12 Brown | Parking tickets
Chicago drivers may see relief as a result of some upcoming lawsuits.
14 Isaacs | On Culture A thyroid expert reconsiders 50 years of dogma.
04 The To-Do Cameron Spratley at M. LeBlanc, Chicago Vintage Festival celebrates hip-hop, and more upcoming events
FOOD & DRINK
06 Sula | Books Local food books youmight have missed—and some you shouldn’t
16 Comic The artist-centered approach of Meekling Press
17 Poetry Taylor Byas’s debut poetry book takes inspiration from the south side.
24 Plays of Note Recommended theater to see, including Gypsy, A Hit Dog Will Holler, and Moon at the Bottom of the Ocean
FILM
25 Festival Preview The Chicago Underground Film Festival is back.
27 Movies of Note Bottoms is an absurdly gory instant classic, and Fremont has a cunning, melancholic charm.
38 Shows and Records of Note
Previews of concerts including the Trenchies, the Impromptu Fest, Blk Odyssy, and Bill Nace & Haley Fahr
44 Early Warnings Upcoming concerts to have on your radar
CEO AND PUBLISHER SOLOMON LIEBERMAN ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER AMBER NETTLES
EDITOR IN CHIEF SALEM COLLO-JULIN
MANAGING EDITOR SHEBA WHITE
PRODUCTION MANAGER KIRK WILLIAMSON
SENIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNER AMBER HUFF
THEATER AND DANCE EDITOR KERRY REID MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO CULTURE EDITOR: FILM, MEDIA, FOOD & DRINK TARYN ALLEN
CULTURE EDITOR: ART, ARCHITECTURE, BOOKS, LITERARY ARTS KERRY CARDOZA NEWS EDITOR SHAWN MULCAHY ASSOCIATE EDITOR AND BRANDED CONTENT SPECIALIST JAMIE LUDWIG DIGITAL EDITOR TYRA NICOLE TRICHE SENIOR WRITERS LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, MIKE SULA
44 Gossip Wolf Jazz pianist Pat Leary celebrates a sleek new electric trio album, Rose Lake play for the closing of the crocheted installation two members created at the Whistler, and more.
18 Small Press TEMPER press is designed to support unclassifiable literature.
20 Book Review Composing
While Black and the Lyric Opera’s Amistad
28 Galil | DJ Deeon The acclaimed DJ never stopped giving back to the south-side scene that made him.
32 City of Win Veteran rapper Stock Marley is here for genuine love.
45 Savage Love Dan Savage gets the lowdown on why you’re not going down.
CLASSIFIEDS
46 Jobs
47 Research, Auditions
FEATURES WRITER KATIE PROUT SOCIAL JUSTICE REPORTER DEBBIE-MARIE BROWN STAFF WRITER MICCO CAPORALE SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT ASSOCIATE CHARLI RENKEN
VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS
ANN SCHOLHAMER
CHIEF DEVELOPMENT OFFICER DIANE PASCAL VICE PRESIDENT OF PEOPLE AND CULTURE ALIA GRAHAM
DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS CHASITY COOPER MARKETING PROJECT STRATEGIST SHAWNEE DAY
DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATE MICHAEL THOMPSON TECHNOLOGY MANAGER ARTURO ALVAREZ OFFICE MANAGER AND CIRCULATION
DIRECTOR SANDRA KLEIN
DIRECTOR OF CHICAGO INDEPENDENT MEDIA ALLIANCE (CIMA) SAVANNAH HUGUELEY
8 City of Sanctuary Fi y years ago, Chilean exiles found refuge in Chicago.
22 Fall books The Understudy staff pick theater titles for the season.
34 The Secret History of Chicago Music Marshall Vente is a genre-defying jazz pianist.
VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES AMY MATHENY SALES TEAM VANESSA FLEMING, WILL ROGERS DIGITAL SALES ASSOCIATE AYANA ROLLING MEDIA SALES ASSOCIATE JILLIAN MUELLER
ADVERTISING ADS@CHICAGOREADER.COM
CLASSIFIEDS: CLASSIFIEDS.CHICAGOREADER.COM
NATIONAL ADVERTISING VOICE MEDIA GROUP 1-888-278-9866 VMGADVERTISING.COM
JOE LARKIN AND SUE BELAIR
DISTRIBUTION CONCERNS distributionissues@chicagoreader.com 312-392-2970
READER INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITY JOURNALISM, INC.
PRESIDENT AND CHAIRPERSON EILEEN RHODES TREASURER REESE MARCUSSON SECRETARY KIM L. HUNT
DIRECTORS ALISON CUDDY, DANIEL DEVER, MATT DOUBLEDAY, VANESSA FERNANDEZ, TORRENCE GARDNER, ROBERT REITER, CHRISTINA CRAWFORD STEED
READER (ISSN 1096-6919) IS PUBLISHED BIWEEKLY BY THE READER INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITY JOURNALISM 2930 S. MICHIGAN, SUITE 102 CHICAGO, IL 60616 312-392-2934, CHICAGOREADER.COM
COPYRIGHT © 2023 CHICAGO READER PERIODICAL POSTAGE PAID AT CHICAGO, IL ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. CHICAGO READER, READER, AND REVERSED R: REGISTERED TRADEMARKS ®
By MICCO CAPORALE
Fall is prime gallery season, and I’m looking forward to “Violets and Daisies,” the second solo show by artist Cameron Spratley at M. LeBlanc (3514 W. Fullerton). Spratley is a rising figure in Chicago’s contemporary Black painting community and was one of the local artists whose work was used as the protagonist’s art in director Nia DaCosta’s 2021 movie Candyman . Like fellow Candyman artist Sherwin Ovid, Spratley went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where the third Candyman artist, Arnold J. Kemp, teaches. (Kemp is also represented by M. LeBlanc.) Understanding this helps situate the artist’s work within a larger conversation of how Black life is threaded between fine art and popular culture and which images are allowed to carry more weight. The opening for “Violets and Daisies” is scheduled for 5-8 PM on Saturday, September 9, and the work will be on view through October 28. mleblancchicago.com
On Sunday, September 10, Chicago Vintage Festival (CVF) is teaming up with the wellness organization Strength in the City to hold a special pop-up celebrating hip-hop’s 50th anniversary. Chicago Vintage Festival gathers people who produce handmade goods as well as small vintage purveyors with niche expertise for pop-ups held across Chicago all summer long. Sunday’s event will focus on streetwear and will also include food, drinks, photo opportunities, hip-hop dance classes, and music. It’s happening from 9 AM-7 PM at 401 N. Morgan (at Kinzie). If you like this festival, you’ll want to check out CVF’s next event, a weekend pop-up in Bridgeport (at 35th Street and Morgan) from Friday, September 15 through Sunday, September 17. All the popups are free to attend and open for all ages. No tickets are required, but CVF would appreciate it if you RSVP at their website. chicagovintagefest.com
At 7 PM on Thursday, September 14, the Facets Anime Club offers a double feature of Devilman: the Birth and Devilman: the Demon Bird at the theater (1517 W. Fullerton). Both pictures are classics of original video animation (OVA) anime. Like direct-to-video cartoons made in the U.S., OVAs are known to feature cheaper production (often to bizarre ends) or more mature content and themes. If you like odd animation, horrible English dubbing, demons, raves, or carnage, you’ll probably like these movies! Note that this screening is only available to Facets Film Club members—but memberships start at $15 per month or $150 per year. Film Club members receive more than free anime screenings: they also get discounts at the Facets box o ce and for the organization’s Film Camps for children and teens, three free video rentals per month, and more. Plus, it’s tax deductible. facets.org
Elastic Arts Foundation kicks off a series of three events including improvised music between Chicago and Mexico City-based performers. Elastic describes the collaborative project, Elastic Aural , as “conceived to bring eight improvising musicians from Chicago to Mexico City to work and perform with eight improvisers based there, then to bring those musicians to Chicago to continue the collaboration six months later.” The first two concerts (Thursday, September 14 and Friday, September 15) will start at 8:30 PM at Elastic (3429 W. Diversey, second floor). Tickets are $15 per night, to be paid at the door. The final event is a free performance happening on Saturday, September 16 at 3 PM at the National Museum of Mexican Art (1852 W. 19th St.). All three concerts are open to all ages. elasticarts.org
If you’re hyped for the upcoming Chicago Underground Film Festival, you’ll also want to mark your calendar for Celluloid Now. The showcase of analog filmmakers and artists or-
ganized by the Chicago Film Society happens Thursday, September 21 through Sunday, September 24 at several venues: Constellation (3111 N. Western), Gene Siskel Film Center (164 N. State), and Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington). Experience everything from archival restorations, experiments in analog audio for film, and contemporary movies shot and projected on 35mm. (The festival website notes that, while there has been an
uptick in 35mm fi lmmaking , few modern analog filmmakers also get to experience it being projected that way.) A complete schedule of screenings and ticket prices is available at the festival’s website. Don’t miss: Saturday and Sunday’s programming is the most robust— and totally free! celluloidnow.org v m mcaporale@chicagoreader.com
for my great-grandaunt
Willie Jane Taylor (1929-2005)
You were as country as the place you were born: Belzoni Hump, and I loved you for it. Every time you were questioned, you’d answer with a hoarse Godwillin. You were that country, and (Golly!) churched. Once, Mother Peebles asked in passing if you could bring the cobbler for the church potluck. God willin, you said, your voice as gallant as a long-legged gal from the South, which you were: skin cracked with age but still smooth. And those heels. Gal, I’m talking heels cracked and callused just so, looked like you was coming up on the rough side of the mountain. Thank you for seeing me through till then,
your end; for the black coffee, plenty sugar, and little cream you gave me; for the insulin shots you made me watch you give yourself; for that one swat on my ass when I got too fresh at church; for the tough butterscotch you kept in your purse just for me; for introducing me to Monk and our family’s legacy of OCD. Sorry I told Mama no when she asked if I’d spend time with you again that one weekend. I knew death, even then. The hollow it made of the living. I couldn’t bear to hear the constant rattle in your chest, knowing it was much worse than you let on. It hurt to see you lie dying (nearly as much as it hurt Mama when she learned you refused surgery) in that hospital bed, tubes and tubes all over your body. I still remember the movie that played in the lobby. The one where Whoopi Goldberg in a bad wig moonlights as a soothsayer. I recall being a bit comforted by the idea the living could speak to the dead (just as I’m speaking to you now). Though y’all prefer to visit me in dreams: you, Miss Pat, Uncle Lorenzo. Sometimes I can still smell his cologne. Oh, memory. The relics we keep. Mama let me have your portrait when I moved out. The black and white one. Your wig perfectly coiled as you face left in your church usher’s uniform: no smile, and no one telling you to. If the Heaven Reverend Cotton preached is real (and The LORD’s as merciful as you said), God willin, sweet lady, I’ll see you again. Should you want.
Jada Renée Allen is a writer, educator, & two-headed Black girl living & working on U.S.-occupied O’odham Jewed, Akimel O’Odham, & Hohokam lands. A 2022 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest winner, Jada Renée is the recipient of fellowships, scholarships, & support from Tin House; the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop; Community of Writers; & VONA. Her work appears in Gulf Coast; Hayden’s Ferry Review; Paris Review Daily; Virginia Quarterly Review; & elsewhere. She is from South Side Chicago, & lives in the wake of Willie Jane’s love.
Poem curated by Cortney Lamar Charleston. Cortney Lamar Charleston, originally from the Chicago suburbs, is a Cave Canem fellow and the author of Telepathologies (Saturnalia Books, 2017) and Doppelgangbanger (Haymarket Books, 2021). He serves as a poetry editor at The Rumpus and on the editorial board at Alice James Books.
A biweekly series curated by the Chicago Reader and sponsored by the Poetry Foundation.
Hours
Wednesday & Friday: 11:00 AM–5:00 PM
Thursday: 11:00 AM–7:00 PM Saturday: 10:00 AM–5:00 PM
Open Doors: Harriet Monroe Editors Panel
Thursday, September 14 | 7:00 PM CT
In conjunction with the exhibition opening for Harriet Monroe & the Open Door, join us for a conversation with guest editors from 2021-22.
Learn more at PoetryFoundation.org
SEPT. 24
"Oh, to write . . . To be able to write, to make pen move on paper!"
Years ago, at the height of the craze, I bought an Instant Pot. Of course I had to have the largest size possible—the eight-quart. If I’d read any reviews, I might have learned that this hissing countertop monster had a few technical liabilities that the smaller ones didn’t. I was particularly annoyed that I couldn’t find a single IP yogurt recipe that worked in my machine. It just never coagulated. Turns out, I wasn’t following any method that accounted for its echoing empty interior. That was until a new Indian Instant Pot cookbook hit the doorstop last spring—one whose yogurt recipe was spot on for the eight-quart. I now have four quarts of super fresh and creamy yogurt, and two quarts of drained whey to figure out what to do with.
That isn’t even the most exciting observation I made while reading this collection of recent and soon-to-be-published local food books. The reasons for my repeated failures at making a Thanksgiving persimmon pie were revealed in a new midwestern cookbook by a local chef and scholar. You’ll be just as angered and touched by the epitaph David Foster Wallace himself put on the writing career of a student who would go on to become one of Chicago’s most beloved chefs. And I’m thrilled to know that COVID-19 couldn’t kill the classic Wisconsin Supper Club.
Instant Pot Indian: 70 FullFlavor, Authentic Recipes for Any Sized Instant Pot, Anupy Singla (Agate Surrey)
Former CLTV reporter Singla’s fourth book is a natural successor to her 2010 debut, The Indian Slow Cooker , given how endemic pressure cookers are to Indian home cooking— your IP can act as both. That being said, it joins a very crowded field of previously published books on the same subject. Singla differentiates hers with recipes designed and tested for three-, six-, and eight-quart Instant Pots. (It matters. See intro.) They’re mostly plant-based, classic recipes, with a few meaty ones tossed in the pot.
The fourth issue of Amano’s “biannual” travel journal dropped in June, just around the time when folks started to notice something special was happening in the Chicago barbecue scene. That was just over one year since the journal’s debut, and the seasoned cookbook author and Sterling Bay corporate chef has really hit his stride. This one features a pilgrimage to some of the barbecue greats in Houston and central Texas, visiting both traditional and “New School pitmasters.” Then the team jumps back to Chicago to embed with our flourishing underground barbecue pop-up scene, whose main players—like Charles Wong of Umamicue and Joe Yim of Knox Ave Barbecue—have followed in the footsteps of Austin’s New School LeRoy and Lewis, ushering in a new age of barbecue that breaks free from the Texas Trinity (brisket, ribs, and sausage). There’s quite a lot of practical content to help get you started smoking your own, and there’s a new photographer on the masthead: Jonathan Zaragoza, whose fetching shots show he’s got an eye for more than just a good-looking caprid. Issue 5: Pizza will be out by Thanksgiving, according to Amano.
The Sacred Life of Bread: Uncovering the Mystery of an Ordinary Loaf, Meghan MurphyGill (Broadleaf Books)
Small enough to fit in an apron pocket, this collection of essays and meditations—sermons, even—from a former journalist and practicing Episcopal priest is a map toward developing a “spirituality of bread.” Released in early June, each chapter examines some aspect of bread or baking as a metaphor for inner truth, and ends with an appropriate recipe. “If you have no spiritual practices in your life or are looking for a new spiritually edifying habit to maintain,” one chapter begins, “may I suggest a sourdough starter?”
This is a ten-year anniversary update on the seminal guide to the Badger State’s greatest legacy to the Good Times. I never would have guessed that so many of the state’s classic supper clubs—or their owners—would have survived COVID. Indeed, 11 of the originals he featured in 2013 have since shuttered. But many of those passed on before the pandemic, and since 2022, Faiola found 15 more to profile—that’s 15 more brandy Old Fashioneds to drink on prime rib nights.
Midwestern Food: A Chef’s Guide to the Surprising History of a Great American Cuisine, With More Than 100 Tasty Recipes, Paul Fehribach (University of Chicago Press, September 20)
Heartland-focused cookbooks are a dime a dozen, but I’ve never seen one like this from Big Jones chef Paul Fehribach, who established himself long ago as a serious culinary historian. Born and raised in Indiana, he’s mostly known for southern food (and somewhat less so for a very specific set of knife skills). Here he looks upward and inward and serves up an expansive survey and love letter to the often overlooked and sometimes derided cuisine of flyover country.
The Lula Cafe Cookbook: Collected Recipes and Stories, Jason Hammel (Phaidon, October 4)
Speaking of midwestern food . . . Jason Hammel was a fiction writer with no kitchen experience when he and future spouse Amalea Tshilds founded their little Logan Square cafe. That was 24 years ago, long before Chicago understood what “seasonal” and “farm-to-table” was supposed to mean; before neighborhood restaurants sprung up like a carpet of April ramps; and way before a worldwide pandemic changed everything. Hammel has stories—and there’s probably no working chef better equipped to tell them. Told between the covers of a thick, beautifully photographed Phaidon art book, it’s the testament this venerated Chicago institution deserves. Hammel spins his tales at the head of some 90 recipes, from beloved dishes that never came o the first menu (Pasta Yiayia, chickpea and fennel tagine), to a broad spectrum of the more ephemeral, ever-changing seasonal dishes that came o the pass over the decades (potatoes with smoked trout and tahini, miso corn cake with shiso ice cream). Each one is stamped with the date of its inception, and Hammel tells the story of its inspiration. The desserts chapter alone is a short history of some of the city’s best pastry chefs. This one is going to occupy a lot of co ee tables.
Fehribach introduces most of the 100-some recipes with a personal and passionate headnote that’s nonetheless deeply researched, often citing the earliest published mentions of a broad selection of dishes both iconic (the jibarito, Italian beef, Chicago-style tips and link) and sometimes forgotten (persimmon pudding, duck and manoomin hotdish, cannibal sandwiches). This is a deep resource, and one of the best validations of the breadth and diversity of our regional cuisine that I’ve seen.
m
How to Taste Co ee: Develop Your Sensory Skills and Get the Most out of Every Cup, Jessica Easto (Agate Surrey, October 24)
“Peach, apricot, lemon.” Those aren’t Italian ice varieties, but rather the flavor notes on the bag of pricey craft co ee beans I usually buy. If I ever detected those flavors in the first place, I rarely think about them now. I just like the way these particular beans perform with my preferred co ee gadget.
Maybe I’d be more mindful if the standardized tools and vocabulary used to talk about how coffee tastes hadn’t been bottlenecked at the upper industry levels. Most co ee drinkers—and few baristas—have the ability to understand the flavor notes often expressed on bean bags and shop menus—let alone independently describe what they taste like. Easto’s follow up to Craft Co ee: A Manual seeks to break down the language barriers that divide professionals and consumers. She gets into the weeds on the science of flavor, taste, and olfaction, while illuminating some of the more detailed and esoteric tools professionals use to produce, buy, and market co ee, all interspersed with 19 palate exercises to flex what you’ve learned. v
Supporters protest the overthrow of Chilean president Salvador Allende at the John C. Kluczynski Federal Building days a er a military coup in 1973. ST-19033055-0012,
Hortensia Bussi held back tears as she addressed a crowd of more than 2,000 people gathered at DePaul University one December afternoon in 1973.
She was in Chicago because a few months earlier, on September 11, 1973, with spring in the air and Chile’s independence day on the horizon, military aircraft launched from the port city of Valparaíso for the capital, Santiago. They attacked the presidential palace and, at some point during the fighting, Chilean president Salvador Allende—Bussi’s husband—died.
With the first winds of a Chicago winter whistling through Lincoln Park, Bussi charged that the U.S. government directly supported the coup d’état that overthrew Allende’s democratically elected government and installed a military junta.
This September marks 50 years since Augusto Pinochet captured Chile, kicking o nearly two decades of authoritarian rule. And while the U.S. is inextricably linked to that government, Chicago also has a deep connection to the coup and its aftermath. For neither the first nor the last time, the city became a sanctuary for people seeking a life away from forces bent on their domination and subjugation at home. But while some activists opened the doors of the Second City to exiled Chileans, others plotted policies to fortify the regime.
That’s why Hortensia Bussi found herself in DePaul’s half-full Alumni Hall, pausing to let her tears subside. When she regained composure, she explained how U.S. policymakers had conspired against her husband, cutting all financial ties to the Chilean government while maintaining substantial military support.
For Washington, Allende’s Chile was always a problem. Chileans had done something unacceptable to U.S. Cold War foreign policy: they freely elected a socialist government from within the empire’s sphere of influence.
After Allende won a plurality in the 1970 presidential election, U.S. president Richard Nixon ordered his advisors to “make [Chile’s] economy scream.” He also directed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to pursue a two-track plan to stop the election from being recognized by the legislature or, failing that, to encourage Chilean military intervention. There could be no sense in Latin America that it was “safe” to vote this way, Nixon said.
Though the Nixon administration failed to prevent Allende’s ascent to power, after three years of economic sanctions, they got their coup.
The day before her speech at DePaul, Bussi stood with the family of Frank Teruggi Jr. at his burial site in Des Plaines. As reporters squeezed in to get a picture of the mourners, Bussi bent down and placed a pine branch on the grave.
A llende’s election attracted thousands of like-minded socialists to Chile. Terrugi, a Spanish-speaking leftist who graduated from Catholic school in Niles, was among them.
Teruggi grew up in the suburbs and became politically active while attending college in California. There, he founded a chapter of Students for a Democratic Society. He was in a range of leftist organizations from 1967 to 1973, and was among protestors at the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention. In 1971, a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent spotted him at a meeting of anti-war Vietnam War veterans in Denver, which earned him a file under the FBI’s counterintelligence program. He a liated with the North American Congress on Latin America, a leftist nonprofit known for its opposition to U.S. imperialism, and joined similar Chicago-based groups.
Just before he left for Chile, a Chicago Tribune reporter writing a man-on-the-street piece about the Loop noticed Teruggi wearing blue-tinted sunglasses and hawking copies of the Chicago Seed , a short-lived, radical underground newspaper. By the time the article ran in early 1972, Teruggi had already landed a new job in Santiago working for an outlet called the North American Investigatory Source . The organization translated English media for Spanish-speaking Chileans while relaying information back to the U.S. about the situation in Chile.
T he economic conditions worsened as Allende’s Popular Unity government strained toward a third straight year of turmoil induced by American sanctions. In 1970, Chilean military officials were unwilling to give in to urges from the CIA to interfere with electoral processes. But after the Allende government maintained its support in a 1973 election, patience with democracy finally ran out among military leadership and business
A Chicago Committee to Save Lives in Chile event from the late 1970s.
Pictured: Some committee leadership and Yamil Ahuile Sr. (stage le )
owners. Women marched through the streets protesting food shortages, banging together lids, pots, and pans. As planes bombarded La Moneda Palace on September 11, police and soldiers began to sweep up those it identified as enemies of the state.
A week after the coup, Terrugi and his roommate were arrested at their apartment in the Ñuñoa neighborhood of Santiago. A U.S. military advisory group in Latin America
had funneled to the junta their address and Teruggi’s intelligence file, detailing his organizational ties.
Witnesses say he was imprisoned inside the Estadio Nacional, a de facto prison for the new regime’s political opponents. Teruggi’s captors led him away from other prisoners soon after his arrival. Military police tortured him, murdered him with a short burst from a machine gun, and dropped his body in the street.
Chicagoans gathered in the Loop to demand a full investigation. By the end of October, they had formed the Chicago Committee to Save Lives in Chile, a coalition of religious, academic, and political organizations that joined forces after the coup. The group sponsored the Hortensia Bussi rally in December.
Doris Strieter, a Maywood village trustee, Lutheran activist, and one of the committee’s founders, was in the crowd at DePaul that day. The Lutherans were active nationwide in settling Chilean political dissidents. Bishop Helmut Frenz, head of Chile’s Lutheran church, organized within the country to help the military’s political enemies find a way to safety.
Strieter and her husband, a Lutheran reverend, helped settle some of the 400 families Frenz managed to extricate from Chile. By early 1974, tens of thousands of people had been arrested and detained as political enemies of the state. Some were never heard from again.
Yamil Ahuile was a few months into his first sentence in a Chilean prison when Bussi gave her address on Chicago’s
north side. He would serve more than two years before Frenz struck a deal with the U.S. State Department resulting in his release. A father of two, Ahuile was not reunited with his wife and children until January 26, 1976, when the family boarded a plane that took them to exile. They moved into an apartment at a Lutheran theological school in Glendale Heights.
In 1973, military police arrested Ahuile at his home in the small southern town of Angol. For weeks interrogators beat him and performed mock executions. He endured the regime’s signature torture—electric shocks administered on a metal bed frame—and guards threatened to do the same to his wife.
A huile was the general manager of the region’s electric company. Chile is not a large country, but parts of it are remote and sparsely populated. Slightly more than 10 million people lived there in 1973. Where the Ahuiles lived in near-southern Chile, many towns had yet to be electrified.
Ahuile’s son, also Yamil, recalls attending ribbon-cutting ceremonies in surrounding villages where he heard his father give fiery political speeches about the conditions in
continued from p. 9
the country. He was a charismatic speaker, a talented organizer, and the leader of the local socialist party.
“He knew a lot of people because they would have political meetings,” the younger Yamil tells the Reader, nearly five decades after the family escaped to Chicago. “He was bringing energy to a lot of communities. He was almost like the mayor of the town.”
After the coup, Ahuile knew that, because of his high profile, he had to go into hiding or risk being rounded up. As word reached him that friends and political allies were being arrested, he decided to turn himself in. His daughter, Leylha Ahuile, was old enough to remember that day.
“After the coup the military came into our home, turned on the fireplace in the living room, and went into the library across the hall and started grabbing books, vinyl records, and anything they found was thrown into the fire,” Leylha Ahuile says. “I remember seeing my mother’s beautiful cookbooks, our collections of children’s books, and the records that my parents loved to listen to.” She remembers the smell of the fire as it consumed her family’s belongings. “That same smell came through the windows of my Manhattan apartment on September 11, 2001.”
P risoners were not fed while interned by the regime. Family members had to bring them food, which became di cult when they transferred Ahuile away from the local jail.
Sonia Ahuile, wife to the elder Yamil, says, “It was very sad to see him deprived of his freedom, but the pain of seeing my children deprived of their father, of their atmosphere of joy and security, it is impossible to describe.”
The Ahuiles were well-o in Chile. They had a large house with a swimming pool and employees. Sonia was a schoolteacher. But they struggled to find jobs when they arrived in the U.S. The couple’s professional credentials took time to be recognized. Yamil had to take a job reading meters for ComEd. Sonia opened a day care in their small apartment.
They were actively involved with the Chicago Committee. They volunteered to house other refugees from Haiti and Latin America, sometimes for months at a time in their new Elmhurst home. Leylha Ahuile recalls sharing a room with refugees and helping them navigate the English-language bureaucracy. “By the time I was 13, I would often miss school to accompany [refugees] as a translator to obtain a driver’s license or into the city to the
immigration o ces,” she says.
T hough they were initially granted the right to return by the junta in 1985, Sonia and her husband Yamil feared for their fate and did not return home to Chile permanently until 1996, after the military government finally relinquished control. They built a home by the ocean and, despite the military’s purge of any records that the Ahuiles had ever worked in the country before their exile, even managed to extract pension benefits from the state.
The elder Yamil passed away in 2006. His son stayed in Chicago until 2015, working as a media producer before returning to Chile as well. Leylha returned home at last in 2020.
Augustana Lutheran Church in Hyde Park sponsored Salvador and Consuela Guerra. A surveyor by trade, Guerra, like Ahuile, left prison for an airplane that took him, his wife, and three children to the U.S.
A short walk from the church down Woodlawn Avenue, the Guerra family could have paid a visit to Milton Friedman, the University of Chicago economics professor who trained Augusto Pinochet’s economic experts. The junta failed for three years to reverse the course of an economy pummeled by U.S. and corporate divestment; Chile became a laboratory for Friedman’s economic theories. “The Chicago Boys,” as they came to be known, were a group of Chilean economists trained by the university. Though Friedman publicly opposed the military regime in Chile, his ideas rescued the junta from a crisis that threatened its legitimacy.
A decade earlier, while the U.S. State Department and intelligence agencies funneled resources to Allende’s political opponents, an effort was also underway to shape the
economic ideology of Chilean policymakers. With the help of the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, the University of Chicago created an international program with the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago.
T he program failed to prevent Allende’s Marxist ideology from capturing an electoral victory. But with the lane cleared by Pinochet, it was finally possible for Friedman’s small-government economic policy to shine in Chile. (The same year the Guerras were exiled in Hyde Park, Friedman won the Nobel Prize for economics.)
W hile Friedman and the Chicago Boys imagined the neoliberal possibilities in Chile, John Coatsworth worked as a history professor at the university and cochaired the Chicago Committee to Save Lives in Chile. He was active in the civil rights and anti-war movements of the era, leading an organization called the Latin American Scholars Committee to join the Chilean solidarity movement. Coatsworth’s Scholars, together with Strieter’s Chicago Peace Council and Teruggi’s Chicago Area Group for Latin America, were the committee’s three founding organizations.
The repression in Chile shook evangelical Lutherans, leftists, and academics alike. These disparate points of view found coherence in appeals to the international human rights agreements.
Chile in 1973 was an inflection point for activists and organizations in the north Atlantic. Groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reached for the terminology of human rights en masse for the first time. The Chicago Committee demonstrates how these ideas and methods gained traction at the local level in response to human rights abuses abroad.
Chicago has officially been considered a sanctuary city since 1985 when Mayor Harold Washington directed all city employees to stop enforcing federal immigration policy, an acknowledgment that the U.S. is no exception to the rule that nation-states fail to uphold the basic dignity asserted in human rights agreements.
But that process was already underway in 1973 when the Chicago Committee started planning and organizing. The city became a sanctuary to exiled Chileans, as it had for Europeans, freed people from the south, 30,000 formerly imprisoned Japanese American citizens, and so many others since the founding of the portage.
That is not to say the experiences of migrants and refugees in Chicago are easy. Today, governors of border states bus people to the city with no plan or warning. Major intersections and thoroughfares are dotted with mothers, fathers, and children who have nothing and nowhere else to go.
And it certainly was not easy for the Ahuiles.
“ When I went to college [at] Northern Illinois University, I realized that there were so many immigrants from so many different countries living in the U.S. and that is something I fell in love with,” Leylha Ahuile says. “I also saw fi rsthand how Latinos born in the U.S. were discriminated [against] just like I was. That Blacks were discriminated [against] by everyone—the level of discrimination in the U.S. became so apparent. And yet what most often prevails is the kindness of most.”
Today, it remains to be seen whether kindness will prevail most in the recollections of Chicago’s most recent refugees. v m
COST OF LIVING
Tickets plague Chicago drivers but several lawsuits and a relief program bring hope.
By DEBBIE-MARIE BROWN
Eric Hoskins has never owned a car in Chicago. The slew of expenses car ownership incurs in the city—including hidden taxes and fines in the form of innumerable parking tickets, street cleaning fees, and more—are one of the reasons he never plans to.
Despite not owning his own car, Hoskins has still paid over $300 to the City of Chicago in ticket fees because of infractions he’s accrued while driving employers’ vehicles for past jobs with a COVID-19 testing site and a flower farm. But $300 is a low number compared to the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of ticket debt Chicago car owners are drowning in.
“I think it’s so dirty how poorly they inform us, you know? And how scarce the [street cleaning notices] are and how brief the window is for that poster to be up,” Hoskins said. Hoskins recalled a time a street cleaning notice was posted after his friend’s car was already parked on the street. The friend’s car was ticketed by the time they returned to use their car several days later. Hoskins continued, “They just never had a chance to see it, you know?” The city generally posts street cleaning signs two days in advance and keeps a schedule of planned street sweeping on its website, but an Illinois state appeals panel ruled in 2019 the City of Chicago has to provide 24 hours of warning time before it begins to write tickets for cars parked in the way of street sweepers.
When Hoskins received tickets in the past,
he found himself shouting and cursing out loud while sitting in his temporary car. “It feels like something I don’t have much power to prevent. Like an occasional mosquito bite that you can’t control, it’s just in the air. Except that mosquito sucks $100 from you here and there.”
In “The Debt Spiral,” a 2018 report from Chicago’s Woodstock Institute (a nonprofit research and policy organization committed to advancing economic justice and racial equity within financial systems), researchers found the City of Chicago issued over 3.6 million vehicle-related tickets in 2017. This was more per capita than issued by New York City or Los Angeles in that year. The majority of tickets issued (54 percent) were for nonmoving violations, such as expired parking meters or missing city stickers. City tickets are so numerous they make up a significant portion of revenue; in 2016, tickets and fines brought in roughly $264 million (or 7 percent of the city’s operating budget).
On top of that, tickets are 40 percent more likely to be issued within ZIP codes where there are more low- and moderate-income residents—making ticketing more likely to happen to people who can’t a ord to pay.
Residents deal with the burden of rising fines from the city but also parking tickets that are issued inaccurately. A 2022 report from the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) found between August 2012 and May 2018, more than one in eight parking tickets,
or 13.2 percent, were issued in error. The city earned $27.5 million in revenue from those tickets, since only 7 percent of inaccurate tickets are contested.
According to UIC, every day in Chicago at least one person goes into financial bankruptcy because of a ticket issued in error. And the city has a reputation for inconsistent enforcement of tickets, depending on the neighborhood you live in.
City drivers received over 1 million tickets in the first half of 2022, up 150,000 from the year prior. Despite then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s March 2021 decision to lower the threshold for speeding tickets in the name of public safety, road collision fatalities have actually increased, alongside revenue collected by the city.
Jacie Zolna is an attorney with Myron M. Cherry and Associates, a law firm that has won several successful lawsuits against the City of Chicago on behalf of ticketed drivers. Zolna says his firm continuously gets calls from people distraught about their own outstanding ticket debt.
“It’s overwhelming, really, the number of people who call in despair [about] the situation that they’re in, in terms of owing the city all this money,” Zolna said.
A recent case Cherry and Associates is engaged in involves the city illegally overcharging residents in ticket fees. Zolna explains under the municipal vehicle code, there’s a decades-old law that allows the city to send its parking and city sticker ticket hearings to the city Department of Administrative Hearings (DAH) instead of tra c court. The DAH is not a real court with real judges—there, city employees adjudicate the cases. To send tickets there, the city has to adhere to a set of rules.
One of those rules sets a $250 cap for any single ticket and related fees that’s judged by DAH employees. But since the city has slowly increased ticket prices over the past decade, common fines have been raised to the point where they’ve exceeded the $250 limit.
This is most common with city sticker violations. Anyone who receives a $200 fine for not having an up-to-date sticker and a $200 late penalty could be part of the recent Cherry and Associates suit, because the $400 combined fee is in violation of the law. Late penalties could hit, for example, when a curious parking
attendant sees a driver’s out-of-date city sticker, which is visible on the windshield, and then tickets it. In 2019, city o cials shared around 500,000 city motorists owe a combined $500 million in unpaid city sticker fines.
Zolna said there’s over a million violations that have been issued in violation of the $400 cap.
Luckily, the legal pressure from this specific suit already encouraged the city to reinstitute the $250 cap after a November 2022 City Council meeting. Anyone impacted before this cap was reassessed, though, will be sent notices in the mail in the coming months giving them information about how to become part of the class action.
Cherry and Associates is also currently in litigation against the city for similar infractions of the standing law. The firm nicknamed a recent closed case the “Red Light Suit.” The firm set the wheels in motion for the Red Light Suit in 2015 because it observed the city had not followed due process by failing to provide a 14-day grace period before issuing a determination of liability to vehicle owners in violation of red light codes. The practice accelerated the city’s ability to issue, enforce, and collect fines illegally, and it was ultimately forced to pay out $125 million in the class-action settlement for a ected drivers.
Another recent suit managed by the firm involves the city’s tow practices for unpaid ticket debt after booting. Presently, if you don’t pay your tickets in time—even if it’s likely you just can’t a ord to do so—the city can boot your car. If you don’t pay the fees within 24 hours of being booted, the city tows your car. And after being towed, the only way to get your car back immediately is to pay o your debt on the spot, meaning those residents no longer qualify for a city payment plan.
“So what happens if you can’t a ord to get your car out? The city keeps your car, sells it, and doesn’t even apply any of the sale proceeds to your ticket debt; they just keep everything,” Zolna said. “Now, someone else in this situation loses their car, and they still owe the city ticket debt. We’re challenging that practice, as well.”
Zolna says there’s a lot of talk from the city about fixing these problems, but in his experience, the only thing that makes the city change is a lawsuit.
S.S. and her family grew up in Chicago. She and her family are all undocumented longtime city residents, so she asked to remain anonymous in this interview for safety reasons. S.S. is a person considered protected
Contact your alderperson’s office or go to chicago.gov for more information.
under DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), a federal program that safeguards those who were brought to the U.S. as children with their migrant families by allowing them to have temporary and renewable work visas.
S.S. told the Reader for people with either DACA or any sort of extralegal immigration status, you have to be extra careful with parking violations. She’s always under high duress when family members get parking tickets or have any sort of interaction with police.
“When you’re filing [with the] Department of Homeland Security, you have to [tell them] that you got a parking ticket or a red light ticket; you have to bring all of that into it,” S.S. said.
For that reason, she’s always been an extremely careful person when it comes to parking violations and feels the pressure to pay them off as soon as possible. “But, you know, the older you get, the more responsibilities you have. It becomes hard to keep track of these things. And to be like is this street cleaning?”
The peak of S.S.’s stressful experiences relating to parking tickets happened in summer 2020, during the Black Lives Matter uprisings. S.S. was active then in neighborhood organizing. She was working a part-time job because that was the only work she could find. One day, she returned to her car to find three di erent parking tickets attached to it totaling $150 in fines.
She remembers paying o those violations depleted her money that month for groceries, so she hustled to find emergency relief from mutual aid networks.
“I broke down and cried in my car because there were so many. I didn’t have the money to pay it, and we were protesting so much in the streets,” S.S. said. “This thing is meant to hold back your transportation, hold you back as a person, and hold you back as a community. And I remember being so infuriated. This is so fucked up.” S.S. thinks the city is funding itself through tickets levied to poor, BIPOC, and marginalized folks—and dumping the ticket money into things like the “massive CPD budget that keeps getting bigger.”
One city practice that stands out to S.S., though, is the discrepancy between ticketing practices in her home neighborhood, Little Village, and Wicker Park, the a uent neighborhood where she works.
She said she and her coworkers constantly park on a permit parking street they realized is rarely enforced by city authorities.
Kaitlyn Poindexter, another car owner, noticed the same discrepancy in her Logan Park neighborhood. She said she never moves her car on days where street cleaning happens, and she’s never gotten a ticket for it. And she notices the same pattern for her neighbors in a four-block radius who feel comfortable leaving their vehicles out those days. In fact, the city usually just cleans around the cars left on the street.
Izzi Vasquez has been booted three times since moving to Chicago from Seattle in 2019. As a new resident who struggled to navigate the city’s byzantine processes for car owners, her introduction to Chicago towing practices was egregious. Between getting her car registered in the right state and learning about the city sticker mandate as she retrieved her car from the pound after two days, Vasquez ended up forking out $900 for her first tow.
“It was all my money, every cent of my money. That was the beginning of all the tickets,” Vasquez said.
Vasquez moved to Avondale in 2022 and was immediately confronted with parking challenges. There’s no permit parking on her street block because it’s close to local businesses, although there’s permit parking on every other residential street surrounding her.
“I can only park on my block,” Vasquez said. “Which means I have to compete with everyone else on the block, plus [business patrons] parking for free.”
If she doesn’t come out victorious with securing a spot on her street, she has to park six blocks away instead. She cleans houses for a living, so that means carrying her vacuum for a ten-minute walk down the street.
She’s due for a new city sticker and a payment for her ticket payment plan, but she won’t be able to a ord either for a few weeks. Her fees came from violating permit parking rules and not moving her car for street cleaning. Although Vasquez usually observes the law, street cleaning notice sign placement and timing is inconsistent and can be confusing. She also erroneously received a ticket for not having an up-to-date parking sticker late last year, when she actually did. But since she didn’t contest the ticket in time, it doubled, and added to the list of fees that got her booted in December 2022.
“All this shit only affects lower-income people,” Vasquez said. “If you can pay off a ticket right away, or if you have a driveway
or if you can a ord parking, you’re not being fucking fi ned all the fucking time. You might get tickets, but it’s not gonna [make you think], ‘Can I pay a ticket, or I can pay my rent?’”
Vasquez said the looming spectre of a potential ticket a ects her every day. She has wondered to herself, “Is today the day Chicago will fuck me?”
“But I also feel like half of Chicago is probably walking around [thinking] that. There’s nowhere to hide. There’s nowhere to hide!”
The Clear Path Relief Program (CPRP) is a pilot program that rolled out after the city eased COVID-19 restrictions in 2021. It waives outstanding late penalties that came
from a debt relief payment plan.
Sandra Puebla is the neighborhood services director for the 35th Ward, handling all city services for the area. Puebla deals with situations that impact residents on an everyday basis, like needing a new garbage cart or signing up residents for the ticket relief program.
Puebla said the good thing is the program is income-based. So it doesn’t matter whether you had a high-paying job and were laid o . If your income has changed in the past 30 days, you’re eligible.
Unfortunately, the wait time to be approved for CPRP after submitting an application is four to six weeks.
By DEANNA ISAACS
My throat was slit. It was back in the dark ages of the 20th century, but if you take a close look at me you can still see the scar—a fine line running along the base of my neck, from ear to ear. It’s the necklace I can’t take o , the trail of a scalpel.
The cut was made to remove a nodule from my thyroid gland. I later had a long and jerky dance with the brand-name, “gold standard” pill for thyroid deficiency.
So when the glaze-over title Rethinking Hypothyroidism appeared on a list of new books published by University of Chicago Press late last year, it lit up for me.
But you wouldn’t have to have my history to be interested. Everybody’s got a thyroid gland—it’s that butterfly-shaped lump that sits front and center in your neck. And it’s in the driver’s seat, so to speak, controlling the activity of all your other organs. If it malfunctions, you could grow a goiter or morph into something like cretinism; if it stops working totally, you’ll die.
Rethinking Hypothyroidism is the work of Antonio C. Bianco, MD, PhD., and professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, where
he runs a National Institutes of Health-funded lab devoted to the study of thyroid hormones, a subject he’s been researching for more than 40 years. A former president of the American Thyroid Association and a consultant to pharmaceutical companies, he’s a longtime member of the medical establishment, so it was a surprise to find that this book—a combination of detailed medical science history, patient user manual, and professional memoir—is unflinching in its analysis of why hypothyroidism now needs to be rethunk.
First, a nutshell version of the science: The thyroid gland uses iodine to produce the hormones that activate your organs, including your brain. These hormones were identified in the early 20th century and long thought to be two separate entities: T4, which is sort of a warm-up act, and T3, the power-packed main performer. T4 is actually transformed into T3 in various human organs, but no one knew that until 1970, when, Bianco writes, its discovery had a huge impact on treatment (more about that in a bit).
The thyroid gland needs a supply of iodine to make these hormones. Humans and animals
ingest iodine from their food, which absorbs it from soil. In areas of the world where iodine is scarce, the gland can’t function properly. It attempts to compensate by enlarging, producing those egglike neck lumps known as goiter. Goiters have been endemic all over the globe, including Bianco’s native Brazil, where they turned up in 10 to 20 percent of the patients he saw there as a medical student in the 1970s. In much of the world, this problem has been addressed by the addition of iodine to the food supply—particularly in salt. Iodine insu ciency is no longer a significant cause of hypothyroidism in the United States, Bianco says. But hypothyroidism is still common here, mostly due to autoimmune disease and thyroid cancer (which requires removal of the gland). He estimates that there are currently about 15 million hypothyroid cases under treatment in the U.S., and—thanks to a lowered threshold for treatment—another ten million subclinical cases receiving thyroid supplements. For most of human history, the function of the thyroid gland was a mystery. Its connection to ailments like cretinism and goiter, and to symptoms like cold intolerance, weight gain, and mental and physical sluggishness, wasn’t understood until the last quarter of the 19th century. After the connection was made, initial attempts at treatment included transplanting animal glands to humans (the glands didn’t survive); serving up a daily chunk of sheep thyroid gland to be eaten (said to taste “disgusting”); and providing oral doses of desiccated animal thyroid extract (bingo). In the early 20th century, commercially produced animal thyroid extract—mostly from the Armour company’s Chicago stockyards, and mostly from pigs—became the standard hypothyroidism treatment.
But the potency of pig extract was di cult to standardize, and there were concerns that it might have negative e ects after long-term usage. In the late 1950s, a subsidiary of Baxter Travenol Laboratories introduced Synthroid, a new synthetic version of T4 (which had been identified and first synthesized a few decades earlier). The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), whose standards for new drugs would later become more rigorous, approved it without clinical trials that would have tested its effectiveness against the animal extract, which contains both T4 and T3. When more stringent FDA standards were later adopted,
Synthroid was grandfathered in.
Initially Synthroid was one of several synthetics on the market, and doctors weren’t necessarily likely to use any of them, sticking with the animal extract they were used to. But research published in 1970 proved what some had previously suspected: that T4 is converted to T3 in human organs. This discovery was interpreted to mean that T4 alone, conveniently available in tablets of standardized potency, was the optimal way to treat hypothyroidism. Synthroid’s manufacturer, seizing the opportunity, embarked on a famously aggressive marketing campaign, influencing physicians directly and through support of their professional associations, and before long, physicians who were still prescribing pig thyroid extract were themselves branded as “old-fashioned.” Brand-name Synthroid (and, eventually, its generics) became the go-to treatment, and a blood test (the TSH test) superseded patients’ reports of symptom relief as the measure of its success.
This worked for most patients, but many others remained fatigued and brain-fogged, even when their blood tests fell within the normal range. Bianco writes that the failure to test the e cacy of T4 alone in comparison to T4 plus T3 was a mistake. The amount of influence allowed to pharmaceutical companies at the time was inappropriate and had unfortunate results. And physicians’ willingness to discount patients’ complaints of continuing hypothyroid symptoms if their blood tests looked normal was a decades-long disservice to those patients. He apologizes for having done so himself. Recent research has shown that not all patients are able to convert T4 to T3 efficiently, and those people—perhaps as many as 20 percent of those diagnosed as hypothyroid—would likely benefit from the addition of T3 to their regimen. He calls for more research on every aspect of this.
In a phone interview last week, Bianco told me that “if something good should come out of this book, it will be some reshaping of the relationship between the pharmaceutical companies and the professional societies. And also, more attention to the patients. We should trust the patients, not dismiss them. They’re telling us something, and we should listen. That was a lesson for me.” v
m disaacs@chicagoreader.com
road
In her debut poetry collection, Taylor Byas keeps a light burning for the south side of Chicago.
By REEMA SALEH
With vivid imagery and a staggering wit, Taylor Byas paints portraits of her childhood on the south side and the city in warm hues. I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times leads her quest for self-discovery with grief, longing, and the late-night monologuing of a seasoned writer. With poems modeled after the likes of Patricia Smith and Claudia Rankine, the collection wears its influences on its sleeve and rides its momentum forward.
Out this month by Soft Skull, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times is the first full-length poetry collection from Byas, a Chicago native with a PhD from the University of Cincinnati. Inspired by the 1978 cult classic The Wiz , Byas’s collection mimics Dorothy’s metaphoric journey from home to Oz and back again. Between Chicago, Birmingham, and Cincinnati, Byas is thinking of the south side, even when she’s far from the trail leading home.
Each section title cribs from songs in the musical, charting a course from adolescence to adulthood. The book is equal parts deep-seated nostalgia and delayed catharsis. From smashing blackberries in the yard after school to “the way a siren becomes a mother too,” Byas’s poetry inhabits a soft and harsh world. Past brownstones and brightly lit corner stores, Byas etches out the beauty in the most mundane parts of Chicago with a reflective eye.
The poems recast home and identity in a new light, capturing old memories in sharp focus.
As the lyrics push forward, the narrator leaves behind failed lovers, grows to womanhood with all its hardships, and makes more room for grief and longing—for family and for knowing that who you are comes from them, whether you like it or not. Her poetry feels striking, o ering answers and probing emotions in a matter-of-fact tone. In “Jeopardy! (The Category Is Birthright),” the narrator o ers game-show responses to what she has
inherited from a father she has already announced as dead to her.
For $800: What people mean when they say I am “my father’s child”
What is: we look alike
What is: time filled my purse with parts of him whether I wanted them or not
What is: I got the same grape-swollen cheeks, his button nose
Sewn into the geography of my face
What is: if I owe him and never what he owes me
“Painted Tongue” describes the narrator’s mother and their becoming mirrors of one another—inheriting each other’s pain like keepsake jewelry.
The saying goes, Like mother like daughter. What then, if mother is rag doll, fresh canvas to ink? We twist and turn in the mirror, my mother and I becoming each other, her bruises and scars passed down, family heirlooms that will take me decades to stop wearing, to sell.
A scattered trail of seven “South Side” poems maps a path from beginning to end. They o er brief glimpses of neighbors cooking on their balconies, sketches of boys taught to be too tough, and blocks where love and violence intermingle. In “(South Side (V),” she writes, “To those who come after, this is the law of the town—the South Side is not a place, but a state of being.”
The collection shines brightest in its childhood scenes, but her verses also bring a penchant for the cinematic. In “This Kill Bill Scene Has Me Thinking About Weave and Girl-Fights,” her poetic eye lingers on what it means to lose hair in a fight—matching Taran-
tino’s fighters to Black girls brawling on the pavement.
The cameras linger on the weave yanked from owners and updo, and the crowd’s uproar
is something like exit music. But we know this is no samurai’s death. No one lives this down.
Just as striking, “Yellow Dress” offers a recut of Beyonce in Lemonade ’s “Hold Up” with a baseball bat at the ready, high-stepping through her rage in heels.” I knew you’d come undone,” Byas writes. “I screamed at the screen when you swiped / the baseball bat from the kid and readied your swing / your full-mouthed smile the cue / to fuck shit up.” She smashes windshields and cracks a cap o a fire hydrant while the narrator takes mental notes and sets fire to her ex’s things.
RI DONE CLICKED MY HEELS THREE TIMES by Taylor Byas, Soft Skull, paperback, 128 pp., $16.95, softskull.com
Her humor swings and hits throughout the collection. In “Men Really Be Menning,” Byas puts her worst dating app prospects in verse— ”The Tinder Guy,” “The Guy Who Has Nothing to Offer,” and “The Never Getting No-Where Guy.” The collection takes on styles inventive in form—with prose hitting the page in staccato and pulling erasure poetry from itself.
At times, Byas can dilute her metaphors with too many companions. The arc set up at the beginning—of Dorothy making her way to the land of Oz and back again—falls to the wayside in favor of the drama of individual poems. The poems stand alone but not as much together. Though as a whole, I Done
Clicked My Heels Three Times o ers a weighty contribution to Black Chicago’s poetry legacy. At its heart, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times is about finding home in other cities—Chicago and beyond. For Byas, the act of remembering rebuilds the city in her mind. Her foreword dedicates the collection “to the South Side of Chicago and to every place and person that has been home to me since I left you.”
In Chicago and Paris, TEMPER reimagines how the indie press can upli writers.
By MAXWELL RABB“We are identifying ‘micro-movements’ and allowing others to explain them to us,” says Jourdain Barton, a cofounder of Chicago’s TEMPER Press. Born to foster experimental writing, TEMPER emerged from such a micromovement: a bond shared by Barton and her grad school classmates Geo rey Billetter and Nat Holtzmann. To them, micro-movements are smaller, unidentified capsules of creative collaboration squashed or overlooked by the conventional publishing industry. So together they formed a press designed to support that unclassifiable literature, offering a network for writers in print and in person.
As Barton, Billetter, and Holtzmann completed their master’s program in writing in 2023 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the trio felt compelled by their friendship to start TEMPER, an effort to rethink traditional publishing and the insularity of writing as a medium. Their frustrations against what traditional literature requires from the writer, such as formal limitations or rising submission fees, incubated by their shared visions, materialized as a platform for experimentation. And it’s an open invite for all writers and artists.
“[TEMPER] is an opportunity to take this insular creative friendship and invite other
people in,” Holtzmann says. “It’s a way of taking the notion of community but making it smaller-scale, widening it, but not sacrificing what we are calling ‘micro-movements’— these more insular, tight-knit friendships. [It’s] an opportunity to pair these conversations with a wider network and hopefully create other micro-movements.”
Unlike most presses, small or large, TEMPER isn’t interested in setting the rules. Instead, the trio intends to push the boundaries they think limit the scope of creation by listening to underrepresented writers. Places to Spit, one of TEMPER’s two debut projects, is situated in the artistic underground, from “clandestine haunts to local DJ sets.” In the spaces where the community struggles to congeal, TEMPER hopes to stimulate those bonds.
“We want to express to people who are doing boundary-pushing and genre-pushing work that we know how to look at it and respect the shape that it is in already,” Billetter says. “We are invested in how you conceive of the piece and [don’t want to] try and shape it into our own ‘house style.’”
Gunplay , their additional debut, models poetry as dialogue. Its first volume features seven “issues” or envelopes with two poets published together, situated in conversation or opposition by the editors. The goal is to
break the impersonality of traditional publication, especially because, as Billetter puts it, “it is hard to trust when you don’t know the editor.” TEMPER’s editors intend to prioritize the complex relationships between editor and writer.
“An explicit part of [TEMPER] is putting two works in conversation for Gunplay,” says Holtzmann. “In Places to Spit, [we’re] trying to create relationships between the artists we publish, even if they haven’t met. There is relationship-building in many di erent ways through the actual art.”
TEMPER’s community focus doesn’t neglect the already established communities in Chicago. Network building is what drives the three editors, and as the press grows, they aim to form partnerships and bonds with other writers and artists in the city. Specifically, the editors currently work closely with Nakiyah T.M. Jordan, the host of Eli Tea Bar’s Poetry Open Mic.
As a new press, the editors hope to integrate with Chicago’s existing resources for artists and writers. Holtzmann mentions groups such as Exhibit B or Meekling Press as forerunners of Chicago’s literary scene. TEMPER wants to join and uplift existing movements. Holtzmann claims “the spirit of the press is collaborative,” a foundation inspired by the
time they spent with each other’s work. What makes TEMPER’s vision so rich is the editors’ dynamic literary styles. Barton, works in performance art and poetry; Holtzmann, predominately in prose; and Billetter, creates hybrid poetic forms—all break open the literary tradition and question it. But they insist on not leaving anyone out, and for them, anything is fair game when it comes to submissions. Even if conceived in the convergence of their voices, the press values the deviations.
“You hear terms like hybridity, interdisciplinary, and things like that, but how does that apply to literature, which is often thought of as this other discipline compared to the capital ‘A’ arts,” Barton says. “TEMPER is taking the logic that exists within circles of performance art and plastic arts where everyone is constantly influencing, borrowing, stealing, and opining in a way that’s immediate.”
Once TEMPER published its debut collections, Barton relocated to Paris, establishing a satellite for the press. From the onset, the editors planned to launch the press simultaneously in the two cities. Like their view on literary requirements, they did not want the press to be su ocated by city or regional boundaries.
Holtzmann is currently seeking submissions for TEMPER’s newest imprint, Green Blood, a prose-based series that prioritizes language over story, sticking to the press’s desire for stylistically inventive work. Additionally, new issues of Gunplay and Places to Spit are in the works.
In another effort to loosen the editorial voice, TEMPER’s latest in-progress project o ers writers a chance to engage with copublished work. For Three, the editors will select three writers who will provide commentary and introductions written among the creative work. This more pointed project will be packaged and sold with the press’s full anthology, the TEMPER Review
“You spend a lot of time in private creating something; you hand it o to somebody else, and they tell you something privately. And there’s this huge gulf of timing,” Barton says. “One thing we learned when looking at each other’s work is this preparation to look at the work of strangers and how the sense of immediacy changes things. I get this work. I look at the work and look at the work it coexists next to, and that’s the only way I can really encounter it.” v
Out of their place. Out of their depth. Out of their minds.
Composer and researcher George Lewis has lost track of the times he’s heard those tropes lobbed, implicitly or explicitly, at Black composers of classical music. These artists, he argues, too often slip through the cracks in academic and cultural discourse: They’re shunted to the margins by historically white institutions or dismissed by skeptics of a musical tradition rooted in European aristocracy. A 1969 newsletter circulated by the Society of Black Composers—a defunct New York-based collective whose archives are housed at Columbia College Chicago’s Center for Black Music Research—o ered a succinct, elegant riposte of its own: “Because we are black, we are making black music.”
Lewis published his own corrective earlier this year, alongside musicologist and saxophonist Harald Kisiedu. Composing While Black collates nine essays in English and German, with all but one centered on living composers. Among them are an analysis of music by South African composer Andile Khumalo, the subject of a 2021 portrait concert by new-music group Ensemble Dal Niente, and an account of the 1997 premiere of Anthony Davis’s Amistad at Lyric Opera, the house’s first opera by a Black composer-librettist team. (Two seasons ago, Fire Shut Up in My Bones, by Terence Blanchard, became the second.)
As its bountifully insightful introduction makes clear, Composing While Black has deep roots in Chicago. Eileen Southern, a Harvard professor who pushed universities to recognize Afrodiasporic music as an area of academic inquiry, grew up here and studied at the University of Chicago; the academic journal she founded, The Black Perspective in Music (1973-1990), was the first of its kind. Samuel Floyd, another pathbreaking musicologist, founded the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College Chicago, which, at its apex, published the Black Music Research
Journal (1980-2016) and boasted its own inhouse ensembles. In the 1970s, conductor Paul Freeman made first-time recordings of dozens of pieces through his Black Composers Series (CBS Masterworks). He later added to that discography with the Chicago Sinfonietta, the ensemble he founded here in 1987. All the while, Chicago was a crucible for the Black experimentalism of the Sun Ra Arkestra, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (or AACM, of which Lewis, a towering computer music pioneer raised in Woodlawn, remains a longtime member and documentarian), and the Art Ensemble of Chicago.
Even so, Lewis and Kisiedu write, an “assumption of marginality” trails the contributions of Black composers and experimentalists. Such an assumption is easily challenged by the historical record: for example, Black Portuguese composer Vicente Lusitano, who lived and worked in the 16th century, and Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George—a contemporary of Mozart—were hardly marginal figures in their lifetimes. In one of Composing While Black’s richest essays, composer and Harvard professor Yvette Janine Jackson notes Egyptian composer Halim El-Dabh used taped sound as the basis for his work four years before musique concrète progenitor Pierre Schae er garnered attention for doing the same thing in Paris.
Lewis’s essay on Amistad, about the slave ship revolt of the same name, recounts a more recent case of Black composerly neglect. Despite Amistad being created “in a medium still somewhat distanced from the center of Black culture”—opera—much of Black Chicago mobilized around the production, spurred on by a liated benefit concerts and large-scale educational initiatives. An abridged version of the opera reached an estimated 15,000 schoolchildren, and its three principal singers appeared in the Bud Billiken parade, atop the Soft Sheen float.
Between all that buzz and its sold-out run,
Amistad had the makings of a runaway hit. Instead, the opera became a parable for the gatekeeping power wielded by culture critics, particularly on beats that almost exclusively reflect white points of view. (A personal aside: Viewing a recent infographic reporting racial and gender demographics of classical music critics by the Asian Opera Alliance, I could identify exactly which of my peers had been counted, because so few of them aren’t white men.) Some 40 critics attended Amistad ’s opening night, and subsequent reviews were mixed. The Chicago Defender and the Chicago Sun-Times both praised Amistad’s craft while finding its emotional impact wanting. Other reports were more excoriating. At least two major newspapers compared the opera to a “pageant,” and a glibly headlined review in the Washington Post—otherwise complimentary to the opera on a musical and dramatic level— accused Thulani Davis’s libretto of anti-whiteness, a charge which also trailed the Davises’ first opera, X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. Lewis skewers these critics’ posturing “as autonomous, objective perceivers, unmarked by the regime of whiteness,” when their reviews demonstrated anything but.
Lewis’s essay is too brief to levy a comprehensive analysis of the opera and its reception. Then again, Amistad’s performance history is similarly abbreviated. It’s seen just one revival, in a revised version at the 2008 Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina—not discussed in Lewis’s essay, though he includes photos from the production. Amistad has not been mounted in its entirety since.
Like so many new operas that deserve repeat hearings, Amistad ’s dismissive reception in Chicago likely contributed to its hiatus from stages. Meanwhile, a powerful recording of the original Lyric version, released by New World Records in 2008, o ers its own endorsement.
Like many collections, Composing While Black can be uneven. The essays leading the volume—a literary survey of racial, ethnic, and gender descriptors applied to Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Tania León and the analysis of Khumalo’s music—feel analytically thin compared to their successors. But don’t judge a book by its first two chapters. Hannah Kendall’s study of vocalist and movement artist Elaine Mitchener’s SWEET TOOTH, her 2018 multidisciplinary music theater piece ruminating on Britain’s bloody sugar trade, is as riveting as it is intricate, not least because Kendall brings Mitchener to the table as an interlocutor. Other essays attentively delve into works by Swiss composer Charles Uzor and Egyptian sound artist Jacqueline George—both introductions for me, and ones I’m still reeling from.
In their introduction, Kisiedu and Lewis write that Composing While Black “is perhaps the first of a kind, but it certainly need not be the last.” If current streams in musicology are any indication, it won’t be: There’s plenty of fertile ground here for a follow-up, perhaps even a series. It may not fill the research voids left by the wide-ranging Black Perspective in Music and Black Music Research Journal what could?—but it would be a start. v
Logan Center kicks o its 11th season with a thrilling month of dance, exhibitions, cinema, music, poetry, and more. Check out these highlights from the month’s performances, visit us online to view the full September schedule, and plan your cultural experiences. YOU WANT TO BE HERE.
EXHIBITION THROUGH SEP 10 MAKES ME WANNA HOLLA: ART, DEATH & IMPRISONMENT Gallery / Free
EXHIBITION THROUGH SEP 14 BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL: PHOTOGRAPHS BY TONY SMITH Café Logan / Free
FILM THU, SEP 7 / 7PM
HOTHOUSE PRESENTS:
PAN AFRICAN FESTIVAL OF ALGIERSSCREENING & DISCUSSION Screening Room / Free
POETRY SAT, SEP 9 / 1PM
7TH ANNUAL GWENDOLYN BROOKS YOUTH POETRY AWARD Performance Hall / Free
DANCE SUN, SEP 17 / 2-8PM
CHICAGO LATINO DANCE FESTIVAL: INAUGURAL SEASON
Performance Hall / Free; RSVP
FILM WED, SEP 20 / 6PM
REEL BLACK FILMMAKERS: QUARTERLY FILM SCREENING Screening Room / Free
MUSIC SAT, SEP 23 / 1:30-10:30PM
17TH ANNUAL HYDE PARK JAZZ FESTIVAL
Throughout Logan Center / Free
MUSIC SAT, SEP 30 / 7:30PM
CHICAGO CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY COMPOSITION:
GROSSMAN ENSEMBLE Performance Hall / $40; $20 under 35; $10 students
Mon-Thu 7 AM- 6 PM, Fri-Sun 7 AM-7 PM, 5531 N. Clark, 872- 806 - 0670, theunderstudy.com
PAGES AND STAGES
The Understudy staff share their favorite theater titles for the season.
By THE STAFF OF THE UNDERSTUDYSince opening in March 2023, Andersonville’s Understudy bookstore and cafe has stayed busy by offering a robust selection of theater-related titles, co ee, pastries, and public programming. With the fall theater season about to kick into high gear, we asked the sta what they’ve been reading lately.
Witch by Jen Silverman
Though this play had its world premiere at Writers Theatre back in 2018, it’s a perennial bestseller at The Understudy. In this witty, modern retelling of the Jacobean drama The Witch of Edmonton , when the devil comes knocking at their doors, those in the village of Edmonton are forced to decide what they’ll sacrifice to change their own lives. Poignant, devastating, and an excellent fall read! Understudy employees have a soft spot for this play, which was one of the first staged readings we produced.
Rubin
“I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be.” —Rick Rubin. The Creative Act is a beautiful and generous course of study that illuminates the path of the artist as a road we all can
follow. It distills the wisdom gleaned from a lifetime’s work into a luminous reading experience that puts the power to create moments—and lifetimes—of exhilaration and transcendence within closer reach for all of us.
Fat Ham by James Ijames
Winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for drama! A modern retelling of Hamlet set in the deep south, this play explores Black queerness, intergenerational trauma, joy, and complex family dynamics—while giving us a karaoke number or two! Fat Ham was the very first pick of our play reading club here at the Understudy.
English by Sanaz Toossi
Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for drama and playing at the Goodman in 2024, this play is about four Iranian adults preparing to take the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). The stakes are high, as passing this exam will allow each student to migrate and fight for their dreams abroad.
Tambo & Bones by Dave Harris
Playing at Refracted Theatre Company this fall! A unique, dark comedy about two characters who find themselves trapped in a minstrel show. How do they escape?
. .
Commissioned by Roundabout Theatre Company, three generations of men live under one roof and grapple with their own truths of what it means to be Black and gay. It’s an exploration of pride, pain, and patience through the unflinching eyes of fathers and sons.
An alternate present-day U.S., where every Black American is given a one-way plane ticket to Africa. Told in surreal, witty vignettes, this play is hilarious and heartbreaking all at the same time.
Set in the northern Mexican desert in 1950, Mariela in the Desert is a deadly mystery—a layered yet profoundly honest story of what happens to a family when creativity is forced to dry and wither away.
Cameron
Nominated for best new play at the 2023 Olivier Awards. Father figures and fashion tips. Lost loves and jollof rice. African empires and illicit sex. Good days and bad days. Six young Black men meet for group therapy, and
let their hearts—and imaginations—run wild. Inspired by Ntozake Shange’s essential work for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy is a profound and playful work of drama.
Contemporary Black Theatre and Performance: Acts of Rebellion, Activism, and Solidarity edited by DeRon S. Williams, Khalid Y. Long, and Martine Kei Green-Rogers
Coedited by Chicago’s own Martine Kei Green-Rogers, dean of the Theatre School at DePaul University, this book is a big hit at the Understudy. How are Black artists, activists, and pedagogues wielding acts of rebellion, activism, and solidarity to precipitate change? How have contemporary performances impacted Black cultural, social, and political struggles? What are the ways in which these acts and artists engage varied Black identities and explore shared histories? Contemporary Black Theatre and Performance investigates these questions to illuminate the relationship between performance, identity, intersectionality, and activism in North America and beyond. v m
A “laugh-out-loud” (Broadway World) “hilarious comedy”
(Arts ATL) from nationally renowned playwright, poet and NY Times best-selling author Pearl Cleage.
It’s 1964 Montgomery, Alabama, and the Nacirema Society prepares for its annual introduction of six elegant African-American debutantes to a world of prosperity, privilege and social responsibility. This centennial year, the Society’s grande dame, Grace Dunbar, will have nothing less than perfection for her granddaughter Gracie’s debut. And with young love brewing, old family skeletons rattling, national media attention abounding and a blackmail plot bubbling…what would dare go awry?
SEPTEMBER 16 – OCTOBER 15
SPECIAL OFFER: Get $30 main floor tickets with code READER
*Not valid on premium seating, on previously purchased tickets or in combination with other offers.
Marriott Theatre’s Gypsy belongs to Mama.
The titular showgirl in Gypsy isn’t necessarily Gypsy Rose Lee, the reluctant vaudeville child star who—per the “musical fable” from Stephen Sondheim (lyrics), Jule Styne (score) and Arthur Laurents (book)—blossoms into an internationally renowned burlesque artist. In the Marriott Theatre’s sturdy production, the stage belongs to Mama Rose (Lucia Spina), the so-called stage mother raised in poverty and dragon-determined to do far better by her two daughters, who she’s forced into an abjectly terrible aspiring vaudeville act. Sometimes Mama’s ambition means she eats dog food so the kids don’t have to. Sometimes it means she goads 15-yearold daughter Rose Louise (Lauren Maria Medina) into stripping.
Directed by Amanda Dehnert, Gypsy fully belongs to Spina, whose Mama Rose has been ruthlessly, clearly shaped by a triumvirate of forces: determination, delusion, and the Great Depression. It’s easy to dismiss Rose as a craven prototype for the crazed parents of Toddlers & Tiaras. But Spina’s Rose will not be dismissed. This Rose takes up all the oxygen in the room and isn’t about to apologize for it. She’s a star—she’s always been a star. The only reason the world doesn’t treat her accordingly is because she never got the opportunity to shine. Despite the elegant wooings of Herbie (Nathaniel Stampley), Rose has no interest in marriage. She’s an outlier today, never mind in the vaudeville era.
In the end, Rose succeeds in all her aims, both in the “musical fable” and in terms of the real people that inspired it. On stage, awkward child Rose Louise becomes the sizzling star Gypsy Rose. In real life, Louise Hovick became Gypsy Rose Lee, while her sister Dainty June grew up to be actress June Havoc. Spina shows that dreams are built on determination, and a relentless refusal to be dissuaded. —CATEY SULLIVAN GYPSY
Through 10/15: Wed 1 and 7:30 PM, Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 1 and 5 PM; also Thu 10/5 and 10/12 1 PM; Wed 10/4 and 10/11 and Sun 10/15 1 PM only; Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Dr., Lincolnshire, 847-634-0200, marriotttheatre.com, $50-$65
Two Black women confront systemic racism in A Hit Dog Will Holler
Chicago native Inda Craig-Galván takes theatergoers on a heart-to-heart journey in A Hit Dog Will Holler, a two-hander that underlines the trauma and resilience experienced by Black women—o en called upon to be at the forefront of social movements—living in America.
Directed by Myesha-Tiara, Artemisia Theatre’s production zooms in on the unlikely friendship between Gina (Alexandria Moorman), a millennial social media commenter, and Dru (Lo Williams), a Gen Z activist, aka the “Banksy of Black Lives Matter.” From the comfort of Gina’s Hyde Park apartment, they confront the looming monster that is systemic racism.
In just 90 minutes, the play explores a spectrum of topics, including COVID-19, the Trump administration, the perils of the Internet, intergenerational clashes, mental health, and the complexities of womanhood. Craig-Galván constructs multidimensional characters, unearthing the virtues and vulnerabilities of the duo.
Moorman’s Gina is passionately spirited; Williams embodies Dru with authenticity and unwavering energy, never coming across as disingenuous.
At its core, A Hit Dog Will Holler offers a candid look at the dynamics in the battle against injustice, acknowledging clashing perspectives and layers of privilege at play. It serves as a reminder that activism manifests in many forms, all equally valid (for the most part). It also spotlights a character grappling with “acute social agoraphobia,” capturing some sentiments of our post-pandemic times. The dialogue-heavy plot, while without clichés, requires—and rewards—sustained attention. —BOUTAYNA CHOKRANE A HIT DOG WILL HOLLER Through 9/17: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee, artemisia theatre.org, $26 ($16 students)
The Innocence of Seduction chronicles a realworld comics industry crossover event.
The title of writer/director Mark Pracht’s second installment to his Four-Color Trilogy, a series about the comic books publishing industry, could easily be mistaken for one of the real-world pre-Code, sultry cheesecake books Pracht’s play centers on. But it’s actually a reference to the markedly un-horny Seduction of the Innocent, German American psychiatrist Fredric Wertham’s 1954 pop science screed that bemoans the moral decay that illustrative storytelling supposedly unleashes upon impressionable child minds.
Following a triptych of historic comic book provocateurs and pioneers (Sean Harklerode as EC Comics crime and horror publisher Will Gaines; Brian Bradford as the closeted, Black artist Matt Baker; and Megan Clarke as comics glass ceiling-breaker Janice Valleau),
City Lit’s world premiere juxtaposes excerpts from Wertham’s panic-stoking manifesto (personified by Frank Nall) against the creatives trying to satisfy their audiences and their own visions in an increasingly finicky market.
At the treatment level, Pracht’s story does what good documentary theater does best: contextualizes major themes of an era—midcentury American weaponization of censorship, in this case—and frames them and their impacts at a personal, human level.
In execution, the saga of future MAD magazine publisher Gaines comes through the strongest, in part due to Harklerode’s genuinely funny performance as a bumbling PR nightmare. Wedged between the Gaines plotline’s madcap style and green-lit scenes of Reefer Madness-esque spooky narration, though, Valleau and Baker’s threads come across as melodramatic and underserved. Even though it clocks in under two hours, Innocence ends up feeling like a long introduction to admittedly fascinating characters that never really gets into what makes them tick. —DAN JAKES THE INNOCENCE OF SEDUCTION Through 10/8: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Mon 9/25 and 10/2 7:30 PM; City Lit Theater, 1020 W. Bryn Mawr, 773-293-3682, citylit.org, $34 (seniors $29, students/military $12)
Moon at the Bottom of the Ocean explores artistic jealousy and romantic need.
It’s beginning to feel like we’re having a mini festival this year of plays about the romantic and professional conflicts facing artist (or academic) couples, between First Floor’s Hate Fuck by Rehana Lew Mirza and Steppenwolf’s Another Marriage by Kate Arrington.
Bryn Magnus’s latest comedy, Moon at the Bottom of the Ocean, perhaps completes the trifecta. But Curious
Theatre Branch, of which Magnus is a longtime member (alongside sister Jenny Magnus, who directs Moon and cofounded Curious 35 years ago with her onetime partner Beau O’Reilly) has long been producing work that examines the sometimes nurturing, sometimes suffocating bonds of creative life and family love.
In Moon, Paul (Jeffrey Bivens) is an unpublished writer in Brooklyn so consumed with jealousy of a more successful scribe who just won a MacArthur “genius” grant that he hires Vera (Julia Williams), a private investigator, to help him figure out the secret to the other man’s success. Paul’s singer wife, Les (Vicki Walden), who can “sing” a person’s face just by looking at them, tells him, “I think you should just tell a story, and the rest takes care of itself.” But Les’s chance to record back-up vocals with an up-and-coming pop star gets derailed when Paul’s paranoia and bitterness seeps into her optimistic viewpoint. Meantime, Williams’s deadpan private dick is hiding some longtime aches and doubts of her own.
All of this comes together in a moving and o en quite funny staging. It’s bare-bones in terms of production values (some projected titles offer a clever take on a table of contents for the narrative), which is all the better for focusing on the small, poignant reactions and the larger moments of physical comedy. It adds up to a tender and knowing portrait of people learning that the value of their story is in the connections to the loved ones who share it. —KERRY REID MOON AT THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN Through 9/23: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM; no performances Sat 9/9 and Sun 9/24; Chicago Dramatists, 798 N. Aberdeen, curioustheatrebranch.com, pay what you can ($20 suggested donation)
Black Ensemble’s latest revue is a tasty concoction.
Near the end of Black Ensemble Theater’s (BET) superb new revue A Taste of Soul, co-emcee Qiana McNary mentions that the show’s creators hope to leave the audience both “full and hungry at the same time.”
The show’s central framing device—a television cooking program veering into musical numbers, concurrently leading the audience through the history of American (and some British) soul music—allows A Taste of Soul to marry together two of our most powerful nostalgia triggers, music and food. McNary and co-emcee Thee Ricky Harris are more than up for the task, as are their large troupe of “sous chefs,” who give masterful performances in the styles of various soul pioneers and, at other times, dance and sing in the background.
A Taste of Soul doesn’t dwell too much on that cooking show conceit (it’s all but dropped outright in act two). BET producing managing director Daryl D. Brooks, who wrote and directed, moves the audience along quickly from song to song.
While recreating a performance in this setting is mostly an impressionistic endeavor, the audience really connected with performances throughout the show, among them LaRon Jones as Barry White; Trequon Tate and Britt Edwards as Peaches and Herb; McNary as Patti LaBelle (in an awesome feather dress); and Edwards again, unsurprisingly a real showstopper as Tina Turner. Music director Robert Reddrick’s band is just as lively as the performers.
—MATT SIMONETTE A TASTE OF SOUL
Through 10/15: Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM; Black Ensemble Theater, 4450 N. Clark, 773-7694451, blackensembletheater.org, $56.50-$66.50 v
CHICAGO UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL Wed 9/ 13 –Sun 9/ 17, Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, Harper Theater, 5238 S. Harper $150 all-access pass, $12 individual tickets excluding special events cuff.org
The Gene Siskel Film Center and the Harper Theater host this year’s Chicago Underground Film Festival.
By ANDREA THOMPSONThe Chicago Underground Film Festival is back, and the longest-running fest devoted to the subculture of movies has quite a variety of attractions—from a pandemic stoner musical to a documentary about a singer who had the honor of making what YouTube dubbed the “Worst Music Video Ever.” Here are some of the highlights of this year’s CUFF.
Genres don’t get much more defiant than Soda Jerk’s Hello Dankness, a bizarre musical composed entirely of hundreds of media clips— from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood to The ’Burbs and The Social Network. It’s carefully constructed, masterfully edited chaos that’s also a rumination of the American reaction to a pandemic in the age of Trump and fake news. It’s also CUFF’s opening night film, so you can kick off the festival with a truly strange odyssey through a darkly humorous American landscape.
Leave it to CUFF to close with a living legacy of the martial arts films of the 80s and 90s. Chicagoan Eugene Thomas is a legend, a talented musician, and a martial artist who worked with the likes of Rudy Ray Moore. As Thomas recounts his life—regarding not just film but his spiritual journey and the history of Black actors and kung fu movies—what emerges in Sean Fahey’s fascinating documentary is a portrait of the various players who brought a genre to life and its lasting impact.
No doubt many a comparison will be made to 1973’s American Gra ti because of the shared setting of Modesto, California. But the true ancestor of Rick Charnoski’s Warm Blood is likely Winter’s Bone (2010). Much like Jennifer Lawrence’s Ree, the teenage runaway Red (Haley Isaacson) is also navigating a drugaddled landscape in the hopes of tracking down her wayward father. But Red’s navi-
gation skews even darker and more experimental in a literally toxic 80s environment, where corporate abuse of power ensures even the bodies of straight-edge punks have been ravaged by chemicals. As we join Red on her impromptu tour through her old stomping grounds and personal history, her reality is called into question as she encounters apathy at best and vicious hostility at worst.
Melomaniac
Some legends don’t steal the show; they just have to show up for it to be one. And Aadam Jacobs has been showing up and taping the Chicago music scene for about 30 years. Katlin Schneider’s documentary is an exploration of how Aadam’s obsession got started and how he became both staple and tastemaker, as
well as a chronicle of the independent music industry in the Windy City. Talking heads that include local icons and the likes of Fred Armisen weigh in on the city’s past and the next step for Aadam’s now massive collection of Chicago history. It’s essential viewing for anyone remotely interested in the sound of the city.
About Negativland
Looking for a documentary that truly embraces the weirdness of it all? Look no further than Stand By for Failure: A Documentary About Negativland , which explores the life and work of David “The Weatherman” Wills, who will find a devoted following among those who believe Weird Al and Mark Borchardt are too mainstream. That’s not to say Wills doesn’t have a big fandom already, since the Bay Area musician has been making underground, deeply experimental music for decades. The mind-boggling turns of his life and music must be viewed to be believed, with a story made for bigscreen viewing.
continued from p. 25
One of the most personal and emotionally turbulent films of CUFF, back home is Nisha Platzer’s attempt to understand an event that will always defy her understanding: her brother Josh’s suicide in 1999 when he was 15 and she was 11. It’s less a story about family trauma (which by Platzer’s account there was none of and plenty of support) than an attempt to empathize with the pain her brother was in, despite his intelligence, artistic talent, and winning personality that meant a tight circle of friends who were his found family. As Platzer speaks to her brother’s inner circle and her family, exploring the legacy Josh left behind, the result is a deeply moving and ultimately uplifting story about how to live with grief and loss.
Brace yourself, because Elisa Levine and Gabriel Miller’s documentary is the kind of experience trigger warnings are made for. Shot vérité style over a period of several years, Sweetheart Deal is a real-life horror story unfolding in real time, as four sex workers grapple with addiction and trauma. The one man they think they can trust is the so-called Mayor of Aurora, who o ers help, a safe space, and friendship from his RV. As the doc continues, there are signs that he’s not all he appears to be, but a shocking betrayal will change every life onscreen and leave everyone (audiences included) reeling. For those who can stomach the harsh truths of drug use, abuse, and the realities of the (in)justice system, it’ll be one of the most memorable viewing experiences of their lives.
The tale of Orpheus and Eurydice is an o eat choice for a bedtime story, to say the least, and sure enough, Todd Verow goes to some suitably weird places, especially after Rick (Guillermo Díaz), a closeted photographer, accidentally captures a murder while cruising in 90s-era Central Park. As he’s drawn into a deadly game with the killer while attempting to make it in the New York City art world, Rick begins to question everything, including his sanity.
The Satanic Panic of the 80s is now an infamous example of the kind of mass hysteria the United States has been particularly prone to. But few know its origins were Canadian, the result of the lurid 1980 memoir Michelle Remembers, which detailed so-called recovered memories of satanic ritual abuse experienced by Michelle Smith as a child, and cowritten by her psychiatrist and eventual husband Lawrence “Larry” Pazder. Using the recordings themselves, reenactments, and some members of the Pazder family, directors Steve J. Adams and Sean Horlor attempt to puzzle out what led Pazder to leave his wife and family to essentially cash in on Michelle’s story. What emerges is fascinating (it could hardly be otherwise), but it ironically reduces Michelle to a hysterical woman driven by her love for Larry, who gets far more leeway and fond memories from family members who speak of him in terms of before and after the book’s publication. The Catholic Church gets its fair share of blame, but outside context is sparse, with the wider political environment and conservative backlash absent—Reagan’s name is never even mentioned. Even Larry’s role in and the origins of Michelle’s lurid tales are insufficiently examined. As it is, the documentary is an attempt to delve into a mostly unexplored history of a modern witch hunt.
A portrait of the artist as a complex woman, the documentary Jan Terri: No Rules is the story of the artist behind the viral sensation YouTube dubbed “Worst Music Video Ever.” A working-class singer whose day job as a limo driver allowed her to promote her career and fund her work, with her now infamous music videos often shot in a day, Jan Terri is a wordof-mouth-fueled phenomenon. She’s also impossible to classify, with the story of her life including name-drops of Marilyn Manson and Rose McGowan, stories of her family’s involvement with the Mafia, and a sexual assault that sidelined her career for about a decade. Come for the story no one could make up; stay for the feeling of a film made by filmmakers who clearly knew all the inside jokes by the time things wrapped. v
m letters@chicagoreader.com
Get showtimes and see reviews of everything playing this week at chicagoreader.com/movies
Packaged in unsuspecting monochrome and monotone, Babak Jalali embeds Fremont with a cunning, melancholic charm. Deadpan humor punctures the measured, near-banal dialogue between empty spaces. But Fremont’s muted tone surprises, luring the audience into the blank, nuanced stare of Donya (Anaita Wali Zada), an Afghan refugee living in Fremont, California.
Longtime best friends PJ (Rachel Sennott, also a cowriter) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri) are high school seniors at the absolute bottom of the food chain. They’re bullied—as they say—not for being queer but for being queer, ugly, and untalented. But their reputations begin to change when they accidentally injure Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine), the star quarterback and high school royalty. Suddenly, false rumors begin to fly about their violent pasts and killer fighting skills, and PJ and Josie use their newfound status to start a female fight club at school. They bill it as a self-defense club meant to increase female solidarity, but it’s actually just a plot to get closer to their hot-girl crushes and maybe, potentially, lose their virginities before college.
Director and cowriter Emma Seligman’s lesbian sex comedy is an absurdly gory instant classic, packing the nostalgia of an 80s or 90s flick and the sharp wittiness of a present-day box-office hit. Bottoms leans into the
tropes of high school movies past and all for the better: football rules the world, class lectures and schoolwork are practically nonexistent, and many of the actors are closer to age 30 than their awkward teenage years. Brilliant writing pairs perfectly with the impressive improv chops of the cast; Edebiri can make anything funny, and her comedic chemistry with Sennott sets the bar high for supporting characters, but everyone delivers. Standouts include Marshawn Lynch as problematic but likable club adviser Mr. G, as well as Galitzine, who plays the American douchebag flawlessly, rendering his other recent leading role in Red, White & Royal Blue completely forgettable. Football player Tim (Miles Fowler) has unfortunate Disney Channel movie villain vibes as he schemes to expose the fight club’s origins and PJ and Josie’s lies, but it’s all in service to get us to the climax: the long-awaited Huntington High football game. Saying “chaos ensues” is an understatement. Just gather your nonsqueamish WLW friends and go see Bottoms immediately. —TARYN ALLEN R, 92 min. Wide release in theaters
In many ways, Donya lives in exile. Before leaving Afghanistan, she worked as a translator for the U.S. Army during the war—a decision looked down on by her neighbors. Not to mention, she’s haunted by the memory of loved ones le behind. Behind her inscrutable composure, Zada, an Afghan refugee herself, shows that Donya’s mind is racing, even if sometimes indecipherably, unable to escape her survivor’s guilt. Her restlessness keeps her from sleeping, leading her to an odd therapist (Gregg Turkington) obsessed with Jack London’s White Fang, who stirs up wry, bizarre tangents about London, memory, and Donya’s self-forgiveness.
But Fremont’s drama transpires at the fortune cookie factory where Donya is hired to write fortunes. Her muted observations and reveries flow onto her unlikely canvas. But really, her job gives her a chance to reach a world outside Fremont, sending messages in a leap of faith. Despite scrutiny from her bosses, she ultimately receives an answer—ultimate proof against her loneliness. But nothing is straightforward. Fremont opens up in scenes where Donya’s isolation is challenged, where walls break down in touching vignettes between her and the people who enter her life.
Donya’s persistence, engulfed by a ruthlessly quotidian existence, prompts the heart-rupturing conclusion. In Fremont’s third act, Donya stumbles into an unlikely closing character, an isolated and charming mechanic played by Jeremy Allen White. But no one breaks the quiet foundation. Instead, Jalali tactfully closes out Donya’s restless isolation. Like a loosely applicable yet familiarly optimistic fortune, Fremont teases us with a hopeful dream. It’s up to us to buy it. —MAXWELL RABB 91 min. Music Box Theatre v
“I come from the projects and that’s considered the ghetto, the bottom of the pile,” DJ Deeon told Vice in 2016, “but we saw nothing wrong with that.” COURTESY OF TASIA CARTER
In the mid- and late 1980s, Deeon Boyd built a reputation as one of the best DJs in Chicago’s Low End. He lived in Stateway Gardens in Bronzeville, and he’d spin records in the projects. “He liked playing music for people,” says Tranz, a hip-hop producer from the Low End. “He would set up outside in Stateway, up under the basketball court, and throw a free party every weekend when it was warm.”
Deeon and Tranz met in the mid-70s, when they were eight or nine years old and lived in the Wentworth Gardens projects, between 37th and Pershing just west of the Dan Ryan. Their friendship remained strong when Deeon moved across the expressway to Stateway Gardens in the mid-80s, and Tranz was among the throngs of young house heads from south-side projects—including the Robert Taylor Homes and the Harold Ickes Homes—who trekked to Stateway to see DJ Deeon.
Tranz remembers a party Deeon DJed on the second floor of a Stateway Gardens tower that got so packed it spilled down a stairwell toward the first floor. At one point, Tranz was hanging out near the ground-level elevator when he saw security personnel enter
The ghetto-house pioneer never stopped giving back to the south-side scene that made him.
By LEOR GALILthe building and head upstairs. “We turned around, [and] the guy from my neighborhood that just went up the stairs, he walkin’ back,” he says. “I’m like, ‘Didn’t you just go upstairs?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, I had to jump out the window. I thought that was the police.’”
In the 1990s, Deeon would release more than two dozen 12-inches through Dance Mania Records, a local house label run by Ray Barney, who also owned a west-side shop called Barney’s Records. The shop had a distribution operation (also called Barney’s) that helped Dance Mania music spread far beyond Chicago. Daft Punk’s 1997 debut album, Homework, features a song called “Teachers” that famously mimics a Dance Mania recording (Parris Mitchell and Wax Master’s “Ghetto Shout Out!!”) as it praises the French dance duo’s musical heroes—including George Clinton, Dr. Dre, and DJ Deeon. In the ensuing decades, Deeon was able to travel abroad thanks to his music, though perhaps not quite as widely as his records: between 2018 and 2020, he performed in São Paulo, Moscow, Ibiza, Toronto, and Tokyo, among other far-flung locales. When Deeon died at age 55, just before midnight on July 17, the news quickly went in-
ternational. The Guardian ran an obituary the next morning.
Within the first decade of his career, Deeon pioneered a stripped-down, rapid-fire style of house music characterized by overdriven drum-machine beats, throbbing bass lines, and raunchy chants that might sound like rapping if they were more than a few words long. This style became known as ghetto house. “It wasn’t actually a term that we used or came up with,” Deeon told Vice in 2016. “We didn’t pick it. It was what we were given. I come from the projects and that’s considered the ghetto, the bottom of the pile, but we saw nothing wrong with that.”
Deeon’s style quickly spurred further innovation among Chicago house fanatics. Gant Garrard, aka Gant-Man, became a key innovator of juke, a faster o shoot of ghetto house. RP Boo, aka Kavain Space, helped develop an even faster style called footwork, whose off-kilter rhythms, rapid-fire vocal samples, and minimalist repetition had evolved to accompany the intricate, strenuous steps of footwork dancing. Both these styles grew into distinct subgenres by the end of the 1990s, and they caught fire in Chicago. Footwork
later grew into an international phenomenon, though its breakout moment—the Planet Mu compilation Bangs & Works—wouldn’t arrive till 2010.
In the mid-90s, Dance Mania was synonymous with ghetto house, but even before Deeon released his first record on the label, the 1994 12-inch Funk City , he’d had a profound influence on Chicago music. Gant-Man first heard Deeon on mixtapes he’d dubbed at home in the early 1990s.
“What made these tapes special is not only was Deeon playing house music that we liked, that was popular at the time, he was playing his own, unreleased tracks that none of us ever heard,” Gant-Man says. “We were always like, ‘What are these tracks? How do we get them?’ That sealed the deal for me—that I really, really had to make tracks, because that was the only way to have your own identity and to make a name for yourself.”
In 1995, when Gant-Man was still in his mid-teens, he put out a Dance Mania 12-inch called The Youngest Professional D.J. Deeon inspired many artists in the label’s catalog, but he also made a mark that’s much bigger than Dance Mania. (Barney shuttered the label in
2001, then relaunched it with Parris Mitchell, aka Victor Paris Mitchell, in 2013.) Music took Deeon around the world, but he remained connected to Chicago’s proliferating music communities, a generous collaborator who encouraged his peers and up-and-coming artists alike.
“He was our hero,” says House-O-Matics founder Ronnie Sloan. In the early 1990s, Sloan’s dance crew began a mutually beneficial partnership with Deeon and his frequent collaborator, Milton Jones, better known as DJ Milton. “He was somebody that we respected, from a DJ standpoint,” Sloan says. “I could have got a million other DJs. There’ll never be another DJ Deeon.”
Sloan first saw Deeon spin at a party at 58th and State in 1991. By then House-OMatics had been active for six years. He’d started the crew to give kids in Englewood something to do in their spare time, and he liked creating dance routines to house music as much as they did. What Sloan heard at that party—fast underground house tracks too risqué for radio—blew him away. “Deeon was the first DJ that I’d known to play that kind of music or even do the things that he was doing musically,” he says. “I asked him to come out and DJ at our first party.”
Deeon and Milton performed at that HouseO-Matics party at a rented hall near 67th and Western in Marquette Park. It went so well that Sloan kept working with both DJs, and House-O-Matics quickly outgrew the space. They moved to a Boys & Girls Club in the Robert Taylor Homes near 51st and Federal, and when it wasn’t available, they’d use an Elks Lodge several blocks east, near 51st and Prairie. Before the year was out, Sloan made Deeon and Milton an o er.
“Instead of them just being our DJs, we brought them in as partners with us,” Sloan says. “So it was just as well their party as it was ours.”
Deeon and Milton took the work seriously. Deeon bought a van, and Sloan recalls the DJs using it to help promote House-O-Matics parties. “Every weekend that we had a party, they had a big ol’ poster board that they would post on their van and drive around the city— throughout the whole week, just advertising the event,” Sloan says. Deeon also created a giddy dance track in the crew’s honor: “HouseO-Matic” later appeared on his 1994 record Funk City , and it became not only his most effective promotional strategy but also the most enduring.
Footwork pioneer RP Boo remembers hearing “House-O-Matic” when the crew played it during a dance down at Kennedy-King College in the early 1990s. “You know how girls be screaming at the concert? When I heard that track, it hit me just like that,” Boo says. “I was like, ‘What is this? Ahhh!’ I never thought I would ever scream that loud in a facility with all these people. I was like, ‘This track is so cold! Who made that?’”
Fortunately, Deeon was already making his music available on mixtapes. “These mixtapes started traveling outside of his area and started spreading around the city, in di erent hoods,” Gant-Man says. “Everybody was playing these tapes.” As Deeon told Fact magazine for a 2014 oral history of Dance Mania, his mixtapes sold so quickly he couldn’t keep up
by simply dubbing them at home. He wasn’t the only local DJ with this problem, and fortunately one of his peers had found a solution. DJ D-Man recorded a monologue on the B side of a cassette called School Dayz where he breaks down his part in the early history of Chicago ghetto-house cassettes. He says that in 1993 Ray Barney pitched him on the idea of mass-producing mixtapes—the demand at Barney’s Records alone was such that DJs couldn’t hand-dub copies fast enough. The first mixtape D-Man had mass-produced was HotMix 10: Bootycall, which came in a blue cassette shell. A wave of underground house mixtapes on eye-catching, brightly colored cassettes soon appeared in local stores.
“When we started doing the colored mix-
tapes and putting them out, they was selling like wildfire,” says Low End producer and DJ Terrence “DJ Stew” Stewart. “It was unbelievable how they was selling, and how people was just trying to get that music.” Deeon’s mixtape production expanded beyond house and ghetto house; in the mid-90s he launched additional mixtape series, including one dedicated to underground hip-hop (Sox Park Mob) and another devoted to R&B (Victoria’s Secret).
Sloan believes that DJing House-O-Matics parties practically every weekend helped drive Deeon’s prolific output. “That played a major part in him being motivated to put out a lot of the tracks that he was doing,” he says. “Because every night he wanted to come to these events with di erent music. And he did it.”
continued from p. 29
Deeon had another big motivation at home: a growing family. His first child, Tasia Carter, arrived in 1989. She describes her father as sometimes hilarious, sometimes stern, and always dependable. “He didn’t have a dad in his life, so he was the best dad,” Carter says. “He was involved in everything that we all had. Sports, every graduation, every prom.” This was no easy task, considering Deeon would eventually help raise nine children—and he did it all while maintaining a career as a DJ that was busy and profitable enough to support his family.
At home, Deeon encouraged the kids to engage with music on their own terms. “He had so many machines in that house,” Carter says. “It got to being like, ‘OK, well, let me show you this. . . . This machine, you can’t touch.’ Some stuff we could play around with, and some stuff it was totally off-limits because those were the moneymakers.”
Deeon’s children weren’t the only ones he helped learn their way around that gear. In 1995, RP Boo bought a Roland R-70 drum machine, but to make tracks with it, he needed to find a sampler too. He was referred to Deeon by the seller of the drum machine, and Deeon didn’t just sell Boo an Akai S01—he also gave him pointers on how to use it. “He broke it down: ‘Put your samples inside the S01, but to control it and pattern it, you’re gonna use the R-5 [drum machine],’” Boo says. “Once I got it, that was it.”
RP Boo, then performing as DJ Boo, sometimes opened for Deeon and Milton at House-O-Matics parties. Unfortunately, those gigs soon began to decline in frequency due to interference from city regulators and law enforcement. Though Sloan would continue to work with the DJs whenever he could, in 1997 the parties stopped.
According to Sloan, House-O-Matics events drew such large overflow crowds that a couple hundred people usually ended up hanging around outside the halls. “It was causing all kinds of chaos [with] people that couldn’t get in,” he says. “I think it was a license thing, that the city wanted us to have at these halls. A lot of the halls didn’t have the proper license in order to have those kinds of events, so we started getting shut down.”
Deeon turned his attention to selling tracks. He’d been releasing vinyl through Dance Mania for three years by that point, and he’d also put out several ghetto-house mixtapes under the auspices of Playground Productions, a south-side label and crew that also included
Beginning in the mid-1990s, Deeon started releasing music on Dance Mania sublabel Freak Mode (sometimes as Debo or Debo “G”), which also issued 12-inches from Milton, Slugo, DJ Flint, and DJ PJ. According to public records, FreakMode Records was also the name of a business that Deeon and Milton licensed at 102 E. 47th. That address corresponds roughly with the location where Sloan says the two DJs opened a record shop.
Deeon and Milton ran the shop from 1997 till ’99, with some help from DJ Slugo. RP Boo recalls that when he released his DanceMatazz mixtape, he brought it to FreakMode Records to sell on consignment. Deeon asked for 20 copies. “Gave him his 20 tapes, and I pulled out my receipt book for him to write for consignment,” Boo says. “He’s like, ‘No. You, I don’t do consignment. I give you your money right here.’”
Carter sometimes visited the store just to hang out with her dad. The record shop gave her the first inkling of his importance, because she could see who else came by. “I seen Crucial Conflict come in there,” Carter says. “It was, like, people that I’ve seen on TV, and I was like, ‘Wait, these people are just stopping by, and this is just a regular spot.’” The shop was the closest thing to an o ce job she ever knew
Deeon to work. “Besides my dad doing parties and packing up equipment, that’s the only job I’ve seen him do,” she says. “I’ve never seen him punch a clock or anything like that. All I’ve ever known him to do is DJ.”
At some point before FreakMode Records closed, Deeon transitioned to releasing CDs instead of cassettes, and he’d recruit his children to help him manufacture CD mixes. “He had a CD burner, and we used to burn his mixtapes— Sox Park Mob, Victoria’s Secret, a lot of stu he was putting out,” Carter says. “We knew how to put the little plastic on there and burn it. We were all on that.”
As much as Deeon encouraged his kids to help with his music, he didn’t involve Carter in his nightlife work. “As far as house parties and all that, oh no, he kept me away from that stu ,” she says. “The boys went. They had to carry equipment; they helped set up. He protected me to the fullest.”
All of Deeon’s children grew up to love music, and he inspired several of them to pursue their own careers. “A lot of my siblings are fully into music because of him,” Carter says. Stepbrother Demarius Johnson has had his own successes as a rapper under the name Spenzo; in 2013, he dropped his breakout song, “Wife Er,” which Drake performed at the United Center the following year.
In July 2020, Deeon launched a Crowdfunder campaign to help shore up his finances. The pandemic had destroyed his ability to make money performing, and he’d also been managing severe health challenges for almost two decades. In 2018, he’d su ered the first of several mini strokes, which curtailed his touring even before COVID-19. “Years of ill education on health in my younger years led me to Quadruple Bypass Heart Surgery,” he wrote, “then su ering through Cancer and Chemotherapy, and then finally they took my leg.”
“Deeon was a strong fighter,” says Terrence “DJ Stew” Stewart. “He said whatever he felt—he didn’t care if somebody got o ended, but he’s gonna tell you the truth, he’s not gonna coat it. He was a very, very strong brother.”
Stewart grew up in the Robert Taylor Homes. He met Deeon in the late 1980s, as they both began DJing. When they traveled to each other’s neighborhoods for parties, they’d vouch for each other. In the 2000s, Stewart received a cancer diagnosis of his own (sadly not his last), and because Deeon had already been through something similar, they commiserated. “Me and him would call each other, and we would uplift each other medically,” Stewart says. “Or if he had a question about something, we’d talk about it.”
Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, Deeon continued to travel to perform, his health problems notwithstanding. He gigged sporadically in the 2020s too, though the pandemic ended his overseas touring for good.
When Deeon was still playing abroad, he’d often bring Tranz with him. They’d been lifelong friends, with the kind of relationship they could pick up again wherever they’d left it off. “Me and him wasn’t speaking for, like, six months, but he called from France,” Tranz says. “He said, ‘Look, I need you to get your passport.’ Ain’t no ‘I’m glad to see you’ or nothing like that. ‘I need you to get your passport. Quick.’ I got my passport, and that’s when I went to Amsterdam. That’s my first time out of the country.”
Deeon would sometimes perform at parties outside the city with other Chicago house producers, including west-side veteran Cornelius “Traxman” Ferguson, who looked up to Deeon. “Me and Deeon became the real ‘big brother, little brother,’ because we started to travel together and do a lot of events—it just really became special,” Traxman says. “Every morning before the time of his demise, we would just talk. Talk early in the morning—and way beyond music.”
On one of Deeon’s trips to New York, he asked Tranz to spin for him during the sound check before the show. That lit a fire under Tranz. “I started getting my own equipment, started taking it serious and practicing,” he says. “I became a DJ.” Deeon began asking Tranz to DJ with him on the road. “I done DJed in Cancun, I done DJed in Brazil,” Tranz says. “I done DJed even if it was just so he could go to the bathroom. I did it.”
Tranz also spun for Blok Bizness Radio, a Web radio platform that Deeon, Stewart, and DJ Jay Jilla launched in October 2017.
“Deeon sent me over 150 mixes that play regularly on Blok Bizness Radio from 12 to 1 central standard time,” Stewart says. “Then he comes on again from 4 to 6 AM for his overseas people. Then on Saturday he comes on at seven o’clock with his Sox Park Mob [mixes], for the people that like old-school rap. Then on Sunday he comes on at seven o’clock with his Victoria’s Secrets, which is his R&B mix. So Deeon, he was not playing.”
Deeon kept making music for as long as he could, and more than one person who spoke for this story mentioned that he left behind a tall stack of unreleased tracks.
On July 13, Deeon posted an Instagram selfie from the hospital, asking for prayers from friends and fans. On July 17, RP Boo got
SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED
THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED
a message from BeatDown House founder and producer DJ Clent telling him to visit Deeon in the hospital. Boo rode the elevator up with Gant-Man and producer Eric Martin.
THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED
THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED
In the hours left to Deeon before he passed, seemingly every important figure in ghettohouse history came to visit him. So did his family, of course—one of Deeon’s daughters had given birth to his second grandchild just a couple weeks before, and she brought the baby to his room.
THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE
“I was so thankful that he was able to see her,” Carter says. “He was able to hold her.”
When Ronnie Sloan went to say goodbye to Deeon, the hospital told him that too many people were upstairs visiting—he had to wait to see his friend. Even at the very end, Deeon Boyd could bring people together.
Mount Carmel Bible Church in Bronzeville hosted Deeon’s homegoing July 28. “Everyone got up and was speaking about how good he was to them and how he helped them out,” Carter says. “I didn’t know he helped people go to college.”
Carter remembers DJ Monty, who grew up in the Harold Ickes Homes, telling everyone how Deeon had helped quash conflicts between their neighborhood DJ crews. Deeon built a working relationship with Monty, rendering any imagined divisions moot.
Deeon also helped unify underground house DJs from all sorts of crews with his track “South Side,” released under the name Debo on the 1995 Dance Mania 12-inch Split Personality. Like “Ghetto Shout Out!!,” it’s a forerunner to “Teachers” that gives props to other musicians—in this case, Deeon lists DJs from his end of town, one by one, alongside clipped chants of “south side,” sharp electronic handclaps, and a stern, looping synth melody.
As Stewart recalls, Deeon made “South Side” right after buying a new Akai sampler. “He was trying to figure it out, to get it working,” he says. “He had just got it working, and he sampled [himself saying] ‘It’s working!’ He put it in the track.”
Gant-Man was among the artists Deeon listed. “I didn’t get a chance to make my name on ‘Teachers,’ but I for sure got a chance to get on DJ Deeon’s ‘South Side,’” he says. “I had just made my first record and was just getting started. So for him to recognize me when the rest of the world hadn’t heard me—matter of fact, the south side was just beginning to hear me—he put my name on the map.” v
COLTER WALL ............. THE SHED WITH RED SHAHAN
18 LES CLAYPOOL’S FEARLESS FLYING FROG BRIGADE ..... THE SHED OCT 19–21 PRETTY LIGHTS ........... THE SHED OCT 22 CHROMEO ............... THE SHED WITH RIC WILSON
OCT 23 AMYL & THE SNIFFERS ..... THE SHED WITH SPECIAL GUEST DIE SPITZ NOV 3 LP ..................... THE SHED ON SALE NOW
THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE SALT SHED THE
The veteran rapper’s upcoming EP asks listeners to see the difference between transactional relationships and real community.
By ALEJANDRO HERNANDEZplains, this isn’t so much recreational use as it is ritual. After one hit, he opens up to me: Both his parents were addicts, he says, and while his mother is in recovery, unfortunately his father passed due to the a iction. Marley developed his own addictive personality, but he credits cannabis for keeping him on the right path.
his peers encouraged him. He joined a music collective called Free Nation, which also included Chicago’s own Mick Jenkins—a Huntsville native who was then a fellow Oakwood student.
After college, the members of Free Nation scattered across the country to their respective hometowns, though they continued to collaborate when they could. Five years ago, Marley took a leap of faith, leaving his life in Ohio to move to Chicago, and he’s since toured nationally in support of Mick Jenkins.
He’s also made a viable music career for himself without a proper debut release, in part by flying overseas to work with international artists and brands on jingles that play in stores. The most streamed song on his Spotify page, a collaboration with Random Dan and Ben Weighill called “Sing,” was created under the auspices of Audiomachine, a California production house that specializes in film, television, and video-game ad campaigns.
Marley’s identity as an artist doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with those tracks, though; on his own, he prefers introspective, rhyme-heavy lyrics and down-to-earth, soulful production. That’s the sound he’ll showcase on his debut album, but first he wants to give listeners a preview of what to expect with an upcoming release he’s titled The Build With Me EP.
“I’m not tryna get high, man. I’m tryna get righteous,” says Stock Marley. He’s in his west-side apartment, delicately rolling up a joint. “This is a daily sacrament. It’s a way of life. I’m not tryna do things fast— I’m trying to do it right. With the weed, with the music, we’re just trying to be righteous all the way around.”
Marley was born in Columbus, Ohio, but he’s proud to show o his adopted west-side community—he’s invited me into his home with open arms. Before our interview, he breaks down a few chunky colas of cannabis, which he says he helped a friend grow. For him, he ex-
“I firmly 100 percent believe that if I didn’t fall in love with weed, I would have fell in love with something much more destructive,” he says. “I started smoking late, like around 21, and as I started smoking, I started freestyling and thought that shit was fun. People were like, ‘Yo, you’re really good—you should do something with this.’”
Marley’s musical career began soon after his introduction to weed. On and o between 2005 and 2012, he attended Oakwood University, a historically Black school in Huntsville, Alabama, where he joined a poetry club called Art N Soul. He was reluctant to rap at first, but
“The group was founded by Prop, who told it to his friend Maine the Saint, and they called it Free Thought at the time,” Marley recalls. “They asked me that day, like, ‘Hey, you tryna get down with the Free?,’ and I’m like, ‘Hell yeah.’ The first time I would rap [publicly] would be a competition called ‘Who Got Bars?,’ and Mick joined the competition as a separate student. He then would drop a Free Thought bar even before joining the group, and everybody got kinda pissed o . But I was like, ‘Yo, I don’t think anybody is gonna prove themselves like he just did—we might as well ask him to be a part of the group.’ And so we called him over, we voted, asked him in, and that was it.”
“You have to be invested for something dense,” Marley says, “or if it requires some intentional thought. I understand the times we live in. I get it—we don’t have a lot of attention span. It hit me that [my team] needed to drop music before we dropped the album. And then The Build With Me EP started to form. This is gonna be the joint or glass of wine before a heavy conversation. It’s the official ‘Nice to meet you. I’m Stock Marley, let me show you around.’”
Marley designed the soundscape of Build With Me with casual listening in mind. It’s not that he doesn’t want fans to take the time to listen to his lyrics, but rather that he also wants them to be able to play the EP in the background of their daily lives. His album, on the other hand, will be something they sit
by Elton “L10MixedIt” Chueng of Classick Studios fame. If all goes to plan, it’ll come out in late October.
By naming the EP Build With Me , Marley is inviting listeners to form organic relationships for the greater good, not just with him but also within their respective communities. Shortly after arriving in Chicago, he volunteered at a Save Money Save Life event where children were taught how to treat gunshot wounds. The experience gave him culture shock, but he knew he wanted to be a positive role model. He now serves as a board member for nonprofit organization Chicago Votes.
“I think as I’ve been moving along and just showing genuine love, the reaction I get from people is mind-blowing. There’s no genuine love—it’s all transactional,” Marley says. “But we gotta have faith, man—have faith in ourselves. If we got faith in what we’re doing, we don’t need to be flailing about in the water trying to save ourselves now. We should be reaching out for each other.”
Chicago gets a lot of criticism, Marley says, for not honoring its hip-hop roots. The oldschool sound has been overshadowed by drill artists. “They don’t show us a lot of love,” he says. “They don’t show us a lot of community. But it’s here. Touch grass, touch people, have real conversations, real ideas. Look somebody in the face and be like, ‘I love you, man.’” v m letters@chicagoreader.com
Photos by ThoughtPoet of Unsocial Aesthetics (UAES), a digital creative studio and resource collective designed to elevate community-driven storytelling and social activism in Chicago and beyond
9/22 Chicago Plays For MauiA Benefit Concert
10/11 Todd Snider
10/20 Bill Frisell
Pre-Order Today! Visit QuietDesperation.art Or scan this code with your mobile device:
Quiet Desperation is a collection of paintings and musings from the palette and pen of Chicago artist Jerry Strub. 32 stunning lithographs of his artworks are accompanied by their own narrations weaving the fictional and factual. Meandering between and beyond photorealist portraiture and abstraction, his art is an intoxicating, textured, and raw expression of life.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 8PM
Allstars In Maurer Hall
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 7:00PM
Kevin Johansen and Liniers In Maurer Hall
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 7:30PM
Frances Luke Accord with special guest Liz Chidester In Szold Hall
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 8PM
Lucy Kaplansky In Szold Hall
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 21 8PM
Clem Snide In Szold Hall
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 21 8PM
Big Bad
Voodoo Daddy In Maurer Hall
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 8PM
Garnet Rogers In Szold Hall
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 8PM
Tom Paxton & The DonJuans In Maurer Hall
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 7PM
Barcelona Gipsy
balKan Orchestra In Maurer Hall
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 8PM
David Longstreth
(of Dirty Projectors) with Sen Morimoto In Maurer Hall
The genre-defying jazz pianist has already had a long career as a bandleader, composer, promoter, and educator, but there’s still time for him to get the wider recognition he deserves.
By STEVE KRAKOWSince 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.
Idiscover subjects for the Secret History of Chicago Music lots of di erent ways—I might see an unfamiliar artist mentioned in passing during an interview with somebody better known, or spot a name I don’t recognize in the credits of a well-loved local LP. Sometimes a musician simply contacts me directly, or a friend or fan reaches out on their behalf. But my favorite way to stumble on a subject is to find an intriguing LP at a thrift shop that I know nothing about.
Innovative jazz keyboardist Marshall Vente, now in his early 70s, has been gigging around town for decades, but I didn’t hear about him that way. I saw his name for the first time almost ten years ago, when I bought a copy of the 1983 LP Endless Intensity by Marshall Vente & Project Nine at a Village Discount Outlet.
The song title “Warmest Regards From Chicago” gave me the first clue that the music might be the work of a local. The album had come out on a tiny label—Divide Records out of suburban Barrington—and its cover art looks pretty low-budget and homemade, so at first I thought Vente was probably obscure. As it turns out, though, he has an impressive career as a pianist, composer, arranger, pro-
moter, radio deejay, educator, historian, and genre-defying bandleader.
I’m a little embarrassed to admit that Vente might’ve been more of a secret to me than to Chicago’s jazz scene at large, but on the plus side, it wasn’t hard for me to track him down. All I had to do was look up his website and request an interview. After a few years of backand-forth, this summer I finally learned about Vente’s story from the man himself.
Marshall Vente was born in 1951 and raised in Roseland on the far south side, where his mother played organ in church. He started piano lessons at age seven, and in 1961 his ears were first tickled by jazz piano at the Big Apple’s famed New Yorker Hotel. That same year, Vente started studying jazz piano with
beloved teacher Bob Vilim, and he kept those lessons going when his family moved to suburban Western Springs in 1963.
The barely teenage Vente started his first band in 1966 with pals from Lyons Township High School and Hinsdale High. He soon left for college at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, where a two-day clinic and concert with renowned saxophonist Cannonball Adderley changed his life. Even more crucial, in 1968 Vente met composer and trumpeter Paul Smoker, who was teaching at the university; Smoker inspired and mentored Vente, and they joined each other’s gigs. Thanks to an agent Vente had hired in Milwaukee, Vente’s college trio landed an extended Green Bay job in May 1968 backing
continued from p. 34
British Invasion star Spencer Davis, then without a band.
In the early 70s, Vente expanded his musical horizons by studying with blind Brazilian pianist Manfredo Fest, who was well versed in jazz and bossa nova. The Marshall Vente Trio, which had existed in one form or another since 1966, settled into its longest-running lineup in the 70s: drummer Isidro Perez joined in 1975, and bassist Scott Mason came aboard in ’79. Those two musicians continue to shape Vente’s aesthetic, playing an integral role in all his projects, but since 1991, bassist Jim Batson and Brazilian drummer Luiz Ewerling have sometimes filled in as alternates.
Vente formed Project Nine (a nine-piece group, naturally) in 1979. The sizzling band would record its debut LP, Endless Intensity, in late 1982 at Acme Studios (1708 W. Belmont). The album’s large cast features Perez, Mason, and horn player Rich Corpolongo on alto sax, piccolo, flute, and clarinet (he also wrote the shape-shifting LP track “Trick Lady”). Nuanced torch singer Joyce Garro elevates standards (“Honeysuckle Rose”) as well as Vente originals (“Slightly Dukish,” which is of course followed by a Duke Ellington cover), and the band devises serene, modal versions of tunes by Wayne Shorter and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Vente also wrote the postbop-flavored title track and the smoky, cosmopolitan “Warmest Regards From Chicago.”
The release of Endless Intensity helped Vente secure institutional support for his music, which he’d already begun to pursue.
“[Pianist] Ken Chaney suggested that I apply for a National Endowment grant,” Vente recalls. “I contacted David Matthews and Gil Evans and was awarded two back-to-back jazz apprenticeship grants to study with them in NYC, 1982 till ’87. Later the NEA awarded me a composer grant.”
By that point Evans had been working with Miles Davis as an arranger for decades, shaping some of his most famous albums. Learning from him must’ve been a master class for Vente. Project Nine continued to release ac-
claimed LPs, including No Net! in 1983 and the more commercial Alison’s Backyard in 1985; both feature Perez, Mason, and vocalist Anna Dawson.
In the early 2000s, Project Nine began collaborating with one of my favorite sax players, Billy Harper. It also expanded to a 12-piece and beyond, taking on new names such as “Project Nine Plus” and, in the year 1999, “Project 99” (taking a cue from Sergio Mendes’s bands Brasil ’66 and Brasil ’88, as critic Neil Tesser noted at the time in the Reader).
Vente started the band Tropicale in 1991 to focus on modern Brazilian, Latin, and Caribbean music. The group released a self-titled album in 1996. Also in the mid-90s, Vente launched his Jazz Tropicale Cruise on the tall ship Windy, and by the time the boat’s owners discontinued the series in 2021, he’d played 46 of them. He simultaneously maintained large ensembles of 19 members or more, including the Tropicale Concert Ensemble and the Limited Edition Jazz Orchestra.
Over the years Vente has cultivated longterm partnerships with a wide variety of musicians. In the mid-90s, he met Saint Martin steel-drum virtuoso Neville York, and they collaborated on a couple of albums. He’d been friends since the late 80s with bassist Eldee Young, formerly of Ramsey Lewis’s trio and Young-Holt Unlimited, and they worked together till Young’s death in 2007. Vente and vocalist Joanie Pallatto released the duo album Two in 1997, then followed up with Two Again in 2015.
In 1992 Vente started his own radio show, Jazz Tropicale , on WDCB 90.9 FM, and it’s still airing today. A year later he founded the Marshall Vente Jazz Festival, which spotlit his own projects and those of his collaborators. It ran till 2006, hosted for the duration at the Jazz Showcase.
Decades into his career, Vente continues to wear many hats. “I play every Friday at Taurasi in Westmont, broadcast and stream Jazz Tropicale every Sunday at 10 PM on WDCB, work freelance gigs and recording sessions, and teach at Elmhurst University,” he says.
He held a job with Roosevelt University from 2014 till 2022, leading the Chicago College of Performing Arts Large Jazz Ensemble, and in 2021 he began teaching jazz history and jazz piano at Elmhurst.
“I’m writing new arrangements for Josie Falbo’s upcoming CD,” Vente says, “all Brazilian music with a huge rhythm section with multiple percussionists and six horns (like my Project Nine nonet). I can’t say when it will be released—we’re working hard on this!”
On his website, Vente includes a long list of testimonials from musical tastemakers. I’d like to close with two of them: “Though listeners often think of Vente as an impresario, bandleader and arranger, we sometimes forget how well he can play a piano,” said Howard Reich of the Chicago Tribune. “He’s one of the finest jazz pianists in the city. The larger than life tone Vente draws from the instrument, the harmonic imagination that colors everything he plays and rhythmic restlessness he expresses with his right hand distinguishes him.”
PianoForte Foundation founder Thomas Zoells went even further. “Behind the jovial exterior of Marshall Vente lies a deep soul, a highly sophisticated performer of live and improvised music, who brings music to new heights and climaxes like only very few can do,” he said. “Vente is also a perfectionist in his craft and his knowledge of the jazz piano literature is encyclopedic. Chicago is lucky to have been able to retain a musician of this stature, who certainly is a key contributor to making Chicago a world destination for jazz lovers.”
Given that Chicago has in fact retained Vente, I strongly recommend that you go see him play as soon as you can—or at least listen to his radio show. It’s not often that we get the chance to experience such a musical legacy while it’s still unfolding. v
The radio version of the Secret History of Chicago Music airs on Outside the Loop on WGN Radio 720 AM, Saturdays at 5 AM with host Mike Stephen. Past shows are archived at outsidetheloopradio.com/tag/secrethistory-of-chicago-music.
Recommended and notable shows with critics’ insights for the week of September 7
Gróa JFDR opens; DJ Hermigervill spins to begin and end the show. 7 PM, Martrys’, 3855 N. Lincoln, free with registration. 21+
In Norse mythology, Gróa is a seer and a goddess of knowledge, but when you listen to the Icelandic trio who share her name, you’ll wonder if she isn’t a little punk rock too. Two teenage sisters, guitarist and vocalist Karólina Einarsdóttir and drummer Hrafnhildur Einarsdóttir, formed Gróa six years ago with a childhood friend, bassist and vocalist Fríða Björg Pétursdóttir. They’d already had classical training, mostly on piano, when at ages 12 and 13 they began teaching themselves to play rock instruments using online tutorials. Their first live appearance was at an annual Reykjavik music contest in 2017, where they reached the finals. Since then, they’ve become beloved faces in the city’s music scene, catching attention for their quirky, propulsive songs and irreverent, high-octane stage presence—like the best DIY shows, their performances make you feel like anything could happen. That spirit comes through on the band’s albums too. Their third LP, 2021’s What I Like to Do , leads you on a rollicking adventure through twisted guitars, funky bass lines, intergalactic noise, and half-shouted, half-sung vocals. The lyrics are primarily in Icelandic, but the energy in the music doesn’t need translating, whether they’re getting activist (“Respect the Nature!”) or just having a good time (“Grannypants”). Their show is part of the Taste of Iceland tour, which hosts nine free events around the city between September 7 and 9 to introduce Chicagoans to Icelandic culture. Tonight’s bill complements Gróa’s postpunk fury with the serene, transcendent songwriting of JFDR, aka Jófríður Ákadóttir.
—JAMIE LUDWIGThe Trenchies See Pick of the Week at le . Olive Avenue headline; the Trenchies open. 8:30 PM, Golden Dagger, 2447 N. Halsted, $10. 21+
OLIVE AVENUE, THE TRENCHIES
Thu 9/7, 8:30 PM, Golden Dagger, 2447 N. Halsted, $10. 21+
CHICAGO FOUR-PIECE the Trenchies combine self-aware bookishness with carefully controlled energy, which work together to give their whimsical indie rock its irresistible momentum—their songs can make you feel like your day is filled with unforeseen possibilities. On their self-released debut EP, March’s You Are Listening To, the Trenchies juggle goofy funk (“Talk Show”), slacker pop (“Hey Junior”), and e ervescent rock ’n’ roll with the steady engine thrum of Jonathan Richman’s “Roadrunner” (“Life Preserver”). They help these disparate styles hang together with tight, slightly flamboyant playing and slyly charming humor—on “Talk Show,” singer-guitarist Logan Ludwig mimics a latenight TV host bantering with a guest, and he’s gotten a few laughs out of me by punctuating a chorus of “blah blah blah blah blah” by shouting “That’s interesting!” The Trenchies are one of the better new Chicago
bands to catch my ear this year, in part because their brain-sticky tunes so e ectively balance sincerity and whimsy. On “Reunion Show,” Ludwig sings about his hypothetical future as a twice-married former rocker whose band is coaxed into returning to the stage, and he peppers his wry observations of the Indie Rock Reunion Industrial Complex with thoughtful, self-deprecating details about his real life and its small, everyday joys (“But these days I’m 23 and I’m just glad to be living / Happy to have a friend or two that doesn’t forget my name”). The song is heartfelt, imaginative, and a tad ridiculous, and the Trenchies drive home its gentle melody with a clever, lilting keyboard countermelody from Andrew Pridmore. It’s one of my favorites of 2023, and it has me wishing I could actually hear how good this band will be in 20 years.
—LEOR GALILKhaliyah X Khaliyah X performs at 2:20 PM on the Goose Island Stage on day one of Taste of Chicago, which continues on Sat 9/9 and Sun 9/10. From 11 AM-8:45 PM, the lineup on the Goose Island Stage (in set order) is Fingy, Dew From 2001, Khaliyah X, OK Cool, Ausar, Kaina, and DJ Simmy. From 5-8 PM, the lineup on the Main Stage (with DJ Selah Say) is Mamii & Slique Jay Adams, Meagan McNeal, and Masters of the Mic: Hip-Hop 50 featuring Doug E. Fresh, EPMD, KRS-One, and Slick Rick. Grant Park, 331 E. Randolph. Fb
Khaliyah X has had a big year. The local R&B singersongwriter has performed at Navy Pier and a Chicago Sky game, earned a spot in the spring-summer “Chicago Artists to Watch” list compiled by local digital publication These Days, and made a cameo in a Wilson Basketball commercial. This weekend she’ll join scenemates such as Kaina and Ausar on the Goose Island Stage at Taste of Chicago.
In an August interview with Vocalo, X recalled performing at the Apollo Theater in New York when she was a child. She also described how devoting years of mental focus to her music has helped her reach another level and bring her artistic dreams to reality. “I’ve always been into discipline and hard work and self-improvement, since I was a kid,” she told morning host Bekoe. “This is the first time in my life that I’ve just been putting 2,000 percent effort towards my music career.”
That effort has given X a commanding confidence that comes through in her songs. On her recent single “What’s My Name,” X spells out her bona fides and boundaries, calling out her male counterparts who lack ambition and lag behind in personal development. “I’m always stuck with the men who got potential / Do I look like Brenda Build-a-Nigga?” she raps in a flowery, staccato flow. “Put ’em together, they leave me broken / So I ain’t going.”
The single’s beat, by producer Sinkslow, samples Alicia Keys’s “You Don’t Know My Name,” cleverly integrating its famous chord progression into the refrain. Keys’s song is an ode to pursuing a crush from afar, but Khaliyah X flips it into an incitement to seize the day. “‘What’s My Name’ is like the ‘X’ side of me,” she told Vocalo. “I’m stepping into myself; I’m being bold. I just wanted to say what I wanted to say and have fun.”
The track is Khaliyah X’s first release since the August 2022 EP Just for the Summer, and it’s a perfect reintroduction to her bubbling talent. These days, she’s going full steam ahead, and as the stars continue to align for her, you’d best remember her name.
—MATT HARVEYBoris, Melvins Mr. Phylzzz opens. 7:30 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $35. 18+
The Twins of Evil tour brings together two of the heaviest trios on the planet: Japanese shapeshifters Boris, whose nearly four dozen studio
releases cover practically every heavy subgenre imaginable, and American sludge pioneers the Melvins, who are celebrating their 40th anniversary. Each group will play an iconic album from front to back.
Boris will perform the landmark 2002 LP Heavy Rocks , freshly reissued by Third Man for its 21st birthday (the digital version is already out, and the vinyl drops September 18). The trio’s first three records are massive, menacing, and droney, and planted Boris firmly in the doom-metal world, but with Heavy Rocks they reinvented themselves as a stoner-rock powerhouse who worshiped at the altars of Black Sabbath, Pentagram, and Motörhead. The record proved that Boris could also dominate in an arena where swagger and melody ruled the day, and it kicked off more than two decades of experimentation—they’ve since explored thrash, psych, crust, shoegaze, industrial, hardcore, and more.
Formed in 1983, the Melvins invented a genre of their own by gumming up punk rock and then slowing it down into fearless, earth-shattering sludge metal. Practically every modern heavy band in America owes them a debt of gratitude, and game-changers such as Nirvana, Eyehategod, and Yob have been open about how much the group influenced their songwriting. Boris chose their name in homage to the Melvins—specifically a song from the band’s 1991 masterpiece, Bullhead , which the Melvins will play in full on this tour.
Melvins drummer Dale Crover, whose fractured, behind-the-beat throb gives their bombastic ooze much of its perverted charm, is recovering from emergency spinal surgery and had to stay home. Filling in will be Coady Willis, who’s a drum monster himself. He’s played in Big Business and the Murder City Devils, and since 2021 he’s been a member of High on Fire. Most relevant to this gig, he served as the Melvins’ second drummer from 2006 till 2015, playing another full kit alongside Crover. Despite the last-minute lineup change, I think they’ll be just fine. —LUCA CIMARUSTI
continued from p. 39
Precocious Neophyte Blinker headline; Precocious Neophyte, Chaepter, and James Barrs open. 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, $15. 17+
By 2021, I knew every dusty corner of my twobedroom apartment so well—and my world during that stage of the pandemic contained so little else— that my everyday reality felt suffocating and small. That year, South Korean singer-songwriter Jeehye Ham started working on her debut album as Precocious Neophyte in her Chicago apartment, but her home-recorded dream pop doesn’t feel confined—it’s as endless as a clear horizon. The tranquil warmth of Home in the Desert (released in 2022 and just reissued in an expanded version by Savannahslash-Chicago label Graveface) calms and comforts like a hearty stew on a winter evening. Ham sings in Korean, and her willowy, almost whispered vocals seem to melt into the resonant synths and thick, reverb-treated guitar, which echoes like nets of crisscrossing ripples propagating across a pond. Her minimal bass and drum patterns don’t usually do much but give her lush melodies something to drape themselves over, but she can kick the rhythm section into a erburner mode when she needs to—a quick, sharp drum fill in the middle of “Yasik (Midnight Meal)” blows up the song into a saturated wall
of sound. Given how much space Ham can fill with her solo work, I’m curious to hear what kind of noise she can make with the full-band version of Precocious Neophyte.
—LEOR GALILDead Lucid Vinyl Palace and ChinaRose open.
9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 21+. F
Chicago rock trio Dead Lucid self-released their debut, titled simply EP , in 2016, and since then they’ve tightened up their bedraggled, bluesy psych-rock style by borrowing from classic postpunk. On their self-released third EP, May’s Vision , they summon an austere composure to compress their former fuzz and fury into newly sparse arrangements. The EP’s best songs build a huge, engrossing sound out of controlled repetition that makes small gestures feel like shocks to your system. Dead Lucid never give you the catharsis of an earth-shaking shi —the most startling aspect of “Start It Up,” for instance, is the gently strummed electric guitar erupting into a hairy midsong solo. But the band’s ability to maintain a gnawing sense of foreboding, even without any clear payoffs, makes their songs as hard to ignore as brush-
fires that might grow into conflagrations. Front man Jon Grammer occasionally injects wild-man panache, either ramping up his vocals for a short burst or dropping a guitar solo that slices through the arrangement like a viper strike. On “Ordinary Freak,” Dead Lucid return to the shaggy psych meanderings of their early days, though they play with a new focus that propels the song through its languorous passages, creating a relaxing sense of blissful immersion that persists even through the tune’s up-tempo middle section. —LEOR
GALILBlk Odyssy Eimaral Sol opens. 9 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, $30, $75 for VIP, $25 in advance. 18+
Blk Odyssy is the brainchild of singer and producer Sam Houston (aka Juwan Elcock), a New Jersey native who moved to Austin, Texas, in 2015. At first he explored Austin’s Americana scene, but then he carved out a niche in crooning, experimental neosoul rap, using the name Blk Odyssy. Working with guitarist Alejandro Rios, he’s transformed the project from a solo act into a full band, and they’ve channeled their varied inspirations and experiences into a jumble of R&B, hip-hop, funk, neosoul, and
jazz—and into memorable live sets that Austin NPR affiliate KUTX ranked among central Texas’s best. Blk Odyssey’s 2021 debut album, Blk Vintage, garnered critical acclaim, and the next year independent label Empire Records released an expanded version. Blk Vintage Reprise further boosted Blk Odyssy’s profile and popularity, with new tracks featuring guests such as Griselda’s Benny the Butcher and Parliament Funkadelic grandmaster George Clinton.
Blk Odyssy have also had a triumphant 2023: they’ve released a second studio album, Diamonds & Freaks, and an accompanying live record, Live From Gold Diggers . The former is a funky, face-scrunching trip through sex, memories, and facing the consequences of one’s pleasurable antics. Dripped out with production from the Alchemist and with appearances by the likes of Bootsy Collins and Rapsody, the record moves between slinky grooves and hedonistic theorizing. The live album is a compact six tracks where the musicians breathe fresh ideas into the songs and punch them up with jazz-heavy breaks and tight chord explorations. At this Schubas date, their energy will doubtless translate into a great show with all the vibes you could possibly handle. As the slogan goes, “Keep Austin Weird,” and Blk Odyssy are doing their part by making Black music with a fresh sound that’s equally perfect for dark, sweaty dance clubs and sneaky-linked hangouts. —CRISTALLE
BOWENImpromptu Fest day one See also Wed 9/13, Thu 9/14, Fri 9/15, and Sat 9/16. Sapphire Woodwind Quintet headline; Codex Trio and Holly Roadfeldt (playing Anthony Lanman) open. 5 PM, Epiphany Center for the Arts, 201 S. Ashland. Fb
Chicago has its fair share of festivals that orbit within the solar system of contemporary classical music, including the smartly curated Frequency Festival, the block-party celebration of Thirsty Ears, and the citywide extravaganza Ear Taxi, which returns every few years. But the vibrancy of the city’s contemporary classical community is such that there isn’t just room for more such festivals—they’re very much in demand.
The Impromptu Fest, which returns this month for its fourth edition after a hiatus last year, is a welcome addition to the scene. Organized by New Music Chicago, the same nonprofit that presents Ear Taxi, Impromptu has more than doubled in scope this year, growing to 15 free performances (from six in 2021), spread across five days and three venues: Epiphany Center for the Arts, Elastic Arts, and High Concept Labs (at Mana Contemporary in Pilsen). The lineup mixes freshly minted upstarts with accomplished long-timers, such as composer and filmmaker Renée Baker (a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) and her Modern Black Music Ensemble. The newer kids on the block include Masso Quartet (an all-saxophone group), Codex Trio (piano, cello, and violin), and OLEA (a quartet whose unusual instrumentation consists of violin, cello, piano, and clarinet). On Tuesday, September 12, pianist Holly Roadfeldt launches the festivities with a performance of Anthony Lanman’s Hommages, a tender, endearing series of miniatures dedicated to the Indiana-based composer’s artistic heroes (including tributes to
the first night of the fest, and the result was total sonic combustion. This time they’ll play two nights at the Hungry Brain, and Nace says that during one set he’ll use an electrified taishōgoto (aka Nagoya harp), an instrument developed in Japan and widely adopted in East Africa that uses typewriter-like keys to change the pitch of its strings. Nace reliably coaxes unearthly sounds out of his guitar, so the possibilities for his taishōgoto playing are staggering.
Both performances will be recorded by local polymath Cooper Crain. He’s best known as a musician—his many projects have included hypno-rock outfits Cave and Bitchin Bajas and a duo with guitarist Bill MacKay—but he’s also an experienced studio engineer. He recorded Fohr’s 2021 LP, -io, and the hope is that these Hungry Brain recordings will yield an album as well. Fohr expects the crowd to be crucial to the final result. “Our music absolutely depends on energy, and much of that is up to the audience,” she says. “So the people who choose to attend these concerts not only control much of our efforts but will also be an invisible, integral piece of our first record.” That’s an extra reason to attend these special shows, which might just li you into the cosmos.
—STEVE KRAKOWChris Speed Trio 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $20. 18+
continued from p. 40
Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, author Neil Gaiman, and actor Tony Kushner). And because no proper new-music fest would be complete without some brand-new music, Impromptu promises plenty of premieres. They include Dynamic Fabric: Chicago Intersections by local saxophonist and electronicmusic composer Mark Nagy, a DCASE commission evoking episodes in Chicago history with music and choreography; a string quartet by cellist Tomeka Reid, played by Black chamber-music collective D-Composed; and a new Ramin Roshandel piece for setar (a traditional Persian lute) and live electronics.
—HANNAH EDGAR
Impromptu Fest day two See Tue 9/12. Mark Nagy’s Station 4 headline; the _____ Experiment and Juliann Wang open. 7 PM, Elastic Arts, 3429 W. Diversey #208. Fb
Impromptu Fest day three See Tue 9/12. D-Composed headline; Tricia Park and Masso Quartet open. 5 PM, Epiphany Center for the Arts, 201 S. Ashland. Fb
Impromptu Fest day four See Tue 9/12.
Renee Baker’s Modern Black Music Ensemble headlines; OLEA and Ramin Roshandel & Jean-
Francois Charles open. 7 PM, High Concept Labs, 2233 S. Throop #401. Fb
Bill Nace & Haley Fohr See also Sat 9/16. Alison Chesley & Steve Marquett open. 9 PM, Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont, $10. 21+
For more than a decade, Chicago musician Haley Fohr, who also makes music as Circuit des Yeux, has been honing and expanding her craft. She’s taken her transcendent vocal explorations, art-rock ensembles, and live film scores to far-off places around the globe. Just when I thought I’d witnessed her lend her powerful four-octave voice to every possible incarnation, she turns up in a new project with Philadelphia-based visual artist and avantgarde guitarist Bill Nace. I was excited enough by their show announcement to write this preview for the Reader, and a er I filed it, Fohr and Nace asked me to illustrate a flyer for them—an honor I couldn’t refuse.
Nace’s musical résumé includes an eclectic assortment of collaborators, including freejazz titans Joe McPhee and Paul Flaherty, multiinstrumentalist Samara Lubelski, and pedal-steel guitarist Susan Alcorn. He’s also worked with both halves of the former Sonic Couple, Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, most recently with Gordon in fuzzand-drone outfit Body/Head. That all makes him a natural foil for Fohr. “I think our duo specifically works due to our abilities within extended technique,” she says. “We both have a very unique and singular approach to our instrument. Our music is ecstatic and very push-pull, like a maniacal conversation in some coded alien language.”
Fohr and Nace have performed together once before, during the 2022 Frequency Festival at Constellation. Curator Peter Margasak (a former Reader staff writer) asked them to join forces and headline
In his own projects and his collaborations with others, tenor saxophonist and clarinetist Chris Speed often makes music with a compounded quality, as though he and his associates are trying to concentrate as much information as possible into the available space. Human Feel packed the divergent aesthetics of four strong players into each tune; Pachora combined jazz with the hurtling velocity and idiosyncratic rhythms of Balkan folk; and
Tim Berne’s Bloodcount used open-ended, contrapuntal epics to test the limits of the performers’ stamina and imaginations. But the Chris Speed Trio, which has been extant for ten years, distills jazz to its essentials. Speed’s vision of the genre is inclusive: the group’s 2017 release, Platinum on Tap , features compositions by Tin Pan Alley songwriter Hoagy Carmichael and free-jazz titan Albert Ayler. But no matter where the tune comes from, it has to be clear and emotionally communicative. Speed is patient; witness his painstakingly tender treatment of the original ballad “Sunset Park in July” on the trio’s new album, Despite Obstacles (Intakt). But he’s also pithy, prioritizing the integrity of a melody over whatever exploratory opportunities it might present. And no matter what contrary elements bassist Chris Tordini (who’s also worked with Lee Konitz and Angelika Niescier) and drummer Dave King (who also plays with Speed in the Bad Plus) sneak into their accompaniment, the trio sustains a graceful, swinging rhythmic foundation. —BILL MEYER
Impromptu Fest day five See Tue 9/12. William Jason Raynovich headlines; Tim Corpus & Alyssa Arigo open. A panel of High Concept Labs artists in residence (Shi-An Costello, Mabel Kwan, and Allen Moore) begins at 4 PM, and a closing reception follows at 5:30 PM. Music begins at 7 PM. High Concept Labs, 2233 S. Throop #401. Fb
Bill Nace & Haley Fohr See Fri 9/15. Nunn open. 9 PM, Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont, $10. 21+ v
SUN 10/29
Hallo-Queen! featuring Derrick Carter, DJ Holographic, Mark Grusane, Justin Cudmore, and more 9 PM, Metro and Smart Bar
TUE 10/31
Blonde Redhead 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+
The Church 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b
WED 11/1
The Church 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b
Play On benefit featuring the JuJu Exchange, King Melik, Merit School of Music Honors Jazz Combo
7 PM, City Winery b
FRI 11/3
Isaac et Nora 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b
THU 9/21
Kuinka, Darling Suns 8:30 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn Silicone Prairie, Answering Machines!, Tension Pets 9 PM, Empty Bottle
FRI 9/22
Sun Room, Sports Team 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall b
Tim Atlas, Pink Skies 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+
SAT 9/23
Nothing but Thieves, Kid Kapichi 8 PM, the Vic b Royal Blood, Bad Nerves 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b
SUN 9/24
Loona 7:30 PM, Chicago Theatre b
MON 9/25
Bruno Major, Lindsey Lomis 7:30 PM, the Vic b
TUE 9/26
Jonathan Hannau, Pinson Chamber Band 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston b
WED 9/27
Kat & the Hurricane, Disaster Kid, Billy Joel Jr., Dogbod 7:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+
THU 9/28
Midamerican Elevator, Jane Hobson, Medical Miracle 8 PM, Schubas F
FRI 9/29
The Blaze 7 PM, Radius Chicago b
Godstar Megamax, Tchochke, R.Mutt 9 PM, Gman Tavern
FRI 12/1
Riot Ten, Effin, Skellytn 9 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+
SAT 12/2
Harlem Hayfield, Wht.Rbbt. Obj, Chocolate in Your Pocket, Matt Carter Band 8 PM, Reggies Music Joint
MON 12/4
Eartheater 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+
Lil Uzi Vert 7 PM, Radius Chicago b
WED 12/6
SAT 9/30
Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys 9 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn
Peter Gabriel 8 PM, United Center b
SUN 10/1
Loraine James 9 PM, Empty Bottle
Keke Wyatt 5 and 8:30 PM, City Winery b
THU 10/5
Jordan Hamilton 9 PM, Tack Room F
Christian JaLon, Morgan Gold, DJ Devonn 8 PM, Golden Dagger
Jessie Ware 7:30 PM, the Vic b
FRI 10/6
Superkick, Cavves, Morpho 8:30 PM, Gman Tavern
SAT 10/7
Sin., Daylongsigh, Ryan Borens, Shotgun Funeral 6:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+
SUN 10/8
Maude Latour, Devon Again 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+
Tophouse 8 PM, Golden Dagger
WED 10/11
Kurt Elling & Charlie Hunter 7 and 9:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston b
SAT 10/14
Kankan, Summrs, F1lthy, Highway, Osamason 7 PM, Concord Music Hall b
Dale Watson 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b
SUN 10/15
Marco Antonio Solís 8 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont b
TUE 10/17
Infinity Song 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+
WED 10/18
Tirzah 8 PM, Metro, 18+
Jackie Venson 8 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn
THU 10/19
Maddie Vogler 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+
FRI 10/20
Death Pose, Slow Death, Grave Animosity 9 PM, Gman Tavern
SAT 10/21
Anjunabeats A er Dark 10 PM, Radius Chicago, 18+
MON 10/23
Justin Hayward 8 PM, City Winery b
Lil Uzi Vert 6:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom b
TUE 10/24
Justin Hayward 8 PM, City Winery b
WED 10/25
Lucy Porter 8 PM, Golden Dagger
FRI 10/27
Mary Lattimore, Jeremiah Chiu 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+
Mr. Sun, Lonesome Ace String Band 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b
SAT 10/28
Skinny Lister, Pet Needs, Bandaid Brigade 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+
SAT 11/4
Rosie Tucker 7 PM, Tack Room, 17+
WED 11/8
Zack Fox, Sky Jetta 8 PM, Metro, 18+
FRI 11/10
Lurk, Instill, Turquoise 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+
MON 11/13
Dirty Honey, Austin Meade
6:30 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+
TUE 11/14
Scene Queen 7 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+
FRI 11/17
This Wild Life, Broadside, Worry Club, Not My Weekend 7 PM, Bottom Lounge b
SAT 11/18
Subtronics, Virtual Riot, Barely Alive, Trivecta, Austeria
7 PM, Credit Union 1 Arena b
MON 11/20
Boy Golden 8 PM, Schubas, 18+
WED 11/22
Coven, Lucifer, Early Moods 7 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+
FRI 11/24
Faith Evans, Kelly Price, Jon B. 8 PM, Chicago Theatre b
SAT 11/25
Menzingers, Cloud Nothings, Rodeo Boys 7:30 PM, Salt Shed, 17+
TUE 11/28
Urban Heat, Rare DM 9 PM, Empty Bottle
Dylan Matthew, Rachel Grae 7 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+
SUN 12/10
Mora 7 PM, House of Blues b
Nick Zoulek 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+
FRI 12/15
Travis Scott 7 PM, United Center b
SAT 12/16
Pink Talking Fish 8:30 PM, Park West, 18+
WED 12/20
Pat McCurdy 8 PM, BanAnna’s Comedy Shack at Reggies
FRI 12/29
Raheem DeVaughn 7 and 10:30 PM, City Winery b
THU 2/1/2024
Madonna 8:30 PM, United Center b
FRI 2/2/2024
Madonna 8:30 PM, United Center b
MON 2/12/2024
Playboi Carti, Homixide Gang, Ken Carson, Destroy Lonely 7:30 PM, United Center b
SUN 3/10/2024
Dervish 7 PM, City Winery b
WED 3/13/2024
Sham 69 7:30 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+
MON 3/18/2024
Westlife 8 PM, Chicago Theatre b
SUN 4/14/2024
Oumou Sangaré 7 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music bv
PIANIST PAT LEARY has played in so many local ensembles it’d be easy to lose count. These days he tickles the ivories in Latin R&B band Partywatcher and indie country outfit Thompson Springs, accompanies jazz singer Livia Gazzolo , and improvises in free-jazz quartet Heuristic with saxophonist and flutist Eric Novak , bassist Jeff Wheaton, and drummer Alex Santilli . That’s not even a complete list! Last month, Leary dropped a standout trio record, Trio, which combines his soulful electric piano with beguiling, bustling playing by the rhythm section of Wheaton and Santilli. The resulting three-song album contains two fully improvised pieces and a skittering cover of Miles Davis’s “Solar.” The trio’s sound is an intriguing mix of cocktail-bar sophistication and dri ing, moody jazz fusion, and it would’ve fit in fine on the Blue Note roster in the late 60s. The trio performs on Tuesday, September 12, at Fulton Street Collective with Thwartet (pianist Erez Dressel, saxophonist Sarah Clausen, bassist Tyler Wagner, and drummer Lily Glick Finnegan ). Music starts at 8 PM.
In June 2023, the Whistler’s storefront windows debuted an installation called Say Yes , which offers a dreamlike view into a cramped, homey apartment where every object is made of crocheted yarn .
Created by Preeti Samraj and Jade Carrico of dark, synthy indie-pop band Rose Lake, the installation shares its name with the four-piece group’s latest EP (which came out in July). The Say Yes installation closes on Tuesday, September 12, and that night Rose Lake play a free show at the Whistler alongside Así Así
Gossip Wolf hasn’t heard much yet about emerging local postpunk four-piece Model Living, but bassist Matt Ciani also plays in doom-metal band Flesh of the Stars and dance-punk group Arthhur. On Friday, Model Living dropped their debut EP, Alignment, which wrings every drop of satisfaction out of its slow-boiling tension.
—J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALILGot a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or email gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.
D ear Readers: I asked the married straight women who follow me on X and Threads why they weren’t sucking their husbands’ dicks anymore. Obvious answers poured in—oral wasn’t reciprocated, poor personal hygiene, no longer in love, guilty admissions that sucking dick was a strategy—so I rephrased the question and asked again. I wanted women who still love their husbands and used to love sucking cock and no longer suck cock to explain what changed. Here are a few of their letters.
M y husband and I have been together for 12 years. We have a loving relationship and I’m not looking to go anywhere but have to admit that I would be a bit more excited to suck some newto-me dick. I’d also wager there’s some fucked up purity culture fallout involved—I was raised in the church and tend to fantasize about the forbidden, and there’s nothing forbidden about sex with your husband.
B low jobs are fantastic. I love giving them, but at this point, I’d rather give a stranger a blow job than my husband. I don’t think there is any issue with the act, but with all the cultural bullshit women are exhausted by— blow jobs are something men feel entitled to, yet another act of service women are expected to perform. In reality, a married woman’s entire day is an act of service. I do all of the emotional labor and take on the entire mental
load of running a family and household, all while also having a full-time job. I miss giving blow jobs for fun.
M y husband got a blow job on a work trip. He doesn’t know I found out, and I don’t plan to tell him because I don’t feel betrayed. I feel relieved. But I think he would be upset to learn that I’m not upset. I love him (very much!) and I want him to be happy (and I make him happy in lots of ways!), but I don’t want his penis in my face ever again. Knowing he got a blow job and could get another sometime makes me feel less guilty. But since I want this to be a very rare thing, I think it’s better he doesn’t know that I know and certainly not that I approve. We still have good and frequent PIV and use toys. Still fantasize about performing oral sex on a man, but it’s never my husband in my fantasies.
I love my husband. We’ve been married for a decade, we have two children, and I actually think we are having the best sex of our married lives now. We’ve been getting kinkier and more adventurous as we get older. That said, I do not like giving head anymore, not at all. And I know I’m not alone, since many of my married girlfriends have told me they feel the same way. It’s hard to find an angle that doesn’t pinch my neck or hurt my knees, and it’s not fun to be reminded in the middle of sex that your body is older and creakier. And since it’s not very fun for me, I don’t think it’s fun for my
husband. Maybe head is just a young person’s game.
M y relationship to the almighty BJ has changed. The hubs and I have been married for 15 years in October. I’m in my late 30s, he’s in his early 40s, and we have four awesome kids. To be honest, I used to enjoy giving head and was pretty good at it. But since giving up alcohol a little over a year ago, I’m less inclined to jump to a BJ. It took me a while to connect the dots, but I realized that alcohol gets me horny and eager and without it I’m a little less motivated. I still do it, but more as a sidebar/ treat now, and rarely to completion.
G ay man here with an observation to share. My husband sucked my cock like a madman when we first met. We’ve been together for 12 years now and he doesn’t suck my cock like that anymore—but I’ve watched him suck the cocks of other men like he used to suck mine. I think a desire to show someone how much you want them inspires a person to suck cock like that. Once you’ve got someone, you’re not as inspired. My advice to straight couples: want to see your wife suck cock like she used to? Watch her suck someone else’s cock. Want your cock sucked like that? Get someone else to suck it. v
Ask your burning questions, download podcasts, read full column archives, and more at the URL savage.love. m mailbox@savage.love
Sales/Biz Dev Representative-Chicago Reader
Sales representatives sell print, digital, and ad products to local businesses. Sales reps shoudl have 2 years of sales experience OR similar skills, & knowledge of media/advertising products. Ideal candidates will be familiar with CRM software & GSuite. Comp packages vary (full or part time), & include salary, commission, and health benefits. Diverse candidates encouraged to apply. This is an ongoing search. Send a resume to careers@chicagoreader. com.
Data Analyst Groupon, Inc. is seeking a Data Analyst in Chicago, IL with the following responsibilities: Develop a deep understanding of and continuously improve the fraud & payments data ETL processes through use of SQL, Python, and Excel VBA. 100% telecommuting allowed from anywhere in the U.S. Apply at www. grouponcareers.com by searching keyword R27799
Instrumentation and Controls Engineer LanzaTech Inc. in Skokie, IL seeks an Instrumentation and Controls Engineer in to provide functional and technical oversight for reactors. Reqs. MS + 3yrs exp. or BS + 5 yrs. exp. To apply mail resume to LanzaTech, Attn: HR, 8045 Lamon Ave, Suite 400, Skokie, Illinois 60077. Reference Job Title & Job Code: 000076.
(Chicago, IL)
1WorldSync, Inc seeks Lead Software Engineer y s e p i e in IT incl exp in LANSA, Web, Mobile & creat & maint bus app sftwre dvlp mthdlgies; Enterprise Apps; & creat apps in LANSA or J2EE & supp apps/sftwre in dvlp. Apply online https://1worldsync. com/es/careers/ or to HR, 300 S Riverside Plaza #1400, Chicago, IL 60606
ACCOUNTANT CTM
ADVISORS, LTD. seek an Accountant. Mail resume to 1 Overlook Point, STE 190, Lincolnshire, IL.
Manufacturing Processes Engineer: Manufacturing Processes Engineer: Analyze prod processes to identify inefficiencies, lower costs & higher prod. Dev & impl strategies, managing resources, optimizing & maintaining docs. Works w/milltornics vertical milling, CNC lathes, CMM machine for parts insp. Oversee manuf processes incl knowledge of materials, tech processes, fixtures design, CNC machines progr. Det machine layouts & programs. Quotations for customers. Facilitate comm w/ cus-
tomers. Blueprints, tool layouts & programs. Test products. Standard prod ate, i p e ie y BS i Mechanical Engineering. 2 yrs exp as manufacturing process engineer or engineering project manager. Res: Reba Machine Corp, 767 N Edgewood Ave, Wood Dale IL 60191
Program Manager Mercer HR Services, LLC (FT; Chicago, IL - Remote work may be permitted w/in commutable dist from worksite). Lead endto-end implementation of complex, multi-yr projs & progs oriented around Darwin™ for new & existing global clients using proprietary proj delivery methodology, DDM, & PRINCE2 & Agile proj mgmt methods.
RQTS: Bach deg or foreign equiv in Biz Admin, Biz Mgmt, or rel + 5 yrs of progressively resp posta e p i p siti e e , or as an Implementation Cnsltnt, Cnsltnt, or rel. Must have 5 yrs of exp w/: Mnging clients to scope, pushing back on scope creep; Mnging client teams comprising multiple depts & 3rd-pty contacts & stakeholders across hierarchical levels, incl C-level stakeholders.
5% domestic & int’l travel req’d to various & unanticipated co & client sites. APPLY: https:// careers.marshmclennan. com using Keyword R_242070. EOE
PEAK6 Capital Mgt. seeks Algorithmic Trader in Chicago, Illinois (Various Unanticipated Worksites) to research & dvlp develop analytical tools to address portfolio construction, optimization, performance measurement, et al. Reqs. Master’s degree or foreign equiv in Computational Finance, Financial Economics, or el fiel y s p st a calaureate exp. as Quantitative Research Analyst or rel. role. Exp. must incl. creating data-driven trading algorithms, Python programming, Convex Optimization, Machine Learning and Neural-Network models to improve portfolio management strategies. Position will be headquartered in Chicago, IL but is a telecommuting position, allowing for remote employment from various unanticipated worksites throughout the United States. Email resume: svallette@peak6. com
Vice President, Application Engineer, Senior Engineer I BlackRock Financial Management, Inc. seeks a Vice President, Application Engineer, Senior Engineer I in Chicago, IL to build quality software and scaling technology to meet the business needs. MS&4yrs or BS&6yrs. To apply: visit https://careers. blackrock.com/ Job Requisition #: R232286.
Data Scientist Groupon, Inc. is seeking a Data Scientist in Chicago, IL with the following responsibilities: Design and build scalable computing systems for collecting, integrating, and processing large sets of structured and unstructured data from disparate sources and feed the results of the computations to other downstream systems within established service level agreement timeframes. Can telecommute up to 100% from Seattle or Chicago. Up to 5% travel required. Apply at www. grouponcareers.com by searching keyword R27808
(Itasca, IL)Byonyks Medical Devices, Inc. seeks Business Intelligence & Strategic Finance Analyst w bach or for deg equiv in Bus Analyt, Data Analyt, Fin or rel fld & 2 yrs exp in job offer or in st at fi el t e tu e ap invest. Emp also accpts mast or for deg equiv in Bus Analyt, Data Analyt, i el yea e p i e i st at fi el t venture cap invest. Must have exp in fin model, fin analyt, data analyt or bus analyt & data drvn mrkt anlys; Fin Model in MS Excel, Data Anlys on Alteryx or Python or R or Excel, Data Viz on Tableau or Power BI. Apply to HR, 550 E. Devon Ave. Unit 140, Itasca, IL 60143
ENGINEERING
DRW Associates LLC has opening in Chicago, IL for Sftw Engr (Position ID SE/NJ/L001): Architect + implement new apps on I s f fi t a i Req: MS in CE, EE or rel & 3 yrs exp. Will accept BS in CE, EE or rel & 5 yrs exp. 100% telecommute OK. Email resume apply@drw. com, Attn: M. CARTER. Must ref. Pos. ID to ensure consider for proper position. EOE.
MULTIPLE POSITIONS
DRW Holdings LLC has openings in Chicago, IL for: Sr. SDET (Position ID SE/IL/K044 ) to perform auto test of highly customiz. web-based front-end tools for fin trading. Req BS in CS, CE, or rel & 8 yrs prog. Resp. post-bac. exp; Quantitative Researcher (Position ID QR/IL/L050) under sup, dev & improve quant trad strat x multiple mkts / time horizons. Req MS in Fin Math, Fin, Fin Engr, Comp Fin, or rel & 2 mo intern exp. Email resume apply@drw.com, Attn: M. CARTER. Must ref. Pos ID to ensure consider. for proper position. EOE.
AArete a fast-growing global management consulting firm is recruiting for the following position
of .NET Developer: Associates Degree in Computer Science, Computer Information Systems, Information Technology, or Mathematics, plus 5 years’ experience in: C#, Asp.Net, SQL, AICS Framework, Kafka, PCF (Pivotal Cloud Foundry), Dynatrace, OCTOPUS. May telecommute from any location in the United States. (Job Code 202303). Please send resume to HR AArete, LLC., 200 E. Randolph Street, Suite 3010, Chicago, IL 60601. Please refer to job code in your cover letter.
Cloud Engineers Imbuesys, Inc. in Rolling Meadows, IL is seek’g Cloud Engineers to dsgn & implemt secure & scalable cloud solut’ns. No trvl. No telecom. Job duties are proj-based @ unanticipated sites w/in U.S. Relo may be req’d @ proj. end. Send resumes to: Imbuesys, Inc., Attn: HR, 3315 Algonquin Rd., Ste. 102, Rolling Meadows, IL 60008
Business Intelligence Analyst Machinery Marketing International is seeking a Business Intelligence Analyst to build, update and maintain business intelligence tools, databases, dashboards, systems or other reusable data assets. Position requires a Master\’s Degree in Information Systems or related; Interested applicants can mail resume with code MMI23 to: Machinery Marketing International, 1626 W. Lake Street, 2nd Floor, Chicago, IL 60612.
Assistant Professor Loyola University Chicago is seeking an Assistant Professor in Chicago, IL to perform research in the area of topology of manifolds combining techniques from homotopy theory, category theory, and geometric topology. Up to 10% travel required. Please send resume to ptingley@luc.edu and reference job #102279.
Coeur Mining Inc. has multiple openings for Senior IT Business Analyst(s) in Chicago, IL The Senior IT Business Analyst will be a key contributor to IT business partner function at Coeur Mining. Provide Oracle and user administration support to functional groups. Coordinate and ensure the timely administration of license management. REQS: This position requires a Bachelor’s degree Computer Science, Business, Information Technology Management or related fiel a yea s f experience in IT Engineering or related. Also must have work experience with Demonstrated experience and understanding of business systems and
analysis; Experience gathering, analysis and translation of business requirements into technical spe ifi ati s pe ie e developing and writing functional business requirements, analyzing user requirements, designing and documenting system components; Develop project plan/scope, requirements, master test plans, test cases; Create status reports, budget risk assessments, project plans, schedules and other documentation required f assu i e e ti e a comprehensive project controls; Identify and resolve application issues, system enhancements and new user requirements; and Troubleshoot and debug IT systems to ensure error-free functionality and end-user satisfaction. Apply online at www. coeur.com, search Senior IT Business Analyst (Reference #1571).
Analyst I, Finance
Grubhub Holdings Inc. seeks an Analyst I, Finance in Chicago. IL to develop an understanding of the business & use it to provide visibility into Grubhub’s financial & operational performance. Telecomm. permitted w/in MSA. Apply at jobpostingtoday.com Ref 23209.
Multiple Openings Arcus Technologies, Inc. dba Kat Tech Systems, Inc. in Arlington Heights, IL is seek’g:
A) Software Developers (.NET) to dsgn & dvlp SW solut’ns.
B) Software Developers (PEGA) to dsgn & dvlp PEGA PRCP SW solut’ns. Post’ns A&B: No trvl. No telecom. Job duties are proj-based @ unanticipated sites w/in U.S. Relo may be req’d @ proj. end. Send Resumes to: Arcus Technologies, Inc. dba Kat Tech Systems, Inc., Attn: HR, 855 E. Golf Rd., Ste. 1126, Arlington Heights, IL 60005
Engagement Manager –Implementation positions avail w/ McKinsey & Co, Inc. US in Chicago, IL. Dvlp relationships w/ clients; be expert in impl & delivering results. Req’s Master’s in Bus Admin, Fin, Econ, or non-bus adv degree, & 2 yrs of exp w/ a major top-tier int’l mgmt consulting firm as Assoc-Implementation or Consultant. Domestic & int’l travel typically required. Dest & freq impossible to predict.
Salary Range: $146,000$242,000 /yr. Email resume to CO@mckinsey.com and refer to CTR4444. Multiple positions.
Associate Partner positions avail w/ McKinsey & Co, Inc. US in Chicago, IL. Lead a team
comprised of Engagement Managers, Associates, Business Analysts, Research Analysts, and others in support of discrete engagements.
Direct the team to resolve complex business problems associated with the engagement. Req’s Master’s in Bus Admin, Fin, Econ (or non-bus adv degree) & 3 yrs of exp, 1 of which must be at Engagement Mgr level w/ a major top-tier int’l mgmt consulting firm.
Alternatively, Bachelor\’s in Bus Admin, Fin, Econ (or non-bus undergrad degree) & 5 yrs of exp, 1 of which must be at Engagement Mgr level w/ a major top-tier int\’l mgmt consulting firm. Domestic & Int\’l travel typically required. Dest & freq impossible to predict.
Salary Range: $243,000$279,000 /yr. Email resume to CO@mckinsey.com and refer to CTR0825. Multiple positions.
Senior Business Analyst positions avail w/ McKinsey & Co, Inc. US in Chicago, IL. Determine & apply analytical skills & tech expertise to mgmt consult engagements & complete discrete pieces of study/work stream such as data gathering, factual & stats analys.
Req’s Bachelor’s in Bus Admin, Fin, Econ, or nonbus undergrad degree, & 2 yrs exp as Business Analyst w/ a major toptier int’l mgmt consulting firm. Domestic & int’l travel typically required. Dest and freq impossible to predict. Salary Range: $112,000 - $208,000 / yr. Email resume to CO@ mckinsey.com and refer to CTR0821. Multiple positions.
Director, Informatica ETL Technical Lead Director, Informatica ETL Technical Lead wanted by Merastar Insurance Company in Chicago, IL. DUTIES: Work closely with insurance source system SMEs to analyze, estimate and efi e ata t a sf ati requirements to load data into EDW, General Ledger systems from various heterogenous sources such as Guidewire Policy, Claims and Billing Center, flat files, and legacy source systems such as Mainframe, AS400 etc. Create ETL architecture and design flows to illustrate data movement from Legacy and Guidewire sources to EDW systems. Design and architect the Informatica PowerCenter and Informatica Cloud (I ICS) software to load the data from Legacy (mainframe) and Guidewire sources to EDW (oracle and snowflake). Design and develop the database code software. Remote work/ telecommuting e efits a aila le y i position. Must report to e site ays pe week. Must reside within
Metropolitan Statistical Area of worksite. MIN
REQ: Bachelor’s, or foreign equivalent, in Engineering, Computer Info. Systems, Info. Technology or related field. Will accept a Bachelor equiv. based on combination of education as determined by a professional evaluation service. 5 years exp. in the job e e S I S I S 5 years supervisory exp. on end-to-end implementation of Data Projects like EDW, data conversion, data migration involving Guidewire Suite (PolicyCenter, BillingCenter and ClaimCenter). 5 years exp. in each of the following: ETL with Informatica PowerCenter, Informatica Data Quality (IDQ); Enterprise Data Warehouse, SQL with Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server and DB2. 3 years exp. in Property and Casualty Insurance domain. 1 year exp. in Informatica Cloud (I ICS), AWS and Snowflake. Up to 5% short term, domestic travel may be involved to attend industry conferences. LICENSE/ CERTIFICATION:
Informatica PowerCenter Certified Specialist Certification. AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification. Email resumes to: Jennifer Brown, Supervisor-HR Services: jennifer.brown@ kemper.com. Please include “R-23-0024284” on resume.
US Sales Director (Concord Premium Meats (US) LLC) (Chicago, IL): Act as point of contact for & wrk w/ Italian sister compny to report anlytcs; Meet demnds of prjcts & strtgc initiatvs as sales leadr & rsrc of R&D dept; Drive customr engmt by prvdg anlys, insghts, recmmndtns & sltns to incrs sales & profit w/ sales leadrs & retail buyrs; Advc dvlpmt of reportg structrs & anlytcl sltns for lg customrs by lvrg’g data & rsrcs to spprt import business; Dvlp stndrds & best practices; Monitor prfmnc vs KPIs, ID opprtnts to imprv skills & implmnt dvlpmt plans to bld capablts on anlyst team. Exp reqd: Exp generatg high qualty mrktg, sales & financl anlys mtrls; Exp hndlg lg data sets from acqstn to mdlg, anlys & validtn to dlvr actnbl insghts; Strng diagnstcs skills; Extsv exp w/ food & bev imprts from Italy; Exp mng’g nationl retailrs & brokers; Exp w/ USDA & FDA regs; IRI & Nielsen Data anlytcs; 1World Sync & EDI s/w. Reqs Bachelors or frgn equiv in Mrktg, Communications or rltd y s e p i Sales rltd mng’g nationl accnts. Trvl reqd: 10-20% in U.S. Salary: $146,224/yr. Send C.V. to boneh@concord premiummeats.com.
Canon Medical Research USA, Inc. seeks Sr. FPGA Engineers for Vernon Hills, IL location to dev digital FPGA logic solutions targeting apps such as syst comm/ control, data movement & processing, & embedded microprocessors. Master’s in Electrical/Electronics Eng or Comp Sci/related field + 2 yrs exp OR Bachelor’s in Electrical/ Electronics Eng or Comp Sci/related field + 5 yrs exp req’d. Req’d skills: FPGA full-cycle design/ architecture for embedded sys; Vivado Logic Analyzer; VHDL; Verilog; HDL design (resource use, clock-rate, latency); Xilinx Vivado, Mentor QuestaSim; Subversion; ClearCase; Git; C++; static timing, functional & timing simulation. Some telecommuting permitted. Apply online: www.research.us.medical.
canon/careers, Req ID: 1187
Clinical Researcher Healthcare Research Network II, LLC seeks a Clinical Researcher in Flossmoor, IL (Chicago area), to conduct and coordinate clinical research trials of pharmaceutical products for treatment of human disease. Master’s degree required in biology, health sciences or related field. Twelve months of work experience with clinical research or twelve months of medical work experience with patients required. Travel required within the USA 4-6 times a year for educational training meetings as needed. Send CV and references to Healthcare Research Network II, LLC at 3235 E. Vollmer Rd, Unit 147, Flossmoor, IL 60422.
Relativity (Chicago, IL) seeks Sr. Software Engineer Relativity (Chicago, IL) seeks Sr. Software Engineer to architect/design/ implement & test high performance apps. by applying best practice software engineering. Must take & pass pre-interview coding test. Remote work option. Submit resumes to Recruiting@relativity. com, to be considered, reference Job ID: 23-9001 in the subject line.
Relativity (Chicago, IL) seeks Sr. Software Engineer Relativity (Chicago, IL) seeks Sr. Software Engineer responsible for delivering results for product development department by contributing to Agile team that solves complex challenges & builds working software/ rapidly producing high quality code & being a dependable & highly skilled development resource for peers. Remote work option w/occ. travel to the Chicago, IL headquarters. Submit resumes to Recruiting@relativity. com, to be considered,
reference Job ID: 23-9002 in the subject line.
Have you had an unwanted sexual experience since age 18? Did you tell someone in your life about it who is also willing to participate? Women ages 18+ who have someone else in their life they told about their experience also willing to participate will be paid to complete a confidential online research survey for the Women’s Dyadic Support Study. Contact Dr. Sarah Ullman of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Criminology, Law, & Justice Department at ForWomen@uic.edu, 312-996-5508. Protocol #2021-0019.
CLEANING SERVICES
CHESTNUT ORGANIZING AND CLEANING SERVICES: especially for people who need an organizing service because of depression, elderly, physical or mental challenges or other causes for your home’s clutter, disorganization, dysfunction, etc. We can organize for the downsizing of your current possessions to more easily move into a smaller home. With your help, we can help to organize your move. We can organize and clean for the deceased in lieu of having the bereaved needing to do the preparation to sell or rent the deceased’s home. We are absolutely not judgmental; we’ve seen and done “worse” than your job assignment. With your help, can we please help you? Chestnut Cleaning Service: 312-332-5575. www. ChestnutCleaning.com
Free audition notices! The Chicago Reader is offering free auditions in our classifieds through Oct. 1. Create an account and your listing at chicagoreader.com/ auditions
Conspirators Casting Workshops Casting workshops, November show. Workshops in our style, then casting.
Mondays/Wednesdays September 4-20. BIPOC and LGBTQ+ highly encouraged. Submit: conspire@conspirewithus. org for info.
FTM4M, 35 Seeks M4M
Gym Partner Hi, I’m looking for a gym partner to spot with, and to be safe in the gym with while working out. NOT LOOKING FOR A HOOKUP. I’m fat, FTM (trans man), Mexican who is very shy and very introverted. NO TRANSPHOBES NEED
APPLY, ESPECIALLY CIS STRAIGHT MEN. Must have Planet Fitness card. Text only 872-529-0333.
Write me a love letter My birthday is in September and I have decided I want love letters in all forms, from all sources, all around the city. Big or small, I welcome it all. So if you like the idea of fulfilling my cute little birthday wish. Don’t be shy, make a love note, and dedicate it to me, Wendy. And if you put it out in the world, let me know where to find it. whereiswndy@ gmail.com / www. whereiswndy.com
All romantic dates women wanted All romantic fun dates all requests 24.7 Call (773) 977-8862 swm
Hot Couple ISO Hot Singles! Hot Couple successful 55 yrs young with fit physiques, ISO Beautiful Uninhibited people to eXplore New Horizons. Lakefront, Sailing, Nude Sunbathing, Biking. Intrigue us with a hot reply!
MJM DOM SEEKS
SUBMISSIVE JEWISH
FEMALE MJM DOM 52
SEEKS SUBMISSIVE JEWISH FEMALE WILL TRAIN BONDAGE ORAL SPANKING PLEASURE AND PUNISHMENT CAN HOST CALL/TEXT-224-292-9899.
Two Mature Male Friends Seek DWF 35-45 For Sexy Fun! Good friends who appreciate a sexy lady who would appreciate the attention of two attentive males eager to please!
MJM DOM SEEKS SUB FEMALE MJM DOM 52
SEEKS SUBMISSIVE WHITE FEMALE 40+ WILL TRAIN SEX SLAVE PUNISHMENT BONDAGE ORAL SPANKING CAN HOST-CALL/ TEXT-224-292-9899.
MJM 52 SEEKS JEWISH FEMALE HOT OIL MASSAGE MJM 52 SEEKS JEWISH FEMALE WEEKEND DRINKS HOT OIL AND ORAL MASSAGE SPANKING BONDAGE CAN HOST DISCREET CALL/TEXT-224-292-9899.
Danielle’s Lip Service, Erotic Phone Chat. 24/7. Must be 21+. Credit/ Debit Cards Accepted. All Fetishes and Fantasies Are Welcomed. Personal, Private and Discrete. 773-935-4995
A premier contractor serving Chicago and the surrounding areas since 1976.
more.
• Commercial & residential pressure washing
• Eco-friendly cleaning
• One-time, monthly or quarterly cleanings
A collection of profiles and features hand-picked by Ben from his 40 years of writing for the Reader
This is only a brief summary of important information about BIKTARVY® and does not replace talking to your healthcare provider about your condition and your treatment.
BIKTARVY may cause serious side e ects, including:
Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. Your healthcare provider will test you for HBV. If you have both HIV-1 and HBV, your HBV may suddenly get worse if you stop taking BIKTARVY. Do not stop taking BIKTARVY without first talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to check your health regularly for several months, and may give you HBV medicine.
BIKTARVY is a complete, 1-pill, once-a-day prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in adults and children who weigh at least 55 pounds. It can either be used in people who have never taken HIV-1 medicines before, or people who are replacing their current HIV-1 medicines and whose healthcare provider determines they meet certain requirements.
BIKTARVY does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS. HIV-1 is the virus that causes AIDS.
Do NOT take BIKTARVY if you also take a medicine that contains:
dofetilide
rifampin
any other medicines to treat HIV-1
Tell your healthcare provider if you:
Have or have had any kidney or liver problems, including hepatitis infection.
Have any other health problems.
Are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if BIKTARVY can harm your unborn baby. Tell your healthcare provider if you become pregnant while taking BIKTARVY.
Are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed. Do not breastfeed. HIV-1 can be passed to the baby in breast milk.
Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take:
Keep a list that includes all prescription and over-the-counter medicines, antacids, laxatives, vitamins, and herbal supplements, and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist.
BIKTARVY and other medicines may a ect each other. Ask your healthcare provider and pharmacist about medicines that interact with BIKTARVY, and ask if it is safe to take BIKTARVY with all your other medicines.
BIKTARVY may cause serious side e ects, including:
Those in the “Most Important Information About BIKTARVY” section.
Changes in your immune system. Your immune system may get stronger and begin to fi ght infections that may have been hidden in your body. Tell your healthcare provider if you have any new symptoms after you start taking BIKTARVY.
Kidney problems, including kidney failure. Your healthcare provider should do blood and urine tests to check your kidneys. If you develop new or worse kidney problems, they may tell you to stop taking BIKTARVY.
Too much lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious but rare medical emergency that can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: weakness or being more tired than usual, unusual muscle pain, being short of breath or fast breathing, stomach pain with nausea and vomiting, cold or blue hands and feet, feel dizzy or lightheaded, or a fast or abnormal heartbeat.
Severe liver problems, which in rare cases can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow, dark “tea-colored” urine, light-colored stools, loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, or stomach-area pain.
The most common side e ects of BIKTARVY in clinical studies were diarrhea (6%), nausea (6%), and headache (5%). These are not all the possible side e ects of BIKTARVY. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you have any new symptoms while taking BIKTARVY.
You are encouraged to report negative side e ects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.FDA.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088.
Your healthcare provider will need to do tests to monitor your health before and during treatment with BIKTARVY.
Take BIKTARVY 1 time each day with or without food.
This is only a brief summary of important information about BIKTARVY. Talk to your healthcare provider or pharmacist to learn more.
Go to BIKTARVY.com or call 1-800-GILEAD-5.
If you need help paying for your medicine, visit BIKTARVY.com for program information.
COVER CREDITS:
MAIN STORY: Photo of Center on Halsted by Travis Sedler
Photo of Patrick Bova & Jim Darby by Hal Baim; photo of AMA president Jesse Ehrenfeld courtesy of AMA; cover of Nobody Needs To Know: A Memoir by Pidgeon Pagodis
PUBLISHER Terri Klinsky
EXECUTIVE EDITOR Matt Simonette
DIGITAL DIRECTOR Jean Albright
ART DIRECTOR Kirk Williamson BUSINESS MANAGER Ripley Caine
SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Terri Klinsky CONTRIBUTORS Andrew Davis, Carrie Maxwell, Kayleigh Padar, Matt Simonette, Ro White WEB HOSTING LoveYourWebsite.com (lead programmer: Martie Marro) (773) 871-7610 FAX (773) 871-7609
Editorial: matt@windycitymediagroup.com Sales: terri@windycitymediagroup.com
Copyright 2023 Lambda Publications Inc./Windy City Media Group; All rights reserved. Reprint by permission only. Back issues (if available) for $5 per issue (postage included). Return postage must accompany all manuscripts, drawings, and photographs submitted if they are to be returned, and no responsibility may be assumed for unsolicited materials. All rights to letters, art and photographs sent to Windy City Times will be treated as unconditionally assigned for publication purposes and as such, subject to editing and comment. The opinions expressed by the columnists, cartoonists, letter writers, and commentators are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Windy City Times. Publication of the name, photograph, or likeness of a person or organization in articles or advertising in Windy City Times is not to be construed as any indication of the sexual orientation of such person or organization. While we encourage readers to support the advertisers who make this newspaper possible, Windy City Times cannot accept responsibility for advertising claims.
WINDY CITY MEDIA GROUP, 5315 N. Clark St. #192, Chicago, IL, 60640 U.S.A (MAILING ADDRESS ONLY)
Center on Halsted marks 50 years
BY CARRIE MAXWELL
In 1973, a group of Chicagoans organized a telephone hotline, which they named Helpline, allowing the community to more easily find and assist one another. This was a time when LGBTQ+ bars were still regularly raided by the police, and members of the community had few guarantees for their safety when they gathered together.
That group of organizers could never have imagined that Helpline would be an integral component of all that morphed into what is now known as the Center on Halsted. The Center has become a world-renowned LGBTQ+ institution with many notable events, a comprehensive list of services and over 1,000 visitors per day to its Lake View neighborhood location on Halsted Street. The organization has grown exponentially since its founding 50 years ago.
The ’70s:
Changing the coming-out process
Michael Bergeron, a Chicago activist who published the Chicago Gay Crusader newspaper, is credited with founding the Helpline and also what became Gay Horizons. He opened Beckman House, the location of the Helpline, in 1974 at 3519-1/2 N. Halsted Street.
There had been several previous attempts at launching community centers prior to and concurrent with Beckman House. In 1971, a location at 171 W. Elm St. had been leased by a member of the Chicago Gay Alliance (CGA) for community meetings, while the Tavern Guild of Chicago raised funds for the Rodde Center on North Sheffield later in ’70s, for example.
Gay Horizons became an official non-profit in 1974 (formed by volunteers remaining from
Beckman House and concerned healthcare professionals). In 1975, the organization moved above the now-defunct Astro restaurant at 2745 N. Clark. This location also featured a dropin center.
Gay Horizons at several points in its history was a springboard for other organizations and agencies that would later be important for LGBTQ+ Chicagoans. A group of gay and lesbian medical students formed Horizons Clinic under the Gay Horizons banner to treat community members with STI’s. Horizons Clinic became a separate organization in 1975, and would eventually morph into the present-day Howard Brown Health.
From early 1975 to early 1976, Lee Newell was chairperson of Gay Horizons and the first person to serve an entire year in leadership. When asked about his time at the organization, Newell said “One thing stands out. When Gay Horizons was about to collapse, the whole community put aside their differences and came together to ensure its continuance. Without the Rogers Park Gay Center keeping the Helpline going, the lifeline to Gay Horizons would have been lost. The amazing community of activists, bar owners and volunteers coming together is what made this all so incredible.”
In 1976, Gay Horizons expanded its mental health and social services, including peer counseling, under the Gay People’s Counseling Service banner—now called Educational and Support Services. A youth program, now under the youth and family services slate of programming, started that same year allowing Gay Horizons could do outreach to that part of the community.
In 1978 Joe Loundy, who was then the chairperson, took on the role of volunteer executive director. Loundy stayed in that position until 1984. He called his time at Gay Horizons “the most fulfilling experience I had as a social worker. Along with many other talented volunteers, we ushered in the birth of LGBTQ+ affirming social services. The programs we created at that time have stood the test of time and continued, uninterrupted, up to the present day. At that time, the general belief was that being gay/ lesbian was a psychiatric disorder that would seriously threaten family relations, job opportunities and social acceptance.
“Gay Horizons provided a framework for transforming all those negative false beliefs into a valuable reservoir of understanding and empathy to support the people who came to us for service. We facilitated the restoration of hope. Gay Horizons was in the forefront of reframing ‘Coming Out’ as a normal developmental phase.”
In the early days of Loundy’s tenure, a Women’s Union was formed to reach more lesbian and bisexual women, and the Gay Switchboard was renamed the Gay and Lesbian Switchboard to be more inclusive.
Gay Horizons continued to grow in 1979 at a new location at 3225 N. Sheffield. The organization hosted the first Identity Conference, provided space for a research center and library (which was the antecedent for what is now known as Gerber/Hart Library and Archives) and a legal services program for all LGBTQ+ people, including those who could not pay, among other endeavors.
In 1980, the first Gay Horizons Coffeehouse opened for LGBTQ+ people who wanted to socialize outside of the bars, especially those who were underage. That same year, the Gay Horizons board reorganized and welcomed its first Black board member. The organization also began tackling the emerging AIDS epidemic; that endeavor grew into the AIDS Action Project which, in 1984, became a part of Howard Brown Health.
Also in 1984, Bruce Koff took over Loundy’s volunteer executive director role and, for the first time, a part-time administrative assistant was hired. Koff stayed in that volunteer role until 1986 when it became a full-time paid position. He continued to work in that capacity until 1990.
Koff told Windy City Times that Gay Horizons’ outreach to LGBTQ+ youth in the early days was “noteworthy, but relied entirely on volunteers and had no capacity to expand outreach and awareness, especially to schools where LGBTQ+ youth were most vulnerable.
“Fortunately, later on, when then-First Lady Nancy Reagan was promoting the expansion of anti-substance abuse programs for youth called ‘Just Say No’… we qualified for some of that funding through a consortium of local youth-serving agencies. I always found it pleasantly ironic that Nancy Reagan’s efforts led directly to assisting LGBTQ+ teens in Chicago.”
Gay Horizons began to garner attention beyond the LGBTQ+ community in Chicago in 1985 with both a Metropolitan Business Association award of merit and the Oprah Winfrey Show inviting the organization’s youth members on her TV show.
Additionally in 1985, Gay Horizons changed its name to Horizons Community Services, Inc. (Horizons). According to Koff, the name change “was controversial and was not taken lightly … . It is hard for people now to understand this but, in those days, no mainstream foundation would support the organization. We were told—point blank—that we would not access such funding with the word ‘gay’ in our name. We realized there was no way we could accomplish what we hoped to do by just relying on bar fundraisers and private donations. To provide more services for LGBTQ+ youth and adults … we needed mainstream financial support. So we swallowed hard, [and] changed our name while remaining forthright about our mission.”
That same year Horizons started a support group called Passages to educate gay and bisexual men who were at risk for HIV/AIDS transmission, as well as conducted its first community-wide needs assessment.
“In the mid-1980s, a wonderful man named Chris Clason came to me in my capacity as ED of Horizons with an idea,” said Koff. “He wanted to start an organization run by and for people with HIV that would empower those impacted to take charge, develop resources and educate each other. The problem was no one wanted to publicly acknowledge their HIV status for fear
of discrimination, so Chris was having a hard time finding HIV+ people to join him.
“As Horizons was then operating support groups for people with HIV, I offered to send all of them a letter about Chris and his idea so that they could contact him directly about it. Chris agreed. We sent the letter out to those clients, and many of them subsequently joined Chris in founding Test Positive Aware Network (TPAN), which is still a vital organization in Chicago for people with AIDS. Small gesture, huge impact.”
Horizons celebrated Helpline’s 5,000th night of continuous operation in 1987 and in 1988 a Youth Director was hired. Also in 1988, Horizons became the first in the nation organization to have a federally funded LGBTQ+ exclusive Anti-Violence Project. This project brought public attention to the rising scourge of anti-LGBTQ+ violence in the community that continues today.
In 1989, Horizons hired its first development and group services staff members and became the first LGBTQ+ organization in the Midwest to gain membership as an official member agency of the United Way.
The ’90s: New respect from the community
To usher in a new decade, Horizons relocated again to 961 W. Montana St. with its 15 paid staffers. Koff handed off the executive director role to Ellie Emanuel in 1990. Also in 1990, Horizons received the 1990 Glynn Sudbery Award from the IVI-IPO Independent Gay and Lesbian Caucus. Then, in April 1992, Tom Buchanan became the executive director until December 1996.
Buchanan told Windy City Times that at that time, “Horizons was going through a rough patch and for nine months had no ED. It was in debt and morale was low. But dedicated volunteers kept the place afloat, and I knew it needed to thrive. I applied for the job of ED and in the process met my future husband, Robert Bell. I left my career with an international NGO and came to Horizons for about half of what I’d been making. I never regretted it.
“With a group of incredible staff and volunteers and a solid board we became financially solvent, nearly doubled staff and built a volunteer corps of over 400. Horizons’ reputation was great, with programs helping thousands of people through eight program areas. By the end of 1996, when I was preparing to go back to working internationally, a small group of us realized Horizons could be much more: a full community center where people would celebrate, learn and grow together. It was a joy to see that dream become real in the years after I left.”
While Buchanan was executive director, Horizons held its first annual Human First Gala. Bell, who was then the Horizons board chair, told Windy City Times that, “We chose the name ‘Human First’ because it embodied what and who we all are. We wanted it to be totally inclusive and transcend sexual orientation and gender identity—remember this was 1990. Human First occurred because the preeminent (gay, of course) Chicago event planner contact-
ed me and said Horizons should consider hosting such a party. We naively thought he would be doing this for free—which was not the case. However, we went ahead with planning without knowing whether anyone would even attend—especially at $100 a plate.
“We hosted the event in Lincoln Park. The first recipient of the Human First award was John Callaway, a well-known and respected radio and television journalist, for his allyship and in-depth reporting on the LGBTQ+ community.”
Additionally, under Buchanan’s leadership, Horizons was inducted into Chicago’s LGBT Hall of Fame in 1992, the same year its board achieved gender parity. The organization received other accolades in the early ’90s, including the Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS in 1992, and Dignity Chicago’s John Michie Award, specifically for the Anti-Violence Project.
For a six-year period (1997-2003), the executive director role was held by Liz Huesemann, Roger Doughty and Frank Oldman Jr. at various times. An older LGBTQ+ adults programming and advocacy started under the name Mature Adults, Motivated and Active launched at that time as well. In 1999, Horizons launched its first website, which has since grown to include a significant social media presence as well.
The 2000s:
A new century, new home and new name Horizons began the new century eyeing an expansion of its physical footprint in the Lake View neighborhood with its then 24-person staff and over 300 volunteers. When Chicago Park District property on the corner of Halsted and Waveland became available in 2000, Horizons negotiated with both the Park District and City of Chicago to acquire that land. The transaction took place the following year, and officially launched the beginning of what is now the Center on Halsted.
To understand the needs and interests of Chicago’s LGBTQ+ community, Horizons undertook research to determine what their new building would need to be a successful community resource. Northalsted Merchants Association donated the first seed money for the building in 2001, with $350,000 from the City of Chicago the following year.
Programming at Horizons also continued to grow in the early to mid-2000s, with a new computerized database for Helpline; a community technology center; both a young women’s and mentoring programs added under the Youth Services umbrella; and an expanded Just4Adults program.
In 2003, Horizons officially became Center on Halsted, with a new board of directors and programs reorganized under three departments—mental health, youth and community and senior services. Modesto ‘Tico’ Valle, who was then the Center’s director of development and volunteer services, took over as acting executive director that same year.
In 2004, the Center held its first annual Anti-Violence Vigil and launched the public fundraising phase of its capital campaign, resulting in donations from many prominent people. This was also
the year that Robbin Burr took on the executive director role, with Valle as deputy executive director. She did that job for the next three years.
A groundbreaking ceremony took place in June 2005, with then Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and other prominent elected officials in attendance. The Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation awarded the Center with a design grant for Green Building. Among the other monies received were a grant from the Kresge Foundation, philanthropists Miriam Hoover and hew nephew Michael leppen, the City of Chicago and the federal Fiscal Year 2006 HUD appropriations bill.
On June 5, 2007, the three-story, 185,000-square foot Center opened its doors at 3656 N. Halsted St. with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The new space was designed to facilitate multiple meetings and events with its rooftop garden, multi-functional theater space, a gym, technology room, kitchen and other amenities as well as indoor access to the Whole Foods next door.
“I was honored to be recruited and selected as executive director during the birth of Center on Halsted’s new building,” Burr recalled. “To watch years of so many people’s collective dreams, fundraising efforts and planning materialize into bricks and mortar was thrilling.
“The first time I walked into the Center’s lobby after Whole Foods opened, I saw just what we had dreamed about for that space. There were trans youth, heterosexual couples with babies in strollers, seniors, women, men, high schoolers and young children all representing a variety of races and socio-economic statuses. I was so moved I cried like a baby.”
Following Burr’s departure as executive director in 2007 after the Center’s grand-opening, Valle officially took on that role. Then in 2008, Valle’s title was changed to CEO, and he held that position for the next 14 years. In 2008, the Center received a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Silver Certification for its status as a green building.
Over the past 15 years, the Center continued to grow and evolve to address the needs of the entire LGBTQ+ community in Chicago with expanded youth services, vocational programming and job placement services, including a culinary arts training program that is now named Silverfork; the nation’s first LGBTQ+ Homesharing program, for elders to age in place with a renter who agrees to do the household chores in exchange for a reduced rental rate; a partnership with Northwestern’s IMPACT Program, which researches LGBTQ+-specific health and wellbeing issues; and serving as both an incubator and residence for community partners that are listed on the Center’s website.
To address the needs of the growing LGBTQ+ elder population in Chicago, the Center announced plans to build the Midwest’s first affordable LGBTQ+ senior housing facility in 2011 in partnership with Heartland Alliance, which was called Town Hall Apartments. The six-story, 79-unit building is adjacent to the Center at
3600 N. Halsted St. and, on the first floor, also houses the Center’s Senior Services program under the name Center on Addison. The Town Hall ribbon-cutting ceremony took place in 2014 with many luminaries in attendance. What also makes this site unique is it was once the former location of the police precinct headquarters that was utilized to carry out the many years of raids and arrests at the local LGBTQ+ bars for so-called “illegal” acts.
The Center also opened a new South Side hub called Center on Cottage Grove at 6323 S. Cottage Grove Ave. in a storefront of the historic Strand Hotel apartments in 2022. This hub is a program of Center on Halsted, as a part of its mission to expand its geographic reach in Chicago. A main focus of Center on Cottage Grove is HIV outreach and testing to reduce HIV transmission rates on the South Side, as well as LGBTQ+ youth housing.
Valle told Windy City Times that, “It has been an honor and privilege to follow in the footsteps of great leadership that founded Gay Horizons. My 21 years of service have been an incredibly inspiring and humbling journey; serving our community during the AIDS pandemic, the expansion of program services and building the most comprehensive community center in the Midwest. This journey has been possible because of the hundreds of volunteers, staff and donors who wanted to create something positive for our LGBTQ+ community.
“Today, the Center continues to be a vital resource for the LGBTQ+ community in Chicago. In addition to providing support and services to individuals, the Center also advocates for LGBTQ+ rights and works to create a more inclusive and safe society for all including the Center on Addison senior center which offers a safe space for older LGBTQ+ adults to find support and connect with peers. As the Center celebrates its 50th anniversary, it remains a beacon of hope and resilience for the LGBTQ+ community in Chicago and beyond.”
Valle stepped down last year and until a new CEO is chosen, the Center’s Chief Program Officer, Editha Paras, is also serving as the interim CEO.
See centeronhalsted.org/ and windycitytimes.com/lgbt/Center-on-Halsted-leaders-discuss-transition-and-organizations-future/75391.html.
In the book Nobody Needs to Know: A Memoir, intersex activist Pidgeon Pagonis details their journey through a sea of trauma that consisted of lies, misdirections and surgeries. It wasn’t until their college years that Pagonis figured out what had been happening: They had been born intersex (with such individuals composing up to 1.7% of the population, according to various sources)—but had been raised as a girl. Initially immersed in curiosity and pain, Pagonis gradually turned their discovery into moments of truth and healing.
In a candid and sometimes emotional conversation, Pagonis talked about their memoir and name—as well as what they would like for themselves more than anything else right now. Note: This conversation was edited for clarity and length.
Windy City Times: First of all, we’re going to provide Intersex 101. For our readers, what’s your definition of intersex?
Pidgeon Pagonis: [Pauses] I don’t want to give the same answer, so I’m trying to think of another way of saying it.
First, being intersex is to exist and to be human. And it’s existing in a spectrum of biological sex traits. People who are labeled intersex tend to fall in the spectrum where they’re not 100% male or 100% female—and I hate saying that because I don’t think anyone is 100% male or 100% female, and it supports this binary model.
Technically, intersex is an umbrella term for people born with sex traits—which can be gonads, chromosomes, sex organs, etc.—that don’t fall into either category of male or female. By the way, intersex traits can be seen at birth but sometimes they don’t appear until later, like around puberty. And sometimes people don’t even know that they’re intersex because those traits are internal and they don’t see them. Also, there are at least 25 variations of being intersex—and within those variations, there’s so much variation.
About 2% of the population is born with traits that could have the people classified as intersex. This is roughly equal to the amount of people in Japan.
WCT: I also saw where the number of intersex people is roughly the same as the number of identical twins and redheads.
PP: Yeah—those are roughly about 2% of the population as well.
WCT: And how did you arrive at “Nobody Needs to Know” as the title of the memoir?
PP: I love the title. Thank you for asking me about it.
The title came to me while I was thinking about the doctors who told me that nobody needs to know my secret and that nobody needs to know my medical information—my truth, basically. I was told that I should never let [the information] out—not at school, not to people I’m dating [but] maybe after I get married.
So I thought this should be the title because so much of my life journey has been about learning how to reject the advice and letting everybody know the truth about what happened to me.
Now that I say it out loud, it sounds similar to what people who have survived other [forms] of trauma have gone through—like sexual abuse. The people abusing them will tell them not to tell anybody else or they’ll hurt somebody. People with authority can maintain this hold over others and have them keep this secrecy. And coupled with that is the shame or stigma that occurs naturally in our society; so many things are not known about being intersex that there is this natural stigma that comes with it.
Our society is so rigid and obsessed with being “normal” and being defined by binaries and categories. And there’s no intersex person like you when you grow up. There’s no one in storybooks like you; there’s no one in Disney movies like you; there’s no one on TV, in books or in your family like you; and there’s no one in school like you.
If you have the luxury of knowing you’re intersex and knowing the truth, you already have shame and stigma attached—but, on top of that, you have medical professionals who are
older than you that [tell you] nobody needs to know.
My book—and my life, from about the time I was 20 or 21—has been about telling people the truth and encouraging [others] to tell their stories. Before that, people were telling their stories in secret. There’s a part in the book about this support-group meeting I first went to; we had badges that read “Women’s Support Group” so no one knew we were intersex. I want this book to be a direct challenge to stigma and shame.
WCT: And the book also answers the question of how you arrived at your name. The story is beautiful, although I’m not the biggest fan of the bird itself. However, your story made me appreciate the bird a lot more.
PP: [Smiles] Yeah—it’s an amazing bird. I actually couldn’t care less about pigeons today. It started out being cute, but people started giving me pigeon pictures, paintings—anything. A friend gave me refrigerator clips in the shape of pigeons. People just assume that I’m obsessed with them, but it’s all about one pigeon. When I named myself, it wasn’t because I loved birds— especially pigeons. It was just that one particular pigeon made me laugh.
I then started to identify with the bird more because I discovered that the history of intersex people is rooted in being a monstrosity or freak. Intersex people were relegated to freak shows. There’s this lore about intersex people that we’re subhuman—and pigeons, out of all the birds, seem to be the most hated. If pigeons could understand us, they might feel shame and stigma, too. Pigeons and intersex people are misunderstood—and I root for the underdog.
You know what’s funny, though? My [birth] name, Jennifer, is actually built into “pigeon”— and I didn’t know that. It’s a phonetic thing, like if you say “pidge-Jen.” My Twitter [now X] name is actually spelled “Pidgejen” because “Pidgeon” was already taken. And then I found out that my last name means “peacock” in Greek. So, in English, my name is “Pidgeon Peacock.” [Laughs]
The one thing I like about my name is that it’s recognizable. There are probably a million Jennifers and a lot of Jennifer Pagonises, but there’s no [other] Pidgeon Pagonis—but I’m thinking about changing my name.
WCT: I can’t even imagine the emotions you went through once you found out the truth about yourself. Was that the hardest part of writing the book?
PP: No. The hardest part—and I didn’t expect this—was the childhood stuff.
I think it’s because—in my work, throughout the years—I talked about the surgeries a lot. But I never really delved into what my childhood was like. During the pandemic, when I was home alone a lot and writing this book, I had to tap inside the younger person who was still inside of me and handle the spaces that were still inside my brain, like the house I grew up in.
I did so much time-traveling into my past, and it was unexpectedly devastating. To go through that experience without the knowledge of what was going on—and to go back and relive it—was doubly hard. They told me there was surgery for my bladder but I know today that it was vaginal-reconstruction surgery that left me with scar tissue and nerve damage, along with so much trauma.
The other day, I went by a house where I grew up and I had my cousin take a picture of me on the steps. I realized then that I have such a longing for home—and I feel like that’s a chapter that I never got to finish in my life. [Voice breaking] Me, my mom and dad had this perfect life for a few years, even though they would argue behind the scenes—but we had a house and a yard, with a block of kids I could play with. We had all that for a few years, and then it was gone.
I’ve lived in an apartment since I was seven, and I just have such a longing for a house. There’s something about a house that I just love.
I think my childhood was just extremely sad; my family has a deep, deep sadness within it. There’s so much pain and trauma, and they don’t talk about it—which just made me think of the book’s title. I thought my uncle died in a car accident, and it wasn’t until I read a book that he was murdered by the Mafia. I never knew the pain my grandmother went through after her son was murdered. And then they did the same thing with me: keeping secrets.
The second-hardest part had to be everything else, like the sex part with my boyfriend. When I was writing the book, his phone number came into my head. I texted it and he answered it; he still has the same number after 25 years. We had a long-ass conversation and he apologized to me. He fully supported me writing the book and talking about us, even though he’s straight, married and has two kids.
But everything was hard about writing this book—except maybe the successful parts at the end. It took me to some dark places.
WCT: What does this memoir say about you?
PP: I think it says that nobody can tell me what to do and that nobody can shut me up. It says that I’m really strong. I think that some people feel I’m too young to write a memoir but I feel like I’ve lived so much already. This book says that I’m resilient.
Nobody Needs to Know: A Memoir is now available at all major online retailers, as well as Pagonis’ own website, pid.ge/ .
From 1983 to 2008, Alison Bechdel’s comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For offered playful, incisive commentary on lesbian culture. Forty years after the comic’s inception, it’s been adapted into an audio series produced by author-journalist Susie Bright.
The Dykes to Watch Out For Audible Original series launched on June 1. In July, the series won an AudioFile Earphones Award and was named a “hilarious, heartfelt, and utterly compelling adaptation of a lesbian classic.”
Like the original comic—which was published in newspapers, online, and in a handful of bound collections—the Audible series follows Mo, a moralizing (though well-intentioned) “left of left” lesbian feminist, and her rag-tag group of friends and lovers. Together they navigate the ups and downs of love, work, friendship, and the 1980s gay rights movement.
“I tell straight people it’s like Doonesbury, but better,” said Bright, who discovered the comic strip in its early days when she was “a young dyke about town” in San Francisco.
“Alison Bechdel had this brilliant, satirical view on what was inside the inner lesbian anarchist, granola-making, separatist, quarrelsome, dyke drama-riddled commune,” Bright said. “It was clear that her politics were to the left—us against the man, dykes against heterosexist hegemony. She was clearly one of us, but at the same time, she made fun of our inner foibles and flaws and silliness in a way that was so right. She brought us all together.”
Bright saw herself reflected in the Dykes to Watch Out For comics—sometimes literally. Characters’ bookshelves occasionally featured issues of On Our Backs, the first women-produced sex magazine, which Bright co-founded and edited from 1984 to 1991.
In 2008, after a 25-year run, Dykes to Watch Out For stalled while Bechdel completed Are You My Mother?, her second graphic memoir. Eight years later, the 2016 presidential election necessitated the dykes’ return in three, brand new strips published in Seven Days. Then Mo and her pals went silent again, but that wasn’t the end for Bechdel’s beloved renegades.
In 2019, while working as an acquiring editor at Audible, Bright called Bechdel with a pitch: An audio series based on the early Dykes to Watch Out For comics. Alison said, ‘Oh, it’s not going to work. Now way,’” Bright recalled.
Then Bright and Bechdel read some dialogue aloud over the phone. “We both started giggling, because it really is funny,” Bright said. “I thought about all the early Dykes to Watch Out For read-
ers who probably quoted the comics out loud.” Once Bright secured playwright, screenwriter, and Pulitzer-Prize finalist Madeleine George (Only Murders in the Building) as the series’ script writer, the project was officially in motion.
Bright took the reins as producer. “I said, ‘We’re going to do this, and we’re going to cast our favorite people.”
The Audible series cast is a star-studded who’s who of today’s queer pop culture milieu, including Carrie Brownstein (Portlandia), who expertly captures Mo’s fervor and neuroses; Roberta Colindrez (A League of Their Own), whose swoon-worthy voice brings Lois to life; Roxane Gay (author of the New York Times best-seller Bad Feminist), who shines as the serious, yet compassionate Madwimmin Bookstore owner Jezanna; and more. Jane Lynch (Glee) elegantly propels the story with an affect that’s part fairytale narrator, part host of a wildlife special.
Dykes to Watch Out For was directed by Obie-winner and Tony nominee Leigh Silverman (Violet) and features original music by Faith Soloway, Bitch and Alana David. Its soundtrack includes hits by Ferron, Holly Near, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Cris Williamson and Joan Jett, plus
recordings from the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, where the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt was displayed for the first time.
Much of the dialogue in the Audible series was ripped directly from the early comics, and the deft voice acting, narration and sound design give the text a life beyond its original pages. Despite making its way onto a mainstream audiobook platform, the series never shrinks back from its source material.
“We weren’t going to get fans by dumbing ourselves down,” Bright said. “Yes, we faced battles along the way, but that’s what happens when the work you’re creating is intellectually and politically acute.”
Removing the word “dyke” from the series was never even a question.
“People think, ‘Isn’t [‘dyke’] an epithet?’ And sure, if the wrong person says it in the wrong tone of voice, they’ll get punched in the nose,” Bright said. “But for us, it’s how we show our love for one another and how we show each other we’re comrades.”
You can listen to Dykes to Watch Out for on Audible.
One of the first couples to be legally married in Illinois is celebrating their 60th anniversary this year.
Jim Darby and Patrick Bova fell in love decades before they became the lead plaintiffs in Lambda Legal’s lawsuit that led to the legalization of same-sex marriage in Illinois in 2014.
Darby first spotted Bova walking along the street reading a book on July 17, 1963.
“I whistled at him, but he didn’t hear me,” Darby recalled. “Later that night, I was headed home and unchaining my motorcycle, when I saw someone looking in the window of a bookstore and it was the same guy I’d seen hours before. I thought, ‘This is fate.’ I ran right over and asked him if he had a lighter, and that was it.”
Darby described their relationship as a 60year “ping-pong match,” since they’re always “going back and forth” with each other. Darby is Irish and Bova is Italian, but at the end of the day they’re “pretty much alike,” Darby said.
“We’ve just had a ball through everything,” Darby said.
Darby taught in public schools from 1963 to 1992, while Bova was a librarian at the National Opinion Research Center until he retired in 1998. Throughout their lives, the couple was dedicated to fighting for LGBTQ+ rights.
Darby served in the military and founded Illinois chapter of Veterans for Equal Rights in 1991. At the time, LGBTQ+ people were prohibited from joining the military, so service members were forced to keep their sexualities a secret.
Darby was arrested in front of the White House during a demonstration against the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in 1993. Later, Darby was invited to the White House to celebrate the policy getting repealed.
“It was like bookends, getting arrested and then getting invited inside 25 years later,” Darby said. “It was really ironic and delicious and fun.”
Nowadays, Darby and Bova live in Hyde Park, where they enjoy watching movies and spending time outside in their large yard.
“We’re boring as hell,” Darby said.
When Darby and Bova first met, the couple didn’t even consider marriage a possibility. They liked to joke with each other about how they were “living in sin,” Darby said.
“In the early days, marriage was out of the question,” Darby said. “You never even thought about it because marriage was an impossibility. We weren’t very interested in it because I didn’t
need society to sanction our relationship.”
Since then, they’ve been married four times and are considering a fifth wedding that they hope will be inside a church, Darby said.
“We decided we’ll go through with it again and just do it privately,” Darby said. “We’ve had four public marriages already, that’s enough for anybody. But, I kind of want to beat Elizabeth Taylor.”
After spending a few decades together, Darby began asking “priests, ministers, rabbis, reverends and anybody [he] saw,” if they’d marry him to Bova.
At a wreath-laying ceremony for Leonard Matlovich—the first veteran that came out as gay—in the historic Congressional Cemetary in Washington D.C., Darby asked a reverend if she’d marry them.
“She said yes, but I didn’t even hear it,” Darby said. “I walked away, because I was expecting a no. A few minutes later, she came over and she said, ‘Well are you ready?’ I said, ‘For what?’ She said, ‘You asked me to marry you and I’m going to.’”
The couple had two minutes to figure out their vows and then they were unofficially mar-
ried in 1992, Darby said. In 2011, the couple was legally joined in a civil union alongside 15 other couples.
That’s when they were approached by lawyers with Lambda Legal and asked to be plaintiffs in a lawsuit for marriage equality.
“I thought, ‘I don’t have a boss anymore, I don’t give a shit about anything,’” Darby said. “We went to court about five times and it was a lot of fun. We enjoyed the ride.”
At one point during the process, a reporter asked Darby and Bova why they wanted to get married.
“I said, ‘I’ve been to so many weddings. I’ve bought so many toasters and irons for wedding gifts. I just want somebody to buy me a toaster.’ And they put it on the front page. When they asked Patrick, he said ‘I want to get my hands on all his money,’ and the Lambda Legal guy grabbed the reporter and told him not to put that in the paper.”
When marriage equality took effect in Illinois in 2014, Darby and Bova were officially married
at the Museum of Contemporary Art and celebrated afterward with their friends, lawyers and some of Bova’s family members.
“When you’re going to make the obligation of marriage, that’s serious,” Bova said. “But it can be fun too. Like any relationship, you have to respect the person you’re with and if things aren’t quite right you have to talk about it. Nothing is different about that when you’re gay.”
APRETUDE is a prescription medicine used for HIV-1 PrEP to reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 infection in adults and adolescents who weigh at least 77 pounds (at least 35 kg).
APRETUDE is the first and only long-acting, injectable PrEP for reducing the risk of getting HIV-1
It’s an injection given every other month, instead of a pill you take every day
Studied in HIV-1 negative cisgender men, transgender women, and cisgender women at risk of getting HIV-1
APRETUDE is given every other month by a healthcare provider after initiation injections have been given 1 month apart for 2 consecutive months. Stay under a provider’s care while receiving APRETUDE. You must receive it as scheduled. If you will miss a scheduled injection by more than 7 days, call your provider right away.
This is only a brief summary of important information about APRETUDE and does not replace talking to your healthcare provider about your medicine.
AP-reh-tood
Important information for people who receive APRETUDE to help reduce their risk of getting human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) infection, also called pre-exposure prophylaxis or “PrEP”:
Before receiving APRETUDE to reduce your risk of getting HIV-1:
• You must be HIV-1 negative to start APRETUDE. You must get tested to make sure that you do not already have HIV-1 infection.
• Do not receive APRETUDE for HIV-1 PrEP unless you are confirmed to be HIV-1 negative.
• Some HIV-1 tests can miss HIV-1 infection in a person who has recently become infected. If you have flu-like symptoms, you could have recently become infected with HIV-1. Tell your healthcare provider if you had a flu-like illness within the last month before starting APRETUDE or at any time while receiving APRETUDE. Symptoms of new HIV-1 infection include: tiredness; joint or muscle aches; sore throat; rash; enlarged lymph nodes in the neck or groin; fever; headache; vomiting or diarrhea; night sweats. Please see additional Important Facts About APRETUDE at right.
Eligible patients may pay as little as a $0 co-pay per injection on prescribed APRETUDE.
While you are receiving APRETUDE for HIV-1 PrEP:
• APRETUDE does not prevent other sexually transmitted infections. Practice safer sex by using a latex or polyurethane condom to reduce the risk of getting sexually transmitted infections.
• You must stay HIV-1 negative to keep receiving APRETUDE for HIV-1 PrEP.
° Know your HIV-1 status and the HIV-1 status of your partners.
° Ask your partners with HIV-1 if they are taking anti-HIV-1 medicines and have an undetectable viral load. An undetectable viral load is when the amount of virus in the blood is too low to be measured in a lab test. To maintain an undetectable viral load, your partners must keep taking HIV-1 medicine as prescribed. Your risk of getting HIV-1 is lower if your partners with HIV-1 are taking effective treatment.
° Get tested for HIV-1 with each APRETUDE injection or when your healthcare provider tells you. You should not miss any HIV-1 tests. If you become HIV-1 infected and continue receiving APRETUDE because you do not know you are HIV-1 infected, the HIV-1 infection may become harder to treat.
° Get tested for other sexually transmitted infections such as syphilis, chlamydia, and gonorrhea. These infections make it easier for HIV-1 to infect you.
° If you think you were exposed to HIV-1, tell your healthcare provider right away. They may want to do more tests to be sure you are still HIV-1 negative.
° Get information and support to help reduce sexual risk behaviors.
° Do not miss any injections of APRETUDE. Missing injections increases your risk of getting HIV-1 infection.
° If you do become HIV-1 positive, you will need to take other medicines to treat HIV-1. APRETUDE is not approved for treatment of HIV-1.
If you have HIV-1 and receive only APRETUDE, over time your HIV-1 may become harder to treat.
APRETUDE is a prescription medicine used for HIV-1 PrEP to reduce the risk of getting HIV-1 infection in adults and adolescents who weigh at least 77 pounds (at least 35 kg). HIV-1 is the virus that causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).
It is not known if APRETUDE is safe and effective in children younger than 12 years of age or weighing less than 77 pounds (less than 35 kg).
DO NOT RECEIVE APRETUDE IF YOU:
• already have HIV-1 infection. If you are HIV-1 positive, you will need to take other medicines to treat HIV-1. APRETUDE is not approved for treatment of HIV-1.
• do not know your HIV-1 infection status. You may already be HIV-1 positive. You need to take other medicines to treat HIV-1. APRETUDE can only help reduce your risk of getting HIV-1 infection before you are infected.
• are allergic to cabotegravir.
• are taking any of the following medicines: carbamazepine; oxcarbazepine; phenobarbital; phenytoin; rifampin; rifapentine
Tell your healthcare provider about all your medical conditions, including if you:
• have ever had a skin rash or an allergic reaction to medicines that contain cabotegravir.
• have or have had liver problems.
• have ever had mental health problems.
• are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if APRETUDE will harm your unborn baby. APRETUDE can remain in your body for up to 12 months or longer after the last injection. Tell your healthcare provider if you become pregnant while receiving APRETUDE.
• are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed. It is not known if APRETUDE can pass to your baby in your breast milk. Talk with your healthcare provider about the best way to feed your baby while receiving APRETUDE.
Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. Some medicines may interact with APRETUDE. Keep a list of your medicines and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist when you get a new medicine. You can ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist for a list of medicines that interact with APRETUDE. Do not start a new medicine without telling your healthcare provider. Your healthcare provider can tell you if it is safe to receive APRETUDE with other medicines.
APRETUDE may cause serious side effects, including:
• Allergic reactions. Call your healthcare provider right away if you develop a rash with APRETUDE. Stop receiving APRETUDE and get medical help right away if you develop a rash with any of the following signs or symptoms: fever; generally ill feeling; tiredness; muscle or joint aches; trouble breathing; blisters or sores in mouth; blisters; redness or swelling of the eyes; swelling of the mouth, face, lips, or tongue.
• Liver problems. Liver problems have happened in people with or without a history of liver problems or other risk factors. Your healthcare provider may do blood tests to check your liver function.
Call your healthcare provider right away if you develop any of the following signs or symptoms of liver problems: your skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow (jaundice); dark or "tea-colored" urine; light-colored stools (bowel movements); nausea or vomiting; loss of appetite; pain, aching, or tenderness on the right side of your stomach area; itching.
• Depression or mood changes. Call your healthcare provider or get medical help right away if you have any of the following symptoms: feeling sad or hopeless; feeling anxious or restless; have thoughts of hurting yourself (suicide) or have tried to hurt yourself. The most common side effects of APRETUDE include: pain, tenderness, hardened mass or lump, swelling, bruising, redness, itching, warmth, loss of sensation at the injection site, abscess, and discoloration; diarrhea; headache; fever; tiredness; sleep problems; nausea; dizziness; passing gas; stomach pain; vomiting; muscle pain; rash; loss of appetite; drowsiness; back pain; upper respiratory infection.
These are not all the possible side effects of APRETUDE.
Call your doctor for medical advice about side effects. You may report side effects to FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088.
• Talk to your healthcare provider or pharmacist.
• Go to APRETUDE.com or call 1-877-844-8872 where you can also get FDA-approved labeling.
December 2021 APR:1PIL
Trademark is owned by or licensed to the ViiV Healthcare group of companies.
©2022 ViiV Healthcare or licensor.
CBTADVT220017 September 2022
Produced in USA.
One thing became apparent during a recent talk with iconic John Marshall Metropolitan High School girls’ basketball coach Dorothy Gaters.
She IS Marshall High School.
Even though the talk took place in an office (alongside her two great-grandsons, Tristian and Darius), several friends—former students who were her “girls,” as she called them— stopped by to chat with her, trade phone numbers and/or playfully banter. (Gaters rightfully boasted about several of her former players, including one who is a retired judge.)
But if that’s not enough, the innumerable awards and photos of Gaters and her team in the trophy case—as well as the basketball court that bears her name—point to how much she is revered at the school on Chicago’s West Side.
Gaters—who stepped away from coaching in 2021—is a member of another group she has not previously discussed publicly: the LGBTQ+ community.
Always a part of Marshall
Any conversation with Gaters has to start with how integral she has been and is to Marshall High School, beginning with her years as a student.
Gaters remembered attending Marshall fondly, having graduated from there in 1964. (“There were 5,000 students here then; now, there are only 200. There was a large Jewish community when I went here and now it’s 98% Black.”) There was no girls’ basketball team then, which was years before Title IX, which bans discrimination based on sex in education programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance.
So who were Gaters’ role models while attending Marshall? “I didn’t have any real role models [at that point],” Gaters said. “I just watched basketball on TV, but we had a very successful boys team, even when I attended. Marshall is the first Chicago team to win a state tournament, in 1958.”
And that love of basketball blossomed. “When I graduated from college [DePaul University], they asked me to come back here to teach and, shortly after that, there were intramurals—and that’s when I started to learn about the game.
“When I started teaching here, I also worked at the park district. I’d go over and watch the boys play there. Basketball was always in my background. At first, I didn’t know anything
technical—just that you’re supposed to put the ball in the hole,” she added with a smile.
“Then, I was asked to take the program as a club here at Marshall called GAA—the Girls’ Athletic Association,” she continued. “We only played four games our first year; we won one game and lost three. The next year we won three and lost one.” This was still before Title IX was implemented.
However, Gaters did not just stick with basketball. “I [also] coached volleyball and softball,” she said. “My same little group did everything so I would say, ‘We did this—now let’s go to this.”
Then, a pivotal figure entered Gaters’ life: John B. McLendon—the first Black basketball coach at a predominantly white university (Cleveland State University, where he coached from 1966-69) and a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. “That’s my mentor; I call him my godfather,” Gaters said. “I didn’t have a godfather, so God sent him to me. He was just a great, great person.”
Gaters started coaching in 1976, ultimately amassing more than 1,100 wins and collecting 10 state titles, while coaching players like Cappie Poindexter and Marie Christian. However, one of her regrets was not winning a state title with one of her most talented players: Janet Harris, who ultimately attended (and played for) the University of Georgia, “and became a threetime college All-American,” Gaters said, adding with a smile, “That’s my kid.” She also noted with pride, “At the 1985 [NCAA] Final Four, three of the teams had players from Marshall [who were Harris, Christian and Annette Jones]”—a testament to Gaters’ success and skill. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t go because we had our own state tournament, which we won.”
Gaters also talked about her first full season of coaching, which turned out to be pretty successful and was the start of the career that ultimately led to becoming a 2018 inductee in the National High School Hall of Fame. She admitted, “I knew I didn’t know a lot. I felt my job was just to manage [the players] and tell them things like, ‘Don’t act up’ and ‘Don’t talk back to the officials.’”
And while Gaters has had many memorable games, the one that’s the most special to her is the first state championship, which Marshall won in 1982. “Oh, yes—that’s the one,” she said.
“Marie Christian was our point guard, but the year before we had a better team with Janet Harris. She was the best player in the country,
but we lost—more my fault than theirs. The 1982 team was the ‘redeem team.’”
Then in 2021, after decades of successful coaching, Gaters decided to retire.
“I do help with the boys [her great-grandchildren], as their mother works Thursdays through Sundays,” Gaters stated. “And their father [had] Marfan syndrome, so I felt it was my responsibility to step in. We try to get them involved in things like karate, because their mother is not into sports.” (Gaters’ grandson died from Marfan five years ago.)
As for being part of the LGBTQ+ community, Gaters—as always—is direct: “There was never anything official. I’ve just always traveled in my own lane, and it’s the same thing now. My life is my business. It [my sexual orientation] was never an issue for me, although it may have been an issue for other people—especially opposing teams.
“Your kids know who they are—especially by the time they get to high school. I’m just here to get them basketball scholarships, keep this ball rolling and keep this program on top—but if a student came to me, they can talk to me, just like I would with any other student.”
When asked what it’s like to be part of the LGBTQ+ community in today’s America, Gaters responded, “I think it’s easier [than it used to be], in some ways. There’s not as much of a stigma to it, and I think that’s because a lot of people have stepped to the forefront. They’ve said, ‘We don’t fight. We don’t bite. We just want to be accepted, like everybody else.’”
She acknowledged that Black and Brown LGBTQ+ people “still have it tougher.” But she also pointed out local people who she views
as role models: the several LGBTQ+ members in the current Chicago City Council. “People can see that [LGBTQ+] people are industrious, smart and have great jobs. It’s about what they’re doing to benefit others,” she said. “It’s the same thing you’d expect from any other group.”
As for the anti-LGBTQ+ discourse in many states, Gaters saw a certain former president as the cause. “I think Donald Trump brought a lot of this [anti-LGBTQ+ bias] to the forefront,” Gaters said. “He brought a lot of negative energy, whether it has to do with race, sex, social class, disability—just anything. Just think: Seventy-something million people voted for him a second time. You know who this man is. You have to watch out for [those voters].”
Legacy
“Win more games.” That’s the answer Gaters gave when asked what she would do differently if she could go back in time, knowing what she knows now.
“We had so much talent,” she reiterated. “We had a very successful program. I had to do more as a coach—be more creative and just find ways to win games.
“I was always a student of the game, watching the other teams. I do that now. I’ve learned a lot. The kids were teaching me, they had so much talent. But it was always about the kids, and about them being successful.”
And regarding how she wanted to be remembered, Gaters quickly got to the point: “I want to be remembered as someone who cared about her kids, and who wanted to bring out the best in them—academically and athletically. I’ve had many [college] coaches say to me, ‘We love getting kids from your program; they’re more disciplined.’”
Milwaukee-based anesthesiologist Jesse Ehrenfeld, MD, this past June became the first openly gay individual to take on the role of president of the American Medical Association (AMA).
“While I didn’t run as an LGBTQ candidate, I know that my visibility and representation matters,” Ehrenfeld said, adding that his candidacy was significant “not just to LGBTQ people, but for all physicians who are facing challenges.”
Ehrenfeld, who is a professor of anesthesiology at Medical College of Wisconsin, steps into the role at a tumultuous time for LGBTQ+ Americans, as politicians across the country have taken aim at the health needs of the LGBTQ+, especially as they pertain to trans individuals.
Ehrenfeld added, “The AMA is doing so much to support LGBTQ patients and [others]. We have legislative advocacy. We have a litigation center that’s standing up for transgender patients through our amicus briefs supporting legal challenges to restrictive laws.”
Reducing stigma against patients with unique needs because of their sexual orienta-
tion or gender identity was another priority, he added.
“We are facing government intrusion into how we practice medicine,” Ehrenfeld said. “We have a lot of challenges ahead of us.”
A Delaware native, Ehrenfeld is also a reserve medical commander in the U.S. Navy, as well as a leading researcher in the field of biomedical informatics (sciences and technologies behind collecting and utilizing patient data). He has also been a high profile advocate for the rights of transgender Americans wanting to serve in the U.S. military.
Ehrehfeld likewise has been a part of the AMA’s efforts in speaking out on behalf of the healthcare-related rights of transgender Americans.
“In 2021, we sent a letter to the National Governors Association calling for an end to legislative interference in healthcare for transgender patients,” he said. “We continue to refer to it as a dangerous intrusion into the practice of medicine. … Doing all those things as an LGBTQ person is pretty exciting—there’s such great alignment with what I know we need to do to support the needs of the community.”
Ehrenfeld noted that the Chicago-based AMA has had membership growth for 11 out of the past 12 years, which he attributed to physicians “understanding the value” that the organization brought to the practice of medicine in the country.
“I was chair of the board when COVID arrived,” he recalled. “So much of that time is now fuzzy, because there was so much we had to do to support physicians and patients.”
The stress of the pandemic contributed to physician burnout—and that burnout is “a real threat” to healthcare in America, Ehrenfeld added. He noted that, “Nearly two-thirds of physicians experienced burnout symptoms in 2021. Think about that. One in five physicians said they’re going to stop practicing in two years.”
As such, the AMA has prioritized what it calls a “Recovery Plan for America’s Physicians,” composed of five facets: reforming Medicare; supporting telehealth; fixing prior authorizations; fighting “scope creep” (political interference de-
termining patient care); and reducing burnout.
“That’s really the focus of a lot of our activity across the organization, in [terms of] trying to support physicians today,” Ehrenfeld added.
He has been active in the AMA’s organizational levels for several years, and said that his colleagues have always been accepting of identity. He jokingly encapsulated his time there in one word: “Fabulous!”
But Ehrenfeld switched gears to describe the thoughts running through his head as he received the AMA’s presidential medallion earlier in the summer of 2023. He wondered that evening, was the event inspiring some younger physician who had not yet come out of the closet?
“Somebody watching in the audience was struggling, because they are gay, or identify as LGBTQ,” he said. “I only hope that the visibility I bring through my leadership of the AMA—the largest, most influential physician group—can give that person some hope and some sense of possibility.”
While Darcy Connors was a nursing home administrator in the South, she also operated a COVID-19 recovery center.
Connors and her staff noticed that two of the patients in their charge had a strong connection with one another—they were obviously a couple but were reluctant to inform the staff.
“One of the partners was hospitalized, and the other partner wasn’t able to visit him in the hospital,” recalled Connors, who is transgender and is now executive director of New York City-based SAGEServes, which advocates for high-quality, inclusive programming and service-delivery for LGBTQ+ seniors. “They both ended up in the nursing home that I was operating for recovery post-COVID. We knew the connection. You can feel someone’s love for someone else.” (SAGEServes is a division of the larger SAGE organization, which advocates for LGBTQ+ older adults.)
Connors explained to the couple that she and the staff knew their situation. She disclosed her identity and said she wanted to provide a safe space for them to have direct conversations about their care and caregivers.
“Unfortunately, they still felt that fear,” she added. “Especially with rural older adults, closeting yourself is very common. But we see that here in New York City [as well].”
Planning for the difficulties befalling any person late in life is challenging for any American. No matter the financial, emotional and physical preparations in anticipation of retire-
ment and beyond, those preparations can all come undone quickly because of unanticipated financial, health or family crises, among other factors.
That precariousness is even more pronounced for LGBTQ+ Americans, experts agree. That community must be diligent to be sure that their health and financial directives will be carried through, and that they can access high-quality and culturally competent service providers. SAGE reports that LGBTQ+ older adults are twice as likely to be single and four times less likely to have children, further complicating caregiving needs.
“Even [when considering] accessibility into hospitals, nursing homes or doctors’ offices, if your family is not registered in the right way legally—such as having a marriage certificate, having a caregiver that has an advance directive to support you—they might not have access to support you—there’s some stigma that goes with that,” Connors explained.
“There is such a pressing need for people to understand what needs to be put in place to ensure that their wishes are honored should they need to receive care from someone else— and to make care easier for that person,” said Kimberly Acquaviva, the author of LGBTQ-Inclusive Hospice and Palliative Care: A Practical Guide to Transforming Professional Practice.
Acquaviva, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Nursing, had already spent a large portion of her professional life researching the needs of LGBTQ+ older adults by the time her late wife Kathy Brandt became ill. The couple saw firsthand how many logistically fraught medical and end-of-life decisions same-sex couples dealing with a long-term illness faced.
“There’s a lot written about advance directives that will help express your wishes, like a durable power-of-attorney and a health care surrogate,” Acquaviva said. “But the other piece people don’t talk about are some of the practical aspects beyond the documents people know about. If you did need to be on the receiving end of caregiving, who’s going to be in charge of paying your bills? Where do you keep your passwords? My wife and I began brainstorming about, ‘What are all the things you need to know in a couple?’”
Additionally, LGBTQ+ folks need to ensure that their service providers are culturally competent when it comes to treating and serving community members. Acquaviva suggests both looking for providers with nondiscrimination
SAGE: sageusa.org
“There is such a pressing need for people to understand what needs to be put in place to ensure that their wishes are honored should they need to receive care from someone else—and to make care easier for that person,” said Kimberly Acquaviva (pictured), the author of LGBTQInclusive Hospice and Palliative Care: A Practical Guide to Transforming Professional Practice.
HRC/SAGE’s LGBTQ+ guide for finding long-term care: https://tinyurl.com/yw2bps2b
AARP caregiver guide: https://tinyurl.com/yc48e76v
statements addressing sexual orientation and gender identity and being explicit in directives about who is to provide care and what that care will look like.
Connors knew of another situation where an older transgender woman had no designated caregivers, so her care reverted to her parents. Those parents, over the course of their caregiving, for all practical purposes, “un-transitioned” the woman.
“Everything that this person as a transgender adult had put in place was struck and reversed, including gender-affirming care and surgeries that were in place,” Connors explained.
In the last several years, organizations like SAGE and various activists have been calling attention to the difficulties LGBTQ+ folks face and providing resources that can help. In late 2021, Human Rights Campaign and SAGE joined forces to create a consumer guide to finding a long-term care community, for example. AARP also publishes a caregiving guide.
LGBTQ+ folks shouldn’t wait for a particular age or stage of life to begin consideration of their later-life plans, Connors said.
“Looking to your doctor is a good start,” she added, recalling that when she relocated to New York City, she immediately spoke with her new doctor about updating her advance-directive documentation and making sure that Connors’ wife received copies.
“It’s really easy to put off those things because it’s so overwhelming,” admitted Acquaviva. But she nevertheless advises that every LGBTQ+ member consider who in their circle they want to discuss their end-of-life planning.
“For all of us—not just LGBTQ people, but everybody—we tend to think that we’re younger than we actually are,” she added. “I’m 51, but I feel like a 27-year-old. The idea of aging can feel really far away, and the idea of needing care is tied into getting older. When my wife got sick, neither one of us were ‘old,’ but we weren’t 15-year-olds either. It’s important for us to have these hard conversations.”
This article appears as part of News is Out, a collaboration between Windy City Times and five other nationwide LGBTQ+ publications, and is possible through a grant from AARP. See newsisout.com.