Chicago Reader: print issue of June 2, 2016 (Volume 45, Number 34) by Chicago Reader

C H I C A G O ’ S F R E E W E E K LY | K I C K I N G A S S S I N C E 1 9 7 1 | J U N E 2 , 2 0 1 6

THE ROAD TRIPS ISSUE: doom and gloom in BRUCE RAUNER’S SPRINGFIELD, the rebirth of an iconic Wisconsin SUPPER CLUB, Jesus at the wheel of Michigan’s BLESSING OF THE BIKES, the curious case for Indiana’s COMEDY SCENE, cycling to AMISH COUNTRY, the adventures of Superman in METROPOLIS, plus major fun with MINOR LEAGUE BASEBALL

Through September 18 Lead funding for America after the Fall: Painting in the 1930s is generously provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art. Generous support is also provided by Shawn M. Donnelley and Christopher M. Kelly. The Auxiliary Board of the Art Institute of Chicago is the Lead Affiliate Sponsor. Additional funding is contributed by Suzanne Hammond and the Suzanne and Wesley M. Dixon Exhibition Fund. Annual support for Art Institute exhibitions is provided by the Exhibitions Trust: Kenneth Griffin, Robert M. and Diane v.S. Levy, Thomas and Margot Pritzker, Betsy Bergman Rosenfield and Andrew M. Rosenfield, the Earl and Brenda Shapiro Foundation, and the Woman’s Board.

Airline Partner of the Art Institute of Chicago

Georgia O’Keeffe. Cow’s Skull: Red, White, and Blue, 1931. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1952, 52.203. © The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Image Source: Art Resource, NY.

2 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 2, 2016

THIS WEEK

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

IN THIS ISSUE 4 Agenda Ike Holter’s Prowess, Louis C.K., Making a Murderer’s Dean Strang and Jerry Buting, the climate-change doc Time to Choose, and more recommendations

CITY LIFE

8 Joravsky | Politics Why won’t Mayor Rahm grant Tenth Ward alderman Sue Garza unpaid leave?

ARTS & CULTURE

23 Theater The first flowers of the 2016 theater festival season 24 Lit Obsolescence: An Architectural History offers an important rebuttal to the rationale behind the wrecking ball. 25 Comedy With The Program, Clickhole’s Jamie Brew has created sketches via a computer application. 26 Visual Art Joan of Arc celebrates its 20-year anniversary with an exhibit at Elastic Arts. 27 Movies A guide to the 23rd Chicago Underground Film Festival

35 Shows of note Peanut Butter Wolf at Do Divison, Sturgill Simpson, Sunn O))), and more

FOOD & DRINK

41 Cocktail Challenge: Squid ink Sammy Faze of Drinkingbird ﬁnds inspiration in the depths of the ocean. 43 Restaurant review: Duck Duck Goat Stephanie Izard goes Chinese, with few surprises.

MUSIC 26

31 Feature Saxophonist Greg Ward returns to Chicago on Mingus wings.

CLASSIFIEDS

45 Jobs 45 Apartments & Spaces 47 Marketplace 40 Straight Dope Is President Obama a secret Neville Chamberlain fanboy? 41 Savage Love A cougar conundrum, crazy sleazy starts, and joyless marital sex 42 Early Warnings Bloc Party, Chairlift, M83, Third Eye Blind, ZZ Top, and more shows in the weeks to come 42 Gossip Wolf Grungy local supergroup Lifestyles drop their debut album.

THE ROAD TRIPS ISSUE

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There’s no joy in Raunerville A journey into the heart of Illinois’s bureaucratic darkness BY RYAN SMITH 11

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Amish AWisconsin Jesus, take What’s so funny about paradise supper club the wheel Indiana? is back for Riding bikes Motorcyclists seconds with the kick-start riding The Hoosier The Gobbler has been transformed into a theater for live music.

BY DAVE HOEKSTRA 13

season at the Blessing of the Bikes. BY LAURA PEARSON 14

State makes a case for seeking comedy beyond Chicago.

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Pennsylvania Dutch in northern Indiana BY JOHN GREENFIELD 18

It’s a bird! Minor It’s a plane! leagues, It’s southern major fun Illinois! Baseball Adventures await in Metropolis, Illinois, the oﬃcial “Home of Superman.”

beyond Wrigley and the Cell BY AIMEE LEVITT 21

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Adverses ò ROSARIO VARGAS

THEATER

More at chicagoreader.com/ theater Adverses Chicago novelist, poet and playwright Rey Andújar is R equal parts philosopher, aesthete, and

insurrectionist—all put to expert use in this savvy, ceaselessly inventive reworking of Euripides’s Electra. This time queen Clitemnestra is a power-hungry, pseudo-feminist nymphomaniac, while princess Electra is a wannabe Marxist revolutionary. Andújar’s stage world is impishly nonsensical (murdered King Agamemnon’s coﬃn has air holes cut in it), yet the malignant passions that consume everyone—jealousy, ambition, lust, revenge—are unsettlingly true to life. He combines Lorca’s erotic lyricism with Brecht’s politically engaged cynicism to create something urgent, idiosyncratic, and wholly contemporary. Directors Sándor Menéndez and Oswaldo Calderón stage the tragedy with perfect authority, assisted by a nimble, exacting cast who exploit every pulse in Andújarj’s intoxicating rhythms. It’s masterful. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 6/19: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 6 PM, Aguijón Theater, 2707 N. Laramie, 773-637-5899, aguijontheater.org, $25, $15 students, seniors, and educators.

The Distance In this searing R transcontinental domestic drama by Deborah Bruce, Bea, the mother of

two young boys, leaves her husband and family behind in Australia and, for reasons unknown, ﬂies to her sister’s home in England, where she blocks their attempts to communicate with her. There, along with the audience, Bea’s extended family and friends struggle to reconcile their empathy for her, an autonomous adult pursuing her own dreams, with their horror and resentment over the heartbreak she’s caused. “This is cruel, you know,” the abandoned father tells Bea (brilliantly played by Abigail Boucher) over Skype. It is, and Haven Theatre’s remarkable production, directed by Elly Green, shows the unforgiving ripple eﬀect of that cruelty on everyone involved. —DAN JAKES Through 6/26: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3:30 PM, Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark,

773-338-2177, raventheatre.com, $28, $14 students and seniors. Medea and Phaedra Released As the nights get warmer, it’s once more time to roll out the blankets for some outdoor theater. Poetry Is artistic director Robert Eric Shoemaker has crafted a new adaptation of the Phaedra legend in which the abandoned queen—here named Luce (Tara Bouldrey)—falls in love with her stepson, the acquiescent Max (Emil Sueck). Max is simultaneously embroiled with his foster sister, Adriana, played delightfully by Kellen Robinson. As the city rebels against the royal family, intrigue mounts inside the doomed castle. Shoemaker retains the tangledness of the original story and skillfully alloys it with youthful touches of his own—like a talking mouse (Rebecca Whittenhall). Phaedra, Released is presented alongside a hectic Medea by Catherine Theis, where Medea (Robinson) and her boorish unnamed husband (Sueck) take their angst along with them on a weekend trip, with mixed results. —MAX MALLER Through 6/11: Fri-Sat 7 PM, Comfort Station, 2579 N. Milwaukee, comfortstationprojects@gmail.com, poetryis.org, $10, lawn seating free. The North Pool Khadim is a Syrian-born Muslim teenager attending a public high school somewhere in the U.S. Dr. Danielson is the school’s vice principal—and very possibly a sleaze. On the final day before spring break Danielson finds a minor reason to hold Khadim for detention, then uses the time (and the solitude, everyone else having cleared out) to pursue more dangerous matters. Well-wrought and judicious, Rajiv Joseph’s 2013 two-hander is a whodunit with a heart, exploiting our preconceived notions about people like Khadim and Danielson both to heighten its mystery and deliver its moral. James Yost’s 80-minute staging for Interrobang Theatre is competent but a little crabbed in that it gets us compellingly to the point yet fails to take full advantage of the psychic and physical violence inherent in the situation. Set designer Greg Pinsoneault does a great job of reproducing the classic school administrator’s office. —TONY ADLER Through 6/26: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2

Old Hobbits Die Hard Fan fiction only works if everyone is in on the joke. Bear that in mind if you decide to see New Millennium Theatre Company’s parody mashup, Old Hobbits Die Hard—and know that you’re seeing Die Hard for dedicated fans of the Ring trilogy, not The Hobbit for action-film fans. Fueled by a shared passion for Middle Earth, the cast is the lifeblood of this production, versatile in dialects, stage combat techniques, and Elvish alike. Costumes by Amber Kessler Freer pay great attention to detail, while director Adam Rosowicz’s use of space is clever. The video elements are a nice touch too, but the script, by Alex B. Reynolds, is simultaneously erratic and predictable. If you’re just a casual fan of Tolkien’s work, or have seen the films maybe once, you’ll probably be left wondering, “What the hell is going on, and why are we celebrating Christmas in June?” —A.J. SØRENSEN Through 6/18: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Royal George Theatre Center, 1641 N. Halsted, 312-988-9000, nmtchicago.org, $20. Prowess I’ve got to admit I R was worried. It was barely two months ago that A Red Orchid Theatre

premiered Ike Holter’s extraordinary Sender, and now another new Holter script would be getting its premiere, this one at Jackalope Theatre. The law of averages suggested that, for all his talent, Holter was unlikely to connect so well again so soon. But I was so happily wrong. Prowess is just as stunningly good as Sender, though diﬀerent in tone. The story follows a familiar comic-book trope: Drawn together by their pain, four outcasts turn themselves into ninja vigilantes and kick Chicago gangbanger ass. The results, however, suggest anything but feel-good underdogism. Prowess falters at the end, when it comes time to pitch the moral(s) of the story. Yet even then we’ve got Holter’s uncanny language, bypassing even conventional distinctions among characters to turn Prowess into something more like a harsh, funny, wised-up, yearning, breakneck utterance than a

play. Sinewed with strong performances, Marti Lyons’s staging sprints right along with it. —TONY ADLER Through 6/25: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Broadway Armory Park, 5917 N. Broadway, 312-7427502, jackalopetheatre.org, $15-$30. Rent Despite its Tony and Pulitzer Awards and long-running afterlife post-Broadway, Jonathan Larson’s 1996 rock musical is not a perfect show. Nor is Lauren Rawitz’s current revival. Actors must be at the top of their game to keep from getting bogged down in Larson’s often flat book, and while this young ensemble has lots of energy and spirit, they’re not all quite there. The same for goes for the weaker songs in Larson’s demanding, but inconsistent score—sometimes this production soars (as in the full ensemble’s “Seasons of Love”), and sometimes it just lies flat on the floor. The show does feature some fine performances, most notably Will Wilhem’s star turn as the sweet, sassy cross-dressing Angel and Derrick Mitchell’s morally ambivalent landlord. —JACK HELBIG Through 7/3: times vary; see website, Metropolis Performing Arts Centre, 111 W. Campbell, Arlington Heights, 847-577-2121, metropolisarts. com, $38. Spinning Deirdre Kinahan’s 2014 play opens with a moment only found in fiction. Proprietor Susan steps out onto the deck of her seaside cafe just as ex-convict Conor, responsible for the death of Susan’s teenage daughter four years ago on this very spot, arrives. She’s impossibly bitter. He’s suicidal. So by the laws of contemporary playwriting they’ll have to find some sort of redemption in each other. Kinahan’s deeply felt if dutifully drawn story is full of none-too-surprising reveals, but it’s all made palatable by director Joanie Schultz’s meticulous staging for Irish Theatre of Chicago. She steers her four-person cast through 65 minutes of splintered flashbacks with unwavering pose and emotional commitment. It’s an engaging evening, even if it never stops feeling overly engineered. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 7/3: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Den Theatre, 1329-1333 N. Milwaukee, 773-609-2336, irishtheatreofchicago.org, $26-$30.

Prowess ò JOEL MAISONET

Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of June 2

VISUAL ARTS Morpho Gallery “Gemini Spacecraft,” an exhibit of vibrant paintings by local artists Randal Stringer and Peter Steeves. Opening reception Fri 6/3, 6-9 PM. 6/3-7/29. Thu-Fri 1-6, Sat noon-6. 5216 N. Damen, 773-878-4255, morphogallery. com.

Louis C.K. ò AP fill this part-scripted, part-improvised double bill of solo shows at iO. Cat McDonnell’s, performed at an “open mike,” switches between satirical bits (my favorite is her precocious, aggressively political grade-school-age standup comic) and straight original songs, accompanying herself on harmonica and guitar. Both sets showcase confident and unique comedic points of view, but it was Spell, a beautifully bizarre set by Zach Zimmerman, that completely won me over. Alt club comedy is a lab for risk-taking, and the risks here—a mini room escape, casting audience members in extended bits, disappearing for stretches at a time—pay off almost as hilariously when they don’t play out as expected as when they do. —DAN JAKES Through 6/12: Sun 8:30 PM, iO Theater, 1501 N. Kingsbury, ioimprov.com/ chicago, $12.

LIT

DANCE

Alison Flowers The author and R award-winning investigative journalist presents an excerpt from

Openwork Dancers use body R movements to create knitted textiles. Fri 6/3, 7 PM, Links Hall at Constellation, 3111 N. Western, 773-281-0824, synapsearts.com, $10-$20.

Tim Meadows ò SUN-TIMES MEDIA Second City NBC Break Out R Comedy Festival Tim Meadows hosts a showcase of up-and-coming

comedy acts from across the country performing sketch, improv, and standup. 6/3-6/4: Fri 7:30 and 10 PM; Sat 7:30, 10, and 11:59 PM, Up Comedy Club, 230 W. North, 312-337-3992, upcomedyclub. com, $10-$20.

Mic Check: A Solo Variety R Show/Spell: An Interactive Solo Show Two actors and a lot of characters

Sarah Silverman The comic headlines the ﬁnal night of the Onion and the A.V. Club’s Third Annual 26th Annual Comedy Festival. Sun 6/5, 8 PM, Civic Opera House, 20 N. Wacker, 312-332-2244, 26comedy.com, $37.50$57.50.

COMEDY Louis C.K. The venerable comic wraps up his four-night run at the Chicago Theatre. 5/31-6/3: Tue-Wed 8 PM, Thu 8 and 11 PM, Fri 11 PM, Chicago Theatre, 175 N. State, 312-462-6300, thechicagotheatre.com, $50.

Pilsen Outpost “Carlos Barberena: Promised Land,” a collection of linocuts and woodcuts by Barberena examining the the mistreatment Central American immigrants have faced from governments and corporations. Opening reception Fri 6/3, 5-11 PM. 6/3-6/26. 1958 W. 21st, pilsenoutpost.com.

Alison Flowers ò KELSEY JORISSEN

Openwork ò MATTHEW GREGORY HOLLIS

Page Turner Matter Dance Company’s choose-your-own-adventure dance performance. 6/2-6/4: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont, 773-327-5252, matterdance. com, $15-$20.

Ann Nathan Gallery “Art Shay,” photographs by street photographer and photo essayist Art Shay, who will be present at the exhibit’s opening reception Fri 6/3, 5-8 PM. Tue-Fri 10 AM-5:30 PM, Sat 11 AM-5 PM. 212 W. Superior, 312664-6622, annnathangallery.com.

her latest book, Exoneree Diaries: The Fight for Innocence, Independence, and Identity, followed by a discussion and book signing. Wed 6/8, 7:30PM, Women & Children First, 5233 N. Clark, 773-7699299, womenandchildrenﬁrst.com. Making a Murderer’s Dean R Strang and Jerry Buting Consider the strengths and weaknesses of the U.S. criminal justice system with Dean Strang and Jerry Buting, the criminal defense lawyers from the Netﬂix documentary series Making a Murderer. Fri 6/3, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre, 175 N. State, 312-462-6300, conversationonjustice.com, $39.50-$95.

Too Fly Not to Fly Explore R themes surrounding black childhood with this photo exhibit celebrating the launch of Briana McLean and Desmond Owusu’s book Too Fly Not to Fly: An Alphabet Photo Book. Fri 6/3, 6-10 PM, Mana Contemporary Chicago, 2233 S. Throop, tooﬂynottoﬂy.com.

Tuesday Funk This monthly R reading series features eclectic works by local writers. June’s lineup

includes Norman Doucet, Rana Khoury, Sara Krueger, Parker Molloy, and Eden Robins. Tue 6/7, 7:30 PM, Hopleaf, 5148 N. Clark, 773-334-9851, tuesdayfunk.org.

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MOVIES

More at chicagoreader.com/movies NEW REVIEWS Alice Through the Looking Glass Children go to Lewis Carroll in search of lunacy. But this soulless Disney contraption, a sequel to Tim Burton’s hit Alice in Wonderland (2010), instead oﬀers child-psyche self-pity: both the garish Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) and the ranting Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) turn out to be adult victims of parental cruelty or injustice. As in the earlier movie, Carroll’s wormhole narrative has been replaced by a mechanical action-movie plot, and once again there’s a tedious frame set in the real world, with Alice (Mia Wasikowska) as a professional sea captain who may have to sacriﬁce her ship to save her mother’s home from creditors. Director James Bobin is almost completely indebted to Burton’s original vision, though Sacha Baron Cohen’s performance as Time, and the attendant clock imagery that dominates the second half, call to mind Martin Scorsese’s Hugo (2011). With Anne Hathaway and Rhys Ifans. —J.R. JONES PG, 113 min. River East 21 Dheepan Writer-director Jacques R Audiard ingeniously advocates for France’s most marginalized citizens

by obliquely addressing their struggles in his suspenseful films. In this immigration drama the focus is on Sri Lankans affected by the fallout of the civil war between the country’s government and the independent faction known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (or the Tamil Tigers). Dheepan (Sri Lankan author and actor Antonythasan Jesuthasan); his wife, Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan); and their daughter, Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby), are the false identities of three Sri Lankan refugees. They immigrate to France, where Dheepan finds work as caretaker of a squalid rural housing project that’s mostly become an open-air drug market, a setting that gradually unearths his concealed past as a Tamil soldier. Though it takes a jarring left turn at the end, this bears the same immaculate plot construction and tonal consistency of Audiard’s previous films, augmented by sensitive, superlative performances from Jesuthasan and Srinivasan. With Vincent Rottiers, riveting as a quietly seething kingpin, and a hypnotic score by electronic-music whiz kid Nicolas µ

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Very Much Forever From a progressive pickup artist to an alien who enjoys intercourse with humans, the solo sketch show Very Much Forever oﬀers more hits than misses. Scenes move rapidly from one wayward character to the next, assisted by the wisely included stagehand Stevie Shale, who doubles as a suicidal deer. Writer and performer Ben Larrison, known for his CTA Red Line PSAs featuring fake facts about squirrels (Project #SquirrelTruth), introduces us to a range of characters, including the perpetually cuckolded and the downright naughty. It’s dirty and offbeat, but that’s the Annoyance brand: dark and absurd, laughing through a wicked grin. Mick Napier directs. —A.J. SØRENSEN 6/26/30: Thu 8 PM, Annoyance Theatre, 851 W. Belmont, 773-697-9693, theannoyance. com, $8.

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JUNE 2, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 5

AGENDA B Jaar. In Tamil and French with subtitles. —TAL ROSENBERG 109 min. Landmark’s Century Centre

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FACULTY MEET & GREET Tues., June 14 6 - 7:30 p.m. RSVP at adler.edu/chi

Me Before You Adapted by Jojo Moyes from her own novel, this juvenile romance stars Emilia Clarke (HBO’s Game of Thrones) as a sunny working-class girl who becomes a professional caregiver and Sam Claflin (The Hunger Games) as the quadriplegic aristocrat who becomes her charge and eventually her Byronic lover. With her comically loud outfits and mile-wide grin, Clarke overemotes so feverishly that she sometimes suggests a silent-movie gamine, though eventually the mounting drama absorbs her outsize performance. I can’t recommend this movie to anyone older than high school age, but French-cinema fans might want to check out the laughably incongruous scene in which Claflin persuades Clarke to watch Of Gods and Men, Xavier Beauvois’s harrowing metaphysical drama about a group of martyred Franciscan monks. Thea Sharrock directed. —J.R. JONES PG-13, 110 min. City North 14, River East 21, Webster Place Pele: Birth of a Legend This cableready biopic of the Brazilian soccer star covers the eight years leading up to his triumphant performance at the 1958 World Cup finals, when he was only 17. Writer-directors Jeff and Michael Zimbalist frame the story as a nationalist journey, beginning with Brazil’s devastating loss to Uruguay in the 1950 World Cup (in Bauru, where the boy lives, the entire neighborhood responds with funereal gloom) and stressing how the Brazilian team prevailed eight years later by renewing their commitment to the ginga playing style that originated with their African slave ancestors. Given the story’s thrust, one might expect Afro-Brazilian rhythms on the soundtrack, but instead there’s a rollicking, faintly Eastern-flavored score by veteran Indian composer A.R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire). With Vincent D’Onofrio, Colm Meaney, and—in a standout performance—Brazilian musician Seu Jorge as the hero’s proud father. —J.R. JONES PG, 108 min. Fri 6/3, 8:30 PM; Sat 6/4, 8:15 PM; Sun 6/5, 5:15 PM; Mon 6/6, 8:30 PM; Tue 6/7, 6 PM; Wed 6/8, 8 PM; and Thu 6/9, 8:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center Time to Choose DocumenR tary maker Charles Ferguson has a reputation for adding fresh perspective to widely reported national crises—the Iraq War (No End in Sight), the 2008 financial collapse (Inside Job)—and this movie about climate change offers a comparatively hopeful assessment of the situation. It begins with a spasm of doomsaying, titles reminding us that the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet would

6 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 2, 2016

Time to Choose

destroy major coastal cities, but for the most part Ferguson wants to spread the good news about the meteoric commercial rise of wind and solar energy, and the slim possibility of turning the world economy around before it’s too late. As part of this campaign, he mounts a full-bore attack on the coal, oil, and gas industries, detailing not only their contribution to global warming but also the toxic side eﬀects of mining and drilling operations worldwide. Ferguson portrays the climate struggle as a winnable war, but also a titanic one, pitting a small, greedy plutocracy against the rest of the world’s citizens. —J.R. JONES 98 min. Landmark’s Century Centre X-Men: Apocalypse Bryan Singer, who directed the ﬁrst two X-Men movies back in the early aughts, returns to the franchise for this installment, following younger versions of the superheroes as they form their iconic team. But compared to the sleek and often thrilling X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), the movie seems dull and bloated. The highlights belong to the teens, notably Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), tapping into her sensitivity to save the world, and Quicksilver (Evan Peters), plucking children from an incoming explosion to the sounds of the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams.” The adults fail to generate much excitement: James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender do their best with slushy material, Jennifer Lawrence looks bored, and Oscar Isaac, as the villain Apocalypse, is hindered by a tiresome back story and terrible makeup. With Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, and Rose Byrne. —LEAH PICKETT PG-13, 147 min. Wilmette

REVIVALS There Will Be Blood Paul R Thomas Anderson’s ﬁfth feature (2007), a striking piece

of American self-loathing loosely derived from Upton Sinclair’s Oil!, is lively as bombastic period storytelling but limited as allegory. The cynical shallowness of both the characters and the overall

conception—American success as an unholy alliance between a turnof-the-century capitalist (Daniel Day-Lewis) and a faith healer (Paul Dano), both hypocrites—can’t quite sustain the film’s visionary airs, even with good expressionist acting and a percussive score by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood. Day-Lewis, borrowing heavily from Walter and John Huston, offers a demonic hero halfway between Thomas Sutpen in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and James Dean’s hate-driven tycoon in Giant (shot on the same location as this movie), but Kevin J. O’Connor in a slimmer part offers a much more interesting and suggestive character. This has loads of swagger, but for stylistic audacity I prefer Anderson’s more scattershot Magnolia. —JONATHAN ROSENBAUM R, 158 min. Chicago Tribune film critic Michael Phillips introduces the screening, part of a series celebrating the 50th anniverary of the National Society of Film Critics. Tue 6/7, 7 PM. Music Box

SPECIAL EVENTS Chapter & Verse Jamal Joseph directed this 2015 drama in which a former gang leader returns to Harlem after being released from prison. 97 min. Joseph attends the screening, the opening program of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival; for a full schedule, visit siskefilmcenter.org. Mon 6/6, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center Grindhouse Film Festival Dubbed the “Indiana Jones of film archivists,” Portland native Dan Halsted presents five programs: a collection of vintage trailers (Fri 6/3, 10 PM); The Mystery of Chess Boxing (Sat 6/4, 7 PM); Shaolin vs. Wu Tang (Sat 6/4, 9 PM); The Gates of Hell (Sun 6/5, 5 PM); and a screening to be announced (Sun 6/5, 7 PM). Music Box Silent Shakespeare Judith Buchanan, director of the Humanities Research Centre at the University of York, presents rare clips of silent films adapted from Shakespeare’s best-known plays. Mon 6/6, 7 PM. Music Box v

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CITY LIFE

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

Alderman Susan Sadlowski Garza ò BRIAN JACKSON/ SUN-TIMES MEDIA

POLITICS

Double standard

Why won’t Mayor Rahm grant Tenth Ward alderman Sue Garza unpaid leave? By BEN JORAVSKY

or the past few months, Mayor Rahm’s been acting like he’s the teachers’ best friend, calling on them to put aside their past differences and join his effort to win more school money from the state. Behind the scenes, however, he’s the same old Rahm as he sticks it to Tenth Ward alderman Susan Sadlowski Garza, a former CPS counselor and the only member of the Chicago Teachers Union in the City Council. Oh, I know, there are greater issues at play in the city than the ongoing saga of how the mayor won’t approve Garza’s leave of absence. But if you want to know why so many teachers still distrust Emanuel, pay attention. First thing you should know—Garza will never be mistaken for a Rahm ally. The daughter of Ed Sadlowski, the longtime steel-union labor leader, her family’s been battling various Democratic bosses on the southeast side for decades. Since 1996, Garza’s worked at Jane Addams Elementary School, at 108th

8 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 2, 2016

Street and Avenue H. She started in the cafeteria and worked her way up to counselor. As you might expect, she’s been a stalwart in the CTU, and was on the front lines for the 2012 strike. Like I said, not a friend of Rahm’s. She was elected in 2015, defeating alderman John Pope—an Emanuel ally—by 20 votes. Soon thereafter, she requested leave to serve in the City Council. “It was an unpaid leave—so it wasn’t like I was double dipping,” Garza says. “I didn’t think this was a big deal.” Obviously, Alderman Garza still has a thing or two to learn about Mayor Rahm’s Chicago. “I called Moriarty, and he said there’s no precedent for this kind of leave,” Garza continues. That would be Joseph Moriarty, chief labor relations officer for CPS. (As opposed to Professor Moriarty, the evil villain in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Just kidding, Joe.) “I said, ‘I guess I’m the virgin that has to be sacriﬁced,’” Garza says. “Moriarty didn’t laugh.”

Yeah, well, Professor Moriarty wasn’t known for his sense of humor either. But after talking to other aldermen, Garza discovered it was standard operating procedure for the city to grant leaves of absence to public employees elected to the City Council. That includes aldermen Nick Sposato and Anthony Napolitano, who are firefighters; aldermen Willie Cochran and Chris Taliaferro, who are cops; and alderman Derrick Curtis, who’s a Streets and Sanitation ward superintendent. In other words, the boys. Apparently, under Mayor Rahm there’s one set of standards for professions mostly filled by men, and another for professions generally occupied by women. “I can’t believe they wouldn’t give Sue the leave,” Sposato says. As Sposato points out, routinely granting unpaid leave to municipal employees is important if you want to encourage anyone other than lawyers to run for office. “Nothing against attorneys,” Sposato says, “but you want people with common sense to be aldermen too.” (Not that some lawyers don’t have common sense. But I get what you’re saying, alderman.) In Garza’s case, she’s an independent-minded alderman—and a member of the P rogressive Caucus—who’s unafraid to vote against the mayor’s budget and borrowing policies. Just the kind of alderman Rahm hates. Without a leave, she’d have to crawl back to CPS and beg for a job once her term’s over. Good luck with that. In defense of Mayor Rahm, the double standard existed before he took office. According to the city’s personnel code, “a leave of absence without pay shall be authorized to enable [employees] to be elected or accept appointment to an elective office.” That covers cops, firefighters, truck drivers, and so forth. Teachers and counselors are employees of the Chicago Public Schools, so apparently they’re not under the jurisdiction of the personnel code. CPS automatically grants unpaid leave to employees

Apparently, under Mayor Rahm there’s one set of standards for professions filled mostly by men, and another for professions generally occupied by women.

who take union positions. For instance, Karen Lewis, president of the CTU, is on leave from her job as a CPS science teacher. But there’s no specific language in the CPS personnel code covering employees who get elected to public office. Garza is the first CPS employee to get elected to the City Council. Now do you get the joke, Mr. Moriarty? Last year, CTU officials raised the matter with CPS during contract bargaining negotiations. The CPS negotiators said they’d have to run the matter past the mayor’s office. Eventually, CPS told CTU that the issue had to be addressed in collective bargaining. So basically, if CTU wants the mayor to give Garza a leave, the mayor wants CTU to give something up. Who knows what he has in mind—a pay cut, longer hours, more standardized tests? He’s a tough guy, that mayor—especially with teachers. Too bad he’s not this tough with bankers and lawyers for the company that owns the parking meters. “This is an important issue for the younger teachers,” Garza says. “It discourages teachers from running for alderman if they think they have to give up their careers to run for office.” I guess we just discovered another reason Mayor Rahm won’t grant Garza’s request. Again, she’s asking for an unpaid leave. So granting it wouldn’t cost taxpayers a cent. In contrast, the mayor gave Pope a $117,000-a-year job in the water department just a few months after Garza bounced him from office. Now, that’s how the mayor treats his friends. OK, I understand why the mayor takes a hard negotiating stand with CTU on salaries and benefits—though he was far more conciliatory with firefighters and cops when he negotiated their contracts. But why be such a jerk on something so minor, like Garza’s leave request? Especially, when you’re trying to convince everybody that you’re not a jerk. I contacted CPS for comment, but they didn’t get back to me. So Mayor Rahm, let me appeal directly to you: Just grant Garza her leave already. You know—treat her like one of the guys. v

v @joravben

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There’s no joy in Raunerville

A journey into the heart of Illinois’s bureaucratic darkness: Bruce Almighty’s state capital. By RYAN SMITH

odernity and history comingle uneasily in downtown Springfield. Illinois’s capital city is a place that increasingly resembles a northern version of Colonial Williamsburg. State workers, lobbyists, and tourists pass along a patchwork quilt of ordinary paved roads and old-timey cobbled boulevards dotted with Subways, Starbucks, Abe Lincoln statues, and souvenir shops. The servants of the state go about the government’s business in mundane-looking office towers or under the silver dome of the capitol building, while visitors shuffle in and out of structures crafted to resemble the city from our favorite son’s pre-Great Emancipator days—including the Old State Capitol that’s now a museum. As Springfield’s major industry keeps on contracting and my hometown continues to be bedecked with mid-19th century garb, I’ve sometimes feared the past might someday fully swallow the present, permanently transforming the seat of our state government into an eerie Lincoln-themed ghost town. During a recent trip to Springﬁeld, I realized that day may have come already thanks to the dark reign of our Great Plutocrat, Bruce Rauner. From his base of power at the redbrick manor on Old Aristocracy Hill, the governor has treated state employees like the barbarians at the gates, and has been all too eager to use Illinois cultural institutions as pawns in his budget chess match with Democrats. Wading into Rauner’s Springfield on an appropriately dismal Saturday morning, I was one of the few human beings in sight in the rain-drenched city center—at least outside the comforts of Boone’s Saloon, a once-shuttered dive bar that reopened after renovations in 2011. It’s a place whose former charms have been polished off by a gimmicky old-west theme and dozens of ﬂat-screen televisions blaring ESPN. There were cheap drink specials, though—and I’d need the alcohol to steel myself for the harrowing journey into Raunerville. Umbrella in hand, I left Boone’s for Young Mr. Lincoln’s old hood, now the 12-acre Lincoln Home National Historic Site. All the houses and yards in this four-block area are meticulously preserved and restored to look as they might have when Abe and family resided there in the mid-1850s. Part of what’s

The Illinois State Capitol ò RYAN SMITH

impressive about Lincoln’s crib is its modesty. It’s no log-cabin hovel, but compared to the splendor of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello or George Washington’s Mount Vernon, Lincoln’s two-story Greek Revival and white picket fence feels extraordinarily ordinary—which perfectly fits Honest Abe’s humble reputation. What’s striking, however, is the emptiness: At one of Springfield’s main tourist attractions, just a handful of curious tourists milled about. The only sound was the crunch of the gravel road beneath my feet. Could this desolation be just an anomaly? Yes, said Timothy, a graying man behind the counter of the visitor’s center. It was a rainy Saturday during the tourism off-season, he noted. Most of the effects of Rauner’s reign on downtown Springfield, he told me, were more subtle—like the fact that there’s only one docent per shift at Lincoln’s New Salem, a reconstruction of the rural village Abe called home in the 1830s. “If you know what to look for,” he said, “you can see the problems.” Timothy was right that the Old State Capitol building and the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum would be relatively bustling—especially the latter site, where historic artifacts and documents take a backseat to what can only be described as a Lincoln theme park, replete with a holographic movie theater and creepy animatronic characters. The museum gift shop especially was teeming with out-of-towners gawking at black stove-pipe hats and Abe and Mary Todd salt-and-pepper shakers. But elsewhere, there were unmistakable cracks in downtown Springfield’s foundation. The historic office on Sixth and Adams where Lincoln and junior partner William Herndon once practiced law was closed, with a sign that read closed for restoration. Upon closer inspection, it was clear that a state employee with a dark sense of humor and access to a Sharpie had jotted quotation marks around those words—a wry commentary on the true nature of the site’s closure. The Illinois State Museum, of which I have fond memories from grade-school field trips, was also shuttered. (The imposing, massive woolly mammoth replica and the dioramas depicting the daily lives of Native Americans living on the prairie thousands of years ago are images burned into my brain.) Rain dripping down the letters of the museum’s name etched into the building’s granite exterior gave off the appearance that the structure was actually crying. A sign affixed to the locked front doors delivered the bad news: we regret the J

JUNE 2, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 11

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Springfield continued from 11 illinois state museum is closed to the public until further notice. Also inaccessible was the home of early-20th-century traveling troubadour Vachel Lindsay—a School of the Art Institute of Chicago grad who pioneered a kind of theatrical, repetitive spoken-word form that was arguably a precursor to slam poetry and hip-hop. Springfield historians have since sanded the edges off Lindsay. He’s now almost exclusively known for his laudatory poems about Lincoln (“the quaint great figure that men love / The prairie-lawyer, master of us all,” he wrote in “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight”), yet he was something of a bohemian radical in his time who advocated for racial equality and labor rights. But fame was fleeting for Lindsay. Shortly after returning to Springfield in 1931 from performing during a grueling sixmonth road trip, exhausted and penniless, he committed suicide in the house by drinking a bottle of drain cleaner. A note posted on the front door of Lindsay’s home announced that tours were available by appointment only, during a two-hour window on weekends, and to call the nearby Dana-Thomas House to set up a showing. Arranging a guided tour for one seemed silly, but I decided to head over to the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed mansion to inquire within. Entry to the halls of the Dana-Thomas House wasn’t a sure thing. It had been shuttered for 18 months in 2008-’09—yet another victim of state budget cuts. When I didn’t spot a soul in the grassy courtyard, I figured that Rauner had shut it down too. But the heavy wooden door leading to the guesthouse budged open, and I was pleased to see a dozen or so people awaiting a tour. The 1903 home isn’t Springfield’s most grandiose structure—it lacks the old-world opulence of the Illinois State Capitol—but it’s by far the most interesting. The famed architect remodeled Springfield socialite Susan Lawrence Dana’s

home during the height of his Prairie style, giving the formerly Italianate mansion a certain humility by blending it somewhat into the natural landscape. The wide-open floor plan and dearth of interior doors mean the 35 rooms evoke a communal feeling missing from most mansions. From the third ﬂoor, visitors can peer over a wooden balcony and see into the basement, which contains quirky treasures like a duckpin bowling alley. Wright’s understated whimsy feels muted by the overcast afternoon sky. The house is funereal—even with scores of windows and colorful art glass all around. The tour group asked questions of the docent in hushed tones. The guide didn’t much lighten the mood by sharing that Dana had squandered her father’s mining fortune over the course of her life. The early death of her young husband may have been what drove her into seclusion, where she became obsessed with spiritualism and the occult. Later she was hospitalized due to dementia and died in care, leaving behind massive debt that was paid with the sale of the home and much of the Wright-designed furniture. From the mansion, I plodded along the splintered sidewalks of the Old Aristocracy Hill neighborhood, its once-regal Victorian homes in various states of disuse and disrepair. The name of the nearby Mansion View Hotel now seems ironic considering that the property next door is a shambolic single-story house no doubt abandoned for years. Around Halloween, it’d make a fine state-government-themed haunted house starring zombie legislators and chain-saw-wielding lobbyists. Finally, it was time to boldly go into the heart of darkness: the Illinois Executive Mansion. I envisioned bumping into the governor traipsing through in his house slippers while chewing on a golden pipe. I’d ask him why he’s using his personal fortune to renovate the crumbling 160-year-old building while neglecting the rest of downtown—and the whole state, for that matter. But alas, the black gate of Rauner’s crypt was locked. A sign stated the mansion was open on Saturdays, from 9:30-11 AM. Despondent, I made one last stop: Obed and Isaac’s Microbrewery, a welcome refuge in the midst of Springfield’s bureaucratic post-apocalyptia. Squint while sipping and you can almost imagine the ghost of Abe sitting across from you with a pint, fondly patting you on the back as if to say everything is going to be OK. v

v @RyanSmithWriter

TK caption ò TK CREDIT

A Wisconsin supper club is back for seconds A midcentury-modern architectural curiosity, the Gobbler has been transformed into a theater for live music. By DAVE HOEKSTRA

here was no fork in the road in 1967 when Wisconsin turkey farmer Clarence H. Hartwig, Sr. opened the Gobbler, a supper club and motel in Johnson Creek, a two-anda-half-hour drive from Chicago about halfway between Milwaukee and Madison. Interstate 94 was relatively new, and Hartwig wanted to attract attention to his space-age getaway. Hartwig commissioned Wisconsin architect Helmut Ajango, who dressed up midcentury-modern design with Prairie-style elements. A Gobbler promotional postcard from the late 60s reads: where central wisconsin meets the concorde age. From the ground, the Gobbler resembles a compact Houston Astrodome. From the air, it looks, appropriately, like a turkey. The Gobbler served the Thanksgiving bird 365 days a year, along with supper-club staples like prime rib and surf and turf. Hartwig’s wife assisted with interior design at the restaurant and motel. The groovy hilltop lodge, replete with heart-shaped waterbeds, red shag carpeting, and eight-track stereo systems, has since been torn down. In late April, Wisconsin trucking magnate and drag racer Dan Manesis reopened the for-

mer supper club as the 435-seat Gobbler Theater with a commanding performance by the rock band Starship. “This is a beautiful venue,” lead singer Mickey Thomas remarked midway through the group’s set, “and very, very unique.” From the stage, Thomas faced the original circular bar, formerly the Royal Roost Cocktail Lounge. The 31-seat bar was bathed in purple light and still revolves, like the famed Carousel Bar at the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans. But the Gobbler bar moves slower than the Carousel’s, approximately one revolution every 80 minutes. Starship didn’t even play that long. In its new life as a theater, the Gobbler doesn’t serve food, a fact that may disappoint people with fond memories of dining there. But Manesis has saved a compelling piece of architecture. “It is one of the most important midcentury buildings in the state of Wisconsin,” says Jim Draeger, the state historic preservation officer at the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison. “I’d been very concerned about that building. The 1950s and early ’60s were an experimental period of American architecture. Buildings like the Gobbler that push the edges of popular architecture taste are important. They are iconic buildings you

use to understand all the other buildings.” At the time the Gobbler was built, modernism had taken the reins of design. “Architects were experimenting with radical new forms of how to construct space,” Draeger says. “The Gobbler was innovative in design because of its unusual uses of circles and curves that in some ways paralleled the kind of work Frank Lloyd Wright was doing at the Guggenheim [Museum] and the Marin County Civic Center.” Hartwig toured the grounds with Ajango, according to Draeger’s research. (After the architect died in 2013 at the age of 81, the Wisconsin Historical Society received all of his records.) “They were driving across the field in the turkey farmer’s Cadillac when they had the conversation of what the building should look like,” Draeger says. “He was smoking a cigar and Helmut was sitting in the passenger seat. Clarence was waving his arms and saying, ‘I want it to look like a turkey.’ Commercial architecture is location, location, location—so it was placed on that site to take advantage of the newly built interstate so people would see it. Think of the McDonald’s golden arches with the dramatic, sweeping lines that are eye-grabbing. The turkey farmer really had some vision.”

Ajango was no stranger to supper clubs, having designed the Fireside Dinner Theatre, built in 1964 in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, where the architect had lived since 1958. “He designed a lot of churches in the southeastern part of Wisconsin, including Mount Pleasant Church in Racine, which has received national recognition,” Draeger says. “He was influenced to some degree by Frank Lloyd Wright, but he was not a follower of Wright. He pretty much danced to his own drummer.” Manesis was a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the late 1960s when he first visited the Gobbler. The 61-year-old now owns a Milwaukee trucking and warehouse company and has been driving dragsters since 1980 at the Great Lakes Dragaway in Union Grove, Wisconsin. “I would bring girls to the Gobbler,” he recalls. “A steak was $16 and I made $1.30 an hour, so I had to work a long time to go on a date. It was a miniature Playboy Club. The waitresses had neat little outfits—they had turkey feathers coming out of their suits instead of the little bunny tail.” Indeed, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner might have used the Gobbler as a template for his chain of clubs, opening the Playboy Club resort in nearby Lake Geneva shortly after the Gobbler had started up. At one point during its hiatus, a GobblerA-Go-Go gentleman’s club was suggested, but the Johnson Creek Village Board denied that proposal, as well as a plan for a small casino in the space. After Hartwig’s death in the mid70s, the Gobbler became a rib shack and later a Mexican restaurant—somewhat appropriate considering the building’s exterior consists of Mexican lava rock. The place reopened in 1996 for a brief period as the New Gobbler. Before this year, it had been shuttered since 2002. Remodeling the old bird was an 18-month process that cost more than $2 million. “The place was structurally sound, but all the mechanicals in the building did not work,” Manesis says. “We had to bring everything up to code. We wanted to do it right.” The original supper club had a beauty shop, barber shop, and gift store in the basement. A 35-ton dance floor with a disco ball hung over the bar from the ceiling. Manesis had it excised. “We had to be very careful,” he says. “We could have [destroyed] the ceiling and the venue would have been junked. The dance floor was made of plywood, steel, and tons of drywall and plaster. A two-story kitchen was where the stage is. That kitchen served the main floor and it was a way to bring food

continued on 15

JUNE 2, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 13

Jesus, take the wheel

Motorcyclists kick-start riding season at the Blessing of the Bikes.

Father Ron Schneider of Saint Ann Catholic Church prays over the hundreds gathered for the Blessing of the Bikes. ò TODD HALTERMAN

By LAURA PEARSON

n a chilly Sunday morning in midMay, packs of leather-clad bikers descend on a field at the outskirts of the municipal airport in Baldwin, Michigan. From the hum of distant engines becoming a thunderous roar to the skull-print face masks and black balaclavas the motorcyclists wear to block the unseasonable cold—all of it evokes some portentous scene from Mad Max: Fury Road. But instead of a future desert wasteland, the setting is a drab midwestern winterscape. What at first look like flower petals falling from trees are actually snowflakes slowly drifting through the air. I roll up in the furthest thing from a trickedout Harley-Davidson: a 2004 Nissan Sentra that broke down twice during the 260-mile

14 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 2, 2016

trip from Chicago and has a bumper that for years has been held on by duct tape. My ride feels especially ignoble on a day like today. Still, I’m not the only person who rode in on four wheels. Dozens of other cars, trucks, and RVs are parked outside the makeshift gates. But beyond the fence, it’s all about the bikes— hundreds of them in all types: cruisers, choppers, roadsters, crotch rockets, and pimpedand-preened custom numbers, including a beastly machine hauling a motorboat and a gleaming black trike pulling a trailer containing a casket draped with an American flag (because . . . #supportourtroops?). The bikers have come to this sleepy little town in northern Michigan from all over the midwest and as far as California for the annual

Blessing of the Bikes. A banner hanging over downtown Baldwin’s main drag, Michigan Avenue, greets those present to the “original” blessing of the bikes. Never mind that the quotation marks around “original” call the claim into question, the sign speaks the truth: While many similar events have popped up in other cities and states, the ﬁrst Blessing of the Bikes ﬁrst took place here in 1972. The story goes that eight riders on four bikes took a trip up from Grand Rapids to Baldwin with the goal of helping out the folks of Lake County, the poorest county in the state. As a gesture of thanks, the local priest offered them a blessing for a safe riding season. More bikers returned the next year, and attendance at the rally grew exponentially, eventually turning

into a full weekend of group rides, vendors, a chili cook-off, concerts, camping, and plenty of partying. Now thousands of bikers attend the weekend festivities before the Sunday event, though the actual numbers vary wildly depending on whom you ask: “We’ve had over 20,000 people during peak years”; “definitely upwards of 30,000”; “an estimated 40,000 bikers were in attendance once,” et cetera. It’s a different story out at the airport, where the average number of yearly attendees is closer to 2,500. Today, organizers speculate it’s something more like 1,500, which nonetheless is an impressive congregation of chrome and cowhide and riders from all manner of clubs, including the Christian Motorcyclists Association. “This year’s turnout isn’t great,” says Carl Huey, a man standing at the entrance dressed in head-to-toe leather, including a vest covered in patches (pretty much the event’s standard uniform). He’s the sergeant at arms of Para-Dice, the motorcycle club from Grand Rapids that has organized the Blessing since its inception. “There were years where we’d have 5,000 bikes—a line of ’em stretching down the road for miles, waiting to come in,” Huey says. “But I think the weather is keeping people away.” Huey is perturbed by the fact that a lot of folks come into Baldwin for the parties and to shop from the downtown vendors that sell patches, concealed-carry purses, skull-themed jewelry, and leather everything, but then never make it to the bona fide Blessing of the Bikes. Don’t get him wrong—he likes a good time. “Not everyone in our club is churchgoing,” he says. “In fact, we sometimes describe it as ‘an alcohol club with a motorcycle problem.’” But Para-Dice puts a lot of effort into making sure the event runs smoothly, and donates every cent of the $5 entry fee to the local senior center. The group also invites nonprofits from Lake County to set up inside the airport grounds to promote their organizations. “The bikers that stay downtown—they’re missing out on a good cause,” Huey says. “We do all this for the seniors.” On the Para-Dice Motorcycle Club Facebook page, a post advertising the event echoes this sentiment: “If your not on the airport on Sunday, your NOT at the ‘BLESSING OF THE BIKES’ . . . Your just spending the weekend in Baldwin!” Shortly after noon, a band begins entertaining the assembled faithful. Behind the stage stands Lake County sheriff Dennis Robinson— who instead of hassling the motorcycle gangs does volunteer crowd control at the event every year alongside other members of his po-

The Gobbler continued from 13

v @tislaurapearson

v @DaveHoekstra66

ò TODD HALTERMAN

esque red-and-yellow skull cap and pulls a brightly colored priest’s stole out of his pocket that he drapes around his shoulders. He thanks the crowd for being there. “You were a blessing to us long before we were ever a blessing to you,” he says. When prompted, bikers across the wide expanse of field bow their heads, close their eyes, and stretch out their arms as the prayer begins: “Good and gracious God, you know each one of these folks, you love and care for each one of them. We are so honored that they came to be here with us, to this little community in Lake County. . . . As they go down the road today and tomorrow and the next day, we ask that your spirit be at their backs, the wind at their backs, the sun on their faces. . . . We only ask one additional favor: that next year you make that wind a whole lot warmer!” Laughter erupts. Later I catch up with Pastor Ron and ask him if the bikers believe that his blessing assures their safety. “I hope they think that’s not all there is to it,” he says with a grin. “They can’t just leave here and be reckless.” He concludes the prayer “in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” then adds, “God, are you listening? They’re gonna make a noise for you! Ladies and gentleman, start your engines!” A heavenly chorus of revving motors fills the brisk air. It’s the first time I’ve heard that sound in the context of community and solidarity, unrelated to some random act of machismo. This single moment, this roaring benediction, is probably what draws all these people here year after year. Before I head back to my Sentra, I notice the snow has subsided and the clouds have parted. And all across the Baldwin Municipal Airport, bikers are enjoying their moment in the sun. v

to people upstairs. All of that had to be removed.” “The most notable [architectural] thing about the building was the use of petriﬁed wood that was added as padding. But its real claim to fame is the revolving bar,” says Draeger, the historian. “The architect told me the difficulty in designing it was that he didn’t know how fast to make revolve.” Ajango took an educated guess on the Gobbler bar’s speed limit. A few weeks later, Draeger recalls, the architect got a call from Hartwig. “The owner said, ‘Helmut, you have to do something! The bar is spinning so fast that after people have a few drinks, they’re falling off their bar stools.’ He had to re-gear it and slow it down.” Manesis fondly remembers the Gobbler as an elegant establishment where men wore tuxedos and women donned evening gowns. Diners sat in lavender and pink chairs. “But time has passed,” he says. “I just looked at it as an auditorium because it is round. It was not designed as a supper club but as a theater. Our research showed Clarence changed his mind to make it a supper club at the last minute.” The idea to start a theater came to Manesis a few years ago, when his son opened for a band at the Rave in Milwaukee. “It was sort of seedy, and I asked a friend who was a ticket broker how come there wasn’t a nice place in the Milwaukee or Madison area that could seat 400, 500 people. He told me if I had something like that I could get up-and-coming bands or established bands that were starting to slow down, and they would ﬁll a venue of that size. So the hunt began.” He originally sniffed around a vacant movie theater, but it didn’t have enough personality. At the Gobbler Theater, no seat is more than 55 feet from the stage. It hosted a couple of private events in February, and Manesis donated the space to the Johnson Creek School District for a play. The Starship show in April was the first public event. Upcoming concerts include singer-songwriters Sarah Ross and Austin Webb on June 4 and Colorado country singer Clare Dunn on July 15. “The first year we’re trying to establish the Gobbler as a going business,” Manesis says. “Making money is far behind giving folks a good time at an affordable price.” v

lice force. While the Blessing is a very mellow family-and community-oriented event, Robinson says things get rowdier during the weekend carousing. “The craziest thing I’ve seen were some bikers at Sporty’s [Pub and Grill] downtown riding straight through the bar,” he says. Also memorable: the time someone brought an alligator to the Blessing. (Para-Dice has since initiated a strict “no pets” policy.) “The bikers here mostly police themselves,” Robinson explains, a fact proudly reiterated by Huey and others. It’s also what differentiates the Blessing of the Bikes from Baldwin’s other big tourist event, Troutarama, a ﬁshing contest that sees a few more annual arrests. In a tower overlooking the sea of bikes, a 29-year-old guy who goes by Moose has just proposed to his girlfriend, Erica Nicholas, 27, who says her riding name is Jailbait. She’s totally shocked—“I literally screamed!” Erica says later—but her answer is an unequivocal yes. The couple are members of Grand Rapids’ American Sons Motorcycle Club, who sport green bandanas and jackets emblazoned with the association’s mascot, Big Ol’ Boar, a cartoon wild pig chomping down on a knife. “You can’t choose your family,” Moose says. “But in our club, we get to choose our family. If someone’s struggling with bills, we all pitch in.” “We’ll watch each other’s kids,” Erica says. She and Moose are parents to a ﬁve-year-old named Gabriel. They plan to incorporate motorcycles into their wedding in some shape or form. “We’re hoping it will be outdoors, and everyone can pull up to the venue and park their bikes right there,” Moose says. Up onstage, Saint Ann’s Praise Band has started in on a rousing version of “I Saw the Light,” then Father Ron Schneider, also of Baldwin’s Saint Ann Catholic Church, takes the mike for the main event. The tan, silver-haired sixtysomething is wearing a Hulkamania-

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JUNE 2, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 15

What’s so funny about Indiana? The Hoosier State makes a case for seeking comedy beyond Chicago.

The Drop Comedy Club is in the back room of the Dew Drop Inn Restaurant & Lounge in South Bend, Indiana. ò JONATHAN BALDIZON/ DROP COMEDY CLUB

By JASON HEIDEMANN

trip to the Hoosier State via I-90 begins rather inauspiciously. The Chicago Skyway separates the city from northwest Indiana, and as motorists glide over the toll road, they’re greeted by monotonous blocks of homogenous houses, spindly smokestacks, and the Horseshoe Hammond Casino’s gaudy orange and pink sign, which juts out of the grey landscape like a puffed-up, preening peacock. In neighboring Gary, the highway runs past decrepit icons like the once mighty, now moldering Grand Central Station, a place that draws only ruin pornographers these days. Despite the distinct lack of scenery, my imagination is running wild. I’m en route at long last to one of the country’s most unassuming stand-up destinations: the Comedy Attic in Bloomington. It may seem counterintuitive to ditch a comedy hub like Chicago for, of all places, Indiana, but I’ve been told the Attic is incomparable. It’s a club that comedian’s comedians have heaped praise upon: Andy Kindler called the spot “a dream come true,” Maria Bamford described it as “a very special place,”

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and Marc Maron hailed it as “a comedy mecca.” Tonight I’ll see the supremely talented former Chicagoan Kyle Kinane take the stage. But first there’s mile after unmagnificent mile of Indiana to plow through. From I-90, I make a sharp turn south onto I-65. What lies ahead is nothing but assembly-line tract homes, barren cornﬁelds, and the occasional billboard. One near exit 240 tells drivers that “Hell is real.” (Less charitable Chicagoans might say that Indiana residents already know a thing or two about hell on earth.) An oasis comes in the form of the city of West Lafayette, the home of Purdue University. The exit on the interstate is announced by hundreds of windmills languidly rotating under the big blue sky. They wave me in the direction of a roadside treasure, the Triple XXX, which is not the strip club or porn shop it sounds like. The 24-hour diner built in 1929 sits on an oddly sloped lot that lends the place quirky charm, but the fountain root beer and ground sirloin burgers are no novelties. From West Lafayette, Route 231 delivers me directly into Bloomington. Despite having

lost an hour along the way due to the shift in time zone, I arrive at the Persimmon Inn, an immaculate small lodging that happens to be a five-minute walk from the Comedy Attic, early enough to take a disco nap before the show. The Comedy Attic, on the southwestern outskirts of the University of Indiana campus, gets its name because the stage is located on a second floor. The room’s L-shaped layout ensures a comic must constantly swivel during his or her set. Aside from the minor design flaw, I’m otherwise instantly smitten. There’s no drink minimum, not a single corporate party in sight, and no gaggle of bachelorettes wearing penis helmets. Moreover, everyone in the room seems to be talking about comedy. It’s easy to see why aficionados of the form— from Indy and beyond—flock to the Attic. Kinane is masterful. His whip-smart, longform storytelling style is carefully honed, although he does manage the occasional one-liner, including, “I think you can be both a stripper and a mother, but you need to keep separate social media accounts,” and “I’m one Netflix documentary away from becoming

a vegetarian. Ever educate yourself into a corner?” Afterward I ﬁnd myself at the Back Door, a queer bar whose logo features a unicorn with a rainbow shooting out of its ass. The bar also happens to be a sponsor of the annual Limestone Comedy Festival at the Attic. I sidle up to the bar and order a Salad Tosser (other cocktails include the Pink Taco, the Boozy Bottom, and Citron My Face) and pivot to the drag show. This being a college town, I’m older than many in the bar but everyone is ﬂirty and welcoming. Indiana isn’t known as a particularly gay-friendly state, but Bloomington wears its liberalism on its sleeve. It’s the kind of place that elicits all manner of cliched adjectives: “funky,” “arty,” “eclectic”—and they all stick. The U. of I. campus is situated in the middle of a forest. Chain stores are the exception. There’s one last stop on my Hoosier State comedy tour: the Drop Comedy Club in South Bend. On the route north from Bloomington, I stop in Indianapolis. Since my last visit eight years ago, neighborhoods like Fountain Square, Fletcher Place, and Lockerbie Square have become ripe with vintage clothing stores and cheffy eateries and bakeries. What was once an old service station is now Milktooth, a brunch spot where I destroy a pair of made-toorder cinnamon-sugar doughnuts and a Dutch baby pancake. Milktooth is on Virginia Avenue, invaded today by a folk festival. There’s live music every few blocks and vendors hawking all sorts of handcrafted T-shirts, candles, and furniture made with apparent Hoosier pride. The historic downtown of South Bend has seen better days. But the city center, which is quiet on this Saturday night, is ringed by a handful of modern-looking municipal buildings, including a police station, a library, and the St. Joseph County Jail, the facade of which is disarmingly pleasant. Across the street sits the Dew Drop Inn Restaurant & Lounge. The place is a true dive bar, populated by working-class whites—the very same ones who now have us contemplating a Donald Trump presidency. It’s also home to the Drop, a backroom comedy club founded by comedians Jonathan Baldizon and Zachery Boyce. Tonight’s headliner is Kevin White, a very funny Chicago comic (full disclosure: he’s also a friend). “At a glance you’d expect it to be the worst place for comedy,” White says, “but thankfully the club was founded by these young comedy nerds who have good taste.” Last year I drove from Chicago to see Todd Barry at the Drop, and I’ve gone previously

continued on 19

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CO-HOSTS Theaster Gates Jr. (Director, UChicago Arts + Public Life) Steve Edwards (Executive Director, UChicago Institute of Politics) FEATURING Charlene Carruthers (National Director, Black Youth Project 100), Lisa Yun Lee (Director, UIC Department of Art and Art History), Kerwin Charles (Deputy Dean, UChicago Harris School of Public Policy), Mabel O. Wilson (Senior Fellow, Institute for Research in African American Studies in GSAS), Cathy Cohen (author, Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics) …and more to be announced SPECIAL GUESTS Young Chicago Authors, Rebirth Poetry Ensemble, Ethan Michaeli (author, The Defender: How Chicago’s Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America), Kristiana Rae Colón (poet, playwright, actor) …and more to be announced

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JUNE 2, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 17

ò BOBBY SIMS

Amish paradise

Riding bikes with the Pennsylvania Dutch in northern Indiana By JOHN GREENFIELD

hen I was growing up in central Pennsylvania, there were Amish settlements nearby, so you never had to travel far for some Lebanon bologna (Pennsylvania Dutch-style beef sausage) or a jar of “chow-chow” corn relish. But I never saw those technology-averse folks riding bicycles until I took a recent train-and-bike trip to the Amish country of northern Indiana. There, I saw lots of folks, young and old, cycling in black hats and bonnets. They were pedaling everything from Spartan black threespeeds to fancy aluminum road bikes to the goofy-looking recumbent bicycles most often associated with a different breed of bearded men: college professors.

18 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 2, 2016

The raison d’etre for my journey was to try out the new bikes-on-board service on the South Shore Line commuter railroad, which runs from Millennium Park to South Bend, Indiana, the home of Notre Dame University. While Metra has accommodated cyclists since 2005, the South Shore Line dragged its feet on the issue for a ridiculously long time. The railroad ﬁnally launched a pilot program in April. For my maiden voyage, I decided to pay a visit to the plain folk in the heavily Amish region east of South Bend, which includes the towns of Goshen, Middlebury, and Shipshewana. I opted for a pilgrimage to Nappanee, a town of 6,648 that’s home to Amish Acres Farm. It’s sort of a Historic Jamestowne for

Pennsylvania Dutch culture, located an easy 35-mile pedal southeast from the South Bend Airport rail station. I pedaled to Chicago’s Millennium Station early one Saturday morning and rolled my bike onto the South Shore platform, where a conductor cheerfully showed me to the two bike cars. Half of the seats had been removed to make room for the bike racks, with space for a total of 40 bicycles. During the two-and-a-half-hour trip, I boned up on the origins of the Indiana Amish. They are believed to have emigrated from Germany to the American colonies in 1727, seeking religious freedom. Due to a mispronunciation of the word “Deutsch,” they became known as the Pennsylvania Dutch. The first Amish

migrated to northern Indiana in the 1840s, eventually making their way to Nappanee. After arriving in South Bend and riding a few miles on a busy bike path along the broad St. Joseph River, I looked to my left and saw . . . a camel. It was being led around a parking lot by a bearded Amish fellow, with two small boys riding on its hump. The dromedary belonged to Amish-owned Maple Lane Wildlife Farm near Shipshewana, which, judging from its brochure, also features a bear, a lion, a white tiger, a crocodile, and a porcupine. The camel ride was part of a kiddie carnival going on outside South Bend’s awesome indoor farmers market, which had a vast array of produce, including homegrown rhubarb and goods in Ball jars such as pickled beets and FROG jam (fig-raspberry-orange-ginger), plus an excellent giant pretzel stand run by teenage girls in prayer bonnets. I was so eager to eat that I nearly burned my lips on the piping-hot dough. I continued along the river for several more miles, then made my way through gently rolling farmland. Just after the tiny town of Wakarusa—where I bought a bag of giant jelly beans at an old-timey candy store—I spied my first Amish person on a bike. He was a smoothfaced teenage boy in a stereotypical black hat, towing a trailer full of vegetables with an orange caution triangle on the back. He waved. Soon I crossed paths with two teenage girls riding cruisers and wearing long, colorful dresses and bonnets. They didn’t return my greeting. Next I saw a classic black buggy, pulled by high-stepping steeds. As I rolled into Nappanee, I passed an elderly Amish couple on a tandem. It was late afternoon when I pulled up to Amish Acres, a farm founded in 1873 by Moses Stahly, a son of one of Indiana’s earliest Amish settlers. Still standing are the blacksmith shop, a one-room school, a cider mill, a maple sugar camp, a mint distillery for making peppermint or spearmint oil, and an icehouse, plus new buildings housing food and knickknack shops. Buggy and farm wagon rides are offered, and there’s a round red barn that holds a 400-seat musical repertory theatre. Most of the employees are “English” (the Amish term for any non-Amish person), but I did see a few ladies in bonnets working as shopkeepers and waitresses. The day’s activities were winding down, but Sunday morning, before riding back to the train, I returned to the farm for a tour of Stahly’s 130-year-old homestead. It was led by Rhoda Creighton, an “English” lady in a floor-

length dress. She showed us shacks used for smoking meat and drying fruit, and explained how the Amish save ashes to make lye, then mix the lye with lard to form soap. Creighton pointed out a fringe of yellowed newspaper strips hanging from the frame of the farmhouse’s front door. “This was supposed to rustle in the wind and scare away the ﬂies,” she explained. “The Amish have lots of good ideas. I use many of them myself. This is not one of them.” Saturday evening I attended a free wine tasting (while some Amish drink occasionally, the guy who served me was an “English” Vietnam vet). I also indulged in a “thresher’s dinner,” the traditional feast served to workers after a hard day of literally separating wheat from chaff. The massive spread included fresh-baked bread, apple butter, pickles, sweet-and-sour cabbage, ham and bean soup, homemade noodles with beef, green beans, mashed potatoes, sage dressing, country ham, “broasted” (pressure-fried) chicken, sassafras iced tea, and the archetypal Amish dessert, a gooey slice of molasses-based “shooﬂy pie.” I was soon pleasantly stuffed. Unfortunately Amish Acres’ theater wasn’t showing its mainstay musical, Plain and Fancy, the 1955 comedy about two city slickers who travel to Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania, to sell some land to an Amish patriarch. Rather than sit through Forever Plaid, a 1989 musical about a 50s doo-wop group, I took a sunset spin to work off my dinner on the back roads southwest of town, where many of the working Amish farms are located. I soon overtook a group of six 16-yearold boys on various types of bikes, all with fenders, racks, and saddlebags. The boys wore work boots, slacks, colorful shirts, and, interestingly, black knit watch caps instead of typical Amish men’s hats. They seemed stoic but friendly, each greeting me with a “Howdy.” “I didn’t know that Amish people rode bicycles—is that a new thing?” I asked, after explaining I had traveled from Chicago. “No, we’ve always ridden bikes,” replied one of the boys. “We like bike riding. We’ve pedaled up close to Chicago ourselves. We were over at Miller Beach [in Gary] one time. You can even see the Chicago buildings from there.” I asked if they were riding home from work. “No, we’re just out spending the weekend with some other friends,” he said. The teen told me the Amish usually just use bikes for practical transportation, rather than for exercise or recreation. “We seldom just go

Indiana comedy continued from 16 to watch Chicago comics Natalie Jose and Kristen Toomey. Tonight the ﬂoor belongs to White and another Chicago funnyman, Seth Davis. The Drop is fascinating in that it challenges Chicago comics to deliver their set in an environment that’s less friendly than the ones offered by the likes of the Laugh Factory, Zanies, and North Side taprooms. The crowd boos White when he brings up the controversial new North Carolina bathroom law. That is until he wins them back with the punchline: “I miss the simple days when there were just two bathrooms,” he says, “black and white.” Maybe what’s so special about the Hoosier State’s comedy scene is that it provides ready testing ground for new material. New state slogan: “Will it play in Indy?” v

v @jheidemann riding a bike for fun,” he said. I asked if he felt that the Nappanee area was a safe place to ride a bike. “Yeah, this is a pretty good place,” he replied. “Most of the drivers around here are used to bikes, although some of them get a little bit speedy sometimes.” “Well, I guess if they’re used to driving around buggies, dealing with bikes is not a big deal,” I replied. After I bid the Amish teenagers goodbye, I noticed the boys cruising around a bit, and then saw them meet up at a crossroads with some other teens driving a buggy. Some hooting and hollering ensued. As I pedaled back to town by the light of a big pink moon, I felt like a ﬁsh out of water—a bit like Harrison Ford in the 1985 ﬁlm Witness. He plays a Philly police detective taking refuge from killer cops by hiding out in a Lancaster County Pennsylvania Dutch community. (Kelly McGillis costars as his love interest—a sexy Amish widow.) Since, Nappanee doesn’t have much in the way of nightlife, other than the playhouse, my plan was to drink whiskey and read a book in my motel room. It was a little depressing to think these ascetic Amish kids would be having a more fun Saturday night than I would. But the next day I’d be back in the big city, just a bike and train ride away. v

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

JUNE 2, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 19

Metropolis residents rally around the Man of Steel. ò MICHELE LONGWORTH/ METROPOLIS PLANET

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s southern Illinois! Adventures await in Metropolis, Illinois, the oﬃcial “Home of Superman.” By BRIANNA WELLEN

he sun was just starting to rise when I woke up in the front seat of my parents’ minivan. We were on our way back to Chicago from Nashville, traveling overnight through the flat and repetitive landscape of southern Illinois so my mom and I could sleep during the most boring stretch of the journey. My dad, always a morning person, was extra chipper, tapping on the steering wheel and singing out loud to the radio with a smile on his face. “Wake up your mom,” he said, “we’re making a stop soon.” It was 6:30 AM and there wasn’t an exit in sight. “Where?” I asked with little hope. (Was this going to turn into a foraging trip? My dad would often point to weeds growing along the highway and proclaim, “That looks edible!”) But before he could answer, a giant billboard said it all: “The Massac County Chamber of Commerce welcomes you to Metropolis,

20 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 2, 2016

‘Home of Superman.’” The Man of Steel himself—or at least the version of him from volume one of the comics—soared across a map of southern Illinois. Metropolis isn’t just a small town trying to be cute: in 1972 DC Comics rewarded Metropolis with the sole right to the title “Home of Superman.” The city erected a 15-foot-tall bronze Superman statue in 1973; five years later it hosted the first ever Superman Celebration, a gathering of comic book artists, celebrities, and fans honoring the superhero with film screenings, costume contests, and more. In 1993, the Super Museum opened, bringing together more than 20,000 pieces of Man of Steel memorabilia. And even though the town’s rural location and tiny population (around 6,500 people) are more reminiscent of Smallville, the farm town in Kansas where a young Superman ﬁrst landed, the real Metropolis is trying its darnedest

to mirror the bustling ﬁctional metropolis of, um, Metropolis in every way possible. You just have to look for it to see that it’s there. The bronze statue was the only thing my dad, a longtime Superman fan, wanted to see. As we wound our way downtown from the highway, the buildings and businesses we drove past seemed as if they were plucked straight out of Superman’s world: there were a few generically named City National Banks; the local supermarket, Big John’s Grocery, had its own giant statue of a grocer (Big John, I assume) in the parking lot. A giant casino looms over the city, the perfect location for an evil mastermind’s lair. The local paper is even called the Metropolis Planet. The statue of Superman stands at the center of town, hands on his hips, cape blowing in the wind, on a pedestal that reads truth. justice. the american way. My dad posed for a picture at Superman’s

feet, a huge grin on his face. After I snapped the photo, he looked longingly at a nearby row of cardboard cutouts—ones of Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Superman, and a phone booth—wondering how much time we could spare before getting back on the road. We took a glimpse of the Super Museum’s offerings (it opens bright and early every day between 8 and 8:30 AM, and will let you stare in the windows even earlier than that). Inside the museum is Superman aficionado Jim Hambrick’s impressive personal collection of toys, props, and costumes—including a rare George Reeves outfit from Adventures of Superman. We were the only people milling about the town square in these early morning hours, but Metropolis isn’t always so calm. This was the off season, when tourists can take their time perusing the town’s oddities. But thousands of people from across the world come to Metropolis every year for the Superman Celebration. “A lot of our town uses it for people watching,” says Trish Steckenrider, Metropolis’s director of tourism. “You see a lot of men in tights.” In fact, throughout the weekend, the hashtag “#menintights” is used to document the costumes of fans who wander through. When the festival started in 1978—the same year Christopher Reeve first portrayed the Man of Steel on the silver screen—the town statue was only six feet tall and the celebration lasted only one day. “It was just a local event,” Steckenrider says. “A local pastor dressed up as Superman and posed for pictures.” This year’s celebration, from June 9-12, features celebrity guests like Mehcad Brooks and Peter Facinelli from Supergirl, a film festival of fan-created work, trivia nights, scavenger hunts, a parade, and more. Metropolis has some sights outside of the shadow of Superman—Fort Massac, Illinois’s first state park, boasts a disc golf course, a 14mile bike trail, trout pond, nature trails, and campgrounds. Then there’s Mermet Springs, a lake and park that offers scuba diving lessons and hosts archery competitions throughout the year. But even those locations can’t escape Metropolis’s legacy entirely—Mermet will host the Superman Classic Archery Tournament June 21-23. As for my dad, he’s already planning his return trip. There’s nothing he regrets more than not getting a photo with his head on Superman’s body. If you find yourself in Metropolis, Illinois, this summer, don’t make the same mistake. v

v @BriannaWellen

Minor leagues, major fun Baseball beyond Wrigley and the Cell

CHICAGO BANDITS Technically located in Rosemont, the Bandits are the reigning champions of the National Pro Fastpitch League. That’s right: all the hype for the Cubs and Sox this year is about what they could achieve, but the Bandits are actually champs. And if you think that maybe the quality of their game is lacking because they’re women, consider this: their record against male pro baseball teams is currently 7-1. (This year, they’ll face off against the Windy City ThunderBolts of the Frontier League in the third annual Battle of the Sexes game on June 20. The ThunderBolts note hopefully on their website that they are poised for their first win.) Their greatest player, Jennie Finch, is now the manager of the Bridgeport Bluefish, the first woman to manage a professional men’s team, but there are still plenty of Olympians on the roster. Rosemont Stadium, 27 Jennie Finch, Rosemont, 877-722-6348, chicagobandits.com.

By AIMEE LEVITT

j BOBBY SIMS

ejoice and be glad, oh ye Chicagoans, for a miracle has occurred: for the first two months of the season, both the Cubs and the Sox were in first place! And in honor of that miracle, ticket prices have gone up, so that a day at Wrigley Field could, hypothetically, set a family of four back $400. (A day at U.S. Cellular Field costs less, but find one die-hard Cubs fan who’d rather watch the Sox just to save a few bucks.) Hey, nobody ever said witnessing a miracle was cheap.

But if you’re willing to settle for baseball that’s less than miraculous—or, if you want to get sentimental about it, baseball that’s about the fundamentals, a sunny day, hot dogs and beer, and people hitting a ball with a stick, there’s plenty of minor league baseball within driving or biking or Metra distance. It’s also an excuse for a spontaneous trip out of town for an afternoon or an entire weekend, because in the minors, there’s seldom any danger of getting caught unawares by a sellout.

SCHAUMBURG BOOMERS The Boomers, named for the mating call of the prairie chicken, are currently in last place in the independent Frontier League. The team’s general manager is quick to reassure a reporter that Boomers Stadium, with its grassy seating area and ample standing room, was not designed for sellouts. There’s not much glory here, but there’s no pressure, either, except during the Midwest Aerosol Association Continuous Spraying Can Race in the middle of the sixth inning. (Who will it be, Shaving Cream, Sunscreen, or Insect Repellent?) Lawn tickets are $8. It’s the perfect place to take someone, say a small child or a dog (but only on Bark in the Park day),

who has never been to a baseball game before and may not have the interest or the patience to sit through all nine innings. Schaumburg Boomers Stadium, 1999 S. Springinsguth, Schaumburg, 847461-3695, boomersbaseball.com.

KANE COUNTY COUGARS It’s a sad fact of life that not everyone likes baseball. Some philistines find it slow. And boring. The management of the Diamondbacks’ level-A affiliate in west-suburban Geneva is well aware of this, and they’ve resolved to make sure everyone is entertained, even people who’d rather be at home with their Netflix. There’s Frozen night, and Star Wars night, and WWE night. There are special appearances by Jimmy Buffett and Dennis Haskins, who played Mr. Belding on Saved by the Bell. There’s a postgame helicopter candy drop. There’s even Hockey Night, complete with complimentary ice packs, for people who hate baseball so much they have to pretend they’re watching a completely different sport. It’s the quintessential minor-league experience. How could you not enjoy yourself, especially since you won’t have to listen to somebody whine about how boring it is? Fifth Third Bank Ballpark, 34W002 Cherry Lane, Geneva, 630-632-8811, kccougars.com.

GARY SOUTH SHORE RAILCATS Gary isn’t exactly a tourist destination, it’s true. But if you feel like giving it some love, you could do worse than hop on the South Shore Line for an afternoon or an evening at the U.S. Steel Yard. The RailCats play in the independent American Association, which has some of the best team names in all of sports: the Sioux Falls Canaries, the Wichita J

JUNE 2, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 21

continued from 21 Wingnuts, the Laredo Lemurs. The promotional schedule is less, shall we say, frenetic than Kane County’s (though, like the Boomers, the RailCats sponsor a Bark in the Park day and also a Christmas in July white-elephant gift exchange), so there’s more purity to the baseball-watching experience. U.S. Steel Yard, One Stadium Plaza, Gary, IN, 219-882-2255, railcatsbaseball.com.

BELOIT SNAPPERS When you think of Wisconsin, you think of beer. Is it any accident

the state’s major-league team is the Brewers? And thus the promo schedule for the single-A Oakland A’s-aﬃliated Beloit Snappers is dominated by many different terms for barley, malt, and hops. Forget theme nights, Pohlman Field has Thirsty Thursday, $2 Leinie Bottles, Craft Brew Night, and Suds and Spuds every Wednesday, featuring a diﬀerent brewery and unlimited potato chips. As you sit and sip, in a seat you can reserve for as little as $2, ponder why a baseball team would choose a snapping turtle as its mascot. Maybe it’ll make sense by the seventh-inning stretch. Pohlman Field, 2301 Skyline, Beloit, WI, 608362-2272, snappersbaseball.com.

GATEWAY GRIZZLIES The Wrigley Field bleachers may have Hot Doug’s now, but is that any match for Baseball’s Best Hot Dog, served exclusively at GCS Ballpark in beautiful Sauget, Illinois, right across the Mississippi from Saint Louis? We think not. Where else can you get a hot dog smothered in sauerkraut, grilled onions, two strips of bacon, and nacho cheese? As if that’s not enough, GCS Ballpark also has Baseball’s Best Burger, topped with cheddar and bacon

and served on a glazed Krispy Kreme. With attractions like that, you don’t really need Superhero Night, but the Grizzlies provide it anyway, because that’s the kind of full-service organization they are. GCS Ballpark, 2301 Grizzlie Bear, Sauget, 618-3373000, gatewaygrizzlies.com.

IOWA CUBS If you’re truly serious about Cubs baseball and eager to see what the future holds, head out to Des Moines and take in a game at Principal Park, home of the

AAA Iowa Cubs and, just a year ago, Kris Bryant, Addison Russell, and Kyle Schwarber. See? Theo Epstein’s master plan is working! (Well, OK, these Cubs are languishing at the bottom of the Paciﬁc Coast League standings at the moment, but it’s still early.) Then in two years’ time, you’ll be able to look at the Chicago Cubs’ hot young rookie and say you always knew he was going to be a star. Extra bonus: an entire weekend in Des Moines will probably cost you less than an afternoon at Wrigley. Principal Park, 1 Line, Des Moines, IA, 515-243-6111, iowacubs.com. v

v @aimeelevitt

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DIRECTED BY ROBERT

FALLS

A wave of uncertainty spreads across Reynolds, Wisconsin, after a Chicagobased corporation acquires its main employer, leaving workers and their families to fear for their livelihoods and question their personal values.

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t’s theatrical horticulture 101: In our Zone Five arts environment December is for A Christmas Carol and June is when the festivals start coming into bloom. Here are the ﬁrst ﬂowers of the 2016 fest season. —TONY ADLER

PREMIER PREMIERES! A WEEKEND OF NEW MUSICAL COMEDIES A half-dozen new works get full-out stagings, thanks to fest host MCL Chicago. Academia and politics figure big this year: five of the six finalists (culled from among 21 submissions) deal with one or the other. The exception is Muffins: The Musical, featuring a book, lyrics, and additional music (Bonnie Janofsky composed the rest) by Reader critic J. Linn Allen. (6/2-6/4, mclchicago. com) PIVOT ARTS FESTIVAL Various sites in Edgewater and Uptown form the mattress for this tenday orgy of edgy performance pieces. Probable highlights include the Ruffians (responsible for the marvelous Burning Bluebeard) in Ivywild, a look at flamboyantly corrupt Chicago alderman “Bathhouse” John Coughlin. Then there’s Midsummer Dream, in which the Hypocrites—famous for their beach-party Pirates of Penzance, among others—mess with the Bard. And a double bill pairs Kristina Isabelle Dance, performing on stilts in And the Spirit Moved Me, with Juan Villa, whose new solo, Finding Pancho, follows up on the family saga initiated in Empanada for a Dream. (6/2-6/12, pivotarts.org) AMERICAN PLAYERS THEATRE Although it technically takes place in “another state” called Wisconsin, this venerable, Shake-

Felonious Munk ò CLAYTON HAUCK

speare-centric festival always bears a heavy Chicago footprint. Among the productions at APT’s big outdoor amphitheater this season will be a King Lear directed by our town’s William Brown. Inside, at the festival’s 200seat Touchstone Theatre, Derrick Sanders of Congo Square Theatre will stage The African Company Presents Richard III, about a black ensemble in antebellum New York. And if you (very appropriately) loved Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s production of The Tempest last fall, you’ll want to know that an architect of that show, Aaron Posner, will be helming Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. (6/3-10/16, americanplayers.org) NBCUNIVERSAL SECOND CITY BREAK OUT COMEDY FESTIVAL Tim Meadows hosts a showcase for 25 ethnically diverse local comics, including the Defiant Thomas Brothers and sharp Afro-futurism veterans Sonia Denis, Felonious Munk, Martin Morrow, Dewayne Perkins, and Dave Helem. (6/3-6/4, upcomedyclub.com) PHYSICAL FESTIVAL CHICAGO Loved the dancing bag in the 1999 Sam Mendes movie American Beauty? Then you’ll want to see Malgosia Szandera of Spain’s Bag Lady Theatre take things a step further. Her The Bag Lady comprises stories told wordlessly, using plastic bags. Other entries: Brazilian troupe Cia de Teatro Manual in Hominus Brasilis, a history of humanity as recounted by four actors on a 15-square-foot platform, and Chicago’s own Rough House Theatre, using everything from puppetry to cantastoria to illustrate morbid tunes in Sad Songs for Bad People. (6/3-6/11, physicalfestival.com) v

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ARTS & CULTURE

LIT

Demolition plan By LEE BEY

t’s really not a question of whether the building was worthy of designation,” then-alderman Edwin P. Fifielski said of the Chicago Stock Exchange Building in 1971, months before it was demolished for a modern office building, 30 N. LaSalle. “It was a matter of weighing the aesthetic value of the building with the money involved to buy and maintain it. It would be true of any landmark in the city.” And with that, Chicago has famously wrecked much great architecture—and even leveled entire neighborhoods. On the surface, it (unfortunately) makes sense: Who’d want to be stuck with an aging building that’s expensive to maintain—regardless of its architectural import—when a new and efficient structure can be built in its place? But a recent book, Obsolescence: An Architectural History, by Daniel M. Abramson, currently director of architectural studies at Tufts University, challenges those ideas. It explains that building obsolescence is an invented notion, created by Chicago real estate experts in the 1890s as a way to justify a near-ruthless push for profitable new construction. And once these ideas took root, they’d go global in the 20th century, a wild reshaping of cities that put older buildings and neighborhoods in constant peril of demolition. Obsolescence shows how the real estate men, led by the Chicago-based National Organization of Building Owners and Managers (now the Building Owners and Managers Association), were largely guessing when they acted like actuaries and determined building life spans. Their actions helped cost the city treasures like Holabird & Roche’s 14story Tacoma Building, an early steel-framed skyscraper that was demolished in 1929 after

24 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 2, 2016

40 years. “Soon afterward it was replaced by a forty-eight-story tower, which could more lucratively exploit the site in its proprietor’s interests,” Abramson writes. The impact of all this rippled far beyond Chicago. In the 1920s the National Organization of Building Owners and Managers reached out to newspapers, bankers, and public officials across America in order to spread the notion of building obsolescence. During this time, Detroit wrecked a 15-year-old downtown hotel using obsolescence calculations perfected in Chicago. Federal tax laws were changed to take building depreciation into account. Nationally, real estate leaders in the 20s openly claimed new homes had only 50-year life spans. Notions of building obsolescence expanded after World War II, with the methodology tricked out a bit to show how entire neighborhoods could be deemed outmoded and thereafter demolished. Abramson has some good news, though: the sustainability movement, along with architectural preservation, is pushing obsolescence-based building demolition out of favor. Globally, architects, the public, and elected officials are advocating reuse over demolition, he argues. But he wisely cautions that sustainability’s dependence on numbers and data could be as restrictive and problematic as those that supported obsolescence. The wrecking ball still swings a bit freely in Chicago, with building obsolescence given as the reason. But Abramson’s book offers an important rebuttal. v R OBSOLESCENCE: AN ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY By Daniel M. Abramson (University of Chicago Press)

v @LEEBEY

READER RECOMMENDED

b ALL AGES

Cast of The Program ò COURTESY THE ARTIST

TRACY MORGAN JUNE 1 / CIVIC OPERA HOUSE / 8PM

CHRIS GETHARD: ‘CAREER SUICIDE

JUNE 2 / THALIA HALL / 8PM

MICHAEL CHE SOLD OUT! JUNE 2 / LINCOLN HALL / 8PM

CAMERON ESPOSITO WITH DAMIEN LEMON

JUNE 3 / LINCOLN HALL / 8PM

COMEDY

The Program offers computer-generated laughs By BRIANNA WELLEN

want to kill everybody who listens to me as I stumble around this world,” says the character Anthony Bourdain in one scene of a short three-act sketch called “Parts Unknown.” “So what happens if I want to eat up a big freaking octopus?” Bourdain asks later. “What do you think of food and water?” Though the lines may seem like inscrutable nonsense, they’re actually based on the most common phrases the celebrity chef uses on his CNN show. The human hand behind Bourdain’s blather is that of Jamie Brew, head writer of the Onion’s viral-content parody website Clickhole, who guides a custom application that creates sketches based on predictive text. It’s script writing as a Choose Your Own Adventure game: Brew types in a word and, much like a cell phone will suggest words or phrases, the application offers up a few guesses as to what the next word might be. He picks one, gets a few more options based on that choice, and the whole thing goes on until he decides he’s written a scene. The result is The Program, a live show featuring sketches, music, visual art, and a machine on stage that Brew calls a “Hallike computer.” Smartphones predict words based on common conversational phrases, but Program’s

REGGIE WATTS

AND HIS BAND KAREN most-used expressions feed off a variety of sources. “One sketch is generated using all the one-star Yelp reviews for the Statue of Liberty, one starts with Romeo and Juliet as a source and adds some other things in there,” Brew says. “What’s the most likely next word based on the combined sources of Romeo and Juliet and a contemporary erotic novel and the lyrics of Prince?” Brew first dabbled with the idea of using his phone’s predictive function to write short sketches and songs, then applied the knowledge he acquired from a few college computer science classes to write a program that would draw from speciﬁc source material. This year he used it to produce an X-Files script, Craigslist ads, and a scarily accurate transcript of the GOP and Democratic presidential debates. This is the ﬁrst time that scripts generated by Brew’s computer will be performed live, and he hopes it won’t be the last. “I don’t know if it will be sketch shows, musical revues, or whatnot,” he says, “but I don’t intend for this to be the end of the line.” v R THE PROGRAM 6/2-6/24: Fri 8:30 PM, iO Theatre, 1501 N. Kingsbury, theprogram.online, $14.

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Joan of Arc, from left: Theo Katsaounis, Tim Kinsella, Melina Ausikaitis, Bobby Burg (not pictured: Jeremy Boyle)

VISUAL ART

Joan of art

ò CHRIS STRONG

By LEOR GALIL

or better or worse, the American indie-rock touring circuit is clogged with fabled acts celebrating some kind of anniversary. But a nostalgia trip wasn’t what multidisciplinary Chicago artist Tim Kinsella had in mind for Joan of Arc, the band he fronts, which is often categorized as “indie rock” even though it’s deeply experimental in practice. So how does a group that makes what Kinsella describes as “music for no audience” ring in two decades of existence? With a visual-arts show: “JOA20,” opening June 4 at Elastic Arts. The event is appropriate for the group, and not just because it’s an unorthodox proposition. “Many of the members are practicing visual artists just as equally devoted to that discipline as band-life,” Kinsella said via e-mail. “JOA20” features music too—every Tuesday beginning June 21, various offshoots of Joan of Arc will perform (though JOA won’t). That’s a loaded lineup: dozens of musicians have played on Joan of Arc records, and in his essay for the “JOA20” program Kinsella cites 23 others as integral contributors to the band, including engineers such as veteran soundman Elliot Dicks. Joan of Arc’s current core roster—Kinsella, Theo Katsaounis, Melina Ausikaitis, Bobby Burg, and Jeremy Boyle—will DJ the opening-night festivities, and they’ve also contributed art to the exhibit. Joan of Arc’s brazenly eclectic catalog

26 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 2, 2016

is partially due to fusion, and the works in “JOA20” provide an alternative view of the individual elements that give the band its voice. Ausikaitis supplies a mixed-media work that brings together tube socks, canvas, and the Sonic Youth logo. Lin Hixson, cofounder of the experimental-theater ensemble Every House Has a Door, chips in the minimalist stage design she produced for Testimonium, a collaborative performance piece she did with Joan of Arc in 2013 (the band’s album from the same year, Testimonium Songs, came out of the project). Kinsella supplies pages from The Communist Manifesto he’s pockmarked with orange, blue, and pink highlighters. This work in particular is strangely inviting—it’s easy to get frustrated by the messy colors, but the coded notes are absorbing. The stylistically broad collection reminds me of what Kinsella writes about Joan of Arc in his program essay: “We are all free at every moment, together and alone, to throw away any and every part of our own pasts that no longer serve us. And now our own tastes, emerging collectively, were the only relevant standard.” v R “JOA20” Opening reception Sat 6/4, 7-10 PM. Through 8/19, concerts every Tuesday, 6/21-8/16, 8 PM, Elastic Arts, 3429 W. Diversey, 773-772-3616, elasticarts.org. F

v @imLeor

ARTS & CULTURE

Arts Circle Celebration June 4 2016

Booger Red

MOVIES

Where the weird things are

he 23rd edition of the Chicago Underground Film Festival kicked off Wednesday with a tribute to the late experimental ﬁlmmaker Tony Conrad and continues through Sunday at the Logan Theatre. Following are reviews of seven features making their Chicago premieres this year, plus a roundup of six short works screening in various programs. For more information and a complete schedule, visit cuff.org. —J.R. JONES

The Alchemist Cookbook Out in the woods, a young bohemian (Ty Hickson) lives in a trailer and labors over what appears to be a bomb; having run out of his antipsychotic medication, he begins hearing voices and engaging in devil worship; and his only visitor, an old friend (Amari Cheatom), is being chased by some dudes over a drug deal gone bad. There are numerous causes for alarm, so why is this drama by underground hero Joel Potrykus (Buzzard) so painfully dull? Partly because the protagonist is a cipher—he plays with his cat, boogies around to a cassette of the Smoking Popes—and partly because the action functions less as a story than as a checklist of transgressions (eating cat food, killing a possum, self-extracting a tooth). The movie peaks at its midpoint with a chilling nocturnal encounter that blurs the line between hallucination and the genuinely supernatural; the rest of the movie pivots around it, but slowly. —J.R. JONES 84 min. Sun 6/5, 8 PM. Booger Red Inspired by a 2009 story in Texas Monthly, this fictionalized documentary (2015) takes place in the aftermath of the “Mineola Seven” case, in which residents of the title town

CHICAGO UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL

Continues Wed 6/1-Sun 6/5, Logan, 2646 N. Milwaukee, 773-2520628, cuff.org, $10, passes $80

were accused of operating a child-sex ring. A schlubby (and ﬁctional) reporter attempts to interview the actual participants, but the mix of actors and real people reenacting horrible events never quite gels. Director Berndt Mader seems to sympathize with the defendants who claim they were railroaded by the justice system, but by splicing their accounts into an invented story about a reporter battling personal demons, he denies each narrative its proper focus. —DMITRY SAMAROV 96 min. Sun 6/5, 4 PM. Director’s Commentary: Terror of Frankenstein The forgotten British-Swedish coproduction Terror of Frankenstein (1977) gets a fictional commentary track featuring the director (played by Clu Gulager), the screenwriter (Zack Norman), and ultimately star Leon Vitali (playing himself). The conceit works pretty well at ﬁrst: the source movie, a largely visual and remarkably faithful adaptation of the Mary Shelley novel, isn’t bad, and the sour banter between the director and screenwriter adds a second layer of intrigue without obscuring the original movie. But the more writers Jay and Tim Kirk develop the commentary track into a dramatic story of its J

Join us for a daylong celebration of the arts at the Northwestern Arts Circle. Free and open to all. Highlights include: • • • • • • •

Trisha Brown Dance Company’s rooftop performance Inﬂation of Otto Piene’s sculpture Grand Rapids Carousel Tea Project by Aaron Hughes and Amber Ginsburg Cello Happening with more than 150 cellists Appearances by The Actors Gymnasium Audio storytelling with professional Foley artists Moderated Conversation: Why Art Matters

For a schedule of events and map, visit: artscircle.northwestern.edu/celebration

The Arts Together Photo Credits: Elizabeth Goldring. Otto Piene’s inﬂatable sculpture Grand Rapids Carousel, 15th Annual New York Avant Garde Festival, Passenger Ship Terminal, 1980. Courtesy of the artist. Leaning Duets © John Mallison 2010.

JUNE 2, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 27

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CUFF continued from 27 own, revealing a series of murders that took place during the shoot and after the movie’s release, the more the commentary ﬁghts the movie and pales in comparison. The metamovie layer is rescued only by a rich irony: when the filmmakers record their comments, the killings have turned Terror of Frankenstein into a midnight-movie sensation. Tim Kirk directed. —J.R. JONES 92 min. Fri 6/3, 9 PM.

Clown (2002, 30 min.) pushes one past comfort to a benumbed tedium and back again, as a demented harlequin pantomimes freakishness, loneliness, and disturbing insinuations of childhood trauma. A. (1995, 60 min.) is similarly discomﬁting, a black-and-white portrait of a withered It Girl summoning her halcyon days with pills and booze; her derangement and despair are rendered in clear, kaleidoscope detail. —LEAH PICKETT Sat 6/4, 8 PM.

Pastor Paul Jules David Bartkowski directed this indie comedy, which gets a lot of mileage out of his performance as a bumbling math geek. Traveling to Ghana to study the rhythms of its traditional music, he gets cast in a ramshackle movie version of Hamlet (the filmmakers need a pale white guy to play the ghost), but the pressures of guerrilla ﬁlmmaking are too much for him and he seeks out local healers to restore his soul. As a student, Bartkowski worked for a touring theatrical revue in Ghana, and his aﬀection for West Africa is evident here. His send-up of the region’s makeshift cinema shares some of its energy, but the movie could have used a tighter script and less improvisation. —ANDREA GRONVALL 67

The Love Witch This spellbinding ode to exploitation films of the 1960s and ‘70s is impressive not only for its mock-Technicolor hues and period mise-en-scène but also for what lies beneath: a creepy and cunning examination of female fantasy. A widowed witch (Samantha Robinson), heartbroken by the neglect of her late husband, moves to a small town and seduces a string of men with love potions as a way to feel adored. Director Anna Biller—who also wrote, produced, and edited the film, and created by hand many of its vivid costumes and set decorations—embraces the melodrama and vampy camp of ’60s horror while also considering the easy conflation of love, desire, and narcissism. Robert Frost once wrote that “love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired,” and Biller’s witch, both liberated in exploiting her sexuality and repressed by her white-knight fantasies, embodies the idea. —LEAH PICKETT 120 min. Thu 6/2, 9 PM. Luther Price: The Hermit Two raw, confrontational works by experimental ﬁlmmaker Luther Price, both shot on grainy Super-8 but screening in new digital transfers from Anthology Film Archives.

min. Sat 6/4, 9 PM.

The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers Writer-director-cinematographer Ben Rivers credits Pere Portabella’s Cuadecuc-Vampir (1971) as an inspiration for this stunning experimental film, which blurs the line between fiction and nonfiction. The first half features behind-the-scenes footage of Spanish filmmaker Oliver Laxe shooting Mimosas

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in Morocco; in the second half, Laxe, playing a version of himself, becomes the protagonist in an adaptation of the Paul Bowles story “A Distant Episode.” The images, captured with a 16-millimeter Bolex, are uncommonly beautiful, even for such famously photogenic locations as the Atlas Mountains and the Sahara Desert, but the stark imagery is more than matched by the grim narrative, which subverts the notion of European superiority over a once-colonized Africa. In English and subtitled Arabic, French, and Spanish. —ANDREA GRONVALL 98 min. Thu 6/2, 7 PM.

SHORTS

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence but self preservation,” declares the heroine of Jennifer Reeder’s gentle girl-power drama Crystal Lake (Sun 6/5, 6 PM), “and that is an act of political warfare.” The speaker, a Muslim girl whose father is dying, comes to stay with her second cousin in Hammond, Indiana, and contemplates trading the hijab for the pleasures of make-up, skateboarding, and a girl gang. –JJ. Jim Finn’s Chums From Across the Void (Fri 6/3, 8:30 PM) is just the movie for old leftists in need of past life regression therapy. As a crystal bust of Leon Trotsky spins in front of an oscillating wall of electric colors, a voice-over narrator instructs us to give up our corporate capitalist beliefs. You may find all this amusing or annoying, depending on your tolerance for art-school wankery and romanticizing failed ideologies. –DS. With Crippled Symmetries (Fri 6/3, 6:30 PM), Beatrice Gibson makes a valiant attempt to adapt William Gaddis’s epic anticapitalist satire J R, though the short only illustrates the ultimate impossibility of turning any novel

into a film. Made up entirely of dialogue, J R is especially unsuited to the screen, though if the short gets even one viewer to pick up Gaddis’s book, it won’t have been a wasted effort. –DS. Michael Bell-Smith’s whimsical Rabbit Season, Duck Season (Fri 6/3, 8:30 PM) uses the old Bugs Bunny-Daffy Duck cartoon Rabbit Fire (1951) as a study in opposing forces, turning the characters’ realityshifting argument with Elmer Fudd (“It’s rabbit season!” “It’s duck season!”) into a waveform before ultimately settling on a Newton’s cradle as the ideal image. If its steady clacking sound is familiar, that’s because BellSmith uses it in the short’s opening minute to cut from earth to sky to earth again. –JJ. Never underestimate the power of the cinema: in Jon Rafman and Daniel Lopatin’s Sticky Drama (Sat 6/4, 10 PM), it transforms a live action role-playing game, enacted by a bunch of kids in a suburban backyard, into something genuinely disquieting. A jagged electronic-music piece by Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never) accompanies the climactic battle, just as the other narrative thread, about a teen princess keeping a strange beast in her bedroom, erupts into geysers of brightly colored goo. –JJ. In Bernd Lützeler and Kolja Barbara Kunt’s Traveling With Maxim Gorky (Sat 6/4, 5 PM), archival footage of tropical island cruises is accompanied by a voice-over narrator’s humorless musings on colonialism, the clash of cultures, and the very meaning of existence. There’s a static shot during the end credits that advertises travels with Gorky, but no other mention of the Russian writer. We’re left with a seemingly random list of 11 world masterpieces before the screen goes black; what these have to do with the rest of the film is anyone’s guess. –DS v

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HOMEBOY SANDMAN

DJ BASHERT

AESOP ROCK+ROBSONIC&DJZONE

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SATURDAY JUNE 4 / 6:30PM / ALL AGES

FRIDAY JUNE 24 / MIDNIGHT / 21+

THE SCISSORS / SWEEPYHEADS

RAQ + PARTICLE

SATURDAY JUNE 11 / 5:30PM / ALL AGES

MARTIN $KY

A CHICAGO PRIDE MAIN EVENT

SATURDAY JUNE 11 / 11PM / 18+

DJ SETS BY IVAN GOMEZ AND DJ ALEXIS-R HOSTED BY IMP QUEEN / NICO / SARA ANDREWS

THE MATCHES: 10YEARTOUR DALLY AUSTON / QARI / JU SECURITY CULTURE (ALBUM RELEASE) AMERICAN GOTHIC PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS

OTTER PRESENTS

SATURDAY JUNE 25 / 11PM / 21+

NEVERLAND PRESENTS: THE LOST BOYS

NOCTURNA WITH DJ SCARY SATURDAY JULY 2 / MIDNIGHT / 21+ LADY SARAH URBANO BLACK PARTY SATURDAY JUNE 18 / 9PM / 18+ FEATURING LIVE PERFORMANCE BY TEAIRRA MARI SUNDAY JULY 3 / 10PM / 21+ BLACK PISTOL FIRE THE HUNNA / TOUCHED BY GHOUL UNDERGROUND SUNDAY JUNE 19 / 6:30PM / ALL AGES RESISTANCE VS QUEEN! AGAINST ME! METRO: TIMELINE [LIVE] / JOHN COLLINS / MARK CLUBHOUSE/URBANO & RAILS PRESENT

A METRO/SMARTBAR ALL-BUILDING EVENT

TIM BARRY / FEA

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7/9 TANKS & GUNS • 7/13 CARCASS & DEAFHEAVEN • 7/23 ACCEPTANCE • 8/5 GHOSTFACE KILLAH + RAEKWON 8/6 L7 • 8/8 BROODS • 8/9 DIGITOUR SUMMER 2016 • 8/14 BORIS PERFORMING PINK • 8/19 X RE-ZOOMED! • 8/27 ARCADIA + RED RIVER • 9/9 RUSSIAN CIRCLES • 9/10 BAND OF SKULLS • 9/22 PITCH TALKS: A SERIES FOR BASEBALL LOVERS THURSDAY JUNE 2

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30 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 2, 2016

MUSIC

GREG WARD & 10 TONGUES AND ONYE OZUZU DANCERS PERFORM TOUCH MY BELOVED’S THOUGHT

ò ZAKKIYYAH NAJEEBAH

Wed 6/1 through Fri 6/3, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $15, 18+

Greg Ward returns to Chicago on Mingus wings

A multidisciplinary project inspired by The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady helped lure the saxophonist back from New York—and it could make for his biggest album yet. By PETER MARGASAK

hicago saxophonist Greg Ward is one of the most versatile jazz musicians of his generation, with a deep-seated curiosity that drives him to push himself into new territory. Through decades of study, the 34-year-old Peoria native has immersed himself in the jazz canon, particularly music that arose in the wake of

his first great hero, bebop pioneer Charlie Parker. So it’s odd that it wasn’t till last year that Ward ﬁrst heard the classic 1963 Charles Mingus album The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady—the inspiration for his new album, Touch My Beloved’s Thought (Greenleaf). A six-part suite for an 11-piece band, Black Saint is one of the legendary bassist and com-

GREG WARD & 10 TONGUES PERFORM TOUCH MY BELOVED’S THOUGHT

Fri 7/29, 9 PM, and Sat 7/30, 8 PM, Green Mill, 4802 N. Broadway, $15, 21+

poser’s densest and most ambitious works, constantly shifting directions and moods with the help of ingenious postsession editing by producer Bob Thiele; its lush, polyphonic arrangements draw on jazz from every era, gospel music, and flamenco (thanks to guitarist Jay Berliner). “I wrote the music for dancing and listening,” Mingus explained in the liner notes. He insisted that his label, Impulse! Records, use the slogan it applied to its folk releases: “The New Wave of Folk Music Is on Impulse!” Drummer and bandleader Mike Reed, whose quartet People, Places & Things has included Ward since its founding in 2006, sent the saxophonist a link to Black Saint, and the record blew him away. Reed was inviting Ward to launch a multidisciplinary project that would take Mingus’s music as the jumping-off point for a new jazz suite paired with a dance piece by Chicago choreographer Onye Ozuzu, who was appointed dean of the School of Fine & Performing Arts at Columbia College this spring. Accepting that invitation would end up being a huge turning point for Ward—and not just because it led to his highest-profile release yet. He’d relocated to New York in 2009, but three months after premiering Touch My Beloved’s Thought in August 2015 in Millennium Park, he moved back to Chicago. Touch My Beloved’s Thought takes its name from a line of poetry on the cover of the original Mingus release, and the title applies both to Ward’s album and to the multidisciplinary performance—whose dance component Mingus might have wished for more than five decades ago. Greenleaf Music, the label run by trumpeter Dave Douglas, will release a live recording of the piece on July 8. This week Ward’s band 10 Tongues play the music again, accompanied by seven dancers executing Ozuzu’s choreography (last summer’s performance had 15). In some ways it’s a homecoming for Ward, who became a fixture at jam sessions all over town as a teenager in the late 90s and maintained a regular presence here even when he lived in New York. Today he’s something of an elder statesman in the Chicago jazz community, toughened by six years in New York’s dog-eat-dog scene. When Ward was in the fourth grade in Peoria, he first got the chance to learn an instrument. He wanted to play drums or trumpet, but he picked up the violin first—he started on the saxophone a year later because his fa-

GREG WARD QUINTET

Tue 6/7, Tue 6/14, Tue 6/21, and Tue 6/28, 9:30 PM, Whistler, 2421 N. Milwaukee, free, 21+

ther had an alto in the closet at home. His dad worked full-time as the musical director at a local church, but Ward discovered jazz on visits to his maternal grandmother’s home—he would watch her VHS tapes of biopics about Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller over and over. By the summer before eighth grade, he was hooked. “My dad introduced me to Charlie Parker via the movie Bird, which was the actual moment I knew that I would be involved in music forever,” he says. At age 14, Ward was already gigging regularly in Peoria, and after becoming friends with Chicago trumpeter Maurice Brown, he began making regular trips to the big city—he’d hit Von Freeman’s legendary weekly jam at the New Apartment Lounge or sit in with the Hillcrest High School jazz band around town. His grades suffered a bit—he’d formerly been a straight-A student— but he was nonetheless accepted to Northern Illinois University in 2000. While in college in DeKalb, he continued making frequent trips to Chicago. “I noticed that there were these different scenes,” he says. “At the time I kind of codified it as: there were north-side swingers, the north-side free scene, there was the south-side swingers, and then the AACM. It was always funny to me that they seemed so separate. I thought it was interesting, but I enjoyed it all. I’ve always tried to spend as much time in each camp as I could.” Every gig was part of the saxophonist’s education, and he devoured new sounds, both by checking out records at school and by exploring the city’s musical subcultures. “I would play all kinds of different music, almost four or five nights a week,” he says. “I was going out to hear African music, going out to hear Indian music, getting to play in all of these different bands on the Latin scene as well as the gospel scene, funk, rock, and hip-hop.” To this day Ward moves fluently between styles. In 2002, during his second year at NIU, Ward started running the celebrated Sunday jam session at Fred Anderson’s Velvet Lounge, partnering for the first year with drummer Vincent Davis. He stayed on till 2006, and the session’s house band—bassist Joshua Ramos, drummer Marcus Evans—became his first working group as well as the first he’d write music for. In 2003 he became a member of Loose Assembly, an early quintet led by Reed. Another important milestone arrived in 2005, when Ward received a commission to compose music for an original production J

JUNE 2, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 31

32 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 2, 2016

MUSIC continued from 31 by the Peoria Ballet Company called Wings. The 40-minute work featured 40 dancers, and Ward was part of a quintet that played the score live. Development dragged on for a couple years due to funding issues, but the piece eventually premiered in 2008. “It was one of the best learning experiences of my life, having to deal with how to write for an ensemble, writing something more than just head charts, and also how to participate in a multimedia project,” he says. “The visual artist Preston Jackson did the set design, so all of these things were brand-new to me. I just threw myself into this unfamiliar territory. That’s kind of been my MO ever since—to throw myself into things I have no business doing, and beneﬁting greatly from it.” Thanks to a friendship with Chicago Symphony Orchestra cellist Katinka Kleijn, Ward got commissions in 2006 and 2007 to write music for International Contemporary Ensemble and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s chamber music series. He was also spreading his wings in other areas. In 2005 he met guitarist Nathaniel Braddock while they were both giving private music lessons at Anderson Musik in suburban Northbrook, and he shortly became a founding member of Braddock’s pan-African combo Occidental Brothers Dance Band International. Ward learned about Congolese and Ghanaian music as the band developed—Braddock would give him CD mixes packed with background information. In 2006, in addition to joining People, Places & Things, he formed another band of his own, the fusion quartet Fitted Shards. The many other groups he worked with over the next few years included Blink, Living by Lanterns, and outﬁts led by drummer Charles Rumback, bassist Karl Seigfried, pianist Darwin Noguera, and guitarist Bill MacKay. In late 2008, though, Ward tried to buy an apartment in Chicago, and when the seller screwed up some paperwork and the deal fell through, he took it as a sign to follow through on his long-simmering desire to move to New York. A friend had a lead on an apartment in Harlem so cheap that Ward leased it even though he wasn’t ready to leave—he paid rent on it for four months while still living here. Upon arriving, Ward quickly realized he had to change the way he worked. Though he loved pursuing a variety of projects, which let him branch out and experiment, he knew he’d have to focus ruthlessly on one thing in order to compete in New York. “Going there was a complete eye-opener,” he says. “There are so many

At chicagoreader.com/music you can read this whole story, as well as hear a track from Greg Ward’s new Touch My Beloved’s Thought and watch a video of his band rehearsing the piece with Onye Ozuzu’s dancers.

talented folks trying to do exactly what I was doing, in the sense of trying to get something going. I found that I needed to make a decision about what scene I wanted to be involved with, because otherwise you’d just be swept away by the massive output of media there.” He got through his first year in New York mainly by busking with a trio in Central Park. The woman who’d become his wife in 2013, Diana Quiñones Rivera, worked nearby and came by regularly to check out the group. In 2011 he released an album called Phonic Juggernaut (Thirsty Ear) with a different trio, drummer Damion Reid and bassist Joe Sanders. He could rarely play with the band, though—another learned lesson in New York. “Everybody has to be gone all of the time, touring, to make a living,” he says. In part because he had to be on the road so often, Ward continued over the next four years to work more regularly with Chicago bands than with bands in New York—and it was by maintaining those connections that he came to write Touch My Beloved’s Thought. Reed mentioned the project to him because in late 2014 he’d started talking about it with Roell Schmidt, director of dance and performing arts nonprofit Links Hall (in residence at Reed’s venue Constellation). She’d recently heard The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady herself. “I had just listened to the CD for the first time, and didn’t understand at ﬁrst why Black Saint isn’t a staple of American masterpieces and played live all the time,” she says. “And also why it hadn’t been danced like Mingus intended. I brought it to Mike and said we should do this—I’d ﬁnd the choreographer and dancers, and he’d pull in the musicians.” Schmidt originally thought the group might perform Black Saint itself, but Reed persuaded her that its postproduction editing would make that impractical. He also realized he couldn’t lead the band himself. “Roell presented me with the idea, but I was already conceiving my own Flesh & Bone project, and I knew that I wouldn’t have the time,” says Reed. “I thought it could be a great vehicle for Greg.” This story continues at chicagoreader.com/music.

WE’RE WAITING FOR YOU. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

When you’re here, you’re part of it. Set your own tone. Get in your own groove. Join up with people from all walks of life, from all over Chicago and the world. Strike a chord with us this summer. Find your folk at the Old Town School of Folk Music. Daytime, weekend and evening classes begin June 20. Sign up at oldtownschool.org

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JUNE 2, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 33

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JUNE 10

MIKE COOLEY (OF DRIVE-BYTRUCKERS)

W/ SPECIAL GUEST JESSE DAYTON

6.8

RYAN MONTBLEU

6.16

IRIS DEMENT

(SOLO)

6.9

SAM BUSH BAND

6.18

6.11

ALICE PEACOCK

W/ SPECIAL GUEST RALPH COVERT

34 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 2, 2016

CÉU

ANDY MCKEE

W/ SPECIAL GUEST THE GRAHAMS

6.24

6.27

DAVID BROZA SONGS & STORIES -AN ALL REQUEST SHOW

6.19

RHETT MILLER

7.2

TALIB KWELI 7PM & 10PM SHOWS

W/ SPECIAL GUEST CLARENCE BUCARO

Recommended and notable shows, and critics’ insights for the week of June 2

MUSIC

'Tis the festival season as Do Division is first to hit the streets Sturgill Simpson

ò RETO STERCHI

THURSDAY2 Cullen Omori Walters open. 9 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, $15. 18+ At the end of 2014, the local garage-rock wunderkinds turned indie-rock big shots in the Smith Western decided to call it quits at the height of their success. The first post-Westerns project emerged last summer in the form of Whitney, a band that features guitarist Max Kakacek and drummer Julien Ehrlich patiently crafting soulful, sunny AM gold. But former Smith Westerns front man Cullen Omori runs in a totally different direction on his brand-new solo debut, New Misery (Sub Pop), instead shedding rock influences and implementing synthy, bubbly, new-wavey pop. The record picks up where the Smith Westerns’ final LP, 2013’s Soft Will, left off, and its electronic flourishes and shimmery tones sound about as far away as possible from the high-strung garage-rock Omori grew up with. It’s a drastic shift best heard on the record’s first single, “Cinnamon,” a dancey and saccharine track that would sound right at home on 80s-pop radio smack-dab in the middle of a couple Madonna tunes. —LUCA CIMARUSTI

ò ISAAC STERLING

YOU KNOW FESTIVAL SEASON is about to hit full swing when Do Division Street Fest arrives. Spanning Division Street between Damen and Leavitt, this start-of-summer staple, now in its tenth year, hosts two stages of live music over its three days. As usual the Empty Bottle books the east-side stage, and it’s a stacked bill, with plenty of farout sounds: sets come from funky hip-hop DJ Peanut Butter Wolf, harsh New York new wavers A Place to Bury Strangers, noise-metal duo the Body (see page 37), and indie rockers Beach Fossils. Subterranean once again programs the west-end stage, with a lineup that includes country singer Nikki Lane, Minneapolis-based indie hip-hop collective Doomtree, jazzy electronic project Bad Bad Not Good, and indie-folk outsiders Fruit Bats. Plenty of local music is represented as well, with the likes of Ne-Hi, Bloodiest, ShowYouSuck, Lifted Bells, and Al Scorch appearing throughout the weekend. The festival includes a load of beer and food, plus arts and crafts vendors and the requisite Family Fun Fest, which hosts kid-friendly activities like face painting, pony rides, and children’s music. —LUCA CIMARUSTI v 6/3-6/5: Fri 5-10 PM, Sat-Sun noon-10 PM, Division between Damen and Leavitt, do-divisionstreetfest.com, $5 suggested donation, all-ages

wall—a Parisian church organist whose presence only seems to magnify the duo’s rapport—into the fray. Lindwall is an adventurous spirit, and together they generate richly atmospheric excursions, fully taking advantage of the sonorous ambience of the 12th arrondissement’s Église du Saint-Esprit. The duo themselves will wind down their ﬁrst Chicago visit in a quartet performance with drummer Tim Daisy and saxophonist Dave Rempis; saxophonist Nick Mazzarella and drummer Tollef Ostvang open. —PETER MARGASAK

PICK OF THE WEEK

Peanut Butter Wolf

ALL AGES

Susana Santos Silva & TorbjÖrn Zetterberg 9 PM, Elastic, 3429 W. Diversey, $10 suggested donation. b Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva and Swedish bassist Torbjörn Zetterberg are two of the most exciting figures in European improvised music, never drawing lines between tradition and experimentation. As a member of Zetterberg’s superb Charles Mingus-flavored sextet Och Den Stora Frågan, Silva adds a full-bodied yet delicately lyric presence, but tonight she’ll show off her equally versatile duo practice with the bandleader. Their 2013 album Almost Tomorrow (Clean Feed) consists mainly of free improvisation, though Zetterberg slyly reveals a deep connection to jazz history: the title track, its name a play on Monk’s “’Round Midnight,” features a similar melody, here voiced in grainy, sumptuously vulnerable half-valved lines from Silva, well supported by Zetterberg’s dark thrum. Elsewhere there’s loads of extended technique as the duo craft turbulent yet subdued atmospheres on “Knights of Storvälen” and strident, knotted explosions on “Falling and Falling and Falling.” For last year’s terrific If Nothing Else (Clean Feed) they invited British native Hampus Lind-

FRIDAY3 Nones Toupee and Absolutely Not open. 10 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, $8.

When we last checked in on the local Flipper-worshipping foursome known as Nones they had just released their 2014 debut LP, Midwestern Family Values, on HoZac and pared their lineup down to a trio. At this show the noise-rock band celebrate a massive leap forward with the self-released Xoxoxo Sue. The formula of Nones has stayed firmly intact: the primal, muscular rhythm section swings and grinds while singer-guitarist Brandon Bayles spreads out-of-this-world atonal, psychedelic leads atop it all. The highlight has always been Bayles’s deranged vocals, and on Sue he delivers bleak lyrics about suicide, loneliness, violence, and drug addiction in a sing-songy, almost nursery-rhymelike scheme that adds a twisted, unsettling sense of glee to the darkness. The title comes from the track “Sue’s Idol,” on which an obsessed fan gives the narrator a reason not to end it all. It’s a great record front to back, and serves as the band’s departing high note—because after a handful of shows in support of the release, Nones are calling it a day and Bayles is skipping town. —LUCA CIMARUSTI

Heron Oblivion Chris Forsyth & the Solar Motel Band and Bill MacKay & Ryley Walker open. 9 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, $12.

Three members of this San Francisco quartet have long raised a psychedelic ruckus, generating crushing guitar jams through a slew of eﬀects pedals and updating the sounds of the 60s with the noise of the 90s. Ethan Miller and Noel Von Harmonson ﬁrst did their damage in Comets on Fire along with a variety of other bands, while Charlie Saufley purveyed a more pop-oriented din in Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound. Each continues to operate with paint-peeling fury in Heron Oblivion, but on the group’s fantastic eponymous debut for Sub Pop, Meg Baird is the real game changer. A Philadelphia transplant who made her name on a series of fragile solo albums for Drag City following a long stint in Espers, Baird plays drums with an elegant minimalism that nonetheless provides firepower to the other players, while her gossamer, delicate voice and exquisite melodies make this band something special. Stinging guitar leads scream out of the gate alongside tom bombs on “Oriar” before the sonic seas part suddenly for a vocal that one might expect from Sandy Denny— but as soon as Baird finishes a verse the guitars storm back. Heron Oblivion don’t play a loud- J

JUNE 2, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 35

MAKING A MURDERER’S DEAN STRANG AND JERRY BUTING

KEVIN JAMES

MARTIN LAWRENCE

CULTURE CLUB

MAKS AND VAL

case/lang/veirs

THURSDAY, JUNE 16

FRIDAY, JUNE 24 SATURDAY, JUNE 25

A CONVERSATION ON JUSTICE FRIDAY, JUNE 3

ORIGINAL LINE-UP IS BACK: BOY GEORGE, ROY, MIKEY & JON FRIDAY, JULY 22

FROM DANCING WITH THE STARS FRIDAY, JULY 29

(neko case / k.d. lang / laura veirs) SUNDAY, AUGUST 7

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chase.com/chicagotheatre 36 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 2, 2016

M A RQ U EE PA R T N ER O F T H E C H I CAGO T H E AT R E ®

The Chicago Theatre provides disabled accommodations and sells tickets to disabled individuals through our Disabled Services department, which may be reached at 888-609-7599 any weekday from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Debit cards are provided by JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. Member FDIC Credit cards are issued by Chase Bank USA, N.A. © 2015 JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

Sunn O))) ò PETER HOÌNNEMANN

continued from 35

a Bad Sign,” a Bell composition made famous by Albert King, and a countriﬁed spin on Jesse Winchester’s empathic “All Your Stories.” “Walking on a Tightrope,” a heartening proclamation of devotion, was written by Leventhal and his wife, Rosanne Cash, but Bell owns it as much as anything he’s ever sung. This performance is one of only four scheduled U.S. dates. —PETER MARGASAK

soft-loud game here so much as engage in a thrilling, constantly shifting tug-of-war where both guitars throb at their coruscating, post-Crazy Horse best as Baird’s gorgeous voice spins lines of exquisite, tender beauty. —PETER MARGASAK

Sturgill Simpson 8:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, 4746 N. Racine, sold out. 18+ Two years ago it seemed like Sturgill Simpson was intent on bringing fresh ideas to alternative country, embracing the sound of the 70s and reﬂecting an uncut ennui that collided with lots of emotional darkness. With his striking new album A Sailor’s Guide to Earth (Atlantic), however, he makes clear he’s following no one’s agenda but his own, opening up his postoutlaw sound with heavy doses of vintage soul and southern-fried rock while somehow steering clear of arch postmodernist garbage. Here Simpson has fashioned an old-school concept record, imagining himself a sailor writing a series of letters home to his son—imparting his love, wisdom, and stories. The opener, “Welcome to Earth (Pollywog),” starts as a turgid piano ballad glossed with strings and tympani swells before turning into a horn-stoked (courtesy of the Dap-Kings brass) Memphis R&B stomper, and elsewhere he transforms Nirvana’s “In Bloom” into a string-and-hornsoaked anthem. What makes it all work is Simpson’s

MUSIC

remarkable voice, a powerful howl that transplants the nasal twang of Waylon Jennings onto the late60s spangled jumpsuit of Elvis Presley. “Keep It Between the Lines” advises his boy to keep his nose clean over a groove that shimmies like the Otis Redding classic “Hard to Handle,” while the jacked-up “Brace for Impact (Live a Little)” oﬀers balance with a plea for us all to have some fun. As much as previous records felt estranged from current Nashville tastes, this new one arrives from outer space, and is all the more powerful because of it. —PETER MARGASAK

SATURDAY4 William Bell John Leventhal opens. 8 PM, SPACE, 1245 Chicago, Evanston, $22-$42. b The big PR hook for soul veteran William Bell’s terriﬁc new album This Is Where I Live is that he’s back

with Stax Records, where he launched his career in 1961 with the hit “You Don’t Miss Your Water.” It makes for good copy, I suppose, but these days Stax isn’t much more than a brand, with little connection to the paradigm-shaping Memphis label. What’s exciting, though, is that on his first new record in a decade the 76-year-old Bell sounds undiminished, and the album’s mostly new batch of songs are all worthy of his voice. Writing with coproducer John Leventhal, whose often-slick style doesn’t interfere, Bell meditates on romantic discord from the perspective of someone experienced but imperfect. With clear undertones of the Bell classic “I Forgot to Be Your Lover,” the album’s opening ballad, “Three of Me,” is an exercise in the pains of taking stock, as the narrator must choose between who he was, who he is, and who he should be. That’s followed by “The House Always Wins,” a rear-view look at a doomed relationship. Throughout, Bell’s pitch command remains peerless as he tackles hooky melodies with ease and elegance; the album also includes a version of “Born Under

The Body Rectal Hygienics and Bloodyminded open. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $8.

Originally out of H.P. Lovecraft’s old turf in Providence, but now based in Portland, Oregon, superheavy duo the Body have a long history of augmenting their stripped-down lineup through productive collaborations—their list of works made with the likes of Braveyoung and Thou is nearly as long as their own discography. This year they’ve already punched us with a double whammy: a collaboration with Full of Hell called One Day You Will Ache Like I Ache (Neurot), and their ﬁfth duo outing, No One Deserves Happiness (Thrill Jockey), the follow-up to 2014’s Haxan Cloak collab I Shall Die Here. As always, the Body build atop the steady foundation of Chip King’s monster riﬀs and Lee Buford’s drumming and evil programming, and there’s no element they’ll balk at using. No One Deserves Happiness places horns and strings, pretty-clean vocals, and a skewed sense of elec- J

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06.02 FOX AND THE ACRES

DOUBLE FEATURE / PAREIDOLIA / CABRONA

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

WITH SPECIAL GUESTS

OFFICIAL AFTERSHOW

06.04 WHEELER WALKER JR. BIRDCLOUD

06.09 LOS AMIGOS INVISIBLES SPECIAL GUEST

FREELANCE WRESTLING PRESENTS

panama wedding OFFICIAL AFTERSHOW

PWR BTTM / PETAL

07.10 THE PLOT IN YOU

ERRA / SYLAR / INVENT, ANIMATE

07.13 ARCHITECTS

COUNTERPARTS / SWORN IN / MAKE THEM SUFFER 1833 PRESENTS

07.14 XXYYXX

06.18 ANDY BLACK - THE HOMECOMING TOUR

07.14 TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

06.24 WE WERE PROMISED JETPACKS

07.20 I PREVAIL

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06.25 HITSLEEP

REV GUSTO / THE BANK NOTES / RIVER SNAKES

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06.10 FREELANCE WRESTLING VS THE WORLD

PRISM TATS

OFFICIAL AFTERSHOW

FREELANCE WRESTLING PRESENTS

07.08 COMBAT ZONE VS FREELANCE WRESTLING

LUMINATE / EDAMAME UPSTAIRS AT BOTTOM LOUNGE

THE STONE FOXES / MAIL THE HORSE THE NOISE PRESENTS

THE WHITE NOISE / MY ENEMIES & I

08.13 THE FALL OF TROY ‘68 / ILLUSTRATIONS

07.07 BELLY - LIVE FROM THE SHADOWS TOUR

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JUNE 2, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 37

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Freakwater The Kickback The Pact Hemmingbirds The 4onthefloor Hey Monea The Social Animals Jonas Friddle & The Majority Man Called Noon Cardinal Harbor The Black Tape Hiber Kevin Presbrey

Chicago Cubs • Illinois State Representative Greg Harris Macaroni Kid • The UPS Store

38 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 2, 2016

Produced by

In Threes

MUSIC Heron Oblivion ò ALISSA ANDERSON

continued from 37

tronic pop into its meat grinder of despair and summons a maelstrom that’s all the crueler for its illusions of respite. The Body also perform earlier today at the Do Division Street Fest (see page 35); their set begins at 5:30 PM on the east stage. —MONICA KENDRICK

Shirley Caesar Part of the Chicago Gospel Music Festival. Hezekiah Walker & the Love Fellowship Choir headline; Travis Greene, Shirley Ceasar, William Murphy, Brian Courtney Wilson, and the Great Migration Centennial Mass Choir open. 6:30 PM set (music starts at 4 PM), Pritzker Pavillion, Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph. F b Shirley Caesar’s career is proof that some of the finest classic soul singers can be found in gospel music, the birthplace of soul. The fervor of vintage Caesar tracks like “The Last Days” or the mostly a cappella “Tear Your Kingdom Down” isn’t just equal to that of Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, et cetera, it’s also the source. While she’s occasionally recorded secular songs with inspirational themes, Caesar’s left little doubt about where she stands. “He Heard My Cry” begins with a monologue about “A white man . . . sent from New York City” who offers her “a contract to sing the rock & roll,” which she accepts only on the grounds that she can “Rock for Jesus and roll for God.” Caesar first came to prominence when she joined the Caravans in 1958, cutting such seminal gospel classics as “I Won’t Be Back” and “Walk Around Heaven All Day” (a thinly disguised rewrite of “That Lucky Old Sun”). Her solo career commenced in 1966, and she really hasn’t looked back since, becoming a giant star in the genre. Her brand-new album, Fill This House (Light), manages the nearly impossible task of updating a traditional sound without diluting it. At a Chicago Gospel Music Festival appearance in 1998, she urged the entire crowd at Grant Park to sing along, adding, “This isn’t a rock show!” Gospel Fest has since moved up the street to Millennium Park, and while it’s certainly still not a rock show, if you want to see where some of the finest R&B singers got their licks, look no further. —JAMES PORTER

Dej Loaf 7:30 PM, Portage Theater, 4050 N. Milwaukee, $30-$75. 18+ One listen to Dej Loaf’s eﬀortless 2014 breakout single “Try Me” does a lot to show why the Detroit rapper-singer sits on the precipice of stardom: over a dreamlike, levitating instrumental, her assured, tranquil vocals morph from strong, coruscated rapped bars to luxuriant Auto-Tune-flecked singing and

back again. At the end of a string of iconoclastic boasts Dej Loaf raps, “And I ain’t signin’ to no label, bitch, I’m independent,” which was the case when “Try Me” was first released, but by October 2014 she’d inked a deal with Columbia. The label hasn’t reined in Dej Loaf’s distinctive pop voice. Her 2015 EP And See That’s the Thing includes “Back Up,” a sinister, twinkling quasi-ratchet track that samples Chicago footwork producer DJ Clent, and Dej Loaf’s coiled raps more than make up for the guest appearance by Big Sean. Her recent All Jokes Aside mixtape is more of a stopgap, though on the inviting “Die 4 It” Dej Loaf calmly shows how easily she can swerve towards pop while keeping her ﬁerce bite intact. —LEOR GALIL

Thumbscrew 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $15, $10 in advance. 18+ From their start Thumbscrew have made thorny, tightly coiled, and wonderfully convoluted music, following a logic where lines zig and zag as a rule and rarely hit a straightaway. But for the trio’s brand-new second album, Convallaria (Cuneiform), they’ve pushed things even further, heightening complexity while playing with increased clarity. Guitarist Mary Halvorson, drummer Tomas Fujiwara, and bassist Michael Formanek have worked together regularly in different contexts, but they developed and composed the music for this album during a rare two-week stay in Pittsburgh sponsored by the BNY Mellon Jazz Residency, where they were able to sink deeply into their material—a luxury rarely afforded in a discipline that requires most musicians to keep busy playing in bands where they don’t get to seriously woodshed. Most pieces hurtle through numerous episodes of generous improvisation embroidering tightly wound arrangements, making the album feel through-composed. Named for a spidery flower as lithe as her snaking, needling guitar lines, Halvorson’s “Cleome” opens the record, getting its thrust from a wonderfully knotty, sideways groove sculpted with surprising out-of-sync fluidity by Fujiwara and Formanek. She further mucks things up on the balladlike “Trigger,” her mangled guitar phrases sounding like they’re being played back on a wrinkled piece of recording tape. Elsewhere “Danse Insensé” is a dazzling showcase for the drummer, a gentle abstraction of rumbalike percussion over tangled guitar and bass support. I heard the trio play this material last September at the Guelph Jazz Festival while still in the process of fully internalizing the music—and with a subconscious ease they generated sparks with every twist and gnarled turn. I imagine the ability to spontaneously build upon these dizzying pieces has only magnified with time. Brace yourself. —PETER MARGASAK J

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SAM PACE, ROCKET CATHEDRAL, ALIBI JUNE 2, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 39

2016

THURSDAY, JUNE 2 7PM

Yemen Blues

Part of the Israeli Jazz and World Music Festival

FREE JUNE 7–JULY 26 TUES, JUNE 7 7–8:30pm James Park

The Congregation Classic soul meets ST^Z _U_ STYY

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7–8:30pm Bent Park

Brian O’Hern & The Model Citizens

A unique, happy, “Big Band” sound Food trucks on site

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7–8:30pm Brummel Park

R-GANG

R&B, funk & soul from the Motown era into the 21st Century Food truck festival

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7–8:30pm, Mason Park

The Victory Travelers

One of Chicago’s longest running traditional Gospel quartets

Peter Oprisko Pop Jazz Band

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LEFT LANE CRUISER SHAWN JAMES • CURIO 40 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 2, 2016

continued from 39

MONDAY6 MusicNow 7 PM, Harris Theatre, 205 E. Randolph, $26. b

at Thalia Hall • 1807 S Allport Ave

Los Perros Cubanos

TUES, JULY 5 7–8:30pm Leahy Park

Old Town School Uncovered 17 Songs: A Tribute to Prince

FRIDAY, JUNE 10 8PM

La Musica Cubana from the 1940s to today

FRI JUNE 3

FRIDAY, JUNE 3 8PM

TUES, JULY 26

7–8:30pm, Dawes Park

MUSIC

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Find more music listings at chicagoreader. com/soundboard.

The final MusicNow concert of the first season curated by Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s recent Mead Composers-in-Residence Sam Adams and Elizabeth Ogonek closes on a high note with the overdue Chicago premiere of Surface Image, an hour-long odyssey composed by Tristan Perich and featured on a fantastic 2014 recording from New Amsterdam Records. As on that release, the work is performed here by the remarkable Canadian pianist Vicky Chow, a member of Bang on a Can All-Stars, who brings a necessary precision and crispness to the score. That technical rigor is required because she plays against a 40-channel array of one-bit electronics programmed in hypnotic cumulative waves that inject a dazzling sense of motion. Dizzying counterpoint and superfast polyrhythmic effects add a serious jolt, and the mix of acoustic and electronic sounds allows the listener to get lost in the music’s hypnotic melodic exposition and ever-morphing richness of color. The program also includes excerpts from the U.S. premiere of Fjoloy, a choral work of haunting beauty composed by Qasim Naqvi, known best as the drummer in Dawn of Midi. Designed for singers of all skill levels, the piece relies on its conductor—in this case Donald Nally—to control the action with a series of hand gestures, as the vocalists don’t have a score but listen to a fixed synthesizer pitch on headphones, resulting in a more natural, almost ritualistic performance. Also featured is the premiere of a new commission from Adams titled Light Readings. —PETER MARGASAK

TUESDAY7 Sunn O))) Big Brave and Hissing open. 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $25-$30. 17+ With any Sunn O))) record—even their menacing 2014 collaboration with Scott Walker, Soused—it’s imperative to allow yourself entrance to whatever sliver of meditative headspace you haven’t yet fried. Because only there might the pressurized, doomfilled drones orchestrated by founders Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson be understood holistically rather than as stand-alone pieces of a daunting puzzle. Split into three only-kind-of-discernible parts, last year’s Kannon (Southern Lord) makes that task pretty simple, actually—at least for a Sunn O))) album. The movements of sludge guitar wash over the practically unintelligible ﬂuttering vocal croaks of regular collaborator Attila Csihar as waves of feedback meticulously and patiently slice through the din, leaving behind squealing chemtrails that subtly evaporate as they’re pulled towards the core of each track. Foregrounded burbles and far-off ruptures consolidate to add scope to the album’s cloaked, cohesive grandeur. Because it seems much more enlightening to pull back from an up-close view of lava slowly globbing forward to see instead the majesty of the volcano spewing forth the lava— and the small village at its base that’s about to be consumed. —KEVIN WARWICK v

FOOD & DRINK

○ Watch a video of Sammy Faze working with squid ink behind the bar at chicagoreader.com/food.

COCKTAIL CHALLENGE

Ink before you drink By JULIA THIEL

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The Ten Thousand Leagues cocktail by Sammy Faze of Drinkingbird and Billy Sunday CORY POPP

QUID INK, often used to flavor (and tint) pasta and risotto, can be intimidating enough to cook with. Making a cocktail with it is another beast entirely. But SAMMY FAZE, a bartender at the DRINKINGBIRD and Billy Sunday, was, well, unfazed by the prospect of the challenge, which came from MICHAEL TSIRTSIS of OAK + CHAR. Faze describes squid ink as having a “very strong, fishy, oceanic aroma” that he decided to tame by making a sauce with onion, shallot, and garlic confit, cooked down with tomato puree, and then combined with squid ink. Searching for a spirit to cut through the squid ink and the aromatics in the sauce, Faze chose a malted aquavit from Bittermens that he says “almost drinks like a rye whiskey.” It was a little too successful at masking the squid ink, though, so Faze used a little sake to bring back its oceanic flavor. A touch of lemon juice added brightness to the cocktail; for garnish he brushed a little squid ink onto a marigold to bring an oceanic aroma to the drink that he

dubbed Ten Thousand Leagues. The finished cocktail is viscous and nearly black, and, Faze says, “you kind of feel like you’re at the bottom of the ocean.” TEN THOUSAND LEAGUES

2 OZ SQUID INK SAUCE 1 OZ BITTERMENS AQUAVIT .25 OZ LEMON JUICE MARIGOLD AND SQUID INK (FOR GARNISH) “Throw” the cocktail: pour it from one tin to another with ice inside one of the tins to chill it. Place a chunk of hand-chipped ice into a glass and pour the cocktail over the top. Brush the marigold with squid ink and ﬂoat on top of the drink.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 9 CADILLAC PALACE ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM

WHO’S NEXT:

Faze has challenged BRETT LICHNEROWICZ of LUXBAR to create a cocktail with freshly cut GRASS. v ®

@juliathiel

BUY TICKETS ONLINE AT TICKETMASTER.COM THE CADILLAC PALACE BOX OFFICE • BY PHONE: 800-745-3000 JAMESBLAKEMUSIC.COM

JUNE 2, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 41

42 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 2, 2016

FOOD & DRINK NEW REVIEW

Stephanie Izard goes Chinese at Duck Duck Goat

The carefully researched menu is authentically executed, with few surprises. By MIKE SULA

Clockwise from top left: hand-pulled “slap” noodles; salad of octopus, cucumber, and peanut; Chongqing chicken ò DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

R DUCK DUCK GOAT| $$$ 857 W. Fulton 312-902-3825 duckduckgoatchicago.com

t some point early one evening at Stephanie Izard’s new Duck Duck Goat, I looked up and wondered, “Who are all the dead Chinese?” That’s because the walls of that particular semi-isolated dining room (one of several) are covered with sepia-toned portraits of old-timey Asian people, like a gallery of ghosts, each one tagged with a circular red sticker. A server explained that these incongruous dots are meant to draw the eyes upward when the lights go down and the photos fade into the wallpaper, but they just looked like someone had forgotten to remove price tags after returning from the flea market. Strange as that may be, I’m guessing this is a small part of what servers are referring to when introducing the restaurant as “reasonably authentic Chinese,” a hedge for when food writers and other pedants might start wondering what Izard is trying to say by serving shrimp wonton soup with blueberries and flat fortune cookies with the messages printed on laminated lapel pins. The busy interiors of Duck Duck Goat, the third restaurant from Izard and her partners in the Boka Restaurant Group, are meant to evoke an “everytown Chinatown,” according to its design firm, AvroKO, though one unimpressed wiseacre in my company said it looked like they did their due cultural appropriation at Cost Plus World Market. As for the food, Izard did her research on well-documented trips to China, and while “reasonably authentic” sounds like an apology, she doesn’t have too much to apologize for. The menu is lengthy and in spots could use some editing. But that’s not unusual—she goes long at both Little Goat Diner and Girl & the Goat. You just tread carefully. After Imperial Lamian, Duck Duck Goat is the second major new Chicago restaurant to prominently feature soup dumplings and hand-pulled noodles. Izard’s xiao long bao are listed modestly as the third item on the dim sum menu. They appear almost discouragingly flat and saucerlike, but each one that arrived at my table was structurally sound, with a thin, translucent wrapper that revealed some of the character of the surprising broth within— dark, hot, and redolent of five-spice seasoning. They’re remarkable, especially in light of the disasters I wrote about at Imperial Lamian. Among other highlights on the dim sum menu, wood-fried duck hearts are fat, smoky, steaky bird nuggets set on a mild horseradish-sesame sauce that would be improved J

JUNE 2, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 43

FOOD & DRINK

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Sepia-toned portraits are tagged with red stickers, as one server explained, to draw the eyes upward when the lights go down and the photos fade into the wallpaper. DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

continued from 43

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

T F A ER R C BE

S P DR EC INK IA LS

4757 N TALMAN · 773.942.6012 · ILOVEMONTIS.COM · 44 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 2, 2016

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

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with only just a bit more searing heat. The jiaozi are pot stickers filled with unctuous beef short rib and marrow—classic, over-thetop Izard in terms of fattiness —garnished with bright counterpoints such as fruity, tart Fresno chiles. (The frequent appearance of Fresnos on this menu suggests that Izard may have found a substitute for her kimchi addiction.) Meanwhile a trio of large, crusty crab Rangoon, filled with thin molten cream cheese and served with a smoked pineapple dipping sauce, could use a little more innovation, and a thick slab of shrimp toast is garnished minimally with fermented aioli and something like giardiniera. The affinity for vivid pickled flavors surfaces again and again. It’s in the octopus, peanut, and cucumber salad (more Fresnos). It’s in the cheong fun, cylindrical rice noodles seared in the wok with XO sauce and tossed with Chinese sausage, shrimp, and cuttlefish. And it’s in the bowl of Sichuan eggplants and goat, with pickled Facing Heaven Bullet Peppers that taste like pepperoncini, all smothered with bean sprouts and fried shallots. Other dishes display a more fearless approach with spicing, such as the Chongqing chicken: smoky boneless nuggets crusted in chiles and sesame seeds, tossed with shishitos and those aforementioned Bullet Peppers. Mapo tofu, electric with Sichuan peppercorns, is about as respectable a version as you’ll find anywhere in town. Also evident, and not unexpected for Izard, are dishes that push the tolerance for fat to

superhuman levels. Both duck fried rice with a molten soy-braised egg and seafood fried rice with smoked clams are saturated with so much oil that it seems a “reasonably authentic” approach to the cliche that American Chinese food is invariably a grease trap. Same goes for thick, ruddy hand-pulled “slap” noodles with shrimp, eggplant, goat sausage, and mushrooms that rise from the plate fairly dripping. A handful of challenging cocktails, one with duck-fat-washed bourbon, plum, and root beer, and another with mushroom-infused whiskey and musty rice wine, test the limits of what should be legal on a drink menu. More delicate options, such as a Tang-like vodka, carrot, ginger, and turmeric combo or a frothy tea-infused whiskey potion with a marigold floater, seem like something you might feel safe introducing to your underage nephew. Best stick with the wine list, which offer a decent number of bottles, whites in a particular, that can handle these flavor profiles. Things are bit more surprising at dessert, where a tart, almost yogurtlike almond milk panna cotta is topped with crunchy cereal and drizzled with thick black vinegar, and a mound of shaved rhubarb ice conceals a chile-infused blueberry sorbet. And while surprises are what we’ve come to expect from Izard, there aren’t as many at Duck Duck Goat as you’d hope for. Most dishes are well executed, but I almost wish Izard had been less reasonable in her search for authenticity and pushed the boundaries further. v

@Mike Sula

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