Print Issue of May 3, 2018 (Volume 47, Number 30)

C H I C A G O ’ S F R E E W E E K LY S I N C E 1 9 7 1 | M AY 3 , 2 0 1 8

Outcry kills attempt to keep police misconduct records secret 5

The Firs t Family of pinb all Chicago is at the center of a national resurgence in the arcade game being led by the sons of a pinball legend.

By RYAN SMITH 6

Oldest black-owned club in city faces uncertain future 20

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

FEATURES

CITY LIFE

The First Family of pinball

IN THIS ISSUE

CITY LIFE

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

4 Street View A bowl cut inspired this design manager to engage with fashion.

5 Politics Public outcry kills a proposal to keep police misconduct records secret.

26 In Rotation Judas Priest, Keith Jarrett, the Roadburn Festival, and other current music obsessions 27 Shows of note Saint JHN, Wicca Phase Springs Eternal, Breeders, and more of the week’s best

ARTS & CULTURE

32 Booze The inaugural Chicago Style cocktail conference emphasizes thinking as much as drinking.

The children of Roger Sharpe—the man credited with saving the game in the 70s—are now leading its resurgence.

BY RYAN SMITH 6

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

12 Small Screen The Girl Deep Down Below explores how it feels to be Muslim in America right now.

13 Theater It’s a long way to act two of Teatro Vista’s The Madres.

14 Theater Jesus Christ Superstar and six more new shows reviewed

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MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

A required Taste on the south side

Harold Washington, Muhammad Ali, and Rick James all dropped in at the oldest black-owned nightclub in the city.

BY DAVE HOEKSTRA 20 ON THE COVER: PHOTO BY JAMIE RAMSAY. FOR MORE OF JAMIE’S WORK, GO TO JAMIERAMSAYPHOTO.COM.

33 Restaurant Review: Radio Anago Hogsalt Hospitality takes a pure, respectful approach to fish amid River North’s culinary cliches.

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FOOD & DRINK

16 Dance Zephyr Dance debuts its performance space Site/Less with the potent Shadows Across Our Eyes.

17 Movies The Chicago Film Critics Association takes a break from journalism to present its own film festival.

18 Movies Avengers: Infinity War and more of the latest releases, reviewed by our critics

36 Straight Dope How often do emergency vehicles get into car accidents?

37 Savage Love “Should I be concerned about my celibacy?” and other questions from the grab bag 38 Early Warnings Mary J. Blige, Death Cab for Cutie, Fleetwood Mac, and more shows to look for in the weeks to come 38 Gossip Wolf Hogg drop a new LP of tense, ritualistic throb ’n’ roll, and more music news.

MAY 3, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 3

CITY LIFE Street View

Mix and match

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é ISA GIALLORENZO

“I really like to pattern clash,” says design manager Katrina Wolf, 27.

AN ASSOCIATE DESIGN MANAGER at a financial technology firm, 27-year-old Katrina Wolf started developing her trademark mix of “a little weird, a little masculine, a little trendy, and a lot of streetwear” when Bria Salvador-French of Lincoln Park’s Smith & Davis Salon gave her a bowl haircut five years ago. “Since then I have been really engaged with fashion,” Wolf says. “I get really excited to dress myself every day, and I just feel great if I have pulled together a good outfit.” Asked if she has any fashion rules, Wolf says, “I really try to teeter the line between extremes. Masculine and feminine. Sporty and chic. Casual and formal. For example, if I wear my favorite Adidas sweatshirt then I will pair it with pointy-toed boots. I also really like to pattern-clash, as you can see!”

That day she was wearing bleached jeans and a striped mock turtleneck sweater she found via the fashion app Depop; a tweed coat by & Other Stories that she first saw on fashion blogger Megan Ellaby’s site; her “worn-in and perfectly comfortable” Emmeline Smooths from Doc Martens; and her favorite piece, a pair of cherry earrings by Brooklyn-based illustrator and designer Andrea Smith, the purchase price of which went to Planned Parenthood. “I try to shop as ethically as I can,” Wolf says. “I am not totally fast-fashion free yet, but I am working towards it.”

—ISA GIALLORENZO

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CITY LIFE

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Attorney Matt Topic, journalist Brandon Smith, and activist William Calloway in November 2015, after a Cook County judge forced the Chicago Police Department to release the Laquan McDonald video. é RICH HEIN/SUN-TIMES

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POLITICS

Transparent victory

Public outcry kills a proposal to keep police misconduct records secret.

BY MAYA DUKMASOVA

W

ithin hours of Democratic state rep Anthony Deluca’s filing of a bill to amend Illinois’s Freedom of Information Act last week, a crescendo of opposition arose from civil rights lawyers and government transparency advocates. The amendment would’ve made misconduct complaints against police officers (and other records associated with pending criminal cases) off-limits in FOIA requests. Dozens of opponents filed witness slips—written statements—against this suggested change, and ultimately DeLuca backed down: he decided he would not be calling the bill for a debate.

DeLuca said last Thursday that the suggested language for the amendment came from the city of Chicago Heights, but he couldn’t explain the intent of the proposed changes. DeLuca is the former mayor of the majority-black town,

which falls within his Illinois house district, the 80th, in Chicago’s south suburbs.

“There was a lack of support for the concept, so we will not be proceeding with this language,” DeLuca said. Indeed, no one filed a single witness slip in support of the proposed amendment.

Chicago Heights officials didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Advocates who protested the proposed amendment say law enforcement representatives and other special-interest groups regularly lobby for changes to Illinois’s FOIA law that would make it harder to learn about alleged misconduct by officers. The arguments for these changes often rest on protecting officers’ privacy or safeguarding the integrity of criminal investigations.

“Imagine a situation in which someone says they were beaten up by the police, and police

say the person was committing a crime at the time,” says attorney Matt Topic of Loevy & Loevy, a Chicago firm specializing in civil rights litigation. “Under the [proposed] bill as I read it, so long as charges were pressed, then the public would lose access to records about what happened until the case was over.”

Since criminal cases often take years to resolve, the amendment would make it impossible to monitor misconduct claims in real time, Topic says. And since police often file criminal charges against people they’ve allegedly assaulted, Topic argues, “it would make it harder for people to hold the police accountable for potential misconduct.”

Topic illustrates this problem with a hypothetical: “Laquan McDonald was killed, so they couldn’t charge him with a crime. But if he hadn’t been killed and they’d elected to charge him with a crime, we would still be waiting to see that video.”

The video of the 2014 shooting of the 17-year-old by officer Jason Van Dyke was released after independent journalist Brandon Smith filed a FOIA request for it and a judge ruled that the police department had to comply.

Topic also points out that the amendment filed by DeLuca would not serve the public because it would prevent people from finding out details about crimes committed in their communities. Any documents pertaining to a crime (beyond arrest reports, which become public through the courts) would be off-limits.

“You would not get the witness accounts of what happened, you would not get the video of what happened,” Topic emphasizes. “You would only get whatever the story the police were telling about what happened.” v

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Roger, Zach, and Josh Sharpe é JAMIE RAMSAY

The Firs t Family of pinb all

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The children of Roger Sharpe—the man credited with saving the game in the 70s—are now leading its resurgence.

By RYAN SMITH

S

ometimes even the best pinball wizards can’t summon their old tricks.

“Well, that sucked,” Roger Sharpe mutters loudly in disgust after striking a ball that immediately caroms off a bumper and zips down the drain of the Old West-themed game Sharpshooter. Sharpe may end up relegated to last place on this blustery Saturday evening in March at the Chicago Pinball League. It serves as a harsh reminder: every game of pinball starts over at zero, and no one gets bonus points for past achievements.

Tonight, as always, Josh and Zach Sharpe are competing with—and against—their father. The Sharpe trio have been topping the leaderboards of the Chicago Pinball League since the league’s inception in 1998, and it’s become a time-tested family ritual. Roger compares it to A River Runs Through It, the 1992 film in which the father and his two sons bond over fly fishing in a tranquil Montana river to catch trout. But the Sharpe clan gathers in a setting a bit less pastoral—the basement of Josh’s home in suburban Arlington Heights.

To be fair, it’s more like a secret arcade museum. Turn left as you reach the bottom of the stairs and you come face-to-face with

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a display of more than a hundred of Josh’s pinball tournament trophies, stacked neatly on metal shelves. From the trophy corridor, you can hear the cacophonous chorus of flippers flipping, bumpers bumping, balls clacking, and endless blips and beeps. Walk several more feet north and you reach a long dark hall lit up by the glow of bright florescent lights from the two-dozen machines that line both walls.

Josh’s collection is arranged chronologically, from the 1965 Gottlieb game Cow Poke (the first pinball game his dad ever played) to the Guardians of the Galaxy game Chicago-based manufacturer Stern Pinball released just a few months ago.

And then there’s Sharpshooter—which really should be called “Sharpeshooter.”

“I can’t believe I’m losing at my own game,” Roger says.

Sharpshooter is property of Roger in more ways than one.

He has a Sharpshooter in his personal collection, one of more than 25 machines he keeps tucked away inside his home, also in Arlington Heights. He’s also credited as the designer of this 1979 pinball machine manufactured by the now-defunct Elk Grove Village company GamePlan. The bespectacled sheriff on Sharpshooter’s backglass? It’s a homage to Sharpe. And that’s his wife, Ellen, depicted as a coquettish saloon girl gripping his right leg.

Look close enough and you can also spot Roger on the adjacent Cyclopes pinball machine he also designed. It’s a ridiculous rendition: he’s wearing sunglasses and a Viking helmet while riding a horse shirtless, fiercely brandishing a sword at a cyclops.

Forty years later, at age 69, Roger still somewhat resembles his pinball avatar, even if that distinctively bushy mustache is silvery gray now instead of dark brown. Aging has been unkind to him in other ways—the slipping hand-eye coordination, the ruptured discs in his back, the torn ligaments in his wrists. It’s hard not to notice that his wrists are splinted tonight. Yet his eyes still have a youthful way of lighting up when he plays, and he kicks his legs up with surprising agility during particularly thrilling stretches of a game.

“Sure, my skills have diminished. I’m acutely aware of that.

But, you know—I’m old, I’m older than dirt,” he says. “But there are times when I pull something out of my butt and people are like, ‘Wow.’ And I’m like, ‘Did you catch that? Because it just might not happen again for another lifetime.’”

More broadly, if anyone can lay claim to an entire game or hobby, it’s Roger. A generation ago he was among the greatest players in the world and one of the architects of competitive pinball. He also wrote the first serious book on the subject and worked in the industry in some shape or form for more than a quarter century. And yes, he’s the man responsible for the most famous moment in the game’s history—the single improbable shot believed to have helped overturn New York City’s long-standing ban on the game over 40 years ago. He’s like the Forrest Gump of pinball, a witness or participant in seemingly every key moment of its history.

That’s why Roger is often asked to play a ceremonial first ball at tournaments—pinball’s equivalent to Arnold Palmer kicking off the Masters or Ernie Banks tossing out the first pitch at a Cubs game. His name is invoked with reverence in pinball-themed magazines and on message boards, podcasts, and other forums. “All of this electronic furniture we love so much wouldn’t be here if not for [Roger],” says Jack Danger, host of the Chicago-based online pinball show Dead Flip, which streams on Twitch.

A worker builds a game at Stern Pinball, the largest pinball manufacturer in the world, in Elk Grove Village. é JAMIE RAMSAY

YouTube or Twitch. The winner of last year’s PAPA 20, the Professional & Amateur Pinball Association tournament that is the world’s biggest, was Escher Lefkoff, a 14-year-old Colorado resident still seven years away from being able to get into an arcade bar legally. “We’re seeing the average age continue to drop, and it’s the future of the sport,” says Zach Sharpe. “Pinball isn’t just a good ol’ boys’ club anymore.”

Pinball’s youthful resurgence coincides with the baby-boomer generation’s fade into old age and retirement. It’s possible that soon the game may finally be ready to escape the long shadow cast by its storied past.

If it does, you’ll be able to thank the duo working hardest to move pinball beyond the legacy of Roger Sharpe—his children.

I “Roger Sharpe” can’t be said to be a household name, and if you google it the only Wikipedia page you’ll find is dedicated to the former North Carolina state senator who shares it. But in the insular world of hard-core pinball enthusiasts, Roger Sharpe is Mr. Pinball—though maybe not for much longer.

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merica is tilting once again.

The old pastime of saving an 80-gram steel sphere from its downhill trajectory using a pair of flippers is on an steady upward climb. The game has become retro cool, the vinyl record of the video-game set. Much of that is due to the proliferation of arcade bars that serve up craft beer and offer vintage games to play at no or low cost. Chicago’s first, Emporium Arcade Bar, opened in Wicker Park in 2012. Now the city has at least ten.

Increased sales prompted Stern Pinball to move from a 40,000-square-foot factory in Melrose Park to a 110,000-square-foot building in Elk Grove in 2015. In the two years since then, the company has increased the number of units it builds by 80 percent. And now it’s got more competition. A decade ago, Stern was the last pinball manufacturer in the United States, but new companies keep popping up.

There’s been a corresponding rise in interest in the competitive pinball scene. Pinball leagues continue to sprout all over the world, and the number of tournaments and players that the International Flipper Pinball Association (IFPA) tracks have both increased a hundredfold—from approximately 50 tournaments and 500 players ranked worldwide in 2007 to 5,000 tournaments a year in 23 countries and nearly 60,000 players in 2018.

And yes, even pinball’s demographics are changing. It’s still heavily populated by middle-aged men, but more than 12 percent of ranked players are now women. Belles and Chimes—a network of women’s leagues—has spread to 21 international chapters, including one that meets regularly at Logan Arcade in Logan Square.

There are also more younger people than ever—kids tired of virtual worlds and inspired by watching pinball videos on

t’s not easy to follow in your father’s footsteps when your dad is Roger Sharpe, but Josh and Zach Sharpe are doing their damnedest. That’s reinforced by the number of hats they wore at the first-ever Stern Pinball Pro Circuit Championship at Bottom Lounge in the West Loop on March 24.

For Zach, 36, one of those hats was quite literal: he wore a red-billed Stern Pinball baseball cap to go along with his signature red T-shirt with the letter “Z” emblazoned on the front.

That’s no coincidence. In August, Stern Pinball hired Zach as its director of marketing, a position similar to the one Roger held for years at the Chicago arcade-game conglomerate Williams/Bally/Midway (which later became WMS Industries).

Last year Josh became chief financial officer of Raw Thrills, Inc., a Skokie arcade-video-game company founded by Eugene Jarvis, a pinball designer turned video-game developer (and one of Roger’s former coworkers).

The idea behind the championship event, says Zach, was to build a bridge between the nation’s biggest pinball manufacturer and two of the sport’s organizing bodies—the Professional and Amateur Pinball Association and the International Flipper Pinball Association—and create a tournament similar to the PGA’s annual Players Championship. “It’s a separate circuit than pinball’s majors, but it is the true premier circuit event,” says Zach.

It was a relatively easy partnership to solidify because of the family’s network of ties. Zach works for Stern and serves as the vice president of the IFPA. Josh is the IFPA’s president, and Roger sits on its board as chairman. The eldest Sharpe also cofounded PAPA in the mid-80s.

Both brothers worked overtime in producing the championship. They set up interviews with the media, hired C-list celebrities to help attract a crowd, and when I tracked them down on the morning of the tournament, they were doing grunt work, sitting at a table with clipboards checking in the 38 other competitors here from around the country.

And Zach had a number one world ranking to defend. He finished 2017 as the top player among 58,000 active players, according to the IFPA’s World Pinball Player rankings. Josh— who created the ranking system—isn’t too far behind at number 17. (For the record, Roger is currently ranked 1,501, and his 75-year old wife, Ellen—also a pinball addict—is ranked 8,238.)

The top floor of the Bottom Lounge was packed with equipment: two-dozen pinball machines, camcorders recording the action, and a broadcasting booth, but it felt oddly J

MAY 3, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 7

Josh, Zach, and Roger at the Stern Pinball factory in Elk Grove Village é JAMIE RAMSAY

continued from 7 intimate, like a family reunion. And not just because of the presence of the Sharpe brothers and young pinball prodigy Escher Lefkoff and his father, Adam, also a nationally ranked player. The faces of the pinball elite—or “pinheads,” as they sometimes call themselves—are changing (four of the event’s players were under the age of 18), but it’s still a relatively tiny, insular world. The core group has traveled to the same handful of major tournaments together for so long, some for decades, that they’ve formed deep bonds over their shared love of the silver ball. When I asked Sunshine Vonn, an Atlanta woman—the only female player of the 40 qualifiers—what her friends thought of her favorite pastime, she replied: “You can ask them. A lot of my best friends are here—they’re other pinball players.”

To the outsider, their conversations rife with lingo about “drop targets” and “kick-out holes” aren’t always easy to decipher. “God, there’s nothing like relying on ball three of Sea Witch with your life on the line,” Adam Lefkoff exclaims to Zach in a knowing way that implies the Sharpe brother knows exactly why the 1980 pinball game is a treacherous tournament finale.

Sea Witch was one of ten different machines from three eras that contenders had to master at the eight-hour-long compe-

8 CHICAGO READER - MAY 3, 2018

tition, ranging from the vintage (60s-70s) to the “golden era” (80s-90s) to modern games. On the surface, pinball seems relatively unchanged since flippers were invented in 1947; today’s machines mostly differ in having more video displays and digital sound effects, and more games themed around rock bands, blockbuster movie franchises, and comic books, among other pop-culture ephemera. They’re still essentially boxes stuffed with a mess of wires (almost a half mile’s worth) and a plunger used to hit a ball into a playfield filled with hundreds of tiny components—flashing lights, bumpers, ramps. The player’s job is the same: to keep the ball in play by jamming buttons that control two or more flippers. Since contemporary video games are a completely different beast from the days of Atari, to some it seems like pinball has stubbornly refused to evolve.

The Sharpes disagree. Listening to them describe the subtle changes in pinball over the last four decades, I feel like a wine novice who thinks all reds taste alike talking to master sommeliers. The newer games are more complex, they say, some—like Stern’s Star Wars pinball game released last year—featuring rudimentary story lines that follow the George Lucas movies. The Sharpes study the arcana of each individual game and know exactly how to unlock bonus multipliers and multiballs—a frenzy of point scoring that occurs when multiple balls are released simultaneously. Take the AC/

DC pinball game, for instance: there’s a good chance everyone playing in this tournament could tell you that when the band’s hit “Hell’s Bells” plays through the machine’s speakers, you need to shoot the bell prop to light up bonus points for four other standard shots.

“Pinball actually can be like chess because your strategy is constantly evolving,” says Zach. “If you’re, say, the second player or fourth player, your strategy changes based on what your opponent is trying to do.” The vast majority of people play pinball in a state of mild panic—just trying desperately to slap the ball to keep it in play. For experts, there’s an intentionality to nearly everything they do with their flippers.

Even so, it’s one thing to know the right way to play and another to execute perfectly. Pinball is a beguiling game that requires skill and an occasional assist from Lady Luck. Every playfield is fraught with danger. There are three places where your ball can drain on its own—the small gap between your two flippers, and the outlanes along each edge. The only thing you can do to save a ball that evades your flippers is to use your body—arms, knees, hips—as a blunt instrument to nudge the machine and alter a ball’s path. Too many bumps or too drastic a knock sets off a machine’s “tilt” function and you automatically lose a ball. Machines are tweaked for very high tilt sensitivity in tournament play for the sake of expedience,

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Pinball machines were routinely confiscated and destroyed once they were banned starting in the 1940s.

and so luck plays an even bigger factor than normal when the stakes are higher.

It’s impossible to say whether the Sharpes’ success can be attributed to nature or nurture. Roger says he may have passed down some kind of pinball gene, but love of the game could very well have been transferred through osmosis: Roger and Ellen used to tuck their kids into bed each night with pinball machines in their bedrooms glowing like oversize night lights. There were eight more machines in the living room, two in the dining room, and another dozen in the basement of their suburban Chicago home. It was worse when they lived in cramped quarters on the east coast, noted Josh.

“Imagine having seven pinball games in a studio apartment,” Josh says. “From an outsider’s perspective, it’s kind of fucking weird. But for me, it was normal.”

Playing in tournaments together is also completely normal for the brothers. They’re millennials, but the Sharpe brothers are already 25-year veterans of competitive pinball. They were ages 14 and 12, respectively, when they first participated in the children’s division at the Chicago Pinball Expo. “We begged our dad to let us, and he eventually caved,” says Zach. “And we ended up dominating and loved it, and we’ve basically done it ever since.” Since 2000, they’ve competed in the same pinball tournament 244 times.

Regardless of rank, sometimes the pinball refuses to bounce your way. Zach—the top seed—missed the second-round cut of the Stern Tournament. This time it was Josh who took the spotlight by edging out 46-year-old Keith Elwin of Carlsbad, California, in the semifinals—the same man who’s won 77 tournaments and nine major championships over his long pinball career (“He’s kind of the Michael Jordan of pinball,” Zach tells me). Next Josh outscored 15-year-old Colin Urban in an intense game of RoboCop to take home a trophy, styled like a wrestling championship belt, and the first-place prize of $2,500. Ironically, because of a shipping snafu, the belt Josh raises in victory is Zach’s from a tournament he won last year. It’s symbolic too, because the brothers have a long-running pact—they split their pinball winnings 50-50 no matter the outcome.

“We call it the Split,” says Zach. “It’s another reason why we’re each other’s biggest cheerleader.”

é CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

Roger Sharpe appears before the New York City Council in 1976. é JAMES HAMILTON

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oger Sharpe’s aspirations as a kid growing up in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood in the 60s were more conventional than pinball champion—though no less ambitious. His success on the track team at Hyde Park High School convinced him he’d eventually land on a Wheaties box as an Olympic runner. “I was only four foot nine and weighed about 95 pounds, but I was fearless and fast,” Roger says.

He didn’t play pinball until he went to college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It was never an option because, well, there was nowhere to play in the city. The game was banned for decades starting in the 1940s in many major cities—including Chicago, New York City, and Los Angeles— after it was depicted as sinful.

Pinball began as a coin-operated version of bagatelle—a 18th-century French table game derived from billiards that later spread across the Atlantic. These “marble games” or “pin games” exploded in popularity in the early 1930s due to the sweeping success of Baffle Ball, a baseball-themed machine made by Gottlieb, a pinball and game company located in West Humboldt Park.

New companies devoted to pinball and coin-operated amusements sprang up over the next few decades, nearly all of them founded in Chicago. A.B.T. Manufacturing emerged in 1925, Bally in 1932, Williams in 1943, and Midway in 1958. Some of these companies also produced slot machines, and pinball machines blurred the line between gaming and gambling devices in those early years. Before Gottlieb revolutionized the game by introducing player-controlled two-inch bats called flippers (which first appeared on a game called Humpty Dumpty in 1947), pinball

relied much more on chance. Once players fired off a ball with a plunger, the only way to get a ball into a given hole was by nudging the device. Some early machines gave out cash payments.

That association with the coin-op gambling industry made pinball a target by crusaders who believed gambling itself went hand in hand with crime, drinking, smoking, and, as one critic put it, “gathering places for undesirables.” In a time of moral panic, some saw pinball as a gateway drug that would inevitably lure kids into a seedy criminal underworld.

J

MAY 3, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 9

The backglass of the game Sharpshooter depicts Roger Sharpe as a sheriff in the Wild West. é RYAN SMITH

continued from 9

New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia pioneered the citywide ban, ordering pinball machines prohibited in 1941 as part of a crime crackdown on the grounds that they were games of chance, not skill, and therefore no better than slot machines.

He associated the game with Italian mob activity, and called pinball operators “slimy crews of tinhorns, well dressed and living in luxury on penny thievery.” He saw the game as part of a broader “craze” for gambling. (LaGuardia wasn’t totally off. In 1980, Chicago-based Bally Manufacturing nearly lost its casino license in Atlantic City because it was learned that Gerardo “Jerry” Catena, a reputed leader in the Vito Genovese crime family, had been one of the original investors in Bally’s forerunner company.)

The mayor told the police to make Prohibition-style pinball raids and seizures their “top priority,” and on the first day of the ban, New York City officers confiscated more than 2,000 pinball machines and issued nearly 1,500 summons. There’s a famous black-and-white photograph of LaGuardia holding a sledgehammer, proudly smashing the seized machines. A New York Times article published in 1942 claimed that the “shiny trimmings of 2,000 machines” had been stripped and sent off to the country’s munitions factories to contribute to the World War II effort—the rest were dumped into the East River. Other major cities followed suit.

It was still banned by the time pinball-obsessed Roger moved to New York City after college. Once there he wrote a pinball feature that appeared in the winter 1975 issue of GQ and followed that with a feature in the New York Times’s Arts and Leisure section. Those pieces became the impetus for his 1977 book, Pinball!.

The GQ and New York Times pieces served another purpose—this one entirely unexpected. They drew the attention of the Amusement & Music Operators Association, a trade organization that wanted to take on the then-35-year-old ban on pinball in New York. “It was those pieces and the fact that, well, I guess I became somewhat of an accomplished player, I’ll say modestly,” says Roger, with a proud smile. “Probably better than anybody else in the world at that point in time.

“So they reached out to me and said, ‘Hi, we’re looking at trying to overturn the ban, would you be willing to go and testify to demonstrate that pinball is a game of skill and has nothing to do with gambling?’

“And I was like, ‘Yes, where do I sign up?’”

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he most iconic plays in sports history have evocative nicknames. The Immaculate Reception. The Shot Heard ’Round the World. The Goal of the Century.

Pinball has its own version: the Called Shot That Saved Pinball.

It refers to a particular moment in 1976 when Sharpe, then 28, testified in the New York City Council chambers, where two machines had been set up during a hearing.

Roger began talking through his specific shots but soon realized calling his flipper shots didn’t seem to be impressing them as expected. So he tried to dazzle the councilmen with a single skillful shot of the plunger—the springy tool used to launch a ball into the playfield. The idea was to “call” which of

10 CHICAGO READER - MAY 3, 2018

the five narrow lanes he’d shoot the ball through.

“I told them, if I do this shot just right, it’s going to go right down the center,” says Roger. “And so I pull back the plunger, let it go, and the ball went up, hit the rubber, made a beautiful arc back, and came right back down the center. Boom. Done.

And I guess it changed the course of pinball.”

Soon afterward, the New York City Council voted overwhelmingly to overturn the ban. Chicago followed its lead a few months later.

It’s fitting that Roger’s plunger shot routinely gets compared to Babe Ruth’s iconic “called shot” against the Cubs in

the 1932 World Series. Both events were spread through word of mouth and oral history, and their mystique has only grown over time.

“The story of Roger has been told, like, in the lobby over and over and over again,” says Danger, the Flip Show host. “And I think it keeps getting slightly exaggerated more and more.”

Regardless, the shot is so enshrined in Roger Sharpe’s lore that one of his nicknames is “The Man Who Saved Pinball.”

As a teen Josh had a custom T-shirt that read: “My Dad Saved Pinball.” The story is even told (with slurred speech) in a 2015 episode of the Comedy Central show Drunk History.

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hicago has long reigned as the historic capital of the pinball manufacturing business, but in the mid-70s through the 80s, a time when pinball enjoyed some countercultural cachet, New York held bragging rights as the essential local scene.

Just like the prohibition of alcohol, the pinball ban there didn’t stop the game—it drove it underground into sex shops and dive bars. There were about 4,000 machines operating illegally in various establishments throughout the city in 1976—many in the Greenwich Village neighborhood, then the center of bohemian culture. Pinball became lazy shorthand for “rebel” in pop culture, as reinforced by that leather-jacket-clad pinball wizard the Fonz from Happy Days (who of course got his own pinball machine).

The year after the ban was lifted, the game’s epicenter became Broadway Arcade, the Times Square joint where arcade rats like Sharpe mingled with celebrities and Broadway stars.

“It was a melting pot where the celebrities would come in after their gigs or whatever show was playing. Paul Simon would come in here. Muhammad Ali. Billie Holliday was a regular. Sarah Jessica Parker when she was the star of Annie,” says Roger.

Lou Reed, the rock pioneer, attended Roger’s wedding reception held at Broadway Arcade (which closed in 1997), and Reed later held his own wedding reception—with 50 guests, cake, and gifts—at the arcade. “You just kind of took it for granted that suddenly you’re friends with Lou Reed and Roberta Flack and whoever else,” says Roger. “It was like you were just one of a gang who was like, let’s just play pinball and have some fun.”

Steve and Roger launched PAPA and league play in the mid-80s and helmed multiple world championship tournaments starting in 1991, most of them held in New York City.

It was a time when pinball enjoyed another massive jolt of popularity—a period also known as a golden age for the machines themselves. Sales peaked around 1992, with more than 100,000 machines manufactured, including The Addams Family game, the best-selling machine ever.

“There were so many interesting things happening with this emerging marketplace, but then it was like, ‘Boom!’” says Roger. “Very quickly the air just got let out of the balloon.”

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hen Zach and Josh took over IFPA in 2006 and launched the first World Pinball Player Rankings, the competitive pinball organization had been dormant since 1995. The path to revive the sport—and pinball as a whole—has been littered with obstacles and detours.

The entire industry was in a state of near extinction throughout the 2000s. The problem? There was nowhere to play pinball anymore. During their peak, the brightly hued machines were ubiquitous in Chicago and elsewhere. “There wasn’t a bar or a tavern in Chicago that you would walk into and not find a pinball next to a jukebox or next to a pool table or whatever else,” recalls Roger. That began to change as video games began to displace them in the arcade world.

“Video games were making more money, and they didn’t break,” says Jarvis. “Think about it: you’ve got this solid-steel ball you’re smacking around and you inevitably end up destroying stuff. And they aren’t easy—or cheap—to fix.”

Jarvis followed suit in that same era. He’d worked as a

programmer for the Chicago-based pinball manufacturer Williams (his 1980 game Firepower pioneered the multiball feature), but he saw unlimited potential for video games and the writing on the wall for pinball.

“No matter how much you innovated, you still had flippers and balls. Pinball was always going to be pinball. It was cool, but the sky was the limit for video games,” said Jarvis, who went on to create Defender, Robotron: 2084, and some of the biggest video-game hits of the 80s. “I look at it as a cool part of my career—I have a soft spot for it, but creatively I moved on.”

Iron Maiden Pinball Launch Party Logan Arcade, 2410 W. Fullerton 7-10 p.m., May 4 Free

Then arcades and the coin-op industry as a whole started dying, victims of the rise of home video-game consoles and then the Internet. Advances in technology allowed kids to play arcadelike games in the safe space of home.

From 1980 to 2007, the number of arcades shrunk from 13,000 to 2,600, according to a U.S. Census business report.

Chicago’s last true neighborhood arcade, Dennis’ Place for Games in Lakeview, shut its doors in 2007. Every pinball manufacturer except Stern went dormant by the mid-2000s.

Stern, then located in Melrose Park, also struggled, cutting its production down from 27,000 machines a year to 10,000 in 2008. The company released just one new title a year.

“It was weird having no pinball presence in Chicago, the city that made them,” says Zach.

But it wasn’t quite yet game over. After bottoming out a decade ago, pinball has experienced a major revival over the last eight years—a development many didn’t see coming.

“Pinball has been declared dead more often than Jimmy Hoffa, and here it is somehow making a huge comeback,” says Jarvis. “At a time when we’re throwing away all our matter away, this industrial relic is somehow rising again.”

Yet the Sharpe brothers are far from satisfied with the industry’s latest growth spurt.

When I talked to Josh on the phone a week after the Stern tournament, he barely mentioned his big victory. Winning tournaments is the easy part of pinball for the Sharpe brothers. Their real challenge? Achieving something Roger never could pull off—growing pinball’s popularity to the point that the sport can foster its first full-time professional players.

Zach and Josh both rank among the top players in the world, but barely break even after travel costs.

They look with envy at the boom of pinball’s cousin—competitive video games. What’s now called electronic sports or “eSports” is a $900 million industry in 2018, according to a recent report by the gaming industry monitor Newzoo.

“We’re trying to find—where does competitive pinball fit in with eSports? It’s more physical than video games, but it’s not

like bowling,” says Josh. “We haven’t been able to crack it, but we’re working on it.”

To do so, they’ll have to figure out whether pinball can match video gaming’s growing appeal as a spectator sport.

Last month, almost 700,000 viewers watched Chicago-area gamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins play the online shooter Fortnite in Las Vegas. Yet only several hundred people tuned in to Jack Danger’s Dead Flip stream to see Josh earn his biggest tournament win in years at the Stern Championship in March.

Likewise, most of the hundreds of attendees at the Bottom Lounge were on the other side of the room mingling with guest host Brian “Q” Quinn of the TruTV hidden-camera show Impractical Jokers.

“Pinball can be a hard sell because nothing’s moving on the screen except for a ball and a few flippers,” said Danger. “We get some curious viewers start watching [my show] who say, ‘What the hell am I looking at?’”

The key, he says, is to increase pinball’s ground game by pulling arcade bargoers aside and preaching pinball’s gospel.

“I have to get people’s attention and say, ‘Hey, you’re going to fucking love this game, guys,’” said Danger. “You just gotta get a spark and show them that this is an awesome physical chaotic game that everyone loves to play.”

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t’s not certain whether pinball is riding just another peak in its popularity in 2018 or is on the cusp of a new golden age. Even as the digital world continues to grow, there may always remain a market for something tangible and physical, especially when it has nostalgia value. Either way, Roger Sharpe is comfortable with the fact that he may not be alive to see it happen.

“I’m just happy there’s enough people that are out there that want to carry the banner,” he says.

Back at Josh’s home, Roger, on his third and final ball of Sharpshooter, pauses, as is his custom. He wipes the buttons and plunger—and his hands—with a white handkerchief before jamming it back into his back pocket. He needs to go on a massive scoring binge if he’s to avoid staying in last place in his four-man group.

That shot blossoms with promise, but a unfortunate thud off a bumper sends his ball careening down the left drain without a chance for him to flip it back. Ironically, the man famous for proving to the New York City Council—and the world—that pinball is a game of skill is sometimes the victim of bad luck.

But even a last-place finish does nothing to threaten his lifelong love for his hobby, a love that borders on the romantic.

“I say this again with great humility, but I think my connection to pinball has always been totally and completely different than anybody else out there,” he tells me.

Sharpe pauses briefly to search for the right words. He begins to smile, his eyes twinkling.

“I think that I’ve always had a very sincere sense as to the propriety of pinball, the sanctity of it—of looking at it as something more than it is in some strange way. These are effectively inanimate objects. But this game is talking to me.”

More frequently these days, he can’t speak back in the kinetic language of the machine. Pinball’s physics work against everyone, and—just like in life—the inevitable pull of gravity always wins in the end. v

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Arij Mikati, Ragda Izar, Nada R. Abdelrahim, and Sabeen Sadiq é COURTESY ALI ABBAS

SMALL SCREEN

Muslim-American horror story

As the country awaits the Supreme Court’s travel ban verdict, The Girl Deep Down Below explores how it feels to be the “other.”

By BRIANNA WELLEN

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hortly after his inauguration, President Donald Trump issued an executive order blocking entry to the United States by citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries in what was presented as an effort to prevent terrorist attacks. The measure was followed by protests, challenges from several state courts—and crackdowns from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Even as the debate over the travel ban continued to work its way through the court system—the Supreme Court heard arguments last week and is expected to hand down a final ruling in June—ICE agents rounded up and deported immigrants, notably 199 Iraqis and 91 Somalis. In this atmosphere, many Muslim Americans fear they’ll be suddenly forced to leave the country. This threat provides the basis for Chicago filmmaker Ali Abbas’s fantastical webseries The Girl Deep Down Below. All seven ten- to 15-minute episodes premiered online in March, but there will be a public screening next week at the Chicago Cultural Center.

In Abbas’s version of Chicago, Muslim women are going missing one by one; the disappearances seem to be linked to an enigmatic

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monster in a business suit. A group of university students joins forces to solve the mystery of the disappearing women—and to protect themselves from becoming victims. The series has plenty of light and funny moments, but the overall tone is unnerving. It’s meant to give viewers a sense of what Muslims in America feel every day.

“I would not have thought that we would get the [positive] kind of feedback that we’re getting now if it had not been for things like Get Out and the fact that the horror genre is now opening up to women and people of color who have been going through horror in real life,” Abbas says. “I didn’t want to mince words. I didn’t want to separate it too much and be too metaphorical.”

Viewers see the villain flash in and out of dark alleys and hallways, leaving behind torn pieces of a pin-striped suit as clues for the intrepid journalism students investigating the case. The Wall-Street-meets-SlenderMan image represents the specific brand of patriarchy and toxic masculinity that Abbas finds most terrifying. Once he created a physical representation of that evil, he focused on building a group of eight fully realized, diverse

female protagonists who are not defined by their religion or culture but just happen to be Muslim. Abbas says he prefers to write women because he finds male characters boring and because Muslim women even more than Muslim men are put in a box in popular media, often portrayed as either trapped by their culture or rebelling against it.

“I feel like in the past couple years the sort of counternarrative and the counterculture to the whole terrorist Muslim has been to make Muslim characters a point of innocence like, ‘Oh, look, they’re not bad people,’ which then you just get sort of dry, boring Muslims,” Abbas says. “I wanted to create more complex Muslim woman characters in the sense that I want them to be problematic. I feel like every character has their strengths and also their glaring flaws.”

The catalyst for the story is Maya (Sabeen Sadiq), a well-meaning but far from perfect student who decides to pursue the mystery behind the disappearances in an attempt to finally get a good grade on a journalism project.

She ropes in her friend Rem (Nada R. Abdelrahim), an unapologetically stubborn and proud straight-A student, and as the investigation continues, they recruit several other women from their community.

The series’ cast and crew is entirely Muslim.

For many of them, this was their first time working in the entertainment industry simply because they never thought they would be able to maintain their religious and cultural values working within it. The on-camera talent assumed acting would lead to going after parts that required them either to change their appearance or to perpetuate stereotypes.

That’s the reason Abdelrahim, for instance, had never considered it despite an interest in theater. She originally became involved with The Girl Deep Down Below as a stylist, but once she read the script, she knew she had to audition for an onscreen role.

“It felt human,” Abdelrahim says now. “I had to go for it. You don’t get these opportunities,

especially being a woman who wears the head scarf in this industry.”

Variety in representation—whether that be through the physicality of the characters, their relationships with their families, their interests, or the way they fit into specific genre archetypes—was the goal of everyone involved.

Samira Baraki, who plays introspective Amel, is a black Muslim, which she calls the minority within a minority. Abbas wrote the characters with different backgrounds in order to create parts for people who might not normally get to represent their specific community. Baraki says she’s happy to show other women like her that they can be a part of the entertainment world while also proving to non-Muslims and white people how similar all people really are.

“Specifically with Muslims, the media really does paint their image, so if you’ve never been around a Muslim, never gone to school with one, lived next to one, worked with one, you don’t really know what they’re like,” Baraki says. “They’re really just regular people living regular lives and dealing with issues that other people of color deal with also.”

Abbas says that while recruiting cast and crew for this project, he didn’t set out to involve Muslims only, but the response proves that there are plenty of people in his community who have just been waiting for an opportunity to work in television and film. A second season is in the works; he hopes to start production come winter. In the meantime, he’s screening the series around the country and in Pakistan to see how different audiences respond to the story and characters. The more control unjustly maligned groups have over their own narrative, he feels, the easier it will be to assuage fears too often associated with the unknown or “other.” The entertainment landscape, in turn, can be enriched by new and compelling accounts of modern life yet to be explored.

“We need to find the people who have the talent who also want to come into these industries and level up together,” Abdelrahim says.

“How we all get into it is pool our talent and make good work and show them there is a talent and something positive and worthwhile in the stories we want to tell.” v MUSLIM GIRLS AND MONSTERS Wed 5/9, 5:30 PM, Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, thegirldeepdownbelow.com. F

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ARTS & CULTURE Lorena Diaz and Ivonne Coll in The Madres é JOEL MAISONET

THEATER

It’s a long way to act two of Teatro Vista’s The Madres But there’s treasure when you get there.

By TONY ADLER

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his past Monday, April 30, marked 41 years since the first demonstration by the women who became known as Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo.

On that day in 1977 a dozen or so of them assembled in the square across from Argentina’s pink version of the White House to bear witness on behalf of their children—journalists, students, activists, the hapless—who’d been “disappeared” by the military dictatorship then in power. The Madres marched every Thursday afternoon thereafter, in increasing numbers, demanding answers and justice. With the rightist “dirty war” going on around them, their outcry constituted an act of defiance as crazy brave as that of the man who stopped the tank column in Tiannanmen Square. Yet the mothers were more effective

than Tank Man in the long run, obtaining information on many of the estimated 30,000 disappeared, helping put about 700 of the perpetrators in prison, and even identifying a few of their grandchildren who’d been handed over to military families as newborns, their genetic mothers having been executed after giving birth.

Stephanie Alison Walker’s The Madres is effective in the long run too. Presented by Teatro Vista as part of a rolling world premiere also involving theater companies in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Austin, this tale of the dirty war has a powerful second act. But in Ricardo Gutiérrez’s staging, the problem is getting through the first.

The Madres puts us in the Buenos Aires apartment shared by Josephina, a sixtysome-

thing widow, and her 45-year-old daughter, Carolina, whose husband has walked out on her. They’ve got solid Catholic, conservative bona fides, just like the generals of the junta, but it’s 1978 and no one is really safe. Carolina’s pregnant daughter, Belén, has gone missing along with her new husband, Agustin.

While Josephina insists on maintaining her cover story that the young couple are merely off traveling in Europe, Carolina has taken to showing up at the Plaza de Mayo protests and wearing the Madres’ white head scarf.

Her actions haven’t gone unnoticed, either.

Not only is their apartment being staked out by a lady who sits in her car and knits all day, but Josephina receives suspiciously timed visits from two old acquaintances—a medialuna-loving Jesuit padre named Juan,

whom she hadn’t seen in five years, and Diego, who had a crush on Belén when they were growing up together and everyone knew him as Diegito. Both men serve the junta now. Both work at the School of Navy Mechanics, the innocuously named neoclassical building that became torture central during the dirty war.

Both are ominously friendly.

What are Josephina and Carolina to do?

Why, of course they decide to throw Belén a baby shower.

It’s a transcendent bit of creative desperation, an absurd gesture worthy of Ionesco, and the ideal act of political theater for two conventional women who can no longer stand doing nothing though they know that their only safety depends on maintaining the lie of normality. It’s subversive yet also magical, like lighting a candle to the Virgin. And it just might work, either on that spiritual plane where wishes are heard in heaven or on the awful real one where hints are addressed to government lackeys. The idea, for Josephina and Carolina, is that if they build their party Belén will come.

This great conceit is the centerpiece of act two, and it leads to some devastating moments—particularly those involving Lorena Diaz, profoundly committed as Carolina, and Ilse Zacharias, radiant as Belén. But neither Gutiérrez nor his Josephina, Ivonne Coll, seem to have a handle on how to make dramatic sense of the long stretch that must lead us to those moments. The show pulls toward naturalism, and, for all I know, that may be the playwright’s preference. I’d argue, though, that The Madres has more in common with I Love Lucy than, say, Jane the Virgin, on which Coll has a recurring role. Paradoxically, despite the horror of the situation, it needs an antic comic energy, a sense of the women having come to the end of their rope and let go, that would justify their mystic/ridiculous/ hail-Mary party.

With the exception of some hints from Diaz, there’s nothing like that here. Worse, Coll’s performance on opening night was frustratingly discursive, as if she hadn’t yet gotten comfortable with Josephina (or, more to the point, Josephina’s lines). The effect was to slow the momentum toward act two still further. You end up wishing for an entire play worthy of this one’s best ideas. v THE MADRES Through 5/27: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2:30 PM, Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln, 773-871-3000, teatrovista.org, $20-$45.

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ARTS & CULTURE Memphis é MICHAEL COURIER

THEATER

The dinner party from hell

Too many explanations spoil the surprises in Future Echoes.

It’s just your typical night for Allie (Gabrielle LottRogers). She’s invited some college friends over for dinner. Things are going fine; people like the soup. Suddenly, a rift opens in space-time. Evil physicist roommate Eamon (Greg Wenz) starts stalking Allie across eternity, even tampering with past traumas to harass her retroactively. Meanwhile, undead future copies of her pals (their “echoes”) claw at the door to Allie’s house with half their faces blown off. Score one for the sadists at WildClaw Theatre, who with this spooker by Paul Foster mark ten years of lavishing gothic thrills on a niche market that presumably loves them rabidly.

And yet, and yet. H.P. Lovecraft wrote in an essay that “natural explanations” could screw up even the eeriest atmosphere. True fear is fear of the unknown. If I’m less enthusiastic about this show than others will be, it’s partly because there’s only so many times I can listen to Eamon lecture Allie on Schrödinger’s cat. Who cares?

A solid hour of quantum mechanics for dummies, whatever it purportedly explains, utterly squelches whatever mystery the show might have had going for it. The horror factor is nil already, however, thanks to design blunders and poor direction: because the wings are wide open in John Ross Wilson’s floor plan, we can see ghouls entering minutes before they register onstage.

I could also have done without the shrillness of Eamon’s never-ending vows to be less of a dweebus around Allie than he was during undergrad. No means no, you revolting gargoyle. —MAX MALLER FUTURE ECHOES Through 5/27: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Den Theatre, 1333 N. Milwaukee, wildclawtheatre.com, $30.

R Kitchen confidential

An unlikely friendship develops in How to Use a Knife.

Will Snider’s 2016 play is an intriguing, thoughtprovoking study of the unlikely friendship that develops between two men working in a restaurant in Lower Manhattan’s financial district. George, the eatery’s new executive chef, is a foul-mouthed, middle-aged, white guy with anger and guilt issues: he’s a recovering alcoholic and drug addict trying to get his life and career back on track. Steve, the dishwasher, is a quiet black man from East Africa who keeps to himself, focuses on his job, and speaks no English—or so it appears at first.

As the pair forge a camaraderie amid the chaos of the kitchen, we learn they share a common skill: expertise with a bare blade. George was a skilled food preparer before substance abuse took its toll, and Steve was a soldier in the Rwandan civil war of the 1990s. Eventually, it turns out that Steve may also be a hunted war criminal.

Developed through the National New Play Network, How to Use a Knife is receiving its Chicago premiere from Shattered Globe Theatre under the direction of Sandy Shinner, whose well-acted staging benefits from the realistic kitchen set designed by Jeff Bauer. Peter DeFaria and Anthony Irons are excellent as George and Steve; so are Victor Maraña and Dennis García as the antic line cooks, Dillon Kelleher as the harried busboy, Brad Woodard as the obnoxious restaurant owner, and Michelle Bester as the

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immigration official prying into Steve’s past. —ALBERT WILLIAMS HOW TO USE A KNIFE Through 6/9: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Wed 5/9, 8 PM; no performance Fri 5/11, Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-770-0333, sgtheatre.org, $15-$35.

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Lyric’s Jesus Christ is, indeed, a superstar

He causeth the amplifiers to thunder and glitter to rain down upon the stage.

Lyric Opera’s annual “American Musical Theater” offering this year is British, but never mind. Jesus Christ Superstar has more in common with Lyric’s usual repertoire than most Broadway musicals: it takes on an epic tale, explores passion on a grand scale, and is sung straight through.

Whether it’s a good idea to turn the Opera House into an amplified music venue is another question, but on opening night, this brilliant and controversial adaptation of the last days of Christ by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice had the place rocking.

In the 48 years since J.C. Superstar first appeared (initially as a record album), there’ve been countless productions—including one just a month ago on NBC TV. Director Timothy Sheader developed this version, which treats the show primarily as a concert performance, for London’s Regent’s Park Theatre, an open-air venue.

Lyric has further ramped up the size of both ensemble and orchestra, resulting in an often crowded stage and a very big, very rich sound.

The cast delivers on one great number after another across the board, but there are two standout performances: Heath Saunders manages to bring life to the difficult, mostly passive role of a weary Jesus, and Jo Lampert is divine as a steadfast, pure-voiced Mary Magdalene. There’s a lot of atmospheric smoke and converging spotlights; 90 pounds of glittering confetti are dumped at every show; and there’s a six-piece rhythm section onstage made up of some great Chicago musicians. So here’s the buzz: it’s super. —DEANNA ISAACS JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR Through 5/20: Wed

1:30 PM, Thu 1:30 and 7 PM, Fri 7 PM, Sat 1:30 and 7 PM, Sun 1:30 PM, Tue 7 PM; no performances Tue 5/1 or Thu 5/3, 1:30 PM, Lyric Opera, 20 N. Wacker, 312-827-5600, lyricopera.org, $44-$219.

A shining emblem of white privilege Memphis makes the birth of rock all about the guy who played the records.

Who deserves more recognition in the story of rock ’n’ roll: the black artists who created the sound or the white men who brought it to the masses? Memphis focuses on the latter, building a musical around a white DJ, Huey Calhoun (Liam Quealy), who fights the racism and segregation of his hometown by playing “race records” on the radio. Memphis, now playing at Porchlight, is driven by good intentions, but it fails to recognize the full scope of the issues. Huey, a shining emblem of white privilege, is presented as a brave hero.

Huey openly admits this as he fumbles his way through life and things typically work out in his favor, but

the show skirts past the trauma that Huey’s decisions cause for his black girlfriend, Felicia (Aeriel Williams).

The book by David Bryan, best known as the keyboardist for Bon Jovi, does a disservice to the black characters by largely ignoring their personal struggles. Felicia and her brother, Delray (Lorenzo Rush Jr.), sing about their harrowing situations in powerful songs like “Colored Woman” and “She’s My Sister,” but these numbers reinforce that there is much more to explore with these characters.

Daryl D. Brooks’s direction has verve but lacks depth, and while the music is rousing, the scenes that bridge the songs often venture into shtick. The central romance is especially flimsy, and the evolution of that relationship over years doesn’t show in the performances. This talented ensemble puts on a fun show, but an inspiring message of perseverance and change isn’t enough to overcome shallow storytelling. —OLIVER SAVA MEMPHIS Through 6/10: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 6 PM; also Wed 5/19 and 5/16, 1:30 PM, Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn, 773-777-9884, porchlightmusictheatre.org, $45-$50.

Family affair

Raised in Captivity loses its way amid too many subplots.

The Right Brain Project presents Nicky Silver’s sprawling 1995 tragicomedy about twin siblings trying to make peace with their past and with each other. Sebastian (Joel Collins) and Bernadette (Hannah Williams) meet at the cemetery after their mother’s untimely and bizarre death. They have been out of touch and are virtual strangers, but each is burdened by a host of unresolved traumas and resentments. For starters, he’s emotionally crippled after his lover’s death from AIDS 11 years prior, while she’s trapped in an unfulfilling marriage and has no discernible purpose in life.

There are moments of depth and dark laughter scattered throughout this two-and-a-half-hour play, but their

Jesus Christ Superstar é TODD ROSENBERG

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impact is blunted repeatedly by supporting characters who hog too much precious stage time. Bernadette’s husband (Tyler Esselman) and Sebastian’s shrink (Liz Goodson) are given full-fledged story lines that could anchor their own plays; both are by turns buffoonish and grotesque distractions from the siblings. A convicted murderer and a violent street hustler (both played by Vic Kuligoski) serve to illustrate Sebastian’s isolation but could’ve been pared down as well. On the other hand, their mother, Miranda, as played by Laura Jones Macknin, is the emotional center of the entire piece in her sole scene.

Silver comes up with a satisfying conclusion in which brother and sister are left to each other to resurrect their broken lives, but I wish we’d had more time with them rather than having to listen to a bunch of other people’s problems. Kathi Kaity directed.—DMITRY SAMAROV RAISED IN CAPTIVITY Through 5/19: Thu-Sat 8 PM; Thu 5/3-Fri 5/4, 7:30 PM; also Sun 5/6, 3 PM, the Frontier, 1106 W. Thorndale, therbp.org, $10-$15.

é ROBERT ALTMAN

The new (poeticized) world R order Reality is an Activity imagines an existence of continued daily astonishment.

Atop an imaginary Tennessee hill, poet Wallace Stevens famously placed an imaginary jar, which “took dominion everywhere” and tamed a wilderness that “rose up to it.”

In Stevens’s philosophy, the most commonplace object holds adequate wonder to create a new, poeticized world order.

Chicago monologist and playwright Barrie Cole has long been placing imaginary jars atop imaginary hills.

Her ambiguously concrete work layers childlike simplicity over seasoned melancholy to produce piercing, wondrous images of charming, discomfiting transformation. You might mistake Cole’s work for the fables of a hyperliterate six-year-old who’s just discovered the reality of death.

Cole’s new play, which borrows strategically from Stevens and William Carlos Williams, condenses the

mundane and the magical into a 95-minute gem. Two middle-aged women, Helen and Miranda, have convinced “the Foundation” to bankroll their efforts to create an improved world order by turning everything into poetry. When hapless Foundation representative Mr. Howard shows up at their compound and finds them doing little but rolling down hills, reading aloud simultaneously from the same page in different books, and removing their dining table leaf to create “a portal, a bowl of renewal, a loophole,” he’s torn between cutting off their funds and seeking to discover their perplexing brand of daily astonishment.

Veteran Theater Oobleck performers Vicki Walden, Colm O’Reilly, and Diana Slickman unlock the poignancy and profundity in the script’s thoughtful foolishness. It’s

a rich, tantalizing evening that provides a restorative antidote to rationality. —JUSTIN HAYFORD REALITY IS AN ACTIVITY Through 6/3: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Mon 5/14, 7:30 PM; no performance Sun 5/27, Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee, 773-697-3830, theateroobleck.com, $20 or pay what you can.

R Real talk

In Until the Flood, Dael Orlandersmith channels the voices of Ferguson.

There’s been no respite in the American crisis of police officers fatally shooting civilians at a higher rate than in any other developed country—not since the events in

2014 in Ferguson, Missouri, that nationalized the Black Lives Matter movement, and certainly not since the Justice Department took an about-face under Attorney General Jeff Sessions and pledged to abdicate its department-review duties. With that in mind, Dael Orlandersmith’s unsparing series of monologues makes some big asks of its audience: to listen to and better understand a multitude of perspectives—some heinous— on the events that led to the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old black man, at the hands of Darren Wilson, a white police officer, and to continue seeking hope in a situation where so little is apparent.

Derived on dozens of interviews with Ferguson and Saint Louis residents, Orlandersmith has crafted eight composite characters with layered, thorny takes on the anger, fear, privilege, injustice, assumptions, and institutional breakdowns that factor into the cycle of violence committed against people of color by American law enforcement.

An elderly black woman confesses resentment toward Brown; a white middle-aged woman grieves a friend from whom she became estranged because of her sympathetic sentiment for Wilson; a black business owner bemoans the naive “green-black and green-white” academics and artists who flocked to Saint Louis in the aftermath and condescended to suburbanites. While Until the Flood is not forthrightly a work of journalism, in this Goodman Theatre production, directed by Neel Keller, Orlandersmith’s masterful series of performances taps into theater’s distinct ability to add in-the-room human voices and faces to hard conversations that are otherwise increasingly held anonymously, digitally, and without empathy. —DAN JAKES UNTIL THE FLOOD Through 5/12: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 and 7:30 PM, Tue 7:30 PM, Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312-443-3800, goodmantheatre. org, $10-$29. v

MAY 3, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 15

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SITE/LESS, designed by David Sundry, sits at the T where Willard meets Augusta, an empty lot traced with barbed wire to the south, el tracks to the west. Beyond its doors lies a curving corridor with unfinished stripes of cement licking the exposed brick walls. For Zephyr Dance’s Shadows Across Our Eyes, the first work presented in this new space for experimental performance, two short henges of brick and plywood are laid out on the floor, intersecting like a Venn diagram. The audience is encouraged to roam the space throughout the show, which begins when an iPad is affixed to the wall, forming its only window and showing an inflated white balloon, or maybe only a tied-off trash bag, bobbing against a short leash in the wind, a joyful, absurd thing in a desolate landscape.

Choreographer Michelle Kranicke emerges first, unspooling a red thread behind her

like Ariadne in the labyrinth as she crosses through the space. On the other end of the line is Molly Strom. They look enough alike to be doppelgangers in different time zones, Kranicke dressed in black jumpsuit zagged through with colored thread, Strom in a poncho of the same cloth, both in black heels that tap imposingly against the concrete floor.

Together they produce a series of images that emerge and then vanish: a cat’s cradle, twin marionettes pulling each other’s strings, Penelopes undoing a day’s work, semaphores sending signals, the life cycle of a winged insect, pupating to the brief mirage of the imago. —IRENE HSIAO R SHADOWS ACROSS OUR EYES Through 5/5: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Site/ Less, 1250 W. Augusta, 773-489-5069, zephyrdance.com, $12.

m @IreneCHsiao

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Thomasin McKenzie and Ben Foster in Leave No Trace

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MOVIES

Critic, review thyself!

By J.R. JONES

F

ounded in 1990, the Chicago Film Critics Association is the only critics’ group in the U.S. to mount its own film festival, which offers its nearly 60 members the dubious distinction of reviewing an event they’re simultaneously promoting. (This is the sort of thing that makes two-thirds of Americans distrust the news media.) I haven’t belonged to the CFCA for years, and because this puts me in a small minority of local critics who can comment on the festival impartially, I’d be remiss if I didn’t weigh in. The festival was conceived as a launch pad for domestic indie films needing a break, and the lineup is always pretty good.

Yet the more notable titles screening this year have already been picked up by Magnolia Pictures, Sony Classics, Bleecker Street, and other national distributors. Twenty-two features screen in this year’s edition; following are five that I was able to preview.

One of my favorite indie filmmakers, Andrew Bujalski finds comedy in the social maneuvering of little subcultures: the

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postcollegiate New York hipsters of Mutual Appreciation (2005), the Carter-era nerds of Computer Chess (2013), the fanatical fitness trainers of his mainstream crossover, Results (2015). Though partly improvised, Bujalski’s movies have a writerly quality, the various characters all speaking from his distinctive sensibility, which makes SUPPORT THE GIRLS (Fri 5/4, 9:30 PM; Thu 5/10, 4 PM) something of a stretch for the Boston-born, Harvard-educated director. His group this time is an assortment of nubile young women waiting tables at Double Whammies, a Hooters-style “family” restaurant along a Texas interstate, and Bujalski conjures up a charming if not entirely convincing milieu around them and their sunny, long-suffering manager (Regina Hall in a dazzling performance). Most of the laughs spring from the inherent contradiction of the business, whose waitresses are coached to flirt with customers but not to let situations get out of hand. The story meanders near the end, but the anticlimax can’t quite dispel the movie’s warm eccentricity.

I’m a latecomer to the poker-faced camp of filmmaking brothers David and Nathan Zellner (Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter), and their fantasy western DAMSEL (Sun 5/6, 7:15 PM, with the Zellners in person) made me want to leave early. Robert Pattinson, affecting a turrible western accent, stars as young Samuel Alabaster, who arrives in a one-horse town searching for the bandits who kidnapped his beloved Penelope. Robert Forster, who must have been available for only a day, contributes an introductory cameo as a minister headed back east in defeat after trying to convert the Indians.

“Things are gonna be shitty in new and interestin’ ways,” he advises a fresh arrival to the Wild West, and his words might as well be the directors’ statement: when Samuel first rolls in, the locals invite him to a get-acquainted gangbang, and an impromptu yodeling concert accompanies the hanging of the town drunk for the crimes of “skullduggery, skullthuggery, and skullbuggery.” A midmovie plot twist hands the narrative over to Mia Wasikowska as the aforementioned Penelope, and her J

RSM

The Chicago Film Critics Association takes a break from journalism to present its own slate of films.

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MAY 3, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 17

ARTS & CULTURE

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committed performance seems out of place in this extended goof.

Debra Granik knows how the other half lives: her powerful debut feature, Down to the Bone (2004), starred Vera Farmiga as a working-class mom fighting coke addiction in upstate New York, and Granik’s sophomore effort, Winter’s Bone (2010), gave Jennifer Lawrence her first big role as an impoverished 17-year-old girl fending for herself and her younger siblings in the Ozarks. Granik’s third dramatic feature, LEAVE NO TRACE (Sun 5/6, 4:45 PM), steps down the social ladder another rung with its gripping tale of a widowed, traumatized U.S. war veteran (an intensely silent Ben Foster) living in the wilderness around Portland, Oregon, with his 13-year-old daughter (Thomasin McKenzie). After police apprehend them camping in a public park, they’re processed through social services and set up with a more stable work and living arrangement, but the father wants off the grid.

“We can still think our own thoughts,” the girl reminds him; the love they share is extremely moving, especially as the daughter grows older and begins to gain perspective on the father’s mental illness.

Still best known as the screenwriter of Taxi Driver (1976), veteran director Paul Schrader indulges his two big passions—Calvinism and bloodletting—with his audacious new drama FIRST REFORMED (Mon 5/7, 7:15 PM, with Schrader in person). Ethan Hawke stars as the earnest, middle-aged pastor of a historic Dutch Reformed church in upstate New York; called upon to counsel a suicidal young man, the minister begins to learn about the chaos awaiting humanity in the next few decades as the ice caps melt, and he succumbs to the same sin of despair. You’ve got to hand it to

Schrader: for 40 years critics have been razzing him for his religious obsessions, which are even less hip now than they were then, yet the 71-year-old filmmaker just won’t give up. First Reformed develops into a conventional moral dilemma as the minister runs up against an oil executive who’s bankrolling the church’s renovation, and you can trust a Protestant like Schrader to recognize the inferiority of good words to good deeds. The movie’s climax is completely over-the-top, but what else can you expect from the guy who created Travis Bickle?

Bart Layton came to national attention with his eerie documentary The Imposter, whose talking-head interviews and staged re-creations tell the true story of a French-Algerian man who managed to enter the U.S. by posing as a missing teenager from San Antonio, Texas.

The director’s second feature, AMERICAN ANIMALS (Wed 5/9, 9:30 PM), recounts another true crime story but unfolds mainly as a standard docudrama, with occasional onscreen commentary from the real-life subjects. Two sharp young actors, Barry Keoghan (Dunkirk) and Evan Peters (FX’s American Horror Story), play Warren Lipka and Spencer Reinhard, college-age friends in Lexington, Kentucky, who masterminded a heist of rare books from the special collections library at local Transylvania University in 2004. Their meticulous preparations begin with typing “how to plan a heist” into Google and continue with watching every heist film ever made, though they manage to overlook the primary lesson of all such films—that something always goes wrong. v CHICAGO CRITICS FILM FESTIVAL Fri 5/4-Thu 5/10. Music Box, 3733 N.Southport, 773-871-6604, chicagocriticsfilmfestival.org, $12, passes $150.

m @JR_Jones

Support the Girls

18 CHICAGO READER - MAY 3, 2018

Claire’s Camera

MOVIES NEW REVIEWS

Avengers: Infinity War

Having missed the last several Marvel Studios releases, I was lost for most of this third Avengers feature, which brings together story lines from multiple franchises. Dozens of superheroes try to stop an evil space alien from stealing six magic stones that control the forces of existence, and though fans may enjoy seeing all the different narratives intertwine (Thor rides with the Guardians of the Galaxy, Iron Man fights alongside Doctor Strange, etc), there’s little here for the uninitiated. With so many characters to cover, directors Anthony and Joe Russo have no time to develop any of them, and the action set pieces are all by the numbers. —BEN SACHS PG-13, 149 min. ArcLight, Block 37, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Chatham 14, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Ford City, Landmark’s Century Centre, Logan, New 400, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON.

The Civil Hoax: Civil War Deniers Filmmaker Jon Silver lampoons Americans’ ignorance of their own history with this half-baked mockumentary, which presents interviews with various dumbbells and conspiracy theorists who claim the Civil War never happened. The young witnesses—identified in onscreen titles as “self-educated historian,” “amateur rocket scientist,” “19th-century combat expert,” and so on—offer alternative histories that Abraham Lincoln was controlled by space aliens and that the war was only camouflage for “a four-year frat party” orchestrated by former Greek brothers Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. Some of these quick hits are funny, but Silver and his cowriter, Joseph Gartner, haven’t really thought through their premise (if the war was never fought, why are there no slaves now?) and contradict it visually with frequent insert shots of Civil War reenactors in the field. A voice-over narrative provides factual information about the war for the benefit of viewers so clueless they might buy the space aliens. —J.R. JONES 52 min. Silver and Gartner attend the screenings. Sat 5/5, 7:30 and 10 PM. Chicago Filmmakers.

Claire’s Camera

South Korean writer-director Hong Sang-soo specializes in small dramas about sexual intrigue, often centering on a lionized director one assumes to be him. His films are clever and socially observant but tend to be rather slippery, satirizing male cultural privilege even as they exploit it. In this minor effort, a woman vacationing in Cannes during the film festival (Isabelle Huppert, checking Hong off her bucket list) snaps a photo that complicates the romantic triangle between a South Korean director (Jung Jin-young), his longtime producer and lover (Chang Mi-hee), and her pretty young assistant (Kim Min-hee), whom she coldly, cryptically fires in the movie’s best scene. (“Trust my judgment,” says the boss. “It was a hard decision for me.”) The young woman later strikes up a friendship with the tourist, though this transpires mainly in English, the second language for each, and their dialogue is blandly functional. Of course the movie director can summon much bolder language in Korean when he scolds the assistant for showing off her legs. —J.R. JONES 69 min. Fri 5/4, 2 and 8 PM; Sat 5/5, 5 and 8:15 PM; Sun 5/6, 3:15 PM; Mon 5/7, 6 PM; Wed 5/9, 8 PM; and Thu 5/10, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

The Desert Bride

In this low-key Argentine drama, a live-in maid from Chile (the spellbinding Paulina García) faces a new chapter in life when the Buenos Aires family she’s been tending to for 30 years sell their house and send her to care for their relatives in San Juan. After her bus is delayed in a pilgrimage town, she connects romantically with a vendor from the marketplace (Claudio Rissi) and ultimately accompanies him on a short road trip across the desert. What gives the narrative its poignance and power, however, is the woman’s reconnection with herself and her kinship with an unrecognized saint the town celebrates—a mother who died in the desert but whose suckling baby lived.

Cecilia Atán and Valeria Pivato wrote and directed this debut feature. In Spanish with subtitles. —LEAH PICKETT 78 min. Fri 5/4, 2 and 8 PM; Sat 5/5, 6:30 PM; Sun 5/6, 5 PM; Mon 5/7, 6 PM; Tue 5/8, 8 PM; Wed 5/9, 6 PM; and Thu 5/10, 7:45 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

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Tully

R Tully

Disobedience

Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Lelio (Gloria, A Fantastic Woman) makes his English-language debut with this romantic drama set amid London’s Orthodox Jewish community. When a distinguished rabbi dies, his estranged daughter (Rachel Weisz) returns from New York City to attend his funeral and resumes her love affair with a childhood friend (Rachel McAdams) who has tried to suppress her lesbianism by marrying the rabbi’s protege (Alessandro Nivola). Lelio, who collaborated with screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz to adapt a novel by Naomi Alderman, displays his usual sureness with actors—the performances are sensitive and relatable—yet his depiction of traditional Jewish life is unconvincing. From the very start he stacks the deck in favor of Weisz’s secularized character, and as a result the Orthodox community becomes little more than the backdrop for a simple lesson about following your heart. —BEN SACHS R, 114 min. For Sachs’s long review visit chicagoreader.com/movies on Friday, May 4.

ArcLight, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark’s Century Centre, River East 21.

The Great Silence

A snowbound western in the tradition of André de Toth’s Day of the Outlaw, this 1968 Italian feature demonstrates that, like revenge, spaghetti is a dish best served cold. German actor Klaus Kinski plays a heartless bounty hunter charged with cleaning up the newly recognized state of Utah in 1898; “I’m sorry, but it’s our bread and butter,” he explains to an old woman whose face is still speckled with her son’s blood. French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant costars as his nemesis, a mute gunslinger trying to protect the lives of a mountain community whose people have been tagged as bandits and targeted for destruction. Shooting in the Dolomite Mountains of northeastern Italy, cult director Sergio Corbucci (Django, Navajo Joe) serves up all the stylistic hallmarks of the spaghetti western—startling jump cuts, voracious zoom-ins, wild shifts in camera focus—though his biggest asset may be the frosty air, through which gunshots crisply reverberate. —J.R. JONES 105 min. Fri 5/4, 6 PM; Sat 5/5, 3 PM; Sun 5/6, 5 PM; and Tue 5/8, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

RBG

Documentary makers Julie Cohen and Betsy West celebrate the career of Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, noting her recent emergence as a feminist rock star but, more importantly, her early work as a litigator fighting for equal treatment of women. Brenda Feigen, a cofounder with Ginsberg of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, provides dramatic recollections of the attorney’s first argument before the Supreme Court in 1973, in the case of an air force lieutenant denied the benefits her male peers received. A chronology of Ginsberg’s subsequent victories shows how patiently and shrewdly she worked to establish the existence and pernicious effects of sex discrimination (her strategy, one male colleague observes, was like “knitting a sweater”).

On the personal side, witnesses recall her love of opera, her warm friendship with fellow justice (and ideological opposite) Antonin Scalia, and her long, happy marriage to Martin Ginsberg, a successful New York tax attorney who loyally supported her judicial career. —J.R. JONES PG, 97 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark’s Century Centre, River East 21.

Screenwriter Diablo Cody won lots of publicity from having once been a stripper, but motherhood animates her two most incisive scripts—for Juno (2007), starring Ellen Page as a pregnant teenager, and this more mature comedy, with Charlize Theron as a woman struggling to cope with the birth of her third child. Relief comes in the form of a young night nanny, played by Mackenzie Davis, who not only minds the baby, bringing it to mom for feedings, but becomes the older woman’s friend, comforter, and free-spirited life coach. Cody’s snarky sense of humor pops up in the dialogue here and there, especially as the protagonist tries to navigate her second child’s behavior problems at school, but what distinguishes the movie is its honest exploration of postpartum blues and the vicissitudes of parenthood.

Jason Reitman (Juno, Up in the Air) directed; with Ron Livingston in a charismatic performance as the heroine’s down-to-earth husband. —J.R. JONES R, 96 min.

ArcLight, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark’s Century Centre, Showplace ICON. REVIVALS

R Woman of Tokyo

This 1933 Japanese drama may be the most formally radical of Yasujiro Ozu’s late silent pictures. The sacrificial theme —a young woman supports her brother through school by becoming a prostitute—recalls the work of Kenji Mizoguchi, but the elliptical and mysterious style is thoroughly Ozu’s. —JONATHAN ROSENBAUM 47 min. Preceded by the surviving fragment of Ozu’s 1929 film A Straightforward Boy (14 min). 35mm. Dennis Scott provides live organ accompaniment. Sat 5/5, 11:30 AM. Music Box. v

164 North State Street

Between Lake & Randolph

Summer in the Forest

Well-intentioned but cloying, this documentary spotlights the life and work of author and philosopher Jean Vanier, who founded a community outside Paris in the 1960s for individuals with developmental disabilities.

Director Randall Wright interviews Vanier (who’s in his late 80s but still managing the community) and profiles various residents, shown working, socializing, and reflecting on the mission of inclusive, meaningful lives for all. Vanier is an admirable figure, and his methods still seem ahead of their time. Unfortunately Wright’s hardsell approach distracts from the inspirational content; his portraits of the residents tend toward sentimentality, and a syrupy score tells you how to feel. In English and subtitled French and Arabic. —BEN SACHS 108 min.

Wright comments via Skype after the screenings. For Sachs’s long review visit chicagoreader.com/movies. Fri 5/4, 3:30 PM; Sat 5/5, 7:30 PM; Sun 5/6, 2:45 PM; and Mon 5/7, 7:30 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

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Isabelle Huppert in Hong Sang-soo’s

THE DESERT BRIDE

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www.siskelfilmcenter.org MAY 3, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 19

MUSIC

A required Taste on the south side

Harold Washington, Muhammad Ali, and Rick James have all hung out at the city’s oldest black-owned nightclub—which faces an uncertain future.

By DAVE HOEKSTRA

20 CHICAGO READER - MAY 3, 2018

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Owners Donald and Lawrence Simmons é TONIKA JOHNSON

Taste Reunion with Farley “Jackmaster” Funk

O The Taste nightclub has been at 6331 S. Lowe since 1980 é TONIKA JOHNSON

ne summer night during the mid-1980s, Mayor Harold Washington visited the Taste Entertainment Center in the heart of Englewood. He walked into the kitchen, put on an apron, and offered some culinary advice to the staff.

While no one can remember what the mayor told the kitchen crew, his visit showed how, at the time, Taste was literally the place to be to connect with African-American constituents.

The club opened in July 1980 in a former Robert Hall clothing store at 63rd and Lowe.

It’s now the oldest African-American-owned nightclub in the city.

What the Pump Room was to white society, Taste was to black society. Muhammad Ali sat with the local crowd. R&B singer Rick James dropped in to get his superfreak on. The Isley Brothers visited every time they were in Chicago. Prince asked to use the juicy, red-lipped Taste logo in his hit movie Purple Rain.

Even more remarkable is that Taste has survived the ups and downs that have hit Englewood for four decades.

The 13,500-square-foot club is still owned and operated by founding brothers Lawrence, 79, and Donald Simmons, 74. Lawrence’s wife, Marie, was an original partner and creator of

the Taste Kittens showgirls. Donald’s wife, Gloria, later joined the family operation.

Taste could hold up to 1,000 people when it opened. It was style with sass.

Dancing has dwindled to a misty waltz at Taste. A view from the south end of Lowe reveals Taste as a lonely urban bunker on the street. A yellow Metra railroad bridge stands in the background. The 63rd Street train station closed in the late 1970s. The Louisville & Nashville Humming Bird train line once transported people from Birmingham, Alabama, and Nashville, Tennessee, to taste the American dream in Chicago.

A metal garage door covers Taste’s front entrance when the club is closed. You’d never suspect how bustling it used to be. The iconic indoor rain curtain and waterfall have been turned off. On a recent weekday afternoon, Donald looked around the empty club and said, “There were fish ponds all the way around.

We had an aquarium in the corner with [fish including] oscars and Jack Dempseys.” There was a Jazz Room, a Zodiac Room, and an outdoor patio. There were players, nitrite poppers, and, most important, community.

Lawrence added, “People don’t realize what we are and what we have been.”

On Saturday, May 5, a Taste reunion featuring house music legend Farley “Jackmaster” Funk and former staff could serve as an introduction to some and a reminder for the old heads. It kicks off at 6 PM and is open to those 30 and over. A $10 cover includes a buffet.

Taste was a cornerstone of late 20thcentury African-American culture in Chicago.

Back when record labels had large promotional budgets, they would bring artists to Taste for meet and greets. DJs Tom Joyner, Doug Banks, and Richard Pegue hosted events. Singers Anita Baker, Janet Jackson, and Vanity hung out at the club while touring.

Taste Entertainment Center 6331 S. Lowe 6 PM Saturday, May 5. $10 cover includes buffet.

Marie said, “Prince’s band came. He didn’t, but he sent for the rights to use the Taste name in Purple Rain.” (It was used during the concert scene featuring the Time.) At the same time Taste showcased Prince’s customized 1981 CM400A Hondamatic motorcycle, delivered from the former Zone Honda at 4520 W. 63rd.

South-side show bands had over-the-top names: Ivory Tower, Brass Bullitt, P.J. Lewis & the Men of Steele. At one time Taste had live music every night of the week. Jazz saxophonist Houston Person, R&B singer Arthur Prysock, and Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes performed at the club.

Marie was known for starting a complimentary Friday evening buffet with shrimp, oysters, and octopus. The family invented a drink called the Easy Living.

“It’s a piña colada without the liquor,” Donald said. “We use strawberry flavoring. When they want Hard Living, that’s when we put in the alcohol. We were one of the first to use the computerized liquor system. We invested $100,000 in that when we started. Now you see those systems in all the clubs.”

Lawrence and Donald are more businessmen than nightclub moguls. They’re soft-spoken and reveal no signs of cynicism from 38 years in the Chicago nightclub world.

Donald is a volunteer with the food pantry at his Faith Movers Church in south-suburban University Park. Gloria operates the pantry.

Before opening Taste, he was an X-ray J

MAY 3, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 21

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Above: Mayor Harold Washington at the club in the 80s, with Lawrence Simmons and an unknown woman; right: Marie Simmons appears on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

continued from 21 tech for an orthopedic surgeon. Before Taste, Lawrence worked for the now-shuttered A&P grocery store chain as a meat inspector. He lives with Marie in the Pill Hill neighborhood.

The Simmons brothers grew up in Brewton, Alabama, about 45 miles north of Pensacola, Florida. Lawrence, the oldest of six children, moved to Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood in 1960, settling in at 61st and Drexel. He took a job at A&P and eventually was promoted to supervisor. When Donald followed him to Chicago in 1962, he moved in a couple of blocks south of his brother, at 63rd and Drexel, and found a job in the United Airlines kitchen at O’Hare.

“We developed Taste after we went on vacation in Atlanta,” Lawrence said. “We had a great time, and when we got back we noticed there weren’t many nightclubs on the south side. We decided to build our own.”

But it wasn’t easy.

“We were discouraged from this area.

Even our lawyer told us not to do it,” he recalled. A consultant “wrote up a downer” of a report about the situation, and the Small Business Administration turned them down twice for loans.

Still, he said, “we felt we could rise above all that.” They got a loan from Seaway Bank, once the city’s largest black-owned bank.

The mom-and-pop operation opened with a $700,000 investment.

Marie came up with the name “Taste.”

Lawrence added, “We had considered ‘Wet’ because of our waterfall. But it just

didn’t come out right. The name helped us.

‘Taste’—we had to live up to that.”

Lonnie Norman has lived in Englewood since 1963, when he was six years old. He worked at the now-razed Henry’s Drive-In restaurant at 63rd and Union and owned Norman’s Food & Liquors at 6647 S. Halsted when Taste opened.

“Stores were open up and down Halsted then,” he said. “Sears. Wieboldt’s. There were at least three movie theaters within five blocks.”

Besides the changes in the neighborhood, Taste had to navigate changes in music.

“We started with a little disco,” Donald said. “We moved into R&B. A couple years later hip-hop started. We didn’t deal with rap. And the house music kept the rap out.

Hip-hop changed the clientele, and we didn’t want that. We wanted to stay 25, 30, and older. When younger people come in, older people stay home or go to other places. We played R&B like Luther Vandross and oldschool blues all the time. And we still play it.”

Old-school community networking created the backbeat for Taste. Rappers Tupac

Above: Donald and his first wife, Minnie, with Marie and Lawrence Simmons. Left: Singer Rick James mingles with other clubgoers.

Shakur, MC Lyte, and Biggie Smalls were on a tour and spent a long Saturday night just hanging out at Taste. “Their bus driver worked with my mother in the hospital,”

Donald said. “She directed them here. We didn’t know who they were. There were about 15, 20 of them. They had a good time.

Tupac took a picture of our logo.”

Former Chicago Defender journalist Willie Wright said, “People were excited to see a nice club open in the area. Every day of the week someone wanted to go to Taste.”

That included the city’s top sports figures, among them Bulls center Artis Gilmore and Bears linemen William “Refrigerator” Perry and Otis Wilson. “People were coming from everywhere. Lots of athletes. It got so crowded I’d run in the office and hide or go on the roof,” Marie said.

The Taste Kittens were born in 1982.

Marie, an Englewood High School graduate, owned a couple of women’s clothing stores, including Mai-Ree’s on the Mag Mile by J

MAY 3, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 23

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Water Tower Place. In collaboration with Miami designer Anthony Ferrara, she began designing metal mesh costumes with metal headpieces, lingerie, and touches of leather.

The Taste Kittens were Englewood’s answer to the Tropicana showgirls in Havana, Cuba.

About a half-dozen Kittens would walk across the stage in provocative but tasteful clothing. “We tried it one time, and it hit the sky,” said Marie. “So we did it for about 15 years. They didn’t dance. Because the body and the costumes said everything. It kept the Taste packed.”

Added Lawrence: “It was classy. The girls had rules. They couldn’t leave the stage for the floor. They couldn’t accept tips.”

In 1982 Taste customers voted Roberta Van Auken Ms. Taste, a title she held for 12 years. She also became a Kitten. “Because of the metal, the costumes were heavy, and everything was hand done,” Van Auken said

Scenes from a recent Friday night at Taste é TONIKA JOHNSON

from her home in Marlboro, New Jersey.

“The lingerie was the best, from Bonwit Teller and [Henri] Bendel’s. Things came from all over the world.”

Ms. Taste was an ambassador for the club.

“In the beginning, high-end music groups were coming in,” she said. “I had to make sure everybody was comfortable. That everything was in order. To make sure the dances were going good with the Kittens. The Kittens were Marie’s baby, but she didn’t want any of the credit. She took the girls to another level, making it this exquisite thing.”

News of Ms. Taste and the Taste Kittens made it to Oprah Winfrey, whose show began taping in Chicago in 1986. “The girls called Oprah about me,” Marie said. “She called back and said, ‘I’m going to send my limo for you at six in the morning. Get in it.’ I said, ‘What?’ She said, ‘Get in it.’ OK. That’s how Oprah was. And I was on the show.”

The glittery swagger of Taste distinguished it from other south-side clubs. Last fall at Buddy Guy’s Legends, Lawrence and Donald were inducted into the club wing of the Chicago Blues Hall of Fame along with Clarence Ludd of the High Chaparral, at 77th and Stony Island, and Mozell Barnes of East of the Ryan, at 79th and Ingleside. But none of the other clubs inducted were in Englewood.

The hard times that hit Englewood over the years have been tough for the club to endure.

“Violence was the number one change,” Lawrence said. “It hurt the business. It slowed people coming into the area because they had other choices. We started seeing that around 2000. It hurt us bad.”

Taste fell quiet.

The club is now open just a few nights a week at most. “We’ve gone through the hard times, the good times, and the bad times,” Donald said. “The steppers [dancers] kept

us going on the weekends—then they left because of the neighborhood. At one time we were [open] seven nights a week. Now, we’re two to three: Fridays, some Saturdays, some Sundays, and every first Wednesday.” Good nights and special events will now see a few hundred people.

The community has praised the club’s resiliency.

“They suffered through it, and they stuck to it,” Chicago Blues Hall of Fame promoter Garland Floyd said.

Taste hosts a Mature Adult Senior Party from noon to 5 PM the first Wednesday of every month. A $20 cover includes cocktails, lunch, stepping, and line dancing. Asked how big the staff is these days, Donald looked at his brother and his sister-in-law and answered, “You’re looking at it.”

Why is the family hanging on?

“We always felt we would put money in it and bring it back,” Lawrence said. “But the longer we go, we realize too much money would be too much of a risk. With our age, we’d never get it back. We want to keep the property. We could expose a new project in a few months. It would be here.”

Donald pointed out, “The area is on the upswing. Saint Bernard’s did a new building for emergency care [which opened in 2016 at 326 W. 64th]. And there’s the new Kennedy-King College [the college’s football and soccer fields are across the street from Taste]. We have Walgreens and Whole Foods.

Starbucks.”

What’s going to happen to the iconic club? The family wouldn’t elaborate on plans for the site—or say whether the club was in the early stages of wrapping up its historic run. If it does shutter, the city will have lost an entertainment institution and what was once a required stop for many African-Americans. v

m @DaveHoekstra66

MAY 3, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 25

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Reader associate editor Roadburn Festival Last month I attended Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, Netherlands.

Originally focused on psychedelic and stoner rock, it’s evolved into the world’s premier event for innovative heavy and experimental music, including emerging bands and the cult figures and pioneers who’ve shaped extreme music and its culture. There were too many highlights to list, but moments such as nearly shedding tears watching a crust band play in an old church with perfect acoustics (it’s very rare to hear outsider music in such a setting) reminded me how lucky I was to be there.

LLNN Hardcore music is saddled with a reputation for purism, but plenty of bands push its boundaries in exciting, unexpected ways. One such group is Danish four-piece LLNN, which twists hardcore touchstones with elements of postmetal, science-fiction movie scores, and more. Its new album, Deads, concerns the downfall of intergalactic civilizations, and it manages to conjure beauty in its bleakness.

Sleep Two Thursdays ago I went to sleep and woke up to Sleep—specifically, the band’s first album in 15 years, The Sciences. Following the trio’s implosion in 1998 (London Records didn’t realize it had a masterpiece on its hands when Sleep delivered Dopesmoker), its members went on to form High on Fire and Om, both heavyweights in their own right. So when Sleep reunited in 2009, it was as if Godzilla had been hit with an extra blast of radiation, but rather than stomping on Tokyo he devastated it with riffs. In a genre plagued by cliche and copycats, Sleep remain untouchable.

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn.

group Ghost, and their identities remain hidden. Their debut LP, New Flesh (released late last yea r) , b a l a n ce s c l u b thumping industrial tracks with serene, reflective, deliciously synthy pieces. “Vaudeville” may be great for a goth club, but “Reloader” is a gin cocktail after a long night. Given that their debut is so evenly balanced and welldefined, I eagerly await their sophomore effort.

Judas Priest, Firepower Judas Priest have been in the game for more than four decades, and being measured against your own living legacy is no picnic. Nevertheless, their latest delivers on a level not seen since 1990’s Painkiller. “Rising From Ruins” carries the perseverance intrinsic to the heavy metal genre they helped sculpt. “Spectre” has a hook big enough to catch a whale. And the guitar solos throughout “Firepower” declare that these metal gods are in no mood to slow down.

Priest é MARISOL CORREA

The cover of Sleep’s The Sciences

HANK PEARL Founder of Black Pearl Photo, Killanthropy benefit series Priest This fresh Swedish synth band includes former anonymous members of cartoon rock

26 CHICAGO READER - MAY 3, 2018

Zeal & Ardor Manuel Gagneux is a mad scientist hell-bent on ripping apart genre, subgenre, and your damned opinion on any of it.

Many bands mash up styles of music, types of instrumentation, or time signatures. Gagneux takes every ingredient in the kitchen and cooks them in the sink. He can have raw, stripped-down American folk sounds in one tune, then move into atmospheric black metal and top it all with bright keyboards. Why? Well, there’s no reason not to. He amazes me by giving the listener much to ponder but still having nothing to prove.

The cover of Chris Dave and the Drumhedz

JOSHUA HASKEN Member of

Fernando Doppel, CPS music teacher Keith Jarrett, The Köln Concert A friend recommended this 1975 Keith Jarrett album to me right before spring break and told me the lore behind it. I listened to this live improvised solo recording nonstop on a 13-hour plane ride to Beijing. Jarrett was playing late at night in front of a German crowd on a whirlwind tour, operating on little to no sleep, and making the best of a subpar piano supplied by mistake. Sounds like pure genius.

My David Bowie and Iggy Pop playlist The soundtrack I made for my eight days in China was greatest hits from David Bowie and Iggy Pop. I create playlists as mnemonic devices to enhance and help me remember experiences around the world. It felt pretty badass to be climbing the Great Wall of China blasting “Search and Destroy.” I also took three domestic flights in China, and I would play “Space Oddity” at takeoff to calm my nerves.

Chris Dave and the Drumhedz This self-titled album masterminded by longtime session and touring drummer Chris Dave (who’s worked for the likes of D’Angelo and Adele) is damn good. Specifically, “Destiny N Stereo,” which features rapping by Elzhi of Slum Village and Phonte Coleman of Little Brother. Now that the weather is nicer, it’s a fun one to drive to work with in the morning.

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Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week of May 3

MUSIC

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PICK OF THE WEEK

The Breeders show their latest lineup is their best yet on All Nerve

Joshua Hedley é JAMIE GOODSELL

THURSDAY3 JOshua Hedley Nora O’Connor opens. 8 PM, SPACE, 1245 Chicago Ave., Evanston, $12-$20. b

é MARISA GESUALDI

BREEDERS, MELKBELLY

Tue 5/8, 8 PM, the Vic, 3145 N. Sheffield, $35. 18+

REVISITING THE TWO albums the Breeders made with drummer Jose Medeles and bassist Mando Lopez, 2002’s Title TK and 2008’s Mountain Battles, I realized I desperately wanted them to be better than they were—I hoped with futility that sisters Kim and Kelley Deal could reclaim the genius of their 1993 masterpiece, Last Splash, and its hit single “Cannonball.” A few years ago they repaired the schism with drummer Jim Macpherson and bassist Josephine Wiggs that ruptured the lineup responsible for that record, and in March the Breeders released a new album, All Nerve (4AD), which also falls short of Last Splash. Of course, the Deals’ arresting harmonies, weird dynamics, and gorgeous melodies have made everything they’ve done together worth hearing, and they sound stronger here than they have in decades—years sober and reunited with that agile yet off-kilter rhythm section,

which seems to understand Kim’s knack for messy brilliance in a way no one else has. For beauty or emotional impact, few songs can match the title track, where the Deals sing of romantic longing in a way that cuts right to the heart of vulnerability: there’s a delicious ambiguity when Kim avers, “I won’t stop / I will run you down / I’m all nerve,” either assured or petrified. On the other hand, the Breeders’ lyrics have often been secondary to their sound, which Kim seems to admit on the deliriously herky-jerky “Wait in the Car”: “Consider, I always struggle with the right word / Meow, meow, meow.” Only “MetaGoth,” which recalls the early spirit of the band’s longtime label with its descending licks and a faux-British accent, falls flat. Plus, a song as good as “Cannonball” is a once-in-a-lifetime creation—even with that measuring stick it’s hard to complain. —PETER MARGASAK

Mr. Jukebox (Third Man) is the title of the debut album by Nashville singer and fiddler Joshua Hedley, but it’s also his nickname—a walking encyclopedia of country music history, Hedley plays requests at the drop of a cowboy hat. On this album, his devotion to classic country is clear: there’s the faux-Nudie suit he sports on the cover, pitch-perfect arrangements recalling the glory days of producers Owen Bradley and Chet Atkins, and melodies of the kind that George Jones and Conway Twitty would elevate into works of art. But his lyrics—Hedley wrote almost all the songs on Mr. Jukebox—are the weak link. He squanders the clever conceit of the title track, sung from the perspective of an actual jukebox; instead of keenly observed details about who’s feeding him coins and what they’re longing for, he trots out couplets like “If you’ve got a new romance / Well, I’ve got the perfect dance.” Luckily, the record’s sound is gorgeous. The opening track, “Counting All My Tears,” evokes timeless 60sera Willie Nelson melodies like “Hello Walls” and “Funny How Time Slips Away.” Hedley has said that he’s not a throwback, because the country he loves has never gone out style; while the Billboard charts might argue otherwise, the appeal of this sound has certainly never diminished. —PETER MARGASAK

Saint Jhn Tyla Taweh opens. 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2105 S. State, $20, $15 in advance. 18+

For years, Saint Jhn wrote for the likes of Usher, Joey Bada$$, and Jidenna, and even modeled on the side. But he grew tired of being another artist’s voice or a designer’s mannequin; with his debut album, Collection One (Godd Complexx/Hitco), Saint Jhn—who grew up in Guyana and Brooklyn— aims to tell his story for himself. In the vein of rappers/singers such as Tory Lanez, Bryson Tiller, and PnB Rock, he talks about getting with women, J

MAY 3, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 27

MUSIC

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

continued from 27

the temptations of alcohol, and reaching success, over standard contemporary R&B production: rumbling bass, stuttering hi-hat trap beats, and minimal melodies. Despite his songwriting background, where he shines is in his ability to convey emotional vulnerability with his voice. On “Reflex,” first released as a single in 2016, he complements the airy production by effortlessly softening, wavering, or lightly tapering off his singing; like he suggests, I could practically “Picture me ballin’ / Picture me with the fifth of Henny” over a bed of clouds. And while another rapper might not be able to sell the lines “Tell that bitch I am the man / I been the man since a child,” he delivers these otherwise average lyrics on “Surf Club” with such swagger I let out an audible “Oh damn”—Saint Jhn is letting us know he don’t fuck around. An artist should be musically adept and have a way with words, but most importantly should offer something someone else can’t: a unique persona or perspective. That’s the difference between Usher’s songwriter and Usher. Collection One is too lyrically and sonically vague to indicate whether Saint Jhn is a bona fide artist, but its few glimpses of his nimble delivery and personal charm are promising. —RACHEL YANG

Wicca Phase Springs Eternal Lil Zubin and Fantasy Camp open. 6:30 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $12. b Pennsylvania singer-producer Adam McIlwee says he doesn’t like emo, but he’s anchored to the genre.

For close to a decade, he fronted Tigers Jaw, one of the brightest acts in the fourth-wave emo scene, and his yearning vocals lent the band’s music a hard-to-measure bittersweet allure. McIlwee left the group in 2013, though, and pulled a creative 180 with Wicca Phase Springs Eternal, where he grafts crestfallen ballads onto trap percussion and foggy synths. Had he launched this solo endeavor ten years earlier it would’ve been called “witch house,” but as a founding member of GothBoiClique, whose ranks have included departed rapstar-in-the-making Lil Peep, his work has been rele-

Saint Jhn é EDNA HOLIFIELD

gated to the even less-defined world of “emo rap,” even though he doesn’t rap. In March he dropped Corinthiax (Dark Medicine), an EP of “occult romantic songs” that feels about as occult as it does rap or emo—which is to say the connection is loose, with McIlwee cherry-picking whatever aspects of the aforementioned elements will lend his music emotional clarity. The resulting songs, particularly “High Strangeness”—an intimate ballad built on twinkling synths, a subtle, echo-treated guitar melody, and percussion patterns that rattle like spoke cards— sparkle regardless of how you want to classify them.

—LEOR GALIL

Chimeka é ADAM TAYLOR/ THE OPTIC BRANCH

28 CHICAGO READER - MAY 3, 2018

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FRIDAY4 Chimeka 10 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $10. 17+ Formerly known as Chin Chilla Meek, rapper and Harvey native Chimeka shows she’s ingrained in Chicago hip-hop on her most recent self-released EP, January’s Cool. She teamed up with producers such as the hard-grinding Novacane, Twista’s right-hand man Sunny Woodz, and ZMoney’s secret weapon J. Neal, and got a nice assist from rapper the Boy Illinois, but you can easily hear the world of Chicago in her vocals. On “Champagne Showers” she adapts Ty Money’s syncopated flow, though she dispenses her run-on-sentence verses at a slower pace—whereas Ty sounds like he’s sprinting down a track, Chimeka sounds like she’s in the driver’s seat of a convertible, her left arm resting on the car door as her hand gently bobs up and down in the wind.

She raps and sings through the album, casually switching between the two on “Elevator Music,” on which she finds new ways to make music about marijuana feel vital by divulging her own history with the green stuff. —LEOR GALIL

Sunwatchers

Messthetics

é COURTESY THE ARTIST

é ANTONIA TRICARICO

Sunwatchers, Olden Yolk Chris Forsyth & the Solar Motel Band headline; Sunwatchers and Olden Yolk open. 9 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $15. 21+ On their bruising second album, Sunwatchers II (Trouble in Mind), New York instrumental quartet Sunwatchers further refine their flinty collision of scorching free jazz and numbing proto-punk.

Yet while the combo’s ethos is guided by influences such as the Stooges blowout “LA Blues” and the acidic skronk of guitarist Sonny Sharrock, there’s more to their game than pure aggression. Like a needling knottiness to the licks of Jim McHugh, who boogies down on the opening track, “Nose Beers,” with an electric phin—a Thai lute—suggesting a distortion-curdled analogue to the riffing of Saharan rockers Tinariwen. Most of the band worked as backing musicians for free-jazz saxophonist Arthur Doyle before his death in 2014, and while their raucous, psychedelic din is rock music through and through, its fiery improvisational drive—including some jacked-up double-drum action when Ryan Sawyer sits in—colors just about every machination.

Moments of relative calm exist too, such as the hovering beauty of “There Are Weapons You Can Bring to School,” its glistening surface provided by guest Cory Bracken’s vibraphone. Sunwatchers share a bill

with Olden Yolk, who’ve dropped one of the year’s most pleasurable psych-pop albums: their self-titled full-length, also on Trouble in Mind. The group explores a more pastoral, sunshine-pop sound than founder Shane Butler’s other outfit, Quilt, and he gets a huge assist from Caity Shaffer, who provides beautiful harmonies while moving between keyboards and bass. Vocal melodies are the focal point, but the instrumental arrangements are just as appealing: a landscape of jangly guitars melded to the ambitious production style of 70s Laurel Canyon pop, with a skittering rhythmic thrust that feels utterly modern. —PETER MARGASAK

SATURDAY5 Messthetics Dress Circle and the Poison Arrows open. 9 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $15. 21+

D.C. punk legends Fugazi took an indefinite hiatus in 2003, though they’ve continued to flood the world with new music—or unreleased recordings, anyway.

In 2011 the band launched the Fugazi Live Series, a site archiving hundreds of concert recordings that showcase their exceptional improvisation- J

Olden Yolk é DANIEL DORSA

MAY 3, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 29

Want to play?

MUSIC

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

We’ll teach you how.

Browse our class schedules online at

oldtownschool.org Frankie Cosmos é ANGEL CEBALLOS

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al skills. Punks may shudder to think of it this way, but Fugazi weren’t far removed from the Grateful Dead . . . at least when it came to transforming songs in concert via jamming. Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty and bassist (and sometime vocalist) Joe Lally recently launched the Messthetics with hot-shot D.C guitarist Anthony Pirog, who plays with genre and musical history like a kid squeezing drops of food coloring into water to make the most vivid and brilliant fluid. Their self-titled debut, released in March by Dischord, is built from the same parts that helped make Fugazi an incomparable live act— the music flows freely, and the changes feel guided by intuition and chemistry. On “Serpent Tongue,” for example, Pirog switches between acerbic stabs and psychedelic twisters, while the rhythm section cushions the guitars like a parent rocking a child to sleep. The Messthetics could be the best jam session turned album of the year. —LEOR GALIL

SUNDAY6 Demilich Blood Incantation, Artificial Brain, and Nucleus open. 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2105 S. State, sold out. 17+ Demilich released just one album, Nespithe, before breaking up in 1993, and its 39 minutes of music have secured their reputation as one of the weirdest, most original, and most prescient bands in technical death metal for 25 years and counting.

Nespithe is a lurid, aggressively metastasizing web of alien convolutions, gonzo metrical collag-

30 CHICAGO READER - MAY 3, 2018

es, and disorienting rhythms, all of it tangled in spidery guitars that dance like the floor is covered in broken glass—and its songs still somehow groove like hell, albeit with a feel that’s more peristaltic than it is funky. Their titles say a lot about the territory these Finnish freaks occupy: “The Sixteenth Six-Tooth Son of Fourteen Four-Regional Dimensions (Still Unnamed),” for instance, or “The Planet That Once Used to Absorb Flesh in Order to Achieve Divinity and Immortality (Suffocated to the Flesh That It Desired . . . ).” Arguably the most distinctive thing about Demilich is the voice of guitarist Antti Boman—his inhumanly deep, guttural gurgle was a startling anomaly in early 90s metal, and though that style has since become familiar (in slam and brutal death metal especially), he continues to stand out. Most such vocalists just sound like backed-up storm drains, but Boman overarticulates so grotesquely that you can actually tell he’s delivering human words. Nespithe accounts for 11 of the 29 tracks on the 2014 Svart Records release 20th Adversary of Emptiness, which collects the band’s entire output to date—including three 2006 recordings (one of them a new song) and the splendidly titled 1991 demo “And the Slimy Flying Creatures Reproduce in Your Brains.” (Demilich say they’re writing two more new songs for two upcoming special releases.) The lineup on this tour includes Boman, drummer Mikko Virnes, and guitarist Aki Hytönen, all from the Nespithe days, plus new bassist Jarkko Luomajoki—but because Virnes couldn’t get time off work for the whole trip, recent live drummer LRH will appear here. The reunited Demilich have played two “final” shows already, in 2006 and 2010, and this is the first time they’ve ever

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MUSIC come to Chicago. I wouldn’t skip this one without a note from your doctor. —PHILIP MONTORO

MONDAY7 Frankie Cosmos Florist and Lala Lala open.

7 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, sold out. b And just like that, Frankie Cosmos—otherwise known as Greta Kline, and otherwise tied to an obligatory footnote, given that her parents are Phoebe Cates and Kevin Kline—released her third studio full-length in four years. Though the brandnew Vessel is the biggest record to date for the 24-year-old lo-fi indie darling, featuring an even fuller band sound than 2016’s Next Thing—as well as a proper knighting from Sub Pop—Kline continues to write the same flickering, aching pop songs that regularly come in under two minutes in length. And she continues to become more amazing at it. Vessel’s 18 bedroom-style songs wisp away like seeds from a dandelion, each subsequent track feeling more fleeting than its predecessor. Grooves materialize in which to get cozy and nod a head along—like in the thrumming “Accommodate”—but Kline doesn’t belabor a single note. Even as she’s flourished as Frankie since 2014’s revelatory Zentropy, her expressive, personal lyrics remain candid and stark— and unaffected by her rising celebrity. —KEVIN WARWICK

TUESDAY8 Breeders See Pick of the Week, page 27.

Melkbelly opens. 8 PM, the Vic, 3145 N. Sheffield, $35. 18+

WEDNESDAY9

Never miss a show again.

Chad Taylor Hearts & Minds open. 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $15, $10 in advance. 18+ Over the past couple years, drummer Chad Taylor has been on fire, contributing to some of my favorite recordings, among them albums by trumpeter Jaimie Branch, bassist Eric Revis, and pianist Mara Rosenbloom. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention to jazz. In the late 90s Taylor cofounded the Chicago Underground franchise with cornetist Rob Mazurek, and since he left his hometown in 2001 his activity and versatility have only expanded. He’s always been intensely ensemble minded, adding drive, color, and presence to every project he’s part of. On Radiant Imprints (Off), a strong new duo album with saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, Taylor alternates between splashy propulsion on drum kit and meditative tones on mbira, but through it all his main focus is subtle dialogue with Lewis’s soulful, probing lines whether melodic or rhythmic. Taylor is a consummate team player, so I was a little surprised to learn that he’s also dropping a solo debut. Recorded live at Experimental Sound Studio in March 2017 as part of ESS’s Option series, Myths and Morals (Ears & Eyes) conveys a composerly vision even though much of it is fully improvised—and engineer Alex Inglizian did a marvelous job capturing every nuance in Taylor’s cymbal play and mbira patterns.

Certain pieces deftly use electronics and looping to create hypnotic foundations, such as the stellar opening track, “Arcadia,” an atmospheric masterpiece that’s more about creating an immersive environment than improvisational development— though that quality is clear on the second piece, a throbbing kit solo called “Phoenix.” —PETER MARGASAK v

Sat May 5 @ 8pm

“Honky Tonk Girl”

EARLY WARNINGS chicagoreader.com/early

- a tribute to Loretta Lynn

Fill your glass up to the brim & enjoy the best fightin’ drinkin’ cheatin’ songs: “Coal Miner’s Daughter” “Don’t Come Home a-Drinkin’” “You Ain’t Woman Enough to Take My Man,” and more!

Starring Jenifer French & the Twang Patrol country band Featuring: Alton Smith (keyboards), TC Furlong (pedal steel guitar), John Rice (fiddle/guitar), Malcolm Ruhl (bass), and Billy Shaffer (drums) Director: Daryl Nitz

Tickets: $25 at www.davenportspianobar.com Davenport’s Piano Bar 1383 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago • 773-278-1830

Chad Taylor é PETER GANNUSHKIN

MAY 3, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 31

FOOD & DRINK

CHICAGO STYLE

drinkchicagostyle.com

COCKTAILS

Drinking and thinking

The Chicago Style conference makes room at the bar for voices not usually heard at industry events.

By JULIA THIEL

C

hicago Style, a “forward-thinking” cocktail conference taking place next week for the first time, was born from conversations—and the goal of the event is to create more. Founders Shelby Allison (co-owner of Lost Lake), Caitlin Laman (beverage director at the Ace Hotel), and Sharon Bronstein (vice president of marketing for the 86 Company) are friends who often discuss their jobs and the beverage industry in general. “That’s how this conference came about,” Laman says, “from Shelby, Sharon, and I talking about our regular experiences, and the topics [we wanted to highlight] are the things we talk most about right now.”

It took one more conversation to get them to pull the trigger, though. “Sharon and Caitlin and I had been daydreaming about doing a conference together, and we had dinner with Lynette [Marrero], the founder of Speed Rack [a speed bartending competition for women],”

CHICAGO STYLE INCLUDES a wide array of events in addition to three days of seminars, panel discussions, and workshops in the Ace Hotel.

More information about each of the associated events is below.

Bar Fight Club A resurrection of a long-running bar competition that historically took place at the Tales of the Cocktail conference, this Bar Fight Club has been reimagined slightly. Bronstein says that when she and her fellow organizers put out an open call for bars to enter, they asked for entries that emphasized “ways they’re actively involved in their local com-

32 CHICAGO READER - MAY 3, 2018

Sharon Bronstein, Shelby Allison, and Caitlin Laman é ANJALI PINTO

Allison says. “She mentioned that Speed Rack might be looking to move from New York for the finals, and we said, ‘You should have it at our cocktail conference.’ Then we created it.” And so, for the first time in Speed Rack’s seven-year history, the national finals will be held in Chicago.

A combination of seminars, panel discussions, and parties, Chicago Style takes place May 7 through 10 at the Ace Hotel and, according to Allison, is designed to address issues of equity, inclusion, safety, and sustainability.

Discussion topics include a history of black bartenders, empowering underserved and underrepresented communities in the hospitality industry, and achieving sustainability behind the bar.

munities, steps they’re taking to address sustainability, how they’re building their teams—not only excelling on the cocktail and hospitality side of things, but really setting a new standard for the way that bars are run in our country.” Mon 5/7, 10 PM-2 AM, Fulton Market Kitchen, 311 N. Sangamon, $20.

C h i c ag o St y l e F i t n e s s Series “We’re working with Alex Negranza, a queer Latino man who’s a big advocate for health and wellness within the service industry, and Equinox cycling studio to provide fitness classes each morning,” Alli-

“We’ve been to so many cocktail conferences over the last ten years and had so much fun at all of them,” Laman says, “but we saw an opportunity to create space for voices that aren’t normally heard.” Two-thirds of the panelists and presenters at Chicago Style are women, and many are queer or people of color.

“We’re not trying to exclude straight white guys from the conversation,” Allison says, “but they have a lot of listening and absorbing to do if they truly are allies.”

The time for a conference like this, according to Bronstein, has been right for a long time.

“It’s past due, in fact,” she says. “The current climate in our country with #MeToo and Time’s Up certainly raises enthusiasm from a business side of things; it was easier to get the

financial support we needed to execute this conference. I think before, companies might have shied away from having a three-hour seminar on sexual harassment training, or they might not have jumped at the chance to sponsor a seminar about community activism.”

The conference’s website describes it as “equal parts drink and think, celebration and critique, party and platform,” and the founders say the goal is to emphasize meaningful discussion as much as cocktails. Bronstein says, “I hope this is the starting point of bigger and broader conversations to come, and that it can be a catalyst for some genuine longlasting change in our industry.” v

m @juliathiel

son says. Tue-Thu 5/8-5/10, 9-9:45 AM, Equinox Cycling Studio, 200 W. Monroe. F

it’s really stressful.” Tue 5/8, 6:3010:30 PM, Revel Fulton Market, 1215 W. Fulton Market, $30.

Speed Rack National Finals The speed bartending competition raises money for breast cancer research; food and drink are included in the ticket price along with a view of the action. Laman won the national finals in season three but won’t be competing this year; national winners aren’t allowed to enter again. “It’s a really fun and really serious competition,” she says. “The best part about winning it the first year [I participated] is that I never had to do it again. Because

Chicago Style Dinner Party Series “We worked with 12 brands to use a restaurant or bar that’s owned, operated, or has food or beverage programs driven by a woman, a person of color, or a queer person,” Allison says. “They’re inviting guests of honor to drive conversations based on equity, sustainability, or safety in the workplace.” Participants include Jonathan Zaragoza, Iliana Regan, Julia Momose, and Nandini Khaund, among many oth-

ers. Wed 5/9, 7-10 PM, various locations and prices.

Wasteland Paradise A disco dance party featuring zerowaste cocktails, presented in collaboration with the Trash Collective (formerly known as Trash Tiki).

The goal of the collective, Bronstein says, is to “showcase ways in which bars can make small steps to being more environmentally conscious.

There are a lot of creative ways to have an anti-waste attitude in the bar community.” Wed 5/9, 10 PM-2 AM, East Room, 2354 N. Milwaukee, $5 or a donation to the Chicago Period Project. v

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RADIO ANAGO | $$ R 226 W. Kinzie radioanago.com

FOOD & DRINK

Waygu tartare; tuna flight: toro, akami, chutoro, toro tartare é TARA WHITE FOR HOGSALT

RESTAURANT REVIEW

Radio Anago is Brendan Sodikoff’s sushi cave under the deep dark sea . . .

Hogsalt Hospitality takes a pure, respectful approach to fish amid River North’s culinary cliches.

By MIKE SULA

A

young woman arrived late to join two friends at Radio Anago, a new Japanese restaurant in River North. Hugs and kisses were exchanged, then the newcomer delicately bent her knees, and then her waist—and then indelicately planted her butt on the floor.

And yet she seemed the picture of sobriety.

Turned out she’d missed her mark on the banquette hidden in the gloom that lurks below table level in this 16th concept from Brendan Sodikoff’s Hogsalt Hospitality.

She recovered herself, but still, not a great

start to an evening at this sushi—uhhhhh, sea cave? There’s no sushi bar to speak of at Radio Anago. Or rather, there’s no bar where you can sit and meditate on the chef’s deft knifework on the fruits of the sea. There is a sort of kitchen stage at the rear of the space that’s the only thoroughly lit pocket of this snug 40-seat dining room tucked behind Sawada Matcha, Hogsalt’s second Japanese cafe.

Just past its espresso machines, you enter Anago through dusty-rose velvet curtains that open upon a twilit gloom thumping with propulsive EDM, the soundtrack for the secret

government breeding experiment that is River North nightlife. This actually comes as a shock if you just finished a drink next door at Hogsalt’s Gilt Bar with Nick Cave snarling about death and redemption.

Under the glow from squat $300 brass table lamps, nigiri shine from the spare brushing they’ve been given of nikiri, a cocktail of dashi, sake, mirin, and usually soy that sushi chefs use when they trust you’re not going to dunk their lovely fish and perfectly steamed rice into a puddle of soy sauce muddied by green-tinted horseradish paste. You can do that here—tables are armed with cut-glass soy sauce dispensers, paste is provided—but try not to.

The rice and fish at Radio Anago are prepared by Hari Chan, a surname that will be familiar to fans of brothers Kaze and Macku Chan, whose exploits in the sushi business (Momotaro, Macku Sushi, Mirai, Heat, and on and on) are well documented.

But don’t go looking for Laughing Cow cheese, tomato-mushroom puree, or foie gras with your fish here. Hari Chan, the brothers’ cousin, pursues purity even if the restaurant’s concept isn’t that of your conventional sushi bar. The menu is simple. There are ten “bites” of nigiri, or sashimi if you prefer. There are five “rolls,” aka makimono. And then there are nine appetizers, which range from the familiar trifecta of edamame, seaweed salad, and miso soup to pork belly buns, uni shooters, and Wagyu tartare.

The latter is a bloody red howl beckoning your ancestral primal beast to attack. You can feel your fangs sharpening just looking at it. But along the lines of yukhoe, the Korean version of the dish, it’s sweetened by Asian pear, which dulls the carnal signal being sent.

Scooped into your gob via taro chips, it’s the literal definition of sweetmeat. The same could be said of the pork bun enveloping two

thick slabs of hoisin-glazed belly and crunchy scallions.

These dishes and all the others are hand illustrated in full color on the menu—amusing enough to frame but too big to slip under your coat. As depicted, the yellowtail sashimi glows a rosy pink thanks to a delicate film of ponzu.

The tuna poke glimmers with ruby-red salmon and chunks of green avocado, smothering the already fatty fish. Miso soup, diaphanous tissues of seaweed fluttering in its depths, is straightforward, a warming umami generator, its oceanic dashi base priming the palate for sea meat. Similarly, the prototypical green salad with ginger-carrot-apple dressing is here, sculpted with wide white strips of daikon rolled around the foliage, the absence of fish inciting the impulsive desire to just get on with the sushi.

With the maki you begin to see the level of restraint Chan is exercising, minimizing the stupid crimes against fish that are committed all over the globe in the name of novelty. If anything there’s a slightly lopsided fish-torice ratio, but the California Tamaki Gold grains are excellent. That said, these are American-style rolls: spicy tuna enveloped in firm rice and snappy nori; scallop with warm liquid applications of miso and spicy mayo; sweet king crab with avocado rolled in tobiko, the Pop Rocks of the fish-egg universe.

When it comes to these pieces, Chan brushes the fish Jiro style with the nikiri, which subs tamari for the traditional soy to appease the gluten averse. You can’t see it, but you barely need even the slightest touch of the soy sauce in front of you. Please go easy on the horseradish.

Sodikoff tells me there’s a dab of true wasabi under some of these nigiri, but it passed beneath my radar. What you get are nearly uniform slabs of tuna, salmon, and yellowtail with consistently contoured corners. J

MAY 3, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 33

FOOD & DRINK

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

continued from 33

There’s a gently charred spot prawn, sweet as can be, giving just a bit of dental resistance before yielding a cool, creamy interior. Tuna is opaque, with faint filigrees of ivory fat; unagi is lush and lacquered sweetly, while octopus has a sausagelike snap.

One great barometer of a sushi-ya’s worth is its treatment of sea urchin. I’m afraid I can’t rate Radio Anago in this category because every time I tried to order it they were all out.

That was due to some interruptions in the supply chain sourcing it from waters outside Santa Barbara. I suppose that’s a good sign—if you can’t get Santa Barbara uni, maybe you shouldn’t get any at all. On the other hand, the uni shooter (a gonad bathed in yuzu), sourced from other waters, was fine though not particularly memorable.

Restraint is Radio Anago’s winningest feature. The fish is fresh, and it’s treated with respect. Given that level of humility, you might be surprised to learn there’s a plate of fried chicken on the menu that’s served sprinkled with gold leaf. That’s right—chicken for the Trump era.

It’s a dark bird: boneless butterflied chicken thighs, buttermilk brined with a batter that incorporates houji, a ground roasted tea that turns the crust a deep brown, almost black.

Sodikoff says he wasn’t trying to revive or even pay homage to one of the hoariest and most vulgar culinary cliches of the 80s, but simply felt this blackest of chickens in this darkest of dining rooms needed something to brighten it up.

Or maybe folks just need some cheering up. It is fun to squirt the crunchy bird with togarashi-dusted lemon wedges and cut it into chunks with the provided gilded poultry shears, pretending you’re Patrick Bateman.

Yet the tea contributes an unfortunate greasy grittiness to the essential hot, crunchy, juicy mouthful that drives humanity toward fried chicken in the first place.

This bird’s spiritual adversary can be found on the dessert menu. It’s a fat wedge of snowy white coconut cake garnished with white chocolate curls (hello again, 1984), its sponge practically oozing sweetened condensed milk, and yet it seems to float above the plate like an angel, just the confection to go with the famous Military Latte served in the front cafe. There’s also soft serve and a bunch of macarons along with some ridiculous specialty shots like the Birthday Cake, vanilla vodka and creme de cacao, and the Woo Woo, peach

34 CHICAGO READER - MAY 3, 2018

JOBS

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

Immediate openings in Loop office. Salary + commission.

312-368-4884.

General The Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, located in a large metropolitan area, is seeking a full-time Accounting Associate to assist the department manage the financial operations of administrative, research, and clinical units.

Manage department funds, participate in annual budget planning and drafting of research proposals, and manage purchasing processes for equipment and supplies. Generate financial reports, oversee monthly reconciliations of accounts, direct financial and accounting audits, and provide recommendations for policy changes. Supervise two (2) Accounting Clerks. Requirements are a Bachelor’s degree or its foreign equivalent in Accountancy or related field of study, plus 2 years of accounting experience.

Coconut cake é TARA WHITE FOR HOGSALT

vodka and cranberry juice, because you never know when a bachelorette party might erupt.

These beverages emerge from the coffee bar, and you can in fact order Sawada’s signature “boozy steamers,” like a matcha latte with gin and mint, or any of its other options.

It’s there too that a number of intriguing cocktails are constructed, with a focus on highballs and strong brown liquors, plus a selection of “light” tipples that, incredibly, features a mai tai, one of the strongest drinks known to man, here reduced to a Skinny Girl parody of the real thing. Other selections in the category are delightful, though, including a tequila-yuzu sour held down with Aperol.

The Negroni, manhattan, bijou, and Sazerac are all well-built painkillers, but the real star of the show is the Osaka old-fashioned, poured in a tall highball glass and sweetened like a silk fist with the deep, dark Okinawan brown sugar kokuto all the cool kids are snorting these days.

Sodikoff said that he wants the music and lighting at Radio Anago to contribute to the sense that guests are dining underwater. I don’t think the aggressive score quite jibes with the ascetic pleasures of the sea creatures served here—though the Pump It Up dance machine outside the restrooms is an irresistible touch. Still, the pure, no-bullshit approach to the fish makes a trip to this inky sea bottom of a dining room worth the plunge. v

m @MikeSula

For fullest consideration, please submit a CV, cover letter, and 3 references to the attention of the Search Coordinator via email at sko8@uic.edu, or via mail at University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, 1855 W Taylor Street, Suite 3138, M/C 648, Chicago, IL 60612.

ADVISORY MANAGER, SALESFORCE TECHNOLOGY (MULT. POS.), PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory Services LLC, Chicago, IL. Leverage the Salesforce technology & platform to transform sales, service & marketing capabilities. Req. Bach’s deg. or foreign equiv. in Comp Sci, Engg, Info Systems or rel. + 5 yrs post-bach’s progress. rel. work exp.; OR a Master’s deg. or foreign equiv. in Comp Sci, Engg, Info Systems or rel. + 3 yrs rel. work exp. Must have at least 1 of following Salesforce.com certs: Certified Administrator, Certified Developer, or Certified Sales/ Service Consultant. Travel up to 80% req. Apply by mail, referencing Job Code IL1736, Attn: HR SSC/Talent Management, 4040 W. Boy Scout Blvd, Tampa, FL 33607.

Essendant Management Services is seeking a Manager, Applications Development in Deerfield, IL with the following requirements: BS in Info. Tech. or Comp. Sci. plus 5 years related experience or an MS in Info.

Tech. or Comp. Sci. and 3 years of experience. Prior experience must include 1.5 years with each of the following: gather and analyze web analytics requirements; implement web data collection using Java, jQuery, javascript, Coremetrics, and Omniture; train internal staff and external clients in Java, web analytics, and providing production support; develop best practices for the implementation and integration of web analytic tools. Apply on-line at es sendant.com/careers.

THE FEDERAL HOME Loan Bank of Chicago is seeking a Sr. Quality Assurance Analyst in Chicago, IL with the following requirements: BS in Computer Engineering or a related The University of Illinois is an Equal field and 5 years related exp. Prior Opportunity, Affirmative Action experience must include the followemployer. Minorities, women, veter- ing: design Reusable Actions in Rstar ans and individuals with disabilities and Dstar to build test cases and are encouraged to apply. The Univer- test data (3 yrs); develop automasity of Illinois may conduct back- tion scripts using any testing frameground checks on all job candidates work (5 yrs); create SQL queries to upon acceptance of a contingent test back end data of applications in offer. Background checks will be per- SQL Server Management Studio and formed in compliance with the Fair Oracle (5 yrs); develop automation Credit Reporting Act. scripts using Selenium and Vb.Net (2 yrs). Send resume to recruiting@ LITTELFUSE, INC. SEEKS a fhlbc.com.

Senior Global Automation & ConCOMPUTER SYSTEMS trols Engineer in Mount Prospect, ANALYSTS IL to prgrm PLCs & sftwre for ZENSAR TECHNOLOGIES, intgrtn of mchl dsgn to prcss fnctn & qulty cntrl. Reqs BS in Elctrnc INC. has openings in Oak Brook, IL. All positions may be assigned to Engrng or rltd +7 yrs exp. 7 yrs various, unanticipated sites exp in: PLC/HMI Prgrmmng & throughout the US. Job Code: USintgrton of Mchl Dsgns for the cntrl of mnfctrng prcsses, such as OBIL173 Computer Systems Analyst (Software/Technical): support, assmbly lnes or auto eqpmnt; solution & maintenance. Job Code: Sftwre Devlpmnt for Mchne US-OBIL174 Computer Systems Intgrtn, Cntrls, Wb bse apps & all Analyst (BFD/Java): design, spprtng docmntn; Visual Basic, LabVIEW, C++, C# and .NET, development & testing. Mail resume to: Prasun Maharatna, 2107 North JAVA Script, HTML, CCS; Mchne First Street, Suite 100, San Jose, CA Dsgn & Intgrtn. Dsgn of Mchncl Prts, Fxtrs, Tstng eqpmnt fr 95131. Include job code & full job title /s of interest + recruitment source Mchne Qlty Cntrl. 5 yrs of exp: in cover letter. EOE Dtbse Mgmt (SQL) to use data effctvly to imprve prgrms, anlyze NORTHWESTERN rslts, orgnze data fr Sftwre dvlpmnt & PLC Intgrtn fr Mchne UNIVERSITY seeks Assistant Cntrls; Dsgn & crte Vsn Prgrms & Professor for Evanston, IL location to teach courses & all spprtng dcmnttn fr Prdct Qlty conduct research in modern assrnce (Vsn systms: Cognex, Iranian or Turkish studies. PhD in Keyence). 3 yrs exp: Dsgn Elctrcl Anthropology or related field req’d. digrms, pnmtc digrms, & lgc Must submit cover letter, research, dgrms fr nw & exstng eqpmnt; & teaching philosophy, C.V., three Mchne Dsgn & Intgrtn. Dsgn of referees, and one writing sample.

Mchncl Prts, Fxtrs, Tstng eqpmnt Send resume to: Iman Nasser, REF: fr Mchne Qlty Cntrl. Dmstic/ EY, Crowe Hall, intrntnl trvl to vrs unntcptd clnt 1860 Campus Drive, 4-103, stes as nded. Snd cvr ltr & CV to i Evanston, IL 60208. mr@littelfuse.com, ref#1000B. THE FEDERAL HOME Loan Bank

of Chicago is seeking a Credit Analyst in Chicago, IL with the following requirements: BS in Mathematics, Finance, Accounting or a related field and 2 years related exp. Prior experience must include the following: develop and implement credit analysis models including Impairment Analysis, Risk Rating, and Loan Loss Reserve (1.5 yrs); conduct credit-related analysis based on asset quality, debt obligation and liquidity condition (2 yrs); perform financial statement analysis to determine financial health and credit worthiness of businesses or institutions (2 yrs); evaluate the performance of statistical models, including linear regression and time series models (1.5 yrs); use software and programing languages including SQL Server, Access, Visual Basic and R to query, process and manage data from relational databases (1.5 yrs). Send resume to recruiting@fhlbc.com.

AVP, BIG DATA ENGINEER, SYNCHRONY BANK, CHICAGO, IL.

Design/develop analytic applications leveraging big data for our enterprise data lake initiative using Hadoop, NoSQL, and in-mem. data grids. Req. Bach deg., or foreign equiv., in Engg, Elec. Engg, Comp. Scie., Comp.

Engg., or rel. field, & 5 yrs post-bach., progress., rel. IT work exp.

Apply to: HR Manager, Synchrony Bank, 222 W Adams St., Chicago, IL 60613 (ref.: ILBDE).

Sr BI Developer: Design, develop, deploy & modify BI dashboards & reporting products & solutions for search marketing agency, w/emphasis on UI & UX design & data visualizations. Chicago, IL location. Req’s MS in Info Sys Mgmt & 2 yrs exp as Technology Consultant, BI. Send resume to: VNC Comm’s, Inc dba Performics, 35 W. Wacker Dr, Chicago, IL, 60601, Attn: C. Colantoni.

Graphic Artist Chicago Korea Radio in Prospect Heights,IL; Graphic Artist w/ 2yr exp in graphic design & fluent in Korean; Design websites, prepare sketches, and analyze relevant data; Send resumes @David Y. Cho-1301 S Wolf Rd. Prospect Heights, IL Tenure Track Faculty, Audio Arts & Acoustics: Full-time tenuretrack faculty position teaching courses in audio arts & acoustics Requires PhD & 2 yrs research exp. Send resume to: Columbia College Chicago, 624 S Michigan Ave, Suite 600, Chicago, IL, 60605, Attn: J. Zarzycki.

3D DESIGNER (Chicago, IL) Mail resume to Christopher Martinez, VP, 3D Printer Experience Benefit Corp., 333 North LaSalle Street, Chicago, IL 60654.

REAL ESTATE RENTALS

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

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

STUDIO $600-$699 Chicago, Hyde Park Arms Hotel, 5316 S. Harper, elevator bldg, phon e/cable, switchboard, fridge, priv bath, lndry, $165/wk, $350/bi-wk or $650/mo. Call 773-493-3500

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

LARGE SUNNY ROOM w/fridge & microwave. Near Oak Park, Green Line & Buses. 24 hr Desk, Parking Lot $101/week & Up. (773)378-8888 CROSSROADS HOTEL SRO SINGLE RMS Private bath, PHONE,

CABLE & MAIDS. 1 Block to Orange Line 5300 S. Pulaski 773-581-1188

û NO SEC DEP û 6829 S. Perry.

2.5 room. $475/mo.

HEAT INCL 773-955-5105

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South Side. Call 773-376-5200

1 BR UNDER $700 SPRING INTO SAVINGS! "Let Us Help" qualified applicants receive 1 month FREE RENT. Newly Remod. 1 & 2 BR w/heat start at $650. 3BR & up start at $900. Section 8 Welcome. For info call: (773)412-1153 Wesley Realty 7022 S. SHORE DRIVE Impecca-

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

MIDWAY AREA/63RD KEDZIE Deluxe Studio 1 & 2 BRs. All

modern oak floors, appliances, Security system, on site maint. clean & quiet, Nr. transp. From $445. 773582-1985 (espanol)

NEWLY REMOD 1BR & Studios starting at $580. No sec dep, move in fee or app fee. Free heat/hot water. 1155 W. 83rd St., 773-619-0204 CLEAN ROOM W/FRIDGE & micro, Near Oak Park, Food -4Less, Walmart, Walgreens, Buses & Metra, Laundry. $115/wk & up.

773-637-5957 $550/MO. 1BR 75TH & Union.

Near public trans, schools and shopping, appl incl. Sect 8 Welc.

708-334-5188

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REAL ESTATE RENTALS

1 BR UNDER $700 7520 S. COLES - 1 BR $520, 2 BR $645, Includes appliances & AC, Near transp., No utilities included (708) 424-4216 Kalabich Mgmt FOREST PARK: 1BR new tile, energy efficient windows, lndry facilitities, a/c, incls heat - natural gas, $955/mo Luis 708-366-5602 lv msg CHICAGO W. SIDE 3859 W Maypole Rehabbed studios, $450/ mo, Utilities not included. 773-6170329, 773-533-2900 Newly updated, clean furnished rooms in Joliet, near buses & Metra, elevator. Utilities included, $91/wk. $395/mo. 815-722-1212 NICE ROOM w/stove, fridge & bath Near Aldi, Walgreens, Beach, Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry. $133/wk & up. 773-275-4442 BIG ROOM with stove, fridge, bath & nice wood floors. Near Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry, Shopping. $121/wk + up. 773-561-4970

CHATHAM - 7105 S. Champlain, 1BR. $640/mo. Sec 8 OK. Heat & appl. Call Office: 773-9665275 or Steve: 773-936-4749

1 BR $800-$899 MONTROSE/ CLARENDON VINTAGE one bedroom. Sunny/

bright, across from park, heat/ gas included. Miniblinds/ ceiling fans.

Free laundry, private porch, block Montrose Harbor. $895. 773-9733463.

UPTOWN,

apartment, 2 blocks from lake, 813 West Montrose Ave. (at Clarendon) , rehabbed vintage, heat/appliances included. $875.00 Call EJM at 773935-4425

laundry, cable ready, heat & cooking gas incl, sec, $850-$900/mo.

773-710-5052 btwn 8-5.

1 BR $900-$1099

ONE BEDROOM near Loyola Park, 1333 W. Estes. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. $925/month. Heat included.

Available 6/1. 773-761-4318.

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

Most units Include..

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

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

Chicago - Hyde PARK 5401 S. Ellis.

1BR. $625/mo.

Call 773-955-5106

NO SEC DEP

CHICAGO - BEVERLY, large studio, 1 & 2BR Apts. Carpet, A/ C, laundry, near transportation, $680-$1020/mo. Call 773-2334939 SUNNY & LARGE 2 & 3BR, hd wd/ceramic flrs, appls, heat incl’d, Sect 8 OK. $900 plus.

70th & Sangamon/Peoria. 773456-6900 UP AND COMING ENGLEWOOD

8316 S INGLESIDE 1BR $ 660/ mo Newly remodeled, laundry, hrdwd flrs, cable, Sec 8 welc. 708308-1509 or 773-493-3500

2 BR $900-$1099 75 S.E. YATES - Renovated 2BR Apt, Family Room, 1.5BA, LR, DR, Eat in Kitchen, 3 flat, tenant heated, $950/mo. Call 773-375-8068

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

Sec 8 Welcome. 312-519-9771

AVAILABLE NOW. ROOMS for

CALUMET CITY 2-3BR, 2 car gar, fully rehab w/ gorgeous finishes & hdwd flrs. Beautiful bkyd.

Sec 8 ok. $900-$1150. 510-735-7171

80TH & TROOP, 1 BR Apartment.

Call 312-402-1030 or 708-596-1828

EXCITED ABOUT THE LOVELY 2BR apt located near 83rd & Paulina, new updates, heat incl, Call for appt, $730/mo, no pets.

773-783-7098 SOUTH SHORE, beauitful 2BR updated kitchen & bath, heat incl., laundry on site, $900/ mo. No Pets. Call 773-9331416 10215 S ST. Lawrence. 2BR, $850. Heat incl. Ten pays utils.

Carpet, stove & fridge & bldg security. Move in fee req’d. 773329-3780 SECTION 8 WELCOME 10743 S. Indiana 2BR in a lovely

2 flat bldg, formal dining room, hdwd flrs. Heat not included $850-$950/mo. Call 773-663-7440

CHICAGO 94-3739 S. Bishop.

2BR, 5 Rms, 1st & 2nd flr, appls, parking, storage, near shops/ trans. $950 + sec. No pets. 708335-0786 BRONZEVILLE SEC 8 OK! 4950 S. Prairie. Remod 1BR. $700+. Heat, cooking gas & appls inc, lndry on site. Z. 773.406.4841 6906 S. MICHIGAN. 2BR Apt to share, free cable & utils, no dep, exc cond, 2 blocks from redline. $600/mo. 312-834-8074

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

Please call 773-852-9425

7159 S. MARSHFIELD

2BR, 1st flr apt, Tenant pays utilities. $775/mo.

773-931-1224

MUST SEE! 86TH & Yates, 1st floor, 2BR, incl free heat & appls, A/C, ceiling fans, intercom system, $850/mo. Call 773-375-6797

2 BR $1100-$1299 2BED & 1 bath condo @ 950 East

86th street in Chicago.Condo unit is located in a Senior building. Sec 8 welcome. Rent includes heat,cooking gas and appliances.Lots of closet space and freshly painted unit.Tenant only pays electric. Rent is $1100.Call me at 773-744-6770

WHY RENT WHEN YOU CAN

OWN? 97th/Merrill - Great Starter home! Newly remod. 2BR, 1BA TH part fin bsmt, huge backyd, 2 prkg spots, $85,900. Carla Norton-Brown Dream Spots Leasing Inc. 312-5199862

BUCKTOWN! NICE 2BDR apartment. Freshly decorated, hardwood floors, very bright with bonus office space. $1200 plus utilities. Small pets allowed.847-845-3944

AUSTIN 5035 W. Westend, 1st flr

apt w/bsmt incl. 2BR. $1100/mo.

Tenant pays all utilities. $600 Move In Fee. Sect 8 Welc. 773-317-1837

SPACIOUS 3 LEVEL Townhouse

available for immediate rent in a very quiet neighborhood about 2 blocks from Roosevelt and State (South Loop). The townhouse has 2 bedroom, 3 Baths, home office that could be converted into a 3rd bedroom.

Kitchen appliances, washer/dryer, fireplace, deck, fence in backyard, and 1 attached car garage including parking pad. Pets allowed: Dogs/Cats.

Monthly rent $2500.00 with tenant pays utilities. Serious inquiry only.

Please email for additional information or set up an appointment to see the Townhouse.

3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200 GARFIELD RIDGE 3049 West Arthington, beautiful 2BR, recently remodeled and painted, across from grade school, close to trans & Blue line, 5 mins from downtown, appls incl: fridge and stove, section 8 welcome, $725. 773-317-7450 NEWLY REMOD 87TH/ASHLAND.

1BR, Heat incl, hdwd flr, 2nd flr. $625/mo + $625 sec. Sect 8 Welc 773-651-8673

CHICAGO 6747 S. PAXTON , newly renovated, 2BR,

2BA, HWFs thru out, $975/mo, appls, heat & prkg space incl., 773-2853206

RIVERDALE: MUST SEE! 3BR Apt Newly decorated. Carpet, near metra, no pets, $925/mo + sec dep Available Now 708-8291454 SECTION 8 WELCOME No Deposit 13356 S Brandon. NICE

ASHBURN 7601 S Maplewood, beautiful rehabbed 4+1BR, 2BA house, granite ctrs, SS appls, fin bsmt, $1625/mo. 708-288-4510

2 BR OTHER ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar

Villas is accepting applications for Subsidized 2 and 3 bedroom apt waiting list. Rent is based on 30% of annual income for qualified applicants. Contact us at 847-546-1899 for details

8340 S. MARYLAND. Great loc

AREA - Newly rehabbed, 3br, near transp, appls incl, utils not incl.

Sec 8 OK. $1100 + Fee. 773-544-8057

9112 S. YATES, Great location.

2BR, 1st flr, carpet, ceiling fans & mini blinds. $785/mo + security.

HEAT INCLUDED. 773-374-9747

for trans & shops, XL 2BR, in well run secure building, 2nd flr, newly rehab, FREE heat & water.

A Must See! Call 773-301-5063

GENERAL

GENERAL

GENERAL

SECTION 8 WELCOME. Near

Garden apartment 2BR, all ceramic. $695/mo. Call 773-285-3206

CHICAGO - 7112 S. EUCLID

AUSTIN Laramie/Madison 2, 3 & 4BR apts, nr trans, updated kit & BA, w/d hookup, no pets, $875$1550+ util. & sec. 708-265-3611

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499

AUSTIN AREA 5BR, 2BA, newly remod BA & kitchen, hdwd flrs, resp for lawn maint. No pets .

dining room, spacious living room, 1.5 baths, many closets, near transportation, $1485 includes heat. Marty 773-784-0763.

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

NEAR PARK MANOR - Newly decorated 3BR, dining rm, kitch, 1BA, fridge incl, no pets. $1050/mo + 1 mo sec dep. 773-779-2986

BUDLONG WOODS, 5500N/ 2600W. Three bedrooms, full

3BR/1BA

2 BR UNDER $900

HYDE PARK LARGE 1BR with dining room. $1095. FREE HEAT 1st floor, newly decor, hdwd flrs, appls, free credit check, no app fee. Section 8 Welcome.

1-773-667-6477 or 1-312-802-7301

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

GENERAL

IMMAC

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

BR $735, Includes Free heat & appliances & cooking gas. (708) 424-4216 Kalabich Mgmt

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

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

HUGE

AUSTIN, 1BR, LR/DR, balcony, air,

7425 S. COLES - 1 BR $620, 2

WEST HUMBOLDT PK, 1 & 2BR Apts, spacious, oak wood flrs, huge closets. heat incl, rehab, $815 & $915. Call 847866-7234

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

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

$700/mo & up. Z. 773-406-4841

1 BR $700-$799

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

HUMBOLDT PARK. 1 bedroom apartment for rent. Newly remodeled. Next door to food store. $880/ mo plus security deposit. Includes gas. Near shopping area. Tim, 773-592-2989.

SEC 8 WELC 7446 S. Vernon.

1BR, 1st flr, remod hdwd floors, appls & heat incl, laundry on site.

7801 S. Bishop. 2BR. $610/mo. HEAT INCL 773-955-5106

SMALL 1 bedroom

SOUTH SIDE, male pref, furnished room, no drugs, secure building. FREE utils, shared kit & bath, $500/mo. Refs 773.874.4941

4BR/1BA, W/D incl $1300. 225 W. 108th Pl. 2/1 w/ ht & hot wtr. $1000. appls incl w/ both 312-683-5174

ALSIP, IL 3 BR/1.5 BA 2 story townhouse for rent. $1100/mo without appliances. $2200 due upon signing. Call Verdell, 219-888-8600 for more info.

BRONZEVILLE: SECTION 8 WELCOME. No Security Deposit.

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

Call 708-2884510 BRONZEVILLE 41st/Wabash 3BR, Tenant pays all utils. $1050/mo.

No Pets, sec 8 welcome. $350 non-refundable fee. 312-859-3666

XL 2ND FL., 78th & S. Sangamon St., 3BR, 1BA, $1000/mo + sec.

Heat incl. No pets, credit check 773-874-0524, 9am-10pm

ADULT SERVICES

5900 W & 300 N. 1/2 block from Greenline & Oak Park. Renovated 3BR, sanded floors, heat incl. $1200/mo + sec deposit. Call 773626-8993 or 773-653-6538 NR 77TH & STONY ISLAND 2 story, Spacious 3BR/2BA, w/ yard, appls. $1250/mo + utils. Credit check req. Sec 8 OK Quiet area 646-202-3294

3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799 SECT 8 WELCOME OR SHARE Refurb 5BR, Appl incl, laundry rm, C/A. 1132 E. 81st Pl. $1700/mo neg.

NO Dep Req. 800-566-2642

3 BR OR MORE $1800-$2499 BEAUTIFUL, HUGE 3 1/2 bedrooms. Lots of living/closet space.

Newly remodeled, stainless steel, marble kitchen. Parking. June 1st. $1950/mo. Heat included. Call or text 773-600-0550 OLYMPIA FIELDS Newly remodeled 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath house, full basement. Beautiful area. $1995/mo.. 708-935-7557.

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

3 BR OR MORE OTHER

53RD & WALLACE, N e w l y renov 5BR house, 1.5BA. Available Now. Close to park & schools. $1350/mo. Sect 8 welc. 773-895-2867 TOUHY & WESTERN , Newly remodeled 3BR & 1BR apts available hdwd flrs, granite countertops.

Sec dep req’d.

773-908-1080 MARKHAM - 3BR, 2 full bath, C/A, near shopping & trans!

No pets! Dep req’d.

Nice neighborhood!

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

CHICAGO HEIGHTS, 3BR, 1BA, NEWLY REMODELED, APPLS INCL , SECTION 8 OK. NO SEC. DEPOSIT. 708-822-4450

ADULT SERVICES

53rd & Indiana, lrg 4BR, near schools w/ stove & fridge. Newly decorated. $1200 + sec dep. 773-955-5024

$1650+ utils & sec. 708-265-3611

GENERAL LAKESIDE TOWER APARTMENTS, 200 JULIAN ST, , WAUKEGAN IL 60085. WAITLIST OPENING. Tuesday May 8th between the hours of 11:00am and 1:00pm, 200 Julian St, Waukegan, IL. 1, 2 and 3 bedroom apartments.

Applicants will be screened and must meet our tenant selection criteria. Valid picture ID is required to apply.

WHISPERING OAK APTS 2443 W. Dugdale Rd Waukegan, IL 60085 Sec 8 affordable housing waiting list now open for 1, 2 & 3 bdrm apts.

Applications will be accepted M-W-F from 10am-3pm 847-336-44

non-residential CHURCH SPACE FOR RENT, Vicinity of 69th & Morgan, great location, seats approx 85 people, close to trans, 773-799-4397

roommates CHICAGO, 10635 S. State, Male Preferred. Use of kitchen and bath. $400/month.

No Security.

Call 773-7911443 SOUTH SHORE, Senior Discount. Male preferred.

Furnished rooms, shared kitchen & bath, $450/mo. & up. Utilities included. 773-710-5431 AUSTIN & MARQUETTE PARK AREAS, furnished rooms with use of hsehld. $115 per week, 1 week security. 773-378-7763 or 773-556-3230

ADOPT MARK FROM Alive Res-

cue! Mark is approximately 2-3 years old, dog-friendly and loves to snuggle! Fill out an application at www. aliverescue.org today!

HUGE YARD SALE, Multiple Ven-

dors, Sunday May 6th 9a.m-3p.m.

4250 N. Marine Dr. South Tower Driveway Housewares, Home Decor, Fitness Equipment, Electronics, Toys, Furniture, Books, Jewelry, Clothing, Health & Beauty, Art, Lighting, Luggage, Handmade items & so much more...

UNITARIAN CHURCH OF EVANSTON ANNUAL RUMMAGE

SALE Friday, May 4, 9 am to 5 pm Saturday, May 5, 9 am to noon 1330 Ridge Ave (1 blk n. of Dempster at Greenwood) Evanston Free parking - Bus No. 201 - 847864-1330

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

AVAILABLE NOW! Spacious Rooms for rent. $400/mo. Utilities and bed incl. Seniors Welcome.

No Sec Dep. 312-973-2793 CHICAGO 55TH & Halsted, male pref. Room for rent, share furnished apt, free utils, $ 440/mo.

No security. 773-614-8252

MARKETPLACE

BUYING OLD WHISKEY/ BOURBON/RYE! Looking for full/

sealed vintage bottles and decanters.

PAYING TOP DOLLAR!! 773-263-5320

GOODS

MESSAGES

ROTTWEILER 6 WKS PUPPIES,

SPIRITUAL PSYCHIC READER Tells you past, present , future,

EURO BLOODLINES AKC PARENTS 773-824-0623

ADULT SERVICES

helps w/all problems, She does not ask why you call she will tell you.

FREE consultation 630-408-4789

ADULT SERVICES

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

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

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

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

BUILDING HAS A SENIOR PREFERENCE!!

Preference as well given to disabled, homeless or displaced.

Applicants subject to HUD income eligibility and other screening requirements.

Rent based on 30% of adjusted monthly income.

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

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

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

MAY 3, 2018 | CHICAGO READER 35

STRAIGHT DOPE

By Cecil Adams Q : Every day I see ambulances, police

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1-312-924-2082

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cars, and fire trucks hauling ass down the road while masses of (mostly shitty) drivers scramble out of the way. Yet I’ve never seen an emergency vehicle crash or even bump into another vehicle, or a light pole, a parked car, etc. How often does it happen?

—JACQUERNAGY, VIA THE STRAIGHT DOPE MESSAGE BOARD

A : Oh, often enough. In the early 00s, when an uptick in cop-car fatalities lined up with a long-running decline in violent crime, it was looking like vehicle crashes had replaced getting shot as the leading cause of line-of-duty death for U.S. law enforcement.

It’s not just cops, of course. A 2012 analysis calculated that there are about 3,100 firetruck accidents each year, claiming about five firefighters’ lives. Vehicle crashes are also a big part of what makes firefighting the dangerous job it is. A study from 2015 compiling 20 years of data from the National Traffic Highway Safety Administration estimated an annual average of 4,500 ambulance crashes, a third of which result in injury. The yearly death toll for these crashes is approximately 33, but only a quarter of these happen inside the ambulance—the balance is borne by people who have the misfortune of being in the vehicle’s way.

One exacerbating factor here is that emergency vehicles, particularly fire trucks, are prone to rollovers. Another is that the folks in them simply aren’t wearing their seat belts: the NTSHA crash data revealed that four in five rear-of-ambulance EMTs weren’t buckled up, nor were 22 percent of the drivers. And while nearly all the patients were secured in transit with at least the bare-minimum lateral belt, only a third were (in the words of EMS World magazine) “correctly restrained” using a shoulder belt as well.

Perhaps a reason you haven’t witnessed these accidents yourself is that they tend to occur under specific conditions: often on rural roads, often at night. And with less fanfare than you might imagine: according to a study from Michigan of 13,000 crashes involving EVs over a five-year period, less than 30 percent of the vehicles were on an emergency run at the time; the others were tooling around on nonemergency business. Police-related crashes dwarfed fire and ambulance accidents in this study, both on emergency and nonemergency runs.

As noted above, EV crashes don’t just involve EV personnel. A scan of the headlines yields plenty of instances where civilians found themselves on the blunt end of an emergency

vehicle: two children fatally struck last November by a Los Angeles sheriff’s car en route to a shooting site; a Fort Worth pedestrian killed the following day by a police cruiser that wasn’t on its way to a call at all; a 2016 incident on the New Jersey shore in which a police car traveling 100 MPH in a 35 zone, sans sirens or flashers, hit a woman crossing the street, who survived only to be subsequently grilled by officers about how much she’d had to drink that night.

A note about this last one: the policeman behind the wheel later explained he’d been chasing down a vehicle that had been observed . . . speeding. A 2004 analysis in the journal Injury Prevention identified 2,654 crashes involving 3,965 vehicles and resulting in 3,146 fatalities in the U.S. over a nineyear period, all specifically related to police pursuits. That already seems a bit stiff, but get this: 1,088 of those fatalities—more than a quarter—were “not in the fleeing vehicle.”

Forty were police officers, 102 were nonmotorists—pedestrians, bicyclists, et al—and 946 were “occupants of vehicles uninvolved in the police pursuit.”

The authors conclude that “approximately 300 lives are lost each year in the United States from police pursuit-related crashes, and one-third of these are among innocent people not being pursued by police,” figuring that these fatalities account for 1 percent of all yearly motor-vehicle-related deaths— not enormous, but hardly insignificant. They also cite a previous finding that as many as half of police pursuits stem from mere traffic violations. The authors recommend further consideration of policies to (e.g.) limit police pursuit speed, or limit offenses for which pursuit is permissible. Of course this isn’t the only front on which it’s lately been suggested that cops might try to effect a less-lethal outcome; I wouldn’t hold my breath. I would, however, be sure to look both ways when crossing. v Send questions to Cecil via straightdope.com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 30 N. Racine, suite 300, Chicago 60607.

l

l

SAVAGE LOVE

HOT GIRL BODY RUBS

By Dan Savage

‘Should I be concerned about my celibacy?’

And more questions from Uncle Dan’s grab bag Q : Married from 28 to 36, single the last three years, and celibate most of the last couple years. The last two years of my marriage were sexless, and I saw professionals until I was priced out. I could probably earn twice what I’m making now if I moved away, but my current job gives me the flexibility to spend afternoons with my young kids. Last year, I had a brief relationship (that included the best sex of my life), but I ended it because I needed more me time. So I lack the willingness or the confidence to be in a relationship, and I don’t have the cash to see pros. I’m not fussed by this.

Should I be concerned about my celibacy? —ABSOLUTELY NOT GETTING SEX TODAY

A : Seeing as your celibacy

is intermittent and by your own choice (you walked away from the best sex of your life for me time? What kind of mid-90s Oprah bullshit is that?), ANGST, you’re unlikely to wind up hanging out on an “incel” forum filled with angry, violent, socially maladapted men who blame the fact that they can’t get laid on women and feminism.

So long as you continue to take personal responsibility for all the sex you’re not having, there’s nothing to be concerned about.

Q : My boyfriend and I have

been together for two years.

When we first got together, we had sex every day. Then it dwindled. We had major problems along the way and separated this winter. During that time, he went to another state. We got back together long-distance, and I received many letters from him saying how much he wanted to have sex with me. He moved back two weeks ago, and we’ve had sex only twice. He used

to say he wanted me to make the first move. But if he really wanted me, wouldn’t he make a move? I feel so neglected, yet he claims he loves me. Please give me some insight. —NO SEX FOR WEEKS

A : He says he wants sex

(with you), but he doesn’t make a move. You say you want sex (with him), but you don’t make a move. So how about this: The next few times you want sex, NSFW, make a move. If he fucks you two out of three times, maybe he was telling you the truth when he said he’d like you to make the first move.

If he rebuffs you every time, then he doesn’t want to have sex with you—and you’ll have to make a move to end this relationship.

Q : I’m a 22-year-old woman living in Central Asia doing development work. There are 14 other expats within an hour or two of me, but eight of them are in relationships.

I’ve always been the “single friend,” and normally I don’t mind. But being surrounded by couples right now has been a tax on my mental health. I know I’m young and should be focusing on this amazing opportunity and my career, but I can’t help but feel lonely at times, especially since I can’t speak the local language well and these 14 other people are the only ones near me who speak English. What should I do? —SINGLE ANONYMOUS DAME

A : Math. Eight of the 14

nearby English-speaking expats are in relationships.

That means six nearby expats are single like you, SAD. It’s not a lot of people to choose from in real numbers, I realize, but as a percentage—40 percent of

nearby expats are single—it’s statistically significant, as the social scientists say. Focus on this opportunity, focus on your career, and focus on that statistically significant number of nearby singles.

Q : On two recent occasions,

my husband shaved his pubes. Both times, I told him it was a turnoff. Like, I literally dried up when I saw it. He said he understood, yet now he’s about to take a trip with friends and he’s done it again. Chest too this time.

Assuming he’s telling the truth and this manscaping effort is not about other women (eye roll), is it fair to me? Can I ask him to stop?

Shouldn’t he want to stop if it’s a turnoff for me? Do I have to be GGG on this too?

REAL PEOPLE REAL DESIRE REAL FUN.

224-353-1353 DISCREET BILLING

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

please recycle this paper

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—NOT INTO BALD BALLS

A : I feel your pain—but it’s not hair removal that’s an issue in my relationship, but hair growth. My husband would like to have a mustache. It’s his face, and he can do what he wants with his face. But I can do what I want with my face, and my face doesn’t touch his when there’s a mustache on it. Similarly, NIBB, you’re not obligated to touch your husband and/or his junk when he’s pubeless. So long as your husband’s balls/ crotch/chest are smooth only when they’re far from you, it shouldn’t be an issue in your marriage—unlike the fact that you think he might be fucking another woman (maybe one who’s into bald balls?) or thinking about fucking other women. That’s an issue you’re going to want to address. v Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at savagelovecast. com. m @fakedansavage

Never miss a show again.

EARLY WARNINGS

chicagoreader.com/early

MAY 3, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 37

b Seal 6/19, 8 PM, Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, on sale Tue 5/8, 10 AM b Silent Planet 7/12, 7:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Alex Skolnick Trio 9/9, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Slum Village 7/12, 8 PM, Subterranean Snarky Puppy 7/2, 6:30 PM, Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, on sale Tue 5/8, 10 AM b Square Roots Festival with Jayhawks, Pokey LaFarge, Matthew Sweet, Bombino, Dream Syndicate, and more 7/13-15, Lincoln between Montrose and Wilson b Wax Idols, Shadow Age 9/9, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle

UPDATED Meg Myers é DARREN ANKENMAN

NEW

Action Bronson 5/17, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, free with RSVP F Peter Bradley Adams 8/28, 8 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 5/4, 10 AM, 18+ Bryan Adams 6/29, 8 PM, Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, on sale Tue 5/8, 10 AM b Anita Baker 6/10, 7:30 PM, Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, on sale Tue 5/8, 10 AM b Jill Barber 9/22, 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ Black Milk & Nat Turner 7/17, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Mary J. Blige 7/20, 8 PM, Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, on sale Tue 5/8, 10 AM b Borns, Twin Shadow 9/30, 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom, on sale Fri 5/4, 10 AM b Brick & Mortar 6/15, 8 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Jackson Browne 6/15, 7:30 PM, Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, on sale Tue 5/8, 10 AM b BTS 10/2-3, 8 PM, United Center, on sale Mon 5/7, 4 PM Cafe Tacvba 9/29-30, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Alex Clare 10/13, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 5/4, 10 AM b Roger Clyne 7/19, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 5/3, noon b Code Orange 6/28, 7:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Corazon de Granada 7/25, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 5/3, noon b Stephan Crump, Ingrid Laubrock, and Cory Smythe 9/22, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+

Roger Daltrey 6/23, 8 PM; 6/25, 8 PM, Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, on sale Tue 5/8, 10 AM b Death Cab for Cutie 10/7, 7 PM, Auditorium Theatre, on sale Fri 5/4, 10 AM Eden, Kacy Hill 10/20, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, on sale Fri 5/4, 10 AM b FitzGerald’s American Music Festival with James McMurtry, Joe Ely Band, Marcia Ball Band, Nick Lowe & Los Straitjackets, C.J. Chenier & the Red Hot Louisiana Band, Kelly Willis, Blackfoot Gypsies, and more 6/29-7/3, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, on sale Fri 5/4, 11 AM Fleetwood Mac 10/6, 8 PM, United Center, on sale Fri 5/4, 10 AM John Fogerty, ZZ Top 6/12, 6:30 PM, Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, on sale Tue 5/8, 10 AM b Buddy Guy, Jonny Lang 7/8, 7 PM, Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, on sale Tue 5/8, 10 AM b Peter Himmelman 6/27, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 5/4, 10 AM b Horrors 6/21, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Hot Stove Cool Music with the Orwells, Peter Gammons, Len Kasper, Theo Epstein, and more 6/8, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Ben Howard 10/3, 8 PM, Aragon Ballroom, on sale Fri 5/4, 10 AM, 17+ Miki Howard 7/3, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 5/3, noon b James Hunter Six 7/8, 8 PM, City Winery b I Don’t Know How but They Found Me 6/5, 7 PM, Subterranean b

38 CHICAGO READER - MAY 3, 2018

Janis Ian 6/24, 7 PM, Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, on sale Tue 5/8, 10 AM b Joey Purp 7/7, 9:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 5/4, 10 AM, 17+ Alison Krauss, Tommy Emmanuel 6/16, 7:30 PM, Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, on sale Tue 5/8, 10 AM b Sonny Landreth 7/27, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 5/3, noon b Lemuria 7/27, 10 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Los Lobos, Los Lonely Boys 6/1, 6:30 PM, Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, on sale Tue 5/8, 10 AM b Louisahhh 6/8, 10 PM, Smart Bar Loverboy, Survivor 6/3, 7 PM, Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, on sale Tue 5/8, 10 AM b Stephen Marley, Matisyahu 6/7, 7:30 PM, Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, on sale Tue 5/8, 10 AM b The Men 8/25, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 5/4, 10 AM Efrim Manuel Menuck 8/21, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Moon Taxi 6/6, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Meg Myers 6/12, 8 PM, Subterranean, on sale Fri 5/4, 10 AM, 17+ Piano Guys 12/8, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre, on sale Fri 5/4, 10 AM Natalie Prass, Stella Donnelly 9/19, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 5/4, 10 AM, 18+ Diana Ross 6/2, 8:30 PM, Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, on sale Tue 5/8, 10 AM b Sango 5/12, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Jill Scott, the Roots 6/22, 7:30 PM, Ravinia Festival, Highland Park, on sale Tue 5/8, 10 AM b

Har Mar Superstar 6/30, 8:30 and 11 PM, Empty Bottle, late show added Justin Hayward 8/26, 4:30 and 8 PM, City Winery, late show sold out, early show added b My Bloody Valentine 7/27-28, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 7/27 sold out, 7/28 added, on sale Fri 5/4, 10 AM, 18+

UPCOMING Antibalas 6/2, 10 PM, Subterranean Armored Saint, Act of Defiance 7/21, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Arrested Development 5/23, 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ ASG, Lo-Pan 6/24, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Nicole Atkins 8/10, 7 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Bambara 6/26, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Bing & Ruth 5/11, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Black Moth Super Rainbow 6/16, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Bongripper 7/13, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Cannabis Corpse, Elbow Deep 5/24, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Car Seat Headrest, Naked Giants 9/7, 7:30 PM, the Vic b Citizen, Angel Dust 6/5, 6:15 PM, Cobra Lounge b David Allan Coe 6/16, 8:30 PM, Joe’s Bar Cold Cave, Black Marble 6/8, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Charley Crockett 5/25, 8:30 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn Dick Dale 8/10, 7:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Dead to Me, Elway 5/16, 7 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Deafheaven, Mono 7/30, 7 PM, Metro, 18+ Dirty Projectors 5/22, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+

ALL AGES

WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK

EARLY WARNINGS

CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME

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Anderson East 5/18, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Jeremy Enigk 6/30, 8:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Flasher 6/15, 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ Garbage 10/17, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ A Hawk and a Hacksaw 5/30, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Helmet, Prong 5/17, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Jaws of Love. 6/27, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Kesha & Macklemore 7/14, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard 6/10, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b La Luz, Gymshorts 5/31, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Lighthouse & the Whaler 6/1, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Jeff Lynne’s ELO 8/15, 8 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont The Make-Up 7/6, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks 6/3, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Janelle Monae 7/5, 7:30 PM, Chicago Theatre Mutoid Man 5/14, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ No Age 5/10, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Obituary, Pallbearer, Skeletonwitch 5/13, 7 PM, Metro, 18+ Oh Sees, Timmy’s Organism 10/12, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Pedro the Lion 8/24, 9 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Pelican, Cloakroom 7/26, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Primus, Mastodon 6/6, 7 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Quintron’s Weather Warlock 5/22, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Raekwon 5/18, 9 PM, The Promontory Martin Rev, Wolf Eyes 6/1, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Scarface, DJ Quik, MC Lyte, KRS-One, Twista 5/25, 8 PM, Arie Crown Theater The Sea & Cake 5/23, 7 and 10 PM, Empty Bottle Sleep 8/1, 7 PM, Riviera Theatre b Toots & the Maytals 8/8, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Transviolet 6/20, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Ufomammut 5/27, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Wand 6/18-19, 9 PM, Hideout Welles 6/26, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Susan Werner & Ann Hampton Callaway 5/12, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b v

GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene GOSSIP WOLF first caught Hogg in a smoke machine-filled DIY space in 2015, and to this day the proto-industrial duo have maintained a prodigious talent for instantly turning any venue into a murky catacomb, ripe for their dark rituals. Talk about bringing serious atmosphere! On Friday, May 11, Hogg drop their new album, Self-Extinguishing Emission, via Alex Barnett’s label Scrapes Recordings. It’s a banger—“Confidence,” the first song available to stream, blends stark spoken and sung melodies and rudimentary, thudding percussion into a tense, crawling manifesto. The vinyl version includes a doublesided poster insert, and it’s limited to 300 copies—Barnett says early birds can buy theirs on Wednesday, May 9, when Hogg open for Pharmakon at the Hideout.

For 15 years WNUR has been pairing musicians and filmmakers for its annual Sonic Celluloid event, and the 2018 edition happens at Elastic Arts on Friday, May 4. The lineup includes Ben Baker Billington’s Quicksails project with video by Christine Janokowicz, a collaborative set by guitarist Bill MacKay and live video artist Kim Alpert, and Spectralina, aka the long-running duo of visual artist Selina Trepp and Tortoise multi-instrumentalist Dan Bitney. For one set, a single artist will play both roles: the inimitable Angel Marcloid, aka Fire-Toolz, performs to her own visuals. The show starts at 7:30 PM. On Friday, April 20, Chicago rock threepiece Lume dropped their second album, Wrung Out, which is also their first for legendary New York punk label Equal Vision.

Gossip Wolf digs their downcast riffing— Wrung Out draws from shoegaze, doom metal, and post-hardcore without falling entirely into any of those boxes. Fans of Low, Soundgarden, and Bedhead will dig its crunchy melodies and satisfying, almost headbang-able tempos. Lume and fellow slow jammers Rezn return from an east-coast tour to play Burlington on Saturday, May 5, with Beneficials and Tum. —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

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SON LITTLE THIS SATURDAY! MAY 5 RIVIERA THEATRE

SPECIAL GUEST:

THIS TUESDAY! MAY 8 RIVIERA THEATRE

SPECIAL GUESTS:

MELKBELLY

THE BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE SPECIAL GUESTS:

THE STEVENSON RANCH DAVIDIANS

FRIDAY, MAY 11 • VIC THEATRE

SPECIAL GUESTS:

THE KICKBACK

SATURDAY, MAY 12 • VIC THEATRE

1ST SHOW SOLD OUT-2ND SHOW ADDED!

SATURDAY, JULY 28 RIVIERA THEATRE

SEPTEMBER 19 • PARK WEST ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM!

ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM!

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18 • PARK WEST

ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 9AM!

BUY TICKETS AT MAY 3, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 39

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