Print Issue of April 13, 2017 (Volume 46, Number 27)

C H I C A G O ’ S F R E E W E E K LY | K I C K I N G A S S S I N C E 1 9 7 1 | A P R I L 1 3 , 2 0 1 7

RETAIL THERAPY

Martha Mae shopkeeper Jean Cate fights her demons by inviting customers into a total work of art.

By MAYA DUKMASOVA 12

A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF LOUDER THAN A BOMB COFOUNDER KEVIN COVAL 23

2 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 13, 2017

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THIS WEEK

C H I C AG O R E A D E R | A P R I L 1 3 , 2 01 7 | VO LU M E 4 6 , N U M B E R 2 7

TO CONTACT ANY READER EMPLOYEE, E-MAIL: (FIRST INITIAL)(LAST NAME) @CHICAGOREADER.COM

EDITOR JAKE MALOOLEY CREATIVE DIRECTOR PAUL JOHN HIGGINS DEPUTY EDITOR, NEWS ROBIN AMER CULTURE EDITOR TAL ROSENBERG DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS FILM EDITOR J.R. JONES MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO ASSOCIATE EDITORS KATE SCHMIDT, KEVIN WARWICK, BRIANNA WELLEN SENIOR WRITERS MICHAEL MINER, MIKE SULA SENIOR THEATER CRITIC TONY ADLER STAFF WRITERS MAYA DUKMASOVA, LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, AIMEE LEVITT, PETER MARGASAK, JULIA THIEL SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR RYAN SMITH GRAPHIC DESIGNER SUE KWONG MUSIC LISTINGS COORDINATOR LUCA CIMARUSTI EDITORIAL ASSISTANT CASSIDY RYAN CONTRIBUTING WRITERS NOAH BERLATSKY, MATT DE LA PEÑA, ANNE FORD, ISA GIALLORENZO, JOHN GREENFIELD, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, DAN JAKES, BILL MEYER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, LEAH PICKETT, DMITRY SAMAROV, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERNS AUSTIN BROWN, RACHEL HINTON, JIAYUE YU

FEATURES

IN THIS ISSUE 18 Theater The metatheatrical comedy King of the Yees is a search for a father on- and offstage.

19 Comedy Queer stand-ups create their own Space in comedy.

20 Movies American Anarchist and Gifted explore the potential dangers of learning.

4 Agenda The Woman in Black at the Den, “#AiWeiwei” at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Reader Book Swap, Dan Savage’s Hump! Film Festival, films by Danny Lyon, and more recommendations

CITY LIFE

GOODS & SERVICES

Retail therapy

7 Street View Zack Crichlow proves you don’t need to be going somewhere special to dress up.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE 30 Shows of note Diamanda Galás, Magnetic Fields, New Pornographers, and more recommendations 31 The Secret History of Chicago Music Forgotten session drummer Eddie Hoh recorded with the Monkees and toured with the Mamas & the Papas.

FOOD & DRINK

The shopkeeper behind Martha Mae fights her demons by inviting customers into a total work of art.

BY MAYA DUKMASOVA 12

35 Restaurant review: Trench Jared Wentworth has reimagined Trenchermen as a crowd-pleaser.

---------------------------------------------------------------VICE PRESIDENT OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT NICKI STANULA VICE PRESIDENT OF NEW MEDIA GUADALUPE CARRANZA SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER EVANGELINE MILLER ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES FABIO CAVALIERI, ARIANA DIAZ, BRIDGET KANE MARKETING AND EVENTS MANAGER BRYAN BURDA DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY ADVERTISING COORDINATOR HERMINIA BATTAGLIA CLASSIFIEDS REPRESENTATIVE KRIS DODD

7 Chicagoans This doula supports moms—both physically and mentally.

8 Joravsky | Politics A darkhorse candidate in the Illinois gubernatorial race reveals an unexpected strategy to unseat Rauner.

10 Small Screen/Politics Director Paul Traynor’s New Trier: Tip of the Spear is about more than a suburban high school.

11 Transportation Navigating the CTA while blind can be “a huge pain in the ass,” musician Andy Slater says.

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ARTS & CULTURE

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COPYRIGHT © 2017 CHICAGO READER. PERIODICAL POSTAGE PAID AT CHICAGO, IL. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. CHICAGO READER, READER, AND REVERSED R: REGISTERED TRADEMARKS ®.

ON THE COVER: PHOTO BY DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

A people’s history of Kevin Coval

For decades the cofounder of Louder Than a Bomb has nurtured young voices and built vital communities in Chicago’s poetry, spoken-word, and hip-hop scenes. Now people whose lives he’s touched help tell his story.

BY LEOR GALIL 23

17 Theater Bad-boy playwright Tracy Letts is true to himself in Steppenwolf’s Linda Vista.

37 Bar review: Larry’s The recently renovated Lawrence House has given the neighborhood a new watering hole.

CLASSIFIEDS

38 Jobs 38 Apartments & Spaces 39 Marketplace

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40 Straight Dope If everything in Europe is more expensive, why is the health care there so cheap?

41 Savage Love Should you just suck it up when there’s incompatibility in the bedroom?

42 Early Warnings Har Mar Superstar, Hold Steady, Insane Clown Posse, Mountain Goats, and other shows in the weeks to come 42 Gossip Wolf A homegrown party puts Emo Nite LA to shame, and more music news.

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Send your events to agenda@chicagoreader.com

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F one of those benighted states where Coors is not sold.” Timmy Hart Barron plays the good ol’ boy Bandit here, Ali Delianides stands in for Sally Field, and Mark Hespen lends his fine, thundering voice to the role of Sheriff Justice.

Together, they pilot cardboard cars, bark into disconnected CB radios, and guzzle down truck-stop fare from slight hostesses in huge beehive wigs. Striving for So Bad It’s Good points, Smokey succeeds in being almost as fun as it is ridiculous.

—MAX MALLER Through 4/29: Fri-Sat 8 PM, MCL Chicago, 3110 N. Sheffield, mclchicago.com, $20.

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THEATER

More at chicagoreader.com/ theater

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The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) Evanston’s plucky little Piccolo Theatre puts a fresh spin on this popular 1987 comedy show, in which three actors race through the Shakespearean canon, parodying the classic plays while reminding us that the Bard of Avon was first and foremost a man of the theater whose mission was to entertain. Written (and originally performed) by Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield—aka the Reduced Shakespeare Company—this 90-minute romp is here enacted by three young women in street clothes, who playfully switch characters with the aid of an array of costume accessories, cheap wigs, goofy accents, and silly props as they race through comically condensed renditions of Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, et al. The production—performed with minimal lighting in the second-floor multipurpose room of an Evanston church, Piccolo’s temporary home—has a charmingly handmade and in-your-face quality. Under Nicole Keating’s direction, the talented cast—Caitlin Aase, Deborah Craft, and Liz Dillard—bring a breathless, improvisational feel to the performance, aided by selective use of audience involvement and a slew of updated jokes. —ALBERT WILLIAMS 4/16-5/14: FriSat 8 PM (no shows Fri 5/5 and Sat 5/13), Sun 3 PM, Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church, 939 Hinman, Evanston, 847-475-3630, piccolotheatre.com, $25.

Mary Poppins Here’s a version of Mary Poppins that will frustrate both purist fans of the stories by P.L.Travers and those of us for whom the glorious 1964 Disney film was a defining experience.

The show, cocreated by Cameron Mcintosh (the man who brought us Cats) and revived by the Mercury Theater Chicago, combines elements and characters from both the books and the movie (which Travers famously did not like) to create an awkward, overly long hybrid filled with both the wonderful old tunes by the Sherman

brothers and less wonderful new ones

by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe.

The needlessly complicated story Julian Fellowes cobbled together runs out of gas halfway through the second act. Led

by Nicole Arnold’s likable Mary, director L. Walter Stearns’s fine A-list cast carries on bravely, but in the end the whole spectacle leaves us wanting less. —JACK HELBIG Through 5/28: Wed 7:30 PM, Thu 3 and 7:30 PM, Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 1 and 6 PM, Mercury Theater, 3745 N. Southport, 773-325-1700, mercurytheaterchicago.com, $30-$65, seniors $30-$60, students $30-$50.

Odysseo Hokey on a grand scale, silly at the very highest level of technical sophistication, Cavalia’s latest multimedia horse opera might charm even a bitter old man like me if it didn’t consume so much of its two-and-a-half-hour running time in repetitive gambits. The trick riding is sharp, the dressage skilled, and the sight of galloping horses can be exhilarating . . . once or twice. But familiarity breeds tedium, even if you flood the stage and gallop (again) through standing water. Maybe that’s why some of the best work here highlights people rather than horses. Aerial lyra and silks acts are strikingly choreographed, and a Guinean tumbling team stole the show I saw, despite attempts to spin its members as quaint tribal types. Cavalia’s use of the Guineans underscores a glaring racial divide in Odysseo: all the riders are white. Odd that a company that culls talent from ten nations (and touts the diversity of its four-legged artists) couldn’t find a performance-quality black equestrian anywhere. —TONY ADLER Through 4/30: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Wed 4/12 and 4/19, 7 PM, Soldier Field South Festival Lot, 1410 S. Museum Campus Dr., 866-999-8111, cavalia.com, $34.50$269.50.

Smokey & the Bandit: The Musical A rowdy little clunker from WeAreProductions, complete with live band, this is an homage to the beloved 1977 chase movie, in which a truckload of smuggled Coors beer, with escort from Burt Reynolds in a black Trans-Am, makes its high-flying way from Texarkana to Atlanta, journeying, as Roger Ebert sublimely put it, “into

Stop Kiss You get the sense that something’s missing in the Cuckoo’s Theater Project’s rendition of Diana Son’s nonlinear drama about two women whose initially platonic, eventually romantic relationship gets upended after a violent attack. First produced in 1998, the work presumably carried more weight back in the days before Obergefell. In 2017, watching two ostensibly straight women, Callie and Sara (Jackie Seijo and Winter Sherrod), come to grips with their sexuality doesn’t hold much drama. And filled with chirpy dialogue, the script frequently feels dated, as when a detective badgers Callie into divulging the nature of her relationship with Sara, or when a witness talks up gay life in relatively narrow terms. Director Angela Forshee and cast do their best; perhaps what’s missing is the historical context. —MATT DE LA PEÑA Through 5/6: Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM (no show 4/16); also Mon 5/4, 8 PM, Collaboraction, 1579 N. Milwaukee, 312-226-9633, thecuckoostheaterproject.com, $20.

The Woman in Black Into designR er John Wilson’s extraordinary immersive set—the Den’s tiny black box transformed into a jewel-box Victorian theater fallen into grotesque desuetude—Wildclaw Theatre inserts a rather ordinary ghost story. Based on Susan Hill’s 1983 faux-gothic novel, the story follows Mr. Kipps, a British solicitor hired to sort out the estate of a deceased recluse who lived in an eccentric house surrounded by gloomy marshes and possibly inhabited by a vengeful ghost.

Steven Mallatratt’s 1987 stage adaptation (the second-longest-running play

in West End history) frontloads the tale with heavy metatheatrical clutter, so it’s hardly surprising director Elly Green’s measured production doesn’t start gathering steam until the midway point.

But once it does, her theatrical restraint starts paying off. Who knew a simple scrim could be put to such creepy effect? —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 4/23: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Sun 4/16, 7:30 PM, Den Theatre, 1329-1333 N. Milwaukee, 773-609-2336, wildclawtheatre.com, $25, $20 students and seniors.

DANCE

Moments Jin-Wen Yu Dance perR forms new and past works exploring “meanings of movement.” Fri 4/14, 7:30 PM; Sat 4/15, 2:30 PM, Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn, 312-337-6543, ruthpage.org, $15.

Stomping Grounds A pop-up R performance by Muntu Dance Theatre in celebration of Chicago Dance Month. Sat 4/15, 7:30 PM, DuSable Museum of African American History, 740 E. 56th Pl., 773-947-0600, dusablemuseum.org. F

COMEDY Buzzed Broadway The best improvisers keep it simple and make it look easy.

The folks behind Buzzed Broadway try too hard and make improv look impossible. It’s challenging enough to create a fully improvised parody of a Broadway musical, but this Laugh Out Loud show junks it up with an additional gimmick, a drinking game that invites audience members to lift a glass every time a performer says a particular line or does a particular dance move. I suppose it could still work if the performers seemed knowledgeable enough about musical theater to mock it (they don’t), or even if the audience got into the drinking game (it didn’t, at least not on the night I attended). Instead, this was 45 minutes of bad theater periodically interrupted by awful off-the-cuff singing and clumsy dancing not even beer

Stomping Grounds o COURTESY OF MUTUN DANCE THEATRE OF CHICAGO

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Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of April 13

VISUAL ARTS Myq Kaplan o MINDY TUCKER

goggles could make look good. —JACK HELBIG Through 4/27: Thu 8 PM, Laugh Out Loud, 3851 N. Lincoln, 773-857-6000, laughoutloudtheater.com, $15.

Deleted Scenes To create its R “pop culture comedies,” Under the Gun Theater has a habit of taking

ingeniously banal concepts and producing disarmingly intelligent improv. The concept this time: show a clip from a bad movie, identify an incidental character in the scene, then improvise the life story that led to this character’s insignificant moment. Thus the unaccountably unemotional girlfriend of a passing murder victim in I’m Gonna Git You Sucka begins life as a preschooler so “strongly annoying” her mother won’t stay home to care for her. Then she’s tutored by a cowboy, who may be a hallucination, in the art of killing cows with her bare hands. And so on. In typical fashion, the improvisers rarely shy from bold, incongruous choices, yet somehow make most everything fall into place. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 4/28: Fri 9 PM, Under the Gun Theater, 956 W. Newport, 773270-3440, undertheguntheater.com, $12.

Great Works of Fiction HipFlask Productions’ debut show is a collection of sketches based on the books of Horace Delancey III, self-described as “perhaps the world’s most eclectic writer.” What follows is a series of riffs on Clue, House of Cards, Hamilton, and a half dozen other cultural touchstones. A babysitting scene that’s part Get Out, part Exorcist comes closest to hitting the mark but never quite fulfills its premise enough to make you forget its sources. If the notion of a sequel to Moby-Dick called Maybe Dick makes you laugh, then this is the show for you. But most of the bits jump off from plays, movies, and TV shows, which undercuts the entire premise of a show based on the work of a writer. —DMITRY SAMAROV Through 4/22: Sat 10 PM, Public House Theatre, 3914 N. Clark, 800-650-6449, pubhousetheatre.com, $15.

Myq Kaplan The comedian R behind the Netflix special Small, Dork, and Handsome performs his stand-up. Wed 4/19, 8 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, 773-525-2508, lh-st. com, $10.

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Las Locas Comedy A stand-up showcase featuring Marsella Lopez, Soli Santos, Lily Be, Sonal Aggarwal, and Deanna Ortiz. Sat 4/15, 8 PM, Karen Marie Salon, 1859 N. Milwaukee, 773-227-4003, karenmariesalon.com. F

DFBRL8R Gallery Anarchist Print Fair 2017, printmakers from around the world put their work on display. The weekend also features performance art, music, screenings, and free mimosas on Easter Sunday. 4/14-4/16: Fri 10 AM-10 PM, Sat 10 AM-11 PM, Sun 10 AM-4 PM. 1463 W. Chicago, dfbrl8r.org.

Document Gallery “Technical Images,” John Opera’s photographic experiments with the cyanotype process. Opening reception Sat 4/15, 5-8 PM. 4/15-5/27.

Wed-Sat 11 AM-6 PM. 1709 W. Chicago, 262-719-3500, documentspace.com.

Museum of Contemporary Art “Smoke, Nearby,” an exhibition of Tania Pérez Córdova’s sculptures. 4/15-8/20.

Tue 10 AM-8 PM, Wed-Sun 10 AM-5 PM. 220 E. Chicago, 312-280-2660, mcachicago.org, $12, $7 students and seniors, free kids 12 and under and members of the military, free for Illinois residents on Tuesdays.

Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College “#AiWeiwei,” the first Chicago exhibit from the Chinese activist, artist, architect, curator, and filmmaker who was detained for his views in 2011. This show highlights the artist’s professional photographs paired with photos from his personal Instagram feed. 4/13-7/2. Mon-Sat 10 AM-5 PM (Thu till 8 PM), Sun noon-5 PM. 600 S. Michigan, 312-663-5554, mocp.org.

Western Exhibitions “The Dead Know Everything,” Elijah Burgh’s colored-pencil drawings exploring friendship, death, flags, gods, demons, and paradise.

Opening reception Sat 4/15, 5-8 PM. 4/15-5/27. Wed-Sat 11 AM-6 PM. 1709 W. Chicago, 312-480-8390, westernexhibitions.com.

Loose Chicks A storytelling R show that encourages women to share things they normally keep to

themselves. This edition features R.C. Riley, Anna Besmann, Gwynn Valentine Fulcher, and Kellye Howard. Fri 4/14, 7:15 PM, Uncharted Books, 2630 N. Milwaukee, facebook.com/theloosechicks.

Deb Olin Unferth The author R discusses her book Wait Till You See Me Dance with Eula Biss (On Immunity). Tue 4/18, 6 PM, Seminary Co-op Bookstore, 5751 S. Woodlawn, 773-7524381, semcoop.com.

MOVIES

More at chicagoreader.com/movies NEW REVIEWS After the Storm In this family drama from Japanese writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda, a rainstorm forces a struggling novelist (Hiroshi Abe) to reconnect with his recently widowed mother (Kirin Kiki), estranged wife (Yoko Maki), and young son at the matriarch’s home. The novelist works as a private investigator, surveilling and blackmailing people, and steals from his mother to feed a gambling addiction, yet he adores his son and re-creates with him the childhood pastimes he and his father once shared. Kore-ada has explored the father-son dynamic in his previous work, most notably Still Walking (2008) and Like Father, Like Son (2013), and brings a gentle, humanist approach to the material. The film was shot in and around a low-rent housing compound in Kiyosi, where Kore-eda grew up, and there’s a palpable sense of connection to it. There’s also a surprising chemistry between the mother and the wife, who are bound by their common love for an impossible man. In Japanese with subtitles. —LEAH PICKETT R, 117 min. Fri 4/14, 2 and 6 PM; Sat 4/15, 5:30 PM; Sun 4/16, 3 PM; Mon 4/17, 6 PM; Tue 4/18, 6 PM; Wed 4/19, 7:45 PM; and Thu 4/20, 8:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center

Colossal Writer-director Nacho R Vigalondo, best known for his Spanish sci-fi thriller Timecrimes

(2007), makes his U.S. debut with this knotty, high-concept fantasy about a hard-drinking New Yorker (Anne Hathaway) who gets fired from her job and kicked out by her boyfriend, returns to her hometown to pull herself together, and discovers one night that she’s the animating force behind a giant monster periodically attacking Seoul, South Korea. This premise alone isn’t enough to sustain a whole movie, but Vigalondo knows how to throw a wrench in the works of his story—in this case, the heroine’s old schoolmate (Jason Sudeikis), who silently nurtures a bitter, unrequited love for her and eventually becomes the animating force behind a giant robot that shows up in Seoul to battle the other creature. Hathaway is miscast in a snarky role that Anna Kendrick would have knocked out of the park, but the players are less important here than Vigalondo’s talent for constructing a narrative room full of mirrors. With Dan Stevens and Tim Blake Nelson. —J.R. JONES R, 110 min. Landmark’s Century Centre Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo Hidden Figures dramatized the true story of four black women whose mathematical skills enabled NASA’s Mercury program to send John Glenn into orbit in 1962; coming on the heels of that movie, this documentary about the development of NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston can’t help but feel like white-male backlash. Director David Fairhead (In the Shadow of the Moon) interviews a large contingent of Mission Control veterans—you know, those guys in the crew cuts, black neckties, and white, short-sleeved shirts—and they relive some of the more storied missions of the Apollo moon-landing program: Apollo 1, scuttled after an electrical fire in the rocket cabin killed three astronauts in 1967; Apollo 11, which landed Neil Armstrong on the moon two W

LIT & LECTURES

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Movie Theater & Full Bar $5.00 sion admis e for th s Movie

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City. Wed 4/19, 6 PM, General Assembly, 444 N. Wabash, level B, generalassemb.ly.

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Friday, April 14 @ 6:30pm Sunday, April 16 @ 3:30pm Mon-Thr, April 17-20 @ 6:30pm

Chicago Reader Book Swap The rules are simple: bring and take as many as 15 books, but nothing musty, dirty, torn, or in poor condition. No encyclopedias, periodicals, or technical, legal or medical information books. The evening features live music from Old Town School performers. Thu 4/13, 6-9 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln, 773-7286000, oldtownschool.org.

Kelly Leonard The Second City R executive director discusses his book Yes, And: Lessons From the Second

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

Friday, April 14 @ 8:30pm Sunday, April 16 @ 8:00pm Mon-Thr, April 17-20 @ 8:30pm

John Wick 2

Sunday, April 16 @ 5:30pm

La La Land “#AiWeiwei,” at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, is the first Chicago show of work by the Chinese artist and dissident. o AI WEIWEI

APRIL 13, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 5

AGENDA B years later; and Apollo 13, the disaster-plagued 1970 mission later immortalized in the Ron Howard movie of the same name. This is the usual mix of talking heads and archival footage, but Fairhead also inserts detailed CGI sequences that vividly illustrate the technical issues unfolding. —J.R. JONES 101 min. Facets Cinematheque Personal Affairs This 2016 debut feature from Palestinian writer-director Maha Haj follows a family from her Israeli hometown of Nazareth, though only the grumpy, middle-aged parents (Sanaa and Mahmoud Shawahdeh) remain there. One of their adult sons (Ziad Bakri) lives in Sweden, where he works as a photographer; their other son (Doraid Liddawi) and their daughter (Hanan Hillo) live in the West Bank in Ramallah, where the daughter’s mechanic husband (Amer Hlehel) gets cast in a U.S. film after the brash director passes through his shop. The more political subplots work better than those focused on the family drama: one well-written scene shows the mechanic and his friends speculating about whether he’ll play a terrorist in the movie, yet the quieter, more deadpan scenes of the parents ignoring each other tend to fall flat. In Arabic and Hebrew with subtitles. —LEAH PICKETT 89 min. Also on the program: Pierre Dawalibi’s seven-minute Today They Took My Son (2016). Dawalibi attends the screening, which marks the opening night of the Chicago Palestinian Film Festival; for a full schedule visit siskelfilmcenter.org.

Sat 4/15, 8 PM, and Fri 4/28, 8 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center

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Queen of the Desert Nicole Kidman goes all Lawrence of Arabia for this slow-moving biopic of Gertrude Bell, the British adventurer and archaeologist who became a key diplomatic figure in the Middle East during and after World War I. Bell was an extraordinary figure, tailor-made for a dazzling presence like Kidman, but Werner Herzog, directing his own script, unwisely structures Bell’s story around her intimate relationships with men, all played by handsome actors who wilt in Kidman’s high-watt glare: James Franco, toothy and gurgling as a besotted secretary at the British embassy in Tehran; Damian Lewis, steel-jawed and resolute as a married officer who sweeps Bell off her feet; and Robert Pattinson, suave and devil-may-care as T.E. Lawrence (really they’re just good friends). The episodic narrative never accumulates any momentum; one wonders how much better Herzog might have fared with a Lincoln-style focus on a critical moment in Bell’s career, such as the Cairo Conference of 1921, at which she helped negotiate the modern state of Iraq. —J.R. JONES PG-13, 128 min. Fri 4/14, 2 and 8 PM;

Colossal Sat 4/15, 3 and 7:45 PM; Sun 4/16, 4:45 PM; Mon 4/17, 7:45 PM; Tue 4/18, 8:15 PM; Wed 4/19, 6 PM; and Thu 4/20, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center Their Finest After the British defeat at Dunkirk, the film division of the UK’s Ministry of Information sets out to produce an inspirational drama for the home front, a task complicated by the evolving propaganda demands of the British war department and the U.S. government. Meanwhile, a young writer assigned to the project (Gemma Arterton) begins to pull away from her artist fiance (Jack Huston) and fall for her no-nonsense boss (Sam Claflin). The source novel, by Lissa Evans, bore the clever title Their Finest Hour and a Half, but someone must have decided that viewers were too ignorant to know the Churchill quotation it tweaks; in fact, the characters’ endless revision of the film within the film tends to heighten one’s awareness of the compromises that must have gone into the writing of this formulaic piece. The supporting cast includes such British treasures as Bill Nighy, Eddie Marsan, Jeremy Irons, and Richard E. Grant—too bad they aren’t the leads. Lone Scherfig (An Education) directed. —J.R. JONES PG-13, 128 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark’s Century Centre

REVIVALS Mad Max: Fury Road Thirty R years after Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985), writer-director George Miller reboots his dystopian sci-fi series, replacing Mel Gibson with Tom Hardy as the title hero and completely reimagining the futuristic Australia of the original films. A ruthless tyrant (Hugh Keays-Byrne) uses his control of the last remaining freshwater source to rule pharaohlike over a mountain community, commanding his own personal army and enslaving several women so they will bear his children. After his lieutenant (Charlize Theron) liberates the women, Max falls in with the group and they trek across the desert in search of a fabled all-female utopia known as the Green Place. This is astonishingly dense for a big-budget spectacle, not only in its imagery and ideas but in the complex interplay between them: the more invested you feel in Miller’s fantasy world, the more you want to see it saved from despots and violence. |—BEN SACHS R, 121 min. Screens in a high-contrast black-and-white

print. Thu 4/20, 7 PM. Univ. of Chicago Doc Films Wake in Fright Ted Kotcheff R (First Blood, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz) directed this

forgotten Australian masterpiece (1971) about an arrogant Sydney schoolteacher (Garry Bond) who’s slowly driven mad after a prolonged stay in the Yabba, a desolate mining town in the middle of the Australian outback. After gambling away every dollar he has, Bond succumbs to the aggressive hospitality of the locals, and they condition him to their brutish lifestyle, which seems to consist mostly of constant drinking, random fistfights, anarchic destruction of other people’s property, and kangaroo hunting. A Conradian parable of a man succumbing to the wild, the film is remarkable for its raw, pointed depiction of human behavior. Push a man too far, Kotcheff suggests, and you’ll find the beast concealed behind the mask of propriety. —DREW HUNT 114 min. Mon 4/17, 7 PM. Univ. of Chicago Doc Films

SPECIAL EVENTS Best of Black Harvest Shorts Shorts that have screened at the Gene Siskel Film Center’s Black Harvest Film Festival, including: Prom Date Blues (2015), The Bathroom Attendant (2013), The Chicago Boyz (2013), and Perfect Day (2013). Filmmakers attend the screening. Wed 4/19, 6 PM. Garfield Park Conservatory An Evening With Valie Export Short works by the Austrian avant-gardist (Invisible Adversaries), who combines images of alienation and eros with a strongly feminist sensibility. —PAT GRAHAM Curator and professor Bruce Jenkins will introduce the screening with an overview of the artist’s career.

Thu 4/20, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center Hump! Film Festival Sex columnist Dan Savage presents his annual festival of amateur porn. Sat 4/14 and Sun 4/15, 7 and 9:30 PM. Music Box Films by Danny Lyon Photographer and filmmaker Danny Lyon presents two of his “intimate” nonfiction shorts: Born to Film (1982) and Willie (1985). Thu 4/20, 7 PM. Univ. of Chicago Logan Center for the Arts v

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CITY LIFE Chicagoans

The doula

o ISA GIALLORENZO

Nicole Woodcox Bolden, 33

Street View

All dressed up, no particular place to go EVEN THOUGH Zack Crichlow defines his style as casual, he often has many admiring strangers ask where he’s going looking so dapper. “I don’t have to be going anywhere to wear these clothes,” he says of the vast collection he has organized by color in two closets of his home. “I’m not gonna let them sit there and rot.” The 67-year-old dresses up every weekend, when he takes a break from his job at a food pantry. “I care about how I look. Being well-dressed makes me feel wonderful.” —ISA GIALLORENZO See more Chicago street style on Giallorenzo’s blog chicagolooks. blogspot.com.

IN THE MEDICAL industry, no matter how educated you are and what questions you come prepared with, if you’re a woman of color, people try to patronize you. I realized this when I was in the hospital, giving birth to my first daughter.

It’s not just in the hospital; it’s also at all the prenatal visits.

You say, “I heard about water birth. Is it a possibility?” and they’re like, “Oh no, you don’t want to do that.”

Then when I was in the hospital, I asked for a birthing ball.

The nurse told me, “Oh, you don’t need the ball. It’s not that good to sit on a ball anyway.”

She just didn’t want to find one for me. I’m like, “I practiced at home with the birthing ball.

Give me the birthing ball.” I had to wait for another nurse to come on duty to get my ball. It was my and my husband’s first time dealing with childbirth, and we’re like, “Are we crazy right now? No one is listening to either of us.”

That was the impetus for me to start working as a doula and deal with situations like this. I make it clear to the mom

that I’m always there for her. I would never speak for her or tell a doctor what she wants. I may say to her, “Hey, does that make sense to you?” That’ll be a prompt for her to ask more questions. Or if the doctor or midwife says something she doesn’t understand and she doesn’t feel comfortable asking, I’ll explain.

I’m a very hands-on doula, so I tend to be with my client from the time they leave their house until the time the baby comes out. I’m there to be support for mom mentally, to make sure she knows she can do it. I’m also a social worker, so I’m heavy on the mental stuff. A lot of the pain comes from fear, so we do a lot of work around, “What’s your fear?” Just talking things out.

All my clients have given birth in the hospital. I make sure the mom is comfortable and make sure the hospital room feels safe for her, because if mom doesn’t feel safe, that’s gonna make the labor take longer. There’s different points on the ear and the feet that activate labor, so I massage them to help things move along. If mom is able to, I

“A lot of the pain of childbirth comes from fear,” Nicole Woodcox Bolden says. o JIAYUE YU

get her up and do exercises with her, because if she’s just laying in bed, the baby can’t move down. I help her squat. I let her lean on me if she’s tired. Or I get her positioned in bed in a way that still helps the body open up.

I’m not a medical professional, and I don’t try to portray one.

But there have been a few times where I’ve asked the doctor or midwife if we can just get a little more time before they do an intervention.

I had this one birth where the mom really, really wanted to have an all-natural birth. She

was doing so well, and then all of a sudden, she was like, “The pain is so bad.” The midwife had checked, and she was only at six centimeters. They were telling her she was going to have to get an epidural. I said, “She’s in a lot of pain to be six centimeters.”

The midwife checked again, and sure enough, the baby had just skydived down and was crowning already, and the mom pushed the baby out in like four pushes. It’s always great to say, “Yeah, you did it! That baby came out of you one way or the other.” —AS TOLD TO ANNE FORD

¥ Keep up to date on the go at chicagoreader.com/agenda.

SURE THINGS THURSDAY 13

FRIDAY 14

SATURDAY 15

SUNDAY 16

MONDAY 17

TUESDAY 18

WEDNESDAY 19

p Black Gi rl Ma gic A dance party celebrating black femininity and queerness, featuring performances by drag queens Ms. Ruff-N-Stuff, Dida Ritz, Lucy Stoole, and the Vixen, with music by DJs Gucciroxx and All the Way Kay. 10 PM-4 AM, Berlin, 954 W. Belmont, berlinchicago. com.

& Cl audia Po p -Up Chef Trevor Teich serves a seasonal menu that includes beef-basil pho, salmon with smoked trout roe, and black sesame bubble tea. 5 and 8:30 PM, Claudia Restaurant, 327 N. Bell, claudiarestaurant.com, $165.

· Un broken Gl ass WTTW and Kartemquin Films host this screening of Dinesh Das Sabu’s documentary about his journey through Illinois, California, and India to piece together the history of his parents, who died when he was young. A discussion follows. 2 PM, Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, kartemquin.com. F

& Easte r Brunch Buffet Chef Brian Jupiter presents an Easter Sunday menu featuring a 45-day house-cured ham, an omelet station, oysters, pastries, and more. Reservations required.

10 AM-3 PM, Frontier, 1072 N. Milwaukee, thefrontierchicago.com, $28.

¸ WhiskyFest Chicago Mixologists from Sable Kitchen & Bar, Bad Hunter, and Broken Shaker create specialty whiskey cocktails. Guests can enjoy a tasting and a snack menu that includes pimento cheese fritters and chicken liver mousse crostini.

5-8 PM, Sable Kitchen & Bar, 505 N. State, whiskyadvocate. com. F

½ Open Books and Laugh Kelsie Huff hosts this fund-raiser for Open Books featuring stand-up from Reena Calm, Lainie Lenertz, Tom Wisdom, Rebecca V. O’Neal, and more. Tue 4/18, 8 PM, Laugh Factory, 3175 N. Broadway, 773-327-3175, laughfactory.com, $25 plus two-drink minimum.

ò Ka ra oke Night Revival Food Hall invites guests to sing their hearts out with signature cocktails available for some liquid courage. 6-8 PM, Revival Food Hall, 125 S. Clark, revivalfoodhall.com. F

APRIL 13, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 7

CITY LIFE POLITICS

The downstate Democrat taking aim at Rauner

A dark horse in Illinois’s gubernatorial race, Bob Daiber says he can deliver the kind of voters that his wealthier and more recognizable Democratic opponents can’t.

By BEN JORAVSKY

A

s the days slowly tick down toward next year’s epic gubernatorial showdown, a conventional strategy has emerged as to how Democrats can unseat Governor Rauner.

Rally behind a Chicago-area personality— preferably one wealthy enough to match our billionaire governor buck for buck—who will coalesce all of the city’s animus toward Rauner and Trump. (Lord knows there’s a lot of that!)

Then use the massive resistance to overwhelm Rauner’s downstate support.

But there may be a second, less obvious tactic that involves putting Rauner on the defensive by nominating a downstate candidate to bring in the swing voters the Democrats never should’ve conceded to Rauner and Trump in the first place. And as a public service to everyone who can’t stomach the idea of another four years of Rauner bankrupting our schools and starving our social services, I’d like to introduce you to the only Democratic candidate who could possibly pull it off.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Bob Daiber, who’s pretty much everything that the

Illinois gubernatorial candidate Bob Daiber doesn’t have the wealth or name recognition of Chris Kennedy and J.B. Pritzker, but he says he could help harvest potential Democratic voters downstate. o ASHLEE REZIN/SUN-TIMES MEDIA

better-known, better-financed Democratic gubernatorial candidates Chris Kennedy and J.B. Pritzker are not.

The 60-year-old regional superintendent of schools in Madison County just east of the Saint Louis border, Daiber grew up in Marine, a village of about 960 people in Madison County. His mother was a retail worker in a local store. His father was a farmer. They were lifelong Democrats. Well, his father was, any-

way. His mother’s father was a Republican. So it was a pretty big deal when she went to the other side, politically speaking. Daiber went to Triad High School in Marine. And then on to junior college and eventually Eastern Illinois University, where he graduated with a degree in education. In 1978, he went back to Triad to teach shop.

“I’m probably the only shop teacher who’s ever run for governor,” he says. “I’ve always

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CITY LIFE

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

been good with my hands. I can run any kind of machine you see on the face of the earth. My biggest influence was Anton Yakos—he was my shop teacher at Triad. I idolized him. He was a World War II veteran and a coal miner.

He’s one of those teachers who taught you a lot more than the subject matter.”

In addition to teaching, Daiber still runs the family farm. “I love being out on the land,” he says.

In 1992, he ran for state representative against Ron Stephens. Daiber lost the bitterly contested race by about 200 votes. He unsuccessfully ran two other times, in ’94 and ’98.

If Daiber couldn’t get elected as state rep in his hometown district, what makes him think he can win statewide? Well, it’s a Republican district, he says, and Stephens was an immensely popular incumbent.

In 2002, Daiber was elected—and then twice reelected—to the Madison County Board.

As he sees it, downstate Illinois is far more progressive on economic issues than people think. Take Madison County, for instance. Yes, Trump won roughly 55 percent of the vote

over Clinton last November. But in 2014, while Rauner racked up 58 percent over former governor Pat Quinn, almost 59 percent of Madison County went for a nonbinding referendum to raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour. And 60 percent voted for another referendum to raise taxes on millionaires to finance the state’s public schools.

In other words, there are potential Democratic voters to be harvested downstate. Just like in the swing districts of rural Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that helped elect Trump.

“I’m the candidate who can carry the downstate vote,” he says. “I can carry Trump voters.

On the county board I represented a largely Republican district.”

On social issues, he’s a moderate. “My personal values are more pro-life, but I recognize pro-choice is the law of the land and I will respect that law,” he says. “I’m fully supportive of reproductive rights. I support Planned Parenthood. And I recognize gay rights.”

As for gun control, he’s says, “I support concealed-carry gun laws. The Second Amendment is a big issue where I come from.”

“I’m probably the only shop teacher who’s ever run for governor.”

—Bob Daiber

On economic issues, he’s an unabashed pro-union progressive. “We have a revenue problem,” he says. “I would support a progressive income tax. There’s only one solution. The debt has to be bonded out. And we have to pay down that debt with the principal of new tax revenue. I want to become governor to stabilize Illinois. Education is my passion. No one needs to tell me how important education is to kids—I taught for 28 years. And no one needs to tell me about living in poverty—I was raised with solid New Deal Democratic values. This is who I am and who I’ve always been.”

Ironically, Daiber would probably have an easier time beating Rauner than he will winning the Democratic nomination. He’s up against two wealthy businessmen, Kennedy and Pritzker, who can self-finance their campaigns. The other two announced Democrats, alderman Ameya Pawar and Evanston state senator Daniel Biss, have a wealthier base to tap for money.

But Daiber’s biggest handicap is his anonymity. He’s generally treated as a fringe candidate, and has earned scant mentions in coverage of the election. He’s so unknown that Rauner’s Republican operatives haven’t even bothered to blast him in a press release—as they’ve done for Biss, Kennedy, Pawar, and Pritzker.

“I’m working hard to get my message out,” Daiber says. “I don’t want anyone to think I’m taking Chicago for granted. I’m in Chicago three or four times a week. Whether we like it or not, we’re all in this together. We may not be a big happy family. But it’s a family, nonetheless.” v

ß @joravben

University of Illinois Assistant Professor of Clinical Emergency Medicine/Physician Surgeon “The Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago, located in a large metropolitan area, is seeking a full-time Assistant Professor of Clinical Emergency Medicine/Physician Surgeon to assist the department teach, train and advise medical students, residents and fellows in Emergency Medicine and Internal Medicine. Provide clinical patient care as a dual board EM/IM physician in the Emergency Room, Emergency Medicine Clinical Decision Unit and Inpatient Hospital, work to improve healthcare outreach and integration of services, and facilitate the creation of a transition of care clinic. Other duties include conducting medical science research in the field, publishing and presenting research findings, and performing University service and administrative duties as assigned. Requirements are an MD degree or its foreign equivalent, plus five years of residency training in Internal Medicine and Emergency Medicine. Valid Illinois medical license and board certification or eligibility for certification in Internal Medicine and Emergency Medicine also required. Some travel is required.

For fullest consideration, please submit a CV, cover letter, and 3 references to the attention of the Search Coordinator via email at kitaylor@uic.edu, or via mail at University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Emergency Medicine, 808 S Wood Street #471, Chicago, IL 60612.

The University of Illinois is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action employer.

Minorities, women, veterans and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply.

The University of Illinois may conduct background checks on all job candidates upon acceptance of a contingent offer. Background checks will be performed in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act.”

WICKER PARK: 1478 N. Milwau Av. (Blue Line @ Damen) • 773-22kee 7-9558 BUFFALOEXCHANGE.COM • APRIL 13, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 9

New Trier High School is the focus of Paul Traynor’s new documentary.

CITY LIFE

o SUN-TIMES MEDIA/TOM CRUZE

SMALL SCREEN/POLITICS

Case study

Director Paul Traynor’s New Trier: Tip of the Spear is about more than a suburban high school.

By DEANNA ISAACS

T

hanks to the subversive power of YouTube, you can now watch New Trier: Tip of the Spear—the documentary the North Shore radical right tried to shut down—on your computer. Director and narrator Paul Traynor gallops deep into the weeds in his hurriedly produced, rapid-fire account of how a battle over Seminar Day, a one-day program on racial civil rights at elite New Trier High School, opened a window on what he sees as a national conspiracy to destroy public schools and take control of local government.

As it happens, Traynor has more than a passing interest in the subject. The parent of “one current and four future New Trier students,” he’s a professional writer, speaker, filmmaker, and, most recently, a host of Race Bait, a podcast he produces with cohost Tania Richard.

Traynor says that as he watched Seminar Day opposition unfold online, drawing “bash New Trier” comments from political activists outside the district, and then blowing up and surfacing everywhere from Dan Proft’s conservative radio talk show to the Wall Street

10 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 13, 2017

Journal, it occurred to him that he should document the brouhaha in a short-form video.

“It quickly became clear that it was a very small group stirring up all this controversy,” Traynor says. “But they managed to sell it nationally. Depending on your point of view, it either painted New Trier folks as leftist indoctrinators who are out of touch and pushing white guilt, or insensitive rich white people.”

Seminar Day went off as planned on February 28, with two National Book Award winners as keynote speakers and sessions on topics like “Disney and Racial Stereotypes” and “21st Century Voter Suppression.” The controversy raged on, however, its focus shifting to previously routine local elections, where for the first time in a century an upstart slate of candidates—supported by some of the same people who’d opposed the seminar—had arisen to contest those endorsed by the nonpartisan New Trier Township caucus.

It was about this time, Traynor says, that he realized he had a “longer-form piece” on his hands. It wouldn’t be his first feature-length project: a decade ago he wrote and directed Witches’ Night, a boys-night-out-meets-coven

thriller you can also access on your computer (through Netflix). But that was fiction; this was shaping up as a real-life horror story.

Traynor launched a Kickstarter campaign in early March, raising his goal of $15,000 in two weeks, and intended to open his film before the April 4 election. His premiere, scheduled for March 22 at the Wilmette Theatre, drew a crowd, but was scuttled at the last minute by a cease-and-desist letter on behalf of some members of the Seminar Day opposition. After getting his own legal advice, Traynor rented the theater again and went ahead with two screenings on April 2.

Tip of the Spear opens with Traynor talking to the camera. The story he tells is fleshed out with video clips, including moments from a wild appearance he and conservative writer (and New Trier parent) Betsy Hart made on Channel 11’s Chicago Tonight, and local rightwing media mogul Proft referring to Traynor as “a typical left-wing bed wetter” on his radio talk show.

By February 19, the film explains, warring petitions had gathered more than 5,000 signatures supporting Seminar Day and only 353

opposed. Traynor theorizes that this attack on “one of the crown jewels of public education” was a strategic ploy by forces in favor of socalled school choice. Those forces include Proft and his colleagues at the conservative think tank Illinois Policy Institute (who attempted to bring virtual charter schools to Illinois), and a group called the Policy Circle, an organization for women cofounded in 2013 by Sylvie Légère Ricketts, wife of Cubs owner and Trumpnominated deputy secretary of commerce, Todd Ricketts, in her Wilmette living room.

The Policy Circle is “like a book club,” but one that only discusses economic policy, adheres to the principle that “the free-enterprise system works,” and bases its discussions on briefing papers from conservative think tanks, like the Illinois Policy Institute. According to its website, the Policy Circle now consists of 47 groups in 19 states and is growing rapidly.

The film finds overlap between the Policy Circle, Seminar Day opponents, upstart candidates, the Illinois Policy Institute, and national organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council, and Traynor sees in this a new, education-based version of the military-industrial complex, intent on turning taxpayer dollars into corporate profits.

“I no longer think it’s crazy to think a national conspiracy is under way with an agenda to dictate our local politics,” he says at the film’s conclusion. “I believe it’s happening, and I believe New Trier is just the tip of the spear.” v

ß @DeannaIsaacs

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CITY LIFE Visually impaired musician Andy Slater recently teamed up with Reader contributor Steve Krakow for a Chick tract-style comic on the dos and don’ts of interacting with blind people.

TRANSPORTATION

Riding blind

Navigating the CTA when you can’t see well can be “a huge pain in the ass,” musician Andy Slater says.

By JOHN GREENFIELD

G

etting around Chicago via mass transit can be frustrating for any of us, but imagine what it’s like for people who are legally blind.

Visually impaired sound artist, rock musician, and recording engineer Andy Slater offered to share his experiences navigating the city on public transportation and floated some ideas to improve transportation access for folks with disabilities.

A native of Milford, Connecticut, Slater moved to town in 1994 to attend SAIC, and now lives in Portage Park with his wife, Tressa, and their 12-year-old son, whose very rock ’n’ roll name—yes, his real name—is Baron Vonn Slater. Andy creates “organic-electric” soundtracks and sound design especially geared toward people with visual impairments, with the goal of evoking images and colors. He also sings and plays keyboards in the acid-funk band the Velcro Lewis Group and records other acts at Frogg Mountain studio in the West Loop.

Slater’s vision has gradually declined since childhood, due to retinitis pigmentosa, a hereditary disease that involves the deterioration of the retina’s rod photoreceptor cells.

Symptoms include loss of peripheral and night vision, plus light sensitivity—Slater must wear two pairs of sunglasses to go outside on a sunny day. The condition can eventually lead to total blindness. Nowadays Slater can detect light and dark, shapes, and movement, but not much else.

“There’s a layer over my vision like snow from an old TV,” he says. “It’s this strange mix between a sort of neon purple and these black dots that kind of move around.”

In 2009, when his sight was somewhat better, Slater was walking from his home in Humboldt Park to Wicker Park when he was struck in a crosswalk at Division and Western by a turning driver who failed to yield. (Five years

earlier, a drunk driver fatally struck Slater’s acquaintance Christopher Saathoff, bassist for Chin Up Chin Up, at the same intersection.)

Slater suffered damage to his leg muscles and back and still has a “nasty scar” on his right arm. It took about a year of physical therapy for him to make a full recovery. While he’d previously been hesitant to use a white cane because he didn’t want to draw attention to his disability, after the crash he began using one without fail, both for navigation and to warn other road users of his condition.

Although Slater and his family own a car, he frequently uses CTA trains and buses to pick up his son from elementary school near the California Blue Line station, commute to his studio near Lake and Ogden, and go to band practice in Humboldt Park. While he’s generally comfortable getting around on his regular el and bus routes, accessibility issues influence his travel decisions.

“If I have to transfer to another train line where there’s no direct transfer, or if I have to leave the station, I generally don’t bother because that’s a huge pain in the ass even if there’s [a customer assistant] there to help me,” he says.

For example, Frogg Mountain is only a few blocks west of the Morgan Green/Pink Line station. But Slater often travels there via the Ashland bus, because transferring from the Blue Line subway to the elevated tracks at the Clark/Lake station is a complex operation for a legally blind person. “It’s just too taxing for me,” he says. “I get turned around a lot in terms of where the stairs or turnstiles are, and I hate wandering around clueless and confused.”

One CTA feature that Slater says makes travel less confusing is the 350-plus bus shelters that beep to broadcast their locations to the visually impaired, and have a button you can press to get audible announcements about

incoming buses. “If they took that idea and put it on the stairs to elevated trains or some of the turnstiles,” he says, “that would help me a lot.” While el stations that serve multiple lines usually have announcements about what color train is approaching, Slater says they don’t always work. “That really pisses me off,” he says.

“If they have a situation where it’s down, the driver should always announce it.”

Slater’s proud that he’s done his part to make the el a little more accessible for himself and other blind riders. During the buggy launch of the Ventra payment system, he realized that the fare card vending machines, which offer audible cues for payment, would state the balance on a customer’s card, but wouldn’t tell you whether it was a positive or negative sum. Roughly three months after he called Ventra and the CTA about the problem, he noticed it had been fixed.

CTA spokesman Jeff Tolman confirmed that Slater deserves credit for bringing the issue to the agency’s attention. He added that other CTA features to assist blind people include Braille text on the vending machines and station, platform, and railcar signs, audible alerts from the card readers at turnstiles, tactile platform edges, and automated stop announcements on buses.

Aside from the aforementioned issues, Slater says he has had few accessibility problems on the CTA, although he can’t say the same for his friends who use wheelchairs, due to the fact that 45 of the el system’s 145 stations don’t have elevators or ramps. The transit agency recently announced plans to make its entire rail system accessible—over the next 20 years.

Slater notes that all people with disabilities are eligible for a reduced-fare card that allows them to pay only $1.10 instead of the usual $2.25 for a train ride, but they have to demonstrate economic need to qualify for a free-fare

card. “Until every station is accessible, I don’t feel it’s fair to have to . . . pay [even] reduced fare for less service than other passengers.”

Slater’s mixed experience using the CTA is fairly typical of the general disability community, according Gary Arnold, spokesman for the disability rights group Access Living of Metro Chicago. “Some things are being done well, but there is also room for improvement, so there’s a continued need for advocacy,” Arnold says. For example, he noted that, thanks to multiple lawsuits, all CTA buses are now wheelchair accessible. However, he added, the fact that the “Your New Blue” rehab of O’Hare branch stations doesn’t include adding elevators to all the stations that lack them arguably represents a missed opportunity.

Despite his severe visual impairment, Slater has become relatively comfortable navigating the physical aspects of our city’s transportation system. “The biggest concern I have as a passenger is other passengers,” he says.

Specifically, Slater has had issues with people grabbing or pulling him on the street or in the subway, assuming he needs help without asking if he wants assistance. Not only is that patronizing, he says, it’s dangerous because he might assume he’s being mugged and instinctively overreact. It’s especially problematic on a CTA platform or when he’s walking under el tracks, because train noise is disorienting for people who rely on their hearing for wayfinding. To ease his encounters with well-meaning, curious people—as well as clueless buffoons— Slater recently wrote a Chick tract-style comic called How Many Fingers Am I Holding Up? illustrated by cartoonist and Reader contributor Steve Krakow. The handout serves as a dos-and-don’ts guide for interacting with blind people and lays out Slater’s daily public space challenges in an alternately heartbreaking and hilarious manner.

“I’m just a dude,” he states in the intro, “who wants to live life without ignorant, aggressive people interrupting me.” v The Velcro Lewis Group plays a release party for their album Taking Frogg Mountain on Thu 4/20, 8:30 PM at the Hideout.

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

APRIL 13, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 11

RETAIL THERAPY The shopkeeper behind Martha Mae fights her demons by inviting customers into a total work of art. By MAYA DUKMASOVA Photos by DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

MARTHA MAE: ART SUPPLIES & BEAUTIFUL THINGS 5407 N. Clark, 872-806-0988, marthamae.info

Objects at Martha Mae are arranged to encourage touching and exploration.

THE FIRST THING YOU notice about Martha Mae: Art Supplies & Beautiful Things is the light. Jean Cate’s small shop, near the northeast corner of Clark and Balmoral in Andersonville, is unlike its neighboring storefronts.

It doesn’t have a dark awning; its windows aren’t obscured by lettering or decorations; there’s no elaborate display of the wares sold inside. If you took away all the stuff for sale— the row of heavy art books, the brass rulers and pencil sharpeners, the handmade scissors, the wooden animal models, the mason jars of paintbrushes and sponges, the boxes of retro paperclips, the notebooks and sketchbooks and desk pads, the porcelain pallets and the colored pencils, the little bundles of erasers and all the framed etchings and watercolors on the walls—what you’d have left would look like someone’s sparse but inviting home, or

12 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 13, 2017

an artisan’s workshop. It’s an airy, long space with a huge skylight and a hardwood floor. The daylight streams in unobstructed.

There are three tables made of blond wood.

There are wide utility shelves painted in Pepto-Bismol pink, the same color as the bricks on the storefront’s facade. There’s a veritable zoo of taxidermied animals, including a shiny armadillo, a miniature warthog, and a stately pheasant peering out from some dried reeds.

From the entrance to the back, the shop is a kind of reverse journey from finished pieces of art to their conception in Cate’s mind. At the front everything is white, brass, or blond wood, with hits of color from a few ceramic vases and notebook covers. A formation of scissors with crane-shaped handles flies skyward on a wall next to Cate’s gold-framed pencil drawings of shrews. Elegant brass staplers share a table

with glass and cork pencil sharpeners shaped like the bottom half of a duck. In the middle section are most of the art supplies and tools— endless types of paintbrushes, oil paints, and watercolors; little foldable stools for plein air painting and portable easels. Proceeding further, there’s Cate’s workshop, a space for crafting where she keeps big sheets of Japanese paper in narrow wood drawers and a light box to photograph items for her future online shop.

In the back there’s a utility sink, a kiln, a couple of pottery wheels, and shelves of unused props and yet-to-be fired ceramics.

And of course, there’s Cate herself, dressed in a round, calf-length black skirt and a white shirt with a red necktie, which matches the one on her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Martha Mae, the namesake of the shop.

As a shopkeeper Cate, 26, is a friendly and

unimposing presence. She doesn’t seem too eager to sell you anything, but she also doesn’t make you feel unwelcome for simply browsing.

She has a round, full face reminiscent of the peasant women in Dutch Renaissance paintings. She wears her light brown hair pinned up in a tiny bun and has round, pink eyeglasses.

On Sunday, or “game day” as she calls it due to the high volume of shoppers, she wears her uniformiest of uniforms: a white shirt or shirtdress with a necktie. On weekdays she can be found in vintage ensembles of wide-legged trousers and silk blouses or two-piece dress sets. Outside the shop, Cate’s getup resembles 1960s society-lady cosplay, but at Martha Mae the clothes are costumes for a daily, six-hour performance, worn to enhance the visitor’s visual experience of retail perfection.

Still, Cate’s full of contrasting impulses

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Owner Jean Cate designed the shop as an “ecosystem” populated with decorative taxidermy, art objects, and maker tools.

and behaviors. She’s reserved but has strong opinions. She’s introverted and sensitive, yet hates being told what to do and is uninterested in others’ approval. She’s attuned to her customers’ tastes and loves talking about her products, but having to interact with people is a daily nightmare. Her well-manicured look is pleasantly at odds with her casual mannerisms and hearty, explosive laughter. She’ll carefully wrap people’s purchases in Japanese paper, tie each box with thin cotton string, and finish off the knots with minuscule golden bells—then she’ll take a giant swig from a half-gallon bottle of GT’s Kombucha.

There are lots of art-supply sellers and stationery merchants around Chicago, in Andersonville even, but none run stores that feel habitable. The typical art-supply shop is a warehouse crammed to the ceiling with

specialized items, a Home Depot replica where nothing but the price tag differentiates high-end Swiss colored pencils from the store-brand variety next to them. The intent is to create a sense of abundance, but most of the time the shops just look like bad housekeeping. Whatever the commercial benefit of displaying merchandise in this way, being in these spaces is fatiguing.

But ceramicist Andrew Jessup, whose work is on sale at the shop, says that walking into Martha Mae “is like walking into a painting, a very well-curated painting.”

Recently, Allison Williams, who runs the New York City-based Wms & Co. and supplies sterling-silver bookmarks and self-inking stampers to Martha Mae, was passing through town and visited the shop for the first time.

She told me she doesn’t usually bother check-

ing in on the retailers selling her wares, but this place looked unusual.

“I’m seeing so much that I don’t see anywhere else,” she said after at least a half hour of careful browsing. “Such a nice juxtaposition . . . and I also love the maker tools with the made, both the ceramics that are made and the clay.”

Williams, whose day job involves branding for fashion-retail companies, spends a lot of time analyzing stores. She told me Cate’s is unlike anything she’s ever seen, even in New York. “It’s closest to maybe Amsterdam or Copenhagen,” she said. “For America, I know nothing close to this. And I don’t just say that . . . not even close.” She walked around some more, then noted, “There’s a real sense of the artist’s hands here.”

IN 1849, IN HIS ESSAYS “Art and Revolution”

and “The Artwork of the Future,” the German composer Richard Wagner explored the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, or the “total work of art.” For him it summed up a vision of a perfect future society, wholly dedicated to art.

But Wagner’s contemporaries took the term to mean an ideal artistic composition, and the popular understanding of Gesamtkunstwerk became linked to Wagner’s operas—grandiose, epic narratives brought to life through an immersive fusion of music, acting, costumes, scenery, and movement.

As we discuss her interest in opera, Cate’s eyes light up when I bring up the term. “That whole concept is kind of behind the shop,” she says, grinning.

Retail spaces require planning a psychological and physical experience, she explains, and creating a “dance” between her mind and J

APRIL 13, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 13

Retail Therapy continued from 13

the customer’s. “You’re essentially mapping out the choreography that these unknown strangers will have.”

While Cate’s not the only one in Chicago who’s selling Blackwing pencils, much beloved

by New Yorker copy editors and cartoonists, she may be the only shopkeeper whose display choices are integral to the desire to buy them—the pencils’ white boxes are arranged in three perfect rows on a dark wood shelf. At Martha Mae there’s no clutter, no attempt to create a feeling of affordability through bulk, but also no pretentious glass cases designed to make objects seem luxurious and rare. That’s because selling stuff isn’t Cate’s primary goal.

“The main priority is so it’s beautiful and that it’s a space of wonderment, and that it’s well designed,” she says. “I only buy things I like and think are really good, because if the business goes under I can just keep it or give them all as gifts.”

Cate carefully organizes negative space so the eyes can rest between examining objects.

Each item is displayed with enough room around it so that it looks unique, even if it’s next to another one of its own kind. This arrangement sharpens visitors’ ability to see and makes them more observant. There’s no shuffle to get lost in, no bins, no Plexiglass lazy Susan towers. People want to touch these things and there are no barriers to doing so.

Cate’s also keen on the idea that people buy things because of the emotions they experience in a store, aroused both by the objects on sale and the atmosphere. “When I’m making displays and setting things up, I think about how [customers] react and interact with it,” she says. “And so I purposely put things so that you’re constantly discovering.” Cate thinks the soul music and old-school hip-hop she plays also help people feel more at ease, more likely to connect with their inner selves and with the things on display.

The shop and Cate’s open, unimposing demeanor persuade people to relish in their inner snob without fear or judgment or oversharing.

“I just have no tolerance for cheap-ass pencil sharpeners,” I once overheard a man declare, as he eagerly examined one of at least five types of sharpeners snuggled in a wooden box.

Mirroring his enthusiasm, Cate explained how the wood and the lead would be cut differently depending on which one he chose.

On a typical day, Cate wakes up at around 8:30 AM and immediately begins “answering e-mails and freaking out about stuff,” she says. The shop is open from noon to 6 PM Wednesday through Sunday, but even when she’s closed or it’s her “weekend,” Cate spends almost every waking minute thinking about or working at Martha Mae—obsessing over new inventory, refining the displays, creating

14 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 13, 2017

tal toll. “People scare me,” she says. “Or they overwhelm me.” The primary question in her head each time she talks to a customer is “How can I survive this encounter?”

Martha Mae isn’t just a reflection of her personality but the projection of an aspiration; the shop isn’t so much who she is as who she wants to be. As she puts it, Martha Mae is “kind of a big experiment. Like, can I be a social being?”

Typewritten price tags and unconventional pencil sharpeners are Martha Mae signatures.

paintings or drawings for the walls. “It’s so nice to have the space to create my own universe,” she says. It’s all-consuming, but in a good way.

The life of a shopkeeper is filled with dramas large and small—conflicts, arguments, haggling. In a typical week, Cate may be battling with a neighboring business to stop filling her Dumpster with their old, rotting lumber; or she may have to deal with repairing her glass door, which some drunk Saint Patrick’s Day reveler shattered with a kick; or she may have to pay extra to a window cleaner to scrape dried soup and potting soil from

her front windows, angrily smeared there by another window cleaner whom she had to let go for doing a bad job in the first place. Then there’s companies who want to charge absurd amounts of money for shipping merchandise, and people who come in angling to have their handicrafts put on sale, and shoplifters, and the crush of weekend postbrunch visitors who touch everything but buy nothing, sending Cate on a tidying frenzy.

And while all of this might amount to the typical stresses of small-business ownership for some, for Cate each challenge can take on epic proportions and comes with a heavy men-

SIX YEARS AGO CATE was barely able to function. She was a student at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, receiving positive critiques of her work but so depressed that she was hardly able to leave her apartment. She contemplated suicide. Coming to college in Chicago from her native Los Angeles was supposed to be an escape, but instead she became trapped in her own mind.

“I just felt so strange, and weird, and almost subhuman,” she recalls.

At the end of her first semester at SAIC she was so suicidal that she checked herself into a hospital and was kept there for several days.

The same thing happened in the spring. “It was really intense—my depression and the suicidal thoughts and yearning for escape.”

One of Cate’s closest friends, Nora Mapp, says that in college Cate was almost “a recluse” and that it was hard to see her have such a difficult time leaving her apartment and interacting with other people. After all, some of Cate’s favorite things were to paint landscapes and animal specimens at busy museums.

“The way her inside space has worked with the outside world—the boundaries between inside and outside have been aggressively at war for her,” Mapp says. “She’s a really remarkable combination of qualities—she’s very generous and has an amazing warm smile, and at the same time, I know she really struggles with other people.”

Cate says that throughout those years she was also on a cocktail of medications for anxiety, sleep issues, and depression. Each came with its own side effects; often they left her feeling dazed and unsure as to whether she was experiencing her symptoms or the side effects. She had no idea how to build a structured routine and take care of herself; she’d never been around any adults who set that example.

Cate is the fourth of five siblings. Her father came from a wealthy family—his parents made some lucrative purchases of beachfront apartment buildings after WWII—but earned a modest living as a piano tuner. Her mother was a teacher for visually impaired children.

They were in their mid-40s when she was born and not in great health. Cate says that from a young age she had to be aware of their physical limitations—bad knees, fatigue, other J

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Retail Therapy continued from 14

health problems.

“I always had an instinctual thing, to take care of other people first, starting with my parents,” she says. “Especially with my mom—I was really close to my mom growing up.”

When Cate was eight years old, her mother developed a chronic health condition that persisted for years and left Cate and her younger sister on their own for much of the time. She didn’t want to get into specifics to respect her mother’s privacy, but she says the illness made family life chaotic and unpredictable.

Cate describes her family as introverted.

“We were all like little islands,” she recalls. But her mom’s illness created even more barriers.

People didn’t talk about what was really going on. In these circumstances, she says, it was easier to connect with people through the objects they enjoyed. “A lot of the time, I felt like getting to know people and appreciating them through their things was safer than, you know, asking them direct questions,” Cate says.

“Because you never knew what was going to happen—you could upset somebody or spur on something.”

Her mom also encouraged her interest in the arts. “She gave me the idea that in art, you can do whatever you want, and it’s OK,” Cate says. “It was a safe space to communicate.”

As a teen, Cate says she had to provide a great deal of emotional support, particularly for her mom and younger sister, and that it left her “extremely depressed and dysfunctional.”

Their father seemed unable to figure out exactly how to handle the kids without his wife’s help, especially after they divorced and she moved out of the house.

The adult troubles and emotional responsibilities of her home life also made Cate feel isolated from her peers. Nor did she identify with characters in books or think about a future adult life. “I didn’t think I would grow up,” she says. “I couldn’t think that far ahead. I was like, How am I even going to get through the next day, month, year?”

Cate says that she did manage to develop some friendships, but she was never sure why people were interested in her. “I’d shower them with gifts that I would make, to thank them for being my friend, because I just couldn’t understand why anyone would want to hang out with me,” she says. “There was no inherent sense of self-worth or self-esteem. It was like I needed to make these things to be worth something.”

In 2011, while Cate was attending SAIC, her depression worsened. Her therapist said Cate couldn’t see her anymore unless she checked into a hospital once again. But Cate didn’t want to repeat that experience; she didn’t think it really helped last time and it left her

16 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 13, 2017

The shop is a tribute to Cate’s dog Martha Mae, for “keeping me going and saving my life.”

feeling trapped and out of control.

She had been walking by a Lincoln Park pet store for months, observing the puppies in isolated pink cubes on the walls. One day she walked in and instantly bonded with a whiteand-orange spaniel. “I needed something to take care of that would therefore make me take care of myself,” she says, “because this other thing was reliant upon me.” She named the dog Martha Mae, and they became inseparable.

Cate eventually finished college and in fall 2015 she partnered with a fellow classmate to open a pottery studio in Andersonville.

They started up with the help of a $40,000 loan from Cate’s father. But the studio wasn’t working as a business, and the partnership quickly soured. Cate bought out the classmate and decided to make the space into a shop.

When it came time to naming it, dedicating it to Martha Mae seemed only right, she says, “like a tribute for keeping me going and saving my life.”

DESPITE THE STRESSES of the business, Cate says the experience of being a shopkeeper has been overwhelmingly positive. Since opening Martha Mae her mental health has improved significantly and she’s been able to go off her medications. Cate thinks the

key has been building a life around a liminal, public-private space filled with objects she loves that are organized through her favorite activities—curation, creation, focusing on small details, and showing her own artwork.

Creating Martha Mae has provided Cate with a way to live simultaneously in her own space and among other people. Walking into work every day means entering her best self.

“This was my only shot to have a semipublic life, to share myself with other people and also to be a part of other people’s lives,” she says.

There are some regulars: a ceramics collector who buys a few of Jessup’s pieces at a time with cash, a local pamphlet distributor who always brings a Milk-Bone for Martha, and several families who consistently come in to buy gifts, their adolescent sons leaving tiny paper cranes for Cate. Mostly, the clientele are artists who come in for tools and casual shoppers who wander in accidentally.

“I like the shopkeeper-customer dynamic, because it’s so clean,” Cate says. “I can have these nice, easy, sort of shallow but pleasant conversations with my customers. I feel like as human beings we need a certain amount of that—just pleasantness. There are no emotional entanglements. We only really exist in this space.”

The people closest to her have noted her

personal transformation. “There’s something about the shop that’s really an act of courage on her part and the force of her belief both in the objects and their makers, and also wanting to inspire other people to make—that’s something that she can fight for, something worth going to every day,” Mapp says. “I think it’s also a profound relief to her, after years of not knowing how she would make a place for herself in the world.”

As she wraps up a day in the shop, Cate might walk around with a small paintbrush and a can of white paint to touch up nearly imperceptible holes in the walls, left by the brass thumbtacks she uses to attach typewritten price tags and product descriptions. She might rearrange some inventory, swapping a row of wooden cats and dogs frolicking across the top of a shelf for some elegant nickel plant misters. Up until now, Cate’s reinvested her $20,000 in monthly profits into her overhead and buying more merchandise, but she thinks that soon she’ll have enough stuff and will be able to start paying herself. Looking around on a recent evening Cate said, satisfied, “I think I’m finally coming to terms that maybe it’s good enough.” v

ß @mdoukmas

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ARTS & CULTURE

Ian Barford and Caroline Neff o MICHAEL BROSILOW

THEATER

Low fidelity

By TONY ADLER

M

y theory? The people who’ve known Tracy Letts longest know him the least. I mean those of us who remember the enfant-terrible days of Killer Joe and Bug, the former a rude jest about a murder-for-hire scheme gone very wrong, the latter a skin crawler about codependency gone very, very, very wrong. Together with his Oklahoma roots, the two plays conveyed an impression of Letts as a postpunk cowboy avant-gardist a la Sam Shepard—the sort you can picture getting into a bar fight over somethin’ bad somebody said about Rimbaud. Killer Joe, in particular, gave Letts significant street cred in London, where he was adopted as an American cousin of theatrical bomb throwers like Martin McDonagh and Sarah Kane.

The consequence has been chronic disappointment whenever Letts shows up with a new play that fails to conform to expectation, which has turned out to be always. The problem only got more complicated when he won a 2008 Pulitzer Prize for his ambitious family drama, August: Osage County, simultaneously cementing his status as a major American playwright and confirming to his old fans the betrayal of everything they thought he stood for. (Want to see the syndrome at work? Read

the recent pair of pieces by Reader contributor Christopher Piatt, taking Letts gleefully to task, first, for the awfulness of the CBS sitcom based on his Superior Donuts, and then for what Piatt sees as his faux-righteous stand against the Jeff Awards committee.)

The thing is, Letts was never quite the edge dweller those early plays made him out to be. Looking back over his output since Killer Joe appeared in 1993, it seems clear that he’s in fact an exceptionally talented, extremely canny, extraordinarily craftsmanlike conventional playwright, whose zest for the cruel joke was initially misconstrued as iconoclasm.

Forget Shepard. The nearest aesthetic equivalent to Letts is really that other endearingly mean snot of a storyteller, Louis CK. Nowhere is this more evident than in Letts’s latest, Linda Vista, getting an engaging world premiere now at Steppenwolf Theatre, under the makes-170-minutes-feel-like-30 direction of Dexter Bullard.

Linda Vista is the tale of Wheeler (Ian Barford), a career curmudgeon remarkably similar to Rob Gordon—the misfit audiophile played by John Cusack in High Fidelity—but, crucially, older. Formerly a photographer for the Chicago Sun-Times, the 50-year-old Wheeler is now the darkest thing in sunny San Diego, working as a camera repairman in a store owned by a logorrheic creep named Michael (Troy West, making you want to get deloused). We first see Wheeler moving his plastic milk crates full of vinyl LPs into a new apartment, having just come off a bad stretch sleeping on a cot in his estranged wife’s garage.

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APRIL 13, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 17

R

ARTS & CULTURE continued from 17 At least one reason for the failed marriage is quickly apparent. Like Cusack’s Gordon, Wheeler is a cultural snob, proud of his uncompromised if rather easy idiosyncrasy: abhoring Alanis Morrisette and karaoke, loving Miles and Ella, distinguishing between the Goodbye, Columbus and Convoy Ali McGraws.

His social critique includes an attack on loyalty (“Loyalty to people is how you end up camping with Hitler”) and, of course, the political middle ground (“Where is this ground in the middle? These people are so fucking stupid they think human beings walked around with dinosaurs”).

Skilled misanthrope though he is, Wheeler has somehow retained the friendship of old school chums Paul and Margaret (Tim Hopper and Sally Murphy), who introduce him to middle-aged life coach Jules at, yes, a karaoke bar. The problem with Jules as a romantic prospect is that she’s too hard to reject. As played by Cora Vander Broek, she’s collected her share of quirks over the decades, as people will do, but she’s got some sweet virtues too.

She’s complicated, in short, like a grown-up.

Wheeler spends much of Linda Vista squirming on the hook of the new maturity Jules demands, resisting it by means both ingenious and stunningly vicious before taking an unexpected route to something like liberation.

Letts peppers the narrative with a delightfully bitter wit, some of it originating in Wheeler, some of it not. Some of it smooth and some serrated. All of it tending, ultimately, to much more than yuks, as a sly Louis CK monologue might do. (Interestingly, they’re about the same age.) Having watched Letts for decades now, seeing him take on his personas, from the Rimbaud cowboy of Killer Joe to the plains O’Neill of August, this is the one that feels truest. And it’s resulted in a successful, satisfying play. Ironically, a mature work. v R LINDA VISTA Through 5/21: Wed 2 and 7:30 PM (7:30 PM only through April), Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat-Sun 3 and 7:30 PM (3 PM only Sun 5/21), Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, steppenwolf.org, $64-$89.

ß @taadler

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18 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 13, 2017

READER RECOMMENDED

b ALL AGES

F

Stephenie Soohyun Park and Francis Jue

THEATER

Father-daughter fun house

o LIZ LAUREN

By DAN JAKES

O

n March 26, 2014, FBI agents raided California state senator Leland Yee’s home and offices in what would become, according to the Los Angeles Times, one of the biggest public corruption scandals in San Francisco history. Arrested as part of a fiveyear investigation targeting the flamboyant gangster Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, Senator Yee admitted in a plea deal to racketeering and accepting quid pro quo deals. For playwright Lauren Yee, the case hit close to home: Her father, Larry Yee, was an enthusiastic supporter of the politician, even volunteering for the senator’s secretary of state run. Moreover, Larry heads the Yee Fung Toy Family Association, a historic Chinatown-based organization that connects and supports Chinese immigrant families and their descendants who share the Yee surname, related or not.

Not only did that name get stained on the day charges were announced, it was a stain writ large on campaign signs all over the city.

Now in a second production at the Goodman, Lauren Yee’s play King of the Yees is built around the scandal—sort of. More central to the show, directed by Joshua Kahan Brody, is its metatheatrical framework. Ostensibly, we’re at a performance of an autobiographical two-hander by Lauren Yee that gets crashed by the “real” Larry Yee (Francis Jue).

As Daniel Smith and Angela Lin play Larry and Lauren “onstage,” the “real” Lauren Yee (Stephenie Soohyun Park) tries to reconnect with her father “offstage.” If that sounds like

some multilayered Charlie Kaufmanesque navel gazing, that’s because it is—but it’s put to extraordinary and heartwarming use here.

Cheeky as the playwright gets—lion dancers do the “Cha Cha Slide,” elders bargain for their grandkids’ admittance to coveted California universities, actors commiserate “offstage” about auditioning in LA, and an audience plant (Rammel Chan) chats with folks onstage—the earnest story at the show’s core, about a young woman grappling with her own life expectations as she explores her roots, never fades from focus.

One of the key arguments the playwright within the play has with herself is who exactly her story is for. When her father claims that it speaks to “honorary Yees,” the offstage Lauren points out at the Goodman audience: “How can they be Yees? They’re white. They’re all white,” she observes wryly; another character then notes that the flyers for the play weren’t translated into Chinese. In reality, Yee knows exactly to whom she’s speaking. In this, she’s like the best comedians, who know and have always known that good jokes land differently in different audiences’ ears, and that this is something to be leaned into, not backed away from. v R KING OF THE YEES Through 4/30: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Tue 4/18, 7:30 PM; Sun 4/23 and Thu 4/27, 2 PM, Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312-443-3800, goodmantheatre.org, $10-$38.

ß @DanEJakes

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ARTS & CULTURE Carly Ballerini and Shannon Noll o SARAH LARSON

COMEDY

Safe Space to tell jokes

By BRIANNA WELLEN

A

t a recent performance at the Laugh Factory, stand-up Carly Ballerini got onstage and yelled out, “Is anybody here gay?” No one in the crowded room responded.

But Ballerini persevered, and she put on a set filled with jokes about her bisexuality. Often audiences think she’s straight, she says, so she needs to pronounce her queerness right away.

As an alternative, she wanted to create a safe and celebratory space where performers are assumed to be queer.

That’s just what she and comic Shannon Noll have in mind for Space, a new monthly variety show at the Revival created by and for the LGBTQ community. The opening lineup includes stand-up by Peter Kim, Cody Melcher, and Melody Kamali, storytelling by Erin Diamond, drag by Kimothy, and music by Serjeeoh. While the focus is on stand-up, in the future Space will feature an array of performance and multimedia art—all without “the straight-male shorthand,” as Ballerini refers to it, getting in the way.

“It is really nice to let that go for a second and speak the way that is native and natural to you that you didn’t have to learn over a period of time just to fit in and do your art,” she says.

“The audience doesn’t need explanations, you don’t need to explain yourself as a performer, and it starts to feel like a really amazing space.

At first I was like, I’m not going to talk about bisexuality because I don’t want people to think whatever gross and stigmatized things

they think about bisexuals, and then I just started talking about it, and because it’s so personal to me it was liberating.”

Space certainly isn’t the first queer-focused comedy show in the city, but it’s one of the only stages on the south side offering such an experience. Ballerini and Noll want their lineups to include as many performers from the south and west sides as possible—for them, inclusion onstage is important because of the impact it can have on those watching.

“I had no intention of coming out as genderqueer, but then I saw another comic talk about being genderqueer on stage and I was like, ‘Oh, I can do it,’ ” Noll says. “It’s part of the reason I seek out queer performance and art and literature—it’s very important to recognize your own story in other things. It’s very empowering.”

In the future performances may also include dance parties and other celebratory events, all supporting Ballerini and Noll’s goal of creating a gathering place to nurture and encourage queer artistic voices.

“It’s odd when you feel odd, and it’s really odd when you’re trying to do a creative thing and you feel odd within the creative thing you’re doing,” Ballerini says. “It’s just nice to sometimes have a space where people get it a little bit more.” v R SPACE Fri 4/14, 9:30 PM, the Revival, 1160 E. 55th, the-revival.com, $10.

ß @BriannaWellen APRIL 13, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 19

ARTS & CULTURE

Gifted

MOVIES

Better off not knowing

By J.R. JONES

A

little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. In 1969, a 19-year-old New Yorker named William Powell, jacked up on revolutionary politics and infuriated by the growing police brutality against antiwar protesters, began compiling The Anarchist Cookbook, a how-to manual for sowers of mayhem. The book included detailed instructions for spying on and sabotaging electronic communications, using lethal weapons, and constructing bombs and booby traps. It contained recipes for TNT and LSD; it explained how to build a silencer for a pistol or machine gun and how to convert a shotgun into a grenade launcher. Copyrighted by independent publisher Lyle Stuart and published in 1971, The Anarchist Cookbook would reportedly go on to sell some two million copies over the years, and it’s still going strong. Count among its loyal fan base James Eagan Holmes, currently serving life in prison for the 2012 movie-theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado; Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people when he blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995; and Eric Harris and Dylan

20 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 13, 2017

Klebold, who carried out the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School.

For American Anarchist, which premiered last year at the Chicago International Film Festival and opens Friday for a commercial run, documentary maker Charlie Siskel (Finding Vivian Maier) tracked down William Powell, then in his mid-60s and living in Massat, France. Powell had long since disowned the book, converted to Anglicanism, and become a teacher of special-needs children. He issued a statement on Amazon that he wished the book were no longer available, and he reiterated his position in a 2013 column for the Guardian. “The anger that motivated the writing of the Cookbook blinded me to the illogical notion that violence can be used to prevent violence,” he wrote. “I had fallen for the same irrational pattern of thought that led to U.S. military involvement in both Vietnam and Iraq.” Interviewed by Siskel, Powell seems to have reached some sort of equilibrium with the past, regarding the book as only part of a life since filled with more positive accomplishments. But there’s no getting the genie back in the bottle.

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Siskel, to his credit, keeps picking away at Powell’s public stance. “I have never held the copyright, and so the decision to continue publishing [the book] has been in the hands of the publisher,” Powell wrote in the Guardian. Yet Siskel gets Powell to admit that he might have squelched the book forever when Lyle Stuart went bankrupt; instead, because he needed money at the time, he accepted a $10,000 payment for all future royalties. The most uncomfortable sequence shows Siskel grilling Powell about incident after incident linked to the book: in 1976, the car-bomb death of a reporter investigating organized crime; that same year, the hijacking of a TWA flight by Croatian radicals; in the mid-80s, a bombing campaign against abortion clinics; in 1989, the mail-bombing assassination of a federal judge; in 1995, the Oklahoma City bombing; in 2005, the London transit bombings; in 2012, the Gabrielle Giffords shooting; and finally, later that year, the slaughter in Aurora, Colorado, that left 12 dead and 70 wounded at a screening of The Dark Knight Rises.

In every case Powell claims ignorance, reminding Siskel that he’s been an expatriate for years and explaining that he hardly spends all his time investigating terrorism on the Internet. “This is the first time that I’m becoming aware of the laundry list of associations that the book has had,” he tells Siskel. Pressed by the filmmaker, Powell squarely takes responsibility for how The Anarchist Cookbook has been used; but later he wonders if he’s any more culpable than factory workers at Colt or Smith & Wesson. In his own defense, he reveals that copies of the book were used to blackmail him when he was teaching in Tanzania, and that his authorship has been a perpetual roadblock to his education career. Powell never lived to see American Anarchist—he died of a heart attack last July, at age 66—and that’s probably for the best. He comes off as a tragic figure: a teacher haunted by his most spectacular lesson, and a man of learning who, where his own guilt was concerned, took care not to learn too much.

GIFTED, a comic drama from the sure-footed director Marc Webb ((500) Days of Summer), also treats learning as potentially dangerous. The story involves three generations of women with extraordinary math skills: Mary (Mckenna Grace), a six-year-old prodigy living happily with her no-account uncle in Florida; her mother, Diane, who was poised to solve a major mathematical problem when she took her own life; and Diane’s mother, Ev-

Between Lake & Randolph

ss AVERAGE

s POOR

•

WORTHLESS

elyn (Lindsay Duncan), who gave up her own academic career to raise a family, drove Diane to pursue the fame and honor she herself was denied, and now wants to wrest custody of her genius granddaughter from her son, Frank (Chris Evans). Compared to William Powell, little Mary may be exceptionally gifted, and her story involves the discovery rather than the dissemination of knowledge.

But in both cases you sense a young person approaching a crossroads that will decide his or her fate, and feel a subtle dread that the power of information might sear a person’s life forever.

Written by Tom Flynn, the movie comes down hard on the side of “normalcy,” defined in this case as knowing no more than anyone else. For six years Mary has lived a cloistered existence, learning how to solve differential equations and deliver wicked one-liners. But the truant officers have finally caught up with Frank, and Mary heads off for her first day at elementary school, where she makes withering pronouncements in class and stuns her sweet teacher (Jenny Slate) with her advanced multiplication skills. Before long the principal has lined up a scholarship for Mary at a school for the gifted, and Evelyn, a pinched harridan with a crisp British accent, has swept back into Frank’s life to reclaim the little girl and stage-manage her education. Evelyn is full of talk about Mary living up to her potential, but Frank, his unhappy sister’s confidant, sees through all that: “You’re gonna bury her in tutors and you’re gonna loan her out to some think tank.”

As scripted, Evelyn is too vicious to be persuasive, and Flynn undercuts her morally by stressing her lust for recognition. In one scene Evelyn takes Mary to the Clay Mathematics Institute and shows her the wall of fame for the Millennium Prize problems, where Diane’s image would’ve been displayed had she succeeded. At the institute, Mary demonstrates a genius so acute that one assumes she’s headed for a life of worldwide prominence, and nothing would please her grandmother more. For Evelyn, knowledge is the route to immortality—the very thing William Powell won, and may have wished he hadn’t. v AMERICAN ANARCHIST sss Directed by Charlie Siskel. 80 min. Fri 4/14-Thu 4/20, Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312846-2800, siskelfilmcenter.org, $11. GIFTED ss Directed by Marc Webb. PG-13, 101 min. Landmark’s Century Centre

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PEOPLE’SOFHISTORY KEVIN COVAL

For decades the cofounder of Louder Than a Bomb has nurtured young voices and built vital communities in Chicago’s poetry, spoken-word, and hip-hop scenes. Now people whose lives he’s touched help tell his story.

o DEUN IVORY

By LEOR GALIL

n the night of Saturday, March 4, a multigenerational crowd wrapped halfway around the block outside the Harold Washington Library; teenagers with braces waited in line alongside silver-haired senior citizens. Everyone had come to celebrate A People’s History of Chicago (Haymarket Books), a new collection by Chicago poet Kevin Coval. It was Coval’s show, but he spent more time talking about other people than he did reading his poems. Many of them spoke, read, sang, or rapped on his behalf, including poet and Third World Press founder Haki Madhubuti, poet and playwright Angela Jackson, radical writer and activist Bill Ayers, poet Nate Marshall, journalist Alex Kotlowitz, poet and soul singer Jamila Woods, and rapper Mick Jenkins.

Coval puts community first, and he walks the walk. He’s the creative director of Young Chicago Authors, the Wicker Park youth writing center founded by Bob Boone in 1991. He’s been working for the organization since 1999, and in 2001 he and his colleague Anna West (later YCA’s executive director) founded Louder Than a Bomb, which now calls itself the largest youth performance-poetry competition in the world. This winter about 120 teams, each of which selected on average six to eight performers, competed in the 17th LTAB, which also paid tribute to iconic poet Gwendolyn Brooks in her centennial year. LTAB wrapped up its monthlong season with the team finals at the Auditorium Theatre on Saturday, March 18, but Coval hasn’t stopped working with the participants; at a recent People’s History of Chicago event at Volumes Bookcafe in Wicker Park, he invited a handful to read.

Coval, 42, understands the importance of mentoring young people and elevating the voices of the marginalized. With YCA and LTAB he’s helped foster a community of artists he says have “really set the course for how J

APRIL 13, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 23

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THE SPEAKERS

Kevin Coval continued from 23 music is for the world.” YCA’s website lists several musician alumni on its page for the open mike Wordplay: Mick Jenkins, Jamila Woods, Noname, Saba, Nico Segal, and Chance the Rapper, who wrote the introduction to A People’s History of Chicago.

Coval’s new collection grew out of research he did for a different book on the gentrification that beset Wicker Park in the 90s. He kept digging, finding stories of other gentrifying neighborhoods further and further back in time. “I was examining the history of globalization and the global economy, and how it had an effect in people’s movements and migratory patterns in, around, and to Chicago,” he says. “It unveiled this really rich Chicago history.”

Coval’s book pays homage to Howard Zinn’s beloved A People’s History of the United States not just in its name but also in its defiantly radical spirit. Throughout the 77 poems (one for each official “community area” in Chicago) Coval celebrates the lives of dissenters, rebels, and the oppressed, some better known than others—I learned about Henry Gerber, a Bavarian-born post-office employee who founded the country’s first gay rights organization, the Society for Human Rights, in Chicago in 1924. There’s no love lost between Coval and the city’s powers that be—he’s especially harsh with Rahm Emanuel—but he occasionally takes a break from raking them over the coals for their moral failings in order to appeal to their humanity.

Music flows throughout the book too. Coval honors house legend Ron Hardy and otherworldly jazz icon Sun Ra, and recalls listening to cassettes by underground hip-hop collective Molemen (that piece originally appeared in The Breakbeat Poets, a 2015 anthology Coval edited with Nate Marshall and Quraysh Ali Lansana). Every poem bears a date—his poetic account of Chief Keef’s Lollapalooza performance, for example, is labeled August 4, 2012—and some passages show how moments in history can communicate with one another.

In Coval’s ode to the father of gospel, Thomas Dorsey, he breaks a line halfway through the name of the label Dorsey founded, House of Music; this choice to highlight the word “house” feels like a nod to another form of music that Chicagoans would create decades later, during the twilight of disco.

Because Coval is so invested in nurturing communities and amplifying the voices of others, I decided it’d be appropriate to tell his story by talking to people in the communities that helped nurture him. I’ve edited together the testimony of 13 friends, relatives, and colleagues to create an oral history of his life—a people’s history, if you will.

KEVIN COVAL JAMILA WOODS Singer and coeditor of the forthcoming Black Girl Magic edition of The Breakbeat Poets BOB BOONE Founder of YCA DANNY COVAL Kevin’s father

LUIS RODRIGUEZ Poet, author, and founding editor of Tia Chucha Press, who collaborated with Coval through local nonprofit the Guild Literary Complex WILL CAREF Teacher who worked with Kevin as part of the nonprofit Alternative Schools Network

TINA M. HOWELL Singer-songwriter who cohosted an open mike at defunct Wicker Park shop Lit X AVERY R. YOUNG Multidisciplinary artist and teacher

DENNIS KIM Better known as poet and rapper Denizen Kane, who cofounded spokenword collective I Was Born With Two Tongues and hip-hop group Typical Cats RHYTHM Member of performance group POETREE Chicago alongside YouMedia mentor Brother Mike

KEVIN COVAL My aunt Joyce [Sloane] was the producer at Second City for a long time, so I grew up there. I started working in restaurants that my dad had at 12. Most Saturday nights—before I started to play varsity basketball—we would go down to Second City. I was very young and staying out very late.

“A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF CHICAGO”

Kevin Coval curated this group show of illustrations and other artwork that appear in his book A People’s History of Chicago. 4/15-5/20, Chicago Truborn, 1418 W. Division, 773-420-9764, chicagotruborn.com. Opening reception Sat 4/15, 6-10 PM.

DANNY COVAL We go down to Second City to see the show at E.T.C. At intermission, Michael McCarthy and Mark Beltzman come and sit with us. They ask me if I wanted to do the improv stuff with them. I said, “Are you kidding? I’m not getting up on the stage.”

They ask Kevin. I thought he’d say no—he was 12 years old. And he said, “Sure.” They took him back into the green room, and they come back and they do a skit similar to Two and a Half Men. Kevin is the son, Mark Beltzman is the single parent, and Michael McCarthy is his roommate—they do a skit, and Kevin was terrific.

KEVIN COVAL Jeff Garlin performed at my bar mitzvah.

DANNY COVAL I knew he was expressing himself in many ways. I saw it mostly on the basketball court.

KEVIN COVAL KRS-One called himself a poet and a teacher. So I wanted to be a poet and a teacher. He probably has had the single biggest influence in some ways on my artistic, creative, educational life. Him, Chuck D, Big Daddy Kane, Rakim, MC Lyte—they sent me to the library to understand who they were

EBOO PATEL Founder of Chicago nonprofit Interfaith Youth Core MALCOLM LONDON Poet, educator, activist, rapper, and LTAB champion

ANTHONY ARNOVE Activist, writer, Howard Zinn collaborator, and editorial board member at Haymarket Books

MARK ELEVELD Cofounder of EM Press, which published Coval’s first two books

referencing. There was a lot of references in hip-hop that I didn’t understand because I was in public education in America.

I read The Black Poets, edited by Dudley Randall. It’s an anthology that came out from his press in Detroit [Broadside Press], where I read for the first time the Black Arts poets—Nikki Giovanni, Jayne Cortez, Amiri Baraka, and Don L. Lee, who later became Haki Madhubuti. That was the first time I felt like that was something I wanted to do.

DANNY COVAL At that point I know he was writing.

KEVIN COVAL I was taking in all this music, all this new poetic. I started to write battle-rap essays my junior year to my teachers.

DANNY COVAL I don’t know that he ever got in trouble at school.

KEVIN COVAL I was immature, and I didn’t have all the language. I was very mad and let them know that. It was also some personal attacks against them, because I thought that they were intentionally trying to miseducate us. I spent a lot of time in the principal’s office.

DANNY COVAL If he got in trouble, it was nothing that they came to a parent about.

KEVIN COVAL I went to the Green Mill probably for the first time in ’96. I signed up for the Slam, and I lost, but I advanced in the round.

What I was doing, in that space especially, seemed not typical—I was rhyming and J

APRIL 13, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 25

Kevin Coval continued from 25 very political. But [Uptown Poetry Slam founder] Marc [Smith] was an old socialist, and so it also resonated with him. I remember it was me and another woman, who beat me. He was like, “This is a new generation.”

LUIS RODRIGUEZ There was a whole lot of young people coming around. We were kind of mentors to them in many ways—they took it to new levels. That’s one of the things that Kevin did, as far as making poetry slams a bigger, more powerful thing.

KEVIN COVAL Luis Rodriguez was somebody who helped mentor me as an educator and as a writer. I was his teaching apprentice in a summer program that he did called Prism at the Guild Complex.

LUIS RODRIGUEZ The Guild Complex at one point was instrumental in everything that we were doing. I was one of the cofounders, but Michael Warr was really the visionary director of it. We connected with almost every community in Chicago, took poetry and literature all kinds of ways—including Tia Chucha Press. We were the publishing wing of Guild Complex. People could also see you can create institutions and amazing projects that can last.

KEVIN COVAL Luis was teaching high school students. I was probably 20, and I was one of his teaching assistants—which just meant I made photocopies, got to sit in on his classes and see him teach.

LUIS RODRIGUEZ Kevin was one of those people that, when he was onstage or organizing the youth, people respected it. There’s an authenticity that you look at with people, just like Patricia Smith or David Hernandez.

There’s so many others that came through— they just knew how to bridge all those gaps that exist in our societies. Kevin was one of those people.

KEVIN COVAL The Mad Bar, which was on Damen Avenue—they had an open mike for poets, and they had an open mike for MCs the same night. So there was a literal blend, and I stayed throughout. In that space was where I met a lot of folks who became my peers. Right down the street on Damen was Lit X, which was an Afrocentric bookstore.

TINA M. HOWELL It was a little bookstore where Underdog is. We had an open mike.

KEVIN COVAL They had a Saturday-night openmike set, which was like church. It was

26 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 13, 2017

where I met Avery R. Young and Dennis Kim. Mario [Smith] and Tina [Howell] hosted.

TINA M. HOWELL I wanted young people to come, ’cause we didn’t sell alcohol or anything. People could come in and express themselves. Not only did we do the open mikes, we had parties.

DENNIS KIM Even if you were underage, someone like Anacron at the Mad Bar would sneak you in, and you could do your thing.

There was a DJ there. If you were young, you were broke, and you had bars, sometimes a poetry spot was the best place to go.

TINA M. HOWELL I had never seen a white Jewish kid with skill like Kevin had. Never.

AVERY R. YOUNG Kevin learned that lesson that young men learn in mentoring programs: speak to someone and look ’em in the eye while you’re talking to them. He’d look me in the eye. I’d be like, “Why is this guy looking at me in my eyes like this?”

DENNIS KIM I remember there was a time where we were trying to get him to put out a record with Galapagos4. I think I put him and Jeff [Kuglich] at Galapagos in touch.

KEVIN COVAL I don’t remember that conversation. I would’ve put out a record if I would’ve been asked.

DENNIS KIM I’ve never heard anyone reference Studs Terkel in a freestyle before—except Kev. So he was definitely coming from left field.

KEVIN COVAL I’m going to the Black Writers Conference at Chicago State, which is run

by Baba Haki [Madhubuti], and Ms. Brooks is still there. Ms. Brooks and Baba Haki are in conversation with Donda West and Common’s mom. And Lupe is a younger person going to open mikes with his mom at the Africa West bookstore. All of these things are starting to weave together. In those moments, we started to sense that what we were doing seemed unique.

AVERY R. YOUNG At the time we were discussing and building around justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal, and just a whole bunch of other things that were popping off in Chicago.

This is Love Jones era.

KEVIN COVAL We were influencing one another.

We felt like we didn’t want to miss a week at the open mike. Similar to how graffiti style in New York was very tight-knit—if

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their class for them. It was a bad look.

EBOO PATEL Kevin’s professors loved him; I met a bunch of them. [DePaul professor] Brother Wayne [Teasdale] loved Kevin, loved him like a grandson.

KEVIN COVAL I went with Eboo to visit with his family that summer in India. We spent two and a half weeks in Dharamsala, where we hung out with the Dalai Lama’s bodyguards and played basketball. They are trash—it’s more like they play tackle football on a basketball court. It’s the basketball court that Richard Gere built. We stayed in the palace that Richard Gere stays in, and we were treated really well. We had an audience with the Dalai Lama, in part because of Brother Wayne’s relationship with the Dalai Lama.

EBOO PATEL Kevin is wearing this chain around his neck with this little empty cup on it, and I’m shaking in my boots. The Dalai Lama, the first thing he does is he grabs this little cup on Kevin’s chain and he says, “Emptiness, I love it.” And Kevin launches into this Jewish theology, about the emptiness before the universe was created. He talks about how it has deep resonances with the Buddhist theology of emptiness, and the Dalai Lama settles back and strokes his chin. I’m like, “Oh my God! My friend Kevin is having a theological discourse with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.”

KEVIN COVAL I started to get asked into other schools. I began to develop a relationship with the Alternative Schools Network.

o DEUN IVORY

you went outside the city for a weekend, you could miss an innovation of style on the train. You felt something similar about that excitement about being at an open mike.

TINA M. HOWELL When you would hear somebody like Kevin, Avery R. Young, or even Mario—that shit made you go get your fuckin’ pen and your book. You bought a new fuckin’ composition book, and you put pen to paper.

is partly what interested Kevin in us.

KEVIN COVAL I was 20, 21 when I got asked into El Cuarto Año, an alternative high school on the near west side—my buddy Eboo Patel invited me into the classroom. I didn’t know that I was gonna teach. I thought that I was a pretty bad teacher, since I was a bad student.

KEVIN COVAL POETREE Chicago is also another poetry collective group, which really blurred the line—“Is this poetry? Is this hip-hop? Like, what the fuck’s going on?”

That was Brother Mike, Phenom, Isa Star, and Rhythm.

EBOO PATEL I invited him to my classroom, like, a week after we met. I know he’s into hip-hop; I’m teaching students who are into hip-hop. I know that he cares deeply about minority teenagers in the city; that’s who I was teaching. Kevin is always up for an adventure, right? I think he discovered something about himself there.

RHYTHM It was 11 of us—we were like the WuTang of poetry. Then a lot of the members ended up leaving, so it was just four of us.

We’d rap, but there’s singing, spoken word, and poetry throughout all of our pieces. Back then that wasn’t going on, really. I think that

KEVIN COVAL That first day, we talked about [the Fugees’] The Score, which had come out maybe two weeks prior. Eboo’s like, “The conversation you had about language was one of the most engaged conversations I’ve seen these students participate in around some-

thing that was related to the subject matter.”

He was like, “Just do that.” I said, “Just bring in hip-hop records?” He’s like, “Yeah.”

EBOO PATEL We’re at the Fullerton Red Line— Kevin is still a student at DePaul. He turns to me and he says, “Do you think I have what it takes?” And I’m like, “What are you talking about?” He’s like, “Do you think I can make it as a poet?” And I’m like, “I think what you write is beautiful and powerful.” And then I’m like, “There’s not that many people who make it as poets.” He’s like, “Do you think I could?” I said, “I think you could do anything you want, man.”

KEVIN COVAL I dropped out of three colleges.

Or was kicked out. I left Ohio University to go to a study-abroad program, where I was pushed out or kicked out. I eventually went back to DePaul—for a very short period of time, because it was not a good fit. I was very combative. I left DePaul—I walked out of class telling a professor that I should get paid half their salary because I’m teaching

WILL CAREF I was working at Prologue Alternative High School—Kevin was one of a number of poetry teachers who came in on some type of grant, and they would come two afternoons a week to class. His classes were extremely popular—he was having a real positive effect on those kids.

KEVIN COVAL Will and one of his bosses started to invite me to other alternative schools.

WILL CAREF We created the funding stream and Kevin created the programming and brought in other poetry teachers. At one point I think we had ten schools having after-school programs that were hip-hop/ poetry based.

RHYTHM Kevin became more interested in helping the youth. He was working in schools, doing poetry things, and then bringing those youth to his sets so that they can do things and helping them to become better writers.

J

APRIL 13, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 27

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Kevin Coval continued from 27 AVERY R. YOUNG What we did as 20-year-olds was say, “You know what, we’re going to teach 14-, 15-, 16-year-olds to write, or give them the space to say what they want to say, and guide them through the craft of writing.” Our work with the youth has definitely made the poetry scene—and hip-hop—that much more massive.

KEVIN COVAL I met Bob [Boone] at the Printers Row book fest in the summer of ’99, and I told him what I was doing in the classroom.

BOB BOONE The first thing I look for is people who genuinely enjoy the company of young people. They don’t talk a good game—they really enjoy being around young people, they understand them, they like them, they’re not bored by them, they’re not made nervous by them. And I could see Kevin was one of the teachers we hired who’s very good with kids.

KEVIN COVAL I started to do some of that work with YCA, and Anna [West] was working for YCA. Through our conversation, we realized we didn’t know what we were doing, and we needed to be in conversation with other people. We formed this collective called the Writing Teachers Collective—we’d gather monthly, down at 2049 W. Division, which was where YCA used to be. We would share our best practices; we’d talk about some of the struggles. Increasingly we were like, “Yo, these students are incredible, they’re brilliant—where is a non-criminalized cultural space in which they can have the occasion to also hear one another?” That’s where the conversation about Louder Than a Bomb emerged.

AVERY R. YOUNG That was just him and Anna West thinking of something to do in response to all of these laws that were put into place that were basically targeting black and brown youth in the city. We all, as teaching artists and community partners, were like, “Yeah, let’s do it. What you need us to do?”

DENNIS KIM Kicking around the idea phase of LTAB, you hear your boy talk about, “Something’s gonna be big, all of Chicago’s gonna be involved—eventually it becomes a national phenomenon.” In the beginning you’re like, “Nah, bro, what? Come on, this is ridiculous.”

KEVIN COVAL We had four or five teams the first year. I didn’t even know that there’d be a second year until the response of the

28 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 13, 2017

evening was what it was—the feeling of that gathering, of bringing together young writers from south, west, and north sides of the city in one room, one night, and hearing them in concert with one another.

RHYTHM POETREE Chicago judged the first Louder Than a Bomb finals. Kevin had asked Brother Mike if we would come out. After that, anything that Kevin did and we knew about it, we would go.

DENNIS KIM [Playwright] Kamilah Forbes, she ended up going to New York, became a shot caller—she worked for Def Poetry Jam. So she brought me out. She brought Kev out.

KEVIN COVAL I was on Def Poetry Jam in 2002, for the first season—that really began to propel my own career as an artist. Once I was on Def Poetry, I didn’t need to have a job outside of poetry anymore.

DANNY COVAL When he was on Def Poetry Jam, boom—it really hit me that he could write and read poetry the way he did.

KEVIN COVAL I started to work for Def Poetry. I started to be the midwest artist rep—there weren’t many Chicagoans on that show, and I was like, “Y’all are missing the hottest shit that’s happening at these open mikes.” The second season I was an artistic consultant, as I was for the next five seasons.

DENNIS KIM Kev was really blowing up, gaining a lot of respect, not only as the dude who could do the poetry, who has the hip-hop flavor—he’s really sliding into these other spaces and organizing stuff.

KEVIN COVAL As I began to become more of a professional artist myself, I think I was able to help younger artists also imagine that space for themselves too, because I had a better understanding of what was possible.

MARK ELEVELD Out of the blue he mailed me his first manuscript, which was called Slingshots. I gave it a read. I called him, and I think we had a good hour-and-a-half conversation that was met with a lunch thereafter. I found Kevin immediately to be engaging, interested, and of the right mind-set.

KEVIN COVAL I published my first book in 2005.

EBOO PATEL I would get so mad at Kevin when he’d talk about moving to New York. I’d be like, “What the fuck are you talking about?

You can’t move.”

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KEVIN COVAL I was going back and forth between Chicago and New York in part because I had a place to stay out there. I had an apartment out there, and I was consulting with Def Poetry Jam. MARK ELEVELD I remember the conversation: I’m looking at him, like, “You’re a Chicago guy. What are you thinking about New York for?” It took him all of ten seconds, when we’re sitting in New York—he goes, “You know what, you’re right.”

BOB BOONE At a certain point, Louder Than a Bomb became an annual time of the year.

In the fall we had something like a weekly newspaper, and right away we’d tell the kids in the program, “We’re getting ready for the big slam that we’re gonna have in the winter.” YCA changed as Kevin changed Louder Than a Bomb, because I sort of let the change happen to add this to the program.

KEVIN COVAL By the time, like, ’06 rolled around—we were probably five years in—I felt the beginning of a shift in some ways.

We were doubling the teams every year at that point. It felt much bigger than this one theater on a Saturday night.

DENNIS KIM Bruh, everybody’s helped out with LTAB over the years. Kev will put you to work. If you’re a homie, extended fam, you’ll facilitate something.

KE VI N COVAL There were t wo tea ms of filmmakers that approached me in 2006.

Through the conversation it was very clear that Jon Siskel and Greg Jacobs were the guys to do the work of showing and sharing this story. We raised the money for the documentary, and I think that they began to film in 2008. I already knew it was a movement, ’cause we were already 60-plus teams, hundreds of kids, thousands of people in the audience. Over the course of that year—and then a year to edit—they made this documentary, Louder Than a Bomb, which pushed us over the top in some ways.

EBOO PATEL I went to see that movie with Kevin. He and I sat in the back, kind of by ou rselves, away f rom t h is crowd.

I’m watching this movie, and the movie follows four kids and four different slam teams—Kevin’s an expert voice. I have this flash, and I turn to him, and I’m like, “They wanted to make this movie about you.” And he kind of shrugged. I’m like, “No, you told them to make the movie this way.” And he didn’t really answer me.

KEVIN COVAL The people that I was publishing with at the time, EM Press—after my first book, they’re like, “You need to leave here.

Just go to a bigger place.” I really loved those guys, and they’re such good guys and great editors. After the second book, they’re like, “Bye.” I needed a publisher, so I gave Haymarket my script. Which is L-vis Lives!

ANTHONY ARNOVE I invited him to be part of a reading—“Voices of a People’s History of the United States,” which is a project Howard Zinn and I started together that involves bringing together actors, musicians, poets, and other artists to bring to life the words of dissenters and dissidents in U.S. history. Kevin read, and it was remarkable.

Around that same time, we started a publishing relationship with him.

MALCOLM LONDON I met Kevin when I was 15.

It was my first performance at Louder Than a Bomb. I was nervous. I was in my chair, freaking out—as most who are about to perform in front of people for the first time.

Afterwards he comes up to me and he’s like, “Yo, your performance was dope.”

JAMILA WOODS I met Kevin when I was in the college slam. It was the first year of the Louder Than a Bomb college slam, 2008.

I was performing my poem “Apocrypha,” and I speak backwards in the poem. Afterwards he came up to me, and he was like, “Wow, that was really cool.” He gave me this bookmark and said he was working on an anthology about hip-hop poetry. At that time I didn’t totally get why he thought my poem would fit in that; it kind of was a foreshadowing of how being involved with YCA has helped me see the influence and lineage of hip-hop and expand my idea of what hiphop is. He was talking about the Breakbeat poetry anthology.

MALCOLM LONDON I didn’t start really seeing black writers and black artists until Louder Than a Bomb and YCA—until Kevin put books in my hand. Art in general is about reflecting or understanding experience— the human experience. Being around artists who had done it before—Kevin showed me a path to livelihood.

JAMILA WOODS Kevin called me and was like, “Hey, YCA is putting a crew together of people who come through the festival— we’d love you to be a part of it.” I remember being like, “What does putting a crew together mean?” It turned out that he was talking about the Teaching Artist Corps.

It was this awesome opportunity to get training to become a teaching artist and to be part-time staff at YCA. Most of us have been through the festival and really been involved in the community of YCA. I’d only come to Wordplay for my last year of high school and through college. Kevin was kind of the leader of that group, and was really instrumental, ’cause he thought it was very important for the students in the festival to see teaching artists who look like them and who they could aspire to be.

MALCOLM LONDON Young Chicago Authors has a group of teaching artists that they employ every year, and I was in one of the first groups of young people to do that.

You don’t see that happening, where arts organizations are able to literally give jobs to young people who may or may not have gone to college, or who are in college, who are hungry and want to be writers and make valuable paths for themselves. Kevin and the artists that he grew up with made that life. When I first met Kevin, this didn’t exist—they literally built the infrastructures and put artists on on a weekly basis, on a daily basis. Me, Noname, and Chance used to go and perform at high schools together by way of Kevin Coval.

JAMILA WOODS Having Louder Than a Bomb as something you can experience as a young person, and then get older and organize it yourself—that’s probably been one of the most instrumental things for me as a person, in addition to as an artist.

That philosophy of creating space in a segregated city, to have young people who wouldn’t have met each other otherwise, to come and hear about each other’s experiences. . . . I just feel very lucky to have experienced that.

AVERY R. YOUNG You can definitely look at where LTAB was when they started 17 years ago—in the basement of a cafe—to a full auditorium at the Auditorium Theatre. It’s crazy. A lot of those in attendance were the students associated with the festival—over a hundred teams. Each team has about eight people. So just do the math. And those are people who made the team— that’s not necessarily all the kids that are actually affected by the work in the school.

ANTHONY ARNOVE Kevin is remarkably collaborative. He’s introduced us to so many other interesting poets, like Nate Marshall, like Quraysh Ali Lansana. Kevin is always thinking about the canon as it’s popularly represented, as it’s received in instruction,

schools, and anthologies. He came to us with this idea that we thought from the start was brilliant: to revisit the canon in light of this long and productive relationship between hip-hop music, spoken-word art, and the poets who were shaped by and in turn shaped hip-hop.

LUIS RODRIGUEZ The Breakbeat Poets, that anthology—I was teaching at California State University as a scholar in residence, and that was one of the main books that I used. It’s so powerful for bringing those powerful new voices out.

JAMILA WOODS Kevin talks about the cypher a lot—passing the mike and always expanding. The Breakbeat book happened, and it was great. He and Nate Marshall worked on that a lot, and also recognized that not everyone’s voice was represented the way it could be. So then, what’s next? The Black Girl Magic edition.

KEVIN COVAL I had a residency in Texas through the Lannan Foundation last January. I was talking with Nate a lot during that time. I was telling him about how the book that I was beginning to write, about gentrification, was kind of taking this other path. He was like, “Those are two books. So you should just write A People’s History of Chicago now.”

JAMILA WOODS I was probably the first reader on a lot of the poems. Nate did more of the overarching structure-type stuff. I just saw every poem as the fresh-out-the-notebook draft and then kind of helped hone it, or bounced ideas off of Kevin for how it could be strengthened the second draft.

EBOO PATEL One of the ways he described it to me is, “This is a book where I am not showing off everything that I can do. It’s a book of restraint. It could’ve been three times as long, and it’s not. It’s a book where I have squeezed the nectar of how I feel about this city onto these pages.”

ANTHONY ARNOVE The book weaves together a very important geographic location—for me, a personal location—with a history that I think is profoundly important, as well as linking up to this vital project that Howard Zinn popularized, of engaging with a different form of history from below.

It extends—in a very profound way, in a way I wish Howard were here to see—that legacy. v

ß @imLeor APRIL 13, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 29

Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week ofApril 13

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PICK OF THE WEEK

The once-in-a-generation voice of Diamanda Galás grows darker and wilder

David Moore of Bing & Ruth o COURTESY THE ARTIST

THURSDAY13 BING & RUTH Trevor de Brauw opens. 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $10.

o CARL GUDERIAN

DIAMANDA GALÁS

Mon 4/17, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $42. 17+

VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING THAT’S ever been written about postapocalyptic GreekAmerican mourning diva Diamanda Galás focuses first and foremost on her voice—and rightly so, given that it’s a once-in-a-generation instrument that’s only grown darker and wilder since her electrifying 1982 debut, The Litanies of Satan. There’s also a lot to say about her prowess as a composer (no one will ever write better ritualistic song cycles lamenting the AIDS epidemic or the Armenian genocide) and about her powers as an interpreter, by which she disassembles standards and puts them back together again (take for example her two new albums, All the Way and At Saint Thomas the Apostle Harlem).

But let’s spare a few lines for Diamanda the pianist too. If she were a slightly less riveting singer, this gift might be more apparent, but as it is, when she performs live the piano serves as an anchor, a prop, a counterpoint, or sometimes a wall to break through. It provides the framework for the cackling, bayou-banshee climaxes in the 11-minute version of “O Death” on All the Way (Saint Thomas has a version of the song too—and you know you need both). It gives an elegant, somber grace to “Verrá la Morte e Avrá i Tuoi Occhi” (“Death Will Come and Have Your Eyes,” based on the poem by Cesare Pavese).

And its fluid, seductive curtains of notes lure the listener into Galás’s deconstruction of the Sinatra standard “All the Way,” as though the music were wafting from the window of a supper club in Hades. —MONICA KENDRICK

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Pianist and composer David Moore is hardly alone in his love of American minimalism (particularly the hypnotically repetitive constructions of Steve Reich), but with his project Bing & Ruth he replaces that aesthetic’s often mathematical precision with something more fluid and human. On Bing & Ruth’s third and most recent album, No Home of the Mind (4AD), the group’s sound is at its leanest yet.

As usual, Moore’s arpeggiated piano patterns cascade so rapidly that they almost blur into striated long tones, becoming graceful, billowing sheets of sound whose risings and fallings border on new age territory. But the large cast of supporting musicians from the previous two records has been slimmed down—it’s now just clarinetist Jeremy Viner (Battle Trance), bassists Jeff Ratner and Greg Chudzik, and tape manipulator Mark Effenberger. Moore’s collaborators blend into the group sound more smoothly than ever, functioning as a ghostly harmony machine. No Home of the Mind also includes a greater number of contemplative pieces, where Moore seems to summon the spirit of Erik Satie, but whether the music is quiet or busy, it’s consistently meditative—at its best, it’s like a bath of sound that closes over you. —PETER MARGASAK

Silke Eberhard See also Friday. A quartet of Eberhard, Dave Rempis, Kent Kessler, and Mike Reed headlines; a trio of Eberhard, Fred LonbergHolm, and Jim Baker opens. 9 PM, Elastic, 3429 W. Diversey, $10 suggested donation. b German reedist Silke Eberhard is hardly cagey about her influences. In recent years, in fact, she’s recorded several personal interpretations of their work—she took a stroll through the Ornette Coleman songbook with pianist Aki Takase, for example, and her all-horn quartet, Potsa Lotsa, plays nothing but tunes composed by Eric Dolphy. Last year Eberhard released two new records on the Leo label that capture different facets of her tart playing on clarinet and alto sax: Turns, with pianist Uwe Oberg, is mostly renditions of beautifully contemplative chamberlike pieces by Jimmy Giuffre (and his associates Carla Bley and Annette Peacock), while Mingus Mingus Mingus, by Eberhad’s trio with trumpeter Nikolaus Neuser and drummer Christian

ALL AGES

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Marien, consists of vivid small-group translations of the bassist’s ebullient contrapuntal arrangements that don’t sacrifice their original energy or wit.

Eberhard is also a terrific composer and improviser, though, and on this rare Chicago visit we’ll get to hear her play without the filter of a jazz legend.

On Friday she improvises in two ad hoc groups with some of Chicago’s best players: a trio with cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and synth player Jim Baker and a quartet with saxophonist Dave Rempis, bassist Kent Kessler, and drummer Mike Reed. On Saturday she presents her own tunes with an intriguing octet: bassoonist Katherine Young, cornetist Josh Berman, bass clarinetist Jason Stein, violinist Macie Stewart, pianist Paul Giallorenzo, bassist Jason Roebke, and drummer Phil Sudderberg. —PETER MARGASAK

FRIDAY14 Silke Eberhard OCTET See Thursday.

Eberhard is joined by Katherine Young, Josh Berman, Jason Stein, Macie Stewart, Paul Giallorenzo, Jason Roebke, and Phil Sudderberg.

9 PM, Elastic, 3429 W. Diversey, $15 suggested donation. b Peter Evans Sextet 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $15, $13 in advance. 18+ Trumpeter Peter Evans packs a ton of music into just about everything he does, and the quintet that recorded last year’s mind-boggling Genesis (More Is More) lets him sound the full diapason of his freakish talent. Here he folds his prodigious extended techniques into his relatively straightforward playing, employing them mostly in service of protean improvisation rather than as a focal point (as he often does in his solo practice). He’s been manipulating bop structures for years, beginning with his agile Zebulon trio in the early 2010s, but this band pushes that approach to a fractured extreme. Evans, drummer Jim Black, bassist Tom Blancarte, and pianist Ron Stabinsky hurtle through tricky changes at a sprint while Sam Pluta digitally reshapes, distorts, and chops up their output in real time. Pluta’s acts of creative sabotage and accretion force everyone to be on their toes to an even greater degree than the airlessly dense music on Genesis would on its own—this group pushes the technical bravado of postbop to the breaking point. The bulk of the album consists of multipart suites such as “Patient Zero (15 Scenes),” which styles itself as a series of scores for imaginary dramas; each begins with a tongue-in-cheek bass-drum hit and a tell-tale quote from the Twilight Zone theme, though two of them are fragile chorales for trumpet and piano. Dedicated to Alice Coltrane, “3 for Alice” contains a few passages of spacey contemplation, but most of the movements combine furious rhythmic intricacy and rigorous compositional complexity—and when Stabinsky moves to synthesizer for dizzying unison passages with the bandleader, it can get a bit exhausting. Since recording Genesis, Evans has developed a new repertoire for this group, which he describes as “more open.” He’s also expanded its lineup, adding Levy Lorenzo on percussion and electronics and Mazz Swift on violin (though she won’t make this gig). —PETER MARGASAK

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SATURDAY15 Cowboys Lala Lala and American Breakfast open. 10 PM, Cole’s, 2338 N. Milwaukee. F Rock ’n’ roll is often most effective when stripped down to its essentials, and that’s what makes the Cowboys so brilliant. On last year’s self-titled debut LP, this four-piece from Bloomington, Indiana, lay out 14 unrelenting, ragged tracks that tip their hats to the Gun Club, the Cramps, and the Dead Boys. The Cowboys play simple, ramped-up, three-chord punk rock—about as far from reinventing the wheel as you can get. But while their formula has been used millions of times before, what makes these guys special is how they deliver it: they rip through their songs at top volume with a slop-

py sneer, leaving all their fuck-ups and flubs on tape.

The Cowboys never give you a second to take a breather—no guitar solos, no fade-outs, no frills. Yet somehow they still slip the occasional hooky, power-poppy melody into their blurry fury—even though it sounds like it’s probably by accident. Prior to tonight’s show, they’ll visit Bric-a-Brac Records (3156 W. Diversey) for a free in-store performance at 6 PM. —LUCA CIMARUSTI

Mark Eitzel & Howe Gelb 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4545 N. Lincoln, $25, $23 in advance. b This bill brings together two veteran eccentrics who’ve been indie-rock staples since the late 80s: Mark Eitzel, who made his name with J

APRIL 13, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 31

New Pornographers

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o COURTESY MATADOR RECORDS

continued from 31

American Music Club, and Howe Gelb, who usually records with a revolving cast under the name Giant Sand. Each is supporting strong new work, and neither has shown any inclination to reduce himself to nostalgic resuscitations of his more popular early catalog. Eitzel’s Hey Mr Ferryman (Merge) is as good as any of his solo records; the sleek, richly melodic songs employ the often hilariously self-aware sense of pathos that’s always distinguished him from indie rock’s mope brigade.

“Spent the last ten years / Trying to waste half an hour,” he sings on opener “The Last Ten Years,” and the next 11 songs address various kinds of failure, heartbreak, and loneliness with his typical mix of sentiment and wit. Eitzel is accompanied at this show by pianist Patrick Main, while Gelb will play the piano himself—as he does on the recent Future Standards (Fire), a collection of originals that seem to aspire to the Great American Songbook. Most of them are love songs, though Gelb gives them a spin with his trademark wordplay (“There’s something in the water / Beside a moon that don’t know when to quit”) and absurdist sensibility. His half-sung vocals tend to undercut the pretty grace of the quiet, gently swinging piano-trio settings, but then again, he’s always been a stick-in-the-spokes sort of guy—and as though in spite of himself, his phrasing is pleasingly sly.

—PETER MARGASAK

32 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 13, 2017

shine, and on these two new boogie songs his supple singing sounds as suave as ever. Tonight is not only a release party but also Pitman’s first live performance in three decades—which alone is worth the price of admission. —LEOR GALIL

Universal Vibrations Copresented by local label Star Creature Universal Vibrations, this showcase features sets by Shiro Schwarz, Donnell Pitman & Wings of Sunshine, Proh Mic, and Tim Zawada & the Boogie Munsters. 9 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $10.

Chicago DJ Tim Zawada, cofounder of nightlife collective Boogie Munsters, goes to great lengths in his search for amazing tracks: as he told the site SF Station in 2012, he’s discovered new wave records in a rural Indiana barn and lucked into a collection of funk seven-inches while doing post-Katrina repairs on a house in Gulfport, Mississippi. Around five years ago, Zawada began to notice a constellation of small labels releasing new takes on boogie, a futuristic funk sound whose synths evoke a battery of computer hardware and whose bass is so dense you could bounce a quarter off it. In 2015 he put his huge network and impeccable taste to work by

teaming up with Ben Van Dyke to launch the label Star Creature Universal Vibrations, which has quickly become one of most interesting in Chicago. This showcase features two artists the label is proudest to have signed. Mexico City duo Shiro Schwarz headline behind their February single, “Together” b/w “Boogie Ghost,” which flirts with boogie’s chintziest sounds. The other big attraction is a set

by Chicagoan Donnell Pitman, who’s backed by Kumar McMillan of Plustapes and his band Wings of Sunshine. Pitman released a handful of sought-after disco and boogie singles in the late 70s and early 80s, and a few years back the Numero Group included his grand disco single “Love Explosion” on a compilation honoring forgotten UHF show Chicago Party and rescued his unreleased tunes “Burning Up” and “The Taste of Honey” by pressing them as a seven-inch. Pitman just dropped a single via Star Creature Universal Vibrations, “Do You Wanna” b/w “Need My Love,” recorded with Wings of Sun-

Ric Wilson Elton Aura, Morimoto, and C$ open. 7 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, $13, $11 in advance. b Chicago rapper and prison abolitionist Ric Wilson has ambition to spare. On his self-released 2016 EP, Soul Bounce, he traverses instrumentals inspired by bachata, British house, or arena EDM, and his loquacious, blustery performances sometimes feel aggressively out of sync with the bustling patchwork of beats—but he’s smart enough to use that tension to fuel his hooks. Wilson streamlines his sound on the new self-released EP Negrow Disco, for which tonight’s show—his first headlining gig ever—is a release party. I’ve only heard a not-quitefinished version, but throughout the EP his vocals mesh with each sleek melody like he’s slipping into a satin bathrobe—he sounds comfortable, and he knows how to wrap himself up so things feel right.

Wilson’s funky recent single, “Ponytail,” works great as a preview to Negrow Disco—it’s a cool, downtempo, charming statement of self-possession and confidence. —LEOR GALIL

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MONDAY17 Diamanda GalÁs See Pick of the Week (page 30). 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $42. 17+ Becca Stevens 8 PM, City Winery, 1200 W. Randolph, $10-$15. b New York singer-songwriter Becca Stevens has built her career combining styles—she expertly teases out complementary elements from folk music, jazz, R&B, and pop to support her sophisticated writing. She’s never sounded more ambitious than on the new Regina (Groundup Music), where she nearly subsumes her own quiet virtuosity in dense band arrangements and rich vocal harmonies—often she simply multitracks herself, but an impressive cast of singers (including Laura Mvula, David Crosby, and Alan Hampton) also helps out. Though “Queen Mab,” which borrows its lyrics from Shakespeare, has a heavy late-Joni Mitchell vibe, and the moody yet driving “Mercury” almost sounds like new wave, none of Stevens’s idea-packed songs can be connected to just one point of influence—their melodies follow unexpected paths, and their arrangements go dark when light might seem more natural or become ethereal when heft feels called for. This is her first record billed to her name alone, but she continues to work with the same tight-knit crew—bassist Chris Tordini, drummer Jordan Perlson, and keyboardist Liam Robinson, all of whom play with her tonight— and her own nimble ukulele, charango, and guitar weave deftly into the tight polyrhythmic arrangements. —PETER MARGASAK

WEDNESDAY19 Lowhangers Roht headlines; Rash, Violent End, and Lowhangers open. 7 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $8. 17+ No fucking around, that’s the ticket. So even while the debut album from fledgling noise-rock powerhouse Lowhangers, September’s eight-track Ulterior Motives (To Live a Lie), is choked by a thick smog of busted distortion and sliced and diced by stabs of flailing feedback, its primary objective is simply to spread a path of scorched earth over its barely 15 minutes. Fleeting moments of contemplative loathing aside, vocalist and leader Cassandra Mukahirn is at a high-strung full tilt, punishing her voice to stay in step with a subterrestrial bass rumble that’s so drowned in its own muck you can barely make out note changes. Which I contend is high praise for any damaged noise-rock band.

Tracks like “Worthless” and “Deprived” leave little to interpretation and little room to avoid what you’ve got coming. Even when a guitar does venture toward a melody, it quickly returns to the fray, congealing with the rest of the hateful mess— because the agony is what’s important, not the reprieves from it. During their short lifetime Lowhangers have mostly stuck to Chicago basements and other DIY offshoots, so this is an opportunity to see them at a venue with a stage—if that’s your thing. —KEVIN WARWICK

Magnetic Fields 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, sold out. Also Thu 4/20, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, sold out. b For just a second, set aside the task of deciding whether Stephin Merritt is being sincere or ironic.

His preoccupation on most Magnetic Fields songs is anxiety: negotiating the desire to live in public with the crippling fear of it. The new Magnetic Fields album, 50 Song Memoir (Nonesuch), is a triumph on this front—these 50 songs, each assigned to a year of his life, are Merritt’s customary bite-size popcraft pastiches, but he sings more or less directly about himself for once. This autobiographical connection lends depth to tunes so concise they might otherwise feel slight, as well as to his conceptual gags— the tune assigned to 1983, “Foxx and I,” is a lovingly noodling futurist ode to Ultravox’s lead singer and the Roland TB-303, but in this case it’s safe to assume that at least some of the love is actually Merritt’s. Speaking of Ultravox, Merritt also uses Memoir to address his influences—on “London by Jetpack” he acknowledges (in a theatrical croon over drum machine and strummed guitar) that “my roots are as New Romantic as some critics have complained.” Music nerds and amateur sociologists may enjoy these glimpses of the winding path Merritt followed into indie (through New Pop, camp, and disco, among other things), but more important for the general public is the way the solipsistic conceit of Memoir allows his sometimes-dinky synth nuggets and affected singing to signify anew. Of course this album is ironic, just like everything Merritt does.

But for all his voice’s punky, self-deprecating wobbliness, he’ll never let you forget that his baritone is glam. —AUSTIN BROWN

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Salif Keita SATURDAY, APRIL 15 8PM

Mark Eitzel & Howe Gelb

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Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares SUNDAY, APRIL 23 7PM

Cheryl Wheeler THURSDAY, APRIL 27 8PM

George Winston

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New Pornographers Waxahatchee opens.

8 PM Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $38. Also Fri 4/21, 9 PM, Metro, sold out. 18+ In press materials for his band’s new album, Whiteout Conditions (Collected Works), primary New Pornographers songwriter A.C. Newman refers to the cohesive sound of the record—for the first time since this Vancouver outfit formed in 1999, he’s responsible for all the material, not just most of it.

Cofounder Dan Bejar typically contributes a few tunes to each release, his post-Bowie vocal style helping to vary the overall complexion, but when it came time to make Whiteout Conditions, he temporarily stepped down, preoccupied with recording a new album with his long-running project Destroyer.

Left to his own devices, Newman pushed the New Pornographers further into the fizzy electronic-pop vibe they introduced on the 2014 album Brill Bruisers, mostly forgoing ballads in favor of hard-hitting confections loaded with sugar-rush hooks. The melodies, sung alternately by Newman and Neko Case, are as indelible as ever, and Newman’s lyrics are his darkest yet. On the title track, he confronts debilitating anxiety (“Only want to glean the purpose, only to scratch the surface, raise the plow / Suffering whiteout conditions, forget the mission, just get out somehow”), and on “High Ticket Attractions” he anticipates a further cheapening of political discourse and a deepening erosion of civility due to the Trump administration. The world he describes is pretty bleak, but his frothy melodies provide at least fleeting comfort. —PETER MARGASAK v

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WORLD MUSIC WEDNESDAY SERIES FREE WEEKLY CONCERTS, LINCOLN SQUARE

4/26 Peter Mawanga and the Amaravi Movement 5/3 GuGu Drum Group

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APRIL 13, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 33

THANK YOU

TO ALL THE BREWERIES AND SPONSORS WHO PARTICIPATED IN THE READER'S FIRST BREWERY TOUR.

34 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 13, 2017

ON TOUR BREWING COMPANY GREENSTAR BREWING DOVETAIL BREWERY BEGYLE BREWING

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FOOD & DRINK

TRENCH | $$$

2039 W. North 773-661-1540 trenchbar.com

N

“Kentucky-fried” quail in country gravy, served with braised green beans and corn bread enriched with bone marrow. o DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

NEW REVIEW

Tuck into Trench

Chef Jared Wentworth has reimagined Wicker Park’s Trenchermen with an eye toward crowd-pleasers.

By MIKE SULA

othing much pleasant ever occurs in a trench. Long, narrow ditches are the natural habitats of trench foot, trench mouth, and trench warfare, to name just a few discomforts. Certainly nobody expects good food and good times to inhabit a trench. And yet that’s the name chosen by Heisler Hospitality’s Kevin Heisner and Matt Eisler to reboot Trenchermen, their popular Wicker Park tavern, after founding chef Patrick Sheerin stepped away at the end of last year.

Trenchermen was always a restaurant with a strong, if curious, identity, opening with the culinary dream team of Sheerin and brother Mike—who for a short time together before the latter left produced cerebral but fun food in a subterranean space that once housed a storied public bath (and following that, a storied vegetarian restaurant).

Heisler brought in Jared Wentworth to fill the, uh, trench Sheerin left behind, and in some ways it feels like a deft, nimble save for the chef, who may have typecast himself over the years at Longman & Eagle and Dusek’s but perhaps recognizes an opportunity to stretch out.

There’s some of that.

But Wentworth was also one of the first chefs in town to put pig face on a plate, and maybe that’s a signature too valuable to give up. You’ll find it in the very middle of the menu, eyeing you like a hog approaching the bolt stunner.

Pastrami-spiced pig head is one of those menu items that a certain type of diner will never fail to order. One of my dining pals refers to this kind of food (and its adherents) as “rich, big-dick man food,” and specifically with regard to this dish, an “unnecessarily large portion of rich, big-dick man food topped with an egg.” It’s a puck of unquestionably lush, fatty pork resting on a bed of sauerkraut (quenching your palate’s desperate thirst for acidity), with a deconstructionist’s plating of “rye powder” and Thousand Island. Get it? It’s a reuben!

Other high jinks ensue: sweetbreads smothered in buffalo sauce are a punch in the mouth served alongside a cooling blob of ranch stuff. There’s a reason chefs have been attempting some form of this wing riff since the days when Graham Elliot worked in a restaurant kitchen. The kids gotta have buffalo something . . . and a burger. Trench has that too, nodding at the cheeseheads among us with a “butter burger” with smoked cheddar and beef fat fries.

J

APRIL 13, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 35

NEIGHBORHOOD

SPONSORED CONTENT

FOOD & DRINK continued from 35

LINCOLN HALL // LINCOLN PARK

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36 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 13, 2017

So in this climate of voluntary vegetable austerity (see Heisler’s terrific Bad Hunter), Wentworth’s is unapologetically a meat tooth’s menu, featuring slabs of confit pork jowl with maple-bacon caramel, and foie gras with turnip-bacon conserva, and a bacon-wrapped venison paté, technically impeccable even if it is served too cold.

There’s a towering ziggurat of jiggling-tender beef short rib barely supporting a giant spinach-stuffed raviolo that squirts egg yolk like a novelty lapel pin, and a trio of dry lamb meatballs no amount of romesco sauce can ease down the gullet. In yet another fastfood gag, “Kentucky-fried” quail parts are drenched in country gravy, the bird’s bones almost delicate enough to crunch through, and served with soft braised green beans and corn bread enriched with bone marrow.

But Wentworth did toss our vegetablecraving friends a few sticks. A roasted hunk of green, fractal romanesco caulif lower with emerald-colored couscous, pickled vegetables, and thick harissa-spiked aioli is a contained pyrotechnic demonstration of flavors that I’d order over any other dish on this menu. A quivering orb of just-too-solidified burrata dusted with onion ash and drizzled with oil infused with the warm baking-spice aromas of the tonka bean is a novel approach to this oft-abused starter cheese. But a few thick slabs of tofu rubbed with the Moroccan spice blend chermoula don’t seem to recognize the presence of the lentils, mushrooms, onions, and piquant romesco sauce they share the plate with.

It was smelt season when I visited Trench, and on the menu was a trio of the bitty fish battered, fried, and served with a tiny bowl of remoulade and salmon roe. The pan-roasted cod might stick around longer. A lush, thickflaked piece of the fish was surrounded by its white poaching medium, dense with a Portuguese-style brew of clams, chorizo, olives, potatoes, and kale. One of the more opulent dishes on the current menu features celery root agnolotti and sweet lobster meat lurking in a murky swamp of truffled broth that tastes like the sort of life-giving chicken soup an invalid would pray for.

Dishes like that give me pity for the type of eater who reflexively leaps toward any menu’s roast chicken. But there’s no better test of a kitchen’s fundamental abilities. No one should find any reason to complain about this one. On the other hand, the undercooked potato pave it’s served with demonstrates a

Churros with coconut-basil sherbet and lemon confit o DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

need for some more advanced training.

I’m not as ambivalent about the desserts of pastry chef Angela Diaz, previously of Owen & Engine, who has a showy interpretation of the humble Saint Louis gooey butter cake, here a moist, not sodden, square of fully risen cake batter sheltered in a kind of lean-to of malt crisps anchored by a chain link of blueberry jam. It’s a take that manages to vividly evoke the best qualities of the original. Diaz incorporates that warm, embracing tonka bean essence in the batter of thin, crunchy churros that twist among coconut-basil sherbet and lemon confit. Most astonishing of all is a hot espresso pudding, built on a custard flavored with coffee and dried shiitake mushrooms, all topped with a mushroom marshmallow, green coffee ice cream, and a candied mushroom crunch. The many powerful elements all come together in a dessert that rivals the licorice-cured duck egg at Smyth and the sweet potato yogurt with miso caramel at Kitsune for most ambitious use of umami in a dessert.

The deceptively sparse wine list by Michael McAvena includes mostly intriguing and accessibly priced bottles and glasses, such as a jammy California red (Coturri Young Carignan) made from a traditional Rhone Valley blending grape, and a Slovenian orange wine (Kabaj Ravan), and seems more promising than the handful of reimagined classic cocktails and seven beers on draft.

Remade by an esteemed chef with an eye toward meaty crowd-pleasers rather than brainy culinary game playing, this sunken Trench takes no more risks than it has to. I’m certain Wicker Park will eat it up. v

ß @MikeSula

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LARRY’S R 1020 W. Lawrence 312-841-7149

FOOD & DRINK

larryschicago.com

argentine atmosphere while you dine

The Rainbo (top) successfully pairs bitter Campari and grapefruit juice with earthy beet juice, rounding things out with a barely smoky scotch and a hint of spiciness and fruit from ginger beer and raspberry juice; the Uncle John (right) is a riff on the Sazerac that substitutes mezcal for rye and adds Braulio amaro and pineapple syrup to the classic absinthe and Peychaud’s bitters. o NICK MURWAY

BARS

Welcome to the Lawrence House— but you can call it Larry’s

The recently renovated former luxury apartment hotel has given Uptown a new cocktail-oriented watering hole.

By JULIA THIEL

F

ive years ago, you wouldn’t have seen a cocktail bar in Uptown’s Lawrence House.

Though it was constructed in the 1920s as a luxury apartment hotel, the building had long since fallen into disrepair and was in foreclosure, notorious for its numerous code violations. But in 2013 the Chicago-based investor Cedar Street bought the building and began renovations, restoring an indoor pool that hadn’t been used since the 1930s and adding a 7,000-square-foot gym and rooftop deck, along with other amenities. Of course, they also jacked up rents (formerly as low as $450 a month) and as a result faced criticism from community activists for pricing out the existing tenants, many of whom were elderly or disabled. Now $925 a month will get you a 235-square-foot studio (about the size of your average college dorm room); a three-bedroom unit is $3,000.

Larry’s, a cocktail bar from the owners of Heritage Bicycles—the Lakeview-based coffee

and bike shop, which also has a cafe in the Lawrence House—opened in February. It occupies a small space that opens onto the lobby, boasting just 21 seats (16 located at the four tables, plus another five at the bar) and some room in the middle for standing around a long communal table. Even early on a Friday evening most of the stools were occupied, but patrons can also take their drinks into the building’s spacious lobby, which looks like a lounge crossed with a library and a turn-of-the-century train station. A curved stained-glass ceiling/skylight (original to the building) and geometric chandeliers illuminate couches, armchairs, and long wooden tables with their own lamps and built-in electrical outlets. Meanwhile the bar itself is cozier than the lobby but has a similarly old-timey feel, with vintage art on the walls (including several display boxes filled with pinned moth specimens).

The menu was created by Sportsman’s Club vets Wade McElroy and Jeff Donahue; in addi-

tion to eight specialty drinks there are a dozen classic cocktails and a brief but solid list of beers (four on draft and six by the bottle) and several wines by the glass. Even the signature cocktails don’t stray far from the classics: a vodka and soda called Lady Louise adds Chareau aloe liqueur and lime cordial, while a twist on the daiquiri, here dubbed Donmoor, features gentian liqueur and sherry in place of simple syrup.

In some cases they go wrong; a salted coffee old-fashioned has a cloying sweetness that can’t be rescued by the slight bitterness of the coffee flavor. But the odd-sounding Rainbo successfully pairs bitter Campari and grapefruit juice with earthy beet juice, rounding things out with a barely smoky scotch and a hint of spiciness and fruit from ginger beer and raspberry juice. And the daily punch—on our visit, bourbon with Aperol, Cocchi Americano, a couple types of bitters, and lemon juice—is so well balanced that it’s hard to pick out any one flavor. It’s boozy but goes down way too easily. My favorite, though, is a riff on the Sazerac called the Uncle John that substitutes mezcal for rye and adds Braulio amaro and pineapple syrup to the classic absinthe and Peychaud’s bitters. It’s a smoky, herbal, almost minty drink with a slightly bitter finish; the pineapple blends in so well you can’t really taste it, but there’s a slightly fruity aroma.

Nearly everything about our visit to Larry’s was pleasant, from the friendly, attentive service to the generally high-quality drinks. In neighborhoods already packed with cocktail bars, like Logan Square or the West Loop, the small bar would barely be a blip on the radar.

In Uptown, though, it’s an oasis in the desert.

The neighborhood can lay claim to the venerable Green Mill, but despite the “Cocktail Lounge” part of its name the jazz club isn’t much known for cocktails. Neither is any other bar in the immediate vicinity. Insofar as any neighborhood really needs a cocktail bar, Larry’s is fulfilling that need in Uptown. v

restaurant & bar 210 0 we st division st .

7 7 3 . 2 9 2 .1 6 0 0

Find hundreds of Readerrecommended restaurants, exclusive video features, and sign up for weekly news chicagoreader.com/ food.

ß @juliathiel APRIL 13, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 37

JOBS SALES & MARKETING Telephone Sales Experienced/aggressive telephone closers needed now to sell ad space for Chicago’s oldest and largest newspaper rep firm.

Immediate openings in Loop office. Salary + commission.

312-368-4884.

NUTS ON CLARK POPCORN STORES- Paid training, lots of hours & opportunity available. Apply in person between 9 A.M. & 11 A.M. 3830 N Clark St. Must bring state ID & Social Security Card.

BUS DRIVER Six Hours Per Day Cass School District 63, $15/hr.

Passenger CDL Required Apply online at www.CassD63.org or call 331/481-4000

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

Ashland Hotel nice clean rms.

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

Low rates daily/weekly/monthly.

South Side. Call 773-376-5200

SPRINGTIME SAVINGS! NEWLY Remod. 1 BR Apts $650 w/

American Veterans helping Veterans.

Felons need not apply per Illinois Attorney General regulations. Start ASAP, Call 312-256-5035

gas incl. 2-5BR start at $650 & up.

Sec 8 Welc. Rental Assistance Prog. for Qualified Applicants offer up to $ 400/month for 1 yr. (773)412-1153 Wesley Realty

General OFFICE NATION INC dba PCNation seeks Software Developer in Northfield, IL w/ requirements: MS degree in Comp Sci, Software Engineering or related field or foreign academic equivalent. 10 months of related exp. Reqd skills: Design,develop secure winform/web applications using ASP.Net,C#,MVC,SQL Server, PHP, AngularJS, JavaScript, Web Services, WCF & other Microsoft Technologies; Implement Kerberos Authentication & security integration for client/server applications & work on Active Directory; Design & develop data models in SQL Server & implement data mining using SSIS, DTS packages; Develop PowerShell scripts for automation & create custom reports using Crystal Reports & SSRS. Send resume to careers@pcnation.com.

Must reference K101590.

TECHNOLOGY ADVISORY MANAGER, APPLICATION TECHNOLOGY (MULT. POS.), PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory Services LLC, Chicago, IL. Provide an end to end sol’n offering incl.

App. Dev. & Integration, App. Arch., User Exp., Quality Mgmt & Testing, & Bus. Process Mgmt. Req. Bach’s deg. or foreign equiv. in Comp Sci, Comp Info Systms, IT, Comp Engg, Engg, Bus Admin or rel. + 5 yrs post-bach’s progress. rel. work exp.; OR a Master’s deg. or foreign equiv. in Comp Sci, Comp Info Systms, IT, Comp Engg, Engg, Bus Admin or rel. + 3 yrs rel. work exp. Travel up to 80% req.

Apply by mail, referencing Job Code IL1127, Attn: HR SSC/Talent Management, 4040 W. Boy Scout Blvd, Tampa, FL 33607.

RENTALS 7022 S. SHORE DRIVE Impecca-

STUDIO $500-$599 Chicago, Beverly/Cal Park/Blue Island Studio $575 & up, 1BR $665 & up, 2BR $885 & up. Heat, Appls, Balcony, Carpet, Laundry, Prkg.

708-388-0170

STUDIO $600-$699 CHICAGO, HYDE PARK Arms Hotel, 5316 S. Harper, maid, phone, cable ready, fridge, private facilities, laundry avail. Switchboard. Start at $ 160/wk Call 773-493-3500

9147 S. Ashland. Lrg Studio, dine -In Kit., laundry, closets. Clean & Secure. $650/mo. You pay utils. No Pets. Avail now! 312-914-8967.

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

bly Clean Highrise STUDIOS, 1 & 2 BEDROOMS Facing Lake & Park.

Laundry & Security on Premises.

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

WINTER SPECIAL: STUDIOS starting at $499 incls utilities. 1BR $550, 2BR $599, 3BR $699. With approved credit. No Security Deposit for Sec 8 Tenants. South Shore & Southside. Call 312-4463333 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)

NEWLY REMOD 1BR & Studios starting at $580. No sec dep, move in fee or app fee. Free heat/ hot water. 1155 W. 83rd St., 773619-0204

7003 S Carpenter, $930 rent & $350 sec fee. 773-405-9361, 773-899-8816. Gina

CAMPAIGN JOBS

IK Gymnastics in Chicago, IL seeks Competitive Programs Instructional Coordinator w/M.S. in PE or related. Must have 2 yrs exp in the job & 2 yrs exp coaching high level gymnastics. Send res: jobsatikgym@gmail.com.

38 CHICAGO READER | APRIL 13, 2017

SECTION 8, 2BR, 5RMS, All new rehab, New, clean, quiet. $850 rent.

7001 S Elizabeth. Cadillac deal. 773467-8200, 773-405-9361. Gina,

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

EXCHANGE EAST APTS 1 Brdm $575 w/Free Parking,Appl, AC,Free heat. Near trans. laundry rm. Elec.not incl. Kalabich Mgmt (708) 424-4216

SOUTHWEST, 6348 S. Artesian St. clean, heated, 2nd flr 1BR, appl inc. 24 hr sec $675/mo. 1.5 mo. sec.

Sec. 8 OK. 773-520-1949 10a-7p

Newly updated, clean furnished rooms, located 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. $130/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

CHICAGO 70th & King Dr, 1BR, clean, quiet, well maintained bldg, Lndry + Heat. Section 8 ok. $680/ mo. 773-510-9290.

NEWLY REMOD HUGE Units!

2-3BR. Hdwd floor& appls, Section 8 OK. 7957 S Ellis. 773-865-5051

1 BR $700-$799 8324 S INGLESIDE: 1BR $660, newly remodeled., laundry, hardwood floors, cable. Sec 8 welcome.

708-308-1509, 773-493-3500

APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. LTD. IT’S MOVING TIME!!!

OUR UNITS INCLUDE HEAT, HW & CG PLENTY OF PARKING 1BDR FROM $750.00 2BDR FROM $895.00 3 BDR/2 FULL BATH FROM $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000***

APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. LTD. SPRING HAS SPRUNG!!

MOST UNITS INCLUDE..

HEAT & HOT WTR STUDIOS FROM $475.00 1BDR FROM $550.00 2BDR FROM $745.00 3 BDR/2 FULL BATH FROM $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000**

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

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

6214 S. EBERHART, O p e n House Sat 11-3pm. beautifuly rehabbed 2 & 3BR Apts, 2BA, $850 & up. Well secured & maintained. Call 773-947-8572 or 312-613-4424

CHICAGO 7600 S Essex 2BR $599, 3BR $699, 4BR $799 w/apprvd credit, no sec dep. Sect 8 Ok! 773287-9999 /312-446-3333 SOUTH SUBURBAN HARVEY East near 159th/Halsted, newly remodeled, 2BR, appl. off St. prk. $775 + 1 mo. sec. 708-289-5168

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

2 BR $1500 AND OVER SAT. 4/15-OPEN HOUSE 10am-

CHICAGO 5246 S. Hermitage: 3BR, 2nd fl, $625 & 2BR bsmt $400 3BR 5258 S. Hermitage. $62 5.1.5 mo sec req’d. 708-574-4085

2 BR $900-$1099 HUGE 2 BEDROOM , 2 bathroom, approximately 1500 S.F. Must see! Ideal location. Close to all public transportation & expressways. 1.5 blocks to Brown Line. Well maintained 3-unit building, laundry in building, $1075/mo + utilities. Credit check & security deposit required. Available May 1.

773-866-0575 9am-6pm.

69TH & ROCKWELL, newly updated 2BR, heat & appliances incl, hdwd floors, laundry on site. $975/mo. Section 8 welcome. 312-622-7702 NEAR DAN RYAN WOODS, nice 2 br, with heated porch, all free parking, $1050 pus 1 month sec. ,utilities not incl.

Call Elton 312-841-6798

ALSIP CALUMET CITY 158TH & PAXTON SANDRIDGE APTS 1 & 2 BEDROOM UNITS MODELS OPEN M-F, 9AM-5:30PM *** 708-841-5450 ***

KENWOOD (4900 S) 2BR, new kitc, new appls, FDR, oak flrs, new windows, $1225/incl heat, 773743-4141 www.urbanequities.com

NEAR 120TH and S. Kildare. 2BR, heat, gas and parking incl, newly updated, appls, laundry room. $900/mo. 773-263-3189

2 BR $1100-$1299 ELMHURST: D L X 1BR, n e w appl, new carpet, AC, balc. overlook pool, $925-$975 incl heat, prkg, OS Laundry. 773-743-4141 w ww.urbanequities.com

5pm 110 N. Kenilworth Oak Park Ren. 2 bdrm $1,750 (heat,water, prk) Free Credit APP! 708-471-7753

SAT. 4/15-OPEN HOUSE 10am5pm 110 N. Kenilworth Oak Park Ren. 2 bdrm $1,750 (heat,water, prk) Free Credit APP! 708-471-7753

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

BEAUTIFUL NEW APT! 6150 S. Vernon, 4BDRM 7649 S. Phillips Ave 2 & 4BDRM Stainless Steel!! Appliances!! Hdwd flrs!! Marble bath!! Laundry on site!!

FREE 42IN TV Sec 8 OK. 773- 404- 8926 GLENWOOD - Large 1 & 2BR Condo, H/F High School. Balc, C/ A, appls, heat, water incl. 2 parking, lndry. $775 & $975. 708-2683762 ENGLEWOOD 2-4BR unit apts in 2 unit gated bldgs, hdwd flrs, pets OK, no sec dep, W/D & appls incl, tenant pays own utils 773-715-1591

CHATHAM, 720 E. 81st St. Newly remodeled 2BR, 1BA, hardwood floors, appliances & heat included.

Call 847-533-5463.

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

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

ROYALTON HOTEL, Kitchenette $135 & up wk. Free WiFi. 1810 W. Jackson 312-226-4678

1 BR $900-$1099 HOMEWOOD- 1 & 2BR new kit, new appls, oak flrs, ac, lndry/stor., $975 -1195/mo incls ht/prkg, near Metra. 773.743.4141 Urban Equities. com

ACACIA SRO HOTEL Men Preferred! Rooms for Rent. Weekly & Monthly Rates. 312-421-4597

2 BR UNDER $900

MERCHANDISING Due to increased business we are expanding our work force in the Chicago area. We have part time Merchandiser positions open throughout Chicago. The position requires reliable transportation and the ability to work in a busy environment. Employees are required to communicate effectively with customers and lift 50lbs or more.

Apply to: Polar Beverages Polarbev.com Job code: 283

applications that conceptualize dynamic market impact on trading portfolios, creating volatility models using algorithmic trading strategies and theoretical parameters. Req. Masters in Finance, or related fields e.g. Math, Stats. Series 57 Securities License. Location: Equitec Group, LLC, 111 W. Jackson Blvd., Suite 2000, Chicago, IL., 60604.

Send resume to resume@eqtc.com

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

773-637-5957

5 ROOMS, 2BR, Section 8 Ready.

CONSULTANT (SOFTWARE DEVELOPER, Applications) needed for Forte Consulting Group, Chicago, IL. Offer soft. Des. and dev. Serv. for clients located throughout the U.S. Work in .net, C#, AS P.net, WCF, WPF, ADO.net, SQL Server, & Microsoft Prism. Offer n-tier app. des. & dev. M.S. in comp. sci., math, business, or eng. & 3 yrs. IT exp., including 2 yrs. in the skill sets listed. Must be willing to travel / relocate. Send resumes & cover letter to Kat eryna.Pavliuk@fortegrp.com

QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH ANALYST. #QRA4717. Develops

Ave) RENT SPECIAL 1/2 Off 1 month rent + Sec dep. Nice,lrg 1BR $600; 2BR $699 & 1 3BR $850, balcony, Sec 8 Welc. 773-995-6950

1 BR UNDER $700

TELE-FUNDRAISING APRIL SHOWER OF CASH!

REAL ESTATE

WEST PULLMAN (INDIANA

1 BR OTHER SINGLE ROOM OCCUPANCY (SRO)

69TH/CALIFORNIA 4RMS, 2BR ($820/mo) owner heated, coin laundry, off str pkng, nr Holy Cross Hospital. 1.5 mo sec dep.

O’Brien Family Realty 773-581-7883 Agent owned

WE are pleased to announce that Mark Twain at 111 W. Division and the Covent at 2653 N. Clark are now accepting rental applications. With rents starting AUBURN GRESHAM 8403 S. at $500.00 per month, make our Peoria. 2BR, stove, fridge, hdwd flrs, c-fans, free laundry facilities, near SRO’s your new home!

$12.50/HR FOR 90 DAYS THEN

$15.00/HR APPLY NOW 872.203.9303

ALL requests for pre-applications can be completed on site. If you would like to receive an application via email or fax please reach out to 312-337-4000. Preapplications will be accepted between the hours of 9:00am 6:00pm, Monday - Friday: ---------------------------------------------To complete a pre-application visit the sites below.

Mark Twain: 111 W. Division, Chicago, IL 60610 Covent: 2653 N. Clark, Chicago, IL 60614

Metra & CTA, secure building, $850 heat incl. 312-493-7043

CHICAGO, 9121 S. Co t t a g e Grove, 2BR apt. $1050/mo Newly remod, appls, mini blinds, ceiling fans, Sec 8 OK. No Dep. Call 312-9150100

7701 S. South Shore Dr. 2 BDs with 1.5 Baths, Large Combo Living-Dining Rm, FREE Heat & cking gas. Prkng extra. $785-$850, Kalabich Mgmt (708)424-4216

CHICAGO SOUTH SIDE Beauti-

7255 S. PRINCETON. 2BR Apt,

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

heat incl, balcony, hdwd flrs, stove, refrigerator, quiet building, $800/mo. 312-371-1274

Find hundreds of Readerrecommended restaurants, exclusive video features, and sign up for weekly news chicagoreader.com/ food. l

l

Chatham , 957 E 84th Pl, 3rd fl, 2BR heated, carpet, dining rm, cabinet kitchen, appls, $990 plus sec Avail now 312-946-0130

NEAR BEVERLY Huge 2BR apt, with bonus room.

Sect 8 Welc 312.809.6068

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

708-288-4510

3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200 SECTION

8

WELCOME

2

BEAUTIFUL APTS & 1 House.

Ready Now. Newly remod 2BR/1BA & 3BR/1BA. Also 4BR House. All hdwd flrs, appls, pkng, $1100-$1400.

773-590-0101

CALUMET PARK, beautiful 3BR, 2BA, hardwood floors, fenced in yard, $1100/mo. Section 8 Welcome. Call 708-4656573

CHATHAM 8817 S. Cottage Grove. Nice 3BR, 1st flr, Ten. Pays Utils., $1,100/mo. Section 8 Welcome No Sec. Dep! Call 773-844-1216

CHATHAM-3BR 1.5BA, STOVE /HEAT incl, laundry in bsmt, 7900 block of Langley, Sec 8 Ok. $1130/Mo. Mr. Johnson, 630-424-1403

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499 CHATHAM, 3BR, 1BA, newly remod, LR & DR with recessed lights, hdwd flrs, C/A, individual heat & alarm sytem. $1200/mo.

773-4918438

ROSELAND, SINGLE FAMILY Home, 3BR, 1.5BA, C/A, newly renov. 9600 Blk Wentworth, $1350. Sect 8 ok. Call Mr. Johnson, 630-424-1403

SECT 8 OK, 2 story, 4br/2ba w/ bsmt. New decor, crpt & hdwds, ceiling fans, stove/fridge, $1465.

11243 S. Eggleston, 773-443-5397

BEDROOM

TOWNHOME,

Great Neighborhood. Tier 1 School, Section 8 ok. Call 312-501-0509

4010 S. KING Dr. 3BR, heat incl,

8222 S. MARSHFIELD 3BR, Showing Sat only 11AM – 2PM $925. + sec, tens. pay utils, Call 773-426-0280

EVANSTON: 3BR TOP corner, 1100sft, New eat-in Kit, SS appls, oak flrs, Redline, $1495/incl heat, 773-743-4141 urbanequities.com

EVANSTON 2BR, 1100SQFT, New Kit/ oak flrs, new windows, OS Lndry, $1295-$1350/incl heat, 773-743-4141 urbanequities.com

SECTION 8 WELCOME . No Security deposit. 7047 S. Aberdeen, 4BR, 2BA house, appls incl, $1300/ mo. 708-288-4510

CHICAGO HOUSES FOR rent.

Section 8 Ok, w/app credit $500 gift certificate 3, 4 & 5 BR houses avail.

312-446-3333 or 708-752-3812

Markham, 3 & 4 BR homes for rent, Section 8 welcome Security Required 708-262-6506

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

GENERAL CHICAGO SOUTH - YOU’VE tried the rest, we are the best.

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

773-221-7490, 773-221-7493

LOOKING FOR PARTICIPANTS Age 55+ for Research Study in Chicago Compensation is $40 Call (312) 372-6300

FOR SALE

UKRAINIAN MASSAGE. CALLS in/ out. Chicago and sub-

CHICAGO S - PARK MANOR 2 flat brick bulding 5 BR, 2-car garage, fenced yard. Mortgage assumption negotiable. 773-7933455

urbs. Hotels. 1250 S Michigan Avenue. Appointments. 773-616-6969.

ADULT SERVICES

legal notices COPY OF LEGAL NOTICE TO BE PUBLISHED - ADDITION OF PARTNER(S) Notice is hereby given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D01069875 on March 15, 2017 Under the Assumed Business Name of CIRCA CERAMICS with the business located at: 3759 N RAVENSWOOD AVE STE 134, CHICAGO, IL 60613. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/partner(s) is: NANCY PIZARRO, 3950 N LINCOLN AVE APT 2N, CHICAGO, IL 60613, USA

ADULT SERVICES

NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County.

Registration Number: D17150212 on March 27, 2017 Under the Assumed Business Name of PARADISE GROVE BEADS with the business located at: 2038 GREENWOOD AVENUE, WILMETTE, IL 60090. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/partner(s) is: CAROL GROVE, 2038 GREENWOOD AVENUE, WILMETTE, IL 60090, USA

NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D17150045 on March 15, 2017 Under the Assumed Business Name of YUMMIES BY YANNIE with the business located at: 5 W BRAYTON STREET, CHICAGO, IL 60628. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/ partner(s) is: AYANNA SCOTT JENKINS 5 W BRAYTON STREET, CHICAGO, IL 60628, USA

ADULT SERVICES

ADULT SERVICES

non-residential

3 BR OR MORE $1800-$2499 ROGERS PK 2000 sft/ 3BR2BA: new kit, SS appl, FDR, oak flrs, new windows, private deck & sunroom, nr lake/Red Line; $1995/ inc ht 773-743-4141 urbanequities .com

SELF-STORAGE

CENTERS.

T W O locations to serve you. All units fully heated and humidity controlled with ac available. North: Knox Avenue.

773-685-6868.

South: Pershing Avenue. 773-523-6868.

roommates SOUTH SHORE, Senior

3

$1025. 7908 S. Justine. 2-3BR ($750-$800) & Restaurant for rent.

708-421-7630 or 773-899-9529

WRIGLEYVILLE 2BR, 1100SQFT, new appls, FDR, oak floors, cac. OS lndry, $1495 + utils.

Prkg avail. 773-743-4141 urbanequ ities.com

3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799

3 BR OR MORE OTHER 7543 S. PHILLIPS, Luxury Apts, 3BR, 2 full BA, ground unit. Amenities incl: walk in closet, storage, appl & granite counter tops.

Section 8 Welcome. New Pisgah Properties, 708-733-0365

BEVERLY/MORGAN PARK. 3BR brick ranch house. C/A, $1,500/ mo + 1.5 mo sec dep req. No pets/ smoking, 3BR Vouchure Pref.

708-647-9737

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Discount. Male preferred. Furnished rooms, shared kitchen & bath, $550/ mo. & up. Utilities included.

773-710-5431

PULLMAN AREA, Newly remodeled 111th St., East of King Dr. $450-$550. Close to shopping & 1/4 block to metra. 773-468-1432

MARKETPLACE LAWNDALE NEAR 19TH/ PULASKI, Section 8 Welcome. 2 or 3BR, 1.5BA, heated, with appliances, utils not incl. Sec dep req’d. 773-4809784

6714 S. CLAREMONT, 4BR, 2BA, completely rehabbed, all hardwood floors, granite countertops. Section 8 welcome. Call Ike, 630-440-8299

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

WANTED: R12 FREON. EPA S. SHORE 4BD, ctrl heat/air, hrwd flr. Located 69th/Merrill. 2 blks W of Lakeshore Dr. Coin operated washer/ dryer in bsmnt. 630-205-2929

Certified buyer will PICK UP and PAY CASH for cylinders of R12.

312-291-9169 or sell@refrigerantfinders.com.

SOUTHSIDE, NEWLY REMODELED 3BR/2BA with appls & was her/dryer. Also, newly remod 2BR with appls. 773-908-8791

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

ADULT SERVICES

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COLLEGE GIRL BODY RUBS $40 w/AD 24/7

224-223-7787

APRIL 13, 2017 | CHICAGO READER 39

12O’CLOCK

STRAIGHT DOPE

TRACK SERIES A SIDE OF JAM WITH YOUR

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Americans pay 2.5 times more per capita for health care compared to Europe and receive much poorer results. But isn’t everything in Europe—gasoline, housing, food, taxes—more expensive than in the U.S.? If this is true, then how could health care be so inexpensive?

SLUG SIGNORINO

LUNCH EVERY WEEKDAY

A : Priorities, Pearl, priorities. European gov-

ernments slap heavy taxes on gas, for instance, but they’ve made sure to contain health-care costs. In the U.S. we’ve done the opposite: our gas tax is one of the lowest in the industrialized world, but health-care costs are largely entrusted to market forces. American insurers are corporations seeking profits, which raises prices, requiring government to step in and cover excessive costs, and this steady flow of state money in turn allows insurers to raise prices even further. In the end, our health-insurance system doesn’t look too different from what you’d get if you’d set out to design one as expensive as you could manage.

Look at administrative costs. Twenty-five percent of hospital spending in the U.S. goes to administration, compared to just 12 percent in (e.g.) Scotland. Why? The Scots use a single-payer insurance system (you know—the kind we’re not allowed to have), wherein the hospital simply sends a bill to the government and gets reimbursed. In the U.S. there are multiple payers: private insurance companies, government insurance plans, and patients.

Sorting through this crowd to determine who’ll pay for what is a full-time job—many, many full-time jobs, in fact. And insurance companies need to cover their expenses and make a little profit.

So do pharmaceutical companies, which brings us to a more headline-grabbing cause: high drug costs. We all remember the outcry when Mylan marked up its EpiPen by 400 percent, but that was merely an extreme example of the rational-capitalist behavior drug firms engage in all the time. When your product can literally save a life, and you’ve got a 20-year patent monopoly on it, you’ll tend to price it like the gold mine it is unless someone steps in to regulate you.

And European nations do. The UK’s National Health Service, like other Euro programs, negotiates pricing with drug companies to limit markup. By contrast, Medicare is legally barred from such negotiation, and it reimburses doctors more when they prescribe more expensive meds. Meanwhile, companies maintain their monopolies by tweaking drugs’

nontherapeutic aspects to extend the patent. And even when generic alternatives exist, laws in 26 states require patient consent for pharmacists to make a substitution, meaning that prescriptions needlessly get filled with pricey name-brand drugs instead.

The pharmaceutical industry can’t just shrug and say “Well, capitalism” without inflaming popular opinion, so it defends high prices by pointing to R&D costs: somebody’s got to invent these new wonder drugs, they say, and that process ain’t cheap. Thing is, the pharma companies aren’t bearing these costs all by themselves—especially in the early stages of drug development, a lot of the key work may get done at the National Institutes of Health or in university labs. The actual cost of drug research is hard to pin down, partly because pharmaceutical companies are so secretive about their accounting. A 2014 study from a pharma-backed organization priced the per-drug development cost at $2.6 billion, but independent research has it as low as $161 million.

Doctors are more expensive in the U.S. too.

A stateside physician may earn effectively three times what her German peers do. Physicians’ groups also blame our litigious society, which they say leads doctors to practice defensive medicine—guarding against malpractice claims by ordering excessive testing and procedures.

Whether fear of malpractice suits motivates our docs or not, we certainly do get more care than our European counterparts: three times as many mammograms, two and a half times as many MRIs, about 30 percent more C-sections. Here’s the thing, though: the fact that this treatment is more readily available means U.S. patients (insured ones, anyway) who might not need it go under the knife just to be safe. Would you or I pass up a potentially life-saving operation? Probably not—and there’s another part of what’s keeping our costs so high. v Send questions to Cecil via straightdope.com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 350 N. Orleans, Chicago 60654.

l

l

SAVAGE LOVE

By Dan Savage

When there’s incompatibility in the bedroom Should you just suck it up or what? Plus: not “secretly gay” but “actually bi” Q : I’m a 27-year-old male

with a 42-year-old girlfriend.

We met at work; we were both going through divorce.

At the beginning, holy moly! My dream girl in the bedroom. We’ve been together for a year, and the sex is still the best I’ve ever had—she says she feels the same—but it’s vanilla.

I want to do other things, but she doesn’t want to do anything anymore other than missionary-position sex. Anal, oral, watching porn together, bondage, voyeurism—she’s not up for any of it. There’s always an excuse: “I’m not young like you,” “I’m not flexible like you,” “I have done that before and don’t like it, no, no, no.” Do I just suck it up and be grateful for what I have or what? —SHE HATES

OPTIONS TOTALLY, DESIRES ONE WAY NOW

A : Hmm. Either you’re

bad at everything you’ve attempted other than missionary, SHOTDOWN, or she has a very limited sexual repertoire and/or actual physical limitations or health issues she hasn’t divulged to you. But considering the age difference here, and considering that this is a postdivorce rebound relationship for you both, you’ll probably be parting ways eventually. Why not enjoy the amazing vanilla sex while it lasts?

Q : My girlfriend and I have

been together for about 18 months. We’re both 29 and are in the process of creating a future together: we live together, we have a great social life, we adopted a dog. We’re compatible, and I do love her. However, our sex life could be a whole lot better. I like sex to be kinky, and she likes it vanilla. She is adamant about monogamy,

while I want to be monogamish. I feel strongly that this is who I am sexually and my sexual desires are not something I can change.

My girlfriend thinks I’m searching for something I’ll never find and says I need to work through it. Because we are so compatible in every other aspect of our relationship, should I keep trying to work past the unsatisfying sex? —NEEDS ADVICE, WANT THREESOMES

A : Divorce courts are filled

to bursting with couples who made the same mistake you and your girlfriend are currently making—a mistake that gets harder to unmake with every dog you adopt or lease you sign.

The importance of sexual compatibility in sexually exclusive relationships (the kind your girlfriend wants) cannot be stressed enough. You’re not sexually compatible, NAWT, and sexual incompatibility is a perfectly legitimate reason to end an otherwise good relationship. You’ve already made the dog mistake. Get out before you make the child mistake.

Q : My BF and I have been

dating for two years. He’s 21; I’m 20 (and female). When I noticed my boyfriend wanted his ass played with and liked being submissive, I couldn’t help but wonder if something more was going on. I snooped through his browser history (not my proudest moment) and found he was looking at pictures of naked men. Then I saw he posted an ad on Craigslist under “men seeking men.”

He responded to one person, saying he wasn’t sure if he was straight or bi, but he had a car and could drive over! I confronted him.

He explained it was just a

fantasy he had, he’s totally straight, and he was never planning on going through with it. We then went to a sex shop and bought a strap-on dildo for me to use on him, which we both really enjoy. He bought me a diamond bracelet as an apology and promised never to fuck up again. But I still feel bothered. He loves my tits, ass, and pussy. He eats me out and initiates sex as often as I do. He doesn’t like to talk about the Craigslist incident and gets upset when I bring it up.

Should I leave it alone? Is my boyfriend secretly gay?

—CONFUSED AND CURIOUS

A : Let’s review the facts:

Your boyfriend digs your tits, and he loves eating your pussy. You also discovered an ad your boyfriend posted to Craigslist where he said he wasn’t sure if he was bi or straight, a discovery that created a crisis in your relationship, a crisis that was resolved with a strap-on dildo and a diamond bracelet.

Your boyfriend isn’t “secretly gay,” CAC, he’s “actually bisexual.” You know, like he said he was—or said he might be (but totally is)—in that e-mail exchange you found. Even if your boyfriend never has sex with a man, CAC, even if it takes him years to drop the “totally straight” line, you should go ahead and accept the fact that your boyfriend is bisexual. Pretend to be shocked when he finally comes out to you—there might be a necklace in it for you—and then get busy setting up your first MMF threesome. v Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at thesavagelovecast.com. ß @fakedansavage

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APRIL 13, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 41

b Never miss a show again.

Sign up for the newsletter at chicagoreader. com/early

UPDATED Fleet Foxes 10/3-4, 7:30 PM, Chicago Theatre, second show added Hippo Campus 5/21, 7:30 PM, Metro, rescheduled from 4/7 b

UPCOMING Diet Cig o COURTESY GRANDSTAND MEDIA

NEW

A Giant Dog 7/6, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Ages & Ages 7/14, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen Glen David Andrews 7/15, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 4/14, 10 AM b Joseph Arthur 6/26, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 4/14, 10 AM b Rachel Baiman Band 6/3, 8:30 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn Baron Rojo 5/9, 8 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Peter Brotzmann 6/9, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 4/14, 10 AM Jake Clemons 8/8, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 4/13, noon b Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers 6/29, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 4/13, noon b Evan Dando 6/20, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Mary Bridget Davies 7/19, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 4/14, 10 AM b Diet Cig 6/4, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Direct Hit!, Brokedowns, Bad Mechanic 4/20, 7 PM, Township, 17+ Dysentery, Drowning, Open Wound 5/6, 7:30 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Father John Misty, Weyes Blood 9/20, 8 PM, Auditorium Theatre, on sale Fri 4/14, 10 AM Bela Fleck & Abigail Washburn, Del McCoury Band 5/12, 8 PM, Symphony Center b Haken 9/23, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Har Mar Superstar 7/8, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 4/14, 10 AM

Hold Steady 6/15-16, 9 PM, Thalia Hall, and 6/17, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 4/14, 10 AM Insane Clown Posse 5/5, 7 PM, Portage Theater b Robert Earl Keen 6/8, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 4/14, 10 AM, 17+ Josh Kelley 6/18, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 4/13, noon b King’s X 7/6, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Sonny Knight & the Lakers 6/13, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 4/14, 10 AM b Lake Street Dive 7/20-22, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 4/14, 10 AM Lakeside & Mark Wood Jr., Voices 4/27, 8 PM, the Promontory b Bettye LaVette 7/7, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 4/14, 10 AM b Lil Pump, Smokepurpp, Sonny Digital 5/27, 6 PM, Portage Theater b Raul Malo 7/25-26, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 4/14, 10 AM b Masta Ace, Pugs Atomz, Pozlyrix 4/28, 10 PM, Subterranean Delbert McClinton 8/9, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 4/13, noon b Coco Montoya 6/15, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 4/14, 10 AM b Mountain Goats 7/3, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 4/14, 10 AM Mt. Joy 7/18, 8 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 4/14, noon Meshell Ndegeocello 7/28, 7 and 9:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 4/14, 10 AM b Neurosis, Converge, Amenra 7/28, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+

42 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 13, 2017

Nothington 7/1, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Graham Parker Duo 7/12, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 4/13, noon b Planes Mistaken for Stars, Canadian Rifle 6/30, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 18+ Princess Nokia 7/14, 11 PM, Bottom Lounge, 18+ Tim Reynolds & TR3 7/14, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 4/14, 10 AM b Eric Roberson, D Maurice 6/30-7/1, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 4/13, noon b Rocket Summer 8/12, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 4/14, 10 AM, 17+ Kenny Rogers 10/28, 8 PM, Rosemont Theater, Rosemont, on sale Fri 4/14, 10 AM Sean Rowe 6/9, 8 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 4/14, noon, 18+ Kermit Ruffins 7/21, 7 and 9:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 4/14, 10 AM b Saywecanfly, Call Me Karizma 6/11, 6:30 PM, Wire, Berwyn b Bob Schneider 7/28, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 4/14, noon Michelle Shocked 6/27, 7/27, and 8/23, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 4/13, noon b Stick Men 9/1, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Uniform 6/24, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Urban Cone, Nightly 6/6, 8 PM, Schubas b Steve Wilson & Lewis Nash 5/19, 8 PM, Symphony Center b Woods, John Andrews & the Yawns 7/10, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 4/14, 10 AM Jesse Colin Young 9/7, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 4/13, noon b

Dave Alvin & the Guilty Ones 5/6, 9 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn At the Drive-In, Le Butcherettes 6/18, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom b Bag Raiders 6/17, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall b Besnard Lakes 5/15, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Big Freedia 5/19, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Black Angels, A Place to Bury Strangers 5/11, 9 PM, Thalia Hall, 18+ Frank Carter & the Rattlesnakes 5/15, 6 PM, Cobra Lounge b ChameleonsVox 9/14, 8:30 PM, 1st Ward, 18+ Elvis Costello & the Imposters 6/12, 7:30 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Dick Dale 8/9, 7:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ The Damned 4/23, 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Demdike Stare 5/9, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Descendents 10/7, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Every Time I Die, Wage War 5/14, 6 PM, Bottom Lounge b Feist 6/14-15, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Fruit Bats 5/11, 8 PM, Schubas Future 6/2, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Gorguts, Defeated Sanity 6/7, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Juliana Hatfield 5/1, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Don Henley 6/17, 7:30 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Griffin House 4/23, 7 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Iron Maiden, Ghost 6/15, 7:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Ampitheatre, Tinley Park b Jeff the Brotherhood 7/29, 10 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ King Crimson 6/28, 7:30 PM, Chicago Theatre Laser Background 5/7, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Ottmar Liebert & Luna Negra 6/4, 7 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b

ALL AGES

WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK

EARLY WARNINGS

CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME

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Lucero 6/10, 9:30 PM, Subterranean Barry Manilow 5/17, 7:30 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Mastodon, Eagles of Death Metal, Russian Circles 5/13, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom b John Mayer 9/2, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Metallica, Avenged Sevenfold 6/18, 6 PM, Soldier Field Mono, Holy Sons 4/22, 9 PM, Subterranean NRBQ 5/26-27, 9 PM, Hideout Phish 7/14-16, 7 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Portugal. The Man 6/14, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Protomartyr, Melkbelly 6/3, 10 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Record Company 5/24, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Red City Radio 5/12, 7 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Red Hot Chili Peppers 6/307/1, 7 PM, United Center Scorpions 9/23, 7:30 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Shining 5/11, 6 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Trey Songz 5/4, 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Rod Stewart, Cyndi Lauper 8/5, 7:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park b Testament, Sepultura, Prong 5/2, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ T.I. 5/20, 8 PM, Portage Theater, 17+ Tool 6/8, 8 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Martha Wainwright 10/15, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b John Waite 6/11, 8 PM, City Winery b Roger Waters 7/22, 8 PM, United Center Sara Watkins 5/30, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Jody Watley 5/25, 7 PM, the Promontory Lewis Watson 5/11, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall b Wavves 5/23, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge b Wedding Present, Colleen Green 4/21, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall Cheryl Wheeler 4/23, 7 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Ralph White 5/22, 7 PM, Hideout Betty Who, Verite 4/20, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall b Ann Wilson 6/16, 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Windhand, Satan’s Satyrs 5/21, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Ray Wylie Hubbard 5/6, 8 PM, City Winery b The XX 5/1, 6:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom Young the Giant, Cold War Kids 9/9, 7 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Hans Zimmer 8/4, 8 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont v

GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene GOSSIP WOLF ISN’T the biggest fan of Emo Nite LA. The widely publicized DJ monthly doesn’t seem to be good for much except using nostalgia for 2000s emo to sell gimmicky shirts (maybe you’ve seen their “Sad as Fuck” tees). The series’s organizers are bringing their laptops to town on Wednesday, April 19, but why spend $10 to watch mass marketers sing along to old Billboard hits when you can go to a homegrown emo night for free? On Thursday, April 20, the Burlington hosts its emo monthly, with regulars Brent Cayson and Justin Watt DJing in the front room (with no admission charge) and cover bands playing in the back room for a measly $5. Salt Sweat Sugar perform as Jimmy Eat World, Band From the Back Porch perform as Saves the Day, and Hi Ho perform as Avril Lavigne—proving that some folks consider eye makeup “emo.”

Gossip Wolf has grown a few gray hairs in the seven years since Office and Mazes bassist Tom Smith moved to San Francisco—and truth be told, he probably has too!

Luckily, his hook-friendly power pop hasn’t aged a bit. Last fall, his band Smokin’ Ziggurats dropped a self-titled LP brimming with Pavement-esque slacker-pop jams, and on Saturday, April 15, they play the GMan Tavern with Bay Area singersongwriter K Skelton and locals Love of Everything, aka the eclectic indie-pop project of Joan of Arc bassist Bobby Burg.

On Saturday, April 15, Subterranean hosts “Dump Trump: Chicago Hip-Hop Against Bullshit,” with part of the proceeds going to the ACLU. Two of the night’s acts, Matlock and Mic Logik, recently collaborated on a song called “Dump Trump” that flips Kriss Kross’s “Jump” into an agitprop rager. The $10 show starts with an open mike; after that the bill is, in order, the Microphone Misfitz, Ezekiel 38 & Japandrew, MZM, Awmack, Matlock & Mic Logik, Mass Hysteria, and Army of 2 (aka Ang13 and Longshot). The music starts at 10:30 PM. —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

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APRIL 13, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 43

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