Print Issue of July 6, 2017 (Volume 46, Number 39) by Chicago Reader

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

In Rahm’s Chicago, a shuttered public school becomes upscale apartments. 8

Longtime SAIC adjunct professor resigns citing “abuse of Title IX protections.” 19

“WHO THE HELL IS GOING TO GO TO A PUBLIC HOUSING After 20 years of battling for its building, the National Public Housing Museum’s most signiﬁcant challenges lie ahead. BY MAYA DUKMASOVA 11

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THIS WEEK

C H I C A G O R E A D E R | J U LY 6 , 2 0 1 7 | V O L U M E 4 6 , N U M B E R 3 9

FEATURE

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MUSEUMS

The National Public Housing Museum’s long journey home

After 20 years of battling for its building, the nascent institution’s most signiﬁcant challenges lie ahead. BY MAYA DUKMASOVA 11 ò SUN-TIMES/JOHN H WHITE

EDITOR JAKE MALOOLEY CREATIVE DIRECTOR VINCE CERASANI CULTURE EDITOR TAL ROSENBERG DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS FILM EDITOR J.R. JONES MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO ASSOCIATE EDITORS STEVE HEISLER, KATE SCHMIDT, KEVIN WARWICK SENIOR WRITER MIKE SULA SENIOR THEATER CRITIC TONY ADLER STAFF WRITERS MAYA DUKMASOVA, LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, AIMEE LEVITT, PETER MARGASAK, JULIA THIEL SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR RYAN SMITH GRAPHIC DESIGNER SUE KWONG MUSIC LISTINGS COORDINATOR LUCA CIMARUSTI FILM LISTINGS COORDINATOR PATRICK FRIEL CONTRIBUTING WRITERS NOAH BERLATSKY, MATT DE LA PEÑA, ANNE FORD, ISA GIALLORENZO, JOHN GREENFIELD, ANDREA GRONVALL, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, DAN JAKES, BILL MEYER, MICHAEL MINER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, LEAH PICKETT, BEN SACHS, DMITRY SAMAROV, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERNS LIBBY BERRY, PORTER MCLEOD, EMILY WASIELEWSKI ----------------------------------------------------------------

IN THIS ISSUE 8 Joravsky | Politics A shuttered Chicago public school promoted as “best in the class” upscale apartments is a big fail. 10 Transportation Are reckless driving and reckless biking equally unethical?

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4 Agenda The play The Chiraq War, Bertrand Tavernier’s ﬁlm My Journey Through French Cinema, and more goings-on about town

ARTS & CULTURE

CITY LIFE

7 Street View A fashionista found in the pharmacy aisle 7 Chicagoans A 17-year-old becomes a ﬁrst-generation college graduate thanks to a program called P-TECH.

humble yellow onion into the star of the show.

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READER (ISSN 1096-6919) IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY STM READER, LLC, 350 N. ORLEANS, CHICAGO, IL 60654.

ON THE COVER: SUN-TIMES ARCHIVE PHOTO OF AN ABLA BUILDING CIRCA 1988

22 Movies In The Journey, lifelong political antagonists in Northern Ireland ﬁnd common ground in their own zealotry.

19 Higher Education Comics and outsider-art expert Michael Bonesteel blasts “Title IX abuse” at the School of the Art Institute. 20 Theater With Ah, Wilderness!, the Goodman gives us O’Neill without tears. 21 Visual Art The Art Institute’s “Artist as Alchemist” downplays the controversial context surrounding Paul Gauguin’s output.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

38 Jobs 38 Apartments & Spaces 39 Marketplace

FOOD & DRINK

40 Straight Dope Are self-driving cars really only a few years away? 41 Savage Love Is it crazy to consider reconciling with a guy who can’t be sexually satisﬁed with vanilla? 42 Early Warnings Jeﬀ Daniels & the Ben Daniels Band, Charles Gayle, and more shows you should know about in the weeks to come 42 Gossip Wolf A celebration of the life of AACM cofounder Kelan Phil Cohran, and more music news

25 Shows of note DJ Shadow, Gorillaz, Monsta X, and more 32 The Secret History of Chicago Music Session drummer Morris Jennings played on Electric Mud, the Superﬂy soundtrack, and scores of other records. 34 Restaurant review: Clever Rabbit The West Town spot is a feeding frenzy for plant eaters. 37 Key Ingredient: Yellow onion The Delta chef Adam Wendt turns the

JULY 6, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 3

AGENDA R

READER RECOMMENDED

P Send your events to agenda@chicagoreader.com

b ALL AGES

F and overwrought symbology, ultimately asking us to ponder interpersonal responsibility in an amoral world. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 7/15: ThuSat 8 PM, McKaw Theater, 1439 W. Jarvis, 773-655-7197, hotshotproductions. org, $15.

JULY 14–16, 2017 UNION PARK, CHICAGO

TICKET G I V E AWAY JUNE 21 – JULY 7, 2017

The Portrait of Dorian Gray

THEATER

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Alone, With Friends Steve (Jonathan Rivera), the awkward star of Lee Peters’s new play, is gay, lonely, and miserable. He’s always around straight boys (he feels safe with them) but he wants to know—are they really his friends? Is Alex (Ben Page) a friend, or do they just hang out? Conveniently, they’re both getting over breakups; but trading bong rips in Alex’s gross apartment and brooding over mayonnaise sandwiches about how their exes could possibly have left them doesn’t feel all that genuine. How about Greg (Henry Steinken), that jock from Steve’s fraternity who just keeps handing Steve his ass in beer pong? Or David (Chris Lysy), who’s always showing up at the bar—cute, secretly gay, perhaps, so possibly? Searching for stable deﬁnitions of friendship in unstable times, it’s a wistful and funny play, if occasionally dull. — MAX MALLER Through 7/15: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Prop Thtr, 3502 N. Elston, 773-5397838, propthtr.org, $20. At the Table Michael Perlman’s brilliant 2015 dramedy is the sort of aural masterpiece that would feel at home in the lineup at LA Theatre Works’ Radio Theatre Series, which streams top-tier performances of language-driven theater. A group of thirtysomething friends gathers, sans social media, in a vacation country house over the course of two weekends one year apart. Over whiskey and hits oﬀ a weed pen, Robert Altman-style conversations play out about privilege, growing pains, relationships, politics, and good ol’ existential dread. Back in February, when Broken Nose Theatre and director Spenser Davis debuted the show’s current iteration, I was too caught up in how astute and prescient is was to appreciate just how blisteringly funny it is. Though Perlman’s script has the goods to be great over

many productions, audiences would do well to see it now with Echaka Agba. —DAN JAKES Through 7/28: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Mon 7/10, 7:30 PM (industry night); Wed 7/19 and 7/26, 7:30 PM (understudy nights), Den Theatre, 1329-1333 N. Milwaukee, 773-609-2336, brokennosetheatre.com, suggested donation $1-$40. The Bridges of Madison County Some things work in Marriott’s revival of the 2014 musical adaptation of Robert James Waller’s 1992 best-selling romance novel, about an affair between an unfulfilled wife and a rootless National Geographic photographer. The casting, performances, and staging are strong—Kathy Voytko is outstanding as the heroine, and Jeffrey D. Kmiec’s set design is brilliant. But the story, adapted by Marsha Norman from Waller’s novel, takes way too long to unfold, then feels rushed at the end as Norman and songwriter Jason Robert Brown try to squeeze a couple decades of the character’s lives into about 20 minutes of stage time. Likewise, Brown’s score, though intelligent and accomplished (it won multiple Tony awards in 2014), is oddly cold and unmemorable. —JACK HELBIG Through 8/13: Wed 1 and 8 PM, Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 4:30 and 8 PM, Sun 1 and 5 PM; also Thu 8/13, 1 PM, Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, 10 Marriott Dr., Lincolnshire, 847-634-0200, marriotttheatre.com, $52-$57.

The Gin Game S.L. Colburn’s 1977 two-act two-hander, about two prickly senior citizens who forge a friendship of sorts while playing gin in a retirement community, is by turns funny, moving, and way too drawn-out. Even when performed by top-ﬂight eminences of a certain age—Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy in the 70s, Charles Durning and Julie Harris in the 90s—the play drags and disappoints. Here it’s performed by Chicago stalwarts (and real-life married couple) Paula Scrofano and John Reeger and directed by Ross Lehman, but while the actors comedy and heart into the thin material, their sweet, quirky sparking only makes the play’s rough, unresolved ending seem all the more a cop-out. —JACK HELBIG Through 8/13: Wed 1:30 PM, Thu 1:30 and 8 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 5 and 8:30 PM, Sun 2 and 6 PM, Drury Lane Oakbrook Terrace, 100 Drury Ln., Oakbrook Terrace, 630-530-0111, drurylaneoakbrook.com, $38-$55. The Portrait of Dorian Gray In Oscar Wilde’s 1890 novel, innocent young Dorian descends into decadence and depravity even as he ascends London’s social ladder. His moral ugliness fails to leave a physical mark, though, because the titular portrait has somehow absorbed his soul. All his grotesqueness registers there, leaving his outward persona deceptively perfect. Runaway Lab Theatre deserves kudos for recognizing how well the tale aligns with social-media culture, where your brand so easily overwhelms your being. Yet this 70-minute adaptation plays like a rough draft for the show that might be. As devised by Olivia Lilley and the ensemble, it lacks clarity and velocity while strangely failing to make real use of the technology around which it revolves. The portrait itself consists of nothing more than a couple transparencies seen through an overhead projector. Peter Wilde is tart and Jojo Brown sweet in supporting roles (I’d like

to see a version with Brown in the lead), but Dorothy Humphrey doesn’t push convincingly past innocence as Dorian. —TONY ADLER Through 7/29: Fri-Sat 10 PM, Studio 4001, 4001 N. Ravenswood, 773-935-4001, runawayslab.org, $12. The School for Lies Molière, in R his 1666 comedy The Misanthrope, skewered the hypocrisies of French aris-

tocratic society. David Ives, in his giddily unfaithful 2011 adaptation of Molière’s masterpiece, packs so many impudent anachronisms into his nonsensical 17th-century France (Frank, the updated misanthrope, detests, for starters, “fat fucks in flip-flops”) that no coherent social order remains. Thus it’s never clear why this coterie of do-nothings hangs together, whether they fit into any pecking order, or how their private notes put them in great legal jeopardy. The performances alone carry the day, and in director Kathy Scambiatterra’s spritely but overlong staging for Artistic Home, they’re mostly delightful, and none more so than Brookelyn Hebert’s unimpeachable Eliante. She’s mouse, lion, virgin, slattern, doormat and dominatrix in equally intoxicating doses. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 8/13: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, the Artistic Home, 1376 W. Grand, 312-243-3963, theartistichom. com, $28-$32.

DANCE Changes Coinciding with the return of 1950s-style xenophobia, Chicago Tap Theatre’s third staging of Changes brings back alien invasions and benevolent Americans in a so-called sci-fi tap-dance opera about good aliens, bad aliens, and a heroine who acts as witness, victim, and ineffectual savior within a narrative of seduction, betrayal, and redemption. Is tap an appropriate medium for a story of such evident complexity? Sort of—if instead of bel canto you prefer the repartee of the feet, and you appreciate an outer space that looks like vaudeville transposed by a few pixels so that hayseeds hoofing with canes become corseted extraterrestrials swinging flashing bazookas to a score of Bowie hits. Lasers, fog, rockets, and

The Chiraq War Chicago civic R order has collapsed. Finn and Cutter, fending their way through an

abandoned city walled off from the rest of the nation and patrolled by sadistic federal police and marauding gangs, first attack each other, then team up in an effort to find a way out. Playwright and director Jeff Newman’s dystopic one-act is the sort that invites testosterone-fueled overacting, but fortunately Newman and company play things tight to the vest (except during multiple eruptions of terrifically unconvincing stage violence), resulting in a thoughtful, tense, and occasionally philosophical pulp fantasy. Though there’s some irony overkill via a roving madman quoting various American presidents between scenes, the story avoids easy moralizing

The School for Lies

Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of July 6 For more of the best things to do every day of the week, go to chicagoreader. com/agenda. including characters and videos created with Mooney’s creative partner, Dave McCary. Wed 7/12, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, 312-526-3851, thaliahallchicago.com, $25.

Kyle Mooney ò TOMMASO BODDI

the curiously asynchronous playing of a string duet aside, tap’s best use here is the tantrum tattoo of protest in the intergalactic battle ﬁnale. —Irene Hsiao Through 7/16: Fri and Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont, 773-3275252, stage773.com, $23-$37. Chicago y Cuba 2017: The R International Dance Experience Cuba’s National School of Ballet visits Chicago for a joint performance with the Ruth Page Center for the Arts. Fri 7/7, 7-10 PM, Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn, 312-337-6543, ruthpage.org, $20.

Durdhara: The Unstoppable One Sarmishtha Sarkar, an expert in the classical Indian dance form bharatanatyam, tells a David and Goliath tale of a young heroine facing a seasoned warrior. Sat 7/8, 7:30 PM, Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th, 773-702-2787, arts.uchicago.edu/explore/ reva-and-david-logan-center-arts. F

Summer Dance-Oﬀs This month, R as part of the Chicago Park District’s SummerDance program, venues across the city—including Garﬁeld Park (100 N. Central Park), Washington Park (5531 S. Russell), Hamilton Park Cultural Center (513 W. 72nd), and Austin Town Hall Park (5610 W. Lake)—host step and footwork competitions. Start practicing now. 7/6-7/27: Thu 2-5 PM, various locations, cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/ dca/supp_info/chicago_summerdance. html. F

COMEDY

#IMOMSOHARD Kristin Hensley R and Jen Smedley’s online videos have earned an audience in the tens of

millions with their breezy improvisational banter about what it’s like being a mom, etc. This evening of conversation at the Vic features not only the women behind the curtain but their mysterious children and husbands. Fri 7/7, 7 PM and 9:30 PM, the Vic, 3145 N. Sheﬃeld, 773-472-0449, victheatre.com, $39.75-$49.75. Kyle Mooney The SNL star R brings his subversive, offbeat, captivating, and occasionally awkward

comedy to Chicago. The evening features a jumble of comedic styles,

JULY 14–16, 2017

Those Who Can’t The teachers R at the Second City Training Center ﬂip the nonscript and improvise for

their students. Second City has a storied history of hiring top talent to teach— especially folks who’ve worked together at higher levels of comedy—so expect friendly play, ribbing, and excitement at merely being back onstage. Tue 7/11, 10:30 PM, Judy’s Beat Lounge, Second City Training Center, 230 W. North, second ﬂoor, 312-337-3992, $5.

VISUAL ARTS AKR: A Beauty Salon In 2016, artist and author Amy Krouse Rosenthal conceived of a different sort of “beauty salon”: a “forum where artists, authors, musicians, and others would convene to talk about and work on the beautiful things they were making.” In tribute to “AKR,” who died in March, this exhibit creates a space for a celebration of creativity featuring a re-creation of Rosenthal’s favorite coffee shop, pop-up yoga classes, a temporary tattoo parlor, and more. 7/8-8/12: Tue-Fri 10:30 AM-6 PM, Sat 11 AM-5 PM. Carrie Secrist Gallery, 835 W. Washington, 312-491-0917, secristgallery. com. Kobe Jordon Kaine: UrBan Terrorist The Chicago-based artist’s first solo show utilizes items historically associated with urban poverty to create beautiful art. Through his repetitive pieces, Kaine wishes to reject the traditional idea of what it means to be American, while bringing awareness to what divides us. 7/7-7/29. Tue-Sat 11 AM-5 PM. Elephant Room, Inc., 704 S. Wabash, 708-369-4742, elephantroomgallery.com.

UNION PARK, CHICAGO

The B-Side: Elsa Dofman’s Portrait Photography takes questions about his new book, The Cell: Discovering the Microscopic World That Determines Our Health, Our Consciousness, and Our Future. Hmm, we should probably listen. Sat 7/8, 5 PM, Book Cellar, 4736 N. Lincoln, 773-2932665, bookcellarinc.com. Samaria Rice: A Mother Speaks The mother of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old who was murdered by Cleveland police in 2014, speaks about the horriﬁc event, the gazebo she received in commemoration, and why that gazebo was brought to Chicago last year. Fri 7/7, 6-8 PM, Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island, 312-857-5561, rebuild-foundation. org/site/stony-island-arts-bank.

Samaria Rice ò FREDERICK M. BROWN

LIT & LECTURES

MOVIES

Daryl Gregory The Chicago-bred author will read from his new novel, Spoonbenders—the story of a family running the talk-show circuit with incredible acts like astral projection. He’s earned much acclaim for his previous work, but it’s great to see someone ﬁnally taking on the background of that bald kid from The Matrix (“There is no spoon”). Tue 7/11, 7 PM, Book Cellar, 4736 N. Lincoln, 773-293-2665, bookcellarinc.com.

Austin Found In the self-regarding city of Austin, Texas, an obsessive stage mother (Linda Cardellini) to an impish 11-year-old pageant contestant (Ursula Parker of FX’s Louie) enlists a yahoo ex-boyfriend (Skeet Ulrich) and his good-natured pal (Craig Robinson) to kidnap and then release the girl so that the media frenzy surrounding her disappearance can be used to land a book deal. Screenwriters Brenna Graziano and Will Raée pilfer their rickety plot from Joel and Ethan Coen’s Fargo (1996), right down to the ugly-ducking investigator (Kristen Schaal as a local TV

Joshua Z. Rappoport The professor at Northwestern University specializing in genes (and, possibly, jeans), reads and

More at chicagoreader.com/movies NEW REVIEWS

VIRGIN HOTELS CHICAGO GRAND PRIZE

reporter) who unravels the conspiracy amid touching heart-to-heart talks with her partner (Matt Jones as the reporter’s cameraman). There’s some sharp satire early on, but the criminal partnership between the mother and boyfriend strains credulity and the movie lacks the gravitas required for its late detour into emotionally ugly drama. Raée directed. —J.R. JONES 104 min. Fri 7/7-Thu 7/13. Facets Cinematheque

Pair of VIP Pitchfork tickets, Two-night stay, VIP access to all Cerise Rooftop Pitchfork After Parties (includes round of drinks at each party) and breakfast each morning

The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography Errol Morris indulges his long-standing interest in photographic method with this slight but agreeable profile of portrait photographer Elsa Dorfman, who made a big name for herself with large-format Polaroid photography but chose to retire after the company discontinued the film in 2008. Associated with Grove Press in the 60s, Dorfman took up photography in the mid-70s and shot numerous black-and-white images of literary and musical icons (Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jorge Luis Borges, Anaïs Nin, Anne Sexton, Audre Lorde, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Jonathan Richman). But the Polaroid portraits she began taking in 1980, captured in fluorescent tones on 20-by-24-inch film, brought out a new sense of color and artifice in her work. “I’m totally not interested in capturing their souls,” she tells Morris. “I’m only interested in how they seem.” To judge from this chatty, fleetly edited film, Morris feels the same way about her, but her story does illustrate the dilemma of an artist dependent on a corporation for her materials. —J.R. JONES 76 min. Fri 7/7, 3:15, 5:15, 7:15, and 9:15 PM; Sat 7/8Sun 7/9, 1:15, 3:15, 5:15, 7:15, and 9:15 PM; Mon 7/10, 3:15, 5:15, 7:15, and 9:15 PM; Tue 7/11, 3:15, 5:15, and 9:15 PM; and Wed 7/12-Thu 7/13, 3:15, 5:15, 7:15, and 9:15 PM. Music Box

READER PITCHFORK TICKETS RUNNER UP PRIZE

Films by Camille Billops and R James Hatch Sculptor Camille Billops and theater professor James

Hatch, curators of a large collection of African-American memorabilia in Los µ

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NO PURCHASE OR PAYMENT OF ANY KIND IS NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. SWEEPSTAKES RUNS FROM 3:00 AM CST ON 6/21/17 TO 11:59 PM CST ON 7/7/17. SEE CHICAGOREADER.COM/PFGIVEAWAY FOR DETAILS AND COMPLETE OFFICIAL RULES WHICH APPLY. LIMIT ONE ENTRY PER PERSON PER SWEEPSTAKES PERIOD DURING SWEEPSTAKES. INDIVIDUALS CAN RECEIVE AN EXTRA ENTRY FOR EACH PERSON THAT ENTERS VIA THIER SHAREABLE SOCIAL MEDIA LINK. THREE (3) PRIZES WILL BE AWARDED, GRAND PRIZE WILL BE ONE (1) PAIR OF VIP TICKETS TO PITCHFORK, TWO (2) SECONDARY PRIZES WILL BE AWARDED THAT CONSIST OF A PAIR OF SUNDAY TICKETS PITCHFORK MUSIC FESTIVAL. GRAND PRIZE VIP TICKETS (2) VALUE IS $730.00 AND THE SECONDARY GENERAL ADMISSION TICKETS (2) VALUE IS $150.00. TO BE ELIGIBLE TO WIN THE GRAND PRIZE ENTRANT MUST HAVE ENTERED THE SWEEPSTAKES BY ENTERING THIER EMAIL ADDRESS ON THE CONTEST PAGE. OPEN TO LEGAL RESIDENTS OF ILLINOIS, INDIANA, AND WISCONSIN, AGED 18 YEARS OR OLDER. ODDS OF WINNING DEPEND ON NUMBER OF CORRECT ELIGIBLE ENTRIES RECEIVED. SPONSOR RESERVES THE RIGHT TO SUBSTITUTE ANY PRIZE WITH ANOTHER PRIZE OF EQUAL OR GREATER VALUE SHOULD THE STATED PRIZE BECOME UNAVAILABLE. IF THE SWEEPSTAKES IS NOT CAPABLE OF RUNNING AS PLANNED FOR ANY REASON, SPONSOR RESERVES THE RIGHT TO CANCEL, MODIFY OR SUSPEND THE SWEEPSTAKES. SPONSORS: SUN-TIMES MEDIA, LLC, 350 N. ORLEANS ST., 10TH FLOOR, CHICAGO, IL 60654.

JULY 6, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 5

AGENDA

My Journey Through French Cinema B Angeles, collaborated on these two short works, both centered on Billops’s family. The extraordinary Suzanne Suzanne (1982, 26 min.) focuses on Billops’s niece, who speaks frankly and wisely about her heroin addiction, the domestic abuse that drove her to drugs, and her hopes to stay clean. She and her mother open up about the drunken beatings they suffered at the hands of “Brownie,” the family’s just-deceased patriarch, and the filmmakers take the creative risk of posing mother and daughter in a highly composed two-shot as they compare notes, which results in a beautiful image of unbearably raw emotion. Billops and Hatch bring that taste for artifice to Finding Christa (1991, 55 min.), about the daughter Billops gave up for adoption two decades earlier, but the film is rambling and self-indulgent, a compendium of easygoing family anecdotes and precious visual conceits (in one staged shot, meant to illustrate Christa’s complaints about marriage, she mops a blackand-white-tiled floor in her elegant wedding dress). —J.R. JONES 85 min. Jacqueline Stewart of the University of Chicago introduces the screening. Tue 7/11, 7 PM. DuSable Museum of African American History F Lost in Paris The golden age of silent comedy lives on in Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon, Belgian performers who deliver the sort of balletic movement, wild pratfalls, and surreal sight gags we expect from Chaplin and Keaton. This 2014 feature is Abel and Gordon’s fourth as writer-director-stars, and though it doesn’t hold a candle to their goofy Rumba (2008), their inventive visual humor still seems like a breath of fresh air compared to the verbal snark of most modern movie comedies. Gordon plays a Canadian rube who arrives in the title city, and Abel is a local vagabond who takes a shine to her. The middle-aged stars may not be quite as limber as they used to be, but they’ve still got the moves—check out their

6 CHICAGO READER - JULY 6, 2017

smoldering dance number in a swank restaurant, to a techno tune whose bass beat causes the other diners to jump in unison. In English and subtitled French. —J.R. JONES 84 min. Fri 7/7, 6 PM; Sat 7/8, 3 PM; Sun 7/9, 5:30 PM; Mon 7/10, 6 PM; Tue 7/11, 8:30 PM; Wed 7/12, 6 PM; and Thu 7/13, 8:30 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center My Journey Through R French Cinema Veteran director Bertrand Tavernier (Life

and Nothing But, It All Starts Today) presents a personal, epic history of the French cinema, just as Martin Scorsese did with Italian cinema in My Voyage to Italy (1999) and U.S. cinema in A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995). Even at 200 minutes this is a pretty narrow journey, focusing almost exclusively on classical French cinema of the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, but as with Scorsese, the reminiscences can ﬂower into precise and passionate criticism. The great masters roll by—Jacques Becker, Jean Renoir, Marcel Carné, Jean-Pierre Melville, who mentored Tavernier—but more distinctive and revealing are the fannish tributes to tough guys Jean Gabin and Eddie Constantine, innovative composers Maurice Jaubert and Joseph Kosma, and forgotten auteurs Edmond T. Gréville (Menaces) and Pierre Schoendoerﬀer (The 317th Platoon). —J.R. JONES 200 min. Fri 7/7, 2 PM; Sat 7/8, 4:45 PM; Sun 7/9, 2 PM; Tue 7/11, 6:30 PM; and Thu 7/13, 6:30 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center

Spider-Man: Homecoming Marvel reboots the Spider-Man franchise for the second time in ﬁve years, with British actor Tom Holland following Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garﬁeld as the web slinger. This time around, the hero—aka high school nerd Peter Parker—is barely 15, and Holland, favoring Maguire’s gee-whiz approach, is positively adenoidal as he swings around dispensing quips. On the bright side, however, Peter’s loving Aunt May is getting younger and

sexier, from Rosemary Harris to Sally Field to Marisa Tomei. (In the next movie, Spider-Man should be three years old.) Michael Keaton plays the archvillain the Vulture, and as in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man (2002), the bad guy turns out to be more closely connected to the hero than expected. Unlike earlier adaptations, this one places its hero inside the “Marvel Universe,” which means that Robert Downey Jr., Jon Favreau, and Gwyneth Paltrow of the Iron Man franchise show up intermittently to prop up the movie. Jon Watts directed. —J.R. JONES PG-13, 134 min. Block 37, ArcLight, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Chatham 14, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, Lake, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON, 600 N. Michigan, Webster Place REVIVALS The Handmaid’s Tale This 1990 adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel takes place after a right-wing fundamentalist takeover of the U.S. government, when a series of ecological disasters have rendered most women infertile and the female population are herded like cattle and assigned the obligatory roles of wives, domestics, or child bearers called “handmaids.” Scripted by Harold Pinter and directed by Volker Schlöndorff, this is a provocative yet disappointingly realized SF cautionary tale, handicapped by an inadequate lead performance by Natasha Richardson, a somewhat routine plot, and a generally flat cast of characters. Tom Walsh’s production design helps give the settings a subtle day-after-tomorrow appearance that recalls Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451, and Robert Duvall does a good job as the glib “commander” Richardson is assigned to be impregnated by. Faye Dunaway projects her usual intensity as his wife, and Elizabeth McGovern is striking as a lesbian rebel. —JONATHAN ROSENBAUM R, 109 min. Helen Thompson of Northwestern University lectures at the screening. Mon 7/10, 6:30 PM. Facets Cinematheque F The Lost World An interesting relic from 1925, translating to the silent screen a marvelous tale by Arthur Conan Doyle about four Englishmen who meet a horde of prehistoric monsters while on a trek up the Amazon. Harry Hoyt directed, combining incredible special effects (the monsters) and unbearable melodrama (the actors). This was Willis O’Brien’s first feature as a stop-motion animator, eight years before King Kong. —DON DRUKER 101 min. Presented by the Silent Film Society of Chicago; Jay Warren provides live organ accompaniment. Tue 7/11, 7:30 PM. Arcada Theatre v

CITY LIFE Chicagoans

The first-generation college graduate

ò ISA GIALLORENZO

Ozzy Ordoñez, 17

Street View

Aisle style “AS SOMEONE WHO gets pretty messy for a living, I love dressing up when I can,” says animal-care technician Breanna Lange. “It’s nice to take time to doll up.” Lately that has meant a lot of long, colorful, flowing dresses like the one she was wearing while strutting the aisles of a Walgreens before heading oﬀ to a friend’s brithday party in a look she describes as “Farrah Fawcett meets washed-up 40s diva.” —ISA GIALLORENZO See more Chicago street style on Giallorenzo’s blog chicagolooks.blogspot.com.

COLLEGE NEVER WAS really on my parents’ mind. They were raised to finish high school and then get a good job and live comfortably like that, but of course times change. I’m a very education-oriented person. When I was growing up, college wasn’t quite a dream; it was more of a fantasy. It was like, “Oh, man, I could end up at Harvard!,” ’cause I thought that was the only college that ever existed. In third grade, we learned about planets. That was amazing; I really liked that subject. The planets are so far away, and they’re gigantic. I imagine that on every other planet, there must be something else that’s interesting. Going on a spaceship, being in an astronaut suit—that sounded like the best thing to do in life. And I still consider Pluto a planet. Like people call it the Willis Tower, and I still call it the Sears Tower. When I was in eighth grade, I had to apply to high schools, and my counselor recommended that I check out the Sarah E. Goode STEM Academy if I

was interested in technology, which I was. I thought it was an ordinary STEM high school, but then they said, “We can get you your college degree through this thing called the P-TECH program, which was codeveloped by IBM,” and I was sold on that. Essentially, you have to pass an exam, and if you pass, you’re able to take dualenrollment courses, so while you’re completing your high school courses, you can also attend a City College of Chicago and get your associate degree. I attended Richard J. Daley College. The model is a six-year program, but I completed it in four years. I just felt that if I could save two years of my life in order to be ahead, to achieve more in less time, I was all for that. It did feel like a lot of work, but I was very determined to do it. In the morning, I’d get to the high school around 7:15. Then I’d get to college at 9:30. My last class there would be around noon, and then I would go back to my high school to finish my normal school day. My very ﬁrst college course was English 101,

Ordoñez at the high school he just graduated from, Sarah E. Goode STEM Academy ò KRISTAN LIEB

when I was a high school sophomore. It was intimidating, but once I was there, there was no reason to back out of it. I graduated in May with my associate degree in Web development. I’m not one to cry, but I deﬁnitely had tears of joy, because of my achievement, and because of appreciation for my family and for this opportunity, because it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Now I’ll be attending the University of Illinois at Chicago. I want to major in mechanical engineering. That sounds fun.

By 27, I hope to be in some type of management position at a car manufacturing company. I want to pay it all back to my family in any way that I can. I want them to be happy and live comfortably. That would be the least that I could do. Hopefully they can live comfortably, I can live comfortably, and I can have a branch that has great production rates, because I want my employees to have a happy life and be happy to work for me. —AS TOLD TO ANNE FORD

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

SURE THINGS THURSDAY 6

FRIDAY 7

SATURDAY 8

SUNDAY 9

MONDAY 10

TUESDAY 11

WEDNESDAY 12

< Ai Weiwei: Never Sorr y Director Alison Klayman paints a portrait of Ai Weiwei, a renowned Chinese artist who uses his expansive work as a form of activism despite strict censorship laws. 7:30 PM, Low Res Studio, 1821 W. Hubbard, 312-533-8786, lowresstudio.com. F

Ô Th e Cubs Show: Next Year Is He re . . . Bu t L ast Year Hosted by a ﬁctional version of Harry Caray, this retelling of the Cubs’ historic season features portrayals of golden boys Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant, ﬁery Jake Arrieta, and more. 10 PM, Public House Theatre, 3914 N. Clark, thepubtheatre.com, $10.

F How to Be a Ro ck Critic Legendary music critic Lester Bangs covered iconic musicians of the 20th century. Director Jessica Blank and actor Erik Jensen deconstruct his work and eventual overdose. 3:30 and 10 PM, Steppenwolf 1700 Theatre, 1700 N. Halsted, steppenwolf.org, $30.

× Irish American Herit age Festival The ﬁnal day of this weekend-long celebration of Irish culture includes performances by Gaelic Storm, We Banjo 3, and Scythian. Eat traditional Irish food, view cultural exhibits, and step dance. Noon-11:30 PM, Irish American Heritage Center, 4626 N. Knox, irish-american.org, $10.

♥ Sex in the Summer in the City Series Black Ensemble brings sexy back. Each performance features sensual work from members of the Black Playwrights Initiative—making for a steamy summer. Through 7/12 PM, Black Ensemble Theater Cultural Center, 4450 N. Clark, 773-769-4451, blackensembletheater.com, $15-$20.

J Th os e Wh o Can’t The teachers at the Second City Training Center ﬂip the nonscript and improvise for their students. Expect friendly play, ribbing, and excitement at merely being back onstage. 10:30 PM, Judy’s Beat Lounge, Second City Training Center, 230 W. North, second ﬂoor, 312-3373992, secondcity.com, $5.

M Ky le Mo oney The SNL cast member brings his subversive, offbeat, captivating, and occasionally awkward comedy to Chicago. The evening features characters and videos forged with Mooney’s creative partner, Dave McCary. 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 807 S. Allport, 312-526-3851, thaliahallchicago.com, $25.

JULY 6, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 7

CITY LIFE

Rendering of the Stewart School Lofts ò COURTESY MORNINGSIDE GROUP

POLITICS

Moving on Uptown

The conversion of the Stewart School to upscale apartments shows gentriﬁcation really has hit the north-side neighborhood.

By BEN JORAVSKY

y chance, I stumbled on the latest gentrification fight in Uptown around the time I read Walter Isaacson’s essay on the rise of the rideshare and home-share industries in the new economic order. Headlined “Resistance Is Futile,” Isaacson writes in his New York Times piece that change is coming whether you like or not, so either go along with it or get out of the way. In the case of the poor people in gentrifying Uptown, the message is more like Scram! And

don’t let the door hit you on the way out! The Uptown controversy has to do with a sign posted outside 4125 N. Hermitage, the former Graeme Stewart School. Chicago Public Schools closed the school and sold the building to a private developer who’s turning it into the Stewart School Lofts, which are being marketed shamelessly on a placard over the school’s abandoned playground as “best in the class” rentals. The sign ignited a Twitter debate between Erika Wozniak (@ErikaWozniak), a CPS

fourth-grade teacher, and 46th Ward alderman James Cappleman, who helped foster the deal that turned a school into an upscale apartment complex. Built in 1905, Stewart was for years a thriving neighborhood grammar school with more than 1,000 students—including, at one point, Harrison Ford. In time, however, enrollment dropped, as many of the surrounding families moved out of Uptown, in large part because of higher rents brought on by gentriﬁcation. The newer, wealthier residents either didn’t

have children or sent the ones they had to private or selective enrollment schools. In 2013, Stewart was one of the 50 schools Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed while he was off skiing on a vacation in Utah (a fact I can’t resist repeating). The Stewart students were sent to the nearby Brennemann School, which ironically had been built in the 1960s to handle overcrowding at Stewart. Having closed Stewart, the mayor faced a big decision—what to do with the building? It’s the same decision he

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faced all over the city. Most of those closed schools remain vacant and boarded up, as they’re in low-income south- or west-side neighborhoods, where there’s little demand for property. It’s a different tale on the north side. Morningside Development made the highest of four bids for the building. And in 2015, CPS sold the school to Morningside for a little more than $5 million. Eventually Morningside announced plans to convert the school into 64 relatively upscale rental units. Morningside is by no means the only developer looking to cash in on converting old schools in gentrifying neighborhood. Svigos Asset Management, a Buffalo Grove-based operation, recently bought the Trumbull School at 5200 N. Ashland for a reported $5.25 million. Svigos has also purchased the buildings that formerly housed Motley School (739 N. Ada), Mulligan School (1855 N. Sheffield), and Peabody School (1444 W. Augusta). All of them have been converted into upscale rental units. In each case, the schools closed after enroll-

CITY LIFE ment fell as wealthier residents moved in and working-class people moved out. CPS officials hailed the Stewart sale as a win-win. “This is the ﬁfth former school site we have sold in the past three months,” CEO Forrest Claypool said in a press release. “While we still have work to do, I am encouraged that the engagement process is working and expect this positive trend to continue.” Not everyone sees it that way, especially Wozniak, who lives in Uptown. “To me, this is Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago,” she says. “We’re closing schools and turning them into private projects and disinvesting in neighborhood kids.” What really galled her was that damn sign. “I ﬁnd that insulting to all the kids who went to Stewart and all the people who worked there,” Wozniak says. More maddening still is that Emanuel earmarked $16.1 million in TIF dollars to subsidize the development of a high-rise apartment complex at Clarendon and Montrose—not far from Stewart. So once again there’s no money for our

dead-broke schools, but millions for upscale housing. Last week Wozniak vented on Twitter, posting a picture of the sign with the following caption: “This is what is happening to Stewart School, which was closed in 2013. I’m disgusted.” To which Cappleman responded: Mika Brzezinski was “bleeding badly from a face-lift.” Wait—that’s another elected official who likes to tweet. No, Cappleman tweeted: “The school was over ½ empty, had 17 grads in their 8th grade class, needed over $13m to bring it up to code, and CPS facing huge deﬁcit.” Wozniak shot back: “Wow. And you used $16 million for JDL developers? Thanks for clarifying where your priorities are.” Cappleman responded: “The [JDL] property is now on the tax rolls for the ﬁrst time since 1939 . . . property tax that CPS desperately needs.” Actually, that’s not true. The JDL property is in a TIF district, so its property taxes get

diverted to the TIF bank account. The money’s not going to CPS—it’s largely used to subsidize the development. So you might say the developers are paying property taxes to themselves, as I’ve pointed out once or twice. (Hey, Alderman Cappleman, anytime you want to learn how the TIF program works, just give me a call!) There’s a sort of happy ending to the Twitter exchange. Cappleman ﬁnally agreed with Wozniak that the sign is “insensitive to the many students and teachers from [Stewart]” and said he’d ask to “have it changed.” Here’s the ﬁnal irony. If the Stewart School Lofts and the JDL development are successful, they’ll bring a bunch of people who may stick around long enough to raise their children in Uptown. If so, those kids will need—you guessed it—a school to attend. These days it costs well over $100 million to build a new school. So that $5.1 million Claypool was bragging about? It won’t look like such a big deal after all. v

v @joravben

STEP OUTSIDE YOUR COMFORT ZONE, CHICAGO. Who doesn t love doing something new and unexpected, especially in Chicago? That s why AARP is hosting tons of fun and exciting events for Chicagoans. Join us at an informational tech class where you ll learn about the latest trends and updates, or grab some popcorn and relax with us at a free movie screening. You can even meet new and interesting people at any of our volunteer opportunities across town. Events like these are just some of the ways we re connecting with you and helping to make Chicago an even better place to live, work and play. Get to know us at aarp.org/Chicago /aarpillinois

@aarpillinois #aarpillinois

JULY 6, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 9

CITY LIFE TRANSPORTATION

The ethics of recklessness Are reckless driving and reckless biking equally immoral?

heated debate recently erupted on social media about whether reckless driving and reckless biking are morally equivalent. It began, as so many of these wars of words do, with a post on Facebook. “Wow! Very disappointed in Chicago’s cycling commuters today,” Erick “Iggy” Ignaczak wrote. He’s a burly, bearded, 37-year-old residential painter who occasionally attends events organized via the Chainlink, a social networking site for local cyclists. Formerly a hard-core all-weather bike commuter, nowadays he drives a van to work. That morning, Ignaczak wrote, he was driving downtown on Milwaukee Avenue— where bikes make up about 40 percent of all the traffic on the street during warmer months—when he had a couple of run-ins with reckless bicyclists. As he drove southeast on Milwaukee just south of Grand, he said, a bunch of fast riders “jumped out of the bike lane” and in front of his van to pass a slower cyclist. Minutes later he was heading east on Kinzie, stopped at the stop sign at Clinton, and was about to turn south when a couple of the same riders passed him on the right and ran the sign. The cyclists, Ignaczak wrote, “are very lucky be alive. If I wasn’t a cyclist commuter in a past life and didn’t know what to watch for, they would be dead.” Drivers are legally obligated to make sure the coast is clear before making turns. But Ignaczak is correct that, unlike their counterparts in European cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen, where the cycling rate is about 17 times higher, Chicago motorists often neglect to check for bikes before making turns or opening doors, which is why “right-hook” and “left-hook” crashes and doorings are common here. It also sounds like the cyclists truly were behaving irresponsibly and would’ve been at least partly to blame if they’d been struck and seriously injured or killed. Other Chainlinkers posted to commiserate with Ignaczak. “Those are the jackholes that

10 CHICAGO READER - JULY 6, 2017

give us all a bad name,” said Sarah Dandelles, who gets around mostly by bike. “Some people are just dumb jerks, no matter what their means of conveyance,” Elliot Edwards wrote. “Yeah, I just have this romanticized view that cyclists are the good guys,” Ignaczak responded. That’s when I chimed in. “Well, if people are going to be jerks on the road, I’d much rather they be on bikes than in cars.” I noted that while bad behavior from cyclists has never resulted in the death of another road user in our city, virtually all of the 100-plus fatal traffic crashes in Chicago each year involve drivers. While acknowledging that irresponsible cycling is wrong, I argued that it doesn’t have anywhere near the potential for harm as dangerous driving. Reckless bike riders are mostly a danger to themselves. Equating reckless driving with reckless cycling is, in short, a fallacy. That didn’t sit well with Ignaczak and many of my fellow bike commuters on the thread. “Feels like you are giving [cyclists] a pass to be said jerks,” Ignaczak wrote. “No.” I responded that operating a 3,000-pound vehicle at 30 to 60 mph that can easily kill people should involve more responsibility than operating a 30-pound vehicle that goes 10 to 20 mph and can’t. The Dutch see it that way too: in the Netherlands drivers are automatically held liable for collisions with cyclists unless it can be proven the bike rider caused the crash. That sensible policy, along with safer street design and universal bike education, contributes to a bike fatality rate in the Netherlands that’s about one-ﬁfth that of the U.S., even though helmet use is rare. In response to that argument, another commenter linked to an article about a 44-year-old London resident named Kim Briggs who was fatally struck in May as she crossed one of that city’s high-traffic Cycle Superhighway routes. In recent years there have been similar high-profile fatal collisions between people on bikes and pedestrians in San Francisco and New York City.

ò DANIELLE GARDNER

By JOHN GREENFIELD

Of course, cases like these are tragic, and if the cyclist acted recklessly, he or she must be held accountable. (I also fully support the ticketing of bike riders who fail to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks, or mindlessly blow red lights, putting themselves and others in danger.) But reports of cyclists fatally striking people, as awful as they are, are the exception that proves the rule. While there are at most a handful of these cases a year in the U.S., more than 2,000 people are seriously injured or killed in driver-involved crashes annually in Chicago alone, and there’s a fatality about once every three days. Again, dangerous conduct on a bike is potentially destructive, but the total amount of damage caused by irresponsible cycling is trivial compared to that inﬂicted by reckless motorists. Still, the Chainlinkers raised a valid question: Does the fact that bad cycling behavior has less potential for carnage than unsafe driving make it any less immoral? To dig into the ethics of the matter, I contacted Anthony Laden. He chairs the philosophy department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is associate director of the Center for Ethics and Education, and for good measure he also happens to ride a bike to work. Laden reframed the question a bit: Are reckless biking and reckless driving unsafe in the same way? “They both expose oneself and others to harms, and more importantly impose those harms, or a chance of those harms, on others without getting something like their agreement or consent to be put in that situation,” Laden says. “It may be that the harms the car driver imposes on others are more severe or at least more likely to involve serious physical injury, but there is certainly a harm imposed on a car driver by a biker when the bicyclist gets into a crash with the car driver in which the

cyclist is seriously hurt and the driver is not. Most people ﬁnd it traumatic to be involved in a situation where another person is seriously injured or killed.” Exposing someone to a harm, or a risk of a harm, he added, might be wrong because of the harms caused, or it might be wrong because of the attitude of contempt it shows for those so exposed. “This will change how we evaluate the wrongs of various kinds of recklessness.” Further complicating this, Laden says, is that sharing the road with others is inherently risky. One agrees to subject oneself to that risk by being on public roads, either in a car or on a bike. “Finally, you might think about sharing the public roads as something we do together, and so ask in what way the reckless driver and cyclist fail in their responsibility to their partners on the road. I take it that once you do that, then you can’t just divide between bikers and drivers.” The exchange with Laden resulted in more questions than answers, and he apologized. “Philosophers are much better at making simple things hard than the reverse.” But here’s the indisputable reality: Reckless driving has far more potential for death and destruction than any other individual travel mode, and as such, the focus of traffic enforcement, infrastructure, and education efforts should be to prevent it. Still, whether you’re behind the wheel, in the saddle, or on foot, you have the ability to inﬂict physical or psychic damage upon others. That’s a serious responsibility. So, to driver, cyclist, and pedestrian alike: Don’t be a jackhole. There’s too much at stake. v

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

The museum’s future home, 1322 W. Taylor, on the Near West Side, was one of the ﬁrst public housing buildings in Chicago. ò MAYA DUKMASOVA

THE NATIONAL PUBLIC HOUSING MUSEUM’S LONG JOURNEY HOME After 20 years of battling for its building, the nascent institution’s most signiﬁcant challenges lie ahead. By MAYA DUKMASOVA

hen the National Public Housing Museum finally opens next year in a three-story brick building at 1322 W. Taylor—the last remnant of Chicago’s oldest federal housing project, the Jane Addams Homes—it will be the ﬁrst cultural institution in the country devoted to chronicling and analyzing America’s attempts to house its people. Over the last 20 years, the idea for the museum has evolved into an ambitious plan that includes historic reconstructions of public housing apartments, a policy research center, and an entrepreneurial hub, along with programming that bridges social justice struggles past and present. But it all began with the dream of one woman,

Deverra Beverly, who wanted to ensure her community wouldn’t be forgotten. If any of the 7,000 public housing residents living in the Near West Side’s ABLA Homes in the 1980s and ’90s needed anything, from a job to a Thanksgiving turkey to a plumbing ﬁx, Beverly was the person to see. A diminutive woman who wore bright colors and gold necklaces monogrammed with the letter D, Beverly was part alderman and part ward boss. Less bombastic than pragmatic, she was the long-tenured president of the Local Advisory Council, the elected resident leadership group for the four public housing projects that made up ABLA—the Jane Addams Homes, Robert Brooks Homes,

Loomis Courts, and Grace Abbott Homes. While every project has an LAC, which serves as the voice of a public housing community before the Chicago Housing Authority, ABLA’s was particularly strong due to Beverly’s pull with city leaders and her keen ability to procure scarce resources from the cash-strapped, disorganized CHA. She was on good terms with local aldermen—who in 1994 christened the section of Loomis running alongside the ABLA community center Honorary Deverra Beverly Way—and with Mayor Richard M. Daley. On any given day she could be found at her desk in the LAC office, the air thick with menthol cigarette smoke, the space stacked with boxes of T-shirts for community J

JULY 6, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 11

continued from 11 fun days, bottles of water, and food for residents donated by the Salvation Army. Beverly had been a ﬁxture at ABLA from the time her parents moved there in the 1940s. Over the years she’d experienced the racial animus of the development’s neighbors in Little Italy and had seen the public housing community transition from a family-friendly paradise into a stigmatized ghetto. Despite the hardships, she raised six kids there, and juggled her LAC responsibilities with work in the city’s Department of Human Services before retiring in 1997 and devoting herself entirely to “my residents,” as she liked to say. By that time the neighborhood all around ABLA was rapidly gentrifying, and the new base of affluent homeowners didn’t see public housing as an asset. As early as 1994, well-to-do residents were calling on the CHA to demolish the projects. One community organizer from this camp told the Sun-Times that the projects needed to go because of “random, violent crimes committed by some of the residents.” To this Beverly responded that most of the crime they too were victims of was perpetrated by people from outside the neighborhood who were taking advantage of the deteriorating physical condition of their buildings. More than a third of the roughly 3,600 units that composed the ABLA homes were vacant. There were persistent maintenance problems. The heating sometimes was out for months, even in the winter. Like other public housing developments around the city, ABLA had trouble with gangs and drug dealing. They were neglected by public services from trash collection to mail delivery while at the same time being aggressively policed. As discussions and meetings about demolition and redevelopment on the ABLA site became more frequent, Beverly lobbied to make sure residents’ voices weren’t totally sidelined. “She was the person who fought for everything,” says Mary Baggett, the current president of the LAC, which these days represents the Brooks Homes row houses—the only remaining part of ABLA. “She was the one who stood up at these meetings and spoke loudly and proudly for us.” In 1998 Mayor Daley announced a $430 million makeover of ABLA that was in line with the federal government’s preference for abandoning the high-rise buildings widely referred to by critics as “warehouses for the poor” in favor of new-urbanist mixed-income communities. The ABLA redevelopment plan, in addition to the ongoing rehab of the Brooks Homes, included the demolition of some 2,700 public housing units in the mid-rise and high-rise buildings, and the creation of almost 3,000 new mixed-income homes as well as a revamped community center. Units that would be lost in the neighborhood were promised elsewhere in the city. Beverly ultimately backed the plan, particularly the idea that ABLA residents could remain in the neighborhood but shed the indignities and stigma of the deteriorating project landscape. “We don’t want [the new homes] perceived as public housing,” she told the SunTimes in September 1998. “We want it to be a mixed-income community.”

12 CHICAGO READER - JULY 6, 2017

At the same time, ABLA’s leader knew that such a redevelopment would risk the erasure of the community in ways more than physical. The demolition of the project buildings, she well understood, endangered the memory and history of public housing residents. And so, before publicly giving her blessing to the ABLA redevelopment, she secured a legal agreement with the CHA that guaranteed that an “interpretive exhibit” devoted to public housing would be part of the future site. Her dream was to see some kind of museum memorializing her community in the ABLA neighborhood, to make sure, as she’d often put it over the years, that no one would ever forget “we were here.” As most of Chicago’s projects, including ABLA, were leveled without replacement and their communities scattered and vouchered into anonymity, the undefined interpretive exhibit developed into the National Public Housing Museum. What began as Beverly’s personal dream became a nonprofit organization with major backing from some of the country’s most influential philanthropists. Ironically, its biggest challenge has been securing a home. Beverly’s lobbying in the early 2000s helped save one building in the Addams Homes complex from demolition in the interest of its being repurposed for a future museum. But NPHM organizers have weathered years of political, financial, and bureaucratic setbacks—from uncooperative CHA leadership to the philanthropic drought brought on by the recession—that kept them from claiming the site. Since the last of the residents moved out of the 37,000-square-foot walk-up on the corner of Taylor and Ada Streets 15 years ago, the structure has stood empty and deteriorating. Beverly wouldn’t live to see her dream of the museum realized; after prolonged illness, she passed away in 2013 at the age of 79. But in May, the NPHM signed a 99-year lease with the CHA. Construction on the site is set to begin this summer, and organizers project the museum to open by the end of 2018. The last two decades of struggle for the building were a boon to the NPHM in one respect—staff and board members have had ample time to refine their intentions for the museum and think through its potential impact. The passing years have also created ever higher stakes for the fledgling institution, as public housing in America slips further into historical memory. How it will manage to be a representative of poor people’s stories and a platform for their voices without co-opting, tokenizing, or excluding them is the most significant problem its leaders still face. THE JANE ADDAMS HOMES were designed in the 1930s by a team of architects that included John Holabird of Holabird & Root fame. Although the museum’s Taylor Street building has good bones, its guts are in disarray. For a couple of years after it was vacated in 2002, it served as a conduit for heating pipes from the Addams Homes power house just north of the building to the remaining ABLA structures. Steam corroded everything made of metal that hadn’t been illegally salvaged by scrappers. Squatters took up residence in the building, and the rooms of the old

apartments are filled with debris—appliances, bathtubs, piles of bricks. Windows that hadn’t been solidly boarded up let in rain, plants, and animals. One recent afternoon, the museum’s executive director, Lisa Lee, a bubbly 48-year-old, deftly navigated the dark, dilapidated building. The self-described cultural activist was previously the director of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, where she led the push to acknowledge Addams’s queer identity and made the institution’s resources and spaces available to an array of groups engaged in contemporary social justice struggles. Maneuvering through jagged holes in the walls and up flights of semi-obstructed stairs, she outlined the museum that she envisions will emerge from the wreckage. “I actually like the ruinous aesthetic,” she says from behind a flashlight beam, explaining that the NPHM might preserve some elements of “poetic ruin” in the apartments. “Ruin somehow gives you a sense of historic time—it was good and then something happened to it. And there’s definitely a part of the museum which has to be committed to telling the story of neglect.” “It’s important to show what happens in intentional neglect, and how people lived, and why they’re still committed to their communities and their buildings, even if [they’re told], ‘Take a voucher and move to Lincoln Park,’” Lee says, making a jab at recent CHA policies as we step gingerly through the remains of an abandoned kitchen. “It’s like, no, they would rather live in a space where they have their people and they have their memories. That’s the part that capitalism never understands.” The rubble will be cleared, she says, and old closet doors, incinerator hatches, and medicine cabinets will help tell stories of the lives and social movements that sprang from public housing. Under the direction of Landon Bone Baker Architects, part of the building will be transformed into a visitor center, entrepreneurial hub, and exhibition space. The side facing Taylor Street will be fitted with a giant bay window intended to be a visual reference to the way demolitions of public housing buildings reveal intimate, interior views of people’s apartments. In the courtyard, a group of animal sculptures by modernist artist and onetime Hull House resident Edgar Miller will be restored and returned to their original home. Three apartments will be re-created to reflect those of actual families who lived in the Addams Homes—one Italian, one Jewish, and one African-American—to demonstrate the variety of experiences in public housing across time. Visitors will be invited to interact with these spaces—sit on the furniture, explore the bookshelves, pick up objects. Artifacts collected from residents, such as a family photo or a pair of shoes or a stove, will allow guides to engage visitors in discussions about the ways personal lives and public policy intertwined in the projects. The museum visit will be shaped at every step by oral histories of a multitude of current and former residents that the NPHM has collected over the last decade—whether told through audio installations or as part of the script of docents’ tours.

The interior of NPHM’s future home has decayed signiﬁcantly since 2002, when the last residents moved out; the museum has hosted temporary exhibitions at the site, including a 2015 event for which the cryptic phrase “House Housing” was painted on the exterior. ò AARON BARLOW; MAYA DUKMASOVA

Lee shines her flashlight around a third-floor apartment cluttered with broken stone and decayed wood, and explains that the physical transformation of the building is bound to larger ideological challenges. The museum has to figure out how to strike the right balance between stories of joy and resilience and those of struggle and suffering, all while providing visitors a civic and political education, and avoiding a lapse into “poverty porn.” Museum organizers have long wavered on whether the hallways should smell like urine—one of the oft-cited indignities of life in public housing. “Since it’s not the real urine, anything that you do is gonna be very Disney-esque,” Lee says of her position on this issue. In her mind, a sensory theme-park-style experience is out of the question. So how then can a museum effectively and engagingly communicate the harsh reality of living without heat and maintenance services, or in a building designed with flaws that could lead to a child falling to his death or a woman being killed by intruders coming through her bathroom mirror? Lee points to successful precedents among the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, an umbrella organization of places that serve to educate the public about painful historical events. Along with the NPHM, the membership includes the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, where New York City tenements are re-created and tour guides engage visitors in discussions about politics and policy. Another member site, the Manzanar Japanese

internment camp in central California, features reconstructions of World War II-era barracks and latrines that highlight the total lack of privacy endured by internees. Successful sites of conscience don’t just tell histories of oppression and survival. They also take a moral stance on the past and push visitors to think critically about current events. Lee says she’s in the camp of museologists who believe that “in order to politicize people, you never suture them in too closely so they pretend, ‘Oh, I felt like I was a public housing resident!’ You always make people aware of their own privilege, where they’re coming from, their historical distance.” The gambit is getting visitors to understand their own relationship to the politics that created public housing initially as a working-class paradise, then as segregated warehouses for the poor, and ﬁnally erased it altogether, telling residents it was no way to live in the ﬁrst place. “The public housing of Chicago came down because people intentionally didn’t keep it up, because they had grand designs of restructuring it,” Lee says, referring to the events that would lead to Mayor Daley’s $1.5 billion Plan for Transformation. THE FAILED PROMISE of those grand designs is apparent in the area surrounding the NPHM’s future home. The 166 acres on which the dozens of buildings in the ABLA group once stood are now pockmarked by vast empty lots. While the Brooks Homes were rehabbed and remain

public housing, the mixed-income redevelopment of the neighborhood was stalled by the 2008 recession. Threeand four-story buildings, made up of a combination of market-rate condos and affordable and public-housing rental units, dot the landscape between Taylor and 15th Streets, along with a handful of churches keeping vigil over a dispersed community. The ABLA community center, however, was renovated, and the building remains a hub for resident activity, as it was in Deverra Beverly’s day. A photographic portrait of Beverly, approximately four feet tall, surveils the remodeled LAC office. Children run past a case ﬁlled with awards and plaques from various city organizations recognizing Beverly’s service. Reflecting on the Plan for Transformation, Modene Jordan, vice president of the Brooks Homes LAC, says that when the old project buildings were demolished a sense of unity in the neighborhood went with them. “Over the division of them bringing in new stuff and taking things away, it really made us all go in our own little direction,” she says. Losing the physical spaces, however tarnished, meant losing a record of their lives. “You took things that was sentimental and valuable to us as kids,” she says. “With our kids, where can we show them and have them go to where we had safe haven? It’s not here.” When local public housing residents talk about what the museum will be, they don’t mention politicizing J

JULY 6, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 13

Longtime ABLA leader Deverra Beverly originated the idea of the museum to preserve public housing residents’ histories. The animal statues by Edgar Miller are being restored and will be returned to the building’s courtyard. ò KEITH HALE/SUN-TIMES

continued from 13 visitors, challenging capitalism, or other high-minded ideals. Instead, they yearn for a memorial to ABLA. “Hopefully, when they do open the museum, it has a reﬂection of us in there, the community itself, telling our stories,” says Baggett, the Brooks Homes LAC president. “I’m quite sure they’re gonna discuss other different public housing, but we want to make sure we are in there and part of the focus. . . . We want to make sure that they show how we lived inside these areas.” The residents’ vision isn’t necessarily at odds with Lee’s, but it harkens back to what Beverly pictured the public housing memorial would be, before the museum experts and university professors and philanthropists got involved. Those who remember that early period recall that the initial objective was to create little more than a storefront room with some display cases of old photos and artifacts. “In their vision, it was really about their community and their story,” says Tim Veenstra, who oversaw the CHA’s redevelopment of ABLA beginning in the late 90s and worked closely with Beverly and other residents. “It was more of an ABLA museum.” Peter Pero, a historian of Little Italy and author of the book Chicago Italians at Work, was among the few white locals to support the museum from the start. He remembers Beverly describing the place in modest terms: “We’re gonna sit around the room and have coffee and we’ll talk about the good times, not the slums and the killing.” No one seemed to have any objections to this idea in the beginning. But neither did it garner enough interest and resources to propel it into existence. The CHA, meanwhile, was busy leveling more and more ABLA buildings. In the early 2000s, Beverly began to push for one of them to be saved for the museum. “We just decided that we would take it to the Chicago Housing Authority and put it in writing that we would like to have a museum,” Beverly told the Tribune in 2004, “so we could make sure that we could show our heritage here.” The CHA contracted a consulting firm to conduct a feasibility study and concluded the museum would cost

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$20 million. It held several forums with residents and the community that never seemed to progress beyond talk. But one of those meetings was attended by photojournalist Richard Cahan, then a program officer at the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation. “I thought it was a fantastic idea, an important, profound idea that needed more than a room,” Cahan says. “I saw the museum as a chance to talk about the issues so much bigger than public housing—about government’s responsibility to house citizens.” It seemed like something the foundation would be interested in funding. Not long after the meeting, Beverly and Pero contacted the foundation. In a 2004 conversation with Driehaus director Sunny Fischer, widely respected in local and national philanthropy circles, they explained that they needed a $25,000 grant to secure and carefully board up the building on Taylor Street while they raised funds to get the museum off the ground. “They were afraid that the building would be a mess by the time they felt they could raise the money to create the museum,” Fischer says. But after talking to Beverly and Pero, it became clear to her that they wouldn’t “have the capacity” to raise the $20 million the CHA had deemed necessary. “As a funder you ask the questions—OK, if we give you $25,000, then what happens? And as I was listening to the response, they didn’t really have a plan at that time about moving forward,” Fischer recalls. “I think what I said to them was, ‘This is a great idea and we want to help you. I’m not sure that securing the building more than it is right now will be the best use of money.’ But that’s when we started ﬁguring out how we could be helpful.” As it happened, Fischer herself had grown up in public housing in the Bronx. Her husband, Lake Forest College professor Paul Fischer, has devoted much of his career to researching public housing. “I used to say I was related to public housing by birth and by marriage,” she says. But unlike the residents spearheading the push for the museum, she never thought about that element of her background as anything worth memorializing.

Her interest in the lives and welfare of the poor was rooted more deeply in her work. Then in her late 50s, Fischer was originally a high school English teacher at the elite North Shore Country Day School, but she also worked with the Upward Bound college prep program for low-income kids. Eventually she transitioned into social work. Volunteering at women’s shelters in the early 1980s, she saw how little funding was directed toward poor women. She later banded together with several influential local philanthropists to start the Chicago Foundation for Women. Fischer came to the Driehaus Foundation in 1992, and over time she came to think that its money was being disproportionately spent on preserving the homes and history of affluent Illinoisans. Shortly before Beverly’s visit, Fischer had toured the new Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York and was intrigued by the concept. “The foundation is spending a lot of time and energy and resources on how really wealthy people lived,” Fischer recalls thinking. “Maybe we should put some resources into seeing how people without any resources lived in public housing.” The alliance between Beverly and Fischer opened a new chapter in the museum’s history. With Beverly’s political and community pull and Fischer’s philanthropic connections, the museum was a step closer to reality. But it would also have serious opposition to contend with in the years ahead. THE CHICAGO HOUSING AUTHORITY proved to be the most persistent obstacle, notwithstanding its apparent willingness to entertain the idea of the museum. In 2006, Fischer went to see the agency’s head at the time, Sharon Gist Gilliam, to discuss the logistics of getting inside the Taylor Street building. Gist Gilliam had been a deft city government operator for years. A former schoolteacher like Fischer, she rose to prominence in Mayor Harold Washington’s administration as the director of the Office of Budget Management and continued on to a variety of high-profile appointments. She reminded Fischer that the museum would have to raise $20 million and added the stipulation that organizers would need to do it within the next two years to get the agency to sign over the building. The figure and the time frame were “daunting,” Fischer says. Raising that much money in two years is a big ask for any cultural institution. But for the fledgling public housing museum, $20 million might as well have been $20 billion. “Public housing,” Fischer says, “is not on a lot of radars of foundations or very wealthy people.” She took Gist Gilliam’s requirements as a reflection of the agency’s desire to dispose of its buildings quickly in the heat of the Plan for Transformation. This could’ve taken the form of demolition or rehab, but a vacant walkup standing indefinitely on a thoroughfare of what would ultimately be the CHA’s $600 million redevelopment of the ABLA area wasn’t exactly part of the program. Gist Gilliam, who’s now retired, has no recollection of meeting Fischer, but she remembers hearing about

the plan for the museum. Besides being troubled by the vacant building mucking up redevelopment, she simply believed it was a stupid idea. “At the time I thought, Well, this is an idea going nowhere,” she recalls. “Who the hell is going to go to a public housing museum?” She adds that she was highly skeptical of entertaining discussions with a yet-to-be-established organization, even with backing from Driehaus. In true Chicago fashion, she wasn’t much interested in dealing with nobody nobody sent. “You’ve got someone unknown purporting to be a new, never-heard-of museum, and you’re just handing them a building?” she recalls thinking. “It’s not like the MSI or the Field coming to you saying they want to put in an extension of an existing museum.” Though the fund-raising goal seemed unattainable, Fischer walked away determined to stir up as much public attention and interest in the idea as possible. In October 2006 she convened a meeting of public housing residents, philanthropists, museum experts, civic leaders, academics, and journalists to tour the boarded-up building on Taylor Street and brainstorm strategies for moving forward. But the increased attention roused still more more opponents. Some housing advocates thought there was nothing wrong with the idea of the museum per se, but took the position that using an entire CHA building for a museum, as well as all the resources required to create it, was a bad idea given the acute need for affordable housing in the city and the amount of displacement in the neighborhood. “I felt it was misdirected energy,” says Janet Smith, a professor of urban planning at UIC who’d been scrutinizing CHA policies since the 90s. “I think the political capital they were expending to get [the museum] should have gone to development of housing first.” Others didn’t want a museum for public housing to exist at all, especially not in a big building in the the heart of Taylor Street. Foremost in this camp was the notorious political operator, disgraced attorney, and mustachioed “Mayor of Little Italy,” Oscar D’Angelo. What Beverly was to ABLA, D’Angelo was to Little Italy. He’d lived in the neighborhood his entire life, and rose to become an influential, if not uncontested, leader in a community with a history of discord and violent clashes with its African-American public housing neighbors. But he was a much bigger power broker in city government than the public housing leader. While Daley respected Beverly enough to put her on the CHA board of commissioners, D’Angelo was frequently described as the mayor’s “confidant”—this despite being disbarred in 1989 for bribing county judges and other officials. D’Angelo finally fell from grace in 2000, after news broke that he’d made interest-free loans to Daley aides and illegally lobbied officials to put two friends of the mayor’s wife, Maggie, into business at O’Hare. Despite these scandals, D’Angelo remained powerful and respected on the Near West Side. At the brainstorming session Fischer organized, he and Beverly got into it.

The NPHM will re-create apartments of three families who resided in the Jane Addams Homes. One of them will be the Hatch family, who lived there throughout the 1960s. ò COURTESY MARSHALL HATCH

“We knew the community was going to change,” Beverly said, according to a column by Mary Mitchell of the SunTimes. “What we wanted to do was leave a part of our own culture in this neighborhood. We had lawyers, airplane pilots, doctors, all kinds of professions came from ABLA.” D’Angelo scoffed at this respectability narrative. He made references to public housing families watching television at all times and not caring about when their children came home. “D’Angelo said he wasn’t interested in the ‘seven doctors, seven lawyers, and seven black pilots’ that came out of ABLA,” Mitchell wrote. “If that’s what it is going to be about,” he reportedly said, “then it’s not a museum, but a falsehood.” Though the CHA was already working with Related Midwest to redevelop the ABLA area, D’Angelo organized a competing group of contractors and tried to convince the agency to pick them to work on the commercial strip along Taylor Street. Instead of saving the Addams Homes building, D’Angelo’s plan would’ve created a row of Italianate buildings along the corridor, with ground-floor retail to complement the existing restaurant row. As Veenstra recalls, D’Angelo proposed giving some space to the museum in one of the storefronts. But D’Angelo’s clout wasn’t what it had been in prior decades, and the leadership turnover at the CHA didn’t help his idea gain traction. Despite D’Angelo’s opposition, Pero says people in Little Italy warmed to the idea of restoring the old building once the plan included telling the stories of Jane Addams Homes’ original Italian residents, in addition to opening an Italian deli on the Taylor Street side of the building. With Gist Gilliam’s departure at the end of 2007, the pressure of the two-year time line fell away. Subsequent leadership didn’t seem particularly preoccupied with either the museum or the disposal of the building, especially once the recession hit a year later. By summer 2008, the agency had extended the museum’s deadline to raise

the funds to 2011, and said it would need only $13 million instead of the original $20 million. As more CEOs came and went, those benchmarks, too, disappeared. With each shake-up in the agency, “the museum people would come and explain what they were doing to the new CHA leadership and they would say, ‘OK, go ahead, keep going,’ ” says Veenstra, who left in the fall of 2015. For years, the CHA basically took a hands-off approach, not making any moves to sign the building over, but also not doing much to stand in the museum’s way. “I think the CHA people in the beginning felt if they waited long enough we’d go away,” Fischer says. She’d heard through the grapevine that some within the agency saw the museum as a joke. NEVERTHELESS, FISCHER, BEVERLY, and other museum supporters, who eventually established a nonproﬁt organization with a board and a three-person staff, kept up the hunt for dollars. Though it was tough to get people to give money to a museum without a home, especially during the recession, organizers started thinking of the NPHM as a “museum in the streets” and began to organize and sponsor events around Chicago to make its institutional presence known. In February 2010 in the lobby of the Merchandise Mart they created an exhibition about public housing that included a replica of a project apartment. In 2012 they mounted another exhibit on public housing as the “unsung cradle of American music,” tracing the careers of prominent recording artists back to the projects. They held book talks and events for residents to share their memories while exposing the wider community to the complexity of the experience of living in public housing. They helped the late American Theater Company artistic director PJ Paparelli create his last production, The Project(s), a critically acclaimed show based on residents’ oral histories collectJ ed over ﬁve years and staged in 2015.

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continued from 15 In 2010, the Ford Foundation gave the museum a $1 million grant to fund the museum’s operating expenses for five years. The MacArthur Foundation, the Boeing Company, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Alphawood Foundation, among many others, also chipped in. The organizers’ plan for the museum—both what they’d do with the space and how they’d use the platform—morphed through many iterations. Their goal shifted from taking over the entire building at once to today’s more modest target of opening a first phase in the 17,000 square feet of the Taylor Street side of the structure. For this the NPHM has raised nearly $3 million of a $7 million capital campaign. Pitching the museum to attract philanthropists requires a broad vision for how it will become a noteworthy cultural institution with a national profile. And that’s required grappling with the fact that in Chicago as across the country, public housing is plagued by negative stigma. Lee says that to catch general public interest it has been important to “excavate” the history of American subsidized housing and challenge basic assumptions colored by decades of grim news stories about the projects. The museum’s early PR efforts highlighted, as Beverly had at the meeting with D’Angelo, that exceptional people came from public housing. Lee describes that as the “‘Did you know?’ phase.” “Did you know that Jimmy Carter grew up in public housing? Did you know that Barbra Streisand grew up in public housing? There were all of these uplifting stories that the museum needed to tell of people who grew up in public housing and who grew up being traditionally quote-unquote ‘successful’ in society,” Lee says. Most of those early exhibitions also carefully sidestepped any criticism of the CHA’s contemporary policies. Keith Magee, the museum’s first executive director, says “it was too soon to explore the Plan for Transformation” when he came on board in 2009. He adds that it wasn’t

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a matter of political pressure, but that the NPHM felt it couldn’t fairly evaluate the impact of the policy when emotions among displaced residents were still raw. But in recent years NPHM organizers have moved away from a focus on famous people and become more active in current policy analysis through events that center on critical perspectives on the CHA. They’ve sponsored lectures by researchers who eviscerate the Plan for Transformation as a scheme to rid desirable city neighborhoods of poor African-Americans; they’ve also partnered with affordable housing activists to collect data on the impact of the CHA’s voucher policies. And residents themselves, four of whom are on the NPHM board, have been involved in organizing the events. Lee doesn’t think that the museum should buy into bootstrap success narratives or sugarcoat present-day housing struggles. And while parts of the museum’s plan remain abstract, the pitch for what the NPHM will be when it opens has coalesced around certain foundational elements: the apartment reconstructions, the repository of oral histories, the housing policy research center, and the “entrepreneurial hub” for CHA residents to incubate ideas for starting their own businesses. Lee and company intend the museum experience to lead visitors to examine notions about house and home and confront received ideas about what it means to be American. But they also want it to be a place that gives back to the residents. The NPHM has promised to give residents museum construction and operation jobs. Once built, the site will serve as a space for assembly. After Beverly’s death in 2013, other resident leaders stepped up to carry her torch on the board and keep the museum in touch with its fundamental values. But while the NPHM’s proﬁle has steadily grown, a number of central ﬁgures have fallen away from the cause. Even Lee, the fourth director in eight years, admits to losing steam for a year. Periodic news reports over the last decade predicted groundbreakings one year or grand openings the next, yet the anticipated deals with the CHA never came to pass. “I

“Hopefully, when they do open the museum, it has a reflection of us in there, the community itself, telling our stories. We want to make sure that they show how we lived.” —Mary Baggett, president of the Brooks Homes Local Advisory Council

The museum plan includes exhibition space, apartment recreations, and an entrepreneurial hub for public housing residents. ò LANDON BONE BAKER ARCHITECTS

was like, ‘This is never going to happen. We’re never going to get this lease.’” Further complicating matters, the various stakeholders haven’t always agreed behind the scenes that the vision for the institution has been moving in the right direction. The discussion about what exactly the NPHM will be and what it will strive to accomplish continues. As more people outside public housing get on board, organizers are wrestling with how to hold true to the museum’s roots at ABLA, how to make themselves relevant to a wider audience without alienating their original constituents. AT AN EVENT COHOSTED by the NPHM in late March, several dozen public policy students from the University of Chicago and regular people who live with “housing choice” vouchers (aka Section 8) gathered at the ABLA community center. The students collected oral histories from the voucher holders about their experiences of trying to find affordable, accessible, quality rental housing in the city and any discrimination they’d faced during the process. “These stories,” a flyer for the event said, “will be recorded and used to advocate for fairer affordable housing policies in Chicago.” Lee got up in front of the crowd to explain that this project was a reflection of the institution’s belief that voucher holders’ stories are also important, and that the museum wants to be actively involved in not just documenting but also directing public policy. By the end of the evening what began as an awkward Q&A with the students had snowballed into impassioned conversations among the voucher holders themselves. No longer noticing the audio recorders, they commiserated with one another about dealing with landlords who openly told them they wouldn’t take vouchers, about having to move into substandard apartments in dangerous or far-flung parts of the city—and about the financial reprieve and security from homelessness the vouchers have nevertheless provided when they became unexpectedly ill or lost their jobs.

Jackie Paige, an organizer in the voucher-holder community, said afterward that she appreciated that the museum made it a priority to include Section 8 residents. She said it was also helpful for her to learn more about her peers’ problems, so she can attempt to address them with the CHA. Normally, Paige explained, she can’t so much as access a list of voucher holders’ contact information to solicit feedback about their experiences. “We have to go and stand outside of the [CHA’s] satellite offices and ask the voucher holders for the information,” she said. Unlike public housing communities, who have officially recognized tenant representatives, voucher holders don’t have any comparable means to communicate with the CHA—another consequence of the Plan for Transformation. In its own small way that night, the museum was able to offer recourse and show its potential to help those dealing with present-day housing problems—to become, as Lee puts it, a “site of resistance.” But Baggett, the Brooks Homes LAC president, didn’t see it that way. She said she couldn’t understand why the museum would organize and request to use public housing residents’ community space for an event focused on voucher holders. “How can you have someone from Section 8 come and tell their story when their story does not pertain to the museum?” Baggett asked me after the event. “They didn’t come from Jane Addams or anywhere in ABLA, they came from somewhere else. So how can they tell a story and place it inside a museum that’s supposed to be about this area right here?” The territoriality Baggett gave voice to is perhaps a by-product of fatigue from the museum’s long gestation and residents’ fear of erasure in a community where so many memories have been bulldozed. But Baggett isn’t alone in feeling skeptical about the museum’s direction. Peter Pero, Beverly’s original ally from Little Italy, hasn’t kept up very closely with the museum in recent years, but he still lives near the building and laments its run-down state. He also regrets that the museum organi-

zation, which once had offices at nearby UIC, has left the neighborhood for Archeworks, a design incubator and coworking space in River North. “I don’t want to be critical, because I want this thing to happen,” Pero says. But he allows that he’s confused by the broad scope of the museum’s public events. “They’re running seminars on the value of restoring public housing for the whole world . . . ‘What should public housing be in our times?’” There’s no more talk about an Italian deli on the ground floor or the homey conversation space Beverly once described to him. During the 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial parts of the building were cleaned up for several temporary exhibits; the name of one, “House Housing,” was painted in white on the plywood covering the windows and has remained on the facade ever since. “It makes no sense to the locals,” Pero says. Despite his admiration for Fischer, Lee, and many others involved in the museum, Pero, watching from the sidelines, has gotten the impression that the problem with getting the NPHM open hasn’t really been a matter of wrangling the CHA for access to the building and raising the money, but of the programming for the museum straying too far from its roots. “I just say: show me the money, show me where they spent ten years of money. I bet it would have finished the deli and bookstore instead of drawing speakers [focused] on public housing in London, Holland, and South Africa,” Pero says. “Frankly, the neighbors around here are very frustrated,” he says, because the Taylor Street building remains empty. “And every day we talk, the rain trickles deeper down the walls.” THOUGH THERE’S NO evidence that the museum has squandered its money or tried to intentionally sideline ABLA residents, Pero’s and Baggett’s questions get at the challenges that can’t be overcome by words—challenges inherent to wealthy, highly educated professionals taking up a cause born of a poor, marginalized community. And there will be more, especially once the museum transubstantiates from an idea expressed through renderings, temporary exhibits, and special events into an actual, physical place. The true test of the museum’s potential to at once honor and illuminate the housing struggles of the past and digest and engage with those of the present will come with myriad decisions NPHM organizers have to make before opening day. First, there’s making good on the promises Lee and the CHA have made to include ample construction and operation job opportunities for residents. The staff is also trying to find an approach to curation so exhibits aren’t relevant only to a bourgeois elite. Other considerations: Can the admission structure be both sustainable and fair? Will the operating hours jibe with working families’ schedules? Will there be a prominent security presence in the lobby? Such decisions have shaped the fate of other social justice businesses and well-intentioned nonprofits. Theaster Gates’s Rebuild Foundation recently came under fire for allegedly tokenizing black artists while reserving J

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management positions for whites; meanwhile, renowned chef Daniel Patterson’s healthy fast-food venture in low-income California neighborhoods, Locol, has been compromised because it caters to young, hip aesthetes despite being managed by locals. Perhaps the most important unknown is whether a public housing museum built on the ruins of a displaced and disappeared community of low-income African-Americans will be capable of challenging Americans to grapple with racism and poverty, however progressive its ideology. Will the museum test the current problematic policies of its landlord, from the CHA’s years-long waiting list to its controversial reserve budget to its broken promises of public housing preservation at places like the Lathrop Homes and LeClaire Courts? Ever the optimist, Lee believes the NPHM won’t shrink from the difficult conversations. “Over the last decade we’ve always been in this relationship with CHA, and we’ve done a lot of programs where we’ve been the space for resident voices, activism, and advocacy,” she argues. “If they tried to kick us out because of content, that would be a really big struggle, and I don’t anticipate that.” But she also adds that she thinks the museum’s dynamic with the agency won’t be “us versus them,” because she’s convinced that its administrators and staff are similarly committed to the “idea of public good.” Eugene Jones, the present head of the CHA, is enthusiastic about the museum. “It’s not only for the citizens of Chicago, it’s for all the citizens across the country who’ve been involved in public housing,” he says. “We want this to be a destination point when people come to Chicago that will rival any museum across the country.” After years of stalemate with the CHA, Jones’s arrival in 2015 turned the tide for the NPHM. Fischer says it immediately became clear that he “doesn’t think it’s a joke and he does want to help us.” The moment that the CHA board ﬁnally approved the lease was, Lee says, both momentous and anticlimactic. “It was so celebratory and everyone was so happy. But it’s also like, ‘What happened? How did it happen?’ Like, all of a sudden, after years of activism, anxiety, hand-wringing, and thinking that it’s not going to happen, there’s a unanimous vote saying ‘Of course we can do it.’” She likens the triumph to the fall of the Berlin Wall, where years of work to change politics and culture led to a moment of

dramatic progress. (A more apt comparison might be to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., which took a hundred years to come into being after it was first conceived by a group of black Union Army veterans.) “All of a sudden there was no resistance,” she says. “I was like, ‘All right, the CHA is giving us the lease—now this museum can open because the cultural work has happened.’” In Lee’s mind the long road to opening the NPHM has been both inevitable and invaluable. She sees the idea behind the museum as a radical one—its purpose is in part to make visible and bolster stories of racism and corruption in the city, to give a platform to narratives that will speak truth to power. “They’ve always used museums to maintain power and privilege,” Lee says. “To have a museum that actually belongs to and is the voice of housing residents is sort of really scary.” She describes all the hoops museum organizers have had to jump through with the CHA as the “bureaucratic processes that are set up . . . to not hand over a building for a group of marginalized voices to tell their stories.” But the CHA didn’t hand over the building to a group of marginalized ABLA residents. The residents had to be represented by a respected nonprofit with a roster of wealthy backers before a transaction could take place. In other words, the NPHM didn’t change the terms under which a museum in Chicago can be created, but rather successfully conformed to long-established expectations. In order to be worthy of the building, it had to become bigger than Beverly and her residents. The CHA’s recognition of the museum, however monumental, shouldn’t be mistaken for a sea change in Chicago’s broader relationship to its poor. Still, Lee believes the National Public Housing Museum is now more urgently needed than ever. As privatization reshapes not just subsidized housing but also schools, health care, and infrastructure, American society is abandoning “the notion of the public itself and the idea of the common good,” she observes. “Part of the resistance is making sure people understand what is this thing we call public housing. How do we understand its future in the soul of what it means to be in America?” The museum will continue its attempt to answer that question when it finally opens its doors to the public next year. v

v @mdoukmas

ARTS & CULTURE

Michael Bonesteel ò RICHARD PEARLMAN

HIGHER EDUCATION

A kapow to a comics expert By DEANNA ISAACS

uthor, art critic, and longtime adjunct assistant professor Michael Bonesteel resigned from the faculty of the School of the Art Institute last month, citing a “toxic environment” that “feels more like a police state than a place where academic freedom and the open exchange of ideas is valued.” Bonesteel, an internationally recognized expert on Chicago artist Henry Darger, left SAIC as a result of complaints by three students over two incidents that occurred within a three-day period in his classes last December. Both incidents consisted of objections to ideas and material related to the edgy historical subject matter Bonesteel has been teaching in popular classes at SAIC for 14 years. Rude? Raw? Often violent? Steeped in the mass culture prejudices of its time? Well, yes—those are the calling cards of Bonesteel’s area of scholarly study: comic books and outsider art. SAIC, in a written statement from dean of faculty Lisa Wainwright, says it is “unable to comment on individual personnel matters,” so what we know about this is what Bonesteel has to say—and even he’s only commenting in writing, via e-mail. But his story echoes what I’ve been hearing from professors at other colleges and universities: the classroom environment, as Bonesteel puts it, “has become increasingly threatening to any professor who [even inadvertently] does not toe the politically correct line.” According to Bonesteel, the first incident occurred on December 12 in his course the Present and Future of Outsider Art. During discussion of a theory that connects the most striking feature of Darger’s work—the prevalence in it of little girls with penises—with possible childhood sexual abuse, a transgender student objected. “The student said there was no proof that

Darger was sexually abused, and therefore I was wrong in proposing the theory,” Bonesteel says, adding that he agreed that there was no proof, but said many scholars thought it likely. After this incident, Bonesteel met with a diversity counselor, and, following the counselor’s advice, posted an apology for his “insensitivity” on an SAIC website, along with a research article as background for the theory. Dean Wainwright, subsequently ruling on this student’s complaint, found no violation of school policy, but determined that Bonesteel needed training on how to deal with “identityrelated material” in his curriculum. Two days after the first incident, during a discussion in his other class, Comic Book: Golden Age to Comics Code, a student launched into what Bonesteel describes as “a long diatribe about perceived anti-Semitic attitudes” of the author of an assigned text, the well-regarded Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book, by Gerard Jones. Bonesteel says the student also criticized “SAIC’s policies toward minorities and transgender students specifically, leveling accusations of racism and homophobia toward me in particular.” Bonesteel made a plea for patience “during this time of transition,” but the exchange “heated up,” and in the same session the student objected about the lack of a trigger warning during a discussion of an implied rape in another book. (Bonesteel says SAIC does not require trigger warnings.) When the student complained, “the dean ultimately ‘determined that it is more likely than not that your conduct in relation to this student constituted harassment based on gender-identity in violation of the School’s Policy Against Discrimination, Harassment and Retaliation,’” Bonesteel says. Months later, another student in the comics class ﬁled a complaint on the basis of having

been “troubled by the incident.” On May 30, Bonesteel says he was told that he wouldn’t be teaching any future courses in comics. His outsider art classes were to be revamped, and readings by “scholars in the ﬁeld of Outsider art were to be discarded in favor of new readings from academic journals.” His hours for the 2017-2018 school year were reduced to a level at which he’d lose his health insurance beneﬁts.

Bonesteel says he “could have lived with” making changes to his courses. “But to be labeled discriminatory and charged with sexual harassment because I got into a heated debate with a hostile student who happened to be transgender, and for that student’s accusations of sexual harassment to be credited— and for my account and those of several other student witnesses to be discredited—seems entirely unfair.” “Then, to be punished by refusing to let me teach three comics courses in which I had invested twelve years of time and effort and love, and in the process take away my insurance beneﬁts, these were the conditions that I found unacceptable.” In his resignation letter, dated June 12, Bonesteel protested what he called “abuse of Title IX protections.” “Overall,” he wrote, “it is my contention that I have been unfairly viliﬁed and demonized by [a] small cadre of militant LBGT students with an authoritarian agenda.” v

v @DeannaIsaacs

JULY 6, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 19

ARTS & CULTURE

READER RECOMMENDED

b ALL AGES

The family gather around the table in Eugene O’Neill’s early coming-of-age comedy Ah, Wilderness! ò LIZ LAUREN

THEATER

O’Neill without tears

By TONY ADLER

“Then, from all reports, we seem to be completely surrounded by love.” —Nat Miller in Ah, Wilderness!

here’s a something old and sweet about preparing a dining-room table for a big holiday dinner. I mean the literal act of pulling the two halves of the table apart and dropping leaves into the gap between them so you can fit more people in. It suggests sharing and abundance, family and friends, refuge and welcome, sentiment and celebration—a little American dream, played out in varnished maple. Before grandma could serve the turkey in that famous Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving painting, somebody

20 CHICAGO READER - JULY 6, 2017

had to add the extra planks and drape them with the good lace cloth. Director Steve Scott gives us a chance to contemplate the aesthetics of the welldressed table during a transitional passage in his charming if never quite riveting version of Ah, Wilderness!, an early Eugene O’Neill romantic comedy, running now at Goodman Theatre. It’s Independence Day, 1906, at the comfortable Miller family manse, in a “large small-town” on the Connecticut shore. Papa Nat is taking the day off from the local newspaper he owns. Mama Essie upholds domestic standards, gently, her firm first judgments always seeming to soften up in negotiation. The four children are home, from Arthur the pipe-puffing Yale

man down to Tommy the 11-year-old afterthought. They’re joined by Nat’s spinster sister Lily and Essie’s bachelor brother Sid, who were engaged once but broke up over Sid’s drinking. Some small traumas will occur in the course of the day, and slightly larger ones will arrive overnight, practically all of them having to do with teenage second son Richard having discovered Ibsen, Marx, Swinburne, and love in a single adolescent whoosh. For a couple minutes, though, we get to watch Essie and the family’s Irish maid, Norah, open up that table and make a place for everyone. The moment unfolds behind a translucent white scrim that descends at other times as well, to remind us that we’re looking through a gentle mental mist at a world governed by the physics of nostalgia, already a quarter century (and a world war and an economic collapse) away by the time Ah, Wilderness! premiered in 1933. This is not O’Neill the tortured memoirist of A Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1956)—Nat Miller isn’t a miserly hack and Essie doesn’t take morphine. Far from it. Over at Steppenwolf Theatre, where

Antoinette Nwandu’s Pass Over excavates the race-enforced misery of young, urban black men, a series of popping sounds indicates gunfire. Here, it’s just Tommy’s firecrackers. Our main concern is Richard’s coming of age, neatly and safely accomplished in about 24 hours. Given a droll spin by Niall Cunningham, Dick is a curly-haired, beanpole-thin know-it-all when we first meet him, spouting opinions on Wilde and Shaw while declaring his epic love for Muriel, daughter of a cranky merchant named McComber—who arrives before long with the soul-baring if pedantic letters Dick’s been writing to Muriel in secret. (For a sense of how badly this kind of thing might go outside Connecticut, see Spring Awakening.) Dick is defiant about the letters but goes into a tailspin when he finds out that Muriel’s broken off their relationship. His dark night of the soul takes him to the Pleasant Beach House, a bar and brothel, where his visit with Amanda Drinkall’s marvelous Belle is both comic and oddly lovely on its way to a messy sort of knowing. But not too messy. One of the best things about Ah, Wilderness! is also the thing that keeps it from going anywhere really worrisome: its kids-are-all-right presentation of the young lovers. For all their bluster and feints at rebellion, Dick and Muriel are good teens—not in the sense of having knuckled under to a pervasive moral code but of having internalized kindness and responsibility. It’s fascinating to watch them come around to the revelation of their own decency. Which, at least in Dick’s case, is clearly modeled by his parents (given an endearing aura of long-term, workaday intimacy by Randall Newsome and Ora Jones). Talk about nostalgia. The Millers’ world as O’Neill wrote it is as white as it is old-fashioned. Scott has mitigated the monochrome with what you might call a modified colorblindness, creating some questions. What does it mean, for instance, that Essie and her brother are played by black actors and Nat and his sister by white ones? How does it happen that Norah the maid is the only character whose ethnicity is explicitly acknowledged? These are puzzlements. But it’s also good to see the table pushed wider. v AH, WILDERNESS! Through 7/23: Wed 7:30 PM, Thu 2 and 7:30 PM (7:30 PM only 7/20), Fri 8 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Sun 7/9, 7:30 PM; Tue 7/11, 7:30 PM, Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312443-3800, goodmantheatre.org, $20-$75.

v @taadler

ARTS & CULTURE Paul Gauguin, Manaò tupapaú (Spirit of the Dead Watching), 1892 ò TOM LOONAN

VISUAL ART

The alchemy of avoidance By LEE ANN NORMAN

auguin: Artist as Alchemist,” a new survey of Paul Gauguin’s oeuvre at the Art Institute, aims to disrupt the familiar association of Tahitian motifs with his work: full-bodied, brown-skinned women, sandy beaches, lush landscapes, tranquil waters. This is a noble and necessary endeavor because Gauguin’s output consists of so much more than his wellknown painting. Here a thorough collection of objects, didactic texts, and historical frames provides much-needed context to Gauguin’s place in the art-history canon. As someone who enjoys a good backstory, I was pleased to see Gauguin’s artwork contextualized with examples of arts and crafts from the cultures

that inspired him. But as an art writer and critic who works to uncover meaning in various settings, I was disappointed. While offering the background that positions Gauguin as an artistic innovator, the exhibition skirts the context that raises ethical questions around his relationship to cultural consumption and appropriation. Gauguin was an unusual figure for the second half of the 19th century. Not only was he a globe-trotter, having lived in far-ﬂung places since childhood, but he was also a genre crosser. Painters hardly ever dabbled in sculpture as publicly as he did, and “Artist as Alchemist” highlights this by displaying more than 240 objects, including ceramics, wood carvings,

prints, and decor alongside arts and crafts that inﬂuenced Gauguin’s creative output. An early example of Gauguin’s forays into sculpture is Gourd (1886-’87), a twisting vessel covered with a sea of protruding faces and animals. Working in the style of Peruvian ceramics he saw as a youth, Gauguin confines the mossy green glaze to certain areas—the faces—while painting others with white slip. Another aspect of his eclecticism was his exploration of nontraditional religious practices such as mysticism and the occult—upon discovering the Celtic community in Brittany, he began to incorporate some of their pagan motifs in his work. The more I traversed the exhibit halls, encountering numerous examples of Gauguin’s appropriation, from images in Javanese reliefs to fiber arts from Martinique to the woodblock printing techniques of Japan, the more I felt uneasy. On a map outlining his world travels near the entrance, I noticed that all of his destinations outside of Europe were lands that had been colonized by Spain or France at some point: Peru, Panama, Martinique, the South Pa-

cific. Gauguin traveled the world devouring the creativity of people whose land and cultures had been violated countless times before. My approach to criticism is rooted in a belief that objects and experiences can be evaluated on their own terms, but that their social history—their backstory—uncovers their meaning. I ask questions about quality, execution, and impact so I can leave my personal preferences out. Criticism isn’t about sorting art into piles of “good” and “bad” work, but rather about sparking dialogue on the ability of an object to effectively convey meaning. Gauguin’s sculptures are beautiful, and his paintings certainly benefit from these earlier experiments in form and material. Figures like the iconic washerwomen and Breton girls, rendered in the manner of Degas and Pissarro, were early indicators of Gauguin’s interest in abstraction, and his use of bold color swatches and mystic symbols anticipate the coming rise of modernism in art. Yet while “Artist as Alchemist” acknowledges Gauguin as an artistic visionary, it only slightly concedes the controversial aspects of his pieces. It’s important to question this framing. Do Peruvian ceramic techniques or Japanese wood-block printing practices only become “radically experimental” when a Western European man incorporates them into his work? Are people from seemingly exotic places inherently less tainted by society and academic learning, making them better able to access the spiritual in art? There aren’t many paintings of Gauguin’s version of “happy darkies” on the islands, but his fantastical assumptions about the lives of people in faraway lands remain embedded in this collection of objects, giving “Artist as Alchemist” a discomfiting feel. Too often scholarly critique allows us to canonize artwork apart from the racist and imperialist subtext of the ideas and practices that undergird it. This exhibition makes a valiant effort to contextualize Gauguin and his body of work, but misses an important opportunity to offer a more in-depth analysis of the social history of the art it exhibits. v “GAUGUIN: ARTIST AS ALCHEMIST” Through 9/10: Sun–Wed and Fri-Sat 10:30 AM–5 PM, Thu 10:30 AM–8 PM, Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan, 312-443-3600. $25, $19 students, seniors ($5 discount for Chicago residents), free kids under 14; free for Illinois residents Thursdays 5-8 PM.

v @namronnnaeel JULY 6, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 21

Get showtimes at chicagoreader.com/movies.

ARTS & CULTURE Timothy Spall and Colm Meaney in The Journey

MOVIES

Driven to extremes By J.R. JONES

ick Hamm’s historical fantasy The Journey is based on a real-life incident that took place near the end of the decades-long civil conflict between Catholic nationalists and Protestant unionists in Northern Ireland. In October 2006 the British and Irish governments, along with the major political parties in Northern Ireland, convened in Saint Andrews, Scotland, to hammer out a power-sharing arrangement between the Democratic Unionist Party, led by the ﬁre-breathing Protestant minister Ian Paisley, and Sinn Féin, the left-leaning Irish republican party. During the negotiations, Paisley was permitted to ﬂy home to Ulster for an evening to celebrate his 50th wedding anniversary, and as a security protocol (to protect his plane from a possible ground-to-air attack), he was accompanied by Martin McGuinness, a leader of Sinn Féin and a former chief of staff for the Irish Republican Army. According to McGuinness (who died in March at age 66), he and Paisley (who died in 2014 at age 88) never spoke during the trip

ssss EXCELLENT

sss GOOD

and had their first conversation only the following spring, after the DUP chose Paisley to serve as first minister of the new government and Sinn Féin nominated McGuinness as deputy first minister. Yet Hamm and screenwriter Colin Bateman have turned the October trip into an extended dialogue between Paisley and McGuinness, men divided by their politics but united by their common extremism. Paisley, played with quiet fury and lordly wrath by Timothy Spall, was a religious fundamentalist whose loathing of the Catholic Church had energized the unionist side since “the Troubles” broke out in the late 1960s. McGuinness, whom Colm Meaney invests with both grit and polish, said he left the IRA in 1974, though as a politician he was dogged by accusations that he maintained ties to the group and monitored its ongoing campaign of bombings and assassinations. The Journey functions primarily as a hopeful story of people overcoming their differences, but it also looks at how each man rationalized his own role in the endless violence. Founder of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, Paisley was a biblical literalist and a

ss AVERAGE

22 CHICAGO READER - JULY 6, 2017

s POOR

•

bitter foe of the worldwide ecumenical movement that was building bridges between the Protestant and Catholic faiths in the 1960s. His ﬁre-and-brimstone speeches assailed not only the Catholic majority in Northern Ireland but also the British government, which he accused of being in league with the pope. His incendiary rhetoric during the civil rights marches of the ’60s, when Catholics protested against job discrimination and the Protestant minority’s control of government, fueled the rise of the Ulster Volunteer Force, responsible for a series of bombings and street murders. “He was our savior, our Moses, our champion,” remembers one UVF veteran interviewed by journalist Peter Taylor for the book Loyalists, though all those questioned maintain that Paisley was carefully insulated from the group’s activities. Elected to Parliament in 1970, Paisley was enormously popular at the polls and had strongly resisted the peace process (the DUP was the only major party not to endorse the Good Friday Agreement that signaled an end to the conflict in 1998). He arrived in Saint Andrews as a man to be courted. McGuinness was a 19-year-old butcher’s apprentice when he got swept up in the street violence between Catholics and Protestants in Derry in 1969, and he held a variety of command posts in the IRA during a period when it killed dozens of British soldiers and innocent civilians. In the 1970s he became increasingly prominent in Sinn Féin, though his past service to the IRA would always be central to his political identity. Over the years he categorically denied stories that he was still involved in the organization. (Taylor, reporting for the BBC in 2008, alleged that McGuinness had reviewed plans for the IRA’s infamous “Remembrance Day” bombing, which killed 11 civilians in the town of Enniskillen in November 1987.) By the late 90s, McGuinness had moved into a senior leadership role in the party, and along with its president, Gerry Adams, he took an active role in negotiating the peace agreement. In fact, his reputation as a secret IRA man helped legitimize the peace process in the eyes of republican hard-liners.

I’m not a big fan of fictionalized history like this—it only encourages people to fictionalize the present—but at least Hamm is up-front about the matter, explaining in the opening title that the whole movie is a big what-if. Instead of letting Paisley and McGuinness sit silently in a private jet, Bateman has invented a brewing storm in Saint Andrews that forces them to travel by chauffeured car to the Edinburgh airport, and then car trouble so they can get out, stroll around the forest, and argue amid the gravestones of a local cemetery. Unbeknownst to them, their fresh-faced driver (Freddie Highmore) is really an MI6 agent keeping an eye on them, and a hidden camera broadcasts their conversation to a flat screen in a little command center, where it’s monitored by a veteran Anglo-Irish diplomat named Harry Patterson (the late, great John Hurt) as well as Gerry Adams, Ian Paisley Jr., Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern, and a comically fretful and feckless version of British prime minister Tony Blair. This little audience gives Bateman a chance to fill in the political implications of the private conversation, with Patterson dispensing periodic pearls of wisdom, but the real story happens in the close confines of the car. Paisley and McGuinness are understandably awkward with each other. Their driver volunteers that he once drove Samuel L. Jackson to a golf outing; Paisley has never heard of Jackson, and McGuinness wryly suggests they take in a screening of the new Snakes on a Plane. When McGuinness, whose cell phone is out of range, asks to borrow Paisley’s phone, the minister refuses. “A text is not gonna kill you,” McGuinness complains, adding slyly, “Unless, of course, it’s an order.” Paisley turns out to be no slouch either: when McGuinness implores him to “extend the olive branch,” the minister cracks, “I imagine you’d be more familiar with the Special Branch,” referring to the British security service, and dissolves into a wheezing, self-delighted laugh. Before long, though, the men arrive at their defining conflict as Paisley attacks McGuinness’s conscience and McGuinness denounces the intolerance Paisley bred for decades. “Do you know why, in nearly 30 years, the IRA has never, never once, tried to kill you?” McGuinness asks him. “Because you—with all your bigotry, all your save-Ulster-from-sodomy campaigning, seeing antichrists around every corner—you have done more damage to your lot than the IRA ever could have done with

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ARTS & CULTURE

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WARM AND HUGELY ENTERTAINING. ELSA DORFMAN IS A FORCE, AND SPENDING TIME WITH HER IS AN INVALUABLE EXPERIENCE.” - THE GUARDIAN

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“The client chooses one portrait and the other one is a reject – I call it the B-SIDE. This is probably better than the one they did take.” - Elsa Dorfman

Elsa Dorfm

A FILM BY ERROL MORRIS

Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography R

RSM

1,000 bombs.” When they happen upon an abandoned country church, Paisley can’t help but climb into the dilapidated pulpit, and Spall shows the minister’s deep discomfort as he recalls his own familiar cry of “Never! Never! Never!” Paisley speaks reverently of Martin Luther King Jr. as a Christian martyr, but he has no credible answer when McGuinness reminds him of his own fierce opposition to civil rights marchers at home. Just as Paisley retreats into scripture to defend himself, McGuinness retreats into the mental construct of the Troubles as a military conflict, despite the fact that it claimed hundreds of civilian lives. In his view, he was only a soldier, but Paisley won’t let him get away with this. When they move from the church out to the graveyard, Paisley confronts McGuinness with the Remembrance Day bombing and the example of Gordon Wilson, whose daughter was killed in the attack but who publicly proclaimed his forgiveness of the IRA. “It was a mistake, OK?” McGuinness admits. “It did irreparable damage to our cause.” He relates an emotional incident in which his daughter’s innocent question about the bombing set him on the path to peace. But Paisley scoffs at his “crocodile tears,” suggesting he share his tender story with the families who lost loved ones. “Tell them that you suffered too,” Paisley thunders, “that it caused your side ‘irreparable damage.’” As in any road movie, the bumps in the road turn fellow passengers into grudging companions, and once the men have unloaded on each other and the driver has gotten the car moving again, Paisley and McGuinness relax into a more comic mode. (In office, they would grow so chummy that people referred to them as “the Chuckle Brothers.”) By the end of the movie McGuinness convinces Paisley that sealing the peace, to the anger of their respective followers, is their opportunity for martyrdom, an argument that resonates with the minister. But when they finally shake hands, they do so clear-eyed, Paisley declaring, “I despise everything you’ve done,” and McGuinness replying, “I despise everything you stand for.” If The Journey rings true, then nothing united these two antagonists like their shared need to justify their own militance and disown the tragedy it inflicted on so many. v THE JOURNEY sss Directed by Nick Hamm. PG-13, 94 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark’s Century Centre, and River East 21.

- THE NEW YORK TIMES

“

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24 CHICAGO READER - JULY 6, 2017

Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week of July 6

MUSIC

ALL AGES

PICK OF THE WEEK

Versatile as ever DJ Shadow surfs through dubstep, jazz, and IDM

ò DERICK DAILY

DJ SHADOW

Sat 6/10, 8:30 PM, Park West, 322 W. Armitage, $30. 18+

THURSDAY6 CafÉ Tacuba Part of Taste of Chicago. Los Vicios de Papa open. 5:30 PM, Petrillo Music Shell, Grant Park, 205 E. Randolph, $22-$50 seats. b

Manera,” an unexpected twirl. Café Tacuba have lost none of their elan or imagination, and the fact that they’re headlining one of Chicago’s largest stages in the middle of the summer testifies to their continued stature; Jei Beibi suggests they have no interest in simply tallying their accomplishments. —PETER MARGASAK

Now in their 27th year, Mexico City quartet Café Tacuba have arguably done more than anyone to give Mexican rock music a broad, serious platform worldwide. As key players in the ascent of rock en español, the group refused to sing in English and deftly forged a vanguard sound that encouraged countless others in Latin America to follow their own creative imperatives rather than imitate bands in the U.S. or Europe. Café Tacuba recently dropped a strong new album, Jei Beibi (Melotrón)—their first in five years—and while it reinforces that they’re no longer trendsetters, it also shows they’ve retained their deep curiosity. Singer Ruben Albarrán’s helium-squeaky tone is still capable of hyperactive hectoring, but when he’s at his best he luxuriates in the infectiously attractive melodies that ripple through every song regardless of stylistic setting. The new album constantly changes complexion, whether hijacking reggae, fizzy new-wave synths, hypermainstream summer pop, sentimental string-sopped balladry, or even Indian electro in the middle of “Me Gusta Tu

A Giant Dog Bleach Party and Deadly Vipers open; DJ Creepy Donnie spins. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $10. Austin’s A Giant Dog are the type of band that shouldn’t stand out as much as they do. The ﬁvepiece, whose lineup at one point featured Texas garage-rock wunderkind Orville Neeley (OBN IIIs, Bad Sports, etc) on drums, play straightforward, no-frills, punky rock ’n’ roll. Nothing fancy, nothing special, they hammer through tracks with rock-solid confidence that rivals the garage-rock greats. “Photograph,” the first single from next month’s Toy (Merge), hints at what could just be their best record yet. Kicking the beat up a little while featuring superhooky but more complex vocal interplay between lead singer Sabrina Ellis and guitarist Andrew Cashen, the song adds a slightly more colorful ﬂare to A Giant Dog’s no-nonsense formula. They’ve been on a roll over the past few years, and now there’s fresh proof they won’t be slowing down anytime soon. —LUCA CIMARUSTI

DJ SHADOW WASN’T the first to repurpose sampled records into wholly original music, or even the ﬁrst to do it artfully—there were Double Dee and Steinski, the Dust Brothers, and Negativland, not to mention hundreds of hip-hop producers. But with his early singles and the long-player masterpiece Endtroducing . . . (Mo’ Wax, 1996), Shadow was the ﬁrst to make sophisticated, drawn-out, cinematic sample-based cuts that were both undeniably hip-hop and yet something else entirely. Most critics categorized it as “trip-hop,” but in truth it was a new, completely fresh progression of hiphop; it existed somewhere in the gaps between that genre and indie, electronic music, and musique concrete—plus, it wasn’t unapproachable. In the time since Shadow has moved away from suitelike compositions and toward more traditional song formats, but he’s still experimenting with how far he can push hip-hop’s boundaries. Last year’s The Mountain Will Fall (Mass Appeal) has brief tracks but still surfs through dubstep, jazz, and IDM while making room for a boom-bap banger like “Nobody Speak,” featuring Run the Jewels. Judging from past performances, you won’t want to miss Shadow’s dexterous handling of turntables and a drum machine, whether the playing is unadorned or accompanied by some kind of multimedia showcase. During his Pitchfork Music Festival appearance in 2011, he was surrounded by a giant orb with videos projected onto it. —TAL ROSENBERG

A Giant Dog ò SEAN DAIGLE

JULY 6, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 25

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26 CHICAGO READER - JULY 6, 2017

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

MUSIC

bottom lounge

Gorillaz ò J-C. HEWLETT

continued from 25

FRIDAY7 ESG Part of West Fest. 8:30 PM (set time), Empty Bottle main stage, Chicago and Damen, $5 suggested donation. b Listening to 1983’s Come Away With ESG—while never forgetting the cut-and-paste album art—it’s almost as though the Scroggins sisters (Renee, Valerie, Deborah, Marie) didn’t realize that their raw Bronx blend of funk, postpunk, and disco would go on to breed and influence a flourishing dance-punk scene in early-2000s NYC. No way, they were having much too hot a time in the now. You can hear that in tracks like “Dance” and “You Make No Sense,” stripped down to low-in-themix bass lines, perhaps a few repeated lyrics— often presented as simple directives—and simple and stark rhythms consisting of drums, tambourine, and, if we’re lucky, cowbell. They’re the kind of fresh grooves that the Rapture and Liars were aping 20 years later, and they sound as relevant today, aging even better than the high-gloss beats laid down by the group’s descendants. ESG have existed in long fits and starts since their inception while continuing to release music. Their most recent record, 2013’s Closure, is often a much more soulful and produced effort than their earliest material, but some of the more simmering, dancier tracks (e.g., “I Feel Tonight”) are true to the old credo. Tonight’s West Fest performance is a rare one, and if you like to get down even a little, it’s also one that should not be missed, rain or shine. —KEVIN WARWICK

SATURDAY8 Bump J Part of WGCI Summer Jam. Lil Wayne, Jeezy, Yo Gotti, TFN Lucci, Jeremih, Fat Joe & Remy Ma, Kyle, Lecrae, MadeinTYO, Bump J, and others perform. 7:30 PM, United Center, 1901 W. Madison, $41-$130.50. b

In the 2000s, Chicago hip-hop broke out via Kanye West, Rhymefest, Lupe Fiasco, and the Cool Kids, but no other local rapper was as emblematic of the city during that era as Terrance Boykin, better known as Bump J. With his unassuming intellect, everyman worldview, and easygoing poise, Bump J approaches rapping as if the instrumentals he works with have to fit his flow rather than be calibrated the other way around. For a moment in the mid-aughts as major labels came through town to kick the scene’s tires, Bump was primed to be the next breakthrough, riding a series of hot mixtapes to a deal with Atlantic. The label released a few Bump J singles: one with Rick James (“On the Run”), two produced by Kanye (“Pushaman” actually features a verse by ’Ye, though Bump outperforms him), and one that was featured in a McDonald’s ad (“Move Around”). By 2006 he parted ways with Atlantic, and three years later it looked as though his rap future was in the tank after he took a plea deal for an armed robbery he allegedly committed in 2007. Behind bars, though, Bump’s renown blossomed, and he’s become a godfather to a young generation of Chicago rappers. His sentence ended in April, and he’s gingerly stepped back into the spotlight, recording with Harvey hero Ty Money (“Yes and No”) and bringing heavies Yo Gotti and Pusha T in for his second postprison single (“Fuck Up the Summa”). Tonight is Bump J’s first major public appearance since his release; his position on the bill for WGCI’s Summer Jam is a testament to how the city feels about him. —LEOR GALIL

Drug Honkey Faces of the Bog, Cokegoat, and Boatman’s Toll open. 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2105 S. State, $13, $10 in advance. 17+ This local “psychedoomic” outfit share spiritual space with some fellow travelers, but really they’re in a league of their own. Heavy as fuck and blending their plunging, slow doom riffs with an industrial flavor a la Godflesh, Drug Honkey live in a much more serious zone of multifaceted darkness than the silly name would have you believe. Their latest album, Cloak of Skies (Transcending Obscurity)— with its trippy Bosch-like cover art and long, J

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MUSIC Glenn Jones ò JESSE SHEPPARD

Long Beach all-star Vince Staples pumps life into the all-too-brief “Ascension,” but too often the contributors’ talents feel wasted. It’s a shame, especially considering Humanz gathers stars from Chicago pop history including Mavis Staples, Jamie Principle, and the Twilite Tone. —LEOR GALIL

DJ Shadow See Pick of the Week (page 25). 8:30 PM, Park West, 322 W. Armitage, $30. 18+

continued from 27

cinematic tracks—further develops their progressive side via a rich variety of tonal ﬂavors created by synthesizers, eerie vocals, and, on the title track, the wailing, damned-soul saxophone of Bruce Lamont (Yakuza, Bloodiest). It’s a risky style, but Drug Honkey are so completely conﬁdent and anchored that it doesn’t sound like they’re going out on any limbs at all—it’s rather that their world really is that weird. —MONICA KENDRICK

Gorillaz 7:30 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion, 1300 S. Linn White, sold out. b Since breaking out in the 90s as front man of Brit-pop powerhouse Blur, Damon Albarn has

turned into the rare rock star who’s unable to make a bad record—but that doesn’t mean everything he’s done has been great. As the wizard pulling the levers behind the curtain of Gorillaz, Albarn has managed to gift the animated cartoon rock band with a consistent, sometimes affecting hip-hop-inflected pop sound through a series of albums made with diﬀerent Frankensteinian supergroups. Gorillaz cast a large shadow on the real-world music festival circuit, and though the group’s artfully rendered, anime-influenced personas beget bigness, they could’ve cut back a bit on their new fifth album, Humanz (Warner/ Parlophone). Lugubrious and lethargic, Humanz carries all the world-weariness Gorillaz brought to their previous work, just without the quixotic exuberance. There are bright spots, like when

SUNDAY9 Poptone 8 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $36, $31 in advance. 18+

Woods Part of West Fest. 4 PM (set time), Empty Bottle main stage, Chicago and Damen, $5 suggested donation. b

Daniel Ash, former guitarist of Bauhaus, Tones on Tail, and Love and Rockets, recently told Kansas City’s the Pitch that he was inspired to take to the road again following a half-asleep 4 AM encounter with Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades” during which he felt his late old acquaintance Lemmy urging him to get his ass back out there. It’s really no more outlandish than anything else in his career—including his ﬁnal attempt at a Bauhaus reunion, which ended fairly decisively after the 2008 album Go Away White (Cooking Vinyl). This retrospective band consists of Ash, drummer Kevin Haskins—who was in all three aforementioned bands—

Jammy New York band Woods aren’t any sort of a political combo, but that doesn’t mean the members don’t feel the overwhelming weight of last year’s election. In preparing to make their latest album, Love Is Love (Woodist), they made the deliberate choice to respond by embracing the titular emotion rather than the rage that enveloped so many of us. In a liner-note essay for the new record, music journalist Sam Hockley-Smith wrote, “There will be parts of life where we will watch as events unfold and we will feel helpless. We will not be sure of the future. On good days, we’ll have each other. J

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and Haskins’s daughter Diva Dompe. Set lists from the tour have shown a heavy emphasis on Tones on Tail, the very underrated goth-pop project that ﬁlled the mid-80s interregnum between Bauhaus and Love and Rockets. Since the set won’t include any songs cowritten with bassist (and Haskins’s brother) David J—who never played in Tones on Tail—it’s a pretty logical period on which to focus. It’s also a rewarding one that includes many of Ash’s best songs. And though it does disqualify a number of Love and Rockets’ best tunes, their catalog remains a deep one. —MONICA KENDRICK

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JULY 6, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 29

Chicago forever.

Take a class and celebrate 60 years of making music! New adult group classes are now open! Browse our class schedules online at oldtownschool.org

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EARLY WARNINGS

chicagoreader.com/early 30 CHICAGO READER - JULY 6, 2017

MUSIC Monsta X ò PHILIPPE LOPEZ

continued from 29

On the bad ones, we’ll turn to the art that helps us feel something.” Indeed, the song “I Hit That Drum” opens with the lines, “Feeling dark and down / I hit that drum / It takes me away.” It’s a nice sentiment—though clearly not enough as rights and dignity are systematically stripped from our lives—and one consistent with the band’s post-Grateful Dead ethos. The six extended tracks turn those mellow thoughts into sound; Jeremy Earl delivers easygoing melodic shapes over chill, rolling grooves and rich arrangements that collide muted 60s soul with horn patterns that continue to reflect the band’s love of vintage Ethiopian pop. Sorrowful melodic shapes are suﬀused with an undeniable air of positivity on the instrumental “Spring Is in the Air,” where a tremolo-laden quasi-tambura drone pulses beneath languid horns, gently meandering Fender-Rhodes, spare dub effects, and a probing flute solo. As passive as it feels in such turbulent times, it achieves its goal of providing a kind of loving balm. —PETER MARGASAK

MONDAY10 Woods See Sunday. John Andrews & the Yawns open. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $12.

WEDNESDAY12 Glenn Jones, House and Land 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $12, $10 in advance. 18+ For his recent album Waterworks (Thrill Jockey) Boston fingerstyle-guitar specialist Glenn Jones planted his spindly, quietly virtuosic take on John Fahey’s American Primitive style within the acoustically challenging Metropolitan Waterworks Museum. To adapt to the space he and longtime friend

Matthew Azevedo, who’s mastered his recordings for 15 years, devised a 20-channel setup, but as they prepared for the June 2015 performance the project became more interactive, Azevedo complementing the guitar (and occasional) banjo lines with field recordings and subtle harmonium and synthesizer accents. The recording, by Ernst Karel, meticulously captures Jones’s playing with dry clarity; unfortunately, Azevedo’s contributions feel a bit superfluous. I admire the guitarist’s willingness to experiment, but I’m still glad this visit will feature just him and his own instruments. House and Land is the duo of Sarah Louise Henson, one of the most exciting instrumental guitarists to emerge in the last few years, and Sally Anne Morgan, the fiddler in Black Twig Pickers. Together they essay songs from Appalachian folk tradition, usually devising fascinating arrangements for tunes they originally heard in a cappella form. Their stunning eponymous debut for Thrill Jockey finds them expanding their instrumental arsenal with a variety of string instruments as well as occasionally generating drones with a shruti box. Their vocal harmonies recall the singular hillbilly singing made famous by Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard, augmented by a kind of accidental avant-garde rich in overtones and psychoacoustic effects. This dazzling marriage feels utterly natural, teasing out microtonal elements while remaining firmly rooted in and respectful of American folk traditions. Morgan’s hydroplaning fiddle drones on a track like “Listen to the Roll”— enhanced by Louise’s shruti box and the bowed double-bass lines of guest Joe Dejarnette—recast a sound that has existed for ages into something fresh, reinforcing the otherworldly durability of the repertoire. —PETER MARGASAK

Monsta X 8 PM, Rosemont Theatre, 5400 N. River Rd., Rosemont, $75-$90. b In March 2015, South Korean clothing company Litmus announced an endorsement deal with Monsta X, a K-pop group that had been a unit for J

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a handful of months and had only a couple singles to their name. Such is the way of K-pop’s assembly-line system, an art in its own right, and Monsta X are among the latest by-products on the rise, a seven-piece boy band with a hip-hop twist that came together on a reality program called No Mercy. It takes an insane amount of willpower, dedication, and ﬁnesse to succeed in this racket— according to a 2012 New Yorker feature on K-pop, only about a tenth of all stars in the making manage to actually release a debut—but Monsta X have proven themselves capable of domination in just a couple years’ time. Their ﬁrst world tour, which

consists of just seven U.S. dates, kicks oﬀ tonight in Chicago, and follows last month’s Shine Forever (Starship Entertainment), a repackaged version of their debut album, The Clan Pt. 2.5. That record peaked at the top of Billboard’s World Music chart after it came out in March. Balancing EDM bombast with neofunk minimalism and lean hip-hop, Monsta X hit the same buttons as Bruno Mars with his blend of pop’s wide history. Sure, they largely sing and rap in Korean, but you don’t have to take any language courses to ﬁgure out what drives the sprightly “All I Do” (though it doesn’t hurt that the opening words are in English: “I think about you”). —LEOR GALIL v

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

MUSIC

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Taste of Chicago The annual celebration of food and music hosts five themed days ranging from rock to hip-hop to Latin on one stage, while touring acts like the O’Jays, Passion Pit, and Café Tacuba (see page 25) play the Petrillo Music Shell. 7/5-7/9, Grant Park, Columbus and Jackson, cityofchicago.org, free, Petrillo shows $19-$50. b

25th Anniversary Celebration & Album Release Party

Irish American Heritage Festival Celebrate all things Irish with dance lessons, traditional bagpipe music, Guinness, and performances by Gaelic Storm and Michael McDermott, among others. 7/7-7/9, Irish American Heritage Center, 4626 N. Knox, irish-american.org, $10 per day. b Ruido fest The giant Latin music festival features 20-year-anniversary retrospectives of Mexican rock band Molotov’s debut ¿Dónde Jugarán las Niñas? and Venezualan ska band Desorden Público’s Plomo Revienta. Bomba Estéreo, Julieta Venegas, and Mon Laferte also perform. 7/7-7/9, Addams/Medill Park, 1301 W. 14th, ruidofest.com, $54.98 per day, $94.98 two-day pass, $149.98 three-day pass. b

Square Roots Festival Presented by the Old Town School of Folk Music, this mainstay takes over Lincoln Square with music and dance lessons, open jams, family activities, and headlining performances by Nikki Lane, Meat Puppets, and Lucero. 7/7-7/9, Lincoln between Montrose and Wilson, squareroots.org, $10 suggested donation, $5 suggested donation for seniors and kids, $20 suggested donation for families. b West Fest The West Town summertime go-to fest features rock and experimental acts like Speedy Ortiz, Local H, Woods (see page 29), and a rare performance from no-wave pioneers ESG (see page 25). There’s also a DJ stage hosting house music over the course of the weekend. 7/7-7/9, Chicago between Damen and Wood, westfestchicago.com, $5 suggested donation. b WGCI Summer Jam Hometown hip-hop station WGCI celebrates the season with some of rap’s biggest stars, including Lil Wayne, Young Jeezy, Yo Gotti, and Fat Joe, with locals like Jeremih and Bump J (see page 27). 7/8, 7:30 PM, United Center, 1901 W. Madison, wgci.iheart.com, $41-$130.50. b

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FOOD & DRINK

CLEVER RABBIT | $$ R 2015 W. Division 773-697-8711 cleverrabbitchicago.com

Crudite platter ò ZAKKIYYAH NAJEEBAH

NEW REVIEW

Clever Rabbit is a feeding frenzy for plant eaters But will the West Town spot survive past the summer? By MIKE SULA

s you probably know, rabbits are running wild all over Chicago right now. If you haven’t seen them, then you must live in a high-rise facing the lake. Summer is the time when rabbits are born and begin their short but happy lives eating, fucking, and sleeping all the time. They’re everywhere. But when the weather gets cold, they’re smart enough to go someplace warm and wait it out. As my colleague J.R. Jones noted a few weeks ago, for those reasons rabbits are kind of like us. We’re kind of like them too—here we are just past midsummer, and all we want to do is eat vegetables. That’s evident from the popularity of new veg-centered restaurants like Bad Hunter and the Little Beet Table, for better and worse, respectively. Even spots that take a scattershot approach to menu development, like Gemini and Ella Elli, are devoting significantly more inches on the page to plant matter. The latest largely verdure-oriented restaurant that has folks bounding in like leporids is named, appropriately enough, Clever Rabbit. It comes to us from a handful of partners, one

34 CHICAGO READER - JULY 6, 2017

of whom is involved in the Betty and Sparrow. But the really compelling piece of the machinery here is the chef, Matt Lair, who last appeared at the stove at the late, great Bom Bolla, which in retrospect was also a pretty great summer restaurant (that unfortunately didn’t survive its first winter). It’s good to see that Lair made it out alive, though. My interest in this restaurant was piqued considerably when I learned he was involved. The first thing that needs to be addressed is the $38 crudite platter, a presentation that seems designed to foment divisiveness. It’s a suitcase-size wooden board covered with a riotous arrangement of vegetables, fruits, flowers, leaves, schmears, cheeses, and flatbreads. Whether you think this a glorious way to enjoy nature’s love for us or an audacious rip-off might depend on precisely when in the season you eat it. I’m somewhere down the middle on the one I munched my way through last month. While the smoked mushroom mousse tasted almost of meat butter smeared on crunchy naan studded with hemp seeds, the ground-up black truffle sprinkled over watery white asparagus performed more like sawdust. Raw cucumber, dill, carrots, garlic scapes, radishes, and convenient spoonlike spears of endive appeared on my board. That Lair was serving excellently ripe and flavorful tomatoes in mid-June indicated they were from someplace far away. (From a Canadian hothouse, in fact.) I bet this spread gets better as the days get shorter. I’d definitely give it another shot, maybe in late July or early August, when our vegetables are at their best. That said, the remainder of Lair’s menu is a bit more consistent, featuring inventive salads and composed and shareable vegetable plates as well as proteins that go easy on the protein. The law that says no one can open a restaurant without putting a burger at the bottom of the menu is proof enough that the bloodmouths will never be satisfied without their red meat. So of course Clever Rabbit has a burger. But it’s the only beef in the joint. Of those salads, the fiambre is something that stays with you for days. You’re really allowed to eat this dish only on the Day of the Dead in Guatemala, when you’re J

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FOOD & DRINK Carrot margarita ò ZAKKIYYAH NAJEEBAH

continued from 34

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36 CHICAGO READER - JULY 6, 2017

supposed to deliver food to your departed loved ones in the cemetery. Yet somehow Lair received special dispensation to fill a deep bowl with roasted red peppers, asparagus, green beans, chickpeas, cucumber, carrot, radish, egg, hearts of palm, cheddar, and a ginger-lime vinaigrette that somehow tastes creamier and richer than it sounds like it would. A Guatemalan fiambre is also supposed to have a colon-clogging amount of meat in it, but happily Lair’s is a truly satisfying bowl without it—and really not something to tackle alone if you want to try much else on the menu. His likewise satisfying but more manageable Caesar turns up the intensity on an inherently flavor-forward salad by boosting the anchovy and Reggiano with ruddy croutons loaded with a surprising chile sting. Most of the vegetable plates that form the heart of the menu function as salads themselves—cooked ones, anyway. And they vary in the pleasures they give or withhold. A trio of overbrowned and stiff dumplings squirt a filling of pureed carrot with an herbaceousness that tastes as if someone spiked the baby food with cough medicine. A plate of Swiss chard and kale cooked down and served cold amid chunks of fatty avocado is a take on Japanese gomae that’s pleasantly bland, especially compared to a bowl of Chinese broccoli and squishy, peppery tofu given deep funk from fermented black beans and elevating sweetness from pink grapefruit. The wiry resistance of shaved brussels sprouts is mitigated by a gob of honeyed yogurt, tart preserved lemon, and a nasaltickling hint of horseradish. The meat-lite portion of the menu is dominated by sea creatures. I always seem to get suckered by the crudo. It’s very often a stingy, unsatisfying thing to eat. Here that’s compounded: the delicate tissues of red sea bream are overpowered by smoked paprika. Scallops—pounded, breaded, and deep-fried crispy, like schnitzel—are a more successful exercise even if the underlying braised cabbage is dominated by salty anchovy. Chicken, usually put on the menu for delicate eaters averse to red flesh, is here the meatiest thing on the menu apart from the burger. A boned half bird flattened on the skillet by a brick, it’s a crispy, juicy job well done.

A short dessert menu features a carrot cake of remarkable density and deep, complex spicing. It’s marred by a disturbing splodge of olive-oil jam with a thickness, viscosity, and opacity shared by certain bodily fluids. I think this otherwise remarkable cake would be improved if served with a simple splash of good, fruity, unmanipulated olive oil. Meanwhile, a banana split proves messy to eat, its large slabs of grilled pineapple resisting pressure from the fork. Everybody at Clever Rabbit seems to order the carrot margarita, but it lacks acidity, and the savory element of the root in tandem with an overdose of agave syrup obliterates any subtleties there might otherwise be. Other cocktails, developed by partner Nick Pagor, perform much better, including a bourbon potion spiked with coffee-flavored amaro that’s best sipped after you’re groaning from eating so much plant matter; there’s also a much lighter alcohol-free watermelon agua fresca given a vegetal jolt from charred jalapeño. A fairly extensive wine list is dominated by high-acidity bottles, but you may not find a more perfect one over which to contemplate your crudité than the medium-bodied Provençal rosé from Mathilde Chapoutier, which seems like a drink made for summer. With its wide-open facade and crowded patio, Clever Rabbit also is made for summer. Whether it will continue to evolve or hibernate over the winter is still an open question. v

v @Mike Sula

○ Watch a video of Adam Wendt working with yellow onions in the kitchen—and get the recipe—at chicagoreader.com/food.

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

argentine atmosphere while you dine

restaurant & bar Onion-brined chicken liver with yellow onion marmalade ò JULIA THIEL

KEY INGREDIENT

Yellow magic orchestrated

By JULIA THIEL

nions have been cultivated for at least 7,000 years. They’re one of the most common ingredients in almost every cuisine. So when Gabino “Bino” Ottoman of the Ruin Daily challenged ADAM WENDT, chef at the soon-to-open Wicker Park restaurant THE DELTA, to build a dish around YELLOW ONIONS, Wendt had his work cut out for him. “It’s kind of a crazy ingredient to be challenged with, because it literally goes into everything,” he says. “It was just ﬁguring what I wanted to do, and then trying to throw as much onion at it as I could.” Wendt’s first thought was to make liver and onions, a dish he grew up eating. His mom would fry calves’ livers in bacon fat, but Wendt decided on chicken livers instead. Then he ﬁgured out seven ways to incorporate onion, starting with the marinade for the livers: he pureed raw onion with buttermilk and vacuum-sealed the mixture with garlic, thyme, and salt, letting it sit overnight with the livers.

Then he drained the marinade, dipped the livers in a mixture of buttermilk and Dijon mustard, and dredged them in ﬂour with spices and onion powder before deep-frying them. Instead of just frying onions to go with the liver, Wendt made a caramelized onion marmalade and a roasted onion aioli. For the ﬁrst, he cooked yellow onion slices and garlic in bacon fat until the onion caramelized, then added sugar and bacon along with white balsamic vinegar and thyme. The aioli, in addition to pureed roasted onion, included canola and olive oil, egg yolks, white vinegar, sugar, Dijon mustard, dehydrated onion, and cayenne, all blended in a food processor. Tasting it to check the seasoning, Wendt’s eyes widened. “Wow. It’s really oniony,” he said. “That’ll work.” Wendt had a couple more uses for his onions: in one, he cooked them down with squid ink, dehydrated them, and pulverized them to make black onion powder. The second was simpler: raw and thinly sliced in a salad of

Fresno chiles, mustard greens, and fried green peppercorns with a little olive oil and lemon juice. All the elements came together on a mustard-yellow plate: first the marmalade and aioli, then a fried chicken liver, topped with the salad and finally the black onion powder. His overall goal was to keep the dish light, Wendt says. “It’s hard to do with onion after you cook it, because it gets such a savory-sweet flavor it’s hard to cut through that richness.” It worked out, though. “Onion definitely comes through. Every single component of the dish was hit with onion in some form or another, so if it didn’t come through I didn’t really do a good job. But it’s there, big time.”

WHO’S NEXT:

Wendt has challenged ASHLEE AUBIN, chef at WOOD and SALERO, to create a dish with MANISCHEWITZ GEFILTEFISH IN GELLED BROTH. He had to be specifc, Wendt says, because otherwise “I ﬁgured [Aubin] would go and have one of his Jewish friends make it for him, and it might actually be delicious. I wanted him to use the nasty canned stuff that comes in a jellied liquid. It’s kind of terrifying.” v

v @juliathiel

210 0 we st division st . 7 7 3 . 2 9 2 .1 6 0 0

Find hundreds of Readerrecommended restaurants, exclusive video features, and sign up for weekly news chicagoreader.com/ food. JULY 6, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 37

JOBS SALES & MARKETING TELE-FUNDRAISING SUMMER CASH! American Veterans helping Veterans. Felons need not apply per Illinois Attorney General regulations. Start ASAP, Call 312-256-5035

food & drink SERVERS, BARTENDERS, COOKS, & LATE-NIGHT SECURITY NEEDED. Please come in to apply: Fireside Restaurant 5739 N Ravenswood Ave, Chicago

General Groupon, Inc. is seeking a CRM Analytics Manager in Chicago, IL w/ the following requirements: Bach deg in Comp Sci or Electrical Engg or rel field or foreign academic equiv + 5 yrs rel exp. Will accept any level of exp in the following skills: apply analytical frameworks to business problems & translate raw data into actionable recommendations; build customer rel reports & dashboards using SQL, SAS/R & Tableau; lead cross-functional teams (Engg, Mktg, Merchandising & Finance) & develop new customer facing products; develop recommendations & present findings to sr leaders to drive business forward. Apply on-line at https://jobs. groupon.com/jobs/R13645.

PERFORMANCE TEST ENGINEER (Bensenville, IL) – Carry out perform test durng release test to ensur interfacs/apps are running per biz needs. Anlyze load test results, find ntwrk/app/DB bottlencks. Reqs: MS comp sc i/eng/info sys or sim ITrltd & 1 yr telecom-rltd SW test exp; 1 yr exp LoadRunner, HP Controller, HPE Performance Center, UNIX, Perl, Shell scripting, Batch scripts, C, J2EE, Oracle DB, SQL, PL/ SQL, TOAD, SQL Developer, WebLogic, HP Diagnostics, Dynatrace; 1 yr exp complx test, complt modul test, cross modul test, apply E2E approach using automat tools & Java frmwrk, creat scripts for perform tests, web ap ps/archi, rich media clients, & telecom-rltd BSS/ OSS & connctd biz processes; 1 yr exp telecomrltd customr care/bill platfrms & charg, bill, CRM, ordr mgmt, selfsrvc/srvc fulfillment, retail interac mgmt & mobil financ srvc sol functionalities. Res: Amdocs Inc., car eersta@amdocs.com, Ref HR-1031 EAST AURORA SCHOOL DISTRICT 131, located in Aurora, IL, is seeking a Computer Coding & Design Teacher, Carpe ntry/HVAC, Maintenance Mechanics and Assistant Principals. Applications should be completed online at www.d131.org.

TECHNICAL ANALYST 4 (RR Donnelley & Sons Company; Warrenville, IL) - Design, develop, code, and test PeopleSoft Human Capital Management (HCM) systems using multiple technologies, including Java, SQL, HTML, XML, Linux, Unix, SQR and COBOL. Reqs: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, IT or a related technical field, plus 5 years of progressively responsible post-baccalaureate experience in PeopleSoft HCM and Payroll within North America. Apply online at https: //www.rrdonnelley. com/about/rrdonnelley-jobs.aspx Job # 35954. Degr (or 5y post BS exp). C/C++ with multi-threading, PostgreSQL, KAFKA, Core Java, Bamboo. Res: EPAM SYSTEMS, 41 University Dr, # 202, Newtown, PA 18940

SMARTLOGIX INC., SEEKS Program- mers/Analysts, S/W Engineers. Primary worksite is Northbrook,IL but relocation is possible. Contact: hrd@smartlogix.us

REAL ESTATE RENTALS STUDIO $500-$599 Chicago, Beverly/Cal Park/Blue Island Studio $575 & up, 1BR $665 & up, 2BR $885 & up. Heat, Appls, Balcony, Carpet, Laundry, Prkg. 708-388-0170

appls incl, $540/mo utils not incl. CALL 773-374-0787

STUDIO $600-$699 CHICAGO, HYDE PARK Arms Hotel, 5316 S. Harper, maid, phone, cable ready, fridge, private facilities, laundry avail. Switchboard. Start at $ 160/wk Call 773-493-3500

SUMMERTIME SAVINGS! NEWLY Remod. 1 BR Apts $650 w/ gas incl. 2-5BR start at $650 & up. Sec 8 Welc. Rental Assistance Prog. for Qualified Applicants offer up to $ 400/month for 1 yr. (773)412-1153 Wesley Realty 7022 S. SHORE DRIVE Impeccably Clean Highrise STUDIOS, 1 & 2 BEDROOMS Facing Lake & Park. Laundry & Security on Premises. Parking & Apts. Are Subject to Availability. TOWNHOUSE APARTMENTS 773-288-1030

SPRING SPECIAL: STUDIOS starting at $499 incls utilities. 1BR $550, 2BR $599, 3BR $699. With approved credit. No Security Deposit for Sec 8 Tenants. South Shore & Southside. Call 312-446-3333

TECH. PRJ. MGR. Chicago, IL. MS

CHICAGO BEAUTIFUL, STUDIO Bsmt Apt. Near 87th & Jeffrey,

Pivotal Software, Inc. seeks Software Engineer in Chicago, IL: Responsible for dvlpng s/w solutions based on detailed specs from sys. consultants. Design, dvlp, test, document & analyze modules & features of new or upgraded s/w sys. & products. Req’s: MS(or equiv.)+2 yrs. exp. OR BS(or equiv.)+5 yrs. exp. Please mail resume w/ ref. to: Req.#: 16-4014 at: ATTN: HR, Pivotal Software, Inc., 875 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94103.

STUDIO $900 AND OVER

HUGE RAVENSWOOD STUDIO! Available July 15! Hdwd flrs,

built-in china cabinets! LANDLORD PAYS HEAT AND COOKING GAS! only 2 blocks to Metra. $1030.00 4916 North Wolcott. (773) 381-0150. www.theschirmfirm. com

STUDIO OTHER 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

CHICAGO - HYDE PARK 5401 S. Ellis. Studio. $470/mo. û CALL 773-955-5106 û

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 REMOD 1BR & Studios starting at $580. No sec dep, move in fee or app fee. Free heat/ hot water. 1155 W. 83rd St., 773619-0204

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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)

WEST PULLMAN (INDIANA Ave) RENT SPECIAL: Pay 1st month rent only - No Security dep req’d. Nice lrg 1BR $575; 2BR $699 & 1 3BR $850, balcony. Sec 8 Welc 773995-6950

108TH ST., LOVELY 4 rm, 1BR, liv rm, din rm, kitchen/bath, heated & hw flrs. Close to trans. Avail now. Also, 1BR w/ crpt avail.773264-6711 CHICAGO, 8927 S. DAUPHIN, UNIT 2S, 1BR, $650/MO + SECURITY, HEAT INCLUDED. CALL VINCENT SMITH, 773620-2843 SECTION 8 WELCOME Newly Decorated 74th/East End. 1BR. $625. 77th/Drexel. 2BR. $700. 773-874-9637 or 773-493-5359

SUMMER SPECIAL $500 Toward Rent Beautiful Studios 1, 2, 3 &

CLEAN ROOM W/FRIDGE & micro, Near Oak Park, Food -4Less, Walmart, Walgreens, Buses & Metra, Laundry. $115/wk & up. 773-637-5957 û NO SEC DEP û 1431 W. 78th St. 1BR. $500/mo. 6829 S. Perry. Studio/1BR. $465$520. HEAT INCL 773-955-5106 Newly updated, clean furnished rooms in Joliet, near buses & Metra, elevator. Utilities included, $91/wk. $395/mo. 815-722-1212

77TH/LANGLEY

4RM,

1BR

1 BR $1100 AND OVER

APT, 1st flr, newly remod, heat & hot water, ceiling fans, & appls incl. $725 /mo + 1 mo sec. 708-641-1227

1 BR $800-$899 N. LAWNDALE 3450 W. Lexin gton.1BR Apt, fridge stove,blinds & heat included $875/mo + sec, credit check required 773-3748316

ONE BEDROOM NEAR Warren Park and Metra. 6804 N. Wolcott. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. Heat included. Laundry in building. $925/ month. Available 8/1. 773-761-4318.

LARGE ONE BEDROOM near the lake. 1335 W Estes. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. Heat included. Laundry in building. $850-925/month. Available 8/1. 773-761-4318.

1 BR $900-$1099 HYDE PARK 1 BEDROOM $1095 newly decorated, dining rm, hdwd flrs, laundry fac, appliances, heated free credit check no application fee 1-773-667-6477 or 1-312-802-7301

RAVENSWOOD DLX 3/RM studio: new kit, SS appl, granite, French windows, oak flrs, close to Brown L; $1050/heated 773-7434141 www.urbanequities.com

RARELY AVAILABLE SUNFILLED 1 bdrm: 1905 West Ainslie!

Hdwd flrs, dec. fireplace with bookshelves on either side! Gorgeous sun room! Large Kitchen with pantry! 2 blocks to Metra. $1245, heat incl. Avail August 16. (773) 381-0150. www.theschirmfirm.com

EAST EDGEWATER LANDMARK 2BR Plus new kit, oak flrs, sunrm, near Red Line/lake, lndry $1 650/heated 773-743-4141 www. urbanequities.com

EDGEWATER GLEN 1000SF 1BR: new kit, SS appls, quartz ctrs, built-ins, oak flrs, lndry, $1250/ heated 773-743-4141 www. urbanequities.com

Never miss a show again.

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

CHICAGO - $299 Move In Special! 110th & Michigan, 1BR & 2BR Apts, $575-$720/mo. Avail now Secure building. 1-800-770-0989 CHICAGO W. SIDE 3859 W Maypole Rehabbed studios, $425/ mo, Utilities not included. 773-6170329, 773-533-2900

Benefits may include: medical, dental, vision, 401(k) profit sharing, paid time off, tuition reimbursement, career advancement, hotel room discounts and more.

NO MOVE IN FEE. Move In NOW!!! Studios - 1 Beds Hyde Park. Call Megan 773-285-3310

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1 BR $700-$799

38 CHICAGO READER | JULY 6, 2017

AUSTIN AREA 1-2 BR apts, $800-$1050, heat & appliances incl .Section 8 OK, close to transportation 708-267-2875

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

LOVELY 4 BR house, newly dec-

7'++"/; 5)!-+)'8/)'& "= ') -,:'& /../+!:)"!$ -*.&/$-+ 1/**";-3 !/ %"+")# ' 3"<-+=- 9/+(0/+1- ')3 =:=!'")")# ') ")1&:="<- 1:&!:+-4 7'++"/; 5)!-+)'8/)'& 3/-= )/! 3"=1+"*")'!- /) !%- 2'="= /0 3"='2"&"!$6 <-!-+') =!'!:= /+ ')$ /!%-+ 2'="= .+/!-1!-3 :)3-+ 0-3-+'&6 =!'!- /+ &/1'& &'9=4

HOMEWOOD- 2BR NEW kitchen, new appls, oak flrs, ac, lndry/ stor., $1195/mo incls ht/prkg, near Metra. 773.743.4141 Urban Equities. com

4 BR Sect. 8 Welc. Westside Loc, Must qualify. 773-287-4500 www.wjmngmt.com

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So, we ask, where will your journey take you?

AUBURN GRESHAM; 80TH & Paulina, 2 bed - $795, Heat included, FREE MONTH! Call 773-6698060

orated, $1200/mo + security. Englewood area. Call 773-703-8400

ALSIP: BEAUTIFUL LARGE 2BR, 1BA $850/mo. 2nd flr, Appliances, laundry, parking & storage. Call 708-268-3762

SOUTHSIDE 6642 S. Evans 1 & 2 Bedroom apartments. $700$$800/month plus security.

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SS appl. Tenant pays util. 773-858-3163

NO SECURITY DEPOSIT NO MOVE IN FEE 1, 2, 3 BEDROOM APTS (773) 874-1122 ROYALTON HOTEL, Kitchenette $135 & up wk. Free WiFi. 1810 W. Jackson 312-226-4678 ACACIA SRO HOTEL Men Preferred! Rooms for Rent. Weekly & Monthly Rates. 312-421-4597

2 BR UNDER $900

TERRIFIC

RAVENSWOOD

bedroom avail August 31! Only 2 blocks to fantastic Winnemac Park! Hdwd flrs, great closet space, lots of windows! On-site lndry/storage. 1942 West Argyle: $1200 heat incl. (773) 381-0150. www.theschirmfirm.com

1 BR OTHER APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. Ltd. IT’S MOVING TIME!!! OUR UNITS INCLUDE HEAT, HW & CG Plenty of parking 1Bdr From $775.00 2Bdr From $925.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000*** APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. LTD. SPRING HAS SPRUNG!! MOST UNITS INCLUDE.. HEAT & HOT WTR STUDIOS FROM $475.00 1BDR FROM $550.00 2BDR FROM $745.00 3 BDR/2 FULL BATH FROM $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000**

NEAR MIDWAY AIRPORT 2BR $875+ SEC DEP. Sect 8 ok, newly decor, carpeted, refrigerator, FREE Heat, laundry room, cable ready, free credit check, no application fee. 1-773-550-9426 or 1-312-802-7301 SECTION 8 WELCOME 54 W. 109TH St. 2BR, 2nd flr, new remod, ceiling fans, appls, ner Elementary School. $775/mo + 1 mo sec. 708-641-1227 Call 12p-7p

AUBURN GRESHAM, 1401-11 West 80th, 2beds from $775, Free heat – no deposit. Call 773-6698060 CHICAGO WESTSIDE NICE 2BR apt, Austin Area, quiet bldg, $8 50/mo + sec, Laundry rm , parking, Background ck req’d 773-575-9283

2 BEDROOMS , Liv Rm, Dining Rm, Computer Rm, encl porch, 5426 S SEELEY $760. Free heat. 773-504-0062 CHICAGO, 8000 S. Hermitage, 2BR, $675/mo + security. Tenant pays own heat. Call James Dennis, 312-683-6837 CHICAGO

7600 S Essex 2BR

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

CHICAGO 92nd and Marquette, 2BR, 3rd floor, quiet bldg, carpet, heat included, $725, Nice! 1 mo rent, 1 mo sec. 773-505-1853

ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar Villas is accepting applications for subsidized 1BR apts. for seniors 62 years or older and the disabled. Rent is based on 30% of annual income. For details, call us at 847-546-1899 ∫

CALUMET CITY 158TH & PAXTON SANDRIDGE APTS 1 & 2 BEDROOM UNITS MODELS OPEN M-F, 9AM-5:30PM *** 708-841-5450 *** MOST BEAUTIFUL APARTMENTS! 6748 Crandon, 2BR, $875. 7727 Colfax, 1 & 2BR, $625-$875. 6220 Eberhart, 2 & 3BR, $850-$1150. 773-947-8572 or 312-613-4424

2 BR $900-$1099 SOUTH SHORE , 8230 S. Merrill, Quiet Large 2 BR, remod, hdwd floors LR, DR, heat incl, $1050+ 1mo sec 708-951-4486 1906 W 80th Street , 2BR, 1 BA 1st fl, living rm, dining rm, kit $925/month, Section 8 Welcome 773-450-8211

2 BR $1100-$1299

HUGE Chatham 900 SF , 1BR, 1BA, newly remod, spac, dining and LR, quiet blk & bldg, nr trans & shops. Won’t Last. Section 8 Welc. Call 312-519-977 RIVERDALE New decor, 1 & 2BR, appls, new crpt, heated, A/C, lndry, prkng, no pets, nr Metra. Sec 8 ok $675-$800. 630-480-0638

CHICAGO SOUTH SIDE Beautiful Studios, 1,2,3 & 4 BR’s, Sec 8 ok. $500 gift certificate for Sec 8 tenants. 773-287-9999/312-446-3333

CHICAGO 55TH & Halsted, male pref. Room for rent, share furnished apt, free utils, $ 440/mo.

2 BR/2BA TOP floor condo in renovated secure courtyard building. High-efficiency furnace, central A/C, ceiling fans, gas fireplace. W/D in unit. Master bedroom suite, walk-in closet, private bath. Hardwood floors, carpeted bedrooms. Fully convenienced kitchen, maple cabinets, granite counters. 1 block from North Park University. Steps from Brown Line. $1295 262-308-3728

No security. 773-651-8824.

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

73RD & DORCHESTER, 2BR, refrig & stove, lndry hookups, off street prkg, enclosed yard, $975/ mo. No security dep. 773-684-1166

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

2 BR $1300-$1499

CHICAGO - BEVERLY, 1BR Apts. Carpet, A/C, laundry, near transportation, $770-$790/mo. Call 773-233-4939

2 BR APT

located at Clark & Diversey across from the Century Mall. 1st floor apt has been completely updated and a garage space is also available. GREAT LOCATION 3 blocks from the lake, 1 block from Trader Joes, and excellent transportation in a half blocks walk to the Broadway and Clark St. busses. 6-flat bldg. is neat and clean. Apt is immediately available. Call Mike 312-3391400

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 HUGE IMMACULATE 2BR, 2BA apt 1200 sq ft, newly remodeled, quiet block, MUST SEE! Won’t last long! Sec 8 wel call 312-519-9771 ENGLEWOOD 2-4BR unit apts in 2 unit gated bldgs, hdwd flrs, pets OK, no sec dep, W/D & appls incl, tenant pays own utils 773-715-1591

6315 S. Whipple . newly renov. 2BR, all large rms, LR & DR, storage area, carpeted, heat inc l. Call James at 708-743-8204

3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200 JOLIET W BELLARMINE. Beautiful townhome, 3BR, 1.5BA, remod., Close to I-80, tenant pays util. $980/mo 815-302-5729 or 708-422-8801 SOUTH SHORE AREA, Spacious 7 rooms, 3 bedrooms, heat included. $940/month + 1.5 months security. Call 773375-1048 68th & ROCKWELL, 3BR, heat incl, newly updated includes appliances, hdwd flrs., laundry on site, $1090/mo. sec 8 ok, 312-622-7702

GARFIELD PARK AREA 3BR apts, Stove, Fridge, Heat Incl. New carpet, $10 appl. fee. $900/ mo. + sec. Call (773)851-5219 CALUMET CITY 3-4BR , 1.5 BA 2 car gar, fully rehab w/ gorgeous finishes & hdwd flrs. Beautiful bkyd. Sec 8 ok $1150-$1350. 510.735.7171

8222 S. MARSHFIELD 3BR, 2nd Fl. Showing Sat only 11AM–2PM $925. + Sec, Tens. Pay utils, Phone calls not necessary 773-426-0280

WOODLAWN COMMUNITY (CLOSE to U of C campus) 3 BR, 1 BA, includes heat, Sec. 8 OK. $1,050/mo. 773-802-0422

ROOMS FOR RENT. MALES PREF. 6140 S. St. Lawrence. $450/mo., include all utilIties. Will Go Fast, Call Now! 773-726-8263

CHICAGO - CLEAN, NEWLY remod, 1BR, 2nd floor Apt, oak flooring. Ready Now! 722 E. 89th St. FREE HEAT. 708-951-2889

2 BR OTHER

WEST RIDGE 2BR: new kit, SS appls, granite ctrs, FDR, lndry, new windows, near Metra $1295-$1350 heated 773-743-4141 urbanequitie s.com

90TH/LAFLIN 3BR heated, decorated. $1075; 84TH PL in Chatham. 5.5 rooms, 2BR, $975. heated, decorated. 312-946-0130

SOUTHEAST LOC 3RD flr apt, 3BR, 1BA, hdwd flrs, heat included, quiet building, street parking. $925/ mo + 1 mo sec dep. 312-550-2647 SOUTHSIDE 68th/Hermitage, 3BR. $850. 70th/Normal, 3BR. $825. 847-977-3552

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499 Riverdale, 4-5BR, 2BA, encl back porch, side drive, lots of closet space, full unfinished bsmt. $1450 + 1 mo sec Sec 8 ok 708369-9071 BLUE ISLAND 3BR, 1.5BA, 2nd flr duplex, appls, heat incl, tenant pays light and gas, off street parking avail, no pets. $1250/mo. Call Toni 708-715-0721

5921 West Ohio, 60644, 3BR,1BA,all hdwd floors, new bathroom separate heat. Section 8 Welcome $1200/month 708439-2816 SECT 8 OK, 2 story, 4br/2ba w/ bsmt. New decor, crpt & hdwds, ceiling fans, stove/fridge, $1465. 11243 S. Eggleston, 773-443-5397

3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799 MORGAN PARK: 3BR apt & Roseland 3BR house: LR/DR, fenced in yard, clean/quiet neighborhood, $1350/mo. Section 8 welcome. 773-415-8077. BELMONT CRAIGIN: BEAUT. 2-flat 1200sf 2BR new kit/appl, oak flrs, lndy, stor/prkg, $1200/ mo + util 773-743-4141 www. urbanequities.com HUMBOLDT PK 2BR: Sunny corner unit, New eat-in kitc., new appl, new carpet, Lndry, $925/mo + util., 773-743-4141 www. urbanequities.com

3 BR OR MORE OTHER 5613 S. CALUMET. Lrg 3BR, 2 full BA, Sec 8 OK. $1100. 1st flr, new decor, SS appls, new sinks, cabs & crpt, free heat & Lrg 1BR bsmt apt, 55+, free utils. $600. No Sec. Avail 7/12. 773-425-0959

SECTION 8 WELCOME Chicago, 11526 S Harvard 5BR/2BA, $1600. 255 W. 111th Pl., 6BR/3BA $1700. Call 773-793-8339, ask for Joe. 7543 S. PHILLIPS, Luxury Apts, 4BR, 2 full BA,Amenities incl: walk in closet, storage, appl & granite counter tops. Section 8 Welcome. New Pisgah Properties, 773-488-2317

RIVERDALE - 13937 S. School St. Newly Renov 3BR, 1BA, 2nd floor, free pkng, appls inc. Section 8 w/ voucher ok. 773-873-8730 1300 W. 68TH, Newly remod. Large 3 & 4BR, hdwd flrs, appls. Sect 8 OK. 1, 2 & 3BR Voucher welc. $800+/mo + utils. Call 773895-9495 MARKHAM HOME FOR RENT 4-5BR. Section 8 preferred. Call 708-296-6222 CHICAGO S: Newly renovated, Large 3-5BR. In unit laundry, hardwood flrs, very clean, No Deposit! Available Now! 708-655-1397 CHICAGO HOUSES FOR rent. Section 8 Ok, w/app credit $500 gift certificate 3, 4 & 5 BR houses avail. 312-446-3333 or 708-752-3812

GENERAL CHICAGO - SOUTH SIDE. 54th & May, 3BR, stove, fridge & heat incl, sec 8 welcome. Tess 773-925-1188 101ST/MAY, 1br. 77th/Lowe. 1 & 2br. 69th/Dante 3br. 71st/Bennett. 2 & 3br. 77th/Essex. 3br. New renov. Sec 8 ok. 708-503-1366

PAXSON PROPERTIES. Own your house. Seller finance, $2500 down. Mo payment cheaper then rent. Buyer must be approved (no bank). N & NW Ind. Mike 847-280-1204 WI, CRIVITZ AREA, home on 40 wooded acres by Caldron Falls, 1800 SF, 3BR, 2.5BA, whirlpool tub, walk out basement, 2 car garage. $450k. Appt, 920-737-6160 2 Flat Building for sale 11729 S Princeton $85,000 or most serious offer 773-480-6414

non-residential SELF-STORAGE

CENTERS.

T W O locations to serve you. All units fully heated and humidity controlled with ac available. North: Knox Avenue. 773-685-6868. South: Pershing Avenue. 773-523-6868.

roommates

3 BR OR MORE $1800-$2499

CHATHAM-3BR 1.5BA, stove/ heat incl, laundry in bsmt, 7900 block of Langley, Sec 8 Ok. $1000/ mo. Mr. Johnson, 630-424-1403

ADULT SERVICES

SERVICES PET SITTER. EXPERIENCED

dog walker / cat sitter provides daily walks, home visits and transportation for your family pets and animals, including dogs, cats, birds, fish, guinea pigs, rats...Skilled, bonded, personable and fun. Justin 773-951-4898.

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SOUTHSIDE large furnished rooms, in Apartment, 1st floor. $400/month, includes utilities. 773-747-2486

1 WEEK FREE. 96th & Halsted & other locations. Large Rooms, shared kitchen & bath. $100/week and up. Call 773-673-2045 CHICAGO 67TH AND Emerald furn. rooms, 45 + pref, share kitchen and bath, util. included, cable ready. From $350. 773-358-2570

MARKETPLACE GOODS

FOR SALE

BRONZEVILLE DLX 1/BR: new kit, private deck & yard, SS appls, FDR, oak flrs, new windows, $1075 /heated 773-743-4141 urbanequitie s.com

SECTION 8 WELCOME. No Security Deposit. 7721 S Peoria, 3BR apt, appls incl. $1050/mo. 708-288-4510

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

HEALTH & WELLNESS

condo w/ adult male owner. $650/ mo + sec. All utils + internet incl. Avail Now! For info call 708-927-0231

EVANSTON 1BR, GREAT kit, new appls, FDR, vint. built-ins, oak flrs, near Red Line, lndry $1095/ heated 773-743-4141 urbanequities .com

ALBANY PARK 3BR: new kit, SS appl, granite cntrs, oak flrs, French drs, $1500+ util 773-7434141 www.urbanequities.com

EARTH-

Use to Protect Garden Plants. Use in Animal Feed & More. OMRI Listed-Meets Organic Use Standards. BUY ONLINE: homedepot.com MASSAGE TABLES, NEW and

M/F SHARE WESTCHESTER

HUMBOLDT PK, 3BR/2BA Duplex: new kit & appl, oak flrs, lrg master suite deck, prkg, lndry, $15 95/+ util 773-743-4141 www. urbanequities.com

WRIGLEYVILLE LANDMARK 3 B R Plus: new kit/appls, vint. built-ins, oak flrs, sunrm, lndry, $21 00/mo heated 773-743-4141 urba nequities.com

DIATOMACEOUS FOOD GRADE 100%

SHIH TZU & Teddys. Fluffy, bouncy,

2 ACRE LAKEFRONT FOR SALE

Private, wooded 2+ acres. Over 300 ft. of incredible shoreline. Beautiful views. Dock in place! MUST SELL! $50,000 Call (217)717-4956

clean, happy, dew claws done, vet certified, home raised and socialized. Parents are in our home. Ready July 1st. White/Gold Teddy female and tri Shih’s are $1200. Rare pure black Shih Tzu $1500. 563-210-5843 or 563289-7877 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

W RG PARK: 2BR, New Constr., grand kit, new appl, oak flrs, lndry, storage, prkg. $1300/+ util 773743-4141 urbanequities.com

NEAR 4800 S. Lake Shore Dr. Lrg 3BR end unit Condo w/spac closets, on the 22nd flr, 2 Full BA, MB, spectacular views of Lake Michigan, 2 indoor garage spaces, full amenity building. $289,900. Call Sid. Maner Realty . 773-783-6474

ENGLISH BULLDOG PUPPIES , GCHB CH Sired Show Dog, Excellent Pedigree/show potential, 618-335-2586 for pics & info

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STRAIGHT DOPE SLUG SIGNORINO

Never miss a show again.

By Cecil Adams q : People talk as if self-driving cars are only a few years away. This seems nuts to me. My Galaxy smartphone can’t even do voice recognition properly, and we’re banking that a car will be able to drive itself safely in the complexity of city traffic? —ASTRO, VIA THE STRAIGHT DOPE MESSAGE BOARD

A : You may not expect to see self-driving cars on the road soon, but you know who does? Ford, for one, which plans to release a fully autonomous vehicle by 2021. BMW says the same thing. Audi wants to debut one by 2020; Volkswagen, by 2019. Still, you’ve got a point. No technology goes from rare to ubiquitous overnight, and certainly not cars, which Americans hold on to for more than a decade, on average, before getting a new one. So will driverless vehicles really be on the road in two or three years? Heck, they’re there now: as of March, 27 developers were operating a total of 180 autonomous cars on California highways. Will we see them in cities? Uber’s been testing its cars in Pittsburgh since last fall. Will they soon become available to any buyer who’s ready to try one? Well, that’s what could take a little longer. Some roadblocks between here and widespread adoption: Regulatory. Fifty different states? As it stands, that makes 50 entities with different regulations governing self-driving cars—if they’ve bothered to write any. This presents an impediment to manufacturers who want their products to go national and can’t design a car for both Michigan (where regulators are leaning toward allowing steering-wheelless, brake-pedal-less vehicles) and California (where they’re not). Then there’s the city level. According to a recent report, only 6 percent of major American municipalities had some transportation plan on the books dealing with autonomous vehicles. Should, for example, driverless cars get their own lanes? Don’t expect consensus off the bat. Legal. Whose insurance company is on the hook in a crash where both drivers are computers? Here’s an example of the wholesale cultural transformation that any significant switch to driverless vehicles will entail, changing not just how we design cars and roads, but how we think about things like car insurance, etc. In this case the short answer is: most experts figure that in the self-drivingcar era, liability will no longer be on drivers but on manufacturers, as with most consumer products. Technological. Plenty going on here. Proposed federal regulations would mandate, in the next few years, that all cars come equipped with vehicle-to-vehicle technol-

ogy, whereby they can share data with one another—to activate, for instance, autonomous braking if one car finds itself too close to the next car’s bumper. Driverless cars will also need to get better at staying in their lane when road-surface markings are obscured by rain or snow. And developers are figuring out how to provide vehicles with site-specific info about wherever they’re driving: Google, perhaps unsurprisingly, is out there making ultradetailed 3-D maps, to be updated continually; Tesla is using what it calls “fleet learning,” building a database using readings sent in from its cars already on the road. Like crowdsourcing, but with robots. In short, there are still a few, ahem, kinks to be worked out. I left the tech part for last because in some ways that’s the lowest hurdle—everybody assumes it’s pretty much only a matter of time. From another angle, though, it presents the biggest problem: not the apparatus and software themselves, but getting people to trust that these cars aren’t going to get them killed. This is no small matter: A recent survey found that 78 percent of Americans are afraid of self-driving cars. As analysts have pointed out, new car technology faces a unique degree of marketplace resistance; with a smartphone, say, consumers will overlook a few not-yet-resolved bugs to get the latest functionality, but they’re not quite as risk tolerant when those bugs might involve pulling out in front of a semi. So any minor incident tends to put a chill on the whole self-driving conversation—as it did last year, when a Google-operated Lexus sideswiped a public bus in the company’s hometown of Mountain View, California. No injuries, the car was going 2 mph, and that’s after 1.45 million miles of safe test driving. What’s the big deal? “For there to be consumer acceptance of these vehicles, they have to be virtually perfect,” a former director of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told a panel audience last year. In other words, we’re dealing not so much with technological problems as with ones of human behavior—suggesting we may yet have a while to wait. v Send questions to Cecil via straightdope.com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 350 N. Orleans, Chicago 60654.

SAVAGE LOVE

By Dan Savage

Lad wants ‘slutty’ girl, threesomes, cuckolding, etc

Am I crazy to be considering a reconciliation? Plus: if TMA, DTMFA Q : I’m a 29-year-old straight

woman facing a dilemma. I dated this guy about a year ago, and in many ways he was exactly the guy I was looking for. The main hitch was sexual. Our sex was good, but he had a fetish where he wanted me to sleep with other guys. Basically, he gets off on a girl being a “slut.” He was also into threesomes or swapping with another couple. I experimented with all of that for a few months, and in a way I had fun with it, but I finally realized that this lifestyle is not for me. I want a more traditional, monogamous relationship. I broke it off with him. We reconnected recently, and he wants to get back together. He says that he wants to be with me, even if it means a more traditional sex life. I’m interested, but suspicious. If he decides to forgo his fetish in order to be with me, can he ever feel truly fulfilled with our sex life? I don’t want to be with someone I can’t completely satisfy. I also worry that down the road he might change his mind and try to convince me to experiment with nonmonogamy again, which would make me feel pressured. I’m looking for someone to settle down with, and I’m scared to waste more time on this guy, even though in many ways he’s a great fit. Do you think it’s possible for us to be happy together in a traditional arrangement when deep down he wants more? —INTERESTED DESPITE KINK

A : Every partnered person

on earth is with someone he or she “can’t completely esatisfy.” No one person can be all things to another person—sexually or in any other way. So don’t waste too much time stressing out about that.

That said, IDK, this guy gets off when girls—his girl in particular—are “sluts.” That doesn’t mean he can’t/won’t/ doesn’t get off when you’re not being slutty. (In this situation, “being slutty” refers to you sleeping with other people, which is only subjectively slutty.) He likes it when you’re a slut, but I bet he also likes it when you ___, ___, or ___. (I don’t know your sex life. Fill in the blanks.) Are you focusing too much on one of the things he’s into (you fucking other people) and not enough on all the other things he’s into (things like ___, ___, and ___ )? If those other things are enough for him to have a great sex life with you without getting to enjoy this particular kink, you can make this work. In other words, IDK: If giving up his hot wife/cuckold fantasies is the price of admission he’s willing to pay to be with you, maybe you should let him pay that price. If being with someone who fantasizes about sexual scenarios you’d rather not participate in is the price of admission you’re willing to pay to be with him, maybe you should pay that price. Another maybe: Are there accommodations that would allow him to have his fetish/fantasies without having to stifle them and allow you to have your monogamous commitment? No fucking other guys, but sometimes sharing stories of past exploits? Or making up dirty stories you can share while you’re fucking? Kinky people sometimes place a few of their kinks on the shelf for years, decades, or all their lives because they love their partners but their partners don’t love their proclivity for ball busting/piss pigging/whatever-evering. And, yes, sometimes people say they’re willing to let go of a kink and then change

their minds and start pressuring their partners years or decades later—often when it’s much harder for the nonkinky partner to end things, i.e., after marrying, having kids, etc. Another thing that sometimes happens: people who never thought they’d be into x and married someone with the understanding that x was forever off the table suddenly find themselves curious about x and wanting to give x a try years or decades later. Who we are and what we want at 39 or 49 can look very different than who we were and what we wanted at 29.

Q : My partner has a hard

time dealing with the fact that, before him, I had several casual ﬂings and one-night stands. It has repeatedly caused issues with us. He’s disturbed by the vastness of my past and concerned that I am sometimes impulsive. Because of these things, he often feels too scared to move forward in the relationship. In all other ways we have a supportive, fun-ﬁlled, and loving relationship—but I wonder if this issue is just too fundamental. I cannot change my past (and wouldn’t even if I could), and I am trying to be less impulsive, but I’m not sure he sees the changes I’m making. —PARTNER’S ANGST

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

please recycle this paper JULY 6, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 41

Apollyon of Aura Noir ò COURTESY THE ARTIST

NEW

Yellow Claw 9/30, 9 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 18+

Arkaik, Alterbeast 10/1, 7 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Aura Noir, Merciless 10/21, 6:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Bros. Landreth 9/19, 8 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, on sale Fri 7/7/, 11 AM Cactus Blossoms 9/24, 8 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, on sale Fri 7/7, 11 AM Jon Cleary 8/17, 8 PM, Wire, Berwyn, 18+ Cordovas 9/7, 8 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, on sale Fri 7/7, 11 AM Jeﬀ Daniels & the Ben Daniels Band 10/26, 7 PM, City Winery, on sale Fri 7/7, noon b The Deer 8/23, 8 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 7/7, 10 AM, 18+ Drumcell, Truncate, Raiz, Microbot 8/11, 10 PM, Smart Bar Tommy Fleming 10/9, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Fri 7/7, noon b Friends & Neighbors 9/6, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Charles Gayle 8/4, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Instigation Orchestra 9/9, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Rami Kleinstein 9/13, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Fri 7/7, noon b Love Theme 9/18, 9 PM, Empty Bottle F Tony MacAlpine 9/14, 7 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Pickwick 10/27, 9 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 7/7, 10 AM Social Repose 10/10, 6 PM, Wire, Berwyn b Matthew Stevens 9/20, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Tender 9/21, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Wovenhand, Subrosa 9/23, 9 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+

UPCOMING Actress, Elysia Crampton 8/24, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Against Me!, Bleached 9/30, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall b American Football 7/16, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Nicole Atkins 8/8, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Avett Brothers 11/9-11, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre Banks, Japanese House 8/4, 11 PM, the Vic, 18+ Bellows, Big Ups 7/20, 7 PM, Beat Kitchen b Scott H. Biram 8/17, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Boris, Helms Alee 10/23, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Jackson Browne 8/13, 7:30 PM, Copernicus Center Car Seat Headrest, Gold Connections 8/5, 11 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Chameleons Vox 9/14, 8:30 PM, 1st Ward, 18+ Cloud Nothings 8/3, 10 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 18+ Shawn Colvin 10/28, 8 PM, Park West, 18+ Cranberries 9/28, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Crystal Castles, Pham 8/3, 11 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Deep Purple, Alice Cooper, Edgar Winter Band 9/6, 6:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Deer Tick 10/21, 8:30 PM, Metro, 18+ Depeche Mode 8/30, 7:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Descendents 10/7, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Doomtree 7/28, 9 PM, Subterranean, 17+

42 CHICAGO READER - JULY 6, 2017

D.R.I. 10/15, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Elder, King Buﬀalo 10/17, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ EMA 11/18, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Ben Folds 10/28, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Foreigner, Cheap Trick 8/9, 7 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Marty Friedman 8/10, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Glass Animals 9/28, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom b Guns N’ Roses 11/6, 8 PM, United Center Gza 7/24-25, 8 PM, City Winery b Halsey, Partynextdoor, Charli XCX 11/19, 7 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Hanson 10/7, 8 PM, House of Blues b Lauryn Hill, Nas 9/7, 6:30 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Inter Arma 8/6, 9 PM, Empty Bottle J. Cole 7/24, 8 PM, United Center Jeﬀ the Brotherhood 7/29, 10 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Joseph 9/22, 8 PM, Thalia Hall b King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard 9/24-25, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Kings of Leon 8/12, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Lake Street Dive 7/20-22, 8 PM, Thalia Hall Dylan Leblanc 8/5, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Lemon Twigs 8/4, 11 PM, Schubas, 18+ Arto Lindsay 10/20, 8 PM, Fullerton Hall, Art Institute of Chicago b Linkin Park, Machine Gun Kelly 8/14, 7:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park

b MadeinTYO 9/28, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall b Jesse Malin 8/6, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Raul Malo 7/25-26, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Mark McGuire, Ancient Ocean 8/1, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Melvins 7/25, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Neurosis, Converge, Amenra 7/28, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Conor Oberst 9/9, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Of Montreal 9/14, 8 PM, Logan Square Auditorium, 18+ Over the Rhine 8/26-27, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b A Perfect Circle 11/24, 8 PM, UIC Pavilion Katy Perry 10/24-25, 7 PM, United Center Pixies, Mitski 10/8, 7:30 PM, Chicago Theatre Psychedelic Furs, Bash & Pop 10/17-18, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Porter Robinson 8/3, 10 PM, the Mid Royal Blood, White Reaper 8/4, 11 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Sacred Reich 9/20, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ San Fermin, Ron Gallo 8/4, 10 PM, Empty Bottle Sir Sly 7/19, 8:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Slow Dancer 9/29, 9 PM, Hideout Slowdive 11/5, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Colin Stetson, Justin Walter 7/16, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Stick Men 9/1, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Swervedriver 9/7, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Toadies, Local H 10/10, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ UFO, Saxon 10/8, 6:30 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Ultimate Painting 7/25, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Venom Inc., Goatwhore, Toxic Holocaust 9/8, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Wand, Darto 9/30, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ War on Drugs 10/19, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Washed Out 8/25, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Roger Waters 7/22, 8 PM and 7/28, 8 PM, United Center Whitney, Kevin Devine 8/3, 11 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Rachael Yamagata, Joshua Radin 7/29, 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Jaymes Young 7/22, 6:30 PM, Beat Kitchen b Jesse Colin Young 9/7, 8 PM, City Winery b Young the Giant, Cold War Kids 9/9, 7 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Zeal & Ardor 8/22, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Zedd 10/12, 8 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 17+ Hans Zimmer 8/4, 8 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont v

ALL AGES

WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK

EARLY WARNINGS

CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME

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Zola Jesus, John Wiese 10/8, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Zombie Girl 8/11, 8:30 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Jeremy Zucker 8/13, 7 PM, Schubas b

SOLD OUT Ryan Adams, Districts 8/3, 11 PM, the Vic, 18+ Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile 10/26, 7:30 PM, Rockefeller Memorial Chapel; 10/27, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall; and 10/28, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Taylor Bennett 8/4, 10 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 18+ Between the Buried & Me, Contortionist 9/30-10/1, 6:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b 6lack 8/5, 10 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 18+ Mac DeMarco 8/4, 10 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Florida Georgia Line, Backstreet Boys 8/12, 7 PM, Wrigley Field Foster the People, Honne 8/2, 9 PM, the Vic, 18+ Liam Gallagher, Blossoms 8/2, 9 PM, Park West, 18+ Grouplove, 888 8/5, 11 PM, Park West, 18+ Guided by Voices 7/28, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen Head and the Heart, Walters 8/6, 11 PM, Metro, 18+ Hippo Campus, Remo Drive 8/2, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 18+ Kaytranada 8/2, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Lady Gaga 8/25, 7 PM, Wrigley Field Lollapalooza with Muse, Lorde, Killers, Chance the Rapper, Arcade Fire, Cage the Elephant, and more 8/3-6, Grant Park Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness, Missio 8/4, 11 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Mura Masa, Saint Jhn 8/5, 11 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ The National 12/12-13, 7:30 PM, Civic Opera House b Neurosis 7/27, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Princess Nokia 7/14, 11 PM, Bottom Lounge, 18+ Shins, Mt. Joy 8/5, 11 PM, the Vic, 18+ Spoon, CRX 8/2, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Suicideboys 8/2, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge b Zeds Dead 8/6, 10 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ v

GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene IT FEELS LIKE just the other day that Gossip Wolf wished a happy 90th birthday to Kelan Phil Cohran, the great jazz multi-instrumentalist, AACM cofounder, former Sun Ra trumpeter, and inventor (he made the frankiphone, otherwise known as the space harp, an electrified thumb instrument). It’s with a heavy heart that this wolf shares the news that Cohran passed away on June 28. On Sunday, July 9, a clutch of musicians, poets, and dancers will convene on the 63rd Street Beach’s bathing pavilion to celebrate Cohran’s life and commemorate the 50th anniversary of On the Beach; Cohran recorded it with Artistic Heritage Ensemble, which he founded in 1965, and the group backed him at weekly performances at the pavilion on the 63rd Street Beach in 1967. The free celebration runs from noon to 6 PM, and includes performances by multi-instrumentalist David Boykin, singer and poet Ugochi Nwaogwugwu, poet Quraysh Ali Lansana, percussive collective the Drum Divas, AACM Great Black Music Ensemble, and more. Local indie garage lynchpins Shannon Candy, who runs DIY label Bernice Records and Tapes and plays guitar in Strawberry Jacuzzi, and Jen Dot, whose virtual zine Disappearing Media and bubblegum punks Swimsuit Addition are Gossip Wolf faves, are totally tired of bros—and they don’t care who knows! According to Candy and Dot, “Being a bro has nothing to do with your gender or clothing—it’s about behavior. They are a fucking drag.” This wolf couldn’t agree more! Their new No Bros Allowed zine and monthly showcase will feature a rotating cast of curators putting together bills of non-binary and female artists and special guest DJs to ﬁght the scourge of masculine-identified boneheadness. The inaugural edition kicks off on Saturday, July 8, at Cole’s, with sets from the Runnies, Impulsive Hearts, Not For You, and She Speaks in Tongues. Don’t forget to grab a zine while you’re there! —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

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