Chicago Reader print issue of May 30, 2024 (Vol. 53, No. 17)

EMIL FERRIS & UPTOWN’S GHOSTS

THIS WEEK

LETTERS

04 Readers Respond

04 Editor’s Note I didn’t expect your reactions but maybe that’s good.

FOOD & DRINK

06 Feature Food apartheid: the erasure of Black health in Englewood

08 Reader Bites Kitcha fitfit (chechebsa) at Mella Cafe

COMMENTARY

09 Isaacs | On Culture The new film Ghostlight celebrates the cathartic power of theater and Chicago artists.

CITY LIFE

10 Before A few blocks in Woodlawn used to be called Baby Skid Row.

ON THE COVER

An illustration by the artist, Emil Ferris, who is drawn surrounded by some of her favorite residents of Graceland

The cemetery was a beloved haunt of Ferris’s as a child and is located in Uptown, where her newest graphic novel is also based. “Sometimes I feel like I’m still there,” Ferris said of her former neighborhood.

“It’s like I walk around, and I expect to see myself there, just as a little kid.”

NEWS & POLITICS

12 Labor Foxtrot’s sudden closure put thousands out of work with hours’ notice.

16 Brown | Prisons Behind Pritzker’s plan to raze—and rebuild two Illinois prisons

ARTS & CULTURE

17 Comic Artist collective SpaceShi on creating community-building spaces

18 Cover story | Graphic novel Revisiting the ghosts of late-60s Chicago in Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing is Monsters Book Two

22 Cra Work The playful and evocative designs of hair artist Ryuan Johnson

THEATER

24 Preview Garters upends the norms of fantasy fiction.

26 Plays of Note Pro-Am examines the lives of porn workers, The Prodigal Daughter concludes Joshua Allen’s “Grand Boulevard Trilogy,” and more.

27 Profile Dr. Yvonne Welbon is a crucial storyteller.

29 Movies of Note Backspot is a groundbreaking sports film, The Dead Don’t Hurt sets the tone with tragedy, and more.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

30 Feature How Chicago forgot about the most important archive of its blues history

34 Shows of Note Previews of concerts including the Chicago House Music Festival, Sadness, Olivia Block, and Melt-Banana

38 Chicagoans of Note Emily Rach Beisel, improviser and Pleiades Series founder

40 Early Warnings Upcoming shows to have on your radar

40 Gossip Wolf Guitarist and oud master Rami Gabriel releases a multifaceted solo debut, and Martin Levy drops a video for his postgender pop-diva persona.

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Chryssa & New York is co-organized by Dia Art Foundation and the Menil Collection, Houston, in collaboration with Alphawood Foundation at Wrightwood 659, Chicago.  IMAGE CREDIT: Chryssa, Americanoom, 1963. © Εstate of Chryssa, National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens. Image courtesy Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami. Photo: Oriol Tarridas  Chryssa & New York is presented by Alphawood Exhibitions at Wrightwood 659.

EDITOR’S NOTE Reader Letters m

Re: “Chicago’s arcade evolution,” written by Maxwell Kroll and published in the May 16 issue (volume 53, number 16)

Everyone should read this! Age restrictions, curfews, and financial barriers are pushing Chicago teens out of public spaces and into online ones. We should ALL be concerned about the impact of young folks missing out on the social rites of passage the rest of us grew up with. —Alex (@turntineforwhat), via X

Re: “‘This is deeply rooted in who I am,’” written by Leor Galil and published in the May 16 issue (volume 53, number 16)

We welcome the Palestinian community in Cook County and across Illinois. I was very lucky to have gone to school with many wonderful people from Palestine who both taught me their lived experiences and opened my eyes to the challenges faced by their people. You are loved and supported here, despite what some rude people are saying. —Jake Alleruzzo, via Instagram

Find us on socials: facebook.com/chicagoreader twitter.com/Chicago_Reader threads.net/@chicago_reader instagram.com/chicago_reader linkedin.com search chicago-reader

The Chicago Reader accepts comments and letters to the editor of less than 400 words for publication consideration. m letters@chicagoreader.com

Two unusual things happened last week. But first we need to talk about the puppy. My younger brother went out of town for Memorial Day, and dropped o his new, cute, still-needs-training puppy at my house for Salem’s Dog Boarding Services. The precious bundle of joy refused to do its business on my bricked-in patio, like all the other dogs that live here (“I have only walked her on grass,” my brother texted, insinuating that her paws are above reproach.) So, late one evening, I found myself dragging the wonderful puppy onto the nearest patch of grass to the house.

It was about 11 PM, and there was no one else on the street. A car drove up. I don’t know if they were stopping for the stop sign or not—I had eyes fixed on a canine rear end, hoping for quick resolution.

Then I heard “click click click click click” and then felt a sharp pain in my arm, like a bee sting. Within the span of ten seconds: I felt the pain, I saw some little object bounce o my thick sweatshirt, I shouted “What The Fuck?” and the car drove o .

It seems that I was shot by a BB, and all I can put together is that perhaps the person or people (who knows?! I was not looking at the car) saw me standing on the street, and thought it would be a lark to BB me. Or maybe they thought I was someone else. Or maybe they thought I was looking at their car. The dog was low to the ground and probably obscured from their sight, as there were some cars parked.

Most importantly, I was fine (sweatshirt was damaged, but the projectile didn’t hit skin). Dog’s fine (never did poop out there, but figured it out eventually).

So I returned inside, and then a few minutes later, I caught up with myself.

I left out something up above. My first reaction, besides a little pain and shouting, was to move directly toward the car and express my discontent. That’s what I was doing while shouting “What The Fuck?”

Is that a good reaction? Not if you don’t want to be in the middle of something. I guess it’s just what I did. And I’ve had emergency experiences. I’m usually the one in a crisis situation that stays relatively calm. But you never know what you’re going to do in a situation until it happens.

To clear my head and share a little, I posted what had

happened on all my social media apps, which is the other unusual thing from last week—a unified message on all my platforms. Sometimes I use Facebook for positive or work accomplishments (lots of family members on that). Instagram for nonsensical memes. Twitter for bitching, respectfully. But this time they all had the same “Well, some person tried to shoot me with a BB” message.

The responses surprised me. Rather, the amount of people who responded privately expressing that I should have called the police and reported this incident surprised me. And none of those people live on my side of town.

Really, the only response that made sense that day to me was a friend’s, who told me about a time he and his wife were sitting at a stoplight near Washington Park and a bunch of kids came out of nowhere and doused them with super soakers. “It was hot, so we were surprised, but then were like, ‘aaaahhhh,’” he said.

I don’t know what kind of reaction I was expecting from friends or family. I totally appreciate everyone’s concern. But I would have imagined more people assuming my incident was the result of dumb idiots, maybe kids . . . not a situation linked to further danger. I also received one note from a friend questioning why I was outside by myself at 11 PM. I don’t have the answers here and I can’t tell every single person what the right thing to do is in every situation. But I would be very reluctant to call the police to report what is most likely idiotic dumb stu when I know I can just call someone’s parents or talk to the idiots directly. It didn’t even cross my mind to get the police involved.

Cheers to Camilo José Vergara and Emil Ferris for doing us the solid of allowing their work to grace our pages this week! Vergara’s photographs of Woodlawn, taken over the course of many years, are part of a stellar group of similar work looking at divestment in cities. (I reached out to what I thought was his o ce to confirm that we had permission to print the photos, and next thing I knew, I was talking to the 80-year-old MacArthur Fellow himself. He said he started reading the Reader from afar decades ago and loves our film reviews.) v

—Salem Collo-Julin, editor in chief m scollojulin@chicagoreader.com

content note

By Bindu Poroori

The poems in this series will be from cultural workers in the city of Chicago who are fighting for a Free Palestine.

From https://crownfamilyphilanthropies.org/about/

PARTNERS IN JUST AND LASTING SOCIAL IMPACT ACROSS GENERATIONS

In 2009, after more than 60 years of family grantmaking under the name Arie and Ida Crown Memorial, Crown Family Philanthropies (CFP) was developed to represent an array of family grantmaking practices.

Today, the legacy of Arie and Ida Crown lives on in the work continued by their descendants, who remain dedicated to the Jewish tradition of tikkun olam, or “repairing the world.” Supported by a professional staff of experts, CFP is led by more than 50 family members across multiple generations who come together to set strategy and make grantmaking decisions.

OUR WORK

We maintain deep strategic focus in the areas of education; the environment; health and human services; global health; gun violence prevention; and the Jewish Community and Israel.

Bindu Poroori (@himabindu) wishes for the annihilation of class, caste, and race. They are Interim Director of Community Organizing at Arts Alliance Illinois, an organizing member of @chicagodesiyouthrising (CDYR), an organizer with UChicago Alumni for Palestine (@uchialum4palestine), and part of the surf punk-Bollywood cover band, Do The Needful (@dtn_chicago). She would love to talk to you about green mango dal.

A biweekly series curated by the Chicago Reader and sponsored by the Poetry Foundation.

Hours

Wednesday & Friday: 11:00 AM–5:00 PM

Thursday: 11:00 AM–7:00 PM

Saturday: 11:00 AM–5:00 PM

Roy Kinsey: A Legacy Project

In partnership with the Court Theatre, the Poetry Foundation presents Chicago native, rapper and librarian, Roy Kinsey. In an intimate presentation, Kinsey will share about the Black storytellers essential to shaping his craft, the urgency of preserving Black literary culture through rap music, and his history.

Thursday, June 6 at 7:00 PM CT

Learn more at PoetryFoundation.org

FOOD & DRINK

Food apartheid: the erasure of Black health in Englewood

Residents, community organizations, and new legislation are making profound steps toward achieving food sovereignty in Chicago.

By NABEELA WASHINGTON

Media have long and relentlessly crafted a certain narrative about Englewood:

“3 shot, 1 fatally, outside Englewood store”; “1 killed, 2 hurt in shooting outside Englewood store”; “Man dies after being shot 20 times in Englewood.” But in the heart of the neighborhood, near the intersection of 63rd and Morgan, a di erent story is growing: strawberry patches, sage, Swiss chard, and kale.

The Englewood community area covers 3.07 square miles on the south side, from Garfield and Racine on the north to about 75th Street and the Dan Ryan. Its story is deeply intertwined with the legacy of racial segregation and economic disenfranchisement across Chicago and America. In 1930s Chicago, Black residents found themselves confined to specific areas, leading to overcrowding and underresourced neighborhoods. Redlining, or the refusal to insure mortgages in and near African American neighborhoods, led to subsequent disinvestment and economic disenfranchisement in these areas and exacerbated neglect by policymakers and developers. This disinvestment has had a long-lasting impact on basic needs and services in Englewood and elsewhere on Chicago’s south and west sides, a ecting everything from housing and health to the environment and food accessibility. As a result, today, grocery stores offering culturally significant and nutritious food options are scarce, forcing residents to travel longer distances and navigate a food landscape dominated by convenience stores and fast-food chains.

dens like the one at 63rd and Morgan. From residents like Tonika Lewis Johnson of the Folded Map Project, to grassroots organizations like Cedillo’s Fresh Produce, the community’s collective struggle and commitment come to light.

Dulce Margarita Morales, cofounder and lead educator at Cedillo’s Fresh Produce and

Cedillo’s also experienced damage to their plants by visitors, due to their lack of harvesting knowledge, diminished air quality due to Chicago’s close proximity to Canada wildfires, and decreased volunteer engagement.

Morales is an immigrant, native to Veracruz, Mexico. She started working in restaurants as a teenager, gaining more than 24 years of experience in food service. Together, Morales and Juan Carlos Cedillo, her life and business partner, have managed Cedillo’s Fresh Produce since 2016.

“I’d love to invite residents to come out to Englewood Village Farmers Market. It starts the weekend of Juneteenth.” The outdoor market is held twice per month on Saturdays at Englewood Village Plaza, a former vacant lot at 58th and Halsted Street. It was built to connect local residents with Black-owned businesses and serves the community further by accepting WIC, SNAP/Link, and Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program vouchers.

Cedillo’s Fresh Produce observes growth in community gardens but notes the challenges posed by stringent food safety regulations and Chicago’s urban agriculture and livestock ordinances. They advocate for ample support for gardens and farms, emphasizing the need for laws that call for more protections for their initiatives and do not limit food access for families. Cedillo’s prioritizes their Community Supported Agriculture subscribers in Englewood and Back of the Yards. They also actively participate in neighborhood initiatives and partnerships with organizations like Grow Greater Englewood. Engaging with neighbors passing by community gardens, they share information about the produce being grown and how to harvest it, and o er assistance to sustain the garden, resulting in more community members being involved.

Like the farmers’ market, Englewood is seeing a wave of new initiatives aimed at addressing food insecurity. Beginning in the summer of 2024, eligible families in Illinois with schoolage children can receive a preloaded card to purchase groceries as part of a new permanent federal program. The Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer Program for Children (Summer EBT, or SUN Bucks) will provide families with a onetime grocery benefit of $120 for the summer for each eligible child, regardless of citizenship status. This program aims to alleviate some of the financial burdens on families during the school break, ensuring that children continue to have access to nutritious food.

To understand the lived experience of food insecurity in Englewood, we turn to the voices of those directly impacted and those doing the work to reclaim their home, those making change and planting seeds at community gar-

a longtime resident of Englewood, shares her journey of witnessing a scarcity of fresh produce options in the area.

“When [Cedillo’s] started working at our community garden, we were doing a pop-up stand. We noticed that the corner store across the street had no produce whatsoever. They had chips, drinks, a lot of juices, cookies, but nothing nutritious or healthy for the community, “ she recounts. “After one summer of doing the pop-up, and after that store closed, we continued the garden, bringing fresh produce to a neighborhood devoid of nutritious options.”

But as the years went by, their challenges grew. “Our immediate neighbors were two senior homes. We started bringing them what we harvested, like collard greens, tomatoes, peppers, but then COVID-19 hit and we couldn’t visit the seniors anymore,” Morales says.

Outside of the market, residents can learn how to grow and harvest food using native practices: companion planting, avoiding pesticides to preserve natural ecosystems (Cedillo’s uses lime powder to repel certain pests), and allowing natural predators to eliminate pests. They can also learn about the garden, pollinating bees, chickens at Cedillo’s main farm, earthworms, and first and true leaves. Building o of this shared education, Cedillo’s hopes to pilot a summer program for second-grade kids residing in Englewood. Throughout its 15 years, Cedillo’s community garden at 7029 S. Princeton has evolved. It was originally a start-up run by Martha Boyd, a former staff member of Angelic Organics Learning Center. Full ownership of the community garden was transferred to Cedillo’s Fresh Produce in 2021.

Additionally, a proposed Englewood “food hub” has been approved for $5 million in tax increment financing (TIF) funding, as part of the Illinois Grocery Initiative, which aims to eliminate food insecurity. This initiative includes the New Stores in Food Deserts Program, which will offer grants ranging from $160,000 to $2.4 million to grocers who build grocery stores in food-insecure neighborhoods identified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Equipment Upgrades Grant Program will also provide “grants for energy-efficient equipment upgrades for existing independently owned for-profit grocery stores, cooperative grocery stores, or not-forprofit grocery stores.”

These programs are designed to support both the establishment of new grocery stores in underserved areas and the modification of existing stores, ensuring they can provide high-quality, fresh produce and other essential items to the community. Marketta Sims, a former Englewood resident, points out that vital resources and large stores, like Walmarts,

Garden space at Getting Grown Collective; a solar-powered community Love Fridge NABEELA WASHINGTON

are still actively disappearing from south-side neighborhoods.

“High prices for unhealthy foods are handicapping us,” Sims says. “Initiatives like [nonprofit urban farm and workforce development center] Growing Home are a beacon of hope, teaching us not just how to cook nutritious meals but also filling us with pride in our neighborhood.” A bitter truth remains despite this silver lining: the transient nature of businesses in Englewood breeds mistrust. “Black businesses become mere intermissions, bringing down the trust factor. We want outreach that extends beyond our borders. We want greater visibility, accountability, and a community that thrives on shared knowledge. How can we support what we don’t know exists?” proclaims Sims.

As financial initiatives are rolled out to address the sustained lack of food access, it’s crucial to understand the deeper systemic issues that have led to specific disparities. Johnson, founder of the Folded Map Project—a project that visually connects residents through investigations of urban segregation and its impact on Chicago communities—o ers insights into the broader structural issues at play.

“Food inequity is just one piece of the puzzle,” she explains. “It’s a symptom of deeper systemic issues, from racist housing practices to the racial wealth gap. By mapping these disparities, we hope to shed light on the interconnected nature of inequality in Englewood.”

The consequences of food insecurity extend far beyond empty stomachs. “[Food security is] not here at all,” Johnson says of Englewood. “It’s nonexistent to the degree that even grocery stores have become scarce in our neighborhood, which includes both Englewood and West Englewood, spanning over six square miles. We have not even a handful of grocery stores. So culturally [important] and nutritious options, at this point, are almost just a hope, a goal, and a luxury because we don’t have enough grocery stores to match our geographic area in this neighborhood.”

In Englewood, chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension disproportionately affect Black residents, and the erasure of Black health is palpable. Tra’Vonne Wright, a community organizer, speaks to the profound impact of limited access to nutritious food options on residents’ well-being.

“Since the age of seven, I’ve seen friends and family struggle with health issues directly linked to food insecurity,” he reflects. “I often hear the term ‘food deserts,’ but I believe what we are experiencing is food apartheid. Deserts

are naturally created. The situations we deal with in our communities, and globally, are systematically created.”

Three key organizations are working to address critical health disparities born from food insecurity: Getting Grown Collective, Top Box Foods, and Dion’s Chicago Dream.

Getting Grown Collective is a small, familyand block-based organization that, in collabo-

ration with several other entities, distributes free meals and groceries. The collective, in partnership with Dion’s Chicago Dream, also hosts and maintains the local Love Fridge. (Love Fridge is a network of solar-powered community refrigerators and outdoor pantries found throughout the city and maintained by neighborhood groups.) “Bridging the gap in food access would require so much more, but we are doing what we can with what we have,” comments Wright, who organizes with Getting Grown Collective. This looks like collaboration, a collective knowledge of land stewardship, and bulk meal preparation.

Taryn Randle, founder of Getting Grown Collective, remarks, “The layout of Greater Englewood is telling of residents’ access to produce with a dominance of food and liquor corner stores and comparatively fewer grocery stores that o er quality, fresh produce. We have been focused on building collaborations that develop infrastructure for residents to grow food for self and the community.”

She continues, “We need a system that uplifts communities to self-sustain. An investment in community members relearning and remembering the importance of land ownership, stewardship, and cultivation. Whether for agricultural or structural purposes, land ownership and stewardship are basic pillars of human survival within our current system, so leveling the playing field is necessary for equity to be considered.”

One initiative that embodies this philosophy is the Farm, Food, Familias meal program.

The Getting Grown Collective has successfully co-coordinated this program with the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, Fresher Together, Urban Pilón, Amor y Sofrito, and Let Us Breathe Collective, with support from Grow Greater Englewood and several other urban agricultural entities. Activated in May 2020 in response to community requests for support with culturally relevant, nutritious meals, Farm, Food, Familias has distributed almost 50,000 free meals and over 10,000 boxes of free groceries, according to Randle.

As a proud recipient of the inaugural Community Growers Program, Getting Grown Collective is eager to expand its operations and extend its growing season. This expansion is essential to addressing the systemic issues they face daily. “Calling in [food justice activist and organizer] Karen Washington in regards to the term ‘food desert,’” Randle quotes from a Guernica interview, “‘What I would rather say instead of “food desert” is “food apartheid,” because “food apartheid” looks at the whole food system, along with race, geography, faith, and economics.’ Our biggest challenge has been building capacity for leveling the playing field while still battling the barriers of funding, grieving the loss of community members, environmental changes, and burnout.”

Another innovative approach to combating food insecurity in Englewood is spearheaded by Dion’s Chicago Dream, which focuses on last-mile delivery logistics. “We’re really just

“Culturally [important] and nutritious options, at this point, are almost just a hope, a goal, and a luxury.”

focused on health equity, and trying our best to positively respond to and a ect social determinants of health,” says Dion Dawson, the organization’s founder.

Born and raised in Englewood, Dawson describes the organization’s commitment to addressing food insecurity. “We are consistently ensuring that more than 200 households are receiving a week’s worth of bread, fruits, and vegetables. We also have our Dream Vault inside of the Save A Lot, the old Whole Foods location. It’s a network-enabled locker system, where we’ve been able to enroll up to 175 households within a one-mile radius. They get their unique code and they can have access to that locker that will have a dream delivery box inside of it,” shares Dawson.

FOOD & DRINK

He reiterated that they don’t have to be everything for everybody, but they do need to come up with a solution that tackles health equity and the root cause, rather than just coming up with a “Black solution.” By this, Dawson means that addressing health disparities requires systemic changes that benefit all marginalized groups, rather than solutions that only superficially address the needs of one specific community.

Similarly addressing food insecurity with a focus on health and accessibility, Top Box Foods was founded in Chicago in 2012 with a mission to provide access to healthy and affordable food. Recognizing a gap in the food system, Top Box specializes in sourcing fresh produce and quality meat, seafood, and poultry, particularly in underresourced neighborhoods. They o er an online grocery market with free home delivery throughout Cook County and participate in the Link Up Illinois program, matching EBT dollars and providing coupons for free fresh fruits and vegetables. Additionally, Top Box operates partner programs such as a Thanksgiving turkey giveaway, monthly grocery deliveries to senior households, and a produce prescription program for individuals with hypertension and food insecurity, aiming to improve health outcomes and well-being.

“One of the things we believe is a shift from focusing solely on food security to prioritizing nutrition security, emphasizing the quality of foods accessible to people. This aligns with the ‘food as medicine’ movement, recognizing food’s role in disease prevention, overall health, educational outcomes, child development, and economic prospects. It’s crucial to address not only economic barriers but also geographic, transportation, and mobility barriers a ecting access to healthy food,” shares Olivia Rodriguez, director of communications and special projects at Top Box Foods.

Despite many challenges, the e orts of these organizations and individuals demonstrate the power of resistance, community, and collaboration in tackling food insecurity. Readers can support these initiatives by volunteering, donating, or simply spreading the word about the work being done in Englewood; by understanding and addressing the systemic issues that perpetuate the erasure of Black communities, we can all contribute to creating a more equitable and nourishing environment for all.

Morales reminds us, “Englewood is a piece of haven for everyone.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

A box of produce from Dion’s Chicago Dream DION’S CHICAGO DREAM

FOOD & DRINK

Most people unfamiliar with Ethiopian cuisine probably first approach it for dinner, as I did: sour, spongy injera on a round platter made for sharing, with a variety of colorful dishes ready to be eaten by hand. But Mella Cafe, a relatively new counter-service spot in Edgewater, instead has Ethiopian and Eritrean breakfast and lunch—plus gelato, co ee, and other treats. Of the traditional dishes on the menu—there are some Western ones too—I’ve loved everything I’ve tried, but the standout is the kitcha fitfit (also styled kita or kicha, firfir or fit fit). Pieces of crispy, chewy, unleavened flatbread— with almost the texture of thin Korean rice

cakes—arrive coated in berbere and spiced clarified butter (niter kibbeh), and there’s the option of honey or sour cream to drizzle over top. I got sour cream once and never looked back, but the buttery, warmly spiced kitcha could just as easily stand on its own. It’s filling, comforting, and addicting, and it can even be made gluten free and/or vegan.

Upon first visit, a wise eater will order the traditional coffee service from a jebena pitcher and the breakfast combo in order to try multiple staples: the kitcha fitfit, along with fuul (fava beans in a spicy berbere sauce); egg frittata (spiced scrambled eggs with onions, peppers, and tomatoes); potato salad; and Portuguese rolls. But next time, they’ll know to go straight for a large order of kitcha fitfit.

—TARYN ALLEN MELLA CAFE, 5418 N. Broadway, $11.99, 773-739-9328 v

Reader Bites celebrates dishes, drinks, and atmospheres from the Chicagoland food scene. Have you had a recent food or drink experience that you can’t stop thinking about? Share it with us at fooddrink@ chicagoreader.com.

FOODBALL MONDAY NIGHT

The Reader’s weekly chef popup series, now at Frank and Mary’s Tavern, 2905 N. Elston, Avondale

Follow the chefs, @chicago_reader, and @mikesula on Instagram for weekly menu drops, ordering info, updates, and the stories behind Chicago’s most exciting foodlums. Tell us more about your

June 3 Indigenous cookout with Ketapanen Kitchen @ketapanenkitchen

June 10 Coming in hot with Milo’s Market @milosmarket

June 17 The legendary Three Little Pigs sandwich by Tony Mata @tonymatachicago @frankandmarystavern

June 24 The sweet, sweet revenge of Funeral Potatoes @funeral.potatoes

July 1 Pies cooked by a Disney princess, with Bad Johnny’s WoodFired Pizza & Kitchen @badjohnnysgoodtimes

July 8 The return of Laimoon @laimoon_chicago

July 15 F*€k around and find out with Fafo @fafo_chicago

July 22 Get back to the Greek with Meze Table @meze.table

July 29 Malaysian, with the return of Foodball O.G.s Kedai Tapao @kedai_tapao

Head to chicagoreader.com/foodball for weekly menus and ordering info!

Kitcha fitfit (chechebsa) at Mella Cafe

ON CULTURE

Ghostlight, the movie

Chicago talent shines in a film that’s a tribute to live theater.

By DEANNA ISAACS

The trailer for Ghostlight , the new film from the Chicago team of Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson, includes a scene in which a horrified adolescent discovers her father in passionate embrace with a woman who is not his wife.

“Asshole,” she screams at him, wielding her phone like a weapon, “Say hi to Mom, cheater!”

It’s the most explosive moment in the film, and it’s also the funniest because this apparently adulterous relationship is not what the movie is about. Written by O’Sullivan and deftly codirected by her and Thompson, Ghostlight is a tribute to live performance, with its unequaled capacity for community building and catharsis. It is also, with the exception of a single role, a showcase for Chicago’s treasure trove of live theater talent.

And that single exception in casting? It brought Philippines-based actor Dolly De Leon, hot o a lauded performance in Triangle of Sadness, the Palme d’Or winner at Cannes 2022, to the project.

Ghostlight got a loving hometown reception on the final night of the Chicago Critics Film Festival at the Music Box Theatre earlier this month, winning the festival’s Audience Award for narrative features. It also won best director and best performance at the 2024 Seattle International Film Festival, the latter for a totally convincing performance by Chicago theater veteran Keith Kupferer as the film’s central character, a solidly (and stolidly) middle-aged, blue-collar, white guy.

O’Sullivan and Thompson’s previous feature film, Saint Frances , which won two awards at SXSW in 2019 (as well as the Chicago Critics Film Festival Audience Award that year), was celebrated for its unblinking female perspective. Written by O’Sullivan, who also played the lead role, its leitmotif was the mundane but historically taboo red spot of women’s lived experience—as in blood on the sheets, blood on the seats, blood on the pants

make this a woman?’ But there was something in it, something I felt could only be a man of that generation. Because of the emotional repression he experienced.”

It’s not a film about toxic masculinity, O’Sullivan said. “But I do think that’s baked in there—that men shouldn’t cry, that the only safe emotion for them to express is anger.”

Kupferer, fresh from her supporting role as Gretchen in last year’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret

and in the toilet. Saint Frances was radically honest about what, in the bad old days of my college undergraduate years, a public health professor (male—they all were then) rhapsodized as “the tears of a disappointed uterus.”

“I feel so proud to have made this movie with so many Chicago cast and crew, and producers and investors.”

So I was surprised that the next place O’Sullivan had found inspiration was in the head of a man. She was too, she told me last week from Los Angeles, where she was promoting Ghostlight’s national release, after landing a distribution deal with IFC. “I couldn’t believe I was writing this story about an old white guy.’”

“I was quite shocked by it,” O’Sullivan said. “I even spent a long time wondering, ‘Could I

There’s plenty of anger, as foreshadowed in a sunrise opening backed by the rapturous strains of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’”—abruptly overtaken by the furious clatter of a construction-site hammer drill operated by Kupferer’s character, Dan. A tragedy has occurred; exactly what it was is a mystery until you’re well into these characters’ lives, compellingly portrayed with the close-up intimacy that is film’s own advantage.

Ghostlight is a family story, realized through the e orts of two families of theater professionals. O’Sullivan and Thompson are partners in life as well as work (their son was born shortly after the movie wrapped). And Dan’s wife and daughter are played by Kupferer’s real-life wife and daughter: actor, director, and Rivendell Theatre Ensemble artistic director Tara Mallen, and actor Katherine Mallen

O’Sullivan says the screenplay was written in fits and starts during the pandemic, at “a time of incredible isolation, missing the community that comes with theater.” Then, as she and Thompson were set to make a di erent, more expensive film (their next project, Mouse), the industry strikes set in. “We knew we could make something for much less money if we went with Ghostlight; we could get the SAG interim agreement and shoot in Chicago, and we knew that we wanted Keith, we wanted Chicago actors.” They pivoted: Ghostlight was filmed in 26 days in Waukegan, Highland Park, Highwood, and Chicago.

“I feel so proud to have made this movie with so many Chicago cast and crew, and producers and investors,” O’Sullivan said. “It’ll get played on a hundred screens nationwide, and they’re going to be seeing this Chicago-centric community.”

Ghostlight opens June 14 at the Music Box and in New York, and nationally the following week. v

m disaacs@chicagoreader.com

Still from Ghostlight COURTESY IFC FILMS

CITY LIFE

BEFORE Baby Skid Row

Two blocks in Woodlawn were reportedly the “heart of sin” in the 50s and 60s.

By NICK ROMMEL

The Chicago Defender’s Adolph J. Slaughter wrote about it in 1961, calling it the “heart of sin on 63rd St.,” where sex, liquor after hours, and narcotics were freely available. The Chicago Daily News characterized it as “tavern-studded.” And residents complained of having to “pick their way through the remains of a Roman orgy,” where “horrible alcoholics are sleeping in a drunken stupor in the alleys” and “women are molested on the way to the grocery store” while “school children are terrified.”

Reporters used a variety of colorful language to describe a two-block stretch of 63rd Street in Woodlawn known as Baby Skid Row in the 1960s. What we know now as the West Loop was largely a vice district from the 1930s through the 1980s. Madison Street from Clinton west to Damen (and surrounding blocks from roughly Van Buren north to Lake Street) was known by some as Skid Row—hence the stretch on 63rd was Baby Skid Row. In earlier years, E. 63rd Street hosted a vice district stretching all the way to King Drive, but the revocation of liquor licenses along that “Sin Strip” in the early 60s concentrated taverns on the two blocks between Kenwood and Blackstone. By 1961, bars, clubs, and liquor stores occupied about half of the storefronts on Baby Skid Row, and a majority of them by 1966. The area had a bad reputation during that time. It was speculated to be the place to find prostitution, armed holdups, and policy games. Incensed residents—one commented that “a nice cocktail lounge is a community asset, but what we have in our neighborhood is a disgrace”—found their political voice in the Woodlawn Organization (TWO), originally founded as the Temporary Woodlawn Organization by local clergy including pastor and civil rights activist Arthur Brazier and the Industrial Areas Foundation, a community organizing network founded in the 1940s and

led by political theorist and community organizer Saul Alinsky. By pioneering tactics like bussing protestors to City Hall, TWO gave Woodlawn a voice in issues like substandard housing and University of Chicago expansion plans. Its creed was “Black self-determination,” and on Baby Skid Row this meant a petition to revoke all liquor licenses in its Fifth Ward precinct.

Many outsiders likely lumped TWO’s low-income members in with local “winos,” but the petitioners saw Woodlawn’s potential for middle-class respectability. As for the winos, they ought to “go back to Madison Street where they belong,” one resident said. The petition quickly made it onto the precinct’s 1966 midterm ballot. But it was less clear-cut for the people whose livelihoods

A 1993 photograph showing the view east along 63rd Street from the Woodlawn Avenue corner. This stretch of the Green Line was removed in 1997, and new housing has replaced some of the vacant lots. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, PHOTOGRAPH BY CAMILO JOSÉ VERGARA, LC-DIG-VRG-02500

Woodlawn at 63rd Street in 1987 LIBRARY

depended on Baby Skid Row. Shirley Nelson was a Woodlawn sex worker who wrote two 1959 op-eds in the Defender after accusing an antivice activist of paying for her services. She often met clients in “$2.50-a-night transit rooms in side streets o 63rd,” and her op-eds humanized sex workers and their complicated motivations. For her, these included the financial strain of her drug addiction and its “body-twisting pangs.” “I hate pimps,” she continued, arguing that “girls nowadays are smart and intelligent enough to make their own contacts.” And though she expressed “remorse” for her life of “sorrow, degradation, and vice,” Nelson thought little of “so-called Christians” who hadn’t “demonstrated a single bit of Christian charity” towards her.

TWO’s ballot measure succeeded. Before the city revoked their licenses in December 1966, journalist Mike Royko interviewed some of Baby Skid Row’s tavern owners for the Daily News . Their views complicated TWO’s narrative. A bartender named Earl denied that “winos” molested children, saying instead “it’s more like the kids molesting the adults.”

CITY LIFE

He also claimed TWO-a liated pastors were paying drunks to vote for closure. Otis Copeland, the owner of Club Arden—“nicest place on the street. . . . Jazz on Tuesdays and Thursdays, blues and rock the other nights”—said that he was the only Black business owner on the block, and bemoaned the fact that “they closed up the good places with the bad.” Still, a block south at St. Cyril’s Catholic Church, TWO member Reverend Tracy O’Sullivan gave the Tribune a different interpretation: “The people here are very happy.”

New businesses did not move into the closed storefronts. By 1968, some of the storefronts were used to register phony voters; several of the storefronts subsequently were burned down, victims of an arson epidemic happening in Woodlawn at that time. By the mid-70s, the block was empty. Today, it’s a parking lot that belongs to the Apostolic Church of God, the church of longtime TWO president Bishop Arthur Brazier. Brazier passed away in 2010 at age 89. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

NEWS & POLITICS

Abigail Stinson was called into an emergency meeting on the morning of Friday, April 19. The former manager of the Milwaukee and Damen location of the Chicago-based, high-end grocery/co ee shop hybrid Foxtrot Market logged onto the video call a few minutes late; she’d been tied up onboarding a new employee. “There’s a cash flow issue. Should be temporary,” company leadership told managers calling in from two states and Washington, D.C., in what was meant to be a 20-minute announcement. The meeting ended up running nearly an hour as corporate reps fielded a torrent of questions from concerned sta . The mood was dire, but questions focused on the practical: inventory share was coordinated in real time, with a hastily made Excel spreadsheet to keep track of cups, milk, co ee, and everything necessary to get stores through the busy spring weekend.

Stinson herself asked leadership for reassurance, guidance—anything to calm her and the other rattled managers. Spencer Young, the company’s director of operations, was an eight-and-a-half-year company veteran with a knack for cooling nerves. “Hey, we’ve been through things like this in the past where we pull labor in really tight,” Stinson recalls him saying. “We really watch the numbers here very closely. Have some assurance. We’ve been here before.”

“Time to update the résumé,” wrote one person in an unofficial manager group chat, which had been bombarding Stinson’s phone throughout the call. Other supervisors, Stinson included, stayed positive. Ordering and budget freezes had happened in the past, and an occasional belt-tightening wasn’t uncommon for fast-growing brands. It hadn’t even been six months since Foxtrot and Dom’s Kitchen and Market—an emerging high-end grocery start-up with two locations on the north side—merged under the new Outfox

OUTFUCKED

The abrupt closure of Outfox, parent company of Foxtrot and Dom’s Kitchen, put thousands of workers out of a job with hours’ notice.

By JONAH NINK

Hospitality banner. Dom’s had quickly become an established grocery favorite in the neighborhood, while Foxtrot had a respectable presence in Chicago, particularly along the north side, that kept even Starbucks and 7-Eleven on its toes. The merger was lauded with praise from leadership in both companies, with the standard-issue barrage of corporate buzzwords like “disruptor.”

For Helix Valentine, former assistant manager of Foxtrot’s Humboldt Park store, the company’s emphasis on community involve-

ment made for an ideal inroad in a new city.

“Every store caters toward the neighborhood a little bit. . . . We have all these local vendors, suppliers, and independent businesses. I was like, ‘Wow, this is really cool for me to get my foot in the door somewhere in a city I don’t really know.’”

Outfox was also under new leadership in Rob Twyman, who replaced Liz Williams as CEO on March 11. Twyman previously served as executive vice president of global operations at Whole Foods and CEO of the Massa-

chusetts nonprofit grocery chain Daily Table. Dom’s cofounder Jay Owen, Mariano’s owner Bob Mariano, and Foxtrot cofounder Mike LaVitola maintained a guiding hand through their continued board roles. “Liz came out, Rob stepped in. He was very nice. It felt like a great, positive step forward for the company,” Valentine says.

To Valentine, the April 19 meeting felt out of place. Red flags for the company’s health were few and far between. “It was a strange meeting, that Friday one,” Valentine tells the Reader. “There were a lot of stores if something had to change. People were just kind of ready for something dramatic to happen.”

Stinson, now back in Wicker Park, relayed the news to her staff, prepping them for the tough weekend ahead. Her mind was on the basics: is there enough milk? Cups? She wasn’t expecting a restock to arrive until later in the week. “Maybe they were finalizing the last round of investors,” she remembers thinking

A vacant Foxtrot at Southport and Henderson in Lakeview KIRK WILLIAMSON

in a bid to make sense of the news. “I [didn’t] have the full picture.”

On April 23, less than a week later, Outfox publicly announced the immediate closure of all Foxtrot and Dom’s locations. One thousand people were out of work with hours’ notice. Thirty-three Foxtrot stores, including three Foxtrot commissary food delivery facilities, two Dom’s grocers, and one Chicago o ce, became vacant. Shelves filled with food were left unaccounted for. Small, local businesses that had partnered with Foxtrot to supply their products and relied on the company for a large portion of sales were suddenly devastated. No more co ee and date smoothies.

Outfox did not respond to multiple requests for comment the Reader made to its PR representation or a lawyer’s o ce representing the company in bankruptcy proceedings.

Stephanie Damian, a former Foxtrot commissary driver, started getting questions from store managers on Saturday, April 20, wondering if they should expect any deliveries. The commissary, known colloquially as Foxtrot’s ‘ugly duckling,’ was the food preparation and delivery hub for Chicago-area stores. The Pilsen facility had a sta of around 50 people, most of whom were immigrants, that assembled and hand-packed Foxtrot’s sandwiches, wraps, and beloved gummy candy mixes daily. By March of 2024, Foxtrot had opened 33 locations across Chicago, Texas, and D.C., with a commissary in each location.

When the commissary team was hit with a supply freeze order the day prior, Damian and the other drivers feared a riot. “Things with us were always kind of different from other vendors because it was all within the same company,” Damian says. Foxtrot closed its Washington, D.C., commissary in March. It acquired the space in 2022 to support an expansion in the area that began in 2021 and saw nine new stores open in the district by 2024. Damian says, despite the closure and sales order freeze, everyone at the Chicago commissary expected nothing less

than a full work week. That was confirmed on Monday, April 22, when the company cleared Damian to return to her normal delivery route. She was a welcome sight to managers and store staff who, after the uncertainty of Friday’s meeting, saw each commissary delivery as a minor miracle.

Whether or not Foxtrot stays dead or drags itself out of the grave, former employees won’t forget the hellish week they were put through.

Across town, that same Monday, Stinson had a meeting on her calendar scheduled for 5 PM. Management first pushed it back an hour . . . and then again to the following evening, and then moved it up to the following morning, on Tuesday, April 23. Stinson already knew it wouldn’t be good news. “I had heard through the grapevine that the entire corporate office had been laid off on Monday and they were planning on closing all the stores.” At the moment, it was still hearsay. But, after Friday, it seemed like the next logical step. Stinson’s phone ran wild with texts from other managers late into Monday night. Everyone seemed to have their own rumor or corporate insider.

Maybe closures would be isolated to stores outside Chicago, or at least to those that were the least profitable? The sudden inventory freeze, plummeting company morale, and unclear stance from leadership about whether she’d still be employed by the end of the week weighed on Stinson. She remembers breaking into tears as she told her husband about the situation. He told her that, o cially, her job was safe until her bosses said otherwise.

Whatever the announcement, Stinson and a handful of other Chicago store managers decided to face the meeting together at Foxtrot’s River North location on Hubbard and Wells. She brought her dog for a little extra support through what was likely to be a pretty abysmal watch party. Managers at the D.C., Dallas, and Austin stores were also on the video call, along with leadership from each market and the guest relations e-commerce operations teams. It was all unnecessary though, as word had spread amongst the managers that the rumors were true: all Foxtrot and Dom’s stores would be closed by the end of the day.

The meeting began with Twyman reading from a prepared statement. “He went on [a], to be frank, kind of a bullshit spiel of, ‘You know, we tried to make it work; it just financially didn’t make sense,’” Stinson recalls. She says Twyman instructed managers to “pull out the trash and pull out prepared food that would spoil.” Twyman then o ered to take questions, but Stinson says he and company leadership

signed o the call almost immediately afterward. “They just hung up,” says Valentine, who also noted that much of Twyman’s language was taken directly from Foxtrot’s public closure announcement. The same announcement was posted to its website, socials, and, within the hour, storefront doors.

After the call, Stinson said a final, emotional goodbye to her coworkers. The call ended around 10 AM, smack in the middle of the morning rush for many of the stores, and the River North store’s cafe was packed. As she left to tie up loose ends at her Wicker Park store, Stinson says the River North managers were beginning to usher confused customers outside.

Wicker Park team members on staff that morning were already fielding questions from patrons and members of the media when Stinson—still with dog—arrived. Social media was ablaze with photos from other locations that had already shuttered and angry testimonials from employees freshly out of a job. Stinson got straight to the point. Yes, Foxtrot was done, she confirmed to her sta . “They were shocked,” Stinson says. “They gave me a huge hug and said, ‘OK, what do we have to do?’”

Stinson asked them to inform customers that the store was closing and that they needed to leave. She had her husband pick up their dog from the store, and sta joked that it was the last time they had to kick out someone’s

Former Foxtrot employees Abigail Stinson, le , and Miya Medina KIRK WILLIAMSON

NEWS & POLITICS

continued from p. 13

pet. The Milwaukee and Damen location’s final customer was a woman looking to buy roughly $200 worth of espresso martini bottles for her wedding. Stinson stepped in before her team could ring the woman up. “No, just take them,” Stinson told her.

With customers cleared and the doors locked, Stinson spent the rest of the day calling workers one by one to let them know they were out of a job. If they were to be unexpectedly unemployed, she wanted them to hear it from her. “Funny enough, I received [the call from Stinson] while I was in therapy,” says Matt Grydzuk, a former part-timer. “Typically, if something were even medium wrong, she would have texted me about it.”

To Stinson, none of it added up. The night before, she spoke with a manager in training who’d just been assigned to lead the Gold Coast location. Two weeks prior, Chicago’s district manager told Stinson she needed to hire three more people for the summer. One of the new hires was moving to Chicago from the UK, and needed the job to help pay for grad school. Stinson lost access to her email before she had a chance to tell them the job no longer existed.

Miya Medina, a barista at Stinson’s store, says she woke up to news of her layoff in a text from a coworker. “I woke up in a panic. For the life of me I couldn’t find any formal communication from the company,” she recalls. An official communication from Outfox HR would come later that day, but Medina still couldn’t find the right person to contact about payments missing as a result of a faulty time-clock app. “I know that Abby lost access to fixing our punches,” says Medina. She and many other employees say they had constant issues with the UKG app that allowed them to clock in and out of their shifts.

“I’m talking to coworkers on a daily basis being like, ‘Ugh, UKG won’t log in again.’” Medina says Foxtrot would tell employees to ask their managers to fix the discrepancy manually. “I wasn’t able to clock in at all on my final day, and I let Abby know that,”

Medina says. “I don’t believe she was ever able to go back and fix it.” Medina says she spoke with other employees over Twitter who also had issues getting a response from HR over missing payments. As of press time, Medina has a final paycheck but still has not received any response about the two days’ pay she’s missing due to the malfunctioning

evening’s deliveries were already packed and ready to be driven to the stores. (It’s unclear how much surplus food, if any, is still at the commissary.)

Stinson ended each of her calls to employees with an invitation to come by the store for a final time to say goodbye and grab some free snacks. Just about everyone on her sta

UKG app.

“It’s crazy how many people they managed to escape from and wrong all in one go.”

—Miya Medina

Back at the Pilsen commissary, Damian and the rest of her staff were taking their lunch break. It was her favorite part of the shift, a time to talk with friends and coworkers. Damian, in particular, was in need of a break. She’d spent most of the morning training a new hire. Unfortunately, lunch began with a surprise announcement from the commissary’s manager. “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” she remembers her manager saying. Of everyone in the company, Damian knew her boss was spread thin and juggling multiple roles to keep the commissary running smoothly, making the sudden closure all the more blindsiding. Damian says, when she left for the final time, the

ture capital funding—was a paper tiger. Stinson says people participating in the lawsuit were asked to mark whether they were part-time, full-time, or part-time with full-time hours. “That was the case for a lot of employees, that they were working full-time hours or . . . close to 40 hours a week but still coded as part-time employees.” According to Stinson, the Outfox HR department instructed managers to default employees to part-time during the onboarding process but allowed employees to work more hours as needed. Managers were not informed by leadership of the potential legal issues regarding how employees were categorized.

Outfox Hospitality did not file for bankruptcy until May 15. On May 10, Outfox held an online auction of its assets, raking in $2.2 million. In a strange twist, buyers on the call reportedly received no specific descriptions of what assets were being sold. Outfox’s assets were dissected over Microsoft Teams, an echo of how its leadership laid o employees during a remote meeting. “That’s crazy to me,” says Stinson, who was baffled by how long Outfox lingered after shuttering its brands.

made it out, a fitting curtain call for a day filled with theatrical twists. Together they shared stories and final bits of gossip over expensive Foxtrot-branded wine. “We took a last team picture in the space, which felt very full circle because I was the opening manager at [the Milwaukee and Damen] location.” At the behest of a regular customer, Stinson shared her staff’s Venmo links via Instagram under the handle @foxtrot_md_tips.

On Wednesday, April 24, dozens of former employees filed a class action lawsuit against Outfox, which Food & Wine reports could shake out to $11,000 per person if it’s successful. They claim they were illegally laid o in violation of the state Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, which requires employers with at least 75 staff members to give employees and the state at least 60 days’ notice before large-scale layo s. Though long-term justice may come eventually, former Outfox sta say the lasting scars come from the realization that the company they entrusted their livelihoods to—in all of its lofty ambition and ven-

Once the stores closed, Valentine says they felt like they were in a fog. “Public opinion and sta opinion was like, ‘Wow, we’re growing. It’s growing, everything’s growing.’ I think in the last year, five or six stores opened; mostly they were D.C. and Texas stores. There’s just been a lot of growth and a lot of opportunities. A lot of people were very eager to continue.” As reported by Modern Retail, Foxtrot missed its 2023 sales goal by more than $30 million, recontextualizing the much-lauded merger as more of a death rattle than a war cry.

Medina, who has a new job now, says existing store necessities sometimes took a back seat to opening new locations. “When I started working there, a lot of our supplies were old and needed work, and [corporate] kept denying us things like new cutting boards because they couldn’t a ord it. But they could a ord to open multiple new locations.”

Rumors have circulated that LaVitola, Foxtrot’s cofounder, may have plans to revive a select number of Chicago locations. If true, LaVitola faces a gauntlet of obstacles, including renegotiating leases and regaining public trust. Whether or not Foxtrot stays dead or drags itself out of the grave, former employees won’t forget the hellish week they were put through. “It’s crazy how many people they managed to escape from and wrong all in one go,” Medina says. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Miya Medina woke to news of Foxtrot’s mass layoff s in a text from a coworker. KIRK WILLIAMSON

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ATTENTION

ATTENTION ALL HCV PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS, PUBLIC HOUSING RESIDENTS, RAD & PBV RESIDENTS

If you listed Lawndale Complex or the Lawndale Community Area on your Housing Choice Survey as a place you would like to permanently live, please read the information listed below.

Proposed Updates to the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Administrative (Admin) Plan & to the Public Housing Admissions and Continued Occupancy Policy (ACOP)

The Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) is releasing proposed updates to the HCV Admin Plan & Public Housing ACOP for public comment.

The 30-day public comment period begins May 15 and ends June 13, 2024. While CHA encourages and welcomes all program participants, residents, and the community-at-large to review the proposed updates to the HCV Admin Plan & Public Housing ACOP you are not required to view or attend the public comment hearings to submit comments. Your presence or absence at the hearing does not a ect your housing.

The Draft Tenant Selection Plan (TSP) and Lease for Ogden Commons, a mixed-income community is available for review. The Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) has worked with its development partner to develop a Draft TSP and Lease for use at the private development known as Ogden Commons (previous site of the Lawndale Complex). The units within this development will be used as replacement public housing units for Lawndale Complex and the Lawndale Community area. If you listed Lawndale Complex/Lawndale Community area on your Housing Choice Survey as a place you want to live or maintain a right to return to new CHA replacement housing per the Relocation Rights Contract (RRC), you can comment on the Draft TSP and Lease during the 30-day public comment period.

CHA will host two public comment hearings—one livestream and one in-person:

• Livestream: Mon, May 20, 2024, at 11:00 am www.thecha.org (A recording of the livestream session will be available following the hearing. A sign interpreter will be present.)

The 30-day public comment period will be held for CHA to receive written comments starting April 7 through May 7, 2021. The Tenant Selection Plans (TSP) will be available on CHA’s website beginning April 7, 2021.

• In-person: Wed, June 5, 2024, at 6:00 pm FIC 4859 S Wabash (Sign and Spanish interpreters will be present.)

Due to COVID-19, CHA has suspended all in person public meetings and instead, CHA will livestream one public comment hearing. The date and time of the public comment livestream hearing is as follows:

We ask that comments pertaining to the HCV Admin Plan & Public Housing ACOP be submitted electronically to commentontheplan@thecha.org prior to each comment hearing or submitted in the chat during the livestream. All comments will be added to the comment grid and receive a response during the livestream and/or in writing in the comment grid.

Tue, April 20, 10:00am: https://youtu.be/QBGG47BHXMg

We ask that comments pertaining to the TSP & Lease be submitted electronically to commentontheplan@thecha.org at least 48-hours prior to the comment hearing. Comments will be read live during the time outlined above. Comments received after the hearing will be added to the comment grid.

If you require translation services check with your property manager for more details or go to www.thecha.org/ about/plans-reports-and-policies/proposed-policies-out-public-comment.

A summary and the full Proposed HCV Admin Plan & Public Housing ACOP will be available on CHA’s website at www.thecha.org May 15. You may also mail or fax comments for the Proposed HCV Admin Plan & Public Housing ACOP. All comments must be postmarked and received by June 13, 2024.

If you require translation services, please read the attached notice or check with your property manager for more details. Do not mail comments to CHA.

E-mail or Fax comments to: commentontheplan@thecha.org

Mail, E-mail or Fax comments to: Chicago Housing Authority

Fax 312. 913.7837

Attention: Proposed HCV Admin Plan & Public Housing ACOP

60 E. Van Buren Street, 12th Floor Chicago, IL 60605

Email: commentontheplan@thecha.org | Fax: 312-913-7837

Ifyouhaveaquestionaboutthisnotice,pleasecalltheCHAat312.913-7300. Torequestareasonableaccommodation,pleasecall312.913.7062. TTY 866.331.3603

If you have a question about this notice, please call 312-913-7300. To request a reasonable accommodation, please call 312-913-7062. TTY 866-331-3603

NEWS & POLITICS

‘If the culture doesn’t change, it’s going to remain the same’

Why are we rebuilding prisons—and for whom?

By DMB (DEBBIE-MARIE BROWN)

In early March, Governor J.B. Pritzker announced a $900 million plan to demolish and rebuild the crumbling Stateville and Logan Correctional Centers over the next five years. The plan sits on the back of a report by CGL Companies, a firm contracted by the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) to assess the conditions of the state’s prisons. It found Logan—opened in Lincoln in the 1870s as the Illinois Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children and currently one of two women’s prisons in the state—was “ine cient, ine ective, and unsuitable for any population.” Men’s housing units at Stateville in Crest Hill, built in 1925, CGL concluded, are “unsuitable for any 21st century correctional center.”

The governor’s announcement has sparked a multilayered discussion of competing concerns amongst formerly incarcerated people, prison abolitionists, nonprofits committed to decarceration, and the prison guard union. At a time when the prison population is continuing to shrink, it raises the questions: Why are we rebuilding prisons? And for whom?

tor, served 37 years behind bars. He was also incarcerated at Stateville, which has accumulated more than $250 million in deferred maintenance costs. He remembers walking under building archways that seemed to lean inward. He says no matter what condition a prison is in, it can never be made more humane because

before her 2022 release at 50 years old. When she and others first transferred to Logan from Dwight Correctional Center, a women’s prison closed in 2013, the building was already crumbling. The men who’d previously been imprisoned there had just transferred out, Brown says. Feces were smeared across surfaces in cells and in the ice machines, and her mattress was saturated with bodily fluids. “That was the culture we stepped into.”

That culture may follow wherever the new prison is built. A 2021 report from the Statewide Women’s Justice Task Force and the WJI found, despite 115 reports of sexual misconduct at Logan between 2015 and 2017, only five were substantiated. Yet conversations with women revealed numerous experiences of custodial sexual assault and a general wariness about reporting violations—trends mirrored

Accountability, the IDOC says the projects wouldn’t result in any layo s. O cials anticipate Logan’s 454 employees can work at one of 850 vacancies across six prisons within a 90-mile radius. At Stateville, the IDOC projects the 939 sta “will be o ered positions at Stateville’s Northern Reception and Classification Center, as well as other IDOC facilities.” Regardless, Roberta Lynch, executive director of AFSCME Council 31, claimed in a statement, “Closing facilities even temporarily would disrupt and potentially destabilize the prison system, while bringing upheaval to the lives of a ected employees and individuals in custody.” The union is pushing for new facilities to be constructed on the grounds where the prisons currently stand, and for Stateville and Logan to remain operational until the overhaul is complete.

The Illinois Prison Project (IPP) is a nonprofit that uses advocacy, public education, and legal representation to support incarcerated people and fight more broadly for decarceration. Marshan Allen, the group’s policy and communications director and an expert on incarceration, served a quarter-century in prison for a crime that happened when he was 15. Allen says that when he arrived at Stateville in 1997, the prison was already run-down. He recalls broken cell house windows that invited in the frigid winter air and water leaks that caused electrical shortages. “Now, here we are in 2024, and we’re just now talking about closing it down. It should have been closed down probably before I got there.”

Renaldo Hudson, the IPP’s education direc-

the system is designed to treat incarcerated people like wild animals instead of human beings. “I want people to begin to recognize that we’ve been made monsters.” Says Allen: “The idea that you’re going to change this physical structure and that’s going to wipe away all the pain and su ering that people are experiencing in prison, that’s just not going to happen. We’re still looked at as subhuman. We’re still going to be treated like we’re outcasts to society and treated with disrespect.”

Organizers at the Women’s Justice Institute (WJI), which advocates around issues specific to incarcerated women, have similar fears about Logan. Sandra Brown, a senior advisor at the WJI, began advocacy work in 2003 when she sought access to higher education while behind bars. She spent 22 years in prison

at prisons across the country. Colette Payne, director of the WJI’s Reclamation Project, has been incarcerated four times between the mid-1990s and 2012. She remembers feeling excited as she prepared to leave prison for the last time—but a correctional o cer quipped, with a sarcastic smile, “Don’t worry about it. We’ll leave the lights on for you and have a toothbrush.” She doesn’t care “how shiny you make the facility. . . . If the culture doesn’t change, it’s going to remain the same.”

Correctional o cers at Stateville and Logan are represented by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 31. The union is nervous about plans to close the prisons because it fears mass layoffs. In a report to the state Commission on Government Forecasting and

Since the 1970s and ’80s, small, rural towns have relied on prison construction and management for jobs and economic stability as once-profitable industries like manufacturing and farming floundered. Communities that once eschewed prisons in their proximity soon sought after them as an economic life jacket. But the supposed economic benefits brought by the prison industry have been challenged in the media and by researchers. Hudson, of the IPP, tells the Reader that rural communities have been investing in a public safety model that isn’t working. “Those jobs are predicated around supporting and keeping punitive philosophy as the lead.” For Allen, the argument that prisons are necessary job creators reminds him of the argument southern plantation owners made for chattel slavery. “We heard this before in history. We shouldn’t be repeating that at all.”

Alice Kim is the director of practice at the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture at the University of Chicago, where she directs the Beyond Prisons initiative. Kim points out that, while there are economic and political reasons that drive investment in prisons, there are also ideological reasons. Politicians argue prisons are necessary because they’re a form of social and racial control. Incarceration, Kim says, assumes “some people and some communities are disposable—and that is what happens when you effectively disappear people.” v m dmbrown@chicagoreader.com

ARTS & CULTURE

ARTS & CULTURE

EMIL FERRIS COMMUNES WITH UPTOWN’S GHOSTS

The sequel to My Favorite Thing Is Monsters delves deeper into late60s Chicago.

BY ANNIE HOWARD

There is a ghostliness shrouding Uptown. Even in daylight, its presence lurks and lingers, like at Graceland Cemetery, home to the sculpture Eternal Silence, whose hooded figure is said to foretell death to anyone brave enough to gaze into its shadowy eyes. That cemetery, and St. Boniface Catholic Cemetery just a mile north, both abut Clark Street, a crooked line carved into the marshland during the Ice Age, then fashioned into a footpath by the area’s Indigenous inhabitants; Broadway is of similar make—two enduring traces of Indigenous pasts, and their genocidal erasure, embedded in the land.

Uptown is a ghost-making place, something you could say of most everywhere in the United States, a nation bought and sold many times over with brutal violence. Still, it’s harder to ignore that fact here, especially while the spirited fates of the lives displaced from these streets persist today. In just a few square miles, the well-to-do can now find shelter in the rebuilt shells of many former Single-Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels, once home to the down-and-out who could at least guarantee a roof over their heads for just a few dollars a day. These SROs-cum-“luxury microunits” are joined by a synagogue and the remnants of the Stewart Elementary School as reimagined high-end housing. Countless poor families, those who might have lived, learned, or prayed in these places, are gone, their corporeality effaced, their histories at most a residue that won’t wear away. Ignore these ghosts at your own risk; their fate is one unlucky stretch away for most of us, the city unapologetic in grinding us all down to dust.

RMY FAVORITE THING IS MONSTERS BOOK TWO BY EMIL FERRIS Fantagraphics, paperback, 412 pp., $ 44 99, fantagraphics.com/ products/my-favorite-thing-is-monsters-book-two

If there is someone who knows these ghosts firsthand, it’s Emil Ferris. Born on the south side in 1962, the artist and her parents moved to New Mexico when she was one year old, then returned to Chicago a few years later. She spent several formative childhood years in Uptown in the late 60s before moving to Rogers Park. While she lives in Evanston today, Ferris admits a lot of herself still resides in Uptown. Ferris says, “Sometimes I feel like I’m still there. It’s like I walk around, and I expect to see myself there, just as a little kid.”

That devotion to preserving a specific experience of the community first became obvious in My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, released in 2017. A surprise runaway success, the graphic novel chronicles the life of Karen Reyes, a preteen girl who sees herself as a trench-coated werewolf trying to uncover the culprit behind the murder of her upstairs neighbor Anka Silverberg—all set in Chicago during the late 1960s. Karen lives with her older brother Diego, better known as Deeze, and their mom

Marvela, usually referred to simply as Mama; together, the three navigate near-poverty, even worse hardships endured by their neighbors, and the risk of political violence, both from neighborhood toughs connected to the Democratic machine and from the danger of Deeze being shipped o to Vietnam.

Much like former 46th Ward alderperson Helen Shiller, who first came to Uptown in 1972 to organize at the call of the Black Panther Party, there’s an authenticity in Ferris’s depictions only possible from firsthand experience. In both the first book and its new sequel, Uptown and its denizens are key characters just as much as our protagonists, with loving depictions of locales like the Golden House Restaurant and Pancake House, the former Goldblatt’s building, the Aragon Ballroom, and plenty more anchoring the neighborhood in place. In one of the first book’s most memorable spreads, Deeze tells Karen about the litany of the dispossessed who called the community home as they await a Broadway bus. Deeze

says, “They’ve all had a ride on the ‘Royal Shaft Express.’”

Monsters part one was a multilayered masterpiece, a story that gave its preteen protagonist incredible leeway to explore a murder that implicated the lingering presence of the Holocaust in Anka’s life, the neighborhood’s political power structure, and Karen’s own brother’s struggle to survive. Still, Ferris has a confession: however much there is to admire in the history of Uptown, to engage in deep study of the generations of low-income people who still fight today to retain a toehold in one of the city’s most picturesque north-side lakefront areas, the toll of living in the area in the late 60s was severe. Ferris says she saw six dead bodies before her sixth birthday; she learned as a child to never stand at the window—gang members would shoot at any silhouette they might see, no matter who might be there. More than 50 years on, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is a singular ode to the complex legacy of this history on one person’s life, a lost world

Emil Ferris at Graceland Cemetery

JAMES HOSKING

reanimated in Ferris’s imagination, vital lessons from the city’s past made obvious with just a slight scratch at history’s sepia-toned facade.

“Everyone became Uptowners, and there was this sense that we were all from this place, and what divided us was very much smaller than the fact that we were all poor,” Ferris says. “Great things happened in the negative space, when the powers-that-be weren’t looking. And there was still contention and fighting and bigotry, but there was a sense of camaraderie and goodness that people had as well.”

At this point, the story of Ferris’s first book has been well documented. After a career spent as an illustrator and toy designer, a chance encounter with a mosquito led to Ferris contracting West Nile virus at age 40, leaving her paralyzed from the neck down, unable to speak. Following significant physical therapy, Ferris eventually returned to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she’d received her BFA, to pursue an MFA in creative writing. Years of patient work went into the first Monsters book, a 400-page tome drawn on spiral-bound notebook paper, which was originally set to publish in the fall of 2016. That was the case, until the initial print run was requisitioned at sea, the Chinese shipping company responsible for the text caught in bankruptcy. Yet no matter the adversities that slowed the book’s initial release, the rapturous praise it received—which included a Lambda Literary Award for best LGBTQ Graphic Novel and an Eisner Award, considered the comic world’s Academy Awards, for best writer and artist—revealed the book’s dramatic impact once it arrived.

ARTS & CULTURE

The sequel picks up where the first leaves o , as Karen and Deeze begin to put the pieces of their lives back together in the wake of their mother’s death from cancer. Intrigue and uncertainty abound, especially as Karen comes to discover that Deeze had a twin

brother named Victor, whose ghostly presence is revealed in the sheltering embrace of an Art Institute painting that Karen disappeared into at the close of the first book. Along the way, we witness Karen’s budding lesbian desires come into focus with Shelley, a girl she meets stealing quarters from the Art Institute bathroom

stalls. Karen, Shelley, and other neighborhood friends further unravel the mystery of Anka’s death, as flashbacks to her survival within the brutal degradation of preteen sex work and escapes from Nazi concentration camps show how much her haunted past never disappeared. Fans of the first book know that Fer-

ris’s work doesn’t shy away from such heavy themes, but Ferris herself acknowledges that this project took her in surprising directions at times, a multiyear process of coming to terms with the responsibility to follow the work wherever it led her.

“I’m sure there are brilliant, wonderful writers who strongarm the whole thing,” Ferris says. “But I get on board with the project, and then daily, it’s a matter of asking it to be patient while it tells me what it wants to be, because I’m usually three steps behind that process.”

Work on the sequel began as Ferris carried out a daunting series of press visits related to the first book. She estimates that its surprise success resulted in around 50 trips—travels around the world that she had to navigate while dealing with the complex realities of living with disability, a promotional pace she won’t repeat with the sequel. On countless sleepless overseas flights, the first flashes of what would become the sequel began to emerge, and now, seven years after the first book, its sequel carries on the rich narratives already at play, drawn in her trademark ballpoint pen and spiral-bound notebook style.

This density of subject matter is something that’s reflected in the ways Ferris depicts the city of Chicago, and especially Uptown. The Darlington Hotel, a longstanding SRO that was reopened as market-rate housing in 2020, plays a vital role in the story, providing shelter to an important character long assumed to have disappeared from the city entirely. The Green Mill, and its legendary secret underground tunnels constructed by Al Capone during Prohibition, also makes an appearance, adding a touch of whimsy that’s drawn from the neighborhood’s own brickand-mortar history. Then there’s the Art Institute, a home away from home, as Karen frequently disappears inside the worlds she

A page from My Favorite Thing Is Monsters Book Two COURTESY FANTAGRAPHICS

ARTS & CULTURE

sees in each painting, an overabundant imagination no doubt inspired by Ferris’s own experience with synesthesia, which allows her to reproduce famous works like Ivan Albright’s Picture of Dorian Gray in her own style. These beloved and familiar urban landmarks, and the variegated populations that Karen and her compatriots encounter on the city streets, create a clear and compelling landscape upon which the story unfolds, an intimate reflection

of the city and its ability to shape the narrative potential of our lives.

According to the 2020 Census, Uptown was the city’s seventh-most dense community area, with 57,182 people living on just 2.32 square miles of land, or 24,647 residents per square mile, which more than doubles the city’s average density of 12,059 people per square mile. Yet today’s Uptown population is nothing compared to the 84,462 registered

during the 1950 Census, the neighborhood’s peak, or even the 74,838 who called the community home in 1970, around the time that My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is set. Even as the sequel now brings the project’s total running length to more than 800 pages, there’s no tidy conclusion to these stories, a reminder that the city will always create a vessel for stories that aren’t meant to end, each life braided together with countless others around it and a new chapter always there to be written.

A lack of tidy endings also belies what’s yet to come: already, Ferris is hard at work further realizing the Monsters universe, including a prequel volume, currently titled Records , which will delve into Chicago’s past and deepen our understanding of Anka and Karen’s relationship. Although there’s no fixed timeline attached to subsequent projects, it’s clear that Ferris is prepared to treat Chicago’s rich history as an artistic sandbox, with no shortage of characters already introduced there to guide readers into unfamiliar territory.

The latest volume captures the grim political violence of the 1968 Democratic National Convention (DNC), a moment where defiant peace movements came to blows with a power structure unwilling to adjust its genocidal policies in Vietnam and elsewhere. It seems there’s no hard line that demarcates past and present, as the city once more gears up to host the DNC this August. While we discuss the ongoing Palestinian genocide and the cruelties our nation has wrought both on this land and elsewhere, Ferris reflects on the ways that people downplayed her thoughts on Trump being elected when she introduced her first book. Her fears of an impending state of fascism have only heightened since then, and as an artist and writer she feels duty bound to bring these

worries into public conversation, her books sifting through the mess of competing brutalities that shaped her own childhood and the lives of her characters more than 50 years ago.

“I think what is coming is that we will be asked to negotiate far more evil than we have anticipated,” Ferris says. “We have to think about how to survive being in a system that doesn’t reflect our values as artists and as people, as individuals, and build those lines of connection and community to protect ourselves. Because I think the day will come that thats going to be necessary, and the fracturing of this country is a project that feels very intentional.”

Spending any amount of time in conversation with Ferris makes it obvious how interwoven these stories are into her own life. While discussing the citywide high school walkouts in 1968, when students protested inadequate school facilities, a shortage of Black and Brown teachers, and a curriculum that didn’t reflect their lives and needs, I learned it was a moment Ferris lived through as an elementary school student. Immediately, Ferris brings back to life her own experience with the dreaded “Willis Wagons,” the unheated temporary classrooms parked outside of already-overcrowded schools in low-income communities, even as the district was building under-enrolled, brand-new buildings in other parts of the city. Ferris spent two years of her education at Joseph Brennemann Elementary School on Clarendon in a Willis Wagon, the sense of disregard and neglect obvious to her even at a young age.

Ferris flashes back to experiences no child should have to face, from witnessing a classmate wearing flip-flops to school in the winter because they had no better shoes, to another who cried through class because their teeth were rotting in their mouth, to another who slept in the foyer of his building because his mom was a prostitute turning tricks in their apartment, to the dusty snowflakes that would rain down from classroom ceilings when the heat kicked on, bits of decay that she would later learn was asbestos. Hearing these stories recalled as if they had only just happened makes it clear why Ferris continues to disrupt the status quo of our world today, as we perpetuate the immiseration of so many while a lucky handful wield power over everyone else.

“It’s instructive that the kids that I remember there weren’t white, and it didn’t feel like we were wanted,” Ferris says. “When people

page from My Favorite Thing Is Monsters Book Two

talk about the playing field in the United States being leveled, I get really fucking angry, because the truth of the matter is I went to school with brilliant children, most of them were Black, and they had nothing. They had nothing. They were lucky sometimes to eat.”

Hearing her describe the lives unraveled by factories closing and so many other sources of sudden loss that she’s witnessed, it’s impossible to not think back to our earlier conversation about Palestine and the brutality unleashed on its people, as she adds: “It doesn’t take much to destroy a family. .

. . When people are dispossessed of any means to provide for their children, to be shocked that they can’t hold their heads up and move forward the way other people who have been provided those opportunities can, I think it’s really a horror.”

Knowing about all of this evil, and wanting so badly to imagine a world in which such pain does not exist, might push many to run as far away from such terror as possible and banish those lurking dreadful experiences into some dusty corner. Yet Ferris always seems to ask: what happens when we accept these forces as real, and find a way to live with their enduring influence on our lives?

week TV specials that she and Deeze consume religiously, and imagined comic book covers that serve as chapter breaks in both books, all manage to transcend their unlovely origins, o ering a novel way of surviving hard times with a winking nod at the ugliness that’s always lurking in some darkened alleyway.

It’s not as if Ferris is only ever capable of brooding, painful creativity: when my black cat Simon sidles in front of my camera on our first Zoom call, Ferris tells me that one of her

Art show Chicago Comics: 1960s to Now , an altarpiece that the artist asked visitors not to photograph, she says the work was an outgrowth of her own personal shrine, one she imagined Deeze and Karen keeping in the wake of their mother’s death, a way to honor her religious faith while incorporating their own love of monsters. Ferris’s shrine incorporates Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of wisdom in Hindu, as well as countless religious paintings that Ferris bought from

ARTS & CULTURE

by her Jewish grandmother, Ferris has never been a stranger to these unusual admixtures of belief, all of which readily blended into the pop culture horror she still loves today.

“This is gonna sound really bad, but the first time I saw creatures features [a once-common format for TV broadcasts of old horror films], I thought a lot about my Catholic experiences, because there was a dark bloodiness to it all, the crypt-like darkness,” Ferris says.

Karen sees herself as a werewolf, threatened in the opening pages of the first book by a fiery, pitchforks-raised, murderous mob of her own neighbors. This monstrousness is undoubtedly a coping mechanism for a young girl grappling with a budding queer sexuality, a neighborhood and city wracked with violence, and the sudden and painful deaths of both Anka and Mama in short order. Yet the figure of the werewolf, the monster-of-the-

favorite downtime activities is to paint pictures of cats in human clothing, always with an appreciative eye for the beautiful intricacies of high fashion. Yet the artist’s constant willingness to look steadfastly at a horrible and degraded reality, refusing to push away a terror that will rear its head regardless of how much we’d wish otherwise, is an ethic that is urgently needed in our genocidal times.

When I ask Ferris about a work that appeared in the 2022 Museum of Contemporary

thrift shops and reworked to better reflect her own love of monsters. The willing subversion of one single religious tradition, a mutating practice that allows Karen and Deeze to accept their mother after she’s departed, is also a way that Ferris has allowed herself to connect to the sacred energies she’s experienced from her family. Exposed to devout penitent Catholicism in New Mexico as a young child, while also holding on to a cross and other 19th century Catholic carvings of saints given to her

In our own turbulent and stormy times, to persist in faith and a belief in a better world requires us all to draw on unlikely sources. My Favorite Thing Is Monsters , with its overwhelming cast of characters drawn from the streets of Uptown, points back to a fundamental Christian teaching that Ferris holds as a guiding principle: to love your neighbor as yourself, and to do unto others as you would like to do unto yourself. But even as copious evidence suggests how far we’ve strayed from these values in our ever-fracturing world and how easily hate can creep back into the hearts of those who still want to imagine a better future, Ferris remains committed to the belief that things can be otherwise and that those who appear to be winning today might actually be going after the wrong rewards.

“We’re quickly heading towards a kind of calcified intolerance,” Ferris says. “It’s gonna be quite a surprise to people who are very vigorously exclusive in their mentality that the people who embrace the humanity of all are going to be the winners of what’s worth having.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Emil Ferris at Graceland Cemetery’s Frailey-Watson Monument by Nellie Verne-Walker JAMES HOSKING

ARTS & CULTURE

From a young age, Ryuan Johnson was taught how to care for and nourish her coily natural Black hair. “I learned very early that my hair is fragile and that it always needs to be styled,” said the 24-year-old hair artist. Johnson transformed her daily hair care routine into rituals, leading her to develop it into an art form.

Now, her artwork has been included in magazine spreads from Vogue to Harper’s Bazaar to PAPER. She’s gone on to style notable Chicago artists like Jamila Woods and—one of her favorites—Ravyn Lenae. “When [Lenae] hit me up to do her hair, my heart dropped,” Johnson said. “That was the first time I felt seen as a hair artist, because someone that I admire wanted to take my work seriously and show it o to the world.”

Johnson’s journey to becoming a hair artist began during the pandemic. With salons shuttered due to the virus, at-home braiding became her go-to to maintain her hair. Her friends then followed suit by asking her to also do their hair and encouraging Johnson to take on clients.

“I did my friend Chloe’s hair one night, and I tried a creative hairstyle,“ Johnson recalled; Chloe’s hair was braided into intricate patterns using red and pink hair. It would be Chloe that would prompt her to venture into the world of hairdressing more formally. That same night, Johnson created an Instagram profile to showcase her art, Sexy Scalps.

“I had to therapize myself through the pandemic and ask myself, ‘What do you really want to do? What really makes you feel good?’ And the answer, to me, was art.”

Johnson attended the Chicago High School for the Arts, where she focused on theater with dreams of becoming famous. Through reflection, she realized that the limelight was not what she needed—it became clear to her that her path was hair art. She began to weave stories and emotions into her designs on people’s scalps, finding a new way to express her own feelings, and in turn, helping people feel sexy.

“We would speak through the session of braiding, and afterwards it just felt like my own thoughts, my own vision, and that person’s thoughts and their own visions [was now on] their heads,” Johnson explained. In the most poetic fashion, a skill she learned that was passed through generations became Johnson’s way to ground herself and reconnect with her roots. “I create pieces based o of what I go through, my experiences, and what the world

CRAFT WORK

Weaving art and story

Hair artist Ryuan Johnson on the roots of Sexy Scalps

By JOCELYN MARTÍNEZ-ROSALES

RSEXY SCALPS

Message Johnson for booking at instagram.com/sexyscalps sexyscalps.co/abt is going through,” she said.

Johnson grew up in East Garfield Park, a predominantly Black west-side neighborhood often overwhelmed by violence and a high crime rate. “There’s a lot of beauty growing up on the west side and also there’s a lot of crazy trauma with growing up on the west side,” said Johnson. “Braiding had become my way out of the chaos and violence.”

Her community continues to influence her current work. She’s is not afraid to incorporate unconventional items: one of her recent pieces blended beads, pearls, Army-green toy soldiers, and braids. “I had lost a family member to gun violence,” Johnson said. The soldiers represented “war and hurt,” and the colors she chose were of the Pan-African flag, symbolizing liberation. “It made me feel so happy, it made me feel relieved because I got to put my emotions into something. And I will always remember what it was like to go through that time in my life.”

The duality of her experience of growing up in a culturally rich but traumatized community can be appreciated through her tribute piece to her grandmother titled, “A look inside Grandma’s JUNK drawer.” The hairstyle included bottle caps, candles, random cables, sewing needles, and a portrait of Johnson’s grandmother. “My grandma instilled it in me that you must learn how to take care of your hair just like you know how to cook food,” reminisced Johnson. “It feels so personal to me. But to see that people related to that piece made me feel so happy because I was like, ‘Man, we’re all the same. We’re all really the same.’ At the end of the day, all of our stories interconnect in a really cool way.”

Johnson has recently decided to venture o as a freelancer, allowing her more time to create. She’s devoted to her craft because to her “it’s like painting.” Her work has gone beyond the realm of braids and into styling hair of all textures. Her style is distinct and pulls you in as you start to notice details like braided-in cigarette lighters and religious trinkets or safety pins and full-size keys.

“I think that even for people who wear the braids instead of doing them, you’re just showing up to express yourself almost to escape and to show who you are too—regardless of where you grow up, or who you are, where you’ve been.” v m letters@chicagoreader.com

Ryuan Johnson of Sexy Scalps PAUL ARAKI ELLIOTT

STOKELY : UNFINISHED REVOLUTION THE WORLD PREMIERE

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DIRECTED BY TASIA A. JONES

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Gustavo Bamberger and Martha Van Haitsma

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THEATER

PREVIEW

Garters upends the norms of fantasy fiction

Otherworld’s world premiere places nontraditional heroes in a traditional realm.

By MATT SIMONETTE

Though set within the realm of fantasy, Otherworld Theatre’s upcoming Garters:

A Queer Immersive Romantasy Play is a play centering friendship, says lead performer Kira Nutter.

“I think it boils down to two long-lost friends trying to figure out who they are, either to each other, or to the Court, or to themselves,” they explain. “That fantasy just happens to include roiling romance, mythical swords, and plots to overthrow kingdoms.”

Inspired largely by the work of authors Tamora Pierce and Jacqueline Carey, Garters is about characters often sidelined in fantasy storytelling—women, nonbinary individuals, sex workers—if they even manage to make it into the story in the first place.

Nutter describes their character, Sir Yvain, as a nonbinary person trying to present in a heteronormative society.

“You can see that in a lot of classic fantasy— it’s very heteronormative in a way,” Nutter says. “You often see men in positions of power, and everyone else following their lead. This world is super unique in that we get to see that power turned on its head. The spotlight purely focused on men is turned on everyone else in this world.”

Sir Yvain is committed to the positive aspects of the code of chivalry even as the character tries to “forge a new vocabulary in this heteronormative society that does not [have space for that] yet,” Nutter adds.

Director Blake Hood says that, even as traditional fantasy stories usually reinforce patriarchal values, the genre leaves itself wide-open for relevant interpretations better reflecting contemporary sociocultural concerns.

“It’s important now that—as we move in our own [societal] trajectory—we include our own modern perspective, even if we’re telling a story that doesn’t live in a modern world,” Hood adds.

Indeed, Nutter sees a pronounced urgency for such storytelling.

“As someone who identifies as nonbinary, I’m by no means on the front lines of that con-

versation,” Nutter says. “It started long ago and was spearheaded by so many queer people and people of color that came before me. But you still see the remnants of that conversation today, especially with anti-trans laws that are passing, and anti-nonbinary and anti-queer ones as well. In the world of Garters , you would see [those identities] described as ‘devilish,’ or having to do with witchcraft, or [punishable] by being burned at the stake. You get to see the toll that takes.”

Nutter is a full-time fight and intimacy director outside of their acting gigs, and they’re relishing the opportunities to work in both crafts with others taking the helm.

“That’s the primary hat that I wear in the theater industry,” Nutter says. “Even while I’m working on this show, I’m working on about three or four other ones, choreographing fights, being that presence in the room. Typically that’s what I’ve been doing for the past six or seven years.”

my pronouns—‘they’ feels very important to me and ‘she’ feels very important for the gifts society has given to me and recognized in me at this point in my career.”

to discuss the specifics of their work.

As such, Nutter enjoyed the chance to work with Garters’s intimacy director, Becca Schwartz, since they rarely have anyone with whom to discuss tricks of the trade.

“It’s so interesting to have another intimacy director in the room and see these common vocabularies, and also the ways we approach intimacy differently and how we can meld those brains together,” Nutter says.

When they first read playwright Natalie Zutter’s script, Hood noticed that nearly every scene in Garters unfolded in a new location, and they knew that it would be a challenge

Fight direction is a cis-, straight-, and male-dominated field. As Nutter rose professionally (and before they came out as nonbinary), they achieved a certain amount of notoriety as one of the rare non-cis-men working in the field.

Feeding their passion for choreographing combat is hard to do while simultaneously sustaining a passion for performing combat, they add.

presenting the scope of a quest story in the confines of a small Clark Street performance venue.

GARTERS: A QUEER IMMERSIVE ROMANTASY PLAY

“I love to sword-fight, and I love performing combat,” Nutter says. “This is one of the first

5/31-7/7: Fri-Sat 7 PM, Sun 2 PM; Otherworld Theatre, 3914 N. Clark, otherworldtheatre.org, $27 (limited number of pay-what-you-can tickets available at each performance; recommended for 18 +)

“With my own journey of self-discovery and starting to lean towards the nonbinary title— and recognizing that part of myself—it felt like I was losing the specialness and that element of acclaim that society had given to me for my own career,” Nutter says. “That’s something I struggled with for such a long time. It’s still very much tied to why I use ‘they/she’ for

shows where I do get to sword-fight onstage.”

Garters has also a orded Nutter the opportunity to think about their work as an intimacy director. Given the nature of that profession, where boundaries between collaborators hold paramount importance, intimacy directors rarely have anyone beyond actors with whom

“I feel like that would be a challenge in even some larger spaces, getting that feeling of motion or movement,” says Hood. “[Amidst] that challenge is putting together the artistic team that can make that a reality.”

Hood committed to using multiple tools— “like lights, projection, and sound”—to convey the protagonists’ quest. “Soundscapes were a really important part going into it, and so I tried to use the height of the technology available to me. I find that it can be more seamless to make those transitions a reality. I want people to feel immersed.”

Hood, who came to the Chicago area from Colorado in 2020, has a long-standing interest

Actor Jenny Hoppes as Hedy in Garters PARRISH DAVIS

“We include our own modern perspective, even if we’re telling a story that doesn’t live in a modern world.”

THEATER

That next work was Garters. Hood says they enjoy tackling a script that is “unpolished,” at least insofar as when writers like Zutter are willing to make revisions based upon their collaborations with the company.

“They are still happy to work on it, and expound upon it, even throughout the process,” they add. “As a director, you get to feel like you are part of the devising team for a show.”

With Garters on tap as a Pride month o ering, both Hood and Nutter are eager to see how Otherworld’s audiences react to Garters tying a medieval world into some very contemporary concerns. But both director and performer are cautious about perpetuating the societal limitations and gender norms the play critiques, hoping Garters depicts an inception of understanding about queer people.

Near the end of the play, Hood notes, Sir Yvain speaks about the eventual acceptance of ‘the sons and the daughters of the round.’

in the fantasy genre, they say.

“Growing up, I was watching Chronicles of Narnia , Lord of the Rings . I’m very into anime, which is very fantasy-based. I love the high-fantasy, medieval-type vibe, and I’ve been hugely into Dungeons & Dragons for the last ten years,” Hood adds.

A self-described “avid improviser,” Hood first worked with Otherworld as part of the company’s Portal-Prov! show and gradually became part of Otherworld’s cohort guiding the company as it became more active following COVID-19 theater closings.

The company eventually o ered Hood the chance to direct a production of The Trade Federation, or, Let’s Explore Globalization Through the Star Wars Prequels, which serves up a critique of late capitalism using the titular intergalactic conglomerate as its central allegory.

“I have a very dear connection to the prequels, because my dad showed them to me,” Hood says. “So I was like, ‘Yes, I want to direct this play.’ It was very fun jumping into that. I got a taste of that and was then like, ‘What’s next?’”

I thought that was interesting, as a nonbinary character to use such binary language like that . . . [The play nevertheless] has to imply that there are more people like this, and this character is playing a role, like being a ‘mother’ to anyone else having these feelings, or who wants to explore a more nonconforming gender role in their lives.”

Nutter indeed drew parallels between their own tensions around their personal identification and professional status and Sir Yvain. That character initially identifies as a woman who is trying to become a knight, before they too come out as nonbinary.

“In a way, it feels like you’re taking away from a movement, [one that strives for] women having the same power as men, because you’re not identifying with women— you’re identifying it with something else.” At the same time, they add, “You’re trying to be true to yourself in such a fascinating way—and you see a lot of pushback to that in the show as well.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Kira Nutter as Sir Yvain in Otherwold Theatre’s Garters PARRISH DAVIS

THEATER

OPENING

The Danish Play never warms up A fascinating subject gets shortchanged in Three Crows’s production.

Based on the life experiences of Sonny Mills’s greataunt, Agnete Ottosen, in Denmark before, during, and a er the Nazi occupation, The Danish Play tries to pack way too much into its nearly two-and-a-half hours of stage time. You could write an interesting play about any one period in Ottosen’s complex life—her experiences in the Danish resistance, her capture, torture, and imprisonment by the Gestapo, and her refusal, a er the war, to conform to the sexist dictates of the postwar social democratic state. (She seems to have lost custody of her child because she refused to reveal the child’s father.) Mills tries to pack it all into one chaotic, highly fragmented, fever dream. The Danish Play contains lots of interesting moments. Scenes Mills writes about daily life in Denmark as it is being absorbed into the Nazi empire are fascinating. But these moments never come together into a coherent whole.

with John Drea, Meighan Gerachis and Micah Stock

Ensemble Member Laurie Metcalf comes home to Steppenwolf to star in Little Bear Ridge Road, penned by MacArthur Fellow Samuel D. Hunter and directed by Tony Award winner Joe Mantello.

At least they don’t in this production. You can find reviews online of the riveting performance Kate Hennig gave as Ottosen in the original 2002 Toronto production. Selena Lopez, in the same role in this production (directed by Kirstin Franklin), is good, but not riveting. She is surrounded by an ensemble of actors who deliver credible, but not amazing, performances. They say their lines, make their entrances and exits, but never release the fire, if there is any, in Mills’s words. But I suspect there just is no fire in this cold, confused, over- and under-written play. —JACK HELBIG THE DANISH PLAY Through 6/16: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark, threecrowstheatre.com, pay what you can

RStage Door, but make it porn

Pro-Am follows a group of Miami sex workers and roomies.

Right a er the curtain call at First Floor Theater’s world premiere of Pro-Am, a colleague sitting behind me leaned over and asked, “Have you ever seen Stage Door?” Despite the fact that Brynne Frauenhoffer’s play (developed originally with Chicago’s now-defunct Sideshow Theatre) takes place in the contemporary Miami porn industry and the 1937 film (adapted from Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman’s 1936 play) takes place in a boardinghouse for aspiring Broadway stars, there are similarities visible even from a distance of nearly 100 years.

Set in a Miami rental house, Pro-Am (the title is a contraction for “professional-amateur”) follows the lives of several young women porn performers and sex

workers, all under the management of schlubby Joe (David Stobbe), himself once an adult model. But this isn’t an exploitative behind-the-scenes approach, a la HBO’s late brothel reality show Cathouse. Nor is Frauenhoffer’s play (skillfully directed by Rebecca Willingham) interested in piously dissecting the pros and cons of the industry. Instead, we get a sense of how each of the women fights for their own identity and slice of the lucrative porn pie.

There’s interpersonal conflict—much of it generated between the chaotic hard-drinking Jenni Jaxon (Amanda Fink) and the all-business Chloe Kendall (Jalbelly Guzmán). There’s the depressing reality that porn, like every other aspect of American life, marginalizes those who don’t fit the mainstream standards, as larger Black women like Moxie and Gabby Thorne (both played by Jenni M. Hadley) and trans performer Nastasia (the charismatic Angelíca Grace) struggle to get work. Hadley’s Thorne, a fantasy-and-anime obsessive, is a comic delight throughout, and her heartbreak when a “straight” boyfriend viciously rejects her upon finding out what she does for a living is palpable.

Frauenhoffer doesn’t shy away from the dangers of the work, but Pro-Am succeeds in fleshing out the lives of women who all have their own reasons for pursuing porn without pathologizing or pandering. —KERRY REID PRO-AM Through 6/15: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM; Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee, firstfloortheater. com, $5-$35

RRed Summer family drama

The Prodigal Daughter concludes Joshua Allen’s “Grand Boulevard Trilogy.”

Joshua Allen’s third installment in his Chicago-set “Grand Boulevard Trilogy” (after The Last Pair of Earlies which alternated between 1921 and 1938, and October Storm , set in 1960) takes place during the “Red Summer” riots of 1919. Though we hear the sounds of unrest and violence outside, the real conflict unfolds inside the south-side house of widower and shopkeeper John Bass (Bradford Stevens)— before it’s broken up into a three-flat where the later stories in the trilogy (all produced by Raven Theatre) take place. (Lovely set design by Lauren M. Nichols.) His eldest daughter, Virginia (Stephanie Mattos), has returned home from her job as a traveling vacuum saleswoman with her white boss, George (Stef Brundage), in tow. Her former beau, Eugene Maxwell (Bryant Hayes), is about to become pastor of their church. Before the end of the 90-minute show, we’ll find out about the many ways the men in her life have betrayed and disappointed Virginia. The basic family structure (a widowed father, two daughters, and an outspoken aunt—played here with gusto by RjW Mays) has some glancing similarities with the family in Lynn Nottage’s Crumbs From the Table of Joy (revived in 2018 by Raven).

Directed with wit and warmth by Jerrell L. Henderson, The Prodigal Daughter is a sturdy story that, despite its abrupt ending, contains ample wisdom about the ways in which Black women in particular have to tailor their ambitions to the realities of socioeconomic and family obligations and limitations. Ultimately, Matto’s Virginia and her winsome little sister, Daisy (Sól Fuller), point the way to a brighter future. I think Allen could easily create another play just about them. —KERRY REID THE PRODIGAL DAUGHTER Through 6/22: ThuSat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark, 773-338-2177, raventheatre.com, $45 (students, military, and industry $15) v

Dr. Yvonne Welbon is a crucial storyteller

Through her filmmaking, writing, and nonprofit work, Welbon documents the history of Black lesbians in Chicago, as well Black women filmmakers at large.

By S. NICOLE LANE

Dr. Yvonne Welbon is a jill-of-all-trades. Her work has been screened by PBS, the Berlin Film Festival, BET, Bravo, and the Sundance Film Festival, to name a few. She’s directed nine films and produced 15. Her documentary Living With Pride: Ruth C. Ellis @ 100 won ten awards, one of which was the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Documentary. Now, she’s opened up the Sisters in Cinema Media Arts Center, a nonprofit hub that celebrates Black girls, women, and gendernonconforming filmmakers, in South Shore. Telling her story in the Reader brings things full circle for Welbon. Like many folks, she was a Reader reader back in the 1980s—that’s how she learned about what was going on in the city and stayed in the loop about free lectures and film screenings. She says the Reader was “an integral part” of her life.

So, when she moved to Taipei, Taiwan, she and other expats were looking for a similar type of information hub. “I started thinking, wouldn’t it be great to have something like the Reader in Taipei for the expatriate community?”

And so, her arts and leisure magazine was born.

Welbon would go on to run the largely volunteer-run, oversize print paper—which she started with $300 in her pocket—for five years and a total of 52 issues. She never had more than three employees, but more than 300 people volunteered to contribute their writing, many of whom had moved to Taipei for a spouse’s job and needed to keep busy. Eventually, the magazine turned into a video zine, which propelled Welbon into a career she wasn’t even aware she was destined for.

After a motor scooter accident led her back home to Chicago for recovery, she decided to take a film and video class at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her initial plan was to stay for the summer and return to Asia once she was finished, but she fell in love with expressing herself visually. She decided to stay in Chicago and continue her studies in film. Her classes at the Art Institute were her first time working with the medium, and as a result, she made her debut film experimental

she had never seen a photo of before. Dash directed Daughters of the Dust in 1991, the first feature directed by a Black woman. In it, viewers saw a unique vision of Gullah women, who are descendants of West and Central Africans who were enslaved and brought to low-country states like the Carolinas, Florida, and Georgia.

In 1994, Welbon was the first Black woman to get an MFA at the Art Institute.

When she started in the industry, she says there weren’t really any Black women working in Hollywood, whereas now many women in general are working in Hollywood and television. She stresses the idea of women being absent in film because Black men began working in film much earlier than Black women.

Spike Lee and Oscar Micheaux have directed more films than all Black women combined, she says.

One of Welbon’s most poignant films, Living With Pride: Ruth C. Ellis @ 100, was released in 1999. Welbon met Ellis when she was 98 years old.

“I remember just wanting to know her life,” says Welbon. “What had she experienced in 100 years?”

autobiography, Monique, in 1992. When she started film school, she knew the name of one film director, Julie Dash, whom

Ellis was a Black, lesbian, Detroit-based activist and oldest known out lesbian; she died in 2000 at the age of 101. Welbon wanted to make the film in collaboration with Ellis by interviewing her and understanding LGBTQ+ history, illustrating reenactments, meeting Ellis’s family, learning about the musical infl uence behind her life, and sharing archival material of an elder in the community. They both had goals they wanted to achieve with

Dr. Yvonne Welbon at the Sisters in Cinema Media Arts Center ORIANA KOREN FOR CHICAGO READER PROFILE

FILM

continued from p. 27

the film: Welbon wanted people to learn about living life with pride, and Ellis wanted younger people to spend time with older people. “She wanted people to understand that gay people are just like anybody else,” explains Welbon.

During the interview process for Living With Pride , Ellis would tell Welbon that she was just an ordinary person, just like anyone else. “But she had lived an extraordinary life,” says Welbon. This made Welbon hungry for other stories of Black lesbians.

According to the UCLA School of Law Williams Institute, an estimated 1,210,000 United States adults self-identify as Black and queer.

Approximately 61 percent of Black LGBTQ+ adults are women, according to 2021 research, which could be much higher if a similar survey were done today.

A 2021 study on African American queer cinema says that from the 1980s to the 2020s, there have been a few Black queer films in mainstream media, but documentary films are the most influential in highlighting the Black queer voice.

Nevertheless, there is a gap in Black lesbian history. Welbon began to wonder about all of the stories she, and all of the world, hadn’t heard yet.

This sent Welbon on her upcoming journey, where she is coming-of-age series called American Pride in collaboration with the Black Lesbian Writers Room. The series is based on the real lives of Black Chicago lesbians and those who loved them. Set in the South Shore, it begins in the 1970s with the birth of the gay and lesbian liberation movement, with one of the anchor characters being Vernita Gray, a Black lesbian activist who was crucial to the movement; it moves to Lori Branch, one of the founders of house music, as a teenager in the 1980s; it continues all the way until the present. By weaving in fictionalized versions of real stories, American Pride will depict Chicago lesbians and their influence on one another and the community that thrives here today.

Overall, Welbon has made it one of her life’s goals to focus on the understudied group of Black lesbian media makers. According to her 2018 book Sisters in the Life: A History of Out African American Lesbian Media-Making ,

“The black women who have directed the most feature films are almost all black lesbians.”

So, why is there such little documentation and representation of Black lesbians in film? In her book, Welbon says there isn’t a clearcut or easy answer. But her e orts through her documentaries, films, books, and website are her way of paving the way toward more education and research.

It’s very clear: Welbon stays busy. In March of this year, she opened the 5,000-square-foot Sisters in Cinema Media Arts Center.

such as legal workshops on how to start a business.

Overall, it’s difficult to summarize all of Welbon’s achievements, projects, and production experience, which include the eight

There is a gap in Black lesbian history. Welbon began to wonder about all of the stories she, and all of the world, hadn’t heard yet.

Sisters in Cinema originally started as a website after she discovered a lack of resources and a need for Black women filmmakers to be documented, recorded, and archived. She then created a documentary with the same name, Sisters in Cinema, in 2003, which to this day is still the most comprehensive film documenting the history of Black women directors. In 2014, it was established as a nonprofit, and in 2018, it was awarded a Neighborhood Opportunity fund grant to bring the project into permanence with free admission and physical space on the south side.

After five years in the making, the nonprofit center is now open to the public, with a plethora of upcoming events, all free. There’s a spotlight on Black women directors every week. Currently, there’s an exhibit called “Sisters in the Center,” featuring a series of portraits of 18 Black women filmmakers.

There’s also a course called Pocket Cinema taught by Coquie Hughes, the center’s storyteller in residence, in which participants can learn how to make a film on their smartphone. Welbon also has a personal interest in financial stability, so the center has held and will continue to hold several events on the topic,

films she’s directed, but one of the main takeaways is that she cares about storytelling, and she elevates the stories of those who paved the way and those who may be less known. Representation is essential to that process, too, and while Black women filmmakers are in the spotlight more than ever, there’s still work to be done.

By telling the stories, building community, and opening doors, the Sisters in Cinema Media Arts Center—along with the immense work Welbon has done to archive a forgotten history—will excite and inspire, and support the future of Black women in film. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

ORIANA KOREN FOR CHICAGO READER

NOW PLAYING

R Backspot

D.W. Waterson’s Backspot, at first glance, is a lot like any number of other sports films. There’s an ambitious protagonist and a gruff coach (Evan Rachel Wood) with (maybe) a heart of gold. There are training montages. There are setbacks, and relationships fray under the high-stakes pressure. And, of course, there are triumphs, victories, and personal growth. In terms of plot beats, it doesn’t break new ground.

And yet, it also does. For starters, there are not many sports films that center a queer, Indigenous cheerleader. Riley (Devery Jacobs) and her girlfriend Amanda (Kudakwashe Rutendo) are last-minute additions to the Thunderhawks, a competitive cheerleading squad. Waterson’s direction is relentlessly close-up and naturalistic; this is a film in which you linger on beads of sweat, where there’s suspense and drama in the smallest moments.

The narrative that accompanies this approach is meandering. The film explores Riley’s mother’s struggles with anxiety and a possibly emotionally abusive husband, Amanda’s financial worries, and the joys and pitfalls of queer role models and queer community. It’s all done with a light touch made possible in no small part by Jacobs’s intense and nuanced performance—at once determined, desperate, and vulnerable.

The generic sports film tropes, in this context, underline the fact that ambition, failure, success, hope, teamwork, and anxiety aren’t just the province of men, white people, or straight people. The film is also nuanced enough to show the way differences like gender, weight, and sexuality have real consequences and that having role models—like queer coaching staff or queer actors—matters and resonates. Backspot looks like movies we’ve seen before, but that’s only part of why it’s groundbreaking. —NOAH BERLATSKY 93 min. Limited release in theaters and wide release on VOD

R The Dead Don’t Hurt

Viggo Mortensen is onto something special with his sophomore directorial feature. A somber romance wearing the clothes of an old-school western, The Dead Don’t Hurt is a lyrical and quiet epic that tests and proves Mortensen’s abilities as a filmmaker (a redemption arc from his debut, Falling). It’s a smoldering fable that is not designed to appeal to the typical western audience. Instead, Mortensen narrows in on his characters—with a cast more than able to enliven the film with nuanced performances.

played magnificently by Vicky Krieps. Only moments a er telling off her wealthy (wannabe) suitor (Colin Morgan), we dive headfirst into a love story. It’s riddled with despair from the first moment because, in a leap of faith, Mortensen opens The Dead Don’t Hurt with Le Coudy’s death.

Meanwhile, we witness a massacre in the town saloon by a certain Weston Jefferies (Solly McLeod), the son of the crooked landowner Alfred Jeffries (Garret Dillahunt). The two tragedies—one intimate, the other intensely violent—set the tone of The Dead Don’t Hurt all before the title card. Mortensen plops us into a touching yet fraught love story within a country barreling into civil war. It’s a world where violence and corruption are ever present, a world where no one wins. Evil is embodied by the Jefferies and the powers that be, particularly the complicit mayor Rudolph Schiller (Danny Huston). It’s painful to confront a world—or story—that cannot change.

One success of The Dead Don’t Hurt is its ability to frame a romance within the western genre. Though characters like the Jefferies and Schiller lack a certain depth (arguably following the legacy of traditional western villains), Olsen and Krieps offer plenty to elevate the emotional stakes in a film that could otherwise feel sluggish. Ultimately, the heart of Mortensen’s western isn’t found in its shoot-outs or chases but in the tender moments that linger long a er the dust settles. —MAXWELL RABB R, 129 min. Limited release in theaters

RFuriosa: A Mad Max Saga

When Australian filmmaker George Miller reinvigorated his Mad Max series with Mad Max: Fury Road in 2015, it felt like lightning in a bottle, despite having been struck from the already existing, petrol-fueled storm cloud that were his earlier three entries from the late 70s to mid 80s. Compared to other contemporary big-budget movies of its ilk, Fury Road looked downright handmade, the mix of impressive stunt work and elegantly realized practical effects (still with some CGI, although seamlessly implemented) imbuing the roaring dieselpunk opera with a tactility that gave viewers what we subconsciously crave, a need for the physical tangibility that’s growing ever more uncommon in our increasingly two-dimensional world.

Imperator for Immortan Joe’s army and the driver of his monstrous War Rig.

Where Fury Road focused on a singular point in time, this is divided into five chapters covering Furiosa’s life before it, thus evincing the feel of an odyssey. Indeed, mythological and even religious undercurrents abound, with allusions to the Green Place’s Many Mothers as messiah-like figures fighting and even sacrificing themselves for the greater good of their pacifist community, though such elements root it in a more carefully paced narrative than the rapacious momentum that distinguished the filmmaker’s 2015 pièce de résistance. The action here is compelling, but Miller relied more on CGI for this than the earlier film, which may account for the appreciable visual distinction (even if intentional on Miller’s part) that flattens both the images and the lore. Fury Road had less exposition, but it nevertheless felt whole, story and form merging to fully realize the depth of its creators’ imaginations. This is still worth seeing, absolutely, but don’t expect the cinematic prestidigitation of the previous film. That innovated the form; this more services the story. —KAT SACHS R, 148 min. Wide release in theaters

RStopmotion

Robert Morgan’s gleefully grotesque Stopmotion is a celebration of creativity bloodily disguised as a warning about creative obsession. Ella Blake (the wonderful Aisling Franciosi) is the daughter of a famous stop-motion animator (Stella Gonet) and desperately wants to live up to—and break away from—her domineering mother. But when mom is hospitalized and Ella starts to make her own bleak movie about the terrifying Ash Man, reality starts to fray at the edges.

Ella’s film-within-a-film is thick with menace and blood. She starts making her stop-motion puppets out of raw meat and dead foxes. She starts to lose time— the live-action film jumping from frame to frame like stop-motion itself—and to hallucinate that the Ash Man is coming for her. On one level, it’s a parable about how artists can be eaten by their art, as Ella starts to harm those around her and tear herself apart (all too literally in an impressively vile sequence). But the movie is also a squelching, lyrical triumph of repulsive imagery and bizarre nightmare fuel, as stop-motion and live-action embrace and morph and vomit one into the other.

The Strangers: Chapter

1

Alongside writing, directing, and composing for The Dead Don’t Hurt, Viggo Mortensen is Holger Olsen, a Danish immigrant living in 1860s San Francisco. There, he meets Vivienne Le Coudy, a French Canadian woman

Miller’s follow-up prequel delves deeper into the backstory of the film’s titular protagonist, played in Fury Road by Charlize Theron and now incarnated, for the most part, by Anya Taylor-Joy. The film begins with Furiosa’s childhood in the Green Place, a postapocalyptic hidden vestige of abundance where a matriarchal society wisely manages the area’s robust natural resources. Early on, she’s kidnapped by Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) and his merry band of bikers; from here, the film spans the decades leading up to her becoming an

At the conclusion of both movies, Ella’s muse, a probably/maybe psychic delusion in the form of a little girl (Caoilinn Springall) tells Ella she loves the movie Ella’s made. It’s supposed to be an ironic capstone to the artist’s self-immolation in the name of art. But it’s also Morgan, Franciosi, and everyone involved in the picture patting themselves on the back through their skin suits. The self-praise is well deserved; Stopmotion is a strange, disturbing, exhilaratingly perverse film, which,

like stop-motion itself, brings dead objects to life, and vice versa. —NOAH BERLATSKY R, 93 min. Shudder, wide release on VOD

It’s been nothing short of a stellar year for horror so far. Whether you’re into nunsploitation, 90s throwbacks, or genre-bending horror comedies, films like Lisa Frankenstein, The First Omen, Immaculate, and Abigail have put 2024 on the map. We’re lucky, then, that the year has already delivered so many strong genre entries, because The Strangers: Chapter 1 is without question one of the most disappointing films of the year, horror or not. Pasting the aesthetic trappings of its predecessor without the wit, suspense, or fear factor, The Strangers: Chapter 1 is a painfully uninteresting home invasion flick.

Starring Madelaine Petsch and Ryan Bown, The Strangers: Chapter 1 follows blissfully happy young couple Maya (Petsch) and Jeff (Bown), who take refuge in a remote Airbnb a er some car trouble mid road trip. Unluckily for Maya and Jeff, their home for the evening is the hunting ground of a mysterious masked trio, and soon, their would-be vacation turns into a desperate fight for survival.

When Bryan Bertino’s The Strangers first hit theaters in 2008, critics and audience were chilled by the cold, remote brutality of the film’s violence, and the disaffected attitude of its killers made for a refreshing take on the horror formula. Chapter 1 seeks to recapture that same frigid, merciless atmosphere (even so far as to li the original’s iconic “you were home” line), but it drops the ball at every turn.

Strangely lacking in tension and suspense, Chapter 1 moves at a glacial, dwindling pace, following Maya and Jeff through banal dialogue and home invasion cliches: unlocked doors, turned-off lights, dropped asthma inhalers, sabotaged cars, etc. The plot of this film is so uninspired and cliche that it feels like the filmmakers don’t particularly care for the genre they’re working in. Maya and Jeff are neither memorable nor likable—Jeff, especially, has some particularly infuriating moments that never satisfyingly pay off. By the time they finally get the axe at the end of the film, even the kills are repetitive and unceremonious, despite the film’s opening title crawl proclaiming them to be “the most brutal” in the history of home invasions.

Bafflingly, Chapters 1 ends with a post-credits reveal that Maya survived the film’s events and will return for a sequel, though why the franchise would go all-in on one of its most unremarkable characters is a mystery. Neither horror aficionados nor casual viewers looking for a good scare are likely to find anything thrilling about The Strangers: Chapter 1 —LAUREN COATES R, 91 min. Wide release in theaters v Get

MUSIC

‘ e greatest treasure no one knows about’

How Chicago forgot about the most important archive of its blues history

By HANNAH EDGAR

Find a longer version of this story at chicagoreader.com.

When it comes to the blues, sometimes it’s the same old story, same old song. Imagine for a moment that you’ve just arrived in Chicago, and you go looking for its blues history. You figure it’ll be easy to find evidence of it—it’s one of the most famous things about the city. You’d be wrong.

The old Maxwell Street Market has been razed. Pepper’s, Theresa’s Lounge, the 708 Club, the Checkerboard Lounge, the Cotton Club, Copa Cabana, the Zanzibar—all those venues and many more are gone. The Record Row o ces of the Vee-Jay label (which later housed Brunswick) have become a co ee shop.

The most famous former location of Chess Records, at least, has been partially preserved by Willie Dixon’s Blues Heaven Foundation. You can tour the recording studio, if you make an appointment. And of course you can still go to the handful of blues clubs that operate today—Rosa’s Lounge, Kingston Mines, Buddy Guy’s Legends, the newly reopened Lee’s Unleaded—and attend the annual Chicago Blues Festival, whose installment this June would’ve been the 41st had it not leapfrogged over 2020 and 2021.

A world-class blues museum, though? We don’t have one. There is one major institution that makes Chicago blues history accessible to the general public, but its materials aren’t just in disarray: nobody seems to know about them.

from Speakin’ of the Blues , a performance and conversation series once hosted in the library’s auditorium; ephemera from every Blues Festival from 1984 till at least 2002; and a notebook Howlin’ Wolf used for transcribing songs.

In the words of Carlos Tortolero, who oversees the Blues Festival as a programmer for the city’s Department of Cultural A airs and Special Events (DCASE), the Chicago Blues Archives are “the greatest treasure no one knows about.”

Tell a librarian you want to see any or all of the above, though, and they’ll hand you an old black binder, its pages disheveled and loose. This is the Chicago Blues Archives’ finding aid, and it’s the only way to learn anything specific about what’s in the collection.

Harold Washington Library staffer Sarah Zimmerman shares a commemorative brochure from the fourth annual Chicago Blues Festival in 1987. JAMES HOSKING

The Chicago Blues Archives are housed in closed stacks behind the eighth-floor reference desk at Harold Washington Library Cen-

ter. Not much announces their existence—or the existence of any of the other archival collections on that floor, really—except for a decorative street sign that purports to mark the intersection of Maxwell Street and Honorary Muddy Waters Drive, a renamed stretch of 43rd Street. (No such intersection exists; both

are east-west thoroughfares.) But that room behind the reference desk houses a trove of blues artifacts: video and audio in various formats, photographs, posters, correspondence, contracts, flyers, pluggers, newsletters, and even merch.

At least in theory, you can find scores of demos and never-released live recordings; photos from the time Keith Richards shared a stage with Chuck Berry at the Petrillo Music Shell in 1986; videotapes of the 1970s and ’80s WTTW live-music show Soundstage, including an episode with Muddy Waters; hours and hours of video and audio

The library has a brief, general overview on its website, but a detailed landing page was lost in a long-ago Web migration. So you have to come to the eighth floor, in person, and riffle through that finding aid. (Sometimes you’ll be given a second binder, even less organized, that refers to blues-related items held by the library whether they’re in the archives or not.) Then, ideally, the librarian will retrieve what you need. Patrons are not permitted to access the closed stacks where the archives are held, nor was the Reader allowed to do so for this story.

There’s another catch. Years ago, stuff in the Chicago Blues Archives got moved around. Nobody is sure how many years or which stu , but photos were refiled, boxes renumbered and renamed, antiquated video formats transferred to DVD. Yet—in a cardinal cataloging sin—the finding aid was never updated. It has no entries for an uncounted number of items in the archives. The GPS to this priceless collection? Broken. No one even knows exactly how big the archives are.

In my own visits to the archives, librarians

more than once tried to fulfill my requests for material and turned up empty-handed. The stu isn’t necessarily missing—let’s pray it’s not—but it’s been long since misplaced.

“It would take forever just to inventory it,” says Dick Shurman, a record producer and blues historian. “But how are people going to find what’s there if it isn’t inventoried?”

More than 40 years ago, educator and promoter Barry Dolins secured an Illinois Arts Council grant that helped him finance local blues programming. In 1984, that work (and that grant) got him hired at the Mayor’s O ce of Special Events (MOSE), one of the agencies later merged to form DCASE. For decades, Chicago had conspicuously lacked a Blues Festival of its own, but within months Dolins had finally kick-started the city’s festival. It would eventually become the largest free blues fest in the world.

As a deputy commissioner at MOSE, Dolins was nominated for a “scissors award” for his skill at cutting through red tape. At the time of the archives’ founding, in 1981, he didn’t yet work for the MOSE. But Richard Schwegel, who facilitated the project, had just become head of CPL’s music department, a position he held till 2004. How exactly the archive got started is now hazy, but Dolins and Schwegel credit each other as instrumental in its creation.

“There was some working relationship between us,” Schwegel says. “The Chicago Blues Archives idea came across, and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s great. We’re thrilled to have it.’” What they both agree on is that the Chicago Blues Archives wouldn’t have been possible without an initial donation from WXRT. The radio station recorded and broadcast the 1980 ChicagoFest at Navy Pier, a predecessor to today’s DCASE festivals, and collaborated with storied local blues label Alligator Records to press an all-star album of performances from the event. That album, Blues Deluxe, included songs by Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Koko Taylor, Lonnie Brooks, Son Seals, and Mighty Joe Young. It did well—it was even nominated for a Grammy.

The proceeds from Blues Deluxe were intended to go toward a hypothetical blues archive and museum. All the artists agreed to donate some form of ephemera to get it started: sheet music, handwritten lyrics, and so on.

Norm Winer, WXRT’s former programming director, doesn’t know why the museum plan fell apart. But he says WXRT’s decision to gift the ephemera to the library (and later, live

recordings from its Blues Breakers specials) made intuitive sense.

“We wanted a reliable place where it would be safe and where people would have access to it,” Winer says.

That collection has since been supplemented by material from a couple other donors. Dolins has been the most prolific, contributing

very aware of the collection. When Dolins was honored onstage at last year’s festival, the ceremony featured archival clips from Speakin’ of the Blues

“[The festival committee], they’re an older generation,” Tortolero says. “There’s a sense of urgency; it’s not like they have years to give away. They’re like, ‘I need to see something happen now.’”

The Chicago Blues Archives are languishing because of an arbitrary bureaucratic designation. A technicality. More red tape.

materials annually from the Blues Festival; his neat handwriting, with shrimp-tail Ys, appears all over festival documents and committeemeeting minutes. Dolins was also the archives’ public face as the creator and longtime emcee of Speakin’ of the Blues . Footage from the series still makes up a significant chunk of the video collection.

“In terms of urban blues, contemporary blues, I can’t think of anything comparable in existence that rivals [the archives]—maybe Smithsonian Folkways,” Tortolero says. “I often joke that it’s the kind of thing that

Despite that urgency, the Chicago Blues Archives and DCASE lack any formal ongoing relationship. Dolins says he donated materials to the archives until his retirement in 2010, but nothing that postdates 2002 appears to have been processed—the librarians I talked to couldn’t locate anything in the Blues Festival collection newer than that.

An outdated CPL webpage claims that the archives continue to receive documents of the annual festival, but Tortolero and another DCASE representative both confirm that the

department hasn’t sent along anything for archiving at least since Dolins’s retirement (though Tortolero says DCASE has been holding onto certain things itself, not simply discarding them).

holders involved (including DCASE, the library, and broadcasters such as WBEZ, WXRT, WTTW, and WCTV, who are behind much of the AV material) have undergone extensive restructuring or staff turnover since 1981. This has punched big gaps in whatever institutional knowledge they may have had of the Chicago Blues Archives.

“You’re gonna need a lot more than scissors to cut through this,” Dolins says.

When photographer Paul Natkin arrived at Grant Park to pick up his press pass for the 1987 Blues Festival, he was handed a form he’d never seen. By signing it, he’d be consenting to share his photographs with something called the Chicago Blues Archives.

“I had never heard of the Chicago Blues Archives,” Natkin says. “Nobody had. I asked the woman behind the desk, ‘What’s the story?’ And she said, ‘I don’t know.’”

Nonetheless, Natkin obliged. Even after the festival stopped using those contracts, he continued to visit the central library to drop o photo sheets.

Around a decade later—he guesses in 1997— Natkin found himself with a free afternoon downtown. He checked on the photos he’d been sending to the archives, then hosted by the new Harold Washington Library. An eighth-floor reference librarian led him to an old, cobwebby wooden desk, he says, “the kind that teachers would have in the front of the classroom.”

His photos were in a drawer, still in their envelopes. They’ve since been taken out and refiled, but the experience left a bad taste in his mouth.

“At that point, I decided it didn’t make any sense to keep on sending stuff to them,” he says.

would make Ken Burns go crazy.”

Even Tortolero, who’s been with DCASE for decades, admits he only became aware of the archives’ existence after assuming responsibility for the Blues Festival in 2018. Now, he says, the Blues Festival committee is

In an email to the Reader , a DCASE representative handed o the hot potato: “At this time, DCASE does not have immediate plans to transfer [its festival] materials to the archive. However, we are always happy to collaborate with our interdepartmental colleagues to assist with expanding and preserving the archive.”

Which colleagues, though? All the stake-

When Schwegel took a buyout from the library in 2004, the archives remained just as disorganized and impenetrable. “The administration didn’t make a good-faith effort to find some way to convert the data we had into anything publicly accessible,” Schwegel says. If the Chicago Blues Archives seem like CPL’s overlooked middle child, that’s because they are. Sarah Zimmerman, who manages the Harold Washington Library departments devoted to music, arts, social sciences, and history, previously worked for two decades in Harold Washington’s Special Collections and Preservation Division, where the library’s most precious archives are held.

Special Collections materials enjoy access

Le : The fi nding aid for the Chicago Blues Archives does not exist in digital form, only in a three-ring binder. A second binder refers to blues-related holdings whether they’re in the archives or not. Right: The only signage related to the archives JAMES HOSKING

MUSIC

to resources and archival procedures that materials in other library departments do not. Zimmerman’s subject departments, she explains, host not only the Blues Archives but also other similar collections. But though they’re all valuable, none of them is administered by Special Collections.

In other words, the Chicago Blues Archives are languishing because of an arbitrary bureaucratic designation. A technicality. More red tape.

“We’re still sort of adjacent and tangential,” Zimmerman says of her departments.

Natkin—like everyone else interviewed for this story— wants the archive, at minimum, to be in better shape. What he really wants is for the library to digitize at least some of its material for remote access.

At one point, Natkin even reached out to a potential major donor (who requested anonymity but spoke to the Reader on background) about underwriting such a digitization effort. In fall 2022, the donor met briefly with Natkin, CPL’s head of Archives and Special Collections at the time, and other library employees to discuss logistics. (In this context, Archives and Special Collections is distinct from the similarly named department at Harold Washington—it’s a system-wide rubric.)

for materials that we know are copyrighted, then they won’t be digitized for online access,” a CPL spokesperson wrote in an email to the Reader

uments turn out to be long gone—and if the state of the Blues Archives themselves is any indication, that’s likely—the library would have to pursue new contracts altogether.

The donor says it became clear that the library didn’t have the sta or the copyright clearances necessary to create a public digital collection of the hoped-for scope—one that researchers outside Chicago could also access. He saw CPL as insufficiently organized and lacking commitment to the project, and he backed out.

Then and now, CPL is reluctant to pursue digitization projects for fiscal and legal reasons. Only a slim percentage of the library’s many collections have been digitized for online or on-site perusal. Securing the right kinds of consent for new uses of the Blues Archives’ recordings could be particularly arduous. “If we can’t secure copyright permissions

However, in contracts between the library and the Chicago Federation of Musicians (AFM Local 10-208) viewable in the Blues Archives, at least some Blues Festival artists consented to have their sets recorded “for archival purposes.” (I happened across such documents from 1984 and ’87.) Artists likely signed other agreements to give the fest’s former broadcast partners permission to record performances, and those documents could be helpful too.

As the host of any potential archive, the library is on the hook to locate those agreements for all the audiovisual materials it wishes to make streamable, whether they’re somewhere in its own collections or in the records of the broadcast partners. If the doc-

Dean Rolando, director of electronic media for the Chicago Federation of Musicians, says the union wouldn’t find the “archival purposes” verbiage troublesome, so long as the material isn’t made available for commercial streaming. If nobody’s profiting from the recordings, those old contracts can reasonably be interpreted to mean that the musicians don’t need to get paid further.

“It appears to me that if this remains in the domain of CPL and they would control access to it via the internet or in person they would be allowed to make it available to the public,” Rolando wrote in an email to the Reader. Pretend, for a moment, that potential copyright infringement isn’t an issue with the Blues Archives. Remove from the equation the vast amount of work required to square away the rights to all its recordings and images. Even then, the hurdles remain high. According to a CPL spokesperson, the decision to make a collection digitally available is “based on the properties of that collection and the resources of its collecting institution.”

When done properly, digitization of archival materials is slow, costly, and labor-intensive. Which brings us back to the Blues Archives’ bureaucratic catch-22: The music department doesn’t have the resources to oversee such a process. Special Collections might, but it doesn’t oversee the Blues Archives.

“Once [something] becomes a digital object, then it becomes a record that needs to be managed in an archival sense. That [archival management] is not something that my department is currently equipped with, in any way,” Zimmerman says. Once again, it’s instead the domain of Special Collections.

Some of the archives’ recordings of Speakin’ of the Blues are already streamable via Media Burn, an independent video archive; Dolins signed off on those permissions himself. To peruse the rest of the audiovisual materials—the LPs, the 78s, WXRT’s Blues Breakers broadcasts, videos from WTTW’s Soundstage and several Blues Festivals—you’ll have to head to the eighth floor of Harold Washington

Library and hope whatever you’re looking for is represented in that messy, misbegotten binder.

If you luck out, then you’ll have to accompany a librarian up a floor to Special Collections, which is open by appointment only on Mondays and Fridays from noon to four. For the most part, that department has the AV equipment necessary to play whatever you’ve found. I say “for the most part” because the Blues Archives include some old U-matic videotapes, and not even the library can play those.

This isn’t an uncommon story in Archive Land. Pretty much every collection in the world has precious material trapped in obsolete formats. Librarians, already overworked and underpaid, can’t be expected to migrate everything onto up-to-date digital platforms overnight. Any digitization initiative would require at minimum a huge grant or major support from a donor.

To Natkin, however, these “buts” aren’t good enough. Like many other lovers of the blues, he finds it unconscionable that the public has to leap through so many hoops to access the city’s closest answer to a blues museum. And he says he’s still prepared to help.

“I’m part of a very small community of people that have dedicated their lives to the blues,” Natkin says. “If I were to get three or four of these guys together, we probably know 95 percent of the people that have played at the Blues Festival over the years. We know their families; we know their heirs. We could go to them and get all of them to sign a release ourselves.”

If there is a villain in this story, it’s not a person—it’s the red tape Dolins was once so good at snipping. It certainly isn’t CPL’s librarians. Everyone I worked with at the eighth-floor desk was passionate, curious, and helpful. One commented that poring over the archive had been an education for her, in the best way.

I did encounter one glimmer of hope that may disrupt the status quo: in a statement to the Reader , a CPL spokesperson noted that, should the library “receive a high number of patron requests about a specific collection or topic within a collection,” it will “consider if these materials should be digitized and placed online for wider access.”

The only way to save the Chicago Blues Archives from obscurity, then, may be to use them.  v

One of the many photos in the Chicago Blues Archives depicts Chuck Berry and Keith Richards at the 1986 Chicago Blues Festival. PAUL NATKIN

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UPCOMING SHOWS

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JUNE 13 JON BATISTE

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MAY 31 TURNPIKE TROUBADOURS ............. .FAIRGROUNDS

WITH LUCERO AND TYLER HALVERSON

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WITH JJ WILDE

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WITH JOHN CARROLL KIRBY

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JUNE 14–15 WILCO ............................ .FAIRGROUNDS WITH CUT WORMS

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Recommended and notable shows with critics’ insights for the week of May 30

The Chicago House Music Festival makes

its grand return

to Millennium Park

among

CHICAGO HOUSE MUSIC FESTIVAL

The Main Stage (music at 1 PM) features Wayne Williams and Alan King of the Chosen Few DJs, Farley “Jackmaster” Funk, Tony Touch, Anané, Karizma, Ash Lauryn, and Lori Branch. The Chicago House Stage (music at 10 AM) features DJ Slugo, Johnny Fiasco, Flores Negras, Jana Rush, and more. Sun 6/2, 10 AM–9 PM, Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph. F b

THE DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS and Special Events debuted the Chicago House Music Festival in Millennium Park on Memorial Day weekend in 2018. Even in its first year, the fest felt like part of a tradition, because the city had presented house-music events in the same place at around the same time for years. On June 3, 2014, the city hosted a belated memorial for Frankie Knuckles next to the Bean, and in 2016 the first Chicago House Party (not festival) arrived in Millennium Park the Saturday before Memorial Day.

In the years since the COVID pandemic obliterated spring and summer programming in 2020, the Chicago House Music Festival has su ered more indignities than any of the city’s other heritage music fests. DCASE has moved it around the calendar like a sticky note. In 2022, Lollapalooza producer C3 helped launch Sueños, a three-day fest of reggaeton and Latin pop on Memorial Day weekend in Grant Park—and the House Music Festival hasn’t returned to its Millennium Park that weekend since. Last year, the department relocated the House Music Festival to Humboldt Park, where it ran in late June in conjunction with satellite programming for Taste of Chicago (the NASCAR race delayed Taste’s usual Grant Park event till September). As much as I like to see more free

music programming in a neighborhood park, I still feel like this “Taste of House” experiment was a sop to distract us from the city’s continued sale of downtown to the highest bidder.

Thankfully, the House Music Festival happens in Millennium Park again this year, albeit on the Sunday after Memorial Day. It caps four days of house-centric programming that includes a conference at the Chicago Cultural Center on Friday, May 31, and a fantastic festival preparty on Saturday, June 1, that’s disappointingly held at Navy Pier’s Wave Wall Stage. The Sunday festival is nearly as robust as the pre-COVID version, with a full day of DJ sets by historically important house figures on two stages. Ghetto-house pioneer DJ Slugo headlines the Chicago House Stage on the north promenade, which also hosts the Queer Fam Pride Jam at 10 AM (presented by Slo ’Mo and Kido) and a 4 PM set by footwork producer Jana Rush. Pioneering woman house DJ Lori Branch kicks o the music on the Main Stage (aka Pritzker Pavilion) at 1 PM, opening a bill that climaxes in a terrific one-two punch: Farley “Jackmaster” Funk followed by a set from Wayne Williams and Alan King of the Chosen Few DJs. Early arrival is a must—I’m betting the park will reach maximum capacity hours before the headliners perform. —LEOR GALIL

THURSDAY30

Olivia Block Bill Harris opens. 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $15, $5 livestream. 18+

When Olivia Block came to Chicago from Texas in 1996, she’d already given up singing in order to focus on the collection and manipulation of sound. Her practice since then has ranged widely, encompassing orchestral compositions, musique concrète–inspired collages of found and performed materials, and site-specific works with which she’s invited listeners to perceive in new ways the sounds of nature, the Rockefeller Chapel’s organ, and Harry Bertoia’s sound sculptures. This diverse oeuvre is united mainly by the deliberate pace of her transformational work processes. But Block’s output took a hard turn toward physicality on her 2021 release Innocent Passage in the Territorial Sea (Room40), a collection of texturally rich and rhythmically propulsive keyboard instrumentals. On her newest LP, The Mountains Pass (Black Truffle), she extends that development into the realm of song. In 2021 she and percussionist Jon Mueller recorded keyboard and drum tracks at Electrical Audio, which she then worked on at home for another couple years. During that time, inspired by a winter sojourn at a New Mexico horse sanctuary that allowed her to observe migrating wildlife firsthand, she wrote lyrics for a couple pieces that convey fragmentary images of survival and calamity in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. On The Mountains Pass, Block’s high, fragile voice threads through a sequence of stately piano and organ melodies, bursts of elec-

Le to right: Alan King of the Chosen Few DJs, Tony Touch, Johnny Fiasco (top right), and Farley “Jackmaster” Funk (bottom right) are

the performers at the Chicago House Music Festival. DAVID SABAT, JARED RYDER, BRIT HANSEN, AND COURTESY OF DCASE

Bill Harris RICARDO ADAME

Olivia Block OSCAR VILLANUEVA DORANTES

tronic sound, and alternately fragmented and driving rhythms. In concert, Block and Mueller will be joined by keyboardist Adam Sonderberg and trumpeter Thomas Madeja (who also appears on the recordings) to perform the album in its entirety. Opening is Bill Harris, who’s also celebrating the release of a new record. Macrodose (Amalgam) is a collection of brief, blown-out pieces for drum kit and electronic distortion. —BILL MEYER

FRIDAY31

Glass Beams 9 PM, Park West, 322 W. Armitage, sold out. 21+

Melbourne instrumental trio Glass Beams have cra ed a distinct sound that blends influences from Indian classical music with elements of disco, funk, surf rock, and more. The band formed in 2020, and within a year they’d captivated an international audience with the strength of their debut EP, Mirage While Glass Beams’ profile has continued to rise, the band’s members prefer to keep the focus on their music, not their identities or personalities; they even wear featureless but intricately beaded gold masks onstage and in photos to obscure their faces. But in a rare email interview with Rolling Stone India in December, founding member Rajan Silva described Mirage as a “love letter to my Indian her-

Melt-Banana

MUSIC

itage.” He doesn’t consider the band’s songs specifically Indian, though, and he also reflected on their placeless appeal: “Since touring internationally, we have realized that as our music; a lyric-less fusion of musical cultures—actually has a universal quality to it that means we can enter new territories and just perform our music.” So far those territories have included Turkey, India, Europe, and now the United States, where Glass Beams are touring in support of the March EP Mahal—their first release on their new label, Ninja Tune. Its five tracks conjure visions of far-off places, some local to this planet and others in galaxies yet to be explored. This band of astronauts spin a web of cosmic grooves, calming atmospheres, and twinkling percussion that makes getting lost in space sound just as exciting as discovering a new moon.

—JAMIE LUDWIG

Sadness Dismalimerence, Vulning, and Apophy open. 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, $17. 17+

Damián Antón Ojeda launched the solo blackgaze project Sadness while living in Oak Park a decade ago and quickly attracted a cult following with music that braids together the serene melodies of shoegaze, the majestic splendor of postrock, and the volatile melodrama of black metal. Ojeda divides his time among several musical endeavors, each devoted to a different strain of heavy music.

he’s singing, it’d be literally impossible for you to understand him.

Mystery connects all of Ojeda’s projects—so much so that Sadness, where he does plenty of unintelligible screaming, is probably the least recondite. The project also includes some of the clearest vocals in his discography, and it’s possible to be pretty sure that his impressionistic lyrics emphasize emotional vulnerability. Some of the best Sadness songs soar on surging crescendos that supersize Ojeda’s feelings, whatever they are. On “Histrionic and Granted” (which appears on Resplendence , a November 2023 split with Chicago progressive black-metal group Dismalimerence), a barbed-wired wall of sound dissolves into a single, distant line of echoing chimes that might be a keyboard or a processed guitar—and that moment creates a combination of astonished bliss and exhausted relief that’s distinct to Ojeda. He explains the process of writing and recording specific songs on his Patreon, and his March 2022 entry about “Histrionic and Granted” goes into detail about its tone and inspiration. But as much as he posts, he’s reluctant to share anything about his personal life.

Banana fan what really keeps them devoted, it’s the band’s live shows.

In a Melt-Banana thread on Reddit’s /noiserock forum, one poster insists the band upstaged Mr. Bungle when opening for them in 1995—and at the time, a Bungle set was like an hour-long car crash with a horn section. Melt-Banana are still going strong today. Singer Yasuko Onuki has a highoctane stage presence honed by years in DIY venues across the world. She barks rapid-fire lyrics while guitarist Ichirou Agata (the only other con-

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/musicreviews

The Damned The Dictators open. 7 PM, Concord Music Hall, 2047 N. Milwaukee, $49.50. 17+

Before now, if you’ve heard Sadness (or most of Ojeda’s other projects), it’s probably been online. Ojeda hasn’t performed his solo material live, further cementing his reputation as an enigma. But Sadness is finally taking to the stage for the first time, with a backing band that Ojeda has assembled for this headlining show. Given his meticulous approach to writing and recording, he’s doubtless put a lot of work into making the live versions of Sadness songs meet his high expectations. —LEOR GALIL

SATURDAY1

sistent member) entangles the crowd in a visceral web of jutting atonal riffs. Even in their duo formation, where Onuki drives an electronic rhythm section with a motion-sensitive controller (they’re expected to be without a bassist or drummer on this tour), Melt-Banana never fail to leave listeners sweaty, gasping, and hungry for more. At this show, they’ll share the bill with apocalyptic Chicago-based jazz-punk outfit the Flying Luttenbachers, disorderly Baltimore dream-pop group Tomato Flower, and discordant lo-fi Rhode Island electronica artists Babybaby_Explores. This evening of art-rock will only reaffirm Melt-Banana’s legendary status. —MICCO CAPORALE

SUNDAY2

Kaskaskia is synth-haloed black metal, Comforting is noise rock, Life is screamo, RPG’97 is hardcore, and Trhä is coarse, even rotten-sounding black metal. Ojeda originally released Trhä recordings under the confounding pseudonym Thét Älëf, detna hacëntara Trha Nönvéhhklëth, Jôdhrhä dës Khatës, Dlhâvênkléth fëhlätharan ôdlhënamsaran Ebnan, written in a language of his own invention called hadlhaj. He’s put out a flood of Trhä recordings over the past few years, all them them cloaked in a layer or three of obscurity—even if you could tell what

Melt-Banana Tomato Flower, Babybaby_ Explores, and the Flying Luttenbachers open. 7:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 1375 W. Lake, $25. 17+  Japanese art-rock outfit Melt-Banana have been making sharp, spasmodic noise for 32 years. In that time, their approach hasn’t changed so much as they’ve gotten better at what they’ve always done. Their music pairs the energy of a sugar-crazed child with the sophistication of a lighting grid—it’s strangely angular in a way that feels technical but also unpredictable and exciting. They’ve faithfully delivered their unique mash-up of punk, no wave, electronica, and grindcore across 11 albums without exhausting its potential. But if you ask any Melt-

Chicago House Music Festival See Pick of the Week on page 34. The Main Stage (music at 1 PM) features Wayne Williams and Alan King of the Chosen Few DJs, Farley “Jackmaster” Funk, Tony Touch, Anané, Karizma, Ash Lauryn, and Lori Branch. The Chicago House Stage (music at 10 AM) features DJ Slugo, Johnny Fiasco, Flores Negras, Jana Rush, and more. 10 AM–9 PM, Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph.  F b

You can keep your Clash and your Sex Pistols; when it comes to pioneering British punk acts, this closet pogo fiend will choose the Damned every time. The Damned roared out of the gate in November 1976 and became the first UK punk band to release a single—the irresistibly propulsive “New Rose.” Since then, the versatile crew have effortlessly veered between new wave, goth, and psychedelia, reinventing themselves at every turn (and every new lineup) while staying true to their subversive ethos and tongue-in-cheek humor. Live, the Damned are always worth seeing. Their singer, stylish baritone vampire Dave Vanian, is one of the greatest and most elegant rock front men to ever grace a stage. And fellow founder and groovy guitarist Captain Sensible is back in the mix after missing the band’s 2022 U.S. tour due to health issues. And in 2017, the Damned welcomed back Hawkwind-inspired bassist Paul Gray, who first joined the band in 1980 a er cutting his teeth with punkabilly thugs Eddie & the Hot Rods and backing the likes of Johnny Thunders, MC5 front man Rob Tyner, and Larry Wallis of the Pink Fairies. Since 1996, the band has also included psychedelic keyboardist Monty Oxymoron.

This tour is especially special, if you’ll permit the phrase, because another founding bandmate has come back to the fold: drum pounder Rat Scabies, who left the Damned for decades in the mid-90s and hasn’t toured the U.S. with them for 35 years. “Be careful what you wish for,” he’s said of his return in a press statement, and it’s hard to say if he’s warning the band’s fans or second-guessing himself. His relationship with Captain Sensible was marred for years by a fight over alleged unpaid royalties, and if you’ve seen the 2015 documentary The Damned: Don’t You Wish That We Were Dead, you know this combo has the potential to combust.

Recent setlists show the Damned balancing the goth-heavy Gray years (they’re playing plenty of darkly heady cuts off 1980’s Blackout and 1982’s Strawberries ) with their ferocious 70s era (you’re likely to hear glorious, groundbreaking singles such as 1978’s “Neat Neat Neat” and anthems from 1979’s Machine Gun Etiquette), as well as sprinkling in some more recent material, since they’ve never stopped making good records. I’ll be there pogo thrashin’ hard, at least by my own aging-human standards. New York punks the Dictators, who open the show, reunited in 2021 without problematic front man Handsome Dick Manitoba, so I’ll give them a chance. —STEVE KRAKOW v continued from p. 35

The Damned in days of yore COURTESY THE ARTIST

Sadness DAMIÁN ANTÓN OJEDA

MUSIC

PLEIADES FEST

With Heet Deth, Circuit des Yeux, Easygoingtech, Emily Rach Beisel, Mabel Kwan, CK Barlow, Ingrid Laubrock, Cristal Sabbagh, Irene Hsiao, and others. Fri 6/7–Sun 6/9, 8 PM (Sat-Sun workshops 2 PM), Elastic Arts, 3429 W. Diversey #208, $15 per day, $30 three-day pass. b

Emily Rach Beisel, improviser and Pleiades Series founder

“In order to make change, you can’t just open the door and expect people to walk right in. You have to go out and find people.”

As told to JAMIE LUDWIG

Emily Rach Beisel became enamored with improvisation as a student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and then moved to Chicago to attend graduate school at Northwestern and explore the city’s vast music community.

The woodwind specialist maintains a busy schedule, working in a variety of settings, including as an educator, theater musician, curator, composer, and member of avant-garde chamber group Fonema Consort. Last year, Beisel released their debut solo album, Particle of Organs (recorded by fellow improviser and collaborator Bill Harris), whose visceral experiments for bass clarinet, voice, and analog effects blur the line between body and instrument while weaving together clean, delicate tones and elements of extreme metal.

In 2021, Beisel founded the monthly Pleiades Series at Elastic Arts, which combines improvised sets by femme, trans, and nonbinary musicians with open jam sessions. Beisel has also expanded the concept into a threeday festival, which runs at Elastic Arts from Friday, June 7, through Sunday, June 9. Each night will feature a mix of improvised music and movement closed out by full sets from Chicago acts, including garage punks Heet Deth, experimental singer-songwriter Circuit des Yeux, and electronic crew Easygoingtech. Saturday and Sunday will also include free afternoon workshops open to the public, the first hosted by three musicians from Baltimore’s High Zero Foundation, the second by New York–based German saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock.

One thing that really attracted me to [improvised and experimental music] is that there’s space in the tradition for the individual. There’s encouragement to explore, and self-reflect, and come to your own individual relationship with sound and instruments, and also to build these deep connections and collaborations with others.

The spaces in which this music happens are so critical. I don’t really consider the music to be overtly political in and of itself, but I do feel that creating work that’s not valued as a revenue generator under capitalism does enable us to more easily build community-owned spaces that aren’t so easily co-opted. That’s a really beautiful thing about touring with this music and seeing all of the spaces that exist across the country that are really just deep labors of

love. We’re very fortunate to have so many of them in Chicago.

I’ve always had a little bit of a horror of being pigeonholed, because variety is what makes me happy and feel like a thriving, creative individual and instrumentalist. So I’ve tried to do a little bit of everything. I teach. I had an orchestra position for eight years. I’ve played with contemporary ensembles, jobbing bands, trad-jazz bands, freelance chamber ensembles. I’m a very serious theater musician and woodwind doubler too, so I also play with one of the big theaters in town. I think all of those things balance out the creative and free playing that I do, and I appreciate how they influence each other.

I also have a really deep love for extreme music, especially metal. Doom metal, mathcore, death metal, and especially avant-garde metal—I’m always on the hunt for more of that. There’s something wonderful about playing a theater show. Your job is to lay it down perfectly every night. It’s a massive team e ort, and every independent being is essential in the web of the production. And then slipping out to go to a free improvised show—that just feels so righteous. The Pleiades Series came out of things I was thinking about during the pandemic, when I had the time to sit down and not run amok in the hustle and bustle. Before the pandemic, I was in much more of a reactionary time of scarcity and competition. As a freelancer, it’s easy to feel like you’re forced to exist in that space.

One silver lining of the pandemic for myself was the ability to step out of the rat race and really consider the source of frustrations that have been there for quite a while—who was playing what, what was being presented, and what was missing.

Initially, I had the idea of creating an ensemble with a very loose roster, so whoever was available could play shows. I did a few jam sessions at my house, just hosting folks to come out and meet and play, thinking I’d grow an ensemble out of that. But I realized it actually needed to be a series.

I’d been really thinking about fractal change and intentional adaptation. That’s something Adrienne Maree Brown talks about in her book Emergent Strategy , which I’d been reading: making change at a small level in order to impact change at a large level. My hope was that a monthly series would inspire people to think about who they’re booking.

The very first Pleiades show at Elastic was in October 2021. It had solo sets from Mabel Kwan and Carol Genetti, who are both very critical people in the experimental and impro-

PETER GANNUSHKIN

vising scene. I was over the moon to present them. The jam session was another component that really took some thought—how to structure it, and then to put a little exclusivity around it and make it a space just for femme, trans, and nonbinary performers. They can be any kind of performers; we’ve had dancers, we’ve had poetry and spoken-word stu . It’s a pretty open space.

Creating a space for people to really meet each other increasingly feels so vital. When you get a bunch of folks together to collaborate on improvised music, new collaborations are going to come out of it. I’ve presented people who’ve met through the jam on the series, in the curated portion in the first half of the shows.

A lot of times, there will only be one person on a bill who is a femme or nonbinary person. So we’re just not playing with each other. That doesn’t necessarily spark a lot of exchange or community among folks who are not as visible or getting the same opportunities. So that’s been really special to see. The jams have also been a really great resource for a lot of folks. I get a lot of people coming through or who just came to town, or they’re just interested in getting into improvisation and want to check it out.

I do think that most of the time [nondiverse booking] is really not intentional. It’s much easier to ask your close friends to do something than somebody that you don’t know as well. At times, unintentionally, that creates a kind of encircling factor around access to spaces. I think that in order to make change, you can’t just open the door and expect people to walk right in. You have to go out and find people and ask them to come and join. Being intentional about inviting people in is really important.

One of my hopes for the series is that the history of the shows acts as a resource or go-to list for people to reference, if they’re trying to be more equitable in how they’re putting a show together. You can look at the past history of Pleiades and see just a multitude of credible performers, or you can go to our Instagram and every show poster is on there. And everybody is welcome to attend—I’m always so excited and appreciative for anybody to come out and support.

[Being able to foster this community] makes me ecstatically happy. I felt so thrilled at the first jam. I felt this rush of joy, like, “Wow, this is actually happening!” And we’re just going to keep doing it, because I think it’s clear that we’re meeting a need. I’ve had some out-oftown guests come through, from New York or from Texas or from Baltimore, who remark on it. Just saying, “Wow, I don’t see this space anywhere else.”

MUSIC

I hope there will be more spaces like it. And I hope one day we won’t actually need these spaces. It feels very odd in a lot of ways to be like, “Well, we’re going to put kind of a gender restriction on this.” Because it would be nice to just not have to do gender at all if you don’t want to.

I ultimately decided that the festival should be as closely aligned as possible with the overall mission of the Pleiades Series, which is to create a connection between femme, trans, and nonbinary performers of diverse backgrounds and to raise the visibility of those performers. So with that in mind, the festival has a lineup of improvisers, and each improviser will perform two of the three nights. That’s kind of an homage to the High Zero Festival.

Having repeat performances and rotating group sets will let folks see these performers in di erent settings. It also lets the performers themselves get to know each other musically in more depth than if they just met each other once and then it’s over.

There will also be two wonderfully free workshops the public can attend. One will be on Saturday, which will be run by three members from High Zero who are coming from Baltimore. I’m from Baltimore, but I haven’t lived there in a long time. I like the ethos of their creative and improvised scene, and I’m very excited for people to come check that out.

So they’ll run a workshop, in which people are encouraged to come and “bring your ax.” Then on Sunday, we’ll have a second workshop with Ingrid Laubrock, an incredible improviser and composer who will be in town from New York.

That really keys into the second part of the Pleiades mission: trying to make connections between people from really diverse backgrounds and also have some audience sharing. So people who come out for one thing will also get to check out all these other things.

We’ll also be really celebrating Chicago’s creative-music scene. All the opener and closer sets will be Chicago bands and performers, and all the openers’ sets will have some element of audience participation.

The Pleiades Series is monthly, so [after the festival] it will keep on rolling, depending on what’s going on. Occasionally we’ll skip a month if there’s just a lot on the Elastic calendar (or my own). But the intention is to potentially expand the Pleiades team, so it’s not just me, and continue that with the monthly series and then perhaps every other year do the festival. I think every year would be a little too much, but I’m very excited to start with a bang. v

EARLY WARNINGS

JUNE

THU 6/6

Archspire, Aborted, Carcosa, Alluvial 7 PM, Metro, 18+

FRI 6/7

Micah Alec Trio 7 PM, the Promontory b

Valebol, Carlile & Elizabeth Moen duo 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+

SAT 6/8

Bonnie Koloc (conversation with author Mark Guarino and performance) 4 PM, Hideout

SUN 6/9

Baroness, Portrayal of Guilt, Gozu 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Dance for Humanity benefit featuring CtrlZora, Eutopia, Penny Candy, S. Lyre, Stecks, Warmcore 8 PM, Empty Bottle Miguel Zenón 7 PM, SPACE, Evanston b

TUE 6/11

Neptune’s Core, Uniflora, Sima Cunningham 7 PM, Subterranean b

Thee Sinseers, Altons, Benny Trokan 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+

FRI 6/14

Loudon Wainwright III, Wesley Stace 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b

FRI 6/21

Kumbia Queers, DJ Future Rootz 9:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+

Off North Shore: Skokie Music Festival day one featuring Mike Campbell & the Dirty Knobs, Larkin Poe, the Bones of J.R. Jones, Empty Pockets 5:30 PM, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, Skokie b

SAT 6/22

Off North Shore: Skokie Music Festival day two featuring Grace Potter, Donavon Frankenreiter, Jaime Wyatt, JC Brooks Band 3:30 PM, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, Skokie b

GOSSIP WOLF

A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene

CHICAGO MULTI-INSTRUMENTALISTRami

BEYOND

WED 8/7

Tirzah 8 PM, Metro, 18+

FRI 8/9

Meso, Severe, Sagz, Iam_sushi, Munk 8 PM, the Point

SUN 6/23

Grlwood, La Rosa Noir 7:30 PM, Reggies Rock Club b

TUE 6/25

Along Came a Spider, Heartsick 8 PM, Burlington

THU 6/27

Sir Woman, Hollyy 9 PM, Empty Bottle

FRI 6/28

Future Islands, Ed Schrader’s Music Beat 7:30 PM, Auditorium Theatre b

Tim Ries & Bernard Fowler with Bobby Floyd Trio and more 8 PM, Martyrs’ Sun Ra Arkestra 8 and 10 PM, Constellation, 18+

SAT 6/29

AJR, Mxmtoon, Almost Monday 6:15 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont b

Mungion 8 PM, Robert’s Westside, Forest Park

JULY

WED 7/3

AJR, Mxmtoon, Almost Monday 6:15 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont b

FRI 7/5

DJ Seinfeld, Jaq Attaque, Kailyn 10 PM, Smart Bar

SAT 7/6

Goapele 6 and 9:30 PM, City Winery b

WED 7/10

Jimmy Gnecco, Model Stranger 8 PM, Gman Tavern Grails, Verity Den 9 PM, Empty Bottle

SUN 7/14

Norah Jones, Mavis Staples 7 PM, Ravinia, Highland Park  b

THU 7/25

Futuristic 8 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Madilyn Mei, Sparkbird 7:30 PM, Beat Kitchen b

SAT 8/10

French Montana, Fabolous, Fivio Foreign 7 PM, Radius b

SAT 8/17

Libianca 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+

SAT 8/31

Yea Big & Tatsu Aoki 8:30 PM, Elastic b

SUN 9/8

Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, Alejandro Escovedo 6:45 PM, Ravinia, Highland Park b

FRI 9/20

Kirk Franklin, Yolanda Adams, Marvin Sapp, Clark Sisters, Fred Hammond 7 PM, Credit Union 1 Arena b

WED 9/25

Coal Chamber, Fear Factory, Twiztid, Wednesday 13, Black Satellite 5 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+

THU 9/26

Astrid Sonne 9 PM, Co-Prosperity, 18+

FRI 9/27

The Bellrays 8 PM, Live Wire Lounge

FRI 10/4

Jalen Ngonda 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+

FRI 10/11

Boris, Starcrawler 8 PM, Ramova Theatre b

SAT 10/12

Acid Mothers Temple, Spirit Mother 9:30 PM, Sleeping Village

WED 10/23

Sisters of Mercy, Blaqk Audio 8 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 18+

FRI 10/25

The The 8:30 PM, Salt Shed (indoors), 17+

SAT 11/2

Allison Russell 7:30 PM, the Vic  b v

Gabriel began dabbling in home recording as a teenager in the 1990s, and last week he finally put out his first solo album, the Sooper Records release That’s What I Been Sayin’ Playing in a variety of contexts, he’s already amassed a heady, eclectic catalog that traverses styles and disciplines. For his debut under his own name, he decided to combine as many of them as he could.

“I thought, ‘What if I put all this stuff together instead of making what I’ve been always doing,’” Gabriel says, “which is, I make my weird record, I put it out, and it’s for the freaks and for very few people. I put out the jazz record for the jazz people, and I put out the Arabic record for the Arab people. I thought, ‘You know what, I’m just gonna put stuff together and I’m gonna sing in public,’ which I have avoided doing for many reasons. This record is really a way of bringing together all the stuff I’ve been doing under one name.”

Born in Lebanon, Gabriel started playing guitar at age 12 and oud at 16. As a teenager, he immersed himself in Toronto’s underground punk scene by playing in under-theradar bands. In the late 90s, he moved to California for college and expanded his musical range. He joined a couple of jazz ensembles—one in the mold of “jazz manouche” guitarist Django Reinhardt, the other a free-jazz collective that hosted an experimental music night in Santa Barbara. He also began a deeper study of the oud. “I learned from a teacher named Scott Marcus, who is an expert on music from all over the Arab world,” Gabriel says. “I started learning all the repertoire, and then I started learning the maqam system.”

Gabriel moved to Chicago in 2007 to teach psychology at Columbia College. He’s since published three books, most recently last year’s A Suspicious Science: The Uses of Psychology. All the while Gabriel has maintained a busy music career. In the Arab Blues , he melds traditional Middle Eastern music with Delta blues in collaboration with celebrated Egyptian percussionist Karim Nagi . Gabriel also leads Rami & the Reliables, a soulful rock combo with drummer Alex Hall (who runs Reliable Recorders) and Hall’s Flat Five bandmates Casey McDonough and Scott Ligon (both of whom play in NRBQ).

Every member of Rami & the Reliables takes a turn on lead vocals—except for Gabriel, which makes his decision to sing on That’s

What I Been Sayin’ conspicuous. Thankfully, he’ll go into his record-release show at Constellation on Friday, May 31, with some experience singing onstage: in November, he opened a sold-out concert for Nick Lowe at SPACE. “That was my first solo gig, and it really went well,” Gabriel says. “I thought, ‘Well, if I can sing before Nick Lowe.’ . . . That gave me a lot of confidence.” Gabriel will be backed on Friday by Hall, Ligon, and Chris “K-Rad” Grabowski, who’s building a special synth for the set. Tickets cost $15, and the show starts at 8:30 PM.

BRAZILIAN-BORN FILMMAKER and DePaul theater alum Martin Levy dreamed up his pop-star persona, Candy , in early 2023, while writing a novel he wanted to perform as a one-man monologue. He imagined an action sequence with a sex worker running in the dark while cops shoot at her from all around. Right as they’re about to catch her, a light shines on her and seems to whisper, “Candy. There’s a door right next to you.” Candy opens the door and escapes. Levy devised a three-part odyssey for Candy, and in the second part, she’s a pop star. Last fall he began introducing the world to Candy through her music, releasing a video for the song “Candy Girl.” The track also appears on the February 2024 EP Candy in the House of a Thousand Hearts Levy is a cinephile whose influences include 2001: A Space Odyssey , Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain, and Quentin Tarantino. He directed, produced, and edited the new video for “Juicy” with help from director of photography Ethan Schoenborn , assistant producer Hannah Loessberg, and Steadicam operator Sam Tudor-Hidy . Candy wears a black Anna Wintour–style bob and smudged eye makeup and dances in an empty warehouse, switching looks from shot to shot: a jean skirt with elbow-length red gloves and 2000s-style pink shades; a long, sleeveless black dress with a floor-length red scarf and red heels; an angelic white drape.

“There is an exhibitionist aspect to this job,” Levy says. “I’m trying to create a new form, a postgender, post-sexuality being. What the story is, what the character is, it’s really the nectar of my creativity—the juice of what I am as a person.” —DMB (DEBBIE-MARIE BROWN) AND LEOR GALIL

Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or email gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

French Montana comes to Radius in August. COURTESY OF LIVE NATION

JOBS

Health Care Service Corporation seeks Business Analyst (Chicago, IL) to work as a liaison among stakeholders to elicit, analyze, communicate and validate requirements for changes to business processes, policies and information systems.

REQS: This position reqs a Bach deg, or forgn equiv, in Tech or Bus Admin or a rel fld + 2 Yrs of exp as a proj mgr, sys analyst, or a rel position. Telecommuting permitted. Applicants who are interested in this position should submit a complete resume in English to hrciapp@bcbsil. com, search [Business Analyst / R0026599. EOE].

XIT Solutions Inc. seeks Sr Software Developers w/ Mast or for deg equiv in CS, CIS, IT or Eng & yr of e p in o offer or in IT. Must have exp w/ collect info, anlz stats, grant rights for DB objct, trans DB objct, trans DB, Teradata dvlpr, dvlp user rqrmt & maint DB func. Mnml dom trvl reqd > 5%. Telecom perm. May reside anywhr in US. Apply to hr@xitsolutionsinc.com or 18W140 Butterfield Rd,. Ste 1500, Oakbrook Terrace, IL 60181.

Sr. Regulatory Specialist, LATAM StoneX Group Inc. seeks a Sr. Regulatory Specialist, LATAM (Job Req. 202411309) in Chicago, IL to prepare and submit regulatory compliance documents with regulatory authorities and advise on regulatory affairs that stem from the U.S. Company’s activities in the Latin American (LATAM) region. Up to 10% domestic and international travel required. Apply at https://www.stonex. com/about/careers/ under U.S. job openings. EOE. No recruiters.

OTC Operations Senior Analyst StoneX Group Inc. seeks an OTC Operations Senior Analyst (Job Req. 2024-11214) in Chicago, IL to assist the Trade Desk to manage a book of limit, market-on-open, market-on-close variety of good till-cancelled orders and coordinate with the broker network on market movement driven status management and fills execution. Apply at https://www.stonex. com/about/careers/ under U.S. job openings. EOE. No recruiters.

Principal Software Engineer sought by Superior Collision Custom in Glenview, IL to lead the design, development, testing, deployment & maintenance of high quality software products. Reqs Bach deg in Comp Sci/Eng or rltd & 2 yrs exp in rltd occupation. Mst hv perm auth

to wrk in US. Snd rsm & cvr lttr to 3124 W Lake Ave, Glenview, IL 60026.

Application Developer(s)

Application Developer(s)

RedMane Technology LLC seeks Application Developer(s) in Chicago, IL to perform analysis, design and development for no code / low code, highly configurable SaaS product. May require to travel/telecommute. Email resume to yourcareer@redmane. com; reference job code D7038-00114. E.O.E.

Senior Legal Counsel Amount, Inc seeks a Senior Legal Counsel in Chicago, IL. Provide general legal advice and support to various functions. Apply at https:// www.jobpostingtoday. com / Ref #45252

Technical Program Manager Tempus AI seeks a Technical Program Manager in Chicago, IL to collaborate closely with data scientists, software engineers, clinicians, and external partners to understand project requirements and technical constraints. Telecommuting permitted. Apply @ www.jobpostingtoday. com #15307.

Regional Operations Director Aby Groups has openings for Regional Operations Director in Burr Ridge, IL. Reqs 5 yrs exp as Operations Manager or Operations Management Specialist. Must be willing to visit franchises throughout midwestern US on monthly basis. Will plan/ direct/coordinate the ops of multiple restaurants. Formulate personnel/food safety/admin company policies & standards. Evaluate performance of restaurants. Conduct on-site visits to ensure compliance with food/ employee/customer safety standards. Responsible for interviewing, hiring, training, & firing employees. Conduct audits & implement initiatives to meet profit/loss benchmarks. Lead & organize new restaurant openings. Send resume to abygroups. jobs@outlook.com with ref #2024-19 & ref this ad

Muzzaffar Mirza DDS, LLC d/b/a Mirza Dental seeks Dentists for Chicago, IL location to meet w/patients to discuss & treat dental concerns. DDM/ DDS OR Bachelor’s in Dental Surgery req’d. Req’d Licenses & Certifications: IL Dental Licensure. Send resume to: Omar Mohammed, o.mohammed@ mirzadental.com, REF: AG

Software Engineer (Adyen N.V.; Chicago,

IL) (Multiple Positions): Design, implement, test, and monitor new functionalities to the platform. Salary: $150,000 to $175,000/ year. Send resume to resumes@adyen.com.

QUANTITATIVE

TRADING ANALYST

DRW Holdings LLC has openings in Chicago, IL: Quantitative Trading Analyst (PosID QA/IL/ L065):Use rigorous stat/ math analysis & ML to gen predict signals to trade ETFs, equities & futures. REQ: Master’s in Stat, Data Anal, Math, or rel+1yr data anal exp. EM apply@drw. com, Attn: M. CARTER. Must ref. Pos ID. EOE.

(Hoffman Estates, IL) Tate & Lyle Solutions USA LLC seeks Industrial Engineering & Planning Manager w/Bach or for deg equiv in Ind Eng, Chem ng or rltd d yrs exp in job offer or in sply chn/ind eng incl exp w/impl S&OP initvs; blncg Spply/Dmnd in a multisite/multi-line envr; logst & inv mgmt; mng ppl; SAP in Plng, sched, wrhsg & procrmt mdls; sply chn ntwk optmz; proj mgmt. Apply online at https:// careers.tateandlyle.com/ global/en or to HR, 5450 rairie tone kwy, off man Estates, IL 60192

(Carol Stream, IL) Serac Inc seeks Retrofit Manager w/Assoc, 3 yr deg or for deg equiv in ind mechtrn tech, mechtrn or autom & 2 yrs exp in job offer on in fllg & cap equip or mach incl exp w/SmarTeam, sftwr & FCS+ ctrl sftwr; techn wrk for ind equip; read & undrst pneum, hydrl & assm drwgs, SOP & BOM; dom & intl trvl reqd. Apply online at https://www. serac-group.com/careers/ or to HR, 160 E. Elk Trl, Carol Stream, IL 60188

Data Architect Data Architect, Pharmacyclics LLC (an AbbVie Inc. company), Mettawa, IL. Responsible for compliance with applicable Corporate and Divisional Policies and procedures. Manage multiple projects and write Business Requirements Documents (BRDs) and technical design Documents (TRDs). Use appropriate tools to collect, correlate and analyze data. Record and maintain technical data for use in developing operating and instruction manuals. Develop simple to complex ETL mappings in Informatica and document all business rules applied in ETL logic to ensure the development is in-line with Functional/Technical specification documents or any other requirements

documentation. Utilize AWS services to implement end to end data pipelines to derive insights. Utilize Informatica MDM hub (Siperian) on 9.x and 10.x versions to make any design & architecture changes including configuring & fine-tuning fuzzy logic Informatica MDM to meet the changing business needs and implementing new processes & projects. Conduct data warehouse/BI/Analytics/ ETL applications development and testing using ETL tools like Informatica Powercenter. Create technical documentations such as technical specification documents, technical design documents, Data flow diagrams, process diagrams and process illustrations. Implement batch and continuous data ingestion pipelines using AWS SQS and Python connectors. Collaborate with various departments, architects, project managers and technical managers to provide estimates, develop overall implementation solution plan and serve as a lead to implement solutions. Implement concepts such as Streams, Tasks, Clustering, Data purge, semistructured (XML, JSON) and unstructured data handling and streaming data loads. Assist in the development of standards and procedures. Apply and execute standard information systems theories, concepts, and techniques. Utilize Analysis, Design, Development, Testing, Data Analysis, Data Governance, Reporting, Impact Analysis, Applications Maintenance and cloud technologies. Identifies the business benefits of alternative strategies. Ensures compliance between business strategies and technology directions. May prepare testing plans to confirm that requirements and system design are accurate and complete and user conduct trainings. Identify process disconnects and translate them into improvement opportunities with cost savings or avoidance, productivity improvements, or revenue generating business benefits. Develop business relationships and integrate activities with other IT areas to ensure successful implementation and support of pro ect efforts. Write SQL queries to analyze the data thoroughly and present results of analysis to larger group. Perform complex SQL, PL/SQL, Unix Shell Scripting,

performance tuning and troubleshooting. Analyze departmental processes and needs and make recommendations that are most effecti e means to satisfy those needs. Develop data ingestion, data processing and raw data pipelines for different data sources to AWS. Partner effectively with all teams to ensure all business requirements and SLAs are met, and data quality is maintained. Communicate business needs and drivers to development groups to assure the implementation phase can fulfill the business need. Establish organizational objectives and delegates assignments. Must possess a Bachelor’s degree or foreign academic equivalent in Computer Science, Applied Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Technology or a highly related field of study with 5 years of related experience. In the alternative, employer will accept a Master’s degree in the aforementioned fields plus 2 years of related experience. Each educational alternative with at least two (2) years of experience in the following: (i) data warehouse/BI/Analytics/ ETL applications development and testing using ETL tools like Informatica Powercenter; (ii) implementing batch and continuous data ingestion pipelines using AWS SQS and Python connectors; (iii) Streams, Tasks, Clustering, Data purge, semistructured (XML, JSON) and unstructured data handling and streaming data loads; (iv) Analysis, Design, Development, Testing, Data Analysis, Data Governance, Reporting, Impact Analysis, Applications Maintenance and cloud technologies; (v) complex SQL, PL/SQL, Unix Shell Scripting, performance tuning and troubleshooting; & (vi) developing data ingestion, data processing and raw data pipelines for different data sources to AWS. Employer will accept any suitable combination of education, training or experience related to the job opportunity. Apply online at https:// careers.abbvie.com/en & reference REF24643K.

Director of Theological Research and Content Coordinator Dir. Of Theolog. Res. & Content Coord. Living With Power Ministries, in Mt. Prospect, IL seeks Dir. of Theological Research & Content Coordination. Req: Bach. in Theology or rel. field; 2 yrs. Exp. Editing, coord. religious pubs. & events; 2 yrs. Exp. Using MS Word, Excel & Google Workplace Suite; 1 year acad.

Coursework in Biblical Greek & Biblical Hebrew; 2 yrs. Exp. Writing & editing theological papers & pubs. Email resume and cover ltr. To: jobs@ livingwithpower.org EOE, must have perm. Auth to work in U.S.

A.T. Kearney, Inc. seeks Kearney Unified Collaboration Specialist(s) to work in Chicago, IL (with extensive travel and/ or possible relocation in unanticipated locations throughout the U.S.) lead the planning, design, implementation, and ongoing support of unified collaboration platforms. Collaborate with global, regional colleagues, internal business partners to maintain awareness of business requirements and opportunities that may leverage unified collaboration capabilities. Requires domestic travel up to 5% to 10%. Telecommuting is permitted. Requirements: Bach’s degree or frgn equvlnt in Computer Science, Engineering, Engineering Management or rltd fld and 5 yrs rlvt exp. Exp to include 1. Fundamental understanding and management of network infrastructure, audio & video conferencing, video codecs and bridges including TCP/ IP, DNS, H.323, XMPP, QoS, Fax, E911, ISDN, MPLS. 2. Experience deploying, managing, and administering Cisco Unity, Voice gateways: Cisco, Audio Codes; Cisco Jabber; Microsoft Teams Client; Telepresence; Cisco media gateways; Inbound/outbound routing using PRI and SIP trunks; Fax Relay / T.37 fax control protocol; and RightFax. 3. Experience providing desk side and remote support for issues or failures impacting soft phone, unified collaboration, audio and video conferencing. 4. Experienced many and configure audio codecs: G.729, G.722. G.711. 5. Experience configuring and managing global +E.164 dial plans. Apply online at http://www.kearney. com Reference IL024.

Strategic Finance Associate Amount, Inc. is seeking a Strat Fin Assoc in Chicago, IL. Build fin tools to drive efficient and effective fin analysis. Tlcmtg is pmtd. Apply at jobpostingtoday. com/ Ref # 34273.

Sales Manager Sales Manager: Schaumburg IL. Setting sales quotes & goals. Create sales plans. Import business dvlpt & sale. Set up goals incl savings. Manage suppliers. Resolve quality issues. New product development. Distribute imported products, research new clients, markets.

Bachelor’s degree in any field. 2 yrs exp as sales manager or business development manager. Res: Euro Liquor LLC; office@euroliquors.com

Royal Cyber Inc. in Naperville, IL. has openings for Business Development Manager (Identify, Develop & Implement business strategies); Salary range $115,482.00/Year to $120,000.00/ Year. Req. Bachelor’s or foreign equiv. + 2 yrs. of exp in the job offered or rel. Travel & relocation req’d. Mail resumes to HR Manager, Royal Cyber, Inc.,55 Shuman Blvd, Suite # 275, Naperville, IL 60563 or Email: hr.us@royalcyber.com

(Melrose Park, IL) WJS Construction Group, Inc. seeks Construction Supervisors w/1 yr exp in job offer or in constr or as a crptnr incl exp in prod of wndws, doors & instll & assmb, assmb of furn segm, wdwk & rpr work. Apply to HR 2021 N. 19th Ave, Melrose Park, IL 60160

Product Managers

Product Managers, Chicago, IL: Collect data, interview experts, leverage understanding of business processes. Oversee product dvlpmt. Collaborate w/ the production team to allocate resources & implement solutions. Build advanced dashboards using Microsoft Excel & Power BI. Some job duties can be performed from home. Send res to: BARCHART.COM, INC. at hrgroup@barchart.com

Sr. Data Modeler/ Analyst NPV Staffing, LLC (Chicago, IL) seeks Sr. Data Modeler/ Analyst. Design strategies for enterprise databases, data warehouse systems, & multidimensional networks. Req: BS in Info Sys or rel/equiv. 6 mos exp as Data Modeler/ Analyst or rel. 6 mos exp w/ Erwin, SSIS, & SQL req. Travel or relocation to various unanticipated worksites throughout US. Telecommuting allowed. Send resumes: hr@npvstaffing.com

Data Engineer NPV Staffing, LLC (Chicago, IL) seeks Data Engineer. Design strategies for enterprise databases, data warehouse systems, & multidimensional networks. Req: MS in Info Sys or rel/equiv. 2 yrs exp as Data/ Software Engr or rel. 2 yrs exp w/ Oracle, SQL Server, TOAD, MS Office, MDM, & Putty req. Travel or relocation to various unanticipated worksites throughout US. Telecommuting allowed. Send resumes: hr@npvstaffing.com

CLASSIFIEDS JOBS AUDITIONS

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PROFESSIONALS & SERVICES MATCHES

Northwestern Memorial Healthcare seeks Sr. Analytics Developers for Chicago, IL location to deliver data warehouse & analytic solutions. Bachelors in IT/Info Sys/ related field +4yrs exp req\’d. Req\’d: 2yrs w/ SSIS, SSAS; SSRS; SSMS; SQL for data extraction, manipulation, & reporting; SQL DB: create complex queries & stored procedures. Exp must incl: gather & scope req’s & recommend analytical solutions to meet business needs; mentor/train junior staff on analytics tools; serve as subject matter expert; Agile environment; Tableau, Microsoft Power BI; analysis, design, dev & support; structured programming. May work remotely in Chicago area w/ability to commute to HQ Chicago office as req’d. Background check & drug screen req’d. Apply online: http://jobseeker.nm.org/ REQ ID: EV64412G

Actonia, Inc seeks Team Lead Data Analysts for various & unanticipated worksites throughout the U.S (HQ: Chicago, IL) to support teams w/ the execution & delivery of data analysis reports. Bachelor’s in Comp Sci/ or related field +3yrs exp req’d. Req’d skills: Python, SQL, R, PL/ SQL, Java, XML, MySQL, PostgreSQL, statistical analysis, prediction analysis, data modeling & data mining techniques, BI tools, MS Excel, Time series Analysis, Statistics, Data visualization, shell scripting, automation scripting, designing & dev algorithms, ETL (extract, transform & load) tasks. Telecommuting Permitted. Kalpesh Guard, Send resume to: careers@ actonia.com REF: KB

ENGINEERING/ TECHNOLOGY DRW Holdings LLC has openings in Chicago, IL: SWE (Pos ID Se/IL/ K064): Des, impl & oper auto liquidity provisioning & alpha signal gen sys. REQ: Bach or foreign equiv in CS, Math, Stat, Phys or Eng or sim quant field & 2yrs exp * DATA SYS OPS ANALYST (Pos ID DA/IL/N068): Dvp & impl analytics to transform key parts of sophist mkt data anal pipelines. REQ: Bach or foreign equiv in CS, EE, DataSci, or rel & 7yrs exp. EM apply@drw. com, Attn: M. CARTER. Must ref. Pos ID. EOE.

Senior Technical Analyst

Senior Technical Analyst, AbbVie Inc., North Chicago, IL. Provide technical experience for application development or package selection & implementation efforts. Conduct business requirement gathering, functional requirement documents, estimation, build, unit & integration testing. Provide comprehensive consultation to business

units & IT management & staff at the highest technical level on all phases of application programming & process implementation for diverse development platforms, computing environments (e.g. host based, distributed systems, client server, software, hardware, technologies, & tools, etc.). Perform Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) such as business requirement gathering, preparation functional requirement, Detailed Design Document estimation, traceability matrix, build, testing (UT, IT, ST), UAT, & deployment. Responsible for translating functional specifications into application design specifications, including but not limited to creation of application architectures, hardware & software configuration specifications, relational database schemas, & component/class specifications. Work with business users & provide status updates & interact with vendors to resolve product issues. Interact closely with Business Systems Analysts, the client user community, & IT management & staff to identify technical solutions, or a combination of available alternatives. Coordinate with business teams & client SMEs and propose latest software features for client application. Coordinate & facilitate application design sessions with development staff. Utilize C#, HTML, .NET Framework, JavaScript, PL/SQL, &/or ASP. Review all technical aspects of a software implementation effort, including monitoring of technical deliverables for consistency & quality. Must possess a Bachelor’s degree or foreign academic equivalent in Applied Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Development or a related field of study with 5 years of related experience. In the alternative, employer will accept a Master’s degree in the aforementioned fields with 3 years of related experience. Each educational alternative with at least 3 years in the following: (i) business requirement gathering, functional requirement documents, estimation, build, unit, & integration testing; (ii) Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) such as business requirement gathering, preparation functional requirement, Detailed Design Document estimation, traceability matrix, build, testing (UT, IT, ST), UAT, & deployment; (iii) working with business users & providing status updates and interacting with vendors to resolve product issues; (iv) coordinating with business teams & client SMEs & proposing

latest software features for client application; & (v) C#, HTML, .NET Framework, JavaScript, PL/SQL, &/or ASP. Any reasonable combination of experience of education, training, or experience is acceptable. Apply online at https://careers. abbvie.com/en. Refer to Req ID: REF25298U.

Senior Analyst Human Capital Data Senior Analyst Human Capital Data, AbbVie Inc., North Chicago, IL. Act as an internal consultant by understanding business needs, scoping data requests, synthesizing insights, & recommending solutions to key business partners in collaboration with other members of the HCD team. Participate as a core member of the department, working closely with the team to provide data driven solutions & support to all HCD solution areas. Design databases by going through all phases like Conceptual design, Logical design, Physical design, & normalization techniques. Take a lead role in the creation of an advanced Oracle data warehouse focusing on maintaining existing data elements & exploring data from other data systems. Manage the tableau server &Identifying patterns and meaningful insights from data by analyzing it using tableau. Demonstrate exceptional judgment & discretion when dealing with highly sensitive people data. Perform analysis & regular reporting for stakeholders across the business. Define design to meet business requirements in compliance with Oracle & Oracle ETL design methodologies. Build systems as designed by using PL/SQL, SQL Loader, Batch scripts, & Autosys Scheduler. Develop presentations on metrics, reports, & analysis. Manage multiple concurrent projects that require inputs from cross functional stakeholders while balancing impact on business needs. Utilize experience in PL/SQL, batch scripting language & job scheduler. Leverage tools, such as Oracle, Tableau & Excel to drive analytics & enable client self-service on routine queries. Responsible for continuous research & learning of new industry trends in Human Capital Analytics. Perform database architecture & routine maintenance in Tableau server. Must possess a Bachelor’s degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science or a highly related field of study w/ at least 3 years of related experience in the following: (i) Designing databases by going through all phases like Conceptual design, Logical design, Physical design, & normalization techniques; (ii) Managing the tableau server and

Identifying patterns & meaningful insights from data by analyzing it using tableau; (iii) Defining design to meet business requirements in compliance with Oracle & Oracle ETL design methodologies; (iv) Building systems as designed by using PL/SQL, SQL Loader, Batch scripts, & Autosys Scheduler. Apply online at https://careers. abbvie.com/en & reference REF25299K

Estimator, Schaumburg. Prepare roof const. estimates, proposals for clients. Accept bid invitations. Analyze, evaluate risk; decide means/methods for construction. Attend local trade shows, seminars. Master’s in construction eng. & mgmt./related required. Mail res., cov. let. to M. Cannon, M Cannon Roofing Company LLC, 1238 Remington Rd, Schaumburg, IL 60173. Computer Programmer Write, analyze, review, and rewrite programs, using workflow chart and diagram, and applying knowledge of computer capabilities, subject matter, and symbolic logic; Correct errors by making appropriate changes and rechecking the program to ensure that the desired results are produced; Perform or direct revision, repair, or expansion of existing programs to increase operating efficiency or adapt to new requirements; Write, update, and maintain computer programs or software packages to handle specific jobs such as tracking inventory, storing or retrieving data, or controlling other equipment; Consult with managerial, engineering, and technical personnel to clarify program intent, identify problems, and suggest changes; Compile and write documentation of program development and subsequent revisions, inserting comments in the coded instructions so others can understand the program; Coordinate and review work and activities of programming personnel; Develop Web sites. Mail résumé to Amgaa Purevjal, iCodice LLC, 5005 Newport Dr, Suite# 505, Rolling Meadows, IL 60008

Associate Director, Brand Marketing & Digital Services The Office of Preparedness and Response, at the Univ of IL Chicago, located in a large metropolitan area, is seeking a fulltime Associate Director, Brand Marketing & Digital Services to assist the department with the following responsibilities: Under direction and supervision, provide strategic and creative leadership to design,

develop, and advance the overall brand vision and execution of the university’s preparedness and resilience missions and prevention through digital services. Ensure content quality, consistency, impact, and relevance in the messages transmitted across campus while addressing the different audiences: students, faculty, and staff. Build a robust modern marketing plan with traditional and digital channel integration, and generate content that is compelling, timely and of great importance within the public safety ecosystem. Other duties as assigned. This position minimally requires a Bachelor’s degree or its foreign equivalent in Arts, Design, Museum & Exhibition Studies, Marketing or a related field, and 2 years of experience in graphic and marketing design or related experience. For fullest consideration, applicants are required to submit Curriculum Vitae, a cover letter, three professional references, and samples or a link to previous design work and marketing portfolio by 06/18/2024. Additionally, please include details of your social media expertise, such as the successful management of marketing campaigns or growth in follower engagement. Links to your professional social media or Linkedin handles or profiles where these skills are demonstrated should also be provided to showcase your digital fluency and creativity in real-time platforms. Please send your complete application package to the Office of Preparedness and Response, University of Illinois Chicago, 1140 S. Paulina Street, Suite 109, Chicago, IL 60612 or via email to ready@ uic.edu. The University of Illinois System is an equal opportunity employer, including but not limited to disability and/or veteran status, and complies with all applicable state and federal employment mandates. Please visit Required Employment Notices and Posters to view our nondiscrimination statement and find additional information about required background checks, sexual harassment/ misconduct disclosures, and employment eligibility review through E-Verify

AUDITIONS

IDM/EDM ARTISTS WANTED original music only. contact : idm-edm.com

MARKETPLACE

I want your old Readers! Hi, Salem Collo-Julin here, editor in chief of the Chicago Reader. I’m interested in your pre-

early 00s copies of the Chicago Reader in print for my personal collection. Will pay reasonable amounts of money (see eBay for what other people are charging). Incomplete issues are ok by me (especially for those fabulous 90s years that we printed multiple sections), but nothing super shredded or soggy please! Looking especially for the 1970s editions. Thanks for reading. Email scollojulin@ chicagoreader.com

PROFESSIONALS & SERVICES

CLEANING SERVICES CHESTNUT ORGANIZING AND CLEANING SERVICES: especially for people who need an organizing service because of depression, elderly, physical or mental challenges or other causes for your home’s clutter, disorganization, dysfunction, etc. We can organize for the downsizing of your current possessions to more easily move into a smaller home. With your help, we can help to organize your move. We can organize and clean for the deceased in lieu of having the bereaved needing to do the preparation to sell or rent the deceased’s home. We are absolutely not judgmental; we’ve seen and done “worse” than your job assignment. With your help, can we please help you? Chestnut Cleaning Service: 312-332-5575. www. ChestnutCleaning.com

Licensed Home Daycare We have immediate openings for children of all ages. Nurturing , caring and educational environment.We offer responsible and safe daycare. References provided.Call (773)267-0461.

MATCHES

All romantic dates women wanted All romantic fun dates all requests 24.7 Call (773) 977-8862 swm

Late 50’s MWM Seeks a European Lady for Adult Friendship I’m 58, white, clean d/d free. ISO of fun discreet European woman that would love some adult attention. Have many interests

‘MAN seeking a serious FEMALE relationship’ My name is Donald Muller; I’m a 68-year-old divorced man searching for an unending source of trust, companionship and love in a woman. I’m a loving, romantic, caring, good-looking and cheerful man. If you are interested in this adventure, please email me to learn more about me. My email is donaldffmm@gmail.com / donaldffmm@outlook.com

BREAK CYCLES TO BUILD FUTURES