Chicago Reader: print issue of May 26, 2016 (Volume 45, Number 33) by Chicago Reader

C H I C A G O â&#x20AC;&#x2122; S F R E E W E E K LY | K I C K I N G A S S S I N C E 1 9 7 1 | M AY 2 6 , 2 0 1 6

Politics Will Mayor Rahm become the pope of Rezko Village? 10

Music Joey Purp raps about the Chicago spots that shaped him. 25

Preserving a culture nearly lost Forty years after the Khmer Rouge genocide, Cambodians in Chicago have renewed their focus on sustaining their ancestral countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s extensive cultural history. By NISSA RHEE 12

2 CHICAGO READER - MAY 26, 2016

THIS WEEK

C H I C A G O R E A D E R | M AY 2 6 , 2 0 1 6 | V O L U M E 4 5 , N U M B E R 3 3

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

EDITOR JAKE MALOOLEY CREATIVE DIRECTOR PAUL JOHN HIGGINS DEPUTY EDITOR, NEWS ROBIN AMER CULTURE EDITOR TAL ROSENBERG DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS FILM EDITOR J.R. JONES MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO ASSOCIATE EDITORS KATE SCHMIDT, KEVIN WARWICK, BRIANNA WELLEN SENIOR WRITERS STEVE BOGIRA, MICHAEL MINER, MIKE SULA SENIOR THEATER CRITIC TONY ADLER STAFF WRITERS LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, AIMEE LEVITT, PETER MARGASAK, JULIA THIEL SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR RYAN SMITH GRAPHIC DESIGNER SUE KWONG MUSIC LISTINGS COORDINATOR LUCA CIMARUSTI EDITORIAL ASSISTANT CASSIDY RYAN CONTRIBUTING WRITERS NOAH BERLATSKY, DERRICK CLIFTON, MATT DE LA PEÑA, ANNE FORD, ISA GIALLORENZO, JOHN GREENFIELD, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, DAN JAKES, BILL MEYER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, DMITRY SAMAROV, KATE SIERZPUTOWSKI, ZAC THOMPSON, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERNS MARC DAALDER, KT HAWBAKERKROHN, CHRIS RIHA, SOPHIA TU, SUNSHINE TUCKER ----------------------------------------------------------------

IN THIS ISSUE 19

TIF dollars to “Rezko Village” in the South Loop. 11 Transportation Is a CTA pilot program to restore bus service set up to fail? 8 4 Agenda The play One Man, Two Guvnors, the Third Annual 26th Annual Comedy Festival, the ﬁlm Weiner, and more recommendations

CITY LIFE

8 Street View People watching at SAIC’s graduation ceremony 8 Chicagoans Gossip Girls podcast cohost Subi Shah talks Blair Waldorf, Tinder racism, and Donald Trump. 10 Joravsky | Politics It’s just a matter of time before Rahm devotes

ARTS & CULTURE

16 Lectures Making a Murderer’s lawyers take their show on the road. 17 Small Screen The latest season of Maron succeeds by by making things up. 18 Theater The six-hour Tug of War: Foreign Fire will give you deja vu. 18 Dance Tap collective Audible Odyssey aren’t celebrating just a birthday with Take Five.

19 Comedy Tracy Morgan faces the road after recovery. 20 Comedy South Asian comedy collective Simmer Brown turns one. 21 Visual Art Salvador Dalí is still silly after all these years. 22 Movies In The Lobster, if you’re single you might be transformed into an animal.

MUSIC

29 Shows of note Rakim, Alexander Robotnick, Beyonce, and more 30 The Secret History of Chicago Music La Porte garage band the Bare Facts rode the wave of late-60s horn rock to Chicago.

CLASSIFIEDS

37 Jobs 37 Apartments & Spaces 39 Marketplace 40 Straight Dope Cecil demystiﬁes the widespread mysterious-boom phenomenon. 41 Savage Love Dan addresses a few queer dilemmas. 42 Early Warnings Ace Frehley, Ghostface Killah & Raekwon, Julie Ruin, Mountain Goats, and more shows in the weeks to come 42 Gossip Wolf Rapper and prison abolitionist Ric Wilson needs help replacing a stolen computer.

FOOD & DRINK

35 Restaurant review: Millie’s Supper Club A slice of Wisconsin cheese wedged into Lincoln Park

FEATURES

VICE PRESIDENT OF NEW MEDIA GUADALUPE CARRANZA SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER EVANGELINE MILLER ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES BRIDGET KANE MARKETING AND EVENTS MANAGER BRYAN BURDA DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY ADVERTISING COORDINATOR HERMINIA BATTAGLIA CLASSIFIEDS REPRESENTATIVE KRIS DODD ---------------------------------------------------------------DISTRIBUTION CONCERNS distributionissues@chicagoreader.com CHICAGO READER 350 N. ORLEANS, CHICAGO, IL 60654 312-222-6920, CHICAGOREADER.COM ---------------------------------------------------------------THE READER (ISSN 1096-6919) IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY SUN-TIMES MEDIA, LLC, 350 N. ORLEANS, CHICAGO, IL 60654. © 2016 SUN-TIMES MEDIA, LLC. PERIODICAL POSTAGE PAID AT CHICAGO, IL. POSTMASTER: SEND CHANGE OF ADDRESS TO CHICAGO READER, 350 N. ORLEANS, CHICAGO, IL 60654.

ON THE COVER: A CAMBODIAN GIRL LOOKS AT THE SKULLS OF KHMER ROUGE VICTIMS ON DISPLAY IN CHOEUNG EK NEAR PHNOM PENH IN 2005. (AP PHOTO/ ANDY EAMES)

ARTS & CULTURE

MUSIC

Forty years after the Khmer Rouge genocide, Cambodians in Chicago have renewed their focus on sustaining their ancestral country’s extensive cultural history. BY NISSA RHEE 12

The Save Money rapper’s new iiiDrops comes from a perspective shaped by neighborhoods on both sides of the city’s racial and economic divides. BY LEOR GALIL 25

Preserving a culture nearly lost

How Chicago made Joey Purp

MAY 26, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 3

"*'0)'6(*0'3*6 /3*1,*-3*& )/&.+;'& -27(+;23- #2/ )/&.+;'& 1&217& +/66751!-*: ,((!5<!8': 48. $74=9 &!5*01*. 23#0"71"*546# 48. >#6871"*546# (75 ,./=13

AGENDA R

READER RECOMMENDED

P Send your events to agenda@chicagoreader.com

b ALL AGES

6.! 80 -<.1&=5 7)-% ;7041*. !8 &7)817)8 %-483178

:$"4:""4*9$, !!!4-7%)27+3#45,-7%)27+3# $7,.45,-

"*$0 !&(%% "*$0 '/-0*1 +&0.0&&01 +&(#-10& !-,)2 +&0.0&&01 +&(#-10&

FREE BICYCLE SAFETY CHECK

Death & Harry Houdini ò MICHAEL BROSILOW

THEATER

More at chicagoreader.com/ theater

R ALEI G H | E VO | R EI D EST. 1935

65 TUNE UP

( R E G U L A R LY $ 8 5 )

includes adjustment of brakes, hubs, gears, H/set & B/bracket MUST PRESENT COUPON · CANNOT COMBINE W/ ANY OTHER OFFERS · EXPIRES 6/5/16 (READER)

WE ASSEMBLE ALL INTERNET BIKES (ALSO SCHWINN, TARGET, WALMART)

FREE ESTIMATES · REPAIR ALL BIKES B I K E D O N AT I O N S A C C E P T E D

7054 N CLARK • 773·274·9281 ROBERTSCYCLE.COM

12A SIDEO’CLOCK TRACK SERIES OF JAM WITH YOUR LUNCH EVERY WEEKDAY

THEBLEADER.COM

4 CHICAGO READER - MAY 26, 2016

The Body of an American Paul Watson, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for his photograph of Somalis dragging a dead American soldier through the streets, has witnessed innumerable atrocities while covering war zones around the globe; he’s left with a crippling case of PTSD. Dan O’Brien, who’s written some poems and plays you’ve never heard of, has a brother who, as a teen, jumped from a third-story window and landed safely in a snowbank; as a result, O’Brien’s still upset. In this 2016 play, O’Brien spends 90 stupefying minutes drawing an equivalence between his and Watson’s struggle, chronicling his own efforts to write this undisciplined, overcooked play and leaving Watson’s own story underdeveloped. Jason A. Fleece’s swift staging for Stage Left has it charms, but go read Watson’s memoir instead. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 6/19: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-975-8150, stagelefttheatre.com, $26-$30. The Boys Upstairs Three gay college friends reunite as adult roommates in this fizzy sex romp by Jason Mitchell. In a Hell’s Kitchen walk-up, a nebbish blogger, a sweetheart monogamist, and Jack McFarland-meets-Foghorn Leghorn drop double entendres and fawn over the presumptively straight neighbor. David Zak’s direction for Pride Films & Plays takes a goofy stab at urban romantic farce—no pun goes untouched, and all three abuse one-liners and look at adulthood through the lens of Logo TV. Some jokes are written with more self-awareness than others—no one onstage seems to notice how creepy a prolonged “grope the passed-out guy” gag is—but it’s an excuse for Luke Meierdiercks to do quintuple duty and shine as a handful of different onenight stands. —DAN JAKES Through 7/2: Thu-Sat 7 PM, Sun 5 PM, Mary’s Attic Theatre, 5400 N. Clark, 773-784-6969, pridefilmsandplays.com, $25-$30.

Chewing on Beckett Inspired by the fact that Samuel Beckett’s estate forbids women from performing in Waiting for Godot, this world premiere, penned by Ed Proudfoot and directed by Steve Scott, is meaty material for Artemisia, with its stated mission to produce plays that empower women. Beckett’s material is chewed on, both ﬁguratively and literally, in a two-act, dialogue-driven story of a Beckett scholar in mental decline (an electric Diane Dorsey) and her former student (Julie Proudfoot, Artemisia’s founder and Ed’s wife), as they struggle to survive in a not-too-distant apocalyptic future. Strong, tragicomic acting from the all-female cast of ﬁve helps tease out raw, gut-wrenching moments from extremely dense source material. The production isn’t for the literary faint of heart. Think of it as your most aspirational college lecture with a side of graphic, dystopian despair. —MARISSA OBERLANDER Through 6/12: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 7:30 PM, Sun 6 PM, The Frontier, 1106 W. Thorndale, artemisiatheatre.org, $25.

Death & Harry Houdini Nathan Allen’s play about the legendary escape artist has already cheated death a few times. It introduced the House Theatre of Chicago to Chicago in 2001, received a remount in 2003, then ran again in 2012 and ’13. Now it’s back for the House’s 15th anniversary, with solid vital signs and perennial Houdini Dennis Watkins back in his water-torture cell. Basically a magic show nestled in a biography, the production recounts Houdini’s life in the graphic-novel style the House has long favored, veering between the cartoonishness of Houdini’s gibberish-spouting mama (rendered endearing despite her decades-long bad mood by Marika Mashburn) and a spectral, top-hatted embodiment of Death. As for the magic: though it loses the sense of raw wonder in a theatrical setting, it’s accomplished with enormous cunning, elegance, and skill. —TONY ADLER Through 7/24: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat-Sun 4 and 8 PM, Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division, 773-769-3832, chopintheatre.com, $15-$59.

Haymarket: The Anarchist’s Cookbook Underscore Theatre’s original musicalized treatment of Chicago’s Haymarket riot and its aftermath fairly bursts with promise, from Elizabeth Margolius’s imagistic staging to Erik Barry’s seductive lighting to Robert Ollis’s and Tyler Merle Thompson’s exacting musical direction. David Kornfeld’s haunting if somewhat derivative score cunningly fuses American folk and European cabaret. Throw in a stalwart nine-person cast who play nearly every acoustic instrument known to man, and you should have a smash. But Alex Higgin-Houser’s alternately overfocused (act one) and underfocused (act two) book and workmanlike lyrics turn much of the two-hour show clumsily diagrammatic. And the inconsistent effort to focus the show around Lucy Parsons, firebrand widow of one unjustly executed Haymarket “coconspirator,” ultimately comes to nothing. Glimpses of greatness abound. Rigorous reworking awaits. —JUSTIN HAYFORD 5/27-6/12: Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 5 PM, EDGE Theatre, 5451 N. Broadway, underscoretheatre. org, $20-$25. Johanna Faustus As in many of the loose adaptations of classic works presented by the Hypocrites, this modern-language riff on Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus stays true to neither the letter nor the spirit of the original. Adapters Emily Casey and Sean Graney (who also directs) have the titular scholar trade her soul to hell—not for knowledge or power, but for a chance to topple Christianity. Turns out Faustus has been anti-religion ever since her parents were killed in a holy war. The cast of Graney’s hour-long production perform the jokey script with a lot of enthusiasm, but their efforts can’t distract from the show’s fundamental incoherence in matters ranging from plot to whatever it is Casey and Graney are trying to say about religion. —ZAC THOMPSON 5/27-5/29: Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Den Theatre, 1329-1333 N. Milwaukee, 773-609-2336, the-hypocrites.com, $36. One Man, Two Guvnors Charles R Newell’s hilarious, nearly flawless direction of Richard Bean’s modern

adaptation of Carlo Goldoni’s 1753 farce is a case where everything goes right. The ensemble (a collection of Chicago’s A-list actors at the top of their game) is first-rate, Mara Blumenfeld’s modinspired costumes are delightful, and Collette Pollard’s set is both eye-pleasing and integral to the show’s postmodern comic conceit (that the audience is reminded at all times that they are watching a play, even as they are drawn into the story). Set in Brighton, England, in 1963, the show evokes the spirit of both commedia dell’arte and the mad, mod world of an early-60s Richard Lester romp. Grant Olding’s British Invasion-inspired songs (performed by the cast) are icing on the cake. —JACK HELBIG Through 6/12: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 2:30 and 7:30 PM, Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis, 773-753-4472, courttheatre.org, $48-$68. The Seagull Two years ago, Kathy Scambiatterra played mother opposite Julian Hester in Jean Cocteau’s incestuous dark comedy Les Parents Terribles. They reunite as mother and son for Cody Estle’s staging of Anton Chekhov’s tragicomedy. Once again, there’s something off-kilter in the dynamic, meaning they also want to bone each other in this one. In Artistic Home’s intimate black-box space, Hester overplays Chekhov’s inherently satirical depiction of hungry author Konstantin Trigorin: here, he’s a juvenile, hysterical brat; he should be a dour sourpuss, which is meant to seem incongruous with his charismatic and romantic reputation. Together, the capable ensemble offers a competent but perfunctory take on a classic play that is, somewhat ironically, about indulgence in the artistic process. —DAN JAKES Through 7/3: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, The Artistic Home, 1376 W. Grand, 312-243-3963, theartistichome. org, $28-$32 suggested donation.

DANCE Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre A collection of past favorites and works in progress. Thu 5/26, 12:15 PM, Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State, 312-747-4300, chipublib.org. F

One Man, Two Guvnors ò MICHAEL BROSILOW

Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of May 26

YOUR CHICAGO BIKE AND CAR ACCIDENT LAWYERS

“Women of Vision” at the Field Museum ò LYNSEY ADDARIO/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

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

COMEDY

Awkward Moments Comedian R Collin A. Bullock hosts a live recording of his interview podcast.

Sun 5/29, 7 PM, Laugh Factory, 3175 N. Broadway, 773-327-3175, awkwardmomentspod.com, $17.

Drew Michael The Chicago stand-up records his second fulllength album. Thu 5/26-Fri 5/27: 8:30 PM, Timothy O’Toole’s, 622 N. Fairbanks, 312-642-0700, timothyotooles.com, $15, $10 in advance.

Super Picante The most potent improv and sketch shows tend to directly reflect the unconventional observations of the casts who create them. So it’s a shame more isn’t being done to diversify the theaters that showcase comedy in Chicago; the effort could offer audiences more complex and compelling scenes with a greater variety of viewpoints. Director Miguel Lepe Jr. directly addresses the dearth of Latin performers with Super Picante. The show’s a mixed bag—improv and sketch mingling with stand-up, storytelling, spoken word, and music—but the rotating all-Latin cast bring perspectives missing from the city’s comedic stages. Some scenes are entirely in Spanish. Not everyone in the audience will get each and every reference, but that’s exactly why you should see this show. —A.J. SØRENSEN Through 6/17: Fri 8:30 PM, Annoyance Theatre, 851 W. Belmont, 773697-9693, theannoyance.com, $10.

Third Annual 26th Annual R Comedy Festival The A.V. Club welcomes headliners Tracy Morgan and

Sarah Silverman to town for its third annual comedy festival. Other performers include Reggie Watts, Jenny Slate, and Chris Gethard. 6/1-6/5, various locations, 26comedy.com, $10-$72.50.

VISUAL ARTS Chicago Cultural Center “Heritage and Fashion: At a Local Crossroad?” Local clothing designers Katrin Schnabl, Tsega Mengistu, and Maria Pinto speak at this forum on heritage in fashion; Field Museum curator Alaka Wali moderates. Thu 5/26, 5:30 PM, 78 E. Washington, 312-744-6630, chicagoculturalcenter.org. Field Museum “Women of R Vision,” works by female photojournalists for National Geographic.

Through 9/11, daily 9 AM-5 PM, 1400 S. Lake Shore, 312-922-9410, ﬁeldmuseum. org, $15; $12 students and seniors; $10 kids 4-11; free on the second Monday of the month.

LIT

BroBots Release Party Sean R Dove celebrates the release of his graphic novel about of trio of

crime-ﬁghting robots. Fri 5/27, 6 PM, Challengers Comics + Conversation, 1845 N. Western, 773-278-0155, challengerscomics.com.

Steve Krakow and Ray Robertson Reader music editor Philip Montoro moderates a conversation with authors Steve Krakow (The Secret History of Chicago Music) and Ray Robertson (Lives of the Poets (With Guitars)). Tue 5/31, 6 PM, Book Cellar, 4736 N. Lincoln, 773-293-2665, bookcellarinc.com.

The Moth Storytelling event based on the theme “escape.” Tue 5/31, 7 PM, FitzGerald’s, 6615 Roosevelt, Berwyn, 708-788-2118, themoth.org.

MOVIES

More at chicagoreader.com/movies NEW REVIEWS Aferim! With a title that transR lates roughly as Attaboy!, this engaging and percipient period comedy

Sarah Silverman headlines the Third Annual 26th Annual Comedy Festival ò GETTY

(2015) focuses on the enslavement of the Roma people in 19th-century Romania, a subject that, until recently, was sel-

FIGHTING INJUSTICE FOR INJURED CYCLISTS ALSO FOCUSING ON:

dom aired by Romanian nativists, much less condemned, and that continues to resonate in the second-class treatment of the Roma today. Set in 1835 in the rural principality of Wallachia, the film follows a constable (Teodar Corban) and his son (Mihai Comanoiu), who serves as his deputy, as they search for a runaway slave (Toma Cuzin) who was sleeping with his master’s wife. Writer-director Radu Jude is ably assisted by cowriter Florin Lazarescu in crafting wry, unsentimental dialogue about the meaning of manhood, and by cinematographer Marius Panduru in creating immense landscapes, shot in black-and-white 35-millimeter widescreen, that evoke the classical American western. In Romanian, Turkish, and Romany with subtitles. —LEAH PICKETT 108 min. Gene Siskel Film Center Alice Through the Looking Glass Johnny Depp and Mia Wasikowska star in this sequel to the 2010 Disney release Alice in Wonderland. For J.R. Jones’s capsule review, visit chicagoreader.com/movies. PG, 113 min. ArcLight Chicago, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, Landmark’s Century Centre, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON, 600 N. Michigan, Webster Place Maggie’s Plan A Brooklyn single with a ticking biological clock (Greta Gerwig) decides to conceive by artificial insemination, but the pregnancy is complicated by her unexpected love affair with a married man (Ethan Hawke). Writer-director Rebecca Miller (The Ballad of Jack and Rose) gives Gerwig a more appealing character than the glamorous snots she often plays, and her early scenes with Hawke, doing his usual shaggy comedy, are charming. But the story grows emotionally muddled after Miller (adapting a story by Karen Rinaldi) leaps ahead three years: now the two lovers are unhappily married parents, and the Gerwig character, for motives unclear to us and possibly herself, contrives to reunite her husband with his ex-wife, a dour academic (Julianne Moore). With Bill Hader, Maya Rudolph, Wallace Shawn, and a musical cameo by riot grrrl Kathleen Hanna. —J.R. JONES R, 98 min. Landmark’s Century Centre Parallel I-IV This intriguing cycle of four short essay films, the final work of German experimental filmmaker Harun Faro-

cki, explores the techniques, technologies, and ethical quandaries involved in the creation of moving images for video games. Each of the shorts—which were made between 2012 and 2014 and range from 7 to 16 minutes—tackles a diﬀerent aspect of the under-seen process by which games are rendered: the evolution of symbolic imagery into realistic graphics, and what that process intimates; the placement of limits, or the lack thereof; the construction of illusions and narrative omnipotence; and the morally fraught relationships between players and their avatars. The shorts consist almost entirely of game footage made between 1980 and the present day, against which an uncredited voiceover narrator waxes philosophical about the impression of digital worlds on the human psyche (“Does the world exist if I’m not watching it?”). —LEAH PICKETT 43 min. Fri 5/27, 7 PM. Univ. of Chicago Logan Center for the Arts Ray St. Ray Ryan Miera directed this documentary proﬁle of Ray, better known as Chicago’s Singing Cabdriver. For J.R. Jones’s capsule review, visit chicagoreader.com/movies. 69 min. Miera and Ray attend the screening. Mon 5/30, 7 PM. Music Box Sunset Song Ever the pictorialist, R Terence Davies opens his adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s 1932

novel by panning over a ﬁeld of rippling wheat, from which the 18-year-old heroine (Agyness Deyn) suddenly sits up. The shot asserts her strong bond to the farming country of northeast Scotland, which holds her despite a life of hardship: her mother commits suicide rather than bear a seventh child, her hardened father (an especially scary Peter Mullan) ritually beats her older brother (Jack Greenlees), and her loving marriage to a local lad (Kevin Guthrie) turns dark after his service in World War I provokes in him a savagery reminiscent of her father’s. The story’s extreme physical and emotional violence poses a challenge to a lyrical master like Davies, and his staging of the domestic drama can seem slow and somber. But Deyn gives a vivid performance as the daughter, a quiet but determined survivor in a patriarchal society; whenever she steps out into the wider world, the movie soars. —J.R. JONES 135 min. Music Box Me to the River With this R Take 2015 debut feature, writer-di- µ

PEDESTRIAN & TRUCK ACCIDENTS SLIP ’N’ FALLS NURSING HOME ABUSE WORKERS COMPENSATION

FREE CONSULTATION NO FEE UNLESS RECOVERY

BEKKERMAN LAW BEKKERMANL AW.COM

312 ·2 5 4 ·7 3 9 9

308 WEST ERIE AVE. ST · SUITE SUITE1000 300 444 N. MICHIGAN CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 60654 CHICAGO, IL 60611

est. 1967

We’ve

Reopened 

for the



49 time

with lots of new loveliness



Under(cover) Choreographer Robyn Mineko Williams teams up with composers Robert F. Haynes and Tony Lazzara and Minneapolis-based graphic designer JT Williams Fri 5/27, 7:30 PM, Links Hall at Constellation, 3111 N. Western, 773-281-0824, linkshall. org, $25.

Yep, still no website

just steps from the Dempster “L” stop Tue - Sat 10 - 6

☎

847-475-8665

801 Dempster Evanston

MAY 26, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 5

AGENDA B rector Matt Sobel transforms a nightmare he once had into an evocative, original drama. A surly California teen (Logan Miller) argues with his parents (Robin Weigert, Richard Schiﬀ) en route to a rural Nebraska family reunion that he should come out of the closet to his conservative relatives; his parents persuade him to keep mum, but at a family picnic, the festive atmosphere turns ominous after his nine-year-old cousin (Ursula Parker) ﬂirts with him in a sexually provocative manner. All the actors are game for this adult fare, but Josh Hamilton, often cast in bland roles, is a real surprise as the girl’s father, whose hair-trigger temper masks a lifetime of secrets and resentments. —ANDREA GRONVALL 84 min. Fri 5/27, 8:30 PM; Sun 5/29, 5:30 PM; and Wed 6/1, 8:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center

20%

OFF APPAREL AND BAGS S O M E E XC LU S I O N S A P P LY BURTON CHICAGO FLAGSHIP 5 6 E A S T WA LT O N S T R E E T 312-202-7900

6 CHICAGO READER - MAY 26, 2016

Aferim!

provocative projects as artwork made from the stained underparts of incontinent fat people and a cable-access TV show to which poor kids could phone in for help with their homework. Among the Conrad fans weighing in are Moby and Jim O’Rourke. —J.R. JONES 96 min. Screens as the opening-night program of the Chicago Underground Film Festival; tickets are $20 and include an after-party. Wed 6/1, 8 PM. Logan

Tale of Tales The ambitious R Italian director Matteo GarTwo Men in Manhattan rone (Gomorrah, Reality) makes his R French director Jean-Pierre English-language debut, directing Melville (Le Samourai) brings his an international cast that includes Salma Hayek, Toby Jones, Vincent Cassel, and John C. Reilly. Yet the material is deeply rooted in Garrone’s native land: drawn from Tale of Tales, a 17th-century fairy tale collection by Neapolitan poet Giambattista Basile, the movie poaches on Guillermo del Toro territory with its alternately comic and gruesome treatment of three supernatural stories. Hayek plays a barren queen who gets pregnant by eating the cooked heart of a sea monster, and Cassel is a randy king whose lovely new queen is really an old hag magically transformed; best of all is Jones as a king who adopts a ﬂea as a pet and raises it into a pale, clammy-looking beast. A scene of a trained bear entertaining the court with its horn-playing and hula-hoop prowess is typical of the movie’s freakish delights. —J.R. JONES 134 min. Gene Siskel Film Center

Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present Tony Conrad (who died in April at age 76) was a double threat of the 60s avant-garde: as a violinist, he performed in the Theatre of Eternal Music alongside such luminaries as LaMonte Young and John Cale (the latter of whom would carry its droning, minimalist aesthetic into the Velvet Underground); as a filmmaker, he apprenticed with director Jack Smith on the scabrous Flaming Creatures (1964) before making his own mark with the stroboscopic The Flicker (1966) and the conceptual Yellow Movies (1973). As portrayed in this affectionate documentary by Tyler Hubby, Conrad never met an authority figure he didn’t want to buck, and his subsequent career—most of which he created while teaching filmmaking at State University of New York-Buffalo—has included such unglamorous but

particular brand of moral rot to New York City for this hard-boiled mystery (1959), which feels like a Hollywood release but trades in such taboo elements as prostitution, lesbianism, and full-frontal nudity. A reporter from the French press agency (Melville in his only starring role) is dispatched to track down a vanished delegate to the United Nations; accompanied by a greedy and unfeeling paparazzo (Pierre Grasset), he follows a trail of sexually available women back to the missing diplomat, but the truth is unpublishable. The story is full of Melville’s ethical shadings and complications, and the nighttime street scenes, shot by Nicolas Hayer, are dazzling, a foreigner’s delirious vision of Manhattan after dark. —J.R. JONES 85 min. Sat 5/28, 5:45 PM, and Tue 5/31, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center We Monsters In this German neonoir (2015), divorced parents try to cover up their teenage daughter’s confession of murder. For Andrea Gronvall’s capsule review, visit chicagoreader.com/movies. 95 min. Facets Cinematheque

Weiner As brutal and comR pelling as a car-crash video, this documentary by Josh Krieg-

man and Elyse Steinberg records the 2013 New York mayoral run of Anthony Weiner, a ﬁre-breathing liberal Democrat who had been laughed out of Congress two years earlier for accidentally posting a photo of his penis on Twitter. Weiner throws himself at the mercy of his fellow New Yorkers, dutifully eats shit for his past behavior, and makes a digniﬁed plea to be readmitted to the public debate. Before long he’s polling in the mid20s alongisde three other major contenders, but then comes the revelation that his online sexual

adventures continued even after he’d resigned from Congress, and his candidacy collapses. Weiner gave the directors nearly unlimited access, and there are gripping scenes of him and his loyal wife, Huma Abedin—whose own political career has been stymied by her husband’s scandals—reckoning with his past behavior as a fresh wave of public humiliation sweeps over them. —J.R. JONES R, 96 min. Music Box X-Men: Apocalypse Bryan Singer, who directed the ﬁrst two X-Men movies, returns for this new installment, For Leah Pickett’s capsule review, visit chicagoreader.com/ movies. PG-13, 147 min. ArcLight Chicago, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON, 600 N. Michigan, Webster Place, Wilmette

NEW REVIEWS Stranger Than Paradise R Jim Jarmusch’s amusing independent feature welds Euro-

pean modernism and American sleaze to produce a very workable definition of hip circa 1984. A New York lowlifer (musician John Lurie) reluctantly agrees to share his fleabag apartment for ten days with a newly immigrated Hungarian cousin (Eszter Balint); though they don’t exactly hit it off, he’s smitten enough to follow her one year later to Cleveland, where he persuades her to join him and his burned-out buddy (Richard Edson) on a depressive joyride to off-season Florida. The film is divided into a series of very brief scenes, each shot in a single long, static take; by the end Jarmusch seems constrained by his own formal ploy, though much of the time the impassive camera serves to echo and underline the absurd underreactions of the characters, which become the film’s chief comic principle. Jarmusch’s eye for blighted landscape (he films in a grainy black and white) is hilariously sharp, and he sends his performers on their zomboid rounds with a keen sense of rhythm and interplay. —DAVE KEHR 89 min. Jonathan Rosenbaum introduces the screening, part of a series noting the 50th anniversary of the National Society of Film Critics. Sat 5/28, 5:45 PM, and Tue 5/31, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center v

TOP 3 PART-TIME MBA IN CHICAGO Located just steps from the Chicago Red Line Station, Loyola’s Quinlan School of Business oﬀers students an innovative, compassionate education in the heart of Chicago. Take the next step in your career with our nationally ranked, part-time MBA program or one of the following degrees and certiﬁcates:

GRADUATE DEGREE PROGRAMS: • Master of Business Administration (MBA) • MBA in Vernon Hills • Executive MBA (EMBA) • MBA Health Care Management (MBA-HCM) • Master of Science in Accountancy (MSA) • Master of Science in Finance (MSF) • Master of Science in Human Resources (MSHR) • Master of Science in Information Systems Management (MSISM) • Master of Science in Integrated Marketing Communications (MSIMC) • Master of Science in Supply Chain Management (MSSCM)

GRADUATE CERTIFICATES: • Business Data Analytics • Business Ethics • Information Systems • Supply Chain Fundamentals Learn more at LUC.edu/Quinlaninfo.

U.S. News & World Report

MAY 26, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 7

CITY LIFE Ù

OUR MOST READ ARTICLES LAST WEEK ON CHICAGOREADER.COM IN ASCENDING ORDER: In The Lobster, if you’re single you might be transformed into an animal —JR JONES

ò ISA GIALLORENZO

On Tinder, the messages I get are a level grosser than the ones white women get —ANNE FORD

Oh, the irony: Mayor Rahm’s allies call Lucas Museum opponents elitists —BEN JORAVSKY

Street View

Go with the flow

ONE OF CHICAGO’S GREAT arenas for people watching is the School of the Art Institute of Chicago graduation ceremony. On the occasion of SAIC’s 150th anniversary commencement in mid-May, fine arts major Misael Oquendo modeled an ensemble assembled by Holly Rae McClintock, his fashion-designer girlfriend and fellow SAIC student. “We started with a pair of white wide-ﬂare pants by Feifei Yang and looked to old or thrifted items to contrast the quality of the pants,” he says. “My shoes were these four-year-old boots from Zara that had been refurbished a couple times after taking a beating throughout the Chicago winters. By the time the spring season ﬂourished, they were again in poor condition, so we decided to paint them monochrome white in celebration of graduation.” —ISA GIALLORENZO

Roister, the Alinea Group’s casual spot, is jaw-dropping —MIKE SULA

Chicago principals send Mayor Emanuel a strong message with the election of Troy LaRaviere —BEN JORAVSKY Diameters of circles are proportional to the number of page views received.

Chicagoans

The Gossip Girl podcaster Subi Shah, 29

I’M A FREELANCE mechanical engineer. People are like, “I have an idea for this thing, and I have no idea how to get it prototyped or printed or manufactured.” No one wants to invest in your idea unless you have a physical product to look at. So I make 3-D models and print them and tweak the design until it becomes a functional product you can pitch to investors. I was a staff engineer for ﬁve years, and I quit my job. It was because I was feeling really unfulfilled, and because everyone was—oh, God—an old white dude, and they didn’t take me particularly seriously. I don’t cross-stitch, I never have in my life, and my boss told me, “Your VP saw you cross-stitching at your desk. You need to not do that.” I was like, “This is not real.” Or sometimes I’d get, “What are you? Do you eat spicy food? Can I call you Curry?” White people are truly embarrassing. On Tinder, the messages I get are a level grosser than the ones white women get. Or not gross, but just racist. I got one that said, “I love Indian women, but I’ve never dated one.” I wrote back: “Hey, next time don’t start a conversation based on race.” He was like, “Yo, dummy, it’s not race, it’s ethnicity.” I didn’t respond, and he was like, “Sorry, can we start over?” I thought, Are you se-

“Our podcast has that point of view: Why do we like the show so much, even though we can’t relate to it?” Gossip Girls cohost Subi Shah says. ò CHRIS RIHA

rious? It’s really disgusting, and that’s why I’m single. Me ﬂirting is like, “Hi, I hate men.” But men are so great. OK, so I’ve loved Gossip Girl since the third season. I saw it, and I was like, “Oh, my God, this is the worst show I’ve ever seen. I love it so much.” It’s a bunch of overprivileged white youths, and their issues are like, “My maid isn’t waking me up on time.” You just want to take yourself into this world where everyone has these weird superﬁcial problems. My friend Cher [Vincent] and I started texting about Gossip Girl with more and more frequency, and one day, she was like, “We should just do a Gossip Girl podcast.” We’re both people of color, and there are almost no people of color on the show. Our podcast has that point of view: Why do we like the show so much, even though we can’t relate to it?

One reason I really like Gossip Girl is that most episodes have some fancy party that they go to. I think some part of me just wants to be in that world and wear fancy dresses and have a lot of money and donate to causes that don’t need donating to. Except I would donate to Planned Parenthood. And I love it when the characters get together and plot. Like Blair Waldorf—she’s an evil queen who plots everything and is so amazing, and I want to be just like her when I turn 17 in negative 12 years. What else about me? I feel like I see the world in different ways. I say really outlandish things. I think it comes from not having as much of a ﬁlter as I should. It’s like the Donald Trump way of talking. I say things that people are thinking, but I’m not a terrible human being. —AS TOLD TO ANNE FORD

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

SURE THINGS THURSDAY 26

FRIDAY 27

SATURDAY 28

SUNDAY 29

MONDAY 30

TUESDAY 31

WEDNESDAY 1

¡ B ike Night A 20-mile motorcycle ride starting at the Glenview HarleyDavidson ends at the Twisted Spoke for beer, burgers, and whiskey. 6:30 PM, Twisted Spoke, 501 N. Ogden, chicagoharely.com. F

Ge lato World To ur Taste the creations of 16 of the best gelato artisans in the country and vote for the best ﬂavor; the winner will go on to an international gelato competition. Through 5/29: noon, Millennium Park, Michigan and Randolph, gelatoworldtour.com, $10.

* Belmont-Sheffield Music Festival Kick off street-festival season in the heart of Lakeview with performances from Wedding Banned, School of Rock Chicago, and Catfight, plus food and drink vendors. Through 5/29: noon, Sheffield between Belmont and Roscoe, starevents.com. F

K Pa rs on’s Bl oc k Pa rty Celebrate Parson’s Chicken & Fish’s third anniversary with live music, a special menu, and Negroni slushies. Entry requires a donation of school supplies beneﬁting the Association House of Chicago. 2-8 PM, Parson’s Chicken & Fish, 2952 W. Armitage, parsonschickenandﬁsh.com.

ò Lo gan Monument De dicati on The Chicago Cultural Mile Association hosts the 20th annual ceremony and dedication of the General John A. Logan Monument. 11 AM, Grant Park, Columbus and Jackson. F

6 Challenging Rahm Em anuel to a Sword Fight The Facebook event challenging Mayor Rahm Emanuel has more than 1,000 conﬁrmed guests. It’s worth showing up—because won’t you feel bad if you don’t go and it does happen? 6 PM, Millennium Park, Michigan and Randolph, facebook.com/ events/260023627663553. F

E CUF F Opening Night Pa rty The first night of the Chicago Underground Film Festival features a screening of Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present, along with music by Tony Conrad’s Amplified Drone Strings and live work by cinematic performance artist Bruce McClure. 9 PM, Elastic, 3429 W. Diversey, cuff.org, $20

8 CHICAGO READER - MAY 26, 2016

CONGRATULATIONS 2016 WINNERS!

CROWD VOTE

CRITICS PICK

Ryan PfeiямАer of Blackbird

Abraham Conlon of Fat Rice

Thanks to our sponsors!

MAY 26, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 9

CITY LIFE

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

Sixty-two acres of South Loop real estate once owned by Tony Rezko ò BRIAN JACKSON/SUN-TIMES MEDIA

POLITICS

The pope of Rezko Village

It’s just a matter of time before Rahm devotes TIF dollars to the South Loop site. By BEN JORAVSKY

ith the steady upswing in the real estate market—and downtown properties fetching record sales prices—Mayor Emanuel’s getting ready for one of his favorite activities: giving your tax dollars to developers. The money comes from—what else?—the tax increment financing program. That well never seems to run dry. In the last few months, the mayor’s signed on to a plan to give about $16 million in TIF money to the developer who’s building 630 units of upscale housing at Montrose and Clarendon—a block or two from the lake. ’Cause, you know, north-side lakefront development would never happen without a handout. He’s also proposing to give developers about $17.5 million to rebuild the Lathrop Homes at Diversey and Clybourn. Over the last few weeks, he’s breathlessly announced two more big development projects: the Old Main Post Office and what I like to call Rezko Village. For the record, he hasn’t said he’s going to spend TIF money on these projects. But I think it’s just a matter of time. TIF rule number one

10 CHICAGO READER - MAY 26, 2016

is never tell the peasants about the handout until you’ve stuck ’em with the bill. And even then—deny, deny, deny. So let’s take it from the top with Rezko Village, the 62-acre swath of undeveloped land just southwest of Roosevelt and Clark. Of course, that’s not its real name. Tony and Rezko—like Richard and Daley—are two words you’ll probably never hear coming from the mouth of Mayor Rahm. Unless, for some reason, he feels compelled to suck up to the latter. I call it Rezko Village because Tony Rezko used to own the land before he was sentenced to ten years in federal prison for his role in extorting millions of dollars from businesses looking for contracts with the state. Ah, the Blago years. By the way, we don’t have to call it Rezko Village. I think Rezko Field or Rezkoville or Rezko World would also suffice. Hey, let the public decide! In 2007, the land was purchased by Nadhi Auchi, an Iraqi-born British businessman who was previously convicted in a corruption scandal in France. How’s that for a multinational coalition? (I doubt Rahm will be mentioning Mr. Auchi much either.)

Last month, the mayor announced that local developer Related Midwest had “acquired a stake in the site” and “will serve as master developer” on a project that will include—well, they haven’t said what it will include. I’m hoping Mayor Rahm makes them tell us before he gives them the green light to build it. Anyway, I’m sure the transaction is a big relief for the mayor, as it finally gives him a landowner he can mention by name. Related Midwest is also the lead developer of the Lathrop Homes project. Apparently the company knows a thing or two about convincing the Emanuel administration to turn on the TIF faucet. Not that the mayor needs much convincing. Rezko Village is already in the River South TIF district. So look for the mayor to tell us that we have to spend TIF money to build streets, install sewer lines, and remediate the soil in Rezko Village. What he won’t mention is that whatever taxes the land might generate would go to the TIF district, instead of going into the coffers of our schools or police. I think Mayor Rahm would call the place Rezko Village for real before he admits to that. Now, let’s discuss the Old Main Post Office— which straddles the Congress entrance to the Eisenhower Expressway and has been vacant since 1996. In 2007, Mayor Daley unveiled a TIF-funded deal that would turn the post office into a hotel. Under the terms of that deal, the U.S. Postal Service agreed to give the developer the building for only $10—while paying $9 million to remove asbestos. And the city would give the developer $30 million to help cover construction costs. The justiﬁcation was that the property really had no value, ’cause with more than 2.5 million square feet of floor space it would cost too much to redevelop it. That deal fell apart. And in 2009, the postal service auctioned off the building to William Davies—a British developer—for about $25 million. So much for the land having no value. Davies was what you might call a property scavenger. That is, someone who buys potentially valuable property, then sits on it until someone else who actually wants to develop it comes a calling. He certainly was in no hurry to pay his property taxes, running up a bill that reached more than $600,000, according to a Crain’s article by Alby Gallun.

Earlier this month, the mayor announced that—under pressure from his administration—Davies had sold the post office and the building next to it to a company called 601 W. These names could drive anyone crazy. In that transaction, Davies sold the structures for about $130 million. That means Davies was “punished” for being an absentee owner by making millions. Hey, man, where’s the line for that punishment? (Incidentally, Davies died just a few days before the deal went through.) The mayor says that 601 W plans to turn the post office into a mixed-use complex that includes “a three acre rooftop park complex with a sports and fitness center” complete with a “quarter mile running track.” We still can’t afford to build indoor running tracks for our public schools, but there’s always plenty of money for another downtown health club.

TIF rule number one is never tell the peasants about the handout until you’ve stuck ’em with the bill. Once again, the mayor hasn’t said that this project will tap into TIF dollars. But, like I said, it’s probably only a matter of time—if only to help the new owner offset the cost of spending all those millions to buy the land from Davies. So, in effect, the taxpayers will be subsidizing the proﬁts that Davies—or his estate—received for being the scavenger owner. Ah, capitalism. Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on Mayor Emanuel. Throwing TIF money at developers is what Chicago mayors do. Mayor Daley did it for the better part of the 90s and 00s, and look where that got us. We can’t adequately fund our schools because the tax growth from the new development is diverted to the TIF fund that underwrites the developer’s profits. It’s a form of madness, people. Maybe we should call Rezko Village the loony bin. v

v @joravben

The #11 Lincoln bus will relaunch next month as part of a CTA pilot program that, come September, will also test the viability of permanently bringing back the #31 31st Street route. ò JOHN GREENFIELD

TRANSPORTATION

En route to restoration

By JOHN GREENFIELD

ommunity activists who lobbied for years for the restoration of the Lincoln Avenue and 31st Street bus routes rejoiced last November after CTA president Dorval Carter Jr. made a surprise announcement that the routes would be coming back on a trial basis in 2016. The CTA board voted earlier this month to relaunch each of the bus routes as a six-monthlong test to determine whether there’s enough ridership to bring back the lines permanently. But transit advocates say the way the agency devised the program’s bus schedules ensures the pilots will fail. While the restored #11 Lincoln line will debut on June 20, the #31 bus won’t return until September. South-side activists say that will undermine the pilot because summer ridership towards 31st Street Beach won’t be counted. Worse, residents say, both bus lines will run only on weekdays between 10 AM and 7 PM, so they’ll be useless for morning rushhour commutes. And while the Lincoln buses will run every 16 to 22 minutes, 31st Street buses will arrive only every half hour. “It looks like it’s set up to fail,” Tom Gaulke, pastor of First Lutheran Church of the Trinity and a member of the Bridgeport Alliance, a social justice organization, told DNAinfo last week in regards to the #31 bus. “It feels like a bit of a slap in the face.” Commenters on social media were also

dismissive of the limited Lincoln bus schedule. “No availability on the weekend or morning hours for commuting doesn’t appear to make this a true ‘test’ of whether there is demand for the #11 bus,” north-side resident Brendan Carter wrote on Facebook. The CTA says, on the contrary, that the schedules were actually devised to make sure the pilots succeed. So how did it come to this? Back in 1997 the CTA, citing low ridership, cut the #31, and residents have been trying to bring it back ever since. In October 2011 the Bridgeport Alliance and the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization joined forces to lobby for restored service, which led to the CTA adding a section of 31st Street in Little Village to the existing 35th Street bus route in 2012. But advocates continued to push for full reinstatement of the #31. The #11 route was shortened during a round of CTA bus cuts in 2012 that eliminated the portion between the Brown Line’s Western station and the Fullerton el stop while preserving the stretch between Howard Street and the Western station. At the time the CTA recommended commuters take the train, which generally parallels Lincoln, as an alternative to the bus, but the el stations are as far as a half mile from Lincoln. Alderman Ameya Pawar of the 47th Ward spearheaded an effort to win back full service

along Lincoln. He was joined by other local elected officials, chambers of commerce, and residents—especially seniors. The retirees showed up in droves to CTA hearings wearing yellow bring back the #11 bus T-shirts to testify about how the service had formerly functioned as a lifeline, transporting them to grocery stores and medical appointments. Since north-siders are often viewed as squeaky wheels who get more than their fair share of resources, Pawar realized he’d had better luck achieving his goal if he joined forces with south-side advocates to lobby for an equitable restoration of bus service. (Lincoln Park alderman Michele Smith and Bridgeport alderman Patrick D. Thompson, who also advocated for restoring bus service, didn’t respond to interview requests.) In April 2015, Pawar reached out to the Bridgeport Alliance, as well as to south-side groups Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community and Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation, to form the Crosstown Bus Coalition. Last fall, the partnership proved its mettle when the CTA’s Carter agreed to restore the routes to test their viability. In order for the #31 to be permanently reinstated, the CTA wants to see 830 average weekday rides on the route, according to spokeswoman Catherine Hosinski. The target for the #11 is 1,500 average weekday rides. But are the two bus lines getting a fair shake? Can they meet their ridership goals with their relatively limited hours, not to mention the autumn launch of the #31? Hosinski says that the routes were planned with maximum efficiency in mind to help them attract enough riders per hour to be deemed a success. The 31st Street bus, she explains, was originally supposed to debut in the spring but was delayed due to the complications of reestablishing the route. (The CTA has to work with the local aldermen to determine where bus stops would be most useful, as well as to minimize impacts from the removal of curbside parking to make room for the stops.) She added that the half-hour interval between #31 buses represents service that’s twice as frequent as it was when the bus line was cut back in 1997. Of course, the fact that the bus used to show up only once an hour contributed to its low ridership, which Hosinski says was a mere 246 passengers per day on average. Hosinski also notes that since the #31 route will stop a few blocks west of the beach (the 35th Street bus goes all the way there), use might not signiﬁcantly spike in summertime, and anyway fall is often the busiest time of

CITY LIFE

year for ridership due to the start of the school year. “So is starting later in the season going to hurt ridership? Not really,” she says. As for the limited hours and weekday-only schedule for both buses, Hosinski says that’s a not a weakness of the plan but a strength. “A lot of folks out there say we’re setting this up for failure,” she says. “In reality we’re trying to set this up for successful results.” The hours of service are intended to serve the kind of trips the community has said it needs, Hosinski says, based on feedback collected through surveys, meetings with aldermen and community groups, and public forums, including the CTA’s annual budget hearings and monthly board meetings. Seniors, who represented much of the potential ridership for both lines, emphasized the need to use the bus for doctor visits and shopping trips. “Furthermore, the CTA has limited resources, not only funding but also the availability of buses during the morning peak,” Hosinski says. Three Brown Line runs were added this year during the AM rush, which Hosinski says resulted in a 10 percent spike in the line’s ridership. But Bridgeport Alliance member Rene Paquin doesn’t buy the CTA’s rationale. “Anyone who’s commuting to a nine-to-ﬁve job or a regular school schedule will be left out,” she says. “When I ride a [daytime] bus at 10, 11 AM, or noon, it’s usually pretty empty, but when I ride a bus from 7 to 9 AM, it’s always packed, so I don’t get the logic.” The weekday-only schedule, as well as the fact that the #31 stops short of the shoreline, will also limit recreational opportunities for low-income and working-class families, Paquin says. “I don’t think the CTA is intentionally trying to make the bus fail, but I don’t think they understand the needs of seniors, poor people, and the disenfranchised.” Still, she says her group will promote the service to residents and try to make the best of things. Alderman Pawar has a similar philosophy. “Will the bus service be as I would have done it? No,” Pawar says. “I would have done it as it was before the cuts. But I’m an optimist—I’m not going to say this was set up to fail.” Pawar says his work won’t be ﬁnished until the bus lines are fully restored. He plans to push for strong ridership in order to convince the CTA to make the routes permanent. “We fought for this for four years,” he says, “and we’re not going to stop now.” v

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

MAY 26, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 11

A Preserving a culture nearly lost

Forty years after the Khmer Rouge genocide, Cambodians in Chicago have renewed their focus on sustaining their ancestral country’s extensive cultural history. By NISSA RHEE

Kompha Seth stands in front of the Killing Fields Memorial at the Cambodian Association of Illinois’s National Cambodian Heritage Museum. ò CAROLINA SANCHEZ

12 CHICAGO READER - MAY 26, 2016

s a young Buddhist monk in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, during the 1960s, Kompha Seth studied the Brahmi alphabet and Magadhi—a root language of modern Khmer—which had been preserved and passed down for generations. Today, he’s one of only a few Cambodians in the world who understands these dialects and their links to modern Khmer. In 1971, Cambodia was in the midst of a civil war between the Communist Party of Kampuchea, more commonly known as the Khmer Rouge, and the government forces of Cambodia. Seth joined the Cambodian army; he was in southern Thailand at a military-training facility when Khmer Rouge insurgents captured Phnom Penh in 1975. He had a crucial decision to make: He could return to Cambodia to try to protect his family, including his wife and two sons, and risk execution; or he could ﬂee to the United States as a refugee and leave behind everyone and everything he knew, yet hold out hope that his loved ones would survive. Seth was fortunate enough to quickly obtain a sponsorship from Catholic Charities, and in 1975 he arrived at Camp Pendleton in California with just one bag of luggage, then moved to Downers Grove three months afterward. He’d later learn that 24 of the 25 members of his family were killed by the Khmer Rouge (his sister-in-law survived). Seth does not know for sure how they all died. His sister-in-law told him that some expired from starvation and diseases due to Khmer Rouge policies (such as closing hospitals and rationing food), while others were executed. “Cambodians lost so much in the genocide,” says Seth, now 74. “They lost their soul.” In 1976, Seth cofounded the Cambodian Association of Illinois, where he serves as executive director. Under his guidance, the association is moving away from its early mission of providing refugee-adjustment services—job placement, English-language instruction—to focus on renewing and teaching a culture that was nearly destroyed by the Khmer Rouge. This year, CAI’s National Cambodian Heritage Museum will mount two exhibits in an effort to both preserve the stories of Cambodian refugees and envision the future of both native Cambodians and Cambodian-Americans. On June 5, the Documentation Center of Cambodia will bring to the museum the traveling show “The Forced Transfer,” which draws on DC-Cam’s vast archives of articles related to the Khmer Rouge atrocities. At some point in the late summer or early fall, the museum will host photographer Pete Pins’s “Migration of Memory,” which portrays members of the

A CULTURE ALMOST LOST

Cambodian diaspora alongside pregenocide photographs and mementos. On a recent Wednesday morning at Seth’s CAI office in Lincoln Square, it was clear that the horrors of the Cambodian genocide still weigh heavily on him. But as CAI celebrates its 40th anniversary this month, his mind is on what lies ahead. “To survive,” Seth says, “we need to remember the past and then transmit it to the younger generation.”

he Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia between 1975 and ’79. During that time they imposed radical social-engineering policies in order to turn the country into a classless society. The communist insurgents forced the urban populations of Phnom Penh into the countryside and made them work long days on agricultural communes. They burned books, banned money and religion, and closed hospitals and schools. They killed anyone they considered “intellectuals,” from academics and artists to people who simply wore glasses. Yale University’s Cambodian Genocide Program estimates that under the Khmer Rouge’s governance 1.7 million people were executed or died from starvation or medical neglect. The destruction extended to Cambodian culture, affecting more than 4,000 years’ worth of art. The Pol Pot-led Khmer Rouge government killed 80 to 90 percent of classical dancers and singers, according to ethnomusicologist Sam-Ang Sam’s book Cambodian Culture Since 1975: Homeland and Exile. Of the 380,000 artists and intellectuals present in Cambodia before the Khmer Rouge, only 300 survived the regime, according to one estimate cited by Sam. Out of this monstrousness, CAI first took shape. It was founded on May 30, 1976, by Seth and two other refugees, Khoun Lorn and Prak Sunay. (Sunay was president, Seth vice president, and Lorn served as secretary.) The group was first incorporated as a chapter of the Cambodian Association of America, a national organization based in southern California. The Illinois group initially had no office; they met in the homes of Cambodians in Chicago and in the western suburbs. They helped new transplants connect with more established Cambodian immigrants and sponsored refugees. Seth says he personally backed 30 refugee families, partially with money he made working as a corrections officer at the Joliet Correctional Center. CAI set up its first office in 1980 on the second floor of a building at 1105 W. Lawrence, across the street from the Aragon Ballroom. In its new space, the group began offering a wide range of services to help refugees acclimate to Chicago. “In the beginning,” Seth says, “it was about

The ground-breaking ceremony for the Cambodian American Heritage Museum and Library on July 13, 2002 ò SUN-TIMES/AL PODGORSKI

learning the language and providing adjustment services—how to learn the new culture and food.” Even mundane tasks like grocery shopping could be a challenge to newcomers used to open-air markets or refugee-camp rations. Seth remembers getting late-night calls in those early years from people who needed blankets or help turning on the heat in their apartments during frigid Chicago winters. By 1983 CAI had grown to the point where the staff believed it was time to break off from CAA and establish a separate organization. Anneth Houy, 34, has fond memories of

CAI’s ﬁrst office on Lawrence. She came to Chicago in December 1989 with her parents and eight siblings from the Khao-I-Dang refugee camp in Thailand, where she was born. Houy’s parents and older siblings fled the Khmer Rouge in 1979 and had waited almost a decade for government approval to come to the U.S. When they ﬁnally arrived, Houy’s family had trouble adjusting. While there were a growing number of Cambodians living alongside them in Uptown, the neighborhood was vastly different from the farming community they had left in Battambang Province in western Cam-

bodia. CAI’s office provided the family emotional support and instruction for navigating life in America—but more importantly, it gave them a home away from home. “You come here and everyone speaks the same language and eats the same kind of food, which is a big part of who we are,” Houy says. “To have a sense of belonging within the community here was great.” In addition to adjustment services, CAI started teaching Cambodian dance and Khmer language classes at the new office. Though many Cambodian refugees in Chicago were struggling financially, Seth and CAI’s other leaders felt that preserving and promoting their culture was an equally important pursuit for their office. And since the Khmer Rouge targeted artists in particular, the group understood that Cambodian culture was in danger of disappearing altogether. In 1998, the association bought their current building at 2831 W. Lawrence. Two years later, CAI launched its Campaign for Hope and Renewal and raised more than a million dollars to renovate and expand the facilities. They completed construction in 2004 and opened the National Cambodian Heritage Museum on the building’s first floor. The new heritage museum marked a turning point for CAI as a social-services agency. It provided a permanent home for Cambodian culture in Chicago and a way to educate both younger Cambodians and the general public about the Khmer Rouge genocide. That education begins at the museum entrance on Lawrence Avenue, where a two-story bas relief in classical Cambodian style is positioned on the right side of the doorway. Engraved vertically on the stone are two figures: a four-sided head and Apsara, a female spirit who signifies beauty and gentleness. The four sides of the face that sits above Apsara represent love, kindness, appreciation, and equanimity. Inside, visitors can view the museum’s permanent exhibit, “Remembering the Killing Fields,” which opened in fall 2011. It illustrates life under the Khmer Rouge and includes the stories of survivors living in the Chicago area. The brutal realities of the “killing fields,” where the Khmer Rouge executed and buried more than a million people, are described in detail. CAI associate director Kaoru Watanabe, 59, says the exhibit has sparked “intergenerational dialogue” within the Cambodian community in Chicago, especially between older refugees and their children, many of whom were born in the U.S. “Many people still don’t talk about life during the genocide,” Watanabe says. “So the exhibit provided an environment in which J

MAY 26, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 13

A CULTURE ALMOST LOST

CAI associate director Kaoru Watanabe says that “many people still don’t talk about life during the genocide.” ò CAROLINA SANCHEZ

continued from 13

survivors could tell their stories using images and artifacts from Cambodia.” “Remembering the Killing Fields” also inspired then-governor Pat Quinn to designate an annual Cambodian Day of Remembrance in Illinois, the ﬁrst state in the country to do so. On the ﬁrst Saturday in April, residents are encouraged to join the Cambodian-American community in remembering the Cambodian genocide. The Killing Fields Memorial, housed in a dark room on the north side of the museum, is the nation’s only monument for victims of the Khmer Rouge genocide. (Earlier this month, the city council of Long Beach, California, approved plans to create a second monument.) The Cambodian Heritage Museum memorial consists of 80 six-foot-tall rectangular glass panels arranged in four rows along a wall, backlit with subtle purple light. Each panel

represents 25,000 Cambodians killed during the Khmer Rouge genocide. Delicately etched on the glass are the names of victims, all of whom are family members and friends of Cambodian refugees living in Chicago and elsewhere in the U.S. The centerpiece of the memorial is a hulking black stone pillar, which mirrors the shape of the glass panels. Etched on the pillar is a white lotus and, beneath it, the words: we continue our journey with compassion and wisdom.

n the floor above the museum, CAI’s staff is working on helping the Cambodian community in Chicago take the next step in that journey. The back wall of Seth’s office is covered in photocopies of ancient Cambodian texts. The passages were inscribed on temples built roughly 1,000 years ago, he says, during the time of the Khmer Empire, which spanned Southeast Asia and

✚ ✚ ✚ ✚ ✚ ✚ ✚

was responsible for the construction of the Angkor Wat temple complex. Seth had studied the texts in the 1960s but had forgotten about them until around seven years ago, when he recalled them in a dream. When he rediscovered them, he thought of his teachers, a pair of monks whom the Khmer Rouge killed along with most other religious leaders and scholars. Seth wondered if any other Cambodians were left who could understand the ancient scripts in which the texts were written. Last December, after ﬁnding no one in the U.S. to assist, he returned to Cambodia for the ﬁrst time since fleeing four decades before to meet with academics at the Royal University of Phnom Penh. To his surprise, none of them could interpret the scripts. Upon his return to the U.S., he put together a small exhibit of the ancient texts that he’s been displaying to Cambodian community organizations across the country as a means of talking about the forgotten languages of the Khmer Empire. The texts connect Cambodian-Americans to their ancestors, Seth says, and help bridge a growing generational gap between native Cambodians and Americans with Cambodian ancestry. “Right now the Cambodian soul is broken,” he says. “The old people say, ‘No, I don’t want to be American, I want to be Cambodian.’ And the young people say, ‘No, I want to be American, I don’t want to be Cambodian.’” Houy understands that divide well. After attending dance classes and refugee-resettlement programs at CAI as a child, she now runs CAI’s Youth Program as well as its Culture and Healing Arts Program. She oversees three music classes and two dance classes a week, in addition to regular after-school activities and camps for kids. Houy says CAI’s youth are seeking their place in the Cambodian-American community—and they’re trying to reckon with a history that’s often very grim. “When you talk about Cam-

bodia,” she says, “everyone always talks about the genocide.” And while remembering the genocide is important, she says, it can sometimes overshadow the country’s rich cultural tradition. “So when I connect with the youth, I try to find a balance with the creative and the positive.” It’s not always easy to get young Cambodian-Americans interested in traditional Cambodian music and dance, she says, especially when their peers are listening to Taylor Swift and Jay Z. But Houy is convinced the classes are critical for the students. “The older generations are getting old and I think that torch has to be passed on to the younger generation.” Houy cofounded the Khmer Support Giving Circle in 2014. The peer-support group housed at CAI helps young people understand their identities and provides financial assistance and volunteers for the local Cambodian community. State comptroller Leslie Geissler Munger bestowed the organization the John Vietnam Nguyen Asian American Youth Leadership Award earlier this month in recognition of their work. Groups like the Giving Circle give Houy hope that CAI will be able to support the Cambodian community in the Chicago area for another 40 years—with cultural preservation and renewal being an integral part of the association’s work in the decades to come. “Culture is a big part of who we are, so that has to continue,” Houy says. “Especially for those born here in America, they are very disconnected from that. We don’t want to forget the past. We need to know our roots and understand our identities.” v“The Forced Transfer” Opens Tue 6/7, Tue-Fri 10 AM-6 PM, Sat and Sun 11 AM-3 PM by appointment only, National Cambodian Heritage Museum, 2831 W. Lawrence, 773-506-1280, http://www.cambodianmemorialmuseum.org, $6 adults, $4 students and seniors, free for children 12 and under.

v @nissarhee

Chicago’s dispensary for medical cannabis Conveniently located 3 blocks north of Midway Airport Attached parking lot Wide range of high quality products Knowledgeable and friendly staff Competitive pricing Visit our website for a complete list of qualifying conditions

5648 S Archer Ave · Chicago · 872.267.7038 · MidwayDispensary.com 14 CHICAGO READER - MAY 26, 2016

SPECIALIZING IN VINTAGE BIKES

2010 READER’S BEST OF CHICAGO

Breeze, Racer, Speedster, Collegiate, and Suburban models. Available at Randolph Street’s Antique Market this weekend. $275-$400. F O R D E TA I L S , C O N TA C T:

award winning

Specializing in the restoration of Chicago-manufactured Schwinn bicycles

MikesClassicBikes.com ✦ Facebook.com/MikesClassicBikes ✦ 708.522.9208

SUMMER + FALL + WINTER + SPRING

EVENTS IN THE PARKS ALL YEAR ROUND

Never miss a show again.

EARLY WARNINGS Find a concert, buy a ticket, and sign up to get advance notice of Chicago’s essential music shows at chicagoreader.com/early.

Access all of our Night Out in the Parks events, and be the first to know when an event changes. 1000+ free events, in the parks, all year round. And yes, the app is free too…

K. Luan Phan, MD at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) is conducting a research study involving

PARTICIPANTS WITH POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD) This study is testing to see how treatments affect brain function, physiology, behavior, and mental health in those with PTSD. Participants will be randomized to receive either medication or talk therapy, both shown to be effective treatments. Participants should be 18-65 years old & have been diagnosed with PTSD in the past; or have experienced trauma in the past and are experiencing anxiety, worry, and/or depressed mood. We are looking for participants who do NOT have metal in their body. Participants will be asked to take part in a clinical interview, 4 sessions with electroencephalography (EEG) and 4 functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to non-invasively measure brain function, and EITHER 12 weeks of treatment with a medication approved by the FDA for the treatment of mood and anxiety disorders, OR 12 weekly treatment visits with a talk therapy called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). You will be compensated for your time and your parking will be paid. Participants must be US citizens or permanent residents. This study has received approval from the University of Illinois at Chicago Institutional Review Board IRB#2013-0325. Please call us at 888-686-5591 or email emotion@psych.uic.edu for more information. MAY 26, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 15

ARTS & CULTURE

DEAN STRANG AND JERRY BUTING: A CONVERSATION ON JUSTICE

Fri 6/3, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre, 175 N. State, $39.50-$95, 312-462-6300, thechicagotheatre.com.

Dean Strang and Jerry Buting ò DANIEL ANDERA

How did you get involved initially? Dean and I both came about three and a half or four months after [Avery] was originally charged with the Teresa Halbach murder. Civil rights attorneys settled the case that they had for the wrongful [sexual-assault] conviction and 18 years imprisonment, really for a paltry sum compared to what they had sued for—they sued for $36 million and settled for $400,000. But after the civil rights attorneys were paid, there was $240,000 left to pay for his defense in the new criminal charge. Were you surprised by the response to the doc? Oh yeah, no question I was surprised. I knew it was good, but I had no idea it would catch ﬁre like this. It obviously struck a nerve with the public—and not just in America, all over the world. We got thousands of e-mails.

LECTURES

Making a Murderer: the road show

Lawyers Dean Strang and Jerry Buting go beyond sound bites in a new speaking tour.

By DEANNA ISAACS

ast winter, the wildly popular Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer turned a pair of Wisconsin attorneys, Dean Strang and Jerry Buting, into celebrities. Although Strang and Buting weren’t able to spare Steven Avery from a murder conviction—he was charged after serving 18 years in prison for an unrelated sexual assault he didn’t commit—the documentary raises significant questions about how the American justice system works. Now the two lawyers are on a speaking tour. “A Conversation on Justice” brings them to the Chicago Theatre June 3. The Reader spoke to Buting about the tour and the series by phone last week.

What’s the idea behind the speaking tour? After the documentary came out, we did a lot of interviews. Particularly with television news, two or three or four minutes ended up on the air. There are very serious issues that are raised by this documentary, and you can’t

16 CHICAGO READER - MAY 26, 2016

deal with them in that short a length of time. The idea that we would do these 90-minute moderator events grew out of that. Where do the two cases from the series stand now? In Brendan Dassey’s case [Dassey, Avery’s intellectually challenged 16-yearold nephew, was convicted as his accomplice], his original appeal through federal court is still pending—waiting for a federal judge to go through everything and render a decision. Avery’s appeals were done. He now has new counsel, [Downers Grove-based] Kathleen Zellner, and a team that she’s put together that’s been working to get his case reopened, which primarily would involve some kind of newly discovered factual or scientiﬁc evidence, or maybe jury misconduct— things that haven’t been raised before. Are you still working on either of these cases? Not directly. We turn over any tips that we get [to the new attorneys].

You and Dean became instant heartthrobs. That was a bigger surprise to us than anything. And very awkward and embarrassing initially. But after a while, what I liked was the number of people who wrote me and didn’t talk about how sexy Jerry Buting was, but instead, how they were inspired to consider going into a law career, and in particular, criminal defense. What’s your response to the backlash against the documentary—claims that it was unbalanced, that certain evidence was not included? That was really the campaign of one man: Ken Kratz, the special prosecutor. He didn’t come oﬀ looking very good in the documentary, and he immediately pushed back and tried to claim that the series was biased and left out all this evidence in the prosecution’s case. In fact, he’d been asked many times if he wanted to participate, and he refused. It was really sour grapes, if you ask me. Yes, there was some evidence left out—it was a six-week trial. There was defense evidence left out as well. But what the ﬁlmmakers really did, I think, is capture the majority of the evidence that was the most disputed at trial.

would be grounds for reopening? That’s always possible. It’s a human endeavor and it’s not impossible for us to miss something. Just from all the crowdsourcing, there’s a whole lot more information and sources of information available now that we never had, and she may come up with something that’ll be useful. Are you still able to practice law while you’re on tour? Most of our speaking is on the weekends, and then I’m back in the oﬃce for three or four days. This is for a limited time, and I think it’s an opportunity that we needed to take on, while the public is interested in the system.

“There are very serious issues that are raised by this documentary, and you can’t deal with them in that short a length of time.” —Attorney Jerry Buting

Going forward, Dean’s going to have his own show—Dean Strang: Road to Justice? It’s something he’s exploring. I’m writing a book. It’s coming out in 2017 and will draw on not just the Avery case but some other cases with common themes. And then, some suggestions I have to improve the system.

Is there going to be a season two? I haven’t talked to the filmmakers for quite a while, but if Zellner finds something, there’ll be a motion filed for a new trial. Then there would be hearings, and the filmmakers said they would be there for those kind of events. Apparently they’re also trying to do some interviews behind the scenes, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see something else.

Such as? Everything from the interrogation of juveniles—the techniques that are used—to the chronic underfunding of indigent defense, the mass incarceration of people, and the media—particularly the way that television tends to cover these cases. And people’s opportunity to inﬂuence the system through jury duty, which they often try to get out of when they shouldn’t. There’s a whole lot of things that can be changed if people are willing, and I think we can make some improvements, however incremental they may be. v

Is it possible that Zellner may find issues with the way you handled the case that

v @DeannaIsaacs

READER RECOMMENDED

b ALL AGES

Marc Maron ò TYLER GOLDEN/IFC

SMALL SCREEN

Maron makes up by making stuff up By DMITRY SAMAROV

arc Maron overshares. For almost seven years now, an ever-expanding audience has heard him talk about himself twice a week on his groundbreaking podcast, WTF With Marc Maron. These personal updates, which sometimes last up to half an hour, precede recorded interviews (or “conversations,” as he prefers) with comics, actors, musicians, and other creative types. In his stand-up shows he favors an improvisational, flying-by-the-seat-of-his-pants approach that relies heavily on mining material from his daily life. He’s also written several books and is himself a regular guest on talk shows and podcasts. I mention all this to illustrate the fact that not only do people know quite a bit about Maron’s life, but that he also likes to talk about his life. A lot. Maron—the half-hour comedy starring Maron as a somewhat fictionalized version of himself—recently began its fourth (and final) season. Compared to his podcast and live show, Maron has always seemed to be an oddly tentative and polite take on Maron’s life. Faithful fans know most of the events that serve as plotlines on the TV show, and they know them in much more detail than it’s even possible to present in a half-hour weekly scripted comedy. Maron pioneered a form of confessional talk that can’t be conveyed properly under such constraints. Those who’ve heard him share his every trial and tribulation on the mike can’t

help but be a little disappointed when they see bits and pieces of his life dramatized in such a circumscribed way. Comedians have adapted their lives for TV with varying success. Unfortunately, most comics aren’t actors; their lifeblood is being themselves in front of a crowd of strangers. Playing someone else—even if it’s a version of themselves—can be a stretch. Maron isn’t bad at pretending to be himself, but his performance also doesn’t make for very interesting television. Yet toward the end of last season, and continuing with the first two episodes of the new one, something strange has happened. A bedraggled, bearded Maron has had a breakdown, gotten addicted to painkillers, lost his home, and lives in a storage locker. Listeners of Maron’s podcast will not recognize any of this, and that makes the story more compelling than the episodes that preceded it. Suddenly the audience has no idea what will happen to this version of Maron, and it’s exciting to tune in each week to find out. As a comedian and interviewer who has prided himself on confessional honesty, Maron has, paradoxically, succeeded on his TV show by making things up. I’ll continue to listen to his podcast to find out what’s going on his life, but on his TV show I now, finally, expect a good story. v R MARON Wednesdays at 8 PM on IFC

MAY 26, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 17

ARTS & CULTURE

READER RECOMMENDED

b ALL AGES

King Edward III (Freddie Stevenson, at center) rallies the British troops (from left: David Darlow, Larry Yando, James Newcomb, and Dominique Worsley). ò LIZ LAUREN

THEATER

War of attrition By TONY ADLER

et’s get one thing straight: It’s not the long sit I mind. One of my favorite sitting experiences ever was the English Shakespeare Company’s Wars of the Roses heptalogy, which played the International Theatre Festival of Chicago (what an idea, huh?) and literally took days to watch. By comparison, the sixhour running time of Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s Tug of War: Foreign Fire should be an easy stretch to handle. But it’s not. It’s hard. Really hard. Which is a little odd. After all, Tug of War covers much of the same territory as The Wars of the Roses, using some of the same scripts drawn from among Shakespeare’s history plays. But where the ESC show accrued complexity and power over the course of its marathon span—culminating in a single, magniﬁcent scene that summarized, perfected, and conferred a terrible beauty on all that had gone before—Tug of War basically repeats the same handful of ideas and motifs over and over again. Noble as it is, the sentiment that organized bloodshed is a bad thing doesn’t constitute a dramatic strategy—even if you use a punky rock band to help you express it. I stumbled away from the production feeling that adapter/director Barbara Gaines didn’t need to combine three plays to get her message across. She could’ve achieved everything she seems to have had in

18 CHICAGO READER - MAY 26, 2016

mind much more satisfyingly with one. Part of the problem has to do with the particular three plays Gaines has chosen to combine. She starts with Edward III, a Shakespeare play you may never have heard of because it wasn’t included in the First Folio and generations of scholars have argued that it’s too awkward to be Shakespeare’s in any case. (The latest thought is that he and Thomas Kyd each contributed bits to it.) I can understand why Gaines might be attracted to Edward III, aside from the coolness factor of its obscurity: The tale of an English king’s 1346 campaign to assert his sovereignty over France, it takes us back to the beginnings of the grotesque slog known as the Hundred Years War. The choice has big drawbacks, though, a glaring one being that all those generations of scholars were right: Edward III is awkward as hell, with a Measure for Measure-esque problem play stuck in it like an embryo that didn’t quite take, having to do with Edward’s unholy lust for a certain Countess of Salisbury. In the context of a war epic, Edward’s obsession with the countess is a distraction that comes early enough in the proceedings to throw the focus out of whack. Worse still, Edward III is followed by Henry V, the tale of an English king’s 1415 campaign to assert his sovereignty over France. I.e.: same play, different Plantagenet. Henry V is

much the better piece of work, and repetition at least theoretically helps Gaines advance her point about the deja vu of war—but those considerations don’t make it any more enlightening or less tedious to see Henry wondering at the miracle of his victory in the face of tremendous odds after Edward did exactly the same thing a couple hours earlier. Gaines’s trilogy ends with Henry VI, Part I, the tale (you guessed it) of an English king’s 1429 campaign to assert his sovereignty over France. The repetition isn’t quite so onerous this time around, partly because the dynamic is different, Henry VI being a well-meaning (and in Steven Sutcliffe’s performance, somewhat hippie-ish) kid whose lack of political and martial acumen leads to a power vacuum filled by others. Plus, Joan of Arc turns up, allowing for a glimpse into the English attitude toward her a mere 160 years after her own campaign to assert French sovereignty over France. Whatever advantage these variations might yield is canceled out by Gaines’s tiresome recycling of a few signature tropes: the band’s rocked-up renditions of anti-war songs like Richie Havens’s “Handsome Johnny,” the cast’s earnestly balladic versions of pretentious ditties like Pink Floyd’s “Us and Them” (which earned titters during the opening day performance), a ritual whereby the dead are identiﬁed by some kind of greasy-looking substance wiped across their foreheads, the use of tire swings and paper crowns to suggest the childishness of nationalism, a rigorously executed color scheme in which the French are blue and the English red. Interestingly, Gaines is able to use these elements to good advantage now and then, turning the finales of each section, for instance, into sometimes stirring, sometimes haunting moments that make you feel like there’s still hope. But when you come back from intermission, the same reductive template kicks in again. Gaines is so intent on putting over the message of Tug of War that she makes a dull chore of sitting through it. v TUG OF WAR: FOREIGN FIRE Through 6/12: Wed 5 PM, Fri 5 PM, Sat 4 PM, Sun 1 PM, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 800 E. Grand, 312-595-5600, chicagoshakes.com, $100.

v @taadler

DANCE

High Five Martin Bronson, Tristan Bruns, and Zada Cheeks ò MATT GLAVIN

ANNIVERSARIES ARE OFTEN facile occasions for dance companies to put on a show, but for Take Five, tap collective Audible Odyssey aren’t celebrating a birthday—they’re exhibiting what they’ve accomplished in such a short period of time. The program features notable performances from a handful of local favorites, plus three new works and more than a dozen artists in tow. Since 2011, executive director Phil Brooks has made a concerted eﬀort to keep Chicago’s homegrown tappers where they belong: here in Chicago. He’s primarily achieved that by raising money for the city’s upstart talent and providing them with the means to finetune their craft. Many of the participants in Take Five have benefited from that steady stream of hard-earned funding. One of them is Aurora native Zada Cheeks, who’s set to restage his crowd-pleasing “Diabolus,” which pits four tappers against Allyn Ferguson’s jazz score of the same name. Other restaged works are Martin Bronson’s “The Hunt,” which mines similar musical terrain, and Melissa Reh’s “Expecting (In Three Movements),” which does away with a score altogether—the piece imparts that tap is a form of music all its own. Past gives way to present when Audible Odyssey’s aptly dubbed “Artists in Resonance”—Starinah Dixon, Rich Ashworth, and Matt Pospeshil—unveil three world premieres that have been six months in the making (per residency stipulations). Sounds like a solid foundation for the ten-year celebration in 2021. —MATT DE LA PEÑA v TAKE FIVE

Fri 5/27-Sat 5/28, 8 PM, Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont, 773-327-5252, audibleodyssey.org, $30, $25 in advance, $15 suggested donation for students, seniors, and artists.

COMEDY

The road after recovery

ò PAUL MOBLEY

By BRIANNA WELLEN

hen Tracy Morgan hosted Saturday Night Live in October 2015, the former cast member slowly walked onstage with a straight face and started talking with a lisp. It was a jarring sight—this was one of Morgan’s ﬁrst performances since he’d been hospitalized in critical condition after a sixcar crash in June 2014. But with a charming smile he relaxed and eased back into his familiar persona with a lighthearted, “Nah, I’m just playing. I’m back!” And now he’s really back into the swing of things: the comedian has a new TV show in the works, is starring in the upcoming ﬁlm The Clapper, and is back on the road doing standup on his Picking Up the Pieces tour, which stops in Chicago on June 1 as part of the the A.V. Club’s Third Annual 26th Annual Comedy Festival. We chatted with Morgan about getting back on the road, telling his story, and making family his number one priority.

How does it feel to be on tour again? It’s wonderful. After what me and family have just been through, it’s really great—I missed it. It really lets me know how special it is to do comedy. Is there a difference now in how you approach your set? No, funny is funny is funny. The material is life. God didn’t give me the gift of material—the gift was the funny and the funny is still intact and is still there. You don’t not become funny no more.

Have you noticed on this tour a different generation of fans coming out to your shows? I never stop to notice things like that. To me that’s crazy; fans is fans. I just do my thing onstage. This is not a generational thing. That’s the problem with show business today: I don’t have to change because the generation changed. I’m a part of a lost generation. In the 80s crack and AIDS wiped my whole generation out. I’m not peeping to see who’s young and who’s old—I just do my thing, my experience. I wasn’t thinking like that when Frank Sinatra was out, I loved him. Hopefully I can say I’ve inspired generations to come with my humor. To make people laugh is temporary, it’s transferable. But to make people care is permanent. I’m just praying for the strength to be brave enough to tell my story. What was it like going back to Saturday Night Live this past year? It was like going back home to daddy’s house. Nothing like your mom’s home cooking, and that’s what it was. I saw the young cast, they gave it all for me, and I wanted to give it all for them, because they really inspired me. I didn’t do that by myself. I had a cast of young people, and Lorne Michaels, and people I came up with at Saturday Night Live there to support me, and my family was there to support me. That feeling of being back there was awesome. When you’re on the road does your family come with? Yeah, of course. They’ve J

MAY 26, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 19

ARTS & CULTURE

continued from 19 always come with me. I take my family everywhere I go. That night [of the accident] my daughter was teething, so they decided to stay home, her and my wife, and look what happened. I thank God that I decided not to take them on the road that night. But, of course, I like to keep them with me because they’re my support and my star players and my world. I like for them to see what I see.

Is there anything in particular you have planned for your family time during your Chicago stop? I want to go to the Field Museum and take my daughter. I want to take my daughter to see the Tsavo lions from The Ghost and the Darkness.

What other projects do you have coming up outside of your tour? My daughter is turning three on July 2, so that takes priority over everything—throwing her a nice birthday party. Then I have my TV show on FX with Jordan Peele, and I have some movies I’m about to shoot with Dito [Montiel] and Ed Helms starting in June, then just looking forward.

Three must be a really fun age for your daughter. Absolutely. They don’t stay babies for long. She’s being guided along nicely, and I’m very proud of her. Does she know that dad’s funny? I make her laugh all the time, and she makes me laugh. She just did a recital last weekend, her first recital, and I just cried the whole recital. I was so proud of her, she worked so hard all year long. When this is all over do you have any plans for turning this tour into an album or a special? Right now I’m just taking it day by day, but we’re talking about a special. People want to hear this story, and they want my humor injected into it. Imagine that. v R Tracy Morgan Wed 6/1, 8 PM, Civic Opera House, 20 N. Upper Wacker, 26comedy.com, $45-$65.

v @BriannaWellen

chicagoreader.com/vote 20 CHICAGO READER - MAY 26, 2016

Prateek Srivastava ò JOSHUA MACWAN

You’ve got to understand, I don’t take life for granted. I don’t look too far ahead. I enjoy my life now. I enjoy each day to the fullest.

COMEDY

One year down, Simmer Brown By BRIANNA WELLEN

n May 30, 2015, Sameena Mustafa, Prateek Srivastava, and Rishika Murthy draped Indian fabric across the walls of Bughouse Theater, cooked up a batch of samosas, and hosted a comedy show. It was the premiere of Simmer Brown, the name of both their monthly stand-up showcase and their south-Asian comedy collective. The inaugural event sold out, and now, one year later, the comedians are celebrating with a special anniversary program. The trio met at an open mike just more than a year ago and bonded instantly—they found they had more in common with each other than with the typically white, male comedians who dominate lineups across the city. Though it was important for the group to represent their Indian culture onstage, their real goal was to create a forum where audiences could expect a diverse roster of comedians who didn’t just tell dick jokes. “The impetus for this particular show wasn’t ‘No white people allowed!,’” Srivastava says. “It wasn’t even ‘the Diversity Hour Show.’ It was ‘Let’s ﬁnd people who we ﬁnd funny who aren’t necessarily performing together, and let’s represent those comics that aren’t getting the push that they deserve to be getting.’” That objective doesn’t apply only to comedians. Several of Simmer Brown’s shows have featured underrepresented variety acts such as a mind reader, a belly dancer, and a rapping violinist. The disparate lineup and the BYOB location have brought and continue to attract an equally mixed crowd,

one that might normally avoid a comedy club with a two-drink minimum. And the tradition of serving samosas to the audience has carried over from that ﬁrst show. “It’s like an Indian-hospitality thing,” Mustafa says. “You’re coming into our home, so we’re going to feed you, then we’re going to entertain you.” But make no mistake, though the hosts embrace their heritage, they’re not here to make fun of it. On a scale from Russell Peters to Aziz Ansari, they ﬁnd themselves somewhere in the middle. “I think a lot of people, when they see we’re doing comedy, they kind of expect us to do imitations of our parents or do accents, and that’s something that we don’t do,” Mustafa says. “I have done accents of other ethnicities.” Mustafa, Srivastava, and Murthy perform stand-up sets every month, and past guest comics include Dave Helem, Azhar Usman, Emily Galati, Sherman Edwards, and Kellye Howard. The one-year anniversary celebration will feature three headlining acts: Chastity Washington, Kristen Toomey, and Erica Nicole Clark. Simmer Brown plan to do more than produce a monthly comedy night: along with expanding their schedule to include more one-offs across the city, they have started a podcast, hope to create Web videos, and are in talks with Chicago Desi Youth Rising about teaching a stand-up workshop to young kids in local south-Asian communities. “My main reason for doing this is to convince young high school Indian kids out there to not be a doctor—be a comedian,” Murthy says. The number one focus, however, will always be to provide a showcase for worthy comics of all genders and ethnicities. “I want to make sure that we’re getting the voices we’re assembling heard,” Mustafa says. “That’s what we’re trying to do—create this forum, this space, this collective, which is about representing the voices that aren’t normally heard.” v R SIMMER BROWN TURNS ONE Sat 5/28, 8 PM, Bughouse Theater, 1910 W. Irving Park, facebook.com/simmerbrowncomedy, $15, $10 in advance.

v @BriannaWellen

ARTS & CULTURE Girafe en Feu ò SUN-TIMES MEDIA

VISUAL ART

Teenage wasteland By DMITRY SAMAROV

haven’t thought about Salvador Dalí since high school, a time when melting clocks, genitalia, and sundry visual jokes are especially well suited to the overheated adolescent psyche. Dalí specialized in realistic renderings of the subconscious, fantasy imagery as described and popularized by Freudian psychoanalysis. Like his fellow surrealists, he loved to shock and provoke with his art; what teenager doesn’t want to do the same? I tried to recall that period of my life while visiting “The Imaginative World of Dalí,” an exhibit currently on view at Zygman Voss Gallery. Pulled from publisher Pierre Argillet’s collection, the show features etchings, drawings, sculpture, and tapestries produced from the 1930s to the ’70s. The ubiquity of Dalí’s more popular images makes it difficult to see his work anew, so it’s reassuring to encounter a grouping of his work selected by one person and thereby reflective of that individual’s particular taste.

Dalí’s artistic peak came in the late 20s to the early 30s, a period during which he collaborated with Luis Buñuel on Un Chien Andalou and painted The Persistence of Memory; unfortunately, the majority of what’s on display is from the late 60s, a less inspiring era. Most of the selections started as scribbles, dots, or ink blots that Dalí shaped into ﬁgures, which are often naked women. The idea of finding meaning in random accident is a well-known surrealist strategy, but by the time most of the material in “The Imaginative World” was executed, Dalí had been ﬂogging this particular dead horse for at least 30 years. Most of these prints have a listless, dashed-off, unfinished feel. Even the hand-painted dabs of watercolor that are applied to many of them look generic, like they were done on a production line. Given the lucrative possibilities of anything with Dalí’s signature on it, I’d surmise that some (if not much) of the work on these editions was done by printers and assistants.

Four large, handmade tapestries from the 70s are a charming reimagining of the artist’s style. Transferred onto fabric and thread, the tiresome weirdness of Dalí’s imagination is here transformed into cheerful decoration. I could see Girafe en Feu, a tapestry with a burning giraffe on it, gracing the wall of a child’s room (if the parents had a sense of humor, of course). I still can’t take Dalí very seriously. The symbolism and sexuality of his work is now dated and risible, and his efforts to jolt viewers no longer pack a punch. But when paired with talented craftsmen—like those who wove the four tapestries on display—or a master filmmaker like Buñuel, Dalí’s harlots and demons can still be counted on to dance their merry jigs and entertain our eyes from time to time. v “THE IMAGINATIVE WORLD OF DALÍ” Through Sat 6/11, Tue-Sat 11 AM-5 PM, Sun-Mon by appointment only, Zygman Voss Gallery, 222 W. Superior, zygmanvossgallery.com.

THE LATEST ON YOUR FAVORITE

RESTAURANTS AND BARS

FOOD & DRINK

WEEKLY E-BLAST GET UP TO DATE. SIGN UP NOW. CHICAGOREADER.COM MAY 26, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 21

164 North State Street

Between Lake & Randolph MOVIE HOTLINE: 312.846.2800

TALE OF TALES

LOLO

ARTS & CULTURE

“A carnival of transgression... gloriously mad... visually wonderful.” – The Guardian

M NEW FRO !! PY JULIE DEL

May 27 - June 2

Fri. at 2 pm & 6 pm; Sat. at 8 pm; Sun. at 3 pm; Mon. at 6 pm; Tue. at 7:45 pm; Wed. at 6 pm; Thu. at 8:30 pm

Fri. at 2 pm & 6 pm; Sat. at 8 pm; Sun. at 3 pm; Mon. at 8 pm; Tue. at 6 pm; Wed. at 8 pm; Thu. at 6 pm

MAY 27 - JUNE 2 • AFERIM!

BUY TICKETS NOW

“Brilliant... raucous, funny and full of life.” — A. O. Scott, The New York Times

www.siskelﬁlmcenter.org

greta ETHAN bill maya TRAVIS julianne gerwig HAWKE hader rudolph FIMMELAND moore

MOVI MO MOVIES VIES VI ES

Alone again, unnaturally By LEAH PICKETT

“Exhilarating! hilarious!” -PETER TRAVERS, ROLLING STONE

MAGGIE’S PLAn A REBECCA MILLER FILM WRITTEN FORTHE SCREENAND DIRECTED BYREBECCA MILLER

WWW.SONYCLASSICS.COM

STARTS FRIDAY, MAY 27

Chicago AMC RIVER EAST 21 amctheatres.com

Chicago ARCLIGHT CHICAGO (312) 637-4760

Chicago LANDMARK’S CENTURY CENTRE CINEMA (773) 248-7759

Evanston CENTURY 12 EVANSTON / CINÉARTS 6 & XD (847) 491-9751

VIEW THE TRAILER AT WWW.MAGGIESPLANMOVIE.COM

Never miss a show again.

EARLY WARNINGS Find a concert, buy a ticket, and sign up to get advance notice of Chicago’s essential music shows at chicagoreader.com/early.

he Lobster, the ﬁrst English-language feature from Greek writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos, takes place in a dystopian world where single people are hunted with tranquilizer darts and, when captured, must secure a suitable mate within 45 days or be transformed into an animal. As the ﬁlm opens, a paunchy, nearsighted nebbish named David (Colin Farrell), whose wife of 12 years has recently left him for another man, checks into a rural hotel that specializes in matchmaking. Accompanying him is his brother, who is now a sheepdog. “He was here a couple of years ago,” David tells the concierge. “But he didn’t make it.” Later, in David’s room, the hotel manager asks him what animal he would like to be if he doesn’t make it. David replies that he would like to be

ssss EXCELLENT

22 CHICAGO READER - MAY 26, 2016

The Lobster

sss GOOD

a lobster, because lobsters are cold-blooded, have hard exoskeletons, and can live up to 100 years. The hotel manager advises David that, if he is transﬁgured, he should stick to dating within his species. “A wolf and a penguin could never live together, nor could a camel and a hippopotamus,” she tells him. “That would be absurd.” Lanthimos and his frequent cowriter Efthymis Filippou draw heavily on the theater of the absurd in their crafting of timeless and tragicomic fables that hold up a mirror to society. Dogtooth (2009), about two parents who keep their children bizarrely cloistered from the world, attacks the idea that sheltering one’s kids from outside influences will keep them safe, as opposed to caged. Alps (2011), involving a dysfunctional group of people who

ss AVERAGE

s POOR

•

WORTHLESS

THE LOBSTER sss Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. R, 118 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark’s Century Centre, River East 21 Get showtimes at chicagoreader.com/movies.

lous, the actors straight-faced and robotic as they utter romantic bromides. After David escapes the hotel to join a wandering rebel band called the Loners, he confronts the Limping Man, who has made a match with Nosebleed Woman (Jessica Barden) by claiming to suffer from nosebleeds himself. “Everyone says they’re going to make it, because they’re perfectly suited,” the Lisping Man tells David. “And their child”—an adolescent daughter gifted to them by the hotel managers—“will help them get past the fighting and the arguing.” Unfortunately for David, the Loners have rules too, which are the inverse of the larger society’s. Touching, kissing, and, above all, falling in love are verboten. But when David meets the stern Near-Sighted Woman (Rachel Weisz), sparks fly. In voice-over narration, she describes the coded body language she and David have developed to hide their love affair from the other Loners: “When we turn our heads to the left, it means I love you more than anything in the world; and when we turn our heads to the right, it means Watch out, we’re in danger. We had to be very careful in the beginning not to mix up I love you more than anything in the world with Watch out, we’re in danger.” Esslin wrote that the real challenge of absurdist drama is to persuade the viewer to “accept the human condition as it is.” An absurdist drama, if written and executed well, need not leave the audience feeling miserable. “The shedding of easy solutions, of comforting illusions, may be painful,” he wrote, “but it leaves behind it a sense of freedom and relief . . . in the last resort, the Theatre of the Absurd does not provoke tears of despair but the laughter of liberation.” The Lobster ends with a similar choice. Will David break the cycle by thrusting himself into an entirely new way of being—a relationship that involves compromise and sacrifice—or will he return to what is lonely and wretched, but also familiar? Rather than present romance as a panacea, as so many other films do, The Lobster not only questions the value almost every society in the world places on procuring a mate but also rejects the notion that finding the One is the ultimate prize. Lanthimos forgoes easy sentiments about the transformative power of love; this may turn off some viewers, but there’s a certain liberation and even some relief in knowing that societal pressure to settle down can be just as cruel as loneliness. v

$.',-'

.)# '! * %& )( ,++, .)# '" * %& )( $&/%& -.

/''*%''#"!$ ,)&'0+(.' .)# '" * %& )( $$ -.

#2/ .%2(+$4'. 03) 0)*03,' +$,"'+.1 *$.$+ +%'!2&03+%'0+/'-,24

chicagoreader.com/vote R

VOTE NOW

chicagoreader.com/vote

RSM

role-play others’ lost loved ones, satirizes the performative aspect of the grieving process. The Lobster explodes the social construct of aspirational coupledom and the binary attitudes toward dating that are as prevalent in today’s Tinderized culture as in more stifled societies of the past and present. All three of these collaborations borrow from absurdist drama in their surrealism and existentialism, and in even more specific aspects. The term “theater of the absurd” was coined by Hungarian dramatist Martin Esslin in a 1960 essay of that name, which dealt with the work of Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, and Eugene Ionesco. “The Theatre of the Absurd attacks the comfortable certainties of religious or political orthodoxy,” he wrote in 1965. “It aims to shock its audience out of complacency, to bring it face to face with the harsh facts of the human situation as these writers see it.” The absurdism of these plays, according to Esslin, typically arises from a world devoid of meaning in which people are controlled by mysterious outside forces. Absurdist plays often mix broad comedy with horror and tragedy; the dialogue is riddled with dictums and cliches; the flat or archetypal characters, stuck in meaningless routines, tend to behave like automatons; and the cyclical plots emphasize repetition and the pointlessness of existence. True to this tradition, the characters in The Lobster are all archetypes. Except for the myopic David, each of them is named after his or her defining characteristic: the Limping Man (Ben Whishaw), the Lisping Man (John C. Reilly). The singles are told that their soulmate must share their defining characteristic for their match to be “well suited.” Otherwise, they needn’t bother looking; they’ll never find the One. The Lobster’s comedy, like that of so many absurdist plays, is biting and tinged with terror. The Heartless Woman (Angeliki Papoulia, a Lanthimos regular) comes off as prickly in a humorous way—like a harmless, stone-faced villain in a Wes Anderson film—before revealing herself to be a homicidal psychopath. The quirky Biscuit Woman (Ashley Jensen) pesters David to become her mate and, sensing his lack of interest, blithely informs him that she’d rather throw herself out of her hotel room window than be turned into something pathetic and inhuman. When she finally makes good on her promise, the residents are mainly distracted and annoyed by the mess. “She jumped from the window of 180,” notes one woman. “There is blood and biscuits everywhere.” The Lobster’s dialogue is purposely ridicu-

www.BrewView.com 3145 N. Sheffield at Belmont

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

18 to enter 21 to drink Photo ID required

Sat-Sun, May 28-29 @ 3:00pm Tue-Thr, May 31-June 2 @ 8:45pm

Batman v Superman Friday, May 27 @ 6:00pm Sat, May 28 @ 5:45pm & 10:00pm Sunday, May 29 @ 5:45pm Tue-Thr, May 31-June 2 @ 6:30pm

Everybody Wants Some Upcoming Special 30th Anniversary Screenings!

Fri, May 27 - Sun, May 29 at 8:00pm

•Top Gun

Tickets: http://topgun1986.bpt.me Fri, June 3 - Sun, June 5 at 8:00pm

•Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Tickets: http://ferris1986.bpt.me

v @leahkpickett MAY 26, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 23

FRIDAY, JUNE 3

sound post

Concert 8:00 p.m. works by Mozart and Beethoven Soundpost 10:00 p.m. Symphony Center Rotunda

CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA’S

SPECIAL OFFER: CONCERT + POST-PARTY = $35

Mix, mingle and connect at Soundpost, the CSO’s new young professional event that combines a CSO concert and a great post-party featuring $5 drinks and a live DJ. Each Soundpost provides up close and personal access to CSO musicians who unveil everything you’ve always wanted to know about the life of a world-famous musician. This June’s Soundpost dives into the world of woodwinds and brass through interactive demonstrations and fascinating discussions with CSO musicians.

CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA / RICCARDO MUTI CSO.ORG/SOUNDPOST 312-294-3000

24 CHICAGO READER - MAY 26, 2016

ZELL MUSIC DIRECTOR

Use promo code SOUNDPOST at check out on cso.org or when calling Patron Services at 312-294-3000.

Global Sponsor of the CSO

Soundpost sponsors:

JOEY PURP, SONNY DIGITAL, LAKIM, LUCKI

Fri 6/10, 7 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $20, $17 in advance b

How Chicago made

C Joey Purp The Save Money rapper’s new iiiDrops comes from a perspective shaped by neighborhoods on both sides of the city’s racial and economic divides. By LEOR GALIL

Joey Purp started taking the Orange Line from Pulaski in elementary school. ò CORY POPP

hicago rapper Joey Purp grew up all over town—Lincoln Park, Garfield Ridge, Humboldt Park—and it’s endowed the 22-year-old with a perspective that bridges many of the city’s racial and economic divides. “The thing that makes me stand out as a rapper is the same thing that makes me stand out as a person, and that’s the same thing that makes everybody stand out— no two of us have the same story,” he says. “If I was to tell somebody everything that happened from the moment I was born to the moment I die—knock on wood that it won’t be anytime soon—it’s different from anybody else’s. And I have a little more sauce in my talk. My shit is a little more seasoned than your average individual.” On Purp’s mixtape iiiDrops, which comes out this Friday, his easygoing braggadocio, frictionless shifts in flow, and subtle but powerful inflections combine to create a colorful, outgoing persona that shines through no matter what the instrumentals do—he sounds like himself against the minimal party-rap thwack of “Girls @,” the stately stomp of “Winners Circle,” and the thumping, horn-sampling funk of “Photobooth.” Purp’s perspective on Chicago shines through too. On “Cornerstore” you can practically see the spittle flying as he raps about his experiences as a young black man in a city that’s rapidly becoming inhospitable to everyone but the wealthy: “I used to hit the blunt and get lifted and then envision / Making college tuition flippin’ a hundred chickens / Now up in the corners where killers used to inhabit / They built a row of new condos where they tore up project buildings.” Purp celebrates the arrival of iiiDrops (pronounced “eyedrops”) with a headlining set at Metro on Friday, June 10. He calls it his debut, though he’s released an earlier full-length—he says he didn’t take rapping seriously until a year after he dropped The Purple Tape in 2012. For years he focused on Leather Corduroys, his duo with rapper Kami de Chukwu: they put out a short EP in 2014, Porno Music Vol. II: This Shit Fucking Raw, and an adventurous full-length, Season, in January 2015. Purp had started working on iiiDrops before he teamed up with Kami, but its current version began to take shape only about a year ago. The mix- J

MAY 26, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 25

JOEY PURP’S CHICAGO

or some shit. Once I got older, I understood that I learned so much of the city, and I learned how to travel, and I learned how to meet new people all because I never had friends in my neighborhood. My friends were always in other neighborhoods—I always left my house, and came back to my neighborhood just to go home.

Oak Street Beach

Purp at Oak Street Beach: “I wish it was nicer out, so I could just kick it on the beach like we used to.”

ò CORY POPP

continued from 25 tape now includes just one song from Purp’s first attempt: the sumptuous, soul-sampling “Morning Sex.” “That was the beginning of me learning how to rap like me, and with my influences, with my real-life experiences,” he says. The Chicago-based collective Purp cofounded as a teenager, Save Money, has become an international force in hip-hop thanks to the success of Chance the Rapper and Vic Mensa. Purp is hardly so well-known, but his work has helped the collective develop a reputation as more than just a bunch of wannabes tagging along after those stars. By listening to iiiDrops I got a vivid feel for what the city means to Purp and how it’s shaped him, but it came only in glimpses and anecdotes. I wanted a fuller picture, and I thought it might help to ask him exactly where he became the person (and the rapper) that he is today. I didn’t need to hear about where he’s recorded and performed, but rather about the places that were foundationally important to him back before he and his friends changed Chicago hip-hop. I traveled with Purp to five spots he chose. We brought along producer and engineer Knox Fortune, who contributed to iiiDrops and appears on Chance’s Coloring Book; Purp’s manager, Kevin Zheng, with assistant Pui-yu Chan; and photographer and videographer Cory Popp. Below are Purp’s recollections, edited for length and clarity.

Orange Line Pulaski Station

Near Pulaski and 51st

I used to come here every day, on the way to school or on the way home. I lived far as hell from where I hung out and where I went to school. We moved over here ’cause my grand-

26 CHICAGO READER - MAY 26, 2016

mother was sick; she passed, and my mom got her childhood home. It was right when I started taking the train by myself. That must have been fifth or sixth grade—until sophomore, junior year of high school. My brother, he’s six years older than me. He taught me how to take the train and shit. We stopped going to school together and I took the train by myself for the ﬁrst time; I missed my train and I thought the world was over. I was like, “What do I do? I didn’t think about this part—I got to the train station, my train left.” I’m just sittin’ there, callin’ my mama, “What do I do?” She was like, “You wait! There’s another train coming!” I was going to Newberry Math & Science Academy, which was a school my brother went to—they got me into it. I guess it’s called grandfathering—if your family goes there, you get a chance to go there, ’cause it was a lottery school. I had to give like two hours of comfort time, ’cause if there was no trains or something, or if I missed my train . . . But it was really like an hour, hour and a half, to do anything. Until I started biking—then I was biking everywhere myself. This is where I learned how to be myself, on my own. Learning how to interact with other people—just learning how to carry myself in society, without my parents, at an early age. It was a cool opportunity to be like an adult. Also it helped me monetarily, if I had any money—I knew I had to get home, I knew I had to get to school. It helped me value what I spent money on and what I spent time on. This is kinda where I got a sense of what music I like, ’cause I had enough time to listen to one album every day. My favorite albums were like time periods, ’cause every day for an hour and a half I could listen to Tha Carter II, or I could listen to Velvet Underground & Nico

I probably first came here my freshman year of high school. Honestly, I think the universe brought us here. The first thing to happen was, the McDonald’s on Chicago and State—that wouldn’t be super populated. We’d meet at McDonald’s because it was cheap. We were teenagers; we didn’t have a lot of money to spend on food and shit. There was also a corner store right off the Red Line that sold blunts, and we would go to get blunts right there. We could always get somebody to buy us blunts and get somebody to buy us a bottle. Then the Water Tower’s right here, and that’s where the Macy’s was. Levi’s 501s were poppin’ then, and True Religion jeans were poppin’ then—we would go in there and steal jeans and shit. Eventually we just realized that there was a beach right here too. We’re like, “Oh shit, it’s lit, we could do everything here.” It started with just six of us, ten of us, 12 of us. But after one summer of gathering friends of friends, everybody knew we could meet up here. Sometimes there was 100 of us walking around, literally, sometimes in different groups. At first it was me, Vic, Chance, Reese, Nikko

[Washington]—Art by Nikko—and Nico Segal. There’s a ton of people that the public probably wouldn’t know, but just as far as the main people—Brian Fresco, Sterling Hayes, some of the people that you see that are involved now, and then a ton of our other friends. The next year of school we met Kami, who’s another notable member of Save Money. Me and Towkio—we went to grammar school together, but he went to a different high school, so he wasn’t down here with us too much. Knox Fortune we met later. We picked up a ton of people along the way. We all were from different neighborhoods, so we all had to meet up somewhere; this was our neighborhood away from our neighborhoods. If there was ever a place that you could find any of us, or you could say that we would be at—in the process of hoppin’ off the train at Chicago and State and walking to this beach, you would definitely run into us. It was the place where we learned who we were together, which ones had certain types of personalities in the pack. It’s really where we became ourselves as a unit and learned how to be more of ourselves as ourselves. I definitely learned qualities of myself as a leader—and qualities of myself as a motivator and a friend in general. We did too much stuff here, and a lot of other people started coming here—we created a cultural hot spot for kids. After a certain point it was just so overpopulated, and so many police started coming—everybody was down here doing so much shit. I got a little older, and I was over it.

The northeast corner of Halsted and Division, where Purp’s father, aunt, and cousins lived in a part of Cabrini-Green that’s since been demolished ò CORY POPP

JOEY PURP’S CHICAGO

Halsted and Division This is where my dad lived, in the now torndown Cabrini-Green projects. This is where he lived until right after I went into high school, I want to say. I saw my dad every day. He would pick me up from school, and then we would come here to where he lived with my auntie— his sister. He managed a restaurant in Lincoln Park—we would go there, and I would kick it there after school. All my cousins lived in here—half of my family, on my dad’s side, lived in the same building. I remember being really young, being lightskinned—I was mixed, so it was a problem here to be light-skinned and not dark. And it was a problem elsewhere to not be white and be darker, so it was weird as a very young child. As I got older, it was crazy to see the significant difference in the environment between neighborhoods—like the neighborhood where my school was, and the neighborhood where half my family lives. I always noticed how fucked-up it was that some people didn’t have the same opportunities as other people. My dad was living here while we still lived in Lincoln Park—it was actually crazy, ’cause it was almost walking distance. Definitely biking distance. My dad would get me—we would ride our bikes down the bike path up north, all the way to Montrose past where that big-ass totem pole is, and we would come back down to Cabrini-Green. I knew that people didn’t have money here, but where I was at we didn’t have money either. We caught a blessing, because we had a family member who had a unit we could rent. It wasn’t really different, ’cause we didn’t have shit, but everybody else always had something. Once I got older and I started making the decision to travel, I saw it myself. It wasn’t just “We get out the car and we’re in the projects, we get back in the car, we get out the car and we’re in a nice neighborhood.” It was like, when I’m on the bus, and I pass the projects and I’m like, “Oh, my dad lives there,” and somebody I’m with is like, “Your dad lives there?” Cabrini-Green never was home. I would stay here sometimes, but it was never like home, ’cause my stuff was always somewhere else; my clothes were somewhere else, my PlayStation was somewhere else. I never saw it as home, but it was my dad’s house. There’s real connection, ’cause it was where my family was—it felt like a home, but it wasn’t my home. I used to kick it in Lincoln Park, and if anything ever happened—like, if I ever got in any fight, or if some older kids tried to jump me, or something like that—my dad and my family was in the projects. For other people in

“I learned so much of the city, and I learned how to travel, and I learned how to meet new people all because I never had friends in my neighborhood. My friends were always in other neighborhoods.” —Joey Purp the same place that I was at, it was the other here. The people at LDRS, they were adults, way around; if you stumbled into the projects, and they dressed in and sold the clothes that you would go running back to Lincoln Park. we wore. We looked like weirdos back then, When my dad moved, I was still too young. dressin’ how we dressed. LDRS was one of the I knew they had to move, but I didn’t know only places where we knew people dressed like the stress of actually having to leave because that and listened to music like that. your building’s getting torn down. I had other Back then there were not a lot of places in friends that went to my grammar school; Chicago that were cultured where you could they still lived in the row houses. Everything be black. And as long as you were different, around them was getting torn down, and their and you dressed a little different, thought houses were still there. It was weird because a little different, you were progressive, you it was like a ghost town—half of the neighbor- were young—you didn’t look out of place here. hood was torn down, and half of the neigh- That’s what made you feel in place here. borhood was boarded up. A small amount of There’s another store called Saint Alfred. I people are still here, and it’s a neglected area. personally—and Save Money, just as a whole— I’m more understanding of the value of are good friends with the people that run ownership. Of owning where you the store. It’s like family all over live and, now that it’s a factor for here. A couple of my homies stay E me, owning your music. Or owning right down here. Vic just moved up to things you’ve done—ownerout of this neighborhood. It’s our Take a video tour of Chicago ship in general. When you’re in a neighborhood away from all our with Joey Purp at situation that you’re completely neighborhoods. chicagoreader.com /music. leaning on something else, literally It was motivational to know that someone can take everything from it was cool to be different. It was you, someone can tear down the just our place to feel at home and building you live in, and you have to scramble feel like we were onto something. We saw that to ﬁnd somewhere else to live. there were other people on the same waveOn the opposite side of the token, there’s length. Over here was the type of area where, just the compassion of knowing that there’s we’ll be young kids just chillin’, smokin’ weed, always somebody with a worse situation than and somebody will stop us—“Can I take a photo you. ’Cause even when my dad was living in the of y’all? I run a style blog.” Or something. It projects, my mom worked somewhere with an was shit like that that let us know, “OK, there outreach program for the homeless, and I was are places that people go, and we don’t have friends as a child with a lot of people who were to be the different ones. We can be the ones in in worse situations than I could ever imagine. general, and everybody’s kinda like this.” Knowing that we had very little, I knew that it Wicker Park, it’s like how it was beforewasn’t always that bad. We always had each hand—I can come up to Wicker, run into so other, and we were always having fun. I don’t many talented young Chicagoans. I’m here all ever remember a time where I was in Cabrini- the time. It’s like home now, man. I’m about to Green and I felt like I couldn’t do something, move over here, before the end of the year. I or I felt like I couldn’t have something, or I felt always knew my ﬁrst apartment would be over like I was missing out. here. I just always knew that, man, when I was a shortie—I always planned it. This part of me hasn’t really transferred Wicker Park into music the way everything else has, ’cause it’s super current—it’s happening right now. LDRS 1354, a streetwear store, was over It reinforces everything; every time I come here—that was my first job. I interned at over here, I get stopped in the street to take a LDRS for a long time. After the period where picture, stopped on the street to say “What’s we were going to the beach, we’d just start up!” by a kid that likes my music. It’s a cool coming up to Wicker Park and kickin’ it up reminder that there’s kids like us. J

3855 N. LINCOLN

martyrslive.com

THU, 5/26

THE BAMBIR, DIVINO NIÑO, SAYERS FRI, 5/27

BIG SAM’S FUNKY NATION, WILLY DYNOMITE SAT, 5/28

MOR VE ÖTESI TUE, 5/31

DANCE BULLIES, ANDREW KENT WITTLER, FURR WED, 6/1

TRIBUTOSAURUS BECOMES… AC/DC THU, 6/2 - NO COVER - ROCKABILLY/ROOTS OPEN MIC!

BIG C JAMBOREE… THE FLAT CATS FRI, 6/3

MOON, MODEL STRANGER, WE KILLED THE LION SAT, 6/4 - 6PM - ALL AGES

THE AUNTEAKS SAT, 6/4 - 9PM

JOHN KILL & THE SLACKS, LIZ JANES, THE ELIZABETH DANE

Never miss a show again.

EARLY WARNINGS chicagoreader.com/early

MAY 26, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 27

JOEY PURP’S CHICAGO

Robert Fripp & The Chamber Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists

Saturday June 4, 2016 8PM (Doors 7PM) Harvest Bible Chapel

935 N. Dearborn Chicago, IL 60610

Purp at Fat Tiger Workshop with (from left to right) producer Knox Fortune, manager Kevin Zheng, and Zheng’s assistant, Pui-yu Chan ò CORY POPP

continued from 27

Fat Tiger Workshop 1043 W. Grand

ENTER FOR A CHANCE TO WIN A PAIR OF TICKETS TO ATTEND THE 11TH ANNUAL

J U LY 1 5 - 1 7 2 0 1 6 / U N I O N P A R K —

Beach House

F E A T U R I N G

—

Brian Wilson performing Pet Sounds

Broken Social Scene Sufjan Stevens

FKA Twigs

E NTE R F O R YO U R C HAN C E TO W I N AT

CHICAGOREADER.COM/PROMOTIONS 28 CHICAGO READER - MAY 26, 2016

Miguel

plus many more

We’re at Fat Tiger Workshop, a very prominent streetwear store in Chicago, run by some prominent figures in Chicago culture. They’ve been here for a year. They were in Logan Square for a little over a year, maybe just under two years actually. Before that they ran and managed LDRS 1354, the store I worked at and interned at when I was a teenager. They showed us that being different was cool, dressing different was cool, listening to different music was cool, being ahead of things was cool. They showed us that being us was cool, and that having a friend group that was different was cool. Having a perspective that was different was cool, and that you could make something out of this. It’s cool that we can carry the torch and continue what they started. They help us with everything, man, and vice versa. There was times where I was fucked-up and didn’t have anything—any bread to buy clothes—and a party was coming up, a school dance was coming up, or my birthday was coming up, and they’ll give me a whole outfit for free. There’s times where I went to see [Fat Tiger co-owner and designer] Vic [Lloyd], and he gave me clothes out of his closet that he didn’t want. He noticed that I was a similar style to him, and just figured stuff that he didn’t want I could always use—fly shit. They looked out for us all the time. When I’m not doing anything at the crib,

I always come up here. Any day of the week, random time of the week, you can always catch me here, just kickin’ it, just talking shit with them. These stores have always been this environment, from when we were 16 and I was a young kid that’d run to the back and get T-shirts for customers—it was them and their friends sitting here, politickin’. I know how you’re supposed to react, as the quote-unquote big homie, when your little homies run up to you with any crazy situation the way we did. Man, we ran into LDRS or the other Fat Tiger with crazy situations, and they would always look out for us, whether we were running from the police or some shit. They let us kick it in the back, ’cause we had just gotten in some trouble. I see the value of having role models; you could always go to them and talk about anything, whether it was shit with girls, or advice on shopping, or advice on when you should do things or how you should move. It was valuable to have somebody who had been through things who was like-minded, so you could see how you’re supposed to act. I hope people support people that support Chicago the way that Fat Tiger supports Chicago. I think it’s important for everybody to frequent these places—there’s few people that care about strangers the way somebody who designs clothes does. Especially when it’s on the level that a Fat Tiger Works or a Saint Alfred does. Truth be told, they’re doing this to keep Chicago fresh, to keep Chicago ahead of the curve. Other people are living in your products—you care. v

v @imLeor

Recommended and notable shows, and critics’ insights for the week of May 26

MUSIC

b ALL AGES F

new records with all sorts of twists and turns. They called it a day in ’83, but punk bands don’t stay dead, and the Urinals returned in ’96; their latest LP, Next Year at Marienbad (Happy Squid Records), came out in 2014. While most reunited punk bands reaching for former glory end up causing more cringes than spontaneous feelings of joy, these guys successfully recapture the spirit of what made them great in the 70s. —LUCA CIMARUSTI

PICK OF THE WEEK

Rakim pays a visit to hip-hop’s golden age with a performance of Paid in Full

Terell Stafford Through Sunday. 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase, 806 S. Plymouth, $20-$40. Alexander Robotnick ò GUIDO MANNUCCI

THURSDAY26 Rakim See Pick of the Week. 8 PM, Park West, 322 W. Armitage, $25. 18+ Alexander Robotnick Kevin Starke, Jordan Zawideh, and Rob Sevier open. 10 PM, Berlin, 954 W. Belmont, $10.

ò ASTRID STAWIARZ/GETTY

RAKIM

Thu 5/26, 8 PM, Park West, 322 W. Armitage, $25. 18+

PUBLIC ENEMY UNDERWENT A TITANIC SHIFT in mentality (and popularity) with their incendiary 1987 single “Rebel Without a Pause,” which drew its inspiration from another canonical hip-hop outfit. As Chuck D. told Vibe in 2013, “I stayed in the crib for a whole two days because I was so mad, yet inspired by Eric B and Rakim’s ‘I Know You Got Soul.’” DJ-producer Eric B and MC Rakim helped bring hip-hop into its golden age with that single and a few others from their 1987 debut, Paid in Full (4th & B’Way). The pair’s alchemical collaboration produced tracks that flow with a singular energy—they move with a relaxed jazz kick but hit hard with a funky wallop, and Rakim’s smooth, nonchalant delivery exemplifies their approach to hip-hop. Paid in Full is so embedded into the history and culture of the genre—and, for that matter, pop music—that Rakim’s wordplay still feels like an elemental part of our atmosphere in a way few other hip-hop acts have achieved. Which is to say even if you don’t know Rakim’s the one who was “Thinkin’ of a master plan,” you probably know what it feels like to hear the opening verse of the album’s title track. If for some reason you’ve made it this far in life without having heard any of Paid in Full, tonight’s a good opportunity to play catch up, ’cause Rakim is, um, playing it in full. —LEOR GALIL

Italian producer and DJ Maurizio Dami, aka Alexander Robotnick, doesn’t look at his history through rose-colored glasses. In a 2010 interview with the Dallas Observer Dami describes his breakout 1983 single “Problems D’Amour,” a suave Italo-disco track spiked with spindly new wave and chilly postpunk, as only a minor hit in comparison with the “shitty Italo disco of the time” that pushed millions of copies. Sales numbers aside, Dami’s record had remarkable influence, particularly in Chicago, where it was thrown into sets at major house clubs throughout the mid-80s. Now in his 60s, Dami is still busting out new recordings, and this year he dropped volume four of the stylistically slippery Music for an Imaginary Club series he launched last year via Hot Elephant Music. The latest veers toward more serene grooves, though Dami inserts sonic flourishes that test the limits of dance-floor tranquility; opener “Maiden Voyage” is cut with an eerie synth melody that sounds like a clique of electronic flutes slowly beaming up into space. —LEOR GALIL

Urinals Le Tour and Skip Church open. 9 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $8. Minimalist punk trio the Urinals came together in Los Angeles in 1978 as college kids who could barely play their instruments, but together they possessed the uncanny ability to twist a fractured, highstrung, two-chord jangle into a totally fresh sound. Today the band’s inﬂuence is heard all over—heavily in the spooky strumming of Lee Ranaldo and the pushy restraint of No Age—but decades ago no one aped the Urinals more than San Pedro legends Minutemen, who came out of the gate in 1980 wearing their love for the band on their ﬂannel sleeves, even covering the furious cut “Ack Ack Ack” on two of their records. The Urinals eventually tired of the minimal approach and in 1981 changed their name to 100 Flowers and began cramming their dense

On last year’s delightful Brotherlee Love (Capri) veteran trumpeter Terell Stafford pays homage to Lee Morgan, one of Philadelphia’s greatest hardbop horn players. Though Stafford grew up outside Chicago he came of age as a musician in Philly, and there’s never been any doubt that he’s the musical progeny of Morgan. The ferociously swinging, deeply soulful album features eight Morgan tunes— some he wrote, some he was famous for recording— performed with energy and style by Stafford’s crack working band with tenor saxophonist Tim Warfield, bassist Peter Washington, pianist Bruce Barth, and drummer Dana Hall. Whether it’s the strutting funk of “Petty Larceny” or the sleek, sophisticated blues of “Candy,” the band evokes not just the brilliance of Morgan but the classic era in jazz that ran from the late 50s into the early 60s. The album includes one Stafford original in “Favor,” where the trumpeter’s half-valved intro connects him to the present while kicking off a strut through the past. For this week’s engagement Billy Williams subs on drums for Hall. —PETER MARGASAK

FRIDAY27 Beyonce See also Saturday. 7:30 PM, Soldier Field, $75-$305. b

There’s no denying that Beyonce is a cultural force beyond anything this generation has experienced— her millions of fans affectionally refer to themselves as members of the “Beyhive.” Millennials have been lucky to experience Beyonce’s astonishingly successful run of albums, tours, and collaborations that turn to gold with just a mention of her name. She can release a surprise digital-only album (2013’s Beyonce) on a Thursday night—with zero press and only whispers of its imminence— and watch it immediately race to the top of the iTunes chart. She was even able to push coverage of Prince’s death out of the news cycle with the release of her recent Lemonade (Parkwood), and much of her Formation World Tour, which includes two nights at Soldier Field, is sold out. Her formula for success is uncomplicated: produce tracks that are texturally rich, strengthened by a queen-size dose of bravado and lyrics that center on strikingly personal themes. She’s endlessly inspired by her own travails as she discusses quakes in her marriage to Jay-Z or her enviable sex life. In Beyonce’s music motifs of independence and sexual agency coexist naturally with marriage and motherhood—they’re simply two sides of the same coin. Women can have it all. If this notion isn’t culturally signiﬁcant enough for you, then consider her J

MAY 26, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 29

4544 N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG • 773.728.6000

MAY 27TH

JULIETA VENEGAS

MAY 28TH

RESONATE 11.0

JUNE 2ND OTT & THE ALL SEEING I W/ THE ORB, THRIFTWORKS

JUNE 5TH

LITTLE KIDS ROCK

W/JAMFEST CHICAGO

JUNE 7TH

THE 3RD ANNUAL CHICAGO NIGHTLIFE AWARDS

JUNE 17TH

ANGIE STONE

W/ DUANE POWEL

JUNE 18TH

PLAN B: "CHENCHO Y MALDY"

JUNE 23RD

DUMPSTAPHUNK A PRE  PHISH PARTY

JUNE 24TH

KARLDENSON'STINYUNIVERSE

W/THE NEW MASTERSOUNDS

JUNE 25TH

DOPAPOD

JUST ADDED • ON SALE FRIDAY! 9/23 10/8 11/17 6/3

Mike Peters Sonny Landreth Dar Williams Old Town School Uncovered: A Tribute to Prince (ON SALE NOW!)

VISIT OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG TO BUY TICKETS! SATURDAY, MAY 28 8PM

Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill THURSDAY, JUNE 2 7PM

Yemen Blues

Part of the Israeli Jazz and World Music Festival

FRIDAY, JUNE 3 8PM

Old Town School Uncovered: A Tribute to Prince SATURDAY, JUNE 4 7:30PM

National Tap Day Celebration SUNDAY, JUNE 12 5 & 8:30PM

Béla Fleck & The Flecktones at Thalia Hall • 1807 S Allport Ave

FRIDAY, JUNE 10 8PM

Maxence Cyrin FRIDAY, JUNE 17 8PM

Mark Lanegan FRIDAY, JUNE 24 8PM SATURDAY, JUNE 25 8PM

Bob Schneider

with special guest Steve Dawson

ACROSS THE STREET IN SZOLD HALL 4545 N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL

5/27 Global Dance Party: Dunav Tamburitza Orchestra with Ethnic Dance Chicago 5/28 Juanito Pascual 6/3 The HillBenders present Tommy: A Bluegrass Opry 6/4 47SOUL 6/10 Global Dance Party: David Antonio y su Orquesta

WORLD MUSIC WEDNESDAY SERIES FREE WEEKLY CONCERTS, LINCOLN SQUARE

WWW.CONCORDMUSICHALL.COM

2047 N. MILWAUKEE | 773.570.4000 30 CHICAGO READER - MAY 26, 2016

MUSIC

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

6/1 6/8

Ryan Cohan Ensemble Español 40th Anniversary

OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG

continued from 29

activist-level self-love. Lemonade has been lauded for being an exploration of the black woman’s complexity, perspective, and excellence. And by declaring herself “ﬂawless” she provides a way for her audience to finally see itself as flawless too. Beyonce gives us perhaps the best way to understand power—as a feeling rather than a force, one that comes from knowing you’re the absolute best version of yourself. —MEAGAN FREDETTE

Terell Stafford See Thursday. 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase, 806 S. Plymouth, $20-$40.

Julieta Venegas 11:30 PM, Concord Music Hall, 2047 N. Milwaukee, $44.50. 18+ On “Esperaba,” the bright and ultrahooky opening track from Julieta Venegas’s recent Algo Sucede (Sony Music Latin), pulsing and chirpy synthesizers and a stuttering, new-wave-style beat recall the fascination with the 80s that the Mexican singer-songwriter showed on her last album, 2013’s Los Momentos. Venegas stood out during the classic 90s wave of rock en Español as a dark and brooding talent, so her shift toward a populist, upbeat sound first struck me as odd. But with each record she seems to become more natural at making high-gloss pop,

bottom lounge ONSALE NOW

WE’RE WAITING FOR YOU.

OTRA CARA BONITA TOUR

05.25 THE GROW WILD TOUR 05.27 CHASE AWAYS

THE FLIPS / LEVER / ALL THE WINE / PAT EGAN & THE HEAVY HEARTS

05.28 WELSHLY ARMS

WILD ADRIATIC / BENNY BASSETT

05.29 7 MINUTES IN HEAVEN Julieta Venegas ò GUSTAVO DI MARIO though she still ﬁnds ways to blend in sounds and messages from her homeland—the pumping, sweet accordion on the single “Ese Camino” hints at Norteño music, while “Explosión” deals head-on with the mass kidnappings in Iguala in 2014. There’s nothing simple or facile about her music; on the contrary, Venegas has used her growing popularity to confront serious issues more eﬀectively than when she was on the fringes. If only more pop-music artists possessed the same kind of fervor and depth. —PETER MARGASAK

SLEEP ON IT / EL FAMOUS / BELMONT / SHIP CAPTIAN CREW / DETOUR NORTH / HUMAN AFTER ALL / DINGUS

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

05.31 LACUNA COIL

STITCHED UP HEART / 9ELECTRIC / PAINTED WIVES UPSTAIRS AT BOTTOM LOUNGE MUSIC GARAGE SHOWCASE

06.02 FOX AND THE ACRES

DOUBLE FEATURE / PAREIDOLIA / CABRONA

06.03 WEREWOLVES AT HOUR 30 ELK WALKING / THE THREADS / THE SAUCY BIRDS

06.04 WHEELER WALKER JR. FREELANCE WRESTLING PRESENTS

SATURDAY28 Beyonce See Friday. 7:30 PM, Soldier Field, $75-$305. b Terell Stafford See Thursday. 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase, 806 S. Plymouth, $20-$40.

SUNDAY29 Terell Stafford See Thursday. 4, 8, and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase, 806 S. Plymouth, $20-$40.

06.10 FREELANCE WRESTLING VS THE WORLD 06.18 ANDY BLACK - THE HOMECOMING TOUR COLOURS

06.24 WE WERE PROMISED JETPACKS PRISM TATS

07.07 BELLY - LIVE FROM THE SHADOWS TOUR FREELANCE WRESTLING PRESENTS

07.08 COMBAT ZONE VS FREELANCE WRESTLING 07.09 PITY SEX

PWR BTTM / PETAL

Carate Urio Orchestra 9 PM, Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont, $10 suggested donation. Belgian reedist Joachim Badenhorst is one of the more curious and restless improvisers at work these days. He works in a wide variety of contexts, from his austere solo music to the moody, melodic chamber-ish trio Equilibrium, but only with his beguiling septet Carate Urio Orchestra can his voracious stylistic appetite be truly sated. The group features interesting musicians from around the globe, with members based in New York, Ireland, Iceland, Switzerland, Denmark, and Spain. Carate Urio Orchestra’s second album, Lover (Klein), is a decidedly and wonderfully sprawling affair that ignores borders between improvisation, pop, and jazz. Set to a sweet electric-guitar passage by Nico Roig, “Ar Antiphon” finds drummer Sean Carpio singing a beautifully fragile melody with a soothing quality that reminds me of Brazilians like Moreno Veloso or Marcelo Camelo, but as the pair continues through the J

07.10 THE PLOT IN YOU

ERRA / SYLAR / INVENT, ANIMATE

07.13 ARCHITECTS

COUNTERPARTS / SWORN IN / MAKE THEM SUFFER

When you’re here, you’re part of it. Set your own tone. Get in your own groove. Join up with people from all walks of life, from all over Chicago and the world. Strike a chord with us this summer. Find your folk at the Old Town School of Folk Music.

1833 PRESENTS

07.14 XXYYXX

LUMINATE / EDAMAME UPSTAIRS AT BOTTOM LOUNGE

07.14 TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

Daytime, weekend and evening classes begin June 20. Sign up at oldtownschool.org

THE STONE FOXES / MAIL THE HORSE

THE NOISE PRESENTS

07.20 I PREVAIL

THE WHITE NOISE / MY ENEMIES & I

08.13 THE FALL OF TROY ‘68 / ILLUSTRATIONS

www.bottomlounge.com 1375 w lake st 312.666.6775

LINCOLN SQUARE • LINCOLN PARK

MAY 26, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 31

MUSIC Beyonce ò COURTESY OF PARKWOOD ENTERTAINMENT

continued from 31

short composition the rest of the group adds viscous texture and harsh noise, eventually erasing all traces of voice and guitar. On the title track Badenhorst sings through a vocoder-like contraption over a jam whose minor-key splendor seems inspired by Radiohead, while “Iron Bird” pushes in a very diﬀerent direction: a splintery, throbbing instrumental, its convergence of kalimba and rumbling and tuned percussion backs scrabbling viola improvisations by Frantz Loriot. The orchestra repels any sort of blanket description, and that’s high praise in my book. This is one of only a handful shows on its ﬁrst U.S. tour—and I wouldn’t expect a return visit anytime soon. —PETER MARGASAK

MONDAY30 Grave Miasma Funeral Nation open. 8:30 PM, Cobra Lounge, 235 N. Ashland, sold out. I could explain that anonymous London death-metal four-piece Grave Miasma (the members identify themselves only as A, D, R, and Y) play death metal tinged with black metal and doom, but that would help only those of you who have a handle on the basic taxonomy of the devil’s music. So I’ll use a metaphor. Imagine fell beasts of various species sorting out their differences beneath a vast soot-colored shroud, so that all you can see are lunging, undifferentiated bulks—you can’t even tell how many of them there are under there, much less which one might be the next to fight its way free and fillet you with its claws. That’s a little like the experience of listening to Grave Miasma’s new Endless Pilgrimage EP (Profound Lore), their fourth release and the first since the 2013 LP Odori Sepulcrorum. The band’s tangled, murky metal seems to make a trap-door shift in tempo and meter every few bars, creating a patchwork of rampaging blastbeats, lopsided rumbles, and martial stomps. The riffs are clear and memorable, at least by the standards of their subgenre—though the twin guitars constantly knot and unravel, they don’t congeal into a shapeless Lovecraftian morass, instead moving stepwise as crisply as the arc from a Tesla coil. The hoarse, athletic bellowing of the band’s front man

32 CHICAGO READER - MAY 26, 2016

adds little melodic interest, but I doubt it’s intended to—the guitars are front and center here, especially when a squalling solo arcs out of the darkness like a white-hot volcanic bomb launched from the heart of an infernal caldera. This is Grave Miasma’s Chicago debut. —PHILIP MONTORO

TUESDAY31 Discharge Eyehategod, Toxic Holocaust, and Ringworm open. 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2105 S. State, sold out. 17+ I’ve long felt that my scuffed, nicked-up, slightly brutalized copy of Discharge’s 1984 LP Never Again—a compilation of tracks from their grating debut fulllength, Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing, as well as other early EPs—represented the perfect medium for capturing the blare of the progenitors of D-beat. If you’re unfamiliar with the relentless, tumbling Discharge-branded rhythm, imagine running at full speed, tripping, and barely keeping your balance as you flail forward in a perfect line. It’s like that. Add in the raunch and bile of Kelvin “Cal” Morris’s gargling vocals and the metallic, industrial-like grind of guitar and bass—all of which often sound like they’re working independently of one another— and you’re gifted with the percolating black mass of Discharge. Or at least that’s classic-era Discharge, the one that helped birth politically fueled crust and grindcore and made a very real impression on that old Hetfield curmudgeon. Morris exited the band in 2003 following decades of starts and stops and was replaced by JJ Janiak, who on the new End of Days (Nuclear Blast) imitates his creator’s growl with a damn filthy gusto. And with tracks like “Raped and Pillaged,” “Hatebomb,” and “Killing Yourself to Live,” it seems safe to say that Discharge are plenty good and happy reminding us that we’re still fucked. —KEVIN WARWICK

Mutual Benefit Florist open. 8 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, $15, $12 in advance. The name Mutual Benefit sounds like a life insurance company, not a band. Luckily, singer-songwrit-

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

1800 W. DIVISION

Est.1954 Celebrating over 61 years of service to Chicago!

(773) 486-9862 er Jordan Lee is better at making music than coining appellations, and this group makes lovely hippie singer-songwriter folk. The band’s lineup consists of whomever Lee feels like playing with, and the drifty collaborative vibe is anchored by quietly impressive melodies that would put him high on the charts if we lived in a time when hippie-folk still charted. Lee will instead have to settle for niche success, which his new album, Skip a Sinking Stone (Mom + Pop), seems set to carve out following his highly acclaimed 2013 debut, Love’s Crushing Diamond. Standout track “Getting Gone” is a gently ravishing earworm that celebrates counterculture rambling a la Glen Campbell’s “Gentle on My Mind” or Simon and Garfunkel’s “America.” “Out from the sleeping bag / Another day to be had,” Lee sings, the off rhyme rolling you along as the keyboard washes, psychedelic flourishes, and vague stoned insights take over your pleasure centers. If you like your hooks twee, ignore the name, Mutual Beneﬁt is the band you’re looking for. —NOAH BERLATSKY

Come enjoy one of Chicago’s finest beer gardens! THURSDAY, MAY 26 .......... FROM OMAHA NEBRASKABOLSZEN BEER BAND FRIDAY, MAY 27................ DJ BEN CAFFEY SATURDAY, MAY 28........... FROZEN BLUES BAND SUNDAY, MAY 29.............. THE MY TYS MONDAY, MAY 30 ............. JON RANICK NONET @ 8PM WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1........ SUSIE CHAY THURSDAY, JUNE 2 ........... BAD ANIMALS FRIDAY, JUNE 3................. SEX THERAPY SATURDAY, JUNE 4 ........... THE POLKAHOLICS LETTER BOMB SUNDAY, JUNE 5............... JAMIE WAGNER BAND WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8........ ELIZABETH HARPER’S LITTLE THING EVERY MONDAY AT 9PM CHRIS SHUTTLEWORTH QUINTET EVERY TUESDAY AT 8PM OPEN MIC HOSTED BY JIMI JON AMERICA

$EE& M VO5M-LL6 W$$,J A$*I(*&, ---H156ORM5/<KH8LN

WEDNESDAY1 Tony Conrad’s Amplified Drone Strings 8 PM, Elastic, 3429 W. Diversey, Second Floor, $20 (includes earlier screening of Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present at Logan Theatre). b

31R (GA$ F9 ">Y

This should have been the year of Tony Conrad’s victory lap. The violinist, minimalist composer, film and video maker, and retired SUNY-Buffalo professor was scheduled to reunite with the German art rockers in Faust on April 1 at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville to reprise Outside the Dream Syndicate, their 1972 collaboration, which has just been reissued by Superior Viaduct Records. Then in June he was to have been the guest of honor at the Chicago Underground Film Festival, where the documentary Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present will be premiering. Instead the prostate cancer he’d been quietly living with since 2005 killed him one week after he’d been forced to cancel his appearance at Big Ears—and the CUFF screening has been transformed into a memorial. Turns out that illness had already compelled Conrad to think strategically about his work: while he continued to give solo performances of his bracing drone music, where he alternates tunings and carefully calculates intervals that split drawn-out tones into mind-altering sonic slabs, he’d also been improvising with other musicians such as Keiji Haino and Jennifer Walshe for several years, giving him the option of dropping out and resting while the other players did the heavy lifting. Tonight Conrad will be represented by a recording, and the trio will comprise violinist Jim Becker and cellists MV Carbon and Fred Lonberg-Holm. The opener is a free-jazz combo led by local drummer Ben Billington and Bruce McClure, who uses film projectors as sound sources; the first screening of Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present at Logan Theatre precedes tonight’s performances (and is included in the ticket price), and a selection of Conrad’s own films will screen Thu 6/2. Also, on Sat 5/28 the Empty Bottle hosts a tribute to Conrad that features DRMWPN, the trio of Cooper Crain, Haley Fohr, and Whitney Johnson, and Mind Over Mirrors with Jon Mueller. —BILL MEYER

31R &G, F9 ">Y

0</ &G* F9 ">Y

1+''+F O?7 G /%F9 8F>9#FX 0.M &G( F9 &>Y

/T1 &GC& F9 ">Y %"-))+ -1( '$-,/& ./&1 0#*!

0</ &GA( F9 ">Y

8?Y#X' 7>HHH $GC I K+B7Z#F= K=+9S+ZY+X $G$ I Q?%X 0799?X G Q7X'Z+ ?) 8#9#+; $G" I LX+ 0+F;?X G Q?%X 0799?X G K#=F9+ 5Z+B9=#B

$GCE I 07X@FU QFSS 0%?4BF;+\ :H QH QFX;+X $GC, I 04++9 6#+S+Z Q+X!#X; G <@FY V?99Z#+D $GA, I <>>Z+D79 <>>Z+D799+= 52>=+;; G /%+Y 8?7Z++ :?U;

3155 K<1PRMV </ /T5 3R5O6 08TLLO OL/ <0TO<M6 [ V155MO5<3 MAY 26, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 33

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

MUSIC Yoni & Geti ò LIZ WOLF

continued from 33 Yoni & Geti Advance Base and Coins open. 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, $18, $15 in advance. b If the shadowy corporation behind the new Star Wars oﬀshoots ever needs a rapper to help mold stories it would be hard to do better than Chicago MC David Cohn (aka Serengeti). He’s gone to Tolkienesque lengths to build entire worlds in his sprawling discography, and the Chicago of his blue-collar, fiftysomething alter ego Kenny Dennis is so convincing it’s easy to mis-

take it for our own. Cohn leaves plenty of Easter eggs for followers to get giddy over without tripping up newcomers drawn in by his beguiling sense of woefulness—which is to say there’s usually something for everyone. The new Testarossa (Joyful Noise), a full-length collaboration with Why? main man Yoni Wolf, hints at Cohn’s distant worlds, but the two artists fully engage in the album’s playful, occasionally doleful environment. Wolf’s melancholic croon and Cohn’s climactic bars augment the cinematic shifts on “Allegheny,” conjuring a moment with as much gravity as Cohn’s well-developed universe. —LEOR GALIL v

1035 N WESTERN AVE CHICAGO IL 773.276.3600 WWW.EMPTYBOTTLE.COM THU

5/26

THE CAVE SINGERS BLANK RANGE • DJ DAN MALONEY FREE

HARD COUNTRY HONKY TONK WITH

THE HOYLE BROTHERS

SWEET COBRA

FRI

5/27

RASH • HIGH PRIESTS

WED

6/1

THU

6/2

FALCOR FRIENDS

3PM FREE

SAT

5/28

MON

5/30

PATIENCE BY DANIEL CLOWES

A TRIBUTE TO DRONE WARRIOR TONY CONRAD FEAT.

DRMWPN

COOPER CRAIN/HALEY FOHR/WHITNEY JOHNSON MIND OVER MIRRORS

BOYS VS. GIRLS

SUN

5/29

EMPTY BOTTLE BOOK CLUB DISCUSSES

OWLTREE • SPORTS BOYFRIEND • ROSS BERMAN FREE

LIFESTYLES (

RECORD RELEASE

)

FIRE RETARDED • COOKIE

TUE

5/31

MODERN ENGLISH

SILENT AGE • ORDER OF NIGHT

ANALOG SIGNALS DJs W/ DJ PHILLY PEROXIDE

CAMPDOGZZ

STONES THROW 20TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR FEAT.

PEANUT BUTTER WOLF J-ROCC • MNDSGN • SAMIYAM

HARD COUNTRY HONKY TONK WITH

FREE

FRI

6/3

THE HOYLE BROTHERS

A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS

THE NUMERATORS • PINK AVALANCHE FRI

6/3

5PM-$5 DONATION

J-ROCC • SAMIYAM • MNDSGN

THE BODY

RECTAL HYGIENICS • BLOODYMINDED 5PM-$5 DONATION

SAT

6/4

@ DO DIVISION STREET FEST

PEANUT BUTTER WOLF

SAT

6/4

DJ DONNIE CREEP

ANALOG SIGNALS & EMPTY BOTTLE PRESENT

OSHWA

HALF WAIF • SEDNA’S NOT ALONE

@ DO DIVISION STREET FEST

A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS

NE-HI • THE BODY • BLOODIEST

PROMISED LAND SOUND • JOHNNY YOUNG

6/5: PRINCE TRIBUTE TO BENEFIT GIRLS ROCK! CHICAGO, 6/5 @ DO DIVISION: BEACH FOSSILS, 6/6: BEACH FOSSILS, 6/7: BLONDE REDHEAD, 6/8: THE PONYS, 6/9: CHRIS COHEN, 6/10: WIZARD RIFLE, 6/11: CHEAP GIRLS, 6/11 @ THALIA HALL: PILSEN FOOD TRUCK SOCIAL FEAT. SONORAMA, 6/12: GUANTANAMO BAYWATCH, 6/12 @ THALIA HALL: PILSEN FOOD TRUCK SOCIAL FEAT. CUMBIASAZO!, 6/13: THE PACK A.D., 6/14: T-REXTASY, 6/15: GLITTER CREEPS PRESENTS THE BINGERS 6/16: JESSY LANZA,6/17: NAILS, 6/17 @ BEAT KITCHEN: NAILS (2PM), 6/18: RADIOACTIVITY, 6/18 @ BNC: GROUPER NEW ON SALE: 6/22: C JOYNES, 6/29: JERRY PAPER, 7/15: WHITNEY, 7/28: ON AN ON, 8/11: SWEET KNIVES, 8/16: OMNI, 9/2-9/3: SCORCHED TUNDRA VI FEAT. BONGRIPPER, MONOLORD, FALSE, 10/21: CASS M CCOMBS

34 CHICAGO READER - MAY 26, 2016

FOOD & DRINK

MILLIE’S SUPPER CLUB | $$ 2438 N. Lincoln 773-857-2000 millieschicago.com/home

NEW REVIEW

A slice of Wisconsin cheese wedged into Lincoln Park At this facsimile of a North Woods dinner joint, the food is authentically all wrong.

By MIKE SULA

Clockwise from left: The iceberg wedge salad provides one of the zestiest bites; the menu features a selection of oldfashioneds, including the traditional sweetand-sour brandy versions; the interior design is straight out of the North Woods. ò DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

n the back of the parking lot of the Hobnob, a wonderful 62-year–old supper club in Racine, Wisconsin, a sign warns drivers not to plunge their cars into Lake Michigan. There’s something about the preserved-in-amber 50s-retro swank at this charming old chestnut—the off-angle arrowhead neon sign, the jumbo martini glass sloshing on the facade, the smooth stylings of house pianist Lillian Gildenstern—that makes almost everything that happens inside magic. Even the food, which under less enchanting circumstances would be considered thoroughly conventional—white-bread middle-American surf, turf, and potatoes—is likable at the Hobnob. But let’s face it: for all the affection and nostalgia many have for Wisconsin supper clubs, few of them are known for terrific food. All too common are the sickly sweet brandy old-fashioneds, limp fried fish, canned threebean salad, tubs of melted cheddar and beer pretending to be soup, hemorrhaging heatlamp-lit hunks of prime rib. So it was with equal parts trepidation and excitement that I approached Millie’s Supper Club in Lincoln Park, a meticulously researched facsimile of a North Woods dinner joint from proprietor Brian Reynolds, owner of another simulated neighborhood restaurant, Lincoln Park’s German beer hall Prost! From the log-cabin exterior and the ivory-tickling singers inside to the carpeted dining room, the dad beers on tap, and the pies displayed in a case, this is a little slice of cheese wedged onto Lincoln Avenue. A giant moose head presides over the bar, a pair of snowshoes hang in the dining room awaiting the next blizzard, and there’s enough tufted red leather to outfit a padded cell. And there’s no cheffy upscaling of Wisconsin supper-club food. The menu is textbook: prime rib, broasted chicken, fried fish, cheese curds, walleye, meat loaf, and more. The chef Reynolds brought in to execute this time-honored cuisine is the talented Gilbert Langlois, late of North Center’s Chalkboard. In an appearance on The Nocturnal Journal, the WGN radio show hosted by Dave Hoekstra, author of The Supper Club Book: A Celebration of a Midwest Tradition, Reynolds said Langlois had little experience with Wisconsin supper clubs—and yet, regrettably, the chef has somehow managed to nail it. Take the prime rib, offered in three increasingly indigestible weights: it’s roasted J

MAY 26, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 35

A UTH E NTI C PH I LLY C H E E S E STEA KS!

T F A ER R C BE

S P DR EC INK IA LS

S G N

@ILOVEMONTIS

! DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

4757 N TALMAN · 773.942.6012 · ILOVEMONTIS.COM ·

FOOD & DRINK

continued from 35

$1.25 TACOS TUESDAYS (CHICKEN, GROUND BEEF, CHORIZO OR CARNITAS)

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

$6.99 EVERYDAY LUNCH PLATE SPECIAL 8AM-4PM • AVAILABLE FOR DELIVERY

BUY 1 DINNER AT REGULAR PRICE, GET THE 2ND 1/2 OFF

(2ND DINNER IS OF EQUAL OR LESS VALUE • DINE IN ONLY)

2829 N MILWAUKEE

4651 N CLARK · 5959 W GRAND

OPEN 24 HRS • WE DELIVER

773·227·1688 ELRANCHITORES.COM

12 O’clOck track series a side of jam with your lunch every weekday

thebleader.cOm

36 CHICAGO READER - MAY 26, 2016

slow, as reported on the menu, which somehow fails to render the fat or denature the proteins on this particular grade of beef. A medium-rare order results in a chewy disaster requiring the mandibular constitution of a pit bull to put away. Served with an undercooked baked potato wrapped in foil, it’s among the most discouraging endorsements for supper-club culture I’ve yet to come across. The broasted chicken isn’t doing the genre any favors either. Broasting is the Beloit-born method of pressure-frying chicken, which is supposed to result in more moist, less greasy birds. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but the poultry emerging from the kitchen is pale blond, with a damp batter that sloughs off at the touch. Paired with limp, dry fries, it’s a sad showing in a city that’s signiﬁcantly improved its fried chicken game in recent years. Fried cheese curds, barely melted, exhibit the same ghostly complexion, though the fried fish seems to be held to higher oil temperatures, emerging acceptably crisp if underseasoned. Much of the food at Millie’s is pallid in color, if not spirit: overcooked cauliflower drenched in Gruyere, waxy-tasting mac and cheese sprinkled with unmelted shreds, creamed spinach wholly separated from its dairy medium. Maybe the most dispiriting example of the kitchen’s deficiency is the walleye: twin grayish fillets smothered in unpigmented sour-cream sauce ﬂecked with

dill. Even something as intrinsically rich and savory as French onion soup tastes as if it’s been diluted. Millie’s does have a pretty good iceberg wedge, though. Drenched in peppered bluecheese dressing and littered with bacon and cherry tomatoes, it provides some of the zestiest bites on this dreary menu. Tables are provided, per tradition, with a standard small relish tray: canned olives, carrot sticks, green olives, radishes, and gherkins. A more deluxe version is another rare success on Millie’s menu: a lazy Susan featuring Merkts-style cheddar cheese spread, smoked trout dip, liverwurst, summer sausage, chicken liver paté, pickled cherry peppers, three-bean salad, and cottage cheese. If you limited yourself to that and a Hamm’s on draft, you could leave assuming nothing was amiss. Millie’s completes the picture with a selection of old-fashioneds, including the traditional sweet-and-sour brandy versions and riffs on those classic recipes, as well as postprandial ice cream drinks like the pink squirrel and the grasshopper. At Millie’s, there’s so much love for supper clubs and obsessive attention apparent in nearly every detail—except the food. Maybe the truth is that you just can’t take the supper club out of Wisconsin. v

" @Mike Sula

SPONSORED CONTENT

DRINK SPECIALS LINCOLN PARK

ALIVEONE

2683 N Halsted 773-348-9800

THU

$6 Jameson shots, $3 PBR bottles, $4 Lagunitas drafts, $4 Absolut cocktails, “Hoppy Hour” 5pm8pm = 1/2 price IPAs + pale ales

FRI

$6 Jameson shots, $3 PBR bottles, “Hoppy Hour” 5pm-8pm = 1/2 price IPAs + pale ales

S AT

$6 Jameson shots $3 PBR bottles

SUN

$6 Jameson shots, $3 PBR bottles, $4 Temperance brews, $5 Absolut bloody mary’s

LINCOLN SQUARE

MONTI’S

4757 N Talman 773-942-6012

$5 Martinis, Lemon Drop, Cinnamon Apple, Mai Tai, French, Cosmo, On the Rocks, Bourbon Swizzle, Pomegranate Margarita

$4.75 Bloody Mary and Marias

M O N $6 Jameson shots, $3 $1 oﬀ all beers PBR bottles, $4 Half Acre brews, FREE POOL, “Hoppy Hour” 5pm-8pm = 1/2 price IPAs + pale ales

including craft

TUE

$6 Jameson shots, $3 PBR bottles, $2 and $3 select beers

$2 oﬀ all Whiskeys and Bourbons

WED

$6 Jameson shots, $3 PBR bottles, 1/2 price aliveOne signature cocktails, $4 Goose Island brews, “Hoppy Hour” 5pm-8pm = 1/2 price IPAs + pale ales

BERWYN

WICKER PARK

SOUTH LOOP

6615 Roosevelt 708-788-2118

PHYLLIS’ MUSICAL INN

REGGIES

$6 Firestone Walker Opal pints $6 Finch Vanilla Stout 16 oz. cans $7 house wines $8 Few Spirits