Chicago Reader: print issue of June 23, 2016 (Volume 45, Number 37) by Chicago Reader

C H I C A G O â&#x20AC;&#x2122; S F R E E W E E K LY | K I C K I N G A S S S I N C E 1 9 7 1 | J U N E 2 3 , 2 0 1 6

2 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

C H I C AG O R E A D E R | J U N E 2 3 , 2 01 6 | VO LU M E 4 5, N U M B E R 3 7

EDITOR JAKE MALOOLEY CREATIVE DIRECTOR PAUL JOHN HIGGINS DEPUTY EDITOR, NEWS ROBIN AMER CULTURE EDITOR TAL ROSENBERG DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS FILM EDITOR J.R. JONES MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO ASSOCIATE EDITORS KATE SCHMIDT, KEVIN WARWICK, BRIANNA WELLEN SENIOR WRITERS STEVE BOGIRA, MICHAEL MINER, MIKE SULA SENIOR THEATER CRITIC TONY ADLER STAFF WRITERS LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, AIMEE LEVITT, PETER MARGASAK, JULIA THIEL SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR RYAN SMITH GRAPHIC DESIGNER SUE KWONG MUSIC LISTINGS COORDINATOR LUCA CIMARUSTI EDITORIAL ASSISTANT CASSIDY RYAN CONTRIBUTING WRITERS NOAH BERLATSKY, DERRICK CLIFTON, MATT DE LA PEÑA, ANNE FORD, ISA GIALLORENZO, JOHN GREENFIELD, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, DAN JAKES, BILL MEYER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, DMITRY SAMAROV, KATE SIERZPUTOWSKI, ZAC THOMPSON, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERNS JESSICA KIM COHEN, SARA COHEN, MARC DAALDER, KT HAWBAKER-KROHN, FARAZ MIRZA, SUNSHINE TUCKER ---------------------------------------------------------------VICE PRESIDENT OF NEW MEDIA GUADALUPE CARRANZA SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER EVANGELINE MILLER ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES ARIANA DIAZ, BRIDGET KANE MARKETING AND EVENTS MANAGER BRYAN BURDA DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY ADVERTISING COORDINATOR HERMINIA BATTAGLIA CLASSIFIEDS REPRESENTATIVE KRIS DODD ---------------------------------------------------------------DISTRIBUTION CONCERNS distributionissues@chicagoreader.com CHICAGO READER 350 N. ORLEANS, CHICAGO, IL 60654 312-222-6920, CHICAGOREADER.COM ---------------------------------------------------------------THE READER (ISSN 1096-6919) IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY SUN-TIMES MEDIA, LLC, 350 N. ORLEANS, CHICAGO, IL 60654. © 2016 SUN-TIMES MEDIA, LLC. PERIODICAL POSTAGE PAID AT CHICAGO, IL. POSTMASTER: SEND CHANGE OF ADDRESS TO CHICAGO READER, 350 N. ORLEANS, CHICAGO, IL 60654.

BEST OF

4 Agenda The SpongeBob Musical, the ﬁlm Free State of Jones, South Side Home Movies, and more recommendations

CITY LIFE

8 Chicagoans Ex-cop Brian McVey: “Anything you can think of, I saw.” 9 Transportation Divvy expands to the west side. Will anyone use it? 10 Joravsky | Politics Rahm ﬁnally praises the Chicago Public Schools. 12 Act Three Actors and crew members push back against denials that the onstage brutality at Proﬁles Theatre was very often real. 13 LGBTQ Whether it’s in Orlando or Chicago, queer and trans people of color are more likely to face violence.

ARTS & CULTURE

hile putting the finishing touches on this year’s Best of Chicago issue, one of the most oft-cited lines about our fair city kept running through my mind. You know the one. Nelson Algren in City on the Make, remarking about Chicago’s rough-edged charm: “Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies, but never a lovely so real.” In the 65 years since Algren made the observation, it’s become, in my estimation, the most nauseating of Chicago cliches. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less true. When the Reader staff and some of our favorite Chicago writers pitched essays on the things they love about this town, many of the proposed topics happened to be possessed of that peculiar broken-nose appeal. And so there are tributes to the Chicago accent (page 14), alleys (page 18), expressway-adjacent el platforms (page 21), rats (page 24), bathroom graffiti (page 30), the cheap seats at the Cell (page 42), uncomfortable theaters (page 43), drunken tattoos (page 47)—even that crooked beak of a downtown edifice, the James R. Thompson Center (page 33). Others declared affection for more conventionally lovable Chicago things: opulent hotel lobbies (page 35), North Shore real estate (page 36), Mold-A-Rama (page 38), the 90s Bulls (page 40), the Logan Square ice cream shop formerly known as Tastee-Freez (page 58). But the common thread uniting all of the pieces in this issue is something Algren would surely appreciate: a passion for the subject matter, whether it’s one of the city’s lovely lovelies or one of its lovelies so real. —JAKE MALOOLEY

Readers’ poll winners ON THE COVER: DESIGN BY PAUL JOHN HIGGINS, DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS, AND SUE KWONG.

IN THIS ISSUE

ò PAUL JOHN HIGGINS

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

THIS WEEK

City Life 14; Goods & Services 20; Arts & Culture 26; Food & Drink 33; Sports & Recreation 44; Music & Nightlife 49

59 Theater Thaddeus and Slocum is more vaudeville than coherent drama. 61 Design Highlights from the return of the Guerrilla Truck Show at NeoCon 62 Small Screen O.J.: Made in America is really about us. 64 Movies Two new documentaries reveal cycles of cruelty and control.

MUSIC

67 Shows of note Céu, Jamila Woods, Horse Meat Disco, and more 71 The Secret History of Chicago Music Oﬀ Broadway should’ve conquered the charts.

FOOD & DRINK

77 Restaurant review: Pork & Mindy’s With the Bucktown sandwich shop, the Food Network’s Jeﬀ Mauro looks to start an empire. 78 Recipe: Elote wings ManBQue manages to transfer the essence of grilled Mexican corn to chicken.

CLASSIFIEDS

79 Jobs 79 Apartments & Spaces 81 Marketplace 82 Straight Dope Why not make large, fuel-guzzling ships nuclear powered? 85 Savage Love Is calling a coworker by his puppy name sexual? 86 Early Warnings Die Antwoord, Eternals Espiritu Zombi Group, Kamasi Washington, and more 86 Gossip Wolf Gel Set is set to leave for LA, and more music news.

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 3

CREATIVE CLAYTHINGS Teaching in Chicago Since 1983

AGENDA R

READER RECOMMENDED

P Send your events to agenda@chicagoreader.com

b ALL AGES

F not to say Doherty isn’t talented in other ways, and with a two-hour running time, this small production deserves credit for sustaining its stamina. —MATT DE LA PEÑA 6/17-7/3: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Sat 6/25, 3 PM, Den Theatre, 1329-1333 N. Milwaukee, 773-609-2336, somethingmarvelous.org, $20.

You’ve been wanting to take a pottery class... now you can afford to!

Materials included. Handbuilding and Wheel. 8 Finished pieces to Take Home.

Human Terrain The odds are R against Broken Nose Theatre’s shoestring production of Jennifer Black-

Special Price! CLASSES STARTING 8 weeks of classes at $160 JULY on 5TH AND JULY 6TH1st Starting June 30th and July

Call 312-421-8000 CreativeClaythings.com

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

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

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

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

Ms. B. — Thanks for being the best teacher. This year was a hoot! —F.H.

4 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

Deathtrap ò BRETT BEINER

THEATER

More at chicagoreader.com/ theater An Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse Songbook This amusing, intimate evening of songs by the British songwriting team of Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse, performed by ﬁve non-Equity triple threats, does a pretty good job of downplaying the weaknesses in these middlebrow pop tunes from the 60s and 70s (pretentious lyrics, mawkish sensibility) while showcasing the qualities that made them hits in the ﬁrst place (memorable tunes, clever wordplay, sweet dollops of schmaltz). The best-performed numbers, like “Where Would You Be Without Me?” (from The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd) and “The Good Old Bad Old Days,” will send you to YouTube to see how Newley and others performed them originally. Codirectors Fred Anzevino and Courtney Crouse mute the show’s sentimentality some by dressing the actors as if they were characters in a Beckett play. —JACK HELBIG Through 7/31: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PM, No Exit Cafe, 6970 N. Glenwood, 773-743-3355, theo-u.com, $29, $24 students and seniors. The Ben Hecht Show What do you expect from a biographical solo show about a Chicago journalist who became one of the great Hollywood screenwriters, composing or contributing to such classics as The Front Page, Scarface, Stagecoach, Notorious, and Gone With the Wind? Probably 90 minutes of big-shoulder memories and back-lot gossip. But writer/performer James Sherman isn’t much interested in that sort of thing. In this Grippo Stage Company production, his primary subjects are Ben Hecht’s rediscovery of his Jewishness after decades of secularism, his crusade to save European Jews during the Holocaust, and his militant Zionism afterward. Activists like Shmaryahu Levin and Hayim Greenberg get far more attention than Alfred Hitchcock or Howard Hawks. I think Sherman must hope that Hecht’s struggle will inform the current, troubled moment, in which

Israel seems especially isolated and diaspora Jews especially embattled. If so, he needs a more pointed script and a less opaque title. One thing he needn’t worry about: Under Dennis Zacek’s direction, Sherman gives excellent Hecht. —TONY ADLER Through 7/17: Fri 8 PM, Sat 5 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Piven Theatre, Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes, Evanston, 847-866-8049, grippostagecompany.com, $35. Deathtrap Sidney Bruhl was once R a big-time writer of slick theatrical thrillers. But a series of ﬂops has left him

teaching seminars and hanging around the big country house his wife owns, staring at the blank piece of paper in his typewriter. Enter Cliff Anderson, a student in one of those seminars. Cliff, Sidney tells his wife, has written a slick theatrical thriller that is to die for—and nobody knows about it but Sidney. So: Is the has-been desperate enough to kill for it? Presented here in an engaging revival directed by William Osetek, Ira Levin’s 1978 play delivers not only a beautifully twisty crime story but a clever subversion of same. Daniel Cantor is suitably obnoxious and believably ruthless as Sidney, but Cindy Gold steals scenes as the neighborhood psychic who delivers herself of visions the way anybody else might shit a brick. —TONY ADLER Through 8/14: Wed 1:30 PM, Thu 1:30 and 8 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 5 and 8:30 PM, Sun 2 and 6 PM, Drury Lane Oakbrook Terrace, 100 Drury Ln., Oakbrook Terrace, 630-530-0111, drurylaneoakbrook.com, $36.40-$52. Don’t Look This contemporary take on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, written by Brooklyn-based playwright Gina Doherty and directed by Something Marvelous artistic director Emmi Hilger, is based on a familiar setup: two fledgling artists struggling to find the sweet spot between their personal lives and their artistic pursuits. Predictably, the journey gets complicated when an accident forces them to confront their issues. Solid performances by Allyce Torres and Zachery Alexander help to convince us that the pair’s love is real, but it’s not enough to overcome Doherty’s proclivity for gushing dialogue and poetic asides. Still, that’s

mer’s play about the war in Iraq. It’s staged in an uninviting oﬃce space sans air-conditioning, with a makeshift set of folding metal furniture and strung-up sheets. But Blackmer’s taut, troubling story, about recently degreed anthropologist Mabry’s attempts to interpret and deescalate tensions between Iraqi locals and the U.S. combat troop with which she’s embedded, provides sharp-edged drama and juicy moral conundrums (the more Mabry engages empathically with Iraqis, the worse things go for everyone). Director Benjamin Brownson stages the intricate drama with perfect clarity and admirable reserve, and while Blackmer makes a few missteps—the ending comes from left ﬁeld, and the only developed Iraqi character is a perpetual fount of philosophical wisdom—her work displays a palpable urgency. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 7/9: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Voice of the City, 3429 W. Diversey, 773-782-9471, brokennosetheatre.com, $1-$18, pay what you can. Make Me a Song: A Musical R Revue This intimate revue features more than 30 songs by brilliant

composer-lyricist William Finn (The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee), whose songs address offbeat topics with driving, sometimes jittery rhythms, soaring melodies, and idiosyncratic lyrics that mix deep emotion and acerbic irony. Eclectic Full Contact Theatre’s bare-bones production, directed by Christopher Pazdernik, features a strong cast—David Belew, Katherine Condit, Max DeTogne, and Jessica Fisher—under the musical direction of pianist Micky York. The 95-minute one-act’s centerpiece is a suite from Falsettos, Finn’s landmark opera about a mixed-up gay man’s relationships with

his boyfriend, ex-wife, and adolescent son during the early years of the AIDS epidemic. Other material is drawn from less-familiar sources, including A New Brain, Elegies (Finn’s response to 9/11), and Romance in Hard Times. Condit’s blistering rendition of that show’s “All Fall Down,” about a Depression-era woman whose boyfriends “ﬂew out the window” after the stock market crash, is a highlight. And DeTogne, a wonderful pop tenor, shines in the Billy Joel-esque “Hitchhiking Across America,” in which a gay man recalls his sexual adventures on the road before he met the lifelong lover he never saw coming. —ALBERT WILLIAMS Through 7/10: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Sat 7/2 and 7/9, 2 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, 773-935-6860, eclectic-theatre.com, $27, $17 students and seniors. MotherStruck! Watching StacR eyann Chin’s searing one-woman show about her journey to single

motherhood, I was reminded of lesbian performance artist Holly Hughes’s early work circling her relationship with her mother. I also recalled poet Adrienne Rich’s line “The loss of the daughter to the mother, the mother to the daughter, is the the essential female tragedy.” Chin’s own mother abandoned her at an early age, which informs her own parenting—and therein lies redemption. There’s power in Chin’s honesty, not just about mothering but also about her sexuality and ﬁnancial insecurity (she’s nearly evicted), as well as her choice to get pregnant on her own. Like Hughes, Chin is playful, coy, and magnetic onstage. Ron Russell’s dynamic direction keeps the nonlinear story moving and dynamic; what could be maudlin or bathetic is profound in Chin’s telling. —SUZANNE SCANLON Through 7/17: Wed-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 and 7 PM (except 7/3, 7 PM only), Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln, 773-4047336, greenhousetheater.org, $42-$48. Savage in Limbo John Patrick Shanley’s absurdist one-act follows a familiar formula: A gaggle of misﬁts grapple with existential crises in a dimly lit dive bar. At the center is Denise, a thirtysomething loner with perhaps the thickest Bronx dialect in theater history. Along-

MotherStruck! ò NOAM GALAI

Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of June 23

dance production created by artists and engineers. Fri 6/24-Sun 6/26, 7 PM, Links Hall at Constellation, 3111 N. Western, 773-281-0824, linkshall.org, $10. We Will Tap You! Chicago Tap R Theatre performs an evening of dance set to the music of Queen. Sat

6/25, 7:30 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, 773-935-6860, chicagotaptheatre.com, $35.

COMEDY

We Will Tap You! ò JOSH HAWKINS side a couple of hotheaded acquaintances from her past, Denise tests the patience of an otherworldly bartender while musing aloud about romantic misadventures and the outside world quickly her passing by. Director Will Crouse’s production for the Poor Theatre capitalizes on his cast’s willingness to go broad, particularly Trap Door Theatre company member Antonio Brunetti as a macho goof. Beyond being fodder for a studio acting exercise, though, Shanley’s script doesn’t hold up as well as Crouse seems to think it does; this is well-trod, booze-soaked territory. —DAN JAKES Through 7/17: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Wed 6/29, 8 PM; no shows Fri 7/1-Sun 7/3, Rivendell Theatre, 5775 N. Ridge, 773-334-7728, thepoortheatre.org, $15, $10 students. The Seedbed The family we R meet in The Seedbed has a lot of secrets. All families do. Why did 18-year-

old Maggie (Abby Dillon) run away from home? Her Irish mother and father seem content enough with her choice of a ﬁance, the much-older Mick (Alan Bitterman). But are they really? And what is happening in their own marriage? Each of these fragile individuals’ secrets eventually comes to light in this harsh and moving drama, which upends everything we seem to know about them—and know about each other. Skillfully acted by Redtwist Theatre’s dynamic cast, The Seedbed’s many reversals and crises are excruciating and profound. Mark Pracht’s performance as Thomas, Maggie’s proud but bewildered father, is especially moving. —MAX MALLER Through 7/17: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM (except Sat 6/18, 3 PM), Sun 3 PM, Redtwist Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr, 773-728-7529, redtwist.org, $30-$35. The SpongeBob Musical R Nickelodeon was just getting out of peak weirdness when it debuted Stephen Hillenburg’s inviting animated series about a patty-ﬂipping bachelor at the bottom of the sea. Unlike a lot of 90s cartoon characters, SpongeBob made unbridled joy seem cool. Tina Landau’s and Kyle Jarrow’s pre-Broadway tryout does right by the little guy—the whole community of Bikini Bottom, in fact—by cleverly translating

the franchise’s hallmark style, running gags, metacomedy, and personalities to the stage. Songs by a cavalcade of contemporary musicians (Cyndi Lauper, Panic! At the Disco, Plain White T’s, etc) somehow manage to get upstaged by a slop-rock rundown of the TV show theme song, but even the most generic show tunes are well-executed toe tappers. The real heart of the show, though, is its spectacular design. —DAN JAKES Through 7/10: Wed 2 and 7:30 PM, ThuFri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM (except 6/19, 5 PM), Tue 7:30 PM, Ford Center for the Performing Arts, Oriental Theatre, 24 W. Randolph, 800-775-2000, broadwayinchicago.com, $30-$85. The Way She Spoke: A Docu-mythologia The ostensible subject of this 60-minute monologue (directed by Laura Baker, delivered by Karen Rodriguez) is the culture of violent misogyny that apparently took hold of Mexico’s Ciudad Juárez in the early 1990s, resulting in the abuse and murder of hundreds of women. But what playwright Isaac Gomez really wants to talk about is himself and his anguish over the American male privilege that, he seems to argue, makes him an accomplice to those murders. The result is a tricksy, clumsy, adolescent exercise in political narcissism. I can’t say how abhorrent I ﬁnd it that an atrocity is turned here into the backdrop for a self-dramatizing and unmerited mea culpa. If Gomez hopes to make a real theatrical statement, I’d suggest he read some Brecht. —TONY ADLER Through 7/10: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2:30 PM, Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln, 773-404-7336, greenhousetheater.org, $42-$48.

All Caps Produced by former Colbert Report writer Peter Gwinn and TJ Jagodowski of TJ and Dave fame, this hour of long-form improvisation is inspired by an audience member’s rant. Upon entry you’re asked to e-mail or tweet something that’s causing you angst; on the night I attended, troupe members selected one young woman’s saga of a roommate from hell. While the story was funny, there was a little too much stage time devoted to it—particularly since the resulting improv drew on only minor details, like the roommate’s love of expensive candles. It took the large, veteran cast of iO improvisers some time to settle in, but Dewayne Perkins’s playful spirit and unique deadpan make him stand out, and Allison Ringhand’s oddball characters are another high-energy highlight. —MARISSA OBERLANDER Through 7/21: Thu 10 PM, iO Theater, 1501 N. Kingsbury, ioimprov. com/chicago, $5. Batsu! Apparently no one informed Face Oﬀ Unlimited—the New York improv troupe now franchising its East Village hit based on humiliation-prone Japanese game shows—that Chicago is America’s improv capital. Otherwise host Brian Walters mightn’t have felt the need opening night to teach us how to shout suggestions for scenes. But then, this amped-up, stereotype-saturated frat party, low on cleverness but high on brothusiasm (I lost count of the times we were pressed to “give it up” for someone or something), is better suited to Jackass enthusiasts than Second City

DANCE

Delve Showcase 2016 Work R from up-and-coming local choreographers and dance companies.

Thu 6/23, 7:30 PM, Fasseas White Box Theater, 1535 N. Dayton, facebook.com/ events/1716771481935442, $15-$35.

Far From Equilibrium at Links Hall Experience the intersection of art and science at this interactive

Pete Davidson ò MARY ELLEN MATTHEWS/NBC

is a full service law ﬁrm with a focus on

regulars. For 90 overamplified minutes four performers and the occasional audience member play improv games, the losers getting “batsued” (shot with a paint ball, thwapped with a large rubber band, etc). After enough sake (one carafe is included with VIP tickets), it’s probably fun. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 8/26: Thu and Fri 8 PM, Kamehachi, 1531 N. Wells, 312-664-3663, kamehachi.com, $25.50, VIP $40.50. Pete Davidson See Saturday R Night Live’s current youngest cast member, Pete Davidson, on his first national stand-up tour. Thu 6/23, 7:30 PM, the Vic, 3145 N. Sheffield, 773-4720449, victheatre.com, $25.

· Immigration · Family Petitions · Asylum · Naturalization · Appeals

Providing advocacy in Cook County and the surrounding suburbs

EVERY CLIENT SHOULD BE TREATED

WITH EMPATHY, DIGNITY AND RESPECT.

Here Veteran iO improvisers Tara DeFrancisco and Rance Rizzutto present the critically acclaimed show in which they take an audience suggestion and turn it into a 45-minute-long, completely improvised musical. Through 8/11: Thu 8 PM, iO Theater, 1501 N. Kingsbury, ioimprov.com/chicago, $12. It’s All True! Live Podcast R Recording and Going Away Party The ﬁnal Chicago recording

of Tim Barnes’s comedic storytelling podcast It’s All True! before the stand-up moves to New York. Thu 6/23, 7:30 PM, North Bar, 1637 W. North, 773-123-5678, alltruepod.tumblr.com, $12, $8 in advance.

· Criminal Defense · DUI · Misdemeanors · Trafﬁc Violations · Bond Hearings

LAW OFFICES

3340 S HALSTED | CHICAGO, IL 60609

773 · 257·73 8 2

Snubfest Under the Gun Theater R and Zanies Comedy Club present Snubfest, featuring comedians and performers from across the country who’ve been rejected by other festivals in the previous calendar year. Each Snubfest act will perform in front of a panel of judges for a chance to win slots on local and national stages. Through 6/26: times vary, see website, Under the Gun Theater, 956 W. Newport, 773-270-3440, snubfest.com, $15.

VISUAL ARTS Art Institute of Chicago “The National: A Lot of Sorrow,” Icelandic performance artist Ragnar Kjartansson’s video installation documents six hours of Brooklyn-based band the National performing one song, “A Lot of Sorrow.” 6/23-10/2. Night Heist, don 1930s-inspired cocktail attire and enjoy nighttime access to art exhibits, live performances, and raﬄe prizes at this annual museum fund-raiser. VIP reception begins at 7:30 PM. Fri 6/24: 9 PM-midnight. Sun–Wed 10:30 AM–5 PM, Thu-Fri 10:30 AM–8 PM, Sat 10:30 AM–5 PM. $130-$250. 111 S. Michigan, 312-443-3600, artinstituteofchicago. org. Gallery 400 “Precarity: Contingency in Artmaking and Academia,” artists explore contemporary economic issues— from poor compensation to rising tuition costs for higher education—in this group exhibition. 6/24-7/30. Tue-Fri 10 AM-6 PM, Sat noon-6 PM. 400 S. Peoria, 312996-6114, gallery400.aa.uic.edu. µ

est. 1967

We’ve

Reopened 

for the



49 time

with lots of new loveliness



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

LAW OFFICES OF FERNANDO GUTIERREZ

Yep, still no website

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

☎

847-475-8665

801 Dempster Evanston

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 5

(OUT OF FIVE)

“ELECTRIFYING.” -TIME OUT CHICAGO

AGENDA B

LIT

George Watsky: How to R Ruin Everything George Watsky—spoken-word poet and

(OUT OF FOUR)

“POWERFUL. IT WORKS STRIKINGLY WELL. (THINK BEYONCÉ AND YOU’LL KNOW WHAT I MEAN.)”

rapper of YouTube fame—presents his debut essay collection, How to Ruin Everything. Thu 6/23, 7:30 PM, Music Box, 3733 N. Southport, 773871-6604, georgewatsky.com, $11.

-CHICAGO TRIBUNE

HOUSETHAT STAND

THE WILL NOT

BY MARCUS GARDLEY DIRECTED BY CHAY YEW

Free State of Jones

Isaac Oliver ò LUKE FONTANA Isaac Oliver: The Intimacy R Idiot The writer-performer comes to the Windy City for the

ﬁrst time to read stories from Intimacy Idiot, his debut collection of essays, named one of the best books of 2015 by NPR. The reading will also include new stories by Oliver. Mon 6/27, 7 PM, Steppenwolf Theatre, 1700 Theatre, 1700 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, steppenwolf. org, $20. Scott Miller The author disR cusses his experiences with Mormonism in conjunction with his

latest book The Book of Mormon: The Real Life and Strange Times of an LDS Missionary. Thu 6/23, 7 PM, the Book Cellar, 4736 N. Lincoln, 773-293-2665, bookcellarinc.com. C. Russell Price The local R poet introduces his debut chapbook, Tonight, We Fuck the

Trailer Park Out of Each Other. Thu 6/23, 7:30 PM, Women & Children First, 5233 N. Clark, 773-769-9299, womenandchildrenﬁrst.com. Cyd Zeigler The “LGBT R sports guy” reads from and signs his book Fair Play,

which discusses the treatment of LGBTQ athletes. Thu 6/23, 7 PM, Unabridged Bookstore, 3251 N. Broadway, 773-883-9119, unabridgedbookstore.com.

MOVIES MUST CLOSE JULY 10

GET TICKETS

1 BLOCK FROM THE FULLERTON EL 773.871.3000 VICTORYGARDENS.ORG 2433 N. LINCOLN AVE

6 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

More at chicagoreader.com/ movies NEW REVIEWS L’Attesa A woman whose brother has just died (Juliette Binoche) invites her son’s girlfriend (Lou de Laâge) to stay at her sprawling

Sicilian villa, and as mourners drift in and out, they await the son’s arrival on Easter Sunday. The religious symbolism is overbearing, but first-time director Piero Messina keeps his simple story, loosely based on two plays by Luigi Pirandello, muted and equivocal. Messina has said he was inspired by the trauma of some friends who lost their son; for a day, no one spoke of the death, pretending instead that it never happened. The film captures the potency of such denial in long, lush shots of the two women, both French, as they drift further into isolation and grow increasingly terrified of their need for each other. The two women repeat the line “I’m waiting” so often that it seems like an incantation, as if the power of their longing might hasten the son’s return. In Italian and French with subtitles. —LEAH PICKETT 100 min. Fri 6/24, 2 PM; Sat 6/25, 7:45 PM; Sun 6/26, 3 PM; Mon 6/27, 8 PM; Tue 6/28, 8 PM; Wed 6/29, 6 PM; and Thu 6/30, 8 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center Free State of Jones AmerR ican history is a mutable thing, shaped by our evolving sense of ourselves as a nation, which is why this Civil War drama, based on the little-known story of Newton Knight, seems so vividly modern. Matthew McConaughey stars as Knight, a Confederate deserter who retreated to the swampland of his native Jones County, Mississippi, and organized a biracial renegade army that declared its allegiance to the Union and eventually took over the southeast corner of the state. Writer-director Gary Ross (Seabiscuit) paints Knight as a utopian socialist and integrationist, dreaming of an America where the races live in harmony and people keep the fruits of their labor. There’s some dramatic license at work in the storytelling, and our limited information about Knight guarantees that Ross’s interpretation will be dismissed by some. Yet the movie gives southerners something the cinema has seldom

provided: a chance to embrace their heritage but reject the Confederacy. With Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Mahershala Ali, and Keri Russell. —J.R. JONES R, 139 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, City North 14, Lake, Landmark’s Century Centre, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON, Webster Place 11 The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble In 2000 cellist Yo-Yo Ma formed the Silk Road Ensemble, an international collective of 50 musicians that has since recorded seven albums and brought its eclectic performances—incorporating such disparate national instruments as the gaita (a Spanish bagpipe), pipa (a Chinese lute), and kamancheh (an Iranian bowed string instrument)—to approximately two million people in 33 countries. Director Morgan Neville (Best of Enemies, 20 Feet From Stardom) adeptly profiles Ma and four prominent members of the ensemble who inspire awe with their stories of defying various sociopolitical limitations. One might easily dismiss this musical journey as a feel-good exercise in “cultural tourism,” which Ma acknowledges as a valid criticism. But what drives the narrative is the musicians’ mutual desire to forge meaningful connections across cultures, an affirmative answer to Leonard Bernstein’s question of whether music can truly serve as a “universal language.” PG-13, 120 min. Landmark’s Century Centre The Neon Demon An innocent teenager (Elle Fanning) arrives in Los Angeles in search of a modeling career and, blessed with that indefinable something, quickly rises to the top; this alienates and then angers her blond, lissome competitors, who are a bunch of vampires. (No, really—they’re a bunch of vampires.) This stylish shocker by writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive) equates physical beauty with the life force—the metaphor

The Neon Demon

feels novel and unpredictable. The actors are uniformly strong; as the policeman’s young daughter, Kim Hwan-hee rivals Linda Blair in The Exorcist. In Korean and Japanese with subtitles. —LEAH PICKETT 156 min. Fri 6/24 and Sat 6/25, 4:50, 8, and 11:15 PM; Sun 6/26, 1:30, 4:50, and 8 PM; and Mon 6/27-Thu 6/30, 4:50 and 8 PM. Music Box

REVIVALS is intriguing, but not enough to compensate for his cliched portrayal of the modeling business as a glamorous snake pit. Refn enlisted two female writers (Mary Laws and Polly Stenham) to help with the screenplay, which still comes across like a man’s notion of how women feel. With Jena Malone, Christina Hendricks, and Keanu Reeves in one of his most eﬀective modes, as a menacing SOB. —J.R. JONES R, 117 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, River East 21, Showplace ICON Vaclav Havel—A Life in Freedom When a documentary maker begins by describing her subject as the nation’s greatest hero, one doesn’t anticipate any surprises, and none are forthcoming in this superﬁcial portrait (2014) of Vaclav Havel, the Czech playwright who became a political dissident under communist rule and president of Czechoslovakia after the country went democratic. Director Andrea Sedláčková touches on the highlights of Havel’s storied life—his youth amid the bourgeoisie, his artistic awakening in the theater, his sponsorship of the Charter 77 human-rights manifesto, his years as a political prisoner, his unlikely rise to the presidency, and his controversial administrations in

Czechoslovakia and later the Czech Republic. Particularly lamentable is Sedláčková’s hasty survey of Havel’s years in office, when the people’s affection for him was sorely tested by the hard political choices of the postcommunist era. In Czech with subtitles. —J.R. JONES 70 min. Sun 6/26, 3:30 PM, and Thu 6/30, 8 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center The Wailing When the small South Korean town of Goksung (translation: “Wailing”) is struck by a mysterious disease that turns villagers into crazed, zombie-like killers, a local cop (Kwak Do-won) investigates a Japanese stranger (Jun Kunimura of Kill Bill) to whom all signs of evil point. Writerdirector Na Hong-Jin (The Yellow Sea) suggests that the town’s seemingly collective xenophobia is misguided but then confirms it is not, which gives this otherwise ingenious probe of religion and superstition an unfortunate taint of isolationist propaganda. Still, the film justifies its epic length, meshing ancient east Asian mythology and rituals (village gods, exorcisms by shamans) with more recognizable horror tropes (demonic possession, zombification, the devil represented by a black dog and rams’ heads) in a way that

The Golden Coach Essential R viewing. Anna Magnani plays the head of a commedia dell’arte

troupe touring colonial Peru in the early 18th century who dallies with three lovers (Paul Campbell, Ricardo Rioli, and Duncan Lamont) in this pungent, gorgeous color masterpiece by Jean Renoir, shot in breathtaking images by his nephew Claude (1952). In fact, this filmic play-within-a-play, based on a Prosper Merimee stage work, is a celebration of theatricality and a meditation on the beauties and mysteries of acting—it’s both a key text and pleasurable filmmaking at its near best. Though generally regarded as a French film, the original and better version is in English, which is almost invariably what gets shown in the states. With Odoardo Spadaro, Nada Fiorelli, and Jean Debucourt. —JONATHAN ROSENBAUM 101 min. Sat 6/25, 5 PM, and Mon 6/27, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center

SPECIAL EVENTS Other People’s Business: South Side Home Movies A program of 8-millimeter and 16-millimeter home movies, screening courtesy of the South Side Home Movie Project. Sat 6/25, 2 PM. Rebuild Foundation, Stony Island Bank v

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

T F A ER R C BE

S P DR EC INK IA LS

4757 N TALMAN · 773.942.6012 · ILOVEMONTIS.COM ·

S G N

CHICAGO FLAGSHIP STORES 5 6 E A S T WA LT O N S T R E E T 3 1 2 - 2 0 2 -7 9 0 0

@ILOVEMONTIS JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 7

CITY LIFE Ù

Chicagoans

OUR MOST READ ARTICLES LAST WEEK ON CHICAGOREADER.COM IN ASCENDING ORDER:

Brian McVey, 38

‘Unfortunately, I am the villain’: Profiles Theatre artistic director Darrell W. Cox responds to Reader abuse investigation —JAKE MALOOLEY

The ex-cop

RIGHT OUT OF high school I started on the railroad—freight, not passenger. I was a switchman, then an engineer. When I made it into the police academy, all my mentors on the railroad said, “You’re gonna see a lot of evil, dark things. Don’t ever lose your smile.” I started out as a patrol officer in Grand Crossing. I had a certain beat every day, around 71st and Cottage Grove. Anything you can think of, I saw. Murder, rape, shootings, stabbings. Car accidents with fatalities. On some days we’d get called over and over to the same house for the same domestic situation, and if we placed the boyfriend in cuffs, the woman would start crying and say, “No, no, let him go, I just wanted you to scare him.” It’s like, wait a minute. You have visible marks on your face, you called the police, we showed up, you just want us to let him go? And then it’s like we’re ﬁghting her. She’s crying, saying, “He’s got a job, he’s paying my rent.” The children are crying. What do you do? If I let him go, maybe next day he stabs her. You really have to weigh that. After a couple years, I got on the Third District gang unit. We’d see a guy on the corner and drive by, and

Profiles Theatre actor: ‘I got $75 a week to get the shit beat out of me’ —AIMEE LEVITT AND CHRISTOPHER PIATT

‘The statement is a study in crisis management’: Not in Our House leaders decline to meet with Darrell Cox without an apology —AIMEE LEVITT AND CHRISTOPHER PIATT Profiles Theatre closes less than a week after Reader abuse exposé —AIMEE LEVITT

“Anything you can think of, I saw,” McVey says. “Murder, rape, shootings, stabbings. Car accidents with fatalities.” ò APRIL ALONSO

20 minutes later we ﬁnd out he got shot. We’d go interview him, and he’d say, “Yeah, I don’t know what happened. I just felt a pain. I didn’t see anything.” That no-snitch policy is terrible. You can’t do your job. I was in one shooting. This guy jumps out of a stolen car with a gun in his hand. I chased him, screaming, “Put the gun down!” It looked like he was going to shoot, and that’s when I ﬁred the one round. It grazed him. I’m grateful that I didn’t kill him. I just remember thinking, I have to go to the bathroom so bad. I stayed on the gang unit till my

accident. I was in a squad car, and we got cut off at 70th and Stony Island. Our car rolled and hit a pole and then another pole. When I woke up, they were cutting my clothes off in the ambulance, which was surreal, because that’s what I always saw the ambulance guys doing for shooting victims. At the hospital, Rahm Emanuel showed up in my room. I almost started crying when I saw him, because I thought, “OK, I must be paralyzed, that’s why he’s here.” It turned out it was just a nice move on my boss’s part. I had a broken

hip, a shattered wrist, and my biceps and knees were torn up. Four years later, I’m on my eighth surgery, and I’m on disability. I hurt, but I’m aboveground. Being a cop was my job, and I did a good job. I prided myself on never getting in trouble. If I stopped a person who was doing something illegal and their friend started ﬁlming me, I never got mad. I was very professional. I always hoped that I could find those YouTube videos. But I guess since I acted decent, they’re not gonna upload them. —AS TOLD TO ANNE FORD

At Profiles Theatre the drama— and abuse—is real —AIMEE LEVITT AND CHRISTOPHER PIATT

Diameters of circles are proportional to the number of page views received.

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

SURE THINGS THURSDAY 23

FRIDAY 24

SATURDAY 25

SUNDAY 26

MONDAY 27

TUESDAY 28

WEDNESDAY 29

d Pr ide Benefit Show Proceeds from this performance of the Neo-Futurists’ Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind beneﬁt the Broadway Youth Center, an organization that provides medical care and social services to teens and young adults. 7:30 PM, Neo-Futurarium, 5153 N. Ashland, neofuturists.org, $25.

Chicago Read er Pride Booze Cru is e Sail aboard the Tall Ship Windy with music, food, and drinks—including brews from Lakeshore Beverage—while taking in the skyline at sunset. 6:45 PM, Navy Pier, 600 E. Grand, eventbrite.com/e/ chicago-reader-pride-boozecruise-tickets-25652687880, $40.

^ Re negade Craf t Fair Pop - Up Stroll around the Hideout to explore more than 150 artisan and craft vendors while hearing live music by bands like Black Bear Combo and Lowdown Brass Band. Through 6/26: 11 AM-6 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, renegadecraft.com. F

ï Chicago Fo od Truck Fest Head over to the South Loop to sample grub from more than 50 food trucks, including Gino’s Steak Truck, Jack’s Fork in the Road, and the Slide Ride. Sat 6/25-Sun 6/26: 11 AM-7 PM, McCormick Place, 2200 S. Indiana, chgofoodtruckfest.com, $5, $10 for VIP.

E Best of Black Ha r vest Film Festival Filmmaker Ronit Bezalel celebrates the spirit of a unique community and mourns its destruction with a screening of 70 Acres in Chicago: Cabrini Green. A discussion with Bezalel follows the screening. 5 PM, Greater Grand Crossing Branch, 1000 E. 73rd, chipublib.org. F

Cash Lev y Comedian Cash Levy, who’s been on Comedy Central and The Late Late Show With James Corden, performs stand-up at Zanies Comedy Club. 8:30 PM, Zanies, 1548 N. Wells, chicago.zanies.com, $25.

× Appellati on Ma rket D inners Pastoral Artisan presents a weekly threecourse meal crafted by chef Jesse Williams with ingredients from the Andersonville Farmers Market. Part of the proceeds go to LINK Up Illinois. Through 8/31: Wed 5 PM, Appellation, 5212 N. Clark, pastoralartisan.com/ appellation, $35.

8 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

CITY LIFE Rob, an Austin resident and substitute teacher, rides his own bike near a new west-side Divvy station. ò JOHN GREENFIELD

TRANSPORTATION

West-side story

West Garﬁeld Park and Austin get Divvy. Will anyone use it? By JOHN GREENFIELD

magine if the CTA, a public transportation system that’s subsidized by taxpayers, was mostly serving wealthy white folks. That would be bullshit, right? Last year the Chicago Department of Transportation admitted to a similarly lopsided situation with the publicly funded Divvy network. Its survey of annual members revealed that, as is the case with most U.S. bike-share systems, membership skewed heavily white, affluent, well-educated, young, and male. That finding was no surprise. Arguably, Divvy got off on the wrong foot from a social justice standpoint when it launched in 2013. The city concentrated most of the first 300 docking stations in dense, well-off areas downtown and on the near-north lakefront, in an effort to make the system financially sustainable. And while stations in these areas were generally installed with tight, quarter-mile spacing, making it easy to walk to and from the docks from many destinations, the rest of the city typically got less-convenient half-mile

spacing. Moreover, the $75 (now $99) annual membership fee and credit card requirements were ﬁnancial barriers to low-income and unbanked Chicagoans. To its credit, CDOT has recently taken steps to address Divvy’s equity problem. When the system added 175 more stations last summer, many of them went to low-to-moderate-income, predominantly African-American and Latino communities on the south and west sides. And last July the department rolled out the Divvy for Everyone (D4E) program, which offers one-time $5 annual memberships to Chicagoans making $35,310 or less a year, and waives the credit card requirement. More than 1,300 residents have signed up so far, well over CDOT’s target of 750 for the year. This summer the Divvy system is expanding to 584 stations and 6,000 bikes, including ten stations in Evanston and 13 in Oak Park. Of the 85 stations being installed in Chicago, almost all are going to communities of color on the south and west sides. However, simply dropping stations and bikes in underserved neighborhoods has generally

not resulted into good ridership. An analysis by the South Side Weekly found that affluent areas with quarter-mile station density like Lakeview, Lincoln Park, and the Near North Side averaged 1,500-3,000 rides per station in fall 2015. But lower-income neighborhoods like Little Village, Back of the Yards, and Greater Grand Crossing, with half-mile spacing, averaged 100 or fewer trips per station. To encourage Divvy use in black and Latino communities, CDOT is partnering with bike equity groups like Slow Roll Chicago and Go Bronzeville to spread the word about D4E. In addition, the department’s Bicycling Ambassadors outreach team will offer six weeks of free adult bike-handling classes this summer, only on the south and west sides. Last week I took out one of the big blue bikes and set out for the heavily African-American communities of West Garfield Park and Austin, the first neighborhoods to get docks in this round of installations. I wanted to get local perspectives on whether west siders are likely to use Divvy. By the new bike-share station outside the Garfield Park Conservatory, I met Decoties Parks, a construction worker and roofer pedaling a mountain bike. Parks said Divvy’s west-side expansion is good for residents who don’t own a bike but would like to start cycling for exercise, or as an alternative to riding crowded buses. After I explained how the D4E program works, he said the $5 memberships would likely appeal to locals. “That’s a good deal for people who ain’t making that much money,” he said. From the conservatory I rode south down Central Park, past the gold dome of the Garfield Park fieldhouse. Next I headed west on a bustling stretch of Madison, filled with sportswear and beauty supply stores. A docking station was installed just past Pulaski, across from YOLO Ladies Wear & Shoes. Sylvester Luke, a contractor, was standing nearby, with a tape measure on his hip and a full-sized bike pump bungeed to the frame of his Giant hybrid bike. “I always carry utensils, so if I catch a flat I can fix it and keep moving on,” he explained. Luke said he’s not interested in becoming a Divvy member because he owns two bikes and a car. I explained that, even if you have

your own bicycle, bike-share is handy for all kinds of trips where you want to pedal part of the way. When I mentioned that annual memberships cost $99, Luke whistled with disbelief. “I’d have to scrimp and save to come up with that money,” he said. I told him about D4E—at this point I was starting to feel like an evangelist for the program. The $5 option got Luke interested, but when I explained that Divvy is intended for short trips and errands—you’re only supposed to keep the bikes for 30 minutes at a time—he said that was a deal-breaker. “They should at least give you an hour or two, just like they do with bus transfers,” he said. As I was about to ride away, a McDonalds employee named Teraneka Moore called after me, “Do you need a credit card to rent the bikes?” I gave my spiel about D4E. “$5 a year?” she responded. “It’s likely everybody will join that program.” Rolling northwest, I visited the station by Austin Park at Lake and Austin, across the street from suburban Oak Park. Rob, an Austin resident and substitute teacher who asked to be identified by his first name only, was riding a Fuji hybrid with his smartphone rubber-banded to the handlebars. Rob told me he’d considered checking out a Divvy recently when he needed to travel across the Loop, but decided to walk instead. “I really don’t like the design of the bikes,” he said, referring to the step-through frame. “They look like girl’s bikes. And I’m not into the baby blue.” While Rob said he thinks bike-share will be a hit in relatively prosperous Oak Park, he was incredulous that the system would get much use in struggling Austin. “People here are not going to support it,” he said. “To be totally honest, I think they’d rather steal a bike than rent one.” But when I explained how D4E works, Rob conceded that the $5 memberships might win some folks over. “The problem is, nobody out here knows about that program,” he said. “If the city wants people out here to use these bikes, they’re going to need to step up the marketing and PR and focus on our neighborhoods.” CDOT, are you paying attention? Looks like it might be worth investing in some additional Divvy-vangelism. v

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

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 9

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

CITY LIFE Mayor Emanuel at south-side CPS school Ariel Community Academy in April 2015 ò MATT MARTON/AP

POLITICS

Mayor Rahm sings a new school tune

Finally, he decides it’s a good tactic to praise CPS. By BEN JORAVSKY

ith his speech last week at a Crain’s business luncheon, Mayor Emanuel made it clear that he’s adopted a new attitude toward Chicago’s public schools: he likes them. Well, not enough to help them stave off bankruptcy by dipping into his TIF reserves to pay the bills. I don’t think he’ll ever like them that much. But he’s clearly moved to the stage of his career where he feels it’s in his best interest to stop bashing the schools so he can take credit for having ﬁxed them. Even though the schools were never as bad as he says they were and they’re not as good as he now claims. It’s a trick he learned from Mayor Daley that’s intended to give the boss maximum credit for stuff he never did. In particular, Emanuel is trumpeting gains made in standardized test scores—more on that in a moment—to win points in his ﬁght with Governor Rauner, his old wine-drinking, money-making pal. I know I’m not alone when I say that I still

10 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

wonder if this ﬁght’s for real—no matter how many nasty things Rauner and Rahm say about each other. At the moment, I must concede that Rahm is less of a schmuck than Rauner—though the bar’s exceedingly low in this competition. At least Rahm’s not saying that CPS is unworthy of more state aid because it’s a shitty system ﬁlled with schools that “are basically just crumbling prisons,” as Rauner recently put it, so let’s just let it go bankrupt. In search of more state aid, Emanuel’s been chiding Rauner for his insensitivity, even though Rahm was saying many of the same things about CPS a few years ago. OK, so Rahm never compared schools to prisons. But he roared into office intent on making his name as a charter-school-loving, teachers’-union-bashing Democrat who stood arm in arm with Republicans like Rauner. Who can forget that moment in a 2011 mayoral debate when Emanuel declared: “When you take out North Side [and] Walter Payton, the seven best-performing high schools are all charters.”

It was his not-so-subtle way of saying there are only one or two good public schools in the system. After that debate, students from Sullivan High—a neighborhood school in Rogers Park—made a video pointing out that Whitney Young, Jones College Prep, Lane Tech, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Lincoln Park high schools all followed North Side and Payton on the list of the city’s top-scoring schools. None of them are charters. The students went on to lambaste Rahm and endorse Miguel del Valle. Sullivan, one student said, “is not one of the schools Rahm Emanuel cares about.” Once in office, Emanuel spent the better part of four years ﬁghting the teachers’ union, provoking a strike, and forcing curriculum changes on schools whether they wanted them or not. When parents complained, his aides told them that the mayor knew best, and that the parents didn’t realize just how bad their schools really were. Obviously, the mayor’s singing a new tune these days. In his luncheon speech, he blasted Rauner for not sending more state money to help him “bridge the divide” between poor neighborhoods such as Roseland and rich ones such as Ravenswood. As Rahm put it, he needed more state aid to continue the great improvements he’s making at CPS. “The caboose,” he said—i.e., CPS—is now “carrying Illinois on it back.” To prove his point, he—irony of ironies— praised Sullivan for sending so many graduates to college. “Folks, let’s be honest. If I told you ﬁve years ago that 100 percent of kids from Clemente and Sullivan were going to college . . . ” Here he paused, as if he couldn’t imagine such a fantasy. Then he said: “I wish those cameras were off. I could really say what I want to say. It includes a Dixie cup and a lab test.” I’m pretty sure Rahm’s making a joke about being high and taking a drug test. Or maybe it’s a paternity test? No matter. He’s got a way of insulting public schools even when he’s trying to praise them. He went on to say that CPS students “led the nation in eighth-grade math and fourth-grade reading gains.” As if his policies had anything to do with it. Let’s go into the weeds.

The mayor was alluding to student scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress—a federally mandated standardized test. Every two years the feds monitor fourthgrade math and eighth-grade reading scores to get a general sense of whether school districts are improving. The study they produce is called the Nation’s Report Card. The good news is that, yes, Chicago’s eighth-graders scored six points higher in reading in 2015 than they did in 2013. And fourth-graders scored one point higher in math. The bad news is that a racial, ethnic, and economic performance gap persists. For instance, black fourth-graders “had an average score that was 41 points lower than that for white students,” according to the report card. And Hispanic fourth-graders had “an average score that was 33 points lower than that for white students.”

Rahm’s reached that stage where he feels it’s in his best interest to stop bashing the schools so he can take credit for having fixed them. Low-income students scored 34 points lower than their wealthier peers. The gap also existed in eighth-grade reading scores. Worse, performance gaps for fourth- and eighth-graders have been rising over time. In other words, in the ﬁght to “bridge the divide between Roseland and Ravenswood,” we’re going backward, not forward. Moreover, Chicago’s performance gap was as bad as or worse than the ones in New York, Los Angeles, and other cities. So there’s no point in trying to make us look good by making other cities look bad. Another one of the mayor’s favorite tactics. I take no solace in writing this. The point is that no one—certainly neither Rahm nor Rauner—has ﬁgured out how to close this gap. I’m pretty sure Rauner’s not even trying. One thing’s for certain: bankrupting or bashing our schools doesn’t help. And neither does congratulating yourself for strides you’ve never made. v

v @joravben

Chicago has been labeled the WORST CITY IN AMERICA FOR BED BUGS! BED BUGS can live in curtain seams, electrical outlets, behind picture frames, in furniture crevices, not just beds.

BED BUGS ARE NOT A DIY PEST because of how easily they can spread. At ﬁrst suspicion of bed bugs, contact Rose for a free inspection!

BED BUGS CAN HITCHHIKE home on purses, backpacks, luggage and other personal belongings. Always inspect items before bringing them into the house.

TRUST THE BEST PEST CONTROL EXPERTS in town to protect your family.

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 11

The cast of Killer Joe. From left: Darrell Cox, Howie Johnson, Claire Wellin, Somer Benson, and Kevin Bigley. ò SUN-TIMES PRINT ARCHIVE

ACT THREE

Proﬁles actor: ‘I got $75 a week to get the shit beat out of me’

By AIMEE LEVITT AND CHRISTOPHER PIATT

arrell W. Cox, coartistic director of the now-closed Proﬁles Theatre, has denied accusations of abuse leveled against him by former actors and crew members in the Reader’s June 9 cover story, “At Proﬁles Theatre the drama—and abuse—is real.” “We have always gone to great lengths to protect everyone physically while performing combat, intimate and other risky scenes,” Cox told the Tribune in a written response to a series of questions sent to him through a spokesman. “The theatre is a physical place. Particular scenes can lead to injury from time to time but all actions are closely supervised with the actor’s safety of paramount importance.” Many of the allegations in the story concerned Cox’s behavior during Profiles’s acclaimed 2010 production of Tracy Letts’s Killer Joe; Cox also addressed these in his statements to the Tribune. “With respect to ‘Killer Joe,’” he wrote, “we had a fight call every single day and I checked in after the performance every night. I would ask questions to the actress if everything felt safe and

12 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

if there was anything we needed to adjust. We did this daily . . . the ﬁght choreographers had us doing some high-risk moves.” But five actors and crew members interviewed for the Reader’s investigation said that they experienced or witnessed Cox be physically violent onstage during rehearsals and performances, sometimes because he disregarded established fight choreography, and sometimes because he veered from the script seemingly due to personal grievances, they said. In addition, three more actors have come forward since the Reader’s investigation was published to share their previously untold stories of onstage violence and lack of supervision at Proﬁles: Kevin Bigley and Emily Vajda, who were both part of Killer Joe, and Larry Neumann Jr., who appeared with Cox in In God’s Hat in 2013. Bigley, who costarred with Cox in Killer Joe, says the Reader’s published account of the production was just as he remembered it—including the observations by crew members that Cox once threw him into a refrigerator so hard it cracked the wall of the set, and

statements by Jonathan Berry, who was then directing Bigley in another show at Steppenwolf, that Bigley felt he had to “keep it real” because that was what Cox required. In the early stages of rehearsal, Bigley says, Rick Gilbert and David Bareford of R&D Choreography had come in to work out the logistics of the climactic ﬁght scene, in which it had to appear that Cox was beating Bigley and actress Somer Benson. But Gilbert and Bareford were only in the rehearsal room for a short period, Bigley says. “R&D’s choreography was very specific,” Bigley says, “but after they left, it was changed and tweaked.” In the final fight scene, Cox slammed Bigley against a table so hard that it broke several times, he says; the table was eventually reinforced with a steel plate for performances. Later on in that scene, Cox’s character was supposed to slam Bigley’s character’s head in a refrigerator door. “[Director] Rick [Snyder] wanted to put a stopper on the door so it would slam, but then stop. Darrell said, ‘We can’t do the stopper.’ He was adamant about the smash. [R&D] said if I did it, I should take the hit on the shoulder. Darrell goes, ‘Don’t do that. It looks fake.’” He suggested Bigley just put his head in; Bigley remembers that Cox said he wanted to “feel” it. In the end they compromised, in a way: Bigley put his body halfway into the refrigerator, and the door slammed on his ribs. In the same scene, Cox was supposed to pretend to choke Bigley from behind and then strangle him with a phone cord. As R&D had choreographed the scene, Bigley’s neck was supposed to rest in the crook of Cox’s elbow so he wouldn’t be hurt. “As he lost himself in the part,” Bigley says, “he began to actually choke me. I was at his mercy. I would try to hold myself up. There was more and more choking and one time I thought, ‘Holy shit, I’m in danger.’ He starts the choke, and then he doesn’t do it. He wraps the cord around my neck and holds it and starts to walk backwards and I really choked.” Bigley lives in California now and is still acting. But he hasn’t forgotten Killer Joe. “I got a $75-a-week stipend,” he says, “to get the shit beat out of me.” Meanwhile, Vajda, who was an understudy for Benson’s role, wrote in a blog post that she was never taught the ﬁght choreography until she said something to Cox about how she wasn’t prepared to go onstage. “Darrell caught wind that I wasn’t comfortable performing and he belittled me,” she wrote,

“He began to actually choke me. I was at his mercy.” —Actor Kevin Bigley

“looked at me as though I were a disappointment and said something along the lines of, ‘What do you mean you wouldn’t be able to perform?’ And I was incredulous. Of course I couldn’t. This show had so much violence. I needed rehearsals.” Vajda and the other understudies were eventually taught the ﬁght choreography. But she believes that wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t insisted. Neumann, a veteran Equity actor, played Cox’s brother in Proﬁles’s 2013 production of In God’s Hat. The theater had joined Actors’ Equity, the actors’ union, the year before, and was technically under the union’s oversight. But that didn’t keep Cox from lashing out, Neumann says. “One night sticks in my mind: At one point, he grabbed me by the throat and started applying pressure, squeezing, however you want to say it. It was never scripted, it was never thought of as a thing to do. It came out of nowhere. He got upset, maybe with a line reading I gave, and he just grabbed me by the throat and held on.” Neumann says he stood onstage and stared at Cox until Cox released him. Backstage after the show, he says, Cox apologized, and it never happened again. Now Neumann says he’s sorry he didn’t speak up sooner. Stories shared by Neumann, Bigley, and Vajda are remarkably similar to ones that were previously published in the Reader’s initial investigation. Benson said that during a performance of that same fight scene in Killer Joe, Cox choked her so hard she started to see specks. Cox didn’t respond, Benson says, when she squeezed his thigh, the prearranged signal for her to let him know that he was hurting her. Later on in the scene, Cox’s character threw Benson’s against a wall. “You heard that crack, and it sounded like thunder sticks at a baseball

CITY LIFE game being clapped together,” said Corey Weinberg, the assistant stage manager. “And you could tell those whimpers that she was making, those were real.” Contrary to what Cox told the Tribune, both Benson and her costar, Claire Wellin, said that Benson tried several times to speak to Cox about adjusting the fight choreography. But Cox would arrive late to performances, they said, too late to address the issue in any serious way. After performances, both Wellin and Weinberg recalled Benson sitting on the floor outside the dressing room, sometimes sobbing, sometimes too overwhelmed to speak. MaryEllen Rieck, the stage manager, said she tried to speak to the show’s director, Rick Snyder, about the diversions from the established fight choreography, but she says he brushed off her concerns. “NONE of the safe fight choreography was used in actual rehearsal and performances,” she wrote in a formal statement presented to Actors’ Equity. The incident between Cox and Neumann recalls an account actor Hans Fleischmann gave the Reader of an incident that occurred during a 2008 performance of In a Dark Dark House. Midway through the run of the show, Fleischmann said, he was nominated for a Jeff Award while Cox was not. Cox’s behavior changed abruptly after that, Fleischmann said. One night, Fleischmann remembered, Cox got physical: “I don’t remember if it was a push or grab, but it was violent, and it was for no reason. It wasn’t in the script. We weren’t supposed to be fighting. There was no reason other than this personal anger.” Actors’ Equity has responded to the revelations of the past two weeks with this statement: “The effects of harassment can be devastating to the individual and Actors’ Equity Association has zero tolerance for harassment of any kind. Equity takes the safety of its members very seriously and has steadfast rules and remedies in its agreements that address these situations. Everyone has the right to expect a safe work environment and there are resources that everyone in the theater industry can access. The courageous women who spoke to the Chicago Reader about their experiences will give others the courage to speak up and their stories will encourage a safer environment in our industry.” v

v @aimeelevitt

LGBTQ

The color of violence By DERRICK CLIFTON

David Tapia, left, and his boyfriend, John Hernandez, attend a vigil in Boystown in the wake of the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando. ò ASHLEE REZIN/SUN-TIMES

any of the early reports and responses to the mass-casualty shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub decry the tragedy as one fueled by anti-LGBTQ hate, or as murders committed by an ISIS sympathizer. With the news that the perpetrator reportedly attended the club on several occasions and may even have used gay dating apps, internalized fear and hatred of LGBTQ people may come to the fore. Indeed, these issues aren’t mutually exclusive and are important areas of focus while trying to make sense of a senseless crime. But there’s another facet of this incident that cannot be overlooked: the shooting occurred during Pulse’s Latin music night, and the vast majority of the victims were black and Latinx (the gender-neutral form of the adjective). This aspect of the tragedy in Orlando unfortunately mirrors a larger issue: anti-LGBTQ violence has a disproportionate impact on black and brown people. As noted by Rob Wile at the news site Fusion, data from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs’s 2014 report, the

most recent available, shows that people of color are vastly overrepresented among victims of anti-LGBT violence. Forty-three percent of survivors of anti-LGBTQ violence identified as Latinx, while the group as a whole makes up just 17 percent of the U.S. population. African-Americans make up 23 percent of said survivors, despite representing roughly 13 percent of the general population. The coalition estimates that the rates could be even higher when cuts to antiviolence programs that support survivors are factored in. Yet in recent years most news reports about violence against LGBTQ people have come at the expense of black or Latinx people, especially those who are transgender or gender nonconforming. As noted by the National LGBTQ Task Force, of the roughly two dozen trans women and gender-nonconforming people who were murdered by the fall of 2015, the majority of them were black or Latinx. And in some cases, police don’t respond properly to these hate-motivated crimes. In fact, some survivors get charged with felonies for defending themselves. Here in Chicago, Eisha Love and Tiffany

Gooden were attacked in March 2012 during an altercation at a gas station in the Austin neighborhood. As the Windy City Times reported, both Love and Gooden were black trans women, and the physical and verbal attacks against them were transphobic in nature. Love, now 26, used her vehicle to run into her attacker—reportedly an act of self-defense. She spent almost four years in jail while awaiting trial and was released last December, after accepting a plea deal for a single felony count of aggravated battery on a public way. In August 2012, 19-year-old Gooden was found murdered in an abandoned South Austin building. Whether it’s Orlando or Chicago, it’s important to remember that many LGBTQ victims and survivors endure the constant threat of psychic and physical harm that comes with facing multiple forms of marginalization. In addition to being members of the LGBTQ community, they must face social settings, institutions, and systems of power that expose them to disproportionate harm as people of color. Gun violence represents one such deadly threat to their ability to live openly and freely. v

v @derrickclifton JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 13

BEST OF CHICAGO

READERS’ POLL

City Life

The Chicago accent The Saturday Night Live sketch “Bill Swerski’s Superfans” lampooned Chicagoese.

BEST VIEW OF THE CITY

SIGNATURE ROOM

ò 2015 NBC UNIVERSAL MEDIA, LLC

875 N. Michigan 312-787-9596 signatureroom.com RUNNERS-UP:

ADLER PLANETARIUM AND

LAKE SHORE DRIVE

BEST HISTORIC BUILDING

CHICAGO CULTURAL CENTER 78 E. Washington 312-744-6630 chicagoculturalcenter.org RUNNER-UP:

WRIGLEY BUILDING BEST ATTRACTION

ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO 111 S. Michigan 312-443-3600 artic.edu RUNNER-UP:

NAVY PIER BEST TOUR

CHICAGO ARCHITECTURE FOUNDATION RIVER CRUISE 112 E. Wacker 312-922-3432 architecture.com RUNNER-UP:

WENDELLA’S CHICAGO ARCHITECTURE TOUR BEST CHICAGO AMBASSADOR

CHANCE THE RAPPER ò MIKE WAROT

@chancetherapper RUNNER-UP:

BARACK OBAMA

14 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

IN THE PARKING LOT of a grocery store in Beverly, I heard the most Chicago sentence ever spoken. “Yeah,” said a middle-aged man who could only have spent his entire life in the city’s most Irish neighborhood, “dey’re buildin’ a new Cat’lick church out dere in Orland Park.” In its most undiluted expression, the Chicago accent—dialect of Daleys, the sound of CTA announcements (“Customer assistance is needed at the key-ask”)—is layered with local history: settlement, immigration, segregation, industrialization, globalization. Our city’s basic speech patterns were brought here in the 1830s by Yankee pioneers from western New England and upstate New York. Stephen Douglas, the first great Chicagoan, was born in Vermont and died on a lakefront estate. The Yankees settled the lower Great Lakes, establishing a dialect region known as Inland North, stretching from Rochester to Milwaukee. From them, we got our nasal timbre and the pronunciations that evolved into the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, a 20th-century linguistic movement that has resulted in such distinctive midwestern pronunciations as “jayg-off” for “jagoff” and “Gapers blahhhk is slowing down tray-ﬁc on da Day-en Ryan.” Then came the immigrants, who adopted Inland North and added elements from their native tongues. Few languages other than

English include the “th” sound. That’s how “Throop” became “T’roop,” and why “dese, dem, and dose guy” is a term for a salt-of-theearth white ethnic Chicagoan, usually from the south side or an inner-ring suburb. The Irish “youse,” a kludge for English’s lack of a second-person plural, can still be heard in Bridgeport and Beverly. Next came the Great Migration. Isolated geographically by restrictive covenants, socially by taboos against intermarriage, and economically by relegation to the dirtiest, lowest-paying jobs, African-Americans had little contact with white Chicago and retained their southern speech. They still say “y’all” on the south and west sides. The midwest, which has the nation’s most segregated cities, also has the widest divergence between black and white accents. The Chicago accent was most widespread during the city’s industrial heyday. Bluecollar work and strong regional speech are closely connected: if you graduated high school in the 1960s, you didn’t need to go to college or even leave your neighborhood to get a good job, and once you got that job, you didn’t have to talk to anyone outside your house, your factory, or your tavern. A regular-Joe accent was a sign of masculinity and local cred, bonding forces important for the teamwork of industrial labor. A 1970s study of East Side steelworker families found that

housewives were less likely than their husbands to say “dese, dem, and dose” because they dealt with doctors, teachers, and other professionals. After the mills closed, kids went to college, where they learned not to say “dat,” and took office jobs requiring interaction with people outside the neighborhood. Chicagoese began going out of style right at the moment the rest of the country noticed it—maybe because the rest of the country noticed it. Saturday Night Live’s “Bill Swerski’s Superfans,” starring Clearing’s own George Wendt, lampooned Polish and Irish Chicagoans who gorged on “Polish sahhhsage” and rooted for “Da Bearsss” and “Da Bullsss.” “It’s become so stereotyped as a pronunciation, and it’s pointed out so often in speech that people are actually shifting away from it,” says David Durian, an adjunct professor of English at the College of DuPage, who’s observed an erosion of the accent among post-baby-boom Chicagoans. It’s now rare to hear a classic Chicago accent from anyone under 50. Even if your grandfather and father had one, you probably don’t. When I was a regular at Sportsman’s Park in Cicero, my racetrack buddy Johnny used to congratulate me on winning bets by shouting “Dayt’s awesome!” Mancow Muller’s radio stooge Turd (who’s also a south-side bartender) spoke perfect Chicagoese, but he’s off the air. Richard M. Daley is out of office after 22 years as mayor of “Chi-caw-go,” replaced by a smooth-talking wonk from Wilmette who runs “Chi-cah-go.” As Chicago has reinvented itself as a consulting and cultural capital, attracting college graduates who speak neutral American English, Chicagoese is regarded as an ethnic, blue-collar accent. It always was. WASP Hugh Hefner and Yalie Gene Siskel never talked about dat great new restaurant over dere in West Lawn. It’s disappearing because Chicago isn’t as ethnic or blue-collar as it used to be. —EDWARD MCCLELLAND McClelland’s book on midwestern speech will be out in November from Belt Publishing.

BEST OF CHICAGO

BEST STREET CHARACTER

PUPPET BIKE

facebook.com/puppetbike RUNNER-UP:

SHARKULA

BEST ALDERMAN

AMEYA PAWAR

ò AP

4243 N. Lincoln 773-868-4747 chicago47.org

The Grid

BEST ACTIVIST

notony of the Grid, but it’s full of interruptions that provide texts we can read to learn our history. Streets that violate the Grid tell crucial stories. What a friend calls “Ur Bridgeport,” the streets in the triangle between 31st, Archer, and Halsted, were built southeast to northwest, dead-ending at Archer. That diagonal street followed the path of the Chicago River and the canal that the ﬁrst Bridgeporters came here from Ireland to dig. Hardscrabble, as it was then called, was outside the city limits, so the original plat hadn’t yet been extended that far. This variation on the Grid tells of Chicago’s founding hustle (the canal and the land speculation it inspired) and its earliest prejudices (Irish laborers were needed, but not welcome in the city proper). Another exception teaches a more recent intersection between prejudice and profiteering. On both LaSalle and Clark between Division and North, the odd-even address system seems broken. Buildings on the west side of Clark have odd-numbered addresses, while those on the east side of LaSalle are even. That’s because officially these buildings are on Sandburg Terrace, the basically private road that bisects this tract, created in the 1960s when the city used eminent domain to bulldoze a Puerto Rican neighborhood and

hand the land over to private developers. Subtle quirks in the Grid show another essential aspect of Chicago: our tendency to half-ass things. We like to make big plans, and kinda sorta follow through. Beyond the street numbering, a key aspect of the Brennan Plan was to regularize the street names. Get rid of the dozens named for the same president, and give continuous streets one name for their entire length. Nice idea, not quite completed. A few examples: northbound, 800 West is Halsted, until it’s brieﬂy Broadway, and then finally Clarendon. Similarly, 1000 West is Morgan south of Chicago Avenue, but Shefﬁeld north of Chicago to Byron, whereupon it becomes Sheridan Road. And 1400 West? Loomis, Noble, Southport, and Glenwood. Half-assing it: that’s the Chicago way, and the Grid teaches us that. Yet the Grid can also help lift our eyes up from our earthly shortfalls by connecting us to the celestial. Twice a year, on the spring and fall solstices, our east-west streets create Chicagohenge, as the sun rises and sets framed perfectly by the megaliths of our built environment. From the muddy swamp of the original city to the tilt of the earth’s axis, the Grid connects us to it all. —BILL SAVAGE

RYAN KELLEHER OF GRASSROOTS COLLABORATIVE AND

PAGE MAY OF ASSATA’S DAUGHTERS RUNNER-UP:

BLACK LIVES MATTER CHICAGO BEST POLITICIAN YOU’D LIKE TO RESURRECT

HAROLD WASHINGTON RUNNER-UP:

ABRAHAM LINCOLN BEST CELEBRITY

CHANCE THE RAPPER @chancetherapper RUNNER-UP:

BILL MURRAY BEST POWER COUPLE

BARACK AND MICHELLE OBAMA RUNNER-UP:

JOE MORENO AND CELENA ROLDAN ò RICH HEIN/SUN-TIMES MEDIA

THE GRID IS Chicago’s circulatory system: the residential and commercial streets, secondary arterials, grand boulevards, and teeming expressways, the gangways and alleys. It is the system of street naming and numbering that makes Chicago comprehensible and easily navigated. But it wasn’t always thus. Chicago grew by annexing suburbs, so many street names were repeated. House numbers started at the lake or the river, so addresses didn’t match block to block. Now we all know the drill: State and Madison is the zero point of the east-west and north-south axes of a logical Cartesian grid. Except in the Loop, every 800 addresses equals a mile, so you can ﬁnd your way to any place by doing a little math. You can also tell which side of the street your destination is on: even-numbered addresses on the north and west sides of streets, odd on the south and east sides. We owe the Grid to Edward Brennan, a freelance city planner who convinced Chicago’s political and commercial powers that were to standardize things in the ﬁrst decade of the 20th century. Daniel Burnham aspired to make the City Beautiful; Brennan made the City Logical. Some aesthetes decry the purported mo-

RUNNER-UP:

CARLOS RAMIREZ-ROSA

BEST LAWYER

ED MULLEN

2129 N. Western 312-508-9433 bucktownlaw.com RUNNER-UP:

CRAIG FUTTERMAN

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 15

BEST OF CHICAGO Aerial view of Elston intersecting with Fullerton and Damen ò LEE

BEST CHARITY

PAWS CHICAGO 1997 N. Clybourn 773-935-7297 pawschicago.org

HOGAN/ SUN-TIMES

RUNNER-UP:

SWING FOR KIDS

BEST LGBTQ ORGANIZATION

HOWARD BROWN HEALTH CENTER 4025 N. Sheridan 773-388-1600 howardbrown.org RUNNER-UP:

CENTER ON HALSTED BEST OVERALL NEIGHBORHOOD

LINCOLN PARK AND

LOGAN SQUARE RUNNER-UP:

LAKEVIEW BEST NEIGHBORHOOD FOR NIGHTLIFE

LOGAN SQUARE RUNNER-UP:

WICKER PARK BEST NEIGHBORHOOD FOR CULTURE

PILSEN RUNNER-UP:

THE LOOP BEST NEIGHBORHOOD FOR AFFORDABILITY

EDGEWATER AND

ROGERS PARK RUNNER-UP:

ò KIICHIRO SATO/AP PHOTO

HUMBOLDT PARK BEST NEIGHBORHOOD FOR DIVERSITY

ROGERS PARK RUNNER-UP:

UPTOWN

16 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

Diagonal streets THERE WERE SUPPOSED to be more of them. It was in the Plan. (You know which Plan.) In the Plan, diagonal streets spanned the city like the Hancock Center’s Xs, creating crosstown routes and turning perfectly perpendicular intersections into junctions of six or even eight corners: 51st and King, LaSalle and Ohio, Western and Fullerton. But Chicagoans love Daniel Burnham’s Plan mostly in theory, and so today the city has fewer Grid-defying streets than in 1909, when Burnham and his coauthor, Edward H. Bennett, made their recommendations. (There’s probably some Mark Twain quote about the Bible that would be applicable here, along the lines of “often cited, rarely read.” That’s how Chicagoans love the Plan.) Our one experiment with adding a diagonal—extending Ogden from the west side through Lincoln Park—was reversed when the Lincoln Parkers thought it ugly and unwarranted (they never wanted to go to the west side anyway). And in the mid-20th century, city planners decided to give already existing diagonals the ax to make room for other things. They cut out a mile or so of Blue Island

Avenue to build UIC. They eliminated an angled section of Cottage Grove north of 35th to build Lake Meadows. They bulldozed a block of Fifth Avenue on the west side for a highway, and another block for a school parking lot. But maybe it’s not so bad. Maybe we just need to do a better job of appreciating the diagonals we have. The paeans to Clark and Milwaukee and Archer are numerous. What about Talcott or Forest Preserve or Manor or McDowell or Vincennes or Exchange or Van Vissingen? For that matter, what about all the streets only masquerading as upstanding members of the Grid? On the west side, road after road gets corrupted at North Avenue, each one dancing to the east for a brief stretch: Kedzie and Pulaski and Cicero and Central—all diagonals for a moment. Lake and Devon and Grand, too, loosen up once they get far enough away from the shoreline. Even Michigan Avenue runs diagonally, if only for a block or two, just north of Old Fashioned Donuts in Roseland. What’s special about diagonals, after all, is that they follow their own rules. A grid promises predictability, the geometric comfort of

a forever-repeating pattern. Some homesick Chicagoan in Brooklyn can do the math to determine that he lives 440 blocks south of Madison and 4,998 blocks east of State. Surely anyone who’s lived in Chicago long enough has come across an unrecognizable block of his own street miles and miles from his home and expected, at least for a moment, to see his doppelganger living a twisted parallel life. The best diagonals, in contrast, are short. They can be yours in ways that a lengthy linear street just can’t: Western or Chicago are vast enough that they begin to seem more like lines of latitude than streets belonging to particular neighborhoods. Look in either direction down a gridded street and you’ll see the horizon; a good diagonal will show you a brick two-flat with a gray vase in the front window and a concrete stoop. In that spirit, my nominee for the very best diagonal in the city measures just a few hundred feet: the 2400 block of North Albany, which is lined with trees and graystones and makes for a handy shortcut from Kedzie Boulevard to a corner store near my old apartment. —DANIEL KAY HERTZ

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 17

BEST OF CHICAGO

BEST NEIGHBORHOOD FOR SCHOOLS

LINCOLN PARK RUNNER-UP:

LAKEVIEW

BEST SUBURB ò SUNSHINE TUCKER

EVANSTON RUNNER-UP:

OAK PARK BEST STREET

LINCOLN AVENUE AND

MILWAUKEE AVENUE RUNNER-UP:

CLARK STREET BEST COLLEGE DEGREE FOR THE MONEY

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO 700 S. Halsted 312-996-7000 uic.edu RUNNER-UP:

COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO BEST PLACE FOR A NEW EL STOP

UNITED CENTER RUNNER-UP:

HUMBOLDT PARK BEST OVERALL RADIO STATION

WBEZ

91.5 FM wbez.org RUNNER-UP:

WXRT

BEST RADIO DJ

ò ZOL87/FLICKR

LIN BREHMER @linbrehmer RUNNER-UP:

TERRI HEMMERT

18 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

Alleys THERE’S NO ALLEY equivalent of the Magniﬁcent Mile. The 1,900 miles of backstreets that crisscross Chicago’s Grid—more than in any other municipality in the U.S.—are only beautiful for their utility. The city has tried to redeﬁne these corridors of concrete and asphalt in recent years by giving a few of them environmentally friendly makeovers or temporarily transforming them into outdoor venues for art and music festivals. But for the most part they’re still a rough and rugged part of our infrastructure—unassuming, unmanicured, and ready to perform a host of important functions while hiding in plain sight. Though they’ve existed in some form or another for thousands of years, alleys were considered a waste of valuable space by the planners of older eastern U.S. cities like New York. As urban development principles evolved during the turn of the last century, the concept of big-city alleys—those shadowy areas teeming with disease and danger and vermin—fell out of favor and were supplanted by more spacious front yards in places such as Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon.

It’s not as if Chicago’s own city planners had “Alley Capital of America” in mind when adding them as a common feature to the urban landscape. They’re something of a happy accident, the result of the City in a Garden flowering at the right time in the right place. Chicago was born during a period of the 19th century when cities were laid out in perfectly symmetrical grids because of a legal quirk—the federal government’s National Land Ordinance of 1785 neatly divided uncharted territory west of the Ohio River into an interlocking network of 36-squaremile townships. Alleys were a logical way to subdivide a block and keep hidden the ugly working parts of urban life, to ensure the impolite realities of the industrial age (horse shit, the ramshackle housing of the lower classes, et cetera) were out of view of polite Victorian society. Nearly 200 years later, Chicago alleys lack some of the Dickensian aesthetics but remain the Swiss army knives of urban space. They’re where we run our phone cables and electric wires and temporarily store our garbage for collection (which might sound

underwhelming until you walk the steaming, trash-heaped sidewalks of Manhattan in the sweltering summer). Alleys double as your neighborhood’s junk drawer—a disheveled bazaar where you can both leave unwanted stuff for others and snag underappreciated goods for yourself. They’re conduits of informal social interaction, where kids play in refreshingly unscripted ways, where neighbors converse. They’re also spots of ad hoc privacy that allow us to exercise the messier parts of our humanity in public without utter humiliation. Depending on your blood alcohol level, you can sneak a piss or puke, or make out with a date behind a Dumpster in a shadowy corner while minimizing the chance of becoming a spectacle. Alleys abhor spectacle. They let the streets and avenues and boulevards take all the credit while providing a practical and unpretentious setting where the city can untuck its pants, grab a beer, and let out that fart it’s been holding in all day. That’s magnificent in a way that would never appear on a souvenir T-shirt. —RYAN SMITH

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 19

BEST OF CHICAGO BEST MORNING SHOW

MORNING EDITION, WBEZ 91.5 FM wbez.org

RUNNER-UP:

MORNING SHIFT, WBEZ AND

WGN MORNING NEWS BEST JOURNALIST

BEN JORAVSKY @joravben RUNNER-UP:

JOHN KASS BEST LOCAL BLOG

BITCHES GOTTA EAT

bitchesgottaeat.blogspot.com RUNNER-UP:

CHICAGOIST BEST CHICAGOAN TO FOLLOW ON TWITTER

@ROBERTLOERZEL RUNNER-UP:

@CDROSA

READERS’ POLL

Goods & Services

BEST BOUTIQUE FOR WOMEN

ò COURTESY HAZEL

HAZEL

1926 W. Montrose 773-904-7779 hazelchicago.com RUNNER-UP:

AKIRA

20 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

The predawn THE SUMMER AFTER high school, I delivered bagels in the mornings, leaving the south side for work at 4:30 AM, when the entire city remained idled in sleep. Except maybe for Santiago, who’d been boiling and baking the bagels since midnight. The Bagel Nosh was on the Rush Street of 1989, not the red-light district that predated me but also far from the Rush Street of Barneys and Madewell today. I’d pull into the dark alley behind the delicatessen and flicker the headlights for several minutes, alerting dozens of potbellied rats that it was time for them to leap from the Dumpsters and disappear. I earned $18 for three hours of work. In many ways, it was the best job I’ve ever had. Up until then I knew Chicago only as a child or a teenager knows the city. I went where my parents took me. I hopped the #6 Jeffery bus. I drove aimlessly with friends on weekend nights. But now I was a bagel deliveryman. I piloted a white van. It had a bagel

logo painted on its side. In the predawn there wasn’t a street I didn’t command, a curb where I couldn’t park as I dropped off bags of pumpernickels and sesames. On the wide roads, it was just me and the guys tossing bales of newspapers from the back of their humpbacked trucks. There were no people streaming from trains to office buildings. Store windows were dark or shuttered. The rattling, shifting, belching city seemed as unmoving as a diorama. In that magic threshold between night and day, it was as if I had the power to stop time. I was free to study the Leviathan and its constituent parts, to peer into the giant turbine that had yet to rumble back to life. My deliveries took me through the Near North Side and the Gold Coast, the Loop, and as far south as Hyde Park’s border with Woodlawn. I’d been to all these areas before. But now I was seeing as if for the ﬁrst time how these pieces of Chicago ﬁt together. I was mapping

Hubbard Street wakes at dawn. ò JASON ROSS

for myself the distances and divisions. Here’s how the city radiates out from its center. This is what is still neglected at the nub end of the 80s and what has already changed. On my drive down South State Street, I passed the four-mile stretch of public housing complexes that had yet to be demolished or developed. That summer was the second Mayor Daley’s ﬁrst in office. I had a delivery at the Illinois Institute of Technology, on 35th Street, where I handed four bags of bagels to a guard in a 20-story modernist tower. Across the street stood a similar modernist tower. It was part of Stateway Gardens, one of the “projects,” and each day I mulled over the message spray-painted large on its moldering wall: cain aint abel. By the time I returned north, customers were eating breakfast in the Bagel Nosh. I joined them. A meal was part of my pay. Then I drove home along the lakefront, thinking about the day I was about to begin. —BEN AUSTEN

BEST OF CHICAGO

ò SUNSHINE TUCKER

Expresswayadjacent el plaforms

FOR MORE THAN A DECADE I rode the Red and Brown Lines to work, peering down at cars and pedestrians as my train groaned into the Loop. So when I moved recently to Avondale, along the Blue Line, I was startled and strangely excited to be waiting for my train on a platform smack in the middle of the Kennedy Expressway. The platform is ﬂanked by four lanes heading north, four lanes heading south, and two reversible express lanes, and if you wait at odd hours, as I often do, the traffic really screams by, especially in the express lanes. It’s like the Indy 500, if the drivers in the Indy 500 were all fat and bored and listening to talk radio. Speed can be intoxicating when you’re inside a vehicle, but no less so when it tears past you at close proximity. Who can read a book when there’s that kind of brain-dead entertainment to be had, and all for the price of a little carbon monoxide inhalation? Even when traffic slows to a crawl, the platform offers endless amusement. No city intersection, no matter how big, can deliver the people-watching opportunities of a tenlane expressway. Sealed into their cars like aquarium ﬁsh, drivers are lost in their own little worlds: they eat, put on makeup, sing along to the radio, talk to people on Blue-

tooth devices. Sometimes, when the train is slow to arrive, I make up extra verses to “Eleanor Rigby” for the people who roll by: Eddie Kilpatrick, late for a boiler repair out in Arlington Heights / Speed as he might. . . . Anna Moustapha, hoping her dress will attract the new guy in IT / To some degree. . . . Monica Jackson, giving her oldest a smack so he’ll learn to be still / Damned if he will. . . . All the lonely people, which exit ramp is theirs? I pitched this story idea weeks ago, and it seemed like a lark then. But this morning, as I sit down to write, comes the awful news that a CTA worker died at the station last night; standing on the tracks to flag oncoming trains during construction, she fell onto the third rail and was electrocuted. This happened in the middle of the night, but there’s always traffic on the Kennedy, and I wonder how many drivers glimpsed her working there as they flew by, the same as I’ve glimpsed them. I probably won’t enjoy the Addison Blue Line stop so much anymore, because for the people who loved her, it will forever be the worst of Chicago. Then again, no structure in the city has any intrinsic meaning; what brings it to life is the lives passing through it—whether they’re moving fast, moving slow, or moving far beyond. —J.R. JONES

#RNRCHI

JULY 15-17, 2016 ½ MARATHON | 10K | SATURDAY 5K

$15 OFF THE 1/2 MARATHON USING ONLINE CODE: RUNCHIREADER $5 OFF THE 10K & 5K USING ONLINE CODE: RUNCHIREADER5 OFFERS EXPIRE 7/10/16

RunRocknRoll.com

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 21

BEST OF CHICAGO

BEST BOUTIQUE FOR MEN

MILDBLEND SUPPLY CO. 1342 N. Milwaukee 773-7729711 mildblend.com RUNNERS-UP:

BELMONT ARMY AND

HAZEL BEST LOCAL CLOTHING DESIGNER

ANASTASIA CHATZKA anastasiachatzka.com RUNNER-UP:

ANNA HOVET

ò DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

Being a regular BEST LOCAL FASHION BLOG

THE EVERYGIRL theeverygirl.com RUNNER-UP:

CHICAGO LOOKS BEST VINTAGE STORE

SEEK VINTAGE

1432 W. Chicago 312-526-3164 seekvintagechicago.com RUNNER-UP:

SHANGRI-LA VINTAGE BEST RESALE SHOP

BROWN ELEPHANT

various locations howardbrown.org/brown-elephant RUNNER-UP:

CROSSROADS BEST SHOE STORE

ò COURTESY THE EVERYGIRL

ALAMO SHOES 5321 N. Clark 773-784-8936 alamoshoes.com RUNNER-UP:

NORDSTROM

22 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

WE NO LONGER have a mayor at my local coffeehouse. There used to be a guy—a genial Hal Holbrook type—who filled that unofficial position. But I hear he left in a huff when management changed the seating plan while redecorating. I don’t know who might become mayor next. Maybe the retired translator who chats up college students. Or the doughnut-eating Bernie supporter. Or the lean, fastidious man who reads poetry while breakfasting on zucchini bread swimming in honey, sprinkling wheat germ from the Ziploc bag he carries with him. My own candidate would be the film professor, Bill, who’s always at his favorite table when I arrive, no matter how early. I’ve never actually seen Bill enter the coffeehouse. He’s just there, in situ, a fixture. I’m no fixture. But I am a regular. Which is to say I’m at the coffeehouse most mornings, either with my wife or alone. Sometimes I come by later in the day, to get

out of my office. If I’m meeting someone, I like to do it at the coffeehouse. I’ve even tutored kids there. Why? Well, it was originally a matter of logistics: from my home, the coffeehouse makes a good destination for a walk. And an iced tea costs less there than at Starbucks. But I’ve sunk a ways into the place by now. I’ve got people I talk to, a drink I order, baristas who recognize me—or my glasses or my hat, maybe—and sometimes get me my drink even as I approach the counter. Spend enough time there and you ﬁnd yourself privy to all kinds of strange and fascinating phenomena. Two twentysomething couples have broken up in my presence and a third had a catastrophic ﬁrst meeting, all at the same unlucky table. When a friend and fellow regular died, he was memorialized with a display at the counter. My coffeehouse isn’t a locus for heady intellectual exploration, like Les Deux Magots

in Paris. Nobody invented existentialism there. And it isn’t a family, like Cheers. Hardly anybody knows my name. In fact, one barista went for the longest time calling me “Bruce” in such a friendly way that I didn’t have the heart to correct him. No, what it is is my land of a thousand dances. Where Bill attracts endless well-wishers to his table. And a certain patient comes every Thursday morning to meet with his therapist. And an apparently homeless man in a knit cap sleeps over his bound journal filled with what look like architectural drawings. And two coworkers say the most appalling things about a third. And a young woman’s eyes brim as she’s being dumped. And an old lady gets a treat because who’s going to tell her no? “And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them / And such as it is to be one of these more or less I am,” Walt Whitman wrote. And I’m with him. —TONY ADLER

BEST OF CHICAGO BEST JEWELRY STORE

BEST GARDEN STORE

BEST DOG WALKERS

HAZEL

GETHSEMANE GARDEN CENTER

SMART PAWS CHICAGO

1926 W. Montrose 773-904-7779 hazelchicago.com RUNNER-UP:

THE SILVER ROOM

5739 N. Clark 773-878-5915 gethsemanegardens.com RUNNER-UP:

ADAMS & SON GARDENS

BEST EYEWEAR SHOP

SPEX OPTICAL

various locations, spexoptical.com RUNNER-UP:

WARBY PARKER BEST BIKE SHOP

various locations, kozy.com

tomorrow exchange nge buy *sell*trade * sell*trade

RUNNER-UP:

WINDY CITY WALKERS BEST DOGGIE DAY CARE

BEST FLORIST

FLEUR

2651 N. Milwaukee 773-395-2770 ﬂeurchicago.com RUNNERS-UP:

KOZY’S CYCLERY

3916 N. Broadway 773-614-7297 smartpawschicago.com

A NEW LEAF AND

ASRAI GARDEN

RUNNER-UP:

URBAN POOCH 4501 N. Ravenswood 773-942-6445 urbanpooch.com RUNNER-UP:

ROCKSTAR PETS BEST VETERINARIAN

BLUM ANIMAL HOSPITAL 3219 N. Clark 773-327-4446 blumvet.com

UPTOWN BIKES

RUNNER-UP:

BEST RECORD STORE

METROPOLITAN VETERINARY CENTER

RECKLESS RECORDS

various locations, reckless.com RUNNER-UP:

LAURIE’S PLANET OF SOUND

BEST TATTOO SHOP

INSIGHT STUDIOS 1062 N. Milwaukee 773-342-4444 insightstudiosonline.com

BEST MUSICAL INSTRUMENT SHOP

CHICAGO MUSIC EXCHANGE

3316 N. Lincoln 773-525-7773 chicagomusicexchange.com RUNNER-UP:

OLD TOWN SCHOOL MUSIC STORE

THE BOOK CELLAR 4736 N. Lincoln 773-293-2665 bookcellarinc.com

RUNNER-UP:

BEST SEX TOY SHOP

TABOO TABOU 843 W. Belmont 773-883-1400 tabootabou.com

EARLY TO BED BEST PLACE TO BUY LOCAL WARES

WOLFBAIT & B-GIRLS

UNABRIDGED BOOKSTORE

3131 W. Logan 312-698-8685 wolfbaitchicago.com

BEST USED BOOKSTORE

HUMBOLDT HOUSE

RUNNER-UP:

RUNNERS-UP:

MYOPIC BOOKS 1564 N. Milwaukee 773-862-4882 myopicbookstore.com RUNNER-UP:

OPEN BOOKS BEST HOME FURNISHINGS

HUMBOLDT HOUSE 1045 N. California 312-785-1442 humboldthouseco.com RUNNER-UP:

ò GETTY IMAGES

NADEAU

BuffaloExchange.com

SPEAKEASY CUSTOM TATTOOS

RUNNER-UP:

BEST BOOKSTORE

WICKER PARK: 1478 N. Milwaukee Av. (Blue Line @ Damen) • 773-227-9558

BEST TATTOO ARTIST

JAMES EASTWOOD tattoosbyjames.com RUNNER-UP:

TIN DEFIORE BEST AUTO REPAIR SHOP

ASHLAND TIRE & AUTO 3737 N. Ashland 773-549-0084 ashlandtire.com RUNNER-UP:

SPEEDLINE

AND

NEIGHBORLY BEST INDIE CRAFTER

REUSE FIRST

4100 W. Grand #202 312-373-0479 reuse-ﬁrst.com

BEST MOTORCYCLE SHOP

MOTOWORKS

1901 S. Western 312-738-4269 motoworkschicago.com RUNNER-UP:

ACME CYCLE

RUNNER-UP:

PAJARO NEGRO BEST PET STORE

URBAN POOCH 4501 N. Ravenswood 773-942-6445 urbanpooch.com RUNNER-UP:

BEST SCOOTER SHOP

SCOOTERWORKS CHICAGO 5410 N. Damen 773-271-4242 scooterworks.com RUNNER-UP:

MOTOWORKS

KRISER’S

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 23

BEST OF CHICAGO BEST DENTIST

ORA DENTAL STUDIO 1854 W. Division 773-227-6721 oradentalstudio.com RUNNER-UP:

ALWAYS THERE DENTAL CARE BEST GENERAL PRACTITIONER

DR. DANIEL BERGER 2835 N. Sheﬃeld #500 773-296-2400 nstarmedical.com RUNNER-UP:

DR. TERRYLL JOY

j MIKE CENTENO

Rats BEST MANI/PEDI

JOSEPH MICHAEL’S SALON AND SPA 1313 N. Ritchie 312-482-9800 josephmichaels.net RUNNER-UP:

NAIL FETISH BEST MASSAGE

VERDE WELLNESS & MASSAGE 2122 S. Ashland 312-243-4530 verdewm.com RUNNER-UP:

MILLENNIUM PARK MASSAGE BEST BARBERSHOP

JOE’S BARBERSHOP CHICAGO 2641 W. Fullerton 773-252-3980 joesbarbershopchicago.com RUNNER-UP:

REV. BILLY’S CHOP SHOP

ò GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO

BEST HAIR SALON

SWERVE SALON 1419 N. Wells 312-255-0255 swervesalon.com RUNNER-UP:

REV. BILLY’S CHOP SHOP

24 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

EARLIER THIS YEAR, I was waiting for a bus in front of a gas station in Albany Park when I noticed an elderly woman milling around in the decorative ground cover that passes for green space in the parking lot. She was tossing ﬁstfuls of torn bread onto what I then noticed was a cratered moonscape of holes in the ground. “Ma’am, are you feeding the rats?” I asked. She ignored me, continuing to shower the ground with white bread. When I repeated myself, she turned away without acknowledging me and retreated across the street. At the end of the mild winter, there wasn’t a single night that I didn’t spot Rattus norvegicus darting across my headlights or see its tracks in the snow or ﬁnd its holes tunneled through the dirt of my garden beds. Here was an advocate for the species, an abettor of the plague, a domestic acolyte of the Karni Mata Temple in Rajasthan, where some 20,000 rats are pampered and worshipped as the reincarnations of the children of a Hindu sage. The rodents aren’t received so well in Chicago, where rat complaints to the city are up nearly 70 percent over last year. In response, homeowners are employing colonies of feral cats to try to diminish the onslaught. At least

one alderman has floated a proposal to protect coyotes that would allow the pests’ natural predator to feast without fear of Animal Care and Control. And the city has reinforced its rat abatement teams and stiffened fines on residents who neglect to clean up their pets’ feces, said to be like bonbons for rodents. I can’t imagine the old woman’s motivations, but I was certainly curious. Is it possible that this universally reviled pest has fans? Is there a reason to love rats? Or at least show them a little respect? “Rats are a reflection of us,” says Steve Sullivan, former senior curator of urban ecology at the Notebaert Nature Museum, currently director of the Hefner Museum of Natural History at Miami University in Ohio and my go-to expert for advice on urban wildlife. Rats, Sullivan points out, are remarkably intelligent. They can figure out when we’ve poisoned their food and when we’ve set traps. They can adjust their schedules so they don’t conflict with ours. They stay pretty clean in their nests. And while they enjoy the same food we do, they turn their noses up at it if it’s unfamiliar. Sullivan even questions the notion that rats actually eat dog poop, though he admits

his assessment is based on anecdotal observation. “I have never seen dog feces with signs of rodent foraging—and I’m looking for this kind of thing all the time.” Yes, they’re vectors for disease, but so are we. And they help reduce overpopulation of organisms both up and down the food chain, Sullivan says. “If we have to assign rats a place in the urban ecosystem, I’d call them opportunist omnivores, scavengers, consolidators of scrap that help energy travel up the food chain.” (This happens when predators— cats, coyotes, hawks, snakes—eat them.) Rats can also help domestic animals get in touch with their animal instincts. This spring my pit bull puppy darted to the backyard fence in broad daylight and seized a squeaking rat in her jaws before prancing around the yard tossing it into the air like an orca with a baby seal. Furthermore, you rarely ﬁnd rats in places where there aren’t any humans. If we weren’t such slobs, there wouldn’t be so many of them. By multiplying with a boost from our casually discarded waste, rats are just being the best rats they can be. In that way, Chicago’s rats are a lot like us. Maybe smarter. —MIKE SULA

g n i c n a D & o f Mu s ic

An EveniTnHgE T A L L S H I P W I N D Y m p ABOARD 0 1 7 · 4 2 e n u J · y a d i r F ERIS DREW

Y DJ SE T S B OF P

J A RV I

SMARTB & L L A B OF HUGO SMARTBAR & O G A C I L A NE T CH

S T RUISE E C K E D C I I R T P / 0 $4 .COM GORE A DER IC A BU Y AT CH ON T I’S M M O R F E S F OOD › INCL UD ARY BEER R AGE T N E M I L P › COM ORE BE VE H S E K A L FROM

›

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 25

BEST OF CHICAGO BEST PLACE TO GET MARRIED

ROOM 1520 1520 W. Fulton 312-952-1520 room1520.com RUNNER-UP:

SALVAGE ONE BEST HOTEL

CHICAGO ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION 12 S. Michigan 312-940-3552 chicagoathletichotel.com RUNNER-UP:

j MIKE CENTENO

THE PENINSULA CHICAGO

BEST APARTMENT FINDER

APARTMENT PEOPLE apartmentpeople.com RUNNER-UP:

CRAIGSLIST BEST REAL ESTATE AGENT

JENNIFER ROMANO sellwithjennromano.com

Central Time

RUNNER-UP:

NOLAN CODE

READERS’ POLL

Arts & Culture ò GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO

BEST NEW THEATER COMPANY

OTHERWORLD THEATRE COMPANY 815-277-7855 otherworldtheatre.org RUNNER-UP:

RED THEATER CHICAGO

26 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

RELOCATING TO CHICAGO from Connecticut five years ago gave me pause. My unease had less to do with the city than its time zone. Central Time isn’t the nation’s chronometric gold standard. That’s Eastern Time. Befitting the region’s dominance, Eastern Time goes first. It’s awake while you’re still sleeping, always ahead. And in modern work life, where business can be conducted anyplace that has a Wi-Fi connection, your time zone matters more than your physical location. Far-flung people scheduling conference calls don’t ask where you are but when you are. The precise where emerges incidentally, usually during premeeting small talk about the weather. In this context, Central Time introduced a peculiar sort of isolation: all my work contacts were suddenly in other time zones. “I’m on Central Time,” I’d say in call after call,

nobody seconding me. To describe my work situation as “remote” and “virtual” was no longer just technically accurate—it suddenly sounded a bit plaintive. By moving, I had taken on a new temporal identity. As an identity, Central Time is rather nebulous. It doesn’t resemble Pacific Time, in which workers rise in the predawn to deal with the New York or Washington office, then gamely return to business in their own time zone. Central Time is akin to Mountain Time, from its noncoastal status to the monolithic quality of its name. Living and working in Central Time initially ﬂooded me with anxiety: What did it mean to move from a coastal edge to this giant middle world? Before contending with that knotty question, let’s consider a slightly more manageable one: Why did we ﬁrst cleave space into

different time zones in the first place? In a word, railroads. Before mechanized travel, people lived by local time (aka solar time). They looked skyward and called it high noon when the sun reached its zenith. If you were traveling slowly—by horse-drawn carriage, say—you’d gradually adjust to shifts in solar time as you moved. But local time wreaked havoc on railway timetables. How could you accurately guess local noon in a distant destination, or calculate a departure or arrival based on the time of a faraway place? The Brits switched to “Railway Time” in 1847, averaging all high noons in their country into a universal mean time. America introduced four time zones on November 18, 1883, dubbed “the Day of Two Noons” because local clocks were nudged forward or backward to standardize high noon to the corresponding new time zone. At the outset, Chicago refused the jump to standard time, according to a contemporary account in the New York Times, because the new time zones weren’t drawn with Chicago as the central point on which all other times were based. Steady, reasonable, forgiving—not unlike Chicagoans—Central Time is high noon among the time zones. Central Timers are never forced to skip breakfast or interrupt dinner to make a conference call; that inconvenience falls invariably to the folks in the Eastern and Pacific zones. Chicago is the big city anchoring CT, but it’s not too far from the western edge of ET, which stretches our summer days by a few luxurious minutes. When I moved to Chicago, I had no clients in the city; after a few years, I have just one. And so my days are largely dominated by meetings set in Eastern or Pacific. The temporal gymnastics with regard to work give me a particular fondness for Central Time. It’s the zone that governs drink dates with my husband at the Hopleaf and play dates with my son at the Garfield Park Conservatory—nonwork time. It reminds me a little of how residents of a town that straddles two time zones will, as a matter of practice when making plans, ask whether the hour in question is “fast time” (east of the border) or “slow time” (west of it). I infinitely prefer to work fast and live slow. —JUDE STEWART

BEST OF CHICAGO BEST ESTABLISHED

Explaining Chicago to New Yorkers

THEATER COMPANY

STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY 1650 N. Halsted 312-335-1650 steppenwolf.org RUNNER-UP:

GOODMAN THEATRE BEST OFF-LOOP THEATER COMPANY

LAKE FOREST THEATRE 847-604-4975 lakeforesttheatre.com RUNNER-UP:

THE HYPOCRITES BEST LONG-RUNNING PLAY

TOO MUCH LIGHT MAKES THE BABY GO BLIND 5153 N. Ashland 773-878-4557 neofuturists.org RUNNER-UP:

j MIKE CENTENO

BLUE MAN GROUP

Without some help, New Yorkers will typically find their way only to the Loop and River North. They come away with the impression that Chicago is a sleek and festive city of museums, and yet conversely also a place full of lost, smiling, pasty people staring up at buildings. Imagining everything outside New York to be a small, flyover burg, they believe they’ve seen the whole thing. They wander two blocks west of a shopping district, find a sad Italian restaurant serving Mike Ditka-brand chardonnay, and assume they’ve found the finest dining the city has to offer. When New Yorkers give their smug assessment of the city after five hours on the ground, how satisfying it is to inform them that they’ve been wandering in the midst of Nebraskans on vacation. That Chicago takes up ten times the area of Manhattan, and they’ve basically been exploring our Times Square. That they’re judging things from the bottom of a tourist trap. That they, the chic and urbane, were the tourists. That they got trapped.

If the New Yorkers stay a bit longer, they begin to admire how clean Chicago is. At which point I hold forth about how Chicagoans store their garbage in alleys rather than in the middle of the sidewalk. “Kind of like how you might put your trash can in a kitchen cupboard, out of sight, rather than the middle of your living room.” This is when I see the ﬁrst glimmer of envy. They’ve heard of Chicago dogs, and they’re eager to try the same deep-dish pizza they can find anywhere these days. But I prefer to blow minds by introducing them to giardiniera, to the jibarito, to paczkis. Chicago’s food is as good as New York’s—if not better. And I don’t even have to explain this part. The revelation is written on their faces midbite. Do I take perverse delight in Chicago-splaining? Absolutely. I want New Yorkers to love us and leave us, to return home before I have to answer that inevitable question, “So where’s your Brooklyn?” —REBECCA MAKKAI

BEST NEW PLAY

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST broadwayinchicago.com RUNNER-UP:

CONNECTED BEST TOURING PLAY

THE BOOK OF MORMON broadwayinchicago.com RUNNER-UP:

RENT AT METROPOLIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTRE BEST REVIVAL OF A WELLKNOWN PLAY

RENT AT THEO UBIQUE ò MATTHEW MURPHY

I’M OFTEN IN THE POSITION of introducing Chicago to New Yorkers who’ve never before spent time here. Writer friends land on a book tour; old college pals pass through for family weddings; publishing colleagues come by on business. You can have a good sense of Manhattan even if you’ve never set foot there—the movies have seen to that—but Chicago isn’t as familiar to the outsider. Watching ChiRaq, The Blues Brothers, and Perfect Strangers in quick succession won’t do a thousandth of what Woody Allen accomplishes in an opening credits sequence. So they arrive, these hapless knickerbockers, expecting a few buildings and a baseball stadium and gangsters—historical and contemporary—in the middle of the corn, and they wind up fairly confused. While explaining Chicago to these people, it’s a particular delight to watch the slow-dawning revelation that another American city might give New York a run for its money. And in describing our strange, beautiful town to them, I fully see it.

773-347-1109 theo-u.com/rent RUNNER-UP:

THE HAIRY APE AT ORACLE THEATRE

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 27

BEST OF CHICAGO

SIP FRESH, DRINK LOCAL SPO AN NS IB LY

R CIDER FOR YOU SP RIN DRINK RE G

W IS C | GLUTEN FREE DE MA HOL IN CO NS % AL O 6

ER MM U S

AVAILABLE AT: Binny’s Beverage Depot • Mariano’s Bottles & Cans • Chicago Cut Steakhouse The Green Door Tavern • Links Taproom Merkle’s Bar & Grill • Milk N More, etc. The Northman • Old Town Pour House Old Town Social • River Valley Farmer’s Table Sheffield’s Beer & Wine Garden The Vine Martini & Wine Bar

28 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

Fonts THERE IS AN ACTUAL “Chicago” typeface— that sans-serif abomination designed for Apple computers in 1984. Remember your ﬁrst-gen iPod? That 50 Cent song you listened to on repeat was rendered in Chicago. But the real Chicago typeface, in my view, is the range of written language on public view that speaks to the character and composition of particular neighborhoods and communities. Indeed, the city’s diversity is legible— from the chipped and peeling hand-drawn signage in Woodlawn and Gothic-inspired graffiti in Humboldt Park to the Korean alphabet in North Park and the Arabic script lining shops along Kedzie Avenue in West Ridge. (This is not to confuse fonts with typefaces and either with handwriting. I’m focusing instead on the cultural and historic detail spelled out on the city’s thousands of signs.) Historically, signage in Chicago has been used as both a beacon and a warning. Before the civil rights era, spotting the written language of a culture aside from your own meant tread lightly and watch your back, or retreat altogether. Chinese, Greek, Korean, Polish, and African storefront signage delineate ethnic enclaves—many of which are the result of exclusionary zoning and explicitly racist employment policies. Likewise, the sight of a certain type can evoke home (how I imagine Little Village’s Spanish-language signs must feel to newly arrived Latino immigrants). There was a time when Chicagoans simply didn’t have the luxury of standardized street signage—in the city’s early years, street signs were hand-drawn, mislabeled, or missing altogether. Upon request, the good folks at the Chicago History Museum excavated more than 30 newspaper articles throughout the last 100 years referencing Chicago’s lack of street signs—when “one-half of the labels on the street corners [were] missing or illegible.” In 1905, the Tribune heralded a “bold experiment”: signs spelling out street names vertically at intersections across the city. The contemporary horizontal signs eventually prevailed. The ﬁrst newspaper mention of typography found by the History Museum staff wasn’t until 1949, and apparently it didn’t take long for the city suits of old to start bickering publicly over a “standard design for all civic

Wellington Avenue Pumping Station; 114 W. Grand ò SHAWN HAZEN

lettering,” including slant strokes, line thickness, and whether the n and d in “Randolph” ran too closely together. “Chicago’s leading authority on lettering thinks the city’s street signs are ‘atrocities,’ ” the Trib reported in August of that year. As it turns out, the battle over Chicago’s typography wasn’t a wasted effort. As the debate over typeface minutiae grew, so did attention to detail regarding issues such as sign visibility, placement, and cost. Today the city’s typeface is Helvetica on the el, the Chicago Park District’s is sans serif throughout, the sign for City Hall is Times New Roman, and the Chicago Public Schools system has Century Gothic as its main typeface. Chicago thinks its street signs so nice it’s named many streets twice (the second being honorary designations). But those are just the city-ordained examples. On the neighborhood level the lettering tends to be more variable, the marks made by people of all races, ethnicities, and classes, using virtually every alphabet on earth. —DARRYL HOLLIDAY

BEST OF CHICAGO BEST MUSICAL

THE BOOK OF MORMON

RUNNER-UP:

BEST GALLERY EXHIBIT

BEST DANCE TROUPE

“VISION QUEST: A KASHINK SOLO SHOW” AT CHICAGO TRUBORN

THE ANNOYANCE

broadwayinchicago.com RUNNER-UP:

BLACKFISH: THE MUSICAL BEST ACTOR

GAGE WALLACE gagewallace.com

MATTER DANCE COMPANY matterdance.com RUNNER-UP:

JOFFREY BALLET

RUNNER-UP:

MATT EDMONDS

CARISA BARRECA carisabarreca.com RUNNER-UP:

CAROLINE NEFF

RUNNER-UP:

“LUCID DREAMSCAPES: DAVID WELKER AND BRIN LEVINSON” AT GALERIE F

BEST VENUE FOR DANCE

MIXED MOTION ART BEST ACTRESS

1741 W. Chicago 773-420-9764 chicagotruborn.com

BEST UNDERGROUND ART SPACE

1102 N. Ashland 773-888-1662 mixedmotionart.com

THE SHITHOLE

RUNNER-UP:

THE DOJO

STAGE 773

shitholehq.com RUNNER-UP:

BEST ESTABLISHED VISUAL ARTIST

AMUSE 126

BEST PLAYWRIGHT

instagram.com/amuse.126

IKE HOLTER

RUNNER-UP:

JAIME KNIGHT

RUNNER-UP:

TRACY LETTS

BEST NEW VISUAL ARTIST

BEST STAGE DIRECTOR

STEVEN LUROS HOLLIDAY

JONALD REYES @jonaldjude

stevenlurosholliday.com

RUNNER-UP:

AARON SAWYER

JEFFERSON PINDER

BEST CHOREOGRAPHER

SHEENA LAIRD @Sheenacular

BEST BURLESQUE TROUPE

RUNNER-UP:

VAUDEZILLA

GLORIA MWEZ BEST STAND-UP COMIC

SARAH SHERMAN sarahsquirm.tumblr.com RUNNER-UP:

JEFF ARCURI BEST SKETCH/IMPROV TROUPE

3614 W. Belmont 773-558-0081 vaudezilla.com RUNNER-UP:

joshuamellin.com RUNNER-UP:

JEFF MANCILLA BEST STREET ARTIST

KISS KISS CABARET

AMUSE 126

BEST PERFORMING ARTS FESTIVAL

MOSHER

RUNNER-UP:

RAPID PULSE rapidpulse.org

BEST PUBLIC ARTWORK

RUNNER-UP:

HITCH*COCKTAILS

CHICAGO IMPROV FESTIVAL

WABASH ARTS CORRIDOR

RUNNER-UP:

BEST ESTABLISHED GALLERY

JAIME KNIGHT

773-561-4665 hitchcocktails.com

SHEBEAST BEST VENUE FOR STAND-UP

LAUGH FACTORY 3175 N. Broadway 773-327-3175 laughfactory.com RUNNER-UP:

UP COMEDY CLUB ò COURTESY VAUDEZILLA

BEST PHOTOGRAPHER

JOSHUA MELLIN

BEST VENUE FOR IMPROV/SKETCH

SECOND CITY 1616 N. Wells 312-337-3992 secondcity.com

RUNNER-UP:

CHICAGO TRUBORN 1741 W. Chicago 773-420-9764 chicagotruborn.com RUNNER-UP:

GALERIE F

BEST PUBLIC ART EVENT

OLD TOWN ART FAIR oldtowntriangle.com/ old-town-art-fair RUNNER-UP:

WABASH ARTS CORRIDOR BEST NEW GALLERY

BLUE JAY WAY 2489 N. Milwaukee 773-329-0901 RUNNER-UP:

UNCLE ART

BEST ADVOCATE FOR THE ARTS

CHICAGO TRUBORN 1741 W. Chicago 773-420-9764 chicagotruborn.com RUNNER-UP:

DAVID WEINBERG

eat. drink. read. local. the book cellar.

773.293.2665.

4736-88 n. lincoln ave. words@bookcellarinc.com. follow us @ BookCellar. JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 29

BEST OF CHICAGO BEST ART SALE

THE DIY TRUNK SHOW diytrunkshow.com RUNNER-UP:

BLUE JAY WAY

Bathroom graﬀiti A bathroom wall at New Wave Coﬀee

BEST MUSEUM EXHIBIT

“VAN GOGH’S BEDROOMS” AT AIC

ò LEOR GALIL

111 S. Michigan 312-443-3600 artic.edu RUNNER-UP:

“CHINA’S FIRST EMPEROR AND HIS TERRACOTTA WARRIORS” AT AIC

BEST MOVIE THEATER

LOGAN THEATRE 2646 N. Milwaukee 773-342-5555 thelogantheatre.com RUNNER-UP:

MUSIC BOX THEATRE BEST FILM PROGRAMMING

MUSIC BOX THEATRE 3733 N. Southport 773-871-6607 musicboxtheatre.com RUNNER-UP:

UIC DEPARTMENT OF CINEMA AND MEDIA STUDIES BEST FILM FESTIVAL

CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 312-683-0121 chicagoﬁlmfestival.com RUNNER-UP:

CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL MOVIES & MUSIC FESTIVAL AND

ò ANOKARINA / FLICKR

CHICAGO UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL BEST FILMMAKER

GORDON QUINN

kartemquin.com/about/gordon-quinn RUNNER-UP:

JOE SWANBERG

30 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

YOU CAN TELL A LOT about a place of business by its bathroom. Are the facilities pleasantly lit, or are they so dim you can barely see the outline of your own body parts? Is the air laden with perfume that smells better than anything you’ve ever worn on your own body, or does it make the word “foul” seem inadequate? Is it a room where you feel comfortable enough to rest, or would you rather, um, evacuate? As important as those questions are, I’m usually less interested in

what the proprietors bring to the bathroom and more in what they allow their customers to leave—and by that I’m referring to graffiti. It’s not as though I make a special trip to the bathroom in a coffee shop, bar, or restaurant just to look for graffiti. But if there’s something scrawled on the wall of a toilet stall or next to the mirror above a sink, in order to read it all I’ll often linger past the point of politeness. (Apologies in advance if you spot me staring at a bathroom wall.) I’m

drawn to all matter of public, noncommercial media, be it a piece of street art wheatpasted on the side of a building or a flyer in a bookstore asking me to be friends with the stranger who made it. But bathroom graffiti is different. It’s intimate, often mischievous, sometimes repugnant, and frequently surprisingly conversational. By “conversational” I’m not just referring to the way strangers reply to one another’s quips or take a Sharpie to an anonymous one-liner to change its meaning—there’s also the way every little doodle and homemade sticker seems to fit together into a big, messy whole. There’s rarely much cohesion, and the total effect is usually less “art” than it is “lots of ink”—the hodgepodge of handwriting in the men’s room at Cole’s, for example, has grown into giant splotches and rays of black marker. But take a closer look, and eventually you’ll get a sense for what the patrons of a particular place care about, what they think in their moments of solitude, and which things in their lives leave such an impression that they’re driven to make a mark in a place that isn’t theirs. All these little notes, stickers, and curious drawings represent the collective psychological weight of those who have passed through a particular bathroom. And they can offer some insight into the culture and history of that part of Chicago. On a recent visit to Filter in Wicker Park, I found stickers and little pieces of art on the mirror and door of one of the coffee shop’s three bathrooms. Say what you will about gentrification in Wicker Park—I certainly have—but that graffiti made me feel at home. Near a “Rock & Roll McDonald’s” tag (a tribute to Wesley Willis, I assume) was a USPS Priority Mail sticker adorned with a drawing of an orange floppy disk whose label read enlightenment disk 1 of 8,128,396. In its surroundings, it all makes sense. —LEOR GALIL

combined with

35TH ANNIVERSARY CHICAGO MUSIC AWARDS

50 % NT OU D ISC ETS T I C KG R EENS A AT W

A family festival of music, food, arts, craft, games and more! M ORE DETAIL S AT FESTIVALO FLIFE . BIZ JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 31

BEST OF CHICAGO Lake Point Tower, a past Open House destination

BEST LATE-NIGHT MOVIES

LOGAN THEATRE 2646 N. Milwaukee 773-342-5555 thelogantheatre.com

ò ERIC ALLIX ROGERS

RUNNER-UP:

MUSIC BOX THEATRE BEST NOVELIST

GILLIAN FLYNN gillian-ﬂynn.com RUNNERS-UP:

BRUCE OLDS AND

JOE MENO

BEST NONFICTION WRITER

SAMANTHA IRBY @wordscience RUNNER-UP:

J.R. JONES BEST NEW NOVEL BY A CHICAGOAN

A MANUAL FOR CLEANING WOMEN BY LUCIA BERLIN RUNNER-UP:

ON THE ISLE OF SOUND AND WONDER BY ALYSON GRAUER BEST NEW NONFICTION BOOK BY A CHICAGOAN

THE LIVES OF ROBERT RYAN BY J.R. JONES RUNNER-UP:

THE SOUTH SIDE: A PORTRAIT OF CHICAGO AND AMERICAN SEGREGATION BY NATALIE Y. MOORE BEST POET

KEVIN COVAL kevincoval.com RUNNER-UP:

LADAN OSMAN

ò EVA BLUE

BEST LITERARY EVENT

PRINTERS ROW LIT FEST printersrowlitfest.org

32 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

Open House Chicago MY MOTHER IS a nosy woman, especially about houses. She likes to peer into windows. When she spots a contractor’s sign in someone’s front yard or construction trucks in the driveway, she slows down so she can see what’s going on inside. Sometimes she’ll ring the doorbell and ask to come in. When I was a kid, it embarrassed the hell out of me, especially when she would drag me along to admire somebody’s half-destroyed, half-refinished kitchen. Now there’s HGTV, which mostly keeps her satisfied. But the funny thing is, since I’ve grown up and started living in cities, I’ve become an inveterate window peeper. I can spend hours browsing on Craigslist, Zillow, and Airbnb, especially when I’m supposed to be doing something else, like writing this essay. It’s a form of daydreaming. I realize that Open House Chicago is supposed to be about architecture, not about scouting imaginary real estate. It’s run by the Chicago Architecture Foundation, after all. Its origins are in the Open House move-

ment that started in London in 1992 as a way to educate the public about the necessity of well-designed buildings (and to prevent the destruction of such landmarks) by inviting them inside to wander around and explore. There are now Open Houses in more than 30 cities on six continents. If you had enough money and lots of free time, you could travel the globe, planning your itinerary based on which city is having its Open House on which weekend. What else is it but an invitation to snoop? What a glorious way to see the world! But Open House weekend in Chicago in October is pretty glorious too. There are 200 or so buildings you can visit; you can never satisfy all your curiosity in a single weekend, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’ve seen some lovely tiled ceilings and strange stained-glass windows and danced in a rickety old nightclub in Bronzeville (where we had to sign a release form in pencil before climbing to the second floor; in retrospect, this seems suspicious). My favorites, though,

are the apartment buildings, especially the ones with special features, like Park Castle and Park Manor in West Ridge, with their fancifully mosaicked swimming pools, and the Edgewater Beach Apartments, which has everything my future old-lady self could possibly want. One year my mother came down to the city for Open House. She has always maintained that Lake Point Tower is the only place she would ever consider living here. The Open House tour only extended to Cité, the restaurant on the top floor, but it has great views from every side, which was the whole point. The hallways, the only segments of the residential part of the building we were allowed to see, were plain drywall and distinctly underwhelming. This made us feel better about not getting to live in Lake Point Tower. If we had that view every day, we decided, we would no longer appreciate it. And thus we saved ourselves a million dollars we didn’t have. —AIMEE LEVITT

BEST OF CHICAGO RUNNER-UP:

BOOKCON

The Thompson Center

Food & Drink BEST FANCY RESTAURANT

ALINEA

1723 N. Halsted 312-867-0110 alinearestaurant.com RUNNER-UP:

GRACE

BEST BANG FOR YOUR BUCK

ò SUNSHINE TUCKER

So much for the power of poetry. This building, with its stout, truncated exterior—like a fat, glassy slice of pie with a cylindrical dollop on top—had already inspired numerous UFO-landing jokes, while its budget overruns, eventually doubling the cost to about $173 million, were the subject of widespread criticism. When those god-awful salmon-pink panels went up on the outside of it, it was pretty clear that I was working the job from hell. Except for this: Chicago Tribune architecture critic Paul Gapp, one of the ﬁrst to get a look inside, had already declared it “the most spectacular building ever constructed in the Loop.” “Its interior is no less than breathtaking,” Gapp had written. Later, when problems with its heating and cooling systems were well-known, Gapp, who never liked the exterior, stuck to his guns

about the inside. Speculating about the inconsequence of such ﬂaws to posterity, he made a heady comparison: “[W]ho talks about how the inside of the Pantheon still gets wet every time it rains?” he asked. Those words came to mind recently, when another Republican governor, Bruce Rauner, stood where the opening ceremony took place and announced that the building, known since 1992 as the Thompson Center, would be sold and likely demolished. Never mind that, despite the state’s neglectful stewardship, the building’s been largely successful at what it set out to be: a multiuse hub for a genuinely diverse population. And forget about Chicago’s ambitions as a center for architectural tourism. What governor, in a city that’s all about that kind of “big Building boasting,” tears down the Pantheon? —DEANNA ISAACS

FATSO’S LAST STAND 2258 W. Chicago 773-245-3287 fatsoslaststand.com RUNNER-UP:

FRANCO’S RISTORANTE BEST CHEF

STEPHANIE IZARD @stephandthegoat RUNNERS-UP:

GRANT ACHATZ AND

CURTIS DUFFY BEST UP-AND-COMING CHEF

MATT DUBOIS OF BAND OF BOHEMIA @chefbukowski RUNNER-UP:

GIDE MERRIMAN OF BISTRO BORDEAUX

ò KARMEN WETTLIN

GWENDOLYN BROOKS WROTE a great little poem for the official opening of what was then called the State of Illinois Building, on May 6, 1985. It was part of her job; as the state’s poet laureate, she’d been asked to produce something in honor of the occasion. Thousands of people had crowded into the 1.2 million-square-foot structure, getting a first look at its jaw-dropping 17-story atrium. They filled every seat that had been set up on the main floor and lined the dizzying successive rings of walkways that rose above it toward a towering circular skylight. Republican governor James R. Thompson, who’d commissioned the building, was there, along with the designer—adopted Chicagoan and rising international architect Helmut Jahn. There was music and speeches, and then Brooks—an unpretentious woman, dwarfed by the monumental scene—got up to read. I was also there because of my job. Unable to land a staff slot at a newspaper (then as now, the city was awash in unemployed journalists), I was working for a public relations firm contracted to help launch the building. I’d written a marketing piece for it, a brochure that described the then-innovative intent to create a multiuse facility and Jahn’s sources of inspiration: “the grand rotundas of older public buildings” and “the busy central plazas of European villages.” But the truth was, I knew more about poetry than I did about architecture, and Brooks’s poem, concluding with a call to “All little people” to “outwit / big Building boasting,” sounded to me like a thunderclap. Standing there, surrounded by the state’s highest officials and their pinstripe-patronage pals in the audience, she had managed to stick a finger in their eye. I waited for the insult to sink in, and could hardly believe it when she got a nice round of applause.

READERS’ POLL

BEST FOOD BLOG

EATER

chicago.eater.com RUNNER-UP:

FOODITOR

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 33

BEST OF CHICAGO BEST RESTAURANT NAME

BEST BREWPUB

DUCK DUCK GOAT

BAND OF BOHEMIA

857 W. Fulton Market 312-902-3825 duckduckgoatchicago.com RUNNER-UP:

SUPERDAWG

4710 N. Ravenswood 773-271-4710 bandofbohemia.com RUNNER-UP:

REVOLUTION

BEST NEW FOOD TREND

BEST ALFRESCO DINING

BEST COCKTAIL LIST

PICCOLO SOGNO

DISTILLED CHICAGO

464 N. Halsted 312-421-0077 piccolosognorestaurant.com

1480 W. Webster 773-770-3703 RUNNER-UP:

RUNNER-UP:

SCOFFLAW

PARSON’S CHICKEN & FISH

BEST COCKTAIL

HOOCH AT BAND OF BOHEMIA BEST MIXOLOGIST

PAUL MCGEE @bagchatter RUNNER-UP:

TIM WILLIAMS BEST WINE LIST

DAVANTI ENOTECA

various locations, davantienoteca.com RUNNER-UP:

SEPIA

AU CHEVAL

ANGRY CRAB

RAMEN

RUNNER-UP:

BEST PLACE WORTH A WAIT

RUNNER-UP:

12 S. Michigan 312-792-3502

AND

WASABI

800 W. Randolph 312-929-4580 auchevalchicago.com

CULINARY BREWHOUSE

SANTA SANGRE AT CINDY’S

AND

TANGO SUR

BEST LATE-NIGHT EATS BEST LOCAL BREW

PIPEWORKS’ NINJA VS. UNICORN RUNNER-UP:

HALF ACRE’S DAISY CUTTER BEST LOCAL SPIRIT

LETHERBEE GIN letherbee.com RUNNER-UP:

JEPPSON’S MALORT BEST WINE SHOP

PERMAN WINE SELECTIONS 802 W. Washington 312-666-4417 permanwine.com RUNNER-UP:

RED AND WHITE WINES

FATSO’S LAST STAND 2258 W. Chicago 773-245-3287 fatsoslaststand.com RUNNER-UP:

DISTILLED CHICAGO BEST UNDERGROUND DINING

SUNDAY DINNER CLUB sundaydinnerclub.com RUNNER-UP:

CLAUDIA BEST WAITSTAFF

BAND OF BOHEMIA 4710 N. Ravenswood 773-271-4710 bandofbohemia.com RUNNER-UP:

DISTILLED CHICAGO

BEST SOMMELIER

CHRISTY FUHRMAN OF VERA @christyfuhrman RUNNER-UP:

5946 N. Broadway 773-989-2115 independentspiritsinc.com

BEST LOCAL DISTILLERY

BINNY’S

5121 N. Ravenswood 312-878-7988 koval-distillery.com RUNNER-UP:

LETHERBEE BEST LOCAL BREWERY ò PHILIP MONTORO

INDEPENDENT SPIRITS, INC.

STEVEN MORGAN OF ALINEA

KOVAL DISTILLERY

34 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

BEST LIQUOR STORE

HALF ACRE

4257 N. Lincoln 773-248-4038 halfacrebeer.com RUNNER-UP:

REVOLUTION

RUNNER-UP:

BEST BYOB

BITE

1039 N. Western 773-395-2483 bitecafechicago.com AND

SCHWA

BEST FOR KIDS

ROOTS HANDMADE PIZZA 1924 W. Chicago 773-645-4949 rootspizza.com RUNNER-UP:

LITTLE GOAT BEST-LOOKING WAITSTAFF

BAND OF BOHEMIA 4710 N. Ravenswood 773-271-4710 bandofbohemia.com RUNNER-UP:

HEADQUARTERS BEERCADE

1466 N. Ashland 773-252-1466 schwarestaurant.com RUNNERS-UP:

ANGRY CRAB

BEST OF CHICAGO

BEST FOOD FESTIVAL

RIBFEST CHICAGO 773-525-3609 ribfest-chicago.com RUNNER-UP:

TASTE OF CHICAGO BEST FOOD TRUCK

YUM DUM

847-376-1925 @yumdumtruck RUNNER-UP:

DONER MEN

BEST GOURMET MARKET

THE FIRST TIME I hung out at the Palmer House, it was prom night. A couple of friends were in from out of town for a conference and were staying there, so it felt OK to take up a few chairs in the lobby. And then the fashion show began. I’m not sure which school the students went to, but they were ﬁrmly committed to the idea of going all out. One young man wore a pair of satin overalls with a tuxedo shirt and bow tie underneath; he did it with such panache he almost pulled it off. A few months later, I wanted a beautiful, comfortable place to sit and read that wasn’t my apartment. I remembered the Palmer House and went back. This time it was the White Sox convention. The clothes were not as interesting—there’s only so much you can do with black and white—but seeing so many Sox fans in one place is always a fascinating experience.

No one seemed to notice or care that I wasn’t a paying guest. I started going to the Palmer House whenever I wanted to be somewhere that wasn’t the office or home. The furniture was more comfortable. It was clean. There was enough white noise that the sound of someone sniffling or eating Doritos didn’t drive me to distraction the way it did in the enforced quiet of the library. I didn’t feel like I required company, as I would in a bar. I didn’t have to buy anything. And the people watching was always spectacular. No other lobby in town compared. And I know, because I looked. They either had uncomfortable chairs or were so cramped I felt conspicuous loitering. Then, about a year ago, a small revolution: the management of the city’s hotels decided that Chicagoans, and not just out-of-towners, should be hanging out in their lobbies. The Chicago Athletic Association and Soho House

1427 W. Willow 312-432-6575 localfoods.com RUNNER-UP:

EATALY

BEST LOCAL GROCER

installed long tables with lamps and electrical outlets so you can plug in your laptop and work, and they arranged the furniture like a living room, not an airport. These lobbies weren’t just a place to kill time between checkout and leaving town. They were a place to be. I’m writing this essay at the CAA. I’m especially fond of this lobby because it looks like the library I always promised myself I would have when I got fabulously rich. It’s 9 PM on a Tuesday. It’s cool in here, and my chair is comfortable. As I’ve been writing, the lights of Millennium Park have come on across the street. The women next to me have been enjoying their wine so much they’ve ordered burgers to go with it. There are ways of being alone in Chicago that make you feel lonelier than when you’re by yourself in your own apartment. But a good hotel lobby always welcomes you. —AIMEE LEVITT

LOCAL FOODS 1427 W. Willow 312-432-6575 localfoods.com RUNNER-UP:

MARIANO’S BEST LOCAL FOOD PRODUCT

CO-OP HOT SAUCE coopsauce.com RUNNER-UP:

UPTON’S NATURALS BEST LOCAL FARMER

NICHOLS FARM

ò COURTESY LOCAL FOODS

Hotel lobbies

LOCAL FOODS

The Palmer House lobby ò APRIL ALONSO

2602 Hawthorn Road, Marengo 815-236-1615 nicholsfarm.com RUNNER-UP:

MOLLY MEDHURST AT CHICAGO PATCHWORK FARMS

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 35

BEST OF CHICAGO

No h Shore house gazing ASK A CHILD to name the most annoying things adults do for fun, and “drive around looking at houses” might top the list. When I was growing up, my parents would, without warning, take a meandering route home from the mall, church, or Sam’s Club to gawk at real estate on unfamiliar streets in previously unexplored neighborhoods of southwest Michigan. In the backseat of the car, my siblings and I reacted to such detours as if we were literally dying of boredom. (Smartphones had not been invented yet, and we had no Neko Atsume virtual cats to feed.) “WHAT ARE WE DOOOING?” we’d whine. “YOU SAID WE WERE GOING HOOOME!” “We’re just looking around,” Mom or Dad would say. “But WHYYY?!” “Because we’re curious.” Ugh, the selﬁshness! The insouciance! My parents’ curiosity was robbing me of precious time I’d planned to, I dunno, watch Saved By the Bell or read a Judy Blume book or stare in the mirror and make poor choices about how to style my bangs. Now I wish I could go back in time and inform that girl that in her 30s she’d love doing the very activity she and her siblings were losing their shit over: spending weekend afternoons just driving around, looking around. “House gazing,” I’d explain to my tween self. “It’s something I do because I’m curious, and curiosity is actually a really great quality of Mom and Dad’s, so get over yourself for one sec and just appreciate that they drive your ass everywhere. . . . Yes, I say ‘ass’ now. And since I have your ear, maybe

36 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

A house in Wilmette ò APRIL ALONSO

ease up on the Rave Ultra Hold Hairspray?” Then I’d take her out for a drive around Chicago’s affluent north suburbs—Wilmette, Kenilworth, Winnetka, Glencoe, Highland Park, Lake Forest, and Lake Bluff—which offer a fascinating sampler of residential architecture of the late 19th and 20th centuries: Italian-style villas, French chateaus, and American takes on English country houses designed by the likes of David Adler, Arthur Heun, and Howard Van Doren Shaw; Prairie-style homes by Frank Lloyd Wright and his contemporaries (John Van Bergen, Dwight H. Perkins); and midcentury-modern marvels by architects such as Edward Dart, Keck & Keck, and A. James Speyer. She would act bored when I explained how North Shore real estate reﬂects both conservatism—initially drawing wealthy clients who preferred well-established, often European, architec-

tural styles—and more forward-thinking design, with several Chicago architects treating it as a laboratory of sorts, a place to work out new ideas. Both of us would enjoy ogling the mind-blowing mansions overlooking Lake Michigan, the sprawling modern ranches perched on the edges of ravines, and of course the redbrick Georgian from Home Alone in Winnetka, where we’d stop for a selfie, both making the Kevin McCallister aftershave-sting face. “OK, the Home Alone house was kind of cool,” 11-year-old me would tell 34-yearold me. What would impress this girl about the North Shore is what impresses me now—at least when I don’t think too hard about things like unchecked privilege and cultural homogeneity and the wealth gap: It’s tree-lined and lake adjacent, with roads that casually

curve and jog in marked contrast to the rigidity of Chicago’s streets. There are wide green lawns, quaint train stops, the summer-long Ravinia Festival, and postcard-perfect downtowns. Immortalized in a crop of some of the most iconic movies of the 1980s, it’s a place that makes me feel at once curious and nostalgic for somewhere I’ve never lived. There’s Cameron’s glass-and-steel house designed by Speyer (and the adjacent car showroom pavilion by David Haid) from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), the exterior of Joel’s house from Risky Business (1983), and the Jarretts’ estate in Ordinary People (1980)—all three located in Highland Park. Despite my superficial familiarity with these elite pieces of property, they have always struck me as “other”: extravagant extensions of other lives in other tax brackets and other zip codes. Houses with wine cellars and movie theaters and tennis courts, whether or not their owners drink wine, watch movies, or play tennis. The third of four children born to two public school educators, I grew up in a house that was comfortable but in no way North Shore palatial. Still, the aspirational young girl in me (the one who thought she had a decent chance of marrying Prince William, if only we could meet) and the real estate-obsessed adult (a freelance journalist whose bank account is all too frequently a real sad state of affairs) wonder what it would be like to live somewhere so idyllic. Who even owns these places, anyhow? And would they consider renting me the coach house? House gazing, whether on the North Shore or elsewhere, isn’t just one of the most stereotypically adult things I do now; it’s also, for better or worse, one of the most American Dream-like. The dream is always the same: When I make enough money, I tell myself, I’ll buy a place here or somewhere like it, a home with character, though, not a McMansion, preferably near a quaint train stop. The dream is also naive: I don’t give a lot of thought to where or how I’ll rake in my riches; it’s more like a game of MASH where one day I’ll just sort of arrive at “mansion” instead of “apartment” because that’s how things work out. “Can you show me where Ferris Bueller lived?” the younger me would ask. “That house is actually in Long Beach, California,” I’d tell her. And in the rearview mirror, I’d notice her bummed expression, as if I had just informed her she wasn’t going to marry Prince William. “How about instead we swing by Molly Ringwald’s house from Sixteen Candles?” —LAURA PEARSON

S P O N SO R ED CO N T EN T

DRINK SPECIALS LINCOLN PARK

LINCOLN SQUARE

2683 N Halsted 773-348-9800

4757 N Talman 773-942-6012

ALIVEONE

MONTI’S

BERWYN

FITZGERALD’S

WICKER PARK

SOUTH LOOP

REGGIE’S

LINCOLN PARK

DISTILLED CHICAGO

AVONDALE

ROGERS PARK

2829 N Milwaukee 773-227-1688

7006 N Glenwood 773-274-5463

RED LINE TAP

6615 Roosevelt 708-788-2118

PHYLLIS’ MUSICAL INN

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

Moosehead pints $3.75, Hamms cans $2.50, Special Export Bush Longneck bottles $3, Foster Big cans $5

Bombs $4, Malibu Cocktails $4, Jack Daniel’s Cocktails $5, Tanqueray Cocktails $4, Johnny Walker Black $5, Cabo Wabo $5, PBR Tallboy cans $2.75

50% oﬀ wine (glass & bottle) and salads

$1.50 Margaritas

$4 Hell or High Watermelon

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

Moosehead pints $3.75, Hamms cans $2.50, Special Export Bush Longneck bottles $3, Foster Big cans $5

Wine by the Glass $5, Jameson $5, Patron $7, Founders 12oz All Day IPA Cans $3.50, Mexican Buckets $20 (Corona, Victoria, Modelos)

$6 Jamison shots; $5 Green Line; 50% oﬀ chicken sandwich

$2.99 Margaritas de Sabores

$5 Stella, $3 mystery shots

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

Moosehead pints $3.75, Hamms cans $2.50, Special Export Bush Longneck bottles $3, Foster Big cans $5

Heineken Bottles $4, Bloodies feat. Absolut Peppar Vodka $5, Original Moonshine $5, Corzo $5, Sailor Jerry’s Rum $4, Deschutes Drafts $4, Capt. Morgan cocktails $5

Brunch 11am to 2pm, Bottomless Bloody Mary’s & Mimosas $15.00; 50% oﬀ nachos and $15 domestic/$20 craft beer pitchers

$3 Corona and $3 mystery shot

$5 Rolling Rock $4 Benchmark, Evan Williams, or Ezra Brook

1800 W Division 773-486-9862

2105 S State 312-949-0120

1480 W Webster 773-770-3703

EL RANCHITO

THU

$4 Lagunitas drafts, $4 Absolut cocktails, “Hoppy Hour” 5pm-8pm = 1/2 price IPAs + pale ales

FRI

“Hoppy Hour” 5pm-8pm = 1/2 price IPAs + pale ales

S AT

$6 Jameson shots $3 PBR bottles

SUN

$4 Temperance brews, $5 Absolut bloody mary’s

$4.75 Bloody Mary and Marias

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

Moosehead pints $3.75, Hamms cans $2.50, Special Export Bush Longneck bottles $3, Foster Big cans $5

Buckets of Miller & Bud Bottles (Mix & Match) $14, Guinness & Smithwicks Drafts $4, Bloodies feat, Absolut Peppar Vodka $5, Ketal One Cocktails $5

Brunch 11am to 2pm, Bottomless Bloody Mary’s & Mimosas $15.00; 50% oﬀ appetizers & $3 pints of Bud Light; Industry Night 10% oﬀ all items not discounted

MON

$4 Half Acre brews, FREE POOL, “Hoppy Hour” 5pm-8pm = 1/2 price IPAs + pale ales

$1 oﬀ all beers including craft

CLOSED

Moosehead pints $3.75, Hamms cans $2.50, Special Export Bush Longneck bottles $3, Foster Big cans $5

All Draft Beers Half Price, Makers Mark Cocktails $5, Crystal Head Vodka Cocktails $4

all beer 50% oﬀ; $5 burgers

$2.99 Coronas

$5 Oberon, $5 Moonshine

TUE

$2 and $3 select beers

$2 oﬀ all Whiskeys and Bourbons

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

Moosehead pints $3.75, Hamms cans $2.50, Special Export Bush Longneck bottles $3, Foster Big cans $5

Jim Beam Cocktails $4, Jameson Cocktails $5, Cabo Wabo $5, Malibu Cocktails $4, Corona Bottles $3.50, PBR Tall Boy Cans $2.75

all specialty drinks 50% oﬀ; $2 tacos

$1.99 Apple Martinis

$4 Founders All Day IPA

WED

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

$6 Firestone Walker Opal pints, $6 Finch Vanilla Stout 16 oz. cans $7 house wines $8 Few Spirits $10 classic cocktails

Moosehead pints $3.75, Hamms cans $2.50, Special Export Bush Longneck bottles $3, Foster Big cans $5

Stoli/Absolut & Soco Cocktails $4, Long Island Iced Teas $5, Herradura Margaritas $5, Stella/ Hoegaarden/Deschutes Drafts $4, Goose Island 312 Bottles $3.50

50¢ wings (minimum 10), selection of 10 discounted whiskeys

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

$2 PBR, $5 wine

OUR READERS LOVE GREAT DEALS! CONTACT A READER REPRESENTATIVE AT 312.222.6920 OR displayads@chicagoreader.com FOR DETAILS ON HOW TO LIST DRINK SPECIALS HERE.

PHOTO: ALEXEY LYSENKO/GETTY IMAGES

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 37

BEST OF CHICAGO BEST FARMERS’ MARKET

LOGAN SQUARE

3147 W. Logan 773-489-3222 logansquarefarmersmarket.com RUNNER-UP:

GREEN CITY MARKET BEST BUTCHER SHOP

BUTCHER & LARDER 1427 W. Willow 312-432-6575 localfoods.com RUNNER-UP:

PAULINA MEAT MARKET BEST CHEESEMONGER

PASTORAL

2945 N. Broadway 773-472-4781 pastoralartisan.com RUNNER-UP:

Mold-ARama

A Tyrannosaurus rex from a Mold-A-Rama machine at the Field Museum ò JEAN LACHAT/SUN-TIMES

LOCAL FOODS

BEST BARISTA

ANDREAS WILLHOFF OF THE WORMHOLE thewormhole.us RUNNER-UP:

DAVID PACKER OF METROPOLIS BEST RESTAURANT WITH A VIEW

CINDY’S

12 S. Michigan 312-792-3502 cindysrootfop.com RUNNER-UP:

THE SIGNATURE ROOM

ò COURTESY WORMHOLE COFFEE

BEST RESTAURANT FOR ROMANCE

FRANCESCA’S ON CHESTNUT 200 E. Chestnut 312-482-8800 RUNNER-UP:

CHERRY CIRCLE ROOM

38 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

YOU DON’T GO looking for a Mold-A-Rama. That’s not how it works. It’s true that a Google search will reveal all the locations of these 1960s-era souvenir machines, including at least 20 around Chicago. But ideally you stumble across one, glowing quietly in a vestibule or stairwell, with its translucent bubble dome waiting for you. When this happens, you’ll likely be in a place that you’ve visited plenty of times before in your life: the zoo, the museum, the skyscraper, the other zoo, the other museum. The place itself doesn’t really matter, even though the ostensible point of Mold-A-Rama is to create a souvenir of that place, a molded object representing it in some way. But then, the object doesn’t really matter either. Mold-A-Rama isn’t about the plastic rhino, or the dolphin or the kangaroo or steam locomotive or dinosaur or bust of Lincoln or John Deere tractor or alligator or German submarine. (It is just a little bit about the gorilla, however. The one from the zoo, waving hello. That one is cool.) In a Mold-A-Rama machine, the object is interchangeable. It’s just whatever happens to be displayed in the TV-screen-shaped window at the top of the console (oh, Mold-ARama, how shrewdly you understand human desire) and touted, rather generically, as an “exclusive product molded in colorful plastic in seconds.” The key word here is exclusive: what’s exclusive about a plastic-injected molded trinket? Only one thing: the moment

in which it is created, the liquid of time beginning to set. In seconds. Scientists say that once you form a memory it changes a little with each subsequent recollection. It’s the same way with my own history of Mold-A-Rama experiences, in that every one bears faint, fingerprint-on-soft-plastic impressions of my earliest encounters, on family visits and school field trips to those zoos and museums: of the peculiar new sounds of crowd noise and footsteps in the echoing vast spaces; of feeling small and simultaneously bored and overwhelmed; of not knowing quite what would happen when somebody (my mother? My older brother?) fed quarters into the machine. And wasn’t there once a time when nothing happened? When the device didn’t work at all? Every Mold-A-Rama experience is slightly haunted by the ghosts of disappointments past and future: there’s always the chance that one’s exclusive product will emerge from the molds misshapen or headless, or that the injectors will malfunction and extrude molten sludge. (Although I don’t speciﬁcally remember this, I must’ve seen an out-of-order unit that had met this fate, and now the idea of it is fused ﬁrmly, like melted plastic, to my Mold-A-Rama gestalt.) Of course, most of the time what happens is that the disconcerting rattle of the machinery starts up, the molds clap together, and just when the chugging motor begins to

seem interminable, the product is revealed, briefly and finally (at least once I missed seeing it, didn’t I?), before being shoved into the retrieval bin. Then comes the pungent scorched-plastic smell—memory searing, a toxic madeleine that calls up all kinds of lost associations. For me, these tend to come from the Museum of Science and Industry: whither the walk-through heart, or that weird exhibit with plates of dusty fake food going around and around on conveyor belts? Maybe you have these kinds of thoughts about the zoos. Maybe you remember elephants, the real ones. Ultimately, though, Mold-A-Rama is about dwelling in the perpetual rather than the past. There’s now a company in Brookfield called Mold-A-Rama Inc., dedicated to keeping the machines running. And while it’s true that your exclusive product—your penguin or lion or ﬁghter jet or Komodo dragon or bison or space shuttle or whatever—doesn’t signify much in and of itself, you might as well take it home and keep it after it has cooled in your hands. Just don’t think of it as a “collectible,” or as kitsch; or God forbid go on eBay and buy “rare” Mold-A-Rama exclusive products of anonymous moments you were never a part of. That said, if you ﬁnd yourself with three or four or ten of these memory thingies, it’s usually an indication of a life well lived. And if you keep only one, keep the gorilla, always and forever saying hello and good-bye. —WENDY MCCLURE

SMALL BATCH BOURBON A W A R D - W I N N I N G

F L A V O R

M O N D AY · J U LY 1 1 , 2 0 1 6 · 6 : 3 0 - 9 : 3 0 P M 1510 N WELLS · CHICAGO 4 -C OUR SE PR I X F I X E ME NU WITH C OCK TA IL PA IRING S FROM W OODF ORD RE SERV E 1ST COURSE

D I S T I L L E R ’ S

S E L E C T

Woodford Reserve is crafted in small batches to ensure the proper time and care is taken to customize each of the five sources of flavor. This batch process creates the distinct taste and crisp, clean finish that sets Woodford Reserve apart from other bourbons.

94 POINTS, EXCELLENT HIGHLY RECOMMENDED Ultimate Spirits Challenge Awards 2015

GOLD MEDAL

Black Rice Salad: Citrus Fruit, Peanuts, Guajillo Glazed Shrimp

Whiskeys of the World Awards 2014

2ND COURSE

San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2014

paired with “CHAREAU YOUR WOOD” Woodford Rye, chareau, honey syrup, lemon, ginger beer

Crispy Pork Loin: Collard Greens, Fresno relish

paired with “WOODFORD SMASH” Woodford Reserve, lemon juice, mint, simple syrup

3RD COURSE

Grilled New York Strip: Oxtail, Fingerling Potatoes, Summer Beans

paired with “4C OLD FASHIONED” Four Corners Private Barrel Woodford Reserve, angostura bitters, Demerara syrup, orange swath

4TH COURSE

Humming Bird Cake: Bourbon Glaze, Cream Cheese

paired with “COUNTRY CAPPUCCINO” Woodford Double Oaked, cream stout, cinnamon, Grand Marnier

PURCHASE TICKE TS AT CHICAGORE ADER.COM/RESERVE YOURSE AT $65 PER PERSON · INCLUDES TAX AND GRATUITY

GOLD MEDAL

D O U B L E

O A K E D

Double Oaked is twice barreled to produce a rich flavor with purposeful emphasis on sweet aromatics. Uniquely matured in separate charred oak barrels – the second with a lighter char and deeper toast to extract additional soft, sweet oak character.

95 POINTS, EXTRAORDINARY ULTIMATE RECOMMENDATION Ultimate Spirits Challenge Awards 2015

DOUBLE GOLD MEDAL

San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2015

WOODFORDRESERVE.COM

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 39

BEST OF CHICAGO

BEST RESTAURANT FOR A CHEAP DATE

FRANCO’S RISTORANTE 300 W. 31st 312-225-9566 francoschicago.com RUNNER-UP:

HEADQUARTERS BEERCADE

The deathlessness of 90s Bulls nostalgia

BEST NEIGHBORHOOD RESTAURANT

FRANCO’S RISTORANTE 300 W. 31st 312-225-9566 francoschicago.com RUNNER-UP:

LULA CAFE BEST BAGELS

NEW YORK BAGEL & BIALY

4714 W. Touhy, Lincolnwood 847-677-9388 newyorkbagelandbialy.net RUNNER-UP:

RENO

BEST BAKERY

FLORIOLE

1220 W. Webster 773-883-1313 ﬂoriole.com AND

SWEDISH BAKERY 5348 N. Clark 773-561-8919 swedishbakery.com RUNNER-UP:

DINKEL’S BEST BANH MI

NHU LAN

ò STUART SPIVACK

2612 W. Lawrence 773-878-9898 nhulanchicago.com RUNNER-UP:

BA LE

40 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

I WAS SITTING in a bar in Los Angeles last year, watching the NBA ﬁnals, and the bartender said to me: “So you’re a Bulls fan, eh?” “How did you know?” I asked. I mean, I hadn’t said one word about the Bulls. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe it’s your Bulls hat. Or your Jimmy Butler T-shirt. Or the Bulls case you got on your phone.” That’s when it hit me—I’ve turned myself into a walking billboard for the franchise. It’s Michael Jordan’s fault. He was so un-

Michael Jordan in his glory days ò PHIL VELASQUEZ

believably great, it made me feel damn near invincible just to know I was rooting for him. So when I wear my Bulls stuff it’s like I’m saying: I wanna be invincible again! Occasionally I scrape together enough money to actually attend a Bulls game. And I have this irrational feeling when I enter the United Center that I’m walking through a

portal that takes me back in time. Suddenly it’s 1974 and I’m sitting on the rocks at the lake, smoking a joint and listening to Tower of Power on my boom box. Wait! Wrong portal. No, it’s more like 1991 and I’m in the second balcony at Chicago Stadium, screaming my lungs out as Jordan blows by Joe Dumars for a dunk and the Bulls finally get past the Pistons. You know, that portal. I realize it’s crazy to think this current team of dysfunctional misfits has anything in common with Jordan’s Bulls other than the jersey. But give me one regular-season win over Cleveland and the Jordan memories return. If all else fails, I’ve got tapes of almost every playoff victory from the championship run, as well as the ensuing Grant Park celebrations. Three of my favorite moments are . . . Game six at Phoenix, 1993. Down two, a handful of seconds left. Jordan passes to Pippen, who passes to Grant, who passes to Paxson, who shoots for three. Bulls win! Game five at New York, 1993. Up one, seconds left, Charles Smith under the basket. As he went up for the easy layup, the Doberman defenders swarmed. Horace blocked a shot. Michael blocked a shot. Pippen blocked two shots. Horace scooped up the loose ball and tossed it to Michael, who threw it to BJ, who went in for a layup as the game ended and Marv Albert proclaimed: “And the Bulls have defeated the Knicks!” Finally, the last Grant Park celebration. Six championship trophies onstage. The crowd pleading with Jerry Reinsdorf to bring the team back for another run. Unfortunately, Reinsdorf let Phil Jackson go and hired Tim Floyd—one of the worst personnel moves in the history of sports. Jordan left, and the whole thing fell apart. Just thinking about it’s got me so bummed out I think I’ll watch the closing seconds of that 1993 Knicks game for like the 500th time. I know—you can’t live in the past. But sometimes it helps to drop in for a visit. —BEN JORAVSKY

BEST OF CHICAGO BEST BARBECUE

BEST ITALIAN RESTAURANT

SMOQUE

DAVANTI ENOTECA

3800 N. Pulaski 773-545-7427 smoquebbq.com

YOUR CHICAGO BIKE AND CAR ACCIDENT LAWYERS

1359 W. Taylor 312-226-5550 davantienoteca.com/chicago

RUNNERS-UP:

RUNNER-UP:

LILLIE’S Q

MONTEVERDE

AND

PORK SHOPPE

BEST KOREAN RESTAURANT

CHO SUN OK

BEST BREAD

4200 N. Lincoln 773-549-5555 chosunokrestaurant.com

PUBLICAN QUALITY BREAD 808 W. Lake, 312-605-1618 publicanqualitymeats.com RUNNER-UP:

HEWN

BEST DOUGHNUTS

STAN’S

various locations, stansdonutschicago.com RUNNER-UP:

BEST BREAKFAST

GLAZED AND INFUSED

JAM ’N HONEY 958 W. Webster 773-327-5266 jamnhoney.com RUNNER-UP:

DAVANTI ENOTECA

BEST FALAFEL

SULTAN’S MARKET

various locations, chicagofalafel. com RUNNERS-UP:

BEST BRUNCH

LULA CAFE

2537 N. Kedzie, 773-489-9554 lulacafe.com RUNNER-UP:

BEST BURGER

LOCKDOWN BAR & GRILL 1024 N. Western 773-451-5625 lockdownbar.com RUNNER-UP:

AU CHEVAL BEST CHINESE RESTAURANT

LAO SZE CHUAN

various locations, chicagolaoszechuan.com RUNNER-UP:

DUCK DUCK GOAT BEST COFFEE SHOP

METROPOLIS COFFEE COMPANY 1039 W. Granville 773-764-0400 metropoliscoﬀee.com RUNNER-UP:

AND

TASTE OF LEBANON BEST GREEK RESTAURANT

GREEK ISLANDS 200 S. Halsted 312-782-9855 greekislands.net RUNNER-UP:

ATHENA’S BEST HOT DOG

SUPERDAWG

6363 N. Milwaukee 773-763-0660 superdawg.com RUNNER-UP:

FATSO’S LAST STAND BEST ICE CREAM

BLACK DOG CHICAGO

various locations, blackdogchicago.com

DAK

BEST MEXICAN RESTAURANT

L’PATRON TACO 2815 W. Diversey 773-252-6335 AND

MAS ALLA DEL SOL

5848 N. Broadway 773-654-1900 masalladelsolrestaurant.com

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

FREE CONSULTATION NO FEE UNLESS RECOVERY

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

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

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

BEKKERMAN LAW

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

BEKKERMANL AW.COM

4651 N CLARK · 5959 W GRAND

312 ·2 5 4 ·7 3 9 9

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

2829 N MILWAUKEE

OPEN 24 HRS • WE DELIVER

773·227·1688 ELRANCHITORES.COM

RUNNER-UP:

DOS URBAN CANTINA BEST MIDDLE EASTERN RESTAURANT

TASTE OF LEBANON 1509 W. Foster 773-334-1600 RUNNER-UP:

REZA’S

BEST PIEROGI

KASIA’S DELI 2101 W. Chicago 773-486-7500 kasiasdeli.com AND

Sunday Brunch Buffet 10 am – 2 pm

PIEROGI HEAVEN

$24 per person

various locations, pierogiheaven. com

BEST INDIAN RESTAURANT

various locations, loumalnatis.com

CUMIN

AND

BANG BANG PIE

RUNNER-UP:

BEST PIZZA

BEST DESSERTS

RUNNER-UP:

sansoogabsan.com

ALSO FOCUSING ON:

RUNNER-UP:

THE WORMHOLE

1747 N. Damen 773-489-1747 hotchocolatechicago.com

5247 N. Western 773-334-1589

LICKETY SPLIT

1414 N. Milwaukee 773-342-1414 cumin-chicago.com

MINDY’S HOT CHOCOLATE

! MANDA WONG

PITA INN

AND

SAN SOO GAB SAN

FIGHTING INJUSTICE FOR INJURED CYCLISTS

RANGOLI

2421 W. North 773-697-7114 rangolifeast.com RUNNER-UP:

HEMA’S KITCHEN

LOU MALNATI’S RUNNER-UP:

PEQUOD’S BEST POLISH RESTAURANT

STAROPOLSKA

3030 N. Milwaukee 773-342-0779 staropolskarestaurant.com RUNNER-UP:

PODHALANKA POLSKA RESTAURACJA

2829 w armitage

dosurbancantina.com

773-661-6452

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 41

BEST OF CHICAGO

BEST PUB GRUB

BAND OF BOHEMIA 4710 N. Ravenswood 773-271-4710 bandofbohemia.com RUNNER-UP:

OWEN & ENGINE

The cheap seats at Sox park

BEST RAMEN

WASABI

2115 N. Milwaukee 773-227-8180 wasabichicago.com RUNNER-UP:

FURIOUS SPOON

BEST SANDWICH

JERRY’S

various locations, jerryssandwiches.com RUNNER-UP:

BARI

BEST SEAFOOD RESTAURANT

ANGRY CRAB

5665 N. Lincoln 773-784-6848 theangrycrabchicago.com

U.S. Cellular Field ò RICH HEIN/SUN-TIMES

RUNNERS-UP:

GT FISH & OYSTER AND

SHAW’S CRAB HOUSE BEST SOUL FOOD RESTAURANT

LUELLA’S SOUTHERN KITCHEN 4609 N. Lincoln 773961-8196 luellassouthernkitchen.com RUNNER-UP:

ò KEITH HALE/SUN-TIMES MEDIA

SOUL VEG BEST SOUP

SOUP BOX

various locations, 312-951-5900, soupbox.com RUNNER-UP:

TASTE OF LEBANON

42 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

IT WASN’T JUST the elotes or the enticing smell of fried peppers and onions that got me. It was the diverse crowd of fans wholly intent on the ballgame. It was the summer of 2000 and I’d just moved to Chicago. I was at my first game on the south side, there to see the great pitcher Pedro Martinez (then with the Red Sox), but also to see the scrappy White Sox team that would make it to the playoffs that year, albeit briefly. There were few if any tourists, or folks from the North Shore, or bros wielding stacks of empty beer cups. The same holds true up above in the cheap seats, where you’ll find a likewise attentive if not easily pleased crowd. It’s extraordinary how a collective hush can descend on a baseball game in the open air. Of course, the same thing can happen at Wrigley Field, currently

home of the best team in baseball by a good measure. But you have to pay an arm and a leg to go to a Cubs game—the average ticket there is $51, $20 more than the major-league average. With Sox tickets for the upper deck starting at $7 ($5 on Sundays) for the real nosebleed seats, you can afford to go to see a game on a regular basis, and unlike at Wrigley Field, here it’s usually pretty easy to move to a more desirable section; the ushers aren’t going to razz you. Sections 530, 531, and 533 will all put you right on top of home plate for as little as $15 on Sundays. Craft Beers of the Midwest (formerly Beers of the World) is just around the corner on the upper-deck concourse, along with a host of food vendors (vegetarian and gluten-free options included) and one of the city’s most stunning

views of the downtown skyline from the ramps outside. There is now Diet Coke on offer, whereas at Wrigley you’re stuck with Diet Pepsi. Plus, you can tailgate in the parking lot before or after the game—verboten on the north side. But what about the most important thing— the game itself? Alas, after an improbably strong start that had them in ﬁrst place in the AL Central alongside the Cubs in the NL Central for the first two months of the season, I can’t say that the White Sox, now struggling to remain at .500 11 years after their World Series victory, will bring you anything but grief for the time being. But that in itself is a long-standing Chicago tradition—just ask any Cubs fan. If at last this truly is “the year” for them, why not check out the prospective American League World Series competition? —KATE SCHMIDT

BEST OF CHICAGO

BEST STEAK HOUSE

BOEUFHAUS

1012 N. Western 773-661-2116 facebook.com/boeufhaus RUNNER-UP:

Uncomfo able theaters IF IT’S TRUE that wisdom comes from suffering, then Chicago theatergoers must have some of the wisest butts on earth. I’m not talking about devotees of the big commercial theaters in the Loop, where the seats boast such hedonistic excesses as back support and stuffing. I’m talking about those whose idea of an evening out involves ﬁnding some tiny, grimy neighborhood storefront (or church basement or bar back room) and wedging themselves into a cramped row to watch a couple hours of tense acting at close range. Trust me—they’re the ones whose backsides have known suffering. In my decade or so of reviewing plays, my

own ass has spent hours—Lord only knows how many—pressed against cold metal folding chairs, rickety plywood benches, and antediluvian movie-theater seats full of wayward springs that took liberties forbidden by Leviticus. As for legroom, in many storefront playhouses you might as well be on a Spirit Airlines ﬂight. Funny thing, though: some of those horrible sitting experiences were tied up with some exceptional theatrical experiences, and I’m half convinced there’s a causal link there. A Red Orchid Theatre’s ensemble-driven intensity, the Gift Theatre’s humane melancholy, Trap Door Theatre’s

i mpor ted-f rom-Eu rope wei rd ness, t he soon-to-be-defunct Mary-Arrchie Theatre’s seedy ferocity—all of those companies have benefited in some way from their, let’s face it, shitty venues. Close quarters, minuscule budgets, and structural limitations can work wonders when it comes to creating intimacy, forcing invention, and generating that raw, gritty effect sometimes called “Chicago-style theater” by those who don’t mind making the performing arts sound like a hot dog. Around here, even when a troupe graduates to bigger, better digs, it feels obliged to assure audiences that the company remains dedicated to confined spaces. In February, Writers Theatre moved into a $28 million building in Glencoe that was designed by starchitect Jeanne Gang. The theater’s website points out, however, that the smaller of the two performance venues isn’t much bigger than the back of the bookstore where Writers got its start. In other words, don’t worry—you might still feel cramped! (I’ll admit, I for one found that a relief.) I don’t mean to romanticize storefront productions and the often uncomfortable rooms they’re performed in. Plenty of shows are dull or self-indulgent, sometimes to an unbearable degree. But then, once in awhile, you’ll find something like the Hypocrites’ unforgettable, death-haunted Our Town, staged in 2008 in the Chopin Theatre’s basement with the sort of immediacy, complexity, sense of surprise, and gut-wrenching emotional impact you can only get from theater artists who recognize the value of not letting an audience get too comfortable. And you won’t even mind that your tush has turned to mush. —ZAC THOMPSON

BEST SUSHI

MOMOTARO

820 W. Lake 312-733-4818 momotarochicago.com RUNNERS-UP:

KAI ZAN AND

TANOSHII BEST TAQUERIA

L’PATRON TACOS 2815 W. Diversey 773-252-6335 RUNNER-UP:

ANTIQUE TACO BEST THAI RESTAURANT

OPART

various locations, opartthai.com RUNNER-UP:

AROY THAI BEST VEGETARIAN RESTAURANT

CHICAGO DINER

various locations, veggiediner.com RUNNER-UP:

HANDLEBAR BEST VEGAN RESTAURANT

CHICAGO DINER

various locations, veggiediner.com ò ANDREA BAUER

j MIKE CENTENO

BAVETTE’S BAR & BOEUF

RUNNER-UP:

UPTON’S BREAKROOM

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 43

BEST OF CHICAGO BEST VIETNAMESE RESTAURANT

TANK NOODLE

4953-55 N. Broadway 773-878-2253 tank-noodle.com RUNNER-UP:

NHA HANG VIET NAM

The Lucky Horseshoe

READERS’ POLL

ò SUNSHINE TUCKER

Sports & Rec

BEST ATHLETE

PATRICK KANE @88pkane RUNNER-UP:

JAKE ARRIETA BEST BLACKHAWKS BAR

WEST END

1326 W. Madison 312-981-7100 westendwestloop.com BEST CUBS BAR

MURPHY’S BLEACHERS 3655 N. Sheﬃeld 773-281-5356 murphysbleachers.com BEST SOX BAR

ò TOM CRUZE/SUN-TIMES MEDIA

CORK & KERRY 3259 S. Princeton 312-842-0769 corkandkerry.com RUNNERS-UP:

SCHALLER’S PUMP AND

TURTLE BAR

44 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

WHEN IT COMES to gay nightlife in Chicago, the Lucky Horseshoe occupies a category all its own. Known to regulars as “the ’Shoe,” the Boystown joint at the corner of Halsted and Belmont is the city’s only bar featuring a daily lineup of male dancers. My ritual is always the same: scoop up an empty stool and scan the room to figure out which comely lad in a jockstrap shall be the recipient of the wad of singles the bartender has handed me. The ’Shoe’s troupe is a diverse lot, certainly more so than the staff of most other Boystown bars. There are straight dancers and gay dancers, and you can decode their orientation based on their moves. The hetero ones are rigid, with their shoulders slightly hunched forward—and they beam from (ahem) cheek to cheek when a blur advancing toward the stage turns out to be a woman. The gay ones tend to be transfixed by their reflection in the mirror and how perfectly their moves mimic those of their dearest diva. At times, these boys are so captivated by their

own performances they barely register it when someone slips a fiver into the waistband of their jock. The ensemble members come in all shapes and sizes, ages, and ethnicities as well. Frank the Tank, a Latino dancer who always wears combat boots, is in his 50s, I’m told. Madonna Otter, an art student with a gap-toothed grin, has an obsession with lace-up jockstraps, which accentuate his plump and furry tush. There was a time I couldn’t take my eyes off of Sebastian, a young Puerto Rican who was a backup dancer in a Jennifer Hudson video. But lately I’ve turned my attention toward Tyler, a chiropractor by day who belongs to my gym and has the body of a Greek god with an ass to match. He’s often wearing backless briefs, and when he’s more modestly clothed my disappointment is evident. I’ve been gifted with a few lap dances over the years, but I ﬁnd the attention embarrassing. What I enjoy more is getting to know the dancers and hearing their stories. When I do

end up in a conversation with a performer, I’m always happy to give him upwards of $10 to $20 for his time—but always in singles so that I can artfully decorate every inch of his undies while we talk. I found out from one dancer, for example, that the metal box perched above the topshelf liquor in the back bar contains one of the founder’s ashes. I’ve also learned that a dancer once punched a customer in the face and was banned for life. Rumor has it one dancer met an older gentlemen within a couple hours of his very ﬁrst shift, grabbed his gear, and left with him, never to be heard from again. Several dancers have shown me their wieners, a few have given me their phone number or hit me up later on Grindr. One dancer took me into the bathroom to try and get it on, though I’ve never actually hooked up with any of them. As much as I can get turned on, I feel equally protective of them. While I appreciate the eye candy, my affection for the ’Shoe stems largely from people’s shame-based resistance to the place: I claim it as “my bar” precisely because no one else seems willing to. Frequently I’ll run into friends there who clearly aren’t expecting to see someone they know and upon locking eyes with me will radiate a deer-in-headlights look before giving a laundry list of excuses for being spotted at an exotic dance club. “This is so funny! . . . I’m just meeting a friend . . . I never actually come here.” I also regularly run into coupled friends for whom the bar seems to function as a compromise between one partner who wants monogamy and the other who has an insatiable libido. Even on Grindr, where filth is de rigueur, there’s reluctance to legitimize the Horseshoe: If I message a guy that I’m at the ’Shoe, the usual response is “LOL.” The Lucky Horseshoe isn’t for everyone, but I’ll never understand the reluctance to be seen there. I didn’t come out, march in protests and Pride Parades, and spend the better part of a decade advocating for LGBT equality and freedom as a journalist to suddenly play timid. If a hot dancer at the ’Shoe gyrates my way, his ample package testing the elastic limits of a teensy G-string, I’ll slip him a dollar happily. He’s earned it, and so have I. —JASON A. HEIDEMANN

THIS SUMMER AT

THALIA HALL JUL 09

JUN 07

JUL 14

WED/THU

THE ENGLISH BEAT & SOUL ASYLUM

LUNA JUL 23

DAUGHTER

EMILY KING

LUCY DACUS

TUSHKA THE HUSH SOUND SEP GAD ELMALEH MERRIMENT / FALLS 04

JURASSIC JAWS:

JUL

RUN RIVER NORTH AUG DOUG BENSON

JUL

FRIGHTENED RABBIT AUG

AUG

COLVIN & EARLE

AUG

TODRICK HALL

SEP

28 05 07

WYE OAK

HANDSOME STRANGERS

JUL 19

PUFF PIECES

AUG 03

JUL 27

THE JULIE RUIN

AUG

A SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER DOUBLE FEATURE

NIGHT RIOTS

MOTHERS

‘STRAIGHT OUTTA OZ’

31 03

SEP

BLIND PILOT

SEP

PEACHES

AN EVENING WITH

SEP

RODRIGUEZ

NICK DIPAOLO

SEP

THROWING SHADE

‘DOUG LOVES MOVIES’

DELBERT McCLINTON

DAVID CROSBY

09 19 20 22

NEW ON SALE: WHITEY MORGAN & CODY JINKS (9.29), WARPAINT (9.30), PREOCCUPATIONS (10.5), SHOVELS & ROPE (10.6 & 10.7), HASAN MINHAJ (10.9), AVERY SUNSHINE (10.12), CHRIS ROBINSON BROTHERHOOD (10.14), COLBIE CAILLAT (10.21)

T H A L I A H A L L | 1 8 0 7 S . A L L P O R T S T. P I L S E N C H I C A G O | T H A L I A H A L LC H I C A G O . C O M

THIS SUMMER AT

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

PLAN YOUR YEAR WITH THE EMPTY BOTTLE THU

7/7

7/8 7/10 TUE

7/12 WED

7/13 THU

7/14

SONNY & THE SUNSETS

FRED THOMAS • SKIP CHURCH WEST FEST 2016 FEAT.

BULLY • CLOUD NOTHINGS

CRAIG FINN • NATURAL CHILD • LUNA

7/21 SAT

7/30

FRI

8/19 THU

ESME PATTERSON MILEMARKER SWEET COBRA • THE POISON ARROWS

RYLEY WALKER (

RECORD RELEASE

)

MARISSA NADLER MUSCLE & MARROW

SUN

THEJOHNMUFFS SAN JUAN

9/2 9/3

BONGRIPPER

WREKMEISTER HARMONIES

INTER ARMA

WITHERED • IMMORTAL BIRD

ROYAL HEADACHE

SAVOY MOTEL • NEGATIVE SCANNER

PORCHES HOOPS

7/17

THU

8/3

8/25

SUN

7/19 7/20

WED

GØGGS [TY SEGALL, CHARLES MOOTHART, CHRIS SHAW]

8/28

SAT

9/10 FRI

9/16 FRI

7/19 w/ RUNNING • CHOKE CHAINS

9/30

ALL THEM WITCHES CHROME PONY • LONG LIVE THE GOAT

10/7

7/20 w/ ABSOLUTELY NOT • SODDY DAISY

EMPTY BOTTLE & WXRT LOLLAPALOOZA AFTERSHOW FEAT.

CHAIRLIFT ELA MINUS

FRI FRI

10/21 SAT

10/22

LUGGAGE • TALSOUNDS

JUN 28

JUL 01

JUN 28

4 HANDS BEER DINNER JUL 08

THE CHRISTOPHER LEMARK XPERIENCE JAY-Z’S REASONABLE DOUBT

JUL 09

LIQUID SOUL JUL 10

SCORCHED TUNDRA VI FEAT.

MONOLORD • THE ATLAS MOTH

MYSTIC BRAVES

THE DREAM RIDE

MILD HIGH CLUB MERCHANDISE SERATONES CASS MCCOMBS BAND

TEMPLES VINYL WILLIAMS

KING

jun 24

“GOD SAID IT WAS GOOD”

TLNTD, VAN GO’, ELIANA

DJ QUIK

HANDSOME STRANGERS

jul 07

jun

SUMMER JAM ‘96

jul

jun

BODY: FELA YOUR BODY

jul

FEAT. DJ SLOW MO

JOE KOLLEGE, KWEST_ON, STACY LETRICE

HOUSE CLUB TOUR PUB CRAWL LOVESEXY ‘YOUR

jul jul 01

FAVORITE PRINCE TRIBUTE PARTY’

DAVID BANNER 13TH ANNUAL SILVER ROOM SOUND SYSTEM OFFICIAL AFTERPARTY

SILENT PARTY DJ WORLD DJ COMMANDO

jul THE CORNER 18 jul WONDER-FULL: TRIBUTE TO THE 23

WONDER OF STEVIE

NIKKI GIOVANNI & MORRIS GEARRING CELEBRATE OSCAR BROWN JR.

jul 30

aug 4/5

aug 11

aug 12

aug 25

GREEK’D UP KINDRED THE FAMILY SOUL MARSHA AMBROSIUS MICHAEL HENDERSON GREG MURPHY

the promontory | 5311 s. lake park w. drive chicago | promontorychicago.com

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 45

BEST OF CHICAGO BEST CHICAGO FIRE BAR

THE GLOBE PUB 1934 W. Irving Park 773-871-3757 theglobepub.com RUNNER-UP:

KROLL’S SOUTH LOOP BEST TV/RADIO ANNOUNCER

PAT FOLEY RUNNER-UP:

PAT HUGHES

BEST NEIGHBORHOOD PARK

WINNEMAC

5101 N. Leavitt 312-742-5101 chicagoparkdistrict.com RUNNER-UP:

WELLES

BEST DOG PARK

JACKSON BARK

5800 S. Lake Shore Drive jacksonbark.com RUNNER-UP:

MONTROSE DOG BEACH BEST ALTERNATIVE TO THE LAKEFRONT PATH

THE 606

312-742-4622 the606.org RUNNER-UP:

NORTH SHORE CHANNEL TRAIL BEST ORGANIZED BIKE RIDE

BIKE THE DRIVE 312-427-3325 bikethedrive.org RUNNERS-UP:

ò SUN-TIMES NEGATIVE COLLECTION

CRITICAL MASS AND

NAKED BIKE RIDE BEST PLACE TO TAKE A STROLL

LAKEFRONT TRAIL RUNNER-UP:

THE 606

46 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

Chicago-style magic UNTIL I FOUND a comb-bound catalog of “Tricks gathered from the four corners of the World” in a second-hand store in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 2014, I didn’t have much clue about the history of Chicago magic—much less know that the city had pioneered its own style. Printed in 1940 by the National Magic Company (once located downtown in the Palmer House), the tattered volume features whimsical, colorful illustrations of vintage tricks on its cover (a rabbit out of a box, Chinese linking rings, et cetera). Inside is a veritable bounty of paraphernalia to order: the Famous Egg Bag would run you $1.60 postpaid, while for a reasonable $7.25 you could buy the Perfection Dove Pan. Once in possession of the latter, you’d learn that crumpling up some tissue paper and igniting it would—voila!—produce “a live rabbit, some doves, a guinea pig, or whatever animal you wish to introduce.” Pretty snazzy. The catalog devotes eight pages solely to cigarette tricks. My interest piqued, I did some cursory digging and discovered that in the 1940s, Chicago had ﬁve magic shops in the Loop. The one still standing, Magic, Inc. (founded in 1926 and formerly known as the Ireland Magic Company), has since moved to 1833 W. Lawrence, roughly a mile from Uptown Underground—a lounge space that calls itself a “speakeasy cabaret” and hosts a show that’s reintroducing Chicago to the close-up, tableside style of magic the city popularized way back when the National Magic Company was in its prime. Uptown Underground claims to specialize in “retrotainment,” but despite that horrifying portmanteau, the Chicago Magic Lounge is legit. Spearheaded by actor and improv comedian Joey Cranford, it takes inspiration from the attractions at the historic restaurants and bars that prospered alongside the city’s trick shops in the 40s—especially the New York Lounge, Little Bit O’ Magic, and Schulien’s. Close-up or tableside magic is exactly what the term suggests. Magicians work the crowd from the floor, moving from table to table to perform their tricks as opposed to sweating alone beneath a spotlight onstage. With the Chicago Magic Lounge, Cranford also incorporates stage magic and bar magic—the venerable Bob Schulien, great-grandson to magic innovator Matt Schulien, was bartending when I visited last year—to give patrons a

Cigarette tricks from a 1940 National Magic Company catalog ò DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

dizzying variety of choices. You’re invited to let the magicians wandering the floor greet you with an illusion at your table, and the host might encourage you to approach the bar for some card-trick sleight of hand—all between sets by the main-stage headliner. It’s a lot of

tuxedo vests and bow ties for one room, but as Cranford explains, he hopes to create the same type of clubhouse atmosphere for magicians that he experienced as a student at iO Chicago. Those old watering holes—most of which had dried up by the 90s—let magicians gather to share anecdotes about tricks, much the same way comedians work material with other comics. —KEVIN WARWICK

BEST OF CHICAGO

Drunken taôos IN COLLEGE my roommates and I would congregate around the breakfast table, well north of noon, to take inventory of our various UPIs. Not to be confused with UTIs, unidentified party injuries are the bumps and bruises sustained during the previous night’s bacchanale. Long after short-term memory, reason, and fine motor skills have shut down in the brain, the body soldiers on like a graceless zombie, lumbering through the festivities with little regard for its own well-being. Once dawn breaks and the mind-body con-

nection is reestablished, you’re left to ponder the provenance of the Indiana-shaped bruise covering your shin. But the beauty of bruises is that they fade, the UPI eventually dissolving into the mist of memory along with the night it was created. As far as I know, there’s no nifty little acronym for waking up with ink plunged indelibly into your dermis. I’d like to propose one— FIGAT. It stands for “Fuck, I got a tattoo.” Twice I have FIGATed. Waking up a few years back with the traditional hallmarks

of a hangover—dry mouth, pounding headache, vague sense of shame—I noticed that my right forearm was inexplicably encased in gauze. That’s curious, I thought before fragments of memory began to appear like sunlight dappling the wall. Tribal bands and tramp stamps, needles and autoclaves, my signature on a form testifying that I was of sound and sober mind. I lay in bed like a kid on some sort of upside down Christmas, visions of dolphins and butterflies dancing through my head, unwrapping my arm with a creeping sense of dread. There, in small, tasteful script were the words “Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux”—a quote from Camus that translates to “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” It’s a little existentialist reminder to embrace the absurdity of the human condition. Nice!, I thought, perfectly happy with the gift that my drunk self had bestowed. But as my headache subsided and my vision cleared, I noticed the transposition of a p and h—then a u and r. Nooooo! screamed my inner editor as I realized my tattoo actually read “Il faut imaginer Sisyhpe herueux”: two of five words misspelled. After the aspirin kicked in, I headed back to the tattoo parlor—a mere zombie’s stumble away from the nexus of regret that is Milwaukee, North, and Damen—and sheepishly presented my arm to the guy at the desk. “There’s nothing we can do,” he said with a weary disgust that told me this wasn’t his first rodeo. “Wait until it heals and then cover it up with some flowers.” Flowers? The thought of trying to conceal my mistake was somehow more shameful than being permanently inscribed with misspelled words. So I lived with it, figuring no one would even realize the tattoo was misspelled. And no one ever did. The biggest problem I ran into was people mishearing Sisyphus as syphilis when they asked what it said. But something still didn’t feel right. It was better than hiding behind flowers, but it was still a lie of omission. Then one morning I woke up with another headache, a right arm encased in gauze, and the hazy memory of googling the hours of Jade Dragon Tattoo. FIGAT, part deux. I unwrapped my arm to find the two misspelled words marked with a line, as if struck through by the pen of an unsympathetic teacher. Two grammatical carets pointed to the correctly spelled words inked above. Yet another gift from my drunken self—a constant and indelible reminder to embrace the absurdity of the human condition. —SARAH NARDI

JACKSON PARK

6401 S. Richards 773-667-0524 jacksonpark.cpdgolf.com RUNNER-UP:

SOUTH SHORE BEST BILLIARDS

TEN CAT

3931 N. Ashland 773-935-5377 RUNNER-UP:

PRESSURE BILLIARDS

BEST BOWLING ALLEY

WAVELAND BOWL 3700 N. Western 773-472-5900 wavelandbowl.com RUNNERS-UP:

TIMBER LANES AND

DIVERSEY RIVER BOWL BEST CANOE/KAYAK RENTALS

KAYAK CHICAGO 1501 N. Magnolia 312-852-9258 kayakchicago.com RUNNER-UP:

WMS BOATHOUSE BEST BEACH

MONTROSE BEACH 4400 N. Lake Shore Drive 773-363-2225 cpdbaches.com RUNNER-UP:

FOSTER BEACH

ò COURTESY WAVELAND BOWL

ò SUNSHINE TUCKER

BEST PUBLIC GOLF COURSE

BEST GYM

TITAN GYM

2256 W. Belmont 773-360-8520 supremetitan.com RUNNER-UP:

THE BARRE CODE

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 47

48 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

BEST OF CHICAGO BEST PERSONAL TRAINER

ZACH TROWBRIDGE allstrengthtraining.com RUNNER-UP:

MELISSA MCNAMARA BEST YOGA STUDIO

BLOOM YOGA STUDIO 4663 N. Rockwell 773-463-9642 bloomyogastudio.com RUNNER-UP:

ò JORDAN MARTINS

TITAN GYM

BEST PILATES STUDIO

MIND ART CORE 4945 N. Damen 773-654-3148 mindartcore.com

Comfo Station reminded me of buildings in the small town I grew up in, all ﬂower shops and bookstores and tiny village museums—a building that should exist far away from the rest of this street. It seems it would have been easy to tear down this structure for a new housing complex or hipsterfy it into a bar where servers wear suspenders and cocktails go for $14 each. But no, there it stands, untouched in a neighborhood that continues to change rapidly. Comfort Station was built in 1926 as one of many warming stations and public restrooms along early transit lines. In the 1940s it was simply a vacant building; in the early 2000s it was used to store landscaping tools belonging to the Department of Transportation. And by 2005, the city ﬁnally realized how cool it was that this little building had stood the test of time. Logan Square Preservation cleaned up the space and opened the doors to a group of volunteers who have been using it as a multidisciplinary art space ever since. The first time I actually walked through Comfort Station’s doors, it was daytime and I wasn’t going to or coming from a local watering hole. I was there for a show called Once in a Lifetime: three comedians presented

their own MST3K-style commentaries on the Lindsay Lohan Lifetime vehicle Liz and Dick while the audience kicked back, laughed, and drank juice boxes. Unlike other casual comedy events held in bars or clubs, the little details of this one at the Comfort Station made it feel like being in someone’s home. Maybe a lot of planning went into setting up the projector and booking the comedians, etc, but the gathering felt like kismet, especially when the group organically made its way to the outside lawn, where a piñata was waiting. In that moment, a group of strangers became best friends, trying their darnedest to knock a papier-mache donkey’s lights out. That’s the feeling of every event there. From art shows like the Pretend Garage Sale to literary events like the Zine Pop-Up to gaming gatherings like a live action role-playing demonstration, there’s a sense that magic happens within the protected confines of Comfort Station. Just as the building itself has remained untouched, so has the creative spirit that now drives the space. I dare you to ﬁnd another perfectly preserved 1920s structure in Chicago where you can get a custom portrait of a butt. —BRIANNA WELLEN

BEST PUBLIC POOL

WELLES PARK

2333 W. Sunnyside 312-742-7515 chicagoparkdistrict.com BEST YMCA BRANCH

LAKEVIEW

3333 N. Marshﬁeld 773-248-3333 lakeviewymca.org RUNNER-UP:

SOUTH SIDE

READERS’ POLL

Music & Nightlife ò COURTESY MIND ART CORE

WALKING DOWN the stretch of North Milwaukee between Diversey and Fullerton is enough to give you whiplash. To your left, there’s a farmers’ market; to your right, a movie theater; to your left, an arcade; to your right, a giant mural; to your left and your right and your left and your right again, a craft cocktail bar—I’m getting dizzy just thinking about it. Maybe that’s why it took me so long to notice the unassuming one-story cottage that sits unobstructed in Logan Square Park. There are no neon lights, no lines out the door (usually), and there’s no signage to indicate that it’s anything other than a garden shed. But for those who take a moment to walk the grassy path that leads to its door, Comfort Station provides an oasis ﬁlled with art, camaraderie, and history. I first found moments of Zen on Comfort Station’s front lawn, on a night spent stumbling between a mystery shot at Crown Liquors and some questionable dance moves at the Owl. I admired its Tudor-style exterior through blurred vision, wondering how such a quaint structure could have possibly landed here—like a farmhouse in the middle of Oz. It

RUNNER-UP:

GALTER LIFECENTER

BEST NEW BAND

ESSO AFROJAM FUNKBEAT essoafrojamfunkbeat.com RUNNER-UP:

WHITNEY

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 49

BEST OF CHICAGO BEST ROCK BAND

THE FALCON

facebook.com/mofukkinfalcon RUNNER-UP:

TWIN PEAKS BEST HIP-HOP ARTIST

CHANCE THE RAPPER @chancetherapper RUNNER-UP:

RICH JONES

BEST METAL BAND

PELICAN

pelicansong.com RUNNER-UP:

BLOODIEST DJ Herb Kent has worked in radio for more than 60 years, and today he’s at V103.

BEST CLASSICAL GROUP

BOW AND HAMMER bowandhammer.com RUNNER-UP:

EIGHTH BLACKBIRD

ò SUN-TIMES NEGATIVE COLLECTION

V103

BEST INTERNATIONAL/WORLD MUSIC ACT

ESSO AFROJAM FUNKBEAT essoafrojamfunkbeat.com RUNNER-UP:

FUNKADESI BEST JAZZ BAND

FAT BABIES

thefatbabies.com RUNNERS-UP:

SONIC OCTOPUS AND

TWIN TALK BEST JAZZ MUSICIAN

ò COURTESY THE ARTISTS

MAKAYA MCCRAVEN makayamccraven.com RUNNERS-UP:

DAVE REMPIS AND

NATE LEPINE AND

SAM TRUMP

50 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

WHEN I WAS A CHILD, I listened to childish things. I put a B96 bumper sticker on my mom’s car in grade school, I was glued to Loveline and Q101 all through middle school, and I studied classic-rock radio with naive devotion in high school. So when my car’s tape player broke down six years ago and I was forced to listen to the radio again, I was excited to revisit all my favorite stations. But I quickly grew tired of my stereo presets—they were too familiar, too repetitive, and too clogged with commercials. I wandered up and down the dial till I eventually landed on WVAZ 102.7 FM. I never moved the tuner again. V103 excels in three essential radio functions: it showcases the most skilled DJs, it has the most entertaining talk show hosts, and it plays the best music. At a time when terrestrial radio has to compete against podcasts and SiriusXM, it’s the only station in town

that seems to focus on making the basics as strong as possible. V103 hosts The Steve Harvey Morning Show, quite possibly the finest morning programming on terrestrial radio (and syndicated all over the country). The insightful and hilarious Doug Banks Radio Show, which aired in the afternoon, was just as good—I fervently recommended it to everyone until its host died this past April. But music is what keeps me coming back to V103. It plays jams no one else does, and most important, its programming isn’t built around any kind of orthodoxy. If you tune in to classic-rock radio, you have to listen to “Free Bird” or “More Than a Feeling” or “All Right Now” at least once a day. Sometimes it seems like V103 doesn’t play the same song twice in a month. Though in industry terms V103’s format

is “urban adult contemporary,” it’s basically an R&B station. And its definition of “R&B” is flexible: Saturday I heard Loose Joints’ “Is It All Over My Face?,” a song I’d characterize as postpunk or avant-garde disco or protohouse. On weekends V103 might play obscure soul or Sade deep cuts. Once I was at a party with incredible music on the stereo, and when I asked the host what we were listening to, she said it was V103 DJ Maurice “Ice” Culpepper—she’d taped his sets of disco and funk and cut out the commercials. Maybe you like to listen to NPR do imitation New Yorker stories on why humans are nervous, or turn on classic-rock radio and have your biases confirmed. But when I listen to the radio, I’m seeking out something I don’t know. The act of discovery gives me joy, and nothing on FM radio makes me happier than V103. —TAL ROSENBERG

BEST OF CHICAGO BEST BLUES BAND

BUDDY GUY buddyguy.net RUNNERS-UP:

AKASHA AND

CASH BOX KINGS BEST COUNTRY BAND

THE LAWRENCE PETERS OUTFIT lawrencepeters.com RUNNER-UP:

THE HOYLE BROTHERS BEST SINGER/SONGWRITER

BRENDAN KELLY @badsandwich RUNNER-UP:

DANIEL WADE

World Music Festival

BEST DJ

RAE CHARDONNAY

Mahmous Ahmed ò ADRIAN BOOT

raechardonnay.com RUNNERS-UP:

their attempts to keep a lid on the party—the only time I saw a staffer intervene, it was to ask a father to remove his little daughter from the stage, where he’d hoisted her to take a photo with the band in the background. I remember thinking that it might be impossible for someone who lives in the country where he was born—someone like me—to feel the kind of excitement those fans were feeling. But I tried as hard as I could, and I don’t think I’ve ever loved a concert more. Ahmed’s music—soulful, slinky, psychedelic, poignant, and joyful—provided a percolating heat that powered all sorts of celebratory, uninhibited dancing, including a few traditional styles I couldn’t name. One popular move looked like arms-at-the-sides pogoing, with both shoulders pumped up and down twice with every hop—Ahmed could still do it at 74, but I didn’t manage to get much closer than my customary goofy jumping around. The thrill of a reunion with music from a

culture and a place you’ve left behind, by force or by choice but never without regret, must be like meeting a long-gone loved one at the airport, except 100 times as intense. Because I have no living connection to my ancestral countries (I’m not even entirely sure what they are, despite what I assume is a Spanish-Cuban surname), I can experience this emotion only vicariously. But because the World Music Festival hosts artists from dozens of nations every year, in keeping with the dazzling diversity of the city’s population, odds are pretty good you can experience it directly. Even as a garden-variety mixed honky, I’m happy to have concerts (and audiences) like this to puncture the jadedness that decades in music journalism have built up between my exhausted ears and anything I try to listen to. If you need a reminder that our species developed music tens of thousands of years before written language, the World Music Festival is full of them. —PHILIP MONTORO

AFROQBANO AND

FESS GRANDIOSE BEST LOCAL DANCE PRODUCER

BUMBAC JOE bumbacjoe.com RUNNER-UP:

FUTURE ROOTZ BEST BAND NAME

CELINE NEON celineneon.com RUNNER-UP:

CORNSTAR FARMER’S MARKET PORNSTAR COINSTAR BEST GIG POSTER DESIGNER

FRANK OKAY ò RJ ELDRIDGE

I’VE SEEN DOZENS of great shows at Chicago’s World Music Festival since it launched in 1999. The fest has more to offer than just music, though, and I can explain what I mean by describing a single set: the Mahmoud Ahmed performance I saw at Pritzker Pavilion in 2015. The greatest living link to the golden age of Ethiopian pop from the 1960s and ’70s, Ahmed is a superstar in his homeland, but he’d never before played a Chicago concert whose venue suited his stature—as far as I know, the singer’s only other local gig was in 2010 at the Wild Hare. I don’t point this out to praise the festival’s bookers (though they deserve it) but rather to explain the sense of occasion Ahmed’s appearance created among Chicago’s Ethiopian expats. They came out en masse, so deliriously happy that they pushed aside the bulky metal crowd-control barriers and danced right up to the lip of the stage. Millennium Park security quickly abandoned

frankokay.com RUNNER-UP:

CHEMA SKANDAL

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 51

BEST OF CHICAGO BEST LOCAL MUSIC BLOG

STORE BRAND SODA storebrandsoda.com RUNNERS-UP:

FAKE SHORE DRIVE AND

LOCAL LOOP CHICAGO BEST LOCAL MUSIC PODCAST

CHIRP

chirpradio.org RUNNER-UP:

ò APRIL ALONSO

WHAT ABOUT CHICAGO?

BEST BARTENDER

ROB GUEVARA OF FOX BAR AT SOHO HOUSE CHICAGO sohohouse.com RUNNERS-UP:

AMEE BINDER OF UPTOWN UNDERGROUND AND

EDGAR ROGEL OF COCONUTZ CHICAGO BEST LOCAL LABEL

RED SCARE RECORDS redscare.net RUNNER-UP:

BLOODSHOT RECORDS BEST PARTY PROMOTER

NO SMALL PLANS PRODUCTIONS @NoSmallPlansChi RUNNER-UP:

SO READY TO BANG BEST MUSIC FESTIVAL

RIOT FEST riotfest.org RUNNER-UP:

PITCHFORK

ò COURTESY FOX BAR

BEST MUSIC VENUE

DOUBLE DOOR 1572 N. Milwaukee 773-489-3160 doubledoor.com AND

52 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

Harold Washington Library rehearsal rooms INSIDE A SNUG, SPARTAN ROOM at the Harold Washington Library Center, Shimon Marcucci had fine-tuned what probably amounted to several albums’ worth of music before I’d ever played a note there. For four years, the middle-aged bureaucrat turned amateur composer had spent his lunch break on the eighth floor of Chicago’s mammoth central library, soprano saxophone in tow. Standing in one of the six first-come, first-served rehearsal rooms—each outfitted with an upright piano and available for an hour at a time to anyone with a library card—Marcucci had been dreaming up and polishing a range of world-jazz fusion material that would eventually become a self-released record. I met Marcucci randomly on the street one day as he walked back to work from one of his practice sessions. Who, I wondered, was this bearded man in a yarmulke carrying a sax through the Loop? Once we got to talking, I wasn’t especially interested in his music, but I was intrigued by someone using free, public facilities to fuel a personal creative endeavor. What really roused my curiosity was the image of an individual embedded deep in such a mammoth institution, honing his craft while insulated

by the world’s bound knowledge. It seemed like something out of Florence during the late Renaissance, the city serving, albeit indirectly, as patron of the arts, the Daleys in place of the Medicis. Soon after my short piece on Marcucci was published, I followed the musician’s lead and began frequenting the library’s rehearsal rooms; I’ve made use of them periodically during the eight years since. At ﬁrst I stopped by incidentally, while checking out a book or doing research for a story. Eventually the visits became more intentional: an hour after work when the stresses of the day had accumulated like unread e-mails; a shorter morning session to clear a nagging case of writer’s block as a deadline loomed. Pawing at the piano, I soon realized, had become a sort of DIY music therapy. This improvised treatment for the tension of daily life thankfully requires no mastery of the instrument. Beyond a basic knowledge of the locations of notes and the construction of a limited assortment of chords, I have only the vaguest grasp of what I’m doing when my ﬁngers hit the keys. But luckily I’m playing for an audience of one. No one will mistake my free-form style for Rubinstein, but to my ears,

I don’t sound half bad. Occasionally I’ll cue up YouTube instructional videos, which have taught me how to noodle my way through a limited but eclectic repertoire that includes Adele’s “Hello” and “Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)” by Phil Collins. Sometimes I close the thick double doors that keep the rehearsal room relatively soundproof, take a seat on the bench in front of a Yamaha or a Baldwin, and do a pitch-perfect cover of John Cage’s silent masterwork “4'33".” I’ll just sit and listen to the muffled resonance of people in adjacent rooms, running through scales on piano, violin, or trumpet. If the rehearsal spaces are all empty, I’ll take in the steady hum of the library air conditioner or heater. This counts as meditation in a city where searching for peace and quiet often seems as futile as attempting to dodge gravity. Back when I was writing about Marcucci’s lunchtime practice sessions, I wondered if it was difficult for the 57-year-old to forgo food for music. “Don’t you ever get hungry or weak?” I asked. His answer echoed in my head like a Zen koan: “When a person has music in their blood,” he said, “it’s the most basic need in their life. It’s precious.” —JAKE MALOOLEY

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 53

BEST OF CHICAGO BEST MUSIC VENUE (CONTINUED)

EMPTY BOTTLE 1035 N. Western 773-276-3600 emptybottle.com RUNNER-UP:

METRO

BEST ROCK CLUB

EMPTY BOTTLE 1035 N. Western 773-276-3600 emptybottle.com RUNNERS-UP:

DOUBLE DOOR AND

REGGIE’S

A section of the DPRT near Libertyville ò JOE SHUMAN BEST HIP-HOP CLUB

DOUBLE DOOR 1572 N. Milwaukee 773-489-3160 doubledoor.com AND

THE PROMONTORY 5311 S. Lake Park 312-801-2100 promontorychicago.com AND

REGGIE’S

2015 S. State 312-949-0120 reggieslive.com RUNNER-UP:

SUBTERRANEAN BEST JAZZ CLUB

GREEN MILL

4802 N. Broadway 773-878-5552 greenmilljazz.com RUNNER-UP:

CONSTELLATION

ò STEVE LUCERO

BEST BLUES CLUB

KINGSTON MINES 2548 N. Halsted 773-477-4646 kingstonmines.com

54 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

Des Plaines River Trail CHICAGO HAS MANICURED parks and an expansive lakefront, but where does one wander if one wants to get lost in the woods? The options are slim for everyone, but the problem is particularly acute for longdistance cyclists, who ride for miles through the grittiest and most dismal parts of the collar counties to get anywhere vaguely green and remote (or anywhere with hills, for that matter). You know you’re in trouble when a “good route” takes you down the very length of Ogden Avenue—broken glass, potholes, and all—and through a UPS depot before it deposits you in some nondescript suburban terrain. The Des Plaines River Trail is an antidote to all that. Known affectionately by its acronym, the DPRT is a 58.6-mile dirt-and-gravel trail more or less in the city—it stretches through the forest preserves of Cook and Lake Counties in the near-western suburbs all the way from North Avenue up to the Wisconsin border. With a trailhead that’s just

a 25-minute drive from Logan Square, it’s accessible. And with 200-year-old oak groves, scampering deer, and views of the river, it’s a scenic dream. Enter through the parking lot on Fullerton, just west of First Avenue in River Grove. Take the path into the woods. Stay sharp: here, the trail takes a steep dip. You ride downhill with a whoosh, then emerge into a clearing. This is what you came for. The sun shines through the canopy, dappling the earth with golden ﬂecks. Twin paths, carved by riders, joggers, and even equestrians, wind their way through the ash and cottonwood trees. You may be just a few hundred feet from the din of the city, but you wouldn’t know it here. The only sounds are the murmur of birds and the quick rush of the river to the left. Sometimes this low-lying part of the trail ﬂoods, because of its proximity to the water. Or it turns into thick, impassable mud after a summer storm. Sometimes it’s a fun challenge to ride through; more often it’s a sign

to try again later. In these conditions the trail is frequently drier and more ridable further north. There it veers away from the river, toward higher ground, with a nice bird’s-eye view of the water below and access to single-track paths back in the woods. You may encounter dads with strollers on this section of the trail, but if you’re lucky, you may also see a stag. If you’re adventurous, the DPRT is especially fun to ride after dark. For some reason my cycling friends call this “night moves,” and it’s become an annual tradition on Thursdays in the summer. We set out while it’s still light, watch the light fade as we head north, then ride back in the dark, guided by powerful 1,200-lumen lights affixed to our helmets or strapped to the front of our bikes. The night is inky. Our soundtrack is a symphony of crickets. We know how to get home from here. But for a little while, we have the wonderful, dreamlike feeling of being lost in the woods. —ROBIN AMER

BEST OF CHICAGO

FOR DECADES, southwest-side Marquette Park was a national symbol of racial bigotry. It’s no longer that today, but neither is it an emblem of togetherness. Marquette Park instead is one of the best examples of the city’s failure to ﬁnd a path to integration. “We are bound for the promised land,” Martin Luther King Jr. said during a rally in Chicago on the morning of August 5, 1966—50 years ago this summer. “We will taste the milk of freedom and the honey of equality.” That afternoon, King stepped out of a car in Marquette Park to lead a march for fair housing. Marquette Park stretches from Marquette Road (6700 South) to 71st Street and from California Avenue to Central Park Avenue. In 1966 the adjoining neighborhood was solidly white—largely Lithuanian, Polish, German, and Italian. Most of the 700 people demonstrating with King that day were black. Instead of the honey of equality, they felt a hail of rocks and bottles tossed over the heads of police by many of the thousands of white hecklers who also gathered that day. “Kill those niggers!” some shouted, while others chanted “Two, four, six, eight, we don’t want to integrate.” One of the rocks struck King in the back of his neck and knocked him to one knee. “The people from Mississippi ought to come to Chicago to learn how to hate,” King said afterward.

Martin Luther King Jr. in Marquette Park on August 5, 1966, before he was hit by debris thrown by the crowd ò LARRY NOCERINO/SUN-TIMES

The hatred in Marquette Park didn’t soon vanish. Through the mid-1980s, white youths would periodically rally in the park, dressed in WHITE POWER T-shirts, and sometimes hurling bottles and bricks at cars with black occupants. Small Ku Klux Klan rallies were also occasionally staged in the park through 1986. In the 1980s, the Marquette Park neighborhood began to change racially. It changed in the customary way: blacks moved in and whites moved out. The area’s Latino and Arab populations also grew. The new residents were generally poorer, and crime in the neighborhood increased with the poverty rate. Because black migration to Chicago from the southern states had greatly slowed by 1980, the pace of racial change in the neighborhood was slower than it had been in many other southside neighborhoods, but it was inexorable. In 1980, the census tracts near the park were 82 percent white, 11 percent Latino, and 5 percent black; by 2010, they were 6 percent white, 46 percent Latino, and 46 percent black. Most of the Latinos live west of Kedzie (the park’s midline), most of the blacks east of it.

RUNNER-UP:

ROSA’S LOUNGE BEST DANCE CLUB

SMART BAR

3730 N. Clark 773-549-4140 smartbarchicago.com RUNNER-UP:

BEAUTY BAR BEST DANCE PARTY

PARTY NOIRE thepartynoire.com RUNNER-UP:

CUMBIASAZO BEST LGBT DANCE PARTY

SLO ’MO

slomoparty.com RUNNER-UP:

GLITTER CREEPS BEST GAY BAR

BIG CHICKS

5024 N. Sheridan 773728-5511 bigchicks.com RUNNER-UP:

ROSCOE’S TAVERN BEST LESBIAN BAR

BIG CHICKS

5024 N. Sheridan 773728-5511 bigchicks.com RUNNER-UP:

FARRAGUTS

Lucy Stoole hosts Deep Dish at Berlin

BEST ANYTHING-GOES CLUB

BERLIN

ò COURTESY BERLIN

Marque^e Park

During the neighborhood’s years of racial transition, the park was used fairly equally by blacks, Latinos, and whites, but there wasn’t much mingling between the groups. Blacks played on the basketball courts, Latinos on the soccer fields, whites on the nine-hole golf course. Now that the vast majority of whites have fled the neighborhood, they’re a rare sight in the park. The golf course is well maintained, with many fairways running alongside the park’s tranquil lagoon, but it’s rarely busy. On a recent sparkling Sunday with temperatures in the 70s, only a handful of golfers played the course. The starter, 68-year-old George Christy, who’s white, noted that blacks and Latinos haven’t embraced golf as much as whites have, and said he figured most white golfers were afraid of the neighborhood. Elsewhere in the park on this particular Sunday, about an even number of blacks and Latinos were enjoying the day—separately. On a soccer field near 71st Street, two uniformed Latino teams competed while Latino spectators crowded the sidelines, many drinking cans of Modelo Especial. On the basketball court just east of the soccer field, almost all the young males playing were black. Small groups of picnickers clustered around kettle grills throughout the park; the groups usually were either black or Latino, not mixed. When fights break out in the park, they’re rarely over race or ethnicity, several people told me. A 43-year-old black man watching a basketball game said that blacks and Latinos in the park have “a mutual understanding: life is too motherfucking short to be arguing over some bullshit.” But neither is there a sense of togetherness. Blacks and Latinos “say ‘hi and bye’ to each other,” a 30-year-old Latino man said. The main exceptions are the play lots for small children, which are a bit more integrated. On Friday, August 5, a memorial to Dr. King and the 1966 march will be unveiled in the park, part of a project led by the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN), whose offices are in the neighborhood. The following day, IMAN will sponsor Takin’ It to the Streets, the music festival the group has staged in the park every two or three years since 1997. Panel discussions in the park that weekend will be aimed at “radically reimagining what neighborhoods like Marquette Park, and parks like Marquette Park, can be,” says Alia Bilal, IMAN’s director of community relations. That’s commendable. But when it comes to racial integration in Chicago, it’s easier to imagine it than to get it to happen. —STEVE BOGIRA

954 W. Belmont 773-348-4975 berlinchicago.com RUNNER-UP:

BEAUTY BAR

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 55

BEST OF CHICAGO BEST NEW BAR

BEST INTENTIONS

3281 W. Armitage 312-818-1254 bestintentionschicago.com RUNNER-UP:

MONEYGUN BEST DIVE BAR

COLE’S

2338 N. Milwaukee 773-276-5802 coleschicago.blogspot.com RUNNER-UP:

SIMON’S TAVERN BEST NEIGHBORHOOD BAR

COLE’S

2338 N. Milwaukee 773-276-5802 coleschicago.blogspot.com RUNNER-UP:

SIMON’S TAVERN

Ve ical li© bridges BEST HOTEL BAR

BROKEN SHAKER 19 E. Ohio 312-940-3699 AND

COMMONS CLUB 203 N. Wabash 312-940-4747 AND

FOX BAR AT SOHO HOUSE 113-125 N. Green 312-521-8000 foxbar.com RUNNERS-UP:

THE J. PARKER AND

POTTER’S BEST 4 AM BAR

ò ADRIAN GAUT

THE OWL

2521 N. Milwaukee 773.235.5300 owlbarchicago.com RUNNER-UP:

LATE BAR

56 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

IF DOWNTOWN BASCULE bridges are show ponies—with curved, double-leaf spans painted a deep maroon—vertical lift bridges are Chicago’s underappreciated workhorses. True to their name, their spans lift vertically but stay parallel to their decks—as opposed to bascule bridges, which ﬂip open at an angle (“bascule” is French for “seesaw”). There are seven vertical lift bridges in the city: just one over the Chicago River, but another six across the Calumet River. If you’ve noticed them, you’ve probably seen the one that runs not quite parallel to Canal Street just south of 18th Street, its towers looming above the dry dock next door, its rust-colored bridge house perched precariously in the middle of its span. Or perhaps you’ve spotted the strange trio of bridges visible from the Skyway, looking like relics, with two of their spans perpetually in the air. These bridges always seemed to be lost in time: impractical remnants that hark back to Chicago’s days as an industrial powerhouse. They’re monuments whose real purpose had been lost or obscured—like neighborhood

ﬁre-alarm boxes or the water towers on the tops of downtown buildings. Of course, I loved them. They were visually striking, but unwieldy: Surely modern engineering had developed a more efficient solution to waterway traffic in the years since these bridges had ﬁrst been built? In time, I would learn the truth. Vertical lift bridges were favored in the 1910s—unlike bascule bridges, they required counterweights only as heavy as the bridge span itself. That meant that the spans could be heavier, and were thus well suited for freighttrain traffic. Today, although a few are abandoned—including three over the Calumet—many are still surprisingly active, and still fill their original purpose. The bridge near Canal Street is properly called the Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge No. 458. Completed in 1914, it’s presently owned and maintained by Amtrak. According to the company, all of its eastbound trains cross this bridge after leaving Union Station—that’s ten trains a day to Michigan and another four to

Amtrak's vertical lift bridge over the Chicago River ò DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

the east coast. Add to that a slew of Metra and freight trains that also use the tracks, as well as trains that use the bridge to turn around in a nearby rail yard, and you have an astonishing 110 or so trains using this vertical lift bridge every day. And because river-barge traffic has the right of way (literally because whatever was there ﬁrst has the right of way and the river was there ﬁrst), the bridge must also lift to let water vessels past. Amtrak estimates that the bridge is lifted, on average, once every 48 minutes. When asked if the company had considered replacing the bridge with something more modern, a spokesman said that for the amount of space Amtrak had on-site, there didn’t seem to be a bridge solution more practical than the one it already had. I’m still attached to my misunderstanding of vertical lift bridges as charming and outdated, but I’m happy to know they’re more than just symbols of the past. For all the changes to our economy and landscape, vertical lift bridges are evidence that Chicago is still a hub, still the city that works. —ROBIN AMER

Libido Funk Circus/Lounge Puppets/Lance Lipinsky & The Lovers/Abba Salute /Bandoleros (Gypsy Kings Tribute) CTA/Gentelmen of Leisure/Cat Fight/Breakfeast Club/Jak Tripper//Planet Groove/Voyage/One/Foot in the Groove/Lisa Rene/Ear Candy

Polka Bands/Games/Casino Kid’s Stage

LLABOR ABOR DDAY AY W WEEKEND EEKEND Milwaukee & Lawrence I 90 exit 84 1 block from Jefferson Park (CTA/Metra)

FREE PARKING/FREE SHUTTLE BUS every 15 minutes @ IRISH AMERICAN HERITAGE CENTER 4626 N. KNOX AVE. (2 BLKS SOUTH OF LAWRENCE AVE.)

This Heat

JUNE 24 – SEPTEMBER 24, 2016

Cheryl Pope Garland Martin Taylor Krista Wortendyke Opening Reception FRIDAY, JUNE 24, 5 – 8 PM

This Heat supports the efforts of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence. Weinberg/Newton Gallery 300 W Superior Street, Suite 203 Chicago, IL 60654 312 529 5090 weinbergnewtongallery.com Hours Mon – Sat 10 AM – 5 PM

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 57

BEST OF CHICAGO

BEST BARCADE

EMPORIUM ARCADE BAR

TasteeFreez on Armitage

various locations, emporiumchicago.com RUNNER-UP:

HEADQUARTERS BEERCADE BEST STRIP CLUB

ADMIRAL THEATRE 3940 W. Lawrence 773-478-8263 admiralx.com RUNNER-UP:

PINK MONKEY BEST CASINO

RIVERS CASINO

3000 S. River, Des Plaines 847-795-0777 riverscasino.com BEST PHOTOBOOTH TO MAKE OUT IN

GLITTERGUTS 773-615-5446 glitterguts.com RUNNER-UP:

RAINBO CLUB BEST JUKEBOX

SIMON’S TAVERN 5210 N. Clark 773-878-0894 RUNNER-UP:

THE G-MAN TAVERN BEST KARAOKE

ALICE’S LOUNGE 3556 W. Belmont 773-279-9382 RUNNER-UP:

HIDDEN COVE BEST MAGICIAN

ò COURTESY GLITTERGUTS

TRICKY OL’ PUSS trickyolpuss.com RUNNERS-UP:

DENNIS WATKINS AND

JEANETTE ANDREWS AND

SEAN MASTERSON

58 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

A FEW YEARS AGO I was walking past Tastee-Freez, a fast-food joint on Armitage near California, when I saw workers boarding up the shacklike shop’s windows. I couldn’t help myself—I shouted “No!,” almost like Darth Vader at the end of Revenge of the Sith. I understood that Tastee-Freez had to close for the season—it was the dead of winter, and snow was accumulating around my ankles at that very moment. Few people crave Oreo milk shakes when the temperature’s in the

single digits. But to me Tastee-Freez felt like such a permanent ﬁxture, nestled in its little corner of Logan Square and dispensing burgers, hot dogs, and a whole mess of frozen desserts, that every time it shut down it came as a shock. Tastee-Freez launched in Joliet in 1950. Its website describes the franchise rather grandly: “There’s only one chain in the fast food dessert industry that instills feelings of nostalgia.” That’s true, albeit in a shal-

low sense. The Logan location looks like a mom-and-pop stop frozen in time back when fast food was still a novelty for Americans. Everything about it—the simple, ﬂag-waving color scheme, the large windows that allow customers to peek into the busy kitchen— harkens back to the good ol’ boom years. But I didn’t grow up then. I wasn’t even alive when John Cougar Mellencamp rode to the top of the Billboard 100 in 1982 with “Jack & Diane,” whose lyrics mention Tastee-Freez. In fact, I’d never even set foot in a Tastee-Freez till I moved to Chicago. Tastee-Freez doesn’t make me pine for a bygone era I never experienced, but I love it all the same—or rather, I love the one in Logan Square. (I haven’t been to another.) I love the warped wooden benches spread out on the unfriendly blacktop next to the restaurant. I love the food in all its imperfections—the chunky fries that contain enough uncrisped starch to remind you that they were once potatoes, the ice cream cone topped with a structurally unsound tower of soft-serve that drips everywhere, the corn dog with breading hot enough to burn the roof of your mouth even as the dog inside remains cold. I love the worn-down wooden building, stubbornly out of place in a neighborhood of stone structures, with colors that make it stick out like a beacon. Tastee-Freez is a beacon—and because of that, it’s a hub for impromptu get-togethers. It isn’t a place I ever plan to visit, but I end up there regularly enough that I wonder when the staff will start calling me by name. It’s where I go when I’m on my way to another part of town, or when I’m wandering around with no agenda; it’s where I go when I’m with friends and none of us knows what to eat; it’s where I can always count on running into a friend, and where I sometimes make new ones. If I’m nostalgic for anything about Tastee-Freez, it’s for the nights I drifted over there and stumbled into freewheeling conversations with people I know from the area. That sense of community keeps me returning to Tastee-Freez—as Logan Square gentrifies and condos blossom around the restaurant, it’s a precious reminder of what neighborhoods are really for. As parts of the city become inhospitable to the middle and lower classes, Tastee-Freez remains open to all. Not that it’s impervious to change—in late spring, the restaurant broke from the franchise and installed a new sign reading simply “The Freeze.” The soft-serve tastes the same. —LEOR GALIL

Signature Cocktails & Creative Pub Classics GRAND OPENING WEEKEND

LOCAL SPIRITS & BEERS

JUNE 24-26

kitchen open late until 2am (last call 1:30am)

OPENING WEEKEND SPECIALS!

$1 select draft · distilled burger 50% off

F R I & S AT DJ - 9PM-2 A M S T R E E T PA R K I N G

2 4 TA P B E E R S

F R I 5PM-2 A M • S AT & S U N 11 A M-2 A M

O U T D O O R S E AT I N G | S P O R T S T V | PA R T Y R O O M S & E V E N T S

14 8 0 W W E B S T E R • C H I C A G O •

3 DAYS OF THE FINEST

TICK ETS

LOCAL AND INTERNATIONAL

FRIDAY SAT/SUN

MUSIC, DANCE, FOOD, CULTURAL EXHIBITS,

CHILDREN 4–12 $ 5 CHILDREN UNDER 4 FREE

IRISH AND AMERICAN

IMPORT STORES AND CHILDREN’S ACTIVITIES.

$ 8 $15

773 -770 - 3703

SATURDAY

EILEEN IVERS

S U N D A Y

THE HIGH

KINGS JULY 8-9-10 NARROWBACKS F R I & S A T

COMEDY SHOWCASE with

FRI 6pm–1am | SAT 12pm–1am | SUN 11am–12am RAIN OR SHINE

Patti Vasquez from WGN Radio

SAT & SUN

cs@saic.edu

312.629.6170

A color is as strong as the impression it creates. Ivan Albright, SAIC Alum (1923)

SAT & SUN

irishfestchicago.com GIRSA TUPELO Follow us!

#81 LAWRENCE @ KILPATRICK

saic.edu/cs

@ MONTROSE–BLUE LINE

SEVEN MILES NORTH OF DOWNTOWN CHICAGO AT THE 90/94 SPLIT FREE OFFSITE PARKING (WITH SHUTTLES) | PAID ONSITE PARKING

Irish American Heritage Center

Be part of the country’s most inﬂuential and cutting-edge interdisciplinary art school. Adult continuing education classes in art, design and writing. Register now.

4626 NORTH KNOX AVENUE, CHICAGO (773)282-7035

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 59

ARTS & CULTURE

READER RECOMMENDED

b ALL AGES

Travis Turner and Samuel Taylor ò LIZ LAUREN

SMALL SCREEN

It’s not about O.J., it’s about us By DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

I THEATER

That old song and dance By BRIANNA WELLEN

ookingglass Theatre’s Thaddeus and Slocum: A Vaudeville Adventure certainly gets the vaudeville aspects right. When Lawrence E. Distasi—in a handlebar mustache and some turnof-the-century spandex—did a handstand on the railing of the balcony, the audience let out a gasp, then cheered and applauded madly. Our collective amazement made it feel like we were all back in 1908, easily dazzled and ﬁlled with hope that the defending champion Chicago Cubs would win the World Series. As Thaddeus and Slocum, Travis Turner and Samuel Taylor have the old song and dance down to a T, from the witty patter to the soft shoe to the (particularly impressive) acrobatics. The pair tumble across a raised platform, then ﬂip each other into the air, always landing with their feet on the ground, bowler hats in hand. The play, written by Lookingglass ensemble member Kevin Douglas, focuses on the duo as they go from busking on the streets of Chicago to playing the largest vaudeville theater in town. But it’s harder for Thaddeus and Slocum than most, because Thaddeus is black.

60 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

In 1908 there are few spots for performers of color, yet blackface is very much in fashion (Al Jolson would get his big break with a minstrel show the following year). Cut to Slocum’s scheme: the pair will pass as white by performing in blackface, never allowing anyone to see them without their makeup. And at ﬁrst, it works like a charm. They work their way up from a seedy nightclub to a burlesque to the biggest show in town, all without blowing their cover. It’s an examination of race, identity, and discrimination sprinkled with high-energy song-and-dance performances. But the story is slow to start, and the ending abrupt and unsatisfying, an unfortunate pair of bookends for a work otherwise ﬁlled with delightful showmanship. Thaddeus has trouble coming to terms with hiding his race, while Isabella (Monica Raymund), a light-skinned black woman, gladly passes as white to perform on white stages. And black duo Zeke and Nellie (Tosin Morohunfola and Sharriese Hamilton, two of the liveliest and most entertaining performers of the night) fully embrace their identity. The different characters’ varied

means of pursuing fame despite racial barriers is interesting and well worth exploring further—but in this instance every scene and conversation stops just short of being revelatory. I would have much preferred a two-hour variety show followed by a discussion about showbiz and race to a muddled story line interwoven throughout. All the same, the evening made me excited about the old days of theater, and Lookingglass’s cabaret setup transformed the space into something out of the past. It’s immensely satisfying to see a glamorous chanteuse go onstage in a gorgeous gown simply to deliver a song free of gimmicks. And there’s an important story at the heart of Thaddeus and Slocum—it just can’t stick the landing. vTHADDEUS AND SLOCUM: A VAUDEVILLE ADVENTURE Through 8/14: Wed 7:30 PM, Thu 2 and 7:30 PM (except 7/14, 7/28, and 8/11, 7:30 PM only), Fri 7:30 PM, Sat-Sun 2 and 7:30 PM (except Sun 7/10, 7/24, and 8/7, 2 PM only), Lookingglass Theatre, 821 N. Michigan, lookingglasstheatre.org, $30-$75.

v @BriannaWellen

t’s impossible not to think of Muhammad Ali when viewing O.J.: Made in America, filmmaker Ezra Edelman’s absorbing five-part, seven-and-a-half-hour documentary about the rise and fall of O.J. Simpson for ESPN’s venerable 30 for 30 series. When Ali died on June 3 at the age of 74, the world didn’t just mourn the loss of a gifted athlete, it also lamented the loss of a fiery political figure. He was someone who spoke truth to power, who through his actions declared that black lives matter, who refused to let anyone forget that he was both black and Muslim, no matter what the cost. Those convictions cost him dearly. That was a price O.J. Simpson refused to pay. Unlike his contemporaries Ali, Tommie Smith, John Carlos, Jim Brown, and Bill Russell, Simpson declined to speak out against racial and social injustices during the political upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s. He was disinterested in seeing himself as black, as part of a larger whole— until, that is, it became a defense strategy when he went on trial for the murder of his wife, Nicole Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994. As with every 30 for 30 installment, sports is the Trojan horse used to examine deeper matters, in this case, issues of race, class, sexuality, misogyny, and America’s culture of violence, particularly violence against women. Much of the first episode is spent exploring the racial tensions between LA’s black population and the LAPD, dating back to the 1940s. By examining the history of the LAPD reputedly recruiting officers at Klan rallies, the root causes of the 1965 Watts Riot, the 1991 murder of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins, and the ’91 beating of Rodney King and subsequent acquittal of the four police officers J

“Quite possibly Guirgis’ most accomplished work to date”

E G A T S N O

! W O N

– Entertainment Weekly

$35 TICKETS to performances June 24 – July 6

USE CODE: 25602

A twisty, raunchy comedy from the wildly original author of The Motherf**ker with the Hat By Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Adly Guirgis

| Directed by ensemble member Yasen Peyankov

Featuring ensemble members Tim Hopper and James Vincent Meredith with Victor Almanzar, Elena Marisa Flores, Audrey Francis, Lily Mojekwu and Eamonn Walker

steppenwolf.org | 312-335-1650 Corporate Presenting Sponsor

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 61

ARTS & CULTURE The School of the Art Institute’s truck; furniture from the Milwaukee-based Good Land Studio; trucks parked in front of the Merchandise Mart; LED lamp designed by Taylor MckenzieVeal ò DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

DESIGN

The Guerrilla Truck Show returns after a brief hiatus By DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

fter taking a hiatus in 2015, the Guerrilla Truck Show returned on June 14 during NeoCon, the annual commercial trade show at Merchandise Mart. About half a dozen U-Haul trucks lined up outside the front entrance of the Mart—their beds were ﬁlled with furniture, textile, and object designs from schools,

62 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

artists, and studios based in Chicago and Milwaukee. This year’s show was smaller than the ones held between 2005 and 2014 in Fulton Market, but it still teemed with eye-catching designs and layouts in tiny spaces. v

v @dascruggs

ARTS & CULTURE

continued from 60 who struck him, O.J.: Made in America deftly provides context for two things: why O.J. distanced himself from politics and his blackness in his heyday, and why the defense successfully engendered so much support for O.J. during his trial. Given that history and the buildup of such enormous and well-founded distrust in LA’s law enforcement on the part of the black community, the defense team’s theory that racist LAPD officers conspired to railroad a black man wasn’t that far-fetched. It was understandable that the case became more about race relations in America and less about Nicole and domestic violence. And that’s unfortunate. O.J. Simpson was a serial abuser, full stop. When they ﬁrst met, Nicole was 18, and he was still married to his ﬁrst wife, Marguerite (who wasn’t interviewed for this documentary— how different things might be if we had her perspective on all that has transpired). David LeBon, a friend and roommate of Nicole’s, mentioned that the night after O.J. and Nicole met, she came back with ripped jeans and told him O.J. had been “a little bit forceful.” O.J. terrorized Nicole throughout their entire marriage. Eight times the police made domestic violence calls to their house. And all eight times, the police left O.J. alone with Nicole afterward. Ironically, the same LAPD accused during the trial of conspiring to frame O.J. actually spent years working in his favor. Seduced by celebrity, power, and athletic prowess, the LAPD protected O.J. and covered up his abuse. In Nicole’s 911 calls, she sounds frightened, but also exasperated. It’s chilling to hear the resignation in her voice. She sounds like she knows she’s already lost, a point that hits home when the documentary reveals her handwritten will and photos of her bruised and battered face that she kept in a safe deposit box. The documentary shows

the crime scene photos of her body, drenched in blood, nearly decapitated. The brutality of her murder, revealed plainly and clearly for the first time in two decades, is absolutely horrifying. Those photos, along with store-surveillance footage of the murder of Harlins (whose killer received only probation) and archival interviews with black women whose houses were destroyed by LAPD officers in raids during the “war on drugs” of the 80s and 90s are all a heartbreaking indictment of the criminal justice system and its tendency to fail women over and over again, whether they’re black, white, rich, middle-class, or poor. All of these images taken together make for extremely difﬁcult, painful, and yet necessary viewing. What also stands out is the candor of so many of the interviewees, which include Nicole Simpson’s friends, O.J. Simpson’s friends and business associates, former LAPD officers (including Mark Fuhrman), and former prosecutor Marcia Clark. Many of the people interviewed make, at best, problematic declarations about race and class. Examples range from Fred Levinson, the director of Simpson’s Hertz commercials, saying O.J. didn’t have a “typical African look” to the CEO of Hertz, Frank Olson, saying “For us, O.J. was colorless. None of us looked at him as a black man” to Fuhrman saying that the King beating could’ve been prevented if officers had been allowed to use the choke hold. Zoey Tur, the reporter and helicopter pilot who ﬁlmed the infamous Bronco chase—and who is also a trans woman—makes a poignant connection between her transition and O.J.’s decline. “Very few human beings fall as far as O.J. Simpson,” she says. “I’ve fallen quite a bit transitioning. You go from a hero pilot to some tranny. So I’ve fallen somewhat myself. But this is an epic fall.” And what a fall it was. After O.J. was ac-

quitted of double homicide in 1995, his life spiraled into a fog of drug and alcohol abuse, bizarre reality-show appearances, transparently insincere attempts to ingratiate himself with black people, and a disastrous attempt to retrieve his sports memorabilia in Las Vegas. It was this attempt that led to a 33-year prison sentence for armed robbery and kidnapping. Ultimately, O.J.: Made in America is fascinating precisely because it isn’t really about one man’s spectacularly ugly fall from grace: It is about us. It is about society’s failure, even in 2016, to admit that racism is interwoven tightly into the fabric of this country and to reconcile how it continues to manifest itself in shocking, often brutal ways. It is about a culture of violence that runs deep in America, as we’ve seen once again in the wake of the tragic mass shooting in Orlando that targeted mostly Latino LGBT people, in the wake of the Rekia Boyds and Laquan McDonalds and Sandra Blands and Michael Browns and Trayvon Martins, in the wake of the Stanford rape case, in the wake of the Reader’s own investigation of 20 years of alleged abuse at Proﬁles Theatre. It is about our willingness to be seduced by celebrity, to look the other way when we see injustice because the perpetrator is handsome, charismatic, and gifted in ways that perhaps we wish we were. It is about America’s obsession with winning at all costs, no matter who gets hurt—or even killed—in the process. v R O.J.: MADE IN AMERICA All episodes streaming on espn.go.com.

v @dascruggs 164 North State Street

Between Lake & Randolph MOVIE HOTLINE: 312.846.2800

L’ATTESA

BAND OF OUTSIDERS

STARRING JULIETTE BINOCHE

JEAN-LUC GODARD’S GREAT FILM NEWLY RESTORED!

June 24 - 30

June 24 — 30

Fri, 6/24 at 2 pm; Sat, 6/25 at 7:45 pm; Sun, 6/26 at 3 pm; Mon, 6/27 at 8 pm; Tue, 6/28 at 8 pm; Wed, 6/29 at 6 pm; Thu, 6/30 at 8 pm

Fri, 6/24 at 2 pm & 6 pm; Sat, 6/25 at 3 pm; Sun, 6/26 at 5 pm; Mon, 6/27 at 8 pm; Tue, 6/28 at 6 pm; Wed, 6/29 at 8:15 pm; Thu, 6/30 at 6 pm

FINAL WEEK! • OUR LAST TANGO • THROUGH JUNE 30 BUY TICKETS NOW

www.siskelﬁlmcenter.org

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 63

PERVERT PARK sss Directed by Frida and Lasse Barkfors. 77 min. Facets Cinematheque,

1517 W. Fullerton, 773-281-4114, facets.org, $10 TICKLED ss Directed by David Farrier and Dylan Reeve. R, 92 min. Music Box, 3733 N. Southport, 773-871-6604, musicboxtheatre.com, $11

ARTS & CULTURE

offenders as people in need of care. Instead they’re demonized, ostracized, blackballed by employers, and endlessly harassed. One resident ﬁnds a bag of dead rats in his clothes dryer. Another resident, Bill Fuery, remembers how a father once drove into the park and pointed a gun at him; Fuery refused to ﬂinch, and after talking it through, the two men became friends. He exhorts his fellow residents to consider themselves ambassadors to the outside world: “You’ve gotta go out and let them see that you’re a human being.”

MOVIES

Shame faced

Two new documentaries reveal cycles of cruelty and control. By J.R. JONES

Pervert Park

y coincidence, two of the more provocative documentaries I’ve seen this year arrive in Chicago on Friday. Pervert Park, screening for one week at Facets Cinematheque, takes viewers inside Florida Justice Transitions, a Saint Petersburg trailer park that provides temporary housing for some 120 registered sex offenders. Tickled, which opens at Music Box, chronicles the efforts of two New Zealand journalists to uncover the truth behind “competitive endurance tickling,” a new sport based in Los Angeles, despite a series of legal threats from the sponsor. Both movies explore atypical sexual proclivities, whether they’re harmless (as in Tickled) or profoundly destructive (as in Pervert Park). But on a deeper level, these are really stories about power, shame, and the law. In Florida, adults convicted of sex crimes involving minors are prohibited from living closer than 1,000 feet to any school, park, playground, or day care center. No landlord wants a sex offender living in one of his properties, so people paroled from prison for sex crimes often can’t ﬁnd a decent place to live. ssss EXCELLENT

sss GOOD

Florida Justice Transitions was launched in the 1990s by Nancy Morais, whose own son faced that same predicament. As portrayed in Pervert Park, the facility offers its residents not only security—which, as social outcasts, they sorely need—but also the understanding and counsel of other people who share their experience. According to an end credit, the recidivism rate for residents of the trailer park is less than 1 percent, compared to 5 percent for all sex offenders nationwide (and 77 percent for all criminals). As the movie demonstrates, the term sex offender encompasses numerous crimes of differing severity. Jamie Turner, one of the five residents profiled in Pervert Park, says he answered a Craigslist ad for a sexual rendezvous with a 30-year-old woman, and as they texted back and forth, she offered up her underage daughter as a sex partner. The ad turned out to be bait for a police sting operation, and Turner, a seemingly mild-mannered graduate student in his early 20s, was convicted of soliciting a minor. At the opposite end of the spectrum lies Patrick Naughton, who recounts how he drove to Mexico hoping to find a pros-

ss AVERAGE

64 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

s POOR

•

titute and, frustrated in his search, abducted and raped a ﬁve-year-old girl. No resident’s story is more heartrending, or does more to lay bare the cycle of abuse, than that of Tracy Hutchinson, the only woman interviewed. From age ﬁve, she alleges, she was serially raped by her father and his friends, and before long she herself was sexually abusing her cousins. Her experiences with grown men, she confesses, “caused my body to want those same feelings, and I didn’t know how to make myself feel those feelings except for to act the same thing on someone else.” Ultimately she was convicted of molesting her eight-year-old son and sentenced to eight years in prison; according to Hutchinson, her son later molested a three-year-old child, and he’s now doing time for armed robbery. As she tearfully recalls, her last words to the boy before she lost custody were to tell him she was proud of him for coming forward. Watching all this, you may feel torn, because Hutchinson’s actions were so despicable. But just as the residents can move forward only by owning up to their crimes, Pervert Park forces viewers to acknowledge even the worst

ickled began when David Farrier, a TV journalist who covers pop culture in New Zealand, learned of a U.S. company called Jane O’Brien Media that was recruiting young, athletic men to take part in tickling videos. Participants were ﬂown to Los Angeles for a video shoot, lodged in a swank hotel, and paid $1,500 for their services, which consisted of being strapped down onto a bed and tickled by other young, athletic men. When Farrier contacted Jane O’Brien Media in hope of writing a story, he received a letter from one Debbie J. Kuhn noting his sexual orientation, which was a matter of public record, and declaring, “Association with a homosexual journalist is not something we will embrace.” Of course, this strange response only intrigued Farrier more, and as he investigated, he learned that Jane O’Brien Media was actually run by a German company that owned some 300 domain names devoted to tickling. When Farrier and his friend Dylan Reeve set out to make a documentary on the company, they received a cease-and-desist letter from its attorney in New York, followed by a visit from three O’Brien staffers. In a conference that Farrier recorded secretly, Kevin Clarke, the eldest and most aggressive of the three, threatens the filmmakers with a prolonged legal battle from his wealthy employer. “I’ve known a lot of rich people in my life,” says Clarke in a subsequent meeting that was also recorded clandestinely. “They don’t work by the same set of rules.” That’s putting it mildly: as Farrier and Reeve soon learn, Jane O’Brien takes a scorched-earth approach to anyone who crosses her. T.J. Gretzner, who participated in a tickling video, says that after he saw it on YouTube and asked the site to take it down, he became the target of endless harassment from Kuhn, including a letter to his employer asserting that he was a child molester.

WORTHLESS

Get showtimes at chicagoreader.com/movies.

ARTS & CULTURE

L AT E NIGHT

5#)#!2#/5# 11:00 PM # 0#*4 4#$") /-10' 11:30 PM '03 %#**-,*) 10:30 PM

Farrier finally hits pay dirt when he learns that Jane O’Brien and Debbie Kuhn don’t exist—the person behind the tickling videos is David P. D’Amato, the wealthy son of a prominent attorney. In 2001, D’Amato was convicted of computer fraud for launching a cyberattack against a Drexel University student who’d taken part in a tickle video produced by Terri DiSisto, another alias. Like Jane O’Brien, DiSisto ruthlessly harassed any troublemakers. Dave Starr, who helped recruit ticklers for DiSisto from 1999 to 2006, gives Farrier a bag full of hostile letters sent to his mother and a recording of a telephone robocall that threatened to expose the receiver’s relationship with the Jewish Starr, described by the caller as “hairy, horny, and hook-nosed.” Hal Karp, a former journalist who covered the story, recalls a pattern in which DiSisto cowed ticklers by promising to blanket the Internet with their videos. Reporter Deborah Scoblionkov, who chatted with DiSisto online, tells Farrier, “She was completely intoxicated with this power that she had to be so destructive against people.” Tickled made the news this past weekend when D’Amato and Clarke crashed the movie’s premiere at the Nuart theater in Los Angeles to denounce the filmmakers. Like Nick Broomfield, director of such tabloid documentaries as Kurt & Courtney and Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer, Farrier makes a story out of his own crusade to get the story, and the movie itself offers substantial evidence of his uneth-

ical behavior. He ambushes people on camera, records conversations without the participants’ knowledge, and includes a remark that was made off the record. On a website created to discredit Tickled, Clarke conducts an interview with one of the movie’s subjects, Jordan Schillachi, who alleges that Farrier paid him for his testimony, coached him through it, and smoked pot with him afterward. D’Amato, himself an attorney for a Long Island law firm, sued the filmmakers for defamation after the movie screened at Sundance in March. He can afford it—according to documents obtained by Farrier, D’Amato has nearly $6 million in his checking account alone—so this story is likely to continue for some time. But it may have begun years and years ago. In the final scene Farrier contacts D’Amato’s stepmother, who paints a revealing picture of him: he was an only child, unusually close to his mother, and had no girlfriends as far as the stepmother knew. His father wanted grandchildren. The stepmother, never identified by name, remembers D’Amato as a bullied kid: the other boys taunted him, and he once got stuffed into a locker at school. That sort of humiliation never goes away, and like sexual abuse, it can sometimes generate a cycle of cruelty. D’Amato has every right to protect his privacy, but is his privacy doing him any good? You’ve gotta go out and let them see that you’re a human being. v

.+&.(

RSM

David Farrier, Richard Ivey, and a tickle subject in Tickled.

www.BrewView.com 3145 N. Sheffield at Belmont

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

18 to enter 21 to drink Photo ID required

Fri, June 24 @ 6:00pm Mon-Thr, June 27-30 @ 6:30pm

Captain America: Civil War Fri, June 24 @ 8:45pm Mon-Thr, June 27-30 @ 9:05pm

Neighbors 2 Fri, June 24 @ 10:30pm

Clown

Upcoming Special 30th Anniversary Screening!

Fri, July 1 - Sun, July 3 at 8:00pm

Big Trouble In Little China

Tickets: http://bigtrouble30th.bpt.me

v @JR_Jones JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 65

JO MERSA MARLEY • RICA NEWELL RANOY GORD0N • ROCHELLE BRADSHAW • NICHOLAS LARAQUE

SPECIAL GUEST: AVA

WITH

THIS FRIDAY! JUNE 24 • PARK WEST 8:00pm • 18 & Over

THIS SATURDAY! JUNE 25 8:00pm • 18 & Over PARK WEST

MENDOZA JULY 13 • VIC THEATRE 8:00pm • 18 & Over

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 8:00pm • 18 & Over PARK WEST

New Album Hurt and The Merciless Available now

ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM!

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 9 • RIVIERA THEATRE 7:00pm • All Ages

ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM!

OCTOBER 11 ARAGON BALLROOM BUY TICKETS AT TICKETMASTER.COM • BY PHONE: 800-745-30000

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29 • RIVIERA THEATRE 8:30pm • All Ages

ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 11AM!

ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT NOON!

BUY TICKETS AT 66 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

Recommended and notable shows, and critics’ insights for the week of June 23

MUSIC

ALL AGES

Bob Dylan ò CHRISTOPHER POLK/GETTY

PICK OF THE WEEK

Brazilian singer Céu merges bossa nova and samba with Jamaican dub

THURSDAY23 Steve Gunn & the Outliners Promised Land Sound open. 9 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, $15.

ò LUIZ GARRIDO CAPA/ SIX DEGREE RECORDS

CÉU, KAUF

Fri 6/24, 8 PM, City Winery, 1200 W. Randolph, $25-$32. b

SULTRY BRAZILIAN SINGER CÉU located her sweet spot long ago, one in which rhythms seductively sashay with a snaking low end. The sensual grooves allow her gorgeous if limited voice to sprawl with a mix of seduction and languor—the marriage of bossa nova and samba with Jamaican dub has worked perfectly for her. The name of her new album, Tropix (Six Degrees), a contraction of “tropical” and “pixel,” underlines the components of her sound, but there’s nothing overly digital or blurred about the record. Made with Pupilo (drummer in the long-running Pernambuco band Nação Zumbi) and French producer Herve Salters (aka General Elektriks), the arrangements toggle quietly between samba rhythms and electronic accents, but it’s ultimately the singer’s presence and her infectious melodies that command attention. On “Arrastarte-Ei” chirpy electronics tangle with old-school organ stabs as Céu moves from whispery intonation to a nasal, restrained, soulful wail, while on the shuffling “Minhas Bics” she celebrates the cheap ballpoint pen as the tool that connects her to the world. —PETER MARGASAK

At first glance it seems like everything about Steve Gunn’s terrific new Eyes on the Lines (Matador) refers to life on the road, particularly those hours spent traveling between towns (the title of the album itself echoes Merle Haggard’s trucker classic “White Line Fever”). But Gunn actually uses the repetition of words like “path,” “direction,” “road,” and “street” in a broader sense—allowing himself to get lost—as his narrators eschew specifics of place to wander and explore the byways of their own minds rather than those of any town or city. Over the last few years Gunn has been transforming himself from a capable fingerstyle guitar player into a dusky folk-rocker, and Eyes on the Lines makes plain that he’s no longer wandering in that regard—he’s arrived. His rambling tunes go down easier than ever, rolling along like the wheels of a van carrying the band to the next gig, and for the first time his homespun vocals feel utterly natural and relaxed. Fluidly backed by Chicago guitarist Jim Elkington, bassist Jason Meagher, and drummer Nathan Bowles, Gunn creates music that breathes, chugs, and rolls with cosmic ease. —PETER MARGASAK

Dave Rempis, Joshua Abrams, and Avreeayl Ra 9 PM, Elastic, 3429 W. Diversey, $10 suggested donation. b Saxophonist Dave Rempis is one of the most intense fire breathers in free jazz, a musician who thrives in rhythmically agile settings where he can summon furious barrages of energy from his cohorts. His lung power is remarkable, and he can be as loud as any saxophonist I’ve heard. He showcases that power in his sturdy trio with bassist Joshua Abrams and drummer Avreeayl Ra, but also shows off a tender, restrained side that’s largely been absent since he first emerged in 1999 as the Vandermark 5’s unknown replacement for Mars Williams. Last week the trio issued Perihelion (Aerophonic), a double CD that’s a qualitative leap from their 2014 debut, Aphelion, particularly in its display

of increased rapport. The first disc is occupied by the 43-minute “Enceladus,” an ebb-and-flow marvel that shows how the members react to and build off one another’s most subtle utterances as well as their most explosive ones. Abrams’s ability to settle into deep ostinato patterns, gnarled high-velocity tangles, or even coolly walking lines results in plenty of propulsion for Rempis, though Ra, a percussionist who sees no dichotomy between swing and free time, can push the saxophonist even beyond that. The album’s second disc features contributions from keyboardist Jim Baker, whose significant history with the other musicians allows him to seamlessly join the fold. He’ll play with the trio tonight. —PETER MARGASAK

Jamila Woods 7 PM, Double Door, 1551 N. Damen, $15, $10 in advance. 18+

Tonight poet, teaching artist, and soul vocalist Jamila Woods celebrates the new Heavn (Closed Sessions). It’s billed as her solo debut, though you might recognize Woods’s enchanting voice if you listen to Chance the Rapper or Macklemore, both of whom have recently enlisted her to sing on tracks. But even if you’re unfamiliar with those contemporary hip-hop heavies, and even if you never listened to Woods’s previous soulpop band M&O (once known as Milo & Otis), her soothing vocals impart a warm familiarity. Her performances are so relatable and down-to-earth that even if you’ve never exchanged a single word with Woods it’s possible to feel like you’re sharing a special moment with her when you hear her sing. An empathetic approach enriches her soul-influenced pop songs and makes her most intimate material feel massive. On early Heavn single “Blk Girl Soldier” Woods uses the oppression women of color have to confront as a rallying cry; her brassy voice suggests there can be an end to the historical and systemic injustice, and that it’s necessary for everyone to join the fight. —LEOR GALIL Rock, Pop, Etc And the Kids, Sexy Fights, Truman & His Trophy, Peach Fuzz 9 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Jeﬀery Austin 7:30 PM, SPACE b

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 67

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

MUSIC continued from 67

Xenia Rubinos ò COURTESY WINDISH AGENCY

FESTIVALS

There's still plenty of sausage to go around B96 Summer Bash The long-running R&B and pop station hosts a stacked concert featuring hit makers like Ariana Grande, Calvin Harris, and Meghan Trainor. 6/26, Allstate Arena, 6920 Mannheim Rd., Rosemont, b96. cbslocal.com/summerbash, $30-$115. b Elston Avenue Sausage & Music Fest Though Hot Doug’s sausage-themed Dog Dayz of Summer was canceled this weekend, one festival still stands. Rock acts like Murder by Death, Local H, and Smoking Popes are the biggest names. 6/25-6/26, Elston between Saint Louis and Grace, cityofchicago.org, $5 suggested donation. Logan Square Arts Festival Xenia Rubinos (see page 71), Screaming Females, Blitzen Trapper, Open Mike Eagle, and Meat Wave are among the fest’s notable musical performers on the main stage, booked by the Whistler. 6/24-6/26, Illinois Centennial Monument, 2595 N. Milwaukee, logansquareartsfestival.com, $5 suggested donation. Old Saint Pat’s World’s Largest Block Party Proceeds beneﬁt, you guessed it, Old Saint Patrick’s Church. Passion Pit and JD McPherson headline. 6/25, UIC Festival Lot, 1145 S. Morgan, worldslargestblockparty.com, $40, $90 VIP.

68 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

Bad Company, Joe Walsh 7 PM, FirstMerit Bank Pavilion Beverly, Flowers, Bleach Party 9 PM, Hideout Deepspacepilots, Year of the Cobra, Hypnochron 8:30 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Deer Leap, Perspective, A Lovely Hand to Hold, Forfeit 9 PM, Burlington Doctor Death Crush, Smoke No. 7, Steamvalve Nation 8 PM, Martyrs’ Dumpstaphunk, Earphunk 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Eve 6 8 and 10:30 PM, City Winery b King’s X, Kings of Spade, Marbin, Riddle House 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Patti LaBelle, Commodores 7:30 PM, Ravinia Festival Metz, Muuy Biien, Brett Naucke 9 PM, Empty Bottle PJ Morton Trio 8:30 PM, Wire, Berwyn Nice Things, Little American Champ, Worn Spirit, Meristems 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon Supernatural Beings 8 PM, Emporium Arcade Bar Ten-Speed, Ladders, Ulta 8:30 PM, Township White Water Ramble, Terrapin Flyer 9 PM, Cubby Bear Hip-Hop Dalek, DJ Abilities 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Logan, Warhol.ss, Femdot 7 PM, Lincoln Hall b Rica Shay, Kaycee Ortiz, Cazwell, Mister Wallace, Big Dipper 7:30 PM, Manhole Dance Lady D, Gant-Man, John Simmons 10 PM, Smart Bar Blues, Gospel, and R&B Mali Music, EJ Jackson 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Experimental Gel Set, Andy Ortmann, Jeremiah Fisher, Anthony Janas, Peter Speer Noon, Savage Smyth Damon Locks 7:30 PM, Comfort Station b Classical Chicago Symphony Orchestra with the Chicago Symphony Chorus Riccardo Muti, conductor; Duain Wolfe, chorus director (Bruckner). 8 PM, also Sat 6/25, 8 PM and Sun 6/26, 3 PM, Symphony Center

FRIDAY24 Céu See Pick of the Week on page 67. Kauf opens. 8 PM, City Winery, 1200 W. Randolph, $25-$32. b Bob Dylan Mavis Staples opens. 7:30 PM, Ravinia Festival, Green Bay & Lake Cook, Highland Park, $49-$160. b Last month Bob Dylan released Fallen Angels (Columbia), his second consecutive survey of the Great American Songbook, and a suggestion that there’s more to his current act than simply paying homage to Frank Sinatra, which is how most people made sense of last year’s Shadows in the Night. Since few artists have demonstrated such mastery and knowledge of the enormity of American music this phase shouldn’t seem that surprising, even if five decades ago the repertoire would’ve been at odds with the roots and early rock ’n’ roll at Dylan’s aesthetic heart. The arrangements on the new album feature a casual postmodern approach, juggling various strands of pre-WWII pop, jazz, and country to support Dylan’s ragged and raspy J

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 69

FIND HUNDREDS OF

READER-RECOMMENDED

RESTAURANTS EXCLUSIVE VIDEO FEATURES AND SIGN UP FOR WEEKLY NEWS CHICAGOREADER.COM/FOOD

70 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

MUSIC

%GG' O ZR6O.NN8 [%%-L C%+K)+'...J368RUO61>MJ:NP

continued from 68

croon. On the one hand his tattered voice sounds absurd delivering these timeless melodies, but on the other his knack for phrasing is beyond compare; he could never work these songs like Sinatra, but he does bring something to them, especially with languid, small-group arrangements crawling behind him. Recent sets have liberally showcased this repertoire, undoubtedly crowding out the originals most fans want to hear—and while I can’t imagine Dylan will stick with this obsession for much longer, for the moment I’m satisﬁed. This is his ﬁrst appearance at Ravinia since 1964. —PETER MARGASAK

Xenia Rubinos Part of the Logan Square Arts Festival. 9 PM (set time), Illinois Centennial Monument, 2595 N. Milwaukee, $5 suggested donation. b On her knockout second album, Black Terry Cat (Anti-), beguiling Brooklyn singer Xenia Rubinos sharpens her knack for nonchalant genre juggling, colliding contemporary R&B, hard funk, and punk into one high-energy blur. Working again with drummer Marco Buccelli, who provides pitch-perfect rhythmic settings for her expansive ideas, Rubinos slyly delivers trenchant commentary about race in many of the tunes. The irresistible stutter of “Mexican Chef,” with its hard-rock update of early-80s South Bronx band ESG, includes the seemingly ebullient chorus “It’s a party across America / Bachata in the back,” though ultimately the track suggests a darker, catch-22 reality in today’s charged state of immigration “reform.” The lyrics break down a litany of unsavory things Latinos are subjected to: “Brown breaks his back, brown takes the flak, brown gets cut ’cause his papers are whack / Brown sits down, brown does frown, brown’s up in a hospital gown / Brown has not, brown gets shot, brown got what he deserved cause he fought.” On “Lonely Lover” Rubinos forges a delivery between Billie Holiday and Erykah Badu without stealing from either as she ruminates on a diﬃcult day during which she requests some space, while “Laugh Clown” follows her through the same sort of pressure-cooker misery, but with a sense of humor. Rather than embrace some positive bullshit, Rubinos acknowledges skepticism, singing, “Don’t know where I’m going, only where I’ve been / I know that cliche’s tired but I J

2>1 'IC) H; %@^

53U 'IC% H; %a-G@^

106 'IC# H; "@^

N_B RHWH?9=] XH?@a

53U %IE H; "@^

2>1%IC H; "a-G@^ %"-))+ -1( '$-,/& ./&1 0#*!

53U %I# H; #@^

:A^$\( 9@JJJ %I" K 2A M?,;;Y I 1&, <H\\,?^,\ I >_@$\H OA$=, %ICC K NV ;&, /$\, I .&$=!,Y :&H?^,?= I X$(&@_H\, %IC- K >@@_,F9;;,? 64@?,== I 1&,^ :A9_,, <AY= %I-G K <_HD! TH@H\ I RA*;,B I >9;9^\ 3,7,?$, #IE- K Z\H? .H7, I 3H; XH^^,? I R,7,? #IE# K <,__ <,__H]= <H?;AA! I 2H\D;$Q,B Z?9^F_,?=

5366 M>3SUOZ >1 1X6 5U6R8 2:XNNR RN1 >2XR>O8 ` Z366OR6>5

please recycle this paper

WE’RE WAITING FOR YOU. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? Sign up for classes at oldtownschool.org

LINCOLN SQUARE • LINCOLN PARK

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 71

JOIN US FOR A TRULY LOCAL EXPERIENCE WITH UNIQUE VENDORS AND NEIGHBORHOOD FOOD FAVORITES. PLUS A KID ZONE WITH GAMES AND FAMILY ACTIVITIES!

JULY 8, 9, 10 • 2016 ON LINCOLN AVENUE BETWEEN MONTROSE & WILSON AVENUE LINCOLN SQUARE, CHICAGO

FEATURING FOUR STAGES AND OVER 70 BANDS! LYDIA LOVELESS • CRACKER • DESSA MY BRIGHTEST DIAMOND • SARAH JAROSZ FARIS • DALE WATSON • DEBO BAND • ISRAEL NASH ADDITIONAL TICKET REQUIRED

DOLLY VARDEN • BONES JUGS • LUCKY DIAZ • LERA LYNN • TAJ WEEKES JODEE LEWIS • SHAUIT • LOS HACHEROS • VILLALOBOS BROTHERS DANCE LESSONS, JAMS, SING-A-LONGS & MORE! PLUS CRAFT BEERS FROM THESE LOCAL, MIDWEST BREWERIES!

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE VISIT

SQUAREROOTS.ORG

MAJOR SPONSORS:

Clif Bar & Co Havas Street Seman Violins

CHIRP Radio Macaroni Kid Chicago Bottles and Cans

EVENT PRESENTERS:

Community Christian Fountainhead The Book Cellar

Gold Tone Music Group Café Selmarie

72 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

PricewaterhouseCoopers Iowa Paciﬁc / Pullman Magellan

MUSIC continued from 71 feel it on my skin.” —PETER MARGASAK

Wussy North by North and Calliope open. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $8. As a native of Cincinnati, let me corroborate how much Wussy mean to the city. It’s not only because of the catalog of Christgau-adored records they’ve dropped on a label run by the predominant, beloved local record store Shake It!, it’s also that they’ve never stopped weaving the fabric of the city into their sound. Fronted by the dueling vocals of Lisa Walker and Chuck Cleaver, Wussy have long cultivated a bleeding, backwoods poeticism accented by an air of shoegaze and a plaintive touch of the tranquil south—the oppressive humidity of Cincinnati gently billowing in to wrap the snaking, gentle delay and mellow rhythms in a thick warmth. On their fine new record Forever Sounds one track might play both harrowing and delicate in its advance (“Dropping Houses”) while another turn will feature a melodic, gently rocking soliloquy (“Hello, I’m a Ghost”). The change of pace is undoubtedly a result of the trade-off of fronting duties between Walker and Cleaver, but though the differences from one vibe to another can occasionally seem subtle, the easy-flowing give-and-take is essential to Wussy’s mentality as a Cincinnati band. —KEVIN WARWICK Rock, Pop, Etc Animal City, Dry Summers, Drag Sounds, Life Partner 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon Assembly of Dust 11 PM, also Sat 6/24, 11 PM, Martyrs’ Blue October, Danny Malone 7 PM, House of Blues b Zella Day, Dreamers 8 PM, Lincoln Hall b Debility, Metalbrook, Roads of Solace 9 PM, Red Line Tap Den, Pinko, Bummer, Ribbonhead 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Giving Tree Band, Cerny Brothers, Sails 9 PM, Wire, Berwyn Steve Leaf & the Ex-Pats, Seth Bernard, Morgan Haner 10:15 PM, Beat Kitchen Magic Giant, Wild Skies 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ Neon Tetra, Johnny Derp, My Boy Elroy 9:30 PM, Double Door Netherfriends, Monster Mike, DJ Stain 8 PM, Emporium Arcade Bar F Nones, La Cosa, Onyou 9 PM, Township Options, Del Paxton, Alaska, Vivian K. 6 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Phish 7 PM, also Sat 6/25, 7 PM, Wrigley Field b Joshua Powell & the Great Train Robbery, Draft Week 7:30 PM, Martyrs’ Raq, Particle 11 PM, Metro Savagery, Genocide Pact, Pig Champion 11 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Bob Schneider, Steve Dawson 8 PM, also Sat 6/25, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Strand of Oaks 9 PM, Goose Island Brewpub F We Were Promised Jetpacks, Prism Tats 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ The Werks, Trees 10 PM, 1st Ward You, Ritual Howls, Hide, Staring Problem 9 PM, Burlington

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

Hip-Hop Domo Genesis 6 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club Dance Deorro, Trademark 10 PM, Sound-Bar Felix Da Housecat 10 PM, Spy Bar Tony Humphries, Michael Seraﬁni, Garrett David 10 PM, Smart Bar Anja Schneider, Dabura, Derek Specs, Steve Gerard, Frankie Vega 10 PM, Primary Nightclub Folk & Country Valentine Bennett 8 PM, Joe’s Bar Blues, Gospel, and R&B Slam Allen 9 PM, B.L.U.E.S. Corey Dennison 9:30 PM, Rosa’s Lounge Flat Cats 7:30 PM, Spirit of Music Garden, Grant Park F b Golden State Lone Star Review, Matt Hendricks 9 PM, Buddy Guy’s Legends Eddie Shaw & the Wolf Gang, Joanna Connor Blues Band 9 PM, also Sat 6/25, 9 PM, Kingston Mines Jazz Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, New Mastersounds 11:30 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Peter Erskine & Dr. Um 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Marquis Hill 9 PM, also Say 6/25, 8 PM, Green Mill Boney James & Roy Ayers 8 PM, the Venue at Horseshoe Casino Brian Lynch Quartet 9:30 PM, also Sat 6/25, 9:30 PM, Andy’s Jazz Club Mar Caribe, Matt Ulery’s Loom 9 PM, California Clipper Kermit Ruﬃns & the Barbecue Swingers 8 PM, SPACE b International Stephen “Raga” Marley, Jo Mersa Marley, Rica Newell 8 PM, Park West, 18+ Mathew Tembo & the Afro Routes, DJ Bashert 8:30 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Classical Grant Park Orchestra Carlos Kalmar, conductor (Mahler). 6:30 PM, also Sat 6/26, 7:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park b

SATURDAY25 Horse Meat Disco Honcho Residents open. 10 PM, Smart Bar, 3730 N. Clark, $16, $14 before midnight, $12 in advance. Many of the acts associated with the mid-to-late2000s disco revival have shifted course or slowed down (Hercules & Love Affair, Kelley Polar, LCD Soundsystem). Yet the London-based quartet Horse Meat Disco—the name doubles as a weekly Sunday-night residency at London gay club the Eagle—have maintained their devotion to the genre. DJs James Hillard, Luke Howard, Severino, and Jim Stanton have an unparalleled ability to unearth disco songs previously lost to the recesses of bargain bins and poppers-fogged memories: stuff like Italo-disco artist K.I.D’s “Hupendi Muziki Wangu?! (You Don’t Like My Music)” and Moesha actress Sheryl Lee Ralph’s 1984 club hit “In the Evening.” You can find these tracks and many others on HMD’S mix-CD series on Strut, the most recent installment of which, 2014’s Horse Meat Disco IV, is more ﬂamboyant and focused than any other edition. In recent years Horse Meat Disco have concentrated more on touring, a RinseFM radio show,

Come enjoyCome one of Chicago’s finest!

enjoy one of

MUSIC Wussy ò JOHN CURLEY

1800 W. DIVISION - (773) 486-9862

1800 W. DIVISION

Celebrating over Chicago’s 58 years of service ﬁnest! to Chicago!

(773) 486-9862

Thurs, Aug 30 ............ GUNNEL PUMPERS Sat, Sept 1 .................HIGH FIVES Celebrating over 61 years of service to Chicago! Sun, Sept 2 ................ BUCKMONDAY, NASTY AND JULY THE WHEAT DON’T FORGET! 4THTHINS Thurs,PHYLLIS’ Sept 6 ............. SMILING BOBBY AND MUSICAL INN PRESENTS:

HIS BLUESALL MACHINE THE 30TH ANNUAL STAR JAM!

and their own edits—released on their eponymous imprint—but it’s their crate-digging chops that are of legend. And where most disco DJs keep things decidedly straighter—more postpunk and electro, sans gaudiness and glitz—HMD always reference the genre’s beginnings in gay clubs. There are few acts better suited to spin at Smart Bar on the night before the Pride Parade. —TAL ROSENBERG Rock, Pop, Etc Assembly of Dust 11 PM, also Fri 6/24, 11 PM, Martyrs’ Jimmy Buffett & the Coral Reefer Band, Huey Lewis & the News 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre Capital Soiree, Karma Wears White Ties, Quiet Hours, Dad Genes 5:15 PM, Wire, Berwyn Paul Cebar Tomorrow Sound 8 PM, SPACE b The Curls, Deadbeat 8:30 PM, Hungry Brain Dark Star Orchestra 8 PM, Park West, 18+ Gavin DeGraw, the Fray 6:30 PM, Ravinia Festival Disinter, Putrid Pile, Face of Oblivion, Deadhand System 9 PM, Wire, Berwyn Dopapod 10:30 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ EGi, North 41 11 PM, Schubas, 18+ Selena Gomez, Bahari 7:30 PM, United Center b Hitsleep, Rev Gusto, Bank Notes, River Snakes 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Hydrangea Benison, Isosceles Kramer 7 PM, Martyrs’ Karen Meat, Hungry Mountain, Easy Fruit, Bernie & the Wolf 8 PM, Red Line Tap Phish 7 PM, also Fri 6/24, 7 PM, Wrigley Field b Pink Talking Fish 11:30 PM, the Vic, 18+ Pipe, Uproars Revenge 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Problem People, White Mystery 10 PM, Cole’s F Reverend Horton Heat, Koffin Kats, Unknown Hinson, Lincoln Durham 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Richard Vain, Tight Phantomz, Love of Everything, Forgotten Species, Noon, Burlington Rooks, Marcus Alan Ward 7 PM, Schubas Vic Ruggiero, Mono in Stereo, Indien 8 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Bob Schneider, Steve Dawson 8 PM, also Fri 6/24, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Rory Scovel 10 PM, Beat Kitchen Soul Glo, Ghost of a Dead Hummingbird, Swells, Dorms, Hit School 6:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Tiny Moving Parts, Prawn, Free Throw, Island of Misfit Toys 6 PM, Beat Kitchen b Turnspit, Lights Over Bridgeport, Cellars, Emblems 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon Whilk & Misky, Hood Smoke 10 PM, Lincoln Hall Hip-Hop Killah Priest, Bryan Ford Band, Pugs Atomz, Awdazcate 9:30 PM, Subterranean Dance Oliver Giacomotto, RJ Pickens, Hummingbird 10 PM, Primary Nightclub Marlo, Jorn Von Deynhoven 10 PM, Sound-Bar

Folk & Country Dan Whitaker & the Shinebenders 6 PM, Cole’s F Blues, Gospel, and R&B NuBlue Band, Dano Lomardo 9:30 PM, Buddy Guy’s Legends Eddie Shaw & the Wolf Gang, Joanna Connor Blues Band 9 PM, also Fri 6/24, 9 PM, Kingston Mines Sugar Blue Band 10 PM, Rosa’s Lounge Jazz Dimensions & Extensions 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ F Marquis Hill 8 PM, also Fri 6/24, 9 PM, Green Mill Brian Lynch Quartet 9:30 PM, also Fri 6/24, 9:30 PM, Andy’s Jazz Club Kermit Ruﬃns & the Barbecue Swingers 9 PM, FitzGerald’s Mars Williams 3 PM, Corbett vs. Dempsey F b International Carpacho y su Combo 7:30 PM, Spirit of Music Garden, Grant Park F b

SUNDAY26 RLYR Cloakroom headline; RLYR and Electric Hawk open. 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, $10. 17+

BANDS MONKEY STARTFIST AT NOON. Fri, Sept 7 .................. FRIDAY, JUNE 9 24................ ...............DANNY DRAHER BAND SENT - CD RELEASE PARTY Sun, Sept NOBODY NOBODY SATURDAY, JUNE 25 ..........ROCKIN BILLY AND HIS WILD COYOTES Wed, Sept 12 ..............ELIZABETH HARPER’S SUNDAY, JUNE 26 .............DJ WHOLESOME RADIO LITTLE THING Thu, Sept 13 ..............BENYAMIN THE FLABBY HOFFMAN SHOW HERST THURSDAY, 30..........MIKE FELTON Sat, SeptJUNE 15 ............... HARMONIOUS FUNK FRIDAY, JULY 1...................PETE BERWICK Sun, Sept 16 ..............TONY DOSORIO QUARTET SATURDAY, JULY 2..............THE TELEPATHS Fri, Sept 21 ................ JAGWEEDS WEDNESDAY, JULY 6..........JON RARICK NONET FRIDAY, JULY 22 8...................THE DHARMAS Sat, Sept ............... CHUCK’S GARAGE SATURDAY, JULY9...............LOST IN THOUGHT Sun, Sept 23 ..............DJ WHOLESOME RADIO SUNDAY, JULY 10...............HEISENBERG UNCERTAINTY PLAYERS Thurs, Sept 27 ...........GIRLS ON BICYCLES MONDAY, JULY 11..............RC BIG BAND TUESDAY, FLABBY HOFFMAN SHOW Fri, SeptJULY 2812..............THE ................ MIKE POWELL AND THE HEADHUNTERS THURSDAY, 14 ...........QUIET OAK Sat, SeptJULY 29 ............... UNIBROW EVERY MONDAY AT 9PM ANDREW JANICK QUARTET JoeEVERY NagelTUESDAY Artist of AT the8PM Month Open withJON Susie Gomez OPENMic MICTuesday HOSTEDatBY8pJIMI AMERICA

3855 N. LINCOLN

martyrslive.com

THU, 6/23

SMOKE NO. 7, STEAMVALVE NATION FRI, 6/24 - 7:30PM

JOSHUA POWELL & THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, DRAFT WEEK SAT, 6/25 - 7PM - ALL AGES

Chicago postmetal supergroup RLYR began as an inauspicious collaboration between Pelican guitarist Trevor Shelley de Brauw and Locrian drummer Steven Hess. The two were invited to perform a duo improvisation at Milwaukee’s experimental Utech Records Music Festival in 2013, and considering both juggle plenty of other creative projects, the partnership could have ended with that one show. But now, three years later—and having since added busy bassist Colin DeKuiper (Bloodiest, ex-Russian Circles)—Shelley de Brauw and Hess welcome their first full-length, Delayer (Magic Bullet). The RLYR handle—inspired by Relayer, which Shelley de Brauw describes as one of the lesser-loved albums by prog-rockers Yes— hints at the group’s desire to push beyond the conﬁnes of metal. Delayer is heavy, yes, but RLYR employ shapeless feedback, progressive suites, elegiac melodies, and radiant bursts of noise in order to bring the hammer down. The record unloads cannonballs of catharsis, and even the transition between the surging gallop of opener “Slipstream Summer” and the shape-shifting ecstatic noise of the title track brims with unseen force. —LEOR GALIL Rock, Pop, Etc Blood on the Dance Floor, Steven Joseph, Brokencyde 5:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club b

HYDRANGEA BENISON, ISOSCELES KRAMER FRI, 6/24 & SAT 6/25 - 11PM - PHISH AFTERSHOWS

ASSEMBLY OF DUST MON, 6/27

CORMAC MCCARTHY, KILGUBBIN BROTHERS TUE, 6/28

FALL CLASSIC, ODE, JAGGERY WED, 6/29

THESE PEACHES, ADAM EZRA GROUP, TINY MILES TRIO

THU, 6/30

GREAT MOMENTS IN VINYL PRESENT VAN MORRISON’S “ASTRAL WEEKS” & “MOONDANCE” JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 73

JUST ANNOUNCED

ON SALE AT NOON THURSDAY 6.23 ON SALE TO VINOFILE MEMBERS TUESDAY 6.21

8.22 CHICAGO SINGS: THE BEATLES PORCHLIGHT MUSIC THEATRE FUNDRAISER 10.7 TONY LUCCA & ALEX DEZEN W/ SPECIAL GUEST CHRISTIAN LOPEZ 10.20 AN ACOUSTIC EVENING W/ DONAVON FRANKENREITER 6:30PM & 9PM 11.3 RIK EMMETT OF TRIUMPH 12.11-14 LOS LOBOS

COMING SOON David Broza

Songs & Stories An All Request Show 6.28

The Verve Pipe

DON’T MISS...

6.29 ROBERT CORNELIUS & FRIENDS PRESENT THE MUSIC OF PRINCE

6.27

6.30

The Wailers

6.24 6.30 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.6 7.8 7.10-11 7.13 7.14-15 7.15

CÉU W/ SPECIAL GUEST KAUF THE WAILERS FUNKADESI TALIB KWELI W/ DJ JAMAL SMALLZ - 7PM & 10PM IAN MAKSIN W/ SPECIAL GUEST GABRIEL DATCU - 7:30PM HOLLYWOOD NIGHTS - A TRIBUTE TO BOB SEGER TERRI CLARK - MEET AND GREET AVAILABLE AN EVENING WITH MACY GRAY BONERAMA AARON NEVILLE DUO TEN YEARS OF TEASE THE CHICAGO STARLETS REUNION SHOW - 11:30PM 7.19 AL STEWART 7.20 THE REAL DEAL STARRING TEXAS LEGENDS REVEREND HORTON HEAT & DALE WATSON 7.21 DARRELL SCOTT W/ SPECIAL GUEST PETER MULVEY 7.22 RICH ROBINSON BAND W/ SPECIAL GUEST BONNIE BISHOP 7.23-24 JACKOPIERCE 7.27 ZOSO - THE ULTIMATE LED ZEPPELIN EXPERIENCE

1200 W RANDOLPH ST, CHICAGO, IL, 60607 | (312).733.WINE

74 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

MUSIC

bottom lounge ONSALE FRI 06.24

titus andronicus finish ticket

w / run river north ONSALE NOW

Invisible Guy

kamasi washington

ò MARTIN PHILLIPS

official pitchfork after party

the sheepdogs w / quaker city night hawks

MONDAY27 Invisible Guy 7:30 PM, Experimental Sound Studio, 5925 N. Ravenswood, $10, $5 students and members. b One way veteran improvisers can prevent predictability is to keep their ears open to younger generations. That’s certainly a discipline that’s made Bay Area clarinetist Ben Goldberg one of the most con-

sistently rewarding players of the last few decades. Since forming the great New Klezmer Trio 25 years ago—injecting traditional Jewish music with a bold improvisational ethos—he’s regularly recharged his music with new ideas and new collaborators. His recent trio Invisible Guy, with keyboardist Michael Coleman and drummer Hamir Atwal, is his latest such project, and the group’s rich new album Knuckle Sandwich (BAG Production) gets plenty of juice from its junior members. Goldberg and Coleman wrote most of the ten pieces, but you can hear a contemporary vitality coursing through the older material too. For example, the lacerating take on “Hocus Pocus” features Goldberg elucidating composer Steve Lacy’s patient lines while Coleman’s electric keyboard and Atwal’s spazzy runs bring a clenched tension and contrasting vibe. The four pieces by the clarinetist are marked by episodic richness, with pretty, sometimes mournful melodies unfolding like classic jazz balladry. And thanks to overdubbed lines and electronic eﬀects the performances don’t sound remotely old-fashioned. —PETER MARGASAK

Eddie Palmieri Salsa Orchestra Ecos del Paciﬁco open. 6:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph. F b Eddie Palmieri’s career consists of one forward-thinking milestone after another. An institution in Latin music, the New York pianist has also emphasized connections between jazz, soul, and African music. During the 60s, trombones were prominently featured in Latin music—and we have Palmieri to thank for that innovation. And while he’s long been lauded for his groundbreaking band La Perfecta, another phase of his career has recently been unearthed by today’s rare-groove DJs: when the Latin boogaloo sound swept NYC a little later that decade, Palmieri was right in the mix with the album Champagne, out on the Tico label. In the early 70s he formed the heavily political Harlem River Drive, who released a couple of albums that stared the time’s funk and jazz movements dead in the eye. Palmieri didn’t just jump on new developments of the Latin sound, he anticipated them, and in a ﬁeld where musicians are prone to add a backbeat or remake an inexplicable pop hit, Palmieri can accommodate almost any genre without a trace of cynicism. For that reason, he’s an excellent starting point when it comes to Latin music. —JAMES PORTER J

9/22

Erwin Helfer / Barrelhouse Chuck with Billy Flynn / Gospel Keyboard Masters The Sirens Records CD release show The Pines

VISIT OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG TO BUY TICKETS! FRIDAY, JUNE 24 & SATURDAY, JUNE 25 8PM

Bob Schneider

with special guest Steve Dawson

THURSDAY, JUNE 30 7:30PM

06.25 HITSLEEP

Deeply Rooted Dance Theater

REV GUSTO / THE BANK NOTES / RIVER SNAKES

continued from 73

JUST ADDED • ON SALE FRIDAY! 9/10

06.24 WE WERE PROMISED JETPACKS PRISM TATS

Centavrvs 7:30 PM, Double Door b Anthony D’Amato, Woodrow Hart & the Haymaker 8 PM, Schubas Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration 7:30 PM, Ravinia Festival Lissie 8 PM, Lincoln Hall b The Life and Times, Magnet School 9 PM, Hideout Music Band, Blackglass 9 PM, Empty Bottle Outer Spaces, Astrobrite, Daisy Glaze 7:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Rad Trads 7 PM, SPACE b Ska-Lers, Serious Jazz Combo, Pascal Pahl Group, 3 PM, Hedlites 5 PM, House of Blues b So Pretty, Vast Canvas, Mykele Deville 8 PM, Emporium Arcade Bar F Talk to You Never, Aiming or Average, Action/ Adventure 5:30 PM, Wire, Berwyn Turnover, Sports, Secret Space, Recreational Drugs 5:30 PM, Subterranean b Vamplifier, Puritan Pine, Empire Smalls 9 PM, Burlington Folk & Country Dry Branch Fire Squad 5 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Blues, Gospel, and R&B Lalah Hathaway Early show sold out. 6 and 9 PM, City Winery b Jazz Cortex 9 PM, Hungry Brain Chad McCullough, Matt Ulery, and Jeremy Cunningham 9 PM, Whistler F Cameron Pfiffner’s Marco Polo 9:30 PM, California Clipper Mark Shippy 9 PM, the Owl F International KAIA String Quartet with Richard Scofano 5 PM, Spirit of Music Garden, Grant Park F b Classical Aperiodic 8:30 PM, Constellation

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

SCHOOL OF ROCK ADULT PROGRAM

Emerging Choreographers Preview Performance In Szold Hall

NO REGRETS

SUNDAY, JULY 10 5 & 8PM

FREELANCE WRESTLING PRESENTS

Sarah Jarosz

06.26 THE LATE STAKES

07.08 COMBAT ZONE VS FREELANCE WRESTLING 07.09 PITY SEX PWR BTTM / PETAL

07.10 THE PLOT IN YOU

SATURDAY, AUGUST 13 7 & 10PM

Hot Tuna Acoustic

ERRA / SYLAR / INVENT, ANIMATE

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 8PM

1833 PRESENTS

Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin

07.14 XXYYXX

LUMINATE / EDAMAME UPSTAIRS AT BOTTOM LOUNGE

07.14 TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

THE STONE FOXES / MAIL THE HORSE

07.15 YOKO AND THE OH NO’S THE NOISE FM / SMOKER / MASSES

07.16 NETHERFRIENDS

TREE / BRIAN FRESCO / JON JAMES / FEMDOT / A.M. EARLY MORNING / DJ DAMNAGE UPSTAIRS AT BOTTOM LOUNGE

07.16 THE DYES

DJ KILLER DILLER RICO / DJ GENTLEMAN JOHN BATTLES THE NOISE PRESENTS

07.20 I PREVAIL

THE WHITE NOISE / MY ENEMIES & I BOTTOM LOUNGE, SILVER WRAPPER & C3 PRESENT AN OFFICIAL LOLLAPALOOZA AFTERSHOW

07.30 LETTUCE 08.13 THE FALL OF TROY ‘68 / ILLUSTRATIONS

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

6/24 Global Dance Party: Mathew Tembo and the Afro Routes 6/24 The Emergent Series: Shantira Jackson, Miah Luz, Wes Perry, Vanessa Vincent, Saint Rodriguez and Nymphy Marvel Concert at 909 W Armitage Ave 6/26 Dry Branch Fire Squad 8/6 Laketown Buskers 9/17 Iain Matthews and Plainsong with Andy Roberts

WORLD MUSIC WEDNESDAY SERIES FREE WEEKLY CONCERTS, LINCOLN SQUARE

6/29 Cody Blackbird

OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG JOIN US IN LINCOLN SQUARE!

08.27 ENVY ON THE COAST 09.22 MOVITS! SIDEWALK CHALK

09.25 ANTHONY GREEN

MAT KEREKES / SECRET SPACE

10.08 THE AMITY AFFLICTION

BEING AS AN OCEAN / HUNDREDTH / TROPHY EYES / DEADSHIPS

1833 PRESENTS

10.11 PANTHA DU PRINCE LIVE 10.18 TESSERACT AN EVENING WITH

11.11 SLOAN

www.bottomlounge.com 1375 w lake st 312.666.6775

Featuring:

LYDIA LOVELESS CRACKER DESSA

MY BRIGHTEST DIAMOND • FARIS DALE WATSON • DEBO BAND • DOLLY VARDEN LITTLE MISS ANN • LUCKY DIAZ • LERA LYNN TAJ WEEKES • LOS HACHEROS VILLALOBOS BROTHERS • AND MANY MORE!

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 75

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

MUSIC continued from 75

JUNE 23RD

DUMPSTAPHUNK W/ EARPHUNK

JUNE 24TH

KARLDENSON'STINYUNIVERSE

W/THE NEW MASTERSOUNDS

JUNE 25TH

DOPAPOD

JUNE 28TH

MICHAEL FRANTI & SPEARHEAD’S SOULROCKER

JUNE 29TH

THESMOKERSCLUBTOUR

W/CAMRON, THE UNDERACHIEVERS, G HERBO, SMOKE DZA, NYCK CAUTION

JULY 12TH

VIOLENTFEMMES:

A BENEFIT FOR CHICAGO COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS

JULY 14TH

CHICAGO OPEN AIR

JULY 21ST

NO RE$T US TOUR: DOK2 & THE QUIETT

JULY 24TH

ZAKK WYLDE:THE BOOK OF SHADOWS II TOUR

JULY 27TH

YEASAYER

W/ DAY WAVE

WWW.CONCORDMUSICHALL.COM 2047 N. MILWAUKEE | 773.570.4000 76 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

Rock, Pop, Etc Cimorelli 7 PM, Schubas b Gal Gun, Barking Cat, Troy Anderson 8 PM, Township Gnar Wave Rangers, 1-800-BAND, Yoko & the Oh No’s 9 PM, Empty Bottle Daniel Knox, Hue, Braden Coucher 8 PM, Hungry Brain Mako Sica, Akosuen, Aerial Ruin, Well Yells 9 PM, Burlington Cormac McCarthy, Kilgubbin Brothers 7 PM, Martyrs’ Sharmon Jarmon, Samo G, D-Rob, DJ Blk Soldier 7 PM, the Promontory Folk & Country David Broza 8 PM, City Winery b Robbie Fulks 7 PM, Hideout Jazz Jarod Bufe, Tim Stine, Matt Ulery, and Quin Kirchner 9:30 PM, Whistler F Marquis Hill Blacktet 9:30 PM, California Clipper F Lovely Socialite, Gerrit Hatcher Trio 9 PM, Elastic b Classical Chartreuse 7:30 PM, Constellation F Juilliard String Quartet 7:30 PM, Ravinia Festival b

TUESDAY28 F/I/P Joshua Abrams opens. 9 PM, Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont, $10. On their recent solo recordings electric guitarist Bill Nace (Body/Head, Vampire Belt) and electronic musician Jake Meginsky (Vapor Gourds) both set up repetitive systems only to disrupt them. Apocalypse Rose (Lenka Lente), the three-inch CD Nace contributed to accompany a tiny, pocket-size book by poet Charles Plymell, features the signal of his strummed guitar separated into bands of blurry sound by multiple passes through a delay. And on Meginsky’s recent cassette Seven Psychotropic Sinewave Palindromes (NNA Tapes) bursts of white noise, quivering sine tones, and sporadic beats from an 808 kick drum take turns sidetracking each other—the piece sounds like it’s searching for the dance floor but keeps ending up in a bird sanctuary or racquetball court. The two men have been improvising together since the early 2000s, first in X.O.4, a trio with percussionist John Truscinski, and more recently as the duo F/I/P. They’ve released just one half-hour-long cassette, but YouTube videos of recent performances reveal that while neither man has completely forsaken playing against the grain, their rapport is so strong that the music they make together absorbs dissenting bursts of beats, echoes, or feedback into an inexorable flow of molten sound. —BILL MEYER Rock, Pop, Etc Animal in Me, Set to Stun 6 PM, Wire, Berwyn Fall Classic, Ode, Jaggery 8 PM, Martyrs’ Michael Franti & Spearhead, Chali 2na & the Funk Hunters 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Ladyhawke, Psychic Twin 9 PM, Schubas Mannequin Pussy, Ron Gallo, Lifestyles 9 PM, Empty Bottle

Eddie Palmieri ò ERIK VALIND

Meatbute with Bethany Thomas 9 PM, Hideout Slushy, Peach Fuzz, Electric Sheep 9 PM, East Room F Verve Pipe 8 PM, City Winery b We Are the Willows 8 PM, Subterranean Blues, Gospel, and R&B Christopher LeMark Xperience 8 PM, the Promontory Jazz Marquis Hill 5:30 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art F b Greg Ward Quintet 9:30 PM, Whistler F International Lila Downs with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra 7:30 PM, Symphony Center

WEDNESDAY29 Rock, Pop, Etc Boy & Bear, Hannah Georgas 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Cheating at Solitaire, Real Bad Real Fast, Stock Footage, Aces 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon Chevrons 6 PM, Whistler F Chyomin, Mookie Betts, Psycho Bearhug 9 PM, Red Line Tap F Cody Blackbird 8:30 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music F b Robert Cornelius 8 PM, City Winery b Kinky Love, Billy Yost, Romero Dance Cheetah, Jayson Kramer 7:30 PM, Schubas, 18+ Listener, Red Sweater Lullaby, Dan Smith, Jon Terrey 6:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Jerry Paper & Easy Feelings Unlimited, Dougie Poole 9 PM, Empty Bottle Pillowhammer, House & Land, Caleb Willitz 9 PM, Hideout These Peaches, Adam Ezra Group, Tiny Miles Trio 8 PM, Martyrs’ Thunderroads, Mama, Dino’s Boys 9 PM, Double Door Underﬁre, Ever Burning Bright, Taste of Ink 6 PM, Wire, Berwyn Valient Thorr, Pears, Beast Warrior, Huntsmen 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Hip-Hop Bas, Cozz, Earthgang, Hics, Ron Gilmore 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 18+ Cam’ron, Underachievers, G Herbo, Smoke Dza, Nyck Caution 7 PM, Concord Music Hall b Sage, the 64th Wonder; Vex; Baer Coon the Ewokk; Erik White; Moecyrus; Mister Mag; Novatore 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Jazz Flat Earth Society 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Classical Grant Park Orchestra with Juho Pohjonen Carlos Kalmar, conductor (Rimsky-Korsakov, Chopin). 6:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park b v

FOOD & DRINK

PORK & MINDY’S

1623 N. Milwaukee, 773-799-8759, porkandmindys.com

REVIEW

Pork & Mindy’s brings the bacon to Bucktown By JULIA THIEL

“Tot’tine” at Pork & Mindy’s ò JULIA THIEL

ut a pig on it” could be the motto at Pork & Mindy’s, the Bucktown sandwich shop from the Food Network’s Jeff Mauro, aka the “Sandwich King.” In addition to smoked pork (available in sandwiches, atop tater tots, and as an add-on to the salads), the quick-service spot makes its own candied bacon (aka “Pig Candy”), which is heavily deployed in the previously mentioned sections of the menu, in two of the three milk shakes, and served straight up.

Mauro reportedly intends to start an empire; a second Pork & Mindy’s location in Irving Park is already in the works, and there are plans to build more locations around the country—and maybe the world—in the near future. (The soon-to-open Museum Campus food court will include one of them.) Maybe that’s why the focus seems to be less on the food than on surface details like an industrial-chic aesthetic highlighting local art, cutesy names (Porknado shake, anyone?), and a wide

array of Pork & Mindy’s barbecue sauces (also available retail!). A soda fountain is dedicated entirely to Jones Soda; spend enough time experimenting with various ﬂavor combinations and maybe you won’t notice that most of the food is mediocre at best. In the restaurant’s defense, however, it serves one of the few renditions of poutine that I’ve actually enjoyed: the “tot’tine” solves the Canadian import’s perpetual sogginess problem by swapping out fries for

more substantial tater tots. The mozzarella cheese curds weren’t as melted as I would’ve liked, but the gravy is more than respectable—especially considering that it’s vegetarian—and pickled red onions provide some welcome acidity. The “French toast” bun for a smoked chicken sandwich didn’t taste anything like the vanilla, maple, and bourbon listed on the menu—but at least it wasn’t too sweet, and the chicken made an excellent vehicle for the barbecue sauces. And while the Pig Candy crumbled on top tasted oddly gamy, pickled onions and a tart, mildly spicy green-apple relish helped balance it out. The smoked lamb, though, had the texture of a wet towel and only slightly more flavor; it’s served on pita bread with an equally tasteless tzatziki sauce. As for the milk shake . . . just because you can put bacon on something doesn’t mean that you should. The Turtle Porknado combines nearly imperceptible amounts of caramel and chocolate sauces with vanilla ice cream, topping the whole thing with house-made candied pecans—which helped to salvage the otherwise uninteresting shake—and Pig Candy, which made it taste unpleasantly porky. Still, I suspect that Mauro and his team know what they’re doing: if there’s one thing people love, it’s bacon (though it’s a toss-up whether they prefer to actually eat it or just talk about how awesome it is). Pork & Mindy’s is more concept than restaurant, easily recognizable and reproducible. The food, it seems, is mostly an afterthought. v

v @juliathiel JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 77

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

FOOD & DRINK RECIPE

ManBQue’s elote wings soar By MIKE SULA

Elote wings by Patrick McBride of ManBQue and Pork Shoppe ò CLAYTON HAUCK

ELOTE WINGS

MAKES 32 WINGS 12 OUNCES MOJO CRIOLLO MARINADE (FOUND IN ANY SELF-RESPECTING SUPERMERCADO) 1 BUNCH CILANTRO, CUT ABOVE THE TWIST TIE 4 CLOVES GARLIC 3 POUNDS WINGS, SEPARATED INTO FLATS AND DRUMETTES (TIPS DISCARDED) 3 PACKETS SAZON CON AZAFRAN 1 12-OUNCE PACKAGE FROZEN SWEET CORN KERNELS (LOOK FOR GOLD-AND-WHITE MIX) 1 CUP HEAVY CREAM 1 CUP COTIJA CHEESE 1 CUP MAYONNAISE SALT AND PEPPER, TO TASTE TAJÍN OR CHILE POWDER, TO TASTE

few years back I had the pleasure of judging a hot dog competition at Schubas. Among the competitors were a few dudes from the men’s grilling and drinking collective ManBQue who’d won the previous year. Still, I was skeptical of their entry, a classic Chicago-style hot dog rejiggered as a panfried gyoza. Seemed pretty gimmicky to me, but I’ll be damned if they didn’t nail it. Stuffed with a mixture of ground hot dog, onion, relish, and tomatoes, drizzled with mustard, and garnished with celery salt and sport peppers,

78 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

it tasted exactly like it had been dragged through the garden. They won again, by unanimous decision. That gyoza recipe, along with 14 other hot dog variants is included in their second cookbook, Eat Street: The ManBQue Guide to Making Street Food at Home, by John Carruthers, John Scholl, and Jesse Valenciana. Like their first collection, ManBQue: Meat. Beer. Rock and Roll., it’s full of similarly appealing, innovative, sometimes goofy dishes, always designed to accompany intoxicating beverages (or other things). With 200 recipes, “street

food” here is meant broadly, encompassing everything from bacon s’mores to broccoli subs to walking tacos to Nashville hot chicken to triple-peach fried pies. The first thing that caught my eye was the elote wings, a mutation not unlike those hot dog gyoza that somehow manages to transfer the essence of grilled Mexican corn to chicken. The recipe’s Dr. Frankenstein is Patrick McBride, new executive chef of Pork Shoppe.

1. Combine the Mojo Criollo, cilantro, and garlic in a blender and liquefy. 2. Throw wings in a bowl and toss with the Sazon con Azafran until evenly covered and bright orange. Pour in marinade, cover, and refrigerate overnight. 3. For the sauce, heat the corn, then puree with cream, Cotija, and mayo. 4. Preheat the grill with medium direct heat. 5. Grill chicken ﬁve to eight minutes, toss in sauce, and sprinkle with salt and pepper, extra Cotija, Tajín, and chile powder.

v @MikeSula

Beer pairing: Helles lager

General

JOBS

ADMINISTRATIVE IMMEDIATE NEED FOR an experienced Administrative Assistant by a regis-tered and fast growing c ompany.at least 1 yr of admin experience needful.we pay $23.50/ hr,subject to review.Pls send your cover letter and resume to bantersl ot@hotmail.com

SALES & MARKETING TEL E -FUND RAISING for local Veterans for the 4th of July. Felons need not apply per Illinois Attorney General regulations. Start ASAP, Call 312-256-5035 INSIDE SALES IMMEDIATE OPENINGS

GUARANTEED SALARY Call 847-233-0333

food & drink DUNKIN DONUTS STORE located at 2801 S. Kedzie, Chicago, IL 60623 is seeking a manager to supervise food preparation, manage employees, hiring, quality control, inventory control, and cash management. High school diploma and 2 years general management required. 50 hour work week. Yearly salary $ 3 6,234.00. Please send resumes to sa mpanjwani@aol.com to the attention of Shamsuddin Panjwani. THE PARK WEST is looking to

hire wait staff. Part time in the evening. No experience necessary. Must be 21 or over. Apply in person. Park West, 322 West Armitage, Chicago IL.

FINE DINING RESTAURANT in

Rosemont; Looking for exp’d Waitstaff, PT Dishwasher, Line Cook & Hostess Located near the Blue Line Call Mark at 847-518-0990 2-4pm

SENIOR BUSINESS ANALYST, CHICAGO, IL. Utilize company’s electronic trading platform by proving in-depth knowledge on the buying/ selling of Derivatives products on exchanges in the US and worldwide, demonstrate an understanding of complex trading processes currently undertaken by potential Company customers who are typically investment banking institutions, simplify complex trading processes currently used by Company customers such as, interfaces, order origination, order routing, market access, smart routing, position keeping, trade reporting, regulatory compliance, trade confirmation and allocation, backoffice processing, to determine how to meet client needs, detailed knowledge of how financial software products work and understand the client’s business objectives and to be a consulting partner in crafting business solutions utilizing Company’s products. Reply to: Gabriela Sutherland @ Fidessa Corporation 17 State Street, 18tth Floor, New York, NY 10005. Gabriela.sutherland@ Fidessa.com VISUAL THERAPIST NEEDED

(with or without experience) Seeking a college educated individual for a permanent part-time employment in Evanston working with children and adults in a Behavioral Vision Training program with Dr. Jeff Getzell, O.D. Experience preferred but not required for the right individual. Dr. Getzell is willing to work with an individual at an entry level, should there be no previous medical experience. Requirements: -Exceptional problem solver -Bright -Curious -Open minded Work schedule: -Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays 2pm-6pm -Saturdays 8am-12pm Please note that the employment hours are not flexible. Resume submission options: -behavioraloptometry@gmail.com -Fax: 847-866-9822 No phone calls please.

MARKETING MANAGER We are looking for a self-motivated marketing manager with experience in digital and print media. This role will manage critical initiatives to support the growth of print, digital and experiential products. Essential Functions: - Develop communication materials and programs to support: marketing initiatives, promotional advertising, audience/subscription development, advertising sales presentations and partnerships - Create presentations for meetings either from scratch or using existing templates - Print/bind materials for the sales/advertising team - Manage trade process including contract review, submission for approval, communication between parties, and management of trade assets - Event support as needed (may require some evenings or weekends) - Manage relationship with media data services (SRDS, NDX, etc.) - Analyze and maintain information on team and individual performance to goal for Sun-Times Media products - Work cross departmentally to collect and analyze advertiser campaign data, prepare wrap-up reports for account executives to share with clients - Ensure quality and delivery of marketing initiatives, reporting, and budget management - Coordinate projects and events that may involve multiple departments (editorial, audience/circulation, sales, marketing, 3rd parties) - General support for all marketing team personnel including but not limited to: * Basic audience requests involving information requests in the Scarborough and Nielsen Claritas systems * Basic analytics reporting using the Google Analytics interface - Other duties and projects as assigned Qualifications: Education and Experience - College degree, preferably in marketing or related field - 2-3 years professional office experience Skills: - Proficient in Microsoft Powerpoint, Excel, and Word - InDesign, Scarborough, Google Analytics familiarity is a plus - Ability to handle multiple projects with strict deadlines - Excellent written and spoken communication skills for customer service, presentations, and coordination between internal and external stakeholders - Strong organizational skills - Analytical mindset with ability to deconstruct complex problems and conceptualize solutions Resumes can be mailed, emailed or faxed to the following address: The Chicago Sun Times Attn: Human Resources – Marketing Manager 350 N. Orleans, 10S Chicago, IL 60654 Fax: (312) 321-2288 Email address: hr@suntimes.com – Please note Marketing Manager in the subject line. The Chicago Sun Times is an Equal Opportunity Employer

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LITIGATION Advisor and Business

Development Coordinator, Chicago, IL: Degree in U.S. legal studies (either J.D. or Master of Laws (LLM)) and undergraduate degree in legal studies from university in the Peoples Republic of China or a special administrative region thereof. Three months experience in the position offered or three months of experience as an Intellectual Property Litigation Intern. Prior experience must include experience assisting attorneys with explaining U.S. intellectual property law and procedures. Must be fluent in Mandarin and have the ability to read, write and speak in English. Mail resumes to Brinks Gilson & Lione, NBC Tower, Suite 3600, 455 N. Cityfront Plaza Drive, Chicago, IL 60611, Attn: Deborah Johnson, Chief Human Resources Officer

IT/COMPUTER SHC Direct, L.L.C. d/b/a Inte Q is seeking a Business Intelligence Analyst in Oakbrook Terrace, IL with the following requirements: Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Engineering, ComputerScience or related field or foreign academic equivalent plus 3 yearsrelated experience. Prior experience must include: perform ETL process using SSIS; develop and maintain SSRS reports for reporting; create dashboards using tableau and provide Analysis of data in Tableau; create and edit Stored Procedures, Views, Functions and Extract required data from database using SQL Language. To apply, email resume to jobs@inteqinsights.com; subject line mustreference S060988. TRANSUNION,

LLC

SEEKS

Consultants, Info. Tech., Application Development & Design (Developers) for Chicago, IL location, to design, implement and maintain highperformance offline systems and highly available high-volume online credit reporting systems. Master’s in Comp. Sci. or Comp. Eng. plus 2yrs exp. or Bachelor’s in Comp. Sci. or Comp. Eng. plus 5yrs exp. req’d. Must have sw development exp. w/ C, C++, Java, Unix/Linux, Oracle/ Informix/Postgres/DB2, multithreading, STL, scripting (TCL, Shell), socket programming, Jenkins/ Hudson, Purify/gdb/valgrind, and working in Agile environment with cross-functional teams. Send resume to: D. Wasserman, REF: AG, 555 W. Adams St., Chicago, IL 60661

OPERATIONS MANAGER, Tata International Metals (Americas), Ltd. in Schaumburg, IL. Mng & mentor operational team w/order proc incl: Incoterms, vendor contracts, doc reqs for shipments. Formulate, analyze& review letters of credit for conformity with UPC 600. Req: Bachelor’s in Finance, Int’l Trade, or related, or foreign equiv, +2 yrs exp in contract admin & doc prep for int’l trade or export/import industry. Knowledge of Letters of Credit & UCP 600 reqd. Resume to hr.americas@ tatainternational.com. Refer to job#16-TI-10

Sr Systems Architect – Comcast Cable Comm, LLC, Chicago, IL. Provide tech leadership w/i & across teams resp for create & maint a platform which facilitates the advertising buying & selling process across all media. Reqs. Bach in CS, Engin or rltd & 5 yrs. exp utilize Agile methodologies to architect SW for high perform, highly scalable systems in Service Oriented Architecture environ, 3 yrs of which must incl utilize C#, ASP.NET, T-SQL, JavaScript, HTML, XML & Web Services. Apply to: Denise_Mapes@cable. comcast.com. Refer to Job ID# 0353 Cyclone Group P.C. d/b/a Cyclone Energy Group seeks Building Analysts 2 for Chicago, IL to design & dev. detailed building study models. Bachelor’s in Mech anical/Architectural Eng. + 2yrs exp. req’d. Exp. must incl. 2yrs w / design & performance modeling of envelope systems, IES Virtual Environment, ASHRAE 62.1, 90. 1, 189.1 & LEED standards, analysis of MEP systems. Send resume to: Ga-Young Park, gpark @cyclone.energy,Ref:IS Sr. Accountant: Prepare returns and financial stmts for business clients. MS in Accountancy, or rel. fld. req. Apply to: Taos Global Group, Inc. 2167 B South China Place, Chicago, IL 60616, Attn: HR

Senior Software Engineers – Master Deg or for deg equiv in CS, CIS, IT, Eng, Bus or Math + 6 months’ exp in position or in IT field (or Bach Deg + 5 yrs exp); and exp with Ruby on Rails, PHP, C++, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, PostgreSQL & Linux/Unix. Travel to various unanticipated client sites req. May reside anywhere in US. Apply to (inc Ref # 10034) HR, Sphere Consulting, 220 N. Green St, Chicago, IL 60607

BANKING JPMorgan Chase & Co. has an opening for a Business Systems Manager, Sr. position in Chicago, IL. Design, modify, create, test and develop computer applications software. Please fax your resume to (312) 732-7830 with following job ID clearly indicated: [MR160057698]. JPMorgan Chase & Co. supports workforce diversity.

Programmer Analysts – Bach Deg or for deg equiv in CS, CIS, IT, Eng or Math + 1 yr exp in position or in IT field; and exp with Ruby on Rails, Objective C, C++, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, & PHP. Travel to various unanticipated client sites req. May reside anywhere in US. Apply to (inc Ref # 10026) HR, Sphere Consulting, 220 N. Green St, Chicago, IL 60607

NODE JS (Web Developer); QSRSoft, Inc. Oak Brook Illinois, Send Resume to M. Henkel, 4921 Forest Ave., Downers Grove, IL 60515, michael.henkel @qsrsoft.com.

DRY CLEANER - Experienced Dry Cleaners, Spotters & Pressers. Steady Work. Skokie, near public transportation. Call 847324-5101

NONNINA LOCATED RIVER

North will be opening its doors soon and is looking for full and part time FOH Staff. For more info. call 312421-0077.

LARGE STUDIO APARTMENT.

REAL ESTATE

6824 N Wayne. Near Red Line. Heat included. Hardwood floors. Pets OK. Laundry in building. $675/ month. Available 8/1. 773-761-4318. www. lakefrontmgt.com

RENTALS

STUDIO $500-$599 LARGE STUDIO CLOSE to N.E. University and transportation. Laundry, street parking, hardwood floors Rent $560 one month security. Call 847-791-4780.Available now.

STUDIO $600-$699 ROGERS

PARK!

7455

N. Greenview. Studios starting at $625 including heat. It’s a newly remodeled vintage elevator building with on-site laundry, wood floors, new kitchens and baths, some units have balconies, etc. Application fee $40. No security deposit! For a showing please contact Samir 773-627-4894 Hunter Properties 773-477-7070 www.hunterprop.com

STUDIO $900 AND OVER AVAIL AUGUST 1! Extra large

Ravenswood 2 1/2 rm studio! Only 1 blk to Metra, LA Fitness, Marianos Grocery! 3 blocks to Damen "EL"! LANDLORD PAYS HEAT AND COOKING GAS! BEAUTIFUL HDWD FLRS, LOADS OF CLOSET SPACE! BUILT IN CHINA CABINETS! $995. 00. 4830 N. Wolcott (773) 381-0150. www.theschirmfirm .com

BICKERDIKE

APARTMENTS:

WAIT list Opening for Section 8

Apartments, 3 & 4 Bedrooms Only. Wednesday, June 22, & Thursday, June 23, 2016. Applications will be distributed: Wednesday, 11:00 am. – 8:00 p.m. Thursday, 11:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. @ 2550 W. North Ave., Chicago, Il 60647. LA APERTURA DE la lista de espera para apartamentos de Sección 8 de 3 y 4 cuartos se realizará el Miercoles 22 de Junio y Jueves 23 de Junio del 2016. Las aplicaciones serán distribuidas en los siguientes horarios: Miercoles de 11:00 am a 8:00 pm. Jueves de 11:00 am a 8:00 pm en la 2550 W. North Avenue Chicago, Il. 60647

JUST IN NEWLY REMODELED APARTMENTS. Throughout Chicagoland area. 1 BRs w/gas starting at $650/mo. 2BR & up starting at $850/mo. No Sec dep. No App fee with ad. Section 8 acce pted.773.870.1812 Wesley Realty

STUDIO OTHER

7022 S. SHORE DRIVE Impecca-

CLEAN ROOM W/FRIDGE & micro, Near Oak Park, Food -4Less, Walmart, Walgreens, Buses & Metra, Laundry. $115/wk & up. 773-637-5957

bly Clean Highrise STUDIOS, 1 & 2 BEDROOMS Facing Lake & Park. Laundry & Security on Premises. Parking & Apts. Are Subject to Availability. TOWNHOUSE APARTMENTS 773-288-1030

Greenleaf. Studio starting at $695 including heat! Close to transportation, laundry on premises, beautiful courtyard building. One block to Loyola Beach! $40 application fee. No security Deposit. For a showing please contact Samir 773-627-4894 Hunter Properties 773-477-7070 www. hunterprop.com

CHICAGO, HYDE PARK Arms

QUALITY

NICE ROOM w/stove, fridge & bath Near Aldi, Walgreens, Beach, Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry. $130/wk & up. 773-275-4442

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

EDGEWATER!

BIG ROOM with stove, fridge, bath & nice wood floors. Near Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry, Shopping. $121/wk + up. 773-561-4970

ROGERS PARK! 1357-67 W

1061 W. Rosemont. Studios starting at $625 to $675, All Utilities included! Elevator building! Close to CTA red line train, restaurants, shopping, blocks to the lakefront, beaches and bike trails, laundry onsite, remodeled, etc. For a showing please contact Jay 773835-1864 Hunter Properties, Inc. 773-477-7070 www.hunterprop.com

ALBANY PARK! 3355 W. East-

wood. Studios starting at $675 including heat & gas. Laundry in the building. Application fee $40. Close to CTA brown line train, stores, restaurant, etc. NO SECURITY DEPOSIT. For a showing please contact Saida 773-407-6452 Hunter Properties 773-477-7070 www.hunterprop.com

Hotel, 5316 S. Harper, maid, phone, cable ready, fridge, private facilities, laundry avail. Start at $160/wk Call 773-493-3500

CROSSROADS HOTEL SRO SINGLE RMS Private bath, PHONE,

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

1 BR UNDER $700 8324 S INGLESIDE, 1BR, newly remodl, lndry, hrdwd flrs, cable, Sec 8 welc. $660/mo.; 7000 S. Merrill, 2BR, hdwd flrs, lrg sunrm, new remod., cable ready, lndry, O’keefe Elem, $800/mo. Sec 8 welcome. 708-308-1509 , 773-493-

3500

APARTMENTS,

Great Prices! Studios-4BR, from $450. Newly rehabbed. Appliances included. Low Move-in Fees. Hardwood floors. Pangea - Chicago’s South, Southwest & West Neighborhoods. 312-985-0556

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

5921 WEST Ohio, 60644, 2BR,1BA,completely remodeled, all hdwd floors, new kit/ba, separate heat. Sec 8 Wel $1000/m 708439-2816 62ND & MAPLEWOOD, 4BR, 2BA, newly remodeled, large LR, DR, kitchen, utilities not incl, Sec 8 ok. No sec dep, $1200. 773-406-0604

CHICAGO SOUTH - YOU’VE tried the rest, we are the best. Apartments & Homes for rent, city & suburb. No credit checks. 773-221-7490, 773-221-7493

THE LATEST ON WHO’S PLAYING AND WHERE THEY’RE PLAYING

EARLY WARNINGS

WEEKLY E-BLAST GET UP TO DATE. SIGN UP NOW. CHICAGOREADER.COM

JUNE 23, 2016 | CHICAGO READER 79

HOMEWOOD- SUNNY 900SF

MOVE RIGHT IN 8200 S. Drexel. XL1BR, heat & appls incl. Newly remod., living/dining room, $660/ mo, no security deposit, Sect 8 OK. 312-915-0100.

SOUTH SHORE 1BR apt, newly renovated apt. hdwd flrs throughout, laundry, secure bldg w/surveillance system & wrought iron fencing. $740. 773-880-2414, 773-580-7797

1BR Great Kitc, New Appls, Oak Flrs, A/C, Lndry & Storage, $950/mo Incls heat & prkg. 773.743.4141

MOVE RIGHT IN - Near 92nd & Stony Island, Garden apartment, 1 bedroom, 1 bath, $600/mo + security deposit incl utils. Call Theresa 312806-0646

CHATHAM LARGE 1BR Apt, wall to wall

1 BR $1100 AND OVER

79TH & WOODLAWN 1 B R $650-$700 2BR $775-$800; 76th & Phillips: 2BR $775-$800. Remod, appls avail. Free Heat. Sec 8 welc. 312-286-5678 WINTER SPECIAL $500 To-

ward Rent Beautiful Studios 1, 2, 3 & 4 BR Sect. 8 Welc. Westside Loc, Must qualify. 773-287-4500 www. wjmngmt.com

Chicago, Beverly/Cal Park/Blue Island Studio $575 & up, 1BR $665 & up, 2BR $885 & up. Heat, Appls, Balcony, Carpet, Laundry, Prkg. 708-388-0170 WEST PULLMAN (INDIANA

Ave) Nice, lrg 1 & 2BR w/balcony. 1BR $550, 2BR $650. Move-In Fee $300. Sec 8 Welcome. 773-995-6950

EXCHANGE EAST APTS 1 Brdm $575 w/Free Parking,Appl, AC,Free heat. Near trans. laundry rm. Elec.not incl. Kalabich Mgmt (708) 424-4216 6930 S. SOUTH SHORE DRIVE Studios & 1BR, INCL. Heat, Elec, Cking gas & PARKING, $585-$925, Country Club Apts 773-752-2200

10801 S. PRAIRIE: 3 room, $590, 1st flr, newly decorated, heat /appls incl; Section 8 ok. 888-249-

7971

CHICAGO, LARGE 1BR apt ,

LR, DR, Hdwd flrs, blinds, enclosed back porch. $600/mo. Call 773-617-2909

û NO SEC DEP û 6829 S. Perry. 1BR/STUDIO $465 & $520 HEAT INCL 773-955-5106 CHICAGO - SOUTH SHORE Large 1BR, $6 60/mo. Free heat. Near Transportation. Section 8 Welcome. Call 708-932-4582

1 BR $700-$799 PORTAGE PARK! 5602-10 W.

Wellington. 1 Bedrooms starting at $795 Includes heat. Application fee $40. No security deposit! Laundry facility on premises. Sunny living rooms, wood floors throughout, kitchen contains large roomy cabinets, walking distance to shops, grocery stores, restaurants and more! For a showing please contact Jose 773-415-4911 Hunter Properties 773477-7070 www.hunterprop.com PLAZA ON THE PARK 608 East 51st Street. Very spacious renovated apartments. 1BR $722 - $801, 2BR $837 - $1,009, 3BR $1,082- $1,199, 4-5BR $1,273 - $1,405. Visit or call (773)548-9300, M-F 9am-5pm or apply online at www.plazaonthepark apts.com Managed by Metroplex, Inc

carpeting. Heat Incl. No Pets. $725/mo + sec req. 708-323-8317

WEST HUMBOLDT PK 1 & 2BR

Apts, spacious, oak wood flrs, huge closets. heat incl, rehab, $775 up to $875. 847-866-7234

WEST SIDE vicinity of Homan & Chicago Ave. 1BR $745/mo. + sec. dep., newly decorated, heat incl. & hardwood floors. 773-533-0233 WOODLAWN 1525 E 67th Pl, spacious 2 BR, 3rd floor, formal DR, carpet, $800 w/heat, close to transportation appl. 773-375-3323

1 BR $800-$899 LAKESIDE TOWER, 910 W Lawrence. 1 bedrooms starting at $895-$925 include heat and gas, laundry in building. Great view! Close to CTA Red Line, bus, stores, restaurants, lake, etc. To schedule a showing please contact Celio 773-3961575, Hunter Properties 773-4777070, www.hunterprop.com LARGE ONE BEDROOM apart-

ment near Warren Park and Metra, 6802 N Wolcott. Hardwood floors, Cats OK. Heat included. Laundry in building. $825/ month. Available 8/1. 773-761-4318, www.lakefrontmgt. com

1 BR $900-$1099 Hyde Park West Apts., 5325 S. Cottage Grove Ave., Renovated spacious apartments in landscaped gated community. Off street parking available. 1BR $1195 - Free Heat, 2BR $1400 - Free heat, 4BR Townhome $2200. Ask about our Special. Visit or call 773-324-0280, M-F: 9am5pm or apply online- www. hydepark west.com. Managed by Metroplex, Inc

Wrigleville 2BR, 1400sf, new kit/ deck, FDR, oak flrs, Cent Heat/ AC, prkg avail. $1550 + util, Pet friendly, 773-743-4141 www. urbanequities.com CHICAGO, 1524 W. 89TH ST., newly updated, 1BR, hdwd flrs, LR/ DR, kitchen, heat & appliances included. $850/mo. Call 708-3331400 RAVENSWOOD 1BR: 850SF, great kit, DW, oak flrs, near Brown line, on-site lndy/stor., $1075/ heated 773-743-4141 www. urbanequities.com 3700 W DIVERSEY: Beaut 3BR, 2BA duplex, 1800sf, new kit, top flr, yard/prkg, storage, W/D, $1650+util. 773-743-4141 www.urbanequities. com

LOGAN SQUARE BLVD Carriage

House, 2-story LR with fireplace, loft, 1 bedroom & sitting room, modern kitchen & bath, utils included. $1250/ mo. Non-smoking. 773-235-1066

1 BR OTHER DREXEL

TOWERS

APART-

MENTS is pleased to announce the opening of its wait list for one, two and three bedroom apartments to individuals and families. Drexel Towers is a professionally managed, mixed-income, affordable rental property with attractive floor plans, laundry and onsite parking.

APTS. FOR RENT PARK MANAGEMENT & INVESTMENT LTD. UNSATISFIED WITH YOUR LIVING CONDITIONS?? Spring is early LET’S GET MOVING!! OUR COMMUNITY OFFERS... HEAT, HW & CG Patio & Mini Blinds Plenty of parking on a 37 acre site 1Bdr From $7 50.00 2Bdr From $925.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000** CALL FOR DETAILS!

APTS. FOR RENT PARK MANAGEMENT & Investment Ltd. Drexel Towers will accept requests SPRING IS HERE... IT’S MOVING TIME!! Most Infor applications by USPS mail only beginning June 1, 2016 and continu- clude ing until June 30, 2016. All requests HEAT & HOT WTR postmarked after July 30, 2016 will Studios From $545.00 1Bdr From $550.00 not be accepted. To receive an application, send this form to: Drexel 2Bdr From $765.00 Towers Apartments, 3473 S. King Dr. 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath Box #361, Chicago, IL 60615. An ap- From $1200 plication will be mailed to you. Com- **1-(773)-476-6000** pleted applications must be returned CALL FOR DETAILS by USPS mail and postmarked no later than August 4, 2016. Applications received after August 4, 2016 will NOT be accepted. Applications cannot be obtained at Drexel Towers. No walk-ins or phone calls.

To request an application please completer the information below and mail to: Drexel Towers Apartments 3473 S. King Dr. Box #361 Chicago, IL 60615 Applicant Name: _______________

ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar Villas is accepting applications for subsidized 1BR apts. for seniors 62 years or older and the disabled. Rent is based on 30% of annual income. For details, call us at 847-546-1899 ∫ CHICAGO, 7727 S. Colfax, ground flr Apt., ideal for senior citizens. Secure bldng. Modern 1BR $595. Lrg 2BR, $800. Free cooking & heating gas. Free parking. 312613-4427

Date of Birth:________ Address: _____________________ City __________State: ______ Zip Code:_______________ Phone: _________________ Cell: _______________________ Email: ______________________ Number of Bedrooms Requested: ______________

SOUTHSIDE - 115TH/ ABERDEEN. Newly renov 4BR

Home. Full bsmnt, lrg bkyrd, $1350/ obo+ dep. Sec 8 ok. Mr. Lee 773-629-4132

CHATHAM CHARM , Vintage,

newly rehab, 1 BR, h/w flrs, sec alarm, heat & hot water incl, laundry, Sec 8 & Seniors Welc. Call for appt (773)418-9908

SPACIOUS-SAFE 773-4235727. BRONZEVILLE, 3BR, heat included. Englewood, 1,2 & 3BR, heat incl. Dolton, 2BR, GatDrexel Towers Apartments does not ed Parking. Number of Household ______________

Members:

discriminate on the basis of disability in the admission or access to, or treatment or employment in, its government assisted programs and activities.

CALUMET CITY 158TH & PAXTON SANDRIDGE APTS 1 & 2 BEDROOM UNITS MODELS OPEN M-F, 9AM-5:30PM *** 708-841-5450 ***

SUBURBS, RENT TO O W N ! Buy with No closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708-868-2422 or visit w ww.nhba.com LARGE SUNNY ROOM w/fridge & microwave. Near Oak Park, Green Line & Buses. 24 hr Desk, Parking Lot $101/week & Up. (773)378-8888

RIVERDALE, IL 1 Bedroom

CHICAGO 7600 S Essex 2BR $599, 3BR $699, 4BR $799 w/apprvd credit, no sec dep. Sect 8 Ok! 773287-9999 /312-446-3333

71ST/HERMITAGE. 3BR. 69th/ Dante, 3BR. 71st/Bennett. 2 & 3BR. 77th/Essex. 3BR. New renov. Sec 8 ok. 708-503-1366

AUSTIN NEW DECOR 2 & 3BR

Condo, newly decorated, off st. parking, gated community. $750 + sec. Call Mr. Jackson 708-846-9734

Avail Immed. Loc nr Augusta & Cicero. No Pets, tenant pays utils. $850 & $900 + sec. 630-816-9957

CHICAGO - BEVERLY, large 2 room Studio, 1 & 2BR Apts. Carpet, A/C, laundry, near transportation, $650-$975/mo. Call 773-233-4939

3BR 1.5 bath & 2BR: newly remodeled. Hrdwd flrs, heat & hot water incl. No Sec Dep. Sec 8 welc.. Call 9am-5pm 773-731-8306

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

2 BR $900-$1099

NO MOVE-IN FEE! No Dep! Sec 8

SOUTHSIDE: 6831 S. ADA. 1st floor of 2 flat building, 2BR Apt with hdwd flrs & ceramic tile. Stove, Refrigerator, W/D incl. FREE HEAT. Will Accept 1 or 2BR Section 8 Vouchers. $900/mo. Call 773-221-0061

MOVE IN SPECIAL B4 the N of this MO. & MOVE IN 4 $99.00 (773) 874-3400

CHATHAM, 2BR, 1BA, HARDWOOD FLOORS, HEAT & WATER INCL. TENANT PAYS ELEC. $925/MO. AVAILABLE SEPTEMBER 1ST. 312-8357623.

CHICAGO SOUTH SIDE Beauti-

ful Studios, 1,2,3 & 4 BR’s, Sec 8 ok. $500 gift certificate for Sec 8 tenants. 773-287-9999/312-446-3333 ok. 1, 2 & 3 Bdrms. Elev bldg, laundry, pkg. 6531 S. Lowe. Call Office 773-874-0100

Ashland Hotel nice clean rms. 24 hr desk/maid/TV/laundry/air. Low rates daily/weekly/monthly. South Side. Call 773-376-5200 ACACIA SRO HOTEL Men Preferred! Rooms for Rent. Weekly & Monthly Rates. 312-421-4597

2 BR UNDER $900 HARVEY - 15544 TURLINGTON, 2BR, 2nd flr,

central A/C, appls, hdwd floors, new windows/kitchen cabinets. $750/mo. 708-692-9177

Chicago, Nice 2nd floor 2BR Apt on Southside, $690/mo + security deposit. Tenant pays own utilities. Call 773-354-1154 for more information. CHATHAM - 79TH and Calumet. 2BR 1BA, 2nd floor, updated. Near public trans. $820/ month. Credit check required. Call 773-488-0143 7701 S. South Shore Dr. 2 BDs with 1.5 Baths, Large Combo Living-Dining Rm, FREE Heat & cking gas. Prkng extra. $785-$850, Kalabich Mgmt (708)424-4216

79TH & LANGLEY. 5 Rms, 2BR, Decor. beaut. h/w floors, $760+ $400 move-in fee. Close to trans & shpg. Brown Realty 773-239-9566 5222 S. WELLS. Newly remodeled, gorgeous 2BR apt, $650/mo. 1st month and sec req. Call Maria 312-265-1784 CHICAGO: 7233 S Kimbark 5 Rooms, 2BR, 2nd flr, heat incl. $700/ month + 1 month security, Call 773-218-0557 CHICAGO, 7443 S. Dante. 2BR,

1BA, 1st flr, heat incl, quiet building. $800/mo. 1 month’s rent + 1 month’s security. 773-752-2764

AUSTIN AREA, 2BR Apartment, carpet, small newer building, $900/month + utilities. Section 8 Welcome. Call 773-457-2284 92ND & ADA, 2 bdrm, lg & spacious w/ DR, hardwood flrs, sunporch, fireplace, heat/appls incl sec 8 ok $1000/mo + sec 773-415-6914 CHICAGO, 2BR CONDO w/ hardwood flrs, microwave, W/D, dishwasher, 2511 E. 76th St. $1100/ mo. Call Austin 773-439-9661 ROSELAND 335 W. 108th Pl. Newly Rehabbed 2BR, appls, hdwd flrs. $800/mo + move-in fee. 312-420-2765 CHICAGO, 5015-25 W. Iowa Ave. Augusta & Cicero. Newly Rehab, 2 & 3BR, $1100+/mo. Section 8 OK. David, 773-663-9488 BELLWOOD 2BR APT, 2nd flr East, no pets, W/D in bsmt, tenant

pays elec & gas. Avail Now. $900. Michael Britton 773-297-7755

Glenwood - Large 2BR Condo, H /F High School. Balc, C/A, appls, heat, water incl. 2 parking, lndry. $950/mo. Call 708-268-3762

2 BR $1100-$1299 EAST ROGERS PARK, steps to

the beach at 1240 West Jarvis, five rooms, two bedrooms, two baths, dishwasher, ac, heat and gas included. Carpeted, cable, laundry facility, elevator building, parking available, and no pets. Non-smoking. Price is $1200/mo. Call 773-764-9824.

Chicago - 2BR, 1st flr, $1100/mo, ap pls/heat, A/C, carpeting, blinds incl. near 93rd/Cottage Grove. Sec 8 ok. No Pets. Smoke Free bldg 773-429-0274

EVANSTON 2BR, 1100SF, great kit, new appls, DR, oak flrs, lndry, $1175/ mo incls heat. 773743-4141 www.urbanequities.co Elmhurst: Sunny 1/BR, new appl, carpet, AC, Patio, $895/incl heat, parking. Call 773-743-4141 www.urbanequities.com

2 BR $1500 AND OVER

LARGE BRIGHT LINCOLN PK

2Bd, 1Bth, In Unit W/D, Roof Deck, Back Porch, HVAC, Fireplace, DW, Hardwood Flrs, Available Immediately. $2000-$2500 Call: 773 472 5944

2 BR OTHER OPEN HOUSE WELCOME TO Town Home Living and Affordable Rents at PRINCETON PARK HOMES A privately-owned south side Chicago rental town home community since 1944 Rents Starting at $844/mo Sat June 25, 2016 Noon - 6PM

FREE CREDIT CHECK – Applicants encouraged to bring last 6 pay check stubs, ID & Social security card. Two and three bedroom residences featuring: Spacious landscaped grounds – Walk to public transportation (CTA, “El”) Nearby public and private schools - Ample parking – Convenient to shopping Centrally located Campus Park - Easy access to Dan Ryan Annual Resident’s Lawn & Garden Contest Each unit includes: Deck or patio – Private front and rear entrance – Basement with hook-ups for washer and dryer – Modern kitchen and bathroom cabinetry – Meet our manager Anthony Jackson, A.R.M. and professional staff for a guided tour: Princeton Park Homes 9119 S. Stewart Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60620 Phone: 773-264-3005 Visit our website at www.ppkhomes.com Open House Special: FIRST TWO-MONTH’S RENT FREE ON SELECTED 3BR UNITS! Directions: From Dan Ryan Expressway – Take 87th St. Exit south to W. 91st St. Right on 91st St ½ mile to S Stewart Ave. Left ½ block to rental office. From W 95th St – Turn North onto S. Wentworth Avenue (200 W) and go 4 blocks to W 91st St. Turn left on W. 91st St. and go 2 blocks to S. Stewart Ave. Turn left ½ block to office.

ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar Villas is accepting applications for Subsidized 2 and 3 bedroom apt waiting list. Rent is based on 30% of annual income for qualified applicants. Contact us at 847-546-1899 for details CHICAGO, PRINCETON PARK

HOMES. Spac 2 - 3 BR Townhomes, Inclu: Prvt entry, full bsmt, lndry hook-ups. Ample prkg. Close to trans & schls. Starts at $816/mo. www. ppkhomes.com;773-264-3005

BEAUTIFUL NEW APT! 7651 S Phillips 2-4BR $1000-$1350 6943 s Woodlawn 4 bdrm $1350 Stainless Steel!! Appliances!! Hdwd flr!! marble bath!! laundry on site!! Sec 8 OK. 773- 404- 8926 CHATHAM, 736 E. 81ST (Evans), 2BR, 5 rms, 2nd flr $ 825/mo. 400 E. 81st St. (King Dr), 1st flr 1 BR, $700/mo. Call Mr. Joe at 708-870-4801 MATTESON, 2BR, $990$1050; 3BR, $1250-$1400. Move In Special is 1 Month’s Rent & $99 Sec Dep. Sect 8 Welc. 708-748-4169 CHICAGO, CHATHAM, XL, 5

rm, 2br, formal lr/ dr, crpt, heat incl., 3rd flr, $850/mo, Blk of 82nd/ Langley. Call for address 773-962-0955

68TH & INDIANA.

Close to transp, newly remodeled, large 2BR, 5 rooms, heated, laundry facility & credit check. 773-213-0263

3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200 CHICAGO 11740 S. LASALLE, 3BR, WILL ACCEPT 2 or 3 BRM SECTION 8 VOUCHER. No Security Deposit! hrdwd & ceramic flrs, Stove & Refrigerator, w/ d, tenant pays utils, 1st floor of 2 flat bldg, $1000/mo. Call 773-2210061 CHICAGO, 3RD FLOOR, 3 B R , decor, w/w carpet, quiet atmosphere, 8100 So. Marshfield, owner occupied, Sect. 8 welc. Rent neg. 773931-7405 69TH/SANGAMON & 124TH/ NORMAL 3 Lrg BR, Hdwd flrs. $975/mo 70th /Wabash. 2BR. $925/mo. Nr trans & good schls 773-568-0053

WASH PARK, 2BR $800/ mo+sec. 3BR, $900/mo + sec. Newly rehab kitchen & baths, hdwd flrs, tenant pays utils. 773-520-7293 105TH NEAR COTTAGE. 2BR Townhouse, 1 bath, Newly decorated. $800/mo + security neg. Section 8 ok. 312-842-7292 5714 S. DAMEN St. - Newly remodeled, 3BR, Heat incl, $800/mo + 1 month security. Call 312-863-9921 or 773-732-1911

FREE TO LISTEN

AND REPLY TO ADS Free Code: Chicago Reader

REAL PEOPLE REAL DESIRE REAL FUN.

60 MINUTES FREE TRIAL

FIND REAL GAY MEN NEAR YOU

(773) 787-0200 www.megamates.com 18+

80 CHICAGO READER | JUNE 23, 2016

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

Ahora español Livelinks.com 18+

THE HOTTEST GAY CHATLINE

1-312-924-2082 More Local Numbers: 800-777-8000

Meet sexy friends who really get your vibe...

Try FREE: 312-924-2066 More Local Numbers: 1-800-811-1633

www.guyspyvoice.com

Ahora en Español/18+

vibeline.com 18+

70TH & ARTESIAN, Huge 3BR, eat in kitch, large pantry + bonus room. Laundry room on premises, sep heat. $950/mo. 312-613-3806

CHICAGO - 3 BR, 2 car gar, fin.

69TH PLACE IN Stony Island,

NEAR 83RD & Yates. 5BR, 2BA, hdwd flrs, fin basement, stove & fridge furn. Heat incl. $1600 + 1 mo sec. Sect 8 ok. 773-978-6134

2 brm, 5 rms, newly remodeled, hdwd flrs, sec. 8 welcome. $750. Call 773-758-0309

3BR, AVAIL IMMED. Newly De-

cor, nr Pulaski/Cermak & pink line, $900. Tenant pays utils, laundry hookup, no pets. 847.720.9010

AUBURN-GRESHAM 7959 S Paulina – 1 3BR, 1 Bath – Free heat, $995, $35 app fee. 312.208.1771

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499 GARFIELD

PARK

bsmt, hrdwd flrs, c/a, All vouchers welc. $1500/mo; 1-3BR apts also for $1050-$1075/mo. 708-800-2562

NEW DECOR 5BR, nr Harrison &

Pulaski, laundry hkup, gated yard, $1575. Tenant pays utils & lawn care. No pets 847.720. 9010

3 BR OR MORE $1800-$2499 LARGE 3 BEDROOM 2 bath

NEWLY

Rehabbed 3 Bed, 1 Bath Home! Section 8 Wel-come! Quiet Neighborhood, Hard-wood, Large. 312 989 9943.

COUNTRY CLUB HILLS: 176th & Springfield, 4BR, 2BA, $1400/ mo. avail. now. Tenant pays heat. Sec 8 Welc. Call 773-851-4576 SAUK VILLAGE 3BR Ranch, 1BA,

1 car gar. quiet neighborhood, $1,200 plus security. Sec. 8 OK. 708-2712502

HUGE 4 BR, 2BA ($1300),

carpeted and 1br, 1 ba hardwood, ($800), close trans, schools, sec 8 welcome, 773-443-3200.

3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799 LINCOLN SQUARE 3BR, $1500.

4914 N Rockwell. Available August 1. Heat included. 2nd floor, no pets, close to Rockwell Brown Line. Pick up & drop off application from the mailbox.

COMPLETELY REMODELED 4

bedroom home for rent in Midlothian. Quiet street. Finished basement. Washer dryer included. Pets negotiable. Contact Chris (815)255-2597.

BEVERLY/MORGAN PARK. 3BR brick ranch house. C/A, $1,500/ month + sec dep req. No pets/ smoking, Sect 8 OK. 708-647-9737

apartment in Wrigleyville, 3820 N Fremont. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. Laundry in building. $2100/ month. Parking available. $150/ month for single parking space. $200/ month for tandem parking space. Available 8/1. 773-761-4318, www.lakefrontmgt .com

LUXURY 3 BED,3 bath,exposed

brick-,hrdwd flr,ss appl, washer/dryer,-parking,deck + more, pet ok.Contact Ms Phillips (773) 5592370

3 BR OR MORE OTHER

MOVE RIGHT IN, 1308 W. 52ND St., newer 4BR, House, 1. 5BA, 3 lvls, huge unfin bsmt, heat, A/C, 2 car garage. Sec 8 ok. $1500/mo. 773-895-2867

MARKETPLACE

CHICAGO, 79TH & INGLESIDE, 4BR, 2BA, laminate flooring & carpet, ceramic tile kitchen. Section 8 welcome. Call 630-674-8399

MULTI-FAMILY GARAGE SALE 6/25-6/26 & 7/2-7/3 8am-

AUBURN GRESHAM 5BR, 2BA House. Newly Remod. Appliances Included. 2 Levels, unfin bsmt. Pets OK. Section 8 OK. 312-371-4001 RECENT REHAB 2-5BR SF Homes. S. Holland, Dolton, Harvey, Markham. Sec8 Ok. $1000 Sec & Bkgrnd Chk. 630-247-5146 hood, near school & trans, Heated, appls & C/A, tenant pays elec. 708735-3545

CHICAGO-

LARGE 3BR apt, hardwood floors, fans, stove, fridge and heat incl. Section 8 Welcome. Call 773-581-8348 or 773-350-0788

MATTESON, SAUK VILLAGE &

UNIVERSITY PARK. 4, 3 & 2BR, House/Condo, Section 8 ok. For information: 708-625-7355

CHICAGO HOUSES FOR rent. Section 8 Ok, w/app credit $500 gift certificate 3, 4 & 5 BR houses avail. 312-446-3333 or 708-752-3812

CHICAGO HEIGHTS 3BR, 1BA, NEWLY REMODELED, APPLS INCL , SECTION 8 OK. NO SEC. DEPOSIT. 708-8224450 SECTION 8 WELCOME avail now! Country Club Hills. 4BR, 2BA Home w/ kitchen appls, $1600/mo + 1 month security. Call 773-4471990

LIVE IN SW SUBURBS $59,900 Priced For Quick Sale. Framed bungalow, large LR & DR w/hardwood floors, 2 small bedrooms, large walkin closet, bath & kitchen, stove, refrigerator. washer & dryer. CAC & heat, fence, 2-car electric garage, public transportation. 1 block elementary school, 3 blocks H.S., 1 block senior center, ideal starter home, no basement. Call Robert Taylor Realty, 708-449-0229 OPEN HOUSE SATURDAY, J une 25, 1-3PM, 4740 S DREXEL

BLVD. Renovated 5BR brown stone plus 2BR coach house. Upper $700’s. 312-893-8190, KoenigRubloff

BY OWNER. PARK MANOR 2Flat, 7411 S. Wabash, 2 bds + enclosed heated porch, , $165,000. Beautiful block. 773-717-6092

COLLEGE GIRL BODY RUBS $40 w/AD 24/7

224-223-7787

non-residential SELF-STORAGE

CENTERS.

T W O locations to serve you. All units fully heated and humidity controlled with ac available. North: Knox Avenue. 773-685-6868. South: Pershing Avenue. 773-523-6868. 9143 S. ASHLAND. Beverly. Store Front, 1200sf Heavy Traffic, A/C, Open Layout, Clean, Secure, Bath, Trans. $1050/mo. 312-523-8914 1400 SQFT, Near 67th & Cottage Grove. Good Condition ideally for florist or resale shop.$600/mo. Call 773-955-6699

roommates ROOM FOR RENT- (Unfurnished) Chicago Southside Location. All utilities included. Cable. $400/mo. Call 773-842-7307

LEARN HOW TO make money li-

censing your music in tv and films in a free 202 page ebook. Visit http://www.howtolicenseyourmu-sic .com/

5pm @ 5931 N SACRAMENTO AVE. Bikes, bike trailer, electric riding car, exercise equip, double baby jogger, riding horses, rocking chair, luggage, toys, books, kitchen stuff, baby stuff

RENDITIONS & RHYTHMS

CHICAGO 6040 N. KOSTNER. Sat 6/25, 8a-7p & Sun 6/26, 9a-5p. Clothes for all ages, 2 bikes, variety of furn., baby items, hshld, toys, tools, TVs & stereos, etc.

NOTICES

AUSTIN 3BR, QUIET neighbor-

FOR SALE CHICAGO 4BR APARTMENTS 8457 S Brandon & 5BR apartment 2707 E 93rd St. 1st flr, Sec 8 ok, 3-4BR voucher ok; 847-926-0625

GOODS

MUSIC & ARTS

MULTI-FAMILY SALE

GARAGE

5931 N Sacramento Ave Chicago, IL 60659 Bikes, exercise equipment, double baby jogger, toys, kitchen stuff, etc

MASSAGE TABLES, NEW and

used. Large selection of professional high quality massage equipment at a very low price. Visit us at www. bestmassage.com or call us, 773764-6542.

GERMAN SHEPHERD PUPPIES - AKC, wormed & vaccinated, sire has OFA cert., maternal sire is ex police dog. $800. Call 260-593-0160 x 3 KILL BEDBUGS AND their eggs!

Buy Harris Bed Bug Killers/ KIT Complete Treatment System. Hardware stores, the Home Depot, homedepot. com

SERVICES LEGAL SERVICES- Need A

Lawyer? For as low as $19.95 CONSULTATIONS: Credit Repair, Bankruptcy, Divorce, Foreclosure, Evictions, Contract Review, Traffic Tickets/DUI, E xpungement, Criminal Defense & more. Call Theresa 312-806-0646

dance performances to live jazz June 24-26, Studio5, Evanston classi cjazzandtap.com

SPIRITUAL LILA SPIRITUAL Psychic helps solve all problems of life. She will not ask you your problems she will tell you. She has helped many people with problems

such as business, love, marriage, dark aura, removes obstacles, health and just plain bad luck. Call 630-4084789

CHICAGO PSYCHIC; SPECIALIZE in palm, tarot cards, love readings, and aura readings. 1 FREE question. call 312401-7517.

legal notices STATE OF ILLINOIS County of Cook In The Circuit Court For Cook County, Illinois In The Matter of the

Petition of Lord Daniel William A. H. Windsor & Lady Sonja Grace O. Windsor Case# 16M2002446 For Change of Name. Notice of Publication Public Notice is hereby given that on August 24, 2016 at 9:00 AM being one of the return days in the Circuit Court of the County of Cook, I will file my petition in said court praying for the change of my name from Lord Daniel William A. H. Windsor & Lady Sonja Grace O. Windsor to that of Lord Wiliam Henry A. G. Windsor & Lady Sonja Wilhelmina Grace O. Windsor, pursuant to the statute in such case made and provided. Dated at Chicago, Ilinois, June 20, 2016. Signature of Petitioner: W. Windsor & Sonja Windsor

NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16147035 on June 6, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of FABB WEAR with the business located at: 10240 W. ROOSEVELT RD SUITE A, WESTCHESTER, IL 60154. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner (s)/partner(s) is: SAKI SADE BUTLER, 1330 ARTHUR AVE, BERKELEY, IL 60163, USA

NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16147109 on June 10, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of EL CONTINUING EDUCATION with the business located at: 3112 N. DAMEN AVENUE APT 2, CHICAGO, IL 60618. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner (s)/ partner(s) is: LEAH A ARGENTO, 3112 N. DAMEN AVENUE APT 2, CHCAGO, IL 60618, USA

NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16147105 on June 10, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of GVN PERFORMANCE with the business located at: 820 N. ORLEANS, CHICAGO, IL 60610, 1018 N. LARRABEE ST, CHICAGO, IL 60610. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner (s)/partner(s) is: BRIAN GALIVAN, 1927 N. 77TH AVE, ELMWOOD PARK, IL 60707, USA

NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16147028 on June 3, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of BIG EYED PUG with the business located at: 723 W. BLACKHAWK STREET, CHICAGO, IL 60610. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner (s)/partner(s) is: RACHEL EPLEY, 723 W.

NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16147155 on June 15, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of POLESTRONG BODYWORKS with the business located at: 2752 W LEMOYNE ST APT 3C, CHICAGO, IL 60622. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner (s)/partner(s) is: SALLY SACHS 2752 W LEMOYNE ST APT 3C, CHICAGO, IL 60622, USA

NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to "An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State," as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16147203 on June 20, 2016, under the Assumed Business Name of Closer Photography with the business located at 444 N Wabash Avenue #500, Chicago, IL 60611. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/ partner(s) is: Adam R. Shuboy, 1401 S State Street #1709, Chicago, IL 60605, USA.

NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16147161 on June 16, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of CHICAGO SPACEWALKERS with the business located at: 3744 N. BERNARD, CHICAGO, IL 60618. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner (s)/partner(s) is: TODD MICHAEL MORRIS, SR, 3744 N. BERNARD, CHICAGO, IL 60618, USA

STATE OF ILLINOIS County of Cook In The Circuit Court For Cook County, Illinois In The Matter of the Petition of Arsema Weldu Case#

BLACKHAWK STREET, CHICAGO, IL 60610, USA

2016CONC000620 For Change of Name. Notice of Publication Public Notice is hereby given that on August 8, 2016 at 9:30 AM being one of the return days in the Circuit Court of the County of Cook, I will file my petition in said court praying for the change of my name from Arsema Weldu to that of Arsema Samuel, pursuant to the statute in such case made and provided. Dated at Chicago, Ilinois,

June 13, 2016. Signature of Petitioner: Arsema Weldu

NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to "An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State," as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16146996 on May 31, 2016, under the Assumed Business Name of Jedi Ventures with the business located at 13182 Briar Patch Lane, Lemont, IL 60439. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner( s)/ partner(s) is: Darren Sardiga, 13182 Briar Patch Lane, Lemont, IL 60439, USA.

HEALTH & WELLNESS FOR A HEALTHY mind and body.

European trained and certified therapists specializing in deep tissue, Swedish, and relaxation massage. Incalls. 773-552-7525. Lic. #227008861.

UKRAINIAN MASSAGE. CALLS in/ out. Chicago and sub-

urbs. Hotels. 1234 S Michigan Avenue. Appointments. 773-616-6969.

ADULT SERVICES DANIELLE’S

LIP

SERVICE.

Adult Phone Sex Provider. Must be 21+. Ebony Beauty. Nothing is Taboo. All Credit Cards Accepted.7739354995

JUNE 23, 2016 | CHICAGO READER 81

STRAIGHT DOPE By Cecil Adams Q : Modern ships run on fuel—a lot of fuel.

SLUG SIGNORINO

Why not make large ships, like cruise ships and cargo transports, nuclear powered? —XODIAC

A : Good news, Xodiac: the future is now. As

EARLY WARNINGS Find a concert, buy a ticket, and sign up to get advance notice of Chicago’s essential music shows at chicagoreader.com/early. 82 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

soon as this weekend, you yourself can set sail on the Russian craft 50 Years of Victory, the largest nuclear-powered icebreaker in the world, which as a side gig takes passengers cruising over the sunny North Pole. A stateroom’s yours for a cool $26,995, and the twoweek package includes an open bar, hot-air balloon rides, and the chance to see firsthand just how quickly climate change is rendering icebreakers obsolete. No wonder they’re turning to tourism. There is indeed something of a global existential need for technological advancement in this arena. But there’s been reason to think that’s about to change since the 1950s, when the idea made its public debut courtesy of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. World War II was over, and having let the nuclear horse out of the barn, the United States was now trying to keep the reins as tight as possible. To that end, Ike introduced his Atoms for Peace program, the aim of which was to spread the promise of a kinder, gentler split nucleus globally. The result—apart from the name Atoms for Peace having been appropriated as that of the alt-rock supergroup led by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke—was pretty much what you’d expect. Ike made recipient countries pinkie-swear they wouldn’t use the technology to develop a nuclear weapon, but the assistance set Iran down the nuclear weapons path and helped Israel, India, and Pakistan cook up nuclear bombs of their own. Ike was also keen to prove the myriad ways nukes could benefit everyday Americans. Thus one stateside AFP project was the NS Savannah, a civilian nuclear ship launched in 1959 as a harbinger of America’s rosy atomic future. Well, sort of, but honestly more like a preview of how slow the whole nuclear-merchant-marine concept would be to gain any kind of traction. Currently the Savannah is gathering dust in Baltimore, having remained in useful service for only ten years. Configured as a hybrid of passenger ship and cargo ship, it fell short in both capacities. But what’s been holding back nuclear merchant ships? There’s a matter of, for instance, customer queasiness. Talking to the magazine

Maritime Executive in 2015, one industry consultant said, “When you ask educated, professional groups whether they believe we should become more reliant on nuclear power, 30-40 percent are positive. When you ask the same group if they would be prepared to take their family on holiday on a nuclear-powered cruise ship, the number drops to below 10 percent.” Crew members on military nuclear ships, safe though they may be, wear dosimeters at all times, just in case—hardly a reassuring sight for your typical Caribbean vacationers, I’d imagine. Otherwise, the challenges look logistically complex but certainly not insurmountable. And the benefits are significant:

• Ship owners nowadays have resisted switching to

cleaner-burning natural gas because of a lack of in-port infrastructure for refueling, and so commercial craft continue to burn the dirtier fossil fuels. Nuclear avoids the issue altogether: not only zero emissions, but no refueling for five to seven years at a time.

• The startup costs of nuclear aren’t nothing—

besides the reactor itself, there’s security, insurance, etc—but Nuclear Engineering International estimates that, factoring in lower fuel costs, a given ship could break even within ten to 20 years. The economics should continue to improve too, as the world sees heavier regulation of fossil fuels in the form of carbon taxes and the like.

• Cheaper fuel means ships can travel faster—a boon in ways obvious (getting goods to market) and subtle (less susceptibility to pirate attacks).

The technology is basically there too—the U.S. Navy’s been successfully powering submarines with small nukes for decades. And though there have been plenty of maritime accidents over those years, no leakage has ever resulted from a sunk nuclear reactor. So maybe hold on to that 27 grand for now, Xodiac—I suspect you’ll see your options expand, and cheapen, before too long. v Send questions to Cecil via straightdope. com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 350 N. Orleans, Chicago 60654.

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 83

84 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

SAVAGE LOVE

By Dan Savage

Is calling a coworker by his puppy name sexual?

Dan enlists an expert on the subject. Plus: inadvertent outing, Orlando Q : There is a guy at my

work who is into puppy play. I know this because I have some friends in the gay puppy community. I don’t give two shits what anyone I work with does to get oﬀ. All well and good, except . . . he wants us to call him Spike, his puppy name. Isn’t this a case of him involving everyone at work in his sex life, whether we want to be involved or not? —DISTURBED OVER GRATUITOUS GRATIFICATIONS OF NAMING EXPERIENCE

A : “It’s important to note,

ﬁrstly, that pup play isn’t a sexual activity so much as it is a head space,” said Amp, a puppy, a gamer, a porn performer, and the cohost of Watts the Safeword, a kink-friendly sex-education YouTube channel. “For DOGGONE’s coworker, pup play may be a comfort thing, or a social thing, or even a way for him to redeﬁne who he is as a person so that he can take control.” Amp, who is 26 and lives in Seattle, got into pup play about five years ago. “A daddy and his pup joined a group of friends on a gay camping trip,” said Amp. “Their bond just seemed to glow, and their relationship stuck with me as something I wanted in my life. For me, yes, pup play can get sexual with my Daddy, but Amp is just who I am when I’m out and about.” Like your coworker, DOGGONE, Amp goes by his puppy name socially and professionally. So I put this question to him: Does he get a secret thrill and/or a visible boner when a coworker, barista, casual friend, or rando calls him by his pup name? “God no!” said Amp. “If someone calls me ‘pup’ in a really sexual way or an aggressive way, maybe, but

not when someone is simply using your name. A pup name is essentially a nickname, and people use nicknames socially and professionally. So long as the kinkier aspects of pup play—tail wagging, barking, ball chasing—are kept out of the workplace, DOGGONE’s coworker using his puppy name at work doesn’t involve the office in his sex life. “DOGGONE should always respect how someone identifies and asks to be named,” said Amp, “and regard the sexual or kink aspects of someone’s name choice as a separate detail.”

Q : I recently synced my

phone contacts to my Twitter account. When I was scrolling through the list of people who turned up from my contacts, I saw a user name that looked out of place. It was the account of a low-key traditionalguy friend of mine. To my surprise, on the account he was dressed as a woman in a few of the pictures and was with another Twitter user who is a popular dominatrix in the area where he lives. I’m sex-positive and support people who are gender nonconforming, of course. I also don’t judge anyone who participates in BDSM. My concern is that I don’t know if this person is aware that his account can be found via a regular old social media and phone sync. I don’t want him to get outed for being a fetishist or possibly being gender questioning or transgender if he does not want to be out. Should I give him a heads-up? Should I keep my mouth shut? I want to be respectful. —KNOW-

ING ISN’T NECESSARILY KNOWLEDGE, YES?

A : Send that traditional guy

a note, KINKY, but “bury the lead,” as they say in the news

biz. Open with the relevant facts about yourself: “You know I’m not fazed by BDSM or sex work or any sort of gender-related sex play, and I’m a big supporter of gendernonconforming people as well as the trans community.” Then let him know what you found, how you stumbled across it, and how to adjust his privacy settings.

Q : My name is Peter and I’m a longtime fan. I’m 21 and only recently out of the closet. I opened up about my sexuality after the passage of marriage equality last June and have since been a proud gay man. It seemed that since marriage equality, our community was only going up. Even North Carolina’s passage of HB2 didn’t make me cynical about the future. But this recent shooting has changed my world completely. Fighting for equality in housing, education, and employment seems like a joke after this massive act of violence in Orlando. I’m looking to someone in the community for guidance. —PETER A : They don’t win—the haters don’t win—when they chase us, beat us, or kill us. They win when we stop ﬁghting. Please don’t stop fighting. And please don’t despair. Look at who’s on our side today—all good and decent people everywhere. Look at the rallies, look at the vigils, look at the outpouring of love, sympathy, and support. Don’t look at the killer. Don’t look at the haters. Look at the good. Look at the love. Then get out there and fight. v

12O’CLOCK

TRACK SERIES A SIDE OF JAM WITH YOUR LUNCH EVERY WEEKDAY

THEBLEADER.COM

Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at thestranger.com. v @fakedansavage

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 85

b Never miss a show again. Sign up for the newsletter at chicagoreader. com/early

Kamasi Washington ò COURTESY THE ARTIST

NEW

Marc Anthony 12/4, 7 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM Ash 9/28, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM, 18+ Bear’s Den 9/23, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM, 17+ Bombino 10/9, 8 PM, Martyrs’, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM Califone 9/23, 10 PM, Schubas Clutch, Zakk Sabbath, Kyng 10/25, 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Andra Day 11/18, 9 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM, 17+ Deslondes 9/15, 8 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 6/24, noon Die Antwoord 10/11, 8 PM, Aragon Ballroom, on sale Fri 6/24, noon Rik Emmett 11/3, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 6/23, noon b Eternals Espiritu Zombi Group 8/13, 9 PM, Hideout Famous Last Words, Outline in Color 7/31, 5:30 PM, Wire, Berwyn b Felice Brothers 9/13, 8 PM, Schubas Finish Ticket 10/1, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM Five Iron Frenzy 8/12, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Donavon Frankenreiter 10/20, 6:30 and 9 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 6/23, noon b Margaret Glaspy 9/20-21, 7:30 PM, Green Mill, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM Heﬀron Drive 8/6, 2 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club b Erwin Helfer 9/10, 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 6/24, 8 AM b

James Hunter Six 9/22, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM b If These Trees Could Talk 9/1, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Jjuujjuu 8/10, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Kaleo 10/15, 7:30 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM, 17+ King Lil G 8/2, 6:30 PM, Double Door Jim Kweskin & Geoﬀ Muldaur 9/25, 7 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 6/24, 8 AM b Laketown Buskers 8/6, 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 6/24, 8 AM b Langhorne Slim & the Law 9/20, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM b Lau 9/24, 7 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Los Crudos 7/17, ChiTown Futbol b Los Lobos 12/11-14, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 6/23, noon b Louis the Child 11/26, 9 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM, 18+ Tony Lucca 10/7, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 6/23, noon b M83 10/20, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM b Madball, Homewrecker, Coldside 8/14, 6 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM, 18+ Taj Mahal Trio 9/1, 7 and 9:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM b Dave McGraw & Mandy Fer 8/31, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM b MDC 10/30, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+

86 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 23, 2016

Ingrid Michaelson, AJR 10/11, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM b Chrisette Michele 8/28, 8 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM Nohband 10/30, 7:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Tom Odell 10/13, 7:30 PM, Park West, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM b Opeth, the Sword 10/9, 9 PM, Riviera Theatre, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM b Paper Bird 9/10, 7 PM, Subterranean, on sale Fri 6/24, 9 AM Pennywise, Strung Out 10/8, 8 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM, 17+ The Pines 9/22, 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 6/24, 8 AM b Plainsong 9/17, 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 6/24, 8 AM b Purity Ring 10/29, 8:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, on sale Fri 6/24, 11 AM b Queensryche 12/9, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Ben Rector 10/21, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM Chris Robinson Brotherhood 10/14, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM, 17+ Roosevelt 9/23, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Sheepdogs 9/9, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Shovels & Rope 10/6, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM, 17+ A Silent Film 8/9, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Simple Plan, Hit the Lights 10/16, 6 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM b Skillet 9/29, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+

5quad 8/25, 7 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 6/24, noon b Sumac 8/9, 8 PM, Township, 17+ Avery Sunshine 10/12, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM b Tall Heights 10/21, 8 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 6/24, noon Tech N9ne 9/17, 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Titus Andronicus, A Giant Dog 9/28, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 6/24, 11 AM, 17+ Cale Tyson 8/4, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats 9/13, 8 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM, 18+ Angel Vivaldi 9/24, 7:30 PM, Wire, Berwyn, 18+ Kamasi Washington 7/17, 10:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Wookiefoot 11/18-19, 7:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 18+ Yarn 8/9, 8 PM, Wire, Berwyn, 18+ Young the Giant, Ra Ra Riot 11/4, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM

UPDATED Architects, Counterparts 7/13, 6 PM, Bottom Lounge, canceled Raul Malo 8/26, 8 PM and 8/27, 7 and 9:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, 8/27 shows sold out, 8/26 added, on sale Fri 6/24, 10 AM b

UPCOMING Anthrax 9/21, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Arcs 7/27, 9 PM, Park West, 18+ Bad Boy Family Reunion with Puﬀ Daddy, Lil’ Kim, Mase, Faith Evans, and more 8/27, 8 PM, United Center Big Business 7/2, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen Bloodshot Bill 7/28, 9 PM, Hideout Catﬁsh & the Bottlemen 10/12, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Child Bite 7/30, 8 PM, Burlington Dead & Company 7/9-10, 7:30 PM, Alpine Valley Music Theatre, East Troy Dinosaur Jr. 10/8, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Donkeys 8/7, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Elvis Depressedly 8/30, 7 PM, Subterranean b

ALL AGES

WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK

EARLY WARNINGS

CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME

Explosions in the Sky 9/10, 8 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 17+ Failure 10/21, 9 PM, Double Door, 17+ The Faint, Gang of Four 9/30, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Ace Frehley, Enuﬀ Z’Nuﬀ 8/26, 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Goggs 7/19-20, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 7/20 added Handsome Family 9/18, 7 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Helmet 7/15, 9 PM, Double Door, 17+ Il Divo 10/22, 7 PM, Rosemont Theater, Rosemont b Jesu, Sun Kil Moon 11/13, 8 PM, Park West, 18+ Talib Kweli 7/2, 7 and 10 PM, City Winery b Milemarker 8/19, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Omni 8/16, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Planning for Burial 8/3, 7:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Prophets of Rage, AWOLNATION 9/3, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Psychic TV 7/22, 9 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Royal Headache 7/14, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Saint Vitus, the Skull 10/10, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Seratones 10/7, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Sloan 11/11, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Patti Smith 12/30, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Smithereens 9/25, 8 PM, City Winery b Snakehips 7/30, 10 PM, Primary Nightclub Snoop Dogg, Wiz Khalifa 8/16, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Sonny & the Sunsets 7/7, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Step Rockets 7/15, 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen Colin Stetson & Sarah Neufeld 8/9, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Al Stewart 7/19, 8 PM, City Winery b Sticky Fingers 10/18, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Sting, Peter Gabriel 7/9, 8 PM, United Center Thee Oh Sees 11/19, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Tokyo Police Club 9/22, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall VNV Nation 10/23, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Weekend Nachos 7/1, 6 PM, Township b Wolves in the Throne Room 9/23, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Woods 7/16, 11 PM, Subterranean Yes 8/20, 8 PM, Copernicus Center b ZZ Top, Gov’t Mule 9/17, 7 PM, Rosemont Theater, Rosemont v

GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene GOSSIP WOLF IS SAD to report that Laura “Lulu” Callier—who performs as local synth jammer Gel Set and half of duos Simulation and God Vol. 1—is leaving town for Los Angeles at the end of the month. Bummer! She’ll play a characteristically idiosyncratic ﬁnal Chicago show at Near North space Savage Smyth (920 N. Franklin) at noon on Thursday, June 23; opening are noise dudes Andy Ortmann, Jeremiah Fisher (Oakeater), Anthony Janas, and Peter Speer. Callier is also having a going-away party at Rainbo the evening of Monday, June 27. See you there! On Thursday, June 23, Lakeview gay bar Manhole hosts what’s claiming to be the midwest’s biggest queer hip-hop showcase. Among the acts on the bill at H.W.A (bet you can guess what it stands for) is this wolf’s favorite bear MC, Big Dipper— even though he lives in New York now, he still represents Chicago. The lineup also includes two current Chicagoans: Mister Wallace (a member of BanjeeReport and a resident at underground party Men’s Room) and trans MC Kaycee Ortiz (who just dropped her debut mixtape, Beach Street). LA’s Rica Shay and NYC’s Cazwell round out the bill; tickets are $20 ($40 for VIP), and the show starts at 7:30 PM. It’s been a minute since Gossip Wolf checked in with rollicking punk band Mama, and a lot has changed. Front man Chris DeArcangelis says he’s got a whole new lineup—for a few weeks he’s been playing with bassist Joe Montanaro (the Rubs, Son of a Gun), guitarist Dan Rico (Ego), and drummer Matt Dudzik (Poison Boys). The new Mama make their public debut on Wednesday, June 29, at Door No. 3 (with Japanese rockers Thunderroads), and you can also catch them the next night at Reed’s Local. DeArcangelis says Mama have a seven-inch called Too Good to Be True due on Maximum Pelt in the fall and will soon begin working on their debut LP, which HoZac plans to release before the end of the year. —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

BEST DESCRIBED BY

BEING HERE

CHICAGO ENJOY NEW BELGIUM RESPONSIBLY

PALMER SQUARE 7/9/16 N. KEDZIE AVE. & W. PALMER SQUARE

REGISTRATION 10AM – 11AM

BIKE PARADE 11AM – 12PM REVIVALATION 12PM – 5PM

NEWBELGIUM.COM/TOURDEFAT

BENEFITTING

[Brand name, e.g. Fat Tire®, Porchswing™, etc] New Belgium® and the bicycle logo are trademarks of New Belgium Brewing Co.

BIKES, BEER & BEMUSEMENT

JUNE 23, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 87

CHICAGO,

SINCE 1988.

GOOSE ISLAND BEER CO.