Print Issue of April 20, 2017 (Volume 46, Number 28) by Chicago Reader

C H I C A G O â&#x20AC;&#x2122; 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 2 0 , 2 0 1 7

Chicago Latino Film Festival

celebrates its 33rd edition with more than 50 new features. 23

Record stores for

Record Store Day heretics 26

The Marijuana Issue Despite decriminalization, the grass gap persists.

Pot shots of Chicago

Every Chicago-area dispensary, listed

2 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 20, 2017

THIS WEEK

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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 ---------------------------------------------------------------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

FEATURES

The Marijuana Issue The persistant grass gap, pot shots of Chicago icons, an updated list of dispensaries, and more BY LEE V. GAINS AND DAVID SAMPSON 11

MOVIES

Chicago Latino Film Festival celebrates its 33rd edition

More than 50 new features make their local debuts in this year’s festival. BY BEN SACHS, LEAH PICKETT, AND ANDREA GRONVALL 23

MUSIC

Record stores for Record Store Day heretics It’s always a good time to get acquainted with the neighborhood shops that don’t partake in the annual retail circus. BY LEOR GALIL AND KEVIN WARWICK 26

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ON THE COVER: PHOTO BY DAVID SAMPSON. FOR MORE OF SAMPSON’S WORK, GO TO DAVIDCSAMPSON.COM.

IN THIS ISSUE 4 Agenda A Stranger Things spoof, an Earth Day art exhibit, a workshop on feminism, and more recommendations

CITY LIFE

7 Street View Dog trainer and student Cas Brener shares her “more is more” philosophy. 8 Joravsky | Politics Students at Northeastern pay the price for the state’s budget failures. 10 Transportation The backlash against the Marshall Boulevard bike lanes oﬀers a cautionary tale for planners.

ARTS & CULTURE

18 Dance Ayako Kato’s Blue Fish has its origins in the Japanese nuclear disaster. 19 Theater There’s no mystery in Writers Theatre’s The Mystery of Love and Sex. 20 Visual Art The Chicago History Museum ruins an interesting spy show with a ﬂawed display. 22 Small Screen After an 18-year hiatus, Mystery Science Theater 3000 returns to revive the group

MUSIC

33 Shows of note Veteran jazz reedist Charles Lloyd, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Japanese postrockers Mono, and more recommendations

FOOD & DRINK

39 Restaurant review: Mango Pickle Chicago-born chef Marisa Paolillo reimagines the food of western India. 41 Key Ingredient: Marshmallow Creme GT Prime chef John Kirchner concocts a foie gras and Japanese rice crispy treat.

CLASSIFIEDS

42 Jobs 42 Apartments & Spaces 43 Marketplace 44 Straight Dope What’s the current legal status of music sampling? 45 Savage Love Tips for safe threesomes/moresomes/swingers clubs, etc 46 Early Warnings Big Freedia, King Crimson, Mac Demarco, and other shows in the weeks to come 46 Gossip Wolf Two clubs, one night, ﬁve release parties

APRIL 20, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 3

AGENDA R

READER RECOMMENDED

Send your events to agenda@chicagoreader.com

b ALL AGES

F but bitter, and their son—the GC—is caught in between. Little beyond these basics is clear, however. Mendoza ﬁnds neither the heart of his story nor a coherent way of telling it. Though his leads (Alberto Mendoza and Angela Vela) are endearing, there’s no way they can stop the chaos. —TONY ADLER Through 4/30: Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Fri 4/28, 3 PM, Den Theatre, 1329-1333 N. Milwaukee, 773-609-2336, thedentheatre.com, $16$21. Strangest Things! The Musical R The second poor ol’ Barb, the hapless ancillary breakout character

Blood at the Root o EVAN HANOVER

THEATER

More at chicagoreader.com/ theater Blood at the Root Dominique Morrisseau’s play inspired by R the Jena 6 case, in which six black

Never miss a show again.

EARLY WARNINGS chicagoreader.com/early 4 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 20, 2017

teenagers were initially charged with attempted murder in the beating of a white classmate after nooses were hung from a tree on campus in their small, mostly white Louisiana town, is given a furious and urgent staging by the Yard and Jackalope Theatre Company. From the moment audience members enter through a metal detector to take their seats before the classroom/football ﬁeld/school hallway set, the tension is palpable, and it doesn’t let up until the show’s end. The cast, composed entirely of current and recent high-schoolers, talk, sing, rap, and dance their message with a passion impossible to ignore. Blood at the Root vividly illustrates the near impossibility of getting through one’s teenage years—fraught in the best-case scenario—unscathed when also having to tackle larger societal problems. It’s a necessary and evocative production all-around. —DMITRY SAMAROV Through 4/29: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 4 and 7:30 PM, the Frontier, 1106 W. Thorndale, jackalopetheatre.org, $20, $10 students.

Circle Mirror Transformation R This 2009 work by Annie Baker, whose play The Flick won the 2014

Pulitzer Prize for drama, chronicles the progress of a six-week “adult creative drama” workshop in the ﬁctional town of Shirley, Vermont. The earnest teacher, Marty (Lynda Shadrake), leads her pupils through rounds of theater games, trust exercises, and improvisation—which in Marty’s less-than-sure hands prove to be less eﬀective as acting techniques than as emotional outlets for her students. They include shy 16-year-old Lauren (Talia Payomo), who would rather be working on scenes than improv; Schultz (Michael Sherwin), a carpenter, and former actress Theresa (Emily Tate), both recovering from painful breakups with other partners and attracted to each other with predictably unsatisfying

results; and Marty’s middle-aged ex-hippie husband, James (Adam Bitterman). Baker’s precise, pause-punctuated use of fragmented speech recalls the early work of David Mamet and Harold Pinter. Under Scott Weinstein’s direction, the fine ensemble convey their characters’ shifting relationship dynamics with well-crafted body language and vocal inflections. —ALBERT WILLIAMS Through 5/14: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Redtwist Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr, 773-728-7529, redtwist.org, $30-$35, $25$30 students and seniors. For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday Omniproduced playwright Sarah Ruhl wrote this one-act as a birthday gift for her mother, Chicago actress Kathleen Ruhl, who plays the title role in this Shattered Globe production. I guess the rest of us are supposed to care, because the playwright hardly bothers to make the content matter. Instead she sketches three scenes—five siblings at their father’s deathbed, then at his wake (where his ghost putters about to little end), then in an insufferably twee version of Neverland—full of calculatedly bittersweet reminiscences, softball political observations, unchallenging religious musings, and ample unearned sentiment. It all seems designed to help us lament the nonproblem of privileged middle-aged adults’ reluctance to embrace adulthood. The solution? “Thinking good thoughts.” For mom’s next birthday, how about a nice pair of earrings? —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 5/20: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-975-8150, sgtheatre.org, $35, $28 seniors, $20 under age 30, $15 students. Graham Cracker We’re not talking digestive biscuits here. As it’s applied in Tony Mendoza’s new play, “graham cracker” denotes somebody who’s nominally Chicano yet acts white. I suppose the idea is that grahams have a brown tint and “cracker” can refer to white folks. But I don’t know that for sure because, like a lot of things in this Broad Shoulders Productions show, the phrase isn’t explained very well. In bare outline Graham Cracker is a Mexican-American family saga. Dad is a wannabe baseball star turned mean drunk, Mom is loyal

stave oﬀ despair? Who cares? Inscrutability gives the show its beguiling power, as though luminous preconscious impulses have been loosed upon our drearily rational world. Director Adrian Danzig creates an exquisitely complex tone: sunny, bewildering, unaccountably ominous. Only in the ﬁnal moments, when the performers start clarifying their intentions, does the piece lose a bit of its fascination. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 5/13: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Neo-Futurarium, 5153 N. Ashland, 773-275-5255, neofuturists.org, $25, $9.99 students; pay what you can at the door Thu 4/27, 5/4, and 5/11.

in Netflix’s thriller series hit the small screen, just about every drag queen in America started cutting up muslin for their own interpretations. The one Christian Siebert serves up in Bryan Reynaud and Emily Schmidt’s musical parody is particularly good-natured and fun, as are Molly LeCaptain’s face-pulling Winona Ryder and Jaron Bellar’s genre-spoofing jerk boyfriend. The full original cast of Random Acts’ Netflix series parody, directed by Tommy Rivera-Vega, returns for this extension, which combines sketch-style comedy and Stranger Things-themed versions of 80s karaoke standards. Squeezing in eight episodes’ worth of mythology gunks up some of the comedic rhythm, and some of the political jokes probably would have landed better back in October, but as a late-night romp this hits a lot of satisfying, low-budget musical comedy notes. —DAN JAKES Through 5/13: FriSat 8 and 10 PM, Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln, 773-404-7336, randomactschicago.com, $20.

Wounds to the Face A young woman feels “jailed” behind her face. A surgeon tells a disfigured soldier he’ll be “forever hideous.” A king punishes a portraitist for making him immortal. As Australian writer Alison Croggon once put it, the 18 vignettes comprising this 1994 work by British provocateur Howard Barker form “a kind of theatrical essay on identity . . . driven not by narrative but by questions: What is a face? What does it mean to ‘lose face’? What are we without a face?” While strong enough to limn those questions, Andrew Root’s staging for Runcible Theatre only fitfully inhabits them. The sticking point: Barker’s arch diction. Most cast members seem to equate it with grim formality, leaving just a few brave enough to play. Among the latter, Robert Bouwman, Grant Niezgodski, and Morgan McCabe give fierce, funny performances. —TONY ADLER Through 5/14: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Royal George Theatre Center, 1641 N. Halsted, 312-988-9000, runcibletheatre.org, $28.

The? Unicorn? Hour? As Leah R Urzendowski and Anthony Courser strut, preen, dance, curse, and

DANCE

diddle their way through 70 minutes of elaborate, childish mayhem in their self-proclaimed Joy Womb (actually the dark little Neo-Futurarium lined top to bottom with comfy old bedsheets), very little makes sense. Is this precious, foulmouthed pair in rainbow-hued face paint and Cirque du Soleil-esque unitards hosting a terrible children’s television show, rehearsing an intricate, meaningless ritual, or simply fucking around to

Aerial Dance: Raw This 90-minute program from Aerial Dance Chicago takes place in a decent-size studio at ADC’s HQ in the Old Irving Park neighborhood, and the bill features “experimental” pieces, almost all of them clocking in at ten minutes or less. The setup screams of work-in-progress-like modesty. And yet you can venture far in the city and never come close to ﬁnding

The? Unicorn? Hour? o JOE MAZZA

Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of April 20

Nicholas Barron. Sun 4/23, 7 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, 773-227-4433, hideoutchicago.com, $10. Revolution at Point Zero: FemiR nist Social Practice Symposium This gathering focused on the intersec-

tion of feminism and socially engaged art includes artist and curator presentations, workshops, networking, and a party. Fri 4/21, 1-4 PM, Columbia College Glass Curtain Gallery, 1104 S. Wabash, 312-369-6643, colum.edu/revolution.

Nicole Byer o ALBERTO E. RODRIGUEZ anything of similar style that’s quite so professional. Of the nine pieces on the program, Chloe Jensen and Karen Fisher Doyle’s excerpt from Aya, a piece from 2015, captures the thrill of the high-ﬂying aerial arts alongside contemporary dance. Dalton Burr’s Bone of Contention, which conjures up Spanish bullﬁghters, also has its moments. Not everything hits the mark, but the performances can be fun—especially for the uninitiated. —MATT DE LA PEÑA Fri 4/21Sat 4/22, 7 PM, Aerial Dance Chicago, 4028 W. Irving Park, aerialdancechicago. org, $25.

Jen Sincero The author discusses R her new book, You Are a Badass at Making Money. Wed 4/26, 7 PM, Women & Children First, 5233 N. Clark, 773-769-9299, womenandchildrenﬁrst. com.

Klein/Olsen: Astrid Klein, Endzeitgefühle, 1982. o ASTRID KLEIN

Global Visionaries Joﬀrey Ballet R presents three works, including the world premiere of Episode 47 by

installations exploring the eﬀects of industrial agriculture and extractive land use. Opening reception Thu 4/20, 5-8 PM. 4/20-6/10. Tue-Fri 10 AM-6 PM, Sat noon-6 PM. 400 S. Peoria, 312-996-6114, gallery400.aa.uic.edu.

Of Time and Tide Hedwig DancR es presents three works inspired by the concepts of time and place. 4/21-

Renaissance Society “Klein/Olson,” a collection of sculptures, collages, and photographs created by Astrid Klein and B. Ingrid Olson. Opening reception Sat 4/22, 5-8 PM. 4/22-6/18. Tue-Fri 10 AM-5 PM, Sat-Sun noon-5 PM. 5811 S. Ellis, Cobb Hall 418, 773-702-8670, renaissancesociety.org.

Alexander Ekman. 4/26-5/7: Wed-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM, Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress, 800-982-2787, joﬀrey.org, $34-$159.

4/29: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn, 312-3376543, hedwigdances.com, $15-$25.

COMEDY

Nicole Byer The star of MTV’s R Loosely Exactly Nicole performs stand-up. 4/21-4/23: Fri 8:30 and 10:30 PM; Sat 7, 9, 11:15 PM; Sun 8:30 PM, Zanies, 1548 N. Wells, 312-337-4027, zanies.com/chicago, $25 plus two-drink minimum.

Jokebox Charlie Vergos hosts R this musical stand-up showcase featuring Becca Brown, Mike

Bobrinskoy, Natalie Carneal, Chris Condren, and Nicky Martin as Ghouldini. Sat 4/22, 9 PM, North Bar, 1637 W. North, 773-697-3563, liveatnorthbar.com, $5.

Rod Man The Last Comic StandR ing winner performs his stand-up. 4/20-4/22: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 and 10:15 PM, Sat 7 and 9:15 PM, the Improv, Woodﬁeld Mall, 5 Woodﬁeld, Schaumburg, 847-240-2001, improv.com, $27.

VISUAL ARTS Gallery 400 “The Earth Will Not Abide,” a group show featuring video, creative mapping, paintings, and

MOVIES

More at chicagoreader.com/movies NEW REVIEWS Free Fire In search of gunplay nirvana, writer-director Ben Wheatley takes the most generic scene in all of post-Tarantino cinema—the criminal transaction erupting into a bloody shoot-out—and expands it into an entire movie. One crew (Cillian Murphy, Brie Larson, Sam Riley, et al) shows up at a warehouse with a suitcase full of cash, the other

RSM

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ern-day Tel Aviv. Laila (Mouna Hawa), a sexually empowered lawyer, and Salma (Sana Jammelieh), a lesbian disc jockey, reject the patriarchal conservatism of their respective Muslim and Christian families by dressing and dating as they please and by immersing themselves in Palestinian nightlife. By contrast, Noor (Shaden Kanboura) wears a hijab and plans to return to her small village after graduate school to marry her impatient fiance. Despite the culture clash, the trio find common ground in their romantic struggles and feelings of alienation. They grapple with various issues connected to their race and gender, yet Hamoud keeps the tone relatively light, the women’s wit and vibrancy accentuated by a brisk pace and Itay Gross’s colorful cinematography. In Arabic and Hebrew with subtitles. —LEAH PICKETT 102 min. Screens as part of the Chicago Palestine Film Festival; for a full schedule visit siskelfilmcenter.org. Fri 4/21, 8 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center

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

18 to enter 21 to drink Photo ID required

Sunday, April 23 @ 3:30pm

The LEGO Batman Movie Sunday, April 23 @ 5:30pm Mon, Wed-Thr, April 24, 26-27 @ 6:30pm

Trainspotting 2 Sunday, April 23 @ 7:45pm Mon, Wed-Thr, April 24, 26-27 @ 8:45pm

John Wick 2

The Lost City of Z Based on the R nonﬁction book by David Grann, this gripping historical epic chronicles

the years-long quest of English explorer Percy Fawcett (played with clear-eyed determination by Charlie Hunnam) to ﬁnd a fabled Amazonian city whose early

Sideshow Gallery “Tarot Art Show,” a group show featuring contemporary interpretations of the tarot. Opening reception on Sat 4/22, 7-11 PM, features tarot readings. 4/22-5/27. Mon-Tue, ThuFri 2-8 PM; Wed 4-8 PM; Sat noon-8 PM; Sun noon-6 PM. 2219 N. Western, 773-2761300, sideshowgallerychicago.com. Stuart & Co. Gallery “At a Place Where the Trees Are Still Green,” new works by Kristian Bruce. Opening reception Sat 4/22, 7-9 PM. 4/22-5/27. By appointment. 2250 W. Ohio, 312-487-1850, stuartandco. com.

LIT & LECTURES

MK Czerwiec The former HIV/ R AIDS nurse discusses her graphic novel about her experiences, Taking

Turns. Thu 4/20, noon, Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, 836 W. Wellington.

Fictilicious This live-lit show presents a collection of songs and short ﬁction based on the theme “animals.” The lineup includes Diana Slickman, Siobhan Roca Thompson, and

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(Sharlto Copley, Noah Taylor, et al) with a shipment of machine guns, but everything goes to hell and they all wind up taking positions in the sprawling space and firing on each other until the credits roll. Wheatley and Amy Jump, his frequent screenwriting partner, can’t afford to let the action flag for long, so the characters never amount to much more than their immediate tactical advantage or disadvantage. But I could tell Murphy and company were the heroes, because their mustaches were cooler. —J.R. JONES R, 90 min. Chatham 14 In Between Arab-Israeli filmmaker Maysaloun Hamoud makes her feature debut with this drama about three Palestinian roommates who live and work in mod-

innovations may have put the British Empire to shame. Fawcett first traveled to South America as a British army officer in 1906, and his crusade to track down the lost city of Zed, as he called it, was interrupted by the trench warfare of World War I; he and his grown son returned to the jungle as private adventurers in 1925 but were never heard from again. Writer-director James Gray (Two Lovers, The Immigrant) stages all this with an impressive sense of narrative scale, presenting a series of physical conflicts between the explorers and the indigenous peoples they encounter even as he tracks the ongoing ideological conflict between Fawcett and the cultural chauvinists calling the shots back home. With Robert Pattinson, W

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SLEEP RESEARCH STUDY FOR PEOPLE WITH LUNG DISEASE: Volunteers are invited to join this study: you must be over age 45 years, have either emphysema or chronic bronchitis and difﬁculty falling asleep or staying asleep to qualify. We are testing a program to improve sleep in people with lung disease. Volunteers eligible for the study will participate in 6 weekly sessions in one of four behavioral or educational programs. The programs are offered by the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Hines VA. Health evaluations include an overnight sleep study, lung function tests, two blood draws, activity monitoring and questionnaires. Compensation is provided to enrolled participants, all program activities and testing are free and free parking is provided.

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08/04/2017

For more information go to cbti-copd.uic.edu or call Mary Kapella PhD, RN or Franco Laghi MD at (312) 996-1575, 9:30AM to 4:00PM, Monday thru Friday at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Center for Narcolepsy, Sleep & Health Research. This study is funded by the National Institutes of Health.

AGENDA B Sienna Miller, Angus Macfadyen, and Tom Holland. —J.R. JONES PG-13, 141 min. ShowPlace ICON Metamorphoses The ﬁlms of French writer-director Christophe Honoré tend to fall into one of two categories: sexually explicit provocations (Ma Mère, Man at Bath) and frothy romantic roundelays (Love Songs, Beloved). This modern-dress adaptation of about a dozen stories from Ovid’s Metamorphoses splits the diﬀerence—it’s full of nudity and sex, yet the view of uninhibited pansexuality is cheery and innocent. The movie (2014) sometimes recalls Pier Paolo Pasolini’s early-70s trilogy of antique literary adaptations (The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights); but whereas Pasolini used the classics to critique his times, Honoré doesn’t seem to be saying anything, direct or indirect, about the current era. He does succeed, though, in conveying the joy of storytelling, which has made Ovid’s work endure; the engagingly knotty structure is full of playful digressions and tales within tales. In French with subtitles. —BEN SACHS 106 min. Facets Cinematheque Norman Richard Gere gets R one of the best roles of his career as the title character,

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a small-time investment broker in Manhattan whose chance friendship with an up-and-coming Israeli politician, played by Lior Ashkenazi, wins Norman a reputation in the local Jewish community as a consummate fixer. As the politician remarks, Norman is a “warm Jew,” and writer-director Joseph Cedar (who was born in New York but makes movies in Israel) finds a thick streak of altruism amid all his professional ambition: he cares sincerely about those he’s trying to help, and he takes a matchmaker’s pleasure in grooming people to meet each other. Eventually the whole situation comes crashing down around Norman, and his public life of influence gives way to a private act of loyalty that proves him the ultimate mensch. With Michael Sheen, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Dan Stevens, and Steve Buscemi. —J.R. JONES R, 117 min. Landmark’s Century Centre The Occupation of the American Mind Documentary makers Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp call on a cadre of left-leaning journalists (Rula Jebreal, Rami Khouri, Amira Hass), activists (Peter Hart, Yousef Munayyer), and academics (Rashid Khalidi, Sut Jhally, Norman Finkelstein) to expose the right-wing Israeli PR machine inside the U.S. Dating back to Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the nation’s hasbara campaign is rooted in the principle of self-defense and, as several interviewees note, employs an Orwellian inversion of

The Promise reality in which decades of steady aggression against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank become a David-and-Goliath battle between a plucky young democracy and the bloodthirsty terrorists bent on its destruction. The filmmakers examine the Israel Project’s “Global Language Dictionary,” created by pollster Frank Luntz in 2009, and track the progress of various pro-Israel talking points and buzz phrases through the flood channels of cable news. Attentive to the landbased conflicts that the hasbara reframes as ideological, Alper and Earp make a compelling case that Israeli hard-liners have a lock on U.S. public opinion. —J.R. JONES 84 min. Screens as the closing-night program of the Chicago Palestine Film Festival; for a full schedule visit siskelfilmcenter.org. Sun 4/23, 5:15 PM, and Thu 5/4, 8:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center

REVIVALS

The Promise As the R Ottoman Empire mounts a genocidal campaign against its

Donnie Darko Richard R Kelly’s 2001 cult classic stars Jake Gyllenhaal as the title charac-

Armenian population, an Armenian woman raised in Paris (Charlotte Le Bon) returns to her native land with her lover (Christian Bale), who works for the Associated Press, and the growing political crisis drives her into the arms of a soulful Armenian medical student (Oscar Isaac). There’s something awkwardly old-fashioned about grafting a Casablanca-style love triangle onto a humanitarian tragedy—especially one that’s still ﬁghting its way into the history books. But director Terry George brings to this story a special gift, honed in his Hotel Rwanda (2004), for choreographing the chaos of civil collapse, and the three stars serve him well, ﬁnding in each character the space where private emotion collides with the harsh dictates of history. —J.R. JONES PG-13, 134 min. Chatham 14 Theaters, Cicero Showplace 14, Ford City, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings

The Settlers This outstandR ing Israeli documentary presents a trenchant, well-researched analysis of the settler movement in the Occupied Territories, portraying it as ideologically divided but, in its growing numbers and inﬂuence, still devastating to a peaceful two-state solution between Israelis

and Palestinians. Director Shimon Dotan (Hot House) traces the settler phenomenon back to the religious Zionism of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, whose followers saw Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War of 1967 as prophecy and honored it by staking claim to ancient Jewish holy sites in the West Bank. Zealotry continues to spur settlement and expansion of illegal outposts, though over the decades the population boom has also been fed by secular Israelis, Russian emigrés, neo-hippies, and American Christian evangelists. The tension between settlers reverting to Old Testament law and Israelis committed to a modern democratic state tests an already fraught region. In English and subtitled Hebrew and Arabic. —ANDREA GRONVALL 110 min. Gene Siskel Film Center

ter, a high schooler who may have stumbled onto the secret of time travel. Reader critic Lisa Alspector called it a “creepy, insightful coming-of-age story, beautifully kaleidoscopic in tone.“ R, 122 min. Screens in a new restoration, along with the director’s cut; for more information see musicboxtheatre. com. Music Box

SPECIAL EVENTS CIMMfest Spring Fling Thing The annual Chicago Independent Movies & Music Festival has moved from April to November this year, but the organizers have put together a three-day schedule for this weekend. Among the attractions: live performances by Fulcrum Point New Music project (Fri 4/21, 7 PM) and Little Hurricane (Fri 4/21, 10 PM); a revival of the local cable-access dance show Chic-a-go-go (Sat 4/22, 10 AM, free); Finding Joseph I, a documentary about the lead singer of the punk band Bad Brains (Sat 4/22, 1 PM); and Allen Parsa’s documentary The Way to Andina (Sun 4/23, 3 PM; see Ben Sach’s proﬁle of Parsa on page 23). For more information and a full schedule visit cimmfest. org. Fri 4/21-Sun 4/23. Chop Shop & 1st Ward v

CITY LIFE

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

Street View

o ISA GIALLORENZO

‘More is more’ “I LOVE A GOOD ketchup-and-mustard aesthetic,” says dog trainer and student Cas Brener, dressed in an outﬁt she describes as “Simpsons convention in Hawaii.” “I get caught up in color schemes from time to time,” she adds. “Right now I’m really gravitating towards red and yellow.” Influenced by figures from Ronald McDonald to Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, Brener has also drawn inspiration from her father, “a supertall man with a white ponytail who wears only one color each day.” Like dad, she’s not one to strive for understatement: “I feel like life can be bleak and boring in a lot of ways, and dressing in bright colors makes my life more enjoyable,” she says. “More is more. Wear things that make your eyes feel excited to see you.” —ISA GIALLORENZO See more Chicago street style on Giallorenzo’s blog chicagolooks.blogspot.com.

SURE THINGS

THURSDAY 20

Black Scholars Salon Theaster Gates hosts Thelma Golden of Harlem’s Studio Museum for a discussion of her experience growing a black museum and the challenge of institutionality for black spaces. RSVP to info@rebuild-foundation.org required. 6 PM, Rebuild Foundation, 6760 S. Stony Island, rebuild-foundation.org. F

p C2E 2 The celebration of comics, television, cosplay, and more features panels, screenings, and plenty of famous faces including Vincent D’Onofrio, Stan Lee, and the kids from Stranger Things. 4/21-4/23: Fri-Sat 10 AM-9 PM, Sun 10 AM-5 PM, McCormick Place, 2301 S. Lake Shore, c2e2.com, $30-$40 per day, $70 for weekend pass.

& Not a Hoax This Earth Day party features music from Air Credits and Sidewalk Chalk, bites from chef Abra Berens, and drinks, plus presentations on how to ﬁght threats to the environment by the Natural Resources Defense Council. 7-10 PM, Garﬁeld Park Conservatory, 300 N. Central, landandseadept.com/hoax, $25.

SUNDAY 23

MONDAY 24

TUESDAY 25

WEDNESDAY 26

& Build the Movement , Not a Wall The Latino Union of Chicago hosts an open house that includes food from Cardona’s Restaurant, live music by Jarochicanos, an interactive art project, and the destruction of a wall-size piñata. 2-5 PM, Latino Union, 4811 N. Central Park, latinounion. org. F

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» It’s Ha ppening The variety show hosted by Bill Bullock features comedy from Calvin Evans, burlesque and dance from Jeez Loueez, and poetry and music from Growing Concerns Poetry Collective. 8:30 PM, Links Hall, 3111 N. Western, linkshall. org, $5 suggested donation.

FRIDAY 21

½ Th e Gi rl Talk This month the talk show that features “Chicago women doing cool things” focuses on the environment with EPA attorney Nicole Cantello and EPA water expert Felicia Chase. 6:30 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, hideoutchicago. com, $5.

SATURDAY 22

We lcome to N ight Vale The podcast that details the odd happenings and characters populating the ﬁctional town of Night Vale records a live episode with musical guest Erin McKeown. 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 1227 W. 18th, thaliahallchicago.com, $30.

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Governor Bruce Rauner released commercials in March accusing state Democrats of cobbling together a budget with duct tape. o STATE SOLUTIONS

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POLITICS

F for effort

Students at Northeastern pay the price for the state’s budget failures.

By BEN JORAVSKY

y chance, Governor Bruce Rauner unveiled his hokey duct-tape commercials around the same time students and faculty from Northeastern Illinois University took to the streets to protest cuts that threaten to put their school out of existence. The protests highlight the holy mess Rauner’s made out of higher education by refusing to pass a budget unless the Democrats cave and support his antiunion legislation. And the commercials highlight his well-funded efforts to bamboozle voters into believing the crisis is someone else’s fault—as if he’s just an innocent bystander in this train wreck. In case you missed them, the commercials are the ones that show Rauner pretending he’s just a regular guy—sitting in a workroom, tools on the walls, wearing a red-and-blue ﬂannel shirt—as he accuses Democrats of cobbling together a budget with duct tape. After the commercials aired, Rauner insisted they weren’t campaign spots. “Really, we’re just trying to communicate with the people of Illinois,” he told reporters last week while making a visit to Decatur, which he insisted wasn’t a campaign appearance.

8 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 20, 2017

It’s pretty obvious that Rauner likes running for governor more than actually governing. The commercials are funded by an outfit called State Solutions, Inc.—an arm of the Republican Governors Association. That means the money to pay for them doesn’t come out of the $50 million Rauner, a billionaire, recently donated to his own campaign. Just what Rauner needs—more campaign cash. Meanwhile, over at Northeastern, students and faculty gathered last Wednesday on the main campus near Foster and Kimball to hear Democratic gubernatorial candidates Ameya Pawar and Daniel Biss lambaste Rauner for running our state colleges and universities into the ground. As more than one speaker pointed out, Northeastern’s traditionally been the school of choice for north-suburban and north-side working-class and lower-income students looking for a relatively affordable commuter school. (Tuition is about $15,000 a year.) Northeastern isn’t to be confused with Chicago State University, which offers similar opportunities for south-side residents and has a raft of its own problems that have mushroomed over the years.

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

For many students, a degree from a state school is a key step toward achieving the middle-class dream. “If you want a professional career, you come to a school like this,” says Ashlei Ross, a senior at Northeastern, who’s studying to be a social worker. “It’s like they want to shut the door on our future.” The peculiarities of the budget crisis have slammed state universities. As I’ve previously written, the state’s compelled to pay its employees, even without a budget. But it’s not obligated to pay vendors like social service providers. That’s why the poorest, most vulnerable residents—like seniors, the disabled, or LGBTQ people—have been hit hardest by the budget crunch. And why much of Rauner’s suburban base remains relatively unscathed. Colleges and universities, like Northeastern, are treated as vendors. So they haven’t had a full budget in about two years. During that time, they’ve had to make do on two stopgap funding measures that Rauner and the Democrats agreed to. Northeastern’s received about $30.2 million. In comparison, the school got $37 million in 2015, the last year it received a full payment from the state. That means the school has basically stretched out a year’s worth of payments over 22 months. To make ends meet, the university has ordered employees to take eight furlough days, and it closed the campus over spring break, leaving students without access to the library, gym, science labs, etc. Of course, the university weakened its case when it agreed to pay former White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett $30,000 to deliver this year’s commencement talk. After the story hit the press, Jarrett waived her fee. Still, it’s hard to convince people you’re really hard up for bucks when you can blow 30 grand on a speech. The state budget crisis has also hit hard at the Monetary Award Program—the so-called MAP grants that help low-income students pay their tuition. This year there won’t be any MAP grants. “How are we supposed to use higher education to get a degree and get professional jobs if we can’t pay tuition?” says Ross. “I don’t have a lot of hope we’ll solve this problem soon. I feel this governor we have now, he operates out of conﬂict.” She makes a good point. In 2012, when he was still a private citizen, Rauner gave a now infamous speech before a right-wing think tank in which he urged the state to pit one faction of the Democratic Party against the other.

CITY LIFE “I think we can drive a wedge issue in the Democratic Party,” Rauner said, “and bring the folks who say, ‘You know what? For our tax dollars, I’d rather help the disadvantaged, the handicapped, the elderly, and the children in poverty. I’d rather have my tax dollars going to that than the SEIU or ‘Af-scammy’ [AFSCME], which are out there for their own interests.’” In other words, if Rauner snatches MAP grants away from students like Ross, maybe she’ll join him in his campaign to cut union pensions. Well, that’s his strategy, anyway. On April 5, the state house passed a “lifeline” measure to send more money to universities like Northeastern.

“How are we supposed to use higher education to get a degree and get professional jobs if we can’t pay the tuition?” —Ashlei Ross, Northeastern University student

It now awaits senate passage. But Rauner will probably veto it. So the Democrats will need a few Republicans to help them override the veto. It doesn’t look like they’ll find many volunteers, as most Republicans depend on Rauner for campaign financing. Their position can best be summed up by Mark Batinick, a Republican state representative from suburban Plainfield. “We should not vote for this on the floor,” said Batinick, paraphrasing Dr. Seuss. “We should not vote for this on our way out the door. We should not vote for this here or there.” Apparently, Rauner’s convinced Republicans that destroying higher education is a cause worth fighting for. At least they’re entertaining themselves. v

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CDOT downgraded protected bike lanes on Marshall Boulevard, left, turning them into conventional lanes, right, earlier this year.

CITY LIFE

o STEVEN VANCE, PAOLO CISNEROS

TRANSPORTATION

Marshaling the opposition

The backlash against protected bike lanes in Little Village is a cautionary tale for bikeway planners. By JOHN GREENFIELD

ayor Rahm Emanuel likes to brag that Chicago is one of the leading cities for protected bike lanes, with 22 miles installed to date. But late last year, Chicago Department of Transportation crews took out the half-mile stretch of protected lanes on Marshall Boulevard in mostly Mexican-American Little Village. Workers ground out the white thermoplastic lines of the protected bike lanes, which had originally been located next to the curbs, with physical barriers shielding cyclists from moving traffic. Then they redrew the bike lanes closer to the center of the road, with no physical protection from traffic. This allowed for curbside car parking on both sides of the street and created about 30 new parking spaces. The downgrading of the Marshall bike lanes was done at the request of residents who wanted more spots for cars and had other concerns. But as the city strives to build more protected bikeways, this unfortunate episode underscores the need for CDOT to earn community buy-ins before construction and do extensive outreach afterward. CDOT originally installed the Marshall lanes in November 2012. To make room for the bike lanes, about 30 parking spaces were stripped from the east side of the street. On the west side of Marshall, the parking lane was moved to the left of the bike lane so that the parked cars protected cyclists from moving vehicles. But some residents were confused about where to park on the west side of the street and left their cars in the bike lanes rather than in the new parking lane. Worse, CDOT didn’t immediately install NO PARKING signs on the east side of the street. As a result, many neighbors didn’t realize that it was illegal to park in the northbound bike lane, and many of them

10 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 20, 2017

were ticketed or even towed. Dan Korn, a computer programmer who lives at the Hub, a co-op building on Marshall that was founded by bike advocates, and an old acquaintance of mine, says he exchanged several e-mails about the sign problem with then CDOT commissioner Gabe Klein, starting shortly after the bike lanes went in. But the signs weren’t replaced until June 2013, about seven months after the fact. Unsurprisingly, residents gave CDOT staffers an earful at a September 2013 community meeting hosted by 12th Ward alderman George Cardenas. Deputy commissioner Luann Hamilton apologized for the “poor implementation and aggressive ticketing.”But in defense of the lanes, Hamilton noted that the “road diet” (as narrowing or removing travel lanes is called) had dramatically reduced speeding on Marshall. Before the protected lanes went in, 59 percent of drivers were exceeding the 30 mph speed limit, with 12.5 percent doing over 40 mph—a speed at which pedestrian crashes are almost always fatal. Afterward, only 27 percent of drivers were speeding, with a mere 1 percent breaking 40. Unfortunately, the CDOT presentation was in English, and the CDOT staffers didn’t speak Spanish. “This kind of thing doesn’t help to combat the perception that cycling is a white activity, and that this bike infrastructure is being pushed onto the neighborhood by white outsiders,” Korn noted. While Little Village may have fewer outspoken bicycle advocates than, say, Logan Square, it does have a high rate of bicycling. The three census tracts bordering Marshall have 7, 9, and 12 percent bike-mode share, much higher than the city average of about 2 percent. And ridership in the neighborhood is likely to rise in the future. A recent League of Amer-

ican Bicyclists study found that, nationally, bike-mode share among Latinos grew by 50 percent between 2001 and 2009, compared to only 22 percent for whites. After the CDOT presentation, neighbors testiﬁed that they found it increasingly difficult to park in the neighborhood, and disliked parking to the left of the southbound bike lane. Others argued that the new conﬁguration wasn’t safe for children crossing the street, even though the bike lanes have actually shortened crossing distances. Korn says he and one other bike commuter were the only attendees to voice support for the bike lanes, and he didn’t hear much more about the issue until CDOT removed the protected bike lanes. Cardenas and his constituents requested the reconfiguration, and Liliana Escarpita, Cardenas’s assistant, says that the alderman used $30,000 in ward funds to pay for the work. Escarpita says her office continued to receive “general complaints . . . about parking scarcity,” and complaints that leaves and garbage were accumulating in the curbside lanes. Neighbors, she says, are pleased with the new layout. “No one in the community supported [keeping] the original configuration,” Escarpita says. Of course, that doesn’t factor in cyclists like Korn, or the roughly one out of ten nearby residents who bikes to work. Longtime Little Village community activist Chris Didato says he was disappointed by the change. “As a biker, protected lanes make sense,” he says. “[They] did make me feel safer.” Urban planning grad student and Pilsen resident Paolo Cisneros, who frequently used the Marshall protected lanes to bike commute,

was likewise bummed about the downgrade. “The lanes provided an additional level of protection for people like me who aren’t superconfident commuters,” Cisneros said. “Now it’s certainly a much more stressful ride. . . . You’re being squeezed between traffic and parked cars.” (The new bike lane design does include a striped buffer to help keep cyclists out of the way of car doors.) Unfortunately, the Marshall rollout was indicative of CDOT’s past problems with installing protected bike lanes south- and westside communities of color. Opposition from Bronzeville community leaders also killed a plan for protected bike lanes on King Drive in early 2012. And protected lanes on Independence Boulevard in West Garfield Park were downgraded in December 2012 after residents complained about the layout. That’s not to say that opposition to protected lanes only occurs in communities of color. But the city has historically installed a lower density of bikeways in these areas. And residents of these neighborhoods stand to gain the most from the economic, health, and mobility benefits of bicycling. On the other hand, as local Latino and African-American social justice activists have pointed out, longtime residents may view new bike lanes and paths as a frivolous waste of money, or even a harbinger of gentrification. When the facilities take away parking, as protected lanes often do, that can exacerbate these issues. “The community has to be onboard,” says Didato. “The city didn’t involve residents in the change to protected bike lanes [on Marshall], so a lot of residents weren’t supportive.” Recently CDOT has been doing a better job of bike lane outreach, including a series of public meetings on the south and west sides last year to ask residents where the next round of bikeways should go. “We’re always striving to do a better job,” CDOT’s Claffey said in a statement, “and make sure that bike lanes fit the needs of the community and that they’re accepted by all people in the community, and that they make transportation safer for everybody.” But as the Marshall Boulevard mess demonstrates, the more neighborhood input taken before protected bike lanes go in, the better. v

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

The Marijuana Issue

The grass gap persists

It took statewide decriminalization to get Chicago cops to stop arresting mostly black Chicagoans for possession of small amounts of weed. By LEE V. GAINES

o PAUL JOHN HIGGINS

ate last July, on the day Governor Bruce Rauner signed into law a statewide decriminalization measure barring cops from criminally charging individuals caught with small amounts of marijuana, a 22-year-old African-American man was arrested by Chicago police officers on the city’s west side after he told them he had about $10 worth of weed on him. The officers were on patrol in the 4200 block of West Madison just before 11 PM July 29 when they spotted two men “engage in what appeared to be a hand to hand transaction,” according to their report. They knew the corner of Madison and South Keeler was a “designated narcotics loitering hot spot,” the officers wrote. An officer asked 22-year-old Leshawn T., one of the two men on the corner, if he was carrying any narcotics or illegal substances. Leshawn told the officer that he had one bag of weed—two grams’ worth, police wrote. He was arrested and charged with misdemeanor possession of 2.5 grams or less, and for failure to appear in court for a prior city citation for marijuana possession. The charges against Leshawn were later dropped, according to court records. (We weren’t able to reach him for comment, and are thus using his first name and last initial only.) Roughly five years before Leshawn was picked up for two grams of weed, Chicago decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana. But it took a statewide bill approved last summer to actually stop Chicago police officers from arresting people caught with amounts ranging from a little more than half a gram of weed to ten grams, or about a third of an ounce. The legislation, which became effective the same day Leshawn was arrested, prohibits officers from charging someone caught with ten grams or less with misdemeanor possession. Such offenses are now considered civil violations subject to a minimum fine of $100 and a maximum fine of $200. Chicago police could have been issuing tickets for small amounts of marijuana possession for years, but instead, according to data obtained by the Reader, chose to arrest thousands of people, mostly African-Americans. About 70 percent of all marijuana possession arrests last year were for ten grams or less. In the first seven months of 2016, before the statewide decriminalization bill took effect, more than 3,300 people were charged for possessing small amounts of weed. While this figure represents a 74 percent decrease from the approximately 12,800 people who were apprehended in 2014 and an 85 J

APRIL 20, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 11

The Grass Gap continued from 11

12 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 20, 2017

issued between July 29—when the decriminalization law took effect—and the end of last year, compared to the 2,340 tickets issued in the first seven months of last year. CPD didn’t respond to a question asking why so few tickets were issued last year, particularly in the latter five months of the year. Taken all together, this all suggests that these arrests are finally ceasing. But why has it taken so long?

2016 arrests for possession of marijuana under ten grams

All 2016

Jan 1-July 28

3,398

3,339 arrests

arrests

Black

arrests

July 29-Dec 31

78%

76%

Hispanic

White

17%

12%

10%

Asian

<1%

Unknown

<1%

o PAUL JOHN HIGGINS

percent decrease from the more than 22,000 people arrested in 2010 (before Chicago passed the decriminalization ordinance), the racial disparity among those arrested for pot hasn’t budged in the last seven years. Even with the overall drop in arrests, people of color continue to be disproportionately affected. Studies clearly show whites and blacks consume marijuana at similar rates, but African-Americans are far more likely to be arrested and charged for low-level pot possession than whites. The American Civil Liberties Union published a report in 2013 that analyzed marijuana possession arrest data nationwide and found that marijuana use among blacks and whites was roughly equal, with more whites age 18 to 25 saying they’d used marijuana in the last 12 months. But African-Americans, the report concluded, were nearly four times more likely to be arrested for pot possession. In Cook County speciﬁcally, the report found that in 2010 African-Americans were about seven times more likely to get arrested for weed possession than whites. Last year, 78 percent of those arrested for small amounts of weed were black, 17 percent were Hispanic, and only 4 percent were white—virtually the same percentages identiﬁed in Reader investigations from 2014 and 2011. But just 59 people were arrested and charged with misdemeanor possession between when the law took effect and the end of 2016—a dramatic drop that could signal the end of possession arrests in Chicago. Even within this population, however, about 80 percent were black. Of course, the fact that the state barred arrests for possession under ten grams raises the question of why anyone was arrested on these charges on or after July 29. Chicago police didn’t respond to a question asking how this could be possible given the current legislation. The mayor’s office also didn’t respond to requests for comment before press time. In addition, Chicago cops issued only 2,776 tickets for pot possession last year, according to CPD data the Reader obtained. That’s a 31 percent decrease from the more than 4,000 marijuana citations issued in 2014. We also requested CPD data about the racial breakdown of the individuals the department ticketed for possession last year, but according to CPD, the city’s Department of Administrative Hearings doesn’t keep track of race for possession citations. The number of tickets cops wrote for possession also dropped off following statewide decriminalization. Only about 400 tickets were

tark racial disparity in arrests is one of the reasons state lawmakers pushed for decriminalization last year, says Democratic state senator Heather Steans, who sponsored the bill. “We knew how discriminatory the police can be in making these arrests,” she says. But Chicago politicians have been apprised of the so-called “grass gap” for years—it was one of the reasons the ordinance that gave police the option to ticket people instead of arrest them passed in the City Council in a vote of 43-3 in 2012. County officials have also pushed Chicago cops to stop arresting people caught with small amounts of weed. Cook County Board president Toni Preckwinkle told the Reader in 2011 that she had asked former CPD superintendent Garry McCarthy to “stop arresting people for small amounts of drugs, because you’re wasting our time.” When presented with the arrest ﬁgures from last year, spokesman Frank Shuftan wrote that “as stated previously, [President Preckwinkle] believes that arrests for small amounts of marijuana are a poor use of public safety resources. She has publicly stated so on a number of occasions, and will continue to advocate for reforms in the criminal justice arena.” The thousands of possession arrests appear even more absurd in light of former Cook County state’s attorney Anita Alvarez announcement back in 2015 that her office would stop prosecuting people busted for the ﬁrst or second time with 30 grams or less of weed. The Cook County state’s attorney’s office says it’s continuing this practice under Alvarez’s successor, Kim Foxx. Foxx was elected to the office after running on a platform of criminal justice reform, including keeping fewer nonviolent offenders behind bars. “The Office of the Cook County State’s Attorney is committed to seeking justice, and to using its limited resources most effectively to protect public safety. Prosecution of cases for possession of misdemeanor amounts of marijuana does not serve those goals, and the Office of the Cook County State’s Attorney continues to decline to prosecute possession of marijua-

na under 30 grams,” reads a statement issued by Foxx’s office. “While the State’s Attorney’s office cannot prevent officers from making arrests, it was and remains the policy of the office to decline to prosecute those cases.” This may be only somewhat reassuring to criminal justice reform advocates like Kathie Kane-Willis, director of policy and advocacy for the Chicago Urban League. “It’s great if you pass an ordinance,” Kane-Willis says, “but it doesn’t mean squat if you don’t implement and use it.” Kane-Willis was one of several authors of a 2014 study conducted by Roosevelt University’s Illinois Drug Policy Consortium that found that the implementation of municipal ticketing ordinances across the state was “uneven and incomplete.” She also takes issue with the term “decriminalized” to describe what Chicago’s elected officials did when they passed the ticketing ordinance. To really decriminalize something, Kane-Willis says, you can’t give cops the option of arresting people for it. The Reader reported in 2014 that CPD officers rarely issued tickets for possession. Between August 2012 and February 2014, CPD made 20,844 arrests for misdemeanor possession and issued just 1,725 tickets. Following the implementation of the ordinance, arrests in Chicago decreased by just 21 percent, and 93 percent of misdemeanor possession violations resulted in arrests while only 7 percent produced tickets, according to the 2014 consortium study. Arrests for low-level possession in Evanston, by contrast, dropped 46 percent following passage of that city’s ticketing law, suggesting that, at least theoretically, the new policy could have been more successfully implemented in Chicago too. For the ordinance to have done what it was intended to do—focus police resources and time on more serious crimes and erode racial disparities in marijuana possession busts— “You had to have everybody behind it and pushing and really working to make clear what the orders were to police,” Kane-Willis says. The failure of the ordinance to fulﬁll its purpose is something CPD has to answer for, she says. CPD didn’t respond to questions asking why so many people were arrested when they could have been ticketed, or why the racial disparity persists. But Chicago police officer Kevin Graham, a 22-year veteran of CPD, says the reason cops choose to arrest people instead of ticket them is because it’s easier. Just last week Graham was elected president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, the local union that represents Chicago cops.

Ticketing someone for low-level marijuana possession “requires a number of steps,” including a ﬁeld test to determine whether the substance is actually marijuana, he says. “If you have an arrest, you send the marijuana to the lab to be tested,” Graham says. “It’s more cumbersome to simply write the ticket, even though I think their idea was to make [the process] shorter.” Graham declined to answer any further questions, citing a lack of time. But Graham’s predecessor, former FOP president Dean Angelo Sr., comes at the issue from a different perspective, saying there are “so many variables” that play into an officer’s decision to arrest rather than cite that it would be “weak” to speculate on what CPD officers’ rationale was for charging individuals with misdemeanor possession rather than ticketing them without scrutinizing each and every police report. But Jim Gierach, a longtime anti-drug-prohibition advocate and former board member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, says the country’s war on drugs also provides economic incentives to lock people up on possession charges. Police officers reap the benefits of arresting folks for pot possession in overtime pay when they go to court in their off-time to follow up on cases, he says, and officers who make frequent arrests may also benefit in the form of promotions. Additionally, as the Reader reported in a previous investigation, CPD has since 2009 taken in tens of millions of dollars via civil forfeiture, a process that lets police and prosecutors keep cash, vehicles, and other items seized from people suspected of having connections to the drug trade even if they haven’t been convicted of a crime. If there’s no incentive to ticket—or if it’s more “cumbersome,” as Graham asserts— and there are economic incentives to arrest, police officers will likely do the latter, says Kane-Willis. Angelo says that, contrary to Graham’s assertion, arrests take more time than issuing tickets. Officers also receive overtime pay for showing up in court on their off days, but he says “they’re not going to get promoted for locking people up for weed.” He disagrees that cops would continue to arrest people for small amounts of marijuana simply because of economic incentives. CPD didn’t comment on whether economic incentives may have played a role in the decision to arrest rather than ticket. Problematically, of course, the time police officers spend locking people up or even ticketing them for weed is also time lost pursuing other criminal offenses. Both McCarthy and

“It’s great if you pass an ordinance [to decriminalize possession], but it doesn’t mean squat if you don’t implement and use it.” —Kathie Kane-Willis, Chicago Urban League director of policy and advocacy

Mayor Rahm Emanuel threw their support behind the city’s ticketing ordinance in 2012, saying every weed bust cost officers four hours of police time that could be better spent tackling more serious crimes—like gun violence. More than 780 people were shot and killed in Chicago last year—the highest death toll since 1996—yet, with each arrest estimated to take four hours, police spent at least 13,000 hours arresting people for small amounts of marijuana. Couldn’t that time have been better spent tackling violent crime? “If you think decriminalizing something is going to magically increase manpower and the murder rate is going to be affected by that decriminalization, that’s connecting the dots from here to Mars,” says Angelo, who also says the department is “down a couple thousand people.” Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has pledged, however, to hire 1,000 more cops over the next two years, and CPD has an annual budget of about $1.5 billion—the largest of any city agency. The real reason murder rates have increased so much, Angelo argues, is because the city mandates police do something called an Investigatory Stop Report. The reports are part

of an agreement reached between CPD and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois in 2015 that was intended to reform stop-andfrisk practices and protect against unreasonable searches and seizures. According to the ACLU, Chicago police conducted more than 250,000 stops in the summer of 2014 that didn’t result in an arrest, and 72 percent of those stopped were black, even though African-Americans make up only about a third of the city’s population. Angelo, who was invited last month to Washington, D.C., to meet with members of the Trump administration, says he told Attorney General Jeff Sessions that these mandated reports “directly caused” the uptick in the city’s homicide rate. As a result of the agreement with the ACLU, he says, street stops “dropped by tens of thousands.” Sessions, a staunch opponent of marijuana legalization who has said “good people don’t smoke marijuana,” recently hinted at a crackdown on states where weed is legal and has also said the benefits of medical marijuana may be overhyped. But a report published in January by the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab that examined the increase in gun violence in the city last year indicates that while street stops did decline sharply in 2016, there’s not enough evidence to draw a clear conclusion that the drop led to a rise in shootings. New York City, the report notes, experienced a similar decline in street stops three years ago with no subsequent rise in gun violence. When asked if the precipitous drop in street stops may have also led to a decrease in pot possession busts since 2014, Angelo found the correlation plausible, saying “I could connect that dot.”

acial disparities between arrest rates is unfortunately a historical phenomenon. That they have persisted through the years doesn’t surprise Kane-Willis. “I feel like 78 percent,” Kane-Willis says, considering the racial disparity, “it’s never changed. It’s never changed. It’s not surprising to me these arrests were predominantly African-Americans and very few whites. . . . That’s the pattern we have seen in this data for decades.” People of color have been disproportionately targeted and affected by the war on drugs and mass incarceration dating back to the Rockefeller mandatory minimum sentencing laws of the early 70s through the Reagan 80s and the “tough-on-crime” Clinton 90s. But Angelo says the present disparities stem from where the arrests occurred. Most of the people charged with misdemeanor J

APRIL 20, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 13

The Grass Gap continued from 13 possession last year were apprehended on the city’s south and west sides, in neighborhoods that are predominantly populated by African-Americans. According to police data, 40 people, including Leshawn T., were arrested last year on charges of low-level marijuana possession on one city block alone—the 4200 block of Madison. And another 22 people were arrested right around the corner, on a small strip of North Keeler between West Washington and Madison. Madison covers portions of the 11th and 15th police districts, which Angelo calls “two of the busiest, most violent districts in this city,” ones where officers are “overdeployed” to protect the city’s law-abiding residents. “The areas that are populated by people we would consider minority status are the same areas we are getting the most shootings and the most murders and the most gun arrests and the most narcotic arrests, so you can look at it, and people splice it, that the police are locking up people of color, are arresting more people of color for marijuana,” he says. “The purpose of the deployment is to keep a lid [on crime] and protect those families that are stuck socioeconomically in these environments because they don’t have the wherewithal to relocate.” With more officers assigned to these areas, it’s not surprising to see more arrests in those locations for every kind of drug, not just weed, Angelo says. “More minorities are being arrested for heroin more than Caucasians—I’d imagine it might be the same,” he says. “Why not legalize heroin too? When does it stop? If people do [legalize heroin], we won’t lock people up for that either.” Of course, analogizing weed and heroin is a faulty comparison. Heroin is a lethal substance responsible for nearly 15,000 overdose deaths in 2015 alone, according to the Centers for Disease Control. No one has ever died from a marijuana overdose, the Drug Enforcement Administration notes. A growing body of anecdotal evidence also suggests pot contains valuable medicinal properties, and one study found that access to medical marijuana was correlated with a drop in opioid-related fatalities. Whatever the cause, systemic racial bias comes with significant individual and societal costs. An arrest for pot possession can hurt someone’s chances of getting a job or housing or a student loan. Because African-Americans are disproportionately arrested for this offense, they bear the brunt of the negative consequences that come with incarceration.

14 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 20, 2017

“It’s more cumbersome to simply write the ticket, even though I think their idea was to make it [the process] shorter.” —Incoming FOP president Kevin Graham

And on a societal level, the Reader estimated in 2011 that 28,000 possession arrests and prosecutions had cost Cook County residents at least $70 million. The 2014 consortium study estimated that the cost of each marijuana possession arrest ranged from $1,600 to $7,200. Even at the low end of that spectrum, last year’s more than 3,300 misdemeanor possession busts cost taxpayers more than $5 million. In the past five years, according to county records, Leshawn T. has been arrested a dozen times for possession amounts ranging from a couple grams to about an ounce of pot. In a majority of those cases the charges were dropped or he was released after spending a few days in jail. By the consortium study’s estimate, Leshawn’s incarceration and prosecution for low-level marijuana possession cost taxpayers between $19,200 and $86,400—a stunning amount for a low-level, nonviolent offender. Replacing criminal penalties with civil ﬁnes would save the state of Illinois $15.1 million in jail and probation costs and bring in more than $9 million in projected ticket revenue, according to a March 2016 analysis by the Illinois Sentencing Policy Advisory Council.

And that doesn’t even account for the projected $350 to $700 million the state could raise if it legalized and regulated pot possession, as Steans’s bill proposes. Despite the ﬁnancial and time costs associated with charging thousands of people for small amounts of weed and the blatant racial disparity in arrest rates, Angelo says he’s not personally a fan of the state’s move to decriminalize pot or the potential legalization of the drug. It’s not a stretch to think that changing the law to keep people out of prison for low-level nonviolent marijuana offenses would improve their chances of ﬁnding employment. Angelo, however, disagrees: “I don’t see those guys high on weed all day applying for too many jobs, do you?”

tate senator Steans says it’s clear that prohibition isn’t working. She says legalization is likely to lead to less crime, not more, by steering consumers away from the underground economy to a state-regulated industry, in addition to mitigating racial inequities in the criminal justice system. A 2014 study found a potential correlation between reductions in assault and murder rates and states that legalized medical marijuana. Additionally, Steans says, “there’s huge tax benefits” and “strong economic development reasons” to legalize weed, as well as reduced incarceration rates and costs and “relief for law enforcement so they can focus on higher-priority issues.” But decriminalization without full legalization may lead to a different form of disparity for the city’s African-American population. Although CPD didn’t provide racial data for the people it ticketed last year, according to the consortium, those receiving citations for marijuana possession “appeared to be a subset of those arrested.” Nearly a quarter of all citations issued last year for pot possession occurred in the city’s Greater Grand Crossing (Third), Austin (15th), and Gresham (Sixth) police districts, which encompass predominantly African-American neighborhoods. Kane-Willis says she’s concerned that even with decriminalization as the law of the land, African-Americans will still be more likely to receive tickets for possession than whites. Though the state law calls for fines between $100 and $200, the legislation allows municipalities to charge their own fines. Chicagoans caught with pot face fines of between $250 and $500. And Kane-Willis worries that these fines will disparately affect people “in racially concentrated areas of poverty where $200 or

$500 is a lot of money.” She’s also concerned about the ability to track data around citations, which is already perhaps justiﬁed by the city’s apparent choice not to track the race of ticket recipients or the address where the citation occurred. “If we see the number of citations replacing the number of arrests and the people receiving the tickets are predominantly African-Americans, then that shows the same pattern being replicated in the civil system,” Kane-Willis says. Legalization of recreational weed could take the brunt of citations off communities of color by making it legal for adults 21 and older to possess marijuana without the threat of a ticket. But neither the statewide decriminalization bill nor the proposed legislation to fully legalize marijuana works retroactively— meaning it won’t expunge an arrest record for someone who was busted carrying an eighth of weed on July 28 of last year, despite the fact that, had that person been the doing the same thing days later, they shouldn’t, according to state law, have been arrested at all. Chris Lindsey, senior legislative counsel for the Marijuana Policy Project, says the Illinois legislation doesn’t “go back and try to right some of the wrongs.” He says it’s rare for states, even those that allow recreational marijuana, to expunge the records of individuals arrested for pot possession before legalization. “The issue with arresting for possession— and while nobody likes getting arrested—the real harm long-term is the record that happens,” he says. Moving forward, he says, we need to create a way for those arrested on charges that are no longer criminal “to overcome what has happened.” “Laws generally don’t work retroactively, so it does take an effort on the part of lawmakers to include those type of provisions,” Lindsey says. Of course, reparations for the damage pot prohibition and the broader war on drugs have wreaked on the lives of those jailed for the offense—particularly people of color— feels like a pipe dream given the country’s still tenuous relationship with legal weed. But maybe in another year, or whenever the Reader next examines these issues, statewide decriminalization and the filing of legislation to legalize the drug in Illinois will turn out to have had a lasting impact on ending long-standing racial disparities in enforcement. At least, here’s hoping. v

@leevgaines

The Marijuana Issue

City of big stoners

Chicago icons seen through a haze of smoke Photographs BY DAVID SAMPSON

Willis Flower

APRIL 20, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 15

The Marijuana Issue

Mayor Emanual; Haroldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Chicken; Vienna Beef

16 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 20, 2017

The el; Wrigley Field ivy; Oprah, Ditka, Jordan; Dibs

APRIL 20, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 17

ARTS & CULTURE The Marijuana Issue

Ayako Kato o HUGH SATO

DANCE

o SAGE ELYSE

Ayako Kato moves from protest to perseverance

Medical marijuana dispensaries are sprouting up like weeds The Clinic Mundelein 1325 Armour Blvd., Mundelein, 847-616-8966, theclinicmundelein.com

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Greenhouse Group 2400 W. U.S. Rte. 6, Morris, 815-513-0124, greenhouseil.com

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Mindful Dispensary 1433 W. Fullerton Ave., suite C, Addison, 630519-1300, mindfulmmj. com

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MOCA Modern Cannabis Dispensary 2847 W. Fullerton, 773722-6622, moderncann. com New Age Care 2015 E. Euclid Ave., Mount Prospect, 224801-2015, newagecare. org PDI Medical, LLC 1623 Barclay Blvd., Buﬀalo Grove, 224-3779734, pdimedical.com PharmaCannis Health & Wellness 1804 Maple Ave., Evanston, 847-424-0140, pharmacannis.com

PharmaCannis Health & Wellness 161 S. Lincolnway, suite 301, North Aurora, 630-264-0890, pharmacannis.com PharmaCannis Health & Wellness 1135 Tower Rd., Schaumburg, 847-755-2992, pharmacannis.com Seven Point 1132 Lake St., Oak Park, 855-977-6468, sevenpointoakpark.com 3C Compassionate Care Center 1627 Rock Creek Blvd., Joliet, 815-773-9300, 3cdispensary.com

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WATCHING AYAKO KATO DANCE, it’s as though she’s suspended in time. Slow and deliberate, the Japanese-born Chicagoan is meticulous in Blue Fish, her world premiere about “balance,” “equilibrium,” and “humanity’s relationship to nature.” The piece dates as far back as 2013, when Kato began developing it in response to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster that in 2011 forced more than 100,000 people to evacuate their homes. The surrounding region has been virtually uninhabited ever since. “I imagine [the fish] as a single life, swimming in the cloister [of the area], where people are protesting the nuclear power plant for 35 years now,” Kato says of the piece. “Those people are mostly ﬁsherman and farmers.” Knowing that, it’s easy to think of Blue Fish as an elegy for a planet suffering from man-made wounds. It almost was. A previous experimental solo was rife with dark, melancholy shadows; another version featured performer Bryan Saner as “the human” in relationship to Kato’s “anonymous, unknown life” existing below the water. The ﬁnal product— now back to a solo—seems much more hopeful. The stage is adorned with a small tree, lit by a white spotlight. In the opposite corner: Kato, dressed in black, reacts to a rippling soundscape that mimics the sounds of small rocks rattling as they bounce on top of one another. Her trancelike state gives the impression that what Kato’s after is a story of perseverance in the face of environmental disaster—“like Standing Rock,” Kato says. —MATT DE LA PEÑA BLUE FISH Fri 4/21-Sat 4/22, 7 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, Michigan and Randolph, 312-742-1168, seechicagodance.com. F

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b ALL AGES

Travis Turner as Johnny and Hayley Burgess as Charlotte in The Mystery of Sex at Writers Theatre o MICHAEL BROSILOW

THEATER

Unsolved mysteries

By TONY ADLER

hat’s really mysterious about Bathsheba Doran’s The Mystery of Love and Sex is her rendering of the word mystery itself, in the title: singular rather than plural, as if there were only one. As if anybody who’s reached the age of interest (i.e., most living humans) can’t easily think of 10,000 riddles, enigmas, conundrums, and secrets relating to love and sex and the interactions thereof. Sure, we all spend our lives asking a single question when it comes to those subjects—a bewildered “Hunh?” But that hunh means something different every single goddamn time. Especially now. It’s argued that America’s belated and uneasy acknowledgment of multiple sexual and gender identities will take some of the awful mystery out of romance, allowing us to be more frankly and specifically who we are. I doubt it. As a practical matter, the death of the binary makes flirtations more fraught than ever, each one constituting its own new universe of mysteries. The current cultural wobble figures among the hunhs of The Mystery of Love and Sex. In fact, sexual preference appears at times to be

Doran’s subject. Yet it’s nothing but window dressing in the end—a way to add an edgy frisson that was sure to have been appreciated in 2015, when the play premiered at New York’s Lincoln Center. The playwright’s actual focus has been a staple of theatrical investigation since the classical period: the question of why our physical desires so seldom align with those of our hearts. Here to investigate the matter are Charlotte, Jonny, Lucinda, and Howard. They come as a set, and we spend about ten years with them overall. Lucinda (the excellent Lia Mortensen) is the mom, a southern girl of a particular sort: white, well-bred, sharp-tongued, and fun loving in a way that might get scary after the third or fourth wine spritzer. She smokes too much and calls people “sugar.” Lucinda went north to college and brought back Howard, her very own New York Jew, mostly just to rile daddy—which worked splendidly. Howard (the usually excellent Keith Kupferer, somewhat too teddy bearish this time around) became a successful, workaholic novelist specializing in detective ﬁction, and Lucinda, naturally, grew to revile him. Together they engendered Charlotte (Hayley Burgess):

ARTS & CULTURE talkative, passionate, sweetly manic, and entirely too unguarded. She and Jonny have been soul mates since they were nine years old, the age at which Charlotte tried to commit suicide—a coincidence that goes oddly unremarked in the script. When we first meet them, during their freshman year at college, Charlotte and Jonny’s affinity is as total as it is unconventional, given that Jonny is a black boy from a broken home. And they enjoy that about themselves. “I feel like we’re this model of how the world should be,” Charlotte tells Jonny while sitting around in her dorm room. “There should totally be a documentary about us,” Jonny replies. Of course this cannot stand. Charlotte tries to push their hitherto platonic relationship to the next level, quite literally offering Jonny her naked body. But he demurs. Can it be that he doesn’t want to risk losing their spiritual bond for the sake of a momentary pleasure? All things being equal and the invitation being clear, no college-age male would fail to take that risk. Then what oh what can it possibly be? Doran tries to make us wonder. But, especially as embodied by Travis Turner in Marti Lyons’s staging, running now at Writers Theatre, any moderately astute audience member would see from the start that Jonny’s reticence is rooted in the fact that (spoiler alert!) he’s gay. You might think Lyons and Doran put Jonny’s secret in plain sight as strategy, to dramatize the notion that Charlotte is intentionally blind and hence has reasons of her own for ignoring the obvious. But the collegiate Charlotte isn’t in denial about her own same-sex impulses (although she initially likes to think of herself as bisexual), so where’s the motive? What’s more, Howard and Lucinda don’t catch on either—especially hard to believe where unfiltered Lucinda is concerned. No, Jonny’s unacknowledged orientation seems best explained as a contrivance meant to complete a literary symmetry: Howard and Lucinda are sexually suited but out of love, Jonny and Charlotte are in love but sexually off-limits to each other. Doran goes on to bend that contrivance toward what can only be described as a liberal’s feel-good ending. Mystery, it turns out, isn’t an investigation but an act of wish fulfillment. Hunh. v THE MYSTERY OF LOVE AND SEX Through 7/2: Wed-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 and 6 PM, Tue 7:30 PM, Writers Theatre, 325 Tudor Court, Glencoe, 847-242-6000, writerstheatre.org, $35-$80.

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ß @taadler APRIL 20, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 19

ARTS & CULTURE VISUAL ART

‘Fear and Freedom in America,’ sabotaged o COURTESY THE INTERNATIONAL SPY MUSEUM, WASHINGTON DC

By DMITRY SAMAROV

20 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 20, 2017

pies, Traitors, and Saboteurs: Fear and Freedom in America,” now up at the Chicago History Museum, is an exhibit with a provocative subject that’s hobbled by poor presentation. For example, a massive time line—inexplicably mounted on wavelike plastic bas-relief rather than a flat wall—takes up the long hallway at the entrance and immediately confuses the viewer. Walking back and forth along its span, it’s possible to trace the events chronicled in each of the exhibition’s sections, yet much more difficult to discern connections between them. And because of the time line’s physical length, you’re actually led past one of the early displays and are forced to double back in order to take in the show in chronological order. Organized by the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., and arriving at the CHS after crisscrossing the country over the last 13 years, “Spies” focuses on nine

ARTS & CULTURE events that threatened America’s freedom, starting with the War of 1812 and concluding with 9/11. By presenting homegrown acts of terror like the Oklahoma City bombing around the corner from Japanese internment camps, the show challenges visitors to confront the ways the U.S. government and citizenry have dealt with self-inflicted turmoil throughout the country’s history. But “Spies” is beset by weak aesthetic presentation and an illogical layout. Much of the exhibit is presented on divisions that don’t reach the room’s ceiling, and the supports are made of plywood, foam, and other cheap materials. There are robes and bibles that belonged to members of the Ku Klux Klan, but they’re placed next to wall graphics that look like they were printed at a local copy shop 15 years ago. A short anticommunist propaganda film, introduced by Jack Webb, could effectively illustrate the paranoia of the red scare, but the agitprop short is screened across from a wall of ersatz filing cabinets holding reproductions of FBI files on such luminaries as Marilyn Monroe and Paul Robeson. The juxtaposition of actual

artifacts and haphazardly manufactured set pieces robs the show of both continuity and impact. Each of the nine events has text, visual, and audio elements, but little ties one section to the next. In 2004, when “Spies” originally opened, people might have had the patience to sort out the exhibit for themselves, but in 2017 anyone could get more information about the subject matter by reading a few Wikipedia entries and watching some YouTube clips. There are touch screens in the show that ask visitors poll questions, such as how a government should deal with the spies it captures. After one submits an answer, the results of the poll appear, revealing attendees’ answers since 2004. An interactive element such as this exists to engage the public, but it just made me realize that I could learn more by going online. v “SPIES, TRAITORS, AND SABOTEURS: FEAR AND FREEDOM IN AMERICA” Through 11/26: Mon, Wed-Sat 9:30 AM-4:30 PM, Tue 9:30 AM-7:30 PM, Sun noon-5 PM, Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark, 312-642-4600, chicagohistory.org, $16, $14 seniors and students, free for children 12 and younger.

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ARTS & CULTURE Jonah Ray leads a brand-new cast in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 revival. o DARREN MICHAELS, SMPSP

SMALL SCREEN

Robots reboot the way we watch movies By LEOR GALIL

graycenter. uchicago.edu/ humanrights

22 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 20, 2017

Saturday, April 29, 9:30am–5pm & Monday, May 1, 6–9pm Free and open to the public Logan Center for the Arts 915 E 60th Street, Chicago

he return of the cult TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000, which originally ran on three different networks for roughly 11 years until 1999, is an act of playful subversion. In late 2015 series creator Joel Hodgson broke Kickstarter records with a campaign to fund 14 new MST3K episodes, raking in more than $5.7 million. Last Friday Netflix premiered a new version of the program that unearths turds of the silver screen. For the uninitiated, here’s the conceit behind the show: a Gizmonic Institute research lab employee is trapped in a bone-shaped spacecraft called the Satellite of Love by a small team of mad scientists (“Mads” in the show’s parlance), who force him to watch obscure and forgotten B movies. Our hapless hero jeers and riffs on the films with the help of a couple robots—the golden, gangly Crow T. Robot and the squat Tom Servo, whose head is a gumball machine. Interacting with a movie is by no means novel. Responding to a physical act onscreen with one offscreen, as the MST3K characters sometimes do, is part of what helped make The Rocky Horror Picture Show a phenomenon—it’s the audience’s interactions with the film that have helped keep the schlocky 1975 movie a midnight staple. There’s something to sharing a communal space with strangers and feeling the energy created by reacting to the film as a group. Even if audiences tackle the new MST3K solo, the viewing experience is enhanced by the onscreen commentary from keen comics who know all the beats. Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return arrives at a curious time for film. Netflix is not

only shifting the way indie flicks and blockbusters get distributed, it’s also changed our viewing habits. The service’s cornucopia of films can be overwhelming. Since Netflix tries to tailor its list to an individual’s taste based on his or her viewing history, it’s increasingly easy to ignore something new in favor of the comfortably familiar. The new MST3K throws a wrench in the equation. Nothing can help liquefy ossifying tastes like asking someone to purposefully watch a 90-minute stinker. But the cast, led by Gizmonic employee Jonah Heston (Nerdist podcast host Jonah Ray), enlivens the dullest moments with a torrent of riffs. The Mads—Kinga Forrester (Felicia Day) and Max (Patton Oswalt)—also get some quips in during the breaks, a holdover from MST3K’s original runs that can seem gratuitous given the switch to commercial-free Netflix. When MST3K’s intra-episode viewers hit their stride—as they do with great clarity while reacting to the 1980s bigfoot dud Cry Wilderness in episode two—time feels irrelevant even though the film moves at a glacial pace. The new MST3K’s most subversive qualities come out when it’s not only demanding viewers’ undivided attention but encouraging them to zoom in and even appreciate a trashy film’s mistakes. The folks behind MST3K have long known that a powerful film experience comes in how we respond, and sometimes even the most inept movies are capable of making us feel something unique—we just need to fill in the blanks. v MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000: THE RETURN Streaming on Netflix

ß @imLeor

Get showtimes at chicagoreader.com/movies.

ARTS & CULTURE

continued from 23

In spite of this issue, The Way to Andina is an upbeat experience. Parsa shows great affection for the people who supported the opera’s creation, including the singers, the conductor, and the public relations specialist who helped him promote it. His use of illustrations to visualize the opera’s research and transcription (inspired, he says, by Errol Morris’s documentaries) is witty and engaging. And the movie communicates the excitement of recovering history and of putting on a show. Given its educational value and G-rated content, it would be ideal viewing for kids, and Parsa expresses interest in having the film screened for music education classes. Later this year the ﬁlmmaker plans to premiere another documentary, this one about activists for affordable housing in Bronzeville. He’s also about to start writing his ﬁrst dramatic feature. But he wants to continue promoting his great-grandfather’s music whenever he has the chance. Parsa is currently talking with Chris Ramaekers, who conducted the stage production of Andina, about recording a soundtrack album, and he’s been in touch with Luis Carlos Rodríguez Álvarez, a musicologist at the University of Antioquia in Medellín, about workshopping the opera at the university next year. (Álvarez has also arranged for the National Symphony Orchestra of Colombia to perform Three Spanish Dances in August.) Evidently the way to Andina leads to the future as well as the past, with Parsa introducing new generations to a piece of Latino culture that nearly slipped through the cracks of history. v

ß @1bsachs

The Holy Biker

LATINO FILM FESTIVAL

Hey, what’s going on down there? New features from Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina screen at this year’s festival

resented by the International Latino Cultural Center of Chicago, the Chicago Latino Film Festival opens Thursday, April 20, and continues daily through Thursday, May 4. All films screen at River East 21, 322 E. Illinois. General admission is $13, $10 for students, seniors, and members of ILCC; a festival pass, good for 12 general admissions, is $120 or $90 for ILCC members. For advance sales call 312-431-1330 or visit chicagolatinofilmfestival.org. Following are reviews of eight features screening at the festival; unless otherwise noted, all films are in Spanish with subtitles.

Parsa with a portrait of his great-grandfather o JIAYUE YU

24 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 20, 2017

At Your Doorstep Set in Spain when the housing bubble burst in 2007—a full year before the financial crisis would be felt in the U.S.—this 2016 musical recalls Rent and Les Misérables in that the primary catalysts for the characters breaking into song are despair and displacement. But these songs, performed by a mix of professional and amateur vocalists, are less showy and also less memorable. The narrative revolves around an evicted woman (Spanish singer Sílvia Pérez Cruz), her husband, and their ten-year-old daughter, but also weaves in the woman’s well-to-do banker friend (Oriol Vila) and the police officer who expels the family (Ivan Benet). Director Eduard Cortés, who cowrote the film with Piti Español, feels for the humiliated family but also for the guilt-ridden authorities as they carry out their jobs; the characters’ pain is expressed unflinchingly in each song. —LEAH PICKETT 93 min. Fri 4/28, 6:15 PM, and Mon 5/1, 5:45 PM. Between Sea and Land Former child actor Manolo Cruz scripted and stars in this 2016 Colombian drama, playing an impoverished young man whose body is painfully twisted by an incurable neuromuscular disorder. Dependent on a

machine that uses electrical impulses to treat his contractions, he lies bedridden in his shack on a Caribbean inlet, barely able to glimpse the sea outside. The character’s scenes with his mother (Vicky Hernández) and the next-door neighbor he adores (Viviana Serna) are engrossing in their unfussy realism, as Cruz (who dropped 44 pounds for the role) uses the tiniest of movements to suggest the red-blooded man trapped inside the infirm body. Carlos del Castillo directed. —ANDREA GRONVALL 98 min. Sat 4/29, 6:45 PM, and Tue 5/2, 6:15 PM. Dark Skull The influence of Argentine filmmaker Lisandro Alonso (Jauja, Los Muertos) hangs over this debut feature by Bolivian writer-director Kiro Russo. Like Alonso, Russo employs nonprofessional actors, immersive sound design, colorful locations (realized so vividly that they practically register as characters), and frequent narrative ellipses; they conjure such a strong mood that I was sucked in despite the derivative style. A young ne’er-do-well, struck by his father’s death, abandons city life to return to the countryside where he was raised, move in with his grandmother, and join his uncle in the local coal mine. The young

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Beyond Sea and Land man clashes with his new surroundings, and his coworkers treat him with distrust, but eventually he takes his first steps toward maturity. Much of the action happens at night or underground, and Russo uses the dark environments to convey the protagonist’s uneasiness as well as the seductive power of the unknown. —BEN SACHS 77 min. Tue 4/25, 8 PM, and Wed 4/26, 8:30 PM. Dogs Method actor John Leguizamo plunges into character for this brutal Colombian drama (2016), playing a mild-mannered farmer whose crime of passion lands him in a decrepit prison full of scheming convicts and sadistic guards. Slow to adjust—and even slower to realize that his wife and son no longer want anything to do with him—the protagonist eventually learns to protect himself and settle scores on the inside. The film often recalls Jacques Audiard’s French feature A Prophet (2009) but without the poetry or mysticism; here, revenge is a dish too cold to be savored. Harold Trompetero directed. —ANDREA GRONVALL 83 min. Fri 4/28, 7 PM; Sun 4/30, 8:45 PM; and Wed 5/3, 8:30 PM. The Holy Biker This semicoherent action movie has something to do with Brazilian motorcycle gangs fighting in the desert to claim a Virgin Mary statue that’s believed to have magic powers. The film’s stark locations, religious symbolism, and violent eroticism sometimes recall the 1970s work of Alejandro Jodorowsky, but first-time director Homero Olivetto lacks the other filmmaker’s mad showmanship, delivering only a tepid biker saga with the occasional dreamlike flourish. There’s some nice action, and Olivetto’s use of sped-up motion heightens the suspense of the vehicular chases, but the movie

tends to flatten out whenever the characters get off their bikes, and a pervasive air of sexism undermines the fun (the hero spends a good deal of the movie assisting a stranded woman from the city, who spontaneously disrobes and offers herself to him). In Portuguese with subtitles. —BEN SACHS 86 min. Fri 4/28, 8:30 PM, and Sun 4/30, 8:15 PM. Olancho Manuel Chirinos, the central figure in this documentary, was a family-oriented farmer in the Olancho region of eastern Honduras who made big money playing drug cartel parties with his band, Los Plebes de Olancho (“A plebe is a farmer who struggles to survive,” he explains). But when his song lyrics offended the narcos, Chirinos was forced to flee to the U.S., where he resides in North Carolina as an undocumented immigrant. Though plodding at times, the movie benefits from its humble, sympathetic subject; Chirinos discusses his complicated feelings about his homeland and playing for the narcos as well as his heartbreak at being separated from his family and his band. Documentary makers Chris Valdes and Ted Griswold were granted remarkable access to the musicians in Olancho and clearly care for them and their families, but they only scratch the surface of the unrelenting and often misunderstood issue of cartel violence driving refugees into the United States. —LEAH PICKETT 70 min. Sat 4/22, 6:15 PM, and Mon 4/24, 8 PM.

One Night of Love In this 2016 Argentine comedy, middle-aged spouses Leonel (Sebastian Wainraich) and Paola (Carla Peterson), disturbed to learn that their best married friends are breaking up, leave their two kids with Leonel’s mother and attempt

a date night in Buenos Aires. Their evening out is unobtrusively punctuated by flashbacks and dream sequences that reveal how their problems mirror those of their divorcing friends; in the film’s most effective motif, Leonel and Paola repeat the abstract reasons given for the breakup—“the passing of time, the burnout, the routine”—but with growing self-awareness. Other Woody Allen-esque touches, such as the husband’s Frank Sinatra CD continually skipping on the track “The Way You Look Tonight,” lend even the more dramatic moments a wry charm. Hernán Guerschuny directed his own script. —LEAH PICKETT 90 min. Screens on Thursday, April 20, as part of the opening-night program; tickets are $90. Thu 4/20, 6 PM, and Sat 4/22, 6:30 PM. Tamara This 2016 drama from Venezuelan-American filmmaker Elia K. Schneider fictionalizes the real-life story of Tamara Adrián, the first transgender person to be elected to Venezuela’s National Assembly. Now one of the country’s foremost LGBTQ and women’s rights activists, Adrián transitioned from male to female while working as a professor at a Catholic university; a conservative upbringing in a predominantly Catholic country, among other factors, had discouraged her from publicly expressing her gender identity earlier in life. I was troubled to see, yet again, a male actor (Luis Fernández) playing a trans woman—it reinforces the harmful, often deadly stereotype that such a woman is simply a man in a dress—but arguably the casting makes sense here, given that the bulk of the film covers Adrián’s life before her transition. —LEAH PICKETT 110 min. Screens on Thursday, May 4, as part of the closing-night program; tickets are $90. v

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APRIL 20, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 25

Out of the Past Records

Visit chicagoreader.com for Record Store Day listings and an interactive map detailing in-store performances, discounts, and other specials at participating shops.

Record stores for Record Store Day heretics

It’s always a good time to skip the lines and get acquainted with the great neighborhood shops that don’t partake in the annual retail circus. By LEOR GALIL and KEVIN WARWICK | Photos by ALISON GREEN

ecord Store Day’s organizers originally promoted it as a celebration of the mom-and-pop shops that had survived music retail’s postpiracy nosedive while the likes of Sam Goody and Tower Records collapsed around them. But this international consumer “holiday” turns ten years old on Saturday, April 22, and as early as 2012 the Reader was already asking whether the whole production

26 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 20, 2017

had jumped the shark. Record Store Day was starting to look like a way to transform brickand-mortar stores into conduits for labels to feed overpriced limited-edition vinyl to customers willing to stand in line for hours before anybody even powers up the cash registers. These days, big-name indie chains such as Reckless Records don’t seem to participate in Record Store Day so much as be held hostage by it. Once a shop factors the holiday’s

revenue bump into its budget—in 2015, for instance, sales for indepent U.S. shops the week of RSD were almost 50 percent higher than the preceding week—it can be difficult to do without. Stores end up resigned to watching freak unsellable releases collect dust in discount-bin purgatory. Anyone who flips through the inventory at one of these unfortunate establishments for long enough will inevitably stumble upon a copy of the

unwieldy 2013 reissue of the Flaming Lips’ Zaireeka, whose four LPs are meant to be played simultaneously. And in 2022 shoppers will surely still be ﬁnding the leftovers from one of 2017’s least essential RSD specials: 1,000 copies of the Corey Feldman seven-inch “Go 4 It!” (featuring Snoop Dogg). Of course, some low-key neighborhood shops celebrate Record Store Day the same way they celebrate every other business day: by ﬂipping a sign over from CLOSED to OPEN. To their owners, the third Saturday in April differs from every other Saturday on the calendar only in that they might get a few extra phone calls or see an unusual number of unfamiliar faces. They don’t necessarily boycott Record Store Day—they might hand out promotional freebies provided by its PR machine or even stock a couple of special RSD releases—but they don’t depend on it. The atmosphere in these shops is more about sharing a communal space with like-minded music lovers and less about showing up with a list of wants from the hundreds-deep RSD special-release catalog and seeing what’s on the shelves. Of the six shops the Reader visited for this year’s Record Store Day, only one plans to host an in-store performance—Kstarke has booked a couple bands and a slate of DJs to spin records. It’s also the only store to bother with any RSD releases at all—owner Kevin Starke says he typically stocks just 30 or so. For the most part these stores don’t involve themselves with any official Record Store Day promotions. They rely for their lifeblood on loyal neighborhood customers, or on pilgrims happy to cross continents to dig through a northern-soul collection or a stack of rare house singles. Each is an unpretentious salon for eccentrics who want a cozy place to, say, shoot the shit about the Stax house band of the mid-60s. At record stores such as these, the owners’ personalities feel inextricably woven into the scenery—stepping through the front door of Record Dugout, for example, is a little like walking into the living room of a zealous collector. The shops in this roundup also exist outside the magnetic pull of retail-dense Wicker Park and Lincoln Park. They all have their own long history in Chicago, and though they’re not as well-known outside their neighborhoods as a Reckless or a Permanent or a Dusty Groove, they’re just as much a part of the city’s musical culture.

ß @imLeor and @kevinwarwick

Record Store Day

BOB’S BLUES & JAZZ MART

3419 W. Irving Park 773-539-5002 Monday-Saturday, 10:30 AM-6:30 PM

Great for: blues and jazz LPs, old 78s so pristine they might never have been played, cheap compilation albums, talking with the owner about classic ﬁlms

Bob Koester

BOB KOESTER, OWNER The reason I went back in is we bought a rather large jazz LP collection. We closed Jazz Record Mart, I think, in January, and bought the collection a couple of months later. I just couldn’t turn it down. For a while we sold stuﬀ in the front room at Delmark

Records on Rockwell. The rent is a lot cheaper than downtown. Ten percent or so of what it would be—more like 8 percent. It’s kind of an overgrown hobby. I was originally gonna be a filmmaker who collected records. Instead I’m a record maker, and I do collect films. A lot of the stuff we have

are collections. What’s the use of buying new ones to sell on a shorter margin than secondhand? I’m working six days now—I’d like to cut it to five. I’m the boss of me right now, and I’m not gonna give me a vacation till I get somebody to replace me. But we’re not quite there yet, in terms of sales.

APRIL 20, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 27

Record Store Day

OUT OF THE PAST RECORDS

4407 W. Madison 773-626-3878 Monday-Saturday, 11 AM-6 PM

Great for: R&B, blues, and jazz; piles of eighttracks and a wall of cassettes; the special pleasure of combing through dusty, barely organized records for hours; a cross-eyed store cat

Marie Henderson

MARIE HENDERSON, CO-OWNER Out of the Past has been here since 1986. We basically had ten stores. When we closed the stores down, we needed a spot to put stuﬀ in, so this came available. My husband bought it, and we decided we’d just make this into

28 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 20, 2017

a major record store. It started small, wound up big—you can’t walk around, full of dust. We’ve been run out by the animals. I live around the corner from here. I’ve been living in this neighborhood since 1963. My major first store was on Pulaski and Madison in 1966, and then we traveled around. I can’t

remember all the stores. I enjoy it—getting old and forgetful, but I enjoy. I’m glad I got the two guys, ’cause they can remind me of some of the records. This is a record place. If you’re looking for something, you want to come look, and you don’t mind getting your hands dirty, this is the place.

Record Store Day

RECORD DUGOUT

6053 W. 63rd 773-586-1206 Monday-Thursday, noon-6:30 PM; SaturdaySunday, noon-4:30 PM

Great for: deep crates of 45s, aﬀordable classic-rock essentials, baseball-card trivia, comics, collectible toys, loud conversations with neighborhood folks

Chicago forever.

Celebrating 60 Years of Making Music! We’ve been singing and strumming with Chicago since 1957! Join the party with a class this year in guitar, banjo, dance, ukulele, and so much more! Steve Batinich o JIAYUE YU

STEVE BATINICH, OWNER I started in the record business in 1989, a little bit east of here at 4220 W. 63 rd . B o u g ht t his building in 1999. This part of town is more residential, a little bit out of the way. It’s not like I’m in Lincoln Park—we got kids all

over the place. I’ve always done baseball cards and records and eventually branched out with comic books and collectibles. I just enjoy collecting things, junking around—it’s in your blood. I think I’m a little bit different—not that I’m better—but there’s not a lot

of places except for Ciba at Logan Hardware where you c an ask for your northern-soul 45s, your garage box from the 60s, your doo-wop. I’ve made some money, a lot of friends, and a few enemies over the years. It’s a dog-eat-dog business, you know.

New adult group classes start May 1st

Celebrate with us and learn more at

oldtownschool.org APRIL 20, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 29

NEW

Record Store Day

RALEIGH RITCHIE

MAY 04

GAVIN JAMES

MAY 09

PITCH TALKS PODCAST

MAY 15

EDAMAME

PANTHA DU PRINCE

MAY 17

TEEBS + FREE THE ROBOTS + LEFTO

MAY 26

ZZ WARD

MAY 31

TONY MOLINA + ABLEBODY

THE PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART

JUN 24

SONGHOY BLUES

OCT 05

FLETCHER’S 1 STOP

457 E. 75th 773-874-4484 Monday-Saturday, 11 AM-6:30 PM

Great for: hip-hop, R&B, gospel, and jazz CDs; cheap DVDs; nostalgic poster-size album art; learning the ins and outs of the wholesale business from the staﬀ

Kenny Lott

UNWED SAILOR

APR 28

SPORTS BOYFRIEND

LYDIA AINSWORTH

APR 28

JACKSON WHALAN

APR 30

JILLETTE JOHNSON

MAY 01

TOPAZ + SPA MOANS

SUPERPOZE

MAY 03

NEW

SAVOIR ADORE

JUN 01

NEW

BENT KNEE

JUN 12

NEW

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YEEK

SPORTS

JUL 27

ZEKE DUHON

30 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 20, 2017

KENNY LOTT, BUYER We’ve been in business for 65 years. Mr. Fletcher and his wife started it back in the 50s. I’ve been here 37 years, right out of high school. They wouldn’t let me leave. The neighborhood supports us a lot. Vinyl was a thing in the 60s and really started going out in the 80s. We were still able to get vinyl

with Thriller, even up till Bad. Then cassettes faded out. The record business has its ups and downs. We just went straight CDs and didn’t get back into vinyl, because it increased in price and a lot of people don’t want to pay for it. One guy said, “I saw they’re releasing Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life—can you order me the album?” I said, “Yeah,

it’s $45.” Then I go to Reckless and a couple others on the north side, and people were picking it up, swiping them cards, buying that vinyl. The first year they did Record Store Day, I had a lot of people from the north side come in because they knew about the store and just came by to look. I get quite a few calls still.

Record Store Day

KSTARKE RECORDS

1109 N. Western 773-772-4880 Tuesday-Saturday, noon-7 PM; Sunday, noon-5 PM

Great for: Chicago dance LPs; soul, funk, and hip-hop staples; a cozy listening nook; the owner’s tales of DJing for decades in the local dance scene

Kevin Starke

KEVIN STARKE, OWNER Every DJ kid is like, “One day I want to have a record store.” I never worked in any record store—I knew zero about this business. Like, I know when I go in, I buy a record, pay the guy, walk out, go home, and play the record. As far as what else to do? I never did

anything like this before. I started selling out of my house a lot. I had so many people buying from me at my house at one time that my next-door neighbor—an ex-cop—he pulled me aside one day, and he’s like, “Hey Kevin, I know we’re friends and everything, and I don’t care what you do in your spare

time, but you’re not selling drugs, are you?” And I’m like, “No, man, I swear, I’m selling records—you can come down and look.” I knew this neighborhood ’cause it was my old stomping grounds , and I saw that it was rapidly changing. I looked in the window—I just liked how it looked. I had saved up

my own money; I didn’t get a loan. When we first opened, the records weren’t even alphabetized. “OK, you’re gonna dig.” I get more people from Europe that know I exist than anywhere else. I’ve had 2 0 -year- olds from France be like, “I can’t believe we’re here,” and

they’re taking pictures. They’re like, “Oh, we all know you in France.” Then I get someone, like, “I’ve been living here 20 years— when’d you move here?” They’re two doors over. I’m like, “I’ve been here 11 years! How does a guy from France know me, and you live right next door and you don’t?”

On Record Store Day, Kstarke will be open longer than usual: from 10 AM till 8 PM. The bands Lettucehead and the Wick will perform, and several DJs will spin: Glenna J. Fitch, Alex Gonzalez, Tim Zawada, Shazam Bangles, Mark Grusane, Jesse S Andwich, Jarvis Mason, Jerome Derradji, and Kevin Starke.

APRIL 20, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 31

Record Store Day

LET’S BOOGIE RECORDS & TAPES

3321 S. Halsted 773-254-0139 Monday-Saturday, 11 AM-6 PM; Sunday, noon-3PM

NEAL S. KELLER, OWNER Been here 44 years. There was another record store down the block, run by an older woman who didn’t really like kids and definitely didn’t like rock ’n’ roll. She’d sell a lot of 45s . . . Barry Manilow and Bobby Vinton and Andy Williams, classic stuﬀ like

32 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 20, 2017

Great for: rock LPs from the 70s and 80s, huge wall cases of cassettes, life-size cutouts of Neil Diamond and Ringo Starr, a good yarn or three from the owner, plenty of elbow room for browsing

that. And there was some barber shops that used to sell vinyl. But the neighborhood needed a rock ’n’ roll place. Don’t we all? I made it through downloads. You guys tried to put me out of business— your age group. If you think about it, you pick the pockets of the bands. That’s why the music was

so boring for the last ten years. I’m not into the hipster lifestyle. I don’t know why people would buy the same album on four colors, you know. “I got the blue one.” OK. I got cu sto m e rs c allin g m e ever y day looking for a certain color. It ain’t happening. v

Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week of April 20 b ALL AGES F

PICK OF THE WEEK

Veteran jazz reedist Charles Lloyd begins a new chapter with the Marvels

MUSIC

THURSDAY20 Scott Amendola & Wil Blades 8 PM, SPACE, 1245 Chicago, Evanston, $15-$25. b On the cover of their cheekily titled new album Greatest Hits (Sazi), Bay Area drummer Scott Amendola and Hammond B-3 groove merchant (and Evanston native) Wil Blades are pitted against one another behind their respective setups, but the music they make relies on total cooperation. As a duo they generate a thick, full-bodied sound, Blades using the organ’s bass pedals to build a deep bottom and Amendola getting a fat presence from his kit without losing his touch on swing and bossa-nova accents. Over the course of the seven originals recorded live at the Duende club in Oakland the pair serve up loads of funk that can be both greasy and sleek within a single tune (“Lima Bean”). “Slow Zig,” which is likely a salute to Meters drummer Zigaboo Modeliste, keeps cool with a hazy atmosphere, and “Addis” bridges the gap between the golden age of Ethiopian soul and early 70s Stevie Wonder. The duo can seriously shift gears too. The drummer’s gorgeous ballad “Deep Eyes” oozes lyric tenderness, while Blades occasionally complements his organ swells and runs with the twangy bite of a Clavinet. More often, though, the pair simultaneously invoke the classic sound of a Hammond trio while resourcefully tapping fresh sources. —PETER MARGASAK

SPECIAL GUEST:

BEACON

FRIDAY, APRIL 28 RIVIERA THEATRE

THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN

Dark Fog Bionic Cavemen and Velcro Lewis Group open. 9 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $10. o D. DARR

CHARLES LLOYD & THE MARVELS, TOMEKA REID QUARTET Fri 4/21, 8 PM, Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan, $28-$89. b

AT 79, CHARLES LLOYD has taken part in a major chunk of modern jazz history. He’s called himself a “sound seeker,” and during the 60s and early 70s he became an inheritor of John Coltrane’s spiritual yearning, his sinewy tenor sax casting a veneer of calm over roiling arrangements. More recently, in a stunning late-career renaissance, he’s melded meditative beauty with burning soulfulness, and last year he further demonstrated his refusal to coast with the release of I Long to See You (Blue Note), a simmering knockout recorded with a combo he calls the Marvels. If that name suggests a rock band, you’re at least partly right: the album opens with a cover of Bob Dylan’s classic protest song “Masters of War” and includes a version of Joe Cocker’s “You Are So Beautiful” (sung by Norah Jones) as well as the pop-folk antiwar song “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream” with Willie Nelson. Lloyd’s front-line partners are guitarist Bill Frisell and steel guitarist Greg Leisz, who’s best known for his peerless session work in rock and country. The group also plays gorgeous versions of traditional pieces like “Shenandoah” and the Mexican folk ballad “La Llorona,” and there’s even a terse arrangement of the spiritual “Abide With Me,” which famously opens the Thelonious Monk classic Monk’s Music. But Lloyd hasn’t embraced fusion. The front line interweaves lines that are as vulnerable as they are wiry and muscular, and often does so at a patient clip, Lloyd’s longtime rhythm section of bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Eric Harland playing in slow motion without a wobble. I Long to See You stands as one of the loveliest albums of 2016. —PETER MARGASAK

On Anatomy of a Sellout (Logan Hardware) Dark Fog run their glowing nuggets of psych through a rock tumbler, retaining the genre’s impenetrable mystique while polishing away much of the indulgent noodling that many contemporary psych bands seem to think is a foundational element. Not that there isn’t any freaked-out wailing—there’s plenty. But Dark Fog know how to play with purpose, and on the record it pays oﬀ in something resembling cohesion. Lugubrious passages melt into astral-pop melodies with noticeable beginnings and ends—but I’m almost happy to overlook the sequencing of the tracks so that I can blissfully let the whole package gel together. Dark Fog aren’t the only ones celebrating a new record tonight: stoner-rock act Bionic Cavemen play behind their new Reactor, and the Velcro Lewis Group drop Taking Frogg Mountain. —LEOR GALIL

SPECIAL GUEST: THE COBBS MAY 10 • RIVIERA THEATRE

FRIDAY21 Olivia Block 8 PM, Rockefeller Chapel, University of Chicago, 5850 S. Woodlawn. F b One of the recurring tricks in the tool kit of extraordinary Chicago sound artist Olivia Block is to toy with the listener’s perception by playing with the boundaries between natural and artificial sound. Back in 2003, as part of the long-running Florasonic series in the Fern Room at the Lincoln Park Conservatory, she created a purely electronic J

BUY TICKETS AT

APRIL 20, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 33

Olivia Block

MUSIC

o ANDREA BAUER

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

continued from 33

installation that meticulously mirrored the space’s babbling water sounds before zooming into whitenoise abstraction, prompting attendees to think about what was real and what wasn’t. Tonight Block premieres a new site-specific work that uses the massive organ in the spectacular Rockefeller Chapel on the campus of University of Chicago. She paid five visits to the venue and worked with house organist Thomas Weisflog to get a handle on the instrument and the complex acoustic properties of the space, and she’ll share her research in a piece called 132 Ranks, named for the groupings of pipes in the cathedral. For the first half she’ll use the instrument’s foot pedals to create ultralow bass tones that are felt more than heard, summoning psychoacoustic interference combined with prerecorded electronic white noise and sounds from an old Korg electronic organ. The second half of the piece will explore the organ’s highest tones via a series of thickening timbres that descend and collide with sine tones. Block told me she hopes listeners will walk around the space to experience how the collision of sound can generate radically different effects depending on one’s location. She said that the organ—which contains 8,565 pipes in 132 ranks and 150 different stops—is like a synthesizer in its richness and range, with seemingly infinite possibilities. Based on her previous work, I can’t wait to experience some of them in person. —PETER MARGASAK

34 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 20, 2017

man David Gedge taking on the role as the band’s sole founding and constant member. After spending the majority of his career crafting urgent and earnest rock music, Gedge set out to make September’s Going, Going . . . (released on his label Scopitones) an immersive multimedia experience and the Wedding Present’s most ambitious record to date—and he succeeded. Ranging from experimental ambience to mellow guitar meandering to heady, angular noise rock, each of the record’s whopping 20 tracks—with the pensive, ten-minute “Santa Monica” providing the climax—is accompanied by a corresponding short film. Shot across North America by Gedge and photographer Jessica McMillan, the ﬁlms, which not so surprisingly feature ambient landscape footage, are packaged with the record on DVD. —LUCA CIMARUSTI

Charles Lloyd & the Marvels See Pick of the Week (page 33). Tomeka Reid Quartet open. 8 PM, Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan, $28-$89. b Wedding Present Colleen Green opens. 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, $20. Since their formation in 1985 up to and following a hiatus that stretched between 1997 and 2004, Leeds-based indie-rock outfit the Wedding Present have consistently turned over lineups, with front

SATURDAY22 Chicago Opera Theater presents The Perfect American 7:30 PM, Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph, $39-$125. b Philip Glass’s 2013 opera about Walt Disney is based on a 2001 novel by Peter Stephan Jungk. Focused on the last three months of Disney’s life, The Perfect American imagines what might have passed through the mind of the ﬂawed visionary as he lay

in the hospital dying, including outlandish visits with Andy Warhol and an animatronic Abe Lincoln. This production, directed by Kevin Newbury, is coproduced by Chicago Opera Theater and Long Beach Opera, where it opened last month. It’s the 25th opera for Glass, who turned 80 in January, and the score might be his crowning achievement within the form. If that’s not incentive enough, local cartoontists, caricature artists, and watercolorists will be in the lobby beginning an hour prior to each performance to offer free portraits to audience members on a first-come, first-served basis. —DEANNA ISAACS

Mono Holy Sons open. 9 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $18, $16 in advance. For their ninth full-length album, last year’s Requiem for Hell (Temporary Residence), this Japanese postrock institution took inspiration from the most famous grouping of circles: the nine that represent the stages of hell in Dante’s Inferno. The record is less austere than the dual 2014 albums Rays of Darkness and The Last Dawn, and not quite as heavy despite the whirlwind light noise of “Death in Rebirth” and the shivery boil of its centerpiece, the nearly 18-minute title track. The loose infernal theme notwithstanding, Mono don’t shy away from mixing in celestial aspects. Recorded with Steve Albini in Chicago, the dense, well-shaped album restores the strings and allows its climaxes and

MUSIC

Mono o MITJA KOBAL respites to build organically—they’re never too long and never rushed. And as has long been the case with Mono, their solid, tight, and well-built soundscape is honed to its best advantage in a live setting. —MONICA KENDRICK

SUNDAY23 Matthew Duvall 3 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago, sold out. b “Whisper” isn’t a word that usually springs to mind when one thinks of percussion, but with his diverse program “Whisper(s)” Eighth Blackbird percussionist Matthew Duvall actively explores quiet sounds and textures. He’s still willing to pound away on a piece like the ultraprecise and melodic “Binge Delirium” by Yu-Hui Chang, or Matthew Burtner’s “Broken Drum,” which gives a car’s discarded brake drum a workout while high-pitched electronics enhance the rapid thrum of a stick beating the inside, the player’s other hand damping the sounds. And on John Luther Adams’s “Wail” the performer generates an otherworldly swell of alien sounds with a hand-cranked siren. But the program’s second part pushes into more gentle territory with David Lang’s sparse solo piano meditation “Wed,” the rare Morton Feldman percussion piece “The King of Denmark,” and, with Third Coast Percussion joining in, John Cage’s “Inlets,” a series of small acoustic sounds derived from seashells and water. The ﬁnal portion of the concert—open to all museum visitors—moves from the theater to the second- and fourth-floor galleries for the world premiere of Voice of the Winds by University of Chicago professor Marta Ptaszyńska, which features nearly 100 percussionists being conducted

in small groups with the aid of wireless clickers to keep them in sync. The immersive notated work will spread throughout the museum’s stairwells and balconies, and the audience is encouraged to wander—Duvall told me via e-mail that “the performance will be diﬀerent for everyone depending on where they choose to go.” A veritable who’s who of Chicago new-music groups will participate, including members of Beyond This Point, Mocrep, Latitude 49, Ensemble Dal Niente, and students from Loyola University, the Merit School of Music, and the Chicago High School for the Arts, among others. —PETER MARGASAK

MONDAY24 Skepta 6 PM, Concord Music Hall, 2047 N. Milwaukee, $22. b When a superstar rapper partners with an up-and-comer it has the potential to obscure what the latter has already built. So now that Kanye and Drake have taken interest in grime artist Skepta these past couple years, the stateside pop fan might not care as much about the reemergence of the genre as it pertains to its native U.K. In the early 2000s grime grew out of pirate radio stations that illegally ﬂooded London’s airwaves with the sounds of jungle and garage, with DJs inviting tag teams of MCs to rap atop hard-edged, 140-BPM electronic instrumentals. Despite early international acclaim for Dizzee Rascal and the relative success of Wiley, grime largely faded from the mainstream, instead bulking up in the underground and returning as an irrepressible culture. Skepta, who dropped his ﬁrst solo mixtape in 2006, was far from wet behind the ears prior to this come-up—and far from the J

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only MC who bolstered grime’s reputation—but his remarkable magnetism sets him apart. On last year’s Konnichiwa (Boy Better Know) he smoothes over Lego-rigid instrumentals with a ﬂuidity that retains an ice-cold punch. —LEOR GALIL

Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile 8 PM, Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan, sold out. b In his liner-note essay for the new Bach Trios (Nonesuch) pianist and composer Timo Andres writes of Bach’s work, “Part of the utility of his music is its protean adaptability to any number of instrumental combinations; the labor of performing is divided easily into voices or parts, each a satisfying narrative thread on its own.” Indeed, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, bassist Edgar Meyer, and mandolinist Chris Thile traverse a variety of works the composer originally penned for different instruments. There are a slew of pieces for solo keyboards—including selections from The Art of the Fugue and The Well-Tempered Clavier—as well as ones written for solo organ or viola da gamba, each of which has been transcribed for the unusual instrument combination these three versatile musicians present. They first performed Bach together as an encore to their performances in 2012, when they toured behind The Goat Rodeo Sessions, a recording with ﬁddler Stuart Duncan that brings a reﬁned chamber-music approach to original bluegrass material. That endeavor reinforced their unwillingness to be boxed in by their musical backrounds. In fact, Meyer has been toggling between classical and country/bluegrass for three decades, while Thile, the new host of A Prairie Home Companion, released a convincing solo recital of Bach partitas and sonatas in 2013 (he also recently made a duo album with jazz pianist Brad Melhdau). Ma has famously used his Silk Road Ensemble to introduce works by composers

and musicians from the Far East and Central Asia to new audiences, among other crossover efforts that have been less successful (like 1992’s Hush with Bobby McFerrin). They might not offer definitive readings here, but they do a splendid job, and there’s no shame in any effort that invites listeners to experience a musical repertoire they might not be familiar with. —PETER MARGASAK

TUESDAY25 Dressy Bessy Radio Shaq, Arc Flash, and Forgotten Species open. 8 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $12, $10 in advance. I’ll be the first to admit that I never really considered the return of the Denver-based, Elephant 6 Collective-associated indie-pop act Dressy Bessy. It’s not because I didn’t love the band’s first record, 1999’s Pink Hearts, Yellow Moons, or the freaky pop scene they worked within, one also traversed by Apples in Stereo, Beulah, and Of Montreal. But the band seemed more and more like a relic of a bygone era—packed tidily in the closet alongside the bright polyester suits, polka dots, and paisley print shirts already reserved for future Halloween costumes and dust-bunny gatherings. Even Kevin Barnes, front man for Of Montreal, has totally reinvented himself as an EDM-dusted progressive-rock guru—bless him for it—making the closing of the musical chapter he helped create seem that much more inevitable. But then (bam!) Dressy Bessy dropped a very solid new album in 2016. Kingsized (Yep Roc) is a direct extension of where they left off in 2003. Tammy Ealom’s vocals remain as saccharine as ever, which in this instance is a good thing. Stuffed with her instantly recognizable guitar hooks and British Beat-style rhythms, the record works through the lens of nostalgia—the 60s as seen in the 90s—but also in today’s low-fi pop landscape. —ERIN OSMON

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Chris Thile, Yo-Yo Ma, and Edgar Meyer o DANNY CLINCH

36 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 20, 2017

MUSIC

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THURSDAY, APRIL 20 7PM

Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre 2017 Season Kick-Oﬀ

SATURDAY, APRIL 22 11AM

Mr. Nick Davio

Kids' Concert

SUNDAY, APRIL 23 7PM

Cheryl Wheeler THURSDAY, APRIL 27 8PM

George Winston

Solo Piano

FRIDAY, APRIL 28 8PM

Peter Mulvey

In Szold Hall

SATURDAY, APRIL 29 8PM

Angaleena Presley (of Pistol Annies) In Szold Hall

FRIDAY, MAY 5 8PM

Cory Smythe Mabel Kwan opens. 8:30 PM, Elastic, 3429 W. Diversey, $10 suggested donation. b A growing number of musicians have mastered both notated and improvised music, but few have done it with more skill, insight, and sensitivity than pianist Cory Smythe. He won a classical Grammy for his work with star violinist Hilary Hahn, but he’s also become an integral part of groups led by percussionist and composer Tyshawn Sorey—another thrilling denizen of this rareﬁed turf—that improvise within Morton Feldman-inspired constellations of sound. On Planktonic Finales (Intakt) Smythe continues to destroy any and all borders that might otherwise separate his interests. The record is an improvised session with bassist Stephan Crump and reedist Ingrid Laubrock characterized by a delicate compositional aesthetic, with forms, melodic exposition, and gauzy harmony shaped in real time. Their interactions are electric, but they exist to serve a larger purpose: threads function as magnetic motifs propelling each improvisation forward and giving it shape, dissolving lines between styles as well as between the composed and the improvised. More germane to this evening’s performance is Smythe’s new album Autotrophs (Not Art), a dazzling set of mostly solo works that situate heavy improvisation within a number of contexts. On “Blockchain” oblique chordal shards are spiked with jarring runs and eventually subsumed by electronic refractions, while “Lulu Lu St” layers vocoder sounds and electronic beats and “Handfall of Keys” turns the stride piano of Fats Waller into a house of mirrors; alto saxophonist Steve Lehman turns up on “Lucy-A” and “Lucy-B,” both honoring composer Alvin Luc-

ier. Smythe’s compositions employ a wide range of conceits, none of which overstays its welcome, but they’re ultimately powered by his improvisational brio. Wonderful Chicago pianist Mabel Kwan will perform a short solo recital to begin the evening. —PETER MARGASAK

WEDNESDAY26 Smino Monte Booker, Jay2, and Bari open. 7 PM, Bottom Lounge, 1375 W. Lake, sold out. b On his debut album, Blkswn (Zero Fatigue/Downtown), Chicago-based rapper Chris Smith Jr. (aka Smino) makes a point of telling you where he came from. “Netﬂix and Dusse,” a gussied-up track ﬁlled with clipped tropical-house beats and come-on raps, ends with a recording of a phone call between Smino and what seems to be his grandfather, who once backed Muddy Waters on bass. “I’m blessed to be able to look and see my history in it though, and just know how I ended up where I’m at,” Smino says. Raised in Saint Louis, he keeps his hometown close to his heart throughout the record: while addressing appropriation on “Amphetamine” he raps, “Don’t give a Chuck ’bout no Berry,” an obvious multilayered reference to his roots. Smino has blossomed since coming to Chicago, where his work with producer Monte Booker, a member of his Zero Fatigue collective, has sparked something in him that sounds like the future. His delicate coos, torrents of sandblasting raps, and flamboyant, sloshing rap-singing electrify the subtlest curves on Blkswn. —LEOR GALIL v

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APRIL 20, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 37

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38 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 20, 2017

FOOD & DRINK

MANGO PICKLE | $$ R 5842 N. Broadway 773-944-5555 mangopicklechicago.com

NEW REVIEW

Mango Pickle is as Indian as it wants to be A Chicago-born chef reimagines the food of western India. By MIKE SULA

he ghee that chef Marisa Paolillo uses at her five-month-old restaurant Mango Pickle comes from a cow sanctuary in Gujarat where the residents feast on organic sugarcane and retire peacefully to the fields when they stop giving milk. When it comes to her usage of the clarified butter, “I don’t hold back on it,” she says. It plays a marquee role on her daily vegetable and dal plate, where a glistening golden gob bejewels a serving of granular moth lentils, somehow transforming this drought-resistant high-protein legume into an agent of seduction. It’s the reason her butter chicken masala has such an uncommonly silky mouthfeel. It’s used to confit the garlic and ginger she uses in her saag paneer. And it’s the source of the glow that emits from her pillowy, warm naan, which should serve as the vehicle for much of her food. Behind a narrow Edgewater storefront

space hung with colored lights and vividly dyed saris, where anatomized renderings of Mughal architecture gender the bathroom doors, Paolillo, who was born in Chicago, is offering a personal interpretation of the food of India’s western coast from Gujarat to Goa, in the middle of which is Mumbai, where she lived for nine years with her husband and in-laws. Mango Pickle is part of a national— some would say international—movement in Indian food typified by restaurants like Houston’s Pondicheri, New York’s Paowalla, and Nashville’s Chauhan Ale & Masala House, where chefs are going hard at regional and seasonal food and there isn’t a culinary tradition that’s not ripe for tweaking. Paolillo did a lot of cooking during her time in India, particularly in a Western-style restaurant run by an American chef, but also with her in-laws, friends, and people she encountered on her travels up and down

The dal plate at Mango Pickle is “an agent of seduction.” o JAMIE RAMSAY

the west side of the subcontinent. When she returned to Chicago she spent three years cooking under Ashlee Aubin at Wood in Boystown. And when it came time to open her own restaurant, she put all that experience into expressing her own vision of how Indian food could be served in the midwest. That vision involves almost crystallized spheres of crunchy pani puri filled with cool English-pea puree from which sweet pepper-and-garlic grilled shrimp poke out like the tail of a comma. It’s conjured the smoky charcoal-fired eggplant-tomato dip baingan bharta, here garnished with roasted carrot halves and beet wedges, an arresting adjustment in texture for a typically homogenous dish. Something similar happens with her saag paneer, a finely rendered, incrementally spicy puree whose thickness is mitigated by pillows of fresh grilled cheese, bits of chopped almonds and cashews, and nuggets of roasted cauliflower and mushroom. It’s a version that doesn’t so much complicate an elemental dish familiar to anyone who’s ever stepped into an all-you-can-eat northern-Indian buffet line as open it to the possibility of evolution. Each week or two the restaurant goes through a Slagel Family Farm lamb, which turns up in a daily special—say, a cardamom-and-saffron-braised shank that leaves a trail of perfume as it makes its way across the dining room, served with roasted root vegetables like a proper Sunday roast. Or it could be ground and grilled and served as sliders on miniature pieces of naan with mustard, pickled ginger, and turmeric. Paolillo has a thing for the large vegetable garnish. She oven-dries tomatoes, concentrating their weak off-season flavor, and uses them to adorn her butter chicken, recalling the sauce’s tomatoes, which have been reduced and caramelized into something sorcerous in that voluptuous ghee. On a dish that in its Mughal-like bombast seems designed for Instagram greatness—the chile-saturated CFC (Chennai Fried Chicken)—a whole roasted purple eggplant is impaled upon a stack of fried chicken thighs prepared in the spirit of Chicken 65. Vegetables take the lead in the daily dal plate—rice, that buttery dal, and a mixture of whatever’s at the market, according to Paolillo (on one occasion fresh green chickpeas, turmeric-stained potatoes, and snappy, sweet long beans). It’s a dish so simple, pure, and affirming that you get to live an extra year just for eating it. Conversely, the J

APRIL 20, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 39

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continued from 39 chickpea-battered and deep-fried vegetable pakoras—clusters of crunchy onions, okra, potato-stuffed green chiles, and thin chiplike taro leaves—will having you swigging beer all the way to hell. This irresistibly scarfable snack makes me suspect that Paolillo and company are sitting on a marketable spinoff in a cocktail concept. They’re already running happy-hour snack specials like spiced lotus seeds, chile-lime marinated chicken wings, and the aforementioned shrimp puri “pop-ups.” It’s rare that a dish’s seasoning fails to strike a beautiful balance of bright, clear spice profiles, and this success extends to an array of cocktails that leans toward the restorative, like a bitterly refreshing negroni made with black-cardamom-infused gin, a sweetly mellow chai spice old-fashioned, or an exuberantly assertive gin and tonic. There are also a couple of cocktails mixed with feni, the cashew distillate that’s India’s answer to a nationally identiﬁed spirit like mezcal, vodka, or bourbon. A resolutely domestic beer and wine

list ﬂouts the convention that Indian restaurants are spiritually bound to pour Kingﬁsher and Sula Vineyards (no relation). But what’s really compelling is the coffee and tea menu, which does feature imports: cardamom coffee from south India, herbal infusions made from rhododendron and tulsi (aka holy basil), black and green regional teas, and chai–bourbon collisions that I’d lean toward as a postprandial option over the stiff rosewater panna cotta or the balls of gulab jamun split, seared, and served with a too-sweet mango sauce. Those two desserts are pretty much the only dishes I couldn’t get behind on my visits to Mango Pickle. Maybe sweets are just set up to fail after such bold and nuanced beginnings. You might look at what Paolillo is doing as akin to Ileana Regan’s food at Kitsune, where the midwestern garden and pantry get raided to make fundamentally solid Japanese food. Or you could look at it as its own brilliant expression of Indian food, neither shackled by tradition nor disrespectful of it. v

ß @Mike Sula

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