C H I C A G O ’ S F R E E W E E K LY | K I C K I N G A S S S I N C E 1 9 7 1 | A U G U S T 3 , 2 0 1 7
Take a little trip to Slow&Low: Community Lowrider Festival. 9
Cyclists vent about their cycling pet peeves. 13
Amanda Williams brings Englewood to the MCA. 18
H OW BL I N K-1 82 G AV E H IP - H O P A R EF R ES H I N G ENEMA The Friday-night Lollapalooza headliners helped connect the mainstream pop-punk of the late 90s to the Soundcloud rap of today. By LEOR GALIL 23
LEAD SPONSOR
The exhibition is organized by the Art Institute of Chicago, l’Etablissement public des musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie, and the Réunion des musées nationaux-Grand Palais, Paris. Major support is provided by Lesley and Janice Lederer. Additional funding is contributed by anonymous donors, the Alice M. La Pert Fund for French Impressionism, Juliette F. Bacon, the Kemper Educational and Charitable Fund, Ann C. Cooluris, Katherine L. Olson Charitable Foundation, Margot Levin Schiff and the Harold Schiff Foundation, Barbara and Marc Posner, the Robert Lehman Foundation, and David and Mary Winton Green Research Fund. Annual support for Art Institute exhibitions is provided by the Exhibitions Trust: Neil Bluhm and the Bluhm Family Charitable Foundation; Jay Franke and David Herro; Kenneth Griffin; Caryn and King Harris, The Harris Family Foundation; Liz and Eric Lefkofsky; Robert M. and Diane v.S. Levy; Ann and Samuel M. Mencoff; Usha and Lakshmi N. Mittal; Thomas and Margot Pritzker; Anne and Chris Reyes; Betsy Bergman Rosenfield and Andrew M. Rosenfield; Cari and Michael J. Sacks; and the Earl and Brenda Shapiro Foundation. This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. Paul Gauguin. Vase in the Form of Leda and the Swan, 1887–88. Private Collection.
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THIS WEEK
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EDITOR JAKE MALOOLEY CREATIVE DIRECTOR VINCE CERASANI CULTURE EDITOR TAL ROSENBERG DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS FILM EDITOR J.R. JONES MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO ASSOCIATE EDITORS STEVE HEISLER, KATE SCHMIDT SENIOR WRITER MIKE SULA SENIOR THEATER CRITIC TONY ADLER STAFF WRITERS MAYA DUKMASOVA, LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, AIMEE LEVITT, PETER MARGASAK, JULIA THIEL SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR RYAN SMITH GRAPHIC DESIGNER SUE KWONG MUSIC LISTINGS COORDINATOR LUCA CIMARUSTI FILM LISTINGS COORDINATOR PATRICK FRIEL CONTRIBUTING WRITERS NOAH BERLATSKY, MATT DE LA PEÑA, ANNE FORD, ISA GIALLORENZO, JOHN GREENFIELD, ANDREA GRONVALL, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, DAN JAKES, BILL MEYER, MICHAEL MINER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, LEAH PICKETT, BEN SACHS, DMITRY SAMAROV, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERNS LIBBY BERRY, PORTER MCLEOD, EMILY WASIELEWSKI ---------------------------------------------------------------VICE PRESIDENT OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT NICKI STANULA VICE PRESIDENT OF NEW MEDIA GUADALUPE CARRANZA SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER EVANGELINE MILLER ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES FABIO CAVALIERI, BRIDGET KANE MARKETING AND EVENTS MANAGER BRYAN BURDA DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY ADVERTISING COORDINATOR HERMINIA BATTAGLIA CLASSIFIEDS REPRESENTATIVE KRIS DODD ---------------------------------------------------------------DISTRIBUTION CONCERNS distributionissues@chicagoreader.com CHICAGO READER 350 N. ORLEANS, CHICAGO, IL 60654 312-222-6920, CHICAGOREADER.COM ---------------------------------------------------------------READER (ISSN 1096-6919) IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY STM READER, LLC, 350 N. ORLEANS, CHICAGO, IL 60654. COPYRIGHT © 2017 CHICAGO READER. PERIODICAL POSTAGE PAID AT CHICAGO, IL. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. CHICAGO READER, READER, AND REVERSED R: REGISTERED TRADEMARKS ®.
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FEATURES
IN THIS ISSUE 4 Agenda Romeo and Juliet, standup from Moshe Kasher and Natasha Leggero, Van Jones, the film An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, and more goings-on about town
CITY LIFE
8 Chicagoans An African-American female police officer on why more cops should look like her.
CAR CULTURE
Camp low
MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE
Take a little trip to Pilsen and see the dazzling custom vehicles at the Slow&Low: Community Lowrider Festival. PHOTOS BY LISA PREDKO 9 11 Joravsky | Politics Governor Rauner’s “special session” was nothing special. 13 Transportation Chicago cyclists vent about their cycling pet peeves, including “shoaling,” “salmoning,” red-light running, and more.
Chicago artist Amanda Williams, whose work is featured in a new exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art, draws attention to the valuation of black neighborhoods. BY KERRY CARDOZA 18 MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE
How Blink-182 gave hip-hop a refreshing Enema The Friday-night Lollapalooza headliners helped connect the mainstream pop-punk of the late 90s to the Soundcloud rap of today. BY LEOR GALIL 23
27 Shows of note Natalia Lafourcade, Cloud Nothings, Rod Stewart, and more of the week’s best 31 The Secret History of Chicago Music Eighties power-pop wizard Julian Leal returns to the stage with a new backing band.
FOOD & DRINK
VISUAL ART
This is my beautiful house
17 Comedy Asperger’s Are Us don’t need to mine autism for comedy gold. 21 Movies Detroit, the latest from director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal, is ambitious but uneven.
ARTS & CULTURE
15 Public Art The Chicago Picasso isn’t the only public artwork worth celebrating. 16 Theater Definition Theatre’s An Octoroon boldly subverts a wildly popular—and wildly racist—19thcentury melodrama.
17 Theater Theater Oobleck puts the lid on Baudelaire in a Box with a final installment and a marathon staging of the whole shebang.
35 Restaurant review: SplitRail Ada Street alums reimagine a lowbrow midwestern culinary heritage. 37 Key Ingredient: Gefilte fish Chef Ashlee Aubin gets creative with the traditional Passover dish of ground whitefish.
CLASSIFIEDS
38 Jobs 38 Apartments & Spaces 39 Marketplace 40 Straight Dope Why are navy SEALs currently the “it” special forces? 41 Savage Love A “hall pass” puts a husband in the crosshairs. 42 Early Warnings Kesha, Earl Klugh, Pere Ubu, 312 Block Party, and more shows you should know about in the weeks to come 42 Gossip Wolf Beloved underground rapper Mic One passes on too soon, and more music news.
AUGUST 3, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 3
AGENDA R
READER RECOMMENDED
P Send your events to agenda@chicagoreader.com
b ALL AGES
F listening, then delivers songs with more showiness than conviction. And the intoxicating rhythms of the five-piece Carpacho y Su Super Combo are often so far in the background it’s hard to imagine this reconstituted nightclub drawing crowds. It’s a shame that so much vital, disquieting history ends up in a muddle. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 8/20: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312-443-3800, teatrovista.org, $30-$55.
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Movie Theater & Full Bar $5.00 sion admis e for th s Movie
18 to enter 21 to drink Photo ID required
Sunday, August 6 @ 6:00pm Mon-Thr, Aug 7-10 @ 6:30pm
The Mummy
Sunday, August 6 @ 8:30pm Mon-Thr, Aug 7-10 @ 8:45pm
The House
Sunday, August 6 @ 3:30pm
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
4 CHICAGO READER - AUGUST 3, 2017
An American in Paris By all rights An American in Paris should be an exercise in nostalgia. Based on the 1951 movie musical starring Gene Kelly and featuring such chestnutty Gershwin classics as “I Got Rhythm,” it tells the tale of Jerry Mulligan, an ex-GI who falls in love while trying to make it as an artist in the City of Light. Thanks to playwright Craig Lucas and director-choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, however, the show doesn’t depend on schmaltz for its richness. Lucas’s book excavates each character’s World War II trauma; Wheeldon’s dances isolate and amplify Kelly’s balletic impulse. The result is at once dark and beautiful. Though this Equity touring show is very fine in most ways, it’s not as satisfying as it might be: McGee Maddox is a marvelous dancer, but his Mulligan comes across as callow—somehow untouched by the wartime experiences he describes. (Ryan Steele plays the role at certain performances.) —TONY ADLER Through 8/13: Wed 2 and 7:30 PM, Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Tue 7:30 PM, Ford Center for the Performing Arts, Oriental Theatre, 24 W. Randolph, 800-775-2000, broadwayinchicago.com, $24-$181. Brave Like Them About Face R Youth Theatre’s “queer as f**k riot grrrl musical” focuses on Danni, a bira-
cial teenager in 1990s Washington State, who’s swept into the riot grrrl movement of that time—a feminist reaction to, and against, the male-dominated punk music and art scene of the day. Initially inspired by the rhetoric and charisma of riot grrrl leader Kathleen Hanna (real-life lead singer-songwriter of the band Bikini Kill), Danni (Kyla Norton), an aspiring artist and writer, gradually becomes disenchanted with the riot grrrls’ white, cisgender insularity, even as she grapples with her own shifting gender identity. The show—devised by the ensemble (aged 12-23) under the direction of Ali Hoefnagel and Kieran Kredell—celebrates the radical impulse of the 1990s riot grrrls while bringing a
2017 perspective to the story. Featuring aggressive choreography by Erin Kilmurray and hard-edged musical direction by Nicholas Davio, the show sensitively and accessibly explores the tensions between young people’s passion to create a better world and their need for individual self-affirmation and peer approval. —ALBERT WILLIAMS Through 8/6: Wed-Sat 7 PM, Sun 3 PM, the Buena at Pride Arts Center, 4147 N. Broadway, 800-737-0984, aboutfacetheatre.com, $20 or pay what you can. The Fair Maid of the West R People who went to see Thomas Heywood’s plays in the 17th century
were a lot like us. They thought a good story was one with the absolute maximum of sword fighting in it. They loved to see virtue rewarded and evil punished. And they believed there were still great adventures to be attempted out in the world, and gleefully lapped up any opportunity to imagine one for the price of a ticket. In 1994, Kevin Theis reworked one of Heywood’s more seldom-seen Elizabethan comedies—the tale of a barmaid, Bess Bridges (Amanda Forman), and her chaste love for a gentleman, Spencer (Zach Livingston)—into a well-received adaptation. The outdoor festival setting is ideal for this cheerful, rapier-twirling spectacle. Theis directs the revival, which is notable for Bobby Bowman’s exceptional reading of Clem, the fool. —MAX MALLER Through 9/2: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PM, Oak Park Festival Theatre, Austin Gardens, Forest & Ontario, Oak Park, 708-445-4440, oakparkfestival.com, $30, $25 seniors, $15 students, free for kids under 12. La Havana Madrid At the center of Sandra Delgado’s two-hour immersive performance piece for Teatro Vista, nominally set in the erstwhile titular Lakeview nightclub, are six true stories of transplanted Latinos struggling for survival (cultural, psychological, and sometimes literal) in a virulently intolerant 1960s Chicago. When the performers favor plain truth over forced exuberance, the stories are quite affecting. But they’d be more so if they weren’t buried under conceptual overload; Delgado, as the club’s embodied spirit, mystically invokes each storyteller, skulks about
Last Dancer Standing (More Than Hip-Hop) “Welcome to our live broadcast,” chirps each usher at Last Dancer Standing (More Than Hip Hop) as contestants mark through choreography before vying for money, glory, and the opportunity to tour with R&B star Justin Paul (Deverin Deonte). Between the ritual catchphrases of the contest, the cattiness of the competitors, and the egotism, sexual harassment, and mansplaining that dominate the off-camera scenes, “it’s like you’ve been here before,” notes one contender. And you have. The panel of judges on the side. The contrived group challenges. The public confessions. The mean girl, the underdog, the sassy gay man, and the others, who have little function beyond protracting the process. Just when you dismiss it as mere entertainment, the show makes a stunning salute to Black Lives Matter, minorities in the arts, and your mama—but if you like dance contests, you’ll have fun too. —IRENE HSIAO Through 9/3: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Black Ensemble Theater Cultural Center, 4450 N. Clark, 773-769-4451, blackensembletheater.org, $49.50-$65. Romeo and Juliet Chicago R Shakespeare Theater brings the Bard’s tale of star-crossed lovers to 18
neighborhood parks for 25 free performances. Utilizing headsets to help amplify dialogue to the farthest outskirts of the lawn, staging that frequently has cast members circulating through the lounging crowd, and drawing on contemporary dance music, this production does a lot to bridge the centuries-long gap between this immortal text and contemporary Chicago picnickers. The
temporary stage, which makes a rather feeble attempt to evoke 13th-century Verona, and the actors’ period garb seem unnecessary distractions in this otherwise stripped-down staging. But just letting these beautiful words ring out in the summer air for thousands of our city’s citizens to hear—perhaps for the first time—is an invaluable service. Marti Lyons adapted and directed. —DMITRY SAMAROV Through 8/27: Sat 8/5, 6:30 PM; Sun 8/6, 4 PM, Welles Park, 2333 W. Sunnyside, 312-742-7511, chicagoshakes.com. F The Vagina Monologues The R Aleatoric Theatre Company’s empowering production of Eve Ens-
ler’s 1996 episodic play is called an “immersive experience” and a “historical interpretation,” and both descriptions proved apt on the night I attended. With very little prompting, audience members described what their vaginas would wear, what they would say, what their essence comes down to, etc, making for an intimate, relaxed, and ultimately rallying theatrical experience. As far as updates to address modern issues, new monologues included an account of horrific atrocities against women witnessed by the Refugee Alliance Group as well as a powerful poem about navigating school bathrooms as a trans teenager. Sandy Smith is charming and relatable in “the vagina workshop,” and Joette Waters brought many to tears delivering “I Was in the Room,” a piece on a grandchild’s birth. —MARISSA OBERLANDER Through 8/13: Fri-Sat 7 PM, Sun 3 PM, Mary’s Attic Theatre, 4333 N. Clark, 773784-6969, aleatorictheatre.com, $20-$25.
DANCE The Bricklayers of Oz For the R bricklayers of Oz, it’s all work and no play. Chicago Dance Crash’s newest
story-length dance takes inspiration from L. Frank Baum, offering a prequel to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz that follows the Witch of the East and her blue-collar minions as they literally lay the groundwork for the Yellow Brick Road. But as we know, the road to Oz is paved with broken promises,
The Bricklayers of Oz ò COURTESY CHICAGO DANCE CRASH
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Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of August 3
For more of the best things to do every day of the week, go to chicagoreader. com/agenda.
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keeps herself relatively subdued discussing the idiosyncrasies of human behavior. Sun 8/6, 8 PM, the Vic, 3145 N. Sheffield, 773-472-0449, victheatre. com, $27.
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and it doesn’t take long before the bricklayers realize they’ve been duped into a life of thankless servitude. That sets up a battle as compelling as it is entertaining, a full-frenzied display of Dance Crash’s signature hip-hop style that’s buoyed by a surprisingly poignant story line. Rapper Al Tamper’s narration, composed of original lyrics, helps a ton, as does choreographer Jessica Deahr’s clever interpretation of a classic, which pays reverence to Baum’s own quirky qualities. —MATT DE LA PEÑA Through 8/5: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn, 312-337-6543, chicagodancecrash.com, $25, $15 children 12 and under.
COMEDY R
Engage! A Choose-Your-Own Sci-Fight Show In this chooseyour-own-adventure-style story, one audience volunteer will be chosen as the Player, and his or her snap decisions dictate the direction of an epic space mission. An unlucky roll of a die can lead to life, death, or absurdity, making each show distinct. 8/4-8/25: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-9758150, theaterwit.org, $20. Judgmental Institutions Huggable Riot’s 12th sketch revue, Judgmental Institutions, has some great ideas sadly overshadowed by its actors’ not-so-great stage presences. An example of the former: a scene about a vampire slumber party (held during the day, natch) includes the bloodsuckers lamenting that they have no idea what they look like—no reflections, of course. In another office workers gush about their thrilling weekends only for us to discover that their actual plans were pretty lame. The performers, however, aren’t adept at adapting to the myriad locations and circumstances—or reacting to each other. In one scene a woman celebrates her half birthday with a game of putt-putt golf, exclaiming that if she doesn’t get a hole in one, she’ll kill herself. Holy bombshell! Yet there’s no build from there—as the actors take turns reacting, all that’s reached is a plateau. (Plus, they take turns?) —STEVE HEISLER Through 8/30: Wed 8 PM, Annoyance Theatre, 851 W. Belmont, 773-697-9693, theannoyance. com, $10, $12 at the door. Moshe Kasher and Natasha R Leggero: The Endless Honeymoon Tour Kasher and Leggero have
married not only each other but their iconoclastic, aggressive stand-up styles. Kasher’s rambling and emphatic stories highlight the extreme, while Leggero
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Natasha Leggero and Moshe Kasher ò ROBIN VON SWANK
Porn Minus Porn Where would R pornography be without story? It’s a question for the ages (specifically
18+), and one Under the Gun is exploring. Each night, members of the ensemble stage readings of pornographic cinema using only the dialogue. No spoilers! 8/4-8/25: Fri 10:30 PM, Under the Gun Theater, 956 W. Newport, 773-270-3440, undertheguntheater.com, $12.
LIT & LECTURES Jac Jemc Women & Children First welcomes Jemc, a former employee and past winner of the Paula Anderson Book Award, for a special launch party. The Grip of It, Jemc’s new psychological thriller, tells the story of a young couple whose new home messes with their minds. Thu 8/3, 7:30 PM, Women & Children First, 5233 N. Clark, 773-769-9299, womenandchildrenfirst.com.
VISUAL ARTS Weinberg/Newton Gallery: “Youth Power” Presented by the Mikva Challenge, which encourages youth to be informed and empowered, panelists Dr. Robert Sherman and Jenny Sazama will discuss identity, the adolescent brain, and emotional development in teens. Moderated by Michelle Morales. Thu 8/3, 4-6 PM. Tue-Sat 10 AM-5:30 PM. 300 W. Superior, #203, 312-529-5090, d-weinberg.com. Society for Arts: “Doodles” PolishAmerican Zbigniew Brzezinski’s pencilshaded drawings resembling sketches in ancient tomes are part abstraction, part mathematical precision. Brzezinski passed away earlier this year, and this posthumous “Exhibition of Subconscious Drawings” demonstrates his melding of right- and left-brain ink. Fun fact: He was the National Security Advisor under President Jimmy Carter. Through 8/23: Tue-Sun noon-6 PM, 1112 N. Milwaukee, 773-486-9612, societyforarts.com. Vertical Gallery: “Trivium” European artists M-City, FAKE, and Trust.iCON come together for a joint exhibition at Chicago’s premier urban-contemporary art gallery. M-City’s mechanical, sci-fi-inspired style contrasts with the clean and colorful work of FAKE, as well as the street artistry of Trust.iCON. 8/5-8/26: Tue-Sat 11 AM-6 PM. 1016 N. Western, 773-697-3846, verticalgallery.com.
Van Jones ò BRAD BARKET Van Jones Join the CNN commentator—a rare voice of reason on cable news—and his #LoveArmy for We Rise, a tour highlighting the commonalities between Americans in the interest of sparking social dialogue. Tue 8/8, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre, 175 N. State, 312462-6300, chicagotheatre.com, $39.50$69.50.
MOVIES More at chicagoreader.com/movies NEW REVIEWS Atomic Blonde In this rapid-fire R spy story, a couture-clad MI6 operative (Charlize Theron) is sent to
East Germany to retrieve stolen intelligence just before the fall of the Berlin Wall; she’s both helped and hindered by an alpha-male fellow agent (James
McAvoy) and targeted by an array of shadowy characters, including members of the KGB and a libidinous femme fatale (Sofia Boutella). Veteran stuntman David Leitch directs, and he orchestrates some intricate, bravura fightand-flight sequences; cinematographer Jonathan Sela enhances these scenes with a gritty palette of frosty blues and somber grays. Adapting Sam Hart and Antony Johnston’s graphic novel The Coldest City, Kurt Johnstad (300) has written a smart exploitation thriller, filled with homages to Andrei Tarkovsky, the German New Wave, and film noir. With Toby Jones, John Goodman, and Eddie Marsan. In English and subtitled German, Swedish, and Russian. —ANDREA GRONVALL R, 115 min. For venues visit chicagoreader.com/movies. Brave New Jersey On the night of Orson Welles’s famous War of the Worlds broadcast on October 30, 1938, the population of a small farm town in New Jersey prepare to fight imagined alien invaders. Jody Lampert, directing a script he wrote with Michael Dowling, attempts to play the scenario for comedy, though the film isn’t very funny. It isn’t very engaging either: the characterizations are thin, the jokes fall flat, and the plot complications are predictable. The town’s ineffectual mayor proves himself to be heroic, the local big shot reveals himself to be a coward, and the bumbling pastor finds his faith in the crisis. Tony Hale (of the TV series Arrested Development and Veep) gives a sweet performance as the mayor, but the rest of the cast is bland. —BEN SACHS 86 min. Fri 8/4, 6:30 and 8:30 PM; Sat 8/5-Sun 8/6, 5:45 and 7:45 PM; Mon 8/7-Thu 8/10, 6:30 and 8:30 PM. Facets Cinematheque Brigsby Bear The rash of real-life cases in which women or children were kidnapped and held captive for years has played out on American movie screens as drama (Room), horror (10 Cloverfield Lane), and now cottage cheese. A teenage boy (Kyle Mooney, who cowrote the script) is rescued by the FBI from a couple who swiped him as an infant, raising him out in the wilderness with no schooling or amusement but their homemade video series starring the giant µ
AUGUST 3, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 5
AGENDA B bear Brigsby. The clueless teen, returned to his awkwardly affectionate birth parents, shares some of his moldering VHS tapes with his new high school friends, and they set out to shoot a homemade video feature starring the bear, whose earlier adventures have become a hit on YouTube. This is a feel-good movie that equates emotional healing with getting lots of people to corroborate your rich fantasy life. Dave McCary directed; with Greg Kinnear, Matt Walsh, Ryan Simpkins, Andy Samberg, Mark Hamill, Claire Danes, and Kate Lyn Sheil. —J.R. JONES PG-13, 100 min. Landmark’s Century Centre
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An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power In the 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, former U.S. vice president Al Gore sounded the alarm about man-made climate change; this sequel is even more urgent, detailing some of the environmental disasters that have come to pass during a decade of rising temperatures. Directors Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk follow Gore beyond the lecture circuit and into the field: to Greenland, where scientists show how glacier melt escalates; to Miami Beach, where costly elevated roads are needed to circumvent the rising sea level; and to India, where the vice president implores government ministers to abandon construction of coal-burning energy plants. Some might see the film as lionizing Gore, but it’s a fascinating primer on how to engage and train citizen activists, from the grass roots to the corridors of power. —ANDREA GRONVALL PG, 100 min. For venues visit chicagoreader.com/movies.
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Kidnap Halle Berry stars in this fast-moving thriller as a divorced mother who goes into attack mode once her six-year-old son gets abducted. The film wastes little time on exposition: the boy is kidnapped within the opening minutes, and after that it’s one long, tense chase, with Berry’s character following the kidnappers across seemingly endless stretches of the Louisiana interstate. Screenwriter Knate Lee makes the most of the elemental concept by devising complications every few minutes to keep the story going, while director Luis Prieto injects some nice local color to the proceedings, which keeps the movie from feeling generic. Yet the most valuable member of the crew may be editor Avi Youabian, who maintains a breathless pace without sacrificing any sense of spatial continuity. This is a superior genre exercise, unpretentious and formally controlled. —BEN SACHS R, 89 min. For venues visit chicagoreader.com/movies. Killing Lazarus A diffident and religious drug dealer (Deji LaRay) butts heads with his volatile
6 CHICAGO READER - AUGUST 3, 2017
Kidnap business partner and best friend from childhood (Tracey Dukes) in this gritty drama, which explores the mental and emotional survival strategies of black males from rough neighborhoods. The film follows the two men over a weekend, with occasional flashbacks to their middle-school days, and frequently cuts to the police team that’s tracking them down in the present. The opening scene suggests that one of the duo will be dead by Sunday, but even as the clock ticks, the narrative drags, in large part because writer-director Desmond Faison includes several unnecessary scenes and side characters that hamstring the plot’s momentum. —LEAH PICKETT 117 min. Falson attends the screenings, part of the Black Harvest Film Festival; for a full schedule visit siskelfilmcenter.org. Tue 8/8, 8 PM, and Wed 8/9, 8:30 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center Landline Remember the old days, when people had to call each other on phones attached to the wall? This genial comedy, set in 1995, exudes a warm nostalgia for its era, which is defined onscreen mainly through its clunky technology: the young protagonist (Jenny Slate) and her school-age sister (Abby Quinn) learn that their father (John Turturro) is cheating on their mother (Edie Falco) when they find his illicit love letters on a floppy disk. The movie reunites Slate, screenwriter Elisabeth Holm, and director Gillian Robespierre of the cult hit Obvious Child (2014), sort of a prochoice romantic comedy; like that movie, this one benefits from Slate’s ample charm and comic timing, though they’ve been funneled into a more conventional coming-of-age story. With Jay Duplass. —J.R. JONES R, 93 min. For venues visit chicagoreader.com/movies. Pop Aye In this gentle Thai comedy, a sexagenarian Bangkok architect reunites by chance with the elephant he owned as a boy. He determines that this occasion is a sign to change his life and impulsively hits the road with the big
animal, resolving to return it to the small town where they both grew up. On the trip the architect displays kindness toward everyone he meets, and writer-director Kirsten Tan follows suit, realizing the supporting characters in agreeable, sympathetic detail. The film’s good cheer goes a long way in elevating the relatively thin story—there’s hardly any conflict, and Tan doesn’t devote much time to the personal crisis that drives the architect to take up his journey. Regardless, the film has plenty of low-key laughs, and the elephant is adorable. In Thai with subtitles. —BEN SACHS 104 min. Fri 8/3, Mon-Thu, 4:15 PM; Sat 8/4 and Sun 8/5, 11:30 AM, 2 PM, 4:30 PM, 7 PM, 9:30 PM. Music Box Step In this inspirational documentary, at-risk African-American students at the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women hope to win a tournament in stepping, a form of percussive dance that dates back to the mid-20th century and requires the use of one’s whole body. This story is told in conjunction with an examination of the school, where tough-love counselors and parents closely monitor GPAs and extracurricular activities in order to try and get the teenagers into college and help them avoid single motherhood and poverty. For most of the film the dancing is unsteady, but in the final number director Amanda Lipitz, a Tony Award-winning producer, makes the gutsy amateurs look like pros. —ANDREA GRONVALL PG, 83 min. For venues visit chicagoreader. com/movies. SPECIAL EVENTS We All We Got Two short works by filmmaker and photographer Carlos Javier Ortiz (We All We Got and A Thousand Midnights), along with selections from the South Side Home Movie Project, an archive of local film and video footage. Ortiz takes part in a postscreening Q&A with Jacqueline Stewart of Black Cinema House. Fri 8/4, 7 PM. Stony Island Arts Bank v
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AUGUST 3, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 7
CITY LIFE Chicagoans
The cop
Janice Wilson, 35, police officer and youth baseball coach
“Englewood is a loving community that needs our support to become even better,” Wilson says. ò PORTER MCLEOD
THERE ARE A LOT of African-American female officers. However, there should be more. There should be more women on the force, period. I’m from West Englewood, the far south side, near Altgeld Gardens. I grew up on a block where everybody knew everybody, and everybody was family. Crime was high there, especially in the 90s. But whenever I saw the police, I knew that they were coming to help, coming as our friends, even though they were coming for something that was probably not so great. I didn’t have a fear of the police. I can’t really say why I didn’t, I just didn’t. I was like, “Aw, I want to do that. That’s so cool.” When I was in my last year of college, my best friend at the time knew I wanted to be a police officer, and she was like, “Hey, they’re hiring.” So I went to the library, I filled out the application, I paid the $25 application fee, and once I got the call, I had graduated. I graduated from college in 2003, and I became an officer in 2004. The police academy? I thought it was going to be tougher than what it was. It was actually fun. After the academy, I went to work in the Fourth District. The station is on 103rd and Luella. That’s where I started my training in the field. You have to do three cycles of training, working on each watch—days, afternoons, and midnights. You work with another officer who walks you through it. They’re training you on radio etiquette, officer safety, learning your beat, writing reports. At the time nothing was automated, so we handwrote our reports.
My first day on the street, I was with my field training officer, who did a lot of traffic. We rode around, we stopped a lot of cars that were in violation, and on one of those stops, we got a guy with a gun. My job now, I’m the business and community engagement liaison for the Seventh District, the Englewood community. It’s a loving community that needs our support to become even better. What I do on a day-to-day basis is build relationships with the residents, the businesses. Visiting them, talking with them, seeing what their needs are, instead of assuming that we know what people need. We may get a call to respond to something as simple as people loitering, or we may have to contact the alderman’s office with a community service request. We go to block parties, we go to sporting events, we give safety talks. My days aren’t set; I may get pulled in any direction. But I know for a fact on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’ll be coaching at the police youth baseball league, which is sponsored by an organization called Get in Chicago. The goal is not only to provide safe summer activities for kids, but to help improve the relationship between police and the youth. You have to start young. A lot of the kids in the league say now, “Hey, I want to be police when I grow up.” They’re not afraid of us. They come to us when they see us; they give us hugs and high fives. That is huge. We feel that those are our kids too. We look forward to being there for those kids every week. Every week. —AS TOLD TO ANNE FORD
Ñ Keep up to date on the go at chicagoreader.com/agenda.
SURE THINGS THURSDAY 3
FRIDAY 4
SATURDAY 5
SUNDAY 6
MONDAY 7
TUESDAY 8
WEDNESDAY 9
Windy City Rubber Ducky Derby Don’t duck out on this annual fund-raiser benefiting Special Olympics Illinois. Rubber ducks race down the Chicago River, and the winning duck scores its owner major prizes—including a 2017 Chevy Equinox. 10 AM, Wrigley Building Plaza, 400 N. Michigan, duckrace. com, $5.
Ô Places Th at Matter More than 40 visual works, all created by folks with developmental disabilities, are on display at this one-night-only exhibition highlighting historic Illinois locations threatened by gentrification. Or, perhaps, a wrecking ball gone rogue. 6-9:30 PM, Bridgeport Art Center, 1200 W. 35th, 773-2473000, bridgeportart.com, $75.
Boobs on Endor: A Return of the Je di Burlesque Gorilla Tango’s now-updated all-female burlesque parody has fighters on both sides of the Force and a whole lot of ewoks take turns stripping down to their pasties to Nicki Minaj and Icona Pop. 10:30 PM, Gorilla Tango Theatre, 1919 N. Milwaukee, gorillatango.com, $22-$28.
( Lollapalooza It’s closing night for Chicago’s elephant in the park, featuring Justice and Arcade Fire as the headlining acts. Hydration is a priority, lest Monday bring headaches and fainting spells. For more Lolla coverage, see page 23. Noon-10 PM, Grant Park, 337 E. Randolph, lollapalooza. com, sold out.
J Je llo Jessica Cornish runs a dance open mike where the city’s emerging talent can test new pieces or clean up some almost ready for the big stage. Each dancer walks away with a video of his or her performance—a chance to perfect moves at home. 7 PM, Links Hall at Constellation, 3111 N. Western, 773-281-0824, linkshall.org, $10.
Ever yone’s Picasso The famous Picasso statue in Daley Plaza is the site to learn more about the city’s initiative declaring 2017 the Year of Public Art, featuring a showcase of neighborhoodand community-created projects and a rededication of the giant metal aardvark herself. Noon, Daley Plaza, 50 W. Washington. F
× Andersonville D inner Craw l Conquer dishes from more than 20 eateries, including macaroni and cheese from Lady Gregory’s and meatballs from Bar Roma. Winners are rewarded for their tenacity with a nap. 6-9 PM, Swedish American Museum, 5211 N. Clark, andersonville.org/events/andersonville-dinner-crawl, $30-$60.
8 CHICAGO READER - AUGUST 3, 2017
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CITY LIFE
Camp low LOWRIDERS ARE MUCH more than just deckedout automobiles. The distinctive elements of the custom vehicles—their sidewalk-scraping stature, powerful hydraulic lift systems, decorative paint jobs, and well-appointed interiors—are all rooted in Mexican-American pride. The subculture, which emerged in southern California in the middle of the last century, was born out of a desire to stray from the predominant Anglo car culture and create something uniquely Chicano. In the 1970s, Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles was a veritable auto show every Saturday night as lowriders cruised the strip. As opposed to the speedy hot rods favored by whites, lowriders were driven at a leisurely pace that allowed them to be properly admired. The Chicago Urban Art Society’s Slow&Low:
Take a little trip to Pilsen and see the dazzling custom vehicles at the Slow&Low: Community Lowrider Festival. PHOTOGRAPHS BY LISA PREDKO
Community Lowrider Festival attempts to continue the tradition. Now in its sixth year, the fest was created by CUAS cofounder Peter Kepha, who was inspired by what he calls the “driving works of art.” What began in 2011 as a small gathering of local enthusiasts has become larger and more popular than Kepha imagined. He says it’s “gone from 40-plus cars and a handful of people to 200 to 300 cars and 2,000-plus people.” There’s a significant presence of lowrider bicycles and motorcycles as well. In addition to all the eye candy, the daylong event includes Mexican food, DJ performances, a marketplace, and an awards ceremony honoring, as Kepha puts it, “the mastery that’s put into these vehicles.” —EMILY WASIELEWSKI
AUGUST 3, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 9
SLOW&LOW: COMMUNITY LOWRIDER FESTIVAL Sunday 8/6, 11 AM-8 PM, 2200 S. Loomis, chicagolowriderfestival.com. $5, free for children under 13.
10 CHICAGO READER - AUGUST 3, 2017
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CITY LIFE
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POLITICS
Nothing special
Governor Bruce Rauner summoned legislators to Springfield for a “special session” that was far from productive. By BEN JORAVSKY
H
aving failed to drive the state into bankruptcy in one fell swoop, Illinois governor Bruce Rauner came up with a new strategy: bleed it to death with a thousand nicks. That’s what’s kept him busy over the last few weeks. First, there was his early July budget veto, which house speaker Michael Madigan managed to override, thus preventing Illinois from hitting junk bond status. Then on July 24, Rauner called a special session, summoning legislators to Springfield even though there wasn’t much for them to do. We won’t know how much that session cost until all the General Assembly members’ per diem vouchers have been submitted. But an estimate from senate president John Cullerton’s office suggests roughly $48,000 a day. Hey, 48 grand here, 48 grand there, and soon we’ll achieve Rauner’s dream of state bankruptcy. By the time you read this, events will have undoubtedly hurtled forward to a new
special session. But I can’t allow this moment to pass without trying to capture the brief history of the special session of July 26 through 28, a momentous three days in Illinois history. On May 31, the Democrats passed a school funding bill called SB1, which would distribute the state aid schools need to open this year. Rauner opposed the bill on the grounds that it’s a Chicago bailout, even though it’s not. In fact, it would send hundreds of millions of dollars to school districts from Cairo to Zion. Chicago would use much of the money it gets from the bill to help pay its teacher pensions. The governor wants downstaters to think that paying pensions to teachers in Chicago is more diabolical than paying teachers’ pensions elsewhere. Rauner vowed to veto SB1, which he finally did on August 1. So Cullerton didn’t immediately send it to the governor, ostensibly to give Rauner time to calm down. In reality, Cullerton’s delay was intended to force the J
AUGUST 3, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 11
Read Ben Joravsky’s columns throughout the week at chicagoreader.com.
CITY LIFE continued from 11
governor to eventually sign the bill, by making him feel the pressure of the impending August 10 deadline. That’s when the state sends its first payments to districts throughout Illinois for the start of the coming school year. As I’ve explained before, Rauner’s budget strategy is to keep just enough money flowing into the state’s coffers so his voters won’t be affected by the impasse. So far the only people really hurt by it are the aged, infirm, and indigent, as well as other people who would never vote for him and who he therefore couldn’t give less of a shit about. (That sort of sums up the attitude of the modern Republican Party, when you think about it.) But the Democrats figured that if Rauner were to veto the education-funding bill, it would turn parents in suburban and downstate swing districts against the governor. Trying to put the heat on the Democrats, Rauner went on a statewide tour where he bashed Madigan, ripped Chicago, and tried to pass himself off as just an ordinary guy who’s standin’ up for the hardworkin’ people of Illi-
nois. As opposed to a billionaire venture capitalist who owns properties throughout the country, including a luxurious condo across the street from Maggie Daley Park, where he occasionally goes rollerblading. When his statewide tour didn’t cause Madigan or Cullerton to blink, Rauner tried a new public relations stunt: taking a page from President Donald Trump, he issued an executive order, declaring that “I, Governor Bruce Rauner, hereby call and convene the 100th General Assembly in a Special Session to commence at 12:00 Noon on July 26, 2017.” And so it was that dozens of legislators schlepped to Springfield from every corner of the state. Well, some didn’t. In a glorious display of defiance, Chicago state reps Ann Williams and Kelly Cassidy spent much of that period painting and cleaning up schools in their north-side districts. That’s probably the most productive thing any legislators have done since Rauner took office. On July 26 about half the legislators in both houses gathered for day one of the three-day session. “Here’s what happened—absolutely
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nothing,” says state rep Rob Martwick, a northwest-side Democrat. That’s because there was nothing to do. The legislators couldn’t take action until Rauner vetoed the bill. And he didn’t have the opportunity to veto it until it was sent to him—which Cullerton finally did on July 31. So they gaveled the meeting to order. They brought on a clergyman, who said a prayer. Recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Took the roll call. A handful of Republicans gave speeches in which they said Rauner was wonderful and Madigan was awful. And then everyone adjourned to the back rooms, where they drank gin out of flasks, played poker, smoked cigars, ate steaks, and told bawdy jokes. Actually, that’s how legislators behaved in the old days. From what I’ve heard they’ve really cleaned up their acts. “That night I watched Ozark,” says Martwick of the new Netflix series starring Jason Bateman. “It’s a pretty good show.” Day two went much the same as day one— prayer, pledge, etc. But no Republicans spoke. (Perhaps they were exhausted from having
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stayed up late, binging on Netflix.) “The whole thing was over in about eight minutes,” Martwick says. There was, however, a caucus meeting with Rauner that was closed to the press. But obviously the Rauner statehouse is as riddled with leaks as the Trump White House. Unnamed Republican sources told reporters that Rauner urged them to stick together because the “revolution” is coming and SB1 is “evil.” Evil? Governor, we’re talking about a school funding bill. If you think that’s evil, you’ve gotta get out more. On day three of the special session, legislators convened, prayed, pledged, adjourned, and went home. “The whole thing was a waste of time,” Martwick says. That won’t stop them from doing it again. Now that Rauner’s vetoed SB1, we can look forward to another special session. Let’s hope legislators can scrape up enough Republicans to override his veto and protect the state from our rollerblading revolutionary. v
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Bike riders wait for a green light at Dearborn and Randolph. Cutting to the front of the line is known as “shoaling.” ò JOHN GREENFIELD
TRANSPORTATION
Breaking the cycle
How can the most annoying and dangerous cycling behaviors—“shoaling,” “salmoning,” red-light running, sidewalk riding—be prevented? By JOHN GREENFIELD
O
ne of the main reasons biking is my favorite way to get around Chicago is the good vibes. Cyclists can bypass hectic, sun-baked arterials during hot-weather rush hours in favor of tranquil, leafy backstreet routes. And nothing beats a relaxed cruise home, past buzzing neon and packed sidewalk cafes on an absolutely perfect summer night. While friction between cyclists and motorists is widely publicized, I have plenty of positive interactions with those around me when I’m in the saddle: the driver who waves me through a four-way stop, the pedestrians who say thanks after I stop and nod for them to cross the street. Most of my exchanges with other people on bikes are similarly pleasant— after all, we’ve got something in common. But cyclists still get on each other’s nerves sometimes, as a recent discussion on the Chainlink, a local social networking site, made abundantly clear. Chainlink president Yasmeen Schuller started a thread called “Pet Peeves Among the Pedals” and invited members to talk about annoying and dangerous bicyclist behavior they hate. She started with one of her own beefs, “the cyclist that blows past me so close to me I feel the wind of their SWOOOOOSH as they fly past, but they say nothing to warn me. . . . Buy a bell and/or tell me you are there!” Some of the other practices cyclists railed against are annoying breaches of etiquette like “shoaling.” This term, coined by influential blogger Bike Snob NYC, refers to when a large group of bike commuters is stopped at a light and someone rolls up from behind and rudely cuts in front of the pack to get a head start. Particularly irksome is sexist “manshoaling,” noted member Heléna Klumpp, “by guys who assume they’re faster than me—you know, because they’re guys, so they must be.” Kate M. added that it’s satisfying to loudly yell “On your left!” when passing these cads after the light turns green “because I am faster.”
Other irritating but relatively harmless phenomena Chainlinkers brought up included overly bright, flashing “seizure-inducing” bike headlights and cyclists who lock sideways to wave-shaped bike racks, hogging multiple parking spots. Mike W. complained about “Helmet Nazis, the people who feel compelled to shame the helmetless, often loudly in public.” In a similar vein, one commenter with the telltale handle OnlyCHICyclerWhoStopsAtStopSigns griped about riders who don’t follow the letter of the law. “[It] just really, really angers me. Just freakin’ stop at the stop sign. . . . It gives all of us a bad name.” Others countered that it’s not practical for cyclists to come to a complete halt at every stop sign, and that there’s a big difference between mindlessly bombing an intersection and treating a stop sign like a yield sign (a practice known as an “Idaho stop” because it’s legal in the Gem State). At that point the stop-sign stickler sheepishly admitted to occasional Idaho stops. The thread also brought up some inconsiderate cycling behavior that’s truly dangerous. On the Lakefront Trail there are oblivious folks who stop in the middle of the busy trail to chat instead of pulling to the side, as well as “Lakefront Lances,” Spandex-clad dudes who refuse to hit the brakes in congested areas lest they disrupt their workouts. Adults who ride fast on sidewalks endanger pedestrians and themselves. “Bike ninjas” who cycle at night without lights make themselves virtually invisible to drivers. “Salmoning” (another Bike Snob NYC term) is biking upstream against traffic, which is especially problematic for other cyclists when it happens in bike lanes that are protected by physical barriers such as curbs and parked cars. “Where the f**k am I supposed to go to safely get around these stupid fish?” fumed Chainlinker Skip Montanaro. My number one personal pet peeve? Riders blasting through red lights at busy intersections without yielding to pedestrians or cross
traffic. While it’s perfectly reasonable for bicyclists to treat stoplights like stop signs, speeding through a hectic crossing in this reckless manner terrifies people, causing them to stop in their tracks or slam on the brakes. ExChicago courier Travis Hugh Culley glorified this selfish style of riding in his 2001 memoir The Immortal Class: Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power. “We can twist Madison Avenue into a runway and penetrate a crowd like it was a puff of smoke,” he writes. “There is no fear. These kinds of stunts come directly from our experience, and that experience should be trusted. An intersection burnt by a courier should herald cheers from cops, motorists and pedestrians alike. It is the clearest expression of a messenger’s technique.” Actually, in my experience as a bike messenger for six years, Chicago couriers are often among the most mindful cyclists on the streets because they don’t want to get killed on the job. Some of the worst intersection-bombing offenders are on brakeless fixed-gear bikes. Look, I know that serpentining around cross traffic on a “fixie” is considered an art form, but so is skidding to a stop at a red and track standing until it’s safe to cross. If that’s too much trouble for you, get a frickin’ hand brake already. While this kind of truly dangerous cycling deserves to be ticketed, police resources should be focused on preventing reckless driving, which causes exponentially more death and destruction. On the other hand, I don’t have a major problem with enforcement events staged by the Chicago Department of Transportation’s Bicycling Ambassadors and the police department at high-crash locations. Officers flag down bicyclists who run reds, salmon, and sidewalk surf, and then
ambassadors talk with them about why the behavior is problematic. Importantly, during these stings motorists are also warned about failure to yield to pedestrians, distracted driving, blocking bike lanes, and opening car doors on cyclists. Nighttime enforcement events where bike ninjas are given free headlights are definitely helpful. It’s also common for the ambassadors to do outreach about path etiquette on the Lakefront Trail. Active Transportation Alliance director Jim Merrell notes that when it comes to improving cyclists’ behavior, enforcement “sticks” are less important than “carrots” in the form of safer bike infrastructure and better bike education. “Our priority is on redesigning streets and trails in ways that intuitively result in safe behaviors,” he says. “Well-designed, lowstress bike lanes lead to less sidewalk riding, and bike-specific traffic signals and highvisibility crosswalks result in better compliance with traffic lights and stop signs and yielding to pedestrians.” He adds that the Chicago Park District’s current project building separate paths for people on foot and bikes on the Lakefront Trail will reduce conflicts. So if you get frustrated by bad behavior from bike riders, the most constructive thing to do is lobby decision makers for better bike lanes, paths, and education. In the meantime, noted Chainlinker Alex Z., when a fellow cyclist does something boneheaded, it’s best to take a breath, stay calm, and maintain some perspective. “You are on a bike, so by default things are going well.” v
John Greenfield edits the transportation news website Streetsblog Chicago. v @greenfieldjohn
AUGUST 3, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 13
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ARTS & CULTURE Contributor and photographer Billy Abernathy in front of the Wall of Respect, 1967 ò DARRYL COWHERD/ COURTESY NU PRESS
PUBLIC ART
The Picasso and the Wall of Respect, 50 years later By DEANNA ISAACS
T
his month marks the 50th anniversary of two seminal pieces of Chicago art. ¶ At noon on August 8, the city’s throwing a big public party for the less important one—the iconic Chicago Picasso. There’ll be a reenactment of the ceremony that took place on August 15, 1967, when in front of thousands of people jamming the plaza now named after him, Mayor Richard J. Daley pulled a cord and the wraps fell away from the towering metal sculpture to reveal— huh?—a 50-foot-tall, funny-faced, slick enigma, probably a woman, but maybe a horse or a bird or an Afghan hound. It could’ve been worse: at least it wasn’t (discernibly) one of the voluptuous naked ladies flashing their private parts that Picasso was turning out at that late point in his career. Broadcaster Studs Terkel made a tape of reactions from the bewildered crowd that
day, and another legendary Chicagoan, Illinois’s newly appointed poet laureate, Gwendolyn Brooks, was also there, reading the poem she’d been tasked with writing for the occasion. She’d seen only a small scale model of the sculpture before that moment, but she’d found it inscrutable, its ambiguity uncomfortable and cold. It had led her to this opening line: “Does man love Art? Man visits Art, but squirms.” Brooks would later link that chilly poem with the fevered one she wrote for the other unveiling, 12 days later and six miles south. The contrast between them is as stark as the difference between the two visual artworks. “It is the Hour of ringing, rouse, of ferment-festival,” Brooks wrote for the August 27 opening of the stylistically motley, homegrown, and momentous mural named— after an Aretha Franklin song—the Wall of Respect.
Collaboratively produced and aimed at celebrating black identity, the wall was a portrait collage of heroes, commemorating dozens of achievers from Nat Turner to Miles Davis and Brooks herself. An artistic embodiment of the then-surging black liberation movement, the Wall of Respect turned the street below it, at 43rd and Langley, into a forum for performance and political action. And, says U. of I. professor emeritus Abdul Alkalimat, a founder of OBAC (the Organization of Black American Culture), whose visual arts workshop members created the wall, “No one had to wonder what it meant.” The Wall of Respect only lasted four years: after damage from a mysterious fire, the building it covered was razed by the city. But a new book, The Wall of Respect: Public Art and Black Liberation in 1960s Chicago, to be published in September by Northwestern University Press, has collected the documents, reminiscences, photographs, and commentary that make its historical significance clear. Written by Alkalimat, SAIC professor Romi Crawford (daughter of photographer and friend of OBAC Bob Crawford), and Northwestern University professor Rebecca Zorach (whose contribution, among other things, points to the contrasting Brooks poems), the book tells how a series of discussions and meetings that started with Alkalimat, then a University of Chicago graduate student, and
two friends, Conrad Kent Rivers and Hoyt Fuller, launched OBAC and its subgroups in 1967. The subgroups included the 15-member Visual Arts Workshop that produced the wall, at the Bronzeville address where another major leader of the group, muralist William Walker, had already arranged to do a piece. Designer Sylvia Abernathy worked out an overall layout and general color scheme, but there was no attempt at aesthetic coherence beyond that. The wall was broken up into seven spaces, each with a theme: literature, theater, jazz, sports, religion, rhythm and blues, and statesmen, and each artist or team of artists forged ahead in their own style. Work started August 5, with neighbors commenting, street gangs protecting, and plenty of interest from the Chicago Police Department and the FBI’s anti-communist arm, COINTELPRO. The result was a patchwork of styles and a controversially evolving canvas that contributed to the dissolution of the visual arts group. Within weeks of its completion, Walker unilaterally approved and helped create a sectional redo by a new artist, Eugene “Eda” Wade, that wiped out the work of one of the original members, replacing it with stronger colors and more confrontational images, including a dominant raised black power fist. Wade would later explain that this was done at the behest of members of the community, to reflect its growing militancy (an attitude that had kept Martin Luther King Jr. off the wall from the beginning). A former gang leader turned community activist who’d supported the wall wound up murdered, his body propped up against it. In the aftermath, the artists splintered—some went on to form the African-American visual arts collective AfriCOBRA (the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists), others joined the nucleus of what became the Chicago Public Art Group. Still, in its short life span, the Wall of Respect became a place of pilgrimage for African-Americans and an inspiration, not only for its immediate community, but for a national and international community streetart movement. Alkalimat says the Picasso, created by a man who never set foot in the city, was “the world coming to Chicago,” while the Wall of Respect—a homegrown, working-class political statement—was “Chicago coming to the world.” Or as another OBAC writer, Haki Madhubuti, put it in his own commemorative poem, “The Wall”: “‘picasso ain’t got shit on us.” v
v @DeannaIsaacs AUGUST 3, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 15
R READER RECOMMENDED
ARTS & CULTURE
b ALL AGES
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THEATER
Black and white and red all over By DAN JAKES
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o be a “black playwright,” according to Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s onstage surrogate, BJJ, is to have every work examined through the lens of racial discord in America, be it relevant or not. Write about farm animals and their feed as an allegory for substance abuse? Must be a deconstructed, modernized African folktale. Ask a Caucasian actor to play a period-appropriate bigot? Must be a personal expression of rage against white society. Use the bathroom? Whoa, enough with the social animus, buddy. If Jacobs-Jenkins is to be backed into a creative corner by literary managers and critics, he’ll go there on his own terms, he tells us in in a direct-to-audience prelude. Inspired by a suggestion from his imaginary therapist (“I can’t afford one [in real life]. . . . You people are my therapy”), BJJ (played by Breon Arzell) slathers on whiteface and, for the sake of discovery, plays the slave-owning leads in a revival of Irish-American actor-playwright Dion Boucicault’s wildly successful—and wildly racist—1859 melodrama The Octoroon. Moments later, he’s met by Boucicault himself (Chris Sheard), his costar for the evening, who’s a little too eager to paint his own face red and perform as a cartoonishly savage Indian, Wahnotee. One project; two very different collaborators. On the rare occasion The Octoroon is performed today, it’s done so under an asterisk,
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presented as a historical artifact and handled gingerly. Here, Jacobs-Jenkins rips the gloves off and tears into the nitty-gritty of Boucicault’s tale of cruel enslavement and interracial love on a Louisiana plantation, deploying an arsenal of metatheatrical tricks, irreverent comedic jolts, and emotional gut punches to— as one character notes in an audience aside— make you feel something. An Octoroon plays out like a daring experiment, its various stylistic and narrative threads pulled, stripped, and crossed throughout with inconsistent and intermittently electrifying results. I didn’t see Sarah Benson’s acclaimed 2014 New York world debut, but judging from accounts of it, this Chicago premiere from Definition Theatre, directed by Chuck Smith and presented in association with the Goodman, significantly diverges from the music-driven, visually spectacular off-Broadway staging at SoHo Rep. Sound designer Aaron Stephenson uses old-timey piano covers of on-the-nose anachronisms like Ray Charles’s “You Don’t Own Me” and Alicia Keys’s “Girl on Fire” between scenes, but it would be a stretch to tag this a modern melodrama, as the original production was treated. With no live music and an understated set by Andrew Boyce, it falls to the cast to send up and subvert the 19th-century theatrical tropes. And their outsize performances really do. As Zoe, the titular octoroon and object of
Breon Arzell and Danielle Davis ò JOE MAZZA
plantation heir George Peyton’s affection, Ariel Richardson gives an affecting performance filled with striking silhouette-like poses and raw recitations of prose. While “white” folks squabble operatically in the foreground about deeds and debts (Arzell does double duty as noble hero Peyton and stock villain M’Closkey, and Carley Cornelius goes broad as wealthy heiress and romantic rival Dora Sunnyside), characters relegated to the background in Boucicault’s text are given the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern treatment. As a house slave making the best of her hellish circumstances, Sydney Charles hilariously employs a whip-smart stand-up-style delivery, and though they’re given fewer punch lines, her frequent scene partners Maya Prentiss and Tiffany Oglesby effectively anchor the dark comedy in some of the play’s strongest, most pointed exchanges.
In blackface as an elderly slave, like something out of a minstrel horror-comedy, Danielle Davis contributes incendiary bits (lifted straight from Boucicault’s original) that shock with genuinely arresting postmodern humor. Her bravery and wit pay out exceptional dividends. Running at about two and a half hours, An Octoroon retains The Octoroon’s plot contrivances, and stretches that should resonate viscerally—including a stark reminder of real-life unspeakable evil—have dampened impact as a result of its longueurs. But for folks who heed Definition’s adjuration to “Stay in it” and meet the show halfway, there are rewards aplenty. v AN OCTOROON Through 8/20: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 2:30 and 8 PM, Sun 2:30 PM, Victory Gardens Theatre, 2433 N. Lincoln, 773-871-3000, definitiontheatre.com, $30-$40.
v @DanEJakes
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When Closed Casket closes it’s closed for good By TONY ADLER Rico. On Saturday comes a marathon performance of the entire opus, presented in two parts starting at 11 AM. Sunday is given over to the premiere of episode ten, comprising the final suite of pieces. That premiere will also be an ending. Closed Casket is touted as the “complete, final, and absolutely last Baudelaire in a Box,” and Buchen plans to ensure that’s the case by cutting up some of his scrolls and handing them out to various participants and sponsors. Still, he says, Baudelaire “is not going away” for him. “I enjoy his angst. When he was writing this, the hopes of the revolution from 1848 were completely dashed, and they just felt like there’s no way forward—which is fairly resonant of the times that we’re in right now.” Baudelaire “was depressed, but he found in his depression a way to make new beauty—and found that beauty in the horror of stasis and the horror of existence and the horror of death and the horror of trying to live together.” Closed Casket’s doom seems appropriate then: “I picture us all in that room together on Sunday,” Buchen says, “finishing off some sort of wake for the Baudelaire and just drinking a toast and saying, ‘Now we’re done. Goodbye.’” v R CLOSED CASKET Fri 8/4, 7 PM; Sat 8/5, 11 AM-5 PM and 5-11 PM; Sun 8/6, 6 PM, Links Hall at Constellation, 3111 N. Western, 773-2810824, theateroobleck.com, $15-$50.
v @taadler
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heater Oobleck’s Martha Bayne sounds overwhelmed when we talk by phone. Over the August 4 weekend Oobleck will be producing Closed Casket, which she describes as a “music project being put on by a theater company that involves a visual art form no one understands.” She adds that the event is huge and logistically complicated. Also arcane, eccentric, and moody—a threeday celebration of angst. “The moral” of Closed Casket, she says, “is despair and folly.” Well, of course it is: it’s inspired by the notoriously dark French poet Charles Baudelaire. Seven years ago Bayne’s fellow Oobleckians Dave Buchen and Chris Schoen decided to (a) put the 130-odd poems of Baudelaire’s 1857 masterwork Les Fleurs du Mal to music, (b) pair the resulting songs with cantastoria—i.e., the visual art form no one understands, consisting here of images painted on long sheets of paper that are then attached to poles and rolled out scroll style for an audience—and (c) display said songs and images publicly in a series of “episodes” as the project progressed. Now the project, Baudelaire in a Box, is complete; Closed Casket is the topping-off ceremony. Buchen painted all the cantastoria scrolls, but the songs were composed and performed by about 50 artists in addition to Schoen over the years, and they’re all coming in for the festivities. Friday’s bill is dedicated to works that have been presented outside Chicago, in North Carolina and Buchen’s adopted home of Puerto
Asperger’s Are Us: Ethan Finlan, “New Michael” Ingemi, Jack Hanke, and Noah Britton ò ALEX LEHMANN
COMEDY
Autistic expression By STEVE HEISLER
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veryone in the four-man sketch comedy troupe Asperger’s Are Us is on the autism spectrum, but the group’s material doesn’t raise awareness of Asperger’s syndrome. Nor do they self-deprecate or write what one member, Noah Britton, describes as “Hallmark cards”—maudlin sketches that resemble the sports-underdog film Rudy. The company’s website shows Britton wearing a T-shirt that says I DON’T WANT YOUR PITY. The members of Asperger’s Are Us want to earn laughs from their work, not their condition. “We’re not intentionally trying to buck stereotypes,” Britton says. “Why would we waste our time serving the interest of people who walk around believing such garbage? But at the same time, we hope they leave our show realizing they were completely wrong.” Still, some audience members encounter Asperger’s Are Us with some unfortunate assumptions. One woman approached the group after a show and shared her patronizing epiphany: that autistic people do, in fact, have a sense of humor. Online commenters have claimed the people in the troupe are faking their condition in order to attract sympathy. The performers in Asperger’s Are Us are Britton, Ethan Finlan, Jack Hanke, and “New Michael” Ingemi (his dad is “Old Michael”). Their alliance started at a Boston comedy camp for autistic kids in 2005. Finlan, Hanke, and Ingemi were 12, and Britton, then 22, was their counselor—he
immediately jibed with these three campers. Six years later, while Finlan, Hanke, and Ingemi were finishing up high school, the foursome formed Asperger’s Are Us. Last year Duplass Brothers Productions made a Netflix documentary titled after the group; its release increased the demand for shows from a few per year to a few per night. Comedy-savvy audiences, like those in Chicago, understand that troupe names are usually nonsensical. But Asperger’s Are Us are true to their moniker. “Asperger’s [humor] is deadpan, absurd, pun-based,” Britton says. “We produce situations that aren’t just breaking social norms but are impossible.” This aspect of the group’s humor is demonstrated in one scene in which a woman shares news of her pregnancy with her husband, who admits that he’s not a human being—he’s bubble wrap. The troupe’s breezy rapport, based on experience and the members’ shared condition, produces comedic twists. Yet it turns out artistic groups consisting of people with Asperger’s aren’t rare just in comedy circles, but all circles. “I looked up ‘aspies’ voluntarily interacting with each other, and the only thing I could find was us,” Britton says. “Why wouldn’t a bunch of aspies hang out and live in a world that makes sense to them?” v R ASPERGER’S ARE US Fri 8/4, 8 PM, Laugh Out Loud, 3851 N. Lincoln, 773-857-6000, laughoutloudtheater.com, $15.
v @SteveHeisler AUGUST 3, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 17
ARTS & CULTURE
VISUAL ART
This is my beautiful house Chicago artist Amanda Williams, whose work is featured in a new exhibit at the MCA, draws attention to the valuation of black neighborhoods. By KERRY CARDOZA
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n the 5900 block of Stewart Avenue, a quiet, grassy lot in Englewood, there’s a brick house painted from top to bottom in the teal hue of a pack of Newport cigarettes. Across the street, wildflowers grow at the base of an elevated track where freight trains periodically chug by with a low hum. The residence was painted in 2015 by the artist Amanda Williams and a small crew of helpers because it fit Williams’s main criterion: it was slated for demolition. “Can you imagine if once a week a house in your neighborhood went away?” Williams asked me. “It would be preposterous, right? It would just be crazy.” However crazy it might seem, the average rate of demolition approaches that ratio in some Chicago neighborhoods. There have been 221 demolitions in West Englewood alone over the past three
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years. Williams, a former architect, continues to explore questions like these—about the valuation of neighborhoods, about what color signifies, and about the sustainability of built environments—in her current exhibition, part of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Chicago Works series, which highlights local artists. For the show, Williams, who’s 42, expanded on ideas from her Color(ed) Theory series, her best-known work. The project focuses on eight homes in Englewood that were on the city’s demolition list, each of which Williams painted a vivid color that held cultural significance for the community—the red of a Harold’s Chicken Shack, the yellow of a Safe Passage route, or the aforementioned teal of a pack of Newports. Color(ed) Theory brought attention to both the properties themselves and the issue of neighborhood vacancies. It was included in the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial in 2015, for
which Williams also invited participants and community members to join her in painting the last house in the series. The following year, in the summer of 2016, Williams first met with MCA curatorial assistant Grace Deveney, who organized the Chicago Works exhibit. “Within a few minutes of our studio visit, I knew I wanted to work with her,” Deveney says. “I found her and her work to be engaging and incredibly relevant.” In institutional art settings such as the MCA, Williams, who grew up in AuburnGresham and now lives in Bronzeville, tries to blur the notions of what art is and what context it exists in. She does that at the MCA with two site-specific installations. Visitors encounter the first, She’s Mighty, Mighty, Just Lettin’ It All Hang Out, when they reach the second-floor gallery. Williams had bricklayers seal off one of the space’s two entranc-
es using salvaged bricks covered in imitation gold leaf. The denied access immediately shifts the dynamic of the venue, subtly changing how many people can fit inside and showing how it feels to be inconvenienced, albeit on a very small scale. In the second installation, A Dream or Substance, a Beamer, a Necklace or Freedom?, Williams invited six collaborators from Englewood to use imitation gold leaf to gild a six-by-15-foot plywood room that’s proportionate to the size of a standard 25-by-125-foot Chicago lot. Set against the wall in a corner of the gallery, the room is closed off to the public—it’s only visible through two narrow gaps in the wall. Visitors can peer in, but they can’t enter the space. “For me, even though very small, it symbolically was this moment where [the Englewood collaborators] had special access, in an institutional capacity, that the average person
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ARTS & CULTURE Amanda Williams, selections from Color(ed) Theory Suite, 2014–’16: Flamin’ Red Hots (opposite); Crown Royal Bag (this page) ò COURTESY OF THE ARTIST/ MCCORMICK GALLERY
will never have,” Williams says. “For them to understand that these hundreds of people . . . [can’t] go in there, but they did—there was a kind of pride with that.” A Dream or Substance, a Beamer, a Necklace or Freedom? takes its name from “Hip Hop,” a 1999 song by the rap group Dead Prez that asks listeners whether they want material objects or justice. Williams has taught architecture for a number of years, most recently at the Illinois Institute of Technology and Washington University in Saint Louis, and the importance of thinking about what we value as a society, and how we assign that value, is at the heart of her teaching practice. “Typical architecture education involves scaling up on the process of starting with a blank slate,” she says. Students start off with a simple structure and then ascend in intricacy and ambition. But Williams introduces an
added layer of complexity, asking her students to consider the context of a community and its history, culture, and socioeconomic realities. “What does sustainability really mean to a neighborhood?” she asks. “What does sustainability mean in Flint? These are the kinds of questions that I ask, and then you can’t concentrate on just form.” This consideration might seem obvious in an era when environmental and social-justice issues are front-page news, but historically architects have often overlooked such concerns. For Williams, thinking about how buildings will endure long after a project ends is essential. “Nobody starts off saying, ‘I hope my project kills a community,’” she notes. One new work on display brilliantly ties these ideas together. The piece’s title is extremely long because it’s styled after the way a parcel of land appears on a Cook County prop-
erty deed. Set off from the rest of the show, it’s displayed on the balcony by the elevator bank and comes directly out of the Color(ed) Theory project, as evidenced by the artwork’s deep purple hue, meant to resemble a Crown Royal whiskey bag. The wooden composition was made with railroad ties salvaged from the location of one of the Englewood houses that was torn down; it’s fashioned into a small toy box, the lid left ajar to reveal Matchbox cars. The piece was crafted with a boy whose family lives on the same block as the house. He’d grown attached to the structure and envisioned the vacant property as a vessel for his toys. Using railroad ties was intentional, Williams says, as the railroad was the cause of the demolition. “It doesn’t have to be a sob story,” she says. “But at the same time, where’s that really intelligent way of trying to make sure that your business doesn’t end communities?”
Although the artwork emerges from this tension, Williams felt joy in designing it, finding she was able, as she says, “to not be paralyzed by the knowledge of the history of what that material is.” The transformation inherent in the piece imparts a sense of lightness and hope. In the media “Englewood” might be a placeholder for the worst aspects of the city— gun violence, gang activity—yet Williams’s exhibit demonstrates that the neighborhood’s residents aren’t stereotypes in a larger narrative. They’re citizens. v R “CHICAGO WORKS: AMANDA WILLIAMS” Through 12/31: Tue 10 AM-8 PM, Wed-Sun 10 AM-5 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago, 312-280-2660, mcachicago.org. $12, $7 students and seniors, free kids 12 and under and members of the military, free for Illinois residents on Tuesdays.
v @booksnotboys AUGUST 3, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 19
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ARTS & CULTURE
Detroit
MOVIES
A mess in Motown By TAL ROSENBERG
W
ith Detroit, her latest feature, director Kathryn Bigelow has done something unusual: she’s made a film that fits all the criteria for what a “Kathryn Bigelow movie” should be, yet one that doesn’t much feel like a “Kathryn Bigelow movie.” Like several of Bigelow’s other feature-length efforts, Detroit is a critique of both institutional corruption and law enforcement as well as an examination of masculinity. But tonally and structurally the work feels like the product of a different director—until the credits rolled and the onscreen text read “Directed by Kathryn Bigelow,” I wondered whether I was seeing something helmed by someone else entirely.
Part of my confusion had to do with the odd narrative structure of the movie and its some what misleading title. Detroit opens with an animated minute-long sequence that explains the Great Migration, white flight, and urban segregation in the United States during the mid-20th century. The first live-action scene takes place in the predawn hours of July 23, 1967, at the moment an unlicensed after-hours bar was raided by Detroit police. Many viewers will likely infer that this incident instigated the 1967 Detroit riots, one of the deadliest instances of public disorder in American history, which prompted government officials to deploy the National Guard and both the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. The audience’s
natural presumption at this point is that Bigelow’s film will be about the Detroit riots. That’s true for the first hour, where Bigelow intercuts real-life news footage of the riots with her own narrative, which gradually introduces characters who are living in Detroit during the time period: Melvin Dismukes (John Boyega), who works in a factory during the day and as a security guard at night; a trio of trigger-happy plainclothesmen (Will Poulter, Ben O’ Toole, Jack Reynor); and Cleveland Larry Reed (Algee Smith), then the lead singer of the famous Motown group the Dramatics, and his friend Fred Temple (Jacob Latimore). Because of the rioting, a Dramatics performance at the Fox Theatre is canceled,
and Reed and Temple make their way to the Algiers Motel to get a room for the night. Among the people staying at the Algiers are a Vietnam war veteran (Anthony Mackie), two girls visiting from Ohio (Hannah Murray and Kaitlyn Dever), and an adolescent prankster (Jason Mitchell). Then Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal make an abrupt shift: the characters and their stories all converge during a police raid at the Algiers, an incident of police brutality and murder that occurred on the night of July 25, right in the middle of the surrounding melee. However much people may know about the Detroit riots, it’s unlikely they know a lot, if anything, about what transpired at the Algiers. For the sake of those who haven’t yet seen Detroit I’m not going to reveal anything further about the sequence, because it’s best to know as little as possible going in—the more information you have beforehand, the more it blunts the effect of the film. Bigelow and Boal’s decision to zero in on the Algiers an hour into the movie is a deliberate strategy. The obvious and worthy reason for structuring the film this way is to provide the proper context for the Algiers raid—the chaotic environment in which the event took place, not to mention the historic and socioeconomic factors that help to explain both why some police officers so grossly abused their power and why such behavior was tolerated. But another, more manipulative motive is to take the viewer off guard, which makes the Algiers scenes more unexpected and thereby more horrifying. This wouldn’t be problematic if Detroit were more tonally cohesive, but that’s not the case—it’s a mess, which undercuts the power of the Algiers section. One gets the sense that by trying to do too much, Bigelow and Boal have hamstrung some of Detroit’s narrative components. Boal reveals as much in an essay published in New York magazine’s Vulture titled “Why I Wrote Detroit,” which is either a frank behind-thescenes commentary, a marketing ploy, or both. In the piece Boal discloses that his decision to create Detroit began when he interviewed Reed, but the screenwriter soon “followed the story outward from Larry’s own.” As a result of interviews and extensive research, the text started to incorporate more plotlines. After working on the script with Bigelow, the ensuing product became “an ensemble piece,” he writes, “quickly shifting between characters in a nesting doll of movies within movies, a riot film that gives way to racial horror-crime that switches to courtroom drama, with sever- J
AUGUST 3, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 21
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al detours along the way . . . ” In other words, Boal eschewed his responsibility to the story in the interest of creative indulgence. That indulgence plays out in clunky dialogue that significantly impairs Boal’s artistic intent. On my second viewing of Detroit, I wrote down every instance of cliche in the film and filled up a full page of my notebook. There’s an out-ofnowhere discussion of John Coltrane’s music that would fit better in a Lifetime movie, and in one scene a white police officer finds one of the black main characters beaten and bloody, then rhetorically asks, “Who could do this to someone?” When the officer tries to help the man into his car, he says, “Come on, brother.” At both screenings audience members laughed during this sequence, something that doesn’t typically happen when viewers are faced with the aftermath of racist violence. Aside from the virtuosity of the Algiers scenes, Detroit is aided by a number of rich performances. Both Poulter (The Revenant) and Smith are actors good enough to obscure the ways in which their characters are written as caricatures, the former as a sociopathic cop and the latter as part of a VH1 made-for-TV biopic. But the standout is Boyega: he perfectly conveys the complicated nature of Dismukes, a person who so prizes his professional reputation that he ignores his sense of morality. Dismukes is the one character that Boal writes
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with any depth and nuance, and Boyega’s controlled performance overshadows any issues with the dialogue. Bigelow and Boal’s previous collaborations, The Hurt Locker (2008) and Zero Dark Thirty (2012), are also movies about historic events (the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, respectively) that critique larger institutions (the military, the CIA) and government abuse (in both cases, the war on terror). Yet The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty are trained on lone protagonists so obsessed with their jobs that they ignore the dangers their actions pose to themselves and the people around them. That narrow perspective covertly makes Bigelow and Boal’s commentary more potent because it operates in the background, allowing the filmmakers to avoid advocacy. Detroit, on the other hand, is transparently an activist film. As a result it’s dictated more by the views and emotions of the filmmakers than by artistic judgment or taste. Some viewers might think that’s the appropriate treatment for such a serious and important subject, but I’d argue that such an approach makes the movie less memorable. Bigelow and Boal ambitiously try to cover a lot of ground, but they’ve done so unevenly, and watching Detroit is ultimately an unnecessarily frustrating experience. v DETROIT ss Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. R, 143 min. See chicagoreader.com for listings.
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MUSIC Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker ò CHRISTOPHER POLK/GETTY IMAGES FOR NARAS
such that drawing on the former disqualifies an artist from the latter. To the contrary, one of Peep’s favorite bands has played a crucial role in bringing them together. Formed in 1992, Blink-182 didn’t hit their stride till Hoppus and guitarist-vocalist Tom DeLonge recruited drummer Travis Barker in 1998. (Hoppus is now the sole original member; Alkaline Trio front man Matt Skiba replaced DeLonge in 2015.) Barker brought musical rigor and professionalism to the band, as well as a deep understanding of hip-hop. As Barker writes in his 2015 memoir, Can I Say: Living Large, Cheating Death, and Drums Drums Drums, he grew up listening to all sorts of music—country singer-songwriter Buck Owens, jazz drummer Buddy Rich, satanic metal pioneer King Diamond—but the Beastie Boys changed his life. As DeLonge told Rolling Stone while promoting the 2011 album Neighborhoods, “If he didn’t bring his love LOLLAPALOOZA of hip-hop into Blink-182 Thu 8/3 through Sun 8/6, noonthen we’d never have 10 PM, Grant Park, Columbus songs like ‘I Miss You’ and Jackson, lollapalooza.com, general-admission tickets or ‘Down.’” Blink also sold out, single-day VIP wouldn’t have had “After passes $650, four-day VIP Midnight,” a Neighborpasses $2,200 b hoods track built on a BLINK-182, ELOHIM but he drinks from the beat that Barker made for Thu 8/3, 11 PM, Metro, same well.) Soundcloud Alabama rapper Yelawolf. 3730 N. Clark, metrochicago. has since tweaked its Barker has crossed over com, sold out, 18+ alt-rock chart to exclude into hip-hop more sucBLINK-182 POP-UP SHOP rappers, but the point’s cessfully than any other The first 182 customers get already been made. rock musician this cena free gift bag with their purchase, but please no lining Peep is the new rapper tury. In 2001 Sean Combs up before 9 AM. Thu 8/3-Sun who’s most obviously (then P. Diddy) asked 8/6, 11 AM-7 PM, Rotofugi, 2780 indebted to Blink-182 and Barker to play drums in N. Lincoln, rotofugi.com b their ilk. His tortured, the video for “Bad Boy for half-sung raps sound Life.” And his collaboramore like Used front man tions with rappers grew Bert McCracken than they do anyone in Migos. into serious partnerships after Blink-182 went Peep’s vocal style and appearance tempted on hiatus in 2005. That year Barker produced Pitchfork to call him “the future of emo” in a his first instrumental for a rapper (Bun B’s January profile, which while provocative basi“Late Night Creepin’”) and formed hip-hop cally erases his present artistic choices. That’s supergroup Expensive Taste, which included not to say I think Pitchfork should’ve ignored Houston rapper Paul Wall (who topped the BillPeep’s influences—that would mean ignoring board 200 in 2005 with The Peoples Champ). the way that he (alongside many others) borWithin three years, and especially after Barkrows from pop-punk to push hip-hop in a new er’s 2007 remix of “Crank That (Soulja Boy),” direction. But many commentators seem to asrap and pop stars practically beat down his door sume that commercial punk and underground asking for remixes. He launched TRV$DJAM, a hip-hop are mutually exclusive categories, dance-forward remix project with former J
H O W B L I N K -1 8 2 G AV E H I P - H O P A R E F R E S H I N G ENEMA The Friday-night Lollapalooza headliners helped connect the mainstream pop-punk of the late 90s to the Soundcloud rap of today. By LEOR GALIL
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n April 9, Gustav Åhr closed his sold-out show at Subterranean with a cover of Blink-182’s “Dammit,” the bratty 1997 single that became the California pop-punk band’s first hit. Shirtless and sweaty, Åhr belted out the lyrics in short, hoarse shouts, duplicating the regimented rhythms of Blink bassistvocalist Mark Hoppus. Åhr loves pop-punk, and as a skinny white 20-year-old with dozens of tattoos and pink-and-black hair, he looks the part—but if you’ve heard of him, you probably know him better as rapper Lil Peep. Peep is one of many young underground rappers influenced by the mainstream rock and punk of the 1990s and 2000s—not just Blink182 (who headline Lollapalooza’s Bud Light stage on Friday, August 4) but also the likes of Marilyn Manson, My Chemical Romance, Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and Disturbed. These rappers don’t share an aesthetic, though a few (in contrast to the bygone radio rockers who inspired them) seem to favor lo-fi production that makes their music sound like it’s always
playing through a broken smartphone speaker. The only other thing they reliably have in common is their preferred streaming service, which might explain why “Soundcloud rap” is an established enough term that the New York Times recently embraced it. You may have heard that Soundcloud itself is in dire financial straits—on July 6, the company laid off 173 employees, and around a week later an anonymous Soundcloud staffer told TechCrunch that it was fully funded for only 80 more days. But Soundcloud rap is thriving, albeit mostly below the radar. Many of these rappers use the streaming platform’s genre-tagging options to cheekily reference their love of rock: in March, when Genius chief content officer Brendan Frederick tweeted a screenshot of Soundcloud’s most-played chart for “Alternative Rock,” it featured Lil Peep, hip-hop hit machine Lil Uzi Vert, and popular alleged strangler of a pregnant ex-girlfriend XXXtentacion. (Uzi, who headlines Lollapalooza’s Pepsi stage Thursday night, is too successful to be considered a Soundcloud rapper,
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A few of the rappers Blink-182 has influenced: Ju, Lil Peep, Lil Uzi Vert, and the Cool Kids, aka Chuck Inglish and Sir Michael Rocks ò CREDITS IN ORDER OF MENTION: ROSARIO ZAVALA, PASCAL LE SEGRETAIN/GETTY IMAGES, FRAZER HARRISON/GETTY IMAGES, ROSARIO E. ZAVALA, LARRY BUSACCA/GETTY IMAGES
continued from 23 Crazy Town turntablist DJ AM (aka Adam Goldstein), which brought him even deeper into the world of hip-hop—Cool Kids rapper-producer Chuck Inglish recalls meeting Barker through Goldstein. The Cool Kids were among dozens of rappers who contributed to Barker’s 2011 solo album, Give the Drummer Some: the others include Lil Wayne, Pharrell, Slaughterhouse, RZA, Snoop Dogg, Bun B, Cypress Hill, Rick Ross, and locals Twista and Lupe Fiasco. Barker has been mentioned in lyrics by Gucci Mane, Rick Ross, and Lil Wayne, and all sorts of rappers have invited him to drum with them onstage—maybe you remember the extra punk punch he gave Vic Mensa’s vitriolic “16 Shots” on Jimmy Kimmel Live! the night before the 2016 election. “Travis has a style, he looks familiar to rap, and more importantly, it’s just history—people know your history. It makes you cooler,” says Chuck Inglish. He’s collaborated with Barker a handful of times; Barker coproduced and drummed on “Sour Apples,” from the 2011 Cool Kids record When Fish Ride Bicycles, and he’ll be on the duo’s forthcoming reunion album, Special Edition Grand Master Deluxe. (In 2012, judging by Inglish’s Instagram feed, he and Barker were in the studio working on an instrumental album, but it has yet to materialize.) Inglish says working with Barker is easy, and it helps that they’re both drummers. He was impressed by Barker even before they met. “At Guitar Center, in the drum section, they always have videos of a famous drummer doing a live solo set,” Inglish says. “It was usually Travis doing a solo.” Inglish became a fan of Blink-182 when they released their breakthrough album, 1999’s Enema of the State. The video for “What’s My Age Again?” made an especially strong impression. “When you were sitting up watching TRL, after Puff Daddy videos and shit, it would be these guys, jogging down North Hollywood streets buck naked, and they didn’t look weird—it was, like, ‘Oh, who the fuck are these dudes?’” Inglish says. “Then the song was catchy. And then you kinda go into the meanings of what they were writing about. I didn’t even know what ‘enema’ meant in high school till, like, 11th grade. I thought they spelled ‘enemy’ wrong. And then when you started growing up and catching all the puns and stuff, it starts to appreciate.”
Blink’s prominence not only enabled Barker’s collaborations with the biggest rappers of the day, but it also guaranteed that their influence would reach young MCs emerging more than a decade later. In the late 90s and early 2000s, few other bands could shift pop culture—or at least nudge it—like Blink did. In 1999 they competed with boy bands on MTV’s Total Request Live, in 2001 they debuted atop the Billboard 200 charts with the album Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, and in 2003 they released an untitled album whose timing helped open up the mainstream to a flood of pop-punk and third-wave emo. The effect was immediate: Blink warmed up the seats for Fall Out Boy, Paramore, and Panic! at the Disco. These days My Chemical Romance may be emblematic of 2000s mainstream emo (whose vague postgoth aesthetic owes a debt to Tim Burton), but Blink got there first with a reference to The Nightmare Before Christmas on “I Miss You.” Chicago rapper Ju says Blink broke up before he discovered them, but he latched on to the bands that followed in their wake. “I think the first song I ever heard that was rock
“BLINK-182 HAVE INFLUENCED THE ENTIRE GENRE OF POP-PUNK, SO THEREFORE I’M UNDER THE INFLUENCE O F T H E M .” —Chicago rapper Ju, whose track “Stains” samples Blink’s “Adam’s Song”
or pop-punk was ‘Sugar, We’re Goin Down’ by Fall Out Boy—on the radio,” says the 22-yearold south-side native. “I was like, ‘Yo, that shit is so fucking fresh.’ So I just started getting into it. I really started listening mainly to Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, whatever other pop-punk bands were around that time—My Chemical Romance.” He and frequent collaborator Melo Makes Music lean hard on the rock and punk bands of their adolescent years. Ju says he stumbled upon his current rapping style in 2014, while recording a song for his defunct duo Moon & Ju. “I did some My Chemical Romance shit, and I was like, ‘That shit’s kinda cool,’” he says. “I just kept with it.” In October, Ju dropped one of his most popular songs so far, “Stains.” He stretches out his words with pained yearning over a familiar sample—the bass melody in “Adam’s Song,” from Enema of the State. “I had no clue that was a Blink-182 song—I thought it was just a producer making a hot-ass beat,” Ju says. (The producer in question, Mysticphonk, has also worked with Lil Peep.) Ju is too young to have a nostalgic connection to Blink-182, but he gives credit where it’s due. “They’ve influenced the entire genre of pop-punk, so therefore I’m under the influence of them,” he says. “But I don’t think I’ve ever listened to Blink-182 and been like, ‘Yeah, Imma bite that’ or ‘Yeah, Imma do that.’” Blink’s fingerprints are all over the newest generation of rappers, even the ones who don’t make it as obvious as Peep—sometimes their impassioned vocals sound like hybrids of all the third-wave emo singers Blink influenced. Frank Guan at Vulture was almost certainly talking about those 2000s acts when he wrote in May that the refrain in Lil Uzi Vert’s “XO Tour Llif3” “wouldn’t sound out of place on an emo chorus—in fact, it’s a perfect emo chorus.” I can hear the connection myself. Recently I listened to Take Off Your Pants and Jacket on a run, and about a mile and a half in, when the heat started to make me sluggish, the chorus for “Stay Together for the Kids” rescued me. Not too many songs can give me a burst of energy like that—but “XO Tour Llif3” is one of them. Great pop-punk—and great rap inspired by pop-punk—does it every time. v
v @imLeor AUGUST 3, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 25
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John Davis & the Cicadas, Evil English, Advance Base 9 PM, Burlington End of the Ocean, Rocket Miner, Barren Plains, Cascader 6 PM, Township b The Fixx 7:30 PM, Arcada Theatre, Saint Charles b Highly Suspect, Frights 11 PM, Subterranean, sold out, 17+ Jai Wolf, Gryffin 10 PM, Logan Square Auditorium, 18+ Alexander Kariotis & the Rock Opera Orchestra, Webstirs 7 PM, Wire, Berwyn b King Shelter, Evening Attraction, Beach Tiger, Max & the Mild Ones 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Andrew Leahey & the Homestead, Simpleton & Cityfolk 8:30 PM, 1st Ward Little Dragon, Xavier Omar 10 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Marah in the Mainsail, Ode, Distant Brothers 8 PM, Martyrs’ Shawn Mendes, Charlie Puth 7:30 PM, Allstate Arena Minor Morals, Bad Blood 8 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Narrow/Arrow; How It Got Burned; Sorespot; Coach, I’m Gay 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon Phantogram, Flint Eastwood 11 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Pretty Reckless, Slothrust 11 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Pup, Deeper 10 PM, Empty Bottle Skott, Flor 11 PM, Schubas, 18+ Tegan & Sara, Frenship 11 PM, Park West, 18+ Whitney, Kevin Devine 11 PM, Thalia Hall, sold out, 17+ Dance DJ SJ, Jena Max 10 PM, Smart Bar F Konstantin Jace 7 PM, the Bar at the Peninsula Paper Diamond, Gold Clap 10 PM, Sound-Bar Porter Robinson 10 PM, the Mid Folk & Country Devil in a Woodpile 6 PM, Hideout Matt the Electrician, Antje Duvekot 7:30 PM, SPACE b Jazz Eric Schneider & Pat Mallinger Quintet 8 and 10 PM, also Fri 8/4 and Sat 8/5, 8 and 10 PM; Sun 8/6, 4, 8, and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Stardust Big Band 9 PM, Red Line Tap International Carpacho y Su Super Combo 6 PM, Portage Park F b Sowflo, Elementree Livity Project, Concrete Roots 8 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Tropics 9 PM, also Tue 8/8, 9 PM, Wild Hare Classical Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Pinchas Zukerman Elgar, Mozart, Tchaikovsky. 8 PM, Ravinia Festival b Fairs & FestivalS Lollapalooza: Muse, Lorde, Cage the Elephant, Wiz Khalifa, Porter Robinson, Liam Gallagher, Migos, Spoon, and others Noon, Grant Park b
THE COAX + STAR TROPICS
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Charles Gayle 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $20, $15 in advance. 18+
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continued from 27
TYLER CHILDERS
NOV 03
Charles Gayle no longer attracts the attention he did in the late 80s, when the onetime street musician became the face of a new strain of energy music. Gayle’s ferocious work on tenor saxo-
28 CHICAGO READER - AUGUST 3, 2017
Charles Gayle ò JEROEN WERKMAN
phone demanded a lot from his rhythm sections; he pushed his huge sound into the sax’s upper register with wild overblowing or swerved around its bottom with fat, volatile tones. In subsequent years he became more unpredictable, as likely to don clown’s makeup and lecture audiences on the evils of abortion (as his alter ego, Streets) as he was to sit down at the piano and deliver the same sort of fury he unleashed with his horn. Now 78, Gayle has slowed down, but he remains as committed as ever to unrelenting free jazz. His most recent recording is an untitled digital-only release on the imprint operated by the great London venue Cafe Oto, an epic, searing 2015 trio session with bassist John Edwards and drummer Roger Turner that sounds as good as anything he’s done on tenor or piano. It helps that he’s in such superb company, flanked by two veterans whose devotion to free playing is rooted in the fundamentals of swing-based jazz. They support, cajole, and push the front man with sharp understanding and faultless pacing. When Gayle most recently played in Chicago, in 2014, he got equally deft accompaniment from bassist Joshua Abrams and drummer Mike Reed—who rejoin him tonight. —PETER MARGASAK
Mush What Gives headlines; Citycop, Alleys, Distants, and Mush open. 8 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $10, $8 in advance. 17+ A brief, tongue-in-cheek bio for fourth-wave emo band Mush says its members, who live in Chicago and Grand Rapids, decided to join forces “after discussing how sick Vagrants Records use[d] to be.” Their debut EP, Protect Your Brand (Skeletal Lightning), is, well, on brand: visceral guitars scream as if out of control, ever-so-slightly shambolic melodies exude pop euphoria, and shout-along choruses balance gruff enthusiasm and saccharine earnestness like a server swerving through a busy restaurant with a couple armloads of dishes. This isn’t exactly
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surprising given Mush’s lineup, which includes Erik Hunter Czaja (Dowsing and Pet Symmetry), Andy Hendricks (Annabel and headliners What Gives), and Adam Vass (La Dispute). Vass also founded World Champ Game Co., through which he’s created a card game for Protect Your Brand that builds on the irreverent title; the group made small batches of the game to sell with the EP’s cassette version, which is available on Mush’s Bandcamp page and Skeleton Lightning’s website. Some of Mush’s members will be familiar to those of us who’ve gone to more local emo shows than we can remember, but the EP’s physical packaging hints at how the band plays with the scene’s sound and boundaries. —LEOR GALIL
Chuck Prophet & the Mission Express Jesse Malin opens. 8 PM, FitzGerald’s, 6615 W. Roosevelt Rd., Berwyn, $20. 21+ Chuck Prophet has been pursuing his vision as a solo artist for so long that his earlier band, Green on Red, is almost an asterisk in his bio. Not that the famed psych-country group, which gained traction in the 80s, doesn’t deserve its shine, but Prophet’s discography has moved far beyond it. While his music falls under the umbrella of Americana, his definition of America isn’t trapped under glass—not the case with everybody in this genre. The song titles on his current release, Bobby Fuller Died for Your Sins (Yep Roc), name-drop not just 60s singer-songwriter Fuller but also Jesus, Nashville actress Connie Britton, and San Francisco police-shooting victim Alex Nieto, and they do so for a reason—these are respectful tributes rather than arbitrary references. And in “Bad Year for Rock and Roll,” Prophet takes stock of 2016 and the steep number of musicians’ lives the year seemed to claim. At a time when rock ’n’ roll itself is in danger of being treated as neglected folk music, Prophet lets go of the self-effacing Woody Guthrie-isms and proves that a little superstar flash won’t detract from the stories. —JAMES PORTER Rock, Pop, Etc Ryan Joseph Anderson, Fishpool Lane, Jeremy Miller 9 PM, Hideout Banks, Japanese House 11 PM, the Vic, sold out, 18+ Tony Bennett, Antonia Bennett 8:30 PM, Ravinia Festival b Deadbeat Beat, Blizzard Babies, Dan Rico 10 PM, Cole’s F Mac DeMarco, Middle Kids 10 PM, Concord Music Hall, sold out, 17+ Rachelle Ferrell 7 and 10 PM, also Sat 8/5, 7 PM, City Winery, sold out b Foo Fighters 11 PM, Metro, sold out Kelly Hogan & Scott Ligon 6 PM, Hideout Hot Mulligan, Save Face, City Mouth, Short Handed, Furlough, Actuator 7 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Isley Brothers 8 PM, the Venue at Horseshoe Casino Lemon Twigs, Bunny 11 PM, Schubas, sold out, 18+ Live, Shelters 11 PM, Park West 18+ Ludlow, One More Moon, Drown the Sea, Lever, Phonographs, A Million Rich Daughters 7 PM, Elbo Room Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness, Missio 11 PM, Bottom Lounge, sold out, 17+
MUSIC
Pleasantries, Paper Hero, Max Plankton, Damjax 9 PM, Red Line Tap Ray Creature, Wingtips, Aviatrix on Fire, Death Valley 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon Royal Blood, White Reaper 11 PM, Lincoln Hall, sold out, 18+ San Fermin, Ron Gallo 10 PM, Empty Bottle Steve Smith & Todd Sucherman 8:30 PM, Martyrs’ b Sylvan Esso, Flock of Dimes 11 PM, Thalia Hall, sold out, 17+ Tributosaurus becomes Led Zeppelin 9 PM, Wire, Berwyn Vance Joy, Cobi 11 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Warpaint, Dan Luke & the Raid 11 PM, Subterranean, sold out, 17+ Webb Wilder 8 PM, SPACE b Hans Zimmer 8 PM, Allstate Arena Hip-Hop Taylor Bennett 10 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, sold out, 18+ Kool Keith, ShowYouSuck, Palmer Squares, Phillip Morris, Mikey to the P 9 PM, 1st Ward, 18+ Dance Brownies & Lemonade 10 PM, East Room, sold out Gramatik 10 PM, the Mid Justin Martin, Duke Shin, Nick Bernstein 10 PM, Smart Bar Ookay 10 PM, Sound-Bar Pleasurekraft 10 PM, Spy Bar Slushii, Young Bombs 10 PM, Logan Square Auditorium, 18+ Blues, Gospel, and R&B Lurrie Bell 9 PM, B.L.U.E.S. Billy Branch & the Sons of Blues 9:30 PM, Rosa’s Lounge Corey Dennison, Will Tilson 9 PM, Buddy Guy’s Legends Rachelle Ferrell 7 and 10 PM, City Winery Shawn Holt & the Teardrops, Vance Kelly & the Backstreet Blues Band 9 PM, also Sat 8/5, 9 PM, Kingston Mines Aaron Kamm & the One Drops 9 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Claudette Miller, Tenry Johns Blues Band 9 PM, also Sat 8/5, 9 PM, Blue Chicago Jazz John McLean/Clark Sommers Band 9 PM, also Sat 8/5, 8 PM, Green Mill New Lionel Hampton Big Band with Jason Marsalis 8 PM, the Promontory b Eric Schneider & Pat Mallinger Quintet 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Mike Smith Quintet with Tom Garling 9:30 PM, also Sat 8/5, 9:30 PM, Andy’s Jazz Club Trio Mokili 8:30 PM, Hungry Brain International Devon Brown & Love This 9 PM, Wild Hare El Rey de Lluvia, Noche Deliciosa, Bad Luck, El Vino Part of Closed Casket: The Complete, Final and Absolutely Last Baudelaire in a Box. 7 PM, Constellation Grant Park Orchestra with Francois Leleux Carlos Kalmar, conductor (Hindemith, Strauss). 6:30 PM, also Sat 8/5, 7:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park b Classical Robert Chen Violin. 7 PM, PianoForte Studios F b Fairs & Festivals Lollapalooza: Killers, Blink-182, DJ Snake, Run the Jewels, Foster the People, Ryan Adams, Gramatik, Phantogram, and others Noon, Grant Park
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AUGUST 3, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 29
4544 N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG • 773.728.6000
JUST ADDED • ON SALE THIS FRIDAY!
continued from 29
10/22 10/27 10/28
SATURDAY5
A.J. Croce Erwin Helfer & Lluis Coloma Seth Glier
SATURDAY, AUGUST 5 2PM
Soundtrack of the City
The Rise of Duranguense Music
National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th St
THURSDAY, AUGUST 10 7PM
Inside/Out with Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre In Szold Hall SATURDAY, AUGUST 12 8PM
Sons of the Never Wrong 25th Anniversary Celebration & Album Release Party
SUNDAY, AUGUST 13 2PM
Soundtrack of the City
The Rise of Duranguense Music
featuring Montéz De Durango, Norteñisimo Zierra Azul, and Show Revelación Harrison Park, 1824 S. Wood St
SUNDAY, AUGUST 20 6PM
Soundtrack of the City
Country Skyline Robbie Fulks & Friends Navy Pier, Lake Stage
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 8 & 9:30PM
Avishai Cohen Quartet at Constellation, 3111 N Western Ave
ACROSS THE STREET IN SZOLD HALL 4545 N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL
8/18 Global Dance Party: Milonga Cumparsita with DJ Charrua and guests 9/1 Global Dance Party: Milonga Cumparsita with DJ Charrua and guests 9/8 Global Dance Party: Stacie Sandoval y su Orquesta 9/15 Bideew Bou Bess
WORLD MUSIC WEDNESDAY SERIES FREE WEEKLY CONCERTS, LINCOLN SQUARE
8/30 Subhi • Debut Album Release 9/6 Choro de Lá pra Cá
OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG 30 CHICAGO READER - AUGUST 3, 2017
MUSIC
Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.
6lack Michael Christmas opens. 10 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2105 S. State, sold out. 18+ Atlanta R&B singer 6lack is emerging as a voice capable of making everyone and everything around him look and sound better. What’s interesting about his breakout single, “Prblms,” is basically everything but his singing—the song’s glistening instrumental, its midnight-hour atmosphere, the 700-pound grizzly bear relaxing in the video. But in our age of curation, 6lack (pronounced “black”) has proved that carefully creating a vibe is as crucial as having a voice that draws people in. Though he sounds relatively anonymous on his 2016 debut, Free 6lack (Interscope/LVRN)—or worse, barely present—he’s a singer whose easygoing coo artfully blends with its surroundings to inform a musical environment rather than claw away at the hippocampus. And as Spotify continues to build playlists for moods, 6lack may have found the key to making himself more crucial to contemporary music than some of his performances might suggest. —LEOR GALIL The Shins ò COURTESY THE ARTISTS
Rod Stewart Cyndi Lauper opens. 7:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, I-80 and Harlem, $30-$199.50. b Rod Stewart is a buffoon and a lech who’s spent nearly 40 years proudly embarrassing himself onstage and on numerous musical projects (the cover of his Christmas album, Merry Christmas, Baby, conveys about as much yuletide cheer as a holiday sweater sprayed with Drakkar Noir). But I still hold out hope that the Stewart of the 1960s and ’70s—the guy who fronted the Jeff Beck Group and the Faces and who cut an incredible run of Stonesy folk-blues LPs, the apex of which is 1971’s Every Picture Tells a Story—might return to his earthy, gently rambunctious roots. The previous time I saw Stewart play, he brought a band consisting mainly of women wearing miniskirts, he kicked soccer balls into the audience, and his stage setup looked like a cross between a nightclub and an office building, with lots of glass and cheap-looking plastic. But he also had a sense of humor about himself, which is more than you can say about many artists nowadays—and he played all the hits. Plus, my fiancee loves him, and her over-the-moon enthusiasm is worth the price of admission. —TAL ROSENBERG
The Shins Mt. Joy opens. 11 PM, the Vic, 3145 N. Sheffield, sold out. 18+ Over a country-flavored lope, the Shins’ James Mercer looks back at his youth on “Mildenhall,” a song from the recent Heartworms (Aural Apothecary/Columbia). It’s the second Shins album since Mercer ditched the folks he started the band with nearly two decades ago, and the tune’s autobiographical intimacy—it’s a military brat’s recollections of how music came into his life—is at once charming and a bit dissonant. Mercer remembers his father teaching him some basic chords and then sings, “And that’s how we get to where we
are now”—now being the present, when he fronts a band of hired guns making meticulously produced pop music. Mercer’s idiosyncratic melodies and the way his forlorn, imploring voice shoots into a soaring upper register have remained constants of the Shins sound. On Heartworms, though, the arrangements sometimes feel like shots in the dark, as on the heavy-handed “Painting a Hole,” where quasiMiddle Eastern flourishes collide uncomfortably with Mercer’s piercing attempt at melisma. Still, despite the album’s overly bright, radio-friendly production, most of the songs radiate the sort of emotional uplift that has distinguished Mercer’s songwriting; his reedy voice brings the bittersweet melodies to life. —PETER MARGASAK
Psychic Temple Crown Larks, No Sinatras, and Idylls open. 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon, 2401 N. Western, $8. 21+ LA guitarist, singer, and songwriter Chris Schlarb earns his bread as a recording engineer, and over the years he’s turned his studio, Big Ego, into his personal laboratory, routinely bottling the musical lightning produced by whoever’s passing through. The project Psychic Temple is the fruit of Schlarb’s experimentation, and with each recording he’s presented an increasingly unified sound. His new album, Psychic Temple IV (Joyful Noise), features his most diverse cast yet, including contributions from veteran British blues-rock singer Terry Reid, former Chicago jazz drummer Chad Taylor, 87-yearold session bassist Max Bennett (who played on two of the greatest Joni Mitchell albums), Cherry Glazerr drummer Tabor Allen, pop chanteuse Nedelle Torrisi, and a slew of LA jazz heavies. As with previous installments, Schlarb’s guidance channels the disparate talent into something luxuriously coherent, updating 70s-style singer-songwriter
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traditions for the present. The gently psychedelic “Dream Dictionary” harks back to the spirit of Steely Dan, with Schlarb and Reid harmonizing wonderfully, while the liquid pedal steel of Dave Easley imparts a shot of exotica into imploring, skeletal album opener “Spanish Beach.” The record achieves a masterful balance of soulful melodic delirium and detail-rich arrangements that never get bogged down by their baroque flourishes. On this tour, Schlarb leads a trio with fellow guitarist and singer Leeann Skoda and violinist-mandolinist Philip Glenn. —PETER MARGASAK Rock, Pop, Etc Alvvays, Clearance 10 PM, Empty Bottle Arcade Fire 11 PM, Metro , sold out, 18+
Black Lips, Ponys, Life & Times 8:30 PM, Hard Rock Hotel Bury the Machines, Destroy Everything, Fear Sore, Anti-Trumpz 8 PM, Elbo Room Car Seat Headrest, Gold Connections 11 PM, Lincoln Hall, sold out, 18+ Barns Courtney, Luke Henry 11 PM, Schubas, 18+ Darkbeer, Shitty Neighbors, Le Yikes Surf Club, Engines 8 PM, Burlington Deceased, Savage Master, Lurking Corpses, Living Terror 8 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Dingus, Infinite Me, Gleemer, Kareem Campbell, Natures 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Environmental Encroachment, Letter Girl, Benjamin Ezra Band 8 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Rachelle Ferrell 7 PM, City Winery, sold out b Grouplove, 888 11 PM, Park West, sold out, 18+
New adult group classes start September 5
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J AUGUST 3, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 31
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MUSIC David Nance (third from left, not counting the dog)
®
MOSHE KASHER & NATASHA LEGGERO
ò COURTESY THE ARTIST
THE ENDLESS HONEYMOON TOUR Mercy Blow, Bodybag, Misgiver, Vicious Embrace, Burdened 6:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Episode X with New Town Drunks, Kate Douglas, Lea Tshilds, Addie Horan, T-Roy Martin, Annie Higgins, Angela James, Jim Becker, and others Part of Closed Casket: The Complete, Final and Absolutely Last Baudelaire in a Box. 6 PM, Constellation Sunjacket, Sedgewick, Animal Holograms, Our Cadence 7:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Sweet Lil, Basement Family, Junegrass 8:30 PM, the Owl F Tomato Dodgers, Cell Phones, So Pretty, Frank Okay 8 PM, Burlington Warbly Jets, Brendan & the Black Jackets, Engine Summer 9 PM, Schubas F Dance Borgore 10 PM, the Mid Michael Serafini, Garrett David 10 PM, Smart Bar Slander 10 PM, Sound-Bar Zeds Dead, Wax Motif 10 PM, Concord Music Hall, sold out, 17+ Jazz Joshua Abrams Quartet 9 PM, Hungry Brain Fat Babies 8 PM, Honky Tonk BBQ Figment 9 PM, Whistler F Eric Schneider & Pat Mallinger Quintet 4, 8, and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Classical Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Sir James Galway and Lady Jeanne Galway Steven Reineke, conductor (Mancini). 5 PM, Ravinia Festival Pesedjet 8:30 PM, Constellation Fairs & Festivals Lollapalooza: Arcade Fire, Justice, Big Sean, Shins, Zeds Dead, Rae Sremmurd, Tove Lo, Milky Chance, Grouplove, and others Noon, Grant Park
MONDAY7 Ben Hall 7 PM, Experimental Sound Studio, 5925 N. Ravenswood, $10, $8 students and members. b Feverishly inventive and wildly curious, percussionist Ben Hall is pretty catholic in his creative pursuits—he also co-owns a restaurant in his native Detroit and is an accomplished visual artist. A former student of singular percussionist Milford Graves and one of the final collaborators with trumpeter Bill Dixon, Hall also led the gloriously chaotic free-noise combo Graveyards with Wolf Eyes
founder John Olson. His playing makes room for barrages of furious, surging-and-receding energy along with drone-oriented bowing and rubbing, whether deafening or pin-drop quiet. After an impressive run of albums made with collaborators such as Dixon, Borbetomagus saxophonist Don Dietrich, and guitarist Joe Morris, Hall’s recorded output has been nil for the past five years. That’s about to change. He’s set to appear on a number of releases in the coming months, where the music will run the gamut from free jazz in a woolly sextet to a pair of epic collages he calls “big band,” on which he mixes 40 different free-jazz solo LPs from his own collection. In this rare Chicago performance, part of ESS’s Option series, Hall will present three works for solo percussion, applying various extended techniques he calls “methodologies,” such as using his own breath on an amplified bass drum or vibrating a drum’s surface with friction and various objects. —PETER MARGASAK
THIS SUNDAY! AUGUST 6 PARK WEST
SPECIAL GUEST:
Rock, Pop, Etc Berry, Icarians, Kodakrome 7:30 PM, Schubas F Gaby Moreno, Centavrvs 6:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park F b Peekaboos, North by North, Cass Cwik 8 PM, Emporium Arcade Bar F Salvation, Electric Hawk, These Beats, DJ Andy Slater 9 PM, Empty Bottle Hip-Hop Allday, Jams the Flava Child, Bob the Younger 8:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Mykele Deville, Curls 9 PM, the Owl F Dance Boogie T 10 PM, the Mid Folk & Country Boy Named Banjo, Maybe April 8 PM, City Winery b Chicago Barn Dance Company 7 PM, Irish American Heritage Center b Jazz Extraordinary Popular Delusions 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen F Nate Lepine Quartet 9:30 PM, Whistler F Experimental Suenolas, I See Lightning Trio 7 PM, Hideout Classical Sir James Galway, Lady Jeanne Galway, Phillip Moll 7:30 PM, Martin Theatre, Ravinia Festival In-Stores Jason Stein Bass clarinet. 7:30 PM, Myopic Books F b
J
SATURDAY, AUGUST 12 • PARK WEST
ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM! BUY TICKETS AT
AUGUST 3, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 33
1800 W. DIVISION
Est.1954 Celebrating over 61 years of service to Chicago!
(773) 486-9862 Come enjoy one of Chicago’s finest beer gardens! THURSDAY, AUG 3.................SMILING BOBBY AND THE CLEMTONES FRIDAY, AUG 4......................PHENOMINAL CAT FRIENDS OF MOTH SATURDAY, AUG 5.................MARK ESSEX BAND SUNDAY, AUG 6....................ROY BLOOD MONDAY, AUG 7 ...................HENRY SMITH QUINTET @9PM TUESDAY, AUG 8...................FLABBY HOFFMAN SHOW @8PM WEDNESDAY, AUG 9 .............ELIZABETH HARPER’S LITTLE THING @9PM THURSDAY, AUG 10 ..............FLABBY HOFFMAN SHOW @8PM FRIDAY, AUG 11....................ROCKING BILLY AND HIS WILD COYOTES SATURDAY, AUG 12...............UNIBROW SUNDAY, AUG 13 .................HEISENBERG UNCERTAINTY PLAYERS @7PM EVERY MONDAY AT 9PM ANDREW JANAK QUARTET EVERY TUESDAY AT 8PM OPEN MIC HOSTED BY JIMI JON AMERICA AUGUST PHOTO SHOW BY JOE NAGEL OPENING FRIDAY AUGUST 4TH
MUSIC
Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.
Chuck Prophet ò KAREN DOOLITTLE
continued from 33
TUESDAY8 Natalia Lafourcade See Pick of the Week, page 27. 7:30 PM, Copernicus Center, 5216 W. Lawrence, $35-$55. b Rock, Pop, Etc Nicole Atkins, Thayer Sarrano 8 PM, SPACE b Bombats, Momentai, Warp Spiders, Torch Room 8 PM, Burlington Jake Clemons, Devon Gilfillian 8 PM, City Winery b New Mastersounds, Spare Parts 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Simon Phillips & Will Calhoun 8 PM, Martyrs’ b Rancid, Dropkick Murphys, Bouncing Souls 6:30 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Valley Queen 9 PM, Hideout Vesperteen, Bonelang, August Hotel 7 PM, Schubas b Wooden Wand, Mint Mile 8 PM, Subterranean Jazz Fat Babies 9 PM, Green Mill $7 Erwin Helfer 7:30 PM, Hungry Brain F Atticus Lazenby Group 9:30 PM, Whistler F Experimental Dustin Wong & Takako Minekawa, Mouth Captain 9 PM, Empty Bottle International Tropics 9 PM, Wild Hare Classical Chicago Symphony Orchestra with the Chicago Symphony Chorus James Levine, conductor (Haydn). 8 PM, Ravinia Festival b
WEDNESDAY9 Rock, Pop, Etc Banditos, Blank Range 9 PM, Empty Bottle Boney, Bilge Rat, Spowder, Scott William 8 PM, Township
34 CHICAGO READER - AUGUST 3, 2017
Country Priest 9:30 PM, Whistler F Dick Dale, Badwater Sound, Austin Stirling 7:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Kristin Diable, Devon Gilfillian 8 PM, SPACE b Falling Doves, Vietrahm, Peel 9 PM, the Owl F Foreigner, Cheap Trick, Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Experience 7 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Forever, Wistful Larks, With Iowa in Between, Pretty Still 8 PM, Burlington Friday Pilots Club, Pact, Ember Oceans, Ballroom Boxer, Hiber 7 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Go Rounds, Goran Ivanovic Trio, Jolie 8 PM, Martyrs’ Heather Lynne Horton 8 PM, Schubas Delbert McClinton, Amy Black 8 PM, City Winery b Paralysis, Xenophile, Bloodletter, Depremacy 7:30 PM, Cobra Lounge b Retirement Party, Tyler Daniel Bean, Boy Rex, Droughts 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Run & Punch, Braceface, Bumsy & the Moochers, Mizzerables 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon Terrapin Flyer 8 PM, Emporium Arcade Bar F Folk & Country Moon Bros. 9 PM, Hideout Blues, Gospel, and R&B PJ Morton, Ash. 9 PM, the Promontory b Jazz Marcello Benetti Shuffled Quartet 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Experimental Katinka Kleijn, Jeff Kimmel, Aaron Zarzutzki, Peter Maunu 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen F International Grant Park Orchestra with Mariachi Cobre Carlos Kalmar, conductor. 6:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park b Kabaka Pyramid, Natty Nation, Dove Muzik, DJ Yaadcore 8:30 PM, Subterranean Classical Mischa Bouvier & Yegor Shevtsov Baritone and piano. 12:15 PM, Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center F b Morris Robinson & Kevin Murphy Bass and piano. 7:30 PM, Martin Theatre, Ravinia Festival b v
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FOOD & DRINK
SPLIT-RAIL | $$ R 2500 W. Chicago 773-697-4413 splitrailchicago.com
The chicken nuggets, jacketed in a crackly, razor-thin batter, bear a tongue-tingling hit of jalapeño. ò DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS
RESTAURANT REVIEW
Split-Rail reimagines a lowbrow midwestern culinary heritage A team of Ada Street alums led by chef Zoe Schor remake the McNugget and other edible icons. By MIKE SULA
I
f Split-Rail opened for breakfast and lunch I could see hanging out there all day talking to myself about chicken McNuggets. This bright, airy, open, industrial space in Humboldt Park, bedecked with fox-hunt-themed banquettes and vintage cheesecake from legendary pinup artist Gil Elvgren, is the home of a new restaurant from former Ada Street chef Zoe Schor, who offers, on a oddly constructed menu, a bowl of three bronzed chicken nuggets at almost twice what you’d pay for a ten-piece under the Golden Arches. Did you know that there are four canonical McNugget shapes? That would be the bell, the ball, the boot, and the bow tie. Far from the mechanically separated molded poultry slurry imprinted on your taste memory, Schor’s nuggets are supersize balls of chicken thigh forcemeat bearing a tongue-tingling hit of jalapeño, jacketed in a crackly, razor-thin batter. Served with a sharp, almost sulfurous honey-mustard dipping sauce, these scarfable advances on the
American fast-food icon could easily become a Schor signature, something she’ll be required to serve for the rest of her career. The nuggets are the anchor of the chef’s gently satirical homage to the traditionally beige foodways of the white midwestern casserole belt. Schor, who grew up in Boston before clocking time in the kitchens of superchefs such as Thomas Keller, Tom Colicchio, and Todd English, has jokes. She’ll knock you dead with a dish of pillowy, Parisian-style potato gnocchi, dressed to impress with proverbial Wendy’s spud fixin’s—bacon, chopped scallions, sour cream, crispy potato skin, and sharp five-year-old cheddar. The insipid elements of Thanksgiving’s dreary perennial vegetal mush—the green bean casserole—have been replaced by snappy al dente, emerald-colored beans, oyster and cremini mushrooms in heavy cream and butter, and frazzled onions. The buffet line spills over to the dessert menu too, with a vibrant strawberry Jell-O mold with a base of buttermilk panna cotta and a crushed-pretzel topping. Schor’s menu, somewhat unhelpfully, is divided among “Bar Bites” (like the nuggets), “Split-Rail Classics” (gnocchi), “Small Plates of Vegetables and Other Things,” and “The Rest of It” (a salad, an entree, and a giant steak). Under that last, seemingly throwaway category are two of Schor’s most forgettable efforts: charred octopus lost among an overabundance of arugula, and the cutesy “duck in three acts” (rare breast, dry croquette, runny egg). Residing among the “Classics” is a cheffy reinterpretation of fajitas: masa approaching a Cream of Wheat texture forms a canvas for dollops of pureed onion, avocado, and red pepper and a fan of seared sirloin slices draped with pickled jalapeño. It’s difficult to detect the prized uni butter among a heavy pile of linguine and clams in the same group, a dish missing its inherent brininess and lightness. But then we come to the fourth entry in this peculiar category: chips and sour-cream-and-onion dip. I recently noted that Daisies chef Joe Frillman is putting actual potato chips and onion dip on his menu as if he’s hosting a rec-room spin-the-bottle party. Schor had the same idea but instead serves her bronzed spuds with a side of J
AUGUST 3, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 35
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From left: pretzel surprise, baked potato gnocchi, chicken nuggets, beef skewers, lamb tartare ò DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS
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“...Wonderful appetizers & martinis!”
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36 CHICAGO READER - AUGUST 3, 2017
orangescent trout roe, hiking the cost to $18. Overall the menu is attractively priced, but in the case of the chips and dip it’s good enough to lower your head and ignore the offense. Split-Rail’s MO is similar to Daisies in another respect. In addition to her clever and frequently delicious takes on midwestern cuisine, Schor addresses the prevailing menu trends of the day with a pair of toasts: a lovely construction of fresh ricotta, grilled apricot, and lightly pickled cucumber; and an intensely meaty strata of buttery country-ham salad, green tomato, and tangy marinated anchovy. There’s also the now-mandatory deference to the plant world. In addition to the aforementioned green bean casserole, a pair of salads, one assertively red with radicchio, red cabbage, and beets, is a wake-up call to the part of your brain that reacts greedily to acidity, while a no less brazen bowl of Little Gem lettuce and radish ribbons is punched up with crispy deep-fried ham bits, assertive blue cheese, and garlicky bread crumbs. Split-Rail’s menu is mined with deliciousness, but I think the most reliable category of Schor’s curiously designed document is the “bar bites,” which include the toasts and the nuggets but also a lamb tartare accented with a swoosh of black garlic aioli that will appeal to the bloodsucking goth you’ve locked inside for so long. There’s also a pair of sirloin beef skewers with all the iron-rich minerality of
Peruvian-style grilled beef heart coated in a thick green chimichurri. Waffled focaccia finger sandwiches, seductively sticky with a warm honey glaze, conceal layers of pork-butter n’duja and grilled eggplant. These snacks embody the qualities by which I think the restaurant will best be embraced. Split-Rail’s also a good place to drink. A versatile beverage program from Ada Street alums Brenna Washow and Michelle Szot features more than a dozen cocktails, ranging from classics to low- and no-proof options to a fiscally irresponsible $18 tepache (fermented pineapple, cinnamon, and brown sugar) and mezcal mix, made with the exquisite Wahaka brand, a spirit better served unadulterated. But there are plenty of more budget-friendly options. Originals include the Armory Show, a brooding rye, amaro, and Fernet potion that somehow winningly evokes a piece of grandma’s horehound candy, and the even more stygian Path to the Black Lodge, a combination of Punt e Mes, amaro, and Tennessee whiskey that’s the kind of thing that can gird you, even if just for the night, for whatever inevitable struggles lie ahead. It’s tricky to pay homage to home-style midwestern culinary values without inadvertently sneering with condescension or veering toward kitsch. Schor avoids these traps by just being a damn good chef. v
v @MikeSula
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○ Watch a video of Ashlee Aubin working with gefilte fish in the kitchen at chicagoreader.com/food.
Search the Reader’s online database of thousands of Chicago-area restaurants—and add your own review—at chicagoreader.com/food.
Ashlee Aubin, chef at Salero and Wood restaurants, turned to tuna salad for inspiration. ò JULIA THIEL
king crab house
open now OYSTER BAR SPECIALS Wings .35 ea • Oysters .65 ea Shrimp .90 ea • Mussels 5.95 Spicy Shrimp 9.95
Bar Specials available at bar with two alcoholic drinks minimum per person
DAILY SPECIALS
Mon: King Crab Legs $26.95 Tues: Snow Crab Legs $22.95 Wed: Crab & Slab $22.95 Thurs: Fried Jumbo Shrimp $19.95
KEY INGREDIENT
Fishing for a complement By JULIA THIEL
G
EFILTE FISH—the traditional Passover dish of ground whitefish mixed with matzo meal, egg, vegetables, and seasonings—can be divisive, inspiring headlines like “Gefilte Fish: Is It Really That Bad?” and “Gefilte Fish: Why, Oy Why?” But until Adam Wendt of the Delta challenged ASHLEE AUBIN to create a dish with gefilte fish, the chef at SALERO and WOOD restaurants had tried only homemade versions, which he thought were pretty good. Wendt, however, specified that Aubin had to use Manischewitz brand of gefilte fish in gelled broth, which turned out to be a very different beast. “When you open the jar there’s some gray, murky-looking jellied liquid that gray fish meatballs are basically floating in,” Aubin says. “The flavor’s a little hard to describe, because it’s fishy but it’s not like a clean oceanfish sort of flavor. It’s a little bit like cat food. The texture is soft, squishy, almost bouncy, like the mystery-meat meat loafs that were popular in the 80s.” Traditionally, gefilte fish is served cold—for good reason, as Wendt discovered. The first thing he tried to do with it was make a brandade: gefilte fish pureed with potatoes, garlic,
and cream and then baked. “That was one of the worst things I’ve ever tasted in my life,” Aubin says. “I couldn’t get the flavor out of my mouth for hours. A shot of tequila—nothing would stop it.” Then he made tempura-fried gefilte fish. “Everything’s good fried, but not gefilte fish,” he says. After other experiments that included sauteing the ingredient, Wendt concluded that gefilte fish should not be served hot. “Even cut with something like potato, the flavor is ten times more intense when you heat it up,” he says. Instead, Aubin turned to tuna salad for inspiration. He took both regular gefilte fish and a version that he’d pickled, chopped them up, and tossed in crunchy vegetables: snap peas, cucumber, and red onion. An herbed creme fraiche dressing not only added flavor but covered up the color of the fish, Aubin said. He garnished the salad with sliced radishes, purslane, dill flowers, and fried hominy. “I always like corn in tuna salad,” he says. He also used another fried element to introduce even more fish flavor: halibut chicharrones (halibut skin that he simmered, dehydrated, and deep-fried). Aubin opted not to use the jellied broth that
the fish balls were packed in, but he did make his own gel from tomato water and horseradish for a “fresh, sharp” element. The result, Aubin says, tastes mostly like vegetables and horseradish, with “a distinct seafood flavor at the end.” He adds that, while the dish actually tastes pretty good, “it’s definitely not ever going on one of my menus.”
WHO’S NEXT:
Aubin has challenged STEPHEN HASSON of UGO’S KITCHEN & BAR to create a dish with MANISCHEWITZ CONCORD GRAPE WINE, continuing the Manischewitz theme. v
All You can Eat Fri, Sat, Sun •11am - 3pm Snow Crab Legs: $38.95 per person Not valid with any other specials, discounts or promotions!
1816 N. Halsted St. Chicago, IL 60614 312-280-8990 Mon, Tues, Wed and Thur 3:30PM-11PM Fri and Sat 11:30AM-12AM Sun 11:30AM-10PM
v @juliathiel
BARRA
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AUGUST 3, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 37
JOBS
SALES & MARKETING FUNDRAISING - FOR VETERANS Flags & Bags Deal. Looking for a few old pros. Start today! Call 312-256-5035 ask for Cash.
food & drink EXPERIENCED WAITSTAFF AND bartenders for King Crab
House, 1816 N Halsted. Apply in person Tuesday through Saturday after 3pm, ask for Mitra.
SERVERS & COOKS NEEDED.
Please come in to apply: Fireside Restaurant 5739 N Ravenswood Ave, Chicago
General The Department of Quality Performance & Improvement at the University of Illinois at Chicago, located in a large metropolitan area, is seeking a full-time Clinical Practice Data Analyst Specialist to assist department in acquiring, managing, designing, analyzing and generating complex data reports from clinical and financial/ administrative relational databases to provide to administration, clinicians and healthcare teams. Work with informatics professionals and clinicians to design reports which align with and support optimal work flows. Design warehouse data sets to provide easy customer access to an integrated repository of clinical, financial and demographic data supporting the health system’s analysis, planning and improvement needs. Utilize statistical software to recognize and resolve system errors, and interpret statistical trends to identify improvement opportunities. Educate and train individuals or teams on data analysis and interpretation. Requirements are a Bachelor’s degree or its foreign equivalent in Management Information Systems, Information Technology, Computer Science, or related field of study, plus one year of data management/ analyst experience in a clinical or
healthcare related field. For fullest consideration, please submit a CV, cover letter, and 3 references to the attention of the Search Coordinator via email at NHarvey@uic. edu, or via mail at University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Quality Performance & Improvement, 833 S Wood Street M/C 581, Chicago, IL 60612. The University of Illinois is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action employer. Minorities, women, veterans and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply. The University of Illinois may conduct background checks on all job candidates upon acceptance of a contingent offer. Background checks will be performed in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The Department of Periodontics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, located in a large metropolitan area, is seeking a full-time Clinical Assistant Professor to assist the department provide clinical and didactic instruction to pre-doctoral and dental students in the areas of Dentistry, Periodontics and Implant Dentistry. Teach topics such as periodontal anatomy, periodontal health and disease, non-surgical and surgical therapy, and implant dentistry. Provide clinical dental patient care to a diverse patient population, conduct medical science research, collaborate with faculty to develop an interdisciplinary curriculum, and provide University service as assigned. Requirements are a DDS or DMD degree or its foreign equivalent, plus three years of Periodontics training and hold or be eligible to hold an Illinois dental license and a specialty license for Periodontics. No travel is required. For fullest consideration, please submit by August 28, 2017 a CV, cover letter, and 3 references to the attention of the Search Coordinator via email at glascott@uic.edu, or via mail at University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Periodontics, 801 S Paulina Street, Chicago, IL 60612. The University of Illinois is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action employer. Minorities, women, veterans and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply. The University of Illinois may conduct
background checks on all job candidates upon acceptance of a contingent offer. Background checks will be performed in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
GROUPON, INC. IS seeking a Senior Product Manager in Chicago, IL w/ the following reqs: Bachelor’s deg in Comp Sci, Engg or Math or rel field or foreign academic equiv & 5 yrs rel exp OR Master’s deg in Comp Sci, Engg or Math or rel field or foreign academic equiv & 3 yrs rela exp. Will accept any level of exp in the following skills: strong analytical skills & familiarity w/ stats to make data-driven decisions based on product metrics; ability to translate complex business goals into clearly understandable product specs; ability to acquire insights by conducting user research, proof of concept, A/B testing, etc. & synthesize the insights into functional specs; ability to mng & prioritize multi projects in a dynamic environment; ability to ensure clear communication & coordination across the business, customer support, finance, design & dvlpmnt teams. Apply on-line at https://jobs. groupon.com/jobs/R13996.
Sr Technical Sales Representative sought by Akzo Nobel Coatings, Inc. in Chicago, IL (Telecommuting Permitted). Reqs: Assoc deg or equiv in a Physical Sci, Comp Sci, or Engg discipline & 1yr of exp in the powder coatings ind. All of stated exp must incl: troubleshootg effect of customer’s powder coatings process on coatings prods used for automotive wheels & architectural aluminum; reading & evaluatg tech analysis rprts & interpretg results for customers; trials & introductn of new prods & technologies of powder coating materials & powder coating applic technologies; testg finished coated prods; & using tech equip incl oven recorders, film gauges, flowmeters, & electrostatic assessment devices. Travel domestically up to 50% of wrkg time. Apply online at www.akzonobel. com/careers for vacancy#(170003BV).
REINHART FOODSERVICE LLC. seeks Director, Supply Chain
Inventory Mgt in Rosemont, IL. Req. Bachelor’s or equiv. in Logistics, Industrial Engr, Bus. Admin., or rel’d + 7 yrs post bachelors exp. in job offered, rel’d. distribution mgt role. Duties: lead the inventory strategy devt & execute change to improve inventory & svc level performance within all divisions at RFS. Must have experience with (1) PL&D & InterCompany Transfer Process; (2) Best Practices process to ensure consistent workflow; (3) Identifying & building key dashboards & metrics to monitor the performance of inventory operations; (4) Managing against KPI process including turn rates, fill rates, & aging inventory. Willingness to travel up to 40%. Send resume to <PLopez@reyesholdings.com> w/ Job ID PP-SCIM0617.
MANAGEMENT POSITION –
Find hundreds of Readerrecommended restaurants, exclusive video features, and sign up for weekly news chicagoreader.com/ food. 38 CHICAGO READER | AUGUST 3, 2017
Chicago, IL. Amazon.com.dedc, LLC seeks candidates for the following position (multiple positions available): Program Manager, Logistics, Job Code PM-2017IL to Identify, design, develop, implement and execute new and existing processes, policies, goals and solutions that increase delivery efficiency, reduce errors decrease costs, and improve company’s overall North American transportation network procedures and logistics involving fulfillment operations, supply chain and inventory management. Up to 80% international travel required. Candidates must respond by mail ]referencing the specific job code to: Amazon, PO Box 81226, Seattle, Washington 98108.
TECHNOLOGY ADVISORY MANAGER, APPLICATION TECHNOLOGY (MULT. POS.),
PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory Services LLC, Chicago, IL. Provide an end to end soln offering including Applicatn Development & Integratn, App Arch., custom IoT and mobile
solns, User Exp., Quality Mngmt & Testing & Bus. Process Mgnmt. Req. Bach’s deg or foreign equiv. in Comp Sci, IT, Comp Engg, Bus Admin or rel. + 5 yrs of post- bach’s progress. Rel. work exp. OR Master’s deg or foreign equiv. in Comp Sci, IT, Comp Engg, Bus Admin + 3 yrs of rel. work exp. Travel up to 80% req. Apply by mail, referencing Job Code IL1373, Attn: HR SSC/Talent Management, 4040 W. Boy Scout Blvd, Tampa, FL 33607.
ACCOUNTING CORE ASSURANCE MANAGER, FINANCIAL SERVICES (MULT POS), PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Chicago, IL. Examine accntng records, docs, & tangible equipment of clnts in the Investment Mmgt and/or Insurance industry. Req BS or foreign equiv in Acctng, Bus Admin or rel + 5 yrs post-bach’s progress rel work exp; OR a MS or foreign equiv in Acctng, Bus Admin or rel + 3 yrs of rel work exp. Must have US CPA lic or foreign equiv. Travel up to 20% req. Please apply by mail, referencing Job Code IL1371 Attn: HR SSC/Talent Management, 4040 West Boy Scout Boulevard, Tampa, FL 33607.
TECHNOLOGY ADVISORY MANAGER, APPLICATION TECHNOLOGY (MULT. POS.),
PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory Services LLC, Chicago, IL. Help clnts determine the best applications for their business needs & integrate new & existing applications into their business including Mobility integration. Req. Bach’s deg or foreign equiv. in Comp Sci, IT, Electronic Engg, Bus Admin or rel. + 5 yrs of post – bach’s progess. rel. work exp.; OR a Master’s deg or foreign equiv. in Comp Sci, IT, Electronic Engg, Bus Admin or rel. + 3 yrs rel. work exp. Travel up to 80% req. Apply by mail, referencing Job Code IL1363, Attn: HR SSC/Talent Management, 4040 W. Boy Scout Blvd, Tampa, FL 33607.
ACCOUNTING TAX MANAGER, INDUSTRY TAX (MULT. POS.),
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Chicago, IL. Provide tax consulting, planning, compliance & acctng services to various companies. Req. Bach’s deg. or foreign equiv. in Acctng, Bus Admin, Tax, Law or rel. + 5 yrs post-bach’s progress. rel. work exp.; OR a Master’s deg. or foreign equiv. in Acctng, Bus Admin, Tax, Law or rel. + 3 yrs rel. work exp. Cert. req.: US CPA, Enrolled Agent or Member of the Bar. Travel up to 20% req. Apply by mail, referencing Job Code IL1385, Attn: HR SSC/Talent Management, 4040 West Boy Scout Boulevard, Tampa, FL 33607
OFFICE MANAGER, SHAHBAIN Internal Medicine Ltd w/offices in Palos Heights & Morris, IL. Plan & direct medical operations & daily administrative, business & technical issues at both office locations. Direct, supervise & evaluate work activities of nursing, clerical & other personnel. Plan budgets & monitor finances, such as patient accounts, insurance referrals & billing. Req: BS/Health Sciences or Public Health. Coursework must include management of health services organizations & the business of healthcare. Send resume to alzandani@msn.com.
ACCOUNTING TAX SENIOR ASSOCIATE,
Private Company Services (Mult. Pos.), PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Chicago, IL. Provide tax advice on the wide array of tax matters faced by private companies throughout the business cycle. Req. Bach’s deg. or foreign equiv. in Acct, Bus Admin, Tax, Law or rel. + 3 yrs rel. work exp.; OR a Master’s deg. or foreign equiv. in Acct, Bus Admin, Tax, Law or rel. + 1 yr rel. work exp. Travel up to 20% req. Apply by mail, referencing Job Code IL1349, Attn: HR SSC/Talent Management, 4040 W. Boy Scout Blvd, Tampa, FL 33607.
Developer: Insurance Auto Auctions, Inc., Westchester, IL. Req. a Master’s in Comp. Sc., Comp. Eng., or related field & 3 yrs. exp. in application development or a Bachelor’s & 5 yrs. exp. Must possess 3 yrs. (w/Master’s) or 5 yrs. (w/Bachelor’s) of exp. with A SP.Net, C#, SQL Server, Web API, WCF/RESTFUL, MVC 3 Razor, JSON/XML, JQuery; & Objected Oriented programming. Please submit résumé to Zeeshan Syed, IAAI, Two Westbrook Corporate Center, Suite 500, Westchester, IL 60154. No agencies or phone calls please. BIOTECHNOLOGY SENIOR CLINICAL PROGRAMMING MANAGER: NORTHBROOK, IL
Astellas Pharma Global Development, Inc. seeks experienced Senior Clinical Programming Manager to act as the primary contact for vendors involved in clinical programming work. Interested candidates submit detailed resume by mail, referencing Job Code ARP1, to: Ms. Maria Gonzalez, Astellas Pharma Global Development, Inc., 1 Astellas Way, Northbrook, IL, 60062.
Quantitative Researchers – Master Deg or for deg equiv in Financial Eng, CS, Physics or Math + 6 months’ exp in position or Data Analyst or Quantitative Analyst (or Bach Deg + 5 yrs exp); and exp with Java, Matlab, developing quantitative models and algorithms, developing software based upon quantitative models, and analyzing algorithms. Apply to (inc Ref # 10026), HR, Allston Holdings, 440 S. LaSalle St., 12th FL, Chicago, IL 60605 ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES MANAGER Act as liaison between patients and doctors. Handle communications, as well as develop and manage patient records and improve and implement operations. Fluency in Arabic, Assyran & Kurdish preferred. Email resume to Skokie Family Clinic at asher_hanna@yahoo. com.
IMANAGE LLC SEEKS in Chicago, IL: Staff Software Eng with MS in Comp Eng, Info Tech, or Telecomm Eng plus 18 months exp in job offered or sub sim pos, or BS in Comp Eng, Info Tech, or Telecomm Eng plus 5 yrs exp in job offered or sub sim pos. Send resume to Peopleops@imanage.com (ref. no. L0881) or Attn: Recruiting, 540 W. Madison St, Ste 2400, Chicago, IL 60661.
Rosel school is seeking a cosmetology instructor assistant w/ two yrs exp, high school diploma and IL cosmetologist license. Job duties include assist cosmetology instructor in tutoring and training students. Send resume to Rosel. Attn:Mrs. Baek, 2444 W. Devon Ave, Chica go , IL 60659. Quantitative Analyst European/ Night Shift Dvlp trading strategies. MS Financial Math, Com Sci or rel. 2 yr Exp with R Studio, Python, C++, Java & Microsoft Visual C#. To Blue Fire Capital, 311 S Wacker Dr #2000, Chicago IL 60606 SOFTWARE ENGINEER, SR. –
Develop next gen Mobile/Android ecommerce apps. Masters in CS, Info Sys. Mgmt. or related; 3 yrs. Related exp. res. to Jared Fryksdale, Raise Marketplace Inc., 11 E. Madison, 4th Fl. Chicago, IL 60602
CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT DIR – Build and manage growth
opps. through M&A and other means. MBA + 5 yrs. Relevant exp. Res. To Jared Fryksdale, Raise Marketplace Inc., 11 E. Madison, 4th Fl. Chicago, IL 60602
Financial Analyst Dvlp Invt. Eval. models & financial analytics in wind industry. MBA concentration of financial mgmt. or rel. To: Goldwind USA, 20 N Wacker Dr #1375, Chicago IL 60606 Quantum Color Graphics LLC (Morton Grove, IL) seeks Solutions Architects. Send resumes to 6511 Oakton St, Morton Grove, IL 60053
Polymax Thermoplastic Elastomers, LLC (Waukegan, IL) seeks Project Engineers. Send resumes to 3210 Oak Grove avenue suite A, Waukegan IL 60087
REAL ESTATE RENTALS
STUDIO $500-$599 73RD AND JEFFERY BLVD. Studio, 1BR & 2BR, heated, hardwood flrs, laundry room, appls, near trans. $565 and up. 773-881-3573
Chicago, Beverly/Cal Park/Blue Island Studio $575 & up, 1BR $665 & up, 2BR $885 & up. Heat, Appls, Balcony, Carpet, Laundry, Prkg. 708-388-0170 81ST/BURNHAM Studio & 2BR apts,tenant pays electric only, No Pets. $500-$750/mo + 1 mo sec. Avail Now! 773-264-3419
STUDIO $600-$699 CHICAGO, HYDE PARK Arms
SECTION 8 WELCOME Newly Decorated 74th/East End. 1BR. $625.
77th/Drexel. 2BR. $700. 773-874-9637 or 773-493-5359
SUMMER SPECIAL $500 Toward Rent Beautiful Studios 1, 2, 3 & 4 BR Sect. 8 Welc. Westside Loc, Must qualify. 773-287-4500 www.wjmngmt.com
CHICAGO - South Shore Large 1BR, $660/mo. Free heat. Near Transportation. Section 8 Welcome. Call 708932-4582 108TH ST., LOVELY 4 rm, 1BR, liv rm, din rm, kitchen/bath, heated & hw flrs. Close to trans. Avail now. Also, 1BR w/ crpt avail. 773-264-6711 CLEAN ROOM W/FRIDGE & micro, Near Oak Park, Food -4Less, Walmart, Walgreens, Buses & Metra, Laundry. $115/wk & up. 773-637-5957 NEWLY REMOD 1BR & Studios starting at $580. No sec dep, move in fee or app fee. Free heat/ hot water. 1155 W. 83rd St., 773619-0204
Hotel, 5316 S. Harper, maid, phone, cable ready, fridge, private facilities, laundry avail. Switchboard. Start at $ 160/wk Call 773-493-3500
6930 S. SOUTH SHORE DRIVE Studios & 1BR, INCL. Heat, Elec, Cking gas & PARKING, $585-$925, Country Club Apts 773-752-2200
STUDIO $700-$899
LANSING - 18348 Torrence Ave. 1 Bedroom Apartment, $650/mo. Heat & Water included. No pets. Call 708-895-4794
LARGE STUDIO APARTMENT
near Warren Park. 1904 W. Pratt. Hardwood floors. Heat included. Cats OK. Laundry in building. $725/ month. Available 10/1. 773-761-4318,
STUDIO OTHER LARGE SUNNY ROOM w/fridge & microwave. Near Oak Park, Green Line & Buses. 24 hr Desk, Parking Lot $101/week & Up. (773)378-8888 CHICAGO - HYDE PARK 5401 S. Ellis. Studio. $400/mo. û CALL 773-955-5106 û CROSSROADS HOTEL SRO SINGLE RMS Private bath, PHONE,
CABLE & MAIDS. 1 Block to Orange Line 5300 S. Pulaski 773-581-1188
Ashland Hotel nice clean rms. 24 hr desk/maid/TV/laundry/air. Low rates daily/weekly/monthly. South Side. Call 773-376-5200
1 BR UNDER $700 SUMMERTIME SAVINGS! NEWLY Remod. 1 BR Apts $650 w/
gas incl. 2-5BR start at $650 & up. Sec 8 Welc. Rental Assistance Prog. for Qualified Applicants offer up to $ 400/month for 1 yr. (773)412-1153 Wesley Realty
7022 S. SHORE DRIVE Impecca-
bly Clean Highrise STUDIOS, 1 & 2 BEDROOMS Facing Lake & Park. Laundry & Security on Premises. Parking & Apts. Are Subject to Availability. TOWNHOUSE APARTMENTS 773-288-1030
SUMMER SPECIAL: STUDIOS starting at $499 incls utilities , 1BR
SPACIOUS 1BR APT Blue Island, $675/month plus security heat included Call 708-759-7214 MARQUETTE PARK: 6315-19 S . California, 1 Bedrooms from $675, 2 Bedrooms from $825. Heat included. Call 312.208.1771 Newly updated, clean furnished rooms in Joliet, near buses & Metra, elevator. Utilities included, $91/wk. $395/mo. 815-722-1212 NICE ROOM w/stove, fridge & bath Near Aldi, Walgreens, Beach, Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry. $130/wk & up. 773-275-4442 BIG ROOM with stove, fridge, bath & nice wood floors. Near Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry, Shopping. $121/wk + up. 773-561-4970
SOUTH SHORE NICE and Cozy w/hdwd flrs, 1-2BR Apts. $630$770/mo. Huge 3BR/2BA. $1020/ mo. 76th/Saginaw. 773-445-0329
1140 E 81st Pl. 1BR newly remodeled, Heat & appls incl, quiet neighborhood. $675/mo. No Sec Dep. Sec 8 OK. 312-915-0100. ONE MONTH FREE. Move In NOW!!! Studios - 1 Beds Hyde Park. Call Megan 773-285-3310
1 BR $700-$799 CHICAGO, 107TH & KING DR. Totally Rehabbed 1BR, carpeting, appliances & heat incl. $725/mo. Call Frank, 708-670-8727
$550, 2BR $599, 2BR $699, With approved credit. No Security Deposit for Sec 8 Tenants. South Shore & Southside. 312-446-3333 or 773-2879999
10815 S. KING DR., updated, hdwd flrs, 0/mo. Tenant pays Credit check req’d. 484-9250
MIDWAY AREA/63RD KEDZIE Deluxe Studio 1 & 2 BRs. All
NORTH LAWNDALE AREA NICE 1BR/1BA. Spacious LR, DR & kitchen. $750/mo. Avail now. Sec 8 welc. 312-221-8281
modern oak floors, appliances, Security system, on site maint. clean & quiet, Nr. transp. From $445. 773582-1985 (espanol)
232 E 121ST Pl. RENT SPECIAL:
Pay 1st month rent only - No Security dep req’d. Nice lrg 1BR $575; 2BR $699 & 1 3BR $850, balcony. Sec 8 Welc 773-995-6950
FREE HEAT! NO SEC Dep. No Move-in Fee! 1, 2, 3 & 4 BRs, laundry rm. Sec 8 OK. Niki 773.647.0573 www.livenovo.com
3BR, C/A. own Call
2BA, $110 heat. 773-
CHICAGO, 1405 N. CENTRAL, 4 rooms, 1BR, $760/mo + 1.5 months sec. Heat & laundry facility. Call 773-490-3347
1 BR $800-$899 SECTION 8 WELCOME SOUTHSIDE, Recently renovated, 1 BR Apts. FREE HEAT! $800-$1000/mo. Call Sean, 773-410-7084
l
l
1 BR $900-$1099 LINCOLN SQUARE (5000N.2200W.) Spacious, quiet 1 bedroom + den, 2nd floor/2-flat, newly decorated, new dishwasher, CAC, no pets. Security deposit/ credit check. $1015. 773-5619266 lv msg. ONE BEDROOM NEAR Warren
Park and Metra. 6800 N. Wolcott. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. Heat included. Laundry in building. $925/ month. Available 10/1. 773-761-4318.
LARGE ONE BEDROOM near the Red Line. 6828 N. Wayne. Hardwood floors. Pets ok. Heat included. Laundry in building. $950/month. Available 10/1. 773-761-4318.
1 BR OTHER APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. Ltd. Hot Summer Is Here Cool Off In The Pool OUR UNITS INCLUDE HEAT, HW & CG Plenty of parking 1Bdr From $765.00 2Bdr From $925.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000*** APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. Ltd. SUMMER IS HERE!! Most units Include.. HEAT & HOT WTR Studios From $475.00 1Bdr From $495.00 2Bdr From $745.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000** WAITING LIST OPENING Beginning, August 8, 2017 through
August 15, 2017, Bryn Mawr Apartments will be accepting applications for our (2) two bedroom waiting list only interested persons may pick up application at 1809 E. 72nd Street between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. Equal Housing Opportunity
ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar Villas is accepting applications for subsidized 1BR apts. for seniors 62 years or older and the disabled. Rent is based on 30% of annual income. For details, call us at 847-546-1899 ∫
MOST BEAUT. APTS! 6748 Crandon, 2BR, $875. 7727 Colfax, 2BR, $875. 6220 Eberhart, 2 & 3BR, $850-$1150. 7527 Essex, 2BR, $950 773-9478572 / 312-613-4424 SEC 8 WELCOME Riverdale 2BR Condo, Exc cond, Free heat & water,
3rd flr, appls, new crpt, Window A/C, No Pets. $825 + 1 mo sec. 708-539-0320
SOUTHSIDE, NEWLY REMODELED room for rent near CTA, $3 50+/mo + $100 sec dep. Parking available. All utils incl. 708-2997605. SPACIOUS-SAFE 773-4235727. BRONZEVILLE, 3BR, heat included. Englewood, 1,2 & 3BR, heat incl. Dolton, 2BR, Gated Parking.
NO SECURITY DEPOSIT NO MOVE IN FEE 1, 2, 3 BEDROOM APTS (773) 874-1122 ACACIA SRO HOTEL Men Preferred! Rooms for Rent. Weekly & Monthly Rates. 312-421-4597
ROYALTON HOTEL, Kitchen-
ette $135 & up wk. Free WiFi. 1810 W. Jackson 312-226-4678
2 BR UNDER $900 97TH & YATES. Town-Hse, 2 story, 5rms, 2BR - newly decor, bsmt, yrd, side drive, nr trans & shops, $750 + sec. Brown R.E. Inc. 773-239-9467 FREE HEAT 94-3739 S. BISHOP.
2BR, 5rm, 2nd floor, appls, parking, storage & closet space, near shops/ trans. $900 + sec. 708-335-0786
6935 S. WASHTENAW. Updated 2BR, 1st flr, Hdwd flrs, appls, nr school, alarm, heat incl. $875/mo + $875 sec. 773-434-9757 71ST & FAIRFIELD, B e a u t if u l 2BR, 2nd floor, unheated, stove & fridge incl., $650/mo + 1.5 mo sec. Please Call Mr. Robinson, 773-238-5188 WEST PULLMAN. 2BR, Newly decor, water incl. $725/mo. 1 mo rent + 1 mo sec. Section 8 welcome. 708-703-7077 74TH & KIMBARK, 2BR, stove & fridge incl., $725/mo + sec dep. Credit check. No pets. Tenant pays utilities. Call 312-607-1941 CHICAGO
7600 S Essex 2BR
$599, 3BR $699, 4BR $799 w/apprvd credit, no sec dep. Sect 8 Ok! 773287-9999 /312-446-3333
73RD/INDIANA, 88th/Dauphin & 74th/King Dr. 2BRs. $775- $850. Spac good trans, laundry on site, security camera. 312-341-1950
2 BR $900-$1099 825 W. 122ND St., 2nd floor, 2BR. $900/mo + $900 security. Heat included. W/D on site. 773-430-2078, ask for Edmund Mitchell.
SUBURBS, RENT TO OW N! Buy with No closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708868-2422 or visit www.nhba.com CHICAGO, RENT TO OWN! Buy with no closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708868-2422 or visit www.nhba.com THE WAITING LIST for Project-
based Section 8 apartments at 3639 N. Pine Grove is now closed.
MARQUETTE PARK 3BR, formal dining room, stove, fridge, laundry facilities. $900 + sec. Must See! 773-881-8836 2 & 3BR House
& Townhome. Matteson, Sauk Village, University Park. Section 8 OK. Call 708-625-7355 for info.
3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200 CHICAGO, 3BR, 1BA, 1409 E. 68th St., 1st floor, hdwd flrs, A/C, stove & fridge incl., W/ D in bldng. $850/mo. Call 773-425-0677 61ST/LANGLEY 3BR/1BA in 2unit bldg Avail Now beautiful apt new bathroom, w/d in bsmt, Nr Trans & sch. Sec 8 ok. $1000/mo. 312-613-0974 NICE 3BR, 1.5BA Apt. Heat and
appls incl. 8622 S. Burnham Ave. 2nd flr. $975/mo + 1 mo sec. Please call 708-210-0803, 9a-5p.
MORGAN PARK AREA, 3BR, 2BA, intercom system, laundry, carpet & tile floors, $1100/mo + $1100 sec. Mark, 773-842-0476 SECTION 8 WELCOME. No Security Deposit. 7721 S Peoria, 3BR apt, appls incl. $1050/mo. 708-288-4510
4010 S. King Dr. 3BR, heat incl, $1025. 7906 S. Justine. 2BR $800 & Restaurant for rent. 708-421-7630 or 773-899-9529
3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499
8200 S. Drexel XL 2BR $1100/ mo . Heat & appls incl. Living & dining rm, newly remodeled. No Sec Dep. Section 8 OK. 312-915-0100. BRONZEVILLE, BEAUTIFUL REMOD 1, 2 & 3BR Apts, hdwd flrs, custom cabinets, avail now. $1000-$1200 /mo + sec. 773905-8487. Sect 8 Ok
room apartment, new kitchen cabinets. $1300 per month. 3003 N Ashland. ZINGG REALTY 708 355-1106 HOMEWOOD 2BR RANCH, 1ba, 2 car garage, 3 season room, HF schools, Avail 9/1. $1350/mo + $2000 sec. 708-539-0522
2 BR $1500 AND OVER LOGAN SQUARE 1ST flr/3 flat bldg 5 min to “L” and I90/94, quiet tree lined street, near congress theater, bars, restaurants. Large shared backyard, 1300 sq ft 2 BR/1Ba LR, dining room, family room, hardwood floors, kitchen, washer/dryer in basement, back patio,$1650/month (plus util), garage parking $100/month avail Sep 1. 773-718-7266 text preferred. beakevin@aol.com
SECTION 8 WELCOME 7134 S. Stewart. Nice 5BR/1BA
House, Carpet & appls incl, washer/dryer hookup. $1350/mo. 312-683-5174
BRICK 4BRS/1.5BA 62nd & Winchester. $1300/mo & 8955 S. May. $1550/mo. Move-in Fee, Sec 8 Ok. 773-720-9787 or 773-483-2594
ADULT SERVICES
FOR SALE PAXSON PROPERTIES. OWN
your house. Seller finance, $2500 down. Mo payment cheaper then rent. Buyer must be approved (no bank). N & NW Ind. Mike 847-2801204
MAKE UP TO
WE BUY HOUSES! Any situation.
rooms in Apartment, 1st floor. $400/ month, includes utilities. No Sec or Move-in fee. 312-973-2793
wooded acres, 2 br, 2.5 ba, exterior w alls/roof are 1 foot thick, granite tops, $220,000, 414-704-1072 Will take over payments. Cash for Keys Now! Call Now! 312-288-0298 ext 804
CHURCH PROPERTY AND pews for sale as is. $25,000. 773264-6151
non-residential
OTHER
SECTION 8 WELCOME Chicago, 11526 S Harvard 5BR/2BA, $1600. 255 W. 111th Pl., 6BR/3BA $1700. Call 773-793-8339, ask for Joe.
SOUTHSIDE, Newly Remod 3BR /2BA with appls & washer/dryer. Also, newly remod 2BR with appls & WD hk up 773-908-8791 CHICAGO HOUSES FOR rent. Section 8 Ok, w/app credit $500 gift certificate 3, 4 & 5 BR houses avail. 312-446-3333 or 708-752-3812
ADULT SERVICES
special. Russian, Polish, Ukrainain girls. Northbrook and Schaumburg locations. 10% discount for new customers. Please call 773-407-7025
SOUTHSIDE large furnished
MARKETPLACE GOODS
Never miss a show again.
CLASSICS WANTED ANY CLASSIC CARS IN ANY CONDITION. ’20S, ’30S, ’40S, ’50S, ’60S & ’70S. HOTRODS & EXOTICS! TOP DOLLAR PAID! COLLECTOR. CALL JAMES, 630-201-8122
3 BR OR MORE
8322 S BAKER, 3BR apt, 1st flr, hdwd flrs, Sec 8 ok. 2BR or 1BR voucher ok. 2707 E 93rd St. 5BR, 2BA, hdwd flrs, Sc 8 ok. 3BR voucher ok. Call 847-312-5643.
FULL BODY MASSAGE. hotel, house calls welcome $90
WASHINGTON PARK -
84th & Kostner, 3BR 3BA full finished bsmt, fireplace, garage hdwd flrs, Available Oct 1st .1 mo rent, 1.5 mo sec, Sec 8 Welcome $2100/mo plus util 773-851-4576
CHICAGO, 33 W. 104th Place, 4BR, 2BA & 130 E. 120th Place. 6BR, 2 full BA. Hdwd floors in both Section 8 Welcome. Call 708-296-5477
HEALTH & WELLNESS
CHICAGO, SOUTH SIDE, $250 Move in Special! Utilities, bed & TV included. Call 773-563-6799 5636 King Dr. Single Rooms for rent from $390, $450, to $510 a month. Call 773-359-7744
LARGE 3 BEDROOM apartment near Wrigley Field. 3820 N. Fremont. Two bathrooms. Hardwood Floors. Cats OK. $2190/month. Parking available at additional cost. Available 9/1. 773-761-4318.
males and females in very private, pleasant home setting in Rogers Park neighborhood. Extremely affordable. Gold standard of wax products used, exclusively: Ciripel hard and soft wax by Perron Rigot of Paris. Call or text 630-520-8052
CHICAGO, furnished room for rent $350/mo at 10154 S State St., utilities included, Mrs. Harris 773-403-7297
DUNDEE, Tettle-Moraine Area, 3
3 BR OR MORE $1800-$2499
PROFESSIONAL EXPERT INTIMATE WAXING for both
roommates
4153 S BERKELEY 3S $1400, 3Bd 1Ba, Heat and water inc, no sec dep., Call Pam 312-208-1771
3BR 1BA, 3rd fl stove & fridge incl, liv rm, dining rm, kit, nice view. Sec 8 Welcome. Call 773287-7512 or 773-430-0089 Beautiful 3 bedroom, 1 bath, in recently remodeled unit. Sect 8 Ok. Clean and No carpets in unit. Asking $1250. Call 312-459-9635 please leave your name and number.
101ST/MAY, 1br. 77th/Lowe. 1 & 2br. 69th/Dante 3br. 71st/Bennett. 2 & 3br. 77th/Essex. 3br. New renov. Sec 8 ok. 708-503-1366
units fully heated and humidity controlled with ac available. North: Knox Avenue. 773-685-6868. South: Pershing Avenue. 773-523-6868.
$60,000 per deal Guaranteed Financing Real Estate Audio Seminar Free info call 773-340-3151
ceiling fans, stove, garage, concrete patio. $1400/mo. Section 8 Welc. 773-456-2061
BEAUTIFULLY RENOVATED 3BR Single Family Homes, new kit. Fridge, stove & W/D incl. Hdwd flrs. Cash & Sect 8 Welc. 708-557-0644
3832 W. LEXINGTON, floor 1,
SELF-STORAGE CENTERS. T W O locations to serve you. All
GENERAL
1300 W. 73RD St. 4+1BR, 1.5 BA,
S. Justine. 3BR/1BA & 225 W 108th Pl, 2BR/1BA. 7134 S. Normal, 4BR/ 2BA. Ht & appls incl 312-683-5174
1801 W. GARFIELD BLVD.
2 BR $1100-$1299
5921 WEST OHIO, 60644, 3BR,1BA, all hdwd floors, new bathroom, separate heat. Section 8 Welcome $1200/month. 708-439-2816
SECTION 8 WELCOME $300 Move-In Bonus, No Dep. 6227
2 lrg BR Apt, balcony, living rm, dining rm & kitch, Free Heat. Sec 8 Welc. $1000/mo. 773-873-6479.
LAKEVIEW 4 1/2 room 2 bed-
1BR, 1ST FLR, Newly rehab, hdwd flrs, spac, appls, lndry facility, Quiet bldg. Gated backyard. Sec 8 ok. 773344-4050
CHICAGO: 2 BEDROOM Apartment, quiet area, utilities not included. Section 8 preferred. Call 708-577-8828
bedroom, $745.00, Free heat, GRANITE COUNTER TOPS, Call 312-2081771
2 BR $1300-$1499
appls, new crpt, heated, A/C, lndry, prkng, no pets, nr Metra. Sec 8 ok $675. 630-480-0638
Villas is accepting applications for Subsidized 2 and 3 bedroom apt waiting list. Rent is based on 30% of annual income for qualified applicants. Contact us at 847-546-1899 for details
7904 S WABASH: Unit 3A - 1
CHICAGO SOUTH SIDE Beauti-
RIVERDALE NEW DECOR, 1BR,
ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar
CHICAGO, 9307 S. Saginaw, Newly rehabbed, 2BR, carpet, stove & fridge, heat not incl, $950/ mo. Sect 8 welc. Mr. Johnson, 773294-0167
CHICAGO - BEVERLY, large studio, 1 & 2BR Apts. Carpet, A/ C, laundry, near transportation, $680-$1020/mo. Call 773-2334939 ful Studios, 1,2,3 & 4 BR’s, Sec 8 ok. $500 gift certificate for Sec 8 tenants. 773-287-9999/312-446-3333
2 BR OTHER
SERVICES
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IN-
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AUGUST 3, 2017 | CHICAGO READER 39
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SAVAGE LOVE
By Dan Savage
‘Was I wrong to cross-dress?’
A “hall pass” puts a husband in the crosshairs. Plus: women are so unfair! Q : My wife has been
seriously ill for three years, and I have been her sole caregiver. The doctors here weren’t getting the job done, so we made the difficult decision for her to move 2,000 miles away to start over and be near her family. Our sex life has been nonexistent since she became ill. She offered me a “hall pass” with two rules: (1) It couldn’t be anyone I worked with, and (2) she didn’t want to know about it. She offered multiple times, but I was taking care of her 24/7 and never used it. I started to consider using it after she moved. But I didn’t want to just find some random person on Tinder. You see, I am a cross-dresser. My wife knows. She’s never seen me dressed, and isn’t interested in knowing more about it. So instead of paying for a traditional escort, I found someone who would dress me, do my makeup, and go out to dinner with me, but no sex. We met three times. However, one time I did hire a trans woman who dressed me, and we did have sex. Following rule #2, I didn’t tell my wife anything about any of these encounters. But then she flew home unannounced to get her things (with her ex-husband along to help), found my clothes out, and quickly got out of me what I had done. She was beyond pissed. She says I had a hall pass for sex but not cross-dressing. She belittled me for the crossdressing and said the sex was supposed to be a oneand-done thing. She knew I was a cross-dresser, and that I derived more pleasure from cross-dressing than from having anonymous sex with an escort. My questions: Did I violate the hall pass? Was I wrong to cross-dress? —DUDE RELISHING EROTIC
SEXCAPADES SUDDENLY ENTERTAINING DIVORCE
A : Your wife went home to
get well and “start over.” And it sounds like she got well—at least well enough to fly—and started over with her ex-husband. I don’t think you were wrong to cross-dress, DRESSED, and if you violated that hall pass, it was only because your soon-to-be ex-wife didn’t share all the rules with you until after you used it. It looks like a setup to me. Your soon-to-be ex-wife gave you permission to fuck someone else—permission that came with rules that were disclosed and secret bylaws and codicils that were not—because, consciously or subconsciously, she wanted to catch you doing it wrong (in your case, DRESSED, doing it more than once, cross-dressing when you did it, etc). Because now she can divorce you with a clear conscience, since she’s not to blame for the split—you and your dick and your dresses are to blame. You might want to brace yourself for some hard-core blaming and kink shaming, DRESSED, and for the very real possibility she’ll out you to family and friends. But however the divorce plays out—and here’s hoping it doesn’t get ugly—at least you’ll soon be free to find a partner you don’t have to hide your cross-dressing from.
Q : I’m a 25-year-old man
who’s mostly interested in women but likes to mess around with men sometimes. I also love wearing high heels and makeup—not to “pass,” but just because I love it. Most women seem to be instantly turned off by these two things. They bolt when I tell them, and some
have been quite hurtful. The average woman doesn’t seem to like it when I do something that they deem “theirs.” Which is so unfair. Women can do anything they please—wear pants if they like, have same-sex experiences—but I must submit or face the life of an outcast. Any advice on how to deal with this while also dealing with the bitterness and envy I feel? —ENRAGING
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GENDER AND DOUBLE STANDARDS
A : Let’s start with those
feelings of envy, shall we? While it’s true that, e.g., women can wear pantsuits without causing alarm, women’s choices and their bodies are subjected to much more scrutiny, control, and violence than our male bodies are, EGADS. Until politicians legislate against your right to control your own body (and wear your own heels), you can note the few areas where women enjoy more latitude than men, but you aren’t allowed to bitch about them. Now the good news: there are women out there who dig men in high heels, there are women out there into bi guys, and there’s a significant overlap between those two groups of women. If you succumb to bitterness at your young age because you’ve been dumped a few times, you’re going to scare off the women who are genuinely attracted to guys like you. The women who bolted did you a painful favor, EGADS, and you should be grateful. Because now you’re free to go find a woman who wants a guy like you. Good luck. v Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at savagelovecast. com. v @fakedansavage
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THEBLEADER.COM AUGUST 3, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 41
b Never miss a show again. Sign up for the newsletter at chicagoreader. com/early
TV Girl 10/7, 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ The Verve Pipe 11/24, 7:30 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 8/3, noon b Christopher Willits 9/14, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Zeds Dead, Ghastly, Ghostface Killah 10/21, 6 PM, Navy Pier
UPDATED Zombie Girl 8/11, 8:30 PM, Cobra Lounge, canceled
Bully ò ALYSSE GAFKJEN
NEW
Gabrielle Aplin 9/22, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Atlas Genius 10/5, 6 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 8/4, 10 AM b Black Violin 11/12, 5:30 and 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 8/3, noon b Bloody Beetroots 11/5, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall, on sale Fri 8/4, 10 AM, 17+ Bully 11/7, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 8/4, 10 AM, 17+ Todd Carey 9/18, 8 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 8/4, 10 AM Tyler Childers 11/3, 10 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 8/4, 10 AM, 18+ George Clanton, Negative Gemini 10/6, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Carl Craig 9/9, 10 PM, Smart Bar A.J. Croce 10/22, 7 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 8/4, 8 AM b Dream Syndicate 12/4, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 8/4, 10 AM, 17+ Dream Theater 11/3, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre El Gran Combo 8/26, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall Extinction A.D., War Curses 9/26, 7:30 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Eyehategod, Cro-Mags 9/2-3, 8 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Fatai 9/28, 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ Festival Cubano with Stevie B, Victor Manuelle, Uriel & Vera, Rumbambere, Charanga Habanera, and more 8/11-13, Riis Park b The Ghost of Paul Revere 10/20, 10 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 8/4, 10 AM
UPCOMING Seth Glier 10/28, 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 8/4, 8 M b Goblin 10/25, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 8/4, 10 AM, 17+ Gryffin, Autograf 10/13, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Thu 8/3, 10 AM, 17+ Aldous Harding 9/19, 9 PM, Empty Bottle High Waisted 10/24, 8 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 8/4, 10 AM, 18+ Human Heat 9/19, 8:30 PM, Subterranean Inti-Illimani 10/20, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Jonwayne 10/22, 8 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 8/4, 10 AM, 18+ Fritz Kalkbrenner 9/8, 10 PM, Smart Bar Kesha 10/18, 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom, on sale Sat 8/5, 10 AM b Earl Klugh 11/29, 6:30 and 9 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 8/3, noon b Alex Lahey 11/24, 8:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Larkin Poe 8/27, 8 PM, Martyrs’ Lil Peep 10/19, 7:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 8/4, 10 AM b Logan Square Food Truck Social with the Gories, Endless Boogie, the Eternals 6, Mykele Deville, Choral Reefr, Cafe Racer, Skip Church, and more 8/25-27, Humboldt between Armitage and Bloomingdale b Low Cut Connie 11/2, 8:45 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Nick Lowe’s Quality Rock & Roll Revue, Los Straitjackets 10/31, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 8/4, 10 AM Witt Lowry 11/11, 9 PM, Subterranean, on sale Fri 8/4, 10 AM, 17+
42 CHICAGO READER - AUGUST 3, 2017
Joyner Lucas 10/3, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, on sale Thu 8/3, 10 AM, 18+ Mike Mains 10/3, 8 PM, Subterranean Mayday 10/7, 6:30 PM, Wire, Berwyn b Mipso, Lil Smokies 11/4, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 8/4, noon Morgan Heritage 9/13, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ My Ticket Home 9/10, 6 PM, Wire, Berwyn b Our Lady Peace 11/2, 8 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 8/4, 10 AM, 17+ Eddie Palmieri Latin Jazz Band 10/27, 7 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Pere Ubu 11/18, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen Pile 9/27, 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Pilsen Fest with Ile, Nina Sky, Rey Pila, Nina Diaz, Elastic Bond, Burghost, and more 8/18-20, 18th and Blue Island b Pinegrove, Saintseneca 11/26, 7 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Thu 8/3, 10 AM b Trevor Sensor 11/1, 9 PM, Hideout, on sale Fri 8/4, 9 AM Sharon Shannon 11/13, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 8/3, noon b Slugish 11/2, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Swingin’ Utters 11/17, 6:30 PM, Cobra Lounge, on sale Fri 8/4, noon, 17+ Tera Melos, Speedy Ortiz 10/26, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ 312 Block Party with Animal Collective, the Record Company, Charles Bradley & His Extraordinaires, Filthy Friends, and more 9/22-23, Goose Island Beer Co Trampa, Laces, Aweminus 10/6, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+
Alvvays 11/3, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Arizona 9/11, 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall b Barr Brothers 12/7, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Scott H. Biram 8/17, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Boris, Helms Alee 10/23, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Cannibal Corpse, Power Trip 11/24, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Coven 10/31, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Deer Tick 10/21, 8:30 PM, Metro, 18+ Doom 8/19, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 18+ El Ten Eleven 9/21, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b EMA 11/18, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Feedtime 9/26, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Flamin’ Groovies 10/19, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Marty Friedman 8/10, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Glass Animals 9/28, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom b Growlers 10/6, 9:30 PM, the Vic, 18+ Haken 9/23, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Halsey, Partynextdoor 11/19, 7 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Jessica Hernandez & the Deltas 9/22, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Ice Balloons 10/10, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Jay-Z 12/5, 8 PM, United Center Johnnyswim 11/10, 7:30 PM, the Vic b Kasabian 9/19, 8:30 PM, House of Blues, 17+ King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard 9/24-25, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Kings of Leon 8/12, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park
ALL AGES
WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK
EARLY WARNINGS
CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME
F
Arto Lindsay 10/20, 8 PM, Fullerton Hall, Art Institute of Chicago b Living Colour 9/3, 6 and 9 PM, City Winery b Lorde 3/27, 7 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Male Gaze 8/27, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Marilyn Manson 10/10, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Dan Navarro 8/22, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston b No Warning, Down to Nothing, Backtrack 9/21, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Odesza 11/11, 7:30 PM, UIC Pavilion Of Montreal 9/14, 8 PM, Logan Square Auditorium, 18+ Partner 9/28, 7 PM, Township, 17+ Pears 10/11, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ A Perfect Circle 11/24, 8 PM, UIC Pavilion Quicksand 9/27, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Quinn XCII 10/6, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall b Revolting Cocks 11/17, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Saint Pe, Crocodiles 10/12, 9 PM, Hideout Silversun Pickups 11/8, 7 PM, Riviera Theatre b Touche Amore 10/7, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ UFO, Saxon 10/8, 6:30 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Wire 9/16, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Zola Jesus, John Wiese 10/8, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Jeremy Zucker 8/13, 7 PM, Schubas b
SOLD OUT Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile 10/26, 7:30 PM, Rockefeller Memorial Chapel; 10/27, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall; 10/28, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Jon Bellion, Max 9/1, 7:30 PM, Metro b Between the Buried & Me, Contortionist 9/30-10/1, 6:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b Brockhampton 9/6, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge b Cold Waves VI with Front 242, KMFDM, Stabbing Westward, Cold Cave, and more 9/29-10/1, 6:30 PM, Metro, 18+ Florida Georgia Line, Backstreet Boys 8/12, 7 PM, Wrigley Field Haim 9/15, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre b Daniel Johnston, Jeff Tweedy 10/20, 7:30 PM, the Vic, 18+ Lady Gaga 8/25, 7 PM, Wrigley Field The National 12/12-13, 7:30 PM, Civic Opera House b Sza 8/31, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall Avey Tare 10/6, 10 PM, Hideout v
GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene CHICAGO UNDERGROUND hip-hop hero Mike “Mic One” Malinowski died this weekend at age 40. Malinowski cut his teeth with the Noise Pollution crew in the 90s; he dropped his first solo album, Who’s the Illest?, in 1998, around when he met longtime collaborator Chad Sorenson, aka DJ Risky Bizness. “Mike was a performance artist,” Sorenson says. “Our goal was to make these rock-star-style shows, but with hip-hop.” Malinowski drew on a love for rock he’d inherited from his family—at one Metro gig, part of the Molemen’s Chicago Rocks series, Malinowski and his band closed by inserting a cover of A Tribe Called Quest’s “Bonita Applebum” into Radiohead’s “Creep” (and then Malinowski smashed his guitar). Sorenson remembers the way his friend brought people together: “Mike was loved by everyone, because Mike was the guy who would go to your show—even if there was ten people there, he would be there.” Chicago hip-hop veterans such as Mic Terror, Astonish, and Longshot have shared condolences online since the sad news broke Saturday morning. “It’s just crazy—a kid from Portage Park who really made the city his,” Sorenson says. “Kids from Portage Park aren’t supposed to do that.” In 2012 Gossip Wolf reported that talent buyer and Tonic Room owner Donnie Biggins was starting his own booking agency, Harmonica Dunn, and he’s clearly doing a great job—last week Berwyn roots-music club FitzGerald’s announced that he’ll be its new booker, replacing co-owner Bill FitzGerald after 36 years. Best of luck to both of them! Lollapalooza isn’t the only game in town this weekend, mercifully. The We Are HipHop Youth Festival takes place in Pilsen’s Dvorak Park on Saturday, celebrating the historical elements of hip-hop. The bill features break dancers, graffiti artists, and musicians such as Black Heaven, Dej Monae, D-Jilla, Lexi Monee, and Me’chelle Renee. The free event runs from 1 till 6 PM. —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.
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AUGUST 3, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 43
TAKASHI MURAKAMI: THE OCTOPUS EATS ITS OWN LEG
JUN 6– SEP 24
220 E CHICAGO AVE CHICAGO, IL 60611 MCACHICAGO.ORG #MURAKAMI
Takashi Murakami Flowers, flowers, flowers (detail), 2010 Acrylic and platinum leaf on canvas mounted on aluminum frame 59 × 59 in. (150 × 150 cm) Collection of the Chang family, Taiwan © 2010 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved