Chicago Reader print issue of July 25, 2024 (Vol. 53, No. 25) by Chicago Reader

Readers Respond 04 Editor’s Note Imposter syndrome is not necessary with support.

06 Sula | Feature They’re laughing in the face of famine at Cedars Mediterranean Kitchen. 07 Reader Bites Bun Dinger at the Kane County Cougars stadium

Sula | Announcement Monday Night

Foodball hits the terrible threes.

10 Caporale | Proﬁle Angelique Antigone Tally, vegan bodybuilder.

NEWS

POLITICS

09 Mutual aid Chicagoans build community and solidarity through shared meals.

Political conventions How Theodore Roosevelt’s 1912 third-party campaign changed history

CITY LIFE

17 Street View Bruce Woods, designer and ﬁber artist

COMMENTARY

20 Isaacs | On Culture Anthony Frued oﬀers parting thoughts on leaving Lyric Opera and Chicago

ARTS & CULTURE

21 Review 60 wrd/min art critic on José De Sancristóbal

22 Calendar Visual arts exhibitions and events to check out

THEATER

23 Preview The F*ggots and Their Fr*ends Between R*volutions brings an underground queer classic to the stage.

FILM

26 Feature Themed movie menus that pair double or triple features with curated charcuterie 29 Movies of Note The Last Breath is a satisfyingly bad shark ﬁlm, Made in England is an enticing cinema documentary, and Twisters pales in comparison to its 90s predecessor.

31 Moviegoer Keep quiet and watch the damn movie

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

32 Galil | Feature Brandon Lee's Internet.Hotspot series has turned his parents’ Vietnamese restaurant into a nightlife destination.

36 Shows of Note Previews of concerts including Lambrini Girls, Full Body 2, Locrian, and Wicker Park Fest

40 Gossip Wolf Bridgeport Records builds on its blowout opening weekend, Heart of Chicago Soul Club celebrates a year of grooves, and more.

CLASSIFIEDS

41 Jobs

42 Professionals & Services

Marketplace 42 Matches

OPINION

43 Savage Love Just because you’re a gay guy doesn’t mean you can D around.

COVER PHOTO CREDITS

CAKE DESIGN

Bon Vivant Cakes

READER LOGO FABRICATION

Margie Criner and Itty Bitty Mini Mart

PHOTOGRAPHER

Crawford Captures Photo & Film

CONCEPT & ART DIRECTION

James Hosking

Cover pull quote said by Taryn Randle in “Forging solidarity through food” by Lindsay Eanet p. 9.

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

CEO AND PUBLISHER SOLOMON LIEBERMAN

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER AMBER NETTLES

EDITOR IN CHIEF SALEM COLLO-JULIN

MANAGING EDITOR SHEBA WHITE

ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR

SAVANNAH RAY HUGUELEY

ART DIRECTOR JAMES HOSKING

PRODUCTION MANAGER KIRK WILLIAMSON

SENIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNER AMBER HUFF

THEATER & DANCE EDITOR KERRY REID

MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO

CULTURE EDITOR: FILM, MEDIA, FOOD & DRINK TARYN ALLEN

CULTURE EDITOR: ART, ARCHITECTURE, BOOKS, LITERARY ARTS KERRY CARDOZA

NEWS EDITOR SHAWN MULCAHY

ASSOCIATE EDITOR & BRANDED

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DIGITAL EDITOR TYRA NICOLE TRICHE

SENIOR WRITERS LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, MIKE SULA

FEATURES WRITER KATIE PROUT

SOCIAL JUSTICE REPORTER DMB (D-M BROWN)

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Reader Letters m

Re: Review of Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person by Lauren Coates published in the July 11 issue (volume 53, number 23)

Saw it earlier this year. FUN. Silly ending though (hehehe). Hopefully it gets a Bluray (but not from Lionsgate). —Braulio Romero, via Facebook

Re: “Novelty Golf & Games celebrates its Diamond Jubilee,” by Tracy Baim published at chicagoreader.com on July 17

When I was 13, my best friend and I carved our names into a picnic bench at Bunny Hutch and the owner threatened to call the police unless we came back the next day and sanded/varnished the table. So we did. —Leyla A., via Instagram

Re: July 12’s Make It Make Sense column, “City to sweep encampments, Oath Keepers in CPD, ComEd billing error,” by Shawn Mulcahy and Joe Engleman

What a nonanswer from Mayor Johnson. Passing the tents by Montrose Beach yesterday, I worried about what would happen to people’s possessions and important documents if their shelters got removed for a photo op . . . to have all that money and not improve city services to help people is despicable. —Whitney Wasson, via Instagram

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The Chicago Reader accepts comments and letters to the editor of less than 400 words for publication consideration. m letters@chicagoreader.com

EDITOR’S NOTE

I’ve been editing the Reader’s food and drink section for about two years now. It was a role I sort of fell into at the Reader, and at first, I felt some imposter syndrome. The Reader has an extensive and unique history of food and drink coverage, notably shepherded in recent decades by our award-winning, longtime sta writer, Mike Sula. In many ways, Mike made it easy for me to step into the role of food editor and to get excited about it; from curated reviews and local cookbook previews to features on rare dishes and funky spirits, his ear is to the ground of the food scene perhaps more than anyone. But the problem with inheriting a legacy like that is keeping it up. There’s only one Mike Sula, after all, and it’s been an interesting challenge to build the food and drink section around him with other writers and other content, all while staying true to what the Reader is at heart: hyperlocal, alternative, and weird.

I sometimes get story pitches from writers hoping to, for example, make top-ten lists, review giant food festivals, create suburban restaurant roundups, or proﬁle some trendy, made-for-Instagram establishment that’s already received a ton of press. No shade to those writers, of course; I always appreciate the ideas and e ort. But readers can look to other media outlets for that content.

Only in the Reader food section will readers find the underground chefs, the compost experiments, and the algae.

In this special issue, specifically, there’s no worm poop or psychedelic mushrooms as there have been in the past, but there is a column about a minor league baseball stadium concession stand abomination called the Bun Dinger—a hot dog topped with bacon bits, bacon jelly, and doughnut cream, all stuffed in a Long John doughnut—and I don’t think that’s that far off. You can also

read about Angelique Antigone Tally, a local vegan bodybuilder and nutritionist who’s finding joy and subverting expectations in the sport. There’s a selection of charcuterie menus curated by a Chicago film buff, each paired with a double or triple movie feature to enjoy at home. Leor Galil has a feature on Internet.Hotspot, a party series at Phở Việt, a restaurant-turned-nightlife destination in Uptown. You can also learn about and support three different mutual aid groups focused on food access and equity, as well as a Hyde Park restaurant that’s raising money to aid those suffering from the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

It’s all here—Mike Sula and more—alongside the rest of your Reader staples. And it’s all free, now and always. v

—Taryn Allen, culture editor m tallen@chicagoreader.com

Top le : buttercream saves the day; top right: a Next Door Dinner community meal CRAWFORD CAPTURES PHOTO & FILM FOR CHICAGO READER

Bottom le : Angelique Antigone Tally ORIANA KOREN FOR CHICAGO READER

Bottom right: Ph Vi t JOSH DRUDING FOR CHICAGO READER

Reign

This summer, I dress like I got no home trainin’ Like Mama’s too busy for lessons and Daddy don’t care Like they ain’t there.

This summer, I realize these clothes are shackles and the more I cover, the more I celebrate captivity. Nah... I’m captivated by my hip curve my thigh rubs my long breasts my nipple so black on brown skin The red between my legs streaming my stripes screaming I’VE LIVED HERE AND STRETCHED A BIT

This summer, I sit at the crossroads of caste and class And know as fact, I am a bird free and as destined as black railroads.

I know my skin’s too Harriet for bondage too Foxy for tame

This summer, I reign every day

By Kiayla Ryann

Kiayla, a womanist poet, somatic yoga instructor, and performance artist from Chicago’s south suburbs is conducting “liberation experiments”. She explores how embracing one’s authentic self propels collective freedom. Currently ﬁnalizing her ﬁrst poetry collection, Kiayla is also the co-curator of Poet’s Tea and Pleasure, a popup evening of poetry celebrating the liberating power of pleasure. kiaylaryann.com

A weekly series curated by the Chicago Reader and sponsored by the Poetry Foundation.

Summer Hours

Wednesday–Saturday: 11:00 AM–5:00 PM

A Bigger Table: 50 Years of the Chicago Poetry Center Celebrating CPC’s ﬁve historic decades, this exhibition will feature 50 broadsides, 50 iconic vintage poetry event posters, archival materials and ephemera, and the premiere of a documentary ﬁlm. Open through September 14, 2024

Learn more at PoetryFoundation.org

THE FOOD & DRINK ISSUE

They’re laughing in the face of famine at Cedars Mediterranean Kitchen

With stand-up and Arab swag tacos, Amer Abdullah risks his restaurant for Gaza.

By MIKE SULA

Sudki Abdullah wanted to name his restaurant “Olive Mount,” but his Jewish friends talked him out of it.

That was 32 years ago, when Sudki, a Palestinian grocer who’d started frying falafel in the unventilated storeroom of Hyde Park’s Harper Foods, prepared to open a full-scale Middle Eastern restaurant.

“We’re Palestinian,” recalls his son Amer Abdullah, who believes Sudki meant to honor the olive groves that grew, since antiquity, on the mountain ridge above East Jerusalem, a site sacred to Muslims, Jews, and Christians alike. “Our existence and our situation is really fucked up. My dad didn’t come from a place of rules and discipline and normal life. It was like, ‘Oh, we’re in a fucking tent this week.’ He comes to America, he doesn’t really follow rules. So there’s no deep fryer, there’s no exhaust system. He does it completely illegally. He grabs a wok and some Mazola oil o the shelf and dumps it in there. He gets a campﬁre stove, attaches a propane tank to it, lights up a Marlboro, and starts making falafel. I’m watching him as a six-year-old, like, ‘This is weird.’”

After a handful of run-ins with the fire department, Sudki eventually went legit, expanding his o erings to spinach and meat pies, kibbeh, and deli tubs of tabouli, baba ghanoush, and hummus. There weren’t many Arabs in Hyde Park, but there was a strong Jewish population.

“He became friends with them,” says Amer. “They had some familiarity with the food, and they were his best customers.” But his original idea for the restaurant’s name didn’t go over well. They said, “‘We don’t recommend you call it that. Don’t link it to Palestine in any way.’ They were genuinely looking out for us. They, being very liberal Jews who were pro-Palestine, were telling us, ‘We know our community. Don’t do that.’”

Prior to arriving in Chicago, Sudki spent ﬁve

years in Beirut studying Arabic literature and working in restaurants. The iconic Lebanese cedar tree inspired his second choice, and he opened Cedars of Lebanon on 53rd and Cornell in 1992.

Amer and his siblings grew up in the restaurant, and he stayed involved even as he studied economics at the University of Chicago. In 2002, he helped manage the move to its current home in Kimbark Plaza about half a mile west and changed the name to Cedars Mediterranean Kitchen.

“On an unconscious level, I was trying to own our roots,” he says. “I was very angry about the situation, and I think at some point I was gonna call it Cedars Palestinian Kitchen.”

He instead embarked on a decade-long career as an investment banker at J.P. Morgan. “It came at a cost,” he says. “I carved out my soul in many ways. The ﬁnancial crisis hit, so that shook me up pretty good. And by the end of the ten years, I had a spiritual moment, and [decided], ‘You know what? I’m out. I got some savings. I’m gonna ﬁgure out what to do.’ So I left that world altogether.”

Amer started practicing stand-up, first at Second City open mikes, then hitting the road with friends like comedians Mo Amer and Azhar Usman. “I needed something to heal. It was almost like art therapy, and then it turned into a love a air.” He had a good run, but by 2018, he was running out of money, he and his

Find more one-of-a-kind Chicago food and drink content at chicagoreader.com/food.

wife had a child, and the following year, his father passed away.

For years, Sudki complained that the restaurant was losing money, and Amer thought he’d step in just to close it down. But after sorting through his father’s memorabilia, he started thinking differently and began pouring his own dwindling savings into the business just to make payroll.

For the ﬁrst few years, Amer operated at a loss. But he also made changes. He brought Cedars into the social media age and hired a chef—Amado Lopez, a one-time Trotter and Bayless protege—to update the menu with Insta-ready cross-cultural provocations like “Popeyes Ain’t Sh!t fried chicken tacos and harissa-glazed wings.”

He also began to embrace the identity that his father concealed out of caution. In 2012, they traveled to the West Bank village of Daniyal where Sudki was born, and from where his family ﬂed during the Nakba, the mass Palestinian displacement that occurred during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. As a young, successful Palestinian professional, he was also tapped to participate in a citizen diplomacy program and embarked on a number of trips that took him all over, from Jenin to Jerusalem to Nablus and Hebron.

“I’m Palestinian, but my roots are not there,” Amer says. “And they’re not here. I got one foot in each world, and that planted a seed that right now is such a big part of me. So when I took over the restaurant I was like: ‘What’s Cedars?’ When I went back to my mom and some friends that knew my dad, they were like, ‘Yeah, he named it out of fear.’ I was like, ‘Oh fuck that. Let’s be real. Let’s be authentic, and hopefully it doesn’t sink the business. I wasn’t sure, at that moment, what I was gonna do, but I did know I needed to work with some professionals to start to rebrand and rethink the restaurant.”

Amer consulted with a brand strategist, and gradually, a new identity took shape in the form of a mission statement founded on the idea that “It’s important to us to be exactly who we are without confusion or apology, ” and that “One of our biggest values is risktaking. The world isn’t safe for Palestinians, so why should we play it safe?”

“We’re a Taste of Palestine on the South Side,” was floated as a slogan, along with “To Sudki, with Love.” By the summer of 2022, they were putting the ﬁnishing touches on this new image, and yet, like his father, Amer hesitated.

Amer Abdullah at Cedars Mediterranean Kitchen SHIRA FRIEDMAN-PARKS

“We weren’t sure how to roll it out,” he says. “We might have been just a little afraid and not sure what the reaction would be, so we just sat on it. But once October 7 happened, I was like, ‘Fuck it. We got to either commit suicide or become a lightning rod for people.’”

One week after the Hamas attack on Israel, and as Israeli Air Force bombs fell on Gaza, Amer took to Instagram wearing a freshly screened pink T-shirt bearing the words “Food Love Liberation,” and he announced that on that following Wednesday, all sales from the restaurant would be donated to humanitarian relief in Gaza.

When the day came, the restaurant was swamped, with a line stretching into the parking lot. Former staff members came back to help out, donating their wages to the cause. Amer set a goal of $10,000 to be donated to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF). By the end of the day, they collected nearly $14,000 in food sales and donations.

“The response was tons of hate online, tons of love online; tons of love in person, a little bit of hate in person,” Amer says.

From there, he announced that 50 percent of sales from a limited menu every Wednesday during “Cease Fire November” would go toward humanitarian relief in Gaza, adding the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace to the beneﬁciaries, and later groups like the Jewish American If Not Now organization devoted to ending U.S. support for Israeli apartheid, and the Israeli veterans group Breaking the Silence.

The restaurant’s finances took a hit at first. “We gave so much in sales that first day that we lost kind of our month,” he says. “It was worth it, obviously. But when November rolled around, we kind of gave away all our profits.

We were like, ‘Shit. We need to take care of our families.’”

In late November, he enlisted his friend, comedian Arbaz Khan, to headline a comedy show after hours in the restaurant’s dining room, half of the ticket sales going to the PCRF.

“The idea of laughing—let alone joy—felt extremely unnatural with the tragedy in Gaza happening,” Amer told me. “So I called some elders in my community to discuss the idea. The advice I got: set your intention in a way to maintain integrity. If you are inviting people in to laugh because that is a gift you and the comics have to give, then make your purpose ﬁrm.”

The show sold out, and by the end of the month, Cedars had raised some $33,000. Ironically, the resulting notoriety caused an uptick in regular business, spurred by people who wanted to eat there simply for its relief work.

“It was a little bittersweet,” says Amer. “So the only way to pay that back to our brothers and sisters in Palestine was for us to do more. And that’s when we came up with the idea of Sudki’s Kitchen.”

Amer contacted the Bridgeview-based nonprofit Pious Projects of America, which had once built a water well in Mali in the late Sudki’s name. For $75,000 they could set up a field kitchen in Gaza and feed an estimated 500 families a day for one month. With money already raised and private donations to purchase vats, utensils, ﬁrewood, and food staples, Sudki’s Kitchen went live in April in the central Deir al-Balah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip. Footage from early May shows mobs of clamoring children lining up in front of steaming pots of rice and soup. Further donations allowed Pious to open two more kitchens, for a total of ten.

Meanwhile, Amer kept hosting monthly sold-out comedy shows at Cedars featuring comics like Usman, Danish Maqbool, Dwayne Kennedy, Sonal Aggarwal, and Adam Burke, with half of the ticket sales going to Pious along with the fees donated by most of the performers. Amer needs to raise $25,000 a month to keep the kitchen running, which has been folded into Pious’s other field operations. Going into August, he has $5,000 so far, with another show

I’m a sucker for any sort of tubular meatstu s presented in a style I’ve previously never encountered. I aspire to try a Baltimore delicacy that wraps a kosher frank in a slice of fried bologna, like a frat boy assembling a toga for a kegger; if I’m really ambitious, I may follow that up with a trip to West Virginia for that state’s regional staple, which reminds me of the Detroit Coney dog but with coleslaw in addition to chili and mustard. I’ll try dogs burnt to a crisp or cubed or drowning in some sort of condiment whose provenance is a secret to all but three people. I’ll eat weiners served in diners, highfalutin establishments, mom-and-pop joints that may not be up to code, and, yes, baseball games.

the bacon. The gentleman who delivered my treat beckoned me away from the counter and toward a side door, where he gingerly handed me the Bun Dinger as if we’d participated in an illicit transaction.

So when I noticed the Kane County Cougars’ concessions stands offered a hot dog delight called a Bun Dinger, I couldn’t resist its call. The meat-sweet dish consists of an Angus hot dog covered with small chunks of bacon, bacon jam, and vanilla icing, all of which is delicately shoved into a plain Long John doughnut. The concessions chefs artfully criss-cross the dog with the bright-white icing before slathering on the burnt-brown bacon jam and sprinkling on

scheduled for later in the month. (You can sign up for an email reminder when they go on sale.)

Through the comedy shows and food sales, Amer ﬁgures Cedars has raised around $125,000 in total. Meanwhile his twofold purpose stands: “to raise money for Gaza humanitarian relief and to raise awareness for the genocide taking place.” Like laughing to relieve a faraway tragedy, he’s aware of the irony of raising money to ﬁght famine amid an abundance of food.

“A spiritual heart that is alive and kicking

The Bun Dinger’s arch sweetness emphasizes the savory meat object at its center. The sugar elements are restrained. The icing looks bold but has a light touch. The Long John base functions as the kind of hot dog bun I dream of—it’s soft and supportive but contains a density that retains its original shape, bite after bite. All the sweet elements accentuate the Angus dog’s spiciness, which provides the aftertaste’s dominant sensation; its heat seems to simmer after the Bun Dinger’s sweetness dissolves into memory. At $15, this sweet hot dog is on the pricey end for minor league fare, especially when you consider the cost of entry; advance lawn tickets for Kane County Cougars are $5. Still, it’s cheaper than an extravagant MLB dish. And it’s just another charming element of minor league baseball, an experience that’s guaranteed to leave you with less disappointment than the baseball team with the worst record in the majors. —LEOR GALIL KANE COUNTY COUGARS AT NORTHWESTERN MEDICINE FIELD 34w002 Cherry Lane, Geneva, $15, 630-232-8811, kccougars.com v

Reader Bites celebrates dishes, drinks, and atmospheres from the Chicagoland food scene. Have you had a recent food or drink experience that you can’t stop thinking about? Share it with us at fooddrink@ chicagoreader.com.

would hypothetically feel terrible about our food culture here versus the Gaza famine,” he says. “So a fundraiser via eating food for a distant famine may seem counterintuitive. But raising awareness and feeding the destitute takes precedence over our shameful food culture. In the end, we choose to move forward despite all the analysis because these are the gifts and resources we have at our disposal.” v

m msula@chicagoreader.com

Front of house and back of house staﬀ at Cedars SHIRA FRIEDMAN-PARKS

Bun Dinger at the Kane County Cougars stadium

THE FOOD & DRINK ISSUE

ANNOUNCEMENT

M ONDAY NIGHT FOODBALL

Mondays (times vary), Frank and Mary’s Tavern, 2905 N. Elston

@chicago_reader, @mikesula, @frankandmarystavern, chicagoreader.com/foodball

Monday Night Foodball hits the terrible threes

Check out the brand-new late summer schedule for the Reader’s three-year-old weekly chef pop-up.

By MIKE SULA

The law says that a traditional threeyear anniversary gift is something made from leather, symbolizing durability and resilience, but also ﬂexibility and versatility.

Problem is, you can’t eat a camel saddle, a set of designer luggage, or a bullwhip (or can you?).

I think smoked masala cheesesteaks are more in order. Or perhaps oxtail deepdish pizza.

You could go either way this August when we celebrate the third anniversary of Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s weekly chef popup at Frank and Mary’s Tavern.

It was August 21, 2021, when the late, great Kedzie Inn hosted the very first Foodball, a humble attempt to give pandemic-imprisoned upstart underground chefs a chance to cook to order in a professional kitchen for real, live

mouths. It was also a chance for the rest of us to break out of our pods into the refreshing, reaffirming togetherness of a dark corner dive bar.

I didn’t know it would last past the first half dozen pop-ups, but on and on it went, hell-bent for leather, and we find ourselves at number 127 this August 19, with the return of four-time Foodball veteran Sheal Patel and his Indian-style, low and slow Dhuaan BBQ. That’s just ahead of Foodball rookies Lynn’s Chicago Pizza, who’ve been tearing up the south side and south suburbs with a mythical oxtail-topped pie, among other revolutions in the pizza arts.

But first, this new late summer schedule commences on Monday, August 5, with a deranged collaboration between two Foodball favorites, Pierogi Papi and Milo’s Market, unleashing a Polish Mexican mutation more

powerful than the Wonder Twins.

On August 12, it’s the Foodball debut of West Town’s Jook Sing, going o menu with a Jamaican Chinese tribute to Patricia Chin, cofounder of the legendary indie reggae label VP Records.

On Labor Day, we rest, but September 9 marks the return of now-wandering food pornographer the Sausage King of Milwaukee Avenue, followed by the Foodball debut of Kimski sous chef Ryan Cofrancesco and his long-running Morgan Street Snacks. But in the meantime, like always, you can follow the chefs, @chicago_reader, Frank and Mary’s Tavern, and myself on Instagram for weekly menu drops, ordering info, updates, and the stories behind Chicago’s most exciting foodlums. v

m msula@chicagoreader.com

MONDAY NIGHT

FOODBALL

The Reader’s weekly chef pop-up series, now at Frank and Mary’s Tavern, 2905 N. Elston, Avondale

Follow the chefs, @chicago_reader, and @mikesula on Instagram for weekly menu drops, ordering info, updates, and the stories behind Chicago’s most exciting foodlums.

THE SCHEDULE

August 5

Worlds collide with Milo’s Market + Pierogi Papi @milosmarket @pierogipapichi

August 12

Jamaican/Chinese tribute to Patricia Chin with Jook Sing @jooksing.312

August 19 Revenge of Dhuaan BBQ @dhuaanbbq

August 26 Side hustle power couple Lynn’s Chicago Pizza @lynnschicagopizza

Sept. 2 Labor Day bye week

Sept. 9 The once and future Sausage King of Milwaukee Ave. @sausagekingofmilwaukeeave

Sept. 16 Escape from Kimski with Morgan Street Snacks @morganstreetsnacks

Head to chicagoreader.com/foodball for weekly menus and ordering info!

From L: salmon tartine; black truﬄ e bourbon chocolate chunk cookie; Wagyu pastrami melt RYAN COFRANCESCO; MORGAN STREET SNACKS; RYAN COFRANCESCO

THE FOOD & DRINK ISSUE

Forging solidarity through food

How Chicagoans build community over shared meals

By LINDSAY EANET

As the times become evermore unprecedented, the advice ringing across social media is to “build community.” In Chicago, organizers, chefs, growers, and regular Chicagoans have answered that call by feeding people and building relationships through food. From a Rogers Park cafe to a city-trotting pop-up to a community-led meal distribution and cooking class outﬁt, here’s how.

The restaurant

On June 18, Rogers Park cafe Smack Dab posted to their Instagram, offering Black guests brunch on the house for Juneteenth. Neighbors lined up for biscuits and veggie hash. In all, Smack Dab gave away more than $4,000 worth of food, along with $300 to Chicago Volunteer Doulas.

“It’s just a meal,” says Smack Dab cofounder Christine Forster, “but it’s this honest moment to acknowledge we do not live in the same universe. We do not face the same struggles, but we can at least feed you.”

The restaurant has hosted regular community dinners since late 2018, when the federal government shut down and a former team member suggested feeding furloughed government workers gratis. Now, they o er free meals up to anyone—without qualiﬁers or barriers. Community dinners are served the ﬁrst Wednesday of every month, and neighbors can take up to ten meals, no questions asked. In addition to community meals, Smack Dab recently offered free breakfast sandwiches in exchange for donations to purchase eSIM cards for Palestinians in Gaza. Forster’s cafe has been vocally supportive of Palestine, and it’s prompted her to think about the community role of small businesses. “We should be involved in ending the genocide in Palestine. But also, one in three Americans are food insecure,” she says. “We get really into the performative aspect of advocacy when, in reality, mutual aid work is unglamorous. It’s ego-killing work.”

The impact of community meals reaches beyond the restaurant. Now, neighbors call ahead to pick up food for an unhoused en-

campment or senior home. “That people are organizing that independently and facilitating the web of care is really cool,” she says.

“I think restaurants really underestimate their importance in society beyond just people eating fancy food,” she continues. “We are some of the last remaining community spaces, and it’s a role we should take seriously. The care we take in our food and beverage and service, I think if we take it one step further, the impact would be incredibly profound.”

The pop-up

Carly Herron’s first foray into community meals was as a student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she’d enjoy the weekly Family Dinner Night from food justice nonproﬁt Slow Food UW.

She moved to Chicago in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic. When the world began to open back up, she sought an outlet for community building around sharing a meal. In 2022, she decided to recreate her Family Dinner Night experiences under a new name— Next Door Dinners—and a pay-what-you-can model.

Herron says by the third dinner, the crowd had grown beyond friends and family. Initially, she shopped and cooked for all 50 guests herself (Next Door Dinners buys from local producers like Back of the Yards’s Star Farm). But now, with a regular fleet of volunteers, many with hospitality backgrounds, her role is on the planning side.

“Now, it’s not Carly running a dinner party. It’s a community event with a lot of hands in it,” she says.

The intimate, three-course dinners have made appearances all over the city, from a Lakeview Unitarian church social hall made dreamy with string lights to a golden-hour open-air meal at Star Farm to the lush West Loop wedding venue Loft Lucia. Seasonal produce is the star in soups, stews, pastas, and more. Herron calls it “ﬁne dining on compostable plates.”

One of the main goals of Next Door Dinners is to connect diners from across the city, and Her-

ron says she tries to be intentional about moving the meals around. But finding a venue—especially a free one—can be challenging.

All of the proceeds from the dinners are donated to local food-focused mutual aid efforts, such as Market Box, which sources fresh food from small local farms and redistributes it to more than 400 south-side households.

Herron encourages people looking to host similar community meals to seek out passionate partners, and be willing to ask for favors. But most importantly, she says, take the time to make everyone feel welcome.

“When I see new people I’ve never met at the dinner, I always sit down and say, ‘Hey,’ to them, and maybe I’ll introduce them to someone down the table,” she says. “Then I look over 30 minutes later and there’s a group of six chatting over a bottle of wine.”

The collective

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, chef Roberto Pérez of Urban Pilón launched a virtual cooking class called “Essential Caribbean Cooking,” the name holding double meaning as stay-at-home orders added “essential workers” to the national lexicon.

One of his students was Taryn Randle, cofounder of Black- and Brown-led food sovereignty organization Getting Grown Collective, who was trying to respond to a community need for prepared meals.

“I was growing [food] before the pandemic and witnessed a lot of waste in the nonproﬁt and school garden sector [where] the people growing it don’t have the capacity to harvest and get it out to people, and it just got composted,” they say. “The pandemic propelled us into action. We couldn’t theorize about it anymore; we just had to do it.”

Randle reached out to Pérez and chef Fresh Roberson. They began cooking and distributing free prepared meals to the community— and Farm, Food, Familias was born. “It was in the high point of the pandemic where folks were really craving nurturing, not just food for food’s sake,” Randle says. “The feedback that we got that was extremely powerful was just how delicious, how nourishing, the food [was].”

Farm, Food, Familias has distributed more than 50,000 meals to the community since launching their mutual aid initiative. They’ve also gained a following for their in-person and virtual cooking classes, where Pérez, Roberson, and chef Kwamena Jackson teach everything from knife skills to DIY pizza to Pérez’s Caribbean specialties like sancocho and sweet plantain canoas. “We’ve evolved to meet people where they’re at,” Pérez says.

Changes in funding have led to a shift away from emergency response and towards sustainable programming, Randle says. Now, Farm, Food, Familias o ers six weeks each of programming in spring, summer, and fall. For Randle, the cooking classes are particularly important as a means of scaling the ability to feed the community in an uncertain time.

“That’s why we have such an intense cooking class program: to prepare. If we come to another pandemic situation, we have more chefs that feel comfortable preparing meals at scale.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Next Door Dinners community meals support

THE FOOD & DRINK ISSUE

‘Plant-based bodybuilders—we’re out here’

For Angelique Antigone Tally, a complex relationship with food and exercise eventually transformed into a love of veganism, bodybuilding, coaching, and community.

As TOLD TO MICCO CAPORALE

Vegan bodybuilder Angelique Antigone Tally is spreading the gospel of plant-based big biceps. The 31-year-old grew up in North Lawndale studying culinary arts at a career academy. Her mom is a chef, so cooking was always a family activity that bonded Tally and her ﬁve siblings. After high school, Tally expected to continue her gastronomic journey by serving as a cook in the military, but when she failed the entrance exam, she enrolled in college, where she learned about fitness

and animal rights.

In 2014, a friend showed her Pumping Iron , the iconic 1977 bodybuilding documentary that launched Arnold Schwarzenegger to stardom. Tally was mesmerized by competitors’ glistening, bulging physiques and Schwarzenegger’s affability and confidence. Is that what muscles gave you? An unshakeable sense of self? It would take her eight years to finally compete in bodybuilding, but after becoming both a vegan

and a personal trainer, she finally found the courage necessary to subject her physique to the spotlight. In 2022, she debuted at Midwest Gladiator, a prominent regional competition, where she took first place in the novice wellness class under the name Angelique Tally Menglimamatov. Since then, she’s amassed an Instagram following of more than 87,000 people and trains clients at one of Chicago’s most legendary bodybuildingfocused gyms, Quads.

Growing up, my grandmom always cooked Sunday dinners. No matter what was going on, Sunday dinners were her thing. She passed 20 years ago, but my mom has kept the Sunday dinner ritual going. My siblings and I get together every Sunday and help my mom cook. [Because I’m] vegan, my mom usually does some spicy greens and corn bread for me. We’re all really big fans of soul food.

My plan after high school was to go to the military and be a cook, but when I took the entrance test, I didn’t pass. I said, “OK, let me go to college for a year, see how I like it, and then try to reenroll.” I ended up going to college and falling in love with the experience. I have an associate’s degree in general studies and a bachelor’s in theater. I focused mostly on acting and playwriting.

My “freshman 15” was more like “freshman 45.” For a while, all I wanted to do was eat and drink all day. During my sophomore year, I had a coming-up moment where all my jeans had holes in between my legs because my thighs were rubbing together. I remember the exact moment I decided to change my lifestyle. It was a Wednesday morning, and me and my friends were hungover from drinking all week. I was using college as an escape. It was a small campus with not much to do, and I thought, “I’m just gonna enjoy myself and have fun.” But my grades were su ering, and I was signiﬁcantly heavier than when I’d started school. That wasn’t actually fun, and I knew if I kept down that path, I wasn’t going to have much of a career.

I started going to the gym every single day, and I changed up my eating habits. In the beginning, I was getting up at 3 or 4 AM to go on an hour-long bike ride. After that, I would walk to the gym, which was a 25-minute walk, and I’d do two hours of cardio and 30 minutes of strength training. I did that the entire summer of my junior year of college.

I dropped a lot of weight, but I was obsessed with the gym. I wasn’t happy with myself or

Angelique Antigone Tally at Quads Gym

what I saw in the mirror. Working out was just another escape—too much of a good thing. I didn’t see the problem as it was happening, though. I thought that I was just “getting into shape” even though I was eating less than 1,000 calories a day and working out six or seven days a week. Over about two years, I went from the heaviest in my adult life, which was around 173, to the smallest, which was about 92 pounds. I didn’t even realize I’d gotten that small until people were asking if I was sick.

That’s also about the time I went vegetarian. I watched a documentary on slaughterhouses that made my stomach turn, and I never wanted to touch meat again. I also thought, “Well, maybe going vegetarian will be good for weight loss, too.” I didn’t know anything about living that way. For the ﬁrst four months, all I was eating was greens and fruit, and I ended up so sick I had to be hospitalized. I was working out all the time, but I had no muscle because I wasn’t eating any protein. I was burping up stomach acid that left this really weird taste in my mouth. I was diagnosed with anorexia. That was rock bottom for me, and I realized I wasn’t as healthy as I thought.

Most of my life, I’d been the biggest carnivore. I never thought veganism would be for me.

ning, she did so much research on vegan cooking and taught me so many techniques and recipes. She’s been my number one supporter. My junior year of college, my friend Bobby showed me Pumping Iron . Being a theater major, I thought there was something about Arnold and the way that he spoke, how charismatic and sure of himself he was. Bodybuilding seemed to give him a confidence I was really attracted to. No matter who was in front of him, no matter the competitors, he was sure of himself. Acting is the same way. No matter what character you’re playing, you always have to be 100 percent sure of yourself, because this is 100 percent of what you’re living.

My friend was like, “I want to start lifting weights. You should too.” I was fascinated . These people didn’t look real, in a way that just gripped me. But I was also very naive and scared, like, “Oh, I can’t lift weights, I don’t want to get big and bulky!” I didn’t realize bodybuilding training is its own beast. I always assumed that fitness had one lane, but strength training has a lot of different avenues. You can get a lot of different results with it, including how you look through it.

THE FOOD & DRINK ISSUE

not science-backed. No supplements, nothing. With veganism, you especially have to prove that it works because I often find myself kind of the butt of the joke. You don’t have to be a full-on tree hugger; just incorporate more plants and veggies in your nutrition. I’m proud to say that most of my clientele has at least one plant-based meal every week.

"All

I was referred to a nutritionist, and they taught me [about] vegetarian sources of protein like beans, lentils, and tofu. Most of my life, I’d been the biggest carnivore. I never thought veganism would be for me. I was a big cheese eater, and I ate a lot of meat for my culinary education. When I went vegetarian, dairy became a bigger food source, but it was doing horrible things to my skin and digestion. Eventually, my nutritionist suggested I cut it out of my diet. They encouraged me to go pescatarian, but I was never a big ﬁsh eater. So I decided to just give veganism a shot. In January 2016, my New Year’s resolution was to try veganism and see if I could stick with it. I’ve never looked back.

It surprised me how easy the transition was, especially now that I had the knowledge about nutrition to support what I was doing. My mom was really understanding about it, too. She began playing around with recipes and veganizing everything that she cooked from scratch so I could be part of Sunday dinners. My favorite recipe from her is a vegan sweet corn bread, where you substitute the egg and milk for bananas and applesauce. In the begin-

After college, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Despite the mistakes, the happiest I’ve ever been is at the gym. Around 2018, I had a job at Chipotle, and an LA Fitness manager came in and was like, “Hey, I see you work out every day—you look like you’re in really good shape. Would you like to become a personal training manager?” So I got certiﬁed as a personal trainer and began working with clients.

About three years ago, I decided to get my nutrition certiﬁ cation. Could I teach my clients to eat more plant-based? I was seeing these studies where scientists compared plant-based and omnivorous athletes. There were drastic di erences in their energy levels and explosiveness and how their bodies were metabolizing certain nutrients. My mom had done things like the Atkins diet, and I was familiar with all these other really meat-heavy, antivegan ways of eating that I thought were very science-backed. Then all these studies dropped showing that plant-based living can help you live longer and be a better athlete.

That research helps me educate clients. I won’t recommend anything to clients that’s

It took me a while to compete because I didn’t feel like I looked like I belonged in the fitness industry. I needed more confidence to get onstage. I entered my first competition in 2022, which was called Midwest Gladiator. I picked it kind of randomly, but it turned out to be one of the biggest shows of the year. There were around 200 competitors, and it was a six-hour show. I went into it like, “I’m just gonna do it. I’m gonna get onstage, and if I don’t place, that’s fine ’cause I ripped o the Band-Aid.”

Unfortunately I didn’t work with the best coach, initially. She was constantly trying to convince me to eat meat or eggs again, saying I’d never be able to put on the necessary weight if I didn’t do that or take steroids. Seven weeks before the show, she dropped me because she didn’t want to represent a meat-free, drug-free athlete. Luckily, I got a new coach, who happened to also be a vegan competitor, named Angela White.

That’s been the most daunting thing about being a vegan bodybuilder: not everyone gets it and treats approaching the sport that way with kindness. But on show day, I got to meet so many people who shared my enthusiasm for the sport, including a couple of vegetarian and vegan competitors. It ended up being one of the best experiences of my life.

Bodybuilding is scary. You’re half-naked in an auditorium of strangers, and they’re talking about how you look. That is a lot to deal with, especially mentally. But I wanted to know what it felt like. I think my naivete and low expectations were a blessing in disguise. I

had such a fun time because I didn’t take myself too seriously. I just went out there and did the best that I could. And I ended up winning ﬁrst in my class! At my ﬁrst-ever show! I’ve met a lot of competitors who are like, “Oh, I was vegan for four years, but then I started bodybuilding, so I’m eating meat again.” You don’t have to do that. Do your own research. We may be few and far between, but plant-based bodybuilders—we’re out here. I hope to keep bodybuilding for as long as I can. It keeps me accountable, and I love being on stages. I want to coach more plant-based athletes and encourage more vegans to bodybuild so the stigma of being a vegan competitor isn’t so negative. People think bodybuilders are a bunch of buff, aggressive men who want to judge them and make them feel bad. Apart from that initial coach, it’s been one of the most welcoming experiences I’ve ever had. I’ve been able to make friends in di erent states and countries. I have a sense of community that I didn’t know that I even wanted. And at the end of a tough workout, nothing beats a spicy chicken (seitan) sandwich with a side of mashed potatoes from the Chicago Diner. v m mcaporale@chicagoreader.com

these studies dropped showing that plant-based living can help you live longer and be a better athlete.”

ORIANA KOREN FOR CHICAGO READER

NEWS & POLITICS

POLITICAL CONVENTIONS

The spoiler eﬀect

What Theodore Roosevelt’s 1912 third-party campaign can teach us about 2024

By MICHAEL SPENCER

Editor’s note: This is the second article in a series about three nominating conventions in Chicago that changed the course of United States history.

The 2024 presidential nominations had seemed a done deal for months. A rematch of the 2020 election seemed a certainty. By spring, no one paid much attention to the primaries, which saw as many as four of every ﬁve registered voters fail to cast a ballot.

But at the end of June, Joe Biden’s concerning performance at the ﬁrst presidential debate with Donald Trump threatened to shake things up. Some Democratic Party members were split on the issue of the incumbent’s mental and physical ﬁtness. Pundits and politicians weighed the risks of sticking with the president versus seeking a viable alternative. And then, the weekend before he accepted the Republican Party’s nomination in Milwaukee, a would-be assassin shot at Trump while he

was speaking at a rally, grazing the former president’s ear and killing an attendee.

It seemed, for a moment, that neither candidate would make it to November. Images of Trump triumphant clashed with an ailing Biden, who tested positive for COVID-19 on July 17. The tenor of debate about swapping the president reached a fever pitch. On Sunday, Biden dropped out of the race.

There haven’t been enough presidential elections for statistics to guide the assumption that replacing Biden would guarantee a Republican victory in November. The sample size is simply too small to know with certainty. But we do have a few historical anecdotes about split votes and third-party presidential campaigns that inform the reluctance of national parties to consider changing a candidate in the summer before an election.

One of those played out in Chicago, which hosted two nominating conventions in the summer of 1912.

Early in the morning hours of June 20, 1912, Chicago’s Orchestra Hall held a raucous crowd. Hours earlier, former president Theodore Roosevelt led his supporters in an exodus from the Republican National Convention (RNC) at the third Chicago Coliseum on Wabash and 15th Street. Now, his loyal delegates gathered a mile north o Michigan Avenue to hear what he would say. Roosevelt told them that the convention’s delegation was illegitimate and that its nominee, William Howard Taft, was a fraud.

Given the events of that night, it’s hard to believe that, four years earlier, Roosevelt had personally chosen to pass the torch to Taft, his friend and war secretary. In the 1908 election, the Republicans cruised to a third consecutive victory over the Democrats and William Jennings Bryan. But by 1912, the relationship between the two men had fallen into such disrepair that it now threatened to split the

Republicans down the middle.

Two months after storming out of the RNC, Roosevelt would return to Chicago under the banner of his new third party—the Progressive “Bull Moose” Party. But, in Orchestra Hall, with the election looming a little more than four months in the distance, there was one major problem: the Progressive Party did not yet exist.

After traveling in Europe throughout her twenties, the social reformer Jane Addams returned to Illinois in July 1888, inspired by her experiences at the Toynbee Hall settlement house in London. The ethos of settlement house activism rejected the paternalistic stewardship of traditional charity in favor of mutual class relationships, easing the strains of poverty and industrialization by making resources, recreation, and education accessible to rising urban populations. Toynbee residents were “university men,”

Addams wrote, “who live there, have their recreation and clubs and society all among the poor people, yet in the same style they would live in their own circle.” Addams decided to open her version of a settlement at Hull House in the Near West Side neighborhood.

In Chicago in the 1890s, an intense debate was playing out about the future of industrial society. When Hull House opened, the Haymarket A air was still fresh in the minds of reformists and laborers in the city. In the spring of 1890, the residents of Hull House and their neighbors started the Working People’s Social Science Club. Hull House garnered a reputation for radicalism throughout the 1890s as the club’s members clashed in discussions over new ideas about reform and revolution. Visitors to the house could hear liberal reformers arguing with socialists and anarchists. Some wondered which of these Addams was.

In 1894, Eugene V. Debs wasn’t yet a so-

Theodore Roosevelt, le , and Hiram Johnson THEODORE ROOSEVELT DIGITAL LIBRARY, DICKINSON STATE UNIVERSITY

cialist or an anarchist. A burgeoning labor organizer, he led the American Railway Union in their strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company, shutting down most of the country’s northern railway system. Debs became a socialist while imprisoned in Woodstock, Illinois , for his role in the strike. Inundated with socialist reading material, courted by leftist politicians, and ﬁnally demoralized by William Jennings Bryan’s defeat in the 1896 election, Debs formed a socialist party in June 1897. He would be the Socialist Party of America’s (SPA) candidate in four presidential elections between 1904 and 1920.

The SPA’s electoral viability grew throughout the ﬁrst decade of the 20th century. European immigrants, familiar with the conditions and language of labor organizing, arrived in increasing numbers to places like Chicago’s near west side. If progressives in the Republican and Democratic parties failed to unite and reform U.S. capitalism, the logic of Marxism threatened a revolution in the streets at any moment.

Historians call this period the Progressive

Era—a time of reactionary reforms enacted between 1896 and the First World War in the face of rising labor tensions and the threat of socialism to the political status quo.

Addams never became a socialist. A mill owner’s daughter from rural Illinois, she connected her resistance to socialism not to her bourgeois class background but to her religious education and “old days of skepticism regarding foreordination,” a doctrine some Christians hold that God determines all events in advance.

Rather, she was a progressive. Progressives like her formed an increasingly coherent bloc within U.S. politics after the populist movement failed to take power in 1896. While the economic conditions that galvanized farmers in the 1890s had been replaced by relative prosperity, the locus of economic discontent shifted to the cities. The Republicans successfully courted the progressive vote during the Roosevelt administration by intervening on behalf of labor and regulating industrial monopolies. And if Roosevelt hadn’t fallen out with his successor, progressives might have

voted for the Grand Old Party (GOP) again in 1912.

But that was not to be.

Theodore Roosevelt was governor of New York when the Republicans named him to President William McKinley’s reelection ticket in 1900, replacing Garret Hobart, who left the vice presidency open when he died the previous November. Tom Platt and the GOP bosses in New York wanted Roosevelt out of their hair and conspired to move him to a less influential post. Platt never liked Roosevelt but needed a strong candidate in the gubernatorial elections. After Roosevelt returned from Cuba with his Rough Riders as a popular national figure, he was elevated by the party to replace an unpopular incumbent. Roosevelt clashed with Platt on issues of policy and patronage. When Hobart died in 1899, New York Republicans urged Roosevelt to take the job. While major national interests ran through the empire state and across the governor’s desk, the vice presidency was a position of great stature but little influence. Platt

and his machine agreed this was the best way to eliminate their irritating executive. But just six months into his term, McKinley was fatally shot in Buffalo, New York, and Roosevelt assumed his position as the highestranking Republican in the country.

If the ﬁrst Roosevelt administration was an accident of Platt’s political gamesmanship, his election in 1904 was a ringing endorsement of that mistake. Although his first term was technically the ﬁnal three years of McKinley’s second term, Roosevelt decided that the spirit of George Washington’s two-term precedent should prevent him from running again. He conceded the presidential nomination to Taft. For his towering stature in U.S. history, Roosevelt comes across as a small person in this chapter. Four days after the 1908 election, Taft sent a letter thanking Roosevelt for his part in their victory. Roosevelt thought Taft diminished his contributions to the campaign in the letter by saying that Taft’s millionaire brother had done as much as the former president. After the inauguration, Roosevelt left for a safari around east and central Africa and did

NEWS & POLITICS

not correspond with his successor for a year. (He would continue to mention the letter to supporters more than a year and a half later.)

Taft and Roosevelt disagreed on most things, personal and political. Despite representing the same party, they disagreed on the nature of executive power and the federal government’s role in regulating the economy. Taft’s geniality was a foil to Roosevelt’s vigor. In the end, Roosevelt launched his challenge for the Republican nomination in Chicago for conspicuously personal—rather than political—reasons. The success or failure of the ad hoc Progressive Party similarly hinged on Roosevelt’s personality.

After the excitement at the RNC, the Progressives decided to return to the spot where the nomination had been “stolen” from them. They gathered once more in the Chicago Coliseum to choose their ﬁghter in this “battle for the lord.”

An atmosphere of religious revival gripped the Progressive National Convention (PNC) when it opened on August 5. Voices bounced from the rafters as attendees sang, “Onward, Christian Soldiers” and waited to coronate their candidate. “It was not a convention at all,” remarked a reporter for the New York Times . “It was an assemblage of religious enthusiasts.”

That summer’s second convention at the Chicago Coliseum brought together a group of

young, ambitious politicians and policymakers fiercely committed to Roosevelt’s vision of “New Nationalism.” The party platform included social and political reforms like women’s suffrage, protections for labor actions, and a national health service.

Jane Addams fully supported the Progressives. “Only such a party could crystalize the advanced public sentiments” she had come to know from more than 20 years at Hull House, she wrote in American Magazine that November. At the PNC, she took the stage to second Roosevelt’s nomination, becoming the ﬁrst woman in U.S. politics to do so. She evoked wilder cheers and enthusiasm than even New York businessman William Prendergast, who delivered Roosevelt’s nomination speech. Afterward, Addams descended from the stage, carrying a banner that read, “Votes for Women.” She paraded down the aisle and around the hall as the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” cascaded down from the stands onto the delegation.

The zeal and popularity of this third party, however, depended on one man’s personality.

William Jennings Bryan covered the conventions that summer as a journalist. In his notes on the PNC, he wrote, “However influential a leader may be, he is hardly large enough to form the foundation of a great party.”

“Of course, I accept,” Roosevelt said as he took the stage to give a speech called, “A Confession of Faith.” His 75-minute oration

captured the full range of progressivism and called for an impressive reform package.

But at one point in the speech, a Black delegate rose to ask about race. Roosevelt and Progressive Party leadership had erred broadly in their campaign to attract white southerners to the party. In addition to spending too much time campaigning below the Mason–Dixon line, Roosevelt also decided that the best way to chase votes in the south was by “encouraging” the participation of Black people in the north while discouraging their participation in the south.

Roosevelt’s answer to the delegate’s question on the night of the convention reportedly turned some African American leaders back toward the Taft campaign. Demonstrating the limits of liberal reformers on issues of race, he justiﬁed the decision by saying that southern Black delegates to Republican Party conventions in the past did “very grave harm, to their own race.”

The PNC captured all the limits, optimism, and potential of the underlying reform movement. But as a third party conceived late in the summer of 1912—and congenitally attached to the personality of one man—the best it could ever do was split the Republican vote. Roosevelt had a choice between building a party that could persist and winning his war with Taft. He picked the latter.

The Progressive Party campaign hurtled toward the general election. As the convention closed, Congress launched a probe to investigate contributions received by Roosevelt in the 1904 campaign.

In October, a saloonkeeper from New York shot Roosevelt at a campaign stop in Milwaukee. The bullet went through the former president’s glasses case, all 50 pages of a speech folded over in his pocket, and it came to a stop in his chest muscle without penetrating his lung. The “Bull Moose” survived, and he met his speaking engagement that evening.

In November, Roosevelt achieved his goal, defeating Taft by four points. The presidency, however, ultimately went to Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who carried the popular vote and a plurality in the electoral college. Debs and the SPA won nearly one million votes, the high-water mark for any socialist in a U.S. presidential election.

Last fall, the Pew Research Center described American attitudes about our politics and elected officials as “unrelentingly negative”: more than a quarter of

Americans have unfavorable views of both major parties, and a similar number do not feel represented by either. Nearly two-thirds were dissatisﬁed with their choices for presidential candidates. Yet despite quantifiable and observable malaise, the will to challenge the status quo is notably absent.

Americans faced these cold realities in 1896 and again in 1912. We may do so once more in 2024. While many work hard within and without our democratic institutions to change these conditions, since 1896, Americans have chosen to tune out and switch off in ever-increasing proportions. One begins to wonder how long this system can continue to reproduce itself. One begins to wonder if it should.

If the U.S. democracy fails its stress test this fall after two and a half centuries, we should wonder who is to blame. It seems unlikely that the historical postmortem will blame the people who saw the structural inadequacies and took steps to overcome them. But the grip of Democratic and Republican institutions seems overwhelming, with each third-party failure reinforcing the subjective conditions. Party leadership wields the examples of Roosevelt, Ross Perot, and Ralph Nader as a cudgel against the overwhelming majority who want something di erent.

The objective conditions are clear—the nature of the U.S. Constitution and its division of political power only allows for the existence of two dominant political organizations. Despite their resistance to political factions, the founders lashed the fate of the American people to the mast of political duopoly. They pushed that ship of state into the tempest of industrial modernity, where it has stayed aﬂoat only on the buoys of executive authority and the ﬁ at of Supreme Court rulings.

The American people may sink with the ship unless they can ﬁnd a way to break free from the binds of our myopic political cartel. Participation in politics and belief in political change circles the drain as right-wing politicians develop new ways to limit access to the ballot box. Blood streams down Trump’s face as he holds a fist in the air, shouting at his followers to “ﬁght.” Democrats scramble to replace their compromise candidate from 2020 with one who dropped out before that year’s first nominating contest. A tired American laborer turns o the TV. v m letters@chicagoreader.com

continued from p. 15

An X-ray shows the bullet that hit Theodore Roosevelt during a stop in Milwaukee. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

BRUCE WOODS DESIGNS

Instagram.com/bruce_woods_designs or bwdesigns.net

By appointment: brucewoods@bwdesigns.net

STREET VIEW

Sophisticated and casual

Designer and ﬁ ber artist Bruce Woods weaves style into his everyday.

By ISA GIALLORENZO

“Idress for myself. I choose clothing that has a certain kind of style that I think endures and is complementary to my way of life and my aesthetic,” said ﬁber artist Bruce Woods. (He said his age is none of our business.) Woods continued, “My style is something I would define as a classical and casual elegance.”

I spotted Woods as he was dressed in a hemp and cotton top that he crocheted himself along with a pair of loose-ﬁtting custom-made slacks. This outfit perfectly embodied the relaxed sophistication he favors. “If you’re not comfortable in what you’re wearing, one cannot appreciate you from the outside because you’re not comfortable with what you’re doing from the inside,” Woods told me. Woods added that ease should be no excuse for sloppiness. “Presentation in any ﬁeld is everything. If you initiate with a good presentation in anything that you do, you will be appreciated for who you are.”

Good accessories are key for optimum presentation. Woods’s outﬁt incorporated interest with pops of yellow provided by his shoes and bag. “I like to wear comfortable shoes, but they have to be stylish. I don’t care how sophisticated one makes a sneaker—I’m not interested in them,” he asserted.

Woods’s bag used to belong to his mother. He bought the hat years ago to bring him a little joy after a bad day. “I haven’t purchased clothing in a long time. I have my trousers made in Italy, and most of my tops or jackets I make myself,” he said.

Yellow is a color that Woods enjoys wearing in the warmest months, as well as pastels. Higher temps work beautifully with his knits, which are made with natural ﬁbers such as cotton, silk, linen, wool, or alpaca. “Linen is a wick-

CITY LIFE

ing fabric, so it moves the moisture away from the body. None of these pieces have to cling to one’s body, and they don’t have to be short or little. They can actually cover your whole body and still be very breathable, creating a sophisticated look with a casual air,” he said.

Woods’s designs are inspired by ethnic groups from all over the world, contemporary and classical art, and nature. His clothes and fiber art pieces have an organic yet refined quality.

The designer’s current summer collection emphasizes the natural materials he uses with simple constructions that, in his words, “let the ﬁbers do the talking.” His summer palette incorporates mainly pastels with a touch of brightness, and the designs cost from around $300 to $2,000 for more intricate pieces. In colder months, Woods also o ers a ordable bags ($100 and up) and hats ($60). His hats actually have a very impressive pedigree: Yves Saint Laurent featured them with his col-

lections in the 1970s.

After spending a good portion of his years in the fashion capitals of the world, Woods returned to Chicago, his hometown. He now designs and sells from his charming atelier in Portage Park. When I told him he was the most stylish person I’d ever seen, he answered in his witty cosmopolitan nonchalance: “I think you should travel more.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

ISA GIALLORENZO; TOP RIGHT COURTESY OF BRUCE WOODS

The Illinois Lottery celebrates a half-century of wins during its 50th-anniversary celebration

If any big win is a reason to cheer, 50 years of wins is cause for a full-on extravaganza. That’s the spirit in Illinois this month, where the Illinois Lottery kicks oﬀ its 50th anniversary with a summerlong celebration.

“We have done a lot over the past ﬁ y years,” says Illinois Lottery director Harold Mays. “We deﬁnitely wanted to do something special this year to commemorate our history and our involvement in society, and so our celebration is in full swing.”

The Illinois Lottery has such a robust presence throughout the state today that it can be challenging to remember a time before you could simply pop onto its website or head over to a neighborhood retailer to buy a ticket. Following legislation led by the legendary State Representative E.J. “Zeke” Giorgi and the leadership of the Lottery’s first superintendent, Ralph Batch, the Illinois Lottery kicked off in the summer of 1974, hosting its first live drawing at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield and later debuting its first scratch-off ticket in 1975, 7-11-21 (which is still available for purchase today). By the end of the first year, 100 million lottery tickets had been sold.

During the Illinois Lottery’s ﬁrst decade, it generated nearly $1 billion in proceeds that were deposited into the state’s general revenue. But in 1985, a new law was passed to earmark Lottery proceeds for public education and capital projects. That move—which beneﬁted the state’s Common School Fund— proved to be extraordinarily popular, and to date, ticket sales have raised nearly $25 billion in funding for kindergarten through grade 12.

Illinois Lottery Director Harold Mays at the 2023 Komen Chicago Race for the Cure, October 28, 2023. Courtesy Freeman Pictures

In the early years, CBS was the ﬁrst to work with the Lottery and produce live draws. Therea er, the Lottery established a long-term relationship with WGN-TV and made Illinois the ﬁrst state where residents could watch live drawings on television regularly. In the 80s, it introduced a number of games, such as Pick 3, Pick 4, and Lotto, which remain in high demand today. “The 80s were our biggest growth decade,” Mays says. “We started the 80’s with just a few $100 million [in sales] a year, and we ended the 80’s with well over a billion dollars a year in sales.”

During the 90s, the Illinois Lottery began using instant-ticket vending machines and launched three televised lottery game shows titled Fortune Hunt, Illinois Instant Riches and Illinois Luckiest, which ran for eleven seasons on WGN. In 1996, it joined forces with ﬁve other states to introduce the Big Game which later became Mega Millions in 2002.

In 2006, the Illinois Lottery made waves once again. Spearheaded by the efforts of Illinois State Senator Mattie Hunter, it introduced the country’s first specialty scratch tickets in which 100% of the proceeds were earmarked for specific causes, starting with breast cancer research and support services and veterans support programs. In the years since, the number of causes has expanded from two to ten (most recently, the Illinois Dream Fund and the United Negro College Fund, both of which support students from marginalized backgrounds pursuing higher education). Since 2006, the overall effort has generated more than $93 million in proceeds. In 2024, the Lottery unveiled a new joint specialty ticket, the $200,000! Bingo Tripler Instant Ticket, which benefits all ten causes and stands to raise even more awareness and much needed funding going forward.

“One of the proudest things that we do is support our specialty causes,” Mays says. “Because we can see how important the proceeds we raise are to the causes and the direct impact they have. Each cause has a story, a mission, and program funding that is subsidized by these proceeds, so it’s a great thing for the state, and it’s a great thing for the Lottery to be associated with that.”

There’s plenty more to be proud of, too. Before 2022, funding generated by the Lottery was allocated to the Capital Projects Fund and the Common School Fund. In 2022, new legislation was passed to maximize the Lottery’s contribution toward education by designating every dollar raised by the Lottery, outside of specialty tickets, directly to the Common School Fund.

This sponsored content is paid for by Illinois Lottery

Courtesy Illinois Lottery

In its 50 years, the Lottery has also positively impacted local communities through its partnerships with retailers. “We have close to 7,000 retailers throughout the state who sell our games, and without them, we really wouldn’t have a Lottery,” Mays says. “We paid over $175 million in sales commissions to our retailers last year. These are all businesses—the mom-and-pop shops, major grocery stores, gas stations, and so on and so forth—that help drive the economic engine in our communities.”

“When I started at the Lottery eleven years ago, for the ﬁrst eight years, we averaged around $2.8 billion in sales and $739 million in proceeds per year,” Mays says. “The last three years have been our most proﬁtable, averaging close to $3.5 billion in sales and $830 million in proceeds per year. We have our players to thank for that. This means that more people are engaging with us, and we’ve been able to move the Lottery forward in a positive way to continue meeting our mission, which is

According to Mays, the Illinois Lottery has made close to 2,200 millionaires throughout the state since 1974, but every player can enjoy the fun and excitement of having a chance to win. “The overwhelming majority of our prizes are not a million dollars or more, but every win is a good win from our players’ perspective,” he says. “We encourage every player to “Be Smart and Play Smart” (the Lottery’s responsible play slogan) while playing. The Lottery is just for fun, and people should play within their means while trying to win.”

Between the Lottery’s exciting games and its positive impact on local communities, is it any wonder that in recent years ticket sales have grown like never before?

to responsibly generate proceeds to subsidize funding for K-12 public education and specialty causes.”

To commemorate its 50th anniversary, the Illinois Lottery launched the “Celebration” family of scratch tickets in May, with top prizes ranging from $50 thousand to $2 million. Non-winning tickets can also be entered into its “Celebration” Second Chance contest for a chance to win one of 50 $500 weekly prizes. It’s also partnering with local radio stations throughout the state, where listeners can win a bundle of the “Celebration” tickets. The “Get in the Groove” online sweepstakes oﬀers players a chance to win $500. The Lottery is also doing a retail tour around the state, visiting 50 retailers. This is

an opportunity for the public to join in the anniversary fun by playing games for a chance to win lottery prizes.

Heading into the next 50 years of the Illinois Lottery, one thing is certain. “It never gets old,” Mays says. “[Working with] winners and retailers who sold the winning ticket is always a great experience. Whether it’s $1,000 or the $1.3 billion jackpot that was won here a couple of years ago, I’m always reminded of the power of what we do and the impact that we have.”

Visit the Illinois Lottery website for more information about the Illinois Lottery’s 50th anniversary celebration, purchase a ticket, or locate a lottery retailer near you.

This sponsored content is paid for by Illinois Lottery

Courtesy Illinois Lottery

COMMENTARY

ON CULTURE

Anthony Freud bows out

The Lyric Opera’s departing CEO on post-pandemic challenges, company premieres, and favorite Chicago restaurants

By DEANNA ISAACS

Anthony Freud is retiring from his triple-title job as Lyric Opera of Chicago’s general director, president, and CEO at the end of July, and a search for his successor is underway. Here’s an edited version of a recent conversation about his time at Lyric and the future of opera.

Deanna Isaacs: You had two more years on your contract. Why leave now?

Anthony Freud: This is my 30th year as an opera director, and my 13th at Lyric. It feels like the right time for a new chapter for me personally. But also I think it’s a strong time for Lyric to be recruiting a new leader.

But it’s a tough time for performing arts in general, isn’t it?

There are headwinds, and there have been since the pandemic. I think it’s a matter of how you engage with the challenges. Over the last few years, we have changed, become more flexible. We adapted to a very volatile environment and we can measure our performance against benchmarks. We are actually at the end of year one of a ﬁve-year growth plan. Year two and the foundation of year three are substantially in place, and I think it’s important for the second half [of the plan] to be led by the person who is going to lead the company in the years beyond it.

This coming season will not include a musical?

Right. Musicals, over the eight or nine years that we’ve been doing them annually, on the whole have worked extremely well for us. What we have found, post-COVID, is that it is too soon to be risking the additional investment that we need to make in a musical given that we have to sell a very large number of single tickets. I do think in the right circumstances—the right title, the right production, the right timing—musicals will once again be

part of a regular Lyric season.

How is sharing the house with the Jo rey working out?

It’s a win-win. We’re able to bring tens of thousands of new people into the opera house. If you think of the great opera houses of the world—London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin—most of them have a regular diet of opera and ballet.

But Lyric used to do more operas and more performances.

To me, it’s much more important for us to do the right range, quality, scale of work than it is to maintain the quantity at a time when we can’t justify it. What on earth would be the justification of doing 13 performances when audience demand can sustain 11?

What was the best part of your time at Lyric for you, personally?

We gave 32 Lyric premieres—32 works the company had never done before—from world premieres like Proximity and Bel Canto to pieces like Fiddler on the Roof and Carousel, through to our first ever Count Ory [Le Comte Ory], our first ever five-act French Don Carlos, our first ever Trojans [Les Troyens], our first ever performances of The Passenger. I think for us to be successfully promoting our art form in 2024, we have to be really innovative and we have to take risks.

And the worst?

March 13, 2020, at 2 PM, when I gathered the company onstage. We were a few days away from opening Götterdämmerung , and two or three weeks away from the first of three complete Ring cycles, and I had to announce that we had no choice but to cancel it. Things don’t get much worse than that. I had never lived through anything like that in my past, and I hope to never live through anything like

that in my future. What I will say though, is we didn’t allow ourselves to spend too long in mourning.

Mourning?

Mourning is the right word for it. When you have to pull the plug on a project that has been planned over literally a decade, it’s a dreadful moment. And it got worse after canceling the Ring because we wound up having to cancel the whole of the following season. But we embarked on a series of online artistic projects which reached 350,000 people worldwide. And when live performances were possible again, in unconventional environments, we did Twilight Gods in the parking garage and Hansel and Gretel in Chicago parks.

Did it take long to make the decision to cancel the Ring?

It happened surprisingly quickly. Until maybe ﬁve or six days earlier, I thought, “Why is the world getting so hysterical? Surely it’s not going to be that bad.” It was probably no more than eight or nine days before we reached the conclusion that proceeding was not going to be an option, that it was actually irresponsible to continue trying to navigate a way through.

anyone watching it today would be aware of the stringent environment in which it had to be created.

Is ﬁlm the future?

No, our audiences are growing. Last year to this year there was a growth of 17 percent; from the previous year to last year, there was a growth of 27 percent. I don’t believe that we should be pessimistic about the future. I think people have an appetite to reengage with the live performing arts.

You’re returning to England?

Was there pressure from the board to cancel?

No, this was not at all board driven.

So it was all on you?

I have the buck-stopping job artistically, financially, and administratively. I have to say that week was very challenging. And as I say, it got even worse when it became clear that the entire 2020–21 season had to be canceled. What became energizing was our decision not to hibernate—to ﬁnd some way of generating high-quality artistic activity that was safe to produce. The project that I think represents that at its most spectacular is our ﬁlm of Pagliacci, which won two Midwest Emmys. It was produced in the closed opera house, in really strict COVID protocols, with Enrique Mazzola conducting, Russell Thomas as Canio, Quinn Kelsey as Tonio . . . it’s a really wonderful performance. And I don’t think

My plan, with my husband, Colin, is to move to London. I haven’t lived in London for 40 years, so it’s not so much going home as going someplace where I grew up to rediscover it. Beyond the move, I have no particular plans. I’m open to do something and I’m open to do nothing, and that’s something that in my 44 years of working in the arts I haven’t had the luxury of.

Since this is our food issue, one ﬁnal question: are there any Chicago foods or restaurants you’ll miss?

The food scene in Chicago is incredibly wide-ranging and of outstanding quality, so choosing specific places is very hard. Here goes: Coco Pazzo for exceptional Tuscan food in an elegant and calm dining room; Riccardo Trattoria for a relaxed and delicious Italian dinner; Bistronomic, an outstanding, very French bistro just off Michigan Avenue; Sun Wah BBQ in Uptown; and BBQ King in Chinatown for yummy Beijing duck, which is maybe my favorite food in the world. v

m disaacs@chicagoreader.com

Anthony Freud TODD ROSENBERG

ARTS & CULTURE

CALENDAR

Getting out there

Exhibitions and cultural events to experience this summer

ON VIEW

Goldﬁnch

Jessie Mott, “Pluto” “Overhang,” group show curated by Roland Miller

Through 7/27: Fri-Sat noon-4 PM 319 N. Albany 708-714-0937 goldﬁnch-gallery.com

Arts Club of Chicago

Passing through borders

60 wrd/min art critic on José De Sancristóbal

By LORI WAXMAN

This review is part of the series 60 wrd/min art critic , a project by writer Lori Waxman that explores how art writing can serve an expanded field of artists—including those incarcerated, trying to gain visas, working to establish themselves professionally, or just wanting feedback for a secret hobby. For more information, visit 60wrdmin.org.

In theater, the fourth wall refers to the imagined barrier between audience and actors, a belief in which is crucial to the self-containment of the fiction being performed onstage.

José De Sancristóbal, an artist born in Mexico and currently living in the United States, breaks not only the fourth wall but, arguably, an entirely new fifth one in Given the right conditions, any sound can pass through a wall Given, a curiously moving two-channel video installation by Sancristóbal, was exhibited at Luminarts Cultural Foundation in Chicago this past spring.

Sancristóbal’s installation occupied a room divided in two by metal struts. One side, with chairs to sit in, featured a large projection: a narrative ﬁlm of a man who walks across the

border to Ciudad Juárez, enters a photo studio, and sits for a passport photograph.

The other side, standing room only, had a smaller monitor showing the Evanston recording studio where the sound for the film was generated by the artist’s neighbor—a man born in Ciudad Juárez who cannot freely return because he is undocumented.

Using standard foley methods, the neighbor creates the sound of walking, opening and closing a door, and clicking a camera shutter—noises needed for the part of the ﬁlm that was shot in his unreachable hometown. So far so good, and really, it would be enough if Sancristóbal had stopped there, using artistry to breach the U.S.–Mexico border wall, (that ﬁfth wall).

But strange things begin to happen: the developed photographs are wrong, lapping waves can be heard through the wall of the photo studio. The audience must go back and forth, from screen to screen, one side of the wall to the other, to see it all.

No matter how freely we travel, the legal ﬁction of immigration, borders, and visas can never make sense. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Christine Tarkowski, “the old Moon in the new Moon’s arms” Through 9/3

Teresa Baker, “Shift in the Clouds” Through 8/16

Tue-Fri 11 AM-6 PM; Sat 11 AM-3 PM 201 E. Ontario 312-787-3997 artsclubchicago.org

Secrist | Beach

Stephen Eichhorn, “Voidground” “Making Time,” group show curated by Eichhorn

Through 8/17: Tue-Fri 10 AM-6 PM; Sat 11 AM-5 PM 1801 W. Hubbard 312-212-8888 secristbeach.com

Soccer Club Club

Loren Connors and John Fahey, “I Listen to the Worn-Out Rain”

Opening 8/30 7-11 PM with a musical performance by Connors at 8 PM Through 10/4: Mon-Fri 10 AM-6 PM and by appointment 2923 N. Cicero 312-455-1015 soccerclubclub.com

The Art Center Highland Park Martinez E-B, “Objects, Images, Signs, & Symbols”

Opening 8/16 5:30-8 PM Through 9/28: Mon-Fri 10 AM-4 PM; Sun by appointment 1957 Sheridan Rd., Highland Park 847-432-1888 theartcenterhp.org

Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago Nicole Eisenman, “What Happened” Through 9/22: Tue 10 AM-9 PM, Wed-Sun 10 AM-5 PM Suggested admission $10-$22 (free for those 18 and under; free for Illinois residents on Tue); advance tickets recommended 220 E. Chicago 312-280-2660 mcachicago.org

Given the right conditions, any sound can pass through a wall , 2024

Bears and Bandannas: Somerset (series 105) by Martinez E-B

ARTS & CULTURE

Logan Center for the Arts, Cafe Logan

Marcus the Artist, “City of Gold”

Through 8/11: Mon-Fri 8 AM-9 PM, Sat-Sun noon-8 PM

Artist talk Sat 7/27 2-4 PM 915 E. 60th 773-834-8377 loganexhibitions.uchicago.edu

DePaul Art Museum

Selva Aparicio, "In Memory Of"

Through 8/4: Wed-Thu 11 AM-7 PM, Fri-Sun 11 AM-5 PM 935 W. Fullerton 773-325-7506 resources.depaul.edu/art-museum

Bridgeport Art Center

“In Conversation with Dale Washington,”

- JULY 25, 2024

659 W. Wrightwood 773-437-6601 wrightwood659.org

Gallery 400

“The Mask of Prosperity” group show with Sonya Clark, Carmen Winant, Eli Greene, and others

curated by Messejah Washington, Makeba Kedem-DuBose, and Marci Rubin

Through 9/6: Mon-Sat 8 AM-6 PM, Sun 8 AM-noon

1200 W. 35th 773-843-9000 bridgeportart.com

Document

Erin Jane Nelson, “Undersight” Through 8/3: Tue-Sat 11 AM-6 PM 1709 W. Chicago 312-535-4555 documentspace.com

Wrightwood 659

“Chryssa & New York”

Through 7/27: Fri noon-7 PM, Sat 10 AM-5 PM

Admission $15 (advance tickets required)

Through 8/3: Tue-Fri 10 AM-5 PM, Sat noon-5 PM 400 S. Peoria 312-996-6114 gallery400.uic.edu

Chicago Artists Coalition

Michelle Chun and Armando Román, “maybe you need time for your eyes to adjust to the dark”

Through 8/29: Wed-Thu 11 AM-5 PM, Fri-Sat by appointment 2130 W. Fulton chicagoartistscoalition.org

Corbett Vs. Dempsey

Rebecca Shore, “Being There”

Ted Halkin, “Rediscovered Works, 1964-69” Jem Cohen, “Aerie”

Through 8/10: Tue-Sat 10 AM-5 PM 2156 W. Fulton 773-278-1664 corbettvsdempsey.com

Patron Gallery

Noé Martínez, “Las raíces conversan por debajo de la tierra” Through 8/17: Tue-Sat 11 AM-6 PM 1612 W. Chicago 312-846-1500 patrongallery.com

Vertical Gallery

Collin van der Sluijs, “Observer” Through 7/27

Summer Group Show featuring Dovie Golden, Flog, Bianca Pastel, Bird Milk, Greg Gossel, Super A, Pizza in the Rain, and others 8/2-8/24

Thu-Sat noon-5 PM or by appointment 2006 W. Chicago, Unit 1R 773-697-3846 verticalgallery.com

Art Institute of Chicago

“Four Chicago Artists: Theodore Halkin, Evelyn Statsinger, Barbara Rossi, and Christina Ramberg”

Through 8/26: Fri-Mon 11 AM-5 PM, Thu 11 AM-8 PM 111 S. Michigan artic.edu v m scollojulin@chicagoreader.com

Le : Chryssa: The Gates to Times Square, 1964-66 ; right: Theodore Halkin, Untitled, 1968

COURTESY WRIGHTWOOD 659; ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

UNDERGROUND CLASSIC

On ‘stepping into the unknown after everything changes’

The F*ggots and Their Fr*ends Between R*volutions brings a queer cult fable to the stage.

By ANNIE HOWARD

The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions, a poetic, richly illustrated book first self-published in 1977 by Larry Mitchell with illustrations by Ned Asta, is a text that is far grander than its small size would suggest. The work may be attributed to Mitchell and Asta as writer and illustrator, two individuals whose collaborative spirit illuminates an image of Ramrod, a decaying city full of decadent queers trying to escape repression and build a renewed, abundant world from within the shell of the old. Yet the book was not the product of two individual people. Instead, both operated as conduits of a much larger spirit of antiestablishment communal living that ﬂourished in the late 60s and 70s, collective energies permeating a story that sees the beauty of queer life in its many manifestations, wisdom from countless sources distilled into its spiritual essence.

The F*ggots and Their Fr*ends Between R*volutions—a poetic, vividly rendered adaptation of the book that’s set to stage its second run from July 25 to August 4 at Bramble Arts Loft in Andersonville—is made from the same vein of queer collaboration and determination. The project began with Jack Bowes, a theater director and playwright who grew up in Washington, D.C., and moved to Chicago in 2018. They made a call for collaborators last spring, hoping to adapt and devise a version of the play with a tight-knit collective of other queers.

Around the time the show wrapped its sold-out, one-weekend run at the Den Theatre last June as part of the Haven Chicago Guest House Project, the group learned that the project had received funding from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE), allowing it to return for another run. The timing couldn’t be any more urgent: as the clock ticks on yet another ghastly election season, one that will undoubtedly leave fresh scars on the

ater, which they’d studied at Boston University before moving to Chicago. Taken together, it was just the kind of personal and social reckoning that 2020 brought into the lives of so many people, stilled to a silence and forced to take a hard look at the assumptions we so readily fail to question in the normal swing of everyday life.

psyche of countless Chicagoans prepared to raise hell once the Democratic National Convention arrives in mid-August, the play reminds us that queers have decades of preparation for whatever comes next, stepping into the unknown after everything changes.

It’s mid-June, the height of Pride month, and the faggots are tired. It’s been one of the first true scorcher summer days, temperatures cresting in the 90s, and as cast members and others working on the play assemble in Bowes’s Lakeview apartment, lamenting nightmare service industry bosses and being catcalled for wearing little in the

oppressive heat, a sense of liberation seems at once far from view. But after a snacky dinner in Bowes’s kitchen, overlooked by a drawing of Draco, a Pomeranian that lives with Bowes and their partner, Kel, the group reassembles in the upstairs attic to read through the latest draft of the play, far di erent from the one the group ﬁrst showed last Pride. Bowes first imagined an adaptation after reading the book in 2020, when the lockdowns made them lose their job at the Chicago Athletic Association. Faggots became fundamental to a larger shift in political consciousness they underwent at the time, one that also led them to questioning their relationship to the-

“At the time, no one was doing theater because it was unsafe, and I had to ask myself: is this something I still want to do?” Bowes says. “The book shows that there’s another, queer way to be, and it was inherently theatrical, and it was really exciting. Otherwise, I’m not feeling like I know why we’re making theater, because it doesn’t feel responsive or reﬂective of this moment.”

Last year’s run, which was written, directed, and produced by Bowes, with writing duties shared by Cal Kreiner and Lia Dewey, emerged thanks to the close-knit collaboration of a core ﬁve-person cast, all of whom have returned to this year’s run. And while the obvious theatrical possibilities of the text were clear in the ﬁrst production, this year’s adaptation looks far di erent, with everyone involved bringing more of themselves into conversation with the book. If the production is less directly indebt-

The ensemble of The F*ggots and Their Fr*ends Between R*volutions in rehearsal

continued from p. 23

ed to the words on the page, it’s only because the collective has managed to better live out the aphoristic wisdom it suggests, internalized and put in conversation with one another and the crumbling world we inhabit.

“The last production was a pretty direct translation of the book, and trying to find the narrative structure within that. I love the book, and I see myself in all of the faggots and their friends, but also, my life looks di erent,” Sierra Kruse, one of the cast members and new cowriters, says. “The best part of the last show was the community that we were able to build together, including with the audience, and this time, we are presenting ourselves and our lives and how that relates to the book because we sense that common understanding.”

As the read-through continues, the reality of the deepening relationship between cast, text, and other inﬂuences becomes obvious, as di erent clarion voices of desperate, seething anger at the state of the world are interpolated into the work. These include older inspirations like the artist David Wojnarowicz, whose death from AIDS drove him into a bitter despondency. The words, “Every morning I awake in this killing machine called America and I am carrying a rage like a blood-filled egg,” from his memoir Close to the Knives, are recast to be about Ramrod.

enough to at least o er a bit of comic relief.

Yet as the group wraps its read-through and shares notes (which they call glimmers), writer and performer Cal Kreiner shares a stark observation: the men’s presence in the work is ever-present and all-encompassing, a threat that permeates to the core of each character desperately trying to escape their inﬂuence. “We ceased being one community and were shaped by the categories in the men’s minds. And the guns in their hands,” one of the characters laments, a recognition that the play’s admixture of queer archetypes—queer men who still hide their queerness in daily life, the faggots, the fairies, and the strong women— should have more in common, if not for the forced separations that oppression has placed upon them.

“The history of struggle is generational and cyclical, and I think we get so trapped into this fucking election cycle every four years.”

“Physically, they don’t appear on stage, unless we are pretending to be the man and they’re puppets, but the actual threat of the men is only spoken of,” Kreiner says. “At first, I thought it was really fun and interesting, but today I was like, ‘Oh, they’re fucking everywhere.’ Like, almost every scene is about them and what they’ve inﬂicted upon us.”

Another voice is Aaron Bushnell, the Air Force serviceman who self-immolated to protest the U.S.’s role in the ongoing genocide in Palestine in February. “I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest. . . . But this is what the ruling class has decided is normal,” Bushnell said just before his death; such a haunting, honest assessment of the state of a airs was devastating when it ﬁrst happened, and the words take on a new resonance within the play.

The key antagonist in the text is WarrenAnd-His-Fuckpole, elevated to rule over Ramrod, the ﬁctional city the characters inhabit, “because he is the most paranoid and therefore the most vicious man in the land.” Warren is only one of so many otherwise referred to only as the men, those who dominate anything they deem beneath them. In the ﬁrst iteration of the production, the men appeared sporadically on stage, their garish, cartoon villainy palpable

There’s lots of doom and gloom in the work, a vivid recognition that the worlds we wish to inhabit and the one we’re stuck in look far di erent. Yet, within the spirit of the original work, it’s clear that the intimacy developed amongst the crew is something special, a refuge from everything painful and pressing outside.

One cast member talks about how working on the play helped them accept their desire to begin transitioning; when another mentions a friend’s nearby farm as a place the group could decamp, the notion of everyone dropping out of city life for a bit shines with live possibility in conversation. On one of the longest days of the year, the slow fade from day to night comes in from skylights in the roof above us, and the trees overhead bend and sway, a gentle sashay that seems to sense the arch homosexuality spilling out just beneath.

In the introduction to a 2019 reissue of the book, Morgan Bassichis, a comedic performer who had also staged an adaptation of the work at the New Museum in New York in 2017, described the book as “part-fable,

Cal Kreiner REN PICCO-FREEMAN FOR CHICAGO READER

Sierra Kruse REN PICCO-FREEMAN FOR CHICAGO READER

Hugo Beckett REN PICCO-FREEMAN FOR CHICAGO READER

Jack Bowes

REN PICCO-FREEMAN FOR CHICAGO READER

River-Zoë REN PICCO-FREEMAN FOR CHICAGO READER

AC Rakotoniaina REN PICCO-FREEMAN FOR CHICAGO READER

7/25 -8/4: Thu-Sat 7: 30 PM, Sun 6 PM; Bramble Arts Loft, 5545 N. Clark, fatf24.eventbrite.com, $15 -$ 45

part-manifesto,” and elsewhere called it “something between a prayer book and a dream journal, dirty as hell, something to be passed around among friends.” For many years, that’s the only way you could access it: like the best kind of sacred but well-worn knowledge, it passed through queer circles as something lent, borrowed, xeroxed, and otherwise spoken about in reverent terms, spilling ink well beyond its initial three-edition, 10,000-copy run. The 2019 reprint was a way of honoring the spirits of so many who had inﬂuenced its creation and sustained circulation, including members of the collective that became Mitchell’s enduring tribe, the Lavender Hill commune, where many of the book’s ideas took root.

The members of Lavender Hill, a commune built on 80 acres in West Danby, New York, emerged over several years through other collective efforts in New York City and around Ithaca. (The group is not to be confused with Lavender Hill Mob, a radical direct-action group founded by organizer Martin “Marty” Robinson in 1986 to fight against government inaction towards the AIDS crisis.) As an instructor at Richmond College, which later became the College of Staten Island, Mitchell’s courses on community building, taught with an eye towards erasing hierarchies between instructor and student, germinated the seeds of these emergent communities.

together.”

The first attempt at the commune, known as 25 to 6 Baking and Trucking Society, began in 1969 and ran for about three years before

“This is a book about how to live with people, how people can help each other live, how we can make life better or bearable together.”

confronting a hard truth: the straight men had shirked o their responsibilities onto others living in the commune. After expelling the straight men within their ranks, the remaining members published a book, Great Gay in the

better world in our own time. That’s brought to bear near the end of the production, as the character of Heavenly Blue, played by AC Rakotoniaina, reﬂects bitterly on all the people that Ramrod has “crushed materially,” all the “generous people [that] lose their houses and get sick with no one to care for them.” In a play that has otherwise extolled the virtues of living simply, of needing little and reveling in the easy pleasures of communal living and loving, Heavenly Blue asks with anguish, “What are we supposed to be sharing if we have nothing to give?” It’s a heavy, grounding moment, one that Rakotoniaina hopes can

All these many years after it was ﬁrst written, Faggots retains its searing, visionary brilliance. F*ggots, in play form, honors the lofty goals of the book and its progenitors: as illustrator Ned Asta said in a 2019 conversation with Interview Magazine, “The intent of the book was that we could live together, we could ﬁght the establishment, we could make new things, and we could create a new world. I think people still want to do that.” In our perilous times, we need all the guidance we can get, and the lessons learned by Mitchell, Asta, and the others they built with are precisely the kind of well-worn, heartfelt wisdom that continues to ring true today.

In one of the book’s most memorable bits of insight, the strong women warn the faggots of two crucial truths: “The ﬁrst is that we will get our asses kicked. The second is that we will win.” Well-versed in the first, unaware of the second, the faggots come to learn from the women that “winning was like surviving, only better”; armed with this newfound knowledge, they come to understand that “getting your ass kicked and then winning elevated the entire enterprise of making revolution.”

Matt Brim, a queer studies professor who interviewed Mitchell and currently teaches at the College of Staten Island, says that while Mitchell made clear that he wrote the book on his own, initially intending it to be a children’s book, the work still emerged thanks to years of experience in communal life.

“By the time Larry published Faggots in 1977, he would have been living and thinking communally for the better part of a decade,” Brim says. “This is a book about how to live with people, how people can help each other live, how we can make life better or bearable

Morning, diagnosing the men using the “hippy ideology [as] a cover for privilege and power and laziness and irresponsibility.” This fracture worked to narrow the ranks of those who would then move on to founding the Lavender Hill commune in 1973, reflecting one of the book’s key themes: while anyone can defect from the ranks of the men and work with others towards collective liberation, the risk of power, privilege, and hierarchy is always something that can slip back into place.

There’s a hard truth to this history, and to the seemingly impossible work of building a

keep the focus on how much we’ve already lost, how painful it will be just to mourn the dead and take stock of the damage done.

“Right now, the pain I’m feeling is not that we’re not supposed to be here, but more from maintaining daily living and how it’s made worse by things on the grander scale,” Rakotoniaina says. “Doing dishes, navigating transit, all while witnessing loved ones’ rights being taken away across the country and around the world, that’s the tension that’s in the monologue. It’s being mired in the day-today while wanting more than that.”

To remain optimistic in this moment in history requires a stubbornness that often feels impossible. For most of us, already aware that we are having our asses kicked on a near-constant basis, the idea of a life lived outside constant duress seems utopian to an impossible degree, something we are perhaps lucky enough to see in our dreams, but slips from view the moment we open our eyes in the morning. For Bowes, this idea is deeply grounding: just because we must scan the horizon with searching eyes for a more hopeful future doesn’t diminish the belief that it will come in time, however di cult that search may be.

“I really appreciate the hope that this book gives me, maybe not hope, but perspective. The history of struggle is generational and cyclical, and I think we get so trapped into this fucking election cycle every four years,” Bowes says. “It’s actually gonna take so much longer than we think it is, and that idea that we’re gonna get our asses kicked, it’s like, well, we might not win in my lifetime. You know what I mean? But I do think that eventually we will win.” v

“The play reminds us that queers have decades of preparation for whatever comes next.” REN PICCO-FREEMAN FOR CHICAGO READER

THE FOOD & DRINK ISSUE

Cheese-en-scène

Themed movie menus that pair double or triple features with curated charcuterie

By DANIELLA MAZZIO

Many of my favorite movie memories are from my teenage years, right at the cusp of the streaming age, when mail-in discs and trips to Family Video coincided with Comcast VOD and a bare-bones Netflix digital queue. My friends and I would stock up on food at Jewel-Osco before a movie night, not just for the usual sleepover junk food fare, but to put together something that would pair well with our movies. I fondly recall spending an hour in my best friend Stefan’s kitchen trying to concoct the perfect mocktails (yes, mock tails) to accompany a longanticipated double feature of 2009’s (500) Days of Summer and 2004’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. We needed the perfect, light, summery ﬂavors to embody those bittersweet, manic pixie dream girl romances. Moonlight (2016) director Barry Jenkins once said in an interview with Bon Appétit , “When you cook for someone, this is a deliberate act of nurturing. This very simple thing is the currency of genuine intimacy.” I’ve been thinking about this lately, not just in regard to the sensitive closing act in Jenkins’s ﬁlm, but in how I share and express love through the act of personal curation—from baking an improvised summer solstice quiche for me and my husband to carefully putting together movie recommendation lists for my friends. If you’ve followed my previous Reader reporting, it should come as no surprise that I’m an ardent believer in the theatrical experience. But I don’t believe that at-home viewing is inherently at odds with the preservation of movie theaters. It’s like a well-prepared meal; there are some you enjoy at an unforgettable restaurant, and there are others you lovingly share in the intimacy of your home. Sure, there’s also the Hot Pockets you throw in the microwave because you might as well (after all, I voluntarily watched Argylle by myself at home), but not every meal has to be that way. Potent memories of sharing a movie with

Whether you’re a lifelong film buff or a passive streaming watcher, I’ve put together a selection of film, food, and drink pairings—the cheeseen-scène, if you will—to get you started on a memorable movie night of your own.

someone at home never pull me away from the theater but instead fundamentally drive my love for the medium and make the in-theater experience that much greater.

For cinephiles, the phrase “mise-en-scène” often appears when considering how a film establishes a sense of place, time, and atmosphere through its visuals. I believe miseen-scène can carry into the way the viewers themselves establish their setting at home. Whether you’re a lifelong film buff or a passive streaming watcher, I’ve put together a selection of ﬁlm, food, and drink pairings—the cheese-en-scène, if you will—to get you started on a memorable movie night of your own.

In our tenuous streaming era, almost every movie can at least be accessed using a Chicago Public Library card (either as physical media or through the free streaming service Hoopla). All movies are also available for free or to rent for about $4 on video on demand, o ering a double feature for less than the price of a movie ticket. For the menu, buy fresh and buy local wherever possible. Play around with flavors, make substitutions, or prepare an accompanying cooked meal for a nurturing night in.

Meats and cheeses: Burrata centerpiece, Irish cheddar, and prosciutto

Fruits: Chopped apples and sliced pears

Miscellaneous: Mustard, roasted nuts, and dried fruit

Served with crostini and soda bread

Wine: A crisp white or sparkling wine—Pinot Grigio if incorporating a milder cheddar, Chardonnay with a sharper, aged cheddar Beer: A stout or an IPA

Nonalcoholic: Experiment with an NA beer or prepare a sparkly cranberry-apple punch with fresh fruit and berries

Movies

Moonstruck (1987)

Dir. Norman Jewison (U.S.), PG, 102 min., free/ rent on VOD

While You Were Sleeping (1995)

Dir. by Jon Turteltaub (U.S.), PG, 103 min., Disney+, VOD

Nicolas “Longlegs” Cage’s performances are more often the subject of scrutiny than they are of awards conversations. What deﬁnes a classic Cage performance? His willingness to go big? Or is it the breakthrough moments where he goes small (like his outstanding turn in 2021’s Pig) that endear us to his abilities?

My favorites are where he gets to do both, exhibiting a sweetness coupled with mania that taps into the most primal urges of our id: the desire to have and to hold.

Cage’s performance in Moonstruck as Ronny, the troubled future brother-in-law of Loretta (Cher), is big, bold, and, yes, surprisingly sweet—as sweet as the glorious full

moon that hovers over New York City. Over on the third coast, Bill Pullman plays a prickly (sort of) future brother-in-law to Sandra Bullock’s Lucy. Brotherly resentments complicate the will-they-won’t-they tensions of both rom-coms. Hijinks, romantic overtures, and Cher and Bullock’s beautiful, voluminous hair abound, surrounded by pitch-perfect ensembles of nosy, multigenerational, working-class families that feel true to their respective cities (New York Italian and Chicago Irish).

A decadent plate of burrata serves as the moonlike centerpiece of this menu. If you’re feeling experimental, you can prepare your burrata with a mix of Italian and Irish flavors. Burrata, tomato, and prosciutto are nobrainers, but how about burrata with roasted cabbage and smoked fish? Head to All Together Now in Ukrainian Village and pick up a jar of Casa Forcello Pear Mostarda to bridge tart and sharp flavors (think horseradish) as punchy as any Cage performance. If you’re the one who keeps to themselves at family occasions, a stout and a glass of Few Spirits’ Cold Cut Bourbon Whiskey will help melt that steely facade.

Meats and cheeses: Soft-rind cheese, Mexican manchego, chorizo, and speck

Fruits: Black grapes, blood orange slices, and cherries

Miscellaneous: Mini baguette, dark chocolate

Optional: Thalia Ho’s recipe for fallen bitter chocolate orange cake

Wine: Sangria using medium-bodied red wine Cocktail: Paloma (tequila or mezcal, grapefruit juice, club soda, lime juice)

ANNA JO BECK FOR CHICAGO READER

THE FOOD & DRINK ISSUE

Nonalcoholic: Agua de Jamaica (hibiscus iced tea) with a touch of pomegranate juice

Movies

El espejo de la bruja (The Witch’s Mirror) (1962) Dir. Chano Urueta (Mexico), not rated, 76 min., Prime, free on VOD, unavailable through CPL or Hoopla

Carnival of Souls (1962)

Dir. Herk Harvey (U.S.), PG, 78 min., Max, free/ rent on VOD

I tend to stay up later than my husband, and out of politeness, I’ll watch a movie with the volume down once he’s asleep. But out of all the literal midnight movies I’ve put on, The Witch’s Mirror and Carnival of Souls are two movies that felt elevated by the way I watched them: tucked up in bed but eyeing every shadow, soft enough to fade into the sounds of the room, but loud enough that every line of dialogue and musical beat is a dreamlike whisper.

The hauntings of both ﬁlms aren’t remarkable on paper—your classic witches and ghouls—but the atmospheric eeriness and thrum of oppression as the women in both movies dance around and with Death offer much more than jumps and bumps in the night; they confuse the space between awake and dreams, lulling you before haunting you.

Rich flavors and a Gothic palette against candlelight may help you sleep better as you luxuriate in the sweet embrace of the occult. Cooking is optional, but if you have the time, a fallen chocolate cake, decadent with bitter cocoa and subtle orange, will seal your deal with the devil. Even a drizzle of chocolate and sea salt on blood orange slices provides an elevated treat. Dry, cured, salty meats and a tart concoction to drink will keep you under a nightlong spell.

Movies

But I’m a Cheerleader (1999)

Dir. Jamie Babbit (U.S.), R, 85 min., free/rent on VOD

The Watermelon Woman (1996)

Dir. Cheryl Dunye (U.S.), UR, 85 min., Max, VOD, unavailable through CPL or Hoopla

Kajillionaire (2020)

Dir. Miranda July (U.S.), R, 104 min., Peacock, VOD

We needed the perfect, light, summery flavors to embody those bittersweet, manic pixie dream girl romances.

Miranda July’s latest feature film, Kajillionaire , was an unfortunate victim of the pandemic, premiering January 2020 at Sundance to positive reviews that would lose momentum once the realities of COVID took hold. It’s a shame, as Kajillionaire shares quite a bit with sapphic classics that came before it, like But I’m a Cheerleader and The Watermelon Woman

All three films feature young women (re)contextualizing lesbian identity, as protagonists Megan (Natasha Lyonne), Cheryl (director Cheryl Dunye, playing a version of herself), and Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood)

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continued from p. 27

embark on new relationships while processing traumas related to family, homophobia, and racism. These explorations occur within heightened realities where conversion camps are high camp, laundromats are constantly overﬂowing with pink foam, and you can stop by the Center for Lesbian Information and Technology (CLIT).

Sit down with a date and a plate as sharp and sweet as this trio of satirical, colorful, and sexy indies. A variety of succulent fruits like berries, kiwis, and nectarines pair well with creamy cheeses like brie and a mild blue. Pick out your favorite wine to split and have some chocolates on hand for a flirty evening—perhaps Katherine Anne Confections’s champagne rose raspberry or seasonal raspberry elderﬂower tru es and a nice rosé or fruity beer. (I personally love Forbidden Root’s strawberry basil wheat beer or even a nice cider from Eris.) A drizzle of something sticky and a nice beeswax pillar from Bee-utiful Honey & Candles will keep the atmosphere going long after the credits roll.

Meats and cheeses: Smoked cheddar, edam or Babybel cheese, hard pork salami, and beef salami

Fruits and veggies: A mix of green and red grapes and red and green peppers

Miscellaneous: Pickles, nuts, pretzels (hard or soft), and spicy mustard

Beer: Your favorite cheap six-pack (or 30 rack!)

Cocktail: Chicago Handshake (can of Old Style and shot of Malört)

Nonalcoholic: Root beer ﬂoat

Movies

War of the Worlds (2005)

Dir. Steven Spielberg (U.S.), PG-13, 116 min., Paramount+, free/rent on VOD

Nope (2022)

Dir. Jordan Peele (U.S.), R, 130 min., Starz, VOD

It feels odd to say about a movie that’s just barely two years old, but Jordan Peele’s Nope feels both timeless yet underrated. The Spielberg influences in Peele’s take on the sci-fi/ adventure flick are apparent, with touches of Jaws (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) evident throughout without ever feeling like pastiche.

With an ending that has been maligned over the years, War of the Worlds is certainly not the most beloved Spielberg film. But Spielberg’s post-9/11 anxieties and his fascination with the family structure are the true heart of the matter—not the fate of the unfriendly tripod visitors. If Jurassic Park (1993) insists that “Life ﬁnds a way,” War of the Worlds suggests that it is also quite fragile; resilience is a choice, and while life always goes on, you may have to scratch and claw to ﬁnd a way.

Nope is equally all-American in its anxieties and grounded by the persistence of a singular family. Despite the desire of characters in both ﬁ lms to conquer the monster in front of them, their ultimate driving force is survival: survival against unpicky peopleeaters, opportunistic human beings, and overwhelming, collective paranoia and grief. Both movies are also massive—the kinds of movies you want at the highest volume—and the scale is matched by real-deal movie-star performances with sparks of horror and cascades of blood.

This no-frills menu is perfect for a classic, salt-of-the-earth movie night. If that cactus Icee from Nope really existed, it’d be a nonnegotiable addition, but a Parch nonalcoholic agave cocktail from Bendición Bottle Shop might do the trick.

as “Black,” played by Trevante Rhodes) has been carrying decades of yearning. If you haven’t seen it yet, I don’t wish to spoil too much, but we do end up on that note that Jenkins discussed with Bon Appétit : nurturing. A meal is prepared, and the ghosts of who Black once was—“Little” as a boy, “Chiron” as a teen—can ﬁ nally rest because someone is there to hold them. Chiron craves the love he could never quite have as his sexuality became a point of shame, isolation, and grief, but the love he receives is much greater than a romantic ﬂame for the one that got away. It is a love that is soft, that smells of summer, and that takes care of him.

The World of Us never leaves the heartbreaking days of youth, but nonetheless, the eternal ache of young vulnerability carries through. The heartbreak that follows the brief, inseparable friendship of two young outsiders is a platonic one, spurred by the casual cruelty of children that is at once cutting and deeply sad, where even the bullies carry an air of unspoken homelife tragedy.

Moonlight and The World of Us capture the visceral feeling of those sweet, dandelion wine memories from warm summers and the childlike worry that if you become small enough, you’ll disappear altogether. The cool rush of the ocean becomes a fantasy in both movies—the one place where a child can feel both weightless and held at the same time.

This menu embraces the warm, gentle innocence of those years of one’s life, with summery ﬂavors and spreadables that require you to handle with care. A slice of baguette, a spread of soft chevre (with a dash of lavender and honey), and a plum slice tastes like a hazy memory to me. Fruity, light beer makes for a good pairing (try Funkytown Brewery’s Summertime Chi), but I recommend embracing the nonalcoholic option here with hibiscus icedtea lemonade. Take your time preparing one of the dishes from either movie, and nurture yourself. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

ANNA JO BECK FOR CHICAGO READER

FREE CHICAGO

NOW PLAYING

R The Last Breath

Shark attack movies are inherently dishonest; sharks almost never kill humans, while humans kill about 100 million sharks a year. The whole genre is based on the lie that nature is more dangerous to us than we are to it, as if dentition is any match for fossil fuels and giant gillnets.

who shares the impact that Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s films had on him as a filmgoer and, later, a filmmaker.

If the movies defame sharks, though, at least the creatures get some ﬁlmic revenge—and the revenge is o en sweeter when the shark ﬁlm is at its most worthless. That’s the appeal of Joachim Hedén’s intermittently adequate low-budget genre exercise The Last Breath. A group of college friends reunite in the Caribbean, where old buddy Noah (Jack Parr) has just discovered a World War II wreck. The friends decide to dive and explore the ship . . which is where the sharks come in.

The acting is not great; the characters—a Wall Street asshole, a self-doubting clown, a doctor with a heart of gold, the old salt played by the late and sadly slumming Julian Sands—are all irritating cliches. They’re smug and tiresome and you want the sharks to get them and get it over with. And then, what do you know? The sharks get (at least some of) them.

Is it great art? No. Is it good art? Also no. But there is something satisfying about the blank, sleek, toothy justice of it—the cathartic ritual whereby we pretend (with indiﬀerent conviction) that we’ll pay in blood for what we’ve done to all the other creatures on the planet. —NOAH BERLATSKY R, 96 min. Limited release in theaters, wide release on VOD

RMade in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger

A celebration of the British duo who wrote, produced, and directed ﬁlms under the banner the Archers, Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger hits the bull’s-eye. Directed by David Hinton, it plays not so much as a documentary as it does a personal essay by narrator and on-camera guide Martin Scorsese,

Scorsese’s childhood asthma restricted him to hours watching movies on the family’s 13-inch black-and-white television set, which is where he first encountered Powell and Pressburger’s films, such as 1940’s The Thief of Bagdad. It is a testament to the power of their cinematic universe, Scorsese says, that even in a degraded and edited state, these films became an obsession for him. While it was French critics and fledgling directors who spearheaded the auteur movement that fostered appreciation of American auteurs for an emerging film school generation here—which included Scorsese—it was the future director of Mean Streets (1973) who shepherded a revival and reassessment of Powell’s 1960 psychological horror show, Peeping Tom, and pulled the director and his former partner out of obscurity. The two became friends, and Powell ended up marrying Scorsese’s longtime editor, Thelma Schoonmaker.

The film clips are keenly curated and—for the uninitiated, especially—will probably inspire a binge-watch of their masterpieces, including A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948), and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943). What elevates Made in England is Scorsese’s commentary on the connection between the Archers’ films and his own, such as the stories involving antihero outsiders, “broken people on the verge of explosion.” There is a straight line, he says, between Boris Lermontov in The Red Shoes and Travis Bickle in Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver. What also resonates with Scorsese is the duo’s insistence on making pictures their own way, with their “lush images, heightened emotions, shock and spectacle and realism.” He cites The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) as perhaps the ultimate testament of Powell and Pressburger’s vision of “all art is one,” a total cinema.

For lovers of ﬁlm looking to expand their cinematic horizons, Made in England is the stuﬀ fever dreams are made of. —DONALD LIEBENSON 131 min. Gene Siskel Film Center

continued from p. 29

Twisters

It’s going to suck you in. Lee Isaac Chung’s Twisters, filmed on 35 mm, breaks out of the dizzying whirlwind of flat-toned big-budget movies and, instead, offers a summer blockbuster with all the right ingredients. Its stars—Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones, and Anthony Ramos—overflow with superstar-making charisma. The story is unforgiving, making our leads appear vulnerable, and of course, the nominal twisters give us something to write home about. Still, the colossal storms and magnetic leads aren’t enough to elevate this film to the cult status of its 1996 predecessor. Above all, it’s far too serious.

A PhD candidate in rural Oklahoma’s Tornado Alley, Kate Cooper (Edgar-Jones), intends to tame a tornado with polymers. (Yes, the stuff that’s in diapers.) She hopes to corroborate her thesis by diving headfirst into the storm with a crew of young, keen tornado chasers, all of whom, except Javi (Ramos), are swept up in the immense swells of the first onscreen storm. One thing is sure: Twisters doesn’t dance around the real stakes.

Traumatized by the event, Kate abandons storm

chasing and her PhD thesis to work at a weather oﬃce in New York City. However, when a historic outbreak of tornadoes ravages Middle America, Javi reaches out for her help. The seemingly superpowered Kate is called back into action with no one better suited for the task.

There, she joins Javi’s crew of weather nerds—a direct contrast to the daredevil storm chasers led by Tyler (Powell), a cocky YouTube star who dons the name “Tornado Wrangler.” It’s a little on the nose for what Kate dreams to accomplish. Everything here is predestined and easy to read. Rivalry to romance. Cowardice to courage. A tempest turned tranquil.

It might suck viewers in, but it spits us back out.

Troubled by poor backstories, strange character motivations, and a soundtrack that appears AI-generated, this remake is still as dubious as its peers. It’s a fun summer blockbuster, one where we can tell where the money went at least a little, yet it doesn’t have nearly as much fun with itself as it could’ve (proven by the predecessor). Twisters is a powerful yet ultimately dissipating tornado, where its ephemeral impact is likely to come and go with the season. —MAXWELL RABB PG-13, 122 min. Wide release in theaters v

This will likely be the first and only time I write about a screening I didn’t attend. Last Thursday, David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) screened at the Music Box Theatre as part of the monthly Rated Q drag-screening series. I saw the film there many moons ago at a midnight screening, and I was appalled at how some people in the audience reacted during the scene where Dennis Hopper’s Frank assaults Isabella Rossellini’s Dorothy, drunkenly yelling and whooping it up as if what was happening onscreen was funny. Apparently, something similar happened during this most recent screening, to the point where both the theater and Rated Q host Ramona Slick issued statements denouncing the behavior.

I’ll stop here to note that none of this is the fault of the Music Box. I’ll also acknowledge that there are sometimes extenuating circumstances as to why a person might not always be a “perfect” moviegoer. But there is some behavior that’s inexcusable, and jovially laughing at abuse, even if rendered in a Lynchian fashion, is one such action.

Sometimes during screenings of older ﬁlms, viewers will laugh at aspects that are now anachronistic. This is also frustrating, as it’s often performative, less a genuine response to the ﬁlm in question and more an indication to those around you that you’re above whatever you’re watching, that it’s old and you’re new, and you know more than those silly people back then. The headline of a 2015 essay by Amy Nichols in LA Weekly , “Stop Laughing at Old Movies, You $@&%ing Hipsters,” more or less sums up my feelings on this phenomenon, though it’s more annoying than o ensive.

To laugh at abuse as if it’s a joke—not just as a response to it, but actively joining in, almost as if you’re another perpetrator relishing in the victim’s discomfort—goes far beyond merely chuckling at outdated special effects. It’s in-

triguing that as modern viewers increasingly demand greater “realism” through uncannily lifelike special e ects (with some ﬁlms going as far as digitally resurrecting deceased actors to reprise their roles) they often react with discomfort or even disrespect toward portrayals of life’s harshest realities. It’s a fascinating dissonance, really.

Speaking of special e ects, I saw Twisters in 4DX this weekend—a competent enough summer blockbuster at which it’s appropriate to laugh! Nothing will ever beat Jan de Bont’s original, but this certainly scratched an itch. Mark L. Smith’s script was generally overwrought, but I appreciate the way Lee Isaac Chung evokes landscape here as he did with Minari (2020), focusing on agrarian beauty in a way beﬁtting of a film about the awesomeness of nature. Mostly, though, I loved the chemistry among the main cast—Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, and Anthony Ramos—and the romance between the former pair. Simple enough reasons for liking a simple enough movie.

I did watch more sophisticated fare, including Jules Dassin’s Uptight (1968) on the Criterion Channel (it expires at the end of the month, so I recommend you check it out soon); Alfred E. Green’s The Jackie Robinson Story (1950), starring the baseball player himself, and John Cassavetes’s Minnie and Moskowitz (1971) on 35 millimeter, both presented by the Chicago Film Society; Agnieszka Holland’s debut feature Provincial Actors (1979), in advance of the rare film screening at Doc Films; and Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963) at the Music Box on 35 millimeter.

That which I didn’t see was apparently bad, but all that I did was really good. Until next time, moviegoers. —KAT SACHS v

The Moviegoer is the diary of a local ﬁlm bu , collecting the best of what Chicago’s independent and underground ﬁlm scene has to o er.

A still from Blue Velvet (1986) YOUTUBE VIA ELLE

THE FOOD & DRINK ISSUE

Bò kho in front, party in the back

Brandon Lee’s Internet.Hotspot series has turned his parents’ restaurant, Phố Việt, into a nightlife destination in the Argyle neighborhood.

By LEOR GALIL

Before last month, I would’ve been hard-pressed to tell you about a single Chicago concert I’d seen with an aquarium in the venue. But on Saturday, June 22, I went to a Vietnamese restaurant in Uptown to see Cincinnati rappers Pink Siifu and Turich Benjy wrap up their summer headlining tour. Phở Việt has a midsize ﬁsh tank along its long north wall, tucked behind the soundboard (which I’ve seen still in place when eating there on quiet nights). In the tiny foyer, you pass a wall-size ad for smoothies, and to get to the dance ﬂoor after hours, you walk to the back of the restaurant through a kind of corridor formed by empty dining tables.

That concert with Pink Siifu and Turich Benjy wasn’t the first at Phở Vi ệ t. It wasn’t even the ﬁrst that month: New Jersey dance producer Sjayy headlined the restaurant on June 14. Both shows were presented by Internet.Hotspot, a sporadic party series that opens the doors of Ph ở Việ t to buzzing rappers, experimental pop artists, and underground dance producers. Brandon Lee, who DJs as Fefe, founded Internet.Hotspot with two friends. They launched the series in February 2019 with a show whose four acts included a set from Fefe. These days Brandon runs Internet.Hotspot essentially alone. He’s the one with the “in” at Ph ở Vi ệ t: his parents own the restaurant (which opened at 4941 N. Broadway in 2007), and his father, Hi ề n, runs the kitchen. The stage and sound equipment were already in place, and Ph ở Vi ệ t has a Public Place of

Amusement license (city records show it was issued in 2015) that allows it to host ticketed events. Internet.Hotspot might look like the work of resourceful DIY promoters hoping to fly under the radar in a nontraditional space, but it’s all perfectly legal and aboveboard.

For the first few Internet.Hotspot shows, Brandon booked mainly emerging Chicago acts, often from within his network.

A July 2019 date with Uptown rapper Wemmy Mo, for instance, also included rap-fusion band Manwolves, whose drummer, Julian Freeman, works as a server at Phở Việt. “We were doing a bunch of random things to try to ﬁgure out

In late 2018, Brandon Lee invited a couple friends to a private party at Phở Việt. They helped him see the opportunity that was staring him in the face.

what really made it work,” Brandon says. Later that July, Internet.Hotspot hosted a show with arty rapper Adamn Killa and Laura Les of experimental pop duo 100 Gecs. When 100 Gecs returned to Chicago in December 2019 on a tour to support their breakout debut album, 1000 Gecs , they booked an official afterparty at Ph ở Vi ệ t. A few weeks later, when 100 Gecs dropped a remix of “Ringtone” with Kero Kero Bonito, Rico Nasty, and Charli XCX, it really hit Brandon what a big show he’d booked. “I remember, like, ‘There’s no way they had just played here and now they just dropped that song with all those artists on it,’” he says.

In February 2020, Internet.Hotspot celebrated its ﬁrst anniversary with a headlining set by Little Rock hip-hop phenom Kari Faux, copresented by tastemaking Chicago culture site These Days. That show caught the attention of Ben Moskow, then a Northwestern student who channeled his love of hip-hop into concert coverage for school radio station WNUR. That year he cofounded local collective Real Ones, a burgeoning media outlet turned promotion company, and in summer 2023 he ﬁnally made it to a show at Phở Việt—an uno cial Pitchfork Festival afterparty headlined by Detroit techno-rap crew HiTech. Ben first suggested an Internet.Hotspot booking this past December, when Travis Scott postponed his United Center date just hours before the show was scheduled to start. Ben got an email from an agent for tour opener Teezo Touchdown, who was looking to book a last-minute Chicago gig. Ben imagined him onstage at Phở Việt and reached out to Bran-

Fans wait in line outside Ph Vi t for the Internet.Hotspot show on June 22 with Pink Siifu and Turich Benjy. JOSH DRUDING FOR CHICAGO

don about it. Teezo ended up performing at Avondale Music Hall, but Ben and Brandon’s conversation planted the seed for a collaboration between Internet.Hotspot and Real Ones.

Earlier this year, when Pink Siifu announced his summer tour with Turich Benjy, Ben noticed that their only local show was at Do Division on June 2. Ben pitched Turich Benjy on routing the tour back through town a few weeks later, and he had his eyes on Phở Việt. “I went that route for that show because with a month’s notice, you’re not gonna get a lot of venues available on a Saturday,” Ben says. “And it turned out Siifu was actually at the HiTech show last summer.”

Real Ones have booked shows at DIY spaces and midsize venues, and they hosted Rich Robbins’s headining Metro gig a week before their collaboration with Internet.Hotpot. Phở Việt is the most distinctive venue they’ve used. The restaurant hosts banquets, karaoke parties, and weddings (including a wedding that Brandon worked just before the show I saw), but its calendar is never very full. That gives Brandon a lot of freedom to plan concerts whenever he wants to. Phở Việt also di ers from most traditional music venues in that it doesn’t have a talent buyer coordinating its bookings—nobody but Brandon is doing that work, which makes it easier for outside promoters such as Real Ones to pitch shows.

“Brandon is really, like, a one-man operation in many senses of the word,” Ben says. “He has people he’ll call—they’ll come in as independent contractors or be able to work the door. He’s got connections with security folks and all that. I think it’s very admirable and unique. I really hope that they can continue doing the shows in this capacity.”

In September 2022, Brandon moved to Brooklyn, where he works as a model. “The week of me moving out to New York,” he says, “somebody reached out to me: ‘Have you ever thought about modeling?’ I was like, ‘Not really.’”

Internet.Hotspot events bring Brandon back to Chicago several times a year. He’d prefer to throw more shows at Phở Việt, but it takes a lot of work and time for him to plan them from another city—that tends to limit the number of events. But he enjoys having a reason to visit his family and friends in Chicago, and he likes that Internet.Hotspot grounds him in the neighborhood he considers home.

“I think it’s made me a lot more appreciative of Uptown,” Brandon says. “I mean, we have the Green Mill, the Riviera, the Aragon, and stuff like that. Since I’ve been here, Uptown

THE FOOD & DRINK ISSUE

From top: Brandon Lee troubleshoots equipment onstage; the front row of the crowd; Blacknmyles, the DJ for Pink Siifu and Turich Benjy; Cincinnati

rapper Devin Burgess performs a support set. JOSH DRUDING FOR CHICAGO READER

THE FOOD & DRINK ISSUE

continued from p. 33

has changed so much. In the last 13, 14 years, I’ve seen so many restaurants close and open. My family’s done a great job of trying to keep the restaurant afloat. There’s been times where it’s been really bad, but they still somehow manage to ﬁnd a way to keep it going. I really enjoy having this restaurant be a staple of the neighborhood.”

Brandon is 26, and he was born in Chicago more than two decades after the 1975 fall of Saigon triggered an inﬂux of Vietnamese refugees to the city. Many settled in Uptown, and Chicago’s Vietnamese population had grown to roughly 10,000 by 1986, when the transformation of the Argyle neighborhood caught the eye of the New York Times It published a story titled “Vietnamese Reviving a Chicago Slum,” noting that about 50 family-run businesses had made Argyle a destination for the southeast Asian diaspora in Chicago. Jennifer Ph m, who cofounded the Celebrate Argyle community initiative in 2021, grew up in the neighborhood in the 1990s.

“It felt like Vietnam outside on Argyle Street,” Jennifer says. “People were outside all the time, on the corners; you saw the aunties and the uncles outside. Everyone knew everyone, and everyone kind of took care of each other. I mean, it was a dangerous neighborhood still—a lot of gang activity at the time—but I think because it was our home, it felt safe. It was a place where we could just be ourselves. And growing up in that, I always thought that that’s something that would exist for the rest of my life.”

Vietnamese- run nail salons opening across Chicagoland, which drew Vietnamese nail techs out of the Uptown enclave. Vietnamese workers and nail salons have had a special connection since the mid-1970s: according to a 2015 BBC story, actress Tippi Hedren brought her manicurist, Dusty Coots Butera, to a northern California refugee camp to teach 20 displaced Vietnamese women the art. This set o a power-

been demolished. As of January 2024, permits had been ﬁled to redevelop the property as a six-story apartment building with retail on the ground ﬂoor.

In 2021, the CTA worsened the neighborhood’s woes by closing the Argyle el station as part of the $2.1 billion Red and Purple Line modernization program. The temporary replacement station at Argyle later closed too, and a new replacement opened a couple blocks north in summer 2023. (The original station is scheduled to reopen next year.) CTA construction continues to depress traffic to the neighborhood, and it’s also permanently eliminated buildings that held businesses directly beneath the train tracks. According to a 2022 SunTimes analysis, Uptown’s Asian population had declined to 6,182 by 2020, a decrease of roughly 25 percent since 2000.

Jennifer says her parents opened the ﬁrst Vietnamese-owned business on the street: Mini Th ng Xá Pharmacy at 1069 W. Argyle, a half block east of the Red Line station. Th ng Xá means “mall” in Vietnamese, and for many years the pharmacy functioned as a one-stop shop for neighborhood folks. You could get your ﬁlm developed there, book trips through an in-house travel agency, rent videos, and shop for clothes, jewelry, CDs, and karaoke setups. “People were singing all the time,” Jennifer says, “trying out the systems.” For around 20 years now, the pharmacy and other medical services have been the sole focus of Mini Tx. In the 2000s, Jennifer saw the neighborhood begin to shift, which she attributes in part to rising rents that pushed Vietnamese families to relocate to the suburbs. She also noticed a new wave of

that would see Vietnamese-run salons come to dominate the industry. Their ballooning numbers would make nail care more widely available and a ordable, and by 2015, 51 percent of U.S. manicurists were of Vietnamese descent.

The changes Jennifer noticed continued into the 2010s. In 2020, her friend H c Tr n told the Sun-Times that at least two dozen businesses on the Argyle strip had shuttered or changed hands between 2015 and 2020, affected in no small part by construction in the mid-2010s to create its current “shared street” layout. The pandemic felled more businesses on Argyle, just like it did everywhere else—among them Hoa Nam Grocery, which shuttered in May 2020 and has since

QIdeas began last fall, and Haibayô held a soft opening on May 18 as part of the annual Argyle block party to celebrate Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

Jennifer has yet to make it to an Internet. Hotspot show, but she’s glad Brandon is booking them. “We’re not throwing as many nighttime parties as we used to,” she says. “I just love that they’re doing that—also, there’s so much overlap here, because I’ve gone to Phở Việt so many times in my life. My dad has actually performed at Phở Việt—he’s also a singer.”

HIn 2014, Jennifer’s dad considered selling Mini Tx. “My initial thought was, ‘No way!’ Then I started to have all these feelings come up,” she says. “I realized how much Argyle itself meant to me and how much it meant to everyone. I have a lot of friends that didn’t even live in the area, but their families would come over the weekend and pick up their medication, grocery shop, or go to the restaurants, because in many ways, Argyle Street was a place where people felt a sense of home. I started to kind of have these visualizations of what could happen if I’m able to do something about it.”

To keep Mini Tx open and in the family’s hands, Jennifer became co-owner. Her investment in the neighborhood deepened even further over the next decade. In 2019, she and H c Tr n launched the nonprofit Haibayô, a creative incubator that celebrates Argyle’s Asian heritage, with a series of informal popup events. They recently partnered with Ellen Duong, who inherited the plant shop QIdeas from her family in 2015, to build out a physical space for Haibayô that would include a cafe, bar, and business incubator. Construction at

iền Lee left Vietnam in 1984. He spent a week in Thailand, followed by six months in a refugee camp in the Philippines. The Cambodian Association sponsored his relocation to the U.S. and found him an apartment in Albany Park near Kedzie and Lawrence. He shared the apartment with his mother, his younger brother, his older brother, and his older brother’s wife and child. When Hiền settled in Chicago, he was 17 and barely spoke English. To help keep his family aﬂoat, he took a series of odd jobs, working for the longest stretch as a delivery driver behind the wheel of a semi-trailer truck. In 1994, he married a woman named Cháu he’d met on a trip home to Vietnam; she emigrated in 1996 and gave birth to Brandon the following year. Family life changed Hi ề n’s priorities. He became a stay-at-home dad after the birth of Brandon’s younger sister, Ste anie. Cháu was busy running a nail salon they’d opened in Lincolnwood. Brandon grew up in the West Ridge home where his parents still live. His dad or Hiền’s mother would usually cook for the family, mostly making Vietnamese dishes. “It’s been a really long time since he cooked for us in our home,” Brandon says. “Since we’ve had this restaurant, we always eat here now, basically.”

Hi ề n got into the restaurant business through an old boss from his truck-driving days. That boss had tried and failed to run a restaurant at 4941 N. Broadway. “He couldn’t make it,” Hiền says. “He called me to help him. I said, ‘OK.’ I had some money, and I gave back to him, ’cause when I worked for him, he paid me very well. So when he was down, I helped him; I took it over.” When Hiền began running the renamed Ph ở Việ t, he had no experience cooking in a restaurant.

“When I got here, I thought it would be easy, but it wasn’t,” Hi ề n says. “The first couple years, it was so tough. I almost gave up.” His friends would eat at the restaurant to show

Turich Benjy at Internet.Hotspot on June 22

JOSH DRUDING FOR CHICAGO READER

their support, and they offered him advice. “They told me the food’s not consistent,” Hiền says. “I hired people, they cooked, they didn’t show the other people how to cook. So some days it was OK, some days it was not OK. I ﬁgured out you had to be consistent to make it.” To ensure that consistency, Hi ề n decided he had to master the kitchen himself. Over the course of roughly three years, he learned the ins and outs of Vietnamese restaurant cooking from several of the cooks he’d hired. He now works with two other chefs in Ph ở Việt’s kitchen. The menu lists more than 200 items, and during my interview with Hi ền, he encourages me three times to try the food. Our conversation ends abruptly when he o ers to pour me some soup and walks into the kitchen to retrieve a small bowl of chicken phở

Growing up in West Ridge, Brandon didn’t feel quite at home. “I just wasn’t assimilated to the neighborhood as much,” he says. “But I felt super comfortable in Uptown, just ’cause there’s a lot of Vietnamese people everywhere.” After his father started running Phở Việt, Brandon went to Uptown whenever he could. He’d spend time at the restaurant, walk along the lake by himself or with friends, or hang out on nearby playgrounds. On unreasonably hot days, he’d shelter at the Uptown library branch and mess around on one of its computers. He’d sometimes steal video games from the Uptown Target and sell them to the since-shuttered

GameStop in Sun Plaza, a strip mall south of Phở Việ t on Broadway that’s now anchored by a Park to Shop Asian supermarket.

Brandon looked up to one of his dad’s employees, a twentysomething Black man who’d grown up in Uptown and often brought his best friend to Phở Việt. “They were basically my older brothers,” Brandon says, “and also my babysitters at the same time.” They introduced Brandon to hiphop, and by age 12 he was hooked. After school, he’d make a little fortress out of chairs in the back of Phở Việt and binge on BET.

THE FOOD & DRINK ISSUE

In high school, Brandon got the urge to try DJing. He and a friend split the cost of a DJ controller. “We didn’t have money like that, so he paid for half, I paid the other half,” Brandon says. “He’s like, ‘You take it these days home, and I take it these days and learn how to play it.’” In 2016, Brandon started DJing in public, usually spinning hip-hop at house parties.

That changed in winter 2018, when Brandon was a student at DePaul. “I remember it was during ﬁnals week,” he says. “I was sitting at the library, and I put on somebody’s Boiler Room set that had so much dance music. I was like, ‘Wait, I actually really like this—like, a lot.’” At the time, Brandon was 20 years old, which sharply curtailed his nightlife options.

The parties that SAIC and Columbia students threw in Pilsen and Bridgeport were of course open to people under 21, but they didn’t appeal to him much.

“I couldn’t go to most of the bars and clubs I really wanted to go to,” Brandon says. “I knew East Room was a crazy place. I always wanted to go to East Room, but by the time I was 21, East Room was on its last legs.” In late 2018, he invited a couple friends to a private party at Phở Việt. They helped him see the opportunity that was staring him in the face: he already had access to a stage and a sound system in a venue that could legally sell alcohol and host entertainment. His dad supported the idea from the jump—and he still does.

“I’m proud of him,” Hiền says. “He’s only 26, but he already knows how to make money.”

When I arrive at Ph ở Vi ệ t the day before the show with Pink Siifu and Turich Benjy, the Real Ones crew have just finished helping Brandon clean out a storage closet next to the stage. The idea is to give the performers somewhere to hang out that at least resembles a green room. After I interview Brandon, he takes me on an informal tour of Uptown.

We walk north to Argyle and head east toward the Red Line. Brandon points out the restaurants whose owners are tight with his dad, the long-lived Vietnamese businesses that have managed to stick around, and the places that have shuttered or boarded up. When we approach Mini

Tx, he mentions that his family goes there for medical appointments. Our tour ends on the corner of Sheridan and Argyle—we’re just east of Milly’s Pizza in the Pan, which opened its brick-and-mortar location in 2022, and Venezuelan restaurant El Rincón de Fabio, which opened early last year.

At the show the following night, I’m able to speak to Brandon only in passing. He never stays put for long. One moment, he’s serving drinks behind the circular bar; the next, he’s troubleshooting equipment onstage. He’s not performing at this concert, but as its host he’s determined to make it the kind of party he wishes he could’ve attended when he was younger. The Argyle neighborhood isn’t going to stop changing, and it’s di cult to argue that every change happening now is for the worse. Uptown is no longer the “slum” that the New York Times saw in 1986, and as the success of Internet. Hotspot demonstrates, it’s not a hard sell today to get people to visit the Argyle area for fun. One thing that remains to be seen—as businesses close and open, as people move out and in—is whether the neighborhood will keep the character that’s made it home to Vietnamese immigrants and their descendants for generations.

The ﬁrst fans trickle into Phở Việ t shortly after ten. They mostly stand around the perimeter of the room, as though they’re at a middle school dance and the DJ just threw on a slow jam. Around 10:15, Brandon gets onstage and takes the mike. “Come, move up,” he says. “Don’t be scared.” Around a dozen people follow his advice. Before long a dense crowd has gathered up front, ready to see what will happen next. v

m lgalil@chicagoreader.com

Concertgoers and staﬀ at Ph

MUSIC

Recommended and notable shows with

Lambrini Girls won’t let warmongers or transphobes stand in the way of fun

LAMBRINI GIRLS, EDGING, FREDDIE SUNSHINE Sat 7/27, 10 PM, Sleeping Village, 3734 W. Belmont, $22.66. 21+

“LAMBRINI GIRLS JUST wanna have fun.” Until 2015, that was the slogan for Lambrini, a pear cider popular in the UK, but it also describes the energy that Brighton rockers Lambrini Girls bring to their variety of punk. Much as rosé is associated with certain kinds of frivolous, unreﬁned American women, Lambrini is associated with chavettes—a British pejorative for loud, brash babes with a taste for streetwear. Lambrini Girls don’t give a fuck about being classy or polite; they’re here to party and ﬂip a neon-pink acrylic nail to the crown.

Much of Lambrini Girls’ catalog—a smattering of singles and a 2023 EP—targets sexism, taking enthusiastic swings at “lad culture” and rapists. But while they consistently espouse a “femmes to the front”–style ethos, they explore a variety of themes in their work. February single “God’s Country” sounds like an update to the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” in the style of electro-punk provocateur Peaches. In a singsong growl, Lambrini Girls highlight the cultural hangover of Thatcherism

and the metastasis of Britain’s far right. “All hail God’s country / Sorry bestie / But it’s giving austerity / Three lions / Close the borders / State is lawless / But God save the king.”

The Pistols were first and foremost brand ambassadors for a burgeoning punk attitude and aesthetic, though, and only secondarily political upstarts. By contrast, Lambrini Girls root their angry music in a robust, informed worldview. In their songs, tweets, and interviews, they’ve been outspoken against J.K. Rowling and other trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) and their transphobic influence on the British healthcare system. In March, they were among more than 100 bands who boycotted South by Southwest in protest of the festival’s ties to the U.S. army and numerous defense contractors profiting from the genocide in Palestine. The following month, they dropped out of Brighton festival the Great Escape for similar reasons. Rape culture? Transphobia? Genocide? Lambrini Girls just wanna have fun. —MICCO CAPORALE

FRIDAY26

Toshimaru Nakamura & Tetuzi Akiyama Superposition and Sarah Lutkenhaus open. 8 PM, Elastic Arts, 3429 W. Diversey #208, $15, $10 students. b

Toshimaru Nakamura and Tetuzi Akiyama probably wouldn’t say so themselves, but they can lay claim to having changed the sound of improvised music. Between 1998 and 2003 they ran two concert series, the Improvisation Meeting at Bar Aoyama and Meeting at Oﬀ Site, that established Tokyo as a center of an austere approach to spontaneous music making known variously as onkyo and electroacoustic improvisation; it’s characterized by sparse gestures, and it demands close listening from performers and audiences alike. Akiyama plays acoustic and electric guitars, and Nakamura plays no-input mixing board—by plugging a board’s output into its input, he turns it into an unpredictable feedback generator from which he coaxes static, sine tones, and abraded chirps. The musicians’ partnership has far outlived the scene they started, and for decades they’ve toured the world, separately and together, o en collaborating with experimental musicians such as Keith Rowe, Gene Coleman, John Butcher, Tom Carter, David Sylvian, and Alan Licht. The previous Chicago visit, in 2015, was as part of an ensemble with improvisers Jason Kahn and Bryan Eubanks. Individually, each can kick up quite a ruckus, but on their most recent duo recording, Idiomatic Expressionism (Ftarri, 2021), they prove that they can still make magnetic music while yielding most of the stage to negative space. Sharing tonight’s bill is Superposition, the local duo of multiinstrumentalists Todd A. Carter and Michael Hartman, who also make up two-thirds of long-running experimental ensemble TV Pow. Their sole recording, Glaciers (Kettle Hole, 2023), consists of a series of groove-adjacent drum and keyboard instrumentals, but the one time I saw them, they played noise on laptops—they’re definitely keeping TV Pow’s anything-goes spirit alive. Sound-collage artist Sarah Lutkenhaus opens the show. —BILL MEYER

Wicker Park Fest Day one See also Sat 7/27 and Sun 7/28. Goose Island Stage: Woolworthy (6 PM), Girl K (7 PM), Superdrag (8:15 PM). Wicker Park Fest Stage: Greg Freeman (5:15 PM), the Slaps (6:30 PM), Chin Up Chin Up (7:45 PM), La Luz (9 PM). Chi’tiva Stage: MC Zulu (5 PM), Shiloh (6 PM), DJ Boi Jeanius (6:30 PM), the Drastics (7 PM), DJ Illest (8 PM), DJ Papa G (8:30 PM). 5 PM–10 PM, Wicker Park at Milwaukee, Damen, and North, $10 suggested donation. Fb

Wicker Park Fest turns 20 this year, and it’s marking the occasion with one of the most compelling neighborhood festivals of the city’s outdoor music season. Headliners include Knoxville alt-rock darlings Superdrag, returning to Chicago for the ﬁrst time since 2009, and hometown R&B and neosoul sensation Jamila Woods. The three-day street fest packs in enough musical diversity to suit your mood, whether you’re in full-throttle party mode or just want to chill in the sun. Among the notable outof-towners are introspective New York soul singer

NICOLE OSRIN

Duendita, surfy west-coast neopsych band La Luz, and Mississippi rock experimenters MSpaint. Much of the lineup’s appeal comes from local talents, of course, including hip-hop darlings Rich Robbins and Rich Jones, instrumental roots-reggae outfit the Drastics (who released a self-titled LP in January), punky power-pop band Woolworthy, and psychedelic cumbia and chica crew Chicha Roots. And in a welcome blast from the past, indie rockers Chin Up Chin Up, a favorite Chicago underground band throughout the 2000s, reunite for their ﬁrst show in 15 years. Sunday’s programming on the Chi’tiva Stage, hosted by WBEZ under the name “The Home of House,” celebrates four decades of Chicago house music with an unassailable crew headlined by DJ Chip E., who helped pioneer the style as a young DJ in the mid-80s. The bill also includes DJ Psycho-Bitch, Ron Carroll, DJ Lady D, and techno master Microdot paying tribute to inﬂuential Chicago DJ and producer Paul Johnson, who died from complications of COVID-19 in 2021. —JAMIE LUDWIG

MUSIC

SATURDAY27

Lambrini Girls See Pick of the Week on page 36. Edging and Freddie Sunshine open. 10 PM, Sleeping Village, 3734 W. Belmont, $22.66. 21+

Wicker Park Fest day two See Fri 7/26.

Goose Island Stage: Modern Dairy (1:30 PM), Rich Robbins (2:30 PM), Rich Jones (3:30 PM), Jovan Landry (4:45 PM), Lé Bump (6 PM), Duendita (7:30 PM), Jamila Woods (8:45 PM). Wicker Park Fest Stage: 606 Open Mic Hip Hop (4:30 PM), Steinza (5:45 PM), Capital Soirée (6:45 PM), Jonah Kagen (7:45 PM), Fiji Blue (9 PM). Chi’tiva Stage: School of Rock Chicago (12 PM), Agua de Rosas (3 PM), Honey Lucio (5 PM), Chicha Roots (6:30 PM), Future Rootz (7:30 PM), Deejay Alicia (9 PM). Noon–10 PM, Wicker Park at Milwaukee, Damen, and North, $10 suggested donation. Fb

SUNDAY28

Wicker Park Fest day three See Fri 7/26. Goose Island Stage: School of Rock Chicago West (12 PM), Thank You, I’m Sorry (2:15 PM), Hello Mary (3:15 PM), Turquoise (4:15 PM), Teen Mortgage (5:45 PM), MSpaint (7:15 PM), Citizen (9 PM). Wicker Park Fest Stage: Aaron & the Lord (4:30 PM), Marina City (5:30 PM), Mike Mains & the Branches (6:30 PM), Stolen Gin (7:45 PM), the Felice Brothers (9 PM). Chi’tiva Stage: Aaron Chase B2B Rondell Adams (2:30 PM), Czboogie (3:30 PM), DJ Psycho-Bitch (4:30 PM), Ron Carroll (5:30 PM), DJ Lady D (6:30 PM), Microdot (7:30 PM), Chip E. (8:45 PM). Noon–10 PM, Wicker Park at Milwaukee, Damen, and North, $10 suggested donation. Fb

Superdrag headline the Goose Island Stage at Wicker Park Fest on Friday. JASON CANTRELL

Jamila Woods headlines the Goose Island Stage at Wicker Park Fest on Saturday. ELIZABETH DE LA PIEDRA

Fiji Blue headlines the Wicker Park Fest Stage on Saturday. COURTESY THE ARTIST

MUSIC

TUESDAY30

Full Body 2 Diiv headline; Horse Jumper of Love and Full Body 2 open. 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $32, balcony and opera boxes sold out. 17+

Of all the emerging bands nourishing today’s shoegaze resurgence, Philadelphia trio Full Body 2 best use the style’s amniotic atmospheres to evoke the dreamlike draw that the screens of our devices can have. The thrumming “Sprite Ocarina” is alternately spellbinding and overwhelming, just like spending all day online; guitarist-vocalist Dylan Vaisey whispers about being transﬁxed by a home screen, his voice floating amid gauzily reverberant guitar, shimmering synths, and a whirlwind of drum ’n’ bass percussion. With “Sprite Ocarina,” Full Body 2 also acknowledge the saturation of our culture by video games: the song shares its name with a transportation device from the .hack series of massively multiplayer online RPGs, and its discombobulating eﬀect feels like losing track of the hours while gaming.

Full Body 2’s unrelentingly propulsive percussion feels like a nod to video-game culture’s inﬂuence on the shape of contemporary underground breakcore. “Sprite Ocarina” appears on Epcot, their 2021 split with Philadelphia experimental shoegaze group They Are Gutting a Body of Water. TAGABOW (whose leader, Douglas Dulgarian, founded cult label Julia’s War) have a similar so spot for breakcore percussion, and along with Full Body 2 they’re part of the electronic collective DX Legacy. In 2022, the collective issued a compilation of video-game soundtrack remixes called Open Beta that includes songs from both bands.

Full Body 2’s output to date also includes a couple demos, a single, a cover of “Sanctuary” from the 2005 video game Kingdom Hearts II , and last year’s self-released EP Inﬁnity Signature. On the EP, their blend of somnambulant shoegaze and fran-

tic electronics feels blurrier than before. It’s obvious when drummer Jack Chaﬀer consults his sampler for a blitz of synthetic beats, of course, but at other moments it’s harder to tell which well Full Body 2 are drawing from. When Vaisey and bassistvocalist Cassidy Rose Hammond harmonize on “Nokia Login,” their dazed melody splits the difference between My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless and gentle, whimsical Zelda score music, creating something beautiful that belongs to neither world.

—LEOR GALIL

Mountain Movers Spiral Galaxy (performing as a four-piece with Drazek Fuscaldo) and SiP open. 8 PM, Cafe Mustache, 2313 N. Milwaukee, $5–$10 suggested donation. 21+

No reasonable person would describe the COVID pandemic as anything other than a catastrophe, but it’s important to look for silver linings—and lockdown gave some musicians a chance to try something different. Mountain Movers, a psychedelic quartet from New Haven, Connecticut, released the double LP Walking After Dark through local label Trouble in Mind in May, and without the band’s enforced sabbatical from the stage, it might have been a very different record. Mountain Movers formed in the mid-2000s and around a decade later solidified their current lineup around singersongwriter Dan Greene, lead guitarist Kryssi Battalene, bassist Rick Omonte, and drummer Ross Menze. Since then, the band’s MO on record and in concert has been to let their songs loose in a storm of surging rhythms, terse electric-guitar riffs, and roiling feedback. But when clubs closed down, Mountain Movers retreated to their rehearsal room, where they started experimenting with acoustic instruments, synthesizers, drum machines, and hand drums. Greene’s distanced, observational lyrics and laconic singing adapt well to the languid, low-key settings that resulted, and much of Walking A er Dark is given over to spacey instrumentals that will short circuit your sense of the passage of time. This

Full Body 2 NICK PEDRO

continued from p. 37

concert is Mountain Movers’ first Chicago gig in five years, and they’ve invited some like-minded locals to join them. Trance-oriented solo organ act SiP plays first, followed by a collaborative four-piece set uniting two duos: the space-themed Spiral Galaxy (aka flutist Sarah Gossett and multi-instrumentalist and Reader contributor Steve Krakow) and the cosmically jazzy Drazek Fuscaldo. —BILL MEYER

WEDNESDAY31

Fcukers 8:30 PM, Sleeping Village, 3734 W. Belmont, $24.72. 21+

The hype around the Dare a couple years ago has made me skeptical of (if not hostile to) any emerging New York City indie artist praised by the few outlets in the city that still care. All I heard at the time was “microwave-dinner version of something on DFA, but maybe a little problematic.” Perhaps it’s unfair of me to dismiss a musician just because they can aﬀord to live in Manhattan and appear inclined to make “indie sleaze” a thing. But nobody has persuaded me to reassess my biases—nobody, that is, except NYC trio Fcukers. They’ve released a handful of tracks whose whimsical, big-tent dance pop borrows from hard-edged early-2000s electroclash as a starting point, rather than trying to duplicate it wholesale.

So far this year Fcukers have dropped two sparse, effervescent songs, May’s “Bon Bon” and July’s “Homie Don’t Shake.” Their declarative percussion sounds like it could break the tracks in half, and Shanny Wise’s dry vocals manage to be chilly and uninflected but simultaneously alluring. That austere aesthetic ties the two tracks together even as they take off in radically different directions. “Bon Bon” is all late-night grime, like it’s been dunked in a curbside puddle for extra ﬂavor, while “Homie Don’t Shake” combines elegant disco ﬂourishes with swaggering, fuzzy guitars straight out of Fatboy Slim’s

MUSIC

playbook. In September, Ninja Tune imprint Technicolour will put out a Fcukers EP called Baggy$$ which will include both of these singles. Even if the four additional tracks on Baggy$$ are merely serviceable, it already seems like a lock to be one of the most memorable EPs of the year. —LEOR GALIL

Locrian Bottomed and Aseethe open. 8 PM, Cobra Lounge, 235 N. Ashland, $24.72. 17+

Metal music often exists at an odd intersection between cathartic, lowbrow lunkhead aggression and adventurous arty abstraction. Since the mid2000s, the members of Locrian—vocalist and synthesizer player Terence Hannum, guitarist André Foisy, and drummer Steven Hess—have been howling and wandering back and forth through the experimental end of that dichotomous terrain. The 2010 record The Crystal World (Utech)—arguably their signature recording—shifts between drony doom and ambient soundscapes that sound like the work of an evil Brian Eno. Other projects, such as their self- titled 2012 collaboration with iconoclastic German sound explorer Christoph Heemann for Texas label Handmade Birds, consist of vaguely industrial noise art that could be outtakes from the score to David Lynch’s Eraserhead By comparison, Locrian’s latest release, April’s End Terrain (Profound Lore), is better calibrated for headbanging. On opener “Chronoscapes,” Hess thumps out something like a beat, and Hannum screams in a throat-shredding metal style. But synths swell out from the supposed structure, creating a sweeping, swelling soundtrack that’s more Sigur Rós than Black Sabbath. “In the Throes of Petrification” embraces Locrian’s prog influences: its spiky, noodling hook, which recalls King Crimson, alternates with soaring washes of electronics and an interjection of textured feedback that would ﬁt nicely on a harsh noise wall record. Nearly two decades into their career, Locrian remain committed to keeping metal weird. —NOAH BERLATSKY v

Locrian PHOTO BY ELENA VOLKOVA AND MODIFIED BY NICOL ELTZROTH

GOSSIP WOLF

CHICAGO’S NEWEST INDEPENDENT vinyl shop, Bridgeport Records, opened its doors on July 12 at 3336 S. Halsted. The store is the brainchild of veteran deep-house DJ and producer Vick Lavender and former union leader Jerry Morrison , who’ve both spent decades in the house-music scene but connected for the first time only a few years ago. Lavender founded Sophisticado Recordings in the mid-2000s, and Morrison spent 22 years with the Service Employees International Union, where he played a major role building labor power in Illinois.

Morrison secured the Bridgeport Records storefront in early May, while Lavender was traveling to a gig in Tbilisi, Georgia. “He said, ‘Vick, I found a space,’” Lavender says. “I came back and this place is damn near built out. I was like, ‘Whoa.’ He wasn’t kidding around. Jerry entrusted me with cultivating and ordering . . . I would say 75 percent of the music.” Lavender says roughly half the stock is new; the shop sells jazz, hip-hop, soul, alternative rock (with a special section for Wax Trax!), and dance music from a heap of subgenres.

Lavender paid special attention to deep house. “I don’t think that that genre has been fairly represented here—artists like myself, Ron Trent, Glenn Underground, Anthony Nicholson,” Lavender says. “I wanted to create a space where deephouse artists got a fair look.”

Bridgeport Records sells visual art too—Morrison’s son, Joe, who studied fine arts at SAIC, helps source the artwork.

A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene

HEART OF CHICAGO SOUL CLUB celebrates its first anniversary at Color Club on Saturday, July 27. Despite the collective’s short history, its members have deep roots in Chicago.

Cofounder Debbie Benjamin-Koller (aka DJ Debbie ) got hooked on mod culture in the 1980s. She befriended Katja-Anna Garza (who spins as Kat ) at the regular mod night at Medusa’s, and in 1987 she landed her ﬁrst gig, in the dance room at Circuits. She started spinning at the Artful Dodger too, but in the mid-90s she le the scene to have a family. She got reacquainted around 2010, a er DJ Jordan Cinco introduced her to Windy City Soul Club. In 2018, Cinco and Benjamin-Koller

was coming to town, and we said, ‘You know what? Now or never.’” On Saturday, July 29, 2023, the women launched Heart of Chicago Soul Club with a packed night at Color Club. In the year since, Benjamin-Koller has traveled to the UK to spin northern soul in the land that gave the scene its name.

Saturday’s anniversary party starts at 8 PM with a quick tutorial in northern-soul dance by Miss Wolﬀ ’s Jiving School—though BenjaminKoller stresses that you don’t need to know any moves to get down. Tickets cost $15.

Bridgeport Records is across Halsted from Let’s Boogie Records & Tapes and just north of the Ramova Theatre. “Being a block and a half down the street from the Ramova was the ﬁnal selling point,” Morrison says. “We already have a relationship with them where we can do cross-promotion.”

Bridgeport Records’ soft opening was the day before the Chosen Few Picnic, and the shop’s emphasis on dance music helped it draw a big crowd that ﬁrst weekend—among the customers was Spiritual Life Music label founder Joe Claussell, a longtime supporter of Lavender’s who was performing at the picnic.

“We probably sold 35 percent of our inventory in three days,” Morrison says. “So Vick has been furiously reordering.” Current hours at Bridgeport Records are noon till 6 PM Sundays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays and 10 AM till 8 PM Fridays and Saturdays.

launched All Mod Chicago as a Facebook group, then branched out into events with Kat and Ricki Friedmann (aka Rockin’ Ricki).

“During the pandemic, we had DJs in my yard and were doing livestreams,” BenjaminKoller says. “We caught the eye of people in the UK who were northern-soul veterans from the 60s and 70s and became very friendly with them.” The collective befriended other far-ﬂung DJs (including Cher Gavel Gingras, aka DJ Cher from Toronto’s Slow Fizz) and a er lockdown began spinning Sunday a ernoons at Golden Dagger.

“We’re like, ‘Wow, people are really loving this on a Sunday a ernoon,’” Benjamin-Koller says. “We decided that we were gonna try to do a new soul club, and it was women led: Ricki, Kat, myself. Later on, we brought on Syreeta Garcia. We knew Cher from Toronto

CHICAGO INDIE-ROCK DUO Berta Bigtoe impressed Gossip Wolf in 2020 with a collection of songs they’d written and recorded in a day. Since then, multiinstrumentalists and vocalists Ben Astrachan and Austin Koenigstein have focused on the solo projects Astrachan and Smushie . But on Tuesday, July 30, Berta Bigtoe self- release their first proper album, Imagination, Love, and Courage, whose giddy, playful spin on psych-tinged roots rock makes it perfect for summer. Koenigstein and Astrachan met in in the mid-2010s in an a cappella group at Brandeis University. They wrote what they consider the first Berta Bigtoe song in late 2016. Their initial demos, 2018’s The Gap (Demos) @ Rat City , are named for the Allston neighborhood of Boston, where they recorded part of them. “There was no AC,” Koenigstein says. “It was, like, 95 degrees, and we’d be wearing just our underwear.”

“Which we somehow still do,” Astrachan adds.

The duo soon set their eyes on Chicago, drawn partly by the city’s music scene. They moved here in 2019. “It seemed like such a unique moment musically,” Koenigstein says. “I don’t think he and I find ourselves in the position of taking notes from that particular time anymore, but it got us oﬀ our asses.”

To record Imagination, Love, and Courage, Berta Bigtoe decamped to Tennessee for six days. “We’ve talked about how we want to stay in cabins elsewhere and bring our gear,” Astrachan says. “Spend ﬁve days here, write an album, it’s done.” —LEOR GALIL

Bridgeport Records cofounder Vick Lavender LEOR GALIL

JOBS

Health Care Service Corporation seeks Business Analyst (Chicago, IL) to work as a liaison among stakeholders to elicit, analyze, communicate and validate requirements for changes to business processes, policies and information systems. REQS: This position reqs a Bach deg, or forgn equiv, in Tech or s in or a rel + 2 Yrs of exp as a proj mgr, sys analyst, or a rel position. Telecommuting permitted. Applicants who are interested in this position should submit a complete resume in English to hrciapp@bcbsil.com, search [Business Analyst / R0026599. EOE].

Lead Software Engineer Relativity (Chicago, IL) seeks Lead Software Engineer to provide tech. expertise on Core Toolchain team’s product architecture & mentor teammates. Remote work option from anywhere in the U.S. Submit resumes to Recruiting@relativity. com, to be considered, ref. Job ID: 24-9005 in the subject line.

Lead iOS Engineer Position – Fortune Brands Innovations Fortune Brands Innovations Group, Inc. is seeking a Lead iOS Engineer in Deerfield, IL with the following requirements: Master’s or foreign degree equivalent in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Software/ Computer Engineering, or related and 3 years of experience with mobile applications development OR Bachelor’s or foreign degree equivalent in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Software/Computer Engineering, or related and 5 years of experience with mobile applications development. Required skills: Experience above must include 3 years with iOS development. Experience above must include 3 years developing with Swift and Objective-C. Experience above must include 1 year with mobile databases: Realm and CoreData. Experience above must include 1 year developing UX using Auto Layout and Storyboard. Background developing with REST APIs. Experience above must include 3 years providing ongoing quality assurance testing. Ability to telecommute with manager approval; can live anywhere in the US. Company headquarters in Deerfield, IL. Anyone interested in this position may apply at https://www.fbhs.com/ careers and search for job: Lead iOS Engineer.

Electrical Engineer Position – Fortune Brands Innovations Fortune Brands Innovations Group, Inc. is seeking an Electrical Engineer in Deerfield, IL with the following requirements: Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering or relate el or orei n e ivalent degree PLUS 3 years of related experience OR Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering or relate el or orei n equivalent degree PLUS 5 years of related experience. Required skills: 3 years of experience providing engineering support to manufacturing team for new and existing products. 1 year of experience using C programming language in embedded system content. 3 years of experience with electronic circuit design for consumer products. 2 years of experience designing for Bluetooth Low Energy, WiFi radio physical layer and radio frequency front end (antennas & transmission line). 3 years of experience with mixed-signal design: interface with video imaging sensors, passive infrared sensors, infrared light emitting diodes, micro electrical/ mechanical systems devices, and onboard radios. 2 years of experience in the design of direct current interface in embedded systems. Minimum of 2 product PCBAs with embedded system and radio functionality to market while owning the board bringup, plus any rework and revisions. May work from home up to 3 days per week or more if required; 20% travel required; can live anywhere in the US. Company headquarters in Deerfield, IL. Anyone interested in this position may apply at https://www.fbhs.com/ careers and search for job: Electrical Engineer.

Sr. Director, Enterprise Architecture Leader Position – Fortune Brands Innovations Fortune Brands Innovations Group, Inc. is seeking a Sr Director, Enterprise Arc itect re in eer el , with the following requirements: Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology (IT), Engineering (Eng.) or relate el or orei n equivalent degree. 10 years related experience. Required skills: Determine strategic roadmap for the Digital technology platforms (CMS, CRM, Cloud systems, HRIS, RWD, Automation & Integration) by leading end to en plannin , nancial budgeting & control, RFP, SOW review, contract negotiations and program execution (4 yrs); Apply emerging technologies, AI trends to execute an

extensive AI business strategy, including leading and mentoring a team of AI specialists engaged in diverse AI projects (1 yr); Run Digital CoE & Digital Factories and prioritize projects based on business impact, resource availability, and risk assessments (2 yrs); Provide System Analysis, Data analysis, Business modeling using UML (Enterprise Architect), Agile product lifecycle management (4 yrs); Implement full life cycle in Microsoft .NET projects including architecting web applications, using ASP.NET [asp.net], MVC, Entity Framework, Web Services with C# and Microsoft .NET frameworks (2.0, 3.5 and 4.0) (8yrs); Work on the .NET technology stack including C#, VB.NET, MVC , LINQ, EF , jQuery, XML, VC.NET 2010, WCF, REST,AJAX(2 yrs); Work on Microsoft SQL Server, Sitecore, SharePoint, Salesforce, UiPath, Boomi, Open AI based business process automation platforms, Azure, and eCommerce platforms (2 yrs). Periodic travel may be required to various unanticipated worksites in the US; individual must live within normal commuting distance of co headquarters in eer el , o pany ea arters in eer el , IL Anyone interested in this position may apply at https://www.fbhs. com/careers and search for job: Sr Director, Enterprise Architecture.

Sr. Manager, Enterprise Architecture Position – Fortune Brands Innovations Fortune Brands Innovations Group, Inc. is seeking a Sr. Manager, Enterprise Architecture in Deerfield, IL with the following requirements: Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Information Technology, Information Systems or related field or foreign equivalent degree. 7 years related experience. Required skills: Lead design, build, and complete testing phase of software application development by performing gap analysis on current and future state business processes and align to best practices in work areas related to Integrations, Ecommerce, Enterprise Resource Planning, Automation, Infrastructure, Cloud Computing, IOT, EDI, BI and Analytics (7 yrs); Design and develop Oracle ERP application by using PL/ SQL, SQL Plus, Forms, eports, or ow iler, BI Publisher, and OA Framework, and SOA Gateway/Suite, along with configuration and setups for AOL module (7 yrs); Conducts research into new technologies, including tools, compo-

nents, and frameworks by producing training and documentation in relation to Web development, Digital Tools, Integration tools, Ecommerce, Enterprise Resource Planning, Automation, Infrastructure, Cloud Computing, IOT, EDI, BI and Analytics (4 yrs); Support design, evelop ent an conuration in the following ERP software application Account Receivables, General Ledger, Order Management, Inventory, Purchasing, Trading Community Architecture (TCA), Human Resources Management System (HRMS), Application Object Library (AOL), Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), E Commerce Gateway, Work In Progress(WIP) and Bill of Materials (5 yrs). Telecommuting allowed; can live anywhere in the US except CA, MT, OR. Company headquarters in Deerfield, IL. Eligibility for hire in any state except CA, MT, OR. Anyone interested in this position may apply at https://www.fbhs.com/ careers and search for job: Sr. Manager, Enterprise Architecture.

Principal Mechanical Engineer Screen emerging tech, demo products/services in pilot projects, transition findings into measures for natural gas and electric utility. Duties: obtain info needed for emerging tech due diligence process; lead manufacturers, contractors, users in pilots; lead/assist in design/execution o la an el e er in tech pilots, incl data acquisition/analysis; design mech solutions, incl eval n er la an el environments; resolve project level issues; become an expert for emerging tech; develop tech understanding, grasp of economics, and market awareness for emerging tech; coordinate w in-house contracting, purchasing, and accounting. Reqd: MS in Mech Eng w thesis or comp research publication in the energy, thermodynamics, or fluids; 2 yrs exp w instrumentation and data acquisition systems for field demonstrations and audits, analytical assessments and modeling of energy saving tech for res/comm/indust buildings incl HVAC and heat recovery, and project management; 1 yr exp in utility energy efficiency programs focused on IL or CA, incl development and execution of pilot studies and workpaper development. Exp may be concurrent. Must have perm US work auth. Dir inquires to Institute of Gas Technology, 1700 S. Mount Prospect Rd., Des Plaines, IL 60018, Attn: A. Carter, HR.

Director of Advanced Technology Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. in Chicago, IL seeks a Director of Advanced Technology to build and lead engineers in developing advanced software technology solutions for dozens of products created by Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster. Must have a Master’s degree in Computer Science or relate pl s ve (5) years of experience in job the offered, Staff Data Scientist, AI Product Manager, Machine Learning Engineer Lead, AI Architect or related. Must have experience with: (1) Software development principles, best practices, and methodologies is essential. (2) Database technologies, including designing and optimizing database schemas, writing efficient SQL queries, and ensuring data integrity and security. (3) Cloud computing platforms, Amazon Web Services (AWS) or similar. (4) Strong leadership skills to contribute to the formulation of the technical strategy and roadmap for advanced technologies and effectively lead a team of engineers in the development of advanced software technology solutions including providing guidance, setting goals, managing resources, and fostering a collaborative work environment. (5) All aspects of product development, including requirements gathering, design, implementation, testing, and deployment. (6) Strong analytical and problem-solving skills to address complex software development challenges and make data-driven decisions. (7) Lead and actively participate in research pro ects relate to rticial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Natural Language Processing based upon in-depth knowledge and practical e perience wit rti cial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Natural Language Processing including the various algorithms, models, techniques, and frameworks used in these domains. (8) NLP concepts and techniques that includes Natural Language Processing, Natural Language Understanding, Natural Language Generation and evaluation metric. Send resumes to staffing@eb.com, Attn Carmen Pagan

Senior Accountant Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. in Chicago, IL seeks a Senior Accountant to research and apply U.S. GAAP and IFRS technical accounting guidance or other accounting standards to support the accounting treatment of transactions, particularly when these may differ from local/statutory

reporting requirements. Must have a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting or related plus 5 years of experience in job offered, accountant or related occupation. Must have experience (1) Consolidating foreign entities with different currencies. (2) Compiling global consolidating nancial state ents Knowledge with U.S. GAAP and IFRS technical accounting guidance or other accounting standards. (4) Preparing global consolidating nancial state ents wit at least iﬀ erent ssidiaries and in at least 5 different currencies, including intercompany reconciliations and elimination entries. (5) Reviewing and interpreting Payroll time tracking system data from editorial and product development groups to determine what time qualifies for balance sheet capitalization, including detailed analysis and communication across departments. (6) Preparing licensing revenue entries including review of the relevant contracts and applying the correct accounting guidance to determine the revenue that has been earned. Telecommuting/remote work allowed. Send resumes to staffing@eb.com Attn Carmen Pagan Sr Associate, Sr Talent Strategy Consultant I – Mercer (US) LLC (FT; Chicago, IL) Lead client projects to translate HR & organizational data into actionable insights that improve & drive talent decisions. RQTS: Master’s deg or foreign equivalent in Econ, Statistics or a related field plus 5 yrs of exp in the position offered. Alternatively, employer will accept a PhD in Economics, Statistics or a related field plus 2 yrs of exp in the position offered. 5 yrs of exp (or 2 yrs in the alt with a PhD) w/ Executing statistical tables through data visualization in MS Excel, Tableau & Qlik; Performing data transformation & quantitative analysis using large data sets to provide labor market insights. APPLY: https:// careers.marshmclennan. com using Keyword R_275018. EOE

Experienced Staﬀ Auditor - Identify accounting & auditing matters. Provide assistance in audit of selected financial statement accounts & prep o nancial state ents & mgmt letters. Document accounting systems & internal controls. Prep audit work papers. Resolve audit issues. *Work is at Employer’s Office 230 West Monroe St, Suite 310, Chicago, IL 60606, w/ domestic travel once

per month lasting 3-5 business days is also required. Min Reqs: Bachelor’s in Accounting, Business Admin or closely rltd field. Must possess 6 mo exp in an occupation analyzing an orgs accounting records & controls. Must possess 6 mo exp in the following: collectin nancial ata conducting reviews of an org’s financial ops for efficiency; Review & maintain financial records for compliance with procedurally regular standards; working with word processing s/w such as MS Word or Google Docs; working with spreadsheet s/w such as Excel or Google Sheets. Must possess 3 mo exp in the following: analyzing an org’s financial docs for completeness & maintained in conformance with GAAP reporting standards; performing reconciliations o nancial recor s conducting an audit of an org’s accounting or nancial recor s preparing Workpapers. Please send resume to Calibre CPA Group PLLC at recruiter@calibrecpa.com

DevOps Engineer II (Chicago, IL) Drive developer exp improvements through automation & standardization; triage platform issues responding to automated alerts/pages; perform advanced troubleshooting & monitoring of systems to ensure SLA & capacity reqmts. Bachelor’s deg in Comp n or rlt el yrs IT exp, incl some solid exp in each: Cloud Platforms (AWS, GCP); Kubernetes; GitLab CICD pipeline; SQL & NoSQL d/bases; Java; Python; C++; Bash/Shell scripts; Prometheus; Grafana; Terraform; Datadog; Ansible; NginX. Red Hat Delivery Specialist Certs in Automation, API Mgmt, & Platform; IBM Certified Administrator - Cloud Pak for Multicloud Mgmt v1.3; GitLab erti e ro l vcs ngineer. Telecommuting from any loc in the US is an option. MUST send CV & cvr ltr to: nichole. knighton@project44. com or Nichole Knighton, project44, LLC, 222 W Merchandise Mart Plaza, Chicago, IL 60654 w/in 30 days & ref Job #W2022-110.

Associate Attorney (Chicago, IL) Provide legal services in admiralty and maritime matters; focus on Longshore & Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act (LHWCA), Defense Base Act (DBA), War Hazards Compensation Act & Maritime law. J.D. from an accredited law school & Bar license required. Send resumes to: HR Dir, Thomas Quinn LLP, 53 W. Jackson Blvd., Suite 1437, Chicago, Illinois 60604; EOE

CLASSIFIEDS JOBS

PROFESSIONALS & SERVICES MARKETPLACE MATCHES

Senior Machine Learning Engineer Relativity (Chicago, IL) seeks Senior Machine Learning Engineer to work w/ data scientists & product teams w/in AI group to deploy machine learning solutions at scale & help build platform to support team & organization in deploying/validating & monitoring machine learning models at petabyte scale. Must take & pass pre-hire coding test related to problem solving/data structures & algorithms. Remote work option from anywhere in the U.S. Submit resumes to Recruiting@relativity. com, to be considered, reference Job ID: 249004 in the subject line.

Outreach and Administrative Coordinator

Oversee the program and policies regarding Home Care Aide involvement, program requirements, and benefits. Job description at https://www. chinesemutualaid.org/ work-with-us Full-time position located at Chinese Mutual Aid Association, 1016 W. Argyle St., Chicago, IL 60640. 40 hours/week. Salary is $51,688. Requires: Bachelor’s Degree in Business or Marketing

Please send resumes to: Chinese Mutual Aid Association Attn: Recruitment 1016 W. Argyle St. Chicago, IL 60640

Team Lead – Logistics (Job#: TL56) sought by IM Global LLC in Elk Grove Village, IL: Ensure that the supply chain is efficient & effective throughout the org; Organize, store, & monitor the distribution of goods to ensure items & resources are shipped to their appropriate destinations. Plan & manage logistics, warehouse, transportation, & customer svcs; Direct, optimize, & coord full order cycle; Liaise & negotiate w/ suppliers,

manufacturers, retailers & consumers; ep track of qlty, quantity, stock levels, delivery times, transport costs & eﬃciency; Plan routes & process shipments; resolve any arising problems or complaints. Rqmts: Master’s in Bus Admin, Logistics, or Supply Chain; In lieu of a Master’s deg rqmt, we also accept a Bachelor’s deg in Bus Admin, Logistics, or Supply Chain + 2 yrs of work exp as a logistician or closely rltd. Apply: mail CV with Job# to Will, 2475 Touhy Ave, Ste 300, Elk Grove Village, IL 60007.

Senior Data Scientist I

Senior Data Scientist I, AbbVie Inc., North Chicago, IL. Develop predictive models using statistical and machine-learning methodologies using complex modeling techniques and communicate insights. Utilize knowledge of statistical and machine learning methods, with expertise in modeling and business analytics. Consult with business users in the analysis of requirements and recommend solutions which anticipate the future impact of changing business requirements. Utilize experience with statistical languages and packages, such as R and Python. Design and develop processes and systems to consolidate and analyze data while considering variety (structured, unstructured), volume (includes big data), data quality (cleaning and validation of the data) and velocity (batch, stream). Enhance the data collection process by consolidating data, standardizing, optimization and perform exploratory data analysis before used on ML model. Work with modern relational databases and/or distributed computing platforms Big Data, and their query

interfaces, such as SQL, Spark, PySpark and Hive. Develop advanced data analytical models and techniques from supervised and unsupervised machine learning, statistical analysis and predictive modeling. Generate reports with findings and communicate these eﬀectively via written, oral and visual Dashboard methods. Utilize experience with Failure Mode and Criticality Analysis. Must possess a Bachelor’s degree or foreign academic equivalent in Data Science, Analytics, Engineering or a highly related field of study with at least 5 years of related experience. In the alternative, employer will accept a Master’s degree in the aforementioned fields. Each educational alternative with at least 1 year of experience in the following: (i) knowledge of statistical and machine learning methods, with expertise in modeling and business analytics; (ii) experience with statistical languages and packages, such as R and Python; (iii) enhancing the data collection process by consolidating data, standardizing, optimization and perform exploratory data analysis before used on ML model; (iv) experience with Failure Mode and Criticality Analysis. Apply online at https:// careers.abbvie.com/en & reference REF27636M.

PROFESSIONALS & SERVICES

CLEANING SERVICES

CHESTNUT ORGANIZING AND CLEANING SERVICES: especially for people who need an organizing service because of depression, elderly, physical or mental challenges or other causes for your home’s clutter, disorganization, dysfunction, etc. We can organize

for the downsizing of your current possessions to more easily move into a smaller home. With your help, we can help to organize your move. We can organize and clean for the deceased in lieu of having the bereaved needing to do the preparation to sell or rent the deceased’s home. We are absolutely not judgmental; we’ve seen and done “worse” than your job assignment. With your help, can we please help you? Chestnut Cleaning Service: 312-332-5575. www. ChestnutCleaning.com

Professional House Painter Professional Interior/Exterior Painter 28 years experience. Proficient, neat and meticulous. Great work ethic. Extensive references upon request. Flexible scheduling. Flat and hourly rates. Chicagoland Area (primarily North) Christopher Banks CBanks Painting. (773) 504-6440

MARKETPLACE

Walnut & Cherry Credenza Handmade in 1995 by Bill Groot. Walnut & Cherry Credenza with 2 drawers and storage on both sides 63.75 w x 27.5 d x 34 h Contact: etonreg3@att.net

MATCHES

All romantic dates women wanted All romantic fun dates all requests 24.7 Call (773) 977-8862 swm

GET HIRED ON THE SPOT.

AUGUST

7TH, 10AM-7PM PRAIRIE STATE COLLEGE

WC_CS_ChicagoReader_ 7:25_4.7917x 4.8542_v3.indd 1 7/10/24 10:03 AM ATTENTION CHA PUBLIC HOUSING RESIDENTS & HCV PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS: PUBLIC COMMENT SCHEDULED FOR FY2024 MTW

If you listed Lawndale Complex or the Lawndale Community Area on your Housing Choice Survey as a place you would like to permanently live, please read the information listed below.

The Draft Tenant Selection Plan (TSP) and Lease for Ogden Commons, a mixed-income community is available for review. The Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) has worked with its development partner to develop a Draft TSP and Lease for use at the private development known as Ogden Commons (previous site of the Lawndale Complex). The units within this development will be used as replacement public housing units for Lawndale Complex and the Lawndale Community area. If you listed Lawndale Complex/Lawndale Community area on your Housing Choice Survey as a place you want to live or maintain a right to return to new CHA replacement housing per the Relocation Rights Contract (RRC), you can comment on the Draft TSP and Lease during the 30-day public comment period.

The Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) is releasing a proposed FY2024 MTW Annual Plan Amendment and the FY2025 MTW Annual Plan for public comment. The 30-day public comment period for both documents will be held July 22 through August 20, 2024 CHA encourages all program participants, residents, and the community-at-large to review the Proposed FY2024 Annual Plan Amendment and the Proposed FY2025 MTW Annual Plan and welcomes any comments. This notice is informational only and your participation or lack of participation will not a ect your housing.

• Livestream: Mon, July 29, 2024, at 11:00 am AND Tue, Aug 6, at 2:00 pm www.thecha.org Live Comment Hearing (Sign interpreter will be present.) Comments can be submitted in the Livestream chat.

The 30-day public comment period will be held for CHA to receive written comments starting April 7 through May 7, 2021. The Tenant Selection Plans (TSP) will be available on CHA’s website beginning April 7, 2021.

CHA will host three public comment hearings—two livestream and one in-person:

• In-person: Tue, July 30, 2024, at 6 pm FIC, 4859 S. Wabash (Sign and Spanish interpreters will be present.)

Due to COVID-19, CHA has suspended all in person public meetings and instead, CHA will livestream one public comment hearing. The date and time of the public comment livestream hearing is as follows:

Tue, April 20, 10:00am: https://youtu.be/QBGG47BHXMg

We ask that comments pertaining to the TSP & Lease be submitted electronically to commentontheplan@thecha.org at least 48-hours prior to the comment hearing. Comments will be read live during the time outlined above. Comments received after the hearing will be added to the comment grid.

You are not required to attend the in-person or view the livestream public comment hearings to submit comments. Comments can be submitted by email, fax or mail: Chicago Housing Authority Attention: Proposed FY2025 MTW Annual Plan 60 E. Van Buren Street, 12th Floor Chicago, IL 60605

Email: commentontheplan@thecha.org | Fax: 312-913-7837

If you require translation services, please read the attached notice or check with your property manager for more details. Do not mail comments to CHA.

Summary documents and the proposed FY2024 MTW Annual Plan Amendment and Proposed FY2025 MTW Annual Plan will be available on CHA’s website at www.thecha.org beginning July 22. All comments must be received by August 20, 2024.

E-mail or Fax comments to: commentontheplan@thecha.org Fax 312. 913.7837

Ifyouhaveaquestionaboutthisnotice,pleasecalltheCHAat312.913-7300. Torequestareasonableaccommodation,pleasecall312.913.7062. TTY 866.331.3603

SEX AND RELATIONSHIPS

Expectations

If you’re a gay man on a date, can you still search for better D?

By DAN SAVAGE

Q: We’re a straight couple in our forties. We have some very dear friends who are younger and queer and we sometimes find ourselves giving them life and relationship advice. We don’t want to unintentionally muddy things with our heteronormative expectations. So, here’s the question: If a gay man goes out with another gay man—something prearranged, intentional, and with an articulated plan to spend the night together

afterward—is it rude for one of them to flirt with other men and disappear for periods of time? There is no relationship to define as of yet, just a planned night out together. To us heterosexuals, this seems like a very shitty thing to do. But maybe there’s a different set of expectations or a different baseline in the gay male community? —SEEKING INPUT TODAY, THANKS YOU!

a: What you describe is deeply shitty behavior

spend the whole/hole night together, that guy (the one who ran oﬀ to search for better D) is an inconsiderate asshole.

Now, maybe that guy decided halfway through the date that your friend wasn’t someone he wanted to spend the night with (and maybe he had good reason to bail) but he should have used his words to officially end the date and given your friend a chance to head home (and/or shift gears

and start looking for other D himself). I was on a date date with a guy once and we quickly determined that we weren’t sexually compatible and instantly pivoted to being each other’s wingman. This was something it was possible for us to do because the feeling was mutual and we used our words

Sometimes a person hesitates to use his words because he knows the other person isn’t going to like

hearing those words. But someone who opts to show rather than tell in a case like this . . . by serving up context clues like flirting with other men and/or disappearing to go get railed in a bathroom stall . . . is either a coward (the worst kind) or a sadist (the wrong kind). v

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regardless of sexual orientation. A good guy doesn’t bring a date (a date date) to a club or a party and then start looking around for better D. If the man who ran oﬀ to ﬂirt with other men didn’t realize they were on a date— sometimes a person asks to “hang out” instead of making their romantic or sexual intentions or hopes clear—then it could’ve been a misunderstanding. But if this was an unambiguous date (a date date) and if they’d made explicit plans to

Sometimes a person asks to “hang out” rather than making their intentions clear. HELENA LOPES/PEXELS

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