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 LY 1 2 , 2 0 1 8
Growing communities— and growing older—on the south side 15
Sy Hersh recalls his rough-and-tumble Chicago past 4
TOXIC Surfers know they’re risking their health catching waves in the industrial waters of northwest Indiana—but they love it too much to stop By DAVID NORTH PHOTOS BY RICHARD ANDERSON 9
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FEATURES
IN THIS ISSUE
CITY LIFE
4 City Life Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh on his rough-andtumble Chicago past: “At some point I realized I was in a tyranny.” 6 Housing Pullman is getting its first residential development in nearly 50 years.
ARTS & CULTURE
Bad-tasting waves
Surfers acknowledge being in polluted Lake Michigan water is risky—but say it’s dangerous to drink it too. BY DAVID NORTH 9
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19 Theater Fucking Men struggles with onstage intimacy realness. 20 Theater Waitress, Peter Pan, and six more new stage shows, reviewed by our critics 22 Small Screen The video series 365 Ways to Kill an American offers a new perspective on police brutality. 23 Movies Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace approaches homelessness on the most intimate terms. 25 Movies The Cakemaker and more new films, reviewed by our critics
MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE
27 In Rotation Stephanie Marlow of Indie Publicity on a brutal band with a soft spot for pitties, and other current obsessions 28 Shows of note George Clinton Parliament Funkadelic, Bongripper, Bombino, and more of the week’s best
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Growing communities while growing older
ON THE COVER: PHOTO BY RICHARD ANDERSON. FOR MORE OF RICHARD’S WORK, GO TO RICHARD-ANDERSON.ORG.
THIS WEEK
From Auburn Gresham to Hyde Park, south-side seniors and their allies are doing whatever it takes to combat social isolation and other issues of aging. TEXT AND PHOTOS BY PAT NABONG 15
37 Savage Love ‘How do I come out as bisexual without misleading people?’ 38 Early Warnings Giorgio Moroder, Lily Allen, Mod Sun, and other shows to look for in the weeks to come 38 Gossip Wolf Transcontinental indie rockers Man’s Body celebrate their debut album in Chicago, and more music news.
JULY 12, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 3
CITY LIFE Seymour Hersh é HOWARD D. SIMMONS
POLITICS
Sy Hersh’s Chicago
“At some point I realized I was in a tyranny.” By RYAN SMITH
I
f Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour “Sy” Hersh is the closest thing that print journalism has to a superhero, then his origin story can be found in the first few pages of his new memoir, Reporter. In 1959—a full decade before he broke the story of the cover-up of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam—the 22-year-old south-side native was a shoe-leather journalist pounding the Chicago pavement for the famed City News Bureau. Hersh describes one night on the job when he sped to the scene of a fire not far from his father’s cleaning store on the southwest side. There he discovered that an entire family, five people in all, lay dead among the burning embers of the shabby wood-frame house—possibly due to a murder-suicide. What a story, Hersh thought. But before he could file it, an editor butted in to ask if the victims were “of the Negro persuasion.” When Hersh replied that the deceased family was black, his boss said to “cheap it out,” which meant relegating the story to a single line in the next day’s newspaper: “Five Negroes Died in a Fire on the Southwest Side.” “That was shocking to me,” Hersh writes. During another late shift, he overheard two cops discussing a robbery suspect who’d just been shot and killed, reportedly while trying to avoid arrest. One police officer, Hersh recalls, said something like, “So the guy tried to run on you?” The second cop replied, “Naw, I told the [N-word] to beat it and then I plugged him.” Hersh later obtained a coroner’s report and found that the suspect had been shot in the back, but when he wanted to write up what looked like a murder committed by Chicago police, his editor again told him no, there was no story. Hersh didn’t push the issue any further, and the matter died there. It left him feeling “full of despair at my weakness and the weak-
4 CHICAGO READER - JULY 12, 2018
ness of a profession that dealt so easily with compromise and self-censorship,” he writes. Hersh learned a hard lesson by the end of his seven-month stint in his first journalism job: black lives on the south side didn’t seem to matter as much as white lives on the north side. More broadly, he learned that those in power regularly prey on the powerless, and that the profession he was “smitten” with— journalism—often let them get away with it. “At some point I realized that I was in a tyranny,” Hersh says. Hersh, now 81, has spent much of the last six decades of his career as America’s preeminent investigative journalist, doggedly exposing abuses of all kinds of power. He’s shined a much-needed light on the excesses of the U.S. military, from My Lai to the torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib in 2003; the deep state and intelligence community (for example, the CIA’s illegal surveillance of citizens); high-ranking government officials (he was especially a thorn in the side of Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Dick Cheney); and massive corporations (e.g., his 2001 New Yorker story on Mobil Oil’s role in the corrupt world of oil acquisitions). It hasn’t always been easy. Hersh’s combative style and take-it-or-leave-it philosophy with editors and others have meant a lot of burned
bridges, and they’re why he’s jumped between so many publications over his long career. The Reader spoke with Hersh about his early life and career in Chicago and how it shaped him.
RYAN SMITH : Where did you grow up
in Chicago?
SEYMOUR HERSH : I grew up on 47th Street. During World War II and up until the end of the war there was a de facto line of segregation. It was called Cottage Grove Avenue, and if you were at 700 Cottage Grove Avenue, it was an all-black neighborhood. And at 800, it was all white. It was a very segregated world.
Did you witness a lot of racism there? In a funny way, growing up and working and living in a black neighborhood, I was insulated, so I just don’t remember thinking about color that much. In a lot of ways—at least in my area—we were much less sensitive to color. I understood that I was white and (many of my neighbors) were black, but I didn’t realize there was some sort of institutionalized racism. But then, as you read, I was working at City News and heard a cop talk about the casual murder of, in his words, a [N-word]. I mean, that was all shocking to me.
It seems like you quickly grew to be very sensitive to institutionalized racism. You ended up being a civil rights reporter for the Associated Press early in your career. Only because I grew up without it. My father’s business was within the black community, and my mother was just as friendly with the black women working for him as she was with her own friends. I did learn on the job about racism, and it made me sensitive to it and interested in people like Martin Luther King and [gospel singer and civil rights activist] Mahalia Jackson. Three years after my City News job, I got back to Chicago working for the Associated Press. It took me a while to make it known that I was pretty good. But once I made it known, the editors there were wonderful and didn’t want it to be a desk job. They just said come in with a story every day, five days a week. That was the deal. And I just saw myself gravitating to writing a lot about racism. That’s why I wrote about Mahalia Jackson. I knew how powerful she was in the black community, and in Europe she couldn’t go anywhere without [selling shows] out, but then I realized she wasn’t all-powerful in the rest of America. And Martin Luther King . . . I mean, how hard was it for him to seduce me? He’d just give me a look and I was his guy. He could read reporters and could tell that I was eager to fall in love. I remember a story I did for the AP. I went to an apartment building and the [landlords] offered me 20 apartments, but then I went with some African-American friends and they said, “We’re full.” There wasn’t anything astonishing about it, it’s just the way it was. And Martin Luther King’s problems in Chicago were so acute. The racism in southwest Chicago—it was a lot of fear: “The blacks are coming not only to take our houses and marry our daughters but to take our jobs.” Is that why it seems like so much of your journalism [aims] to get Americans to care more about the lives of people of different countries—especially countries with a lot of black and brown people? Don’t make me say that’s all because of what I learned working in Chicago in the black neighborhoods. It’s not. No, that’s just me. Are you kidding? Look, you’re talking to
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CITY LIFE somebody whose parents are immigrants off a boat. I don’t think either one got through high school—we never talked about it. My father came from a town that was completely destroyed by the Nazis, and I only learned about that 20 or 30 years after he died. So I’m not going to be somebody that says we’ve got to keep people from coming to America. We have to have our doors open. We have to respect people everywhere—human beings are human beings. I love the story you tell in the book about how you got your first journalism job because you lost a poker game. Losing a poker game was something I did, particularly in the army. But I kept on playing it anyway. So the deal was I applied to City News, but I didn’t pay attention and went back to selling beer at Walgreens. I moved away from the apartment with the phone number I gave City News, so they had no way of reaching me. But it just so happened that I was back in that place one night because a bunch of graduate students [were there and] had what they call the table stakes no-limit poker game. I stuck around for a bit, but I lost early—the card games usually went all night. But instead of going back to my apartment, I crashed on the couch. And in the morning, the phone rang at nine o’clock and I happened to be up and answered. And they said “Hersh?” I was surprised, but said, “Yeah.” He goes, “This is Ryberg, City News—ready to start?” So that’s how I got my job. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t gotten that call. It’s funny, I read the papers a little bit, but I had no interest in journalism at all. I just knew I could write. Yours is an increasingly rare story these days. A working-class kid with no journalism degree getting a job in the field. This has become a white-collar profession. Yes. Are you kidding? Journalism is totally this thing, a pipeline from the Harvard Crimson and Yale Daily News to the New York Times. You learned the truth about institutional racism while a reporter in Chicago. What else did you discover? I didn’t know anything about real life back then. And then to get a job at a newspaper and get on the street and understand that you don’t report a cop for killing somebody and you don’t even begin to mess around with the Mafia because the cops sure didn’t as long as they didn’t cross the line. I mean, what the hell?
I got friendly with [former Chicago reporter and press secretary to Richard J. Daley] Bob Billings, who was a tough-talking guy who gave me all kinds of grief. But we had something in common: golf. This is Chicago in 1960, because he was dating the wife of a police captain. One day we drive 50 miles out of the city to play golf in a suburb and we took his car, and I remember he opened up his trunk and he took out a pole that he extended to be about eight feet and it had a mirror on it. He was clearly looking for a bomb that would have been left by the police captain. Are you kidding me? I was knocked out by that. I didn’t know anything about that stuff. But I learned. It was tough then. There was one police district in Lawndale in 1960 in which they indicted half the police district for doing most of the crimes they were allegedly solving. It was a funny world. Mort Sahl used to call the Chicago drive “the last outpost of collective bargaining.” You’d learned to drive with a $10 bill below your driver’s license so when you got stopped for speeding, you just gave the cop the license and money and he would say, “OK son, better be careful,” and give you back your license. I remember one shock. There was an AP story I wrote about police corruption, and one of the Chicago papers ran a story I wrote, a Sunday feature story about police corruption, on page one. Obviously, the newspaper had people on staff that knew a lot more about corruption than I did, but they didn’t want to write it themselves because the cops were crooked and there would be payback. So they just laid it off on the wire service story. It’s all different now. Thank god for iPhones and video cameras. If [I’d] had an iPhone back then, I’d be in business. But come on. There are more killings, and nobody’s figured out how to resolve the problem. If you were a reporter working in Chicago in 2018, what do you think you’d focus on? Getting out of there. What can I tell you? Chicago is one of those cities that sort of—it does look its racism a little bit more in the eye than most cities. Right. They’re a little more open about it, and the city’s keeps moving on and it works a little bit like Beirut. I go to Beirut and there’s incredible strife and this political unrest but the first thing you want to know is, where’s the new French restaurant? So the city is very vital. v @RyanSmithWriter, rsmith@chicagoreader.com
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CITY LIFE A rendering of the Pullman Artspace Lofts é ARTSPACE
HOUSING
Artists’ lofts come to Pullman
The historic neighborhood is getting its first residential development in nearly 50 years, a home-grown arts enclave with affordable housing units. BY SANDRA GUY
T
he historic Pullman neighborhood is getting 38 units of affordable housing inside a new $18 million artists’ enclave—some 124 years after Pullman railroad car workers went on strike over the company’s refusal to lower their rents after cutting their pay. The Pullman Artspace Lofts, a new apartment building to be built between two long-abandoned Pullman workers’ housing units, sits on three-quarters of an acre on Langley Avenue, just south of 111th Street. The land where the three-story, 32,000-squarefoot complex will be situated has been vacant for 88 years, and the construction itself marks the first new residential development built in Pullman in nearly half a century. It’s unique because it will house 2,000 square feet of community space intended to be used as an art gallery, meeting place, classrooms, and com-
6 CHICAGO READER - JULY 12, 2018
munity room. The project is expected to open in early fall 2019. Artspace Lofts is a home-grown project in a neighborhood that has more than its share of artists, including painters, musicians, filmmakers, sculptors, and ceramicists, said architect Ann Alspaugh, a board member and past president of Pullman Arts, a neighborhood nonprofit whose volunteers have worked on the development for the past eight years. “It’s [the result of] a lot of hard work by a lot of people,” she said, noting that the project required meeting and even exceeding local and state landmark and historic district requirements, obtaining unconventional funding, and conducting detailed feasibility studies. Alspaugh volunteers as a community member; the project architect is the Chicago firm of Stantec (formerly VOA). Alspaugh said she’s satisfied that the lofts fit in with the surround-
ing historic architecture. The developers modified the plans after residents expressed concerns and after reviews by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks and the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. “The first thing we want to do is to start an annual art fair,” said Alspaugh, who moved to Pullman from Rogers Park in July 2010 with her husband, musician Q Kiser. The couple bought a three-bedroom house with a front and back yard, a basement, and a garage for what a condo in Rogers Park would have cost. “It also gives me a door into living amid historic architecture and helping restore historic architecture,” she said. Construction of Artspace Lofts is expected to start in September, with tenant applications expected to start being processed next summer. The rents are set so that they’re affordable to families at or below 30, 50, and 60 percent of the area median income, which is $38,370 in Pullman, compared with the citywide median of $53,006. That means a studio apartment would rent for $360 a month for a single person who lives at or below 30 percent of the Pullman average, while a two-bedroom unit would rent for $910 a month for a family at 60 percent of the median income. The complex will house three studio apartments along with 16 one-bedroom and 19 two-bedroom units, and the development will have 25 bicycle spaces and a parking lot for 17 cars. (Street parking is expected to accommodate another 20 cars.) The developers and a board made up of neighborhood artists will review potential tenants’ applications with an eye toward accepting people involved in creative or artistic work who want to be a part of a community devoted to that. “It’s not about the quality or kind of [art] work a person is doing; it’s about seeing a demonstrated commitment to a creative pursuit and wanting to be a part of a community that supports” that goal, says Andrew Michaelson, director of property development for Artspace, a Minneapolis nonprofit that develops places where artists can live and work. Pullman Arts, the neighborhood nonprofit, will curate and operate the gallery space for artists’ showings, performances, and meetups. The Lofts’ hallways and corridors are also intended to be space where residents can create murals and other works, Michaelson said. The project was not without opposition. Some residents have objected to the
design plans in a neighborhood with strict landmark guidelines, but officials said the project is moving forward. The construction is expected to employ 120 people, and the developers have hired a consultant to ensure that women, local businesses, and people of color are hired to help with the work, said Ciere Boatright, director of real estate development and inclusion at the Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives, part of the development team for the Lofts project. The lofts are expected to generate $13 million in low-income tax credits and another $1.2 million in historic tax credits. Alderman Anthony Beale (Ninth Ward) says they’re part of a “renaissance” in the Pullman neighborhood that’s seen $300 million in investments and the creation of 1,300 jobs in the past decade. The neighborhood still suffers from the blight of foreclosures—many elderly residents lost their homes during the housing crisis—but more properties are being rehabbed, and some houses are selling for more than $280,000. “The opportunities are growing every day,” he says. “I just need more restaurants and hotel chains.” While Pullman’s population declined by 16 percent between two five-year periods (from 2006-2010 to 2011-2015), the number of people living in poverty dropped by nearly 16 percent; six-figure households grew by 58 percent, and the number of college grads jumped by 10 percent, according to the Metropolitan Planning Council’s analysis of U.S. Census data. The most dramatic increases in college graduates and six-figure households took place in an area bordered by the Bishop Ford Freeway to the east, 103rd Street to the north, Cottage Grove Avenue to the west, and 111th Street to the south. The area includes the 180acre Pullman Park, a $125 million mixed-use site that has created 800 new jobs. Pullman Park includes a Walmart, a Method soap factory, a new Whole Foods distribution center, a second greenhouse for hydroponic greens grower Gotham Greens, and a Potbelly that anchors the Gateway Retail Center. That’s in addition to the historic Landmark Inn and Greenstone Church, both renovated, and the iconic Clock Tower and Administration Building, which has been converted into the visitor center for the Pullman National Monument, established by President Obama in 2015. “Everyone is getting lifted up by the positive things that are coming,” Alspaugh said. v
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Some Illinois politicians want to legalize marijuana
Illinois does not have the mental health capabilities to handle these social costs. Please consider the following issues that often result from marijuana: CHRONIC PSYCHOSIS: Daily use of 12-18% THC marijuana use raises the risk 5 !mes: DiFor# M, et al. Propor#on of pa#ents in South London with first-episode psychosis a!ributable to use of high potency cannabis: a case-control study/ Lancet Psychiatry. 2015: 2(3): 233-8
SCHIZOPHRENIA: In two large, well-controlled studies of drug-induced psychosis, marijuana was the drug most likely to convert to a permanent psycho!c disorder, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder, nearly 1/2 half the !me: Niemi-Pyn!ari JA, et al. (2013). Substance-induced psychoses conver#ng into schizophrenia: a register-based study of 18,478 Finnish inpa#ent cases. J Clin Psychiatry, 74(1), e94-9. Starzer, MSK, Nordento" M, Hjorthoj C (2018) Rates and predictors of Conversion to Schizophrenia or Bipolar Disorder Following Substance-Induced Psychosis. Am j Psychiatry, 175(4), 343-350. BIPOLAR DISORDER: Marijuana use raises the risk 2.6 !mes. Cougle JR et al. (2015). Quality of life and risk of psychiatric disorders among regular users of alcohol, nico#ne and cannabis: An analysis of the Na#onal Epidemiological Survey on Tobacco and Related Condi#ons (NESARC). J Psychiatry Res, 66-67, 135-141 DEPRESSION and ANXIETY: Marijuana use raises the risk 1.8 !mes: Fairman, B.J. & Anthon, J.C. (2012) Are early-onset cannabis smokers at an increased risk of depression spells? Journal of Affec#ve Disorders, 138(1-2), 54-62. SUICIDE: Marijuana use raises the risk by 7 !mes. Silins E. et al. Young adult sequelae of adolescent cannabis use: an integra#ve analysis. Lancet Psychiatry 2014: 1(4): 245-318. Even a!er accoun"ng for prior history of depression: Clarke MC, et. al. The impact of adolescent cannabis use, mood disorder and lack of educa#on on a!empted suicide in young adulthood. World Psychiatry. 2014: 13(3): 322-3.
The cannabis industry, like any addiction-for-profit industry, sells 80% of product to the 20% who become daily users. It will need to recruit young users and produce dangerously potent products to grow the industry. 8 CHICAGO READER - JULY 12, 2018
IQ SLIPS: If marijuana is used persistently while brain is developing: Meier MH, et al. Persistent cannabis users show neuropsychological decline from childhood to midlife. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2012:109(40): E2657-E2664
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TOXIC SURF Surfers know they’re risking their health catching waves in the industrial waters of northwest Indiana—but they love it too much to stop. By DAVID NORTH PHOTOS BY RICHARD ANDERSON
A
group of dedicated Great Lakes surfers is always chasing the next big wave, even if it means surfing in dangerous water alongside grimy landscapes home to some of the area’s largest polluters. The surfers say some of the best waves in the midwest are near Whiting and Portage in northern Indiana, an area of Lake Michigan they refer to as “Southend.” But the surf scene is unlike the coastal ocean paradises where most surfers flock. The local spots are directly next to towering industrial complexes, including those of British Petroleum (BP) and U.S. Steel. J
JULY 12, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 9
Surfers hit the water in Whiting, Indiana, near steelmaker ArcelorMittal (right).
continued from 9
The BP facility sits near what used to be a gun club. Surfers call the location “Shooters.” “It feels a bit more like you’re part of the background of a Kurt Russell, post-America apocalyptic wasteland,” says Patrick Noyes, who last year directed a documentary about the spot, Southend: The Place Where I Go Surfing. “There is BP, [the] huge aboveground web of pipes . . . next to a huge ArcelorMittal steel manufacturing facility with fire-breathing, smog-belching smokestacks next to a gigantic pile of coal.” Longtime surfer Rex Flodstrom says “the refineries, flame towers, and industry make a unique backdrop for surfing. Sometimes you see irregular clouds of black or orange smoke.” Beyond the grit, the location poses a number of hazards to surfers, says Mitch McNeil. McNeil is the chairman of the Surfrider Foundation’s Chicago chapter, a group that advocates to make more locations open for surfing, which was banned in the city until recently and now is restricted to two areas in the summer and four the rest of the year. “When you’re surfing down there, you know this is a whole different animal than surfing up farther north,” says McNeil, 62, of Oak Park. “Sometimes there’ll be a noticeable oily sheen or smell, the color’s funky brown [like] chocolate milk. And then there’s stuff in the water like trash. So, you know, most people wouldn’t go in that water. But for us, the allure of the waves—it’s the deal you make.” Flodstrom, a 46 year-old artist who lives in Streeterville, says the surfers are like “canaries in the coal mine just immersed in the water. Sometimes the water has a funny smell or taste. You ingest some on accident and you’re a little worried about that.” Last April, Surfrider Chicago took its advocacy to another level after U.S. Steel discharged nearly 300 pounds of toxic hexavalent chromium into the Burns Waterway
10 CHICAGO READER - JULY 12, 2018
in Portage, which flows into Lake Michigan. The company cited equipment failure as the cause of the spill. U.S. Steel, under EPA oversight, collected water samples from the waterway on April 11 that contained chromium levels several hundred times greater than those allowed under its permits, the EPA reported. Levels at the point where the waterway meets Lake Michigan were at least twice the amount allowed. Chromium is a naturally occurring element used in electroplating, making stainless steel, manufacturing textiles, and preserving wood. According to the Centers for Disease Control, exposure to hexavalent chromium
“at high levels can damage the nose and cause cancer.” A toxic substances fact sheet further warns that “ingesting high levels may result in anemia or damage to the stomach or intestines. . . . Allergic reactions consisting of severe redness and swelling of the skin have [also] been noted.” The dangers associated with the chemical were made famous in the movie Erin Brockovich. Last October, U.S. Steel violated its federal permit again when chromium was once more released into the water near Portage, the EPA said. While the company informed regulators at the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, it requested the incident be kept
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CLEAN WATER ACT VIOLATIONS AND PENALTIES ARCELORMITTAL,
BRITISH PETROLEUM CARGILL - Violations four of last 12 quarters - Recent Clean Water Act (CWA) violations for chlorine, sulfates, and ammonia - No CWA enforcement actions
- Violations six of last 12 quarters - Recent CWA violations for total suspended solids, water quality, and operations and maintenance - $47,000 state penalty
Indiana Harbor (primary permit) - Violations in nine of last 12 quarters - Recent CWA violations for mercury, cyanide, zinc, oil and grease, total suspended solids, and ammonia - State CWA enforcement 2014, 2015, 2018, $31,550 penalty
ARCELORMITTAL,
Indiana Harbor (second permit) - Violations in six of last 12 quarters - Recent CWA violations for mercury, water quality, and monitoring failures - Enforcement information same as primary permit
Whiting 90
East Chicago
Calumet City
UNION CARBIDE,
Linde Division - Violations in two of last 12 quarters - Recent CWA violations for chlorine - No CWA enforcement actions
Ogden Dunes
90 94
Hammond
HAMMOND WASTEWATER - Violations in ten of last 12 quarters - Recent CWA violations for chloride and failures to meet maintenance, planning, and wetweather management requirements - 2017 federal enforcement action, $247,500 penalty - 2013 state enforcement action, $4,375 penalty
ARCELORMITTAL USA - Violations in seven of last 12 quarters - Recent CWA violations for chlorine, zinc, and oil and grease - No CWA enforcement actions
Gary
GARY WASTEWATER - Violations in 12 of last 12 quarters - Recent CWA violations for ammonia, total suspended solids, biological oxygen demand, unapproved bypasses of treatment, and reporting requirements - 2016 federal enforcement action, $75,000 penalty, and supplemental environmental project of $175,000 - 2014 federal enforcement action, $645,000 penalty against former private plant operator
“confidential,” the Chicago Tribune reported earlier this year. The U.S. EPA apparently wasn’t aware of this spill until a Tribune reporter contacted the agency. That’s when Surfrider Chicago got involved. Under the federal Clean Water Act, private citizens can sue private companies for harming the environment.
90
U.S. STEEL, Gary - Violations in seven of last 12 quarters - Recent CWA violations for toxicity testing failures, operations and maintenance failures, and unpermitted discharges - No CWA enforcement actions
Portage
U.S. STEEL, Portage - CWA violations at issue in Surfrider v. U.S. Steel
EPA DATA COMPILED BY THE SURFRIDER FOUNDATION AND THE ABRAMS ENVIRONMENTAL LAW CLINIC
Surfrider, which is represented by the University of Chicago’s Abrams Environmental Law Clinic, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Northern Indiana’s Hammond office. The suit says that surfers—unaware of what happened—were in the water shortly after the spill.
“The weekend following U.S. Steel’s October 2017 illegal chromium discharge, surfing conditions on the Southend were among the best of the year,” the lawsuit states. “Surfrider members were surfing on the Southend that weekend and surfers were at the Portage Lakefront without any awareness of U.S. Steel’s illegal discharge.” The lawsuit cites several incidents of surfers having adverse reactions to the polluted water, among them the cases of “a surfer in his thirties who suffered from shingles in his eye and two male surfers with urinary tract infections.” McNeil compared surfing in the water at Southend to a game of Russian roulette. “Your skin breaks out in this weird, blotchy, red, puffy thing that lasts a few hours. Other guys have had some really bad infections. Everybody who surfs there has experienced some sort of minor physical complication with their skin or one of their orifices getting infected.” Mike Calabro, who’s been surfing the Great Lakes since 2004, believes the water around Portage has given him sore throats and skin rashes, and it’s made his eyes so bloodshot he was embarrassed to be seen in public. “I developed a rash on my back after surfing for about four hours,” says Calabro, 44, a photographer from Whiting. “The rash took well over a week to heal. I got a urinary tract infection as well.” The CDC says damage to the male reproductive system has been found in lab animals exposed to hexavalent chromium. Calabro says he’s never experienced complications like this after surfing at “cleaner locations like Sheboygan or South Michigan.” Peter Matushek, 38, a math teacher from Homewood, believes he’s had “two serious kidney infections due to surfing the lake.” While the first infection was “mild,” the second was “really bad”—Matushek says he spent a week in the hospital when his infection turned into pneumonia and sepsis. He received antibiotics through a catheter for a month and a half and didn’t fully heal until three months later. Even this hasn’t stopped Matushek from surfing, and he doesn’t think anything will. “My family lives in South Chicago,” he says, “and I don’t want to leave. So that means I’m still surfing here. My doctor told me to take a piss and shower as soon as possible, so that’s what I’m doing nowadays.” Although Surfrider’s lawsuit doesn’t name specific surfers who have gotten sick, it alleges that “the harms that Surfrider members experience are directly traceable to the failures of U.S. Steel.” It’s not just surfers who should be worried about lake pollution. Surfrider’s suit was joined by the city of Chicago, which says it was left unaware of the chromium spills. (U.S. Steel has violated its discharge permit at least four times since 2013.) After the April 2017 spill, it took five days for chromium levels to return to normal in the water surrounding the 68th Street intake crib, one of the locations where the city collects drinking water, the suit says. The city claims that U.S. Steel’s activity harms everyone whose drinking water comes from Lake Michigan. J
JULY 12, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 11
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U.S. Steel did not respond to requests for comment. But in a legal document filed in March, the company admitted to violating the terms of its federal permit, though it denied that the discharges were illegal. The company claimed it was unaware that surfers used the Portage Lakefront beach and rejected the claim that any of their injuries could be attributed to its actions. The suit is currently on hold while Surfrider and the city evaluate a consent decree that has been reached between U.S. Steel and the EPA. In April, U.S. Steel proposed making a $900,000 settlement—including a $600,00 civil penalty to be paid to the federal government. U.S. Steel has also pledged to enhance its spill-prevention practices. Magistrate judge John Martin at Northwest Indiana’s District Court in Hammond will go over the most recent terms of the settlement this Friday, July 13. Cocounsel Rob Weinstock of the U. of C. told the Reader he’s “looking for assurance U.S. Steel will not do this again.” The U.S. EPA referred questions to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, which declined to comment. Even as that lawsuit moves forward, Surfrider members have larger goals. “U.S. Steel is just the beginning,” McNeil says. The suit is part of a larger campaign for transparency in the manufacturing industry. That includes BP’s oil refinery in Whiting. The refinery produces ten million gallons of gasoline and 1.7 million gallons of jet fuel every day, making it the largest oil refinery in the midwest and the sixth-largest in the country. In 2012, BP was fined $8 million by the EPA and the Department of Justice, which claimed its Whiting plant contributed harmful air pollution linked to asthma, acid rain, and smog. This multimillion-dollar penalty led to a $400 million modernization project at the facility. Despite this investment, the Whiting refinery was fined by the EPA again in 2016, and the company agreed to pay $275,000 for violating the Clean Water Act. This fine covered a 2014 spill of 39 barrels of oil and other violations dating back to 2011. BP did not respond to requests for comment. Surfrider has also put a spotlight on other polluters, including steelmaker ArcelorMittal, which has three facilities in the area that have racked up multiple violations in the past three years, according to data compiled by Surfrider and the Abrams clinic. The dirty water has led many to stay away. “I think [once] people have something major happen [healthwise], that’s when they’ll stop to think about their overall health,” says surfer Amanda Bye, 38, of Humboldt Park. While she loves surfing Southend, she doesn’t trust the water anymore. But many can’t resist the draw of the big wave. Lake surfers already have to search harder than ocean surfers to enjoy their sport. Waves on Lake Michigan are created by local winds (as opposed to ocean waves, which are formed by faraway storms), so lake surfers have to anticipate when the northern winds will travel down south. Even the biggest winds only yield a few really good days each year. For surfers, this often means going out in subzero temperatures during the winter months.
12 CHICAGO READER - JULY 12, 2018
Surfers say the waters off the coast of northwest Indiana offer some of the biggest waves in the midwest—against a grimy industrial backdrop.
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The BP Refinery in Whiting
“It’s a unique surf culture here,” says Flodstrom. “Less known, [fewer] surfers, more dedication. There’s less opportunity, so when there is an opportunity it feels that much more special. You’re dealing with really harsh weather and dealing with the elements, but we get good waves.” The waves are especially big at Southend because they’ve traveled the entire length of Lake Michigan, which means they break with more force once they hit the shore, surfers say. Ironically, the waves are higher quality because of some of the manmade features on the lakefront made to accommodate the industrial facilities. “The steel and concrete piers and jetties are what make a lot of good nooks, crannies, and sandbars for surfing,” says Noyes, 33, of Lakeview. That fact is even noted in the Surfrider lawsuit: “The Portage Lakefront offers a rare, high-quality, freshwater surfing experience. When the wind is right, surfers can get longer lines, more power, bigger [wave] faces, and longer rides at the Portage Lakefront.”
Although the winter months offer better waves, the summer is still peak season for midwestern surfers. Calabro says it’s not uncommon to see “30 people trying to catch the same wave,” including many beginners. Noyes adds that “the waves don’t last forever here like they do on a huge ocean, so you have to be willing to drop everything you are doing pretty quickly.” Why do they put themselves at risk for a few waves? “If you’re a surfer, there’s an element of desperation,” McNeil says. “It’s like a junkie looking for his needle. You want that wave. You want that high. You want that endorphin rush. . . . [It’s] just that much better down there when the wind is blowing from the north. There’s places we surf in Chicago and there’s places farther north, but for the big north wind, that’s the spot. . . . You’re putting yourself in harm’s way, but the reward trumps everything.” “[The pollution] has not stopped me from going to [Southend],” Calabro says. “Most of my friends J
JULY 12, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 13
The Chicago skyline is visible (below) from Whiting. The city of Chicago has joined a lawsuit claiming nearby U.S. Steel polluted the city’s drinking water.
continued from 13
stopped going there for at least six months, but they are starting to go back slowly. I do worry about the health risk after it rains and will not surf unless the waves are really good. I’m dumb because the pollution does not stop me.” Calabro surfed a spot in northern Indiana earlier this month. In an e-mail, he says he woke up to an eye infection and that another surfer suffered a sinus infection. Still, the surfers emphasize that protecting the lakefront is about more than just recreation. “It’s really all about the drinking water,” McNeil says. “We’re trying to [figure out] the effects of what’s going on down there for the drinking water of Chicago and Gary and Hammond and Portage.” “The pollution affects absolutely everyone,” Calabro adds. “Everyone in this area should be grateful to Surfrider,” Matushek chips in. “This is our drinking water that is being polluted, and for years no one seemed to care. Wake up, Chicago. I might be surfing in polluted water, but you’re drinking it.” v
Contributing: Richard Anderson
dnorth@chicagoreader.com
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Growing communities while growing older From Auburn Gresham to Hyde Park, south-side seniors and their allies are doing whatever it takes to combat social isolation and other issues of aging. By PAT NABONG
Older adults line dance at Mather’s More Than a Cafe in Chatham. The cafe, which caters to older adults but is open to all ages, serves affordable food and offers payas-you-go fitness classes.
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lder adults in their 70s and 80s gather in the lobby of New Pisgah Haven Homes every Thursday morning. The lowincome senior building in Auburn Gresham provides a necessary service, run by residents for residents: a communal trip to the grocery store.
On a sunny day in June, four of these older adults sit on the couch chatting while waiting for others to join them, and after 20 minutes, they board a small white vehicle that resembles a school bus. Carlton Brown, 72, is the volunteer designated driver this morning. He lets his crutch lean on the railing. His neighbors sit in J
JULY 12, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 15
Residents of New Pisgah Haven Homes, a senior building in Auburn Gresham, eat together during the Father’s Day Cookout—one of the building’s regular events that keep older adults busy. “A lot of people think when you come to a place like this, you come in here to die. But that’s not why I come here,” said Carlton Brown, 72, a resident for 11 years. “If you live in a building like this, it’s what they call a congregation, a peoples that are around together.”
Carlton Brown drops off his neighbors at a grocery store in Oak Lawn. “I was raised to help people that I can help, and that’s why I do what I do around here,” said Brown, who drives other residents of an Auburn Gresham senior building wherever they need to go. “One day I’m probably gonna need the same thing but right now I don’t, so I make myself useful while I can.”
Yvette Gresham, 59, has been Lillie Smith’s homemaker for four years, and they think of each other as extended family. Sometimes people mistake them for mother and daughter. Having a homemaker makes life easier for Smith and makes her feel more comfortable going outside. “I used to walk out here and get the bus, but now I’m afraid to walk out,” said Smith, who lives in Auburn Gresham. “There’s too much happening. They grabbing old people, throwing ’em down . And so now I don’t go out there [alone]. She go with me.”
continued from 15 the back with their walkers and collapsible grocery carts. Some days, Brown takes them in his car and they go to the doctor’s office. Sometimes he drives them to restaurants and shopping malls. Other times, Brown visits people in the building who can’t get out of their apartments. When Brown doesn’t need to shop for food at the grocery store himself,
16 CHICAGO READER - JULY 12, 2018
he keeps an eye on his neighbors as they scan the aisles. “Some peoples can’t get out to do what they need to do. Some don’t have the means to get there,” said Brown, who’s been living at New Pisgah Haven Homes for 11 years. He anticipates that one day he may need help too, in the same way that he helps his neighbors. “Right now I don’t [need assistance], so I make myself
useful while I can. . . . If you live in a building like this, it’s what they call a congregation, a peoples that are around together, and you have to learn how to live that way.” For many older adults who live alone on the south side, being part of a community, remaining active, and having people to rely on are not just important—they’re necessary to their everyday needs and their overall health and well-being.
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Yoga teacher Tony Stevens, who lives in Calumet Heights, used to serve as a caregiver for several people in his family who were sick. Now he ‘s committed to living a healthy lifestyle.
Older adults attend free yoga at Abbott Park’s senior satellite center in Roseland.
Access to health care on the south side looks starkly different from that of other areas in Chicago. According to the University of Chicago, it’s one of the most medically underserved communities in the U.S. Lack of access to health care is particularly magnified among the elderly. “Isolation is more than just being alone. It’s being at risk,” said Debra Thompson, chairperson of Age Friendly Englewood Village, a
nonprofit that visits isolated seniors, organizes porch parties for them, and helps them with everyday tasks. “We have to get out and socialize with people. That’s why we send our kids to day care for socialization,” she added. “It don’t only take a village to raise a kid. It takes a village to raise a senior.” But not all older adults have people they can rely on, or the ability to participate in ac-
tivities. Social isolation is a common concern among older adults on the south side, said Dr. Katherine Thompson, program director for the South Side Healthy Aging Resource Experts (SHARE) Network and a geriatrician at the University of Chicago’s Outpatient Senior Health Center in South Shore. Studies show this goes beyond loneliness—social isolation among older adults can be linked to de- J
Jerry Gripshover and Sam Guard leave a tip at Piccolo Mondo in Hyde Park. Gripshover and Guard are part of a men’s group of neighborhood residents that meets at least twice a month. Social isolation among older adults is one of their biggest concerns.
JULY 12, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 17
The view from Donegan’s apartment
“I don’t wanna get old,” said Darnetta Donegan, 69, who lives alone in a senior building in Washington Park. “When I see someone my age and they’re getting around worse than I am, you know, they’re in a wheelchair or broken up really bad or mentally gone, that’s when you think about it and feel bad about it. . . . I used to take care of people that had all kinds of disorders, but now I’m living here with it. After a while it gets a little depressing. I stay in prayer quite a bit.”
To Betty Griffin, 77, aging on the south side has been “a very positive thing.” Griffin, who’s lived in Morgan Park since 1969, loves yoga. “We tend to limit ourselves once we get at a certain age group or something. I hear, ‘I’m old, I can’t do that. I can’t.’ So I’ve never said anything like that. As a matter of fact, it opened up more avenues of what I realized I could do.”
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pression, diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, and coronary disease, among others, according to a report from the American Association of Retired Persons. “The people who age well have some kind of purpose in their lives or something that brings them meaning, and they tend to be people who have been able to stay active,” said Thompson. Many older adults who live alone find that sense of belonging in their neighbors, their home-care workers, or their yoga classmates. Some find it at the local senior center, at church, or even in line dancing class. Many say that being involved in different activities has made them happier and healthier. Eva Early, 73, who lives alone in the same
18 CHICAGO READER - JULY 12, 2018
Auburn Gresham building as Brown, said she was reluctant to move out of her apartment in Englewood and into a senior building. But she’s come to enjoy weekly activities like Hawaiian luau-themed cookouts, field trips to museums and gardens, and health-related discussions. Early said she seldom sees her family these days, but when she gets bored or lonely, she goes to the building’s common room to talk to other residents, who have become a second family to her. “It’s like a little community, and I like that. They look out for you. We don’t see you for a while, [we] check up on you,” she said. “This is home. This is where I was supposed to be.” v
To Alicia McCarthy, 64, commuting on the south side is challenging as an older adult. “ I have at least three buses to catch to get to some very important places, and it’s quite a bit of walking in between the bus stops because they don’t make good connections all the time,” said McCarthy. She almost been struck by cars several times. “We need to do something about these [transit] officials downtown who don’t never catch any buses. They’re living in a vacuum by themselves.”
@pat_nabong
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READER RECOMMENDED
b ALL AGES
ARTS & CULTURE
F
Whitman Johnson and Luke Halpern é PAUL GOYETTE
THEATER FUCKING MEN
Can you believe?
Fucking Men struggles with onstage intimacy realness. By MAX MALLER
T
he sexual act is hard to get across onstage. Directors have had to unlearn all the old ways it was once done. Billowing drapery, the dimming of lights, a sudden curtain: that entire evasive language is old hat, as obsolete a thing now as barrel staves and buggy whips. It wasn’t always like that. When the Viennese playwright Arthur Schnitzler staged his ten-act play Reigen, better known as La Ronde, in Berlin in 1921, the result was a mob scene. There were rumblings that this was a pornographic play about linked courses of infidelity by an obscure Jew who combined undisguised sedition with inexcusable snark about the upper-class spread of syphilis. On opening night, there were armed members of the Anti-Semitic League for Protection and
Defense in attendance. And to the audience’s shock, there was sex in La Ronde—though its only visible trace was the modest curtain and blackout that divided each respective act in half, like Hogarth’s Before and After. The depth of Schnitzler’s psychological insight in the play impressed the mature Freud, but the run itself fell through after members of the audience rioted at the opening, sabotaging it. La Ronde was instantly banned. In the text, Schnitzler indicated each of the blackouts with five simple dashes. La Ronde has since been adapted numerous times. Most productions “fill in” the notorious dashes with greater or lesser amounts of explicit fucking. Joe DiPietro’s 2008 version, one of several adaptations on gay themes to appear in recent years, is showing now at Pride Films and
Through 8/1: Fri-Sat 11 PM, Sun 8 PM, Pride Arts Center, 4139 N. Broadway, 773-8570222, pridefilmsandplays. com, $25-$30, $23 students, seniors, and military.
Plays, abrasive title and all. It maps Schnitzler’s plot onto ten hookups between males in present-day New York City: a soldier and a gay escort in a public park, the soldier and a graduate student at a bathhouse, the graduate student and a college kid he tutors at the kid’s home, and on down the line, until the escort reappears for a quickie with a prominent closeted power broker. The tripartite scene structure is retained, with the unwelcome addition of fake interpretive-dance sex in the middle. These soundtracked passages of almost uniformly inept Meisner capoeira are all the more grating because the interactions on either side of them are so vibrant. See the hot, hilarious hotel scene between married Jack (Jay Espano) and a nameless bartender who moonlights in porn (Roy Samra). Samra has
impeccable timing, both as a comedian (with one unforgettable bit in particular about this thing “[he] did with his tongue on this guy’s balls”) and as a shapeshifter (he can go from porn-star bravado to quavering bundle of nerves on a dime). He’s also the one member of the cast who I could say brought his character’s body into the movement portions. The rest of them just looked like actors trying to remember their choreography. Jack, a traveling businessman, is HIV positive. He lies to Samra’s bartender about this at first. He then comes clean. Nobody in this play keeps a secret from anyone else for very long. Everybody in La Ronde, by contrast, is a practiced and inveterate liar, even about his or her possible infections. Theater along the lines of Schnitzler and another of his adapters, Eric Bentley (whose distinguished gay version of La Ronde antedates DiPietro’s by more than 20 years) might well be defined as “bodies with secrets.” Flouting that ironic dogma by making these men so open, intimate, and forthright in the scenes with dialogue is perhaps what makes the ham-fisted coyness of the sex scenes here so doubly disappointing. Then again, everything about sex in today’s plays feels like a cop-out somehow, since such a premium abides elsewhere in theater on the authentic, the intimate, the skin-to-skin contact, all except here, between penetration and climax, when things are most real. And audiences, who go to the theater for flesh and entropy and occasionally get it, have come to hate “using their imaginations” at plays, both when it comes to sex and in general. They want the same thing the men want in this play, which they also call “intimacy.” And the first rule of intimacy, whether in the bedroom or between a play and its spectators, is for there to be, to the best of everyone’s ability, nothing secret at all. There will always be secrets, of course. The question is always how overt to make them: when to draw back the curtain, and when the action absolutely must stay concealed in order for the play’s desired illusions—whether of love, spontaneity, or what have you—to take effect. v
m @mallerjour JULY 12, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 19
ARTS & CULTURE Peter Pan é LIZ LAUREN
they were written down—and modified—by medieval monks. Set during the reign of a capricious, hotheaded King Conchobar mac Nessa (circa the first century CE), the tales describe an intensely tribal warrior culture in which heroes—of which Cú Chulainn is the best known— clash constantly over land, livestock, and honor. It is not hard to see why Rae, who wrote as well as stars in this show, now at Open Door Theater, was attracted to the material. All of the women in the tales are strong, bold, interesting, full-blooded characters. Scathach, for example, is a warrior so adept at martial arts that the great Cú Chulainn comes to her to learn from her. And Queen Medb, known for her selfpossession, beauty, and sexual prowess, seems very modern indeed. Sadly, Rae isn’t equal to the task of releasing the full power in this material as either a writer or performer. She can’t decide whether she’s telling us a series of ripping yarns or presenting, to quote her press materials, an “incisive feminist political and cultural analysis.” Instead, she tries to do both and, as a result, does neither very well. She’s also limited as a performer: all of the women look and sound the same. At 80 minutes the show feels too long. —JACK HELBIG DAUGHTERS
OF IRE Through 7/29: Sat-Sun 3 PM, Open Door Theater, 902 S. Ridgeland Ave., Oak Park, 708-3009396, oakparkfestival.com, $24.
THEATER
Cheerleaders will save the R universe
Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Factory Theater, 1623 W. Howard, 866-811-4111, thefactorytheater.com, $25, $18 students and seniors.
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Sleeping beauty
The thrilling and shrewdly idiotic Adventures of Spirit Force Five
Folks Operetta revives the century-old Csárdás Princess.
I’ll admit Factory Theater had me at “cheerleading squad must save the universe,” about as shrewdly idiotic a theatrical setup as the company has concocted in its 26-year history. And the first few minutes of Jill Oliver’s vulgar, trashy, childish romp reveal unexpected layers of additional idiocy. A trio of incessantly spirited high school cheerleaders (actually, one is preternaturally disagreeable by nature), joined by a fey, fawning, troopless Boy Scout, must follow their extraterrestrial coach into a dumpster in order to transport themselves to the realm of Lej, where diabolical Lady Mauron rules with an iron vagina (don’t ask). Lej’s mystical oracle, the Spirit Tree, has turned into a potty-mouthed perv, and the squad must jam a stick in its hole to stave off intergalactic ruin. By design, it’s an adolescent mess, akin to a Mighty Morphin Power Rangers episode written by 13-year-old boys on crank. Director Spenser Davis keeps everything moving at a breakneck pace for 55 minutes, packing in great gobs of intentionally amateurish theatricality (Lady Mauron magically dissolves by walking offstage in plain view of everyone). While both playwright and director would be wise to carve out a bit of breathing room in the action, if only to help audiences navigate several currently incomprehensible plot turns, the evening’s furious precision is a technical feat. Best of all, the play teaches no lesson. Having helped save the universe by showing that “spirit” conquers all, the preternaturally disagreeable cheerleader moans, “I learned nothing.” —JUSTIN HAYFORD THE
Composer Emmerich Kálmán was a Hungarian Jew who found fame in Vienna during the 1910s and ’20s with such operettas as Der Zigeunerprimas (The Gypsy Band Leader) and Countess Maritza. Perhaps he sensed that, despite his success, he would always be a bit of an outsider in the world of Austrian high society that embraced his music, which distinctively fused elegantly romantic Viennese waltzes with the csárdás, a robust folk dance whose name derives from a Hungarian word for “tavern.” One of his most popular works, the 1915 Die Csárdásfürstin (The Csárdás Princess), recounts the story of a Hungarian cabaret singer, Sylva, whose romance with a Viennese aristocrat, Edwin, seems doomed to failure: his stuffy parents forbid their son from wedding a girl from “the wrong side of the tracks” and have arranged for him to marry his childhood friend Stasi instead. Of course, being a Viennese operetta, The Csárdás Princess reaches a happy ending, with a lot of lively music and dancing along the way. Kálmán’s lush, tuneful, rhythmically charged score is the main draw in this revival by Folks Operetta, a local company dedicated to reclaiming the heritage of Jewish artists who contributed to Viennese operetta’s “Silver Age.” The fine singers under Gerald Frantzen’s direction include Katherine Petersen as Sylva, Jonathan Zeng as Edwin, Emma Sorenson as Stasi, and William Roberts in the comic role of Sylva’s womanizing manager Boni. The offstage 25-piece orchestra under conductor Mark A. Taylor’s baton is splendid, and deserves to be more
ADVENTURES OF SPIRIT FORCE FIVE Through 8/11:
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visible. —ALBERT WILLIAMS THE CSARDAS PRINCESS
Through 7/22: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM, Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont, 847-609-2939, folksoperetta.org, $40, $35 seniors, $25 students.
Land! Livestock! Honor!
Daughters of Ire celebrates the badass women of Irish folklore. The titular daughters of Savanna Rae’s one-woman show—Scathach, Uathach, Deirdre, and Queen Medb—all appear in the Ulster Cycle, a collection of wild, violent, sexy, fascinating folktales set in a decidedly pagan Ireland that were transmitted orally for generations before
You can fly, you can fly, you R can fly! Chicago Shakespeare’s Peter Pan is a soaring delight for both kids and adults. Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s production of George Stiles and Anthony Drewe’s musical based on the J.M. Barrie classic is a captivating 75 minutes for both adults and children. The story centers on Peter Pan, played with lightness and impish excitement by Johnny Shea, who teaches the Darling children, led by Elizabeth Stenhold’s precocious and adventurous Wendy, how to fly to Neverland: “second star to the right and straight on ’til
Csárdás Princess é COURTESY OF FOLKS OPERETTA
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ARTS & CULTURE Two Gentlemen of Verona é TOM MCGRATH
too in love with the poetry of the Ukrainian women’s black humor—to develop that theme with any force or clarity. Elizabeth Lovelady’s Red Theater staging doesn’t compensate either. And so the Holodomor remains an abstraction when the job was to render it horrifyingly concrete. —TONY ADLER SICKLE Through 7/29: Thu-
Sat 8 PM, Sun 4 PM, Strawdog Theatre, 1802 W. Berenice, 773-733-0540, redtheater.org, $20.
midsummer afternoon’s R Adream What’s more charming than Two Gentlemen of Verona in the park? Two Gentlemen of Verona in the park with a puppy.
morning.” This is where things really get magical, thanks to flying effects created by ZFX. Peter Pan flies up to the rafters and out over the crowd, impressing everyone, including my five-year-old nephew. He later asked how the pulley systems worked, expressing a healthy interest in backstage mechanics. Amber Mak’s Chicago Shakespeare directing debut uses imaginative staging, set design, and choreography to bring the book to life, inspiring wide-eyed awe from most junior audience members. The cast keeps up the energy with clever use of the multilevel set, percussive instruments, and audience interaction in the aisles. The Lost Boys (Travis Austin Wright, Michael Kurowski, Colin Lawrence, and John Marshall Jr.) are a special treat, bounding across the stage with a blustery confidence that eventually reveals a deep desire for a nurturing family. The musical could use a trim of some of the longer and slower ballads throughout, though. Around the 60-minute mark on the afternoon I attended, kids around the room were audibly antsy, and conversation levels rose. —MARISSA OBERLANDER
PETER PAN: A MUSICAL ADVENTURE Through 8/19: Wed 11 AM, Thu-Sun 11 AM and 2 PM, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 800 E. Grand, 312-595-5600, chicagoshakes.com, $22-$34.
perchance to dream R ofToasleep, better world Rest offers a simple yet radical premise: let’s all take a nap outside together. Let’s face it: American society has weird hang-ups about sleep. Be it in the workplace, academia, or supposedly public spaces, rest is either (a) a bought-and-paid-for private luxury or (b) a mark of indolence instead of, you know, one of the most fundamental biological necessities shared by literally every living being. But for people of color, some shut-eye in a car or park or Ivy League common room can be rewarded by encounters with paranoid Caucasian bystanders or hostile law enforcement. I was moved, then, by Free Street Theater and Tricia Hersey’s seemingly simple and quietly radical performance art piece, which invites members of the Chicago community to assemble in various parks throughout the city, listen to some spoken-word poetry, and then safely nap as a group. Director Katrina Dion leads an 18-member youth ensemble dressed in ethereal white
who together create a circular pillow and mat-lined “Dream Space.” The performance I attended in Gage Park was not entirely quiet: young friends of the performers giggled and took turns having their auras cleansed preshow with burning sage; kids in the adjacent pool splashed and made noise; portable speakers in different corners of the park played a pastiche of different songs; trees rustled overhead. While the resistance-themed movement and vocal pieces are brief and shouldn’t be oversold, the spiritually revitalizing impact of the experience shouldn’t be undersold either. As part of then ongoing work of the Nap Ministry, Rest is an enlightening, thoughtful event that reminds audiences that a simple snooze can be a powerful and political act of self-care. —DAN JAKES
REST Through 8/1: various times and locations, see website, freestreet.org. F
Daughters of the revolution
Sickle isn’t sharp enough to draw much blood. In 1929 the Soviet government initiated a rural collectivization program in Ukraine, confiscating privately held farms and turning the farmers into state workers. The results were disastrous. By 1932, people were starving by the millions. Cannibalism was a big enough problem that posters were reportedly printed reminding people that “to eat your own children is a barbarian act.” Some argue that this catastrophe, known now as the Holodomor, wasn’t a bureaucratic failure but a sinister success—an act of genocide designed to wreck Ukrainian hopes for independence. Abbey Fenbert’s new play, Sickle, attempts to engage the Holodomor at an intimate level by focusing on a single Ukrainian farming village. The crisis is upon us from the start. The men have been deported as class traitors for resisting collectivization; the women maintain discipline as best they can, guarding the land, foraging for food, rationing scraps while attempting not to die or go mad. Into their midst comes Nadya, a freshfaced member of the Young Communist League, tasked with seeing to it that the party line is toed even if it kills every last villager. In an ideal world Sickle might be about Nadya’s struggle to reconcile her ideological purity with the dire circumstances she finds on what we’d now call “the ground.” Fenbert certainly seems interested in that aspect of things. But her script is too diffuse—and
What is lovelier than Shakespeare in the park on a day in midsummer? What could be more meet for an afternoon of leisure than a comedy briefer than As You Like It, simpler than Twelfth Night, that gives you song and women for your wine and speaks as much of friendship as of love? Plus you get a puppy for your pains. Midsommer Flight delivers an interlude of fun with its production of Two Gentlemen of Verona, which follows the mishaps of young Valentine and Proteus as they stumble along the rocky course between Verona, Milan, and Mantua in pursuit of position and passion. Along the way, they encounter incompetent villains, squabble with their servants, and write humiliatingly bad letters, all for the love of Julia and Silvia. More amusing than their masters are the maids and serving men: Richard Eisloeffel as Valentine’s snarky servant, Speed; Stephanie Mattos as Proteus’s hilarious help, Launce; and Shanna Sweeney as Julia’s mordant minion, Lucetta. Accompanied by an adorable sidekick (canines from the Masonic Association of Service and Therapy Dogs and New Leash on Life taking turns in the role of Crab), Mattos in particular charms while delivering Launce’s elliptical discourse on the disappointments of love, especially a dog’s failure to weep at the pains of his master. An afternoon in the park is nice—a play in the park that includes attempted rape, banishment, disloyal friends, fickle lovers, bad fathers, robbery, and deceit and yet ends well is nicer. —IRENE HSIAO
Sweet as pie
In the world of Waitress, almost all sins can be forgiven with a song.
Written by Jessie Nelson, composed by Sara Bareilles, and based on the 2007 movie starring Keri Russell, Waitress is a sweet-as-pie musical about domestic abuse and adultery. Jenna works at Joe’s Pie Diner someplace in the southern-drawl belt, where she waits tables and serves as the resident pie genius, producing baked works of art that express her inner state on any given day. She’s unhappily married to Earl, a classic prole ne’er-do-well who puts her down, confiscates her pay, and conveys the promise of violence with his love. When she finds herself pregnant by him, she feels all chance of escape has been foreclosed. She finds some consolation, though, in an affair with her married, male ob-gyn, Dr. Pomatter. Now, this Equity touring production has a lot to recommend it. Bareilles’s score offers all kinds of interesting rhythmic variety while maintaining the tuneful accessibility expected of a Broadway musical. Lorin Latarro’s gestural choreography is fun. The leads all know how to endear, particularly Larry Marshall as cantankerous old Joe. And Bryan Fenkart’s Pomatter demonstrates a Chaplinesque physicality that’s entertaining if out-ofleft-field strange. What’s more, I kind of like the show’s forgiving attitude toward certain loving (and discreet) forms of immorality, embodied in the song “Bad Idea.” Woozy acceptance covers a lot sins here. But my wife couldn’t shrug off the notion of a doctor getting intimate with a patient, even if director Diane Paulus stages those intimacies in a way that makes Jenna’s willing participation utterly clear. In the time of #MeToo, Pomatter’s behavior may need to be confronted with something more than a song. —TONY ADLER WAITRESS Through 7/22: Wed 2 and 7:30 PM,
Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Tue 7:30 PM, Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 W. Randolph, 312977-1700, broadwayinchicago.com, $24-$102. v
TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA Through 8/26: Sat
6 PM, Sun 2 PM, various locations, see website, midsommerflight.com. F
Daughters of Ire é CARIN SILKAITIS
JULY 12, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 21
ARTS & CULTURE Kema Johnson as Philando Castile é RINKESH PATEL
SMALL SCREEN
Say their names
The video series 365 Ways to Kill an American offers a new perspective on police brutality. By ARIEL PARRELLA-AURELI
U
ntil a couple of years ago, Jordan Rome saw herself only in front of the camera, not behind it. The actor, a 2014 DePaul University graduate originally from metro Detroit, is part of the local theater and film scene. She was always interested in social justice and women’s issues. But a couple of years ago, when stories about police brutality started to take over the news, Rome felt she needed to do more to challenge the systems of power and authority that afflict black and brown communities. Her new video series, 365 Ways to Kill an American, is an effort to bring attention to what she calls “this very American issue.” She hopes the series will not only generate outrage and empathy among white people but also inspire them to consider how they can help
22 CHICAGO READER - JULY 12, 2018
dismantle the socially constructed systems that oppress people of color. “A lot of what inspired me is this overarching theme of oneness,” says Rome, who’s black. “At the end of the day, we are all human beings, but we can’t connect on that level unless we come to terms with these lower vibrational energetic forces, which [are] white supremacy, patriarchy, and these socially constructed norms that put people in boxes.” People can’t truly connect, she believes, until they’re willing to address the historical and cultural forces that keep them apart. 365 Ways to Kill An American is a series of reenactments of infamous recent police brutality cases. The first video focuses on Sandra Bland, a black woman who was pulled over for a traffic violation on July 10, 2015, in Prairie View, Texas, near Houston. After she refused
to put out her cigarette, the police officer, Brian Encinia, a Latino, told her she was under arrest and physically forced her from her car. Bland was found dead in her cell in the Waller County Jail three days later; an autopsy determined she had committed suicide. Her family was later awarded $1.9 million in a wrongful death suit. The video is a verbatim reenactment of the arrest except that Rome cast a white actress as Bland and a black actor as Encinia. She wanted to give the scene a new perspective so that nonblack people could better empathize. “It’s a certain feeling when you are constantly watching people who look like you, your mother, your best friend getting killed in cold blood on the street and nothing is being done with it,” she says. The project is a work in progress, with no set number of videos yet. Rome released the Bland video on April 15 on Vimeo, and a second video is in postproduction. It’s about the 2016 killing of Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, but told from the perspective of the little girl who was in the car when Castile was shot by a cop while reaching for his driver’s license. A third, about Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old who was shot by a security officer in Sanford, Florida, in 2012, is still being developed. The nonprofit video production company
Soft Cage Films came on board to produce the series after its cinematographer, Spence Warren, who’s on the company’s board, brought it to the attention of cofounder David Holcombe. Holcombe started the Soft Cage ten years ago to produce experimental, socially relevant films. So 365 Ways to Kill an American was a perfect pairing. Mainstream media coverage, he says, fails to address how police brutality shapes the worldview and development of the victims’ families, friends, and communities. He wants to help rectify this. “That’s where film comes in and can really explore these psychologies and how one event can have all of these ancillary effects that ripple through a community,” Holcombe says. Cassandra Snyder, the actress who plays Bland, applauds Rome’s vision and willingness to create a space of discomfort and anger in which to discuss police brutality. She remembers acting out the altercation with actor Djvon Simpson, who played Encinia as intense, both physically and emotionally. She had bruises the next day. “It’s gut-wrenching to think that we were re-creating something that actually happened,” Snyder says. “I don’t understand how one person can’t watch that once and then be outraged to the level that the community of people of color were. I’m hoping this film will inspire white people to empathize more. If that’s what it takes—someone with the same skin color as them being treated this way—for them to care about the issue, then I am happy to help make that happen.” More people need to open their eyes to that view and remember we’re more similar than different, adds Simpson, an artist and native south-sider. His side gig as a Lyft driver has given him a new perspective on other communities—just as Rome’s video series aims to do. Rome feels grateful to be supported by a diverse cast and crew. “[They’re] about implementing changes and doing the work—and not in a way of overstepping boundaries,” she says. In a time when everyone is checking their privilege and “safe spaces” has become a buzz phrase, this project aims to increase that awareness. She’s currently planning a public screening of the completed videos. v
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ARTS & CULTURE
Thomasin McKenzie and Ben Foster in Leave No Trace
MOVIES
A large story writ small
With Leave No Trace, Debra Granik approaches homelessness on the most intimate terms. By J.R. JONES
O
ne of America’s greatest filmmakers, Debra Granik finds her stories on the margins of a wealthy society. Her potent debut feature, Down to the Bone (2004), gave Vera Farmiga a breakout role as a working-class mom fighting cocaine addiction in upstate New York, her rocky personal situation aggravated by the family’s nickeled-and-dimed existence. Granik’s sophomore effort, Winter’s Bone (2010), brought critical acclaim to TV actress Jennifer Lawrence for her flinty performance as an impoverished 17-year-old girl fending for herself and her younger siblings in the Ozarks. A sense of economic injustice colors both movies, yet their stories are small and intimate: years after seeing Down to the Bone, I can still recall the look on Farmiga’s face when her character, given a reality check by a drug counselor, understands that her two young sons know exactly what she’s doing when she locks herself in the bathroom.
Granik steps down the social ladder another rung with her third feature, Leave No Trace, the tale of a widowed, traumatized war veteran and his 13-year-old daughter living in a heavily forested public park near Portland, Oregon. A trained survivalist, Will (Ben Foster) knows how to evade trackers and live off the land, and young Tom (Thomasin McKenzie) doesn’t mind their tenuous existence if she can stay with her dad. After police apprehend them, father and daughter are processed through social services and set up with a more stable work and living arrangement, but Will is so alienated from modern life that he can’t function. Leave No Trace offers a stark commentary on homelessness and the terrible human cost of America’s wars. What makes it a great and moving film, though, is the extraordinary connection between Will and Tom, who are as quiet and direct with each other in their isolation as the forest is with them. J
JULY 12, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 23
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ARTS & CULTURE RSM
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continued from 23 Leave No Trace opens in the sunlit woods, the warm green tones in sympathy with Will and Tom’s affection as they forage for food. They don’t speak, but they hum in unison—“You Are My Sunshine,” with its nature imagery and undercurrent of despair (You make me happy when skies are gray). At one point Granik stops to admire a large, perfect spiderweb, as beautiful and fragile as the father and daughter’s life together. Their little camp includes a garden, a barbecue pit covered by a metal cooking rack, an umbrella whose concave side has been covered with aluminum foil to create a sun oven, a hung plastic sheet with a hole in the center to gather rainwater into a bucket below, and a pup tent that Will and Tom share at night, batting away dogs that come to investigate them. Later in the film, when a social worker tells Tom, “Your father needs to provide you with shelter and a place to live,” the girl replies, “He did.” But all is not well in the forest. Tom, a growing girl, complains of hunger, and Will suffers from night terrors. When a combat dream wakes him, Tom tries to calm him by asking about her mother, whom she barely remembers. Will has been prescribed medication for post-traumatic stress disorder, which he and Tom hike into town to procure at a local health center, but when they return, Will sells the medication to another homeless vet who supervises a squatters’ camp elsewhere in the vast park. Not long after Tom is spotted by a park worker—a development she conceals from Will—their chess game is interrupted by the distant barking of police dogs, and they bug out of their little campsite. Caught by the police, they face separation (Please don’t take my sunshine away), but their social workers put together a deal with a local Christmas tree farmer to provide Will and Tom with a little house in exchange for Will’s labor on the farm. “It feels good to be by ourselves again,” Tom says once they’re alone together in the house, and Will admits, “It was hard not knowing what you were doing.” As their new life takes shape, though, one realizes that Will and Tom’s isolation from the rest of the world was the key to their intimacy. Tom enjoys their new living arrangement, especially when she meets a boy her age (Isaiah Stone) who invites her to the local 4-H Club meetings, but Will shies away from people, and when he’s out on the farm harvesting pine trees, the roar of ssss EXCELLENT
sss GOOD
a helicopter overhead drops him to his knees in anguish. The conflict between father and daughter comes to a head when Tom arrives home late from a club meeting and suggests that she needs a cell phone so she can reach her dad. “We’ve always been able to communicate without all that,” Will argues. Tom suggests that they try to adapt, but Will resists: “We’re wearing their clothes, we’re in their house, we’re eating their food, we’re doing their work. We have adapted. The only place we can’t be seen is inside this house.” From Will’s perspective, their life together is being ruined by possessions. The first breach between them comes when they’re still camping in the park and Tom finds a little pendant someone has accidentally dropped on a trail; Will agrees to let her keep the pendant if it’s still there an hour later, and though he gently admonishes her to leave it out in the open, she secretly nudges it into the dirt with her foot as they depart. Shopping for groceries, they evaluate every purchase with the question “Want or need?” When they’re first installed in the house, Will hides the TV in the closet, and when Tom’s social worker, Jean (Dana Millican), brings her a bicycle, Will tells the well-meaning woman, “We don’t need more things.” Jean also brings papers to enroll Tom in school, and when she mentions the DMV to Will, he seems to shrink from the thought of being burdened with an automobile. Another spiderweb shows up later in the film, but this time the spider has departed and a few segments are missing from the web. Granik finds another striking natural metaphor in beekeeping, which Tom takes up as a hobby. Eager to show her father what she’s learned, she outfits them both in beekeeping hoods, pulls a vertical drawer from the hive to reveal the clustering bees, and directs him to the open slot, explaining, “If you put your hand over it, you can feel the warmth of the hive.” Now that Tom has felt that warmth herself as part of a community, she wants to stay put, but Will, she comes to realize, can never find peace in a group, and may never find it at all. Leave No Trace might be described in social terms as a film about homelessness, but Granik never loses sight of the fact that what makes a home is the privacy people need to connect with each other. v LEAVE NO TRACE ssss Directed by Debra Granik. PG, 109 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, River East 21
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MOVIES
Aim for the Roses
Canadian filmmaker John Bolton entwines the stories of two other passionate Canucks into this “musical docudrama,” as he calls it, about obsession and self-actualization. In 1976, daredevil Ken Carter declared he would jump a mile over the Saint Lawrence River in a rocket-powered car and land on Ogden Island in a bed of roses. In 2010, double bassist and composer Mark Haney completed a conceptual album, after which this film is titled, about Carter and his storied attempt. Carter and Haney pushed their respective art forms to the brink, and Bolton follows suit, pairing archival footage and interviews with reenactments and fantasy sequences that are staged like music videos. Echoing the strange intersection of classical music and stunt driving, Bolton’s confluence of highbrow and lowbrow elements is inelegant at times, but also the basis of this 2016 film’s untidy appeal. —LEAH PICKETT 103 min. Sat 7/14, 7:30 PM. Chicago Filmmakers.
R The Cakemaker
In this astounding debut from Israeli writer-director Ofir Raul Graizer, a German pastry chef (Tim Kalkhof) moves from Berlin to Jerusalem to bond with the widow (Sarah Adler) and young son of his recently deceased boyfriend. The baker keeps his identity secret as he lands a job in the Israeli woman’s kosher cafe, gets to know the family, and circumvents religious, cultural, linguistic, and sexual barriers to find common ground in grief. Graizer’s exquisite restraint and sensitivity render each moment plausible, while natural performances from Kalkhof and Adler root the melodrama in genuine pathos. The only overpowering sweetness here is in the softly lit close-ups of mouthwatering desserts, courtesy of cinematographer Omri Aloni. In German and Hebrew with subtitles. —LEAH PICKETT 104 min. Fri 7/13, 2 and 6 PM; Sat 7/14, 7:45 PM; Sun 7/15, 3 PM; Mon 7/16, 6 PM; Tue 7/17, 8 PM; Wed 7/18, 6 PM; and Thu 7/19, 8 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.
Eating Animals
This hard-hitting documentary, based on Jonathan Safran Foer’s memoir, bypasses his personal history of vegetarianism and goes straight for the jugular of corporate factory farming, exposing its myriad abuses of food animals and the effects on people and the environment. From the enormous toxic-waste lagoons colored a nauseous pink by hogs’ blood and feces to the mutilated, diseased chickens suffering in overcrowded coops, director Christopher Dillon Quinn (God Grew Tired of Us) surveys the cost-cutting ways large-scale agribusiness finds to deliver cheap meat to a rapidly expanding global population of carnivores. Some of this ground has been covered in documentaries such as Food, Inc. (2008) and Fresh: The Movie (2009), but none of these films mention that the most effective way to reduce animal consumption would be to scale back on human procreation. Natalie Portman narrates. —ANDREA GRONVALL 95 min. Fri 7/13-Sun 7/15, 4:45 PM; Mon 7/16, 2:15 PM; Tue 7/17, 4:45 PM; Wed 7/18, 2:15 and 7:15 PM; and Thu 7/19, 4:45 PM. Music Box.
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The Cakemaker
8 Heads of Madness
The furious verse of Soviet dissident Anna Barkova finds its visual equivalent in the hyperactive visuals of Czech writer-director Marta Nováková, whose biopic divides the poet’s life into eight chapters and offers such flights of fancy as a mock silent-film vignette, an imagined phone call from Joseph Stalin, and candy-colored scenes combining animation and live action. Barkova was adopted by the Bolshevik literary world as a young poet in the 1920s, but her growing denunciations of Soviet life turned the establishment against her, and from the mid-30s to the mid-60s she endured a series of exiles and imprisonments. When Nováková tries to dramatize Barkova’s grim life in the gulags, scenes of terror, privation, and rape collide head-on with the film’s sense of novelty. Pop singer Aneta Langerová stars as the poet. In Czech with subtitles. —J.R. JONES 107 min. Fri 7/13, 8 PM, and Sat 7/14, 5 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.
The First Purge
Horror outfit Blumhouse Productions enjoyed a surprise hit with The Purge (2013), set in a dystopian near future in which the U.S. government thins the herd each year by suspending all laws against violent crime for a 12-hour period. This prequel (actually the fourth in the series) reveals that the practice began as a social-science experiment dreamed up by moony academic Marisa Tomei (who predicts “a freeing violence”), backed by the totalitarian New Founding Fathers of America political party, and confined to the mostly white Staten Island. The action centers on a housing project where a powerful drug dealer becomes the unlikely defender of the black and Hispanic residents, and the night’s cascading mayhem includes a white-supremacist gun assault on a black Baptist church. Unfortunately the characters are so poorly written that the political provocations hang in the air like birthday balloons. Gerard McMurray directed a script by James DeMonaco, who dreamed up the whole franchise. —J.R. JONES R, 97 min. River East 21.
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The Other Side of Everything
During the communist takeover of Yugoslavia, bourgeois living spaces were handed over to the
proletariat, and the apartment in downtown Belgrade owned by Mila Turajlić’s family was divided in half to be shared with a poor family. For this fascinating documentary, Turajlić (Cinema Komunisto) records the process by which her mother reclaimed the other side of the unit and threw open doors that had been locked for 70 years. This milestone turns out to be mainly a framing device, but inside that frame lies a family portrait rich in political history: Turajlić’s great-grandfather, Dusan Peles, signed the Declaration of Unification that created Yugoslavia in 1918, and her mother, professor and activist Srbijanka Turajlić, helped lead the uprising that drove president Slobodan Milošević from power in October 2000. Located across the street from the British embassy, the apartment provides an ideal vantage point for street protests that roil the capital in the run-up to the 2017 presidential election and suggest that the civil tensions of the Balkan conflict still simmer. In Serbian with subtitles. —J.R. JONES 107 min. Fri 7/13-Thu 7/19. Facets Cinematheque.
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164 North State Street
Between Lake & Randolph
Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist
Once upon a time, fashion designer Vivienne Westwood dressed the Sex Pistols, but in this documentary she flat-out refuses to talk about them and groans about how bored she is with revisiting her punk-rock days (her husband at the time, Malcolm McLaren, was the charlatan and PR genius who put the band together). Instead director Lorna Tucker trails the crabby Dame Westwood as she prepares for a show at London Fashion Week, tries to get a grip on a company that’s grown out of her control, and takes an expedition to the North Pole to inspect the melting ice caps with Greenpeace. Whenever the Pistols come up, Tucker turns to a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, who lays out and comments on Westwood’s original garments as if they were relics of the true cross. Westwood’s more recent collections are amply displayed, and her style hasn’t changed much in 40 years; aside from a few smart suits, most of her outfits are loud, vainglorious statements. —J.R. JONES 80 min. Fri 7/13, 2:15 and 7:15 PM; Sat 7/14Sun 7/15, noon and 7:15 PM; Mon 7/16, 4:45 PM; Tue 7/17, 2:15 and 7:15 PM; Wed 7/18, 4:45 PM; and Thu 7/19, 2:15 and 7:15 PM. Music Box.
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THE CAKEMAKER
“A master class in exquisite restraint.” — NY Times
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Fri., 7/13 at 2 & 6 pm; Sat., 7/14 at 7:45 pm; Sun., 7/15 at 3 pm; Mon., 7/16 at 6 pm; Tue., 7/17 at 8 pm; Wed., 7/18 at 6 pm; Thu., 7/19 at 8 pm SEE WEBSITE FOR SHOWTIMES THRU 7/26
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“A landmark adaptation that brings out the play’s humor in a way that hasn’t been done before.” — The New Republic
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IN ROTATION
A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn.
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Publicist with Indie Publicity
JAMIE LUDWIG
Golden Dawn Arkestra, Children of the Sun For me, savoring summer in Chicago means sitting on a patio, imbibing, and listening to music. This record has been my go-to for those times: “ Wings of Ra” especially is perfect for wearing a caftan and sipping tiki drinks under twinkle lights on a hot summer night. I got into the album through that song’s video—the esoteric visuals drew me in as much as the driving, otherworldly psych punk.
Uniform, The Long Walk Uniform spent years pummeling listeners with bleak, industrialized fusions of no wave, noise-rock, and metal as a guitar-and-vocals duo before replacing their programmed rhythms with prodigious drummer Greg Fox for The Long Walk (out August 17 via Sacred Bones). Named for a 1979 Stephen King novel in which the U.S. is ruled by a dictator, the album explores authoritarianism, religion, and inner conflict—and demonstrates that adding live drums to Uniform’s mix of blistering guitar, unrelenting electronics, and rage is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline.
Cave In’s set at A Celebration of the Life & Art of Caleb Scofield Last month I watched the live stream of the Boston benefit concert for the family of recently deceased Cave In/ Old Man Gloom/Zozobra bassist Caleb Scofield, and I couldn’t believe how connected I felt from 1,000 miles away. When Cave In went into Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon,” I was floored. I find myself going back to that song in the archived stream often. Stephen Brodsky’s crestfallen vocals coupled with the band’s tender electricity are so affecting you can feel them in your bones. It’s a performance as unforgettable as Caleb.
Uniform é COURTESY THE ARTIST
Reader associate music editor
Beth Winegarner, Tenacity: Heavy Metal in the Middle East and Africa This collection of essays and interviews by California journalist Beth Winegarner (author of The Columbine Effect) sheds light on how the “satanic panic” that flavored the American discourse surrounding metal in the 80s and 90s has taken on new forms in parts of the world fraught with conflict and religious fundamentalism. Acknowledging her limitations as a white Westerner, she aims to create a platform for these metalheads to tell their own stories, which provide a stark reminder of our collective humanity and the privilege of freedom. Psychic Lemon, Frequency Rhythm Distortion Delay Sometimes you just want to float away, and UK band Psychic Lemon can help with their pillowy, light-speckled blend of spacerock, psych, and Krautrock. Their new album is too weird and too grimy to be bubblegum, but it’s top-shelf feel-good music—I hope someday I’ll get to see these guys play.
Baptists, Beacon of Faith Vancouver-based crust/metal/punk band Baptists rip, and their songs are “heavy” in every sense of the word. I’d always liked the group, but after reading an interview in Revolver where they discuss their new album’s lyrics, I think I’m in love. Their front man works in social services, and one song in particular showcases him as a pitbull advocate and opponent of breed-specific legislation. Anyone who knows me knows that that’s a cause near and dear to my heart. The cover of Longmont Potion Castle’s newest album
JASON GAGOVSKI Sweet Cobra, Hawthorne Street Records
Longmont Potion Castle If you’ve been in a band at all related to the punk or hardcore scenes in the past 20 years, chances are you’ve heard this on a long van ride to the next show. Since the late 80s, the man who releases prank calls as Longmont Potion Castle has created a DIY surrealist universe, complete with a ludicrous nomenclature all its own, disorienting sound collages, and bizarro instrumental interludes. Throughout his ongoing work (the album 15 came out this year), he’s maintained an unmistakable demeanor that’s earned him a cult following. Dig in. Facs, Negative Houses I always tell people from out of town that one of the best things about living in Chicago is all the great bands from here—bands that take the idea of whatever genre they’re in and push it into a new place. Facs is a great example: formed after Disappears split, they take dark, heavy, minimalist postpunk to somewhere surprisingly lush, and it’s wonderful.
Baptists é COURTESY THE ARTIST
Cocaine & Rhinestones podcast My parents, having moved to the U.S. from eastern Europe in early adulthood, sought out “American” music. When I was growing up, they played Johnny Cash, Elvis, and Dolly albums alongside folk records from Macedonia. My musical interests followed my big brother’s into metal and eventually punk and hardcore, but I was intrigued by country—though I didn’t dig past Cash and Hank Sr. till later. This podcast is a deep dive into the history of 20th-century country music, and it’s fascinating whether you’re a fan of the genre or not.
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MUSIC
Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week of July 12 b
ALL AGES
F
THURSDAY12 Haley Heynderickx 8 PM, Martyrs’, 3855 N. Lincoln, $15. 21+ Mama Bird Recordings in Portland, Oregon, has been positioning itself at the center of the transcendental hippie coffee shop scene by releasing album after album of dreamy, meditative folk. In early March they added a new highlight to their catalog with the debut album by Haley Heynderickx, I Need to Start a Garden. Heynderickx has a knack for hitting folksy cliches dead-on for true believers, then sliding off of them just enough to keep others interested. “Untitled God Song” features lyrical acoustic playing and Heynderickx warbling about an imagined earth mother: “Oh maybe my god / Has thick hips and big lips / And the button she’s pressing / She speaks every language.” She then reveals that the celestial being is playing Nintendo while the music expands into a full rock band with horns, making the last segment of the song sound more like the Velvet Underground than Joni Mitchell. “Oom Sha La La” is a delightfully odd detour into girl-group pop. “The olives got old / I’m tired of my mind getting heavy with mold / I need to start a garden / I need to start a garden!” she shrieks with punk fervor before nestling down again into the expressive melody of “Drinking Song.” “And the edge of the world makes it seem / That everyone gone is still singing the same song.” That line comes with an audible wink; everyone else may sing that same song, but Heynderickx knows hers is a little different. —NOAH BERLATSKY
PICK OF THE WEEK
Tuareg singer and guitarist Bombino reinforces his connection to Africa on Deran
é RICHARD DUMAS
BOMBINO
Part of the Square Roots Festival. Sat 7/24, 8:15 PM (music starts at noon), South Stage, Lincoln between Montrose and Wilson, $10 suggested donation, $5 for seniors and kids, $20 for families. b
ON HIS PREVIOUS two albums, virtuosic Tuareg singer and guitarist Oumara “Bombino” Moctar worked with American producers Dan Auerbach (Black Keys) and David Longstreth (Dirty Projectors). Each of these auteurs left an imprint on his desert blues without muting his inviting soulfulness and beautifully scuffed sound—a bit of organ-stoked soul from Auerbach on 2013’s Nomad (Nonesuch), a bouncy, syncopated sheen from Longstreth on 2016’s Azel (Partisan). Like the best Tuareg artists who’e made inroads in the rock world, the Nigerien musician has never lost direction, but for his new record, Deran (Partisan), Bombino returned to Africa to record his rippling grooves in Casablanca, Morocco. The kit drumming of Corey Wilhelm retains a direct connection to rock, and the pumping
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organ licks of Mohamed Araki imbue the arrangements with the a touch of reggae, but as Bombino unspools biting leads threaded with infectious licks and effective repetitions of tightly coiled phrases, he’s never sounded more comfortable. On a few acoustic songs the ubiquitous clopping rhythm of a calabash cycles through the lattice of guitar riffs while Bombino delivers sparse lyrics that meditate on his native culture, ethnic fighting, the erosion of tradition, the struggle for freedom, and the Tamasheq language. Taken together, the songs and Bombino’s decision to record in Africa suggest a yearning to plug back into a land he’s been disconnected from after years of international touring, but as with every album he’s made, his homeland and Tuareg tradition course through every note. —PETER MARGASAK
Haley Heynderickx é ALESSANDRA LEIMER
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Bongripper é PAUL VERHAGEN
Lucky Boys Confusion play Roscoe Village Burger Fest on Saturday. é KERRI SACHAN
FRIDAY13 Bongripper Oozing Wound, Rezn, and High Priest open. 8 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $15, $12 in advance. 18+ It wouldn’t be a Bongripper album if the Chicago doom squad didn’t give it some sort of crass title that parodies metal’s predilection for the vehemently vile and violent. Their new Terminal (Great Barrier) follows the great tradition they established on previous releases such as 2007’s Hippie Killer, 2008’s Hate Ashbury, 2010’s Satan Worshipping Doom, and 2011’s delicately named “Sex Tape” b/w “Snuff Film” seven-inch. Which is to say, it offers more of the same Bongripper: gargantuan sounds that treats doom like an obelisk that’s heavy and imposing in all the ways you can hope in this corner of the music spectrum. They spread all the weight of the world out across two tracks, “Slow” and “Death,” that together extend for 40 or so minutes, the bulk of which travels along at a geriatric pace that somehow feels full of life even its most crawling. Guitarists Nick Dellacroce and Dennis Pleckham bring nuance and complexity to what otherwise might resemble a musical tundra, shifting from subterranean, sometimes nearly inaudible ambience into concrete slabs that, at the beginning of “Death,” seem to stretch on for days. Bassist Ron Petzke and drummer Dan O’Connor bring singular focus to both songs; you could probably set your watch to the sound of O’Connor’s tension-snapping cymbal. —LEOR GALIL
Matt Muse Part of Taste of Chicago. 4 PM (music starts at noon), Goose Island Stage, Columbus and Balbo. F b At the end of May, Che “Rhymefest” Smith, creative director of local youth mentorship nonprofit Donda’s House—which has since been
rebranded Art of Culture Inc.—went through a heated Twitter debate with Kim Kardashian West over Kanye’s alleged lack of financial and spiritual support for the nonprofit organization named for his late mother. Rapper Matt Muse, who joined Donda’s House in spring 2015, voiced his support for the embattled organization that weekend, and he continues to champion it as often as he can, as he did in a recent interview with local hip-hop outlet Elevator. “They opened up a lot of doors and opportunities for me to be seen,” Muse said. “I opened for Big Krit through Donda’s house. I performed at the Aahh! Fest with J. Cole and all of them.” These days he pays the spirit of his experience at Donda’s House forward, working in the local creative community as a teaching artist at Young Chicago Authors, where he helps youthful writers and performers find their voices and find their way. And Muse is doing quite well on his own; today he celebrates the arrival of his second project, the self-released Nappy Talk, with a performance at Taste of Chicago. He parallels his personal and artistic evolution with the decision he made three years ago to to grow out his hair. “When I really started to let my hair grow, it coincided with the confidence in myself to release music seriously and to take music seriously,” Muse recently told Redeye. The album shows that his skills have bloomed in that time too; his cool-in-the-pocket affectation on “Getting to It” is the stuff that turns rappers into stars. —LEOR GALIL
FESTIVALS
Burgers, barbecue, Bombino, Black Star, and lots more in this week’s festivals
Roscoe Village Burger Fest This fest’s 12th installment features than a dozen Chicago restaurants serving burgers (of course) and other fare, plus two stages of bands: Lucky Boys Confusion, players from the School of Rock, and many more. Sat 7/14 and Sun 7/15, 11 AM, 2000 W. Belmont, roscoevillageburgerfest.com, $10 suggested donation, all-ages
Jayhawks See also Saturday. Sima Cunningham opens. 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $26-$60. 17+
Square Roots Festival The 70 artists on this festival’s four stages come from across the globe: they include Nigerien guitarist Bombino (see page 28), Canadian-born country singer Whitney Rose (see page 32), and Nigerian fuji star King Wasiu Ayinde Marshal (see page 31). Fri 7/13, 5 PM; Sat, 7/14 and Sun 7/15, noon, Lincoln between Montrose and Wilson, squareroots.org, $10 suggested donation for adults, $5 kids and seniors, $20 families, all-ages
In recent years Jayhawks front man Gary Louris has found increasing success writing songs for other artists, both on his own and with a slew of collaborators. In 2006 he composed four tunes with members of the Dixie Chicks for their album Taking the Long Way Home, and he’s J
Taste of Chicago If you can brave the crowds at the city’s biggest annual outdoor festival, there’s an impressive range of music waiting for you on two stages: Black Star, Brandi Carlile, George
Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic (see page 30), the Flaming Lips, and more. Wed 7/11 though Sun 7/15, 11 AM, Grant Park, 337 E. Randolph, free admission, Petrillo Music Shell tickets $18-$50 per night, all-ages V103 Summer Block Party Good thing it’s cooler by the lake, because this stacked lineup of R&B and hip-hop is bound to sizzle: performers include Keith Sweat, Ja Rule, Ne-Yo, Ashanti, and more. Sat 7/14, 6 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion, 1300 S. Linn White, $39.95-$217.75, all ages
Windy City Smokeout This Fulton River District festival targets the significant overlap between carnivores and country music fans, with some of the area’s finest barbecue and tunes from the likes of Brett Eldredge, Aaron Lewis, Ashley McBryde, and Brothers Osborne. Fri 7/13, 2 PM; Sat 7/14 and Sun 7/15, noon, windycitysmokeout.com, 540 W. Grand, three-day pass $120-$130, Fri $45, Sat $50-$55, Sun $45-$50, VIP available, kids ten and under free, all-ages
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Jayhawks é SAM ERICKSON
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since penned songs for that group’s lead singer, Natalie Maines, as well as for country and folk performers such as Carrie Rodriguez and Ari Hest. In fact, most of the material on the new Jayhawks album, Back Roads and Abandoned Motels (Legacy/Sony), was originally made for others, but with Louris’s unmistakable, sweetly soulful voice and knack for indelible melodies, most of the tracks sound like they were waiting around for the Jayhawks to tackle them. The band offers a comfort zone tailor-made for his talents, but this time he shares the spotlight with keyboardist Karen Grotberg and drummer Tim O’Reagan, who each sing a pair of his songs. These were written over the course of a decade, and their lyrics reflect a mixture of resignation and support. “Come Cryin’ to Me” and “Carry You to Safety” both express encouragement and help for friends struggling to soldier on, though the latter (one of two songs written specifically for this album) contains some rather hackneyed phrases, such as “I was a seagull wandering the lonely beaches / Now I am an eagle soaring to your upper reaches,” which Louris sings in the wake of an annoying Jayhawks-style millennial whoop. On the other hand, “Everybody Knows” proves more effective in confessing that the narrator knows he’s fooling no one in his flailing attempts to change himself: “Stepping out, everyone can see my face / All the things I can’t erase in my life.” —PETER MARGASAK
SATURDAY14 Bombino See Pick of the Week, page 28. Part of the Square Roots Festival. 8:15 PM (music starts at noon), South Stage, Lincoln between Montrose and Wilson, $10 suggested donation, $5 for seniors and kids, $20 for families. b
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Jayhawks See Friday. Part of the Square Roots Festival. 8:45 PM (music starts at noon), North Stage, Lincoln between Montrose and Wilson, $10 suggested donation, $5 for seniors and kids, $20 for families. b
SUNDAY15 George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic Part of Taste of Chicago. BJ the Chicago Kid and the Boy Illinois open. 4:30 PM (music starts at noon), Petrillo Music Shell, $18$50. b I considered myself quite lucky when in 1996 I caught two legendary flash and funk showmen, James Brown and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, at the Petrillo Music Shell. Recently George Clinton, who possesses the best aspects of both of these wild bandleading performers and who’s slated to play the same venue as part of Taste of Chicago, admitted he isn’t quite in top form these days. In a statement to Billboard he wrote, “Anyone who has been to the shows over the past couple of years has noticed that I’ve been out front less and less.” With that, Clinton, who just had pacemaker surgery, announced his retirement from touring in 2019. Though he will continue throughout the end of this year, it looks like tonight’s show just might be his last Windy City appearance (the traveling P-Funk party will most likely continue without him). Also this year, George Clinton’s Parliament issued their first new song in decades—a beatdriven affair called “I’m Gon Make U Sick O’Me” that features rapper Scarface. While the track harkens back to the much-sampled electro-funk of 1982’s “Atomic Dog,” I’ve gotta admit it’s not totally my cup of tea; it seems a bit desperate to appear “modern thug.” But notably, it’s the lead single off
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Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.
their upcoming LP, Medicaid Fraud Dog (their first since friggin 1980 under the Parliament moniker), which will feature horn veterans Fred Wesley and Pee Wee Ellis, both former JBs (as in James Brown, natch). Such old-timers will probably not appear at the Taste of Chicago performance—Clinton tends to favor younger musicians for that party-onstage energy—though recent tours have featured Blackbird McKnight (who’s played with the Headhunters and Charles Lloyd). On the Parliament Funkadelic Wiki page I counted almost 200 members who have passed through the band and various funky offshoots, and I feel that must be some kind of record. My fave era of the band is its early super-psychedelic phase, where a heavy Sly Stone and Hendrix influence, combined with a unhealthy drug intake and a sense of musical abandon, propelled the band to still-unmatched heady heights— all while staying true to their roots in gospel, blues, soul, and, of course, the funk (JB again, hello?). Set lists for 2018 show the band going deep into their nearly 50-year-old catalog, with tunes like “I Call My Baby Pussycat” (from their game-changing, criminally underrated 1970 LP Osmium), “Superstupid” (where they seriously outdo Black Sabbath’s heavyrock bluster), and “Maggot Brain”—perhaps their finest, most expansive bit of mournful psychedelia ever(though it’s hard to imagine anyone but original genius guitarist Eddie Hazel wailing away on that one). In any case, this might be the last chance to see Clinton perform in person before he ascends into the Mothership, and to miss seeing him for free would be quite unfunky and way foolish (plus the people watching on the scene is bound to be epically freaky). —STEVE KRAKOW
MUSIC Dave Rempis & Tim Daisy 9 PM, Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont, $10 suggested donation. 21+ Saxophonist Dave Rempis and percussionist Tim Daisy have been stalwarts of Chicago’s improvised music scene for more than two decades. During that time they’ve grown, listened, and explored together while collaborating in many contexts and deeply expanding their sound worlds. That’s deftly illustrated on the recent double CD Dodecahedron (Aerophonic), which celebrates their shared history. Though on the duo’s 2005 album, Back to the Circle (Okka Disk), they opted for terse exchanges that tended to investigate specific ideas, the first disc of the new album mirrors a more organic, episodic approach where each participant trusts in his ability to push each encounter forward. “Eikosi” engages in seemingly endless twists and turns with natural ebb-and-flow machinations that for 28 gripping minutes give the sense that the ideas sprout out of one another. The music moves from fiery to contemplative with plenty of stops in between; while the duo has long revealed an almost telepathic connection, the first disc captures them at their most locked-in. The second disc puts their relationship at the core of improvised performances with a disparate cast of associates, all of whom will be present for tonight’s release concert: vibist Jason Adasiewicz, pianist Jim Baker, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, trombonist Steve Swell, bassoonist Katie Young, and electronic tinkerer Aaron Zarzutzki. The various trio configurations those guests form with the duo create a dazzling range of approaches that showcase the practiced versatility of Rempis and Daisy, who stretch to accommodate the J
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EARLY WARNINGS Find a concert, buy a ticket, and sign up to get advance notice of Chicago’s essential music shows at chicagoreader.com/early. ASAP Ferg é JASON GOODRICH
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1800 W. DIVISION
Est.1954 Est. 1954 Celebrating over Celebrating over 61 service 65 years of service to Chicago! Chicago!
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10/26 Dom Flemons
JULY 12TH.............FLABBY JANUARY 11.................. FLABBY HOFFMAN SHOW 8PM FEBRUARY 23 .....MIKEHOFFMAN FELTENSHOW
FOR TICKETS, VISIT OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG
JULY 14TH.............FIRST WARDROOM FEBRUARY 24 .....DARK MEN JANUARY 13.................. DJ PROBLEMS SKID LICIOUS JULY 15TH.............TONY DO ROSARIO GROUP WHITEWOLFSONICPRINCESS JANUARY 14.................. TONY JULY 16TH.............PROSPECT FOURDO ROSARIO GROUP MOJO 49 80TH JANUARY 17.................. JAMIE WAGNER & FRIENDS JULY 17TH.............SMILIN’ BOBBY BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION 8PM
Cheick Hamala Diabate FRIDAY, AUGUST 24 7PM
An Evening with
Alejandro Escovedo and Joe Ely
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MUSIC
JULY 13TH.............SILVERTONE JANUARY 12.................. AMERICAN DRAFT
King Wasiu Ayinde Marshal é COURTESY THE ARTIST
JANUARY 18.................. MIKE FELTON
JULY 18TH.............WAGNER & MORSE FEBRUARY 25 .....WHOLESOMERADIO JANUARY 19.................. SITUATION DAVID DJ NIGHT
JULY 19TH.............THE JETSTAR 88S MAXLIELLIAM ANNA JULY 20TH.............KILLING ME SMALLS FEBRUARY 26 .....RC BIG BAND 7PM JANUARY 20.................. FIRST WARD PROBLEMS JULY 22ND............WHOLESOMERADIO DJ NIGHT JANUARY 21.................. TONY DO PM ROSARIO GROUP8PM FEBRUARY 28 .....PETER CASANOVA QUARTET MOSTLY DAVE 9:30 JANUARY 22.................. RC BIG JULY 23RD ............RC BIG BAND 7PMBAND 7PM MARCH 1............SMILIN’ BOBBY AND THE CLEMTONES JULY 25TH.............PETER CASANOVA QUARTET QUARTET JANUARY 24.................. PETER CASONOVA JULY 26TH.............THE PROF.THE FUZZ 63 JANUARY 25.................. WICK MARCH 2............ICE BOX AND BIG HOUSE PLUS DAVE WARPONY JANUARY 26.................. THE HEPKATS JULY 27TH.............SCOTTY AND THE BAD BOYS SKIPPIN’ ROCK MARCH 3............CHIDITAROD AND TARRINGTON 10PM JULY 28TH.............MARK ESSICK BAND BOLTS JANUARY 27.................. THE STRAY JULY 29TH.............NUCLEAR JAZZ QUARKTET 8PM MARCH 7............JAMIE WAGNER & FRIENDS JANUARY 28.................. WHOLESOMERADIO DJ NIGHT
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9/16 Harold López-Nussa Trio 9/28 Bruce Molsky's Mountain Drifters 9/30 The Revelers
OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG THIS WEEKEND!
JULY 13 • 14 • 15
FRI
Funk
13 Night! SAT
14
SWIFT TECHNIQUE
In The SideBar - Nigel Mack
WEBB WILDER
plus Dan Whitaker & The Shinebenders In The SideBar - Expo ‘76
TUE
17
OAK PARK VOICEBOX STORY NIGHT
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garrulous bleats of Swell, the slippery abstractions of Zarzutzki, and the electronically smudged lines of Young. —PETER MARGASAK
WED
18
SideBar Jazz w/ ROB CLEARFIELD QUARTET
SCOTT LIGON’S ALL-STAR FREAKOUT! 19 In The SideBar - Judy Roberts & Jeannie Lambert THU
T H R E E D AY S O F L I V E MUSIC, LOCAL FOOD, CRAFT BEER & FAMILY FUN!
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Classic-Minded R&B and Soul!
ALANNA ROYALE In The SideBar - Ian Leith
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SQUAREROOTS.ORG 32 CHICAGO READER - JULY 12, 2018
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21
CLIFF JOHNSON & THE RAINE plus a Bonus Set by Original Members of Off Broadway! In The SideBar - RALPH COVERT
7/26 - Country Night in Berwyn w/ Bunkertown 7/27 - LOTUS (Santana Tribute) 8/2 - Scott Ligon’s All-Star Freakout! 8/4 - Terry White / Ron Lazzeretti 8/7 - WDCB Bluesday Tuesday w/ Lurrie Bell 8/11 - Second Hand News (FleetwoodMacTribute) 8/16 - Judy Roberts / Jeannie Lambert 8/17 - Martin Van Ruin / The Shams Band 8/23 - Bossa Blue (James Taylor Tribute) 8/24 - Switchback 8/25 - The Waco Brothers 8/30 - Scott Ligon’s All-Star Freakout! 9/1 - The Flat Five
King Wasiu Ayinde Marshall Part of the Square Roots Festival. 5:30 PM (music starts at 12:15 PM), South Stage, Lincoln between Montrose and Wilson, $10 suggested donation, $5 for seniors and kids, $20 for families. Ayinde Barrister is known as the pioneer of Nigerian fuji music, but it’s King Wasiu Ayinde Marshal who has spread the percussion-rich style globally—after working with Barrister as backup singer between 1975 and 1978 he emerged as a bandleader himself. Though the densely percolating form first erupted in the mid-60s, it would be three decades before the music of the Islamic population of the country’s Yoruba people ascended to pop dominance. Like juju, the style popularized by King Sunny Adé, fuji was originally built upon an embarrassment of pulsing polyrhythms shaped on kit drums, congas, bells, shakers, and talking drums, without much else beyond hectoring call-and-response singing. Over time fuji adherents have embraced keyboards, horns, and guitars, and Marshal—who’s also known as K1 de Ultimate—is no exception; his music’s pulsing groove and chanted vocals are well suited to assimilate all kinds of outside sources, and he allows it to absorb contemporary influences such as trap as well. I still have vivid memories of a King Sunny Adé performance at the Vic in 2005 when his group performed as it would at home in Lagos, as opposed to the heavily edited shows it usually played in the West; its loads of praise songs sung in Yoruba left the much of the audience perplexed about what
was happening. Marshal operates exclusively in that format, appealing to the Nigerian expat community. Though non-Nigerian audiences may not understand a good chunk of what his nimble band is putting down, that’s no reason to bypass this orgy of rhythm and soulful testifying, which connects to its listeners through feeling and groove. —PETER MARGASAK
Whitney Rose Part of the Square Roots Festival. 4:15 PM (music starts at 12:15 PM), North Stage, Lincoln between Montrose and Wilson, $10 suggested donation, $5 donation for seniors and kids, $20 donation for families. b Singer and songwriter Whitney Rose may have been born and raised on Prince Edward Island in Canada, but her ebullient music suggests she’s easily settled into the rich scene of her adopted home of Austin, Texas. Last year’s Rule 62 (Six Shooter/ Thirty Tigers) reflects the ongoing influence of Mavericks front man Raul Malo on her work, a fizzy mix of honky-tonk, Tex-Mex, and a variety of 60s pop sounds including French ye-ye and classic girl groups. But country twang is her guiding principle, and her songs vividly essay failed and burgeoning relationships. The silken countrypolitan opener, “I Don’t Want Half (I Just Want Out),” is a classic kissoff in which the singer doesn’t just leave behind an old boyfriend but discards everything that reminds her of him—including a ring, a cat, and all of her clothes. On the ballad “You Never Cross My Mind,” Malo’s sweet voice expertly shadows Rose on the chorus, where the narrator crawls through a series of ridiculous falsehoods (“The ocean ain’t that deep” or “Spaniards don’t like wine”) to parallel her insistence that she doesn’t think about the per-
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MUSIC
Whitney Rose é COURTESY THE ARTISTZ son she’s singing to. She takes a few clever detours from romance, including a couple of trucker songs: “Trucker’s Funeral” describes how much a longhaul trucker is missed by his wife and children, who learn only at his funeral that he was leading a double life and had a second family who also yearned for his presence. At first the soul-stoked “Can’t Stop Shakin’” might suggest that a lover has seductively infected her mind, but eventually it’s clear that Rose is trembling out of fear thanks to our current president, defiantly testifying, “I ain’t gonna let him win / No I ain’t givin’ in.” —PETER MARGASAK
MONDAY16 J@K@L 7:30 PM, Experimental Sound Studio, 5925 N. Ravenswood, $10, $8 students. b Multigenerational improvising trio J@K@L is one of the more exciting ensembles to emerge in Chicago over the last few years. Fueled by the energy of the young drummer Julian Kirshner, the group benefits from the vast experience and disparate aesthetics of reedist Keefe Jackson and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm. The latter left Chicago last year, and though the scene has weathered plenty of such departures over the years, it’s always heartening when players return and continue their work in local outfits. Lonberg-Holm is back in town this week, and part of his visit celebrates the recent release of After a Few Days, the self-issued CD that J@K@L recorded in April 2017 at the Hungry Brain. The recording features some of the most aggressive playing I’ve ever heard from Jackson, who unleashes seething staccato outbursts and snake-charmer sallies on tenor in the opening of “In a Silt of Atoms.” His blowing soon tangles with astringent bowing by Lonberg-Holm, whose acidic output is charged by deftly deployed effects pedals while Kirshner effectively produces a sizzling barrage of cymbals (pierced by the occasional tom rumble and kick-drum turbulence) to offer three
disparate but linked layers of scalding motion. Naturally, the piece shifts and the trio enters different terrain that’s sometimes rhythmically driving and sometimes reserved, with Jackson augmenting tenor with sopranino and a “tube.” But the musicians are never less than fully engaged with one another, pushing forward as an ensemble with each member making asides and sometimes changing the direction. For tonight’s concert each musician will play a short solo set and the full trio will follow. —PETER MARGASAK
TUESDAY17 Asap Ferg Jay IDK opens. 6 PM, House of Blues, 329 N. Dearborn, $40. b In a January interview with GQ, ASAP Ferg talked about hip-hop’s emergence as pop’s lingua franca and the genre’s musical plateau. “All you hear on radio right now is trap music,” he said. “It’s starting to sound like one big reggaeton song to me. All the songs sound the same. We’re not pushing the culture forward with new sonics.” The collective Ferg belongs to, Asap Mob, is as guilty of contributing to the homogeneity as any other mainstream rap act— their worst material is instantly forgotten amid the Soundcloud playlists swelling with new rap tracks. But on his second mixtape, last year’s Still Striving (RCA), Ferg has managed to figure out how to make songs that still smolder when he leaves the mike, holding his own on a full-length that’s packed with personalities such as Migos, Playboi Carti, Lil Yachty, and Famous Dex—who’ve all bent music to their vocal whims. On breakout track “Plain Jane,” he accomplishes more than many rappers can on an entire full-length, delivering syllabically stubby verses with a fervor that vacillates from militaristic to blustery. In the process he molds new musical textures into the instrumentals—adding to what’s already there while contributing to its percussive feel. —LEOR GALIL v
JULY 12, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 33
FOOD & DRINK
3 SQUARE DINER | $$ 1020 W. Lawrence 773-293-6158 3squaresdiner.com
From left: biscuits and jam
RESTAURANT REVIEW
Opposite: hot chicken and waffles
At 3 Squares Diner there’s a dog that won’t bark
é AMELIA MOORE
The ersatz Uptown diner in a restored artdeco hotel promises more than it delivers. By MIKE SULA
T
here’s a “Chicago Pastrami Dog” on the menu at 3 Squares Diner that sounds tempting. Just imagine: an encased farce of brined and smoked brisket dragged through the garden of the orthodox Chicago condiments. Sounds simultaneously delicious and dangerously provocative. The pastrami dog is currently being served in this ersatz corner diner on the ground floor of the beautifully restored Lawrence House, in Uptown, home of the nifty little cocktail joint Larry’s and 344 apartment units whose tenants tend to have a lot of complaints about their noisy neighbors, judging from the building’s Yelp reviews. Yes, the building has a Yelp page, and so does 3 Squares Diner (five stars!), a new outing from the folks who brought you the
34 CHICAGO READER - JULY 12, 2018
longtime Wicker Park (now Logan Square) breakfast-lunch crowd-pleaser Jam. Jam chef Ian Voakes dreamed up the pastrami dog, but it isn’t at all as I expected. Instead it’s simply a pastrami sandwich dressed up in a Halloween costume of Chicago-style hot dog toppings—not even a combo of the two meats, a la the jumbo pastrami dog at Herm’s Hot Dog Palace in Skokie. I must admit that this violated even my sense of orthodoxy, and I wasn’t just upset about the MIA wiener. The pastrami itself is sliced thick and seems undercured, halfway between brisket and heaven. The slightly flattened brioche bun I ate it on seemed old and unimpressed with what it had become: a bed for confit tomatoes, “Dijon onion jam,” pepperoncini, and a fair approximation of that hideous neon-green relish that makes
this classic so revolting. (Forgive me. I’m a Depression-dog kind of guy.) I was so unnerved by the Chicago Pastrami Dog I was prepared to ask for ketchup, but then I noticed the small tub of it—a molasses-colored version with a deep sweetness that seemed to terrify the thick and nicely crisped fries. The pastrami dog is on the lunch menu and only nettling the dining room between 11 AM and 9 PM each day. But you can have breakfast all day at 3 Squares Diner—or 3SD, if you’re nasty. Both menus are studded with intriguing accents on familiar items. Biscuits and gravy are anointed with coconut-mushroom gravy, French toast with coffee anglaise and doughnut glaze, and a fried chicken thigh is mounted on a sourdough waffle. Like the pastrami dog, the last suffers from
false advertising—it’s billed as hot chicken but is barely so; on the contrary, it’s pretty sweet despite or perhaps because of the application of a pimenton gastrique. Still, it’s one of the better things you can eat at 3SD. Another is a bowl of red grits that present as grayish, crowned with a mass of soft braised lamb neck and a sunny-side up egg tarted up with an acidic gremolata. But the latter demonstrates an aesthetic problem with much of the food here that’s at odds with the bright, white-tiled cheeriness of the room. A lot of it is heavy and gray in appearance, from the small patties on a burger ordered medium rare to a duck confit hash with a huge pile of fried potatoes that don’t harmonize with the bird meat. A side of lamb bacon in no way resembles the belly of an ovine but instead consists of scraps of J
l
l
Search the Reader’s online database of thousands of Chicago-area restaurants—and add your own review—at chicagoreader.com/food.
JOBS
ADMINISTRATIVE EDUCATION: ASSISTANT
PROFESSOR - Loyola University, Chicago, IL. Duties include: Classroom teaching of students in the area of Spirituality, and related courses. Course preparation; reviewing and grading assignments; providing advice to individual students, as requested; conducting and supervising research; preparing and submitting research findings for publication; attending and presenting at various national conferences or meetings; administrative duties potentially will include service on Department or University committees. Requires Ph.D. in Philosophy, Theology, or related. Apply by mail to: Brian Schmisek, Loyola University, Institute of Pastoral Studies, 820 N. Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60611. IMC AMERICAS, INC. (Chicago,
IL), a proprietary trading company, seeks an experienced professional to fill an opening in its Chicago office for a Trader. To apply, submit resume and cover letter to talent@ imc-chicago.com with position title in subject line. No calls. EOE.
REAL ESTATE RENTALS
STUDIO $500-$599
General MEDICAL TECHNOLOGISTS For Skokie, IL location. Bachelor’s in Med Tech +1yr exp performing lab testing in the areas of hematology, chemistry, urology, microbiology & other specialized med areas to provide lab data for clinical use in the diagnosis, treatment & mgmt of diseases. Analyze bodily fluids to determine the presence of normal & abnormal elements. Analyze test results & examine bodily fluids using microscopic techniques. Perform quality control & analyze results that correlate to known & standard values. Prepare & handle lab equipment & instrumentation req’d. Send resume to: Kym Janisch, Ref: JY hr@lifescanlab.com NORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL HEALTHCARE seeks Medical
Technologists for Chicago, IL to perform test procedures in a clinical lab & convey the results to the physician or designee in an accurate & timely manner for the purpose of patient diagnosis & treatment. Bachelor’s in Med Tech/Laboratory Sci req’d. Req’s: Must be ASCP certified Medical Laboratory Scientist. 40 hrs/wk, 7am-3:30pm, work M-F w/ rotating weekends. Apply online: http:// jobseeker.nm.org/ Requisition ID: 0039168 EOE
irregular, gnarly flesh that appeared to have been reheated. Same goes for an arid crock of cavatappi mac and cheese. The menu at 3SD is a focused one, and there are enjoyable items on it, including some nicely cooked flaky rockfish fillets and tiny white peas bathing in a delicate “ginger–Sichuan broth,” which fails to resemble anything I’ve tasted from that cuisine. The drop biscuits are good—moist and warm— and there’s a thick, delicious, and pretty convincing vegan chocolate-peanut butter milkshake made from soy milk, dates, cocoa, and maca root.
Apart from milkshakes 3SD doesn’t do dessert, but you can add its proprietary distillations of vodka, gin, and rum to them as well as to the classic cocktails. But there’s something about the food at 3SD that on the surface appeals yet consistently fails to live up to its promise, no better demonstrated by a romaine salad with dry chunks of corn bread, corn, and tomatoes served in late June and tasting that way. Like a sandwich in an iconic hot dog’s clothing, not much at 3SD is as it seems. v
m
@MikeSula, msula@chicagoreader.com
SCIGON Solutions, Inc seeks Software Developer in Deerfield, Illinois to be resp for the dvlpmnt of sftwr applctns for our cmpny. Reqs. BS dgr in Comp Sci, Sftwr Engnrng, or a rltd fld, pls 4 yrs of experience; 4 yrs exp in Sftwr dvlpmnt; 3 yrs mbl dvlpmnt exp; 1 yr of knwdge of C#,ASP.NET, MVC; 3 yrs exp in Mltthrdd dvlpmnt; 3 yrs exp in Frnt end web tchnlgs. Send cvr lttr & rsme to: egonchar@scigonsolutions. com, sbjct ref#12001x Groupon, Inc. is seeking multiple Managers, Software Engineering & Engineering Managers in Chicago, IL to: develop, construct & implement the next generation of company products & features for Groupon’s web & mobile apps; design high-performance RESTful service-oriented architectures & s/are that is fast & efficient for millions of users. Send resumes to apply@groupon.com & ref MGRCH7 TECHNICIAN NOVASPECT in Minooka, IL seeks a Quarter Turn Valve Repair Technician responsible for repair and testing of industrial ball, plug, wedge plug, and butterfly valves. Mail resume to: K. Mutuc, 1124 Tower Road, Schaumburg, IL 60173-4306
CLEAN ROOM W/FRIDGE & micro, Near Oak Park, Food -4Less, Walmart, Walgreens, Buses & Metra, Laundry. $115/wk & up. 773-637-5957
CHICAGO, CAL PARK & Blue Island: Studio $625 & up; 1BR $700 & up; 2BR $885 & up. Heat, Appls, Balcony, Carpet, Laundry, Parking. Call 708-388-0170
6930 S. SOUTH SHORE DRIVE Studios & 1BR, INCL. Heat, Elec, Cking gas & PARKING, $585-$925, Country Club Apts 773-752-2200
STUDIO $600-$699
BR $735, Includes Free heat & appliances & cooking gas. (708) 424-4216 Kalabich Mgmt
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.
SALES & MARKETING HOME IMPROVEMENT COMPANY LOOKING for experienced & energetic Lead Generators. $11-$12/hr + 1% commission. Call Mark after 2:30pm 773-227-2255.
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
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
Ashland Hotel nice clean rms. 24 hr desk/maid/TV/laundry/air. Low rates daily/weekly/monthly. South Side. Call 773-376-5200
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 Impecca-
bly Clean Highrise STUDIOS, 1 & 2 BEDROOMS Facing Lake & Park. Laundry & Security on Premises. Parking & Apts. Are Subject to Availability. TOWNHOUSE APARTMENTS 773-288-1030
MIDWAY AREA/63RD KEDZIE Deluxe Studio 1 & 2 BRs. All
modern oak floors, appliances, Security system, on site maint. clean & quiet, Nr. transp. From $445. 773582-1985 (espanol)
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; LOVELY NEWLY DECORATED rooms available. Far South. $425-$475/mo + security. Apartments also available for rent. Call 773-703-8400 CHICAGO: VICINITY OF 108th & Wabash, Lrg 3BR, newly rehabbed, 1st flr, quiet, clean 2-flat bldg, Sec 8 welcome. $950/$1100. 773-510-9290 NO SEC DEP
7801 S. Bishop. 2BR. $610/mo. HEAT INCL 773-955-5106
7425 S. COLES - 1 BR $620, 2
Newly updated, clean furnished rooms in Joliet, near buses & Metra, elevator. Utilities included, $91/wk. $395/mo. 815-722-1212 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
Forest Park: 1BR new tile, energy efficient windows, lndry facilitities, a/c, incls heat - natural gas, $895/ mo Luis 708-366-5602 lv msg
1 BR $700-$799 CHICAGO 92ND AND M a r quette, Good location, 2BR, first floor, quiet bldg, Nice! Heat included, $750 w/1 mo rent & 1 mo sec. 773-505-1853
RIVERDALE, IL 1 Bedroom Condo, newly decorated, off st. parking, gated comm. $750 + sec. Call Mr. Jackson 708-846-9734 ALSIP: Large 1 Bedroom Apartment, 1BA, $770/month. Appliances, laundry, parking & storage. Call 708-268-3762
1 BR $800-$899 UPTOWN,
4344 NORTH CLARENDON AVENUE, #1 (At Montrose) Large 2 bedroom vintage apt with hardwood floors and updates. New Stone/Quartz bath and new kitchen with granite top and stainless steel appliances: stove/ ref/dishwasher. Private front balcony. 2 blocks from lake $1400 (includes heat and hot water) Call EJM 773-935-4425
LARGE GARDEN APARTMENT. 6802 N. Wolcott. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. $850/month (heat included) Available 8/1. 773-761-4318.
EVERGREEN PARK, SPACIOUS 1BR, elevator bldg., appliances, heat incl, close to Christ Hospital, $870/mo. 708-422-8801 77TH AND PRAIRIE, 1BR Apt, ready now, heat incl, section 8 welcome. $800/mo. G.R.B Company. 773-955-0900
1 BR OTHER 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.
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** 6748 CRANDON & 7727 COLFAX MOST BEAUTIFUL APARTMENTS! 1 & 2BR, $625 & UP. OFF STREET PARKING. 773-947-8572 / 312-613-4424
JULY 12, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 35
ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL
REAL ESTATE
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 ∫
RENTALS
1 BR OTHER 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*** 92ND & ADA, 1 & 2BR, lg & spacious w/ DR, hdwd flrs, sunporch, fireplace, heat & appls incl. Sect 8 ok $850-$975/mo + sec. 773-4156914
SALES & MARKETING
SUBURBS, RENT TO OWN! 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
SALES & MARKETING
2 BR UNDER $900 Chicago, 9121 S. Cottage Grove, 2BR apt. $1050/mo Newly remod, appls, mini blinds, ceiling fans, pkng Sec 8 OK. Free Heat 312-915-0100
CHICAGO, 3400 W & 1900 S., Newly decorated 2.5BR Apartment, $700/mo + 1 mo sec. Call 773-626-8993 or 773-653-6538 CHICAGO 94-3739 S. Bishop. 2BR, 5 Rms, 1st & 2nd flr, appls, parking, storage, near shops/ trans. $950 + sec. No pets. 708335-0786 CHICAGO,
89th & Blackstone, avail now! 6.5 rms, 2BR, 3rd flr, heat incl, need appls, $850/mo + move-in fee. Call 773-375-9842, 1pm-6pm
SALES & MARKETING
8943 S. ADA. Safe, secure 2-3BR, separate heating, school & metra 1 blk away, $875 & Up. Section 8 welcome. Call 708-465-6573 CHICAGO SW 1516 W. 58th St. & 5759 S. Justine, Updated 2BR, cfans, quiet, hdwd flrs, formal LR/DR, Intercom, $800. 312-719-3733 BLUE ISLAND,
2BR Apt, $845/month. Heat & hot water incl. Appls + security 708-205-1454 or 630-570-9572
2 BR $900-$1099 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 CHICAGO, 6825 S. TALLMAN AVE. Newly renovated 2BR Apt, $1100/mo. For all inquiries please call Mr. Hodges, 773-524-8157
SALES & MARKETING
Retail
HYDE PARK 2BR $1295 Newly decorated, hdwd flrs, stove & fridge incl, Free Heat & Hot water. Free credit check, no application fee, laundry facilities. 1-773-667-6477 or 1-312-802-7301
BEAUTIFUL REMOD 1, 2 & 3BR Apts, hdwd flrs, custom cabinets, granite cntrs, avail now. $1000$1200 /mo + sec. 773-905-8487. Section 8 Ok 10446 EGGLESTON. 2-3BR Ranch, 1.5BA, tenant pays heat and electric. $400 move-in fee. $1200/ mo. Sec 8 Welcome 708-417-6999 SECTION 8 WELCOME. NO SECURITY DEPOSIT. 718 W 81st St, 5BR, 2BA house, appls incl., $1300/mo. 708-288-4510 7315 S. MICHIGAN Ave. Large, newly renov 2BR Apt, $1100/mo, heat incl. For all inquiries please call Mr. Hodges 773-524-8157
2 BR $1500 AND OVER LARGE BRIGHT LINCOLN Pk
2Bd, 1Bth, In Unit W/D, Roof Deck, Back Porch, HVAC, Fireplace, DW, Hardwood Floors, Available Immediately. $2000-$2900. Call: 773-4725944
2 BR OTHER 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
BINNY’S IS HIRING!
HUGE
CIGAR SALES SPECIALIST
11339 S. CALUMET. 3BR, 2nd flr, fully carpeted, new ceramic tile bath, new kit w/tile & counter, stove & fridge incl., elec incl. $1100. 773-519-7011 53 W. 110TH ST. CHA Welcome. 3BR, 1.5BA, newly renovated, stove & fridge incl., $ 1250/mo. $625 Move in Fee. Call 773-876-6591 6119 S. ADA. Beaut. 5BR, 1. 5ba, lrg bckyrd, quiet, well kept area. Major appls incl. Utils not incl. Sec 8 OK. $1390. 773-720-9787 LOVELY 3BR AUSTIN APT,
Newly decor, LR, Formal DR, Eat in Kit, 1BA, heated. $1200 + sec. Sect 8 Welc. 773-287-2545
3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799
IMMAC
RIVERDALE:
Must See 3BR
apt, Newly decor. Carpet, nr metra, no pets. $900/mo +sec. Avail Now 708-829-1454 or 708-754-5599
www.binnys.com/careers
HARVEY 3BR, 1BA, newer paint & crpt, finished bsmt, fenced yard, tenant pays utillities. $1050/mo + 1 mo sec dep. 708-927-1950
BRONZEVILLE: SECTION 8 WELCOME. No Security Deposit. 4841 S Michigan. 4BR $1300 . Appls incl. 708-288-4510
ADULT SERVICES
LARGE 3 BEDROOM apartment near Wrigley Field. 3822 N. Fremont. Hardwood Floors. Cats OK. $2175/ month. Available 8/1. Single parking space available for $175/month. Tandem spot available for $250/month. (773) 761-4318
LAKEVIEW -1440 W Barry, 3 BEDROOM , 2 bath, dishwasher, central air, laundry in building, deck. Pets ok. Walk to red/brown line. $1895/mo. 815-345-7958 call or text
3 BR OR MORE OTHER LARGE LAKEVIEW DUPLEX. 4 BR/2BA. Great location
Sheffield and Oakdale. Walk out deck. Stainless and granite kitchen, Jacuzzi in bath, hardwood floors. Cable/internet, laundry. Parking available. $2950. 312-543-5548, 773-339-7783
CHICAGO, 12328 S. Normal, newly remod 3BR, 1BA, hdwd flrs, low security deposit. Near elementary school. $1200/mo. 708275-1751
SOUTHSIDE NEWLY REMOD, 5BR, 2BA, finished bsmt, huge fenced-in backyard with parking, SS Appls & W/D. 773-908-8791
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
SECTION 8 WELCOME 13356 S Brandon 4/1 W/D incl
Please apply online at
3 $1800-$2499
MARKHAM COMPLETELY REMODELED 4, 5 & 6BR, 2BA,
EAST 115TH ST, 3 BR/2BA, full bsmt, stove/refrig incl, encl yard, security system, tenant pays utils, no pets, $1175+ move in fee 773817-4680
GREAT HOME 82ND and Ci-
cero- SCOTTSDALE Amazing ranch. 1273 sq feet. Corner Lot. 3 bedrooms 1 bathroom, hardwood floors, huge kitchen with eating area, new stainless steel appliances, in nice quiet neighboorhood. Newly rehabbed with new appliances. 2 car garage and side fenced backyard make this home the ideal place to call home! Perfectly located close to public transportation, stores, schools and restaurants. call 708 785 8852 for a showing.
ADULT SERVICES
FOR SALE
LONGBOAT KEY FL: Gorgeous 8/1. Parking space available for $75/ condo, all 3 BRS face Gulf of Mexico, 3 marble baths, priv. stairway month. (773)761-4318. to white sand beach, tennis, golf, 24-hr concierge, email: saldan171@ aol.com BR OR MORE
2 car attached garage, finished bsmt. Section 8 ok. Call 847-804-9210
2BR/1BA
$1300. 7134 S. Normal. 4/2. $1300 225 W. 108th Pl. 2/1 w/ht. $1000. appls inc. No Dep 312-683-5174
LARGE 3 BEDROOM, one bath apartment, 4423 N. Paulina. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. $1790/ month. Heat included. Available
SUMMER SPECIAL, SECTION 8 Ok, 3, 4 & 5 BR houses avail. South Side: 773-287-9999, West Side: 773-287-4500.
3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200
Qualified persons must be able to lift 40-50 lbs. and available to work flexible hours including evenings, weekends and holidays.
CHICAGO Southside Brand New 3BR & 4BR apartments. Exc. neighborhood, near public transp. For details call 708-774-2473
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
BUYING OLD WHISKEY/ BOURBON/RYE! Looking for full/ sealed vintage bottles and decanters. PAYING TOP DOLLAR!! 773-263-5320
HEALTH & WELLNESS 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
MASSAGE OFFICE in Northbrook invites you for relaxation session. Swedish Relaxation $75/hr. Call or text for your appointment 630-842-3317
BODY MASSAGE 312-834-2806
Located Downtown Chicago In Call / Out Call Available
ADULT SERVICES MATURE WOMAN, GOOD natured, busts beauty, who can offer you companionship, looking for a
mature, wealthy gentleman who will be very generous with me. 224-2411523.
please recycle this paper ADULT SERVICES
ADULT SERVICES
EOE
REACH OVER
1 MILLION
PEOPLE MONTHLY IN PRINT & DIGITAL.
CONTACT US TODAY!
36 CHICAGO READER | JULY 12, 2018
3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499
newly remod, spac, quiet block & bldg, nr trans & shops. Won’t Last. Sec 8 Welcome. 312-519-9771
Assists in developing sales and providing assistance to customers. Keeps merchandise and store organized, while continuing to develop knowledge of store products. Must possess a thorough, in-depth knowledge of cigars.
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SOUTH SHORE AREA, Spacious 7 rooms, 3 bedrooms, heat included. $925/month + 1 months security. Call 773-375-1048
CHICAGO, DELUXE, N e w l y Decorated 2.5 & 3 BR, by 71st & Union. Free heat. $800$840/mo. Section 8 Welc. Mr. Wilson, 773-491-6580
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 Chicago location in Lincoln Park.
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SAVAGE LOVE
By Dan Savage
‘How do I come out as bisexual without misleading people?’ Dan Savage advises two men combatting the “erasure” of bisexuality. Q : Longtime Savage Love
fanboy with a bit of a conundrum—and it’s your fault! I’m a bi man in my 30s. To use Charles M. Blow’s word, my bisexuality is “lopsided”—I fall in love with women exclusively, but I love to have sex with men occasionally. My current girlfriend not only approves, she likes to join in. We have a great kinky sex life, and at times we invite a hot bi dude to join us. You keep saying that to counter bisexual erasure, it is the duty of every bisexual to come out of the closet. If I were a “proper” bisexual, i.e., romantically interested in men also, that would be no problem—my family and work and social circles are extremely liberal. However, your advice to us kinksters and people in open relationships is that we probably shouldn’t come out to our parents or colleagues, since when it comes to sex, it’s advisable to operate on a need-to-know basis. While I agree with this completely—my mother doesn’t need to know my girlfriend pegs me—the rule keeps me in the closet as well. Since I’m only sexually interested in men, wouldn’t I be revealing facts about my sex life if I came out as bi? I also wouldn’t want to mislead gay men into thinking that I’m available for romantic relationships with them. So which rule is more important: the duty to come out as a bisexual or the advice to operate on a needto-know basis when it comes to your sex life? —BISEXUAL LEANING OUT WARILY
A : There’s nothing improper
about your bisexuality, BLOW—or Charles M. Blow’s bisexuality, or the bisexuality of other “lopsided” bisexuals. While the idea that bisexuals are equally attracted to
men and women sexually and romantically used to be pushed by a lot of bi activists (“I fall in love with people, not genitals!”), it didn’t reflect the lived experience of most bisexuals. Like you and Blow (hetero-romantic bisexuals), many bisexuals have a strong preference for either women or men as romantic partners. This popular misconception—that bisexuals are indifferent to gender—left many people who were having sex with men and women feeling as if they didn’t have an identity. But thanks to bisexuals like Blow coming out and owning their bisexuality and their lopsidedness, a more nuanced and inclusive understanding of bisexuality has taken root. That nuance is reflected in bisexual activist Robyn Ochs’s definition of bisexuality: “I call myself bisexual,” Ochs says, “because I acknowledge that I have in myself the potential to be attracted—romantically and/or sexually—to people of more than one sex and/or gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree.” Lopsided or not, BLOW, you’re a proper bisexual, and if you’re in a position to come out to your family and friends, you should. And rest assured, telling people you’re bi doesn’t mean you’re divulging details about your sex life. You’re disclosing your sexual orientation, not detailing your sexual practices. And if you and your girlfriend are perceived to be monogamous and you want to keep it that way, you can allow people to continue to make that assumption. Finally, BLOW, most gay men are aware that bi guys usually aren’t romantically interested in other men. And that’s fine—so long as hetero-romantic bi guys don’t
mislead us, most gay men are down to fuck. (And gay men who won’t date homo-romantic or bi-romantic men? You guys are missing out.)
Q : Bi married man here. I
was always out to my wife, but two months ago, I came out to our tight circle of friends. Everyone has been supportive, and I’m glad I took this step. But on three different occasions, my wife’s best friend has loudly asked me whose cock I would most like to suck out of all the other guys at the party. My birthday is coming up, and I don’t want her there. My wife doesn’t want to offend her oldest friend, and she makes excuses like “She was drunk” or “She was only joking.” I told my wife that I wouldn’t be coming to my own birthday party if her friend was invited, but she invited her anyway “by accident.” She doesn’t want to confront or disinvite her friend because that would be awkward. What do we do? —H ER UNTHINKING
BUDDY BAD YUCKS
A : Here’s what you’re going
to do, HUBBY: You’re going to ask your wife how she would feel if a friend of yours was sexually harassing her and you made excuses for that friend (“He was drunk!”) and then “accidentally” invited that asshole to her birthday party. Then if she won’t call her friend and retract the invitation, you do it. It will be awkward, that’s for sure, but your wife’s friend shouldn’t be spared that awkwardness. Lord knows she made things awkward for you—don’t hesitate to return the favor. v Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at savagelovecast.com. @fakedansavage.com
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JULY 12, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 37
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Alejandro Excovedo Band 9/16, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, $32-$68 b Bettye LaVette 10/20, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, $25-$55 b Case 8/18, 8 PM, Schubas, $10, $15 at door b Cut Worms, Glyders 9/20, 9 PM, Schubas, $15, 18+ Dwele 11/29, 9:30 PM, City Winery, $38-$60 Elizabeth Cook, Caleb Caudle 10/26, 7 PM, SPACE, Evanston, $20-$30 b The Empty Pockets 8/21, 8 PM, City Winery, $28-$38 Giorgio Moroder 8/31, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, $30-$50, 17+ Good Charlotte 11/4, 5:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, $38.50, $42.50 day of b Grant-Lee Phillips, Josh Rouse 10/17, 8 PM, City Winery, $22-$32 Gregory Alan Isakov 11/7, The Vic, $35, $40 day of, 18+ Har-di-har, She Speaks in Tongues, Foatie 8/16, 9 PM, Hideout, $10 Irreversible Entanglements 7/23, 8:30 PM, Constellation, on sale now, $15, 18+ James Bay, David Ryan Harris 3/19, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, $37.50, 17+ John Popper 9/18, City Winery, $55-$68 Jonathan Richman 10/27, 9 PM, Thalia Hall, $18-$40, 17+ Jordanna, Sports Boyfriend, Glitter Moneyyy, Yomi 9/2, 8 PM, Schubas, $12, 18+ Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Cool Maritime 7/22, 10 PM, Constellation, on sale now, $15-$18, 18+ Lawrence 9/20, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, $20, $22 at door, 18+ Local H 11/18, 8 PM, Lincoln
Hall, $20 Lucero, Brent Cowles 9/28, 8 PM, Metro, $26, $30 day of, 18+ Ludlow, Kelroy, The Bishop’s Daredevil Stunt Club, Trick Shooter Social Club 8/18, 8:30 PM, Metro, $12, $15 day of The Main Squeeze and Bonelang 11/23, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, $19-$30, 17+ Mako Sica, Hamid Drake 8/30, 8:30 PM, Constellation, Free, 18+ F Marcia Ball 8/23, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, $22-$47 b Martha’s Vineyard Ferries, Nonagon, Out 7/29, 8 PM, Hideout, $10 Matana Roberts 8/16, 6 PM, Art Institute of Chicago, $10, $5 students and members b Miranda Winters, Joe & Linda, Mia Joy 9/23, 9 PM, Schubas, $10, 18+ Mod Sun 10/3, 6 PM, Bottom Lounge, $22.50 b Night Moves, Wavy ID 11/10, 10 PM, Schubas, $12 Of Montreal, Locate S 10/30, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, $25$50, 17+ Ollie & Packy, Gianni Taylor 9/6, 7 PM, Schubas, $10, $13 at door b Paula Abdul 10/27, 9 PM, Silver Creek Events Center, New Buffalo, on sale Fri 7/13 10 AM, $65+ The Sadies 8/6, 7 PM, Hideout, $15 Sam Evian 10/2, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, $12, $14 b Sean Rowe 9/29, 9 PM, Hideout, $15 Seasaw, Dream Vision, Uma Bloo 9/28, 9 PM, Hideout, $8 Sister Sparrow & The Dirty Birds 10/31, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, $17, $20 at door, 18+ Sloththrust 10/27, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, $18, $16 pre-sale, 18+
38 CHICAGO READER - JULY 12, 2018
Sons of Kemet 10/3, 9 PM, Schubas, $15, $17 at door, 18+ Strung Out and Makewar 8/24, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Todd Snider 11/7, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, $25-$75 b Toe, Jack Grace 9/13, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, $20, 17+ Toro y Moi 11/6, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, $25-$40 We Were Promised Jetpacks 9/25, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, $22, $25 at door, 18+ Yaeji 10/28, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, $20-$25, 17+ Youngr 10/27, 9 PM, Chop Shop, $15-$18, 18+
UPDATED James Bay 3/19, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, on sale Fri 7/13, 10 AM, $37.50, 17+ Andy Shauf 11/29-30, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 11/30 sold out, second show added, 18+
UPCOMING Avenged Sevenfold, Prophets of Rage 8/11, 8 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Bahamas 8/6, 6:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park Fb Big Sam’s Funky Nation 9/13, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Black Milk & Nat Turner 7/17, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Mary J. Blige 7/20, 8 PM, Ravinia Festival, Highland Park b A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, Femdot 8/3, 11 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Luke Bryan, Sam Hunt 9/1, 7 PM, Wrigley Field Car Seat Headrest, Naked Giants 9/7, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b
Kenny Chesney 7/28, 5 PM, Soldier Field Cigarettes After Sex 8/4, 11 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Howie Day, Nick Barilla 7/18, 8 PM, City Winery b Dumpstaphunk 9/6, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Eliane Elias 11/13, 8 PM, City Winery b Fleetwood Mac 10/6, 8 PM, United Center Greg Fox 7/28, 9 PM, Hideout Gallant 11/3, 6:30 PM, Concord Music Hall b Godsmack, Shinedown 7/27, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Goldlink 8/3, 11 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Curtis Harding 8/3, 10 PM, Empty Bottle Justin Hayward 8/26, 4:30 and 8 PM, City Winery, late show sold out b Ionnalee, Tungorna 8/13, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge, 18+ J. Cole 9/22, 7:30 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Joey Purp 9/22, 9:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Kansas 10/13, 7:30 PM, Chicago Theatre Mark Kozelek 9/11, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Lady Antebellum, Darius Rucker 9/15, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Lettuce 10/4, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Don McLean 8/19, 8 PM, City Winery b Motet 10/5, 11:45 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Mourn, Chastity 8/7, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Mt. Joy 9/6, 8 PM, Thalia Hall b Murder by Death 10/6, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Needtobreathe, Johnnyswim 9/8, 7 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Owl City 10/13, 8 PM, House of Blues b Ozuna 10/5, 8 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont, on sale Fri 7/6, 10 AM Parquet Courts, Dream Wife 8/2, 11 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Pearl Jam 8/18, 7 PM; 8/20, 7 PM, Wrigley Field Post Animal 8/4, 10 PM, Empty Bottle Psyclon Nine, Panic Lift 8/25, 6 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Quintron & Miss Pussycast 9/12, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Rex Orange County 8/4, 11 PM,
ALL AGES
WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK
EARLY WARNINGS
CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME
F
Subterranean, 17+ Gruff Rhys 10/14, 8 PM, Chop Shop, 18+ Logan Richardson 10/23, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Serena Ryder 7/23, 8 PM, City Winery b Saint Etienne 9/13, 7:30 PM, Park West b Jon Stickley Trio 8/19, 8 PM, Hideout Tower of Power 8/8, 8 PM; 8/9, 8 PM; 8/10, 7 and 10 PM, City Winery b Träd Gräs och Stenar, Endless Boogie 10/4, 9 PM, Hideout Unknown Mortal Orchestra 7/27, 8 PM, House of Vans Keith Urban, Kelsea Ballerini 8/18, 7:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Vaccines, Regrettes 8/4, 11 PM, Schubas, 18+ Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons 11/3, 8 PM, Auditorium Theatre Wax Idols, Shadow Age 9/9, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Whitney, Ne-Hi 8/12, 6:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park Fb David Wilcox 9/30, 3 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Wild Rivers 10/12, 7 PM, Martyrs’ Jess Williamson 8/8, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Alicia Witt 8/22, 8 PM, City Winery b Wiz Khalifa, Rae Sremmurd 7/29, 6 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Wolf Parade 8/8, 8 PM, House of Vans Yungblud 10/18, 7 PM, Subterranean b Zeal & Ardor, Astronoid 9/29, 9 PM, Subterranean, 17+
SOLD OUT Against Me! 7/28, 10 PM, Subterranean Animal Collective, Lonnie Holley 7/27, 7:30 PM, The Vic, sold out b Chvrches, Sasha Sloan 8/1, 9 PM, Metro, sold out, 18+ Dinosaur Jr. 7/19, 7:30 PM, Temperance Beer Company, Evanston, part of Out of Space, sold out Sylvan Esso 7/23-24, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, sold out b Franz Ferdinand 8/1, 9 PM, Park West, sold out, 18+ Gaslight Anthem 8/11, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, sold out b Carly Rae Jepsen, Morgxn 8/3, 11 PM, Park West, sold out, 18+ Tenacious D 11/13-14, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, sold out, 18+ Greta Van Fleet, Dorothy 8/4, 11 PM, The Vic, sold out, 18+ Walk the Moon 8/4, 10 PM, Concord Music Hall, sold out, 17+ v
GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene LAST FALL Gossip Wolf fell for indierock outfit Man’s Body via their debut EP, Found. This transcontinental band consists of Los Angeles scene vet Greg Franco, also of Rough Church (guitar, vocals), and two Chicagoans, Marco Obaya (guitar, bass) and J. Niimi (guitar, drums)—you may know Niimi from Chicago-Australia pop group Ashtray Boy or his Reader music writing in the 2000s. On Friday, July 13, Man’s Body drop their first full-length, Put Your Family in It, on Franco’s Beautiful Workhorse label, and that night they celebrate with a show at Debonair Social Club. (They play live as a five-piece.) Fans of the Pixies and skinny-tie power pop should dig the band’s easy hooks and melodic guitar clatter—the new video for “Man’s Body Theme” provides a taste. Gossip Wolf has been eager for recordings from CB Radio Gorgeous (members of Forced Into Femininity, Red Delicious, Big Zit, and Negative Scanner) since giving the band a big “ten-four” in January! Last month they posted a few furious jams on Bandcamp (think 70s UK DIY and the Minutemen), and local hardcore label Not Normal Tapes will drop a cassette version next Friday. On Saturday, July 21, at Happy Gallery, CBRG play a skateboardcentric benefit for the Florence Project, which provides legal and social services for detained immigrants. The show starts at 6 PM and includes a raffle of gear from Unity Skateboarding, Pardon My Thrashing, and Vans. You can also meet folks at Roberto Clemente Community Academy at 4 PM for some preshow grinding! For three and a half years, Fresh Roasted has hosted a monthly battle for hiphop producers: typically two record collectors bring LPs, which three beat makers use to make new tracks. At the Whistler on Thursday, July 12, King Hippo and Kten provide the records, and the battlers are John Simmons, Kenny Keys, and Artie Do Good, who recently released an album in homage to Pablo Neruda. —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.
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SAM HUNT
DIERKS BENTLEY
TOBY KEITH
LUKE BRYAN
GET YOUR TICKETS NOW AT COUNTRYTHUNDER.COM JULY 12, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 39
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