Print Issue of June 28, 2018 (Volume 47, Number 38) by Chicago Reader

C H I C A G O ’ S F R E E W E E K LY S I N C E 1 9 7 1 | J U N E 2 8 , 2 0 1 8

The final Straight Dope— as we know it 4

The ghost of Archer Avenue 16

O G A C I

A T ’S

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THIS WEEK

C H I C A G O R E A D E R | J U N E 2 8 , 2 0 1 8 | V O L U M E 4 7, N U M B E R 3 8

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INTERIM EXECUTIVE EDITOR DAVE NEWBART CREATIVE DIRECTOR VINCE CERASANI DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY JAMIE RAMSAY CULTURE EDITOR AIMEE LEVITT FILM EDITOR J.R. JONES MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO ASSOCIATE EDITORS STEVE HEISLER, JAMIE LUDWIG, KATE SCHMIDT SENIOR WRITER MIKE SULA SENIOR THEATER CRITIC TONY ADLER STAFF WRITERS MAYA DUKMASOVA, LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, PETER MARGASAK SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR RYAN SMITH GRAPHIC DESIGNER SUE KWONG MUSIC LISTINGS COORDINATOR LUCA CIMARUSTI FILM LISTINGS COORDINATOR PATRICK FRIEL CONTRIBUTORS NOAH BERLATSKY, ISA GIALLORENZO, JOHN GREENFIELD, ANDREA GRONVALL, KT HAWBAKER, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, IRENE HSIAO, DAN JAKES, MORGAN ELISE JOHNSON, MONICA KENDRICK, BILL MEYER, MICHAEL MINER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, MARK PETERS, LEAH PICKETT, JANET POTTER, BEN SACHS, DMITRY SAMAROV, OLIVER SAVA, JULIA THIEL, TIFFANY WALDEN, KEVIN WARWICK, BRIANNA WELLEN, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERNS MATTHEW HARVEY, DAVID NORTH, KATIE POWERS, TYRA NICOLE TRICHE, ANNA WHITE ---------------------------------------------------------------ADVERTISING DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER BEST SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER EVANGELINE MILLER DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY ADVERTISING COORDINATOR HERMINIA BATTAGLIA ---------------------------------------------------------------DISTRIBUTION CONCERNS distributionissues@chicagoreader.com CHICAGO READER 30 N. RACINE, SUITE 300 CHICAGO, IL 60607 312-222-6920 CHICAGOREADER.COM ---------------------------------------------------------------READER (ISSN 1096-6919) IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY STM READER, LLC 30 N. RACINE, SUITE 300 CHICAGO, IL 60607. COPYRIGHT © 2018 CHICAGO READER. PERIODICAL POSTAGE PAID AT CHICAGO, IL. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. CHICAGO READER, READER, AND REVERSED R: REGISTERED TRADEMARKS ®.

ON THE COVER: PHOTO BY JAMIE RAMSAY. HAND MODEL: YOHANCE LACOUR (LOVELEATHERCARDS.COM).

FEATURES BOOK EXCERPT

Resurrection Mary, the ghost of Archer Avenue A chilling tale of the south side A SELECTION BY EDWARD MCCLELLAND 16

THE BLOCK BEAT

Phor leads a tour through the cradle of his creativity

FOOD & DRINK

A taco crawl for the end times

Three newish spots on the northwest side show that, if nothing else, the taqueria abides. BY MIKE SULA 10

He’s gone from painting on Nikes and writing verses in his grandma’s Marynook basement to costarring on Black Ink Crew: Chicago and working with superproducer London on da Track. WORDS BY TIFFANY WALDEN PHOTOS BY MORGAN ELISE JOHNSON 23

IN THIS ISSUE

CITY LIFE

4 Dope Update The future of the Straight Dope 5 Fourth of July The best events in Chicago for fireworks and beyond 5 Food & Drink Troll the Chicago hot dog fascists with a new T-shirt flaunting the virtues of ketchup. 6 Shop Watch Ravenswood’s Sailor showcases independent jewelry designers, but that’s just for starters. 7 Joravsky | Politics Time to yank Trump’s wretched name off his tower— or make him pay more taxes. 8 Transportation Electric scooters could be the next vehicle to clog Chicago’s sidewalks and bike lanes. 9 Animals All Hyde Park wants to know: Where’s Bobo?

FOOD & DRINK

13 Key Ingredient Momotaro chef Mark Hellyar deconstructs the tuna hoagie.

ARTS & CULTURE

18 Theater The Artistic Home’s drag version of The Maids . . . drags.

CLASSIFIEDS

22 Movies Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and six more new ﬁlms, reviewed by our critics

35 Jobs 35 Apartments & Spaces 36 Marketplace

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE 26 In Rotation Thunder Rock, Hogg, Eliza Weber, and other current obsessions

19 Theater Golden Girls: The Lost Episodes, Volume 2 and three more stage shows, reviewed by our critics 20 Lit Jamila Woods and Kevin Coval collaborate with Vinyl for a Cause to beneﬁt Young Chicago Authors. 21 Movies Music is the connecting tissue in Brett Haley’s indie drama Hearts Beat Loud.

27 Shows of note Josefus, Kasey Musgraves, Serpentwithfeet, and more of the week’s best

36 Straight Dope Is Prevagen, the cognitive supplement, as eﬀective as its TV ad states? 37 Savage Love What to do when you’re stuck in a platonic marriage. Plus: a gay guy explains why he prefers straight dick. 38 Early Warnings Tune-Yards, Menzingers, Great Lake Swimmers, and other shows to look for in the weeks to come 38 Gossip Wolf Chicago band Diagonal do mid-90s shoegaze so well they might have a time machine, and more music news.

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FAREWELLS

The ﬁnal Straight Dope— as we know it

After 45 years, I’m taking a break. By CECIL ADAMS

his week’s Straight Dope (on p. 36) marks the last appearance of the column as the Teeming Millions have known it for the past 45 years. Why the change, and why now? With the planned sale of the Reader, the folks at SunTimes Media, which will continue to own the Straight Dope, are rethinking the once-a-week deep dive (sorta) on a single topic (usually) in question-and-answer format. It’s possible a successor to the Straight Dope will emerge, possibly with daily online content. But no decision has been made, and my role, if any, hasn’t been determined. In the meantime, I’m thinking about publishing another The Straight Dope book—it’s been nigh on 20 years since the last one. Regardless, the Straight Dope legacy will remain intact. The Straight Dope archive— some 3,400 columns, most written by me, the balance by the Straight Dope Science Advisory Board, my online auxiliary—will remain accessible at straightdope.com. A sizable number of those columns also are archived at chicagoreader.com. The Straight Dope home page will continue to be updated with recycled classics. The Straight Dope Message Board (SDMB), the online community that has grown up around the column, will remain open for business. Those who have read the Straight Dope only in print might know of the Straight Dope Message Board chieﬂy as the source of occasional questions in the Straight Dope column. In fact, in many ways the SDMB has become the heart and soul of the enterprise. Its members are an exceptionally lively and devoted group. In a business where “stickiness” means you can get someone to spend ten minutes on your site, we’ve had people who’ve spent hours every day for years. Most members of the community never meet in real life, but many do: Dopefests have been held around the world. Meeting a future life partner through the Straight Dope has long since ceased to excite comment. The SDMB been a raucous, wildly entertaining house party that has kept users coming back for 22 years—“like caramel-covered crack,” as one user once put it. People partic-

SLUG SIGNORINO

SOAK UP SOME SAVINGS

ipate not out of civic duty, but because it’s fun. Part of what makes it fun is the arguments, which anyone can start on any subject. The SDMB offers a soapbox and an audience that routinely numbers in the thousands and occasionally in the millions. How many minds are changed as a result of these freewheeling symposia I have no idea. But surely there’s value in having to defend your views in open debate, and in having cherished beliefs challenged. The chastening thing for me as a journalist was to realize how little my participation was needed to keep the conversation going once it began. The Straight Dope got people in the door and has continued to set the tone; ﬁghting ignorance has long been the site’s mantra. But the community at an early stage took on a life of its own. That’s not to say it just happened. Two elements were key. The ﬁrst was that we had rules. The initial one was simple: don’t be a jerk. Jerkitude lacking specificity, this was soon elaborated on, but the basic idea persisted: you could venture any opinion you cared to provided that you remained civil. The second critical element was the SDMB moderators—the staff—whose job was to enforce the rules and keep the peace. They’re volunteers who get only a coffee mug for their trouble. Many have kept at it for years, which continues to astonish me. Clearly the job has its rewards; the SDMB is an enduring community, and they’re the pillars of it. Without them it would be a different and in my opinion much worse place. I owe a debt to them I can never pay. Of such people are communities made. Say what you will about newspaper comment sections, Twitter, and Facebook, no arena has emerged for the clash of ideas of the sort we’ve tried to encourage at the SDMB—no forum where ordinary people with fundamental disagreements can duke it out provided they remain civil. I can’t say I have no regrets; there are things I might have done differently. But I’m grateful for the opportunity—and grateful for the fact that the Straight Dope community will live on. Regards, CECIL

CITY LIFE

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EVENTS

From sea to shining sky: Fourth of July in Chicago

FOOD

Ketchup forever!

By ANNA WHITE

Troll the Chicago hot dog fascists with this T-shirt. Another 90s Party: Wet Hot American Summer Edition Beauty Bar hosts this all-American installment of its Another 90s Party series. Get down to some throwback tunes, summer camp-style. Sat 6/30, 9 PM, Beauty Bar, 1444 W. Chicago, 312-226-8828, thebeautybar.com/home-chicago, $5. 21+

Four-Course Fourth of July Dinner Watch the ﬁreworks from Pinstripes’ riverfront patio while enjoying a main course of mapleglazed salmon or boneless short rib, accompanied by antipasto, salad, and dessert. Wed 7/4, 7:30 PM, Pinstripes, 435 E. Illinois, 312527-3010, $80.

Chicago History Museum Fourth of July Celebration For an educational holiday activity, head over to the Chicago History Museum for its 59th annual Fourth of July celebration, featuring a parade for children, a reading of the Declaration of Independence, and a keynote speech by Illinois Supreme Court justice Anne M. Burke. Wed 7/4, 10 AM, Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark, 312-642-4600, chicagohistory.org. F

Fourth of July Kickoﬀ Party Hopsmith Tavern hosts a patriotic rager, complete with drink specials, giant games, barbecue, and a live DJ. Prizes are awarded for best outﬁts; don’t hold back on the red, white, and blue. Sun 7/1, 11 AM, Hopsmith Tavern, 15 W. Division, 312-600-9816, hopsmithchicago.com.

Fireworks at Navy Pier A classic! Make your way to Navy Pier for its annual ﬁreworks display. Make sure to get there early; the party will close once it reaches capacity, and a large crowd is expected. Wed 7/4, 9:30-9:45 PM, Navy Pier, 600 E. Grand, 312-595-7437, navypier. com. F

Fourth of July Late Night After the ﬁreworks, the Owl oﬀers drink specials and a midweek dance party. Wed 7/4, 10 PM, the Owl, 2521 N. Milwaukee, 773-235-5300, owlbarchicago.com. F Fourth on 53rd Parade and Picnic This year marks the 26rd anniversary of Hyde Park’s annual Fourth of July celebration, a family-friendly south-side tradition. Decorate a bike or wagon and march in

the parade, or join in afterward for the picnic and festival at Nichols Park (1355 E. 53rd). Wed 7/4, 10 AM, 54th and Old Lake Park. F Independence Day Salute The Grant Park Orchestra performs a selection of patriotic works, including Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” featuring 16-year-old pianist Emily Bear. Wed 7/4, 6:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, Michigan and Randolph, 312-742-1168, millenniumpark.org/artandarchitecture/ jay_pritzker_pavilion.html. F July Fourth Jazzin’ at the Shedd Part of the Shedd Aquarium’s summer jazz series, this iteration carries an Independence Day theme. Enjoy access to the entire aquarium, take in tunes by local jazz musicians, and dine on all-American hot dogs and hamburgers. Wed 7/4, 5 PM, Shedd Aquarium, 1200 S. Lake Shore, 312-939-2438, sheddaquarium.org, $25. v

By MIKE SULA

part from open deﬁance, the secondbest way to resist Chicagoans’ pointless prohibition of ketchup on a hot dog is with mockery. Artist and ninja-level japester Derek Erdman, who recently returned to town after an extended residency at the Stranger in Seattle, posted a good one on Facebook the other day: Last night on an airplane to Chicago I overheard some guy talking about how much he loved Chicago-style hotdogs. When there was a lull in his dogsplaining I piped up, “They’re great with ketchup!,” and he gave me dagger eyes. I wrote down his address from his luggage tag because I’m a total psycho and I’m going to send him one of these very pedestrian joked t-shirts.

And now you can troll the dogsplainers with your very own. Nick “Mayor ” Mayor of Logan Square’s Bric-a-Brac Records is printing them up in all sizes and taking preorders at nick@bricabracrecords.com for $20 per, plus shipping. Or you can wait two weeks and buy them in-store at 3650 W. Diversey. Erdman himself is selling four-by-six prints for your fridge for $10. All proceeds beneﬁt promoting a reasonable degree of tolerance for other people’s totally normal eating habits. v

m @MikeSula

JUNE 28, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 5

CITY LIFE The storefront; artwork by Michael McGuire, striped blankets by Garza Marfa, and wall hangings by MQuan Studio é ISA GIALLORENZO

shoP Window

SAILOR

Sailor

The Ravenswood boutique showcases jewelry by independent designers, but that’s just for starters.

4658 N. Damen 773-942-7356 shop-sailor.com Fri-Sat 11 AM-6 PM, Sun noon4 PM, and by appointment

By ISA GIALLORENZO

hy would a successful jewelry designer—with loyal customers and her own line in more than 60 stores in the U.S.—sign up for the headaches of running a shop? “Love,” answers Sara McGuire, 45, the owner of Sailor, a boutique she opened in Ravenswood last fall. “It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time,” McGuire says. “To create something that’s small, personal, distinctive, ambitious and welcoming, all at once. A store for everyday luxuries and special occasions. A neighborhood shop with broad horizons. Sailor is the shop I’ve always wanted to have on my corner.” Sailor is indeed a convenience store of sorts,

6 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 28, 2018

filled with a wide variety of products handpicked by its owner, from a $6 letterpress card to a $2,500 engagement ring, plus framed artwork, handmade shoes, ceramics, wall-hangings, books, blankets, ﬁne teas, leather bags, and other accessories. Jewelry prices range from $70 to $4,000; engagement rings start around $600 and can be purchased custom-made as well. “If you come in looking for a wedding ring, we’re going to be as helpful and involved as you need us to be,” says McGuire. “And if we don’t have what you’re looking for, we’ll happily refer you to someone who might.” McGuire, who crafts her pieces in a nearby studio, became a jewelry designer almost 20

years ago while working as a graphic designer in New York City. Her line, like her shop, feels both organic and sophisticated, and is produced in mostly mixed metals—Sarah’s favorite pairing is 18-karat gold and oxidized silver. “Black and gold is a magical combination,” she says. Besides her own work, McGuire also represents independent jewelers from all over the country, designers she admires for various reasons: “I love the rawness of Variance and the edginess of Elizabeth Street. The bold, graphic quality of Acanthus. The delicate reﬁnement of Carla Caruso, who makes the best hoop earrings on earth. The stop-you-in-yourtracks originality of Atelier Narcé. They’re all

quite different, but what they have in common is that they have a distinctive vision.” Nonjewelry lines include MQuan Studio (ceramics and wall hangings), Garza Marfa (textiles), Notary (ceramics), Winter Session (bags), Tatine (candles and apothecary items), and Frēda Salvador (shoes). There are also Fog Linen’s functional objects and textiles, made in Japan, and Sibilia’s brass and enamel pieces from Buenos Aires, among others. Thanks to its high ceilings and large windows, Sailor is an airy space drenched in sunlight. It has a minimal and contemporary look, yet a natural and inviting vibe. “We don’t have traditional jewelry cases. We don’t have overly bright jewelry-store lighting,” explains McGuire. “The style of the shop blends modernism’s clean lines with the imperfections of preindustrial handicraft.” Located in a wooded street in the Ravenswood neighborhood just a few steps from the Brown Line, the Damen bus, and a Metra station, the boutique is also close to other charming independent businesses such as District, Architectural Artifacts, and Alapash New Home (and Terrariums). McGuire is enthusiastic about her surroundings and her prospects: “The response we’re getting is great. I love that the store already has regulars, people who visit often, whose names I know, and whose speciﬁc tastes I’m learning. For some people we’re a jewelry store, for some we’re an art gallery, for others we’re a shoe store—and for some it starts out as one of those things and becomes another, which is wonderful.” —ISA GIALLORENZO

CITY LIFE

Celebrating our st

THE

MEXICAN 1967

YEAR

Refreshed Revived

POLITICS

De-Trump the Tower

Rejuvenated

RELOADED& Revised Reopened

Time to yank his wretched name oﬀ his building—or make him pay more taxes. By BEN JORAVSKY

he other day I was walking past Trump Tower, steaming over the sight of that wretched name on its side, when it hit me. I know a way that might make Trump take his name off that building. Make him choose between giving up the sign or the property tax break he effectively gets for having it there. He shouldn’t get both—especially not in a Democratic city like Chicago. All right, let me explain. The amount you pay in property taxes is partly determined by the value of your property as assessed by Cook County assessor Joe Berrios. If you think Berrios has overassessed your property, you can appeal his assessment. If he—or the Cook County Board of Review— lowers your assessment, you’ll pay less in property taxes. Over the last few years, Trump has successfully appealed several times, hiring 14th Ward alderman Ed Burke as his attorney. In addition to being chairman of the City Council’s ﬁnance committee and one of Mayor Rahm’s closest allies, Burke somehow finds the time to run a property tax appeal business. So, in effect, Trump has depended on the kindness of powerful Democratic bosses to cut his property taxes even as he bashes the Democrats and tries to eradicate everything they believe in. Burke recently dropped Trump as a client— in part because he’s worried the connection will cost him votes as he runs for reelection next year in a mostly Latino ward. But the damage has already been done. Thanks to Burke, Trump has saved roughly $14 million in property taxes since 2010, according to a SunTimes exposé. What’s worse, the less Trump pays in property taxes, the more the rest of us have to pay.

The eyesore é RICH HEIN/SUN-TIMES

for you

Tue - Sat 10 - 6 847-475-8665

801 Dempster Evanston I don’t know exactly how much more we have to pay to compensate for the $14 million in breaks that Burke helped Trump win. But it makes my blood boil just thinking about all of this. When he was representing Trump, Burke argued that Berrios should lower the assessment on Trump Tower because it had so many vacant commercial units. And do you know why Trump has so many commercial vacancies? ’Cause he put his freaking name on the building! I mean, no self-respecting Chicagoan would want anything to do with a building that has T-R-U-M-P on its side. If you don’t believe me, believe the marketing people who are trying to lease those vacant commercial units in Trump Tower. They’ve used brochures that show the building without Trump’s name on the side. The brochure doesn’t even call it Trump Tower. It’s referred to by its address, 401. N. Wabash. Like anyone’s fooled. There’s a Yiddish word for what Trump is displaying: chutzpah. The standard illustration of chutzpah is the man who kills his parents and then throws himself at the mercy of the court on the grounds that he’s an orphan. In Trump’s case, he alienates prospective tenants by putting his name on his building and then throws himself at the mercy of the asses-

sor ’cause—oh my gosh, surprise, surprise—he can’t get any tenants. As I see it, Trump has a choice. If he wants to rent his units, he has to take his name off the building. If he wants to keep the name, then stop appealing for tax breaks. “You make an interesting point,” says Tom Shaer, spokesman for Berrios. “I’ve not heard anyone raise that one—the Ben Joravsky theory. Maybe you should be a property tax lawyer.” You know, as opposed to the broke-ass writer that I am. In other cases, the assessor has refused to lower assessments on commercial property owned by landlords who have turned off potential tenants by not taking care of their buildings, Shaer notes. Well, why not do the same for a landlord who, like Trump, makes his building radioactive to tenants? I placed a call to Fritz Kaegi, who will be the assessor in December, having defeated Berrios in this year’s Democratic primary. But he was unavailable for comment. So, Fritz, I just gave you a sureﬁre tool to use against Trump the next time he and his lawyer come crying to you about his property taxes. Make Chicago great again—get Trump’s damn name off the building. v

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

m @joravben JUNE 28, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 7

CITY LIFE Bird electric scooters in Washington, D.C. é JOE FLOOD VIA TWITTER

TRANSPORTATION

Cog or clog?

Will shareable electric scooters be taking over Chicago’s sidewalks and bike lanes? By JOHN GREENFIELD

ast week’s Reader bike issue was (mostly) all about the joys of Chicago cycling, but there’s another twowheeled transportation mode on the horizon that could potentially present a nuisance for cyclists and a hazard for pedestrians. E-mails I recently acquired from the Chicago Department of Transportation via a Freedom of Information Act request show that city officials and transportation advocates are wary of the potential negative effects that dockless electric scooter sharing could have on bikeways and sidewalks.

8 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 28, 2018

Dockless scooter technology is the latest craze in the burgeoning shared-mobility industry, which also include the dockless bike-share cycles that were rolled out on Chicago’s far south side in May as part of a ninemonth pilot. As is the case with dockless bike share, scooter customers use a smartphone app to locate and check out the vehicles. The battery-powered devices offer a fun, zippy, sweat-free way to get around that’s ideal for traveling between transit stations and destinations, and proponents say they can be part of the solution for reducing traffic jams and

pollution in cities. Bird, a billion-dollar startup that’s the current industry front-runner, charges $1 to check out a vehicle plus 15 cents a mile. The tech has already taken off in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. However, partly due to some scooter entrepreneurs taking an Uber-style “It’s easier to be forgiven than to ask permission” approach by scattering the vehicles around cities without obtaining permits first, there has been a major backlash to this Jetsons-esque travel mode. Residents have complained about scooters strewn across sidewalks and riders clogging bike lanes, zooming down sidewalks, and occasionally crashing into people on foot. San Francisco has impounded scores of unlicensed vehicles, and Santa Monica, where Bird first spread its wings, ﬁled criminal charges against the company for operating without permits, which resulted in a $300,000 settlement last January. Both cities passed legislation regulating the technology earlier this month.

As reported by the Sun-Times last month, Chicago alderman Joe Moreno (First Ward), who previously advocated for bringing dockless bikes and point-to-point car sharing to our city, wants to get out front of the scooter trend before the gadgets start popping up on Loop streets. In May he introduced an ordinance to the City Council to govern their use. The legislation would limit speeds to 20 mph and charge companies a daily fee of $1 per vehicle. Scooters could only be parked in the “street furniture zone” near the curb, for example, by leaning them against bike racks. While riding on sidewalks would be prohibited, scooter customers would be allowed to use bike lanes and paths. When I first visited Amsterdam in 2012, the fast gas-powered motor scooters allowed in the bike lanes were the main irritants in an otherwise-utopian cycling environment. (The city recently announced plans to ban motor scooters from bikeways.) Of course, dockless electric scooters are a different animal, but I’d still be annoyed if I were crossing the Loop in the narrow Washington Street protected bike lane at my usual ten mph cruising velocity and some tech bro buzzed past me at twice that speed without breaking a sweat, essentially ﬂipping me the bird. CDOT, which helps set transportation policy, has been tight-lipped about the scooters. But through a FOIA request, I obtained e-mails from the department this month showing that Chicago decision makers are highly skeptical of the scooters. In late April, assistant transportation commissioner Sean Wiedel shared a Guardian article with colleagues about San Francisco scooter mayhem, including crashes, tripping injuries, and a cease-and-desist order from the city. “I’m putting money on us impounding scooters in a couple of months,” responded Ranjani Prabhakar, a sustainability expert from the mayor’s office. The e-mails also showed that Bird lobbied for Illinois legislation that in its original incarnation would have allowed people to ride dockless scooters on sidewalks as well as bikeways, at speeds of up to 20 mph, although

CITY LIFE it would have allowed local municipalities to impose their own rules. (People over 12 are not allowed to bike on the sidewalk in Chicago.) “We have talked to Bird, the company running the bill, and have helped put the brakes on it,” Active Trans Alliance director Ron Burke wrote to Wiedel on April 25. “We see pros and cons but want to make sure it’s done right and don’t want too many scooters clogging sidewalks, trails or bike lanes.” Burke added that Active Trans would likely advocate the state ban the vehicles on Illinois bikeways and sidewalks unless local governments allow them, although he conceded that allowing scooters on sidewalks might work in less dense municipalities. Wiedel forwarded Burke’s message to city colleagues, and indicated that he shared Burke’s point of view. “We should also advocate for local governments to make determinations where they can and can’t be operated,” he wrote. “I would generally be concerned with them operating in bike lanes, trails and on sidewalks,” he said. Therefore, it seems likely that if and when the scooters roll out in Chicago, they’ll be on a tight leash. The current version of the state scooter bill, reﬂecting the input of Active Trans and possibly the city of Chicago (a CDOT spokesman declined to comment on the issue), bans sidewalk riding unless it’s legalized by a local municipality. Earlier this month Bird spokesman Ken Baer told me that the company actually believes scooters should not be ridden on sidewalks, and has messages on its app and printed on the vehicles telling customers not to do so. However, he argued that “scooters and bikes can coexist nicely in bikeways,” adding that Birds don’t go faster than 15 mph. Burke recently told me he doesn’t have a problem with scooters sharing bike lanes and trails with cyclists as long as they’re capped at 15 mph, adding that the new technology can be part of the solution to reducing car dependency. “Scooters are another way to move people more efficiently and safely than 3,000-pound cars that carry one or two people when they’re moving, and then require a sea of pavement to be stored during the more than 90 percent of the time when they aren’t moving.” v

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

ANIMALS

Where’s Bobo?

All Hyde Park is wondering whether the lost mourning dove will ever ﬁnd his way home. By KATIE POWERS

yde Park resident Karen Bradley has been asking for her neighbors’ help in finding her beloved mourning dove Bobo, who escaped from a window in her home last month. Bobo’s plight gained the attention of the Hyde Park community when hand-drawn signs started popping up all over the neighborhood. Bradley has put up more than 350 of them, sometimes posting them for six hours a day. She doesn’t intend to stop until he returns. “He means so much to me. I just can’t give up,” she said Tuesday. Bradley’s signs describe Bobo as being “hand-sized” and brown with black spots on his wings and yellow-and-white leg bands. He was born in Bradley’s home two years ago to a pair of mourning doves she rescued from a falcon attack ten years ago. Falcon attacks on smaller birds were a persistent problem in Hyde Park at that time, she says. Some signs mention that Bobo has a wife and kids. Bradley also cares for many other birds, including Bobo’s relatives. She’s offering a reward (amount unspeciﬁed) for anyone who brings him back. Nearly a month after Bobo’s disappearance, Bradley remains distraught. Prior to his escape, Bobo had never been outside, which makes her far more fearful about his condition. “It’s torture, because inside birds don’t know how to live outside,” she says. Many Hyde Park residents have reported potential sightings of Bobo on a Google group called Good Neighbors. Bradley herself is a frequent poster, consistently encouraging community members to keep looking out for him. “Please call me if you spot him,” she wrote. “He has no clue about falcons, dogs, cats, cars, windows, or how to eat outside.” One resident reported that she saw a bird

Karen Bradley has put up more than 350 signs since Bobo’s disappearance; Bobo at home é UCHICAGO/TWITTER; KAREN BRADLEY

that matched Bobo’s description in an alley near Cornell and Hyde Park Boulevard. Bradley wrote that it was unlikely he would choose such a noisy location. Despite Bobo’s long disappearance and his lack of experience with the outdoors, Bradley

still hopes that her signs will help bring him home. “Everyone in Hyde Park knows about him,” she says. “My only chance is that someone will spot him from my description.” v

m @kmpowers01 JUNE 28, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 9

RESTAURANT REVIEW

A taco crawl for the end times Three newish spots on the northwest side show that, if nothing else, the taqueria abides. BY MIKE SULA PHOTOS BY JAMIE RAMSAY 10 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 28, 2018

here’s been a lot of freakishness forced down our throats by the idiocracy in recent times, but amid it all you may still remember this whopper: “My culture is a very dominant culture, and it’s imposing and it’s causing problems. If you don’t do something about it, you’re going to have taco trucks on every corner.” That was Marco Gutierrez, founder of—please stay with me—Latinos for Trump, on MSNBC in September 2016, spouting what will go down as one of the most unintentionally hopeful campaign promises ever made.

(Left) Steak and bacon taco from El Santo Taqueria; (middle) ﬁsh, carne asada, and barbacoa tacos from Tomatillo Taco-Ville; (right) al pastor taco from the Chicago Taco Authority Ï HAND MODEL: YOHANCE LACOUR

But to a clear majority of the nation’s lasting rage and sorrow, that promise has not been delivered upon. And yet the state of the taco is strong. Albany Park, for example, and its neighboring north-side enclaves remain (for now) a safe place where the professional taquero can thrive in America. A case study: on a side street off one of the busier thoroughfares in this part of the city, there’s a family who each weekend set up a tent along the sidewalk, sheltering a table and chairs, coolers, cold drinks, a salsa bar, and a gas-powered comal on which the patriarch of the clan griddles piles of hissing carne asada, al pastor, ce-

sina, and chorizo con papas. The smell of warming corn tortillas and caramelizing meat casts a spell that’s palpable for blocks. People who don’t even live in the neighborhood drive their cars to this corner, line up under the tent, and wait patiently to place their orders with a teenager scribbling in a spiral-bound notebook. This weekly pop-up is clearly enchanted, but a lot of that owes to the simple superiority of eating tacos on the street. That’s appreciated all over this city if you know where to look—sidewalks, garages, and soccer fields—and yet it’s almost easier and in certain ways less risky to open a brick-

and-mortar taqueria. It’s definitely more competitive, which benefits all of us. Just in the last six months, a trio of taquerias opened in Irving Park and North Park. They aren’t even the only new ones in the area, but they’re certainly notable. On Foster Avenue at the edge of the North Park University campus, EL SANTO TAQUERIA opened in April, bedecked with brightly painted murals that embody Dia de Muertos, and slinging equally vivid tacos on blue corn tortillas that almost make them look like dulces. The shtick here is that the food is inspired by southern California, though I’m at a loss to J

JUNE 28, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 11

Tomatillo Taco-Ville

El Santo Taqueria

Chicago Taco Authority

EL SANTO TAQUERIA R 3352 W. Foster 773-649-3114 elsantochicago.com

CHICAGO TACO AUTHORITY R 4219 W. Irving Park 773-282-8226

facebook.com/Chicagotacoauthority

TOMATILLO TACO-VILLE R 2943 W. Irving Park 773-654-1350

continued from 11

see how, unless superloaded tacos with unconventional elements are more endemic to Los Angeles than anywhere else. These include a barbacoa taco with chihuahua cheese and the crispy onions that also adorn a number of others, such as the carnitas taco, which doubles down on the swine with the addition of bacon, and a sweetly glazed shredded-pork number with pineapple and chipotle-spiked crema. The signature here seems to be the somewhat misleadingly named “steak and bacon” taco, which is fundamentally a lot like the barbacoa, but with a crunchy topknot of “Asian” red cabbage slaw and queso fresco. While these are all compelling and mostly original ideas, I was more taken with the all-vegetable offerings, which include calabacitas, pale green zucchini-like squash diced along with corn, tomato, bell pepper, and onions; and hongos, an umami bomb of mushrooms, huitlacoche, chihuahua cheese, and avocado sour cream. While the focus at El Santo is on tacos, there are a number of similarly unconventional takes on classic antojitos, including a quartet of incrementally complicated guacamoles, cemitas that include a chicken tinga with deep-fried jala-

12 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 28, 2018

peño rings, and “Mexican street fries” covered with melted cheese, sour cream, and fat chunks of carnitas. If you find the tacos at El Santo overbuilt, you’ll probably quail in the shadow of those at the CHICAGO TACO AUTHORITY in Irving Park. I don’t know many people who harbor positive feelings about the el or the bus, so it seems weird to enter a public transportation-themed environment in pursuit of pleasure, and yet there’s a compelling reason to stay provided by the overhead menu. It has several options taped over and discontinued, and there’s no printed menu either; I was told the six-month-old shop is continuing to develop new taco disruptions, some of which are just as avant-garde as El Santo’s. There’s the Bloody Mary, for example, fat bacon-wrapped shrimp drenched in a tomatoey pico de gallo with cucumbers and shaved celery, and the beef brisket taco, served on a tostada with radish and iceberg lettuce. But I was more taken with CTA’s traditional offerings, like a pleasingly greasy chorizo con papas and a solidly executed carne asada with chunky nugs of caramelized steak, crisp onion, and bracing cilantro. There’s nothing wrong with the fillings at CTA, but a problem lies in the delivery system: the two small corn tortillas

they’re built on can’t support the generous portioning here. Plastic spoons are stored to the left of the salsa bar. The most traditional entry in the new class of taqueria is TOMATILLO TACO-VILLE, situated a little less than two miles east of the Chicago Taco Authority. If you’re looking for a reliable roster of classic tacos (and burritos and tortas), from asada to tripas, they’re all here, folded in proper, manageable proportion to two standard corn tortillas showered with onion and cilantro, needing only a squirt from the provided lime wedges and the red and green salsa squeeze bottles on the counter next to the tub of gratis escabeche with spicy carrots, cauliflower, and jalapeños. No surprises here except perhaps the pescado, a length of unbreaded tilapia dunked in the fryer and served piping hot, countered by a cool nest of cabbage and pico de gallo, as unassuming and satisfying as anything you could ask for. El Santo and Tomatillo have both announced their intentions to open other locations, which even in the worst of times illustrates the very nature of the taqueria. Tacos never die—just multiply. v

m @MikeSula

FOOD & DRINK “That actually tastes like a hoagie, I swear.” é JULIA THIEL

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of bread crumbs fried in olive oil and tossed with dehydrated giardiniera powder, while tuna made two more appearances: more canned tuna, marinated in olive oil, and fresh bigeye tuna, pounded thin into carpaccio and sprinkled with sea salt, chives, and chive blossoms. Fava beans and pickled cherry tomatoes rounded out the dish, which Hellyar ﬁnished with a little more giardiniera powder. “It’s pretty dead-on,” he said after trying it. “That actually tastes like a hoagie, I swear.”

WHO’S NEXT:

Hellyar has challenged JOE FRILLMAN of DAISIES to create a dish with PRESERVED KOMBU (a type of seaweed). v

KEY INGREDIENT

The tuna hoagie, deconstructed

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Mark Hellyar’s creation tastes just like J.P. Graziano’s, only cheﬀy! By JULIA THIEL

essarily apply to the Bumblebee brand tuna he lot of people hate canned tuna,” says was challenged with, but Hellyar says there’s chef MARK HELLYAR of MOMOTARO. “It plenty of good canned tuna from Spain: “I gets a bad rap.” He himself hated it went to Spain last year to swim with our tunas growing up, he says, “because tuna cassethat we buy here, and I went to three days of role, that’s disgusting.” He thinks that JIMMY food shows and got to taste a lot of PAPADOPOLOUS, chef at BELLEMORE, canned tuna.” was trying to trip him up by For this challenge, however, challenging him to create a ○ Watch a video of Mark his inspiration was local: a dish with CANNED TUNA. “LitHellyar working with canned tle does he know that I eat tuna hoagie he’d recently tuna in the kitchen at eaten at the nearby J.P. Gracanned tuna a lot—had some chicagoreader.com/food. ziano Italian yesterday.” market and Because sandwich Momotaro is a Japanese shop. Helly a r ’s d i s h restaurant, was a play on Hellyar works with a lot of the hoagie, including the high-quality same flavors, fish, but “ just done that doesn’t in a cheffy diminish his appreciation way.” His tuna salad included canned tuna belly, for the canned variety. “I love all canned fish— giardiniera, and mayo made from the oil the all fish in general—as long as it’s handled well and treated nicely,” he says. That doesn’t nectuna was canned in. Bread came in the form

JUNE 28, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 13

SPONSORED ADVERTISEMENT

When you walk into Connect Gallery at Harper Court in Hyde Park, it doesn’t have that overly

reverent hush you feel in some art galleries. People are laughing and talking – either meeting

for the ﬁrst time, introducing friends, or just catching up. A local artist might be ﬁnishing a painting.

Kids might be doing homework at a long table. And then there’s the art. Commanding. Unapologetic. Relatable. True. Current. None of this is by chance. Co-owner Rob McKay sees Connect as “the anti-gallery,” adding, “we don’t want anyone to feel like they can’t come in the space and enjoy art or be inspired – we say, ‘From Kangols to tuxedos – art is for everyone.’” People might stop in alone one day, bring a friend another time, and then become a regular at the openings. The gallery grew from the 2016 Connect Art Fair, a three-day, multi-site, pop-up art event Rob co-produced with Eric Williams, owner of The Silver Room, and recent Harvard Graduate School of Design Loeb Fellow. The event combined visual and performing art, designed objects, ﬁlm, music, fashion, and literary culture – attracting 5,000 people to Hyde Park and winning for “best public art event” in the Chicago Reader’s 2017 “Best of Chicago” awards. Rob and Eric were introduced by house music DJ/ record producer Ron Trent. With his background in tour/stage production working on shows for The Roots, Fugees, Oz Fest, Smoking Grooves Tour, Rage Against the Machine/Wu-Tang Clan, and Lilith Fair, Rob was a perfect collaborator for the growing block party, which started at Eric’s original Silver Room location in Wicker Park in 2002. If there’s an extra buzz in the air at Connect lately, it’s because Rob, Eric, and the team are in the ﬁnal stretch of planning the 15th Annual Silver Room

career, whether starting out as a street vendor or working as a music producer, label director, recording engineer, tour manager, curator, or just being a dad to his four children. For him, art – whatever the medium – has always been a catalyst for social innovation – as well as keeping him extremely busy.

Artist: Max Sansing | Title: Super Giant 1

Connect Gallery is currently helping to organize the “100 Canvases” fundraising exhibit on Friday, July 6 at The Silver Room, with 12” x 12” paintings by well-known artists and friends auctioned to raise money for the block party.

The block party is a standalone in Chicago’s jampacked festival season for its inclusive, backyard barbecue vibe, even though it’s grown to attract an estimated 40,000 people to the one-day event next month – with fans ﬂying in from across the country. It may be bigger and require more volunteers than when it started in a Wicker Park alley, but the party’s organic nature, sense of family and community, and involvement of local businesses has remained the same.

Rob is also relaunching Connects’ podcast, “The Habitual Line Stepper,” recorded in the gallery. Previous episodes have covered ex Chicago Bull Craig Hodges and “Freeway” Rick Ross – the third episode will highlight the “Chicago Top Five” local artists featured in Connect’s current exhibition “Larger Than Life” – David Anthony Geary, James Nelson, Martha A. Wade, Max Sansing, and Brian Dovie Golden. The name and theme of the podcast reﬂects those who push boundaries with the purpose of actualizing their dreams, and as a kid growing up in Markham, Illinois, Rob credits his mom and inspiration as the original line stepper in his life.

There’s a common thread of creativity and entrepreneurship in everything Rob has done in his

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JUNE 28, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 15

a DAVID WILSON/COURTESY BELT PUBLISHING

FEATURE

Resurrection Mary, the ghost of Archer Avenue A chilling tale of the south side By EDWARD MCCLELLAND

16 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 28, 2018

ust southwest of Chicago, on Archer Avenue in Justice, Illinois, across the street from Resurrection Cemetery, is a bar called Chet’s Melody Lounge. Chet’s is a classic roadside tavern, with a pool table, a jukebox, a popcorn machine, and a large clientele of bikers. But Chet’s has an unusual tradition: every Sunday, the staff leaves a Bloody Mary at the end of the bar for a ghost. The ghost’s name is Resurrection Mary, and she has haunted this stretch of Archer since the 1930s, when she picked up young men dancing to the big bands at the Oh Henry Ballroom. An old south-sider named Vince was still telling his Resurrection Mary story to paranormal investigators half a century after it happened. When he did, he sounded just as haunted as he’d been the night he met the ghost. Before he went out dancing that evening, Vince put on his favorite suit—a double-breasted gray number with squaredoff shoulders—and his most colorful tie, red with Hawaiian hula girls in grass skirts. He cruised Archer Avenue with the top down on his Chevy Cabriolet. The night was warm, and he’d slicked back his hair with enough Brylcreem to keep the wind from mussing it. The Oh Henry Ballroom was going to be jumping, as it always was on Saturdays. Vince had danced to some of the biggest of the big bands there: Harry James, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey. Tonight was just Chet Barsuitis and His Merry Men, from the southwest side of Chicago, but even the local combos knew all the hot numbers on the hit parade. Inside the ballroom, Vince spent the first half hour downing enough Cuba Libres and smoking enough Lucky Strikes to work up the courage to ask a girl for a dance. By the time the band got started on “Jumpin’ at the Woodside,” he was in a bold state of mind. Spotting a pretty blond girl in a white dress, he said, as casually as he could manage, “Hey, it ain’t right to stand still for Count Basie. Why don’t we cut a rug on this one?” The girl smiled, and they joined the jitterbugging throng on the parquet ﬂoor. The band played a few more fast numbers—“Boogie Woogie” and “Jeepers Creepers”—so Vince didn’t get a chance to talk to his partner. That he didn’t mind too much. Sometimes girls

asked what he did for a living. He was a bookkeeper at the Union Stockyards. Even though he didn’t work anywhere near the slaughterhouse, that gave some girls the willies. When the band segued into “Begin the Beguine,” Vince was finally able to get close to his partner. Her name was Mary, and she lived, she said, on Damen Avenue in the Brighton Park neighborhood. That wasn’t far from where Vince lived, in the house he shared with his parents (something else he didn’t like to tell girls). As they slow danced, he noticed, for the first time, that the girl’s hands were cold, her skin brittle. Mary seemed to notice that he noticed it, so he made what he hoped was a lighthearted remark: “Cold hands mean you have a warm heart.” Mary smiled, and they danced together for the rest of the evening. After the final number, Vince offered Mary a ride home; her place was just a straight shot up Archer. But after they had driven north for a few miles, Mary insisted he pull the car over, outside the locked gates of Resurrection Cemetery, the graveyard of Chicago’s Polish community. Vince was baffled, but he complied. Mary opened the door, and stepped out onto the roadside. “I have to go, and you can’t follow me,” she said. Then she walked toward the gates, laid a hand on the iron chain that bound the gates together, and vanished. Vince spent the rest of the night driving his Chevy up and down Archer Avenue, looking for a blond girl in a white dress. He drove until dawn, and then, when the cemetery gates opened, he drove through the rows of tombstones engraved with crosses and angels and names such as Butkowski and Gwiazda and Pietrzyk. He was impelled not simply by the mystery of having seen a ghost, but by the hope that the girl he had danced with was not a ghost, that he could dance with her again on some future night. Catching no sight of Mary, he decided finally to drive to the address she had given him before they got into his car. It was a brick bungalow, on a street of nearly identical houses separated by concrete gangways a few feet wide. Only the adornments on the porches and in the yards—an American flag, a statue of the Virgin in a half bathtub—

differentiated the dwellings. Vince rang the doorbell. His eyes were red with sleeplessness, his dark beard had not been shaven for a day, and his hair had fallen loose over his forehead. The middle-aged woman who answered the door looked startled by the young caller’s dishevelment. She looked even more startled when Vince asked, “Is Mary home?” “Mary doesn’t live here anymore,” said the woman, who looked old enough, and enough like Mary, to be her mother. “Mary died in a car accident four years ago. Who are you?” “I knew Mary in high school,” Vince lied; it was the only plausible story for why he had been unaware of her death. “And you didn’t know?” “I went to college downstate after I graduated,” he said. That much was true: he had attended Illinois State University, in Normal. “I just moved back to Chicago.” Looking past the woman, who was still blocking the doorway, Vince spied a framed photo resting atop a piano in the front room. It was the girl he had danced with the night before: an ever-youthful face, never to age. The face of a ghost. “I am sorry to be the one to tell you,” the woman said. “Mary went out dancing with some boys she worked with at Brach’s, but they never made it to the dance hall. One of the boys crashed the car into the el at Wacker and Lake. Mary was thrown through the windshield and died on the way to the hospital.” “I’m sorry to hear that,” Vince said, retreating down the steps. “I’m sorry for your loss.” “If you want to visit Mary’s grave,” the woman added, “she’s buried in Resurrection Cemetery.” Vince never returned to the Oh Henry Ballroom. Or to Resurrection Cemetery. (He had

never learned Mary’s last name, so he could not have located her tombstone.) In fact, he was so shaken by having danced with a ghost that he never set foot in a dance hall again. But Resurrection Mary, as the girl’s ghost came to be known, continued to haunt Archer Avenue. When the big-band era ended, after the war, Mary rested quietly in her grave, because the music she had hoped to dance to on her ﬁnal night among the living was no longer heard at the Oh Henry. But in the 1970s, her ghost rose again. Mary’s family, not being wealthy, had buried her in a “term grave,” a rented plot that only held remains for a quarter century. By the time the term expired, all of Mary’s loved ones had joined her in the cemetery, leaving no one alive to renew it. During a renovation, Mary’s coffin was removed to an unmarked grave in a remote corner of the cemetery. One night, a suburban police officer received a report of a woman in a white dress walking through the grounds of Resurrection Cemetery. When he arrived at the gates, he found two bars pried apart, with scorch marks where a pair of hands would have gripped them. The following year, a couple driving down Archer Avenue saw a girl, wearing the same white dress, lying in the street. The man at the wheel swerved to avoid her, but she disappeared before his tires could make contact. In the 1990s, the owner of Chet’s Musical Lounge was pulling out of the driveway when he saw a man running up the road, waving desperately. “I need to use your phone,” the man said, in a stricken voice. “I hit a woman back there, but I can’t ﬁnd her body.” “Was she a blond woman in a white dress?” the owner asked. “How did you know?” “That was Resurrection Mary. Don’t worry, you didn’t hit anyone; you saw a ghost.” Despite these reappearances on Archer Avenue, Mary has yet to drink her Bloody Mary at Chet’s. When a ghost is roaming your neighborhood, though, you have to be ready to soothe her restless spirit. v

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Excerpted with permission from FOLKTALES AND LEGENDS OF THE MIDDLE WEST by Edward McClelland (Belt Publishing, 2018). Illustration by David Wilson.

JUNE 28, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 17

ARTS & CULTURE

olange and Claire are sisters and servants, attending to the needs of the young woman known to them as Madame. They’re also nuts. What’s made them that way is an interesting question, the answer to which may or may not be embedded in the gambits they act out during The Maids, Jean Genet’s 1947 succes de scandale, getting a less than successful revival now at the Artistic Home. When Madame is away, the sisters raid her boudoir. One becomes Madame herself, dressing up in her clothes, jewelry, and makeup. The other retains her usual work livery. Then they perform their private play about a haughty mistress and her sadomasochistic maid. Insinuations are made, orders given, insults hurled, slaps tendered. There’s cruelty and groveling and not a little erotic heat. At the height of the proceedings, the maid—who may be Solange or Claire or Claire in the role of Solange or Solange in the role of Claire—kills “Madame.” Or would, if time allowed. The real Madame always seems to return just as they’re about to reach the big climax.

THE MAIDS

Through 7/14: Fri-Sat 9 PM, the Artistic Home, 1376 W. Grand, 866811-4111, theartistichome.org, $25.

Hinkypunk é JOE MAZZA

THEATER

The Artistic Home’s drag version of The Maids . . . drags

The show runs out of provocations too soon.

By TONY ADLER

18 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 28, 2018

Solange and Claire’s game/ceremony/tryst looks at first like an amusingly sick way to blow off some working-class steam. But that’s not how things turn out. Carried away by the forces they’ve let loose within themselves— their anger, their fantasies, their desire to punish and be punished—the sisters have written anonymously to the police, denouncing Madame’s husband for crimes Genet never enumerates. When this ﬂimsy plan falls apart, they know the jig is up, and the game takes on a mortal urgency. Genet based The Maids on a notorious 1933 case concerning a pair of French sister housemaids, Christine and Léa Papin, who murdered their employer’s wife and daughter. The crime was attributed to the inﬂuence of strong-minded Christine over susceptible Léa, and some of that dynamic survives in Claire and Solange. But Genet takes their relationship well beyond sibling issues, making their constantly changing dialectic of power and subjugation vibrate with social, economic, artistic, and sexual implications—not to say implications for the construction of identity and of reality itself. In his introduction to the published version of the script, Jean-Paul Sartre says Genet sets “being and appear-

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b ALL AGES

ance” spinning so that the discrete categories we depend on blur into one another. “Genet constructs such whirligigs by the hundred,” Sartre writes. “They become his favorite mode of thinking.” Sartre goes on to suggest that Genet wanted to make a whirligig of gender too, citing a remark from his Our Lady of the Flowers: “If I were to have a play put on in which women had roles, I would demand that these roles be played by adolescent boys, and I would bring this to the attention of the spectators by means of a placard which would remain nailed to the right or left of the sets during the entire performance.” And, indeed, though its world-premiere cast consisted of three women (Sartre says it was a concession to the director), there have been plenty of Maids with men in various styles and degrees of drag. For his Artistic Home staging, Michael Conroy has chosen to mix things up to the extent that Madame is played by Brookelyn Hebert, who presents unambiguously as a woman, while Claire and Solange are embodied by drag artists Patience Darling and Hinkypunk respectively. What we see for most of the show’s 90-minute running time are two lean, tallish people in extravagant face makeup transitioning back and forth between ball gowns and the tastefully kinkified maid uniforms created by costume designer Zachery Wagner. Claire and Solange’s masklike look has important uses. With a single stroke it emphasizes the surreality of their dress-up game, the hermetic nature of their relationship, their outsider status in the world—and, in the presence of Hebert’s Madame, both the hopelessness of trying to emulate her and the comic irony that at a certain level of their consciousness they’re way more fabulous than she is. Trouble is, the makeup has to stay on for the duration, which means that points made in the first few minutes become the sum total of what we take away from the entire experience. Provocations offered at the start are repeated in paler and paler iterations. Abetted by some limited, tentative performances, Conroy’s bold concept backfires, and the whirligig stops. Well, maybe not entirely. There’s a moment late in the play when Hinkypunk’s Solange gets a glimpse beyond her folie a deux, recognizes the inevitability of what’s to come next for her and her little sister, and gives in to it. For that moment we’re entirely beyond avant-garde gestures of the past or present, looking at human pain. v.

m @taadler

ARTS & CULTURE Golden Girls: The Lost Episodes, Volume 2 é RICK AGUILAR

in drag, Scooby Don’t, I saw Jones play Cher. Now I have seen everything. Cerda’s play is in three parts, or “episodes,” each one loonier than the last; in the ﬁnale, for instance, Rose is put on trial by a covert Swedish police force for allegedly murdering a cow who plays the harmonica. The whole show is a vehicle for the cast’s antics, pure and simple, and there’s a ton of them, all more or less outrageously satisfying. There are also no fewer than four breaks in the action for audience trivia, with questions like, “What show did Rue McClanahan star in before Golden Girls?” Be forewarned: the crowd on my night could be ruthless about wrong answers. (“Oh, boo!” “It’s Maude!” “What kind of gay doesn’t know that?”) —MAX MALLER THE GOLDEN GIRLS: THE

THEATER

It’s the end of the world as we know it And no one at Barbecue Apocalpyse feels ﬁne. Company’s coming, and the house is a mess. Thirtysomethings Mike and Deb have no matching patio furniture, and their collective greatest accomplishments are the deck Mike built in the yard and a single published short story, the meager fruit of Mike’s creative writing degree. Unable to cook and despairing of the central role a beanbag chair plays in their interior design concept, the hapless couple decides charring meat outdoors is the least humiliating way to entertain their friends. Adulting is hard. It’s harder when your only friends are Win, an obnoxious bro who makes more money than you do, and hipster foodies Ash and Lulu. Oh, and Win is dating an actress named Glory who was born in 1996. The horror. His characters having nothing better to do than insult each other openly (Win) or passive-aggressively (Ash and Lulu), playwright Matt Lyle introduces a deus ex machina poached directly from Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer-winning Skin of Our Teeth and designed as the ultimate wish-fulﬁllment vehicle for small-pond losers everywhere: yes, it is the apocalypse. Now that they’re all eating raccoons with only Mike’s short stories for entertainment, Ash and Lulu’s impeccable style and

Win’s stock options no longer have any signiﬁcance at all! Though Lyle’s ﬁnely attuned to the anxieties of suburbanites on their scramble toward the complacencies of middle age, the wittiest segments of his script are the putdowns, which soon begin to grate. Under Marc James’s direction, the ensemble is shouty and overwrought. —IRENE HSIAO BARBECUE APOCALYPSE Through

7/21: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Prop Thtr, 3502 N. Elston, 312-882-8201, thecuckoostheaterproject. com, $30.

R Picture it: Miami, 1987

Four lovely, lusty Golden Girls return to the stage—in drag. For those who dream of living inside a Miami house with a suite of Chippendale chairs and a loud sofa—and where it never stopped being 1987—there can be no entertainment more joyous than this sequel to last year’s smash from Hell in a Handbag Productions, The Golden Girls: The Lost Episodes. Picture it: three women of a certain age who no longer feel like hiding their unﬂagging desires. And make the women drag queens. David Cerda (also the playwright), Grant Drager, and Ed Jones play the holy TV trinity of Dorothy, Blanche, and Rose, respectively, to the hilt, with Adrian Hadlock as Sophia. The belle of the ball is Jones’s superlative Rose. Two years ago, reviewing a previous Handbag extravaganza

LOST EPISODES, VOLUME 2 Through 9/7: Wed-Fri

7:30 PM, Fri only after 8/10, Mary’s Attic, 5400 N. Clark, handbag productions.org, $25-$120.

Workers of the world unite

But not at the curiously featureless Haymarket. Yes, Underscore Theatre’s reworked 2016 “new folk musical” about the titular violent 1886 Chicago labor protest and its hopelessly corrupt aftermath features singing and dancing anarchists (who play musical instruments to boot). But both Nick Thornton’s no-frills choreography and Robert Ollis’s straight-ahead musical direction are ﬁttingly—if unengagingly—workmanlike. The production’s general lack of razzle-dazzle may suit the subject matter, but it makes for a rather featureless two-plus hours. Part of the problem stems from the insular material. David Kornfeld’s folk-Americana score, while at times haunting, suﬀers from a narrow repetitiveness (it seems every other number is The Big Anthem). More important, Alex Higgin-Houser’s book and lyrics reduce the horrendous working conditions of the day to punchy vocal refrains (“Eight hours for work! Eight hours for rest!”) rather than lived realities. And the main characters remain underdeveloped, pronouncing their convictions in song without revealing much about themselves. About all we know of lead organizer Albert Parsons, for instance, is that he was inspired by the Paris Commune and doesn’t advocate violence.

The creators have made one great improvement on their original version, fashioning a satisfying dramatic arc for protagonist Lucy Parsons, whose struggle to find her voice as a union leader nicely intertwines the personal and the political. Still, she’s more emblem than person. Thornton, who also directs, too often leaves her (and the rest of his cast) to raise a fist and stare defiantly into the middle distance rather than interact in compellingly human ways. —JUSTIN HAYFORD HAYMARKET

Through 7/22: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Mon 7:30 PM, Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee, 773-6973830, underscoretheatre.org, $30-$35, industry and students $15.

R Sweet and salty

Saltbox Theatre puts on a very model of a modern Pirates of Penzance.

The genius of this 139-year-old comic opera lies in how gracefully Gilbert and Sullivan are able to have their cake and eat it too. Sullivan ﬁlls the show with sugar—a surfeit of sweet, innocent, very hummable tunes—and then Gilbert sprinkles on lots of salt, barbed lyrics that wittily undercut Sullivan’s sentimentality. This charming ambivalence extends to the show’s story and characters. Frederic, the show’s good-hearted protagonist, wins us over with his overly correct, very Victorian sense of propriety even as he’s lampooned for the awful choices he makes for the sake of duty. Likewise, the show’s pirates are lovable rogues, at once endearing and threatening, bloodthirsty and cowardly. The beauty of Saltbox Theatre Collective’s shoestring production lies in how much they buy into both sides of the show, the side that mocks British manners and mores and the side that revels in them. Similarly, director Brian Fruits and vocal music director Charles Brown have done yeoman’s work coaxing above-average to superb performances from their large, non-Equity ensemble (the program lists 28 performers in the cast), which proves adept at both Sullivan’s gorgeous tunes and Gilbert’s complex lyrics (enunciated clearly enough that we don’t miss a quip). Not all of the performances are equally ﬁne. Some pirates overplay their roles, ruining the comedy by trying too hard. But Ryan Smetana and Alexandria Rust are quite winning as the lovers at the center of the story. And Brian Bengston is the very model of a perfect major general. —JACK HELBIG THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE!

Through 7/15: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont, 773-327-5252, saltboxtheatre.org, $16, $9 students and seniors. v

JUNE 28, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 19

CHICAGO’S PREMIERE IRISH FESTIVAL

TICK ETS

$10 PRESALE

$15@DOOR C HIL DR E N 12&UNDER FREE

Fun for all Generations

S U N D A Y

GAELIC STORM

S U N D A Y

WE BANJO3 F

JULY 6-7-8 FRI 6pm–12am | SAT 12pm–12am SUN 12pm–11pm | RAIN OR SHINE

irishfestchicago.com

ARTS & CULTURE LIT

Louder than a bomb Jamila Woods and Kevin Coval collaborate with Vinyl for a Cause to beneﬁt Young Chicago Authors. By MATT HARVEY

F R I, S A T & S U N

TUPELO

SAT & SUN

RORY MAKEM

@ MONTROSE–BLUE LINE

SEVEN MILES NORTH OF DOWNTOWN CHICAGO AT THE 90/94 SPLIT

FREE ONSITE PARKING

Irish American Heritage Center 4626 NORTH KNOX AVENUE, CHICAGO (773)282-7035

arlier this week local label Vinyl for a Cause dropped a limited-edition vinyl seven-inch called VFAC 004 in collaboration with Chicago-based online record marketplace Reverb LP. It’s the fourth Vinyl for a Cause release, and like the ﬁrst three, it brings together two local artists to reimagine each other’s original creations—and half of the net proceeds go to a nonproﬁt chosen by the artists.

VFAC RELEASE 004

Featuring Jamila Woods and Kevin Coval and Tasha (Vinyl for a Cause). lp.reverb.com, $20.

This seven-inch features soul singer and poet Jamila Woods on one side and poet Kevin Coval collaborating with R&B artist Tasha on the other. The nonprofit they chose is Young Chicago Authors, which runs the renowned Louder Than a Bomb poetry slam and has fostered the talents of countless rising stars, among them Nico Segal, Chance the Rapper, and Woods herself. Coval is the group’s artistic director, and Woods serves as its associate artistic director. “Jamila and I are in continual creative conversation,” Coval says. “The discussion was open when we talked about this collaboration for Vinyl for a Cause. I forgot who chose whose song first, but I think we gravitated toward what felt right.” On the record’s A side, Woods performs “Muddy”—a fiery, up-tempo track inspired by Coval’s poem “Muddy Waters Goes Electric.” Woods flexes her jazzy vocals and poetic songwriting style over a rocking instrumental, singing “Motherfuckers won’t shut up / We been in a war, my God / Some country shit won’t cut it / He need the blues he can plug in.” The lines borrow phrases directly from the opening stanza of the poem. On side B, Coval flips Woods’s “LSD” (featuring Chance the Rapper) into “Snow Day,” a

20 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 28, 2018

Jamila Woods; Kevin Coval é ZOE RAIN; ARIS THEOTOKATOS

song dedicated to Chicago’s winters. “I chose ‘LSD’ because to me, it’s an ode to the natural beauty of Chicago, its topography, and people,” he says. “I hear it as a summer anthem, centralizing the experience of the midwest and Chicago in particular. I wanted to ﬂip it seasonally and write an ode to the terrible winters in this cold-ass city.” The song begins with Tasha (another YCA alum) crooning over a light and soulful instrumental: “Pray that this night stretches on oh so long / Pray that this snow don’t ever stop us falling.” Then Coval joins in, painting the image of a Chicago winter day with his prose. “I’m a giant fan of Tasha—I love her writing and lyricism,” Coval says. “I was thinking about a counterpart to my tone as well as someone I’d be geeked to work with, and she was the ﬁrst person who came to mind.” This collaboration between Woods and Coval is a first for Vinyl for a Cause—so far their records have featured mostly bands, and never an R&B singer or a poet. Coval believes that this interdisciplinary link—between music and poetry—is a natural part of Chicago’s arts scene. “The story of arts in Chicago is one of deep collaboration—networks and crews of artists who build and collaborate and put on for one another,” Coval explains. “The Chicago creative community is rich and vibrant. If we stay open and connected and supportive of one another, we have the power to change the city’s future toward the more equitable and fresh.” v

m @MattheMajor

Get showtimes at chicagoreader.com/movies.

ARTS & CULTURE R

RSM

Nick Oﬀerman and Kiersey Clemons in Hearts Beat Loud

www.BrewView.com 3145 N. Sheffield at Belmont

Movie Theater & Full Bar 0 $5.0 ion s admisthe for ies Mov

18 to enter 21 to drink Photo ID required

Sunday, July 1 @ 5:00pm

Super Troopers 2 Fri, Sun, June 29 & July 1 @ 7:00pm Tue, Thr, July 3 & 5 @ 7:00pm

Isle of Dogs

Fri, Sun, June 29 & July 1 @ 9:00pm Tue, Thr, July 3 & 5 @ 9:00pm

A Quiet Place

MOVIES

They’re playing our song

Music is the connecting tissue in Brett Haley’s indie drama Hearts Beat Loud. By DANIELLE GENSBURG

refreshing take on the coming-of-age story, Brett Haley’s Hearts Beat Loud follows the lives of Frank Fisher (Nick Offerman), a middle-aged rock musician preparing to close his record store in Red Hook, Brooklyn, after 17 years, and his daughter, Sam (Kiersey Clemons), who’s about to move to California to begin college. Music is a shared passion of theirs and the glue that holds their relationship together. In fact, music is so central to Hearts Beat Loud that it’s connected to everything, from the characters’ emotions to important events taking place in the story. The film opens and closes with it, signifying the end of one chapter in the Fishers’ lives and the beginning of a new one. Haley, who cowrote the ﬁlm with Marc Basch, considers not only how we grow and change but what we take with us when we leave home. Haley is particularly skilled at using diegetic music, or music whose source is visible onssss EXCELLENT

sss GOOD

screen. In the opening scene Frank sits behind the counter at his store, smoking a cigarette and listening to a record on his headphones while a single customer browses through the bins. A shot from Frank’s perspective shows the customer suddenly waving as he tries to get Frank’s attention, then the background music fades as Frank removes his headphones; the song that seemed to be playing in the background turns out to be the one Frank was listening to. This point-of-view trick brings the viewer into the scene to identify with Frank. Another scene begins with a YouTube video of a singer performing onstage, then cuts to a wider shot that reveals Sam’s computer screen, with the Web page open and the video frame at the left. With Sam, we watch the singer, absorbing the emotion in her voice, which inspires Sam to pen a love song for her new girlfriend, Rose (Sasha Lane). One of the film’s most significant scenes

ss AVERAGE

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•

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shows Rose teaching Sam how to ride a bicycle, which is fraught with emotion because Sam’s mother died years earlier in a cycling accident. The mood music playing in the background is actually coming from Frank as he strums his guitar in a different scene happening simultaneously. Here the diegetic sound transforms into nondiegetic sound as both characters undergo a sort of release, Sam in letting go of the past and Frank in venting all his frustrations (with Sam, who brushes off his silly idea that she postpone college and collaborate with him on a band; with his old friend Leslie, played by Toni Colette, who harbors romantic feelings toward him; and with himself for never having made it as a musician). Hearts Beat Loud is anything but sad; the characters move on as one hopes they will. Frank not only accepts but actively supports Sam’s dream of becoming a doctor; he ﬁnds a new lover and companion in Leslie and continues to enjoy music even without his store. Sam heads off to UCLA and continues to share music and lyrics with her dad. Moving on from her father, she starts a life of her own, and Frank not only accepts this but comes to embrace it. v HEARTS BEAT LOUD sss Directed by Brett Haley. PG-13, 97 min. For listings visit chicagoreader.com/movies.

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JUNE 28, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 21

ARTS & CULTURE Angels Wear White

MOVIES

R Angels Wear White

This potent Chinese drama addresses a number of pressing social issues—child abuse, government corruption, China’s migrant labor force—but never feels didactic, thanks to a gripping story and a fully realized sense of place. Set in a seaside resort town, it centers on the police investigation of a local government oﬃcial who may have sexually assaulted two 12-year-old girls at a motel. Writer-director Vivian Qu barely shows the oﬃcial, dividing her narrative between the suspected victims, their families, and the motel’s employees, who fear they’ll lose their jobs if they provide the investigators with evidence. Gradually Qu narrows her focus to one of the employees, a young undocumented immigrant who knows more about the case than she lets on to the investigators; her moral dilemma—whether to help the girls or protect herself—becomes a source of relentless suspense. In Mandarin with subtitles. —BEN SACHS 107 min. For Sachs’s long review visit chicagoreader.com/ movies. Fri 6/29, 4 and 8 PM; Sat 6/30, 2:45 PM; Sun 7/1, 5:15 PM; Wed 7/4, 4:45 PM; and Thu 7/5, 8 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

Boundaries

Road movies tend to rely heavily on vivid scenery and the banter sparked by a long, intimate trip; this comedy from writer-director Shana Feste (Country Strong) succeeds on the ﬁrst count but fails on the second. An emotionally stunted divorcee (Vera Farmiga), her bright but trouble-prone son (Lewis MacDougall), and her elderly father (Christopher Plummer), a career criminal who claims he’s dying, cruise the glittering Paciﬁc coastline as they drive from Seattle to Los Angeles. The father’s chicanery is the brightest spot in a screenplay that makes the heroine a shrill stooge for everyone else’s agenda as the protagonists bicker their way to self-discovery and mutual regard. —ANDREA GRONVALL R, 104 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark’s Century Centre, River East 21.

Damsel

In this fantasy western from Austin brothers David and Nathan Zellner (Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter), Robert Pattinson, aﬀecting a turrible western accent, stars as young Samuel Alabaster, who arrives in a one-horse town searching for the bandits who kidnapped his sweetheart. Robert Forster, who must have been available for only a day, contributes an introductory cameo as a minister headed back east in defeat after trying to convert the Indians. “Things are gonna be shitty in new and interestin’ ways,” he advises a fresh arrival to the Wild West, and his words might as well be the directors’ statement: when Samuel ﬁrst rolls in, the locals invite him to a get-acquainted gangbang, and an impromptu yodeling concert accompanies the hanging of the town drunk for the crimes of “skullduggery, skullthuggery, and skullbuggery.” A midmovie plot twist hands the narrative over to Mia Wasikowska as the sweetheart, and her committed performance seems out of place in this extended goof. —J.R. JONES 113 min. Fri 6/29-Tue 7/3, 2, 4:30, 7:10, and 9:35 PM; and Wed 7/4-Thu 7/5, 2, 4:30, and 7:10 PM. Music Box.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

In this sci-fi thriller, the fifth in the Jurassic Park franchise, idealistic paleontologists protect and then flee cloned dinosaurs as chaos erupts (a volcano this time) on their remote island wildlife preserve. Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are back as the two dinosaur-rights advocates, and Rafe Spall plays a greedy biotech honcho who suckers them into his scheme to auction off the giant carnivores while he secretly engineers a terrifying hybrid monster. The movie’s first half feels hackneyed, but director J.A. Bayona (The Orphanage, A Monster Calls) demonstrates a flair for the gothic in the second, which has less pyrotechnics but more suspense. With Ted Levine, Toby Jones, and Jeff Goldblum. —ANDREA GRONVALL PG-13, 128 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Chatham 14, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Davis, Logan, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON, 600 N. Michigan.

R Personal Problems

Best known for the eccentric vampire movie Ganja & Hess (1973), Bill Gunn ﬁnished out his brief, illstarred screen-directing career with this “experimental soap opera” (1980), shot on analog video and based on a story idea by novelist Ishmael Reed. A captivating snapshot of Harlem in the days leading up to Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, it presages Spike Lee’s movies with its warm jazz score and Tyler Perry’s with its feminine emotional perspective. Its two completed parts (the second beginning with a recap of the ﬁrst) unfold in long, semi-improvised takes that lovingly record the insights and antagonisms of a Harlem emergency-room

22 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 28, 2018

nurse (Vertamae Grosvenor), her family members, and their immediate social circle. Like Reed, the heroine is a product of the Great Migration, having moved north from South Carolina, and though she still pines for Dixie, her nostalgia begins to sour after her no-account cousin from back home arrives in New York with his wife and moves in with the nurse and her irritable husband. Gunn is an artist badly in need of rediscovery, and this new 4K restoration is a major event. —J.R. JONES 165 min. Sat 6/30, 5 PM, and Tue 7/3, 6:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado

Denis Villeneuve’s white-hot drug thriller Sicario (2015), about FBI agents carrying out rogue operations against Mexican drug cartels, gets a hard-charging sequel that’s equal parts anti-immigrant hysteria and gun-death porn. Returning screenwriter Taylor Sheridan (Hell or High Water) opens with a Fox News fantasy in which jihadists sneak over the U.S.-Mexico border and stage a bombing attack on a big-box store. From the original movie, Emily Blunt has bailed out, but jacked-up Josh Brolin and so-sad Benicio Del Toro are back, as agents sent by commander Catherine Keener to foment a war between rival cartels so the feds can divide and conquer. Their escapades, involving the kidnap of a drug lord’s snotty 16-year-old daughter, result in numerous heads spraying across walls and windshields; director Stefano Solima has a real eye for this stuﬀ, and Columbia Pictures should consider excerpting slow-motion footage for gallery installations. —J.R. JONES R, 122 min. ArcLight, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Chatham 14, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON, 600 N. Michigan.

R The Train of Salt and Sugar

An impressive product of Mozambique’s emerging film industry, this drama from writer-director Licínio Azevedo explores the fraught relationship between civilians and the military during the civil war that divided Mozambique from the late 1970s to the early ’90s. A group of men, women, and children travel to Malawi by train to exchange salt for sugar; along the way they endure violence inflicted by both rebel forces in the bush and government soldiers onboard, who’ve been hired to protect the passengers but regularly assault them as well. The most effective scenes involve the main characters, a young nurse and a conscience-stricken lieutenant, calling out the hypocrisy inherent in the more brutish soldiers’ actions. These two fall in love, though their conversations about morality in the fog of war are enticing enough. In Portuguese with subtitles. —LEAH PICKETT 88 min. Fri 6/29-Thu 7/5. Facets Cinematheque. v

PHOR LEADS A TOUR THROUGH THE CRADLE OF HIS CREATIVITY

HE’S GONE FROM PAINTING ON NIKES AND WRITING VERSES IN HIS GRANDMA’S MARYNOOK BASEMENT TO COSTARRING ON BLACK INK CREW: CHICAGO AND WORKING WITH SUPERPRODUCER LONDON ON DA TRACK. The BLOCK BEAT BY

Words BY TIFFANY WALDEN Photos BY MORGAN ELISE JOHNSON

Phor in front of what used to be his grandma’s house in Marynook. His “87” chain represents nearby 87th Street as well as his birth year, and “NMOL” stands for “No more ordinary lifestyle.”

hor Robinson has the whole hood standing in the middle of 87th and University Avenue, like he’s about to shoot a music video. “Marynook, to be exact. This is where I grew up,” he says, before taking us on a walking tour. Phor actually has made a video in Marynook. Chicago videographer Xavier Williams, aka scene staple A Zae Production, came here to ﬁlm parts of the clip for Phor’s 2017 summertime favorite “Chi Town”—an airy rap track with straightforward bars and a catchy chorus that’s easy to sing along to. On an ordinary day, though, Marynook is a quiet subdivision in the Avalon Park neighborhood, full of modest suburban-style homes with backyards and driveways. It’s worlds away from the fast-paced glitz and glam of the VH1

reality show Black Ink Crew: Chicago, where most people who’ve heard of Phor got to know him—he works as a tattoo artist in Ryan Henry’s 9 Mag shop in Pilsen. Now in its fourth season, Black Ink Crew: Chicago is largely responsible for Phor’s celebrity, but it doesn’t capture who he is. He’s an all-around artist, he says, and he wants people to respect him as such. “I always tell people, when you look at me, think of an artist. Don’t just think ‘rapper,’ because everything I do is art,” he insists. “I’m always creating something, no matter what it is.” Phor was an introverted kid, playing video games and writing battle raps in his grandma’s basement. For today’s visit, however, he’s in full-on performance mode—he’s brought an entourage of more than a dozen, including his Black Ink Crew: Chicago costar Donald Robinson, J

JUNE 28, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 23

Phor (right) and his brother Don reminisce with friends on the block.

A few members of Phor’s entourage tag along as he strolls through Marynook.

continued from 23

who’s also his biological brother. There’s a Maserati in the street, and Phor wears a couple of iced-out chains with his birth year (’87) and his motto (NMOL, which stands for “No more ordinary lifestyle”). As we walk from 87th and University to his childhood home near 85th and Avalon, Phor can barely answer a single one of our interview questions without people driving by waving at him, rolling down their windows to dap him up, or getting out of their cars altogether for a photo op. As we sit talking on the porch of the house at 8595 S. Avalon, its current owner, Tasha Anchondo, pulls into the driveway. “Hold on one second, please. This is personal,” he says. He jumps off the porch to hug Anchondo, who’s surprised to see him back on the block. When he shot the “Chi Town” video, Anchondo wasn’t home, and only later heard about it from neighbors. This is the ﬁrst time they’ve

had a chance to talk, and with Anchondo’s permission we walk through the house to help Phor relive childhood memories. “This is my grandmother’s house. She took us in after my mother and father didn’t work out,” Phor explains. “Years ago, we got evicted. We had to move to the suburbs eventually, but at one point we had to stay in hotel rooms for a while. It was my difficult times but, you know, it was what it was. We pushed through.” Phor made a name for himself in these parts years ago, he says, before the suburbs—and way before the bright lights of reality-TV fame. He was known ﬁrst as a rapper: “I had a childhood friend named Aaron who went by the name Phase One,” Phor remembers. “He started making beats, and he stayed on University Avenue. He was really good at freestyling about anything he saw. I was so inspired.” Phor was 14 or 15—he remembers picking up the pen around the time Nas ethered

Jay-Z in 2001, during the ﬁnal rounds of their legendary beef. Without Aaron, Phor says, he wouldn’t be the songwriter he is today. “I

really didn’t know the formula for rap like that, but I took that motivation that he gave me and I started taking it seriously,” he adds.

The Block Beat multimedia series is a collaboration with the Triibe (thetriibe.com) that roots Chicago musicians in places and neighborhoods that matter to them. Video accompanies this story at chicagoreader.com.

24 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 28, 2018

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Phor’s leg tattoos

“I try not to make hits. I try to make anthems, like, stadium music. My formula is different.” Phor also grew up drawing—a neighbor he remembers only as Mr. Harris, who was a painter, taught him perspective and dimension and how to hone his skills. “I used to draw and put all my drawings in a big-ass Aldi’s bag and hide it in my mama’s closet,” Phor says. “It was so sacred. I used to draw all video games.” That led to Phor painting custom designs on gym shoes as a student at Thornwood High School in South Holland. “I didn’t have a job. Moms was only giving, like, maybe $5 to $10 a day for lunch. I couldn’t get ﬂy, so I started designing clothes and designing shoes,” he says. “People would bring me their new Air Force 1s, and I used to go crazy. Anybody who got a pic can tell you. I had every school on lock, even after high school.” He says that at age 20 he signed a contract with Nike, but it happened so fast he wasn’t sure what he was getting himself into—and that when it expired, he didn’t renew it. From there, it was a short step into tattooing. On New Year’s Eve 2008, he was hanging out in the Indiana basement of his friend Jet, who had his own tattoo gear—and who still does Phor’s own tattoos. Don says everyone there encouraged Phor to pick up the needle: “Stop painting shirts. Stop painting shoes. Just get into tattooing.” Phor remembers Don being even more direct. “My brother was like, ‘Tat me.’ I’m laughing or whatever, like, I ain’t gonna tat you,” he says. “My homie had the equipment already there, so I did one of the designs that I did on a shirt on his arm.” He points to the ink on his brother’s forearm. “I’ll never cover it up or change it,” Don says. Phor’s rapping, though, is the core of his art.

It’s the biggest reason he stands out on Black Ink Crew: Chicago—he’s the only musician in the cast, and his songs get played on the show. He likens himself to Paul Wall, the ﬂashy Houston rapper who designs grills and makes chopped-and-screwed hip-hop. Phor operates independently of any record label (he’s managed by Chicago hip-hop collective Private Stock), though he says he’s met with reps from the majors who’ve asked him to end his tattoo career to go all-in with music. “In my head I’m like, I’m going to do it my way,” Phor says. “So basically, if I was to go on tour, if I gave one fan a chance to meet and greet with me and just get one tattoo from me, no matter what it was or how good it was, they had a chance to win something to take with them.” He’s been ramping up the amount of energy he devotes to his rap career, and plans to drop a mixtape every year—so far he’s released Lightning Bug in 2016 and Butterfly in 2017. He says he’s written 200 songs, and on Instagram he’s now posting what sound like freestyles, set to popular R&B beats—he has nearly 380,000 followers, and he’s calling the series #StricklyPhorInstagram. He’s also working on a song with Los Angeles-based superproducer London on da Track, who saw him perform at the WGCI Big Jam at the end of last year. “I know a lot of people that get on reality TV and then become rappers. I never tried to become—you know, it was already in the pudding for me,” Phor says. “With tattooing, it’s a service. Music is, like, my getaway drug. That’s therapy for me. When I tattoo, I listen to my music—so I [kill] two birds with one stone as I tattoo.” v

m @TheTRiiBE

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JUNE 28, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 25

IN ROTATION

A Reader staﬀer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn.

LUCAS REIF Editor

and photographer of the zine Disruptor

Jayaire Woods é ALEX ZANDRO

LEOR GALIL

Reader staff writer Valley of the Sun audio rips Shout-out to the intrepid superfan behind Hidden Valley (of the Sun Publishing), a blog dedicated to the music of southwestern new age entertainment company Valley of the Sun—which in the 1980s released a boatload of beautiful, gauzy cassette recordings. Though some titles sold tens of thousands of copies, they’re now hard to find. In 2016 founder Dick Sutphen told the Wire that his fourth wife licensed the company’s catalog to third parties, and I imagine the resulting bitter legal battle might explain why the music hasn’t been reissued. Good thing “Serveaux,” identified via Blogger profile as a 23-year-old Jamaican telecom employee, continues to scour the Web for these releases. Jayaire Woods, “Impatient” Given what a big year it’s been for emo rap, I can’t understand why Jayaire Woods’s April single hasn’t invaded corporate streaming playlists and radio airwaves. Woods is an intuitive performer and contemplative lyricist, and he marinates in the melancholy instrumental of “Impatient”—he makes songs that sound sad feel good. Thunder Rock, “Don’t Go Away” I found this charmingly inept 1984 pop-metal single by the amazingly obscure Thunder Rock while browsing the world’s greatest digital repository of private-press records, eBay. “Don’t Go Away” is its B side, a cockeyed ballad that sounds ready to fall off the wax at any moment, then miraculously arrives at its triumphant finale nearly intact. The singer’s timorous, tuneless falsetto convinced me to put in a bid, but somebody else won the auction for $113.61.

26 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 28, 2018

Hogg, Self-Extinguishing Emission I just finished the Samuel R. Delany novel Hogg, from which this Chicago duo take their name, so I felt the timing was perfect for them to release a new album of what they call “ritualistic anarcho death-dance.” Self-Extinguishing Emission, out on local label Scrapes Recordings (brainchild of the inimitable Alex Barnett), is a full-scale plunge into cruelty and intimacy via the magical interplay of rhythm and droning noise. “I’m good because I listen,” they chant, in suppressed whispers or ferocious screams. “I’m good because I hate.” The mesmerizing cover and insert artwork is by drawing team Rebecca Walz and Ryan Pfeiffer. Gun Outfit, Out of Range Los Angeles-based group Gun Outfit pairs intricate, delicate psychedelic western melodies with curious, mythological lyrics: “There’s a cause for celebration I don’t suppose we understand / I don’t worry about the reason until I hold it in my hand.” I’ve had this gorgeous record on repeat ever since its release last November. Haram, ‫ تحبر سب‬,‫ ترسخ‬When You Have Won, You Have Lost This record doesn’t just have one of the most beautiful cover designs of the past year (and some of the hardest riffs), it’s also the most culturally and politically relevant hardcore release of 2017. Haram’s debut full-length is a powerful condemnation of the Trump administration’s violent anti-Muslim policies (“Your President, Not a President”) and an inspiring cry for liberation. Front man Nader Habibi sings entirely in Arabic—a pas-

The cover of Haram’s ‫ تحبر سب‬,‫ترسخ‬ When You Have Won, You Have Lost

sionate refusal—atop booming drums and melodic guitars.

ALEXA VISCIUS Bassist in Bunny, photographer, designer

Eliza Weber é ASHLEIGH DYE

Eliza Weber Not only is Eliza my bass-playing hero, she’s also my favorite self-taught poster designer in Chicago. When she’s not playing bass in Glyders, she’s designing and printing flyers for local shows. The flyers, which she started making out of necessity to promote her own concerts, combine a handmade DIY punk feel with qualities you ﬁnd in old psychedelic and Krautrock aesthetics. Add to that her playful use of color and total disregard for the strict Swiss typography I studied in school, and what comes out are perfect show posters. Sike Rock Laughing and listening to music are my favorite things to do. Local comedian and musician Tim Makowski feels the same way, so he started a bimonthly variety show that features sets by local bands and sketch comedy in between. Sike Rock has found a home at Schubas, where it’s billed as “a night of music and comedy,” but I see it more as “a night of not being able to take a cigarette break for fear of missing something.” Tim’s comedic collaborators include Sarah Jane Quillin, Ashley Ray, and Zach Hebert. Ruins I’m seeing a bit of a pattern here . . . all the people who inspire me in the Chicago scene are multitalented overachieving maniacs. Adam Schubert is no exception. He plays in the band Cafe Racer, and his solo project, Ruins, just released its self-titled debut EP on Dumpster Tapes. It’s such a beautiful tape, with thick layers of sound that envelop you— it’s reminiscent of Deerhunter, with a sad-pop sensibility similar to that of Elliott Smith.

Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week of June 28

MUSIC

b ALL AGES F

Sons of Kemet é PIERRICK GUIDOU

THURSDAY28 Sons of Kemet Melissa Laveaux opens. 6:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, Michigan and Randolph. bf

PICK OF THE WEEK

Zither maestro Laraaji explores musical paths no one else can see

é LIAM RICKETTS

MIND OVER MIRRORS, LARAAJI, DJ ROB SEVIER Sun 7/1, 7 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $15. b

BORN EDWARD LARRY Gordon in 1943, composer, zither maestro, and experimental musician Laraaji has spent his life making music that captures humanity’s pulse and then some. He’s walked a colorful path while connecting threads between Sun Ra’s experimentation and Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda’s devotional music with new age mysticism, and critically championing ambient music and performative public art. Born in Philadelphia, Laraaji took up musical composition with a scholarship to Howard University, got hooked on the comedy circuit, moved to New York, and wound up with a role in Robert Downey Sr.’s 1969 cult comedy Putney Swope. In the early 70s he got turned on to autoharps while participating in cross-genre open-mike series. From there he began to focus his energy on the zither, dedicating himself to intense research about spirituality and busking around New York with an ampliﬁed zither. It was through one of these public performances—in Washington

Square Park in 1979—that he caught the ear of Brian Eno. The inﬂuential musician produced Laraaji’s 1980 album Day of Radiance as part of his celebrated Ambient series. In the years since, Laraaji has continued to produce a mound of material—last year All Saints released a pair of full-lengths, the levitating Bring on the Sun and the darker Sun Gong. Part of the challenge with trying to nail what Laraaji is all about lies in sifting through all that material, especially since some of his work is released only in small batches on cassette. Fortunately Numero Group rescued such a release earlier this year. In the process of reissuing 1984’s glistening Vision Songs, Vol. 1, the label also shed new light on his mid-80s NYC public-access television program, Celestrana, which combined musical performance with conversations about art and spirituality and occasional appearances by a puppet. Tonight Laraaji performs with assistance from Numero co-owner Rob Sevier. —LEOR GALIL

Jazz-related music rarely gets any sort of mainstream hype these days, and it’s gratifying when one of the figures attracting wide attention outside of the jazz press actually deserves it. British reedist Shabaka Hutchings, a dynamo rooted in jazz, is an agile and curious musician who spreads his soulfully biting improvisation across wildly disparate projects. Last year he made his local debut at the Chicago Jazz Festival, playing in a band led by veteran South African drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo, where he extrapolated dancing solos sparked by free-jazz exploration and fueled by kwela melodies. This week marks his first Chicago show with Sons of Kemet, the group that’s proved his most fruitful and exciting platform to date. Earlier this year the quartet’s third album, Your Queen Is a Reptile, got a global release on Impulse Records. The powerful recording captures the ensemble’s infectious hybrid of funk and various Caribbean styles while the leader unspools probing lines steeped in vintage Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane. Born in London, Hutchings spent most of his childhood in Barbados before returning to his birthplace for high school, but this early immersion in reggae, calypso, and soca made a deep impact. Those styles still run through his veins, so his jazz approach sounds unlike anything that would come out of the U.S., even though it wouldn’t be possible without the American jazz tradition. In this band he’s formed an indelible bond with tuba player Theon Cross, as shown when they team up for a firestorm of contrapuntal riffs or engage in freewheeling call-and-response, or when the tubaist is puffing fat bass lines for Hutchings to wildly run over. Meanwhile the group’s tandem drummers (Tom Skinner and Eddie Hick) produce a tight-knit feast of polyrhythmic joy that shares nothing with postbop apart from a magically elastic sense of time. The music possesses a fiery undercurrent of protest, rejecting the hereditary privilege of the English monarchy and celebrating nine women who’ve made powerful contributions to the world, among them Angela Davis, Albertina Sisulu, and Harriet Tubman. —PETER MARGASAK J

JUNE 28, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 27

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

MUSIC

Jim Lauderdale é SCOTT SIMONTACCHI

FRIDAY, JUNE 29 8PM

Meat Puppets with special guests Ratboys

FRIDAY, AUGUST 24 7PM

An Evening with

Alejandro Escovedo and Joe Ely SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 8PM

Dave Alvin & Jimmie Dale Gilmore

(Backed by The Guilty Ones)

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 8PM

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

6/29 Global Dance Party: Peruvian Folk Dance Center 9/16 Harold López-Nussa Trio 9/30 The Revelers

OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG JULY 13, 14, 15

T H R E E D AY S O F LIVE MUSIC, LOCAL FOOD, CRAFT BEER & FAMILY FUN! FE ATURING

THE JAYHAWKS

continued from 27

Rock, Pop, Etc Code Orange, Nicole Dollanganger, Twitching Tongues, Vein 7:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Curious Grace, Black Rabbit 8 PM, Wire, Berwyn Dead Boys, Mystery Actions, Peel, Evictions 8 PM, Beat Kitchen Deluge, Zainghis, Doc Ill 9:30 PM, Whistler F Discus, Why Bonnie, Gosh! 9 PM, Sleeping Village Heligoats, Dutch Tulips, Rich Salamander 9 PM, Hideout Cody Johns, Friday Pilots Club, Pact 7:30 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Joseph 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Killer Moon, Hot Garbage, Wet Wallet 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Kevin Krauter, Major Murphy, Claude 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ Maps & Atlases, Prism Tats 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Negative Approach, Dayglo Abortions, Spare Change, XEuthanizedX, Kreutzer Sonata 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Red Wanting Blue, Liz Brasher 8 PM, City Winery, sold out b Soul Rebels 9 PM, Chop Shop, 18+ Sun God Ra, Furr, Transit Method, Strange Foliage 8 PM, Martyrs’ Dance Mobilegirl, Ziur, Ariel Zetina 10 PM, Smart Bar Folk & Country Devil in a Woodpile 6 PM, Hideout Old Crow Medicine Show, Joshua Hedley 8 PM, Thalia Hall, sold out, 17+ Blues, Gospel, and R&B Brian McKnight 7 and 9:30 PM, through 7/7, City Winery b Jazz Jane Bunnett & Maqueque 8 and 10 PM, also Fri 6/29 and Sat 6/30, 8 and 10 PM; Sun 7/1, 4, 8, and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Huntertones 8 PM, SPACE b Quin Kirchner Group 9:30 PM, California Clipper Dave Rempis, Brandon Lopez, and Ryan Packard 9 PM, Elastic b International Vinicius Cantuaria & Jasmin Williams 7 PM, the Promontory b

POKEY LAFARGE MATTHEW SWEET THE HANDSOME FAMILY BOMBINO • GATO PRETO LOS GAITEROS DE SAN JACINTO

Ida y Vuelta 9 PM, Hungry Brain Swing Brasiliero 7:30 PM, Spirit of Music Garden, Grant Park F b Wailers 7:30 PM, Arcada Theatre, Saint Charles b Classical Chicago Symphony Orchestra Richard Kaufman, conductor (Williams, Star Wars: A New Hope in concert). 7:30 PM, also Fri 6/29 and Sat 6/20, 7:30 PM, Symphony Center

FRIDAY29 Josefus Doomstress and Plastic Crimewave Syndicate open. 9 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $12. 21+ I’ve never been to Houston, but I imagine it to be a place where the humidity is so omnipresent it can seep into your bones, cloud your vision, and permeate your art. Granted, my impression is informed by the languid thump of DJ Screw’s productions, the soupy drawl of the city’s prewar

blues recordings, and the broiled, psych-soaked melodies of Josefus. Formed in 1968, Josephus foreshadowed heavy metal with the turgid riffs, brutal-but-sparse rhythms, and wild-man vocals across their 1970 debut, Dead Man. The album was ﬁnanced by the father of drummer Doug Tull and self-released on the band’s Hookah label, but Josefus originally recorded the songs in 1969 in Phoenix with producer Jim Musil. According to a 2011 interview with guitarist Dave Mitchell on the blog It’s Psychedelic Baby, Musil wanted the band to change their name to Come in the hopes that Frank Zappa’s label would release the record— which he envisioned would be called “Come on Straight Records.” But the sessions that became Dead Man were superior anyway, and they’re the strongest work in the band’s catalog (Numero reissued the album in 2014). Josefus’s musically scattershot self-titled 1970 follow-up for Mainstream Records lacks the magnetic heaviness that makes Dead Man a thrill, though self-admittedly the band churned out much of the material at the last minute; they broke up shortly thereafter. In the ensuing years, Josefus have reunited sporadically, though Tull died in 1991 and a few years ago bassist Ray Turner suﬀered a stroke that’s made it impossible for him to play. But ace guitarist Mitchell and feral vocalist Pete Bailey remain in the picture; tonight’s performance, which Reader contributor and Secret History of Chicago Music creator Steve Krakow booked, will be a rare opportunity to see this historic Houston band in person. —LEOR GALIL

AND MORE!

Jim Lauderdale See also Saturday. 6 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $15. 21+

PLUS CRAFT BEER FROM

LAGUNITAS HALF ACRE • DOVETAIL BEGYLE • 5 RABBIT AND MANY OTHER BREWERIES!

SQUAREROOTS.ORG 28 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 28, 2018

Josefus é COURTESY THE ARTIST

As if we needed another reminder of the Catholic sensibilities of country auteur Jim Lauderdale, on August 3 he’ll drop a pair of disparate albums on Yep Roc that casually reveal his easygoing range and natural curiosity. Jim Lauderdale and Roland White is a previously unissued session he cut with the titular bluegrass picker of Ken-

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

tucky Colonels fame in the basement of Earl and Louise Scruggs’s house in 1979, not long after Lauderdale had arrived in Nashville determined to make his mark. The guitarists harmonize together on the classic bluegrass repertoire with such ease and charm it sounds as if they’d been working together for decades. In the years that followed, Lauderdale made his biggest mark as a songwriter, churning out country hits for other artists, but he’s never stopped working as a performer—he’s got 30 albums to his name. The newly recorded Time Flies captures Lauderdale in typically eclectic form and treats his impeccable songcraft through a variety of modes; the title track, for example, reflects his abiding love for soul music, though the twang quotient remains front and center, and “The Road Is a River” channels the haze of 70s folk-rock, deftly embroidered by the lead guitar of Chris Scruggs, whose performance recalls early Mark Knopﬂer more than Chet Atkins. On most of the record singer and ﬁddler Lillie Mae Rische and her brother Frank Rische expertly limn Lauderdale’s singing with agile vocal harmonies that put a pop gloss on the tender ballad “Violet” or on the hokum of the music-hall ditty “Slow as Molasses”— which is one of several tunes that descend into corn. —PETER MARGASAK Rock, Pop, Etc Bryan Adams 8 PM, Ravinia Festival b Atomic Love, Lavisher, Melanin, Bryce Cashman 8 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ The Body, Big Brave, Lingua Ignota 9 PM, Empty Bottle Marc Cohn, Clarence Bucaro 8 PM, City Winery b A Film in Color, Bristletongue, Indisposed, Tideshift 6:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Fury, Chai Tulani, E. Brown, Jason Gatz 10:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Har Mar Superstar 7:30 PM, SPACE b Horrible, Highball, Peeves 8 PM, Burlington Kites & Boomerangs 9 PM, Heartland Cafe

MUSIC Dave Matthews Band 8 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Meat Puppets, Ratboys 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Middle Western, Mouth Captain, Deep Cricket Night 8 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Mighty Pines, Porch Fire 9 PM, Schubas Pink Frost, New Canyons, Slow Witch 10 PM, Cole’s F Poster Children, Porcupine 9 PM, Lincoln Hall Rhea the Second, Limitless Soundz, Laura Burke 8 PM, Emporium Arcade Bar F Quinn Tsan, Yadda Yadda 9 PM, Hungry Brain Wanna One 8 PM, Rosemont Theater b Hip-Hop Sterling Hayes, the Mind, Elz the DJ, DJ King Marie, Qari, Such n Such 9 PM, Virgin Hotel F Dance Chus & Ceballos, Gene Farris 10 PM, the Mid Jackmaster, Mike Dunn, DJ Heather 10 PM, Smart Bar Martinez, Michael Seraﬁni, Ari Frank 10 PM, Spy Bar Folk & Country Rodney Atkins, Josh Mirenda 8 PM, Joe’s Live, Rosemont Unknown Hinson, Blind Staggers, Krank Daddies 9 PM, Beat Kitchen Blues, Gospel, and R&B Lurrie Bell Blues Band 9:30 PM, Rosa’s Lounge Billy Branch & the Sons of Blues, Mojo Morganﬁeld & the Mannish Boyz 9 PM, Buddy Guy’s Legends Cash Box Kings 10:30 PM, California Clipper Chicago Wind Blues Band 9 PM, also Sat 6/30, 9 PM, Blue Chicago Carlos Johnson & the Serious Blues Band 9 PM, B.L.U.E.S. Lil’ Ed & the Blues Imperials, Joanna Connor 9 PM, also Sat 6/30, 9 PM, Kingston Mines Brian McKnight 7 and 9:30 PM, City Winery b Jazz Jane Bunnett & Maqueque 8 and 10 PM, also Thu 6/28 and Sat 6/30, 8 and 10 PM; Sun 7/1, 4, 8, and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase

Summer is more fun with Old Town School Music • Dance Art • Theatre Wiggleworms®

Browse our class schedules online at

oldtownschool.org

Geof Bradﬁeld é SCOTT HESSE

JUNE 28, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 29

MUSIC continued from 29

Angelo Hart & Jake Wark 7:30 PM, PianoForte Studios Vincent Herring Quartet 9 PM, Green Mill Joel Paterson & the Modern Sounds 7:30 PM, Spirit of Music Garden, Grant Park F b Mike Smith & Mark Colby 9:30 PM, also Sat 6/30, 9:30 PM, Andy’s Jazz Club Michele Thomas Sextet 7:30 and 9:30 PM, Winter’s Jazz Club Experimental Bearl, Angel Bat Dawid, Columnduo 9 PM, Elastic b International Gizzae 9 PM, Wild Hare Son Veteranos 4 PM, Wrightwood Park F b Classical Chicago Symphony Orchestra Richard Kaufman, conductor (Williams, Star Wars: A New Hope in concert). 7:30 PM, also Thu 6/28 and Sat 6/30, 7:30 PM, Symphony Center Fairs & Festivals Chi-Soul Fest: Isaiah Sharkey, Syleena Johnson, Dee Alexander Quartet, the Right Now 5:30 PM, Navy Pier F b FitzGerald’s American Music Festival: Eric Lindell, James McMurtry, Sam Lewis, Bob Schneider, Marcella & Her Lovers, Band of Heathens, and others 5 PM, FitzGerald’s

30 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 28, 2018

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

SATURDAY30

ﬁeld’s project with drummer Dana Hall and bassist Clark Sommers—who lock into a ferociously swinging opener, and “Chorale” is a rich, contrapuntal marvel that features trombonist Joel Adams and trumpeters Russ Johnson and Marquis Hill. The longer pieces feature lush arrangements with lots of moving parts and elegantly swinging drive: “In Flux” highlights the restrained lyric side of guitarist Scott Hesse and the soulful, stop-on-a-dime agility of alto saxophonist Greg Ward, and the tip-toeing twists and turns of “Anamneses” highlight Anna Webber’s plush bass-flute melodies and Johnson’s trumpet playing at its most tunefully pensive. The entire group reconvenes for this album release celebration. —PETER MARGASAK

Geof Bradfield 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $15, $10 in advance. 18+ In his typical fashion, reedist, composer, and bandleader Geof Bradfield deployed a veritable notebook of conceptual conceits when writing and formulating his new album Yes, and . . . Music for Nine Improvisers (Delmark). The title refers to a comedic device famously devised by the iconic Chicago improv troupe the Compass Players to propel bits forward and expand them in new directions—actions that are guiding principles in strong musical improvisation too. That directive demands that each participant look out for others in the group as well as for themselves performance-wise. As Bradﬁeld says in the liner notes, “So ‘Yes, and . . . ’ requires you to believe that what you improvise is building on whatever everyone else is doing—even if the response is, ‘Yes, and here’s my contrasting’ response to that.” Bradfield used a set of scales developed by the French composer Olivier Messiaen in writing these pieces, and the album alternates between brief trios for different instrument combinations and full ensemble works that allow the improvisational capabilities of his top-notch group to shine. Of the shorter pieces, “Prelude” features the members of Bash—Brad-

Jeremy Enigk Chris Staples opens. 8:30 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $18. 17+

Kacey Musgraves é KELLY CHRISTINE SUTTON

Seattle emo superheroes Sunny Day Real Estate were falling apart at the end of 1994, when they recorded LP2, an album that still feels like a comet entering earth’s atmosphere. Listening to it, I get a sense of the band’s behind-the-scenes tension, especially from Jeremy Enigk’s otherworldly howl, which seems to scoop up all the complex feelings of being in the precarious position of being young and on the precipice of stardom; many had touted them as the next big thing, especially given their back-

MUSIC Sarah Shook & the Disarmers é JOHN GESSNER

FRIDAY JUNE 29TH é THE SODA JERKS/ THE BAMA LAMAS SATURDAY JUNE 30TH é RED WIGGLERS/ DEADLY BUNGALOWS SUNDAY JULY 1ST é ANDREW D. HUBER/ ERIC PETER SCHWARTZ MONDAY JULY 2ND é PROSPECT FOUR 1800 W DIVISION • 773.486.9862 TUESDAY JULY 3RD é DJ SKID LICIOUS THURSDAY JULY 5TH é MIKE FELTEN SATURDAY JULY 7TH é STRAY BOLTS SUNDAY JULY 8TH é HEISENBERG UNCERTAINTY PLAYERS MONDAY JULY 9TH é RC BIG BAND 7PM/JON RARICK NONET 9:30 PM TUESDAY JULY 10TH é FLABBY HOFFMAN SHOW 8PM WEDNESDAY JULY 11TH é ELIZABETH’S CRAZY LITTLE THING THURSDAY JULY 12TH é FLABBY HOFFMAN SHOW 8PM UNIBROW | SMILIN’ BOBBY FRIDAY JULY 13TH é SILVERTONE SATURDAY JULY 14TH é FIRST WARD PROBLEMS AND THE CLEMTONES SUNDAY JULY 15TH é TONY DO ROSARIO GROUP BK READ | AMERICAN DRAFT MONDAY JULY 16TH é PROSPECT FOUR THE POLKAHOLICS TUESDAY JULY 17TH é SMILIN’ BOBBY 80TH THE PHONE CALLS BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION 8PM WEDNESDAY JULY 18TH é WAGNER & MORSE BAD FORUM | LAY CHICKIE

PHYLLIS’ MUSICAL INN PRESENTS THE 32ND ANNUAL ALL-STAR JAM

JULY 4TH:

ing by Sub Pop, at the time was the biggest indie label in the world. Though Enigk’s lyrics, largely thrown together at the last minute, were sometimes gibberish (speciﬁcity can only get you so far), the tone and emotion in his vocals expressed far more than any words could on their own. Enigk became a born-again Christian as Sunny Day came to an end, but has wisely kept Jesus in the background of the bulk of his solo material, including his debut album, Return of the Frog Queen, released in 1996 and just reissued by Sub Pop, which Enigk will perform in full tonight. After fronting a band that could summon typhoons, Enigk decided to go acoustic as a solo artist, but he always kept a sense of drama intact; on Return he pulls in a 21-person orchestra to add ﬂesh to his brittle guitar melodies. All these years later I still can’t make sense of some of these songs, but on the baroque, disarming “Shade and the Black Hat” Enigk’s sustained yowl tells you everything you need to know. —LEOR GALIL

Jim Lauderdale See Friday. 8 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $15. 21+ Kacey Musgraves Harry Styles headlines. 8 PM, United Center, 1901 W. Madison, $39.50$79.50. b Since Kacey Musgraves released her 2015 album Pageant Material she’s gained popularity and also a husband, fellow singer-songwriter Ruston Kelly. On her third studio album, Golden Hour (MCA Nashville), the new-breed country star moves away from sharp observations of small-town life toward something more universal. The shift in her lyrics is matched by a musical pivot toward grand pop gestures that sometimes turn the songs’ country instrumentation into chintzy decoration, as when banjo licks ripple through the stiﬀ expression of wanderlust on the Coldplay-like “Oh, What a World.” Musgraves has always had strong pop instincts, and on Golden Hour she’s doubled down on fizzy emotions in songs that embrace joy and satisfaction. She describes the ﬂuttery, happy feel-

ings of romance on “Butterﬂies” and settles into a more relaxed, self-possessed state of mind on the sun-baked opener “Slow Burn.” Other tracks touch on the disappointment of heartbreak, particularly “Space Cowboy,” where Musgraves drops biting wordplay ending with the kiss-off “You can have your space, cowboy,” and “Happy & Sad,” where she sings of creeping insecurity encroaching on her euphoria. It’s hard not cringe at the pop-house groove and plebeian lyrics of “High Horse,” where the put-down chorus “Yeah, everyone knows someone who knows someone / Who thinks they’re cooler than everybody else” lacks the sting of her old writing. I’m glad Musgraves is happy, but I do miss the depth and detail of the songs she created when she wasn’t. —PETER MARGASAK

THURSDAY JULY 19TH é THE JETSTAR 88S FRIDAY JULY 20TH é KILLING ME SMALLS SUNDAY JULY 22ND é WHOLESOMERADIO DJ NIGHT/MOSTLY DAVE 9:30 PM MONDAY JULY 23RD RC BIG BAND 7PM WEDNESDAY JULY 25TH é PETER CASANOVA QUARTET THURSDAY JULY 26TH é THE PROF. FUZZ 63 PLUS DAVE WARPONY FRIDAY JULY 27TH é SCOTTY AND THE BAD BOYS SATURDAY JULY 28TH é MARK ESSICK BAND SUNDAY JULY 29TH é NUCLEAR JAZZ QUARKTET 8PM JULY ART SHOW BY DAN CLEARY / EVERY TUESDAY (EXCEPT 2ND) AT 8PM OPEN MIC HOSTED BY JIMIJON AMERICA

Kelly Willis, Sarah Shook & The Disarmers Part of FitzGerald’s American Music Festival, which runs from Friday, June 29, through Tuesday, July 3 (no show Monday, July 2). Music starts at 1:30 PM; Willis plays at 8:30 PM and Shook at 6 PM. FitzGerald’s, 6615 Roosevelt Rd., Berwyn, $40, $140 four-day pass, 21+ after 10 PM. b Sarah Shook and Kelly Willis are a generation apart in age, but listening to each songwriter’s new album in succession prove that breakups, kiss-oﬀs, and immediate consolation are timeless themes in country music. Just about every jacked-up song on Shook’s recently released second album, Years (Bloodshot), addresses good-for-nothings that the singer has either dumped or deems unworthy of her time. On the opener “Good as Gold,” she admits she’s afraid of losing, then quickly adds, “Not afraid of losing you”—sticking with a lover who doesn’t treat her well would cost her much more. In “The Bottle Never Lets Me Down” she downplays her own excesses; she doesn’t need to worry about where her next sip might be, which is more than she can say about her lover’s vices: “You won’t ﬁnd it running around / In the darkest corners of this town.” Shook’s band the Disarmers are fairly workmanlike, though Phil Sullivan does a great job J

JUNE 28, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 31

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SQUAREROOTS.ORG 32 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 28, 2018

MUSIC continued from 31

bringing out a vocallike pathos in his pedal steel lines, but her powerful wail commands attention— if she learns to modulate her instrument with more nuance she could be unstoppable. Kelly Willis mastered her comparably sweeter, more refined voice long ago, so each throaty exhortation hits with great impact. Her new album Back Being Blue (Premium/Thirty Tigers)—her first solo record since 2007—is less confrontational and strident than Shook’s when it comes to heartbreak, and its ten songs convey a much broader range of styles, emotions, and intensities. There’s a touch of early Elvis Costello on “Only You,” an effective evisceration of a lover who lacks any sense of accountability, while the ebullient “Modern World” is a spoton, surprisingly succinct indictment of how contemporary mores revolve around multiple forms of exploitation. There are a few covers, including a sharp take on Rodney Crowell’s “We’ll Do It for Love Next Time” and a cheesy slog through Ronnie Light’s faux-western swing dud “I’m a Lover (Not a Fighter),” but the strongest tunes were penned by Willis, and make the record as strong as any in her career. —PETER MARGASAK Rock, Pop, Etc 101 WKQX Piqniq with Awolnation, Dashboard Confessional, Bush, Greta Van Fleet, Front Bottoms, and others 1 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre Alvarez Kings, Anarbor, Fox & the Hounds, Harvey Dentures 7 PM, Cobra Lounge b American Authors 10 PM, Martyrs’ F Drivin’ N Cryin’, Erin Edmister & Three Tons, Kevin Daniels 8 PM, Beat Kitchen Har Mar Superstar 8:30 and 11 PM, Empty Bottle Kuinka, Remington Pettygrove 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ Modern Vices, H.A.R.D., Kachi 9 PM, Sleeping Village Kevin Newhall & the Affinities 8 PM, Elastic b Oblio & Arrow, Martin & Mild, Danger Pony 8:30 PM, Chop Shop, 18+ Planet What, Vietrahm, Vacuum 10 PM, Cole’s F Remember Sports, Nadine, Tasha 7:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Mike Silvestri 7:30 PM, Cubby Bear Neil Young 8 PM, also Sun 7/1, 8 PM, Auditorium Theatre, sold out b Zoofunkyou, Stampy, Zombie Mañana 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Hip-Hop Smoke DZA, Bodega Bamz 6 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club b Dance Armnhmr 10 PM, the Mid Victor Calderone 10 PM, Spy Bar Grum, Tinlicker 10 PM, Sound-Bar RP Boo, DJ Spinn, Jana Rush, the Era, I Am the Queen 7 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art Speedy J, Jeff Derringer 10 PM, Smart Bar Folk & Country Koe Wetzel, Read Southall Band 8:30 PM, Joe’s Bar Wild Earp & the Free-for-Alls 10:30 PM, California Clipper Blues, Gospel, and R&B Lurrie Bell 9 PM, B.L.U.E.S. Jimmy Burns Band 9:30 PM, Rosa’s Lounge Chicago Wind Blues Band 9 PM, Blue Chicago Lil’ Ed & the Blues Imperials, Joanna Connor 9 PM,

Serpentwithfeet é ASH KINGSTON Kingston Mines Brian McKnight 7 and 9:30 PM, City Winery b Nick Moss Band 8 PM, SPACE b NuBlu Band 9:30 PM, Buddy Guy’s Legends Jazz Ari Brown Quartet 8 PM, Green Mill Jane Bunnett & Maqueque 8 and 10 PM, also Thu 6/28 and Fri 6/29, 8 and 10 PM; Sun 7/1, 4, 8, and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Small Time Napoleon 7:30 and 9:30 PM, Winter’s Jazz Club Mike Smith & Mark Colby 9:30 PM, Andy’s Jazz Club International Freddie McGregor 9 PM, Wild Hare Son Veteranos 7:30 PM, Spirit of Music Garden, Grant Park F b Classical Chicago Symphony Orchestra Richard Kaufman, conductor (Williams, Star Wars: A New Hope in concert). 7:30 PM, also Thu 6/28 and Fri 6/29, 7:30 PM, Symphony Center Kevin Cole 7:30 PM, Ravinia Festival b Daniel Pesca 7:30 PM, PianoForte Studios Yanni 8 PM, Chicago Theatre Fairs & Festivals Chi-Soul Fest: J.C. Brooks Band, Brandon Markell Holmes, Kaina, Akenya, Sam Trump, Shawnee Dez, Christian JaLon, Congregation, Duane Powell 2 PM, Navy Pier F b Tour de Fat with Best Coast Noon, Humboldt Park

SUNDAY1 Laraaji See Pick of the Week, page 27. Mind Over Mirrors headlines; Laraaji and DJ Rob Sevier open. 7 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $15. b

MUSIC

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

Blues, Gospel, and R&B Brian McKnight 7 and 9:30 PM, City Winery b Jazz Jane Bunnett & Maqueque 4, 8, and 10 PM, also Thu 6/28 through Sat 6/30, 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Michael Salter Quartet 9 PM, Whistler F International Duo Scofano-Minetti 5 PM, Spirit of Music Garden, Grant Park F b Fairs & Festivals FitzGerald’s American Music Festival: Banditos, Marcia Ball, John Moreland, CJ Chenier, Sarah Borges, Archie Bell, and others 1:30 PM, FitzGerald’s Miscellaneous Kidz Bop Kids 4 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion

MONDAY2 Rich Homie Quan é RACHEL MURRAY

Serpentwithfeet Lee Mo opens. 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $14. 21+ Serpentwithfeet’s recently released debut album, Soil (Secretly Canadian), is essentially one long, ecstatic warble. The R&B singer-songwriter genius also known as Josiah Wise sings with the most pronounced vibrato this side of Tracy Chapman; when he multitracks his high tenor and falsetto vocals such as on “Wrong Tree,” the result is an ocean of shimmering, yearning ululation. Set against electronic soundscapes reminiscent of Björk or FKA Twigs, his singing is both sensual and unearthly, floating and shaking beyond the usual limits of male and female voices to sketch out new, extravagant life forms (as you’d expect from an artist who calls himself Serpentwithfeet.) Trained in both classical and gospel music, Wise’s songs of queer love, sex, and sadness embody a reverential conviction. “I get to / Devote my life to him,” he sings on “Cherubim,” conﬂating religion and romance as smoothly as midcareer Al Green. Other tracks mix inﬂuences and messages even more dizzyingly; “Fragrant” is

set against a quiet industrial beat over which Serpentwithfeet loses both himself and his love in languid inﬁdelity. “I called all your ex-boyfriends / And asked them for a kiss / I needed to know / If they still carried your fragrance.” Self becomes body becomes scent becomes music—in Serpentwithfeet’s art, nothing is stable and everything vibrates. —NOAH BERLATSKY Rock, Pop, Etc Brandon James 7:30 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Khemmis, Starless, Varaha 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Ciaran Lavery, Jess Robbins 8 PM, SPACE b Low Swans, Sugarpulp, Sayers, Late 8 PM, Schubas F Nancy, Trouble Boys, Bad Sons 9 PM, East Room Sore History, Nectar, Special Death, Horrible Things 8 PM, Burlington Neil Young 8 PM, Auditorium Theatre b Hip-Hop Tory Lanez 7 PM, House of Blues b

Rock, Pop, Etc Martin Bisi, Ono, Secret Means of Escape 9 PM, Hideout Blacker Face, Peach Lavender, First Responders, Arts & Letters 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Diagonal, Lake of Fire, Plastic Crimewave Syndicate, Black Road 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle F Doobie, Krash Minati, DJ Hylyte 7 PM, Schubas b The Naked and Famous 8 PM, SPACE b Paramore, Foster the People 7 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Dennis Quaid & the Sharks 8 PM, City Winery b Snarky Puppy, Damien Escobar, Jacob Collier 6:30 PM, Ravinia Festival b Hip-Hop Tory Lanez 7 PM, House of Blues b Folk & Country Chicago Barn Dance Company Barn dance featuring Baba Yaga’s Stew with caller Diane Silver. 7 PM, Irish American Heritage Center b Blues, Gospel, and R&B Brian McKnight 7 and 9:30 PM, City Winery b Jazz Francesca Castro Quartet 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Extraordinary Popular Delusions 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen F

Lenard Simpson Group, Max Bessesen Quartet 9 PM, Elastic b Experimental Kelley Sheehan & Taylor Stevenson, Keeley Seehan & Emily Beisel 7:30 PM, Experimental Sound Studio b In-Stores Christian Schumacher & Skyler Rowe 7:30 PM, Myopic Books F b

TUESDAY2 Rich Homie Quan Nova opens. 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2105 S. State, $25, $22 in advance. 18+

Lyricism doesn’t immediately come to mind as Rich Homie Quan’s standout quality. The Atlanta rapper’s breakout hits, including 2015’s “Flex (Ooh, Ooh, Ooh)” and 2013’s “Type of Way,” were heavy on swagger and catchy beats, but with lines like“15,000 dollars on your bitch wanna fuck me / Got her screamin’ like ooohh,” they lacked creative writing. But the 28-year-old made a total about-face with his full-length debut, March’s Rich as in Spirit—his lyrics are the strongest part of the album. The record’s production is one-note, and half of its 19 tracks are filler, but damn if Rich Homie Quan can’t spin a yarn. On “4rm Me to You,” the album’s best song, the rapper captures his gritty past without glamorizing violence he’s witnessed, though many rappers are wont to do the opposite. His reflections about a time in his life when he supported himself through crime, the drug “residue on the floors” that he kept from his mom, the “shootout in her truck,” and even the pregnancy he pressured his lover to terminate (“If I could change anything baby / Wouldn’t’ve made you never aborted that kid”) are so vivid I could see his world crystallize before me, line by line. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised; if you look closer at Rich Homie Quan’s discography, you’ll find gems like “Daddy,” a heart-wrenching narrative about his ailing father. However, his talent was always either overshadowed by other members of his Rich Gang collective, like Young Thug, or lost in mixtapes that favored quantity over quality. Going forward as a solo artist, if Rich Homie Quan tightens up the track list and ups the production to the quality of J

JUNE 28, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 33

MICHAEL CHE SPECIAL GUESTS:

MUSIC

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

CIPHA SOUNDS

SATURDAY, JULY 14 VIC THEATRE TICKETS STILL AVAILABLE FOR 10PM SHOW! 7:30 SHOW IS SOLD OUT!

Luke Winslow-King é VICTOR ALONSO

continued from 33

early tracks like “Flex” while maintaining his current level of songwriting, that next album will be a hell of a project. —RACHEL YANG

OCTOBER 10 RIVIERA THEATRE TICKETS ON SALE NOW!

SUNDAY OCTOBER 21

VIC THEATRE

ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM!

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27 PARK WEST WITH SPECIAL GUEST

NICK WATERHOUSE

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 1 VIC THEATRE ON SALE THURSDAY 6/28 AT 10AM! BUY TICKETS AT

34 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 28, 2018

ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM!

Luke Winslow-King Part of FitzGerald’s American Music Festival, which runs from Friday, June 29, through Tuesday, July 3 (no show Monday, July 2). Music starts at 5 PM, and Winslow-King plays at 6:30 PM. FitzGerald’s, 6615 Roosevelt Rd., Berwyn, $50, $140 four-day pass, 21+ before 10 PM. b On his latest album, Blue Mesa (Bloodshot), suave roots-rock maven Luke Winslow-King has thankfully expunged the acrimony that dripped from his 2016 breakup album, I’m Glad Trouble Don’t Last Always— suggesting that album title was a testimonial. Back then his vitriol toward an ex was so strong he called her out by name, so it’squite a contrast when he opens his new album with an expression of unconditional support on “You Got Mine.” The acceptance and tenderness in lines such as “If indignation and despair / Have you feeling like life ain’t fair / Come on over baby, pull up a chair,” is heightened by the fact that the person Winslow-King wrote the song with, New Orleans ﬁxture “Washboard” Lissa Driscoll, died from throat cancer not long after he cut the track. Winslow-King has left the Crescent City, which he called home for 15 years, and returned to his native Michigan, but the imprint of New Orleans on his music is as profound as ever; the album mixes blues, swamp rock, and soul and serves it all up with a sense of calm and grace. I’m not sure where the blue mesa Winslow-King refers to is located, but between the ambling groove of the title track, the vocal quality of Roberto Luti’s aching slide guitar, and lyrics that describe how its

natural beauty function as an emotional balm certainly make me want to pay a visit. There are some pretty dull moments of boilerplate blues-rock that veer toward MOR mouthwash, but even then Winslow-King sings with an infectious ease that values calm over anguish. —PETER MARGASAK Rock, Pop, Etc Mick Flannery 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Pooky, Blind Moon 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Vista, Farhampton 6 PM, Wire, Berwyn Dance Steve Bug 10 PM, Spy Bar Hot Mix 5 10 PM, the Mid Michael Seraﬁni, Ciel, Eris Drew, Diz, Sold, Striz 10 PM, East Room Blues, Gospel, and R&B Miki Howard 8 PM, City Winery b Brian McKnight 7 and 9:30 PM, City Winery b Jazz Dee Alexander 5:30 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art F b Erwin Helfer 7:30 PM, Hungry Brain F Greg Ward 9 PM, Hungry Brain F International Ksenija Sidorova Accordion. 7:30 PM, Martin Theatre, Ravinia Festival b

WEDNESDAY4 Folk & Country Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, Devil in a Woodpile, Al Scorch 3 PM, City Winery b Blues, Gospel, and R&B Brian McKnight 7 and 9:30 PM, City Winery b

JOBS

General TECHNOLOGY EXPEDIA, INC. has openings for

the following positions in Chicago, IL: SOFTWARE ENGINEERS (Job ID#: 728.2077): Design, implement, and debug software for computers including algorithms and data structures. Technical Product Managers (Job ID#:728.4619): Gather detailed business requirements from stakeholders and work closely with technology staff to translate requirements into functional designs and specifications. Senior Analysts, Air Optimization (Job ID#: 728.2492): Analyze customer data to determine variances between internal and external search providers to best implement strategic vision for air search optimization. To apply, send resume to: Expedia Recruiting, 333 108th Avenue NE, Bellevue, WA 98004. Must reference Job ID#.

SLALOM HAS MULTIPLE openings for the following positions at its Chicago, IL office. Must be available to work on projects at various, unanticipated sites w/n commuting distance of its Chicago office: -MSCRM SYSTEMS ARCHITECT [Job Code KB045]: Design & develop complex custom solutions & interfaces leveraging Microsoft Dynamics’ MSCRM platform. -TECHNOLOGY CONSULTANT, MICROSOFT BI [Job Code KB049]: Identify/develop technology solutions for clients using company products, outsourced technology solutions &/or proprietary tools/techniques that others implement. TO APPLY: Email resume to recr uithr@slalom.com & indicate appropriate job code. QRM LOOKING FOR a Financial

Mathematics Engineer to analyze, develop & optimize fin modeling & simulation for portfolios sensitive to market factors, use fin mkt modeling tech incl adv Monte-Carlo to value & quantify fin risk for changes in mkt & econ factors for client profit dec Uses adv math & stats model & analysis tech & methods w/prob meas & algorithms to verify, impr, & enhance risk simulation. Develops new data cleansing algorithms & math models for effic, reduce errors & enhance secur forecast & cash flow models. Uses fin & math meas tech to ensure data qual & integrity in modeling & effic intro of upgrades to fin modeling & routines. Req Master’s in Financial Eng or Financial Math. Send resumes to: Attn: ZZGC, P.O. Box 61038 Chicago, IL 60606.

THE FEDERAL HOME Loan Bank

of Chicago is seeking a Sr. Credit Analyst in Chicago, IL with the following requirements: BS in Finance, Accounting, Business Administration or other business-related ﬁeld and 5 years related experience. Prior exp. must include 3 years with each of the following: performing ﬁnancial statement analyses to assess creditworthiness of customers and authorizing credit; proposing credit and collateral terms for customers to minimize credit risk; monitoring performance of high risk clients on a regular basis to identify potential issues; analyzing numerical data on high risk clients and make strategic recommendations to senior management. Send resume to recruiting@fhlbc.com. Architect (Video Streaming) – Design & dev. software sys. to support secure digital video distrib’n. Integrate enterprise software sys. w/ identity management sys. U.S. Bach. deg. or foreign equiv. in engineering, w/ spec. in info. tech., or related field req’d. 5 years’ prog. responsible postbaccalaureate exp. in software dev. pos’n(s) req’d. Min. 5 years’ exp. in pos’ns involving a) use of MSE in media program’g. & b) SAML & OAuth 2.0 protocols req’d. Great Software Laboratory, Inc., Chicago, IL. Resumes to: Recruiting, Great Software Laboratory, Inc., 60 E. Monroe Street, Unit 4301, Chicago, IL 60603.

(Hoffman Estates, IL) CMIC, Inc. seeks Quality Assurance Specialist B-1 w/ Bach or for deg equiv in Chem, Biol or a rel fld & 3 yrs exp in job offered or in GLP or GMP or regul lab environ. Empl also accepts 3 yr diploma, deg or crsewrk in Chem, Biol or a rel fld & 5 yrs exp in job offered or in GLP or GMP or regul lab environ. Special skills include 18 mnths hands-on exp utilizing LC-MS-MS instrum for drugs in bodily fluids & 12 mnths exp in quality assurance or quality control role in lab setting. Mail CV & cover ltr to 2860 Forbs Ave., Hoffman Estates, IL 60192

ITEMMASTER, INC. SEEKS a Senior Developer in Chicago, IL to re-archtct & imprv cust prtls & infl our intrnl tool wbsts using Java based sftwr stack. Reqs: BS in CS, EE, CIS, or rltd & 5 yrs exp. Reqs any lvl of exp: Java 7 & 8 prgrm lang; Spring fw for Java (inc. Spring Boot / Batch / & MVC); Rltnl Data Mdlng & Rltnl DB Sys (SQL); RESTful micro servs (build & cllng); Web app dev incl dynmc pages & AJAX; BPM & Biz Prcss Wrkflw Sys. Apply: email resume to hiring manager at hr@itemmaster.com.

(Accenture LLP; Chicago, IL): Develop, design, and maintain software products or systems to enable client strategies. Must have willingness and ability to travel domestically approximately 80% of the time to meet client needs. For complete job description, list of requirements, and to apply, go to: www.accenture.com/us-en/careers (Job# 00590004).

ENGINEERING EGENCIA LLC has openings for MANAGERS, ENGINEERING

(Job ID#: 728.2120) in Chicago, IL: Drive a team of software engineers to innovate and deliver roadmap features with agility and high quality. To apply, send resume to: Egencia Recruiting, 333 108th Avenue NE, Bellevue, WA 98004. Must reference Job ID#.

king crab house 1816 N. Halsted St., Chicago

HELP WANTED! Prep Cook

(Some Experience Needed)

& Dishwasher Apply In-Person (after 4:00 pm)

312-280-8990

APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATE MANAGER (MULTIPLE POSITIONS)

Software Engineer Aeris Communications, Inc. in Chicago, IL seeks Software Engineer to design, research & dev cloud based IOT fleet mgmnt pltfrm. MS in CS/CE plus 12 mons exp req’d. Mail resume w/ ad copy to Aeris Communications, Inc. 435 N. LaSalle St., Suite 300, Chicago, IL 60654 Attn: C. Kearns #AG103. TECHNOLOGY ORBITZ WORLDWIDE LLC has openings for DATA SCIENTISTS

(Job ID#: 728.4229) in Chicago, IL: Working with business partner to optimize the search campaigns to improve the efficiency. To apply, send resume to: Orbitz Recruiting, 333 108th Avenue NE, Bellevue, WA 98004. Must reference Job ID#.

REAL ESTATE RENTALS

STUDIO $500-$599 CHICAGO, CAL PARK & Blue Island: Studio $625 & up; 1BR $700 & up; 2BR $885 & up. Heat, Appls, Balcony, Carpet, Laundry, Parking. Call 708-388-0170

STUDIO $600-$699 CHICAGO1411 NORTH CENTRAL,

Studio, heated, laundry facilities, $600/month + 1.5 months security. Call 773-490-3347

Chicago, Hyde Park Arms Hotel, 5316 S. Harper, elevator bldg, phon e/cable, switchboard, fridge, priv bath, lndry, $165/wk, $350/bi-wk or $650/mo. Call 773-493-3500

STUDIO OTHER EAST CHICAGO - Harborside Apartments accepting applications for SECTION 8 1 & 2 Bedroom Apartments. Apply Wednesdays ONLY from 12pm to 4pm at 3610 Alder St. Applications are to be filled out on site. Adult applicants must provide a current picture ID and SS card.

1 BR UNDER $700 NEWLY REMODELED UNITS

61st & King Dr. 3 Bd/2Ba, Washer/ Dry Hook-up, Alarm, 61st & Racine - 1Bd/1Ba, 1 year Free Heat. Chicago Heights 4 Bed, 2 Full baths, SFH. Other locations available. Approved credit receive 1 month free rent. For More Info Call 773.412.1153

7022 S. SHORE DRIVE Impeccably Clean Highrise STUDIOS, 1 & 2 BEDROOMS Facing Lake & Park. Laundry & Security on Premises. Parking & Apts. Are Subject to Availability. TOWNHOUSE APARTMENTS 773-288-1030 MIDWAY AREA/63RD KEDZIE Deluxe Studio 1 & 2 BRs. All

GARY NSA ACCEPTING applications for SECTION 8 STUDIO AND ONE BDRM Apartments. Apply Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10am to 2pm ONLY at 1735 W 5th Ave. Applications are to be filled out on site. Adult applicants must provide a current picture ID and SS card.

LARGE SUNNY ROOM w/fridge & microwave. Near Oak Park, Green Line & Buses. 24 hr Desk, Parking Lot $101/week & Up. (773)378-8888 CROSSROADS HOTEL SRO SINGLE RMS Private bath, PHONE,

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

û NO SEC DEP û 6829 S. Perry.

1BR. $530/mo HEAT INCL 773-955-5105

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

NEWLY REMOD 1BR & Studios starting at $580. No sec dep, move in fee or app fee. Free heat/hot water. 1155 W. 83rd St., 773-619-0204 NO SECURITY DEPOSIT Fullteron & Kedzie, Large Studio near bus, train & shopping. Free heat, gas & lights. $650 & Up. Call 773-616-1253 or 847-401-4574

side. Newly rehab, 1 BR, large LR, new kit, carpeted. $600. no sec, heat included. 708-921-9506

Binny’s Beverage Depot is the Midwest’s largest upscale retailer of ﬁne wines, spirits, beers and cigars, and due to our continued growth, we are now looking for dedicated individuals to join our team at our location in the South Loop.

Newly updated, clean furnished rooms in Joliet, near buses & Metra, elevator. Utilities included, $91/wk. $395/mo. 815-722-1212

DELIVERY DRIVERS/STORE ASSOCIATES

966-5275 or Steve: 773-936-4749

CHATHAM - 7105 S. CHAMPLAIN, 1BR. $650. 2BR. $750. SEC 8 OK. Heat & appl. Call Office: 773AUSTIN - 1BR GARDEN APT, utilities not included. $650/mo + 1 month security deposit. Section 8 Welcome. Call 773-317-1837

FULLTIME

We are seeking energetic, customer-oriented individuals to perform a variety of store and delivery functions. Qualiﬁed persons must be able to lift 40-50 lbs. and available to work ﬂexible hours including evenings, weekends and holidays. Valid IL driver’s license with a clean driving record is essential.

NICE ROOM w/stove, fridge & bath Near Aldi, Walgreens, Beach, Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry. $133/wk & up. 773-275-4442 BIG ROOM with stove, fridge, bath & nice wood floors. Near Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry, Shopping. $121/wk + up. 773-561-4970

Please apply online at

www.binnys.com/careers

6930 S. SOUTH SHORE DRIVE Studios & 1BR, INCL. Heat, Elec, Cking gas & PARKING, $585-$925, Country Club Apts 773-752-2200

7425 S. COLES - 1 BR $620, 2

BR $735, Includes Free heat & appliances & cooking gas. (708) 424-4216 Kalabich Mgmt

NO SECURITY DEPOSIT CHICAGO HEIGHTS, Studio, 1, 2 & 3BRs, free heat, gas and parking, close to everything, section 8 welcome. $500 and up. 708-300-5020

73RD/JEFFERY & 75TH/ EBERHART & 70TH/MAPLEWOOD

NO SECURITY DEPOSIT Chicago, Peterson & Damon, Kedzie & Lawrence, Studio, 1, 2, 3 & 4BR Apts. $550 & Up. Section 8 Welcome. Call 847-401-4574

Cozy 1BR, freshly painted, 2nd floor, fridge & stove incl., 600 SF, close to CTA & I-90. $700/mo, heat incl. Call 773-619-9511

AVAILABLE NOW! 4br, 2ba.

1 & 2BR apts, c- fans, appls, hdwd flrs, heated, intercom, near trans, laundry rm. $700/mo & up. 773-881-3573

1 BR $800-$899 77TH AND PRAIRIE, 1BR Apt, ready now, heat incl, section 8 welcome. $800/mo. G.R.B Company. 773-955-0900

LARGE GARDEN APARTMENT. 6802 N. Wolcott. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. $850/month (heat included) Available 7/15. 773-761-4318.

1 BR $900-$1099

$965/ mo, newly renov kit & ba, hdwd floors, mega closet space & storage, quiet area. Harvey 708-715-4484

AVAILABLE NOW! Spacious Rooms for rent. $400/mo. Utilities and bed incl. Seniors Welcome. No Sec Dep. 312-973-2793 SUBURBS, RENT TO OW N! Buy with No closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708868-2422 or visit www.nhba.com CHICAGO, RENT TO OWN! Buy with no closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708868-2422 or visit www.nhba.com

NO SECURITY DEPOSIT NO MOVE IN FEE 1, 2, 3 BEDROOM APTS (773) 874-1122 ACACIA SRO HOTEL Men Preferred! Rooms for Rent. Weekly & Monthly Rates. 312-421-4597

2 BR UNDER $900 2BR $895 ALL UTILITIES INCLUDED

Newly decorated, carpeted, stove, refrigerator, dining room. Elevator & laundry facilities. FREE credit check, no application fee. 1-773-919-7102 or 312-802-730

VINTAGE CHARM IN Avondale. 3.5 rooms, 1 bedroom on 2nd. ﬂoor faces North. 1 mile to Blue Line L/Kennedy X-Way. Walk to Target & Jewel. Lessor is a licensed real estate broker. Brokers do not call. $900 heated. dianehansen3039@comcast.net LARGE 3 BEDROOM, one bath apartment, 4423 N. Paulina. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. $1790/ month. Heat included. Available 8/ 1. Parking space available for $75/ month. (773)761-4318.

CHICAGO 7600 S ESSEX PRE-SPRING SPECIAL - 2BR $599, 3BR $699, 4BR $799 w/apprvd credit, no sec dep. Sec 8 Ok! Also Homes for Rent avail. South Side office: 773-287-9999; West Side office: 773-287-4500 HARVEY - 15544 TURLINGTON, 2BR, 2nd flr,

central A/C, appls, hdwd floors, new windows/kitchen cabinets. $775/mo. 708-692-9177.

LARGE ONE BEDROOM Apartment near the lake. 1337 W. Estes. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. $975/ month. Heat included. Available 8/1. 773-761-4318.

CHATHAM: QUIET NOSMOKING building. 2BR, 1BA, 2nd

1 BR OTHER

DIVISION / SPRINGFIELD Area. Large 2BR Apt. $750/ month, tenant pays gas and electric. Call 312-401-3799

FELLOWSHIP MANOR Affordable Housing For The Elderly. Applications are being accepted at Fel-

lowship Manor, 5041 South Princeton Avenue, Chicago IL, 60609 for one bedroom apartments. Applicants must be at least 62 years of age, and must meet screening criteria. Contact the onsite management office by phone at (773) 9245980, or Via postal mail. This institution is an equal opportunity provider.

floor, appls incl, intercom, $850/mo, heat incl, 1/2 blk to CTA & Metra. 312925-1932

CHICAGO 94-3739 S. Bishop. 2BR, 5 Rms, 1st & 2nd flr, appls, parking, storage, near shops/ trans. $950 + sec. No pets. 708335-0786

CHICAGO NEWLY DECORATED 2 bedroom, 3rd flr, heat included, $875 + 1 mo sec. 9117 South after 6pm 708-957-7861

10215 S ST. Lawrence. 2BR, $850. APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. LTD. SUMMER IS HERE!!! MONST UNITS INCLUDE.. HEAT & HOT WATER STUDIOS FROM $495.00 1BDR FROM $545.00 2BDR FROM $745.00 3 BDR/2 FULL BATH FROM $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000** APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. LTD. SUMMER IS HERE!!! HEAT, HW & CG PLENTY OF PARKING 1BDR FROM $785.00 2BDR FROM $1025.00 3 BDR/2 FULL BATH FROM $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000***

WOODLAWN 2BD- $ 9 0 0 3 B D-$ 10 0 0 Move in by July 1.

ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL

Forest Park: 1BR new tile, energy efficient windows, lndry facilitities, a/c, incls heat - natural gas, $895/ mo Luis 708-366-5602 lv msg

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 ∫

Free TV & No Security Niki 773-8082043

EOE

1 BR $700-$799

CHICAGO: VICINITY OF 108th & Wabash, Lrg 3BR, newly rehabbed, 1st flr, quiet, clean 2-flat bldg, Sec 8 welcome. $950/$1100. 773-510-9290

CHICAGO NEAR 80TH & Ingle-

BINNY’S IS HIRING!

NO SEC DEP

7801 S. Bishop. 2BR. $610/mo. HEAT INCL 773-955-5106

PRE-SPRING SPECIAL - CHICAGO South Side Beautiful Studios, 1,2,3 & 4 BR’s, Sec 8 ok. Also Homes for rent available. Call Nicole 312-446-1753; W-side locations Tom 630-776-5556;

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

Retail

FINANCE EXPEDIA, INC. has openings for Financial Systems Managers (Job ID#: 728.2158) in Chicago, IL: Support the strategic financial planning process by ensuring solutions and services are linked to business strategy with measurable benefit. To apply, send resume to: Expedia Recruiting, 333 108th Avenue NE, Bellevue, WA 98004. Must reference Job ID#.

Ashland Hotel nice clean rms. 24 hr desk/maid/TV/laundry/air. Low rates daily/weekly/monthly. South Side. Call 773-376-5200

Heat incl. Ten pays utils. Carpet, stove & fridge & bldg security. Move in fee req’d. 773-329-3780

8943 S. ADA. Safe, secure 2-3BR, separate heating, school & metra 1 blk away, $875 & Up. Section 8 welcome. Call 708-465-6573 BLUE ISLAND, 2BR Apt, $845/month. Heat & hot water incl. Appls + security 708-205-1454 or 630-570-9572

WEST PULLMAN, Cute 2BR, 120th & S. Halsted, hardwood floors, individual heat, appliances. $630 / mo. Call Mr. Orange, 773-230-9195

2 BR $900-$1099 AUSTIN- Westside of Chicago, 2 BR/5 rm apt. $1,000 + 1 mo security. No Pets, heat incl, Hdwd flrs throughout, lg bathroom 773-261-4415 CHICAGO, 9305 S. Saginaw, Newly rehabbed, 2BR, carpet, stove & fridge, heat not incl, $950/ mo. Sect 8 welc. Mr. Johnson, 773294-0167 75 S.E. YATES -Renovated 2BR,

FR, 1.5BA, LR, DR, Eat in Kitc., 3 flat, tenant heated, $950/mo. No rent increases for 4 years. 773-375-8068

JUNE 28, 2018 | CHICAGO READER 35

CHATHAM AREA, Gorgeous, 2BR, 1st flr, updated kit & bath.

$900/mo + 1 mo sec. Clean & Quiet. No Pets. 773-930-6045

2 BR $1100-$1299

BEAUTIFUL REMOD 1, 2 & 3BR Apts, hdwd flrs, custom cabinets, granite cntrs, avail now. $1000$1200 /mo + sec. 773-905-8487. Section 8 Ok 7315 S. MICHIGAN Ave. Large, newly renov 2BR Apt, $1100/mo, heat incl. For all inquiries please call Mr. Hodges 773-524-8157 LYNWOOD, 2BR, 1BA, c-fans, heat, appls, A/C, pkng, cer flrs, new crpt, balc. $1200. Credit check, sec dep, no pets. 773-721-6086

SECTION 8 WELCOME. NO SECURITY DEPOSIT. 7335 S Morgan, 5BR, 2BA house, appls incl., $1400 /mo. 708-288-4510

SECTION 8 WELCOME. NO SECURITY DEPOSIT. 718 W 81st St, 5BR, 2BA house, appls incl., $1300/mo. 708-288-4510

2 BR $1500 AND

OVER

LARGE BRIGHT LINCOLN Pk

SECTION 8 WELCOME

13356 S Brandon 4/1 W/D incl $1300. 7134 S. Normal. 4/2. $1300 225 W. 108th Pl. 2/1 w/ht. $1000. appls inc. No Dep 312-683-5174 FREE HEAT CHICAGO 8017 S. WOOD. 3rd flr unit, Newly Decor 3BR, 1.5BA, crpt, appls incl. $1000/ mo + $300 sec dep. Sec 8 OK. Rick, 773-636-4822

LARGE 3 BDRM 1800 sq ft. apartment, 82 and Peoria. Updated unit with appliances. Quiet block, cheap heat. ONLY $1200. 312-221-2217! RIVERDALE: Must See 3BR apt, Newly decor. Carpet, nr metra, no pets. $900/mo +sec. Avail Now 708-829-1454 or 708-754-5599

4010 S KING DR . 1 & 3BR $800+. heat incl. 7906 S JUSTINE. Store Front & 2BR. $800 + utils. 312-576-8847 or 773-899-9529

80TH & GREEN. 3BR in a quiet

building, newer carpet, updated bathroom, heat incl. $1000/mo. Credit check req’d. 773-699-6775

2 BR OTHER

AVALON, 2 UNIT bldng, 2nd flr, 3BR, 1BA, hdwd flrs, carpet & ceramic tile. $1100/mo., heat incl. 1 mo sec. 773-386-6607, texts pref. SECTION 8 WELCOME. No Security Deposit. 7721 S Peoria, 3BR apt, appls incl. $1050/mo. 708-288-4510

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

FAR SOUTH CHICAGO 2br+ house for rent, 1 bath. Around 128th & Sanganom. Please call: 312-720-1264

UNIVERSITY PARK. 2BR Townhouse. Section 8 OK. Call 708-625-7355

3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200 CHICAGO HEIGHTS 3 BED-

ROOM 1 BATH, NEWLY REMODELED, SECTION 8 OK, APPLIANCES INCL, NO SECURITY DEPOSIT 7088224450.

BRONZEVILLE: SECTION 8 WELCOME. No Security Deposit. 4841 S Michigan. 4BR $1300 & 3BR $1100. Appls incl. 708-2884510

SOUTH HOLLAND Deluxe 3BR, 7 room house, large yard, near schools & shopping centers on Cottage Grove. $2000. 708-418-2384

3 BR OR MORE OTHER

PRE-SPRING SPECIAL CHICAGO Houses for rent. Section 8 Ok, 3, 4 & 5 BR houses avail. Call Nicole: 773-287-9999; West Side 773-287-4500 2861 E 93RD Street, 4BR, hrdwd flrs, laundry. 1st flr, Section 8 ok. 3 or 2 BR Voucher ok. Call 847-3125643.

SECTION 8 WELCOME. Near 3BR, newly rehab, no pets. Heat incl $1150/mo + sec dep. Tenant pays elec 53rd & Indiana, lrg 4BR, near schools w/ stove & fridge. Newly decorated. & cooking gas. 773-507-8475 $1200 + sec dep. 773-955-5024 XL 2ND FL., 78th & S. Sangamon St., 3BR, 1BA, $900/mo + sec. Heat incl. No pets, credit check 773-874-0524, 9am-10pm

kitchen, loc near 88th cottage grove, free heat, free laundry rm, close to metra,cta,and shopping, $1,275 month,vouchers welcome. 2bdrm, in 2ﬂat bldng, nr 83rd and brandon $800 monthly, move in fee for each $400. 773-653-8043. Mr. Brown.

LARGE 3 BEDROOM apartment near Wrigley Field. 3822 N. Fremont. Hardwood Floors. Cats OK. $2175/ month. Available 7/15. Single parking space available for $175/month. Tandem spot available for $250/month. (773) 761-4318

6812 S. ROCKWELL. 2nd flr,

2Bd, 1Bth, In Unit W/D, Roof Deck, Back Porch, HVAC, Fireplace, DW, Hardwood Floors, Available Immediately. $2000-$2900. Call: 773-4725944

2BDRM CONDO.VRY LRG eat in

3 BR OR MORE $1800-$2499

S. Shore - Near 80th & Paxton: deluxe 7 rms. 3BR, heat incl., newly decorated. hdwd flrs, $1000/mo + move-in fee. Call 773-551-3448.

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499 11339 S. CALUMET. 3BR, 2nd flr,

fully carpeted, brand new ceramic tile bath, new kit w/tile & counter, st ove/refrig incl., elec incl. $1100/mo. 773-519-7011

SAUK VILLAGE- 3-4BR, 2BA Ranch, lrg backyard, driveway, W/D hookup, appls incl. $1,250 +1 mo sec. Sect 8 pref, 708-307-5003

3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799 MARKHAM 4BR, finished

basement, 1.5BA, tenant pays utils, nice deck. $1500/mo + sec req’d. No Pets. Call 708-990-6237

36 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 28, 2018

CHICAGO S: Newly renovated, Large 3-4BR. In unit laundry, hardwood flrs, very clean, No Deposit! Available Now! 708-655-1397

GENERAL 70TH & ABERDEEN, 2BR, $695 /mo. 3BR, 3rd floor, $750/mo. 1BR, 87th & Ashland, $625/mo. 1 mo rent + 1 mo security. 773-651-8673 NEW KITCHENS & BATHS. 69th/Dante, 3BR. 77th/Lowe, 1 & 2BR. 71st/Bennett. 2BR. We have others! Sec 8 Welc. 708-503-1366

FOR SALE WISCONSIN FARMETTE: 45 Acres on river, great hunting/fishing, 3 hrs north of Chicago. 3BR ranch style modern home + farm buildings. 414-828-0730

roommates 1 WEEK FREE. 96th & Halsted & other locations. Large Rooms, shared kitchen & bath. $100/week and up. Call 773-673-2045

MARKETPLACE GOODS

CLASSICS WANTED ANY CLASSIC CARS IN ANY CONDITION. ’20S, ’30S, ’40S, ’50S, ’60S & ’70S. HOTRODS & EXOTICS! TOP DOLLAR PAID! COLLECTOR. CALL JAMES, 630-201-8122 NUTRIBULLET RX 1700 WATT , Must sell. New in box $155/obo. 312-200-6155

HEALTH & WELLNESS BODY MASSAGE 312-834-2806

Located Downtown Chicago In Call / Out Call Available

LOOKING FOR A Powerful Life-

Coach ? Susan Curry of InteriorWerx.us, in Lincoln Park brings a unique technique. As an intuitive empath Susan removes childhood traumas and sabotaging self-talk at the root. A Session Package with Susan is impactful, efficient and life changing. Get your head back in the Game! www.interiorwerx.us Direct number (312) 479-7893 FULL BODY MASSAGE. hotel, house calls welcome $90 special. Russian, Polish, Ukrainain girls. Northbrook and Schaumburg locations. 10% discount for new customers. Please call 773-407-7025

ADULT SERVICES MIDDLE AGED CAUCASIAN

attractive gentleman looking to meet middle aged and older Asian & Mexican women for serious relationship. I am in good shape and well versed in current events & good conversation. Enjoy the outdoors and dining out. Email: bal711@att.net

MUSIC & ARTS TRACY GUNS P R O D . - Wild

Smoken hot GNR Axl R & Aerosmith, thanks Universal, Warner, Columbia, Sony, BMG, Jive, Capitol, Epic, Atlantic, News Media & Newspapers. Buy Records-Shuts. Britney Beach. Love Britney S./RS Bunny 312-206-0867

MESSAGES

CHICAGO, SINGLE ROOM IN 4BR home, 6541 S. Hermitage, large living & dining room, full basement. Call 708-333-9490 CHICAGO 55TH & Halsted, male pref. Room for rent, share furnished apt, free utils, $ 440/mo. No security. 773-614-8252

SOUTHSIDE - 1514 W Garfield 55TH & Ashland, Clean Rooms, use of kitchen and bath. Available Now. Call 773-434-4046

STRAIGHT DOPE SLUG SIGNORINO

CALUMET CITY 2-3BR, 2 car gar, fully rehab w/ gorgeous finishes & hdwd flrs. Beautiful bkyd. Sec 8 ok. $900-$1150. 510-735-7171

ADOPTION A Successful Executive & Pre-K Teacher Yearn To Be A Doting Dad & Stay Home Mom. Expenses paid ***1-800-603-1667*** ***Erica and Chris***

By Cecil Adams Q : Is Prevagen cognitive

supplement as eﬀective as its TV ad states? —ROB SUTTERFIELD

A : Probably not, but you don’t have to take my word for it. Just ask the Federal Trade Commission, which together with the New York attorney general filed a lawsuit last year over those claims, calling them “false and unsubstantiated.” A little catch-up for those who’ve never heard of this stuff. Prevagen is a dietary supplement whose key ingredient is a protein extracted from jellyfish called apoaequorin. Wisconsin-based Quincy Bioscience, the manufacturer, claims apoaequorin aids cognitive function and memory by supplementing proteins lost in the brain during aging. The bone of contention here is its commercials’ reference to a “double-blind, placebo-controlled study” in which folks who took the pills daily were said to have demonstrated rapid improvement in recall ability—20 percent better in 90 days. Just one problem: the clinical trial cited apparently didn’t show anything of the sort. In the study, 218 subjects with “self-reported memory concerns” were given either apoaequorin or a placebo, then took a test gauging verbal recall. The results? Zip—no difference between the treatment group and the control group. The FTC suit alleges that Quincy’s researchers (on the company payroll, let’s note) basically sliced and diced these unpromising numbers via what’s called post hoc analysis: going back into the data and poking around in search of correlations you didn’t predict beforehand. Post hoc findings can be useful as a basis for further study, but seemingly Quincy just took three such analyses that tentatively pointed to some cognitive improvement (ignoring 27 others that didn’t) and touted those results on TV. On top of that, the complaint alleges, Quincy hasn’t proven satisfactorily that apoaequorin ingested orally can cross the bloodbrain barrier: instead all evidence points to it breaking down in the digestive process rather than getting to the brain. So who knows if Prevagen works? Welcome, Rob, to the burgeoning field of nootropics (from Greek words for “mind” and “bending”), awash with various arcane-sound-

ing products all claiming to improve mental function. Why so much interest now? Well, baby boomers are getting to the age where at best they keep misplacing their keys; at worst, they’re developing conditions like Alzheimer’s. Another major driver here is Silicon Valley, which is on fire with the idea that the brain can be “hacked” into greater productivity. A 2017 Washington Post article profiled one Bay Area entrepreneur who was taking 25 pills a day to give him “the cognitive edge he needs” to do business. It’s tough to make any broad claims for the effectiveness of this stuff, simply because there’s so much of it out there, but beyond the merits of any one product lurks a bigger issue: because these are marketed as supplements, they’re unregulated by the Food and Drug Administration. The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, or DSHEA, places such products outside the FDA’s ambit—essentially they’re considered food, not medicine. With the uptick in allegedly brain-boosting supplements on the market have come concerns, as with Prevagen, of unscrupulous marketers selling useless or even harmful products to credulous consumers and facing few consequences. Will they continue to get away with it? No reason to think not. Quincy Bioscience’s strategy on the FTC suit, filed in January 2017, seemed to be to wait it out; the company characterized the plaintiff as an overreaching lame-duck regulatory body that’d be reined in by the Trump administration. The suit was thrown out last September and is now in the appeals process, but the company’s sanguinity reflected that of the supplements industry at large, which was described by one trade website as feeling “bullish” about its prospects under the current anti-regulatory regime. In some quarters at least, it’s evidently reassuring to know there’s a snake-oil salesman in the White House. v Send questions to Cecil via straightdope.com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 30 N. Racine, suite 300, Chicago 60607.

SAVAGE LOVE

HOT GIRL

By Dan Savage

BODY RUBS

What to do when you’re stuck in a platonic marriage

Dan advises an unhappy wife—and the rest of us. Plus: a gay guy explains why he prefers straight dick

Q : When I started dating

my husband, he told me he had a low libido. I said I could deal with that, and we started having sex, but it was infrequent and impersonal, though there was some slow improvement over the three years we dated. Then we got married, and suddenly he had no libido at all. Now, after four years of marriage, the relationship has become strictly platonic. He blames health problems and has sought treatment, but I can’t even start a conversation about intimacy without him getting irritated. After we married, he also decided he no longer wanted children, and I eventually convinced myself it was probably for the best, given his health. We built our dream home, adopted a pet, and built an outwardly successful life together. I was, if not happy, at least complacent. Until I ran into an ex-boyfriend at a party. We ended up talking about how important it is to him to have a biological child and got physically close, and that got me thinking about how much I missed sex with him. Ever since, I’ve been thinking about him. I think he was hinting that he wants me back, and right now that sounds like the answer to all my problems. But if not, I don’t want to leave my hubby and lose the decent life we’ve built together. Plus, my leaving would hurt my husband’s feelings, his health, and his finances. I also worry that people would blame me. Can I follow up and clarify with my ex before I break it off with my husband, or is that too much like cheating? Is it selfish of me to even consider leaving at this point? I’m a 30-yearold woman, so I don’t have a lot of time left to decide about children.

—INDECISIVELY MARRIED DAME ON NEARING EXIT

A : Here’s one thing I’ve never

seen in my inbox: a letter from someone explaining how sex with his/her/their partner was at ﬁrst infrequent, impersonal, etc, but got a lot better after the wedding. The lesson, dear readers? If sex is important to you, hold out for someone with whom you click sexually before committing to marriage. Back to you, IMDONE: You’re free to go. Even if the sex was good and your husband wanted 30 kids, you’d still be free to go. But you should explore your options before making up your mind. So go ahead and call your ex and ask him if he’d like to get coffee with you. A husband who won’t even discuss intimacy with you can’t ask you to refrain from contemplating or even discussing intimacy with someone else. But whether you have that convo or not, you need to ask yourself if you want to stay in this marriage. You’re only 30 and you wanted and still want kids. That said, IMDONE, you frame your choice as the husband or the ex, but there is another option: it’s possible you could have both. Your husband and ex would have to agree to an open relationship, but it could be worth a try. Good luck.

Q : You ran a letter about

a gay man (“Sam”) who has been sucking off his straight friend. Sam said he’d never done this before and isn’t turned on by the idea of “servicing straight guys.” I’m a gay man who enjoys sucking off straight guys, and I wanted to share my perspective. I’m not trying to “convert” them. I simply find that straight guys have

less emotional baggage than most gay guys. I’m very skilled, and it’s a thrill for me to give a guy a lot of pleasure. I don’t want a relationship; I don’t want to have to think about two people and have to adjust my plans—it’s hard enough to plan for just me. I prefer the friendship and the occasional dick sucking. These guys can always trust me to be straightforward with them; I like pleasing them and having their trust. And for the big question everybody asks: “Do you get lonely?” No, I don’t. I have all kinds of friends and lots of interests and hobbies. And from time to time, I get to suck a guy’s dick. —WHATEVER ACRONYM

WORKS

A : Like most gay guys, WAW, you’ve got some baggage there of your own. You don’t want a relationship— and, hey, that’s fine! Not everyone wants to pair or triple or quad off, and not everyone has to want that. But you’re seeking out straight guys not because they have less baggage on average than gay guys (they don’t), but because straight guys won’t be interested in you romantically, and consequently won’t demand a commitment from you or ask you to prioritize their needs and feelings the way a boyfriend would. So it’s not that you and all the straight guys you’re sucking off are baggage free, WAW, it’s that your baggage fits so neatly inside theirs that you can momentarily forget you’ve got any at all. v Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at savagelovecast. com. savagelovecast.com. m @fakedansavage

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Never miss a show again.

EARLY WARNINGS

chicagoreader.com/early

JUNE 28, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 37

Tove Styrke é EMMA SVENSSON

NEW

Ava Luna 9/16, 9 PM, Hideout, on sale Fri 6/29, noon Eric Bachmann 10/13, 9 PM, Hideout, on sale Fri 6/29, 9 AM Trace Bundy & Sungha Jung 10/7, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 6/28, noon b Pedro Capo 8/30, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 6/28, noon b Exploded View 11/1, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Gang Gang Dance 9/10, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Glorietta 10/13, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Great Lake Swimmers 10/20, 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ Grouper 9/23, 7 PM, Bohemian National Cemetery, on sale Fri 6/29, 10 AM b Guerilla Toss 9/22, 9 PM, Hideout, on sale Fri 6/29, 10 AM Giovanni Guidi & Gianluca Petrella 9/16, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Mark Guiliana Space Heroes 11/15, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Sean Hayes 9/30, 7 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 6/29, 10 AM b Jay Rock, Reason 9/14, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, on sale Fri 6/29, 10 AM, 18+ Ruston Kelly 11/3, 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ Kota the Friend 8/23, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 18+ Masego 10/25, 7 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 6/29, 10 AM b Max, Bryce Vine 10/31, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 6/29, 10 AM b John Mark McMillan 9/7, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge b

Melanie 10/13, 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Menzingers, Tiny Moving Parts 11/14, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall, on sale Fri 6/29, 10 AM, 17+ Moe. 10/18-20, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 6/29, 10 AM, 17+ Mutual Beneﬁt 12/1, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 6/29, 10 AM Ott 10/25, 10 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 6/29, 10 AM, 18+ A Place to Bury Strangers 10/19, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 6/29, 10 AM Prefuse 73 8/24, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Rad Trads 9/23, 7 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 6/29, 10 AM b Emma Ruth Rundle, Jaye Jayle 9/25, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Sango, Naji, Sahar Habibi 10/25, 9 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Darrell Scott 9/6, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 6/28, noon b Andy Shauf 11/30, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Shiner 9/23, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Jill Sobule 9/20, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 6/29, 10 AM b Special Olympics 50th Anniversary Celebration Concert with Chance the Rapper, Usher, Francis & the Lights, Smokey Robinson, and more 7/21, 5:30 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Lisa Stansﬁeld 10/21, 7:30 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri 6/29, 10 AM, 18+ Allen Stone, Nick Waterhouse 12/1, 8 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri 6/29, 10 AM, 18+

38 CHICAGO READER - JUNE 28, 2018

Tove Styrke 10/9, 7 PM, Chop Shop, on sale Fri 6/29, 10 AM b Tigers Jaw, Sidekicks 10/12, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge b Trouble in Paradise with Omni, Weather Station, Nap Eyes, and more 9/13-15, 8 PM, Empty Bottle Tune-Yards, U.S. Girls 10/27, 7:30 PM, Park West, on sale Thu 6/28, 10 AM b Wild Rivers 10/12, 7 PM, Martyrs’ Van William 9/22, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Yaeji 10/27, 11 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 6/29, 10 AM, 17+ Yawpers 9/15, 9 PM, Hideout, on sale Fri 6/29, 10 AM Zhu 10/5, 9 PM, Aragon Ballroom, on sale Fri 6/29, 10 AM, 17+

UPDATED Apocalypse Hoboken 7/13-15, 7:30 PM, Chop Shop, third show added, 18+ Batushka 8/16-18, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 8/16 sold out, second show added, 17+

UPCOMING Anne-Marie 9/24, 7 PM, Lincoln Hall b Arizona, Aces 8/3, 11 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Ash 9/19, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Nicole Atkins 8/10, 7 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Babys 9/27, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Madison Beer, Chase Atlantic 8/1, 6:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club b Belly 10/6, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Cory Branan 8/26, 8 PM, Schubas

b Car Seat Headrest, Naked Giants 9/7, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Cigarettes After Sex 8/4, 11 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Dead Milkmen 7/12, 8 PM, House of Vans Dead South 11/26, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Deafheaven, Mono 7/30, 7 PM, Metro, 18+ Diplomats 7/28, 9 PM, Portage Theater Roky Erickson 11/9, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall Alejandro Escovedo & Joe Ely 8/24, 7 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Greg Fox 7/28, 9 PM, Hideout Foxing 9/30, 7 PM, Lincoln Hall b A Giant Dog 8/13, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Godflesh, Harm’s Way 8/24, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Guided by Voices 8/26, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Highly Suspect, Cleopatrick 8/2, 11 PM, the Vic, 18+ Immersion 7/6, 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ Jungle, Superorganism 8/2, 11 PM, Park West, 18+ King Buffalo 8/15, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Kenny Lattimore 7/20, 7 and 10 PM, City Winery b Lvl Up 8/31, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Jeff Lynne’s ELO 8/15, 8 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont The Make-Up 7/6, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Melvins 7/31, 7:30 PM, Park West b The Men 8/25, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Kevin Morby, Anna Burch 7/8, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Mt. Joy 9/6, 8 PM, Thalia Hall b Murder by Death 10/6, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Nicki Minaj, Future 9/28, 7:30 PM, United Center Nothing, Culture Abuse 9/12, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Oh Sees, Timmy’s Organism 10/12, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Oneida, Cave 7/28, 10 PM, Empty Bottle Poolside, Neil Frances 9/6, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 18+ Porches, Sidney Gish 7/27, 10 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Post Animal 8/4, 10 PM, Empty Bottle Quintron & Miss Pussycast 9/12, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Racquet Club 7/9, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen Gruff Rhys 10/14, 8 PM, Chop Shop, 18+ Rico Nasty 8/9, 7 PM, Lincoln Hall b Brandon Rogers 8/25, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall b Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever 9/8, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+

ALL AGES

WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK

EARLY WARNINGS

CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME

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Ty Segall, William Tyler 11/2, 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall b Sleep 8/1, 7 PM, Riviera Theatre b Sleigh Bells 8/17, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Sparta 8/10, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Tacocat 8/10, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Unsane, Child Bite 7/14, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Wax Idols, Shadow Age 9/9, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Yob, Bell Witch 7/8-9, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+

SOLD OUT Virgil Abloh 8/2, 10 PM, Smart Bar Against Me! 7/28, 10 PM, Subterranean Animal Collective, Lonnie Holley 7/27, 7:30 PM, the Vic b Bonnie “Prince” Billy 10/7, 7:30 PM, Fullerton Hall, Art Institute of Chicago Chvrches, Sasha Sloan 8/1, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Clairo 7/17, 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall b Chelsea Cutler 10/2, 8 PM, Chop Shop, 17+ Dinosaur Jr. 7/19, 7:30 PM, Temperance Beer Company, Evanston Sylvan Esso 7/23-24, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Franz Ferdinand 8/1, 9 PM, Park West, 18+ Gaslight Anthem 8/11, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Hozier 9/21, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre b Illenium 8/5, 10 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Jim James, Alynda Segarra 11/9, 7:30 PM, the Vic b Carly Rae Jepsen, Morgxn 8/3, 11 PM, Park West, 18+ Dermot Kennedy 8/2, 11 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Lany, Harry Hudson 8/1, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge b Dua Lipa, Buddy 8/3, 11 PM, the Vic, 18+ Lizzo, Davie 8/4, 11 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Radiohead 7/6-7, 7:30 PM, United Center Tenacious D 11/13-14, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ The The 9/22, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Greta Van Fleet, Dorothy 8/4, 11 PM, the Vic, 18+ Walk the Moon 8/4, 10 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ v

GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene GOSSIP WOLF IS convinced that psychedelic Chicago six-piece Diagonal would’ve been stars in the UK if they’d been around in the mid-90s. Fans of the Verve and Spiritualized might want to dig through their back issues of NME and Melody Maker to make sure these folks aren’t time travelers! Their debut album, Tomorrow, combines hazy waterfalls of shoegaze guitar, serious pop hooks, and “guy howling in an empty cave” vocals. It drops Monday, July 2, on local label Midwest Action, and that night Diagonal play a free show at the Empty Bottle with Plastic Crimewave Syndicate (led by Reader regular Steve Krakow), Texas psych-rockers Lake of Fire, and local stoner-doom unit Black Road. Last month Save Money rapper Sterling Hayes dropped his SideFX mixtape, where his raw performances build on the themes and sound of his dark, turbulent 2016 full-length, Antidepressant. For this one Sterling and longtime producer Spanish Diego called in a team of Chicago rappers, producers, and singers, including Smoko Ono, Kami, Via Rosa, Malcolm London, the Mind, Papi Beatz, and Teddy Jackson—Chance the Rapper even appears on “Drowsiness,” bringing some uplift to a track about struggling with depression. On Friday, June 29, Sterling throws a free (albeit belated) release party at the Virgin Hotel on Wabash, where he’ll be joined by the Mind, Elz the DJ, DJ King Marie, Qari, and DJ Such n Such. Chicago’s Bad Sons play fast, melodic street rock that’s as classic as a biker jacket bristling with safety pins. Their new seven-inch EP, Cry Tough, is the musical equivalent of a hard-luck punk spiking up his Mohawk and carving his exsweetheart’s name into his arm with a broken beer bottle—not that Gossip Wolf would know what that’s like! You can buy a copy when they play East Room on Sunday, July 1, with New York punk troublemakers Nancy and Austin goon squad Trouble Boys. They’re surprisingly nice! —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

SAM HUNT

DIERKS BENTLEY

TOBY KEITH

LUKE BRYAN

GET YOUR TICKETS NOW AT COUNTRYTHUNDER.COM JUNE 28, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 39