile area encompassing the city’s west side and many other neighborhoods.

The man who cut my hair told me he watches hockey on TV but described being an African-American fan of hockey as “awkward.”

“There’s not too many of us out there,” he told me.

Over the years, many people of color have told me that they want to like hockey and let their kids play or even just ice skate, but they’re afraid of being singled out based on their appearance. What’s more, black and brown families who want to embrace the sport really haven’t had many places to turn because ice rinks are few and far between in many neighborhoods.

The lack of access and long history of racial tension surrounding the sport have hampered efforts to diversify its ranks.

In 1961, Willie O’Ree, a Canadian who was the first black man to play in the NHL, suited up for the Boston Bruins in a game against the Blackhawks.

In his first game at the old Chicago Stadium, he was called the N-word by Hawks winger Eric Nesterenko, O’Ree recounted in the book Breaking the Ice: The Black Experience in Professional Hockey. Nesterenko then jammed the butt end of his stick into O’Ree’s mouth, leaving him with a broken nose and two missing front teeth.

“It was a shock,” O’Ree recounted. “I had never faced the guy before in my life!”

The incident led to a bench-clearing brawl. O’Ree was taken to the locker room, then got a police escort out of the building.

Nesterenko later said he had no recollection of the incident or of using the racial slur.

The problems persist.

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APRIL 12, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 9

“It’s obviously a white sport,” said Anthony Duclair, the lone black skater on the Blackhawks this year. é JONATHAN DANIEL/ GETTY IMAGE

continued from 9 Earlier this season, four Blackhawks fans shouted “basketball, basketball, basketball” at Washington Capitals forward Devante Smith-Pelly as he sat in the penalty box in a game at the United Center. To me, chanting “basketball” at a black player is the equivalent of calling him the N-word. Those fans told Smith-Pelly that he, and the NHL’s players of color, do not belong.

“It’s obviously a white sport,” Anthony Duclair, the Hawks’ lone black player, said after the incident.

I’m sure there was a nonwhite kid interested in hockey who changed his mind after seeing that footage, saying, “Nah, I’m good.”

That’s a shame, considering there are fewer than three dozen black or biracial players in the NHL. And Team USA’s Olympic hockey team this year had just one black player, Jordan Greenway, the first to be on a U.S. Olympic roster.

The NHL has at times not done much to alter its perception of being an all-white club. The league’s “Hockey for Everyone” campaign featured few players of color, and this year it chose to feature Kid Rock, a Trump-supporting culture vulture, as its All-Star game performer.

Brad Erickson is the founder and executive director of Inner City Education (ICE), a Chicago-based program that provides training and scholarships for city kids to play hockey. Erickson called the jeering of Smith-Pelly an “awful situation, but a teachable moment” for the kids in his program.

The players “talked about how it would make them confused as to why anyone could make bad comments about them without even knowing them. They talked

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about how silly it is to think all people of any race are the same. They talked about how it could make them feel bad about themselves,” Erickson said.

“We explained that sometimes people fear others out of ignorance, and that it’s a reflection on the person making negative comments, not the person who’s the target of the comments. We explained to our kids that, as much as anything, they should feel sorry for anyone who’s so ignorant or fearful that they would make racist statements toward them,” Erickson said.

Hockey mom Nakia Young of South Shore said she believes the incident involving Smith-Pelly stemmed from fans who felt uncomfortable with the sport’s emerging diversity.

“There’s a line drawn in the sand by people who believe that hockey belongs to them only. This man reached a level of excellence to play professional hockey, and some believe that’s not good enough,” Young said of Smith-Pelly. “Devante handled the incident well. That shows the mental toughness he has to participate in a sport where some folks have taken it upon themselves to decide who and who should not play hockey.”

Young has tried to shield her six-year-old daughter, JordinParker Wilson, and five-year-old son, Hunter Wilson, from that kind of nastiness while they take part in the ICE program.

“I shouldn’t have to prepare them for that because it shouldn’t exist. When it comes to my children, I don’t want them to learn about race in that way, but I know the day is coming where I’m going to have to [prepare

them],” Young said.

NHL agent and Evanston native Eustace King represents Smith-Pelly, along with Ducks forward J.T. Brown, the only NHL player to protest police brutality during the national anthem this season.

The 45-year-old King, who said he was the victim of racial taunts when he grew up playing in Chicago’s suburbs, told the Reader that he hopes the incident at the United Center doesn’t deter minority families from exposing their children to hockey.

“As we all know, sometimes the unfortunate things that happen in life happen in sports. Sports is not immune to societal issues, but I don’t think hockey should be tied to that,” he said. “[But] this came out at a hockey game, so people may think that hockey is to blame.”

The truth is, the best way to combat the sport’s diversity issues is to get more players of color on the ice.

I first got excited about hockey watching the Soviet team win the gold during the 1988 Olympics in Calgary when I was ten years old. But even more powerful for me was seeing a picture of the Blackhawks’ Tony McKegney in Jet magazine’s Blacks in Sports section in 1991. Even though McKegney’s stay with the Blackhawks was short, it was all I needed to become a fan.

Representation matters to my community.

But there were cultural barriers too. As a kid from 71st Street, I hid my hockey fandom out of fear of being called a white boy or an Uncle Tom. And as I made my fandom public, I started to hear those familiar tropes about “acting white.”

In South Shore, my friends and I played every sport imaginable except hockey, including baseball, basketball, and football. We were fans of almost every major sport mainly because we saw people like us playing. None of us had ice skates (let alone full hockey gear), and there were no rinks nearby, so hockey was just something we saw occasionally on TV and in video games such as Blades of Steel and NHL ’94. We had zero access to live hockey.

One of the best speed skaters in history had similar problems. Shani Davis became the first black athlete to win a gold medal in an individual event during the 2006 Winter Olympics. Davis was born on the south side and only started skating because his mom worked for an attorney whose son was involved in the sport. He got involved with an Evanston skating club and eventually moved to Rogers Park so he could train in the suburbs because there were so few opportunities for a black skater in the city.

“As there were—and still are—no speed skating clubs in inner-city Chicago, at age 10 Shani and his mother moved to the far north side of the city to be closer to the Evanston rink,” his online bio says.

My experience growing up was very different from that of Chris Bury, 64, a journalist in residence at DePaul University, where I’m also an adjunct instructor. Bury, who’s white, grew up in South Shore and played rat hockey—the equivalent of pickup basketball—during the 1960s and ’70s. He recalled that during the winters, the Chicago Park District made an ice rink by flooding a part of a playground in the 7500 block of South Euclid

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Avenue—which is about a three-minute walk from where I grew up more than a decade later.

“We played hockey every winter, setting up makeshift goals with sticks, boots, hats, and whatever we could find. It was strictly pickup hockey on the playground— no nets or boards, but it was by far my favorite sport.

All of the kids who played hockey then were heavily influenced by the Blackhawks teams of that era, starring Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita, Phil Esposito, Glenn Hall, and so on,” Bury said.

He also played at an indoor rink at 79th and Loomis started by Michael J.R. Kirby, a Canadian national champion figure skater. That rink closed in the mid-70s, however, before I was born.

There used to be even more places for kids in the city to skate. In the 1920s, the heyday of speed skating in the city, there were 600 rinks, according to the Encyclopedia of Chicago. The city was a national force in the sport, with Olympians from Chicago including Diane Holum, Ann Henning, Leah Poulos, and Andy Gabel.

But when whites left the city for the suburbs, the rinks left too.

Today, in addition to the city-run Millennium Park ice rink, the Park District maintains just eight outdoor and two indoor rinks in the city—for nearly 2.7 million people. The outdoor rinks are typically open for less than three months a year, with limited hours. Although Johnny’s IceHouse runs two private rinks on Madison Street—one east of the United Center in the West Loop

Evan F. Moore, during a 2016 hockey tournament at Johnny’s IceHouse, 2550 W. Madison é SHAWN BOYLE PHOTOGRAPHY

and the other west of Western Avenue on the near west side, there is no ice in huge swaths of the city.

My life trajectory changed after I wrote a column in 2013 for Chicagoside, a now defunct sports website, about being among the few black men who grew up as a hockey fan. A reader reached out and gave me some used hockey gear. I started skating and playing rat hockey at rinks around the city and suburbs, and joined a team at Johnny’s that formed via word of mouth and Reddit. I now play at least twice a week for two teams.

For the most part, I enjoy playing hockey. I realize that black excellence can be anything under the sun. And playing helps me stay active when other black men my age are suffering from hypertension and high blood pressure.

But not everyone has been welcoming to players like me. One of my teammates was called the N-word during a game earlier this year at the Morgan Park Sports Center (which was opened by the Park District in 2015). I’m glad I wasn’t there to witness the ugliness—not because I would have done something to the player, but because racists don’t deserve a second of my time.

I’ve gotten plenty of puzzled looks from other players and spectators that turned into long stares. Even off the ice, people are surprised that I skate: I was wearing a T-shirt from Gunzo’s hockey shop while at my favorite watering hole, the Flat Iron in Wicker Park, when a man asked me where I got the shirt and looked at me in disbelief when I told him I play hockey.

The ICE program is seeking to change that.

When the program started in 2003 it offered scholarships to low-income players already playing hockey. It added its own hockey training program in 2015 with 80 kids, and there are now 150. The kids play at Bobby Hull Community Ice Rink in Cicero, Riis Park in Belmont Cragin, and this year at the new Blackhawks practice facility, the MB Ice Arena, at Jackson and Wood on the near west side. The players come from underperforming schools near the rinks, Erickson said. The program continues to provide academic scholarships as well as tutoring, on-ice training, and equipment.

Young acknowledged there are still barriers that keep many African-Americans from encouraging their kids to take up the sport.

“Parents have to be comfortable in knowing that it’s OK for our kids to play hockey,” she said.

In addition to incidents like the one at the Blackhawks game, other barriers for low-income families include expensive hockey equipment and getting kids to frequent practices at rinks that are often located far away from home.

A project manager at a construction company, Young said she is considering getting a second job.

But overall, the hockey community has welcomed her kids with open arms, Young said. Her kids have been able to enjoy learning the sport, like any other kids, without worrying about deeper societal issues.

“They look forward to finishing up school activities and getting on the ice weekly,” she said. “I never have to remind them to grab anything for hockey; both are always ready to go. I honestly know they are enjoying themselves as they mimic moves they see on television and pick the teams they like based on the ‘fancy’ ice skating and jersey colors,” she said.

Their favorite team, of course, is the Blackhawks. The kids, who attend Suder Montessori Magnet School, a CPS school at Damen and Washington, play at the MB Ice Arena down the street.

“The last three years have been filled with laughter, learning the sport, and bonding,” she said.

The Blackhawks have donated money to the ICE program and sponsored fund-raisers with pro players, and have pledged that the MB Ice Arena will be open for community use more than 90 percent of the time. The team has also opened outdoor roller-hockey rinks at two parks in the city.

King, whose own kids play hockey in California, said the game is going through a metamorphosis.

“You [have] a predominantly white sport where inner-city kids are playing and excelling,” he says. “The game is changing.”

In the African-American community, I no longer hide my enthusiasm for the sport. My interest in hockey used to garner reactions like “What are you doing?

That’s a white boy’s sport.” Now, when people see me with my gear, they say, “You play hockey? Go on ’head, brother.” v Evan F. Moore is a digital content producer at the Chicago Sun-Times.

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Trying hard

Can you handle the truth?

Second City E.T.C.’s Gaslight District examines the perils of living in the age of alternative facts.

By STEVE HEISLER

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801 Dempster Evanston 12 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 12, 2018

ast September, former White House press secretary Sean Spicer appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and was asked about the president’s obsession with fake news. Spicer took a breath, futzed with his jacket, and explained how news has moved beyond “true or false” and into an arms race for the truth adjacent. “They’d rather be first than right,” Spicer said of modern journalists.

“That’s unfortunate, and it gives a bad name to those who actually do take the time.”

The cast of Second City’s excellent new E.T.C. revue agrees. Gaslight District posits that online junkies would rather get their news “first” even if it’s incomplete, because they can’t afford patience and because facing the truth is a terrifying proposition.

In a recurring bit, one of the actors will turn to the audience while the rest of the cast freezes. This is the zone of truth. The character will say how he or she really feels, then turn back and let the scene continue. It’s a pretty standard stage device. But when Andrew Knox takes his turn in the zone, he slams into an invisible wall. Alone and faced with this therapeutically healthy conceit, he immediately begins pounding his fists against the wall, begging to be let out.

The truth hurts, and the show’s characters hide pieces of story, sometimes even from themselves. Cubemates at an office embellish their weekends. An immigrant conceals the reason why he’s eager to be deported. Over at Office Depot, an employee shares his dream with his boss of ditching the stapler aisle because he just wants to dance, even though he knows full well that he doesn’t have the drive or the chops even for backing up a superstar.

The cast’s quick wit keeps scenes from falling into maudlin territory. The jovial Sayjal Joshi appears as an ICE agent in the deportation sketch, and gamely plays along with the Mexican immigrant who turns himself in. In another sketch about a couple’s confrontation over whether they should marry, Joshi deftly hops from comedic bickering with her boyfriend into measured, sincere dialogue with him about the ramifications of engagement.

This loaded conversation takes place, of course, once the two enter the aforementioned zone of truth together.

Since this is a Second City revue during the Trump Administration, we naturally have to talk about politics. Thing is, there’s not much of it in Gaslight District, and what there is mocks all sides. Sure, the Oompa Loompa in

chief makes an appearance—played by Knox, whose vocal impression is uncanny—but so do whiny, do-nothing protesters accompanied by a tepid battle cry: “Who are we?” “Democrats!” “What do we want?” “Equality!” “How do we want it?” [Unintelligible shouting.]

Even the improvised material remains relatively bipartisan. In an early segment the cast solicits an audience suggestion and demonstrates how pundits can spin something as simple as “dogs”—which was the topic at the performance I saw. Two morning-show anchors highlight the fluffier side of a dog-related news piece. Cut to Fox News and the familiar blind vitriol and incessant shouting. Finally, two NPR hosts introduce themselves thusly: “Hi, I’m a sentient pair of glasses.” “And I went to Vassar.” Their take on the topic eschews straightforward reporting for interviews with academics and long, winding This American Life-type stories, neatly showing how folks living in the liberal bubble avoid the truth with tangential information as often as right-wing pundits grasp at conspiracy theories.

That sketch, and a few others, can drag on a bit too long, but the show’s pace is tempered by quick, outrageous bits. Emily Fightmaster takes the stage in full tinfoil garb, belting out a hopeful tune as a gender-neutral alien. And, boy, the elastic dance moves of Jasbir Singh Vazquez electrify not only the staff at Office Depot but the real-life audience. And though its premise comes off as a downer, a sketch that takes place in a hospice care facility manages to be one of the funniest in the show.

Gaslight District doesn’t deal in caricatures. It isn’t Saturday Night Live, where Alec Baldwin can make a face, repeat the week’s Trumpisms, and win an Emmy. Nor is it one of the many late-night talk shows where writers scurry to make light of the day’s events. It’s the equivalent of Jimmy Kimmel’s interview with Sean Spicer. It constructs characters who are reeling from the whiplash that comes from trying to determine what’s actually true when they’re bombarded on all sides with opinions and assholes. The show lets them step back, peer beyond the headlines and the Facebook feeds, and take the time to get it right. v R GASLIGHT DISTRICT Through 9/2: Thu 8 PM, Fri-Sat 8 and 11 PM, Sun 7 PM, Second City E.T.C., 1608 N. Wells, 312-337-3992, secondcity.com, $21-$48.

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ARTS & CULTURE The Wolf at the End of the Block é VICTORY GARDENS

THEATER

ROCK STAR

Joel Reitsma delivers the performance of the season in Birdland.

THEATER

Hate has a home here

Nothing is as it seems in Ike Holter’s The Wolf at the End of the Block.

By JACK HELBIG

T

he beauty of Ike Holter’s 2017 play about a young Latino seeking justice after being beaten up by a cop is how deftly Holter avoids the temptation of simple didacticism and instead turns a sensational incident into the catalyst for a complex morality tale. Over 90 taut minutes Holter presents us with a story full of flawed, deep characters. No one in the play is completely honest, and everyone’s motives are tainted.

The young man at the center of the drama (played with passion and depth by Alberto Mendoza in this 16th Street Theater production) is no saint; he stole money from his employer, and he withholds key details from his story (he was drunk, he provoked the fight).

We also find out he changed his name from Alejandro to Abe, but he’s no “honest Abe.” Yet his cause is just. He was the victim of a hate crime.

Meanwhile the cop, played with blond, blue-eyed intensity by Christian Isely, looks at first like the villain of the play. But the more we get to know him, the more we see he’s something else: a burnt-out case for sure, but also someone who has a moral center, or at least used to have one, and now is seething with anger, riven by ambivalence, and utterly revolted by the decadent world around him. He’s also probably not the cop who beat up Abe, a fact Holter slips in late in the story to reveal the full complexity of the dark world he has created. In fact, we never

know which side this cop is on, but that just makes him of a piece with all the other morally ambiguous characters in Holter’s fascinating tale.

Director Lili-Anne Brown remains true to the material. There are no easy answers, and Brown keeps it that way. José Manuel DiazSoto’s gritty urban set includes several walls festooned with posters featuring caricatures of Trump as Hitler, but that is no easy swipe at Twitler. They are there to introduce one of the themes of the play: that hate indeed has a home here.

Brown’s casting is strong, and her cast’s performances are multilayered. Gabriela Diaz delivers an exceptionally subtle performance as Abe’s sister, who slowly realizes over the course of the evening how untrustworthy people are (even her brother) and how complicated—and fallen—the world is.

But all the performances in this fine production reveal the full power and grace in Holter’s story. From the first moments of the play we are pulled in, and we remain enthralled throughout. And then, after the lights come up, we are left, bereft, to sort it all out alone. v R THE WOLF AT THE END OF THE BLOCK Through 5/19: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM; also Sun 4/15, 3 PM, 16th Street Theater, 6420 16th St., Berwyn, 708-795-6704, 16thstreettheater.org, $22.

Watching director Jonathan Berry’s compelling, carefully shaded production of Simon Stephens’s Birdland, which charts the predictable dissolution of coddled, self-absorbed rock superstar Paul, is like driving to Milwaukee on surface streets. It takes twice as long as necessary to get somewhere you’ve known you’ll end up the entire way, yet the unfamiliar sights along the route make you wish highways had never been invented.

Like fellow British writer Mike Leigh, Stephens privileges meticulously articulated anecdotes over eventful plotting. Paul’s trajectory from venerated superstar to unbankable pariah is an expedient one, marked by financial, sexual, and emotional profligacy as the music icon grows increasingly aware that stardom has required him to sacrifice a coherent sense of self, not to mention a moral center. Everyone else in the play—fan, journalist, father, bandmate, hanger-on—is more foil than character, existing primarily to throw Paul’s dilemma into higher relief. But Stephens captures a sordid, indulgent world with such depth and precision—enhanced by Joe Schermoly’s glam-yet-sterile set and Brandon Wardell’s shadowy lighting—that even the most discursive scenes (and there are plenty across two intermissionless hours) ultimately provide something to enrich and aggravate the imagination. All that’s required is the patience to linger.

At the center is Joel Reitsma’s forcible turn as Paul, a convincingly impossible concoction: childlike, malevolent, charming, repugnant, pathetic, condemnable.

Reitsma is a thrill to behold: exacting yet impulsive, rigorous yet unrestrained. If this isn’t the performance of the season, I can’t imagine what could be. —JUSTIN HAYFORD R BIRDLAND Through 5/12: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Steep Theatre Company, 1115 W. Berwyn, 773-649-3186, steeptheatre.com, $27-$38.

SELF HELP

Cornerstone immerses audiences in a weekend seminar that will change their lives—maybe.

Have you wanted to make a change in your life? Is there someone you’d like to love if they were a tick or a ton dif-

ferent from what they are? Are there goals you haven’t yet abandoned to a rational consideration of reality? Do you have heirlooms you haven’t dared to jettison from the sinking ship of your existence? Enter Cornerstone, where everyone is CACAPA (Currently Already Considering All Possibilities Anyway). If you don’t already see this motto punctuated with the corresponding hand gestures, you’re behind the curve. But you can start bouldering your way up this class-six, grade-VI wall by taking advantage of a Weekend Seminar, free to those who rope in ten more suckers.

Cornerstone is everyone you hate at the office congregating before yet one more PowerPoint to participate in evangelist-style proselytizing, political propaganda-level cheering, and Alcoholics Anonymous-type confessions to convert/recruit you to something that might be a self-help group, a cult, or a multilevel marketing scheme. In other words, it is an SNL skit that goes on and on and on. Conceived by Jake Fruend, written by Kevin Sparrow, and directed by Rose Freeman for Nothing Without a Company, the experience is partly immersive and traverses a few rooms in Artspace 8, a gallery inside a mall. However, no clear references are made to visual art or retail shopping complexes. Individual stories by participants occasionally stand out, but as Freeman points out in her program note, “You don’t need to sit and listen to any of this.” —IRENE HSIAO CORNERSTONE Through 4/29: Thu-Sat 7 PM, Sun 6 PM, Artspace 8, 900 N. Michigan, nothingwithoutacompany.org, $25 online, $30 at the door, half off students and industry.

AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER

The Gentleman Caller imagines a romance between Tennessee Williams and William Inge as they teeter on the precipice of success.

At the elevator pitch-level, Philip Dawkins’s world-premiere romantic melan-comedy is such a harmonious coupling of playwright and subject matter that I suspect it may have been preordained by the universe. Dawkins—a young author who is fluent in the parlance of contemporary LGBTQA experiences and issues—looks back at the real-life affair between Tennessee Williams and William Inge and imagines their encounters on the eve and the aftermath of Williams’s first hit, The Glass Menagerie.

It’s a thought-provoking, meticulously sourced work of speculative fiction (Dawkins’s script references dozens of personal letters, play excerpts, interviews, and notebook entries to color the dialogue) that is as much

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Joel Reitsma and Cindy Marker in Birdland at Steep Theatre. é LEE MILLER.

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about artists’ relationship with their own public reception as it is a drama about two thirtysomething lovers who are on the precipice of overwhelming success.

But director Cody Estle’s Raven Theatre debut navigates the latter territory far less easily than the former. In part, I suspect that’s because the emotional arc of the play is significantly shorter than its nearly two-and-a-half-hour run time, which is filled out by a dramaturgical smorgasbord of musings about sacrifice and criticism both past and present.

Those weighty and substantial musings would be better served if the deep tension The Gentleman Caller presumes between its subjects’ carnal desires and their differing levels of willingness to expose themselves to the world was better manifested. Though both Rudy Galvan (Williams) and Curtis Edward Jackson (Inge) are fine and comedically adept actors, the limited chemistry between them keeps their relationship’s emotional resonance—and its timelier implications—at a distance. —DAN JAKES THE GENTLEMAN CALLER Through 5/27: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3:30 PM, Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark, 773-338-2177, raventheatre.com, $43, $38 seniors and teachers, $15 students and military.

OSCAR WILDE, SERIOUSLY

Ghostlight Ensemble brings humanity to An Ideal Husband.

The problem with Oscar Wilde’s 1895 potboiler An Ideal Husband is precisely the thing for which its author is routinely praised: its flood of exquisite witticisms. They come fast and furious in the play’s opening, as a coterie of Victorian aristocratic types gather in the octagon room of parliamentarian Sir Robert Chiltern’s home, apparently for no other purpose than to skewer the superficiality and hypocrisy of London society. It’s such a giddy, farcical world that the sudden intrusion of mysterious, scheming Mrs. Cheveley, bent on blackmailing the seemingly unimpeachable Chiltern over a youthful moral indiscretion, turns everything absurdly melodramatic.

Or so I thought until I saw director Holly Robinson’s savvy production for Ghostlight Ensemble.

Robinson relaxes the farce into drawing-room comedy and populates it with passably clever people who have much deeper concerns than the strategic deployment of bons mots. It’s a warm and human world, quite unlike any I’ve seen in a Wilde staging, where the drive for revenge, honor, and self-preservation is disarmingly familiar. Naturally, the melodrama transforms into, well, drama.

This approach creates a few dry patches, namely every time Wilde provides little but witticisms to carry a scene. But the tradeoff is remarkable: a compelling examination of acute moral dilemmas faced by recognizable people with rich inner lives. Robinson’s supremely confident cast never falter, despite being packed into the living room of Gunder House with a fully illuminated audience a few feet away. These two and a half hours fly by. —JUSTIN HAYFORD R AN IDEAL HUSBAND Through 4/28, Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2:30 and 7:30 PM, North Mansion in Berger Park, 6205 N. Sheridan, 773-377-5342, ghostlightensemble.com, $20, discounts for students, seniors, and industry at the door.

14 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 12, 2018

CAMP CLASSIC

L’Imitation of Life gives an old-fashioned “women’s picture” an old-fashioned drag treatment.

There’s something nostalgic about L’Imitation of Life.

Not just because Hell in a Handbag Productions is reviving the show after having premiered it in 2013, or even because it’s based on Imitation of Life, the 1959 Douglas Sirk “women’s picture” starring Lana Turner.

No. L’Imitation is nostalgic because it’s an old-fashioned drag parody in the spirit of Charles Busch, Charles Ludlam, and, yes, Hell in a Handbag eminence grise David Cerda. To watch Ed Jones as Lana (looking an awful lot like John Goodman in a succession of Edith Head-esque gowns) is to be transported back to a simpler time when it was enough just to subvert the classic binaries: male and female, hetero and homo, proper and obscene, black and white. It’s kind of sweet, really.

Not that the material doesn’t lend itself to a more complex update. Sirk’s movie tells parallel tales of mother-daughter angst, the central one concerning Susie, neglected child of the success-obsessed Lana character, while the secondary but more interesting one centers on Sara Jane, who tries passing for white in defiance of her black mom. Either narrative might be pitched to resonate in the era of #MeToo and #prettymucheverythingsowhite, but director Stevie Love and adapters Ricky Graham and Running With Scissors are content to stick with familiar caricatures and cock jokes. It’s amusing for a while, but the strategy wears thin well before the L’Imitation’s 100 minutes run out.

In the principal roles, though, Jones, Katherine Bellantone, Robert Williams, and Ashley J. Hicks go an awful long way toward forestalling the inevitable. —TONY ADLER L’IMITATION OF LIFE Through 5/6: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont, 773-3275252, handbagproductions.org, $29.

THERAPY SESSION

Analisha Santini gets confessional in her wild and witty one-woman show, My Cosmic Blowout.

Analisha Santini wants you to know she’s got attention deficit disorder (“with a dash of dyslexia”). And she’s bisexual too. And as far as she’s concerned, there’s nothing coincidental about the combination. She’s also more than happy to tell you about the time she

drove her parents’ car down to Saint Louis without permission, to see a suicidal girlfriend. And about the bad patch she suffered when a lot of issues hit her all at once. And how much she likes Adderall. She’ll even take you to see her (rather disturbing) shrink.

Santini’s solo skit show, My Cosmic Blowout, pushes so far into the confessional and the therapeutic that bits of it sound like self-help affirmations. Oddly enough, that doesn’t wreck it.

That’s because Santini is not only wildly talented but able to use the wildness in her talent to canny effect. She brings a rare comic physicality to her skits, deploying her body and face in ways usually associated with clowning. Her props, too, can have a clowny edge; witness the enormous tampon she produces from between her legs, strung with an endless array of bizarre items.

Gross as the tampon thing may sound, it’s cleverly handled. There’s a definite look-at-me! spirit to My Cosmic Blowout—an abandon that’s not at all the same as chaos. Santini can be as witty as she is wild. The biggest drawback to the show, ironically, is one of the elements it’s built on: autobiography. If I were director Wolfgang Stein, I’d advise Santini to pull away some by building characters from her experiences. And ease up on the affirmations. —TONY ADLER R MY COSMIC BLOWOUT Through 4/16: Mon 8 PM, Annoyance Theater, 851 W. Belmont, 773-697-9693, theannoyance. com, $8.

METADRAMA

In Red Bowl at the Jeffs, small theater in Chicago performs a play about a small theater in Chicago.

There’s something wonderfully firsthand about this brilliant new work from playwright Beth Hyland and the Sound, directed by Rebecca Willingham. To begin with, it’s a small theater in Chicago performing a play about small theater in Chicago. Red Bowl Ensemble, a fictional company, have netted several Non-Equity Jeff Award nominations this year for their production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, and here they are at the Jeffs, in jumpsuits, jackets, and a very memorable cape, ready to face the music and disparage the competition. Willingham gets supremely unguarded performances out of her top-notch young cast, as though everyone had been in this ballroom before, sipped these same drinks, and worn these same embarrassing ribbons that say NOMINEE on them. For viewers with local theater mileage this show has enough to recommend it simply as a confection of dead-on in-jokes about the incestuous storefront scene, but it handles its Chicagoness well, never feeling too fringy or deep-dished out.

Indeed, anybody with a past in theater, or who ever made art with friends, or who ever played Would You Rather between Shakespeare and Chekhov (Chekhov wins, naturally: those glasses!), will find plenty to love here. There’s a cute but unnecessary coda, and though the good doctor’s ghost presides here, all right—in Hyland’s livid pauses and the superb Georgi McCauley’s injured wit if nowhere else—the use of Three Sisters as background is inconsistent. Nevertheless, Red Bowl is humble Chicago theater at its finest. —MAX MALLER R RED BOWL AT THE JEFFS Through 4/21: Fri-Sat, Mon 8 PM, the Frontier, 1106 W. Thorndale, thesoundchicago.com, $10. v

LIT

The last white family on the block

Linda Gartz’s memoir Redlined tells the story of a 1960s childhood in West Garfield Park.

By TANNER HOWARD

R

edlining is still alive and well, continuing to haunt communities that decades ago were denied access to home loan financing. A March report from the Neighborhood Community Reinvestment Coalition found that areas denied credit in the postwar period remain heavily disinvested in today.

One community emblematic of the ravages of redlining is West Garfield Park, one of the city’s poorest, most neglected neighborhoods.

The city of Chicago has transferred millions of TIF dollars out of the community and is now planning to spend $95 million on a new police academy in the neighborhood that many claim could be better spent on other services.

Before World War II, the community looked quite different: it was home to recently settled

Linda Gartz and her brother Billy, 1965 é COURTESY THE AUTHOR

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Lillian and Fred Gartz on their tenth anniversary, 1952 é COURTESY THE AUTHOR

German immigrants. But that wouldn’t be the case for long, as documented in Linda Gartz’s new memoir Redlined: A Memoir of Race, Change, and Fractured Community in 1960s Chicago. Gartz, a longtime Chicago TV producer, describes a far different West Garfield Park than the one that exists today: “At the time of Dad’s birth, in 1914, West Garfield Park was a neighborhood of wooden sidewalks, dirt streets, and butterflies fluttering above open prairies.”

In 1940, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, the organization tasked by the federal government with determining the financial viability of neighborhoods, would mark the area in yellow to signal “definitely declining.”

Just blocks away, it drew a red line, designating the area as “threatened with Negro encroachment” and therefore an undesirable place for banks to offer home-loan financing.

Although these government-backed policies encouraged massive economic disinvestment in changing neighborhoods, their eventual impact was hardly clear to the white families already living there; instead the whites directed their anger and violence at the black families trying to settle on their blocks.

The Gartz family lived in the neighborhood in the midst of these chaotic changes, similarly confused about what was happening.

But unlike most white families, who sold their homes and fled the neighborhood, Linda’s parents remained, rooted by the reluctance

of her father, Fred, to leave the place where he grew up and Fred’s parents’ decision to give the family their house—a six-flat—after they fled, compelling them to become landlords for more than 40 years. The decision to remain would create an incredible strain on their marriage as Fred traveled for work while his wife, Lillian, became a full-time property manager in a community that grew increasingly unstable and violent each year. Redlined offers insight into the ways white families failed to grasp their own role in how government officials reshaped the city, and how those failures further solidified the racial divisions that continue to plague Chicago today.

Tracing these consequences is in part what drove Gartz to write the book. After discovering her parents’ and grandparents’ letters, diaries, and business records in the attic of her childhood home in 2002, she and her two brothers worked, over the course of the next 15 years, to compile, sort, and analyze the massive trove of documents. (They plan to donate all the papers to the Newberry Library.)

Sensing that her family’s experience provided a distinct perspective on one of the city’s most fraught eras, Gartz struggled for years to find a story within the thousands of pages of documents. The historical importance of redlining ultimately helped her find a focus.

“I knew that this story about my parents staying in this neighborhood was significant, because no other whites did that,” Gartz says.

“I wanted to explore what happened to my neighborhood, what happened to my parent’s marriage, and the two sort of coincided.”

In the book, Gartz documents the ways in which she grew into political consciousness amid the tumultuous changes brought on by the civil rights movement. While she remembers feeling confused and unsettled as a teenager watching southern police officers attack black protesters, those changes would soon be felt much closer to home.

Gartz writes about her eighth-grade graduation at Tilton Elementary School, where only four of 74 students in her 1962 graduating class were black. She was friends with one of those four, she remembers, but even as a 12-yearold, she “knew that because of the way things were in the neighborhood, I wasn’t allowed to have her over to my house.” But with redrawn school maps and the profiteering efforts of blockbusting real estate speculators to drive white families out and resell their houses to black families at a markup, the school would have a graduating class of 58 percent black students just a year later. This was the moment, Gartz sees now, when redlining “turned the flow of whites out of our community into a flood.”

As Gartz and her parents became familiar with their new neighbors, their racist assumptions were quickly challenged. While Lillian initially describes feeling “squeamish” at the arrival of the first black family on her street, she soon declares to the rest of the family, “You know, I’m not the least bit unhappy in this changing neighborhood.” Though a sense of neighborhood stability quickly fell apart after the sudden change in demographics, there’s still a sense in the book that Lillian and Fred are transformed by their deepened relationships with black families, which quietly reshape the reflexively racist attitudes

ARTS & CULTURE

they’d once held. Gartz shares a moment at their dinner table, when her mother recounts the experiences that their local butcher, Eddie, experienced growing up in the Jim Crow south. Telling her family how he was used as a shooting target by his white boss, she breaks down crying, while Fred comments, “Man’s inhumanity to man.”

For that reason, Redlined is an important reminder that white people’s racist attitudes are harder to maintain after sustained contact with people of color. Since the 1950s, psychologists have developed the contact hypothesis, which argues that, under the right conditions, meaningful interracial contact is one of the best methods of reducing hostile attitudes between people. That’s clear in small moments in Redlined, as when Linda’s brother Billy and their neighbor Mr. Lewis repair a car together while the 1965 riots rage just blocks away.

Living through the aftermath was a formative childhood experience for Garz, and as she grew older and came to realize that its consequences were even more far-reaching than she’d realized, she was compelled to explore the topic further.

“I would have never done this search if I hadn’t lived through this,” she says. “I had heard of redlining, but I didn’t realize how pervasive and insidious it was to our present situation.”

Though she’s lived in Evanston for the past several decades, Gartz still considers herself a “dual citizen of sorts,” forever changed by her first 26 years as a Chicagoan—although the family did leave West Garfield Park in 1965 for Jefferson Park. With Redlined, she hopes that her family story will help readers understand how consequential redlining remains across our country today and how similar injustices are still being perpetrated against poor black communities today.

“Redlined is a personal story, into which is interwoven the history of redlining and its impact on one family in one Chicago neighborhood,” Gartz says, adding that she believes a memoir might be less intimidating to casual readers than an academic book on the subject. “[I hope] it may provide a path for the nation to move forward and remedy these unconstitutional injustices of the past that are still having an impact on race relations today.” v REDLINED: A MEMOIR OF RACE, CHANGE, AND FRACTURED COMMUNITY IN 1960S CHICAGO By Linda Gartz (She Writes Press). Talk and book signing Wed 4/18, Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton, 312-255-3610, newberry.org. F

APRIL 12, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 15

ARTS & CULTURE Richards (second from right) with Hillary Clinton and Planned Parenthood staff and volunteers

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é BARBARA KINNEY/HILLARY FOR AMERICA

Troublemaker

“Women are the most powerful political force in America right now,” says Cecile Richards.

By ALLISON DUNCAN

C

ecile Richards has been president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund for 12 years, but this May she’ll step down.

“In that time, I’ve worked hard to invest in, and lift up, a new generation of leaders,” says Richards, 60. “Now I’m trying to not just talk the talk but walk the walk. I don’t see this as stepping down; I’m stepping aside to make room for someone else. This is a moment when the organization is stronger than it’s ever been, and no one is better positioned to help lead the fight for women’s health and rights. I’m looking forward to staying in this movement as one of Planned Parenthood’s 11.5 million proud supporters.”

In that span of 12 years, Richards has collected a lifetime’s worth of stories, many of which she’s sharing now in her memoir Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead.

The book starts with her childhood in ultraconservative Texas, where she grew up watching her mother, Ann Richards, become a feminist icon after her historic win in the Texas governor’s race in 1990. (Richards is generally considered the first woman governor of Texas; Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, who was elected in the 20s and 30s, was a proxy for her husband, James “Pa” Ferguson, a disgraced former governor who’d been banned from holding state office.) Richards credits her parents for helping her launch a life of activism. When she was just 13, Richards wore a black armband to school in solidarity with those fighting to end

16 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 12, 2018

the Vietnam war. Her principal summoned her to his office and called her mother, who wasn’t home. Later that evening, Richards excitedly related the events to her mother, who went ballistic, angry the principal would try to intimidate Richards for standing up for her beliefs. “It felt like she and I were in a conspiracy together,” recalls Richards.

Richards would later experience a bit of deja vu, if only just in the sense of feeling part of a conspiracy, after meeting with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump at a Trump golf course in New Jersey in February 2017 about federal funding for the nonprofit. In the weeks after President Trump’s election in 2016, Planned Parenthood saw a 900 percent increase in requests for appointments for IUDs from women who wanted to to make sure their birth control would outlast the Trump presidency.

So Richards was hoping to find an ally in the administration when an acquaintance offered to facilitate a connection with Ivanka Trump.

At that meeting, Kushner told Richards Planned Parenthood had made a big mistake by becoming “political” and that if the organization wanted to keep its federal funding, it would have to stop providing abortions. If Richards could agree to that, he said, funding might just actually increase.

“Honestly, it almost felt like a bribe,” she recalls telling the vice president of Planned Parenthood. It should come as no surprise that her answer was an unequivocal no.

Richards will visit Senn High School on Saturday to chat with David Axelrod, chief strategist for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns and current director of the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, about these stories and more. But first, Richards shares with us why it’s better to fight and lose than to not fight at all, how making trouble can be a career path, and what’s next for her.

You call yourself a professional troublemaker. What does that mean?

It’s someone who had to decide whether she accepts things the way they are or questions authority, and I chose the latter.

In the book you recommend trouble making as a career path. To you, what’s worth raising trouble for?

Making trouble is an excellent career path.

It’s challenging, and there can be really tough moments (I’m looking at you, November 8, 2016). But it’s also fulfilling, inspiring, powerful, and a lot of fun. Not only that, it introduces you to people who will change your life. In the book, I write about meeting my husband, Kirk [Adams], when we were both working as union organizers in New Orleans. Some of my best friends are people I met on picket lines and campaigns.

To answer your question, anything you believe in is worth raising trouble for. It’s like my friend Representative John Lewis says, “It’s good to make trouble, as long as you’re making good trouble.”

You also say that if you’re not scaring yourself, you’re probably not doing enough.

What are some of the things that scare you?

Losing. Any time you’re taking on a fight you’re not sure you can win, it’s a little scary, especially when there are people counting on you. I write in the book about a union campaign Kirk and I worked on in Beaumont, Texas. We lost, and it was crushing. I felt I’d let down all of the nursing home workers we’d been organizing [to fight for fair wages].

It took a long time to get over that. But I still think our cause was just, and it was better to fight and lose than not fight at all. The way I see it, if you win every battle, you probably need to set your sights higher.

While a student at Brown, you first learned to question authority during a janitors’ strike that, you write, “became a battleground between a rich Ivy League corporation and the folks who cleaned our dorms.” Do you think that’s still an important lesson today?

Absolutely. We are living through a moment in America when pretty much all of our fundamental values are under siege: democracy, pluralism, equality, and a whole lot more. The future of our country depends on people who are willing to question authority—to push back against the regressive movement we’re seeing and say, “This is not OK. This is not normal.”

It is inspiring to see teenagers standing up, demanding change in gun laws and criminal justice, and putting these questions to people in office.

Give us a preview of what you’ll discuss with Axelrod on Saturday.

You mean other than how much we miss having President Obama in the White House and how we need to fight to preserve the progress we’ve made? I’m looking forward to sharing some behind-the-scenes stories, like what it took to get birth control included in the Affordable Care Act. We’ll talk about this insane moment we’re living through and what people can do. And, of course, we’ll talk about the book!

I’m really looking forward to this one, and I’m thrilled that Women and Children First is sponsoring this event. They are legendary!

What’s next for you?

I’ll be wrapping up my time at Planned Parenthood, which has been the most incredible job of my life. And then I’m going to do everything I can to mobilize women, because marching is great, knitting our pink pussy hats is great, but voting—that’s the whole ballgame. Women are the most powerful political force in America right now, and if we show up at the polls this November, we can change the direction of this country. v MAKE TROUBLE: STANDING UP, SPEAKING OUT, AND FINDING THE COURAGE TO LEAD By Cecile Richards (Touchstone). In conversation with David Axelrod, Sat 4/14, 4 PM, Senn High School, 5900 N. Glenwood, 773-769-9299, womenandchildrenfirst.com, $27 (includes book).

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ARTS & CULTURE Charlie Plummer in Lean on Pete

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MOVIES

A boy is a horse (of course of course) In Lean on Pete, a neglected teen finds a kindred spirit in a worn-out stallion.

By J.R. JONES

I

n Andrew Haigh’s moving indie drama Lean on Pete, a motherless 15-yearold boy in Portland, Oregon, gets a part-time job caring for horses at the local racetrack and bonds with a fiveyear-old quarter horse named Pete; when the stallion begins losing and faces a trip to the glue factory, young Charley (Charlie ssss EXCELLENT

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Plummer) makes off with Pete and the two set out on a treacherous cross-country journey together. A quietly observant filmmaker, Haigh understands the need for connection: his breakthrough feature, Weekend (2011), traced a gay romance through its heady first days, and his acclaimed 45 Years (2015) gave Charlotte Rampling one of her best roles as

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a wife suddenly alienated from her longtime husband. Lean on Pete, adapted from a novel

by Willy Vlautin, turns on the extraordinary connection between Pete and the silent Charley—who, in his emotional outlook, often seems more equine than human.

Certainly the boy has been treated like a horse for most of his life, led around by J

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ARTS & CULTURE continued from 17

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the nose from one place to the next. Charley’s mother abandoned him when he was a child, and his good-timey father, Ray (Travis Fimmel), drags Charley from town to town as he searches for unskilled work. (A cardboard box full of athletic trophies sits off to one side in their kitchen, and in one scene Charley wears a T-shirt from a previous high school in Spokane.) Charley runs for exercise in the early morning, and one day he discovers the Portland Downs racetrack, which intrigues him (horses are naturally curious). When he returns the next day, he crosses paths with Del Montgomery (Steve Buscemi), an irritable horseman, who offers him ten bucks to help change a tire, then $25 to help transport a horse to another town for a race. Before long Del hires Charley as a part-time stable boy to look after his six racehorses, and Charley begins to learn his way around the business.

The more one sees Charley with the animals, the more one notices his innate sympathy with them. Horses love a herd, and Charley wants nothing more than to belong to a group; he enjoys the community at the racetrack and quickly fits himself into its routines and rhythms. Like a horse, Charley throws himself into a task, which impresses the cynical Del. (“See that, Bob?” he tells another horseman. “The kid’s a natural. He ain’t afraid of a day’s hard work.”) Most important, horses are prey animals, conditioned to defend themselves and inclined to see any threat as mortal. Their first impulse when threatened—an impulse Charley shares—is to flee. “Never let go of the rope,” Del instructs Charley. “If you let go, he’ll run on you.” Haigh never shows Charley riding Pete, only walking alongside the horse, which cements the idea of them not as master and steed but as equals.

Even as Charley creates a new life for himself at the racetrack, his home life falls apart. An early scene shows him gratefully accepting a hot breakfast from the secretary Ray brought home the night before. Charley hasn’t had a woman in his life since his mother left and Ray fell out with her sister, Margy.

One awful night after Charley has hired on at the racetrack, the secretary’s jealous husband shows up at their door, bursts into their home, and puts Ray through a window, impaling him on a shard of glass. This stomach wound leads to a bowel infection, and Ray spends days in the intensive care unit while

Charley looks after himself, sleeping in the jockeys’ room at the stable.

Trust figures heavily in Lean on Pete, because Charley and Pete are both so defenseless against the world. Every horseman knows that, to win a horse’s cooperation, you need to convince it that you’re looking out for its safety, and Charley understands this thoroughly: from the moment he meets Pete, he’s all about the horse. The longer he works at the racetrack, though, the more he begins to understand that the horses’ well-being is secondary.

“Every horse is just a piece of shit,” declares Del, who’s spent decades in the business and once owned 20 horses. Charley strikes up a friendship with Bonnie (Chloë Sevigny), the jockey who rides Pete, but she too turns out to be untrustworthy; after Pete wins a race, Bonnie confesses to Charley that she was using a device hidden under the saddle to give Pete an electrical shock.

The movie’s turning point comes when Charley’s father dies of his infection and Charley, hiding from his trauma at work, watches Pete lose on the track. Fed up with the horse, Del orders Charley to load Pete into the van so he can be sent away for good. But once Del lets go of the rope, Charley runs on him. After loading Pete into the van, Charley hops into the cab and drives off, indulging a vague plan that he will locate his aunt and rescue Pete from the slaughterhouse. Vlautin, author of the source novel, has cited John Steinbeck’s memoir Travels With Charley as an inspiration (Charley was the writer’s poodle), and as Pete and Charley make their way—first in the van and later on foot—from Portland to Aunt Margy’s home in Laramie, Wyoming, Lean on Pete becomes a sort of American odyssey.

None of the characters Charley meets along the way registers as strongly as Del and Bonnie, but the relationship between Charley and Pete grows ever more poignant. As they trek across parched landscapes, Charley talks to the horse, opening up as he never has to any human character. He’s haunted by his mother, confiding to Pete that she’s never called or written since she ran away, and that he threw away his only photograph of her in a fit of anger. As the boy and the horse march over the cracked ground, they almost seem to be searching for that lost photo, on a race with no finish line. v LEAN ON PETE ssss Directed by Andrew Haigh. R, 121 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark’s Century Centre

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ARTS & CULTURE

MOVIES

Like Taxi Driver, but lonelier You Were Never Really Here updates the Scorsese classic to an even colder world.

By LEAH PICKETT

T

here are many parallels between Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976). Each film explores the seedy underworld of its contemporary Manhattan through the fractured mind of a traumatized war veteran. In Taxi Driver, Robert De Niro plays Travis Bickle, a depressed, laconic cabbie who befriends a teenage prostitute and decides that saving her will be his salvation. In Ramsay’s film, Joaquin Phoenix is Joe, a depressed, laconic hit man who specializes in rescuing underage girls from white-collar sex rings and bonds with one child who reminds him of himself. Both movies contain jaw-dropping sequences in which the hero storms into a brothel to retrieve the girl and obliterates every complicit man in his path.

But You Were Never Really Here amounts to more than a Taxi Driver for our time. Despite the obvious homage, this is a Ramsay film, rooted in the Glaswegian auteur’s feverish, kaleidoscope style. And it speaks to a new cultural anxiety and loneliness that might have driven Travis crazier, and sooner. At least the riders in Travis’s cab talked to him; today, they’d probably stare at their phones, riding in complete silence.

Perhaps better than any filmmaker of her generation, Ramsay (Ratcatcher, Movern Callar) understands and conveys the interior lives of broken people. Each of her films

Joaquin Phoenix in You Were Never Really Here

is a psychological character study, more concerned with the protagonist’s violent relationship with him- or herself than with any external violence. Every shot feels essential, and many are startling, but especially those from the protagonist’s perspective. In Ramsay’s previous feature, We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), the defining shot comes from the perspective of a beleaguered mother as she watches her sociopathic son squeeze the juice from a pulpy white fruit. In You Were Never Really Here, the twin of that shot is a close-up of a green jellybean that Joe squeezes between his thumb and forefinger, observing its journey from cracked to mushed.

Everyone remembers Travis Bickle’s demented voice-over in Taxi Driver, but none of Ramsay’s films contain voice-over narration—she doesn’t need it. This is not to say that Scorsese, an oft-imitated master of the device, spoon-feeds the audience, but Ramsay seems more trusting of her viewer to pick up on visual clues. Joe’s trauma is dramatized through abrupt, elliptical flashbacks that intimate horrific childhood abuse and relate his distressing experiences in the line of duty, first

as a soldier and later as an FBI agent. Though relayed only in snatches, Joe’s memories form a tapestry of pain so visceral that any further explanation for his current line of work would have felt superfluous.

Furthermore, the most overt link between You Were Never Really Here and Taxi Driver —a broken man’s kinship with, and absolution through, a young, female prostitute—cuts deeper in Ramsay’s film. Nina, played by Ekatarina Samsonov, is even younger and more traumatized than Iris, the character Jodie Foster plays in Taxi Driver. Joe sees himself in Nina, which makes their relationship sadder but also meatier: for Travis, saving Iris is simply a narcissistic excuse to “wash all the scum off the streets,” but for Joe it’s the chance to save an abused child just as he once wished to be saved. Joe’s weapon of choice is a ball-peen hammer—the same kind of tool that his father used on Joe and his mother.

Like Travis and Iris, Joe and Nina share a pivotal scene in a diner, but in the first film it stresses the generation gap between the characters and in the second it suggests the pair will help each other on their convergent

roads to recovery. In Taxi Driver, Travis sees Iris slathering jam on her toast, which solidifies his vision of her as a child and himself as her white knight. In You Were Never Really Here, the roles are reversed: Joe realizes that, in many ways, he’s an arrested child, and ultimately Nina helps him see a way out, so that both of them can live on the other side of misery.

Before that moment, Joe imagines an alternate ending to his story. When Nina goes to the restroom, he shoots himself in the head at the table, and a blood-spattered waitress blithely passes by to drop off the check. Such a surreal and grisly tableau would have felt at home in Taxi Driver, perhaps, but here it has a modern edge. We’re more distracted than ever and more willing to disbelieve or ignore the quotidian horrors all around us. But with this film, as with all her others, Ramsay impels us to see. v YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE ssss Directed by Lynne Ramsay. R, 89 min.

Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark’s Century Centre, RIver East 21

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ARTS & CULTURE Jon Hamm in Beirut é MOHAMMED KAMAL/BLEECKER STREET

MOVIES NEW REVIEWS

Back to Burgundy After spending several years abroad, a young man returns to his family’s vineyard in the title French region, rediscovers his love of the land as he assists his siblings with the annual harvest, then sticks around for several more months to help out on the farm. Director Cédric Klapisch elicits charming performances from the ensemble cast and incorporates lots of interesting details about the wine-making process.

The familial relationships in his leisurely drama are so pleasant and uncomplicated that you might long for some of the acidity of his early feature Un Air de Famille (1996), but the new film marks an improvement over his last two, My Piece of the Pie (2011) and Chinese Puzzle (2013), in its relative lack of sentimentality. In English and subtitled French. —BEN SACHS 114 min. A wine tasting follows the 7 PM screenings on Friday and Saturday. Fri 4/13, 4:30, 7, and 9:30 PM; Sat 4/14-Sun 4/15, noon and 4:30, 7, and 9:30 PM; Mon 4/16, 4:30, 7, and 9:30 PM; Tue 4/17, 4:30 and 9:30 PM; Wed 4/18-Thu 4/19, 4:30, 7, and 9:30 PM. Music Box.

Beirut Screenwriter Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton) set out to write an international thriller that harked back to John LeCarré but was properly scaled to a feature film, and his script strikes a perfect balance between suspense and geopolitical context. In 1972, a U.S. diplomat in the title city (Jon Hamm) hosts a high-level cocktail party attended by his wife and the 13-year-old boy, rescued from a Palestinian refugee camp, whom they plan to adopt; to their horror, the party is attacked by terrorists led by the boy’s grown brother, and the diplomat’s wife is killed. Ten years later, as Israel prepares to invade south Lebanon, the hero, now an alcoholic labor negotiator, is called back to the troubled country by the CIA to help negotiate the release of an old colleague who’s been kidnapped by a PLO splinter group. Gilroy paints a nuanced picture of the civil conflict in Lebanon, noting the U.S. and Israeli agendas at work and the inner tensions of the PLO, yet this information serves to clarify and accelerate the action. Brad Anderson directed; with Rosamund Pike, Mark Pellegrino, and Dean Norris.

—J.R. JONES R R, 109 min. Landmark’s Century Centre, River East 21.

Blockers Three overprotective parents, having learned of their teenage daughters’ plan to lose their virginity on prom night, set out to find the girls and stop them. Seth Rogen produced this rowdy comedy, which feels like one of his starring vehicles in its mix of sentimentality and gross-out humor. What’s different is the emphasis on female sexuality, with surprisingly serious conversation about the agency and desires of young women.

John Cena, playing against his tough-guy persona, steals the show as the most sensitive parent (in one of the better running gags, his character is secretly a crybaby), though fellow grown-ups Leslie Mann and Ike Barinholtz score numerous laughs as well. Kay Cannon directed. —BEN SACHS R, 102 min. River East 21.

Chappaquiddick This biographical drama revisits the 1969 scandal in which Senator Edward Kennedy, accompanied by a young woman not his wife, drunkenly drove off a bridge into a lake, killing his passenger, then disappeared from the scene and failed to report the

20 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 12, 2018

accident for eight hours. Despite the polarizing subject matter, screenwriters Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan take a factual, even-handed approach, detailing the Kennedy family’s efforts to cover up the scandal but also embracing the standard liberal reading that the crucible shamed the senator into rededicating himself to public service. Their efforts may have been in vain: the distributor, Entertainment Studios, bypassed the right-wing media in promoting the film but was brushed off by many lefty outlets (The Rachel Maddow Show, Real Time With Bill Maher). John Curran directed; with Jason Clarke (as Ted Kennedy), Bruce Dern (as patriarch Joseph Kennedy), and Kate Mara (as the accident victim, Mary Jo Kopechne). —J.R. JONES PG-13, 106 min. River East 21.

A Quiet Place A familiar premise is redeemed by a nifty gimmick in this suspenseful horror thriller, directed by John Krasinski from a story by indie filmmakers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. Krasinski and Emily Blunt star as parents on the run with their children as space aliens ravage the earth; these are the usual giant, fast-moving insects with sphincter visages, but they respond only to sound, hunting down and eviscerating anyone who utters a word. The elder of the two children is hearing-impaired, so the family communicate with sign language (captioned onscreen), but most of the story transpires in pantomime, and Krasinski takes advantage of the heightened paranoia that silence can bring. Blunt carries the movie, not least because her character faces the direst dilemma: she is nine months pregnant, and the baby’s birth may doom them all. With Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe as the two kids. —J.R. JONES PG-13, 90 min. Landmark’s Century Centre, River East 21.

Rampage A 1950s atomic monster movie on a modern megabudget, this thriller stars Dwayne Johnson as a San Diego primate specialist whose best buddy, an albino gorilla named George, is infected by a serum that causes it to grow exponentially. The wicked corporation that developed the serum cranks up a giant antenna on the roof of the Willis Tower to call home its creations, and before long the Loop is besieged by not only the Kong-size George but also a titanic wolf and crocodile.

(Tourists! I hate them.) Ridiculous but entertaining, the movie profits from Jake Lacy’s supporting performance as a sniveling corporate conspirator and even more from Johnson and the ape, who communicate with sign language and yuk it up like a couple of baggy-pants comedians. Brad Peyton directed; with Naomie Harris, Malin Akerman, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. —J.R. JONES

PG-13, 107 min. ArcLight, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Chatham 14, Cicero Showplace 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON, Webster Place.

Submergence In a ship on the Greenland Sea, a young biomathematician (Alicia Vikander) prepares for a risky mission in which she and other researchers will descend to the ocean’s floor in a submersible vessel; meanwhile her Scottish lover (James McAvoy)—unbeknownst to her, a British intelligence agent—is being held hostage by jihadists in Somalia. These scenarios may seem like exotic action fare, but the film, adapted from a novel by J.M. Ledgard and gracefully directed by Wim Wenders, tends toward romance and philosophy: both characters descend into darkness and isolation, and each of them, in search of solace or wisdom, flashes back to the idyllic Christmas week they shared at a hotel along the French coast. As the woman remarks, darkness challenges people’s sense of self, and in the romantic tradition, they seek themselves in each other. —J.R. JONES R 112 min.

Fri 4/13, 3:45 PM; Sat 4/14, 7:45 PM; Sun 4/15, 2 PM; Mon 4/16, 8 PM; Tue 4/17, 6 PM; Wed 4/18, 8:15 PM; and Thu 4/19, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

Zama After a hiatus of nearly a decade, the brilliant Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel (The Holy Girl, The Headless Woman) returns with an entrancing 17th-century period drama. The title character, a magistrate in rural Argentina, longs to return to his native Spain so he can be reunited with his wife and children; waiting on his deliverance, he idles away his time with native women and petty political squabbles until he’s sent into the jungle on a suicide mission to capture a violent bandit. As always with Martel, the story is opaque but the atmosphere rich and immersive, with meticulously designed frames that balance one’s attention between the principal characters and marginalized individuals (in this case women, slaves, and Native Americans). The soundtrack is also characteristically vibrant, as Martel conjures up a vivid world beyond the frame. In Spanish with subtitles. —BEN SACHS R 110 min. Martel attends the Sunday and Monday screenings. Fri 4/13, 3:45 and 8 PM; Sat 4/14, 3 PM; Sun 4/15, 4:15 PM; Mon 4/16, 6:15 PM; Tue 4/17, 8:15 PM; Wed 4/18, 6 PM; and Thu 4/19, 8:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

SPECIAL EVENTS An Evening With Catherine Crouch Short films and excerpts of features by the independent artist, whose work “explores gender, race, and class in lesbian lives.”

Crouch attends the screening, part of the “Dyke Delicious” series; a 7 PM social hour precedes the screening.

Sat 4/14, 8 PM. Chicago Filmmakers.

An Evening With Joan Jonas Old and new works (19682017) by the pioneering video artist and experimental filmmaker, whose art “explore[s] fundamental questions around visual perception, ritual, archetypes, and transmission of knowledge.” Jonas attends the screening. Thu 4/19, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

Sound of Silent Film Festival Presented by Access Contemporary Music, these two programs feature contemporary silent films, scored and accompanied by local musicians. Sat 4/14, 7 and 9:30 PM. Davis. v

Chappaquiddick

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Tink at Signature Banquets in Markham, former home to Adrianna’s é MORGAN ELISE JOHNSON

TINK REMEMBERS

THE TRIAL

BY FIRE THAT LAUNCHED HER CAREER

THE CROWDS AT ADRIANNA’S WOULDN’T ROCK FOR JUST ANYBODY, BUT AS A CALUMET CITY TEENAGER SHE WON THEM OVER WITH A MIX OF DRILL RAP AND R&B. The BLOCK BEAT BY

Words BY TIFFANY WALDEN

W

hen Tink performed at Adrianna’s for the first time, it was summer 2012, and the Chicago rapper and R&B artist was just 17—not even old enough to get into the Markham nightclub and banquet hall. But she had a chance to open for Future at one of the underground rap world’s answers to Harlem’s Apollo Theater, and she wasn’t going to pass it up. Though Adrianna’s had a reputation for rowdiness that sometimes escalated into violence, it was also a vital proving ground.

“I was nervous as hell,” Tink says. “This was my first club experience. I had performed for smaller crowds—small gigs. I’d do parties or drop by if somebody was having something at a school. But the club was a totally different scene—you gotta remember, it’s grown folks in here. It’s turned up. People are smoking. They drinking. They having a good time. It was a lot that I had to prepare myself for.”

Much as a preteen Michael Jackson earned his stripes singing for adult audiences on the chitlin’ circuit of the 1960s, Tink went through her musical rite of passage by getting 500 or so clubgoers at Adrianna’s to rock with her music.

“Everybody in Chicago who rapped, you wanted to be on the bill—just to get those looks, just to possibly shake hands inside here and hold the mike,” she says.

Tink, now 23, was born Trinity Home in Calumet City, a southeast suburb a few miles east of Markham. Two years after that show with Future, she signed a deal with Mosley Music Group (run by megaproducer Timbaland) and Epic Records. But what looked like a dazzling success turned out to be a trap: her album Think

DJ Reese, Tink’s DJ, used to spin at Adrianna’s in the booth that’s still there behind the pool table. é MORGAN ELISE JOHNSON

Tink, originally scheduled for July 2015, reSo naturally, Chicago’s emerging rappers mains shelved. She’s free of her contract now— dreamed of opening at Adrianna’s—or even she escaped in December 2017—but other than headlining a show. “If you take over Adrianna’s, self-released mixtapes, all she put out for its if you get a banger here, nine times out of ten duration was a handful of unconnected tracks. it’s going to blow up,” Tink says. And that’s exLast month, Tink dropped the EP-length actly what happened for her. mixtape Pain & Pleasure, which just entered the Tink grew up harmonizing on gospel tunes Billboard 200 at number 147 (it’s at number 15 with her mom and singing in the choir at Mount on the independent albums chart). And last Pisgah Missionary Baptist Church at 46th and week she took us back to Adrianna’s, where it King Drive. But her dad’s taste in soul, R&B, all began for her. The building at 163rd Street and dusties influenced her even more. “My and the Dixie Highway is no longer home to dad would have these records—he would have the nightclub, but its new occupants, Signature Brandy, Michael Jackson, SWV, even artists Banquets, were gracious enough to let us inside. who were more towards funk, like Teddy Pen“Just imagine being in the dergrass and Zapp,” she says. “It TINK club,” Tink says as we walk was unlimited amounts of records Fri 6/8, 8:30 PM, through the transformed space. laying around.” He also built a stuthe Promontory, “It’s two levels, and from each dio in the basement of the family’s 5311 S. Lake Park, $30, $27 side of the room, it’s packed home in Calumet City, and would in advance, VIP with people—like, shoulder to engineer for local people he knew. tables $50 per shoulder. You got the hottest DJs As a student at Thornton seat, $45 in advance, meet coming by. Even the parking lot Fractional North High School, and greet $62 is packed. So, I mean, about 500 Tink started playing around with GA, $80 with people in the club at once. To perwith music. The Chicago scene VIP, 18+ form there, it means a lot.” was boiling, as the likes of Chief Back in Adrianna’s glory days, Keef and King Louie cooked up from 2010 till maybe 2014, it seemed like noa new style of trap-derived rap called drill. body in rap’s underground royalty could step So Tink got into the mix, moving between foot in Chicago without stopping by to throw drill-influenced hip-hop and tender, insightful bands and pop bottles or to bless the stage R&B—she debuted with the first installment of with their latest hit. We’re talking Migos before her ongoing Winter’s Diary mixtape series in Donald Glover’s Golden Globes shout-out gave March 2012 and followed up with Alter Ego four them commercial clout, or Gucci Mane before months later. the prison weight loss, dental overhaul, inspiWinter’s Diary was more R&B than rap, but rational tweets, and mainstream glow-up. Nicki Alter Ego gave Tink street cred—it featured the Minaj, Wacka Flocka Flame, Yo Gotti, Juicy J, brash, booming “Fingers Up” and a freestyle and many more. over Keef’s “3Hunna.” She’d just started J

The Block Beat multimedia series is a collaboration with the Triibe (thetriibe.com) that roots Chicago musicians in places and neighborhoods that matter to them. Video accompanies this story at chicagoreader.com.

APRIL 12, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 21

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Tink at Signature Banquets, formerly Adrianna’s é OLIVIA OBINEME

continued from 21 working with Maurice Davis, aka DJ Reese, who had a job at Adrianna’s at the time, and shortly after she opened for Future, Reese got her a slot opening for Juicy J on Labor Day weekend.

“We would pile into the car. It would be about three or four of us in the backseat, and I remember we would wait [in the parking lot] until it was time to really perform, because we weren’t supposed to be in there so we didn’t want no drama,” Tink says. “People be smoking they weed. People will have they Hennessy bottles. It be live,” she adds. “You’ll never see that type of energy again, ’cause Adrianna’s was just on a whole ’nother level.”

In summer 2016, Adrianna’s became Stadium Plus, and in October of that year it shut down

after a 36-year-old man was shot and killed by police—according to the Tribune, they were responding to calls about a fight behind the building. But the club had been scarred by violence for years—between Christmas Eve 2010 and July 2016, at least eight people were shot there, and two of them died.

You don’t have to look far to see this closure as part of a pattern. Also in 2016, popular hiphop club the Shrine, located in a gentrifying South Loop neighborhood, was shut down by the city after a patron was shot in the head outside. Black Chicagoans complain that incidents like these are taken as pretexts to unfairly target the venues they frequent, because officials and residents equate gatherings of black people with violence. Late last month,

WGCI’s Takeover Jam at the Chicago Theatre, featuring buzzing hip-hop artists such as YFN Lucci and Rich the Kid, was shut down before it started when Chicago police cited “specific safety and security concerns for the surrounding area.” WGCI radio personality DJ Moondawg took to Twitter to remind his listeners that no similar official responses greet much bigger but largely white Saint Patrick’s Day and Lollapalooza crowds—and to ask them to look up the phrase “coded racism.”

“Our city, we just gotta do better so we can come and party in peace,” Tink says.

Did the closure of Adrianna’s leave a hole in Chicago rap? Tink thinks so. Though she doesn’t want to minimize the occasional violence that doomed the club, she misses

the space it provided for emerging artists to thrive—and she thinks there must be a way for the city to maintain something like that.

“It sucks. It’ll never be another Adrianna’s,” she says.

“You go to Atlanta and they in the clubs, and it might be turned up but they really just trying to get a bag,” Tink continues. “If we all had that mentality, Chicago would be on fire even more than it is. It all just started with us just doing our parts and making sure we’re setting that right example, so when you come through, people know that you’re coming for a good time or you coming just to count it up.

It’s no bullshit involved.” v

m @TheTRiiBE APRIL 12, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 23

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Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week of April 12

MUSIC

b ALL AGES F

PICK OF THE WEEK

On their debut album, Avantist show they’re one of the best rising bands in Chicago

Rob Magill é BRETT CHILDS

THURSDAY12 Rob Magill A quartet of Gerrit Hatcher, Charlie Kirchen, Julian Kirshner, and Rob Magill headlines; a duo of Magill and Kirshner opens.

9 PM, Elastic, 3429 W. Diversey, $10 suggested donation. b

é CAROLINA SANCHEZ

AVANTIST, MYKELE DEVILLE, CRIMINAL KIDS

Fri 4/13, 9 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $5. 17+

WHEN I CAUGHT local four-piece Avantist at Ian’s Party in January, front man Fernando Arias smoothly inserted some lines from Frank Ocean’s “Nights” into a cyclonic, humid jam.

While I recognized that the lyrics belonged to someone else, Fernando belted them out with such conviction and folded the words into the swirling music so naturally, I might have assumed he dreamed them up himself. The experimental quartet, who blend furious punk with exacting prog rock, are such a force that when you see them play it feels as if no other band can deliver music quite like them. Onstage Avantist have a commanding,

endearing presence, and in their lockstep performances the musicians can (and do) rip through their songs with whiplashinducing speed. Tonight, the band of brothers—Fernando, bassist Erick, guitarist David, and percussionist Luis Arias— celebrates the release of their self-titled debut album on No Trend. Juggling sawtooth punk ragers (“Veneno”), simmering postrock-inflected soundscapes (“Medi-Demi”), and knockout should-be singles flush with pop hooks (“Ramses”), the record captures the might of their live presence as well as their wide range as songwriters. —LEOR GALIL

Rob Magill is a ridiculously prolific musician and artist from Ojai, California, who churns out music at a manic pace, a situation that’s made dipping into his work a bit daunting. I first encountered him a couple years ago when Sun Ark, the label operated by fellow LA experimentalist Sun Araw (Cameron Stallones), dropped his sprawling 2016 album The Owl and the Pussycat. On the back cover Magill included a list of influences from across the entire musical spectrum, among them the Flamingos, Elliott Carter, Marshall Allen, and Yma Sumac. While it’s hard to identify any direct reference to these artists in the music, given its ambition and range, it all makes sense. On the side-length piece “The Owl” Magill overdubs various strings, guitar, reeds, vocals, and percussion—all played by him—to create a brooding, through-composed work of strident harmony and pensive melody, strewn with improvisation but informed by 20th-century classical music. The flip side includes a delicate dialogue between Magill’s saxophone and the austere singing of Natalie Alyse before moving into an extended spoken-word section, where Magill’s delivery over his own freewheeling chamber-jazz improvisation suggests the poetry-jazz collisions of 1950s San Francisco. But that album—a rarity in that it was released on vinyl by his mostly digital label Weird Cry—is hardly characteristic. Two of his titles from last year focus on the more extroverted, spontaneous side of his sax blowing. Transparent Actions is a fiery duo recording with drummer Marshall Trammell (ex-Black Spirituals) on which Magill’s soprano and tenor saxophone lines alternate between blown-out assaults and seductively snaking spell casting, while February Paintings Series Vol. 2 (Escape to Freedom) gets even more vivid in a series of solo reed improvisations where his playing alternates between lyric tenderness and furious energy. In his Chicago debut Magill will play two improvised sets: a duo performance with drummer Julian Kirshner and a quartet with Kirshner, bassist Charlie Kirchen, and saxophonist Gerrit Hatcher. —PETER MARGASAK J

APRIL 12, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 25

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MUSIC continued from 25 Margo Price See also Friday. Blackfoot Gypsies open. 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $25-$40. 17+ It’s been heartening to see a wave of country artists who have rejected the hat-act simplicity and cornpone sentiment that’s tarnished the genre now verging on becoming the new mainstream. Among this rising crop of players is Margo Price, whose surprise success with her 2016 debut, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter (Third Man), hasn’t altered her sober worldview or her admiration for the 70s country sound of Loretta Lynn, Bobbie Gentry, and Dolly Parton. While the title of her second album, All American Made (Third Man), might suggest knee-jerk patriotism, just about every song reflects economic struggle and a sense that the lines between right and wrong are increasingly hazy, making it hard to know which path to follow. On “Heart of America,” a pointed look at how agribusiness has destroyed the livelihood of the American farmer, Price salutes Willie Nelson (who makes a sweet-toned cameo on “Learning to Lose”) and Neil Young for spearheading Farm Aid to help those in danger of foreclosure—though even those efforts came too late for many small farmers. “But that was still long after the much bigger war,” she sings glumly, noting her own family was among the devastated. Several tunes provide solemn meditations on the current state of the American dream: “Nowhere Fast” describes a fruitless search for a better life, and on “Pay Gap” she excoriates economic gender inequality and reflects on Judeo-Christian hypocrisy, singing, “We’re all the same in the eyes of my God / But in the eyes of rich,

Margo Price é COURTESY THE ARTIST

white men / I’m no more than a maid to be owned like a dog / And a second-class citizen.” Price’s honeyed twang is beautifully framed by nimble, unfussy arrangements, whether her delivery is sassy, as on the soul-steeped “Do Right by Me”—which features harmony singing by Nashville institution the McCrary Sisters—or weary, as it is on the pessimistic title track. —PETER MARGASAK

FRIDAY13 Avantist See Pick of the Week on page 25.

Mykele Deville and Criminal Kids open. 9 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $5. 17+ Margo Price See Thursday. Blackfoot Gypsies open. See Thursday. 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, sold out. 17+

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26 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 12, 2018

Betty LaVette é MARK SELIGER

Bob Dylan has famously and relentlessly toyed with the melodies and arrangements of his voluminous repertoire, using his songs as perpetual works in progress despite the iconic status of many of them.

His open-ended mind-set makes his ouevre particularly well suited for treatment by veteran soul singer Bettye LaVette, who in 2005 rebooted a largely moribund career by putting an indelible mark on songs by Dolly Parton, Aimee Mann, and Lucinda Williams on her now-classic record I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise. Though she’s rarely turned to soul or blues for source material since her reemergence, her renditions couldn’t come from anyplace else.

For the searing new Things Have Changed (Verve) LaVette worked with producer Steve Jordan to tack-

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MUSIC

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

Greenbeard é HOLLY JEE

PETER MARGASAK

smoking, it’s good stuff. —MONICA KENDRICK

Greenbeard Erzulie, Sombra, and Melting Sun open. 8 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint, 2105 S. State, $10, $8 in advance. 21+

Wreckless Eric Slushy and James Deia open.

9 PM, Burlington, 3425 W. Fullerton, $12. 21+

Greenbeard are a grimy-sounding stoner-rock trio from Austin who riffed their way onto the scene in 2014 and have produced three albums since. Like its predecessors, last year’s Lödarödböl (Sailor Records) has a confident swagger in its crunchy, crusty hard-rock, psychedelic custom-van boogie. It clocks in at less than 40 minutes, and not a second of it is wasted, though the band stretch out their grooves with the calm of a stoned occult guru on a waterbed. One of Greenbeard’s greatest strengths is guitarist Chance Parker, whose solos ripple up and surge with some of the bluesy fire Eric Clapton spewed in Cream, the lyrical waning and waxing of Blue Oyster Cult’s Buck Dharma, and the hallucinogenic conjurings of Jimmy Page. The long tracks that give him room to roam, like “Lanesplitter” and “Wyrm,” are the album’s high points, and Parker wouldn’t have nearly the same impact without the tight rhythm section of drummer Buddy Hachar and bassist Dan Alvarez, who put fist-punch power behind the shaggy hard-rock numbers like “Swing” and “Young Concussion.” As their song of the same name suggests, whatever “Battleweed” they’re

le 12 Dylan tunes. The songs are mostly taken from albums he released from the late 70s onward that have gone largely overlooked—“Do Right,” a chill track on his first gospel album, Slow Train Coming, appears in a jacked-up blues-rock version—but considering the way she reinvents classics like “It Ain’t Me Babe” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” it doesn’t matter whether you know the originals anyway—you might not recognize them at first listen.

LaVette even dares to pare down some of Dylan’s lyrics, focusing on his cutting lines more than on his skeins of verses; according to press materials, she left out four on “Ain’t Talkin’” (from 2006’s Modern Times) to quickly get to the heart of the song.

Some musicians might deem it a drag to be best known for their first single, but English rock songwriter Wreckless Eric’s a pretty good sport about it. He’s still willing to play “Whole Wide World” and his other hits for Stiff Records 40 years after their release, but Eric (whose surname is Goulden) is hardly coasting. Between his contributions to the three albums he’s made with his wife, Amy Rigby, and his recent solo LPs amERICa (Fire) and Construction Time & Demolition (Southern Domestic), he can easily assemble a great set from songs he’s recorded in the last ten years. Back in the day Eric sang a lot about romantic disappointment, but nowadays it’s technology and geopolitics that let him down. “Space Age” contrasts the optimistic embrace of science during the Sputnik and Apollo era with the dubious payoffs of contemporary communication methods; “Gateway to Europe” compares the economic bust his hometown, Hull, suffered when England first joined the European Union with the city’s post-Brexit circumstances and finds that while things look different, not much has changed. In his home studio Eric and a shifting ensemble of side players work up loose, psy- J

Within the sleek blues-rock arrangements shaped by a band that includes Jordan, bassist Pino Palladino, and longtime Dylan guitarist Larry Campbell, she emphasizes a more elemental emotional thrust than the songwriter does. I’ve previously noted that LaVette can make just about anything compelling with the earthy grit of her voice and the commanding power of her presence, but when she tackles material as strong as Dylan’s she’s sublime. Plus, her readings have already sent me back to reconsidered maligned Dylan records such as 1985’s Empire Burlesque and 1989’s Oh Mercy!, off which she covers, respectively, “Emotionally Yours” and “Seeing the Real You at Last” along with “Political World.” —

APRIL 12, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 27

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chedelic sounds that draw heavily upon the examples set in the late 60s by the Rolling Stones and the Velvet Underground, but on this tour he’ll be playing solo, accompanying his vocals with guitars and old effects boxes. —BILL MEYER

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New York flutist Jamie Baum embodies the title of her forthcoming album Bridges (due May 18 on Sunnyside) through a series of stylistic connections that bridge divides between Arabic, Indian, and Jewish music traditions and filter them through a jazz perspective. The recording, which is billed to her long-running Septet+, draws upon some of jazz’s most noted syncretists to help her achieve that goal, especially trumpeter Amir ElSaffar, who has a mastery of Iraqi maqam, and guitarist Brad Shepik, who deftly fused jazz and Balkan approaches in the group Pachora. Baum has previously worked outside of jazz on her own, including Septet+’s 2013 effort, In This Life, which was inspired by the great Pakistani qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (a track on the new album called “Joyful Lament” is based on a melody the vocalist titled “Lament”). While pieces on Bridges such as “There Are No Words”—a springy, fusion-touched original with lyric, slaloming solos by Baum and the superb pianist John Escreet—make the leader’s jazz bona fides clear, the three-part Honoring Nepal: The Shiva Suite clearly shows how easily she can swivel between different worlds. That work was commissioned by the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, and Baum drew upon her experiences visiting and playing with local musicians in Kathmandu in creating it. According to her liner-note essay, the music attempts to celebrate the spirit those people displayed in the aftermath of the earthquake that devastated the region in 2015 by summoning the pan-Hindu deity of the title, “the destroyer of evil and the transformer.” For this rare Chicago performance Baum appears with the working band Short

Stories, which places a greater emphasis on jazz than Septet+, with original tunes inspired by the succinct beauty in the compositions of Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, and Wayne Shorter. The group includes pianist Andy Milne, saxophonist Andrew Rathbun, bassist Joe Martin, and drummer Jeff Hirshfield. —PETER MARGASAK

Martin Carthy Max Wareham opens. Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4545 N. Lincoln, $27, $25 members. b Few figures have been as important, ubiquitous, and reliable in modern British folk music as singer and guitarist Martin Carthy. He was born in 1941, and like so many teens of his generation was sucked into music by England’s mid-50s skiffle craze. The first song he learned to play was “Heartbreak Hotel,” but by the early 60s he’d become fully absorbed by the folk revival. Nearly six decades later he remains one of the genre’s greatest and most profound proponents. In the mid-60s Carthy launched a long part-

Jamie Baum é VINCENT-SOYEZ

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Become a tour guide for Chicago’s Original Hop On Hop Off Tour. You’ll learn about Chicago history and give tours on our famous open-top double deckers. nership with fiddler Dave Swarbrick, a key member of Fairport Convention, and during the 70s he served stints in important folk-rock bands like Steeleye Span, Albion Band, and Brass Monkey along with countless one-off projects such as Lal and Mike Waterson’s brilliant record Bright Phoebus. After marrying their sister Norma Waterson in 1972, he became a longtime member of the family’s popular band, the Watersons, and when the couple’s daughter, Eliza Carthy, also became a first-rate musician, the three of them formed a new group, Waterson:Carthy. Throughout his career, Carthy’s been known as a nonflashy but superb guitarist and exemplary vocalist who deftly illustrates time-tested tropes of folk music with the nuances of his singing. He’s a veritable human jukebox, a committed student of Britain’s vast repertoire, and an adherent of updating tradition with tasteful rock influences. These days Carthy—who turns 77 next month—doesn’t tour nearly as much as he once did. But his most recent recording, a lively, interactive duo effort with Eliza from 2014 called The Moral of the Elephant (Topic), captures his typical mix of soul, erudition, and historical fidelity. —PETER MARGASAK

fingerstyle patterns, such as the tender, atmospheric notes played on a Wurlitzer keyboard on “Lament,” and the brittle twang of requinto guitar on the looping riff that levitates the closing track, “Lift.” The lick that opens “Slow Ascent” sports the same tightly clustered thicket of notes Joe South plays on the intro to Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools,” but rather than shepherding a loping groove, Anderson dials in, spinning a gossamer web of reverberant sound that’s utterly hypnotic. Throughout the album, there’s more than a hint of the measured, lyric bluesy exploration Loren Mazzacane Connors forged in his Guitar Roberts guise, and touches of post-Fahey American Primitive technique, but Anderson sticks to her less virtuosic, less fussy approach, and ultimately takes great stock in the way her tangles of notes hang in the air, their overtones billowing out like clouds. — PETER MARGASAK J

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Portland guitarist Marisa Anderson makes music rooted in tradition and distinguished by a scuffedup intimacy. She’s internalized multiple strains of rustic American sounds, including Delta blues and old-timey country, and remakes them with a decidedly handcrafted feel. In recent years she’s opened up her music to new influences, which is in part a result of heavy touring, sharing the stage, and recording with Saharan guitarists like Mdou Moctar and Kildjate Moussa Albadé, whose modal, trance-inducing work sounds like a lost relative of southern blues. Though Anderson’s aesthetic is too fully formed for outside forces to significantly alter her singular identity, these have given her work a greater, more mesmerizing depth. In June she’s dropping Cloud Corner, her strongest album yet and her debut for Thrill Jockey. On the record she adds subtle overdubs to her rolling electric

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continued from 29 Kid Koala’s Turntable Orchestra See also Wednesday. 7 and 9:30 PM, Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room, Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan, $25, $15 members, $10 students, early show sold out. b

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Canadian DJ and producer Eric San, aka Kid Koala, is unbound by the structures typical of someone who operates with a couple turntables and a mixer. He’s made a name for himself as a master turntablist, both on his own and as part of the supergroup Deltron 3030 (not to mention his collaborations with Mike Patton and Gorillaz).

He’s also penned graphic novels, contributed to movie scores, and pitched in on video games— his soundtrack for the breakdancing video game Floor Kids comes out on vinyl later this month.

The concept for San’s Art Institute performances grew out of a series he hosted in Montreal in which he invited fans to sketch or write in public while he spun cosmic, ambient-leaning original compositions he had made with synths, strings, and, yes, turntables. The songs appeared on his first non-sample-based record, last year’s Music to Draw to: Satellite (Arts & Crafts), and he devised a unique interactive live show. Those who join his orchestra in Chicago will be able to command one of 60 turntables and play along by following colored lights directing which records to spin. San’s music has an immersive quality, and this is a rare chance to be able to step into his process of bringing it to life. —LEOR GALIL

decade ago, and through the years she’s inched her sound closer and closer to pop; her 2012 track “Work From Home” sounds like a doo-wop number that curdled during the recording process.

Whatever the outcome, her songs serve as reminders of the dark underbelly that often hides beneath pop’s sheen. Now based in Toronto, Remy teamed up with area jazz band the Cosmic Range (which includes her husband, Maximillion Turnbull, aka Slim Twig, as a member) to make In a Poem Unlimited (4AD). It’s the cleanest, most sonically uplifting U.S. Girls album yet, but there’s plenty mutating within its postdisco dance cuts. Throughout the record Remy sings about women fighting back against suffocating patriarchy; on the steamy single “Velvet 4 Sale,” she wrestles with the thoughts that would convince someone to purchase a gun to protect herself from explosive men, her piercing, haunting voice acting as a beacon of safety in a foggy world.

—LEOR GALIL v

WEDNESDAY18 Kid Koala’s Turntable Orchestra See Tuesday. 7 and 9:30 PM, Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room, Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan, $25, $15 members, $10 students, early show sold out. b U.S. Girls Matchess and Sip open. 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, sold out. 21+ Chicago native Meg Remy began recording and performing noise collages as U.S. Girls roughly a

U.S. Girls é COURTESY 4AD

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TIED HOUSE | $$$ R 3157 N. Southport 773-697-4632 tiedhousechicago.com

FOOD & DRINK Top right: Monkfish with kohlrabi ribbons; middle left: Okinawan sweet potato with baby turnips; bottom right: pork belly with salsify funnel cake é NICK MURWAY

RESTAURANT REVIEW

Surprises abound at Tied House

Schubas Tavern’s finedining annex is the rarest of neighborhood restaurants: a destination.

By MIKE SULA

T

he old man is angry.

His rack of lamb looks great—pink and glistening, with a roasty brown crust rubbed with ground bloodorange peel and a bone that swings out of each chop like the grip on a saber. Blood sausage lurks below amid pickled cranberries and a sweet-and-sour cranberry gastrique.

But it doesn’t please him.

“It’s RAW!” he scolds his server in a tone one should reserve only for the willfully ignorant.

“It’s medium rare,” replies the young man, as agreeably as possible.

“It is NOT MEDIUM RARE!” he insists. “And even if it was, you should’ve informed me that’s how the chef serves it—then I could decide for myself.”

The lamb is whisked back to the kitchen.

When it returns its beauty has died. But the old man has only begun his lecture, and spends much of his meal cataloguing to his superhumanly patient date and his super unlucky server all the flaws he finds, returning even to the lamb.

“The lamb is delicious,” he says. “But the pork sausage underneath is overkill. That’s what gets me about all these fancy restaurants. Too busy! Too many things! It would’ve been perfect with just the lamb and potatoes.”

This was the scene at Tied House, the fancy restaurant attached to Schubas Tavern that replaces the old Harmony Grill. Maybe the old man yearned for the former kitchen’s cilantro-lime steak tacos or Schlitz-battered cheese curds? The vegetarian poutine? The red velvet pancakes? Somehow I don’t think so.

Yet restaurants of this unusual ambition don’t frequently open in Lakeview. The last time it happened was four years ago, when Spanish hideaway MFK greatly improved the

unpromising options. The locals aren’t used to it.

This most recent act of bravery was committed by the principals behind the music video production company Audiotree, the relatively new owners of Schubas (and its attendant Lincoln Hall). They commissioned the Chicago office of Gensler, the world’s largest architecture firm, which flattened Harmony Grill and built this lovely modern annex that

somehow manages not to mess with the aesthetic integrity of the 115-year-old neo-Gothic tavern. And there’s still an indoor passage to Schubas, so it’s as easy as before to polish off your meal and stroll next door to catch a show.

The interior practically glows with a white marble bar lit by copper fixtures. Up above, mirrors are set amid textured patterns mimicking those on the tin ceiling of Schubas.

The chief reason people mirror their ceil-

ings is to watch themselves have sex. I detect a similar purpose in the mirrors on the ceiling at Tied House, where from certain seats you can tilt your head upward to measure the pleasure on your face as you work through the menu by chef Debbie Gold, who spent the last couple decades cooking in Kansas City, racking up awards and accolades, but who in the late 80s also clocked in for the first two years of a new restaurant called Charlie Trotter’s, when the menu was still a la carte.

You may not yet be familiar with Gold’s food, but if you ever ate at Trotter’s you’ll recognize the combination of impeccable technique and artful plating with surprising flavors and textures and occasional exotica that so many veterans of that kitchen carried out into the world. Yet more frequently Gold takes simple, elemental ingredients to extraordinary places.

Dinner starts with bread service. Don’t be like the old man. This is worth paying for. A trencher of—in increasing degrees of rusticity—Parker House rolls, seeded rye, and honey-oat porridge bread. Then there’s a selection of individually priced spreads, say, a thick, supple bone-marrow-whipped butter that slows the passage of time once it enters your mouth. Or a piece of honeycomb luxuriating in a pool of creme fraiche, or a pink oval of smooth, cold chicken liver mousse. My favorite among these is an opaque green-tomato marmalade, just barely sweet yet somehow deeply fruity and savory, with the texture of something you could pack into a hash pipe.

The rest of the menu is divided among “vegetable,” “sea,” and “land,” the dishes in each category somewhat confusingly listed by size and price point, smallest and lowest to largest and highest. It makes it somewhat difficult to contemplate an ordering strategy without some help. Luckily the servers I interacted with were well-equipped guides.

Like the marmalade, a few dishes on this menu are so unique they defy description. I’ll do my best: there are torn chunks of purple sweet potato, first baked in a salt crust, then fried to order, that have an almost brownielike texture, with a concentrated tuberous sweetness, set off against barely roasted tender baby white turnips and cool fromage blanc, a nightshade dish I won’t soon forget.

The aforementioned carnaroli porridge J

APRIL 12, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 31

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

FOOD & DRINK

Carnaroli porridge with beet soup and kvass é NICK MURWAY

continued from 31

uses a grain of rice normally found in risotto—though what is risotto but a thick porridge? The well-cooked grains are suspended in a cool beet soup with the fermented rye drink kvass, drenched in a licorice-infused cream, and topped with a beef chicharron.

On the “sea” section of the menu pieces of alabaster monkfish and pebbles of green apple are separated by thinly shaved kohlrabi ribbons, all perched on nutty toasted barley fattened with bonito-compounded butter.

Under “land,” jiggling lumps of rich beef marrow liberated from bone are piled under halos of malted dried onion and mounted on sweet, cream-cooked onions and fermented Swiss chard.

Other dishes are designed for dramatic effect. The sole pasta on the menu, a raviolo filed under “sea” for the light dashi broth poured over it at the table, seems like it was conceived for Instagram influencers. It’s a raw,

32 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 12, 2018

shimmering duck yolk sprinkled with black sesame seeds and toasted nori, mounted on two thin sheets of pasta sandwiching a smear of potato puree. Aim your phone at the yolk, set it for slow-mo, pierce the orb with your knife, and ogle the contents seeping into the dashi like a yellow oil spill. In a similarly executed vegetable dish, a maitake mushroom sits in a bowl next to a pile of just-scrambled egg; a measure of hot leek broth is poured over the ingredients and the yellow curds float apart.

Anyone put off by this display will miss out on the concentrated allium intensity of the broth and carnal umamic meatiness of the fungus.

In fact, meatier dishes seem less likely to annoy your grandparents. A charred ducksauce-glazed mackerel fillet that has been aged in beeswax for 12 days to concentrate flavor is laid across yellow beet coins amid dabs of horseradish sauce. A luscious slab of milk-braised pork belly sits under a squiggly funnel cake of deep-fried salsify batter.

Yellow chanterelles and shredded beef short rib alongside tiny orbs of fried potato with stygian black-garlic sauce presents the most straightforward play on meat and potatoes on the menu, while a truffled pork terrine, tight layers of meat and fat over a light sauce gribiche, was, at least on the occasion I ate it, served too cold. (Or maybe the old man just got to me.)

If you’re still following along, you won’t be surprised to learn that Gold’s deserts are as abstract as some of the savory dishes.

There’s a dense chocolate mousse nestled among spherified milk pearls. Marshmallowy meringue dominates a white-chocolate panna cotta with tangerine sauce, graham-cracker sweet dough, and carbonated oranges. A “wedding cake” features torn angel food adorned with red currants and rose petals, indeed like a discarded wedding dress. Sheepmilk ice cream is set in a pool of yellow custard and a pleasantly astringent goat-milk caramel.

Cocktails, identified by number, feature a crisp and bracing tequila-and-Malort concoction with the bite of ginger beer, made candy-colored by blood orange, and a rich Boulevardier, its rye spice softened with syrupy sherry. A very reasonable wine list features most bottles in the $40-$60 range, like a floral Habit Jurassic Park chenin blanc from central California or an earthy ruby-colored Division gamay noir from Oregon.

In fact, the menu’s prices across the board are not unreasonable for cooking of this sophistication—I’m certain they’d be much higher if this project were planted in a poncier neighborhood than Lakeview. It is among the rarest of neighborhood restaurants. I can see how a lot of the food at Tied House might be upsetting to people who don’t like surprises at dinner, but it’s a destination for those of us who live for them. v

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

FORTUITOUS UNION

FOOD & DRINK

fortuitousunion.com

Clockwise from left: Turner Wathen; Jordan Morris; the Union Park Swizzle é TED WATHEN; WHITNEY MORRIS; JULIA THIEL

SPIRITS

From fuck-up to Fortuitous Union Or how high-end whiskey-rum blends get made

By JULIA THIEL

N

early eight years ago, Jordan Morris, now 32, and his friend Turner Wathen, 35, began planning a business to bring the best, purest rums they could find to the U.S. “We’re looking for rums that are unadulterated,” Wathen says. “No sugar, no caramels. We like the purity of rum.” They identified a 12-yearold rum from Trinidad that they loved, bought some, and had it shipped to a warehouse in Louisville where—due to a mistake—it got mixed with whiskey. Their pure, unadulterated rum had been adulterated, and Wathen and Morris would have to figure out what to do about it.

Whiskey practically runs in Wathen’s veins: his family has been making the spirit for five generations, starting in 1788 and continuing through Prohibition as one of the few companies licensed to sell medicinal whiskey (since then, Wathen says, “we drank and sold ourselves out of all our assets”). Morris’s background is also in whiskey; he’s worked in liquor stores, led bourbon tastings, and written whiskey reviews for the online magazine Whiskey Wash. So perhaps it’s fitting that when the two decided to start importing rum, whiskey inevitably found its way into the mix.

When he and Wathen began talking about starting their own business, Morris says, they discussed trends in the spirits industry. “The one market I saw that had a very historic spirit that actually had a passionate following, but not in America, was rum,” he says. “There are a lot of great distilleries making great rum in the Caribbean that don’t have any market penetration in the United States.”

They decided the business model for their company, which they called Rolling Fork Spir-

its, would be to seek out excellent rum, import it, and finish it in various casks—for example, barrels that had previously held sherry. Or, in the case of the 12-year Trinidad rum, bourbon.

That rum had spent six months sitting in Kentucky bourbon barrels in a shared warehouse space rented by Wathen and Morris before being transferred to a holding tank for bottling. The warehouse workers who moved it, though, didn’t realize that the tank already contained a five-year-old rye made by MGP (Midwest Grain Products, which supplies whiskey to many smaller brands).

The mix is mostly rum, says Morris; less than a quarter of it is whiskey. When they got the call telling them about the mistake, he says, they first told the warehouse to pay back whoever owned the whiskey that had been mixed with their rum. “Then we had to look at this spirit to see, is it godawful?” According to Wathen, “it was just enough rye to make a spicier finish to a sweeter rum, so you get a variety of flavors going from sweet to spicy.

That’s where we lucked out.” Both Morris and Wathen liked the spirit a lot, as it turned out.

But they didn’t trust themselves to be impartial, so they asked other people in the spirits industry in Louisville for their opinions— which also turned out to be favorable.

They called the spirit Fortuitous Union— but despite the name, neither of the owners thinks the mix-up was a happy accident. In fact, Wathen says, “Fortuitous Union stands for FU, it stands for fuck-up.” Both say they got lucky that the blend turned out as well as it did, but they never would have let it happen if they’d had a choice. “If we hadn’t had it forced upon us by accident, I can say with 100 percent certainty we would not have done it,” Morris says. “Not with aged rum.”

Because the product contains both rum and whiskey, it can’t be labeled as either. There’s a category for alcohol that doesn’t fit into any other category: distilled spirit specialty. “It’s this weird category that many in the industry view as the bottom shelf of bottom shelves,” Wathen says. Morris adds, “One distributor told us we were crazy—you can’t sell a distilled spirits specialty. That same distributor took the first allotment from us and sold out in like two days.”

Wathen says that while rum as a category is still underappreciated in the U.S., tiki culture has helped to make the spirit more popular in major cities. Partly because of Chicago’s strong cocktail scene, partly because there’s a limited amount of Fortuitous Union (1,650 bottles), the spirit is available only in Louisville— where the company is based—and Chicago.

“We found a welcome we weren’t expecting in high-end cocktail bars like Prairie School,” Morris says.

Prairie School head bartender Kristina Magro was surprised she liked the spirit as much as she did. “You hear a story like that and you’re like, oh, so you guys made a really expensive mistake?” she says. “I think it’s really cool because it’s a nice rich, robust rum, but

with the rye you have a spicy component. Not only do I get the baking spice from the wood but from the rum; they play off of one another.

The rum is really rich but it drives home that wood, oak, spice, dill. When I taste rye I always taste dill.”

Magro used Fortuitous Union in a riff on the Queen’s Park Swizzle that she named the Union Park Swizzle. In addition to the rum-whiskey blend, the cocktail includes maple syrup, lime juice, and 11th Orchard bitters (it’s no longer on the menu, but she expects to use the spirit again in the future, she says). “It’s perfectly in line with what we’re doing here—we try to make really simple, elegant cocktails that put the spirits that we’re using at the forefront,” she says. “But it’s also something cool that no one’s ever seen; I get to introduce people to this spirit that they wouldn’t likely try if it wasn’t in this cocktail.”

Part of the goal of Rolling Fork Spirits is to help whiskey drinkers appreciate rum. “We source unique rums from across the Caribbean and do interesting finishes to help match what consumers look for in bourbon and Scotch whiskey,” Wathen says. Both he and Morris believe that what whiskey drinkers want is quality, and there’s plenty of quality rum out there. “It’s crazy to me that you can walk into a liquor store and there’s Appleton Estate 21year rum sitting on the shelf,” Morris says.

“They make fantastic rum, and no one wants it. Whereas people will line up the day before for a 12-year bourbon.”

At the moment, the owners are focused on their original goal: importing high-end rum, finishing it in various barrels, and releasing it under their Rolling Fork label. But while Fortuitous Union can’t be replicated, it’s not the last rum-whiskey blend the company will produce. “We wanted to do small batches of this for the cocktail bars, the people who embraced us and are asking if we’re going to make more,” Morris says. It’s been a process of trial and error, and only recently have they found another blend they like. “We’ve done some blends with higher rye-whiskey ratios, and they taste . . . not as good,” Morris says.

“We got really kind of lucky [with Fortuitous Union].” v

m @juliathiel APRIL 12, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 33

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Master’s in Statistics/ Mathematics + 2yrs exp. or Bachelor’s in Statistics/Mathematics + 5yrs exp. req’d. Skills req’d: exp. w/SAS, SAS EG, SAS Macro, Xeno, Revolution R, R markdown, Python, MS SQL Server, Netezza, Hadoop, Hive, Unix, C++, TreeNet, Tableau, Statistical Modeling and model implementation, data mining, CHAID segmentation, logistic regression, gradient boosted trees, constrained regression optimization, random forests methodology, Hue system, manipulation of large

34 CHICAGO READER | APRIL 12, 2018

data sets (>100 GB). Telecommuting permitted. Send resume to: C. Studniarz, REF: DZ, 555 W Adams, Chicago, IL 60661

COMPUTER SYSTEMS ANALYSTS Zensar Technologies, Inc. has openings in Oak Brook, IL. All positions may be assigned to various, unanticipated sites throughout the US. Job Code: US-OBIL170 Computer Systems Analyst (Quality/Design): design documents & testing code.

Job Code: US-OBIL171 Computer Systems Analyst (Enhancements/ Maintenance): development, enhancement & testing. Job Code: US-OBIL172 Computer Systems Analyst (Study/Execution): analysis & project planning. Mail resume to: Prasun Maharatna, 2107 North First Street, Suite 100, San Jose, CA 95131.

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

TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS MANAGER, ANALYTIC INSIGHTS (MULT. POS.), PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Chicago, IL. Support dev’t & engage in strategies that will help clients to inc. revenue, margin or improve op’l performance. Req. Bach’s deg. or foreign equiv. in Comp Sci, Comp Eng, Tech Mgmt or rel. + 5 yrs post-bach’s progress. work exp.; OR a Master’s deg. or foreign equiv. in Comp Sci, Comp Eng, Tech Mgmt or rel. + 3 yrs rel. work exp. Travel req. up to 20%.

Apply by mail, referencing Job Code IL1708, Attn: HR SSC/Talent Management, 4040 W. Boy Scout Blvd, Tampa, FL 33607.

JBS TRANSFER PRICING Tax In-Charge, Plante Moran, Chicago, IL. Provide multinational clients w/ solutions to transfer pricing & valuation matters that result in effective tax planning & risk mngmnt. Bach’s degree in Accounting, Economics, Finance, International Affairs & 5 yrs of exp; or Master’s in same. Must’ve 1-2 yrs exp in public accounting w/ at least 2 yrs working w/ Japanese businesses. Reqs fluency in Japanese & English.

Send resumes to Michelle Kolb, Regional HR Mgr., 10 S. Riverside Plaza, Ste. 900, Chicago, IL 60606, EOE. ref# (20122850)

ADVERTISING

EXECUTIVE

PRODUCER for Cramer-Krasselt in Chicago, IL oversee integrated broadcast & multi-platform production; oversee production budgeting & fiscal mgmt; direct production resources, shoots & schedules; negotiate production contracts; oversee hiring; manage all aspects of commercial film shoots Bachelor’s in Film or Television + 2 yrs exp in job off’d req’d Employer will accept 3 or 4 year Bachelor’s degree Respond SM/C-K PO Bx 4241 NYC 10163

Familia Dental Springfield LLC is seeking General Dentists to diagnose and treat diseases, injuries, and malformations of teeth and gums and related oral structures, and provide preventive and corrective services. Work location: Springfield, IL. Req. DDS/ DMD and State dental license.

Multiple openings. To apply, send Resume to Familia Development LLC – ATTN: Vito Losuriello, 2050 East Algonquin Rd., Ste. 601, Schaumburg, IL 60173.

Automated Trading Specialist Bachelor’s deg in Economics, Finance, Physics or closely reltd quantitative fld of study. Must have internship or rsrch exp in trading. Coursework, rsrch or trading exp must have included C++ Pls send CV to Megan Suerth, Akuna Capital LLC 333 S Wabash Ave, Ste 2600, Chicago, IL 60604 Associate Attorney Ladas & Parry in Chicago,IL; Attorney w/JD+license; Draft IP briefs, apps, letters, analysis reports; Send resume @Richard J. Streit-224 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL

REAL ESTATE RENTALS

TRANSUNION, LLC SEEKS Sr. Consultants- IT Database for Chicago, IL location to analyze & develop databases. Master’s in Comp. Sci./ Comp. Eng. + 5yrs exp. or Bachelor’s in Comp. Sci./Comp. Eng. + 7yrs exp. req’d. Req’d Skills: Oracle database administration, RHEL Linux, OracleLinux, Windows, Oracle RAC & NON RAC, Oracle streams, Goldengate, IBM change data capture, Exadata, Oracle datacenter migration, Architecture & solutioning, Oracle PL/SQL. Send resume to: C. Studniarz, REF: LKVT, 555 W Adams, Chicago, IL 60661

Mid-Level Developer-Data Infrastructure Bachelor’s deg in Info Systs, Compu Sci, or reltd & 5yrs of exp as a S/Ware Dvlpr, DevOps Engr, S/Ware Engr, or reltd role. In lieu of BS & 5 yrs exp, we will accept a Master’s in the stated flds of study & at least 6 mths of exp in stated job roles. Wrk exp or coursewrk must have included Linux & Linux administration & scripting languages Bash & Python. Must pass coding exam prior to offer. Pls send CV to Megan Suerth, Akuna Capital LLC 333 S Wabash Ave, Ste 2600, Chicago, IL 60604 Mid-Level Quantitative Researcher MS in Stats, Compu Sci, Mathematics or closely reltd fld. Must have coursewrk in computational methods & statistical models; must have completed an internship or rsrch projt that included data analysis, Python & SQL. Must pass coding exam.

Multiple roles. Pls send CV to Megan Suerth, Akuna Capital LLC 333 S Wabash Ave, Ste 2600, Chicago, IL 60604

1 BR UNDER $700 Van Buren Park Apartments, 2045 W Jackson Blvd, Chicago, IL 60612. (312)633-1916 Phone; (312)633-0708 Fax; (800)5260844 TTY vanburenpark@related .com THREE DAYS ONLY. Opening Section 8 and Tax Credit waitlist for 2 (two), 3 (three) and 4 (four) bedroom units, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday, April 16, 2018 thru April 18, 2018. Applications are available for pick up between 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

Waitlist will close Friday, April 18, 2018 at 3:00 p.m. Rent is income-based. Eligibility is subject to Program guidelines. Income guidelines and restrictions apply

Van Buren Park Apartments, 2045 W Jackson Blvd, Chicago, IL 60612, (312)633-1916 Phone; (312)633-0708 Fax; (800)5260844 TTY, vanburenpark@ related.com Opening Section 8 and Tax Credit waitlist for 1 (One Bedroom Units Only, Monday thru Friday from April 16, 2018 til May 7, 2018. Applications are available for pick up between 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Waitlist will close Monday, May 7, 2018 at 3:00 p.m. Rent is income-based Eligibility is subject to Program guidelines Income guidelines and restrictions apply

GENERAL

7022 S. SHORE DRIVE Impeccably Clean Highrise STUDIOS, 1 & 2 BEDROOMS Facing Lake & Park.

Laundry & Security on Premises.

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

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

MIDWAY AREA/63RD KEDZIE Deluxe Studio 1 & 2 BRs. All modern oak floors, appliances, Security system, on site maint. clean & quiet, Nr. transp. From $445. 773582-1985 (espanol)

S. SHORE 7017 S. Clyde. 1 & 2BR, reno Kit/BA, hdwd flrs, ten pays heat, nr Metra & shops. $600-$685 + move In fee 773-474-0363 PRE-SPRING SPECIAL - CHICAGO South Side Beautiful Studios, 1,2,3 & 4 BR’s, Sec 8 ok. Also Homes for rent available. Call Nicole 312-446-1753; W-side locations Tom 630-776-5556; FOREST PARK: 1BR new tile, energy efficient windows, lndry facilitities, a/c, incls heat - natural gas, $955/mo Luis 708-366-5602 lv msg CLEAN ROOM W/FRIDGE & micro, Near Oak Park, Food -4Less, Walmart, Walgreens, Buses & Metra, Laundry. $115/wk & up.

773-637-5957

GENERAL

7520 S. COLES - 1 BR $520, 2 BR $645, Includes appliances & AC, Near transp., No utilities included (708) 424-4216 Kalabich Mgmt Chicago - Hyde PARK 5401 S. Ellis.

1BR. $625/mo.

Call 773-955-5106 Newly updated, clean furnished rooms in Joliet, near buses & Metra, elevator. Utilities included, $91/wk. $395/mo. 815-722-1212 NICE ROOM w/stove, fridge & bath Near Aldi, Walgreens, Beach, Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry. $133/wk & up. 773-275-4442 BIG ROOM with stove, fridge, bath & nice wood floors. Near Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry, Shopping. $121/wk + up. 773-561-4970

7425 S. COLES - 1 BR $620, 2 BR $735, Includes Free heat & appliances & cooking gas. (708) 424-4216 Kalabich Mgmt 6930 S. SOUTH SHORE DRIVE Studios & 1BR, INCL. Heat, Elec, Cking gas & PARKING, $585-$925, Country Club Apts 773-752-2200

NO SEC DEP 7801 S. Bishop. 2BR. $610/mo. HEAT INCL 773-955-5106

1 BR $700-$799 CHATHAM 736 East 81st (Evans), 2 bedroom garden apt, $700/mo.

Please call Mr. Joe at 708-870-4801 for more info

GENERAL

1 BR $800-$899 HUMBOLDT PARK. 1 & 2 BEDROOM apartments for rent. Newly remodeled. Next door to food store. $880/mo plus security deposit. Includes gas. Near shopping area. Tim, 773-592-2989.

1 BR $900-$1099 LARGE ONE BEDROOM near Loyola Park, 1341 W. Estes. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. $975/month.

Heat included. Available 5/1. 773-7614318.

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

Most units Include..

HEAT & HOT WTR Studios From $475.00 1Bdr From $550.00 2Bdr From $745.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000** PTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. Ltd. SPRING IS HERE!!!

HEAT, HW & CG Plenty of parking 1Bdr From $845.00 2Bdr From $925.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000***

GENERAL

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

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

TECHNICAL ANALYST 4 (RR Donnelley & Sons Company; Warrenville, IL) - Design, develop, code, & test PeopleSoft Human Capital Management systems using multiple technologies. Reqs: Bachelor’s degree or foreign equiv. in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or related technical field + 5 yrs post-bacc experience in PeopleSoft HCM & ePerformance. For complete job description, list of requirements, and to apply, go to: https://www.rrdonnelley.com/ about/rrdonnelley-jobs.aspx Job # 38485.

Ashland Hotel nice clean rms.

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

Low rates daily/weekly/monthly.

South Side. Call 773-376-5200

STUDIO $600-$699 MAY 1 - ANDERSONVILLE ST U D I O GARDEN APARTMENT, modern kitchen & bath, lots of light, easy access to backyard & private deck, washer/dryer in building. No dogs. $635/mo.

708-482-4712

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

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

FREE APPLICATION!

BUILDING HAS A SENIOR PREFERENCE!!

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

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

Preference as well given to disabled, homeless or displaced.

Applicants subject to HUD income eligibility and other screening requirements.

Rent based on 30% of adjusted monthly income.

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

STUDIO OTHER HARBORSIDE APARTMENTS ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS for SECTION 8 1,2,3 & 4 Bedroom Apartments. Apply Wednesdays ONLY from 12pm to 4pm at 3610 Alder St. Applications are to be filled out on site. Adult applicants must provide a current picture ID and SS card.

GARY NSA ACCEPTING applications for SECTION 8 STUDIO UNITS ONLY. Apply Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10am to 2pm ONLY at 1735 W 5th Ave. Applications are to be filled out on site. Adult applicants must provide a current picture ID and SS card.

LARGE SUNNY ROOM w/fridge & microwave. Near Oak Park, Green Line & Buses. 24 hr Desk, Parking Lot $101/week & Up. (773)378-8888 û NO SEC DEP û 6829 S. Perry.

2.5 room. $475/mo.

HEAT INCL 773-955-5105 CROSSROADS HOTEL SRO SINGLE RMS Private bath, PHONE, CABLE & MAIDS. 1 Block to Orange Line 5300 S. Pulaski 773-581-1188

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

(773)773-717-2008 588-7767 ext.•108 TTY (711 National TTY•(711 National Relay)Relay)

{ {

www.CyrilCourtApts.com • Email: CyrilCourt@m2regroup.com

R U O Y AD E R E H

REACH OVER

1 MILLION

PEOPLE MONTHLY IN PRINT & DIGITAL.

CONTACT US TODAY!

312-222-6920 l

l

Newly rehabbed apartments for IMMEDIATE OCCUPANCY loacated at 401 E. Bowen Ave. SUBSIDY waiting list for studios and one bedrooms.

Open House Dates: Saturday, April 14, 2018 from Noon until 3:00p.m.

Saturday, April 21, 2018 from Noon until 3:00p.m.

Saturday, April 28, 2018 from Noon until 3:00p.m.

HEAD OF HOUSEHOLD MUST BE AT LEAST 62 YEARS OLD!!

Maximum income limits apply State photo ID or drivers license will be required to fill out waiting list application. Only one preapplication per household allowed.

Open House held at 400 E 41st St Chicago IL 60653 773.924.

2100 . Applications will only be accepted on the dates listed above.

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

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

6748 CRANDON & 7727 COLFAX MOST BEAUTIFUL APARTMENTS! 1 & 2BR, $625 & UP. OFF STREET PARKING. 773-947-8572 / 312-613-4424 1BR, 7722 S. JEFFERY AVE. $750 1BR, 7203 S King Dr, $750.

1BR 1645 E 85th Pl, $750 Heat & appliances included.

Shown by appt. 773-874-2556 www.archerinvestmentco.c om SUNNY & LARGE 2 & 3BR, hd wd/ceramic flrs, appls, heat incl’d, Sect 8 OK. $900 plus.

70th & Sangamon/Peoria. 773456-6900 CHICAGO - BEVERLY, large studio, 1 & 2BR Apts. Carpet, A/ C, laundry, near transportation, $680-$1020/mo. Call 773-2334939 HUGE

SOUTH SIDE, male pref, furnished room, no drugs, secure building.

Cable ready.

FREE utils., shared kitchen & bath, $500/mo. References.

773-874-4941

ADULT SERVICES

IMMAC

3BR/1BA

newly remod, spac, quiet block & bldg, nr trans & shops. Won’t Last.

Sec 8 Welcome. 312-519-9771

SUBURBS, RENT TO OWN! Buy with No closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708868-2422 or visit www.nhba.com CHICAGO, RENT TO OWN! Buy with no closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708868-2422 or visit www.nhba.com ACACIA SRO HOTEL Men Preferred! Rooms for Rent. Weekly & Monthly Rates. 312-421-4597

AVAILABLE NOW. ROOMS for

ADULT SERVICES

UNIVERSITY PARK, 2 bedroom Townhouse, newly decorated. $950/mo. plus security.

Please call 773-852-9425

CHICAGO 94-3739 S. Bishop.

2BR, 5 Rms, 2nd flr, appls, parking, storage & closet space, near shops/ trans. $950 + sec. 708-335-0786

rent. Utilities incl’d. Seniors Welcome. $500/mo. Call 773-431-1251

2 BR UNDER $900 CHICAGO 7600 S Essex PRE-SPRING SPECIAL - 2BR $599, 3BR $699, 4BR $799 w/apprvd credit, no sec dep. Sec 8 Ok! Also Homes for Rent avail. Call Nicole 773-287-9999; W-side locations Tom 630-776-5556 8316 S INGLESIDE 1BR $725/ mo Newly remodeled, Dining room, laundry, hrdwd flrs, cable, Sec 8 welc. 708-308-1509 or 773493-3500 7807 S. WOODLAWN in a New

2 BR $900-$1099 GLENWOOD, Updated lrg 2BR Condo, HF HS, Balcony, C/A, appls, heat/water incl. 2 pkng, laundry. $990mo. 708.268.3762

CHATHAM AREA, Gorgeous, 2BR, 1st flr, updated kit & bath. $900/mo + 1 mo sec. Clean & Quiet.

No Pets. 773-930-6045

2 BR $1100-$1299 BUCKTOWN! NICE 2BDR apart-

ment.Freshly decorated, hardwood

Development, 3BR, 2BA, in-unit Was floors, very bright with bonus office her/Dryer, dishwasher, cent heat/air, space. $1200 plus utilities. Small pets pkng. Sec 8 Welcome. allowed.847-845-3944 $1250/mo. 312-572-9729.

CHICAGO SW 1516 W. 58th St., CHATHAM 74th/King Dr. 1BR. 88th/Dauphin. 2BR. Both bright & spac, great trans, laundry on site, sec camera. 312-341-19

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

Updated 2Br, quiet, ceiling fan,ceramic kit/Ba, Lr/Dr, intercom, encl. porch, close to trans, $775, 312719-3733

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

Section 8 Ok

ADULT SERVICES

ADULT SERVICES

Beaut rehabbed 3+2BR, 2BA house, granit ctrs, ss appls, ca, fin bsmt, 2 car gar. $1675/mo 708-288-4510

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

708-288-4510

SECTION 8 WELCOME. NO SECURITY DEPOSIT. 718 W 81st St, 5BR, 2BA house, appls incl., $1300/mo. 708-288-4510

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499

ASHBURN 7927 S WHIPPLE,

BUDLONG WOODS, 5500N/

2 BR OTHER ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar Villas is accepting applications for Subsidized 2 and 3 bedroom apt waiting list. Rent is based on 30% of annual income for qualified applicants. Contact us at 847-546-1899 for details MATTESON, RICHTON PARK, HAZEL CREST & UNIV PARK. 2 & 3BR Houses & T.H. Sec 8 OK. Call 708-625-7355

3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200 CHICAGO, 1945 S. Drake, 3rd floor, 2BR, 2BA, newly renovated, hardwood floors, storage, no dogs, $1050/mo.

Call 773-4853042 BRONZEVILLE: SECTION 8 WELCOME. No Security Deposit.

4841 S Michigan. 4BR apt, appls incl., $1400/mo.

Call 708-2884510 CHICAGO, 4200 BLOCK Grenshaw, studio bsmt Apt, newly decor, utils incl., $750/mo + $750 sec dep. Senior pref. 773785-5174 CHICAGO, kitchen, stove tenant pays $600 Move in 1087

3BR, MODERN & fridge furnished, utilities, $900/mo.

Fee. Call 773-363-

SECTION 8 WELCOME DOLTON -14545 Chicago Rd. 3BR, $1100-$1300/mo + sec.

On-site laundry, pkng, appl.

Tenant pays utils. 708-372-4392 3BR, 7 ROOM, Section 8 Ready, recent rehab, nice, big unit, $1050 rent, heat separate, 3430 W Walnut.

Gina 773-405-9361

7624 S. NORMAL Beautiful 3BR Apt, appls, C-Fans, fenced-in front & backyard. $1135/mo + $600 Sec. Sect 8 Welc. 708-283-9020 7037 S. Wabash. Clean, secure building, large 3BR, carpeting, Sec 8 OK. $935/mo incl cooking gas & heat. 773-497-9687 HUGE 3BR 2 BA 1954 E. 73rd Place, newly remodeled, near school & transp $975 plus utilities & Sec dep 773-671-0155

ADULT SERVICES

2600W. Three bedrooms, full dining room, spacious living room, 1.5 baths, many closets, near transportation, $1475 includes heat. Available May 1. Marty 773-784-0763.

SAUK VILLAGE- RANCH, 3 sm BR, 1 mast BR, 2BA, lrg backyard, appl. incl, laundry hookup, $1300. 1 & 1/2 mo sec., sec 8 ok, 708-307-5003

Austin Area, 5BR, 2BA, newly remod. BA & kitchen, hdwd flrs, resp for lawn maint. No pets $1650+ utils & sec. 708-265-3611

3 BR OR MORE $1800-$2499 OLYMPIA FIELDS Newly remodeled 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath house, full basement. Beautiful area. 708-935-7557.

GOODS CLASSICS WANTED ANY CLASSIC CARS IN ANY CONDITION. ’20S, ’30S, ’40S, ’50S, ’60S & ’70S. HOTRODS & EXOTICS! TOP DOLLAR PAID! COLLECTOR. CALL JAMES, 630-201-8122

SOUTHSIDE - 12025 S. Perry St 4Br, 2Ba, Section 8 Welcome, Eat-inkit, Option to buy 708-288-7939

HEALTH & WELLNESS

3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799 121ST & PARNELL: SEC. 8 WEL. $500 Cash Back! $0 Security for Sec 8. 3BR, $1500/mo. Fine condition.

ADT alarm. 708-715-0034

MARKETPLACE

GENERAL SINGLE ROOM OCCUPANCY Apartments that offer short-tomedium term affordable housing are available at Casa del Sol, 2008 S. Blue Island Ave. Chicago, IL. We also have WORKFORCE HOUSING APARTMENTS which offer rents below market rate and affordable to community residents.

Contact the Resurrection Project’s Property Management office at 312-248-8355 or at pm@ resurrectionproject.org to inquire about IMMEDIATE OCCUPANCY!

HIGH QUALITY MASSAGE Offered by experienced, welltrained female massage therapist. From 9am-9pm 7 days.

DesPlaines-Touhy Ave & Lee St. 773-592-3908. In house or www.chicagobestmassage.com

NOTICES

FIRST MONTH RENT FREE

3 BR OR MORE $2500 AND OVER MONEE 1.5 ACRE,1 level, 3000SF, 4BR, 3BA, full bsmt, 3 car attached garage, fireplace. $2500/mo + sec. 708-243-7628

CHICAGO Southside Brand New 3BR & 4BR apartments. Exc. neighborhood, near public transp.

For details call 708-774-2473

3 BR OR MORE

PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT

OTHER PRE-SPRING SPECIAL Chicago Houses for rent. Section 8 Ok, w/ app credit $500 gift certificate 3, 4 & 5 BR houses avail. Call Nicole: 773-287-9999; W-side locations: Tom 630-776-5556

FOR SALE 102ND & VERNON: 3BR, 2.5BA, 1 car gar., fin bsmt, lrg rms, All appls. Priced to sell fast! Brokers Welc. $159,900. State Wood Realty, 773-684-1166

MARKHAM - 3BR, 2 full bath, C/A, near shopping & trans!

No pets! Dep req’d.

Nice neighborhood!

Avail Now! $1500. Call 708-906-6122

roommates Austin Area, 2, 3 & 4BR apts avail close to trans, updated kit & BA, w/d hookup, no pets, $875-$1550+ util. & sec. 708265-3611

SOUTH SHORE, Senior Discount. Male preferred.

Furnished rooms, shared kitchen & bath, $495/mo. & up. Utilities included. 773-710-5431

ADULT SERVICES

ADULT SERVICES

Belmont Tower Apartments at 510 West Belmont, Chicago, IL 60657 will open its federally subsidized Section 8 waiting list for one, two, and three bedroom apartments on Tuesday, April 10, 2018 at 2 p.m. The Affordable Waiting List will remain open until further notice and will accept applications between the hours of 2:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. on Tuesdays. All applicants must be at least 18 years or age and bring a valid state picture I.D. and proof of legal residency. All applicants will be subject to a credit and criminal background check, and must meet all criteria of the Tenant Selection Criteria in order to become a residents. [Include Equal Housing Opportunity logo]

ADULT SERVICES

please recycle this paper APRIL 12, 2018 | CHICAGO READER 35

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

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36 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 12, 2018

ota.org

By Cecil Adams Q : Why oh why did the USPS decree a

two-letter abbreviation for states? With three letters you can not only have an unambiguous designation but one that can be recognized as the state designated without memorizing an arbitrary twoletter code. Surely it isn’t saving ink. What nefarious plot brought this plague upon us? —RICHARD TROMBLEY

DISCREET BILLING

Ahora español Livelinks.com 18+

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orthoinfo.org

A : If you feel overwhelmed by two-letter state

abbreviations, wait’ll you hear about 13-letter city abbreviations. I pray you never have to use it, Richard, but yes, the United States Postal Service publishes a list of approved city-name truncations, for those emergencies when you need to send something to Rancho Santa Margarita, California, but your address template permits only so many spaces.

And that’s the limiting factor here: it’s not ink the USPS is worried about but mailing-label real estate. According to Publication 28, the carrier’s addressing-standards bible, everything on the bottom line of an address should fit into 28 character positions. That’s 13 characters for the city, a space afterward, two characters for the state, two spaces (“preferred”) between state and zip, and ten characters (including hyphen) for the zip+4.

This wasn’t always a concern, of course.

Until the mid-20th century, the PO preferred that senders write out state names in full but was willing to meet the abbreviating public halfway by providing an occasionally updated list of suggested short forms. These were all over the place lengthwise, from two or three letters on up: Massachusetts was Ms. on the 1831 list but had settled out at Mass. by 1874; Michigan evolved from Mic. T. (for “Michigan Territory”) to Mich. and stayed thus for 90 years.

Meanwhile, mail delivery tended to be circuitous and inefficient, because we lacked an orderly sorting method. A letter might be handled by as many as ten carriers on its voyage from sender to recipient; one addressed to Charleston, South Carolina, could well make an errant stop in Charleston, West Virginia. And the mail system became taxed by ever-greater usage, booming along with everything else post-WWII: between 1940 and 1965, Americans’ use of the mail grew by nearly 160 percent.

What nefarious plot was cooked up to solve this problem? The Zone Improvement Plan, introduced in 1963, in which geographical areas were assigned a numeric code for easier sorting and delivery. Along with this came the now-familiar all-caps, no-periods state abbreviations, which were actually rolled

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REAL PEOPLE REAL DESIRE REAL FUN.

HOT GIRL BODY RUBS

out twice that year. The first batch, in June, contained lots of three- and even four-letter entries: IDA, OKLA, MONT, etc. But by October the postal service, looking to preserve more character space for the new codes, published a revised list using a consistent two letters per state. It’s been emended only once since: Under the second 1963 scheme Nebraska was given NB, which inspired objections—polite ones, we’ll assume—from Canadian postal authorities fearing potential confusion with New Brunswick. In 1969 Nebraska became NE. Zip codes evolved more significantly: zip+4 was added in 1983 to identify a particular side of the street or an office building; starting in ’93, 11-digit zips allowed for mail to be sorted in order of the carrier’s route. As demanding as some may find those two-letter abbreviations, AL, AK, and the rest are really the least significant facet of the Zone Improvement Plan, which transformed the way mail was delivered in the United States.

For a deeper dive on this subject, I’ll refer you to a 2013 report by the USPS’s Office of the Inspector General, The Untold Story of the ZIP Code. If that’s even a slightly punchier title than you’d expect from an IG report, blame it on enthusiasm: These guys, it quickly becomes apparent, are really proud of their little mail-sorting system and its “positive spillover effects” on the nation as a whole.

Zip codes are nonproprietary, we’re reminded, and so have been available for societally beneficial use by demographers, public health officials, emergency workers, and insurance providers alike. (Plus schlock-TV producers—Beverly Hills, 90210 rates a mention in the report’s third sentence.) As calculated by the authors, the zip scheme adds about $10 billion annually to the economy, and yet it exists only “out of pure good will.”

Seriously, you will never love anything as much as the USPS Inspector General’s office loves zip codes. v Send questions to Cecil via straightdope.com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 30 N. Racine, suite 300, Chicago 60607.

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SAVAGE LOVE

By Dan Savage

When casual sex is appealing in theory, awful in reality

How to get laid without freaking out. Plus: a snooper reaps what she sowed Q : I’m a 36-year-old straight

woman. I was sexually and physically abused as a kid, and raped in my early 20s.

I have been seeing a great therapist for the last five years, and I am processing things and feeling better than I ever have. I started dating this past year, but I’m not really clicking with anyone. My problem is that I’d really love to get laid.

The idea of casual sex and one-night stands sounds great—but in reality, moving that quickly with someone I don’t know or trust freaks me out, causes me to shut down, and prevents me from enjoying anything. When I was in a relationship, the sex was great. But now that I’m single, it seems like this big, scary thing. Is it possible to get laid without feeling freaked out? —SEXUAL COMFORT AND REASSURANCE ELUDES DAME

A : It is possible for you

to get laid without feeling freaked out.

The answer is so obvious, SCARED, that I’m guessing your therapist has already suggested it: Have sex with someone you know and trust.

You didn’t have any issues having sex with your ex because you knew and trusted him. For your own emotional safety, and to avoid recovery setbacks, you’re going to have to find someone willing to get to know you before you can have sex again.

You’ve probably thought to yourself, “But everyone else is just jumping into bed with strangers and having amazing sexual experiences!” True, many people are capable of doing just that. But at least as many or more are incapable of having impulsive onenight stands because they too have a history of trauma, or because they have other

psychological, physical, or logistical issues that make one-night stands impossible. (Some folks, of course, have no interest in one-night stands to begin with.)

Something else to bear in mind: it’s not unheard of for someone reentering the dating scene to have some difficulty making new connections at first. The trick is to keep going on dates until you finally click with someone.

Also, don’t hesitate to tell the men you date that you need to get to know a person before jumping into bed with him. That will scare some guys off, but only those guys who aren’t willing to get to know you—and those aren’t guys you would have felt safe fucking anyway, right? So be open and honest, keep going on those first dates, and eventually you’ll find yourself with a guy you can think about taking home without feeling panicked. Good luck.

Q : This is about a girl, of

course. Pros: She cannot hide her true feelings.

Cons: Criminal, irascible, grandiose sense of self, racist, abstemious, selfcentered, anxious, moralist, monogamous, biased, denial as a defense mechanism, manipulative, liar, envious, and ungrateful. She is also anthropologically and historically allocated in another temporal space continuum. And last but not least: she runs less quickly than me despite eight years age difference and her having the lungs of a 26-yearold nonsmoker. Thoughts?

—DESPERATE EROTIC SITUATION

A : If someone is criminal,

racist, and dishonest—to say nothing of being allocated in another temporal space continuum (whatever the fuck that means)—I don’t see

how “cannot hide her true feelings” lands on the “pro” side of the pro/con ledger.

You shouldn’t want to be with a dishonest, moralizing bigot, DES, so the fact that this particular dishonest, moralizing bigot is incapable of hiding her truly repulsive feelings isn’t a reason to consider seeing her—it’s the opposite.

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Q : My boyfriend and I love each other deeply, and the thought of breaking up devastates me. We also live together. I deeply regret it and am full of shame, but I impulsively went through his texts for the first time.

I found out that for the past few months he has been sexting and almost definitely hooking up with someone who I said I was not comfortable with. We are in an open relationship, but his relationship with her crosses what we determined as our “cheating” boundary: hiding a relationship. How do I confess to what I did and confront him about what I found without it blowing up into a major mess? —UPSET GIRL HOPES RELATIONSHIP SURVIVES

A : Snooping is always

wrong, of course—except when the snooper discovers something she or he had a right to know. This is a major mess, UGHRS, and there’s no way to confront your boyfriend without risking a blowup. So tell him what you know and how you found out. You’ll be in a better position to assess whether you want this relationship to survive after you confess and confront. v Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at savagelovecast. com. m @fakedansavage

Never miss a show again.

EARLY WARNINGS

chicagoreader.com/early

APRIL 12, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 37

Cold Cave é TRAVIS SHINN

NEW

Alestorm, Gloryhammer 9/21, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Dave Alvin & Jimmie Dale Gilmore 9/8, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 4/13, 8 AM b Ash 9/19, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Nicole Atkins 8/10, 7 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 4/13, 10 AM b B96 Summer Bash 6/23, 6:30 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont, on sale Thu 6/12, 4 PM Sebastian Bach 7/13, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Andrew Bird 5/9, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, Blue Heart film premiere b Blackbird Blackbird 6/17, 8 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 4/13, 10 AM, 18+ David Bromberg Quintet 8/7, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 4/13, 10 AM b Camp Howard 5/13, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Cold Cave, Black Marble 6/8, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 4/13, 10 AM, 17+ Cosculluela, Nio Garcia 5/4, 10 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Donna the Buffalo 8/24, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 4/13, 10 AM b Tav Falvo’s Panther Burns 5/21, 7 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Faust 7/11, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 4/13, 10 AM The Fever 333 5/14, 8:30 PM, Cobra Lounge, on sale Fri 4/13, 10 AM b 5 Seconds of Summer 9/8, 8 PM, Aragon Ballroom, on sale Fri 4/13, 10 AM b Flow 10/27, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+

Francis & the Lights 6/14, 7 PM, Metro b Goo Goo Dolls 10/26, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre, on sale Fri 4/13, 10 AM Noah Gundersen 10/1, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 4/13, 10 AM b Handsome Ghost 5/17, 8 PM, Schubas b Justin Hayward 8/26, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 4/12, noon b Headhunterz 5/19, 9 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Hey Ocean! 10/28, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Josefus 6/29, 9 PM, Hideout Kid Rock, Brantley Gilbert, Wheeler Walker Jr. 9/22, 6:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park, on sale Fri 4/13, 10 AM Kevin Krauter 6/28, 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ Lady Antebellum, Darius Rucker 9/15, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park, on sale Fri 4/13, 10 AM Kenny Lattimore 7/20, 7 and 10 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 4/12, noon b Jim Lauderdale 6/30, 8 PM, Hideout Little Dragon 6/7, 7:30 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri 4/13, noon, 18+ Magic Giant 6/6, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 4/13, 10 AM b Pat McGee 8/3, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 4/12, noon b Meat Puppets 6/29, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 4/13, 8 AM b Nobunny 6/9, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Now, Now 7/7, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Peking Duk 6/16, 8:30 PM, Lincoln Hall b

38 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 12, 2018

Willy Porter Band 9/28, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 4/12, noon b Chuck Prophet & the Mission Express 8/22, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 4/13, 10 AM b Dennis Quaid & the Sharks 7/2, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 4/12, noon b Marc Scibilia 5/20, 8 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 4/13, 10 AM b Son Volt 8/9, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 4/13, 10 AM b Sparta 8/10, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 4/13, noon, 17+ Third Day 6/7, 7:30 PM, Chicago Theatre, on sale Fri 4/13, 10 AM 311, Offspring 9/6, 7 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion, on sale Fri 4/13, 10 AM Transviolet 6/20, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Rufus Wainwright 11/20, 8 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri 4/13, 10 AM Wand 6/18-19, 9 PM, Hideout Warcry 6/10, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Welles 6/26, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Witch Mountain 8/8, 8 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Yehme2 5/12, 10 PM, the Mid

UPCOMING Aces, New Respects 6/21, 6:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park Fb Pepe Aguilar y Familia 8/19, 7 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Armored Saint, Act of Defiance 7/21, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Bambara 6/26, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle

b Big Sean, Playboi Carti 5/27, 7 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Terry Bozzio 9/18, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Cannabis Corpse, Elbow Deep 5/24, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Citizen, Angel Dust 6/5, 6:15 PM, Cobra Lounge b Ry Cooder 6/24, 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall b Deerhoof 6/3, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Dinosaur Jr. 7/19, 7:30 PM, Temperance Beer Company, Evanston, part of Out of Space Emmure, Counterparts, King 810 5/18, 6 PM, Bottom Lounge b Fall Out Boy, Rise Against 9/8, 7 PM, Wrigley Field Follakzoid, Lumerians 5/3, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Full of Hell, Gatecreeper 6/6, 8 PM, Cobra Lounge Glassjaw, Quicksand 7/8, 6:30 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Gomez 6/15-16, 7:30 PM, the Vic, 18+ Handsome Family 7/13, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b A Hawk and a Handsaw 5/30, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Helmet, Prong 5/17, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Iamx 4/28, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Iguanas 6/16, 9 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn Jimmy Eat World, Hotelier 5/8, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Kindred the Family Soul 12/29, 8 PM, Portage Theater King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard 6/10, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b L7 4/20, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Ted Leo & the Pharmacists 5/31, 9 PM, Empty Bottle The Make-Up 7/6, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Aimee Mann, This Is the Kit 7/30, 6:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park Fb Melvins 7/31, 7:30 PM, Park West b Kate Nash 4/20, 8 PM, Park West, 18+ No Age 5/10, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Oh Sees, Timmy’s Organism 10/12, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Ozzy Osbourne, Stone Sour 9/21, 7:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Panda Bear 4/30, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Alan Parsons Project 6/5, 7:30 PM, Copernicus Center b Quintron’s Weather Warlock 5/22, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Raekwon 5/18, 9 PM, the Promontory Jeff Rosenstock 4/26, 6:30 PM, Logan Square Auditorium b

ALL AGES

WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK

EARLY WARNINGS

CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME

F

Never miss a show again.

Sign up for the newsletter at chicagoreader. com/early

Screaming Headless Torsos 6/15, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Slayer, Anthrax, Testament 5/25, 5 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Sleep 8/1, 7 PM, Riviera Theatre b Suuns 5/30, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Tinariwen 8/13, 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall b We Are Scientists 6/22, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Weezer, Pixies, Wombats 7/7, 7:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Andrew W.K. 5/12, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Wooden Shjips 6/2, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Yamantaka // Sonic Titan 4/19, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Yob, Bell Witch 7/8, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+

SOLD OUT Trey Anastasio Band 4/20-21, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre Animal Collective, Lonnie Holley 7/27, 7:30 PM, the Vic b Courtney Barnett 5/21, 8:30 PM, Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center Big K.R.I.T. 4/28, 7 PM, Metro b Bishop Briggs 5/12, 8 PM, Metro, 17+ Bon Iver 6/3, 7 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park b Boombox Cartel 4/28, 9 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ David Byrne 6/1-3, 8 PM, Auditorium Theatre Camila Cabello 4/22, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Flatbush Zombies 5/10, 7:30 PM, the Vic b Gaslight Anthem 8/11, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Grouplove 6/1, 7:30 PM, Metro b Ides of March 5/3, 8 PM, City Winery Kooks 5/30, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Lord Huron 4/21, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Tom Misch 4/26, 8 PM, Metro, 17+ Mt. Joy 5/11-12, 9 PM, Hideout Rainbow Kitten Surprise 4/21, 8:30 PM, Metro b Shakey Graves 5/22, 7:30 PM, the Vic, 18+ Sum 41 5/18, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall b Yeah Yeah Yeahs 5/29, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom b v

GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene LATE LAST MONTH one of the hardestworking bands in town, La Armada, digitally released Anti-Colonial Vol. 1, their first new music in four years. The album blends crusty hardcore and monolithic metal with a whiff of the rhythms of the Dominican Republic—where La Armada formed in 2001 (they moved to Chicago in 2008). Front man Javier Fernandez sings about injustice and corruption in Spanish and English, and his furious but playfully elastic vocals make him sound like an heir to the throne Serj Tankian seems to have vacated. On Saturday, April 14, La Armada headline an all-ages record-release show at Cobra Lounge; Fister, Knaaves, and Bad Blood open. Anti-Colonial Vol. 1 will be available in stores Friday, April 20.

Every time Gossip Wolf checks out the northwest Indiana scene, there’s another awesome, trashy punk band to get excited about! Case in point: zonked-out Hammond trio the Fritz, aka bassist Dani Leopardo (Cyber Pink, Pentas), guitaristvocalist Clay Fritz (Pukeoid), and drummer Joe Seger (Big Zit, Raw Nerve, CB Radio Gorgeous). They tear through ripping mashups of Damned-esque riffs so fast it’s amazing they don’t get motion sickness! After years of demos, last month the Fritz dropped a self-titled debut LP on UK label Drunken Sailor, and it’s packed with burnout leather-jacket jams. On Friday, April 13, the Fritz play a release party to benefit local folks being harmed by SESTA/FOSTA, laws that aim to fight sex trafficking but mostly make life harder and more dangerous for sex workers; also on the bill are Dagger, Accela, and Deodorant. The show is at a DIY space, so e-mail dan.leopardo@gmail.com for details.

On Saturday, April 14, the 16th annual CHIRP Record Fair & Other Delights takes over the Plumbers Hall at 1340 W. Washington. Expect lots of vinyl dealers with primo wares, plus tables from local labels such as Bernice, Patient Sounds, Maximum Pelt, Already Dead, and Hausu Mountain! —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

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L I V E

M U S I C !

Friday, April 13, 8:00 PM - 10:30 PM

An Evening With(out) David Bowie Presented and directed by Thomas Mulready...

Featuring a Live Music Set

by Vanity Crash

APRIL 13-15, 2018

Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel & Convention Center SCHAUMBURG, IL

LISTENING ROOMS

WHERE MUSIC MATTERS MOST!

Saturday, April 14, 8:00 PM - 9:30 PM

Blues Revue with Corey Dennison Band and special guests Demetria Taylor and Jimmy Johnson

Hear your music the way the artist intended!

EXPO HALL

S P E C I A L Sunday, April Sunday, April 15, 15, 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM

Highlights • Over 160 Hi-Fi Audio Demonstrations

Classic Album Sundays presents Daft D a ft Punk Pun k Discovery

• The AXPONA Expo Hall with headphones, turntables, cables and more!

• Seminars with Special Guests • Plus, shop AXPONA’s Record Fair with new and vintage vinyl and attend evening concerts all with one ticket!

VINYL

Tickets are on sale now! www.axpona.com FREE PARKING! 4.14

JUST ANNOUNCED

ON SALE AT NOON THURSDAY 4.12 ON SALE TO VINOFILE MEMBERS TUESDAY 4.10

DENNIS QUAID & THE SHARKS KENNY LATTIMORE PAT MCGEE JUSTIN HAYWARD WITH MICHAEL DAWES WILLY PORTER BAND

4.15-16

4.18

DON’T MISS

4.19 4.22 4.25 4.26-27 4.29

DELBERT MCCLINTON TOMMY CASTRO & THE PAINKILLERS TYRONE WELLS WITH GABE DIXON A SOLO/ACOUSTIC EVENING WITH KEB’ MO’ RED MOLLY

Willie Nile with Nicholas Tremulis

1200 W RANDOLPH ST, CHICAGO, IL 60607 | 312.733.WINE

7.2 7.20 8.3 8.26 9.28

E V E N T !

4.20-21

Candlebox Acoustic Duo Max Weinberg’s Jukebox Kevin Nealon

UPCOMING SHOWS 4.21

WASABASSCO BURLESQUE 10:30 PM SHOW

4.22

WDCB JAZZ BRUNCH

4.23-24

RYAN BINGHAM

4.28

A TOAST TO GEORGE FREEMAN W/ BILLY BRANCH - 12PM SHOW

4.28

DAVE BARNES

4.30

SIMRIT KAUR

5.2

ELIANE ELIAS

5.3

THE IDES OF MARCH FEAT. JIM PETERIK

5.5-6

SUZANNE VEGA

5.10

GRAHAM PARKER W/ JAMES MADDOCK

5.11

SAM BUSH

5.13

GLEN PHILLIPS W/ HEATHER LYNNE HORTON

5.14

BRENDAN JAMES W/ SPECIAL GUEST PETE MULLER

5.15

KAT EDMONSON W/ MATT MUNISTERI

5.16

GHOST LIGHT FEAT. HOLLY BOWLING & TOM HAMILTON

5.17-18

HEATHER MCDONALD

APRIL 12, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 39

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