Chicago Reader print issue of June 6, 2024 (Vol. 53, No. 18)

BECAUSE CHICAGO IS JOY.

THIS WEEK

LETTERS

04 Readers Respond 04 Editor’s Note An arts education

FOOD & DRINK

06 Sula | Preview Thai Festival Chicago returns for its fi h, and biggest, year.

07 Reader Bites The Yellow Line smoothie at Wrigleyville’s Smoothie Joint

NEWS & POLITICS

08 Stadium Is a publicly funded stadium deal all it’s cracked up to be?

10 Health The Chicago South Side Birth Center is set to open by the end of 2025.

ARTS & CULTURE

12 Books Expand The Classroom is fostering connections for serious readers.

14 Gallery A new experimental exhibition space offers a transparent and comfortable experience for artists and collectors.

THEATER

18 Feature Water People Theater’s NOTICIAS KIDS changes lives through theater and journalism.

20 Reid | Review Nambi E. Kelley’s Stokely: The Unfinished Revolution is a complex portrait of the civil rights icon.

21 Plays of Note The Enigmatist at Chicago Shakespeare celebrates cryptologists; A Little Night Music at Theo celebrates Sondheim.

FILM

22 Feature Chicago journalist Jerry Nunn has put together a national celebration of LGBTQ+ talent.

23 The Moviegoer Kat Sachs takes us on a blind date with nitrate film movies.

23 Movies of Note Hit Man keeps things light and engaging; Young Woman and the Sea delivers for family movie night, but not much else; and more.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

24 Tribute Dee Alexander honors Dinah Washington at the Chicago Blues Festival.

CHICAGO READER | JUNE 6, 2024 | VOLUME

25 Feature Lee’s Unleaded reopens in time for the biggest blues weekend of the year.

28 Secret History of Chicago Music The Pearl Handle Band debut 40 years a er breaking up.

30 Shows of Note Previews of concerts including Kim Gordon, Heavee, Aigel, and Tropa Magica

35 Gossip Wolf Daniel Villarreal and Vivian McConnell finally drop an album as Valebol, the South Side Zine Library opens with a free party in Bridgeport, and more.

CLASSIFIEDS

33 Jobs

34 Marketplace

34 Professionals & Services

34 Matches

34 Auditions

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BREAK CYCLES TO BUILD FUTURES

Reader Letters m

Re: “Emil Ferris communes with Uptown’s ghosts,” written by Annie Howard and published in the May 30 issue (volume 53, number 17)

Such a great read. Love that Chicago’s cemeteries continue to have such a unique influence in our art and culture. —Grace Robbins of Coimetromania, via Instagram

Re: “Street corner activations with SpaceShi ,” written and illustrated by Coco Picard and published in the May 30 issue

Great piece [this week] about the SpaceShi artist collective and their work on Devon and elsewhere. Tremendous community art and public space projects. —Max Grinnell, via X

Back when my eyes were clear, I loved this style of artistry. Now, I hesitate to draw in close, remove glasses, and read, for fear of losing the train of thought while I take my time to ingest it. And by the time I read through the artwork, I found the print dialogue below it to not require any eye preparation. All in all, I’ve enjoyed a most pleasant pre-dawn read. Thank you so much. —John Hanson, via Facebook

A reply from the Reader: Thank you, John! We always include the full text of Picard’s comics separately online for ease of reading.

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

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

EDITOR’S NOTE

As we created this week’s issue, a few bits of recent news seemed to pepper most of the conversations I had with friends.

One, of course, was the welcome arrival of some modicum of justice in the form of a jury in New York finding Donald Trump guilty on 34 charges of falsifying business records. I took the opportunity online to reshare Reader contributor Coco Picard’s 2023 comic depicting Stormy Daniels as Scooby-Doo’s Daphne, solving mysteries on behalf of her donkey friends (perhaps representing a political party); take a look at our website to check it out.

Giving us more evidence of some sort of higher power with a sense of humor, Judge Juan Merchan’s (maybe that’s just the higher power I’m referring to) court scheduled the sentencing hearing for July 11—just days before the Republican National Convention hits Milwaukee. We’ll see how it all plays out.

The second news topic came in the form of arts-focused colleges, and troubles brewing at institutions both near and far.

Just before the end of May, Columbia College Chicago announced the layoff of 70 sta members and the elimination of 32 then vacant positions in an effort to deal with a budget deficit that the school ascribed to a decline in enrollment. This left students, sta , and faculty confused as to the state of a airs, while the school connected the decision to a restructuring e ort they say is underway.

This week, University of the Arts (UArts) in Philadelphia abruptly announced its closure, set for June 7. While UArts has been in a similar situation as Columbia over the past few years (lowered enrollment, declining revenue), the closure announcement came as a shock to most students and faculty.

I lived in Philadelphia for seven years. I have friends whose jobs were a ected by both of these closures, and the connection was not lost on me.

For cities that depend so much on arts and culture, it’s a terrible look to have these kinds of institutions fall apart. We’ll see how Columbia fares over the next few months with this restructuring, but as a near–open enrollment institution offering tracks like creative writing, journalism, and animation,

Columbia has always had a special place for city teens aspiring to have careers in the arts.

One of the first writing critiques I received was courtesy of a Columbia-sponsored workshop at my high school with poet Paul Hoover, then poet in residence at the college. I didn’t know much about Hoover’s poetry at the time (I was 14 years old and just getting through the Beats) but having a professional writer from a college take my work seriously and give me pointers was like a magic spell that showed me an instant world of possibilities. Let’s hope that Columbia gets it together.

This issue marks our return to a weekly cadence and we’re excited to keep bringing you investigative stories, writing on culture, and all of the other things you love about the Reader— out every Thursday, just like you’ve always remembered. What else should we look into? What stories do you want to read? What neighborhoods need more newspapers? Reach out to us and let us know! v

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

CORRECTIONS

The Reader has updated the online version of Leor Galil’s May 16 print feature “This is deeply rooted in who I am,” about Palestinians in Chicago’s music scene. In the interview with Na’el Yusef Shehade, we deleted the first sentence from the following quote: “I’m not gonna say he was the greatest father in the world, because every father has a struggle. Being an immigrant father is difficult because of the things that you went through.”

Shehade requested this change. As he explains: “The quote about my father not being the greatest father in the world was misinterpreted and a misunderstanding of the greater picture I was painting. It was never intended to be a quote about my father directly but rather a general statement about the relationship people may have with their parents, particularly kids with immigrant parents.”

The online version of “‘The greatest treasure nobody knows about,’” by Hannah Edgar (published in our May 30 issue) has been updated in order to fix a transcription error in a quote from Richard Schwegel.

“The administration didn’t make a goodfaith effort to find some way to convert the data we had into something publicly accessible” has been corrected to read “The administration did make a good-faith e ort,” and the surrounding paragraph has been changed to account for the correction. v

Setting up print layout for the Valley News of Browns Valley, MN in 1939 COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, FSA/OWI COLLECTION, LC-USF34-060405-D

FOOD & DRINK

Find more one-of-a-kind Chicago food and drink content at

Thai Festival Chicago returns to North Center this weekend

The five-year-old pavement party remains one of the city’s most interesting food festivals.

By MIKE SULA

For three years before the pandemic Dew Suriyawan, owner of Uptown’s great Immm Rice & Beyond, kicked o summer festival season with one of the best food-focused pavement parties of the year. Under various names, it featured contemporary and traditional music and dance performances soundtracking a leisurely crawl among booths sta ed by some of the city’s most interesting Thai restaurants.

That’s not to say it wasn’t a struggle. In its second year, his self-funded Thai New Year Water Festival, for which he purchased 1,000 water pistols, practically got rained out. The weather didn’t cooperate in 2019, either, and in 2020? Well . . . you know what happened to that.

But last summer, after a three-year COVID hiatus, it came back when the 56-year-old Thai American Association of Illinois took over, hiring Suriyawan to handle logistics and permitting. There was a small but solid contingent of food vendors, including Immm and the late, great, recently closed Spoon Thai (also owned by Suriyawan), along with North Center’s Sticky Rice and Talard Market.

This weekend, it’s back in its fifth year, and though Suriyawan didn’t book the talent, Immm is returning with crispy chicken skin, chicken basil egg rolls, and Isan sausage. The restaurant Rainbow will be there again with seven items, including its magnificent crispy rice salad, naem khao tod. And one of the festival’s most enduring legacies—and one of the city’s most undersung restaurants—Paula’s Thai Kitchen returns with at least one item you can’t get on her generally unique menu: a beef short-rib curry that looks like it could be a late course at Arun’s. Speaking of which, the venerable prix fixe restaurant is making its festival debut, with the southern Thai–style chicken biryani khao mok gai.

Apart from those notable restaurants, a number of new (and new-to-the-festival) spots are debuting, including West Town’s J.J. Thai Street Food with the braised pork leg stew khao kha moo; Morton Grove’s Sri Siam with its shatteringly crispy, shallot-crusted Hat Yai fried chicken; and Evanston’s Yasotorn with fried duck beaks.

6/8, 10 AM–9 PM and Sun 6/9, 11 AM–7 PM, Thorek Memorial Hospital’s parking lot, 851 W. Irving Park Rd., free, all ages facebook.com/thaifestivalchicago

Among the 18 restaurants serving more than 100 items—more than any in the festival’s history—there is also a som tum demonstration on Saturday, and on Sunday, an appearance by Nashville celebrity chef Arnold Myint, who may or may not be preempted by his domestic diva alter ego, Suzy Wong.

Auspiciously, the forecast looks dry for the 2024 Thai Festival Chicago, in the Thorek Memorial Hospital parking lot, 851 W. Irving Park, Saturday, June 8, and Sunday, June 9. v m msula@chicagoreader.com

After three years of wishing for a smoothie spot in my beloved Wrigleyville, fate finally intervened. I discovered the Smoothie Joint and it felt like stumbling upon a hidden gem, tucked away amidst the familiar streets I’ve come to call home.

Inside, exquisite depictions of luscious fruits adorn the walls alongside a mural of the Chicago el map. The items for sale are delightfully correlated to the map. Each culinary o ering—smoothies, juices, and acai bowls—is aptly named after the various train lines crisscrossing the city, perfectly complementing the mural.

FOOD & DRINK

invigorating coconut water serves as the foundation, offering a delicate sweetness reminiscent of paradise, while mango and pineapple join forces for a tropical explosion. The Yellow Line transports my taste buds to a realm of refreshing citrus bliss, leaving an enduring impression as the ultimate embodiment of smoothie perfection.

A few years ago, Telesha Christopher, the owner of the Smoothie Joint, was running a home day care when she came up with the idea to start a smoothie shop to properly nourish the kids in her care. And she got it right on her first try. I’m impressed by the Yellow Line, and I’m planning a return to the Smoothie Joint to embark on a journey through the rest of the iconic train lines.

—HECTOR CERVANTES THE SMOOTHIE JOINT 948 W. Newport, $8.75-$9.75, 773-697-7202, thesmoothiejoint. com v

My choice is the Yellow Line smoothie, which contains coconut water, mango, orange, turmeric, ginger, pineapple, and banana. It’s a tantalizing blend of flavors:

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

Yellow Line at the Smoothie Joint

Scenes from Thai Festivals

NEWS & POLITICS

EDIFICE COMPLEX

Mayor Brandon Johnson makes a “progressive” pitch for a new Bears stadium.

By MILES MACCLURE

In the early 1970s, Imelda Marcos, the wife of Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos, was infatuated with constructing grandiose structures using funds borrowed from foreign governments, despite the country’s relatively poor economic state. The condition, if you will, became known as the edifice complex. Since then, it’s been used to describe a host of public officials—in democracies and dictatorships alike—with a propensity to construct architectural behemoths in the name of public good. The term is often used in scenarios where the proponents wish to build a monument of sorts that can act as a symbol of progress. The scale and visibility of such projects often acts as a tangible reminder of so-called “progress,” whereas the impact of projects like replacing lead water pipes or installing air-conditioning in public schools is more di cult to see.

While the City of Big Shoulders is ripe with decadent architecture, not all of it can claim to be fiscally responsible. On April 24, the Chicago Bears unveiled plans for a new stadium to be constructed about 500 feet south of their current home, Soldier Field. The project comes with a $3.2 billion price tag—the majority of it to be funded privately by the Bears organization, with a proposed $900 million in public dollars. Infrastructure upgrades to

the surrounding area would require an additional $1.5 billion. The source for funding these upgrades is unclear. Images of the proposed stadium show a domed structure with a glass roof, a large north-facing window to give fans a view of the Chicago skyline, and angled rooftop swooshes that presumably light up. One depicts the stadium in a winter wonderland scene, with snowy trees, an ice rink, and a Christmas market hugging the stadium in a blue and purple iridescent glow. (I, too, miss the days when it snowed in Chicago.)

Even modest stadium renovations that use taxpayer dollars are more likely than not to turn out as a bad deal for taxpayers.

This style of architectural imagery is called vaportecture, a term coined by journalist Barry Petchesky in 2019 to describe renderings of sports stadiums that often bear diminished resemblance to completed projects. Designed to hype up projects, vaportecture often includes liberal use of visual candy like lens flares, fireworks, and a general lack of regard for physics or really anything that could be construed as representing reality. It’s the architectural equivalent of the Burger King hamburgers that appear in advertisements and bear a deflated resemblance to the ones served up in stores. Admittedly, the new Bears stadium does appear compelling in image, with a sleek, contemporary look that could double as a spaceship to transport

the Bears to a parallel universe where they win the Super Bowl.

As he revealed the Bears’ ambitious plans, team president and CEO Kevin Warren pointed to a Sports Business Journal list of the top 25 U.S. cities for hosting sporting events—a list Chicago didn’t make. To Warren, that’s cause for “major concern for where we are as a city.” If Chicago doesn’t get a new stadium, will it reach professional sports heaven? Warren stood alongside Mayor Brandon Johnson, who emphatically endorsed the deal, arguing that the proposal aligned with his vision for “a better, stronger, safer Chicago.” It calls for the creation of an additional 14 acres of park space, which Johnson touts as a win for the children of Chicago. The Chicago Park District portfolio includes more than 8,800 acres of green space; an additional 14 acres works out to about 0.2 percent increase.

Soldier Field revenue accounted for about

one-tenth of the Chicago Parks District’s 2024 gross income. It isn’t immediately clear what the impact of a new stadium—and a renegotiated revenue-sharing agreement—would bring. In economic impact projections posted to the Chicago Bears website, the team claims a new stadium would create 2,300 permanent jobs in the City of Chicago, with a total labor income of $92 million annually. This works out to an average of $40,000 per job per year. To a ord a modest studio apartment in Chicago, one would need to make about $52,000 annually, at a minimum. In total, the Bears say a new stadium could bring 4,200 permanent jobs across the Chicagoland region. “There’s no way you’re going to get [4,200] permanent, full-time equivalent jobs just from moving the Bears from one part of the lakefront to another,” says Neil deMause, coauthor of Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money into Private Profit

Taxpayers still owe $600 million from a 2002 rennovation to Soldier Field. SEA COW VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The Bears and Johnson have also claimed the stadium would create up to 43,000 temporary construction jobs. But this number refers to job-years. (A job-year equals one year of employment for one person.) If the project took three years—and the job-year projection is accurate—the actual number of people employed works out to about 14,300.

Allen Sanderson, a sports economist and senior instructional professor in economics at the University of Chicago, takes issue with the figures provided by teams pushing for new stadiums. He suggests you “take whatever number they give you and move the decimal one to the left, and [then] you’re pretty close.” (For their part, the Bears called the plan “one of the largest commitments of private funds to a public asset nationwide,” according to a press release.)

“It’s not an investment; it’s spending money. And whether it is an investment depends on: does it have a positive rate of return? And again, the answer is just overwhelmingly no,” says Sanderson.

Johnson sat for an interview with NBC Sports Chicago’s Laurence Holmes in late April after endorsing the plan at a joint press conference with team leadership. “Having the opportunity to stand with billionaires, you could not have convinced me a decade ago that I would have the opportunity to do that. But here’s the thing that I believe is special about this moment: the fact that a middle child of ten siblings from a working-class family is in a position to speak to the interests of everyday Chicagoans and challenge billionaires to put skin in the game. That’s what I promised that I would make sure would happen.” He brushed aside criticism. “People want to see the people of Chicago work,” he said. Johnson’s o ce did not respond to the request for comment.

Renderings of the proposed Bears stadium. Such designs o en bear diminished resemblance to completed projects.

State lawmakers would ultimately be the ones to determine the fate of public funding for a new stadium, and they skipped town for the summer with the stadium issue placed on the back burner.

“There’s a better chance of Brandon Johnson being drafted number one by the Bears than that stadium making a dollar.”

Voters in Kansas City recently had the opportunity to voice their opinions on a similar issue at the ballot box. If successful, the referendum would have set aside 40 years of sales tax revenue to fund a new stadium for the Kansas City Royals and renovate the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium. Voters overwhelmingly rejected the proposal by a margin of 16 percentage points.

later ponied up for the tickets after reporters came knocking.)

Even modest stadium renovations that use taxpayer dollars are more likely than not to turn out as a bad deal for taxpayers. The Bears themselves are already itching to move on from Soldier Field, despite a lease that runs through 2033 and nearly $600 million the public is still paying o for renovations more than two decades ago. “People ask me all the time, ‘What does a good deal look like?’ And usually, the answer is one where it doesn’t cost a whole lot of public money,” deMause says. “But when you’re anything over $100 million or so in public money, there’s almost no way you’re ever going to see that back.”

The Bears’ decision to shop for a new stadium before they’ve paid o the renovations on the current one raises questions about the sustainability of supposed “economic development” projects built, renovated, and funded with public money. If a new stadium were to be built, how long would it actually last?

Raiders back to the city after they decamped to Los Angeles in 1982. The 1995 stadium addition, which included 22,000 new seats and luxury suites and blocked the view of the Oakland Hills, was a ectionately named Mount Davis after the late Raiders owner Al Davis. The Raiders moved to Las Vegas in 2020, complete with a brand-new stadium that tapped $750 million in public funds from the Clark County hotel room tax.

When teams are denied public funding, they often threaten to leave town as a tactic to get local officials to pony up. Even the Super Bowl–winning Kansas City Chiefs have entered the rumor mill amid murmurs of a move to San Antonio after they were denied taxpayer-funded renovations. Regardless of whether such moves are simply a blu to get city governments to chip in, Johnson proudly touts himself as the mayor who convinced the Bears to remain the Chicago Bears.

While Johnson is fully behind the proposal, Governor J.B. Pritzker doesn’t think so fondly of the deal, calling it a “nonstarter.”

DaRon McGee, chair of the Jackson County, Missouri, legislature, introduced the measure. The Kansas City Star reported McGee received luxury suite tickets to a Royals game for free. (He

In perhaps a more stinging example of public funding for stadiums gone awry, the City of Oakland, California, is still on the hook through 2025 for renovations to the Oakland Coliseum that occurred in 1995. Those renovations took place as an incentive to lure the

I asked both deMause and Sanderson if they knew of a stadium built in the last 20 years that’s on track to make a profi t, and neither of them could think of one. “There’s a better chance of Brandon Johnson being drafted number one by the Bears than that stadium making a dollar,” says Sanderson. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

NEWS & POLITICS

REPRODUCTIVE CARE

Bringing health equity to Chicago’s south side

The Chicago South Side Birth Center—expected to open by the end of 2025—aims to create a holistic space for the whole community.

By MAIA MCDONALD

As the state of reproductive health continues to evolve more than a year after the conservative-leaning Supreme Court overturned abortion protections codified in Roe v. Wade, Black health equity advocates in Chicago are responding to the growing need for reproductive health care in south-side neighborhoods. Such areas have long been disenfranchised and deprived of the same attentive pre- and postnatal and postpartum care received by their counterparts in wealthier areas of the city. Among those looking to leave their mark is the team at the Chicago South Side Birth Center (CSSBC), a nonprofit, Black midwife–led birth center expected to open in South Shore by the end of 2025. Through the CSSBC, founder Jeanine Valrie Logan and her team are working to address long-standing reproductive health-care shortfalls experienced by scores of Black birthing people and their families.

and newborn care provided by doulas and certified professional midwives; ensure midwife services are covered under state medical assistance programs; and expand access to reproductive health care. Having already passed the Senate, the bill now heads to Governor J.B. Pritzker who has committed to signing it. The measure will “close the tragic gap in maternal mortality between Black women and other new parents, and [ensure] we meet the unique pregnancy, birthing and postpartum needs of women across our state,” Pritzker wrote on Twitter.

As a lactation specialist, birth justice activist, certified nurse midwife, and leader-in-residence at Chicago Beyond—the philanthropic

with concordant, culturally centered reproductive health care will make building families less fraught while also facilitating increased wellness in marginalized communities overall.

While Valrie Logan’s endeavor to establish a birth center has been years in the making, it got a major push in August 2021, when an Illinois law, the Alternative Health Care Delivery Act, increased the number of birth

centers allowed to operate in the state from 12 to 17—legislation that Valrie Logan herself helped draft. Additionally, just last month, the Illinois General Assembly approved House Bill 5142, the Birth Equity Initiative, now awaiting the governor’s signature. The bill will require insurers to cover all pregnancy, postpartum,

organization investing more than $1.8 million into the CSSBC—Valrie Logan is more than familiar with the struggles Black birthing people and their families face. With a yearslong career in reproductive health care, coupled with her personal experiences as a mother, she believes fervently that providing south-siders

“A place like Chicago South Side Birth Center deserves to exist, where we are centering people’s community and culture to increase wellness, not only for the birthing person and the newborns but also the whole family and community,” Valrie Logan says. Currently, there are no independent birth centers—freestanding health-care facilities for childbirth often sta ed by midwives, doulas, and nurses—on the south side. Residents of this part of the city experiencing pregnancy and seeking care have to visit one of several hospitals, many of which struggle with the large volume of patients they serve and threaten to buckle under the financial weight of operations, like Mercy Hospital, the city’s oldest hospital, which closed in 2021 after nearly 170 years. That leaves many to navigate what Valrie Logan calls a “very disjointed system” without a universal place for patients to access resources. The overburdened health-care system is compounded by community distrust, a lack of transportation, and more. Many people either can’t get to or don’t want to go to their local hospital, Valrie Logan says. She’s cognizant that the nation’s history of medical racism and widespread racial disparities in the health industry have led scores of Black and Brown people to distrust traditional medicine. For providers like her and the CSSBC team, this means taking such concerns seriously. “When you focus on the most marginalized in the most divested communities, then everyone gets better.”

According to Anastasia Harris, a researcher at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine’s Center for Health Equity Transformation, Chicago’s south side is a ma-

Black women are nearly three times as likely to die during childbirth as white women and Black infant mortality rates are not much better, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. SYDNI BALUCH FOR CHICAGO READER

ternal care desert, an area without su cient access to hospitals or birth centers that o er obstetric care and have obstetric providers. Black women are nearly three times as likely to die during childbirth as white women and Black infant mortality rates are not much better, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Harris believes building trust with the community is essential for making birth centers a reliable reproductive health-care option. “We’re seeing that if trust is built, folks are more likely to adhere to medical advice, and people have a better experience overall.” She says health equity research is “crucial and beneficial, and definitely a foundation to all of the work that needs to be done.”

NEWS & POLITICS

Once operational, she wants the CSSBC to be more than just a place for reproductive health care. Valrie Logan envisions the center as a community space for neighbors to relax and receive massages, where young people can have their hair braided, and where people can find mental health resources, food giveaways, and more. She also plans to o er general health-care services. The CSSBC will be a place that empowers the community to invest in its wellness.

“We’re putting the power of people’s health back into the people’s hands.”

Valrie Logan hopes to build that trust by having a team that reflects the people they’ll care for, across race, gender, and other identities. “That means having providers that are from the south side, that look and represent the communities that we serve. So, Black midwives, Spanish-speaking midwives, queer midwives. We want to make sure that we are representing the community that we serve. That’s really, really important, even in my own experience of working as a midwife.” The CSSBC’s decision to employ a sta led largely by midwives and doulas is intentional. Valrie Logan says such practices are an important part of Black American culture. Midwifery is a tradition that was previously “taken away from us,” she says, due to a 1992 law that made the practice illegal in Illinois, later reversed by the state legislature in December 2021 through the Midwife Practice Act.

Valrie Logan purchased a South Shore building for the CSSBC in December and is currently looking for additional funding sources. Her team is planning a $7 million capital campaign sometime this year to help raise money for construction costs and the center’s first two years of operation. Already, the birth center has received massive support from neighbors, many of whom Valrie Logan says believe in their mission and are just as excited to see the CSSBC open as she is. “There are people emailing us like, ‘I’m pregnant. When are you opening?’ or, ‘I’m planning a pregnancy. When are you opening? Because I want to be pregnant when you’re open.’ Like, those are my two favorite emails that I get.”

“We’re putting the power of people’s health back into the people’s hands,” Valrie Logan says. “They don’t need us. They have just been looking for a place where they can be inquisitive and ask questions and be respected. That’s all people want. Everyone has the power to heal themselves and take care of their own health.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Even in an era where technology has made the world feel increasingly small, nothing can replace in-person connection when it comes to genuine intercultural exchange. AFS-USA fosters that sort of opportunity for thousands each year by matching high-school exchange students with host families around the globe.

The story of AFS-USA starts in 1915, when American economist and politician A. Piatt Andrew founded the American Ambulance Field Service. Following World War I, the volunteer ambulance corps evolved into a French-American fellowship program to coordinate reunions between corps members and cultivate peaceful ties between France and the United States.

These days, AFS-USA connects approximately 1,000 students from up to 80 countries with American host families for programs lasting from 12 weeks to a full academic year, and 300 American students with semester, summer, and yearlong study abroad opportunities. Currently, 33 AFS students are being hosted in the greater Chicago area, with another 29 students hosted throughout greater Illinois. Three Illinois students are participating in AFS study abroad programs in Thailand, Malaysia, and Japan.

For AFS-USA host parents David and Nancy Frye, hosting a visiting student is an exciting adventure. “Think about it like traveling right inside your own home: a family trip at the dinner table,” David Frye wrote in a recent blog post for AFS-USA.

The Tennessee couple have hosted 13 AFS-USA exchange students since 1999. Their current host daughter, a 16-year-old Indonesian student named Nadhira, has been embraced by the Frye’s large extended family and has been able to visit several states while balancing school and social activities. “She is a very loving daughter who is more than willing to plug in where possible. . . . She is open for the whole experience,” Frye wrote.

While AFS-USA accepts applications from potential hosts throughout the year, the organization is currently looking for families to welcome students who will arrive in August for the 2024 school year and fall semester, including a number of students

from Italy. Nontraditional families and adults without experience raising children are encouraged to apply alongside families with school-age children living in the home. “We have 75 years of experience doing this,” says AFS-USA’s director of marketing and external communications Julie Ball. “So each family and student will have a volunteer team and a volunteer dedicated to them, and staff available for 24/7 support. So we’re really with [them] the whole way.”

Due to the structure of student visas, families host students on a volunteer basis, but they are eligible for tax deductions for every month the student lives under their roof. Host families are required to provide three daily meals, transportation to and from school, and a place to sleep and do homework. All other expenses are at their discretion. Necessities such as school enrollment fees and secondary insurance are provided by the students’ families or scholarship programs (a select number of students receive full merit-based scholarships awarded by the U.S. Department of State), and students bring spending money from home for recreation or other expenses.

As AFS-USA students and host families learn from one another, they also model the power of open-mindedness, acceptance, and love to others. “I think the thing that makes it work on our side is that we open ourselves to receive another son or daughter,” Frye wrote. “In this, our church, school, family, and community has a chance to see that everyone is not the same and that [this] isn’t bad—it just adds some flavor to your world.”

Interested in learning more? Visit https://www. afsusa.org/ to find out more about hosting, volunteering, and studying abroad with AFS-USA today.

An AFS-USA host family. Courtesy AFSUSA

ARTS & CULTURE

BOOKS Expand The Classroom makes reading a community practice

The monthly book swap and online book club aims to foster connections among bibliophiles.

By ARIEON WHITTSEY

In April, Bucktown’s Life on Marz Community Club was the meeting site for Expand The Classroom (ETC), a local group that fosters community through in-person and online book clubs as well as monthly book swap events. Bookish Chicagoans filled the space, seeming to blend in with the 70s decor of the cafe. Amidst the intimacy of a noon start time, attendees gathered around a table with pens and cardstock with a printed prompt instructing them to write “A love letter to my book, and to you who chooses it.” Instead of sitting at the bar next to the espresso machine or grabbing a CBD drink or a beer, everyone engaged in sometimes shy chatter.

ETC’s book swap began as a Discord server and has emerged as a “third space” for people interested in partaking in an intentional, community-based culture around reading.

Founded by BookToker Bernie Julia in 2018, ETC is focused on highlighting books that promote a culture of learning and make reading a community practice. Each month, the book swap travels to a different location around the city. The club also organizes events for collaborative writing and other activities that aren’t solely focused on reading a book within a set time frame, alleviating the pressure of meeting deadlines, which can make the typical book club overwhelming.

Julia began ETC in an attempt to disrupt the reading curriculum and get people to read books around important themes. With a grant from University of Illinois Chicago, this goal originally manifested as a website that categorized books. But when the project took shape, she felt that something was missing. “It didn’t really have a community around it; I felt like I was just talking to myself,” said Julia.

read, she found her place on BookTok—a niche on the app that centers around book content. In 2022, she posted a video of one of her favorite reads, holding a book sideways and flipping it to reveal the title: The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard. It explores the interaction of physical space, consciousness, and poetics; the video gained over half a million views. After garnering thousands of followers, she began directing people to the communications app Discord, where ETC would begin as an international group of book lovers. The ETC Discord server hosts multiple channels with genre-specific chats for Afrofuturism, Octavia Butler reads, and urban fiction, among other topics. The Discord allows members—now 450 people—to meet, read together via video chat, and talk about books and, most importantly, make reading a community practice instead of one done in isolation.

Julia attributes her success to her knack for throwing gatherings and her Detroit lineage. “I just love fostering connection,” Julia said. “A lot of people in Detroit are like community builders, have community practices. . . .

“Having the first book swap felt very intimate, felt like community, like you let me into your house and I just met you online.”

There’s gotta be something in the water.”

The first book swap was held in Julia’s Pilsen home and wasn’t posted online. Club members were encouraged to bring a book that they love, not just something they were looking to get o their shelves. This idea fosters intimacy and intention and goes against the practices of overconsumption promoted by megacelebrity book clubs. Volunteer (and

ETC first gained traction on Julia’s TikTok. In 2021, when she started posting about books she R EXPAND THE CLASSROOM instagram.com/expandtheclassroom discord.com/invite/C28WGfp 6py

Life on Marz Community Club hosted the April iteration of the monthly Expand The Classroom book swap. BERNIE JULIA

ARTS & CULTURE

friend of Julia) Desirée Jones recounted the first meeting: “Having the first book swap felt very intimate, felt like community, like you let me into your house and I just met you online.”

The first publicly-announced book swap took place at Pilsen’s Lo Rez Brewery and Taproom in the fall of 2022. Around ten people showed up, smaller in comparison to the most recent April 27 swap at Life on Marz in which over 50 people attended. Noticeably, the club has grown in numbers but maintained its feeling of inclusion. Pictures on Instagram show a crowd full of Black and Brown people, something attributed to Julia’s presence as the face of the club on social media.

strangers. There’s an openness at the swap that can be hard to cultivate in spaces like a brewery.

When recounting her decision to join the club, Jones said, “I was like, I need something to do, aka that third space. And so I joined the club. . . . I feel like I’m always at work, at home, or at a bar. . . . I’m saying this while we’re at a bar, having a book swap, so you have to create space within those spaces.” Jones helps keep the meetups engaging, active, and intimate, and assists with setup.

“I think people are just hungry for space to just be in community without feeling the pressure to do anything else.”

“Knowing that there’s a Black woman running this, it makes other Black and Brown people want to come in,” said Jones. Volunteer Kristen Jeré agrees and attributes the group’s diversity to the visualness of social media, “If you’re part of these communities, you can kind of look and see, ‘Oh, they kind of look like me!’”

At the April swap, a table with a rotating book selection was constantly crowded as attendees sent their favorites to new homes and found new ones. Titles like The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School by Sonora Reyes appeared in the rotation alongside Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. People turned to each other to gush about the books they brought or picked up, while volunteers flitted around the room, engaging with attendees and fostering a space where it’s OK to talk to

A similar sentiment was echoed by a participant attending the swap for the first time, “There’s not a lot of spaces in the city where you can just sit and engage without having to pay a lot of money. I think people are just hungry for space to just be in community without feeling the pressure to do anything else,” said Tamara H. This sentiment was consistent with attendees I spoke to, especially those who later became volunteers.

Julia and her team are continuing to come up with ideas about further nurturing their growing community. For now, ETC will continue monthly book swaps, and will have a programming residency at El Paseo Community Garden this summer. “I’ll go on Instagram and I’ll see two people who met [at the swap] and they’re hanging out—that’s really what matters,” says Julia. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

POETRY CORNER

Crowning Achievement (Target Practice)

As both a family and a philanthropy, we recognize that lasting social impact requires us to center markable people.1

By Robin Segg

1 This language was borrowed from the philanthropic website of a family who shall knot be named (https://crownfamilyphilanthropies.org/about/). They are, in turn, tied directly to a company who shall also not be named, but whose business was generally pretty dynamic in Q3 (https://investorrelations. gd.com/ news/press-release-details/2023/General-Dynamics-Reports-Third-Quarter-2023-FinancialResults/default.aspx). This company currently manufactures weapons that have killed thousands of children (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/05/03/barclays-became-lightning-rod-gazaactivists/) in what UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese described as a conflict which meets at least three of the criteria for genocide (https://news.un.org/en/story/ 2024/03/1147976).

Robin Segg lives and works in Chicago, IL.

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

Summer Hours

Wednesday– Saturday: 11:00 AM–5:00 PM

Roy Kinsey: A Legacy Project

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

Thursday, June 6 at 7:00 PM CT

Exhibition Opening: A Bigger Table: 50 Years of the Chicago Poetry Center

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Chicago Poetry Center (CPC), this event features a film screening, live performances, and an exhibition of historic broadsides, event posters, and treasures from the CPC archive.

Saturday, July 13 at 2:00 PM CT

Learn more at PoetryFoundation.org

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

BERNIE JULIA

ARTS & CULTURE

Studio suite 920 in Pilsen’s Mana Contemporary building is home to the prolific Ciera McKissick’s latest enterprise: cam.contemporarie. With this new project space, one of Chicago’s staunchest advocates for the arts turns her eye both to the market and to cultivating holistic support for artists. She calls cam.contemporarie a “micro-gallery” (at 394 square feet), a self-directed curatorial residency, and an experimental exhibition model.

The bright, sunlit room served as incubator, painting studio, and office before opening to the public as a gallery and community gathering space in March. As an independent gallerist, McKissick is excited to explore curation and exhibition production autonomously. “I’m really just excited to be able to have the freedom to do what I want,” she says. “I can be very spontaneous sometimes and get an idea or a spark from anything, and really just

GALLERY

Meet Ciera McKissick’s latest enterprise: cam.contemporarie

The micro-gallery aims to cultivate holistic support for artists.

By ERIN TOALE

wanted a space to be able to bring those ideas to fruition the same way an artist may test out a new technique of painting or explore a new subject matter. It’s really a studio for my practice in that way, but oftentimes curators aren’t given the freedom to explore the same way artists do.” The laid-back, warm aesthetic of the room mirrors this exploratory ethos, embracing an “urban matter” theme with DIY cinder block furniture and plants spilling out of vessels made by the gallerist herself. Cam.contemporarie’s inaugural show “mano a mano” featured Chicago-based multimedia artist Carina Vargas-Nuñez. They work across painting and textiles, integrating symbolism and magical realism with their Cuban heritage. McKissick’s unique approach to exhibition production ensured that Vargas-Nuñez had access to resources including space/time (they used the gallery as a painting studio leading up to their exhibition), professional development,

and networking opportunities. McKissick arranged studio visits, facilitated feedback, and hosted Vargas-Nuñez’s first public artist talk, stating in an interview: “I felt really proud to be able to present work by someone that I had really worked hard to mentor.”

To say that a gallerist providing all of these amenities to exhibiting artists is unusual would be an understatement. McKissick’s demonstrated commitment to supporting career progression and financial literacy for creatives is special and rare. Her approach to exhibitions in this context is not overly didactic, prioritizing foundational marketing materials like press releases, artist statements, and other documents intended to drive sales (which, it needs to be said, directly support exhibiting artists as well as ensure the financial solvency of the gallery). Artistic and creative production without economic support is finite. The exhibition program at cam.contempo-

rarie will remain focused on solo shows by midwestern artists for the foreseeable future, and is not accepting unsolicited submissions at this time. However, McKissick notes that she frequently discovers new talent while sitting on juries—so, artists, perhaps your next residency rejection letter is not a door closing but a window opening. Saint Louis–based artist Vaughn Davis Jr.’s “Reminiscing” opens June 8, followed by a solo show by Chicago/Milwaukee native Tyanna Buie, opening August 2. Between exhibitions, the space will function as a showroom for collectors to browse during o ce hours on Mondays and Fridays. She is excited to o er auxiliary programs that educate and cultivate new collectors while continuing to further the professional practices of the artists and develop community partnerships— teasing a forthcoming series called “Conversations with Contemporaries.” This series will be aimed at making collecting contemporary

Cam.cotemporarie’s inaugural show “mano o mano” featured work by Chicagobased multimedia artist Carina Vargas-Nuñ ez. NATASHA MOUSTACHE

Indulge Your Curiosity!

Arts, literature, Chicago history, film, music, writing workshops, and more! From one-day courses to in-depth seminars, in-person and online, we provide options to fit your schedule.

View the full list of classes and register at The Newberry, 60 W. Walton St., Chicago

newberry.org/learn/adult-education-classes

ARTS & CULTURE

continued from p. 14

art more accessible for emerging arts patrons. McKissick provides ample resources to artists on the production end as well as to the collector on the commercial end, hoping to make the transactional stages of collecting more transparent and comfortable for all involved.

McKissick thinks expansively about the possibilities that programming can a ord, crediting

“I can be very spontaneous sometimes and get an idea or a spark from anything, and really just wanted a space to be able to bring those ideas to fruition the same way an artist may test out a new technique of painting or explore a new subject matter.”

her four years as public programs manager at the Hyde Park Art Center for honing those skills. She recently cocurated her first show at the institution: a solo exhibition by Candace Hunter. In 2023, she was also the inaugural curatorial fellow with The Luminary, which culminates with the exhibition “Considering St. Louis.” McKissick spent this fellowship exploring the arts ecosystem of Saint Louis and the midwest, interviewing 30 artists about the resources they need to thrive, with the express purpose of keeping creatives in the midwest region.

AMFM (Art Music Fashion Magazine), a web magazine, event organizer, and promotions platform for artists and more, is a long-running and separate arm of McKissick’s cultural production. AMFM had a brick-and-mortar storefront location in Pilsen from 2016-2018 that functioned as an exhibition and performance space, recording studio, shop, and shared studio/residency. She told Canvas Rebel: “AMFM grew so quickly that I didn’t have time to process what it meant to run an actual business, manage a team, manage artists, and the day to day operations and admin—I was just in a survival production mode. I felt like this was a necessary moment to figure out what the next phase of my work and AMFM could and would be, and be able to take the necessary steps to-

wards professional development to implement that vision and be ready for it.” In 2024—year 15 of AMFM’s operation—she launched a quarterly evening talk show which takes place at the Hoxton (the events are also live streamed and recorded) and hosted booths at both EXPO Chicago and the Other Art Fair.

Since the storefront closed, AMFM has continued to gain momentum and evolve as a pop-up, but McKissick is clear that cam.contemporarie is a separate brand with di erent priorities. She describes the projects as tiered; AMFM has launched the careers of countless emerging artists, and as McKissick and her vision mature, cam.contemporarie is a site for artists (and a gallerist) ready for the next step—although her overall mission remains “supporting and uplifting the work and practice of Black and Brown artists.”

For McKissick, this level of production and consistency requires extensive planning, discipline, and delegation; she is excited to welcome a paid intern this spring. In a 2022 interview with the Reader, McKissick articulated professional goals including moving more slowly and intentionally—taking on less projects to ensure higher quality engagement. She writes of the pace she was keeping prior to the pandemic: “I didn’t have enough time to process what I was really doing, and be able to sit with and let the things meander in my body.” With cam. contemporarie, McKissick and her artist roster take time to let ideas percolate and metabolize while developing economic infrastructures that ensure the sustainability of both artistic and administrative creative practices—prioritizing, says McKissick, “allowing myself room to breathe so that I can actualize something in a full way.” v

Ciera McKissick ZAKKIYYAH NAJEEBAH DUMAS O’NEAL

Works by Carina Vargas-Nuñez NATASHA MOUSTACHE

STOKELY : UNFINISHED REVOLUTION THE WORLD PREMIERE

BY NAMBI E. KELLEY

DIRECTED

MAY 24JUNE 16, 2024

Gustavo Bamberger

Martha Van Haitsma

Al Burts, PIECES; courtesy of Gallery Guichard

Transforming young lives through theater and journalism

Water People Theater’s NOTICIAS KIDS spreads good news.

By SANDRA TREVIÑO

It’s no secret that in recent years, journalism has been in a state of crisis. According to Northwestern Medill’s State of Local News Project, in 2023 “there were more than 130 confirmed newspaper closings or mergers” and “since 2005, the U.S. has lost nearly 2,900 newspapers.” Disconcerting as that is, I feel a sense of relief, and hope, after learning about the young students learning broadcasting and journalism via the Water People Theater’s bilingual creative lab sessions. The students’ first news program, NOTICIAS KIDS News, premieres on June 8 at Instituto Cervantes. Water People Theater was born in 2001 when its founder and executive director, Rebeca Alemán, found herself at a turning point. She explains, “I am an actress, journalist, and pianist, and at one point in my life I found myself in three professions and at a real crossroads. That is when Water People Theater was born. It was the ideal space to connect these three disciplines.”

Alemán is an award-winning multifaceted wonder woman who believes in the transformative power of art. Born in Venezuela, she was interested in art at an early age, learning piano when she was just five years old. As a teenager, she was selected to form part of the first National Youth Theater Ensemble of Venezuela. Alemán began her acting career on Radio Caracas Televisión, performing in soap operas like Por Estas Calles. Her career continued with RCTV, Marte TV, and Venevisión. She has won acclaim for her performances in The Worst of All (playing Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz), El Desprecio , and Encuentro en el Parque Peligroso

In 1995, she received a B.A. in journalism and media communication from Universidad Central de Venezuela, as well as a B.A. in music and piano from the José Ángel Lamas Higher School of Music in Caracas, Venezuela. After university, she went to London to continue her theater studies and then to New York City, where she continued studying theater, acting,

tions. She has also written six plays, four short films—including Gone With The Sea—and the children’s book ¿Y yo . . . por qué no? / What is wrong with me? She currently leads Water People Theater, a nonprofit organization and theater company she founded in New York City in 2001.

Based in Chicago since 2011, the name Water People Theater, according to their website, comes from the Venezuelan ethnic Yekuana and means “people on the wood that opens paths in the water.” As an organization, they

just, and inclusive communities.”

Tapias’s award-winning career began through her mother, Ligia Tapias, who was the first woman to produce and direct theater in Venezuela. Iradia has penned seven plays and has worked in theater for more than 50 years, producing and directing dozens of theatrical performances and plays.

These e orts led them to launch an artistic safe space for young people to express themselves and feel art’s transformative power— Studio Kids, which produces NOTICIAS KIDS News (formerly NotiKids). Alemán says, “We have designed this creative laboratory with the objective of giving children a space in which they can express themselves and their voices can be heard. This first edition is a pilot from which we are learning a lot and after knowing the audience’s response on June 8, we will be adjusting it for future editions. The goal is to have a newscast hosted by children between the ages of 7 and 14 that we can produce four times a year and that will be transmitted and broadcast on various platforms.”

and directing at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. While living in New York, Alemán formed part of the Repertorio Español, where she performed in numerous plays and productions including La Casa de Bernarda Alba , Denegado , Deranged Chronicles , and Algunos lo piensan. Nosotros lo decimos , among others.

“We have designed this creative laboratory with the objective of giving children a space in which they can express themselves.”

Alemán has produced over a dozen plays and has since starred in nearly 40 produc-

have opened roads by setting in motion art as a tool of empowerment, and theater as a way to create engagement, motivation, introspection, and ethnocultural appreciation. Alemán, along with artistic director Iraida Tapias, also from Venezuela, produces transcendent bilingual theater that encourages and supports the defense of human rights. Part of their mission is “to inspire diverse audiences to become changemakers contributing to more equitable,

The creative lab forms part of the Water People Studio program, which was created virtually in 2020 and has expanded to in-person sessions.

I attended two sessions that form part of the nineweek program of NOTICIAS KIDS News, hosted at Steppenwolf Theatre. I was greeted by the lively sounds of children gathered to learn about newscasting. As soon as I walked into the classroom, the students welcomed me, and, let me tell you, in all the years I have attended student events, this has never happened. I was in disbelief at how well-mannered and courteous they all were. The 15 students were guided mostly in Spanish, by Alemán and Tapias, along with Isadora Villamizar, Ramón Camín, Estefanía Mena, and Zenda Zurita.

The session began with all of us forming a circle, introducing ourselves, and mentioning something we like. At this point, the students asked me random questions in preparation for

NOTICIAS KIDS participants and instructors DANTE PADILLA

$15

the interview they wanted me to participate in during my second visit.

After this, the circle expanded for a warmup consisting of stretching, relaxation poses, and breathing exercises while tango music played in the background. Alemán says, “Through games and theatrical dynamics, we reinforce human values, social values, responsibility with our community, respect for others, respect for ourselves, and the importance of information and truth.”

After the warm-up, the students learned about screenplay writing and storyboards, organizing ideas and topics for the newscast, and rehearsing. And, whether it was news about robots from Japan or the newest bridge being built on the west coast, the overall theme throughout the newscast was about sharing good news. I was inspired to see how the students, ranging in age from six to 11, supported each other throughout the two-and-a-half-hour class, with the older students helping the younger ones with their scripts and other activities. (It was during the rehearsal that I learned that I was one of their “news items” and was included in their newscast rehearsal and later in their newsletter. What a humbling and joyful moment!)

THEATER

I could barely contain my smile as they each demonstrated their journalistic professionalism by introducing themselves before asking their question, telling me how excited they were to have me there, and thanking me for joining them. Their questions were respectful and profound. I was and continue to be in awe of their enthusiasm and willingness to explore journalism.

I asked Alemán how she feels about the current state of journalism and how she intends to teach children how to navigate and determine facts from fake news.

“Theater has proven to be a beacon of positivity and empowerment for these children.”

“Journalism is a very demanding and exciting profession and today, more than ever, it plays a fundamental role in society. Journalists have the enormous responsibility to inform with the truth. We live in a time in which too much unverified information circulates at impressive speeds through the media, social networks, various platforms, and other channels. It is a world in constant change and a challenge for journalists. I believe in ethics and the value of quality journalism.

“Approximately 60 percent of the children are already [working two years] with us so this would be their fifth Studio Kids creative lab,” says Alemán. “The remaining 40 percent are children attending NOTICIAS KIDS News and come from Namaste Charter School, with whom we have an alliance. It is important to remember that we work with children in migration situations, as well as children from underprivileged communities. Theater has proven to be a beacon of positivity and empowerment for these children, opening doors to new ways of expression and understanding.”

Throughout the session, the adults reiterated respecting one another and allowing each person to express themselves without interrupting. Halfway through, everyone took a small snack break and then rehearsed again. They wrapped things up by forming a roundtable to discuss the topic of bullying. It was encouraging to see them approach the subject with curiosity, share their own experiences, and learn how to deal with that type of negativity.

During my second visit, the students gathered before me to do their o cial interview.

“In this new creative laboratory, we decided to create a newscast with them, a space where their voices and opinions regarding important issues for everyone are heard. [The students] learn tools to communicate, express themselves, and share issues or situations that impact and concern them. Together we research the issue, guide them to use reliable sources, and at each meeting, we exchange ideas, suggest initiatives, and propose possible solutions.”

After their debut at Instituto Cervantes on June 8, the next edition of NOTICIAS KIDS News is projected for winter 2024.

In the meantime, Water People Theater will continue building alliances to further cement the future of Latine theater.

In July, Water People Theater will be at Repertorio Español in New York City for three weeks presenting the Spanish-language version of Alemán’s 2019 play, Las Delicadas lágrimas de la Luna Menguante / The Delicate Tears of the Waning Moon , about a human rights journalist recovering from a brutal attack.

In September, the play returns to Chicago with some performances in Spanish and others in English. v m letters@chicagoreader.com

REVIEW

From sideline to spotlight

Stokely: The Unfinished Revolution gives a complicated activist his due.

By KERRY REID

Kwame Ture (formerly Stokely Carmichael) has seemingly existed in popular culture mostly as a footnote to other, better-known civil rights figures. In George C. Wolfe’s Rustin and Ava DuVernay’s Selma, Carmichael doesn’t appear at all, despite being one of the first Freedom Riders and the chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)—and the man who popularized the phrase “Black power.”

In Robert Schenkkan’s All the Way , Carmichael is the skeptic who shows up in a few scenes to cast doubts on LBJ’s intentions, perhaps pointing the way to the more radical Carmichael/Ture who appears in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman (played by Corey Hawkins). Mario Van Peebles played Ture in his own film, Panther. After leaving SNCC, Carmichael became “honorary prime minister” of the Black Panther Party, and later formed the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party. (He broke with the Panthers over what he described as their “dogmatic party line favoring alliances with white radicals.’’)

But there’s no biopic that I’m aware of centered solely on Ture. Perhaps that’s because he died relatively young at 57—and not, like Malcolm and Martin, as a result of violence. He instead died of prostate cancer in 1998 in Conakry, Guinea, where he had lived for nearly the last 30 years of his life. Arguably, that exile from the U.S. stage could be a reason for the relative lack of attention he’s received.

Chicago-born playwright Nambi E. Kelley’s Stokely: The Unfinished Revolution, now in a world premiere at Court Theatre under Tasia A. Jones’s direction, compiles a portrait through fragments of this complicated but vital leader. As played

by the absolutely incendiary and multivalent Anthony Irons, Kelley’s Stokely is self-assured and vulnerable, cunning and impulsive, and always focused on a higher purpose.

This isn’t hagiography. As Kelley demonstrated in her nimble adaptation of Richard Wright’s Native Son (first produced in 2014 at Court and currently running in revival at Lifeline Theatre), she has a wellhoned understanding of the double consciousness that runs through the lives of many Black Americans and how negotiating that consciousness while fighting white supremacy can sometimes lead to blind spots in personal relationships. In Stokely, that consciousness gains further texture since we also see him as an immigrant. That sense of being an outsider in American life exists as a shadow throughout Kelley’s story, and seemingly also accounts in part for the hypnotic mix of knotty combativeness and smooth charm that Irons embodies.

In the first scene, Irons as young Stokely is having what appears to be an asthma attack in his native Trinidad. His grandmother, Cecilia Carmichael (Dee Dee Batteast), urges him to breathe, clearly playing the nurturing role that his mother, Mabel (later called May), played by Wandachristine, is unable to do (or pushed out from doing). Cecilia promises to mix up her special herbal remedy: “Gonna mix it bitter like you don’t like. But bitter heals you, son.”

“The mix of bitterness and nurture is a constant in the Stokely/Kwame we meet here.”

R Stokely: The Unfinished Revolution Through 6/ 16 : Tue-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat-Sun 2 and 7:30 PM; touch tour, audio description, and ASL interpretation Sat 6/ 15 2 PM (touch tour 12:30 PM); open captions Sun 6/ 16 2 PM; Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis, 773 -753 - 4472 , courttheatre.org, $ 56 -$ 88

visit him in Guinea, to preserve his archives.

The flow of information about Carmichael and his sometimes thorny relationships with family and comrades in the civil rights move-

Diane Nash, cofounder of SNCC. The latter, played by Melanie Brezill, takes Irons’s Carmichael to task for his comment that the only position for women in the movement is “prone”—a line that continues to dog his legacy today. The Carmichael we meet in Stokely clearly depends upon the guidance of women, even as his relationship with his mother is fraught and his marriage to singer Miriam Makeba flounders when her career su ers because of his activism.

Whether it heals or not, the mix of bitterness and nurture is a constant in the Stokely/Kwame we meet here. Framed as a memory play of sorts, the story unfolds as the dying Ture tries to get his memoirs down on tape and urges his mother, who has come to

ment occasionally feels a little overpowering, without allowing enough space and time for us to process how these conflicts affected Carmichael’s life and ideologies. Kelvin Roston Jr. plays several important men in Stokely’s history, including his father, Adolphus, and Reverend King, James Baldwin, and Bayard Rustin. (Perhaps some irony exists in the fact that the latter three are the footnotes to Carmichael here.)

We also meet women in the movement, including Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, and

Though the narrative can sometimes feel a bit overstu ed, Jones’s staging finds gorgeous and a ecting images. A red blanket that young Stokely wears as Superman shortly after joining his parents in New York is a totem of idealism (even though his mother describes Superman as “white man’s fiction”—a harbinger of the nay-saying that Carmichael kicks against throughout the play). The murder of Sammy Younge Jr. (the first Black university student murdered for his civil rights activism—he was killed trying to desegregate a whites-only bathroom) is underscored in a brilliant moment when the signs carried by the protesters are reversed to form the image of Younge’s face. (He’s shown dressed in his Navy uniform as a sign of how much the patriotism and loyalty of Black Americans has been repaid by racist violence.)

Yeaji Kim’s flexible set features a high folding wall of shelves with books and boxes of papers. It suggests that there’s far more to unpack in Stokely’s life than one play can tackle. But Kelley, Jones, and the ensemble (particularly Irons) deserve much praise for giving the unfinished story of this compelling force for radical change the intelligent and moving narrative he deserves. v

m kreid@chicagoreader.com

The ensemble of Stokely: The Unfi nished Revolution at Court Theatre MICHAEL BROSILOW

THEATER

OPENING

RBreaking the code

The Enigmatist pays homage to cryptologists and cruciverbalists.

The Enigmatist run time is officially 95 minutes, but you’ll want to get there a solid half hour early so you can crack the codes in the “puzzle garden” that greets audiences on the sixth-floor lobby of Chicago Shakespeare Theater. There are four ciphers in the garden, and their solutions figure in the “meta” puzzle finale of David Kwong’s evening of card sharpery, elite-level Scrabble play, and illusory magical trickery.

Kwong is part of a magic renaissance that Chicago is enjoying: Dennis Watkins’s Magic Parlour has been running in the Loop for at least 15 years; Andersonville’s Chicago Magic Lounge and Rogers Park’s Rhapsody Theater provide a platform for a rotating roster of abracadabrians. Kwong’s brand of magic sets itself apart via verbiage. Literally: He’s also a cruciverbalist, i.e., a crossword puzzle designer for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. His linguistic acrobatics are as impressive as his sleight of hand.

Kwong’s illusions don’t bring anything especially novel to Chicago’s prolific magic menu. He makes dollars disappear, conjuring them later from deep within a piece of fruit. He works jaw-dropping feats with playing cards. He has a locked box on stage that, when opened during the finale, reveals contents both mind-blowing and seemingly impossible.

Where he stands out is in the frame he uses for his act. Kwong’s illusions are built around the story of Elizebeth and William Friedman, cryptologists whose work helped turn the tide of WWII. Their lives were fascinating, and a near-perfect anchor for the feats of philology and prestidigitation Kwong deploys.

by Hugh Wheeler (inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s 1955 film Smiles of a Summer Night), the musical’s ravishing, comedic whirl of affairs and assignations unspools in Sweden circa 1900, but the roiling emotion and razorwire taut sexual tension driving the action remains relatable no matter the time and place.

Directed by L. Walter Stearns for Theo, the tale of actress Desirée Armfeldt (Colette Todd) and her complication-filled romance with attorney Fredrik Egerman (Patrick Byrnes) is rich with moments of gleaming intrigue and wry, wise humor—the latter primarily coming from Honey West’s scene-stealing performance as the matriarchal Madame Armfeldt, whose reminisces about long-ago liaisons anchors the carousel of sexual shenanigans surrounding her.

Todd is a fine Desirée, and does the show’s signature ballad “Send in the Clowns” right, instilling the number with the rue and longing it demands. But the show’s most memorable moments come from the supporting cast.

Desirée’s lover-of-the-moment, Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm, is played to comic perfection by Kevin Webb

Kwong embraces his self-proclaimed nerdery throughout, in a persona that somehow manages to evoke both the charm of a 1970s game show host and the earnestness of a middle school spelling bee finalist on the cusp of taking home the national championship. The clues to the puzzles he presents are visual, auditory, mathematical, and literary, their solutions offering one “aha!” moment a er another. Whether or not you’re into crosswords or cryptology, there’s enough brainteasing intrigue in The Enigmatist to keep you marveling until the last code is cracked. —CATEY SULLIVAN THE ENIGMATIST Through 6/30: Tue 7:30 PM, Wed 1 and 7:30 PM, Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2:30 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM; open captions Wed 6/12 1 PM; Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 800 E. Grand, 312-595-5600, chicagoshakes.com, $69-$95, recommended for 6+

RRomance and regret

There’s much to love in Theo’s A Little Night Music

The sexual round-robin that swirls through the heart of composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim’s lilting masterpiece A Little Night Music is set in motion by regrets over paths both taken and not. With a dazzling book

as a vainglorious man-peacock with far more bluster than brains. As Carl’s long-suffering wife Charlotte, Maya Rowe serves comedy bathed in despair and pathos, her deadpan delivery turning the most dire pronouncements into saber-sharp zingers. And Madison Kauffman gives the unapologetically lusty maid Petra a powerful agency that turns “The Miller’s Son” into a sex-positive anthem for the ages.

Choreographer Brenda Didier makes the most of Theo’s sleek, intimate space, although it’s that up-close intimacy that hampers several performances. As the 18-year-old Anne Egerman, Chamaya Moody goes way over the top, making a character who should be merely childish downright infantile. A similar lack of subtlety informs Tessa Newman’s Fredrika, Desirée’s teenage daughter. A little wide-eyed wonder goes a long way. Where Fredrika’s concerned, it’s a bit too far.

There’s much to love here regardless, including music director Eugene Dizon’s four-person micro-orchestra. Perched above the stage, it’s an ensemble that fills the night with Sondheim’s incomparable score.

—CATEY SULLIVAN A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC

Through 7/14: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sun 6 PM; Howard Street Theatre, 721 Howard, Evanston, 773-939-4101, theo-u.com, $30-$59; dinner from Estación available for additional $33 (must be ordered at time of reservation) v

David Kwong in The Enigmatist JUSTIN BARBIN

FILMFILMFILM

Critics Choice Association celebrates LGBTQ+ film and TV artists

Longtime Chicago journalist Jerry Nunn on representation within CCA and organizing its newest event.

By CATEY SULLIVAN

When the Critics Choice Association (CCA) hosts its very first celebration of LGBTQ+ artists in movies and television on June 7, it will mark the culmination of a passion project years in the making for longtime pop culture/arts reporter and Chicagoan Jerry Nunn.

A constellation of queer stars will be at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles for the event, a celebration for which Nunn planted the seeds shortly after joining CCA two years ago.

“After I was accepted into the CCA, I realized pretty quickly something was missing,” Nunn says.

CCA’s marquee event is the eponymous Critics Choice Awards, which are bestowed annually in January and are generally seen as a bellwether of the Oscars. But CCA also produces a myriad of other events throughout the year. Among them are the “diversity celebrations,” honoring specific groups.

“There’s celebrations for Black artists, Latino artists, and there’s also separate awards ceremonies for documentaries, superheroes, sci-fi and horror, reality TV—everything. But when I joined in 2022, there was nothing for LGBTQ+,” Nunn says. “I had been a member for about six months when I went to the president and just asked, ‘Where’s my people? There’s nothing in place here for celebrating LGBTQ+ people.’ And he said, ‘Why don’t you start something, Jerry?’” Nunn didn’t think too hard about accepting the challenge.

“I really had no idea how to do this, but I was super thrilled. I wanted representation for our community. I vote for these awards and my gay vote matters. So I got together a committee and some cochairs and a lot of really talented people, and we started working.”

The aim was straightforward: Nunn wanted to create a big, splashy celebration of LGBTQ+ talent who work both in front of and behind the camera.

Honorees for the inaugural event include a roster of acclaimed LGBTQ+ artists. Among them: Nathan Lane, who will receive a Career

Achievement Award, and Star Trek alum/ activist George Takei, who will collect the Social Justice Award. Actress and singer Michaela Jaé Rodriguez will get the Vanguard Award for her work in the Apple TV+ comedy Loot , while Carl Clemons-Hopkins ( Hacks ) and Chris Perfetti ( Abbott Elementary ) will receive, respectively, Supporting Performance and Breakthrough Performance awards. Drag queen extraordinaires Sasha Velour, Priyanka, Jaida Essence Hall, and Latrice Royale will collect the Reality TV Award for the documentary series We’re Here

Nunn joined the CCA after a solid 25 years of freelance reporting in Chicago, often for the gay press, predominantly Windy City Times. By day, he works at Haymarket Center, helping LGBTQ+ clients navigate their health-care needs. His long-running column, “Nunn on the Run,’’ o ers readers a dishy, mini-escape from the daily grind and a window into celebrity nightlife in and around Chicago.

“It took me a while to get into CCA,” Nunn says. “You really have to prove yourself. It’s not like [you] just send them some links. They want to know who is reading your reviews; they want analytics.”

Nunn earned his bona fides as a pen-for-hire, learning as he worked. “I did sales at Windy City before I started writing. And I wasn’t a good writer at first. I had to learn. I’ve gotten much

R THE CRITICS CHOICE ASSOCIATION’S INAUGURAL CELEBRATION OF LGBTQ+ CINEMA & TELEVISION Fri 6/7, Fairmont Century Plaza, Los Angeles Streaming on HereTV after the event criticschoice.com/celebration-of-lgbtq-cinema-television

Top to bottom, le to right: Chris Perfetti, Kristen Kish, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Sasha Velour, Carl Clemons-Hopkins, George Takei, Nava Mau, Ron Nyswaner COURTESY CCA

better over the years. It was gratifying to be accepted,” he says.

There was also a learning curve on the road to this month’s celebration. “We were all set to do it last year, but the writers’ strike happened,” Nunn recalls. “I was devastated. Just crushed. I didn’t even want to think about it for a while. But eventually, I pulled myself together and we started to rebuild. I try to keep things positive because this is such an important event.”

Takei agrees that the newly minted LGBTQ+ celebration is crucial.

“I didn’t come out of the closet until I was 68,” Takei says.

“I pretended to be straight because I wanted to be an actor. And from what I saw when I was coming up in the 1960s and ’70s, if you were openly gay, you wouldn’t get work. You disappeared.”

That’s precisely the kind of invisibility Nunn intends to battle with the awards.

“When we were planning, one thing came up that I was very against: having an award for straight allies,” Nunn says. “I didn’t put my foot down because I respect the committee. And it’s not my party—it’s for the community, the honorees. But I wanted everything to be all LGBTQ+. Everything. The Black celebration doesn’t have a ‘white ally’ award.”

Nunn continues, “I also felt strongly about taking gender out of all the awards. That was immediate. There’s no actor or actress awards. Having gender in the awards is outdated and leaves no place for nonbinary people.”

For Rodriguez, who is trans, accepting the Vanguard Award is personally significant on several fronts. On Loot, Rodriguez plays Sofia Salinas, the tightly wound, highly motivated chief operating o cer to Maya Rudolph’s CEO Molly Wells. This follows Rodriguez’s breakout performance as Blanca in Pose, a three-season

portrait of ballroom culture in 1980s and ’90s New York City.

“With Loot, I thought the script was hilarious,” Rodriguez says, “but I also wanted to do it because I thought Sofia could send such a powerful message. I want little girls to say, ‘This is achievable. I can do this. I can be in charge.’ And I think it helps a lot of trans girls around the world to know that a trans woman is playing this woman. I want them to look at Loot and see the possibilities—know that you can get to a place of love and power. I want women around the world to know that is so, even though the world keeps trying to slap us down.”

Nunn has a parallel sentiment about the celebration itself.

“People are having their rights taken away every day,” he says. “Representation is more important than ever. In Tennessee, where I grew up, the same people making drag a crime are arguing in favor of letting cousins marry. It’s insanity.”

For Takei, the insanity is fraught with grim echoes of the past. As a child in the 1940s, Takei spent years imprisoned in one of the U.S. internment camps for “hostile resident aliens” alongside his Japanese American parents.

“We were imprisoned in our own country. A country that went haywire with racism and hate,” he says. “The parallels to today are impossible to miss.”

Takei came out in 2005 and has been outspoken about LGBTQ+ rights since. He credits the activists who came before him with giving him the courage to do so.

“I felt guilty all the time I was carrying signs and marching for peace in Vietnam. Especially after Stonewall. I’d see other gay people making sacrifices while I was being silent about my most personal issue.”

Takei has no qualms about speaking up now. “I know how vulnerable our democracy can be,” Takei says. “I know the terror of losing it. We’re by the people, of the people, and for the people. That’s the strength and the danger of it. People are human. They don’t always do the right thing.”

Nunn plans to ensure the CCA platform keeps growing, and LGBTQ+ representation along with it.

“I was raised Southern Baptist and closeted. I prayed every day; the gay never went away,” Nunn says. “I want people like I was to see themselves celebrated.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Barbara Stanwyck in Stella Dallas

IIn 1948, the Eastman Kodak Company introduced a 35 mm triacetate safety base

film to replace the highly flammable cellulose nitrate base that had dominated film production until then; Kodak ceased production of nitrate film stock altogether in the early 1950s. Nitrate film endures now as the stuff of infamy—and for good reason. It is highly flammable, producing its own oxygen when burning, which makes fires extraordinarily di cult to extinguish and thus potentially disastrous. For instance, in 1897, the projection equipment for a cinematograph installation at a charity event in Paris caught fire, resulting in the deaths of 126 people.

That isn’t to say I’ve felt unsafe when I’ve attended the Nitrate Picture Show these last two years. And, if I did, the Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman Museum is the ideal place to risk life and limb, all in the name of cinema. I kid, of course, as it would be the logical place to feel safe should the anxiety still linger. The location, Rochester, New York, is where George Eastman first used cellulose nitrate as a base for photographic film roll and where Kodak has been headquartered since its inception. And the films’ handlers have considerable expertise as world-class authorities on matters ranging from film preservation to exhibition.

I’m writing this from the Lake Shore Limited, heading back to Chicago. Mere hours ago, my husband and I were seated in the Dryden awaiting this year’s Blind Date With Nitrate screening, which is exactly what it sounds like: each year the festival concludes with a mystery screening, with viewers given just a single clue beforehand in the form of a still from the film in the festival schedule. Last year, it was Carol Reed’s The Third Man. This year, after

closing remarks from the festival director, the curtain went up and the lights went down. Words appeared on the screen: Day of Wrath.

A collective gasp from the audience and, when the scene from which the hint was taken appeared, collective acknowledgment. A minor miracle of moviegoing, these moments make the Nitrate Picture Show such a unique experience.

Other highlights this year included an educational film from the shorts program warning about the spread of syphilis; Max Ophüls’s De Mayerling à Sarajevo, which posits Archduke Franz Ferdinand as a pretty dashing figure; William Wyler’s The Good Fairy (starring Margaret Sullavan and Herbert Marshall, need I say more?); and Raoul Walsh’s The Strawberry Blonde , with James Cagney as a dentist and Olivia de Havilland as his unlikely love interest. My favorite, though not new to me, ended up being King Vidor’s Stella Dallas, about the woefully maligned mother who will do anything for her daughter to have everything she didn’t.

I began crying about three-quarters of the way in. As the audience laughed at Dallas’s gaudy getups (for good reason, though I couldn’t bring myself to deride her maximalist sartorial choices), my heart swelled with empathy toward Barbara Stanwyck’s Stella, whose greatest crime is simply being herself and loving her child unconditionally. It was the best kind of sadness, cinema having transformed light into humanity, the image moving and, in return, moving us as well.

Until next time, moviegoers. —KAT SACHS v

The Moviegoer is the diary of a local film bu , collecting the best of what Chicago’s independent and underground film scene has to o er.

NOW PLAYING

R Bad Boys: Ride or Die

Bad Boys: Ride or Die, the fourth installment in the franchise, finds the buddy cop duo of Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) a bit older but not at all wiser.

Narratively, we aren’t breaking any new ground for the action-comedy genre. Our heroes are framed for a series of crimes they didn’t commit and forced to go on the run to clear their names and save their families. The players and locations are typical action fare—cartels; corrupt cops and politicians; strip clubs; a wedding; and an abandoned gator park (because it is Florida a er all).

A er meandering through the first few acts with some minor setups, reintroducing our players, and blowing several things up, the third act does what the series does best: a frenetic set of action set pieces that leave room for wisecracking. Visually, directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah pull from an extensive locker of tricks, allowing the set pieces to be the star of the show. It’s a film that never quite takes itself too seriously, which sadly limits any real stakes or emotional he . Even Marcus is self-aware enough to the extent that he reflects on his inability to die throughout the film.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die does a little bit of everything while not being particularly great at anything. At its most mediocre moments, it’s a star-driven vehicle with questionable star power but, every so o en, it reminds you of the genuinely funny film that kicked off the franchise two decades ago. —ADAM MULLINS-KHATIB R, 115 min. Wide release in theaters

RHit Man

There’s a lot of hope for Glen Powell, and lots of energy—from studios, directors, publicists, even critics—behind the idea of him as the next great Hollywood star. Untainted thus far by superhero dreck, he’s a charismatic lead focused on executing a nostalgic playbook for household status, which thankfully means compiling a diverse portfolio of interesting creative choices.

Richard Linklater’s Hit Man makes this announcement, in case you hadn’t heard it yet. A showcase for Powell—who cowrote the picture, based on a true story discovered in a Texas Monthly long-form article—it has him quite literally trying on a bunch of different hats. He plays Gary Johnson, a doofy and diffident psychology professor who moonlights as a police consultant and gets thrown into undercover work when his superior is suspended for unspecified workplace misbehavior that he bemoans as “cancel culture.”

A series of cosplay hijinks lead to an unprofessional episode that begets the movie’s tricky love story, rich

with enjoyably strange circumstances and made warm by Powell’s screen partner, Adria Arjona. Meditations on desire and identity play out through a fun house of perverse justice; occasionally, Linklater throws the screenplay at the audience’s face by cutting to Johnson lecturing his college class, conveniently describing the film’s themes.

The more fictive aspects of the story evolve into a questionable parable about what to do with retrograde men (read: cartoonishly underdeveloped villains). Still, everything’s kept light enough that any literary qualities don’t really matter. Retta and Sanjay Rao are excellent comedic players, running the undercover van in a fashion reminiscent of Jack Black and Seth Green in Enemy of the State (1998). Powell entertains with range. A rogues’ gallery of fools fall for the myth of an easily found assassin for hire. As far as cinematic toy chests go, this one’s swell. —JOHN WILMES R, 115 min. Netflix, limited release in theaters

RYoung Woman and the Sea

In an era when collective, in-person viewing is in a tenuous state, Young Woman and the Sea is what we call a straight-to-streaming movie.

There’s certainly little that’s objectionable about the story and how it’s told, which easily lends itself to an inspirational, live-action Disney experience. There’s a heroine in period dress who overcomes all manner of obstacles to achieve greatness, and a simple Google search will tell you of its triumphant end.

Daisy Ridley is certainly endearing as real-life champion swimmer Trudy Ederle, who became the first woman to swim the English Channel in 1926. Born to immigrant parents in New York City in 1905, the movie gives her a near-fatal childhood case of measles, along with other various trials, mostly rooted in sexism, before she can even get in the water.

Once she does, however, the steely young woman she becomes cannot be stopped, even if Young Woman and the Sea can’t resist throwing in a few obstacles Ederle didn’t actually face. Like many a biopic, context is thrown overboard in exchange for a close-up on our heroine, with cinematographer Óscar Faura making her family home as visually arresting as the ocean, and composer Amelia Warner expertly setting the mood. None of it is revelatory, but it’s rooted in respect for its subject, even if it’s executed in a manner that’s about what you’d expect from a Disney film about a remarkable woman which was written and directed by men. It’ll also perform its intended function for family viewing night, so with no great heights comes no great loss. —ANDREA THOMPSON PG, 129 min. Limited release in theaters v R

MUSIC

‘Her

Dee

CENTENNIAL TRIBUTE TO DINAH WASHINGTON

Part of the Chicago Blues Festival. With vocalists Dee Alexander, E. Faye Butler, Kristin Atkins (Washington’s niece), and Bruce Henry, pianist Miguel de la Cerna, bassist Jeremiah Hunt, drummer Charles Heath IV, and guitarist Melody Angel. Sat 6/8, 5–6:15 PM, Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph, chicagobluesfestival.us, free, all ages

voice could cut through air’

Alexander honors Dinah Washington at the Chicago Blues Festival.

By DAVID WHITEIS

Dinah Washington was one of the premier vocal stylists in American popular music from the 1940s through the early ’60s. She came of age as the music industry was beginning to loosen its arbitrary assumptions about genre and audience (in 1949, Billboard started calling its “race records” chart its R&B chart), and her wide stylistic range took every advantage of that development.

Washington could sing elegant jazz, 12-bar blues both bawdy and bereft, proto–rock ’n’ roll romps, and lush ballads. Her classic, stringsoaked rendition of “What a Di ’rence a Day

Makes,” which she nailed in one take, won a Grammy for Best R&B Performance in 1959. All told, she landed 47 hits on the R&B chart and 24 on the pop chart, making her one of the first major crossover artists to achieve mainstream recognition. Nonetheless her name has begun to fade from popular consciousness, which makes the centennial tribute to Washington at this weekend’s Chicago Blues Festival—headlined by Chicago singer Dee Alexander—not just timely but also welcome.

Born Ruth Lee Jones in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in 1924, Washington moved to Chicago with her family in 1928. Though trained as a gospel vocalist and pianist (she landed an early job accompanying gospel singer Sallie Martin), she defied her pious mother’s wishes and began sitting in at local nightclubs as a teenager. She wasn’t yet famous for her independence and her refusal to be tamed, but she would be soon—she hit the road as a lead singer with bandleader Lionel Hampton in 1942, just after she’d turned 18.

Washington’s recorded debut, “Evil Gal Blues,” cut for the Keynote label in 1943 with members of Hampton’s band, reached number nine on the Billboard R&B chart (then called the “Harlem Hit Parade”) and stayed one of her signature songs for the rest of her life. She went solo in 1946 and rapidly became not just a recording star but an A-list live draw. Critics and fellow musicians feted her as a worthy successor to Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday (both of whom she paid

tribute to in song), and in her prime she was dubbed “Queen of the Blues” and “Queen of the Jukeboxes.”

Modern-day blues fans, though, prefer to focus on the hard-edged, Delta-honed electric sound that captivated white blues revivalists in the 1950s and ’60s and still defines “authenticity” for many of the music’s self-appointed gatekeepers. They often overlook Washington as well as the legacy she represents.

Dee Alexander pays little mind to such turf wars. Since debuting on the local scene in the late 1970s, she’s grown to embrace a dauntingly eclectic variety of musical styles. Aggressive funk and fusion characterized her tenure with the Ken Chaney Xperience in the 80s and 90s (a sound she revisited at the South Shore Cultural Center in 2012 with a tribute to Jimi Hendrix and James Brown, billed as “Dee Alexander’s Funkin’ With Electric Soul”). She honored Ella Fitzgerald at the 2012 Chicago Jazz Festival, accompanied by Orbert Davis’s Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, and she excels at the classic Great American Songbook repertoire that Fitzgerald took to such heights.

Early in her career, Alexander absorbed boundary-shattering free jazz from the likes of vocalists Rita Warford and Iqua Colson, percussionist Baba Eli Hoenai, and woodwind virtuoso “Light” Henry Huff, and she contin-

ues in that adventurous vein today, alongside similarly forward-looking improvisers such as saxophonist Ernest Dawkins, flutist Nicole Mitchell, and multi-instrumentalist Douglas Ewart, among other members and alumni of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). She’s also worked with mainstream blues artists, including singer Zora Young, harpist Billy Branch, and southern soul-blues star Willie Clayton.

This Blues Festival program represents something of a musical homecoming for Alexander. She’s celebrated Dinah Washington in the past—her 2007 “Sirens of Song” tribute to Washington and Nina Simone in Millennium Park was ecstatically received—but her love for the singer goes back much further.

“I cut my eyeteeth on Dinah,” Alexander says. “And I thank my mom for that. I always have to start off by saying, ‘Thanks, mom, for exposing us, me and my brothers, to this music.’” Alexander acknowledged this debt with the 2014 album Songs My Mother Loves. “Dinah was another one that knew what she wanted,” she continues. “I never got to hear her sing live, but my mother told me that she would go to the Club DeLisa, and she was there when Dinah actually shut it down because people wouldn’t stop talking. She would cuss like a sailor, you know, tell everybody where to go.”

Dinah Washington appears on the cover of a posthumous compilation from the 1980s. JAMES HOSKING

As a child, Chicago jazz singer Dee Alexander learned to love the music of Dinah Washington, which her mother liked to play on Sundays as she did the ironing. RAYMOND MAYS

Washington once silenced a noisy patron by saying, “Please, mister, don’t make me call you no motherfucker!”

“But my thing is, her voice could cut through air,” Alexander says. “You listen to her—they talked about how she could stand in front of those big bands, and her voice could ring right over those horns, the trumpet section. They didn’t blow her over. And that to me is absolutely amazing.”

Washington also did it without histrionics. Renowned for her precise articulation (as biographer Nadine Cohodas has noted, with Dinah it was always “little,” not “liddle”; “started,” not “starded”), she delivered her lyrics with the care of a storyteller. She could convey realms of meaning through subtle shifts of intonation and timbre, and she could use even the most seemingly o and legatos and fillips to create cinematically vivid emotions.

two minutes [each], two and a half minutes at the most.”

The band will include the nucleus of what Alexander calls her “A team”: pianist Miguel de la Cerna (her longtime collaborator and musical director), bassist Jeremiah Hunt, and drummer Charles “Rick” Heath IV. They’ll be joined by blues guitarist Melody Angel, whose spiky, Hendrix-influenced playing should add a jolt of contemporary urgency.

“She could stand in front of those big bands, and her voice could ring right over those horns.” —Dee Alexander on Dinah Washington

In this she has a soulmate in Alexander, one of the most riveting and e ective vocal stylists active today. She’s earned that reputation with sensitive, inventive readings of such starkly drawn vignettes as “Light” Henry Hu ’s “You and I,” Nancy Wilson’s “Guess Who I Saw Today” (which Alexander transforms into a tragicomedy in one act), and Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” (“Billie rides me; her spirit rides me,” Alexander says).

“When I hear an artist,” Alexander says, “I want to hear a story. It can be the same song that’s been sung a thousand times, but I want to hear this person’s interpretation of it. I want to tell a story, and I’m really selective about the kind of story that I tell.”

Alexander says it’s been an honor and a challenge to put together a revue that will do justice to a legacy as rich and varied as Dinah Washington’s. “I was actually humbled,” she says. “I was surprised, actually. ’Cause, you know, I did the Jazz Festival last year, on the early slot with the Chicago Soul Jazz Collective, and so—I’m like, wow! I’m looking forward to it.”

The tribute set will be 75 minutes long, somewhat longer than the usual Blues Festival performance, but given the richness of Washington’s body of work, it’ll still need to be paced briskly. When Alexander started planning, she reminded her bandmates, “We’re gonna be like the records back in the day, like

As of this writing, the program has not been finalized, but the show will feature several other vocalists alongside Alexander. They include Je Award–winning singeractress E. Faye Butler and Washington’s niece Kristin Atkins, a longtime CPS music teacher and gospel singer who’s mounted tribute shows to her “Aunt Ruth” (including The Dinah Washington Experience and Destination Dinah) and written children’s books about Washington and Billie Holiday. Singer, storyteller, and cultural historian Bruce Henry will reprise Brook Benton’s role as Washington’s studio partner on two duets she released in 1960, “Baby (You’ve Got What It Takes)” (with Atkins) and “A Rockin’ Good Way (to Mess Around and Fall in Love)” (with Alexander).

Atkins will also be featured on “Destination Moon,” and Butler will revisit “What a Di ’rence a Day Makes” as an up-tempo swinger. Melody Angel will take the mike on the playfully edgy “Blow Top Blues,” which Washington first recorded in 1947. Alexander will showcase her own ballad style on “This Bitter Earth,” a hope-against-hope lover’s plea that was Washington’s final number one R&B hit in 1960.

This celebration promises to be both joyful and poignant—Washington was only 39 when she died in 1963. Characteristically, Alexander sees it as an opportunity to honor a revered forebear and to carry her music (and the culture it represents) into the future.

“We’re the American griots,” she says. “That’s what we are. We’re the griots. Hearing these songs since I was a child, they’ve become a part of me, a part of my life. When something is classic, it never dies. You live the song, and if you believe in the song, then I think that whoever’s listening will also believe in it. You just find your voice and make it your own.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

LIL’ ED & THE BLUES IMPERIALS Fri 6/7 and Sat 6/8, 9 PM and 11 PM, Lee’s Unleaded Blues, 7401 S. South Chicago, $20 (9 PM, good for both shows), $15 (11 PM only), 21+

Lee’s Unleaded Blues rises from its own ashes

The revitalized

south-side club has reopened in time for the biggest blues weekend of the year.

By JUSTIN O’BRIEN

Like a phoenix rising from its own ashes, Lee’s Unleaded Blues (7401 S. South Chicago) has risen again after a decade of disuse, defying grim pronouncements about the demise of “real blues” on the south side.

Chicago entrepreneur Warren Berger, who also owns Club Escape (a Black LGBTQ+ bar a few blocks away at 1530 E. 75th St.), bought the shuttered blues club in 2018. To reopen Lee’s Unleaded, he’s endured COVID delays, answered to doubting neighbors, and navigated shifting city building-code regulations. He’s also created some di culties for himself by insisting on improving the acoustics of the room.

The project got o the ground after Leslie Hairston, alderperson of the Fifth Ward at the time, suggested that Berger help revive the derelict club. Lee’s Unleaded had started operating under that name in 1983 and closed in 2015.

“I’ve known Leslie for years,” says Berger. “She called me one day and said, ‘You know, Lee’s Unleaded Blues is available. And I know you know how to run a bar. It would be really

great if you could see about buying Lee’s and resurrecting it.’”

The previous owner of Lee’s had lost the club’s liquor license in 2014, so Berger needed to apply for a new one. During that process, neighbors called a community meeting with Hairston’s o ce to share their concerns about a liquor license returning to the space.

“A lot of people knew me,” says Berger, “because I operated a fish market [South Chicago Seafood] for years. I was a reputable operator. There were never problems. People were really satisfied with everything. And I told them, ‘I have lights, security. I’ll see to it that they don’t park in your neighborhood. We’ll watch it.’”

Now that the club is operating again, Berger is convinced he has the neighbors on his side. “I think they’re really pleased with what I’ve done,” he says. “This is a community thing. We have to do this for the benefit of the community.”

Construction at Lee’s began in earnest in 2020, after Berger was awarded a $136,000 grant from the city’s Neighborhood Opportu-

Harpist Steve Bell and guitarist John Primer perform at the so opening of Lee’s Unleaded Blues in April. MARC MONAGHAN

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continued from p. 25

nity Fund. He combined that money with some of his own funds and contributions from a few investors. But by that point, of course, COVID was complicating everything.

In Chicago, even without a pandemic, you can count on permitting and inspections to double the length of whatever timeline you’ve planned. “Construction in Chicago takes forever,” says Jennifer Littleton, manager of Lee’s Unleaded. “We had to remodel the entire interior.”

“Nothing’s ever going to be the same as it once was, but we just want to be an important part of not only the blues community but the south-side community as a whole.”

—Lee’s Unleaded manager Jennifer Littleton

In many ways Lee’s isn’t the same club now, despite the familiarity of its name and location to decades of blues fans in Chicago and beyond. But in some ways, it’s better.

The triangular space has been reconfigured, partly to accommodate a new bar, a new stage (where the entrance used to be), new accessible bathrooms, and additional seating with new furniture. The club’s capacity has more than doubled, to around 110.

“We’ve had challenges with the sound,” says Berger. “It sounds good, but we want it to sound great. I have a fabulous sound guy who’s done a lot of major sound work. We have to resolve some of that, because it’s a small place and musicians play loud. You want to be able to control with your sound system, not with the instruments.”

The club held a successful soft opening on April 26 and 27 with John Primer & the Real Deal Blues Band. Lee’s Unleaded has since been open on Fridays and Saturdays, and it hopes to ramp up to five days per week after this weekend’s Chicago Blues Festival.

“People were excited, and are excited, for the club to be open,” says Littleton, who previously managed B.L.U.E.S. on Halsted and also

works for Delmark Records. “It’s definitely needed on the south side.”

On Blues Fest weekend, Lee’s will feature Lil’ Ed & the Blues Imperials on Friday, June 7, and Saturday, June 8. This year Lil’ Ed was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame by the Blues Foundation in Memphis, as Primer was last year. The club’s plans are still up in the air, but it might have additional bookings on Thursday or Sunday of that week.

“Warren was kind of talking to Johnny Drummer,” says Littleton, referring to the bluesman who anchored jams at the old Lee’s Unleaded Blues for decades. “He doesn’t live in Chicago anymore. But if Warren can get him to come do a jam session Thursday or Sunday, that would be great.”

Such a link to the club’s historic past could only help—especially since many blues lovers still remember the 1960s and ’70s, when Lee’s Unleaded Blues used to be Queen Bee’s Lounge, run by E e Taylor, the Queen Bee herself.

“Everything that I’ve heard about her, she just seems like a really vibrant force,” says Littleton. “Queen Bee’s was one of the places where younger musicians would go to learn from the more established musicians.”

One of those younger musicians was Harry “Snapper” Mitchum, the house bass player at Queen Bee’s for many years, who went on to notoriety in Son Seals’s band.

“She was a sweet person,” says Mitchum. When he returned to Chicago from two combat tours of Vietnam, he was lost, and Queen Bee essentially took him in. “She took care of everything for me. She was a great woman.”

Mitchum, who now lives in Ohio, remembers that Queen Bee’s daughter Regina Collins carried on for nearly ten more years after her mother died in 1974. For a while in the late 70s and early 80s, she leased the club to an operator who ran it as Harper’s Point and didn’t

book bands. In 1983 Collins sold the bar to Ray and Leola “Lee” Grey, who’d previously owned a blues club called the Clock Lounge one block north.

“That’s how Queen Bee’s became Lee’s Unleaded,” explains Mitchum. “There was three or four blues clubs right there in that area. She had music six days a week. The people that came to the Clock would come down to Queen Bee’s, and the Queen Bee’s people would go there to the Clock. And she closed on Mondays because the Checkerboard had their jam on Mondays.”

Though Lee’s Unleaded would eventually pass through several more owners in the 2000s, for decades it kept alive the tradition of presenting live blues bands and hosting jams. And now, under Warren Berger’s watch, the tradition will resume.

“We will add additional nights, probably after Blues Fest,” says Littleton. “The plan is to start up some Sunday afternoons, and maybe some happy hour–type openings throughout the week. I’d love to work with the neighborhoods—and I know that Warren would too—and do block parties or events out there. We definitely want to do some community things.”

“Everybody’s very cool,” Littleton adds.

“Nothing’s ever going to be the same as it once was, but we just want to be an important part of not only the blues community but the south-side community as a whole.”

“We’re trying to communicate with the people in the neighborhoods,” says Berger. “That’s our core market—the south side, the people who love the blues, the people who were raised with the blues. They’re out there, and they’re not that far from us.”  v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Clockwise from top right: John Primer greets journalist and Reader contributor Evan F. Moore at the so opening of Lee’s Unleaded Blues, patron Johnetta Eatmon watches the show from the bar, and Primer leads his Real Deal Blues Band. MARC MONAGHAN

THEE SINSEERS & THE ALTONS

SINSEERLY YOURS TOUR + BENNY TROKAN

BONNY LIGHT

CONSUMER

THE WALLFLOWERS + DAVID ROSALES WAND IN THE ROUND

JULIE BYRNE IN THE ROUND + ANGEL BAT DAWID

NASSER AL-RAYESS

CORTEX + BRAINSTORY

THE RETURN OF TOP 8 WITH ROD THILL THE WAR AND TREATY

DIIV

+ HORSE JUMPER OF LOVE + FULL BODY 2 TYLA RAYE ETHEL CAIN THE LAST DINNER PARTY + KING ISIS WILD NOTHING + PEEL DREAM MAGAZINE EVNNE

WHITNEY + HANNAH FRANCES

THE SECRET HISTORY OF CHICAGO MUSIC

The Pearl Handle Band debut 40 years after breaking up

A er these outlaw rockers cut their only album in 1980, their label folded and the recording got bootlegged. But it finally has a proper release.

By STEVE KRAKOW

Since 2005 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.

I’d never say the Windy City shouldn’t be famous for blues, soul, and house, because it definitely should. But after nearly 20 years of writing the Secret History of Chicago Music, I’m confident our town can produce top-shelf tunes in practically any genre—gospel, power metal, psychedelic soundscapes, you name it. Most folks don’t associate outlaw southern rock with Chicago, but then again, most folks don’t know about the hard-living Pearl Handle Band, with their fabulous mustaches and cocked cowboy hats.

The Pearl Handle Band played their first gig at a farm party in Waterman, Illinois, on Halloween night in 1974, but they mostly have roots closer to Chicago. Bassist Mickey Gentile and guitarist Dan Hurc went to Lane Tech High School. Drummer Dean Aliotta attended Morton West in Berwyn, like his older brothers, Mitch and Ted. (Mitch played bass with psychsoul group Rotary Connection, and they were both in Aliotta Haynes, which became Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah after Ted left—they scored a regional hit in 1973 with “Lake Shore Drive.”)

The band’s lead singer and guitarist, the late George “Big G” Millspaugh, was the only native southerner in this southern-rock band— he was born in Rockport, Texas, in 1950, but by the time he started high school, his family had settled in Waterman, 60 miles west of Chicago. While still in high school, Hurc and Dean Aliotta had played in the band Hoona with Phil

Balsano (later of Tantrum) and Ted Aliotta. Gentile’s high school band called themselves Bloodhawke, having decided that “Burlington Express” sounded too “bubblegum.”

After graduating, Hurc and Dean Aliotta rented a house together in Champaign, and Gentile attended Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Gentile commuted to Champaign to jam with Balsano, Hurc, and Aliotta.

In the early 70s, Millspaugh was already gigging around the Fox Valley area with the groups Cox’s Army and Chicken Lips. He’d played with Balsano in a high school band called Captain Soul, and it was Balsano who recommended him to Gentile, Hurc, and Aliotta after the three of them returned to Chicago.

“When Millspaugh joined it was official,” Gentile says. “We knew we had our front man and lead singer.” Their first gig felt like a good omen too: “It was a full harvest-style moon on

that infamous night.”

The four-piece took the name “the Pearl Handle Band,” suggested by their friend Mike Lash. They gigged mostly in the midwest (frequently at colleges) and once toured Texas for six weeks. The acts they covered on a late-70s set list sum up the band’s influences pretty neatly: they include ZZ Top, the Rolling Stones, Savoy Brown, Johnny Winter, Little Milton, Marshall Tucker, and the Allman Brothers. The group played a bigger share of originals as time went on, but stylistically speaking, they kept their boots where they’d planted them.

Because the Pearl Handle Band didn’t have much local competition in the “outlaw twang” department, they landed plum slots opening for the likes of Black Oak Arkansas, Point Blank, and Dickie Betts. They shared bills with Journey and Van Halen, and Millspaugh’s wiz-

ardry on slide guitar gave the PHB a dual-lead sound that made them a good fit with acid rockers Captain Beyond and Mahogany Rush

They also played with country stars, including Waylon Jennings and Johnny Paycheck.

“In the late 70s, the band was booked to be the opener for Johnny Paycheck for several weeks in Minnesota,” Gentile says. “We did two shows with Johnny, which were great. Then our drummer ended up in the hospital with bleeding ulcers. We had to cancel the rest of the tour until he recovered.”

Despite their success onstage, the Pearl Handle Band had a tough time getting a record out—but not through any fault of their own. Millspaugh explained in a 2013 interview for the magazine Bands of Dixie

“We got the original offer from Sunbird Records, because a friend of our sound man did photo and graphic work for that studio,”

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he said. “Through him, we sent them a demo of our songs.” The band was well-rehearsed, and they nailed most of the material in one take. But then the wheels came o . “The whole session was shelved, because Sunbird Records went out of business,” Millspaugh explained. “We never heard from the studio people after we returned to Chicago.”

The PHB’s relationship with their manager fell apart. They couldn’t finish final mixes or overdubs, and it would be years before they heard about those recordings again. When they did, it wasn’t good news.

In the early 80s, some of the Pearl Handle Band’s music ended up on a bootleg release from Brylen Records. “A friend of mine called and he had just returned from a trip to Nashville,” Millspaugh told Bands of Dixie. “He was in a record store checking out cassettes in the bargain bin, and he saw the Pearl Handle ‘Brylen’ tape. I was completely surprised.” The producer of the sessions was long gone, and nobody could answer the band’s questions about how the bootleg had come to exist.

Gentile retrieved the master tapes for those sessions in the 1990s, years after the band broke up. At the time he worked for the WEA label group (Warner, Elektra, Atlantic), and he ran into former Sunbird owner Nelson Larkin at a conference. Larkin pleaded ignorance about the bootleg, but he did help with the tapes.

The Sunbird disaster demoralized the PHB so thoroughly that they split up for what Gentile calls a “reset” at the end of 1980. They reunited in 1983 and hit the local circuit, but it didn’t stick— the Pearl Handle Band broke up for good in 1984.

“Clubs were going disco, or DJ music, and were not interested in paying big bucks for live bands,” Millspaugh told Bands of Dixie. “We all needed a break from each other as well. After constant touring, playing clubs four to six nights a week for six or seven years, we were pretty burned out.”

That’s not to say the PHB didn’t sometimes have fun burning themselves out. “A good friend of ours was getting married in the Florida Keys,” Gentile recalls. “He decided he wanted our band to play at his wedding no matter what it cost.” The gig ended up lasting three songs before the cops shut it down due to noise complaints. “We had to stop playing and tear our equipment down,” Gentile says.

“The band and some of the crew ended up partying at the resort and doing some ‘Fear and Loathing in Key West’ for about five days.”

These days Aliotta is retired in Las Vegas. Millspaugh, who died in November 2023, worked in air cargo at O’Hare and fronted Big G & the Real Deal, who released two albums in the 2000s. Gentile plays with the Windy City Rev Ups, accompanies husbandand-wife R&B act Cyrus Hayes & Lady Lee, and still occasionally jams with Hurc.

The tale of the Pearl Handle Band has a relatively happy ending, though—I always love when a long-lost record finally comes to light. Millspaugh’s early band Cox’s Army had released an obscure 45 in the early 70s, and guitarist Larry Zimmer sold a copy to Permanent Records in Los Angeles. Owner Lance Barresi, who was doing A&R work for LA-based RidingEasy Records, took an interest, and a Cox’s Army track ended up on the label’s 2022 compilation Brown Acid: The Fourteenth Trip Zimmer hipped RidingEasy to the derailed PHB album (by then the bootleg had made it online). RidingEasy licensed the recordings from Millspaugh and recreated the album from the reel-to-reel masters Gentile had saved. Best of all, the original tapes contained all 12 songs the band had intended to release, one-upping the seven-song bootleg.

On March 29, RidingEasy released Pearl Handle Band via Bandcamp. The band’s ragged, swaggering glory shines through on the bloozy “Nasty Ways,” the hedonistic “Going Down Again,” and the shuffling “Call for the Doctor,” which beats ZZ Top at their own game.

Gentile says RidingEasy has suggested that a release on vinyl (and other physical media) could arrive in January 2025. I’d love to hold this album in my hands, but in the meantime, I’m just happy we can hear the PHB’s distinctively midwestern take on sizzling southern rock. v

Big thanks to music historian Ken Voss (founder of the Illinois Entertainer) for his research.

The radio version of the Secret History of Chicago Music airs on Outside the Loop on WGN Radio 720 AM, Saturdays at 5 AM with host Mike Stephen. Past shows are archived at outsidetheloopradio.com/tag/secrethistory-of-chicago-music.

June 13, 2024

June 27, 2024

July 25, 2024

August 8, 2024

August 22, 2024

Sept. 19, 2024

Kim Gordon keeps it freaky and far-out on The Collective

THURSDAY6

Babe Report Wallplant and Sonny Falls open. 7 PM, Fallen Log, 2554-2556 W. Diversey, $10. 17+

Babe Report’s new debut album, Did You Get Better (Exploding in Sound), delivers unfussy pop songs on the back of straightforwardly fuzzy guitars and colossal punk rhythms—it wastes no time rocking. Jefferson Park residents Ben Grigg and Emily Bernstein launched Babe Report during the pandemic lockdown, with Bernstein playing guitar, Grigg playing everything else, and both of them singing. A er issuing the two-song single Very Different Original Masses in April 2021, the duo recruited bassist

IT’S BEEN INTERESTING to see how the members of Sonic Youth have tackled their solo careers since the landmark experimental rock band suddenly split up in 2011. Their paths have often suggested that Sonic Youth were a phenomenon greater than the sum of their parts, to put it politely. The output of guitarist Thurston Moore has encompassed rock stylings you might call Sonic Youth Lite, while guitarist Lee Ranaldo (in my opinion always the band’s heart and soul) has leaned into his hyper-earnest songwriter side. They’ve each made some good work on their own, but these two dudes often sound a bit lost without each other. Bassist and guitarist Kim Gordon, however, has emerged from Sonic Youth’s breakup as the member most concerned with continuing to push musical boundaries, notably in her guitar-noise duo with Bill Nace, called Body/Head, and on her second solo LP, March’s The Collective (Matador). To realize her vision for the album, Gordon teamed

up with producer Justin Raisen (whose credits include Drake, Charli XCX, and Yves Tumor), who keeps one foot planted firmly in pop and the other in heady realms; together they engineer a mind-bending collision of spoken word, trap hip-hop, industrial grind, power electronics, and noise rock. The whole record is densely layered and aggressive in every sense, stuttering from dissonant feedback breakdowns to heavily processed and Auto-Tuned hyperpop to full-on harsh-noise assaults, making it by far the most exciting thing to come out of the Sonic Youth camp since Sonic Youth. It’s too soon to say how The Collective will age. Is it too trendy to be timeless? Or will we look back on it with the same adoration as the Sonic Youth classic “Bull in the Heather,” which just passed its 30th anniversary? Whatever happens, it’s great to see Gordon creating freaky, far-out sounds more than four decades into her career.

—LUCA

CIMARUSTI

Mech and drummer Peter Reale, allowing Grigg to switch to second guitar, and they’ve stuck with that four-piece lineup ever since. On the 2022 EP The Future of Teeth, the sinewy rhythm section provides precisely placed support beams for Grigg and Bernstein’s serrated vocal harmonies and spunky riffs. The version of Babe Report on Did You Get Better is all that and more: recording in Grigg and Bernstein’s basement studio, the band played these lean and focused songs with seasoned agility. The lyrics on Did You Get Better strike a balance between sardonic and empathetic, and Bernstein and Grigg sing as if they’re sharing concerns rather than issuing declarations. When Grigg shouts about the Nadig Newspapers police blotter on the nervy “Turtle of Reaper,” he encourages us to ask what we get when we let fearmongering override our critical thinking. And when the song boils over into huge climaxes, it sounds to me like an affirmation that we still have the power to see our world more clearly. You might not hear it exactly as I do, but if you like noisy indie rock, I think you’ll agree that “Turtle of Reaper” kicks ass. —LEOR GALIL

FRIDAY7

Heavee Sherelle headlines; Heavee and Ariel Zetina open. 10 PM, Smart Bar, 3730 N. Clark, $25, $20 with student ID, $20 in advance. 21+

As Heavee, Chicago producer Darryl Bunch Jr. is responsible for some of the most inventive footwork tracks in recent memory. In March, Hyperdub released his album Unleash, which offsets its polyrhythmic aggression with melodic serenity. Bunch likes to evoke video-game scores in his work, and Unleash sometimes includes parts that recall, say,

KIM GORDON, IRREVERSIBLE ENTANGLEMENTS, DREW MCDOWALL

Sat 6/8, 6 PM, Bohemian National Cemetery, 3969 W. Bryn Mawr, $35. b

DANIELLE NEU

Babe Report MATT SCHWERIN

Super Mario 64 , though they occur in unexpected forms. On “Bounce Dat,” a collaboration with DanTOG and DJ Paypal, the rapid loops of bubbling synths sound a little like an underwater level, except with the notes blenderized and rearranged into tiny hiccupping snippets. The way Unleash most reminds me of video games, though, is that I get immersed in it—it can carry me through gameplay or a turn on the dance floor.

—LEOR GALIL

Huntsmen Without Waves and Anatomy of Habit open. 9 PM, Sleeping Village, 3734 W. Belmont, $19.57. 21+

Chicago quintet Huntsmen made waves with their 2018 debut full-length, American Scrap (Prosthetic). The record’s distinctive sound blends heavy doom with dark folk and Americana, a combination so intuitive that it’s hard to remember it wasn’t already an established genre. Huntsmen’s followup, the March 2020 release Mandala of Fear , is an ambitious narrative concept album that takes about an hour and a half to tell a harrowing postapocalyptic story. COVID shutdowns hit the band at a pivotal time, but they powered through, and their April 2022 EP, The Dying Pines , feels like a deep breath after a trial by fire. That same month they

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set off on their first European tour, which included a special set at Roadburn where they played American Scrap in its entirety.

Since then, the members of Huntsmen have contended with personal struggles, including chronic illness, which makes their forthcoming full-length, The Dry Land (Prosthetic), feel all the more hardearned and fierce. At six tracks long, it doesn’t echo the sprawl of Mandala, but that’s not a complaint. Singer Aimee Bueno-Knipe contributed to the writing significantly this time around, and her vocals bring a cold-sheened black-metal influence to “This, Our Gospel,” whose sharp grandeur perfectly suits its bloody biblical imagery. “Lean Times” starts as a poignant, acoustic bit of breathing room before erupting into a shivery power-ballad climax. “Rain” holds true to Huntsmen’s country-gothic roots with a chthonic, pulsing rhythm that sounds like the heartbeat of a mountain that’s being gutted. Drummer Ray Bueno-Knipe and bassist Marc StrangerNajjar bolster the twin-guitar attack of Chris Kang and Gavin Cushman, and it’s all hands on deck and all throats deployed for the goose bump–inducing choruses. (Another guitarist, Kirill Orlov, contributes to the studio recording.) An equally heavy undertow drives the epic “The Herbsight,” a raw depiction of a painful and spiritually expensive shamanic journey. Kang and Aimee Bueno-Knipe sweep you up in catharsis as they sing, “Breathe in deep the herbs and let the tears roll down / Tears that will fill up the cracks between time / Till this goddamn era drowns.” The Dry Land reaches its peak with “In Time, All Things,” which unites the themes of life-and-death struggle that flow throughout the album’s songs. At this record-release show, Huntsmen share the bill with two more reliably great Chicago heavy bands, Without Waves and Anatomy of Habit. —MONICA

Let’s Play!

KENDRICK

Darryl Bunch Jr., aka Heavee SAM SIEGEL

Huntsmen SAM PORTER

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SATURDAY8

Slow Joy Daundry open. 9 PM, Gman Tavern, 3740 N. Clark, $20, $15 in advance. 21+

Slow Joy is the solo project of vocalist and multiinstrumentalist Esteban Flores, a second-generation Mexican American born and raised in New Mexico, and his heritage radiates throughout his music. “It’s the bass undertone to the treble,” he tells me over Zoom from his home in Dallas. As the grandchild of a pastor at a conservative Hispanic church, he wasn’t allowed to hear much secular music growing up, though each of his family members played several instruments at services. As an adult, Flores finally listened to previously forbidden music and got hooked. On his new album, Mi Amigo Slow Joy, Flores lays out angsty vocals over a foundation of gritty punk guitar to create melanges of grungy shoegaze. “Pulling Teeth” reflects the influence of one of his favorite late discoveries—Nirvana—in its alternation between quiet, melodic verses and thrashing, anthemic choruses. On other songs, such as “King Cowboy,” Flores’s bleak, melancholic lyrics recall the work of great country and folk troubadours. Mi Amigo Slow Joy embraces the philosophy baked into Flores’s stage name: rapid changes can be devastating, he says, and sometimes you need patience. “A lot of times you don’t feel like good things are coming,” he explains, “but it’s because when life changes for the better, it takes a lot more time.” It’s a perspective, he adds, gi ed to him by his cultura. “It’s what holds me,” he says. “Why would I hide my best, this fire? I’m not far removed from the person who came across the border with two dollars in his pocket, and I’m held up by the people who are not far removed from that.” At this Gman show, Flores will be accompanied by his touring band, bassist Grant Miller and drummer Travis Haile. —CATALINA MARIA JOHNSON

KiM Gordon See Pick of the Week on page 30. Irreversible Entanglements and Drew McDowall open. 6 PM, Bohemian National Cemetery, 3969 W. Bryn Mawr, $35. b

TUESDAY11

Aigel Beth Sawlts opens. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $20. 21+

Aigel are the dark electronic hip-hop duo of Tatarstan poet and vocalist Aigel Gaisina and Russian musician and producer Ilya Baramiya. The two came together in 2016 when Gaisina asked Baramiya to write music for poems she’d written a er her boyfriend at the time was imprisoned on assault charges—he’d gotten into a fight with her exhusband, who was willing to settle, but the authorities insisted on prosecuting. Their collaborations evolved into a band, and in 2017 Aigel released their smart, compelling debut full-length, 1190, titled for the number of days in Gaisina’s boyfriend’s sentence. They went viral for the video to their song “Tatarin,” which depicts a man on the day of his release from jail, grappling with a confusing outside

world and causing havoc.

Against bouncy, minimalist electronics, Gaisina raps about a woman remaining faithful during her partner’s long imprisonment, partly out of devotion and partly out of fear he’ll go ballistic if he finds out she’s strayed. Throughout “Tatarin,” the tone of her voice wavers between lovelorn and anxious, but she serves up the singsong chorus—“My boyfriend is a Tatar / His love is authoritarian”—with a snarling

laugh. She makes it clear she’s parodying stereotypes of Tatars as low-class rabble and taking aim at an unjust carceral system that can be especially cruel to minorities.

In February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Aigel were devastated. Public protests were forbidden in Russia, but two days later they chose to play a previously booked concert so they could provide a space for fans to support one another. They donated the proceeds from that performance and subsequent tour dates to charity. In September of that year, Aigel were blacklisted by the Russian government for their anti-war stance, and they’ve been living abroad ever since— Gaisina is now in Germany, Baramiya in Montenegro. During their exile, their fame has only grown. Last fall Aigel went viral again, in the Russian Federation and beyond, when their gothy, catchy single “Piyala’’ appeared on the soundtrack of the popular TV series Slovo Patsana: Krov na Asfalte . Also the title track of Aigel’s fourth album, released in 2020, “Piyala” hit number two on Shazam’s global charts and became the first Tatar-language song to achieve such widespread success. That in itself could be seen as a sign of resistance to the Russian government, which since 2008 has restricted use of the Tatar language in Tatarstan schools as it promotes the Russian language across

the federation. And beyond politics, it speaks to the broad appeal of Aigel’s music—it’s hard not to get lost in Baramiya’s haunted, driving rhythms and Gaisina’s wistful, layered vocals. —JAMIE LUDWIG

Tropa Magica Shannon & the Clams headline. 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, $30. 18+

Brothers David and Rene Pacheco make twisted cumbia as Tropa Magica. Born in East Los Angeles, the duo grew up immersed in the sounds of cumbia and ranchera, punctuated by chihuahua barks, baby wails, and family gossip. In a video for Firestone Walker’s 805 beer, Rene describes their philosophy as “conviviendo.” It’s music for living together. As they got older, the Pachecos explored the LA punk scene and then spent time in Mexico, where they learned about Latine rock ’n’ rollers such as Kumbia Queers and Chicano Batman. They liked the grit, simplicity, and do-it-yourself spirit of punk, but as they developed a deeper connection with their roots and understood more of the current Latine indie landscape, they were inspired to expand on the musical styles that echoed through their childhood homes. Thus Tropa Magica’s grungy, trippedout cumbia sound was born.

Initially, the Pachecos called themselves Thee Commons to reflect the grassroots spirit they were going for, but the name didn’t translate well to Spanish. In a 2022 interview and live performance for LA radio station KROQ, they said that it was difficult to discuss their band with friends and relatives who spoke only Spanish, so they changed the name to Tropa Magica—which also reflects their love of weed and psychedelics and the influence of those substances on their songwriting. If you wanna get down to music that has the spirit of laughing in the sun while food cooks outdoors, of gazing up at a starry night sky while feeling small but content, of hugging the people who matter most to you, get to this Lincoln Hall show. Between Tropa Magica and the headliners, doo-wop country outfit Shannon & the Clams, it’s sure to embody the best parts of summer. —MICCO CAPORALE v

Esteban Flores of Slow Joy JAY MARTIN

Tropa Magica MATTHEW NOVAK

JOBS

Health Care Service Corporation seeks Business Analyst (Chicago, IL) to work as a liaison among stakeholders to elicit, analyze, communicate and validate requirements for changes to business processes, policies and information systems. REQS: This position reqs a Bach deg, or forgn equiv, in Tech or us Admin or a rel fld + 2 Yrs of exp as a proj mgr, sys analyst, or a rel position. Telecommuting permitted. Applicants who are interested in this position should submit a complete resume in English to hrciapp@bcbsil.com, search [Business Analyst / R0026599. EOE].

XIT Solutions Inc. seeks Sr Software Developers w/ Mast or for deg equiv in CS, CIS, IT or Eng & 1 yr of exp in job offer or in . ust have exp w/ collect info, anlz stats, grant rights for DB objct, trans DB objct, trans DB, Teradata dvlpr, dvlp user rqrmt & maint DB func. Mnml dom trvl reqd > 5%. Telecom perm. May reside anywhr in US. Apply to hr@ xitsolutionsinc.com or 18W140 Butterfield Rd,. Ste 1500, Oakbrook Terrace, IL 60181.

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

OTC Operations Senior Analyst StoneX Group Inc. seeks an OTC Operations Senior Analyst (Job Req. 202411214) in Chicago, IL to assist the Trade Desk to manage a book of limit, market-on-open, market-on-close variety of good till-cancelled orders and coordinate with the broker network on market movement driven status management and fills execution. Apply at https://www.stonex. com/about/careers/ under U.S. job openings. EOE. No recruiters.

Principal Software Engineer sought by Superior Collision Custom in Glenview, IL to lead the design, development, testing, deployment & maintenance of high quality software products. Reqs Bach deg in

Comp Sci/Eng or rltd & 2 yrs exp in rltd occupation. Mst hv perm auth to wrk in US. Snd rsm & cvr lttr to 3124 W Lake Ave, Glenview, IL 60026.

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

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

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

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

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

to: Omar Mohammed, o.mohammed@mirzadental.com, REF: AG

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

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

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

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

Data Architect Data Architect, Pharmacyclics LLC (an AbbVie Inc. company), Mettawa, IL. Responsible for compliance with applicable Corporate and Divisional Policies and procedures. Manage multiple projects and write Business Requirements Documents (BRDs) and technical design Documents (TRDs). Use appropriate tools to collect, correlate and analyze data. Record and maintain technical data for use in developing operating and instruction manuals. Develop simple to complex ETL

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

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

Director of Theological Research and Content Coordinator Dir. Of

Theolog. Res. & Content Coord. Living With Power Ministries, in Mt. Prospect, IL seeks Dir. of Theological Research & Content Coordination. Req: Bach. in Theology or rel. field; 2 yrs. Exp. Editing, coord. religious pubs. & events; 2 yrs. Exp. Using MS Word, Excel & Google Workplace Suite; 1 year acad. Coursework in Biblical Greek & Biblical Hebrew; 2 yrs. Exp. Writing & editing theological papers & pubs. Email resume and cover ltr. To: jobs@ livingwithpower.org EOE, must have perm. Auth to work in U.S.

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

Sales Manager Sales Manager: Schaumburg IL. Setting sales quotes & goals. Create sales plans. Import business dvlpt & sale. Set up goals incl savings. Manage suppliers. Resolve quality issues. New product development. Distribute imported products, research new clients, markets. Bachelor’s degree in any field. 2 yrs exp as sales manager or business development manager. Res: Euro Liquor LLC; office@euroliquors.com

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

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

Product Managers

Product Managers, Chicago, IL: Collect data, interview experts, leverage understanding of business processes. Oversee product dvlpmt. Collaborate w/ the production team to allocate resources & implement solutions. Build advanced dashboards using

Microsoft Excel & Power BI. Some job duties can be performed from home. Send res to: BARCHART.COM, INC. at hrgroup@barchart.com

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

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

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

Estimator, Schaumburg. Prepare roof const. estimates, proposals for clients. Accept bid invitations. Analyze, evaluate risk; decide means/methods for construction. Attend local trade shows, seminars. Master’s in construction eng. & mgmt./related required. Mail res., cov. let. to M. Cannon, M Cannon Roofing Company LLC, 1238 Remington Rd, Schaumburg, IL 60173.

CLASSIFIEDS JOBS

MARKETPLACE

PROFESSIONALS & SERVICES MATCHES

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

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

Senior Technical Analyst Senior Technical Analyst, AbbVie Inc., North Chicago, IL. Provide technical experience for application development or package selection & implementation efforts. Conduct business requirement gathering, functional requirement documents, estimation, build, unit & integration testing. Provide comprehensive consultation to business units & IT management & staff at the highest technical level on all phases of application programming & process implementation for diverse development platforms, computing environments (e.g. host based, distributed systems, client server, software, hardware, technologies, & tools, etc.). Perform Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) such as business requirement gathering, preparation functional requirement, Detailed Design Document estimation, traceability matrix, build, testing (UT, IT, ST), UAT, & deployment. Responsible for translating functional specifications into application design specifications, including but not limited to creation of application architectures, hardware

& software configuration specifications, relational database schemas, & component/class specifications. Work with business users & provide status updates & interact with vendors to resolve product issues. Interact closely with Business Systems Analysts, the client user community, & IT management & staff to identify technical solutions, or a combination of available alternatives. Coordinate with business teams & client SMEs and propose latest software features for client application. Coordinate & facilitate application design sessions with development staff. Utilize C#, HTML, .NET Framework, JavaScript, PL/SQL, &/or ASP. Review all technical aspects of a software implementation effort, including monitoring of technical deliverables for consistency & quality. Must possess a Bachelor’s degree or foreign academic equivalent in Applied Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Development or a related field of study with 5 years of related experience. In the alternative, employer will accept a Master’s degree in the aforementioned fields with 3 years of related experience. Each educational alternative with at least 3 years in the following: (i) business requirement gathering, functional requirement documents, estimation, build, unit, & integration testing; (ii) Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) such as business requirement gathering, preparation functional requirement, Detailed Design Document estimation, traceability matrix, build, testing (UT, IT, ST), UAT, & deployment; (iii) working with business users & providing status updates and interacting with vendors to resolve product issues; (iv) coordinating with business teams & client SMEs & proposing latest software features for client application; & (v) C#, HTML, .NET Framework, JavaScript, PL/SQL, &/or ASP. Any reasonable combination of experience of education, training, or experience is acceptable. Apply online at https://careers. abbvie.com/en. Refer to Req ID: REF25298U.

Senior Analyst Human Capital Data Senior Analyst Human Capital Data, AbbVie Inc., North Chicago, IL. Act as an internal consultant by understanding business needs, scoping data requests, synthesizing insights, & recommending solutions to key business partners in collaboration

with other members of the HCD team. Participate as a core member of the department, working closely with the team to provide data driven solutions & support to all HCD solution areas. Design databases by going through all phases like Conceptual design, Logical design, Physical design, & normalization techniques. Take a lead role in the creation of an advanced Oracle data warehouse focusing on maintaining existing data elements & exploring data from other data systems. Manage the tableau server &Identifying patterns and meaningful insights from data by analyzing it using tableau. Demonstrate exceptional judgment & discretion when dealing with highly sensitive people data. Perform analysis & regular reporting for stakeholders across the business. Define design to meet business requirements in compliance with Oracle & Oracle ETL design methodologies. Build systems as designed by using PL/SQL, SQL Loader, Batch scripts, & Autosys Scheduler. Develop presentations on metrics, reports, & analysis. Manage multiple concurrent projects that require inputs from cross functional stakeholders while balancing impact on business needs. Utilize experience in PL/SQL, batch scripting language & job scheduler. Leverage tools, such as Oracle, Tableau & Excel to drive analytics & enable client self-service on routine queries. Responsible for continuous research & learning of new industry trends in Human Capital Analytics. Perform database architecture & routine maintenance in Tableau server. Must possess a Bachelor’s degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science or a highly related field of study w/ at least 3 years of related experience in the following: (i) Designing databases by going through all phases like Conceptual design, Logical design, Physical design, & normalization techniques; (ii) Managing the tableau server and Identifying patterns & meaningful insights from data by analyzing it using tableau; (iii) Defining design to meet business requirements in compliance with Oracle & Oracle ETL design methodologies; (iv) Building systems as designed by using PL/SQL, SQL Loader, Batch scripts, & Autosys Scheduler. Apply online at https://careers. abbvie.com/en & reference REF25299K

Computer Programmer Write, analyze, review, and rewrite programs,

using workflow chart and diagram, and applying knowledge of computer capabilities, subject matter, and symbolic logic; Correct errors by making appropriate changes and rechecking the program to ensure that the desired results are produced; Perform or direct revision, repair, or expansion of existing programs to increase operating efficiency or adapt to new requirements; Write, update, and maintain computer programs or software packages to handle specific jobs such as tracking inventory, storing or retrieving data, or controlling other equipment; Consult with managerial, engineering, and technical personnel to clarify program intent, identify problems, and suggest changes; Compile and write documentation of program development and subsequent revisions, inserting comments in the coded instructions so others can understand the program; Coordinate and review work and activities of programming personnel; Develop Web sites. Mail résumé to Amgaa Purevjal, iCodice LLC, 5005 Newport Dr, Suite# 505, Rolling Meadows, IL 60008

Associate Director, Brand Marketing & Digital Services The Office of Preparedness and Response, at the Univ of IL Chicago, located in a large metropolitan area, is seeking a fulltime Associate Director, Brand Marketing & Digital Services to assist the department with the following responsibilities: Under direction and supervision, provide strategic and creative leadership to design, develop, and advance the overall brand vision and execution of the university’s preparedness and resilience missions and prevention through digital services. Ensure content quality, consistency, impact, and relevance in the messages transmitted across campus while addressing the different audiences: students, faculty, and staff. Build a robust modern marketing plan with traditional and digital channel integration, and generate content that is compelling, timely and of great importance within the public safety ecosystem. Other duties as assigned. This position minimally requires a Bachelor’s degree or its foreign equivalent in Arts, Design, Museum & Exhibition Studies, Marketing or a related field, and 2 years of experience in graphic and marketing design or related experience. For fullest consideration,

applicants are required to submit Curriculum Vitae, a cover letter, three professional references, and samples or a link to previous design work and marketing portfolio by 06/18/2024. Additionally, please include details of your social media expertise, such as the successful management of marketing campaigns or growth in follower engagement. Links to your professional social media or Linkedin handles or profiles where these skills are demonstrated should also be provided to showcase your digital fluency and creativity in real-time platforms. Please send your complete application package to the Office of Preparedness and Response, University of Illinois Chicago, 1140 S. Paulina Street, Suite 109, Chicago, IL 60612 or via email to ready@ uic.edu. The University of Illinois System is an equal opportunity employer, including but not limited to disability and/or veteran status, and complies with all applicable state and federal employment mandates. Please visit Required Employment Notices and Posters to view our nondiscrimination statement and find additional information about required background checks, sexual harassment/misconduct disclosures, and employment eligibility review through E-Verify.

Gelber Group LLC seeks Financial Quant Analyst in Chicago, IL to perf stat analysis by applying math/stat techniques on financial data. Reqs. Master deg or foreign equiv. in Fin. Eng., Finance, or rel. field. Coursewrk must incl Fin. Eng., Cont. Time Models, Machine Learn for Fin Eng & Oper, Compu Methods in Fin, Algorithmic Trading, Analysis of Algorithms. Quantenet C++ Certificate req.Email Resume to: recruiting@ gelber group.com.

Sales Engineer, Metamation Software Sales Engineer, Metamation Software. TRUMPF. Hoffman Estates, IL; 1 day/week remote; 10% travel annually in US, Mexico, Canada. Conduct live webinars & presentations to support sales by analyzing customer needs & advising on process improvement with mfg software. Must have bach in indust eng & 2 years in TRUMPF, Metamation, or comparable mfg software sales, CAD & CAM software programming, analysis & consultation for sheet metal mfg, user feedback collection & sharing. Apply at www.trumpf.com.

OVE CONSTRUCTION, INC . OVE

CONSTRUCTION, INC. seeks a Purchasing Manager. Mail resume to 50 OLD OAK DR #213 BUFFALO GROVE , IL.

Morningstar Research Services seeks Senior Equity Analyst (multiple positions) in Chicago, IL. The position is research-focused and has client-facing responsibilities. BS deg in Econ, STEM, Engg Management, or a related field or foreign equivalent & 5 yrs of rlvt exp req’d. In alternative, MS deg in Econ, STEM, Engg Management, or a related field or foreign equivalent & 2 yrs of rlvt exp req’d. Add’l specific skills req’d. For position details & to apply, visit: https://www. morningstar.com/careers; ref. job ID REQ-044432.

Research Manager Northwestern University seeks Research Managers for various & unanticipated worksites throughout the U.S (HQ: Evanston, IL) to manage all activities associated w/biomedical & or social behavioral research studies. Bachelor’s in Econ/Pub Policy/Soc Sci/related field+4yrs exp OR Master’s in Econ/Pub Policy/Soc Sci/related field +2yrs exp req’d. Req’d skills: 2yrs managing research projects & staff; Exp must incl conducting advanced statistical/ econometric analysis, analyzing data from large randomized controlled trials; supervising/managing teams; project mgmt w/data; field exp; Econometric analysis using Stata, incl. randomized evals; Stata w/survey data & large data sets; SurveyCTO. Edu/exp in R/Python, data visualization. Hybrid work available. Must be willing to travel internationally as req’d to support projects. Background check req. Send resume to: Katie Dallia, povertyresearch@northwestern. edu, Ref: ND

TECHNOLOGY

ServiceNow Inc is accepting resumes for the following positions in Chicago, IL. Senior Software Engineer – Front End (ref# 4153022): Build highquality, clean, scalable and reusable code by enforcing best practices around software engineering architecture and processes. Telecommuting permitted. Annual salary: $175,000$205,000. Supervisor, Software Engineering Management (ref# 3422243): Support the use of the latest technologies that provide potential improvements to

results. Telecommuting permitted. Annual salary: $170,088-$200,088. Email resume to servicenowresumesUS@ servicenow.com. Or mail resume to ServiceNow Inc, Attn: Global Mobility, 2225 Lawson Lane, Santa Clara, CA 95054. Resume must include job title, job ref. #, full name, email & mailing address. No phone calls. Must be legally authorized to work in U.S. without sponsorship. EOE. Fuji America Corporation seeks Field Service Engineer w/ Assoc or for deg equiv in elec tech or rltd fld & 2 yrs exp in job offer or in fld serv or eng incl exp in surf mount-autom, elec & mech diagn/rep, mdrn PC apps and ntwk concp. Freq dom & intl trvl reqd. Telecom permit. May reside anywhr in US. Apply online https:// www.fujiamerica.com/ hr.aspx or to HR, 171 Corporate Woods Pkwy, Vernon Hills, IL 60061

Sr. Staff Scientist Billups, LLC in Chicago, IL seeks Sr. Staff Scientist to develop & apply geo-location data analysis techniques to solve business problems. 100% remote. Reqs MS + 3yrs exp. $163,328/yr. To Apply: To apply: email resumes to HR, jennifer. napierala@billups. com, reference job title: Senior Staff Scientist.

QUANT TRADER

DRW Holdings LLC has openings in Chicago, IL: Quant Trader (Pos ID QT/ IL/R069): Execute exist trad strat & apply to new prod. REQ Bach or for equiv Math, Engr, or rel quant field & 3yrs Quant Anayst exp Quant Trader (Pos ID QT/IL/X070): Op trad strat, mng auto mkt-system risk, mng vol surfc pric & optmze trad strat para. REQ Master’s or for equiv Math, Stat, Quant Fin, or quant field & 1yr quant tding analy exp. EM apply@drw. com, Attn: M. CARTER. Must ref. Pos ID. EOE.

MARKETPLACE

I want your old Readers! Hi, Salem Collo-Julin here, editor in chief of the Chicago Reader. I’m interested in your pre-early 00s copies of the Chicago Reader in print for my personal collection. Will pay reasonable amounts of money (see eBay for what other people are charging). Incomplete issues are ok by me (especially for those fabulous 90s years that we printed multiple sections), but nothing super shredded or soggy please! Looking especially for the 1970s editions. Thanks for reading. Email scollojulin@ chicagoreader.com

VINTAGE YARD SALE

Vintage resale vendor clearing out lots of old stock for super cheap prices. Records, art, swag lamps, some small furniture, fabrics, tons of glassware, knick-knacks and so much more. Sat., June 8, 9 am - 3 pm, 1407 W Jarvis in Rogers Park

PROFESSIONALS & SERVICES

CLEANING SERVICES

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

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GOSSIP WOLF

SINGER-SONGWRITER Vivian McConnell

developed a curious problem with  Valebol , the effervescent pop duo that she and percussionist Daniel Villarreal founded around seven years ago. Valebol has performed live sporadically since 2019, landing gigs in part on the strength of the members’ pedigrees: McConnell makes gentle indie rock as V.V.

A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene

Los Angeles label Otherly Love . On Friday, June 7, the duo celebrate Valebol with a headlining set at Thalia Hall

McConnell traces Valebol’s beginnings to 2017. She and Villarreal both lived in Bridgeport at the time, and he invited McConnell and some other musicians over to his house to hang out. “We had a jam in the basement,”

Lightbody , and Villarreal is not only one of the leaders of Latine fusion group Dos Santos but also performs and records under his own name. McConnell and Villarreal are seasoned pros, and with what seems like little effort they’ve figured out how to charm audiences by making arresting tunes together. So what’s the problem? When fans at their concerts asked how to fi nd Valebol’s music, the best answer the band could give was about their next gig.

“We have played so many shows with no music out,” McConnell says. “It was kind of a dream. But it also was really intense at a certain point, ’cause I was like, ‘All right, we really need to put music out.’ Every time we played shows, people were like, ‘That was so great— where’s your music?’ And it’s like, ‘See you in two years.’ I felt really grateful for that experience—it was refreshing, to just be like, ‘Nope, we’re just a live band right now.’ I think it’s helped us establish ourselves.”

In April, though, Valebol finally put out their debut album, a self-titled release on

McConnell says. “I was playing his dad’s 70s Casio, and he was playing some beats. We were kind of like, ‘OK, whatever is happening right now is really cool, and we should try to explore it more. Let’s get together and start playing.’”

Both musicians wanted their new collaboration to be fun and flexible—they didn’t want to deprioritize their other musical endeavors or burn themselves out. “The idea of the band was, ‘When we can fit it in, and if it feels good when we can fit it in, we’re gonna fit it in— because it means a lot to us and our friendship,’” McConnell says. “It was supposed to be a low-pressure band to take off the pressure of all of our projects.” Valebol offered McConnell the chance to break away from the personal approach to songwriting she’d developed with V.V. Lightbody. While figuring out her collaboration with Villarreal, she also started writing for keyboard rather than guitar.

“I was able to just explore a new part of my music—like, my songwriting self,” McCon-

nell says. “We would write together, and write lyrics together—some lyrics are in Spanish, and [we’d] check in on those. It was so freeflowing, our rehearsal style, and all the songs we wrote in a room together. I would have one riff or he would have one beat, but it was all super natural, and then we’d take a break and eat charcuterie. It was always some friends hanging out and making music. You can really hear that in the music that we made.”

Valebol will perform “in the round” at Thalia Hall; openers Carlile and Elizabeth Moen (performing as a duo) will join Valebol onstage for a cover song. Tickets cost $20 ($15 in advance), and the show starts at 8 PM.

MIDWEST MUSIC ZINE Off the Record published its inaugural issue last summer. Last month, Off the Record announced its third issue, which includes pieces on Chicago indie acts Lifeguard , Free Range , and Scarlet Demore. On Sunday, June 9, Eli Schmitt’s New Now series at Color Club hosts a release party for the new Off the Record . Ocean Child headline; opening the show are TV Buddha , Liptoss , and Niko Kapetan performing a solo Friko set. Tickets are $10, and the show starts at 7 PM.

MORE EXCITING NEWS for zine enthusiasts! This Sunday, June 9, Zine Club Chicago celebrates the launch of a new South Side Zine Library at the Richard J. Daley Branch of the Chicago Public Library at 3400 S. Halsted (not at all by coincidence, also the home of the South Side Zine Library). In collaboration with the Blue Ribbon Glee Club , Zine Club Chicago hosts a day of zine making that includes live music, an installment of the reading series Three Songs , and an open mike. The free, all-ages event kicks off at 1 PM and runs till 4 PM. The Three Songs readings and Blue Ribbon Glee Club performances begin at 2 PM; Nikki Roberts ( Locals Only zine), Liz Olney (RadicleArts), and Cynthia E. Hanifin (Pulaski at Night zine) will each share a story about one of the songs in the glee club’s repertoire, which the group will then perform in its signature punk rock a cappella style. The open mike closes the party, and if you’ve got a music-related story to tell, it’s just right for you.

—TYRA NICOLE TRICHE AND LEOR

GALIL

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Daniel Villarreal and Vivian McConnell of Valebol GRYPHON HALLEY