Chicago Reader: print issue of July 21, 2016 (Volume 45, Number 41) 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 2 1 , 2 0 1 6

MOVIES A new wave of premieres at the Chicago French Film Festival 21

FOOD & DRINK Chef Cameron Grant’s Animale instincts are sharp. 39

THE NEW ED VRDOLYAK IS NOTHING LIKE THE OLD ONE or HOW TO BE

A PROGRESSIVE

IN MAYOR RAHM’S CHICAGO

Tenth Ward alderman Sue Sadlowski Garza is cultivating a new kind of progressive power on Chicago’s southeast side.

By BEN JORAVSKY 11

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THIS WEEK

C H I C A G O R E A D E R | J U LY 2 1 , 2 0 1 6 | V O L U M E 4 5 , N U M B E R 4 1

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EDITOR JAKE MALOOLEY CREATIVE DIRECTOR PAUL JOHN HIGGINS DEPUTY EDITOR, NEWS ROBIN AMER CULTURE EDITOR TAL ROSENBERG DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS FILM EDITOR J.R. JONES MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO ASSOCIATE EDITORS KATE SCHMIDT, KEVIN WARWICK, BRIANNA WELLEN SENIOR WRITERS STEVE BOGIRA, MICHAEL MINER, MIKE SULA SENIOR THEATER CRITIC TONY ADLER STAFF WRITERS LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, AIMEE LEVITT, PETER MARGASAK, JULIA THIEL SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR RYAN SMITH GRAPHIC DESIGNER SUE KWONG MUSIC LISTINGS COORDINATOR LUCA CIMARUSTI EDITORIAL ASSISTANT CASSIDY RYAN CONTRIBUTING WRITERS NOAH BERLATSKY, DERRICK CLIFTON, MATT DE LA PEÑA, MAYA DUKMASOVA, ANNE FORD, ISA GIALLORENZO, JOHN GREENFIELD, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, DAN JAKES, BILL MEYER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, DMITRY SAMAROV, KATE SIERZPUTOWSKI, ZAC THOMPSON, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERNS APRIL ALONSO, JESSICA KIM COHEN, SARA COHEN, MARC DAALDER, KT HAWBAKER-KROHN, FARAZ MIRZA, SUNSHINE TUCKER, ANNA WATERS

FEATURES

22 Movies In the Dept. Q Trilogy, Nikolaj Lie Kaas stars as a damaged cop reopening cold cases.

MUSIC

POLITICS

8 Street View Styles seen during the Pitchfork Music Fest in Union Park 8 Chicagoans This 75-year-old’s fountain of youth includes skull rings.

The new Ed Vrdolyak is nothing like the old one

39 Restaurant review: Animale The folks behind Logan Square’s great Osteria Langhe get gutsy with Italian. 40 Key Ingredient: Spotted dick Kuma’s Corner chefs make—what else?—a burger with the British dessert.

Tenth Ward alderman Sue Sadlowski Garza is cultivating a new kind of progressive power on Chicago’s southeast side. BY BEN JORAVSKY 11 10 Politics A civil suit against Calumet City cops who fatally shot an autistic teen loses steam.

CLASSIFIEDS

41 Jobs 41 Apartments & Spaces 43 Marketplace

ARTS & CULTURE

15 Public art A mural’s complicated history gets even more complicated.

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FOOD & DRINK

CITY LIFE

VICE PRESIDENT OF NEW MEDIA GUADALUPE CARRANZA SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER EVANGELINE MILLER ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES FABIO CAVALIERI, ARIANA DIAZ, BRIDGET KANE MARKETING AND EVENTS MANAGER BRYAN BURDA DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY ADVERTISING COORDINATOR HERMINIA BATTAGLIA CLASSIFIEDS REPRESENTATIVE KRIS DODD

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29 Shows of note Psychic TV, Drake, Hearts & Minds at the Astral Spirits Festival, and more 29 The Secret History of Chicago Music Joe Daley is a jazz innovator who never got his due.

4 Agenda The play Squeeze My Cans, the Comedy Exposition, the exhibit “Petcoke: Tracing Dirty Energy,” the ﬁlm The Witness, and more recommendations

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IN THIS ISSUE

MUSIC

Trouble in Mind blossoms as it grows Bill and Lisa Roe’s golden ears have helped turn their erstwhile garage-rock label into something much more diverse—and even more wonderful. BY PETER MARGASAK 25

16 Visual Art Before #BlackLivesMatter, there was Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison. 17 Theater War Paint at Goodman Theatre is done up too rosily. 18 Comedy Megan Gailey returns home for the Comedy Exposition. 19 Movies Inquiring Nuns, a 1968 documentary from Kartemquin Films, explores the nature of joy. 21 Movies Ten new features make their local debuts at the Chicago French Film Festival.

44 Straight Dope What happens to all the stuﬀ left at memorials to dead celebrities? 45 Savage Love Dan’s special allgay edition of the column 46 Early Warnings Danny Brown, Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Mekons, Andrew W.K., and more shows in the weeks to come 46 Gossip Wolf Chicago power trio Beat Drun Juel drop a heavy new EP, and more music news.

JULY 21, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 3

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Popstar: Never Stop Stopping Fri-Sat, July 22-23 @ 9:30pm

This Is Spinal Tap

Bite: A Pucking Queer Cabaret ò CAROLYN REYNOLDS

THEATER

More at chicagoreader.com/ theater As You Like It Midsommer Flight’s As You Like It is outdoor Shakespeare done the old-fashioned way, complete with Elizabethan costumes and musical interludes. The banished duke’s daughter, Rosalind (Emily Demko), and her sisterly cousin, Celia (Charlee Cotton), flee the frigid atmosphere of court for a life of revelry and disguise amid the forests of Arden. They bring the motley fool Touchstone (Adam Habben) along for the ride; despite overemphasizing his punch lines from time to time, Habben makes a fine clown. As the inevitable coupling begins (this is a comedy, after all), the tenderness of Touchstone’s bond with the dull, affectionate country maiden Audrey (played with sensitivity and sweetness by Margaret Kellas) is one of this show’s unexpected delights. —MAX MALLER Through 8/28: Sat 6 PM, Sun 2 PM, Touhy Park, 7348 N. Paulina, midsommerflight.com. F Bite: A Pucking Queer Cabaret R Magic lurks in the shadowy crevices of adapter-director Derek

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Van Barham’s eroticized overhaul of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Through 17 mostly contemporary pop songs (Troye Sivan, Nicki Minaj, Years & Years), Shakespeare’s tale of disruptive fairies bamboozling would-be lovers becomes a pansexual floor show. Led by preternaturally seductive Nathan Maurice Cooper as Puck, Van Barham’s cunning 12-person cast find unlikely profundity in radio-friendly tunes (who knew Britney Spears’s “Toxic” could be heartbreaking?). The show, produced by Pride Films & Plays, is hampered by a convoluted narrative that never makes adequate sense, and given how successful the evening’s least linear scenes are—as when each of the four lovers delivers a monologue divorced from time—it might benefit from more strangeness and less story. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 8/14: Thu-Sat 7 PM, Sun 5 PM (no show 8/7), Mary’s Attic Theatre, 5400 N. Clark, 773-784-6969, pridefilmsandplays.com, $25-$30.

Chops Middle-aged jazz devotees Vince, Walt, and Philly like to think they ruled Rush Street in their youths. These days, hopped-up Walt’s penchant for shady deals keeps him flush, but broken-down Vince barely scrapes by, operating the scuzzy bar where he and Walt reminisce to the delight of Kaki, Walt’s twentysomething “chick.” Philly’s been missing for nine months, but tonight he pops up, maybe running from a local thug. Michael Rychlewski’s 90-minute one-act is full of vintage Rush Street misogyny and bloviation as well as gobs of colorful stories, but it lacks a viable plot and adequate character differentiation (Walt and Philly are nearly indistinguishable), and the twist ending is difficult to track. Under Richard Shavzin’s workmanlike direction, Dashnight Productions’ opening night felt cautious and underrehearsed. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 8/14: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-9758150, theaterwit.org, $25-$35. Herculaneum Any play that begins with the entire cast dead in a heap on the floor has its work cut out for it. As the action of Herculaneum begins, the eruption of nearby Mount Vesuvius has buried the eponymous ancient Roman town beneath volcanic ash and mudflow. The production then moves back in time, re-creating and invoking life before the disaster through a whimsical, idyllic montage of dance scenes and bacchanalia. The end is the beginning of this mostly wordless, ensemble-conceived one-act, but Blue Goose Theatre Ensemble have created a chilling, moving play, a promising beginning for this brand-new company. —MAX MALLER Through 7/31: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, the Frontier, 1106 W. Thorndale, bluegoosetheatre.com, $15, $10 students and seniors. Kin Folk Mary is busy building her online brand as Mary-Beth, a household advice guru. Her transgender brother has surgically rebranded himself as Eleanor. But third sibling Lucy has them both beat. Sparked by her discovery of a virtual fantasy community where people adopt Tolkien-esque avatars, she now sees herself as Kreeka. A dragon. And she’s not role-playing. William

Glick’s script has a ways to go if it’s going to fully inhabit its own identity as a seriocomic look at the new culture of self-creation. The way things stand, for instance, the only apparent reason for the sisters’ shared dysphoria is that the concept demands it. But the potential is there—along with a certain charm, as when Annie Prichard’s Lucy perches like a gargoyle and roars back at a question from a friend. One significant problem: director Evan Linder weakens this New Colony world premiere by parking it in John Wilson’s vague and figurative set. The humor, magic, pain, and surprise of Kin Folk all require absolute realism to bring them into sharp relief. —TONY ADLER Through 8/14: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Den Theatre, 1329-1333 N. Milwaukee, 773-609-2336, thedentheatre. com, $15-$25. Much Ado About Nothing This outdoor production from Honest Theatre, staged in Indian Boundary Park, is pretty bare-bones. There’s no stage to speak of. The actors aren’t amplified (which means they sometimes can’t be heard above screaming kids and planes passing overhead). And the costumes could have been assembled from the actors’ closets. Still, the spirit of the Bard’s comedy about two contrasting couples—one reluctant, one passionate but troubled—survives, along with much of its poetry. Yes, some of the staging is awkward and acting rough. But Sharon Biermann and Zachary Bortot are banging as Beatrice and Benedict, and Sean Cowan (who also directs) kills as the malaprop-spouting Dogberry. —JACK HELBIG Through 7/31: Fri-Sat 7 PM, Sun 2 PM, Indian Boundary Park, 2500 W. Lunt, 773-764-0338, honesttheatre.com, pay what you can.

My Son the Waiter: A Jewish Tragedy Written by and starring actor-comedian Brad Zimmerman as himself, this 90-minute show hit a home run with the North Shore crowd thanks to its mix of rapid-fire Jewish jokes and pathos. Zimmerman’s underdog spirit comes out as he chronicles his rise to the top of Little League in junior high and subsequent fall from grace in adulthood, when he finds himself waiting tables and waiting in the wings for a shot at stardom. This show is that shot, and he makes his mother proud with its memorable zingers and surprising emotional depth. Customers may not have liked Zimmerman the waiter (he didn’t like them either), but this “Zimmy” is a lovable loser who’s finally found his calling. Which is jokes like this one: “A waiter asks three older Jewish ladies, ‘Is anything all right?’” —MARISSA OBERLANDER Through 8/7: Thu 2 and 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 2 and 7 PM, Sun 2 PM, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie, Skokie, 847-673-6300, mysonthewaiter.com, $41-$56. Our Lady of 121st Street Vivid, R volatile, detailed performances drive director Sarah Moeller’s shrewdly cast, skillfully acted Eclipse Theatre production of this 2003 work by

Stephen Adly Guirgis—not so much a coherent play as a collection of edgy, darkly comic, often profane set pieces. In Harlem, a group of intense, wounded, yet brutally funny African-American and Latin community members gather for the funeral of beloved white nun, schoolteacher, and community activist Sister Rose—whose body has been stolen, leaving the mourners to pay their respects to her empty coﬃn. Chief among them are Balthazar (Todd Garcia), the alcoholic police detective investigating the theft, and radio DJ Rooftop (Bernard Gilbert), whose tryst with nasty Norca (Paloma Nozicka) ended his marriage with his bitter ex, Inez (Celeste M. Cooper) years ago. —ALBERT WILLIAMS Through 8/21: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, 773-935-6860, eclipsetheatre.com, $30, $20 students and seniors.

Cathy Schenkelberg in Squeeze My Cans ò HALEY PRESS Squeeze My Cans The enemy R of Scientology is truth, and in Squeeze My Cans, Cathy Schenkelberg

makes sure the message of her brutally honest story comes through loud and clear: Stay away from this intergalactic Ponzi scheme. Told with masterful ﬂuidity and hilarious jabs, this one-woman show directed by Shirley Anderson does more than debunk L. Ron Hubbard’s creation; Schenkelberg puts you in her skin and lets you experience for yourself how Scientology devours money (in Schenkelberg’s case, $900,000) and lives. —A.J. SØRENSEN Through 7/21: Thu-Fri 7 :30 PM, Sat 2 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM, Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln, 773-404-7336, greenhousetheater.org, $25. Tomorrow Morning Laurence Mark Wythe’s 2011 musical is based on an intriguing premise: follow two couples through the 12 hours leading up to a marriage and a divorce. The parallel structure gives Wythe lots of room to contrast the lives of his characters, two at the start of their careers, two facing midlife crises. But the setup also straitjackets him—Wythe packs lots of life-changing events into that short time span (an unplanned pregnancy, a career reversal, a missing child), and after a while it all feels contrived. Not even strong performances from an inspired four-member ensemble led by Tina Naponelli and Carl Herzog can mask

Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of July 21

Wythe’s sometimes tiresome lyrics or his lapses into cliche; John D. Glover’s staging for Kokandy Productions is nevertheless energetic and well paced. —JACK HELBIG Through 7/28: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-975-8150, kokandyproductions. com, $38. Twelfth Night I’ve been to ShakeR speare’s Globe in London, which purports to give its patrons the experience they’d have had at the original Globe Theatre in, say, 1600, when the Bard himself worked there. It was very cool. But this outdoor, traveling Twelfth Night from Chicago Shakespeare Theater feels more like I imagine an Elizabethan comedy felt to Elizabethans, never mind the fact that it’s been (loosely) updated to the 1930s. Adapter-director Kirsten Kelly keeps the gestures big enough, the storytelling clear enough, the songs charming enough, and the clowning bright enough to hold the happy attention of a crowd hanging out in a big open space with plenty to distract them. Better still, there’s no I’mso-bored revisionism here. No attempt to trick up or subvert Shakespeare’s landscape of fools and lovers. With an especially delightful turn by Jonathan Weir as the much-abused Malvolio, a sharp cast impart a raucous, sweet spirit to mistaken identities, cross-gender disguise, and one legendary prank. When the happy ending arrived, we all went “Awww!” —TONY ADLER Through 8/14: Tue-Sat 6:30 PM, Sun 4 PM, with exceptions (check schedule), various locations, chicagoshakes.com. F

PM, the Revival, 1160 E. 55th, 866-811-4111, the-revival.com, $10.

VISUAL ARTS Arc Gallery “We the People . . . ,” a group exhibition examining the current election season. Opening reception Fri 7/22, 6-9 PM. 7/20-8/13, 2156 N. Damen, 773-252-2232, arcgallery.org.

The First Time: First Taste The R Chicago Independent Radio Project (CHIRP) hosts the First Time, a

reading series that pairs personal stories with a musical performance. Thu 7/21, 8-11 PM, Martyrs’, 3855 N. Lincoln, 773404-9494, martyrslive.com, $10.

Chicago Artists Coalition “Younghye Han: My Mother’s First Exhibition,” Aram Han Sifuentes presents drawings and paintings that his mother created in Korea before immigrating to the United States in 1992. Opening reception Fri 7/22, 6-9 PM. 7/22-8/11, 217 N. Carpenter, 312-491-8887, chicagoartistscoalition.org. Museum of Contemporary Art “Andrew Yang,” the artist and trained biologist’s ﬁrst solo exhibition, inspired by the human body’s connection to the Milky Way. 7/26-12/31, 220 E. Chicago, 312-280-2660, mcachicago.org, $12, $7 students and seniors, free kids 12 and under and members of the military, free for Illinois residents on Tuesdays.

Amy Rose Spiegel

ò JORDAN HEMINGWAY

Amy Rose Spiegel The author R reads from her autobiography, Action: A Book About Sex. Local authors Ernest Wilkins and Diamond Sharp join for a discussion. Tue 7/26, 7 PM, Women & Children First, 5233 N. Clark, 773-7699299, womenandchildrenﬁrst.com.

DANCE

Chicago Human Rhythm R Project: Juba! The Museum of Contemporary Art presents a series

of tap and percussive dance acts over the weekend. Thu 7/21-Sat 7/23: 7:30 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago, 312-280-2660, mcachicago. org, $35.

COMEDY R

Here Veteran iO improvisers Tara DeFrancisco and Rance Rizzutto present the critically acclaimed show in which they take an audience suggestion and turn it into a completely improvised 45-minute-long musical. Through 8/11: Thu 8 PM, iO Theater, 1501 N. Kingsbury, ioimprov.com/chicago, $12.

Oﬀ the Radar Comedy A weekly R stand-up showcase featuring members of the Oﬀ the Radar Comedy

Club. Open run: Mon 8 PM, Hidden Shamrock, 2723 N. Halsted, 773-8830304, thehiddenshamrock.com, $5 suggested donation.

The Revival Hour The comedy club’s signature hour of improv, sketch, and stand-up. Open run: Sat 8

A photograph by Terry Evans from “Petcoke: Tracing Dirty Energy” ò TERRY EVANS/MOCP

Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College “Petcoke: Tracing Dirty Energy,” an exhibit of commissioned photographs and other artworks exploring Chicago’s petcoke industry and its associated environmental and social impacts. 7/21-10/9, 600 S. Michigan, 312-663-5554, events.colum. edu/event/petcoke_tracing_dirty_energy#. V40s8Vq29mI.

LIT

Scott Atkinson The journalist R presents Happy Anyway, an anthology of essays and narratives by

residents of Flint, Michigan. Sat 7/23, 5 PM, City Lit Books, 2523 N. Kedzie, 773235-2523, citylitbooks.com.

We Hear An evening of reflection R on the murders of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and the five police officers in Dallas. Participants express their concern and frustrations through artistic showcases, an open mike, and public dialogue. Mon 7/25, 7 PM, Berger Park, 6205 N. Sheridan, 773-761-0376, waltzingmechanics.org.

MOVIES

More at chicagoreader.com/movies NEW REVIEWS Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie The chaotic party girls of the beloved BBC sitcom return one more time, before arthritis sets in. Edina (Jennifer Saun-

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ders) needs to revive her ﬂagging PR agency (her last big coup was getting Bono to wear yellow sunglasses), and after learning that Kate Moss is looking for representation, she shifts into high gear. Patsy (Joanna Lumley, still sexy at 70) takes a break from sticking Botox needles in her face to come along for the ride, during which she tells Stella McCartney about blowing Sir Paul back in 1969. The original TV show became a cult sensation in the early 90s, when women were still expected to show a little decorum; now that bad girls are in greater supply, Edina and Patsy aren’t the novelty they once were, but they’re still a giant embarrassment, and thank God for that. Mandie Fletcher directed; with Julia Sawalha, June Whitﬁeld, and Jane Horrocks. —J.R. JONES R, 91 min. Landmark’s Century Centre, River East 21

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The Blackout Experiments Documentary maker Rich Fox lifts the veil on Blackout, described in the movie’s press materials as an “extreme immersive horror experience” and a “terrifying, psycho-sexual thrill-ride designed to play on our deepest psychological fears.” Onscreen this involves various LA nerds signing up online for a sort of personalized haunted-house tour and showing up at an anonymous storefront where they’re yanked inside, tied up, and terrorized before being ejected back out onto the pavement with no explanation. In keeping with the movie’s hype, the participants provide plenty of heavy breathing about the darkness within, though when the mysterious organizers, a couple of young theater types, finally sit for an on-camera interview, their idea of what it’s all about seems pretty vague. Essentially their “experiment” tests the hypothesis of whether people in Los Angeles would like to star in a movie. And guess what? They would. —J.R. JONES 80 min. Fri 7/22 and Sat 7/23, 7:45 and 9:45 PM; Sun 7/24, 1:45 and 3:45 PM; and Mon 7/25-Thu 7/28, 7:45 and 9:45 PM. Facets Cinematheque Café Society For the first time since Radio Days (1987), Woody Allen provides the voice-over narration for one of his own stories, his thick-tongued delivery reinforcing one’s sense of this Depression-era romance as an old man’s nostalgia trip. A young go-getter from New York City (Jesse Eisenberg) finagles a job with his uncle (Steve Carell), a high-powered Hollywood agent, and falls for his pretty assistant (Kristen Stewart); things don’t work out, so he moves back east, opens the title nightclub, and mopes around like a world-weary Fitzgerald character. As in many of Allen’s period comedies, the dialogue sounds completely modern and evokes the era only in its endless name-dropping. Early in the story Allen twists his misogyny into the shape of µ

JULY 21, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 5

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AGENDA B a TV sketch when the hero endlessly berates and ultimately dismisses the eager, innocent young prostitute he’s solicited (Anna Camp); that same impulse emerges more nakedly in the movie’s second half, when he’s reunited with his old lover and gets to take her down a peg for the supposedly easy choices she’s made. With Blake Lively, Parker Posey, and Paul Schneider. —J.R. JONES PG-13, 96 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark’s Century Centre, River East 21 Ghostbusters This gender-flipped reboot of the 1984 comedy hit aces the Bechdel test (Are there women in the story with their own concerns?) but fails in almost every other respect. The spunky, likable heroines (Melissa McCarthy, Kristin Wiig, Leslie Jones, Kate McKinnon) work some funny riffs into an unimaginative script by Katie Dippold and director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids), who have opted for a beat-by-beat retread over an actual sequel. The story takes place in an alternate universe from the original Ghostbusters that never quite gels: a shiny, spotless simulacrum of New York City where everyone is a goof and hardly anyone believes in ghosts or the busters thereof, even though the paranormal battles occur in public and on camera. This might have worked if the 1984 film were less well remembered, but it looms large over this production, which does little to distinguish itself. With Chris Hemsworth, Neil Casey, and halfhearted cameos by Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Sigourney Weaver. —LEAH PICKETT PG-13, 117 min. River East 21 Lights Out Swedish director David F. Sandberg expands his 2013 short into a brisk, studio-glossy feature that’s predictable and heavily reliant on jump scares but spooky good fun nonetheless. The supernatural entity stalking the grungy, twentysomething heroine (Teresa Palmer) and her precocious little brother (Gabriel Bateman) has an obvious Achilles heel: it’s allergic to light of any kind, so it hunts in darkness, waiting for the opportune moment to strike. The creature’s motivation is easily sussed out too, because the siblings’ mother (Maria Bello), a mentally ill widow who calls the creature her “friend,” has a dossier of files and cassette tapes in her library for the daughter to drop by and decipher (à la Naomi Watts in The Ring). Sandberg clings to almost every genre convention imaginable, though apparently this was intentional and the actors are in on the joke; Bello’s histrionic line readings drip with camp. —LEAH PICKETT PG-13, 81 min. ArcLight Chicago, River East 21

60 W. Walton St., Chicago • www.newberry.org 6 CHICAGO READER - JULY 21, 2016

The Other Side In this 2015 documentary by Italian director Roberto Minervini, poor whites in rural Louisiana manufacture and

The Witness

use methamphetamine, copulate, and rail against infringements on their freedom. President Obama is their mortal enemy, and they swear to protect their homes against the invasion they expect any day now. Minervini films all this in dramatic chiaroscuro, and the contrast between the verdant natural setting and the unadorned ugliness of his subjects’ sentiments couldn’t be more stark. At times, though, he goes overboard: the shot of a meth addict wandering naked down a country path would have more poetic value if it weren’t so obviously staged. Minervini has captured a segment of American society too often ignored and mocked, but sometimes he’s overtaken by the urge to romanticize decrepitude. —DMITRY SAMAROV R, 92 min. Fri 7/22-Sat 7/23, 7 and 9 PM; Sun 7/24, 1, 3, 5, and 7 PM; and Mon 7/25-Thu 7/28, 7 and 9 PM. Facets Cinematheque Portrait of the Artist In this brainy, surreal drama (2014), real-life director Bertrand Bonello (Saint Laurent, House of Pleasures) plays a Parisian filmmaker obsessing over his next feature, which, like Hitchcock’s Vertigo, will hinge on a painting. The producer hires an attractive art historian to help the director with research, and their tours of French museums provide the most voluptuous sequences in this otherwise chilly and slow-moving drama. References to other films— Luis Bunuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire, Olivier Assayas’s Irma Vep—liven things up, but a major narrative thread (the filmmaker’s mysterious rash) isn’t adequately explored, leaving underdeveloped the links between hysteria, madness, and creativity. Antoine Barraud directed. In French with subtitles. —ANDREA GRONVALL 127 min. Sun 7/24, 3 PM, and Thu 7/28, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center Therapy for a Vampire Dracula meets Sigmund Freud in this Austrian horror farce (2014), which benefits from a polished production but exhausts its premise about halfway through. Vienna, 1932: the good doctor (Karl Fischer) takes on a new patient, Count Geza

(Tobias Moretti), still depressed about the woman from his ancient past who got away (at the mere mention of her name, he levitates above the couch). Freud takes all this in good stride, though when the patient prepares to fly off, the doctor begs him to jump from someone else’s window. In a clever subplot, the vain countess (Jeanette Hain), a bloodsucker like her husband, craves a look at herself but can’t cast a reflection, so she engages a handsome young painter to do her portrait, and the count moves in on his girlfriend. Can this marriage be saved? Yes, but no one else can. In German with subtitles. —J.R. JONES 87 min. Fri 7/22, 7:45 PM; Sat 7/23, 6 PM; Sun 7/24, 5:30 PM; Mon 7/25, 7:45 PM; Tue 7/26, 6:15 PM; Wed 7/27, 8:15 PM; and Thu 7/28, 8:30 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center The Witness Queens R barmaid Kitty Genovese became a symbol of urban apathy

in March 1964 when a New York Times story reported that 38 people had watched impassively from their apartment windows as she was stabbed to death on the street in the dead of night. As the victim’s brother, Bill Genovese, proves in this engrossing documentary (and as the Times conceded when the perpetrator died), the story was wildly exaggerated: there were only a handful of eyewitnesses, and two diﬀerent people came to Genovese’s aid. Assisted by documentary maker James D. Solomon, Bill tries to track down the surviving witnesses and also the journalists who perpetrated the mythic story; Times editor A.M. Rosenthal, interviewed prior to his death in 2006, is so impressed with the story’s social impact that he couldn’t care less about its accuracy. The movie cuts deep on a personal level as well, turning Kitty from a poster child back into a real person—a live wire, a closeted lesbian, and a racist who may have hastened her own death with an ill-considered slur. —J.R. JONES 89 min. Fri 7/22, 6 PM; Sat 7/23, 7:45 PM; Mon 7/25, 6 PM; Tue 7/26, 8 PM; and Wed 7/27, 7:45 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center v

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CITY LIFE Street View

Pitch-perfect style

Matching pairs and prints stood out during last weekend’s Pitchfork Music Festival in Union Park.

Chicagoans

The fountain of youth

Barb Jonesi, 75 going on 35

“I really hate the term ‘bucket list,’” Jonesi says. ò SUNSHINE TUCKER

Clockwise from top left: Sarah Burden and her daughter Josephine; April Scissors; Laurel Kane and Gia Chosen; Samuel Ng ò ISA GIALLORENZO

I’VE ALWAYS DRESSED funkily, I guess you would say. I don’t dress a ge appropr iately. I a m most comfortable when I’m wearing something loose and flowy, and I pretty much live in Frye boots. I’m not a color person, except for the shock of pink in my hair, which I did on my last birthday, to say, “Hey, world, I’m still here.” Other than that, color is just not who I am. I’m always in black or gray or khaki or olive. It’s not that I want to blend in. I don’t think I blend in at all. I find that most of my compliments on the street come from the teenagers, for some reason: “Love your Grateful Dead T-shirt, lady. Love your striped hair.” Or my skull rings. I’m very big into skulls, and I wear a lot of skull T-shirts. I just love the form. I get a lot of strange looks from other women my age. I get a lot of “How do you do that?” I’ll say, “How do I do what?” And they say, “Look

the way you do, dress the way you do.” I don’t know what to say. It’s just who I am, that’s all. I know I don’t look the way most women my age look. And I’m not putting down how they look. That’s perfect for them. I really hate the term “bucket list.” All of those books, like 1,000 Places to See Before You Die—oh, God, they just infuriate me for some reason. But I would love, love, love to see Italy. I do not foresee that happening. I am a widow living on a ﬁxed income, although I certainly don’t see myself that way. My husband passed away three years ago. We were together 32 years, but we were only married for nine. I just hadn’t believed in marriage. At age 63, it was like, “Why the hell not? How many things do I get to do for the first time anymore?” When we went to get our license, and both of us said this was our ﬁrst marriage, we got: “Oh, how cute.” Like, “Oh, they let you out of

the assisted-living facility to come get married.” So we got married, and it was absolutely wonderful, until he got lung cancer and died nine months after he was diagnosed. It’s hell. But you go on. You do what you have to do. I see myself wanting to live my remaining years the same way I’ve lived my life, which is: Whatever happens, let it happen naturally. I will never go into assisted living or one of those retirement homes. I want to be offed before I hit any of that. I am a strong, strong believer in assisted suicide. Until then I want to enjoy life. I want to interact. I want to not be seen as an old person. Older women become invisible, and that’s a shame. We become cute. I hear that a lot: “You are so cute.” And I find that very condescending. I’m still 35, as far as I’m concerned.” —AS TOLD TO ANNE FORD

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

SURE THINGS THURSDAY

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

SUNDAY

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TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY

× Green City Ma rket Ch ef BBQ More than 100 chefs gather for this food event during which Chicago’s top restaurants—including Girl & the Goat and Momotaro—provide tasting portions of meals created using ingredients from the market. 5:308 PM, Green City Market, 1750 N. Clark, chicagogreencitymarket.org, $125.

♀ Women Rule th e St age Four women present plays dealing with feminism, motherhood, civil rights, and identity through the lens of Greek myth, a 1960s nightclub, Black Lives Matter, and more. 7/21-7/23: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 7:30 PM, Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, goodmantheatre. org. F

* Sheffield Music Festival & Garden Wa lk The weekend fest features live music from Stephen Kellog, the Mowgli’s, and Redfoo plus more than 80 local gardens to explore. Sat 7/23-Sun 7/24: noon-5:30 PM, Sheﬃeld and Webster, sheﬃeldgardenwalk.com, $10 suggested donation.

W Ch icago Hot Sauce Fest For those who like it hot, this festival ﬁres up pepper-eating and sauce contests, and vendors serve their spiciest concoctions to only the most daring participants. Sat 7/23-Sun 7/24: noon-7 PM, Belmont and Elston, chicagohotsaucefest.com, $5 suggested donation.

F Campaigns , Conventi ons , and Comedy WBEZ’s Morning Shift hosts Tony Sarabia and Jenn White speak with Saturday Night Live writer Katie Rich, hip-hop artist and activist Rhymefest, and others during this “after dark” version of their radio show. 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, 773-525-2501, lh-st. com, $25.

E Ka rtemquin Films 50th An ni ve rsar y Celebrati on The city honors the acclaimed Chicago documentary company with an outdoor screening of the early ﬁlm Inquiring Nuns (see page 19). 6:30 PM, Millennium Park, Michigan and Randolph, kartemquin.com/ktq50. F

ã Sake 101 Arami owner Ty Fujimura doubles as a sake sage for this evening, inviting guests to enjoy samples from Japan’s ﬁnest breweries. 6:30 PM, Arami, 1829 W. Chicago, aramichicago.com, $40.

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JULY 21, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 9

CITY LIFE

Stephon Watts was the subject of Adrienne Hurst’s Lisagor Awardnominated feature “Black, autistic, and killed by police,” from the issue of December 17, 2015. Read the story at chicagoreader.com.

Danelene Powell holds a photo of her children, including Stephon Watts, bottom right. ò JEFFREY MARINI

POLICE SHOOTINGS

Still searching for justice

A civil suit against Calumet City cops loses steam.

By MAYA DUKMASOVA

ven t hou gh Way ne Wat ts is fighting leukemia and is tethered to a dialysis machine three days a week, he frequently makes the 20-minute drive from his home in Hazel Crest to Lincoln Cemetery in Blue Island, to visit the grave of his nephew, Stephon. “I stand there and I talk to him,” says Watts. “I just tell him that we’re still here ﬁghting for you.” But that fight just suffered a major setback. Stephon Watts was 15 in February 2012, when he was shot and killed by Calumet City police officers in his own home. Now an Illinois appellate court has rejected his family’s appeal to have a hearing on a civil suit ﬁled against the city and the two officers who killed Stephon. The family’s prospects of having their day in court are dwindling. The officers who shot Watts, William Coffey and Robert Hynek, had been called to the house before, and knew

10 CHICAGO READER - JULY 21, 2016

that the teen was autistic. During their final encounter, Coffey, Hynek, and a third officer entered the Wattses’ home after Stephon’s father, Steven Watts, placed a nonemergency call for help. (The two had been ﬁghting.) When the officers arrived, Stephon was in the basement. Less than two minutes later, Coffey and Hynek fired shots, alleging that the boy had threatened them with a steak knife as they descended the stairs. The family maintains it was a butter knife. This is one of the “hundreds” of facts in dispute between the family’s and the officers’ accounts of what happened that day, says Tony Peraica, the Wattses’ attorney. After the incident the two officers were put on paid administrative leave. The family filed a civil suit against Calumet City, Coffey, and Hynek in April 2012. A Cook County circuit court judge granted the defense’s motion for

summary judgment, ruling that it was impossible for the facts to be presented in a light that would be favorable to the Watts family. “The whole thing was handled as if it happened in some sort of banana republic without any rule of law,” Peraica says of circuit court judge Eileen Brewer’s decision. “We came together [with Calumet City’s attorneys] to argue our motions—she didn’t even let us. It was already decided.” The Watts family then turned to the Illinois appellate court. But on July 6, the appellate court unanimously upheld Brewer’s summary judgment. In the appellate court’s 17-page decision, Justice Terrence J. Lavin wrote that the Watts family’s expert witness did not describe the officers’ conduct as “willful and wanton,” which plaintiffs must prove to bypass the state law that grants police officers immunity from prosecution for using deadly force when they believe their lives to be in danger. The expert witness was S. Ronald Hauri, a former police chief from Waukegan. In his deposition he called the officers’ conduct “negligent and unprofessional.” Lavin used this same turn of phrase to justify the lower court’s ruling. “Simply put, Hauri’s speculation does not somehow provide plaintiff with enough evidence to avoid summary judgment,” Lavin wrote. “It also merits mention that Hauri acknowledged that the force used when Stephon displayed a knife was reasonable.” Peraica insists that Hauri’s words were taken out of context. “The judges cherry-picked the facts from a four-hour deposition that Mr. Hauri gave, and found what they wanted to ﬁnd to justify their decision,” he says. Hauri was himself surprised that the judges saw his statements as favorable to the defendants. “It’s one of those situations that, had [the officers] taken the time and the steps to deescalate the situation prior to forcing it into a confrontation, it would have turned out differently,” he said in an interview Monday.

“I want those policemen to testify in open court so everyone can hear what they did and how they did it. It was so cold what they did.” —Steven Watts, father of Stephon Watts

Peraica, a former Cook County commissioner, is now preparing to appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court. Though he’s hopeful about the court taking the appeal, Calumet City attorney Michael McGrath says he’s “pretty confident that they won’t take the case.” “Although it’s an unfortunate situation, we’re pleased with the outcome,” McGrath says. Meanwhile, the Calumet City Police Department appears to have moved on from the incident. “Having a situation like this arise is not uncommon in law enforcement work,” says training director Sergeant Jason Menclewicz. Menclewicz insists the case is no longer on people’s minds. “I think it’s been put to rest,” he says. “No one’s talking about it anymore. In view of what’s going on in the world, what happened here years ago is irrelevant.” Hynek and Coffey are back on patrol. For the Watts family, however, Stephon’s death is ever present. His sister, Renee, spoke about it at a Department of Justice forum in Uptown last week. His mother, Danelene Powell, continues to march at protests against police violence. Unlike his brother, Steven Watts hasn’t been to the cemetery to visit his son. “I haven’t had the courage to go because I don’t want to think of him like that,” Watts says. “It’s just so hard for me to imagine him in the ground.” Watts, who watched his son die, says he relives the moments of February 1, 2012, every day. “I think about what I could have done differently,” he says. “It really bothers me that I didn’t take a lot more precautions . . . like taking the police downstairs when I could have called him upstairs.” Though Watts is himself fighting stomach cancer, he’s chosen to delay a dangerous but potentially life-saving operation because he fears he might die on the operating table before the case is resolved. “It’s hard but I’m trying to hang on,” he says, “because I want those policemen to testify in open court so everyone can hear what they did and how they did it. It was so cold what they did. We’ve got to get this out.” v

v @mdoukmas

Tenth Ward alderman Sue Sadlowski Garza gazes out from an ore wall on the edge of the former U.S. Steel South Works site. ò MICHELLE KANAAR

The new Ed Vrdolyak is nothing like the old one Tenth Ward alderman Sue Sadlowski Garza is cultivating a new kind of progressive power on Chicago’s southeast side. By BEN JORAVSKY

t’s Tuesday, the day Tenth Ward alderman Sue Sadlowski Garza sets aside for constituents to drop in and tell her what’s on their minds. Garza sits in her swivel chair in the back room of her southeast-side ward office, preparing to meet her people. As a joke, I tell her she’s the new Eddie Vrdolyak, ready to hold court. That draws a laugh. Vrdolyak and Garza have virtually nothing in common, other than the fact they both got elected alderman of the Tenth Ward. Still, comparing one to the other is a useful way to illustrate how much everything in Chicago—including the southeast side—has changed over the last few decades. So, indulge me for a moment.

Nicknamed “Fast Eddie,” Vrdolyak was the original Donald Trump Democrat—playing one race against the other to accumulate more power. In 1983 he organized most of the city’s white aldermen against Harold Washington, the city’s ﬁrst black mayor, in an epic and ugly political battle known as the Council Wars. A wealthy, wheeling-dealing lawyer, Vrdolyak favored dark business suits, and was rarely seen without a bodyguard at his side as he was chauffeured around town in a limousine. By contrast, Garza hasn’t had a nickname since high school, when her friends called her “Suzy Q.” She’s a former public school counselor and Chicago Teachers Union activist who’s married to an ironworker. They live in a comfortable working-class neighborhood in

the shadow of the old steel mills where Garza’s father, Ed Sadlowski, an icon in the labor movement, once worked. If Garza has Vrdolyak-like ambitions of wealth and power, she does a masterful job of concealing them. She’s a progressive Democrat, a Bernie Sanders delegate. In the warmer months, she wears summer business casual— capris, patterned tunics, and a black blazer. In the lobby of her ward office hangs a poster that quotes Jimi Hendrix: “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” A very unusual sentiment for a Chicago politician to express. In 2015, Garza won her aldermanic seat by narrowly defeating incumbent John Pope, one

of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s closest City Council supporters—an offense, it seems, the mayor may never forgive. Whereas Vrdolyak once organized a majority of aldermen against a progressive mayor, Garza’s now among a progressive minority of aldermen trying to push a centrist mayor to the left. Good luck with that. Back in the ward office, Garza’s ﬁrst meeting of the day is with the father of a 14-year-old girl who used to be her student back when Garza was an elementary school guidance counselor. The girl and Garza exchange hugs. “You’re looking good, babe,” Garza says. She may be the only alderman in Chicago who can get away with calling a young woman “babe.” J

JULY 21, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 11

Garza continued from 11 As everyone sits around a long table, it occurs to me that the father may have brought his daughter to this meeting because he ﬁgured he could use her presence to win over the boss. At least, that’s how it usually works in Chicago. The father clears his throat and gets down to business. Several years ago, a city work crew destroyed the curb near his house, he says. He shows Garza a picture of the damage. He’s hoping Garza can use her inﬂuence to get the city to repair it. “Alderman—” the man says. “Sue,” says Garza. The man looks confused. “You can call me Sue,” she says. “That’s my name. You don’t have to call me alderman.” I feel as though I’m in a parody of The Godfather, where the great Don Corleone is telling a humble favor seeker: “Please, call me Vito!” The man looks at me for guidance. I shrug. He returns to his story. “OK, Alderman,” he says. Garza sighs. Yes, the Tenth Ward has changed. But apparently, it’s going to take some time before that message gets out.

arza was born in 1959 at the University of Chicago Hospital in Hyde Park. But after a day or two, her family piled her into the car and took her home to the southeast side. She’s been living there ever since. This portion of Chicago swings east under the lake and touches the northwest corner of Indiana—it’s a land of factories and warehouses, marshes and swamps, right there on the edge of the lake, cut off from the rest of the city by expressways, freight train tracks, and landﬁlls. Most people can spend a lifetime in Chicago and never realize it exists. Garza and others here often refer to their part of town as the “forgotten” Tenth Ward. In that neck of the woods, Garza’s father, Ed Sadlowski, was something of a legend. He was seen as a fiery young radical, aiming to lead a steelworkers’ uprising against their entrenched union leadership. In 1974, at age 37, he pulled off an upset by getting elected director of United Steel Workers of America District 31, which encompassed Chicago and northwest Indiana and at the time was the largest steelworkers’ local in the country, with more than 130,000 members. In 1977, he ran for president of the national union. His bid garnered glowing write-ups in publications from Rolling Stone to Penthouse to the New York Times Magazine. Charismatic

12 CHICAGO READER - JULY 21, 2016

Ed Sadlowski with Sue, then 17, during his run for president of the national steelworkers’ union in 1977. ò SUN-TIMES PRINT COLLECTION

and well-read, he’d win over reporters by taking them to the local watering hole, where over beers he’d deliver blistering critiques of fat-cat bosses, reminisce about labor legends of yore, and occasionally break into a union song. Sadlowski envisioned a utopian future in which the working class would work less and earn more. In reality, things went the other way: he lost his election bid, almost all of the steel mills eventually closed, and union membership shrunk to a fraction of what it once was. Most of those late-70s profiles contained an obligatory scene set inside Sadlowski’s book-strewn southeast-side house, where his wife (Marlene, a social worker) and four kids lingered in the background. Sue Sadlowski was the oldest of those kids. “I knew my dad was some kind of hotshot, but I was barely paying attention,” she says now. “I was in my own world back then—it was sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. I was a wild kid, man.” She was among a gaggle of southeast-side teens—the working-class sons and daughters of south-side factory workers—drinking beer and smoking reefer in the forest preserve out by Wolf Lake. “There’d be hundreds of kids,” she says. “Wild parties, man. People doing their thing.” But for all his gallivanting with the visiting press, Sadlowski was a strict disciplinarian on the home front. He expected Sue home at a certain hour, and insisted she study harder. “He was always very supportive, but he wanted me to do things right. And by that he meant he wanted me to do it his way,” Garza

says. “He used to tell me, ‘I won’t steer you wrong.’ But I’m as hardheaded as he is. So, yeah, I pushed back. But that’s what he did with his union work. I guess you can say we were cut from the same cloth.” In 1977, Garza graduated from southeast-side George Washington High School and went to Western Illinois University. But after a year she dropped out and moved back home. She took a job as a bartender and waitress at a Bennigan’s in Calumet City. She married Dave Martino, an ironworker who’d been her high school sweetheart. “I got married at 21. Had a kid at 21. And got divorced when I was 23,” she says. “You can see how I was driving my parents crazy.” Martino died in a car crash in 1986. “One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do was to tell David, my five-year-old-son, that his father had died.” In the mid-1980s, she started dating Raul Garza, who also grew up in the area. They got married in 1996. Raul Garza adopted David, and together he and Sue had three other children. “Raul and I moved in together before we got married,” she says. “My parents weren’t too happy about that, but they bought us this giant console TV as a housewarming present. My dad tells Raul, ‘This is so you never bring her back.’” Sadlowski was joking, Garza says, but he was also making a larger point. Sooner or later even the wildest rock ’n’ rollers have to grow up. Garza did too. While working as a waitress and raising her son, she got a bachelor’s degree from Governors State University in Will

County and a master’s in counseling from Concordia University in River Forest. In 1996, she got a job as a counselor at Jane Addams, the same public grammar school she and her children attended. Eventually, Garza became a leader in the Chicago Teachers Union. She helped coordinate the 2012 teachers’ strike, speaking at rallies and meetings where she denounced “corporate fat cats who keep shelling out directives that have nothing to do with education.” Now when she speaks, she hears her father’s voice. “I ﬁnd myself saying things he used to say. I spent my teenage years rebelling against him, and it’s like I’m picking up where he left off. Life’s weird, isn’t it?” Over the last few years her parents have retired and moved to Florida. “My mom’s doing great, but it’s sad—my dad’s slipping,” she says. “I think he’s in the early stage of dementia. He forgets things. Sometimes he says stuff and I’m not sure what he’s saying.” Still, even in his diminished state, Garza describes her father as an “armchair alderman.” “He still wants to tell me what to do,” she says. “And I still want to do what I want to do. But you know something? Outside of my mom, no one loves me like my dad. Put aside all our head butting and he’s just a dad trying to protect his daughter.”

ack in her ward office, Garza’s next appointment is with a developer, a casually dressed man with a quick smile and an easygoing manner. He says he has no connection to the Tenth Ward—he just wants an opportunity to ﬁnally meet this wonderful new alderman he’s heard so much about. He smiles. She smiles. He looks at me. I smile. Everyone’s smiling. Then into the room walks Sadlowski, in town for a brief visit from Florida. He moves slowly, as one might expect of a 78-year-old man who’s had open-heart surgeries and three operations to remove noncancerous tumors from his brain. The developer eyes Sadlowski but keeps talking about his vision for the ward—especially the Lakeside property. That’s the nearly 600 acres of land once home to U.S. Steel’s South Works site, one of the largest steel mills in the country. U.S. Steel closed the plant in 1992. Over the years, the factories were leveled. It’s now the largest single tract of undeveloped land in Chicago. The last plan for developing it—with up-

scale houses, townhomes, condos, and retail— fell apart in February for lack of funding. It’s back to square one. The developer says he’d like to tour the site with Garza. “I’m a guy who can make things happen, OK?” he says. “I’m a mover and a shaker.” Suddenly, Sadlowski erupts. “Why are you here?” he exclaims. “What?” asks the developer. “What do you want?” Sadlowski asks. “Dad,” says Garza. “No, no, Sue,” Sadlowski says. He turns back to the developer. “I know about your type. I want to know why you’re here, huh?” “Hold on,” Garza says. She leaves the room. It’s silent—with Sadlowski staring at the developer. A moment later, Garza returns. “C’mon, dad,” she says. “Mom’s here.” Sadlowski rises slowly and walks toward the door. As he does, he looks back at the developer and says again: “I know your type.” The developer gives me a WTF look. “Do you know who that is?” I ask. “No.” “That’s Ed Sadlowski,” I say. “Who’s he?” I feel like Burt Lancaster in Atlantic City trying to explain to a very young Susan Sarandon how the world used to be. “He’s a Chicago legend, man—that’s who he is.”

n retrospect, it’s a no-brainer that Garza ran for alderman in 2015. Her kids were grown. She was wellknown throughout the ward—scores of voters had either been her students or were related to students of hers at Addams. And of course, the Sadlowski name still meant something—at least to anyone over 50. CTU president Karen Lewis urged Garza to run as part of the union’s larger strategy to elect teachers to the council. “There are police and firefighters in the council—but no teachers,” Lewis says. “I thought she’d make a great alderman.” Pope, Garza’s opponent and a four-term incumbent, had seemed unbeatable because of his mayoral connections and sizable war chest. Bolstered by contributions from the CTU, SEIU, and other unions, Garza matched Pope’s fund-raising nearly dollar for dollar. It was like a two-round heavyweight fight. They pounded each other with negative ads and flyers. In the February 24 primary election, Pope won round one—getting the most votes in a seven-person

Garza with Mike Deveney, center, and other residents of a Hegewisch nursing home ò MICHELLE KANAAR

race, but falling short of the 50 percent he needed to avoid a runoff. Garza won round two—the April 7 runoff— but barely. It took two weeks of tense vote counting before the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners declared her the winner by all of 20 votes: 5,825 to 5,805. Even then it looked as though the fight was heading for a third round. Emanuel put Pope on the city’s payroll, giving him an $117,000-a-year job in the Water Department. In the summer of 2015, Pope opened his own ward office just three doors down from Garza’s. Pope had invaded her turf—so she invaded right back. “Right after he moved in, I walked into his office with a box of Dunkin’ Donuts,” she says. “I said, ‘Welcome to the neighborhood, John. If you need anything, let your alderman know.’ ” (Pope didn’t respond to requests for comment.) Ultimately, round three fizzled. Last fall, Pope closed his ward office. And he chose not to run for committeeman, instead backing a city worker named Fred Carrizales. In April, Garza walloped Carrizales, winning 74 percent of the vote and carrying every precinct in the ward. A few weeks later, Pope officially closed his campaign account. And just like that, the bout was over. The mighty Democratic organization of the Tenth Ward—once run by Eddie Vrdolyak—had been defeated. The ward was now run by an inde-

pendent named Sadlowski. Up was down and down was up. Now what?

fter meeting with several other constituents, Garza drives to a retirement home in Hegewisch for an ice cream social. She drives a black 2016 Ford Explorer—“made right here in the ward” at the assembly plant on Torrence Avenue. Her aides call it her “Jay-Z ride.” There’re about a dozen seniors in the meal room. “We’re having ice cream,” Garza says in a cheery voice. “Who wants some?” But if you think a dish or two of ice cream will win over this bunch, think again. Here’s the thing about being alderman: you can campaign on grand issues like ending injustice, but once in office you’ll discover your constituents have more practical concerns on their minds. “There’s a man across the street who’s got three dogs in his yard,” one woman says. “Yes?” Garza says. “They’re barking all night—I can’t sleep.” “That’s terrible,” Garza says. “When you hear those dogs, call my office.” “You want me to call your office in the middle of the night?” “Yes, you can leave a message.” Someone else complains about the passing

freight trains, which blow their whistles as they pass by at night. Between the dogs and the trains, no one can get any sleep. Garza takes down the info, but there’s one potential problem: the city department that regulates noise pollution—like every other department in the city—is controlled by the mayor’s appointees. And there’s a widely held perception—not always real—that in Chicago, if an alderman steps out of line, the mayor will punish her ward. That would be the same mayor who vociferously backed Pope in the last election. So justiﬁed or not, that perception stays in the back of Garza’s mind every time she calls the mayor’s office.

n the day the Board of Election declared Garza victorious over Pope, Mayor Emanuel called her into his City Hall office for a chat. “I walk into his office and he said, ‘Wow, you’re really a lesson in landslide victories, aren’t you?’ Really sarcastic. And I said, ‘No, it’s a lesson in every vote counts.’ We sat down and he shook his ﬁnger at me and said, ‘I don’t want a circus in the council.’ I’m thinking, ‘Circus? What, do I look like a clown?’ But I said, ‘I don’t want a circus either. That’s not why I’m here.’” As Garza sees it, Emanuel was trying to intimidate her. As he sees it, well, the J

JULY 21, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 13

Garza continued from 14 mayor’s office didn’t respond for comment. According to Garza, she now has a “complicated” relationship with the mayor. Her concerns that Emanuel might punish her ward by withholding services have so far been unfounded—city aides return her complaint calls, like the ones with the seniors and the barking dogs. The mayor can even be nice, Garza says, especially when he wants something. For instance, when he wanted her vote for his 2015 budget—property tax hikes and all—he invited her to join him for a brief visit with President Obama. But more often than not, the mayor’s passive-aggressive, Garza says. For instance, he still hasn’t approved her request for a leave of absence from CPS—even though such leaves are routinely granted to cops, firefighters, and garbage haulers who get elected to the council. And he didn’t invite Garza to the opening of Big Marsh, the 40-acre bike park the city built in her ward. She showed up for the ceremony anyway. “When he sees me at the Big Marsh thing, Rahm puts his arm around me and says, ‘Let’s piss off all your liberal friends,’” Garza says. “I drew him closer and said, ‘Let’s really piss them off.’” As she sees it, he invaded her space by putting his arm around her. So she invaded his. In her heart of hearts, Garza says, she wants to be more of a hell-raiser—like she’s still on the front lines of the teachers’ strike. But she realizes she’s making her way in a strange new venue, so she’s cautious. She compares the City Council to high school. There are cliques and petty rivalries. Many aldermen are trying to curry favor with the mean girl—in this case, Mayor Rahm. “Most of the aldermen have been very welcoming,” she says. “But there are one or two assholes—I don’t want to name names. On the day of meetings, I wear red—to show my solidarity with the teachers. One alderman made fun of me for that. Can you believe it? He’s like— ‘Oh, look at you in red.’ I said, ‘That’s the best you got?’” Another alderman hinted she shouldn’t be in the Latino Caucus. “I said, ‘I’m married to a Mexican-American. My kids are Latino. I may be Irish and Polish by birth, but I’m Mexican by injection.’” Even after a year, she’s says she’s still trying to figure things out. “I’m not afraid to vote against the mayor,” she says. “I voted against his budget.”

14 CHICAGO READER - JULY 21, 2016

Garza stands on a hilltop at Big Marsh, a former industrial waste dumping site slated to open as a bike park in the fall of 2016.

But she has unexpected empathy for her colleagues, even the mayoral lackeys. “We’re all trying to do what we think is best for our ward— most of us anyway,” she says. “I feel for these guys, ’cause I know what we’re up against.” As an example, she recalls a recent vote over a $16 million TIF handout to a developer in Uptown—a deal backed by 46th Ward alderman James Cappleman She opposed the deal, she says, because in her view, a city whose school system is broke shouldn’t spend millions on an upscale development just a few blocks from the lake. But when activists asked her to defer and publish the proposal—a parliamentary move that would delay its passage—she hesitated. “I sympathized with the activists. But Cappleman himself came up to me and said, ‘Please don’t defer and publish.’ He looked me in the eyes. What am I going to do? The deal’s gonna pass anyway. So I split the baby. I didn’t defer and publish, but I voted against the deal. Was that right? I don’t know. This job’s different than I imagined.”

fter the visit to the senior center, we head over to Lakeside. The South Works plant that once employed more than 50,000 workers, including her father, is now a vast, grassy ﬁeld. We drive through on a bumpy dirt road. The

skyscrapers of the Loop rise in the distance. I can see why developers might think they could make a fortune building upscale housing here for young professionals who can’t afford more centrally located neighborhoods. The site’s southern edge is lined with a trio of 2,000-foot-long ore walls—giant threestory-high slabs of concrete. In the old days, boats hauling iron ore would deposit their cargo in storage areas flanked by the walls. From there it would get hauled to the mills to be made into steel. The ore walls are all that remain of the old plant. Garza points to the big dents in one, apparently left by a wrecking ball. “You can see they tried to knock them down,” she says. “But they couldn’t. It was too strong to fall. Now they’re going to have to build around it.” It’s a metaphor for the ward as a whole, she says. “All these jobs and industry have left us, but we’re still here.” As she stands next to the wall, looking out at the lake, she makes a prediction: If she and the mayor are still in office after the next election, he’ll try to redistrict this site into another ward, in order to put it under a more compliant alderman who won’t object to whatever he wants to build there. “The ﬁght never ends, does it?” Garza makes her final stop of the night in Hyde Park, where the Progressive Caucus is holding a reception at the Promontory restaurant.

ò MICHELLE KANAAR

Alderman Scott Waguespack gives a brief speech thanking the aldermen for standing up to Emanuel on important issues like toxic interest rate swaps. But he points out that they’re waging a difficult battle, since a majority of the council will vote as Emanuel commands. During the ride back to the Tenth Ward, Garza talks about the frustrations of the job. “It is an uphill fight,” she says. “I’ve learned I have to think strategically. This is not checkers, it’s chess. You can’t just take the obvious move. You have to think ahead. One move leads to another. So you always have to figure out the consequences of a move—how it plays out in the long run.” She continues: “It’s like that Cappleman vote. If I defer and publish with him, they can defer and publish me. It’s frustrating. But that’s the way it is. I have to take the long view if I want to change the world.” She turns south onto Avenue L. “Aw, hell,” she says. The streetlights are out on a block of 100th Street. Most likely, a complaint or two has already been left on her office answering machine. “I’ll have to call the Bureau of Electricity in the morning,” she says. She shakes her head. Changing the world will have to wait. First she’s got to get those streetlights fixed. v

v @joravben

ARTS & CULTURE American Nocturne depicts the crowd that gathered to watch an infamous 1930 lynching in Marion, Indiana. ò MICHAEL SMART/SUN-TIMES MEDIA

PUBLIC ART

The Elgin mural mess

A delayed public reaction leaves American Nocturne stranded between censorship and outrage. By DEANNA ISAACS

he Elgin mural is not the Elgin Marbles. Those Greek sculptures were infamously taken from the Parthenon to the British Museum 200 years ago, sparking a debate that still rages. But the story of this 21st-century Illinois painting, American Nocturne, with its disputed motives and retrospectively outraged public, is at least as complicated. The mural’s story begins August 7, 1930, in another midwestern town—Marion, Indiana. On that day, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, two black teenagers accused of killing a white man and raping his female companion, were dragged from their jail cell by an angry mob, beaten, and lynched. A local photographer, Lawrence Beitler, captured the spectacle: the victims hanging from a tree above a crowd of ostensibly ordinary white onlookers. At the moment Beitler snapped the photo, some of the townspeople had turned toward the camera, one man raising his arm to point in the direction of the two bodies.

Beitler sold thousands of copies of that image, which was turned into a postcard and became a notorious icon of American racism. It inspired a New York teacher named Abel Meeropol—a Jew, a Communist, and, later, adoptive father to the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg—to write the searing words and music for the song “Strange Fruit,” which Billie Holiday recorded and made famous in 1939. A decade ago, Beitler’s photograph also inspired Elgin artist David Powers, then working on the last in a series of murals the city had commissioned from the Outside Exhibition Group, a small arts organization that’s no longer active. Powers’s drawing for the Elgin mural, loosely based on the lower portion of Beitler’s photo, eliminated the victims in order to focus on the faces in the crowd—an intense and agitated group under a threatening sky. Art students from Elgin’s Judson University executed the painting in the summer of 2007 under Powers’s direction. The finished work covered eight four-foot-by-eight-foot panels,

and was installed in a small park that’s also a walkway in the center of town. For the next nine years, the mural hung there—under a tree, fronted by a bench, and facing a happier Powers mural that features a marching band (Parade). If any viewers wondered about the situation American Nocturne depicted, or recognized it, they didn’t bother to ask or comment publicly. That is, until May 17, when a passerby noticed its similarity to Beitler’s lynching photo and his companion posted images of both on the What’s Happening in Elgin? Facebook page. The post ignited a furor that quickly drew widespread attention, along with calls for the removal and/or destruction of what many saw as a racist work of art. Four days later, after a take-it-down-now message was found taped to the mural, Elgin’s city manager had the painting moved to the municipal cultural center, where it remained on display, but indoors. Public comment was taken at two subsequent meetings, and on June 13, the Elgin Cultural Arts Commission unanimously recommended that the city council remove American Nocturne from public display. On June 17 it was put in storage. That prompted a response from the New York-based National Coalition Against Censorship. In a July 7 letter to Elgin mayor David Kaptain, the NCAC objected to the mural’s removal. “No matter how disturbing some people may ﬁnd it, the mural is a work of art,

a representation of ideas,” the letter read. “As such, it enjoys First Amendment protection.” But last week the arts commission recommended that the mural be kept in storage for at least seven months while it researches and writes a public art plan that can then be used to determine American Nocturne’s fate. Although the city owns about 80 pieces of public art, arts commission chairman Joe Vassallo says that it never established procedures for acquisition and display, which is why the mural was up all those years without any historical context. There’s a bureaucratic failure behind this muddle, Vassallo says: “Not having a process failed this piece.” Whether the city would have approved the mural knowing its source is an open question. David Powers did not respond to requests for an interview for this story, but in a 2007 video interview he described the mural as “an allegory of the American Depression.” But two other members of the Outside Exhibition Group told me that everyone who worked on American Nocturne was aware of its source material, and that the current discussion is one they expected to have nine years ago. Group member Milt Evans Jr., an artist, retired art teacher, and former arts commission chairman, says Powers was employing ambiguity “to provoke people to think about what is going on.” Evans says he told Powers that the mural would be controversial, “but as an African-American, I didn’t see any problem with what was being presented.” Exhibition group president Paul Pedersen says “the only ones who should be upset by American Nocturne should be the white population, dressing up to go to an affair like that—something we hope will never happen again. My wife is black, Mr. Evans is black. We never looked at this as a racial thing from the black side. More the other way around.” Pedersen says Outside Exhibition will buy the mural back if given the opportunity. “We stand by our work,” he says. “I’m not a bit ashamed.” As things now stand, it’ll be a while before anyone sees American Nocturne again. In the meantime, Kerry James Marshall’s 2002 triptych Heirlooms and Accessories, inspired by the same photograph, accompanied by wall text, and also focusing on faces in the crowd, is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art through September 25. Peer very closely at its nearly all-white background and you’ll be able to make out the ghostly trace of the rest of Beitler’s photo. v

v @DeannaIsaacs JULY 21, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 15

ARTS & CULTURE

READER RECOMMENDED

b ALL AGES

Contact sheet of Gordon Parks’s photos for “A Man Becomes Invisible,” Life magazine, 1952 ò THE GORDON PARKS FOUNDATION

VISUAL ART

Before #BlackLivesMatter, there was Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison By AIMEE LEVITT

16 CHICAGO READER - JULY 21, 2016

he 1943 Harlem riots broke out on August 1, just a few days after the photographer Gordon Parks moved to the neighborhood. He considered shooting the chaos around him, but decided against it. “The police would only think I stole the camera and take it from me,” he wrote in a memoir years later. Ralph Ellison, who also lived in Harlem, began writing Invisible Man, his ﬁrst novel,

ARTS & CULTURE Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole ò JOAN MARCUS

THEATER Gordon Parks, Untitled (Harlem, New York), 1952 ò THE GORDON PARKS FOUNDATION

This War Paint is too rosy

By TONY ADLER in 1945; it was published in 1952. “I am an invisible man,” it begins. “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” The two men became friends and developed a shared philosophy about racial injustice: If they could use their words and images to depict black Americans as they truly are—instead of as a collection of stereotypes—they could make white Americans see them as people, not just as criminals or exotic “others.” They decided to start with their own neighborhood. Pieces of two of their collaborations are now on display at the Art Institute. The exhibit “Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison in Harlem” contains photos and contact sheets from two magazine essays, “Harlem Is Nowhere” (1948) and “A Man Becomes Invisible” (1952). “Harlem Is Nowhere” was intended to focus on the Lafargue Mental Hygiene Clinic, the first racially integrated psychiatric clinic in New York City. Ellison considered it a haven from racism and the alienation of northern blacks, who had been cut off from the tight familial and community bonds of the south. “When things take on special signiﬁcance because you’re black,” he wrote in one of the captions, “a cold, unseeing eye seems to judge your every act. It makes you feel guilty, hostile, ‘nowhere.’” One of Parks’s photos is of a man in silhouette wandering through a maze of brick walls; sunlight shines through clotheslines hung with white

laundry, showing the way out. Unfortunately, ’48: The Magazine of the Year, which had commissioned the essay, went bankrupt before it could be published, and most of Parks’s photos were lost. “A Man Becomes Invisible” was published in Life, where Parks was a staff photographer, but in a much more truncated form than its creators had intended. (The exhibition includes a copy of the magazine as well as contact sheets so viewers can gauge the original scope of the project.) It’s a companion to the Harlem sections of Invisible Man, juxtaposing scenes of ordinary street life with staged photos of the unnamed invisible man’s lightbulb-lined “hole” in the basement of a white-owned apartment building. Parks pairs his photos of soapbox preachers, junkshop windows, stoop sitters, and rooftops emerging from the mist with appropriate lines from Ellison’s novel. “Harlem, city of dreams,” Ellison’s text reads, next to a photo of a broken-down church bearing the sign citadel of hope. The exhibition draws no obvious parallels between Parks and Ellison’s present and ours. Perhaps it doesn’t need to: 60 years later, we still live in a country where only tragedy teaches us the names of invisible men. v R “INVISIBLE MAN: GORDON PARKS AND RALPH ELLISON IN HARLEM” Through 8/28, Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan, 312443-3600, artic.org, $25.

v @aimeelevitt

“The truth is never in good taste.” —War Paint

osmetics pioneers Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden were formidable women who battled long, long odds to reach the top of their profession. They were also ruthless hucksters, possessed of an Ayn Randian sense of entitlement, whose lying machinations endangered the very people they were supposed to be serving. Sound like any stories you’ve been hearing lately? Maybe some having to do with a certain female presidential candidate? Inspired by Lindy Woodhead’s 2003 double biography and getting its world premiere now at Goodman Theatre, War Paint wears our paradoxical, Hillary-saturated zeitgeist like a Park Avenue matron wears a pore-opening mudpack. Yet the three creators of this new musical about the rivalry between Rubinstein and Arden (playwright Doug Wright, composer Scott Frankel, and lyricist Michael Korie, known for their previous collaboration on Grey Gardens) seem hesitant to own the implications. Perhaps out of excessive deference to the current political culture—or possibly just in hopes of retaining our sympathy for the central characters—they attempt to evade their narrative even as they engage it. Which is too bad, because that narrative is pretty fascinating. Elizabeth Arden started life in 1878 as a Canadian named Florence Nightingale Graham. A quick apprenticeship followed by a failed part-

nership brought her into the beauty business in New York, where she developed what even now remains the well-known iconography of the Elizabeth Arden brand: red-doored spas, boxes tied with nylon bows, pink everything, and exquisitely designed containers (in the show, a reluctantly appreciative Rubinstein calls one Arden jar a “tiny kiss made of clay”). Meanwhile, Helena (nee Chaja) Rubinstein was busy turning her Polish Jewish self into the “Marie Curie of mascara” so as to escape the fate she foresaw if she didn’t get a fortune of her own: “barefoot in Gdansk, widow to a butcher twice my age.” Establishing herself ﬁrst in Europe, Rubinstein sought to conquer the U.S. with a shtick involving the science of rejuvenation. Both Woodhead’s book and Wright, Frankel, and Korie’s stage adaptation concentrate on the titanic feud between these sisters from different mothers—so alike in their outsider status, their lust for success, their broken marriages, and their mercantile cunning that they couldn’t help but hate each other. They fought it out in a universe they’d essentially invented, built on a gospel of exclusivity and elitism they shared, until they were challenged in their turn (yet another resonance out of the zeitgeist) by populist upstarts like Charles Revson and Estée Lauder. Referring to their dinosaurlike inability to respond to those challenges, someone dubs them “Epidermis Rex.” Throughout, we’re made privy to the most appalling chicanery. Bits of it are so absurd you can’t help but laugh, as when an early J

JULY 21, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 17

ARTS & CULTURE After the Expo you’re also returning to Crackers, in Indiana, where you did your ﬁrst stand-up set. What was that ﬁrst night onstage like? Oh my god, I wore a vest, which I look back on like, “What was I doing?” I think I just wanted to have a really thin waist so I just wore this pinched-in tight vest. I have a theater background, so I knew at least how to talk in front of people. I did much better than I deserved to, but it was terrible. It was an open mike and I had a bunch of friends there, and we all went out and celebrated after. I went to two open mikes just last night, and it was so bleak.

War Paint continued from 17

v @taadler 18 CHICAGO READER - JULY 21, 2016

How old were you when you started doing comedy? I was 23, and now I’m 30. I used to say to myself that if I didn’t feel like I had made signiﬁcant strides by the time I was 30, I’d stop. But the thing is, you constantly accomplish something and then are terrible at something. At this point I can’t stop—I’m addicted.

ò COURTESY MEGAN GAILEY

song-and-dance number—one of several neatly choreographed by Christopher Gattelli—shows Arden’s treatment girls sending 600 volts through metal masks and into the faces of enthusiastic customers. (“I am first to plug women into wall,” insists the ever-quotable Rubinstein.) But there’s no lighter side to formulas whose ingredients include lead, and not much of a defense against the two doyennes’ culpability in creating the culture of never-ending youth, which has devolved further over the decades into our culture of outright regression. Or, for that matter, against the charge that they practiced all their depredations against members of their own sex. War Paint directly addresses the issue only in its final moments, when Arden and Rubinstein—elderly now and thrown together unexpectedly—have occasion to wonder whether their companies make women “freer or help enslave them.” Though the answer they give is interesting in its starkness, the question surfaces far too late. It should’ve come up in act one. I’ve even got a good spot for it: during a number called “If I’d Been a Man,” in which the authors use a feminist argument speciously, to give the impression that Arden and Rubinstein were victims of sexism when the whole show until then and afterward is dedicated to demonstrating how they expressly bypassed traditionally male industrial strongholds, acted with all the remorselessness of male empire builders, and succeeded fabulously if not happily. But then the function of “If I’d Been a Man” isn’t to get at a truth about our protagonists. As far as I can tell, it’s meant to soften them up some so they don’t come across as complete monsters. A really damning representation of Rubinstein and Arden would first of all be seen as politically backward, and, second, offer the show’s stars no opportunity to ingratiate themselves. Those stars are big too: Christine Ebersole as Arden, looking like Pat Nixon in Catherine Zuber’s costumes and David Brian Brown’s hair designs, and Patti LuPone, resembling nothing so much as a Baltic Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as Rubinstein. The two of them are absorbing to watch, marvelous to hear: true, unspun divas. v WAR PAINT WedThu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 and 7:30 PM (except 8/7, 2 PM only), Tue 7:30 PM; also Thu 7/21, 7/28, and 8/4, 2 PM, Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312-443-3800, goodmantheatre. org, $44-$200.

COMEDY

Megan Gailey’s homecoming By BRIANNA WELLEN

n the two years since she left Chicago, Megan Gailey has boosted her recognition with shows across the country, a spot on Conan, and a starring role in MTV’s prank show Ladylike. Now she’s returning to the city where she cut her teeth to headline the Comedy Exposition. We talked with the stand-up about her ﬁrst time onstage, drunk Chicago comics, and reading YouTube comments.

Last year you showed up for the Comedy Expo thinking you were headlining, but you actually ended up hosting a night of comics instead. How does it feel to oﬃcially be a headliner this year? Last year was so fun. When I got there I was like, “Oh, OK,” and then it ended up being so much more fun for me because I got

to introduce friends and make fun of them. It was almost like they were giving me my own party to host. This is my third year doing the Comedy Expo and I love it so much. Chicago is always so fun for me, but especially to come back during Expo, when there are other people who have also left Chicago and are visiting, it’s like a fun, drunk reunion.

You’re on TV quite a bit now, that’s got to feel like a significant stride. Someone asked me recently if it’s validating, and oh yes, it absolutely is—if not for yourself, then for other people. If I die, it’s like, “Oh, cool, here’s this clip of me.” Luckily, for the MTV show we have hair and makeup and wardrobe, so I always can be in a fun outfit and look good, and every time I see myself there hasn’t been a time when I’m not like, “Oh no, my arm is so fat!” Even people on YouTube have commented that I have fat arms. Never read the comments! I know, but they’re so funny! Once a man said that he wanted to choke me and have sex with my dead body. And it’s like, what?! I was onstage for five minutes, how did you get to that point? Tell me a little bit more about your MTV show, Ladylike. This one is a hidden-camera prank show. I think they like to think of it as a feminist version of Punk’d. It’s an all-girl cast and then there’s Matteo Lane, who’s also a Chicago comic, and we just go around and harass people in New York City with the idea of “Boys always get away with this stuff, why can’t girls?” It was very nerve-racking to film because I don’t like people being mad at me,

ARTS & CULTURE Inquiring Nuns

and I go into every situation trying to make someone the most mad at me. What’s one of the worst situations you’ve gotten into? Three people tried to fight me throughout the filming. You have an earpiece in, because they give you some logistical directions sometimes, and I would have someone be like, “I’m going to fight you!” One girl once said, “Bitch, I’m from Chicago, I’ll kill you,” and I was like, “She means it!” But I always thought that I’d be in danger and the producers would say, “Tell them it’s a prank and you’ll be fine!” But, no, once they hear that, they’re like, “OK, now really go for it.” My mom, every day, she’ll ask, “Are you safe? Are you OK?” We’re harassing people in Times Square—it’s scary. So just in the past two years you’ve gone from Chicago to New York to LA—that’s a lot of different comedy scenes in a short amount of time. It is, it’s weird. They’re all different and fun, and all have drawbacks and positives, but the nice thing coming from Chicago is I have so many friends in LA and New York, so when I got to both places it felt like I had a built-in support system already. And people hate us— we’re so annoying about being from Chicago. We’re the loudest and drunkest and craziest. And people will try to be nice, “Oh, you Chicago people are all so funny! You’re mentally ill, but you’re funny!”

MOVIES

One question, many answers By J.R. JONES

comedyexposition.com, $25.

early 50 years ago, Chicago documentary makers Gordon Quinn and Gerald Temaner recruited a couple of Dominican nuns, Sister Marie Arné and Sister Mary Campion, for an experimental ﬁlm in which they would approach random people on the street, ask them if they were happy, and try to determine why. Inquiring Nuns (1968), one of the earliest releases from the directors’ Kartemquin Films, screens outdoors Tuesday at Millennium Park as part of Kartemquin’s extended golden anniversary, with Quinn taking questions after the movie. The event was arranged months ago, and no one could have known then that it would transpire during a national summer of sorrow, when the question “Are you happy?” might well bring the response “Are you crazy?” Looking at the movie now, amid a pandemic of gun violence, you realize that the people in the movie, whether or not they were happier, certainly felt safer. They fret about the war in Vietnam and social and

v @BriannaWellen

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How are you preparing for this headline set? I’m just going to try my very best [laughs]. When I’m in Chicago I tend to tell a lot of stories about my time there, even stories that are more insane than I realized at the time. I think when you’re in that bubble you’re like, “Oh, yeah, everybody falls asleep on the sidewalk.” When I go back I tend to be very reminiscent and nostalgic about how great it was and how much I loved living there. What other projects are you working on right now? I’m currently filming a webseries for the Kicker, which is part of Above Average, Lorne Michaels’s digital platform. And I’m going to Beyonce in September. That’s really what’s keeping me going right now. v R MEGAN GAILEY Fri 7/22, 8 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport,

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racial unrest at home, but in the era of the daily newspaper and the nightly newscast, they live in a bubble, exposed to less chaos than we are today. Many lose themselves in their work (you can tell this was shot in Chicago), viewing happiness not as a life goal but as a feeling that comes and goes as they race through their days. They find happiness in their family’s health, or in their financial security, or in other people, though all those things can be terribly fragile. For some people the question “Are you happy?” is so complex they tie themselves in knots trying to answer it; for others it’s simply irrelevant. What’s extraordinary about Inquiring Nuns is how variously people on the street pursue fulfillment. One middle-class white woman argues that happiness demands “a constant sense of self-involvement,” whereas a visibly troubled man defines unhappiness as “being alone, feeling that you’re the only person. No one is interested in you except yourself.” An African-American woman

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coming out of Sunday church says she teaches her three children “to accept life, work hard, expect to get things by working hard, and to discipline themselves and conform to society.” Earlier, a white teen in a rock band praises the controversial new Picasso sculpture in the Loop: “Maybe a lot of people aren’t ready for it, but I think they’d better start getting ready for it, because the world is just changing, and you can’t lag behind.” Quinn and Temaner bookend their interviews with shots of the expressway, a funky organ piece by Philip Glass (his ﬁrst credited ﬁlm work) pumping away on the soundtrack. Yet their movie captures as many paths to happiness as there are people, each traveling at his own chosen pace. v INQUIRING NUNS sss Directed by Gordon Quinn and Gerald Temaner. 66 min. Tue 7/26, 6:30 PM, Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph, cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/ millennium_park7.html. F

v @JR_Jones

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Disorder Post-traumatic stress disorder is a common device in ﬁlms about war veterans, but Alice Winocour, who wrote and directed this slow-boiling thriller (2015), tracks her protagonist’s PTSD so closely that it becomes the story’s essence. A Special Forces soldier (Matthias Schoenaerts), discharged from the military and haunted by his most recent tour in Afghanistan, returns home and hires on with a Lebanese millionaire to protect the man’s German wife (Diane Kruger) and their preteen son at the family’s coastal villa. Winocour keeps the viewer guessing as to whether the intruders in their midst are real or imagined, the soldier’s paranoia captured in an eerie, pounding score by techno musician Gesaffelstein. —LEAH PICKETT 101 min. Sat 7/23, 7 PM. Down by Love In this drama by writer-di-

Microbe and Gasoline

MOVIES

France, illuminated

Ten new features make their local debuts at the Chicago French Film Festival.

ur thoughts are with France, and by a lucky coincidence, this week its thoughts are with us. Launched in 2011, the Music Box Theatre’s Chicago French Film Festival provides a valuable snapshot of what’s happening in French cinema, still the liveliest national cinema in Europe. Following are reviews of eight features screening this week, six of them making their local premieres; all are in French with subtitles. —J.R. JONES

Soﬁa Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides (1999). But the movie isn’t as bold or shocking as it makes itself out to be—plenty of art-house fare (especially in France) is just as explicit in portraying adolescent sex and recreational drug use. The characters are mostly white, bored, and affluent, a revolving door of hedonistic brats throwing swinger parties and being horrible to one another. The cheeky title may be ironic, but if “modern love” equals self-indulgence, romance is truly dead. —LEAH PICKETT Sat 7/23, 9:15 PM, and Wed 7/27, 7:30 PM.

Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story) This

The Brand New Testament Cheerily sacrile-

debut feature from writer-director Eva Husson, about a group of teenagers in Biarritz, shows promise on a technical level, with long, shimmery tracking shots of their bacchanalia that recall Harmony Korine’s Kids (1995) and

gious, this inventive comic fantasy by Belgian director Jaco Van Dormael (The Eighth Day) is narrated by a ten-year-old girl in Brussels (Pili Groyne) who’s neglected by her drunken mother (Yolande Moreau) and beaten by her

CHICAGO FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL

Fri 7/22-Thu 7/28, Music Box, 3733 N. Southport, 773-871-6604, musicboxtheatre.com, $12, passes $80

frustrated father (Benoît Poelvoorde). Imagining him as God and herself as Jesus’s kid sister, she vows revenge and hits the streets to recruit a homeless man as her Peter and various other lost souls as her disciples. The movie’s ready visual wit often recalls that of Michel Gondry (in the local laundromat, the father climbs into a clothes dryer and enters an epic tunnel), but Van Dormael also works his way through a vivid philosophical gag: The girl accesses the father’s computer and sends out an e-mail blast telling each of God’s children the exact moment he or she will die, which leads many people to reconsider and reorder their lives. Catherine Deneuve plays one of the disciples, a cultured woman who learns her years are numbered and tumbles into an impetuous affair with a circus gorilla. —J.R. JONES 115 min. Fri 7/22, 7:30 PM, and Mon 7/25, 4:45 PM.

rector Pierre Godeau, a prison director (Guillaume Gallienne) falls in love with an inmate (Adèle Exarchopoulos of Blue Is the Warmest Color), though his passion feels more like taboo-speciﬁc lust (and mannered lust at that). Their romance is based on a true story that occurred in a Versailles detention center in 2011, yet it rings false because the actors lack chemistry and their individual narratives are nebulous. Gallienne suggests a man suffering a latent midlife crisis, though Godeau depicts him as a content husband and father whose only vice (before the affair) is watching reality TV. Exarchopoulos’s character is even more puzzling: her backstory is limited, her personality amorphous, and her craving for the prison director as unclear as his motivation for pursuing her so recklessly. —LEAH PICKETT Sun 7/24, 6:45 PM, and Tue 7/26, 7:15 PM.

R Microbe and Gasoline

With an engine, an auto frame, and some discarded lumber, two pubescent misfits in Versailles construct a ramshackle motor home and set off for a street-illegal tour de France. The crate-on-wheels gimmick is a typically winsome fantasy from writer-director Michel Gondry, and the buddy story between diminutive Microbe (Ange Dargent) and nascent biker Gasoline (Théophile Baquet) sometimes recalls his earlier trash-for-treasure comedy Be Kind Rewind (2008). But that film was overconceived and undercharacterized, whereas this one is unerringly genuine, with a true sense of adolescent reasoning. (“[She] loves me too much,” Microbe says of his mother. “I feel sorry for her.”) The boys’ J

JULY 21, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 21

Get showtimes at chicagoreader.com/movies.

ARTS & CULTURE Seasons

continued from 21

friendship is based on their shared love of gadgetry, for which they have a knack, and curiosity about the opposite sex, for which they have none; once they develop one, Gondry implies in a poignant final shot, they won’t need each other quite as much. With Audrey Tautou. 105 min. —J.R. JONES Sat 7/23, 4:45 PM, and Tue 7/26, 9:30 PM.

Phantom Boy In this moving 2015

animation by Alain Gagnol and JeanLoup Felicioli (A Cat in Paris), a young cancer patient with the power to leave his body helps a cop whose legs have been broken bring down a criminal mastermind holding New York City hostage. Able to ﬂy anywhere invisibly, but unable to touch anything, the boy acts as a spy for the cop, who’s been marginalized by the force for his reckless methods, and as a guide for the enterprising journalist also trying to save the city from the gangster. The noirish plotline is smart and engaging, but this French film is most powerful for its treatment of the young hero’s illness; in one scene he uses his supernatural ability to eavesdrop on his family as they discuss him. —ERIC LUTZ Sat 7/23, 2:45 PM, and Thu 7/28, 5:15 PM.

R Scene of the Crime

André Techiné’s moody 1986 thriller, about a provincial nightclub owner (Catherine Deneuve) whose teenage son is terrorized by a pair of escaped criminals. Techiné had his ups and downs as a stylist through the 70s and early 80s, but this film finds him back on ﬁrm formal ground. The relentless wide-screen panning, from character to character through a succession of deliriously packed-in landscapes, is lyrical and strange:

22 CHICAGO READER - JULY 21, 2016

it creates connections and sunders them and sends the narrative spinning into areas of dark unsettlement. The film’s hardly without faults, and the proliferation of themes (landscape as locus of guilt, etc) diffuses the line of tension, but the envelope of style is brilliantly assured. With Nicolas Giraudi, Wadeck Stanczak, Victor Lanoux, and Danielle Darrieux, an elegant Ophulsian memory amid the lyrical image swirl. —PAT GRAHAM Sun 7/24, noon; Mon 7/25, 9:30 PM; and Wed 7/27, 5:30 PM.

R Seasons

Jacques Perrin’s stunning nature film teems with life and death, working its way from the end of the Ice Age to the present and from the bottom of the food chain to the top. The movie opens 12,000 years ago as the glaciers are collapsing, with panoramic long shots of reindeer migrating north to the arctic circle, but the story soon settles in the forest, where life explodes. Perrin and codirector Jacques Cluzaud search out the manic energy of the animal kingdom by finding highly dramatic vignettes: birds feed their chicks, bear cubs climb tall trees, and cattle suffer from marauding flies before thundering away to a more congenial spot. Predation is the dominant theme—there are bloodcurdling sequences in which a wild boar and then a horse are menaced by wolves—but none of these species stands a chance once mankind appears on the scene halfway through the film. At that point the movie’s narrative arc snaps into focus, and what seemed an entertaining collection of wildlife encounters becomes the tale of a planet heading from one brutal epoch toward another. 97 min. —J.R. JONES Sun 7/24, 2 PM, and Tue 7/26, 5:15 PM. v

The Keeper of Lost Causes

MOVIES

Cold cases, burning beliefs By LEAH PICKETT

he Dept. Q Trilogy, based on three best-selling crime novels by Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen, draws comparisons with Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo franchise: set in Scandinavia and featuring a sullen male protagonist, it’s violent, hard-boiled, and psychologically disturbing. But its antihero, a clench-jawed police detective (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), also embodies a belief that individual goodness might be enough to prevail over darkness. “I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in jack shit,” the detective tells the villain at the climax of the third installment. The villain disagrees: “All your life you’ve saved people you never met. Of course you believe. I’ve never met a believer like you in my life.” The ﬁlms get away with this sort of moralizing because they’re so relentlessly bleak and brutal, and because the protagonist is a terse, cynical misanthrope, recently divorced and palpably lonely. (Interviewing a witness at a bar, he informs her that “95 percent of all murders on women are committed by the husband, the boyfriend, or someone they turned down,” and then asks to buy her a drink. She declines.) After a gunshot wound to the head, he’s been transferred to “Department Q,” a basement unit in his Copenhagen police station designated for closing cold cases, but to his captain’s chagrin, the nettled detective decides to crack open some of those cases, assisted by his ssss EXCELLENT

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younger, more affable Muslim partner (Fares Fares of Zero Dark Thirty). Their colleagues refer to them as “the Arab and the drunk.” All three films are atmospheric and propulsive, gliding seamlessly through different backstories and points of view. The Keeper of Lost Causes (2013), in which the partners search for a woman who’s been missing for ﬁve years, is the most formulaic; A Conspiracy of Faith (2016), in which they hunt for a serial kidnapper, suffers from a hammy, unconvincing villain. The Absent One (2014), in which they solve a string of 20-year-old crimes by tracking down a key witness, cuts the deepest because director Mikkel Nørgaard takes the time to develop the detectives, the villains, and the witness (Sarah-Soﬁe Boussnina as a teenager and Danica Curcic as an adult, both extraordinary); when the climax arrives, its emotion is earned. At one point the detective explains to the witness why he gets up in the morning: “You and all the people who need me.” His moral and emotional investment in victims—both his weakness and his greatest strength—is the series’ linchpin. v THE DEPT. Q TRILOGY: THE KEEPER OF LOST CAUSES ss Directed by Mikkel Nørgaard. 97 min. THE ABSENT ONE sss Directed by Mikkel Nørgaard. 119 min. A CONSPIRACY OF FAITH sss Directed by Hans Petter Moland. 112 min. Fri 7/22-Thu 7/28. Gene Siskel Film Center

v @leahkpickett

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MUSIC

Trouble in Mind blossoms as it grows

Bill and Lisa Roe’s golden ears have helped turn their erstwhile garage-rock label into something much more diverse—and even more wonderful.

Bill and Lisa Roe in their Portage Park home, which also serves as headquarters for Trouble in Mind ò LUCY HEWETT

By PETER MARGASAK

n a winter day in early 2014, I was browsing at Permanent Records when the music on the shop’s sound system caught my ear—terse Krautrock-inspired grooves topped with buoyant organ licks that reminded me of a late-60s Walter Wanderley bossa nova record. I’m sufficiently jaded that I rarely ask a record-store clerk what’s playing, but this time I couldn’t help myself. Bill Roe was behind the counter, and though I only knew him by name, I also knew he was well established in

Chicago’s garage-rock scene—he and his wife, Lisa, played together in the band CoCoComa, and in 2009 they’d founded a small label called Trouble in Mind. He told me that the music I was hearing was from a new record by Swiss duo Klaus Johann Grobe—an unfamiliar name to me at the time—and that Trouble in Mind was about to release it. This news caught me by surprise—as far as I knew, Trouble in Mind was a garage-rock label. The Roes had launched it by releasing a CoCoComa single shortly after

the birth of their ﬁrst child, Veronica “Ronnie” Moon. In the ﬁnal few months of 2009, as they ramped up their schedule, they put out half a dozen more singles by bands in their orbit, all of whom had garage rock in their DNA—including the Fresh & Onlys, Ty Segall, the White Wires, and Chicago’s own Tyler Jon Tyler. The Klaus Johann Grobe record was a long way from three-chord caveman trash, though, and in light of that accidental discovery, I figured I should give Trouble in Mind’s output a proper hearing. In the two

years since then, the label has continued to diversify its roster, adding the likes of Portland art-rock band Alto!, who are inspired by guitar music from Lebanon and the Sahara, and San Francisco fingerstyle guitarist Chuck Johnson, who sculpts moody electric soundscapes. During that time Trouble in Mind has also become a full-time gig, at least for Bill—in September 2014 he quit his job at Permanent to devote himself to the label. (Lisa works full-time at the Bucktown-Wicker Park branch of the Chicago Public

Library, though she says she usually checks Trouble in Mind’s e-mail each morning—right after getting out of bed at 6:45 AM.) The Roes have graduated from releasing only singles, and their catalog of roughly 120 titles now includes more than 50 albums. Their operation has grown organically, expanding within its means—the same MO followed by many of the best indie labels in Chicago, including Drag City and Bloodshot. Trouble in Mind has introduced several artists who’ve gone on to greater fame elsewhere, among them Mikal Cronin (who now records for Merge) and Morgan Delt (who’s about to drop his debut on Sub Pop). When the Roes started their label, each sold-out single would fund the next one, and for a while they were pretty happy with that arrangement. They released all their seven-inches in sleeves with identical artwork, so that only the varying colors of the center labels distinguished them. They also restricted themselves to “trash” vinyl—made from multicolored scraps—or plain black. When scene elder Brian Costello profiled Trouble in Mind for the Reader in 2009, Bill explained the thinking behind this: “We’re trying to reduce the collectibility,” he said. “We want to keep these records in print, something to enjoy instead of resell a month later.” Today Bill isn’t sure Trouble in Mind had an overarching vision in place at the beginning. “I wouldn’t say there was ambition, like a grand scheme, necessarily,” he says. “We just wanted to be a singles label at ﬁrst, and that was probably a little shortsighted.” The label took the plunge into LPs in 2010, after Bill noticed several unreleased songs on the MySpace page of French band Limiñanas, who’d already released a single on Trouble in Mind. The group were working on a full-length album, as it turned out, and later that year their LP became the first in the TiM catalog. “You realize,” says Lisa, “that as much as we love singles and the idea that it’s two songs you just want to play over J

JULY 21, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 25

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Matchess Somnaphoria

Trouble in Mind continued from 25 and over, having ten songs that you want to play over and over is even more enticing.” At the time Bill was working for Chicago Independent Distribution (the rebranded U.S. distro arm of Southern Records), which had recently opened Logan Hardware. His job dealt mostly with production, and it didn’t prepare him to handle every facet of running a label— keeping Trouble in Mind on the rails was a learning experience. He talked as much as he could to friends who worked at other labels. “I asked a lot of stupid questions,” he admits. In 2013 Trouble in Mind released Cabinet of Curiosities, the debut album by Dutch psych-pop singer Jacco Gardner, and it succeeded beyond anything the Roes could’ve hoped for. (It’s gone on to be the label’s biggest seller, moving 10,000 copies so far.) This raised the profile of Trouble in Mind, and soon it was facing greater demands—the Roes suddenly found it more difficult to keep music in print, maintain a steady release schedule, and satisfy the growing expectations of their artists. For the first time, the label began hiring PR and marketing firms to help with some of its records. “Once you start putting a little more real money into it, that’s when the bottom line starts mattering, I guess,” says Lisa. Bill insists he never imagined that the label would take off the way it has. “It was never a thing where I was like, ‘Someday this is what I’m going to do for a living,’” he says. “It was really just sort of stumbling into it, with the success of the label—and trying to juggle that with a full-time working job.” In 2010, shortly after leaving CID, he’d started at Permanent, but before long his responsibilities at Trouble in Mind forced him to reduce his hours and go part-time, and in 2014 he had to quit. Trouble in Mind’s growth as a business has been impressive, but the broadening of its aesthetic is what’s really thrilling about its evolution. Bill cites the full-length debut of Klaus Johann Grobe—the

Alto! LP 3

Chuck Johnson Velvet Arc

Invisible Astro Healing Rythm Quartet 2

Jacco Gardner Cabinet of Curiosities

Klaus Johann Grobe Im Sinne der Zeit

MUSIC record I heard him play, which came out in spring 2014—as one of the first releases that definitively departed from the label’s comfort zone at the intersection of garage, psych, punk, and pop. Trouble in Mind was building a hard-core fan base—one that was willing to trust the label’s sensibilities even as they evolved. “We have a pretty dedicated mail-order following of about 150 people that will buy everything,” Bill says. “I think that’s awesome and a testament that we’re doing something right—that people still follow us and trust our opinions and tastes.” “To Bill’s credit, he has very deep knowledge of music, and I think that has allowed us to be brave sometimes and trust that what we’re hearing is valid,” Lisa says. “Ultimately, the label is sort of a reflection—if you came and looked at our record collection, it’s not just garage rock.” Since the Klaus Johann Grobe album, Trouble in Mind has put out records by jazz-influenced Ethiorock band Invisible Astro Healing Rhythm Quartet, industrial-flavored noise-pop act 31Ø8, and atmospheric dream-psych artist Matchess (aka Chicagoan Whitney Johnson), among others. Bill has a rabid curiosity about new music, and it hasn’t faded just because he’s no longer being exposed to fresh releases at Permanent. “When I was working in a record store, it was lot easier to keep my ear to the ground and keep on top of things, but I think I’m still in a rhythm,” he says. “I’m kind of an insomniac, so she’ll go to bed at ten, fall asleep, and I’m up. I’ll either watch Netflix or I can go dink around on the computer and go to music sites and listen to stuff. I’m glad I haven’t gotten to the point where I’m just settled into a rut—‘This is what I listen to.’ I’m always pretty restless, and I’m always feeling the need to keep listening.” Though Trouble in Mind continues to branch out, its heart and soul is still in the garage—that is, ultracatchy rock with a 1960s feel. The Roes have an uncanny talent for un-

covering a seemingly endless procession of little-known acts—the Paperhead, Doug Tuttle, the Butterscotch Cathedral—who make incredibly hooky music. The fact that Trouble in Mind has only done two reissues in its history—one by Del Shannon of “Runaway” fame and another by UK indie-pop band the Dentists—can be seen as a testimony to the Roes’ skill at ﬁnding active artists doing great things with classic sounds. The Roes live in a Portage Park home they bought in 2013, which houses the label too. They became a family of four with the birth of their son, Arthur Lee, in spring 2012. Bill and Lisa admit that running the label and raising two kids can be overwhelming, but they seem remarkably centered—and they have an inspiring rapport that makes the challenge easier to face. They’re so thoroughly in sync that they don’t just finish each other’s sentences—they both seem to know in advance what the other will say. “There are terrible days in life sometimes,” says Bill. “If one of us sees the other is stressed or upset, the other can step in. Somehow it’s this weird dance, and we can each take care of business.” “I can’t imagine if Bill was married to someone who wasn’t involved with the label,” says Lisa. “There have been times where it’s literally been like, ‘We have this amount of money—we can either get records or pay our mortgage on time,’” and we look at each other and it’s, ‘Well, we gotta have those records.’ And so we’ve got to pay our mortgage a little late that month.” The couple have also decided that they have to agree on everything they release. “That’s the rule,” she says. “I’m the worst liar on earth, the worst pretender, and I can’t commit myself to something that I’m not 100 percent on board with.” “I’ve rallied hard for a few things that she’s ultimately like, ‘I’m just, you know, I’m not into it,’” explains Bill. “It’s broken my heart a few times, but it is what it is. I mean, ultimately, she’s got golden ears.” v

v @pmarg

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Recommended and notable shows, and critics’ insights for the week of July 21

MUSIC

ALL AGES

PICK OF THE WEEK

A mutating art project over three decades, Psychic TV remains the brainchild of cofounder Genesis P-Orridge

Lucy Dacus ò COURTESY OF ARTIST

THURSDAY21 Steve Turre Quartet Through Sunday. 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase, 806 S. Plymouth, $20-$35.

ò DREW WIEDEMANN

PSYCHIC TV, CHANDELIERS, RADIANT DEVICES

Fri 7/22, 9 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2105 S. State, $25, $20 in advance. 17+

FORMED IN 1982 by Genesis P-Orridge and Peter Christopherson following the demise of their protoindustrial, minimal-electronics group Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV have long been an incredibly prolific, shape-shifting experimental collective doubling as an art project. Their monumental debut, Force the Hand of Chance, represented a massive departure from the eerie soundscapes of Throbbing Gristle, trading in a stark, chilling machine pulse for lush, melodic postpunk embroidered with heady new-wave and noise-rock passages. Psychic TV have undergone a lot of change over the last three decades, leaving P-Orridge as the sole constant member; phases of productivity (including a span in the 80s where 17 live records were released in a row, one per month) have been interspersed with long lulls

28 CHICAGO READER - JULY 21, 2016

of inaction (like when P-Orridge “retired” from touring in 2009) while collaborations with members of Coil, Bauhaus, and Soft Cell piled up. Psychic TV’s most recent studio record, 2014’s tribute to voodoo culture Snakes, is a sparse, beat-heavy affair that sounds more like Throbbing Gristle than any record thus far. This is the band’s ﬁrst tour since that album, though in January they released a mixtape of demos, live songs, and outtakes called Fishscales Falling: A Smorgasbord Ov Delights—and a reissue of Force the Hand of Chance is coming at the end of summer (they’ll perform it in full during LA’s Beserktown II Festival in a few weeks). A new album, tentatively titled Alienist, is slated for this fall, so at this show you can expect a nice mix of old and new weirdness. —LUCA CIMARUSTI

Trombonist Steve Turre has quietly become an eminence grise of mainstream jazz, a veteran with unerring instincts who brings elegance, bluesiness, and rhythmic sophistication to just about everything he touches. He shows off his skills on the recent Colors for the Masters (Smoke Sessions), a crisp and satisfying quartet recording that ﬁnds the veteran at ease among three of his peers: pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Jimmy Cobb (saxophonist Javon Jackson joins the front line on four tunes). The title is meant as an acknowledgment to his bandmates, but it also applies to the likes of J.J. Johnson, Curtis Fuller, and Jimmy Cleveland, trombonists in the classic tradition Turre carries forward. The record has no surprises—you’re ready for that trademark solo on the conch shell, and originals like “JoCo Blue” have the classic veneer of Blue Note sides made by Turre’s heroes in the late 50s. For this Chicago engagement he performs with a crew of locals who can locate that same aesthetic with pinpoint accuracy: bassist Larry Gray, pianist Willie Pickens, and drummer Greg Artry. —PETER MARGASAK

FRIDAY22 Mystery Lights Night Beats headline; Mystery Lights and Evening Attraction open. 9 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, $12, $10 in advance. Lots of things have made the output of Daptone Records compelling: the meticulous depth of production from cofounder Gabriel Roth, the historic accuracy of the playing, the irresistible charm of the songs, and the charisma of singers like Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley. The ﬁrst release on Daptone’s new rock imprint Wick is by young New York band Mystery Lights—who clearly use their copies of Nuggets as road maps to making music— and though singer Mike Brandon can’t match J

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John Reis and Rocket From the Crypt headline Wicker Park Fest ò GETTY

FESTIVALS

Wicker Park, Lincoln Park, or Tinley Park . . . take your pick Taste of River North Featuring food from a stable of River North restaurants, this festival is heavy on cover bands, though its first night is headlined by stalwart local pop-punks Lucky Boys Confusion. 7/22-7/24, Kingsbury and Erie, tasteofrivernorth.com, $5 suggested donation.

Astral Spirits Festival Presented by Astral Spirits, an Austin label that specializes in improvised music and has several Chicago musicians on its roster, the festival includes performances by Tashi Dorji, Hearts & Minds, Chatoyant, and the Tim Stine Trio (see page 33). 7/23-7/24, Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont, hungrybrainchicago.com, $10-12.

Warped Tour Welcome to another year of frustrated suburban teens flocking to this long-standing mall-punk mecca. Falling in Reverse, Every Time I Die, and

New Found Glory are among the bigger bands playing. 7/23, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park, vanswarpedtour.com, $41.50.

Wicker Park Fest One of Chicago’s most popular street fests in one of Chicago’s most popular neighborhoods. Makes sense. Headliners this year include the Mountain Goats, Rocket From the Crypt, Alvvays, and Antibalas. 7/23-7/24, North and Milwaukee, wickerparkbucktown.com/fest, $5 suggested donation.

Sheffield Garden Walk Tour more than 80 gardens in Lincoln Park while a bevy of cover bands play all weekend. Headlining the festival is Redfoo, one half of LMFAO. Remember them? 7/23-7/24, Sheﬃeld and Webster, sheﬃeldgardenwalk.com, $10 suggested donation, $7 suggested donation before 3 PM.

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JULY 21, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 29

Mobley ò GABO BELTRAN

MUSIC continued from 29

the presence of Jones and Bradley, he gets the job done, reaching deep into his chest for some impressive, R&B-informed wailing. The production is great, with each Farﬁsa swell and fuzzed-out string bend leaping from the speakers. The band ditches the caveman rawness of most garage rock over the last couple of decades for something more polished but no less powerful and satisfying. There may be nothing remotely original about the group’s eponymous debut—“21 & Counting,” for example, wouldn’t exist without the armature of “Pushin’ Too Hard” by the Seeds—but I don’t know of many groups delivering this sound with such precision and verve. There are also subtle allusions to 60s-era machismo and grandeur: on “Melt” the singer rues his diet of booze and drugs, while on “What Happens When You Turn the Devil Down” the narrator is stood up by the devil at a crossroads. —PETER MARGASAK

Psychic TV See Pick of the Week on page 28. Chandeliers and Radiant Devices open. 9 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2105 S. State, $25, $20 in advance. 17+ Swear Beam Melkbelly headline; Swear Beam, Basement Family, and Relevant Hairstyles open. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $7.

Former Chicagoans Jessee Rose Crane and Philip Jerome Lesicko kick up a ton of bittersweet noise as the Funs, though there’s plenty more to go around. A couple years ago Crane and Lesicko, who now live downstate in New Douglas, formed a four-piece called Swear Beam. That outfit calls Saint Louis home because the other half of the band lives in Missouri—bassist Sam Pounders also kicks around in postpunk group Rip Rap, while drummer John Birkner plays in nasty punk outfit Lumpy & the Dumpers. Swear Beam’s vast alt-rock pulls from its members’ musical lineages: the composed frigidity of Rip Rap, the mercurial tension of Lumpy & the Dumpers, and the colossal, J

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30 CHICAGO READER - JULY 21, 2016

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swooning rock of the Funs, whose bubblegum-pop hooks sound like they’re melting from the energy of guitar reverb. Tonight Swear Beam celebrates the release of its self-titled debut, which comes out on irreplaceable Chicago DIY label Maximum Pelt. Only seven songs long, Swear Beam feels even shorter once the melodic nirvana of “Forever” fades away. —LEOR GALIL

Steve Turre Quartet See Thursday. 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase, 806 S. Plymouth, $20.

SATURDAY23 Mobley Peach Kings headline; Mobley and Kelroy open. 8 PM, LiveWire Lounge, 3394 N. Milwaukee, $10, $8 in advance. Musicians often ignore the genre lines that critics and listeners draw to box them in. Al Green made Hank Williams’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” an R&B tune, Prince morphed R&B into rock over and over, and Beyonce keeps on fusing hip-hop J

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JULY 21, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 31

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2047 N. MILWAUKEE | 773.570.4000 32 CHICAGO READER - JULY 21, 2016

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MUSIC Castle ò ERIC HAINES

OFFICIAL AFTERSHOW

Special Guest:

Mariachi Flor de Toloache NEXT WEDNESDAY! JULY 17 PARK WEST 9:00pm • 18 & Over

continued from 31

into pop-diva anthems. Austin singer-songwriter Mobley ﬁts nicely into this long tradition of refusing to be bound by any one tradition. His new EP Some Other Country (Violent Films) draws equally from indie rock and pop charts, from heartfelt R&B emoting and precise, distanced electronica. “Victoria” cannily channels the Doors’ lascivious pomposity: “I really want to know your name,” Mobley declares as cheerful keyboards make way for distorted vocals, an ominous throb, and a pickup line that turns into a metaphor for imperial occupation (“You know we only want what’s left of you”). My favorite track is the glorious “Tell Me,” a straight-up love song in which a sparse beat serves as a backdrop to Mobley’s stunning, falsetto-heavy, Michael Jackson-esque vocals—he alternates breathy, tight, soulful phrases with soaring ﬂights of ecstasy (“I’ll be patient / I’ll be steady / I’ve been waiting / I’ll be ready / Tell me what you want me to be”). The eclectic virtuosity accentuates the romantic charge. When Mobley says he’ll be anything for you, you know it’s not an idle promise. —NOAH BERLATSKY

Tim Stine Trio Part of the Astral Spirits Festival (see page 29). Tashi Dorji, Thom Nguyen, and Tyler Damon headline; Nick Mazzarella, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, and Avreeayl Ra; Ben Bennett; and Tim Stine Trio open. 8 PM, Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont, $12, $10 in advance. In the last couple years Austin label Astral Spirits has emerged as one of the more interesting labels in improvised music, usually issuing bold sounds by up-and-coming players on limited-run cassette releases—though imprint owner Nathan Cross has begun releasing titles on vinyl too. A large percentage of the roster hails from Chicago, so it makes sense that the label has decided to host a weekend of concerts in town. I’m thrilled that someone is ﬁnally releasing the self-titled debut by the Tim Stine Trio—I’ve had a digital copy of the record made by guitarist Stine with bassist Anton Hatwich and drummer Frank Rosaly for a year or so, and it remains as beguiling and rich as ever. Stine plays acoustic guitar and writes knotty, slaloming lines that express melodies in sudden rushes of activity— tangles of tightly clustered notes are followed by

measures of silence, as if Derek Bailey had decided he wanted to swing again. Hatwich and Rosaly do an excellent job at giving the music a brisk energy, and their playing eschews any kind of clutter, giving the leader a sophisticated, spacious platform on which to embroider heaving-and-retreating melodies. For tonight’s performance Adam Vida subs on drums. The rest of this evening’s lineup is as strong. A trio featuring saxophonist Nick Mazzarella, bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, and drummer Avreeayl Ra gives only its third appearance ever (the group’s ﬁery debut at Constellation on September 8, 2014, was released on the label last year as Azimuth). Stunning North Carolina-based Bhutanese guitarist Tashi Dorji here presents a sound diﬀerent from his usual acoustic work, delivering high-octane electric improv on a new duo recording with drummer Tyler Damon called Live at the Spot; tonight they’ll play in a trio with drummer Thom Nguyen. The lineup is rounded out by Philadelphia percussionist Ben Bennett. —PETER MARGASAK

Steve Turre Quartet See Thursday. 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase, 806 S. Plymouth, $20.

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SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22

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Hearts & Minds Part of the Astral Spirits Festival (see page 29). Dave Rempis, Jason Adasiewicz, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, and Tyler Damon; Chatoyant; and Julian Kirchner, Keefe Jackson, and Jim Baker open. 8 PM, Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont, $12, $10 in advance.

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The second evening of the Hungry Brain takeover by Austin label Astral Spirits features a headlining set by Hearts & Minds, a wonderfully jagged trio with bass clarinetist Jason Stein, keyboardist Paul Giallorenzo, and drummer Frank Rosaly, who’s now living in Amsterdam and will be subbed for by former Chicagoan Chad Taylor. The trio will drop their debut for the label in October, but they’ve been playing in fits and starts for ages, and earlier this year they logged serious time together during a European tour. On the recording Giallorenzo mostly plays an electric pianet, using his left hand

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JULY 21, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 33

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

MUSIC Swear Beam ò JAMES RIDLING

continued from 34

to play basslike ostinatos while his right hand frequently delivers unison lines with Stein. Sometimes the material is controlled: with its Sun Ra-like trance, “Three for One” is a cycling waltz that slowly creates tension as Stein makes occasional excursions into the upper register of his rheumy instrument. Elsewhere things are decidedly lumpy and visceral. The movement of the harrumphing “An Unfortunate Lack of Role Models”—deadpan track titles are matched by dry humor in the music—suggests an H.G. Wells-era robot trying to do ballet, with Rosaly toggling between hyperactive accents and lurching explosions. Not too shabby at all, the rest of the evening features a set from pianist/synthesizer player Jim Baker, drummer Julian Kirshner, and reedist Keefe Jackson; a performance by Detroit quartet Chatoyant (with Wolf Eyes guitarist Crazy Jim Baljo and scene capo Matt Smith); and a ﬁrst-time quartet with saxophonist Dave Rempis, bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, vibist Jason Adasiewicz, and drummer Tyler Damon, who hails from Bloomington, Indiana. —PETER MARGASAK

Steve Turre Quartet See Thursday. 4, 8, and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase, 806 S. Plymouth, $20.

TUESDAY26 Castle Brimstone Coven, Scars of Armageddon, and Beast Warrior open. 7:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2105 S. State, $10, $8 in advance. 17+ Now established in sunny but sinister LA, this powerful doom unit just released their fourth full-length, Welcome to the Graveyard (Prosthetic). Its 40 minutes of heaviness—reminiscent of the most classic of classic LPs—is an absolute triumph of unwavering commitment to their aesthetic. Putting on a Castle record is like stepping into a time machine to transport to an era that barely existed: when heavy psychedelic occult-rock bands like Black Sabbath and Pentagram were the gold standard and movies and gig posters were dominated by Englishwomen in revealing black robes. With decades of metal subgenre reﬁnement under their belts, Castle don’t so much indulge in nostalgia as try to per-

34 CHICAGO READER - JULY 21, 2016

fect the sound using superior tools and technology (that muddy sludginess is a choice). Their weapons are irresistible riﬃng, solid songwriting, and Elizabeth Blackwell’s absolute powerhouse of a voice. As earnest and commanding as Halford or Dio at their best, Blackwell’s wail is the driving force of an epic jam like “The Hammer and the Cross,” as well as hair-raising incantatory ritual pieces like “Traitors Rune” and “Flash of the Pentagram.” It’s enough to make you think all those preacher-fueled urban legends about metal-inﬂuenced black magic might well have been true. —MONICA KENDRICK

Drake, Future See also Wednesday. 6:30 PM, United Center, 1901 W. Madison, sold out. b Drake has become a superstar by selling his emotions. On April’s Views (Young Money/Cash Money/Republic) he corners the market like Tony Montana, walling himself into a lavish mansion and trudging through piles of his own feelings, his real woes: paranoia, euphoria, sorrow, confusion, hope, anger, and some all-of-the-above combo. Drake presents a caricature of himself on a large portion of the album, forcing big, self-referential brushstrokes that feel rote—he’s sometimes keen to remind listeners of the fact that he’s not perfect, but the subtlety that guides his most engrossing material is in short supply here. “I’m happiest when I can buy what I want, get high when I want,” Drake glumly half-sings—almost like he’s trying to convince himself—at the end of “Weston Road Flows.” That track bleeds into the solemn “Redemption,” on which he raps, “Why do I want an independent woman to feel like she needs me? / I lost my way.” It’s a cogent, lucid moment that suggests Drake’s still capable of escaping his echo chamber and delivering the good stuﬀ. What’s new is old with Future. The Atlanta rapper’s incandescent, evocative, and idiosyncratic warbling landed him on the cover of Rolling Stone this month, just a handful of weeks after Jamie Foxx parodied his likeness for a Verizon ad during the NBA Finals (he played Future’s dad, Past). Future’s je ne sais quoi is in demand, and plenty of rappers are using his blueprint for their own devices. NYC rapper Desiigner lifted Future’s fluid flow for “Panda,” which became a juggernaut hit after J

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JULY 21, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 35

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10.11 PANTHA DU PRINCE LIVE 10.12 NF 10.14 RANDY & MR. LAHEY (FROM THE TRAILER PARK BOYS)

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11.11 SLOAN 12.15 FOR TODAY www.bottomlounge.com 1375 w lake st 312.666.6775

36 CHICAGO READER - JULY 21, 2016

continued from 35

Kanye used the tune as the foundation for “Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 2” (Desiigner later signed with Kanye’s GOOD Music label). All of this is to say that as Future’s left-ﬁeld sound has moved to hip-hop’s center, he’s done little moving himself, and though he can still make his recorded performances feel alive, his recent work is repetitive enough to forget. On June’s Project E.T. Esco Terrestrial, a DJ Esco mixtape that features Future on nearly every track, the rapper’s contributions are so familiar they melt into the background more often than not. However, Future’s near-hoarse gasps on the lilting “Married to the Game” offer hope that he hasn’t quite plateaued. —LEOR GALIL

WEDNESDAY27 Lucy Dacus Daughter headline. 9 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $26-$36. 17+ Though she’s only 21, Richmond singer Lucy Dacus proves an exceptionally sharp observer on her impressive debut album, No Burden (released in February by the tiny EggHunt label but due for re-release in September by Matador). Her band delivers lean, scrappy indie rock that would be forgettable if not for the way her wisdom is channeled through a nonchalant but elegant vocal style—puretoned, direct, and unstudied in its melodic grace. She belies her youth, whether she’s refusing to be stereotyped on “I Don’t Wanna Be Funny Anymore,” indicting her own negatives in a kind of “asking for a friend” mode on “Troublemaker, Doppelganger,” or lamenting how someone dear to her can’t stop fucking up: on “Strange Torpedo” she sings “I thought you’d hit rock bottom / But I’m starting to think that it doesn’t exist.” For the most part Dacus maintains a veneer of measured calm throughout the record, as if she knows the ins and outs of this troubled world, but when her voice creeps toward an emotional precipice, she reminds us that she’s as simultaneously scared and hopeful as anyone else. That ineﬀable quality sets her apart. —PETER MARGASAK

Drake, Future See Tuesday. 6:30 PM, United Center, 1901 W. Madison, sold out. b v

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FOOD & DRINK

R ANIMALE | $$

1904 N. Western 872-315-3912 animalechicago.com

NEW REVIEW

Cameron Grant’s Animale instincts are sharp The folks behind Logan Square’s great Osteria Langhe get gutsy with Italian. By MIKE SULA

Stewy, clean-tasting tripe teems with jalapeños and pancetta. ò DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

ust about a year ago Logan Square’s Osteria Langhe emerged as a unique specimen among an overwhelming and frequently confounding menagerie of Italian restaurants. Scottish-born chef Cameron Grant lived and trained in Piedmont, where he absorbed the traditions of that particular hallowed regional cuisine, and put those values on display at Osteria Langhe with excellent product, proper portioning, restrained saucing, and rigorous pasta making, tempered with an impulse to innovate that very rarely overreaches. This kind of effort doesn’t come cheap, so in an apparent move to bring Cameron’s food to an audience that might feel priced out of the mothership, he and owner Aldo Zaninotto have opened a quick-serve counter-service operation under the Western Blue Line station, in the space vacated by a short-lived, ill-conceived Asian burrito joint. Though not to be confused with Los Angeles’s offal-centric Animal, Animale also traffics in a surprising amount of off bits for a restaurant with such a tight menu. That’s along with some extraordinary pastas that rival those you’d find in the more rarefied environs of Osteria Langhe, plus a selection of panini that showcase Grant’s willingness and ability to go off the ranch without corrupting the purity and intent of Italian culinary custom. Animale gives Grant a venue in which to continue pushing the limits of the Italian cucina, starting from a solid foundation and taking off on creative flights of fancy, transforming, for example, a caprese salad into a sandwich with an oozing deep-fried mozzarella puck that serves as a base for his “house poultry” (an amalgam of shaved duck breast and chicken breast and thigh that appears winningly in other dishes) as well as a basil salsa verde and tomato fonduta dip. His carbonara panini is built with a lightly cured pancetta—almost like roast pork—sweet caramelized onions, Parmigiano, and a sunny-side up egg. The only hitch with these fine sandwiches was the focaccia supporting them, unpleasantly soft and given a less assiduous crisping than the same bread when used as a bun for the burger, which we’ll get to shortly. To add a texture to his firm potato gnocchi, Grant crumbles potato chips onto the mound of salty, savory goodness, the sweet acidity of grape tomatoes balancing the barnyard perfume of Taleggio. This free hand with tradition in the service of clearly conceived audacious departures is a pleasure to experience. And there don’t seem to be J

JULY 21, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 37

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

F L A V O R

T UE SDAY · AUGUS T 9, 20 16 · 6:30-9:30PM 1400 N WELL S · CHIC AGO 4 - C OUR SE PR I X F I X E ME NU WITH C OCK TA IL PA IR ING S FROM W OODF OR D R E S E R V E FIRST COURSE

Fried Green Tomato with Marinated Strawberry, Woodford Balsamic Reduction, Goat Cheese

paired with NYQUEST: Woodford Reserve, Strawberry Preserves, fresh grapefruit juice, garnish with strawberry and mint SECOND COURSE

D I S T I L L E R ’ S

S E L E C T

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

94 POINTS, EXCELLENT HIGHLY RECOMMENDED Ultimate Spirits Challenge Awards 2015

GOLD MEDAL

Whiskeys of the World Awards 2014

GOLD MEDAL

Scallop with Woodford Aioli, Pickled Vegetable, Fried Leek

San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2014

THIRD COURSE

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

paired with SADDLE AND STIRRUPS: Woodford Rye, Campari, Grand Mariner, fresh grapefruit juice, ginger syrup, garnish with an orange twist

Filet Medallion with Potato Puree, Boozed Brussels, Woodford Demi-glace, black pepper and parmesan butter

paired with WOODFORD OLD FASHION: Woodford Double Oaked, Angostura Bitters, Orange Bitters, Demerara syrup, luxardo cherry and orange twist garnish DESSERT

D O U B L E

O A K E D

95 POINTS, EXTRAORDINARY ULTIMATE RECOMMENDATION Ultimate Spirits Challenge Awards 2015

DOUBLE GOLD MEDAL

Bread Pudding paired with CHERRY BOURBON ANGLAISE

San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2015

PURCHASE TICKE TS AT CHICAGORE ADER.COM/RESERVE YOURSE AT

WOODFORDRESERVE.COM

$65 PER PERSON · INCLUDES TAX AND GRATUITY

38 CHICAGO READER - JULY 21, 2016

FOOD & DRINK Animale makes room on the menu for conventional items, including a burger: two patties with fontina, pickles, and marrow-infused “savage sauce” on thick, crusty focaccia.

Saturday & Sunday

BRUNCH 11am - 2pm

ò DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

BOTTOMLESS BLOODY MARY’S & MIMOSAS - $15 WITH FOOD PURCHASE -

Fri 5pm - 2am • Sat & Sun 11am - 2am

continued from 37 any duds on the menu, not even when Grant nods to the more conventional items hungry commuters might expect at a quick stop: the burger, two thin griddled patties with fontina, pickles, and marrow-infused “savage sauce,” is topped with thick, crusty focaccia that owes its crackly charm to a spell on the flattop. Same goes for the fries, here called “chunky puppies,” more English chips than anything else. They’re thick cut and battered before frying to achieve a rough crispiness that helps the aforementioned marrow sauce adhere, then given a poutinelike treatment, smothered with pancetta, peppers, onions, Calabrian chiles, arugula, fontina, and an egg. Meanwhile saffron risotto is wrapped around Gorgonzola and deep-fried, the gooey interior running out to mingle with a garnish of pink peppercorn-basil cream. As with the gnocchi, Cameron’s superb pasta-making skill is in evidence. Thick, ribbony pappardelle can stand on its own even without its appealing ragu of Wagyu beef cheeks. Cameron doesn’t mess with his signature plin, delicate, ethereal ravioli stuffed with molten, funky La Tur cheese (a Piedmontese specialty), though an order runs $15, a dollar more than it does at Osteria Langhe. But the most astonishing thing about Animale is its devotion to offal in such a casual environment. Seared rabbit livers mingle with Madeira-sauteed mushrooms on crispy toast. Firm blood sausages are wrapped snug in puff pastry and served over black lentils—pigs in the blanket from the depths of the Inferno. Diced Wagyu beef tongue is braised in acidic

puttanesca sauce, while stewy, clean-tasting tripe teems with jalapeños and pancetta. Juicy sweetbreads are wrapped in bacon, deep-fried tempura style, and served on crisp boats of endive with spicy honey mustard. Guts-to-go never tasted so good. What’s odd is that this worthy and unusual food is found in a place that so departs from traditional restaurant service. You order at the counter, and sometimes you pay there, while on other occasions you might pay at the table when you’re finished. You take a number and seat yourself in one of the booths that run alongside the open kitchen, from which blow waves of heat that can render the seating area stiﬂingly hot. Before you can blink a server arrives with all your food on warped disposable bamboo serviceware. Coursing is an obsolete relic here. I’m sure the system works for the restaurant. There are far fewer servers to pay, and the ones that are present have a lot less to do than in a full-service restaurant. But from the diner’s point of view it seems a little cockeyed. Perhaps the vision for the place is that it’ll be a commuter haven (the occasional homeless encampment under the bus shelter certainly keeps it real), with grab-and-go or a quick sit-down weekday dinner replacing one’s last-minute Costco chicken and bagged salad. But it feels like a mismatch to compromise the basics of restaurant service when such clearly uncompromising culinary talent is at work behind the pass. Still, it’s hard to complain about the setup if it gets Grant’s outstanding food into more mouths. v

1480 W WEBSTER CHICAGO 773-770-3703

v @Mike Sula JULY 21, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 39

S P O N SO R ED CO NTENT

DRINK SPECIALS LINCOLN PARK

ALIVEONE

2683 N Halsted 773-348-9800

LINCOLN PARK

DISTILLED CHICAGO

1480 W Webster 773-770-3703

AVONDALE

BERWYN

LINCOLN SQUARE

2829 N Milwaukee 773-227-1688

6615 Roosevelt 708-788-2118

2829 N Milwaukee 773-942-6012

EL RANCHITO

FITZGERALD’S

MONTI’S

NEAR SOUTH SIDE

WICKER PARK

ROGERS PARK

SOUTH LOOP

7006 N Glenwood 773-274-5463

2105 S State 312-949-0120

REGGIE’S

MOTOR ROW BREWING

PHYLLIS’ MUSICAL INN

RED LINE TAP

Happy Hour 4-6pm, $2 oﬀ all beers

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

$4 Hell or High Watermelon

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

Happy Hour noon-6pm, $2 oﬀ all beers

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

$5 Stella, $3 mystery shots

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

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

$3 Corona and $3 mystery shot

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

2337 S Michigan 312.624.8149

1800 W Division 773-486-9862

THU

$4 Lagunitas drafts, $4 Absolut cocktails, “Hoppy Hour” 5pm8pm = 1/2 price IPAs + pale ales

50% oﬀ wine (glass & bottle) and salads

$1.50 Margaritas

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

FRI

“Hoppy Hour” 5pm8pm = 1/2 price IPAs + pale ales

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

$2.99 Margaritas de Sabores

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

S AT

$6 Jameson shots $3 PBR bottles

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

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

SUN

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

Brunch 11am to 2pm, Bottomless Bloody Mary’s & Mimosas $15 with food purchase, 50% oﬀ appetizers & $3 pints of Bud Light, Industry Night 10% oﬀ all items not discounted

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

$4.75 Bloody Mary and Marias

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

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

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

MON

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

all beer 50% oﬀ, $5 burgers

$2.99 Coronas

CLOSED

$1 oﬀ all beers including craft

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

$5 Oberon, $5 Moonshine

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

TUE

$2 and $3 select beers

all specialty drinks 50% oﬀ, $2 tacos

$1.99 Apple Martinis

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

$2 oﬀ all Whiskeys and Bourbons

Happy Hour 4-6pm, $2 oﬀ all beers

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

$4 Founders All Day IPA

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

WED

1/2 price aliveOne signature cocktails, $4 Goose Island brews, “Hoppy Hour” 5pm8pm = 1/2 price IPAs + pale ales

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

Happy Hour 4-6pm, $2 oﬀ all beers

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

$2 PBR, $5 wine

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

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

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

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

40 CHICAGO READER - JULY 21, 2016

PHOTO: ALEXEY LYSENKO/GETTY IMAGES

CHATHAM 8642 SOUTH Maryland 1BR, modern with appliances, off street parking. $600/mo + sec. 773-618-2231 CHICAGO, 82ND & JUSTINE. 1BR. near transportation. $650$695 /mo. 1 month rent + 1 month Security. Heat is incl. 773-873-1591 û NO SEC DEP û 6829 S. Perry. 1BR. $520/mo & 1431 W. 78th St. $2BR. $600/mo HEAT INCL 773-955-5106

CHICAGO - SOUTH SHORE Large 1BR, $6 60/mo. Free heat. Near Transportation. Section 8 Welcome. Call 708-932-4582 CHICAGO - HYDE PARK 5401 S. Ellis. 1BR $535mo CALL 773-955-5106

1 BR $700-$799 PLAZA ON THE PARK 608 East 51st Street. Very spacious renovated apartments. 1BR $722 - $801, 2BR $837 - $1,009, 3BR $1,082- $1,199, 4-5BR $1,273 - $1,405. Visit or call (773)548-9300, M-F 9am-5pm or apply online at www.plazaonthepark apts.com Managed by Metroplex, Inc

LARGE ONE BEDROOM apart-

ment near Warren Park and Metra, 6802 N Wolcott. Hardwood floors, Heat included. Laundry in building. Cats OK. $795-$825/ month. Available 9/1. 773-761-4318, www. lakefrontmgt.com

LARGE 1 BEDROOM, $725

Nr Metra & shops, Sec 8 OK. Newly decor, dining room, carpeted, appls, FREE heat & cooking gas. Elevator & laundry room, free credit check, no application fee, 1-773-919-7102 or 1312-802-7301

WEST ROGERS PARK (6300 N /3000 W) Four Room, One bedroom. 1st flr, new paint, new carpet, 800sf. Clean, quiet, Cultured area. Near shopping, transportation. Cats ok. $825. 773-441-5183 CHICAGO- VICINITY 73RD/ STONY Island xtra lrg 1BR, newly remod, lndry fac. Clean/quiet/well maint bldg. Start at $750, all utils incl. Sect 8 ok 773-510-9290 SOUTH SHORE 1BR apt, newly renovated apt. hdwd flrs throughout, laundry, secure bldg w/surveillance system & wrought iron fencing. $740. 773-880-2414, 773-580-7797

702 WEST 76TH STREET, 1BR Apt Available now, heat included. Starting at $750/mo. Call 773-495-0286

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

Rent $875 includes garage parking space, cable TV, utilities, washer/ dryer Short walk to Brown Line fletcherkni ght@aol.com

SECTION 8 WELCOME SOUTHSIDE, Recently renovated, 1 , 2 & 3 BR Apts. $800-$1250/mo. Call Sean, 773-410-7084

QUIET BUILDING CHATHAM,

1BR, 1BA, heat & garage space incl in rent. laundry on premises, $790/mo. Avail Now 773-233-7673

AUSTIN - 1BR, LR/DR, balcony,

air, laundry, cable ready, heat & cooking gas incl, security, $850/mo. Call 773-710-5052 btwn 8am-5pm.

1 BR $900-$1099 Hyde Park West Apts., 5325 S. Cottage Grove Ave., Renovated spacious apartments in landscaped gated community. Off street parking available. Sutdios $950, 1BR $1150 - Free Heat, 2BR $1400 - Free heat; 4BR Townhome, $2200 Call about our Special. Visit or call 773-324-0280, M-F: 9am-5pm or apply online- ww w.hydepark west.com. Managed by Metroplex, Inc

LAKEVIEW FREE LAUNDRY!!!

NEWER 1BDRM WITH IN-UNIT PERSONAL LAUNDRY ROOM. DAMEN/DIVERSEY INCLUDES DISHWASHER, MICROWAVE,KIT.ISLAND,PANTRY,PATIO&CENTRAL AIR. APPROX 800 SQ.FT. $985/MONTH 312-388-1962

Wrigleville 2BR, 1400sf, new kit/ deck, FDR, oak flrs, Cent Heat/ AC, prkg avail. $1550 + util, Pet friendly, 773-743-4141 www. urbanequities.com

lndry rm, security camera, nr metra, $800-$900/mo, 312-341-1950

RAVENSWOOD 1BR: 850SF, great kit, DW, oak flrs, near Brown line, on-site lndy/stor., $925$1075/heated 773-743-4141 www .urbanequities.com

BROADVIEW. 2BR Apt. Heat, appliances & parking incl. On site laundry. $875/mo + sec. Available now. Call 312-4044577

3700 W DIVERSEY: Beaut 3BR, 2BA duplex, 1800sf, new kit, top flr, yard/prkg, storage, W/D, $1495 +util. 773-743-4141 www.urbanequities. com

WEST HUMBOLDT PK 1 & 2BR

HOMEWOOD- SUNNY 900SF

CHATHAM - 88TH &

Dauphin, Spacious, lovely 2BR,

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

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

1 BR $1100 AND OVER LOGAN SQUARE BLVD Carriage

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

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 ∫

BRONZEVILLE FAMILY APARTMENTS

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

400 EAST 41ST STREET, CHICAGO, IL SUBSIDY WAITING LIST FOR 2, 3, AND 4 BEDROOMS WAITING LIST OPEN FOR 5 DAYS ONLY!

CHICAGO, 7727 S. Colfax, ground flr Apt., ideal for senior citizens. Secure bldng. Modern 1BR $595. Lrg 2BR, $800. Free cooking & heating gas. Free parking. 312613-4427

OPENS MONDAY, JULY 25 ,2016 10:00 a.m. CLOSES FRIDAY, JULY 29, 2016 at 10:00 p.m.

9143 S. ASHLAND. storefront, Beverly.1200sf Heavy Traffic, A/ C, Open Layout, Clean, Secure, Bath, Trans. $1050/mo. 312914-8967

1 BR OTHER PHASE I & II

TO APPLY APPLICANTS MUST GO TO WWW.PGSAPT.COM CLICK ON THE LINK FOR BRONZEVILLE FAMILY APARTMENTS WAITLIST REGISTRATION. APPLICANTS MUST AGE QUALIFY MAXIMUM INCOME LIMITS APPLY ONLY ONE APPLICANT PER HOUSEHOLD ALLOWED NO PHONE CALLS!!

APTS. FOR RENT PARK MANAGEMENT & Investment Ltd. SUMMER IS HERE BUT IT WON’T LAST! OUR UNITS INCLUDE HEAT, HW & CG Patio & Mini Blinds Plenty of parking on a 37 acre site 1Bdr From $750.00 2Bdr From $925.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000** CALL FOR DETAILS APTS. FOR RENT PARK MANAGEMENT & Investment Ltd. SUMMER IS HERE BUT IT WILL SOON BE GONE!! Most Include HEAT & HOT WTR Studios From $475.00 1Bdr From $550.00 2Bdr From $765.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000** CALL FOR DETAILS

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

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

NO MOVE-IN FEE! No Dep! Sec 8

9235 S LAUGHLIN , 3rd fl, large 2BR Apt, no stove or fridge,heat incl, quiet bldg, credit check, $800 + security 773-445-1524

4 ROOMS, 1 BR Super Jumbo

CHICAGO SOUTH SIDE Beauti-

CALUMET CITY 2BR,carpet, appls, window a/c, heat + ckng gas incl, $850/mo + $850 sec. $25 credit check fee. 708-955-2122

BELLWOOD 2BR APT, 2nd flr East, no pets, W/D in bsmt, tenant

Near 107th & King Dr, 3BR, 4 rms, near grammar & high school, tenant pays utilities. $1000/month Section 8 Welcome 312-483-3817

900 N/4100 W: 2BR+, LR, DR,

ok. 1, 2 & 3 Bdrms. Elev bldg, laundry, pkg. 6531 S. Lowe. Call Marcy 773-874-0100

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

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

2 BR UNDER $900 2, 3 & 4 BR/2BA on Douglas &

Independence: 10 min from Dwntn: Move-In Special: 1 mth-Free Heat & Lights, Stove, Fridge & Blinds Incl. A/C, Ceramic tile in Kit & BA: Laundry Rm, Tenant Pkng: Hdwd Flrs: Sec 8 OK: $775-$1000. To View Call 773-733-7681

CHATHAM CHARM , Vintage,

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

SUBURBS, RENT TO O W N ! Buy with No closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708-868-2422 or visit w ww.nhba.com LARGE SUNNY ROOM w/fridge & microwave. Near Oak Park, Green Line & Buses. 24 hr Desk, Parking Lot $101/week & Up. (773)378-8888 CHATHAM- 720 E. 81st St. Newly

2051-53 W. GARFIELD ST. 4 rooms w/ 2BR. Modern, quiet bldng. Heat & cooking gas incl. $800/mo + 1 mo sec. Proof of income. 773-4366922 JUMBO,

EXTRA

LARGE 4.5

sunny rooms, remodeled, hardwood floors, 1-2 bedrooms. Two blocks Brown Line, near expressway. Between Kimball and Pulaski. $830 heat included. 773-710-3634.

SUMMER SPECIAL: STUDIOS starting at $499 incls utilities. 1BR $550, 2BR $599, 3BR $699. With

remodeled 2BR, 1 BA, Dining room, Living room, carpeted flrs, appliances. & heat included. Call 847-5335463

approved credit. No Security Deposit for Sec 8 Tenants. South Shore & Southside. Call 312-446-3333

W. AVALON, 1 & 2BR Newly decor. 8059 Ellis & 11200 S. Vernon. Hdwd floors, heat & appliances incl, $585 & $685. 708-406-2718

CHICAGO, 73RD & King Dr. Beautiful 2BR Apt. Newly remodeled, new cabinets, $750/mo + heat. MUST SEE! Irma, 847-9874850

71ST/HERMITAGE. 3BR. 77TH /LOWE. 1 & 2BR. 69th/Dante, 3BR. 71st/Bennett. 2 & 3BR. New renov. Sec 8 ok. 708-503-1366

RIVERDALE, IL 1 Bedroom

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

6944 S. GREEN. Modern 2BR apt, walk-in closet, modern kitchen w/new appls. new bath, background check req’d. 773-203-8491 CHICAGO - BEVERLY, large 2 room Studio, 1 & 2BR Apts. Carpet, A/C, laundry, near transportation, $650-$975/mo. Call 773-233-4939 CHICAGO, RENT TO OWN! Buy with no closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708868-2422 or visit www.nhba.com

kitchen, enclosed back porch, back yard, $950/mo + util. Gar. opt. Storage in bsmt. Marie 773-921-3000

AUBURN GRESHAM 1814 W 79th, 2b-drm, Inclu. Stove, Refrig, AC, Laun-dry, Ht, No Pets, $800 plus Sec Dep, Mon-Sat 8-4pm 773-3587757 CHICAGO

MORGAN

7350 S. UNIVERSITY 5rms, 2BR, enclosed back porch, $790/mo + sec. No Pets. 773-374-4357 2BR W/ CARPET, cherry kit cabi-

nets & Kolher prod., tenant pays heat, 8632 Escanaba, $600/mo + security. Call 773-415-4970

BLUE ISLAND, 2 BR, DR, lndry fac, refs reqd. no pets. $795/mo plus dep. & util. Option: Attic, 2 rooms, 1/2BA. $295 + Dep. 708-481-5212 CHICAGO

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

1401 W 80TH, Auburn Gresham 2BR from $895, Free heat and appliances. 312.593.1677

2 BR $900-$1099 MONTICELLO & OHIO Beautiful

2BR apt, freshly painted, appl incl. tenant pays all util. No pets. Sect. 8 welcome. $900/mo + sec. dep. 773533-0140

SECT 8 WELC, 71st & Wentworth, newly decorated, 2BR, 1st floor unit, $900/mo, heat incl., lndry on site. Contact Frank, 708-205-4311 MAYWOOD - 2BR APT WITH enclosed sun porch, carpet A/C. No pets. Ten pays electric & gas. Avail now. $900. David Miller, 708259-9219 CHICAGO, 2BR NEAR 82nd & King Dr, $900/mo + security. Heat included. Newly remodeled. Laundry facilities. Call 312-3152988 92ND & ADA, 2 bdrm, lg &

spacious w/ DR, hardwood flrs, sunporch, fireplace, heat/appls incl sec 8 ok $1000/mo + sec 773-415-6914

PARK

2BR, 1.75 BA, near grocery, bus line to Rock Island, $860, heat incl, street parking only, no pets, Sec req. 773253-8768

SOUTH SHORE, 78TH & Ridgeland, 6 lrg lovely rooms, newly decorated, wall to wall carpet, blinds, heated, $850/mo + security. 773-568-1718 7444 S. VERNON. 2BR, remod hdwd flrs, Sect 8 OK, heat and appls incl, laundry on site. $800 & up. Call Z, 773-406-4841

7600 S Essex 2BR

RICHTON PRK 2BR, rem od cabinets, granite tops, ceiling fans, new carpet & stove, ceramic tile flr. Sec 8 ok. Heat incl. $950. 708.717.7612 SECT 8 READY! 4 Rms, 1BR HUGE $860, New Rehab, quiet, heated. 773-405-9361, 8160 S Racine, $300sec 773-467-8200, Ms.Perez 4 RMS, 1BDRM, Jumbo $660+ $300 sec. New rehab, quiet, clean, heated. 773-405-9361, 8160 S Racine 773-899-8816, Gina

$630 + $300 sec, Fresh rehab, quiet, clean , 773-405-9361, 655 W 80st. 773-467-8200, Ms. Perez

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

AUSTIN AREA, 2BR Apt, carpet, small newer building, $700/mo. Tenant pays heat and elec. Section 8 Welcome. Call 773-457-2284

2 BR $1100-$1299 5 ROOM 2 BEDROOM, modern

kitchen & bath, dishwasher, hardwood floors, pleasant neighborhood (5000N/3700W). Available 8/1/16. $1200 + security deposit includes heat, gas, electric & Direct TV. Call 773-279-0466

BUCKTOWN/ WICKER PARK.

Milwaukee/ Ashland/ Division. Great, attractive, four rooms, two bedrooms, hwfl, all remodeled. Victorian building. One block expressway. $1200. 773-710-3634.

Chicago - 2BR, 1st flr, $1100/mo, ap pls/heat, A/C, carpeting, blinds incl. near 91st/Cottage Grove. Sec 8 ok. No Pets. Smoke Free bldg 773-429-0274 CHATHAM

BEAUTIFUL

REMOD 2 & 3BR, hdwd flrs, custom cabinets, avail now. $1100-$1200/mo + sec. 773-905-8487 Sec 8 Ok EVANSTON 2BR, 1100SF, great kit, new appls, DR, oak flrs, lndry, $1250/mo incls heat. 773743-4141 www.urbanequities.co Elmhurst: Sunny 1/BR, new appl, carpet, AC, Patio, $895/incl heat, parking. Call 773-743-4141 www.urbanequities.com

Nice Area, 2BR, finished basement, hdwd floors, A/C, fireplace, appls, utilities not incl, near transp $1200/mo. 312-771-0683 BRONZEVILLE: 2.5 BR, 1BA, fireplace, appls, hardwood floors, utilities not included $1100/month 312-771-0683

2 BR $1500 AND OVER

RARELY AVAILABLE STUN-

NING 2 bedroom in Ravenswood! Hdwd flrs, dec. fireplace, built-in book-shelves, huge china cabinet! Only 1 block to Metra, Marianos, LA Fitness! $1650.00. avail now. 1901 West Ainslie (773) 381-0150. www.theschirmfirm .com LARGE TWO BEDROOM, two bathroom apartment, 3820 N Fremont. Near Wrigley Field. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. Laundry in building. Available 9/1. $1775/ month. Parking available. $150/ month for single parking space. $200/ month for tandem parking space. 773-761-4318, w ww.lakefrontmgt.com LINCOLN PARK AREA : 2BR, 1BA, 2nd floor of owner occupied 2-flat, appliances, central air, inunit washer/dryer, great floor plan, gorgeous residential treelined street, $1595/mo. 773-3435206 NONSMOKING TWO BEDROOM garden apartment. Lake-

view. Living room, dining room, Central air, in-unit washer/ dryer. Walk to restaurants, Brown Line. August 1st. $1500 includes heat, electric. 773510-6896.

SAUGANASH AREA : Pulaski & Peterson, 2.5 bedrooms, 1 bath, hardwood floors, 1st floor, quiet building. No smoking. Heat incl. $1500/mo. 773-316-0833

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

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LARGE BRIGHT LINCOLN PK

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

2 BR OTHER NEW YEARS RESOLUTION, rent for less! PRINCETON PARK HOMES. Rents Starting at $844/MO. A privately-owned south side Chicago rental town home community since 1944. Two and three bedroom residences featuring: • Spacious landscaped grounds • Walk to public transportation (CTA, “El”) • Nearby public and private schools • Ample parking • Convenient to shopping • Centrally located Campus Park • Easy access to Dan Ryan • Annual Resident’s Lawn & Garden Contest. Each unit includes: • Deck or patio • Private front and rear entrance • Basement with hook-ups for washer and dryer • Modern kitchen and bathroom cabinetry. For more information contact our rental office at: Princeton Park Homes • Phone: 773-264-3005. 9119 S. Stewart Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60620. Special movein credits. on selected units. Visit our website at www. ppkhomes.com

3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200 CHICAGO 11740 S. LASALLE, 3BR, WILL ACCEPT 2 or 3 BRM SECTION 8 VOUCHER. No Security Deposit! hrdwd & ceramic flrs, Stove & Refrigerator, w/ d, tenant pays utils, 1st floor of 2 flat bldg, $1000/mo. Call 773-2210061 CHICAGO, DR, c-fans, pays utiles. Now. 8128 619-7983

REMOD 3BR, LR, hdwd flrs. Tenant $900/mo+sec. Avail S. Marshfield. 773-

95TH/FORREST. 3BR. $875/MO. 2 FLAT BUILDING. RANCH REALTY 773-238-3977 CHICAGO 5246 S. HERMITAGE: 2BR bsmt $400. 2BR 1st floor, $525. 3BR, 2nd floor, $625. 1.5 mo sec req’d. 708-574-4085. CHICAGO, 90TH & LAFLIN, 3BR, 1st floor, heated, formal dining room, carpet & hardwood. Available. $1125/mo + sec. 312946-0130 CALUMET CITY, 3BR, 2 car garage, fully rehab w/ gorgeous finishes & hdwd flrs. Beautiful backyard. Sect 8 ok. $1175/mo. 510735-7171

CHICAGO, PRINCETON PARK HOMES. Spacious 2-3 BR Townhomes, Inclu: Prvt entry, full bsmt, lndry hookups. Ample prkg. Close to trans & schls. Starts at $844/ mo. w w w . p p k h o m e s . com;773-264-3005

QUIET & SECURE, 3rd flr, 3BR, recently renov, appls incl. 4251 W. Wilcox, Garfield Park Community. $850 + 1 mo sec. 708-935-8621

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

CHICAGO 2746 WEST Maypole. 4BR upstairs. Kitchen, living room & dining room downstairs. $800. Call 773-863-2889

BEAUTIFUL NEW APT! 7649 S Phillips Ave 1, 2 & 4BR Stainless Steel!!

Appliances!! Hdwd flr!! marble bath!! laundry on site!! Sec 8 OK. 773- 404- 8926

CHICAGO - 2BR apts, Vicinity of 83rd & Ashland. Newly remodeled. Heat included, Section 8 Welcome No smoking/pets. 708565-6973.

CALUMET CITY - Nice 3BR, 2BA, heat incl, oak floors, spacious rooms, near public trans & shopping. Sect 8 ok. Call 708-747-8970

WEST SIDE, 3BR, 2nd floor, central air, enclosed back porch and yard, carpeted, stove & fridge supplied, $1000 month, 708-841-8123

CALUMET CITY: 3BR, 1BA c/a, garage, all appliances incl no basement, $1175/month plus 1 month security 773-374-6782 69TH/SANGAMON & 124th/ Normal3 Lrg BR, Hdwd flrs. $975/ mo 70th /Wabash. 2BR. $925/mo.

Nr trans & good schls 773-568-0053

CHICAGO S - NEWLY renov, Large 3-4BR Apts, In unit laundry, hrdwd floors, very clean, No Dep! Avail Now! 708-655-1397

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

North Lawndale, 3BR, 1.5BA Remod Garden Unit, hardwood floors, $1100/mo, no security, leave message, 773-203-0288

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499 11740 S. LASALLE, 2nd floor of

2 flat bldng. 4BR, will accept 3 or 4BR Voucher, hdwd flrs, stove, refrigerator & W/D incl. Newly remod., $1200/mo. No Security Deposit. Tenant Pays utils. Sect 8 welc. 773-2210061

MARKHAM, 1500 BLOCK OF W. 163RD ST. 3BR, brick ranch, Sec 8 OK, no Bsmt, 2 car gar, side drive, $1200$1350/mo + sec. 708-7150441 CHATHAM 3BR, 1BA, newly remod, LR & DR w/recessed

lighting, hdwd flrs, C/A, indiv heat & alarm system. $1250/mo. 773-491-8438

South Shore - 6815 S. Merrill,3BR 2 full BA, 3rd fl,c-fans, cent heat & air, hdwd, $13 00 + 1 mo sec. Ten pays utils. Credit check. 773-643-1970 HANDSOME 3BR HOUSE, 1. 5BA, large backyard, A/C, close to transportation, $1300/mo. 6851 S. Evans Ave. Call 773-994-7200 97TH & PAXTON 3BR TH, appls, W/D hookup, hdwd flrs, fin bsmnt, HUGE fncd yrd, new paint. $1250 + dep, Sec. 8 OK. Kay, 773-370-8018 8841 S. PRINCETON. 4BR, 1BA, hdwd flrs, newly remod. $1400/mo. Tenant pays utils. No Sec Dep. Sec 8 Welc. 773-221-0061

AUSTIN - LARGE 6 rms, 3BR,

1.5BA, Hdwd flrs, prkg space, lndry rm, $1250/mo. + 1/mo security. Tenant pays utilities. Call 312-217-3301

5900 W & 300 N. 1/2 block from Geenline. Renovated 3BR, sanded floors, heat incl. $1200/mo + sec deposit. Call 773-626-8993

3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799

CHATHAM 8817 S. Cottage Grove Nice 3BR, 2nd flr, Ten. Pays Utils., $1,100/mo. Section 8 Welcome No Sec. Dep! Call 773-844-1216

PARK MANOR: 7532 S Vernon, Beaut rehab 3BR, 2BA house, granite ctrs, SS appls, whrlpl tub, fin bsmt, $1475/mo. 708-288-4510

6437 S. NORMAL 2ND FL Heat/

76TH AND CALUMET

CHICAGO, 42ND & Cottage Grove, Rehabbed Condo Available. 2BR, 1.5BA, parking included. Section 8 Welcome. Call 773263-6473

STONY ISLAND & 69th Place , 2 & 3 brms, newly remodeled, hdwd flrs, sec. 8 welcome. $750 - $850. Call 773-758-0309

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

SOUTH SIDE - 6237 S. Evans.

117/PRINCETON. 2BR, $550.

3 BR OR MORE $1800-$2499

MATTESON, 2BR, $990$1050; 3BR, $1250-$1400. Move In Special is 1 Month’s Rent & $99 Sec Dep. Sect 8 Welc. 708-748-4169

2 BR Basement Apt, heated, Close to L & bus lines. Call Milton at 773-590-1680 / 773-643-4778

BURNHAM - 14500 S. Torrence Beautiful 1 BR in a class of its own, tile floors, appls, lndry room, a/c, heat included. 773-731-5010

stove/fridge 3 Bedrooms 2 full baths,fireplace, Din rm. $875/Mo + sec 708-653-0119

Tenant pays utils, Sec dep req’d. Avail Now 847-401-5800

VICINITY 65TH and St. Lawrence, modern, tenant heated, 2BR Unit. $725/mo. No Sec Dep. Agent Owned, 312-671-3795

5BR, 2BA, Fenced yard, nr transportation,avail 8/1/16. $1550/mo. Bernard 312-721-5692

FOREST PARK 3BR apartment, laundry on premises, 1 parking space, no smoking, 1 month deposit, $1800/mo., all utilities included. Call 973-309-6159

3 BR OR MORE OTHER

CALUMET CITY, If you see it, you’ll want it. Everything brand new 3BR, 2.5 BA, kit w / new appls, fin bsmt, fully A /C, 2.5 car gar, 524 Hirsch Ave. Sect 8 welc. 773-3174357 HUGE, IMMACULATE 4 B R , 1BA & 1BR Garden Apt Avail. Newly remod, close to trans & shopping, quiet block. Must See! Won’t last long. Sect 8 welc. Call Nigel, 312-7700795 AUSTIN AREA, Newly remodeled Spacious 3BR Apt with hdwd flrs, appls incl. Section 8 welcome. Available immed. 708593-4740 SECTION 8 WELCOME WEST PULLMAN 255 W. 111th Pl, 6BR, 3BA, $1620. Newly remod, appls incl, full bsmt, garage. 5BR Voucher Accepted. 773-793-8339 CHICAGO 2707 E 93rd St. 56BR apartment, 1st & 2nd flr, 2 or 3BR voucher ok; Sec. 8 Welcome. 847-926-0625

SAFE, PEACEFUL, SECLUDED, walk to Lake Michigan, marina

and METRA. Upgraded 3 bed, 2.5 bath Detached All Brick Ranch, in the prestigious Pines of Winthrop Harbor. Sur-rounded by nature. Full finished basement, landscaped, new kitchen, baths, carpets, paint and much more. Pet Friendly area 431 Ravine, WH

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 SOUTH SHORE, Senior Discount. Male preferred. Furnished rooms, shared kitchen & bath, $525/mo. & up. Utilities included. 773-710-5431 WEST SIDE - 5126 W. Madison, rooms, utils incl, $425/mo. prk avail, shared BA & Kit, nr stores/shops, sec dep neg. 773-988-5579

ALSIP: 2BR, 1BA, $830/mo & 3BR, 1.5BA, $1100/mo. Parking, appliances, laundry & storage. Call 708-268-3762

MARKETPLACE

CHICAGO, 6111 S. Normal 2BR apt, stove/refrig., 6101 S. Normal 4BR T/H apt, newly decor. Sec. 8 welc. Call 773-422-1878.

YARD/BASEMENT/ GARAGE SALE 1830 & 1835 N. Fremont, Chicago

CHICAGO, SOUTH ON 129TH. Section 8 Welcome. Newly remodeled, 4BR, all appliances incl. $150 0/mo. Call 773-220-0715

CHICAGO HEIGHTS 3BR or 2BR, 1BA, NEWLY REMODELED, APPLS INCL , SECTION 8 OK. NO SEC. DEPOSIT. 708-822-4450 CHICAGO, 3BR APARTMENT, newly remodeled, heat included, $ 900/mo. Also, Storefront, $800/ mo. Call 773-297-4784 MATTESON, SAUK VILLAGE &

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

MESSAGES

HEALTH & WELLNESS SWEDISH AND DEEP

Tissue Relaxing Therapeutic Massage for pleasure, stress & anxiety relief for whole family in my place or yours. 847-650-8989. By appointment. Lic. #227000668.

FOR A HEALTHY mind and body.

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

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

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

NOTICES UIC INTESTINAL HEALTH RESEARCH STUDY Looking for woman (African American, Caucasian or Hispanic) between 55-70 of age with no major medical problems. Investigating how bodyweight can affect your body’s ability to digest and absorb iron. Please contact Yolanda Vega at yvega22@uic.edu or 312-9966433 for more information.

GOODS

Saturday, July 16 & Sunday, July 17 8:30am-4:00pm 1835 (enter yard to basement): Great furniture, household items, women’s clothes, shoes, handbags, and accessories. 1830 (across the street, enter gangway or alley to garage): Frames, prints, vintage & repro tin print signs and more.... Please stop by! Great deals!

MASSAGE TABLES, NEW and

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

SUNDAY, AUGUST 7,

2016 AMERICAN CREW sponsored Master Stylist Patti Davenport Master-Shave, Skin Care & Haircutting class series at 3 SINKS SALON located at 2204 W Chicago Ave. Start time: 10am | End time: 8pm Email: Howard@3sinks.com

BUCKTOWN

ESTATE

SALE

EXQUISITE ANTIQUES, paintings, furniture shab-by chic, mission late 1800s early 1900s 2330 N Leavitt Chi 60647 7/22-23

ADOPTION: A BEAUTIFUL secure life, unconditional forever love awaits your newborn. Kelly 800554-4833 Exp. Pd.

legal notices NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to "An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State," as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16147273 on June 28, 2016, under the Assumed Business Name of Menacerno Music with the business located at 4916 N. Mozart Street Apt. 2, Chicago, IL 60625. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/ partner(s) is: Brian Matson, 1036 N Honore Apt. 2R, Chicago, IL 60622, USA; Joseph Martinez, 9004 S. 49th Avenue Oak Lawn, IL 60453, USA; Maggie O’Keefe, 4916 N. Mozart Street Apt. 2 Chicago, IL 60625, USA; Matthew J Buckingham, 11 West Division Street Apt. 1009 Chicago, IL 60610, USA; Peter Neumer, 1346 N. Greenview Apt. 2F Chicago, IL 60642, USA.

NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16147343 on July 5, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of BLUEPEN SOFTWARE with the business located at: 8300 CONCORD DRIVE UNIT 415, MORTON GROVE, IL 60053. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner (s)/partner(s) is: EDWARD BABAYAN, 8300 CONCORD DRIVE UNIT 415, MORTON GROVE, IL 60053, USA

NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16147272 on June 28, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of THIS QUIET DUST with the business located at: 5233 ARCADIA STREET, SKOKIE, IL 60077. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner (s)/partner(s) is: DUBHE CARRENO 5233 ARCADIA STREET, SKOKIE, IL 60077, USA

NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to "An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State," as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16147418 on July 15, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of FUTURE MDRESIDENTS with the business located at 1060 W Hollywood Avenue Apt 406, Chicago, IL 60660. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/ partner(s) is: Babajide Akinnuwa, 1060 W Hollywood Avenue Apt 406 Chicago, IL 60660, USA.

NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to "An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State," as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County. Registration Number: D16147312 on June 28, 2016, under the Assumed Business Name of Robynhood Ink with the business located at 2620 West Fletcher St #43A, Chicago, IL 60618. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/ partner(s) is: Robyn Michelle Johnson, 7064 N Damen Ave Unit 2 Chicago, IL 60645, USA.

SECTION 8 WELCOME 3-5 BR, 2 BA, 6714 S Eberhart, will take 2 BR voucher all appliances incl. 312-804-0209 CHICAGO HOUSES FOR rent. Section 8 Ok, w/app credit $500 gift certificate 3, 4 & 5 BR houses avail. 312-446-3333 or 708-752-3812 CHICAGO 8457 S Brandon, 4BR

apartments, 1st & 2nd flr. 2 or 3BR voucher ok; 847-926-0625

GENERAL 4BDR, 3BDR OR 6 BDR house

available. Recent Rehabs. Appliances Included.No Sec Dep.Sect 8 welcome. 708-979-3852.

FOR SALE HEGEWISCH: 3BR, 1BA house,

2-car gar, full bsmt (partially finished), 5 mins from Metro/Expway, close to schools/park. $136,000 312307-1491

07 21, 2016 | CHICAGO READER 43

SLUG SIGNORINO

STRAIGHT DOPE By Cecil Adams Q : In the wake of Prince’s death, I’ve read a

lot of magazine special editions dedicated to him, and each contains pictures of hundreds of gifts left at his home by fans as memorials. Something like this seems to happen whenever a major celebrity dies. What happens to these items? Does the family take the stuﬀ? Do other fans eventually take it? Does the city? Or is there possibly some foundation that deals with such things? —TRINA HIGH

A : Any parent of an all-too-prolifically cre-

R E G I S T E R AT

C A M P N O R T H E R LY 2 0 1 6 . E V E N T B R I T E . C O M

FAQ & U P DAT E S - C H I C AG O PA R K S F O U N DAT I O N . O R G

44 CHICAGO READER - JULY 21, 2016

ative child can sympathize with the dilemma facing the custodians of a celebrity memorial site. Think of when an offspring’s lovingly finger-painted artworks have papered the entirety of the refrigerator and threaten to consume all available wall space in the house. Then even the most doting patron has to make a decision: store these masterpieces lovingly away, or surreptitiously trash them and hope the artist never asks where they went. In the case of Prince, who died April 21, that’s pretty much the task that fell to Bremer Trust, the Minnesota-based bank that’s been appointed temporary administrator of the superstar’s estate while the court determines his rightful heirs. As you note, fans had decorated the chain-link fence surrounding Paisley Park, Prince’s home and studio outside Minneapolis, with flowers, balloons, and all sorts of homemade tributes. These clearly couldn’t stay up forever. Rather than throw the stuff out, though, the bank’s representatives undertook a fairly heroic preservation process, and like the industrious midwesterners they are, they did so quickly. Just one month after Prince’s death, multiple curators from four local history societies, working as volunteers under the supervision of a Bremer archivist, gathered up the accumulated items. The dead flowers and rotten food got tossed, but everything else was documented and archived according to standard museum procedures. The most sun-bleached and rain-soaked poster boards, their valedictory messages however illegibly smeared or faded, have been stored away in an environmentally controlled space, possibly for future public exhibition. That’s not always how it happens. Don’t try to commemorate John Lennon at Strawberry Fields, in New York City’s Central Park. There items left behind are treated as abandoned property and disposed of accordingly. There is a middle ground, of course. Elvis Presley’s Graceland, in Memphis, Tennessee, is the granddaddy of all celebrity shrines, attracting 500,000 visitors per year, many of whom leave some token of admiration behind. Though Graceland didn’t open as a tourist

attraction until 1982, fans had been using the site to communicate with Elvis while he was still living, scrawling messages to him on the wall surrounding his mansion. Groundskeepers scrubbed the graffiti away for years, but after the King’s death in 1977 the task grew too great, and now they only zap the off-color material— everything else is left to the elements. Graffiti, though, doesn’t create storage issues. The objects left behind at Elvis’s grave are another story. The archivists at Graceland are highly selective about what they keep—only creations deemed of particular artistic merit or ingenuity get stored away in the archives. A slightly different case is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., which was dedicated the same year Graceland was opened to the public. As with Graceland, visitors to the memorial, colloquially known as the Wall, started leaving items behind immediately: the National Park Service estimates that 400,000 items have been left as remembrances and tributes—one group from Wisconsin even left a motorcycle. Currently these tributes—every last nonperishable one of them—go into the Vietnam Veterans Memorial collection, which is warehoused in a Maryland facility. Looking ahead, however, the Park Service admits there won’t always be room for everything and plans to limit the scope of the collection to items directly related to the Vietnam War. Someday, whoever inherits Bremer Trust’s responsibility for Paisley Park’s upkeep may have to make similar decisions, particularly if the site becomes a Graceland-style tourist attraction. Right now, though, Bremer faces more pressing concerns. Since Prince died intestate, the administrator expects that the IRS and the state of Minnesota may gobble up more than half his estate’s value next year. Should some future Straight Dope reader ever ask “Why should I leave a will?” I may simply direct them to the messy story of Prince’s probate woes, which is just beginning. v Send questions to Cecil via straightdope.com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 350 N. Orleans, Chicago 60654.

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SAVAGE LOVE

By Dan Savage

A commitment-phobe, a hot bi BIL, and a Reconer recog Uncle Dan’s special all-gay edition Q : I’m sorry if my English is

wrong. I’m a gay man writing from Germany, where I am being heartbroken and not knowing how to go on. I’ve been seeing a guy for a couple of months and slowly falling in love with him. “Peter” has always been very open to me about himself, his failed relationships, and his commitment issues. He talks frequently about his ex-boyfriend from ﬁve years ago, and yesterday he told me he’s still in love with his ex from one year ago but that his love is unrequited. He also told me that he values what we have but he can’t stop loving this other guy. And he can’t promise me that this will change. Should I stay and wait for Peter to get better even if it hurts to know he’s in love with someone other than me? —HEALING EROTIC LOVE

PROBLEM MEANS EVERYTHING

A : Peter could be lying to

you. That’s probably not what you wanted or expected to hear, HELPME, and you’ll find some more less cynical advice further down. But when a guy with “commitment issues” tells you he’s struggling with the emotional fallout of a relationship that ended five years ago and still hopelessly in love with someone he hasn’t seen for a year, you have to entertain the possibility that he’s lying to you. When someone tells us he has “commitment issues,” we’re primed to hear this: “This boy is incapable of committing until healed (by a therapist, by a new love, by the passage of time).” But sometimes what he means is this: “I have no interest in committing—not to you, not to anyone, not now, not ever.” But hey, maybe he’s telling you the truth. Maybe he’s in

love with Mr. One Year Ago. So tell him he can love you and love the other guy at the same time. Established gay throuples, stable straight poly quads, bi men with GFs and BFs—there are examples everywhere you look these days of people in love with more than one romantic partner. I don’t see why a person can’t be in love with someone and still in love with an ex—think of it as a sort of semi-posthumous/semi-poly relationship. Give Peter permission to love his ex (pathetically and abstractly) while loving you too (intimately and tactilely), HELPME, and you might be able to love a commitment out of him.

Q : I’m a gay male in my

late 20s. My little sister’s husband, “Peter,” is my age and bisexual. I’m not one of those gay men who think bi guys don’t exist or aren’t capable of monogamy, and I don’t have a problem with my brother-in-law being bi. More importantly, my sister doesn’t have a problem with his being bi. But whenever I’m alone with Peter, however brieﬂy, he starts telling me how much he misses dick and wants to hear about the last “really great dick” I sucked. I smile and make a halfhearted attempt to change the subject. The last time it happened was after my grandfather’s funeral. I’m pretty sure Peter wants to suck my dick, and I’m tempted to let him. I know it’s a bad idea, but Peter is hot. This is torture. What should I do? —BOY IS LOST

A : Stop smiling, work harder

to change the subject, avoid being alone in a room with Peter, and repeat after me: “My sister might be able to forgive her husband for

sucking a dick, but she’ll never forgive him—or me—if that dick is mine.”

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Q : I’m a gay guy on Recon,

a gay hookup/dating site for guys into leather/fetish/ BDSM. My partner, who isn’t kinky, knows I have a proﬁle there, and it’s not a problem. Today I got a message from a new guy, and when we exchanged pics, I saw that he looks exactly like “Peter,” my boyfriend’s best friend’s ﬁance! I asked him if he was, and he stopped responding. What should I do? This could make our next double date extremely awkward, but if I’m wrong and it wasn’t Peter, bringing it up with them could make things even more awkward. —REQUIRES EDUCATED CONSULTATION ON NEXT STEP

A : Going silent after you asked “Is that you, Peter?!?” is a pretty good indication that it was indeed Peter you were talking to. But even if it was, you don’t know exactly what he was doing on Recon. Maybe he goes online to swap pics and jack oﬀ. Maybe Peter is on Recon with his ﬁance’s blessing, just as you are. Maybe their relationship is on the verge of collapse. Since you don’t know what’s going on, RECONS, keep your mouth shut and refrain from making assumptions. And the next time you have to interact with Peter and his fiance socially, slap a smile on your face and talk about the weather, the election, the estrogen-enhanced better-than-the-original Ghostbusters reboot—basically anything other than Recon, kinks, and wedding plans. v Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at thestranger.com. v @fakedansavage

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'C>-53 1>&@? 4/C+ >1'/C45?>/1 51- 5-<510+- ?>0;+?A 9 5-4>C587)0/4 JULY 21, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 45

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

Brian Wilson 10/1, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre, on sale Sat 7/23, 10 AM Andrew W.K. 9/15, 7 PM, Revolution Brewing Tap Room Rachael Yamagata 10/4, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Yelawolf, Bubba Sparxxx 10/29, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+

UPCOMING Bill Callahan ò HANLY BANKS

NEW

Airbourne 9/30, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Amira 10/30, 7 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Dan Andriano in the Emergency Room 10/21, 7:30 PM, Cobra Lounge Arkells 11/12, 9 PM, Subterranean, on sale Fri 7/22, 10 AM, 17+ Bilal 10/16-17, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 7/21, noon b Karla Bonoﬀ 10/2, 7 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 7/21, noon b Danny Brown 9/22, 7 PM, House of Blues b Bill Callahan 9/25-26, 7:30 PM, Constellation, on sale Fri 7/22, 10 AM, 18+ Car Seat Headrest 9/23, 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 7/22, 10 AM b Caspian, Appleseed Cast 11/13, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Fred & Toody Cole, Strychnine, Glyders 9/21, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 7/22, 10 AM Jacob Collier 9/21, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Thu 7/21, 10 AM b Elvis Costello & the Imposters 10/29, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre, on sale Fri 7/22, 10 AM Darlingside 10/13, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b D.R.I. 9/17, 10 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Andy Frasco & the U.N. 9/21, 9 PM, Hideout Alex G 11/11, 7 PM, Subterranean b Adam Green 9/12, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen Gucci Mane 9/23, 8 PM, UIC Pavilion

Haas Kowert Tice 9/8, 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Ari Hest 10/21, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 7/21, noon b Hiss Golden Messenger, Tift Merritt 11/6, 7 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 7/22, 8 AM b Hobbs’ Angel of Death, Atomic Aggressor, Scythian UK, Funeral Nation 9/7, 8 PM, Cobra Lounge Gavin James 11/17, 7:30 PM, Subterranean, on sale Fri 7/22, noon b Jezabels 11/23, 8 PM, Double Door, 18+ Johann Johannsson 10/16, 8 PM, Thalia Hall b Lucy Kaplansky 10/21, 7 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 7/22, 10 AM b Kishi Bashi 10/10, 7:30 PM, the Vic b Michael Kiwanuka 12/3, 8 PM, Park West, on sale Fri 7/22, 10 AM b Tory Lanez 11/23, 7 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri 7/22, 10 AM b Nick Lowe 10/15-16, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Lucero 10/28, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 7/22, 11 AM, 17+ Madeintyo, Salma Slims 9/6, 5:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b Mandolin Orange 11/10, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 7/22, 8 AM b Mekons 9/19-20, 8 PM, Hideout Meshuggah, High on Fire 10/28, 8 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 7/22, 10 AM, 17+ Nothing, Nowhere. 9/10, 6 PM, Township b Opposite Sex 9/26, 9 PM, Empty Bottle F Particle 10/16, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+

46 CHICAGO READER - JULY 21, 2016

Passenger 3/17, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, on sale Fri 7/22, 11 AM b Poi Dog Pondering 10/21-22, 8 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri 7/22, 10 AM, 18+ Justin Quiles, Kevin Roldan 7/31, 10 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Joshua Radin, Good Old War 11/8, 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 7/22, 10 AM b David Ramirez 10/28, 10 PM, Schubas Rebelution 11/12, 9 PM, Riviera Theatre, on sale Fri 7/22, noon, 18+ Kevin Seconds 8/27, 6 PM, Township b Seven Lions 12/2, 9 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Squirrel Nut Zippers 10/9, 5 and 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 7/21, noon b Steel Panther 12/4, 8 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 7/22, 10 AM, 17+ Stick to Your Guns 9/15, 6 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 7/22, 10 AM b Chris Trapper 9/24, 7 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 7/22, noon William Tyler 9/14, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Adia Victoria 9/20, 8 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 7/22, noon Vomitface 8/31, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Weepies 11/2, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 7/22, 10 AM b Allison Weiss 9/17, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, on sale Fri 7/22, 10 AM, 17+ What So Not 9/30, 9 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Whitney 12/3, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Webb Wilder 10/28, 7 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 7/22, 10 AM b

Art of Rap with Public Enemy, Ice-T, Naughty by Nature, and more 8/5, 5:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Band of Horses 11/16, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom b Big Eyes 8/18, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Bloodshot Bill 7/28, 9 PM, Hideout Child Bite 7/30, 8 PM, Burlington Cold Cave, TR/ST 9/14, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Cymbals Eat Guitars 10/11, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Die Antwoord 10/11, 8 PM, Aragon Ballroom Dinosaur Jr. 10/8, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Donkeys 8/7, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Elvis Depressedly 8/30, 7 PM, Subterranean b Rik Emmett 11/3, 8 PM, City Winery b Explosions in the Sky 9/10, 8 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 17+ Failure 10/21, 9 PM, Double Door, 17+ Famous Last Words 7/31, 5:30 PM, Wire, Berwyn b Florida Georgia Line 9/17, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Ace Frehley 8/26, 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Ghostface Killah & Raekwon 8/5, 8:30 PM, Metro, 18+ Vivian Green 8/20, 7 and 10 PM, City Winery b Halsey, Oh Wonder 7/30, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom b Health 9/25, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Insane Clown Posse 10/27, 7 PM, Durty Nellie’s, Palatine Instigation Orchestra with Djaspora 9/10, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Jaye Jayle 8/2, 9 PM, Hideout Jesu, Sun Kil Moon 11/13, 8 PM, Park West, 18+ Kero Kero Bonito 10/26, 6:30 PM, Subterranean b Kindred the Family Soul 8/4-5, 8 PM, the Promontory

ALL AGES

WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK

EARLY WARNINGS

CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME

Liima 9/27, 8 PM, Schubas Lil Yachty 8/31, 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall b Lion Babe 8/19, 8 PM, Double Door Marduk, Rotting Christ 9/11, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 18+ Cass McCombs 10/21, 9 PM, Empty Bottle MDC 10/30, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Molotov 9/15, 7 PM, Portage Theater, 17+ Naked & Famous 11/6, 7 PM, Riviera Theatre b New Madrid 8/5, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Obsessives 7/30, 6 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Omni 8/16, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Pennywise, Strung Out, Unwritten Law 10/8, 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Pet Shop Boys 11/5, 9 PM, Civic Opera House P.S. Eliot 9/13, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Queensryche 12/9, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Josh Ritter 9/26, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Rotten Sound 8/22, 6 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Xenia Rubinos 9/6, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Satan 10/26, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Savoy Brown 9/30-10/1, 7 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Ed Schrader’s Music Beat 8/25, 9 PM, Hideout John Scoﬁeld 10/5, 7 and 9:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Skinny Lister 11/3, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall Slim Cessna’s Auto Club 11/19, 9:30 PM, Subterranean Sloan 11/11, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Patti Smith 12/30, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Terrorizer L.A. 10/29, 8 PM, Cobra Lounge Tesseract 10/18, 6 PM, Bottom Lounge Thee Oh Sees 11/19, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats 9/13, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Keith Urban, Brett Eldredge 10/28, 7:30 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Valley Maker 8/23, 9 PM, Hideout Vinyl Thief 9/18, 9 PM, Empty Bottle VNV Nation 10/23, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Ryley Walker 8/25, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Wilco 8/21, 6:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park b X 8/19, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Yellow Claw 7/31, 10 PM, the Mid Yes 8/20, 8 PM, Copernicus Center b ZZ Top, Gov’t Mule 9/17, 7 PM, Rosemont Theater, Rosemont v

GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene LIKE HANNIBAL FROM the A-Team, Gossip Wolf loves it when a plan comes together—especially when it involves new music from local power trio Beat Drun Juel! Their 90s rock style is worthy of MTV’s Buzz Bin—imagine if PJ Harvey were in Tad, maybe. On Friday, July 22, BDJ release the EP Suppressor, about which guitarist Donna Polydoros says, “It’s badass how much heavier our sound has gotten over the past year, since our current drummer joined. We recorded with the same engineer who did our seven-inch last year, Erik Rasmussen at Decade Music Studios, but the sound is way harder— much closer to how we are live.” If you’ve ever seen BDJ live, you know that’s a good thing! On Sunday, July 24, they celebrate with a set at Double Door’s daylong Fuck Fest—alongside Lasers and Fast and Shit, Typesetter, the Cell Phones, and more. Break out the party hats, because unstoppable local DIY label Maximum Pelt has something to celebrate. Actually two somethings: the self-titled debut records from Saint Louis-based fourpiece Swear Beam and ripping Chicago trio Basement Family, which includes two former members of space-pop group Bigcolour. Basement Family’s EP of fuzzy, garagey stoner rock has been out on wax for a few weeks—Reader music listings dude Luca Cimarusti premiered it in June. At the Empty Bottle on Friday, July 22, the bands play a double release party with headliners Melkbelly. This wolf is keen on local label Star Creature, helmed by Ben Van Dyke and Tim Zawada (both from the fine Boogie Munsters DJ crew) and specializing in disco, funk, hip-hop, and of course boogie. Its Bandcamp page is a treasure trove of tunes to make you shimmy, including a new release from Zawada’s Tugboat Edits imprint: Hotmood Vol. 1 from Mexican collective Hotmood. The four-track EP ships next week, and the whole blissful thing is streaming at starcreature.bandcamp.com. —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

JULY 21, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 47

CHICAGO,

GOOSE ISLAND BEER CO.